Crime is surging in Houston, and homicide detectives are given free rein equally they race to close cases. Investigators are certain that Charles Raby is guilty of Edna Franklin's murder — and that DNA show volition show it. But once Charles confesses, the forensic investigation stops.

Transcript

A quick listener notation: This podcast contains adult linguistic communication and descriptions of violence.

Broadcaster: Now stay tuned for an NBC News special presentation.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: On December half dozen, 1990, NBC preempted their Friday nighttime primetime drama "Midnight Caller," about a erstwhile cop turned talk radio host, for a show well-nigh real cops. Titled "Houston Homicide," it was hosted by Tom Brokaw and kind of like the one-time reality prove "Cops" simply more than cinéma vérité.

"Houston Homicide" (Tom Brokaw): Tonight, a detective story. We'll take you inside the working lives of Houston homicide investigators. Nosotros'll be with them during their daily struggles with the awful realities of America's sudden and alarming increment in the business of violent death.

Liliana Segura: The show opens with the two lead detectives who investigated Edna Franklin's murder: Houston Law Sgts. Wayne Wendel and Waymon Allen.

They pull up to the scene of a homicide. There'south a man dead in a ditch past the side of the road. Allen is driving. Information technology'south one of those boxy, '80s unmarked cop cars.

Allen parks backside some crime scene tape. He grabs his jacket with one hand and his gun with the other, which he shoves into the waistband of his pants. Wendel follows backside Allen. He has a nighttime mustache and spectacles. They lift the white sheet covering the body. Later on examining the scene, they become over to talk to the victim's blood brother.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: Amid the Houston homicide cops, Allen was known as a masterful interrogator. He would end upwardly interrogating Charles Raby.

Allen died in 2019, and then this is the only time you're going to hear his vocalisation.

Waymon Allen: At that place'due south not any good time for you to talk to me, I know, and what we've told you is devastating, I know. Only we demand to try to find out what happened to your brother, OK? Tin yous help me do that?

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: In a tribute to Allen on Facebook, Wendel said they'd cleared so many cases together that he'd lost track. "If you killed someone in Houston," Wendel wrote, "you would not desire Waymon on your case. He would find you, abort you and he knew how to get incriminating statements from suspects."

[Theme music]

Liliana Segura: From The Intercept, I'chiliad Liliana Segura.

Jordan Smith: And I'one thousand Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith. Welcome back to Murderville, Texas. Episode Two, "The Cops."

Liliana Segura: Allow's exercise a quick recap. After Edna Franklin's grandsons discovered her body, they told constabulary they had a couple suspects in listen, including Charles Raby. He was on parole at the fourth dimension. The police wanted to question him, but Charles was avoiding them, which only made them more than suspicious.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: They caught up with him a few days later, and Charles confessed to the crime. Just no concrete evidence tied him to the scene, and the cops accept never establish a murder weapon.

Liliana Segura: One of the first things we expect at when nosotros start working on a case is the constabulary report. Ideally, it should requite you lot a detailed road map of how the investigation went: where information technology started, what was learned along the way, and how it was all resolved.

Jordan Smith: The police report in Charles'south instance is simply thin. To exist sure, there are a lot of details — but generally about how the inside of Franklin'due south house looked: where the couches were located, that at that place was a bag of old car parts in a corner.

Liliana Segura: But aside from the law-breaking scene investigator mentioning that he booked into evidence a small paring pocketknife found in one of the bedrooms, there is no word of looking for a murder weapon. In fact, there's really no investigation documented in this report at all. Instead, the cops asked Franklin's grandsons who they thought did it, glommed on to Charles, and spent the next few days trying to run him downwardly.

Jordan Smith: How do nosotros know there was no investigation? The cops had an abort warrant for Charles the day subsequently the murder. Remember about that: Franklin's body isn't found until 10 p.chiliad. The cops are there all night processing the scene, and so they don't actually know still what kind of prove they may or may not take. And then, armed with a hunch and a very general description of a dude seen jumping the neighbor'south fence, they seek out a approximate who volition allow them to pick up Charles, less than 24 hours later.

Oh, and the warrant? It's for trespassing, for beingness in the neighbor's yard. Simply the search warrant application makes articulate this is just a pretense for capital letter murder — a death-eligible offense.

