2024-06-26 00:40:46
Twelve-year-old McKay Everett disappeared from his Texas home in September 1995. His father Carl returned from an Amway meeting to find the back door ajar and the telephone ringing. On the line, a woman with a raspy voice demanded $500,000. Over the next week, the FBI played a game of cat-and-mouse with the kidnappers, who used inside information to stay one step ahead of the investigation. Ultimately the FBI uncovered a series of crimes that started long before McKay was taken. Most shocking of all was the suspect. McKay had been betrayed by someone he trusted – a pillar of the community hiding a dark secret. But decades later, McKay’s mother, Paulette, still isn’t satisfied with the official story. She doesn’t think everyone involved has been brought to justice. Ransom: Season 1 - Position of Trust is a story of greed and betrayal and how one’s outward appearance can be dangerously deceiving.
A warning about content. This show contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. In the lead-up to Hilton Crawford's trial, Paulette encountered Hilton in the Montgomery County Courthouse.
I'm inclined to sit on the front row wherever I go, whether it's church or what.
As Paulette found a seat in the front row, Hilton was brought into court and seated at a table with his attorneys right in front of her.
I was sitting down, and Hilton Crawford was sitting down, and our faces kind of came face to face. And he was groaning with anger, you could tell, seething.
It was the first time Paulette had seen Hilton since McKay's death. She glared at him with contempt.
And he went, if you, he said a word, if you. And I went, good morning. They had a detective there to kind of be with me.
The detective tried to diffuse the situation by getting Paulette away from Hilton.
The detective picked me up and lifted me over the chairs to the second row, and he said, you can't do that. I said, neither can he. See how it turns? I can't do something. But it showed me who he really was.
A ton of pent-up anger. You think about how McKay died. Do you think that was a person who was angry or not? He was furious.
Paulette wanted to show Hilton that she wasn't afraid of him.
I'm not backing down one little bitty smidgen. I wouldn't say how you like your choices you make.
And she didn't care what anyone else thought about her behavior.
I thought, you're lucky. I haven't walked in here with a pistol and shot him. I just said, good morning.
But Paulette's attitude worried prosecutors, like Assistant D.
A. Mike Aduttle.
I was aware that it was going to be a problem once I learned that the judge was going to leave him in the courtroom. Normally, when you invoke what we call the rule, witnesses are sworn in, and then they're put into another room. Okay? That's the rule. That's the way Texas does it, and it's a great help.
Except when your judge has the discretion to not invoke the rule. to a mother and father of a little boy that was brutally killed. That wasn't, I didn't think, a smart move.
Aduttle was concerned that Paulette might do something in anger that would jeopardize the trial.
I even called all the bail bondsmen and said, please don't make bail for Hilton Crawford. And Mike Aduttle went, you can't do that. I said, I already have. It's already done.
To put it lightly, Paulette and Aduttle's relationship was fraught.
I can talk about that. I won't.
He just didn't like me. I don't know what it was. I just rubbed him the wrong way. But I'm aggressive.
While Aduttle worried about Paulette, Hilton's defense, was worried about the jury pool. They argued that the trial needed to be moved out of Montgomery County, Texas. Stories about how 12-year-old McKay had been kidnapped and killed by a family friend were all over the local news. Behind bars and charged with aggravated kidnapping is a family friend. Hilton Crawford was called Uncle Hilty by McKay.
And the defense won their argument. The trial was moved one county north to Walker County. I was surprised that it was moved so close. Mike Graczyk was a journalist covering the kidnapping and trial. for the Associated Press.
It's the same media market. Conroe or Huntsville still gets its news primarily from Houston. But that's where it was moved. But holding the trial in Huntsville was fitting for another reason. The courtroom sat just 12 miles south of Texas' notorious death row.
And the execution chamber where prosecutors were trying to send Hilton Crawford.
From KSL Podcasts, I'm Art Rascone. This is Ransom, Position of Trust.
Episode 8, The Scream. The trial proper for Hilton Crawford began on July 8, 1996.. Hilton had been charged with capital murder. A charge reserved for the most heinous of killings. And a charge that made Hilton eligible for the death penalty.
Nancy Neff made the prosecution's opening statement. Which is read here by a voice actor, and edited for clarity.
