June 5, 2026

Georgia 'House of Horrors' Dad on Trial in Zowey McCue's Death, a Las Vegas Photo-Shoot Killing, and a Tollbooth Death by Drunk Driver

Georgia 'House of Horrors' Dad on Trial in Zowey McCue's Death, a Las Vegas Photo-Shoot Killing, and a Tollbooth Death by Drunk Driver
A Georgia father, William McCue, is on trial in Lawrenceville on felony-murder and child-cruelty charges after prosecutors say he and his wife trapped their children inside a home with no plumbing, buckets for toilets, and a child sleeping on plywood over a bathtub — a daughter, ten-year-old Zowey McCue, died in a fire her teenage brother set to escape.

Garret Fisher covers three cases this Friday. In Las Vegas, twenty-year-old Allysandra Blea has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and kidnapping in the shooting death of twenty-three-year-old Mark Gaughan during a costume photo shoot — a case in which detectives say her social media revealed an obsession with guns and a claimed family link to New Mexico’s West Mesa serial-murder case. And in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, Deanna Harrell is charged with vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter in the death of sixty-three-year-old tollbooth attendant Tammie Jo Baker, who was alive in her booth for thirty-five seconds before the crash.

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WEBVTT

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Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning.

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I'm Garrett Fisher and this is Daily Crime Injustice for Friday,

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June fifth, twenty twenty six. Three cases today in three states.

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In Lawrenceville, Georgia, a father named William McHugh is standing

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trial accused of trapping his own children inside what prosecutors

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are calling a house of horrors, a case in which

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his ten year old daughter, Zoe died. In Las Vegas,

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a twenty year old woman named Alessandra Blee has pleaded

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guilty in the shooting death of her friend, twenty three

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year old Mark Gown during a costume photoshoot. And in

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Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, a woman named Deanna Harrell is

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charged with killing a sixty three year old tolbooth attendant,

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Tammy Joe Baker, in what the sheriff is calling a

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drunk driving homicide. Look, I'm going to be honest with you.

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The first story today is one of the hardest I've

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had to tell you in a while. It's about a

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little girl named Zoe McHugh and the house she lived

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in and the things that were done to her and

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her brothers and sisters inside it a house with a

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lock on the refrigerator, buckets instead of bathrooms, a bedroom

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that was actually a bathroom with a bed made out

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of a piece of plywood laid across a bathtub, and

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it took a fire, a fire set by one of

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those children, just trying to get out for anyone on

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the outside to find out what was.

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Happening on the inside.

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Then we go to Las Vegas, where a young man

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named Mark Goggin agreed to take some polaroid photos of

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two friends posing with guns. He took the pictures and

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then there was one more flash and it was louder

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than the others, and Mark in the camera both hit

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the floor. The woman who fired that shot just pleaded guilty,

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and wait until you hear what detectives found on her phone.

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And finally to a toll booth on a Florida beach

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where a woman named tam Me Joe Baker went to

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work on a Monday morning the way she had for years.

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She stepped into that booth at twelve thirty eight and

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five seconds. By twelve forty she was gone thirty five seconds.

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We're going to talk about how thirty five seconds was

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all it took, and about every choice.

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That led up to them. Stay with me.

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I want to start with Zoe McHugh because before this

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becomes a story about a courtroom and a list of charges,

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it should be a story about a ten year old girl.

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She was ten years old. She had brothers and sisters.

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She lived in a house in Gwynette County, Georgia, just

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outside Atlanta, and on the night of April seventeenth, twenty

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twenty two, she did not get out of that house.

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She died of smoke inhalation.

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She was ten.

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Someone has to say her name first, so I'm saying

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it Zoe. Here's what happened that night, as prosecutors laid

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it out this week in opening statements, there was a

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fire at the mceu home. Zoe's mother, Karina, got out

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and she got two of the boys out with her,

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a twelve year old and an eight year old. The father,

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William McHugh, wasn't home. He was working a shift at

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a waffle house with the oldest daughter, who was seventeen,

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and Zoe was left inside. When the first responders went

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into that house, they started noticing things, strange things. There

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was a lock on the refrigerator, not on the front door.

