Pod Insights The Binge Crimes Fatal Fantasy | 3. ‘One Big Oopsy’ About this episode Once in custody, several unlikely suspects describe a bizarre Live Action Role-Playing game called “The Underworld” — which doesn’t seem so harmless when one suspect begins talking about the game’s villain.
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Transcript 5,417 words · 14 speakers
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0:31 Speaker 01 Listen to all episodes of Fatal Fantasy ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed Your True Crime Obsession.
1:06 Speaker 01 So last we left it, Mike Foale and Katie Inglis were in separate interrogation rooms, each telling Loudoun County detectives about the night in question. But they're also each harping on about something called "The Underworld." That's a live-action role-playing game, or LARP as they called it, that their friend, Clara Schwartz, created. For as much time as they hung out in real life, they spent online together acting out quests and being wrapped up totally in the underworld game.
1:48 Speaker 01 Live-action role-playing is a major pastime these days and was a fast-growing activity at the beginning of the 2000s, covering everything from dressing up as Star Trek characters at a sci-fi convention to getting intimate in fuzzy animal costumes as part of a LARP subculture called "furries."
2:10 Speaker 01 But assuming that there's a kinky aspect to LARP would be ignorant, since most simply enjoy dressing up as a fictional character from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, or some comic book character. Some LARP practitioners like to add an old-world, magical, and fantasy element aspect to it, and it can get quite dark if they also have an interest in the occult.
2:41 Speaker 01 As investigators spoke to Mike and Katie, they thought maybe both had perhaps taken these role-playing games a bit more seriously than your average geek out there, dressing up as their favorite anime character at a convention. And now, in the middle of these interviews, a bloodied, medieval sword is found in Mike's bedroom, which would later turn out to have Dr. Robert Schwartz's DNA on it. So they know for certain Mike has a connection to the murder, if he hadn't committed the crime himself.
3:22 Speaker 01 In addition to that, Mike's friend Kyle Hulbert was another person who might be connected to the crime, or at least had knowledge of it.
3:35 Speaker 01 When Loudoun County Investigator Greg Locke asked Mike about the sword, Mike told him he'd only met Kyle a few months ago.
3:44 Speaker 02 September of 2001, that Katie, Michael, and Clara actually went to a Renaissance fair in Maryland, and that's where they met Kyle Hulbert.
3:56 Speaker 01 We have all heard of Civil War reenactments, where history buffs get together, dressed as soldiers, and reenact battles from the 1860s. Renaissance fairs are similar gatherings where historically-minded dress in outfits from the medieval and Renaissance periods and act as if they were still back in those times, just like our friends, Mike, Katie, Clara, and Kyle.
4:25 Speaker 01 I was able to reach Kyle Yulbert by phone. And he talked about how exciting it was for him going to this Renaissance Fair. Because he had never been to one before.
4:38 Speaker 03 It was everything I had never wanted. Like this was, you know, everybody's walk around in character. I had this really cool little cat mask on. Covers the top half of your face, gives you like the bridge, the brow ridge and stuff. And the nose. Had my face painted black, had my hair dyed, and I was wearing all black.
5:01 Speaker 01 On that September day, while roaming around the fair, Kyle met a pretty girl who was known as the Madame of the Maze. Madame's real name is Brandy Dyer. And he was struck by her immediately.
5:18 Speaker 03 I meet her, she's at a food station and she comes up and she, if I remember her, she just had to, she could scratch my ears.
5:26 Speaker 03 And she was really cute and petite and just, I'm just... I don't even remember, god, this is gonna sound so fucking melodramatic. I don't remember a word we said to each other. I just remember looking at her eyes, she had these big, bright, blue eyes. And just going, "You're pretty."
5:45 Speaker 01 Kyle fell hard, as did Brandy. So they exchanged phone numbers. From there, Kyle meets up with three other role players of a similar age who love cosplay, which is short for costume play. They had gone to many of these fairs in the past together and loved the idea of people who thought like them. Inside a vendor tent, Kyle runs into a bespectacled Katie Inglis.
6:17 Speaker 04 I was hanging out at the weapon shop. Okay, it's a place where they actually make swords. You know, custom made, you know, same sword. These are handmade knives, swords, metalware, stuff like that.
