More Questions and Answers to Close Out 2023

[00:00:00] Content Warning This Episode Includes Discussion of Murder Hey everybody, today we're going to do the second part of our Questions episode. We got so many questions last time that we weren't able to fit them all into one episode. So in this go-around

[00:00:14] we'll be doing questions we didn't get to and chatting about a variety of different cases and other subjects that you all asked about. Thanks to everyone who asked a question. My name is Ania Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[00:00:29] And this is the Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reported, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet. And this is More Questions and Answers to Close Out 2023. This is a question from Beth. What would you say

[00:01:34] is the most fascinating unsolved murder in history? Oh it's intriguing. And I like that you broadened it out to all of history. There's something intriguing about some of those old cases, even though you recognize that where they committed today they would have

[00:01:52] probably been solved or we'd have a lot better information. So things that come to mind for me, Jack the Ripper. We recently talked to Jim McKenna about that on the show and it's an intriguing case. Again, it's obviously sexually motivated murders by a serial killer.

[00:02:10] But there's just something about how brutal they were and just how horrifying that definitely makes me wonder. And then the other one that comes to mind is the Valeska Axe Murders in Iowa. What's that case? That's a man who comes into a house and

[00:02:33] basically bludges everyone to death with an axe. And that happened, it's an old old case. That's another one, the brutality and the frustration of knowing that this is all like pre-DNA, pre-other investigative techniques so it went unsolved.

[00:02:54] What about the identity of the man in the iron mask? This is a person that was arrested all the way back in 1669. He was kept imprisoned in the Bastille, among other facilities and he was kept there until he died over 30 years later. Geez, that's awful.

[00:03:17] And we're still not sure who he was or why he was subjected to such awful punishment. Are there any theories? Lots of theories, lots and lots of theories. But is a fascinating unsolved crime? Interesting. You went the Alexandria Dumas route. Yes.

[00:03:38] Not a murder but kind of a definitely a criminal justice situation or injustice rather. Here's a Delphi question from Terry. Do you suppose the prosecution has more evidence that would come out at trial to secure a conviction?

[00:03:54] It's a good question. I mean it's sort of hard to speculate about something like that. I think speaking with different prosecutors and law enforcement officers on background for this show, which is something we do a lot, we talk to a variety of different experts who reach out

[00:04:15] to us or we reach out to them and just kind of run stuff by them. And I think everybody we've talked to have said that they felt that the case as it stands right now was definitely winnable

[00:04:30] for the prosecution and that Allen's, Richard Allen's incriminating statements that apparently happened bolster it a lot. So I think just to give a baseline of what the kind of consensus is around this, people are like, it's enough. I don't think I've gotten the sense that

[00:04:50] anybody thinks it's like, oh my gosh, slam dunk DNA. But I think people feel it's winnable and it's again he's made his situation worse by making incriminating statements. But do I think there's more? Yeah, I think there's probably more. I don't think there's

[00:05:09] anything like DNA. I don't think there's even like a forensic smoking gun. I think that would have been mentioned by now. I think in terms of maybe other things that have gone on,

[00:05:22] I think we don't I don't think we know everything. Yeah, I think there's more. I think one thing to keep in mind not only is we keep repeating we keep on repeating that a PCA doesn't have to

[00:05:34] include every single last piece of evidence. That is true. It is also true to keep in mind that the PCA was basically a snapshot of at least some of the most compelling evidence against

[00:05:47] Richard Allen, as it stood at the time of his arrest. The investigation has not exactly stood still. Here's another thing I think people understandably want everything in Delphi to be answered. And I think it's important to stress that that won't be the goal of a trial. The

[00:06:09] goal of the trial is not to get up there and being like, okay, like here's how Keegan Klein relates to everything. The goal of a trial is to be presenting the evidence against Richard Allen

[00:06:20] that's relevant to the case and is allowed in court and trying to convince the jury based on that. And that also involves the defense trying to poke holes in that. So there's going to be

[00:06:33] like a limited venue or limited, there's going to be a limit to what's actually discussed and talked about as far as being relevant here. Also, for that same reason, they can't just pull in anything about Richard Allen. It has to be stuff that specifically relates to this

