Welcome to Stranger's from KCW's Independent Producer Project and PRX. I'm Leo Tao.

And this is Radio Topia Week, meaning all the shows in our Radio Topia Network are doing

one theme, the long shadow. You know, like when something happens that casts a long shadow

into the future of everyone involved and nothing is the same ever again. This is such a story.

It's about the randomness of fate and how life changes in an instant at the hand of a stranger.

My connection to the story starts about six months before the actual event when I first

met these guys whose lives were about to change. It starts with another random coincidence

of a much more benign sort. It was August 1996 and I've been living in New York for exactly

one year. I was living in a very crungy apartment in the East Village with Kimberly Pierce

to film maker Huttka Wanda Maker famous to Pewfilm Boyz on Cry. Her career has no real

bearing on the story that's just a fun fact for my life. But came and I were roommates

and I was moving out because I was moving in with my boyfriend. In two weeks before I was

going to move out the phone ring and it was a friend of a friend from Denmark. That's

what I'm from and he said I'm Jacob. I know Cecil. It was a woman I knew a little bit.

And I'm moving to New York next week and I'm looking for a place to live. Do you have any

tips? Now I didn't know this guy at all but Danes tend to stick together in foreign lands

so I said, you know, if it's cool with Kim, you can take my room. So I checked with Kim.

It was cool with her and I called him back and I said, you can have my room but I'm about

to go on a road trip so I won't be here when you arrive in New York. This was before

cell phones and emails and all that. So I said, I'll be back on the 25th. Call me after

that and you can move in on the first. So I went on this road trip with my brother and

my cousin and we got back late on the 25th and on the 26th we decided to go see a free

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