Dec. 2, 2025
SERIAL KILLER: Paul Durousseau | Jacksonville, Florida 1997-2003 Part 02
On a humid September day in 1997, a man walking his dog discovered the nude body of 26-year-old Tracy Habersham in a ditch near Fort Benning, Georgia. She had been strangled. What investigators couldn't know then was that her death marked the beginning of a six-year killing spree.
Part 2 of 2
VICTIM PROFILE:
Paul Durousseau's victims shared heartbreaking commonalities. They were young African American women—many of them mothers—struggling to build better lives. Tyresa Mack was raising three small children. Nikia Kilpatrick was six months pregnant when she died; her two young sons, aged 11 months and 2 years, were found alive but malnourished beside her body two days later. Shawanda McCalister was also pregnant. These women trusted the wrong person, and that trust cost them everything.
CASE SIGNIFICANCE:
Between 1997 and 2003, Durousseau used his various jobs—security guard, taxi driver—to identify and gain access to vulnerable women. His method was consistent: gain trust, enter their homes, bind them, sexually assault them, then strangle them with whatever cord was available. A phone cord. A coaxial cable. An extension cord tied in a distinctive military-style slipknot. His victims included Tracy Habersham, Tyresa Mack, Nicole Williams, Nikia Kilpatrick, Shawanda McCalister, Jovanna Jefferson, and Surita Cohen. German authorities also suspect him in additional unsolved murders near U.S. military bases during his Army deployment.
CONTENT WARNINGS:
This episode contains detailed discussion of sexual assault, strangulation, domestic violence, and child endangerment. Listener discretion is strongly advised.
KEY DETAILS:
- Durousseau was born in Beaumont, Texas in 1970 and experienced significant brain trauma in utero and as a toddler. He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
- After graduating high school in 1989, he enlisted in the Army in 1992 and was stationed in Germany, where he married fellow soldier Natoca Spann.
- In 1997, while stationed at Fort Benning, he was arrested for kidnapping and rape but was acquitted. Less than a month later, Tracy Habersham was found murdered—DNA would eventually link Durousseau to her death.
RESOURCES:
For case documentation, sources, and additional information, visit: https://www.mythsandmalice.com/show/obscura/
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
CREDITS:
Research and narration by Justin Drown. Obscura is an independent true crime documentary podcast dedicated to telling the stories of forgotten victims with unflinching honesty and scholarly research. All information presented draws from court records, police reports, and verified news archives.
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, released with this episode is going to be a free fireside chat and I'm going to release one next episode as well.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Just to give you guys a taste of what you're missing on the Patreon that just isn't black label because there's other stuff that gets released there too.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If you'd like to hear more, head to patreon.com so I should obscure a crime podcast.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If not, just enjoy the episodes and the fireside chat.
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[SPEAKER_04]: For a time in the late 90s and early 2000s, a man stalked the streets of Jacksonville, Florida.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He stealthily dispatched of women, and a manor of which he got his nickname.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Jacksonville Strangler.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Today, we cover this man, and as many crimes,
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[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome listener.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm glad you're here.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Take a seat.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Next to the fire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Obscura, where we shine a light on the dark.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, welcome to Part 2 of a two-part series.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In the last episode, we covered Paul Deruso, a serial killer in rapist, as he's just getting started.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Now, in Part 2, we continue on with his deadly crimes, and his eventual downfall.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All right, let's get on with it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In June, 2001, a Jacksonville woman was raped in her home.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Russo was arrested and spent 30 days in jail.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He received two years probation in a deal that also kept his DNA out of the police database.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This failure to obtain his DNA, meant he was not linked to other unsolved cases.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This was a mistake.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This was a major mistake by law enforcement.
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[SPEAKER_04]: more people would die because of this, and August 2001 all worked most of the month as a school bus driver.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At the end of the month he was arrested for domestic battery, spent 48 days in jail, then all was released from jail when Nautica dropped the charges.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On April 25th, 2002, Paul was arrested for committing burglary.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He was acquitted of the burglary charge by the jury.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The judge was rightfully furious, an extended durooseau's probation by two years, seemingly in spite.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On December 17, 18-year-old Nicole Williams was reported missing by her family.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Her body was found two days later, on so-tell drive.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She was tied up in a ditch, and had been strangled to death.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nikiya Kilpatrick was living at Spanish Oak's apartment, along with Chantral Green and Sarah Anthony.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In the fall of 2002, Kilpatrick and Green met Paul De Russo.
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[SPEAKER_04]: One day, when he pulled up to them and his red Mazda, they were walking home from the store.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Green went out with Paul that night.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He picked up Green at the apartment of Sarah Anthony, and Kilpatrick was there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Paul told the women that he sold lingerie, and Kilpatrick went to his car to see it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What they didn't know is they were looking at the underwear of murdered women.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Despite the fact that he was dating her friend,
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[SPEAKER_04]: Phone records indicate numerous calls from Paul D'Nickey at Kilpatrick during December of 2002.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His last call to Kilpatrick was made at 903 p.m. on December 29th, 2002.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The layers of affairs he was having here is something to behold.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He was cheating on his wife with green and then cheating on green with Kilpatrick.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All while selling them and their friends, the underwear of murdered women.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nicky a Kilpatrick sister on to share called Kilpatrick's apartment on the evening of December 29th, 2002, between 9 and 10, to pick up her children, the apartment was tidy and welcoming.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There were candles lit, and the TV was playing in the background.
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[SPEAKER_04]: While Chero was there, Capatric received a phone call.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Capatric spoke quietly, so that Chero could not hear, and seemed to Chero that she was talking to a man.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Chero left, and when she called after she got home, Capatric cut off the call, as if she had company or was expecting company.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nauna Daruso, all's wife, drove him to an apartment off Arlington Expressway around 830 or 9pm, on December 29th.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He told her he was going to watch a football game with friends.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This is baffling to me.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I cannot imagine asking my wife to drop me off at a strange apartment down the block from the actual apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe she was just over dealing with him at that point.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All returned home sometime after one or two a.m. Run to share attempted to call Kilpatrick several times over the next two days.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But Kilpatrick never answered Sarah Anthony walked by Kilpatrick's apartment at 6 a.m. That morning it was still dark outside.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She saw the bedroom lie on and noticed a strange smell.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When Anthony returned from work, she knocked on Kilpatrick's door, but got no response.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nor did Kilpatrick enter Anthony's calls later.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The following evening December 31st, Kilpatrick still did not answer her door.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The smell was getting much worse.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Around midnight, Anthony returned to Kilpatrick's apartment and beat on the window.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Listener.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Their images that hone us all, they only where we get, both large and small.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When Anthony saw moments after beating on the window, it's something that Anthony, whenever forget, and not for lack of trying, the face of a small child appeared in the window, like a ghostly visage.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The child's eyes were red and he was crying.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was Kilpatrick's two-year-old son.
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[SPEAKER_04]: After the initial shock, Anthony looked past the desperate child and saw someone
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[SPEAKER_04]: Anthony could see Kilpatrick lying on the floor with her other son, an 11-month-old lying on her.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Anthony broken and called 911 from Kilpatrick's apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All the holding the 11-month-old, will the sobbing two-year-old, Kondey Anthony's leg.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The apartment was in total disarray.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was nude in lying partly in the bathroom, and partly in the hallway next to the bedroom.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She had literature marks on her hands, and a coaxial cable around her neck.
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[SPEAKER_04]: A heater in Kilpatrick's bedroom had a cut cord, but the cord was never found.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The scene showed no sign of force entry, no latent prints of value were found.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rosa conducted the autopsy on Kilpatrick.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was five foot five and weighed 145 pounds.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was decomposing by the time of the autopsy.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Janet Cable wrapped tightly around her neck, in a slip knot, and trauma to her head.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rosa did not find any binding marks on her hands or feet.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But this could have been attributed to the decomposition.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Spurm was present in Irva, China.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Larry Lake of Gator City Taxi Company trained Paul to drive a taxi cab on January 9, 2003.
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[SPEAKER_04]: During this training, Lake and Paul picked up Shawanda McHallister and took her to an address on Arco Drive.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At that time, McHallister lived with her boyfriend, Rashid Toppy, in an apartment on Arco Drive.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On that date, Toppy helped McHallister with laundry, and then went to school, arriving at school at 7.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Toppy spoke with McHallister once on the phone
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[SPEAKER_04]: He arrived home at around 9 or 9.30.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey could knock into the apartment because he had left his key in the car of another girlfriend, Victoria.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey saw a while on and heard the television.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He banged on the door, but got no answer.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And when he called McAllister from his cell phone, he could hear it ringing inside.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But McAllister did not answer.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey left went to McDonald's and then went Dixie and returned to the apartment again.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This time, the lights were off.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Tope knocked and called again, but again, received no answer.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Tope attempted to enter the apartment from a window, but heard a black male saying, she wanted don't wanna see you no more.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Tope responded to McAllister, mentioning that McAllister was pregnant, and the male voice said,
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[SPEAKER_04]: What, you're pregnant?
