Sheila and Clay Fletcher: The Parents Who Let Their Daughter Die

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There's a house in slaughter, Louisiana, that first responders still struggle to talk about.

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What they found inside on January 3, 2022 was not the result of a stranger, a weapon,

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or a break-in.

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The people responsible lived there, both of them, and they were among the most respected

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members of their community.

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This is the story of Lacey Fletcher.

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[Music]

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Slotter, Louisiana, population hovering around 1,000 people.

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It's a place where everyone knows whose truck is parked and whose driveway, and that's

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not gossip, that's just a Tuesday.

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Small towns like this run on reputation in a way that a city with a million people could

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never.

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Your name carries weight out there.

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The life you project to your neighbors becomes a form of social currency, and the general

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unspoken agreement among decent people is that you don't go digging in someone else's

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business as long as they're conducting themselves appropriately in public.

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The Fletcher family had spent years building a name that carried a significant amount of

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that weight.

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Sheila Fletcher worked as a clerk for the local court system and served as a town alderman.

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Clay, her husband, was equally embedded in the fabric of the community, serving as

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an officer in the Baton Rouge Civil War roundtable, volunteering as timed document and

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preserve history.

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Neighbors described him as friendly, always visible in the front yard, or at community gatherings.

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By every observable measure, these were upstanding people, and slaughter saw no reason to think

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otherwise.

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Their daughter, Lacey Ellen Fletcher, was born on November 25, 1985.

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Her childhood was unremarkable in the best way possible.

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She went to school, she played volleyball, and the people who knew her described her as sweet

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and kind.

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There was nothing about her early life that announced what was coming.

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In 2016, Lacey began struggling in ways her family struggled to address.

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She developed severe social anxiety, and was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a neurodevelopmental

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disorder on the autism spectrum.

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A diagnosis like that, in the right environment with the right support, is entirely workable.

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People with Asperger's lead full, independent, connected lives all the time.

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Lacey's anxiety was real and significant, and the decisions her parents made in response

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to it over the following years would redirect the entire course of her life.

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By 2002, Lacey was 16 years old, and she had her last documented appointment with a medical

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professional.

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After that visit, Sheila and Clay moved her to homeschooling.

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Whatever the reasoning at the time, that decision fundamentally severed the last remaining

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connection between Lacey and any outside oversight.

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No more teachers, no more coaches, no more mandated reporters with illegal obligation to speak

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up if something seemed off or wrong.

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After 2002, the only people responsible for Lacey's well-being were her parents, and her

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access to the outside world began narrowing in a way that nobody from the outside was

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positioned to see or stop.

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Her world contracted year by year.

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Slotter became just the Fletcher household for her.

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The Fletcher house became mostly just the living room.

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The living room eventually became a single leather couch, and that couch became the entirety

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of Lacey Fletcher's existence for more than a decade.

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Behavioral experts who have studied this case referenced something called the boiling frog

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phenomenon in caregiving situations.

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The changes come so incrementally that no single moment presents itself as a crisis demanding

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action.

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In 2003, Lacey was a teenager who didn't want to go out.

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By 2010, she was a young woman who preferred to stay in.

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By 2015, she had not left the couch in years, and by then, the Fletcher had likely normalized

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every stage of her decline because they had been present for every small step along the

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way.

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Researchers also point to a concept known as "Folly a Duh".

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Now, I don't speak French, maybe you do, but in case you're like me and do not speak French,

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I looked it up for both of us.

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It's a shared psychological state between two people who reinforce each other's belief

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that a deteriorating situation is under control.

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Folly a Duh.

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Both frameworks appear to directly apply to the Fletcher household, and together they

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go some distance toward explaining how two seemingly rational adults could coexist

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with what was developing in their living room.

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Ecology can describe the mechanism.

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It offers no comfort whatsoever on the question of why they never tried to stop it.

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Responding to a call from the residents, first responders arrived at the house on Highway

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964 on January 3, 2022, Lacey Fletcher was found seated on a leather couch.

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She weighed 96 pounds.

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Her body was covered in stage 4 pressure ulcers.

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The wounds so advanced that bone was exposed in multiple areas.

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She was covered in fecal matter found in her hair, her ears, and under her fingernails.

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There was an active maggot infestation in her open wounds.

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She also, by the way, tested positive for COVID-19, which almost certainly delivered the

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final blow to a body already compromised beyond recovery.

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The couch itself held a complete record of what had been happening there for years.

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Sheila and Clay had called it Lacey's sanctuary, a place she had chosen.

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What the forensic evidence showed was a woman left to disappear.