May it please the court. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Lock the door and turn on the alarm. That is the last thing Paulette Everett told her son McKay before she left home in the evening of September 12, 1995 to attend a meeting. Lock the door so you're safe.
Carl Everett will testify. that's what he taught his son McKay. He worried of the unknown. Don't talk to strangers. Don't open the door for a stranger.
Don't let a stranger into the house. You don't know what evil lurks in the heart of the stranger. The evidence will show, however, that evil toward McKay lurked not in the heart of a stranger. But behind the face of a friend. The face of Hilton Crawford.
Uncle Hilty, as McKay called him, a long-time family friend. This case is about a child's trust and the betrayal of that trust. This case is about the ultimate betrayal. But the evidence will show that Samuel McKay Everett is dead because he trusted somebody he knew.
He trusted Hilton Crawford.
After laying out details of the investigation and the crime, prosecutors called Paulette as the first witness. Paulette testified that she'd known Hilton and Connie for decades. How they'd played with McKay when he was an infant. Paulette stared directly at Hilton as she testified.
Then he never looked up my way. Nothing. He was numbed out. And it was just another reminder, he's emotionally dead. He's a crocodile.
Then prosecutors switched to questions about McKay's last day.
The big thing was, had Hilton called the house prior to McKay being taken? Yes.
Paulette testified that on the day of the kidnapping, Hilton Crawford had called to confirm that both she and Carl were attending the Amway meeting. And that's how he'd known that McKay would be home alone.
It was not much more than, are y'all going to be at the meeting? Yes, we are. And that was it, you know. And you look back on that and you think, how in the world could you plot something so evil? So just, terribly evil.
But he did. It's like somebody snuffing out a cigarette, not a human being, you know?
After Paulette finished on the witness stand, she returned to the audience. She says that as the trial progressed, she was disturbed by what she heard. Hilton Crawford had already admitted to the kidnapping in a recorded interview, so the defense did not try to dispute that aspect of the case. Here's AP reporter Mike Graczyk. They presented no defense witnesses at his trial.
And that means to me that they conceded he was guilty, guilty of something. Instead, in their cross-examinations of the state's witnesses, the defense tried to paint Hilton as a desperate man looking to make quick money who had gotten himself into a bad situation. He claimed to have mobsters or folks who were demanding money from him, and he didn't have it. And the defense tried to bolster Hilton's claims that the real killer, R.L. Remington, was still on the loose.
But prosecutors had put together even more evidence that R.
L. Remington wasn't even real. Following Hilton's arrest, a young man named CB Heron had come forward to the FBI. Prosecutor Aduttle refers to the witness CB as the kid.
He had met with and befriended Crawford at the racetrack here in Houston. And Crawford had come up and offered this kid $80,000 to babysit a child that they were going to fake, a kidnapping. The kid said no. After he found out that Crawford was charged with the crime, went to the law, and another assistant, DA and I, talked with the kid. He was a straight shooter.
The witness, CB Heron, had an ironclad alibi the night of the kidnapping. But when prosecutors interviewed CB in the lead-up to the trial, they realized he was important for another reason.
A lieutenant in the sheriff's office did a composite drawing of R.
L. Remington. Well, the kid looked exactly like the composite drawing. Crawford took that kid's face and replicated it to try to throw us off.
When CB testified in court, Aduttle held up the composite drawing of R.
L. Remington next to his face to show the jury the uncanny resemblance. Both had the same sunken eyes, with thick eyebrows, the same short, dark hair, and prominent nose. It was more evidence the Remington story was bogus. But it was also evidence that, at least originally, Hilton had planned to keep McKay alive.
It seemed that Hilton's plan was to drop off McKay with CB until the ransom was paid, before sending him back on a bus to Houston. Another witness, however, suggested that at some point Hilton's plan had turned darker. Billy Joe Cox was one of Hilton's security guards, and Hilton knew he'd previously worked in the funeral business. Cox testified that in the weeks leading up to the kidnapping, Hilton had asked him how long it would take before a dead body started smelling in the trunk of a car.
Had any one of those people called the police and said, you know, I've got this friend and he is saying some goofy stuff? But they didn't. They just let it go over their head. They were too busy gambling.
Many new facts about the extent of Hilton's dissent and depravity emerged at the trial. Facts that surprised even Hilton's closest friends, like Sam Petro.