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[SPEAKER_04]: Toby asked for his work clothes, which were pushed through the window.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At the window, McHallister told Toby to come back at one in the morning.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Toby asked a neighbor, she quit a Jones, if he could use a phone, because a cell phone battery died.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Toby used the phone, and then went to the Windixie.
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[SPEAKER_04]: were used the pay phone to call us cousin, to help you return to the apartment and, because no one answered the door, entered through the window, to help you found McAllister dead, face down with her hands and legs tied together.
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[SPEAKER_04]: McAllister was nude from the waist down.
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[SPEAKER_04]: A cord was wrapped around her neck.
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[SPEAKER_04]: A condom was found on the floor.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The cord of the television set had been cut.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It appeared as though, whoever was in that apartment,
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[SPEAKER_04]: Just to get him to leave, just for enough time to kill McAllister.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rusea conducted McAllister's autopsy.
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[SPEAKER_04]: McAllister was five foot five and 161 pounds.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She had a bloody nose.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Judging extension cord looped into multiple knots around her neck.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Her feet were bound with a cord and marks on her wrist were consistent with having been bound.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At around 930 or 10 that evening, Manita Hicks saw a Gator City cab, parked in front of her apartment, unmotans his way, near Arco Drive.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Around 35 to 45 minutes later, Hicks took out her trash, and encountered Paul running to his cab.
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[SPEAKER_04]: 20 to 30 minutes later, Hicks heard a man screaming.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody called the police.
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[SPEAKER_04]: My girlfriend has been killed.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Darrell Lemmon that saw the Gator City Taxi cab, Ark on Matanzas, at around 1020 to 1030, in a tall skinny black man, get out and walk around to Arco Drive.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Around 1130, Lemmon saw the man quickly return to his cab and drive off.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The following morning, Kimberly Barron, while working as a 911 operator, received a call from a payphone.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and accused her boyfriend, Rashad, of killing McAllister because she was pregnant, needed not want the baby.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Hall refused to speak to a homicide detective and gave no further information.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On February 2, 2003, Paul Deruso was arrested for dealing in stolen property, the in violation of probation, from prior rape charges.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When Paul was questioned by a detective
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[SPEAKER_04]: He testified that he had taken Shawanda McAllister for a cab there, but denied he had ever seen her again, or that he knew where she lived, or that he had sex with her.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The others had murdered Theresa Mack.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Paul suggested that Adam Moss wore Johnny Parker, or the Mar-Odom, could have killed Theresa.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He suggested that Frampton Brown could have killed Nakia Copactric.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All then directly accused where she'd toepy, of killing Shawanda McAllister.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Hulk claimed that he met Theresa Mack at the hospital and that he had sex 7 to 10 times with her inner apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He claims he stopped by to see her on July 26, 1999 and had sex with her.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Mack told him that her television was broken.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And asked him to take it to the dumpster.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This is not consistent with witness testimony at the time that remembered it playing.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All then claims that he was told he could keep the television if he wanted it since it was broken.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He then took the television and put it in his car and left.
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[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, when he found out about a week later that Theresa Mack had been killed, he did not call the police because, quote, he didn't have any information to give them, and he continued, when I left, she was still alive, and that when he was asked by a detective originally, whether he knew Theresa Mack, he denied it because, supposedly, he was scared,
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[SPEAKER_04]: On December 29, 2002, the bedroom was in disarray when he arrived, according to him, at her apartment that evening, all claimed he planned to spend the night, but at three a.m., a man later identified as Frampton Brown arrived, angry at Kilpatrick and, quote, grabbing at her.
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[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he was concerned for Kilpatrick's safety, but when she told him she would be fine, he then left.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Paul claimed that he continued calling Kilpatrick, but from a payphone, rather than a cell phone.
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[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he found out four or five days later that Kilpatrick had been killed.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He did not call the police because, quote, he didn't know the circumstances of how she died.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Or when she died, also admitted that he had sex with Shwanda McAllister, on January 9, 2003 in her apartment, the same day met her as a cab fare, afterward, according to Paul, McAllister gone to a fight with Rashid Tobey, who tried to enter the apartment through the window, Paul left the apartment, but later returned, and found McAllister dead.
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[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he called 911 the following morning, but did not identify himself because he did not want to get involved.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All the Russo was ultimately charged for five counts of murder, not counting the two unborn lives he ended.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Russo began his killing spree, less than a month after being acquitted of rape charges.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His pattern involved meeting young, single African-American women, typically through his job, earning their trust and gaining access to their homes.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Once inside, he would bind and rape them before strangling them to death with a cord, usually found within the house or apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On September 7th, 1997, the new body of 26-year-old Tracy Habersham was discovered at
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[SPEAKER_04]: Haversham had been raped and strangled with a cord.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At the time, Drusso was not considered the suspect, but DNA winked him to the crime.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In 1999, Drusso raped and murdered 24-year-old Theresa Mack in her apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The witness reports saw him leaving a scene carrying a television.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In 2001, he was arrested in Jacksonville for reaping another young woman.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We had found that his criminal history that the Rootsow had been arrested in 2001 for sexual battery on a 19-year old female here in Jacksonville.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Insert 30 days in the Montgomery Correctional Center, followed by the two years of probation that would later be extended.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When you get a person like this, it thinks he can get away without having to answer for his crimes.
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[SPEAKER_02]: didn't to me, they become very dangerous, and they're going to escalate.
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[SPEAKER_04]: On December 19th, 2002, the body of 18-year-old Nicole L. Williams was discovered wrapped in a blue blanket at the bottom of a ditch in Jacksonville.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She had been reported two days earlier.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Less than two weeks later, on January 1st, 2003, relatives of 19-year-old Nikita Kilpatrick checked on her after not hearing from her for several days.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They found her dead in her apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She had been raped and strangled with a cord two days earlier.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Her two young sons aged 11 months and two years were found alive, but malnourished.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was about six months pregnant when she was killed.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Eight days after that, 20-year-old nursing assistant she wandered in East McAllister, also pregnant.
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[SPEAKER_04]: was raped and strangled in our Jacksonville apartment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The scene closely resembled Kilpatrick's murder.
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[SPEAKER_04]: McHowlster was killed onto Rousseau's first day working as a taxi cab driver, for Gator City Taxi.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And her body was found literally the following day.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It seemed at a certain point, he had entered a Pazarkur mode, and just couldn't stop.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His final known victims, 17-year-old Giovanna Jefferson, and 19-year-old Saruta Cohen, were found on February 5th in a ditch near construction site on New King's Road in Jacksonville.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Police determined that Jefferson was murdered around January 20th, and Cohen about 10 days later, witnesses reported seeing both women with a taxi driver matching to Russo's description.
17:23.289 --> 17:24.391
[SPEAKER_04]: On the night they disappeared.
17:24.911 --> 17:32.021
[SPEAKER_04]: For these crimes, Paul de Russo was arrested on June 17th, 2003, in charge with five counts of murder.
17:32.521 --> 17:40.071
[SPEAKER_04]: On December 13th, 2007, he was sentenced to death by
17:40.051 --> 18:09.163
[SPEAKER_04]: As of August 18, 2013, he remained on Florida's death row at Union Correctional Institution, then in January 2017, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, ruling that the original 10-2 jury vote for death was unconstitutional under state law, which requires a unanimous decision in capital cases, following a new sensing hearing
18:09.346 --> 18:16.319
[SPEAKER_04]: And on December 10th, 2021, Deruso was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
18:16.720 --> 18:22.350
[SPEAKER_01]: Willie Newton, 95, a convicted killer in a cute serial killer, will spend the rest of his life in prison.
18:22.811 --> 18:25.816
[SPEAKER_01]: Paula Doroso's death sentence was overturned today.
18:25.836 --> 18:27.900
[SPEAKER_01]: He was charged with killing five women.
18:27.920 --> 18:31.607
[SPEAKER_01]: He was only convicted of one killing that happened in 1999.
18:33.528 --> 18:36.940
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, all to Russo is a remorseless killer.
18:36.960 --> 18:42.559
[SPEAKER_04]: He's never confessed to any of the crimes he so obviously committed.
18:42.978 --> 18:45.121
[SPEAKER_04]: Let alone apologize for what he's done.
18:45.161 --> 18:52.272
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead, he sits in his cell, showing no signs of guilt or regret for the pain he caused.
18:52.933 --> 18:56.077
[SPEAKER_04]: The wives he destroyed, and the families he has shattered.
18:56.939 --> 19:07.855
[SPEAKER_04]: He preyed on women who trusted him, women who believed they were safe in their own homes, their own city, stripped them of their dignity, their future, and their voices.
