Episode 205 - Unmasking the Monster - Chicago Serial Killer Paul Runge
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In 1996, FBI agents had been watching a suburban Chicago home, suspecting a couple in their mid-20s of three unsolved homicides. They'd been keeping a close eye on the suspects for months, waiting for the day they'd hopefully slip up. And it seemed that day had come, when all of a sudden, the couple jumped into their car and sped off with the wife behind the wheel.

Weaving through traffic like a bat out of hell, the agents followed closely behind, tailing the duo all the way to Chicago O'Hare Airport. But just as they pulled up to the terminal, the wife sped off and the husband took off running, carrying a large bag.

Hoping the contents of the bag might hold the key to breaking their entire case wide open, the agents sprinted through the airport trying to apprehend the man. But when they finally managed to catch up to him, they were in for a disappointment. Because when they opened the bag, all they found inside was a pile of dolls. Amused that he'd tricked them, the agents knew they'd have to let him go.

But this hadn't been the first time they'd been played by the couple. Realizing the FBI had been surveilling them, Paul and Charlene Runge had come up with a plan to toy with the agents. And it wouldn't be the last. To Charlene and Paul, it all seemed like one big game.

Join me now as we dive into a case of one of the most twisted and unknown serial killers in modern Chicago history. A cunning criminal who played a game of cat and mouse with law enforcement for years while hunting in plain sight. A brutal sexual sadist with an unquenchable appetite for rape and murder.

It had been a bitterly cold day in January 1995 when a German shepherd named Friendly emerged from a nearby forest on his owner's property near the Wisconsin-Illinois border, carrying back home something truly horrific. Instead of a stick, or perhaps a dead animal, Friendly was carrying home a human leg.

After the dog's owner notified local police about the gruesome find, it didn't take long for officers to descend on the area, scouring the property with cadaver dogs in case there were other remains to be found. But after an extensive search, they found nothing. That's why it was astonishing when five days later, Friendly returned home again with another human leg.

Both legs had been perfectly severed and appeared to have come from the same body. But whose body? Police tried attaching a special tracking collar to Friendly, hoping he might lead them to discover more body parts. But if Friendly knew where they were hidden, he kept that secret all to himself.

While police continued searching the area, medical examiners determined the body parts had most likely come from a white woman in her 20s.

After looking through records of recent missing persons reports, investigators discovered a potential match for the mysterious pair of legs, a 24-year-old woman last seen in early January. The woman's name was Stacy Frobel from the West Chicago suburb of Carroll Stream. But in order to make a positive DNA identification, lab technicians would need to collect samples from both her parents to compare.

Finding her mother was easy, but it would be her biological father who'd be difficult to track down. He'd only seen his daughter Stacy once when she was four months old, but even then, didn't believe she was his. But he'd soon know for sure, once police managed to locate him down in Nashville, Tennessee, and got him to submit his DNA for testing.

After comparing his DNA to the DNA from the severed legs, it was concluded that not only had the legs belonged to Stacey, but that the man was indeed her father. As police tried determining Stacey's last movements before her legs were discovered, they found out the last time anyone had seen her alive had been on the night of January 3rd, 1995.

That night, she'd visited some friends and headed home around 12:45 in the morning, but never made it home. Even though her husband didn't see her the next day, he reportedly hadn't been too worried. According to neighbors, the couple had been together less than a year and could often be heard arguing. Apparently, it wasn't uncommon for Stacey to take off for a day or two at times as well.

Finally, after waiting 24 hours with no sign of her, Stacey's husband reported her missing. When police started looking into Stacey's background, what they discovered was a rather tumultuous situation that would lead them down a number of unfruitful rabbit holes.

For starters, five years earlier, when Stacey was eight months pregnant, her first husband and father of their soon-to-be child was sent to jail for domestic abuse. Then, just 15 minutes after being placed in a holding cell, he took his own life by hanging himself with his own shirt.

Struggling to cope with the loss of her husband and becoming a single mother, Stacey decided to give her mother custody of the baby.

After canvassing local establishments, police would also discover that Stacey was a known patron of a lot of the bars. So police began to theorize. After leaving her friends home on January 3rd, she might have swung by a pub before heading home around 1 in the morning, but no one remembered seeing her.

Eventually, police were able to determine that Stacey made two phone calls before leaving her friend's place that night. The first was a call to her husband. The second was to another man she'd been having an affair with.

