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The Megyn Kelly Show
Alex Murdaugh Crimes, Jodi Arias Trial, "Bad Vegan" Deep Dive - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode
02:58:25
Megyn's "true crime" mega-episode this week focuses on the various crimes of Alex Murdaugh, the explosive Jodi Arias trial, and a deep dive on the "Bad Vegan" series with the woman at the center of the story.
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- [00:01]
Mark Igar
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- [00:59]
Megyn Kelly
Learn more@splunk.com welcome to the Megyn Kelly show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. And welcome to today's true crime mega episode. We are diving into three wild stories. The shocking criminal history of Alec Murdoch unbelievable case, the Jodi Arias trial over the murder of her boyfriend Travis Alexander, and did you watch Bad Vegan on Netflix? We talked to the woman at the center of that entire bizarre drama. Love the true crime shows. Enjoy and we'll see you Monday. Today we are diving deep into the case of Alec Murdoch and there are updates in this incredible case. Believe it or not, his story begins much earlier than the crimes that made national headlines over the past few years. And no one has covered the story quite like the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Borlein, who wrote the book the Devil at His Elbow. We get into everything from Murdoch's family history to the details of his downfall and the new info. Valerie, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
- [02:18]
Valerie Borlein
Thank you.
- [02:19]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so this is all so fascinating and one of the most eye opening things I read was about Alec Murdoch's background. His. His. He comes from a long line of deeply ethically problematic people which I did not know. All you ever heard about him was that he came from this very storied family. They were lifelong solicitors or like the prosecutors in their town in South Carolina, very well respected. They controlled everything. It was far more nefarious than that. Can you take us back?
- [02:51]
Valerie Borlein
Oh, it Absolutely was. I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises I had researching this book was that every CR that Alec was eventually convicted of had some echo in the past. And that includes, like, violence against women or overtures of violence against women. That includes insurance fraud. Like, by the side of the road, there was an act of insurance fraud that started the family dynasty. Stealing from clients, drug trafficking. There were. There were echoes in the past for every single crime we're talking about, even a boat wreck that caused really a traumatic injury. So that was. That surprised me, too. It wasn't. It wasn't just ellic. It was the history going back to 1920 of this family.
- [03:33]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. I mean, it really does show you, you know, if you have a family, a father, a grandfather who are committing crimes and teaching you either explicitly or implicitly that that's okay, your odds of becoming a criminal are obviously much higher. But hello, women of the world, Pay attention. Pay attention to your. Your spouse, the. The. The guys you're dating. It can work the other way around too. And what they come from, who they come from. So this. His great grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh Senior, basically committed suicide and insurance fraud at the same time.
- [04:11]
Valerie Borlein
That's right. And I was in Hampton just last week. I actually was standing at the train tracks just south of Almeida, where. Alex. The home place that Alec went the night of the homicides. His great grandfather, Randolph Senior was a very prominent man. I mean, every meal he ate was front page news. Like, where was he now? He was the district attorney for four counties in the low country of South Carolina. He was. He was very sick. He was 53 years old. He was. He was dying. He was at the end of his life. He had. He had kidney failure at a time when there just. You didn't. There was no cure, right? There was no dialysis. He was broke. He had been a big investor in the. In a bank, and then the bank failed, and through the depression, he was just. I found documents down at the courthouse in Hampton where he just would say, there's no chance. I can never pay these people back. So he was broke, he was dying. And he knew how to do one thing incredibly well, which was sue the railroad, which at that time in 1940 was one of the only entities worth suing. So what happened was he was driving back from a poker game in Yemassee, a little town right on the Hampton county line, at 1 in the morning, hottest day of the summer, 90 some degrees. He pulls. He stops short of his home and turns onto a deserted train tracks. And. And Right. And is at the base of it. And as the train is coming, and if. If y'.
- [05:32]
Sarma Melngailis
All.
- [05:32]
Valerie Borlein
If you up in a small town near a railroad, you know what time the train comes through? The train is coming north and you can hear it for miles. It's coming north. It's bearing down on this train tracks. He speeds up onto the tracks themselves, and they're blowing the whistle, they're flashing the light. It's a clear, moonlit night. And they see. He sees them. And instead of, like, driving off, he waves at them. And what happens is there's a coroner's jury. And the coroner, of course, was a protege of Randolph Senior. The sheriff was a protege of Randolph Senior. There was an inquest the next morning, and guess what? The local coroner's jury found that in spite of the testimony of the engineer and others, it was an accident. And it cleared the way for Randolph Murdoch Jr, Alex grandfather to sue the railroad for the equivalent of millions of dollars, which is what he did successfully.
- [06:26]
Megyn Kelly
Is Randolph Murdoch Jr. Buster.
- [06:31]
Valerie Borlein
Randolph Murdoch Junior's Old Buster. And Old Buster was a real force to be reckoned with. He. He was solicitor from 1940, when he was 25 years old, to 1986, so Roosevelt to Reagan, and he even stayed in that office beyond that time. The legislature finally essentially forced him. They created a rule that essentially forced him to retire. But he kept going into the office as a volunteer solicitor. So he was so. Randolph Murdoch Jr. Old Buster, Alec Murdoch idolized him. He told many people that he wished he'd been born in old Buster's day, because in those days, what you said was what the truth was. And, and, And Old Buster was. He ruled with an iron fist. He was one of those guys that would rather be feared than loved.
- [07:16]
Megyn Kelly
And he also continued fraud and potential violence against women.
- [07:22]
Valerie Borlein
He. So Old Buster, there's. There's. I was able to pull 900 pages from the National Archives of the. From his trial, his federal trial. The feds charged him with bootlegging, actually running the largest bootlegging ring in the South. He was the ringleader. They charged two dozen people. Old Buster, Alex grandfather was. Was charged with leading this entire ring in Colleton County. And he was. He was. He was. He was accused of taking a cash bribe. In the hallway of the Colleton County Courthouse, which is the hallway that we went in and out every day of. Alex Murdoch trial, he was accused of. Of intimidating witnesses, buying off wit witnesses, and eventually of tampering with the jury by buying off the foreman. And he was one of the only People in that entire weeks long federal trial that was acquitted. So there's a history of, you know, Alec Murdoch was convicted of drug trafficking. His grandfather was credibly accused and narrowly escaped being convicted of bootlegging. So again, those echoes in the past
- [08:29]
Megyn Kelly
tell us about the mistress who got on the wrong side of Alec Murdoch's grandfather.
- [08:33]
Valerie Borlein
So there was testimony in Alec's trial, as you remember, there was testimony that Alec was somewhat of a philanderer. And that certainly is a history in the family going back generations. His grandfather, old Buster had a mistress, several, but one in particular who he was in touch with for many, many years. And her name was Ruth Fox. And Ruth Fox was married to a local like a nor a northern baron who came down and bought a plantation. And she was from one of the nation's first families. A really impressive woman in her own right. And she was, had been in, in the navy during World War II, like training pilots. Which is kind of wild to think about what kind of woman was doing that in the 40s. And she met Buster and asked for his help in getting out of her obligations. He's like, I know everybody, I'll know all us senators, I'll help you get out of this, out of this bind. They got to know each other and wouldn't you know, a year later is pregnant with his child. She goes to, it's just such an incredible story. She goes to the house and we're talking about the same house that Alec went to the night of the homicides at Moselle. He goes, she goes to the house, knocks on the door, speaks to Alec's grandmother and says, you know, you have a son, I have a son, these boys shouldn't eat. And the grandmother says, you know, don't let my name come out of your mouth ever again. Go away. And it was, it was a stunning thing because she had survived essentially when she had told old Buster that she was pregnant, he had tried to have her killed. He had a fixer, the story goes, he had a fixer of one of many who laid in weight underneath her porch one night and got a little bit too drunk and fell asleep and didn't kill her. So there was just like this incredible, incredible echoes throughout this story. Isn't it amazing?
- [10:25]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, it is amazing. I mean I cannot. You must have been just slack jawed when you read up about the direct line from which he came. And it's makes sense of everything. So it didn't stop there. It didn't even skip a generation. Alex's father also had a history of paying people off to cover up a boat accident, which of course would set off Alex's own story with a different boat accident as well.
- [10:53]
Valerie Borlein
Well, there was, and there was certainly a terrible boat accident in 1998 from the same island, like Murdoch island, where you'll remember the tragic boat wreck that killed Mallory beach in 20. They took the Murdoch family boat from the family compound, which is called Murdoch island. Back in 1998, Ellic's younger brother was having a party on Murdoch Island. There was a boat there. And it's incredible. I couldn't believe it when I saw the documents. It was. It had been seized in a drug raid by the solicitor's office, so by old Buster. And he liked the boat so he kept it for his own use at the island and everyone, the family used it. So they. It's, it's, it's. It's late at night. There's some guests there that wanted to take the boat home rather than the roads because they didn't want to get in trouble. They've been drinking for many hours and they, these, these young men set off on a boat ride home. And it's tricky. We know from what happened with the, with the wreck that killed Mallory beach, it's very shallow waters and places they hit a sh. And stopped and then immediately started back up and didn't realize that one of the guests had fallen overboard and had gotten run over by the motor and, and sustained a traumatic brain injury. And, you know, I've got hundreds of pages of documents from the state. So the Murdaughs were involved in trying to make that wreck go away. Even some of the same dnr, the Natural Resources officers, even some of the same officers who were involved in the Mallory beach wreck, they were working that night as well. So the echoes in the past are just sometimes. I couldn't believe it. I really was gobsmacked many times in a row.
- [12:34]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, same. I'm having the same reaction just sitting here. So then of course we get to Alec and, and this whole thing that we watch, this double murder trial in which he was found guilty of killing his wife and his own son was set off by that boating accident. The second one, not, not the one you discussed where the woman was run over, but more recently with the younger generation while Alec was out on a boat, was drinking and they had an accident and Mallory beach was thrown from the boat and wasn't found for some time later and was dead. And that old Murdoch instinct to cover it up, run, cover for those involved, or especially for Alec kicked in and would set off a chain of events that would ultimately destroy the Murdoch family.
- [13:30]
Valerie Borlein
And it's so poignant to look at pictures of mallory. She was 19 years old when she died. She was just full of life. I've gotten to know her family over the course of reporting this story. And it was Alex Boat, but it was his son, Paul Murdoch, who was 19 at the time, who was, who was, who was driving. I mean, I think the facts established that he was driving. He was criminally charged with it. And so he, he's, he is incredibly drunk. He drank a lot. I talked with people that knew the family. He had been sneaking beers since he was 8 years old and, and, and, and a certain point, not even sneaking them. So he was, he was, he was very, very drunk. He had 19 drinks that night. His, his BAC when he got to the hospital was 0.2. He was a, he was a person even at 19, who'd been drinking for numbers of years and had been driving drunk for numbers of years, according to people I talked to who were involved in wrecks with him before. But so he, he gets angry at his girlfriend, who's one of the, one of the passengers on the boat, confronts her. She says, you're too drunk to drive, give everybody the keys, slaps her, spits in her face, goes back to the wheel of the boat and, and floors it at the equivalent of 28 miles an hour. And they're going through a very narrow, very shallow path and hit a bridge that fast, and Mallory is thrown overboard and never resurfaces. And what all the evidence, I've got thousands of pages of documents, some of them public, many of them not, not many of them that had not been reviewed before that just showed that there was. When Ellic got to the hospital that night, where these young people had been on the boat was. He went room to room to room trying to get everyone on the same page. Had his, his, his grandfather, old buster's badge outside of his pocket, pretending to be a law enforcement officer. And I have his cell phone records and have tracked his path that night. Do you remember when he testified that he put blue lights, blue lights and siren on the Suburban that he was driving?
- [15:31]
Megyn Kelly
There's.
- [15:32]
Valerie Borlein
It was almost physically impossible for him to get from Moselle, where he and Maggie were living at the time, to the hospital, unless he was going fabulously fast, 80 or 90 miles an hour. And I think it stands to reason, and I argue this in the book, that he almost certainly used lights to get to the hospital before the other families and get everyone on the same page. But it really was his undoing. The reason that he said he wanted to live in old Buster's time is that, you know, there was so much evidence in the video cameras in the hospital that night, so many statements. There was so much. Everything is recorded, right? You know, and he could not outrun modernity. And in the end, that night and his. His actions the night of the boat wreck, really, with the beginning of the end of the family, for, among other
- [16:19]
Megyn Kelly
reasons, he was then sued by the beach family. And that in the course of that lawsuit, he would have to produce discovery speaking to his economic status, his financial data and so on. And he was, we know, separately now running a massive fraud, stealing from his law firm, had a massive drug problem, or so he testified, and was very worried this is all going to come out. He would be exposed. And at the same time, his law firm. Was this coincidental? Was this coincidental, Valerie, that like the law firm started an investigation of Alec at the same time for possible ethical breaches, or were those two things related, the lawsuit and the law firm getting interested in him?
- [17:00]
Valerie Borlein
Well, it's all kind. It's all kind of woven together. And what. What happened in the immediate aftermath of the boat wreck is that Mallory's family was having a tough time finding a lawyer to represent their interest. And Renee Beach, Mallory's mom, tells the story of being down at the. At the landing where the boat was, had come to rest and wanting to go down there and see where her daughter was, where she was the last time she was spotted. And the. The police were very, very kind, but said, I'm sorry, you can't go down there. Here's a case of water for you and your family while you wait. And there was a moment where Randolph Murdoch iii, Alex, dad, and. And Maggie, his W in. In their pickup truck. And he waves at the officer and waves him through. And Renee beach realized then, oh, my gosh, this is not a vigil. I thought I was at a vigil. Morning, my daughter. This is a crime scene. And the family that's been the law in this area for 100 years is in charge of it. I need a lawyer. And she made a critical decision, which is to hire a lawyer to represent the family's interest. And that lawyer was a key player and a big character in this book. And his name is Mark Tinsley. And there's no enemy like your former friend. He was very close to Ellic. He knew the playbook. He had a. He had a card key to get in and out of the Murdoch law firm at will. And he recognized those relationships. He's like, oh, I know he knows these particular officers because of my own personal information. And once he decided to take the case, take the Beaches case, he was relentless in showing that. That Elliot and potentially the officers who were involved in protecting the scene were really, really protecting Paul from charges. And so he filed a lawsuit in very short order. And that lawsuit sought, like you said, all of Ellic's financial records, just a standard part of a civil lawsuit to say, how much insurance do you have? What resources could you potentially pay if there was a judgment? And Ellie knew more than anyone else that he had been robbing his personal injury clients, the poorest of the poor, for more than a decade. And he knew what any serious inquiry would. Would do. And so he had to stave that off. And. And in the end, it was his undoing.
- [19:18]
Megyn Kelly
So he killed his own wife and his son Paul, who had been at the helm for that boating accident. And it was an attempt to garner sympathy, like, to make him a sympathetic character, so that his law firm would move away, would stop investigating him, so that the lawsuit involving Paul would be less strong because, you know, the main culprit would be gone. And who would put this poor man now through the torture of seeing a civil lawsuit through? It was an effort to just change his own financial and reputational fortunes.
- [20:00]
Valerie Borlein
No, I think. I think the prosecution argued that very effectively. And one of the things that I think that Mark sincerely said on the stand is, you know, personal injury lawyers don't think like other people. They. Their. Their gift, their understanding of a successful one is. Is understanding emotion. Like what motivate. What might motivate a jury to. To. To pay blood money and a lot of it in a case, they understand what makes people tick. And he knew that, you know, the day of the homicides, June 7th of 2021, and I'm sure we'll talk about this. He had been confronted over some of that missing money that he had. $792,000, not a small amount. He knew that the law firm was on to him, and he. He knew also that his father was dying, the patriarch of this family, who had also loaned him a million dollars over time, and who he had just been texting with his. His buddy at the bank, oh, I'm going to get another loan for my dad for some money. He was short, knew his dad was dying. He knew this. This. This lawsuit was pending about his financials. He had been confronted over the missing Money. And he also knew that Paul was a mess. I mean, sadly, and may he rest in peace. Paul's actions, drunken actions, did not cease with the boat wreck. There was, there's testimony and, and that even just 10 days before he was killed, he was on a boat, drinking, taking some people out and, and he had to call his father to get out of it. So Paul's behavior was in. Was not de. Escalating. If anything, his. His behavior is getting worse. So. So yes, I think that the state made a really effective argument that he needed to do something to become instead of the object of suspicion, an object of sympathy. And what more would do that except becoming instead of somebody, a potential thief, a grieving father, a grieving husband, someone who was the victim of a horrible crime. And for months he was right. It completely changed the subject.
- [22:01]
Megyn Kelly
And he had, prior to getting arrested, done what I guess it was his great grandfather did, which was attempt to create a suicide situation that would lead to an insurance payout. I mean, now it's like kind of all connecting.
- [22:18]
Valerie Borlein
It's all connecting and it really is extraordinary. So, so over the course of the summer of 2021, he did almost get away with the murder of Maggie and Paul. He really did. And he almost got away with the thefts that he's now admitted to dozens and doz people. Millions and millions of dollars by, you know, getting, borrowing more money, borrowing money from his best friend Chris Wilson, borrowing money from. From the bet, getting, getting fronted money and trying to repay the $792,000 back, back to the law firm, which he did. And they stopped. They kind of let. Let it go until, and that goes in July and in August until the, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. His paralegal is in his office looking for some paperwork which she knows he doesn't like, but she really needed it. She lift finds the check that was missing that proved that he had been stealing. So what happens then is the gig is up. Alex confronted by his brother, his law partner, and many other law partners. And they say, you've been stealing. We've got evidence you've been stealing from the firm. You have to go. So he gets fired that Friday of Labor Day weekend. And what happens the next morning? Saturday morning, he tries to fake his own death on the side of the road. And what he said was an insurance fraud attempt to get money for his surviving son, Buster. But what really looks like another way to change the subject, just like he had done back June 7 with the homicides of his wife and son, it really is stranger than stranger than fiction.
- [23:49]
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- [24:44]
Megyn Kelly
think he did not intend to die then when that, that guy who was next to homeless. I mean that guy seemed, you know, not like a sophisticated character when he got him to quote, shoot him, but it just grazed raised his head. That was always so confusing to me. Like was this some sort of a sharpshooter? How did the guy manage to actually barely connect with him to the point where it looked like he actually had been shot at, but not so much that he actually killed him?
- [25:13]
Valerie Borlein
Yeah, no, there, there, there are many theories about what happened actually at the side of the road. But, but the man you're talking about, Curtis, Eddie Smith will tell you and he said it, he's like if I'd shot him, he'd have been dead. So that what he believes happened is there was a, was a struggle over the gun. And he has said he thinks that Ellick was trying to frame him, that they were, they were struggling over the gun and maybe Ellic was going to, you know, Ellic was bigger, like 6, 4, 200 pounds. Can he overpower this, this incur to Setdy Smith is his cousin. Eddie is a smaller guy. He's been out on disability for a number of years. Ellick was his disability lawyer. And then frame him. And you remember when Dick Harpoulian and Jim Griffin, Ellick's lawyers, they said in court filings they're like you the real killer is Eddie Smith. He was the one who killed Maggie and Paul. And so one of the theories is that Ella may have been trying to kill Eddie and then say see he was coming after me to kill me. The Same way that he killed my wife and son. And it's strange, I don't know if you remember, but he was paying. He was paying Eddie was. Was cashing a lot of checks for Ellic over a number of years. And the checks accelerated that summer that hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ellic was. Was effectively paying Eddie in a way. So was he going to say he was blackmailing me? Look at these payments. There were, There are multiple ways to look at what actually happened there, but one of them is that if you look at the, The. The photos and, and the defense released the, the photos, they signed a HIPAA release and released all the photos there. There. There are people locally that say that's not a cut in his head. He fell and that's the gravel on the side of the road. That's, That's. That caused him to.