[00:06:49] crime most likely. So I think we're hoping that a trial will provide more answers and more relevant information on this case, but we're not holding our breath that everything will make sense after this trial. We have another kind of a prosecutorial question related to Delphi. Tanya asked,

[00:07:15] can we have more prosecutor's sides of things? I feel like all defense lawyers are definitely willing to talk about Richard Allen because of the benefits of all this, but get tired of listening to them. Yeah, we've definitely gotten that criticism that we have too many defense

[00:07:30] attorneys on the program. And I understand that we appreciate the feedback Tanya. I think one thing people may not realize is that it's a lot easier to get defense attorneys to talk to you than it is prosecutors. Yeah, it's a lot easier. Prosecutors for one reason, especially

[00:07:48] if they are active prosecutors, they're very aware of wanting to protect the dignity of the victims or they're very aware of wanting to protect the integrity of the case. And they can be more reluctant to come forward. Also, I think there's something about defense

[00:08:07] attorneys. Prosecutors don't have to depend on marketing to get their jobs. They don't have to promote themselves to get jobs because you just show up to work in the office in the morning. Unfortunately, there was always new crimes happening. There's always new things

[00:08:23] for you to get assigned to. Defense attorneys are more likely to need to promote themselves. Unless they're public defenders, obviously. Unless they're public defenders, obviously. So they are more likely to want to talk to the press. And there's also like, I think with

[00:08:37] defense attorneys, I think your experience as a prosecutor or defense attorney molds a bit how you think about things just like any job is going to perhaps influence your worldview, influence how you do things day to day. And with defense attorneys, typically it makes sense to be open

[00:08:53] to trying anything, right? Like open to different routes. And one route is the media. One route, if you don't have a gag order, it can be helpful to put your narrative, your side of the story

[00:09:07] out there because most likely, if it's a high profile enough case, there's going to be the prosecution side is going to get out there organically through the press. And so, yeah, it makes sense that there would be that more of a relationship there. So we,

[00:09:26] if you are a prosecutor and you're listening to this, if you have prosecutorial experience, email us please. We're always trying to get more prosecutors. And I think, you know, that would be great. We'd love to hear from you. We try to be balanced. It's funny, some people

[00:09:45] indicate to us that they feel that we're not pro defense enough in the Delphi case. I think it's because we don't get on there and just weep at the brilliant artistry of the Frank's memorandum. But I think if you actually listen to the show, which Tanya obviously does,

[00:10:04] you'll find that we actually have a lot more defense perspectives on there. We feel our role is perhaps more important than giving our own opinions, is that we provide a place for experts to come

[00:10:17] discuss their opinions based on their years of criminal defense or prosecution or law enforcement or whatnot. So we're always looking for experts. We're always looking for people who can speak to that. And of course, one couple of prosecutors we have had on the show more than once is

[00:10:34] are the prosecutors, Brett and Alice. The prosecutors. Yeah, they're great. And so, you know, but again, if you're in law enforcement, if you're a prosecutor, reach out. If you're a defense attorney, reach out. We still, we still, I mean, it's not like we have one defense

[00:10:48] attorney that we talk to and that's it. We talk to all sorts of defense attorneys. So we'd love to hear from you and get your opinions, whether that's on background or on the record.

[00:10:58] Yeah, we love getting different perspectives, even if it's from the same general side of the fence, because different people have different insights and different thoughts. So you can talk to a Michael Osbrook and get different perspectives than you would get from a Shea Hughes,

[00:11:16] even though both of them work for defense. And Tanya, I will say we do have an interview coming up with a defense attorney whose views on Delphi might just surprise you. Uh, Mandy has a question about the DB Cooper case, which we covered recently. We did an interview

[00:11:33] with Eric Eulas who was absolutely a terrific guest. Oh yes, amazing guest. Has any other money turned up other than what was found by the river? And I don't believe it has. No, yeah, that's my understanding. And one thing that's interesting about that is,

[00:11:50] as far as I know, none of the money that was given to him in ransom is like turned up in banks or anything. Yes, I think it was $5,800 about that much. That was buried by the river? Yeah, buried along the Columbia River in Washington State.

