TARGETED-M.William Phelps

A local sheriff's deputy is arrested in charge with his murder, but as New York Times best selling author and investigative journalist M. William Phelps digs in the truth, leads to questions about her guilt. In his first full length original true crime book for Wild Blue Press, Phelps delivers a hard hitting, unique reading experience, immersing readers in the life of the first female deputy in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, who claims a sexual harassment suit she filed against the sheriff

led to a murder charge. Is Tracy Fortson. Guilty or Innocent? You read and decide. The book that we're featuring this evening is targeted a Deputy, her love affairs, a brutal murder with my specialized journalist, an author and filmmaker M William Phelps. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. M William Phelps.

since twenty twelve and investigation. Tell us a little bit about Dark Minds and what you've just come from the last book we had on we were talking about your relationship with the serial killer involved in Dark Minds. Tell us a little bit about just what you've been doing recently that will inform that has informed you in preparation for this book targeted.

in Connecticut, and I became part of that story. So I had written about, you know, in the first person, as as a charen the story myself before and ultimately as a writer I've spent a number of times if you write professionally long enough, you're ultimately going to write about yourself. What it did for me was open up a new way to look at cases for me, you know, injecting myself into the story and just to the story

of my investigation rather than just reporting on it. So with Dark Minds, with Dangerous Brown, I tooked into these cases, and I talked about how they affected me personally, professionally, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally really And so then this case of Tracy Fortune came around, and if I can, then I'll just tell you a little bit about how it came to me, which is another interesting thing that really sparks my interesting cases. I do a lot of work not only on investigation Discovery,

but I do lots of work for Oxygen. I do lots of work for other television networks. So I know a lot of producers and one producer in particular, Donna Dudeck. She produced an episode of a series on Oxygen called Snapped, and Tracy Portson was the subject of that Snapped episode. And so Donna was here one day interviewing me on another case, and she said, Phelps, you know, you really need to take a look at this Tracy Fortson case.

It's it's got your name written all over it. I mean, it's it's really it's perfect for your analysis, for you know, for you to dig into and look at. So I said, well, send me what you have and I'll take a look. Just sent me a couple of things and I started to look at it. I started to say, interesting. So, you know, I juggle five or six crime cases at the same time until I picked the one that I'm

usually going to write about in book for him. And then my next My next move was to write to Tracy Fortson, to contact some of the people involved in the case, start talking to people, see what they thought. And immediately Tracy Fortson was I didn't do it. You know, I was framed, I was set up all of this And as you know, Dan, I mean, I hear this with every murder case I've written about. Whenever I interview

the murderer, the murderer is always innocent. And I think Keith Justerson really is the only murder I've ever interviewed who said I did it. I did it, man.

this is a slam dunk. I mean, this is you know, there's there's no question about who did this, No question at all, Right, So I became very interested in that, exploring that question of why, sixteen years later is Tracy Porson so stuck on the idea that she didn't do this? So I just started down that route and it led me to target it.

both sides. So I begin to get to know Tracy, and she is an abrasive She's a tough, talking, abrasive kind of type a personality who likes to tell you how it is, and maybe maybe I'm describing myself, likes to tell you how it is, and and kind of get in your face and kind of say, I challenge you, I challenge you to prove me wrong, that sort of thing. Take a look at this. But she's also in you

the respect. She's also a person who when you throw stuff in front of her, when you put it in front of her and say, look, well, look at this here, how do you explain this? She wants to look beyond it and move on to the next thing. So she's really a person who I believe believes what she's saying. Now, whether it's the truth or not, is besides this point that I'm trying to make is that she believes what it is she is saying at this point sixteen years later.

So it was really an obstacle in the beginning. And then, of course, as you know reading the book, point in time where I cut ties with her, she cut ties with me. We stopped talking for three months, you know, and then I kind of just gave her one more shot, you know, and she kind of came around.

didn't have a fair trial. And what do you do with that type of situation? And how do you address that in your writing and in this book?

first trial, her second trial. You know, so there's been there was two trials in this case, and and and and and I don't want to give away the outcome to either one of them, but you know, uh, she's had plenty of chances in the courtroom to prove her innocence, and she has yet to do that. And then every time she she doesn't get the chance to do it, and and the chance falls to the wayside and she

doesn't accomplish the goal. It's the or it's this one's fault for not coming forward, or it's this one's fault for not signing an AFFI David, or it's that, you know. So there's always this or that or this and geez i I you know, when I look at the evidence in this case, like I say in the book, if I'm on the jury, I'm voting for guilty. There's no other possible way I can vote for anything other than guilty because of the evidence. Is there some sketchy stuff?

