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Salt Life and Death · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:22
  Welcome to ten Minute Murder, brief and bingeible true crime. I'm Joe,
• 0:27
  I am the host, and thank you for joining today. Do you guys
• 0:31
  have a kid, like a nearly grown human being that you are in charge
• 0:35
  of. I've got one of those, and I get roasted every single day.
• 0:41
  I don't know what's happening with this generation of kids. Now. I
• 0:44
  grew up roasting people. It's like no big deal. But this generation is
• 0:50
  relentless. I mean they will find the smallest little weakness, the most mundane
• 0:57
  thing, and they'll attack it. For example, I got told that I
• 1:02
  look like I drink tapwater. It doesn't make any sense to me. By
• 1:07
  the way, I do drink tap water. I happen to live in a
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  place where tapwater tastes delicious, so I drink it. I was just talking
• 1:14
  about something to my kid and I said something about tapwater, and he just
• 1:18
  stopped and looked at me and said, you look like you drink tap water.
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  And I deal with that daily. Is anyone else going through this?
• 1:26
  I hope so, I hope I'm not the only one. Hey, if
• 1:27
  this is your first time listening to ten Minute Murder, please subscribe now so
• 1:32
  that you can catch up on all the back episodes and never miss any new
• 1:36
  ones. Connect with me on social media to see the visuals that we talk
• 1:38
  about here on the podcast, and if you like the episode, please leave
• 1:42
  a rating and review on Apple or any place that that's possible. Your positive
• 1:47
  feedback is very much appreciated. Go to ten Minute Murder dot com for all
• 1:52
  things related to ten Minute Murder. Now to today's story. Laura Grace Duncan's
• 2:07
  body was found face down on the floor of a hotel bathroom. She had
• 2:12
  been at the beach earlier that day and was wearing only her one piece swimsuit
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  at the time of her death. Her cause of death was pretty easy to
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  discover. The eighteen year old was surrounded by a puddle of blood coming from
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  a bullet wound in her stomach. It was a lonely, undignified way to
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  die. The teenager's body was found after the Riviera Beach Police Department received a
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  phone call on the morning of October twenty ninth, twenty twenty, requesting a
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  welfare check on Laura. The call came from Laura's father, Burton Duncan,
• 2:46
  who was worried about his daughter's well being. Desperate defined his daughter safe,
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  Burton resorted to tracking the location on the phone, which led him to the
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  Hilton Hotel on Rivera Beach. He pleaded with the police to go to the
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  hotel, tell and check on Laura. It wasn't just her radio silence that
• 3:02
  worried him, it was also the person he knew that she had last been
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  seen with. Recently, eighteen year old Laura had started dating a man three
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  times her age. She had met Michael Huddo, who was fifty four at
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  the time and had four children and a wife of his own, at the
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  gym that she went to. Michael was a highly successful businessman who had founded
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  a popular lifestyle brand called Salt Life, which she had then sold in twenty
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  thirteen. Charismatic, personable, and well liked, Laura quickly developed a crush
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  on the older man, which he reciprocated. Laura was excited about her new
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  relationship, which felt sophisticated and made her feel special. Her parents, however,
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  did not share these same feelings. When they got a text from their
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  daughter informing them that she was going traveling with Michael, they waited anxiously for
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  one day without communication, and then reported her as missing. The Sheriff's office
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  sent a deputy to Laura's parents home, and while the deputy was there,
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  Laura called home, but her parents weren't reassured. She sounded strange over the
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  phone, slurring her words and seeming very anxious. They believed that Michael had
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  given drugs to Laura. She just didn't sound like herself. Was Michael drugging
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  Laura to keep her subdued while he harmed her in some way? If anything,
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  the phone call just made Laura's parents more certain that something was terribly wrong.
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  Laura's father called the police again and requested that they check on his daughter.
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  When the officers arrived at the Hilton, the hotel staff revealed that Laura
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  had booked a room with Michael and directed them to the suites where the couple
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  were staying. The officers knocked on the door, but there was no reply,
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  so the hotel staff unlocked the room. Immediately, the strong smell of
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  decomposition hit the investigators, confirming that something was terribly wrong inside the hotel room.
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  Following, the odor led them to the bathroom where they found Laura's body.
