Gregory Fickess (Jack of Diamonds, New York)

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Speaker 1 Our card this week is Gregory Fickus, the Jack of Diamonds from New York.

Speaker 1 On a summer night in 1993, 19-year-old Gregory Fickis had just gotten out of his car in downtown Rochester when he was jumped in a seemingly unprovoked, fatal act of violence.

Speaker 1 A case with no motive and few cooperating witnesses is tough to get very far.

Speaker 1 But when detectives found out that one of the few cooperating witnesses they did have died suddenly and under strange circumstances, it seemed like one more sign that the theory they did have might be right.

Speaker 1 And they just need a little help from you to get this thing over the finish line after three decades.

Speaker 1 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 1 At around 10 p.m. on July 22nd, 1993, a man named David was driving through a bustling section of downtown Rochester, New York.
And that's when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

Speaker 1 Two guys aggressively beating a young man as he lay on the sidewalk. Per Sergeant Gus Vinosa of the Rochester Police Department, David was one of multiple people to witness this attack.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of people that were driving by. This is on just north of Main Street, maybe about 30 yards, very busy area.
And people as they drove by, some stopped, others continued and then called.

Speaker 4 but there were people that stopped and when the suspects, as they were beating Greg, they noticed people were stopping and they obviously didn't want to be identified and they took off.

Speaker 1 David did more than just stop. He actually tried to chase the two assailants on foot.

Speaker 1 But the sun had set about an hour before, so it was easy for the assailants to lose him and disappear into the dark.

Speaker 1 When David then returned to the scene to check on the young man who was unconscious on the ground, he saw that a state police car had already arrived.

Speaker 1 In the 90s, troopers helped patrol the city, so it wasn't unusual for them to respond to emergencies.

Speaker 1 And David told the trooper which direction the two men had gone in, but the trooper told David that he couldn't pursue them. He had to remain at the scene.

Speaker 1 But now, retired investigator John Brennan, who also worked the case, told us that wasn't a rule or a department policy. He absolutely could have gone after those two men.

Speaker 1 And his decision not to probably changed the course of the investigation forever.

Speaker 5 In hindsight, should he have gone down and gone around the corner to try to catch him? Yeah, that would have been a perfect world. But obviously, you know, that didn't happen.

Speaker 5 I don't know what was going through the trooper's head.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Finosa, however, saw the trooper's decision a little differently. He sees it as a damned if you do, damned if you don't moment for a cop.

Speaker 4 Those are kind of catch-22s in the sense, if you leave to chase the bad guy, you don't find the bad guy, and the meantime he dies because you didn't render aid, you're jammed up. You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 If you don't follow the bad guys, you're jammed up because, oh, you let the bad guys get away. So, I mean, it's a no-win situation for that trooper.

Speaker 1 City police and emergency services arrived at the scene only minutes later. They quickly realized that while the young man was still alive, he was in really bad shape.

Speaker 1 He was unconscious, he was struggling to breathe, and his head and neck were severely injured.

Speaker 1 The emergency responders rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was placed on a ventilator while medical staff tried to save his life.

Speaker 1 But his brain was badly swollen and there was blood all over the surface of his head.

Speaker 1 There was also bleeding in the muscles on the right side of his neck, and a deep part of his brain was actually torn. An injury that couldn't happen from just a minor bump or fall.

Speaker 1 I mean, these were injuries that took serious force. And notably, this poor young man had no defensive wounds.
It was as if the attack had come out of nowhere.

Speaker 1 Investigator Brennan said that after almost 40 years in law enforcement, he is still struck by the violence of this case.

Speaker 5 To continue the beating and kicking and knocking him to the ground and kicking him in the head and just continually kicking him, you know, that's bad.

Speaker 5 I mean, they could have just walked right up and just take cold cocked him and hit him and knocked him on the ground and kept walking and he would have been, you know, bruised face, whatever, broken teeth and walked away.

Speaker 1 Brennan explained to our reporter Nina Schutzman that even his first responders surveyed the scene left behind and spoke to witnesses. The motive for the attack was confounding.

Speaker 1 Witnesses' descriptions of the assailants were consistent, but vague. The two men were black and appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s, but that was it.