Is there some questions revolving around certain witnesses? Is there some questions revolving around expert testimony and questionable evidence? Absolutely there is. But when you look at any trial, there is there's no trial that's infallible. There's no trial that is that is devoid of any you know, mistakes, errors, mistakes and judgment. People on the stand, lying, people lie all the time in court. That's not that's nothing. That's new.

I mean, you know, if you're a pathological liar or you lie, you're gonna lie in court too, What does it matter to you? What really struck me is that when one avenue didn't work, she changes her tune to another avenue of a red flag right there. Because if you if you get if you go down a road and you're like, well, this is the road that I'm on, and if that road doesn't lead you to the destination, you say, well that was the wrong road. Now I'm on this other road. Well, you know what, I question

your your your objectivity, I question what you're saying. I question everything really at that point.

to cover up or conspire. Tell us a little bit about this very interesting crime scene specialist.

he reconstructs crime scenes and teaches that. And it's incredible the amount of work he's done in this field. And he goes to the crime scene and he reconstructs what happened. So in this case, you know, you have a guy that's given his expert testimony on something he's just seen in photographs and stuff. And granted, he might be qualified to do that, but the more the bigger problem here that I see is that who's challenging this guy in the witness stand. He didn't have much of a challenge

on the witness stand. So I'm gonna take advantage of that situation. I'm not gonna lie, but I'm gonna take advantage of this situation. You know, and I also think and by the time you get to Ralph Stone in the trial, you've absolutely made up your mind about her already. You know, he's just kind of he's just kind of patting the bow down to make sure the bow isn't like blooming too much off the package. But he's just patting the bow down, saying perfect, that ball is perfect.

these things put together. And it is to me surprising that he was allowed without objection, as you point out, to be able to do that, to be able to make sort of references and connections, and so as you do in the book describe a little more what he was able to do, the prosecution was able to use him, to be able to say which was quite conclusive.

the defense attorney. I'm standing up and objecting to that, having it stricken the whole thing, because a hell, can this guy say, who committed this crime? You know, who we just described was Tracy Fordson. That's who he described.

of the investigation. It seems a miss. And you do point out some of the things in the investigation, some of the practices that were done that don't seem to be normal investigative procedure. And one of those was the question of when they talked to Jeff Bennett right after and the idea that somehow he knew and made a statement regarding cement. Could you talk about that just a bit.

something that this this Sheriff's department hardly ever saw. I mean, here you had a guy, Doug Benton, who was Tracy's boyfriend, not her husband, but her boyfriend, in cased in cement inside that watering trough. That watering trough spray painted, cameouflage, you know, crudely cameouflaged with spray paint, and it was dumped in a field, a pasture with you know, farm animals, Kyle's, et cetera. Tracy hunted in and it was way out and it was trying to be hidden, and you know,

you do a quick search. Immediately you find that Tracy Fordson bought bags of cement at the local feed store. She bought a brand new galvanized watering trough that in her garage. She has cans of spray paint that kind of matched the camouflage colors. She even spray painted her

mailbox at some point the same colors. And you know, looking at this, and there's there's cement in the back of her pickup truck, you know, powdered cement and scratches, and there's indications on a tree next to the trough that she used a wire to pull the thing off. And you're like, holy wow, you know, oh my god. And I look at that, and then they asked you,

Jeff Bennett. You know, a friend of Jeff's about a friend of Doug's rather bent and the victim, and you know, he mentions the word cement, and and I didn't see too much in that. I didn't read too much into that. Tracy read Moore into that than I did. He must have he must have, you know, knew something about that from somewhere else. She liked the point a singer at Jeff Bennett. She liked to say that he knew things

he shouldn't have. But I never found any of that, you know, I found a guy to be Jeff's good friend who didn't like her. You know, That's what I found. I found a lot of her his friends didn't like her. I found that a lot of people didn't like her, that she was an unlikable person. I think the bigger piece of evidence to me that I I don't question it, but I do have questions about it. If you can

understand that Dan is the neighbor. The neighbor, here's a gunshot in Doug's house, and remember Doug a shot once from the top of the skull. But she doesn't come forward with that information for like six months, and that that I wondered why, And yeah, so there's a lot of questions, you know. So what I'm saying is this neighbor, here's a gunshot, she reports, here a gunshot. I come outside.

