The suicide victims all had one thing in common: they trusted Brandon, and told him intimate details from their lives. The fourth suicide victim, Josh Thomas, told Brandon that he was “the person he trusted more than anybody else.” To understand why, we speak with women who were in Brandon’s life at the time. Despite the fact that people were dying all around him, Brandon was kind of a player, and the women he was involved with describe how Brandon ingratiated himself to them. Some call him manipulative, and one even says she believes he was grooming her for suicide.

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The Truman State suicides hit the town of Kirksville, Missouri hard. In this episode we investigate the deaths of the first two victims, Alex Mullins and Jake Hughes, close friends from the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity who killed themselves only three weeks apart. Their fraternity brother Brandon Grossheim found both bodies; later, he began wearing Hughes’ clothes and dating his girlfriend. Brandon was also accused of stealing money and drugs out of Hughes’ safe. After two more students soon killed themselves — both also friends with Brandon — parents of victims filed a lawsuit against Brandon and demanded police action against him.

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This introductory episode is set at the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity at Truman State University, in the small college town of Kirksville, Missouri. In 2016 and 2017 the fraternity was rocked by a series of suicides, which all happened in disturbingly similar fashion. All of the victims had one thing in common: They were close friends with a student named Brandon Grossheim. Brandon called himself “The Peacemaker” for his supposed abilities to counsel kids in crisis. But as he became tied up in one death after another, the fraternity brothers took action.

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Starting in 2016, a series of student suicides shook Truman State University. At first, they were seen only as tragedies. But when the same young man appeared at the center of each death, mourning turned to questions--then accusations. Was Brandon Grossheim a compassionate confidant? Or something else entirely? THE PEACEMAKER is a true crime podcast about grief, suspicion, and the most notorious suicide cluster in American history.

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