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The Megyn Kelly Show
JonBenét Ramsey's Father, "Dopesick," and "Family Annihilators" - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode
04:43:59
On today's true crime mega-episode, Megyn goes into the archive and brings her deep dive into the JonBenet Ramsey case with an in-depth interview with her father John Ramsey, the look into "Dopesick" and the opioid crisis, and some of the worst of the worst criminals with a focus on "Family Annihilators."
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A
Hey, everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life, and just a warning, I'm gonna be giving my opinion on everything.
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I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun.
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The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube.
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I'm Kiana and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed.
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Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything.
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Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it
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to me because it's so easy to use.
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It's like I can't stop.
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I'm addicted.
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Start your free trial@shopify.com welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and today's mega true crime episode. We are going into the archives and bringing you a deep dive into the JonBenet Ramsey case. With her father, John Ramsey. We also have our episode about dope sick and the opioid crisis in America. This happens to be one of my favorite episodes ever. The dopesick episode. Incredible, incredible story. And the filmmaker, like, you're going to love this. As well as an episode we call Family Annihilators. You know what that is, right? Remember when Alec Murdoch was on the stand? It was one of the final questions the prosecution asked him, are you a family annihilator? He denied it. We now know of course he is and was. Well, he's not the only one. This was an intense episode on some of the worst of the worst criminals, including Chris Watts. I mean, that story is so chilling, but whenever it's on, I cannot turn away. In any event, enjoy the true crime episode mega. And we will be back tomorrow live. We'll see you then. Today on the program, we are speaking with Jon Ramsey, the father of little JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet's murder remains one of the most covered stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet despite decades of intense media attention, police investigations, and over 20,000 tips in this case, we still don't know the person or persons responsible for her death. But there are several new developments in the case, and John is here to walk us through what they are and whether he believes they could lead to finding his daughter's killer after all these years. First, a reminder of how this story began. It was Christmas night, 1996, Boulder, Colorado. The Ramsey home was decorated with holiday wreaths tied with bows. John and his now late wife, Patsy Ramsey had put six year old JonBenet to bed after returning home from a Christmas dinner with friends. When Patsy woke up early the next morning and went downstairs, she found a ransom note at the bottom of the steps. It read in part, we have your daughter in our possession. Patsy ran to JonBenet's room. She would later tell authorities, but she was nowhere to be found. Patsy called 911. Her voice was hysterical, begging for police to come as soon as possible. At the end of the call, you can hear Patsy praying and pleading, Help me, Jesus. Help me. There's a ransom note here. It's a ransom note. It says FBTC Victory. Please. Okay, what's your name? Are you.
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E
Oh my God.
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A
Please. I'm okay. I'm sending an officer over. Okay. Do you know how long she's been gone?
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E
No, I don't.
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A
Please. We just got up and she was here.
- [03:59]
E
Oh my God.
- [04:00]
A
Please. Okay, I am. Honey, please take a deep breath. Hurry, hurry. Paty. Paty. Patty. Patty. You couldn't hear it as well there, but she, she is on there saying, help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus. Oh. Hours later, their little girl's body was found in the basement of their home. Not by police, but by John, who was sent around by the detective who was there saying, go look for any belongings of hers that may be out of place. And he found his own child. JonBenet had been strangled and left for dead on a concrete floor. Police focused their investigation almost solely on John and Patsy, believing there was no way an intruder was responsible. Why? That's one of the big questions here. Why did they believe that? Because there's a lot of evidence suggesting the opposite. They believe the parents did it. Case pretty much closed in their eyes. It would take years before DNA evidence would clear them in 2008. But Patsy would never live to see that day. She died of ovarian cancer two years earlier, ten years after the death of her little six year old. Oh, so tragic. To this day, John's hope is that this case will be solved. And that hope remains in the hands of the same police department that pointed the finger at him wrongly. John Ramsey is here today. John, thank you so much for being with us.
- [05:42]
E
Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
- [05:45]
A
Oh, I've been following you for so many years, following the case and seeing so many of your interviews and you've handled it with such dignity. I appreciate the fact that here we are 25 years later and you're still, still trying to keep interest on the case and try to call attention to what you need, you think, to solve it. And there's breaking news, I should say, about the detectives involved in your case that's extraordinary. The very guy who interviewed you and Patsy, who you've been kind of complaining about, like he, he didn't follow up on leads, he didn't do this, he didn't do that. There's news about him today. You, I assume you've heard what's happened to him.
