Doris Carlson

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A brutal crime in an unlikely place.

A nurse at the assisted living facility discovered her.

She was in very bad shape.

She had been stabbed multiple times.

The worst I've seen.

I've never experienced anything like this.

Investigators consider whether the threat came from inside.

The door was actually locked when the nurse came in, so somebody had a key.

But a tip shines light on a more intimate betrayal.

They used $90 plus thousand dollars on stuff instead of paying the bills.

The list of offenders and betrayals continues to grow.

Do you have an idea on what he was doing?

It was just an angry outburst.

I was never really supposed to be a part of it.

It stunned me.

How do you do that?

But who will lead investigators to the mastermind?

It was terrifying.

If these people were capable of doing this, anybody could be capable of anything.

At 5 a.m.

on October October 25th, 1996, a 911 call comes into the Peoria, Arizona Police Department from the Camelot Care Assisted Living Facility.

While calls from the facility are not uncommon, the nature of this one is definitely unusual.

They were advising that they had a resident that had been stabbed, but there was not a lot of details.

Obviously, officers responded quickly.

A nurse went into her client's room and discovered her client was severely, severely injured and was bleeding.

The nurse identifies the victim as 53-year-old Mary Lynn Carlson.

When first responders arrive, they find Lynn still alive, but just barely.

Lynn was in very bad shape.

She'd been stabbed multiple times.

The main thing is to try to get her out and keep her heart moving.

Life is going to be the number one priority.

Paramedics load Lynn into an ambulance and patrol officers call for detectives.

While I was en route to the scene, I was advised that she was en route to the hospital.

I'm thinking that this is a very odd place for an attack like this to happen.

It's at a residential assisted living care facility.

There's nurses that make rounds.

Usually there's traffic, foot traffic going around.

Lynn had multiple sclerosis, and she wasn't able to care for herself.

She was in a wheelchair.

She was bedridden.

She's an unlikely victim.

Born in 1942, Mary Lynn's life started out far from the Arizona desert in the bustling city of Chicago, where she was adopted at a young age by Marie and Dave Sullivan.

She had a wonderful mom and dad.

Dave Sullivan owned a men's clothing store with his brother-in-law.

They were just wonderful people.

She loved her father.

She loved her mother too, but she was daddy's girl.

She had a vivacious personality.

She was the opposite of her parents.

Her parents are quiet, and Mary Lynn was her own person, even as a child.

After high school, Lynn set out on her own.

She worked as a clerk.

She didn't work maybe a couple years, and then she met Dale Carlson, and they got married.

Sadly, the easy days were short-lived.

Now, as Lynn got older, she actually was diagnosed with MS, and so she really struggled with her health.

MS affects her muscles and her strength, and she would become weak at times, and also at times, it affected her moods.

She would slip into depressions.

Despite the early onset of MS and ensuing depression, Lynn was determined to live life to the fullest.

In 1970, the 28-year-old and her husband started a family.

Lynn and Dale had one son, and his name was David.

David was her world.

She loved David so much.

She loved him dearly.

However, Lynn was often preoccupied by the worsening symptoms of her disease.

MS is something that is very painful, and it really prohibits people from moving and having the independence with freedom.

The loss of independence took a toll on lynn's mental health

lynn and i would talk and she did confirm with me that yeah you know i had a problem with drinking lynn and dale struggled with alcoholism that was one of the straws that broke the camel back and you know they have divorced

lynn tried to cut back on her drinking and focused on rebuilding the relationship with her 12-year-old son, David.

She was embarrassed by her behavior.

She said she wished she could have changed things when he was growing up, but now things were better.

By the late 80s, Lynn's father had passed away and her mother relocated to Arizona.

In 1988, 46-year-old Lynn followed her mother to the Phoenix suburb of Peoria.

David stayed back in the Chicagoland area to try to start his his life.

He didn't pursue higher education.

He sort of worked, you know, in and out of fast food restaurants.

He was a little lost.

At the age of 22, David found what he was looking for when he met 30-year-old Doris Hagenagh.

She worked odd jobs as well.

She worked at a movie theater, she worked at some fast food restaurants, but she also was a certified nurse assistant.

Doris Hagenah was born in 1962 and raised in Indiana.

