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When a child first reveals they are the victim of abuse it’s a process police call “disclosure.” That’s where Nichole comes in. She’s a trained forensic investigator and relies on a mix of research and empathy to give the victims a voice and bring criminals to justice.

Special Guest: Forensic Intervewer Nichole

Nichole is currently the Lead Forensic Interviewer for her local Child Advocacy Center. Since 2006, she has been interviewing children who have been witness to, or victims of crime and has conducted over 3,800 interviews. She testifies as an expert witness in child development, disclosure processes, and other topics related to child abuse. In addition to interviewing, she is currently a State and Regional trainer and has been involved in revising the State Guidelines for 2014 and 2017 reviews.  She has a BA degree in Law and Justice and a MS degree in Psychology with an emphasis on child and adolescent development.

Read Transcript

Yeardley: [00:00:01] Hey, Super Podcast Fams, it’s Yeardley. I just wanted to pop in with a quick announcement about Small Town Dicks Season 12. It drops on April 21st. April 21st, mark your calendars. We will see you there.

[00:00:28] When a serious crime is committed in a small town, a handful of detectives are charged with solving the case. I’m Yeardley, and I’m fascinated by these stories. So, I invited my friends, detectives Dan and Dave, to help me gather the best true crime cases from around the country, and have the men and women who investigated them, tell us how it happened.

Dan: [00:00:53] I’m Dan.

Dave: [00:00:54] And I’m Dave.

Dan: [00:00:55] We’re identical twins.

Dave: [00:00:56] And we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan: [00:00:58] Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave: [00:01:01] Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.

Dan: [00:01:10] Names, places, and certain details, including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families. Though we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[theme playing]

Yeardley: [00:01:42] Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: [00:01:48] Glad to be back.

Yeardley: [00:01:49] [giggles] Detective Dave.

Dave: [00:01:51] Good morning.

Yeardley: [00:01:52] And we are so pleased to have our very special guest, Nichole.

Nichole: [00:01:55] Hello.

Yeardley: [00:01:56] Hi. So, Nichole, you have a really interesting out of the box job that you do for law enforcement. Tell us about that.

Nichole: [00:02:05] Yeah, I’m a forensic interviewer. I interview children who are witnesses too, and victims of crime.

Yeardley: [00:02:11] Wow. So, Nichole, tell us how you got into this important line of work.

Nichole: [00:02:17] Okay. Well, I first started off my career working with juveniles who have offended. I was a probation officer for juveniles in the first part of my career. And then I actually worked for Child Protective Services as an investigator. So, I’ve done some field work being in these houses, in these homes that you guys talk about. As a part of that, I started working with an advocacy center as a part of a multidisciplinary team. It’s a team of professionals that come together and work these cases. And so, I was trained to interview children, like cross-trained, and then a position became open and I started interviewing.

Yeardley: [00:02:49] What’s cross-trained?

Nichole: [00:02:50] It means I was trained to investigate and look at child safety in the home, and also interview the kids.

Yeardley: [00:02:56] And as a woman, do you mostly interview female child victims of these crimes or it’s not gender specific?

Nichole: [00:03:04] It really isn’t gender specific. Research says that it doesn’t matter. We understand that sometimes, trauma can inform who we interview. So, we’re respectful and mindful of the victim if they need a male or female interviewer. So, we look at that. Every case is different.

Yeardley: [00:03:21] You were saying before we started that children used to be interviewed by regular detectives and that didn’t know has worked so well. So, your job was created to do a better job of serving the victims. Can you talk about that a little?

Nichole: [00:03:37] Yeah, that’s why advocacy centers were created, because back about 10, 15 years ago, children were interviewed in police stations, and they were brought in, and they had to go to each professional. They had to go to the police station, they may have had child protective services come to their home, then they’d have to be interviewed by the physician, the doctor, who they may have to see, and they also would be interviewed by the DA, and then eventually, a counselor or a therapist.

Yeardley: [00:04:03] Oh, wow.

Nichole: [00:04:04] So, the whole purpose of a child advocacy center is that the professionals come to the children. So, the children come to one place, and we all gather together and share information, so they don’t have to go through that traumatic experience or that interview multiple times. When I first started 13 years ago, there was only about 500 accredited centers around. Now there’s 850 accredited centers, and that’s accredited by the National Children’s Alliance. There’s also centers that aren’t accredited yet or in the process of accreditation. So, our goal is to make every community have a child advocacy center.

Dave: [00:04:40] So, you had mentioned the multidisciplinary team, and sometimes people go, “What is that? That sounds big.” So, locally here and across the United States, a multidisciplinary team would include law enforcement people from the advocacy center, the forensic interviewer, child welfare. We have a veterinarian, because we see a lot of animal abuse associated with domestic violence. And so, we have all these people. We have mental health professionals, we have the district attorney’s office there, we have juvenile services there. So, you have all these people that are stakeholders in a child’s case. We all have input on how a case is being handled, how it’s being investigated, the kind of follow up that we need to do to ensure that the family’s got services, that the child is being supported. And so, that all goes into what a child advocacy center does.

Yeardley: [00:05:39] So, you’re all sitting around a big table talking about the case.

Dave: [00:05:44] That’s exactly what it is. And we’ve actually had that meeting in this room. That table probably has 25 to 30 people around it for our county. So, you have everybody that might touch a certain case, they’re going to have some input at that table. I forgot to mention the sexual assault nurses, and sometimes doctors, they participate as well.

Nichole: [00:06:05] We have a doctor at our center, that’s stationed at our center that can see emergent cases, acute cases of sexual abuse and physical abuse. We have a special law here, where they have to be seen within a certain period of time. And so, children can come in and see our doctor. We have child advocates who sit with the family members and walk them through the process, fill out their paperwork for them, because, like I said, every case is different. So, once a family comes in, the advocate can assess their level of trauma and walk them through the process, explain exactly what’s going to go on from start to finish.

Yeardley: [00:06:39] Is your center staffed 24 hours a day?

Nichole: [00:06:42] It is not. It’s a Monday through Friday, 08:00 to 05:00. But we are always on call if we need to be. If there was a call out, let’s say there was a homicide that happened on the weekend, we can interview the witnesses to homicide, if it was a child victim.

