Luther Meshell (9 of Hearts, Louisiana)

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Speaker 1 Our card this week is Luther Michelle, the nine of hearts from Louisiana.

Speaker 1 On a mild spring night in 1991, Luther's teenage son found him lying dead on his bedroom floor next to his overturned wheelchair and a knife.

Speaker 1 With a locked door and no signs of forced entry, police believe his killer could have been someone he knew and trusted.

Speaker 1 But when they zoom out, investigators notice a series of other crimes with eerie similarities, and they begin to consider whether a serial killer could be to blame.

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Speaker 1 On Wednesday, March 27th, 1991, 22-year-old Tammy Michelle was on her way to work the evening shift at a local bar.

Speaker 1 But first, she had to drop off her brother Alan at his dad's house in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Speaker 1 When Tammy pulled up to their father's house, she noticed that her dad's car was gone and the living room light was on, a red bulb that cast an ominous glow into the night.

Speaker 1 Tammy watched, as she always did, as Alan got out of the car, walked to the house, and unlocked the front door.

Speaker 5 And so, my brother goes up to the house, and I'm digging in my purse for work keys. And next thing I know, my brother's right back at the passenger window.

Speaker 5 And he says, Tammy, something's wrong with daddy. He's laying on the ground.
And I thought, on the ground, he's outside. And he goes, no, he's in his bedroom.

Speaker 1 Tammy was immediately concerned. The last time they saw their dad was a few days before, so there was no telling how long he'd been lying there.
Their dad, Luther Michelle, had limited mobility.

Speaker 1 He'd been seriously injured during his work as an arborist many years ago when a tree fell on him. And ever since then, he needed to use a wheelchair or crutches.

Speaker 1 So when she heard that her father was lying on the ground, Tammy threw the emergency brake on and ran inside with her brother.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I go in, and as soon as I go through the front door, I go to that immediate right that takes you right into his bedroom.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I see him laying there on the floor.

Speaker 5 And he has this black stuff all over him.

Speaker 1 At first, Tammy thought that black stuff was hair dye and that maybe he had had a heart attack while coloring his hair, which made sense to her because her father was wearing only boxer shorts and a pair of socks.

Speaker 1 But as Tammy looked around, she realized there was more going on.

Speaker 5 I realized that his TV was gone in his bedroom. Oh, hold up.
His car was gone when we pulled in. The red light in the living room was on.
Now he's on the floor. His TV's gone.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 That was when Tammy realized the dark-colored liquid crusted on her father's body was blood. Luther had been stabbed.
He'd been stabbed a lot, and he wasn't breathing.

Speaker 1 Tammy frantically looked for the house phone so she could call for help. And it's worth noting here that the phone Luther had was a corded landline.

Speaker 1 He lived in a small house, and the cord on the phone was long enough that he could pretty much use the phone in any part of the house. But it was connected to one spot on the wall in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 Once Tammy found the phone cord, she started to pull with the hope that it would lead her to the receiver.

Speaker 5 And all of a sudden, I heard this like crackling sound, and

Speaker 5 I realized that the phone line was underneath him

Speaker 5 and it was dried in a big puddle of blood. And so they had cut the phone line.

Speaker 5 And they had cut the phone line to where he couldn't even go for help.

Speaker 1 With no phone that they could use, Tammy and Alan went to the neighbor's house to call 911.

Speaker 1 And in minutes, the street flashed with blue and red lights as police, firefighters, and paramedics arrived at the scene.

Speaker 1 Inside Luther's home, investigators found the front living room still decorated with balloons and streamers from Luther's 50th birthday party a few weeks before.

Speaker 5 We did a little party for him. It wasn't no big to-do, but

Speaker 5 I went to taking the balloons and their decorations off the wall. And he told me, no, Tammy, leave those up

Speaker 5 because I may not be here for my birthday next year.

Speaker 5 And he wasn't.

Speaker 1 Past the living room, the rest of the one-bedroom, one-bathroom house told a horrific story of Luther's last moments. The kitchen was in chaos.

Speaker 1 One chair was knocked over and there was grease in large areas of what appeared to be blood smeared across the laminate floor.

