Speaker 1: Please be advised the following episode contains distressing scenes of
Speaker 1: murder involving children. Parental discretion is advised. You're listening to Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season five, episode twelve, Profit and Loss, Part two of two.
Speaker 1: With the local neighborhood still reeling from the shock of
Speaker 1: the brutal evangelist and murders, down at Detroit's Grand River
Speaker 1: Avenue Police station, Detective Lieutenant John Whitman and detectives Charles
Speaker 1: Searle and Earl Switzer were joined by Detective Fred from
Speaker 1: as they trawled through the various correspondents taken from Benny's office,
Speaker 1: having found a number of letters from the extortionist group
Speaker 1: the Black Hand, and one in particular, sent six months
Speaker 1: prior to the murders, ending with the line this is
Speaker 1: your last chance. Police were beginning to suspect that they
Speaker 1: were responsible for the deaths, but there was one other
Speaker 1: letter that gave them even more pause for thought. It
Speaker 1: was addressed to A Lewis Evangelista of Coreopolis, Pennsylvania, a
Speaker 1: name the detectives knew well. Back in nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: a man was found dead outside thirty five thirty two
Speaker 1: Saint Auban Avenue, not far from Santina and Benny Evangelista's home,
Speaker 1: having been shot multiple times. The man was later identified
Speaker 1: as thirty three year old Felis Argento, a known enforcer
Speaker 1: of the Black Hand. Argento had been ambushed to just
Speaker 1: outside the property by Angelo Paperot and his son in
Speaker 1: law Louis Evangelista. It seemed more than a little coincidental
Speaker 1: that Lewis was also named Evangelista, leading the police to
Speaker 1: speculate that perhaps he and Benny were related, or, more tragically,
Speaker 1: that Benny and his family had been murdered in a
Speaker 1: case of mistaken identity. The police interviewed Lewis at his
Speaker 1: home in Coreopolis two days later, where he gave his
Speaker 1: version of events. As he explained, he and his stepfather
Speaker 1: police had shot Argento out of self defense when he
Speaker 1: came to collect five thousand dollars of so called protection
Speaker 1: money from his stepfather. The pair had warned police of
Speaker 1: the impending danger, but were forced to take matters into
Speaker 1: their own hands when the detectives assigned to protect them
Speaker 1: failed to show up. After fleeing to Pontiac, twenty miles
Speaker 1: north of Detroit, the pair were picked up by local police,
Speaker 1: but eventually let go After Detroit police informed them of
Speaker 1: their circumstances, the officers in Pontiac agreed not to book
Speaker 1: them because they were essentially running for their lives from
Speaker 1: a criminal organization, and to do so would have put
Speaker 1: them in mortal danger. In short, Lewis knew only too
Speaker 1: well how seriously the black Hands should be taken. But
Speaker 1: as for Benny had a letter with his name and
Speaker 1: address on it. He claimed to have no idea. The
Speaker 1: pair were distant relations, he said, but hadn't spoken in years.
Speaker 1: Then about the same time, another letter arrived at the
Speaker 1: Grand River Avenue station, simply written on a folded up
Speaker 1: piece of paper. It read, my conscience bothers me since
Speaker 1: I killed that family of six. So we'll confess and
Speaker 1: say I am sorry. I live on Lincoln Avenue in
Speaker 1: the fifty four hundred block, but I won't give the
Speaker 1: house number because I want thinking time. Searched the houses
Speaker 1: and you will find the bloody hatchet in a suitcase.
Speaker 1: I am ready for the worst punishment I can get.
Speaker 1: Two officers were promptly dispatched to search the location, but
Speaker 1: were unable to find any suitcase. In the end, investigating
Speaker 1: officers determined the letter to be nothing but a hoax,
Speaker 1: and Detroit's Finest were once again left empty handed. Having
Speaker 1: reached something of a dead end, investigators turned to Benny's Bible,
Speaker 1: the Oldest History of the World, for clues. The book
Speaker 1: was republished online by Jarrett Koebec in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: painstakingly typing it up from one of only three original
Speaker 1: copies thought to remain in existence. Jarrett describes the book
Speaker 1: as a prime example of outsider art, but one that
Speaker 1: was also gut wrenchingly awful, while at the same time offering,
Speaker 1: as he says, a sidelong glance into all the weirdness
Speaker 1: that makes up the basic fabric of the American experience.
