Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Killer Brothers Pt. 2
Episode Date: May 4, 2023Hitmen need a certain level of detachment to do their job. They typically think of their victims as targets, not people. So when brothers Steve and Robert Homick were hired to kill Gerald and Vera Woo...dman, their inability to be cool, calm, and collected led to a series of mistakes and, ultimately, their capture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.
This episode includes discussions of gun violence and murder.
Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.
In 1985, Vera and Gerald Woodman were fatally shot in their apartment garage.
Leading up to their deaths, the couple was locked in a battle with their two sons,
Neil and Stewart, over the family business.
It got so ugly that by the end of it, the brothers didn't really seem to consider Vera and Gerald.
their parents anymore. They were competition, and their dad always taught them that when it came to
business, competition should be eliminated. So Neil and Stewart hired two hitmen, also brothers,
to do their dirty work. These brothers were even colder and more violent than Neil and Stewart,
but like the younger Woodmans, they also saw murder as a business decision. And business was booming.
But when all said and done, we wonder, when it comes to family, is it possible to keep emotion out of our decisions?
Will it ever be just about business?
Hi, listeners, it's Greg.
You're listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast.
I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa.
Hey, everyone.
This is the second episode in our new special series, Serial Killers, Hit Ben.
These episodes explore the twisted world of contractual.
homicide, both the people who kill and those who hire them.
This time, we're continuing our story about a pair of brothers in Los Angeles,
who took a hit out on their own parents.
Today we'll see how the authorities piece the drama together.
And, of course, we'll get to know the men hired for the actual murder.
We've got all that and more coming up.
Stay with us.
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mist collection only at Sephora. Let's start in September 1985. As a reminder, Neil and Stuart
Woodman had determined the best night to kill their parents was on Yom Kippur. That's when Vera and Gerald would
coming back from a family dinner together. In the weeks leading up to this night, Steve and Robert
Hommick, the brothers hired for the hit, had been busy laying groundwork. They'd brought in two
other guys to help, Michael Dominguez and Anthony Majoy. We don't know much about these men. All we can
say is that Michael lived in Las Vegas and had known Steve for a really long time. Anthony was L.A. based.
So Steve had the guys. Now he needed the gear. At some point, Steve brought three walkie-talkies
to a tech shop in Las Vegas and made sure they were working.
One of them was a dud.
Steve exchanged that one.
The day before the murders, he secured ammo for a 38-caliber pistol
and then boarded a plane with Michael Dominguez.
When Steve and Michael landed, they met Steve's brother Robert.
The three then went to the gated Bel Air community
where Vera and Gerald would be observing Yom Kippur the following night.
The homics probably wanted to make sure their walkie-talkies could transmit
between their targets Brentwood apartment and their planned lookout posts.
That's when they found a hiccup.
One of the three walkie-talkies wasn't working at all, and the two others were on the fritz.
When Steve called his guy in Las Vegas to complain, he was directed to get a battery at a spot in West Los Angeles.
Robert picked up the battery, but apparently it didn't do the trick.
Instead of just buying new equipment, Steve flew back to Las Vegas that day to visit his tech shop.
After some back and forth, Steve decided to just make do with the two walkies that were kind of working.
After all, Yom Kippur was tomorrow.
He was working on a deadline.
The next day, September 25th, he was Burbank bound again.
Just hours before the planned hit, Michael and Robert picked Steve up at the airport.
The group went to the mountains again to test the walkie-talkies.
Eventually, it started getting dark.
That's when Steve and Michael drove to Vera and DeViro and.
Gerald's place. Their car was loaded up by this point with all their tools, walkies, two guns,
and a bolt cutter. Michael rang the doorbell, checking if they were home. They weren't. Steve looked
around the complex for any sign of them. Nothing. It was good news. Things were going according to
plan. But a second hiccup happened around 6.30 p.m. While Michael and Steve were lurking around
the older Woodman's place, Robert circled the block, and got into a car accident with
one of Vera and Gerald's neighbors.
The neighbor and Robert agreed to pull over and swap insurance information.
But Robert bailed.
Now, remember, the younger Woodman specifically asked Steve not to involve his brother.
