Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:15]

Hello and welcome, my favorite murder, the many, so it's tiny and many it's real short. We're just going to keep you for a couple minutes. We've got some emails from other people to read to you. If you just hang out for five, 20 minutes.

[00:00:29]

Yeah, it would be great. Got a PowerPoint presentation to go with the quick and easy. There's also going to be sound effects. We'll have lunch catered and it will be great.

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I'm going to go first.

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You got it. You want to go first? Go ahead. OK.

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Hey, MFM, I know you hate Mullarkey, so I'll get straight to the story now from Joe Biden's writing to Joe. I don't know that I could see your dad.

[00:00:55]

Oh, no, Jim, no.

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No malarkey. He would use that sarcastically. But now he would say bull shit, make it last four minutes.

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My dad owns his own business, a solid waste consulting and engineering consulting company. I actually work for him as his marketing director and then in parentheses, yay for family businesses. Question mark. Question mark. Exclamation point. Exclamation point.

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Close parentheses, period. WW promo code murder.

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Because he's an expert on landfill's. I know, right? He had been called in on many criminal and civil cases over the years, most often because a landfill employee or customer is killed. But sometimes he gets called in on a murder trial where evidence or bodies have been found in a landfill. And this one, I'm about to tell you, is both riveting and heartbreaking. In 2001, Michael Blagg came home from work to find his wife, Jennifer, and six year old daughter Abby missing and a blood soaked master bed.

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He called the police, but eventually he was arrested, charged and found guilty of murdering his wife. Her body was found in a local landfill, which is why my dad was brought in. One of the key pieces of evidence was material from his workplace that was found in proximity to his wife's body. However, my dad was for the defense and argued that the evidence did not indicate that her body and the pamphlets from his work could have come in on the same load.

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Regardless, Michael Blagg was imprisoned and a second trial just a couple of years ago found him guilty. The evidence against him seems pretty cut and dried until you consider some of the other evidence, most of which was not allowed to be discussed during either trial. One Shortly after Abby, the daughter disappeared, a man was pulled over for a traffic stop in a nearby state. He had a little girl in his car and some sort of incriminating evidence. I think the mom's driver's license or something that linked him to the family.

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It wasn't Michael's car. He'd already been arrested. And another suspect only identified as Mr. B was identified but never charged, had confessed to murdering other little girls and had a list with both Jennifer Blagg, the mom, and Abby Blagg, the little girl named on it. Many people think that Abby was kidnapped and trafficked while her mother was murdered because she got in the way. I wonder if Michael did not murder his wife and someone kidnapped his little girl and he has been sitting in prison all of these years.

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Of course, maybe he did murder them. And that's awful, too. Either way, as a parent to two young children, this case is heartbreaking. I'm always proud that my dad played a role in trying to get to the truth. You guys are amazing. And I so appreciate your honesty and sense of humor. Thank you for all your hard work. Much love, Sarah. Wow. I don't think I mean, that's the thing. Is that idea that you could it would be impossible to link evidence like that at a dumpster.

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It's pure chaos. It's just like imagine all the things that are out the dumps. And if they flew over and landed by a body, you can interpret it a thousand ways. Like, I wonder how many different people could be could be connected to that just based on the trash that happens to be there. And then I wonder what happened to make it so that that other evidence wasn't allowed in court because got kicked out might have made a really huge difference.

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But who the fuck?

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But maybe there was a reason where it was. I don't know. But at the same time, it's like, what if he were the murderer? Why would he allow flyers from his work to be anywhere near? Yeah, it's not like that's almost suggesting that he somehow it all got thrown out with garbage or something like that.

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And it's like he had been at the dump.

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That would be the proof somehow. But why would he put his own whatever. We're going to solve it right now.

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I mean, this is what I feel like. This is this horrible and tragic case and situation is kind of what people who get hooked on true crime gets. This is a perfect example. It because you could sit here and like theorize in your court armchair quarterback way for so long about it. It's just like what happened. Every little element and why crazy. Yeah. Well yeah, tragic. OK, this one has maybe my favorite opening it just says.

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Pleasantries about a year ago when my boss learned I was going to your show and what it was about, he casually asked, did I tell you about the time I almost bought a murder saw? No, I replied, we'll strap in because I'm going to break it down for the sake of time. Back in 2009, a lady named Patricia Kimie of Horten, Kansas, was abducted from her home after days of searching and collecting evidence. The police believe she had been taken by force and might be deceased.

