April 24, 2026

True Crime Blueprint - JonBenét: The Family, the Secrets, and the Case That Broke America

True Crime Blueprint - JonBenét: The Family, the Secrets, and the Case That Broke America
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WEBVTT

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Hi, it's Joe and what you're about to hear is

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a sample of an episode from a new podcast created now.

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If you like it it vibes with what you're looking

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for in a true crime podcast, go over and subscribe

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to the new one. You can find links for it

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in the episode notes here, or you can just search

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for True Crime Blueprint. I'll be releasing weekly episodes there,

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full deep dives, no ten minute restriction. So again, if

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you like this new podcast, it's very important that you

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search for and go to True Crime Blueprint and follow

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subscribe to the new podcast. A six year old girl

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goes missing from her bedroom on the morning after Christmas.

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Three hours later, her father finds her body in the

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basement of their own house. One of the most prominent

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families in their city becomes the most hated family in America,

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and twenty nine years later, nobody has gone to prison

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for it. This is True Crime Blueprint, Okay, So let

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me set the scene here, because to really understand this case,

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you have to understand who the Ramseys were before any

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of this happened. And I think part of the story

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gets completely lost because people jumped straight to the pageant

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photos and the suspicion and the press conferences. There's a

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whole life that existed before December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six,

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and it matters enormously. John Ramsey was born in Lincoln, Nebraska,

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in December of nineteen forty three. He grew up in

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the Midwest with a very structured, achievement oriented value system

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that a lot of people from that part of the

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country carry with them their whole lives. He eventually moved

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to Michigan, attended Michigan State, got his bachelor's degree, then

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his MBA. He served in the Navy after that. His

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military experience instilled a particular sense of order and hierarchy

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in him that would later find his management style as

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a CEO, and it would later be misread by investigators

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and the public as emotional coldness. His first marriage was

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to a woman named Lucinda. They married in nineteen sixty

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six and they had three children together, Elizabeth, Melinda, and

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John Andrew. That marriage ended in nineteen seventy eight. And

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here's something that gets genuinely underappreciated in most profiles of

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John Ramsey. In January of nineteen ninety two, his eldest daughter,

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Elizabeth was killed in a car accident at the age

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of twenty two in Athens, Georgia. John Ramsey had already

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lost a child before John Benay. He already knew what

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it felt like to have his world collapse without warning.

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That piece of his psychological history is real and important,

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because when investigators later described him as seeming too composed

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after John Benney's death, they were evaluating a man who

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had already been through devastating grief once before. That's not

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an excuse for anything, it's just context that deserves to

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be part of the picture. Now, enter Patsy. Patricia Ann

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Paul was born nineteen fifty six in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

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She grew up in a household where ambition was encouraged,

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an achievement was the clear expectation. Her mother fostered her

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participation in beauty pageants from a young age, and Patsy

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absorbed that mentality completely. In nineteen seventy seven, she won

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Miss West Virginia. And here's a detail that really tells

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you who Patsy Ramsey was at her core. She reportedly

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watched the previous year's competition and took detailed notes before

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entering herself she studied it, she reverse engineered what winning

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looked like, and then she went out and she won

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the thing herself. That meticulous, analytical approach to achievement would

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later define how she operated as a pageant mother to

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John Benney. She got a journalism degree from West Virginia University,

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moved to Atlan, and in that city social orbit, she

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met John Ramsey, who was by then a successful businessman,

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turning a garage based startup into something significant. They married

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in nineteen eighty. Patsy was thirteen years younger than John.

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John's company, called Access Graphics, was eventually acquired by Lockheed

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Martin and grew into a subsidiary that reached a billion

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dollars in annual sales. John mentioned that milestone proudly in

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the family's nineteen ninety six Christmas card, because that's exactly

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what a CEO running a billion dollar company in nineteen

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ninety six would do. That's peak nineties executive culture right there.

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Merry Christmas. Here are the photos of the kids. Also,

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bt dubs, I run a multi billion dollar company. God bless.

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Now those aren't exactly the words that he used, but

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I'm taking a liberty there. The family moved to Boulder,

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Colorado in nineteen ninety one, following John's professional success. They

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settled into a seven thousand square foot Tudor style home.

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They were prominent members of Saint John's Episcopal Church. They

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hosted elaborate parties and were visible at the top of

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Boulder's social circle. By every surface measurement, they were living

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exactly that life that the American professional culture told them

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that they were supposed to build. There was, however, something

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heavy underneath all of that carefully constructed success. In nineteen

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ninety three, Patsy was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer.

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Stage four that's not a diagnosis that you strategize around.

