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[Music] Shirley and Ed Andronich were regulars in a neighborhood bar a few blocks from
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their home in Winnipeg, Canada. On one of their nights out, Ed decided to leave early. Shirley wanted to stay.
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There was a brief argument and Ed went home alone. It was surely Andron Witch's last night
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alive. [Music] Ed and Shirley Andronowich had been married for 20 years. Ed was a
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construction worker. Shirley was a housewife. They lived in the Fort Rouge section of
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Winnipeg, Canada with their three teenage daughters. They went out that night together and
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just as usual, they went out for a good time. And I guess a few hours later, my dad came home. He was tired. He didn't
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want to be there anymore. And she just wanted to stay. And his friends are there, so she stayed with his friends.
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>> Shirley left the bar around midnight and walked home. >> I heard her come home that night.
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She was by herself. I don't know if she was drunk, but you could tell that she
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had been drinking. >> Ed and Shirley argued again when she came home. Ed said Shirley went for a walk to calm
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down, but never returned. The next morning, an employee at a nearby high school discovered a woman's
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body in the schoolyard. >> It was very gruesome scene. There was some very senior homicide
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detectives that were there that were a little taken aback of uh of what was discovered there.
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They came to the door and I went and got my father and I went upstairs. Then I got called downstairs and uh
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the uh the police looked at my father and said, "Do you want to tell her?" And
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he just kind of hung his head and kind of nodded. And uh they told me they told me that you know we found your
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mother and she's been killed. Shirley Adronowich had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and mutilated with
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bite wounds over much of her body. It appeared that she had been strangled, then hit with a large piece of concrete.
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there was the destruction of the facial features and there was an obvious sexual
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assault had taken place. So this this was a uh a definite uh uh gruesome uh scene.
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>> I've been a prosecutor for 23 years and I have never seen any case with as much
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brutality to a human body. In a written statement, Ed Andronowich admitted that he argued with his wife that night, but
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said he had no idea what happened to her after she left their home. Homicide investigators Bob Marshall and
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Ron Oliver decided to question Ed Andronich again to learn more about what happened on the night Shirley
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Andranowich was murdered. At one point he was sort of asked in a in a sort of a helpful sort of a question to him if he
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had any idea who may have killed his wife. >> 12:30 in the morning. >> The answer Andronowich gave was a
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bombshell. He said he was the murderer. >> He actually had some knowledge of some
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of the aspects of the crime. For example, he knew where the body was. He knew that it was in behind the Grand
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Park High School. And >> I was angry with the with the police. I mean, they thought it was my dad. And I
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was angry with people who thought it could even be my father because I knew it wasn't. And
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not only should they just, you know, knowing my father, know that he could not have done that, but trust my word,
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even though I was only 14. >> To make absolutely sure, police questioned Andronic again on the
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following day, and again, he confessed. Ed Andronic was charged with secondderee
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murder. Ed Andronovich was held in a Winnipeg jail after confessing to the murder of
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his wife. Although parts of his confession were inconsistent with the murder scene, Andranovich said he had
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been drinking on the night of the murder and his memory wasn't entirely clear.
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Police began their forensic investigation by turning to Dick Monroe, a forensic geologist with the Winnipeg
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Police Department. The murder weapon was a 55 lb concrete block found near the body.
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>> His trunk was full of concrete particles. That was exciting at the outset because he saw all this concrete,
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but the trick was, can you match the concrete to the block? Can you put that block in his trunk?
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>> The process was tedious since there were hundreds of particles recovered from
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Andron Witch's trunk. All very small >> because the murder weapon was rough.
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because it was a broken piece of concrete. You're looking for like a jigsaw puzzle, a piece that would fit
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onto it. Could you get a physical match? >> But Monroe was unable to find a match.