Speaker 1 Police still went ahead and created composite sketches of the suspects. They showed two men, one wearing a backwards baseball hat and the other in a hoodie.

Speaker 1 And Sergeant Venosa and Investigator Brennan's opinions on those sketches clash just a little. Like Sergeant Venosa was pretty impressed by them.

Speaker 4 They actually did a very good sketch composite.

Speaker 1 Investigator Brennan, on the other hand, found those sketches a lot less helpful.

Speaker 5 I could drive down and pick out 25 guys that look like that too.

Speaker 1 There was even less to go off of when it came to motive.

Speaker 1 All of their victim's personal items had been left behind. I mean, that's how they found out he was 19-year-old Gregory Fickus, who went by Greg.

Speaker 1 Greg's wallet wasn't taken, 20 bucks in cash was still inside, and his car keys were still on him. So a robbery didn't happen.

Speaker 1 But based on what Sergeant Venosa told Nina, it didn't seem like this was a personal attack either.

Speaker 1 Were all signs pointing to Greg not knowing these people at all? And like, this is a random encounter.

Speaker 4 Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 No indication they had any previous issues.

Speaker 4 Nope. I don't think there was even an exchange of words between them both.

Speaker 4 From everything I've looked at and interviewing the witnesses, nobody said, yeah, they were in an argument and then somebody threw a punch or whatever.

Speaker 1 Police were still trying to put pieces of the puzzle together when less than 24 hours after Greg had been rushed to the hospital, he was declared brain dead and was taken off life support.

Speaker 1 So this was now a murder.

Speaker 1 That meant homicide investigators needed to come in and play catch up quickly. They learned that toxicology results showed there were no drugs in Greg's system and only a very small amount of alcohol.

Speaker 1 His BAC was just 0.02%.

Speaker 1 Now, Greg's stomach had food in it that wasn't fully digested, meaning that he likely ate not long before he died.

Speaker 1 Officers conducting the initial police work had spoken with Greg's family at the hospital, and they told police that Greg was a talented trombone player who was a student at Eastman School of Music, which is just a stone's throw away from the scene of the attack.

Speaker 1 He was on summer break now living at home with his family, but he had plenty of reason to be in that area. I mean, it was packed with jazz venues, just the kind of music Greg loved to play.

Speaker 1 While school was out, he had been working a few days a week at a popular northeastern restaurant called Friendly's.

Speaker 1 And by all accounts from friends and family, Greg was the kind of person who didn't get into trouble, which made the whole context of this murder so odd.

Speaker 4 You know, Greg wasn't a tough guy. He wasn't a badass.
I don't even know if he's ever been in a fight type of guy, you know?

Speaker 1 No one seemed to be able to point investigators in the direction of a who or a why.

Speaker 1 So instead, they focused on when. building out a timeline of the moments leading up to the attack.

Speaker 1 Police determined that on the night of July 22nd, Greg had the night off from his job.

Speaker 1 In a 2016 interview with ABC 13 in Buffalo, his mom said that she had tried to convince him to just stay home and watch TV with her, but he wanted to get out of the house.

Speaker 1 So he drove the family Dodge pickup about 20 minutes into downtown. Now, Greg's family couldn't tell police why exactly he made that trip.
They still don't know why.

Speaker 1 or whether he stopped somewhere on the way. We tried reaching out to Greg's family for an interview and to find out exactly what time he left the home that night, but they declined our request.

Speaker 1 There was speculation that Greg headed out to visit a friend who lived near the Eastman School of Music or maybe to listen to jazz at a downtown club, but these theories were never able to be confirmed.

Speaker 1 What police did conclude was that sometime around or just after 10 p.m., Greg parked the family Dodge pickup at the northeast corner of East Main Street and Chestnut Street.

Speaker 1 And from there, Greg walked down Chestnut and was just steps away from the music school when he was attacked. And this seemingly random attack unmoored Greg's community.

Speaker 1 In the days after his funeral, articles appeared across local media calling for an end to violence, expressing horror that this promising young college kid had become a victim of such violence.

Speaker 1 And the lack of any leads added to that fear. You see, it had been an especially violent summer in Rochester.