- [06:22]
E
Yes. Yeah, it, there was a, a big step forward, I think in this case because he was a roadblock. When he was assigned to this case 25, 26 years ago, he was at that time a auto theft investigator and now he's put on the investigation of a murder of a child. And I've never criticized the Boulder police for not knowing what they're doing or not having any experience. They didn't have a homicide department. But I have criticized him over the years and for the reason they would not accept help from those who offered it. And lots of help was offered right in the beginning. The Denver police offered to put two experienced homicide detectives on Boulder staff at Denver's expense for as long as they needed them. Boulder said, no, we don't need that. We've got this under control. That's been going on for 26 years and we've just kind of had it. It's time to do something different. Put some people in charge that know what they're doing and be willing to put their ego and arrogance aside and accept help.
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, the, the, the detective's name was Tom Trujillo. He was one of the lead investigators in JonBenet's case. He just received an involuntary transfer to another division where he's going to be working the midnight shift. Not, not a promotion in addition to a three day suspension. And they've basically said that he and another were not, they were not investigating, appropriately investigating several cases. They said JonBenet's case was not one of them. These are the cases that he's being accused of, you know, half assing it on were not homicide cases, but he is being accused of not doing his job and not following through on leads and so on and other significant investigations. Do you feel, you know, validated at all by that?
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E
Well, it, in a way yes, we've, we've known that he's been a problem and not really capable of thinking out of the box and, and more importantly, his arrogance, I guess, and ego prevented anybody from coming in to help. You know, our system, the way it's set up is kind of crazy, but you know, there's 18,000 police jurisdictions in this country. Each one's a little island of authority. And if crime happens on that island, it's up to the, the local police to deal with it. With the exception of a few things like Bank Robbies, nobody can come in and help them unless they're invited. And that's a real crazy system because there was tons of qualified help that could have come in, wanted to come in, but unless they were invited and asked to come in to help, they can't. And it's been a huge frustration. And that's really what I'm very critical of the police department on that issue,
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A
of course, because you see, the bigger cities tend to have a higher homicide rate and thus more experienced homicide detectives and people who know how to preserve a crime scene and you know, preserve evidence. And that's the problem. That was one of the major problems right from the get go with this, which let's take a step back now and talk and set up the crime so that people have a better feeling for what they did and didn't do and why you really kind of want this case wrested from them right now. I mean, it's been 26 years. It's kind of time. You know, there should be a statute of limitations for the police. If they haven't solved it, they should be able to be compelled to give the evidence to the family or to somebody else who might be able to have a go at it. But we'll get to that. So let's go back. Let's go back to December 26, 1996. You were living in Boulder, Colorado with Patsy, your wife, with little JonBenet who was six. You had a son to Burke at the time who was 10. And things are going well for you. You were a successful business executive. Was Patsy a stay at home wife?
- [10:34]
E
Yes. Yes, she was.
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A
Okay. She's very devoted, taking care of the children. Okay. Very devoted mom. We've seen the videos of her. She seemed like a very loving mother. And you just celebrated Christmas Day. Was it, was there anything out of the ordinary on, on that day, Christmas Day?
- [10:51]
E
No, it was a very normal day. We had gotten up early, of course, and had made a breakfast and then all day long kids were in and out of the house with their friends coming and going and playing with new toys and Very normal, very normal Christmas Day for us.
- [11:10]
A
So you went out over to a friend's house to eat Christmas evening dinner, the dinner on the 25th with the kids?
- [11:17]
E
Yes.
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A
Okay.
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C
Yeah.
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A
So you go over there and you, you go ahead.
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E
Well, I say the friends we visited have kids our age, our kids age and so that they, they were buddies and it was a logical place to have a family get together.
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A
So what time did you get home from that dinner?
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E
Well, I think if I recall it was about 9:30. JonBenet had fallen asleep on the way home and it was only maybe six blocks but she was tired, she'd been up all day and having fun and playing and, and so I carried her upstairs and, and put her on her bed and then Patsy came up and got her ready for bed and tucked her in.