19:08.122 --> 19:14.232
[SPEAKER_04]: And even after the evidence mounted, after the court spoke, Deruso refused to take responsibility.
19:15.134 --> 19:16.916
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no redemption in his story.
19:17.678 --> 19:18.960
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no moment of truth.
19:19.821 --> 19:26.993
[SPEAKER_04]: Just a trail of devastation left by a man who used trust as a weapon and cruelty as his calling card.
19:28.155 --> 19:29.898
[SPEAKER_04]: All Deruso will die in prison.
19:30.599 --> 19:33.083
[SPEAKER_04]: In the world will move on without him.
19:33.383 --> 19:43.042
[SPEAKER_04]: But the memory of his victims, their names, their faces, their stolen futures, remain in the minds of the people that knew them, and love them.
19:44.224 --> 19:50.937
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, while he silenced them, their stories continue to speak louder than he ever will.
20:17.410 --> 20:19.054
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, how are you?
20:19.635 --> 20:25.569
[SPEAKER_04]: So, before I get going on this fire side chat, I just want to let you know that black label is coming this weekend.
20:25.589 --> 20:28.475
[SPEAKER_04]: It is an extra large episode of black label.
20:29.497 --> 20:31.823
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I wanted to make one a little longer.
20:31.863 --> 20:34.609
[SPEAKER_04]: This month, uh, give you guys something...
20:34.589 --> 20:35.871
[SPEAKER_04]: a bit longer to chew on.
20:36.092 --> 20:40.740
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be somewhere between three to four different cases along with something for everyone.
20:41.221 --> 20:43.425
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so expect it this weekend.
20:43.906 --> 20:44.928
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm still working on it.
20:45.569 --> 20:53.543
[SPEAKER_04]: I have some editing to do and would have liked to release it today, but I just, you know, I want to make sure it's nice and polished.
20:53.776 --> 21:02.287
[SPEAKER_04]: With that out of the way, I wanna thank you guys for the overwhelmingly positive response of the last fireside chat that I did.
21:02.307 --> 21:04.450
[SPEAKER_04]: I recorded that in the spur of the moment.
21:04.690 --> 21:06.192
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just feeling a certain way.
21:06.232 --> 21:14.603
[SPEAKER_04]: My wife was out at a celebration of life for someone that died and it just had
21:14.768 --> 21:20.194
[SPEAKER_04]: Got me in a certain mood, and I just pulled the mic out, and, you know, it was late at night.
21:20.615 --> 21:22.537
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just opened up, essentially.
21:23.278 --> 21:29.385
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, most of the comments were wildly positive, and I really appreciate that.
21:29.766 --> 21:31.508
[SPEAKER_04]: There were a couple that disagreed with certain things.
21:31.608 --> 21:35.292
[SPEAKER_04]: I definitely understand on my evolving stance with the death penalty.
21:35.773 --> 21:36.994
[SPEAKER_04]: I get that trust me.
21:37.415 --> 21:39.477
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not perfect, certainly.
21:39.895 --> 21:45.021
[SPEAKER_04]: But then there was one person and this kind of surprised me a little bit.
21:45.562 --> 21:57.036
[SPEAKER_04]: They seemed upset when I casually mentioned my religion, something that I don't really open up about because people tend to make a lot of harsh judgments about you if you do.
21:57.877 --> 22:01.221
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, it's kind of confirming a lot of fears.
22:01.902 --> 22:02.983
[SPEAKER_04]: I have with that.
22:02.963 --> 22:10.396
[SPEAKER_04]: This person has been a long time subscriber and always been a pretty positive person on the Patreon, never really had any issue.
22:10.997 --> 22:15.045
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he seemed to take from that that I was some sort of white supremacist.
22:15.886 --> 22:23.520
[SPEAKER_04]: I would ask you to go check out episodes like Matthew Shepard, Heather Higher,
22:24.007 --> 22:27.193
[SPEAKER_04]: green river killer, you know, things like that, right?
22:27.594 --> 22:35.309
[SPEAKER_04]: I go check them out and, you know, maybe remind yourself then, I'm not the person that you seem to think I am.
22:35.689 --> 22:36.511
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll just put it that way.
22:37.032 --> 22:44.867
[SPEAKER_04]: So, one of the things that was brought up is that the fact that I don't like to talk about politics on the podcast, and
22:44.847 --> 22:51.317
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the thing is I feel like you guys can get a sense of my character through the podcast and that's enough.
22:52.439 --> 23:00.011
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like a lot of people inject politics into everything and I've always wanted my podcast to stray away from that.
23:00.592 --> 23:09.606
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of true crime podcasts where the presenter has a tendency to inject their politics into what's happening.
23:09.586 --> 23:14.717
[SPEAKER_04]: And for me, whenever I hear that, all I hear is, me, me, me, me, me, right?
23:15.259 --> 23:18.987
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just a spotlight on their beliefs, their cult of personality.
23:19.568 --> 23:21.472
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is something I've never wanted.
23:21.512 --> 23:28.067
[SPEAKER_04]: And so early on, I made a promise to you guys that that's not something that I would do.
23:28.047 --> 23:43.693
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you kind of figure things out and the way I cover things and, you know, I try to use compassion and things like that when I'm covering cases, if you, you know, think of certain things about me, that's fine, but
23:43.673 --> 23:49.659
[SPEAKER_04]: I would hope that you would know that, I am not a hateful person, I am a very open person.
23:50.119 --> 24:03.953
[SPEAKER_04]: I always have been, and it is surprising to me that somebody would take that stance about me because I don't know, it certainly feels kind of unearmed, I'll just put it that way.
24:04.834 --> 24:11.520
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, yeah, so, you know, if you're hearing this, and you know who you are,
24:11.872 --> 24:21.443
[SPEAKER_04]: Just, you know, please, maybe consider that I'm not the person that you seem to think I am now, based on one thing I said in one podcast.
24:21.676 --> 24:32.928
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, so with that out of the way, the other thing I wanted to talk about because I see this conversation come up all the time and recently it sprung up on social media.
24:33.709 --> 24:37.553
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's about the morality of true crime as a whole.
24:38.274 --> 24:50.687
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is something that really gets my gourd because I really disagree with some of the takes you see on Reddit and Facebook, et cetera.
24:50.667 --> 24:59.644
[SPEAKER_04]: is that true crime is a moral, that it's rubber-nacking, that it's gawking, et cetera, and here's where I disagree.
24:59.684 --> 25:02.830
[SPEAKER_04]: I think of true crime as necessary.
25:03.752 --> 25:07.579
[SPEAKER_04]: You can look at all these articles that get released today.
25:07.829 --> 25:11.054
[SPEAKER_04]: that are like, where are all the major serial killers?
25:11.394 --> 25:14.058
[SPEAKER_04]: They seem to have gone away, right?
25:14.518 --> 25:23.631
[SPEAKER_04]: And while we do have some here and there, nothing can quite compete with the peak that you saw from like the 50s through the 80s and especially in the 80s.
25:24.813 --> 25:27.897
[SPEAKER_04]: And part of what I think happened
25:28.568 --> 25:30.972
[SPEAKER_04]: is that people became more aware.
25:31.032 --> 25:34.218
[SPEAKER_04]: They stopped hopping into random vehicles.
25:35.420 --> 25:38.245
[SPEAKER_04]: They stopped talking to strangers alone.
25:38.806 --> 25:41.191
[SPEAKER_04]: They became more aware of their surroundings.
25:42.152 --> 25:50.307
[SPEAKER_04]: And I genuinely, and I mean this, I genuinely believe true crime plays a part in this.
25:50.287 --> 26:01.008
[SPEAKER_04]: I grew up watching Unsolve Mysteries, America's most wanted Rasq9-1-1 forensic files, you know, the whole laundry list of them, and I love them.
26:01.408 --> 26:12.109
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they were huge influence on me, and they made me hyperware of what not to do, of what not to do, and what to do.
26:12.950 --> 26:29.645
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I would have never been caught doing something incredibly stupid, you know, and that's not to, you know, blame anyone that made mistakes in the past, they were educated on this, you know, a lot of television showed the world as this incredibly peaceful and safe place.
26:30.506 --> 26:40.915
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think people kind of became naive, especially post-free love movement, so you had a lot of women just jumping into random vehicles with complete strangers.
26:41.047 --> 27:06.143
[SPEAKER_04]: And when you look at the stomping grounds of serial killers, like the green river killer, and the amount of people were talking 50 plus that they had killed a lot of them, sex workers, and a lot of them crimes of opportunity, well, then you can see, man, if you were hitchhiking during that period, your odds weren't particularly great.
27:06.123 --> 27:20.728
[SPEAKER_04]: When you were in the stomping rounds of some of these killers, it wasn't a good idea, and yeah, true crime comes around, and not only does it educate individuals on what you should do, and what you shouldn't do, etc.
