Murder by nature

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Murder by nature

The Covid Cover Up

December 10, 2022 • Jazmin Hernandez • Season 1 • Episode 25

0:00 | 33:02

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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!

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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!

Thank them for listening and being a part of this community.

References:

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, fear and panic spread quickly. States were shutting down, the economy was cratering, and thousands of people were becoming sick each day. In the weeks leading up to the shutdowns, People were staying home, and there was no real human interaction outside of the common core within your four walls. Some learned to bake bread; others binged Tiger King. But for some, the real nightmares were sparking within the four walls of their home with no one to protect them.

During the early 2020 era, one life in Palm Beach County was starting to really come undone. David Anthony had a laundry list of failures and disappointments that was starting to make him spiral out of control. His marriage was ending, he had lost his job after several disturbing outbursts with the women within the company, and to top it off, his wife had kicked him out of the house, and he moved back in with his mother. As Covid started to kick off, David started to tell people that he was going to move to costa Rica and start a new live. He was inviting friends, former coworkers, and even girls that he had just met. Now, as one life was spiraling, the other was finally starting to come together. Gretchen Anthony was a newly single mother who decided to put herself back there. She had a job at Viking utility in an HR position that she loved and decided she was going to be happy. Gretchen’s previous marriage ended years prior with a man named Jeff, and they shared a daughter together. As the virus upended daily living, Gretchen was just like everyone else, trying to figure out how to get by. Her near-daily musings on Facebook echoed the frustrations and fears now familiar to most. She shared informational videos about the virus and how to stay safe. After finishing Schitt's Creek and Game of Thrones, she asked for new TV recommendations. She re-posted memes and jokes that poked fun at the absurdity of the "new normal." "Does anyone else feel like life is being written by a fourth-grader right now? 'There was this virus, and everyone was scared, and the world ran out of toilet paper…and then there was no school…'" On Thursday, March 19, she posted a quote from a meditation blog: "When chaos is all around you, the wisest choice is to create peace within you." But slowly, her profile start to go dark. Over the next few days, so did most of her communications with loved ones.

In 2008 Gretchen was a teacher in Jupiter, FL, when she met personal Trainer David Anthony at the gym. They quickly grew a connection and felt sparks flying. David had a magnetic personality, and Gretchen was drawn to it. The only problem was Gretchen was married to a man named Jeffrey. Gretchen and Jeffrey were dating for many years before they got married in 2007. They had a daughter together, but both were unhappy and trying their best to make their relationship work for the child. Over the next few months, the relationship would start to spiral, and Gretchen and David would become official. In 2015 Gretchen and David tied the knot, and although their relationship was new and fresh, the dynamic quickly started to change. Gretchen had spent most of her life up north, attending fashion school in New York City and later earning her degree closer to her childhood home of New Jersey, where she eventually worked as a teacher. She moved to Florida sometime in 2006, but after spending eight years working at private schools in Palm Beach County, she made a career change and accepted an HR position with Viking Utility, an electrical contractor. It was a job that allowed her to connect with others, something she absolutely loved.

Growing up with a single mother in Palm Beach Gardens, David had spent most of his childhood and adolescent years adrift. He usually didn't speak unless addressed. He was overweight and had low self-esteem, which made him a constant target for bullies at school. Because he was so much larger than other kids his age, he hadn't even been allowed to join recreational sports leagues. As a teen and young adult, he struggled with severe depression and showed symptoms his family believed to be consistent with bipolar disorder. Refusing to take medications of any kind, he devoted every bit of himself to his physical well-being. After high school, he earned a scholarship to play basketball for Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. He idolized hypermasculine superheroes like Thor and basketball greats like Kobe Bryant, even naming his husky Kobe. In his 30s, and throughout much of his relationship with Gretchen, he worked as a trainer at OrangeTheory and other gyms. David had always dealt with insecurities. They tried hard to make the relationship work. Friends noticed as you started to get to know David better, you would start to noticed his moods change too. David had a lot of ups and downs in his mood, and he quickly started to become very challenging to be around. This caused a massive strain in their marriage to the point of attending a week-long Hawaii retreat to help them grow closer. Unfortunately, it ended up doing the opposite, during the trip, David acted so erratically that he had to be separated from the rest of the group. For the first few years of their marriage, the two appeared happy. But Gretchen spent the remaining three trying to leave. She confided in friends that David was becoming increasingly manic and, at times, verbally abusive. They separated once for at least six months but wound up back together.

