Hey friends, Nina here.

I need to warn you ahead of time that this will not be your typical episode.

There is extensive discussion of one of the hardest topics to talk about, child abuse.

There will be a lot of unpleasantness and I will do my fair share of swearing.

Because today we're talking about the 2005 murder of 7-year-old Ricky Holland.

I've avoided this case for a long time despite getting several requests to cover it.

Then I released a version of this story for Patreon subscribers but I keep getting requests

so here we are. And I love getting requests so don't get me wrong if you have show ideas

or topic ideas. Hit me up, host at alreadygonepodcast.com.

For this episode I updated and expanded the Patreon version to what you will hear today.

Before we get into the case, a brief personal story of my own. In 2004 my husband and I adopted

a waiting child from the foster care system. You see his birth parents couldn't care for him

and in the first five years of his life there was instability and things were not predictable.

There was domestic violence in the home. He was neglected and sometimes he went hungry.

For the first five years of his life he was in and out of foster care or living off

an on with various relatives. When he was five his parents' rights were terminated and he was

sent foster care. He was almost seven years old when he came to live with us. We were his

forever family. And I remember that his first day at home was on Good Friday which was kind

of cool. So in addition to normal kid things like Boy Scouts and swim lessons each week he

attended therapy with a skilled counselor someone used to dealing with traumatized children.

This was a service that our insurance didn't cover and we paid for it out of pocket.

In some days our son hoarded food in his room while refusing to eat the meals that we

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