Criminal - E. Jean

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

We visited E. Jean Carroll at her house in the woods to talk about her two trials against President Donald Trump. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, everybody, it's Andy Roddock, host of Serve podcast for your fix on all things tennis. The U.S. Open's coming up, and we're covering it on our show. Can someone knock off Algarazan Center? Can Cocoa Gauph win her second U.S. Open title? Can Fiatik win her second Grand Slam title in a row? Can Sabalanka break through and win her Grand Slam in 2025?

You can watch our coverage of the U.S. Open on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast, brought to you in part by Amazon Prime. This episode contains a description of sexual abuse. Please use discretion. A few weeks ago, I visited E. Jean Carroll at her house in the woods in New York. She offered to read me some of the messages she'd gotten online that day. Okay, here, here's a typical. You all end up in jail, hopefully.

Your day will come. Absolutely no evidence. Okay. You'll never see a dime. still making money off the grift, huh? And you are a liar. I'm surprised there's no how ugly I'm here. So it just keeps going.

I mean, it won't stop. Yeah, no, these are pretty, this is actually, this puts me in a good move because there's not even a mild threat here. E.Cene Carroll has been getting messages like this since June 2019. When she first publicly accused President Donald Trump of sexual assaulting her in her Bergdorf-Gudman dressing room in the 1990s. E. Jean was a well-known writer by then. She'd moved to New York from Montana in her late 30s

after she was assigned her first magazine story. In the 80s, she was hired to write for Saturday Night Live. And by the mid-90s, she was writing an advice column for Elle magazine called Ask E. Jean, which was so popular, it was turned into a cable television show. Have you always been good at giving advice? Here's the thing. I'm a cheerleader. So I figure out what the person wants me to tell them when they send the letter.

And then I just tell them, do it or don't do it. It's fairly simple. It's kind of a black and white thing. Yeah, but then the gray areas, when after I send the answer, then I worry about it for days afterwards, sometimes weeks afterwards, sometimes months afterwards. But you really got to give them a solid yes or no. You can't, you know, that's why my column was liked, because many advice columnists will enter into the very fascinating gray parts.

I'm not interested in the gray parts. I either want you to do it or not do it. Life is short. You've got to do it or not do it, right? What's life like for you? I mean, what are you feeling in the mid-90s in New York? Oh, I'm living at 90 miles an hour. I have like three outfits, have a pair of cowgirl boots, I have my jeans, I have, I'll show it to you, we'll walk over, I have it sitting there, I have it hanging on the mall.

It's a buckskin jacket. I had a black coroneroy shirt. I had a white dress shirt that I picked up off the street, and I thought I was fabulous. four o'clock in the morning, we'd be running down the boulevards. We'd be going to brosery for a cup of coffee at the end of the night. It was, magazines were at their peak. It was great. So let's talk about what happens when you run into Donald Trump in 1996.

Tell me about that day. Well, at the time I had a talk show based on the Askey Gene column in L. And it was called Ask Eugene. And it was on a network started by Roger Ailes, who went on to create Fox News. So I had a live talk show every day for one hour at 4 o'clock, and it re-ran every night at 11. So I am coming out of Birddorf, and I don't remember why I went to. there. It was after the show. It was around 637, and I come out, and Donald Trump is standing on the other side, out in the street, ready to come in the door, and he stopped me, and he came

on through. He said, hey, you're that advice columnist. And I said, hey, you're that real estate mogul. So he knew me because Donald Trump watches television. And then so he asked me for advice on buying a present for a girl. And I thought, oh, boy. What did he, would he say I need to buy? I mean, do you remember what he said to you? Yeah, he said, I have to buy a present for a girl. Come advise me.

What could be better? I was, you know, I could have dined out at Elaine's, you know, for five nights in a row on a story like that. So, of course. I said, yeah, let's, yeah. And what happened next? Well, I suggested to get her a handbag. He didn't like that idea. And the handbags at Bergdorf's...

