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Gacy · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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For many of us, watching horror movies and listening to true crime podcasts is
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the closest we will ever knowingly come to the killers living among us. But
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that wasn't the case for many young men in America during the nineteen sixties and
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nineteen seventies, and the killer they would meet was quite unlike any other.
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He was born in nineteen forty two Chicago. John Stanley, our serial killer's
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father was a mechanic and oh World War One veteran who often beat and verbally
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abused and tormented his son, a son who had become known as the infamous
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John Wayne Gacy. John later recalled that the beatings from his father started when
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he was only four years old. His mother, Marian, would often try
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to shield John from her husband, but that only made the beatings worse.
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John Stanley would often brate and belittle his son, calling him a sissy and
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a mama's boy for needing Marian's protection. The beatings became so bad and so
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frequent that John was perpetually afraid of getting into trouble, and that was why
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when a family friend began molesting John when he was only seven, John kept
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it to himself instead of telling his father, and John was always at risk
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of saying or doing the wrong thing. He wasn't like the other boys his
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age. He was softer, quieter, and enjoyed spending time with his mother
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and sisters. A congenital heart condition meant that he couldn't go out and play
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with the other children in the neighborhood or rough and tumble like the other boys
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liked to do. In his father's eyes, he was already a failure,
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and that was something that John didn't believe he would ever be able to fix.
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Things grew worse when John turned eleven and started experiencing blackouts and seizures.
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Doctors discovered that he also had a brain clot as well as the heart condition.
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They were able to treat the clot, but between treatments and other hospitalizations
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for a burst appendix, John had missed too much of school and ended up
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dropping out. Now around eighteen years old, he found work at a local
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political party office, something that his father also took issue with. Tensions grew
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between the two over John's work and ended up reaching the boiling point when a
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dispute over John's car led him to packing up his bags and moving to Las
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Vegas. There he found work as a mortuary assistant and slept in a cot
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behind the embalming room. And it was in Las Vegas that John would experience
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something so shocking it sent him all the way back to his abusive father.
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John had no questions about his sexuality from a young age. He'd figured out
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that he was more attracted to men than he was to women. But times
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being what they were, Openly being a homosexual wasn't going to win John any
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favors. He kept his orientation to himself and tried to suppress his desires,
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But when a teenage boy ended up on the embalming table on the other side
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of John's bedroom wall, John found the temptation too strong to ignore. In
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the middle of the night, when everyone else at the morticians had gone home,
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John snuck into the boy's coffin and laid down beside him. He spent
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the night intertwined with the teenager's remains, hugging and caressing him for as long
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as he could. The emotions that John experienced that night had him packing his
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bags and heading home the following day, maybe trying to distance himself from the
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memories as much as possible. John then enrolled into business and quickly struck up
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a new relationship. Her name was Marilyn Myers, and she provided John Wayne
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Gacy with the fresh start that he so desperately needed. Once they were married,
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Marylynd's father bought up three KFC restaurants in Waterloo, Iowa, and made
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John the manager. The cover of a loving wife, two young children,
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and running a successful business opened many doors for John and helped him put the
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past behind him. Allegedly, and according to John's own account, it was
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then that his parents came to visit and John Stanley had a change of heart.
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John Wayne Gaysey recalled that his father took him by the hand and said,
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quote, son, I was wrong about you. If true, John
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Stanley had plenty of reasons for believing that his son now had it all.
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He had the house, the family, and the business, and those around
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him believed that John was a well mannered and respectable man. But there was
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something brewing under the surface. It started with the people that John surrounded himself
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with. He was part of a local club for businessmen, supposedly to help
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grow and support each other and their business endeavors, but behind closed doors anything
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was possible. Their parties involved drugs, prostitutes, and even sometimes each other's
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wives, and they stirred up some feelings in John that he'd been so desperately
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trying to forget. John built a tiki bar in the basement of his family
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home. He and his wife Marilyn, hosted their own parties together, but
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John often invited the teenage boys he employed at his restaurants home as well.
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He lured them in with the promise of alcohol and entertainment, and on at
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least one occasion, things went too far. You have to have sex with
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a man before you start having sex with women, John told the fifteen year
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old son of a friend, Donald Vorhees. Wasn't quite sure if he believed
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him, but by then Donald was quite drunk and alone with John in the
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basement. Before Donald could fully understand what was happening, John was forcing him
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to perform oral sex on him. It took Donald a few months to work
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up the courage to tell his father what John had made him do that night,
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but when he did, he pulled back the curtain and revealed what was
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really going on inside John's home. By then John had quite a few more
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victims, all of them young boys, and most of them his employees.
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Furious and disgusted by the predator living among them, the Vorhetes took John to
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court. John first tried to deny the allegations, and then he tried to
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scare Donald off. He paid another teenager that worked at one of his restaurants
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three hundred dollars to beat up Donald Vorhees and convince him not to testify.
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Far from being deterred, Donald showed up in court with even more evidence against
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John, and John was sentenced to ten years in prison for his crimes.
