Salt Life and Death

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Welcome to ten Minute Murder, brief
and bingeible true crime. I'm Joe,

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I am the host, and thank
you for joining today. Do you guys

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have a kid, like a nearly
grown human being that you are in charge

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of. I've got one of those, and I get roasted every single day.

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I don't know what's happening with this
generation of kids. Now. I

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grew up roasting people. It's like
no big deal. But this generation is

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relentless. I mean they will find
the smallest little weakness, the most mundane

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thing, and they'll attack it.
For example, I got told that I

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look like I drink tapwater. It
doesn't make any sense to me. By

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the way, I do drink tap
water. I happen to live in a

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place where tapwater tastes delicious, so
I drink it. I was just talking

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about something to my kid and I
said something about tapwater, and he just

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stopped and looked at me and said, you look like you drink tap water.

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And I deal with that daily.
Is anyone else going through this?

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I hope so, I hope I'm
not the only one. Hey, if

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this is your first time listening to
ten Minute Murder, please subscribe now so

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that you can catch up on all
the back episodes and never miss any new

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ones. Connect with me on social
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feedback is very much appreciated. Go
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things related to ten Minute Murder.
Now to today's story. Laura Grace Duncan's

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body was found face down on the
floor of a hotel bathroom. She had

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been at the beach earlier that day
and was wearing only her one piece swimsuit

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at the time of her death.
Her cause of death was pretty easy to

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discover. The eighteen year old was
surrounded by a puddle of blood coming from

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a bullet wound in her stomach.
It was a lonely, undignified way to

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die. The teenager's body was found
after the Riviera Beach Police Department received a

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phone call on the morning of October
twenty ninth, twenty twenty, requesting a

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welfare check on Laura. The call
came from Laura's father, Burton Duncan,

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who was worried about his daughter's well
being. Desperate defined his daughter safe,

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Burton resorted to tracking the location on
the phone, which led him to the

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Hilton Hotel on Rivera Beach. He
pleaded with the police to go to the

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hotel, tell and check on Laura. It wasn't just her radio silence that

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worried him, it was also the
person he knew that she had last been

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seen with. Recently, eighteen year
old Laura had started dating a man three

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times her age. She had met
Michael Huddo, who was fifty four at

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the time and had four children and
a wife of his own, at the

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gym that she went to. Michael
was a highly successful businessman who had founded

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a popular lifestyle brand called Salt Life, which she had then sold in twenty

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thirteen. Charismatic, personable, and
well liked, Laura quickly developed a crush

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on the older man, which he
reciprocated. Laura was excited about her new

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relationship, which felt sophisticated and made
her feel special. Her parents, however,

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did not share these same feelings.
When they got a text from their

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daughter informing them that she was going
traveling with Michael, they waited anxiously for

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one day without communication, and then
reported her as missing. The Sheriff's office

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sent a deputy to Laura's parents home, and while the deputy was there,

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Laura called home, but her parents
weren't reassured. She sounded strange over the

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phone, slurring her words and seeming
very anxious. They believed that Michael had

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given drugs to Laura. She just
didn't sound like herself. Was Michael drugging

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Laura to keep her subdued while he
harmed her in some way? If anything,

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the phone call just made Laura's parents
more certain that something was terribly wrong.

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Laura's father called the police again and
requested that they check on his daughter.

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When the officers arrived at the Hilton, the hotel staff revealed that Laura

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had booked a room with Michael and
directed them to the suites where the couple

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were staying. The officers knocked on
the door, but there was no reply,

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so the hotel staff unlocked the room. Immediately, the strong smell of

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decomposition hit the investigators, confirming that
something was terribly wrong inside the hotel room.

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Following, the odor led them to
the bathroom where they found Laura's body.