- [12:01]
A
So patsy put on JonBenet's pajamas that night and this would later become an issue what she was wearing. What, what did Patsy put JonBenet in?
- [12:12]
E
I don't remember quite frankly. I'd have to look at the pictures but it was just night clothes.
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A
But my understanding, the reason I ask you John, is that I reading up in the case that there was an allegation that Patsy said she put her in a red outfit like red pj' and when she was found she was in, she was in white. Is that, is that familiar to you?
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E
Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't know but I don't know about the red nightgown. I hadn't never heard that. But when I found her she had on like a black and white pants and, and top.
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A
Okay, so Patsy puts her in bed. So probably by 10 o' clock JonBenet was in her bed.
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E
Oh yeah, yeah.
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A
And what time did you guys go to bed in Burke too?
- [13:04]
E
Even shortly after that? Probably 10:30, I guess. Yeah.
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A
And your son too?
- [13:13]
E
Yes, yeah, he went to bed immediately when we got home.
- [13:16]
A
Yeah, he's also a little guy. It's not like you have a teenager at that point who likes to stay up late.
- [13:20]
E
10 year olds, 9 years old go to bed worn out from Christmas Day as well.
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A
Okay, so everybody goes to bed by 10:30 and you, you like in our house before we go to sleep we lock all the doors, make sure the security's on, you know, all that stuff. Did you have any of that on your house?
- [13:39]
E
We had an alarm system that was in the house when we bought it and it was the type that at that time the theory Was you scare the. Everybody out of the house, including the intruder. It was just this horrible loud noise and. But we, so we didn't use it. It went off once. JonBenet about dinner time, I don't know, six months or eight months before was playing. We didn't know it, but she was punching the buttons on the alarm system and this horrible sound came up and I ran into where the control box was and I remember John Bidet looking at me like and said, this makes my ears loud. So. But we've all been there.
- [14:25]
A
Those security systems can be, they can definitely be more annoying than you know they, they ought to be when they
- [14:29]
E
go off to go off when you don't want them to. In this case, this would have given you a heart attack if it went off.
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A
So what about, what else was there? Did you, were there locks on the doors or the windows? What, what was the security setup?
- [14:39]
E
It was an old house built 1927. It, yes, there were locks on the doors and just typical window locks, but I didn't check them that night. And that's to my deep regret. We were tired and, and you know, we, we always assumed Boulder was kind of a, you know, Ozzy and Harriet flowers coming up. Quiet, safe place. And so you get complacent and I regretfully admit we are complacent.
- [15:18]
A
No, I know it, I know it. I mean I grew up in upstate New York. We never locked our doors ever. We go away for vacation for a week and not even lock the door. And yeah, there was never an incident.
- [15:28]
E
It's, you know, I've told people, I said, you know, just be aware there are bad people everywhere. Not just because you live in a nice neighborhood or don't live in south la, that you're safe. But don't be paranoid, but just be aware of that and your home should be your sanctuary. And, and that's a huge regret on my part to, to become complacent.
- [15:52]
A
Do you know if, do you know if you had locked just the doors? Of course. You say you didn't check the windows, but had you locked the doors?
- [16:01]
E
No. Well, I thought I did. Yeah. The, there was a door found open that morning, not by me but by the police. It shouldn't have been open. It's possible the kids were playing and went through it and didn't close it. I doubt it because that it was kind of in a sub basement area. They wouldn't have been going down there. But I think the killer was in the house. And we got home and. He waited until we were in bed and. And took Gemini from her room.
- [16:43]
A
It's a chilling thought. It's a chilling thought just to have him lying in wait there for. For murder. Can I ask you, too, just because before we leave the subject of security. Was there a dog? Was there any, you know, any other layers?
- [16:58]
E
John Benet had a little dog. His name was Jock. And we had taken over the neighbors before we went out to dinner because we were going to leave town the next morning and have a second Christmas with my older children. And then we had a reservation for the family on the Disney big red boat. And that was our, you know, take place, you know, right after Christmas. So we were.
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C
We.
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E
We took the dog and took him to our neighbors, and they were going to take care of him until we got home.
- [17:33]
A
Right. That's. Oh, gosh, I'm sure, like, all these things you'd like to have back, and who knows whether they would have made a difference, but, yeah, the dog. They basically say as many layers as you can put between a potential bad guy and those you love, the better.