The district attorney in Conroe called me and he said, I want you at the trial.
I said, well, you know, what, for? He said, well, you'll see, just come. So I did, and they called me as a witness. And they asked me about Hilton.
I told them just about what I'm telling you. He was a good guy for a long time, then went off the deep end. This and that. So I finished my testimony, and I was leaving the building, and the district attorney said, you don't want to leave yet. I said, why?
He said, just listen to the next witness. I said, okay. So they called another witness after me. It turns out it was the girl from the office, brother, Colleen's brother.
Remember, when Petro bought the security company and brought on Hilton to run it, Hilton had hired a woman named Colleen to manage the office. And Petro says that Colleen had embezzled $60,000 from the business. Petro was pressuring Colleen to pay back the money, which angered Hilton because Hilton had moved on to another security business. And was trying to keep Colleen's father as a customer.
He was mad at me because he wouldn't have the Houston Lighting and Power Company as a customer, because that's her dad.
Now, Colleen's brother, James Gaffney, was testifying at Hilton's trial.
So I'm listening to why the district attorney wants me to be here for this. So the district attorney is asking the boy questions up on the stand. He said, so what did Hilton Crawford ask you to do? He said he was going to pay me $5,000 to kill Sam Petro.
And I'm just sitting there, what?
Well, Hilton thought he was just a common criminal that he could go to and say, you want to make five grand? Kill this guy. This kid pulls out just paper that Hilton wrote. He said, call Sam, tell him that Colleen's got a car and a bunch of furniture. she's going to turn over to him to try to repay the $60,000..
Which was all a lie. But have him meet you at her apartment building early in the morning. He drives a green Lincoln Town Car. When he pulls up, go to the car, have him, roll the window down to talk to him. Shoot him, shoot him in the head.
Shoot him twice. Make sure he's dead. And that was in Hilton's handwriting.
James Gaffney said Hilton had given him a silver revolver. Gaffney testified that he hesitated and never went through with the plan. But Petro says he had gotten a call about Colleen wanting to hand over the car and the furniture.
I was a fool. I fell for it. But I ended up not going. And I don't know, I don't remember why. Something must have smelled bad.
that caused me to not go.
Petro was floored by this revelation. To this day, he still has trouble squaring the Hilton that plotted to kill him with the Hilton he'd known as a friend.
I mean, there was a lot of bad stuff in between it, but it was all financial stuff. Financial stuff is different than murder. I think I'm in denial with it. I really do. My wife says I am.
I mean, it was right there. Hilton gave the kid the gun. Hilton gave him the gun. He killed me with it.
The trial stretched out over 10 days. More than 70 witnesses testified. It was the most involved trial of a Duddle's 42-year career.
I was working on adrenaline, and I would go to bed at night just exhausted, because you can't work on adrenaline that hard, that length of time. But you get yourself in shape for it, and you do what you have to do.
The trial was taxing for Paulette as well.
The stress level, the intensity of everything. You don't go home and have a meal and watch a little TV and go to bed. You pace the floor. You do such a mental exercise every day of trying to piece together what the FBI has told you, what local police have uncovered. And at night, I couldn't sleep because I'd think about what McKay had gone through.
It was real intense and real tough, and I don't want to ever go there again.
Paulette didn't need to be in the courtroom, but she thought it was important for her healing to know precisely what had happened to McKay.
There was something inside of me that went, you face this flat tail square on, don't back up, don't be a coward. now. You can only heal from what is real.
But there was one part of the trial in particular that Paulette wanted to avoid.
Well, I told the FBI, I told the district attorney's office, please let me know when y'all are going to talk about McKay being in the trunk of the car fighting for his life. I said, I don't want to be there. Well, they forgot.
On the fourth day of the trial, FBI agent Lloyd Diaz was called to testify about the pry marks on the inside of Hilton's trunk.
I saw the dad sitting there toward the front. I didn't see the mom. Okay, so I thought she wasn't in court.
I said, okay, cool.
She was about eight rows up above where he was.
And I was sitting there and my mother was here from Mississippi and he just went off into it.
The prosecutor asked, well, did you see anything odd about the trunk?
We projected up on the big screen a picture and it was of the trunk of the car.
And I said, yes, the lid of the trunk looked like it had pry marks or somebody was trying to pry it open.