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Flash forward a few months to when the police officially detained Patricia's killer, Roger Hollister, because he tried to kill himself and his wife in a head on collision after police named him as a prime suspect. Whoa. Let me just say, this motherfucker must have never seen a single true crime show because of how sloppy he was with everything. Anyway, this was followed up by his wife, Rebecca, being saltiest. Shit that her husband tried to kill them both and proceeded to tell the police what she knew, including taking police to the gravesite.

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Oh, shit.

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Rebecca, so what led to the slaying? Patricia's ex-husband, who owned a sawmill that Roger frequented, contracted a hit for seventy thousand dollars because he was angry about the division of property in the 2008 divorce, who note that this guy was also an idiot because once the division of property was issued, he told anyone who would listen, would listen, including various family members, that he wanted her dead and was willing to pay to have it taken care of.

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Not mention it was at this point in the story which might be followed.

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I want not only do I want her dead weight come back, I know that's creepy. I also will pay any price. I'll pay for it. And then a week let me. She's gone. Yeah, weird. I'll circle back with you to really underline all the ways that you can look out for me being guilty in the future.

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It was at this point in the story that when my boss said that during the months when Patricia was missing, he met with the ex-husband to buy a used saw from the sawmill.

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Oh, no.

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He says that when he met with the guy, he was being a bit weird about everything and was willing to sell the overly clean store for a lot cheaper than what it was worth with the situation not feeling right.

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My boss passed on the purchase. Turns out he made the right decision because when Patricia's remains were found, it was documented that, quote, a forensic pathologist examined the vertebral body and the few ribs that were still attached and noticed a line of deconstruction where the ribs appeared to have been cut in a straight line. Oh, in the end, the ex-husband settled in civil court in a wrongful death suit. What the fuck? Roger died in prison in twenty thirteen, and his wife, Rebecca, was officially charged with aiding a felon.

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I'm just glad that Patricia got justice and that my boss didn't buy a murder.

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Saw Whitney H. Wow, yeah, that would be a very creepy position to be the person that answers the Craigslist ad and the second you roll up your every hair on, your body stands up and you're like, get out of this saw mill. I feel like let's not buy size second hand guys. Let's stay out.

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Sawmill's in general. I don't think unless you are run a lathe or like a very talented logger, there's no don't be over there. Go to your local hardware store, pick up a, you know, something cute and kitschy and find a new brand new store. That's never it has to be new. Yeah. Whether it's a saw, a hatchet or anything and stop being such a cheap bastard, you're getting yourself into trouble, right? I'm not reading the subject line of this.

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It gives it all away. OK, let's just get right to it. My hometown is Paradise, California, you know, the one that was completely destroyed by the campfire two years ago. Yeah, my family survived by the skin of their teeth and images and articles from the event still send me reeling into anxiety and panic, I bet. Anyway, that's not this story.

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In our middle school, there was a program for eighth graders called Northwest Eight, literally because the four portable classrooms the program used were on the northwest corner of the campus. About 45 students were sectioned off from the rest of the school. We attended separate classes and we had just three teachers between us. The real appeal of the Northwest eight was that the teachers used alternative learning methods such as simulated history and trips to our local wildlife areas to learn about the land and California history.

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This is some California Montessori shit like that.

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We went to San Juan Capistrano to learn about the swallows that came in every fucking whenever it is.

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So this is so California, you know, it all went straight into little Georgia, really picking up on what they're laying down.

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Yeah, this reminds me of like when Mrs. Terwilliger would come and visit our school and she would bring, like, this is a living abalone or whatever, and you'd learn about the coast to coast land or whatever. Yeah. Get into it immersive.

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Close my door really quick. Yeah. Yeah. We bought a jukebox from the 90s, from the 60s. You guys did Vince's birthday and and it's fully it's from a record store that refurbishes old jukeboxes. So they filled up like two hundred and fifty records. Old records. That's badass.

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We had to apply to be in this program and it was competitive. We usually looked forward to simulation days where they remade our little world of classrooms into sets for whatever we were learning about from Ellis Island. We were checked for nits and segregated by our home preassigned countries to the Industrial Revolution. They had us assembling little paper hats in a hot, loud classroom under cramped conditions to a slave ship. I'm not even going to describe this one because, yikes, one of the simulations they did was dot, dot, dot, the nineteen seventy six Chowchilla bus kidnapping that Karen covered in the last episode.

