Going West: True Crime - Jane Britton // 376
Episode Date: January 27, 2024In January of 1969, a 23-year-old Harvard graduate student headed out for dinner and ice skating with her boyfriend. After returning home to her Cambridge apartment that night, she was bludgeoned to d...eath. For nearly fifty years, her murder would go unsolved. Then, with the help of Ancestry DNA, police uncovered a serial killer. This is the story of Jane Britton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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What is going on true crime fans?
I'm your host Teeth and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Going West.
Hello everybody, hope you're doing well today.
Big thanks to Julia for recommending today's case.
This is a really interesting one that had a ton of recent developments and it has some
type of connection to the Boston Strangler which we are going to talk about so I know
a lot of you guys know about that case so that's kind of an interesting angle of this
story but yeah, I don't think we got anything else for you today.
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In January of 1969, a 23-year-old Harvard graduate student headed out for dinner and
ice skating with her boyfriend.
After returning home to her Cambridge apartment that night, she was found bludgeoned to death.
For nearly 50 years, her murder would go unsolved, but then, with the help of ancestry DNA, police uncovered a serial killer.
uncovered a serial killer. This is the story of Jane Britton. Jane Sanders, Britain was born on May 17, 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts to parents Ruth
and Joseph.
She grew up alongside a brother named Boyd and two half-siblings, Charles and Susan, from Joseph's previous marriage, in the southwest Boston suburb of Needham.
Growing up, Jane was a stellar student and came by it honestly, as her mother Ruth was
a medieval history scholar, which is so cool, I've never heard of that.
I've never heard of that either.
It's badass.
And her father Joseph was the administrative vice president of Radcliffe College, which
was the sister college of Harvard that was later absorbed by the university.
Jane attended the prestigious Dana Hall Private Girls School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where
she busied herself honing a variety of hobbies and skills.
A lover of classical music, Jane mastered both the piano and the organ, and also nurtured
her creative spirit through painting.
She was passionate about animals and loved riding horses, so animals were her favorite
subject to paint.
She was fluent in French and spoke some German, Spanish, and Farsi as well.
After graduating from the Dana Hall School, she went on to attend Radcliffe College, which
is where her father worked, pursuing a degree in anthropology, and to no surprise, Jane
excelled in her studies and had a fascination with archaeology, especially in the Middle
East.
In 1967, she graduated from Radcliffe College, Magna Cum Laude, and immediately continued
her anthropological studies
in Harvard University's graduate program.
During the summer of 1968, Jane traveled to
Southeastern Iran with a group of fellow graduate students
for an archeological dig, and actually helped uncover
ruins that dated back to Alexander the Great.
So it's pretty safe to say that she was
an incredibly intelligent person.
Oh, absolutely.
A spokesman for the anthropology department described her as, quote, very talented, a
bright student, and a great artist.
One professor remembered, quote, everybody liked her.
In the classroom and among her peers, she was known for her work ethic and painstakingly
meticulous attention to detail. Those accompanying her on her dig in Iran credited her with one
of the trip's most important discoveries and praised her for her quick wit. And it was in her
graduate program that she met fellow anthropology student James Humphries, a 27 year old from Toronto, Canada, and the two
began dating. James settled into a three bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of Six University
Road, which is near the Harvard Yard Campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So the complex, which
was this large brick building offering spacious apartments to students was owned and operated by Harvard.
Jane was absolutely thrilled to live next door to two of her closest friends there, which
were Jill and Donald Mitchell, a young couple who were also Harvard University students.
And Jane had even played the organ at their wedding.
Jane's parents, however, were pretty hesitant to let her put roots down in this area.
I mean, not only did they describe it as a dingy old brick building, but it had been the scene of a heinous
crime just a few years prior.
On May 6th, 1963, 23 year old Beverly Sammons was raped, strangled, and stabbed inside her
apartment in the very same complex that Jane later moved into,
which will prove to be an even eerier detail as Jane's story unfolds.
Like Jane, Beverly was a promising young student and was a music teacher who was preparing to begin her master's degree studies at Boston University.
Beverly's death was the ninth strangling to take place in the city of Boston that very year.
Which is probably making a lot of you guys think about the Boston Strangler case from
1962 to 1964, which was the same period of time that Beverly was killed.
