Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The National Forest Serial Killer” Gary Michael Hilton Pt. 1
Episode Date: April 17, 2023Out in nature, alone with only the trees for company, Gary Michael Hilton found a peace that always eluded him in day-to-day life. Numerous run-ins with landlords, spouses, and law enforcement complic...ated things in the city. And in October of 2007, he went from petty thief to murderer. If you’d like to take action on the climate or learn more about the topics covered in “Dark Green: Earth Crimes and Conspiracies,” visit www.spotify.com/darkgreenresources. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hi, Parcast listeners. I'm Vanessa.
And I'm Greg.
Welcome back to dark green, earth crimes and conspiracies.
For this event, Parcast is investigating the shadowy corners where crime and the environment meet.
And telling those stories.
Because climate change affects all parts of society, including crimes and conspiracies.
If you're enjoying our Earth Day episodes and would like to learn more or take action on the climate, visit www.
dot Spotify.com slash dark green resources.
Due to the nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.
This episode includes discussions of child abuse, domestic abuse, gun violence, animal
abuse, and murder.
Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.
It was early morning 2004. Pam Burnett was walking your dogs around Murphy Candler Park,
100 acres of forests, trails, and a lake just outside Atlanta.
The sun was just beginning to rise, and the air was fresh.
Starting her mornings this way usually set her up for a good day.
But in this particular day, something was different.
Suddenly, one of the dogs started barking.
Pam glanced left.
A man was emerging from the trees.
He was middle-aged and disheveled,
with a scraggly goatee, dirty clothes,
and an angry expression on his face.
The thing was, though she didn't know his name,
She'd seen him before.
Usually he'd lurk at the edges of the hiking trail.
He'd always given her the creeps.
Pam pulled on her dog's leashes, bringing them closer to her, but he continued approaching.
Then she noticed he was holding something, a stick.
He was the kind of person that most people would not want to encounter in the park,
and in this case, for good reason.
Because one day that man would be known as,
The National Forest Killer.
Hi, I'm Greg Paulson.
This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast.
Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers.
Today we're discussing the crimes of Gary Michael Hilton,
the National Forest Serial Killer.
I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.
Hi, everyone.
You can find episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast
for free on Spotify every Monday and Thursday.
In this episode, we'll tell a familiar story about a killer with a childhood full of abandonment,
but we'll also discuss the things that set him apart, namely his age at the time of his first known murder, over 60 years.
Next time, we'll explore how Gary stalked his victims across hiking trails in North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia,
and the erratic behavior that finally led to his arrest.
We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.
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Most of us love spending time outdoors, which makes sense.
Research shows that getting out into nature is quite literally therapeutic,
great for mental health and cognitive abilities.
But for some people, particularly women and members of other marginalized groups,
going for a walk alone isn't all fresh air and beautiful scenery.
Sometimes it can feel dangerous, and sometimes it is dangerous
because of people like Gary Michael Hilton.
But before he was a predator hiding out of the woods,
Gary was a small child.
He was born the week before Thanksgiving, 1946.
Unfortunately, he didn't have very much to be thankful for.
Before he was even born, Gary's father, William, abandoned the family.
Gary's mother, Cleo, was forced to raise her only child alone.
The stress of the situation may have affected Cleo's ability to bond with her son.
According to Gary, his mother never hugged him, and their relationship was distant,
even in his early years.
Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode.
Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of
research for this show.
Thanks, Greg.
If it's true that Gary was never hugged as a child, this likely had a serious impact on him.
Research has long documented the importance of physical touch for children's psychological development,
partially due to the stress hormone cortisol.
It's believed that physical touch helps to regulate the release of the physical touch.
of cortisol throughout the day. It's a stress hormone that follows a specific rhythm. It's supposed
to rise throughout the morning and decrease in the evening. But in children with a history of neglect,
that cortisol rhythm is often disrupted, which may in turn make them more susceptible to stress
and conditions like anxiety and depression. That may sound dire, but the good thing is those cortisol
rhythms can be corrected if a child receives supportive caregiving at some point in early childhood.
