The Grief Book: How Kouri Richins Hid a Murder Behind a Children's Story

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In March of 2022, Eric Richens died in his bedroom in Kamis Yutal, with five times the legal

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dose of fentanyl and his system.

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His wife told the police that he had some drinks and had gone to bed.

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Within a year, she was on a local television station promoting a children's grief book

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that she'd written for the kids.

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Let's start the story off in March of 2023, about a year after Eric Richens died in his

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home in Kamis Yutal.

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His wife, Cory, was appearing on local television stations, talking about a children's book

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that she just published called "Are You With Me?"

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It was illustrated and it was moving.

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The premise was exactly what you'd expect from a grieving parent.

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A boy searches for signs of his late father in the everyday moments around him.

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Cory came across as exactly what she wanted people to see.

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A devoted, heartbroken mother channeling her family's loss into something meaningful

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for other kids who'd lost a parent.

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The interviews were warm.

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She was composed and sympathetic.

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She was also, at that point, the primary suspect in her husband's murder.

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To understand how someone does this with a straight face, you have to go back to where

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Cory Darden started.

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She was born in Oklahoma in 1990.

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By the time she finished growing up, she had lived in 17 different states.

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17.

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Her father, an engineer by trade, was incarcerated when she was six years old after a drunk driving

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incident involving a police officer.

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The family came apart.

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Her mother, Lisa, relocated them to Yutal around 2000.

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And according to Cory's own written account during a 2021 wellness retreat, her mother was

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also a compulsive gambler who regularly lost the family's housing and vehicles on casino

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floors.

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Cory described spending weekends and hotel rooms attached to casinos while her mother lost

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their stability downstairs.

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If you grew up watching the concept of home evaporate over and over because of someone

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else's choices, you either make peace with the impermanence or become obsessive about

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acquiring things that felt permanent.

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With Cory, it was the second one.

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She met Eric Richens in college.

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Eric was everything the word "stable" actually means.

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He ran a successful stone masonry business.

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He had deep roots in the community.

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And by every account, he was exactly the family man he appeared to be.

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Cory wrote in that same personal life story that she instantly fell for the idea of a marriage

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with kids and a happy family.

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The phrase "the idea of" is doing some heavy lifting there, right?

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They're married.

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They have three sons.

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And for a while, at least from the outside, it looked like she'd found exactly what she'd

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been chasing her entire life.

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By 2019, Cory had launched "K Richens Realty," a house flipping business that prosecutors

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would later describe as a collapsing operation from the very start.

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At same year, she allegedly used forged power of attorney to take out a $250,000 home equity

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line of credit on Eric's premarital home without his knowledge.

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He used those funds to keep a real estate business breathing.

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Eric found out about the heat lock in October 2020.

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He confronted her, and she promised to repay it.

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The loan was still unpaid when he died.

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The next two years were a financial catastrophe moving and slow motion.

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In 2021 alone, Cory purchased 15 properties totaling over $6.7 million.

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She owed about $7.5 million across various lenders and needed around $80,000 per month just

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to stay current.

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She was covering those gaps with high interest payday loans that doubled in rate to pond default,

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paying four separate lenders $2,100 each per day.

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In December 2021, her accounts recorded 77 overdraft transactions in a single month.

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She also pulled directly from Eric that year, charging $30,000 on his credit cards and

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withdrawing $100,000 from his bank accounts.

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Then, on the very day Eric died, she closed on a $2.9 million property in Midway, Utah,

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that required an additional $3 million in renovations that she had no funding for.

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In a note to a potential investor, she admitted the project was "out of my league," but felt

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the margins were too good to pass up.

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She'd figure it out.

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According to prosecutors, Eric Richens was the solution she landed on.

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Meanwhile, Eric had quietly started protecting himself.

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He consulted divorce attorneys in 2020.

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In November of that year, he created a living trust naming his sister as trustee to protect

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his estate for his sons.

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What that meant, legally, was that if Eric died, Cory would receive nothing.

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His approximately $5 million estate would pass directly to his boys.

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Cory apparently believed that killing Eric would give her access to his money.

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What she either didn't know or chose to ignore was that Eric's trust had already made his

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death financially worthless to her.

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The state says its first alleged attempt on his life came Valentine's Day 2022.

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Prosecutors say Cory put fentanyl in a sandwich.

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Eric survived, broke out in hives, hit himself with an epipen and he blacked out.

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He told a friend that night that he believed his wife was trying to poison him.

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He said those words out loud to another person.

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He was still alive three weeks later.

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Cory sourced the fentanyl through Carmen Lauber, her housekeeper, contacting her four separate

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times.

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She reportedly asked specifically for the Michael Jackson stuff.

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A reference to the powerful illicit pharmaceuticals that had gained kind of a grim cultural shorthand.

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Lauber testified to delivering blue-green pills confirmed as illicit fentanyl and received

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between $1,000 and $1,500 per delivery.

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On the night of March 3, 2022, Eric Richens drank a Moscow mule at home and went to bed.

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He did not ever wake up.

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When officers arrived, Cory told them that Eric had no history of illicit drug use.

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That statement is on body camera footage.

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The toxicology report came back at 20,000 nanograms per milliliter of fentanyl in a system.

