Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Lewis Clark Valley Murders

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Five missing people in five years. And that’s far from the only fact that aroused suspicion of a serial killer operating along the Idaho-Washington border in the early 1980s. While some victims have been found, the hunt for the killer is still on. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, dismemberment, and suicide. For mental health support, visit Spotify.com slash resources. Today's story is still an open FBI investigation. Because of that, today's serial killer doesn't have a name. They're yet to be caught, and they may not be guilty of all the crimes we'll cover. But there are so many connections between today's victims, it's worth investigating the serial killer theory. because 40 years later, they might still be out there waiting to be caught.

Welcome to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. I'm Janice Morgan. You might recognize me as the voice behind the investigative docu-series Broken and the True Crime Podcast Fear Thy Neighbor. I'll be your host for the next few weeks, and I'm thrilled to be here. We'd love to hear from you. Follow us on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast and share your thoughts on this week's episode. Or if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and leave a comment. Today we're going to the Lewis Clark Valley, a collection of small remote towns on the Idaho-Washington border. Between 1979 and 1982, five young people went missing from that area.

Those who were found had been murdered. Their disappearances changed the valley forever and cast a shadow of suspicion on one man. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the unit bomber, it's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So if you're hiring, I've got news for you. You can skip the lengthy investigation and the tiresome process of sorting through hundreds of,

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One is Assohn, Washington. In 1979, A Soton had a population of just 1,000 people. Think quaint, charming, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and nothing bad ever happens, at least until today's story starts. In such a small community, annual events were a big deal. So even though April 2, 1979, was an unseasonably hot day, people came out for the Asotan County Fair. The fair still happens to this day, and even in 1979, it was a major production. Think games, rides, and of course, a parade.

That year, Betty Wilkes dragged her two daughters out of the house for the fest. her youngest, six-year-old Carlin, seemed to have a pretty good time. But 12-year-old Christina White got bored fast. The heat didn't help. Christina was a bit of a tomboy, not too interested in the glittery, bright colors of the parade. She'd much rather be with her friends, fishing on the snake river or playing in the nearby woods. Around noon, when the sun was at its peak, Christina poked her mom and asked her if she could go to her friend's house. She had her bike at the fair. She could ride there herself and come back home for dinner.

Betty nodded. The heat was starting to bother her, too. As Christina jumped on her bike and rode away, Betty and Carlin started home on foot. They passed Christina's friend's house on the way and saw her outside. She arrived safely. They waved and carried on. Later that afternoon, Betty's phone rang. It was Christina calling from the friend's house.

She had symptoms of her. of heat stroke. This had happened before, so Betty wasn't too worried. She told her daughter to drape a cold, damp towel over her head, then lie down for a bit. Then as soon as she felt better, bike home. Betty expected to see her daughter fairly soon, but hours passed with no sign of Christina and no call back. When she didn't show for dinner, Betty grew worried.

She called Christina's friend's house, but her daughter wasn't there anymore. Nobody knew where she was. So Betty contacted the police. As you probably know, in a lot of disappearances, authorities wait anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to begin an official investigation. But in this case, Chief Tom Pryor immediately sprang into action, likely because Christina was so young

and the Asotan community was so tight-knit. That said, Betty and the authorities thought they'd find Christina quickly. She was probably riding her bike around, totally unaware of the commotion she'd caused. Or maybe she was still having heat stroke symptoms and decided to lie down somewhere. Betty and the police scoured every nook and cranny of the small town, but they couldn't find Christina or her bike anywhere. As far as they could tell, she left her friend's house to bike home, then vanished.

News spread fast in Isotan. That night and the next morning, the community came together in support of Betty and her family. They offered help in whatever way they could, searching the town, putting up posters, or simply lending a sympathetic ear. But one man was incredibly quick to offer his services. For privacy, we'll call him Frank.