[00:12:09] And none of the rest of the money has never turned up is gone. And all together, he had a $200,000 ransom. So that's a lot of money that is unaccounted for. And that was $200,000 in 1971 money, which is worth who knows how much now.

[00:12:32] Apparently according to Wikipedia, that's 1.4 million today, or rather in 2022. So that was a lot of money. A lot of money remains missing. And it's notable to me that the money wasn't recovered from a bank or a business. It was

[00:12:48] from this beach on the river buried by a river. I believe it was found by a child, right? Yeah, can you imagine? You're out with your kids for a day at the beach and suddenly,

[00:12:59] I don't think they're out for a day at the beach. But you made a really good point recently that had to do with another famous case, Kevin, the baby Lindberg kidnapping. Can you and murder? Why don't we call it a kidnapping? I mean, he murdered that kid.

[00:13:13] Can you talk about that as a vis-a-vis the ransom money? Well, I think in the 30s, it probably was more difficult to keep track of serial numbers and such on money. But even so, some of the Lindberg kidnapped money turned up in circulation

[00:13:33] in the months and years after the crime. And as far as we know, none of the Cooper money has turned up. Even though in 1971, we would imagine that it would be easier to follow and trace and keep an

[00:13:49] eye on serial numbers of bills. So that's also interesting. What happened to that money? It was very interesting. Because I would think that sometimes this isn't a safe thing to do. But I always assume that people who do things do things for rational reasons.

[00:14:13] And so if you are doing this admittedly, inherently irrational act of skyjacking a plane, let's assume if you're not crazy, you're doing it because you have a reason you need the money.

[00:14:26] It's very important for you to get this money. And if that's the case, what happened to the money? Why wasn't this money used as far as we can tell? Yeah, it's an excellent question. Although I will

[00:14:40] say in crime, it's very dangerous to assume rationality. And you were talking, there was actually, we've talked a lot over the years about Peru and Indiana. And you said there was actually a Peru-Indiana connection to skyjackers. There was. So there was a bunch of copycat hijackings

[00:15:04] after D.B. Cooper. And so this case happened June 23, 1972, a guy named Martin McNally hijacked an American Airlines flight. So he obtained $500,000 in ransom and then jumped out over Indiana. And this is kind of amusing. He dropped the money. Dropped the money.

[00:15:35] Dropped it and landed right near Peru, Indiana. And so he actually got away because apparently we've heard from a wonderful local source that the chief of police at the time

[00:15:51] gave him a ride to a hotel to be nice. And then, but eventually he was caught in Detroit or near Detroit. So they got him eventually, but there was a Peru-Indiana connection. And gosh, do I love

[00:16:02] that? Because we love Peru-Indiana and it's wild that there was like a, they had their own little D.B. Cooper incident. But thanks to our wonderful local source who mentioned this story, because I just, that's amazing. Maybe we'll go more in depth onto D.B. Cooper

[00:16:19] copycats and some of them, because I'd love to learn more about this. Yeah, it's interesting. It seemed to inspire other people to do similar things. Just like if you see someone do something successfully, you always say, oh, I can do

[00:16:37] that to anybody. Can do that. And none of these people were successful. And you could imagine if you read press accounts of a person hijacking a plane and getting away with a couple of hundred

[00:16:50] thousand dollars and then just vanishing, you would think, wow, that seems like a pretty good way to make money. But it's not. It's not. And certainly now it's even more difficult than

[00:17:03] it was back then to, uh, skyjack a plane. Okay. Here is a question from Kristen in the leak episode. You all mentioned a few times that are never should have been put in this position, but I don't

[00:17:17] understand that sentiment. I feel like I must be missing something. Westerman gave are the drip, drip, drip, but couldn't are have told him he didn't want to be involved. Instead, if I understand correctly, are passed on what he learned to mark and also sort of insinuated

[00:17:33] that are was more involved than he was going so far as to possibly conflate himself with Westerman and are was active on socials, et cetera. So could you explain or elaborate on your stance

