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that before our next trip out to

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Italy, I could impress them with some

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new skills that they do not see coming. It

28:06

was almost three in the morning when I got back

28:08

from the police station. A

28:10

Clays Mill officer interviewed me followed by a

28:13

detective from the state police who'd been called

28:15

in to assist. They

28:17

showed me photos of the man and

28:19

asked if I could identify him as

28:21

the same clown who had been outside

28:23

my house the two previous nights. I

28:26

told them I was pretty sure it was, but

28:29

added that he must have changed his outfit. I

28:32

slept till almost five that evening.

28:35

Once I'd gotten home, I finished

28:37

off the bourbon sitting on my kitchen

28:40

table and fell into the deepest sleep

28:42

I'd had in days. The

28:44

sun was setting when I woke up, and

28:47

I forced myself to a few pieces of

28:49

toast and a glass of water before settling

28:51

into my recliner and flipping through the TV.

28:54

I was awake for less than four

28:56

hours before I drifted off to sleep

28:59

once again. I

29:04

woke in the early hours of Sunday

29:06

morning when my phone chirped

29:08

at the arrival of a new email. It

29:11

was from the Chief, so I opened

29:14

it quickly and scanned it over. The

29:16

clown outside of my house had been

29:18

identified as Wilson Pickering from Lexington,

29:21

Kentucky. He said

29:23

he and dozens of other party

29:25

clowns had been hired by an

29:28

anonymous person to appear throughout Clay's

29:30

Mill, but none of them

29:32

understood why. A viral

29:34

stunt, maybe? Pickering

29:37

had provided dozens of names, and

29:39

the state police were contacting them

29:41

for questioning. But

29:43

toward the end of the email, the

29:46

Chief said two things that caught my

29:48

eye. There hadn't

29:50

been any more clown sightings since

29:52

the arrest at my house. And

29:56

according to Wilson Pickering, he

29:59

was only outside. He

34:01

lifted an old bicycle horn and

34:04

honked it silently at the camera

34:07

before stepping fully back into the

34:09

lobby. It

34:11

was the clown from outside of my house

34:13

those first two nights. He

34:16

was dragging Kara's limp body behind him.

34:21

Four people were taken

34:24

that night. Andrea

34:28

Wells, a nurse, vanished from her home. Phillip

34:33

Redmond, a middle school math teacher,

34:35

was taken from the parking lot

34:37

of the grocery store. Jacob

34:40

Denny, a student, was taken while smoking a cigarette

34:43

outside of the community college

34:45

library. Kara

34:48

Gray, my editor, made the

34:50

fourth. I've

34:55

been working as a stand-in editor at the paper for the last few months, and

34:57

not an issue goes by where the clowns

35:00

and the missing people aren't slathered across the

35:02

headlines. For most people, it's a sick fascination.

35:09

But for me, I still

35:11

need answers. I've

35:14

spent a lot of sleepless, drunken nights

35:16

poring over the videos of the killer

35:18

clowns, articles from the 2016 stunt

35:21

in Wisconsin, other

35:23

missing people from around the areas where

35:26

clowns have been spotted lurking. Chief

35:29

Randolph has become all

35:31

too accustomed to my late-night calls.

35:35

The conversation is the same each time. He'll

35:38

update me on the recent interviews and

35:40

say they still haven't been able to find

35:42

who hired the clowns. They

35:45

also haven't found any sign of the

35:47

missing people, dead or

35:50

alive. In return,

35:52

I tell him about

35:54

any information I've gathered, however

35:56

slim or out of left field it may be.

36:00

But we always come back to the four

36:02

they took. Fear

36:05

and chaos. I thought

36:07

it was their motive. And

36:11

maybe it was. With

36:13

every sighting, with

36:16

every article, with

36:18

how thin police were spread, we

36:21

were giving the clowns attention. Their

36:24

window to act. And

36:27

there it is. For all

36:30

of my reporting, the

36:32

only solid fact. The

36:36

clowns were just a distraction. The

36:48

temptation of a smile. The

36:51

extortion of a scream.

36:54

A jester acts and

36:57

distracts from their

36:59

hidden scheme. One

37:02

whole story. Down

37:04

and done. Five

37:07

more stops. Left

37:09

to run. There's

37:12

no way out. This

37:14

ride is hexed. Just

37:16

wait and see what

37:19

comes next. Full

37:33

Body Chills is an Audio Chuck production.

37:36

This episode was written by Ryan

37:38

C Major and read by Marlene

37:41

Martinez. Intro and

37:43

outro written in red by David

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