Death Cap Mushroom Poisoning: The Australian Family Lunch Murders

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July 29, 2023, a family lunch in rural Australia.

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Beef Wellington is on the menu, and by the end of the week, three people are dead, and

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one is fighting for his life with a new liver.

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The poison?

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Deathcap mushrooms.

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The person who served the meal.

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The host.

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And here's what makes this whole thing so calculated.

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Deathcaps have this phase where you feel completely fine.

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Where's Go-Buy?

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You're laughing, talking, saying goodbye.

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And the whole time, the poison is already doing its work.

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There's this town in rural Victoria, Australia called Lyon Gatha.

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Around 5,000 people.

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The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, or at least knows of everyone.

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And on July 29, 2023, something happened there that would become one of the most talked

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about murder cases in Australian history.

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Aaron Patterson invited four people to lunch at her home.

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Not just any four people.

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Her estranged husband's parents.

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Don and Gail Patterson, both 70.

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And Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

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Plus Heather's husband, Ian Wilkerson, 69.

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Who happened to be a Baptist pastor?

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These were her former in-laws, and things had been tense between them for about two years

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at that point.

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The invitation itself was based on a lie.

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Aaron told them she needed to discuss something important.

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Her recent cancer diagnosis.

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Serious stuff.

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The kind of news that brings a family together, even when relationships are strained.

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Except Aaron didn't have cancer.

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She admitted that in court later.

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She made it up because she was embarrassed about planning to have weight loss surgery.

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So right from the start, the entire reason for this lunch was fabricated.

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There was supposed to be a fifth guest.

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Simon Patterson, Aaron's estranged husband.

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He was invited too, but the day before the lunch, on July 28, he told Aaron he wasn't

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coming.

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That decision saved his life.

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The prosecution would later argue that Aaron had prepared an extra individual serving of

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Beef Wellington specifically for Simon.

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He was likely the primary target, but when he bailed, the plan shifted.

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So Sunday afternoon rolls around.

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Aaron serves lunch.

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Beef Wellington.

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Individual servings plated by Aaron herself.

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Ian Wilkerson testified about this later.

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He described the servings as very much looking like a pasty.

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Each person got their own, and inside those servings were death-cap mushrooms.

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Let's talk about death caps for a second.

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They're one of the most toxic mushrooms in the world.

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The act of toxin is called amatoxin, and it blocks DNA replication in rapidly dividing

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cells.

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Your liver, your kidneys, eventually your central nervous system, all of it starts

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shutting down, and here's the really sinister part about this particular poison.

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There's a silent phase.

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For six to twelve hours after you eat death caps, you feel nothing, no symptoms.

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You're sitting there finishing your meal, chatting, maybe commenting on how good the food

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tastes.

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Meanwhile, the toxin is binding to your liver cells, starting the process of destroying

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them.

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The time the symptoms hit, severe nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, profuse diarrhea, the

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damage is already done.

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You go to the hospital thinking maybe it's food poisoning, and then your liver starts

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failing.

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There's even this thing called transient recovery phase.

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After the initial wave of gastrointestinal symptoms, you actually feel better for a while,

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like you're recovering.

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But internally, your liver is still collapsing.

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By day three to six, you're in full organ failure.

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John Dis, himmeraging, multiple systems shutting down.

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And then you die.

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It's pretty brutal.

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All four guests at that lunch ended up in the hospital within 24 hours.

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They were all four diagnosed with severe liver failure from mushroom poisoning.

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Gail and Heather died on August 4th, five days after the meal.

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Don died the next day, August 5th.

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It received an emergency liver transplant trying to save him.

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Didn't work.

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The poison was too powerful, too widespread in his system.

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Even replacing the primary affected organ couldn't stop the cascade of failure.

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Ian Wilkerson was the only one who survived.

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He spent over seven weeks in the hospital.

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Had to get a liver transplant too.

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Didn't get discharged until September 23rd.

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And here's something interesting.

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Aaron was also briefly hospitalized.

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She ate the same meal and got sick too.

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Just not as sick.

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Her defense tried to claim her test results showed low potassium and elevated hemoglobin,

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consistent with having eaten the meal.

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The prosecutors were not buying it.

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While people were dying, Aaron was being calculated about other things.

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She was reluctant to let her children be tested for poisoning.

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She delayed giving information to health authorities about where the mushrooms might have come from.

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Even when she was in the hospital herself, she didn't initially tell doctors that there

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might have been forged mushrooms in the meal.

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Think about that.

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People are dying, and she's withholding the one piece of information that might help save

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them.

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The investigation started peeling back layers pretty quickly.

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In her first police interview, recorded just hours after it became clear how serious the

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poisoning was.

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Aaron was calculated and evasive.

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She denied foraging for mushrooms.

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She denied owning a food dehydrator.

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She said she bought the mushrooms at a supermarket in an Asian grocery store.

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All lies.

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Then police found a five-page statement where Aaron admitted she lied about the food dehydrator.