A view of the Houston Police Department headquarters in Houston, Texas on September 3, 2021.

A view of the Houston Police force Department headquarters in Houston on Sept. 3, 2021.

Photograph: Christopher Lee for The Intercept

Liliana Segura: This is just a classic example of tunnel vision. Instead of investigating, developing evidence, and tracing it to a suspect, the Houston PD identified a suspect, then sought to confirm their belief in his guilt. With the law study leaving so many questions unanswered, nosotros wanted to talk to the cops who worked the Franklin case dorsum in 1992.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: We found Sgt. Wendel on Facebook. He retired in 2005 later a 34-yr career with the Houston Police Department. This freed him upward for what is conspicuously a true passion: photography. His landscape and travel photos are all over his Facebook page, which is otherwise total of right-wing memes. Wendel said that working homicide for the Houston PD back in the day was intense.

Waymon Wendel: You had, basically, about a three-day window to clear your case earlier y'all got some other one. We would get a example about every fourth or fifth solar day, a new homicide would come up up. That's subsequently going through 30 detectives.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith In other words, they were trying to close cases every bit chop-chop as possible. Here's Sgt. Dwane Shirley. He helped Allen and Wendel on the Franklin case. In fact, it was Shirley who drove Charles to the constabulary station the day he was arrested for Franklin's murder.

Dwane Shirley: I spent 26 years in homicide. The caseload when I striking there, when I first got to homicide in 1980, the homicides were streaming upward every year.

Liliana Segura: Homicides peaked the following yr, at 701. Past the time Franklin was killed, that number had dropped. Just per capita, 1992 was one of the worst years for murder in Houston'due south history. Still, Shirley told u.s.a. that they were really good at catching the bad guys — actually, unbelievably good. He said that, in his day, the clearance rate in the homicide partitioning was close to xc per centum.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: This claim struck us as problematic because the national average is much lower, and police departments have been known to pad their numbers. Endmost a case doesn't necessarily mean solving it.

Lilian Segura: Of course, a clearance rate every bit high as Shirley described would be slap-up, if they were actually getting the right person for the crime. Getting the wrong person in a murder instance leaves a killer on the streets, but Shirley also suggested that they did pretty much whatever they wanted to close cases, without a whole lot of oversight.

Dwane Shirley: You tin can't do at present what nosotros did then.

Jordan Smith: What do you lot mean?

Dwane Shirley: Well, wait at all the scrutiny that's being placed on police officers right now. Every single move they make is subject field to videotape.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: And you think that is hamstringing?

Dwane Shirley: Sure. It hamstrings the entire police department.

Jordan Smith: Why do you recall that is? In homicide, why do you remember that would have impacted your piece of work?

Dwane Shirley: I remember I better not hash out it; you'd ameliorate not discuss it. But we were given a free rein in solving a case.

Liliana Segura: And Shirley had a story near Wendel to describe the kinds of things they would practise to investigate murder cases.

Dwane Shirley: I accept one instance here that was probably not politically correct in today'due south climate referring to Wayne Wendel. Nosotros were once conducting surveillance on a doubtable in a Black area of town, and nosotros didn't have admission to some Black officers to help the states stake out this location, and then Wayne Wendel dressed up in greasepaint and conducted surveillance on this location, which today would probably get him fired and charged.

Liliana Segura: Do you call up when that was or what the case was?

Dwane Shirley: I don't remember what the instance was, simply it was over on the east side of town, in the ghetto. I think everybody was kidding him well-nigh dressing up in blackface so that he wouldn't go recognized as being a police force officer on surveillance. But the bargain is, there was no racial overtones in his actions. We were trying to abort a murder doubtable.

Liliana Segura: We were obviously pretty shocked by this story. When we afterwards wrote to Wendel, he confirmed it and elaborated. "I rode around Fifth Ward in the backseat of a yellow cab," he wrote. "We were looking for a serial rapist/murderer."

This might be a practiced moment to make clear: Charles Raby is white, then was Edna Franklin. But Wendel's actions hither speak volumes about the culture that existed within the homicide bureau and their attitude towards the communities they were supposed to be protecting.

Jordan Smith: We also asked Shirley about something Charles says happened on the way to the law station — that Shirley told him they could charge his girlfriend, Merry Alice Gomez, with aiding and abetting him, for non turning Charles in.

