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- [00:01]
Ashley
Hey, besties, it's Ashley. We wanted to remind you we have a Patreon, and your subscription to Patreon for $8 a month quite literally helps us keep the lights on. Podcasting is fun. We love it. We love this community, but it's not free. Your support means the world to us. We also have exclusive content on Patreon that we think you'll like. Thank you again for listening.
- [00:23]
Emily
Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley, and this is Books with youh Besties. Hi, Ashley.
- [00:30]
Ashley
Hi, Anne.
- [00:31]
Emily
Welcome back, besties. Today we are talking about the book Night Watching by Tracy Sierra. I read this book with my ears. Ashley, did you read it?
- [00:41]
Ashley
I read it with my ears.
- [00:42]
Emily
With your ears. And it was phenomenal. It was an excellent book.
- [00:47]
Ashley
It came up on our. So we have our Facebook group page where all of our members are. And it came up there. One of our members. It was Rebecca, right?
- [00:54]
Emily
Yeah. Yep. Rebecca.
- [00:55]
Ashley
Yes. Rebecca posted it and just said, like, holy, this book. And then I remembered you had read it, or maybe I screenshot it to you and you were like, hey, dummy, I. I told you about that book.
- [01:06]
Emily
I don't know. I just know that I saw her post and I immediately downloaded it just because I'm always looking for that. Like, wow, this was incredible. You have to read it. Authentic kind of review. And I felt the same way. So here we go. All the spoilers. All the delicious spoilers. If you haven't read it, then you have to go read it. Just do it. Go audiobook it. I. I audioed it in two days. I just could not stop listening. I was just walking around my house with it in my ears.
- [01:35]
Ashley
I could not stop listening also. But I. So I could only listen to it while I was seated because it's so scary that if I tried to listen to it while doing housework or whatever, I literally was looking over my shoulder or like, I could not listen to it walking the do. I couldn't. It was just in a seated position in my house.
- [01:56]
Emily
I was so scared of it too, honestly. Okay, here's the thing about night watching. And. And if you're listening to this, you either don't want to read it and you don't care about the spoilers, or you already read it and know. I was like, wait, it starts with, there's a man in this woman's house and they're trying to hide. And I was like, this is really unique. Like, this is gonna be. This whole thing. Is this whole book gonna be in this one night? And it's not. But it was like half of it was like a lot of the book was just about this one night and how you handle the situation. A, that's my very worst nightmare. B, I don't have a little hidey hole. I'm gonna make one. So I'm gonna hollow out. I'm gonna get rid of most of my husband's clothes and hollow out the drawers so I can put us into that. He will be fine. He can have just one pair of pants.
- [02:41]
Ashley
I wonder if we have to mark explicit content because you said hidey hole and that sounds like something else.
- [02:46]
Emily
Oh, Heidi, you know, you know. Okay, well, just.
- [02:52]
Ashley
We.
- [02:52]
Emily
We're typically explicit anyway.
- [02:54]
Ashley
We.
- [02:54]
Emily
We do the kind thing, though. We bleep out a lot of our swear words.
- [02:57]
Ashley
But. So you're right, it opens. And what usually would happen, like, halfway through the book is the first scene in the book. And the author does a fantastic job. Most of the book is told from her point of view, like hiding with her kids. We'll get into that. But she did such a good job placing that piece of doubt. And I think it's because she all knows we have been there, where you do wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, is there someone room? Is there someone in my house? And it takes you a few minutes to then be like, oh, no, that's my coat hanging on the door. Or oh, no, that there's not someone there. But there was someone in her house.
- [03:32]
Emily
Yes. And she had two small children. How old were they? Five and seven. Ish. Five and eight. Yeah. And so it was just the mom we came to find, find out later that the husband had died after a fall down the stairs in this historic home. And here's the thing. If you look up, we should link this. Ashley. If you look up Tracy Sierra's Instagram, she actually has a house. She was like, sort of picturing of what that would look like, I think, in like this remote area with the woods around it. And it's really old. And so it has all this character. But it also means it has loud creaking noises and lots of strange little spaces. And anyway, interesting, don't you think, that.
- [04:17]
Ashley
She did such a good job? Like, I feel like, did you stage this in a house and do these things while you were writing it? Because it feels so real, bringing to life the sounds of the house. Because I know I'll be laying in bed and I'll hear something, and I can tell. Usually it's if you have teenagers, you know, they have this whole other life from like 10pm until 1am so I'll hear something and I will know, like, oh, Hunter opened the fridge. Oh, Hunters. In like the living room you get to know the sounds of your house. And in this book she kept identifying where this man was in her house or was going to next based on the sounds of her house. Like, I can tell he's walking this way. I can.
- [05:00]
Emily
Yes.
- [05:00]
Ashley
And that was terrible. I have shivers on my arms right now. That was absolutely terrifying.
- [05:07]
Emily
Yes, absolutely terrifying. And. And then the daughter says, well, there's this man who's been watching me in the corner. So they call him the corner. Here's what's really interesting is I was trying to remember what was the woman's name. And I looked it up earlier and there were no names. They didn't name them. There was no little boy's name or little girl's name for the kids. They called the man the corner. I think ultimately they said his name maybe later. But I don't think the mother had a name because it was all from her perspective. Isn't that interesting?
- [05:40]
Ashley
Yes, that's fascinating. I didn't notice that. I'm looking at notes right now and I don't have. Usually I have like characters names and I don't have any of that same.
