The Case of Belcher's First Cousin

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Baldwin tracked down Belcher's first cousin to talk about his childhood. He said that trauma really infected Mr. Belcher's brain at a young age and set him on a path that maybe he could have come back from. All the cousins and uncles who had helped him once he kept stealing and committing crimes, basically left him. And so she ultimately couldn't explain this is why he killed Jennifer Ambre but she did kind of unearth enough of the story of his early life.

Should past trauma prevent a convicted killer from being executed? The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah reports on “mitigation specialists” who try to save the lives of death row inmates by investigating their histories.

This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matt Collette, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King.

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