Speaker 1: The book, which had in fact been ghost written owing
Speaker 1: either to Benny's lack of English or typewriting abilities, centered
Speaker 1: largely around the wanderings of a prophet called Meal, as
Speaker 1: presented to Benny through his apparent communications with God. It
Speaker 1: was effectively a rewriting of the world as laid out
Speaker 1: in the first section of the Torah, known as Basheet
Speaker 1: or Genesis as it's known in the Old Testament of
Speaker 1: the Bible. Though the press and police were quick to
Speaker 1: hold up the oldest history as evidence that Benny was
Speaker 1: attempting to establish a cult through his teachings. There's little
Speaker 1: evidence to suggest he'd amassed any followers by the time
Speaker 1: of his death. However, a sign that Benny had hung
Speaker 1: up in his basement window reading Great Celestial Planet exhibition
Speaker 1: suggests he'd been intending to entice people in to visit
Speaker 1: his peculiar religious sanctum, though for what purpose exactly is
Speaker 1: not entirely clear. For the family's priest father, Beccherini, even
Speaker 1: if Benny had only concocted it all as an elaborate
Speaker 1: money making scheme, it was still tantamount to blasphemy. Having
Speaker 1: watched from afar, Beccherini had long been concerned that Benny's
Speaker 1: dabblings in the occult might unwittingly awaken something dark that
Speaker 1: he was not able to control. For those unfortunate to
Speaker 1: have witnessed the horrific crime scene, especially considering the lack
Speaker 1: of evidence and witnesses, they could certainly be forgiven for
Speaker 1: thinking Benny had succeeded in summoning something unspeakable from the
Speaker 1: very darkest depths of Hell, only for it to then
Speaker 1: vanish silently back into the night, and if indeed a
Speaker 1: disgruntled or deranged client was ultimately responsible, perhaps in some
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Speaker 1: morning of Sunday, July fourteenth, another letter arrived, this time
Speaker 1: sent to Detroit's Wayne County Police Station and addressed to
Speaker 1: the station Sheriff Irah Wilson. The letter, which being dated
Speaker 1: July sixth, was written only three days after the murders,
Speaker 1: read as follows, Sir, just a few lines to introduce
Speaker 1: to you a name of a good man of which
Speaker 1: I believe he will lead the road to discover the
Speaker 1: brutal slaughter of the evangelists if you only give him
Speaker 1: the power to act the investigation. This man lives at
Speaker 1: fourteen eighty five East Grand River in lansinc. His name
Speaker 1: is George Prico. Later that day, two detectives made their
Speaker 1: way to Lansing to interview Prico, a tailor who worked
Speaker 1: at a vocational school for boys. Unfortunately, Prico claimed to
Speaker 1: have no idea who might have sent the letter, but
Speaker 1: he did confess to know something about Benny. According to Prico,
Speaker 1: a friend of his from Detroit at once visited Benny
Speaker 1: for treatment. During the appointment, Benny confided to the friend
Speaker 1: that he feared a former patient was going to kill him.
