The Longline

For years, John Moore and Tanner Mansell ran shark diving tours off the coast of Florida. One day, they came across a fishing line in the middle of the ocean – with over a dozen sharks caught on it. “This looked like something very illegal going on. And we felt like if we didn’t act, these sharks would definitely die.” Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:39Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 03

  If a shark is coming towards you, most of the time, just staying calm and just maintaining eye contact is going to do the trick. It's when people start freaking out and flailing around is when they're like, oh, is that a prey? Why is the energy so high? Why is this thing looking like prey, right? I mean, I have a hard time getting sharks close to me most of the time because I'm wanting them to get close.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  This is Tanner Mansell. He's been diving with sharks for about 10 years.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  The first time was in 2016 on vacation in Jupiter, Florida.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  We got out there, we jumped in the water and it was just like, these sharks were just swimming within five feet of us, just minding their own business, looking at us, swimming around. But it was this overwhelming feeling of just calmness and peacefulness. It was a high, a literal high, that lasted months afterwards.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Tanner had been working a corporate job in Oregon. But after this vacation, he decided he wanted to make a change.

• 2:23Speaker 05

  I couldn't go back to what I was doing, knowing that that existed. So I just started reading books. I started putting everything I could together to be like, okay, how do I exit, you know, this lifestyle that I'm in and start over completely doing this?

• 2:41Speaker 04

  By 2017, Tanner had saved up enough money to move to Florida. Eventually, he started helping out on tours with the same company he'd gone diving with, working with a man named John Moore. John and Tanner would take small groups about four miles offshore in the Gulf Stream. Then they put a cage with fish into the water to attract sharks. Jupiter, Florida is known for its sharks. Depending on the season, they have bull sharks, hammerheads, and sometimes even great whites. By August 2020, Tanner had been working as a shark diving guide for about three years.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  On Monday, August 10th, they had a tour scheduled with six passengers, a couple, and a family of four. Here's John.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  And we headed out to our normal bull shark spot. And I kind of remember the water was a little bit murky, but we had great sharks that day. It kind of rained, so it was kind of a bit overcast and the sharks were... And the water just wasn't super clear, but I do remember we had really good shark activity. And we did probably about a 45-minute dive. And then we were headed back, and we still had extra time, you know, before our... It was right before our lunch break.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  There was a nearby shipwreck that John and Tanner sometimes took tours to if they had extra time.

• 4:17Speaker 05

  And so we cruised over to that wreck, but the water was really murky there. Like I'd say, you know, almost no visibility, like maybe not the kind of water you'd really want to be in just because, you know, it's, it just becomes a little sketchier when the water's not clear. And so we were getting ready to go back in and, uh, and as we spun around, I could see this orange float, like, or an orange speck in a little bit further out. And, uh, so I was like, oh God, you know, cause sometimes if there's like a diver comes to the surface away from a boat, he'll inflate a little colored thing so that his boat can find him and other boats don't run him over.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  You know, there's been dozens of times where we've, we've picked people up out in the water and, and so when I saw this buoy, I was thinking to myself, oh, it's probably a scuba diver or trash. So we did our normal routine. If it's trash, we'll pick it up. If it's a diver, we'll, we'll help them out, get them back to their boat. And as we got closer, we realized, okay, it's just some, you know, random buoy.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  And Tanner grabbed it, but he's like, oh, there's a fishing line on it. And, um, he started pulling in the line and he's like, it feels like there's something on this and, you know, and it's a very thick fishing line. And he pulled and pulled and pulled. And then we got to, um, a shark that was swimming on the, on the line.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Neither of them had seen anything like this before.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  I was out there at least five days a week and, uh, we'd never seen anything like that because, you know, occasionally, you know, it's Florida and people catch sharks occasionally. Um, but you know, there, there's strict regulations for shark fishing. Um, and so we cut that shark free, but that line was attached, you know, to a, a thick, a very thick line. Um, and so we just started pulling on that thicker line and, uh, and it was one of those where it never ends. Like we, we pulled it in, we started pulling it and we got to another shark, um, which we cut off and then we, and then the line continued.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  So we realized we found something really, you know, odd out here.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  When he looked at the setup a little more, John realized that it looked like a fishing method called longlining. But he'd never seen a long line in this area, and he'd never seen one with sharks on it.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  Longlining is, it's a method of fishing where you will have miles of fishing line set out that'll have hooks spaced out upon it. And you know, when I was in college, I did a couple tours of working on a longline boat for fishing for swordfish. And so I knew what longline is. But this wasn't, you know, where when I was fishing, we had, it was a very legitimate looking setup. It wasn't like, this was not like your regular longline setup. This had like little pink and purple weights from Walmart attached to it and to hold the line down