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On the refrigerator. There were buckets of human waste sitting

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in the house because, as it turned out, there was

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no working plumbing. And there was a room that was

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supposedly a child's bedroom, except it wasn't a bedroom at all.

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It was a bathroom and the bed in it was

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a piece of plywood laid across the top of the bathtub.

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That's what the people who came to put out the

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fire found. And I want you to sit with the

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fact that it took a fire for anyone to see it. Now,

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the prosecutor in this case is named Wanda Vance, and

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she stood up in front of that jury and told

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them something you don't often hear a prosecutor concede right

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out of the gate. She told them that the man

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on trial, William McHugh, did not light the match. He

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didn't start the fire. The person who started the fire

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was his fifteen year old son. And here is what

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that child did after he set it. He walked six

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miles through the night until he reached a church and

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he asked the people there for help. He was initially

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charged with murder, a child charged with murder, but the

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first responders who dealt with him that night, realized very

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quickly that something was deeply wrong, not with what he'd done,

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but with what had been done to him. This was

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a boy who they say, did not know how to

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use a toilet, did not know how to use a

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ziplock bag. He told them he set the fire because

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he needed to escape that house. And then he described

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what escaping meant. He described beating. He described being made

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to stand on milk crates or on cinderblocks for hours,

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and sometimes, he said, for days. He described a shot collar.

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He described children with no plumbing using buckets and being

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assigned the job of emptying those buckets once or twice

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a week. That was the childhood, as he described it,

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that he set a fire to get out of. And

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I need to be careful here and fair because that's

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the job. Those are his accounts, and this is a trial,

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and the jury hasn't weighed all of it yet. But

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the physical conditions of that house, the lock on the fridge,

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the buckets, the plywood over the bathtub, those aren't accounts.

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The firefighters saw those. And you don't lock a refrigerator

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by accident. That's not a mistake, that's a choice. We're

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not here because this family is poor. The prosecutor anticipated

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the defense, and she met it head on, because the

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easy story to tell a jury, the comfortable story, is

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that this was just a poor family that couldn't fix

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the plumbing and couldn't afford much food, and now the

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state is piling on. Vance told the jury in so

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many words, that is not what this is. She told

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them the reason the plumbing wasn't fixed and the reason

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the children didn't have enough to eat was not that

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the money wasn't there.

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And then she told them what was in the house.

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A big screen television in the master bedroom, a telescope,

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two treadmills, a six foot privacy fence. So the money

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for a privacy fence was there. The money to keep

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the world from seeing in just not the money to

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fix the toilets the children were forbidden to have. She

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also told the jury that these kids were isolated from

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the world and homeschooled, except that homeschooled implies schooling, and

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she says there wasn't any. When the fifteen year old

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was handed forms to fill out, he reportedly couldn't spell

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his own name correctly. He spelled it differently every time

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time he tried a teenager who couldn't reliably write his

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own name. Nobody was paying attention to that boy. Nobody

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was paying attention to any of them. The defense and

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the mother. William McHugh, who is fifty one, has pleaded

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not guilty to all of it felony, murder, aggravated assault,

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cruelty to children, false imprisonment, rape, aggravated child molestation, and incest.

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He is entitled to that plea. He is entitled to

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his defense, and he is presumed innocent of every one

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of those charges unless and until a jury says otherwise.

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That's not a formality to me. That's the floor we

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stand on. His attorney is a man named Thomas Clegg,

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and his argument to the jury was essentially, don't rush.

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He framed it as a question of degree.

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Did the kids have to empty some portable toilets because

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the septic system wasn't working? Probably, he said. Could the

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kids have been better educated, probably? Could they have had

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more variety in their meals? Probably? But that, he said,

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is not really why we're here. I'll let the jury

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decide what it's about. I'll just note that more variety

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in their meals is a remarkable way to describe a

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house where a child slept on plywood over a tub.