Speaker 1 While the area in which Greg was attacked was largely considered safe, in the month that he was murdered, the city as a whole had an additional 13 homicides.

Speaker 1 The record-breaking violence stretched police resources, which were already tested by a worsening drug epidemic.

Speaker 5 The crack epidemic was outrageous back then. Drugs, violence, and all that.
Their homicide unit back then was not as big as ours.

Speaker 5 What they would do is, let's say Gary and myself are on call and four homicides came in that week. Guess what? We have four homicides.

Speaker 6 You get one, he gets one, you get one, he doesn't.

Speaker 5 We just work all four together.

Speaker 1 Just when fears began to mount that Greg's case would be impossible to solve, a man came forward with a wild tip.

Speaker 1 According to him, there had been another witness, and that woman, he said, saw everything.

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Speaker 1 Around a week after Greg was murdered, a parking lot attendant came to Rochester Police with a compelling story.

Speaker 1 And just as a heads up, I'm changing both names in this story at police requests, as this is still an open investigation.

Speaker 1 So this guy, Brian, told investigators that this woman he knew, Lisa, was right there when Greg was attacked.

Speaker 1 She had said she'd stopped Greg on the street as he was walking and asked him for money, but he refused and told her to leave him alone. She said that right after is when he was attacked by two men.

Speaker 1 Lisa said she yelled at the men to stop before running away, scared that she might get hurt herself or get caught up in something. And that's actually why she hadn't come forward earlier.

Speaker 1 Brian said that she made it clear to him she did not want to talk to police. And she told him that if he reported their conversation, she'd just deny it.

Speaker 1 But that didn't stop police from wanting to talk with her. So the day after hearing this story, an officer tracked Lisa down.
And when face to face with law enforcement, she did start talking.

Speaker 1 In the police report, Lisa relayed the same thing to police that she told Brian, except she was specific with details. She said she asked Greg for 35 cents.
What for? I don't know.

Speaker 1 And she said she asked him for this right before two men, quote, effed him up. But when police pressed her, Lisa got nervous and backtracked, saying basically, you know what? Never mind.

Speaker 1 I didn't see anything and I need to keep quiet. Now, she had seen those men before in the area.

Speaker 1 as part of the reason she was so afraid that they would find out who she was and that she was talking to police. Maybe they would come after her next.
And Lisa was adamant on this point.

Speaker 1 And so that is where the discussion ended.

Speaker 1 And unfortunately, this was also when Lisa's credibility started becoming an issue. It wasn't that police didn't believe her story.

Speaker 1 It was just that saying it all before just taking it back was kind of a problem if she were to ever testify in court. But Lisa was their best chance at IDing the attackers.

Speaker 1 I mean, she was the only one who had seen the incident up close, not just from a a car driving by. So instead of giving up, they just gave it some time.
And on August 10th, they approached Lisa again.

Speaker 1 She may have seen how desperate they were or must have felt for Greg's family, because even though they could tell that she was still holding back, she at least told police something new.

Speaker 1 She said that while she didn't know the suspects' names, She did know what they looked like and that she had noticed them returning to the area since Greg's murder.

Speaker 1 According to the police report, Lisa even went as far as to tell the officer, quote, someday, you and I are going to talk about it straight up, but not now, end quote.

Speaker 1 Clearly, she was still scared, and that fear held her back from identifying the suspects, even though it seemed as if she could. But the universe was on police's side.

Speaker 1 And where one investigative door closed firmly in their faces, another opened.

Speaker 1 Police got word that a narcotics unit informant by the name of Cornelius Welch, who went by Connie, had something to give detectives about Greg's murder.

Speaker 1 Investigators learned that just a few days before, Connie had run into an old friend from the neighborhood. We'll be referring to this old friend at police's request as Dan.

Speaker 1 But according to Connie, Dan told him that he and his nephew had beat up, quote, the white kid on Main Street, end quote. And they're referring to the one that died.

Speaker 1 Connie remembered Dan saying that he punched the victim while his nephew stomped on him. And with this, police finally had a name.
Two names, actually.

Speaker 1 Dan and then his nephew, who we're gonna call Tim.

Speaker 1 Now, police tried to leverage Connie to try and get a recorded confession from Dan, but it wasn't long before Dan became suspicious when Connie was pressing him for more details about Greg's murder.