They thought Robert was a klutz and a car accident.
Well, it made it hard for Steve to disagree.
This was not the kind of update they were supposed to use the walkies for.
So when Robert radioed him, Steve was probably upset.
Steve and Michael went to find Robert, who was with Anthony Majoy.
The two brothers exchanged a few words, probably he did ones.
Despite the setback, Steve decided to push forward.
At this point, there's some conflicting information about how everything went down.
But we can assume that Stephen Robert got into Steve's car
and headed toward the older Woodman's while Anthony and Michael acted as lookouts.
Michael was dropped off at a nearby bus stop with a walkie and told to watch for an elderly couple
driving a beige Mercedes.
Sometime around 10 p.m., Michael spotted the Mercedes.
He called it in.
Vera and Gerald were on their way.
The Hommick brothers, clad in all black and wearing hoods, went to the older woodman's building.
There, they cut their way through one of the underground garage gates with a pair of bolt cutters.
They crept into the darkness, waiting as the Mercedes entered and pulled into a parking spot.
Once the vehicle stopped, the car doors opened.
Steve pounced on the driver, Gerald, shooting him twice.
Vera screamed, but before she could flee, Steve shot her three times.
She slumped over, falling halfway out of the car.
A plate of leftover fish from dinner was still on her lap.
Then the brothers ran.
They raced out of the garage, bouncing over the brick wall at the edge of the complex,
into the alley of the building beside it,
where at least one of them was seen by a neighbor,
Roger Backman.
Roger called out,
while the brothers quickly disappeared
into the darkness.
After finding Vera and Gerald Woodman
dead in their garage,
investigators interviewed family members
about who might have wanted to hurt them.
Okay, I'll just cut to the chase here.
It didn't take them long to think
Neil and Stuart Woodman had something to do with it.
For one, authorities found out about two things pretty fast.
One, the nasty family feud.
and two, that Neil and Stewart's company had a life insurance policy on Vera.
Police asked to meet with the brothers, but Neil and Stewart weren't exactly in a rush.
Their secretary scheduled the meeting for a few days out, and when they did meet, the brothers
brought their criminal attorney along.
Younger Woodmans didn't even ask questions about the murder during the meeting,
like about how their parents died or what police thought happened.
They had alibis, though.
a Yom Kippur gathering at the time of the murders.
So at least at the moment, police weren't quite sure what happened.
All right, we know what happened that night, though.
We also know why, but we still don't know a lot about the Homic brothers.
And in order to really understand how Vera and Gerald ended up murdered in their parking garage,
we should know the men who killed them.
The Homics came from Ohio.
Steve was outgoing, athletic, a real star.
He even played professional baseball at one point, the Philadelphia Phillies for a year, and then the Detroit Tigers for two.
Robert, on the other hand, was quieter and really followed Steve's lead.
Some friends of the brothers have said Steve leaned into this dynamic and would order Robert around.
Steve moved to California in 1965 after getting released from Detroit.
By the 1970s, he was living with his wife, Dolores, in California.
Robert followed his big brother there at some point, and even moved in with him.
with the couple for a bit.
As for the brothers careers,
Steve joined the LAPD,
and Robert passed the bar and went into law.
It's not clear exactly what went wrong.
Robert ultimately decided not to practice law,
and Steve, well, he got fired from the force
only four months after finishing his training,
something about being too violent towards suspects.
We're going to focus on just Steve now,
because he's the guy,
the mentor of that,
Robert would follow to the ends of the earth. At least, that's how it seems. Steve eventually moved to
Las Vegas and found work at the MGM Casino. That's where he met Joey Gambino and then the Woodman
brothers. This might be a good time to note. Steve had a crew in Las Vegas, a lot of connections. He
made friends at the casinos, but he was also a bit of a social butterfly playing racquetball at a
facility where bookies famously hung out and cozying up to cops because of their shared
background in law enforcement. They all became his network, some of whom gave him information or
helped him with crimes like robberies or his burgeoning cocaine dealing career. Basically, Steve
seemed to have a lot of people to turn to if he got in trouble. Maybe that made him feel like he
could get away with anything, like murder. The day after he shot and killed Vera and Gerald Woodman
in their apartment garage, he was on a flight to Vegas with Michael Dominguez. Back in Nevada, Steve
returned to his current gig, which was working security at a jewelry store called Tower of Jewels.