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That's right. Our three teachers dressed as kidnappers with fake guns, bandanas and lots of yelling. They shuffled us into the back of a pitch dark U-Haul parked on school property. And we were given instructions to figure a way out. I think I blocked I think I blocked a lot of this stuff out. But listening to Care tell the actual story that inspired my teachers to do this was disturbing. Looking back, I'm really not sure what the lesson was.

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Something about teaching us survival and strength, maybe. But the lesson I learned was don't trust adults, even your teachers, because what the fuck?

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I might add, this was in nineteen ninety seven, so not that long ago, but in still teaching skills then they've been to the eighties.

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They push that eighties shit right up to ninety seven. Anyway, thanks for everything. The years upon years of listening to you both has helped me through some rough times. See first paragraph.

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Oh and recently I completed listening to every episode. From the beginning it took me 18 months and an approximately 350 miles of morning walk. Oh I love that. Stay sexy and don't let your teacher fake kidnap you Rachel t good one. That is ok. Yeah. What I mean I kind of have to say but I know it's wrong but I love the idea of it's like what are you going to do now. Yeah. This crazy shit has happened to you.

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What are you going to do now. It's very unfair for maybe the more delicate people in their class to be like, you know what I'm going to do? I mean, to pee in the corner and then I'm going to be known as the peeing in the corner girl for the rest of my career. I'm going to obsess about the fact that this happened to children my age every night and not be able to fall asleep.

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Did you DHP? What were they thinking? I had a teacher and also just like lawsuits and parents, I still remember this fucking teacher I had in third grade, wanted to show us what sexism was like, you know, in the old days when, like, women couldn't work in the workforce. And so she separated the boys and girls and let the boys do whatever they want and made the girls, like, turn in homework and switch it and let the boy make the boys like she basically did sexism.

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She underlined sexism, still mad about it. And the boys were such dicks, like they were playing cards and stuff. And we were all like, this isn't fucking fair. And she's like, right, it's not there. That's it.

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But also, how about the lesson be reversing the people who actually already know what sexism is like already like the boys are already in charge, ingrained already.

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What was it? You flip it, flip that script and let the people learn who. Well, I will.

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The opportunity missed. But Rachel, not you. Thank you for sharing your or your drama and the things you're where teachers did. So thank you for sharing. You love to know all about it.

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Yes. OK, this one's called the Mexican Revolution Family Murder. Hi y'all. Just listen to the latest episode. And when Georgia talked about the Mexican Revolution, I decided to send you my family murder. That happened during the Mexican Revolution. I came across a story when I was helping my abuelo start some belongings and found a letter from the Mexican embassy. And since I can't speak or read Spanish, my greatest shame, my Aflalo, filled me in.

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In 1912, my great great grandfather and great great grandmother came to America seeking asylum, which they were granted, and they built a life for themselves on a small farm on the Texas Mexico border. One day, a few years later, my great great grandfather was out working the farm when American soldiers rode up on their horses and shot him dead. They the their reason he was Mexican and look like a rebel. This left my great great grandmother alone to raise eight children.

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Oh, she was pissed and rightfully so. She fought in court against the United States and was awarded two thousand dollars for the death, around twenty eight thousand. Today, she took that money and bought a huge plot of land and built a home which is the same home. My abuela would grow up in the same home I spent my childhood summers at visiting my mama, great grandma, until she passed. My abuela still owns the home and rents it out to locals and other family members who still live there.

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We used to visit their old town multiple times a year less so now that my Veloz Parkinson's is advancing. But it's a special place to my family. It's our American roots grown from a horrible injustice. This story reminds me that not that much has changed. So we must keep fighting as my gweilo has gotten sicker every time I visit. I worry it could be the last time and every time he tells me to never be ashamed of who I am and where I come from.

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He says he spent his whole life feeling ashamed of who he was because of some racist bastards. And he told me, quote, watching you and your sisters grow into successful independent women and taught me that there is nothing to be ashamed of. We are strong and beautiful people and we should be proud of that. Thanks for all y'all do.

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Your podcast brings me so much joy in times of real darkness. Love y'all. S That's so cool. Also, a grandfather that's telling his granddaughter he's learning from them totally. What a badass like awesome thoughtful man. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. It is. It's really a beautiful story.