Speaker 1 Investigator Brennan learned of this attempt at a recorded confession from a colleague after he inherited the case.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, there's no documentation of what police's exact plan even was, or that the failed recorded confession was even attempted.

Speaker 5 It didn't go well. It just didn't work out.
We had no idea that there was a wire or anything that they even made an attempt on these guys.

Speaker 1 Because there's no documentation of it.

Speaker 5 No documentation, no.

Speaker 1 After that fiasco, it seems the Rochester Police Department stopped actively investigating. There's no record of investigators following up with Lisa or Dan or Tim at that time.

Speaker 1 And as I already mentioned, they were backed up that summer with all of those other homicides.

Speaker 1 As the years dragged on, Greg's family was vocal about his death and the loss that they were still trying to process.

Speaker 1 His family theorized that Greg may have been the victim of a racially motivated attack or a gang initiation.

Speaker 1 Investigator Brennan emphasized to our reporter Nina that there was no evidence to back up either of these theories.

Speaker 5 Homicides like this in that area, they weren't happening in those areas because the crime element wasn't there. This was a fluke that these guys were walking down the street and attacked him.

Speaker 5 It wasn't like every student down there was worried about getting robbed or getting killed.

Speaker 1 And so the case languished, but not because of a lack of tips.

Speaker 1 Over the years, some came in, but because of the lackluster record keeping, by the time Sergeant Vinosa and Investigator Brennan were assigned Craig's case in 2016, they couldn't tell what had or hadn't been done.

Speaker 1 I mean, when you see no follow-up, you have to assume no follow-up, which is not ideal, but it did give the two investigators a lot of hope that maybe if they put in the legwork, they could finally shake something loose.

Speaker 1 And they wanted to start with a Crime Stoppers tip that had come in on October 27th, 1995.

Speaker 1 The tip said that a counselor at a mental health treatment center, which was then called St.

Speaker 1 Joseph's Villa, told police that he had a client whom he believed either had information about Greg's homicide or knew who was responsible.

Speaker 1 Now, somehow, they were able to find out who this man was, and good news, he was still alive. Bad news, though.

Speaker 5 We actually talked to him on the phone, on speaker, and I think that was the first thing he told us. I want to let you guys know I have dementia.

Speaker 1 The counselor couldn't remember exactly who he wanted to flag for police back then, but he did give them a potential name anyway. Maybe it was this person.

Speaker 1 But investigators met with her and determined that she was not the one who knew anything. The counselor also suggested to police to contact the center, which is now called the Villa of Hope.

Speaker 1 He said maybe if they could get the records of his clients in 1995, that would help. And so they did via a judicial subpoena, but it led nowhere.
And so if you were a client at St.

Speaker 1 Joseph's Villa in the 90s in Rochester and you shared a tip with a counselor regarding Greg's case, the police want to speak with you.

Speaker 1 They're still looking for you because you could be the key to solving this. And I'm going to put police's contact info in the show notes.

Speaker 1 So while they hoped and prayed that a person from St.

Speaker 1 Joseph Villa would magically just reach out to them again, they began making their way down the line of witnesses, hoping to get some FaceTime with people who might be less scared to share information with the police now that it was 20 years out.

Speaker 1 But this is when they got hit with another huge blow, and one that had major implications for the case that they were trying to build.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Venosa and Investigator Brennan learned some disturbing news about Connie, the guy who tried to get a recorded confession from Dan back in 1993.

Speaker 1 It turned out that in October of 1995, a couple of years after Greg was murdered, Connie was found dead.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Connie and several other people were at this party near South Union and Monroe near downtown Rochester.

Speaker 1 Now, the partygoers were allegedly using cocaine, and at some point during this party, Connie supposedly got up, kicked out the third floor window, and just jumped. So his death was ruled a suicide.

Speaker 1 But Sergeant Venosa found the circumstances concerning.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of theories on his suicide. I find it very strange.
Supposedly he's there.

Speaker 4 Everybody has the same story that he just got up, didn't say anything, walked, I think it was to the bedroom, and boom, they heard a crash and they looked out and he was on the sidewalk.

