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[Music] up next he made lots of money and liked to show it off wasn't a phase with him
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that's how he lived he was known to gamble sometimes too much he had had some gambling debts
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he had some problems with the irs when he ends up dead his two ex-wives and a girlfriend are
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all suspects but someone was sloppy you can plan and plan and plan but you'll never plan for
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everything around 2002 the real estate market in the dallas-fort worth area of texas was
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booming and david nixon made a fortune he had a very big personality he was always smiling he was always
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happy he liked nice things nice clothes nice cars nice women nixon primarily sold real
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estate in grapevine texas just outside dallas fort worth well grapevine it's a very vibrant city very suburban
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there is some money here but the main focus is the lake people want to live by it and and have very
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nice homes around it but david's idyllic life started to unravel one sunday night when his
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ex-wife walked into police headquarters to report him missing she said he didn't
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show up for a dinner meeting with their 10 year old son that evening which was very unusual she said he
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wasn't returning telephone calls either david nixon was a great father who kept in contact with his son even though
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he was divorced from his wife and would constantly keep in contact with him i can't really put my finger on anything
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i just have a gut feeling that there's something about this one that you know there's more to it than
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just the typical missing person just a few hours later a motorist 10 miles away spotted a fire in the parking lot of an
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abandoned building when he got closer he was horrified to see what looked like a human body the upper portion
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of the body was engulfed in flames an accelerant was believed to have been used like
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gasoline the victim wrapped in a blue tarp and the blanket was clearly a large white male with
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brown hair dental records confirmed it was david nixon looked like at some point someone may have tried to
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stuff the body down the drainage ditch the body wouldn't fit if david's body had had actually gone
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all the way down into that eight-foot drain pipe he might have never been found friends and family were shocked by his
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murder it's such a cruel way to die [Music] to light someone on fire [Music]
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there was no blood or any sign of a struggle which meant david had likely been killed elsewhere
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but it was clear that where the body was found was not the primary scene that this was a dumping
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site and that the body had been set on fire to destroy potential evidence and david's
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body had been wrapped in a blanket a possible clue to the murder site there was a group of filamentous wires
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meaning very fine wires from the charred remnants of the blanket your typical blanket does not include
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metal fibers unless it's a heat generating blanket such as an electric blanket
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a fractured rib alerted the medical examiner to a bullet pathway that led from david's left side
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through his heart cause of death was a single gunshot it was a small caliber handgun
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they couldn't determine you know what caliber because we never found the bullet
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to investigators it seemed strange that david's ex-wife reported him missing
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just three hours before his body was found and police soon learned she had a possible motive
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a half million dollar motive at david nixon's autopsy the medical examiner discovered that david had been
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shot with a small caliber bullet and tests showed his body had been soaked with gasoline
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before the fire despite the damage the medical examiner was able to analyze undamaged tissue
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to estimate when david was shot i was able to estimate that at room temperature the body was probably deceased for 36 to
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48 hours prior to the body being discovered since david's body was discovered
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sunday night past midnight he was probably killed either late thursday night or early
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friday morning david's murder bore striking similarities to another unsolved murder
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that occurred just four months earlier literally happened across the street the victim
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a 22 year old prostitute named janet dolan was killed with a single gunshot before her body was transported doused
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with gasoline and set on fire it would appear to be more like uh an execution or a message style murder when
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you have somebody shot and wrapped up and burned but while the similarities between the cases were
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striking so were the differences well first of all we had a female versus a male victim
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david nixon was wealthy had no criminal history and was not the type to put himself in
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harm's way janet dolan was just the opposite she probably put herself in some very
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strange situations with people she did not know and janet's murder seemed to be a crime
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of opportunity not something that had been planned police concluded it was possible but
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highly unlikely the cases were connected but investigators got a break when they
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discovered forensic evidence at david nixon's crime scene there were tire impressions found
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within 10 feet of david's body obviously we believe was the vehicle that transported him there