Liliana Segura: He named you specifically as the officeholder who took him into custody, I believe, collection him to the station. And co-ordinate to him, you had said something to the effect of, his girlfriend could be charged with aiding and abetting. But does whatever of that sound familiar to y'all?

Dwane Shirley: Well, very slightly, but let me explain something to you. Nothing says an investigator has to tell the truth to a suspect. I would lie to a doubtable in a minute. It wouldn't carp me. I'm not going to threaten him, I'm not going to beat him. Merely if I had to prevarication to get him to tell me a confession or the truth, I'd lie.

Liliana Segura: We told Shirley that Charles maintains his innocence. And we wanted to know, with the rise of DNA testing and exonerations, has he e'er worried almost the possibility of executing an innocent person?

Dwane Shirley: It's never given me pause — always. Because if I ever worked a case and I had doubts about whether or not the doubtable did it, I wouldn't have charged him. I wouldn't have arrested him. But if I arrest him on a murder charge that he didn't practice, that ways the person who did it is still out in that location.

Jordan Smith: Right.

Dwane Shirley: You know how they practice it in Russia, right, when they give you a decease punishment? They lock yous up. They don't give you a date for execution or anything. All they do, you stay in that location, information technology may exist at that place a week, it may exist in that location a calendar month, information technology may be at that place a year. They walk upward to your cell, accept y'all out of the jail cell, walk y'all out back, and shoot you in the caput with a 9 mm. That'southward how they do it. There's no fancy stuff about information technology.

Liliana Segura: Are you saying that we should do it more like that?

Dwane Shirley: No, I'chiliad not proverb nosotros're doing it like that. But a suspect should have one entreatment, and later on that, he should be executed.

Liliana Segura : For the record, that'due south not actually how they practise it in Russia. Technically, the death penalty has been on hold there since the '90s.

Jordan Smith: Some of the about detailed data in the law report was written by the crime scene investigator. He diagrammed and described the scene — a homo named Jim Norris. He had a incomparably less condescending attitude nigh the system than Sgt. Shirley. This is because Norris not simply saw the organization from a cop'south point of view, just later from the other side besides.

Jim Norris: My name is Jim Norris. I am — I was a offense scene investigator with the homicide division at this time, in 1992. Right now, I'k 67 years old and the pastor at a pocket-sized country church. [In 1992] I worked the night shift. It was nothing for me to take hold of a scene at ii o'clock in the morning and so work the entire rest of the night on the scene and then all the day shift doing paperwork.

Jordan Smith:We sent Norris his portion of the police report. He recognized it every bit his work but has no specific recollection of it. The murder took identify toward the end of his time with HPD.

Liliana Segura: Norris worked Houston homicide for virtually a decade before leaving the state for a serial of career changes, including a short stint equally an emu farmer.

Jim Norris: I picked those emus up in Texas. It was a big thing back and so, and information technology was a shot in the dark sort of thing, just I took those emus to North Carolina with me.

Liliana Segura: More importantly, afterward moving to Indiana, he began doing work for criminal defendants.

Jim Norris: I was a private investigator, and I concentrated by and large on criminal defense work and that usually involved death penalty cases.

Liliana Segura: Norris knows the system sometimes gets things incorrect. In a 2001 profile of him in the Times of Northwest Indiana headlined "Gumshoe With Gumption," Norris talked about his passion for investigating wrongful convictions, especially in decease penalty cases.

"If every time 100 people flew in an airplane one of them died, people would end flying," he told the paper. "But we may accept ane out of 100 inmates sitting on death row with no connection to the crime."

Norris is opposed to capital punishment at present. He saw serious flaws in the evidence that police and prosecutors relied upon to send people to die.

Jim Norris: I recollect that eyewitness testimony was probably the biggest thing that deterred me from believing that the decease penalty was correct. And then when you got into Dna and you constitute out how many times blood typing was incorrect, and how many people were bedevilled on that ground, and so that kind of solidified the thought nosotros need to take a step back from the death penalty until nosotros can get it more correct than what we have.