- [05:47]
Emily
And so I couldn't figure out why I couldn't remember any of their names except the corner. So they called the man the corner the whole time. And he said he called them like little piggies and come here and called to them and tried to get them to come out. I mean, he was an absolutely terrifying character. And the whole saga was absolutely just gut wrenching. And she basically hid them in behind the fireplace in like an unfinished part of the house that you, you would normally like close off. And they had like left a little opening that she could hide behind there with the kids. So they were like in a crawl space, sort of.
- [06:17]
Ashley
And they were in the crawl space and they're. So not only was she in there hiding with them, which was absolutely terrifying. Trying, I mean, think about trying to keep your kids quiet. They're not even quiet when you threaten their lives, let alone when you need them to be. But the, the other piece we know we didn't know until, what, most of the way through the book, right. How her husband died. She just saying things like maybe, maybe it's him like that. Those don't sound like his footsteps. He's not tall enough to hit his head or he knew to duck there.
- [06:44]
Emily
But.
- [06:44]
Ashley
But could it be him? And then she'd be like, no, I know it's not. So didn't you feel like there was so much of that not knowing how the husband died and if he. If he could be here doing something nefarious because we didn't know if he was a good guy?
- [06:55]
Emily
Yes, she created a little suspense around that, but I didn't feel like it was distracting either. I wasn't like, just come out with it. Like sometimes in books you're like, just tell us, you know? But it was like, oh, the husband is gone. Are they divorced? Or is he out of town? Or like, is he dead? Like, I couldn't quite figure that. And then it came out. Yeah, that he had fallen down the stairs early in the morning. I mean, how traumatizing.
- [07:14]
Ashley
I. I leaned more towards him not being dead because it. She did just place that seed of doubt that at some point, could her husband and we can get into her dad be some. Somehow involved in this or could he be coming back? I felt like she let that go on for long enough until you found out what happened to the husband.
- [07:32]
Emily
Oh, my gosh. The fact that his dad hit her and then was excused for it by people. This is the thing, this book. Here's why I love this book so much. It scared me to death. This woman left her children in this little crawl space and went out in the snow in a blizzard and got herself like frostbite and crawled her way to a neighbor's house far away through the woods to get help for these kids and saved them. And what was really interesting is right away the neighbors had all this doubt about what was going on. But more than that, the police immediately were like, oh, you killed your children? And you're saying you put them in the wall because they're dead? And she's like, no, I put them in the wall. They're hiding. Like, help them. And then guess what? They weren't exactly where she said. But there was this whole theme in the book. I don't feel like we have to go through what the whole book is because everyone listening read it. But of women not being believed.
- [08:27]
Ashley
And also even if they're somewhat believe, being told, you're making too much of it. Right. Because it kind of starts with her feeling like this coroner is a pretty uncomfortable guy when he makes a statement to her daughter or about her daughter and touches her spaghetti strap tank top and to. To her husband, who at the time is alive. She's like, that felt not okay to me. And her husband is also Kind of like, don't go there. Like, don't do this. Don't embarrass us. Right, right.
- [08:55]
Emily
Well, yeah. And women having to question like that makes me uncomfortable that he touched my daughter's shoulder in sort of what seemed like an intimate way but nobody else noticed. And even the cops then when she brings that up are like, well, who? You know that. Did your husband notice? No. Okay. You're a little hysterical. It's just very much like the hysterical woman the whole way along. And here's what I thought Tracy Sierra did. I know, I just like, I'm getting to the punchline, but I feel like we have so much to talk about related to that. Here's what Tracy Sierra did that was so brilliant. I thought she took us on that ride of doubt in the main character and under understanding the self doubt of the main character. And there was one point at which, you know, one of my least favorite things, just because I am a non clinical, non licensed, but psychologist still and I work in this field that I am so frustrated by any kind of depiction of dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. Because A, it just doesn't happen. I keep seeing A and B, like I have a list, I'm going to be A, it just doesn't happen and two, it's played out, okay. And X factor, I don't like it, so. And Lucinda Barry, I know, agrees with me on that. We've talked about that and laughed about that. But it's really hard as a psychologist to read like, oh, it was a dissociative identity disorder and they had multiple personalities. I'm like, oh, what a cop out. To me, that is the cheapest way out instead of having to craft like a creative narrative around it. It's sort of like when you can't figure out in a series how they could resolve an issue so they just kill off a character and then it's like, oh, it's resolved. But in real life that's not happening. That's not happening. Oh, well, luckily the neighbor who wanted to kill me is now just dead, got hit by a bus. Let's move on. Like, you should be better at identifying ways to make this reasonable that are true to life. And that's not to say dissociative identity disorder doesn't exist, but that, that's controversial too. Okay. And even to what extent it really exists. So I just don't like that. And I think Split did it really well and that was really entertaining. And like the Sally Field movie, I forget what One that was. But there's like a couple movies that all came out around the same time in like the 90s and 2000s. Okay, we're all done with it. That was a good storyline. And here's what I loved about Tracy Sierra's book is says at one point the officer goes, oh, he was using a funny voice. Like, do you think that he's was. This was like multiple personalities kind of thing. And like, alluded to dissociative identity disorder. And she goes, like, in the movies, is that even a real thing? And I. That's what the main character said. And I was like, yes, this is it for me. We're not gonna go down that idiotic path. Right. Like, she immediately quashed, squashed it and, like, made it more realistic. I just really liked that.