And we are going to touch on that a little bit later, but Beverly is considered to have
been one of his victims.
So although the Boston Strangler had been caught in 1964, due to lack of evidence
and fear someone else could have been behind it after all, Jane's parents were understandably
concerned about her living in the same space as a murder victim. But Jane settled into
her new space, moving her pet cat and turtle in with her.
On Monday, January 6, 1969, 23-year-old Jane Britton and her boyfriend James, of 8 months,
by the way, had a date planned that night as he was returning to Cambridge after spending
the holidays with his family in Canada.
So since they had been apart for a couple weeks or so, she told her father Joseph earlier
that day about how excited she was about seeing him and basically their plan was to go
ice skating in Cambridge Common which is a large park near Harvard Square but first Jane had dinner
with some friends. After a night of good food, good friends and ice skating with James, she and
James had drinks at Charlie's Pub before he dropped Jane back off at her apartment. Before
going into her unit,
she stopped in to see her neighbor friends,
Jill and Donald, who had been watching her cat
for the evening.
And the three shared a bottle of Sherry as a nightcap
while they chatted for a bit.
Then Jane took her cat back to her apartment to go to sleep.
Now the next morning, Tuesday, January 7th, 1969,
Jane was supposed to have an exam that she
failed to arrive for.
And you guys know by now that Jane was an incredibly punctual student.
She was super smart.
She would have never missed a class or a test, especially without warning her professor.
So concerned by her absence, her boyfriend James stopped by her apartment, but received
no answer at the
door.
Hearing him knock, Jill and Donald emerged from next door and joined him, growing concerned
when he told them that Jane was unaccounted for.
Because these were the last three people to see her and they saw her just the night before,
so they don't understand what could be happening here.
So cautiously, they entered her apartment
and found it still and eerily quiet.
And when they reached Jane's bedroom, they saw why.
Her bloodied body, still clad in her pajamas
from the night before, was lying face down on her bed
beneath the fur coat that she had worn
on her date night with James.
Tossed over her body was a Greek flakati rug that she had acquired on her travels.
It was a white wool rug, kind of resembled a shag carpet, and her blood had soaked through
the entire front of it.
The group made their gruesome discovery around 12.30pm that day, and it's believed that
she had been
dead for about 12 hours, meaning she was killed shortly after she returned home the night before,
after she settled in briefly and got into her night clothes.
Though an autopsy was imminent, law enforcement observed that she had likely died from blunt
force trauma to the head as according to the responding lieutenant quote she had been hit from all angles and at least twice in the face. The most
eerie detail though was that her body and the area surrounding it had been
sprinkled with dots of what police believed was red ochre powder which was
used as a coloring agent in Africa for hundreds of thousands
of years, as well as for body and hair decoration.
It was also known to be used in burial practices by Native Americans to decorate or cover the
deceased person's corpse.
And the red ochre had even been sprinkled on the walls, so this added a really curious
layer to this investigation, with police jumping to the belief that they were dealing with a murder of sacrificial nature.
And that perhaps Jane had been targeted for her work in Middle Eastern archaeology.
Detective Sergeant John Galligan, who was one of the first on the scene, recalled that Jane's fellow anthropology students, including her boyfriend James and also the Mitchells, observed
that the red powder sprinkled on her is similar to what would have been used in a primitive
burial rite.
John recalled, quote, they told us we were dealing with a sick man, and then he added,
quote, it was described to me as an ancient symbolic method of purifying the body, to
get it into paradise, and to rid it of evil spirits.
Regarding Jane's actual apartment, nothing really of value had been stolen, the only
missing thing was the potential murder weapon.
But Jill and Donald Mitchell did observe that a stone that they had brought back for Jane
from a recent expedition had vanished, but other than that, there was very little sign that anyone else had been present in
that apartment, let alone that a brutal murder had taken place.
So this takes out the likely theory that they always look at at first, that it was just a
murder that had taken place during a struggle, during a home invasion or a robbery.
Yeah, exactly.
And now it seems like there's a little bit more to the story here.
So now detectives entertain the possibility that they were dealing with someone who was targeting Jane specifically,
taunting her and sending a message to her loved ones.