Jordan Smith: Norris talked about a couple things that nosotros know are leading causes of wrongful convictions, including erroneous bystander identification, which is the most mutual factor constitute in Deoxyribonucleic acid exonerations and — along with the confession — a central component of Charles'south case.

Retrieve: Edna Franklin'due south neighbor, Hillery Truitt, told the cops that he and his brother-in-constabulary had seen a guy spring the fence from Franklin's backyard the night of the murder. And fifty-fifty though the pair said they didn't get a good look at the guy's face, the cops decided that it was Charles they had seen. Only even under the all-time circumstances, eyewitness IDs are notoriously unreliable. Norris told us that information technology wasn't until afterwards he left HPD that he learned merely how unreliable they are.

Jim Norris: And I call back things like that bothered me for a long time. I've tested myself and my own recollection — just take anybody in a restaurant some twenty-four hour period and look at them for a minute and so ask yourself the adjacent twenty-four hour period what y'all can tell me virtually information technology. Could you 100 percent sure pick that person out of a lineup or photo array? How often, if you did that, would you be correct?

Jordan Smith: Norris besides talked about false confessions, which have been implicated in hundreds of wrongful convictions.

Jim Norris: Fake confessions, I recollect, fall into 2 categories: a forced imitation confession and a voluntary false confession. And certainly, a forced false confession is probably the saddest thing that an investigator can be accused of. Nonetheless, that doesn't negate the fact that at that place are voluntary false confessions, and I believe that they're in abundance.

One of the things that I take institute over the years in confessions is that a guy volition say whatever he thinks he needs to say that will do good him at the time. Certainly the one that is a self-interest false confession is something that you've got to become back to stride i and see: Does the evidence support what he says?

Liliana Segura: Today, Charles insists he didn't murder Edna Franklin. He says the confession he gave the police was false.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: At present, yous may be thinking, come on: Confess to something I didn't do? No style. Let solitary something and then horrible as murder. Something that could send me to the execution chamber? Not gonna happen.

Liliana Segura: A lot of people think that no one would confess to something they didn't practice. They simply can't excogitate of it, especially when the stakes are so high. Simply simulated confessions practice happen, more than you'd think.

The National Registry of Exonerations catalogs all the factors that take led to wrongful convictions in the U.S. Since 1989, there have been more than 2,900 exonerations. More than than 360 of those cases involved false confessions. Twenty-7 were death penalty cases.

Nosotros're going to dig deeper into false confessions, but starting time, you need to hear what Charles has to say about how all of this happened.

Jordan Smith: Nosotros went to come across Charles in December 2019. Information technology was just before Christmas. Texas'due south expiry row is in Livingston, down the road from the execution sleeping room in Huntsville.

To go within, you have to become through security and a series of gates that lock backside you. Before you achieve the visitation area, you lot pass a glass display cabinet full of handmade crafts. Many are decorated with characters from Disney. They're made by prisoners.

The visiting area is stark and has all the charm of an one-time loftier schoolhouse cafeteria. In that location are rows of booths. On i side is where we'll sit. On the other side are cages backside plexiglass-like windows. That's where prisoners are brought in and uncuffed.

Charles Raby, who is currently being held on death row, in the visitation room at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility in Livingston, Texas on September 22, 2021.

Charles Raby in the visitation room at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit of measurement, which houses death row, in Livingston, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2021.

Photo: Christopher Lee for The Intercept

To communicate, you take to utilise an old handheld telephone receiver. Information technology was hard to hear Charles, allow alone tape him on the other side of that receiver. And then you're gonna have to behave with u.s..

Liliana Segura: I'll but start. This is paused correct at present, but I'll just start rolling.

Guard: And so that'due south going to work for yous?

Jordan Smith: Yep, I think it'southward going to work.

Liliana Segura: Yeah. I think we're good.

Guard: OK. You outset at 12:39.

Jordan Smith: Sounds proficient. Thanks. Hey, Charles.

Charles Raby: How yous doing?

Jordan Smith: Good. Nice to meet you lot.

Charles Raby: That's how she's going to do it, sit at that place like that?

Jordan Smith: Yep, it'due south going to be fine.

Liliana Segura: Charles has bluish eyes and a small, upturned nose. He was dressed in the all-white prison scrubs issued past the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. At 49, he was a slightly doughier version of the 24-year-former who get-go went to death row. He was also visibly nervous — similar, really nervous. He seemed apologetic virtually his demeanor. At i point, he told u.s.a. that he was getting curt of jiff. "I don't practise a lot of talking," he said.