Speaker 1: In fact, as some have pointed out, in the preface
Speaker 1: of his book, Ben, he appeared to have a prophetic
Speaker 1: sense that he was going to die, writing that only
Speaker 1: if I live shall I tell of the Third World,
Speaker 1: a reference to one of the later volumes he planned
Speaker 1: to write. As for helping the investigation, however, Prico's information
Speaker 1: was far too vague to be of any use. Police
Speaker 1: then turned their attention again to the idea that Benny
Speaker 1: and his family were murdered for money. The theory was
Speaker 1: given greater credibility when it was revealed that the night
Speaker 1: before their death, Benny had made arrangements to have a
Speaker 1: truckload of scrap timber delivered to his property early the
Speaker 1: next morning, having offered two hundred dollars for the material
Speaker 1: about three thousand dollars in today's money. The delivery was
Speaker 1: arranged for seven am, and yet, despite the family's bodies
Speaker 1: not being found until ten thirty am, no delivery of
Speaker 1: timber was made to their home. Since Benny was thought
Speaker 1: to have agreed to pay cash on arrival. The fact
Speaker 1: that no money was found at the property during the
Speaker 1: police investigation led some to believe that whoever knew about
Speaker 1: the delivery might also have known the money would be
Speaker 1: in the house. Neither the driver or the person who
Speaker 1: Benny arranged the delivery with was traced, although it would
Speaker 1: by no means have been unheard of. Most simply couldn't
Speaker 1: believe that a crime of such deliberate brutality would be
Speaker 1: perpetrated for such a relatively small sum of money. But
Speaker 1: what the police ultimately couldn't shake was the suspicion that
Speaker 1: all of it was somehow linked to Benny's strange and
Speaker 1: unusual religion, and so they began to dig a little
Speaker 1: further into his past, in particular to his time spent
Speaker 1: in York County, Pennsylvania, a place located in the heart
Speaker 1: of pow wow country. The practice of pow wow is
Speaker 1: thought to have arrived in America with Dutch and German
Speaker 1: mainly Amish as in the eighteenth century, with many heading
Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania. The states soon became a focal point for
Speaker 1: what would eventually become the Pennsylvania Dutch pow wow tradition.
Speaker 1: Though taking many forms, the practice essentially involves the utilizing
Speaker 1: of spells and charms in an effort to cure illness
Speaker 1: and disease. The term pow wow is thought to derive
Speaker 1: from the Algonquin word for healer or dreaming, for divination
Speaker 1: and healing purposes. However, it wasn't until the publication of
Speaker 1: the book pow Wow's or Long Lost Friend by Johann
Speaker 1: George Hohman that it became synonymous with the growing folk
Speaker 1: magic movement. Homan and his family emigrated to Pennsylvania from
Speaker 1: Germany in eighteen o two. Practically penniless when they arrived,
Speaker 1: Homan and his wife, Anna Catherine were forced to sell
Speaker 1: themselves as indentured servants to raise money to live. Though
Speaker 1: separated at first, the family were eventually reunited once their
Speaker 1: debt was paid off, with Homan by then making a
Speaker 1: living writing ballads and hymns to sell at market. Then,
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty, he published Long Lost Friend, a peculiar
Speaker 1: mix of prayers and healing recipes. Though Homan never intended
Speaker 1: it to be used for magical purposes, it soon gained
Speaker 1: a glowing reputation among many of the local faith healers
Speaker 1: and pow wow practitioners. Even mere ownership of the book
Speaker 1: was said to bring protective powers to any one who
Speaker 1: possessed it. It is thought Benny's own attempted religion and
Speaker 1: self proclamation as a prophet and healer was heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by the pow Wow movement, all of which led police
Speaker 1: to wander if his death was linked to an equally
Speaker 1: bizarre murder that occurred in Pennsylvania the previous year. It
Speaker 1: was during Thanksgiving of nineteen twenty eight that thirty two
Speaker 1: year old John Blymeer arrived at the Marietta use of
Speaker 1: Nellie Knoll, also known as the River, which in Pennsylvania's
Speaker 1: Lancaster County. Blymir had been struggling with his mental health
Speaker 1: over the loss of two children and his wife leaving him.
Speaker 1: Over time, he came to suspect his misfortune was due
Speaker 1: to the fact that some one had put a curse
Speaker 1: on him. Over the course of six sessions at a home,
Speaker 1: employing all manner of spells, charms, and herbal remedies, Noel
Speaker 1: attempted to determine the source of Blymier's misery. At the
Speaker 1: end of the final session, Noel asked Blymeyer to hold
Speaker 1: out his palm, into which she placed a single dollar coin,
Speaker 1: telling him that the moment he removed it, he would
Speaker 1: see the cause of all his pain. Blymier promptly removed
Speaker 1: the coin, whereby he later claimed to see a vision
Speaker 1: of Nelson Raymier, another local witch doctor and acquaintance of Blymier's,
Speaker 1: who lived at a place known coincidentally as Heck Hollow
Speaker 1: roughly twenty miles away with the malignant agent identified Noel
Speaker 1: informed Blymyer that in order to break the curse, he
Speaker 1: needed to collect a lock of Raymier's hair and bury
Speaker 1: it six feet underground. But more crucially, he must also
Speaker 1: locate Raymier's copy of The Long Lost Friend and burn it.