Dave: [00:06:55] We actually had a case, not our agency, but a neighboring agency had a case like that a few years ago, where there was a shooting between current boyfriend and estranged husband, and it happened right in front of all the children in the family. And so, that agency pulled the kids into the child advocacy center that night, and they came in on an emergent basis and took care of all the interviews that day to gather all the information they needed to press charges on this guy who committed the murder.

Dan: [00:07:24] I know we’ve covered it in the past about specifically why we need a forensic interview and what the differences are between a forensic interview and Joe Schmo cop out on the street. Can you explain that to us?

Dave: [00:07:37] Right. So, detectives, especially in a specialized caseload like child abuse or sexual assault, we get cross-trained. And Nichole is the one who trained me. Cops are just like any other people. We have varying degrees of competence, and comfort, and certain types of investigations. Doing a narcotics investigation, I would not be a good candidate for that, because I don’t understand the culture like our narcotics detectives understand. Same goes for patrol officers. They might be more geared towards DUI investigations or traffic enforcement.

Yeardley: [00:08:15] What’s a DUI?

Dave: [00:08:16] Driving under the influence. So, cops find their niche in police work. And mine happened to be child abuse and sexual assault. So, we don’t want our, what they call, knuckle dragging cops in uniform wearing a gun. I don’t want that officer sitting down with a six- or seven-year-old doing a field interview to get the basics of a disclosure of sexual abuse. I want that person to be Nichole or the other person at our advocacy center. I want trained professionals that know which questions to ask, and in what order, and how to pull that information from the child. I want the smart people doing it. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want somebody who’s not trained to do that. It causes problems at trial. If a street cop, patrol cop speaks to a child trying to get a disclosure, you’ll inevitably see a defense attorney go after that whole process, because they say, “Are you trained to speak to kids?” So, I defer to the expert. In this case, it’s Nichole.

Yeardley: [00:09:23] And, Nichole, you testify on the stand. I’m assuming, yes?

Nichole: [00:09:27] Yes. I’m an expert witness and a fact witness.

Yeardley: [00:09:29] What’s the difference?

Nichole: [00:09:30] A fact witness is somebody involved in the case. When you interview a child, you could testify as to what you did on the case. And an expert witness comes in and talks about the dynamics of the abuse, how children function, sex abuse in general, grooming and manipulation, disclosure process, and all that. So, we educate the jury members about how that happens.

Yeardley: [00:09:53] Right. And let’s say you are the forensic interviewer who actually did the interview. I’m assuming that you would explain both aspects, at least minimally to the jury. “As an expert witness, this is how I do what I do. And then as the fact witness, this is what I found out.”

Nichole: [00:10:11] Right. It’s different in every state. I’m fortunate that I come from two different states and I’ve had two different practices. In some states, the expert witness is blind and doesn’t know anything about the case. Where I currently practice, we are blended, so we can qualify as an expert as long as the judge allows you to qualify. You have to do a qualifying process, sometimes special hearings to become an expert witness. You basically need to have your resume and know more than an average person to qualify as an expert, but it’s a formal process.

Yeardley: [00:10:42] You have to qualify as an expert witness for each individual case that you weigh in on?

Nichole: [00:10:49] Yes.

Dave: [00:10:49] It’s fairly entertaining. Nichole’s been qualified as an expert in a few of my trials, and you’ll see the jury in the darker a little bit, not understanding what she’s talking about. Then as she walks through the process, and all the aspects of abuse and what victims go through in child development and what to expect based on a child’s age, their verbal and cognitive development, she’ll walk the jury through that. And then by the end of it, you see them all nodding their heads like, “Oh, I know what she’s talking about.” I watch juries when she’s testifying because I’m like, “Are they tracking?” And within a few minutes, they’re all tracking and you’re like, “Okay, we’re good.”

[00:11:33] Nichole, can you talk about disclosure, a term we use to describe when a victim first reports a sexual crime and why it’s different in cases with kids versus adults?

Nichole: [00:11:44] I can. It’s very difficult. So, disclosure is a process, and we talk and educate about disclosure. One of the reasons why we don’t have officers interview children in the field is because child sex abuse is not like adult rape. Typically, officers that respond to a rape, the rape has just occurred, and so they’re talking to them and they’re trying to gather the evidence. Children’s cases, they’re most likely delayed in reporting. So, adult cases can be very different, because they’re immediate or acute, and children’s cases aren’t like that, unless they’re walked in on or somebody witnesses it in progress or the offender didn’t do a good enough job manipulating the child.

Yeardley: [00:12:27] So, this is one of the things that you explained to the jury.

Nichole: [00:12:30] Right. So, we have to talk about the disclosure process and how it is a process and what kind of disclosures there are, because there’s a couple of different kinds of disclosures. Why kids don’t tell? Reasons why they don’t tell us because of that offender victim dynamic and manipulation.

Dave: [00:12:48] Nichole, can you walk us through forensic interviewing, the disclosure process to begin with, which leads to a forensic interview? During the forensic interview, we learn about the types of grooming that occurred in this child’s life.

Nichole: [00:13:01] Sure. Like I said before, disclosure is a process. It’s not like a onetime event. There is different ways that children tell. It depends on ages. We take age and development into consideration. So, most young children that present with disclosures, they’re not meaning to tell. It’s almost accidental that they tell, like somebody may have walked in on it, or they presented to the ER with findings, or they innocently may have said something and somebody probed and understood that there might be some sex abuse there. That’s because of that victim offender manipulation and grooming is what we call it.

[00:13:37] Some teenagers that disclose it could be acute, like, it just happened and so, they’re telling. Adolescents also disclose in ways like they hadn’t seen the offender, and therefore they feel safe. And so, they feel like they can tell somebody and they make a decision to tell. So, that’s a purposeful disclosure.

Yeardley: [00:13:53] What do you mean they hadn’t seen the offender?

Nichole: [00:13:55] A lot of times, offenders, they have been removed from their lives for years, possibly. When we talk about offenders, a lot of them are people we know, people that live in the home, family members, significant others. There’s research that tells us that the victim most likely knows their offender or has a close relationship. And that feeds into the disclosure process. That’s why disclosure is quite delayed, because it’s somebody they know, love, and trust. They just don’t like this thing that they’re doing with them. I generalize a lot of things. Every case, like I said, is different, but we do that to just kind of paint a picture of how this manipulation happens.

