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A Brutal Home Invasion Left a Beloved Businessman Dead · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: You know, there's a really specific kind of comfort in
0:04
the geometry of a suburban mourning.
0:06
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, it's predictable.
0:08
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, it's predictable. It is almost like a perfectly
0:11
engineered clock. You have the coffee maker, you know, clicking
0:14
on at five one, five am. You have the soft
0:17
thud of the newspaper hitting the driveway, and then right
0:21
on schedule, you get that mechanical, heavy hum of the
0:24
garage door opening. We rely on these routines, like we
0:28
build our entire sense of security around the idea that
0:31
today is going to start exactly the way yesterday did.
0:34
Speaker 2: It is deeply ingrained in human psychology. Honestly, we use
0:37
routine as a shield against well against the unpredictability of
0:41
the world. Yeah, when you are in your own garage,
0:44
in your own neighborhood, your brain essentially just turns off
0:47
its threat detection systems because you feel safe. Exactly, you
0:51
are in what you perceive to be a completely controlled environment.
0:54
The walls of your house, the borders of your property.
0:57
They signal to your nervous system that you were insulated.
1:00
Speaker 1: I think that's precisely why this case is so unsettling.
1:03
I mean, what happens when that exact routine, the very
1:05
thing that makes you feel so safe is actually weaponized
1:08
against you. Welcome to the.
1:10
Speaker 2: Deep dive, the heavy one. Today.
1:12
Speaker 1: It is today. We are heading to Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania.
1:16
It's January two thousand and nine. We have a picturesque,
1:21
quiet suburban morning that is about to be shattered by
1:24
just an unthinkable crime.
1:26
Speaker 2: And you know, this is not just a story about
1:28
a home invasion, if we look at the underlying currents
1:31
and source material, it's really a story about the profound
1:34
vulnerabilities of success, right. It is about the tight knit
1:37
nature of immigrant communities and the horrifying reality that sometimes
1:41
the absolute greatest threat to your safety isn't you know,
1:44
a stranger hiding in the bushes.
1:46
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We are pulling today's insights from
1:49
a really chilling true crime case sourced from a piece
1:52
titled Betrayal in North Wales, the Robert Cha Murder.
1:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that source material is intense, very intense.
1:58
Speaker 1: Our mission today is to explore how a horrifying home invasion,
2:03
one that initially looked like a random, hate fueled crime,
2:07
was ultimately unraveled by a single digital thread, and at
2:11
the center of it all a betrayal so deep it
2:14
literally destroyed one family's American dream.
2:17
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the entire trajectory of the
2:20
investigation pivoted based on one almost microscopic oversight by the criminals.
2:26
Just one mistake, Yeah, just one. It's basically a masterclass
2:29
in how modern digital forensics intersect with the darkest parts
2:32
of human nature, and how assumptions can so easily lead
2:36
an investigation completely stray before the physical data corrects the course.
2:40
Speaker 1: Before we can even begin to understand the tragedy, though,
2:42
we have to understand the life that was violently interrupted.
2:45
We have to understand who Robert jemsik Chay actually was
2:48
at the time of this event. Robert was fifty eight
2:50
years old. He was a Korean American businessman, and when
2:53
you look at his background, I mean, he is the
2:56
absolute picture of the American dream realized.
2:59
Speaker 2: He really is.
2:59
Speaker 1: He was born in South Korea in nineteen fifty, which
3:02
places his arrival into the world right at the outbreak
3:05
of the Korean.
3:05
Speaker 2: War, and for context his early life. His formative years
3:10
were completely defined by post war reconstruction.
3:13
Speaker 1: Which was incredibly difficult.
3:15
Speaker 2: Oh, unimaginably difficult. This meant severe poverty and a level
3:20
of national and economic instability that is just it's hard
3:24
for many of us to fully grasp today. The country
3:28
was completely devastated, that the infrastructure was gone, and the
3:31
daily reality was focused purely on survival.
3:34
Speaker 1: So, like so many immigrants of his generation, he looked
3:37
across the ocean and he saw possibility. He emigrated to
3:40
the United States in the nineteen seventies seeking a totally
3:42
different life exactly, and he didn't arrive with the trust fund.
3:45
He arrived with determination. He worked menial jobs, he saved relentlessly,
3:49
and eventually he opened pen Center Beauty Supply.
3:52
Speaker 2: And this was not a small operation, No.
3:54
Speaker 1: Not at all. This wasn't just a tiny corner store.
3:57
This was a thriving wholesale and retail right in center
4:01
city Philadelphia. He was supplying hair products, whigs, and salon
4:05
supplies to the city's booming beauty industry.
4:09
Speaker 2: That is an incredibly demanding business model. Oh, I bet
4:12
you are dealing with vast inventory, managing really complex supply chains,
4:16
and interacting with a multitude of clients ranging from individual
4:21
stylists to massive salon franchises. Right, And more importantly for
4:25
our narrative, it's an industry that traditionally handles a significant
4:29
amount of cash. Transactions are rapid, they're often wholesale, and
4:32
cash flow is basically the lifeblood of the operation.
4:35
Speaker 1: But what really stands out in the source material about
4:38
Robert Jay is his character. He wasn't just you know,
4:40
a businessman. He was an anchor in his community.
4:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. The sources emphasize that heavily, they really do.
4:47
Speaker 1: The sources note that he explicitly made it a point
4:49
to hire people experiencing homelessness. Yeah, he would give him
4:53
a paycheck, give them a second chance. A former coworker
4:55
actually said he believed in paying it forward. He was quiet,
4:59
he was hard working. He was the guy who opened
5:02
the store before the sun came up and closed it
5:04
long after dark.
