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Well, hi everyone, I am Jeff and thanks for joining
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us on History and Factory is about today? Yeah, I
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know what did day is? But we have something awesome
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for you today. We have just a total awesome co host,
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one of the best writers out there, and she's got
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this really incredible video podcast that we're going to tell
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you about. So we're not gonna just scare you with
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a simple boo that's for kids. We're gonna add some
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little intrigue to you today. So Claire, why don't you
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gon to introduce youself?
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Sure, my name is Claire o'donahue and I'm the host
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of the History of Murder podcast. I'm also a true
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crime TV producer and a mystery writer, so all things
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murder pretty much, and the History of Murder podcast is
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sort of a combination. Well, we like to say we
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put crimes in context. We tell you about the crime,
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but we tell you about the events that were happening
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that impacted the crime as well.
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Well, you've always been into books, right, always. Yeah, So
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started off with a writer and then you got into
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we'll talk about it later. You had really good books
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out there, so then you went into TV and that's
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kind of what your forte was it's true grime on that.
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Yes. Yes, most of the stuff that I've worked on
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in TV is lots of lots sort of some famous
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ones like Forensic Files and the first forty eight and
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lots and lots of of different types of true crime
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shows that I've worked on, and I've interviewed a lot
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of different people in that world as a result.
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Cool. Have you always been a Halloween fan?
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I love Halloween. You know, it's originally an Irish holiday
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and my parents are from Ireland, so it is something
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that's sort of in the.
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DNA, I guess, so, well, we might as well start celebrating.
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Today is Halloween.
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I'm the one shot red hair.
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Well, happy Halloween, are you goblins and ghosts out there?
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Halloween it means Hallows Evening. That's the night before Hallow's
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Day and that's where all the Catholic Saints are honored. Now,
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by the late eighteen hundreds, like Claire said, kids in
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Scotland and Ireland, they would dress as costumes and go
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door to door and get food. Then in trick or treating,
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and that's starting Canada in nineteen twenty seven. So by
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the nineteen thirties, trick or treating. It was all across
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Canada and the United States. So today, according to Statistics,
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forty eight percent of you will wear a costume, forty
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six percent of you, yeah, you're gonna carve a pumpkin,
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sixteen percent of you're gonna dress up your dog, and
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you're gonna ptend like you weren't home. Where do you
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fall in on those Claire.
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Oh, I I it's been a while since I won't
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a costume, I'll admit that. But what I like to
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do is get lots of Halloween candy and enjoy opening
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the door to many many, hopefully many many trick or
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treaters that will come by, and then getting to eat
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the left over candy if there is any.
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Yeah, I had to go out again. I kind of
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ate my Halloween candy. I bought it a little too
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early this year. Some more. Yeah.
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I used to live in Sleepy Hollow, New York, which
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is famous, of course for the legend of Sleepy Hollow,
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and I think they used to bust kids in because
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I'd go through thirteen or fourteen bags of candy every year,
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and eventually I would be in that twenty one percent
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and I have to turn off the lights because we
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would run out of.
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Candy, right, and that the whole thing. You hope they
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realize that once the fourth front pork lights out, kids,
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you're done, you know, don't go up there anymore.
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You're done. Yeah, you're done.
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Yeah.
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And usually by that time it's the older kids, because
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the younger kids come early so they can buy their
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own candy.
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And it looks like it's gonna be a nice weather
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all across the nation, so all the kids should be
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able to have a pretty good Halloween this year.
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Good, good, Absolutely, it's a really lovely if it's a
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nice day. It is. Actually, I do remember that as
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a kid, A lovely fun experience.
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Yeah, it's just a fun day. Don't read too much
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into just enjoy the day. It's nothing wrong with that, absolutely,
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all right, this is going on entertainment. In October thirty first,
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let's goat your twenty twelve, the number one album was
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Babble by Month for and Sons Room five had the
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number one song with one More Night Across.
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My Heart and I Hope You Die.
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I'll Only Stayed with You Monting a million times Only.
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Stay Taylor Swift. She had the number countries on with
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we are never ever ever getting back together.
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On getting together, to.
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Your friends, to.
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Getting back together.
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The number one book was The Panther by Nelson de Mill.
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You read that.
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One, No, I haven't aught to look for it.
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The top movie was wreck itt Ralph. Now Ralph, he
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is tired of being a bad guy. He wants to
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be the hero of a video game. Well, he accidentally
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brings in an enemy that probably takes out the entire arcade.
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So Ralph is voiced by John c Riley. Then you've
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got Sarah Silverman and Jacqueline Brayer in there. Okay, so
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after you started your career, how'd you end up in
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the TV?
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Actually? I got a job on a show called Simply
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Quilts on HGTV because I make quilts and the show
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was looking for people who could speak the language as
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all hobbies have a particular kind of set of words
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and phrases, and could write. So I fit perfectly into that.
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And I worked on that show for four years on
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and off, and then just kept going. So worked in
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TV in different fields, and little by little made my
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way from that kind of television to more documentary and
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true crime.
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It's kind of hard to say, is there any true
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crime that really haunts you, since we're talking about Halloween
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that even to this day is just kind of represents evil.