This was according to a 2007 study in the journal's Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Unfortunately for Gary, a stable, supportive familial life never really came.
Cleo and Gary bounced from place to place for the first eight years of his life.
He experienced a brief stint of stability in 1954 when they settled in Tampa.
There, Gary enrolled in an after-school program run by the Boys Club of America
and seemed to like the activities.
But there was more instability on the horizon.
The pair moved again to find low-income housing.
For Gary, there was no fixed sense of home,
just a series of run-down apartments in various cities.
Some stays were only for a few months.
The constant moving made him feel like a piece of luggage.
And the homes themselves weren't always safe.
What apartment was so small that it came with a Murphy bed,
a metal-framed bed that folds into a wall during
the day to save space.
Today, Murphy beds have safety features to avoid any potential injuries, but back in the 1950s,
standards may have been lax.
One day, that metal bed fell out of the wall and struck Gary across the back of the head.
He crumbled to the ground and lost a large chunk of his scalp.
Cleo drove her son to the hospital, probably horrified.
Gary, however, didn't seem to feel any pain, probably flooded with adrenaline.
Instead, he spent the car ride to the hospital asking his mom if she could see his brain,
which is a very normal response for a child.
The head trauma, though, was serious.
Gary needed 200 stitches in his scalp and had an extended stay in the hospital.
There, he became incredibly hyperactive, to the point where the children's ward struggled to handle him.
It doesn't seem that anyone at the hospital considered the possibility of brain damage, however.
even though childhood head injuries have long been associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders,
poor academic achievement, professional outcomes, and even personality changes.
According to a 2014 review from researchers at the schools of nursing and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,
up to 10 or 20% of children who experience a traumatic brain injury will develop some form of personality change.
It's generally not permanent, but for a severe,
brain injury, the chance of a personality change is as high as 60%.
This most commonly presents as aggressiveness, moodiness, or disinhibition.
In Gary's case, his extreme hyperactivity while in the hospital could indicate that he developed ADHD.
Research does indicate that ADHD is a potential consequence of a childhood head injury.
In these situations, it's known as secondary ADHD, which makes sense because it's a potential consequence of a childhood head injury.
makes sense because after he returned from the hospital and went back to school, Gary began
showing many classic signs of ADHD.
He struggled to concentrate on his work, was often loud and disruptive during classes,
and had a hard time waiting his turn.
This had consequences.
Gary had an above-average IQ of 120, but his grades began slipping.
The lack of consistency in Gary's life didn't help.
Gary attended multiple schools during his childhood.
To make matters worse, Gary's home life changed too.
Cleo met her husband, Nilo.
Gary resented his new stepfather.
For his entire life, it had been just him and his mother.
Now he was competing for attention.
And according to Clio, Nilo was equally jealous of Gary.
He was often dismissive of the nine-year-old.
It wasn't a good match.
That became even more apparent when he verbally abused Gary.
There were taunts about Gary being lazy.
And on one occasion, Nilo even asked why Gary, then 10 years old, didn't drop out of school and get a job, as if Gary could be more useful.
Cleo came to her son's defense, telling Nilo that she wanted him to stay in school for as long as possible.
Nilo was, however, undeterred.
In response, he said when he was Gary's age, he was working to support his family, implying Gary should too.
Gary didn't talk back to his stepfather, at least not for a while.
But after years of verbal torment, things came to a head.
It was early 1959, and the family was living in Hialeah, a city about 10 miles from Miami.
Gary was 13, and sometime that year he borrowed a rifle from a friend and hid it in his bedroom.
Gary was done taking Nilo's abuse.
Soon enough, he and Nilo,
began arguing again. It's not clear exactly what the fight was about or whether it was different
from the dozens they'd had before. Either way, in the middle of the argument, Gary grabbed the
rifle and pointed it at Nilo. Perhaps calling his stepson's bluff, he responded,
Just shoot me. But Gary wasn't bluffing. He fired.
What happened in the aftermath is a little fuzzy. We know that he lived, and we know that he lived,
And we know that following the commotion, the police arrested Gary, though we don't know for what.