[00:17:45] that are was wronged or should not have been put into that position? Yeah, I think that's a good question. And we definitely appreciate it. I think you have to understand that, you know, sometimes we give our opinion on things and you don't have to agree. One thing with

[00:18:00] Delphi to back up a little bit is that you have a online group of people who are obsessed with the case and, and that's fine. Most of them are fine as we discussed in the episode. Like most of the

[00:18:13] people are just curious. They're trying to get information. No worries there. Highly invested, but, but you do have a lot of people who have no law enforcement experience, no legal experience, no legal knowledge, no understanding about how anything works,

[00:18:29] and no media training. And so they find themselves in the middle of a whirlwind without any information to really understand or contextualize everything. They don't know what's a big deal. They don't know what what's what they try to act like they do when they when they post,

[00:18:47] but they don't. And so that's the backdrop. Did R do something wrong by participating in the leak? In my opinion, yes. But in my opinion, I can also understand how people without really any background in this space can get over their heads and do something that's awful,

[00:19:13] but not necessarily have a lot of ill intent. And so in that situation, I have sympathy for R and his family because it ended in the most horrific way possible and was caused by a situation

[00:19:28] where I just don't feel like he should have ever been put in that position because nobody was ready to handle that. And I think that's where I feel, I mean, I just I think it's tragic for

[00:19:43] everyone involved. And again, especially given what happened to R, you have to understand too, Kevin and I were in this because we because we went to police and we're the ones who let them

[00:19:57] know that this was going on and that, you know, more photos than just the bloody tree photo, which had already been posted online at that point, we're out there. And, you know, we learned that a man unfortunately had died by suicide over this situation. So it really emotionally

[00:20:19] affected us. And as a result of that, we've tried to moderate and be conscious of what we're saying when we're talking about this because I can tell you when when it first came to our attention, we were we were pretty angry. Is that fair to say, Kevin?

[00:20:34] Yes. We were horrified that people were taken by the leak itself. Yeah, when we heard about the leak itself, we were pretty horrified and pretty angry because it just felt like Richard Allen's rights were being endangered. It felt like

[00:20:46] the families were being put in a horrible situation. And on an emotional level, we were both pretty upset about it. But since the worst has happened, again with R, it's we're not really trying to lead with any anger. We're trying to lead with some compassion

[00:21:07] and making it clear that you can make a bad mistake and do something bad. And again, the leak is bad. But that doesn't necessarily define who you are as a person. You can

[00:21:19] you can come back. And I just feel like that's a more appropriate way of discussing this in the situation. It's difficult to understand what it must be like to be in that position. I'm going to

[00:21:36] give a silly example, taking a page out of Ania's book, I guess. Let's say you're going home for the holidays for to see extended family. And it's going to be at your brother's house. And your brother and his wife are talking about what a great marriage they have,

[00:22:02] how successful they are, blah, blah, blah. And right before you walk in the door, someone whispers in your ear, oh, here's proof that your brother is having an affair or your

[00:22:15] brother is actually about to file for bankruptcy. And then you go in and you see your brother doing other things pretending like everything is fine. And then you have this secret and you feel that the people around you are being fooled and would be interested in knowing

[00:22:33] the truth from this information that you have. I think it would be enormously tempting to divulge that to at least one or two people. It might make you feel important if you did. And also it might just simply, these people deserve to know the truth, you can convince

[00:22:54] yourself of that. And it's just a bizarre position to be in. And I can imagine in that sort of temptation wanting to tell the people the truth about my brother. And I don't even have a brother.

[00:23:12] It's all just a dream. So he never should have been given that information. He never should have been put into that. I mean, because I'm going to tell you in the Delphi space specifically,

[00:23:27] you can't tell anybody anything because if you do, it will get everywhere in five minutes. That has been a consistent thing. I remember we would tell somebody, oh, we're doing an episode. We were

[00:23:40] very naive talking to people in the beginning of getting involved in this case because we were like, oh, we don't just spread stuff around when people tell us. So obviously nobody does.