I'm thinking someone's hunting. But then I see Tracy come out of the house an hour later getting her truck and leaves from Dougs. What does that tell you? You hear a gun shot, Tracy walks out an hour later, gets in her truck and leaves. And I'm a journal I'm thinking, most you shot him. And then she cleaned up and then she left right right. So there's a lot of questions here, and I say that in the opening pages of this book. There are so many questions that need

to be answered. If someone wants to dig further into this. I'm satisfied with the perrect I'm satisfied with what happened to Tracy. You know, I don't know that a further investigation will dig up anything, but I think there's questions that need to be answered. And I could say that about every case I look into. Dan.

And what do you bring from all that experience, all the work that you've done, the experience on Dark Minds, investigation, discovery, everything you've done. And I agree with you taking these stories, you have to become part of the story. You're such so immersed in these things that you have to be part of the story. What is all that experience brought to this book that's different?

even opening them. And I think that's disingenuous. I think it's mean spirited. I think it's I think it's people who think they're better writers than other people doing. I think it's ridiculous, and it angers me because I worked my ass off on these books, and I know other journalists that work their asses off on these books, and you know, they're snubbed and because your book is sold at a drug store in a rack that it's cheap,

it's ridiculous. Stephen King has been mounting that argument for you know, thirty years, the same argument, but in a different genre. And I just wanted to talk about that a little bit in the opening of this book, that you know nothing against my other publishers owned and run by a true crime author, and Steve Jackson knows the business, he knows the work that's involved in these things. And look, this book was vetted by attorneys and everything, just like

any other book. It's the same type of book. It's that's been I've written for other publishers. What why offered me was my experience when I call Steve Jackson up on the phone and I say, I got a great case for you, and I want to tell it my own way. He says, Phelps, you've earned that respect from me. You've written thirty four books, You're a New York Times bestseller, you have the respect of the industry. Whatever you want

to do, Phelps, go ahead, I'll publish it. So so that that to me right there, it's it's not like I have to I have to jump through a bunch of hoops for an editor who's asking me, well, you know, ah, you know, it doesn't have an interesting female character, it doesn't have a you know, you know, this is true. This is true, This is nonfiction, this is journalism. Steve knows that I know what a good story is, and I know how to tell a good story, and he

doesn't question that. And I was just so appreciative and humbled by that, and and you know, and and that's what while Blue Press offers, you know, and and look, I'm writing a book now for Kensington Publishing, my old publisher, the one the publisher who published Dangerous. I'm writing a new book for her about Belly Cochlan, my editor there. So you know, I go back and forth. Where there's stories that I need to tell, I go find the right place to tell them, you know. But yeah, I'm

a little pissed off. As you can see in the author's note about this true crime explosion we're having and people jumping on the true crime bandwagon and all of a sudden trying to shine up true crime from their previous you know, description of it. You know, you've got people in true crime right now that basically shunned it

fifteen years ago. That's basically what I was trying to say in that author's note that you know, you have some pretty big names now doing true crime who ten years ago laughed at you for writing a true crime book. You know.

I'm in Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is like that. Now. They wouldn't even report on things through their news agency regarding Picton or Bernardo and Homolka, but yet now they're producing American stories in Canada for a Canadian audience. Again almost totally against their whole ethic, you know. But still a bandwagon is a bandwagon. So what I think, though,

is encouraging is wild Blue Press. Some of the more interesting guests that have been on this program that once we're with Kensington are now with Wild Blue Press, and Wild Bloe Press is going over and beyond what normally I think the True Crime imprint would do and being allowing authors like you say, to tell their own stories, trying them enough to be able to produce the books that they feel that the audience will accept. And the audience obviously is accepting it. So I agree with you that.

Trailer Park Boys. I love that show My God. I've been a fan of that show for oh my God. But it's funny you say that about Canadian television because it's it's it's it's one hundredfold here. You know, there's there's networks doing true crime now who you wouldn't even didn't even know what the words true crime meant ten years ago, you know. So it's it's it's really is.

