Our card this week is Maggie Long, the Four of Spades from Colorado.

In 2017, 17-year-old Maggie went missing in rural Park County, Colorado, only to be found

hours later as the victim of the most brutal murder the area had ever seen.

For the past five years, Maggie’s horrific murder has weighed on law enforcement in the

small community, as they’ve struggled to get any answers to the nagging questions surrounding

her case.

I’m Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.

It was around 7 p.m. on December 1st, 2017, when Connie Lewis pulled up to her little

sister’s high school in Bailey, Colorado.

Her sister Maggie was helping with a Christmas concert that night, and Connie promised that

she would be in attendance.

She even planned to stay the weekend so the two could go Christmas shopping together.

But when Connie walked inside the high school, she wasn’t met with Christmas cheer.

Instead, she was greeted by her younger brother, Derek, and several of Maggie’s friends who

were standing around looking worried.

Everyone is asking where Maggie is.

Do you know where Maggie is?

Like, Maggie’s in charge of the VIP lounge.

She’s supposed to bring all the refreshments and the snacks and everything.

Where’s Maggie?

Immediately, a wave of concern washed over Connie.

Maggie was super responsible, so she wouldn’t just not show up for something without telling

someone, especially if it was an event that she helped organize.

But before freaking out, Connie wanted to make sure Maggie hadn’t just somehow totally

spaced the concert or lost track of time or something.

Connie stepped outside to call Maggie, but her phone went straight to voicemail, which

actually kind of happened a lot around there because Bailey is a pretty rural, mountainous

place and the reception is spotty.

So Connie knew it was possible Maggie just didn’t have service wherever she was.

At this point, I’m thinking she’s at the house because sometimes she gets so busy and she

exhausts herself to the point where she’ll just like take a nap for a couple hours.

So I was like, maybe she like fell asleep, but I waited around to see if she’ll show

up and I kept my eye on the door and she, and at this time, like the opening band has

started and I’m like, okay, she’s still not here.

I was getting that like weird gut feeling that something was off.

So Connie left to go to her parents’ house, which was like this huge two-story house that

they owned where the family lived on the first floor and they actually rented out the smaller

top floor.

On the 10-mile drive there, Connie kept trying to call the man who was currently renting

out that second story.

His name was Robert.

And Robert had just been texting Connie about an hour prior, something about weird noises

at the house and how the lights were flickering.

So she knew that he was home, but now he wasn’t picking up.

His phone was going straight to voicemail too.

So she eventually just left him a voicemail asking him to go check and see if Maggie was

downstairs asleep.

When Connie finally arrived at the family home, she turned into the three-quarters-of-a-mile

long winding driveway.

And that’s when her stomach dropped.

Even though she could hardly see the house from the end of the driveway through the layers

of trees, it was immediately clear that something terrible had happened.

There was a lot of commotion.

There was like a ton, a ton of sirens.

And I could still smell the smoke, but our house, the driveway kind of winds up into

the woods.

So you can’t see very plainly from the county road what was going on.

Like, I could just see the lights kind of, you could see it like through the trees.

With a pit in her stomach, Connie continued down the driveway and the scene she found

was overwhelming.

Connie’s mom, Heather, had just arrived home too, and they were taking it all in together.

Patrol cars and fire trucks were crowded in front of the house, which was enveloped in

billowing smoke, though the house was still standing.

And I just stopped there and I was like, okay, what’s happening?

And there was a fireman who, he like vaguely mentioned like, oh yeah, it seems like there

was a burglary.

We did like, there are some missing weapons.

And I remember him saying like, it’s just really messed up.

And I was like, huh?

Like, I don’t, I didn’t know what was happening, I was very confused.

Adding to the confusion was something else Connie and her mom saw in the driveway, and

that was Maggie’s car, which meant that Maggie had to be home, but they didn’t see her anywhere

outside.

So, at this point, we don’t know where Maggie is, because they’re not telling us.

And I kept asking, like, is Maggie okay, is she in there?

Where is she?

And nobody was telling us anything.

All Connie knew was that there had been a fire, the home had possibly been burglarized,

and her little sister was still missing.

So with no answers in sight, Connie did what any good big sister would do.

She began calling people, getting the word out about Maggie’s disappearance.

One of the first people she phoned was their older sister, Linna, who was living 900 miles

away in Minneapolis at the time.

Connie called me and was, you know, sounding very emotional, kind of relayed the scenario

that she kind of just said that somebody was wrong with the house, it seemed like there

was a fire, that they can’t find Maggie.