Hashemite kingdom of jordan Smith: We only had an hour, and we had a lot of questions. Going in, we understood his caption for why he confessed to Edna Franklin'due south murder. He said information technology was to protect his girlfriend, Merry Alice Gomez. But we wanted to hear more than virtually what happened at the police station, especially his interactions with Sgt. Waymon Allen. Recollect: Charles'south interrogation wasn't recorded.

Liliana Segura: Charles had been in and out of the organisation his whole life. Growing up, his father was absent and his mother was neglectful. He was repeatedly removed from her home by the country's child welfare agency. He barely ever went to school; instead, he ran the streets.

Charles told us that he'd heard the cops were looking for him on October 16, 1992 — the twenty-four hour period after the murder — but he really didn't know why. He'd but recently gotten out of prison house. Simply knowing that the cops were looking for him was enough to brand him desire to avert them.

Jordan Smith: Merry Alice had told him that the cops had asked her to phone call if she saw him. Charles says that's why he decided to plough himself in. He was worried she might arrive problem, but before he could, the cops showed up. Hither's Charles.

Charles Raby: And I tell Merry, "Well, they're hither." He told me to come out, I'thou under arrest, y'all know. He didn't really tell me what correct then and at that place, simply later on. And so, I told Merry to stay in the firm and I said, "You stay here." They asked me almost who she was. I told them, "That'due south my girlfriend. She can stay here." The next thing I know, they're taking her and I asked them, "Where you all taking her?" They told me they were taking her habitation.

So I really thought they were taking her home. But then nosotros go to the constabulary station, and they started questioning me. I'k similar, "Man, I don't know what you're talking almost or annihilation like that."

Liliana Segura: He recalled going to the bathroom and hearing the baby crying and Merry Alice's vox. He was surprised. He idea the cops had taken them home. He asked Allen why they were at the station.

Charles Raby: He said, "Well, we just desire to talk to them and everything, question them, see what she might know." I said, "Man, she don't know nothing. She don't know none of them people over there." I'm merely kind of paraphrasing everything really, but later on, he seen how focused I was on talking about her. I didn't want to talk about cypher else only why the hell she'south hither, I want her to leave. And that's when he said, "Well, nosotros told her to call us if she seen yous, and the side by side matter nosotros know, we detect her hiding out with you." And I told them, "Man, we wasn't hiding out. We were at my business firm."

I've got to admit that he never actually told me, "We're going to arrest her," but he gave me the impression. I'm not stupid. I know, "We could arrest her. You know we could practice this and nosotros could practice that." To me, that's you can and that you will if I don't starting time talking to yous most those things you want me to say.

Liliana Segura: Charles told us that when he'd gotten arrested with his friends growing upward, it was every man for himself inside the police force station. Just with Merry Alice, it was unlike. He didn't desire her to get in trouble considering of him. Information technology seems clear Allen saw that he cared about her and that he could utilise that as leverage to get Charles to cooperate.

Charles Raby: I mean, I've been in trouble quite a bit. I'chiliad sure you know that. I've been to jail. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been in and out of juvenile and in jail. But this is the first time I ever had everyone utilize somebody I love against me like that. I hateful, this is someone totally innocent, doesn't have no reason to be in that location. So you're talking about taking her or taking the baby away from her. They really had me. I don't know any other way to explain information technology. I merely know they found my weak spot, so I just started telling them whatever I idea they wanted to hear, you know.

Jordan Smith: One affair the cops did practice before getting the arrest warrant for Charles was to speak to people who had seen him the day of Edna Franklin's murder. Like the adult female who said he'd sat in front of her house, cleaning his fingernails with a knife. Then it wasn't hard for Allen to trip Charles up when he claimed to exist somewhere else.