And in the spring of 2017, a horrific accident occurred. David was working on his truck in their garage when the jack slipped. He suffered a traumatic brain injury from the car falling on him, and Gretchen had to care for him as he healed from the wounds. David attempted all kinds of methods, including gratitude training and self-help groups, but his behavior continued to spiral. On one frightening occasion in 2018, David believed the world was ending. He loaded his truck with three big bags of rice, some pots and pans, and ten pairs of shoes before taking off. His family believed the episode was a symptom of his bipolar and manic-depressive disorders. Although Gretchen recognized her husband was struggling, she didn't feel equipped to help. Over time, as his mental illness continued to go untreated, her patience waned. "I wish him well and hope he learns how to deal with his mental issues," Gretchen texted a friend in December 2019. "I feel bad that I couldn't help, but I think he needs to learn how to love himself before he can love anyone. Something he might not experience in his lifetime." Sometimes, she said, she locked herself in their bedroom just to put distance between them. "I gleaned a hit of that crazy look in his eyes," she texted Dawn one morning in late December. David was spiraling, and she didn't know what he was capable of. "I'm watching him on the cameras and waiting for him to go to bed," she texted Dawn another evening. "Then I'll go downstairs and get a knife to put under my pillow — just in case — and hopefully get some sleep!" That year on Christmas Eve, Gretchen went through David's backpack and found her wedding ring, passport, driver's license, credit cards, and some cash. The incident worried her enough that she texted Dawn, her boss, and friend, that she was afraid of her own husband. By the end of the month, Gretchen made the decision to leave the turbulent relationship. David ended up moving out of the house they shared and into his mothers home. In the weeks after his separation from Gretchen, his coworkers noticed gradual changes in his behavior. Most days, David would be among the first to arrive at the gym. But after the split, he started coming in later and later and seemed more withdrawn. On January 26, another switch seemed to flip for David. Kobe Bryant, his idol, died in a fiery helicopter crash that also claimed the life of Bryant's 13-year-old daughter. The tragedy sparked nationwide mourning and wall-to-wall news coverage of the devastating deaths. David was among the throng of grieving fans. In the days that followed, he broke out in hysterics, crying and wailing in front of the classes he led. But when a manager offered to send him home and call in a replacement, he refused. David, imploding in the most visible and visceral manner possible, seemed to want everyone to know he was hurting. Despite his emotionally fragile state, David continued going through the motions of his day-to-day life. Now that they were separated, he and Gretchen had begun dating other people. He became heavily involved in a controversial self-improvement program called Gratitude Training, which critics have likened to a "cult." He spent thousands of dollars on the seminars but refused to disclose to his family what it was he did during the sessions. David continued teaching classes at OrangeTheory, but on February 24, he failed to show up to work, leaving the gym's members locked outside. When Tabitha confronted him, he erupted at her, and once again, she made the decision to terminate his employment, this time for good.

Four days later, Gretchen filed for divorce.

On March 7, the woman he'd been dating made reservations for a paint-and-sip class where they would drink wine while an instructor led them through the process of completing a canvas painting. But when she rebuffed his attempt to feel her up during the session, he burst out of his seat, screamed at her in the middle of the class, and stormed outside. Later that night as she drove him back to her home to get his truck, she told him he was not welcome to stay. When they reached the house, she was alarmed by what she saw inside: Duffel bags filled with his clothes had been laid out on her bed and dining-room table, and food from his mother's house was stashed inside the freezer. Kobe, David's husky, was in the backyard. David, it appeared, had already attempted to move in. As she collected the belongings of a man she'd barely known a month, David lurked outside, banging on the windows and screaming at her. He left only after she called her neighborhood's security company.

A week later, David had a similar episode outside Gretchen's home. While she slept in the early-morning hours, he ranted about escaping to Costa Rica. The world, he believed, was coming to an end. She let him go on for a few hours until she relented and invited him inside.

