Transcript
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For five years, Peter Succliffe terrorized the UK, leaving women across the country afraid
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to step outside after dark.
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He claimed he was cleaning up the streets, but his brutal murders told a different story.
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This interviewed him nine times and still missed their man, thanks to outdated methods
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and one truly bizarre hoax.
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This is the story of how the Yorkshire Ripper evaded capture, the failures that kept him
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killing, and the shocking way he was finally caught.
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But before we get into that story, if you like your true crime brief and bingeable, you
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found the right podcast.
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Tap the follow button now for access to at least two episodes per week.
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Welcome to 10 Minute Murder.
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Let's get into it.
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Bastard prostitutes who were littering the streets, I was just cleaning up the place a bit.
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Those were the words of a man whose reign of terror gripped the UK for five years, the
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Yorkshire Ripper.
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At his peak, his crimes left the police urging women of all ages to stay locked indoors, warning
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that as long as he was on the loose, no one was safe.
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Before Peter Succliffe became one of Britain's most infamous serial killers, he was a child
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exposed to violence that would shape his life in unimaginable ways.
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Born prematurely in 1946, Peter's arrival into the world was already marked by trauma.
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His mother, Kathleen, had endured a violent beating from his father, John, while heavily
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pregnant, sending her into early labor.
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After two weeks in the hospital, mother and child returned to a home where fear was constant.
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With more children, came more visits for John's cruelty, and Peter didn't escape his father's
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wrath.
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One Christmas, John smashed a beer glass over Peter's head simply because the boy had dared
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to sit in his chair at the dinner table.
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For John, his abuse had a twisted justification.
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He believed Peter was weak, a slim, timid boy who lacked the toughness John thought a
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son should have.
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Worse still, Peter's habit of seeking comfort from his mother after beatings only made him
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more of a target in John's eyes.
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The atmosphere in our house would change as soon as John walked in.
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One of Peter's siblings later recounted, "His life revolved around playing football,
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cricket, singing, and choir, and womanizing."
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This was the environment that shaped Peter's Sutcliffe.
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A home where violence wasn't just a possibility, it was the norm.
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It's impossible to ignore how these early years set the stage for what was to come.
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John's Sutcliffe lived his life by a double standard.
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While he enjoyed the freedom of womanizing, he demanded loyalty from Kathleen, his wife.
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When she strayed, John responded with cruelty designed to humiliate her and leave a lasting
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mark on their children.
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Peter recalled one particularly scarring moment when John took him and his younger siblings
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to a hotel, ostensibly to catch Kathleen meeting her lover.
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What Kathleen found instead was her furious husband and her horrified children.
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The public shaming that followed was seared into the family's memory and left deep emotional
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scars, particularly on Peter.
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As Peter entered his teenage years, he developed an unsettling habit, spying on sex workers
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while they were with clients.
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What began as voyeurism laid the groundwork for a disturbing obsession that would later
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define his crimes.
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Meanwhile, Peter found another fixation in his brief stint at a local cemetery.
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Initially hired to dig graves, he became fascinated with preparing bodies for burial.
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Washing and handling corpses became a task he was disturbingly drawn to, often staying
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late to immerse himself in the process.
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In leaving school at 15, Peter moved between jobs until he settled into work as a truck driver.
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This gave him an intimate understanding of Britain's streets, neighborhoods, and isolated
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areas, knowledge that would later aid him in invading capture.
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Violence, humiliation, voyeurism, and an obsession with death.
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Peter Sutcliffe's formative years were a perfect storm of influence that shaped him into
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one of Britain's most notorious killers.
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But before he became the Yorkshire Ripper, one more key element would push him over the
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edge.
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In the spring of 1967, Peter Sutcliffe met 16-year-old Sanya, with the last name I'm not going to
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attempt, and the two quickly fell in love.
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It would take seven years for them to marry, but Peter seemed to find in Sanya the kind of
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chaotic comfort that echoed his childhood.
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Sanya, diagnosed with schizophrenia, often directed emotional and physical outbursts
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at her husband.
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Remarkably, Peter rarely retaliated.
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At most, he would pin her arms to stop her from hitting him further.
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The relationship was turbulent, but it was one Peter accepted, maybe because he was
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used to the dysfunction.
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The couple's shared heartbreak came in the form of repeated miscarriages.
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Every time Sanya became pregnant, the pregnancy would end in loss.
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After this devastating cycle repeated itself, doctors finally uncovered the truth.
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Sanya was unable to have children.
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Sanya turned to an affair with a local ice cream van driver, maybe as a way to cope.
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Peter surprisingly forgave her infidelity, but by then he had already found his way to
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release his frustrations, and it was far more sinister.
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Peter's outlet for his growing rage revealed itself in 1975.
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He was already known to have attacked a prostitute, striking her on the head with a sock
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filled with stones.
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He survived, but Peter wasn't deterred.
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That summer he escalated.
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36-year-old Anna Rogulskiy became his next target.
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Peter struck her on the back of the head with a hammer and slashed her stomach open with
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a knife.
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Her life was saved only because a neighbor heard the commotion and interrupted the attack.
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Just a month later, Peter struck again.
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This time the victim was 46-year-old olive-smelt, whom he attacked in a nearly identical manner.
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Once again, the attack was interrupted, sparing Olive's life.
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She told the police her assailant had spoken with a distinct Yorkshire accent.
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Her testimony, however, was largely dismissed because of her profession.
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Peter's escalating violence and the alarming similarities in his attacks came to form a pattern,
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one that wouldn't be fully recognized until it was too late.