- [26:58]
Megyn Kelly
To.
- [26:58]
Valerie Borlein
To be cut. But one thing I should add about Cousin Eddie is that he's actually a cousin. I remember, I, I could not believe it. But if you go back more than 100 years to the Civil War, Alex's great great grandfather, so Randolph Sr's father was. It was an officer in, in the. This, the. In the Southern army, and so was Eddie's great great grandfather. And they were brothers. His great great grandfather was named Lazarus Murdoch. He was, he was what they call a. Was an especially virulent anti. He was, he was anti union. He made these, these, These incredible speeches that got picked up by national media and actually were read by Abraham Lincoln. So Eddie is.
- [27:43]
Sarma Melngailis
He.
- [27:43]
Valerie Borlein
He says he's like, I'm half Murdoch. And he's right there. He's.
- [27:47]
Megyn Kelly
He's part mur. Do we know. Do we ever figure out. And by the way, just for the audience, I'm talking today to Valerie Borlein. She wrote the book the Devil at His Elbow. Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty. Um, do we know where all the money went? This is one of the mysteries.
- [28:04]
Valerie Borlein
Right.
- [28:04]
Megyn Kelly
Just seemed like Alec was taking in so much money via fraud from the law firm, the clients and so on.
- [28:10]
Valerie Borlein
Yeah.
- [28:11]
Megyn Kelly
And where did it go? Like, it seemed like he claimed he just spent it on drugs. But it. The conclusion by many was always how many drugs could that. Could he possibly have taken? He took in more than he could ever have spent. Was the layperson conclusion I. On the, on the funding?
- [28:30]
Valerie Borlein
No. And I think, I think you know, one of the key voices in the book is Blanca Simpson, who was the house. The housekeeper at Moselle for many years. And I think the evidence establishes that Ellic was using drugs, but I think there's no evidence that he was using the, the amount of drugs and opioids in particular that he says he was. And I had the benefit of, of 10 years of spending. I could see his through some federal exhibits. I could see what he and Maggie spent over the course of 10 years down to like when they would go to the honey baked ham store at Thanksgiving. You could see what that expenditure was and what was so shocking about it, and I think we probably know people like this in our own lives, is as soon as money came in the door, it went out. He was, he was overdrawn tens of thousands of dollars multiple times in a year. Maggie would have to call him and say, can you call the bank? I need to be able to, I'm at the grocery store. I need to be able to cash this check and to be able to pay for my groceries. He's spending on, you know, it's, it's, it's extraordinary. It was, you know, they would take a private plane to a USC bowl game when instead of flying first class or, you know, they, they Blanca told me, and their farm equipment out on moselle, which is 1700 acres, a huge, huge property twice the size of Central Park. And rather than fix, you know, a big piece of heavy equipment, they would just put gallons of oil in it every day. So he was spending hundreds of dollars on oil. It was just you. It's hard to even understand where the money was going. But there is missing money, you know, millions of dollars. The fed say that's still missing. So he spent a lot of it. He spent some of it on drugs. He. I think there is. I do subscribe to the idea that he buried some of it at Moselle and PVC pipes. I've talked with people who've been there when those pipes have been dug up, but that you can't. I mean, cash is tough. It's tough to bury, you know, millions of dollars in, in, in dirt over time there. And I think the feds have been pursuing it, that, that some of the money is offshore and was he going to run that summer is one of the ideas. But there's, there's, there's. The Feds say about $6 million that's still missing.
- [30:42]
Megyn Kelly
So that, that makes more sense that, that we've got millions missing than that he spent it all on the drugs. All right, so then we go to trial. He does wind up arrested. This all comes out there is, is the moment he is found guilty. Actually we have that. Let's just watch that. S51.
- [31:04]
Valerie Borlein
The state of South Carolina, county of
- [31:06]
Megyn Kelly
Colleton, in the court of General Sessions,
- [31:09]
Valerie Borlein
the July term of 2022, the State versus Richard Alexander Murdoch, defendant, indictment for murder. SC code 163001. CDR code 0116.
- [31:25]
Megyn Kelly
Verdict guilty signed by the four lady. Okay. And that's interesting for a few reasons. One, he was found guilty. Two, old Becky Hill reading the verdict would come to play a major role in this story, which no one knew at the time. But Becky almost got this verdict thrown out because of her behavior behind the scenes with the jurors. And could it still her behavior, get this verdict thrown out? Is that totally settled? I know that we had a hearing in which a different judge said, no, I'm not throwing out the verdict, but could that be reversed on appeal? I imagine, Alex, lawyers are taking that up.
- [32:10]
Valerie Borlein
No, it's. It's incredible to watch that footage. I was sitting there that night, and I. I was leaning forward on the edge of my seat just listening to it because I remember that emotion and, and, and all of the docket numbers and numbers were like, but what's the answer? So.
- [32:24]
Megyn Kelly
Right. Spit it out.
- [32:25]
Valerie Borlein
So. But we had been in that courtroom. It's very tight corners. It's. It, the. These soaring ceilings. It's. It was built in. It was designed in the 1820s, but very tight quarters. And we had been in there every day for six weeks. And by we, I mean the, the lawyers, the law enforcement officers, the jury, the. The Murdochs, they were across the aisle from me. I could, you know, exchange pleasantries every day. And so extraordinary result to be there that night and listen to the verdict read by Becky. And Becky was really like the den mother of the courtroom, because the clerk of court makes sure the jury has lunch, make sure that the press has the credentials or, you know, do they. There's so many people in downtown Walterboro didn't have places to eat. What about food trucks, which they ultimately bought in? She was sort of the principal of an elementary school is what it felt like a little bit. So it's surreal for Becky to be the center of so much screaming scrutiny. But what that scrutiny is about is her relationships and potential. Talking out of school with members of the jury, many of whom she knew beforehand, and many of the jurors knew each other. It's a small town. I always. I always, you know, I'm from. I'm from a relatively small town myself in the South. And, you know, if you had 100 people in church the day before jury Selection, you know, five of them would have gotten a jury summons. So, you know, people knew each other, and the jury wasn't sequestered. Everybody in town knew who they were. And Becky, you know, knew a lot of them personally. And so the question was, did she talk to them out of school and did she say things that would prejudice. Prejudice them against Ell, particularly when he took the stand?
- [34:04]
Megyn Kelly
And you had jurors come forward to say yes, at least one of them said she influenced my verdict.
- [34:11]
Valerie Borlein
And it is, it is a small town. And we talked a little bit about the bootlegging case involving old Buster. You know, it's extraordinary. But Becky's grandmother and grandfather and her uncle, who was a teenager, were charged federally charged with felony with felonies in that bootlegging ring. They were on Buster's payroll.
- [34:27]
Megyn Kelly
And everything is connected.
- [34:29]
Valerie Borlein
Everything's connected there. But to your question, Megan, I think that we did have a first answer. The, The. There was a hearing back in January where the former Chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jean Toll, was asked by her former colleagues on the Supreme Court to take a listen to this request for a new trial. She denied it, but the defense is appealing it back to the Supreme Court court. They've agreed to hear it, even though it seems unlikely they will overturn their own special. The person that they trusted with this decision. And then also, they're very close allies with Judge Newman, who presided over the initial proceeding. He's very tight with the Chief Justice, Don Beatty. So I spoke with Dick. I saw him recently in Columbia, Dick Harpootlian. And they see their best chance at a new trial at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, just a little bit further removed from South Carolina, which is such a small, small state. And, and, and getting fresh ears at this idea of not just did. Did Becky Hill say things to the jurors that were prejudicial, but also did the state apply the wrong standard? And, and it was a degree that was. It's a measure of degrees. Like, yes, we acknowledged that she talked with the jury, but did it. Did it move the needle? And so what they hope is that the, the federal court will apply a different standard.
- [35:47]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, that they, they're going to argue they were held to too high a burden of proof to prove jury tampering, and that a lower standard should have been applied, which would have allowed them to prove jury tampering, which would allow him to get a new trial. The Justice Toll was great when she came in and held that hearing over Becky Hill. The allegations against Becky Hill just got weirder.
- [36:07]
Valerie Borlein
And Justice Toll, I will say was. I'm sorry. She was. She's just such an extraordinary figure in South Carolina history. I used to cover South Carolina politics when I was a reporter at the state newspaper in Columbia, and she was the chief justice at the time, former speaker of House. She's been in public life there for 60 years and came. Was a young lawyer. And this is so extraordinary to me, was a young lawyer in a time when women weren't even allowed to serve on a jury until 1968.
- [36:35]
Megyn Kelly
And so she was. She is.
- [36:37]
Valerie Borlein
She did talk to all male juries
- [36:38]
Megyn Kelly
when she was up there. I say this lovingly. She. She seemed like a tough old broad in the best sense. You know, like she wasn't going to tell me.
- [36:45]
Sarma Melngailis
She would love to hear you say
- [36:45]
Valerie Borlein
that she knew the Murdoch. She knew the Murdoch, and she had actually both in the legislature. I talked with her about both in the legislature and on the bench. Had. Had pushed for laws that would. Would. Would kind of claw back some of the power that they were using, you know, inappropriately, in her view. So she knew the Murdochs quite well. Over the course of.
- [37:11]
Megyn Kelly
Of decades, she. She made the comment about Becky Hill that would become very well known. Here it is. 50, 52.
- [37:21]
Sarma Melngailis
I find that the clerk of court is not completely credible as a witness. Ms. Hill was attracted by the siren call of celebrity.
- [37:31]
Megyn Kelly
She wanted to write a book about
- [37:32]
Sarma Melngailis
the trial and expressed that as early as November 2022, long before the trial began.
- [37:41]
Megyn Kelly
And that led to bad behavior by Becky Hill, which got this whole thing, you know, mother mucked up. But do you remember? Can you.
- [37:48]
Sarma Melngailis
I'm just.
- [37:48]
Megyn Kelly
It's been a while since we've covered this, but she also has a son who worked in the courthouse, and there was an allegation about him wiping his phone and wiping her phone on the day that they were supposed to turn them over for an internal ethics investigation. It smelled too high heaven.
- [38:09]
Valerie Borlein
You know, it is. I think it's. If you're not from a small town in the rural south, maybe it just boggles the mind. But her son was the information technology director for the county, and that was, you know, it's a. She's an elected official. She. She is, she is, but she's also, you know, politically powerful, and some of those jobs are patronage jobs. And he was. He was in that role and is, you know, accused of. Of tapping the phone of an eminent county administrator that was communicating with the state ethics board to try to find out what was going on in the investigation with his mother there were all so wiping the phone. Which, you know, his, the lawyers will tell you, is a fairly standard move in some defense cases. But high looked highly irregular to a lay person. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's such a big case, it captivated so much attention that the center ring of the circus is really Alec Murdoch and the. In the trial. But we're. We. There's so many outer rings with the, with the Mallory beach case, for example. There's another case that's ongoing about whether the convenience store where Paul bought beer, whether the owner of that convenience store has been trying to harass the beach family over the years. That's been going on for several years. Becky is. Is facing an investigation into her behavior, and that's been going on. So we're in multiple layers of drama with this story, and it's just incredible, like, the layers. I remember sitting in court and watching Alec during a break. He was. Is, you know, six feet away from me. And he's the center of this. He's the eye of this hurricane, and there's so much swirling around him. That one person could stir up so much chaos is really amazing.
- [39:52]
Megyn Kelly
So now here we are where he's appealing. He's gonna argue Becky Hill mucked up the trial to the point where he gets another trial. We don't love the chances, but one never knows. And in the meantime, the wrongful death lawsuit that Mallory Beach's family brought against alleged Alec. Is that totally resolved?
- [40:14]
Valerie Borlein
That was the, The. The remnants of that were resolved this week with a $500,000 payment from her from the. From Alex insurer that had been tied up and that was paid to the lawyers this past. The paper was filed this past Monday. So that case is. Is pretty well wrapped up.
- [40:32]
Megyn Kelly
Did the family. Did the family get a. A payment, too?
- [40:36]
Valerie Borlein
The family did it last. Not this past summer, but summer of 22. They. I'm sorry, Summ. They received a payment largely from Parker's convenience Store, this. This convenience store where Paul bought beer on the order of $14 million. So it was a significant civil judgment that. And, and, and I learned a lot about personal injury law in the course of this, of reporting this book. But, you know, the personal injury. This was considered, you know, what is. What was Mallory's life work? It is blood money. And so it was. It's a, It's a. It's a difficult fact of personal injury law that the more money that you get paid is a reflection of. Of what, you know, a jury might think your, your loved one's life is worth?
- [41:23]
Megyn Kelly
I'm sure it's a, it's a special form of sentencing for you because every time you get into the car that money bought or the bed that money paid for, it's got to make you feel, feel awful.
- [41:37]
Valerie Borlein
And they will tell you and they will, and they will tell you. Mrs. You know Pamela Pinkney, Hakeem Pinkney's mother. Hakeem was the paraplegic teenager who died in a nursing home and was robbed by Alec Murdoch twice. She would tell you she would give back all of it for time with her son. It's just the proxy we have in our judicial system to make a family as whole as possible, knowing that nothing really ever will.
- [42:06]
Megyn Kelly
So what, if anything is happening with the other piece of this story, which is the possible murder?
- [42:15]
Valerie Borlein
There's only one other piece by Buster,
- [42:19]
Megyn Kelly
Paul's older brother of a young gay classmate who was killed on the road. But there's just only speculation that it was Buster Murdoch, not actual proof. And they were going to reopen that investigation. In the wild wake of all of this, where does that stand?
- [42:39]
Valerie Borlein
Well, you know, you, you mentioned the, the missing money. There's also the question of the missing guns and the homicide. But the biggest unanswered question is what happened to Stephen Smith? He was the, he was a 19 year old young man who was found in the middle of a road in the summer of 2015. In the, the course of the investigation, the Murdoch name came up 40 different times. People would say one of the boys or another was involved somehow. But I should be clear, there is no evidence that Buster or Paul, there's no, there's no proof one of them had anything to do with the death of this young man. Buster has gone so far to say, you know, to, that there's, he had nothing to do with it. He wasn't close to it wasn't there that evening. And he's even sued some of the documentary filmmakers who have, who he alleges, have, have, have said that he had a role in some way shape or.
- [43:26]
Megyn Kelly
They certainly have laid those breadcrumbs it,
- [43:29]
Valerie Borlein
but, but it is, yeah, you can go through the, you know, it's, it's 90 some pages of, of a, of a police report where the name comes up over and over again and strange ways. So there's always been a rumor that the Murdochs were involved somehow in his death or in making it impossible to find out who was, who, who killed him. But I can tell you that the state grand jury has been. Still been meeting over this case and taking and trying and is eager to figure it out. It is one that is. It still haunts Hampton County. So we. It. We may never know, but it won't be for lack of interviews and lack of trying, because they're active, actively working the case, from what I know understand.
- [44:09]
Megyn Kelly
So in the time we have left, what's life like right now for Buster Murdoch, the one who. The son whose entire family is. Has been killed or is now in jail. And for Alec Murdoch, who was living this life of excess and now is convicted of double homicide, not to mention all the fraud charges that were brought against him separately, which he was also found guilty on.
- [44:32]
Valerie Borlein
No, it's very poignant.
- [44:33]
Sarma Melngailis
I was.
- [44:33]
Valerie Borlein
I mentioned I was in Hampton last week and went by the cemetery and I saw. It took a while, but Maggie and Paul's gravestones have been put up and people will leave flowers there. There's a ceramic dog that looks like Bubba, the yellow lab that belonged to the family that's there. And most poignant of all, it's. You know, on Maggie's headstone, it says Margaret Branstad or Murdoch mother. And on Paul's. It says, paul Terry Murdoch son. And it's incredible that that is how you be defined. But the person I was with said, what happens to Alec? You know, where is he in this picture? So will he be remembered as a father? Will he be remembered as the person that killed them? But he's in prison in the upstate. He has acclimated to prison life. Well, according to what I'm told. And by that, I mean he has. Alec Murdoch is the type of a person who works the system, and he has. He has relationships. He does. He's. He's a disbarred lawyer, but he's a law. He knows the law. And he helps other inmates with their questions. He's. He's using his notoriety to. To. To his benefit. He. He was, you know, accused by. Or, you know, he. The prison's system of prisons found that he had been, you know, essentially bribing other inmates to let him use their pin number to make phone calls. He's figuring things out on the inside, but he will never, ever see the light of day, even if there's another trial. In the homicide case, the state has effectively got an insurance policy. You remember back in November when he pled guilty to those dozens of financial crimes, and they got a sentence that will take him, keep him in prison until he's roughly 80 years old. So regardless of whether the homicide is overturned. As for Buster, my understanding is, you know, he's, he's living in Bluffton, the community just, you know, adjacent to Beaufort with his, his fiance is a woman who was in court with him every day. His, his girlfriend from law school who is a lawyer. He got a substantial settlement from his mother's estate, roughly $500,000. There's a payment I, I document in the book where he participated in a documentary and, and got several hundred thousand dollars from that. So he has a small amount. Amount not, sorry, not a small, but, you know, significant amount of money to, to you know, start a life. Although it is difficult to see how he does so separate from his family because his last name is Murdoch and he's got that red hair. He's so just. He, he. It would be hard with that, that name and that hair to make it. Make a new life.
- [47:27]
Mark Igar
Mm.
- [47:28]
Megyn Kelly
You'd have to go someplace else. I mean, there's a brother, Alec's brother. Brother seemed non sociopathic. Perhaps there's some hope there. I don't know. Raised by that man with that family lineage. That's.
- [47:43]
Valerie Borlein
Well, and you're right about his, his brother's. His, his older brother Randy and his younger brother John Marvin are still in the community as well. You know, I was, I went by the law firm the other day and his brother is. Older brother Randy is a partner there and is actively working cases. His younger brother John Marvin 1 runs a heavy equipment business and as you go down, dragged from linking Hampton and Barnville, you see Murdoch Rentals right there. So they're still in the community and, and, and, and you know, well regarded to a degree. But I think that everything's changed with, with, with the downfall.
- [48:19]
Megyn Kelly
Is anyone living at the estate where it happened?
- [48:23]
Valerie Borlein
So Moselle is the estate where it happened. It actually has been sold and it's been sold in two pieces that the house itself was sold along with roughly 20 acres to, to an out of state buyer whose name was not revealed. And the Delta, the other acreage was sold to a neighboring landowner who wanted the land. You know, it is, I went by there the other day too, just to take a look. I had been onto the property during the trial. I accompanied the jury on their visit to see the place. It still feels, it still seems like a. There's a heaviness in the air out there. It is still a haunted place really. Dick Harpoutland said so. And, and I, you know, and I felt it as well.