The country was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, as people stayed home to isolate and avoid the disease. It wasn't unusual to not see your loved ones during this time — but friends and family were deeply concerned by the texts they started to get from Gretchen on March 23, 2020. Gretchen was due to return to work that morning, but she never showed up and didn't notify her office that she wasn't coming in. Dawn Paris, Gretchen’s boss, and close friend, texted her to see if she was okay, but there was no reply, so she texted again at the end of the day. “ Hi, please let me know if you need something. I’m really worried about you” again, no reply. Finally, on Tuesday morning, she received a response. Gretchen stated that she had gone to the ER and passed out in the hospital after recording a 102-degree fever and low oxygen levels. Because of her increasingly dire medical condition, she said, she was being transferred to an off-site location in Belle Glade run by the federal government. The only issue with this story is that the facility she spoke of didn't exist. Gretchen started to text family members to a similar message "Tested positive for coronavirus early this morning. That's the bad news, but I'm at a CDC/Coronavirus treatment facility that only handles COVID cases. The good news is that my blood type has the potential to be used in the cure. Not sure if you remember me saying that I have a strain of Mad Cow disease in my blood. Well, that strain is significant in gathering more answers to find a cure. For safety purposes, Dr. Sinclair and her team are strongly recommending that we maintain contact with immediate family members only. I'm using my mom." At the time, Gretchen's ex-husband, Jeff Dreier, had their 12-year-old daughter with him in Jupiter. He, too, began receiving texts from Gretchen saying she had been quarantined by the CDC and may be placed in a medically induced coma, rendering her unreachable. But Jeff didn't buy it. He took a hard look at the texts, rife with shoddy grammar and punctuation. They used a lot of abbreviations, which Gretchen never did, and knew this was not her. But there was something familiar about the speech pattern. He did, indeed, know someone who talked like that: his ex-wife's now-estranged husband, David Anthony. At this point, Gretchen was not answering texts or phone calls, that a friend decided it was time to reach out to law enforcement and ask them to perform a welfare check. As the family was trying to find any answers to what was going on with Gretchen, they called the clinic and hospital for more information, only to find out that nobody named Gretchen Anthony had been admitted to either of the medical facilities in the recent days.

On March 26th, 2020, police began knocking on doors in Gretchen’s neighborhood in search of clues. At this time, a neighbor came forward to claim she had heard horrible screams on the morning of Saturday, March 21, 2020. In addition to the screams, the woman said she heard the woman saying “no” and then something along the lines of “it hurts, stop it.” It is unclear why the woman didn’t contact 911 about what she heard, but Police said it is not all that uncommon for some people not to want to get immediately involved in situations they don’t fully grasp. Another neighbor told police that he had noticed a soapy substance coming out from under Gretchen’s garage door, right after Gretchen was last seen or heard from. An investigation revealed what appeared to be stains from this mysterious soapy substance on the driveway. It would appear that someone had been in there cleaning in recent days, and certainly doubtful that someone sick with the coronavirus would feel up to such a task as cleaning their garage. While checking the property, police observed that the door from Gretchen’s patio to her garage was locked, and the key had been broken into the deadbolt. Investigators wondered if that is where they might find Gretchen. They immediately forced entry inside, where they encountered a strong, pungent smell of some sort of cleaning solution in the garage. Still, there was no sign of the missing woman, so they ventured farther into the house. Their search of the home revealed evidence of a violent struggle. There was a broken picture frame, a stained towel sitting on the washing machine, and shards of glass across Gretchen’s bed. The towel later tested positive for BLS, a blood-like substance, but the most important clue came from neighbors who had taken photos of a black Nissan pickup truck that was parked outside Gretchen’s house after the screams were heard. So, who owned such a truck? None other than Gretchen’s ex-husband — 44-year old David Anthony. Now, Gretchen’s disappearance was looking like it might be foul play of some sort and her former husband was the prime suspect.