27:21.108 --> 27:25.857
[SPEAKER_04]: But also serial killers start to see like damn, this DNA stuff is serious.
27:26.257 --> 27:30.865
[SPEAKER_04]: There is a lot of ways for myself to get caught.
27:30.845 --> 27:47.003
[SPEAKER_04]: And so suddenly, you're scaring killers because all these people that thought they were smart are getting caught left and right, and you know, sitting around waiting for the knock, and then there would be victims are getting smarter too.
27:47.884 --> 27:50.367
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, that's where I am on true crime.
27:51.368 --> 27:53.410
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sick of this sort of
27:54.115 --> 27:57.239
[SPEAKER_04]: week, you know, sort of reddit take that.
27:57.819 --> 27:59.241
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's just exploitative.
27:59.361 --> 28:00.883
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just that, etc.
28:01.944 --> 28:10.354
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll tell you, I have been contacted by family members of cases post coverage of people thanking me for covering the case.
28:10.975 --> 28:16.061
[SPEAKER_04]: And then a lot of times I can't reach out to by family members asking me to cover a case.
28:17.523 --> 28:21.928
[SPEAKER_04]: When someone loses someone, there's such a finality to it.
28:22.280 --> 28:31.075
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's the end, and some people really do want their loved one stories out there, you know, for whatever reason.
28:31.493 --> 28:41.083
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's very presumptive to assume that true crime is this thing that's just a rubber necker's hobby.
28:41.624 --> 28:45.387
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a lot of us came to true crime in the same way.
28:46.328 --> 28:48.210
[SPEAKER_04]: We had darker interests when we were younger.
28:48.831 --> 28:54.697
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe due to some complicated situations at home, maybe not the best home life, right?
28:55.258 --> 28:57.400
[SPEAKER_04]: I know I had that experience.
28:57.380 --> 29:02.412
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it just led me down a path that I was always going to end up walking.
29:02.459 --> 29:05.462
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, people asked me, why do I cover a true crime?
29:06.183 --> 29:08.205
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's because it was what I was always going to do.
29:08.285 --> 29:15.873
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what I wanted to do when it came time for me to sit down, figure out what I was going to write.
29:16.313 --> 29:18.055
[SPEAKER_04]: It was always going to be true crime.
29:18.275 --> 29:19.637
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what flows from my fingers.
29:19.717 --> 29:21.078
[SPEAKER_04]: It's what I was made to do.
29:21.138 --> 29:23.000
[SPEAKER_04]: And I love doing it.
29:23.641 --> 29:27.505
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, I just get a little frustrated by those takes.
29:27.940 --> 29:42.131
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's sort of the surface level view if you just think of it as like, you know, shock entertainment in that alone and you don't think that it has any sort of impact socially.
29:43.114 --> 29:46.000
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're going to arrive to that conclusion.
29:46.165 --> 30:01.667
[SPEAKER_04]: But when you consider the effect that it's had on the zeitgeist as a whole, the understanding of serial killers and the social awareness and impusing people, I do think it provides a service.
30:02.148 --> 30:08.397
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not just saying that, like from a stance of defensiveness, I've always believed this.
30:09.438 --> 30:15.447
[SPEAKER_04]: Ever since I watched America's most wanted as a child, I always looked at it this way.
30:15.427 --> 30:23.636
[SPEAKER_04]: and it really seems like a post-COVID post-Tiger King type of thing where people view it that way.
30:24.257 --> 30:37.772
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, I will say, I could see someone saying that about Tiger King because if you don't know, the Tiger King himself, he was given a very, let's just say,
30:37.752 --> 30:43.583
[SPEAKER_04]: positive edit job to make him look a lot nicer than he actually is.
30:44.084 --> 30:52.499
[SPEAKER_04]: They cut out a lot of racist ransom among other things to sort of make him the protagonist of that show.
30:52.900 --> 31:00.975
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you want to say something like that, that sort of infotainment, that altar's reality to form a TV series,
31:00.955 --> 31:03.880
[SPEAKER_04]: is exploitative sure I can see that.
31:04.241 --> 31:07.968
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, someone like me, sometimes I'll work a case for a long time.
31:08.449 --> 31:16.924
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when I finish the episode, I'm not always particularly happy with how entertaining it's been, you know?
31:17.084 --> 31:22.474
[SPEAKER_04]: Like sometimes I'll finish an episode and I'm like, man, I hope people find this exciting because
31:22.454 --> 31:31.068
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't twist facts, I tell all the facts that happen the way they happen, and that's, you know, the simple angle of things.
31:31.088 --> 31:41.704
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't try to mold reality to create this, you know, mystery drama or whatever, you know, that these shows on Netflix tend to do.
31:41.724 --> 31:48.495
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you know, there was that Ed Geen show that came out recently, the monster TV series.
31:48.475 --> 32:16.626
[SPEAKER_04]: This series that started out strong with the Jeffrey Dahmer, one where they took a couple liberties to combine certain characters or whatever, but they did overall a decent charm on Dahmer, but starting with the Menendez brothers and then especially with Ed Geen, the creators blurred the facts more and more to create more entertaining narrative, and that to me is a bit wrong.
32:16.606 --> 32:29.761
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to change the names of the people, you know, involved, including the serial killer and make your own show, which from what I understand the creator of that show also makes American horror story, you know, that's fine.
32:30.342 --> 32:38.331
[SPEAKER_04]: But taking reality and kind of pushing it around a certain narrative, that kind of thing has always bothered me.
32:38.792 --> 32:45.820
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the worst examples I like to bring
32:45.800 --> 33:14.423
[SPEAKER_04]: you know cartoon that took the real story of a real person and they made it like a love story with her with someone that she didn't have a love story with and in reality she was a child that was basically abused by her captors so taking like a victim of that and then turning it into a
33:14.403 --> 33:25.181
[SPEAKER_04]: So even like from a true crime perspective, I've never been a fan of that, um, which, you know, that's why when I cover cases, what you get is what you get.
33:25.221 --> 33:28.346
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'll get through the whole case final, I'll put that to sew together.
33:28.726 --> 33:31.170
[SPEAKER_04]: And sometimes there's not that many twists and turns.
33:31.791 --> 33:34.656
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes what happened is what happened.
33:34.636 --> 33:40.065
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, uh, yeah, I think that pretty much wraps up fire side chat for this week.
33:40.666 --> 33:44.552
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and remember, you got black label coming this weekend.
33:45.133 --> 33:47.817
[SPEAKER_04]: Really excited to get this one out to you guys.
33:48.418 --> 33:49.880
[SPEAKER_04]: I put a lot of hours into it.
33:50.481 --> 33:53.867
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be a long one and I hope you guys enjoy that.
33:54.548 --> 33:58.534
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I thank you for listening and keep the fire burning.
00:00.031 --> 00:08.687
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, released with this episode is going to be a free fireside chat and I'm going to release one next episode as well.
00:09.048 --> 00:17.564
[SPEAKER_04]: Just to give you guys a taste of what you're missing on the Patreon that just isn't black label because there's other stuff that gets released there too.
00:18.005 --> 00:23.575
[SPEAKER_04]: If you'd like to hear more, head to patreon.com so I should obscure a crime podcast.
00:23.555 --> 00:27.240
[SPEAKER_04]: If not, just enjoy the episodes and the fireside chat.
00:27.801 --> 00:34.429
[SPEAKER_04]: For a time in the late 90s and early 2000s, a man stalked the streets of Jacksonville, Florida.
00:35.271 --> 00:40.337
[SPEAKER_04]: He stealthily dispatched of women, and a manor of which he got his nickname.
00:41.499 --> 00:42.961
[SPEAKER_04]: The Jacksonville Strangler.
00:44.102 --> 00:48.448
[SPEAKER_04]: Today, we cover this man, and as many crimes,
00:51.112 --> 00:51.954
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome listener.
00:52.856 --> 00:53.778
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm glad you're here.
00:54.820 --> 00:55.341
[SPEAKER_03]: Take a seat.
00:56.123 --> 00:56.904
[SPEAKER_03]: Next to the fire.
01:00.532 --> 01:07.888
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Obscura, where we shine a light on the dark.
01:28.996 --> 01:32.621
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, welcome to Part 2 of a two-part series.
01:33.201 --> 01:39.790
[SPEAKER_04]: In the last episode, we covered Paul Deruso, a serial killer in rapist, as he's just getting started.
01:40.311 --> 01:45.798
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, in Part 2, we continue on with his deadly crimes, and his eventual downfall.
01:46.379 --> 01:48.321
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, let's get on with it.
01:49.280 --> 01:54.126
[SPEAKER_04]: In June, 2001, a Jacksonville woman was raped in her home.
01:54.526 --> 01:57.991
[SPEAKER_04]: The Russo was arrested and spent 30 days in jail.