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the tracks were from a dual axle vehicle meaning it was a truck with two sets of
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tires on the back and one set on the front there's two sets of tires two sets of
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different tires the front and rear those had dramatically different tire tread impressions but who
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wanted david nixon dead the thing that i've seen when you're dealing with murder cases is there
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there's generally two reasons people kill love and money david's ex-wife donna had both of these
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motives there were problems in in david and donna's relationship obviously he left her for a young flight
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attendant which of course hurt her deeply donna would also benefit from david's half
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million dollar insurance policy until their young son came of age in crime investigating
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one of the cardinal rules is follow the money and of course the ex-wife had just been named a
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beneficiary of an insurance policy and the first thing police were going to do under those circumstances was take a
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good long hard look at her but donna was cooperating fully with the investigation
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and was an unlikely killer she also had an alibi for thursday night and friday morning
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the estimated time of death as the investigation went along it was clear that the evidence did not point into in
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the direction of donna david's second ex-wife also had an alibi for the time of david's murder
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an alibi confirmed by numerous witnesses next investigators questioned david's current
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girlfriend 32 year old tracy frame tracy said she last saw david on thursday and she assumed he
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was headed to las vegas where he liked to gamble he didn't hear from any thursday night
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didn't talk to him nothing saturday hadn't talked to him since he had to not
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talk to anybody it was discovered that he had had some gambling debts and he had some problems with the
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irs tracy consented to a search of the house she shared with david we searched the home with luminol
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we did a search with cadaver dogs they found no evidence of blood and the cadaver dogs didn't find anything either
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but investigators did find one possible clue as they searched the house they found
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electric blanket controls but they didn't find an electric blanket which was kind of odd because they found
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david wrapped in an electric blanket a day later police found david's white lexus
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abandoned in a supermarket parking lot within walking distance of their house there was no blood or sign of violence
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in the car but something immediately caught investigators attention one of the first things investigators
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notice is that the seat is pushed up toward the steering wheel which would indicate that a much smaller person had
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been in it last and not a big man like david nixon investigators hope the store's security
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cameras might shed some light on who left david's car in the lot [Music] when police interviewed david nixon's
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live-in girlfriend tracy frame she claimed david was headed to las vegas on the night he
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disappeared tracy also revealed she didn't have an alibi for the night david was murdered
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she said she was at home alone we as a family didn't really know much of anything he didn't bring her up
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um i never spoke to her on the phone she was a mystery to all of us really a background check revealed the two had
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an interesting past the couple met at a lake party shortly after david's second wife left him
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tracy was a successful accountant with no children shortly after they got together david
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bought two matching cars a black lexus for tracy a white one for him and because he owed back taxes
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to the irs david decided to place his house in tracy's name a decision he came to regret
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david wanted to regain control of the house and tracy wanted to make sure that that she kept the house in her name but
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there was one seemingly insurmountable hurdle to her being a suspect in looking at her investigators had to
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decide how she could have moved the body after all she was although she was a trim and strong young
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woman she was almost half the weight of david and moving him would have been no easy task
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then tracy's neighbors told police they saw a large rental truck parked at their
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house during the weekend david went missing [Music] i mean he even um a moving van like a u-haul
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ride yeah we took we were getting a truck to move um a um some large stuff the uh cool stuff
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pool chairs that the uh dumpster wouldn't take and they said that uh you'll have to
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move it but we don't have a vehicle so david's done in the lawn next police analyzed the security video
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of the supermarket parking lot where they found david's car at 1 34 a.m just 37 minutes before
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david's burning body was found a woman got out of david's white lexus walked
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to a black lexus and drove away you kind of look and go you know that that looks like tracy
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especially when she got in the black car thinking man four hours earlier the black lexus
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drove into the lot the same woman got out walked across the lot to a rental truck
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and drove away tape showed that the previous afternoon this same woman had parked the rental
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truck in the lot then left on foot with a large black dog tracy had a large black dog it