6:26 Speaker 01 And you're interested in this stuff because it's...
6:29 Speaker 04 I love the medieval period. And I love, you know, say, all things fantasy. So that just was a natural extension for me.
6:35 Speaker 01 As Mike and Katie explained to detectives, Kyle came across as this larger-than-life, boisterous, jovial person. He seemed older than his years. He was warm and eccentric, and the three of them hit it off.
6:52 Speaker 04 Mike and I started talking, and he's the one that he'd say, you know, he and I kind of gravitate to each other more than anything.
6:58 Speaker 01 Mike was normally shy, but dressed like a scraggly 1970s Game of Thrones reject, he found it easy to relate to Kyle. With Mike and Katie that day is another young girl. Mike introduces her to Kyle. Clara, she says, "Nice to meet you." Kyle is under the impression that Clara is their leader. She's dressed like a female Gandalf, wearing a large gray cloak and carrying a wooden staff.
7:32 Speaker 04 She was the quietest one of the group. Just kind of seemed to be watching everything. And she was friendly but quiet. I mean, that's the word to describe her, is quiet. Very introverted.
7:45 Speaker 01 Within a few days of meeting, Kyle falls quickly into Clara's underworld game, which the others are already wrapped up in. Kyle takes on his role in the game with gusto. Right away, he is deemed a protector and serves proudly as a knight for Clara, the game's queen, the lord of chaos.
8:12 Speaker 01 Her underworld is a complicated place. But all you need to know at this point is she's got a lot of enemies in her fantasy world. But Kyle, the newest member of her underworld force, proves to be a dutiful warrior, there to enjoy and take on the virtual challenges she sets up for him.
8:34 Speaker 05 She finds the perfect guy, the perfect person, who can take the roles and demands and quests and valorization from the fantasy world into the real world. Clara has, in the fantasy world, found the solution to what she perceived to be her real world problem.
8:56 Speaker 01 In the land of fairy tales, happy endings are a must. But when the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred, the end of the story becomes anything but a happy one.
9:19 Speaker 01 My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of dozens of true crime books. From Sony Music Entertainment and M. William Phelps, LLC, you are listening to Fatal Fantasy. This is episode three, One Big Oopsy.
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11:05 Speaker 01 Loudoun County Investigator Greg Locke was now certain of one important fact. Although Mike and Katie knew Clara and hung around with her, she was nowhere near her father's house on the night Dr. Schwartz was murdered. But this other dude, Kyle Hulbert, he was. In fact, they confirmed this by that photograph of a wiry kid, Kyle, in the ATM video going back to the kiosk to grab Mike's ATM card after Mike had forgotten it. Kyle was also the one from the group having tea and crumpets with the neighbor on that night while waiting for the tow truck driver to show up.
11:50 Speaker 01 Realizing now they were all friends, Detective Locke had questions, specifically centered around Clara Schwartz.
12:00 Speaker 02 If they were friends with her, they would have known she was away at school and was not at home. My red flags went up at that point. It made that statement that they had gone there to see Clara when, you know, being her friend, they knew she was at college.
12:17 Speaker 01 Mike and Katie had told police so far that they went to the Stone House that night to visit Clara. But Locke was seeing straight through that line of bullshit.
12:30 Speaker 02 They had been there, it was back in November, I think it was November 9th, I believe, that they went to visit her at JMU. What I'm saying is, is that when we were interviewing and they said that they had gone there to visit her, they should have known that she was away at school and not back home.
12:47 Speaker 01 It's the little white lies that strangle you, not the big ones. The truth is inherent. You do not have to remember it. And smart, dialed-in investigators are just waiting for those little lies to creep into the conversation, which is exactly what Greg Locke heard in speaking to Mike and Katie.
13:11 Speaker 01 With the murder weapon found inside Mike's house, and now forensic proof that both Mike and Katie's fingerprints were found on the sword handle, things weren't looking so good for the role-playing couple.
13:25 Speaker 02 You know, I believe that one was a little less forthcoming than the other. I believe Katie was a little more forthcoming than what Michael was at the time of the interview.
