November 19, 2025 • 28 mins
In 1989, one woman's testimony was unquestionably believed by police and helped seal Lee's fate. With fresh eyes, Team 'Free Lee' begins to wonder what exactly she saw that night.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's now twenty seventeen, and Robert has been beavering away
for months on the Lee Harris story, teaching himself lots
of new skills like video editing and sound production. It's
fair to say he's caught the documentary making bug.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I've seen it so much I could pretty much bow
mild the lions as they're happening. Really, yeah, that's ridiculous.
It consumes my brain like you couldn't imagine.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I know more about you than anyone I think. At
this point.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
The movie is jam packed with all kinds of material Lee,
of course, but also old newsreel from eighty nine, interviews
with Detective Zuli, information about other cases he worked on.
The David Told story is in there. The alternate suspect
plus the sweatshirt are in there. He's even done interviews
with an old friend of Lee's from early Cabrinia days,
(00:53):
all leading to poignant musical crescendo in the form of
Sam Cook's A Change is Gonna Come. There's just one problem.
It is long, like too long.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's an hour and forty eight minutes, and it's
like forty minutes before I even get to you.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Which by any storytelling measure is a long wait before
meeting the protagonists. So Rob's opened the dock to some feedback.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
My mom watched this, she said, she said, it's good,
change this, this, and this, like how Ha's. I watched
it and staid, I should narrate the lions.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, so a few changes couldn't hurt. So how about
opening the dock? Was something profound like an Enlightenment age
quote about the very nature of justice?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm starting it out with the caption. You know, there's
a quote somewhere that says that it's better that ten
guilty menu ten guilty men escape than one innocent man propper.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's better.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
What is it they say about taste? There's no accounting
for it. Well, it's about to get more challenging. Another
bit of feedback is just landed in Robert's inbox. He
reads it to.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Lee, you could take those news stories apart, who weave
them together with thee's story to present a more compelling
narrative story drama about an innocent man. I agree with
them there, I could have done a couple of different
things in there.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, he's taking it well. But then cue the denial
stage of the creative feedback process.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I mean, if I really have to change and I'll
go back and change your I did it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I made the audio work, I made everything work. It's
it's a complete piece.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Stuff, followed swiftly by the bargaining phase.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So I mean I like it. I like it the
way it is.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
But it's like it at what point? At what point
is the thing done?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Then depression the way I see it, I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Done, man't. I don't want to go I don't want.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
To go back that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean, I could weave things together in a way
that would be compelled. I agree, But oh my god, after.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
This point until finally acceptance.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So at this point, so will I decided that I
need to redo it.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
But the definitive piece of feedback is about to come,
and it's gonna be fatal. Jennifer Black has seen the
latest version of the movie. She tells Rob in no
uncertain terms to take it down immediately, to put it mildly.
She is unhappy with the way he has portrayed a
key witness, someone who has not spoken in thirty years,
(03:37):
but who, if they were to speak, could be the
key in turning the case. She doesn't want anything spoiling
our chances, and certainly not Rob's burgeoning freely enterprise. I'm
Dax Stevlin Ross and from iHeartMedia. This is Crying Wolf,
(04:19):
Episode six, The Dog Walker. These are the facts as
we know them. In nineteen eighty nine, on an otherwise
ordinary summer's night in Chicago, Diana Seppielli, a woman in
her early twenties, is out walking her dog near her
apartment on the Gold Coast. It's quiet late and she's
(04:43):
virtually alone on the streets, but at the intersection of
North and Dearborn unusual a young white woman who appears
to be about her age walking down the street with
three maybe four black men. The women lock eyes for
a moment, but then in a flash, it's over. Sepielli's
dog does its business and she returns home forgets about
(05:06):
the encounter. End of story. Several days later, she reads
an article on the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune
newspaper all about the Dana Fhightler case. The cops are
desperate for any information that could lead to an arrest.
Diana Sepielli is rattled by the crime and the image
of that young woman keeps coming back to her. Maybe
(05:28):
that was Danas she saw and that look they shared.
Perhaps it was a cry for help. She racks her brain,
searching for clues to jog her memory. There was definitely
one man that stood out. He was holding Dana's hand
and he had a limp. She heads back to the
same spot to walk her dog and it all becomes
solidified in her mind. She heads straight to Area six,
(05:52):
where she's met by Detective Richard Zuli and his colleagues,
whoill promptly show her a picture of Dana. Yeah, that's her,
all right, followed by seven pictures of black men they
have on file already. Lo and behold, it's him, the
one holding Dane's hand that night, the guy with the limb.
She's almost certain, but she can only be sure in person.
(06:13):
So the police arrange a lineup. They make the men
walk up and down, and when she sees the man
living and breathing, it's definitely him Tony, our alternate suspect
from the last episode. A few days after the lineup,
Sepielli offers to draw some sketches of what she remembered.
(06:36):
She had just graduated from the art Institute of Chicago.
Drawing from memory was not exactly her training. She was
used to sketching by looking at scenes, but she could
give it a go. So alone in her apartment, she
sits down and lets her memory guide her hand in
creating a raw rendering of what she actually remembered. Could
it help that remain to be seen? Sketches in hand,
(07:01):
Sepielli heads back to the police station to show detectives
in Area six. When who should she cross paths with
someone who was also a regular Area six at the time.