Speaker 5 We both looked at that and said, man, that's that's too coincidental. You know, he just got made wearing a wire and he committed suicide out a window.

Speaker 1 As far as Sergeant Venosa knows, there was no autopsy done on Connie, but he did share with our reporter Laura Frader that he hopes to interview the people who were at that party, because there's no record showing if police ever spoke to anyone who was there back then.

Speaker 1 And it's not that Sergeant Venosa believes it'll solve Greg's murder necessarily, but if there was more to Connie's death, it might be worth knowing given how close Connie got to one of the suspects in Greg's killing.

Speaker 1 Knowing that Connie, arguably their best witness, was gone, the investigators turned their attention to the next best witness they had, Lisa.

Speaker 1 They hoped to finally have that long talk about what happened to Greg that she promised would one day come.

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Speaker 1 Even though Lisa was agreeable to a meeting with Sergeant Vinosa and Investigator Brennan in 2016. They had their work cut out for them.

Speaker 5 She didn't even want to talk to us at first. I sat down with her, talked to her calmly, you know, nicely, but then she eventually started feeling comfortable with me.

Speaker 1 In her first interview, Lisa told roughly the same story that she'd initially shared with police back in 1993, that she had approached Greg for money.

Speaker 1 But this time, she said that when Greg refused to give her anything, he told her to get a job and repeatedly yelled at her to leave him alone.

Speaker 1 Lisa said that the two suspects had been walking nearby and heard Greg shouting at her. She said the suspects asked Lisa what had happened and one of them gave her some money.

Speaker 1 And then they both followed Greg and grabbed him. According to the police report, Lisa didn't want to discuss anything else she saw.

Speaker 1 So if Lisa's account was accurate, Could it have been the catalyst for the attack on Greg? Sergeant Venosa thought it was possible.

Speaker 4 Maybe they just overheard him walking by and saying, get a job. They may have taken offense, and that's when they accosted him.

Speaker 1 But that's if Lisa was to be believed. Sergeant Venosa was skeptical about her account of what led up to the attack.

Speaker 4 Well, let's take a step back. That's what Lisa says.

Speaker 1 While Lisa's credibility left something to be desired, what she did next strengthened an earlier lead in the case.

Speaker 1 Lisa agreed to look at a photo array for investigators, even though she told them that she wouldn't sign her name to anything.

Speaker 1 And it was then that she positively identified Dan, saying, quote, he was one of the guys who followed the white kid, end quote.

Speaker 1 She also identified Tim as the man who gave her money and the one who was with Dan. Now, she initialed the photo array, but still wouldn't sign anything.

Speaker 1 This wasn't what they needed to make their case, but it was at least something. And they felt like they might finally be getting somewhere.

Speaker 1 So they went back to Lisa multiple times that year, twice in October, twice in November, and again in December. And it was during that December interview that Lisa opened up a little bit more.

Speaker 1 She said that after Greg snubbed her request for money, Tim had actually given her $10.

Speaker 1 Then she said Tim and Dan followed Greg, grabbed him, knocked him to the ground, and started beating him. Lisa said that she shouted at them to leave Greg alone, but then she got scared and ran.

Speaker 1 And she told Brennan and Vinosa that she was still too afraid to testify. According to the police report, Lisa became emotional during that interview.

Speaker 1 She asked to see a photo of Greg, which she put on a table next to her own family's photos. Lisa's ever-evolving story was going to be a problem.

Speaker 1 Investigator Brennan said that Lisa's accounts were inconsistent and that she was easily led by the way questions were phrased. It was going to make her a weak witness in court.
And Venosa agreed.

Speaker 1 So did the prosecutor who sat in on one of those interviews.

Speaker 4 We met with her and we brought along the second ADA at the time. And it wasn't a good interview, to be honest with you.
She was kind of all over the place.

Speaker 4 It didn't help when he walked in that he bumped into like one of her little trinket shelves and knocked him all over either. But that was kind of funny.
You know, he's like, oh my God, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 He's picking up all these little trinkets. He goes, man, they're going to have a field day with her on the stand.
We need something more.

Speaker 1 As it turned out, that something more came a few months later in 2017. And it was all thanks to a simple traffic violation with Dan behind the wheel.