- [49:11]
Megyn Kelly
Always will be. Wow. Great reporting, Valerie. Thank you. It's her name is Valerie Borlein and the book again is the Devil at His Elbow, Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty. Google it. Check it out. Devil at His Elbow thank you so much for coming on and telling us the story and the updates.
- [49:29]
Valerie Borlein
Thank you so much for having me.
- [49:30]
Megyn Kelly
All the best
- [49:33]
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- [50:30]
Megyn Kelly
Today A deep dive into the Jody Aras case. This month marks 15 years since Travis Alexander was viciously murdered by his ex girlfriend Jody Aras. We revisit the case with criminal defense attorney and longtime Kelly's Court contributor Mark Igar. We'll take a look back at the events leading up to Travis's murder, what Jody's life is like in prison today. And Mark will dissect the defense and prosecution prosecution in a way that only Mark can. I'm going to kick it off with a little walk down memory lane because used to come on Kelly's Court back then as now, this one doesn't involve you. This Kelly's Court doesn't involve you. But it's a scene setter now. We're 10 years post verdict right now. Here's a little flashback to I was on the air when we got the guilty verdict and covered it with the court then, which was Mercedes Colwin that day and Janice Bilboer. Look at this sweet delivery. She's so concerned about their happiness and their peace.
- [51:31]
Sarma Melngailis
Now listen, I hope that now that
- [51:36]
Jodi Arias
a verdict has been rendered that they're able to find peace, some sense of peace.
- [51:41]
Megyn Kelly
That's great. And the Oscar goes to because this is a woman who stabbed him 27 times in the heart as well. They then shot him and look at the bloody sink. Not to be sensationalist, but prosecutors say the man was standing at the sink watching himself get stabbed to death. Watching himself get murdered and bleed out over the sink. Oh, but Mercedes, she's so concerned about the family's peace. Give me a break. A very pregnant Megyn Kelly in that clip. But that gets to it, right? I mean, the thing. Because I've been asking myself, Mark, what is it about the Jod Aras case that keep. That kept people so riveted? And in part, it's this mousy little woman who committed one of the most heinous murders that ever came before the National Eye.
- [52:34]
Mark Igar
You. You left out one thing, which is obvious, and maybe you intentionally did it, but Americans like pretty packages. Okay, if she wasn't pretty, and I put that in quotations, I mean, it's not how I, I feel, but there is some type of objective, you know, in Hollywood, what people look for. People found that she was attractive, and if she wasn't and she looked differently, I don't know if people would have been as interested. So let's, let's bring that out. That's, that's got to be something that you concede, right?
- [53:03]
Megyn Kelly
And the sex, I mean, it was like an R rated trial. It was like Cinemax back in the day.
- [53:11]
Mark Igar
Oh, yeah, no, there was a lot of that, yes. And. And she really threw punches. I mean, she really, you know, dead man can't tell tales. He was dead. She was free to say whatever the hell she wanted. So whether it be, you know, allegations of him being involved in kitty porn, which he can't defend, or, or him wanting to do, which really was documented because you heard those horrible audio tapes of him, you know, some of the things he would do to her, which weren't meant for public viewing. It was just horrible.
- [53:43]
Megyn Kelly
All right, so let's start. Let's start at the beginning. These two meet in 2008, I think it was 2008, at a business convention. And 2006, sorry. To September. These two meet in September 2006 at a work conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jody Arias and Travis Alexander. And what then they start dating a few months after that? As far as I can tell, Mark, they were only dating for like four months, but then continued to. She continued to sleep with each other.
- [54:17]
Mark Igar
Yeah, it sounds like it became very physical very quickly. And, you know, she's the manipulative type, right? So I can't imagine this was pure love. I think this was lust. I think this was her, you know, playing the act angles looking to manipulate him. And she jumped all in real quick.
- [54:35]
Megyn Kelly
Did we have any evidence that prior to that relationship, Because I think she was like 28, he was a couple years older than that, that she was some sort of a psycho, that she had, you know, problems with other partners in turning into a stalker or any other criminal history?
- [54:54]
Mark Igar
I don't remember hearing anything like that. I heard little stories but you know, everybody comes out of the woodwork on high profile trial cases. Nothing that I attributed as credible and believable.
- [55:06]
Megyn Kelly
So he was a Mormon and she wasn't until after she met him. Right, right, right.
- [55:13]
Mark Igar
She became a drive through Mormon. You know, all of a sudden I'll convert. I'm sure that was, you know, again to somehow take one step further into his good graces.
- [55:23]
Megyn Kelly
So they, they, they meet. Yeah, here she is getting her, you know, I don't know, is it a baptism into the Mormon face? I'm not exactly sure how we would refer to this, but they date from February of 2007 to June 2007 and then they break up and maintain a physical relationship. One year later, one year later, she appears to stage a burglary at her grandparents house. This would become important because it was one week before the murder. And what happened in that burglary?
- [55:55]
Mark Igar
Yeah, next level stuff. She's thinking, okay, they stole a gun from my grandparents. So that gun's out there in the criminal world. So that's the gun however she'd like to use to potentially execute her boy.
- [56:12]
Megyn Kelly
This is relevant because she would later claim when she was on trial, a bunch of different things. Intruders, accident, self defense defense. And if she intentionally staged a burglary at her parent, her grandparents house a week before the murder, then it's very clearly a premeditated act.
- [56:30]
Mark Igar
Absolutely. The best she's got is, well, I brought it with me for protection. I was going on the road, whatever. I didn't mean to kill him, I had it with me. Doesn't necessarily mean she wanted to kill him, but it's strong evidence of it. But I got to go back. There's something that's bothering me and it'll bother me tonight. Megan, I had brought out that she has a pretty shell to many people. Did you concede that? Is she what you would call attractive? And I'm not talking about her soul, not talking about. I'm just saying, don't you think that that played a role in why people cared so much, why the media was.
- [57:04]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, sure, yeah. If you have an attractive defendant or a victim, I Mean, I think she was prettier when things started. And then when she took the stand when she was at trial, she tried to make herself look very plain. Janie Mousy, you know, but like the blonde and you know, the naked pictures. Obviously she's got a. A very good body. All those things play into. Whoa, what's happening there? Why? What? That kind of a person, right?
- [57:26]
Mark Igar
All right, I got what I needed. You can move along. I got it. I just needed to know that. Okay.
- [57:30]
Sarma Melngailis
Okay.
- [57:31]
Megyn Kelly
So the date of that burglary was May 28, 2008. June 2, 2008. Which is now two days before the murder. She rented a vehicle from Budget Rent a Car in Reading, California. California. And then on June 4, 2008, Travis Alexander was killed in Mesa, Arizona. So I mean, to me this does all look like premeditation. She looks like a jilted lover who became a stalker who became obsessed with him. We're told that in I think April, right before the fake burglary at her grandparents house, he was going to go with her on some trip.
- [58:07]
Mark Igar
That.
- [58:08]
Megyn Kelly
Right. And then he bailed.
- [58:10]
Mark Igar
Cancun. Everybody wants to go to Cancun, baby. And then he. She thought she was in the money. She was going to go with him. It's going to be romantic. He's going to really spend the dough on me. He's gonna, he's gonna. It's gonna be romantic. And he picked another girl.
- [58:27]
Sarma Melngailis
That was it.
- [58:29]
Megyn Kelly
And that really can be the catalyst for a lunatic like you never know what's going to set some crazy stalker off.
- [58:35]
Mark Igar
Off, sure.
- [58:36]
Megyn Kelly
To the point of murder.
- [58:37]
Mark Igar
Point. Any normal gal who has strong feelings for someone for whatever reason, but when you take someone who's, you know, got 51 cards and isn't all there, that can really amp it up. Yes.
- [58:49]
Megyn Kelly
All right, so that's as near as we can tell. Like one of the last final acts he does that gets in her head somehow. But they had met on again, off again with the sex after breakup. So you know, who knows how this exact files in June 4, 2008. That's the day of the murder. And we'll get to what happened that day. But weirdly, his body was not found for another five days. Why do we know why? That was like, did he not have a job? Did he not have friends? How do you sit in your, you know, how is it that a body's five days in the apartment without anybody noticing?
- [59:24]
Mark Igar
Yeah, it was like that. I'm trying to think of the specifics, but they. He was supposed to be somewhere. And then they checked in on him, I think I. A friend did, finally. He wasn't there, but, yeah, I don't think he had any place that he had to be. He didn't have roommates, he didn't have nosy, you know, parents coming around. So, yeah, it just happened.
- [59:43]
Megyn Kelly
Wow. All right, so the day of the murder, June 4, what happened? She. She goes over there and what happened?
- [59:51]
Mark Igar
Well, I don't know. Meaning, you know, we have what was alleged by the prosecution. The jury found her gun guilty. You never really know exactly what took place, but what it looked like was she had a plan to execute him, and that's exactly what happened. She tried to defend with. He was attacking me. And that was malarkey. Initially, though, I think she was on Inside Edition and told a few people I wasn't there. I was framed like the Mona Lisa. I had nothing to do with it. And then when the evidence comes out, like most of my clients do, they go, oh, wait, you got that evidence? Okay, okay, okay, okay. I was there. But that's what happened.
- [60:31]
Megyn Kelly
So initially, you know, the Murder happens on June 4th. She leaves. We. We know. I mean, she winds up confessing on the stand. We know she did this crime now, but she left the crime scene. No one finds Travis until his friends realize, like, he's not showing up at events etc, and they go to his house. They. The friends find out his body in a crumpled heap in his shower. An incredibly bloody crime scene. And called 911. Here's a bit of that call.
- [61:05]
Mark Igar
Hello.
- [61:05]
Jodi Arias
Hi.
- [61:06]
Sarma Melngailis
So what's going on? He's.
- [61:09]
Mark Igar
He. He's dead. He's in his bedroom in. In the shower.
- [61:13]
Valerie Borlein
Okay. How did this happen?
- [61:15]
Mark Igar
Do you have any idea? No, we have no idea.
- [61:17]
Sarma Melngailis
Everyone's been wondering about him for a few days.
- [61:20]
Valerie Borlein
There is blood. So is it coming from his head? Did he.
- [61:24]
Mark Igar
It's all over the place.
- [61:28]
Megyn Kelly
And right away, Mark, the friends suspected her. They. They described her to the authorities as. As a potential stalker, and that's what Travis had been saying about her. But they did have sex that day, right? I mean, like, it appears that they had hours and hours of some sort of sexual interlude prior to the murder.
- [61:47]
Mark Igar
That's what's so unusual. Listen, you know, this guy clearly was a guy with strong emotions, which is the nicest thing I can say about him in terms of that. And, you know, they went at it, and my guess is there were some discussions. Maybe that was her way of trying to convince him to pick her and replace the gal that he did select for Cancun to go, I don't know. But something happened and she snapped.
- [62:11]
Sarma Melngailis
If.
- [62:12]
Mark Igar
If she didn't plan on doing this anyway, no matter what, because you have hours.
- [62:17]
Megyn Kelly
And we know this because they found a camera that the two had been taking pictures of the sexual acts. There's pictures of her posing totally nude for the camera. I mean, very consensually. Does not look like a fourth situation on either end. So for sure. And it looks like it went on for hours.
- [62:37]
Mark Igar
What do you make of that? In other words? I want to know what you think. Why are they having sex? The next minute she's executing him in a horrible, horrible, tragic way, which we're going to get to. But why do you think. What's the sex about? What do you think?
- [62:50]
Megyn Kelly
I think it was like a goodbye gift from her to him, though he didn't realize that's what it was. I think he thought it was just genuine. A genuine hookup. And I think she had this whole thing planned. She went there to murder him and this was her fair farewell, you know, send off to the guy. I do. That's why she's a sick effort. And so I think she had the whole thing planned out. And this was. There's no other reason.
- [63:16]
Mark Igar
Okay. That is just cold as ice, baby. Wow.
- [63:20]
Megyn Kelly
That's her. That's what's interesting about her. I mean, from a. That's, you know, that's.
- [63:24]
Mark Igar
I never thought.
- [63:24]
Megyn Kelly
Humanity, perspective, like, why.
- [63:26]
Mark Igar
In fact, in my mind, I couldn't wrap my head around that theory. And so I then, then thought, okay, she's got it just in case, whatever. And then things go awry and then she kills him. Either second degree or she just said, okay, it's part of my plan that I'm now going to implement. And she had time to think about it when she's there and she does it. But I don't know, man. You think she knew she was going to kill him prior to having sex with him?
- [63:55]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, I do. I think the whole thing was planned out in great detail. But she's a bad murderer. I mean, she's. She was effective at. At committing the murder, but very bad at covering up her tracks. And she should have spent more. More time in the planning and the lying phase because she turned out to be a disaster at that. Now she, very shortly thereafter gets arrested. The friends are like. It was. It was Jody Aria. She's a stalker. Meanwhile, the day after the murder, she went and saw another love interest, some guy named Ryan Burns, a former coworker of her, her, of his, of hers in Utah. That guy, I think he also took the stand. It's like, that's how cold she is, Mark. Like, she. Now, at this point, there's no doubt she committed this brutal murder the day before she goes off to see another lover. Oh, no problem.
- [64:40]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [64:41]
Mark Igar
Something with what you were saying, like, to be able to have sex with. With this guy before she. She kills him. You know, there's Travis, all right, he's dead.
- [64:49]
Sarma Melngailis
She.
- [64:49]
Mark Igar
She seems to just manipulate. And this is also what I know after the fact. I'm sorry, Jumping ahead of how she manipulates everybody in prison and stuff like that, but that seems to be her M.O. i don't know that type of person, but someone who. Who can't have an honest relationship, and it's all about manipulation. So she probably had numerous fellas in her life, including the guy you just mentioned where. Okay, on to him. What do I need from him? Let me manipulate him to get it.
- [65:16]
Megyn Kelly
And they're. They tend to be narcissistic personalities, right? Who it's all about. About them. You only matter to the extent you reflect off of them. You cannot leave them. You certainly cannot dump them the way Travis did with Jod. And that's why you can't process it as a normal person, because normal people don't react that way when they get dumped. It's sad, but we don't kill anybody. So she goes to see Ryan burn.
- [65:39]
Mark Igar
Wait, let me tell you this. That type of person gets very misunderstood because the average juror who's arguably like you and me, you know, who's got sensibilities, the right moral compass, who goes to work, everybody, every day. Kids, family, normal. They come in and they're trying to analyze the actions of some of these people. And a lot of times, like, well, wait, that doesn't make sense. I wouldn't do that. There's no way that happened. I couldn't have done that. Even with the Murdoch trial. To this day, I know he killed his wife and kid and OJ Killed. It's hard for me to actually see it because it's so foreign to me and what I would do and what the average juror can recognize their heads around.
- [66:20]
Megyn Kelly
Well, that plays into the brutality of the crime because you. You look at this beautiful, tiny woman, and you do not think she would be capable of this. You know, you see, like, two big, muscly men with the tats in the prison in their background, and you think, oh, okay.
- [66:40]
Mark Igar
From the eye. Yeah. The tattoos.
- [66:42]
Megyn Kelly
You see Jod you think? No, because the level of, of violence that went down at this crime scene.
- [66:49]
Mark Igar
Right.
- [66:49]
Megyn Kelly
Was unbelievable. 27 stab wounds.
- [66:54]
Mark Igar
Yeah.
- [66:54]
Megyn Kelly
A slit throat and a gunshot to his face. And the medical examiner testified that the, the actual like slicing was extremely deep, 3 to 4 inches deep into his neck. Trying to find the exact, the description of it, but it was absolutely merciless. She, she nearly decapitated him while he was in that shower. She clearly went in there while he was showering and nearly decapitated him, stabbed him 27 times. And then the medical examiner said after that, shot him in the face. So I mean, the level of anger behind that mark speaks to what, I mean, I don't know, what do we, what do we glean from the level, level of violence?
- [67:40]
Mark Igar
It goes back to what I keep trying to do in my head, maybe as a defense lawyer, as a compassionate soul, to believe that something went down before that happened, that he said something that set her off. I, I, I find it hard to believe, although I'm not relating to this type of person, that she, and this is probably what she did, that she had the whole plan and this was, as you say, her goodbye love session. And then I'm going to get him in the shower. And she did. It just seems more consistent with someone who is set off by some words or how can that be?
- [68:13]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, but how can that be? Because we've seen the crime photos and, and among the photos that they found on the camera, which she left behind.
- [68:20]
Mark Igar
Right.
- [68:21]
Megyn Kelly
Is there are photos of Travis in that shower. And it appears to be after the love making. You know, he's in the shower, he's not wearing his clothing. And that's of course we know where he was killed. And he's okay. There are photos of him in the shower. He's okay. So you don't have a fight? I mean like an errant word from the shower as she was photographing him naked after their love making. That doesn't make sense. My theory makes much more sense.
- [68:45]
Mark Igar
No, it might. I, again, I'm. Listen, I am not defending this woman at all. I'm just a human being. I'm just opening up and telling you how it's still hard for me to wrap my head around what she did.
- [68:55]
Megyn Kelly
It's so challenging and it's hard to understand how she, this life thin little thing could, could kill him, could kill a man. He wasn't overly large, but he was bigger than she was. And how do you stab a man? 27. I mean, he was in the shower, I guess so he's vulnerable and he's not expecting it. But I mean, if that. If that, you know, slice across the neck was number one, then that would been the end of it.
- [69:23]
Mark Igar
And it pro. And it probably wasn't. I think the medical examiner said that those defensive wounds on his hands likely came first, which would make sense. She's. He's caught off guard. He goes like this. She continues to stab. But you just said it. He's off guard. He doesn't expect it. He's vulnerable. He's got nothing to defend himself except a bar of soap. You know, what do you do? She. She. She knew what she was doing, and she's passionate and aggressive and. And. And wanted it done.
- [69:51]
Megyn Kelly
And then to shoot him after the fact, as me said that he didn't see a brain hemorrhage from the bullet in Travis's head, and he said there would be if. If the bullet had gone in there while he was alive and his blood was pumping. So she shot him. She just made sure, you know, he was 100% dead. She wanted this guy dead. She was very angry with him, which again suggests, I think, my theory, you know, she was angry she was dumped. She was angry she wasn't going to Cancun. You don't dump somebody who's a narcissistic sociopath like Jody Cody Arias. And the whole thing was a setup. That's. You know, that seems to be what the evidence suggests.
- [70:28]
Mark Igar
I agree. I just. I just cannot relate. It's going to take me some time to process. Probably tonight as I'm laying down writing my gratefuls. Wait a second. She had sex with him as a goodbye? Megan said that, and I trust Megan. I believe her. And then executes him in the most violent manner. In other words, after stab number 16, that apparently wasn't enough for her. You know, it required another few jabs. Right now we're at 21, 22. Still not enough. I need about six more, and then I'm going to slash his throat and shoot him. You really do have to think about what she actually did to appreciate how abhorrent this was.
- [71:04]
Megyn Kelly
My God. And then. And then leave his crumpled dead body in the shower like he was trash. She did get arrested. A month and a couple of days after the act, then more bizarre behavior came out. I'll get to the interrogation room. But she gave an interview to Inside Edition. Mark's number one advice to all of his clients. Do not talk. Shut up. Let me do the talking. If there's going to be any talking, she Talks fish.