Speaker 1: And so on November twenty seventh, Blymyer and two accomplices
Speaker 1: arrived at Raymier's home and assaulted him. It isn't clear
Speaker 1: if the men had only intended to subdue Raymeyer to
Speaker 1: collect some hair and steal his book, but after a
Speaker 1: quick struggle that lasted less than a minute, Raymeyer was dead,
Speaker 1: unable to even find the book. Afterwards, Blymyer decided to
Speaker 1: set fire to the entire house to be sure it
Speaker 1: was destroyed. He and his accomplices were captured soon after,
Speaker 1: with Blymyer sentenced to life for his crime. Though ultimately
Speaker 1: he regretted his actions, he remained convinced, nonetheless, that Raymier's
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Speaker 1: police couldn't find any obvious connection between Benny and the
Speaker 1: Ramayer murder, it did lead them to something else. Having
Speaker 1: looked further into Benny's time in New York County, police
Speaker 1: became interested in a man he met there shortly after
Speaker 1: he arrived in nineteen o six. Aurelius Angelino, also known
Speaker 1: as Leon, was twenty years older than Benny and had
Speaker 1: also emigrated to the US from Napoli, with Benny only
Speaker 1: twenty two, when he was effectively banished to Pennsylvania by
Speaker 1: his older brother. Some have speculated that Leon quickly became
Speaker 1: something of a father figure to him. But more than
Speaker 1: any think what drew them together was their mutual fascination
Speaker 1: of occult philosophies, and in particular, the mystical teachings of theosophy.
Speaker 1: In May nineteen nineteen, for reasons unknown, Angelino was jailed
Speaker 1: and committed to a psychiatric unit, only to be released
Speaker 1: soon after due to the please of his distraught wife,
Speaker 1: who'd been left alone to look after their four children.
Speaker 1: The day after he returned home, however, Angelino attacked his
Speaker 1: wife with a club while she made dinner. After fighting
Speaker 1: him off, she somehow managed to escape the house, taking
Speaker 1: two of their children with her into the garden to
Speaker 1: get away from him. Back inside the house, however, Angelina
Speaker 1: quickly located the other two children, who he then battered
Speaker 1: to death. After stripping naked, Angelino picked up his blood
Speaker 1: soaked children and carried them into the yard, where he
Speaker 1: proceeded to chop one of them up, stuffing their remains
Speaker 1: into a garbage can before police eventually arrived to subdue him.
Speaker 1: Leon was consequently committed to what used to be Fairview
Speaker 1: State Hospital in Pennsylvania. Believing they might have a lead,
Speaker 1: detectives working the Evangelista murder went to Fairview to interview Leon,
Speaker 1: only to discover, much to their alarm, that he'd escaped
Speaker 1: from the hospital the year after he was committed. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, two years before the Evangelista murders, a
Speaker 1: body was discovered on a train track in Baltimore that
Speaker 1: was later identified as Aurelius Angelino by his wife. Though
Speaker 1: Detroit police were satisfied this meant he couldn't possibly be
Speaker 1: their man, some have speculated that, due to the mangled
Speaker 1: state of his body, it is entirely possible his wife
Speaker 1: was mistaken in her positive identification. Nonetheless, the evangelistic case
Speaker 1: remained open, with the investigation beginning to pete are out
Speaker 1: once more. Detective Fred Frown, who was now leading the investigation,
Speaker 1: was surprised to read one morning in the Border City
Speaker 1: Star that one of his detectives, Michael Larco, had cracked
Speaker 1: the case. Larco, a member of Detroit's Italian Squad specializing
Speaker 1: in crimes relating to the Italian American community, was duly
Speaker 1: brought in for questioning to give his side of the story.