He was a local guy with a wife and kids. He worked at a local theater, sometimes performing on stage. So far, pretty normal. Except he seemed a little. too invested in the search, especially right at the start, which detectives found odd. According to one of Sotan police officer, it's rare for innocent bystanders to get highly involved in an investigation, but it's actually quite common for the perpetrator of a crime. They offer to help, but they really just want to see what the police know.

Frank's behavior struck detectives as off-putting, but that was just gut instinct, not real evidence. Right then, the most important thing was finding Christina, so they took any help they could get. While the police dealt with Frank, Christina's father, Gary White, braced to a soton to join the search. By the time he arrived in town, he had his own theory. Someone from the county fair kidnapped Christina. He tried to get the police to search the trailers and campers, but there wasn't enough evidence to obtain warrants. Gary was frustrated, but he had another idea. He idea. He asked a local man, Jim Pope, for a favor. Jim owned a helicopter, and Gary thought they might have an easier time spotting clues from above. So they took the chopper all over the county. In the air,

Gary kept his eyes peeled, desperate to find his daughter. They didn't see anything. But Gary wasn't giving up. When the carnival left town, he followed it 150 miles to the Tri-Cities area. He conducted his own informal investigation, going through the fairgrounds and questioning everyone he could. Still, nobody knew anything about his daughter. Gary was devastated, and it wasn't just Christina's parents who were heartbroken. Her disappearance cast a shadow on the whole community. A sotan used to be a place where kids played in the streets. Somewhere children could run around without supervision.

Now everyone was on edge. Everyone wanted answers. But as the weeks turned into months, then years, it seems like they might never know what happened to Christina. Her case went cold, and slowly the townspeople convinced themselves that her disappearance was a one-off event. That is, until a second girl went missing.

She was last seen in Lewiston, Idaho on June 26, 1981. Lewiston is a bigger city than a sotan, with a population of around 28,000. But both towns are in the Lewis Clark Valley, and what happens in one affects the other. That day, James Archibald was driving through Lewiston when something on the side of the road caught his eye. A young, blonde woman sprawled out on the ground, apparently unconscious.

Her bike was strewn to the side with the back wheel still spinning. Nearby, a van pulled over. It must have hit her. And the accident just happened because the driver was still getting out of his car. Archibald saw the driver head toward the young woman. He smiled at James as if to say, all's good here. James considered stopping to help, but he kept driving. He figured he'd be more helpful calling 911, so he hurried home and called for help.

He reported the accident to the 911 operator. Blonde biker, van, the driver around six feet tall, maybe 100, 50 pounds. Paramedics rushed to the scene. When they got there, there was no woman, no man, no van, no bike, nothing. Authorities thought James made the story up, and they chewed him out for his so-called false report. But James held firm he knew what he saw. After the fact, he wished he'd stopped and done more. Now he had no idea what happened to the young woman or who she even was. The answer came a week later on the 4th of July.

The fisherman was having a peaceful, pleasant day on the Snake River. That was until he saw a garbage bag washed up on the shore stuffed to the brim. The fisherman put down his rod, opened the bag, and found newspapers tightly wrapped around an object. He unraveled them and could not believe his eyes. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound, terseptitide, may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet

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include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounds.lil.com. your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. On July 4th, 1981, a fisherman enjoying his holiday on the snake

River, found a washed-up garbage bag and opened it up. He pulled back newspapers to discover a young woman's dead body. He called the police who raced to the river to investigate. Officers examined the remains and they quickly realized it wasn't a whole body just one part. The victim was dismembered. They scoured the river and before long they found five other bags, all with additional body parts, seemingly belonging to the same young woman. They brought them back to the lab for testing, and eventually IDed the victim, Kristen David. Kristen was a 22-year-old journalism major at the nearby University of Idaho. Her parents described her as a loving, responsible young woman who was especially close to her younger siblings. One of her favorite hobbies was bicycling.

