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welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me
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as always is a man who spent the afternoon trolling his fantasy football league's waiver wire here is the c a
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turkey for me and a turkey for you let's eat turkey in a big Brown Shoe it's good
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to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend today we are still sipping on
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this delicious and tropical India Pale Ale called Eternal Autumn oh will it ever stop I hope not garage grade five
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out of five bottle caps and here's a cheers to just some of our friends who decided to help out the garage we would
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like to send a thanks to Heather in Maran Virginia and also a double fisted cheers to Brady and Neely Ray from East
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Philadelphia born and raised actually that's East Philadelphia New Jersey thank you to everyone who contributed to
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this week's beer fund and of course thank you all for listening and subscribing to True Crime garage and
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because all of you out there helping us out this week we were able to send a nice donation to the National Center for
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missing and exploited children and also to our friends over at the Charlie project thank you so much for trying to
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make a difference in this world and Mak it a difference in our world by listening to True Crime garage b r n
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Colonel that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
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crime [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 whe whether you agree with
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all 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 and 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 12th
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1994 the FBI sent a team from Quantico Virginia in response to a vicap report on Tracy's case so they reviewed the
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evidence they reviewed all the information with detectives and it looks to me captain that detectives came to the
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theory based off of everything that they found in their investigation that yes we have a list of
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persons of in interest the priority person the person likely at the top of that list would be David seock right
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they believe this was a crime of passion that whoever killed Tracy Harkness was somebody known to her and that that
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person either let themselves into her apartment or she let them into her apartment on that night that she was
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killed interesting to me it appears that the FBI agreed with the findings of the local police's
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investigation now they put together a profile on the Killer and the events of the crime I love when local law
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enforcement does this bring in the big guns you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room you just have to get
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this correct now police would not give us the entire profile as created by the FBI but
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they gave us a little little pieces and parts a little taste a little taste that
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we can share with you here today so according to the FBI is their opinion that the suspect the killer arrived
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already angry at Tracy's apartment that night late that night they say that the suspect is a Caucasian male likely in
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his mid 20s sounds familiar the suspect would have a history of anger issues check the suspect was a local check who
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knew Tracy check the suspect likely changed his behavior after the murder yeah and this person would have problems
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maintaining long-term Rel relationships yeah or headbutting walls now I think it's safe to
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say I'm not going to sound like Sherlock Holmes here when I point out the obvious
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that this small the profile that we received certainly fits who might be at the top of the list
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of Persons of Interest David seock it also certainly fits several other people that are on that list as well yeah
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there's so many difficult things about this case for me one David has a temper and if it's true that he was abusive
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with his not just his girlfriend but on top of that she was the mother of his children showed zero respect to towards
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her if he was physically abusive towards her but also when you're getting an argument shows such a lack of maturity
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to then run your head into a wall to the point where it it leaves bruises and marks and cuts on your face but then
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some of the other people on the list you have to look at because of the proximity
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when you live the access we have two people that wanted Tracy out of their lives that lived
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within a football field I mean that is access that is that is opportunity everybody knows that one of MC Jagger's
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favorite moves on stage is finger pointing finger pointing finger pointing and in this case I feel like when you
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review the information that was collected by the detectives and the police there's a lot of reasons to point
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a finger at person a or person B and in some situations we might have a person in particular where there should be a
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lot of fingers pointing at that individual yeah or a giant big stinky finger and police as you were saying yes
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go on what we don't have here is the eliminating of these persons who did they actually eliminate did they
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actually eliminate anyone the only statement that we have on record was well if I was going to go out on a limb
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and eliminate someone it would be Michael Harkness that's the only statement in any type of relative
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relationship we have to the possible eliminating of a person of interest or a suspect so we have a lot of good
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suspects here a lot of good interesting Persons of Interest I will say my opinion of the case is this Captain it
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appears to me to be still a very solvable case all of these years later yeah absolutely they have a lot of
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physical evidence and we're really sitting here sifting through all this information 30 years later but still
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left with some really key questions right in this case like one where the the hell is the
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murder weapon very good question what was the murder weapon where did it come from you you have to wonder Crime of
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Passion we talked a lot about you do not have to have the intent to murder to murder someone was there was this
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something that somebody grabbed in in a fit of anger from Tracy's Apartment A belonging of Tracy's that that was an
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item from inside of her home right and took it with them when you're moving into to an apartment and she's only been
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there for a few months I mean who who knows what she was doing maybe at some point it takes you a while to get
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settled and then eventually you want to put things on the wall and so you have a
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hammer out and is it possible that that's the murder weapon and then that person took them with the murderer took
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the murder weapon with them the other thing though is that we have this claw hammer that was found in one of the
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Persons of Interest car and but has no blood on it has no human blood on the hammer right but that doesn't mean that
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it wasn't cleaned and put back into the vehicle or I mean think about this even if the even
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if it had nothing if that claw hammer has nothing to do with Janet it is possible that police are coming around
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and they're interviewing me David and they're interviewing my ex-girlfriend my baby mama and I take that murder weapon
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and I put it in her car even though it's clean now it's going to raise a lot more
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questions and point a lot more fingers towards her but again what I said I think in episode
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two of this case the problem with David is going to be that we know that he lived at that residency for a time
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period so his DNA is going to be in that house his fingerprints are going to be in that house possible hair samples
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could be in that house the issue for David or anyone else that had stayed at that apartment at any time is
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that we have nobody saying that they were at the apartment that day there's no reason for someone else's DNA to be
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on our victim and so that's where I think as far as technology goes that we might be able to have a break in this
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case but but again back to the questions the other question I have is this house