[00:23:50] So we'd say things like we're doing an episode on X and then suddenly people in a Facebook group are talking about it. And you're like, oh my gosh, it is a very, very gossipy space. And I don't

[00:24:01] think that's necessarily, I used to just read really ill intentions into that. These are a bunch of gossips, which I think is probably somewhat true. But in addition to that, I

[00:24:12] think there is, it's like a dopamine rush when you get to be the one to tell people, oh, here's what's happening. And I think that leads people astray. We've seen situations where people, and

[00:24:26] I'm not even going to go into details on this, where people have had like, wow, that is a heck of an in or that is a heck of a story or that is a heck of a thing, like that you've got going.

[00:24:35] And they just couldn't keep their big mouth shut for two minutes to like capitalize on it without going to everyone and saying what was going on. And then it all fell apart. So people are constantly telling people things against their better interests.

[00:24:48] I'll give an example to kind of explain what Anya is talking about. There was a person interested in the case who developed a social relationship with one of the public figures involved in this case and actually went out to dinner with this public figure

[00:25:11] and got just a little bit of information from Delphi. And I don't even think they got that much information about Delphi at all, but there was at least the proximity and at least the potential to cultivate that relationship over time. So then what this person does is immediately

[00:25:28] go to Facebook, Reddit, what have you and say, guess who I had dinner with last night. And then that spreads all over and this person is never going to have dinner with them ever again.

[00:25:40] Yeah, it's like, it's like you have this tendency, I'd love to play poker with these people because you have this tendency to like get a good hand of cards and be like, oh gee,

[00:25:50] golly whiz and like jump up and click your heels together. And, and then it just, it's like, wow, these people don't know what they're doing. And so the lack of professionalism is something that's been just endemic and, and it's understandable because the reason Anya

[00:26:09] and I are talking to you now is because we're interested in the case and other cases, we're interested in talking about it. The reason why you're listening is you're interested in the case, you're interested in hearing about it and talking about it. And that's why you also

[00:26:22] join groups like our Facebook group to talk about it. It's very natural to want to talk about the case. And frankly, there is a, there is a kind of a rush you get when you're the people to break the news

[00:26:36] or tell somebody something that they didn't know or when, you know, like, like that I'm the one who's bringing you information. So I understand why people crave that. One thing about journalism

[00:26:47] that I've found is that it's not just about what you put out there. It's about knowing what not to put out there, knowing what's not ready, what's not verified enough. It's knowing how to cultivate

[00:26:59] sources. It's knowing how to maintain those relationships, build trust. And it's, it, I just, you know, so I guess what we're, what I'm trying to say in regards to this question

[00:27:12] is that it is, it's a very complicated space. These people were all adults and they did something bad. But at the same time, I can understand how somebody who doesn't know what they're doing in terms of

[00:27:25] media, legality, law enforcement, anything like that could get caught up without having terrible intentions and do something bad, make a mistake, but not be an irredeemable person. And I also

[00:27:37] can see how at every step of the process of the leak, I don't think any of these people were necessarily like trying to have it have such a bad outcome. It just did, but, but it shows you that

[00:27:49] unfortunately when there is this influx of amateurs for lack of a better term in this space, people can get hurt. And when people are just doing things for the sake of like, I get to know special

[00:28:01] information that no one does and I'm going to hint at it or tell people, it can end disastrously. And that's why professional journalists don't do that. They don't, they don't spread stuff around. I've never been in a conversation with a journalist

[00:28:21] where they've been like, well, you know, I got dinner with this public official last night and like they're trying to impress you. They just shut up because if they need to use it later,

[00:28:30] they will or if they need to get information from that source later, they will, but they're not going around trying to impress people. This desire to impress people just turned into a disaster in this situation. And also in this particular case, you look at

[00:28:48] Westerman and Westerman, he wasn't working for Andy Baldwin at the time. He surreptitiously took these pictures, but he'd worked for him in the past. And so he was a professional in that space. And so he had some professional obligations. He also had some

[00:29:10] obligations because his friend Andy Baldwin trusted him. And so then he takes this information and these photos, and he gives them to someone who has never worked in that space, doesn't understand the obligations, doesn't have any real obligations because he didn't, he wasn't

[00:29:32] working in a law firm or anything like that. And so you just put a lot of temptation in his past, and it never should have happened. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I mean, Ar was talking about things like,

[00:29:47] oh, well, I don't want these out there because there's a gag order. Like he didn't understand, like the problem isn't the gag order, it's the protective order, the gag order shouldn't media. Like there was, you just, you shouldn't put people in that position.