But aside from the missing rock and the sprinkled powder, police really couldn't find any indication that this was someone that she knew.
Since she had been sexually assaulted before her death, this pointed to the possibility of a completely random, sexually motivated crime of opportunity that escalated to a brutal murder,
perhaps from Jane's attempt to fight back. Exactly, so some reports on the crime scene
indicate that Jane's front door had been left unlocked intentionally.
And this would have been because, so the Mitchells said later that she would leave it unlocked for them to be able to use her fridge because
I guess she had a fridge that was bigger than theirs and they would need extra space so they would use hers.
But another newspaper printed that they simply held on to a key to use her fire escape
because their apartment didn't have one.
So we don't know why it was left unlocked, but her door was left unlocked and it seems like this was in
whichever way it goes, it was related to the Mitchells just being able to have access.
Unless of course they did have a key, but regardless.
As you can imagine, other tenants of the building
were outraged that a second crime of this magnitude
could be committed in the same apartment complex,
simply due to careless security measures,
which I can't even imagine,
especially in such a short frame of time.
It's so concerning.
So on the security situation of this building,
as Jane's parents had worried,
the building was not properly maintained
and virtually no security measures had been taken,
including even having functional locks
on the front door of the building.
So police believe that Jane's murderer
gained access to her apartment
by scaling the fire escape attached
to the side of the building
and then climbing to the fourth floor where her apartment by scaling the fire escape attached to the side of the building and then climbing
to the fourth floor where her apartment was located and forcing his way in through the window
that opened onto the fire escape. And if that theory is true then it would mean that he didn't
end up taking the front door and that whole piece wasn't relevant. But police also leaned into the
hypothesis that Jane's murder was a personal one, and that
maybe a scorned lover was likely responsible.
The day after her murder, the Boston Globe printed that police were entertaining culprits
such as, quote, a sex fiend, a prowler, a crazed psychedelic hippie, and a rejected
suitor.
That just seems like the most late 1960s quote of all time.
Yeah.
Literally a psychedelic hippie or a prowler or a sex fiend.
That just seems like a movie.
Yeah, it is definitely 1969.
So police comb the surrounding area
for a discarded murder weapon,
which they believe could be that rock
taken from Jane's apartment or possibly
a tool, including a hand hatchet, a cleaver, or even an archaeologist's ball-peen hammer,
which would indicate that a cohort of hers was likely involved.
I mean, it really seems to be kind of leaning that way if they believe that maybe it was
like an archaeologist's tool and the fact that there was this red ochre surrounding
her body. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like that archeologist's tool and the fact that there was this red ochre surrounding her body.
Yeah, it seems like that could be very possible.
It's all really weird and that's why they wanted to at least try to rule that out and
figure out who her cohorts were and question them and see who had alibis to see if that
was the plausible route.
So shortly after her death, police announced that they sought to speak with the next boyfriend
of Jane's whom they believed had just returned from a trip to Peru.
However, he was quickly eliminated after they spoke to his new girlfriend who provided an
alibi for him.
They also interviewed a man who had been interested in Jane and even asked her out but was turned
down, wondering if he was spiteful and jealous of her relationship with
James. But this man was also cleared of involvement. January 10, 1969 brought James Memorial, with
her friends, peers, boyfriend, and all of her family in attendance. Believing her killer may
show up as well, police were present and also filmed
the service and wake to be able to look back for any clues. As they spoke to more of her
neighbors, fellow students, professors, and friends, more theories began to spill out.
And a fellow Harvard student who lived downstairs from Jane's apartment recalled seeing a commotion
on their street that evening that she was killed.
Though the neighborhood was static and the still of the frigid January night, he recalled
seeing two men with slicked back hair running down the street and jumping into a parked
car.
One of them yelling, get in the car, get in the car.
The witness remembered them getting into an older model black sedan and speeding off,
but that was the only witness statement that they had, because none of her neighbors reported
hearing any screaming or any sounds of an altercation that night, although one neighbor
reported hearing what she thought was someone on the fire escape late that evening.
Now, two days after the discovery of Jane's body, her boyfriend James, Jill, and Donald
Mitchell and a fourth person who remained anonymous, but who was likely a neighbor, were given
polygraph examinations about their statements and potential involvement, and all four people
passed.