- [71:36]
Mark Igar
The. The fish who kept his mouth shut never got caught. Right?
- [71:40]
Megyn Kelly
That's right. That's right.
- [71:42]
Sarma Melngailis
And.
- [71:42]
Mark Igar
And I'm not saying that certain interviews. Interviews aren't beneficial. We. I've done it in many cases, but that's after you know what the evidence is, you know the parameters, you know how you can and can't get hurt. What she did was just reckless.
- [71:59]
Megyn Kelly
So she gives an interview to Inside Edition, which actually makes some sense, knowing her in the way we do. She did. She. She was a narcissist. She wanted to be a star. She cared about how she looked, how people were perceived. I think she was seeing an opportunity to, like, see her name in lights as opposed to just like, oh, my God, keep yourself out of bars. Here is a bit of what she told Inside Edition. This is well before the trial, after she'd just been placed in jail.
- [72:26]
Mark Igar
Did you kill Travis Alexander?
- [72:28]
Jodi Arias
I absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with his murder. I didn't harm him in any way. I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals.
- [72:38]
Mark Igar
Who.
- [72:39]
Jodi Arias
I don't know who they were. I couldn't pick them out in a police lineup.
- [72:42]
Mark Igar
So what happened?
- [72:44]
Jodi Arias
They came into his home and attacked us both.
- [72:48]
Mark Igar
You did not shoot Travis?
- [72:50]
Jodi Arias
No, I've never even shot a real gun.
- [72:51]
Mark Igar
You did not stab him 27 times.
- [72:55]
Jodi Arias
That's heinous. I never.
- [72:56]
Mark Igar
I slit his throat from ear to ear.
- [72:57]
Jodi Arias
I can't imagine slitting anyone's throat. No jury is going to convict me.
- [73:01]
Mark Igar
Why not?
- [73:02]
Jodi Arias
Because I'm innocent.
- [73:03]
Megyn Kelly
And.
- [73:03]
Jodi Arias
And you can mark my words on that one. No jury will convict me.
- [73:08]
Mark Igar
Oh, man. Oh, man. We could. We could have. We could do an hour just on that. There is so much there. So wait. All right, so let me just go. First of all, the one thing she asked for was for makeup prior to her mug shot. That's what she's thinking about, right?
- [73:28]
Megyn Kelly
Right.
- [73:29]
Mark Igar
I'm not thinking about a life of.
- [73:31]
Valerie Borlein
Of.
- [73:31]
Mark Igar
Of having to never take a shower ever again in a. In a jail or prison because, you know, I'm too pretty. She's worried about her mug shot. She needs to. To make. There we go. She needs.
- [73:42]
Megyn Kelly
It is a nice mug shot.
- [73:44]
Mark Igar
So point how she's so narcissistic. She wants the world to love her and. And believe that she's, you know, Snow White. But look at the way she acted. This is why you never know anyone. You just know how they want you to see. See them. Because she looks believable. If you know nothing about the facts of the case. And you look and you go, yeah, how could she have done that? So beware, folks. You never really.
- [74:10]
Megyn Kelly
I watched that interview, Mark, and all I can think of is Phil Houston, the human lie detector. CIA guy who invented the deception detection method that's still used there. He was at CIA for 25 years. And what he talks about. I'll set it up for you. I'll play it again. Again. But listen to how. Okay. She does a couple of the things. Convincing behavior. If I say to you, mark, did you kill this guy? You say, no. You don't try to convince me you would never kill anybody. That's. That's not what a normal non killer does. So the convincing behavior, the deflecting behavior, the qualifying statements, the trying to convince you she's a good person. Listen. Listen to it again. Understanding. Those are so signs of deception.
- [74:52]
Mark Igar
Did you kill Travis Alexander?
- [74:54]
Jodi Arias
I absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with his murder. I didn't harm him in any way. I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals.
- [75:05]
Mark Igar
Who?
- [75:06]
Jodi Arias
I don't know who they were. I couldn't pick them out in a police lineup.
- [75:09]
Mark Igar
So what happened?
- [75:11]
Jodi Arias
They came into his home and attacked us both.
- [75:14]
Mark Igar
You did not shoot Travis?
- [75:16]
Jodi Arias
No, I've never even shot a real gun.
- [75:18]
Mark Igar
You did not stab him twice? Seven times.
- [75:21]
Jodi Arias
That's. That's heinous.
- [75:22]
Mark Igar
I've never slit his throat from ear to ear.
- [75:24]
Jodi Arias
I can't imagine slitting anyone's throat. No jury is going to convict me.
- [75:28]
Mark Igar
Why not?
- [75:29]
Jodi Arias
Because I'm innocent. And you can mark my words on that one. No jury will convict me.
- [75:36]
Megyn Kelly
Classic. That's heinous. What? That's convincing. I can't imagine ever slitting some. Who says that? You wouldn't say that. You. You'd say, no, no, I didn't do it, period.
- [75:47]
Mark Igar
Listen, in retrospect, you see all these signs. You don't really see it up front, but she did. You know, Listen, there's one thing that she did say that really bothers me. And I know it's probably for other cases, but when I can't stand when people blame other people for their crimes and worse, I actually think there should be an enhancement, a penalty enhancement. When you pick somebody of a certain
- [76:07]
Megyn Kelly
race, or it's always like, oh, black man case.
- [76:10]
Mark Igar
It is two Latino women who. Who did this. Or it was two black males who. I can't stand that. All right, I'm done.
- [76:18]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, no, it happens all the time. Yeah, two Latino women. Who is that? That was the blonde lady. The the wife who staged her own disappearance. What's her name? You. So now thinking about this.
- [76:29]
Mark Igar
So how many. How many Hispanic Latina women are stopped and questioned and harassed in that area because of what she said? Right? I can't.
- [76:38]
Megyn Kelly
Well, Jodi Aria said I couldn't pick them out of a lineup. Like, don't buy. Bother you. Don't worry, we won't. Sherry Papini. Sherry Papini was the one that.
- [76:48]
Mark Igar
Wasting precious judicial and. And law enforcement resources on her trying to identify someone. That give her credit for that?
- [76:55]
Megyn Kelly
Yes. Okay, so she gives that BS interview. I mean, it's so weird. And. And you can take it right now. I'm not going to be convicted. What the hell? This is not a sports game. Like just. This is a crazy person sitting there, though, not legally. But on the subject of the craziness, there was video of her in the interrogation room at the police station doing a headstand. And I want to ask you why. Why did she do this? They left her alone in the interrogation room for the listening audience. She goes down headstand, legs up against the wall. She's got no shoes on. She's in civilian clothes. She holds it for 30 seconds. They said she then began to walk around the little interrogation room and sing a diary Kaido song and search through the trash. So, Mark, what's that about?
- [77:40]
Mark Igar
Well, whenever I've done that, Megan, I have no idea. I should know what that means. That's a nut job.
- [77:49]
Megyn Kelly
Well, is she going for an insanity thing? That's my first thought. Was she trying to look like a nutcase? The most serious of circumstances. She's doing headstands.
- [77:58]
Mark Igar
No, no, no, no, no. I eliminate that. Listen, of all your theories, that one I don't like. Like. Because that would mean this narcissist who has consistently said that it wasn't her, she wasn't there. I was framed like the Mona Lisa. She's not going to then say, I'm nutty, I'm crazy. I did it. But I did it because I'm, you know, I don't know right from wrong and I have a mental illness or defect. There's no way that that's what she was doing. So could it just be she's been in there for hours and somehow in her apartment she does that?
- [78:27]
Megyn Kelly
I don't know.
- [78:27]
Mark Igar
There's women who do headstands like that for some purpose, I think. Think. Right. Isn't that part of some pose? Somebody might.
- [78:35]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I mean, it could have been a stress reliever. I don't know, it could have been a stress. Sure, she was stressed. You heard in that interview with Inside Edition, she claimed for the first time two intruders killed Travis and that she was there as well. The ones she would never be able to pick out of a lineup. She continued to claim a home invasion and that we'd been there having a consensual sexual interlude using the. The camera before the intruders got there. The camera is one of the most interesting things about the whole day. They took pictures of each other. She took pictures of him post injury. Like post. At least one picture they say of was of him in the shower, like while he was being attacked. And so we have crime scene photos that the police took that show us actually what happened to him. But the reporting was that there was at least one photo posted. Initial injury. How does this person leave the camera there? And I think they eventually found it. Like in the washing machine.
- [79:38]
Mark Igar
Yes. I'm glad you said that. I was getting that vibe. It was either washing machine gun. I'm thinking back all these years. It was either washing machine or dryer. So I think it was the washing. And somehow the. I don't know, the little disc or whatever they use was still good. And they were able to get those photos. And again, once that evidence came in. That's it. She's done all her stories.
- [79:58]
Megyn Kelly
Don't get it, Mark. She leaves. She's got all the time in the world. She leaves. They don't find the body for five days. She knows there's a camera with all these photos of her at a minimum with him moments before he dies.
- [80:12]
Mark Igar
Why washing machine? Why she was she. Bye bye. That's what I think happened.
- [80:18]
Megyn Kelly
Why wouldn't she just take it with her? I don't get it. It's too stupid. Is she a.
- [80:23]
Mark Igar
She left a lot of clues and she's serving a lifestyle sentence. I wouldn't put her up there with Einstein. Yeah.
- [80:30]
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- [81:29]
Megyn Kelly
She gets arrested. She goes on trial once she takes the stand. And was it a surprise, do you remember? Because the prosecution went on for two weeks before the defense had to offer its side. Was it a shock when she took the stand?
- [81:44]
Mark Igar
I don't think I was shocked, no. In fact, the type of person that she was, very outspoken, very passionate. Passionate. I think she needed to, I think that she, I think it was expected. I don't think I was shocked.
- [81:56]
Megyn Kelly
Okay. Because somebody's going to have to say what happened inside of that room and she's going to have to admit she was there now thanks to the photographic evidence.
- [82:06]
Mark Igar
Yeah. And, and also, anytime there's any element of self defense, which is pretty much what she was saying, that she was attacked and then she, you know, had to do something that, that, that can't be brought up by a lawyer. You got to, to put him up there.
- [82:18]
Megyn Kelly
Okay.
- [82:19]
Mark Igar
Because.
- [82:19]
Megyn Kelly
Because she started with Intruders to Inside Edition. She continued with home invasion. And you know, I was an innocent victim that saw him, you know, get attacked. And then she switched, she switched to Travis, attacked me and I killed him. In self defense.
- [82:37]
Sarma Melngailis
She.
- [82:38]
Megyn Kelly
In August of 2010, she submitted a request to the court to have letters allegedly from Travis Alexander admitted into evidence. The letters were meant to help prove her new theory of self defense. The prosecution objected, saying the defendant argues that the letters are relevant to her claim of self defense and that she was a victim of previous sexual and physical abuse by Mr. Alexander. But they denied that and they said these letters should not be allowed. Her new theory was that Travis Alexander became angry when she dropped his camera and she was forced to kill him in self defense. That was ultimately, Mark, what she did claim in front of the jury, was it not?
- [83:19]
Mark Igar
That's all that was left. In other words, okay, the two intruder theory didn't work. Everything else didn't work. Then you're left with, all right, I'm there. I can either do insanity, which works in a fraction of 1% of the cases, and in this case, with all the planning and all the, you know, lies after the fact would absolutely not work. So by, you know, the same way I took the bar exam, I might not have known the answer, but I eliminated, eliminate those that definitely aren't the right answer and what's left is the only thing I got to go with. So that's what happens.
- [83:48]
Megyn Kelly
She starts to try to demonize Travis. He abused me. He sexually pressured me. He treated me like I was his sexual plaything. I didn't enjoy it. He was this Mormon who, you know, made me do dirty things that I didn't want to do because he. Whatever. He had some beliefs that he didn't want to cross. Here's some of that. Okay. Okay. We have. First of all, she accuses him of being a pedophile just to set the jury's expectation of him, you know, where she wanted it. Right. Absolutely no proof of. Of that whatsoever, other than her weird word here that is sought for.
- [84:23]
Jodi Arias
I walked in, and Travis was on the bed masturbating, and I got really embarrassed. It was a picture of a little boy. Oh, five. Ish. Five, six. I'm not a good judge of age. He was dressed in underwear, like briefs. I was frozen there for a minute, and I just ran. I didn't stay. I felt nauseated, ran inside, and threw up in the bathroom.
- [84:54]
Megyn Kelly
That's a clip from hlm, which is why there's music over the weird testimony. But, yeah. So she tries to condemn him as a pedophile before she goes had.
- [85:02]
Mark Igar
And had spider man pajamas ordered to the house. Like, she was very specific. She's dangerous because she's not an idiot. I mean, she's dumb, but she's not an idiot. I don't know what that means, but you know what I'm saying. She's very cunning.
- [85:14]
Megyn Kelly
She's not a criminal mastermind.
- [85:17]
Mark Igar
What's that?
- [85:18]
Megyn Kelly
I said she's not a criminal mastermind. But that doesn't mean she's not smart.
- [85:23]
Mark Igar
She's correct. She's creative. She's, you know, cunning. She. She plans these things out. She had plenty of. Of time to. To plan how she was going to lower him in the eyes of the jury. And. And you dig from the pedophile card deck. That's about as low as you go. That was the worst.
- [85:41]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. So then she tries to say that she had to give him certain forms of sex because he was a Mormon and this is what he required of her. I'll let her tell it. This is S5.
- [85:55]
Jodi Arias
Sex is sex. There's just different ways to have sex. And it's seemed like. It seemed like Travis was kind of. I don't know how to put it, but it just seemed like he sort of had, like, the Bill Clinton version, whereas over here, it seemed like, you know, oral and anal sex were also sex to me, but not for him.
- [86:29]
Megyn Kelly
So now she's Jody the Librarian, right? She's got her little glasses on. He made me do it this way and the other way. This pedophile, right? So she's. This is the defense. And this is one of the reasons why America was riveted.
- [86:42]
Mark Igar
So transparent what she's doing to me anyway, and I think to the jurors also. But you still got to do it. You know, you dealt the cards that you have, you got to play them and, and you have a, a horrible defendant. But there's no other way to advance that ridiculous self defense theory.
- [87:00]
Megyn Kelly
Well, is that true? I mean, if you had been her defense attorney, what would you have done?
- [87:06]
Mark Igar
Not write a tell all book and get disparate. We'll get to that. What would I do? Probably what happened here. I would. It would be obvious, painfully to me that my client, client is guilty as they come. And I would say to that person, first of all, they might be offering you life. You might want to take that instead of risking the death penalty, try to persuade her that her chances are very low of prevailing. She, the narcissist would say, I'm not going to be convicted. So I'd go and I'd say, okay. And to myself professionally, I'd say winning is defined by doing everything I can to achieve the best possible outcome for the. This client, whether they say guilty or not guilty is not in my control. And so testifying is her option. She wants to testify, she testifies. In other words, yeah, I might lose this case. And you know what? I'm fine with that.
- [87:57]
Megyn Kelly
This is the problem. I mean, basically you try to cut a deal on it with a client like this because there's just no question that the jurors are going to find her guilty. Juan Martinez was the prosecution. And I. One thing I do wrong remember is you did not like him. You did not like the way he behaved.
- [88:15]
Mark Igar
Listen, the main reason why I accepted your invitation is because I get another crack at, at, at talking about his cross examination.
- [88:23]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, so let's set it up before, before we play the sound bite of that. He had two weeks to present his case. It's kind of open and shut. What should he have done? What, what would you have preferred to see a process prosecutor do?
- [88:37]
Mark Igar
Okay, ready? And I'm talking to the Murdoch prosecutors. You know, everybody gives both Juan Martinez and those guys such accolades. And they did good things. I'll give them credit for that. I'm merely talking about cross examination, which is an art form. I have taught my students that you don't wing it. You carefully craft every single question that you're to going, going to ask, knowing that it could go this way or this way, and then you are ready with the follow up. Isn't the fact that on such and such a day, you said this and you boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it's a lean filet mignon. You don't present a big fatty steak wandering around, hey, Mr. Martinez, your ego is not your amigo. You don't get up there and make it about you. You don't take days. You don't, you know, try to grandstand like he did. I, I thought his cross examination was horrible. And people are going to say, oh, you're jealous, this and that.
- [89:34]
Megyn Kelly
I'm not.
- [89:35]
Mark Igar
I don't care. I wish him well. I'm simply saying that it was a, a D minus on the scale. And I'm telling you this don't go by the outcome. This case could have been won by, by rookie prosecutors. I'm talking about how he did on cross. Both he and the Murdoch prosecutors sucked in cross examination. Yes, I've sucked it publicly again.
- [89:57]
Sarma Melngailis
Yes, I know.
- [89:58]
Megyn Kelly
I agree with you. And now I have to tell you, I listen to some of these friends of the Murdoch prosecutors on their little podcast and they're like, oh, people just didn't get it. They just didn't get how brilliant that cross was. It's like, no, people know how to do a proper cross examination. And they could have. It would have been over and done with had they done it properly. They let him go on. There was a chance the jury could have bonded with the guy. They took unnecessary reason risks in that cross of Alex, I agree with you. Okay, so here's one.
- [90:25]
Mark Igar
You don't take credit because either the guy or in this case, Jody looked bad. Oh, look at me, I made her look bad. She would have looked just as bad. Without the opportunity to then explain, humanize, go on and on. There's no need for that. There's no reason to take a risk on a single question. Good lawyers carefully craft everything we think about, everything we're doing. These guys look like they were winging it and they were. That's unacceptable.
- [90:56]
Megyn Kelly
And you stay in control the whole time. You're the one who's speaking. The witness is just there to say yes or no. That's it. You are the one who's telling the jury the story. They're really listening to the prosecutor.
- [91:05]
Mark Igar
With limited exceptions when I know no matter what they do or say, they're hanging themselves. So every now and then, I'll throw that in just to switch it up, because I know there's not a single answer that's going to score points for them.
- [91:22]
Megyn Kelly
Well, here's. Let's let the audience get a flavor of Juan Martinez. Here is the prosecutor. Juan, trying to have Jody demonstrate Travis's alleged attack because she's claiming I dropped his camera. Then he came for me. He chased me. That's why I had to kill him. Here's just a little bit of that exchange, and then I'll play the. The feistier one.
- [91:46]
Mark Igar
Ma', am, if you would mind.
- [91:47]
Sarma Melngailis
Stand up, go to the lap, and
- [91:49]
Mark Igar
show me the posture of Mr. Alexander immediately before he rushed you, according to
- [91:56]
Jodi Arias
you, as he was.
- [91:58]
Mark Igar
No, no, Just show me. That's what I'm asking you to do, not talk. Show me. Show me the linebacker pose.
- [92:05]
Jodi Arias
He got down.
- [92:07]
Mark Igar
Well, show me. Show me the linebacker pose. That's what I'm asking for you to do.
- [92:10]
Jodi Arias
Okay. He went like that. And he turned his head and grabbed my waist.
- [92:14]
Mark Igar
Just like that, correct?