Doris is the twin to Debbie.

They're fraternal twins.

They're six years older than I am.

So we shared the same mom, but

different dads.

Growing up, we really had a good family.

She was a little more than the wild one.

You never knew what kind of adventure you were going to get into with Dory.

Doris married young and had three children.

But after eight years, Doris and her husband went their separate ways.

There was a big difference in personality.

There were a lot of heated arguments.

They eventually said, that's it.

We're done.

It was a very contentious divorce.

Her ex-husband got custody of her three children.

There was some time that went by from Doris's divorce.

She had been on her own for a while, going from apartment to apartment.

In 1992, six years after her divorce, Doris met 22-year-old David Carlson.

She was in her 30s and he was early 20s.

After only a year of dating, David and Doris married, and the newlyweds decided to move to Arizona to live with David's mother, 50-year-old Lynn.

Lynn had already been confined to a wheelchair.

She had a trust fund and an annuity.

She was able to buy the pretty decent house.

And at that point, her son and daughter-in-law moved in with her.

Doris was a certified nursing assistant.

So it worked out great that they could stay with Lynn, take care of her.

For the next three years, David and Doris cared for Lynn, but eventually it became clear that Lynn needed more than they could provide.

With the stage of MS that she had at the time she would get the shakes, she would have no sense of balance.

Fine motor skills were then challenging.

In July 1996, Lynn moved into the Camelot Care Assisted Living Facility just a few miles away.

When Lynn moved into the assisted care facility,

David and Doris continued to live in the home.

Lynn was making friends there at the facility that she would have lunch with or visit with at times, and

she really enjoyed it.

Just a few months after Lynn moved into the facility, the 53-year-old is found with multiple stab wounds inside her apartment.

When detectives arrive, they get an update from Lynn's caregivers.

She's in critical condition.

They were going to get her into surgery as soon as they could.

She was stabbed eight to 10 times in the chest.

So they tried to repair these stab wounds.

They're trying to heal her.

This is an unusual crime because that victim was helpless.

They really wanted to find out who, of course, could have access to Lynn's apartment.

Coming up, detectives zero in on a mysterious clue.

The door was actually locked.

Okay, now somebody had access to the key.

Until theories on motive shift their attention.

Then you have to look at who stands to gain the most

out of this attack.

October 25th, 1996.

As surgeons work frantically to save the life of 53-year-old stabbing victim Lynn Carlson, detectives interview the nurse who discovered her.

She let herself in with a key.

So she walks in and she knew obviously something horrific had happened because her client was bleeding.

Lynn said to the woman that found her, I tried as hard as I could to fight them off, but it was too hard.

Investigators note an important detail.

My main thing is, how did the suspect get in?

We looked at the door, we looked at the windows, there was no damage.

The door was actually locked when the nurse came in, so somebody had a key.

That was our first clue was okay now somebody had access to the key

the nurses had a key which we could account for administration had a master key which we could account for

and the third key we were told was with david and doris

Detectives asked the nurse if she noticed anything out of the ordinary during her earlier rounds that night.

The nurse had observed somebody walking in a white, like a physician's coat, a medical coat.

She said she didn't know who he was.

She didn't recognize him, but she thought it was interesting because most of the doctors and nurses that are wearing white coats are there during the day.

It's very rare that somebody that's wearing a white coat would be in that assisted facility in the evening hours.

Detectives conclude their interview with the nurse and begin to examine the scene.

We're just trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Was it a burglary gone bad?

But Lynn's purse had been untouched.

The TV had been unplugged.

They had piled some stuff on or around the TV like they were going to take, but they never took anything.

The whole scene looked staged at that point because the TV was right there and Lynn's purse.

So just a lot of things at this point didn't make sense.

Investigators search for the murder weapon.

As we looked through the crime scene, we checked the knives.

There was nothing there that appeared to have been used or washed.

The knife or knives that were used

were not left at the crime scene.

We were not able to find any fingerprints.

They got in.

and got out and for the most part they left a clean scene.

Investigators dig for more information about Lynn's experience in the care facility over the past few months.

We wanted to check and see if there was any kind of disagreements or anything between Lynn

and any of the caregivers or any of the residents.

