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He Used Her Rosemary Planter to Steal Her Identity-How and Why · Why Humans Lie

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: At six twenty two in the morning on January ninth,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: two thoy nineteen, a county snowplow operator named Hawley Miller
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: spotted something in a ditch along Sycamore Flat Road. It
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: was a ceramic rosemary planter, sitting upright in frozen mud,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: fourteen miles from the house it belonged to. The plant
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: was still alive. That planter had been on Tracy Lane's
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: window sill the night before, and what was packed into
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: its soil would become the most important piece of evidence
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: in a trial three years later. There is something about
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: this case that resists easy categorization. No money was ever stolen,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: no one was ever hurt, and yet a forensic analyst
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: named Thomas Paget would later describe what happened to Tracy
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Lane as one of the most methodically constructed identity theft
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: architectures he had ever reconstructed. The blueprint had been assembled
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: inside her own home, using the objects she trusted most,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: by a man she had known since childhood. This is
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the story of how one person's ordinary life, her routines,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: her handwriting, her garden, became raw material for some one
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: else's scheme, and how a canceled choir rehearsal on a
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: cold Ohio night unraveled everything. Tracy Lane was thirty two
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: years old and had lived on Covey Street in Aldermore
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: for several years. By the time any of this began,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: she worked as a billing coordinator, a job that suited
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: her precisely. People who knew Tracy described the same quality repeatedly.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: She was orderly in a way that felt personal, not compulsive.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: She kept a handwritten garden notebook. She tracked what she planted,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: when she planted it, and what grew well in which light.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Her front window sill held a terra cotta planter with
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a rosemary plant she had kept alive through two Ohio winters.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: She had been single for three years. Her social life
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: was consistent and relatively quiet, a community korral, a regular
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: coffee shop, a network of neighbors she knew by name.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Her east side neighbor, Pete Dunbar, was a retired mail
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: carrier who had watched the rhythms of the block for years.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: He knew without thinking about it, what time Tracy's car
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: left in the morning and when it came back. That
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: kind of visibility, the settled, predictable texture of her days was,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: according to the later forensic reconstruction, exactly what made her
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a target. She had not seen Stephen Dalton in years
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: when they crossed paths again in September of two thousand
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: eighteen at a back yard party hosted by a mutual
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: acquaintance named Gwen Pacheco. Dalton was a childhood acquaintance, not
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a close friend, but someone from the same geography of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: her past. He was easy to talk to at the party.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: He asked about her garden. Within weeks he had joined
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the community corral. He began appearing at her regular coffee shop.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Over six weeks in October and November. He was present
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: at the edges of her life with a consistency that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: felt at the time like genuine interest. He mentioned that
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: he was in the area dealing with a family estate,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: an uncle's property in Rennick Township just up the road.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: He was staying nearby, handling the paperwork. None of that
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: was true. There was no uncle, there was no estate.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: The Rennick Township address was a short term cash rental,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: but in the fall of twenty eighteen, Tracy Lane had
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: no reason to know that. By December they were spending
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: evenings together Dalton raised the subject of home ownership. He
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: made comments about putting down roots, and on December twenty first,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: he asked if he could use her Covey Street address
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: for what he called state correspondence documents that needed a
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: stable address while things were being sorted out. She said yes.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It was a small thing to say yes to. It
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: cost her nothing visible, and that, according to Paget's later reconstruction,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: was precisely the design. Every step Dalton had taken since September,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the party, the corral, the coffee shop, the evenings, the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: talk of roots had been preparation for that single sentence.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: The question had been coming for months. Tracy Lane simply
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: had no way to know she was being walked toward it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: What happened next happened fast, and it happened inside her home.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: In early January of twenty nineteen, Tracy Lane noticed three
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: things wrong with her house. The first was the spare room.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: She kept it tidy. The door sat at a particular
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: angle when left open, and one morning she found it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: at a different angle, not much, just enough. The second
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: was the grow lights. She un use them for her
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: seedlings in winter. They ran on a timer she had
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: set herself. One morning they were on at the wrong time.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: She checked the timer. It had been adjusted. The third
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: was the garden note book. Tracy kept a spiral notebook
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: on a shelf near the back window. It held her
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: planting schedules, her soil notes, her seed catalog orders. It