5:05
Speaker 2: And that work ethic, you know, it speaks to a
5:07
very specific kind of immigrant psychology. How so, Well, when
5:11
you have experienced profound scarcity, as he did in post
5:15
war Korea, and you managed to build stability out of nothing,
5:20
you often develop a really deep sense of responsibility.
5:23
Speaker 1: Right, you want to hold onto it, yes, and.
5:25
Speaker 2: You want to share that stability. Yeah, Robert poured all
5:28
of his hard earned profits into two things, his children's
5:31
futures and the ultimate symbol of American success, which is
5:35
the suburban family home.
5:37
Speaker 1: Right, the fortress. That home was located at a one
5:39
thirty nine Gwinmont Drive in North Wales and.
5:42
Speaker 2: North Wales is it's quite picturesque, it is.
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Speaker 1: It's a town of about three to two hundred residents
5:47
just north of Philadelphia. It's known for quiet streets, great schools,
5:50
pure stability. It was a beautiful four bedroom home with
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a spacious garage and.
5:54
Speaker 2: You live there with his family, right.
5:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, he lived there with his wife, Janice and their
5:58
two adult children, including their son Richard, who actually still
6:01
lived at home and helped with a family business. It
6:04
was the fortress they built against the struggles of their past.
6:07
Speaker 2: But while the Cha family had achieved this beautiful suburban stability,
6:12
they were navigating a very specific, very dangerous cultural landscape
6:17
back in two thousand and nine.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the context here is crucial.
6:20
Speaker 2: It is at that time there's a well documented spike
6:24
in crimes targeting Asian owned businesses, specifically in the Philadelphia
6:29
suburbs and the surrounding counties. The environment was incredibly tense.
6:34
People were on edge.
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Speaker 1: I actually want to push back on this concept of
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suburban safety for a second because it feels so relevant
6:40
here to you, the listener. It's like building a fortress,
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outfitting it with alarms, locking the heavy doors, but leaving
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the drawbridge completely down because you assume the moat is enough.
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Speaker 2: Oh that's a great analogy.
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Speaker 1: You think the physical distance from the city is your protection,
6:55
but achieving the American dream moving out of the city
6:58
and getting that quiet suburban house actually paints a target
7:03
on your back.
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Speaker 2: It really does. The moat in your analogy is indeed
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the illusion of distance.
7:08
Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: You think, because you live out in North Wales, you
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are totally insulated from the dangers of center city Philadelphia.
7:15
But criminals are highly observant of routines, and they are
7:19
highly aware of socioeconomic patterns. They pay attention absolutely. Former
7:24
Delaware County Assistant District Attorney Pearl Kim was quoted in
7:28
the sources discussing this exact phenomenon.
7:30
Speaker 1: What did she say?
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Speaker 2: She noted that perpetrators specifically targeted Asian people during this
7:35
time because they believe that Asian business owners, particularly those
7:39
running cash heavy retail operations, kept large amounts of cash
7:43
in their homes rather than trusting banks.
7:45
Speaker 1: Wow, And it also seems clear from the sources that
7:48
perpetrators basically banked on these victims staying silent, like if
7:51
there's a cultural language barrier or an inherent distrust of
7:55
the police, perhaps brought over from their home countries where
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authorities weren't exactly trusted. It makes them the perfect targets.
8:02
They are viewed as high yield, low risk marks.
8:05
Speaker 2: That combination assumed cash on hand plus a perceived reluctance
8:10
to involve law enforcement, it created an entire ecosystem of
8:14
predatory crime. So achieving that success and having that predictable
8:18
daily commute from the quiet suburbs into the bustling city,
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it essentially created a highly trackable profile for Robert Cha.
8:26
Speaker 1: The predictable routine that built his empire also inadvertently broadcast
8:30
his vulnerability. Which brings us to the morning of January nine,
8:33
two thousand and nine. A terrible morning, the pre dawn quiet,
8:37
It is freezing, it is pitch dark. Robert wakes up early,
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as he always does. He and his wife Janis are
8:41
getting ready to head into the city.
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Speaker 2: Together for work, just a normal friday.
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Speaker 1: Exactly around five thirty am, Robert steps out into the garage.
8:49
His goal is really simple, warm up the car so
8:52
it's comfortable for his wife. He hits the button, the
8:54
garage door hums open, and the moment that barrier lifts,
8:59
the darkness outside literally explodes into their lives.
9:02
Speaker 2: It's terrifying. Three men rush into the garage like that,
9:05
just like that, And the sources emphasize a really terrifying detail.
9:09
They are completely unmasked. They are bold, they are armed,
9:14
and they are highly coordinated.
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Speaker 1: You know, the fact that they are unmasked is so
9:18
chilling to me.
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Speaker 2: It's a huge red flag in a.
9:20
Speaker 1: Home invasion that almost always points to one of two things.
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Either the attackers are so incredibly reckless and unsophisticated that
9:27
they just haven't thought ahead right, or they have a
9:30
much darker intention, like they don't plan on leaving any
9:32
witnesses alive to identify them. Given the level of coordination
9:36
they show in the next few minutes, the latter is
9:38
a horrifying possibility.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, when you cross the threshold of an occupied home unmasked,
9:43
you are making a profound statement about how you view
9:45
the people inside.
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Speaker 1: You don't care if they see you exactly.
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Speaker 2: You view them as already neutralized. The violence that unfolds
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immediately supports that.