She'd go on rides for hours. On the day she went missing, she was biking 40 miles from her school in Moscow, Idaho to her hometown of Lewiston. When Kristen didn't show up for work, her family immediately knew something was wrong and reported her missing. However, the Lewiston police waited 48 hours to begin an official search. This is especially tragic in hindsight because it's possible Kristen was the young, injured, blonde woman James Archibald saw while he was driving. By the time her body was recovered, over a week had passed since Kristen David was last seen, and the trail had otherwise gone cold.

Beyond her body, the only evidence was the newspapers and trash bags she was wrapped in. Officials hoped they could salvage a DNA sample from the newspapers, but it would be a long shot. With the technology available in 1981, they'd need to get a sample, then compare it against a suspect's DNA. meaning that without a suspect, the evidence was useless. But law enforcement still had to try. Kristen David's case became a top priority for multiple jurisdictions. Two states and three separate counties searched for her killer. Eventually, even the FBI got involved.

Yet all this manpower uncovered nothing. No clues, no potential suspects. Kristen David's case hit a dead end. It was difficult for the community to swallow. The Lewis Clark Valley was once a safe haven. Now it felt like the setting for a horror movie. Locals couldn't help but connect Kristen David's story to Christina White, the 12-year-old who disappeared on her way home from the county fair two years before.

What if Christina suffered the same terrible fate? It felt like anybody's daughter could be next. A chilling thought that soon became reality. Less than a year later, three more people vanished from the Lewis Clark Valley. On the evening of September 12, 1982, 21-year-old Christina Nelson and her step-sister, 18-year-old Brandy Miller, hung out at home in Lewiston. Both young women were known as kind and bubbly.

Christina Nelson dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, Brandy was in her senior year of high school. That evening, they decided to run some errands. They didn't want to worry their parents, so they left a note saying they were going to the shop. They walked out the front door and were never seen again. This was the third disappearance in an area where things like this never happened. Naturally, people thought it was related to the previous two disappearances.

But something was different the same. time. Christina White and Kristen David both went missing while biking alone. Christina Nelson and Brandy Miller were two young women who vanished together. There's more. The same night Christina Nelson and Brandy Miller went missing, a local man also disappeared from Lewiston, 35-year-old Stephen Pearsall. Police immediately noticed that Stephen didn't match the established victim profile. Up to this point, they'd all been girls or young women. Stephen was a man in his mid-30s. For law enforcement, this was a red flag.

Then another popped up. Stephen knew Christina Nelson and Brandy. He was a janitor at the Lewiston Civic Theater, where Nelson worked part-time and Brandy often stopped by. Detectives wondered, maybe Stephen was the killer they'd been looking for. He quickly became the prime suspect, not just in Christina Nelson and Brandy's case.

but all three crimes. Officers talked to Stephen's girlfriend. She said, on the night of his disappearance, they went to a party together. Afterwards, she dropped Stephen off at the Civic Theater to do laundry and practice his clarinet. Apparently, the clarinet was Stephen's most prized possession. According to his family and friends,

there is no way he would have left town without it. And yet, police found his clarinet in Lewiston. They also discovered his car still in. in town, along with a number of uncashed paychecks. Detectives faltered. Maybe they had the wrong idea. As the days went on, a more likely scenario emerged. Stephen wasn't responsible.

He was probably a victim himself. With Stephen Pearsall reclassified as a missing person, detectives started over from scratch. Eventually, they determined a new person of interest. Frank, the man who offered to help search for 12-year-old, old Christina White, the one police had been suspicious of for years. It's not clear how authorities narrowed in on Frank, but one way or another, it came to their attention that he had a connection to all five victims. He lived in the same neighborhood as Christina White. She'd been to his home

before. Some sources even told police they saw her at his house the day she went missing. And Kristen David, the 22-year-old who disappeared on her bike ride, might be have also known him. She spent a few summers working at the same theater as Frank. That's also how he knew Christina Nelson, Brandy, and Stephen. The three of them all either worked or socialized at the theater where Frank also worked and performed. According to FBI agent Bradley Garrett, who joined the case later on, it's unusual for a serial killer to target victims they know personally, but it's not impossible. And for Agent Garrett, that's what makes the this case so fascinating. If the authorities' suspicions were correct, Frank was a unique killer.