• 7:31Speaker 05

  and had this little, you know, faded buoy on the end of it. It was not like a legitimate looking setup. When I, you know, when I longlined, I was a buoy man. So I, I set the buoys out for the thing and we would have, you know, a massive buoy on the end of the line with a, with our boat name, permit number and everything on it. And then it had a, a large mast with a radar reflective dome thing on the top so that other boats would recognize it and stay away from it. And this didn't have any of that. This looked like something very illegal and subversive going on. And, and we felt like, you know, if we didn't act, yeah, these sharks would definitely die.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Tanner says there were all different kinds of sharks on the line. Tiger sharks, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, and hammerheads. And that some of them looked like they weren't doing well. Some sharks, like hammerheads, need to keep moving to get enough oxygen.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  So they're trapped, they're not getting oxygen. So they, that's how a hammerhead shark will die, is you stop them from moving in the water.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Tanner got in touch with a coworker and she called NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  She said they seemed very concerned about what we had found.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Then their coworker called Florida Fish and Wildlife.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  And they were as baffled as we were because they'd never heard of this either. Like, this is not an area where, you know, I knew lots of fishermen there. No one had ever heard of a long line there, ever. And, yeah, so, you know, we got no indication from anybody that we should stop doing this because nobody knew what this was.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  So they kept pulling the line.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  At first, we kept thinking this was going to end. Like, you know, you keep thinking like, okay, here's, you know, there's another shark. Oh, my God, and this must be the end of this line. But it didn't end. It just, it went on for forever. And this is like backbreaking work, like you're like hand over handing, especially because we're collecting this line and putting it on the boat because, you know, we didn't want to just, you know, cut these animals free and leave like this line out there to, you know, pollute the ocean or potentially ensnare some other wildlife. And, uh, and so, you know, we're, we're picking up this line and coiling it into the back of the boat.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  The passengers that were on board with John and Tanner helped pull the line in, and they took videos of them cutting the sharks free.

• 10:10Speaker 06

  Go free, baby!

• 10:18Speaker 05

  That made my day!

• 10:22Speaker 05

  And everyone, you know, and everyone was kind of excited too because they'd seen, you know, it seemed like we had found like something very criminal going on and we were, you know, saving this wildlife. And the first few sharks, you know, they looked exhausted because they've been, you know, pulling against this line for a while. But, you know, when we cut them free, they just, they just swam away. But then we got to like a bigger hammerhead shark, and that shark was not in good shape. It sort of half swam, half sank, and I'm, I'm pretty certain it died. And it was a big, probably like a 12, I'd say at least like a 12-foot great hammerhead.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  They cut 19 sharks free. At one point, a few hours in, John called Fish and Wildlife and spoke with an officer named Barry Partalo. John told him that they were still pulling the line in and cutting sharks free.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Eventually, they had to head back to shore. And on the way, John spotted a Fish and Wildlife boat.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  And so I buzzed over to the Fish and Wildlife boat. And I said, hey, you know, we found this line, you know, out there. And he's like, I was the guy you were talking to on the phone. And so he took photos of this line, of this giant pile of line in my boat. And, uh, and said, oh, my God, that's crazy. Like, I've never seen anything like that. And he said, can you like, put it on the dock? And I said, sure, yep. And so I headed back to our marina where I did, you know, as he said, I put it on the dock, much to the chagrin of the harbor master, who was like, wait, why are you putting this massive pile of line? But everyone was so intrigued by this line.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Like, people were just coming up and checking out this massive pile of line that we've now unloaded on the dock. And we're telling everyone the story and the passengers are, you know, all excited, telling everyone what, what happened and what we found out there. And there was a, at that point, there was a guy that had like a fishing blog or something? And he said, oh, my God. So we told him the whole story too. And he's like, can I take pictures? And, uh, and so we had, you know, we're posing with all this line and, and he was taking pictures. He's like, I'll put it in my fishing blog. This is so crazy. And, and that was one of the pictures that then went viral online.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  That night, John and Tanner started getting a lot of messages from people who'd seen the photo online. John noticed that there were some comments that said he and Tanner were going to get in trouble because someone had a permit to set up that line.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  And I was just ignoring it because I thought there's no way that that's a permitted line because, you know, we'd already talked to all the authorities and no one had told us that there was a permitted line out there. But then I was still talking to Fish and Wildlife that evening. And they said, hey, well, can we talk to you again tomorrow? And I said, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and they were, at this point, they're still, everyone's so nice. And, and, you know, they were, you know, acting like we had thwarted a crime. And, uh, and it wasn't until the next morning that like, all of a sudden, the tone had changed.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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• 16:17Speaker 04

