This episode was produced with audio effects in full surround sound.

For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones.

Hi listeners, I'm Michael David Axel, and I have a story I want to tell you.

A story of a butcher whose hand is stained with innocent blood.

So, gather round and listen, close.

Boris B. the butcher would never hurt a fly.

That's what everyone used to say.

Even as a kid, I knew running around his shop full of blades and saws

was safer than our backyard slip-in slide.

But of course, when Boris B was convicted of murder, the town changed their tune.

I knew he had it in him, or I should have seen it coming,

Tisk, Tisk, to round every dinner table for decades to follow.

It didn't help that our town was small.

Small enough where you could ride your bike from one end of town to the other

and do it three more times before lunch.

Here everyone knew everyone, and anyone was someone.

Privacy was limited to the bathroom, and secrets were secret with no one.

The Growinsky's painted their fence, it was news.

The Williams boy got caught drinking beer, it was scandalous.

Nothing happened in our town that didn't see the front page.

So when the local butcher was accused of killing a kid, the world stopped turning.

Boris Bezrakov, or Boris B, as the town called him, used to own the old red and white brick butcher shop on Fourth Street.

...