When the couple finally separated in February 2020, It was at this time that Anthony began to grow increasingly volatile, according to his former boss, Tabitha Hopkins. Apparently, Gretchen had felt the same. She had confided in her family that she was concerned for her safety and had security cameras installed around her home as a protective measure. Her fear was apparently driven by an uninvited visit from David to their home after he had already moved out. Now, as the police were searching the house, they noticed that someone had removed all the security cameras throughout the property of the house. The removal of the cameras by someone was obviously an attempt to erase any evidence of whatever crime had taken place in the home, but the culprit hadn’t considered that the footage was stored in the cloud for retrieval. Detective Kenerson requested a search warrant for the service provider to turn over the files for review. While waiting for the results, investigators were sent to speak with David Anthony at his mother’s home. Anthony’s mother, Susan Warner, greeted them politely enough. She told police that she had gotten a text just that morning from Gretchen indicating that she was still at the CDC center and offered to show it to them. They accepted her offer and found it to be much the same as others that had been sent to friends and family, but her answer to their inquiry about David’s whereabouts was of concern to them. Anthony’s mother said he told her he was going to Costa Rica. She said he had packed up his truck on Tuesday, March 24, 2020, and left in it with his dog, Kobe. This made the police feel like they got their guy, and there was something more sinister about this case as the detectives on the case received the footage requested from the JMC parking lot where they had found Gretchen’s car. The video showed Gretchen’s Mini Cooper pulling into a parking space, but the figure that got out was clearly not Gretchen. Instead, it was a very tall figure not readily identified male.

Next, investigators began tracking Gretchen’s cell phone. If someone was still sending texts from it and that someone was him, it might help to locate him. They discovered that it was pinging off a tower more than six hundred miles away, near Pensacola, Florida, and it was on the move. In fact, when they used the tracking data from the phone, they were able to follow a trail as Anthony traveled across Florida, stopping at jewelry stores along the way in an attempt to sell Gretchen’s jewelry.

One store owner told investigators that Anthony had claimed he was selling some jewelry left to him by a family member who had died of COVID-19. However, the one thing that none of the videos showed was Gretchen. The only advantage police had in this little game of chase was that, thanks to his own mother, they knew where Anthony was headed.

By this time, Gretchen had been missing for six days, and there was no indication of where she might be, but both his phone and hers were pinging at the same cell phone towers as he traveled toward Texas and, presumably, the Mexican border. It could be that they were traveling together, but with no sign of her at any of the videos from places Anthony stopped along the way, it wasn’t likely.

Digging into Anthony’s past, investigators found something else about him. A few weeks before Gretchen’s disappearance police officer on patrol observed him, visibly nervous and sweaty, pacing around outside a Riviera Beach restaurant and, at one point, approaching a group of teenage girls. When the officer noticed that David's license plate was partially obscured by black electrical tape, he confronted him. David grew defensive, suggesting his 12-year-old stepdaughter was to blame. And he refused to stand still — despite the officer's warning not to move, David yanked open the door of his truck and began rummaging around. Fearing what would come next, the officer trained his gun on David and ordered him onto the ground. When another officer arrived to provide backup, David leapt from the pavement, dove headfirst into his truck, and reached for the driver-side floorboard. One of the officers grabbed hold of David, but not before he slammed the door on her arm. He was arrested for resisting arrest with violence and posted bail several days later. When officers looked beneath the driver's seat where he had been reaching, they found a large Bowie knife.

With the evidence detectives were accumulating, they were very much aware that they were dealing with a potentially dangerous individual. He was also attempting to be crafty by turning off the cell phones and only turning them on as needed, so there were gaps in tracking him.

On March 27, 2020, Anthony’s phone pinged in Pecos, Texas, but the next time they were able to get a ping was the following day when it showed up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Fearing they might lose track of him before he reached the border, detectives made a call to the Las Cruces police and gave them a description of Anthony’s truck. Police there were able to pull him over. When he was asked about his ex-wife, he told them she had COVID and that the last he heard from her, she was in a CDC facility getting treated for it. Police impounded his truck, using the felony vehicle BOLO to do so, and seized his possessions, including three cell phones, but they didn’t have enough evidence to bring Anthony in for questioning. They were forced to let him go. He and his dog were allowed to just walk away. Now, Anthony was in Las Cruces, on foot and without the phones allowing Jupiter detectives had been using to track him. Plus, the key detectives in his case were still hundreds of miles away in Florida, left to wait and wonder what he would do next.