So three weeks of intense investigations went by and law enforcement were still grasping
at straws.
The Middlesex County District Attorney announced that, quote,
investigators have nothing definite in a case that has baffled them from the beginning.
The District Attorney's office also admitted to hearing witness testimonies for anyone
believed to have been in the area at the time, as well as Jane's neighbors, friends, peers,
and professors.
But they still had no prime suspect or any evidence.
However, on the Harvard campus, the rumors had already decided who their suspect was. RBC Avion Visa lets you get there your way.
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...bois. Among Jane's fellow students, gossip persisted that one of Jane's teachers had been the
one to kill her.
Supposedly after an affair between them kind of soured and she moved on with
her boyfriend James, her professor grew jealous, killing her in a fit of rage and dusting her
with powder in what was described as a quote, macabre post-mortem ritual. Though there was
no factual basis of these claims, the rumors began after it was discovered that James faculty
advisor who had also accompanied
her on the dig in Iran, had given her a stern warning about her upcoming examinations.
She had apparently failed an examination in her first semester, and her professor, who
was a guy named Karl Lambert Karlofsky, alerted her that her future at Harvard could be in
jeopardy if she didn't adequately prepare.
Fellow students of his described him as arrogant, short-tempered, and at times downright unpleasant.
He was also known to have inappropriate flirtations with students, even though he was older and married.
According to others who were present at the Digni Iran, Carl was critical of Jane's contribution, but also seemed to favor her,
which led speculation that the two were engaging
in a sexual relationship of some kind,
though there was no evidence to suggest that this was true.
This was just something that people were thinking
and speculating on.
The possibility of this dynamic
did, however, complicate investigative efforts, as police
interviews were rife with speculation.
Some students claimed that they believed it was possible that Jane was killed to keep
her quiet about their affair, which would terminate Carl Stint at Harvard.
Now, not only was he esteemed within the community, but he was up for tenure at the time.
One student who knew both Carl and Jane even reportedly speculated that Jane was blackmailing
Carl into passing her for her examinations by threatening to go public with their alleged
affair, which is an accusation that would likely end both his time at Harvard and his
marriage.
While luckily Carl was questioned and he called the accusations against him outlandish and
preposterous, maintaining that he had the utmost respect for Jane as a person and a student.
So like many others in this investigation, Carl is off the table.
In February of 1969, just a month after Jane's murder, a grand jury heard all the evidence
that police had collected, including theories that could have implicated Karl Lambert-Karloski,
but unanimously, it was decided that there was not enough evidence to arrest anyone in
her slang.
So let's go back a little bit here.
Back in 1964, a Boston man named Albert DeSalvo was arrested for breaking into the apartment
of a young woman, tying her to the bed, raping her, and then fleeing into the night.
Thankfully, she survived to report the Haring Wing incident, and when she did and identified
Albert DeSalvo as her attacker, he confessed to 13 murders over the course
of a year and a half, as well as a slew of other rapes.
And one of his victims was Beverly Sammons, who remember was the 23-year-old who had
been found dead in her apartment in the building that Jane later resided in, and two was murdered
in.
Frustratingly due to a startling lack of physical evidence left behind,
Albert was never charged with any of these murders.
In 1967, he was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the series of rapes,
but he was never held accountable for the shocking murders that he claimed responsibility for.
But then, in 1973, he was actually killed in a dispute with another inmate while serving
his prison sentence.
However, because his case was never properly tried or investigated due to lack of evidence,
many felt that he may not have been acting alone.
Because most of his victims were strangled to death after being assaulted, the media
dubbed Albert the Boston Strangler.
Which is a case that I know many of us are familiar with, as Daphne mentioned, but if
you're not, between 1962 and 1964, at least 13 women in the Boston area were strangled
to death.
Now, although he was already incarcerated by the time that Jane was killed, was it possible
that Albert's co-conspirator, if there actually was one,
was responsible?
In the wake of the arrest of the Boston Strangler with the entire city on edge, rumors surfaced
of a new serial killer plaguing this area.
Because about a month after Jane's murder, another Cambridge woman was murdered under
eerily similar circumstances.
