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Andrea Jo Phillips

Soon, the murderer's modus operandi became clear. She worked as a Gimmick Girl. When a customer would schedule a call to have their robot replaced, the killer would report the replacement as a new sale and keep the disabled old unit herself. She would then restore the old units and repogram them - to kill. The press nicknamed her "the Brass Widow."

No fingerprints were found on any of the Mechs or in the victims' homes, which left only the company's records. The falsified customer records were traced back to a saleswoman named Andrea Jo Phillips, who was soon arrested.

Even at a casual glance, Phillips wasn't a likely suspect. She was 18, from the countryside, and she possessed little technical knowledge. She maintained her innocence, saying she didn't even sell in the same areas where the falsified sales were made.

However, High London Mechanical produced witnesses who said they saw Phillips coming back from the company's engineering department on the day some important schematics went missing. Another witness said she'd received bribes from Phillips to cover up her theft of the deactivated robots.

Based on this evidence, she was convicted of all seven murders and sentenced to death. However, Phillips wasn't fated to die on the gallows.

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Copyright 2010 Haley Moore