I think your listeners probably know Bergdorff. It's a seven-story building. It used to be a home of the Bergdorf Goodman family, and it's a luxury specialty store. So when I said, how about a handbag? We're looking at $6,000 and $8,000 handbags in the 1990. Beautiful works of art. But he wasn't interested in that.

And then I suggested a hat, but, you know, he really wasn't. And then he suggested lingerie. And I just thought the story was getting better and better. So, of course, we took the escalator up. And we went to the lingerie department. There was nobody on the floor because it's 637. And he snatched up a body suit that was on the counter. He picked it up.

And he held it up, and he said, go put this on. I said, do you put it on? What are you kidding? And he said, no, no, no, you're in shape, go put it on? I said, no, you put it on. And at the time, it was very light, very funny, very joshing. It couldn't have been better. I had written a sketch, I was a writer at Saturday Night Live,

I had written a sketch somewhat similar. So I'm thinking, this is hilarious. What was the sketch for Saturday Night Live? Oh, William Shatner, standing in front of the mirror in his underwear falling in love with himself. Nor done is standing off, putting lipstick on, belittling him as he's telling himself, don't ever die, and things like that. So the sketch was somewhat similar, a guy in underwear standing in front of a mirror. So I pictured him putting this bodysuit on over his pants, which to me would have been hilarious. So he said, after you, he said, let's go put this on.

He said, after you. And I just walked in the dressing room, not thinking. Was he funny? He was like. He was like, let's go put this on. And then he did the big gesture after you, ma'am. you know everything overdone and I did

and my intention of course was just to see what happened next which was him putting those past but now the door slammed behind me and he shoved me up against the wall and hit my head hit my head very bad that's how fast it was I walked in laughing

and that was it you had no time to say anything I laughed to try to get the situation in hand No, it happened so quickly There was no words I couldn't say words

I could laugh to think To, you know Kill any eroticism that was in him But when it starts It's a fight It's a fight And he was stronger than you Well I weighed 110

I weighed 120 at the time He weighed about 220 at the time He was 6, 2.5, 6.2.5 six, three. I was five, nine in my stocking feet, but I was wearing four-inch heels, so I was six-one. So he had 100 pounds on me, but at least I was tall enough. So it was, once all that weight comes against you, once his whole weight came against me, against my chest, it was rough. But I got out.

How'd you get out? First of all, I was stamping, but second of all, I got my knee wedged up so I could push him out and off. That's all it took. I just needed something. And for some reason, I saw had my handbag in my hand. I didn't. And I got out. Did he say anything when you walked out of the dressing room?

Not that I recall. He could have. I don't. He could have. I remember clearly his bro. breathing right next to my face. That I remember. You know?

I can remember that. What did you do when you got outside? I called my friend. What did you say? I said, you're not going to believe this. Were you still laughing? Oh, she told me, I don't think this is funny, Eugene. So I guess I was.

The friend she called was Lisa Bernbach, who was also a well-known writer. So my psychiatrist, she has a theory of why I called Lisa Birnbach, because it was an odd person for me to call. It would be just odd for me to call Lisa because she wasn't like my best friend at the time, but she was the funniest person I knew. I mean, nobody's funnier than Lisa Birnbach. She wrote the preppy handbook.

So apparently I was thinking, if Lisa laughs, it's not so bad. What did you say to her? I said, you're not going to believe what. happen. And Lisa also said, this is from her court transcript, he pulled down my tights. He pulled down my tights.

Apparently, I couldn't get over the fact that he pulled down my tights. And then, unfortunately, Lisa said the words that shocked me, she said, he raped E. Jean. She was feeding her kids dinner.

She had to leave the room because she didn't want to use the word in front of them. They didn't know what meant, but she didn't want to, and it was, it was, I couldn't process it. And, um, even though at the time, I thought I'd been killed in that dressing room. I didn't know what had, I thought I'd died in that dressing room. I had sort of that feeling. Um, but Lisa was going to make everything all right. I guess, you know, Lisa was going to make, because we're going to laugh about this. And then I'll go to lanes and I'll, you know, so no, she says, we're going to got to go to the police, and, oh, well, that was too much.