Speaker 1 The back door was slightly open, but there was a blanket shoved against it, so there was no way to use that exit. And that same blanket appeared to have been used to wipe the kitchen floor.

Speaker 1 That's why everything was smeared.

Speaker 7 What appears to have happened is that Mr. Michel was in the kitchen with someone else, most likely in his wheelchair.

Speaker 1 That's Corporal Christopher Bordelon, a public information officer with the Shreveport Police Department, who reviewed Luther's file for our interview.

Speaker 1 Our reporters spoke with a PIO because at the time of this recording, there isn't a detective assigned to the case.

Speaker 7 He did have a contusion to the head, and that is important. It's significant.

Speaker 7 because one of the initial detectives noted a skillet that had been filled with grease and it appeared that the grease had been flung across the kitchen, possibly indicating that that skillet had been used to strike Mr.

Speaker 7 Michel.

Speaker 1 That blow from the skillet may have been enough to knock Luther onto the ground, or perhaps he was hit with the pan and then shoved out of his wheelchair.

Speaker 1 Either way, that would have given an attacker enough opportunity to arm themselves with a knife.

Speaker 1 And Luther had either crawled or was drug a short distance to his final resting spot in the bedroom, where police found him lying near his collapsed wheelchair.

Speaker 1 Several feet away from his body, police also found a butcher knife.

Speaker 1 Now the knife didn't have any visible blood on it, so it was unclear in that moment if Luther grabbed it to try and defend himself or if that was the weapon used to stab him and then it was wiped clean.

Speaker 7 The injuries sustained by Mr. Michel are consistent to someone standing over him and stabbing in a downward angle.
He also had injuries to his forehorns,

Speaker 7 which would be consistent with defensive injuries trying to block someone trying to stab him.

Speaker 1 Detectives collected lots of evidence throughout the house, including beer cans, cigarettes, scissors, knives, towels, and sheets.

Speaker 1 They also collected a latent print from a bloody palm stain found next to the window in Luther's bedroom.

Speaker 1 While searching the home, one of the first things police noted in their reports reports was that there was no sign of forced entry. Remember, the front door had been locked when Alan came home.

Speaker 7 I did note that they never located the victim's keys.

Speaker 7 And so it led me to believe that the suspect in this case retrieved the keys or knew where the keys were and was able to re-secure the door in an attempt to cover things up.

Speaker 1 And while a couple of things were taken from the house, like the bedroom TV and a few pieces of DJ equipment, Luther's home wasn't ransacked.

Speaker 1 Detectives interpreted that to mean that robbery probably wasn't the main motive, more like an afterthought.

Speaker 1 Corporal Bordelon says that the fact that Luther was found in his underwear, combined with the fact that there was no forced entry, could indicate Luther's attacker was someone that he knew and trusted.

Speaker 1 And Luther's family agreed. When police talked to Alan, he told them that his father always kept the doors locked and would never let let strangers inside.

Speaker 1 He also explained that Luther didn't have many friends. His visitor list was short.
For her part, Tammy told our team that her dad always dressed before answering the door. I mean, for everyone.

Speaker 1 He wouldn't even answer the door for Tammy if he was just in his boxers. For that reason alone, Tammy always believed that whoever it was either knew her dad really well or he was ambushed.

Speaker 1 Alan also told police that his dad would have never loaned out his car, a late 1970s Oldsmobile, a Delta 88 that was blue-green in color.

Speaker 1 It seemed really likely that whoever took Luther's keys, locked his door and drove off in that car had to be the killer.

Speaker 1 And as luck would have it, someone actually saw that car drive off two nights before.

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Speaker 1 Police records don't reflect how many neighbors they spoke with that Wednesday evening. But of all the doors that they knocked on, only one neighbor had anything to say.

Speaker 1 That neighbor said it was on Monday, so two nights before Luther was found, when she saw Luther's car leaving the neighborhood through her bathroom window.

Speaker 1 She remembered this happening at around around 11 or 11:30 p.m.

Speaker 1 Now, it was dark, so she couldn't tell who was in the vehicle. But despite this, she was absolutely certain that the car she saw was Luther's.

Speaker 1 Police asked her if she had heard any kind of disturbance that night, but she hadn't.