It was a dramatic shift for a kid who'd never been in any kind of formal trouble.
But Nilo decided not to press charges.
Instead, the state sent Gary to a psychiatric ward for treatment.
It's unclear what conclusions the doctors reached, only that they decided that Gary posed no danger to the public.
And just a few months after the shooting, the staff cleared him to go home.
But Cleo wasn't ready to have her son back in the house.
Not yet.
She may have feared him or was simply still processing all the trauma,
so Gary didn't go to his mother's home.
Instead, he spent a few months in foster care.
By the time the next school year started,
this was the fall of 1959.
Gary was back at home with his mother and her alone.
Cleo and Nilo had separated in the aftermath of the shooting.
Probably Nilo couldn't stomach the thought of living
with the boy who'd shot him.
So things couldn't have worked out better for Gary.
He'd gotten rid of his stepfather,
and now he had his mother to himself again,
just as things had been when he was young.
Unfortunately, that shooting was only the beginning.
In a moment, Gary heads to the military.
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Now back to the story.
In the fall of 1959,
13-year-old Gary Michael Hilton was living back with his mom
after a literal shootout with his stepfather.
But Gary was hyperactive,
and it didn't take his mother long to lose patience.
She treated him coldly, and she missed Nilo.
She wanted him to move back in,
so when Gary was 15, she sent him to live with her friends.
We don't know much about this period.
It seems Gary got along well with the couple who took him in,
and he stayed there for two years.
Still, the rejection from his mother must have stung,
especially when Nilo moved back in with Cleo.
It may even have reopened old wounds.
Plus, Gary never knew his biological father.
By the time he was a teenager,
he probably understood when his father had left,
right after his conception.
Now, he had another father figure,
making him feel unwanted.
But he did find a pretty good outlet for his emotions, drumming.
Around this time, he was playing at a band with his friends and decided that's what he was going to do with his life.
At 17, he told his mother he wanted to drop out of school.
He would pursue music.
His grades had declined for several years, and he failed most of his classes.
What else did he have to lose?
Reluctantly, Cleo agreed to sign the consent form, making him promise to at least
at a GED. Then he got a job playing at a local club. Within weeks, though, Gary's dreams went up in
flames. He was fired for being underage. He was on the cusp of adulthood, but a drift.
So he developed a new plan. Surely before his 18th birthday, he enlisted in the Army.
It was around 1963, as the U.S. was escalating its presence in Vietnam. Many of Gary's
peers were being drafted, he figured he'd go willingly. Soon enough, Gary shipped off to basic
training in Georgia, only he didn't want to be a basic soldier. He wanted to be part of the Army's elite.
He dreamed of being in the Green Berets and applied to be a paratrooper. At first, he did really
well in the Army's airborne school, so much so that he was selected for more specialized training.
Surely, this was the start of the illustrious military career he longed for.
There was just one problem. Alcohol. Many young soldiers drank when they were off base,
but Gary struggled to stay sober, and it affected his work. It got so bad, he flunked out of
paratrooper training entirely. But the regular army still had its use for him, and in 1964,
Gary was deployed to West Germany. What was waiting for him, however, wasn't any kind of glory.
It was the reality of being a soldier.
Gary's platoon was given a very dangerous assignment.
They deliver nuclear missiles across West Germany to build a barrier against Soviet forces.
There's a Hilton biographer who wrote about the precariousness of this mission, Fred Rosen.
In his book, Trails of Death, he calls it, tantamount to a suicide mission.
It was scary times for many Americans.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had made nuclear anxiety a familiar thing, but Gary was literally
face to face with the nukes themselves, and it caused his sanity to fray.
Reports indicate that he had a psychotic break and started hearing voices.
Possibly the first symptoms of schizophrenia, given Gary's age at the time.
In men, the typical age of onset is the late teenage years,
and the condition can involve numerous symptoms, including hallucinations,
delusions, and catatonic behavior.
The most common are auditory hallucinations, which often take the form of voices.
Sometimes friendly, but often not.