And how insane, I know that this was a time where serial killers were a bit more active
than they are compared to today, for example, but the fact that in within the 60s, there's
two different serial killers in the Boston area, they think that Jane, originally think
that Jane's murder could be connected to the first one, and now they're thinking she could be connected
to the second one, it's just wild.
Yeah, it is absolutely terrifying.
So on February 6th, 1969,
one day shy of exactly one month since Jane's murder.
50 year old Ada Bean was discovered bludgeoned to death
inside her third floor apartment,
which was just a quarter of a mile or about four tenths of a kilometer from Jane's apartment.
That is super super close.
So Ada had also been found in her bed still wearing her pajamas, though they had been
pulled up around her shoulders, which indicated that a sexual assault may have taken place.
Like Jane, she had also been covered up.
Her attacker tossed a blanket over her
before fleeing into the night.
And they believed that she had been killed
two days prior to her discovery.
At some point late on the evening of Tuesday, February 4th,
or early on the morning of Wednesday, February 5th, 1969.
The reason that she was found even two days later
is because her employer became concerned
when she didn't show up to work on Wednesday and reported her missing after that.
And then after gaining access to the apartment, police found her bludgeoned to death in her
bed.
Blood had been splattered as far as the ceiling as she sustained her injuries and sadly, Ada's
murder has never been solved.
And for decades, it seemed like Jane's murder would suffer that same fate.
When the grand jury indictments led nowhere and the leads completely dried up, the case
turned cold by the end of the year.
So naturally, her friends, family, and loved ones were frustrated at the lack of answers, as for years, her murder was barely even discussed
in the media, let alone investigated.
In 1978, so nine years after Jane's murder,
her mom Ruth Brittain passed away
without ever knowing what happened to her daughter.
Every few years, the Boston Globe,
whose thorough coverage of the case
dominated newsstands in 1969,
would print a refresher on her murder alongside a plea for information, but there were never any updates.
That is, until almost 50 years after her murder.
In 2017, her brother Boyd said regarding the solving of her case, quote, my pessimism remains.
Donald claimed that he and his wife mourn the loss of their friend and neighbor for decades
and still hoped for a conclusion.
By then living in Hawaii, he kept the rug that was found discarded on top of Jane's
body in order to keep her memory alive.
He said, quote,
I don't think that two months have ever gone by when I don't
think about it. Then in November of 2018, just two months before the 50th anniversary
of Jane's death, the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office announced that they had
found a link to their killer, and Jane was not his only victim. Using Ancestry.com DNA, police located a link
to the murder's biological brother
who was very cooperative in their line of questioning
and even offered a DNA sample to them for comparison.
The man in question was a local Boston man
named Michael Sumter, someone who had not been
on their radar whatsoever when the crime occurred.
However, he was already well known to police
because Michael had a lengthy criminal record
dating back to his teens.
Just two years younger than Jane,
Michael grew up in the Cambridge area
and worked near Jane's apartment building,
and his girlfriend at the time also lived
in Jane's neighborhood.
In 1965, when Michael was 19, he was arrested after stealing a purse from a woman on the
street and he served a short stint in prison for this crime, though unfortunately, his
offenses began to get worse upon his release.
As far as police knew, he was next arrested on an assault and battery charge for which he was given a longer sentence of 6 to 10 years.
But somehow, he convinced the court to offer him furlough for a day to attend an event,
and instead he fled and evaded capture for a whole month.
It was during this period of time that he killed his third known victim.
In 1973, he committed another purse theft and then assaulted
the police officer who apprehended him. He was also found to be in possession of a loaded firearm
which as a felon was illegal. In 1975 while serving time for his latest crime spree he was
inexplicably offered work release despite his history of running from the law
But instead of reporting to work Michael broke into a young woman's apartment and assaulted her
He had entered the home with permission and breaking into an apartment building before knocking on the door of a young woman
Telling her that he was a new neighbor and that he needed a drink of water get your own water
I know what the hell so when she kindly obliged and let him inside, he disappeared into the bathroom and returned,
clad in latex gloves, attacking and assaulting her before fleeing the apartment.
After reporting the incident, she plucked his picture from a lineup of 250 people.
Thankfully, police were able to track him down quickly this time and he was arrested
for a final time.
So given that he was a violent offender and a known flight risk, Michael was given a sentence
of 21 to 30 years in prison.