- [11:28]
Ashley
I did too. And I like. So we have talked about female characters in book and how they can be very damsel in distress or very whatever. I did not feel that way. Her main character had to make a split decision to hide her kids, to believe if what she was feeling was real, if there's someone in her house, then she had to decide, am I going to sacrifice my own life by going out in this blizzard and finding people to help me? And then as those people and the cops kept trying to make it seem like maybe she was having a nervous breakdown or maybe didn't know what she was talking about, she stood completely firm. Like, yes, she questioned herself sometimes because she's still going through grief and trauma. But I felt like she was a female character who was very. This word gets used too much. But she was strong and she was a smart decision maker. And really it just shows what moms go through to put their kids first.
- [12:19]
Emily
Totally. And being questioned just all the way along about everything. The alcohol thing. Oh, there was alcohol in your system. And her being like, I didn't drink and you're too skinny thing, like, what does that have to do with whether or not. How does my weight come into play as to whether or not this is a true crime or true incident? Just all the things that women are criticized for. She was. And you're right, she totally stood firm.
- [12:41]
Ashley
And even with her, I just thought the way Tracy, too wrote in. I know we don't have to go through the whole book again, but her father in law, he was just a piece of shit. We can bleep that. And she couldn't believe the way that he treated her. But there were still moments of doubt because she was wanting to be with her husband and wanting to do what women do to not make people feel bad. And here he wouldn't even let her talk to her own children on the phone because he thought she killed her husband. So I. I wouldn't say there were many. I don't know what you call these. There weren't red herrings. Like, I didn't think. There wasn't someone in the house. I didn't think she had killed her husband. But there were so many little side stories. It definitely kept you guessing until the last, what, 10 pages?
- [13:21]
Emily
Totally. Well, and it put that little bit of seed of doubt. And I was going to be so disappointed in the book. I think if at the end, it had been like she had imagined it all because she was in a trauma response situation and what really happened was xyz. I. I mean, I. That would have. We wouldn't be on here talking about.
- [13:37]
Ashley
When they were getting. So when cops were with her and where she had escaped to that house. And it was leading towards that Em. It was leading towards, like, oh, is she in a hospital room? And she just woke up. And I was like, I will hate. But I knew you loved it, so I thought, there has to be something else, because Emily would not have loved this if this was just a dream or whatever it's called. That would have been off.
- [13:58]
Emily
That's the thing, is there was no big twist in this. Like, she knew who it was, and it was him, and everything she said was true.
- [14:07]
Ashley
The twist is.
- [14:08]
Emily
I.
- [14:08]
Ashley
It just hit me. The twist is that, oh, my God, a woman told the truth. And look, she was telling the truth the whole time.
- [14:16]
Emily
That's why it was so masterfully written, because there wasn't a twist. And you weren't like, at the end, although you were kind of like that the whole way anyway. Even though you knew. Even though she told you, I know who this is gonna be. This is the guy. And she saw his T shirt, and she's like, I know where I've seen that T shirt. Like, she identified that man from the diner. She was right the whole time. And still like. And that was the end of the book, and it still just kept you on the edge of your seat. Brilliant. Okay, I think here's what we need to talk about. We can come back to, like, obviously keep coming back to the book, because we'll keep relating it. And I think there's a million pieces I want to talk about with it. But it was really interesting because we did kind of that partnership with Truer Crime with Celisia Stanton, because it's Such an awesome show. And it fits so nicely with the topics that we talk about, you know, and her whole platform is looking at cases, at what went wrong essentially in the legal system. Like, what went wrong. And I was listening at the same time to this book that I was going back because I listened to her most recent episodes and I was going back and listening through her whole first season. And episode one that she ever did was on Darlie Routier. And everybody needs to go and listen to episode one of season one of Truer Crime because it is such a prime example of how women are not listened to in the criminal justice system. And what happened in that case essentially is that her two children were killed. She. They were stabbed to death in the night. She suffered some superficial wounds, but I mean, to have her neck cut 2 millimeters from her carotid artery, like she could magically do that. There was evidence that really brings in a lot of reasonable doubt as to if she was the killer or not. For example, a sock that was found with both boys blood on it, but none of her blood, even though she was all cut up, none of like her DNA found on the sock 75 yards away. Far enough away that you would wonder if anyone would see it too. It wasn't like a bloodied up sock. It just had specks of blood. So you'd think that somebody would just pick it up and throw it in the trash can. But the fact that it was found far away and the timeline of the crime, no one can figure out how she would possibly be able to plant that, like get their blood on this sock and then go plant it, get blood nowhere else, come back and have called 911 in the timeline of, of, of the child's death. So anyway, go and listen because it's really in depth and it gives you really good rundown. But what I hated about the case is that as I was listening to it and was so upsetting was that from the jump they decided she did it and they just focused on that and never could get away from it. Just like in night watching when the detective just decided that she was just. She was mentally unstable and couldn't possibly know what she was talking about and she was somehow making her this up, fabricating it or, you know, what's the word? Making it more extreme. What's the word? Exaggerating it. Tell me about cases.
- [17:04]
Ashley
Well, this makes me think of two things. You just watched the. And I both watched the Gabby Petito Netflix. Stop.
- [17:10]
Emily
Yes.