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Speaker 1: They swarm Robert instantly. They force him and Janis back
9:59
inside the perimeter of the house at gunpoint.
10:01
Speaker 2: He must have it had total chaos.
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Speaker 1: One of the assailants puts a pistol directly to Janis's head.
10:06
The others drag robber deeper into the garage. They force
10:10
him to the ground. They take his hands and bind
10:13
them behind his back with heavy plastic zip ties. So
10:16
he came prepared, oh absolutely. And then then comes the
10:19
detail of this case that just stopped you cold. The
10:22
duct tape.
10:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. The sheer brutality of what they did with the
10:25
duct tape is what elevated this crime from a robbery
10:30
to honestly a torture scene. It's sickening. They didn't just
10:33
tape his mouth to keep him quiet.
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Speaker 1: Now, they wrapped his entire head roll after roll of
10:38
thick silver duct tape. They wrapped him so thoroughly that
10:41
only his nose was left exposed.
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Speaker 2: It's almost hard to picture.
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Speaker 1: Retired Montgomery County Detective Michael Santarelli, who actually worked this scene, said,
10:48
I didn't understand why it was necessary to duct tape
10:50
his head so many times. He noted that it looked
10:53
like they had used an entire fresh roll of duct
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tape just on Robert's head alone.
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Speaker 2: We really have to talk about the physical reality, like
11:00
the medical reality of what that means. Please do while
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they were doing this, while they were binding him, they
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were beating him violently, And during this beating, Robert's nose
11:09
was broken. God. Now, think about the mechanics of the
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human body. When a nose is broken, it bleeds profusely.
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But because his mouth, his jaw, his entire face is
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in case in a rigid, impenetrable shell of industrial tape,
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normal physiological responses are impossible.
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Speaker 1: There's literally nowhere for the blood to go but backward.
11:32
Exactly because his face was sealed tight, the blood poured
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down his throat. Robert Jay didn't die from a gunshot wound. No,
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the autopsy confirmed he died of asphyxiation. He drowned in
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his own blood on the floor of his own garage, entirely,
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unable to scream or even breathe.
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Speaker 2: It is an agonizing slow way to die. It is
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the very definition of depravity.
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Speaker 1: It really is and while Robert is dying in the garage,
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the terror is actively spreading through the rest of the house.
11:59
The chaos down stairs wakes up the adult children.
12:01
Speaker 2: Who are still in their bedrooms.
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Speaker 1: Right, the intruders move upstairs, They find the children and
12:05
they bind them with duct tape as well. So now
12:08
you have an entire family incapacitated in their own sanctuary.
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Speaker 2: And this is where the specific motive of the attack
12:15
becomes crystal clear.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't random, not at all.
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Speaker 2: This wasn't a random burglary where they grab a flat
12:21
screen TV and just run out the back door. Yeah,
12:23
this pacific target. They march Janis at gunpoint through the
12:27
house and force her to open the family safe.
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Speaker 1: They know exactly what they're looking for, and they know
12:32
exactly where it is exactly. They demand cash, jewelry, designer purses.
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They end up hauling away about twenty thousand dollars in cash.
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Speaker 2: And valuables, a substantial amount. Right.
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Speaker 1: But as this is happening, as they are actively ransacking
12:46
the house, Janie notices something really strange.
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Speaker 2: This is the detail.
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Speaker 1: This is the detail she recounts to police later that
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while the men were moving between the floors you know
12:57
some upstairs with the safe, one downstairs in the grid
13:00
beating Robert. They were communicating with each other using cell phones.
13:04
They were calling each other.
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Speaker 2: Inside the house, inside the house during an active, highly
13:09
violent felony.
13:10
Speaker 1: I look at that detail, and the cognitive dissonance is
13:13
just staggering. You have a seemingly sophisticated crew. They brought
13:18
zip ties, they conducted surveillance, they executed a coordinated multi
13:22
person ambush in the dark, right, and yet they are
13:26
so incredibly reckless as to leave a digital trail of
13:29
phone calls while actively inside the victim's home. It seems
13:33
like an astonishing level of hubris.
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Speaker 2: It is hubris, certainly, but it also reveals a fascinating
13:38
blind spot in the logistics of street level crime in
13:41
two thousand and nine. What do you mean, Well, while
13:44
cell phones were ubiquitous by that time, the absolute permanence
13:47
of digital forensics wasn't always front of mind for these perpetrators.
13:50
They were using burner phones, uh, prepaid phones right, untraceable
13:54
devices bought with cash at a convenience store. In their minds,
13:59
these phones entirely invisible to the system.
14:02
Speaker 1: They think, my name isn't on the billing account. Therefore,
14:05
this piece of plastic does not exist to the police exactly.
14:08
Speaker 2: They use them for convenience, to coordinate silently without shouting
14:12
up and down the stairs and alerting the neighbors. They
14:14
think they're being incredibly tactical.
14:16
Speaker 1: But they are actually broadcasting their exact location to every
14:20
cell tower in Montgomery Township.
14:22
Speaker 2: Yes, they are.
14:23
Speaker 1: Think of a burner phone not as an invisibility cloak,
14:26
but as a megaphone in a dark room. You might
14:31
not know the actual name of the person shouting, but
14:33
if you have three people standing in different corners of
14:35
the room listening, which would be the cell towers, they
14:38
can point directly to where the voice is coming from.
14:40
Speaker 2: That is an excellent way to conceptualize it. They believe
14:43
the burner phone was a ghost. They didn't realize it
14:46
was a homing beacon, right, and that fundamental misunderstanding of
14:49
cellular technology is going to become the hinge upon which
14:54
this entire case turns.