Dan: [00:14:34] So, a good example of somebody being removed from the life is maybe mom and man get together, and they end up getting a divorce, and stepdad is removed from the picture, basically. So, maybe five months, a year, two years later, then the daughter feels comfortable enough?

Nichole: [00:14:50] Yeah. A lot of disclosures come when children feel safe to disclose. Sometimes, it’s happened when they were younger children, and now they’re hitting puberty and they’re having feelings with going through that and experiencing their first love and things like that. They start having feelings or flashbacks back to when they were abused as a child. So, they start going to therapy, and then they tell a counselor, and that counselor is a mandatory reporter, and that report comes in, and then we have to interview based on that. The offender may be out of the home or it may be a family member that’s still a family member that they may or may not have access to.

Dave: [00:15:25] I’ve had several cases, where a child actually disclosed almost immediately after the first time their parent, the one supposed to be providing safety for them didn’t believe them. And so, they just ate it and said, “Okay, well, I’m not going to believed.” And then years later, it happens again. They get tired of it and they come forward and they say, “I told you about this years ago, but it’s happening again,” and they don’t get believed again. So, this just gets perpetuated.

Yeardley: [00:16:06] Nichole, do you find that, let’s say in the case that Dave was just talking about, the child tells their parent, the parent doesn’t believe them, but now it’s out. So, you’re doing the interview. Is your saying to the parent, “No, this really happened?” Does that often change their mind or do they often dig their heels in and say, “I just don’t believe it?”

Nichole: [00:16:25] In general, the non-offending parent that doesn’t believe poses a risk for recantation, a child taking it back. There’s actually research on that too. There are many reasons why a parent wouldn’t believe. First off, offenders groom and manipulate the parents too-

Yeardley: [00:16:41] Oh.

Nichole: [00:16:41] -in addition to the child. We look at in our society, a lot of the offenders that have been shown publicly, people are like, “No, I wouldn’t believe that,” or “No, that couldn’t have happened.” We look at our media cases, the cases that are in the media with the clergy members and the coaches. That’s a part of that manipulation. They don’t only groom the child, they groom the child’s caregiver, they groom the community. They’re master manipulators.

Yeardley: [00:17:08] Which Dave always said that one of their really strong suits, these sexual predators, is that they fit in or they stick out in the most exemplary, trusting way and then nobody ever thinks it could possibly be them.

Nichole: [00:17:22] Right. So, a role of our forensic interviewer is to talk with the child and gain from the child’s perspective what may have happened to them. We say may, because we always don’t know if a crime has occurred or hasn’t occurred. Sometimes it’s child safety, sometimes they’re a witness to a crime. We can’t assume. We go in with a non-bias. We do go in with information. We understand what that child may have told by reading reports, by interviewing caregivers, by understanding a little bit of the history of how that child presented, but we don’t form an opinion.

[00:18:00] That’s the great thing about my role is, I don’t have to determine whether this child was abused or not. My role is to question the child in a developmentally appropriate way to elicit their experience, like what they experienced during that event or multiple events, retrieving from their memories what happened to them, and then we leave it at that. That’s where my role ends, and the detective picks up and corroborate those facts, and either supports or refutes whatever allegation may have came out of it.

Yeardley: [00:18:34] Set the scene for us. Are you sitting across a table with these children or these teenagers? What’s the set up?

Nichole: [00:18:42] Every interviewer has their own style and their own way. They like their rooms. Advocacy centers across the nation will look different. More than likely, it will be video and audio recorded. A forensic interview has a structure to it. So, we have a way of talking with a child. There’s a basic structure, what we go through with a child when we’re talking with them. First of all, the room should be neutral, but child friendly, because we know that a friendly interviewer and a friendly place will allow that child to disclose in a safe way. And so, in our advocacy center, we have two rooms. It’s just a simple couch with a chair across from it. We try not to have tables, kind of impedes communication. You want to have a conversation with a child.

[00:19:27] My biggest challenge, what I find and I like is the young children. I love to interview the littles, like three, four, five-year-olds-

Yeardley: [00:19:35] Oh, my.

Nichole: [00:19:35] -preschoolers. Yes, because they say and do the darnest things. [Yeardley laughs] I’ve been in situations where they’re jumping on me. I’ve been in situations where they’ve colored on me. [Yeardley laughs] I’ve been in situations where they’re dancing around and, “Look what I can do. Look what I can do.” It’s really cute. They’re not always coming in and traumatized. Children don’t come in and they’re like in these cases of trauma. Sometimes, they are. I don’t want to minimize that, but a lot of the times they’re not. And we try to make them as comfortable as possible when they’re in there.

Yeardley: [00:20:06] I love it that they’re coloring on you, but you still obviously have a job to do.

Nichole: [00:20:11] Correct. It’s hard to focus them. You have to use a mix of different kind of question types. It gets a little complex, but you can’t be too broad because littles aren’t abstract thinkers. You have to be very concrete, but yet, we’re trying not to lead and insert information. So, they’re quite challenging.

Yeardley: [00:20:28] You said your interviews have a very specific structure. Can you give us an example of the kinds of questions you have? Do you, for instance, have the top five questions are–?

Nichole: [00:20:37] No, we don’t. It’s more of a pattern. So, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end to a forensic interview. The beginning should look like rapport building. There’s a specific purpose for rapport building is to make that child comfortable, to establish how they communicate. So, if you’re asking open ended questions, you’re expecting them to respond. Certain questions you use in that rapport building kind of an underlying, “This is how I’m going to ask a question. This is how you should respond without saying that.” “Tell me about you,” is one of my first questions or “What do you like to do?” “I’m in choir.” “Tell me all about choir.” Very open ended. And then in that rapport building, there’s research that tells us we should be using specific language, telling the rules and the guidelines of the interview, so the child’s on the same page.

[00:21:29] So, with young children, you actually have specific language that you tell them to let them know that this is a serious talk, and we need to talk about the truth and real things. And also, if you let young children know that if they don’t understand something, they can speak up and say so because I’m an adult. We train children in our lives to, like, adults know all the answers.

Yeardley: [00:21:54] Right.

