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on September 17th 1966 Diane kaidel met a boyfriend for a drink at a local night
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spot after leaving the bar she disappeared officials weren't sure whether she ran away from the
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responsibilities facing a single mother with four young children or perhaps had been the victim of Foul
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Play that question was answered 27 years later when her daughter came forward with a fantastic tale of something she
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saw when she was 5 years old [Music] in 1956 21-year-old Diane K went to work in
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her father's grocery store in Peoria Illinois she needed the money since she
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was recently divorced and was Raising her 2-year-old daughter Susie and it was in that store one day day where she met
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a bachelor from town Jean kaidel Jean wasn't the best looking guy in the world
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but he is a good talker he's a very good talker and he was able to uh woo her the
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couple dated for a year fell in love and eventually married they moved to Phoenix Arizona
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where Jean found work in the growing construction industry together Jean and Diane had
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three more children Greg Kelly and Sor my siblings and I were really close yeah it was a lot of great childhood
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memories over time Diane and Jean decided that it was best for all concerned if they
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divorced on September 17th the couple met for dinner at a nearby restaurant to discuss the final details of the
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property settlement and visitation by all accounts the meeting went well afterwards Diane dropped Jean
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off at his apartment from there Diane drove to the Amber Inn where she met Bob Marlin a man she had been casually
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dating since her separation finally got him out of the house a few hours later Jean kaidel called Diane at the house
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and when the children said she still wasn't home he went over to babysit and
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fell asleep on the sofa the next morning Jean said he found his wife's car in the driveway but there
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was no sign of her Jean called the police department and reported her missing I know she arrived
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home her car was there her purse was in the house her keys were in the house on the table in the kitchen Diane did not
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take any clothes with her that we learned of and there was no reason for her to run away there was no no motive
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there missing person's investigators couldn't understand why Diane would have
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left town without her children her neighbors her mother and her brother all indicated that Mrs kaidel would never
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leave her children for any length of time they described her as an excellent mother very concerned about her
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children when police went to interview Bob Marlin the man Diane was with at the bar they were told an incredible piece
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of news it was tough Bob Marlin suffered a heart attack and died the day after his date with
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Diane what ever Marlon might have known about Diane's disappearance went with
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him to his grave two days after Diane kael's mysterious disappearance Jean kaidel
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moved back into the family home to look after the four children my father's explanation to not only his children but
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to neighbors and anybody that that would inquire about my mother's um sudden
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disappearance was that my mother had run off with with a boyfriend Jean provided police with a
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list of men he said Diane had been dating since the separation but they all were dead ends over time the kaidel
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children adjusted to life without their mother although they all hoped that someday she would
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return but 4 months later tragedy struck once again around 9:00 at night while Jean was at a nearby
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laundromat a fire broke out in the kael's home The Blaze quickly engulfed the
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entire house and the four children were trapped in their bedrooms Lor Lor come on come on wake up
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wake up Lor come on come on there's up Susie the oldest led the others around
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the Flames I forgot my I but Lori ran back into her bedroom for her Winnie the Poo
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stuffed animal I fell on the floor I was burnt I was crying I wanted my mother and my older sister Susie came in
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the house was a blaze around us and so she laid on top of me she said they're
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coming for us now Lord they'll help us uh she said I love you and she said I'll
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never ever leave you I love you and I'll never ever let you go I promise and at that point we died and she held
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me Susie gave her life protecting Lori from the Flames although Lori suffered third degree burns over 50% of her
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body I was continually loved by my sister as she held me and died protecting me the
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trauma the nightmares the horror of it that doesn't go away I just try to overcome that with knowing that I was
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loved that I was valuable Enough To Die For What can you say I mean when you see
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that it takes your breath away I mean you you you realize that that person made the ultimate
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sacrifice 8-year-old Kelly also died in the fire 9-year-old Greg survived Jean kaidel arrived at the seen
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just as firemen were pulling the children from The Blaze investigators found a melted pot
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on the stove top burner the knob was in the on position as a result the fire was