So detectives brought Frank in for questioning. Their working theory was that he'd been at a bar in Lewiston when he saw Nelson and Brandy walk by. He might have offered them a lift home, and because they knew him, they accepted. At that point, he brought them back to the theater where he had enough privacy to kill them. Frank didn't anticipate that anyone else would show up at the theater, especially so late at night. When Stephen's girlfriend dropped him off, Frank killed him, so there wouldn't be any witnesses. That's the idea, at least. But for every question investigators throughout Frank, he gave a quick answer. He admitted he went to the theater that night, but told detectives a story about accidentally injuring himself and then taking a nap. He claimed he was asleep

and never heard Nelson, Brandy, or Stephen enter the building. Later, he said he did. He did, he did did move his car around back to load something up, but he swore it was just his tools. Everything about this story felt too convenient to investigators, but it's not enough to arrest Frank, and as of 2025, he's never been charged for any crimes related to the murders. He also declined interview requests. With Frank free to go, investigators were out of loss.

For the next 18 months, there were no new leads. Five people were gone. One most definitely murdered. In all likelihood, this was an active serial killer. And it felt like there was nothing anyone could do. Tension built until March 1984. A 15-year-old boy named Marvin Mead went out to collect cans. He stopped on a remote property about 40 miles away from Lewiston.

After grabbing the cans, he walked through the tree line back to his truck. Just then, a branch knocked his hat off. It blew down the hill and stopped near a strange gray object. Marvin figured it was an animal bone and he thought, hey, that would be cool to have on display. So he reached down to pick it up, only to realize it was a human skull. Horrified, Marvin alerted the police. When crime scene technicians got there, they made another grisly discovery. It wasn't just one skull. There were two badly decomposed bodies. Detective sent the remains back to the lab for testing. Through the clothing and jewelry found with the bodies they could ID them. Sure enough, it was Christina Nelson and Brandy Miller.

A year and a half after the women went missing, the police finally had some answers, just not the ones they wanted. Christina Nelson and Brandy Miller's case was now a murder investigation. Detectives brought Frank in for another round of questioning, this time as an official suspect. He repeated his claims. He didn't see or hear Nelson, Brandy, or Stephen come into the theater that night, but given the layout of the building and where Frank said he was sleeping, that seems

nearly impossible. Investigators kept pressing. Frank was nervous and fidgety. Every time he repeated his story, details changed. Detective still thought he was hiding something. But they didn't have any physical evidence to tie him to Nelson and Brandy's murders. Without that, they needed a confession, and Frank wasn't going to give one. So once again, Frank was free to go.

This frustrated the police, especially after they looked into Frank's past. It doesn't paint him in a very good light. For example, his acquaintances recalled that a woman he once dated died by suicide. Frank was the one who discovered her body. At the time, her loved ones wrote it off as an unexplainable tragedy. But as news came out about the Lewis Clark Valley murders, they noticed it was awfully suspicious that so much violence and death surrounded one man. They wondered if Frank was capable of murder.

There's also the fact that Frank had a criminal record in California. While he was living there, a 17-year-old girl died under suspicious circumstances. A day or two later, Frank was arrested for breaking into the funeral home where her body was being kept. He'd been carrying a hunting knife. His behavior didn't improve, even after the police interrogated him. At some point in the mid-1980s, Frank put his house up for sale. A local woman came to him. to check it out. It went fine, except that he kept insisting she come see the basement.