- [92:15]
Jodi Arias
Pretty much.
- [92:15]
Sarma Melngailis
Much.
- [92:16]
Mark Igar
And he grabbed your waist, right?
- [92:17]
Jodi Arias
I can't say. It's just like that. That's what I remember.
- [92:20]
Mark Igar
No, just.
- [92:21]
Sarma Melngailis
Just.
- [92:21]
Mark Igar
I want.
- [92:22]
Sarma Melngailis
Without talking.
- [92:23]
Mark Igar
Just show me the pose.
- [92:25]
Jodi Arias
He got down like that.
- [92:27]
Sarma Melngailis
Like that.
- [92:28]
Mark Igar
All right, go ahead and have a seat then.
- [92:32]
Megyn Kelly
He's already annoying.
- [92:34]
Mark Igar
Megan. Let me add him. Okay, first of all, nobody likes a bully. And I'm telling you, I. I've actually, during jury selection. Excuse me, use jurors. One woman I saw when I was speaking, because I was like, you know, I turned to this woman, I said, you know, you said you could be fair to my client, but I'm really wondering, ma', am, I get a sense that. And I really questioned her very firmly because I really wanted her out if she wasn't going to be on board with the plan of being fair. There was a tear that fell down from her eye. And I realized in that moment, I asked her, I go, is everything okay? She goes, I don't know. It's just your energy. Like, I feel like you're. And I realized, oh, oh, my God. I'm too much for people at certain times. Similarly, what Juan Martinez is doing is being so overly aggressive unnecessarily that that has to turn certain jurors off. There's no reason to be that way in a case like this. That's the first criticism I've got more with what I just saw.
- [93:30]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, there's more coming. I'll play another sound bite and then you can resume. There was this tense moment where she got after him. Him for his style. You know, it got to the point where she actually had to call him out. Here's a little bit of that on SOT 7.
- [93:43]
Mark Igar
What factors influence you're having a memory problem?
- [93:49]
Jodi Arias
Usually when men like you are screaming at me or grilling me or someone like Travis doing the same.
- [93:54]
Mark Igar
So that affects your memory problems, right?
- [93:55]
Jodi Arias
It does. It makes my brain scramble.
- [93:57]
Mark Igar
So you're saying that it's the core. Basically what you're saying is Mr. Martinez fault that you can't remember things that are going on.
- [94:05]
Jodi Arias
It's not your fault?
- [94:06]
Mark Igar
I'm not saying that. You're saying that, isn't it?
- [94:09]
Jodi Arias
No, I'm not saying that.
- [94:10]
Mark Igar
Is there something about a certain decibel of the voice that creates problems?
- [94:18]
Jodi Arias
Decibel, Tone, content. Sort of a combination of those factors.
- [94:26]
Megyn Kelly
Go ahead.
- [94:27]
Mark Igar
God, it's so horrible. And the public doesn't understand because they don't see great cross examinations when they're watching these high profile cases. I haven't seen it recently. There's been some examples. There's some exceptions. None that come to mind. Right.
- [94:40]
Megyn Kelly
Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp's lawyer with.
- [94:44]
Mark Igar
What's that? Which one?
- [94:46]
Megyn Kelly
Johnny Depp's lawyer. Cross examining. Amber Heard. Very effective.
- [94:51]
Mark Igar
Probably. I'm trying to remember.
- [94:53]
Sarma Melngailis
Remember.
- [94:53]
Megyn Kelly
I can't remember her name. She became a star. She's now on NBC. Contributor, which. She did it exactly the way we're discussing it was textbook, Mark. It was. Isn't this true? Isn't that true? And then you did this. And then this. Isn't that true? Misheard. Your Honor, please direct the witness to answer my question and not. Not to go on like this. You know, like she controlled the witness. What's. What's her name, Steve? Camille Vasquez. Yeah, she was good. She was solid.
- [95:17]
Mark Igar
I. I agree. So two things. One, in the first clip that you played, you're asking the defendant it now to give her version again. Giving her another opportunity to then display for the jurors why she's not guilty. I would never do that. I just make fun of it. And the second clip, you look at him. He doesn't have those questions prepared. He's just winging it. That's what a rookie lawyer does. Or someone who doesn't do cross examination. It's not to say there's not room for spontaneity, but I plan my spontaneity. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's what I.
- [95:55]
Sarma Melngailis
You sound like a great.
- [95:56]
Megyn Kelly
Like a great person to hang out
- [95:58]
Sarma Melngailis
with for a wife.
- [96:01]
Mark Igar
Not always. I'm talking about. Not in the bedroom, in the courtroom. Come on.
- [96:07]
Megyn Kelly
And on three. Okay. Let's talk about the fact that your friend Juan Martinez, in addition to the defense. Defense lawyer, have both been disbarred since then. They've both lost their law licenses.
- [96:23]
Mark Igar
Yeah. Yeah. Different reasons. But can we back up a little bit because we.
- [96:28]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [96:28]
Mark Igar
We left out one of the biggest things in the trial.
- [96:31]
Megyn Kelly
Well, yeah, I'm not done with the trial, but I. I do think it's interesting that your friend lost his law license. And I think when people look at that cross examination, it's very interesting to know. Quoting now the ap, that won't. Martinez was accused later. This is why he lost his law license. Of leaking the identity of one of the Jody Aras jurors. He leaked the identity to a blogger with whom he was having a sexual relationship, then lied to investigators about it. That's what he was accused of. And of sexually harassing a bunch of female law clerks in his office. He chose not to defend the charges. Charges. And consented to disbarment and. What's happening?
- [97:14]
Sarma Melngailis
What are you.
- [97:14]
Megyn Kelly
What are you doing?
- [97:15]
Mark Igar
It's a fog, Megan. Like Jodi Aries. Don't you remember? She was in a fog. What did you think I bring props out for you? Come on.
- [97:26]
Megyn Kelly
You got dry ice in your office?
- [97:30]
Mark Igar
It's a little machine I gave to my son for his, like, 13th birthday. But so appropriate, really, when we're talking about the fog and how Jody Aras was in a fog. She didn't remember anything. Don't you remember the famous fog? Come on.
- [97:44]
Megyn Kelly
Yes, she was in a fog.
- [97:46]
Mark Igar
Okay.
- [97:47]
Megyn Kelly
The lawyer, too.
- [97:48]
Mark Igar
All right.
- [97:50]
Megyn Kelly
The lawyer, too, was in a fog as he was sexually harassing all the female law clerks to the point where they were. They had to run. He was staring at the chest of some female employees in the county prosecutor's office. Looked them up and down as they walked away. Some female employees would hide in the bathroom, duck into cubicles, or engage in and busy work to avoid encountering Martinez. He got fired after 32 years as a prosecutor, then lost his law license. That's the man. I'm going to have to say. Tip of the hat. Your instincts were dead on.
- [98:17]
Mark Igar
What an unsubtle pig. You know, I read that to my wife. She's like, ah, what a horrible. And I looked at it from her perspective and. And women don't like that, you know, and a horrible place to be, you know, where. Where all day long you have this guy staring at you and he's not so subtle and it just. It's just horrible, you know?
- [98:37]
Megyn Kelly
I know it's creepy. Well, so you. I mean, I think your instincts were dead on. You understood this is not a good lawyer and this is not a good man, and you had a revolt in watching him that was well placed, but the. The evidence was so strong against her, it didn't wind up hurting his case. He did ultimately get a confession on the stand, which was rather helpful. I mean, we knew that she killed him because she was claiming self defense by that point. But here is the moment of confession on the stand when she breaks down side eight.
- [99:11]
Mark Igar
Would you agree that you're the person who actually slit Mr. Alexander's throat from ear to ear?
- [99:23]
Sarma Melngailis
Yes.
- [99:26]
Mark Igar
Would you also agree that you're the individual that stabbed him in the upper torso?
- [99:37]
Megyn Kelly
Yes.
- [99:40]
Mark Igar
And you're doing all of this according to your version of events? You're doing this to this individual after you have already shot him? Right?
- [99:54]
Valerie Borlein
Yes.
- [99:58]
Megyn Kelly
What do you make of that?
- [99:59]
Mark Igar
Credit again, Megan? That was her whole theory. She was admitting that she did the abhorrent acts for which she's accused. If anything, he could have artfully said. All right, just so these jurors are crystal clear, the first stab that went into his body, you did that. Not. Not two strangers that you initially said, these two intruders. Right. Then another jab, and then another jab. This one over here by the heart. That was you, not somebody else. And then he could have gone on and on and on about every stab that she did. And then to really highlight the brutality, especially since he's going for the death penalty after. So you really want to highlight it. The best he had was you stabbed him in the torso. Yes. Yes. No. 27. Seven times. And then you did this or that. Whatever order he wants. That was. You're giving him credit. And yeah, okay, he did that. But again, it was. Wasn't the most effective. He lost a huge opportunity.
- [100:58]
Megyn Kelly
That's a good point. Drive it home. And I found the medical examiner's testimony that I was looking for earlier. Kevin Horn testified about the stab wounds and said the slash wound to Travis's throat was 3 to 4 inches deep and went to the spot. Spinal cord in the back of the neck had two major vessels that had been sliced. He would have lost a great deal of blood very quickly and then lost consciousness within seconds and died a few minutes later. And then of course, she shot him as well. But he talked about the wounds to Travis's hands. That must have been before the fatal injury. So the guy fought for his life. He must have been terrified. This person he trusted, who was, you know, he was undressed with Smith had had this interlude with surprises him in this place that's supposed to be, you know, inviolate. The shower. My God. So you're right. And. And his failure to bring home the brutality did come back to haunt him at the penalty phase.
- [101:53]
Mark Igar
Yeah, I'm still actually thinking of ways that I would have done this differently. I would have said, I'm sorry. Ms. Arias, I see that you're crying. Do you need a moment? And by the way, Ms. A.R. you crying? Stab number seven. Were tears running down your eyes? Cries Then. When you did this, were you crying then? Okay. Do you need time? I'll ask the judge if you need a few minutes, but I'm not going to let her hide her face in that tissue and put on that act. Ms. Arius, can you look at me? I'm asking you some questions. If you need time, I'll give you some time. She's hiding her face. The jurors need to judge her credibility. Your honor, assuming the judge wouldn't allow me to. To, you know, control her that way, I'd go sidebar and say, judge, they're judging. She's hiding her face. I want them to see her face. She needs time.
- [102:34]
Megyn Kelly
I'll you tell.
- [102:34]
Mark Igar
Give her time. But I'm not going to let her bury her face when I'm asking her to talk about the most intimate of brutality that she committed. No way.
- [102:43]
Megyn Kelly
That's a good point. Does anyone have a scrunchie? Who's got a scrunchie? Let's. Let's get that hair back. No, you're right. There was. That was clearly a tactic. Well, the jury didn't buy it because after she'd been on the stand for, they say, 18 days. 18 days between direct and cross examination. Many felt that was a tactic by her defense. Defense lawyer. To create a bond between Jody and the jury to where they could not vote for death. Do you agree that was a strategy?
- [103:13]
Mark Igar
100%. And let me just say this. I just finished a federal trial. My client wanted to take the witness stand. My direct was extremely long. Number one, I'm humanizing my client. Number two, there was a lot to talk about. Right. Number three, it is difficult when they don't know who your client is. They. The prosecutors will always call them the defendant. I'm here to humanize my client. And yes, in that case, they want to slaughter her. They want to kill her. Right? The ultimate sanction. So that serves a purpose. Kudos to the pro. For the defense lawyer. Not the prosecutor, the defense lawyer. I don't care how long he takes, as long as it's productive. And it's routine. They've rehearsed it all. It's choreographed. She could look great on direct. Long, long, long, long. Cross not the same.
- [104:03]
Megyn Kelly
What do you mean?
- [104:04]
Mark Igar
Cross needs to be tight. It needs to be planned out. It shouldn't go for a more than a day and certainly within that day, I'd say a few hours. You can make your points. That's it.
- [104:16]
Sarma Melngailis
Okay.
- [104:17]
Megyn Kelly
You don't.
- [104:18]
Mark Igar
You don't want to Juan Martinez show. This isn't about you, dude. Stop making it about you.
- [104:24]
Megyn Kelly
You don't want to prolong the relationship between this person and the jurors any more so than. Than the defense lawyer did on the direct. All right, so the jury gets the case. Ultimately, the jury was read in court. Here's sound bite 9.
- [104:38]
Sarma Melngailis
State of Arizona vs. Jodan Aras. Verdict count 1. We the jury, duly impaneled and sworn and the above entitled action upon our O do find the defendant as to count one, first degree murder, guilty. Five Jurors find pro premeditated, zero fine. Felony murder, seven fine, both premeditated and felony. Signed four person.
- [105:04]
Megyn Kelly
Is this your true verdict?
- [105:05]
Sarma Melngailis
So say you want it all.
- [105:10]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, it wasn't a shock. She actually looks kind of surprised to hear the verdict. It wasn't a shock to anybody.
- [105:16]
Mark Igar
Don't credit her with having real emotion and equating whatever she just did to have how you and I. She's in a whole different area code psychologically. I don't know what that was.
- [105:26]
Megyn Kelly
I don't. Right, we don't. There's more acting. Well, then. Then we moved on to the penalty phase. Will she get life in prison or will she get the death penalty? And that is in Arizona is up to the jury, at least on the initial go round. And so the. The jury had to wrestle with that. She got to say how she felt about the death penalty in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix the week she was found guilty. Listen to this side. 11.
- [105:55]
Jodi Arias
I believe death is the ultimate freedom. So I'd rather just have my freedom soon. As soon as I can get it.
- [106:01]
Mark Igar
So you're saying you actually prefer getting
- [106:04]
Megyn Kelly
the death penalty to being in prison for life?
- [106:06]
Jodi Arias
Yes.
- [106:09]
Megyn Kelly
Then here she is.
- [106:10]
Mark Igar
Brilliant. Wait.
- [106:12]
Megyn Kelly
Addressing the jury yeah, go ahead.
- [106:14]
Mark Igar
No, no, no, no. Megan, come on. That was brilliant. In manipulation. That's what Nicholas Cruz should have done. I want death, you know, for killing all those kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Again, it's reverse psychology. She doesn't want to die. She doesn't want to get death row. She's going to be the. The queen in. In. In prison. She wants to live out her life, and so she just does the twist. That's the ultimate manipulation for that idea. Sure.
- [106:45]
Megyn Kelly
So she. She did it with the jury as well. Here's a couple of sound bites of her addressing them. We'll start with SOT12.
- [106:54]
Jodi Arias
This is the worst mistake of my life. It's the worst thing I've ever done.
- [106:58]
Megyn Kelly
You think?
- [106:59]
Jodi Arias
It's the worst thing I ever could have seen myself doing. In fact, I couldn't have seen myself doing it before that day. I wouldn't even want to harm a spider. I'd gather them up in cups and put them outside. To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence, but I know that I was. And for that, I'm gonna be sorry for the rest of my life. Probably longer.
- [107:25]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, Lord. All right, let me add on to that one.
- [107:28]
Mark Igar
I'm offended for her making me feel guilty for killing spiders. Very offensive.
- [107:32]
Sarma Melngailis
I do it.
- [107:33]
Mark Igar
And number two.
- [107:34]
Sarma Melngailis
Two.
- [107:34]
Mark Igar
Come on.
- [107:36]
Megyn Kelly
She's.
- [107:36]
Mark Igar
Again, she's. I see how manipulative she is. I keep coming back to that word.
- [107:41]
Megyn Kelly
And she couldn't drum up any real tears either. It's like, if you really are unjustly convicted, it's you. You just look and sound entirely different. Here she is.
- [107:51]
Sarma Melngailis
Wait.
- [107:51]
Mark Igar
And one more thing bothers me. I got to get these things off. I'm sorry to keep interrupting you. Like, if I don't, I'm gonna think about them later.
- [107:56]
Valerie Borlein
Please.
- [107:57]
Mark Igar
Mistake. I can't stand what people call, like, something as complex and abhorrent and as planned. Planned out and as, you know, just gory as a mistake. Right.
- [108:08]
Megyn Kelly
27 stabs. Those were mistakes.
- [108:11]
Mark Igar
Like. Like which ones? The Holocaust. You know, an inconvenience, you know, a minor blemish on my record. You know, like, Stop minimizing things. It's not a mistake.
- [108:20]
Megyn Kelly
Right, That's a good point. Like what. What was the mistake? The three inch, you know, cutting of the carotid artery after you stabbed him 27 times. Like, the number. Number two through 26.
- [108:29]
Sarma Melngailis
Those were the.
- [108:30]
Megyn Kelly
Like. In any event, now here she is asking them for. Well, you'll listen, you'll hear.
- [108:36]
Jodi Arias
Slot 13 I've made many public statements that I would prefer the death penalty to life in prison. Each time I said that, though, I meant it. I lacked perspective. Until very recently, I could not have imagined standing before you all and asking you to give me life. To me, life in prison was the most unappealing outcome I could possibly think of. I thought I'd rather die. But as I stand here now, I can't in good conscience ask you to sentence me to death because of them. Asking for death is tantamount to suicide. Either way, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison. It'll have either be shortened or not.
- [109:26]
Megyn Kelly
She was pointing to her parents when she said, because of them. So a change of heart, Mark.
- [109:31]
Mark Igar
Yeah. How convenient. I just. That's just so silly. I don't even have anything to say. I think I've said it already. Manipulator.
- [109:38]
Megyn Kelly
This person is a household name. I mean, think about that. This woman is a household name. Most people in America know who Jody Aras is because the media took to this case like mods to a flame. She was the star. She's a sociopath. You can see. It's fascinating to see the mind in. In, you know, working, like, doing its manipulation. And you know what? It worked because the jury ultimately did not sentence her to death. They were. It was a hung jury. And then they brought in another jury to try to decide, and they, too, could not decide on giving her death. And without a unanimous vote for it, you don't get it. And that's why she got life in prison without the possibility of parole, where she is right now.
- [110:18]
Mark Igar
What we don't know is the split right. Was it one loan juror? Was it a few? Likely it was a few because, you know, there was a lot of mitigators. I didn't see any of that testimony, but, you know, the lack of priors, I don't want to start naming them because it'll look like I'm being sympathetic, but whatever. The defense said, there was stuff to work with here. You know, the crime was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel and cold, calculated and very premeditated. This the go. The state had that going for him. You know, everything else, you know, the mitigators, it was probably a couple people said, no, she should get life instead, and then that's it. They only needed a few there.
- [110:58]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, is it true that generally they don't like to give you the death penalty if it's just one murder as opposed to a serial killer or like the guy who takes out his family, you know, something like that. There's that.
- [111:11]
Mark Igar
And statistically, you know how many women actually get the death penalty, you know, it's very rare. And don't you tell me that looks don't matter and how she acts, People consider that, they just do.
- [111:29]
Megyn Kelly
So we talked about the fact that the prosecutor is now disbarred and you mentioned it in passing, her lawyer 2 is now disbarred. What did he do?