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There's one more piece, and it matters. The children's mother,

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Coriina McHugh, has already pleaded guilty. She pleaded guilty to

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every charge she faced, including three counts of murder and

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false imprisonment, and she is awaiting sentencing, and the state

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intends to put her on the stand as a witness

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against her husband. The defense is ready for that. Cleig

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told the jury she's motivated to cut her losses, that

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she's scared of spending the rest of her life in prison,

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and that she's trying to save her own skin.

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Maybe she is.

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Both things can be true. A person can be trying

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to save herself and also telling the truth about what

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happened in that house. The jury will have to sort

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out which parts are which. We'll be following it when

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we come back Las Vegas. A costume photoshoot, a borrowed

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Polaroid camera, and a single gunshot that detectives say was

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anything but an accident.

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Stay with me.

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The young man at the center of this next story

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was named Mark Santiago Gown. He was twenty three years old,

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and from what came out in the Grand jury. Here's

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a thing we know about him. He liked a girl.

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He told a mutual friend he liked her, that he

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talked about her all the time, that he thought their

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relationship was good. On the night he died, he'd brought

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a bottle of vodka over to a friend's place to share.

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He brought his camera energy. He agreed to take pictures

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of his friends because they wanted to dress up and

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have a little photo shoot. Mark gown was, by every indication,

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a young man who showed up for the people he

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cared about. Say his name Mark. What happened in that driveway?

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This was August of last year in Las Vegas. There

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were four of them gathered at a home Mark, a

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woman named Alessandra Blay, a mutual friend named Maverick Crafts,

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and Crafts's boyfriend. They were drinking the vodka Mark had brought.

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He'd also brought a handgun, a compact glock. After the

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boyfriends fell asleep, the two women got to talking and

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the friend. Crafts told the grand jury that she mentioned

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to Blee how much Mark cared about her and Blee,

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she said, was disgusted by the idea, said they weren't dating.

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That she didn't understand why he thought she was his girlfriend,

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that she didn't feel that way about him at all.

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And then Kraft said, after the bottle was finished, Blee

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picked it up and slammed.

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It down on Mark while he was asleep.

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The two women moved to another room and decided to

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put on costumes and do a polaroid photo shoot. Mark

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good naturedly agreed to be the photographer. They went out

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to the driveway and the two of them posed on

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the hood of a truck with knives and with guns

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while Mark took the pictures. And then Kraft said there

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was one more flash, louder this time, and Mark and

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the camera fell. He'd been shot once in the neck.

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The bullet traveled down through his body and out his back.

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At first, officers thought it might have been a terrible accident,

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two kids playing with a loaded gun, A horrible mistake.

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It happens, and if that's where the evidence had stopped,

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that's probably where this story would have stopped too. What

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was on the phone. It didn't stop there. Detectives looked

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at Blee's social media, and a homicide detective named Casey

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Kirkgard told the grand jury what they found. Was, in

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his word, problematic. He described images and messages showing what

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he called almost an obsession with guns, and specifically with

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wanting to shoot someone and get away with it. Investigators

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ran a keyword search across her counts. The words gun

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and guns came up more than two hundred times. And

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then there was a message she'd sent to another person online.

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I'll paraphrase it carefully. She wrote that she would kill

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prostitutes and bury them in the New Mexico desert. When

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detectives brought her in and confronted her with that, she

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said it was a joke. But then she said something

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that made it a much stranger joke. She told them

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she had a personal intimate knowledge of women being buried

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in the New Mexico desert because she said her grandfather

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was a serial killer who'd been convicted in New Mexico.

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Investigators identified her grandfather as a man named Joseph Blee.

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And here I have to be precise, because the precision matters.

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Joseph Blee is.

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A person of interest in the disappearances of ten to

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twelve women in New Mexico, the cluster of cases often

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called the West Mesa murders. He has not been convicted

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of those killings. What he was convicted of were sexual

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assaults connected to several women. So the granddaughter's claim isn't

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quite the claim the record support, but the fact that

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she reached for it that when she was cornered about

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a dead friend, the thing she offered up was a

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family legacy of buried bodies. That tells you something about

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the world inside her head. Alexandra Blia is twenty years old.