13:35 Speaker 01 As I investigated this part of the case, and got to know this couple and Kyle more directly, it became apparent that they all accepted and even enjoyed the darker aspects of role-playing. Maybe not so much Clara, the author of it all, but certainly Mike, Katie, and Kyle. And part of what they loved more than anything was the old pagan and Wicca side of it. Not wanting to take Kyle's word for it, to learn more about this, I spoke to Joe Lacob, whose specialty is alternative religions.
14:14 Speaker 07 Wicca is an attempt to reconstruct or revive pre-Christian traditions of Europe. And I think that a lot of the appeal of this is that Christianity says, "Well, the supernatural is in heaven. It's not in this world. You get to encounter God after you die." And paganism is saying, "No, no, no. The spirit world is all around us, right? Nature is magical."
14:39 Speaker 01 Kyle told me that he believed the spirit world hovered around him like a cloud wherever he went, and that he could even speak to some of those spirits.
14:49 Speaker 04 I call myself Wiccan. If I use a term to describe myself religiously, it's pagan. Practitioner of witchcraft, Wicca. I believe in multiple gods and goddesses, but I believe that they are, all gods and goddesses are simply manifestations and aspects of the one true source, the one God, so to speak.
15:09 Speaker 01 When Wicca or the occult is mentioned here in this podcast, what it means to Kyle and Katie, Mike and Clara, is, as he says, witchcraft, dabbling in black magic, and all things on the darker side of spirituality. But not every pagan or Wiccan dabbles in the occult. I want to be clear about that.
15:36 Speaker 01 A month before meeting this new group of friends, Kyle had turned 18 and was emancipated from being a ward of the state. He'd had a difficult upbringing and a lot of troubles during his teenage years. And if that wasn't enough, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia early in his life. For someone with this condition, freedom came with a lot more responsibility and accountability, and Kyle believed he was up to the task.
16:06 Speaker 04 My social worker basically said, "He's not throwing a child into psychosis. He's turned 18. We want to release him, declare him an adult." Because I was a ward of the state, so Commonwealth stood up to their little rigmarole, "We don't want him to leave," et cetera, et cetera. And the judge said, "You're gone. You're an adult." And they gave me a bus ticket and sent me on my way.
16:24 Speaker 01 How did you feel about that?
16:25 Speaker 04 I was happy. I was free. No more leashes, no more having to worry about institutions. I was free. But three words that swear in my head, I am free.
16:41 Speaker 01 Taking his medication fell on Kyle's shoulders post emancipation. And as Kyle told me, one of the first things he did after walking out of the courthouse on what he referred to as his "hatching day" was toss his meds in the trash. For Dee Benedetto and Locke, they were focused on what Kyle's role was in the car that night, or if he could give them a better understanding of Mike's involvement in the murder. Did Kyle even know that Mike had the sword? And that Mike had possibly killed someone? For all they knew at this point, Kyle was oblivious to what had happened inside Dr. Schwartz's house.
17:26 Speaker 01 Then Mike told them who had asked him to hide the sword.
17:31 Speaker 02 He later told us that he had taken it there on Kyle's request.
17:37 Speaker 01 So now Mike is saying that the sword used to kill Schwartz belonged to Kyle and not him. Then he tells Locke that it was Kyle who told him to stash it in his closet, and before he did that, Kyle insisted that Mike wipe Schwartz's blood off of it with alcohol.
18:00 Speaker 01 Now the detectives had a problem. Who are they supposed to believe? Some unknown male they have yet to speak to? Or a role-playing stoner with a bloody sword found in his closet?
18:29 Speaker 01 As Detective Locke got further into investigating the sword found in Mike's closet, Mike suddenly declared that the murder had little to do with him. It was Kyle Hulbert's sword, he claimed. Then he kicks it up a notch, claiming that Kyle, his so-called buddy, had killed others.
18:50 Speaker 01 With Mike dropping a hammer on Kyle and playing games with investigators at the same time, they needed to be certain he wasn't trying to protect himself and throw Kyle under a bus. They needed proof, specifically forensic evidence tying Kyle directly to the murder. Also, where was the motive in all of this? Why had Mike, or any of them, murdered their friend's father? Locke decided to go with what he had in front of him, which was enough circumstantial evidence on Kyle to bring him in.