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ruled accidental after spending 4 months in a Hospital Burn Unit Lori went back to
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live in the family home her father had rebuilt after the fire but one year later there was an incident that helped
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Lori realize the ter terrible truth of what happened to her mother it happened when Lori and her
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father went to a friend's funeral his name was Michael a boy from the neighborhood who was killed in the
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Vietnam War Daddy when is he going to wake up he's not he's dead they're going
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to bury him today wake him up wake him up and I began to cry and I threw a very large
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distraction in a very large fet trying to make people understand that we needed to wake Michael up that I
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wasn't going to permit them to bury Michael in the ground I was the only living person that now knew the secret
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of my mother but it took another 27 years for Lori to reveal the deep dark Family
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secret she had been harboring [Music] in 1993 after Diane kaidel had been missing
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for 27 years her only surviving daughter Lori walked into the Phoenix Police Department with a written statement it
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described a terrible secret she had been too afraid to reveal to whom it may concern I need to convey to authorities
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what I witnessed as a child first I must greatly impress the fear I have of my father's violent
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retaliation I was often told when I was a child by my father I brought you into this world I can take you
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out the letter went on to say that as a 5-year-old child Lori saw her father beat her mother to
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death and then bury her in the backyard at first Lori thought her mother was sleeping as hibernating
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animals do quiet she said she once asked her father if she could dig a hole in the backyard to feed her mother as a
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5-year-old I thought my mother was sleeping I thought that my father made my mother go to sleep and I thought he
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buried my sleeping mother in the hall in the backyard I wasn't confused on where
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she was I wasn't confused on who did it I was confused between sleeping and death
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she only sleeping only after she went to her friend's funeral did she realize
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that her mother would never wake up detective Ed Reynolds at first wasn't sure what to think I've been lied to by
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some pretty good liars and have been fooled by a lot of people and when that happens you tell yourself I'm not going
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to let that happen again I'm not going to fall Hook Line and Sinker for every
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story that comes down the pike and in this case though she did seem very believable very truthful very sincere in
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what she said but I still I wanted more than just a story I I wanted proof Lori said that her father poured a concrete
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patio over her mother's grave the day after he buried her the home had long since been sold by her father who was
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now remarried and living across town Reynolds was hesitant to ask the new owners for permission to dig up their
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concrete patio without more evidence than a 27-year recollection I became very frustrated I became
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angry I thought that possibly the officials didn't believe me I was terrified that my father would find out
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that I had confessed Reynolds looked all over the country for the technology that
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could look underneath the concrete patio without damaging it the search took almost a year and led to a nonprofit
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agency in Colorado called necro search which brings applied sciences to law enforcement in this case necro search
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recommended a ground penetrating radar system to take a look within the ground and to see if it's Disturbed that's what
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we do in geophysics just because we find a disturbance could be could be caused by many things the the proof the
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substantiation is going to have to be a careful excavation when the radar was pulled across the
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cement decking it revealed a ground disturbance 6 ft long by 2 ft wide in the corner of the patio the very spot on
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the concrete where Lori romanic had taken me to earlier when we had walked through the backyard where she
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suspected the body of her mother was buried when police removed the concrete they had to dig only 10 in before making
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a Grizzly Discovery a piece of human skull within hours they uncovered the rest of the remains in the shallow twoot
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grave they also discovered a bra and a girdle around the skeleton's neck were
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women stockings Lori romanic was not at all surprised now I don't need any Medical
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detectives to prove to me that that's my mother there was no identification on
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the remains and bacteria in the shallow grave eliminated the possibility of DNA testing even the teeth were too badly
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damaged by bacteria to analyze the tooth pulp usually a rich protected source of
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DNA so detectives had to use other means to identify the skeleton the first clue
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was a tree root from a neighbor's malberry tree that had grown through the skull the root was sent to Dr Thomas
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Haren a dendr chronologist at the University of Arizona by studying the age of the tree root and the manner in
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which it penetrated the skull Harland was convinced that the body was placed in the ground before the tree root since