- [17:10]
Ashley
And you see, if you haven't watched it yet pause this in the show notes. Look to where we stopped talking about it. But there is a part where she is being interviewed by the police because she and Brian have been in an argument. And any normal person. Emily watching this is like, she is clearly the victim. She.
- [17:27]
Emily
Right.
- [17:27]
Ashley
The way she is talking, the way her body language, all of it. But the cops decide he's the victim. And he literally says stuff like, well, she's crazy. She gets like this. He says all of the telltale things that men say to sow doubt. And then, of course, what ends up happening, he murders her, right?
- [17:45]
Emily
And two. Two, they got a phone call that a man was slapping a woman. So they totally disregarded that witness and were like, no, she was really the aggressor. He was just pushing her away. And you know what? She might have been fighting, too. Fighting with him, too. But this is one of those issues where it's probably not the tiny little woman who's hysterically crying and has scratched his face. And they pointed in the video at bruises on her body that were new.
- [18:09]
Ashley
Did you also catch on to then how men will. I don't know how to say this, but, like, relate to one another? So the cop is then talking to Brian, and he's like, my wife gets hysterical like that, too, but she just needs a hot shower.
- [18:21]
Emily
Right?
- [18:22]
Ashley
I'm like, the way you're talking about women who have mental health issues or have. Or who you are abusing, it was. It was just the ultimate. We are watching in real time how men get away with.
- [18:35]
Emily
Yes. And I feel like this is happening. This is what we do as a society. Right? Like, okay, I'm gonna take it way back, but Brock Turner, remember him? The swimmer at Stanford University who was literally caught by another man raping a woman behind a dumpster. Who was unconscious. And the rhetoric around this was, let's not ruin this young man's life. Nobody talked about this young woman's life. And it just. Just to become more recent with everything, I feel like we as a society continue to pick on and blame women whether we know what's going on or not. And there's two cases in the recent pop culture lens that I think really demonstrate this, and that's Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, that whole trial, and Lake Lively and Justin Baldoni. And this is just another repeat of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard thing that I'm seeing with this new Blake Lively thing. People are so quick to weigh in and think because they can access information on the Internet that they know what happened. You weren't there. So to. So to decide that the woman is the villain here, which is what I see all the time. Right. Amber Heard was certainly made out to be the villain, and so is Blake Lively. And you know what? They may be imperfect, they may have their flaws, they may be the villain. I have no idea. But for you two so quickly on them. I'm sorry. You know exactly what I'm talking about, Ashley. But I have seen people in both in my own circle and just in the broader Internet community say, oh, this woman's trash. Blake Lively is trash. Poor Justin Baldoni, he's a great guy. You gonna let your. Your daughter be alone with him? You sure?
- [20:11]
Ashley
You sure you that sure?
- [20:13]
Emily
Because how stupid are you to be so quick to jump on a train where you're willing to bash a woman? You think I would let be alone with Johnny Depp or let my daughter be alone with Johnny Depp? Are you kidding me? We know that he has, like, violent tendencies and abusive tendencies. And if you look at her text messages to her mother, we. We just weren't going to forget about all of that and say, oh, she's just histrionic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. We'll believe that one psychologist over the other psychologist who said those things weren't the case. And we're just going to trash her in the public eye. She's a liar. That's American society. So the Blake Live slander. You don't know her. I don't know her. I'm real over that. Stop trashing women when you don't know.
- [20:57]
Ashley
I would say one of the other recent documentaries about this, and I know that this is not played out, but people think they've seen it a million times. But there was just a new O.J. simpson documentary that came out. And I mean, the amount of people who blame Nicole and who. I mean, just because they have this parasocial or whatever you call it, he's a celebrity relationship with OJ and they think they know who he is and he would never do that. There are 911 calls. There are pictures. There is so much evidence that he abused her until the day he murdered her. God forbid we say, we say any of that. Right? Because obviously she's the one that pushed him to do that. She gets crazy. She gets hysterical. Yeah, the women shaming and blaming is. Yeah, I'm over it.
- [21:40]
Emily
It's just a sign. It's just indicative of how the whole world and our culture is moving. Look, we see that, that women's rights are slowly being taken away here. And that the goal ultimately is to strip women of all of their rights. I mean, watch the hands Handmaid's Tale and then look at some of the things that are happening in our current political climate and tell me those things aren't similar and that women aren't under target. And also how idiotic, like, my mom as an adult was not allowed to have her own credit card that wasn't tied to my dad when they first were trying to get credit cards. This is not that long ago that women didn't have full rights. Right. Women didn't have the right to vote. Like, that's less than a hundred years ago. So, so for us to then, so for us to then think, oh, but now women are totally equal. Give me a break. There's not a woman on the planet that is truly, truly believes that they're getting exactly equal treatment to men. Well, that, that might not be true. There's probably some women who are living under some kind of rock who believe they are, that there's true equality. But I mean, there's still a wage gap. We still see all kinds of, of rights given to men and not to women. And clearly women are just treated differently. And it really bothers me when I watch other women tearing women down and in any context.
- [22:51]
Ashley
Well, and you have helped me see this because, you know, I get on my high horse about the amount of white women, yes, we're going to get into politics for just a second, but beat the amount of white women who voted for Trump. And my whole thing is saying women who carry water for the patriarchy, happily, but it also boils down to, it's still the patriarchy. Like, it's, these women don't have access or, or to misinformation, disinformation or the type of education they need or have been raised in these systems to still be this way. So for me even to put women down, even though some, I think there are some who deserve it, like, but it's still a bigger issue of women, right? That women are not equal and women don't have the same rights. And even these women who I think are so opposite of me and I'm very anti them and how they voted, they're still a part of this system. And maybe the reason they voted that way is because they're still a part of it. And you've helped me see that a lot because I'm really quick to, not to, to blame a segment of women for where we are today.
