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Frank Kerrigan holding a picture of his son, whom he believed had died. Andrew Foulk/Orange County Register via AP

11 days after his funeral, a US family received a call to say their brother was still alive

His family were told by authorities that Frank M Kerrigan had been found dead. He hadn’t.

A CALIFORNIA MAN received a call to say that his son was alive, eleven days after he thought he’d buried him.

Orange County coroner’s officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported Friday.

The mix-up began on 6 May when a man was found dead behind a Verizon shop in the town of Fountain Valley.

Frank J Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, said he called the coroner’s office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M Kerrigan, 57, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street.

When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said — apparently incorrectly — that identification had been made through fingerprints.

“When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them,” Kerrigan said. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would have been there in a heartbeat.”

Frank’s sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads.

“It was a very difficult situation for me to stand at a pretty disturbing scene. There was blood and dirty blankets,” she said.

On 12 May, the family held a $20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state. Frank’s brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.

“We thought we were burying our brother,” Meikle said. “Someone else had a beautiful sendoff. It’s horrific.”

The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 150 feet from where Kerrigan’s wife is buried.

Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced he was looking at his son for the last time. “I didn’t know what my dead son was going to look like,” he said.

Then came the 23 May phone call from Shinker. Kerrigan’s son was standing on the patio.

It was unclear how coroner’s officials misidentified the body.

Doug Easton, a lawyer hired by Kerrigan, said coroner’s officials apparently weren’t able to match the corpse’s fingerprints through a law enforcement database and instead identified Kerrigan by using an old driver’s license photo.

When the family told authorities he was alive, they tried the fingerprints again and on 1 June learned they matched someone else’s, Meikle said.

Easton said the coroner’s office provided the Kerrigan family with a name of that person, but the identification hasn’t been independently confirmed.

The lawyer said the family plans to sue, alleging authorities didn’t properly try to identify the body as Kerrigan’s son because he is homeless.

Sheriff’s Lieutenant Lane Lagaret, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, said the department extends regrets to the Kerrigan family “for any emotional stress caused as a result of this unfortunate incident”.

Lagaret said in a statement yesterday that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is conducting an internal investigation into the mix-up and that all identification policies and procedures will be reviewed to ensure no misidentifications occur in the future.

The mistaken death identification led the federal government to stop disability payments for her brother, Meikle said. The family is working to restore them.

Meikle said her brother chose to return to living on the street and doesn’t understand how hard the mistake was on his family.

“We lived through our worst fear,” she said. “He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don’t go away.”

Read: Trump wants to put solar panels on his border wall – but would the plan work?

Read: Texas children who died in hot car were left there as punishment

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21 Comments
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    Mute Shane Hickey
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:28 PM

    more alternative facts

    265
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    Mute Seamus Mc Meel
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:57 PM

    Whoever controls the Spicer, controls the universe.

    112
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    Mute Conor Cody
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    Mar 14th 2017, 6:50 PM

    Is Trump the Barron??

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    Mute Larissa Caroline Nikolaus
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    Mar 14th 2017, 8:16 PM

    He’s definitely not the Kwisatz Haderach

    7
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    Mute Simon Moore
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:50 PM

    I love this guy, he reminds me of the Iraq defense minister saying they’re winning the war when US tanks were rolling into the city in the background.

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:43 PM

    lol totally forgot about him! That gave me a laugh!!

    34
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    Mute William O'Rourke
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    Mar 14th 2017, 5:28 PM

    Good ole Comical Ali….

    37
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    Mute David Orde
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:29 PM

    This circus in Washington just keeps getting more and more ridiculous

    272
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    Mute Fank Pulman
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:34 PM

    No more than here David – where we (with much more regularity than the US) continue to elect inept/corrupt politicians, time after time. It won’t be long before FF are back – who would have believed that!?

    73
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    Mute Neal, not Neil.
    Favourite Neal, not Neil.
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:49 PM

    Here we go, like clockwork, the “our lot are just as bad” non-argument.