01:58.451 --> 02:04.679
[SPEAKER_04]: He received two years probation in a deal that also kept his DNA out of the police database.
02:05.320 --> 02:10.726
[SPEAKER_04]: This failure to obtain his DNA, meant he was not linked to other unsolved cases.
02:11.327 --> 02:12.288
[SPEAKER_04]: This was a mistake.
02:12.769 --> 02:15.372
[SPEAKER_04]: This was a major mistake by law enforcement.
02:15.352 --> 02:22.983
[SPEAKER_04]: more people would die because of this, and August 2001 all worked most of the month as a school bus driver.
02:23.624 --> 02:34.120
[SPEAKER_04]: At the end of the month he was arrested for domestic battery, spent 48 days in jail, then all was released from jail when Nautica dropped the charges.
02:34.100 --> 02:38.908
[SPEAKER_04]: On April 25th, 2002, Paul was arrested for committing burglary.
02:39.369 --> 02:42.754
[SPEAKER_04]: He was acquitted of the burglary charge by the jury.
02:43.335 --> 02:50.187
[SPEAKER_04]: The judge was rightfully furious, an extended durooseau's probation by two years, seemingly in spite.
02:50.848 --> 02:56.918
[SPEAKER_04]: On December 17, 18-year-old Nicole Williams was reported missing by her family.
02:57.016 --> 03:00.680
[SPEAKER_04]: Her body was found two days later, on so-tell drive.
03:01.161 --> 03:04.665
[SPEAKER_04]: She was tied up in a ditch, and had been strangled to death.
03:05.186 --> 03:11.934
[SPEAKER_04]: Nikiya Kilpatrick was living at Spanish Oak's apartment, along with Chantral Green and Sarah Anthony.
03:12.515 --> 03:17.021
[SPEAKER_04]: In the fall of 2002, Kilpatrick and Green met Paul De Russo.
03:17.581 --> 03:23.108
[SPEAKER_04]: One day, when he pulled up to them and his red Mazda, they were walking home from the store.
03:23.088 --> 03:24.812
[SPEAKER_04]: Green went out with Paul that night.
03:25.233 --> 03:29.682
[SPEAKER_04]: He picked up Green at the apartment of Sarah Anthony, and Kilpatrick was there.
03:30.123 --> 03:35.414
[SPEAKER_04]: Paul told the women that he sold lingerie, and Kilpatrick went to his car to see it.
03:35.855 --> 03:39.924
[SPEAKER_04]: What they didn't know is they were looking at the underwear of murdered women.
03:40.405 --> 03:42.750
[SPEAKER_04]: Despite the fact that he was dating her friend,
03:42.730 --> 03:48.598
[SPEAKER_04]: Phone records indicate numerous calls from Paul D'Nickey at Kilpatrick during December of 2002.
03:49.439 --> 03:55.467
[SPEAKER_04]: His last call to Kilpatrick was made at 903 p.m. on December 29th, 2002.
03:55.547 --> 04:00.233
[SPEAKER_04]: The layers of affairs he was having here is something to behold.
04:00.733 --> 04:06.561
[SPEAKER_04]: He was cheating on his wife with green and then cheating on green with Kilpatrick.
04:06.541 --> 04:10.908
[SPEAKER_04]: All while selling them and their friends, the underwear of murdered women.
04:11.549 --> 04:24.972
[SPEAKER_04]: Nicky a Kilpatrick sister on to share called Kilpatrick's apartment on the evening of December 29th, 2002, between 9 and 10, to pick up her children, the apartment was tidy and welcoming.
04:24.952 --> 04:28.218
[SPEAKER_04]: There were candles lit, and the TV was playing in the background.
04:28.699 --> 04:31.805
[SPEAKER_04]: While Chero was there, Capatric received a phone call.
04:32.286 --> 04:38.999
[SPEAKER_04]: Capatric spoke quietly, so that Chero could not hear, and seemed to Chero that she was talking to a man.
04:39.480 --> 04:47.415
[SPEAKER_04]: Chero left, and when she called after she got home, Capatric cut off the call, as if she had company or was expecting company.
04:47.395 --> 04:57.131
[SPEAKER_04]: Nauna Daruso, all's wife, drove him to an apartment off Arlington Expressway around 830 or 9pm, on December 29th.
04:57.471 --> 04:59.955
[SPEAKER_04]: He told her he was going to watch a football game with friends.
05:00.536 --> 05:01.959
[SPEAKER_04]: This is baffling to me.
05:02.460 --> 05:09.271
[SPEAKER_04]: I cannot imagine asking my wife to drop me off at a strange apartment down the block from the actual apartment.
05:09.691 --> 05:12.576
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe she was just over dealing with him at that point.
05:12.556 --> 05:21.032
[SPEAKER_04]: All returned home sometime after one or two a.m. Run to share attempted to call Kilpatrick several times over the next two days.
05:21.513 --> 05:30.430
[SPEAKER_04]: But Kilpatrick never answered Sarah Anthony walked by Kilpatrick's apartment at 6 a.m. That morning it was still dark outside.
05:30.410 --> 05:33.895
[SPEAKER_04]: She saw the bedroom lie on and noticed a strange smell.
05:34.416 --> 05:39.564
[SPEAKER_04]: When Anthony returned from work, she knocked on Kilpatrick's door, but got no response.
05:40.145 --> 05:42.930
[SPEAKER_04]: Nor did Kilpatrick enter Anthony's calls later.
05:43.531 --> 05:48.458
[SPEAKER_04]: The following evening December 31st, Kilpatrick still did not answer her door.
05:48.959 --> 05:50.802
[SPEAKER_04]: The smell was getting much worse.
05:51.383 --> 05:55.790
[SPEAKER_04]: Around midnight, Anthony returned to Kilpatrick's apartment and beat on the window.
05:56.351 --> 05:57.092
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener.
05:57.072 --> 06:01.756
[SPEAKER_04]: Their images that hone us all, they only where we get, both large and small.
06:02.177 --> 06:14.568
[SPEAKER_04]: When Anthony saw moments after beating on the window, it's something that Anthony, whenever forget, and not for lack of trying, the face of a small child appeared in the window, like a ghostly visage.
06:15.129 --> 06:17.571
[SPEAKER_04]: The child's eyes were red and he was crying.
06:18.051 --> 06:19.953
[SPEAKER_04]: It was Kilpatrick's two-year-old son.
06:20.534 --> 06:26.539
[SPEAKER_04]: After the initial shock, Anthony looked past the desperate child and saw someone
06:26.519 --> 06:32.308
[SPEAKER_04]: Anthony could see Kilpatrick lying on the floor with her other son, an 11-month-old lying on her.
06:32.949 --> 06:36.555
[SPEAKER_04]: Anthony broken and called 911 from Kilpatrick's apartment.
06:37.156 --> 06:43.245
[SPEAKER_04]: All the holding the 11-month-old, will the sobbing two-year-old, Kondey Anthony's leg.
06:43.225 --> 06:45.529
[SPEAKER_04]: The apartment was in total disarray.
06:46.070 --> 06:52.000
[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was nude in lying partly in the bathroom, and partly in the hallway next to the bedroom.
06:52.601 --> 06:57.369
[SPEAKER_04]: She had literature marks on her hands, and a coaxial cable around her neck.
06:57.990 --> 07:03.259
[SPEAKER_04]: A heater in Kilpatrick's bedroom had a cut cord, but the cord was never found.
07:03.239 --> 07:08.326
[SPEAKER_04]: The scene showed no sign of force entry, no latent prints of value were found.
07:08.786 --> 07:11.950
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rosa conducted the autopsy on Kilpatrick.
07:12.311 --> 07:16.156
[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was five foot five and weighed 145 pounds.
07:16.637 --> 07:19.560
[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was decomposing by the time of the autopsy.
07:20.001 --> 07:24.847
[SPEAKER_04]: Janet Cable wrapped tightly around her neck, in a slip knot, and trauma to her head.
07:25.308 --> 07:29.213
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rosa did not find any binding marks on her hands or feet.
07:29.193 --> 07:31.919
[SPEAKER_04]: But this could have been attributed to the decomposition.
07:32.420 --> 07:34.465
[SPEAKER_04]: Spurm was present in Irva, China.
07:34.906 --> 07:38.134
[SPEAKER_04]: The cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.
07:38.595 --> 07:46.493
[SPEAKER_04]: Larry Lake of Gator City Taxi Company trained Paul to drive a taxi cab on January 9, 2003.
07:46.473 --> 07:53.885
[SPEAKER_04]: During this training, Lake and Paul picked up Shawanda McHallister and took her to an address on Arco Drive.
07:54.426 --> 08:00.697
[SPEAKER_04]: At that time, McHallister lived with her boyfriend, Rashid Toppy, in an apartment on Arco Drive.
08:01.237 --> 08:08.409
[SPEAKER_04]: On that date, Toppy helped McHallister with laundry, and then went to school, arriving at school at 7.