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Now, I don't know exactly what that means, but I can tell you that the lethal threshold,

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the amount that will kill you is a fifth of that amount.

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There were no track marks on him, no signs of chronic drug use, no prescription, nothing

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consistent with a man who'd built any kind of dependency.

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Intnault was illicit and had been ingested orally.

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Months later, Cory adjusted her story and told investigators that Eric had a secret pain

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killer addiction and may have accidentally consumed a laced THC gummy.

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She told police on night one that he had no history of drug use.

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Those two accounts don't belong to the same version of Eric Richens.

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Between his death and her arrest in May 2023, Cory did not disappear.

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He published "Are You With Me?" in March 2023, appeared on local television stations

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to promote it and held the role of grieving widow publicly and without apparent difficulty.

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Prosecutors called it a calculated cover-up attempt.

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In practical terms, she was using her own sons as the marketing vehicle for a book that

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pointed community attention at her grief rather than at her finances.

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The boys told the court a different story about what home life actually looked like after

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Eric died.

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"Cory was frequently drunk," they said.

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She locked her oldest son in his room while she drank.

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She threatened their pets.

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The middle son, 11 years old by sentencing, told the court directly, "You took away my dad

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for no reason other than greed and you only cared about yourself and your stupid boyfriends."

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Eric's sister, Katie, who took custody of all three boys, told the court they were not props

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for some twisted children's book about grief and loss.

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While incarcerated at Summit County Jail, officials found a six-page handwritten letter in Cory's

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cell.

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It was tucked inside an LSAT prep book.

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She was studying for the Law School entrance exam.

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In Jail, while awaiting trial for murder, the letter itself was titled "Walk the Dog."

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And in it, Cory instructed her mother, Lisa, to coach Cory's brother Ronald into feeding

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a false narrative to Cory's own defense attorney, specifically that Eric had admitted

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buying fit-nail from ranch workers in Mexico during a Sunday football game.

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The letter included the line, "Tell him I need him to do this."

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When the letter was found, Cory told investigators it was an excerpt from a fictional mystery novel

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she was writing.

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The six pages of specific legal instructions and personal vendetta against Eric's sisters

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remained in evidence regardless.

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The investigation eventually pulled in Cory's mother.

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Summit County authorities unsealed a warrant in 2023 connecting Lisa Darden to the 2006

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death of her business partner, Gertrude Moore, who had died of an oxycodone overdose under

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circumstances and investigators described as "suspiciously similar to Eric's case."

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Darden had been named Moore's beneficiary shortly before her death.

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Darden has not been charged at this point with any crime.

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Two opioid overdose deaths.

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In Generation Apart, both connected to financial gain.

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It's a detail that doesn't quietly go anywhere once you've heard it.

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The trial ran through February and March 2026.

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The defense considered calling a witness who claimed Eric had once tried to purchase

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fentanyl himself.

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The judge warned that doing so would open the door to previously suppressed evidence and

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describe the decision as "a game of high stakes poker."

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After a 30-minute conference, the defense called "no witnesses."

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The jury came back in under three hours, guilty on all counts.

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The judge in the case sentenced Cory Richards on May 13, 2026, which was Eric's 44th birthday.

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He said she was "simply too dangerous to ever be free."

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She's serving life without parole and as file for an appeal.

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Eric's three sons are in Katie's care, in therapy, building something forward.

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His trust did exactly what it was designed to do.

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His estate did go to the boys.

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Everything Cory built.

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She lost.

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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 here's an email subject easy recommendation to people.

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Hey Joe, your show is one of the easiest podcasts for me to recommend because I already know

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the person will need to commit to three-hour episodes.

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I've probably gotten at least four coworkers listening at this point.

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Question though.

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If you could instantly master one hobby without putting in the years to learn it, what would

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it be?

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Megan and Fort Collins, Colorado.

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And Megan, thank you for the email first of all, and thank you for sharing the podcast

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with your coworkers.

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I really appreciate that too.

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I'm having trouble with this one.

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I'm sure there's a really good answer that would make more sense than this one that I'm

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about to tell you, but I can't think of what it would be.

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And the answer is golf.

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But I have been playing golf for years.

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If you've ever played golf, you know that mastering it means that you're very, very good

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at golf.

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And I've played a long time just to kind of suck.

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I can finish around with one sleeve of golf balls.

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Like I can lose very few golf balls is what I'm saying.

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So that's about as good as I am.

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I can usually find my ball every time.

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And it's taken me years to be able to do that.

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So if I could master anything, it would probably be that.

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Again, Megan, thank you for the email.

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And if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, obviously Megan's not a brand new listener.

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But if you listening to me right now are a brand new listener, this is your first or maybe

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second episode that you've you've checked out, I appreciate it.

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Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now.

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If you want to follow me on social media, you'll see the photos that usually come along

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with these stories.

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Links are in the show notes of this episode or you can go to 10minuteMurder.com.

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OG listeners, been listening since day one.

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I appreciate you.

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Love you with my whole heart.

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Please continue doing what you're doing, engaging with the content, sharing the podcast,

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rating it, five stars, all that stuff.

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I love you to death.

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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.

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(upbeat music)