Nichole: [00:21:54] Like teachers, what’s two plus two? The teacher knows the answer. It’s four. Children know that the teacher knows the answer is four. They have that expectation already. So, in that room, I want to come down to their level, and I want to make sure that they know I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there, so I talk to them about not knowing what happened. If they’re not understanding to let me know that they don’t understand. If they don’t know the answer, they can say, “I don’t know.” They don’t have to guess and they don’t have to make things up. We also talk about them being comfortable in the room, taking a break if they need to take a break, things like that.

Yeardley: [00:22:32] Right. So, considering the gravity of these conversations, how do you end them?

Nichole: [00:22:38] Sometimes, and that’s why we have an ending. We go back to a neutral topic or we acknowledge their feelings and emotions, and we talk about it. We ask if they have any questions and we answer their questions as best we can. Sometimes, they are like, “What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to the offender?” We may not know. And so, we don’t have answer to that question, but let’s talk with some people about the process and what’s going to happen next. Sometimes, it can be awkward to just end it, because they’ve just told you the most intimate things that have happened in their lives, the most traumatic things that have happened in their lives, and it could be awkward, but I’ve done a lot of interviews.

Dave: [00:23:16] How many?

Nichole: [00:23:17] Well, to not purge myself on the stand, I underestimate I’m very conservative. 3,800.

Yeardley: [00:23:24] What? No.

Dave: [00:23:27] How many cases went through your center last year?

Nichole: [00:23:31] 6,700. I don’t know the exact numbers.

Yeardley: [00:23:33] Oh, my God.

Nichole: [00:23:34] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:23:35] That’s devastating.

Dave: [00:23:36] That gives you an idea of the scale of people they’re helping.

Yeardley: [00:23:40] And those are just the ones you know about.

Dave: [00:23:42] Right.

Yeardley: [00:23:42] Oh, my God.

Dave: [00:23:43] Those are the ones that have came forward.

Yeardley: [00:23:45] That’s an enormous number of cases going through your center. 600 to 700 last year. But that’s not 600 to 700 convictions.

Nichole: [00:23:53] Correct. A lot of it is sexual abuse of children, but we also deal with drug endangerment, witness to domestic violence, neglect, physical abuse. So, there’s many different crimes we look at, not to minimize, but some are minor and some are major. So, we try and serve all children. We don’t charge for our services. We have never charged a parent for services.

Yeardley: [00:24:18] Amazing.

Dave: [00:24:19] It’s important to note that, I’ve sat through hundreds of these interviews, there are plenty where I look and go, “There’s no way this happened.” Or, there’s others where you say, “I think it did happen. There’s no way I can prove this,” or “There’s no way I can corroborate this.”

Yeardley: [00:24:37] They must gut you.

Dave: [00:24:39] Yeah. So, you get the whole spectrum of a criminal investigation. Some don’t even rise to the level of a crime. Some might initially disclose that, “I don’t like Uncle Joey, because every time I go to his house, he hurts me.” And so, somebody takes that as a disclosure of physical abuse. We get to the advocacy center and it’s that, “He plays too rough and when they wrestle, I hurt my elbow.” So, that’s not a crime. You get the whole spectrum. My criminal investigations focus on the exceptional stuff. Nichole’s done hundreds of interviews for my cases.

[00:25:17] So, early on, I was sitting there wide eyed, not knowing anything about forensic interviewing. Then as you start to get experience and you see her rhythm and how she asked questions, it got to the point where I could anticipate she’s going to ask this question now. And so, that from a detective and child welfare worker perspective is really valuable, because she knows the information that I really need for my investigation. She knows that I want sensory details. She knows that I want to know what room it happened in and what other things were going on in the background, because then I can corroborate this child’s interview because right now, all I’ve got is this child saying, “X, Y, and Z happened to me and that person did it.”

[00:26:05] When they can provide me with other things like, I remember a girl saying, “I remembered the smell of cinnamon toast from the kitchen, and that my brother was at a baseball camp that day.” Then you can go back and talk to a mother and be like, “Well, that was her favorite breakfast with cinnamon toast and her brother went to baseball camp around this time, and this guy used to babysitter.” That’s the corroborative stuff that we really need. She’s able to get that, and she’s able to pull that with anticipating where I want the interview to go without me having an earpiece where I can directly speak to her.

[00:26:42] There are times she’ll take a break towards the end of an interview and say, “Hey, I’m going to go across the hall and speak with the detective and see if he has any questions.” I always do. But there are one or two questions, “Hey, can you get some clarification on this?” I’m well known for asking her. I always wanted to know, “How many times did it happen?” And hundreds of times she’s told me, let’s not get into frequencies because kids aren’t good with that.

Nichole: [00:27:09] Time, number, and duration is very difficult for children. So, we have our tricks. We have our tricks to get there.

Yeardley: [00:27:14] So, Dave, you’re watching the interview?

Dave: [00:27:16] In real time, yeah. I’m watching a closed circuit television and seeing how the interview is going. I take particular note of when sensitive subjects come up, what that child’s body language does, because that is really telling, are they open when the subject that we’re all there to know about or hear about? When that comes up and they cross their legs and they start crying, these are children. You can see when it genuinely hits them and they finally give that up to the interviewer. I cannot imagine the things that you’ve heard in that room. I’ve been with you on hundreds of cases, but I think that I have heard about traumatic experiences. This woman is amazing, the kind of stuff she deals with.

Dan: [00:28:03] Dave has told me, when we would talk about his caseload, that’s one of the ways Dave would unload is we would talk about it. Dave would tell me in the middle of an interview with Nichole, he would make a decision. “I don’t need to hear another word. I’m arresting that guy today.” Just because he knows, based on his observation of that child and what questions are being asked that it absolutely happened.

Yeardley: [00:28:29] Wow.

Dave: [00:28:29] The only way I get there is through Nichole. I’ve said this multiple times on this podcast. The most important partner for us in these investigations is where she works and the people who work with her.

Yeardley: [00:28:43] Incredible.

Dave: [00:28:44] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:28:57] Nichole, do you ever struggle to keep it together?

Nichole: [00:29:00] I don’t know. I learned to turn it off, kind of. I’m there in the moment with the child. And so, I’m truly doing active listening, and listening to their story, and trying to strategize on where I need to go next. And so, what that child’s telling me isn’t pulling on my emotions as far as what they’ve experienced. Until sometimes later, you can process and you personalize things like that was really hard for me. You recognize it. You may talk to your partners about it.