In many ways, it's in many ways it's disgusting, but in other ways it's empowering for me because I like being able to go to Kensington Publishing with certain stories, and I like to be able to go to Wild Blue Press with certain store true crime stores. And I like to take historical true crime cases to Lions Press, who I've written four books for, you know, historical true crimes.

So I like to diversify my publishers, you know. I like to go to the best place who can do the best jobs for that particular case.

looking at interviews. What did you bring What new techniques did you bring to this interview that you hadn't brought to previous ones.

this story. Whereas ten fifteen years ago that would have been in an epilogue, two pages in an epilogue in the back of the book. Sure, now I can incorporate it in real time as part of the narrative, which I did hear, because it really added an extra layer of reporting to this story. You know, it showed just a deeper, deeper aspect of Tracy Fordson's character that when I pushed her and I pushed her on those hard questions, those questions that readers would ask when they're reading the book.

When I pushed her, if I'm innocent, I say this in the book over and over again. If I'm innocent, I'm going to answer any question off the top of my head without any argument whatsoever, because I do not have to remember the truth. The truth is inherent.

All I care about is the truth. How do you get me to your truth that you're saying it is? How do you get me there? Tracy? I want to get there with you. Take me there? And then she'd say something that I'd say, but that's speculation. There's no there's no way that there's no way to corroborate that at all. So, you know, we I ran into this brick wall over and over and over again. Like there's one section, Dan, and you might recall this where she

totally misreads the document written by the medical examiner. She totally misreads a statement in it, and she thinks it's in the fairyest statement. And I said, he's only guilty of not putting a comment in the right place in that document. That's the only thing he's guilty of. And she tried to say that he was lying in a document submitted to the court about something that could be easily checked. It made no sense to me, you know.

So those are the types of things that I really was like, Jesus, this is you know, you know, this is stupid. You know, let's get to the point here, Let's get to the point here. You know, she talks about recorded conversations that her daughter made with I didn't name the guy with someone so recorded conversations that the guy she made the conversations with would not back up with an affidavit that you could as signed after David

you could submit to the court. And you know, so the court looks at this, The appelic court looks at this, and they say, where's the signed off of David. Where's his testimony about this conversation. He wouldn't testify, He wouldn't sign it off for David. So what does that tell you? That tells me a lot. That tells me that person is not willing to back off what he said or he never said it. That's what that tells me.

And how sensible was she? German this entire thing and even accessing something from this interview tell us about this.

want to talk. They all want to believe that they can get out of that place. They all want to believe that someone's gonna hear them, someone's gonna believe them, and that one piece of evidence quotes is there out there that's going to get them out of jail. Or they're just gonna, you know, get some time again to bull horn clause and tell their story again. It's the only part of this that bothered me was how much of a slam dunk it was. And I think I

even mentioned that in the book. I'm like, well, this is a freaking slam I mean, the evidence is just over overwhelming, overwhelming? Is it too overwhelming? And then I come to the question and I and I commented a book, Well wait a minute. For that to happen, for there to be some elaborate frame up, there would be five agencies involved, FBI, GBI, Sheriff's department, police department, judges, prosecute. I mean, that's stuff that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen,

you know. And and we're so today, we're so conspiracy driven, were so making a murder type of cops are framing everybody thinking that just the mention of it today gets people's attention, right, So, yeah, so I'm working in that world today, you know. And maybe she's trying to take advantage of that world. Maybe that's why she helped, right, because she's trying to take advantage of that world that we live in today. But for me, and I appreciate you saying it earlier, Dan, that for me, I just

laid it all out. This is what Tracy said, this is what the cops said, here's what the public record said, here's what I dug up for information that I you know, it wasn't hard to find, and here it is, you know, here's all of it, and you decide, And the overwhelming decision of readers thus far is she's guilty as hell.

How much of this was she directing towards an excuse or was she able just to give you this information and you just saw it as well? That makes sense that she ended up in the place that she did.