08:08.870 --> 08:13.037
[SPEAKER_04]: Toppy spoke with McHallister once on the phone
08:13.017 --> 08:15.120
[SPEAKER_04]: He arrived home at around 9 or 9.30.
08:15.220 --> 08:22.530
[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey could knock into the apartment because he had left his key in the car of another girlfriend, Victoria.
08:23.011 --> 08:25.955
[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey saw a while on and heard the television.
08:26.395 --> 08:28.759
[SPEAKER_04]: He banged on the door, but got no answer.
08:29.239 --> 08:33.365
[SPEAKER_04]: And when he called McAllister from his cell phone, he could hear it ringing inside.
08:33.825 --> 08:35.808
[SPEAKER_04]: But McAllister did not answer.
08:36.269 --> 08:41.556
[SPEAKER_04]: Thopey left went to McDonald's and then went Dixie and returned to the apartment again.
08:41.536 --> 08:43.160
[SPEAKER_04]: This time, the lights were off.
08:43.741 --> 08:47.309
[SPEAKER_04]: Tope knocked and called again, but again, received no answer.
08:47.730 --> 08:54.505
[SPEAKER_04]: Tope attempted to enter the apartment from a window, but heard a black male saying, she wanted don't wanna see you no more.
08:55.127 --> 09:01.080
[SPEAKER_04]: Tope responded to McAllister, mentioning that McAllister was pregnant, and the male voice said,
09:01.060 --> 09:02.303
[SPEAKER_04]: What, you're pregnant?
09:02.683 --> 09:06.250
[SPEAKER_04]: Toby asked for his work clothes, which were pushed through the window.
09:06.311 --> 09:11.100
[SPEAKER_04]: At the window, McHallister told Toby to come back at one in the morning.
09:11.521 --> 09:17.493
[SPEAKER_04]: Toby asked a neighbor, she quit a Jones, if he could use a phone, because a cell phone battery died.
09:17.974 --> 09:21.381
[SPEAKER_04]: Toby used the phone, and then went to the Windixie.
09:21.361 --> 09:34.553
[SPEAKER_04]: were used the pay phone to call us cousin, to help you return to the apartment and, because no one answered the door, entered through the window, to help you found McAllister dead, face down with her hands and legs tied together.
09:35.133 --> 09:37.335
[SPEAKER_04]: McAllister was nude from the waist down.
09:37.936 --> 09:39.677
[SPEAKER_04]: A cord was wrapped around her neck.
09:40.278 --> 09:41.859
[SPEAKER_04]: A condom was found on the floor.
09:42.280 --> 09:44.622
[SPEAKER_04]: The cord of the television set had been cut.
09:44.662 --> 09:51.368
[SPEAKER_04]: It appeared as though, whoever was in that apartment,
09:51.348 --> 09:55.713
[SPEAKER_04]: Just to get him to leave, just for enough time to kill McAllister.
09:56.273 --> 09:59.396
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Rusea conducted McAllister's autopsy.
09:59.877 --> 10:03.621
[SPEAKER_04]: McAllister was five foot five and 161 pounds.
10:04.121 --> 10:05.163
[SPEAKER_04]: She had a bloody nose.
10:05.763 --> 10:09.347
[SPEAKER_04]: Judging extension cord looped into multiple knots around her neck.
10:09.827 --> 10:14.853
[SPEAKER_04]: Her feet were bound with a cord and marks on her wrist were consistent with having been bound.
10:15.373 --> 10:18.857
[SPEAKER_04]: The cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.
10:18.837 --> 10:28.694
[SPEAKER_04]: At around 930 or 10 that evening, Manita Hicks saw a Gator City cab, parked in front of her apartment, unmotans his way, near Arco Drive.
10:29.214 --> 10:36.447
[SPEAKER_04]: Around 35 to 45 minutes later, Hicks took out her trash, and encountered Paul running to his cab.
10:36.467 --> 10:40.333
[SPEAKER_04]: 20 to 30 minutes later, Hicks heard a man screaming.
10:40.774 --> 10:41.996
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody called the police.
10:42.537 --> 10:44.440
[SPEAKER_04]: My girlfriend has been killed.
10:44.420 --> 10:55.292
[SPEAKER_04]: Darrell Lemmon that saw the Gator City Taxi cab, Ark on Matanzas, at around 1020 to 1030, in a tall skinny black man, get out and walk around to Arco Drive.
10:55.752 --> 11:00.858
[SPEAKER_04]: Around 1130, Lemmon saw the man quickly return to his cab and drive off.
11:01.298 --> 11:14.072
[SPEAKER_04]: The following morning, Kimberly Barron, while working as a 911 operator, received a call from a payphone.
11:14.052 --> 11:20.322
[SPEAKER_04]: and accused her boyfriend, Rashad, of killing McAllister because she was pregnant, needed not want the baby.
11:20.803 --> 11:25.170
[SPEAKER_04]: Hall refused to speak to a homicide detective and gave no further information.
11:25.811 --> 11:34.986
[SPEAKER_04]: On February 2, 2003, Paul Deruso was arrested for dealing in stolen property, the in violation of probation, from prior rape charges.
11:35.567 --> 11:38.271
[SPEAKER_04]: When Paul was questioned by a detective
11:38.251 --> 11:48.482
[SPEAKER_04]: He testified that he had taken Shawanda McAllister for a cab there, but denied he had ever seen her again, or that he knew where she lived, or that he had sex with her.
11:48.963 --> 11:50.805
[SPEAKER_04]: The others had murdered Theresa Mack.
11:51.205 --> 11:56.951
[SPEAKER_04]: Paul suggested that Adam Moss wore Johnny Parker, or the Mar-Odom, could have killed Theresa.
11:57.392 --> 12:01.076
[SPEAKER_04]: He suggested that Frampton Brown could have killed Nakia Copactric.
12:01.516 --> 12:06.081
[SPEAKER_04]: All then directly accused where she'd toepy, of killing Shawanda McAllister.
12:06.061 --> 12:12.819
[SPEAKER_04]: Hulk claimed that he met Theresa Mack at the hospital and that he had sex 7 to 10 times with her inner apartment.
12:13.300 --> 12:18.674
[SPEAKER_04]: He claims he stopped by to see her on July 26, 1999 and had sex with her.
12:19.135 --> 12:22.163
[SPEAKER_04]: Mack told him that her television was broken.
12:22.143 --> 12:23.947
[SPEAKER_04]: And asked him to take it to the dumpster.
12:24.508 --> 12:29.759
[SPEAKER_04]: This is not consistent with witness testimony at the time that remembered it playing.
12:30.300 --> 12:35.110
[SPEAKER_04]: All then claims that he was told he could keep the television if he wanted it since it was broken.
12:35.591 --> 12:38.717
[SPEAKER_04]: He then took the television and put it in his car and left.
12:38.697 --> 13:04.468
[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, when he found out about a week later that Theresa Mack had been killed, he did not call the police because, quote, he didn't have any information to give them, and he continued, when I left, she was still alive, and that when he was asked by a detective originally, whether he knew Theresa Mack, he denied it because, supposedly, he was scared,
13:04.448 --> 13:23.200
[SPEAKER_04]: On December 29, 2002, the bedroom was in disarray when he arrived, according to him, at her apartment that evening, all claimed he planned to spend the night, but at three a.m., a man later identified as Frampton Brown arrived, angry at Kilpatrick and, quote, grabbing at her.
13:23.180 --> 13:30.173
[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he was concerned for Kilpatrick's safety, but when she told him she would be fine, he then left.
13:30.533 --> 13:35.703
[SPEAKER_04]: Paul claimed that he continued calling Kilpatrick, but from a payphone, rather than a cell phone.
13:36.204 --> 13:41.293
[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he found out four or five days later that Kilpatrick had been killed.
13:41.774 --> 13:46.943
[SPEAKER_04]: He did not call the police because, quote, he didn't know the circumstances of how she died.
13:46.923 --> 14:10.990
[SPEAKER_04]: Or when she died, also admitted that he had sex with Shwanda McAllister, on January 9, 2003 in her apartment, the same day met her as a cab fare, afterward, according to Paul, McAllister gone to a fight with Rashid Tobey, who tried to enter the apartment through the window, Paul left the apartment, but later returned, and found McAllister dead.
14:10.970 --> 14:18.021
[SPEAKER_04]: According to Paul, he called 911 the following morning, but did not identify himself because he did not want to get involved.
14:18.762 --> 14:25.633
[SPEAKER_04]: All the Russo was ultimately charged for five counts of murder, not counting the two unborn lives he ended.
14:26.294 --> 14:31.662
[SPEAKER_04]: The Russo began his killing spree, less than a month after being acquitted of rape charges.
14:31.777 --> 14:40.726
[SPEAKER_04]: His pattern involved meeting young, single African-American women, typically through his job, earning their trust and gaining access to their homes.
