April 17, 2026

True Crime Blueprint - The Boy They Called Pee Wee: A Serial Killer's Origin Story

True Crime Blueprint - The Boy They Called Pee Wee: A Serial Killer's Origin 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. He weighed just four pounds

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when he came into the world, grew up without knowing

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his own legal name, and walked out of childhood so

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damaged that murder eventually felt to him like a relief.

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Donald Henry Gaskins killed and rule South Carolina for years

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before anyone noticed, and by the time they did, the

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number of victims was almost impossible to count. This is

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the story of Pee Wee Gaskins. Donald Henry Gaskins was

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a teenager. The first time he heard his own full

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legal name, it came from a judge. A judicial officer

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read it out loud during his first court appearance, and

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Gaskins reportedly had no idea that's who he was. He

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had been Peewee his entire life, a nickname added to

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him at birth because he weighed just four pounds, and

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nobody expected much more from him than that. You reach

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your teenage years and you genuinely don't know your own name.

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That's not a quirky footnote on the edge of a

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larger story. That's the foundation. And here's what I want

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you to hold on to as we go through this.

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Understanding where someone came from is its own separate conversation

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from accountability for what they did. Gaskins murdered people, multiple people.

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He described murder as something he did for pleasure and

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for relief, and the number of victims he claimed runs

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into the triple digits. We're going to get there, but

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going straight to the crime scenes skips the part that

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actually matters, how a human being arrives at that place.

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That's what this episode is about. Florence County, South Carolina,

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in the early nineteen thirties was a place with a

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very narrow set of options available for the people who

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live there. The depression had hit the entire country hard,

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but in the rural South. The depression arrived into conditions

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that were already punishing. Share cropping, tenant farming, and field

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labor defined the economic landscape of communities like Prospect. These

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were livelihoods built on exhaustion and exploitation, and they had

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been for generations. Eula Parrot, who went by Mollie, had

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dropped out of school at twelve years old to work

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in the fields. She was a teenager herself when she

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became pregnant with the baby who would eventually become Donald

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Henry Gaskins. The father was reportedly a local man with

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more money than most people in Prospect, had access to

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someone known for gambling and drinking who reportedly paid Molly's

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small amounts for sexual access. He was exploiting this girl,

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and it happened in the same cramped, three bedroom shack

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where young pee Wee Gaskins spent his earliest years observing

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how adults related to each other. He was born on

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March thirteenth, nineteen thirty three, four pounds, sickly and barely

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expected to survive. The people around him responded the way

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people often do when a new baby arrives and nobody

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actually prepared for one. They largely ignored him. At one

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year old, Gaskins reportedly drank a bottle of kerosene. The

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supervision required to prevent that simply wasn't there. The incident

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triggered convulsions that reportedly continued until he was three years

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old three years of chronic seizures in infancy. That kind

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of prolonged neurological disruption can carry real lasting consequences for

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brain development, for impulse regulation, for cognitive function. Now, we

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obviously can't say with any certainty with the long term

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effects were for Gaskins specifically, but it's worth sitting with

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the fact that the first chapter of his life involved

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accidental poisoning in years of seizures in a home where

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anyone paying attention would have been the anomaly his mother

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cycled through men. Gaskins had multiple stepfathers throughout his childhood,

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and the whole atmosphere he described later in interviews and

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writings was one of ongoing chaos and neglect and periodic violence.

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No stable adult figure ever looked at this small, scrawny

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kid and decided that he was worth consistent attention. School

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was not the refuge it might have been for another

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kid in different circumstances, Gaskins was visibly small. His poverty

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was the kind that you could see from across the

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school yard, and he had no social footing to stand on.