He had tried to pry himself out like a caged animal.
Paulette pictured McKay in the trunk of the car, struggling for his life and screaming at the top of his lungs.
What in the world was he feeling? What was he thinking? It drove me up the wall. A child. You wouldn't put an animal in the trunk of a car.
I wouldn't.
Her son was in this trunk, all alone, scared to death, you know, still alive, trying to get out of his trunk.
It just drove me crazy.
And right when I said that, I've never heard anything like this and hadn't heard anything like it since. A scream that you would not believe.
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On July 11, 1996, FBI agent Lloyd Diaz testified that McKay had tried to escape from Hilton's trunk. A pressure had been building up inside Paulette throughout the trial, and she finally reached her breaking point.
And I started out like, just like a mouse. And then the next thing, I know, I was screaming to the top of my lungs.
She let out a scream, like you would not believe.
And the judge was pounding his mallet, ordering the court, ordering the court. I don't know if people thought somebody was in the courtroom with a gun or what. They were trampling themselves to get out the back of the courthouse, you know, over the seats. And they raised Hilton Crawford out of there, and he turned around and looked. No expression.
Deadpan.
Assistant, D.
A. Aduttle was stunned.
I'll never forget this as long as I live. It was brutal.
Aduttle, worried that the disruption could lead to a mistrial.
She screamed at the top of her lungs until she had no more air. And then she took a breath, and she screamed again and again and again. The judge did a great job. I don't think I had presence of mind enough to do it, but he did. He got the jury out of the room as quickly as possible, got spectators in the courtroom out, and got a doctor in, and Paulette was still screaming.
The defense demanded a mistrial, saying, quote, She has been screaming hysterically now for about three minutes in the presence of the jury. There is no way this jury can give the defendant a fair trial after this exhibition. But the judge overruled and denied the request.
I had no control over it. I'd never screamed like that in my life. It was so much pent-up emotion and anger. It was like, I can't believe I did that.
The trial resumed the next day. It continued for another five days, with the prosecution calling blood spatter experts, DNA scientists, and firearm analysts that provided hard evidence linking Hilton to the murder.
It was a 10-day trial. We put in over 250 objects of evidence.
On July 19, 1996, both sides made their closing arguments, with the defense insisting the real killer was R.
L. Remington, and the prosecution pointing out all of the contradictions in Hilton's story and how unlikely it was that Remington even existed. The jury left to deliberate. I've covered dozens of cases like this, including capital murder, and I've never seen a jury return a verdict so quickly.
It didn't take very long to do it. An hour, something like that.
After just 61 minutes, the jurors returned. Hilton Lewis Crawford was found guilty of capital murder.
In some ways, Hilton's guilt was already a foregone conclusion. In Texas, Hilton could be found guilty even if the jury bought into the R.L. Remington story because of a legal concept called the law of parties. Anyone who aids in a felony can be held liable, even if they aren't the one who ultimately pulls the trigger. But all the testimony thus far had been setting the stage for the real debate.
Should Hilton be sentenced to death for his crimes?
If you're found guilty of a capital murder case in Texas, then you go into the punishment phase. Then the defense can bring in mitigating factors. One mitigating factor from one individual is enough to forego the institution of death.
In this phase of the trial, the defense did call witnesses to the stand. A teacher friend said that Hilton took care of the family to the extent that Connie didn't even know the price of electricity, since Hilton had always paid the bills. Hilton's sons testified about how their father had spoiled them and how their family had been completely in the dark about Hilton's death. To sentence a defendant to death, Texas law states jurors must conclude the defendant is likely to commit acts of violence in the future. The final witness for the defense was a clinical psychologist named Walter Kehano, who testified that Hilton Crawford was unlikely to reoffend.
One reason Dr. Kehano gave was that at 57 years old, Hilton had no documented history of violence. But we know that's not true. Hilton's disciplinary record as a police officer in Beaumont showed problems with violence going back to his early 20s. Further, his recent attempt to hire a hitman to kill Sam Petro showed that his violent streak hadn't softened with age.
Dr. Kehano also assessed Hilton to be a relatively normal man. According to Kehano's assessment, Crawford had an IQ of 94, slightly below average, but in the normal range, and he didn't suffer from any mental illness. It seems, though, that Hilton should have at least been diagnosed with gambling disorder, which could have been used as a mitigating factor in Hilton's defense. Here's prosecutor Adudal.