- [17:48]
E
Yes. You know, you're most vulnerable at night when you're asleep, for sure. And it's just prudent to. To pay attention to that, regardless.
- [18:05]
A
How far away were your children's bedrooms from your bedroom?
- [18:10]
E
Well, they were. It was an old house. There were basement, ground floor, second floor, and the second floor is where the kids were. And then the upstairs attic we converted into a master bedroom. So in terms of distance, I don't know, 30ft, maybe something like that. 40ft, but also on a different level.
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C
You.
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A
Did you sleep with the doors closed to your bedrooms? Like, do you believe if you would. If.
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E
No, they were.
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C
They were open.
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D
So.
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A
Do you believe if she had yelled, you would have heard it?
- [18:47]
E
I think so, yeah. I really do. I think with virtual certainty. We're. We're. We're sure a stun gun was used, perhaps when she was asleep in her bed? Don't know that for a fact, but. But, yeah, I think if we. If she'd have screamed or.
- [19:10]
A
Or
- [19:14]
E
there been noise, we would have. We would have heard it.
- [19:16]
A
I think there were. There were marks on her face and I think her neck, too, that suggested a stun gun had been used on her. John, forgive me, because I don't know the answer to this, but what would us. What would a stun gun do to. To a person when used? I mean, would it incapacitate you for a, you know, for a time? What would it do?
- [19:34]
E
Well, apparently it does. I don't Know, but I, It. We had. We had it looked at. Police discounted that idea, and we had it looked at by a. A doctor who specializes in that kind of stuff somehow. And he said with 99 certainty, those are stun gun marks. And. But I think because we didn't hear anything, we, you know, you would think at least if this creature had come in and. And started to take Gemini from her bed, she would have screamed, and we would certainly have heard that.
- [20:14]
A
Yeah. Even if he covered her mouth, you know, you'd hear something, some sort of signs of a struggle. But if the stun gun were used, and of course, I know that you found her with duct tape on her mouth. That could have kept her quiet. All right, so let's back up. So you. So Patsy comes downstairs early. They say it was 5:52am Was that 911 call? So it was early in the morning. You say you were taking a trip, and was that your first sign that something was wrong? She finds this ransom note at the bottom of the stairs, and then what, does she come find you or what happens next?
- [20:46]
E
Well, she screamed, and it was, you know, I was getting ready to get dressed, and she screamed. I could tell from the scream it was a. Something was very, very wrong. And I ran down and. And she had this ransom note. And, you know, it was just a unbelievable thing. And we went. Or I did. I think I did it looked, check, make sure Brooke was okay, because his bedroom was on kind of the other end of the house, and he was still in bed and appeared to be asleep. So he knew he was safe. And so I, you know, I took the note and I mean, she, Patsy explained, said, hey, this is. This is a ransom little gentleman. He's gone and checked her room. And so I, I tried to grasp what was in the ransom note. It was three pages and just told Patsy to call the police, call the police, call 91 1. And of course, funny thing, we was criticized for that because the ransom note told us not to do that. Well, that's silly. Of course we did.
- [22:01]
A
Of course. Of course you're going to call the police. And you don't follow the directions of a kidnapper to not call law enforcement.
- [22:08]
E
Yeah. So that she called immediately. She was standing by the phone at that time. And then I was still trying to comprehend what the note said and what. What was going on.
- [22:21]
A
I'll get to the note in one second. I think it's worth reading so that the audience can understand how bizarre it was. Before we do that, I want to play the longer. Patsy. 911 call. Because to this day, even though you've been totally exonerated, people say, oh, the parents did it. You know how that. You know how it is, John.
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E
That'll.
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C
That'll.
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E
I just think even after the killer's
- [22:39]
A
arrested and convicted, of course, percentage DNA has exonerated you. So it's like. Okay, but I, as a mother, you hear Patsy Ramsey in this 911 call, and you can hear the sheer panic in her voice. And especially if you listen to the longer version, which I'll play Here, it's sound by 2.
- [23:00]
B
911 emergency.
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E
Police.
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A
What's going on? By 5 15th Street. What's going on there? Ma', am, we are kidnapping. All right, please explain to me what's going on. Okay, There's a note left in.
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E
Our daughter's gone.
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A
A note was left in. Your daughter is gone. How old is your daughter?
