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The Case of Amanda Busse
📻 Episode #346
🎙️ Hosted by Maggie Freleng
📅 Apr 03, 2023
About This Episode
From an extremely young age, Amanda Busse endured severe physical and sexual abuse, not only by her father, but also by her father’s friends, who were all feared by much of the community as they were rumoured to control the local drug trade. After her mother passed, Amanda’s father sold her to a 36 year…
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The Case
From an extremely young age, Amanda Busse endured severe physical and sexual abuse, not only by her father, but also by her father’s friends, who were all feared by much of the community as they were rumoured to control the local drug trade. After her mother passed, Amanda’s father sold her to a 36 year old acquaintance of his, to be his wife. Amanda was 17 at the time. On November 15, 1997, a local woman was found brutally murdered in the Meramec River in MO. Amanda’s father, husband, and 3 others were initially arrested and charged. Her father’s charges were dropped and her husband received a life without parole sentence. It wasn’t until 5 or 6 years later that Amanda’s brother implicated her in the crime, as revenge for Amanda reporting him for molesting their young nieces. Amanda was convicted, and ultimately sentenced to 25 years in prison. Maggie talks to Amanda Busse, Mary Payne, Amanda's aunt, and Anne Geraghty-Rathert, Amanda's attorney.
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:04:10“Speaker 2: getting them ready for school, cooking dinner. Speaker 1: Amanda's father, Kenny, worked various jobs, but she doesn't remember Speaker 1: any of them lasting long. Speaker 2: My dad, he just he quit working and then he Speaker 2: just start selling his drugs. He'd go from this place”
00:17:18“Speaker 1: Ten days later, seventeen year old Jeremy Payne was brought Speaker 1: into the police station and questioned about his knowledge of Speaker 1: Diane's murder. Jeremy knew Diane through his father, who was Speaker 1: in a relationship with her. In a taped confession, Jeremy Speaker 1: said that he, Amanda's father, Kenny, and two young women”
00:29:37“Speaker 2: for everybody, kind of like Valvictorian, And they kind of Speaker 2: surprised me when they came up there after all these years, Speaker 2: you know, And that's kind of like my whole life Speaker 2: just classed before in my eyes, you know, because we Speaker 2: all conspected.”
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