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key the duplicate house key or key to the apartment there's been people that say
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that it was in possession of David seock David is not trying to hide the fact from police that yes at one time he did
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have a key to the apartment he says he gave it back to Tracy that key Still Remains a big part of this mystery that
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key could also unlock this Myster because that could be the item that the perpetrator of this crime used to gain
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access to this apartment well look I know we shouldn't assume but when you have this murder come up and law
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enforcement goes did you have a key yes I did have a key did you return that key
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yes I did but the only person that can dispute that they're not alive and come on come
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on give me a break all of her possessions all of Tracy's possessions are in that
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apartment so why aren't the keys there I know we shouldn't assume but I'm just assuming that David never gave them back
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and he just lied about it the other big question I think here and I think this is a a rightful question that this it's
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qu it's correct to ponder this because when we have people giving different and conflicting stories it really makes you
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wonder who's covering for who and how many people were involved or at least how many people knew what actually
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happened so a big question that I have here is was this crime perpetrated by one person a duo or a group of people
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well that's really difficult because one let's say we take the top six people of
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Interest they're all connected to somebody all of them have a significant other that is also on the list of pois
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or people that you should have on your list of pois and sorry if you're listening this to this and you're going
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I I shouldn't be looked at well why wouldn't you you you have a reason to not want her in your life and then you
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your aliis the aliis of all these individuals the The Alibi is coming by somebody that could be involved in the
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crime with them I wish we had uh more information as far as the evidence because to me it seems like there was
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one weapon used and so unless both attackers are using the same weapon to me that maybe it points more towards one
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individual and also the time frame it hasn't been solved for so many years most of the time it's hard for for if
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there's a Duo one person is normally a better person the than the other person eventually tells somebody and then the
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other question would be would the person or persons responsible who attacked Tracy would they have any idea about the
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little one Megan not being home that night right so while we are left with all of these questions here Captain the
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interesting thing to me about this profile while it doesn't really point a direct finger at
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anyone it doesn't really eliminate anybody either other than the fact that the profile states that they believe that
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the killer was a male so that would eliminate some of the female suspects or Persons of Interest here but again when
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reviewing this crime it's difficult to say that there wasn't more than one person that is
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responsible and even using something like a profile that should never be used to directly implicate somebody's guilt
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or to eliminate anybody from contention it's certainly a tool that that is used regularly and was used in
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this investigation now what we can say for certain as far as the police go is their statements that they gave to the
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public and this was in the form of interviews that they did with news outlets local news outlets but also the
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Crim Stoppers release information that they've released over the years because they've continually asked the public for
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help and in fact Tracy harness's family asked the public for help early on in this investigation by offering a reward
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for information of their own money from the family and then in the Crim Stoppers
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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 and sexual assault as possible motives in this case
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well it's sad too because when we started diving in and doing our own investigation into this case there's
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little to no information about this case online MH and it's sad when you see that but
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that's one of the reasons we do this podcast is to try to shine some light and get people talking about
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cases they don't get enough of the spotlight and it would be nice if the True Crime Community would kind of
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spread it out because there are so many cases that are doc series are about books are
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about online forums are all about and these cases just need one a little bit of pressure from
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the public and that's something that we can do is we can discuss these cases we can share this information there is
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probably 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 had think about it cases like Deli and John Ben Ramsay and West Memphis
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3 a lot of those people have come forward after a couple years because there is public pressure because they
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saw a documentary about it on TV they heard about heard about the case on a podcast so they they decide hey people
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actually still care about this I I should maybe share the information and law enforcement might be
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one piece away from solving the puzzle MH now my question to you which I don't know but do they have what they think is
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DNA from the killer at the crime scene well what I can say is that one Ray of Hope here is that yes police do
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have a bunch of physical evidence in this case they have items that new technology may now or soon be able to
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offer the final solution to the murder of Tracy Renee harkes and we know that they conducted DNA testing in
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1993 again in 1994 and in 2009 the most significant pieces of evidence in this case per the files we
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reviewed include but are not limited to the following personal items of Tracy's found in the apartment and on her
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person a jacket that was worn by one of the Persons of Interest that was collected fingernail
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scrapings the toilet seat being up in Tracy's apartment and it seems like most if not
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all of these items are definitely eligible for renewed modern testing and maybe this case being covered by anybody
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in the media will give that push to law enforcement to go hey maybe it's time to
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revisit this case and take a look at some of these pieces of evidence and get these tested we have a lot of Ohio
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listeners and we say this often but it's even more important when we're covering
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an Ohio case because the abundance of Ohio Liv listeners that we are so lucky to have if you have any information or
00:21:03
if you know who killed Tracy Renee Harkness call The Grove City police department at 614
00:21:11
2771 1710 or to submit a tip and remain anonymous you can call that tip in at 614 645 tis that's
00:21:24
tips or you can email our show by going to our website true Crim [Music] garage.com this show is sponsored by
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it already is right here Mayo Clinic you know where to go [Music] want to thank everybody for joining us
00:23:15
here in the garage and like always this is an important case so if you can share
00:23:21
it on social media somebody knows something out there somebody needs to come forward and get some closure for
00:23:28
this family yes thank you all for listening we will be off next week to celebrate the holiday with our families
00:23:35
but that does not mean that you have to take a break from True Crime garage if you are looking for something to listen
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to please check out our other show off the Record it's available on Stitcher premium we released an episode this week
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and we have another great episode coming out on Monday as well that's true crime
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garage off the record check out the entire catalog on Stitcher premium have a great safe and wonderful Thanksgiving
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Happy turkey day be good be kind and don't [Music] litter [Music] is it possible to predict the
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unpredictable could surgeons use a patient's own Anatomy to create 3D printed life-size organ models to map
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because every day we're doing what's never been done learn more at mayoclinic.org
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