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Next, police sent photographs of the victim's bite wounds to Dr. Davidu, a forensic odontologist at the Bureau of
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Legal Dentistry in Vancouver. Ed Andronowich wore dentures, which were also sent for analysis. The question
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that came up obviously was can artificial teeth in the form of a complete upper and lower denture
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actually bite hard enough to remove human tissue. >> Dr. Suite performed a metric analysis
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measuring the width and arch of Adonich's dentures to see if they were similar to the bite wounds on Shirley
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Andronich's body. But Dr. could find few similarities. I think at that point we were all
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leerary of of whether we had the right person or not. Uh I know I had a question in my own mind as to whether we
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had the right person. >> During Shirley Andron Witch's autopsy, the medical examiner had swabbed the
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areas around the bite wounds for possible forensic evidence. The swabs were rolled in a moistened
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filter paper and the paper turned white. A positive presumptive test for the presence of saliva.
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The next step was to determine the blood type of the saliva. >> We had a new technique at our disposal
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called Eliza which allowed us to uh type saliva in the [ __ ] blood typing factors.
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>> The ELISA test revealed that the perpetrator had type B blood. This did
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not match Edanovich's blood type. >> Therefore, Mr. Andronovich being of
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blood type A could not have left the B type saliva found on the swabs from the breast.
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Thereby meaning he did not he could not have been in my mind the murderer. After two months in prison for a murder
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he confessed to but apparently didn't commit, Andronovich was released. >> Feel better today?
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>> You happy to be outside? >> Not saying anything. >> But why had he confessed?
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>> Andronovich back at that time had a terrible problem with alcohol. And when
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the detectives interviewed him and they asked him such questions as, "Did you
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have a fight with your wife last night?" he responded and said, "Well, I might
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have." And then when they went on and pressed him and said, "Well, did you hit
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her?" He said, "I might have." Memory lapses while drinking are called
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blackouts and happen because alcohol interferes with the neurotransmissions that form memory in the brain.
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And when they come out of the blackout, it's the realization, the recollection
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uh all of a sudden that uh something bad may well have happened. And it's very
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common for alcoholics to feel remorse, uh express guilt, uh even u imagine that they have done terrible things during
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the blackout period. >> Now the police investigation had to start all over again.
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The murder weapon was a 55lb piece of concrete to forensic geologist Richard Monroe. It appeared to be about 5 years
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old and looked as if it had once been part of a bumper block used in parking lots.
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Monroe decided to visit the murder scene to survey the area. He went around midnight to evaluate the
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scene the way it appeared at the time of the murder. Standing where the body was discovered,
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Monroe wondered what exactly took place. If the victim had been strangled and was
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unconscious, what happened next? Where did the concrete block come from? Then Monroe saw it. An illuminated area
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about 500 ft away. In the shadows, Monroe found a piece of concrete. About 12 ft away was another piece. Both
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were similar to the murder weapon. The killer had been drawn to the area by lighting, his only visual cue.
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[Music] [Music] To prove his theory, Monroe needed to find out whether the murder weapon and
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the pieces in the schoolyard had once been part of the same block. [Music] Monroe performed a petrographic
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examination. Petrography is the term for identification of minerals. [Music] Concrete is made of sand, cement, water,
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and pieces of stone which is poured into molds to form the bumper blocks. As it dries, the mixed design settles
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into a distinctive pattern which is visually different in each concrete block. When Monroe compared the murder
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weapon to the other concrete pieces found in the schoolyard, the mixed design and position of the stones were
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identical. >> The fit was um almost like a glove. uh when you get uh broken aggregates in
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your your sand and gravel inside your concrete, it'll break and it's usually
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an irregular surface and you'll have some they call class small stones that will break out of the concrete mold and
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what you're trying to do is fit that in. And it's not just one fit, it's a
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collection of fits. Monroe suspected that the murder weapon might contain a fingerprint, but lifting a print from a
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porous surface like concrete is extremely difficult. >> It's almost like uh a fingerprint is
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sitting on top of a bed of nails. So your latent material which is very very thin is sitting on top of something that
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is very very tenuous. As a last resort, Monroe decided to try a technique usually used to find prints on
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non-porous surfaces called superlue fuming. Superglue is made of cyanoacrylate esester.