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She was originally charged with open murder. On Tuesday, she

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pleaded guilty to amended charges in voluntary manslaughter and kidnapping

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as part of an agreement, and under that agreement, the

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expectation is that she'll serve about five years in prison.

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Her sentencing is set for July twenty ninth, five years

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for Mark Goggin's entire life. I'm not the judge, and

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the sentence isn't final until it's handed down. There may

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be reasons in the evidence, problems of proof, questions about intent,

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the difference between what you suspect and what you can

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prove beyond a reasonable doubt that made the prosecution take

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this deal rather than risk a trial. That's the real,

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unglamorous machinery of the justice system, and I'm not going

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to pretend it doesn't exist, but I'd ask you to remember,

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Mark's family is sitting with a number now, and the

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number is five.

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You weigh that against two hundred mentions of the.

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Word gun and a stated wish to shoot someone and

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get away with it, and you tell me how that

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math feels. Her name was Tammy Joe Baker. She was

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sixty three years old. She was a longtime employee of

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Vlusha County, Florida, the kind of person who shows up

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year after year to do an ordinary job that keeps

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an ordinary place running. On Monday, that job was working

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the toll booth at the Dunlawton Avenue Beach Approach in

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Daytona Beach Shores. Her family says her birthday was just

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around the corner. Her granddaughter, we're told, was at the scene.

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She was a grandmother. She was somebody's whole world. The

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sheriff there is a man named Mike Chitwood, and he

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put the whole horror of it into one sentence. Tammy

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Joe Baker entered that booth at twelve thirty eight and

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five seconds. By twelve forty she was dead thirty five

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seconds inside that little booth before a truck came through it.

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You're here, the sheriff said, and you're gone. The booth,

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he said, wasn't made of anything that could stop a truck.

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Lifeguards ran to her. A young woman on the scene

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started CPR. None of it could have mattered. He believes

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she was killed close to on impact. Now here's where

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the sheriff says, that truck came from. And I want

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to walk it with you because this is a story

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about a chain of choices. The driver is a thirty

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five year old woman named Diana Harrel. And I'll say

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clearly she is charged, she is not convicted. And everything

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that follows is the allegation as the Sheriff's office has

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laid it out. They say Harrol was working that morning

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at a little shop that rents golf carts and bicycles.

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Sales were slow, the weather was turning, and her boss

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sent her home early. According to investigators, she did not

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go home. She went to a lounge where they say

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she had a couple of rum and cokes and part

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of a shot over about an hour and then, and

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this is the detail. The sheriff says she admitted to

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in an interview. They alleged she'd poured out part of

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a bottle of gatorade, filled it back up with vodka

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and was drinking that too. By twelve twenty nine, the

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nine to one to one calls were coming in. A

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couple reported a driver who'd hit a mailbox, clipped a

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trash can, and was coming the wrong way, nearly hitting

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them head on. Another caller described a blonde woman in

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a Chevy truck all over the road heading straight for them.

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Nine minutes later, that truck went through Tammy Joe Baker's

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toll booth at an estimated forty miles an hour, and

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then the sheriff says it kept going toward the ocean

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like it was trying to get away, until it bogged

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down in the sand. When officers reached her, body camera

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video shows her being taken into custody. She was, they say,

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cooperative with the officers themselves, but as she was being

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walked to a patrol vehicle, she turned to a bystander

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who was filming and said, can you please not record this?

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Can you please not record this? A woman was dead

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in a toll booth fifty yards away, and the concern

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was the camera, why the arrest took a few days.

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There's one more thing you should know, and I'm going

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to handle it plainly and then move on because it

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deserves care, not spectacle. After the crash, Harold told officers

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she wanted to take her own life. She was placed

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under a mental health hold and taken for treatment before

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she could be booked. That's the reason she wasn't formally

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arrested until Wednesday morning, after she was medically released. She's

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charged now with vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter, and she

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had her first court appearance scheduled for yesterday afternoon. I'm

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not going to dress that part up and I'm not

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going to dwell on it. A person in crisis is

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still a person. But a person in crisis who gets

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behind the wheel of a truck has put everyone on

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that road inside the crisis with her, and one of

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those people was Tammy Joe Baker, who did nothing that

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morning except go to work.