The current star witness in the Dana Fightler case one
Lee Harris.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I'm perforated today, Siri Yella. She was sitting in an
area fixed with the security guard and I walked to
the back and she was showing to say she had
roasts a person persons.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The sketch shows a woman, Dana, whose hand is being
held by a man that takes up center frame. The
figure is evocative. The outline of his body has been
gone over several times with dark pencil. His features are vivid.
Then they are the other two male figures flinking Dana.
They are more vague, one rudimentary set of marks, the
(07:52):
other more of a gesture none with features.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It was kind of like fix and another person without
a faith.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Lee joins the group of police now huddled around Sepielli
and her sketches.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
She was explained what everybody was doing, what the gap
with the lint was doing. Hold in her hand? Who
that yards?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Now? I know what you're thinking, isn't There another pretty
significant time that Seppielli and Lee would be in a
police station together, but that time separated by a wall
of glass. I'm gonna hand this one over.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
To Robert Diana Seppielli. Not only did you work with her,
go over sketches with her in drawings. This is the
same woman that picked you out of a lineup and Hashley, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
What I'm fell at you seek later she picked me
out of a ladder. She picked me out of a ladder.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
About four months later, Lee would turn from fellow witness
moving in and out of Area six to one of
the men in sepielli sketch.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
With no face. She changed me. During the line up.
She was standing on the side with another girl.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And that's what the police said to another Holly, he's
been tendively identified, and she was She was looking at
me like, oh, well, I mean, you know, and I'm
looking at her light. You couldn't have kicked me out
of the line up, not.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Shoot, but pick him out. She did.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Here's what they did. They handed me upstairs, then stept
yelling me in her lineup see, and they decatted they
was gonna charge me. They called the medium and then
they took me down and walked me to the meeting them.
Then what they did to me.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's where you might remember he locks eyes with one
of the reporters, Bob.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Jordan, and I remember the look on his face.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It was a look of.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
And amazement, and it was like he had seen something unreal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, this was Lee's team.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was crazy.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Things happened that I didn't believe what was going on
in your big in jail with no bail, no nothing,
the law, you the law.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think about it, the boy I get Addy.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You can hear how traumatic it is for Lee to
recall that moment in nineteen eighty nine, scary and confusing
an equal measure out of nowhere, the police had turned
on him, and so seemingly had the dog walker Diana Seppielli.
So many unanswered questions, and as the lawyers began to
prepare for Lee's case. They were only gonna be more.
(11:03):
It's the early nineties, and Andrea Lyon and her colleague
Shelby Prussak have spent over two years preparing for Lee's trial,
and the whole situation with Dina Sepielli felt, well, I'll
let her say it.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
She was just a little too helpful. The sketch that,
all that stuff, it seems suspicious.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Plus so much time had passed when she'd finally idd Lee.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
Eyewitness identification is fraught with error, and you know, mistakes
are made all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And then there was the fact that Diana Seppielli had
seen Lee around the police station before she idd him.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
You know, you see someone again and again it you know,
the power of suggestion is very.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Strong, perhaps, thought Andrea, someone may have used this to
their advantage to, let's say, help the case along.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
You can get if a police officer wants to help
someone make an identification. It's not hard to do. It
really isn't.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And so, amidst all the uncertainty, and Andrea decides she
needs something tangible. She heads down to the Gold Coast
with Shelby for the most obvious bit of detective work,
retracing Diana Seppiele's steps that night.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
To just see what could you see, you know, what
was the lighting like, what did it feel like? And
we we walked it the best we could based on
what we're the police reports were exactly where everybody was.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And all that.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
Or we had a video camera with us and we
took the most sickening video you've ever seen. Because it's
going like this, we know how to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Properly, think shaky nineties cam quarterer.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
You know, and it just it showed that the opportunity
to observe was very, very poor. It wasn't nonexistent, but
it was very poor. There were not good street lights
there there. There were not like shops with bright lights,
none of it.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I've done that same walk, starting from Dana's building across division,
then back to the park and through to the alley
where the shooting actually happened. It's open, the streets are wide,
homes and apartment buildings abound. There's no real place to hide,
certainly not for three black men in the middle of
(13:13):
the Gold Coast late at night, and the ATMs one
was just a cross division which was bustling with activity
on any given summer Saturday night, the other a solid
five minute walk in the opposite direction, which means, if
the story holds, the men would have had to grab Dana,
walk her to one atm, then another, and then somehow
(13:35):
back toward the park, all without drawing any attention ro out. Aside.
For Andrea, the fact that Sepielli even lived in the
area felt suspicious.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
There was a reward I think that would have motivated
her to come forward. Seppielli was a mystery to us.
We couldn't figure out how she made a live I mean,
she was living in the Gold Coast and we couldn't
find any evidence that she had a job anywhere. So
we had our suspicions, unprovable suspicions.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
When we reached out to Sepieli for comments, she said
she was working full time in nineteen eighty nine in
Chicago and studying, and that she volunteered the information willingly
and was not aware of the reward. However, Andrea also
had a theory about Sepieli's testimony in the run up
to the trial, one that echoed Lee's twenty two statements.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Sepiel's testimony got better over time, and that coincided with
visits from Zuli. Again, it's speculative. I don't know if
he showed her pictures of Lee and helped her remember him.
I don't know that I suspected, but I don't know it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Sepielli told us that never happened, that Zuli never visited her.