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    Mute GameOverMan
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:51 PM

    You’re right David… it just gets more laughable as the days go by. Has he done anything positive? Seems like hes just there to entertain us with his own style of presidential parody. Fü@k knows whats really going on… but this clown is not in charge.

    108
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    Mute Fank Pulman
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:59 PM

    Keep up N – that was not the point. Our (the electorate) awful choices was…mediocries/crooks like Charlie, Bertie, Cowen, Kenny etc. Who left us with a €200+ billion Debt.

    18
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    Mute Lily Martin
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:35 PM

    Can’t look at a picture of Spicer without seeing Mekissa McCarthy.

    76
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    Mute Terry McClatchey
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:41 PM

    @Lily Martin: McCarthysim for 2017 now means Melissa on SNL not having to exaggerate very much on Sean Spicer. Hilarious if this were not the most important office on the planet.

    33
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    Mute throw9away
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:55 PM

    McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. The goon

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    Mute Dave Thomas
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:11 PM

    Maybe he was thinking of himself

    31
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    Mute ChuckE
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:01 PM

    Mother of jaysus. I actually feel sorry for his staff at this point. How do you defend such a moron without lying on a daily basis

    151
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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:57 PM

    @ChuckE: You lie on a hourly basis!

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    Mute bmul
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:30 PM

    He meant talk about this not Russia

    62
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    Mute jane
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:32 PM

    So he meant broad surveillance not wire tapping and he meant the Obama administration not Obama himself. For someone so proud of his straight talking he seems to be a little muddled here.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:51 PM

    He also used the words tapp and phone. It’s hard to explain that as not being wire tapping.

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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:51 PM

    I can’t tell the difference between the White House Press conference and Saturday Night Live at this stage!

    62
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    Mute Anne Marie Devlin
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    Mar 14th 2017, 1:36 PM

    Sure himself and Enda will have a great time with their tales – wiretaps, men with 2 pints and the army being deployed to protect the atms

    53
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    Mute Craba
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:10 PM

    @Anne Marie Devlin:

    You are at it again. You never answered me the last time. Are you employed by AAA/PBP or Sinn Fein?
    Pretending to be a real person makining genuine comments, when in fact its your job it to come on to totally unrelated stories to make anti government comments. How many differnt accounts do you have?

    24
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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:24 PM

    We all know what Wire tapping means, or what he meant and show us the evidence to back it up!

    39
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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:37 PM

    @Stephen murphy: I only hope Obamas legal team are ready to file…………..

    32
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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:45 PM

    He SAID wire tapping but he didn’t MEAN wire tapping silly!!!

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    Mute Pinkpantheroz
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    Mar 15th 2017, 5:41 AM

    @Deborah Behan: Didn’t the “President” say he always means exactly what he tweets? So he is now an even more exposed (pun intended) as a serial liar.

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    Mute No To Forced Births!
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:01 PM

    Tap dancing is not really tap dancing..

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    Mute filthypete
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:33 PM

    At some point it’s going to get really difficult to tell the difference between AND sketch and an actual White House press conference.

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    Mute filthypete
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:42 PM

    AND was meant to be SNL, apologies for weird autocorrect.

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    Mute Ronan Murphy
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    Mar 14th 2017, 5:12 PM

    Trump is the one inspiration for me to study 1984 for my LC Comparative study…..doublespeak of the highest accord!

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    Mute Stíofán Ó Baoill
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:25 PM

    That bowl of shamrock he’ll be getting Friday has a bug in it ,,

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    Mute sean o'dhubhghaill
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    Mar 14th 2017, 5:45 PM

    Maybe when he was elected President he didn’t think people actually meant President?

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    Mute Tony Hartigan
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:52 PM

    SPICER: The new COMICAL ALI

    20
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    Mute Stephen Ramsey
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    Mar 14th 2017, 5:13 PM

    First Obama was a socialist, now he’s a Macarthyist. Pick one.