- [23:55]
Emily
Yes. And my other, my other Big argument is women aren't the reason that we're here. Right. Men are the reason that we're here. So blaming women for Trump being in office. And look. Oh, there you go. If you listen to our podcast, there is no part of me that is willing to not speak out against Trump and what he is doing and this fascism that we are walking toward. So I don't care if we lose some listeners. Bye. Maybe we'll get some new folks in here. But the. I don't excuse the women who are carrying that water for the patriarchy, but I do think it's important as a social psychologist that we explain it right. They themselves are not. Not inherently evil, probably like the men are not inherently evil. But there is this system that we are stuck in that is teaching them that they are inferior and need to follow their master, a man, even in a subtle way. You know, one thing I will say is there are two types of people. This is what I've recently been learning from, from the interwebs. There's two types of people. There's people who are fuck around and find out F A F O people, and there's people who are not. There's people who are fafo. Like, like, you voted for this and now you're getting what you voted for and it sucks, and you're pissed and you're upset and you've lost your job or you, you know, are losing some of your rights or losing your health care or whatever. And like, that's fafo. And then there's people who are just maybe so much more compassionate and. And say, no, I don't want that to happen. I don't want anything bad to happen to anybody. And I just want you to know I'm squarely in the FAFO camp.
- [25:24]
Ashley
Everybody who follows me knows I am.
- [25:27]
Emily
I just can't.
- [25:28]
Ashley
I'm just.
- [25:28]
Emily
Just. I'm too bad.
- [25:30]
Ashley
And we all have to find out, right? So I'm not saying, like, oh, it's you. No. Because of how people voted. Now we all have to find out.
- [25:37]
Emily
But.
- [25:37]
Ashley
But it's your fault because you voted that way. We try to tell you.
- [25:40]
Emily
Yeah. And you know what? Here's the thing is, I keep talking to people about this. What is the tipping point for some of these people, these MAGA folks who are so die hard? Like, look, he's doing great things. He's doing great things. Like, can I show you some of the things that he is doing that are so incredibly harmful to the people, not to billionaires. Billionaires are doing great but the actual common people. Okay, here, I'll just give you one example. He's. Elon Musk is cutting all of these jobs, right? It's all of the people on the ground doing the work, right? All the people who provide U.S. aid, like 85% of U.S. aid workers. These are the people who provide aid to people who are in a natural disaster. Okay? So I guess we're good with way less help going to those folks. And we're good with like. Like not having anybody on the ground helping. Okay, great. And all those 85% of people in that office also now don't have a job. Right? And we're fine with that. So they're. We're cutting government spending for what? That's my question. For what? To fund what? You want the. You want the billionaires palace in Gaza? You want to own Greenland for no purpose? For what? If you can tell me one thing, it's not for lunches for children. We don't want to fund that. It's not going to be for public education for kids. Kids. Because we're done with that. We actually defunded it. It's not going to be for health care for all people, including people who can't afford any health care. It's not going to be for housing. It's not going to be for veterans. We cut all of the veterans benefits both abroad and here on it on the ground in the United States. Okay? So we don't care about our military personnel. We don't care about anybody that's on the ground. So what for. What's the money for?
- [27:12]
Ashley
Not national parks. We can add that one to the list.
- [27:14]
Emily
Not national parks. I mean, for what? For what?
- [27:17]
Ashley
So I feel like this brings us full circle back to women and that we don't believe them because we have Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris. We have women who have been telling us over and over and over again. So that brings us full circle back to women who.
- [27:34]
Emily
I'm off track, but I'm so angry right now. I'm so angry. It's hard to do a podcast without getting angry. And we're talking about, like, women not being believed and now women getting their rights stripped. And suddenly for me, this is about all of politics.
- [27:45]
Ashley
I'm so angry. I just took my fleece off. I got sweaty. Hot. But it's perfect. It leads us into this. So we talked about Darlie Roudier, who is a mother who is still.
- [27:56]
Emily
She's still in prison.