19:28 Speaker 02 Based on information obtained from Katie Inglis and Michael Foal, along with having recovered the murder weapon, an arrest warrant was issued for Kyle Holbert.
19:40 Speaker 01 Here it was, only day two of the investigation, and they were cantering along at breakneck speed. Within 48 hours, they had two people in custody, the murder weapon, and were heading out to pick up a third person of interest.
19:56 Speaker 02 We were running. I think I was there 72 hours, pretty much straight. That was that particular office there, we had a shower, so, you know, it was pretty much straight on work around the clock. Cat nap at the desk, that type of thing.
20:17 Speaker 01 That's how these things go, right? You know, you gotta, you gotta kinda hit, well, it's hot, right?
20:22 Speaker 02 When you have leads that are starting to come in, you really have to run with them.
20:29 Speaker 01 Detective Locke also wanted to talk to Clara Schwartz about her friends, but that could wait. He needed to get to Kyle first. Kyle was staying at his girlfriend Brandy's house. Brandy and her mother, Anna Dyer, saw Kyle as a displaced young guy who had nobody in his life. The state of Virginia had offered him little in the way of support. Here's Brandy's mother, Anna Dyer, who Kyle refers to as "Mom." That is how close they had gotten in the weeks he'd stayed with the family.
21:05 Speaker 08 He was like lost. He needed some guidance. He was very friendly. I took him home that night when I met him because he didn't have anywhere to go. And it was cold. I didn't want him sleeping in the woods. So I gave him my couch to sleep on.
21:21 Speaker 01 Kyle was upfront with them about how he'd recently been "Award of the State."
21:28 Speaker 09 I was heartbroken for him. I felt that the state of Virginia should not have just pushed him out the door without giving him resources, without preparing him, that nobody should be just at 18 just going, "Oh, here you go. You're free." And no life skills given.
21:46 Speaker 01 That's Brandy. She worked hard to help Kyle adapt to his new life. Actually, everyone in Kyle's new family did, including Brandy's mom and sister. But it wasn't always easy.
22:02 Speaker 08 Seeing him just trying to be normal, to do normal things. We tried to get him a job and he was just turned down numerous times for anything he wanted to try for. I was always comfortable around Kyle. I know he was having his issues and he was trying hard to deal with them.
22:24 Speaker 01 One particular quirk of Kyle's they noticed was his various ways of coping with stress or fear.
22:32 Speaker 08 When he gets scared, he internals in. So that would be the Disney music. He definitely would go with that Disney music and be in his own world. He just basically stayed into his part of the room.
22:46 Speaker 01 Kyle and Brandy are home on December 12th as armed officers surround the house, warrant in hand, preparing to bust through the front door and take Kyle into custody. They just had dinner and were relaxing together.
23:03 Speaker 09 We cuddle up on the bed and watch TV. And then that's when I tell my dad, "Oh, hell breaks loose in the house." And all the police are there and they're there to arrest Kyle for the murder. And I am just shocked. And I'm being told not to move, to get on the floor, put my hands behind my back.
23:28 Speaker 01 Investigators have no idea if Brandy is involved. She and her mother have not even heard about the murder of Dr. Schwartz.
23:37 Speaker 09 I know nothing. They tell me that I need to put my hands up, to come up on my knees, and you're not to move. And I said, "Oh, okay." I do so. And then they pull me into my dining room. And that's when they start to question me. Do I know Clara? Do I know Katie? Do I know Mike? How do I know them?
23:57 Speaker 01 Brandy's mother had just gotten home.
23:59 Speaker 08 They said they were looking for Kyle. So they had me get on the floor and everybody in the house get on the floor until they went for Kyle. Kyle did not hide from them. There was no struggle.
24:14 Speaker 01 I asked Kyle what he could recall from the moment the police showed up to arrest him.
24:21 Speaker 03 You have like a million thoughts all at once. And you categorize all of them all at once. And it's not till later that you look back at how much you were thinking. I was in bed with Brandy. I know we'd gone out to, we'd gone out and had sex in our little hideaway. I think that's where Mom was home. I just suddenly hear, you know, police freeze, don't fucking move. And I look up and there's this big fuck. And it probably wasn't that big in real life. But in my brain, it's always this huge fucking cannon of a revolver pointed at my head. I remember looking at it going, "Wow, that's a big ass barrel."