- [111:37]
Mark Igar
This bothers me. Another reason why I was, I was looking forward to doing this. This really bothers me. So he writes a book, a tell all and included in that book are intimate details that she shared with him while he was representing her. He then writes this book and you know, she's objecting to it naturally. And apparently they knew about it, the bar did and said, listen, you're either going to, for putting this out there, you're either, you have two options. One will suspend you for four years, but you cannot then put this book out there. Or you can lose your law license forever, give it up and then, you know, obviously then you'll be free to publish that book. He chose option number two and I'm not going to out anybody. My wife who said good for him for putting that out there because I'm sure many people, people feel that way. And I was so upset about that because. Yeah, do I care that Jody Arias's thoughts are put out there? No, because I don't like Jodi Arias but it's so much bigger than that. He is eroding the attorney client privilege where now either my clients or other future clients feel like, wait, is this going to be the lawyer who like that guy, that nimrod, you're going to put it out there in some book to capitalize and then that doesn't give any confidence when anybody goes to speak to an attorney. I'm really bothered by it.
- [113:00]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. I mean it's amazing that two of the main cast characters in this cast wound up disbarred and the third, the true star is behind bars for the rest of her life without the possibility of parole. There have been some reports that behind bars she's in a medium security prison. She's been making friends and lovers and tattooing her name on her jail cell mates. Lifetime is actually just now, 10 years later coming out with a, a docu drama about Jodi Aras and, and the case and gets into some of that like her life in jail. We managed to pull a clip Mark Igar for the entertainment of the Audience, here's a bit.
- [113:43]
Mark Igar
A Lifetime original movie ripped from the headlines.
- [113:46]
Megyn Kelly
Jody Arias killed Travis Alexander.
- [113:51]
Valerie Borlein
Jody Aryan.
- [113:51]
Megyn Kelly
I'm Jody.
- [113:53]
Mark Igar
You know her name.
- [113:54]
Megyn Kelly
It's worth doing whatever it takes to gain my freedom. There's a worse. We do what we have to do.
- [114:00]
Mark Igar
But not this story.
- [114:01]
Valerie Borlein
When you get out, maybe you can
- [114:03]
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help me get the word out about my innocence.
- [114:04]
Sarma Melngailis
Sure, whenever you need it.
- [114:06]
Valerie Borlein
I thank God for you.
- [114:07]
Megyn Kelly
I knew you came into my life for a reason.
- [114:10]
Mark Igar
Based on a true story.
- [114:11]
Megyn Kelly
There is no question Jody killed Travis Alexander.
- [114:14]
Valerie Borlein
This channel, everything you said, it was a lie.
- [114:17]
Jodi Arias
I was worried that if I told
- [114:18]
Megyn Kelly
you what really happened, I'd lose you. It's in the past now.
- [114:22]
Jodi Arias
And I love you.
- [114:23]
Valerie Borlein
I can't defend you.
- [114:26]
Mark Igar
Did you believe she was innocent?
- [114:27]
Valerie Borlein
Yes.
- [114:27]
Megyn Kelly
Was she innocent?
- [114:28]
Mark Igar
Hell no.
- [114:30]
Valerie Borlein
I feel like you betrayed me. I will never forgive you that.
- [114:37]
Megyn Kelly
Behind bars.
- [114:38]
Mark Igar
Jody Arias,
- [114:41]
Megyn Kelly
bad behind bars. She's manipulating after in jail, social media posts, all sorts of bad stuff.
- [114:50]
Mark Igar
Good casting. I mean, you know, I was like, wait, that looks like her.
- [114:54]
Megyn Kelly
You know, what, what happens at a medium security prison? How are you able to make friends and, you know, tattoo one another and do social media?
- [115:03]
Mark Igar
Yeah, she's probably living a pretty damn good life. Number one, medium security. She wasn't high. They. They brought her down to medium, so that's much better for her. Orange is the new black, you know, and then seven. Secondly, she didn't kill any children, you know, in the pecking order. She killed a man that many think might have done something bad to her. At least that was her story. So in prison, you know, she's at the top of the pecking order. And with her manipulation and, and beauty, she's probably living large. And when I say beauty, I use that in quotations. I'm talking about objectively to others. I know she's using that for her own benefit.
- [115:39]
Megyn Kelly
Is, is it. Is. Is it possible to have a co ed prison? Because this is where I get confused. They said she met somebody named Donovan Baring while serving time. Donovan was serving time for accessory to arson in the Maricopa County Jail where they were cellmates for six months. Oh, they're both girls. Okay. Then this duo became really close and stayed in touch. Afterward. Donovan, who I guess is a girl, and J. Jody, they stayed tight. Then they were at Estrella, another prison where this other gal, Tracy, met Donovan for the first time. They got romantically involved. They then say by their own admission, Jody used her good looks and sexuality to get what she wanted and inserted herself into their union. As well. Although they never engaged in actual sex acts together. She once delivered a striptease with Tracy for Donovan and then often refused to leave their cell when they wanted alone time together. From getting them to manage her social media accounts again, why does she have them? To ultimately officiating their wedding ceremony. She did it all for the couple. Quoting from the cine cinemaholic.com so all of this is documented. I mean, on and on it goes, Mark. Once a master manipulator, always a master. That's what she does.
- [116:57]
Mark Igar
And she has nothing but time on her hands. So she's playing all those games. And I too, by the way, found it confusing at first. I'm like, donovan, she with a dude? How'd that happen? No, Donovan's a female. And then you play it along and you figure out what happened. I think as an aside, I read she's got something going on with a guy on the outside. And that's easy to do because there's nut jobs out there sending letters wanting to be with her. Phone privileges, right? And then eventually she's looking to get married, to get the conjugal visits. That's all going to happen. We saw that with Lyle and the other Menendez, what they do.
- [117:31]
Megyn Kelly
It just goes to show you, though, the media is still obsessed with this case. I mean, here we are 10 years later. You don't always do a 10 year retrospective on every case, but I remember covering this all the time. The America was into it and wanted more, more, more, more, more. And here we are ten years later, and she's still providing material from behind bars. So what's our, what's our takeaway? When you look back and you say, okay, what lessons can be learned from this case? Anything come to mind?
- [117:57]
Mark Igar
Okay, so number one, you never really know anyone. Do not judge someone based upon how they look. And even when you think that you're a good judge of character, you never know. You gotta look at the evidence. So once you get the evidence, that speaks volumes. Don't judge somebody based upon their demeanor, what they say and how they look. Which is which, coincidentally, is exactly what courts are about. And that's why they get it wrong all the time. Time. But, you know, the court of public opinion, wait, listen to all the evidence, and then you can decide. But we don't do that. The second takeaway I got is, you know, I can't say enough about this prosecutor. Again, he won the case. Good for him. And by winning, I mean he got the guilty verdict that anyone would have gotten. But his Cross examination to this day still is. Was horrible. I don't even want to put it in the same category as the Murdoch prosecutor. His was not great, but Martinez's was, to me, offensive. You know, that. That he took a case that was a slam dunk and just took days and days and days to do this horrible badgering, bullying, cross. So prosecutors, beware. I'm available. You want to reach out to me, we'll make arrangements to make sure that in a very important case that you prepare and all the questions are right there and you've thought them out, that's what matters. You've got to prepare. Those are two thoughts off the top.
- [119:20]
Megyn Kelly
You know, the rule is that the jury's supposed to like you more than the defendant. You know, that's your goal when you're cross examining somebody, that they will like you, the lawyer, more than the person. And that the way to get there is not usually to berate them, to shout at them, to telegraph with every question that you have nothing but dripping disdain for them. They know that. They know that if you're the prosecutor,
- [119:44]
Mark Igar
this is going to be deep and you're going to say it's flaky and hokey. But I think first for you to be liked by a jury or anyone, you've got to thoroughly and unconditionally like yourself. And I don't know that Juan Martinez
- [119:56]
Megyn Kelly
did well, it's interesting that he did turn out to be a bad guy. You know, he did such a bad job and he wasn't likable in there. And it's. It's just always interesting when, like, the outward Persona winds up, up matching with what's going on behind closed doors. It's sort of. It is an affirmation that maybe you can sometimes trust your instincts. I don't believe you can't ever. You can't ever know somebody. My God. Doug, we need to talk. I have to wait to see the evidence.
- [120:22]
Mark Igar
I. I love Doug, too, but I love what Doug has shown me Doug to be. Doug's got stuff inside of Doug. And so do you and so do I. That's. We've never let out. Not necessarily consciously, but sometimes subconsciously. So again, all we're seeing, and I adore my wife. I love her, but I love what I know about her. There's stuff I don't know about her, and I love her for that, too. And I love her unconditionally. But again, all we know is what we know.
- [120:49]
Megyn Kelly
That's it. Turn back on the fog. The fog, the fog.
- [120:53]
Sarma Melngailis
Needs to come back on Mark Eich.
- [120:58]
Megyn Kelly
It's always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you.
- [121:02]
Mark Igar
Thank you, Megan.
- [121:05]
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- [122:02]
Megyn Kelly
My guest today built one of the most successful vegan food empires in the Big Apple. But her dramatic rise and fall would become the focus of the hit Netflix quote documentary, or so they call it Bad Vegan, a series she says got major parts of her story wrong. By the way, this always happens on Netflix. Sarma Meln Gylis has a new memoir. It is called the Girl with the Duck Tattoo. In it she aims to set the record straight by laying out what she says is the real story behind the fame, the manipulation and the fallout of her unbelievable saga. Salma hi, thanks for being here.
- [122:43]
Sarma Melngailis
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
- [122:47]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I'm sorry that you had an unfortunate experience with Netflix, but you are not alone. Yes, we've covered so many of these cases on Netflix where they lure you in and they really do sell a documentary and it's nothing of the kind. It's a mockumentary, it's a docudrama. It's something that is not committed to journalistic fact based reporting. So I will give you that right off the top. But I'm super interested to find out what is true as is. I I'm just like to to give a two line encapsulation of your story to the audience. As I understand it, you're very well educated. You went to Wharton, you worked at Bear Stearns, Bain Capital. Then you went to the French Culinary Institute. You learned how to be a serious chef. You open up this banger of a Restaurant with raw food, pure food and wine everyone in New York loved. It was going really well. And then you met this. This man, this man who came into your life who was somewhat sketchy and notwithstanding your sophistication, bit by bit, he eroded your sense of self, your understanding of what was real. And before you knew it, you had lost everything. Is that a fair summation of how this thing went down?
- [124:08]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, that was an incredible summation. That was better than I can do it in a concise way. But, yeah, that's what happened. And what I've learned is that my story was an extreme version of something that happens to people a lot more than people realize. And I know this now from all the messages I've gotten in my DMs since the show came out and since it became much more public, is that this type of manipulation can happen a lot more than people realize, and it also can happen to men and women alike. And. And so part of my telling of the story is to, you know, is to really help educate people how it happened. And that was the most important part that the show on Netflix left out and that the filmmakers left out is any explanation of how this happens, which is what would allow people to help
- [124:58]
Megyn Kelly
protect themselves and which is so unsatisfying. Because what's most interesting about the story, to many of them, us, is how someone as sophisticated and well educated and successful as you would fall for this guy's lies. Yeah, that's what we all want to know, right? Because in our heads, we want to say, oh, I would never. But I mean, I have covered enough of these stories to know. Don't ever say that, because nine times out of 10, the person being targeted has a bio not unlike yours. For some reason, these kind of con men go for the sophisticated, smart types.
- [125:36]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, similar with cults. You know, they. They actually need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence because it's almost like you can't train a. You know, you need. You need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence to be able to pull off this long, slow manipulation. And, I mean, I've spoken to people who have PhDs and clinical psychology, attorneys even, who've been had their world turned upside down in a way that they never expected. And so, again, that's what I write about in my book is really taking the reader along with me through this sort of nightmarish journey about getting manipulated over time and really trying to, as honestly as I could, even in places where. Where I Felt it didn't reflect well on me to help people understand how this happens and also the psychology behind it. And that's really also what was left out of the show. Do.
- [126:37]
Megyn Kelly
Have you ever, have you ever heard the story of I'm going to mess up her. Is it Anderson? Bonita is her first name. NBC journalist who got lured in by this doctor who said he had figured out a way to do prosthetic Bonita Alexander to do prosthetic tracheas on people. And long story short, he was a big fraud and he convinced her that they were going to go and be married in Rome by the Pope even though she was divorced. And also she's a newswoman. You can't find more cynical mofos than news producers. And she got lured in and what she said at the end, Sarma is something that you, of our interview you might relate to, to which was because she's also very smart. He needed her to be smart because that's where the Jones came from. Like it wasn't going to be fun for him if she were too easy a mark.
- [127:36]
Sarma Melngailis
Yes. I mean part of what I think, part of why this can happen is because certainly, you know, whether it's my wiring or whatever it is, but I almost couldn't, it's like I couldn't fathom that somebody could be so diabolical. And also his motivation, it wasn't that clear because, you know, it's not like in the end of this, he walked away with all of this money that he took from me. He just, you know, spent it, gambled it away. That wasn't the point for him. The point for him was the thrill that he and people like this get from the takedown. You know, because I'm not a psychologist, but when you're wired a certain way and you don't have empathy and you go around in this world, it's like life is a game. And to manipulate people is I think what gives people like this arise. And so, you know, again, the bigger the takedown, the bigger the high they get, I suppose. And that's really the point of it is, is the destruction.
- [128:31]
Megyn Kelly
Well, and I want people to remember this. I want people to remember Benita again, a hard nosed NBC journalist who was doing journalism at the, you know, the toughest levels he can, who was convinced by this fraudster that the Pope was going to marry them in the Vatican, notwithstanding the fact that she was divorced and that Bill Clinton was going to go and Barack Obama was, was gonna go. And the only reason she found out it was all a lie. Is a friend at NBC was like, bonita, we checked the president's schedule. He's not going. Even the Pope's not even gonna be in Rome on the date of your wedding. Hello. And sort of the mask finally started coming off, and she started realizing she'd been totally manipulated. So the point is simply, while the lies may sound so obviously outrageous to those of us on the outside, these fraudsters build slowly to gain your trust and control over you before they really start with the huge whoppers to where, you know, you're really believing what looks like to the outside world, obvious nonsense, but when you're in it, you're so far removed from your original self, it's. It can happen. So, okay, let's talk about how it happened to you. So you're. You did the corporate stuff using your Wharton degree. And then like, everybody, you decided you hated that. You go to call culinary school. You open up this raw restaurant, and it's a hit. It's like doing really well in Manhattan. This is what, the early aughts.
- [129:57]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, it opened in 2004, and it was a beautiful restaurant. What I was so proud of is that it wasn't a restaurant for, you know, it was a raw vegan restaurant. It wasn't a restaurant for vegans. It was a restaurant for everybody. And, you know, the. The food that we. We made. Now I realize kind of how ahead of its time it was because this was 15 years ago, and it really was about clean ingredients. There were no fake meats. There was no processed food whatsoever. So, you know, and there were no, you know, 15 years ago, there were no seed oil. So it was really about showing people how incredibly good, really, truly clean, nutritionally dense food can be, not just in the restaurant, but through the brand. One Lucky Duck, where we had products that were sold through Whole Foods, and kids loved them, which meant a lot to me. So, you know, and this was my whole life's purpose. It wasn't like I just started a business and wanted to make money. This was my life's purpose, was hopefully being able to have a positive impact. And, you know, it was a beloved restaurant because people came there and there was, you know, it was very important to me that there was zero judgment. We weren't dogmatic about anything. So half the staff or more probably weren't vegan. Most of our, you know, half our customers, it wasn't like that. There was no, you know, we weren't, like, annoyingly dogmatic about it. There was no judgment whatsoever. It was just sort of showing people how good this can be. And, you know, we were doing great with it. And I had all these opportunities to expand and take it global and open in other locations, but I was running it on my own in a way, and very overwhelmed. And I now understand more about. About my psychological wiring, too, that, you know, I just. I always needed a trusted partner to help me grow the business, and I didn't have that. And I was overwhelmed and then also went through a painful breakup and was at a particularly vulnerable, vulnerable moment when this man slid into my DMs.
- [132:01]
Megyn Kelly
They can smell it. They can smell vulnerability.
- [132:04]
Sarma Melngailis
They absolutely.
- [132:05]
Megyn Kelly
They know how to explore.
- [132:06]
Sarma Melngailis
It's like a spidey sense.
- [132:07]
Megyn Kelly
Women who are down and it can go the other way, too, but it's. In this case, it's a man taking advantage of a woman. All right, so, right. You're just out of a relationship that didn't work out. You're growing your business, but that's tough. It's challenging on any individual and. But it's succeeding. And there's a little bit of this. I'm going to show some Netflix clips because it's just interesting how they documented some of the. We can see the B roll of the restaurant and so on. Let's take a look at SOT51, which is about the beginning of your career.
- [132:34]
Sarma Melngailis
My undergrad major was economics, and I feel like I got there by process of elimination. So I went to UPenn Wharton in Philadelphia. I think what happened is when I was there, it was like, what is everybody else doing? Everybody's gunning to go work in investment banking. I got hired by Bear Stearns. Somebody that I'd worked with said to me, do you really like this work? I mean, is this what you really want to do? And my first thought was, do you like it? I don't.
- [133:06]
Megyn Kelly
Do people like it?
- [133:07]
Sarma Melngailis
He sort of confronted me on that. Nobody else had really done that. He said, you seem to be interested in food. People that I worked with had subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, and I had a subscription to Gourmet magazine and Food and Wine. That might have been a clue. I wasn't going into. Into the right field. I left after a year and a half. At that time, I wasn't under any pressure to get a job financially, so I went to culinary school. I finished at the French culinary institute in 99 and then focused on working in food.
- [133:45]
Megyn Kelly
Now, I understand you don't love this clip. What is it about this that that's off?
- [133:50]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, that Clip. I didn't have any issue. Issues with. It was the, the parts that I had issues with were mostly what they left out of the series, including any explanation of the psychology of it. And. And then they misused a call at the end and they, they move. They actually.
- [134:07]
Megyn Kelly
We'll get to that.
- [134:07]
Sarma Melngailis
My words around.
- [134:09]
Megyn Kelly
So hold on. Because the audience isn't ready for that yet. Yeah, we will definitely get there. Okay, so there you are. You're making the restaurant.
- [134:15]
Valerie Borlein
The.
- [134:16]
Megyn Kelly
The documentary calls attention to the fact that Tom Brady, Giselle, Alec Baldwin came in and actually wound up hitting on you, but you weren't really in a place where you thought you could do that. This is before Hilary or at least was. Like there was some sort of a vibe going there. It was potentially an option, but didn't happen. I mean, he's got his own issues, but they're not quite as bad as the one you. The man you wound up with. So then enters the guy who is kind of the other star of the Netflix documentary, who was going by Shane Fox, but actually has a different name, Anthony. Is it Brugalis?
- [134:57]
Sarma Melngailis
No, his name. His name was Anthony Stranges. He since changed it to Anthony.
- [135:01]
Megyn Kelly
Sorry, Stranges.
- [135:02]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, he's changed it to Anthony Knight, which I always point out, just because if anybody out there comes across a dude that, a very large dude named Anthony Knight, he's. He legally charged. Changed his name, I think, to try to hide further. Yeah.
- [135:18]
Megyn Kelly
How did you meet him? What was his name when you met him?