Much about that night still lingers in the shadows and
part at least because Diana Seppielli refused to speak with
Andrea or Shelby back in the early nineties, and when
you're the defense, a witness of silence is a dead end.
So what did Diana really see or think she saw?
(15:18):
Andrea only has her guile and her gut to go on.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
I think she saw a white woman with three guy
black eyes walking down the street. That's what I think
she saw. I don't think she I don't know if
she saw anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
In court, Andrea played her shaky footage walking the jury
through the timeline, pointing to the gaps, and for a
moment she thought she saw the kind of flicker that
gives a defense lawyer hope. But then came Sepielli. Calm, steady, ready.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
Stepielli was prepared to testify very well. She was dressed appropriately,
she sounded good, She looked good. I she didn't sound
like she was stretching.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
You know, at this point, now in twenty seventeen, Lee
has been running all kinds of scenarios through his head.
After all, he's had nearly thirty years to do so.
The way he sees it is Sepielli a bit like himself,
a bit like David Toles, could well have been another
(16:26):
puppet being manipulated by the CPD to close the case.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, I mean, from the way you described it to me,
at first, she was pretty sure that she was almost sure.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All the way through to that point, Sepieli appeared to
become less emphatic about whether she had actually seen Lee,
such that by the time she testified in court she
was only ninety percent sure it was him.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I really feel that she was really tried to do
the right thing and know how to do it without really.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I think she really get cattle h wants to. I
don't know, I mean, it's like, what are you gonna do?
You know? But what we need, what we need big
want it be in that direction. That's what we need
her to fact. But you know what, she's probably scat definitely,
(17:25):
probably the frightening her with everything it is.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Robert has been chomping at the bid to contact sept Billy,
but Jennifer has told him that's a big no no.
That's her job. She knows how to bring witnesses around.
But since telling Robert to take down his documentary, well,
it feels there's been a whole bunch of nothing coming
from Jennifer's side.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They've been talking about going and seeing her for so long.
I wish they would just do that already, right right.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
With the documentary dead on arrival and no news on
the sweatshirt, their weekly calls soon narrowed to a single
fixation with Jennifer.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What else is going on? Anything you talk to Jennifer?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
No, I've been going to Jennifer every day that we can.
Haven't been able to catch her.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Hum huh, I don't know, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
At this point, Jennifer has been on the case going
on a year and a half. It's getting harder and
harder not to take her silence personally.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
She doesn't she doesn't tell me every move she makes
in it. It almost upsets me in a way. But
but as long as she's working on it. That's all
that matters. I figure out. I'll try to get a
phone call with her next week. Oh okay, okay, just
just because I tell when things are rolling and when
things aren't.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We don't. We don't want to. We don't. We don't
want to push her. No, we don't want to push her,
but we want to. We want to. We don't want
to really push her, but we want to. Gotta give
a mo nudge.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Right right, right, Well, I'm I'm doing I'm doing the
best that I can, and nudd are along and I'm
using my best instincts on it.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, you have one minute left, oh, one minute,
one minute water.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Robert knows the next sixty seconds matter. He has to
find the words, make them count for his friend and
for himself.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I know you've down inside. Believe me, Jennifer still loves you.
Jennifer wants to get you out. Nothing's changed, man, I
promise you. Okay, And it ain't nothing going yet right now,
but hopefully and by next week there will be keep
in touch. Okay, and hopefully on Friday or Bundy, whatever,
it's fine, call me whenever you are.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Oh here, the caller has hung up, so I wouldn't
tell Robert jack shit, right.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Jennifer meanwhile, was having to figure out her own way
to manage Robert and the demands of the case.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
Because this was a slow, slow process. I had to
create this unbelievable timeline. It's the first time I've ever
created a time like this. Select three hundred pages of
facts that I was plugging in to try to make
sense of what was happening in the case and the
different theories, and why did they not go with the
alternate suspect, and when was Sepielli at the police station?
Speaker 7 (20:27):
And why is there no report about Sepili at the
police station?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Like Andrea, she said something was up with this witness.
At the same time, keeping Robert away from Diana Sepielli
was priority number one.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
There are certain people who should not interview witnesses, and
that's family members of a defendant, friends of a defendant
because inadvertently, you might say emotionally manipulative things to try
to get the person to cooperate. But you definitely don't
want someone like Robert who's putting stuff on the internet,
who would probably put it, you know, his interview with
her on the record it and not tell her and
(21:04):
then put it on the internet, you know, which is
a crime in Illinois to record someone without their permission.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And ask any defense lawyer. Getting a witness to talk
is tricky at the best of times.
Speaker 8 (21:18):
It's very rare that someone has something they really want
to get off their chest and they're like, oh my God,
that god you're calling. I lied forever ago, and you
know now I want.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
To tell the truth.
Speaker 8 (21:27):
Or the police beat me up and it was one
of the most traumatic times of my life and I'm
choosing to relive it.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All of that is real. But in Chicago, there's yet
another hurdle.
Speaker 8 (21:37):
There's a culture in Chicago among many of the residents
that talking to anybody is what's called snitching. That's even
helping an innocent person, it's considered snitching. So there's that
kind of threat. So it's just a lot to try
to overcome to get someone to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Having said all that, I do have a good.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
Rate of getting people to talk to me.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
It's about fifty to fifty.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
One of the things I've learned is that I'm a
genuine person. I think I'm not full of shit, and
people can sense that for me, and they can sense
that I'm really just trying to figure out what happened.
