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thank you [Music] [Music] foreign foreign garage wherever you are whatever you're
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doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who
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spent the afternoon trolling his fantasy football league's waiver wire here is the cat a turkey for me and a turkey for
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you let's eat turkey and a big brown shoe it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for
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telling my friend today we are still sipping on this delicious and tropical India Pale Ale
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called Eternal Autumn oh will it ever stop I hope not garage grade five out of five bottle caps and here's the cheers
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to just some of our friends who decided to help out the garage we would like to send a thanks to Heather in Marion
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Virginia and also a double-fisted cheers to Brady and Neely Ray from East Philadelphia born and raised actually
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that's East Philadelphia New Jersey thank you to everyone who contributed to this week's beer fund and of course
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thank you all for listening and subscribing to True Crime garage and because all of you out there helping us
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out this week we were able to send a nice donation to the National Center for missing and exploited children and also
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to our friends over at the Charlie project thank you so much for trying to make a difference in this world and
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making a difference in our world by listening to True Crime garage bwe double r u n kernel that's enough of the
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business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] well Captain we have something here that we don't see with a lot of these local
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small town types of cases here and we talked about the police and the detectives doing their due diligence in
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this case they this was a very thorough investigation whether you agree with all
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aspects of it or not but there was certainly a lot of work and effort put into this investigation not just in 1992
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in November of 1992 when it happened but the following year in the years after that there's been a lot of ears a lot of
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eyes a lot of boots on the ground working this case trying to figure out what happened to Tracy Harkness who is
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responsible and how can we get Justice for her and her family and one of the things that we don't see in a lot of
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these cases is the detectives went so far to bring in some experts so January 12 1994
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the FBI sent a team from Quantico Virginia in response to a VI cap report on Tracy's case
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so they reviewed the evidence they reviewed all the information with detectives and
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it looks to me Captain the detectives came to the theory based off of everything that they found in
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their investigation that yes we have a list of Persons of Interest the priority person the person
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likely at the top of that list would be David celock right they believed this was a crime of passion that whoever
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killed Tracy Harkness was somebody known to her and that that person either let themselves into her apartment or
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she let them into her apartment on that night that she was killed interesting to me it appears
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that the FBI agreed with the findings of the local police's investigation now they put together a profile on the
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Killer and the events of the crime I love when local law enforcement does this bring in the big guns you don't
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have to be the smartest guy in the room you just have to get this correct now police would not give us
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the entire profile as created by the FBI but they gave us a little little pieces and parts
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a little taste a little taste that we can share with you here today so according to the FBI it is their opinion
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that the suspect the killer arrived already angry at Tracy's apartment that night late that night
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they say that the suspect is a Caucasian male likely in his mid-20s sounds familiar the suspect would have a
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history of anger issues check the suspect was a local check who knew Tracy check the suspect likely changed his
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behavior after the murder yeah and this person would have problems maintaining long-term relationships yeah
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or head-butting walls now I think it's safe to say I'm not going to sound like Sherlock
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Holmes here when I point out the obvious that this small the profile that we received
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certainly fits who might be at the top of the list of Persons of Interest David celock it also
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certainly fits several other people that are on that list as well yeah there's so
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many difficult things about this case for me one David has a temper and if it's true that he was abusive with his
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not just his girlfriend but on top of that she was the mother of his children showed zero respect toward towards her
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if he was physically abusive towards her but also when you're getting an argument
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it shows such a lack of maturity to then run your head into a wall to the point where it it leaves bruises and marks and
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cuts on your face but then some of the other people on the list you have to look at because of the proximity when
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you live the access we have two people that wanted Tracy out of their lives that lived Within
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football field I mean that is access that is that is opportunity everybody knows that one of Mick Jagger's favorite
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moves on stage is finger pointing finger point and finger pointing and in this case I feel like when you review the
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information that was collected by the detectives and the police there's a lot of reasons to point a finger at person a
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or person B and in some situations we might have a person in particular where there should be a lot of fingers