On March 30, 2020, Jupiter police received the video footage from Gretchen’s security cameras. They showed a very tall figure on her patio, waiting to attack. The dark figure forced her into the garage when she appeared on the patio. She screamed for her Alexa device to help her by dialing 911 for her. Unfortunately, this is a service that Alexa does not offer unless previously programmed to do so, and Gretchen had not known you must set it up. Still, the device recorded her failed commands in its history.

At this point, the intruder grabbed Gretchen and muffled her screams before dragging her further into the garage. A bit later, the intruder came back into view alone, looked up, and realized there was a camera present. He was looking directly into it. He snatched the camera off the wall and threw it on the floor. The face of the man attacking Gretchen could now clearly be seen. It was David Anthony. Afterward, he took all the cameras down throughout the house.

With the evidence needed to arrest Anthony for the kidnapping and murder of his former wife, Detective Kenerson’s team headed out to Las Cruces in search of the killer. They searched homeless shelters and common gathering areas. They searched hotels and hostels. There was no sign of him. Now, they feared he might disappear off the radar completely.

On March 31, 2020, officers caught a break. Anthony was spotted walking with his dog. Police arrested him and took Kobe to a shelter. Detective Kenerson was finally face to face with the murderer he’d been searching for all this time as Anthony sat in the back of a police car. Kenerson explained to him that there was a warrant for his arrest and Anthony's ignorance of the circumstances. He asked, “for what?” When Kenerson told him it was for homicide he asked him “for who?” Kenerson asked who he thought it was, and Anthony shook his head, saying that is why he asked the question. At that point, Kenerson told him they could talk more about it at headquarters, but he still wanted the answer to one question right then. He asked Anthony what he had done with Gretchen’s body.

He got no answer.

Kenerson, along with Detective Kelly Sanders, both from the Jupiter Police Department, sat down in an interrogation room with one primary goal. They wanted Anthony to tell them what he had done with Gretchen, but a defiant killer had no intention of being cooperative. He claimed she was alive. He claimed that she was following him toward his destination in a separate vehicle but that she had “bolted” when they reached El Paso.

Kenerson and Sanders knew this was a lie but let him continue as he further claimed she was on the run because she’d discovered some illegal activities were happening at her employer’s company and someone was after her because of what she knew about it. He was evasive about follow-up questions about the COVID texts that were supposedly from Gretchen. When told there was no record of her being in the hospital for coronavirus, David shrugged it off, saying it “doesn’t mean anything.”

Sanders and Kenerson told David that they knew he was the one sending the texts, but he still denied having harmed her, even after they told him they had him on video parking her car in the hospital parking lot. He claimed that she had him to that for her, but he surely couldn’t deny what they’d seen on her home surveillance. They told her they had seen him put his hand over her mouth and drag her into the garage. Still, he stuck to his claim that she was still alive.

No matter what tactic they took, David stuck to his claim that Gretchen was still alive. In fact, he repeated that she was alive thirty-five times during the interrogation. Frustrated and angry, Kenerson tried to switch tactics, this time appealing to David’s affection for his stepdaughter. He held up a photo of her and told David to look at it. David told him, “I love her dearly. I love her dearly.”

David shared that he had taught her to ride a bike and shoot hoops. Kenerson told him that was “awesome” and was hopeful that his tactic might be working, but when Sanders told Anthony to “do what’s right for her,” he only responded that he would never hurt her. He added that he “would never hurt either one of them.”

Challenged with the statement that he was hurting her indirectly, he responded again that Gretchen was still alive. They made it clear that they knew she was dead. He dared them to prove it. That’s when Sanders told him they had it in black and white. He told them that they didn’t have video of him killing her and they asked how he knew. He just told them to show it to him and angrily kept insisting that they do so.

Seeing that they were getting nowhere with him, they decided to take a break and sent officers in to adjust his handcuffs while they were outside the room. Afterward, Kenerson returned, alone, and putting on a quiet and friendly persona. He played audio of Gretchen’s daughter begging Anthony to tell them what he had done with her mother’s body, but that didn’t work either. Instead, Anthony falsely claimed that the voice on the recording was not his stepdaughter. He said he knew her voice and that wasn’t it.