Yeardley: [00:29:32] How do you decompress after a particularly difficult day of disclosures?

Nichole: [00:29:37] Talking with our fellow coworkers because it’s very hard to talk with other people about this topic. That’s the most awkward thing. I was at an airport the other day, and somebody asked me, “So, what do you do?” 99% of the time, the reaction to what I do is, “Oh, that’s got to be so hard.” It really isn’t for us because that’s what we do. That’s our job. We see the bigger picture, the satisfaction we get when these cases come to conclusion. That’s my goal.

Yeardley: [00:30:07] Right. A means to an end.

Nichole: [00:30:08] Even if it’s not that the offender gets arrested, like his perspective, it’s that child’s got their story told, and people understood and believed and helped that child through that process.

Dave: [00:30:19] So, in that middle portion of the interview, what typically happens in there? If you get a disclosure, what kind of information are you gathering in that?

Nichole: [00:30:28] Right. That’s great. So, we talked about the beginning of the interview and how it’s very structured, and we talk about rules, guidelines, expectations. We’re doing that basic rapport building, opening that child up. By the time we get to the middle, we should be in a place where we can talk about why they’re there. And so, the main questions are like, “What reasons are you here today?” or, “Tell me why you’re here?” And then if they know, they’ll tell you, and then you’ll guide them through the process. A lot of open-ended questions, like they said, “Scotty, hit me.” “Tell me all about the hitting. Where were you when the hitting happened? From start to finish, tell me about the hitting.” So, you’re trying to get a narrative response to what that child is saying.

[00:31:10] If you do a good job in the beginning, we’re going to do a practice narrative. We’re going to ask them to demonstrate that they can give a narrative like, “Think about your last vacation and tell me something about it.” Like, “We went and saw grandma.” “Tell me from start to finish everything you did when you got to grandma’s house.” So, we can understand that they could put together a sequence, what kind of details they give us, and we’re telling them, “This is how we’re going to talk when we get to the hard stuff.” And so, we talk to them in the middle. We guide them through. If it’s a onetime thing, kind of simple. You get the whole from start to finish. But if it’s multiple times, we have to go by the child’s perspective because number of times, it’s not helpful.

[00:31:53] So, we talk about, “Tell me about a time you remember most? Tell me about a different time?” I tend to strategize my disclosures and the counts by location because it’s hard to remember things completely, there’s different kinds of memories, autobiographical memory come in a couple of different forms, script and episodic memory. It’s kind of complex.

Yeardley: [00:32:17] What is the difference, script and episodic?

Nichole: [00:32:19] Script is the overview. Like, say you’ve done something more than a handful of times. We’re not human recorders, so we’re not going to tell you exactly everything that happened more than a handful of times. Like, going to Disneyland. If you’ve only been once or twice, you could give me a great account of going to Disneyland, because your memory is specific to those two accounts. But let’s say you’ve gone more than five times, you might blend them together. You’re not going to remember every single detail. Like, when I was a kid, I remember being 13 and remember it was around Valentine’s Day. And the reason why I remember is because there’s [unintelligible [00:32:54], the things cut in heart. And so, I remember it was around that time, but I don’t know the exact date. So, that’s the way our memories work. We have general overviews and then episodes within that general overview.

Yeardley: [00:33:07] So, if you know that a child’s account of how many times is not necessarily reliable, Dave, you’ve often said that the number of times a sex offender offends has a lot to do with how long their sentence is, should they get convicted. How do you reconcile those two things?

Dave: [00:33:26] Well, the big stuff like the penetrative, sexual abuse, rape, sodomy, unlawful sexual penetration, those things, if I only get one or two of those episodes, those are worth a couple of decades apiece. So, we get into these situations where, me, I’m kind of trying to get a framework of how often was this happening or how many times did it happen? It’s really easy when a child says, “Well, it only happened one time.” Then I know, “Okay, there’s just going to be one count of this behavior.” There’s other times where the child says, “It happened every time I went over to visit my dad.” “How often did you visit him?” I went over there every other weekend for three years.

Yeardley: [00:34:09] Oh.

Dave: [00:34:10] So, I’m trying to get an idea of that. I know it got to be our little inside thing where I’d be like, “How many times, Nichole?” Because I already knew what the answer was going to be. That’s not how children remember things. So, she was really good about, “Do you remember the first time? Tell me all about that. Do you remember the last time? Tell me all about that. Do you remember the worst time? Tell me all about that. Are there any other times?” So, she’s trying to get to where she knows, I want to get to, but I don’t want to belabor this disclosure either. And so, we just want to get the basics and really it’s what type of behavior was this child exposed to? I want to know what this person is doing to this child. It’s on a wish list that I get to know how many times, because I want to know how many times I get to charge this guy with this crime.

Yeardley: [00:34:59] Right.

Dan: [00:35:00] You do a lot of presentations in the community about your caseload and things to look for and things like that. What is your advice to parents on, A– and we talked about it a little bit how you ask the question to get a disclosure and what are the steps beyond that? Because I know in the past, you’ve had cases where parents completely screwed the case up from the get-go. How do you screw that up before you even get going?

Dave: [00:35:28] Well, I think TV doesn’t help us. I think there’s a lot of people that say they watch Law & Order: SVU and they fancy themselves a detective and they feel like, “Well, I’m going to get this investigation rolling and I’ll hand off the completed package to the detective and let him take the ball across the goal line.” So, there’s some misinformation out there. I think there’s other people that their intentions are good, but why not just hand it off to the experts who do this all the time? So, we have some parents that will hear something and they get going 200mph on something that’s really not a disclosure.

[00:36:06] My favorite one is we get lots of toddler age kids with diaper rash, and they’re involved in a custody dispute with their husband, and they automatically equate this redness in the diaper area with, “My ex-husband must be abusing my child.” Or, they say that, “My child’s exhibiting sexualized behavior.” They’re just discovering new body parts. I can’t leap to, “This child must have been sexually abused.” It’s frustrating when you talk to a parent and we go through the forensic interview process and the child discloses nothing, and you tell the parent that brought them there, “Hey, your child didn’t bring anything up.” They’re devastated that their child hasn’t been sexually abused.

Yeardley: [00:36:51] [gasps]

Dave: [00:36:52] They’re like, “She must have been sexually abused.” And you’re looking at them like, “No, this is a good thing.”