14:41.367 --> 14:49.335
[SPEAKER_04]: Once inside, he would bind and rape them before strangling them to death with a cord, usually found within the house or apartment.
14:49.776 --> 15:01.328
[SPEAKER_04]: On September 7th, 1997, the new body of 26-year-old Tracy Habersham was discovered at
15:01.308 --> 15:03.793
[SPEAKER_04]: Haversham had been raped and strangled with a cord.
15:04.234 --> 15:09.685
[SPEAKER_04]: At the time, Drusso was not considered the suspect, but DNA winked him to the crime.
15:10.587 --> 15:15.777
[SPEAKER_04]: In 1999, Drusso raped and murdered 24-year-old Theresa Mack in her apartment.
15:16.418 --> 15:20.346
[SPEAKER_04]: The witness reports saw him leaving a scene carrying a television.
15:20.326 --> 15:24.951
[SPEAKER_04]: In 2001, he was arrested in Jacksonville for reaping another young woman.
15:25.532 --> 15:35.123
[SPEAKER_02]: We had found that his criminal history that the Rootsow had been arrested in 2001 for sexual battery on a 19-year old female here in Jacksonville.
15:35.143 --> 15:41.910
[SPEAKER_04]: Insert 30 days in the Montgomery Correctional Center, followed by the two years of probation that would later be extended.
15:42.531 --> 15:48.898
[SPEAKER_02]: When you get a person like this, it thinks he can get away without having to answer for his crimes.
15:48.878 --> 15:53.485
[SPEAKER_02]: didn't to me, they become very dangerous, and they're going to escalate.
15:53.505 --> 16:03.180
[SPEAKER_04]: On December 19th, 2002, the body of 18-year-old Nicole L. Williams was discovered wrapped in a blue blanket at the bottom of a ditch in Jacksonville.
16:03.640 --> 16:05.523
[SPEAKER_04]: She had been reported two days earlier.
16:06.144 --> 16:16.540
[SPEAKER_04]: Less than two weeks later, on January 1st, 2003, relatives of 19-year-old Nikita Kilpatrick checked on her after not hearing from her for several days.
16:16.520 --> 16:18.323
[SPEAKER_04]: They found her dead in her apartment.
16:18.823 --> 16:21.567
[SPEAKER_04]: She had been raped and strangled with a cord two days earlier.
16:22.529 --> 16:27.356
[SPEAKER_04]: Her two young sons aged 11 months and two years were found alive, but malnourished.
16:27.817 --> 16:30.601
[SPEAKER_04]: Kilpatrick was about six months pregnant when she was killed.
16:31.202 --> 16:37.431
[SPEAKER_04]: Eight days after that, 20-year-old nursing assistant she wandered in East McAllister, also pregnant.
16:37.411 --> 16:40.076
[SPEAKER_04]: was raped and strangled in our Jacksonville apartment.
16:40.517 --> 16:43.022
[SPEAKER_04]: The scene closely resembled Kilpatrick's murder.
16:43.523 --> 16:49.595
[SPEAKER_04]: McHowlster was killed onto Rousseau's first day working as a taxi cab driver, for Gator City Taxi.
16:50.016 --> 16:52.821
[SPEAKER_04]: And her body was found literally the following day.
16:52.801 --> 16:57.850
[SPEAKER_04]: It seemed at a certain point, he had entered a Pazarkur mode, and just couldn't stop.
16:58.371 --> 17:11.434
[SPEAKER_04]: His final known victims, 17-year-old Giovanna Jefferson, and 19-year-old Saruta Cohen, were found on February 5th in a ditch near construction site on New King's Road in Jacksonville.
17:11.414 --> 17:22.588
[SPEAKER_04]: Police determined that Jefferson was murdered around January 20th, and Cohen about 10 days later, witnesses reported seeing both women with a taxi driver matching to Russo's description.
17:23.289 --> 17:24.391
[SPEAKER_04]: On the night they disappeared.
17:24.911 --> 17:32.021
[SPEAKER_04]: For these crimes, Paul de Russo was arrested on June 17th, 2003, in charge with five counts of murder.
17:32.521 --> 17:40.071
[SPEAKER_04]: On December 13th, 2007, he was sentenced to death by
17:40.051 --> 18:09.163
[SPEAKER_04]: As of August 18, 2013, he remained on Florida's death row at Union Correctional Institution, then in January 2017, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, ruling that the original 10-2 jury vote for death was unconstitutional under state law, which requires a unanimous decision in capital cases, following a new sensing hearing
18:09.346 --> 18:16.319
[SPEAKER_04]: And on December 10th, 2021, Deruso was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
18:16.720 --> 18:22.350
[SPEAKER_01]: Willie Newton, 95, a convicted killer in a cute serial killer, will spend the rest of his life in prison.
18:22.811 --> 18:25.816
[SPEAKER_01]: Paula Doroso's death sentence was overturned today.
18:25.836 --> 18:27.900
[SPEAKER_01]: He was charged with killing five women.
18:27.920 --> 18:31.607
[SPEAKER_01]: He was only convicted of one killing that happened in 1999.
18:33.528 --> 18:36.940
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, all to Russo is a remorseless killer.
18:36.960 --> 18:42.559
[SPEAKER_04]: He's never confessed to any of the crimes he so obviously committed.
18:42.978 --> 18:45.121
[SPEAKER_04]: Let alone apologize for what he's done.
18:45.161 --> 18:52.272
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead, he sits in his cell, showing no signs of guilt or regret for the pain he caused.
18:52.933 --> 18:56.077
[SPEAKER_04]: The wives he destroyed, and the families he has shattered.
18:56.939 --> 19:07.855
[SPEAKER_04]: He preyed on women who trusted him, women who believed they were safe in their own homes, their own city, stripped them of their dignity, their future, and their voices.
19:08.122 --> 19:14.232
[SPEAKER_04]: And even after the evidence mounted, after the court spoke, Deruso refused to take responsibility.
19:15.134 --> 19:16.916
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no redemption in his story.
19:17.678 --> 19:18.960
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no moment of truth.
19:19.821 --> 19:26.993
[SPEAKER_04]: Just a trail of devastation left by a man who used trust as a weapon and cruelty as his calling card.
19:28.155 --> 19:29.898
[SPEAKER_04]: All Deruso will die in prison.
19:30.599 --> 19:33.083
[SPEAKER_04]: In the world will move on without him.
19:33.383 --> 19:43.042
[SPEAKER_04]: But the memory of his victims, their names, their faces, their stolen futures, remain in the minds of the people that knew them, and love them.
19:44.224 --> 19:50.937
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, while he silenced them, their stories continue to speak louder than he ever will.
20:17.410 --> 20:19.054
[SPEAKER_04]: Listener, how are you?
20:19.635 --> 20:25.569
[SPEAKER_04]: So, before I get going on this fire side chat, I just want to let you know that black label is coming this weekend.
20:25.589 --> 20:28.475
[SPEAKER_04]: It is an extra large episode of black label.
20:29.497 --> 20:31.823
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I wanted to make one a little longer.
20:31.863 --> 20:34.609
[SPEAKER_04]: This month, uh, give you guys something...
20:34.589 --> 20:35.871
[SPEAKER_04]: a bit longer to chew on.
20:36.092 --> 20:40.740
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be somewhere between three to four different cases along with something for everyone.
20:41.221 --> 20:43.425
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so expect it this weekend.
20:43.906 --> 20:44.928
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm still working on it.
20:45.569 --> 20:53.543
[SPEAKER_04]: I have some editing to do and would have liked to release it today, but I just, you know, I want to make sure it's nice and polished.
20:53.776 --> 21:02.287
[SPEAKER_04]: With that out of the way, I wanna thank you guys for the overwhelmingly positive response of the last fireside chat that I did.
21:02.307 --> 21:04.450
[SPEAKER_04]: I recorded that in the spur of the moment.
21:04.690 --> 21:06.192
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just feeling a certain way.
21:06.232 --> 21:14.603
[SPEAKER_04]: My wife was out at a celebration of life for someone that died and it just had
21:14.768 --> 21:20.194
[SPEAKER_04]: Got me in a certain mood, and I just pulled the mic out, and, you know, it was late at night.
21:20.615 --> 21:22.537
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just opened up, essentially.
21:23.278 --> 21:29.385
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, most of the comments were wildly positive, and I really appreciate that.
21:29.766 --> 21:31.508
[SPEAKER_04]: There were a couple that disagreed with certain things.
21:31.608 --> 21:35.292
[SPEAKER_04]: I definitely understand on my evolving stance with the death penalty.
21:35.773 --> 21:36.994
[SPEAKER_04]: I get that trust me.
21:37.415 --> 21:39.477
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not perfect, certainly.
21:39.895 --> 21:45.021
[SPEAKER_04]: But then there was one person and this kind of surprised me a little bit.