  The day after John Moore and Tanner Mansell found the long line, John noticed that he had missed a call from Florida Fish and Wildlife.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  So I called them. And now the guy was like very, like the tone had changed so dramatically on the phone. And the guy now was like super aggro sounding on the phone. He's like, I need you to come down to, you know, the marina right now. And, you know, I want to talk to you. And I was like, hey, I'm going to talk to a lawyer because I knew something was up. And I did not go down and meet him. And I said, you can talk to my lawyer.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  And then John found out that the rumors he'd been hearing online were true. The long line had actually been legal. Someone had a permit for it.

• 17:05Speaker 05

  And it was permitted through NOAA, through the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  The organization that John says had seemed concerned about the line being there when his coworker called them. They learned that the permit belonged to a local fisherman's boat and that it was a type of permit that was hardly ever granted. Here's Tanner.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  So this is the most rare permitted line in the US. Only up to five, I think, are given out per year. And initially, I just felt bad because I'm like, oh, you know, we obviously interfered with a legal thing. But we did everything we could to make sure that it wasn't like we, you know, we, we thought we were uncovering a crime the whole time. We asked law enforcement.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  John and Tanner didn't hear anything else from law enforcement over the next few months, but they say a lot of people in the community were talking about what happened.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  There's a big anti-shark culture in Florida, you know, in a certain, you know, in the fishing community, you know, because they, a lot of the fishing community hates the sharks because, you know, the sharks eat their catch. And so a lot of the fishermen, you know, want the sharks dead. And, you know, and we regularly see, you know, gunshot wounds to sharks, like that's just a standard in our business. You know, we're, we're out there diving with these sharks and you see sharks on the daily with bullet holes in their head and stuff. And so as soon as the fishing community found out that this was a legal

• 18:45Speaker 05

  line that was killing sharks out there and that we had, that we had thwarted this, we became like public enemy number one and they were like, I was getting death threats.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  A couple of months after they found the line, Tanner got a knock on his door. It was an official from NOAA and some police officers. Tanner remembers them saying that they were now investigating what had happened with the long line as a stolen property case.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  They essentially said to me, they were like, "We're not going after you. We're going after Captain John. We're not planning to put you on the indictment, but we need information and we need your cooperation." And I was like, I, all I said was, "Yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm not, speak to a lawyer and we can talk after that." But I'm, I don't feel comfortable. And so they're like, "Okay, very well. No, no worries." And then they left. And then I told John, I'm like, "Dude, John, like, they're seriously coming at us. They were coming at you." And I just didn't say anything because I didn't feel comfortable.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  The whole thing just seemed so insane. Like, we, you know, if I was gonna, if we were gonna commit a crime out there, like, I wouldn't be calling the police while I was doing it. I wouldn't be calling, you know, Fish and Wildlife repeatedly on myself. And the people, the passengers we had, this chief of police, his wife, who also worked in law enforcement, as witnesses to this, you know, because they were listening to my phone conversations on speaker. They were seeing me reporting this in real time. There was no way that you could have thought that we were doing anything, you know, illegal out there.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  John and Tanner both hired lawyers, but they hadn't been officially charged with anything. So they waited and tried to keep working as usual.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  It was always in the back of my head, but I honestly, you know, I never thought anything would come of this. You know, you couldn't forget about it because still, like, almost on a daily, there were people like waving pistols at me when I'd go out of the harbor, you know, fishermen waving guns at me and, you know, yelling obscenities at my passengers and stuff. Like, the level of, you know, vitriol from the fishing community was insane.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  It was like this for a couple of years.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  In 2022, Tanner traveled to Indonesia, where his partner runs a nonprofit.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  So I just landed in Indonesia. I'm about two days in. And I get a call from my lawyer, who says, "You're being arrested, and you need to be in the US tomorrow."

• 21:39Speaker 04

  John was at home in Florida when he got the call. He remembers it was his wedding anniversary, and he was at the store buying flowers for his wife. Tanner's lawyer reached out to the prosecution to explain that Tanner was out of the country.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  And said, "They're willing to turn themselves in. Tanner's in Indonesia. He'll catch the first flight back. But we need a little bit of time." And that's when things started getting really serious because the prosecutor started arguing that we couldn't do what's called like a safe surrender, or we couldn't turn ourselves in, that they were going to arrest us on our doorstep.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  John says that after a lot of back and forth through their lawyers, they were finally able to turn themselves in. They were both charged with theft of commercial fishing gear in federal waters, a felony.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  The prosecutor offered us plea deals to plead guilty. And John and I didn't even hesitate. We were like, "No, we're not pleading guilty to something we didn't do." So we were, if we would have pled guilty, we would have got misdemeanors, community service, and we had to write a letter of an apology and admit guilt and be like, "We did, you know." And we're like, "No." We were like, "We're not going to do that because we didn't do anything wrong here."