14:55
Speaker 1: It's wild. So the invasion is over in minutes. The
15:00
men gather their twenty thousand dollars hal and flee into
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the freezing.
15:04
Speaker 2: Dark, leaving devastation behind.
15:06
Speaker 1: Janice manages to somehow break free of her restraints. She
15:09
runs out of her house into the suburban dawn and
15:12
pounds on a neighbor's door to.
15:14
Speaker 2: Call nine one one, and the response is quick.
15:16
Speaker 1: The police from Montgomery Township arrive within minutes, and the
15:20
scene they walk into is pure devastation. You have the
15:23
adult children bound and in profound shock, and then you.
15:27
Speaker 2: Have the garage finding Robert's lifeless body. Understanding the mechanism
15:32
of the duct take. It's a lot for anyone to process.
15:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:36
Speaker 2: Retired Detective Chris McMullen, who actually hosts Philly Homicide, was
15:40
quoted in the sources saying that the sheer brutality of
15:43
this crime set it apart from anything they had ever seen.
15:46
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a robbery gone wrong, No, it was
15:48
a torture scene. The moment the police step across that threshold,
15:51
they have to start building a narrative. They have to
15:52
answer the question who did this and why?
15:55
Speaker 2: And the investigation almost gets completely derailed by a false
15:58
narrative right out of the gate.
15:59
Speaker 1: Because the crime scene perfectly fits a pre existing fear.
16:02
Speaker 2: Exactly the societal undercurrents we discussed earlier.
16:06
Speaker 1: Right the string of robberies.
16:07
Speaker 2: The police are looking at a Korean American business owner
16:11
known to deal in cash, living in a wealthy suburb,
16:15
targeted in an extremely violent home invasion. It is textbook yeah,
16:20
it perfectly matches the pattern of violence against Asian American
16:24
business owners that was plaguing the entire region at the time.
16:27
Speaker 1: So the police naturally immediately lean into this theory. They
16:31
are looking for a random targeted robbery crew operating out
16:35
of the city.
16:36
Speaker 2: It's the most logical starting point.
16:38
Speaker 1: They sit down with Janis and the children, who miraculously
16:41
survive the ordeal, and they work up composite sketches. The
16:44
victims describe three black men unmasked roughly in their twenties.
16:49
Speaker 2: And then they get what seems like a massive break,
16:51
a huge physical clue that fits the narrative perfectly right.
16:55
A local garbage collector comes forward.
16:57
Speaker 1: What did he see?
16:58
Speaker 2: He tells police that a few days prior to the murder,
17:00
he was doing his route and noticed a really suspicious suv.
17:04
It was slowly circling the Chay family block, three occupants inside,
17:09
looking hard at the houses.
17:10
Speaker 1: They were chasing the home.
17:11
Speaker 2: Yes, casing the neighborhood.
17:13
Speaker 1: So now the police have a physical description, they have
17:16
a vehicle type, and they have a behavioral pattern. The
17:19
community reaction is immediate and intense.
17:21
Speaker 2: I can imagine over.
17:23
Speaker 1: Thirty thousand dollars in reward money is pulled together by
17:26
local businesses and concerned citizens offered for any information leading
17:30
to an arrest. The terror in the community must have been.
17:33
Speaker 2: Just palpable, oh undeniably.
17:35
Speaker 1: The sources note that the Chay family was so shattered
17:38
and terrified that they couldn't stay in the house. They
17:41
sought refuge with relatives moving into Robert's sister's house.
17:44
Speaker 2: They couldn't go back.
17:45
Speaker 1: No, and the entire Korean American community in North Wales
17:49
and Philadelphia was gripped by fear, convinced there was a
17:53
highly organized, ultra violent crew actively hunting them down.
17:57
Speaker 2: This reaction highlights a really critical psychological phenomenon in law
18:01
enforcement confirmation bias.
18:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that.
18:04
Speaker 2: It is very easy to criticize detectives in hindsight, but
18:07
when a crime perfectly matches a sociological trend, confirmation bias
18:12
can set in almost instantaneously.
18:14
Speaker 1: Because it just makes sense.
18:15
Speaker 2: Right. The human brain is a pattern recognition machine. It
18:19
craves order. When police see a pattern Asian business owner,
18:23
cash business, violent robbery, their brains literally light up. They
18:28
start filtering all incoming information through that specific lens.
18:32
Speaker 1: It makes complete sense. The alternative is almost too chaotic
18:35
to consider. If it's not part of a known pattern,
18:38
it's an anomaly, and anomalies require starting from absolute scratch.
18:42
Speaker 2: Precisely leaning into a pattern saves cognitive resources and investigative time.
18:47
But the mark of a truly great investigative team is
18:49
the ability to acknowledge the pattern but follow the evidence
18:52
anyway wherever it leads, even if it completely shatters the
18:56
narrative they've instructed.
18:57
Speaker 1: And the evidence here was about to do exactly that.
18:59
Speaker 2: The sketch, which is the suspicious suv, the reward money,
19:02
these were all casting a very wide net into the
19:05
criminal underworld of Philadelphia. But the breakthrough wasn't going to
19:08
come from the street.
19:09
Speaker 1: Where was it going to come from.
19:11
Speaker 2: It was going to come from the sky.
19:12
Speaker 1: The cell towers exactly. We have to go back to
19:14
those burner phones used inside the house. While the physical
19:18
clues were leading to this broad regional manhunt, the invisible
19:22
digital clues left at the scene were quietly waiting to.