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Each attack brought him closer to his eventual transformation into the Yorkshire Ripper.
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It was the autumn of 1975 when Peter took his first life.
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28-year-old Wilma Mary McCann left her house one evening and was brutally attacked, struck
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on the back of the head and killed.
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The investigation into her murder was enormous, involving over 150 police officers, yet non-managed
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to connect Peter to the crime.
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Peter didn't stop there.
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He struck again and again, targeting sex workers in particular, and almost always ending
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their lives.
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For a time, the general public clung to a false sense of security, believing that the killer,
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dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper at this time, was only targeting a specific group of women.
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But that illusion shattered when Peter widened his focus.
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Peter's victims began to include women from all walks of life, teenagers, mothers, and
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women with "respectable" "jobs."
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Some were simply making their way home when they crossed paths with him.
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The violence was no longer contained to a single group, and the public's fear spread like
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wildfire.
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Mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters suddenly felt like they could be next.
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Despite the escalating body count, there was hope, or so it seemed.
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During the course of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, Peter was interviewed by police
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a staggering nine times.
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Surely, with that level of scrutiny, the killer's reign of terror was on borrowed time.
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Yet, every single time Peter was brought in, he was released.
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The reasons for this were maddening.
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The police were operating with what we'd now consider antiquated systems.
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There were no computers or searchable databases.
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Every lead, every clue, every shred of evidence was written down on index cards and filed away.
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By the end of the investigation, there were so many cabinets filled with these cards that
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the floors of the storage room had to be reinforced.
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It could have been an opportunity to connect the dots became an overwhelming mess of information,
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allowing Peter Sutcliffe to evade capture again and again.
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The public's hope dimmed, and the fear of the Yorkshire Ripper grew stronger with every
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passing day.
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One of the most frustrating missteps in the investigation came from a hoax that diverted
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precious resources.
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A man sent in a tape claiming to be the Ripper himself.
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Upon the recording, his voice laughed the distinctive Yorkshire accent, but investigators believed
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it was legitimate.
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This red herring led them to chase leads far from Yorkshire, pulling their focus away from
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the actual killer.
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By the winter of 1981, luck or persistence finally turned in the police's favor.
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An officer noticed a man sitting in a car with false license plates.
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The man was arrested and brought in for questioning.
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His appearance matched descriptions provided by surviving victims of the Ripper.
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After more telling, at the time of his arrest, he'd been sitting beside one of the Ripper's
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usual targets, a sex worker.
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This man was Peter Sutcliffe.
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Naturally, he denied everything.
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The following day, investigators revisited the spot where Peter had been arrested.
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There, behind an oil storage tank, they found a knife, a hammer, and a piece of rope.
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Tools Sutcliffe had attempted to discard under the guise of relieving himself during his
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arrest.
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At the police station, another knife was recovered from a restroom he'd used.
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After two days of interrogation, Peter Sutcliffe made a shocking pivot.
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He confessed.
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He admitted to not only the murders and attacks the police had connected him to, but also others
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they hadn't yet uncovered.
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Peter Sutcliffe's confirmed victim counts stood at 13 murders and at least seven attempted
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murders during his years of terror.
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Peter admitted at least two more killings, though these remain unconfirmed.
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At trial, Sutcliffe attempted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming that
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he'd been commanded to kill by divine voices.
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The courts, however, rejected this plea and sentenced him to life in prison without the
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possibility of parole.
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Peter Sutcliffe remained behind bars until his death at the age of 74 in 2020.
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He'd contracted COVID-19 and refused treatment.
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Marking a quiet end to the life of one of Britain's most notorious killers.
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That's 10 Minute Murder for Today.
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Brief and Bingeable True Crime.
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I'm Joe, I'm the host, and thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
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If this is your first time listening, I'm stoked that you're here.
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And also, I don't know why I use the word stoked.
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I don't think I've ever used it in my life, but it's a first for all of us today.
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Anyway, glad that you're here.
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Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you are listening to this podcast right now and follow
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on social media.
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If you're an OG listener, you've been on these streets for a while.
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I really appreciate you.
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And please continue to share this podcast with your friends, family, neighbor, veterinarian,
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post office worker.
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Anyone that you think could be into brief, true crime stories.
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And if you think, well, maybe they're not necessarily into murders, Joe.
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Let's back up on that one.
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Good news.
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I also do the podcast 10 Minute Mystery, which isn't necessarily about murders.
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It could be, but it's mostly not.
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10 Minute Mystery, wherever you're like listening to podcasts, you can search it up and you can
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find it there.
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And some of you have reached out over the years of me doing this podcast and asked, how
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can you help?
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Some of you have offered to research cases for me, directly pay me for some reason.
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And I always turn that down.
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But here is how you can actually, two ways, actually, how you could help this podcast if
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you want to.
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First of all, you could buy something in the merch shop.
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I get a little bit of money from that, which I put back into the podcast and make the episodes
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better, do more research, blah, blah, blah.
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You can buy something in the merch shop.
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Or you could simply what I've already mentioned, tell your friends and family about this podcast.
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That's it.
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It seems like a small thing, but most of you that hear me and think, yeah, I'll do that.
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You don't.
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Some of you do, and I really, really do appreciate that.
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I know that you do because the podcast numbers always grow.
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So some of you are doing it.
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And it's not a necessity.
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You could tell not another living soul about this podcast, and I still love you for listening
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to it.
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But if you want to help, that's a good way to do it.
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Anyway, I'm rambling now, so I will end it with this.
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Thank you for listening to 10 Minute Murder.
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[Music]