She was very loved and beloved at this assisted facility.

People really liked her.

There was just nothing that pointed towards anybody that would have done something like this

then detectives get word that lynn's son has just arrived at the facility

david carlson said that he just decided to stop here to see his mom i advised david that his mother had been attacked his question was where is she and can she talk Detective Lang breaks the news that Lynn's condition is serious.

He told him she was unconscious and she's on her way to surgery.

I said, hey, look, you know, I know you want to get to the hospital and see your mom, but I really need to talk to you.

So I need you to go straight to the Peoria Police Department.

He agreed.

He said he understood.

But as detectives arrive at the station, less than a 10-minute drive from the facility, David is not there

so when david arrived at the police department i asked david i looked at my watch and said you know it took you a while to get here because we left at the same time is everything okay you know did you have any car problems or anything like that did you stop anywhere and david goes no i didn't i didn't stop anywhere i came straight here

So at that point, I believe that David's not being truthful with us.

Detectives move on, questioning David about Lynn.

David maintained that he had a very good relationship with his mother, that they were loving, and that he, you know, obviously moved his entire life to Arizona to take care of her.

However, he admits the high cost of the facility has them all stretched thin.

Lynn's trust fund and two annuities totaled roughly about $370,000 total.

But then Lynn goes to the care home, and so all of the money supporting Lynn goes to Lynn in the care home and that leaves no money to support Doris or David Carlson.

David did admit that they're in some financial problems because of the care facility.

The house was still owned by Lynn.

David and Doris were just living there.

They were supposed to be taking care of, paying the bills.

We were able to confirm that they are about ready to lose a house, the utilities are going to be shut off and so forth.

The house in Arizona was so large, it actually had multiple bedrooms that were not being used.

So David and Doris rented out other bedrooms from the home in order to make additional money.

Mary Lynn told me one of the other things that she kind of, I'll say, stuck in her craw was that Doris was accepting rent money and not turning it over to Mary Lynn.

That rent money should have gone to her.

Detectives asked David point blank, would you ever hurt your mother?

And he maintained that he would never.

He did, of course, say that they had arguments over finances and money, but at the same time, he loved her very much.

Detectives asked David where he was when Lynn was attacked the night before.

He said that he was at home with Doris.

I didn't press too much because I wanted to try to to keep an open dialogue with him.

Investigators also ask about the third key to Lynn's room.

He said that they do have a key that he thinks is at the house and that he could probably get it to us.

Investigators get one important takeaway from David's interview: Lynn Carlson had money.

Most common motives for homicide would be for money or for love.

You have to look at who stands to gain the most

out of this attack.

If Mary Lynn was to die, that would be David who would get the money.

Coming up, a tip exposes horrifying secrets.

I came to the home and Lynn would be on the floor, could not get herself up.

She would ask for help and no help would come.

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For investigators looking into the attack that left 53-year-old Lynn Carlson clinging to life, there is an unanswered question looming.

The nurse actually told detectives that she saw this man in a white coat.

And we were still looking at that point for the white medical jacket.

It seemed like it wasn't part of the actual attack.

They interviewed all the employees at the facility, and they're really coming up blank, and they're really hitting a brick wall.

The white coat

never came up again.

Detectives move on and take a look at the financial records of Lynn's son David and his wife Doris.

And they find something troubling.

When the house was bought, it was paid cash by Lynn.

So it was free and clear.

There was no mortgage.

And then when Doris and David came, they put a pool in.

And then they took out some other loans.

That amount of money that was owed was $97,000.

On October 25th, less than 12 hours after Lynn's attack, detectives secure a search warrant and head to the Carlson home.

We were looking for any knives, any kind of bloody clothing, anything like that.

David couldn't produce a key.

He would just say, I don't know what happened to him.

While the search is underway, detectives speak with David's wife, 34-year-old Doris Carlson.

She backs up everything David told police.

She confirmed that both of them were at home during the hours of the crime that took place.

They were asleep in their bed together.

She did admit that they did go to Lynn's the previous day and that asked for money.

David asked her to sign this paperwork so that her trust would then be back to paying all of his bills.

And Lynn told him that she'd have to talk to her financial advisor.

Detectives asked Doris about the key to Lynn's apartment.