I don't have a motive, and.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (22:21):
Maybe it's too much of a stretch to say people
trust me, but there's something about me that feels safe,
I think for people to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
And it's looking like this might be one of those
times when things are going Jennifer's way, because with only
a little digging, she finds what she thinks is Diana
Sepielli's home phone number.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
So it's really rare in this. You know, now is
the day of no longer people having landline phones, but
if memory serves, she had like a landline phone.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Jennifer dials the digits. She's definitely got the right number.
Speaker 8 (22:57):
It was like, Hi, this is Diana Sippielli. I'm not
here right now. Please leave a message and I'll call
you when I get back, you know, And I'm like, hey,
this is Jennifer Black blah blah blah blah. Then I
never heard anything.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Sepielli would never get back to Jennifer. Turns out someone
else had gotten there first. And in case you're wondering,
it wasn't Robert. You might remember me mentioning the Cook
County Conviction Integrity Unit. It had been set up in
twenty twelve to examine old cases and establish convictions. Lee's
case happened to be one of the cases they were
going over. It had been picked up a year later.
(23:33):
By twenty seventeen, a prominent prosecutor by the name of
Nancy Doucey was working on it.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Behind the scenes, Nancy Doucy interviewed everyone involved in the
case as part of her investigation. With the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The world of prosecutors and defense attorneys being so intertwined
and interdependent, Jennifer and Nancy go way back, and so
when they catch up, Nancy tells her that she's already
interviewed Diana Seppielli. What's more, Jennifer's message spook to her.
She went straight to Nancy asking if she needed to
speak to this lawyer. Of course, Nancy tells her no,
(24:07):
and well that was that Jennifer Black was blacklisted.
Speaker 8 (24:12):
And it's just the same bullshit all the time, where
the prosecutor has all the power. I'm like, screw this,
you know, it's always them's what's the harm in talking
to me? Even though I know how people feel and
why they wouldn't. I'm not mad at Nancy for saying
that to her or any state's attorneys for saying it.
(24:33):
I'm mad at the power and balance where they always
believe and trust the prosecution and they don't believe or
trust someone like me who's trying to investigate and getting
people to cooperate and trying to figure out what happened.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
It just pisses me off that things are unfair.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Aside from feeling slighted in Sideline, Jennifer, just like Andrea
before her, is left to make up her own mind
about Diana Seppielli.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
So I think when it comes to DINASAPLI I don't
know what was in her heart or in her mind,
or what was her motivating factor. But when I mapped
out where she was when she saw Dana Fitler versus
where the ATM was and where Dana's apartment was, it
made absolutely no sense that the people would have been
walking on that route to get to the ATM because
(25:21):
it's actually.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Out of the way by a block.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
We don't know what happened to Dana Fyler.
Speaker 8 (25:27):
We don't know if the dog walker actually saw Dana Fightler.
I think a lot of people proceed with the assumption
that it was Dana that she saw. I do not
believe that's necessarily true. I don't think she was purposely
lying by any means. But the long and the short
of it is, we don't know how Dana Fitler ended
(25:47):
up in that alley with a gunshot wound of her head.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
In interviews Diana Sepieli gave the Conviction Integrity Unit in
twenty seventeen, she said the following she felt the pressure
amongst the police, but she herself was never under any
pressure to identify someone, and in response to our own
request for comment, she confirmed that she did not feel
under pressure. She also said she was unaware of any
(26:12):
reward offered in the case. When we reached out to her,
she reaffirmed that her only motive was to help the
police do their job based on what she saw that night,
and at one point, she says she saw a picture
of the alternate suspect on a desk and immediately recognized
this photo as the man holding Dana Feitler's hand, to
which an officer replied, no, that's not him. Lee Harris
(26:37):
is the guy. But finally, for Robert and Lee, there's
a glimmer of hope after years of trying, a journalist
has been sniffing around.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
She says, good news. The Marshall Project is interested in
pitching the story to the proposed parker.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Looks like Lee's story of sparks some interest with a
prominent criminal justice nonprofit. Been burned so many times before,
but could this time be different?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Closer?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So it's the narest airport to you. I'll need them,
could in the proposal's budget to get a trick down
there to talk to you in person.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
She says, she's gonna need to fly to meet Rob
in person on his farm in the middle of nowhere,
del Rio, Texas. That's for Jennifer. If she's gonna make
a dent in this case, she's gonna need another inn,
and she knows where she wants to start. The other witness,
David Toles. Okay, so his recantation held as much weight
(27:36):
as a rumor in the wind. But there had to
be some more clues.
Speaker 8 (27:40):
I was desperate for some connection to why Zulie or
any of the detectives at Area six would pick David Toles.
Why David Toles.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Crying wolf is an iHeart and clockwork Films podcast and
association with and Blade. I'm Your host Dax Devlin Ross.
The series producer is Sarah Stolart's. The senior producer is
Laura Hyde. The series script is written by me and
by Sarah Stolart's. Bonus episodes are written and produced by
(28:17):
me Dax Devlin Ross. Our executive producers are Christina Everett
for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for Clockwork Films,
and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk and Blade.
Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George dre Being Hicks.