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Both things can be true.

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We can hold space for a human being in a

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dark place, and we can refuse to let that erase

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the woman in the booth. Accountability doesn't have a legal department,

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and it doesn't have an excuse big enough to cover

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thirty five seconds. So that's where we are this Friday.

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A father in Georgia on trial over a house that

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firefighters had to walk into to believe. And a ten

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year old named Zoe who didn't get out, a young

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woman in Las Vegas who pleaded guilty after a photoshoot

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ended with a gun shot. And a twenty three year

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old named Mark who was just there to take the pictures.

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And a toll booth on a Florida beach where a

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grandmother named Tammy Joe went to work and never came home.

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Three cases, three families that didn't ask to be on

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this show. The thread running through all of them isn't

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bad luck. It's choices. A lock on a refrigerator, a

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finger on a trigger, a bottle of gatorade filled with vodka.

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Somebody chose and somebody else paid for it. The least

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we can do is say their names and pay attention,

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because somebody has to. I'm Garrett Fisher. Take care of

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each other this weekend, and do better before you go.

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If this episode meant something to you, share it, Send

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00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:31.079
it to one person who follows these cases. The way

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you do word of mouth is genuinely how This show

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00:19:34.559 --> 00:19:37.079
finds the people who need it, and if you're listening

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00:19:37.160 --> 00:19:40.160
on Spotify, drop us a comment. Tell me which of

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00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:42.519
these three you want us to stay on as it develops.

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I read them and they shape what we cover next.

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Wherever else you're listening on YouTube anywhere alike. A follow

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00:19:50.279 --> 00:19:53.200
a rating helps more than you'd think. We'll be right

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back here, same time, with whatever the court's hand us next.

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This program covers active and ongoing legal proceedings. William McHugh

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00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:07.839
has pleaded not guilty and his trial is in progress.

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Everything described about that case reflects allegations and opening statements

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by the prosecution, not findings a fact, and he has

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00:20:15.799 --> 00:20:20.400
presumed innocent unless and until a jury convicts him. Karina

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00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:23.720
McHugh's guilty plea and pending sentencing are reported as a

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00:20:23.799 --> 00:20:27.640
matter of court record. Alessandra Blay has pleaded guilty to

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amended charges of involuntary manslaughter and kidnapping. The approximately five

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00:20:32.559 --> 00:20:35.640
year term described is the expected outcome under her plea

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agreement and has not yet been imposed, with sentencing scheduled

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for July twenty ninth. Regarding her grandfather, Joseph Blew, he

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is a person of interest in the New Mexico cases

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00:20:47.079 --> 00:20:50.160
known as the West Masa murders, and was convicted of

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00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.720
sexual assault. He has not been convicted of those killings,

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and any statement to the contrary attributed to the defendant

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00:20:57.119 --> 00:21:01.839
is unproven. Deanna Harrell has been charged with vehicular homicide

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and dui manslaughter. She has not been convicted, and all

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00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:08.319
accounts of her conduct that day come from the Volusia

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00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:12.720
County Sheriff's Office and remain allegations. Her reported age has

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been listed as both thirty five and thirty six. Details

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00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:20.319
of the victim's age have varied slightly between sources. Her

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court proceedings are ongoing as of this recording. Reporting in

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00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:28.039
this episode is drawn from Court TV and additional public

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00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:31.839
reporting where sources differ or details are unconfirmed.

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We've told you so.

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This program is for information and commentary and is not

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legal advice. Today's episode also touches on mental health, crisis

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and suicidal thoughts. If you or someone you know is struggling,

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help is available in the US. You can call her

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00:21:48.559 --> 00:21:51.279
text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at nine to eight

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eight