Let's break this down for a minute. He's just done this hit job where he got to be the leader
in charge of an operation. Now he's back to the grind at his security job, waiting for the people
who hired him for the hit to pay up. And this is just speculation, but maybe he's wondering if
that makes sense. If he's capable of pulling off a job like this, why should he have to just wait
around. Does he actually need people like Neil and Stewart? They're getting a bigger payout than
him anyway, and he did all the grunt work. So maybe he was thinking, what if I just cut out
the middleman? Coming up, Steve hires himself for a hit. Listeners, in honor of May being
missing an unidentified person's awareness month, Parcast is presenting a new collection of
captivating stories you do not want to miss.
On disappearances, Sarah Turney examines the disturbing crimes linked to the highway of tears and the Bethesda home for girls.
Plus, she welcomes the founders of the Black and Missing Foundation for a special discussion.
Catch these episodes starting May 4th.
Then, on Unsolved Murders, discover three no-body homicide cases rife with cons, conspiracies, and conflicting statements.
The Unsolved Murders special The Missing Dead starts May 6th.
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obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. And now back to the story. Tower of Jewels where Steve
Hamek worked made custom jewelry and had a lot of regular wealthy clients like Bobby Jean Tipton.
50-year-old Bobby Jean was the owner of an oil company. It was a family business, so she'd inherited
the whole thing, and it was really lucrative.
Her husband David did pretty well, too.
He was a real estate broker.
A lot of the jewelry she owned were family heirlooms,
about 50 to 200 pieces worth about $250,000.
She kept these in a safe at home and came into Tower of Jewels
to have items polished and repaired.
At least once she had them reappraised.
In that case, they were kept at the store for two months
while the manager, Timothy Kat, worked on a figure.
Steve Hamek noticed this.
He first noticed it before Vera and Gerald's murders, but saw it happen afterwards, too.
He kept asking Kat, whose jewels they were, how much they were worth.
He did this like five or six times.
Cat would point out certain items like a yellow sapphire bulgarie piece worth 10 grand, or a diamond worth 30.
Seems like the more Steve learned, the more he saw dollar signs.
Exactly, dollar signs, not human beings.
Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode.
Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show.
Thanks, Greg. I'm kind of stating the obvious with this, but hit men are unlike other killers.
It's a job, so theoretically emotion shouldn't come into the equation when they're planning or carrying out a hit.
They often approach murder in a pragmatic, clinical way.
Birmingham City University did a study in 2015.
into the minds of hitmen, and they found proof of what we already might have suspected.
Contract killers need a detached mindset to succeed in their job.
They're excellent at convincing themselves their victim is a target, not a person.
I say this to emphasize that in all likelihood, Steve didn't see Bobby Jean Tipton as a human woman.
She was a way to get paid.
As October became November, Steve seemed to be watching the Tipton's.
Their phone number was written in the same notebook he'd used for surveilling Vera and Gerald Woodman.
He'd also stopped working at Tower of Jules by this point.
We don't know why, but to venture a guess, he didn't need the job.
He was about to get a score.
I do want to jump in with a clarification.
As far as we know, Steve Hommick wasn't a career hitman.
And it seemed like he wasn't necessarily trying to start a new business or anything.
He's more of what criminologists call a novice assassin, someone who carries out of,
a hit to solve a problem or get a payday. Now, we don't have a solid play-by-play of what Steve did next,
but based on witnesses and investigator reports, we can sort of piece things together. For simplicity's
sake, we'll defer to Steve's own words when we can. These were heard secondhand and later
recorded in a court document. Quotes have been edited for expletives. With that in mind, let's jump to
December 11th at the Tipton home. Around 8.45 a.m., David Tipton left,
for work. His wife, Bobby Jean, agreed to meet him for lunch. Sometime, likely around 10.30 a.m.,
Steve arrived at the tipped-in home. He probably just knocked. There's a big Christmas
wreath on the door covering up the peephole, and a later investigation didn't show forced entry.