19:26
Speaker 2: Be discovered, waiting in the data.
19:28
Speaker 1: Right, investigators pull the cell tower data for the area
19:31
surrounding one thirty nine Gwinmont Drive for the hours leading
19:34
up to and during the five point thirty am ambush.
19:37
They are looking for anomalies.
19:39
Speaker 2: Right, what phones were pinging that tower at that specific,
19:42
highly unusual time exactly?
19:45
Speaker 1: And to understand how powerful this is, we have to
19:48
look at how cell networks operated in two thousand and nine.
19:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, cell phone is constantly checking in with the nearest
19:54
towers to see where the strongest signal is, even when
19:56
you aren't making a call.
19:58
Speaker 1: Right, just sitting in your pocket exactly.
20:00
Speaker 2: But when a call is actually placed, a specific record
20:04
is generated showing which sector of which tower handled that transmission.
20:08
Speaker 1: And a cluster of calls routing through the exact same
20:10
suburban sector covering Gwinmont Drive at five point thirty in
20:14
the morning is.
20:14
Speaker 2: A glaring statistical anomaly.
20:16
Speaker 1: They pull the call logs from the night of the
20:18
invasion and they discover a complete web of communication. Three
20:23
specific numbers stand out.
20:25
Speaker 2: The three phones in the house.
20:27
Speaker 1: Right, they are pinging off the local Montgomery township towers
20:31
and they are calling each other constantly. They are coordinating.
20:34
And remember, these are burner phones, supposedly anonymous, right they
20:38
are not registered to a real person with a home address.
20:41
Speaker 2: They are anonymous, but digital forensics is entirely about finding
20:46
the edges of that anonymity.
20:48
Speaker 1: What do you mean by edges?
20:49
Speaker 2: A burner phone is only anonymous if it only communicates
20:52
with other burner phones. Who did these phones call before
20:56
the crime? Who did they call after? Do they accidentally
20:58
call a registered land line or a girlfriend's contracted cell phone?
21:03
Speaker 1: A single slip up?
21:04
Speaker 2: Exactly? The police start mapping the network of these three numbers,
21:08
analyzing their basically their patterns of life.
21:11
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting.
21:12
Speaker 2: Oh, this is the turning point.
21:14
Speaker 1: The police trace the web. They look at the numbers
21:17
these burner phones are interacting with, and one of those numbers,
21:21
the central node of this entire conspiracy, doesn't trace back
21:25
to a random street criminal in Philadelphia. No, it doesn't
21:28
trace back to a known gang member who specializes in
21:31
targeting Asian businesses.
21:33
Speaker 2: It's so much worse.
21:34
Speaker 1: It traces back to a name that sends an absolute
21:37
shock wave through the entire investigation. Angelo loshin the revelation of.
21:43
Speaker 2: That name completely upends everything they.
21:45
Speaker 1: Thought they knew because Angelo Shin is Robert Chase twenty
21:49
five year old nephew.
21:50
Speaker 2: Look that sync in for a second.
21:52
Speaker 1: I know.
21:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
21:52
Speaker 1: The sources outline his background and it makes the betrayal
21:55
almost physically sickening to read. Angelo had emigrated from South Korea,
22:00
and when he arrived in America, his uncle Robert didn't just,
22:03
you know, give him a handshake and wish him well.
22:05
Speaker 2: No, he did what he always did right.
22:06
Speaker 1: He opened his doors. Angelo lived inside one thirty nine
22:10
Guinmont Drive for an entire.
22:12
Speaker 2: Year under their roof.
22:14
Speaker 1: He lived under that roof. He ate at their table.
22:16
He was treated like a son.
22:18
Speaker 2: He had intimate knowledge of the family's internal rhythms.
22:21
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate trojan horse. You spend all this energy,
22:25
all this anxiety, worrying about the strangers circling your.
22:28
Speaker 2: Neighborhood a suspicious suv.
22:30
Speaker 1: Yes, you install the alarms, you worry about the suv
22:34
slowly driving down your street. You are completely unaware that
22:38
the literal blueprint to your home, the exact knowledge of
22:41
your five point thirty am routine, the location of your safe,
22:44
the contents of that safe, all of it all of
22:47
it was handed out to the wolves by someone who
22:49
used to have keys to the front door.
22:51
Speaker 2: The psychological impact of this pivot on the investigators must
22:54
have been just profound.
22:55
Speaker 1: Oh totally.
22:56
Speaker 2: In a matter of hours, this single phone connection trans
23:00
forms the case from a sociological trend, you know, a random,
23:03
hate fueled home invasion, into something deeply intimately personal.
23:08
Speaker 1: It's an inside job.
23:09
Speaker 2: It is an inside job. It is a family betrayal.
23:11
Speaker 1: Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Furman did not mince
23:14
words when discussing this later.
23:16
Speaker 2: What did she say?
23:17
Speaker 1: She described Shin as a trader to his family. He
23:20
is a trader to his people, and his treachery is
23:23
of the lowest kind we have ever seen here.
23:25
Speaker 2: That phrasing trader to his people is very, very deliberate
23:30
by the da ohso in tight knit immigrant communities, where
23:34
this shared struggle of assimilation creates these incredible bonds, turning
23:39
on your own family, turning on the very community network
23:42
that supports you is viewed as an unforgivable violation of
23:46
the social contract.
23:47
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate sin.
23:49
Speaker 2: It is. It strikes at the core of their collective
23:52
survival mechanism.
23:53
Speaker 1: So knowing who did it is really only half the battle.
23:57
The investigators now have the who, but they need to
23:59
understand the how, and most importantly, the why.