Eventually, both men were interviewed and polygraphed on three separate occasions. In the end, each of the suspects passed their lie detector tests, and both of them had reasonable alibis. In the meantime, more body parts started turning up, with the next of Stacey's remains being discovered on March 21st. Her skull, found by another dog near the same area the legs had been found,

Four days later, a woman walking through a field in southern Wisconsin found Stacy's hand about six miles away. A month after that, one of her feet was found in Wisconsin as well.

News of Stacey's murder investigation received considerable coverage in the Chicago press, and despite Stacey's mother's best attempts at shielding her five-year-old grandson from the news, inevitably, he'd learn the gruesome details from watching TV.

something he tried to make sense of in his own way. That spring, when he was taken to the hospital for a dog bite, Stacy's son asked the doctor if he was going to die, because what he comprehended from the news was that his mother had died because of a dog.

But the way Stacey's remains had been removed from her body, one thing was clear: her injuries hadn't occurred because of an animal. Police knew they were looking for an entirely different kind of predator. A person. Someone who'd gone to great lengths to dismember Stacey's body and scatter her remains in different locations. The only question was: who?

But while police continued their high-profile investigation in the summer of 1995, a bizarre new case fell into their laps.

On July 24th, 1995, a man in a neighboring jurisdiction reported his adult nieces missing. In fact, no one had seen them in almost two weeks. 20-year-old Janeta and 22-year-old Emela Pasenbegovic, sisters who'd recently immigrated to the United States from Bosnia, fleeing the brutal civil war during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

To escape the conflict, their father had cashed in his entire life savings to fund his daughter's passage to America, smuggling them out of Sarajevo through a half-mile tunnel beneath the city.

After arriving in the US, the sisters moved in with an uncle who lived just outside of Chicago, where they found work in a factory. A few months later, after feeling a bit more stable, the sisters moved into their own place. But just as things were looking up for the Bosnian immigrants, things suddenly took an unexpected turn when they were both laid off from their jobs.

They'd only been in the country for six months and were already learning how difficult it could be to make a life on their own. That's why the sisters thought it was their lucky day when they ran into a former co-worker at the unemployment office, telling them about an opportunity to clean houses for some friends who were starting a new business.

After sharing their contact info, it was arranged the sisters would be picked up the following day to start their new jobs. But no one had seen them since.

When police started interviewing anyone who knew the sisters, they soon learned the identity of the couple who'd allegedly started the new house cleaning business, Paul and Charlene Runge, a couple in their mid-20s living in nearby Glendale Heights. But when investigators spoke to the couple, they were surprised by their response. Not only did the Runge's deny knowing the sisters, but they also denied having any sort of house cleaning business as well.

In fact, they seemed downright surprised by the claim. This left police at a strange impasse, and it was obvious somebody was lying. But before they could figure out who, investigators received a stunning piece of news. Paul Runge was now also a suspect for the murder of Stacey Froebel.

After the leads on Stacey's husband and the man she'd been having an affair with failed to pan out, detectives began reworking the Frobo case from square one, beginning with the last known person to have seen her alive. And interestingly, that's when they realized the friends Stacey had been hanging out with the night she disappeared were Paul and Charlene Rungey.

But it wasn't just the fact that Paul had been the last person to have seen Stacy alive. It's what detectives discovered when they ran a background check on all of Stacy's friends and acquaintances. Because Paul had a record, but not just any record. In fact, what they discovered was horrifying.

On August 17th, 1987, when Paul Runge was 17 years old and had his parents' house all to himself for a weekend, it seemed his life of devious behavior began. That night, Paul called a 14-year-old girl he knew from school and told her he needed a favor. A mutual friend of theirs needed a place to stash some marijuana, and he asked if she'd be willing to help him get it. But it was a trap.

After sneaking out of her bedroom window, the young girl met up with Paul at his house. But as soon as she walked inside, Paul attacked and raped her. He then tortured her for the next 15 hours. And what Paul did to that girl was truly horrific.

In fact, what the victim described later were some of the most violent sadistic details we've ever come across. And the torture only ended after Paul was interrupted by a phone call from his girlfriend at the time, and he left the house.

But to keep his captive from escaping, Paul cuffed the 14-year-old girl's hands behind her back, tied her legs together, and zipped her up into a sleeping bag before stuffing her into a crawlspace.