We'd ask, where is it?

Well, I don't know.

I'll find it.

Well, it's kind of important.

We need the key now.

The fact that we were not able to find the key and they could not produce a key, to me, I felt that we were on the right trail.

While Doris searches for the key, detectives talk with the couple's tenants, 17-year-old Scott Smith and 20-year-old John Daniel McCreaken.

who both rent rooms at the home.

They were friends with everybody there at the house.

Daniel and David at one time had worked together.

Scott and Daniel also corroborate David and Doris' stories.

Everybody was confirming everybody's alibi.

They were all saying, yes, they were here at the house.

Neither Doris nor investigators are able to locate the key or any other evidence.

We checked all the drawers and we checked that house out thoroughly and we really didn't find anything

however just three days after the attack on october 28th investigators finally get a break we received a call from a subject who was stating that they had information pertaining to the attack

The witness, Richard, agrees to come to the station for an interview later that evening.

He had grown up with David, but then during their visits to the house, he became friends with Daniel and Scott.

Richard says a couple of nights ago, he was hanging out at the house with 20-year-old Daniel.

Daniel had told him,

Hey, man, I'm going to be getting some money.

And Richard asked, Well, how are you doing that?

He told him that him and Scott Smith were hired to break into her apartment and to kill Lynn.

And that once she dies, David's going to give them money.

Richard said that Daniel said he's splitting it with Scott.

So he goes, are you serious?

What happened?

According to Richard, Daniel says he stabbed Lynn as instructed.

Richard says he came forward because the nature of the crime is too much for him to bear.

They asked Richard if he would be involved in a sting operation to try to get one of the men to actually tell their story.

He says, absolutely, I will do that.

Scott Smith was 17-year-old.

He was the youngest, and they really felt like they might get the most information from him.

As investigators work with Richard to set up a meeting with Scott, they take a deeper dive into Lynn's relationship with her son.

Investigators interview a nurse who cared for Lynn when she still lived at home.

I worked for the home health agency and the trustees of Lynn's estate actually were the ones that hired our nursing agency to come in and oversee and help Lynn with her care.

Gail tells investigators that the trustees from the bank had grown concerned about Lynn's well-being.

Lynn would go to the bank with her daughter-in-law, Doris, and withdraw money from a trust fund.

Then at some point, the daughter-in-law was going into the bank without her withdrawing money.

The trustees started questioning those

and sent CNA certified nursing assistant to go check on the condition of Mary Lynn.

Gail says she found Lynn in horrific conditions.

Lynn would be in the bathroom or on the floor, could not get herself up, and she was left there.

The worst I've seen.

I've never experienced anything like this in all the years I've been in the healthcare field.

I do not remember that Doris was a CNA, and if she were, I didn't see evidence of that.

In July, based on the nurse's report, the trustees of Lynn's estate made a decision about her care.

The attorneys involved had all come and made a resolution that she should leave the home, get some medical attention, live in a place that she could benefit from.

Gail continued to care for Lynn at the facility.

She says Lynn thrived, but the tension between Lynn, her son David, and Doris grew.

They definitely seemed irritated.

That was my perception.

They were trying to bully Lynn into calling the trustees.

They said, we are going to lose the house and it will be your fault.

You need to call.

Investigators start to wonder, how desperate did David get?

In the meantime, they check in with Lynn's caregivers at the hospital.

After several surgeries, she is conscious, but the damage is grave and she still cannot identify her attacker.

We spend a lot of time going to the hospital, just checking on Lynn and her condition.

I went to visit Lynn.

When I saw her, it did not even look like Lynn.

She could not speak.

And I went over and held her hand.

I said, I love you.

Hospital staff take note of Lynn's most frequent visitors.

David and Doris would play video games and stuff

and really not even pay attention to Lynn.

Lynn would have her eyes open, and the minute that Lynn would see Doris, she would close her eyes.

That she did not want to see Doris at all.

Coming up, a sting confirms detectives' worst suspicions.

He said, Go ahead and do it, but I didn't think they'd have the balls.

Investigators must determine how deep this betrayal runs.

It was just

an angry suggestion.

A cooperating witness by the name of Richard agrees to help detectives coax a confession out of his friend Scott Smith.

one of the main suspects in the attempted murder of Lynn Carlson.