I said, no. She said, come to my house, I'll give you dinner. I told her, no, I just wanted to go home. So I did. So I went home. And I went to work the next day. And that was the only conversation you had about pressing charges was when Lisa brought it up. You didn't wake up the next morning and think.

No, Lisa and I agreed at the end of the phone call. never going to speak of this again to anybody this is it it's over or this is not to ever be spoken of again of course the next day or possibly the next day i'm not sure but i saw carroll martin one of my very good friends she also had a tv show at the same network and that was it i just saw carroll and i had to tell carol then i had to say you know you're not going to believe it so she said let's go to my house because she lived 10 minutes away. We sat in her kitchen like you and I are sitting here in my kitchen and I told her what happened. Well, Carol said, do not go to the police because he has two of the lawyers and he'll bury you.

That's what Carol said. It was, listen, it's the same today as it was then. Yes, I could have gone to the police, but I would have lost my job. Roger Ailes would have fired me on the spot. This is why women don't come forward against a powerful man. You lose your job, and he will retaliate. How were you doing in those weeks immediately after? Was it still, you know, were you still just in shock?

Or did you find that you were moving forward in some ways, but other parts of you weren't? Well, I thought I was getting along fine. No, I was saying, I put it behind it. I'm not a woman who, like, dwells. So I thought I was doing that. So that's what I thought I was doing. But, you know, but you were never intimate with anyone after that again. Well, see, there's that.

Did it all change for you? I mean, you were moving on, and you were, but in a deeper level, was that, Could you see that that was kind of shut down now? I didn't see it at the time. No, any time an attractive available man would look at me. I couldn't look back. I'd turn my eyes down. I wouldn't smile.

I wouldn't do anything. Did you try to go on date? Well, the dog would have objected. The dog would say no man's coming in here. Did you try, though, to date? No. It's not fun. I started two dating sites, if that has anything to do it.

Yeah, I mean, you weren't dating, but at the same time you were... I was in there doing the stuff. I started Greatboyfriends.com, where women recommended their ex-boyfriends at each other. So I was psychologically pulling strings behind my own back of getting me out there again, but no. I mean, you wrote a book about finding the right guy. Echin's book was called Mr. Wright, Right Now, Man Catching Made Easy. It was published in 2004.

Years later, Eugene spoke to a psychologist about what had happened to her. She realized she blamed herself. When she saw Donald Trump come into Bergdorf-Gudman, she thought he was attractive. She'd flirted with him. She told the psychologist, quote, I can feel the shutdown. It's like when shopkeepers pull down the metal grate to secure the store. I can feel it when it happens.

When you're interested in someone, you communicate it in a million little physical ways. And when you like them, you pursue them. I haven't done that since then. I shut it down. You know, it'd be nice for me to call it my fella and say, come over, let's make dinner together. And then we'd watch him Netflix. Then we'd make out like crazy.

But no, I don't have that. So, yeah, I lost a lot. When you would hear about him, Donald Trump, and the new, you know, coming up for whatever he was doing, in those years after, what would it do to you when you would hear his name? I got really good at, well, luckily, oddly, oddly enough, it's sort of exposure therapy with Donald Trump because you see him so much. You either have to learn to deal with it or your life is shattered, right? So I learned very quickly to bat it away, bat it away.

when and why after all those years did you decide to come forward and go public with what had happened to you oh it was a Weinstein story hitting the front page of the new york times i thought well my god yeah okay all right let's do it okay and then i thought i've been silent i'm 75 june get the fuck over it and come forward So that was it. Of course, I couldn't really have foreseen all the damage. But even at the time, I thought, okay, I'll just pay the price. I've got to do it. I'm Phoebe Judge.

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customers schedule their own appointments. Check out Squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code, Criminal, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Once E. Jean Carroll decided to talk about what happened, she said she sat down at her kitchen table and wrote everything down in one sitting. Her story was published as an essay in New York Magazine in June 2019. Eugen was on the cover, too, photographed wearing the same wool Donna Karen coat dress she remembers wearing that day in 1996.