insignificant to them. So what I did in the book was your story, with the disclaimer that you know, this is her voice, this is her story. I'm just kind of repeating it for take what you will. And there's little nuggets in that, in that whole narrative of her life that that show, you know, pieces of who she is. There's also what she left out, right, So I know there's stuff she left out. There's plenty of stuff she

left out. She's not gonna tell me about the bumps and bruises, you know, She's not gonna tell me about the trouble, you know. And yeah, but when you look at that, when I look at that, I also looked at court testimony of people who knew her, and repeatedly you see in both trials, repeatedly you see people who just said she's not a good person, she is mean, vulgar, controlling,

over and over and over. Not one person, not two people, not three people, but Jesus, but all the neighbors, all Doug's friends, you know, in fact, the only one person that really was one hundred percent behind her, save for her daughter, was the strangest thing to me was Doug Ben's mother, the victim's mother believes that Tracy is innocent, and that was the first time I ever ran into that and I just found that to be It just

blew my mind, just blew my mind. But then again, talking to the mother, talking to Carol Benton, I can see that she's been you know, I hesitate to use certain words, but her and Tracy have been talking for a long time.

making nasty accusations against her. In fact, what I heard from other people in that same office was she was cracking her own sexually charged jokes too, right. So so then we have this fact that Doug Benton, the victim, is the one who pushed her into filing those charges, right, Okay, So then she claims, well, the sexual harassment against the sheriff was the motivation, was the impetus for them to frame her for murder because she made the sheriff look bad.

I don't believe that for one minute. I think that's bs, total bs. But now on the other end of that, she says, oh, but Doug Benton was a CI, A confidential informant, and I believe he was feeding information his sheriff's department, and he got killed over that information. So now you have two totally different stories. She's telling in the same best. What you're saying is the sexual harassment

was the impetus for the murder. But then when that doesn't work, when I start to push on that, she's, well, well, Doug was a CI. You know, he was a CI, and I know there were people after him. And there I call him in the book, I call the drug dealer. I don't name him, I use a fictitious name. And well, this guy must have had him killed, you know. So it's like, okay, we'll pick your argument here, man, you know, pick your hargument here, you know. And and and look,

the sexual harassment suit never went anywhere. It never went anywhere. She also files for unemployment compensation before the sexual harassment suit is filed. So there's all kinds of little red flags that stick up when we when we try to place this sexual harassment suit motivation for frame into the matrix. There's all kinds of red flags that just pop up to me.

out with Jeff, she started causing problems. Finally, she's just this menace in his life. She just starts really really becoming this domineering, controlling person to Doug, pushing him around, basically telling him who he should hang out with, where he should go when she he should do it, where he should work, how much he should work, controlling his money. And Doug is just up to here with it all. And he says, you get out of here, get out of my life. I don't want you in my life

no more. Leave. They get an argument, she leaves, she comes back that night, he tells her to get out of here again, and he's dead two days later. And when you look at Tracy's anger issues, when you look at her issues in the past. When you look at the means and the motive, it all spells out someone who just snapped, kind of you know, who snapped and kind of might have had the horse trough and the paint and all of this on hand and went out and bought to some men and just you know, snapped.

You know, there's that whole cover up of the crime scene that we didn't talk about, that relief for your listeners to read in the book, that's a major part of the story where prosecution believes is killed on one day and two days later someone goes into the crime scene to try to burn the place down, and there's only one person who could have known that this murder investigation was going on, and that one person had to be in law enforcement, and Tracy was a deputy chef.

So two and two, you know, they make four a lot of the times I'd never seen two and two make three, you know, And sometimes we want to look for things that aren't as obvious as they are. When when you know what the answer is, just that obvious answer. It's just that obvious answer. You know that, yes, she's not the smartest killer because of the mistakes she made and where she bought stuff and when she did it.

But yeah, yeah. Another argument Tracy Fordson makes is, how could they possibly know it was Doug at the CROs You know, when they when they lifted up that horse trough in the in the field, and and and they identified him out in that field. How could they possibly know? It is an easy explanation for that, and the report a report obviously she never saw. Easy explanation is someone saw a pat two on his arm and one of the deputies said, I know that guy. He hangs around

the Sheriff's department. That's basically boyfriend. That's Doug Benton, I know. And sure enough they look up and Doug Benton has been missing for two weeks. Of course it's them, you know, that's not Columbo stuff. That's just you know, a small town people knowing each other, you know what I'm saying, Dan, mm hmm. Yeah.

the end. And in this case, what you have is you have the Sheriff's department immediately onto her and her backtracking right away. If you look at it from that perspective, Let's take a look at it from that perspective for a minute. That she is guilty, and that they did a great investigation which led directly to her, and they

start questioning her. Well, she's backtracking now, and she's trying to come up with answers, and these are the answers she comes up with you know, she never made in the beginning, which leads back to the comment you made in the beginning that she's had sixteen seventeen years to think about it all now, right, Yeah, of what she hangs on now is that bullet fragment and the testimony of Bernard at Daisy, the ballistics expert. And sure enough I dig up reports of some really bad report writing

on her part. If you look at the things Bernard that baby did, they were done out of laziness. They weren't done out in the fairy. It's like, oh jeez, I want to frame this guy. Everything she did, every mistakes she made that she admitted to those periods, was basically done out of laziness. She didn't want to conduct twelve pulls of the trigger. She only did ten, all right, all right, ten, not twelve?