[00:30:01] And I feel on a level, I feel really, really bad for Mitch Westerman because I think, obviously I don't think he wanted this outcome. It's been a disaster for him. He's, he's been charged with a crime and just there's all this awful fallout. So I do have,

[00:30:15] I, on some level, I do have sympathy for him because I just, I feel bad for people when they're in a bad situation. But I also think that it was, it was really, really,

[00:30:26] it was, I would never want to put it a person who, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to drag anyone else into this mess and leaking this stuff is just such a horrible, bad idea on so many levels, morally,

[00:30:43] ethically, legally. It just never should have happened. It never should have happened. But anyways, you have to understand we've been in this situation. We've dealt with the emotional roller coaster that it's entailed. And so, you know, we're kind of,

[00:31:02] some of the anger has been burned out of us and we just feel compassion for a lot of those involved because it's just a terrible situation. And so we might have a different perspective than you and that's okay. It's just, it's been really difficult to watch

[00:31:19] this happen in a case that we care about. That kind of segues into our next question, which I think is probably looking at the clock might be our last question. This is from Beth. What is the mental load of the work you do and how do you decompress?

[00:31:37] Oh, that's a nice question. Um, I don't know. It's honestly like, I feel like really like weak sometimes because when it affects me, I'm like, you should be used to this. Also, you're not going through anything compared to like the people who are the parties in the case,

[00:31:55] the lawyers or law enforcement or whatever, um, the families of the victims, the victims themselves that they're surviving victims in whatever case. But you know, it can get pretty dark at times because there's a lot of bad things that

[00:32:12] we cover. What do you think, Kevin? You're just staring down sadly. Yeah, it gets tough. It gets tough. But again, like I don't even feel like we have a right to think it's tough because it's like, we're not doing anything. We're not, we're just talking about it.

[00:32:33] I never thought that some of the things that we would encounter in any of, you know, just in our work, like, I mean, like the leak, it was just like, wow, okay, as if things weren't

[00:32:46] awful enough already. Now this is going on though. There's always some splash of gasoline on the fire, especially in Delphi, frankly, but even in other cases, just a lot of like soul crushing stuff, like even just minor things like wit, like people who claim to be witnesses

[00:33:08] who are liars. We've gotten a lot of that. People come, oh, this is what I saw happen, and they're just lying. And then afterwards, it's like kind of like haunts you like, why, why?

[00:33:19] Do you just want attention that badly? Like, why would you do that? I don't know, just thinking too much about like what the victims must have gone through in some of these cases. I remember the leak in particular was one of the hardest

[00:33:36] episodes, not only because it went on for a while and not only because in a way, still ongoing. And a man ended up losing his life. But I remember when we first got those pictures, and we were both

[00:33:54] upset by what they depicted, obviously. And we also realized that this could have a huge impact on the case, and more specifically on a potential trial. So this could really affect the rights of the defendant. And we tried very, very, very hard. Our intent was not to say

[00:34:21] a word about it publicly. And hopefully, we can just get it wrapped up and it doesn't even become a story. And that's not what happened. You know, other people started talking about it because

[00:34:35] they got the pictures too. And it just, it just got, it just went on and on. And then the pictures started spreading. And we realized no matter what we do, it's out. And I just remember

[00:34:50] it was devastating because we knew what it would mean to the families and just everybody involved. And that was just really a horrible time. Yeah, I was like watching a car stuck on the train tracks and a train's approaching. You know, it was awful. We really, really tried.

[00:35:09] We talked about when you say things and when you don't say things, and we were not going to say anything about the leak or the pictures, unless we had to because we wanted it to be kept.

[00:35:19] Let's just take care of this behind the scenes. Yeah, we even put out a statement being like, we're not talking about it because at that point we still had some hope, although it was fading quickly. Yeah, that point someone else had started talking about it.