(28:38):
Our theme music is by Kenny Koziak. Additional production support
from Stephen Pate
It's now twenty seventeen, and Robert has been beavering away
for months on the Lee Harris story, teaching himself lots
of new skills like video editing and sound production. It's
fair to say he's caught the documentary making bug.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I've seen it so much I could pretty much bow
mild the lions as they're happening. Really, yeah, that's ridiculous.
It consumes my brain like you couldn't imagine.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I know more about you than anyone I think. At
this point.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
The movie is jam packed with all kinds of material Lee,
of course, but also old newsreel from eighty nine, interviews
with Detective Zuli, information about other cases he worked on.
The David Told story is in there. The alternate suspect
plus the sweatshirt are in there. He's even done interviews
with an old friend of Lee's from early Cabrinia days,
(00:53):
all leading to poignant musical crescendo in the form of
Sam Cook's A Change is Gonna Come. There's just one problem.
It is long, like too long.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's an hour and forty eight minutes, and it's
like forty minutes before I even get to you.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Which by any storytelling measure is a long wait before
meeting the protagonists. So Rob's opened the dock to some feedback.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
My mom watched this, she said, she said, it's good,
change this, this, and this, like how Ha's. I watched
it and staid, I should narrate the lions.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, so a few changes couldn't hurt. So how about
opening the dock? Was something profound like an Enlightenment age
quote about the very nature of justice?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm starting it out with the caption. You know, there's
a quote somewhere that says that it's better that ten
guilty menu ten guilty men escape than one innocent man propper.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's better.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
What is it they say about taste? There's no accounting
for it. Well, it's about to get more challenging. Another
bit of feedback is just landed in Robert's inbox. He
reads it to.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Lee, you could take those news stories apart, who weave
them together with thee's story to present a more compelling
narrative story drama about an innocent man. I agree with
them there, I could have done a couple of different
things in there.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, he's taking it well. But then cue the denial
stage of the creative feedback process.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I mean, if I really have to change and I'll
go back and change your I did it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I made the audio work, I made everything work. It's
it's a complete piece.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Stuff, followed swiftly by the bargaining phase.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So I mean I like it. I like it the
way it is.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
But it's like it at what point? At what point
is the thing done?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Then depression the way I see it, I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Done, man't. I don't want to go I don't want.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
To go back that.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean, I could weave things together in a way
that would be compelled. I agree, But oh my god, after.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
This point until finally acceptance.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So at this point, so will I decided that I
need to redo it.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
But the definitive piece of feedback is about to come,
and it's gonna be fatal. Jennifer Black has seen the
latest version of the movie. She tells Rob in no
uncertain terms to take it down immediately, to put it mildly.
She is unhappy with the way he has portrayed a
key witness, someone who has not spoken in thirty years,
(03:37):
but who, if they were to speak, could be the
key in turning the case. She doesn't want anything spoiling
our chances, and certainly not Rob's burgeoning freely enterprise. I'm
Dax Stevlin Ross and from iHeartMedia. This is Crying Wolf,
(04:19):
Episode six, The Dog Walker. These are the facts as
we know them. In nineteen eighty nine, on an otherwise
ordinary summer's night in Chicago, Diana Seppielli, a woman in
her early twenties, is out walking her dog near her
apartment on the Gold Coast. It's quiet late and she's
(04:43):
virtually alone on the streets, but at the intersection of
North and Dearborn unusual a young white woman who appears
to be about her age walking down the street with
three maybe four black men. The women lock eyes for
a moment, but then in a flash, it's over. Sepielli's
dog does its business and she returns home forgets about
(05:06):
the encounter. End of story. Several days later, she reads
an article on the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune
newspaper all about the Dana Fhightler case. The cops are
desperate for any information that could lead to an arrest.
Diana Sepielli is rattled by the crime and the image
of that young woman keeps coming back to her. Maybe
(05:28):
that was Danas she saw and that look they shared.
Perhaps it was a cry for help. She racks her brain,
searching for clues to jog her memory. There was definitely
one man that stood out. He was holding Dana's hand
and he had a limp. She heads back to the
same spot to walk her dog and it all becomes
solidified in her mind. She heads straight to Area six,
(05:52):
where she's met by Detective Richard Zuli and his colleagues,
whoill promptly show her a picture of Dana. Yeah, that's her,
all right, followed by seven pictures of black men they
have on file already. Lo and behold, it's him, the
one holding Dane's hand that night, the guy with the limb.
She's almost certain, but she can only be sure in person.
(06:13):
So the police arrange a lineup. They make the men
walk up and down, and when she sees the man
living and breathing, it's definitely him Tony, our alternate suspect
from the last episode. A few days after the lineup,
Sepielli offers to draw some sketches of what she remembered.
(06:36):
She had just graduated from the art Institute of Chicago.
Drawing from memory was not exactly her training. She was
used to sketching by looking at scenes, but she could
give it a go. So alone in her apartment, she
sits down and lets her memory guide her hand in
creating a raw rendering of what she actually remembered. Could
it help that remain to be seen? Sketches in hand,
(07:01):
Sepielli heads back to the police station to show detectives
in Area six. When who should she cross paths with
someone who was also a regular Area six at the time.
The current star witness in the Dana Fightler case one
Lee Harris.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I'm perforated today, Siri Yella. She was sitting in an
area fixed with the security guard and I walked to
the back and she was showing to say she had
roasts a person persons.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The sketch shows a woman, Dana, whose hand is being
held by a man that takes up center frame. The
figure is evocative. The outline of his body has been
gone over several times with dark pencil. His features are vivid.
