The Cereal Killer

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[MUSIC]

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Christina Harris struggled to hold her spoon while she was eating cereal one evening

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in September of 2014.

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By morning, the 36-year-old mother of two was dead.

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Her husband Jason collected the life insurance money, moved on with his life,

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and thought he'd gotten away with it.

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But Christina's family knew something wasn't right,

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and what investigators eventually discovered in her frozen breast milk would change everything.

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[MUSIC]

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This case out of Davidson, Michigan starts in September 2014.

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And it's one of those stories that shows you how close someone can get to getting away with murder

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when they're patient and willing to wait it out.

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And that is no way shape or form advice.

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Christina and Thompson Harris was 36 years old.

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She had two daughters, including a baby she'd given birth to just a few months earlier.

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She was working as a manager at Subway, where people said she was a mentor and friend to everyone.

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And she was married to Jason Harris, who was 44 years old and had a serious problem with his wife still being alive.

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Jason was involved with other women, multiple women.

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Christina knew about it, her family said the marriage was rocky.

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Jason's own siblings said they'd heard him talk about wanting to get rid of Christina.

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Here's what makes this particularly calculated.

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Jason didn't want a divorce.

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He told his co-workers exactly why.

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He did not want to pay alimony.

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He did not want to lose custody of the kids.

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He wanted Christina gone, but he wanted to keep everything else the same.

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The house, the kids, the life he'd built, he just wanted to remove her from the picture entirely.

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So he started asking questions at work.

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What kind of pills or tastes lists and odorless?

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He tried crushing up Xanax and putting it in Christina's water one time.

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She refused to drink very much of it because she said it tasted funny.

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So he kept asking around.

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What would knock someone out so they wouldn't feel anything?

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Then Jason started trying to hire someone to actually kill Christina.

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He told co-workers he'd already paid an X-Con $5,000 to do it.

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But the guy got caught on a parole violation before he could follow through.

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Police had supposedly caught this hitman doing surveillance on Christina.

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When they found him with a gun, they sent him back to prison.

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Jason tried again.

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He asked at least one co-worker directly if they would kill his wife for $5,000.

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The co-worker said no.

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Never reported him to the police at the time, which is wild.

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But there it is.

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When the murder for higher thing kept failing, Jason decided he's going to have to do it himself.

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And listen to this, Christina seemed to know this was coming.

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Christina told a friend that if something ever happened to her, look at Jason.

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She knew she was aware her husband wanted her dead and she told someone.

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And then it happened anyway.

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The evening of September 28, 2014, Christina told Jason she was hungry.

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He made her a bowl of cereal.

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Really thoughtful behavior, right?

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Except he'd put heroin in there.

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He'd asked previously around if heroin was tasteless and odorless so it would just look

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like she accidentally overdosed.

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Jason told his neighbor later on that Christina had tried to eat the cereal but dropped the

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bowl.

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She fell out of her chair and passed out on the living room floor.

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He said he helped her to the bed.

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The next morning, September 29, he took their two kids and then went to work.

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He texted Christina, called her.

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She didn't respond.

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So he asked the neighbor to go check on her.

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The neighbor found the door unlocked.

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Christina was in bed, called to the touch.

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Unresponsive.

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And foaming at the mouth.

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Another neighbor who was a nurse came over and knew immediately that Christina was dead.

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When police arrived, they ruled it an accidental heroin overdose, which is exactly what Jason

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was counting on.

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Christina Harris, 36-year-old mother of two, accidentally overdosed.

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Case closed.

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Jason told police Christina had been sick with a cold.

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She'd been coughing, not sleeping well.

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He attributed her death to being in a weakened state.

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People examined her confirmed heroin toxicity and called it accidental.

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But Christina's family knew immediately something was wrong here.

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Christina did not use drugs.

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She'd never tested positive for anything during her pregnancy that was alarming.

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She just had a baby four months earlier.

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She was breastfeeding.

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None of this made sense.

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Jason's own brother and sister went to the police just days after Christina died.

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They said Jason had talked about getting rid of Christina.

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They said he was seeing another woman.

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They had serious concerns.

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Jason collected $120,000 in life insurance benefits.

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He'd been fired from his factory job for repeatedly testing positive for drugs himself, so

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that money was probably looking real good to him.

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Within days of Christina's death, he was on a plane to Rhode Island to visit a woman he'd

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been texting.

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Prosecutors would later reveal that Jason had exchanged over 5,800 text messages with

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this woman.

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Two weeks after Christina died, a different woman moved into the house.

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Into the home he had shared with Christina and their children.

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In Christina's obituary, Jason asked mourners to send money in lieu of flowers.

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Memorial contributions may be made to the family payable to Jason Harris.

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That's what it said.

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Christina's family refused to let this go.

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They kept pushing.

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The Davidson police investigated for years.

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Then the Michigan state police took over.