24:03
Speaker 2: The why is almost impossible to comprehend.
24:05
Speaker 1: Why would a twenty five year old man orchestrate the
24:08
torture and murder of the uncle who literally took him in. Yeah,
24:12
detectives bring Angelo Shin in for questioning, and his facade
24:15
crumbles almost instantly. His own defense attorney, David Mishak later
24:19
noted that Shin was quote.
24:20
Speaker 2: Guilt written, I mean you'd hope.
24:22
Speaker 1: So the moment the detectives sit him down and likely
24:25
slide those phone records right across the table, Shin breaks.
24:28
He comes completely clean about what he had done.
24:30
Speaker 2: And you know, this is remarkably common in cases approximate betrayal.
24:35
Speaker 1: Really.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, when a person orchestrates a crime from a distance,
24:38
they can compartmentalize the guilt. They treat it like a
24:41
logistical puzzle, like a video game, almost exactly, But when
24:45
confronted with the horrific physical reality of what their actions
24:48
actually caused, in this case, his uncle suffocating in duct
24:52
tape while his cousins were bound upstairs, the psychological weight
24:56
is crushing. The compartmentalization shatters complete.
25:00
Speaker 1: Shin confesses to the entire plot, but the motive he provides.
25:05
The motive is almost as pathetic as it is evil.
25:08
Speaker 2: It's infuriating.
25:09
Speaker 1: He didn't have some deep seated, burning hatred for his uncle.
25:12
He wasn't settling a decade's old blood feud. Shin wanted
25:16
to impress a friend.
25:17
Speaker 2: That's it.
25:18
Speaker 1: That's it. Shin had a friend in Philadelphia named Joseph Page.
25:22
Shin was eager to look like a big shot, eager
25:24
to impress Page, and he was desperate for easy money,
25:27
so he starts bragging.
25:28
Speaker 2: Of course, he.
25:29
Speaker 1: Tells Page that his rich uncle in the suburbs keeps
25:32
massive amounts of cash at home. He throws out a
25:34
huge number. He brags that his uncle keeps up to
25:37
one hundred thousand dollars in the family.
25:38
Speaker 2: Safe, which is a completely fabricated or at least wildly
25:41
exaggerated number, considering the crew only got away with about
25:45
twenty thousand dollars in cash in valuables. Right, he inflated
25:48
the prize to elevate his own status among.
25:50
Speaker 1: His peers and for providing this information for handing over
25:55
the layout of the house, the exact timing of the
25:57
morning commute, the existence of the safe, and the guarantee
26:01
of cash. Shin negotiated a payout.
26:04
Speaker 2: A payout for his family safety.
26:05
Speaker 1: He put a literal pricetag on his uncle's life. He
26:09
traded his uncle to a hit squad for two thousand dollars.
26:12
Speaker 2: It is staggering to conceptualize two thousand dollars.
26:15
Speaker 1: Two thousand dollars to destroy the family that sheltered him. Shin,
26:19
in his confession, attempts to mitigate his guilt. He claims
26:22
that the plan was just supposed to be a quote
26:24
quick robbery. No one hurt.
26:26
Speaker 2: They always say that.
26:26
Speaker 1: He says, everyone was supposed to just get their cut
26:28
in and out and go home. He claims he never
26:30
intended for murder.
26:31
Speaker 2: That claim introduces a really profound psychological defense mechanism known
26:37
in criminology as neutralizationism. Yeah. Criminals use it to justify
26:43
their actions to themselves, to maintain a concept of themselves
26:46
as you.
26:47
Speaker 1: Know, not evil, right, I'm not a bad guy exactly.
26:51
Speaker 2: Shin tells himself. I'm just a guy providing information for
26:54
a victimless property crime. The insurance will cover it wow,
26:58
and the actual invaders tell themselves, we're just taking money
27:01
from someone who hoards it. But the reality of an
27:04
armed home invasion is inherently, unavoidably violent. Obviously, the moment
27:10
you introduce a firearm and a surprise ambush into a
27:13
confined space at five point thirty in the morning, the
27:16
statistical probability of lethal violence skyrockets.
27:19
Speaker 1: I just have to wonder how anyone, even in the
27:22
depths of criminal delusion, can claim no one gets hurt
27:24
when you send three armed men into a home to
27:26
wake people up with guns in their faces.
27:28
Speaker 2: It's pure self delusion.
27:29
Speaker 1: But shins lie about one hundred thousand dollars acted like
27:32
blood in the water Joseph's page. Here's this exaggerated number,
27:35
and suddenly this isn't just a two man operation anymore.
27:38
Speaker 2: Now the scale of the line necessitates a larger workforce.
27:41
Speaker 1: Exactly leading Page to assemble a seven person hit squad
27:44
from Philadelphia.
27:46
Speaker 2: Seven people. Let's look at the logistics of that crew. Okay,
27:50
you have the three invaders, the ones who actually stepped
27:52
into the garage and executed the ambush. That is a
27:56
Toaddi Latham, twenty five years old, Page twenty four years
28:01
old for friend Schin wanted to impress and Caro Pitts
28:05
twenty eight years old.
28:06
Speaker 1: And then you have the extensive support network, the lookouts,
28:09
the planners, the drivers right, Julius Wise thirty two, Robert
28:14
Eatman thirty four, and Sybil White. They are the ones
28:17
circling in the suv, holding the perimeter, running the burner
28:20
phone network.
28:21
Speaker 2: They are providing the tactical overwatch for the horror happening inside.