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Oh gosh, yeah, I think, you know. I think the
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hardest interviews I've done are with family members of victims,
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because it doesn't matter if the murder happened, you know,
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a year ago or twenty years ago. Family members are
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haunted by it. They hold the grief very strang wrongly obviously,
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they hold the thoughts of what their loved one must
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have must have been thinking in the final few moments.
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So those are hard and uh and I didn an
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interview one time with a killer in Montana who the
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guards told me that they would stop the interview if
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he tried to kill me, which I was very grateful for,
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and I was like, yeah, you should totally do that.
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If he tries to kill me, you should you should stop.
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He was very nice though, he actually was extremely nice
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to me, So there you go. Uh, but I remember
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that moment of just I've interviewed a lot of killers.
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That was the only time that anyone's ever suggested somebody
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might do me harm.
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But.
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That one, Yeah, I went back to my hotel that
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night and went, Wow, that was weird.
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That's true. You might have a really good subject to
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because everybody all these big murder cases on TV and
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everyone that neverbody watches it, and you know, they're intrigued
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by it, and then it comes out, Okay, it's over.
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People forget about. There's victims and families and members on
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both sides. It is not over for them.
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It's never over for them. It's never over for the
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families of the victim. It's never over for the families
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of the killer. I've interviewed those as well, and they live,
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you know, with a different kind of haunting, right the families.
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A mother of a woman who was murdered. I remember
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her saying to me that she felt the most sorry
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for the mother of the killer, because that woman would
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have to live with what her son had done, and
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at least she could live with the memories of her daughter.
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It's it just it's a it's a ripple effect that goes,
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you know, to both families, to the communities, to everyone
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who knew both people involved. It really yeah, it. Having
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had an up close and personal seat to it for
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a number of years, you really see it. You really
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see it for what it really is and not not
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just the sort of and I'm as guilty of this
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as anyone, the sort of entertainment of it, but you
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see the reality of it.
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Yeah, I was just going to ask that that's a
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fine line you have to walk so you're not exploiting them,
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but yet you're getting their story across. You really have to.
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It's kind of a fine line there.
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It's a very fine line. And believe me, I have
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asked people why are they doing it? And a lot
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of times what I find from family members is what
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they say is when you go to court, you have
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to sit there quietly while the defense attorney drags down
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your family member or friend because they're trying to get
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their client off right and you can't say anything. That
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is how the justice system works. And being on television
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is a chance for them to write the ship and
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to talk about this person that they love in a
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full way, and maybe in some cases it also is
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a sense of warning to someone who might be in
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a similar situation to their loved one that they could
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potentially hey, you know, these are the red flags that
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were ignored. Hopefully you won't ignore them. So we try
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to do right by people. We try to be respectful
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of people, and I've been lucky. I think most of
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the stuff that I've worked on does do that. I
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don't think everyone does that. And I think in the
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podcast we also even though these are cases that happened
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one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago, there are
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still people, there's still families, They everybody might be dead,
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but it was still a real person and we try
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to be respectful of them and what happened in that
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situation as well.
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So what have you found most that most of the
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murders are committed by great or lust?
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You know, I think it's probably split fifty to fifty,
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and I think those are two of the biggest things.
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I think here's the number one reason I think murders
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are committed entitlement. I really do think that a lot
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of killers feel entitled to the love, the money, the position,
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the whatever, and they and it's weirdly not as personal.
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It's you're standing in the way of my having custody
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of the kids, or my owning the business full time,
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or quiet in the neighborhood, or my particular point of
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view being heard or whatever it is. You're standing in
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the way of it. So I'm going to kill you.
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But I really think it's more entitlement than anything else.
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Yeah, I hadn't looked at that. I was simple like
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greedor less. But I think you nail it on the
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head right there. I think entitlement. You're probably right. That
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sounds right. All right, Let's see what happened.
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It's scary but true.
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All right.
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What happened in October the thirty first, In fifteen seventeen,
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Martin Luther he started the Protestant Reformation. His ninety five
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thesises is what was wrong with the Catholic Church. He
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ended up sending it to the Archbishop of Brandenburg in Germany. Now,
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Luther had been a priest and amongk for about ten
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years when he did this. Now there's a story about
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him nayling the thesis is to the door of a church.
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And now that didn't happen. It's just get talking. According
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to Luther, he said that basically he just wanted to
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start a discussion. Well, his ninety five thesis they made
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it all the way to the pope, and when the
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Pope burnt about it, yep, Luther was immediately excommunicated and
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had to run for his life. But their Protestant Reformation,
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ye split year and a half. The northern half kind
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of went to be the Protestants and the southern half
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mainly went to be State Catholic. And that's general, it's
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not just one hundred percent. That's kind of what happened
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eighteen forty six. The Donner Party, we've all heard about
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them today. They realized that they were stuck. They could
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not go over the Sierra Nevadam mountains and they couldn't
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go back, so they had just set up a camp
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for the winner. So you kind of heard about some
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stories that most people don't hear about the Donner Party, right.
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Yeah. There were two Indian guides who were named Lewis
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and Salvador. They were shot and cannibalized around January eighth
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of eighteen forty seven. It's also possible that Tamsen Donner
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was murdered in March of eighteen forty seven, but we
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don't know that for sure. So, yeah, there was murders.