Then they are the other two male figures flinking Dana.
They are more vague, one rudimentary set of marks, the
(07:52):
other more of a gesture none with features.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It was kind of like fix and another person without
a faith.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Lee joins the group of police now huddled around Sepielli
and her sketches.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
She was explained what everybody was doing, what the gap
with the lint was doing. Hold in her hand? Who
that yards?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Now? I know what you're thinking, isn't There another pretty
significant time that Seppielli and Lee would be in a
police station together, but that time separated by a wall
of glass. I'm gonna hand this one over.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
To Robert Diana Seppielli. Not only did you work with her,
go over sketches with her in drawings. This is the
same woman that picked you out of a lineup and Hashley, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
What I'm fell at you seek later she picked me
out of a ladder. She picked me out of a ladder.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
About four months later, Lee would turn from fellow witness
moving in and out of Area six to one of
the men in sepielli sketch.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
With no face. She changed me. During the line up.
She was standing on the side with another girl.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And that's what the police said to another Holly, he's
been tendively identified, and she was She was looking at
me like, oh, well, I mean, you know, and I'm
looking at her light. You couldn't have kicked me out
of the line up, not.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Shoot, but pick him out. She did.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Here's what they did. They handed me upstairs, then stept
yelling me in her lineup see, and they decatted they
was gonna charge me. They called the medium and then
they took me down and walked me to the meeting them.
Then what they did to me.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's where you might remember he locks eyes with one
of the reporters, Bob.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Jordan, and I remember the look on his face.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
It was a look of.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
And amazement, and it was like he had seen something unreal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, this was Lee's team.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was crazy.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Things happened that I didn't believe what was going on
in your big in jail with no bail, no nothing,
the law, you the law.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think about it, the boy I get Addy.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
You can hear how traumatic it is for Lee to
recall that moment in nineteen eighty nine, scary and confusing
an equal measure out of nowhere, the police had turned
on him, and so seemingly had the dog walker Diana Seppielli.
So many unanswered questions, and as the lawyers began to
prepare for Lee's case. They were only gonna be more.
(11:03):
It's the early nineties, and Andrea Lyon and her colleague
Shelby Prussak have spent over two years preparing for Lee's trial,
and the whole situation with Dina Sepielli felt, well, I'll
let her say it.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
She was just a little too helpful. The sketch that,
all that stuff, it seems suspicious.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Plus so much time had passed when she'd finally idd Lee.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
Eyewitness identification is fraught with error, and you know, mistakes
are made all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And then there was the fact that Diana Seppielli had
seen Lee around the police station before she idd him.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
You know, you see someone again and again it you know,
the power of suggestion is very.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Strong, perhaps, thought Andrea, someone may have used this to
their advantage to, let's say, help the case along.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
You can get if a police officer wants to help
someone make an identification. It's not hard to do. It
really isn't.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And so, amidst all the uncertainty, and Andrea decides she
needs something tangible. She heads down to the Gold Coast
with Shelby for the most obvious bit of detective work,
retracing Diana Seppiele's steps that night.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
To just see what could you see, you know, what
was the lighting like, what did it feel like? And
we we walked it the best we could based on
what we're the police reports were exactly where everybody was.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And all that.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
Or we had a video camera with us and we
took the most sickening video you've ever seen. Because it's
going like this, we know how to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Properly, think shaky nineties cam quarterer.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
You know, and it just it showed that the opportunity
to observe was very, very poor. It wasn't nonexistent, but
it was very poor. There were not good street lights
there there. There were not like shops with bright lights,
none of it.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I've done that same walk, starting from Dana's building across division,
then back to the park and through to the alley
where the shooting actually happened. It's open, the streets are wide,
homes and apartment buildings abound. There's no real place to hide,
certainly not for three black men in the middle of
(13:13):
the Gold Coast late at night, and the ATMs one
was just a cross division which was bustling with activity
on any given summer Saturday night, the other a solid
five minute walk in the opposite direction, which means, if
the story holds, the men would have had to grab Dana,
walk her to one atm, then another, and then somehow
(13:35):
back toward the park, all without drawing any attention ro out. Aside.
For Andrea, the fact that Sepielli even lived in the
area felt suspicious.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
There was a reward I think that would have motivated
her to come forward. Seppielli was a mystery to us.
We couldn't figure out how she made a live I mean,
she was living in the Gold Coast and we couldn't
find any evidence that she had a job anywhere. So
we had our suspicions, unprovable suspicions.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
When we reached out to Sepieli for comments, she said
she was working full time in nineteen eighty nine in
Chicago and studying, and that she volunteered the information willingly
and was not aware of the reward. However, Andrea also
had a theory about Sepieli's testimony in the run up
to the trial, one that echoed Lee's twenty two statements.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Sepiel's testimony got better over time, and that coincided with
visits from Zuli. Again, it's speculative. I don't know if
he showed her pictures of Lee and helped her remember him.
I don't know that I suspected, but I don't know it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Sepielli told us that never happened, that Zuli never visited her.
Much about that night still lingers in the shadows and
part at least because Diana Seppielli refused to speak with
Andrea or Shelby back in the early nineties, and when
you're the defense, a witness of silence is a dead end.
So what did Diana really see or think she saw?
(15:18):
Andrea only has her guile and her gut to go on.