25:05 Speaker 01 Kyle was escorted outside by several armed officers.
25:11 Speaker 03 They put me in the, when they put me in a cop car, my mom came and saw me there and basically told me that she was not abandoning me.
25:20 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, back at the police station, Detective Locke is still struggling to get a handle on why this group of pagans would have had it in for Dr. Schwartz. You don't need motive to prosecute a case in court, but motive is imperative in piecing together who is responsible. Locke had a nagging suspicion that the murder is somehow tied into this game, the underworld. Remember, there were specific wounds left on Schwartz's body, occult aspects to the crime, and the murder weapon was a sword. By then, Mike and Katie had told Locke the underworld was a kind of medieval board game,
26:05 Speaker 01 except the storylines and language were created by the game's architect and acted out in the real world.
26:13 Speaker 02 So in this particular game, Clara was the lord of chaos and the queen, if you will. And she pretty much doled out orders to different people who participated in the game.
26:25 Speaker 04 Well, Frank, it's simply you're telling a story and all the people playing are actually playing their characters. They're acting their part in the story. Whoever's running the game is the person that's writing the story and setting the adventure and setting the obstacles for everybody to beat.
26:39 Speaker 01 Had these three, Mike, Katie, and Kyle, took it upon themselves to murder Dr. Schwartz as part of the game? Did they have some sort of beef with Clara? It seemed unfathomable, unimaginable.
26:57 Speaker 01 But then again, seasoned cops know that people will kill one another over just about anything, so nothing can be taken off the table. What role, in fact, did the game play? Can you imagine waking up one morning and three of your best friends are in custody for the murder of your father? And they are talking about a game you not only created, but turned them on to? Clara Schwartz must have been devastated by this alarming turn of events. Right around the same time, Clara, her grandparents, and sister arrive at the station house to
27:40 Speaker 01 speak with investigators. One of the first questions they ask Clara is, "Do you think there is any possibility your new friend Kyle, whom Mike and now Katie were saying could have committed the murder, might have killed your father?"
27:57 Speaker 02 The information that Clara provided, she didn't believe that Kyle would really do this.
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29:14 Speaker 01 At this stage, based on what they knew about him, Kyle Yulbert didn't seem like the type of person who could commit such a vicious crime. Jennifer Miller met Kyle when the two were teenagers. They shared a lot of the same interests and have remained close friends.
29:35 Speaker 11 He was a really nice guy. I mean, he didn't put on any airs about himself. It was, this is what you get.
29:41 Speaker 01 Jennifer was also into live-action role-playing.
29:45 Speaker 11 Kyle always wanted to be the hero. He usually played the knight, or he played especially the magician. He loved playing the magician. I always say he has the knight in shining armor syndrome. Kyle's personality is, if I know something bad's going on, I want to help. How can I help? How can I protect my friends and who I consider family from whatever bad is going on?
30:18 Speaker 01 Was Kyle just the fall guy, and Mike the more likely suspect, playing a game of his own with investigators? Or perhaps, they killed Dr. Schwartz together? While investigators prepare to speak with Kyle about his potential role in the murder, Katie suddenly sees the light and decides to cooperate fully. No more bullshit, the truth, she promises. Immediately, Katie reveals it was Kyle who walked up to the Schwartz's house on his own just before Mike got the car stuck in the mud. "When Kyle came back 20 minutes later,
31:00 Speaker 01 he was a completely different person," Katie said. After Mike asked, Kyle said there was no one at the house.
31:17 Speaker 01 Katie was now placing the blame on Kyle, which made me want to understand him better. I was able to track down Kyle's sister, Natasha Yulbert. She's only 10 months younger than Kyle and has fond memories of his love and protection. Regarding Kyle, Natasha says...
31:35 Speaker 12 He was my world. He was everything to me. I was bullied at school, I was bullied at home, and Kyle just... Kyle made everything better. He was just my best friend. And when he left, it devastated me. And I didn't know if anything would ever be okay again.
