Rowena Irani-An Update

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Hi guys. I'm Courtney and I'm
Lisa, and welcome to the next chapter

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in the Book of the Dead,
brought to you by Dark Cast Network indie

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Podcasts with a twist. Hello.
Hello. So today's episode is going to

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be a little bit different. It's
more of a mini episode, a bonus

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jonas if you will. If you
recall, in the last chapter we released,

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I mentioned that I would have more
information regarding the murder of Rowena Irani,

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and I do so. I was
reached out too by a close family

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friend of hers, and Misbah has
given me permission to share some of what

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was in the email, and again
I appreciate her greatly for reaching out to

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me correcting my pronunciation. The email
she sent me was incredibly kind and very

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validating for me to read. But
in regards to Rowena, the first thing

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I want to mention is I had
called Rushad Rowena's brother, and Dane Owens,

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the man that was convicted of killing
her friends. And that was partially

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because in the media the different articles
that I was reading, no one had

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a clear understanding of how they were
acquainted. So a few articles had said

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they were friends and they weren't.
In fact, Misba said she wouldn't really

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call them friends because they weren't.
They were polite to each other reluctantly,

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and she said that was more in
the way that you know some people will

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do when they don't really want to
get to know the other one. But

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the only time she had recalled Rushad
ever really interacting with Dane willingly was at

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a Fourth of July party that Dane
had thrown at his parents' home in twenty

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thirteen. He was around Dane because
Muspa, Rowena and Misa's sister of Sean

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were friends with Dane. So Rushad
hung around Dane because based on his sister

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and the other women's judgment of Dane, you know, they were friendly with

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him. He trusted their judgment,
so he tolerated him, I think at

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best. Now. According to Muspa, the way that Dane came into Rowena's

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life was because he was friends with
off Sean. Rushad and av Sean worked

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at the disability services at Wichita State
Universe, and Dane worked there as well.

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He was working on his college undergrad
while he was also enlisted in the

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Army National Guard. Now. She
said that this was in twenty twelve and

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Rowena was eighteen and Dane was going
to be twenty four, so you know,

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that was a bit of an age
gap. It was. There's no

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denying that, and at least in
my opinion, that's a bit of a

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red flag for an almost twenty four
year old to be interested in an eighteen

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year old girl. But Mspa did
say that she remembered feeling that Dane was

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too old for Rowena, and she
said that Dane was definitely interested in her,

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and Rowena was interested in him as
well. But Rashad and Avshan kind

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of convinced Rowena that she should really
focus on school not really worry about dating

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right then and there, and she
did. She continued on with her plan,

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focusing on school, focusing on what
she needed to do to further her

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education. Now, af Sean,
Mispa, and Rowena were all very close

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with each other. They all commuted
to school together, they spent a lot

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of time together, so they had
this very strong relationship, and they spent

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time with each other's families. But
because they spent so much time together,

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that means they were also spending a
lot of time with Dane because again he

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worked in the disability services as well, and she thought that, you know,

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it was creating a good friendship with
him. Now, in the original

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recording, I did say that Dane
had moved, and I was really fuzzy

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on the details he had moved he
had come back, And Mispa said that

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she was a little bit confused as
well, like the timeline was a little

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bit convoluted in regards to Dane.
She said that in twenty thirteen, he

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said that he was moving to Arizona. He was going to live with someone

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he had been deployed with until he
kind of figured out his own living situation.

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And she said she doesn't know if
that's really what he did, or

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if that's what he was just kind
of telling them, But he did eventually

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come back to Kansas if he left
at all, and enrolled at Kansas State.

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Now, in twenty fourteen, off
Shan and Rashad graduated from Wichita State,

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and so she says that that was
around the fall semester, and that's

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around the time that Rowena had started
working at Disability Services herself, and that

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by that time Dane was no longer
working there. Now, at the time

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that Rowena was in Kansas State and
Dane was in Kansas State. Mispa says

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that she knows that they were in
contact, but she's not one hundred percent

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sure if they were actually seeing each
other, you know. She said,

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from what she understands, they weren't
seeing each other. But in September of

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twenty sixteen, they had gone to
the state Fair, all of them,

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the whole group, and that everything
had seemed fine between Dane and Rowena at

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the time, but by the end
of the month, Dane had written that

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letter talking about marrying Rowena and having
kids with her, and Rowena had broken

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it off. Now, this is
the part of the email where she adds

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a lot more context for me in
regards to what happened in the days leading

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up to Rowena's murder. And she
said that Dane had come down to Wichita

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to have surgery on his rotator cuff, and he was expecting to have help

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from his parents, but they had
made plans to go out of town and

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they had basically said, we're not
going to change our plans because you're having

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the surgery, but stay at the
house while we're gone so you can recover.

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Now, Mispa says that she was
supposed to go check on him,

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and she said that basically, she
was very nervous to do so. She

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was very hesitant to do so because
she did not want to be alone with

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him. He had a history being
emotionally manipulative, which was clear as day

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when looking back at the original recording. He was emotionally manipulative with Rowena.

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I'm sure he was emotionally manipulated with
Mispa and her sister as well. In

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fact, because of the way he
was acting in regards to Rowena breaking things

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off with him and his refusal to
accept it, av Sean has said basically

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she was going to take a step
back from their friendship. He needed to

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figure out his feelings, he needed
to work on moving on, and she

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felt that she needed to remove herself
from that situation now. On that Saturday,

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the day after his surgery, Mispa
talked on the phone with Deane.