Speaker 6 (15:22):
I think she saw a white woman with three guy
black eyes walking down the street. That's what I think
she saw. I don't think she I don't know if
she saw anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
In court, Andrea played her shaky footage walking the jury
through the timeline, pointing to the gaps, and for a
moment she thought she saw the kind of flicker that
gives a defense lawyer hope. But then came Sepielli. Calm, steady, ready.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
Stepielli was prepared to testify very well. She was dressed appropriately,
she sounded good, She looked good. I she didn't sound
like she was stretching.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
You know, at this point, now in twenty seventeen, Lee
has been running all kinds of scenarios through his head.
After all, he's had nearly thirty years to do so.
The way he sees it is Sepielli a bit like himself,
a bit like David Toles, could well have been another
(16:26):
puppet being manipulated by the CPD to close the case.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, I mean, from the way you described it to me,
at first, she was pretty sure that she was almost sure.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All the way through to that point, Sepieli appeared to
become less emphatic about whether she had actually seen Lee,
such that by the time she testified in court she
was only ninety percent sure it was him.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I really feel that she was really tried to do
the right thing and know how to do it without really.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I think she really get cattle h wants to. I
don't know, I mean, it's like, what are you gonna do?
You know? But what we need, what we need big
want it be in that direction. That's what we need
her to fact. But you know what, she's probably scat definitely,
(17:25):
probably the frightening her with everything it is.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Robert has been chomping at the bid to contact sept Billy,
but Jennifer has told him that's a big no no.
That's her job. She knows how to bring witnesses around.
But since telling Robert to take down his documentary, well,
it feels there's been a whole bunch of nothing coming
from Jennifer's side.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
They've been talking about going and seeing her for so long.
I wish they would just do that already, right right.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
With the documentary dead on arrival and no news on
the sweatshirt, their weekly calls soon narrowed to a single
fixation with Jennifer.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
What else is going on? Anything you talk to Jennifer?
Speaker 3 (18:08):
No, I've been going to Jennifer every day that we can.
Haven't been able to catch her.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Hum huh, I don't know, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
At this point, Jennifer has been on the case going
on a year and a half. It's getting harder and
harder not to take her silence personally.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
She doesn't she doesn't tell me every move she makes
in it. It almost upsets me in a way. But
but as long as she's working on it. That's all
that matters. I figure out. I'll try to get a
phone call with her next week. Oh okay, okay, just
just because I tell when things are rolling and when
things aren't.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
We don't. We don't want to. We don't. We don't
want to push her. No, we don't want to push her,
but we want to. We want to. We don't want
to really push her, but we want to. Gotta give
a mo nudge.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Right right, right, Well, I'm I'm doing I'm doing the
best that I can, and nudd are along and I'm
using my best instincts on it.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, you have one minute left, oh, one minute,
one minute water.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Robert knows the next sixty seconds matter. He has to
find the words, make them count for his friend and
for himself.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I know you've down inside. Believe me, Jennifer still loves you.
Jennifer wants to get you out. Nothing's changed, man, I
promise you. Okay, And it ain't nothing going yet right now,
but hopefully and by next week there will be keep
in touch. Okay, and hopefully on Friday or Bundy, whatever,
it's fine, call me whenever you are.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Oh here, the caller has hung up, so I wouldn't
tell Robert jack shit, right.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Jennifer meanwhile, was having to figure out her own way
to manage Robert and the demands of the case.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
Because this was a slow, slow process. I had to
create this unbelievable timeline. It's the first time I've ever
created a time like this. Select three hundred pages of
facts that I was plugging in to try to make
sense of what was happening in the case and the
different theories, and why did they not go with the
alternate suspect, and when was Sepielli at the police station?
Speaker 7 (20:27):
And why is there no report about Sepili at the
police station?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Like Andrea, she said something was up with this witness.
At the same time, keeping Robert away from Diana Sepielli
was priority number one.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
There are certain people who should not interview witnesses, and
that's family members of a defendant, friends of a defendant
because inadvertently, you might say emotionally manipulative things to try
to get the person to cooperate. But you definitely don't
want someone like Robert who's putting stuff on the internet,
who would probably put it, you know, his interview with
her on the record it and not tell her and
(21:04):
then put it on the internet, you know, which is
a crime in Illinois to record someone without their permission.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And ask any defense lawyer. Getting a witness to talk
is tricky at the best of times.
Speaker 8 (21:18):
It's very rare that someone has something they really want
to get off their chest and they're like, oh my God,
that god you're calling. I lied forever ago, and you
know now I want.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
To tell the truth.
Speaker 8 (21:27):
Or the police beat me up and it was one
of the most traumatic times of my life and I'm
choosing to relive it.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All of that is real. But in Chicago, there's yet
another hurdle.
Speaker 8 (21:37):
There's a culture in Chicago among many of the residents
that talking to anybody is what's called snitching. That's even
helping an innocent person, it's considered snitching. So there's that
kind of threat. So it's just a lot to try
to overcome to get someone to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Having said all that, I do have a good.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
Rate of getting people to talk to me.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
It's about fifty to fifty.
Speaker 8 (22:04):
One of the things I've learned is that I'm a
genuine person. I think I'm not full of shit, and
people can sense that for me, and they can sense
that I'm really just trying to figure out what happened.