What police didn't know, however, was that he also had at least three murders under his
belt.
And Jane was actually Michael's first known victim.
And because Jane and Michael had no known history or contact prior to the attack, investigators
believe it to be a crime of opportunity.
Being from the area, it's possible that Michael had been watching Jane and took a liking to
her, but it's equally possible that he watched her come home or saw her through her apartment
window, which was adjacent to a fire escape, and then jumped at the opportunity to assault her.
Michael claimed his next victim
almost exactly three years later.
24-year-old Ellen Rutchik was a secretary at a hotel
in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston,
which is about 15 minutes away from Cambridge.
So late on the evening of January 5th, 1972, Michael broke into Ellen's
back bay apartment, strangled her with the cord of a high-fi stereo, and ripped off some of her
clothing. The following day when she didn't report to work as usual, a few of her co-workers at the
hotel stopped by her apartment to check on her, when they arrived they were puzzled to find her door left not only unlocked
but open
Inside limp on the couch was Ellen's body clad only in a robe and a torn bra and
Further examination yielded that she had also been raped
The final victim attributed to Michael is 24 year old Mary Lee McClain who like Ellen
worked as a secretary. Mary Lee was home in her apartment in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of
Boston but unlike the other two women she had not been alone. So two female roommates and a
male friend had been home at the time making it very surprising that no one in the apartment heard
anything suspicious.
But a neighbor of theirs did report later
that they heard someone clatter down the metal staircase
in the back of the building early on the morning
that Mary Lee was killed, which was December 12th, 1973.
So these all took place during the winter time.
Well, it's now believed that this commotion was Michael
fleeing from Mary Lee's third
floor apartment after murdering her around 3.30 that morning.
A few hours later, around 8am, one of her roommates went into her bedroom to check on
her and found Mary Lee in her nightgown on her bed strangled to death.
In total, Michael was linked to five sexual assault cases, three of which resulted
in murder. And though James was the first to occur, it was the last of the three to
be connected to him, meaning that the other two already were solved before they could
make this connection to Jane Britton's murder 50 years later.
Yeah, because in 2010, investigators established the link between Ellen Ruttschik and Michael
Sumter and two years later connected him to Mary Lee McClain.
Frustratingly he was never brought to justice for those brutal murders because he was already
dead.
And actually, Michael passed away from cancer in 2001 at the age of 54 while continuing to
serve his sentence for the rape that he committed in 1975.
After his death, his information was entered into the CODIS database and later connected with
his victims. And although it was disheartening that he managed to avoid being charged with the
murders of these three young women, their families were thankful for some final closure. Ellen's sister Irene Rutcich said after the discovery, quote,
This is a great relief.
It is helpful to know who the murderer was, particularly for me, because I always wondered
if it was someone I knew.
My understanding is that it was totally random.
It was a real tragedy to our family for many, many years that she was no longer
with us. But I think he faced justice in many ways. He died in prison, and for us, it's
a relief to know the facts."
James was the oldest cold case in Middlesex County to be solved. Her brother Boyd told
reporters that he was thankful to have finally received closure in his sister's case after so much time had passed.
He said in his statement, quote,
A half century of mystery and speculation has clouded the brutal crime that shattered
Jane's promising young life and our family.
As the surviving Britain, I wish to thank all those friends, public officials and press
who persevered in keeping this investigation
active, most especially state police sergeant Peter Sennett. The DNA evidence match may be
all we ever have as a conclusion. Learning to understand and forgive remains a challenge.
Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and on Tuesday we'll have
an all new case for you guys to dive into.
Thank you so much again to Julia for recommending today's case.
It's always crazy because this is something we've been seeing a lot in recent
years that these cases from 50 or so years ago are finally being solved due to
places like ancestry.com and genealogical DNA testing.
So it's, it's crazy to see how much that is happening. And it's so amazing.
So I'm glad that at least some of her friends and family who are still alive
were able to get that information,
but it's so sad that they couldn't figure it out sooner.
Yeah, and it also really sucks that this asshole died before he had to, you know,
really serve any justice for all these crimes that he committed, but at the end of the day,
that is one less piece of shit on the streets.
Indeed.
All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you for watching! you