Gary's commanders sent him to a military psychiatric hospital.
There, he was given an antipsychotic drug called Thorazine.
This was the first antipsychotic drug ever produced,
and for many years it was the first-line medication for schizophrenia.
It's unclear, however, how long Gary stayed on the thorazine, or even if it worked,
and the details of his remaining time in the army the next five years or so
are a little fuzzy.
We do know he found a girlfriend while in Germany,
that they got married and returned to High Lea, Florida,
and that around then, the army honorably discharged him.
Then Gary enrolled in Miami-Dade College and graduated with an associate degree.
He had dreams of being a pilot,
but this new plan didn't seem to work out.
After only a few years together, Gary and his new wife divorced.
By the end of 1971, he was all alone again.
He began working as a humble chauffeur.
We don't have much insight into Gary's mental state, but it's possible that he was having trouble
readjusting to civilian life.
This isn't uncommon.
According to a 2011 review by the Pew Research Center, about a third of veterans report
difficult transitions.
That number gets much higher for veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder.
And Gary had a psychotic episode while in the Army.
He probably also experienced some psychilessing.
after effects, ones that might have led to some reckless behavior.
From 1972 to 1973, Gary was arrested twice, once for dealing in stolen property, and again,
a year later, for driving under the influence.
The second time he lost his chauffeur license and gave up the job, then he turned to petty
crime.
He seemed to lose all motivation to do anything productive.
He began feeling that the world was against him anyway, and so there wasn't much
point in trying.
The one theoretically good thing he did for himself was exercise.
He discovered a love for the outdoors and became an avid runner and hiker.
Out in nature, alone with only the trees for company, he found a piece that always eluded
him in day-to-day life.
It helped quiet down his demons.
At some point during the early 70s, Gary moved more than 300 miles north to Georgia,
where he'd spent the next decade drifting through a series of odd jobs and,
money-making scams. He again got into trouble with the law at least once when they charged him
with seeking donations for a non-existent youth sports team. His personal life was equally fraught. After a
series of failed relationships, he married for a second time in 1977 when he was 31. The marriage
lasted less than a year. Undeterred, Gary made another run at it in 1979. Around that year,
he met and married a woman about whom we know two main things.
things. First, that she was a single mother with two children. Second, she was a park ranger at
an Atlanta area park. We'll call her Barbara. It was called Stone Mountain Park, 3,200 acres of
preserved woodland, lush oak forests, granite outcrops, and gentle waterfalls. It was a hiker's
dream, offering miles and miles of scenic trails, including one that led up to the mountain's
summit. Gary spent a lot of time in the park. They,
both loved it. It was one of the many things they bonded over. But things went south, fast. Barbara
had thought Gary had a job in advertising, but it turns out it was really just a phone scam.
That would have been one thing, but it wasn't the worst of it. She realized Gary also had a temper.
He'd fly off the handle without warning. According to the book Trails of Death, one afternoon,
Gary got into an argument with Barbara's five-year-old son, we'll call him John.
Gary punished the boy by whipping him with his belt.
When Barbara jumped in to defend John, Gary hit her across the face.
In response, she punched him back.
Not long after that incident, she told him she wanted a divorce.
Which is how by 1980 and age 33, Gary was a three-time divorcee,
that nothing got better from there.
Over the next decade, he racked up several more criminal charges, including arson, theft,
and a hit and run.
At this point, he was essentially living on the fringes of society.
He left the city and spent more time in the woods and mountains around North Georgia,
as if a regular adult life had failed him.
Sometimes he rented apartments, but usually he lived out of his van, out in the wilderness.
There, with the towering oaks and sounds of birdsong,
and without any human relationships to fail him, he found peace.
temporarily.
Up next, Gary's
killer instinct emerges.
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Now back to the story.
The 1980s and 1990s are a mysterious period in the life of Gary Michael Hilton.
We have a few snapshots of what was happening during that time,
that he bounced around the woods of North Georgia,
that he lived in a van with only a dog,
and that he dabbled in petty crime to make ends meet.
He didn't always fly off the radar, though.