Eventually, she agreed and they headed down. On their way down, she turned around to say something to him, and he quickly dropped his arm. He was holding something raised above his head. He tried to play it off, but she told him to show her his hands. Reluctantly, he revealed a bedpost, finial. It's not an obvious weapon, but the woman was terrified. She later said she couldn't help but think, if she hadn't turned around at just the right moment, Frank might have murdered her.

So the community and the police never stopped considering Frank a suspect. They couldn't shake their suspicion, but they also couldn't find any proof. Then, in 1990, a man named John Jeffers took over as the Asotan County Sheriff. Bright-eyed and determined, he hoped to solve the area's most haunting cold cases, and he wanted to try something different. See, up until this point, all the investigations were handled by different agencies. Christina White's case was under the jurisdiction of the Asotan County Sheriff's Department.

Kristen Davids was split between various local, state, and federal agencies, and the civic theater trio was in the hands of the Lewiston PD. Not an efficient way to run things. Sheriff Jeffers was all too aware, especially because as far as he could tell, law enforcement organizations were all looking at the same person of interest. Frank. The Asotan County Sheriff's Department and Lewiston PD

agreed to pool their resources in hopes of finding a breakthrough. And that's when they got a tip that sent shivers down their spines. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book-to-screen favorites you've already read twice. Off-campus, L. Every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen.

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Frank, their main person of interest, had just poured a layer of concrete into the basement of one of his properties, a chilling development. Authorities worried he was trying to hide something beneath that concrete. Not missing a beat, they obtained a search warrant and arrived at Frank's property with radars and cadaver dogs in tow. Despite the impulse to tear up every last inch of the basement, a Soton County Sheriff John Jeffers was methodical. He and his team tested different areas, using specialized equipment to look for aberrations or empty spaces beneath the concrete, signs that they should start digging. They narrowed in on one spot they believed was big enough to hide a body, and Jeffers ordered his men to start excavating. As the dig started,

he watched and waited. Positive this was the moment they'd all been waiting for. Finally, he could put this case to bed and send the man responsible to prison. When the digging was done, no one said anything. Sheriff Jeffers stepped forward and peered into the ground. Nothing was there. This marked the end of an era. Authorities didn't have probable cause to question Frank again or to search any more of his properties.

Until they could find something more definitive, they had to stop investigating him. so the cases went cold. Although Christina White and Stephen Pearsall's bodies hadn't been found by this point, most people assumed they were dead. Because of this, all five cases became known as the Lewis Clark Valley murders. Over the coming decades, most of the officers who worked the original investigations retired. The pain of the crimes dulled, but nobody in the valley forgot.

Then, in the 2000s, a new detainee. joined the Asotan County Sheriff's Office. Her name was Jackie Nichols, and she breathed new life into the cold cases. Since she was based in Asotan, she specifically focused on Christina White. Although nearly 30 years had passed since her disappearance, Jackie considered it her job to figure out what happened. She hoped to finally give Christina's family answers. So she poured over all the evidence.

She re-interviewed the witnesses. She retraced the steps of both the victims and her prime person of interest. Like her predecessors, she believed Frank was responsible for at least four of the disappearances and deaths. In her mind, there was only one that could potentially be the work of another second killer. That's Kristen David's case, the 22-year-old who went missing on her bike ride. Jackie thought the way Kristen's body was dismembered didn't match the MO in the other cases. So Jackie looked into a lead for a potential suspect, a convicted murderer named Harry Hantman. In 1968, when Hantman was college-aged, he was arrested for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was sentenced to stay in a psychiatric hospital. Five years later, he escaped and went on the run. He spent the next two decades hiding out in a cabin on the Idaho-Oregon border. It's about 100 miles away from the Lewis Clark Valley, but still close enough that he could have easily made a day trip. Eventually, Hantman was caught and returned to prison in 1993, but that was 12 years after Kristen David's death. It's possible he killed her.