She still had it at the back of her closet. I was in New York City because when it came out, people thought it'd be best if I'd be in New York. Why? For press or for security? We weren't talking about security then. It never occurred to us. New York Magazine wanted me available. So I was aware there was a buzz coming on, and I didn't really know anything until I got back to the little tiny cheap hotel I was staying out on 10th Avenue, opened up my computer. And I just saw a slut, skank, lying bitch, you know. And so then I went to my Ask Eugene email because I always know I will get something nice.

And there was something nice, you go, girl. And then I opened up the third one, and it was, I stared at it. And I thought I was going to get hit with a bullet at that minute. it was a threat to kill me and I thought when you get a threat to kill you you look around there was no curtain over the one and I like docked because I thought I was going to get shot that's what it's like getting into death

because you feel you read the threat and you think it's happening and then I got several that night so my life had was that I used to know it was over and the new life began Donald Trump denied E. Jean's story. He said that he had never met her, that he didn't know her, even though there was a photo of the two of them together at a party in the 80s.

And he said, I made it up to sell books, and so that's what happened. You knew he would react, though. I thought he would say it was consensual. Soon after E. Jean's story was published, Lisa Bernbach and Carol Martin both confirmed to the New York Times that E. Jean had told them the same story over 20 years ago. Lisa said she thought E. Jean might have called her first because Lisa had just written a magazine article about Donald Trump.

She remembered they fought about what E. Jean should do next. When Lisa told her to go to the police, she said E. Jean said, quote, it was 15 minutes of my life. It's over. Don't ever tell anybody. I just had to tell you. Carol Martin remembered sitting in her kitchen with E. Jean.

And she remembered that she told her, quote, I wouldn't tell anybody this. Donald Trump kept denying anything it happened. He repeated that he didn't know who E. Jean was. And in one interview, he said, quote, She's not my type. Do you think if you were 35, he would have said, she's not my type? Was it something about the fact that you were 75?

And, you know, that... Well, of course, everything to do with it because I was on the cover of New York magazine with no makeup. From the artistic point of view, it was brilliant. Here she is, no makeup, she's telling the truth. This is a woman. This is an old... So what it was was a shriveled crone on the cover.

After her essay came out, Eugen was at a party and ran into the lawyer and activist George Conway. They talked about Donald Trump's comments about her. She said it was during that conversation that she realized she could sue Trump for defamation. So in November 2019, she did. But the case was stalled for years. And then, in November 22,

a new law went into effect in New York State called the Adult Survivors Act. What is the Adult Survivors Act? It is a brilliant idea which is now happening in many states across the country where it opens a window for victims of sexual assault to make a complaint in civil court against their abuser. In normal, the statute of limitations usually is shut down in most states after five or six or seven years. But in New York, they opened it up, and we sued him at, I think, two minutes after 12 o'clock on the day it became legal to do it. E. Jean filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump for battery and, again, for defamation.

Based on more comments he had made about her in 2022, He'd repeated that her story was a lie and that she was not his type. This time, E. Jean didn't have to wait. A trial was scheduled for the spring of 2023. She started preparing, and she says her legal team scheduled a mock trial. Lawyers like to present their arguments to people who could be on a jury to find out how their arguments are working. E. Jean says they selected three different juries for the mock jury.

trial, trying their best to reflect the New York court's jury pool. And I did not appear. What they had was tapes from me from my deposition, all three juries agreed that, yes, a man and a woman could end up in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman in 1996, and yes, something sexual could have happened in a Bergdorf dressing room of 1996. And yes, of course, one of those people was Donald Trump and the other was Eugene Carroll. Yes, what they didn't agree on was they thought I wanted it because I was so ugly and so old that there was no way in hell Donald Trump ever attacked me.

Ejean was worried that might happen. She said she'd even talk to her lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, about it. I had suggested to them. I don't like the way I look because I was getting constant. much of my social media feed concerned how ugly I was so what we did is

I had said let me show you some clips from the old Ask You Gene show from 1996 let's do my hair like this and they said Robby said no forget it well just show pictures of you we don't need it then the mock jury happened first thing Robbie said was cut your hair so go back to how you looked in 1990 Yeah, so this is the look I had in 1996, and then we did the color I did in 96, and the makeup, and I wore clothes exactly that I wore in 1996.