In 1983, police charged him with carrying a pistol,
without a license. During his trial in Clayton County, the judge asked why he had the weapon.
Gary, who was then 37, said he needed it for self-defense because, quote, there's a lot of crime
and a lot of crazy things going on in the world. We don't know if Gary had any specific reason
to be fearful about his safety, nor do we have any concrete information about his mental health.
But there was his psychotic episode from his military days, so it's possible he was still experiencing
paranoid delusions, which can be a symptom of schizophrenia, that he believed he really was in danger,
that he was being pursued, harassed, or persecuted. And this only made him more unstable and angry
towards others. The next thing we know about happened a decade after the weapons charge. It was
1995 and Gary was 49 and living in Marietta, Georgia. He'd just rented a room from a landlord named
Chris C. Johnson. We're not sure if he was employed.
or how he could afford the room.
But Chris had reason to be wary of his new tenant.
For one thing, Gary routinely carried an expandable baton around with him,
which struck Chris as odd.
Gary also seemed like a bitter and angry person with a misogynistic streak.
Chris told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Gary kind of had a real bad negative attitude
against everyone.
He really didn't like anyone, women specifically.
But Gary didn't have a problem with Chris.
At one point, Chris had issues with a totally separate tenant.
We'll call that tenant Jeff.
Gary knew about the issues somehow and asked Chris if he wanted Jeff thrown out.
Chris said yes, probably not thinking Gary was going to do anything, but Chris was wrong.
As if a switch had been flipped, Gary turned on Jeff.
The two men fought before Gary finally did throw Jeff out.
It's unclear who called the police, but Gary ended up arrested and charged for
simple battery. He spent two months in the county jail. After that, there's another gap in our
information, at least until 2004, when Gary would have been 58 years old. Then he was living in
Shambly, a northeast suburb of Atlanta. There, he rented a place from a couple, John and Jana Tabor.
At first, the Taborz didn't sense that anything was off with their 58-year-old tenant. He seemed
reserved, but polite. And he had a sweet golden retriever that
went everywhere with him. He even seemed eager to work. He asked if they had any leads on jobs.
Turns out they did. They ran a side construction company and needed extra help, so they hired Gary
to do odd jobs. That was a mistake. A customer complained that Gary made them uncomfortable.
The specifics aren't clear, but according to the client, Gary's speech and demeanor were strange.
And it wasn't just the Tabor's customers that felt uncomfortable around Gary. It was
also patrons of a nearby park, Murphy Candler, where Gary liked to hike. Patrons like Pam Burnett.
At 135 acres, the park was smaller than many other state or national parks, but it still contained
plenty of trails, including a lakeside loop and patches of pine forest where deer roamed. It was perfect
for women like Pam, who often walked their dogs in the mornings. But she had several uncomfortable
run-ins with a man, Gary Michael Hilton. When once in 2004 he threatened her and waved a baton
at her, it was the last straw. She called the police. And again, that wasn't the only call that
DeKalb County Police received about Gary, or the worst offense. Someone at a different nearby
park called the cops to report not necessarily that he was just threatening, that they'd seen him
beating up a dog. Now, the dog could have been Gary's own golden retriever.
Gary's former landlord, Chris Johnson, had felt Gary was unnecessarily harsh towards the dog,
and the dog seemed afraid of him, which is not a great sign.
We've said before that animal cruelty can be the beginning of the road to homicidal violence.
But this feels especially troubling in Gary's case because he'd expressly talked about his love for his dogs,
describing them as being, quote, like his children.
Things got worse when Gary diagnosed himself with multiple sclerosis.
He then claimed he was too sick to continue working in the construction business.
If Gary actually had MS, this would make sense.
MS is a neurological condition affecting the brain and the spinal cord.
The symptoms and manifestations can vary wildly,
but typically they include fatigue,
problems with balance and coordination, and cognitive difficulties.
In some forms of MS, symptoms come and go intermittently,
but the condition cannot currently be cured.
It's unclear if Gary actually did have it.