Richard would frequently show up where Scott works, and then they would come out and smoke a cigarette or whatever.

So Richard agreed to let us go ahead and put microphones in his car.

Scott said that he would meet him on one of his breaks.

Richard pulled up, parked his car.

Scott comes out, and Richard just said, dude, what happened?

He told Richard that, oh man, it was great.

We went in, we got out.

Daniel stabbed her.

We're going to get money.

He didn't identify David as being one of the active participants.

He mentioned that Doris Carlson had given them a key.

Doris wanted to do this.

Although the comments are damning, investigators need more to make an arrest.

On November 20th, Richard agrees to help investigators again by meeting up with Daniel.

They were just more or less sitting around.

It wasn't anything out of the norm for them.

Daniel wasn't real open.

He did say that they had ditched the key going out towards the White Tank Mountains, but then he really wouldn't talk

about really anything else.

Detectives asked Richard to wire up for a third time.

Then we went ahead and we had Richard contact David.

Richard just kind of mentioned that, you know, hey, I heard what had happened talking to Daniel and Scott.

And David really wouldn't talk, but he did make the comment to Richard that, well,

they told me what they were going to do, and I told them to go ahead and do it, but I didn't think they'd have the balls.

On November 21st, nearly a month after the attack, as Lynn remains in critical condition, detectives arrest her son and daughter-in-law.

They were at the hospital visiting Lynn when police walked in and arrested them.

That same day, detectives also arrest John Daniel McCreakin and Scott Smith.

Daniel was at home and he was taken into custody.

And Scott was at work and he was taken into custody.

At the station, the four alleged co-conspirators are separated for interviews.

Investigators start with 17-year-old Scott Smith.

Sensing that the jig is up, Scott cooperates.

It was probably a few weeks before any of this happened.

I came home from work and saw Tory talking to Dan.

I was never really supposed to be a part of it.

He said Doris did not have an agreement with Scott.

It was just with Daniel.

That she would pay Daniel $20,000 to kill Lynn.

We had to go along and make sure Guy was going to be okay.

Dan said, we just coded with me.

Scott says that on October 25th, he, Doris, and Daniel left their house just before 1 a.m.

He said she drove him over to the supermarket, which is about five blocks away.

She dropped him off there.

They went through the back alleyways,

got to the complex.

Doris had given Daniel a key.

Doris waited in the car as the two men used her key to let themselves into Lynn's apartment.

did you do anything while you were in the apartment?

Dan had some stuff off the thing.

Are you the one that unplugged the colors?

Yes.

Scott started trying to make look like a burglary gone bad.

According to Scott, Daniel focused on Lynn.

Did you have an idea of what Dan was doing?

I said, extending that 12

smaller stops on her body.

Within a few minutes, the attack was over.

Scott and Daniel ran back to meet Doris in the grocery store parking lot.

What was Dory's purpose in doing this?

Money?

How much money?

How would Dory have carried $325,000?

I'll bet.

Okay, meant she would obviously get her hands on that.

You're saying that David wasn't involved.

He obviously knew about isn't

David is not innocent in this equation, but Doris really was the woman behind this plan.

Detectives next speak with Daniel.

He gave basically the same account that Scott did, just a few more details.

He said, I walked over to the bed.

He took her wheelchair, which is right by the bed, and moved it.

He said he just started stabbing.

He was trying to hit vital organs so that she would die and she would die quick.

As for David, he also admits his role.

He had heard Doris talking about doing it and they asked David, what do you think?

And David told him, go ahead and do it.

It stunned me, you know, how do you do that to your own mom?

Once Doris entered into the picture, David's relationship and the way he viewed his mom changed.

It was clear in their marriage who the dominant person was, Doris.

With three of four co-conspirators coming clean, investigators are eager to find out if Doris will do the same.

But Doris claims that she is also a victim here.

She hired me come out here and work for her.

I helped her in and out of her backup.

I helped her in and out of her bed.

I never got any free.

I was like a guardian angel to her, and then behind my back, she'd tell people how

I was nothing but a hot box.

You know, that I was after her running.

Doris admits to venting her frustrations one night in front of Daniel.

