True Story Media

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Hey everyone, it's me, James.

I'm very excited to announce a brand new season of Dakota Spotlight coming during the first week of November.

Season 12 is titled Meanwhile in Mankato, Lies, Silence, and Murder in Minnesota.

Here is your first listen.

If you've ever been to a garage sale or an estate auction, you've probably felt that tingle of excitement while sifting through items on a table or in a box,

because somewhere mixed in among the junk, there just might be a gem.

That happened to me a couple of years ago. No, not at a garage sale, but in the online archives of a library, I was scrolling through old newspapers, half

distracted by the blur of endless headlines when a little story caught my eye. It was an old one

from 1965 about a murder.

Rapid End was a little farming community. A bank, numerous houses. Two grocery stores. And a school.

The headline read like this. Mankato youth arrested in shotgun slaying.

On a late night in September of 1965, in rural Minnesota,

a clean-cut 17-year-old high school student walked into a local crossroads gas station on the edge of town.

Gas station in front, truck stop in the back. Kind of a lonesome place out on the edge of town. Gas station in front, truck stop in the back.

Kind of a lonesome place out on the highway.

In his hands was a loaded shotgun.

When he walked out, he had about $800 in his pocket,

...