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: was the kind of record a person builds over years,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: adding and revising. It had also, years earlier, been used
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to register for a Seed Catalog membership. That registration had
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: required her full name, her date of birth, and her
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Social Security number. She had written them all down neatly
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: in the same note book she used for everything else.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: The note book was on the shelf, but it was
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: not where she had left it. These three things, a
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: door angle, a timer setting, a shifted note book were
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: not crimes. No window was broken, nothing was taken, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Stephen Dalton had informal standing access to the property. He
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: had a key because she had given him one. When
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Tracy contacted the non emergency line on the evening of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: January eighth, Deputy Artfelker filed the report as informational only.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: He had no legal basis for more. But there was
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: a fourth thing, and this one arrived by mail. A
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: piece of correspondence reached Covey Street, addressed to a Karen Dalton,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: not Stephen Dalton, a different person entirely in a different county.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Tracy did not know Karen Dalton, She had no reason
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: to know her. The envelope sat on her kitchen counter
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: while she tried to understand why some one else's mail
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: was arriving at her address. What Tracy did not know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: what no standard background check would have revealed, was that
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, Karen Dalton had filed a civil
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: complaint in Allegheny County against Stephen Dalton, the allegation unauthorized
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: use of her address. That case was settled quietly. It
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: left no trail a person could find without knowing to look.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The mail sat there, the note book was on the
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: wrong shelf, the grow lights were on the wrong timer,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and that evening corral was canceled. Bev Norris, the corral director,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: sent the cancelation message at six forty five in the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: evening on January eighth, a family emergency. Tracy received it
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: on her way out the door. She turned around and
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: went home forty minutes early. Pete Dunbar, her retired mail carrier, neighbor,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: on the east side had been outside that afternoon. He
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: later told investigators that he had seen a man at
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Tracy's front door around five thirty in the evening. The
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: man knocked, waited, then went around to the back Stephen's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: truck was not in the driveway. When Tracy arrived home,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: she called him, no answer. She waited. She called the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: non emergency line at nine fourteen that night, and then
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: she noticed the window sill the rosemary planter was gone.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: The rosemary planter was a terra cotta pot Tracy had
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: kept on the kitchen window sill for two years. It
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: was not a valuable object. It was not something a
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: person would steal, and yet it was gone and nothing
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: else was missing, which made its absence stranger than a
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: standard theft would have been. Felker filed the informational report
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and left Tracy locked her doors. The next morning, at
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: six twenty two, a County snow plow operator named Holly
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Miller was running her route on Sycamore Flat Road, roughly
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: fourteen miles from Covey Street, roughly halfway between Aldermore and
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the Rennick Township rental property. The road curved through a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: low area with drainage ditches on both sides. Miller saw
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: something in the ditch that did not belong there. The
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Rosemary planter prit plant intact, soil packed and level despite
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: a night of freezing temperatures. Miller photographed it at six
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: twenty two and called the sheriff at six twenty six.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: That photograph became exhibit one at trial, not because the
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: planter itself was damming, but because of what forensic analyst
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Thomas Paget later determined was inside it. The terracotta pot
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: had a drainage hole in its base. Drainage holes in
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: planting pots are ordinary, This one, Paget concluded, had been
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: used as a concealment. Cavity folded pages photographed copies of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: specific notebook pages had been packed beneath the soil layer
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: before transport fourteen miles upright in a ditch, a living
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: plant used as a document's sleeve. The Sheriff's office cross
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: referenced the two reports. On January tenth, Felker returned with
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Detective Bev Kohler. They walked through the spare room, the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: grow light timer the mail addressed to Karen Dalton. Koehler
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: contacted the Prosecutor's office the same day, Thomas Paget was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: assigned to the case. What Paget found when he pulled
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the financial records was a chain. At least three documents
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: using Tracy's Covey Street address had been filed by Dalton
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in early January. Several others could not be fully accounted for.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Credit applications had been submitted in a hyphenated name Dalton Lane.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: The applications were caught before any funds moved, but the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: architecture was complete. The address, the name combination, and the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: social security number from the notebook, all of it was
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: in place. Paget also pulled Dalton's phone. Forensic extraction recovered
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: forty one photographs taken inside Tracy Lane's home across four