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Thank you for sharing that essay and I love how much you use the word y'all. That's just my one of my favorite words. Not by sound sarcastic. I'm not. I remember the one time those Texans remember in the beginning when we were we were all like someone tweeted, I tweeted something and used the word y'all. And you text us. I'm like, Steven, why did you use the word y'all? We don't talk like that.

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Like, actually, that was me. I like it because it's gender neutral.

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I don't know, like it's just because it's so not something I would normally say. OK, here's my last one. Hey, ladies, I love the podcast, even if it sometimes freaks my roommate out. Yeah, that's right. Stand by us. This story is about my parents spooky house and their very good dog.

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All caps, good dogs, Georgie and Frankie look at how quiet sleep and they know what they have to do to stay in their room. Yeah, that's right. It's just like me. When I used to ask to be in my cousin Cheryl's room, you just have to zip the lip and you can stay in there for as long as you want. Simple, really, ok. My parents house was built in 1915 and they bought it just before I was born in the 80s.

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It's a pretty normal house, two stories, three bedrooms, a big yard and an unfinished basement. We've never finished the basement as it's prone to flooding and we've always just use it as a general sort of laundry workshop, et cetera. Space. It's just a little bit creepy the way that all unfinished basements are, but never freaked me out too much as a kid. When you grow up in an old house, creepy basements and spooky noises at night like noisy radiators are just part of life.

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Anyway, around twenty eight, my parents adopted a new dog, a black lab mix named Clark and Mr. Clark.

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Oh, I miss that moment when I was reading this.

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That's the funniest our childhood dog had passed away. My sister and I were long grown and gone and my parents wanted a furry friend around the house. Clark was six months old and incredibly sweet. He'd been rescued from a bad situation and for years he hated to be alone and always wanted to be in the same room as someone that's so frank. He was pretty well trained by his foster family, housebroken and almost never barked. He was and still is to this day.

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He's doing great for his age. Pretty much the perfect dog of a day or two. After he came home with my parents, my dad was at work and my mom went downstairs to do laundry. The basement is accessed through a door with a little closet area on one side in the kitchen, and it has creaky wooden steps going down to it. Clerk predictably followed my mom down these stairs into the basement and immediately freaked out. It was the first time he'd been in the basement and something terrified him.

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He looked around and sniffed the air a little bit, then let out one sharp bark. The first time my mom ever heard him bark, he backed up. His hackles were raised tail between his legs. He was so scared he peed on the floor a little bit and then he raced back upstairs to the kitchen. My mom was at a loss for what had scared him so much, but obviously something did. She went upstairs and comforted him, but he refused to go back down in the basement.

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He refused to even stepped through the door, leading to the stairs to the basement. There's a door to the driveway halfway down the basement stairs. And that's the only door where you don't get a face full of flying lab if you enter. We've tried everything. Favorite dog treats people, food, toys. But nothing in twelve years has convinced this incredibly social dog to even pass through that doorway. Well, once when I was visiting, something happened to cause a small hole in the kitchen floor and Clark wouldn't go near it until it was covered up.

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None of us have ever experienced anything too creepy in the basement, but obviously something terrifying is down there. And Clark's the only one with the good sense to avoid it. Stay sexy and don't get murdered in a creepy basement and then scare sweet dog.

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Oh, my God. What's down there? They don't know. Get up, dig in. Something's down there.

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That dog knows what he's talking about or it's like I believe I think it like it just for me.

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It like makes me believe in like bad vibes more, you know. Sure. But if it's unfinished, there could be like one corner of the basement where there's just a body. It's just like, you know, in a cartoon which is going down underground. You see the skeletons and stuff. There could just be a skeleton just right on the other side of one of their unfinished dirt walls. Or he's just a design snob and is like, finish this fucking basement already.

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It's garbage. I don't want to look at it. I will pee on it. It's not fair.

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It's just it's obvious that the one thing he stuck up about is unfinished flooring. Finish it. I'm gonna finish it. OK, this my last one is called Kentucky Meet Shower. Oh, yeah. Charente, Georgia. Steven, Vince and all the pets.