• 22:59Speaker 04

  John and Tanner's lawyers started preparing for the trial.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Our lawyers sat John down before, and they tested him to see how he would hold up. And John is such a like, good energy, agreeing kind of guy, that he failed so miserably.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  They quickly said, "John, you are not cut out for this." They're like, "It's so easy to make you say, 'Oh, yeah, no, I see what, I see your point.'" And they're like, "This doesn't work in court."

• 23:30Speaker 03

  So our lawyers were like, "Look, this prosecutor's going to eat John up if he goes up there." And I didn't even consider going up there because I'm like, "Well, if John's not going, I'm not going." We had four different lawyers representing us, and they said, "We don't think that you guys should take the stand. We think that we have enough evidence here to acquit you." So we decided not to testify.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  The trial began on November 28, 2022.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  The prosecution argued that we intentionally sought out to destroy this fisherman's property because sharks are worth more to us alive than dead. So we stole, essentially, they said, we stole the sharks from them.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Because you have a tourism business that relies on your clients being able to see sharks.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Exactly, which, you know, obviously, I don't want to see sharks die, but I'm also, you know, no fool, I know that sharks are being harvested off of Florida daily, you know, so I'm not, I'm not, you know, I wasn't trying to take a stand, I was trying to do the right thing, and I thought somebody was illegally killing them.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  The fish and wildlife officer who'd been on the phone with John, Officer Barry Partalo, testified. He told the court, quote, "I advised him, as a law enforcement officer, we would never remove anything from a hook or a line without first investigating it. And we would never advise anybody to remove anything from a hook and a line without investigating it." He also said, "I told him not to cut the fish off the line."

• 25:20Speaker 04

  John says he was surprised when he heard that. He says Officer Partalo never told him to stop.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  "We reached out to Florida Fish and Wildlife and NOAA for this story, but didn't hear back."

• 25:35Speaker 04

  A NOAA officer who filed a report on the incident also testified and said that the report didn't include anything about John being told to stop.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  The trial lasted nearly three days.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  And then the deliberation lasted an eternity. It was like two and a half days of the jury sending notes to us.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  One note from the jury to the judge read, quote, "Not unanimous, cannot get there."

• 26:09Speaker 04

  The jury asked for more specific definitions of certain words, like "mistake."

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Near the end of the first full day of deliberations, the judge said the jury was, quote, "still very divided."

• 26:23Speaker 04

  The next day, the judge issued something called an "Allen Charge", which urges the jury to work harder to reach a verdict to avoid a hung jury. It's also sometimes called a "dynamite charge".

• 26:36Speaker 05

  So after our three days, basically, of jury deliberation and deadlock jury, they said, "The jury has come to a decision." And honestly, we had like, you know, like, we all felt really good about it. And, and the prosecution looked stressed. And, and so when the jury came out, you could immediately see on their face that it was bad. You know, like, people, they, like, people were avoiding eye contact as they came out. Some of the jurors were crying.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And that's when I knew. I was like, "Oh, yeah, they're, they're, they're gonna find us guilty."

• 27:18Speaker 05

  And like, the whole courtroom, like, everyone behind us started crying. And, you know, in our side of the courtroom. And, and I was just, honestly, I was pissed. I was in shock and I was just, and I was pissed.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  We'll be right back.

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• 29:53Speaker 04

  Talkiatory.com/criminal. The US Department of Justice issued a press release announcing John Moore and Tanner Manzell's conviction. It began, "A boat crew offering tourists the opportunity to swim with sharks took a pause between dives to steal a commercial fishing gear set."