According to the victim's testimony, once Paul left the house, she swore to herself she wasn't going to die laying down and she was going to escape. And miraculously, she did. After rolling, hopping, and opening doors with her hands cuffed behind her back, the 14-year-old managed to make it out to the middle of the street before being spotted by a neighbor who rescued her.

Paul was soon arrested and received a 14-year prison sentence, but after serving only seven years, he was released on parole in 1994, just eight months before Stacey's murder. During that time, Paul got himself an apartment, found a job at Lady Foot Locker, and became engaged to Charlene, who he'd marry just three weeks after Stacey's disappearance.

Needless to say, police were stunned when they discovered Paul's sexually violent criminal history. And once they started seeing him through a new lens, it changed their entire perception of what might have happened on the night Stacey disappeared.

The only people claiming to have seen Stacey leave the Runge's house on the morning of January 4th were Paul and Charlene. Originally, police had dedicated their time to finding out what happened to Stacey after she left her friend's house. But now they wondered if Stacey had left the house at all.

By the end of the summer of 1995, Paul Runge became the prime suspect for both Stacey's murder and the Pasambegovich sisters' disappearance, which police now feared was most likely a homicide as well. Over the course of the next two years, police and the FBI would conduct surveillance on Paul and Charlene on more than 280 separate occasions.

In fact, local police dedicated so many man hours to the case, they even had to request an 8% budget increase to account for the excess spending.

However, Paul and Charlene knew they were being watched, and soon started toying with the agents in charge of their surveillance. At first, they started waving at the agents whenever they spotted them sitting in their unmarked vehicles, even making a point of saying hello to whoever was listening on their tapped phone line.

For fun, Paul would hop into his car and start driving just to see if he could spot his tail. And once he did, he'd try to lose them in traffic.

The couple even staged that elaborate scene when Charlene dropped Paul at the Chicago O'Hare airport with a bag full of dolls just to see the FBI agent's reactions. They were openly taunting police, poking the bear, and giving them the metaphorical finger.

Naturally, this only encouraged the agents to want to catch them even more. And one day in 1996, they finally found their first piece of solid evidence against Paul and Charlene.

One day as the agents were watching the Rungees home, they spotted a garbage truck roll up and remove their trash. That's when they decided to follow the truck around the corner, pull it over, and look for any potential clues the Rungees might have thrown away. Inside a trash bag, agents discovered a single piece of paper that would confirm their darkest suspicions.

Written in Charlene's handwriting were the names of the sisters from Bosnia, their phone number, and their home address. And the reason this was such a key breakthrough was because up until that point, the Rungis had denied having any connection to the siblings or even knowing who they were.

But now police had hard evidence to prove they were lying. Although the piece of paper wasn't enough for an arrest, it was enough for police to secure a search warrant at Paul and Charlene's home. It was during the search of the Runge home that FBI discovered a number of weapons, including a stun gun, a crossbow, and some rather large knives.

But after being forensically tested, no traces of blood or DNA were found on the weapons. Although it initially seemed their search hadn't turned up anything valuable, it would later turn out that the FBI had been wrong about this. If they'd only realized then what they already had in their possession, the rest of this tragic story would never have happened.

On January 10th, 1997, almost exactly two years after Stacey's murder, a fire broke out in a home near downtown Chicago. Inside the burning home, firefighters found the lifeless body of 30-year-old Dorothy Jubok in her own bed.

although police first thought Dorothy had died from the fire. An autopsy would later reveal she'd actually been murdered, with signs of manual strangulation, including a broken hyoid bone in her neck, petechia in her eyes,

But most telling of all was the lack of soot in Dorothy's lungs, which meant she hadn't been breathing when the fire started. Further examination also revealed that Dorothy had been sexually assaulted. An investigation into the fire would show evidence of an accelerant being poured over Dorothy's body in bed before someone deliberately set it on fire.

Police also learned Dorothy had been trying to sell her house without a realtor. Instead, she put up a for sale by owner sign posted out front.

They also learned that just before her murder, Dorothy had been on the phone with a close friend. And it was during that call, Dorothy said a potential buyer was coming over to view her home, a man that had made her feel uneasy. So she asked if her friend could call her back in 15 minutes, just to make sure she was okay. But when she did, no one answered.

So the next call she made was to police, asking them to perform a welfare check. But before they could get there, the fire department was already en route. Detectives were left with little doubt that the person who murdered Dorothy was the same man who went to look at her home. However, the man's identity remained a mystery.