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Oh, Vince, I was listening to the recent Minnesota where you shared about the jello rain shower in Washington. And finally, I have a hometown to send you the story of the Kentucky meet shower. Here we go. Back in March 1876 on a clear night in Rankin, Kentucky. Mrs. Couche, I never could find her name, only her husband's egg was outside Minding Your Own Business, doing Fahmi type things on her farm when all of the sudden chunks of meat started falling from the sky.

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Well, the chunks were as small as a golf ball, up to as big as a grapefruit. I'm sure this poor woman was freaking the fuck out. She was interviewed saying the shower of flesh must have been a sign from God. Yeah, probably the next day sign a sign, you know.

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Go inside, stay inside, finish your basement, go inside the next day, some random dudes came to the farm to investigate and said the mystery meat had the distinct taste of, quote, rancid mutton, which means they ate, which means it's like it's like the cocaine rubbing it on your tooth.

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But the shower just you just dab it under your tongue. Each side says, no, thank you.

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A scientist later studied preserved sample and said it had to be some form of no stick or cyanobacteria that can fall when it rains, much like the story in the last hometown, which I pronounce totally wrong. By the way, in the last I got so many tweets, but I don't care about the words, whatever that's called, fancy pronunciations that I don't know.

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Oh, are you not a scientist? You know I'm not a scientist. Wait, no, because you've really been acting like one this whole time.

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Yeah. And it's on my resume that I gave you a science smoking offensive.

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The only problem with that theory is that it was complete. It was a completely clear night, so it couldn't have been part of the brain. To add further confusion to the story, a later analysis of the tissue discovered it to be either lung tissue from a horse Woodmore or perhaps a human infant.

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And then it says apparently those tissues were indistinguishable back then. Weird. So it's probably horse meat, a human infant, but. OK, but questions. OK, let me keep it.

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So what actually happened? Questionmark. No one knows for certain. The favorite theory of locals in the area is that the meat from the sky was quite literally meat. They think vultures flying overhead must have disgorged their stomachs all at once to cause the chunks of meat to shower down. They had probably previously chow down on an animal carcass, hopefully. And sure, Mrs. Couch was just incredibly unlucky that night. I've lived in Kentucky for more than half my life now, and I love my weird and wonderful state.

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Hoping to see you come through here again if the world stops ending. Thanks for keeping me sane at normalizing my true crime obsession and just generally being the best SSD GM and watch for me showers.

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Kayla Kela, I need to know if you're going to say a meteor shower. In my mind that means meat is going from as far as the eye can see to the right. Yeah. As far as the eye can see to the left, back and forth. So if it's Vulture's throwing up. Yeah. Did it just, did it come down within like a ten foot radius or was like just one person and then that's it you know.

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Yeah because. Yeah. Right. Because then that I there's so many theories you could start inventing. Yeah. About what that be from. But I imagine that it was like when you talked about the other one that it's like real but other stuff. Yeah. Like rain goes everywhere. It doesn't just. No I think it was just the meat. Can someone also like a biology major tell us if, if fucking horse meat and human infant meat are at all similar?

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Why back in the eighteen hundreds they would have used the two. I have to say that I bet you the scientists that theorize that was like this, the chances are this looks a lot like the horse lung to me.

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What was he like.

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And then, then, then the person that they worked with is like still writing it down or it's like no no, no, no, don't make anything I say thinking it and accidentally writing at the same time, you know, when you go, yeah, that's got to be like he's he's writing what it probably is. Right. Then he accidentally wrote what he hopes. It's not right. What's the best case scenario in the worst case scenario. Best case scenario.

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And then when he will quit is when it comes back us.

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But if this ever happens again and it's human infant, I'm out.

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I just need to know the range. I need to know the the what by what did this in. Yeah. Send us your fucking stories please. They're so fun.

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They're getting better by the month. They really are so good. I had so many good ones to choose from. You can send them to my favorite murder at Gmail. There's a place on the website to send them and in the fan cult as well.

[00:26:06]

We love them and come and be a part of things. Listen and then get just find one noun that you can relate to your own life and that like many people did on this episode and then go, I finally have a reason to write in and write it, if that's right. Maybe Steven leave in the conversation about the jukebox.

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So maybe people will write in about random jukebox stuff, honky jukeboxes.

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There are jukebox didn't work because they opened up the back and there was horse lungs and say, come on, don't make me do all the work. You do the work. Yeah.

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You get your horse long story together and also used sex and don't get murdered by Elvis.

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You want a cookie.