- [27:58]
Ashley
She is still in prison. So that's not a giant spoiler alert. She is still there, although there is ample evidence not to prove that she didn't do it because we don't know, but to prove there's definitely reasonable doubt out. So you know that we have talked about the Innocence Project. I love to follow their work. Ben and I donate to them because we think the work they are doing is very important because people get wrongfully imprisoned and wrongfully convicted. And I think it matters that there are people who are willing to fight these cases. So I found the case of another mom who is still in prison and was on death row and has not been believed. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about her story. And if you have questions m asked because I think this is the first time, I bet once I get into it, you'll be like, yes, I've heard of her. But when you hear some of these facts, you're gonna be big mad. So just me as you get angry. So her name is Melissa Lucio. She's actually the first woman of Latino descent to be sentenced to death in the state of Texas. She was convicted of capital murder after the death of her two year old daughter, Mariah. So it has similarities to the Darley case because it's her own child and it's a smaller child who could be harmed by her mom. So there was a case, there's a documentary called the state of Texas versus Melissa in 2020. And I will make sure to link that below for people so you can go watch this. So in 2008, she was sentenced to death for the murder of her 2 year old who fell down the stairs. She had 12 other children at the time. So Mariah was I think the youngest of her 12 and she was also pregnant. So her death was an accident. She fell down the flight of stairs. She had a mild physical disability that made her unstable while walking and prone to tripping. Died two days later after taking a nap and she didn't wake up. So number one, you and I have had toddlers, toddlers fall over. Toddlers get hurt. My, look at my children. Kids get hurt all the time. But the second that, that her daughter passed away, who do you think they blame her immediately. They were like, obviously your 2 year old did not just fall down the stairs. You must have murdered her. So she is brought in and she is interrogated. They use, use horrible interrogation techniques until she gets to the point where she falsely confesses. And when she falsely confesses, she just finally says, I guess I did. So they bring her in two hours after her daughter has passed Away for five or six hours, no food, no water, just constantly talking with her, yelling at her, and finally get her to the point where she just says, I guess I did it. And they count that as a quote, unquote confession. The. The cops were also at her daughter's autopsy, which should not happen. So one of the other things that the, the police did not mention in trial at all and they were not allowed to talk about is how she herself was a victim of sexual assault and domestic violence starting at the age of six. And at the age of 16, she became a child bride to escape the life she was in. So she left being sexually assaulted as a child, then married someone at 16 who continued to abuse her. So there's so much research, Em, I'm sure you know this, but that I was able to find around when someone has been a victim of assault and violence for so long, when they are then put under this pressure and interrogated in this way, that's where she just got to the point where she said, I guess I did it.
- [31:23]
Emily
Yeah, they're just like more vulnerable to pressures.
- [31:26]
Ashley
Absolutely. And to those situations where they're feeling trauma again, they're feeling trapped, they're feeling absolutely scared. And she had 11 other kids to think about. She just wanted to get out of there. So anyway, she was convicted, even though there has was zero evidence ever that she ever abused any of her children. So she had 12 children, no abuse in her history whatsoever. There were a few calls of potential neglect where her younger kids were left with teenagers, but never a single incident of abuse in her house. And the quote, unquote evidence they found on her body's daughter were bruises. Toddlers get bruises. And also that the bruises were caused from blood coagulating when she fell down the stairs. So in 2024, the judge who actually presided over her original trial came back and overturned her conviction and death sentence. And it's now before the Court of Appeal.
- [32:22]
Emily
Okay, here's. Here's a question I have, and you probably don't know the answer, but do you know how old were at the time?
- [32:29]
Ashley
So they were between teenagers, and Mariah was her youngest, who was 2.
- [32:34]
Emily
Okay, so what did they say the motive was? Like, what? This woman successfully raised 11 children to older than this child and then decided to murder this one.
- [32:44]
Ashley
It's just what we've talked about. They just decided. I think that was the easiest answer. Instead of looking at this as an absolutely tragic and horrific case where someone's child falls down the stairs, has a brain injury, passes away two Days later, of course, instead they're gonna say that the mom murdered her.
- [33:01]
Emily
Yeah. So there's actually. Okay, so this is a really common way too, for her to falsely confess. And it's the stupidest way because there are basically like four primary types of confession. The first type is true confession. Right. Like so unprompted, like voluntary confession. So I actually am confessing that I did. And then the other types are about whether it's like internal or external. So there's like compliant confessions, which is what she did. She did a coerced compliant confession. The altern alternative would be like a coerced internalized confession. So there's two types of internalized confessions where you might believe based on the coercion of the, of the situation. I guess I did it. She. She never believed she did it, obviously. But people will use these compliant confessions because the cops say things like, just say it. And then we're done here. And they're like, fine, I did it so I can go home now. Right. It's like almost like in the moment they lose track of what that really means. And so it's, it's more common than we think it is.
- [33:59]
Ashley
It says here, I'll link the article from the Innocence Project that she asserted her innocence over a hundred times before she finally just goes, I guess I did. And that was what was her confession and why she has been sitting on death row before 2000.
- [34:16]
Emily
How awful. And I mean, this is just one story. It's just one story. It's just.
- [34:21]
Ashley
Yeah, one story. It said. The article also said that one in three exonerated women are wrongfully convicted of harming children or other loved ones. One in three. So if you're exonerated, one out of three women were there because they said you hurt a loved one. Again, women just not being believed.
- [34:39]
Emily
Right. And. And the reality is women just aren't the perpetrator as frequently. And so to believe that it was more likely, you know, Gabby Petito over Brian Laundrie or in night watching that, that the mother was the one who perpetrated the violence against her children instead of this man she said was in her home.
- [34:59]
Ashley
Well, and to circle it around back to politics, the person prosecuting Maria. Melissa, But Melissa. Sorry, I'll change that. The person prosecuting Melissa was running on like a hard on crime ticket. So he wanted to have this prosecution so he could be like, you see, you see, like I got someone on death row.
- [35:17]
Emily
Yeah. Politics. I mean, they really play a role in, in the way that crimes are prosecuted. And the way that women are treated in the court system and I mean, not to mention other marginalized groups, even more so. But the fact that like, probably this women didn't have a ton of money, she didn't have some big fancy O.J. simpson kind of defense attorney for herself. She's an easy target.
- [35:38]
Ashley
And she had a hard. She had a hard life. Like, she had a really hard life. And she was far from perfect. So I think it was so easy to just be like, we're taking your kids away. You did this.