Less than a month later, on February 3rd, another fire broke out in a small apartment in Chicago. Inside, firefighters discovered two bodies in a bed. The victims were 35-year-old Yolanda Gutierrez and her 10-year-old daughter, Jessica Muniz. Both mother and daughter were fully clothed, with their mouths gagged, hands tied behind their backs, and their throats cut.

An autopsy would later show evidence they'd been sexually assaulted. Collected semen samples were sent to a forensics lab to create a DNA profile. And just like the previous fire, investigators found an accelerant being poured all around the bed.

During their investigation, police interviewed a number of possible suspects linked to Yolanda's personal life, but it was what they found inside Yolanda's home that caught their eye. A stack of flyers she printed out and posted around the area, advertising a hooked-on phonics program she was selling that included her phone number.

It made detectives wonder if someone had managed to talk their way into Yolanda's home, posing as a potential buyer. The third Chicago fire happened six weeks later on March 14th,

This time, it was a condo located only a few minutes away from the previous fire. Inside in the bathroom, firefighters found the deceased body of 43-year-old Kazimiera Peruch. And at first glance, it was obvious there'd been a violent struggle between the woman and her attacker. Investigators would later discover that she too had been sexually assaulted before being beaten and stabbed with a knife.

They also found evidence she'd been strangled. And just like the previous fires, an accelerant had been poured over the body before the fire was started.

During the investigation, detectives discovered Kazimiera was a Polish immigrant who planned on returning to Poland after going through a painful divorce. She just needed to sell her condo first. And this is when Chicago police started recognizing a pattern. Outside of Kazimiera's condo was a sign that read "For Sale by Owner."

That's when they began to realize they were looking at the same perpetrator at all three crime scenes. A man who found his victims through classified ads and used them as an excuse to enter the women's homes before attacking, raping, and murdering them, then setting their homes on fire to destroy any trace evidence.

Over the span of just 10 weeks in early 1997, their killer had burned down three separate homes and committed four homicides. Another shocking aspect of these crimes was the fact they'd all taken place in the middle of the day. Realizing they were dealing with a killer who knew how to cover their tracks, Chicago police asked the FBI to develop a psychological profile on the person they now believed was a serial killer.

For Chicago police, it was a race against time to solve the case before the killer struck again. The only problem was, they didn't have a single clue who could be responsible. Police in downtown Chicago were completely unaware of the years-long investigation happening out in the suburbs. The investigation into Paul Runge...

After spending two whole years investigating and surveilling Paul and Charlene, the FBI and local police still didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest for the murders of Stacey Frobel and the Pasambegovich sisters. But in their minds, there was zero doubt about who was responsible.

In May 1997, the FBI decided to pull a page from their old Chicago playbook. If they couldn't arrest Paul for murder, was there something else they could arrest him for? Famously, the FBI used the same trick

to bring down Windy City gangster Al Capone in the 1930s when they convicted him on tax evasion instead of busting him for murder, racketeering, and bootlegging. And this is when they realized that they had a piece of evidence already in their possession that could take Paul off the streets and put him behind bars, at least for a little while.

During their search of Paul's home the year before, investigators found a number of weapons, including a large knife they'd sent away for forensic testing. At the time, they'd considered their search a failure, but they were wrong.

Having weapons in his house was a violation of Paul's parole after being released from prison for the rape he'd committed in 1987. And so their prime suspect in three homicide cases was sent back to prison on a simple parole violation. But still, the clock was ticking, and if they couldn't come up with the evidence soon, Paul would be released again in only a few short years.

By the year 2000, investigators were running out of time to bring a case against Paul before his sentence was up. Out of desperation, they offered to give Charlene Runge full immunity in exchange for her cooperation and testimony against Paul. And it was a deal Charlene eagerly accepted.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Charlene admitted she'd helped clean up the crime scene after Stacey Frobel's murder and even assisted Paul in scattering her dismembered remains along the Wisconsin-Illinois border.

To prove her claims, she showed detectives bloodstains inside her house that would later confirm to have come from Stacey. But that's not all she admitted. Charlene also confessed to playing her role in luring the Pasambegovich sisters over to their house to be attacked by Paul by pretending to offer them a housecleaning job and driving them to her home.

After the murders, Charlene helped Paul clean up blood at the crime scene. At the very least, Charlene was confessing to be an accessory to at least three homicides. But because of her deal, she had complete immunity. The trade-off was something prosecutors were willing to begrudgingly accept. But just months later, it would turn out their immunity deal hadn't been necessary.