Like you say that, I might open the floodgates to cases to be reviewed because of the ethical infractions that

this Davy did. When I see though, in all of this though, and maybe I'm getting the wrong impression, it seemed that once law enforcement is absolutely with this slam dunk sure that someone is convictable and they're guilty, that sometimes they skip certain procedures and steps, and like you say, with the crime scene analysis, some things that maybe shouldn't have been able to be said again gets through appeals.

But it seems that once they know someone's guilty, see that, they do a lot of stuff to support that, and I think that shows sometimes it can be dangerous to do that.

stupid a little bit because you're overwhelmed. You're overwhelmed. I mean if you look at the reports in the beginning of this case, which I did, I mean I studied up and down. You can see these cops are writing the reports and they're like, you know, you can just see it, see it in it. It's all leading to one person, and it's like, all right, she doesn't have a PhD. And how to murder somebody because she bought

the cement, you know, five miles away. You know what I mean or or she bought a horse watering uh truugh, you know, a couple of days before, you know, Okay, so she's not the smartest killer, but she's still a killer, right, And yeah, if you look at these reports, I mean, you know, my whole thing was and I made this

point in the book. I think pretty clearly that, knowing what I know about investigations, if it was up to me, if I was running that investigations, what I what I would have done was I'd have taken a step back from Tracy, and I had to put a tail on her, and I had to let her go about her business for the next month, you know. And and i'd have just watched her, you know, instead of just rushing to bring her in. You know what I mean, I would

have I would have watched her make mistakes. I would have watched her make one mistake after the next and watch her just you know, bury herself if you will, no pun intended. So so yeah, I mean, you know, and then Tracy makes the whole big deal about the forks in the tractor that probably punctured Dug and it wasn't a knife, right. That makes this whole case for this and what do I say. In the end, it

doesn't make any difference. It doesn't make any difference. If a knife did it or the forks did it makes no difference. In the end. What makes the difference is the guy was shot in the head on that couch as he was laying down. He was shot in the head, and then somebody allegedly stabbed him all over the mid section. Wounds really don't matter to me if I'm looking at who did this, you know, they don't matter to me.

What matters to me is what happens afterwards to clean up, trying to you know, burn the crime scene down, that whole thing, you know. Yeah, so it's you know, look, look, sometimes you look out into the water and you see a duck swimming by, and you know, you're certain that it's a duck, and you get closer to it and you're like, damn it, all, that's a duck, you know

what I mean. Very rarely you say, well, no, that's a loon, you know, because the loon is much bigger, right, So, so look, it looks like a duck, acts like a duck. You know, it's a duck. And I have seen nothing nothing in this case that tells me that Tracy Fordson is innocent. I just see questions, questions that can't be answered.

framed her. That means that that person would have to been watch Tracy Fords in twenty four to seven, watched her go to the feed store and buy the cement and buy the trial, take it home and then steal it and then Barry dug in it. That's what she's saying when she's saying she's framed, That's what she's saying. That's what she's saying, that they stole that stuff from

her and framed her with it that she bought. And I find that to be the most ridiculous statement of this entire thing, because that just it's impossible when you look at the logistics of that in the time frame and when he's missing and when he's buried, it's impossible for that to happen. It's just impossible. It doesn't add up. It does not add up.

stupid woman, and she was experiencing law enforcement. So it seems so unbelievable that faced with a journalist like yourself who tells her right out, because not everyone does listen, this is what's going to happen. And yet, like you say this obvious lying where you do have the opportunity to be able to answer answer your direct questions, and

yet she's deflecting and offering alternative motives. It is really the trademark or the telltale liar for her doing this in spite of knowing that she has an opportunity, this last opportunity, to be able to provide a plausible not guilty defense for herself with this book, and she has failed miserably.

It's always been a pleasure. It has been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Have a great night. Thank you, Dan, talk to you again.