Being so far away and feeling helpless, Linna did what she could to help find her little

sister.

She posted on Facebook, begging for anyone who had seen Maggie to call the police immediately.

Linna’s Facebook post read in part, quote, please, anybody who is from Bailey, Colorado,

I need your help.

My sister Maggie Long is missing.

Time is of the essence.

She is 17 years old, Asian female, long brown hair with blonde highlights.

She was supposed to be at the high school concert tonight.

Any details are welcome, end quote.

Unbeknownst to the Long family, as Linna was making that post, first responders were processing

a baffling crime scene inside their home that was unlike anything the community of

Bailey had ever seen before.

Just like the firefighter implied to Connie, the home had been completely ransacked, and

it looked like there had been a burglary.

A huge firearm safe that looked like it had been dragged from the primary bedroom was

laying in the middle of the living room, which right away told responders that they were

dealing with more than one perpetrator if they were able to lug that safe into the living

room.

Other items were scattered about, almost like there had been some kind of struggle.

And there was a trail of accelerant throughout the home, which solidified the theory that

they all probably had at this point.

They were looking at a burglary turned arson.

The whole home had sustained heavy smoke damage.

But as they searched the house, they realized there was only one room that bore the brunt

of the fire.

Wendy Kipple, who at the time was an investigator with the district attorney’s office in Park

County, was on the scene that day, and she recalled that the whole room, which they determined

was a bedroom, was burned down pretty much to the studs.

Everything was really burnt in there and unrecognizable pretty much as objects.

Among the heaps of ashes and unidentifiable scorched objects, they saw something that

was recognizable, something that they would never be able to unsee.

Atop what looked like a bed was a severely burned human body.

The body was so badly burned that it was impossible to even loosely identify.

Parts of the limbs had even been burned off.

But there was one thing that was immediately clear.

The person had been restrained, with their arms behind their back, and a coat had been

pulled down over the victim’s hands, which actually preserved them, and duct tape was

used to tie them together.

And although first responders couldn’t identify the body right away, they knew Maggie

was missing.

So putting two and two together, they notified Connie and her mom.

After breaking the news to the family, authorities knew that they couldn’t stay quiet.

They had to address the public.

Bailey is a tight-knit community of about 8,000 people, and law enforcement knew that

everyone was worried sick about Maggie.

So the Park County undersheriff wrote a statement about the situation that was posted on Facebook

the very next day.

The post is now deleted, but The Flume reported that it read in part, quote,

“‘On-scene investigation is wrapped up.

Cause and origin of the fire is inconclusive.

Still no sign of her.

No body at the fire scene.’”

End quote.

And yeah, you heard that right.

Nobody at the scene.

Why the sheriff’s office felt the need to blatantly lie to the public like that is something

present-day investigators still struggle to wrap their minds around.

I still to this day do not know why they didn’t want to put out there that Maggie

was in fact found at the house.

Her family knew because they notified them right away.

They knew she was dead, but yet they were still putting it out to the public that Maggie

was still missing.

And I just, it blew my mind as an investigator with the district attorney’s office.

I think maybe they thought they could get whoever committed this crime before it got

out that she was murdered.

With the public still in the dark about what happened, investigators began interviewing

people.

And one of the first people that they talked with was the person who called 911.

That upstairs tenant, Robert.

Robert told investigators that he left work that day at around 7.45 in the morning and

then didn’t return to his apartment until 6.40 p.m.

When he got home, he said that he saw Maggie’s silver Cadillac parked right out in front

but didn’t notice any other strange vehicles in the driveway or anything.

It wasn’t until Robert got into his upstairs apartment and settled in that he realized

something was off.

He heard concerning noises from the first floor, like lots of banging and commotion.

Then he started smelling smoke.

So that’s when he texted Connie.

Now you’re probably asking yourself why Robert texted Connie instead of reaching out to somebody

who currently lived at the Long’s house like Connie’s parents or even their younger brother

Derek or even Maggie.

But Connie told our reporting team that she recalls Robert actually texted her mom first,

but she was likely too busy at the restaurant to respond.

So that’s when Connie and Robert started texting.

She said they had each other’s numbers because they used to work at the restaurant together.

So anyways, as the loud noises continued, Robert told investigators that he grew more

and more worried.

So about 20 minutes after he got home, this would have been just before 7 p.m., he called

911.

And he said that after he made that call, he saw a man standing out in the driveway.

And he heard the sounds and he went out his door and there’s like a small deck area and

then steep stairs that went down to the front of the house.