Speaker 1 The only other things that she had noticed were that Luther's lights had stayed on and his laundry had been hanging outside for the last several days.

Speaker 1 That was out of character for Luther, especially the lights.

Speaker 7 Mr. Michel was known for always turning the lights off.
He lived a very frugal lifestyle because of being on a fixed income with Social Security. That light being left on was not common.

Speaker 1 When police spoke with Tammy and Alan, they learned that Monday when the neighbors saw his car drive off, that was also the last time the kids saw their father alive.

Speaker 1 Now, usually, Alan saw his dad all the time. He'd actually moved into the single bedroom home with Luther a few months before.

Speaker 1 But Alan also spent a lot of of time with Tammy, especially when she was off work.

Speaker 1 Tammy says that she picked Alan up from their dad's house on Monday and Alan stayed with her the next two nights, partly because Luther was planning on spending Tuesday night at his wife's house.

Speaker 1 And yeah, you heard that right. Luther was married, but he and his wife had totally separate households.

Speaker 1 Pearlie Alvarez, who was named Pearlie Michelle at the time, was Luther's second wife, and she had her own place a few miles away from Luther's.

Speaker 1 Tammy told police that Luther and Pearlie did live together after they got married, but only for about six months.

Speaker 1 They just couldn't get along when they spent too much time together, especially when both had been drinking.

Speaker 1 So Luther and Pearlie decided it was best to live in separate homes and regularly visit each other, sometimes staying the night at each other's places. That didn't totally solve the problem, though.

Speaker 1 Tammy told police about a troubling call she got from her father sometime in the months before.

Speaker 7 He called me, Tammy.

Speaker 5 She won't leave. I just said, Daddy,

Speaker 5 you know y'all do this all the time.

Speaker 5 Every time y'all drink together, this happens.

Speaker 5 He said, no, Tammy, it's different this time.

Speaker 5 She's got a knife and she took my crutches. She won't leave.
And she's waving a knife in my face.

Speaker 1 Tammy said she didn't know if her dad was exaggerating, but she took it seriously enough to drive over to see him.

Speaker 1 When she got there, Pearly was already gone, and her dad didn't have any major injuries, but he did have a nick on the side of his nose.

Speaker 1 Neither Tammy nor Luther reported this incident to police, but she was obviously telling them now.

Speaker 1 So guess who police we're going to look at next?

Speaker 1 An officer was sent out to see if Luther's car was at Pearlie's house. It wasn't, so police put out a bolo on it while they checked Pearlie's criminal history.

Speaker 1 They found she'd previously been arrested for misdemeanor theft, but nothing violent popped up on her record. Now, this is all happening quickly.

Speaker 1 Like, I mean, they're finding all of this out on Wednesday night, the same day that Luther's body had been discovered. So that same evening, detectives go to Pearlie's home.

Speaker 1 She lets them in, and the detectives have to break the news to her that Luther is dead.

Speaker 1 According to the investigative notes, Pearlie and her 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship were shaken and upset. They agreed to go with police down to the station for questioning.

Speaker 1 And there, police were pretty upfront with Pearlie and told her that she was under investigation for homicide, but she said that she had nothing to do with his murder.

Speaker 1 Like Tammy and Alan, she too said that the last time she saw Luther was on Monday in the morning.

Speaker 1 Pearlie had stopped by his home while with a friend and the couple talked about Easter plans before she left. And yes, he was supposed to come stay at her place Tuesday night, but he never showed.

Speaker 1 She had even called his home phone to see why he didn't come, but no one answered.

Speaker 1 Pearlie also explained that she didn't have a home phone, so every time she called, she had to walk to a store to use the phone or she would have someone drive her because by the way, she didn't have a car either.

Speaker 1 So it was with no small effort that she also tried calling him again the next day on Wednesday. But again, no one answered.

Speaker 1 Police also spoke to Pearlie's 10-year-old daughter that night, who corroborated her mother's story. So did Pearlie's friend who had stopped by Luther's house with her.

Speaker 1 In a follow-up interview several days later, police talked to Pearlie again, and that second conversation raised a few interesting questions to investigators.

Speaker 1 Pearlie told police that no one was drinking when she visited Luther's home Monday morning, nor was she aware of any beer in the house.