21:45.562 --> 21:57.036
[SPEAKER_04]: They seemed upset when I casually mentioned my religion, something that I don't really open up about because people tend to make a lot of harsh judgments about you if you do.
21:57.877 --> 22:01.221
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, it's kind of confirming a lot of fears.
22:01.902 --> 22:02.983
[SPEAKER_04]: I have with that.
22:02.963 --> 22:10.396
[SPEAKER_04]: This person has been a long time subscriber and always been a pretty positive person on the Patreon, never really had any issue.
22:10.997 --> 22:15.045
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he seemed to take from that that I was some sort of white supremacist.
22:15.886 --> 22:23.520
[SPEAKER_04]: I would ask you to go check out episodes like Matthew Shepard, Heather Higher,
22:24.007 --> 22:27.193
[SPEAKER_04]: green river killer, you know, things like that, right?
22:27.594 --> 22:35.309
[SPEAKER_04]: I go check them out and, you know, maybe remind yourself then, I'm not the person that you seem to think I am.
22:35.689 --> 22:36.511
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll just put it that way.
22:37.032 --> 22:44.867
[SPEAKER_04]: So, one of the things that was brought up is that the fact that I don't like to talk about politics on the podcast, and
22:44.847 --> 22:51.317
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the thing is I feel like you guys can get a sense of my character through the podcast and that's enough.
22:52.439 --> 23:00.011
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like a lot of people inject politics into everything and I've always wanted my podcast to stray away from that.
23:00.592 --> 23:09.606
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of true crime podcasts where the presenter has a tendency to inject their politics into what's happening.
23:09.586 --> 23:14.717
[SPEAKER_04]: And for me, whenever I hear that, all I hear is, me, me, me, me, me, right?
23:15.259 --> 23:18.987
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just a spotlight on their beliefs, their cult of personality.
23:19.568 --> 23:21.472
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is something I've never wanted.
23:21.512 --> 23:28.067
[SPEAKER_04]: And so early on, I made a promise to you guys that that's not something that I would do.
23:28.047 --> 23:43.693
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you kind of figure things out and the way I cover things and, you know, I try to use compassion and things like that when I'm covering cases, if you, you know, think of certain things about me, that's fine, but
23:43.673 --> 23:49.659
[SPEAKER_04]: I would hope that you would know that, I am not a hateful person, I am a very open person.
23:50.119 --> 24:03.953
[SPEAKER_04]: I always have been, and it is surprising to me that somebody would take that stance about me because I don't know, it certainly feels kind of unearmed, I'll just put it that way.
24:04.834 --> 24:11.520
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, yeah, so, you know, if you're hearing this, and you know who you are,
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[SPEAKER_04]: Just, you know, please, maybe consider that I'm not the person that you seem to think I am now, based on one thing I said in one podcast.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All right, so with that out of the way, the other thing I wanted to talk about because I see this conversation come up all the time and recently it sprung up on social media.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And that's about the morality of true crime as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And this is something that really gets my gourd because I really disagree with some of the takes you see on Reddit and Facebook, et cetera.
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[SPEAKER_04]: is that true crime is a moral, that it's rubber-nacking, that it's gawking, et cetera, and here's where I disagree.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I think of true crime as necessary.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You can look at all these articles that get released today.
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[SPEAKER_04]: that are like, where are all the major serial killers?
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[SPEAKER_04]: They seem to have gone away, right?
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[SPEAKER_04]: And while we do have some here and there, nothing can quite compete with the peak that you saw from like the 50s through the 80s and especially in the 80s.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And part of what I think happened
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[SPEAKER_04]: is that people became more aware.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They stopped hopping into random vehicles.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They stopped talking to strangers alone.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They became more aware of their surroundings.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I genuinely, and I mean this, I genuinely believe true crime plays a part in this.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I grew up watching Unsolve Mysteries, America's most wanted Rasq9-1-1 forensic files, you know, the whole laundry list of them, and I love them.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they were huge influence on me, and they made me hyperware of what not to do, of what not to do, and what to do.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so I would have never been caught doing something incredibly stupid, you know, and that's not to, you know, blame anyone that made mistakes in the past, they were educated on this, you know, a lot of television showed the world as this incredibly peaceful and safe place.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think people kind of became naive, especially post-free love movement, so you had a lot of women just jumping into random vehicles with complete strangers.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And when you look at the stomping grounds of serial killers, like the green river killer, and the amount of people were talking 50 plus that they had killed a lot of them, sex workers, and a lot of them crimes of opportunity, well, then you can see, man, if you were hitchhiking during that period, your odds weren't particularly great.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When you were in the stomping rounds of some of these killers, it wasn't a good idea, and yeah, true crime comes around, and not only does it educate individuals on what you should do, and what you shouldn't do, etc.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But also serial killers start to see like damn, this DNA stuff is serious.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There is a lot of ways for myself to get caught.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so suddenly, you're scaring killers because all these people that thought they were smart are getting caught left and right, and you know, sitting around waiting for the knock, and then there would be victims are getting smarter too.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, that's where I am on true crime.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sick of this sort of
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[SPEAKER_04]: week, you know, sort of reddit take that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's just exploitative.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's just that, etc.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'll tell you, I have been contacted by family members of cases post coverage of people thanking me for covering the case.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then a lot of times I can't reach out to by family members asking me to cover a case.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When someone loses someone, there's such a finality to it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's the end, and some people really do want their loved one stories out there, you know, for whatever reason.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's very presumptive to assume that true crime is this thing that's just a rubber necker's hobby.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I think a lot of us came to true crime in the same way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We had darker interests when we were younger.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe due to some complicated situations at home, maybe not the best home life, right?
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[SPEAKER_04]: I know I had that experience.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it just led me down a path that I was always going to end up walking.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You know, people asked me, why do I cover a true crime?
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[SPEAKER_04]: And it's because it was what I was always going to do.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's what I wanted to do when it came time for me to sit down, figure out what I was going to write.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was always going to be true crime.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's what flows from my fingers.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's what I was made to do.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I love doing it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, I just get a little frustrated by those takes.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's sort of the surface level view if you just think of it as like, you know, shock entertainment in that alone and you don't think that it has any sort of impact socially.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're going to arrive to that conclusion.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But when you consider the effect that it's had on the zeitgeist as a whole, the understanding of serial killers and the social awareness and impusing people, I do think it provides a service.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not just saying that, like from a stance of defensiveness, I've always believed this.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Ever since I watched America's most wanted as a child, I always looked at it this way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and it really seems like a post-COVID post-Tiger King type of thing where people view it that way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Now, I will say, I could see someone saying that about Tiger King because if you don't know, the Tiger King himself, he was given a very, let's just say,
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[SPEAKER_04]: positive edit job to make him look a lot nicer than he actually is.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They cut out a lot of racist ransom among other things to sort of make him the protagonist of that show.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So if you want to say something like that, that sort of infotainment, that altar's reality to form a TV series,
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[SPEAKER_04]: is exploitative sure I can see that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, someone like me, sometimes I'll work a case for a long time.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then when I finish the episode, I'm not always particularly happy with how entertaining it's been, you know?
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[SPEAKER_04]: Like sometimes I'll finish an episode and I'm like, man, I hope people find this exciting because
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't twist facts, I tell all the facts that happen the way they happen, and that's, you know, the simple angle of things.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't try to mold reality to create this, you know, mystery drama or whatever, you know, that these shows on Netflix tend to do.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you know, there was that Ed Geen show that came out recently, the monster TV series.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This series that started out strong with the Jeffrey Dahmer, one where they took a couple liberties to combine certain characters or whatever, but they did overall a decent charm on Dahmer, but starting with the Menendez brothers and then especially with Ed Geen, the creators blurred the facts more and more to create more entertaining narrative, and that to me is a bit wrong.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to change the names of the people, you know, involved, including the serial killer and make your own show, which from what I understand the creator of that show also makes American horror story, you know, that's fine.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But taking reality and kind of pushing it around a certain narrative, that kind of thing has always bothered me.
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[SPEAKER_04]: One of the worst examples I like to bring
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[SPEAKER_04]: you know cartoon that took the real story of a real person and they made it like a love story with her with someone that she didn't have a love story with and in reality she was a child that was basically abused by her captors so taking like a victim of that and then turning it into a
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[SPEAKER_04]: So even like from a true crime perspective, I've never been a fan of that, um, which, you know, that's why when I cover cases, what you get is what you get.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'll get through the whole case final, I'll put that to sew together.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And sometimes there's not that many twists and turns.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes what happened is what happened.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, uh, yeah, I think that pretty much wraps up fire side chat for this week.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and remember, you got black label coming this weekend.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Really excited to get this one out to you guys.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I put a lot of hours into it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be a long one and I hope you guys enjoy that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I thank you for listening and keep the fire burning.