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the root was 15 years old the body was placed in the grave before [Music] 1978 this will tell us the age of the
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tree root growing over the body means that the body had to be there before the tree root was there otherwise it would
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have been cut Disturbed would not have gone across um this gives a minimum age for the body to be in that position
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forensic anthropologist Dr Laura F Genetti analyzed the skeletal remains and determined it was a CO Asian woman
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between 5'4 and 5'5 in in height the pelvic bones indicated that the woman
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had given birth to at least two children and was between 20 and 40 years of age all were consistent with Diane
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kaidel dental X-rays are commonly used for identification unfortunately Diane kael's dentist was no longer in practice
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and her dental X-rays had been destroyed as a last ditch effort to identify the remains Dr F janetti decided to try a
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technique called skull photograph superimposition what you basically are doing is taking a picture of the person
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in life and superimposing it on to the skull of the person that you think it might have been Dr F janetti
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photographed the skull in the same position and size as the photograph of Diane kaidel taken shortly before she
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disappeared a canine tooth that was slightly a jar it's it just stuck out slightly from her mouth and we were able
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to line that tooth up with the tooth in the photograph I have no questions I'm
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sure that it's her police immediately arrested 61 year-old Jean kaidel and charged him with murder Lori romanc was
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now ready to tell a judge and jury what really happened on the night her mother disappeared
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for years Jean kaidel told family and friends that his wife Diane abandoned her children and ran off with a
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boyfriend but lri romanc told a very different story about what happened to her mother on the night of September
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17th 1966 Lori said her mother was wearing her blue double breasted dress when she
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left to meet her father for dinner at a local restaurant bye after dinner Diane drove Jean home
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to his apartment later Witnesses saw Diane at the Amber Inn having drinks with a boyfriend is that right around
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11: p.m. Jean called the house to speak with Diane and when he learned that she wasn't there went over to the house to
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wait for her where have you been when Diane returned home around midnight the couple fought waking 5-year-old Lori and
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her oldest sister Susie the two girls went to investigate will stop it go away just get out of
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this house right now I own this house I'll stay here when she saw her children
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she took her defense down and it was at that point that my father delivered her last blow and she whipped back and hit
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her head and slid to the floor [Music] Jean saw the girls run from the hallway and they hid in the
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[Music] closet When the Children eventually came out of hiding they saw their mother's
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lifeless body on the pool deck and they saw their father digging a hole in the [Music]
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backyard the next day Jean kaidel poured a fresh layer of concrete over his wife's grave for what he thought would
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be an eternity Lori describes her father as an alcoholic cruel and violent we're
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talking about the fact that my father would beat my mother violently my father would attempt to
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beat his children my siblings and I and when my mother was alive she would intervene and she would not permit my
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father to beat his children she was very strong on that issue Lori also says that her father
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threatened to kill her if she ever revealed DET tals of her mother's death this was something that Lori says that
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she never forgot and she would just been terrified for her whole childhood and then adult life of her of her father
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even after she got married and left the house and they barely had a relationship
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at some points it was she remembered the thing the whole way through through and
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somehow I mean I don't think there's anyone that really could exactly describe what was going on in that head
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of hers all those years in 1995 Jean kaidel was convicted for the murder of his wife
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Diane and was sentenced to life in prison I think it says that the memory of a 5-year-old even though it's some 29
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years later is sufficient to convict but again remember the one unanswerable question was if what she saw wasn't what
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she saw how could she have led us to the body and she did my father single-handedly murdered my
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mother murdered my two siblings and attempted a murder on me and a murder on my brother I think that my father
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will more meet his calling upon his death I I pray for my father I think that this judicial system
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will have nothing in the comparison of the wrath of God and that I'm sorry for
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my father will have to answer and be held accountable what does a man tell our Creator God When God says what did you
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do to that beautiful wife and lovely children I gave you and my father will reply I beat them I murdered them I
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burned them up in a horrible fire what will be my my father's punishment I'm sorry that causes
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me the grief that I feel today for him [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]