In 2001, detectives in downtown Chicago were still pursuing what they believed to be an entirely unrelated string of rapes, murders and arson from early 1997. In fact, they even had a suspect they were looking into for the murders of Yolanda Gutierrez and her daughter Jessica.

Detectives collected a sample of DNA from their suspect and sent it away to be compared to the semen sample collected from the original crime scene. By this time, DNA databases were becoming increasingly linked across jurisdictions, and the sample from the original crime scene turned out to be a perfect match to Paul Runge.

This is when the FBI and local Chicago police finally realized that all the unsolved murders they'd been investigating had been committed by the same killer. Not only did they now have solid forensic evidence against a bonafide serial killer they believed was responsible for raping and murdering six women and one child, but they were also faced with a few haunting realizations.

First, it meant that despite being under FBI surveillance on hundreds of occasions, Paul had committed four more murders right under their noses in 1997. But the second realization was even harder to stomach, because if the FBI had informed the parole board about finding weapons in Paul's home back in 1996, instead of waiting another year, four of his victims would still be alive today.

And lastly, even though there'd been no way prosecutors could have foreseen this development, the DNA evidence against Paul meant that giving Charlene full immunity hadn't been necessary.

Detectives interviewed Paul in prison on June 7th, 2001, and although he started out by denying any involvement with the murders, when detectives showed him the DNA results from the Gutierrez crime scene, he completely changed his tune and simply said, ''You got me. What do you want me to say?''

Paul then continued to give a full confession of all the crimes, even admitting to murdering a sex worker in January 1997, bringing his total number of victims to eight. Detectives were absolutely stunned by what they were hearing. Not only was Paul telling them every single detail, but they were haunted about how matter-of-fact he was about all of it.

Where'd you do that? I got on top of her. I leaned on her with my hand like this on the high part of the back lower neck area and I was talking to her and I said don't say anything, don't tell nobody, don't do anything. I'm not going to come back. I'm not going to hurt you or your daughter or anything like that. That was pretty much it. Were you leaning hard or were you like stuck? I was leaning enough that I got stuck. What do you mean by that? Because when I got up off her she was moving.

Paul showed no emotion, no signs of regret, and talked about murder as if he was talking about the weather. The other thing that shocked detectives were Paul's claims about Charlene's involvement.

For the most part, he corroborated what Charlene had told them regarding Stacy and the Pasantbegovich sisters, that she'd helped lure the women in hopes they would be willing to become intimate with both her and Paul. But when they weren't, she sat by as Paul murdered them and helped clean up and dispose of their bodies.

But what detectives had never heard before were Paul's claims that Charlene had also come with him to the apartment of Yolanda Gutierrez and Jessica Muniz.

In his original statement, Paul claimed that Charlene had witnessed the entire brutal attack and was even the one who handed him a can of turpentine so he could set the apartment on fire. But when detectives questioned Charlene after his interview, she denied all the new allegations. During Paul's next interview, he changed his story and now said he'd been lying about Charlene's involvement. But detectives weren't entirely convinced.

Regardless, the truth of what really happened made no difference when it came to Charlene because there was nothing the prosecution could do about it. In 2006, Paul Runge was put on trial for the murders of Yolanda Gutierrez and Jessica Muniz. As a defense strategy, Paul pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which was rejected by the jury, who found him guilty on all counts.

During the penalty phase, it only took the jury an hour to unanimously sentence him to death. After sentencing, Yolanda's father told the press, "I hope the Lord will give me enough time so I can see him strapped to the gurney. Once he's gone, I'll be very satisfied."

With Paul being sent to death row, the DA elected not to prosecute the other murder cases against him, since he couldn't possibly receive a harsher penalty. But in 2011, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state. That meant Paul Runge, along with 14 other men, had their sentences commuted to life without parole.

you come to this decision and when did you actually decide? Well, I made my final decision over the weekend and I thought it was important for our state, for history as well as for an important piece of legislation like this to have a opportunity for all to register their opinion. So I heard from both sides. I think I had a pretty good idea of where people's points of view were and ultimately I had to make that decision of what

which way to go. People point to John Wayne Gacy as probably the worst perhaps that had been executed in Illinois. I mean, if you look back on that case and the

in the context of what you've done today, do you think that that was a mistake that the state did in executing that? Well, I think John Wayne Gacy was an evil man who committed heinous crimes. Having said that, you cannot have a death penalty system in our state that kills innocent people. And unfortunately, that system was in grave danger of doing exactly that in 20 different instances in Illinois. And so what's really a

The question here, it seems to me, is the system itself. If the system can't be guaranteed 100% error-free, then we shouldn't have the system. It cannot stand. It just is not right in our democracy and system of justice to have a death penalty system that would apply and execute to innocent men and women. And so that really, I think, is a decisive matter that

has to be dealt with by all of us. No, I think all of us learn as we go through life and I certainly learned in the past two months from a variety of people from Illinois and outside of Illinois who have opinions on this issue.