28:25
Speaker 1: And the crew's own words proved they were more than
28:28
ready for violence. There is a chilling quote in the sources.
28:31
Speaker 2: This quote stuck with me.
28:32
Speaker 1: When the police eventually interrogate the co conspirators and ask
28:36
them point blank why Robert Chay had to die, like
28:39
why they couldn't just take the money and leave. The
28:42
response absolutely.
28:43
Speaker 2: Defies belief, It really does.
28:45
Speaker 1: The co conspirator looked at the police and said it
28:47
was Robert's fault for fighting back.
28:49
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate shifting of blame. It is victim
28:52
blaming in its purest, most toxic form.
28:55
Speaker 1: It makes you sick to your stomach.
28:56
Speaker 2: They invade his home, ambush him in the dark, pull
28:59
guns on and his wife, and when his natural human
29:02
instinct to protect his family kicks in. They blame him
29:06
for his own murder.
29:07
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
29:08
Speaker 2: It absolves them of the moral weight of wrapping his
29:11
face and duct tape. In their twisted logic, they gave
29:14
him a choice and he made the wrong one.
29:16
Speaker 1: It is sickening. But with Shin's confession, the dominoes start
29:20
falling incredibly fast.
29:21
Speaker 2: The whole network collapses.
29:23
Speaker 1: Shin gives up everyone he identifies, every single participant. Arrests
29:27
follow rapidly across Philadelphia. By February fourth, two thousand and nine,
29:31
which is literally just weeks after the murder. In January,
29:35
Shin and several of the crew are in custody.
29:37
Speaker 2: That's incredibly fast for a case with this many moving parts.
29:40
Speaker 1: And the police also had another crucial piece of leverage.
29:43
An informant had actually overheardker Pitts discussing the crime on
29:46
the street.
29:47
Speaker 2: That combination of human intelligence, you know, the informant, with
29:51
the undeniable, irrefutable digital evidence of the cell phone links
29:55
leading straight to Shin. It created an airtight case for the.
29:59
Speaker 1: Prosecute, which moves us right into the justice system. The
30:02
legal proceedings stretched into twenty ten and This is where
30:06
we see the shattered remnants of the Chay family having
30:09
to actually face the people who destroyed their lives in a.
30:12
Speaker 2: Courtroom that has to be agonizing.
30:14
Speaker 1: Let's start with the architect of the betrayal, Angela Shin.
30:17
Shin pleads guilty. The charges are third degree murder, robbery
30:21
and related offenses. Right at his sentencing on October twelfth,
30:26
twenty ten. Shin is now twenty six years old. He
30:30
stands up in court and he offers an apology. He says,
30:33
I made the biggest mistake of my life when I
30:35
told a friend in Philadelphia that my uncle kept large
30:37
sums of money in his house.
30:38
Speaker 2: It is a statement of fact short, but it feels
30:41
incredibly inadequate against the scale of the horror he unleashed,
30:44
Completely inadequate.
30:45
Speaker 1: And the court hears from the family Richard Chay, Robert's son,
30:49
the son who was bound with duct tape upstairs while
30:51
his father was suffocating in the garage.
30:53
Speaker 2: I can't imagine his pain.
30:54
Speaker 1: Richard addresses the court directly. He says, Shinn spent time
30:59
growing up in our house when he was younger, and
31:00
this was the worst act that any family member could
31:03
do to another. We can no longer live a normal life.
31:06
Speaker 2: We can no longer live a normal life. That is
31:08
the true enduring legacy of a crime like this. Yeah,
31:12
the financial loss the twenty thousand dollars can theoretically be
31:16
recovered or written off, but the psychological foundation of the
31:20
family is permanently cracked. The trust they had in the
31:24
world and in their own blood is obliterated.
31:27
Speaker 1: The rest of the crew faced varying sentences based on
31:29
their roles and the specific charges against them. Amatadi, Latham,
31:33
and Joseph Page two of the men who actually went
31:35
into the house, are convicted of second degree murder.
31:38
Speaker 2: Now, in Pennsylvania, second degree murder is often tied to
31:41
the felony murder rule.
31:42
Speaker 1: Can you explain that for the listener?
31:44
Speaker 2: Sure? The felony murder rule is a critical legal concept here.
31:48
It means that a killing occurred during the commission of
31:50
another dangerous felony, in this case, an armed robbery. Even
31:54
if the prosecution cannot prove that the individuals intended to
31:57
kill Robert when they walked in, they are held shtrictly
32:00
liable for his death because it was a direct result
32:03
of the felony they did intend to commit.
32:04
Speaker 1: So Latham and Page receive life sentences plus decades. Yes,
32:08
Robert Eatman, one of the lookouts, pleads guilty and gets
32:11
twenty to forty years. Julius Wise and Sybil White received
32:15
terms ranging from decades to life.
32:17
Speaker 2: But then there's care Pits.
32:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kara Pits, the third man alleged to be inside
32:22
the house. He actually takes his case to a jury
32:25
and he is acquitted.
32:27
Speaker 2: That outcome is a stark reminder of the unpredictability of
32:30
the jury system. It really is, even with informants in
32:33
complex digital webs proving presence and active participation beyond a
32:38
reasonable doubt to twelve individual jurors, it can folter on
32:42
the smallest technicality or shadow of a doubt.
32:44
Speaker 1: Let's break down a legal distinction. That the source is
32:46
highlighted because it frankly makes my blood boil, and I
32:48
think it will frustrate you listening too.
32:50
Speaker 2: Oh, the intent distinction.