And he went out and kind of looked out and he saw this guy standing at the bottom of

the stairs.

But he was standing back enough that that guy, he said, couldn’t see him.

It’s kind of like peeking the edge and he could see him.

Robert said that from where he was standing, he couldn’t see any strange cars that he could

offer investigators a description of.

But he did get a really good look at the man.

He described him and what he was wearing and he said he was wearing like khaki colored

shorts, long shorts and a t-shirt, which for December, that’s kind of unusual, unusual

dress for up here.

While investigators were talking with Robert, other detectives were interviewing Maggie’s

family, trying to piece together what Maggie had been doing that day.

Here’s the timeline that they came up with.

She left for school at 6.30 that morning and stayed there till around 2.40 in the afternoon

when she told friends that she was leaving to go home to grab snacks and water for the

VIP lounge at the concert.

That would have put her arriving home at around 3.10 p.m.

And we know that 911 call came in around 7, which meant that there were nearly four hours

unaccounted for.

Because so much of the evidence was destroyed in the fire, investigators were left to speculate

about the horrors that happened in that window.

We’re pretty sure she was sexually assaulted and they maybe tried to get the combination

of the safe from her.

She probably gave them the combination of her safe that they brought from her room into

the master bedroom.

But she may not have known the combination to the big safe that had the large amount

of cash in it and sexually assaulted her in her room, bound her hands behind her back.

Through talking with Maggie’s family, authorities were also able to identify what items had

been stolen in what now they knew was a robbery.

A green gun safe and all of its contents were gone.

There were some jade figurines from Maggie’s safe that were missing.

A pearl necklace that had been gifted to Maggie from her parents, an AK-47 style rifle,

a Beretta handgun and somewhere around 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

Now Maggie’s parents had the serial number for the AK-47 that they could provide police,

but unfortunately they couldn’t find the serial number for the Beretta handgun.

For the serial number that they did have though, investigators entered that into the National

Crime Information Center, or NCIC, so they’d be notified if a gun with that serial number

was ever recovered from another crime or if it was sold legally.

But to this day, there have been no hits.

While all of this was going on, investigators were having Robert sit down with a sketch

artist to create a composite of this mystery man that he saw.

There were no security cameras or anything that saw this guy, so detectives had no choice

but to rely solely on Robert’s memory.

I’m going to put that sketch that they created in the blog post for this episode, which is

on our website, thedeckpodcast.com.

The drawing is of a young white man, possibly in his 20s, with a very short haircut.

He had almond-shaped eyes and this square chin.

Now none of his features are super pronounced, so he really just kind of looks like your

average Joe.

But even after getting this sketch, investigators weren’t done with Robert just yet.

They also wanted to vet his alibi before clearing him as a potential suspect.

I mean, on paper, he seemed like a promising person of interest.

He had no relation to the family at all.

He was a newer tenant.

And since he used to work for the Longs, he likely knew their schedule.

So investigators checked with Robert’s employer, who confirmed that he was at work when he

said he was, until 6.15 that evening, which would have put him arriving home at around

6.40, just like he said.

And that wouldn’t have given him enough time to commit the crime before calling 911.

So with that, he was cleared as a suspect.

Back at the Longs’ home, an arson investigator with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation

was carefully examining the scene.

He determined that the accelerant used to start the fire was gasoline from a gas can

in the Longs’ garage.

It wasn’t even something that the killers had brought with them.

It was looking more and more like this was a crime of opportunity, like the assailants

had no plans to kill when they entered that home.

But then something changed.

As investigators continued sifting through the home and collecting evidence, they were

still being secretive about what really happened.

There had been no communication to the public to clear up what the undersheriff had said,

and authorities were unwavering in their silence, even as the days passed by.

Three days after the fire, which would have been December 4th, Maggie’s autopsy got

underway, and it confirmed what detectives suspected all along.

Since both of her hands were well-preserved, the coroner’s office was able to compare

fingerprints from Maggie’s driver’s license, and it was a match.

But because of the state of her body, the coroner was unable to determine if she’d

been sexually assaulted, but they were able to determine how she died.

Wendy Kipple was present at the autopsy that day and remembers the horrifying discovery

well.

Her trachea had soot inside of it, and the only way that happens is if you’re alive

when you’re in the fire.

So she was literally burned alive.

This is probably the most brutal murder I have ever seen in my career.

And I just, I can’t imagine the horror that that poor girl went through.