[00:35:30] Yeah. And so like, it was just a disaster and it just feels like it just the worst possible outcome happened. In hindsight, by the time we didn't want to talk about it at all, other

[00:35:44] people started talking about it. So by the time you put out a statement saying, oh yeah, there's these pictures, we're not going to talk about it. You've already lost. Yeah, we'd lost, but we didn't realize it at the time. We didn't know everything that we know now.

[00:35:58] And I'll tell you, I mean, in terms of other things, the thing that really affects me, I think is like some of the stuff about child sexual abuse materials. Like if we do an episode

[00:36:09] along those lines, I just end up feeling like awful for a few days. That's a really heavy, heavy subject. Anything involving kids or sexual abuse just really... And I personally think it's a really important thing to talk about because I think if we don't

[00:36:31] talk about it, it gets ignored. I think you have to make people aware that this is happening and that with the advent of the internet and the advent of cell phones and people who are younger

[00:36:45] getting these devices, it's something that could happen to any kid. It's not like a kid who's bad or doing something wrong. These predators are sophisticated and they know how to get to kids.

[00:36:57] So it's important for people to be aware. And so we're going to keep talking about it obviously, but it is hard. Different times when we covered some elements of the cake and client case,

[00:37:08] it would be like really, you'd be in a dark place for a while because it's just horrible. But I think as far as lightening the mental load, we don't. I'm just kidding.

[00:37:22] But it's hard to... I don't really know. We're not very good at that. Is that fair to say, Kevin? We're going to see a magician. What? We're going to see men would rather go to a magician

[00:37:34] than go to therapy. I enjoy a good magician. We try to do little activities, Kevin and I, that just make it so that we're just getting out of the house and not always thinking about this.

[00:37:47] It's a work in progress. I'm sure a lot of you are just work hard and have a bit of a hard time at times switching off work mode and going back into life mode. But if... I mean, I remember

[00:38:02] thinking like if those two gentlemen, we spoke to the catfish cops who have a wonderful podcast that is about protecting children, crimes against children sort of cases. If they can switch off and they both are just such nice gentlemen, they just seem like really cool people

[00:38:24] just on a personal level. If they can do it, then we can do it because they have the hardest job in the world. Just trying to be unplug and step away from things at times,

[00:38:37] I guess is a good idea for anybody. Before we close out this question and answer episode, I'd like to thank you all for listening this year. We really, really appreciate it. We really think we have an amazing audience. I think we have a really intelligent, insightful

[00:38:59] audience. And so before we go, I'd like to turn the tables and ask you guys a question. Whoa! What can we do better? We always want to make the show better. We want to give you content you

[00:39:16] find interesting and worthwhile. We also have a Patreon, and if you have ideas or suggestions for how we can do better to make that more valuable to you, please let us know that as well.

[00:39:30] Yes, and just know that we are incredibly grateful to each and every one of you who's listening. Thanks for supporting the show. If you enjoy it and it's something that you think your friends

[00:39:42] or family would enjoy, feel free to send it to them, spread the word, leave us a positive review if you want. And we're just going to try to make this show even better in 2024.

[00:39:58] And I just want to reiterate what Kevin said. I think we have the best and smartest audience in the world. I really do. I feel like first time parents often think their kid is the

[00:40:10] smartest in the world and they're going around telling everyone that's how I feel because we get so many wonderful questions. There's such great engagement in our Facebook group and just such great discussions, civil, smart informed discussions, and just so many experts reach out to us who

[00:40:27] have been listening and I'm just incredibly grateful to them for giving us additional insights into whatever the heck we're rambling on about. So yeah, you guys are the best. We really appreciate you and we hope you've enjoyed the show and certainly look forward to any

[00:40:46] feedback on how we can get better and what improvements we can make. But anyways, here's to 2024 and we hope you and your families and your friends and you yourselves just have a wonderful start of 2024.

[00:41:04] Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[00:41:24] If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com. We very much appreciate any support.

[00:41:48] Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com. If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion Group on Facebook.

[00:42:07] We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.