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She told detectives she dumped it a long time ago.

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But CCTV footage showed her disposing of it the day after she got out of the hospital.

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When they recovered the dehydrator and tested it, they found traces of death-capped mushrooms

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inside.

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The food dehydrator was used to dry and concentrate the fungi.

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It would make the poison more potent, easier to incorporate into a dish.

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And the fact that she threw it away immediately lied about it and then got caught on camera

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doing it.

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That's consciousness of guilt.

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That's someone who knows exactly what they did and is trying to destroy the evidence.

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Aaron eventually admitted during trial that she lied about the food dehydrator, about

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the foraging.

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Her explanation was that she panicked when she realized her meal had killed people, especially

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after her estranged husband Simon accused her of poisoning his parents.

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She also claimed she reset her phone and dumped the dehydrator because she was scared of child-protective

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officers seeing photos related to them.

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But the digital evidence told a different story.

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Cell tower data showed Aaron may have visited two specific locations in regional Australia

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right after the reports of death-capped sightings in those areas.

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The prosecution used this to prove she was actively foraging for the toxic mushrooms despite

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all of her denials.

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And then there's the phone.

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Aaron's phone underwent a remote factory reset when it was seized and taken into police

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storage.

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She admitted to resetting it four times in August 2023.

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She said she did it because there were photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator on there

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and she panicked.

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But here's what really sealed it.

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There's recovered photos from April 2023 showing wild mushrooms being weighed on a scale.

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The prosecution argued that this was her researching how to determine a lethal dose.

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The trial started on April 29, 2025 in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

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Aaron pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

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Her defense center down the argument that there was no clear motive for her to kill these

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people.

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Colin Mandy, her defense attorney, called it a tragic and terrible accident.

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But here's the thing about murder cases.

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You don't actually have to prove motive.

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You just have to prove intent.

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The prosecution needed to show that Aaron had the intention to kill or call serious bodily

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harm.

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And that resulted in death.

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Motive helps, but it's not required.

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Ian Wilkerson's testimony was crucial.

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He confirmed that that day Aaron individually played it all the food.

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The poison wasn't randomly dispersed.

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It was selectively served in those individual beef Wellington portions.

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Combined with the death cap traces in the dehydrator, the timeline of her visits to foraging

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areas and the photos of her weighing wild mushrooms, the defense's argument of a spontaneous

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accident fell apart.

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The jury deliberated for six and a half days.

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On July 7, 2025, they came back with guilty verdicts on all counts.

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Three counts of murder for gale, dawn, and Heather.

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One count of attempted murder for Ian.

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The synancing hearing on September 8, 2025 was historic for Victoria because it was the

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first time such a proceeding was broadcast live.

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And then later, the victim impact statement started on August 25.

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Just as Christopher Beale handed down the sentence, "Life in prison."

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Three life sentences for the three murders running concurrently.

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Twenty-five years for the attempted murder also concurrent and a non-parole period of

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33 years.

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Aaron Patterson won't be eligible for parole until 2056.

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She's currently serving her sentence at the Dame Philist Frost Center in Western Melbourne.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email subject, a small complaint I need to share.

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Oh boy.

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Hi, Joe.

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I blame you for the fact that I now fold laundry slower.

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Every time I start a chore, I put on your podcast, and then I get sucked into the story, and

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the socks never get matched.

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This is on you, Brian and Norfolk, Virginia.

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Brian, brother, you can't blame that on me.

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For one particular reason.

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I've already mentioned on this podcast before, and it's weird that I even mentioned it,

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but I did.

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That I buy all socks that look the same, so that I don't have to do all that matching

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business.

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For like 10 or 15 years in my life, I was a weird sock guy.

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Every pair of socks I wore, they were weird in some way.

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Had some kind of strange design or face of something on it, animals, or you name it, I had

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the sock.

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And I felt like I spent half my life matching socks.

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So I decided to get all new socks that just look the same.

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Eliminates the matching, #LifeHack.

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And I'm saying that to you, but right now, at this very moment, on my feet, I'm wearing

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socks that have footballs on them.

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So what I just told you is partially a lie.

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I don't exclusively wear those socks, but most of the time I do.

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Brian, I suggest you look into doing that, brother.

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It'll save your life.

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Hey, if you're new, listen to this podcast.

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Make sure you hit subscribe right now.

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I'm giving you brief, true crime stories, life hacks.

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I think at one point I've given you a casserole recipe.

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I'm covering all the bases here.

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And then you can go to 10minuteMurder.com, which is where Brian went to send me an email,

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anything under the sun about this podcast or about me or any questions that you want

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to ask me, fair game.

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You can also sign up for the newsletter that I send out weekly and check out the Murder

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Block.

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OG listeners, I love you so much.

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Make sure you keep doing what you're doing, sharing this podcast with your friends and your

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family and rating and reviewing it anywhere that's possible.

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And that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today.

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Thank you again for listening to 10minuteMurder.