Yeardley: [00:36:58] Yeah, really.

Dave: [00:36:59] Your child said nothing has happened and your child feels very safe at both houses, so let’s calm down. It’s good that your child isn’t disclosing anything. Don’t be disappointed, be happy.

Yeardley: [00:37:09] Right. So, Dave, what’s the best way to approach a child if you do suspect something is up?

Dave: [00:37:17] Ask open ended questions. Don’t ask the leading questions, don’t pick up the stuffed bear and point to the crotch region and say, “Did he touch you here?” We don’t do that. So, ask open ended questions. If you get a disclosure, shut it down and call the police. Don’t inform the suspect. Don’t lose your mind and go over to his house and say, “You know what my daughter just told me?” “How about you call us?” We’re missing an opportunity here where we’ve got this suspect in the dark. This could be a turning point for us. Don’t spoil it.

Yeardley: [00:37:51] Right. Don’t tip them off.

Dave: [00:37:52] Go to the police. If your child discloses actual abuse, go to the police.

Nichole: [00:37:57] Right. You can taint their account. You can put your own bias, because you have your own thoughts about how this abuse may have occurred. And so, you’re saying, “Well, did he do this? Did he do this? Did he do this?” Instead of what happened.

Yeardley: [00:38:10] Right.

Dave: [00:38:11] What happened is a lot better than did he touch you here? “Did he put his X here?” And then we get the people that video record the interview with the child.

Yeardley: [00:38:21] What?

Dave: [00:38:22] Yeah. They’ll sit him down and say, “Okay, now the time is–” And it’s like they’re introducing a forensic interview, like this is going to be evidence.

Nichole: [00:38:31] “Tell me what you just told me.”

Dave: [00:38:32] Yeah, exactly. They’re well intentioned.

Nichole: [00:38:35] And there’s different types of parents. We have parents who are protective, supportive, appropriate. And we also have parents that are not. We have parents that also have had their own trauma and are considering their own trauma into their child’s life. And so, some of those extremes where the parent is saying, “No, you had to have been abused, they have their own perspective or–“

Yeardley: [00:38:55] Their own bias.

Nichole: [00:38:56] Exactly. Or, their own history that they’re hypersensitive and bring that history into their child’s story.” And young children, they’re super innocent and they don’t understand.

Yeardley: [00:39:07] I’m guessing that one of the things that surprised parents the most are the way their child was groomed. You’ve talked a lot about grooming, again, being a really patient, drawn-out process with these predators. Can you speak about that?

Dave: [00:39:24] Yeah. So, some guys are better than others. And I say guys because in general, 95 plus percent of my caseload are male perpetrators. So, I generalize by saying guys, him, he. Some are better than others. Some are less patient. Some are really patient. The more patient you are, the more creative you are, probably the better groomer you are. I have other suspects who were not so patient and were more focused on the end goal, which is sexual contact with the child. They screwed up because that child was too strong and wasn’t groomed in a way that that child was going to hold on to that they were going to go to their parents and say, “I didn’t like what happened. He did this to me.” And those are great cases because usually, it’s not such a delayed disclosure.

Yeardley: [00:40:14] Right.

Dave: [00:40:14] But certainly, Nichole is the expert. She knows about the grooming process.

Yeardley: [00:40:19] So, tell us about that, because I’m sure that any parent listening to this would be, “Oh, God, what should I be looking for?” Things that seem perfectly normal, obviously in a different context turn out to be absolutely lethal.

Nichole: [00:40:30] Sure. I’m going to talk in general overview. Every case is different. People who groom children put themselves in a situation where they have access to the population they’re attracted to, like the coaches that are coaching young boys or teachers putting themselves in situations where they have access to their preference. We work with vulnerable children, children who are neglected and don’t get the attention they need. Sometimes, the parents are abusive. So, we may have a neighbor that sweeps in and kind of the hero, or we have a single mom who needs help with babysitting or caretaking. So, offenders take advantage of those situations, and they come in and they’re the hero and they’re going to help out and they’re going to save the day, kind of, and start developing a relationship with the family and the child.

[00:41:21] So, putting themselves in that situation where they can have access to children, that’s the first kind of step. And then that’s where the conflict comes in at the end, when children do tell and they don’t know what to believe, they don’t know how to believe, they’re like, “No, this person couldn’t do that.”

Yeardley: [00:41:37] The parents are disbelieving.

Nichole: [00:41:39] It’s the master manipulation that comes with the dynamics and/or the child doesn’t want to tell because of that manipulation. They start having a bond with offenders and they don’t like this thing that they’re doing, but they like all the other things.

Yeardley: [00:41:55] So, they want to protect them?

Nichole: [00:41:56] Correct.

Yeardley: [00:41:57] You mentioned that these predators go a great distance not only to groom the child but to groom the community and the parents or the caregiver of that child. Yes?

Dave: [00:42:08] Yeah. The biggest fear they have is being discovered. If that child discloses and they’re discovered, then there are huge ramifications for their freedom, and potentially, other issues as far as blowing up the family. So, there’s a lot on the line for these guys and they are entirely dependent on how good they are with the child and with the people around. I’ve spoken about it at length. The people who say, “He would never do this” or “I’ve never seen him do that. Is that that shocking?” So, my family and friends that will reach out to me and say, “Hey, this is going on. Should I be concerned?” And I’ll say, “You’re throwing up red flags for me. I wouldn’t have my child around that person if they’re acting creepy or making comments.”

[00:42:58] Grooming takes on all kinds of forms, and it could be inappropriate jokes. Bringing up sexual topics to a child that is not of the age to be discussing that or that’s not the type of relationship. If I had a child, which I don’t, I wouldn’t want my child to be having a birds and the bees talk with somebody that’s not me or the mother. For the uncle to be bringing up a sexual topic is completely inappropriate. These guys will provide gifts. They’ll provide a place to hang out, say, “This child isn’t in a great family environment and this is a family friend and he has his eyes on a certain person.” He says, “You know what? When you get upset with your parents, why don’t you just come over to my house and we’ll hang out and we can talk about it.” They do all these things to subvert parental control, parental authority.

Yeardley: [00:43:50] So, they become the safe haven.