I was really mad with my ass.

I strew my hands up before she said, I said,

I was sending you a f ⁇ ing killer boot.

It was just an angry outburst.

Doris insists that Daniel must have acted on his own.

I leave her a thicker.

Okay.

Tell us about the key that you gave to Dan.

I would get in the two.

I would not hand him a make the key available to them?

The key has always been available.

The truth is it was city house.

Did you make the key available to them?

I guess that would be my hand available.

So the answer is yes, isn't it, Dory?

It was clean.

After detectives press Doris for another two hours, she finally admits to giving Daniel and Scott a ride to the grocery store, but stops short of a confession.

You gave them a ride up there, knowing damn well what they were going to do.

Did you?

Did you, Dory?

Investigators aren't buying it and charge all four in the attack.

At this point, the charges are attempted first-degree murder, burglary in the first degree,

and facilitation to commit first-degree murder.

Coming up.

A tragic turn.

She finally died of her injuries.

That changes everything.

And a defense no one sees coming.

Doris Carlson had some kind of long-term brain damage.

Doris Carlson, along with her husband and two co-conspirators, have all been charged in a plot that has left her mother-in-law, 53-year-old Lynn Carlson, fighting for her life.

News of the arrests travels quickly.

I was relieved, but I was angry and disgusted in the fact that they could do this to their mom.

I couldn't believe it.

I cried a lot.

I mean, that was my sister.

But then, when I started learning the details of what had happened,

it was just complete shock.

On April 21st, 1997, six months after the attack, the case takes a devastating turn.

Lynn passed away.

She finally died of her injuries, specifically the sepsis, the infection.

At that point, now that changes everything because it's no longer attempted first-degree murder, it's now first-degree murder.

With high stakes and little physical evidence tying the accused to the crimes, prosecutors approach Scott Smith with a deal.

We really needed more evidence than we had.

Scott Smith was a witness.

He knows what happened.

He knows who did it.

His attorney agreed that he would testify at all the other trials in return for a guilty plea of second-degree murder.

And he would serve serve a sentence of 10 years.

With the aid of Scott's testimony, in 1998, both David Carlson and Daniel McCreaken are found guilty at trial.

Daniel was found guilty on all charges and was sentenced to life in prison, no possibility of parole.

David was found guilty on the conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to 25 to life with a possibility for parole after 25.

When it comes time for Doris's trial, prosecutors add another name to the witness list.

Our case against Doris is probably the weakest.

Daniel agreed to testify against Doris, knowing that he would not get any benefit from it.

Daniel testifies that it was Doris who approached him with a plan.

Doris Carlson was getting tired of caring for her mother-in-law.

She had no thought about how bad this was, how horrible it was, how cruel it was.

Prosecutors assert that Doris became desperate after she and David blew through money they had borrowed against Lynn's home.

used money on stuff instead of paying the bills.

So the $90,000, $90 plus thousand dollars, they end up just squandering away and didn't take care of anything that they needed to take care of.

As for her defense, Doris's attorneys make a new and shocking claim.

The defense strategy was to say that Doris Carlson had some kind of long-term brain damage from some previous injury near her head.

But there was not very much evidence to support that.

On July 27, 1999, Doris is found guilty on all charges and sentenced to death.

It ended up that the Supreme Court reversed the death penalty.

It was a close call.

It's a little harder to convince the Supreme Court to affirm death for women.

It hurts.

It's not just the one woman that got killed.

You've got the rest of her family that had to go through that horror.

Our family that had to go through the horror, realizing that it was one of us that did this to another family, and that's not who we are.

It's not.

Still, to this day, it affected me more than I even realized.

And it was terrifying.

You know, if these people were capable of doing this to their mother, you're like, oh, wow, you know, anybody can be capable of anything.

You just don't know.

After serving 10 years, Scott Smith was released in 2008.

David Carlson was released in 2023 after serving 25 years.

John Daniel McCregan is serving his life sentence at ASPC Yuma.

Doris Carlson is serving her life sentence at ASPC Perryville.

The town of Agda in France is famous for sun, sand, sea, and sex.

But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.

The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael.

The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

Legal proceedings have been initiated.

Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Sheikh for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, and magic.

Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mayor exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.

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