Crime Junkie

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MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Tripp Brazeale

Explore episode Jun 8, 2026

Where this was said

The Physics of the Hanging Don't Add Up

At 43:40 · chapter starts 39:50

As the crow flies, Tripp would have needed to travel about a mile and a half from where his ATV stopped to where he was found. The terrain between those two points — described by Gil and PI Cody Turner, who have walked it at night since — is treacherous: broken glass, barbed wire, ditches, snakes. Without shoes. Yet when the family viewed Tripp's body at the funeral home, his feet showed no scratches. His socks, visible in autopsy photos, look dirty and possibly worn through at the toe — but the sheriff's office has refused to release those socks to the family. Meanwhile, an independent forensic pathologist found that the branch used in the hanging appeared only about 2 inches in diameter, well below what research shows is needed to hold Tripp's 119-pound body. And the ratchet strap came from a deer stand whose owner told Cody he'd cut it down two years ago and forgotten it was there, buried under foliage — making it nearly impossible for Tripp to have found it in the dark in an unfamiliar stretch of woods.

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