Chances are, Bobby Jean opened the door right up. She might have been expecting her maid
Marie Bullock around that time anyway. But what she got was Steve. As Steve said,
I ransacked that house.
She didn't have any money in the safe.
I shot her in the head.
I offed her in the head.
I dusted her.
Wasted her.
At some point, the Tipton's maid, Marie got to the house.
We're not sure if she got there while Bobby Jean was alive
or arrived to witness the horrific aftermath.
Regardless, once she was inside, Steve shot her three times.
And then the doorbell rang again,
and this one really threw Steve off.
Whoever it was, he wasn't expecting them.
Now, maybe the logical thing to do is hide, be quiet, something like that,
because you'd want whoever's outside to think no one's home,
but instead, Steve ran to the front door and opened it.
A man named James Myers stood on the steps.
He was there to deliver meat to Bobby Jean.
His ice truck was in the driveway, engine still on,
like he hadn't expected this delivery to take long.
Let's go to Steve again.
He said that he...
Snatched him, yanked him inside the house, and dusted him.
While Steve was murdering three people, David Tipton was at work.
He called his wife around 1145 to see where they wanted to meet for lunch, but she didn't answer.
He assumed she'd made other plans.
He headed home around lunch anyway, a little after 1 p.m.
His house was close to his office about 10 minutes away.
He was just dashing back to check the mail.
There were some things that gave him pause right away.
The still-running meat delivery truck in the driveway,
the unlocked front door,
and inside the body of James Myers,
the delivery man by the bedroom.
David called the police before he'd even gotten to look around.
When he did, he noticed something else.
Two bodies in the main bedroom,
Marie and his wife.
Beyond the bodies, the safe in the closet was open.
The floor was covered with empty jewelry boxes.
Steve got a big haul from the Tipton's.
He seemed to wait a few weeks for things to cool off, though.
Then, as 1985 ended, and the bright new horizon of 1986 began,
Steve paid his old co-worker Timothy Kat a visit.
The guy who managed Tower of Jewels where Steve used to do security.
Kat had cleaned and stored the Tipton's jewelry before,
so he was familiar with a lot of their pieces, like the Tipton's yellow bulgarie sapphire.
We mentioned this piece earlier. Kat had told Steve a while back that it was worth $10,000.
But at this point, he said that it was only worth about a grand.
Kat had a good justification for this change.
If a bulgarie is ever disassembled and sold for parts, it's no longer technically a bulgarie.
But he didn't actually get to explain this to Steve.
Right, because as soon as he heard the take was low,
less than expected, Steve threw a fit, saying he was going to kill Kat's girlfriend, threatening
Kat too, if he told anyone he was there.
As you've probably figured out by now, Steve wasn't the most calm, cool, and collected
guy. He was scary, which could be why Kat didn't go to the authorities right away.
Even after Steve met with him again, getting more of the Tipton's jewelry appraised,
and not even after Steve told Kat about the murders.
During at least one of these meetings, Kat noted that Steve seemed desperate, saying he had no money.
It seemed like reselling the jewelry wasn't going too well.
A lot of it was worth less than he thought.
That could be why he left Las Vegas to look for some other options.
He went to Los Angeles at the end of January, 1986, and met up with Robert.
The brothers took the jewelry around L.A. and Orange County.
During this trip, Steve met up with Kat again.
He also connected with Anthony Majoy, the other lookout in the older Woodman's murders.
We know all this because the police knew all this.
By this point, they were watching Steve Hamek.
They've been watching him for a while now.
Coming up, The Unravelling.
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And now back to the story.
Let's check back in with the LAPD's investigation into Vera and Gerald Woodman's murder.
As a reminder, shortly after the older Woodman's were killed,
killed, investigators zeroed in on their sons, Neil and Stuart.
But the one thing that didn't really seem to fit was their alibi.
The brothers were at a large family gathering when their parents were killed.
But when October 1985 came around, a new lead cleared things up.
Two retired LAPD officers came forward with information about the murders, Gene Scherer and John O'Grady.
They were the ones hired to work Stewart's sons bar mitzvah a few months earlier.
