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Criminal

Perfect Specimen

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.739.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2016

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The 500-year-old Treaty Oak in Austin, Texas was once called "the most perfect specimen of a North American tree." But in 1989, Austin's city forester John Giedraitis realized that the Treaty Oak didn't look so good, and began to wonder whether someone had intentionally tried to kill it. The Austin police were on the case, so when Paul Stedman Cullen was arrested for the criminal “mischief,” it was time to unearth what his motives for killing a tree could be. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. At Barclays, we're here for the land of football.

0:35.0

We're here for the Premier League.

0:38.0

And the Barclays Women's Super League.

0:41.0

We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance. We're

0:48.1

here for the grassroots and all the muddy booths. From schools to stadiums we're here for it all.

0:57.6

Barclays here for the land of football.

1:00.0

So it's about 50 feet tall so it's not a giant tree according to tree standards, but in down here in the south that's a pretty good size tree.

1:08.5

So about 50 feet tall, 100, 120 feet so in diameter. So it's very sort of low and spreading tree. Big

1:17.2

branches coming out and swooping down and touching the ground and going

1:20.9

back up to the sky again. Just a beautiful tree.

1:24.5

This is John Gedritus, former city forester for the city of Austin.

1:28.6

He's describing a famous tree in downtown Austin

1:31.4

known as the Treaty Oak.

1:33.0

Quercus Virginiana, southern live oak, very, very common all the way from Florida, all the way to Texas along the Gulf Coast.

1:41.0

So you'll see them, you know, they're the big trees of the South. That's the live oak, the ones with the Spanish moss hanging off them.

...

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