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: separate visits. Every page of the garden notebook had been captured.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Every page the notebook with her name, her date of birth,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: her social Security number written years earlier for a seed catalog.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Never a target, just a record. Dalton was arrested on
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: January seventeenth at a gas station in Rennick Township, seven
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: days after Kohler and Felker walked through Covey Street together.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: The question that stayed open after the arrest. Was not
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: whether Dalton had done it. The phone extraction was unambiguous.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: The financial chain was documented. The planter would carry its
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: own logic to the jury. The question was the design itself.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: How does a person build a month's long approach party, choral,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: coffee shop evenings, address request toward a notebook that no
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: one knew contained that information. Picture the September party at
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: when Pacheco's house, Dalton asks Tracy about her garden. That
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: is the first question. It sounds like conversation. It is
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: also reconnaissance. He learns what she grows, how seriously she
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: takes it, what records she keeps. Someone who loves a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: guard enough to keep a notebook about it is someone
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: worth returning to. Picture October. The chreisle Dalton joins. Tracy
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: is already a member. The choral is not random. It
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: is her community anchor. Being present there signals alignment with
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the life she has built. It produces shared time in
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a way that feels organic rather than engineered. Picture the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: coffee shop appearances over six weeks. Nothing dramatic, just presence.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Presence that accumulates into familiarity, familiarity that accumulates into trust.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Then December, and the question about the address small reasonable
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: framed as temporary, she said yes, But here is the thing.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: The address alone was not enough. Dalton needed the social
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: security number. He could not ask for it. Asking would
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: end everything, so he did not ask. He photographed his
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: way to it for visits across his say December and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: early January, forty one images every page of a notebook.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: She had no reason to hide because she did not
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: know it was a target. One version of this case
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: holds that the Planter was a disposal mistake that Dalton
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: panicked when Tracy's call came in at nine fourteen, grabbed
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: what he had used as a transport container, threw it
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: in his truck, and dropped it on a road he
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: drove daily. He did not return for it because the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: call had already spooped him. The plant survived because it
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: had been properly potted, watered before use, and the terra
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: cotta held enough thermal mass to protect the roots over night.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: That version is supported by the timing nine fourteen. The
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: call the Planter appears fourteen miles away, upright on a
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: road between Aldermore and Rennick. It reads like flight, but
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Paget's reconstruction pointed towards something else. The planter was upright,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: not dropped, not thrown. The soil was packed and level,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: which means it was placed. A panicked man does not
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: place a terra cotta pot carefully in a drainage ditch
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: in the dark. He drops it, or he leaves it
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: in his truck, or he takes it back to Rennick
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and deals with it later. If the planter was placed,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: then Dalton stopped the truck on a dark rural road,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: got out and set it down deliberately, which means the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: disposal was controlled, which means the nine fourteen call did
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: not panic him, it stopped him. There is a difference.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Panic is reactive, stopping is a decision. And if Dalton
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: had already run this architecture once before, same approach, same method,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: six lines of credit opened before the target understood what
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: had happened, then stopping was the practiced move, not flight containment.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: That earlier case was a woman in Garrett County, Maryland
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. Analysts noted the methodological similarity in two
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, but the link was not confirmed as Dalton's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: work until he said so himself in a recorded statement
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: to a journalist after his second appeal was denied in
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty four. He told her she
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: had been very organized. He meant it as a compliment.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Stephen Dalton was arrested on January seventeenth, two thousand, nineteen,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: nine days after Tracy Lane came home forty minutes early.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: A deputy and a detective found him at a gas
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: station in Rennick Township. He was not hiding, he was
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: filling his truck. The trial did not begin until March
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, delayed a full year by procedural motions.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: When it finally opened, Thomas Paget walked the jury through
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the architecture, piece by piece, the forty one photographs extracted
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: from Dalton's phone, every page of the garden notebook, the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: hyphenated name Dalton Lane on the credit applications, the chain
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of fraudulent documents built from a woman's address, her handwriting,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and three digits she had written in a Seed Catalog
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: membership form years before any of this began. Pete Dunbar
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: testified about the man he saw at the back of
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the house at approximately five thirty in the evening on
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: January eighth, Holly Miller testified about the planter she found
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: upright in a drainage ditch at six twenty two in