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He said he was doing fine,
and she told him basically, look,

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my brother has things going on with
baseball. He's got games, so I'm

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probably not going to make it over
to check on you and see if there

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was anything I can do for you. He told her that that was fine,

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he understood that. Sunday, Mispa
said she was feeling very nervous and

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very anxious. She really didn't understand
why she was having this feeling, but

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she was nervous, and she was
with her boyfriend and she explained to him,

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look, I'm having all these feelings. I really don't want to go

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over to Dane's house. And her
boyfriend told her, then don't go.

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If you feel like that, don't
go, which we love, We love

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that validating her feelings. Now,
Mispa had told Dane over text that she

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just had a bad feeling, a
weird feeling about coming over, and he

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texted her back. From what she
remembers, she remembers him saying, have

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a good rest of your week.
And she believes that that was kind of

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the last straw for him. You
know, he had lost his core group

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of friends that he had built at
which testage he felt that they all abandoned

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him in the breakup, and he
didn't understand that just because she was uncomfortable

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being around him in that moment didn't
mean that she didn't want to be friends

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with him any longer. It just
meant that in that moment, she was

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uncomfortable and that was something that he
was either refusing to understand or just not

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understand it. She said that that
night, he uploaded a meme of the

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punisher on Facebook with the quote it's
a mistake to push a man to violence

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when violence is what the man has
dedicated his life to perfecting. And she

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said sometime during the next day,
on October third of twenty sixteen, he

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had deleted everyone off of social media
and went on to murder Rowena Mispa did

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say that based on the information that
Michael Higgins had given to the police,

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and again that's what I cover in
the original recording, that she did believe

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one hundred percent he did struggle with
PTSD. He was very lost, you

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know, he really struggled before any
of this happened. Not that that excuses

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anything that he did, and she's
very clear that that's not what she's saying,

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and I believe that that's not what
she's saying. She's just confirming the

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fact, Yes, he did struggle
with post traumatic stress disorder. He had

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a lot of demons, but that
does not excuse the actions that he made

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at all, and it doesn't There
are people out there that struggle with mental

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health disorders and struggle with PTSD have
seen horrific things due to war and the

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things of the like, and they
don't do the things that he did.

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So I wanted to share that with
you guys, because it adds a lot

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of context that I was not able
to give in the original recording. And

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she did give me permission to share
this with you. Regards to Rowena,

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she said she was really funny.
She had an incredibly dry sense of humor,

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very sharp wit, and she couldn't
always keep her emotions off of her

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face, so she was very open
with her emotions. She felt her emotions.

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Mispa said she loved country line dancing
and singing in the shower, even

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though she was a terrible singer.
And she would drive up behind me Spa

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on campus in the golf cart while
she had her headphones in and honk just

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to scare Mispa. So clearly she
had a sense of humor. She liked

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to kind of prank, for lack
of a better word, her friends.

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Sometimes she would intentionally drive across Mispa's
path and Musba would do it back to

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her, you know, cutting each
other off in the golf carts, and

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they would flip each other off,
you know, teasing each other she loved

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her long hair. She was very
proud of her long, beautiful hair.

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And she said that she would get
grumpy with Misbah when miss Bah would cut

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her own hair, and she did
that pretty often, so Rowena would get

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upset with her, like why did
you cut your hair? She said her

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hair was very curly, so she
would scream and run out of the rein

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to keep her hard work from going
to waste when she would straighten it and

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spend all that time straightening her hair. And for the women out there with

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long, thick hair, you know
how long it takes to straighten, and

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you would probably react the same if
it was raining after that happened, or

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after you spent so long doing that. Lisa said she it took her like

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two hours to straighten her hair,
but she wore straight every day because that's

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how she liked it. She said. Rowena loved to run and work out

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every morning before school, and she
was just starting her life and she just

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wanted to be a kid for a
while while they had the time. She

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said, if she had her way, Rowena would be living in Hawaii with

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a couple of dogs and running her
own practice. And reading that hurt my

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heart. To know that she had
this beautiful life that she wanted to live

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and these goals that she wanted to
achieve, and that was taken from her

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because a man could not handle the
fact that she rejected him. And it's

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sad that that is an all too
familiar story to MISPA, thank you so

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much for the email that you sent
me, for giving me more context,

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and for sharing more of Rowena with
me. It means so much that you

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put your trust in me to do
that and to share the real Rowena with

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me. I hope I did her
story justice. And for anyone else out

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there that has wanted to reach out
regarding a case I've covered, you know,

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if someone you have loved or someone
you have known and you want to

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clear or if I something or give
me more information or anything like that,

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My dms are always open. My
email is always open. You know,

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there is you can email directly.
There is a contact form on my website.

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You can always reach out. You
know, I take what I do

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seriously. I take the stories that
I tell seriously. So if there's something

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that I've gotten wrong, or there's
something that you want to clarify or share,

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please do Please do not hesitate because
it means a lot to me to

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make sure that the stories I'm telling
are accurate. You know, whether it's

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something small or something big, you
know you can always reach out and tell

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me again, MISPA, thank you
and I will see you guys on Wednesday

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for another chapter. Bye guys,
thank you so much for listening to this

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chapter of the Book of the Dead, and don't forget that you can always

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can connect with us on Twitter, and

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well that we have frequent discount codes
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get March hand drawn by myself at
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a lovely rest of your week and
just remember, please be kind and don't

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forget to always stay safe, stay
curious, and stay vigilant. Bye guys, Bye,