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They dug deeper.

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Co-workers started coming forward with stories.

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Jason had asked them about pills.

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He tried to hire them to kill Christina.

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He complained constantly about wanting to get rid of her.

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He specifically said he didn't want to go through divorce because of child support and

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custody.

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Jason's own brother testified that Jason asked him to book a hotel room for a secret hookup

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with another woman.

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The brother canceled it when he found out what it was for.

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Investigators got Christina's medical records.

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No history of drug use whatsoever.

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They tracked down every doctor's visit during her pregnancy.

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Nothing.

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Then they got the frozen breast milk.

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Christina had been breastfeeding their infant daughter.

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She'd stored frozen breast milk at her parents' house.

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Investigators collected those samples in 2016 and had them tested.

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No controlled substances.

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Zero.

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Nothing.

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Christina Harris was not using drugs.

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This was the first time in Michigan history that breast milk had been analyzed as evidence

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in a criminal case and it completely destroyed any possible defense that Christina accidentally

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overdosed herself.

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The science was clear.

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If Christina had been using heroin on a regular basis, it would have shown up in her breast

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milk.

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But there was nothing there.

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Which meant that massive lethal dose of heroin in her system the night she died had to

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have come from somewhere else.

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And everyone knew Jason had made her that serial.

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In August 2019, five years after Christina's death, the medical examiner officially changed

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the manner of death from accidental overdose to homicide.

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That ruling was everything.

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Without it, prosecutors couldn't charge Jason with murder.

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When this finally went to trial in November 2021, seven years after Christina died, the

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prosecution had an overwhelming case.

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They had Jason's co-workers testifying about the murder for higher attempts, the $5,000

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offer, the questions about tasteless pills, his constant complaints about wanting Christina

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dead, his explicit statements that he didn't want to pay child support or lose custody.

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They had his own brother testifying against him.

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They had the breast milk evidence proving scientifically that Christina wasn't a drug

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user.

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They had Jason's behavior after her death, the life insurance collection, the trip to Rhode

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Island, the new girlfriend moving in two weeks later, the money request in the obituary.

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The jury convicted Jason Harris of first degree premeditated murder, solicitation of murder,

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and delivery of a controlled substance causing death.

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The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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During sentencing, Jason maintained his innocence.

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Said he was going to appeal.

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The judge called him a liar and a murderer.

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Jason did appeal. He claimed he had ineffective counsel that his lawyers didn't do a good

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job representing him.

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On February 22, 2024, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld his conviction.

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They reviewed everything.

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They said the evidence against him was overwhelming.

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The conviction stands.

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Christina and Thompson Harris was 36 years old when her husband poisoned her cereal because

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he didn't want to deal with the consequences of divorce.

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She left behind two young daughters who have to grow up knowing their father murdered their

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mother over money and inconvenience.

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She told a friend that if something ever happened to her, Jason did it.

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She knew she was in danger and her family fought for five years to make sure that the truth

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came out, to make sure her death wasn't written off as just another overdose statistic.

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That frozen breast milk she'd stored for her baby daughter ended up being the key piece

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of evidence that proved she was a good mother who wasn't using drugs.

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It proved that someone gave her that heroin and the only person who had that opportunity

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was the man who made her cereal that night.

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Jason Harris asked his co-workers about tasteless pills, wanted to hire a hitman.

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When all of that failed, he put heroin in his wife's food and watched her drop the bowl

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and pass out.

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Then he went to work the next morning like nothing happened.

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He's now serving life without parole.

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Christine's daughters are growing up without their mother and all of it could have been prevented

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if Jason had just been willing to deal with child support payments like millions of other

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divorce parents instead of choosing murder.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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I'm Joe, I'm the host, and let's get to a couple of emails, first one subject, background

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noise, but make it murder.

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Joe, your podcast has become my background noise while working from home.

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I'll be answering emails while you, calmly, explain a homicide and my brain treats it as

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normal.

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Not sure that's healthy, but here we are.

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Melissa in Saratoga Springs, New York.

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Melissa, I hope that's normal, because that's kind of what I do too.

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The next one, subject, my commute got darker.

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Joe, I drive 40 minutes to work and your podcast has turned that drive into a parade of crimes

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from the last 100 years.

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I now arrive fully caffeinated and mildly unsettled.

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No notes, just reporting in.

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Ethan in Ames, Iowa.

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Ethan, I appreciate the report from Iowa.

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Keep up the good fight, my man.

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Hey, if you're a new listener to the podcast, hit subscribe right now.

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Then you can go to 10minuteMurder.com, sign up for the newsletter, you can check out

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the blog and see all the places you can listen to the show and also connect on social media.

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And again, that's at 10minuteMurder.com.

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OG listeners, I love you.

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Keep sharing this podcast with your friends and your family, rating it and reviewing it

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anywhere that that's possible.

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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.