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Lacey had remained in the same position for so long that her body wore a cavity through

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the leather and foam cushioning all the way to the floor beneath it.

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The leather had been chemically dissolved by years of exposure.

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The hollow beneath her held accumulated biological waste that had saturated into the

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flooring.

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Dr. Bicum, the East Felicia Ana parish coroner, had spent decades in this profession.

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He described what he saw as the worst of his career, and called Lacey's death murder

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Biden neglect.

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The official cause was sepsis, a systemic infection originating from those stage 4 ulcers that had

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gone completely untreated, or weighed at death confirmed years of malnutrition.

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What's genuinely hard to absorb about this case is that Sheila and Clay were living

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entirely normal on the other side of the house, eating meals in the kitchen, sleeping in their

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beds, traveling, attending social events.

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Clay was out doing yard work and chatting with the neighbors.

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Sheila was driving to her job in the legal system of East Felicia Ana parish and then coming

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home.

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They had functionally partitioned off one section of their home and one section of their

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minds.

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And within this partition, a human being was dying.

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Doctors used the term "high functioning disassociation" to describe the capacity to

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seal off a horrifying reality while operating completely normally everywhere else.

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Their neighbors had not seen Lacey in approximately 15 years.

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When they got asked about her, they offered vague reassurances.

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She's doing okay.

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She's still struggling a little.

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Because the fletchers were trusted, well regarded people, nobody pushed further and nobody

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called for a welfare check.

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These cases become one of the most widely cited examples in a national conversation about

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vulnerable adult protections.

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Children have layers of mandatory oversight surrounding them, teachers and coaches and

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pediatricians, with legal obligations to act if they see something wrong.

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Adults with developmental disabilities living under the sole care of family frequently have

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no equivalent system.

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Lacey Fletcher fell through every gap that existed.

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In May 2022, a grand jury returned a second-degree murder indictment against both Clay and

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Sheila Fletcher in under two hours.

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Sheila resigned from her alderman position shortly after.

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Those indictments were tossed in 2023 on technicalities related to statutory language, producing

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a wave of public outrage, and a second grand jury returned the same charges.

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In February 2024, both fletchers entered a no-contest plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter,

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which carries identical legal way to a guilty plea while allowing defendants to avoid saying

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the words directly.

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Each received a 40-year sentence with 20 years suspended, meaning each will serve 20 years

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followed by five years of supervised probation.

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A lot of people following this case sat with the math for a while.

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Being neglect is genuinely difficult because the crime lives in two decades of consistent

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inaction rather than a single identifiable event.

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And manslaughter is often the most realistic charge prosecutors can actually secure.

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The law has real limits in these situations, and that awareness does not make the number

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feel adequate.

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In the aftermath of this case, advocates began pushing for legislation informally they're

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calling it "lacy's law," which would require periodic welfare checks or medical attestations

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for disabled adults living solely under the care of family members.

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A framework designed to bridge the gap between protections extended to children and the relative

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invisibility of disabled adults in the current system.

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That conversation is still ongoing.

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Lacey Fletcher played volleyball, had friends.

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She was described as sweet and kind.

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She had a diagnosis that came with real challenges, and the people who were supposed to walk through

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those challenges alongside her chose their reputation and their own lives above hers for

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20 years in a living room where the television was probably still on.

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The very least we can do now is say her name and mean it.

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It's for listening to 10-minute murder, vengeful true crime stories.

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My name is Joe.

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Hi, I'm the host, and here's an email subject.

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Do you ever scrap episodes?

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Hi, Joe.

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Have you ever researched a case and decided not to release the episode, either because it

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didn't sit right or it just didn't come together the way that you wanted?

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Imagine this has to happen sometimes.

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Trent?

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In Mozilla, Montana.

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Trent?

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Bingo, brother, you got it.

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It does happen.

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Unfortunately.

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It feels like a waste of time every time I do it.

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And in the end, I would feel weird if I just started putting out episodes just because I

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did the work on the front end, if that makes any sense.

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I can't justify.

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Well, I did so much research on this.

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I just might as well release it.

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I wouldn't feel right about that.

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If at any point I think I'm not telling this story appropriately, I'm not being as respectful

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about the victims as I should be.

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I don't think there's a way for me to tell the story in 10 minutes and it be respectful

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to what the situation was.

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Then I just don't.

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And it doesn't matter how much time I spend in researching the case.

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Again, thank you for the email.

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Hey, if you're a new listener to this podcast, welcome.

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And this goes to everyone, whether you're an OG listener or this is the first episode

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If you like it, subscribe over there as well.

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And that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today.

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Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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See you next time.