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Instead of keeping his head low and flying under the radar, John used his
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time behind bars to become a model inmate. He organized to pay raise for
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the other inmates working in the prison, and even managed the installment of a
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mini golf course in the wreck yard. But then he was shaken by some
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shocking news. On Christmas Day nineteen sixty nine, John Stanley Gacy died,
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and when he heard the news, John Wayne Gacy supposedly hit the floor of
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his prison cell and started uncontrollably sobbing. He was denied compassionately to attend his
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father's funeral, but it didn't matter much. John served only about eighteen months
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of his tenure prison sentence before he was released on parole. Part of the
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conditions of his release was that he would be living with his mother. He
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couldn't return home because Marylyn had already divorced him and taken full custody of their
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children. John would never see any of them again. Within months of being
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released, John was accused of molesting and attempting to rape another teenage boy.
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The charges were dropped when the boy failed to show up in court, and
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John was then free to move into the yellow brick ranch in Chicago that he
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and his mother had just bought together. It was in this house that John
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would cement his legacy. He laid the foundations for what was to come by
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forming his own construction business and bringing a piece of his imagination into reality.
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During his short incarceration, John used to draw a character he called Pogo the
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Clown, and now that he was free to walk the streets again, John
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brought Pogo with him. He would often dress up and attend children's birthday parties
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and hospitals as Pogo the Clown, and for many in the neighborhood, John
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and Pogo were one and the same. Pogo provided John with a good sense
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of cover, but he sealed the deal by marrying again. He and his
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second wife, Carol Hoff, had once dated in high school, and now
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she and her two daughters from a previous marriage made John look like the perfectly
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harmless family man that he wanted people to think. He was used this image
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to lure young men into his garage. He promised them alcohol and porn and
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maybe even a summer job at his construction company, and then he abused them.
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Carol became suspicious of the number of young boys coming in and out of
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their home, and when John confessed to her that he was actually bisexual,
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it didn't come as much of a surprise. But what happened shortly after that,
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however, did. On Mother's Day nineteen seventy five, John climbed off
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of Carol and told her that that was the last time they were ever going
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to have sex. This startling proclamation and the constant stream of young men was
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enough for Carol to realize that something was deeply wrong with their marriage. Carol
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divorced John and got out just in time before things would take a turn that
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they would never come back from. The first and second had allegedly already occurred.
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John had supposedly mistakenly believed that one of the fifteen year old boys he
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had lured back to his yellow brick homeb had wanted to kill him. John
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acted quickly and without thinking. He killed the boy and stashed his body in
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the cross space of his home before anyone discovered what he had done. He
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allegedly did the same with one more victim before Carol divorced him and moved out.
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Carol leaving gave John a freedom he had never experienced before, and young
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men began disappearing from the neighborhood at an alarming rate. Most of these young
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men ended up murdered and hidden underneath John's home. He liked to torture and
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torment his victims. He sometimes pretended that he was about to perform a magic
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trick and handcuff their hands behind their backs. John wouldin dangled the keys in
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front of their faces and enjoy watching them struggle as they realized they were actually
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in grave danger. He also used to enjoy sitting on their chests and forcing
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them to perform oral sex on him. John was still a big man because
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his heart condition kept him from being very active, so these boys often could
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and breathe and suffocated underneath him. John would strangle and then revive them,
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sometimes even drown them in his bathtub before bringing them back and doing it all
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over again. And when they were gone, John would sometimes join the search
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parties going on in the neighborhood and pretend to look for them. But it
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was his thirty third and final official victim that John would be unable to escape
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from himself. Robert Piste had only walked into the pharmacy to talk to a
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man about a summer construction job when he disappeared. His mother, Elizabeth,
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was still sitting outside in the car, and had the police looking for her
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son within hours. John Wayne Gacy's construction company had recently renovated the pist family
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pharmacy, and the investigators quickly put the puzzle pieces together. They called John
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in for questioning, and though they didn't find any traces of Robert and John's
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home, they did find the receipt from the pharmacy for one of Robert's friends.
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There. One thing led to another, and John's stash of victims were
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pulled out from under his house. Robert's remains were found at a nearby river
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and cemented John Wayne Gacy's legacy as the killer Clown. He was sentenced to
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death for his crimes and his last meal was supposedly a bucket of Kentucky fried
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chicken. So that's ten minute Murder for today, brief and bingeable true crime.
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My name is Joe, I'm the host, and thank you for taking
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the time to listen to ten minute Murder and this story today. I don't
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know how we got it in the amount of time we got it done,
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and he's like eleven minutes or something like that. That's crazy. I did
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an episode on John Wayne Gacy probably two years ago. I don't remember exactly,
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but if you scroll back, there's going to be another episode of John
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Wayne Gacy and it's beefy. There's a lot to it. It's much much
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longer than the one today is. So if you like longer episodisodes, that's
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cool because there are several of them scattered in the in the you know,
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if you go back and search ten Minute Murders episode list, you'll find several
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of them there, including stories about Charles Manson, the Green River Killer,
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also Ted Bundy. There are several that I took time I used to do
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longer episodes every now and then. I don't do that so much anymore,
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but there was a time when I did longer episodes. So if you like
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those, there are some back there you can go check out. Anyway,
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Thank you for listening to this one. That's it. That's your episode for
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today. Thank you so much for listening to ten minute Murder