I really read as much as I could and I took notes. Most of you know I know how to scribble down notes and I keep meticulous notes and then I review my notes and I do that on everything that applies to this job. So I really feel that I gave it my best review and follow my conscience. And if you do that,

I think God wants you to do it that way and your conscience will never kick you in the shins. In a scathing op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune, the author singled out Paul by saying, of the 15 men on death row, none more deserve to die for his crimes than Paul Runke.

It appears that Paul Runge first started displaying sexual deviance towards females around the age of eight. Touching and grabbing them to the point, he was asked to leave the Catholic school he was attending. And although Paul had come from a supportive, middle-class family without any known history of violence,

abuse, or other notable trauma. It's been reported that Paul had an especially close relationship with his adoptive mother, and when she died of cancer when he was 17, he was there to watch her take her last breath.

A traumatic experience, followed by Paul committing his first reported rape three weeks later. But this alone couldn't possibly explain what had caused him to become one of the most heinous serial killers in modern US history. A serial killer later diagnosed as a sexual sadist with borderline antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic features.

In later interviews, Paul claimed he believed his brain began connecting sex and violence during adolescence through watching horror movies and viewing pornography at a young age. He also claimed that every one of his murders had been a crime of opportunity rather than selecting specific victims. He also said that nearly every day during his two-year killing spree, he was on the lookout for potential victims and that during that time,

time, there were many women he planned on attacking if he thought he could get away with it. The case of Paul Runge is a stark reminder that we can never forget the untold number of ancillary victims that crimes like these affect. Firefighters trying to save people from a burning building, but instead coming face to face with brutal homicides burned into their memories forever.

The innocent people discovering dismembered body parts while walking their pets in the woods. And even the jury members who sat and listened to the horrifying details that were much too graphic for us to even repeat. All told, Paul Runke confessed to murdering eight different women between 1995 and 1997.

But the ripple effects of these crimes would be felt all around the world, from Chicago to Poland to Bosnia and beyond. During Paul's sentencing, the father of Janeta and Emila Pasenbegovic took the stand and spoke through an interpreter. He'd flown all the way from Bosnia to make sure the jury understood just how much Paul had taken from him and his family.

As he told them about the last time he'd seen his daughters, kissing them goodbye as they escaped a violent war zone for a better life, the interpreter himself began weeping and could hardly get his own words out.

But despite the linguistic barrier and the interpreter's struggle to convey the words, the raw display of emotions and humanity became a universally understood language of its own. And when the proud father held up a picture of his daughters, gripping it tightly in both hands to show the jurors, there wasn't a single dry eye among them.

I think we should have stern, unrelenting, unremitting punishment for those who commit violent crimes like murder and heinous crimes. They should never be allowed to go free or never should be allowed to leave prison. I think they should be put in maximum security prisons and left to reflect on their wrong for the rest of their lives. I mean, if you read the Bible, if you save one life, you save the whole world. And if we are in any way

participants as a state in killing an innocent person using the power of the state. We have to deal with that as a very important issue and I totally understand how the family members of victims feel about the loss of their loved ones due to the heinous crimes of violent people who are evildoers. I do believe the evildoers should be punished severely in prison without parole

without ever seeing freedom again, but also without the death penalty. And now I'd like to introduce the podcast, Marooned. Hello, the Minds of Madness listeners. I'm Aaron Habel of Generation Y, and with me is Jack Luna of Dark Topic. We'd like to introduce you to Marooned, a new podcast that's sure to capture your attention. Tales of the catastrophically lost are what we have to offer. Hikers swallowed by the woods. Explorers discovering nothing but destitution.

True crime calamity. Oddities of harrowing human experience. It's a museum of misadventure. So pack a lunch. Subscribe to Marooned wherever you find podcasts. We are waiting. Please hurry. Thank you.

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