Dave: [00:43:52] Right. And they’ll paint it in all kinds of different ways. I’ve arrested a teacher who tried to fashion himself as daddy number two. That’s what he referred to himself as. “I’m your second daddy.” And he would have her call him that. You have other uncles who try to be like the cool uncle that offers the alcohol or marijuana, and you can sneak out and come over to my house and bring all your friends. I’ve had offenders where they offer to train or actually physically teach the child about sexual contact. “Hey, I want to show you this. So, when you get to high school, you know how to satisfy your boyfriend.”

Yeardley: [00:44:30] Oh, my God.

Dave: [00:44:31] These guys are absolute wolves.

Dave: [00:45:20] So, Nichole, I hit on a few aspects of grooming, but certainly you are more well versed in the process. Can you explain, go through your spiel that you give people?

Nichole: [00:45:31] Yeah. Well, we already talked about the first step, an offender putting themselves to have access to their preferred population. But in addition, some manipulation happens where gift giving might occur, like giving gifts or special attention, drawing that child in and trying to form a bond with that child. Not necessarily abusing them at that point, but befriending them.

Yeardley: [00:45:56] So now there’s a measure of trust and the boundaries are fuzzy. When do they start a sexual abuse?

Nichole: [00:46:03] That comes next, where they’ve had that bond with them, but they could desensitize sexual touch like lap sitting, special massages, game playing, or desensitizing sex in general, showing pornography in the magazines. Well, magazines are kind of obsolete now, right? [chuckles] Showing internet porn or teaching. I’ve had a situation where the offender was teaching about sex, like sex education, where it starts out as very clinical and appropriate, and then soon it morphs into, “Well, let me show you, show you on the internet.” “Well, let me show you in person” and went that way. So, desensitizing those sexual topics.

[00:46:44] Then the final step is concealment and allowing it to happen. So, once you have that child involved in the desensitizing sexual touch, that’s when the offender can choose to move on to another victim, because if that child tells it’s only something minimal, where they can say, “Oh, that was an accident” or “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” Like let’s say they brush their elbow across the breast and they’re desensitizing that sexual touch, and the child tells their mom, “Oh, that was an accident.” Or, “By the way, I brushed my elbow against her.” Maybe they got a reaction to over explain or explain away,” and then they’ll move on to a different victim who won’t tell her is more vulnerable. We find that often.

Dave: [00:47:28] This inadvertent or accidental touching, the comments or the jokes they make, the topics they bring up that are adult or sexual in nature. The whole time they’re gauging two different reactions, how’s the child reacting and how’s the family reacting to my relationship with this child? If the child tells the family about what happened, how the family react? Did they believe her? Did they send the child back to my house the next day anyway? So, all this is a give and take. They’re constantly reading the situation and steering what they’re doing based on the type of interaction they’re having with this child and the type of reaction they get every time they try something new.

Yeardley: [00:48:11] Is there a rough average of how much time it takes for a sex offender to groom to the point where now there’s actual physical contact with the victim?

Dave: [00:48:22] I’m thinking back to some of my cases where the grooming occurred over the course of hours or days, and other cases where it occurred over the course of years.

Nichole: [00:48:32] There’s no set time. It just depends. It depends on the relationship, the opportunity, and the means. A lot of the newer research is coming out on the technology and grooming, and those are like seconds and minutes, because they can move on to the next victim. So, they’re talking to them saying, “Oh, you’re very pretty,” and engaging them. And then it’s like, “Oh, send me a pic.”

Dave: [00:48:55] I’m thinking about all my Facebook stings that I’ve done. They all had their one little pickup line like, “Hey, I’d really love to cuddle you,” or the other fishing line was, “You have a really lucky boyfriend.” So, you either say, “Yeah, he is lucky,” or “I don’t have a boyfriend.” And so, then within minutes, these guys would send a dick pic and then ask for a revealing pic in return and you’re like, that is so bold. That’s in less than four minutes. You progressed to that point where now I’ve seen your erection three times. Are you kidding me?

Nichole: [00:49:27] They’re preying on the vulnerability of teenagers and their emotions. I mean, they’re in emotional time. They like that attention. They’re hearing nice things.

Yeardley: [00:49:36] Have you ever arrested a female offender?

Dave: [00:49:39] I have.

Yeardley: [00:49:39] And what’s the ratio of female to male offenders?

Dave: [00:49:42] I’ve arrested hundreds of males. I’ve arrested less than 10 females.

Yeardley: [00:49:48] Are their techniques the same as the men?

Dave: [00:49:50] A lot of it is similar, although it’s a little bit more overt. I’ve arrested a female teacher that was using Snapchat to send inappropriate photos and videos to teenage boy and basically, flirting with this boy to the point where he developed a little crush on her. So, they do what they need to do to get a child’s attention. I think the youngest victim I’ve had with an adult female offender. I’ve never had a child under 14. It’s always been the 14- to 16-year-old age group with female offenders.

Dan: [00:50:29] Well, and there’s quite a different stigma when it comes to females rather than males too.

Dave: [00:50:34] And, Nichole, that drives you nuts, doesn’t it?

Nichole: [00:50:37] It’s my soapbox. [giggles] I’ve seen throughout my career, female offenders, it gets minimized, especially when discovered. Even if it goes through the process, sometimes their sentences are even lower.

Yeardley: [00:50:50] Why do you think that is?

Nichole: [00:50:52] I don’t know, because they think females can’t abuse? I don’t know. I have had younger victims under 14 that I’ve worked with. And one I could think of, it was more of like an emotional manipulation, and sometimes it was tag team with a male offender, like both of them. You know what I mean? So, it was like taking advantage of the situation. So, it’s a lot more emotional.

Yeardley: [00:51:15] Do you find that female offenders, is there less actual physical sexual contact and it’s more, like you were saying, Dave, inappropriate pictures and sort of maybe sexual talk, but less penetration per se?

Dave: [00:51:30] Yeah. Of the 5 to 10 females that I’ve arrested, I’d say at least half of them actually had sexual intercourse with the child. So, they work their way up. But boys going through the hormonal stage of puberty, they know that that boy is horny.

Yeardley: [00:51:49] And vulnerable. Yeah.

Dave: [00:51:50] And so, they go after that aspect. But I haven’t had the younger population.