That’s not the only thing the autopsy uncovered.

The coroner also scraped Maggie’s fingernails and got some possible DNA, which was sent

off for testing.

But after the autopsy, the Park County Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office

did something weird.

Instead of sharing the devastating news with the community that there was a body found

in the fire, and it sadly was Maggie, they just stayed quiet.

In fact, they wanted to make sure that everyone else stayed quiet, too.

So on the day of the autopsy, a gag order was issued, which obviously only added to

the confusion for the community, because to them, this was still only a missing persons

case and a possible arson.

So we couldn’t talk about the case and we couldn’t say Maggie’s dead.

And I think that’s why they put out the gag order, to keep people, anybody close to the

case from saying, no, there was actually a body found in the house and it turned out

to be Maggie.

While investigators were staying quiet, waiting for the perpetrators to come forward, Maggie’s

family was quietly mourning their unspeakable loss.

Their sweet Maggie, who was just days away from her 18th birthday, was so suddenly and

horribly stolen from them.

Linna and Connie told our reporting team that their sister was the best person to be around.

She was funny and smart and caring and a huge overachiever.

She was involved in just about everything a high schooler could be.

Key clubs, student council, music theater, drama club, and even speech and debate.

I think kind of just aside from the things that she did and the things that she participated

in, Maggie was always a very social and inclusive person who was very emotionally intelligent

and just like a social butterfly, like just a very inclusive person, just very warm and

super funny.

She was hilarious, just super nerdy.

It’s just the interactions we would have with her because she would just laugh really hard.

Making her laugh was something that I loved to do because then she would just lose it

and hyperventilate and that would make me be really silly.

It’s funny because me and her had a pretty significant age difference, like nine years.

But even despite that, it was just like, she always brought out the silliness in me.

She would throw her head back, throw her body back in like full body laughter.

Yeah.

And she would always do that.

She did this thing where she would say something or when somebody would respond to her in a

way that she thought was weird, she would kind of do a weird side eye as if there was

like a third party, as if there was like a camera right there.

She would break the fourth wall.

Yeah.

Kind of like in the office, you know, when Jim would just like look at the camera, she

would do that.

It was really funny.

She would always like apologize when she would run into inanimate objects.

I actually made a sorry jar for her so that every time she like said sorry to an object,

she had to put a dollar in it.

The Longs had to privately grieve, to say goodbye to those side eyes and apologies and

all the things that they loved about Maggie that were taken away without warning.

By whom?

Whispers were slowly spreading around the community about what had really happened to

Maggie, even though the authorities weren’t talking.

And tips began coming in here and there with people reporting suspicious cars that they

saw speeding away from the direction of the Longs house on the eve of December 1st.

A few people saw a silver or white minivan driving away from the home, but that description

alone wasn’t super helpful because in rural Colorado, that’s like trying to find a poorly

described needle in a haystack.

As the days passed by with no word from authorities about the status of the case, the community

at large was becoming increasingly frustrated because with every passing day, they grew

more convinced that the rumors they were hearing were true.

And there was a lot of, I mean, chatter on social media about how the investigation was

being handled and that people of the community felt like the sheriff’s office was hiding

stuff from the community.

And they were understandably upset because they felt like, well, we have a killer at

large and they’re still saying that Maggie’s just missing.

So a lot of people in the community were upset and still are upset about it.

And understandably so.

The community would remain in the dark about the truth until December 7th, almost a week

after the fire, when Park County Sheriff Fred Wegner broke the silence and issued a press release.

The release read in part, quote, it comes with great sadness.

We report that human remains discovered in the burned home of the Long family have been

positively identified as those of 17 year old Maggie Long.

We would like the community to help us in this endeavor and ask that you reach out to

us to report if you observed any suspicious vehicles, individuals, or activities along

County Road 43 in Bailey on December 1st, 2017.

At this time, due to ongoing activities in this case, the sheriff’s office will not

comment on any details or status of the investigation, signed Sheriff Fred Wegner.

The community was devastated.

Not only was it confirmed that Maggie was gone, but also that they had been blatantly

lied to by the sheriff’s office.

The staff of the local newspaper, The Flume, asked Sheriff Wegner why his office made that

false claim to the public the day after the fire.

He replied, quote, we made our comment, we’ll live with it, end quote.

The public was heartbroken, but they now knew the truth and tips began flooding in.

One person even called local police and said that they could give descriptions of two suspicious

people they saw that day.

Somebody said, hey, we saw this vehicle coming at a high rate of speed down the road from

the direction of the Long’s house.