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pointing at that individual yeah or a giant big stinky finger and police as you were saying yes go on what we don't
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have here is the eliminating of these persons who did they actually eliminate did they actually eliminate anyone the
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only statement that we have on record was well if I was going to go out on a limb and eliminate someone it would be
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Michael Harkness that's the only statement in any type of relative relationship we have to the possible
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eliminating of a person of interest or a suspect so we have a lot of good suspects here a lot of good interesting
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Persons of Interest I will say my opinion of the case is this Captain it appears to me to be still a very
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solvable case all of these years later yeah absolutely they have a lot of physical evidence and we're really
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sitting here sifting through all this information 30 years later but still left with some really key questions
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right in this case like one where the hell is the murder weapon very good question what was the murder weapon
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where did it come from you you have to wonder Crime of Passion we talked a lot about you do not have to have the intent
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to murder to murder someone was there was this something that somebody grabbed in in a fit of anger
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from Tracy's Apartment A belonging of Tracy's that that was an item from inside of her home
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Brian took it with him when you're moving into an apartment she's only been there for a few months I mean who knows
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what she was doing maybe at some point it takes you a while to get settled and then eventually you want to put things
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on the wall and so you have a hammer out and is it possible that that's the murder weapon and then that person took
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them with the murderer took the murder weapon with them the other thing though is that we have this claw hammer that
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was found and one of the Persons of Interest car has no human blood on the hammer
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right but that doesn't mean that it wasn't cleaned and put back into the vehicle
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or I mean think about this even if the even if it had nothing if that claw hammer has nothing to do with Janet it
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is possible that police are coming around and they're interviewing me David and they're interviewing my ex-girlfriend my
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baby mama and I take that murder weapon and I put it in her car even though it's clean
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now it's going to raise a lot more questions and point a lot more fingers towards her
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but again what I said I think in episode two of this case the problem with David is
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going to be that we know that he lived at that residency for a time period so his DNA is going to be in that house
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his fingerprints are going to be in that house possible hair samples could be in that
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house the issue for David or anyone else that had stayed at that apartment at any
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time is that we have nobody saying that they were at the apartment that day there's no reason
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for someone else's DNA to be on our victim and so that's where I think as far as
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technology goes that we might be able to have a break in this case but again back
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to the questions the other question I have is this house key the duplicate house key or key to the apartment
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there's been people that say that it was in possession of David C lock David is not trying to hide the fact from police
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that yes at one time he did have a key to the apartment he says he gave it back to Tracy that key Still Remains a big
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part of this mystery that key could also unlock this mystery because that could be
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the item that the perpetrator of this crime used to gain access to this apartment
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look I know we shouldn't assume but when you have this murder come up and law enforcement goes did you have a key yes
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I did have a key did you return that key yes I did but the only person that can dispute
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that they're not alive and come on come on give me a break all of her possessions all of Tracy's possessions
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are in that apartment so why aren't the keys there I know we shouldn't assume but I'm just assuming
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that David never gave them back and he just lied about it the other big question I think here and I think this
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is a a rightful question that this it's quite it's correct to ponder this because when
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we have people giving different and conflicting stories it really makes you wonder who's covering for who and how
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many people were involved or at least how many people knew what actually happened so a big question that I have
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here is was this crime perpetrated by one person a duo or a group of people well that's
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really difficult because one let's say we take the top six people of Interest they're all connected to somebody all of
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them have a significant other that is also on the list of pois or people that you should have on your list of pois
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and sorry if you're listening this to this and you're going I I shouldn't be looked at well why wouldn't you you you
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have a reason to not want her in your life and then you your Alibis the Alibis of all these individuals
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the The Alibi is coming by somebody that could be involved in the crime with them
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I wish we had uh more information as far as the evidence because to me it seems like there was one weapon used and
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so unless both attackers are using the same weapon to me that maybe it points more towards one individual and also the
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time frame it hasn't been solved for so many years most of the time it's hard for for if there's a Duo one person is
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normally a better person though than the other person eventually tells somebody and then the other question would be