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the morning, fourteen miles from Covey Street, on a road
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that ran directly between Aldermore and Rennick Township. The jury
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: convicted on six counts of identity fraud, two counts of
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: criminal identity theft, and one count of burglary. The sentence
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: was eleven years. Dalton filed two appeals. The first failed,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the second was denied in the spring of twenty twenty four.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: After the second denial, he gave a recorded statement to
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: a journalist. In it, he confessed to an earlier scheme.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: A woman in Garrett County, Maryland in twenty twelve, same approach,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: same method, Six lines of credit opened before she understood
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: what was happening to her. Her name was not released.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Analysts had noted the methodological similarity in twenty nineteen, the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: year of Tracy's trial preparation, but it was never officially
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: confirmed as Dalton's work until he said so himself. He
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: had been doing this for at least seven years before
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: he walked into Gwen Pacheco's back yard in September of
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen and asked Tracy Lane about her Rosemary. No
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: money was ever taken from Tracy. Every credit application was
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: caught before any funds were dispersed. The financial damage was contained,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: but containment is not the same as cost. The notebook
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Dalton photographed was evidence. It was also something Tracy had
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: written by hand for herself because she loved growing things.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: It held her name, her date of birth, her Social
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Security number. She had written those numbers down years before
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: she ever saw Stephen Dalton again, in a moment of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: ordinary domestic trust, never imagining anyone would hold a camera
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: over them in her own spare room. The Rosemary planter
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: was returned from evidence after trial. The soil was still
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: packed and level, The plant was still alive. What Dalton
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: built was not a robbery. There was no moment of confrontation,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: no forced entry in the conventional sense, no weapon. What
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: he built was a slow substitution. He inserted himself into
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the texture of Tracy Lane's daily life, her choir, her
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: coffee shop, her evenings, her spare room, and then he
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: inserted himself into her identity on paper. He was working
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to become legally and financially a hyphenated extension of her
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: The plan was that by the time she noticed the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: architecture would already be load bearing. It nearly worked. Six
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: weeks of attention, a story about an uncle and an estate,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a request so reasonable she said yes without hesitation. The
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: thing that stopped it was a canceled choir rehearsal. Bev
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Norris sent that cancelation at six forty five in the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: evening because of a family emergency. She had nothing to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: do with this case. She could not have known what
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: her message would interrupt. But Tracy walked through her own
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: front door forty minutes before Dalton expected her, and the
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: spare room was wrong, and the planter was gone, and
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: she called the sheriff at nine fourteen. One call filed
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: as informational only because no item could be confirmed stolen
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and Dalton had informal access. It was almost nothing. It
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: became everything. The Garrett County woman in twenty twelve was
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: not so lucky in timing. Six lines of credit opened
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: before she caught it. Her name remains unreleased. She is
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: in this story only as a shape a prior version
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of the same scheme, proof that Dalton had already practice
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the architecture once and refined it. The gap between twenty
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: twelve and twenty eighteen is six years, six years in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: which he appears to have operated without consequence, without a
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: public record, without a result that would have surfaced in
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: any standard background check. Karen Dalton's civil complaint from twenty
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: fifteen was settled quietly. It did not appear. There is
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: something in that gap that does not resolve cleanly, and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: it is worth sitting with not because it changes the verdict,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: but because it is the part of this case that
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: extends beyond Tracy Lane's front door. How many times does
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: something have to work before it becomes a pattern? How
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: many settled complaints and unreleased names does it take before
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: a name appears somewhere a person can find it. Tracy
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Lane still lives on Covey Street in Aldermore. She renewed
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: her Coral membership in the twenty twenty two season. She
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: is still there. She kept the planter, soil act and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: level plant alive. That is not a small thing. To
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: keep the object he used and return it to the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: window sill where it belongs. That is a decision. It
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: says this is still mine. It was always mine. You
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: did not take it, he told the Maryland Journalist. She
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: had been very organized. He meant it as a compliment.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: What he described without meaning to was the reason he failed.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Tracy Lane had built a life with enough precision that
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: the absence of a single planter registered as wrong. Her
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: habits were not a weakness he exploited. They were the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: alarm system he never accounted for. The Rosemary is still growing.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: This show is made by Oboe Media.