But it’s December at seven o’clock at night on a windy, narrow road.

They said these, these two guys they saw in that vehicle.

How do you see them at seven o’clock at night in the dark on a windy road going past each

other at 45 miles an hour?

Even though it seemed unlikely that the witnesses’ memory of these two guys was reliable, the

sheriff’s office was in no position to be turning away potential leads.

So they had the tipster work with a sketch artist to make composites.

You can see those images on our website as well.

The sheriff’s office also caught wind of rumors that might point to a potential motive

for the robbery and murder.

Supposedly, the Long’s were having money problems, even though they owned two popular

restaurants and a liquor store.

But the gossip was that they owed some money, and that’s why all of this happened.

Now, it’s not super clear how seriously this rumor was taken, but it seems like it

would have been easy to brush off because, like I said, the Long’s were successful

business owners and investigators were becoming more and more convinced that was actually

the reason they were targeted, not because of money problems, but because of their money.

The Long’s had Asian food restaurants in Park County and one liquor store.

And they didn’t deposit their cash that they aren’t too trusting of the banks.

So they keep their cash at home.

And there was a large amount of cash in the big safe.

So police’s theory was that Maggie got home that day and had interrupted a burglary in

progress.

And that’s why she was killed.

But it was a theory that they wouldn’t be able to prove until they caught the killers

themselves, a hope that was fading more and more as the days crept by.

Eventually, authorities got the results back from the skin cells found under Maggie’s

fingernails.

But the results weren’t exactly what they’d hoped for.

Testing revealed that the cells were from two separate people, but the DNA was only

enough for partial profiles.

That meant that they wouldn’t be uploaded to any databases.

But they were enough that if any future suspects came on their radar, they could do a direct

comparison.

But six months went by and there were no suspects, no one to compare to that DNA.

And that’s when another eerily similar case in Missouri had everyone hopeful that Maggie’s

killers had been caught.

In June, two men broke into a 20-year-old woman’s home in Johnson County, Missouri.

They tied her up, beat her, and demanded that she give them the combination to her safe.

She refused, so they poured gasoline on her.

They lit her on fire and then fled.

Thankfully, the woman survived.

She somehow managed to escape and put out the flames on her skin.

Just days later, law enforcement announced that they’d caught the guys who had done

it.

They were 23-year-old Antonio Bowen and 22-year-old Vincent Rist.

When word of this horrible crime spread to Bailey, everyone was optimistic that these

were the same guys who took Maggie’s life.

I mean, both cases were home invasion robberies that ended with a woman being lit on fire

that happened just months apart.

But it wasn’t just the striking similarities in the case that stuck out to the small Park

County community.

It was the fact that one of the suspects, Vincent, bore a striking resemblance to the

first composite sketch created for Maggie’s case.

I mean, it literally looked like a drawing of this guy.

We actually have the composite next to his mugshot on the blog post for this episode.

But just as quickly as everyone had gotten their hopes up that these were the killers,

their hopes were dashed.

Colorado investigators compared the partial DNA profiles that they had gotten from Maggie’s

fingernails with the two guys arrested in Missouri, and neither of them matched.

It was a dead end.

The months continued to drag by with no substantial leads.

The anniversary of Maggie’s death came and went, and detectives were no closer to catching

her killers than they were on day one.

Even though the community was a year removed from the heinous crime, it was still fresh

in their hearts, and they wanted to honor Maggie the best way that they could.

So in December, to celebrate what would have been her 19th birthday, friends, family, and

members of the community joined together and handed out sandwiches to those in need, which

is exactly what Maggie had planned to do on her 18th birthday.

Despite Maggie’s loved ones keeping her memory alive, and law enforcement so desperately

wanting to give her the justice she deserved, the case went cold.

Even as turnover happened and new eyes were put on the case, there was still little movement.

In 2019, Park County welcomed a new sheriff, and he brought on Wendy Kipple as a detective,

but the case was still stuck in a rut.

I mean, investigators chased down small leads here and there, but the next big development

in the case wouldn’t come until May of 2021.

That’s when the FBI made an announcement no one was expecting.

They were now investigating Maggie’s murder as a hate crime.

This was huge for the case.

It meant investigators would have additional resources and manpower to pour into finding

Maggie’s killers, but the announcement was met with confusion from the community.

In Colorado, a hate crime is legally defined as, quote,

a threat or act of intimidation, harassment, or physical force that is motivated by bias

against a person or group based on their actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry,

national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, and physical or mental disability,

end quote.