The trial started in April of 2003. On the second day, Eugen was called to the stand, and she told her story to a jury for the first time. She told them she flirted with Donald Trump. She said, quote, I didn't picture anything. about what was about to happen. That open door has plagued me for years, because I just walked into it. She told them that inside the dressing room, Donald Trump forcibly penetrated her with his fingers and his penis.

One of Donald Trump's lawyers, Joseph Takapina, cross-examined E. Jean for hours. He asked repeatedly about the details she couldn't remember clearly, like whether Bergdorf-Gudman had a revolving door. He spent a lot of time asking her why she didn't scream. She was in a department store, not the middle of nowhere. Why didn't she cry out for help?

He brought up the fact that instead, she laughed. She told him she wished she had screamed, so more people would believe her. It's such an old argument that women have to behave one way, and never. There's the perfect victim.

She always goes to the police, she always screams, she never laughs afterwards, she never goes to a party, she never smiles. She may go to work, I don't know, but usually she just sits home depressed because she's been attacked. That's the perfect victim. How do you not keep your cool in that type of an environment where you're being asked these questions, and you want to say Fuck you! Yeah, how do you... But you know, you can't.

No, you can't. No, no, I kept my cool because I knew at that point Tocopina was really getting on my nerves. Where I lost it was when my own attorney, Mike Perrara, having made it through the day and a half of doing my direct testimony,

he asked me, was glad that I came forward, and that's all it took, and I just, that was at the time. tears like were exploding behind my eyes. When somebody handled me gently, that was a moment where my anger against Trump just came pouring down my face. E. Jean was prepared for Donald Trump's lawyers to ask her personal questions. In a deposition before the trial, she says another one of his lawyers asked her how many people she'd slept with. She said eight. Then she was asked to list them. The list ended with her second

husband, the anchorman, John Johnson. She said no one talked to her about the ninth man, Donald Trump. Lisa Bernbach and Carol Martin both testified during the trial and confirmed E. Jean's story. Donald Trump never appeared in court, but he gave a taped deposition. During the nearly hour-long video played in court, Trump called E. Jean a nut job, a whack job, and mentally sick. He denied the story again and said again that she was not his type. Well, when the jury went to deliberate, how are you feeling? Were you feeling confident?

When the jury went out, are you insane? No, we had six men and three women. No, I was a wreck. The jury deliberated for just under three hours. They found Donald Trump responsible for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, but they rejected her claim that he raped her. Under New York law at the time, rape was defined as non-consensual vaginal penetration by a penis. The jury did not agree that that had happened. But they did believe Donald Trump had forced sexual contact without E.G.

the jury also found him liable for defamation and awarded E. Jean $5 million. Trump called the verdict a disgrace. The next day during a CNN presidential town hall, he denied the story again. He called the case fake news, and he called E. Jean a whack job. He did it in front of a huge crowd and made the audience laugh. So we sued him again. Absolutely. E. Jean amended her original defamation lawsuit, the one she had filed in 2019, to include his comments from the town hall.

The trial began in January 2024. This time, Donald Trump showed up. So what about that in the second trial, the moment that you see him for the first time in the courtroom? What was it like? Well, while I was preparing for trial, I lost my ability to speak, so that was the thing. What, tell me about the... I did not want to face him in court.

I didn't want to do it. And I kept saying, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, then we went for a prep session. I couldn't talk. E. Jean says in the years since she made her story public, the death threats never stopped. She says she has sent emails with pictures of women who had been violently killed.

One picture, she remembers, was from a car accident. Another looked like it was taken from a crime scene, and the woman had been murdered. E. Jean's team organized a meeting with a psychologist. So I had to talk to Dr. Leslie Liuboats over the Zoom, and I said the problem was I couldn't talk. And pretty soon she says, now you don't have to say anything about it,

but just give me an example. of a threat that you can't talk about. So before I note, I'm reading the threat to her, and then she solved the problem. I don't have to say how I feel about the threat. Just tell what's happening in my body. That's all I had to do. And that's...