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Other kids noticed it. The bullying he experienced was relentless

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and physical, and it continued for years. Rather than tapering

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off the way that a lot of childhood cruelty does,

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chronic bullying, particularly the sustained physical kind, does something very

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specific to the way a person understands the world. If

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the only lesson getting reinforced every single day is that

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weakness invites the punishment and that size determines your value,

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eventually a person starts looking for a way to change

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that equation. For Gaskin's that change came through the discovery

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that the threat of violence commanded a kind of respect

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that being likable never had. He found that probably earlier

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than most kids find anything significant about themselves. He eventually

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fell in with two other boys from similar rough backgrounds,

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and together they started getting into the kind of trouble

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that teenagers in any era find when there's nothing constructive

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in front of them, breaking into homes and petty theft,

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which in nineteen forty six South Carolina got them in

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front of a judge in short order. Gaskins was around

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thirteen when the legal system engaged with him in a

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serious way for the first time. He and his friends

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were caught, and the court's response to a traumatized, neglected

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thirteen year old from an abusive home was to send

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him away to the South Carolina Industrial School for Boys

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in Columbia. And I said school, but the word school

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in that institution's name was doing an enormous amount of

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work it had not earned. The South Carolina Industrial School

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for Boys was a correctional facility full stop. It was

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not built around any meaningful therapeutic or rehabilitative model. Its

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primary tools were hard labor and strict rules, and the

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hierarchy of violence that existed among the boys housed there

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was something the institution either couldn't manage or didn't really

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care about. For a boy who was small and young

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and arriving with zero support system behind him, the Industrial

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School functioned like an advanced course in being victimized. Gaskins

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was sexually abused by older boys at the facility. He

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arrived already carrying neglect, poverty, a chaotic home, years of bullying,

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and a neurologically disrupted early childhood, and then he was

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placed in an environment where sexual assault by peers was

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part of his experience while the adult in charge of

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his care were occupied elsewhere. Apparently, the word failure genuinely

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feels inadequate here. The system didn't fail Gaskins in a

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passive or accidental way. It took a damaged kid, added

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new layers of damage, and eventually released him back into

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the wild. He ran from the school at various points,

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got caught, sent back. The cycle continued until it didn't.

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Somewhere across those years, the psychological architecture that would eventually

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produce a serial killer was being laid in place. Piece

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Gaskins was developing a worldview built entirely around dominance and submission,

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around the idea that power was the only real currency

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and that you were either always wielding it or suffering

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from someone else wielding it. After Reform school, Pee Wee,

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Gaskins moved through his young adulthood in a way that

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should have sent more of a clearer signal to the

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systems around him. He reoffended quickly. He attacked a young

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girl with a hammer, which resulted in additional incarceration, he escaped,

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at least once he was recaptured, he went back in.

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This was the rhythm of his life for years, in out,

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in out, with each cycle producing a version of Gaskins

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that was harder and more fixed in his view of

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what the world was and what he was allowed to

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do in it. Something was happening during those years that

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matters for understanding what came later. Every experience of the

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institutional violence, every mist intervention, every time an authority figure

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looked at him and saw only a problem to be contained,

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it compounded. By the time Gaskins reached his thirties, he

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had a criminal record spanning pages, a psychological profile that

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would require a very long appointment to unpack, and a

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compulsion toward violence that he later described to something living

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inside him. He described it as a pressure, a buzzing feeling.

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He called being bothered and killing as the thing that

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relieved it. He also, and this is genuinely important to

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the story, got married multiple times. Gaskins had long term

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relationships with women, He had children, held down jobs, and

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existed as a recognizable member of communities in rural South Carolina.

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He moved through the world in a way that didn't

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consistently flag him as dangerous. That surface level normalcy is

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one of the most disturbing aspects of this case, because

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it meant he had access neighbors, coworkers, people on the

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road who needed a ride. Pee Wee. Gaskins eventually described

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his murders in two distinct categories, and his own taxonomy

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tells you quite a bit about how his mind operated.

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The first category he called his coastal kills. These were

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strangers people he encountered on the back roads of South Carolina,

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often hitchhikers, often young women or couples who accepted a

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ride from a small, ordinary looking man and had no

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way of knowing what they'd stepped into. All right, or

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do you think it's a bit different than regular ten

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minute murder episodes. I didn't want to create a new

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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. Hey, Joe,

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question will you still be doing Ten Minute Murder? Answer?

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Absolutely I will. Ten Minute Murder has been and always

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will be the main podcast for me into the foreseeable future,

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so I'm not slowing down or that podcast isn't going

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to go anywhere, so don't worry about that. Thank you

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for listening to both podcasts. Now go and subscribe and

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I'll see you next time.