Speaker 1 You see, Dan was pulled over while driving on a suspended license, so police were able to arrest him. Sergeant Bonosa told our reporter Laura that they'd been planning to talk to him.

Speaker 1 And now was as good a time as any to try. So both detectives approached this conversation carefully.

Speaker 1 They avoided accusing Dan of anything directly, and they just started by telling him that a witness had identified him as attacking Greg before a second group of individuals assaulted him more severely.

Speaker 1 This tactic was designed to let Dan, you know, potentially minimize his role, blame someone else, or at least just place himself nearby without taking full responsibility.

Speaker 1 But Dan didn't fall for it, and he denied any involvement.

Speaker 1 He also brought up how Connie had tried to bait him into a recorded confession and how police back then had played him the recording that Connie made.

Speaker 1 That was the exact moment when Sergeant Venosa and Investigator Brennan learned that Dan had already been interviewed in the 90s, which was a shock to Brennan because there were no records or documentation in the case file confirming that.

Speaker 1 It seemed that some documentation from the original investigation was either incomplete or missing entirely.

Speaker 5 We started talking to him and he just like basically knew why we were picking him up when we started talking to him. He said, I already talked to the police about this.

Speaker 1 I'm like, what?

Speaker 5 You know, then we found out. Were you stunned? Yeah, I was shocked.
I had no idea that the cops had already talked to him.

Speaker 1 During the 2017 interview, investigators asked Dan to take a polygraph. At first, he agreed, but when they told him they were ready to give it to him, he backed out.

Speaker 1 Afterward, while alone in the interview room, Dan talked to to himself as if he believed he was being arrested for murder. It was a strange thing for police to witness.

Speaker 1 And unfortunately, we don't know exactly what was said because police can't release those details. Ultimately, Dan was booked on traffic charges, but detectives weren't giving up.

Speaker 1 Later that very same day, police reached out to Dan's nephew, Tim, who they believed was with him during the attack on Greg.

Speaker 1 And they did this so quickly because they didn't want to risk Tim finding out that Dan had been interviewed. I mean, he might lawyer up.
But luckily, Tim agreed to come in for questioning voluntarily.

Speaker 1 Investigators told him that they understood the attack on Greg had followed an earlier altercation involving two black men, one of whom witnesses had supposedly said matched Tim's description.

Speaker 1 Rather than accusing him of the beating like they'd done with Dan, This time they were suggesting that maybe he was a witness to something or was wrongly being associated with the attackers.

Speaker 1 This didn't work either. Tim denied everything.
He told investigators he had already been interviewed in the 1990s while in jail for a drug charge and that he never hung out with his uncle Dan.

Speaker 1 After the interview, Tim took a call from his wife while alone in the room and investigators could hear as she asked why he agreed to talk to the police.

Speaker 1 And although he didn't confess, Tim allegedly never denied involvement in Greg's death either.

Speaker 1 Today, no charges have been filed against Dan or Tim in connection with Greg's murder, and they still live in the Rochester area.

Speaker 1 Though police's case isn't strong enough to bring charges, they are confident that they know who attacked Greg, even if they still aren't totally clear on why.

Speaker 1 We asked Sergeant Binosa if other theories have been explored over the years, and he said that he spent a lot of time talking to Greg's family and getting to know Greg as a person.

Speaker 1 But literally, nothing has ever come up that has led them to any other possible motive, theory, or persons of interest.

Speaker 1 Police say that a credible, admissible statement from someone directly involved or a new witness willing to corroborate the known version of events under oath could finally push Greg's case toward charges.

Speaker 1 Short of that, all investigators can do is wait for someone's conscience or fear of exposure to finally break the silence.

Speaker 4 It hasn't happened yet, but we're not letting it go. It's still open.
This case hasn't been forgotten at all. It's still active.

Speaker 4 You may have enjoyed your years of freedom so far, but hey, if things fall into place that day when you hear that knock on the door, that may very well be coming.

Speaker 1 If you know anything about the murder of Greg Fickus, you can call the Rochester Police Department at 585-428-7033.

Speaker 1 If you prefer to leave an anonymous tip, you can call Rochester Area Crime Stoppers at 585-423-9300.

Speaker 1 The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

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