Speaker 1 So at some point between Monday morning and when Luther died, A number of beer cans had accumulated in Luther's home.

Speaker 1 Now, those had been collected from the scene, but police records don't say if they were submitted for testing. And if so, what the results of those tests were.

Speaker 1 Plus, and I think important to note, Luther's autopsy report shows that he had no alcohol in his system. So we know he hadn't been drinking right before he died.

Speaker 1 Now, police were interested in the all-important question. They wanted to know if Pearlie's hands matched the bloody print that had been left at the scene.

Speaker 1 By this point, they already knew it wasn't Luther's. But when they compared her print, they were easily able to determine it wasn't hers.

Speaker 1 Now we know that print was compared to others on file as well, including Tammy and Alan, but they weren't a match either.

Speaker 1 Bordolon told our reporters that back in the early 90s, there was not a significant database of palm prints, and that the way prints would have been compared then is different from how it would happen today.

Speaker 1 Bordolon checked the evidence log to see if the latent print was still there, but as of this recording, no one's been able to find it.

Speaker 1 there's also no record of anyone else they may or may not have compared the print to when they still had it

Speaker 1 police ended up finding luther's car two hours after sunrise the morning after he was found it was parked just a few miles away from his home in the back of an apartment complex on mabel street when they found it the oldsmobile was unlocked and its windows were partially rolled down The right rear tire was flat and the hood was slightly open with the car's battery missing.

Speaker 1 There was also evidence that someone attempted to open the trunk by force.

Speaker 7 The keys were not present with the vehicle, which is somewhat significant because the person had to get the keys from the residents in order to take this vehicle.

Speaker 7 And the keys to this point in time have never been found.

Speaker 1 With the threat of thunderstorms looming that day, police had the vehicle towed to the police department's garage so it could be processed and searched.

Speaker 7 The vehicle, when officers went through it, they did locate what they believed to be some remnants of blood blood or blood spatter.

Speaker 7 And a part of the console from under the dash was actually taken from the vehicle and submitted for testing.

Speaker 1 It's unclear what kind of testing was done, but Corporal Bordelon said that investigators back then would most likely try to determine whether the blood belonged to Luther.

Speaker 1 If it didn't belong to him, then that would indicate that the suspect could have been injured and bleeding as well.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, police records don't have any information about the test results from the car console. And the car itself is no longer in evidence.
Neither is the portion of the car console.

Speaker 1 Shreveport police don't have any record of how or when it was released. And police records also don't have information about any additional evidence testing, if it was done and on what.

Speaker 1 We know investigators did talk to multiple people who lived in the apartment complex where the car was found, specifically people who lived in the building right where the car was parked.

Speaker 1 But no one had any helpful intel, and police records don't know anything about footage from security cameras.

Speaker 1 Corporal Bordelon said investigators determined that Pearlie did not have any ties to that apartment complex.

Speaker 1 And I think it's important to note that our reporters looked to see if anyone mentioned in the case file had lived at an address near where the car was found, but they were unable to find any.

Speaker 7 It's not uncommon for a suspect to ditch a vehicle in a heavily traveled area like a apartment complex

Speaker 7 because vehicles can hide in plain sight where there's a lot of vehicles, a lot of traffic. So that's not an uncommon thing.

Speaker 7 We still to this day locate many stolen vehicles in apartment complex parking lots.

Speaker 1 This is about where the case file starts to trail off. Tammy filled in for us what was happening on the homefront, though.
She said it was a hard time for her and her brother, obviously.

Speaker 1 And the fallout from her father's death left a lot of wounds for the entire family. But Tammy said that when they held funeral services for her father, Pearlie, his wife of four years,

Speaker 1 didn't attend. And when Tammy tried to go talk to her, she wouldn't even come out of the house and speak with her.
Tammy only heard from Pearlie two more times.

Speaker 1 Once when she asked about getting Luther's death certificate so she could collect social security, and a second time to ask about Luther's old refrigerator, which neither of those sit well with Tammy.

Speaker 1 And in that time, they didn't hear from police either.

Speaker 1 Aside from a 1992 supplementary report that sums up everything we've mentioned, there is no indication that any additional evidence testing resulted in new suspects.