I don't have a motive, and.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (22:21):
Maybe it's too much of a stretch to say people
trust me, but there's something about me that feels safe,
I think for people to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
And it's looking like this might be one of those
times when things are going Jennifer's way, because with only
a little digging, she finds what she thinks is Diana
Sepielli's home phone number.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
So it's really rare in this. You know, now is
the day of no longer people having landline phones, but
if memory serves, she had like a landline phone.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Jennifer dials the digits. She's definitely got the right number.
Speaker 8 (22:57):
It was like, Hi, this is Diana Sippielli. I'm not
here right now. Please leave a message and I'll call
you when I get back, you know, And I'm like, hey,
this is Jennifer Black blah blah blah blah. Then I
never heard anything.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Sepielli would never get back to Jennifer. Turns out someone
else had gotten there first. And in case you're wondering,
it wasn't Robert. You might remember me mentioning the Cook
County Conviction Integrity Unit. It had been set up in
twenty twelve to examine old cases and establish convictions. Lee's
case happened to be one of the cases they were
going over. It had been picked up a year later.
(23:33):
By twenty seventeen, a prominent prosecutor by the name of
Nancy Doucey was working on it.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Behind the scenes, Nancy Doucy interviewed everyone involved in the
case as part of her investigation. With the Conviction Integrity Unit.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
The world of prosecutors and defense attorneys being so intertwined
and interdependent, Jennifer and Nancy go way back, and so
when they catch up, Nancy tells her that she's already
interviewed Diana Seppielli. What's more, Jennifer's message spook to her.
She went straight to Nancy asking if she needed to
speak to this lawyer. Of course, Nancy tells her no,
(24:07):
and well that was that Jennifer Black was blacklisted.
Speaker 8 (24:12):
And it's just the same bullshit all the time, where
the prosecutor has all the power. I'm like, screw this,
you know, it's always them's what's the harm in talking
to me? Even though I know how people feel and
why they wouldn't. I'm not mad at Nancy for saying
that to her or any state's attorneys for saying it.
(24:33):
I'm mad at the power and balance where they always
believe and trust the prosecution and they don't believe or
trust someone like me who's trying to investigate and getting
people to cooperate and trying to figure out what happened.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
It just pisses me off that things are unfair.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Aside from feeling slighted in Sideline, Jennifer, just like Andrea
before her, is left to make up her own mind
about Diana Seppielli.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
So I think when it comes to DINASAPLI I don't
know what was in her heart or in her mind,
or what was her motivating factor. But when I mapped
out where she was when she saw Dana Fitler versus
where the ATM was and where Dana's apartment was, it
made absolutely no sense that the people would have been
walking on that route to get to the ATM because
(25:21):
it's actually.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Out of the way by a block.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
We don't know what happened to Dana Fyler.
Speaker 8 (25:27):
We don't know if the dog walker actually saw Dana Fightler.
I think a lot of people proceed with the assumption
that it was Dana that she saw. I do not
believe that's necessarily true. I don't think she was purposely
lying by any means. But the long and the short
of it is, we don't know how Dana Fitler ended
(25:47):
up in that alley with a gunshot wound of her head.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
In interviews Diana Sepieli gave the Conviction Integrity Unit in
twenty seventeen, she said the following she felt the pressure
amongst the police, but she herself was never under any
pressure to identify someone, and in response to our own
request for comment, she confirmed that she did not feel
under pressure. She also said she was unaware of any
(26:12):
reward offered in the case. When we reached out to her,
she reaffirmed that her only motive was to help the
police do their job based on what she saw that night,
and at one point, she says she saw a picture
of the alternate suspect on a desk and immediately recognized
this photo as the man holding Dana Feitler's hand, to
which an officer replied, no, that's not him. Lee Harris
(26:37):
is the guy. But finally, for Robert and Lee, there's
a glimmer of hope after years of trying, a journalist
has been sniffing around.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
She says, good news. The Marshall Project is interested in
pitching the story to the proposed parker.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Looks like Lee's story of sparks some interest with a
prominent criminal justice nonprofit. Been burned so many times before,
but could this time be different?
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Closer?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So it's the narest airport to you. I'll need them,
could in the proposal's budget to get a trick down
there to talk to you in person.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
She says, she's gonna need to fly to meet Rob
in person on his farm in the middle of nowhere,
del Rio, Texas. That's for Jennifer. If she's gonna make
a dent in this case, she's gonna need another inn,
and she knows where she wants to start. The other witness,
David Toles. Okay, so his recantation held as much weight
(27:36):
as a rumor in the wind. But there had to
be some more clues.
Speaker 8 (27:40):
I was desperate for some connection to why Zulie or
any of the detectives at Area six would pick David Toles.
Why David Toles.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Crying wolf is an iHeart and clockwork Films podcast and
association with and Blade. I'm Your host Dax Devlin Ross.
The series producer is Sarah Stolart's. The senior producer is
Laura Hyde. The series script is written by me and
by Sarah Stolart's. Bonus episodes are written and produced by
(28:17):
me Dax Devlin Ross. Our executive producers are Christina Everett
for iHeart Podcasts, Naomi Harvey and Jamie Cohen for Clockwork Films,
and Ruth Barnes and Jason Phipps for Chalk and Blade.
Sound design is by Kenny Koziak and George dre Being Hicks.
(28:38):
Our theme music is by Kenny Koziak. Additional production support
from Stephen Pate
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