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    Mute Padraig Nolan
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:43 PM

    AFFS

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    Mute The Edge
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:10 PM

    FAKE NEWS

    12
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    Mute Joe Caulfield
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:14 PM

    Michael Schmidt Matthew Rosenberg Adam Goldman and Matt Appuzo have to clarify their article in NYT January 19th in which they claimed the content of wire taps on members of the Trump campaign where sent to the White House. So who collected the communication and who received them in the White House.

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    Mute Geraldine Costello
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    Mar 14th 2017, 7:52 PM

    Better than any comedy

    7
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    Mute Catherine O'Connor
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    Mar 14th 2017, 8:44 PM

    Everything he says should be taken with a spoonful of inverted commas

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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:17 PM

    Just because you can’t find the evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:25 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe: No evidence=It didn’t happen and maybe they need more time to make some up?

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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:27 PM

    Bit like the Trump ‘Russian Tapes’. Nobody’s ever produced those have they.

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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:34 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe: Let’s stick to the wire tapping allegation, he made it and so he must prove it. One thing at a time, RUSSIA will get its turn and how many other ambassadors from other countries did Trump team meet during 2016 or was it just that one?

    46
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    Mute filthypete
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:35 PM

    That’s interesting logic Emmet. So say what you want and as long as you believe it to be true without proof it’s true. And then that should be accept it. It’s simply a way of undermining your own credibility when you have something of consequence to say.

    43
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    Mute Stephen murphy
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:42 PM

    @filthypete: Trump has gotten away with it, for a long time and now he won’t!

    32
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    Mute Enda Kennny
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:44 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe: can you provide an example of such a circumstance ?

    30
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    Mute Philip Gerard
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:53 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe: I’m looking for evidence you’re not a bullsht artist, Alex Falcone. Can’t find any.

    32
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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:54 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe:

    So let’s start with this comment “Bit like the Trump ‘Russian Tapes’. Nobody’s ever produced those have they.”, if you take your first comment this means that although we didn’t find the tapes to prove that it happened, it means it did happen anyways. Those are your words!

    If there was a Darwin aware for stupidest comment ever I would submit yours.

    39
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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:25 PM

    So, where are the Russian tapes then?
    A figment of someone’s imagination?

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:29 PM

    They’re under your box of Kleenex Emmet.

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    Mute B9xiRspG
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:30 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe: So where are the Russian tapes? Well just because you can’t find the evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

    lol

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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:32 PM

    @B9xiRspG:
    It’s called an analogy Jim. a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
    Whereas one story seems to have been given an official stamp of credibility (based on the inordinate amount of media coverage the story has generated) without actually producing the evidence to support it the other is dismissed as lacking any credibility on the grounds that no evidence has been forthcoming.
    To call that hypocrisy would be doing it a disservice.

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    Mute Carnac
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:14 PM

    @Stephen Murphy No evidence of Russia interfering with the election=It didn’t happen and Dems and MSM keep trying to make some up.

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    Mute Carnac
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:17 PM

    @Stephen Murphy now it transpires that Clintons campaign people also meet with the Russian Ambassador before the election. But that’s not news since she didn’t win.

    2
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    Mute Philip Gerard
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    Mar 14th 2017, 4:27 PM

    @Carnac: Clinton didn’t lie under oath to a congressional committee about meeting Russians, numbskull.

    32
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    Mute Ian Moloney
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    Mar 14th 2017, 8:00 PM

    I’m sure wires, tapping and tapes are all obsolete terms now. The authorities on both sides need only to target and intercept which ever communications they want via the complex satellite related digital phone systems in use today.

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    Mute Joe Caulfield
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    Mar 14th 2017, 6:17 PM

    @Emmet O’Keeffe A confederacy of dunces appears to be against you. What’s your IQ?

    4
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