31:54 Speaker 01 She then recalled the day Kyle left the Yulbert household for good.
31:58 Speaker 12 The reason I was told he was leaving was, and this was from Kyle, he said he was leaving because he couldn't stand Dad anymore. And he just couldn't put up with Dad, and he just had to go. I was like, "Well, I want to go with you." "I don't want to be here anymore either. If you're not here, I don't want to be here without you." And he said, "No, you have to stay here. You can't go where I'm going. You can't go with me."
32:23 Speaker 01 She wondered for years where Kyle had gone. Then, the truth finally came out.
32:31 Speaker 12 I didn't know he was in and out of foster care. I never knew he was in and out of mental institutions.
32:40 Speaker 01 Kyle was nine years old when he left, and Natasha discovered the reason for him being essentially taken away from the family.
32:50 Speaker 12 Every summer, growing up for several years, I would go and spend the summer with this couple. I remember these two summers, my dad came and picked me up early. And he was like, "We have to go home." And I'm like, "Well, why?" And he said, "Kyle tried to kill Chris."
33:10 Speaker 01 Chris is Kyle and Natasha's younger brother.
33:13 Speaker 12 And I'm like, "What happened?" Well, he tried to kill him with a butcher knife. He was chasing Chris around with Dad's freshly sharpened butcher knife around the yard. And the only thing that saved Chris was the fact that my dad had heard him yelling from his office and came out and got the knife away from Kyle.
33:32 Speaker 01 That was the first time.
33:36 Speaker 01 The next had the potential to be far more violent.
33:41 Speaker 12 And the second time, kind of the same scenario, but it was gasoline can and a lighter. Kyle was asked why he was doing it. He said, because I wanted to see the flames jump off of him. He wanted to see what would happen.
34:04 Speaker 01 After Katie told investigators Kyle was the only one who'd gone into Dr. Schwartz's house, they went back to Mike and asked him about this. And Mike cracked. He told cops that he and Katie knew when they arrived at the Schwartz's house that Kyle was going there to kill him.
34:29 Speaker 01 This was a breakthrough. Katie hadn't admitted that. Detective Locke asked Mike to tell them how he knew this. Mike explained, Kyle said he's done other jobs, which we knew to be homicides. And he said he had buried one victim behind the victim's house.
34:54 Speaker 01 "Is there anything else you can tell us about that night at the Schwartz's residence?" Locke asked. "The murder, getting stuck in the mud, keeping this secret," Mike said. "It's one big Oopsy."
35:11 Speaker 01 I've heard murder described in a lot of ways, but never in almost three decades of reporting have I heard taking someone's life boiled down to a childish, idiotic, ignorant faux pas like spilling a glass of milk. With that information, they go to Kyle and tell him they have witnesses willing to testify against him. In fact, Katie had already cut a deal with investigators. After Kyle heard that, he told investigators he was ready to tell them the truth about what happened that night. "Have I got a story for you about what really happened," he told them.
35:58 Speaker 01 For investigators, it sounds like there's not only a confession in the air, but also more secrets to be revealed.
36:21 Speaker 01 Next time on Fatal Fantasy. A new suspect is in jail and very angry.
36:28 Speaker 03 Because of the way she talked and the way she made out like she knew everything. So she's got the incentive to come up with whatever bullshit that's now convincing to them to secure their case.
36:37 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, investigators find a witness who sends the case in an entirely new direction.
36:45 Speaker 02 Young man came forward that he had been a participant in this underworld game. And that one of the tasks that was assigned was to kill the old geezer.
36:58 Speaker 01 And a voice with a deadly plan is soon discovered.
37:03 Speaker 13 Someone should put a gun to him, tell him to write the note, then put it in the drawer of the desk and point a gun at him while he pours the vial in his milk and drinks it, watches him die and then leaves.
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38:06 Speaker 01 Fatal Fantasy is a production by Sony Music Entertainment and M. William Phelps, LLC. Written and executive produced by me. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis, and our production manager is Samantha Allison. Jeremy Adair is my senior producer and script consultant, and Matt Russell, my sound engineer. I use Epidemic Sound for music and SFX.
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