32:51
Speaker 1: Yes, the prosecutors noted that they heavily considered pursuing the
32:55
death penalty for the men who killed Robert, but they ultimately.
32:58
Speaker 2: Spared them from it, and the reason given lack of.
33:00
Speaker 1: Intent to kill. I mean, if you tackle a man
33:02
to the ground, beat him so badly you break his nose,
33:05
and then meticulously wrap his entire head in an industrial
33:09
role of duct tape until only his nose is showing,
33:12
sealing his mouth so he suffocates on his own blood.
33:15
How on earth does the law distinguish that from an
33:18
intent to kill?
33:18
Speaker 2: It's hard to reconcile.
33:20
Speaker 1: How is that not premeditated murder?
33:22
Speaker 2: It is a deeply frustrating distinction for families of victims
33:25
to hear, but it is rooted in how the law
33:28
operates on rigid definitions of men's ray or the mental
33:32
state of the defendant. First degree murder requires premeditation, meaning
33:37
the prosecution must prove that the individuals woke up that
33:40
morning with a specific primary goal of ending a human life. Okay,
33:44
the prosecutors are looking at the evidence and saying their
33:47
primary goal was the money in the safe, the violence.
33:51
The duct tape was a tool used to facilitate the robbery,
33:54
control the victims, and insure silence.
33:57
Speaker 1: But the tool they used is inherently obviously lethal. Wrapping
34:01
a bleeding man's face and tape guarantees asphyxiation.
34:05
Speaker 2: Yes, and the law recognizes that it is incredibly reckless
34:09
and depraved, which is exactly why the felony murder rule exists,
34:12
leading to life sentences. Right the law says, you didn't
34:16
plot an assassination. You plotted a robbery, but you executed
34:20
it with such reckless disregard for human life that a
34:23
homicide resulted.
34:24
Speaker 1: Got it.
34:24
Speaker 2: But legally proving they walked into that garage intending to
34:28
commit a homicide rather than a robbery is a much
34:30
higher burden of proof. But prosecutors likely felt the felony
34:33
murder charge was a safer route to guarantee life behind
34:37
bars without risking a jury rejecting a first degree intent charge,
34:41
which could have led to a lesser manslaughter conviction.
34:43
Speaker 1: I hear the logic. I do, but as the source
34:46
material notes, that legal distinction feels entirely hollow to a
34:50
grieving family. Absolutely, you can't tell a widow that the
34:53
men who duct taped her husband's face didn't intend for
34:56
him to die. It doesn't compute with human suffering.
34:58
Speaker 2: It doesn't.
34:59
Speaker 1: Mar Ruko, Robert's coworker, summed up the community's feelings at
35:03
the sentencing. She said, he's where he belongs. Angelo made
35:07
adult decisions, and I believe Angelo has to pay for them.
35:10
Speaker 2: And by focusing on adult decisions, she really strips away
35:15
the narrative of the naivetu who just made mistake in
35:19
trying to impress a friend.
35:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't a child exactly.
35:23
Speaker 2: He made a calculated choice to value his own status
35:26
and two thousand dollars over his uncle's existence.
35:29
Speaker 1: So let's recap this staggering journey. What began as a
35:32
routine an early morning commute from the quiet suburbs ended
35:36
in a brutal, tape bound.
35:38
Speaker 2: Nightmare, a complete tragedy.
35:40
Speaker 1: We saw a crime that looked perfectly engineered to mimic
35:43
a larger societal trend, the targeted robbing of Asian business owners.
35:47
It triggered the community's.
35:48
Speaker 2: Worst fears, But that societal pattern was just a smoke
35:51
screen for the actual mechanism of the crime. The truth
35:54
was far more intimate. It wasn't a random attack by
35:56
ghosts in the night. It was a highly specific betrayal,
35:59
unlocked by a single burner phone pinging off a local cell.
36:02
Speaker 1: Tower, a digital footprint that a reckless crew thought was invisible,
36:06
revealing a nephew who held the keys to the fortress.
36:09
Exactly In the aftermath, the Chay family had to try
36:12
and rebuild. They kept the beauty supply business running, honoring
36:16
Robert's hard work. But one p thirty nine Gwyinmont Drive,
36:19
they couldn't stay. They had to leave it behind. The
36:22
family moved away. The sources describe it perfectly. They were
36:25
moving away from a house of ghosts.
36:27
Speaker 2: Robert's legacy certainly lives on in his generosity to his
36:31
community and in the people he lifted out of homelessness.
36:35
But the American dream he built, that suburban fortress he
36:38
worked decades to secure, was permanently scarred.
36:41
Speaker 1: It is a profound tragedy, and it leaves us with
36:44
a thought that is just hard to shake. We spend
36:46
so much time, so much money securing our physical spaces,
36:50
we really do. We lock our heavy doors, we set
36:52
the complex alarms at night, we install the high definition
36:55
cameras to keep the outside world out. We build our
36:58
own little fortresses.
37:00
Speaker 2: Treat security entirely as a physical barrier.
37:02
Speaker 1: But this case proves that our greatest vulnerabilities aren't physical
37:05
at all. They are the trust we freely give to
37:08
the people we let inside the walls.
37:10
Speaker 2: That's shilling thought.
37:12
Speaker 1: As you go about your day as you punch in
37:13
your alarm code or lock your front door, ask yourself,
37:17
in a world where digital footprints are permanent, where a
37:20
single text or phone call can map your entire life,
37:24
how much of your safety relies entirely on the assumption
37:26
that the people who know your secrets will never put
37:29
a price tag on them. Thank you for joining us
37:32
on this deep dive.