Speaker 1 Corporal Bordelon was straightforward about the limits of Shreveport's record retention at the time.

Speaker 7 Most of our detectives at that point in time, like their case files were their case files. They may be at the attic of their house.
They may be thrown away. So this could be in somebody's attic.

Speaker 7 You know, there was just record retention

Speaker 5 was different back then.

Speaker 1 That means that there is a possibility that a retired detective somewhere out there has documents that could give us a deeper insight into the investigation.

Speaker 1 So our reporter Emily Enfinger tracked down one of the initial lead detectives who is now retired to, you know, see if they had anything interesting in their attic. He did not.

Speaker 1 And while he didn't want to be interviewed on this podcast, he was willing to talk with us on background. And he actually shared another theory about Luther's death.

Speaker 1 Apparently, early case investigators had been exploring the theory that Luther may have been killed by a serial killer.

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Speaker 1 One of the original detectives on Luther's case disclosed that there are at least two other unsolved cases in Shreveport that he believes might have been committed by the same person who killed Luther.

Speaker 1 When our reporter Emily spoke to this retired detective, he couldn't remember the details about some of the other cases, but he did remember one of the victims' names, 35-year-old Louis Woodrow Plaisance, who went by the nickname Woody.

Speaker 1 And Woody's case does have some similarity to Luther's.

Speaker 1 Both were found dead in their apartments, both were brutally stabbed, and in both cases, their cars were missing but later found within a matter of days.

Speaker 1 Woody's murder, however, came a few years before Luther's death.

Speaker 1 And notably, according to reports in the Shreveport Times, that happened during a rash of other homicides that all had a similar MO, white men who were fatally stabbed.

Speaker 1 But while a few of those cases ended up with the conviction of suspects that could not be tied to Woody's murder, it's not a far jump to see how Luther's death would have made detectives think about his case and others like his that remained unsolved.

Speaker 1 And according to the Shreveport Times, one element that at least some of those early cases shared, such as in Woody's murder, was the possibility of an LGBTQ connection.

Speaker 1 Either the killer and or the victims were gay.

Speaker 1 And that said, there was a supplementary report in Luther's case dated in March of 1992 that includes some notes on interviews that kind of back up this line of investigation, notably with questions about Luther's sexual orientation.

Speaker 1 But investigators never made a concrete connection between Luther's murder and the other cases. And his case in particular, lost steam.

Speaker 1 I mean, that much is obvious because more than 30 years have gone by and no one has been arrested or so much as charged for his murder.

Speaker 1 In that 1992 report that I had mentioned, that is the last report available in the case file. Corporal Bordelon said at the time, there were really limited options for what police could do.

Speaker 7 They hit a point where it just appeared that they needed something else to push this case over the edge.

Speaker 7 You know, this is one that had this happened today with the advances that we have now in technology, in communication, and in forensics, there's a lot more that could have been done on this case.

Speaker 7 But in 1991, those things didn't exist yet.

Speaker 1 But detectives didn't let forensics limit them.

Speaker 1 It appears they were willing to make note of any tips that came in, no matter how unusual the source.

Speaker 1 Around the time of Luther's funeral, his ex-wife went to see an elderly psychic for a card reading, reading during which he told her that Luther had actually been killed by two people.

Speaker 1 According to the case file, the psychic claims Luther had a visitor the night that he was attacked. And although Luther was surprised by the visit, he let them in to his home.

Speaker 1 The psychic said it was a black woman and a white man. And they also said that Luther got into an argument with the woman.

Speaker 1 and she started the attack on him, but that the man was who caused the fatal wound. Investigators asked Luther's family if the psychic's account brought anyone to mind, and it actually did.

Speaker 1 To the family, the woman that the psychic described sounded like one of Pearlie's sisters and her boyfriend.

Speaker 1 Luther supposedly didn't like that sister because he felt like she was taking advantage of Pearlie.

Speaker 1 But if they continued to look into Pearlie's sister, that is not documented in the files that the PD has retained.

Speaker 1 But where the case slowed down, Tammy's efforts to bring justice to her father have not.

Speaker 1 Over the last 30 plus years, she has done everything she can to keep her dad's case in the minds of the public. I mean, she's done countless interviews with media, put up posters, even billboards.