• 30:19Speaker 04

  What was your sentence?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  The prosecutor was trying to get us to go to jail for five years and pay $250,000.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  They were each sentenced to one year of probation and had to pay back the cost of the long line equipment and the sharks they let free.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  And I had one year of community service, which was, you know, I volunteered at the shelter, walking dogs. Like, that was great. Like, it was something I'd like to do anyway.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  The judge said, I think their primary motivation was trying to protect the sharks and the ocean life.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  You know, so the sentence itself was nothing, you know, was really nothing. No, you know, but it's, there's a lot of things that come along with a conviction, you know, it's with a felony, life changes. You know, I, my daughter lives in Canada. I couldn't go visit my daughter in Canada. She just bought a house, just had a baby. And, you know, with a felony conviction, anything like, like renting an apartment, you have to put down that you're, you know, I, we're planning on moving to California, which we finally have, were able to do. But it, you know, when, as we're applying for houses to rent, you know, you have to put down that you're a felon on the thing, which, you

• 31:36Speaker 05

  know, the most bizarre thing for me. Like, I didn't even have, I didn't even have a speeding ticket. Like, I had never, you know, this was not my, my wheelhouse.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Did, did you appeal?

• 31:48Speaker 05

  Yes, we appealed. And luckily, you know, my attorneys, they, they did it for free. You know, they, they said, we're going to appeal. And I just said, listen, like, I am, I'm completely bankrupt from this. I, you know, I, we lost. I, I can't afford to appeal. And they're like, well, we're doing it. And you don't have to pay anything.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  They appealed on an issue about jury instructions.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Three appellate judges heard their case and decided to uphold the convictions. But one of the judges wrote, "Because I am bound to consider only the single narrow issue raised on appeal, I join my colleagues in affirming, but I do so with reluctance." John Moore Jr. and Tanner Mansell are felons because they tried to save sharks from what they believed to be an illegal poaching operation. They are the only felons I have ever encountered in 18 years on the bench and three years as a federal prosecutor who called law enforcement to report what they were seeing and what actions they were taking in real time.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  And so my lawyers were like, well, we're not done. We are going to see what the next step is. And it was, it looked like it was going to be the Supreme Court.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  But then, in May of 2025, nearly five years after John and Tanner found the long line, they both got a phone call.

• 33:18Speaker 05

  It was the day after my birthday. We were walking our dog and I got a call from my lawyer. She said, John, I have a, can you talk for a second? I said, yeah, of course. And then she said, I have the White House on the other line. And I was like, what?

• 33:35Speaker 03

  I was actually on a plane and the plane started rolling forward and I started getting a call from my lawyer. And he never calls. He's always emails. So I was like, ooh, I wonder what this is. Like, you know, I didn't know. So I answered. I said, hey, I'm on a plane. It's rolling forward. I've got like 30 seconds. What's up? And he said, you were just pardoned by the President of the United States. Congratulations.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  And I just broke down. I started crying. I was like, oh my god, finally, it's like some good news. I couldn't believe it. The person next to me thought I was probably crazy.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  They were both shocked because they hadn't even applied for a presidential pardon.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  I could vote again because that was another obvious thing that you couldn't do. And if I wanted to have a firearm, which I hadn't wanted, but I could have a firearm again and all that, but you still couldn't, it wasn't recognized internationally. You were still a felon, but you were a pardoned felon.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Meaning that the conviction, along with the pardon, would still appear on their criminal records. John would be able to visit his daughter in Canada, but he says in his case, he would have to apply for a special permit. John and Tanner's lawyers started working to get their felony records expunged. They submitted a petition to the original judge who heard their case. John says they were told it might take several weeks to hear back, but they heard the next morning that the judge had cleared their records. John and his wife live in California now. He's still out on the water most days and still guiding shark dives and wildlife tours.

• 35:30Speaker 04

  How has this changed the way you do your job?

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I don't know if it's changed the way I do my job at all, but it's changed my outlook on everything else. I'm like a very optimistic person by, you know, like annoyingly optimistic for a lot of people, like you know, my wife. And, you know, it stripped a little of that optimism from my brain because, you know, I always thought if you do the right thing, then, you know, then the universe takes care of you. And, you know, and this was not the case in that situation.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  Tanner still lives in Jupiter and still leads shark diving tours. But he says he isn't able to enjoy it the way he used to. One day this past summer, he was heading back to the marina after a trip and saw two large gasoline canisters floating in the ocean, leaking gas.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  And my reaction is always, obviously, is to stop and pick them up and put them, clean up the ocean, right? So I got there and I immediately started feeling I was going to have a panic attack. And yeah, no, that was... So I started feeling like I'm going to have a panic attack. And kind of everything froze. And I just started feeling like, you know, what's in these tanks, right? Like, what's going to happen if I do this? So, you know, even though I can blatantly see, you know, gas leaking into the ocean, I was hesitant.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And it took me like a good five, 10 minutes to like, collect my thoughts and be like, all right, this is the right thing to do. And picked them up, took them in.

• 37:44Speaker 04

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• 38:00Speaker 04

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajikko, Lilly Clark, and Lena Silison. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Sederborg. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes, to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.