Charles Raby: He was but asking me, "Where take you been, what accept you been doing?" And I kept lying to him. He'd say, "Where was you over here?" And he said similar, "What'd you do that day?" I said, "Well, I stayed in my grandmother's neighborhood." He said, "Well, did you go over here?" I'one thousand like, "Well fuck, how the hell did you know I went over there?" I said, "Yep, I went over at that place." And then but these niggling lies — so then when I started finally telling the truth, it'due south like he own't trying to hear it. He washed caught me in so many of these little lies, you know? Only he tracked me all the manner from my brother's house to my friend's business firm. He tracked me from all the style over there to the neighbor. He's putting me in this neighborhood.

Jordan Smith: Non only did Allen become Charles to put himself in the neighborhood, he got Charles to say he'd knocked on Franklin'due south front end door.

Charles Raby: Once he got me to admit that I was there at the house, that I actually knocked on the door, that was it. That's all he wanted. He placed me at the house, said I was there. So, I don't know. I was willing to do, say anything he wanted me to to get Merry and the baby out of there.

Jordan Smith: So, Charles said, he gave Allen a story.

Charles Raby: I don't know why I was lying to him like I was, in other words. I merely didn't — it'southward only what I do. I grew up on the street. But don't tell the cops nothing, right?

He was, but had me, "Well, what'd you do?" Past this time, I know somebody'due south dead. He done told me that somebody'south expressionless, right? And that's when I told him, "Well, I guess I went in the front door, simply walked in, knocked on the door, merely walked in and there she is, and I just grabbed her and did what I did." You know, information technology's just and then many details, it just doesn't make no sense. I mean, nothing.

Liliana Segura: Charles told us that Allen fed him details about the case. Police force idea the murderer had left through Franklin's back door and had been seen by neighbors jumping a debate. So, Charles said, he fed those details right back to Allen.

Charles Raby: He said, "What about the back door?" I said, "What about the back door?" He said, "Did you go out the back door?" I said, "I guess I went out the dorsum door so." He says, "Was you lot confronted by somebody about staying out of his yard?" I said, "Yes, I guess somebody told me to stay out of their yard."

Jordan Smith: Ultimately, Charles insisted that despite what he told the cops, he did not kill Edna Franklin.

Charles Raby: All I know is I didn't have no blood. I didn't kill the adult female. I didn't. I experience for Lee and them, just I did non practice it. That's all I can say.

Jordan Smith: We plain didn't get a chance to ask everything we wanted during that visit, but in our mind, that was no big deal. The mode it works is that reporters go one visit with the same person every 90 days. So we were already planning our next visit — for April 2020. That didn't happen.

Liliana Segura: Instead, the pandemic would end upwards locking down the prison for more than than a year. Our reporting, like everything else, suddenly basis to a halt. We would have to keep our investigation remotely. Of course, there was no way we could have known what was coming.

Before we left Livingston, we exchanged Christmas gifts in the parking lot. Then, two days subsequently, I was checking Twitter on my phone when I saw a tweet directed at me from a adult female I didn't recognize. She said, "I certainly hope Charles 'Buster' Raby hasn't convinced you he's innocent."

Her name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why. It was conspicuously someone who knew the instance, just this was still pretty early in our reporting. And I but couldn't place it. Then I chosen Jordan. I told her I'd gotten a strange tweet nigh Charles. Information technology came from a woman named Linda McClain.

Jordan did recognize the name.

Jordan Smith: That's Edna Franklin's daughter.

Side by side time on Murderville, Texas: More about Linda, and Charles Raby goes on trial for his life.

Maurice Chammah: I heard stories nigh prosecutors who called themselves the Silver Needle Society because they had sent men to decease row.

Anonymous Juror: It haunted me for a long time that I decided that that guy was supposed to die.

Linda McClain: Practise y'all still want to confess to this? Uh, I wouldn't take at all. I would accept ran screaming from the room.

Liliana Segura: Murderville, Texas is a product of The Intercept and First Look Media.

Andrea Jones is our story editor. Julia Scott is senior producer. Truc Nguyen is our podcast beau. Laura Flynn is supervising producer. Fact-checking by Meerie Jesuthasan. Special cheers to Jack D'Isidoro and Holly DeMuth for boosted production assistance.

Our prove was mixed by Rick Kwan, with original music past Zach Young. Legal review past David Bralow.

Executive producers are Roger Hodge and Christy Gressman. For The Intercept, Betsy Reed is the editor-in-principal.

I'chiliad Liliana Segura.

Jordan Smith: And I'thou Jordan Smith.

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