That's what you're supposed to do as defense counsel in a capital murder case. You are to find any type of mitigating factor. It takes only one juror person to say, I think that's mitigating and I'm not going to vote for death. And then it's up. The doors open up and it's over.
All the defense needed to do to save Hilton's life was plant a seed of doubt. Author. Tanny Shannon, who interviewed Hilton in prison, was surprised that Hilton didn't use his gambling addiction as a mitigating factor in his defense. Tanny thinks that Hilton's gambling is what led to the crime.
He got into this out of desperation. He was reacting the way addicts react to, you know, drug addicts that go out and commit crimes to satisfy their addiction.
But perhaps Hilton didn't use gambling as a defense because he was in denial about his addiction himself.
He swore to me that he was not a compulsive gambler, that, you know, he won when he gambled and so forth, which is ridiculous.
We reached out to a gambling addiction expert who has served as a forensic psychiatrist on cases like this. Even after diving deep into this story, Hilton continued to baffle us. So we wondered if understanding gambling addiction could help us better understand Hilton. And we wanted to know whether gambling disorder should have been a mitigating factor in determining Hilton's sentence.
My name is Dr. Timothy Fong. I'm a professor of psychiatry. I'm the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. It's considered the, quote, hidden addiction, because you can't see it, you can't smell it, people don't overdose on it.
I think even more so. of all the other addictive disorders, it's the one that people don't recognize they have. You think you have a problem with luck or you have a problem with an angry spouse who doesn't understand what you like to do, but you don't recognize that what you actually have is a gambling disorder.
In many ways, gambling resembles a drug addiction, where the gambler becomes addicted to the neurotransmitters produced when they gamble.
The drug or the substance that's being altered is our own internal brain. So it's our neurochemicals, dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, adrenaline. That's what's different.
Fong says that by the time their gambling disorders are diagnosed, it's not unusual for addicts to have turned to crime to finance their addiction.
About 15% of them have committed some crime to finance their gambling. Things like stealing your husband or wife's credit card, insurance fraud, embezzling from work.
But Dr. Fong says that gambling addiction isn't linked to violence.
People with gambling disorder do not have an increased rate of committing violent acts. So it's not like if you're having a gambling addiction, you're more likely to be violent. That doesn't happen. We know that the predictors of people who commit violent physical acts are going to be things like past history, committing violent acts, sociopathy, antisocial behavior, substance use disorder, while intoxicated, things like that.
It seems clear from Hilton's story that he had a gambling addiction. But can Hilton's addiction help explain the kidnapping and murder of McKay? In his work as a forensic psychologist, Dr. Fong tries to answer that question, educating judges and juries on the extent to which gambling disorder can explain a defendant's behavior.
I had a guy once who had robbed a bank. He got the money, he got in his car, and he literally drove from the bank straight to the casino. And the police picked him up at the blackjack table. That was not a crime that was well mapped out. That was an impulse driven by untreated gambling disorder.
Without knowing all the details of Hilton's case, Dr. Fong thinks it's unlikely that gambling addiction fully explains Hilton's behavior. Even though the crime was badly planned, there was still a lot of forethought that went into it. It wasn't an impulsive decision.
The vast majority of folks I work with who need to get money, they don't resort to kidnapping schemes. They do banks and loans and robberies.
Fong says, one of the most informative questions about the extent to which gambling addiction can explain a crime is what the defendant was planning to do with the money.
Are you trying to get back to even? Are you trying to get money to pay off people you owe? Or are you just going to get it and you spend it on a bunch of different things, which then says maybe it's not about gambling, but it's about power and control. Someone who tends to be more sociopathic and is just willing to take advantage of others to get money to benefit themselves.
So what was Hilton's plan for the money from McKay's ransom? In the trial, the defense tried to paint Hilton as a man desperate to pay off his debts. But the prosecution found a witness that painted a very different picture. A real estate agent named Marty Spiller.
We found her and she was a good witness for us.
Spiller said that around the same time, Hilton had been planning McKay's kidnapping, Hilton and Connie had come to her looking to buy a new house.
Crawford had been out there with his wife and they were making plans to buy a home, $300,000 home, which at the time was a good home.