- [35:47]
Emily
Well, who is perfect? Who is perfect, right? I mean, it's just so frustrating to think about that people will take the worst little parts of you and pick them. Them apart. But. And if you're a woman, then that all becomes truth. But they don't do the same for men. So like the detective in the night watching story. I love that he got off scot free in terms of. Well, I mean, he was killed. I guess that's not scot free, but his reputation. Nobody was like, wow, he didn't believe you. He was wrong. That was really offensive. Everyone's like, oh, sad. A good man dead. Like, it's just very. And true. He shouldn't have been. I don't think he deserved to die. But I just think there is this double standard where men are allowed to be excused for the things that they have done and women are not. So Johnny Depp is excused. Justin Baldoni, we know. We have solid evidence. The New York Times uncovered and wrote an article about that he created a smear campaign on Blake Lively with his PR team that they intentionally tried to soil her name because they knew a lawsuit was coming out from her and everyone like, but she's a bad person. She called Taylor Swift her dragon, which I don't even know what that means because I haven't watched Game of Thrones, but apparently that's real offensive. And so we are gonna call her trash and hate her.
- [37:08]
Ashley
Well, and we need to do a whole episode on what I'm about to say, because this is your complete wheelhouse. And I know that you have been interested in potentially looking at this and studying it, but there are, there are moms and women who are, are, are bad who have harmed their children. And when that happens, yes, those women deserve to be punished. But also they are punished relentlessly in the media at horrible mothers. And they are. But also when a man does the same thing, like a Scott Peterson, a Chris the American. What? You don't hear it? There's nothing. I have goosebumps. Right now, thinking about this, you never hear like, wow, he's a really bad dad. He killed his children. Children, wow. It's the double standard of both people. If you harm your kids or your spouse, you're a piece of. But the way that women are burned to the ground when men are seen as like, gosh, I really wonder what made him do that, what pushed him to get to that point.
- [38:04]
Emily
Chris Watts gets fan mail. Yeah. He, he has women who write him letters in prison to this day. He brutally murdered his wife and two tiny daughters.
- [38:15]
Ashley
Right.
- [38:15]
Emily
And.
- [38:15]
Ashley
But if they name Susan Smith, there's nobody that's going to, quote, unquote, defend her. There's nobody who's going to say anything but horrible things about her, because how could a woman ever do that to her children? Agree. Terrible. But you don't hear people talk about men the same.
- [38:30]
Emily
No, I agree. I just, I, It's a, it's a frustrating thing for me. And right now, just, and when I watch those things unfold, I just think too, any of the women that I've known who I see just absolutely hating on women in these cases, just hating on them, I'm like, where? It's an unknown, it's kind of a back and forth. You're not, you're not a, you're not a girl's girl, you're not a woman's woman. And you're not my type of people, you know, like, you're, you're willing to put that all out there. Okay, great. You're gonna come for me the first chance that I do something a little bit wrong. But my husband will be good. My husband will be good.
- [39:02]
Ashley
With Johnny Depp, it was like, do you think he's really Pirates of the Caribbean? Do you think that's who he is? Because it's not.
- [39:09]
Emily
I mean, my gosh, people, I've seen him in movies. He's a great guy. He did an interview once. I mean, my gosh, have you not ever seen somebody, have you never met somebody who puts on a good public, forward facing face, but they privately are a little bit different? Like, we all have. Everybody knows people like that. And in fact, you yourself are like that. Everyone is like that. Everyone has someone that they are in certain contexts and not others. Like, who I am in the classroom is not exactly who I am with my husband is not exactly who I am with you, Ashley. And so to, to be literally one of my students who's an onlooker, only in that context, and say, oh, I know she would never do that about me killing my husband. You don't know that I would.
- [39:52]
Ashley
And that brings us back to night watching because in the book she literally, I'm pretty sure there's a part where she says, like, I don't know if I call the police, if they are going to believe me me. So then these women like Amber Heard who do decide to say something. You're like the strength it took you to get there, knowing you're going to be burned to the ground. And you're belief is unbelievable. Right. To be like, okay, I am going to put my whole ass on the line because I so firmly stand in my truth.
- [40:22]
Emily
Yeah. And that's, that's the thing is I, I'm unwilling to weigh in on those. I'm unwilling. And you should be too. I mean, I'm not trying to shame anyone for what they've done, but shame on you. And I just think we should, we should give more grace, especially when we're thinking about women. How does it help uplift us when we just trash other women for anything? Really? All the caveats aside, when we know someone is harmful, when we know. Right. That's a different thing. But we, most of the time we don't. We're just hateful. We just hate on Taylor Swift for no reason. I just hate her. Which, you know, you don't hate her. You just want to hate her because she's successful and pretty and you aren't, you know, and so in the literary.
- [41:01]
Ashley
World, people who are like, I hate Colleen Hoover, I want to be like, do you know?
- [41:05]
Emily
I know.
- [41:06]
Ashley
Is she your friend?
- [41:08]
Emily
Just say, I don't care for those books much. That's not really my style. I mean, my gosh, I don't like fantasy stuff and I don't crap on it all the time. I just, it's not really my cup of tea and I, I'm sure I could enjoy some if, if it was the right context. Like, it's just I, I just find that hatred toward women kind of in any context really baffling. What. Who is it that said, who is it? I'm gonna. I gotta. And then while you.