- [135:21]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, he said his name was Shane Fox. And I met him through Alec Baldwin, through our Twitter conversations, which is part of why, you know, I write about Alec in my book and our relationship. And then how, oddly enough, I met. It was just through DMs and Twitter. Alec had just joined Twitter. And I think that this guy just got lucky enough that he, he got there early. And so Alec followed him back, which in a way gave him at least some kind of a credibility that made him a little bit more, I don't know, legit. So I wasn't quite as suspicious as I might have been otherwise. And that's something that people like this always look for is any kind of sort of validation that they can get. And how did he explain to you
- [136:05]
Megyn Kelly
that his name wasn't cheating Shane Fox?
- [136:07]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, that came out later. But, you know, he crafted this whole sort of Persona that he, you know, worked in these clandestine operations, which of course is the perfect cover if somebody's a con artist because, you know, they have an immediate excuse to not Explain anything. And so eventually, I found out his real name, but when that happened, by the time that happened, I was already ensnared. And. And also by that time, it was as if, you know, well, of course that's not my real name. Of course I have to have different identities because of what I do or whatnot. I mean, a load of crap. But at the time.
- [136:44]
Megyn Kelly
Sarma, did he love bomb you? Because usually that's what these guys do.
- [136:48]
Sarma Melngailis
Yes. In my case, it wasn't so much love bombing as it was more like validation bombing. Because what this man did, it wasn't. Wasn't that I was so in love with him or it was about some sort of romantic delusion. It was more that he knew he had clocked me as somebody where what meant the most to me in the world was this business and what I wanted it to do for the world. And. And then at the same time, he figured out what all of my weaknesses and vulnerabilities were. And so what. What people do like this, and I think cult leaders do this like, as well, is they. They present to you your goals and ideals and. And the best version of you and what you want to be ultimately, and. And then somehow attach themselves to it as if the only way to get there is through them. So I would say, in my case, it was more of, like. I don't know, it's like a validation bombing, like, sort of overwhelming me with feeling, like he recognized and understood what I wanted to do and understood all of my hopes and dreams and my frustrations, and that he would be able to remove all of those and enable me to grow my business into the business that I wanted it to be without, you know, the influence of sort of unsavory investors or because I was in a position where a lot of people wanted to come help me expand the business, but they were not the right people or they were predatory in one way or another.
- [138:15]
Megyn Kelly
Well, the restaurant industry is notoriously sketchy, and you don't know who to trust. So I can see how it would be difficult to understand. Like, is this somebody whose money I want? Is this somebody whose partnership I want?
- [138:26]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [138:27]
Megyn Kelly
Enters this guy who's charming. You didn't then know about his criminal history or what he'd done to another woman. So I get it. You're, you know, kind of willfully blind to some of these things about him. Many women go through this when they're, you know, first coupling with a man who may be the answer to their problems. But you married. Married him, which was Not a good decision. The. The Netflix documentary covers that a bit. Here's a little bit. In Sat 52, Anthony would tell me
- [139:00]
Sarma Melngailis
that that 2 million dollar debt that I'd taken on to buy the restaurant, that's like nothing. He could just take care of that and make that go away. So he would be there with me and help, you know, support me to do all the things that I wanted to do. You know, I would be protected, at least in one significant way financially. And I remember thinking that would be like some sort of dream come true. I remember asking the accountant, would he be able to just give me that money or would that be taxable and how could we do that? And he sort of jokingly, but half seriously said, well, you should just marry him and then he can give you the money without. Without it being taxable in a taxable situation. And very quickly it was like the next day we went and got the license and they have to wait 24 hours. And it was like, boom, 24 hours. We did it and got married. We got married in November of 2012. So it was close to a year that I had known him.
- [140:05]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, so you, you're married now?
- [140:07]
Jodi Arias
Yeah.
- [140:08]
Sarma Melngailis
And this was one of the parts where they edited.
- [140:11]
Megyn Kelly
They.
- [140:11]
Sarma Melngailis
I mean, there was a whole. There was two totally different parts of the interview. So it wasn't that the accountant said that and then 24 hours later, what we were married. What I had said was that he had later subsequently really pressured me and badgered me to marry him, saying that I would be protected and it would make everything easier. And it was a whole different part of the interview where I. And then I, I made the point that. So I, I finally agreed, like, fine all time, the marry you. And we went to city hall to get the license, and then 24 hours later, we were married. So this wasn't even one of the most egregious examples of where they changed the narrative, but this was. It was just one that, in a way, it made me look a bit suspect to the audience because it made it seem like I just married him for the money that I thought he had, when in reality it was later on. And he really badgered me to marry him. Him for. For other reasons.
- [141:07]
Megyn Kelly
What did you think he did for a living?
- [141:10]
Sarma Melngailis
I mean, that's a good question. I write about it in my, in the memoir, how, you know, what he did was always vague, and anytime I asked him questions, I would always get vague answers. And what he did was drop. You know, he would say things in a very word Salady way. So you get an answer, but it's not a real answer, and you're almost left to connect the dots and figure it out on your own. So I know that sounds weird, but that's kind of how he addressed every question that I had about everything. So, you know, and again, later on, what he did was almost irrelevant because, you know, he spun the delusion to such a extent that, you know, he kind of had me believing that there's, you know, parallel realities and nothing is real anyway. So, yeah, what he did was almost irrelevant.
- [142:03]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. So he kind of spun a bunch of bull and. But like, how long into the relationship did he start asking you for money? Because he definitely said he was very, very wealthy and that, you know, you were gonna be super wealthy too, but the money only ever went one way from you to him.
- [142:21]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [142:22]
Megyn Kelly
So how early on in the relationship did that start?
- [142:25]
Sarma Melngailis
It took a while before he ever asked me to for money. And the first time, it was as if it was an emergency, like some last minute thing and there would be dire consequences and he needed my help. And I. So I, you know, again, I'm the type of person where if you need my help and I can do it, I'll do it. And in retrospect, it was a way of getting me tethered because then he never paid me back and. And then, you know, he would. It was another way for him to get me. You know. What the show didn't cover adequately too, is that this took a really long time. And multiple times after I first got to know him, I thought, all right, well, this is it, you know, something feels off about this guy. And my gut was telling me something feels off about this guy. And so I'd tell myself, I'm going to cut off communication or I won't see him again. But once he borrowed that money, it was. It was like a tether. So then he would say, well, I'm going to pay you back, so let me come back and see you this weekend. Because he didn't live in New York, so he always, when he came, he was coming from out of town. Let me come back, I'll pay you back. And so I'd agree. And then he'd do whatever mind sorcery he did that somehow by the end of the weekend, I'd have loaned him more money. And over time, I just got in deeper and deeper. And he always had these ever changing stories about how he was. He had money, but he didn't have access to it or he was gonna have It. And again, it just got deeper and deeper.
- [143:57]
Megyn Kelly
When you had given him. I mean, the. The final number's a lot bigger than this, but when you realize you'd given him more than a million dollars, did the light bulb go off? Like, was there any point when the numbers got huge that you were like, what am I doing?
- [144:11]
Sarma Melngailis
The bigger the numbers got, the more terrifying the whole thing was. And again, part of what these people do is they. They weaponize fear. And so, you know, the deeper in the hole I am, the more I need him to get me out or the way that he's promising he's going to get me out of it. And so it's almost like, you know, it's a terrible analogy because I'm not a gambler, but it's like, if you think that if you just keep going, it's all. All going to be absolved and you'll get out of it if you just keep going. That's part of how they, you know, he got me trapped is I just. I mean, how. And by that point, I couldn't even explain what happened. So if I had walked away from him and gone and ran to somebody and said, look, I need help. I, you know, I'm in a bad situation. And they said, well, what's going on? What happened? I. I wouldn't even know how to explain it. And that's the part that, you know, it almost takes having been through something like this to really understand how it happens. So, again, that's, you know, why I'm writing, why I've written this book, is to try to help people understand so they can hopefully avoid it or potentially recognize if it's happening to somebody that they care about or a loved one and be able to help them sooner. Because people around me knew that something was wrong, but they didn't know what was wrong.
- [145:35]
Megyn Kelly
I'd love to believe that your book can do that and that this segment can do that. I have my doubts. I think people make their own mistakes for all sorts of deep psychological reasons. They need to pursue this terrible pattern of choices, and most people have to learn individually. It's unfortunate, but maybe, you know, we have a shot. Maybe we'll get one or two who are happening to hear us and read the book and feel differently when they get approached by. By a guy like this. Can you just put some color on how he was reeling you in? You know, like, when I talked to Bonita, she talked a lot about how this doctor was just over the top with, like, the rose petals and the gifts and she had tape of him like, my love, my love. And she thought he was this world class doctor saving lives with this, you know, brand new breakthrough technology, you know, so you could kind of see, see how, you know, any young woman would be like, this is a pretty good catch. He's hanging out with the Clintons and the Obamas. Allegedly.
- [146:34]
Sarma Melngailis
Yep.
- [146:34]
Megyn Kelly
But I, I remain somewhat mystified about what this guy had to recommend him, like how he mind wormed into your psyche.
- [146:42]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, a couple of things. One is that because I met him through Twitter Now X DMs, there was at least a month or more before I saw him in person. So he was able to sort of do a number on me before I even met him. Which was smart on his part because if I had met him, a lot of things in my intuition might have told me that he wasn't right. But by that time he'd gotten me sort of hooked on this fantasy. And what he really did was weaponize my ambitions because I really believed in my business and what we were doing for the world. And he effectively love bombed me with validation and knew what I wanted to hear and saying that he believed in me and that, you know, that my business was so important to helping the world and helping to heal people and helping to change the way people eat. And that's really what, that's really what got me and making me believe that he would help me be able to realize those dreams.
- [147:47]
Megyn Kelly
Forgive me for the psychoanalysis, but when you look back at how you were when you were a little girl, have you in retrospect been able to like explain your susceptibility to that kind of, you know, your need for that kind of outside flattery and, and, I don't know, building you up?
- [148:05]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've, I've done a lot of my own psychoanalysis to try to figure these things out. And I always tell people the most important work that you can do is this sort of this deep self reflection and looking at your childhood and whatever your specific wounds are. Because even if you grew up and had good parents who weren't, you know, abusive or cruel in any way, shape, shape or form, you know, perhaps they're, you know, emotionally unavailable in some way or you're not getting the validation you want or, you know, for whatever reason I grew up, you know, I might present a certain way, but I really was also probably deeply insecure in a lot of ways and needed that sort of validation. And then on the other side of the show, one of the things that happened on the other side of this show coming out is that people bombarded me, asking me if I'd ever had an autism diagnosis. And I thought, like, that had never occurred to me. And so I went and got an evaluation and ended up getting a diagnosis. It used to be called Asperger's, and now they call it autism one for whatever reason. But that's another thing that shed a lot of light on whatever it is about my particular wiring that makes me, you know, that sort of allows. Allows for that paradox of being objectively, reasonably intelligent, yet also unable to see certain things that other people might have seen.
- [149:29]
Megyn Kelly
Mm, right. It's almost like a social. I don't want to say handicap, but like a social struggle that when you have Asperger's, social does not come easy to you.
- [149:39]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I can again, and women, I think, are better at masking, so people don't see it as easily. You know, I can, I can go out there and talk to people, and nobody would necessarily think, oh, she has Asperger's burgers. But yet certain things, you know, I, I. Certain things, I don't clock people's intentions as well as other people might, or it takes me a little bit longer sometimes to process things, and I just walk into interactions and have a, A default setting that I trust people and that I assume that they would operate the way that I would, which is in good faith. And so I just don't. You don't see. You know, there's a thing called betrayal,
- [150:19]
Megyn Kelly
blindness, and very, very, very silly. I have to trust no one. No one's operating in good faith. No, no. I have the same deficiency in some ways, so I can understand.
- [150:28]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah. And I mean, I, It. This wasn't an isolated event. This has happened to me. There's like that saying, you know, fool me once, shame on you. But for me, it's like I have to take responsibility for the fact that this has happened to me over and over and over again. And so I really have had to do it. A lot of deep analysis on understanding the how and the why. I mean, even what happened with the, the filmmakers, I blindly trusted that they would make an accurate show and that they wouldn't have done something that was on the other side of it, such a betrayal.
- [151:03]
Megyn Kelly
But, you know, I mean, they, they do it all the time over on Netflix.
- [151:09]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah. I mean, in this case, the, the filmmakers made the show and then sold it to. To Netflix. But Netflix and their market.
- [151:15]
Megyn Kelly
Well, but Netflix has a responsibility. They're the error of it like that. They're the ones putting it out there. Like, I'm sick of this because Netflix is so many people who even I know it's a pattern. Do not believe the word documentary. When Netflix slaps it on any film, it's always going to be docudrama that I will never believe them when they say documentary ever, just given what I've seen. But let me go back to the, the fraud because near as I can tell, he was taking all this money from you and he was telling you like he needed it for an emergency. And he talked about like there being kind of like another side. There's some sort of family that sounded more like an ethereal family, not like a mob family, not like a family of origin, but like some quote family that was evaluating you and you had to pass these tests. And this was after he had ratcheted up the trust factor. He didn't just drop that on you on email 1, but eventually he got you believing that your sweet dog Leon, a pit, who you adopted, who was absolutely beautiful and very sweet and who you were in love with, that he could somehow provide immortality for for Leon. Here's SOT54 from the Netflix show.
- [152:31]
Mark Igar
What eventually happens is that Anthony promises or that that if she just followed along with the program he was suggesting, kept going along with what was instructed, he is going to make both Sarma and her dog immortal, just like Anthony is. There was some magical force in play here and he's already in this special ethereal world because he's passed through the tests into this new state of being.
- [153:01]
Sarma Melngailis
It's like some fantastical, magical future where my dog is going to live forever. And like this reality didn't really matter because it would all be reset to some sort of utopia, his happily ever after that he always referred to.
- [153:21]
Megyn Kelly
Now when people watching this say, oh, come on. Right, like that would be a bridge too far. Everyone knows there's no such thing as immortality. How do you explain that?
- [153:30]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, what I would say is that, you know, I think unless you've been through it, the effects of things like cognitive dissonance and over time, a ratcheting up level of dissociation. It's not that I believed things he told me necessarily, but they were things that you can't disprove. And so I don't, didn't not believe him. I just didn't know what to believe. And again, he, he had gotten me in so deep that I didn't see a way out. And so you start to cling to whatever Solutions and fantasy that they operate you because by this point, you're desperate. So, again, it wasn't so overt that he said, you know, Leon's going to live forever, my dog. But it was all things that he implied. And. And I think that the more afraid I got, the more I dissociated and wanted to believe that none of this was real because I was in so deep financially. I mean, the. The most painful part is that this wasn't my money. It's not like I had this money saved and he got it. That would have been, you know, for me, comparatively, that would have been great if that was the only consequence. The most painful part is that this was money that came from the business, which ended up destroying it. And. And, you know, all of these other people that were hurt through me was the most painful, grueling part of this
- [154:52]
Megyn Kelly
whole situation, because you had investors, you had employees.
- [154:56]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [154:57]
Megyn Kelly
And, yeah, you were not the only one who would go down as a result.
- [155:01]
Sarma Melngailis
And he got money out of my mother.
- [155:03]
Megyn Kelly
Your company had to close twice. Not one, but twice. One time because of all the money he stole. Then he reopened, and then it happened a second time. And that second time was the. The last time.
- [155:12]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and because he took me away. So when he took me away from the city, I mean, when I was arrested a year, almost a year later, nine months later, if you had told me that people had stepped in and the restaurant was still running, I would have. I would have been relieved. But the point is that the entire time that I was away, I never Googled what happened or, you know, whether or not the restaurant had closed or what happened after. After I left. And, you know, again, that's something I go into detail and in the. In the book so people can better understand how it happened, because eventually, as.
- [155:50]
Megyn Kelly
And by the way, we should cover this, do we believe that he was taking all those, you know, 10,000, 100,000, $14,000 checks you were sending him, and eventually your mom was sending him and just gambling it?
- [156:03]
Sarma Melngailis
I believe so, again, because I think people like him. It's not about the money. It would all make much more sense if he had been stashing the money somewhere and, you know, and then had just dumped me and gotten on a plane and, you know, traveled, left the country, but he didn't. Again, I think the point was the takedown. And in some ways, it almost feels like the point was to destroy me, to absolutely obliterate me, and to, you know, beyond just the financial side of it. But it's Almost as if he wanted me to be so utterly humiliated and broken and to have burned all of my bridges so that any chance for me to recover and come back and rebuild would be, you know, as small as possible. And I'm. I'm still trying to do that, but he made sure it would be as difficult as humanly possible.
- [156:55]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. Because not only did he destroy your business, but he destroyed your reputation.
- [157:00]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [157:00]
Megyn Kelly
And no. No investor. Investor is going to give you money. You say this in the documentary now. And employees are going to have a. A care or two about taking a job with you. Yeah, well, I mean, with your employees, though, I know you want to add something about, I guess, did you pay the employees back? Their. Their back pay?
- [157:18]
Sarma Melngailis
Yes. So I. I agreed to participate in the show. I. I said I just wanted enough money to repay my employees. So as a condition of participating, I got the amount of money that the employees were owed, which was just about 75 grand, and all of it went to them. Because that's the part that weighed on me the heaviest. Because, you know, of course, that they are not getting paid is more significant than, you know, maybe a wealthy investor being out some of their money. I mean, that weighs on me as well. But what happened with my employees weighed the heaviest. And, you know, all of those people that work there, the ones who are available, want to come back if I can reopen. You know, I'm. I'm in contact with.
- [157:58]
Megyn Kelly
So they forgave you.
- [157:59]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, because they knew. I mean, the people that worked there and the people who were longtime customers of the brand, they knew me. They knew that whatever happened, they knew something really crazy happened, but they knew that I would never, ever, ever hurt that business or the people who work there. It's the other way around. I would have sacrificed. Sacrificed myself for them and for that business. So they knew that it didn't make sense.
- [158:25]
Megyn Kelly
So then eventually, this. This. I'm still unclear even having watched the show. This guy gets you to go kind of on. On the run with him. You leave New York for 10 months, you guys are down in, like, Tennessee for some of it. By $hollywood. You changed your name. Well, not legally, but you started to go by Emma instead of Sarma. And he went. He changed his name. You covered up your tattoo that had the name of your secondary restaurant on it. So what did you think during those times? Did you think, I'm on the lamb from the law?