Speaker 1 Since day one, she has made it her mission to find answers about her father's murder.

Speaker 5 You know, 34 years, I've had every emotion. You know, I've had depression.
I've had anxiety. You know, my son's 33.
He grew up watching watching me cry.

Speaker 5 He grew up watching mama go back and forth to news stations and, you know, police stations and homicide departments. And,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 I would always be a basket case before it, during it. I do pretty good, you know, with the exception of a few tears.
But then

Speaker 5 next couple of days later, it'll be, it's an emotional thing. And,

Speaker 5 but I'll, I'll die talking about it.

Speaker 5 I will die talking about it.

Speaker 1 Even if the case never leads to a formal arrest, Tammy said she just wants to see the face of whoever killed her father. To have an answer.

Speaker 5 One of the worst things was watching my grandma, you know, knowing that somebody had killed her son.

Speaker 5 And she just sat there in her little wood frame house. until she passed away at 96,

Speaker 5 waiting to hear on who.

Speaker 1 And maybe advancements in technology will help bring answers closer to Tammy and the rest of Luther's surviving family.

Speaker 1 When our reporter Emily spoke to Corporal Bordolon, she asked specifically what kind of testing has been done on the evidence since those initial days of the investigation. And the answer was none.

Speaker 1 But some of the evidence is still with police. Corporal Bordolon did share that due to our interest in the case, some of that evidence will be submitted for new testing.

Speaker 1 Although, as he explained to our reporter Emily, that's no guarantee that anything will come back.

Speaker 7 Now, we will be met with challenges depending on how this evidence was stored. Was it stored in a manner that allows us to do these testings?

Speaker 7 Will DNA still be present after all of these years? So, unfortunately, after reviewing this case, I'm left with probably more questions than answers.

Speaker 1 What are you seeing your questions?

Speaker 7 There's specifically items that we do have that I'm not entirely sure why, what the significance was of some of these items, specifically like a phone book, what the detective sees that for and why.

Speaker 7 There was a binder.

Speaker 7 And upon seeing these items, maybe I'm able to make that determination.

Speaker 7 But right now,

Speaker 7 there's many things I would have liked to have had more information on, including phone records.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 7 maybe with some DNA evidence and some stuff from the crime lab, we're able to come up with something.

Speaker 1 We wanted to make sure that Tammy was made aware about that development, and we wanted to ensure that she heard it from the police department.

Speaker 1 So we called her then while we had Corporal Bordelon in the room with us.

Speaker 1 Hey, Miss Tammy, it's Emily.

Speaker 1 This was the first time Tammy had spoken to law enforcement about her father's case in at least a decade.

Speaker 5 And you're on speakerphone.

Speaker 7 Hi, I'm Corporal Chris Boardmaugh. And I work with the police department here in Shreveport.

Speaker 7 I just got done. I interviewed with these journalists and they brought some really good information.

Speaker 7 And so I have reached out to our crime scene or our crime scene investigations as well as our property management unit.

Speaker 7 And we're going to do everything we can. We may still have some items in property, and I'm going to try to have them sent off for some further DNA testing.
I don't want to make any promises to you.

Speaker 5 I understand.

Speaker 7 But we're going to do everything we can to try to get you any kind of closure possible. Wow.
Wow.

Speaker 5 Well, this is the most hopeful I've been in a really long time.

Speaker 1 Corporal Bordelon is hopeful too, because there's always a chance that new information could move this case forward.

Speaker 7 And at that point in time, you know, if a family member or one of their friends has knowledge that this was done,

Speaker 7 it would be really good for them to reach out to the police department at this point in time just so that we could give some type of closure to Mr. Michel's family.

Speaker 7 It's important to note, you know, after 34 years, this family has had to deal with this case. And it would

Speaker 7 really ease the burden of their suffering if we could somehow bring this to a resolution.

Speaker 1 Anyone with information on who is responsible for the death of Luther Michelle is urged to contact the Shreveport Police Department.

Speaker 1 That can be done by calling 318-673-7300 and asking for someone in investigations.

Speaker 1 For other ways on how to contact the Shreveport Police Department and to view materials relating to this case, check out our blog post on thedeckpodcast.com.

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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