Then I could talk. I can't breathe. That could be my answer. I can't breathe. That's it. I can't get my breath. My heart is beating too fast. That's, that's, and that's what I did.

The first day, the attorneys were having a sidebar with Judge Kaplan, and I'm sitting at the plaintiff's table, and he is sitting at the defendant's table, which is right behind it. So when nobody was there, I turned all the way around in my seat, all the way around, and lanced him. in the eye. This is just to give myself courage, okay? Just to give me courage.

And he jerked and looked back at me. I got his attention. And then I held his eye, and he held my eye, and then I told him what I wanted to tell him. And he got it. He got it. What did you tell him? I'm not telling you.

I told him, and I looked right in his eye, and he knew what I was saying to him. and then I turned back around. So after I had forced myself to do that, I was all full of beans, let me tell you, for the rest of the trial. And I looked at him the whole time I was given testimony. And he never looked. Anytime our eyes would cross, he would look away.

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Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. One day, Donald Trump posted 40 times on truth social about eugen care, in less than an hour. He called the case a witch hunt and accused E. Jean of changing her story. When he testified in court, three days later, he was on the stand for less than five minutes.

He was asked if he stood by his video deposition from the previous trial where he called E. Jean a whack job and sick. He answered, quote, 100%. E. Jean stayed in New York City during the trial. One day, the people taking care of her dogs at home told her they noticed an unfamiliar car driving up and down her street

and parking at the end of her driveway. When she testified, she told the jury about her first death threat the night her essay was published in June 2019. She said she was so afraid she was about to be shot in her hotel room that she tried to hide and tried to hang her clothes across the windows. Before the verdict was announced to the court, E. Jean heard the judge ask the jury four person a question. She said he asked, quote, the M that appears next to various numbers, what does it mean?

You want a kind of a lot of money. Yeah, 83.3 million. But it's more now because of been getting interest. Did you ever imagine it was going to be that much money? Look at me. Do you see? don't even like stuff. I don't like stuff. I don't think about money. I don't imagine money. I never for a minute thought, oh, I'm going to get a bunch of money. Can you tell? We are drinking out of salsa jars. I don't care. Oh, I got to go buy some pretty glasses. E. Jean hasn't gotten any of the money yet. She won't until the appeals process is over.

Trump appealed both verdicts. But she said that she plans to donate the money. She has a running list of ideas. One is to start a fund supporting victims of sexual assault. Right after we finished our interview, E. Jean gave me a tour of her house. She's lived alone there for years, plus her two dogs. She showed me her bedroom, which is right off of the kitchen. In it, there's a twin bed, and next to the bed, there's a shotgun. Oh, it really is right next to your bed. Well, of course it is. Wow.

Do you practice? No. I mean, I guess you know what you have to do. I used to do it. I used to practice with a nice little revolver because that I could handle a high, you know. But this one, I don't. This is locked. This is loaded.

All I have to do is push off the safety and shoot in the general direction. You know what? They can come, they can come and shoot me. I don't care. I'm ready to. don't care. Because they're not going to get far. I mean, you might not care that they shoot you, but they're still, how do you feel about them coming to shoot you? Well, they would be coming because of Donald Trump. He has an enormous impact on his followers. So when

he says, she's a liar, you better keep your wits about you. That's all. In 23, Donald Trump's lawyers went to court to try to get a retrial against E. Jean. A judge rejected their motion, and he added a comment about the jury's original verdict. Quote, the finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was raped does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump raped her, as many people commonly understand. Indeed, as the evidence makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump, in fact, did exactly that. In January of 2024, the governor of New York changed the state's law

to expand the legal definition of rape and mentioned Eugen's case the day she did it. And now the definition of rape includes what Trump did to me in the dressing room. So that is a good... We were way behind the times there. So that's been fixed. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me.

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Cunane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this iscriminal.com. And you can sign up for a newsletter at this iscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus.

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