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would the person or persons responsible who attacked Tracy would they have any idea about
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the little one Megan not being home that night right so while we are left with all of
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these questions here Captain the interesting thing to me about this profile while it doesn't
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really point a direct finger at anyone it doesn't really eliminate anybody either other than the fact that the
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profile states that they believe that the killer was a male so that would eliminate some of the female suspects or
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Persons of Interest here but again when reviewing this crime it's difficult to say that there wasn't more than one
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person that is responsible and even using something like a profile that should never be used to directly
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implicate somebody's guilt or to eliminate anybody from contention it's certainly a tool that that is used
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regularly and was used in this investigation now what we can say for certain as far as the police go is their
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statements that they gave to the public and this was in the form of interviews that they did with news outlets local
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news outlets but also the Crime Stoppers release information that they've released over the years because they've
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continually asked the public for help and in fact Tracy harkness's family asked the public for help early on in
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this investigation by offering a reward for information of their own money from the family and then in the Crime
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Stoppers release information we have the statements from police that the killer likely was someone Tracy Harkness knew
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and that police have ruled out burglary in sexual assault as possible motives in
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this case what's sad too because when we started diving in and doing our own investigation into this case
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there's little to no information about this case online and it's sad when you see that but that's one of the
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reasons we do this podcast to try to shine some light and get people talking about cases
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they don't get enough of the spotlight and it would be nice if the True Crime Community would kind of spread it out
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because there are so many cases that are docu-series or about books or about online forums are all about and
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these cases just need want a little bit of pressure from the public and that's something that we can
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do as we can discuss these cases we can share this information there is probably
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somebody out there that knows something yes this this happened early 90s but that means that there's somebody
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that's sitting on information but think about it cases like Delphi and JonBenet Ramsey and
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West Memphis Three a lot of those people have come forward after a couple years because there is
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public pressure because they saw a documentary about it on TV they heard about heard about the case on a podcast
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so they decide hey people actually still care about this I I should maybe share the information
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and law enforcement might be one piece away from solving the puzzle now my question to you which I don't
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know but do they have what they think is DNA from the Killer at the crime scene well what I can say is that one
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Ray of Hope here is that yes police do have a bunch of physical evidence in this case they have
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items that new technology may now or soon be able to offer the final solution to the murder of
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Tracy Renee Harkness and we know that they conducted DNA testing in 1993 again in 1994 and in
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2009. the most significant pieces of evidence in this case per the files we reviewed
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include but are not limited to the following personal items of Tracy's found in the apartment and on her person
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a jacket that was worn by one of the Persons of Interest that was collected fingernail scrapings
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the toilet seat being up in Tracy's apartment and it seems like most if not all of
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these items are definitely eligible for renewed modern testing and maybe this case being covered
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by anybody in the media will give that push to law enforcement to go hey maybe it's time to revisit this case
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and take a look at some of these pieces of evidence and get these tested we have
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a lot of Ohio listeners and we say this often but it's even more important when we're covering an Ohio case because the
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abundance of Ohio listeners that we are so lucky to have if you have any information or
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if you know who killed Tracy Renee Harkness call The Grove City police department at
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614-277-1710 or to submit a tip and remain anonymous you can call that tip in at
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614-645-t-i-p-s that's tips or you can email our show by going to our website True Crime garage.com
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thank you [Music] promise [Music] I want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage and like always this
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is an important case so if you can share it on social media somebody knows something out there somebody needs to
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come forward and get some closure for this family yes thank you all for listening we will be off next week to
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celebrate the holiday with our families but that does not mean that you have to take a break from True Crime garage if
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you are looking for something to listen to please check out our other show off the Record it's available on Stitcher
00:21:30
premium we released an episode this week and we have another great episode coming
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out on Monday as well that's true crime garage off the record check out the entire catalog on Stitcher premium have
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a great safe and wonderful Thanksgiving Happy turkey day be good be kind and don't litter
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[Applause] thank you [Music]