April 12, 2026

True Crime Blueprint - Robin Hood Hills: The West Memphis Three Story

True Crime Blueprint - Robin Hood Hills: The West Memphis Three Story
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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. Three little boys went into

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the woods one afternoon in West Memphis, Arkansas, and it

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never came back out. Three teenagers went to prison for it.

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Eighteen years later, those teenagers walked free as convicted murderers

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who pled guilty. They say they didn't do it, and

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the DNA in this case may point to someone else entirely.

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This is true Crime Blueprint, all right. Let's start at

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the very beginning of this, because if you don't understand

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where this happened and what the place felt like in

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nineteen ninety three, the rest of the story is going

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to make almost no sense. West Memphis Arkansas sits right

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on the western bank of the Mississippi River, staring right

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across the water at Memphis, Tennessee, and in nineteen ninety

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three it was a working class Delta town with a

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poverty rate that was significantly higher than the national average.

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A lot of families were renting, a lot of people

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were living in trailer parks. The jobs that existed were

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mostly labor jobs, and the social structure of the community

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was what i'd call pretty rigid. There was this version

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of normal that got enforced quietly and consistently, and if

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you fell outside of it, people noticed and they talked.

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Want you to keep that in your mind as we

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go forward with this. Now, the other thing you need

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to understand is the culture moment, and this is really important.

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In the early nineteen eighties, something started happening across the

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United States that historians and psychologists now called the Satanic Panic.

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Starting roughly around nineteen eighty three and running through most

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of the nineteen nineties, there was this enormous widespread fear

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about secret Satanic cults operating in America. Those daytime talk

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shows like Donahue and even Oprah back then would have

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these Satanists do on there, and it was a big thing.

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People talked about it all the time. Being a child

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of the eighties, it was something that I thought was

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going to be a big deal when I grew up.

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This I'm going to have to deal with Satanists when

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I became a grown up. They're everywhere. The idea was

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that networks of devil worshipers were hiding in plain sight,

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abusing children, conducting rituals, and that it was everywhere. Like

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I said, daytime talk shows were full of people claiming

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they'd survive these cults. Books were published, Actual congressional hearings

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happened over this. It wasn't a fringe thing. It was

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mainstream American anxiety. And a huge part of this was

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fueled by the rise of fundamentalist Christianity and American political life.

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There was a very literal belief in the active presence

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of evil in the world, and that evil had a

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specific esthetic heavy metal music, black clothing, dungeons and dragons,

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horror movies. If it looked or felt edgy by conservative,

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small town standards, it was getting flagged as a potential

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gateway to the occult. Now take that cultural moment, drop

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it into a small economically struggling Delta Town, and then

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we have three little boys get murdered in a horrific

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way that no one in the community saw coming. And

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what do you think happens? People need an explanation, they

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need it fast, and they need it to make sense.

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And the explanation that presented itself was the one the

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entire culture had spent the last decade building for them.

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That's the environment. Three eight year old little boys. Let

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me tell you who they were. Steve Branch went by Stevie.

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He was a small kid, blondehaired, lived with his mom,

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Pamela Hicks and his stepfather, Terry Hobbs. He was a

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second grader at Weaver Elementary. His friends say he was

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funny and a little mischievous, the way that most eight

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year old boys tend to be. Christopher Byers was the

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adopted son of John Mark Byers and Melissa Deferr. He

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was one of those kids who still fully believed in

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Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at eight years old.

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Just a regular kid in every sense of the word.

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Michael Moore was sort of the leader of the three

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of them, and at least by reputation he was. He

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loved his Boy Scout uniform so much that he wore

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on days that there wasn't even a Scout meeting. He

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didn't have boy Scout things going on, but he loved

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the uniform and loved being a part of the Scout

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so much that he kept the uniform on. He was

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just proud of it. His parents, Todd and Dana Moore,

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described him as a gentle kid who cared a lot

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about doing things the right way. All three were honor students.

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All three had recently made the rank of Wolf in

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their Cub Scout pack. They were, by every account, good

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kids from families who loved them. One afternoon on May fifth,

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they were seen riding their bikes together in their West

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Memphis neighborhood. That was the last time any of them

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were seen alive. The search started that evening. They found

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the bodies the following afternoon, May sixth, in a drainage

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ditch in a wooded area in the neighborhood kids called

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robin Hood Hills. A juvenile parole officer named Steve Jones

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spotted a child's shoe floating in the water. What they

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found after that was devastating. All three boys had been

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stripped of their clothing, They were hogtied, their wrists bound

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to their ankles with their own shoelaces. All three showed

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signs of severe head trauma. The medical examiner determined that

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drowning was the actual cause of death, but the injuries

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before that were extensive and brutal, and Christopher Byers had

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additional injuries, including what the original autopsy described as genital mutilation,

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which the medical examiner interpreted as having been done with

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a knife. That detail, that one detail, lit a fuse.