- [159:03]
Sarma Melngailis
No, I had no idea that I was. That, you know, I was being sought after. And at the time, I wouldn't have even. You know, of course, the what. What happened with the money was incredibly unfortunate, but I would have thought it's more of a civil matter, not criminal, because, you know, again, you think that to. To be a criminal, you have to have criminal intent. And I had the opposite of criminal intent in this situation. So I didn't think that, you know, I wasn't aware of being sought after by. By the police. But what I write about in my book and what really didn't come through is that by the time he took me away, I was so broken that there's a scene where he drives me away and I'm screaming in the car. And by scene, I mean I write about this part in the book because it's almost the last memory I have is being in the car. And when he tells me we're driving away, I was screaming my head off, which is very unlike me, but, like, almost like a wild animal just screaming. And he just let me scream. And then I wore myself out. And it's as if that was the moment when I just slid into a deep, deep level of dissociation. And from then on, was in a sort of autopilot. And so if you saw me during that time, I could function, function. I could, you know, talk to a barista at Starbucks, but it's like I wasn't there. And that's the part that, again, it's really hard to know how that might feel unless you've been through it. And so to answer the question, what was I thinking or what was I feeling? I wasn't thinking and I wasn't feeling. It's like that's what dissociation is. Your thinking and your feeling is detached. So you're just like a. Almost like a zombie on autopilot. And then the really gut wrenching part is when I get. When I finally was arrested, and I write in my book that it took getting arrested to set me free. You know, I have warm, fuzzy feelings for the detective who arrested me, who's a lovely person, and I think he could see what was going on. The prosecutors in New York, different story. But the detective who arrested me, he recognized the dynamics of what was going on. And then once I was arrested, it was the slow process of waiting, breaking back up into a level of sanity and coming back into the real world.
- [161:32]
Megyn Kelly
To me, it's like breaking a horse. Once the horse is broke, it does stop bucking. It stops trying to get out of the corral. It's a different horse.
- [161:43]
Valerie Borlein
Yeah.
- [161:44]
Sarma Melngailis
Or like the elephant that they don't realize that they've been set free. They've just been so trained to walk in this one area that they don't, or they don't realize that they could break away. You know, it is. It is like breaking an animal in that way.
- [161:58]
Megyn Kelly
So what did. What was he getting out of having you in this condition and just with him during these 10 months on the lam because you were out of money. Now, I know your mom started to get. He started to hit her up for dough, and she did it because she was so worried about you. But what was. Why keep you. In other words, afterwards, once, like, you were kind of bankrupt. And I have the same question more to get.
- [162:22]
Sarma Melngailis
Like, you would think that by that point he would have just. I mean, he could have just dumped me somewhere and he could have gotten on a plane and left the country and. And nobody would have ever probably gone after him, but he didn't. And so, you know, I don't. I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that he was, you know, when he took me away, he was then also took full control. He had access before, but he took full control of my phone, my devices, my email. So I was unaware of him using my phone to text people and using my email to reach out to people and ask for money, which is incredibly humiliating. When I eventually got back into my email, you know, nine months later, however long it was, so he was still able to get some money out of people, ball through me. And I think that in the end he realized that somehow the. The game was over. And I can't really explain this, but I think he. It's almost as if I think he might have gotten us arrested intentionally, which I know seems like it doesn't make any sense, but I. My gut tells me that that's what happened, because he said to me, either the day before or even that morning, he said to me, there's going to be one more gut shot. And I was terrified because I didn't know what he meant by that. But he. It's as if he was telling me, you're going to have to endure one more really painful thing before this is over. And then, boom, you know, we were arrested. You know, which reminds me of. Speaking of things he made me endure, there's a whole sexual abuse component of this story that they asked me about and I spoke about in my very long interviews for the. For the series, but they left it out, which felt really strange to me. I didn't understand it at first, but I think had they left it in, then, the audience would have sympathized me with to the extent that they wouldn't have able to create sort of a twisty ending and cast doubt on whether or not I was complicit.
- [164:22]
Megyn Kelly
What was the nature of the alleged abuse?
- [164:26]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, I think that you might have spoke. Spoken to people in the Nexium cult in the past on your show. And so a similar thing happened with Keith Raynery. And, you know, they create this dynamic where it's almost as if they make you believe that the sexual stuff is necessary and something that you have to endure for your own benefit. It's really twisted and hard to explain, but I. I go into sort of grotesque detail in a chapter in my book about. About what he did because, you know, I was so repulsed by this man. This is another thing that people didn't understand and that didn't come through in the stories. I was so repulsed by him. The last thing in the world I want to do is have sex with this guy.
- [165:10]
Megyn Kelly
Who, by the way, just by which point. By what point were you repulsed by.
- [165:14]
Sarma Melngailis
I mean, it happened over time, but it was reasonably at some. You know, certainly when we got married, it wasn't like we were a married couple and had having sex. By that point, I'm sure I had stopped wanting to have sex with him. And I don't. I think that happened pretty quickly. But he. You know, so eventually it was something that he started to force me to do in a really disgusting, manipulative, cruel way. And it was. You know, I mean, it was incredibly painful. But it's something that cult leaders do as well. And I think it's another. It's like another element. May I ask.
- [165:51]
Megyn Kelly
Forgive me, I haven't read the book. I only saw the documentary, so I wasn't aware of that. But what. Can you provide any color on that? Like, what. What. What was so awful about. I mean, I accept that sexual abuse is awful, but if you could just help us understand what you're talking about.
- [166:04]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, well, you know, he basically told me that I had to do things. I mean, there's a. There's a chapter in my book that goes into some gross detail about this where I come home, you know, I'm exhausted, working my ass off getting the restaurant reopened after it closed because of, you know, the actions that he put me through. And I miraculously raised money, got the restaurant reopened. I'm exhausted, and I think that he felt me pulling away a bit where maybe I sensed at that point I could get away from him. And so he needed a way to exert even more dominance over me. And so, you know, there's. He told me to bring a bottle of wine home from the restaurant one night. And I didn't know. Know why, because he didn't drink a lot and he wanted me to drink because he told me that he was going to have to force me to do stuff and it was for my own good. And, you know, he had this whole long explanation which I don't even necessarily recall, but by that point it was, you know, he had created this dynamic where I have to do what he tells me to do, otherwise there's going to be horrible consequences. You know, again, what didn't come through in the show and what people don't understand about situations like this is fear. There is so much fear that you feel like you have to do what these people tell you to do. So it's as if he. It's as if somebody said, I'm going to have to. I don't know, I feel like sometimes if you use the R word, it's screws with the tv. But it's like somebody says, I'm going to have to now sexually abuse you. And you have to let. You have to let me. And so that's, you know, that's what happened and that's what I describe in the book.
- [167:49]
Megyn Kelly
Did. Did you get a response to that allegation when you published the book from him?
- [167:55]
Sarma Melngailis
I mean, I haven't gotten any response from. I can't even imagine. He's. He's off doing what he did to me to somebody else right now. There was a show called Toxic that was on Discovery Story, hbo, that I, I ended up. I didn't want to participate at first, but I did participate once I learned that they were trying to track him down and figure out where he is to potentially hold him accountable. Because at that point we knew that he was doing this to other people. And so they do track him down and he is doing what he did to me to somebody else, and he'll continue to do that. He always.
- [168:26]
Megyn Kelly
This is post prison time. I should make clear. These are allegations. We do not have the proof of that as an independent broadcaster, either of the sexual abuse or that he's doing it to somebody else. But these are Sarmer's allegations.
- [168:41]
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- [169:38]
Megyn Kelly
been to prison because at the end of this 9, 10 month stint in Tennessee, you did get arrested. It made headlines that it was after ordering Domino's. I mean, the short form of this, as I recall, was like, she's not even a vegan. They ordered chicken wings and a pizza from Domino's. Like, she's, the whole thing is a fraud. She's a fraud. That's where your critics went with it. Yeah, well, that want to speak to the Dominoes.
- [170:01]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah. That was a tabloid narrative. And I'll point out that even the lovely detectives who arrested me, who again I feel very warmly towards, they pointed out to tabloids that were calling him that I was in a different hotel room than him. I didn't even know about the pizza. I wasn't in the same room as the pizza. And so, you know, even knowing that information, information, it's sort of too juicy a headline for tabloids to claim that, you know, this New York City vegan was arrested because of a pizza. Again, I didn't, I didn't even know that a pizza existed until a girl in jail when I was in the holding cell in Tennessee and she had seen me on a news program, she came into the holding cell after me and said, ain't you that girl that was on tv, you know, you got arrested of the pizza. And I was like, pizza? I didn't know anything about it. So again, that was just a way that the tabloids want to make a
- [170:56]
Megyn Kelly
story juicier for attention to diminish you.
- [171:00]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah.
- [171:00]
Megyn Kelly
Some of the abuse, not sexual but verbal, is captured in the Netflix film. We have some of the, the language he used over the phone with you captured in the following sound bite here. 55.
- [171:14]
Mark Igar
You know what the fucking deal is here? If I send you something, do it.
- [171:18]
Sarma Melngailis
No, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works.
- [171:20]
Megyn Kelly
I already gave you 100k.
- [171:22]
Sarma Melngailis
On top of everything else, I thought
- [171:25]
Mark Igar
you were going along with everything. Yeah, you wanted to happily ever after, and now you're talking about this stuff. It's fucking real. This isn't real. None of this is real. Those wires are. I took you in the books. I told you what was going on. I held you fucking. He. You're fucking falling apart. You're fucking coming on gluten, making all these fucking threats, telling me this and that. You're gonna go do this and you're gonna go do that, because now I fucking talk to you.
- [171:54]
Megyn Kelly
Who's threatening who?
- [171:57]
Mark Igar
Soma, I love you. I'm threatening you. If I tell you to take all your money out of the bank and light it on fire, do it.
- [172:08]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, I can. I got. I got chills. Listen. I haven't listened to that in a long time, so hearing his voice and. Yeah, I mean, I've. I've like, goosebumps right now. I. I think these people have a certain power that's really hard to understand. It's. It's. There's something about it where it's like they get you under a spell. And in my case, one. Another paradoxical element about this whole situation is that. But I kept pushing back on him, and yet he'd end up dragging me in and overpowering me over and over again.
- [172:43]
Megyn Kelly
But he was not intimidated by your pushback at all. And by the way, there's an ex wife in the documentary or whatever we're calling it on Netflix, who says he did this to her too, except she had a baby. And she claims in the film that he said to her, if you give a baby salt, it will die, and it won't be detectable in her autopsy. And she said, I never let him be alone with a baby after that. I mean, like, again, we don't know whether that is true. It's an allegation by an ex. But if so, then this guy's got a dangerous pattern here. And one might argue you should consider yourself lucky to have just escaped with debt, the loss of your business self esteem, some anger from employers and investors, and a short stint in prison. I mean, honestly, this could be the lucky outcome.
- [173:33]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, I mean, mean, there.
- [173:34]
Mark Igar
I.
- [173:34]
Sarma Melngailis
You know, I. I say this in all seriousness. There were times where I wished that he had killed me. Because when I came out of the other side of this, the consequences and everything being destroyed, I just felt like, what. What is there left for me to live for? And, yeah, and he was never held accountable for what he did to me. He spent a year in jail, and I ended up having to go serve four months after he. He was released. So he was out, free, clean slate. And I had to go in and do four months.
- [174:05]
Megyn Kelly
How does he only get a year for all of this? He stole $1.7 million minimum from you? Yeah, I mean, I saw, you know, the ultimate damages were higher than that. But, like, how does he only get a year in jail for that?
- [174:17]
Sarma Melngailis
That's a good question. You know, I was prosecuted aggressively. He was. It's almost like he was an afterthought because the prosecution focused on the business. Business loss. But there was no. He was never charged for what he did to me or to my mother. And this happened, you know, this was 2016. So I would think that perhaps if it happened now, it might be different on the other side of, for example, Keith Raynery getting prosecuted for what he did and the way he was able to manipulate people. I think maybe now it would have been different or had it been a different prosecution, prosecutor, just different circumstances. But did he.
- [174:55]
Megyn Kelly
Did he plead guilty to something or was he found guilty of anything?
- [175:00]
Sarma Melngailis
Well, he. He pled guilty. We both pled guilt. There was never any trial or anything like that. I mean, you know, I think anybody who's been through the criminal justice system knows that pleading guilty is something that people do all the time, because it's a better alternative than getting dragged through, you know, a trial that you can't. Can't afford, or the prospect of the stress of a trial and, you know, perhaps things not being admitted into evidence and you end up with even more time and not to mention not being able to afford a trial. So, you know, I ended up pleading guilty, which was really painful because however they made it look, I'm a deeply honest person. And so to stand there in court and have to plead guilty to something that I had no intention of ever doing, you know.
- [175:50]
Megyn Kelly
What did you plead guilty to?
- [175:53]
Sarma Melngailis
I've almost, like, blacked it out. But, you know, the words fraud and grand larceny were involved, and that's not me. I mean, I'm like the goody two shoes who never got in trouble in school, you know, respects authority, does the right thing. You know, my. We ran the restaurant. I had an accountant once who I was talking to about doing our. Our taxes. And he said, well, how many of your employees are on versus off the books? And I said, well, they're all on. He said, no, no, really, tell me how. How many are off. I said, no, they're all on the books. Like, we did everything by the book. That's kind of just. Just the person that I am. And so to.
- [176:30]
Megyn Kelly
Well, the thing that's strange about it is normally if you're committing larceny, you take the money and then you get a gain with it. You do something. I lost everything that will help your life for, you know, I don't know, helps you, someone you love. But what happened here was you were taking money that he was demanding and giving it to him, which he appears to have gambled away, which you do not appear to have benefited from at all. In fact, it was at great cost to you. And the things that you cared about. Yeah, like there's. They don't have some Rolex watch, right, that you. You got or some penthouse that you got. You weren't taking this money and lining your own pocket with it. You were giving it to him.
- [177:13]
Sarma Melngailis
Yeah, and even so, I mean, people know me know that kind of stuff doesn't matter to me. What mattered to me was the business and wanting to protect it. So. Yeah, I mean, he's the only one who benefited. I didn't.
- [177:29]
Megyn Kelly
That's a nightmare. I mean, this is just a nightmare. I very much feel for you. I know some people are mad at you because they don't believe that you are mind manipulated. But I believe you. I've seen this happen with enough people. I believe you.
- [177:42]
Sarma Melngailis
I really appreciate that. And, you know, I at least was lucky enough to recover enough of my communications with him that I have all the backup. You know, it's like I naively thought that with my prosecution, the more evidence they dug up and the more they were able to recover, that it would help me. They recovered a journal of mine where I was writing about what was going on. And when I was given a copy of it, I thought, okay, finally, like this exonerates me. Because surely they were. Wouldn't think that, you know, nothing logically made sense. Why would I have torched my own life? And. But, you know, that's not how the history. Yeah, he's got a long criminal record of impersonating police officers, like a very extensive criminal record. And I was completely the opposite. But I just got very unlucky with the. The prosecution in my case.
- [178:37]
Mark Igar
Mm.
- [178:39]
Megyn Kelly
So sorry to bring this up, but is Leon still alive?
- [178:45]
Sarma Melngailis
Oh, no. He passed away a year and a half ago. I was with him when it happened. And, you know, he had a long life. He was a pit bull, and he was 14 and a half when he passed away, but at least I got to be with him. And, yeah, that's him.
- [179:03]
Megyn Kelly
You gave him a lot of love. Yeah, a lot of love.
- [179:05]
Sarma Melngailis
But it was here and this apartment.
- [179:07]
Megyn Kelly
Yet yet another. I mean, obviously, no, like the deluded version of you chose to believe that maybe he could save your beloved pet forever. And of course, it's yet another lie that he told you. And so now where. Where are you and where is he? You think he's still doing this to yet another person because he's out of prison? I would imagine the Netflix film would make that a little tough for him, but who knows? Knows women do what they're going to do. And what about you? What are you now? What for you?
- [179:39]
Sarma Melngailis
Good question. I was moved back here to New York, which was what I always felt was home, to reopen the business in the same location. And then what I said before about I have to take responsibility for somebody that unfortunately makes a good target and is able to. Able to be deceived by some dishonest people. It's happened, sad to say again. And so I've been a bit reeling on how to move forward, but I still have some things in the works. And I, you know, one of the things that these people look for in a good target is somebody that won't give up and, and will keep going. And that is something about my personality, is that I will keep getting up and I will keep going and keep going, trying and believing in what I wanted to build the first time around. And so I may be able to pull it off for it to happen again. And maybe not.
- [180:36]
Megyn Kelly
If you can earn, if you personally can earn enough money to fund yourself, no one can stop you. I mean, that would be a great outcome here. Even if you have to do catering, whatever, like, do something to use your skills to earn and enough money to open something up, even if it's not in Manhattan. That could be.
- [180:57]
Sarma Melngailis
And I think, you know, another. Going forward now, my. My mission always was around food and clean eating and healthy living. But I think also on the other side of this, it's really meaningful to me to be. To have my story be as useful as possible through my book and through speaking out about what happened and this type of manipulation that, again, a lot of people don't realize that it could happen to them, and hopefully so that they might also recognize if it's happening to somebody, to a loved one or somebody that they care about and be able to intervene and help prevent somebody going through as extensive as a nightmare as this
- [181:37]
Megyn Kelly
Alec Baldwin needs to help you. Alec Baldwin should fund your restaurant.
- [181:42]
Sarma Melngailis
I don't think so.
- [181:43]
Megyn Kelly
Somebody else should control the finances. But why not? He was, like, kind of played in a early role on this. In a way. He was responsible for you meeting this guy. A lot of money.
- [181:51]
Sarma Melngailis
He met a laria at my restaurant. So, I mean, there's a weird. I ended up getting. I adopted my dog because of him. It's a. That's another story that's in the book. But there. There's a weird connection there. And it's not. You know, it's. It's a lot of things just need to go right. But for me, it's a matter of finding the right partnership and people that I can trust because, you know, it's not that I necessarily would need somebody else to oversee the money. It's that I need. I need guardrails. I need people that are trustworthy and honest and forthright and that I could work collaboratively with and move forward so that. Also. So that I'm.
- [182:29]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I think it's not. It's not for you that you need somebody to control the finances. It's that anybody who is going to be associated with the restaurant is going to want to see that it's not you Control. Controlling the finances. Yeah.
- [182:39]
Sarma Melngailis
Or that nobody could get.
- [182:40]
Megyn Kelly
Just for this. Yeah. For this next phase out. You know, maybe when you're at this for 10 years and everybody sees you're. You're good, you don't need that. But I think that's all part of rebuilding trust and telegraphing to the world that you know what happened and you acknowledge it and. But you're gonna earn back trust. I think that would be a great start. Anyway, I'm gonna text Alec Baldwin. I'm gonna tell him. But I do think he should help you. And if not, then you have yourself, then you. You'll. You're very capable, you're well educated, you have a lot of skills. I think you're. You're. You can earn money and help give yourself the next big start you need.
- [183:14]
Sarma Melngailis
I appreciate it.
- [183:14]
Megyn Kelly
I hope you do it. Thank you for telling your story. I'm sorry this happened to you.
- [183:17]
Sarma Melngailis
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
- [183:19]
Valerie Borlein
Being here.
- [183:21]
Megyn Kelly
All the best. And we'll see you again. Thank you.
- [183:23]
Sarma Melngailis
Sarma.
- [183:26]
Megyn Kelly
Wow. Unbelievable, right? Like, what a crazy story. The book again that she mentioned is called the Girl with the Duck Tattoo. And that's where Sarma aims to set the record straight by laying out what she says is the real story. One note for you. The Megyn Kelly show reached out to Anthony Strangas for comment regarding the sexual assault allegations made by Sarma. As of now, we have not received a response. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear. Why have I asked my electrician I
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Mark Igar
found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster? I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electricity electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury
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Megyn Kelly
my sweet nibbles after his untimely end.
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Mark Igar
This is very strange Angie. The one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com
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Megyn Kelly
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