Despite his recent bankruptcy, Hilton was looking to upgrade to a 3,200 square foot home on the shore of Lake Conroe, in a gated community with a country club and a golf course. Hilton later called the real estate agent to ask her how much it would cost to install a bar and an additional bathroom in the home. He told her he'd soon be coming into some money.
He was supposed to come into some money, and that money was going to come from the life of McKay Everett. He had it planned. And that's what makes this case so horrendous.
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On July 24, 1996, the sentencing phase ended and the jury left to deliberate about Hilton Crawford's crimes. FBI agent Lloyd Diaz says investigators were hopeful he would get the death penalty.
We did recover a body and he did confess to being involved. So yeah, we were pretty hopeful he was going to get the death penalty.
Then again, it would only take a single holdout harboring a doubt to spare Hilton Crawford.
Yeah, that's always, you know, you never know on that.
And Texas law required the jury to determine that Hilton posed a continuing threat to society if they were to give him the death penalty. This time, the jury deliberated for two hours and 20 minutes. They returned and read out their decision. Hilton Crawford was sentenced to death.
He was very calm. He sat there with his coat and tie, just like everyone else, thanked his attorneys and shook their hand and so forth.
At 57 years old, Hilton became the oldest person in Texas history to receive a death sentence. Author. Tanny Shannon doesn't think that Hilton deserved the death penalty.
I don't have any qualms about him being guilty, but as I understand the death penalty, I don't think he should have been executed. I don't think he was a continuing threat to society. I really think that the defense attorneys kind of dropped the ball on that one.
In the weeks that followed, Hilton moved for a new trial, claiming that Paulette's scream had tainted the jury. But Paulette makes no apologies for her behavior.
You know, I really don't care. I think every mother deserves a good scream when their child is missing or dead. People say, how did you feel? I didn't have any words to describe how I felt. That scream was the real me at that time.
And I screamed my heart out. And I feel so much better.
Ultimately, the district judge rejected Hilton's request for a new trial. Here's prosecutor Micah Duddle.
We did it right. Everybody did their business. It was not going to be a case that would get reversed on my watch, and it wasn't.
But even though he'd worked hard to give Hilton the death penalty, Duddle has never supported capital punishment personally.
I'm a lawyer. I follow the law. Personally, I think life without the possibility of parole really should be used instead of having the state kill people.
Paulette disagrees.
Do I still think that he should have been executed? Yes, I do. I think. anyone who harms children, we don't need them on this earth. This earth's too hard anyway without having that kind of a person down here.
The trial was over, but the consequences of Hilton's actions continued to reverberate.
It changed my life. It changed a lot of lives. Not necessarily for the better, but it changed lives. Why did Crawford think that he had the power to take that life? What gave him the right to do that?
Nothing did, obviously. It busted up a lot of families. It busted up a lot of things. Things were not ever going to be the same.
On the next and final episode of Ransom, Position of Trust, Hilton Crawford's final gamble, and Paulette's quest for McKay's legacy.
I was convinced that he was telling the truth. I had to be, I think, to follow through with it.
If you, or someone you know, has a problem with gambling, please reach out for help. You can call the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-GAMBLER or go to 1-800-GAMBLER-CHAT-DOT-ORG to connect to more resources.
For more information, including pictures, find us on social at The Ransom Podcast or visit our website, RansomPodcast.
com. We'll have new episodes every Wednesday and bonus episodes every Friday. Follow us now wherever you get your podcasts. And if you could leave a rating and review, we would really appreciate it. Ransom is researched and written by Ben Kebrick and hosted by me, Art Rascone.
Production and sound design by Ben Kebrick, Aaron Mason, and Trent Sell, who also did the mixing. Special thanks to Andrea Smartin, Kellyanne Halverson, Ryan Meeks, Amy Donaldson, Felix Bunnell, Josh Tilton, and Dave Cauley. Additional voice acting by Mickey Gomez. Main musical score composed by Allison Leighton Brown, co-created by Austin Miller. For Podcast One, executive producer Eli Dvorkin.
For Workhouse Media, executive producer Paul Anderson. And for KSL Podcast, executive producer Cheryl Worsley. Ransom is produced by KSL Podcasts in association with Podcast One and Workhouse Media.
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