Now, up to this point, the public was under the impression, based on what they were getting

from authorities, that Maggie was killed because she interrupted a burglary.

She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So were police still holding back material info that completely changes the lens in which

one would view this case?

And if so, what are they holding back?

It seems like this big question mark looming over the case is one that hasn’t really

been publicly addressed.

So our reporting team asked Maggie’s sisters if they’ve ever received an explanation

for the labeling of her murder as a hate crime.

And their answer was gut-wrenching.

When you look at the pattern of attacks against Asian American properties and Asian Americans

in that kind of COVID era, you know, you’ll see that there was like a number of crimes

committed against Asian families because of the cultural differences of, you know, not

trusting banks, having cash at home.

There were patterns of Asians that own restaurants to, you know, not be at home because they’re

working at the restaurant during, you know, long hours.

So is that why we were targeted?

You know, that’s one arm of it.

The other is, you know, when you’re looking at it as who is the victim here and why did

that person become a victim?

If they were somebody else, would it have escalated to this, to that level?

And so, you know, now we’re talking about violence against women as a hate crime.

Race aside, you know, you’re looking at an extremely violent crime and the elements of

the crime that occurred, would that have happened if it were a man?

You know, would that have happened if she were not a young woman?

And, you know, what are those elements that allow the crime to get to that level?

You know, in a situation of a burglary, why would you not just kill somebody, but why

would you burn them alive?

Like that’s messed up, right?

Wendy Kipple, who is now a sergeant with the sheriff’s office, wants nothing more than

to put the assailants behind bars.

And she’s hopeful DNA testing will advance to a point that that is going to be what cracks

this case.

I think eventually technology will get us there.

I’ve talked to our DNA analysts down at CBI and they think within a short amount of time,

like two to three years out, maybe sooner, we can hope that technology will get to the

point that we can develop something more from the evidence that we do have.

But so far, we just don’t have it, which is frustrating because we don’t have anything

else at this point.

We don’t have anybody coming forward and saying anything.

Sergeant Kipple told our reporting team that she believes the people who killed Maggie

were not locals.

I just don’t think that they’re from here because if they’re locals, somebody’s going

to start talking.

They can’t keep quiet for five years and not have anybody say anything.

If there’s several guys that are involved in this, why hasn’t somebody come forward?

Why hasn’t an angry ex-girlfriend or ex-wife or ex-friend say, you know what, I know who

did this and go after them?

But she acknowledges that there are other factors that seem to point to the assailants

being from the area.

Like, how would they have known what house to target?

The Long’s place was in a really remote location.

How would out-of-towners have known that the family had large sums of cash stowed away

at home?

These are the questions that keep Sergeant Kipple up at night.

And they gnaw at Lena and Connie too, because they know someone out there holds the answers.

That person just hasn’t come forward yet.

You know, definitely been a standstill in the investigation, and we just need people

to, you know, come forward and speak out.

And if the lead doesn’t go anywhere, then that’s okay, it doesn’t go anywhere.

We’ve gone through a lot of leads, but we need more to look into in order to make any

progress.

I think just that somebody knows something, and that there were multiple people involved,

and those multiple people have relationships and families and connections.

I hope that, you know, anyone who’s listening who has, like, a bad feeling, that they come

forward with it.

There’s nothing to say that those people aren’t going to do this again.

To someone else’s sister, to someone else’s daughter, to someone else’s cousin.

So Maggie was, in all of this experience, Maggie was truly innocent.

Maggie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In closing, I want to read something Maggie wrote after one of her classmates passed away.

And after Maggie’s death, these words were featured in her school’s yearbook to comfort

the people now mourning her loss.

She wrote, quote,

I think the only real cure to cope with loss is to continue to be good people.

Be kind.

Be caring.

Be passionate.

Be thoughtful.

Find the value of the people around you and spread good vibes.

But most importantly, don’t limit your boundaries.

Share love and consider everyone around you, from strangers to acquaintances, to peers

to friends.

We all have our circle of close people, but it surely wouldn’t hurt to feel the comfort

of everyone on your side.

I think enough people have experienced pain to understand that life is far more measurable

in joy and good memories than to be scorched with cruelty and loss.

If you know anything about the murder of 17-year-old Maggie Long in 2017, please call the Maggie

Long tip line at 303-239-4243.

The deck will be off next week, but we will return the following week with a brand new episode.

The Deck is an AudioChuck production with Bee Music by Ryan Lewis.

To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?