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That's a diagnosis that fundamentally re orders a person's relationship

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with time, with their children, with a very concept of

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the future. She went through aggressive chemotherapy, she went into remission,

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and surviving something that was expected to probably kill you

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leaves its own psychological residue. It can intensify your focus

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on legacy, on appearance, on the things you can control

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when your body has proven itself to be unreliable. A

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lot of people who have analyzed Patsy Ramsey's behavior later,

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especially her intense involvement in John Beney's pageant career. Have

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pointed to that cancer diagnosis as a turning point and

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how she processed the concept of time and what mattered

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most in the time that she had John Beney. Patricia

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Ramsey was born on August sixth, nineteen ninety in Atlanta, Georgia.

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By the time the family settled in Bolder, she was

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a toddler, and she grew up in a city that

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was culturally speaking, pretty far removed from the pageant world.

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Her mother came from Bolder in the mid nineteen nineties,

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had a very specific personality. It was academic, outdoorsy, liberal,

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and fairly low key about overt displays of wealth. The

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richest person at any given Bolder social event was probably

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wearing a fleece vest and talking about a hiking trail

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they'd recently discovered. Status existed, but it tended to express

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itself through experiences and ideas rather than formal appearance. That

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was the environment John Benay grew up in. And then

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there were the Ramseys, with their Southern influenced traditions, their

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formal entertaining style, and their participation in a pageants subculture

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that was well established in Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee, but

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landed somewhat oddly in Bolder. John Benay competed in child

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beauty pageants. She held titles including Little Miss Colorado and

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National Tiny Miss Beauty. Patsy coached her, dressed her in

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elaborate costumes, arranged her hair and stage makeup. In the

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pageant community, there was standard practice. In the context of Boulder,

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it felt foreign and a little uncomfortable to a lot

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of people who encountered it. And here's where I want

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to be careful, because there's a significant amount of judgment

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that gets loaded onto the ramseys based entirely on those

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pageant photos. Was child pageantry the right choice? People genuinely

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disagree on that. It's a legitimate conversation. Was it evidence

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of abuse or neglect? The evidence doesn't support that conclusion.

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John Benay, by the accounts of people that actually knew

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her in daily life, was a cheerful, energetic, funny kid.

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She liked to dance, She liked to perform. Whether that

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enthusiasm was entirely her own or partly shaped by her

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mother's ambitions is something we can't definitively separate. But treating

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her parents' participation in pageant culture as proof of deeper

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dysfunction or violent secrets is a logical leap that the

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facts simply do not support. What is true is that

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the images from those pageants, a six year old and

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heavy makeup and sequin costumes styled to look much older

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became the defining visual shorthand for this entire case in

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the media, and those images shaped the national conversation in

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ways that had almost nothing to do with justice and

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almost everything to do with American cultural discous comfort with

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a very specific kind of parenting. You have to understand

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the environment this happened and to fully understand how the

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public and the police responded to it. By nineteen ninety six,

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violent crime in the US had been falling for several

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years running. Boulder specifically was doing well on every single metric.

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Serious crimes on the University of Colorado campus were down

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nearly twenty percent that year. Burglary rates were dropping city wide.

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People in Boulder felt genuinely reasonably safe. There's a particular

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confidence that comes with a low crime rate, combined with

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the university town sense of its own thoughtfulness. Boulder had

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that nobody in that community was operating with their guard

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fully up because statistically they didn't need to be. This

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matters because it explained some of what happened with the

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initial police response. The Bolder police departments in nineteen ninety

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six had years of experience handling drug offenses, property crimes,

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and the occasional assault. They had no meaningful experience handling

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anything like what landed on their desks on December twenty sixth,

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and that inexperience would cost the investigation dearly. Within the

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first few hours. The Ramses spent Christmas Day nineteen ninety

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six making the social rounds. They visited friends, including the

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family of Fleet White, who would become a significant figure

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later in the story. They got home late. John Benay

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had apparently fallen asleep in the car on the way home,

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and John, all right, what do you think. It's a

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bit different than regular ten minute murder episodes. I didn't

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want to create a new podcast that was simply a

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ten minute murder but longer, so this one's still me

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and my vibe. Actually, it's probably much more me because

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I'm not limited by time constraints. So please right now

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go and follow True Crime Blueprint wherever you're listening to

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this episode. That's super important for the show to grow,

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like Ten Minute Murder has grown. Hey Joe, question, will

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you still be doing ten Minute Murder? Answer? Absolutely I will.

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Ten Minute Murder has been and always will be the

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main podcast for me into the foreseeable future. So I'm

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not slowing down or that podcast isn't going to go anywhere,

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so don't worry about that. Thank you for listening to

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both podcasts. Now go and subscribe and I'll see you

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next time.