So Jackie went to Hantman's old cabin and searched the place. As she walked the grounds, she spotted something half buried in the earth, the remains of black trash bags, disintegrated, like they'd been sitting there for years. Jackie couldn't help but think maybe these are the same garbage bags used to wrap up Kristen's dismembered body. It was a glimmer of hope. Remember, years earlier, police thought they might be able to get DNA

from the garbage bags or newspapers, and genetic technology had advanced a lot by the 2000s. If samples of these items still existed, police might be able to salvage DNA from them and compare it to Hantman's genetic profile. But there was a major problem. Jackie had no idea where the original garbage bags and newspapers even were, certainly not in evidence storage,

and there was actually a pretty good chance they'd been thrown out in the last four decades. In the end, Jackie's discovery didn't amount to much. But it wasn't a dead end, because Jackie wasn't the only one searching for answers. Remember Christina Nelson? Her cousin, Gloria Boberts, devoted her life to finding answers

for all the victim's families. Like Jackie and the authorities, Gloria believed Frank was guilty, but she also thought there were more than just five victims. With his history of violence, she was convinced Frank had to be responsible for other murders. If she could find proof of that, it might help prosecute him in the valley.

Gloria's mission took her all the way to Chicago, where she looked into the 1963 murder of an eight-year-old girl. The victim was last seen alive at a local YMCA, the same place Frank worked as a youth camp counselor. At the time, Chicago police questioned nearly everyone in the neighborhood, including 15-year-old Frank, but he was never a real suspect. The cops thought they were looking for someone much older. Gloria sent everything she learned to Detective Jackie Nichols.

And the more Jackie read about it, the more she thought Gloria was on to something. Jackie called up her counterparts in Chicago and shared the details of her investigation. From there, the FBI stepped in. They asked for all of Jackie's notes and files. Then they took over. As we mentioned at the beginning, the investigation is currently in the hands of the FBI. they continue to gather clues in hopes of prosecuting the killer. Meanwhile, in the Lewis Clark Valley, life was permanently altered.

Kristen David, Brandy Miller, and Christina Nelson were all found in return to their families. But to this day, Christina White and Stephen Purcell have never been located. Christina's father, Gary White, held out hope that Christina was still alive until the day he died. In the 2011 documentary Confluence, he told filmmakers, quote, You just sit there and hope that somewhere down the line she'll surface and will be a happy lady. She was born in 1967, and so, you know, she's a young woman now, if she's still alive. Who can blame him for hoping? Sometimes that's the only way to deal with such terrifying, senseless violence,

to hope some of the victims will turn up safe, to hope answers will be found, to hope justice will be served. These crimes serve as a constant reminder that evil lingers in the safest places. There's no turning back from that loss of innocence. And there's no forgetting, only processing. One local, who was a kid when the murders happened,

recalled hearing a rumor about a certain man, a danger in their midst. He said in a later interview, kids and teens knew to stay away from him, even if the police couldn't arrest him. That kid, Brian Fuller, grew up to create TV shows like Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me and Hannibal, which is about serial killers.

His childhood memories influenced those shows. By the time Fuller moved to Hollywood, there was no illusion that the Lewis Clark Valley was a safe place where nothing ever happened. It was an inspiration for horror stories. As Lewiston reporter Sandra Lee put it in the 2018 documentary Cold Valley, these cases, how can they go away? They still all have family here, and they all have friends.

And we all know those cases, and if we didn't know those people before, we feel like we know them now, because they've become part of our lives. What happened is forever a part of this community. If you have any information related to the people, this case, please go to tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800 call FBI. Thanks for listening to Serial Killers. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.

For more information on the Lewis Clark Valley murders, amongst the many sources we used, we found the documentaries, Confluence, and Cold Valley, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there. This episode was written by Alex Burns, edited by Karris Allen, Giles Hofseth, and Maggie Admeyer. Fact-checked by Haley Milliken,

researched by Mickey Taylor, video edited by Spencer Howard, and sound designed by Kelly Gary. I'm Janice Morgan. I want to hear something, spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters among us. is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal.

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