The Teflon Don: How John Gotti Ran New York and Lost Everything

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His kids visited him in federal prison and looked up at those enormous stone walls genuinely

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believing their dad helped build them.

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He told them he was a construction worker.

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That one image carries almost everything you need to know about this man, the mythology,

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the compartmentalization, the version of himself he never stopped selling to everyone around

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him, and probably most of all to himself.

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John Joseph Gotti was born on October 27, 1940, and the South Bronx, the fifth of 13

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children.

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Two of those siblings died at birth, leaving 11 kids crammed into a tenement apartment

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where everything got divided and subdivided until there wasn't much left of anything.

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His father, John Sr., was a day laborer.

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Unconsistently employed and consistently coming up short.

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The man worked.

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He followed the rules.

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He got nothing for it.

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And young John watched all of this with the kind of attention that tends to harden into

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a world view.

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John Sr. wasn't cruel.

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He wasn't a drunk or a monster.

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He was just a man who played it straight and lost anyway, and that outcome landed on

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his son like a verdict.

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By the time Gotti was old enough to make his own choices, he had already made the foundational

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one.

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Whatever his father's life was, he was not going to live it.

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That decision didn't come from ambition.

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Exactly.

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It came from refusal, and it would drive every move he made for the next 50 years.

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In 1952, the family moved to the East New York section of Brooklyn, and that's where everything

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starts to accelerate.

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Brooklyn in the early 50s ran on reputation, and you built it outside, not in a classroom.

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By 12, Gotti was already running with street crews connected to the local mob.

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At 14, he tried to steal a cement mixer from a construction site.

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Not a radio, a cache.

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A cement mixer.

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The thing tipped over and crushed his toes, giving him a permanent slight limp that would spend

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decades slowly converting into a signature.

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That signature Gotti limp.

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That rolling, deliberate walk became the fiscal trademark of Dapper Dawn.

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A stride that announced him before he even set a word.

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He dropped out at 16 and fell in with the Fulton Rockaway boys, a crew that functioned as a

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feeder system for the Gambino crime family.

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He met Angelo Regario and Willie Boy Johnson there, and both would stay in his orbit for

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decades.

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They ran errands for a Gambino captain named Carmine Fattico, picked up small jobs, and gradually

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absorbed the architecture of how the business worked.

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In 1826, Gotti was arrested nine times for petty offenses and kept receiving suspended sentences.

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The time that honestly probably felt like a confirmation that he was untouchable.

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It was really just confirmation that the reckoning hadn't caught up yet.

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In 1962, he married Victoria DeGeorgio, and they eventually had five children together.

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Inside the house, Gotti ran a very specific performance.

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He was the strict traditional father, no cursing at the dinner table, full respect for his

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wife.

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He told his kids he was a construction worker.

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When he went to federal prison in 1969 for cargo theft at JFK Airport, his children were

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told he was simply away on a long job.

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And when they came to visit him at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary and saw those enormous stone

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walls, they genuinely believed their father held build them.

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He wasn't in prison.

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He was on a construction job.

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It was a construction worker of the century, apparently.

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The compartmentalization was total and deliberate.

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He held two entirely separate identities and needed everyone closest to him to only ever

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know one.

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The man who shaped Gotti's understanding of what actual power looked like was a Nello

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Neal Delacrosse, the Gambino family's underboss.

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Delacrosse had come from the murder-ink era, ran operations in the Ravenite Social Club

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on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, and he had a reputation for a cold, focused intensity

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that reportedly made veteran detectives uncomfortable just even sharing a building with

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him.

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He commanded every room without appearing to try.

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Under Delacrosse's guidance, Gotti graduated from hijacking trucks to coordinated racketeering

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and learned that discipline was the actual engine underneath everything that worked.

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Delacrosse also kept a check on Gotti's temper, consistently redirecting him away from situations

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that would get him into trouble.

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That function mattered more than either than probably ever set out loud.

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In 1973, a nephew of Carlo Gambino was kidnapped and killed, and the family ordered retaliation.

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Gotti was selected for the hit team.

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They tracked their target, James McBratney, to a bar in Staten Island and trying to pull

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them out while posing as police officers.

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But Bratney resisted, and they shot him dead in front of witnesses.

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John Gotti was arrested, managed to plead the charge down to manslaughter, and he served

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two years.

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When he was released in 1977, the family officially made him a soldier, an induction that happened

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rarely, and carried genuine weight.

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He had proven what he needed to prove.

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On March 18, 1980, Gotti's 12-year-old son Frank was riding a neighbor's mini-bike through

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their Howard Beach neighborhood.

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When he darted out from behind a blind spot and was struck and killed by a car, driven by

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their neighbor, John Favre.

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The police ruled it a tragic accident.

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That ruling carried no weights in the world, John Gotti occupied.

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John Jr. later described laying in his bedroom and hearing his father crying through the vents

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of the house.

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A sound that had simply never come from this man before.

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Victoria attacked him with a baseball bat when he came to the door to apologize.

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Favre was urged to leave the neighborhood.

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He stayed.

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Four months later, in July 1980, while the Gotti family was on vacation in Florida, Favre

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was grabbed near his workplace, forced into a van, and never seen or heard from again.

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Theories about what happened to him range from dismemberment to being crushed in a car

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at a mob-owned chop shop.

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None of it has ever been confirmed.