We touched on it really briefly in part one, but basically, they were told to make sure Vera and Gerald didn't get in.
Officer Scherer and O'Grady heard about the murders, and they'd also gotten wind of the $50,000 reward the Woodman family had recently offered up for the information.
They told police about the men who oversaw them at the bar mitzvah, Steve Hamek and his brother Robert.
Remember, Steve told these guys to carry guns and that if Vera and Gerald showed up to, quote, waste them.
It's safe to say that the LAPD looked into Steve after that and found out he had a record in Las Vegas.
Among the charges, fraud, check cashing, and aggravated assault.
And the FBI was investigating him for drug trafficking.
But it wasn't just Steve they were interested in.
Robert was on their radar too.
And they noticed that earlier that month, an LAPD officer took a hit-and-run report from Robert about a car accident on September 25th.
In case you forgot, Robert got into a small accident with one of the Woodman's neighbors on the night that they were killed.
The guy's name was Richard Altman. Altman and Robert agreed to exchange information, but Robert drove off.
That could have been the end of it, but apparently Robert wanted Altman to pay for the damages,
because he showed up at the guy's place a few days later and accused him of fleeing the scene.
Robert then demanded $300 and said he'd file a hit-and-run report, which he ended up doing.
It's just all Robert was doing was calling attention to himself.
He literally went out of his way to talk to the police about an incident that put him at the scene of the crime.
Now, investigators were not only aware of the homics, but they were pretty sure the brothers had something to do with the older Woodman's deaths.
Then, in January 1986, an airline passenger identified Steve and Michael Dominguez as being on their September 24th flight, Las Vegas to Burbank, the day before the murders.
Then, police found out Manchester products had cut a check to Steve Hamek for $28,000.
All this to say, investigators had enough intel to tap Steve's phone lines.
There were a lot of calls in January between associates like Dominguez and between sales.
Steve and his family, his wife Dolores, his older brother William, his daughter, Rina.
For L.A. investigators, the intention was to get evidence for the Woodman murders, but they
ended up hearing a whole lot about another crime. We don't have transcripts for these calls,
but later court documents indicated the Hommick family discussed the Tipton's stolen jewelry at
lengths and tried to figure out how to keep the robbery quiet.
Another call around this time was between Steve and a friend, Ron Brill, about an estimate for
the stolen jewelry. You went to Ron's home with some pieces, asking if it was possible to grind
off distinguishing marks. Ron did, and Steve brought more jewelry in a few days later.
At some point, Ron seemed to get jittery about the whole thing. He was supposed to mail one of
the rings to another of Steve's friends on the East Coast, but he didn't.
He thought the police were watching him.
They were.
And by the end of January, they searched Ron's place.
They found the ring he was supposed to mail, which they eventually determined was the Tipton's.
They found drugs, too.
Ron was arrested.
Steve talked with Robert about all this on a call.
His main concern?
That Ron would talk.
He didn't say this outright, though.
He spoke in code, using F-3.
or French fry instead of Ron's name, and out of the Greece to refer to Ron getting out of jail.
Get the French fry out of the grease. Nice.
Because Steve suspected his phone lines were being tapped. He used code a lot and issued warnings,
telling people on the calls that he was in trouble, that things were about to go down
and to be aware of police watching them too. He instructed in code,
make sure your glass and your mirrors are clean.
And speaking of, French Fry did eventually talk, and he wasn't the only one.
Authorities continued building up evidence through February, and then came March.
A lot happened in March.
Police interviewed Steve's daughter, Rina, who was wearing jewelry stolen from Mrs. Tipton during their meeting.
She eventually handed over more items, 20, all of which were identified as Bobby Jeans.
Then Michael Dominguez was arrested in Las Vegas for possession of cocaine and other charges not related to the murders,
meaning they now had a key participant in the Woodman deaths and a close associate of Steve's in custody.
So it's not surprising that March was the month investigators pounced.
Search warrants were executed in both Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
In L.A., they searched Robert's apartment.
They got the bolt cutter that was used to open the gate at the older,
Woodman's garage. Robert was arrested after that. So was Steve, who was in town for a visit.