- [41:32]
Ashley
Well, that makes me think that I want to tell people to also read the book of our. The book of the month that was this month crossed my heart. Because there's a whole theme in there about women and women being believed and countless women not being believed. So I'm not going to give any spoilers, but if people want a super fast paced, super fun read, but also to be like, why is no One listening to these women read Cross My Heart by Megan Collins. And we're going to interview her tomorrow. And I have a lot of questions for her about her female characters, because there are multiple female characters who are not. Did you find your quote?
- [42:06]
Emily
Here's the quote. Here's the quote. By Taylor Swift. By Taylor Swift. In Lover, the Deluxe Album, I want to be defined by the things that I love. Not the things that I hate, not the things I'm afraid of, not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. I just think you are what you love. I want to be defined by the things that I love, not the things that I hate. And it seems like there are two types of people right now out there. There are people who want to spread hate, and I just called myself an FAFO person, so that's probably me. No, there are people who want to spread hate and there are people who want to be defined by love. So when you are talking about your hatred for Blake Lively or your hatred for Amber Heard or your hatred for, I don't know, any woman that you just.
- [42:55]
Ashley
Your hatred for liberal women, for liberal.
- [42:58]
Emily
Women, for academics, for immigrants, for poor people, for people who don't believe the same things as you, for gay folks, for anybody that is different. For trans people, when you are talking about your hatred for those, that's what you're known. Right. And I want to be known for the things that I love. So.
- [43:16]
Ashley
And I don't think being an CAFO person is being hateful. I think it's called accountability. And at some point, everybody has to be held accountable for the choices they make, which includes the way you.
- [43:26]
Emily
That's right. It's not. Okay, this is what I was going to say earlier, and I couldn't. I couldn't get there because I got so rambling and excited. But it's not that I'm an FA fo person because I want people to suffer. It's because I want the tipping point for people to come faster than it did in the 1930s Germany. I want the tipping point for people to change their mind. If it has to be personal and be harmful to you, and then you'll finally stop being a mogul, yoga, Trump lover and. And voting for fascism and pushing forward the fascist agenda and get on the side of retaining our republic and our democracy, then I want the bad thing. I want FAFO to happen to you so that you will change your mind. I just don't know that we can get that.
- [44:09]
Ashley
And that really is the true. You know, I always Love to say empowered women, empower women. And wanting people to get to that tipping point is because we want to protect women and women's rights. It's not about wanting to cause harm.
- [44:20]
Emily
Harm.
- [44:20]
Ashley
It's about wanting to protect as many people as we can before that harm is caused.
- [44:25]
Emily
Exactly. And, and that's not to say I don't understand that there are things that the liberal progressive agenda have done that have been misguided or taken too far. I get that. I get the pushback and the swing back of people being like, wait a minute, there's no space for conservatism in any of this. I get that. You don't then go, okay, we're going to go back to the 1900s and strip everybody's rights. I mean, my gosh, let's get rid of dei. You want to get rid of diversity, you want to get rid of equity. You don't want people treated equitably. And you, you want to get rid of inclusion. You don't want the inclusion of everybody. Okay, great. I hope that if you ever break your leg and you need an elevator, that you don't mind that there's not one because there's no more funding for that.
- [45:12]
Ashley
I hope when you have to pump, you just have to do it in the middle of your office with every person because there are no longer room, rooms for, for moms who need to pump at work.
- [45:20]
Emily
I know. I hope if you're a woman, you don't want a job. That's dei. I hope if you are, you know, people just look at it like, oh, well, you know, immigrants and black folks are taking our jobs. Oh, my God. That was one of my favorite series on Tick Tock. Like black jobs doing black jobs. People being like, today I'm gonna be a lawyer stealing this black job. Yeah, you can't. What's. What is the black job? That really was. I just loved that clap back. I thought that was beautiful.
- [45:46]
Ashley
Okay. Oh, well, in night watching too, last little piece. I feel like we just keep coming full circle to that. There is a whole theme too right. Of her. Wasn't she making more money than her husband at one point and that pissed her father in law off. Wasn't.
- [45:57]
Emily
Oh, yes.
- [45:58]
Ashley
She had a whole career and her husband was floundering as this wannabe photographer guy. I mean, that was a whole theme there too. Like she was the breadwinner and her father in law was pissed about that. That.
- [46:10]
Emily
Oh, yes, I have, I have had similar situations of people saying, you know, you work a lot and you started this business, and how does that harm your family if you're not home enough to, like, you know, cook for the children and whatnot? Like that. That whole old chauvinistic viewpoint is very much alive.
- [46:25]
Ashley
And I had someone ask me how. How did my kids do for the five days I was a gone at creepy book club? And I wanted to say to this person, they did fine. Did you ask me how I did when my husband was in China for five days, weeks? No, because nobody asks about that.
- [46:40]
Emily
That's insane. Like, should they not be able to function without their mother for five days with their father to find out when.
- [46:47]
Ashley
They'Re in therapy 10 years from now? If that's what did it, those five days that, God forbid, their mother was.
- [46:52]
Emily
On a work trip next year, let's do six.
- [46:55]
Ashley
On that note, Three night watching. Or you probably already did, if you're listening to this.
- [46:59]
Emily
Oh, yeah. Thank you all for listening and to us ramble. Ashley, we're gonna have to cut out, like, three quarters of this.
- [47:05]
Ashley
There are. Sorry if this episode was only 17 minutes.
- [47:08]
Emily
Bye.