Speaker 1: It was a few weeks earlier, he said, when he
Speaker 1: received a call from US Immigration asking him to take
Speaker 1: custody of an Italian man who'd been picked up in
Speaker 1: the town of Windsor, having illegally crossed the Canadian border. Strangely,
Speaker 1: when the man was asked to empty his pockets on
Speaker 1: arrival at the station in Detroit, he was found to
Speaker 1: have a piece of paper with the address thirty five
Speaker 1: eighty seven Saint Auban Street written on it, the home
Speaker 1: of the Evangelista family. He also happened to have a
Speaker 1: copy of the oldest History on him too. Then, over
Speaker 1: the next few days, according to Larco, man slowly began
Speaker 1: to open up. Not only did he know Benny, he'd
Speaker 1: also once been a client of his. On his first
Speaker 1: visit to Benny's home, the man, who had gone to
Speaker 1: treat a minor ailment, was given a copy of his
Speaker 1: book before being led down into the bizarre basement altar space. There,
Speaker 1: the man watched a little unnerved as Benny fell into
Speaker 1: a trance and proceeded to minister a cure for him.
Speaker 1: Having felt better, he continued to visit Benny until eventually
Speaker 1: he was broke. Only when his ailment returned did he
Speaker 1: realize that he'd been duped. In the evening of July second,
Speaker 1: the man slipped into Benny's home and found him sitting
Speaker 1: in a trance at his desk. Taking the meat cleaver
Speaker 1: he'd brought with him, he chopped Benny's head clean off,
Speaker 1: then turned to find Benny's daughter staring up at him
Speaker 1: in stunned disbelief. Believing he had no other choice, the
Speaker 1: man proceeded to murder the rest of the family, and
Speaker 1: when it was fled to Canada, Detective Larco claimed to
Speaker 1: have traveled to Windsor himself to verify bank withdrawals made
Speaker 1: by the man to Benny for the sum of ten dollars,
Speaker 1: the amount he routinely charged his clients. Only none of
Speaker 1: it was true. Larco had made the whole thing up,
Speaker 1: attempting to pin the crime on the unknown Italian man
Speaker 1: in the hope of receiving the states by then four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars reward for the killer's capture. The man's prince
Speaker 1: were taken nonetheless, and after they were found not to
Speaker 1: match those at the evangelist of property, he was quietly
Speaker 1: released the following day. In what appears to have been
Speaker 1: a recurring theme in his career, Detective Larco was eventually
Speaker 1: reprimanded and convicted of soliciting a bribe. Over the next year,
Speaker 1: attention in the evangelistic case inevitably began to wane. With
Speaker 1: no further evidence coming to light. To fill the vacuum,
Speaker 1: police began increasingly to turn to more bizarre theories. One
Speaker 1: detective suggested the killings were part of a series of
Speaker 1: forty disparate murders or perpetrated by the same serial killer,
Speaker 1: who he'd given the name the Holiday Ripper, but the
Speaker 1: theory was never seriously investigated, and so the case went dormant.
Speaker 1: Two years later, on Sunday, November twentieth, roughly ten blocks
Speaker 1: from the former evangelist of property, a man walked into
Speaker 1: the home of Robert Harris, a member of the Allah
Speaker 1: Temple of Islam soon to be Nation of Islam that
Speaker 1: had been established by Wallace Fard two years previously. As
Speaker 1: the man searched for Harris, he stepped into a crude
Speaker 1: oldar room at the back of the property and found
Speaker 1: the body of a man named James Smith spread out
Speaker 1: limply on top of it, an eight inch knife thrust
Speaker 1: into his heart all the way to the hilt. His
Speaker 1: head had also been bashed in Harris, who was arrested
Speaker 1: along with his wife Bertha. Later that afternoon, having gone
Speaker 1: to a friend's house for lunch, immediately confessed to the murder.