A few years later, Janet Tabor did an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
She told them she didn't really buy his story and thought Gary was seeing a quack doctor.
Who, as we understand it, prescribed Ritalin, a stimulant medication that's typically prescribed for ADHD.
We're not sure what the doctor's justification was for prescribing the Ritalin,
but it's sometimes used off-label to treat the cognitive symptoms of MS.
As a child, remember, Gary demonstrated symptoms of ADHD, so the Ritalin prescription makes sense.
But the medication didn't seem to help. Gary's behavior only got worse.
Ritalin also has the potential to cause psychosis or mania, and though mania is typically associated
with bipolar disorder, it can occur alongside other conditions. It's characterized by an abnormally
elevated or irritable mood, a high level of physical energy, reduced need for
sleep and sometimes delusions and hallucinations.
Again, it's hard to tell exactly what was happening in Gary's mind, but people who
encountered him later in life often described him as intense and volatile. These are traits
Ritalin can exacerbate. Some stories about him though do feel larger than life, as if Gary
Michael Hilton was some sort of boogeyman in the woods, a man capable of all kinds of bizarre and
violent behavior. It's a sad thing to ascribe to someone in any situation. Unfortunately for Gary,
it also became true. By 2007, Gary was demanding money from his landlords, based on delusional
claims that they owed it to him. At first, John Tabor paid a small amount, hoping Gary would
leave them alone. But it didn't work. And soon, Gary escalated things. If John didn't give him $10,000,
Gary would kill him.
That was the final straw for Gary's behavior.
In September, John kicked him out.
To Gary, it was more evidence that the world was out to get him,
as if other people were the problem.
That October, he set out in his van and drove to North Carolina's Pisga National Forest.
He fled to nature, became the boogeyman in the woods.
On October 21st, 2007, John and Irene Bryant set out for a high-kewarm,
in the forest. They were on the older side in their 80s, but avid hikers. In fact, John once
hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, something reserved for only the most fit. This hike was nothing
to him, just to stroll in the woods on a beautiful fall day.
It all seemed so idyllic, until it wasn't. The details of what happened next aren't entirely
clear, and they may be hard to listen to. But based on what we know, here's a likely sequence of events.
Gary probably saw the Bryant's coming and identified them as easy targets.
Though he wasn't a young man, they were at least 20 years older, and he figured they'd be no physical match.
He approached the couple, produced his baton, and demanded money.
The Bryant's likely gave him everything they had, but it wasn't enough.
No amount of cash would be enough.
At some point, either John or Irene dialed 911, but the restrictions.
The reception was weak and the call dropped.
They were helpless.
Gary killed Irene first by striking her with the baton.
Then he left her body and kidnapped John, driving him more than 70 miles south.
They ended up in the mountains of the Nantahela National Forest, and there, Gary killed him,
finally taking his wallet.
The following day, Gary drove to an ATM in Tennessee.
he withdrew $300 from John's account.
Yet for Gary, it couldn't have been just about the money.
He had killed one person, then driven a second, 70 miles, just to kill him too.
And he'd done it in a place beloved by not just him, but his victims, a park.
And he'd do it again.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Dark Green, Earth Crimes and Conspiracies, brought to you by serial killers.
a Spotify original from Parcast.
For Part 2 on Gary Michael Hilton,
tune in next time on serial killers
and check out our other shows,
Unsolved Murders, Solved Murders, and Unexplained Mysteries.
You can find all episodes of serial killers
for free on Spotify every Monday and Thursday.
For more information on Gary Michael Hilton,
amongst the many sources we used,
we found Fred Rosen's book,
Trails of Death, The True Story of National Forest Serial Killer Gary Hilton,
extremely helpful in our research.
And if you'd like to learn more and take action on the climate, visit Spotify.com slash dark green resources.
We'll see you next time.
Stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast.
Our head of programming is Julian Bwaro.
Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production
and quality control by Spencer Howard.
Stacey Mimick is our supervising editor and Derek Jennings is our writing lead.
This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Robert Tyler Walker and Terrell Wells, fact-checked by Claire Cronin, 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.
All.
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