A 27-year-old man is a knock at his front door. He goes to answer it, but there's no one there.

But on the ground is a plant pot. He reaches down to pick it up. There's a card in it that says to my teacher.

But the man picking up that plant is not a teacher, and this is not a gift.

Its only purpose is to lure him out of the house, and then a gunshot rings out, and the man sinks to the floor.

This is Red Rum, stories about the true victims of crime.

I upload a video version on Monday and a podcast exclusive on Thursday so make sure you're subscribed

so you never miss an episode. Our case today takes place in Santa Barbara in the US. I have been to

the west coast of the US only once and I was most obsessed with Santa Barbara. It really is

picture perfect. It's beautiful. It feels

incredibly safe. Our case today centres around a man called Jared Davidson. Jared was born in

December just before Christmas of 1976 and he was born in Panama City in LA. He grew up with

his mother, Susan, father Richard, and younger brother Michael.

And to an outside eye, he was quite a quiet child. But with his friends, he had a really

big outgoing personality and he really hung out with other people who was super outgoing. And so

everyone knew who Jared was. Jared had always been fascinated with chemistry and he was

really good at it. In fact, he ended up getting a job in pharmaceuticals and he worked there for

about a year and a half before deciding to move on. And the reason he decided to move on was because

he wanted to get a greater understanding. He wanted a deeper understanding of

chemistry. And so he went to grad school over in Santa Barbara. Now grad school for us people in the

UK is basically like a postgraduate course. So it's something you might do in, uh, in relation to

then getting a master's or a PhD. And that's exactly what Jared was doing.

He was preparing to get his PhD.

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