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When detectives asked Gotti about his missing neighbor, he said he wasn't sorry the man

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was gone and wouldn't be sorry if he turned up dead.

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No charges were ever filed.

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By the mid-1980s, the Gambino family was being run by Paul Castellano, who operated the

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organization more like a CEO than a street boss.

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He lived in a statin island mansion, kept his distance from the social clubs and the soldiers,

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and enforced in no drugs policy punishable by death.

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Then, federal wiretaps caught Gotti's brother, Jean, and close associate Angelo Dealing

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heroin.

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Castellano wanted the transcripts of those recordings, and those same tapes also contained

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Gotti's crew making remarks about the boss that would have not survived Castellano's

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review.

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Everyone in the organization understood the math.

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Then Neil Dillacross died of cancer on December 2, 1985.

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The last steady voice between Gotti and an irreversible decision was gone.

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Castellano didn't attend the wake, which in organized crime functions as a declaration rather

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than a slight.

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14 days later, on December 16, Castellano and his under boss Thomas Balotti pulled up to

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Sparks' Steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan.

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Hitmen in Bay's trench coats and fur hats stepped out of the holiday crowd and shot both

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men the moment they stepped out of the car.

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It was mid-December.

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Midtown was packed with Christmas shoppers and they blended right in.

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Across the streets Gotti and Sammy Gravano watched from a parked car, then slowly drove past

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the bodies.

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Gotti was acknowledged as the new boss almost immediately.

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What followed was one of the most publicly theatrical stretches in organized crime history.

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Gotti wore fancy suits, added the finest restaurants in the city, and held court outside the

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Ravenite like it was a receiving line.

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He ran an annual 4th of July celebration outside the Bergenhunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park,

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a full barbecue with professional grade fireworks that drew thousands of neighborhood residents.

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When Mayor Giuliani tried to shut it down, Gotti's crew launched the rockets from rooftops,

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the crowd chanted his name.

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Three consecutive federal trials ended in acquittals, earning him the nickname "The Teflon

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Don."

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Those acquittals were the byproduct of jury tampering, witness intimidation, and evidence

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that had a way of becoming unavailable at exactly the right moment.

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One juror was paid $60,000 to deliver a non-guilty verdict.

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A victim in a separate assault case suddenly found he could no longer identify his attacker.

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Every time Gotti walked out of a courtroom, his mythology expanded, and his caution contracted

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a roughly the same amount.

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The FBI planted listening devices in an apartment above the Ravenite where Gotti held his most

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sensitive conversations.

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And what they captured was Gotti completely unguarded.

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He was recorded discussing murders, describing his organizational authority, and laying out

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plans to use Sammy Gervano as the scapegoat if they were ever indicted together.

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When both men were arrested in December 1990 and the FBI played those recordings, Gervano

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made his decision.

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He became the highest-ranking member of the American Mafia to ever cooperate with the

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federal government.

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His testimony confirmed Gotti's direct role in the Castelano assassination and removed

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every viable defense argument that remained.

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On August 2, 1992, John Gotti was convicted on all counts, including five murders, racketeering,

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and extortion, and sentenced to life without parole.

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He was sent to USP Marion in Illinois where he spent 23 hours a day in a cell.

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In 1998, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, the same disease that had taken de la Croce.

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He died on June 10, 2002, at 61 years old, in a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

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John Gotti spent his entire life refusing to be invisible, in the end, that turned out

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to be the thing that cost him everything.

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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, hello.

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Here's an email, subject, my dog has opinions.

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Hi Joe, this is going to sound strange, but my dog seems to recognize your voice now.

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If I put your podcast on while I'm getting ready for work, he settles down and goes back to sleep.

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So apparently you're calming to at least one nervous golden retriever in the world.

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Alicia and Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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And Alicia, that's an adorable story.

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However, you neglected to tell me your dog's name.

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And I don't know why I'm weird like this, but I am obsessed with knowing what people name their animals, what they name their pets.

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Like strange names and I like very ordinary names.

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I like when they name a dog, just a normal person's name, like Larry.

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If you name your dog Larry, that's hilarious to me and I love it.

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Or if you've got a dog name, pancake, I also love that.

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I don't so much love like the traditional dog names.

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I don't really like that so much.

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But for future reference, this doesn't necessarily apply to you, Alicia, because you didn't know the rule.

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But going forward, if you tell me in an email about your pet, you have to tell me what their name is, because I have to know.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, make sure right now you hit subscribe.

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You'll find listen links there, also links to where you can follow the show on social media.

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Let's say you've gone past that point, so you've already subscribed.

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You're already following on social media.

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What can you do next?

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Well, you can tell your friends and your family about 10minuteMurder.

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Tell them all about it.

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It's a true crime podcast.

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It's 10 minutes.

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Joe's weird, but I guess he's okay.

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You can understand the words that he's saying.

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Unless it's a name that he doesn't know how to pronounce.

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Okay, so let's say that you've done that as well.

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You've shared the podcast with your friends and your family.

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What else is there?

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You can rate and review 10minuteMurder wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

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But Joe, I've done that too.

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Awesome.

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By the way, I love that you've done all this.

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Here's what you can do next.

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You can subscribe to my newest podcast.

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It's called True Crime Blueprint.

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It's available most places.

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Just type it in True Crime Blueprint or look in the episode notes of this podcast episode

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right now.

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True Crime Blueprint.

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Alright, and that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today.

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you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. See you next time.