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does seem to be highly coincidental that the same person that you're looking at
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would also have a black lexus a white lexus access to a penske truck and to walk a
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dog similar to the one that tracy frame had because the camera was so far away there
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was no way to positively identify the woman if this was tracy frame they'd need
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some way to prove it i don't know thank you [Music] police had surveillance tape showing an
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unidentified woman parking two different cars in a shopping center parking lot next to a large rental truck
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the two cars matched the make and model of those owned by david nixon and his girlfriend tracy
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frame police also had surveillance video of the same woman walking into the store on the night
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david's body was discovered wasn't able to really pick her up throughout the store but
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could pick her up at the at the register again the woman purchased garbage bags and
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two bottles of muriatic acid although muriatic acid is sold in small amounts to private individuals mostly
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it's used as a solvent or cleaner and heavy industry that's when investigators
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noticed something important in order to save 34 cents on her purchase the woman used her discount card
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and store records showed the name on the card was none other than tracy frame after the purchase she drove away in the
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rental van the rental agency told investigators they had rented that same truck to three
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other people in the days after tracy returned it investigators found no blood or any trace of acid inside the
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truck but the tire impressions were potential evidence my job was to see if there was any
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relation between the tires that were photographed of the moving vehicle and what was left at the scene by laying
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the test impressions over the evidence photos analysts were able to compare all six tires on the van to those found at
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the scene i was able to document that six different tires that had two different types of tire
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tread impressions two different sets of class characteristics were represented very neatly on the
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scene this meant it was virtually certain tracy's moving van left these tire
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tracks but one question remained a lot of folks have asked the question you know how
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does a woman tracy size move a guy that large the answer a hand truck came with the moving
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vehicle [Music] she merely has to place the hand truck on the bed beside him and roll him over
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on top of it and strap him to it once he is strapped to that hand truck then it's just a matter of pulling the
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hand truck around investigators believe tracy knew david was planning to leave her and she wanted
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to keep the house that was still in her name late thursday night as he slept she shot him with an
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unregistered handgun friends said he kept in the house she wrapped the body and blankets from
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the bed the next day friday she drove david's car to the rental agency where she rented a moving van
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she waited until nightfall and used a hand truck to get david's body into the van
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[Music] then she drove 14 miles to the isolated parking lot where she tried to dispose of the body
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in a large drain [Music] but it was too big it wouldn't fit [Music] she panicked and left leaving
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the tire impressions worried that she'd have to explain why the moving van was parked at her house for
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an extended period she parked it at the supermarket and walked home with her dog
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[Music] on sunday night she returned to the supermarket bought trash bags and muriatic acid
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and identified herself by using her discount card to save 34 cents that night she cleaned the truck
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doused david's body with gasoline set it on fire then exchanged vehicles again
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and returned home once in custody tracy was found to have linear bruises on her thighs
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at exactly the height the hand truck would have hit her body police also found evidence that tracy
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purchased a new mattress for her bedroom and had the old one removed we don't
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know where the new mattress came from i would think that that mattress was probably
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taken in to one of these illegal dumping sites as opposed to you know obviously being put in a in a
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dumpster somewhere police believe that money was the motive tracy was complaining about david one
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time her friend carol she said well why don't you just leave him and she said well without him
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i'd be living in an apartment and driving a honda in march of 2005 a jury took just
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four hours to convict tracy frame of first degree murder she was sentenced to 40
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years in prison she'll be eligible for parole after 20. police were looking at the totality of
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the coincidences the black lexus the white lexus the penske truck the woman walking the dog
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and at the same time her personal shopper's car being used to buy some muriatic acid it was just too
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much for police not to determine that she was probably the one the fact that she ran that card over and
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saved uh i don't know what was it 34 cents something like that um nice science was this case
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pure and simple i mean there was there's really nothing else that's what sealed it for you can plan
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and plan and plan but you'll never plan for [Music] everything