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She was clearly deceased and had been
for a while long enough for the

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pool of blood underneath her to have
dried completely, But the staff knew that

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Laura hadn't arrived alone. In fact, the room itself had been booked under

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Michael's name, and the couple had
been staying there together. A search of

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the room quickly located Michael's wallet as
well as his driver's license, both of

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which had been left behind. But
where was Michael himself? Examining the surveillance

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footage from the hotel's CCTV cameras quickly
provided the answer. The last sighting of

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Michael in the footage showed him hurriedly
leaving the hotel with only a backpack full

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of his belongings before quickly driving away. Laura had been with her boyfriend,

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a man that she trusted, and
somehow this short trip away had resulted in

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Michael leaving Laura bleeding and alone on
the floor of a hotel bathroom. The

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police immediately sent out an alert requesting
any information and on Michael's whereabouts, and

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they didn't have to wait long before
they were contacted by the Saint John's County

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Sheriff's Office, who reported an encounter
they had with a member of the public

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on the previous day, on October
twenty ninth, a gas station attendant in

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Saint Augustine had called the Sheriff's office
after a man clearly under the influence of

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drugs walked into the gas station begging
for help. The man was twitching,

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talking gibberish, and crying with his
eyes rolling back in his head. The

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man was rushed to the hospital for
treatment, and the hospital staff found out

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two key pieces of information. The
first one was that he was suffering from

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a drug overdose, and the second
one was that the man was none other

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than Michael Huddo. He'd arrived at
the gas station around four hours after leaving

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the hotel and presumably around four hours
after Laura had been shot. After hearing

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that their prime suspect was still hospitalized, police arrived at the ward to question

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Michael, who was now lucid and
able to answer their question. Investigators didn't

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beat around the bush, immediately asking
Michael if he knew why they wanted to

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talk to him. Michael didn't try
to hide it. Oh my god,

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he said, I think I hurt
my Gracie. Then he burst into tears.

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As it turned out, Michael didn't
call Laura by her given name.

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He gave her the nickname Gracie,
which is who he was referring to.

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Police took a recorded statement from Michael
about the incident, and the older man

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sobbed the entire time, seeming genuinely
distraught. The next day, in a

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second conversation with detectives, Michael was
able to give more information about the events

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that led to Laura's death. He
told them that during their trip away together,

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they had been spending time on the
beach and had returned to the hotel

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room to relax. At some stage, they began playing a game where they

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pointed their fingers at each other in
a gun shape, pretending to shoot at

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each other. It was a joke, he said. It was just a

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joke. According to Michael, this
somehow evolved into Michael pointing a real gun

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at Laura as a part of the
joke. Then the gun went off,

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firing a bullet which hit Laura in
the abdomen. Why exactly Michael had the

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gun and why it was loaded was
not made clear. His memories of the

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events were blurry, or at least
he wanted investigators to believe that they had

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been Marijuana was also found in the
hotel room, and the theory that Laura

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had indeed been on drugs when she
called her parents seemed more and more likely,

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given that Michael had been suffering from
an overdose when he arrived at the

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gas station. It was possible that
a drug addled Hayes had led to the

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gun going off. However, it
was equally possible that the drugs had caused

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a fit of rage, which had
led Michael to murdering his much younger girlfriend.

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One part of the story, in
particular, brought how much Michael actually

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cared for Laura into doubt. After
the shooting, Michael left Laura and his

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wallet behind, but remembered to pack
his medication and his weapon into his backpack

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before leaving. It's not clear if
Laura was dead when Michael left, but

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she was certainly dying, and he
made no attempt to call for an ambulance

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or police. He didn't even alert
hotel staff to the fact that she needed

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help. He just left. Possibly
she could have survived with urgent medical care.

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A bullet wound to the stomach is
serious, but it's not always a

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death sentence. Michael did not wait
around to find out. In twenty twenty

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three, almost three years after Laura's
death, Michael Huddo was found guilty of

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manslaughter with a firearm, a charge
to which he pled guilty. He received

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a sentence of twelve years in prison
and cried in court while a sentence written

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by Laura's family was read to him. Michael's defense attorney said this about the

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case quote, it was an accident, a stupid, tragic, heartbreaking accident

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that basically ruined two families. He
loved Grace Duncan. I know it sounds

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odd to say that because of their
age difference and the nature of their relations

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ship, but he absolutely loved her. Regardless if Michael truly loved Gracie or

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if he truly did not mean to
harm her when the trigger was pulled,

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his love led to her dying alone
because of a gunshot wound that he inflicted.

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Nobody would think that a relationship between
a married man and his fifties and

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an eighteen year old would have a
happy ending, but Laura's family never could

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have predicted that it would truly end
in tragedy.