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A drop of superlue is placed into a chamber along with the item containing the print and the chamber is heated for
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up to 6 hours. By heating the superlue, fumes condense and adhere to biological material such as the oils of a
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fingerprint. Under a laser light, the biological material flueses, producing a clear
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image of the print. Monroe followed these steps with the concrete, placing both the superglue and
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the concrete in a vacuum chamber. [Music] But the color of the concrete is the same as the cyanoacrylate.
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In order to see a print, Monroe needed to find a chemical that would attach itself to the cyanoacrylate.
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After a number of tries, Monroe finally found one that worked. It was a biological stain known as Sudan black.
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Monroe found what he was looking for, the killer's fingerprint, but it was badly smudged.
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Unfortunately, with the circumstances of the event, uh, with the end of it being
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used as a pile driver and, uh, repeated blows on on the victim, uh, there was a certain amount of slippage taking place
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with 55 lb block on the on the hands. >> But the discovery of the related concrete pieces in the schoolyard was
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important. It revealed that it was a crime of opportunity and that the perpetrator may have been on foot.
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But a full year passed and the trail was turning cold. One year after the crime, local
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television stations and newspapers carried stories about the unsolved murder, hoping to jog someone's memory
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or conscience. The media campaign led to the break police were hoping for. [Music]
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One year after the brutal murder of Shirley Andronovich, an informant came forward saying that
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his roommate had returned home on the night of the murder with stains on his jeans and boots that looked like blood.
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I'm going to take a shot. They lived in an apartment building across the street from the murder scene.
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Mark German was a 29-year-old unemployed construction worker. The informant also
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revealed that German had burned his clothes the day after the murder. Samples of German's blood and saliva
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were sent to the forensic lab. Tests revealed that Mark German had type B blood, the same blood type as the
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saliva found on the victim. Photographs and impressions of German's teeth were also sent for analysis.
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German had a distinctive wear pattern that had ground the biting edge of the upper and lower teeth into a flattened
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surface. There were also some unusual spaces between the teeth and several chipped areas had not been restored.
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>> As a result of some of the testing that I did and the comparison with the
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suspect's teeth, I was able to determine that his teeth were in fact consistent
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with causing these marks. Or another way to explain that is his teeth could not be excluded in this case as causing
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those marks. Finally, police had a shopping list they found in the schoolyard on the night of
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the murder. It was a big schoolyard, and police weren't sure whether the shopping
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list had any connection to the murder. On the shopping list was a fingerprint. That print belonged to Mark Gar, placing
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him in the schoolyard around the time of the murder. After initially denying he was involved,
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Mark German eventually confessed. German said he was at the same bar as Shirley and Ed Andronic on the night of
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the murder, but he didn't speak to them. [Music] He said he ran into Shirley Andranowitch
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later near the high school while she was out walking. >> Can I see you at the bar before?
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>> German said they talked and had consensual sex. [Music] German said he killed Shirley Andronich
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when she threatened to tell her husband. German said he emptied the contents of her purse to make the scene appear to be
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a robbery. But investigators didn't believe German's entire story. Staff Sergeant Dan Ron is a blood
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spatter expert who studied the crime scene photos and noticed an inconsistency in German's story.
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The distance blood travels from a head wound struck by an object the size and weight of a cement block is 10 to 12 ft,
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creating medium velocity impact spatter. On the papers found within 10 to 12 feet
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of Shirley Andronich's body, Ron discovered medium velocity impact spatter. >> The pictures of the evidence actually
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showed that the contents of her purse had been strewn around at some location in a position where they were exposed to
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the bloodletting, >> which meant that Shirley Andronich's purse was ransacked before she was
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murdered, not afterwards. Mark German was convicted of firstdegree murder and sentenced to life in prison
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with no chance of parole for 25 years. >> He took my mother. I was 14 years old.
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It's it's almost half my life, you know, I've been without her now. And you can't I don't know how I'm ever
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supposed to forgive somebody for doing such a terrible thing to me. [Music] There isn't a punishment severe enough
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that we can give this guy for taking something like that from us. Not a day goes by when she doesn't come into my
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mind. I just think about what it would have been like if she was still here. I miss her.
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[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]