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Within days of the murder, the chief inspector of the

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West Memphis Police Department, Gary Gitchell, publicly announced that cult

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activity was a primary theory in the case, not a

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lead they were pursuing quietly, a public statement. Once you

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say that out loud, in this particular town, in this

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particular moment in American culture, you have fundamentally changed the

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nature of your investigation. Because a search for whoever killed

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these three boys starts with evidence and builds a case

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from there. A search for Satanic cults starts with the

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conclusion already written and works backward to fill in the blanks.

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Those are fundamentally different investigations, and the one West Memphis

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launched was the second kind. There was also a specific

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person on the county's radar who seemed to fit the

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profile they were already building. His name was Damian Eccles.

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Damien Eckles was eighteen years old in nineteen ninety three.

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He had not had an easy childhood. He was born

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Michael Wayne Hutchinson in December of nineteen seventy four, and

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his parents divorced when he was eight. He moved around constantly,

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attending eight different schools before he was ten years old.

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He eventually took the last name of his stepfather and

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became Damian Wayne Eccles. By the time murders happened, he

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was a high school dropout living in West Memphis, and

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Damien Ecchles did not look like everyone else in West Memphis, Arkansas.

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He wore long, black trench coats year round. He listened

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to heavy metal. He had expressed an interest in wicca

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and ceremonial magic. He wrote brooding poetry and drew what

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people described as disturbing imagery in his notebooks. Now, to

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most people listening to this in twenty twenty six, it

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probably sounds like a typical artsy teenager who was into

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things his community didn't understand. But in West Memphis nineteen

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ninety three, after the Satanic panic had been running for

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a decade, that description made him an immediate suspect in

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the minds of local law enforcement. There was also a

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history that made him harder to dismiss. Eccles had been

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hospitalized in nineteen ninety two at Charter Hospital in Little

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Rock for major depression and suicidal ideation. He had a

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diagnosed non specific psychotic disorder. He'd been on the radar

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of the county Juvenile Probation officer Jerry Driver, who was

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personally convinced that a satanic cult was operating in the

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area and that Eccles was its leader. Eccles had reportedly

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made statements to people about violent and occult subjects, though

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later accounts suggest that he was at least in part,

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deliberately building a reputation for himself, which is a thing

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troubled teenagers have done throughout human history. The psychiatric history

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was real, the instability was real. Whether any of it

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had anything to do with the murders of those three

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eight year old boys is a different question. The police

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also had two other suspects alongside Damien they built a

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theory around three people, and the other two were sixteen

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year old Jason Baldwin and seventeen year old Jesse miss

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Kelly Junior. Jason Baldwin was Damien's best friend. Baldwin had

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a much lower profile around town. My most accounts, he

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was actually a pretty decent student, not overtly involved in

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any occult practices, and described by people who knew him

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as a pretty normal teenager who happened to be close

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friends with someone unusual. His alibi for the evening of

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May fifth was that he'd been cutting his uncle's lawn.

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Investigators largely set that aside. Jesse miss Kelly Junior was

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more peripheral connection. He knew Damien and Jason, but wasn't

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particularly close with either of them. He worked odd jobs,

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did carpentry, and babysat occasionally for a local woman named

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Vicky Hutchinson. He had a measured IQ of seventy two,

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which puts him on the borderline of intellectual disability. He

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was seventeen. He was eager to please authority figures, and

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navigating a police interrogation requires a kind of self protective

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awareness that he just didn't have. He was the one

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they got to first. On June third, nineteen ninety three,

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Jesse Miss Kelly Junior was brought in for questioning. He

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was there for about twelve hours. His parents weren't present,

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an attorney wasn't present. End of those twelve All right,

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what do you think? It's a bit different than regular

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ten minute Murder episodes. I didn't want to create a

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new podcast that was simply a ten minute Murder but longer,

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so this one's still me and my vibe. Actually, it's

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probably much more me because I'm not limited by time constraints.

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So please right now go and follow True Crime Blueprint

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wherever you're listening to this episode. That's super important for

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the show to grow, like ten Minute Murder has grown.

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Hey Joe question, will you still be doing ten minute Murder?

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And thank sir, absolutely I will. Ten Minute Murder has

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been and always will be the main podcast for me

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into the foreseeable future. So I'm not slowing down or

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that podcast isn't going to go anywhere, so don't worry

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about that. Thank you for listening to both podcasts. Now

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go and subscribe and I'll see you next time.