In Las Vegas, police burst into Steve's house and searched the premises, where his wife and
daughter were. The searches uncovered Steve's daily reminder journals, which he used pretty
religiously. His entries recorded interactions between him and the Woodman brothers. Many interactions.
Speaking of, Neil and Stewart were a part of this whirlwind of searches and arrest, too. A
authorities hit Manchester Products with a warrant and took both Woodman brothers into custody.
Later that day, Neil Woodman sat in the Van Nuys police station making a phone call.
It was to the CFO at Manchester Products.
When the guy answered, Neil asked if the police were there.
They weren't, which was good news.
He told the CFO to go to his office, find some papers he'd hidden under his desk, then destroy them.
The CFO did as he was told.
He did, but it didn't help.
During the raids, numerous documents connecting the suspects were found.
For example, Neil had items with Steve's name on it.
Their other outlook, Anthony Majoy, had papers with the homic's names and Manchester products on it, and so on.
The chips were falling, and there was no stopping them.
As word of the arrest got out, people started talking.
Timothy Kat spoke to police.
And since Steve had literally told Kat that he killed Bobby Jean, Maria Bullock, and James Meyer,
Kat's testimony was bad for Steve.
But the nail in the coffin might have been Michael Dominguez.
He confessed to everything.
The Woodman murders, his knowledge of the Tipton hit.
He even told police about an earlier attempted murder that Steve asked him to commit.
In return for his cooperation, he got a plea deal.
Let's talk about the trials.
Michael got two concurrent terms of 25 years to life in exchange for pleading guilty.
Anthony Majoy got life without parole, though he maintained his innocence.
That leaves us with the big four, Stuart, Neil, Steve, and Robert.
And essentially, between the confessions, phone recordings, bullet forensics, and eyewitnesses,
none of them stood a chance.
That could be why the Woodman brothers turned on one another.
Basically, Stewart confessed to avoid a death sentence, getting the jump on Neil, who hadn't had his trial yet at that point.
Worse, Stewart kind of pointed the finger at his brother, describing Neil as the one who said they had to kill Vera,
and implying he was guilty of a crime punishable by death.
Neil didn't end up getting the death penalty, but he did get a life sentence.
He's eligible for parole.
But as of May 2021, all his requests have been denied.
The other set of brothers, Robert and Steve Hamek, didn't rat each other out.
Robert got life in prison without parole for his part in the murders.
Steve got the most severe punishment.
First, he was tried for the Tipton murders in May 1989.
He was found guilty and given the death penalty.
Then he got another death sentence for the Woodman murders, about four years later.
He was put on death row, where he died of natural causes in 2014.
He was 74.
Earlier we mentioned the mental process a hitman needs for success.
Feelings shouldn't come into it because it's not personal, it's business.
So maybe this was doomed from the start.
It began with emotion.
Neil and Stewart's family drama, their business was intertwined with their personal.
They wanted their company to succeed, but were also fiercely competitive with their dad,
which clouded their judgment.
Then again, they're not the assassins.
The homics were supposed to be those cool.
calm and collected killers, except Stephen Robert gave into their emotions repeatedly too.
They had the violent detachment needed to pull off the job, but their disastrous behavior
in the aftermath prevented them from getting away with it. Maybe when family is involved,
it's just really hard to keep emotions like competitiveness or greed or rage out of it. And with two
sets of brothers, both driven by these feelings, just business ended up being
impossible.
Thanks again for tuning into serial killers.
We'll be back next time with a new episode.
For more information on the Killer Brothers,
we found the court briefing,
People versus Stephen Hommick,
extremely helpful to our research.
You can find all episodes of serial killers
and all other Spotify originals from Parcast
for free on Spotify.
We'll see you next time.
Stay safe out there.
Cereal Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast.
Our head of programming is Julian Boarrow.
Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production,
and Quality Control by Spencer Howard.
Stacey Nemek is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead.
This episode of Serial Killers was written by Kate Murdoch, edited by Terrell Wells and Maggie
Admire, fact-checked by Catherine Barner, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, produced
by Bruce Kitovich, and sound design by Michael Motion.
Our hosts are Greg Poulson and me, Vanessa Richardson.
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