Kenerson was at his wit’s end and called Anthony a monster for what he had done, but Anthony still insisted he had nothing to do with it. Kenerson just kept calling him a monster while Anthony replied that he needed to do his homework over and over. After more than two hours of this verbal standoff, David cut the interview short by asking for a lawyer, Kenerson left the interview room angry and frustrated that he couldn’t find out what Anthony had done with Gretchen’s body, but there was nothing more he could do at that moment.

Anthony was charged with second-degree murder and extradited to Florida. His black and white husky named Kobe was adopted by new owners and Anthony’s face was all over the news, revealed him to the public as the monster he clearly was, but still, Prosecutor David Aronberg knew he would have a hard time getting a conviction without the body. Though the footage showed Anthony attacking Gretchen, it did now show him murder her or what he had done with her body. That lack of evidence was exactly what Anthony was counting on.

Anthony was held in custody at the Palm Beach County, Florida jail as a grand jury indicted him on a charge of kidnapping and upgraded the second-degree murder charge to first-degree murder. The change in charges put Anthony at risk of being sentenced to death, but still, there was no body. It was the one thing that could set Anthony free at trial and the cold-blooded killer knew it.

As the months rolled on and the holidays approached, it was increasingly apparent that Gretchen’s remains might never be found. With her family broken-hearted over the lack of progress in finding her so they could put her to rest and the possibility of her killer eluding justice due to the lack of physical evidence, the prosecution entered into negotiations with Anthony’s defense attorney. In December 2020, the prosecution and defense lawyers began working out a plea agreement that would take a possible death sentence off the table and put Anthony behind bars for 38 years in exchange for his pleading guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder.

And there was one more requirement.

David Anthony must finally reveal the location of Gretchen’s remains.

On December 21, 2020 — nine months after David Anthony murdered Gretchen Anthony, he finally pleaded guilty to his crime and put one more piece of the puzzle into place. He revealed what he had done with his former wife’s body. Gretchen was buried just a few miles from her house beneath an otherwise inconspicuous patch of grass behind a Walmart shopping center and near a retirement home. It is unclear how he managed to bury her there without being noticed by anyone and he wasn’t providing any further details.

With Gretchen’s location now known, her remains were recovered and an autopsy was performed, finally revealing why a neighbor had heard Gretchen Anthony screaming on March 21, 2020.

Gretchen had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck and torso. There were defensive wounds where she had tried to fight back — where she had tried desperately to save her own life. Ultimately, she had lost her fight and her ex-husband had disposed of her and cleaned up the evidence of his crime as much as possible before attempting to flee the country.

On January 14, 2021, David Anthony was sentenced per his plea agreement.

Members of Gretchen’s family were also present in the courtroom. Sarah Carey, Gretchen’s sister had this to say to her sister’s killer: “You used what you did to negotiate something for yourself. You are pure evil. You stole a mother away from her child, a daughter away from her mother. You are a monster. You are a coward. You can never be forgiven.”

When Anthony was allowed to speak, he gave only a strange explanation for his actions:

“My illusions saw the COVID pandemic as an end of the world prophecy, an Armageddon that I felt compelled to escape no matter the cost. … Instead of being a man, I chose to be a coward. I tried to steal what wasn’t mine, and in the process, I ended a life. Her life had value, her life had meaning, and I stole that life.”

And he still would not say why he really murdered Gretchen. Her friends and family may never be given the answers to the questions that remain. Gretchen’s daughter is in the care of her biological father and is recovering from the trauma of losing a man she once adored and the loving mother he so callously took from her.

David Anthony’s sentence puts him behind bars until 2058. He will be 81 years old upon his release.

It remains to be seen if he will ever truly have any remorse for what he did and finally explain, honestly, why he killed Gretchen Anthony.

Outro

That brings us to the end of this episode! As always, thanks for listening to Murder By Nature. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any streaming platform you are currently on, and be sure to come back Saturday for our new episode. Until then, I am your host, Jazmin Hernandez, don’t forget to stay safe! Don’t get murdered or murder people, you lovely humans!

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