Nichole: [00:51:54] And they don’t tell. I mean, the old-fashioned way is, “Oh, that hot teacher was coming on to me. He’s a lucky guy.” But if the gender was reversed, it’d be like, “That teacher is a pervert.” Males traditionally are a lot lower to disclose than females, especially their sex abuse. They can be embarrassed about it, or confused, or not understand, or not view themselves as a victim.

Yeardley: [00:52:19] So, tell us again, as parents, what are some of the signs that your child might exhibit or are there sort of these three or four things usually mean–? Do you know what I’m trying to say?

Dave: [00:52:35] You’re asking, what should parents be on the lookout for?

Yeardley: [00:52:37] That’s exactly what I’m asking.

Nichole: [00:52:39] Change in behavior, secretive things like their social media, trying to hide things, hide the gifts they may have received.

Dave: [00:52:47] I’m thinking of some of these cases where we have the child that they used to love going over to grandpa’s house, but suddenly, they reached a certain age group where now you’re in the strike zone that grandpa is into, and the interaction with grandpa changed when that child became that age. So, they had three or four bad experiences over at grandpa’s house on a visit, and now the topic goes, “Hey, we’re going to grandpa’s for Christmas,” and that child has an absolute meltdown. It’s because that child knows, “When I go over to grandpa’s, bad shit happens, and I don’t want it to happen anymore.”

[00:53:28] So, my thing is, if your child reacts in such a way that is odd to you or you’ve not seen that type of reaction before, that’s the time to have a talk, “Hey, why are you feeling this way about going to grandpa’s?” Open ended. We have other parents will say, “Did grandpa touch you?” That’s what they lead with. And you’re like, “Really?”

Nichole: [00:53:51] They’re going to say no automatically. Denial is the first thing, whether it happened or not.

Dave: [00:53:56] Give your child a chance to tell you why they’re upset. Open ended question. Your child also has to know that it’s safe to come to you that when you receive information such as a disclosure of sexual abuse that you’re going to handle it with some poise, that you’re going to handle it in a supportive way, that we have some parents that will hear that and will immediately turn around and blow up on the child that just disclose that. “Do you know that he’s the one who pays all of our bills? He’s going to go to prison. Are you making this up, because he could go away for a long time? You better be serious about this or are you making it up?” And then the child’s like, “Nah, I was just kidding.” Because now they realize, mom can’t handle that.

Nichole: [00:54:39] Oftentimes, it’s the reaction of the caregiver. It could be a supportive caregiver, but their reaction to the disclosure can cause a reaction of the child to either minimize recant or take it back based on what they tell them, like if they’re not believing. Or, even the, “Are you sure?” Or, the shock that the parent goes through could cause the child to take it back.

Dave: [00:55:02] I’ve even had mothers, who, when they heard that were jealous of their child. “Are you saying he’s more attracted to you than he is me?”

Yeardley: [00:55:10] Oh, my God.

Dave: [00:55:11] It happens.

Dan: [00:55:12] And it has led to some very gruesome cases in this county, that same thing that you’re talking about. Some really horrible stuff that happened to a little girl, because her mom was jealous.

Yeardley: [00:55:22] Oh, man.

Dan: [00:55:23] Yeah. And she’s on death row.

Yeardley: [00:55:25] The mom is?

Dan: [00:55:26] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:55:27] Did she kill her daughter?

Dan: [00:55:28] She did. She tortured her.

Yeardley: [00:55:30] So, it was long and drawn out.

Dan: [00:55:31] Months.

Yeardley: [00:55:32] Jesus.

Dave: [00:55:33] Yeah. So, you get all kinds of parents. It was always refreshing to have the parents that were, “I don’t care what he says. My child would never lie about this, and I know my child, and I’m going to support them. Even if we find out later that it didn’t happen, I don’t care. I am in my child’s corner and I’m going to support them.” That was rare.

Nichole: [00:55:57] To start by believing.

Dave: [00:55:58] Yeah. Child wants to believed. If they perceive that they’re not going to believed or that it’s going to cause some huge blow up that the parent can’t handle that with poise, the child’s going to pull back.

Yeardley: [00:56:11] And Dave, you’ve also always said that parents should be familiar with their child’s social media. Just get in it.

Dave: [00:56:20] Yeah. I tell parents when I give presentations, be nosy. Know your child’s passcode to their phone. You don’t necessarily have to be friends with them on Facebook or something like that, but at least be aware of who they’re friends with. We have all kinds of cases where we have people online. It’s a perfect groomer’s paradise. It’s a playground for these guys.

[00:56:46] Never met the child, they’re sending out friend requests, shotgunning them out to whatever age group they’re interested in. They start collecting friends, they open up messenger, and they start shotgunning messages out to these girls or boys that they’re interested in age wise and see who bites. So, I tell parents, be nosy, be in your child’s business. You don’t have to be overbearing about it, but be a responsible parent and be aware of what your child is doing and who they’re talking to.

Yeardley: [00:57:14] Right. Wow. Well, thank you both so much. These are hard conversations, but I do think they’re really important. Nichole, thank you so much for joining us.

Nichole: [00:57:26] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:57:26] God, I don’t know how you do what you do, but thank you for doing it. And Dave and Dan, it’s always a pleasure.

Dave: [00:57:34] Yeah. And I’m honored to have Nichole here.

Nichole: [00:57:36] We could talk for hours, huh?

Dave: [00:57:37] Yeah.

[theme playing]

Yeardley: [00:57:43] On the next episode of Small Town Dicks, we sit down with a new guest, Sheriff Carl, to hear about a tragic case that took place in his very small town and ended up testing the bonds of his tightknit community. It’s a story of innocence, consequence, and incomprehensibly bad luck. Don’t miss Collateral, available Friday, September 20th on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere you like to listen.

[00:58:14] Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary Scott and Yeardley Smith, and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Gary Scott, and me, Yeardley Smith. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our music is composed by John Forest. Our editors extraordinaire are Logan Heftel and Soren Begin, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Dan: [00:58:42] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com. And join the Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you.

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Yeardley: [00:59:09] That’s right. Your subscription also makes it possible for us to keep going to small towns across the country-

Dan: [00:59:15] -in search of the finest-

Dave: [00:59:17] -rare-

Dan: [00:59:17] -true crime cases told as always, by the detectives who investigated them.

Dave: [00:59:22] So, thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley: [00:59:24] Nobody’s better than you.

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