Speaker 1: As he explained to police, he murdered Smith as a
Speaker 1: sacrifice to Allah, claiming that the man had voluntarily climbed
Speaker 1: on to the altar after Harris promised him his sacrifice
Speaker 1: would make him the savior of the world. Though Harris
Speaker 1: had no real standing in the Alla Temple of Islam
Speaker 1: and his history of mental illness was well known to
Speaker 1: his family and other members, it didn't stop the media
Speaker 1: proclaiming him as the temple's high priest and describing the
Speaker 1: movement as nothing but a voodoo cult obsessed with ritual
Speaker 1: and human sacrifice. As such, investigators looking into the evangelistic
Speaker 1: case couldn't help but wonder if Robert Harris was the
Speaker 1: man that had been looking for all this time. Despite
Speaker 1: only the most tenuous of links with both Benny's apparent
Speaker 1: religion and the Alla Temple of Islam being described lazily
Speaker 1: as colts, Harris was investigated for the crime. However, not
Speaker 1: only did his prince not match those found at the scene,
Speaker 1: but he was also in ten A c At the
Speaker 1: time of the murders. Is there something interfering with your
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Speaker 1: years had passed since the evangelist of family were brutally
Speaker 1: butchered in their home at thirty five eighty seven Saint
Speaker 1: Auban Street, when a woman, Teresa my Couci, walked into
Speaker 1: Hunt Street police station claiming to have some vital information
Speaker 1: pertaining to the murders, though the original investigators had long
Speaker 1: moved on to other cases. Teresa was taken to see
Speaker 1: Detective Charles Snyder, who duie set about taking her statement.
Speaker 1: The information was regarding her ex husband and Berto Ecchio,
Speaker 1: one of the original suspects in the case, who had
Speaker 1: been arrested the day the bodies were discovered, alongside his
Speaker 1: friend Angelo de poli. As. She went on to explain,
Speaker 1: she and Umberto had actually been to the evangelist at
Speaker 1: home on a number of occasions because she had once
Speaker 1: been a client of Benny's, having been taken there by
Speaker 1: Aumberto to undergo a series of healing rituals. Something that
Speaker 1: had always bugged her since the murders, she said, was
Speaker 1: the fact that Benny, as she recalled, used to have
Speaker 1: two machetes hanging up on the wall of his office,
Speaker 1: but nothing was ever mentioned of them in the subsequent investigation.
Speaker 1: Presumably she thought because they were no longer there when
Speaker 1: the police inspected the property. Not only would aumberto have
Speaker 1: known about them from the times they went to visit Benny,
Speaker 1: but he had some previous Two. In April nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: three months before the evangelist and murders, Techio, stabbed his
Speaker 1: then wife's brother to death in a dispute over money
Speaker 1: to raise a divorce Techio three weeks later, but despite
Speaker 1: efforts to rid him from her life, in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: her second husband, Lewis Peruzzi, was found shot dead on
Speaker 1: their porch. Only days before his death, Perrutzi had begged
Speaker 1: police for protection from Techio, who'd threatened to kill him
Speaker 1: and blow up the house. The death was oddly ruled
Speaker 1: as suicide, and then more people began to come out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork. Frank Costanza, who was a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old paper boy at the time, revealed that he saw
Speaker 1: Techio leaving the evangelist of property at five am in
Speaker 1: the morning, despite Techio's previous claim that he'd returned to
Speaker 1: his boarding house at eleven pm the night before. Following
Speaker 1: up this claim, Detective Snyder reinterviewed former aqaintances of Techios
Speaker 1: from the boarding house and received some startling information. One
Speaker 1: former lodger, Camillo Treus, admitted that he had also accompanied
Speaker 1: Techio along with Tapoli, to the evangelist of property the
Speaker 1: night before the murders, Though they did return to the
Speaker 1: boarding house at eleven pm after going out drinking, as
Speaker 1: Techio had originally stated, by the time Treus woke up
Speaker 1: the next morning at seven pm, Umberto was nowhere to
Speaker 1: be seen. He didn't return to the boarding house until
Speaker 1: four pm the next day, when he arrived carrying a
Speaker 1: canvas mason bag about three feet in length. This bag, however,
Speaker 1: was never found. As for Techio, police were unfortunately unable
Speaker 1: to interview him again because by then he too was dead,
Speaker 1: dying of a brain hemorrhage in November nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 1: As frustrating as all this was, the irony of it
Speaker 1: is that it was only the event of Techio's death
Speaker 1: that gave others the confidence to come forward in the
Speaker 1: first place. With all the new information regardless, in August
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, Detective Snyder compiled a final report on
Speaker 1: the crimes, concluding the Umberto, Techio was the murderer. Two
Speaker 1: weeks later, Techio's Prince were sent to another police department
Speaker 1: to verify them against the bloody prints found the evangelist
Speaker 1: at home, and they were stunned by the result. The
Speaker 1: prints were not a match. If you enjoy Unexplained and
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