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  She was clearly deceased and had been for a while long enough for the
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  pool of blood underneath her to have dried completely, But the staff knew that
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  Laura hadn't arrived alone. In fact, the room itself had been booked under
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  Michael's name, and the couple had been staying there together. A search of
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  the room quickly located Michael's wallet as well as his driver's license, both of
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  which had been left behind. But where was Michael himself? Examining the surveillance
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  footage from the hotel's CCTV cameras quickly provided the answer. The last sighting of
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  Michael in the footage showed him hurriedly leaving the hotel with only a backpack full
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  of his belongings before quickly driving away. Laura had been with her boyfriend,
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  a man that she trusted, and somehow this short trip away had resulted in
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  Michael leaving Laura bleeding and alone on the floor of a hotel bathroom. The
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  police immediately sent out an alert requesting any information and on Michael's whereabouts, and
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  they didn't have to wait long before they were contacted by the Saint John's County
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  Sheriff's Office, who reported an encounter they had with a member of the public
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  on the previous day, on October twenty ninth, a gas station attendant in
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  Saint Augustine had called the Sheriff's office after a man clearly under the influence of
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  drugs walked into the gas station begging for help. The man was twitching,
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  talking gibberish, and crying with his eyes rolling back in his head. The
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  man was rushed to the hospital for treatment, and the hospital staff found out
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  two key pieces of information. The first one was that he was suffering from
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  a drug overdose, and the second one was that the man was none other
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  than Michael Huddo. He'd arrived at the gas station around four hours after leaving
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  the hotel and presumably around four hours after Laura had been shot. After hearing
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  that their prime suspect was still hospitalized, police arrived at the ward to question
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  Michael, who was now lucid and able to answer their question. Investigators didn't
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  beat around the bush, immediately asking Michael if he knew why they wanted to
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  talk to him. Michael didn't try to hide it. Oh my god,
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  he said, I think I hurt my Gracie. Then he burst into tears.
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  As it turned out, Michael didn't call Laura by her given name.
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  He gave her the nickname Gracie, which is who he was referring to.
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  Police took a recorded statement from Michael about the incident, and the older man
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  sobbed the entire time, seeming genuinely distraught. The next day, in a
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  second conversation with detectives, Michael was able to give more information about the events
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  that led to Laura's death. He told them that during their trip away together,
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  they had been spending time on the beach and had returned to the hotel
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  room to relax. At some stage, they began playing a game where they
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  pointed their fingers at each other in a gun shape, pretending to shoot at
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  each other. It was a joke, he said. It was just a
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  joke. According to Michael, this somehow evolved into Michael pointing a real gun
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  at Laura as a part of the joke. Then the gun went off,
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  firing a bullet which hit Laura in the abdomen. Why exactly Michael had the
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  gun and why it was loaded was not made clear. His memories of the
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  events were blurry, or at least he wanted investigators to believe that they had
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  been Marijuana was also found in the hotel room, and the theory that Laura
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  had indeed been on drugs when she called her parents seemed more and more likely,
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  given that Michael had been suffering from an overdose when he arrived at the
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  gas station. It was possible that a drug addled Hayes had led to the
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  gun going off. However, it was equally possible that the drugs had caused
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  a fit of rage, which had led Michael to murdering his much younger girlfriend.
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  One part of the story, in particular, brought how much Michael actually
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  cared for Laura into doubt. After the shooting, Michael left Laura and his
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  wallet behind, but remembered to pack his medication and his weapon into his backpack
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  before leaving. It's not clear if Laura was dead when Michael left, but
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  she was certainly dying, and he made no attempt to call for an ambulance
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  or police. He didn't even alert hotel staff to the fact that she needed
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  help. He just left. Possibly she could have survived with urgent medical care.
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  A bullet wound to the stomach is serious, but it's not always a
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  death sentence. Michael did not wait around to find out. In twenty twenty
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  three, almost three years after Laura's death, Michael Huddo was found guilty of
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  manslaughter with a firearm, a charge to which he pled guilty. He received
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  a sentence of twelve years in prison and cried in court while a sentence written
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  by Laura's family was read to him. Michael's defense attorney said this about the
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  case quote, it was an accident, a stupid, tragic, heartbreaking accident
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  that basically ruined two families. He loved Grace Duncan. I know it sounds
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  odd to say that because of their age difference and the nature of their relations
• 10:00
  ship, but he absolutely loved her. Regardless if Michael truly loved Gracie or
• 10:05
  if he truly did not mean to harm her when the trigger was pulled,
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  his love led to her dying alone because of a gunshot wound that he inflicted.
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  Nobody would think that a relationship between a married man and his fifties and
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  an eighteen year old would have a happy ending, but Laura's family never could
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  have predicted that it would truly end in tragedy.