- [23:17]
B
Six years old.
- [23:18]
A
She's gone. Six years old. How long ago was it? I don't know. I put it on the note and my daughter's. They. Who took her? What does it say? Who killed her? I don't know. There's a ransom note here. It's a ransom note. It says, SBTC Victory, Please. Okay, what's your name? Are you.
- [23:48]
E
Oh, my God. Please.
- [23:51]
A
Okay, I'm sending an officer over. Okay. Do you know how long she's been gone?
- [23:54]
E
No, I don't.
- [23:56]
A
Please. We just got out and she was here.
- [23:58]
E
Oh, my God.
- [23:59]
A
She. Please. Okay, I am. Honey, please take a deep breath. Py. Kathy. Py. That's where she says, help me, Jesus. She's in a sheer panic. You were there. She. All she knew at that point was JonBenet was missing because she wasn't in her bed. And you can feel. You must have been feeling the same, John. Just the slow reveal of. Wait. A ransom note. And wait, she's actually not in her room. What on earth is going on here?
- [24:41]
E
Well, we didn't know. We knew. She. According. We. We believed what the note said, that she. They have our daughter and we were not to call the police, and if we did, she would be beheaded. And it was dark, it was cold out. It was a horrible feeling. I tell people it's like when if you're with your child and you're at a department store, grocery store, and you look around and the child's gone, you have this instinctive, just horrible feeling in your stomach that you know, where's my child? And it's a terrible feeling. And I think all parents have experienced that from Time to time, when their little ones gone out of sight, you don't know where they are. And that was the feeling we had. And, you know, it went on for. Till, I don't know, one in the afternoon.
- [25:37]
A
And then an even worse feeling came. See, we've all had that. We've all had that. In the moment of relief when you find your child, well, it's overwhelming. And you kept waiting, kept waiting for that, for that to happen. And you can hear Patsy, you know, waiting for it with the. With the 911 operator and doing the only thing you can do at that point, which is pray to Jesus. Just pray, pray, pray, pray. It's not as you think it is. The note. The note is one of the most important and bizarre things of this whole case. The handwritten note, which for our listening audience, we've put on the screen and it's. You can see it on YouTube. It's handwritten. It's three pages long, as you point out. And I'm going to read it just so the audience understands what you guys read. It was addressed to you. You John Ramsey, right? Dear Mr. Ramsey. And then it reads as follows. Listen carefully, exclamation point. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We do respect your business spelled wrong, but not the country it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession. Spelled wrong. She is safe and unharmed. And if you want to see her, if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter. You will withdraw $118,000 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills. The remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank. When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting, so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence a earlier delivery pickup of your daughter. Another grammatical error. Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you, so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, et cetera, will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us, but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart towards us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow a brain, John. You are not the only fat cat around. So don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us, John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now, John. Victory. Exclamation point. Sbtc. Absolutely bizarre when you read that. Other than the obvious, was there anything, you know, I've had a chance to read it and reread it. What jumped out at you?
- [28:58]
E
Well, there's several things that you wonder, what did that mean to the killer? One was the amount of the ransom money request. 118, 000. Why not a million? Why not, you know, a hundred thousand, whatever. Why 118? That has some had some significance to the killer. And then the other of course was the, the, the beheading concept. You know, that's, that's very un. You don't think about that as a, as a, as a punishment or penalty. But yet that's a very common thing nowadays. We read about some of the terrorists and stuff that goes oh, so you wonder, well are they, is it really a terrorist group or terrorist individuals and that's a common threat they can make. And then of course the final thing was sbtc, what does that mean? Victory. That's sign off. So those are kind of the three elements in my mind that just didn't make sense. And the 118,000 was happened to be my annual bonus that year and I was paid in January of 1996. And that is somewhat of a logical where that number came from. They would have had to known that. But the rest of it just didn't make sense. It was a bizarre note. I mean I've been told too that in a way it's gift because I've been told by handwriting experts that with that long of a sample, three pages, if we had the handwriting of the killer, it'd be very easy to conclusively say this person wrote this note. It's a big sample of their handwriting.
- [30:57]
A
What did the handwriting analysts say could be gleaned about the Writing. Could they, could they tell anything about age, gender, psychological state, any of that?
- [31:07]
E
Well, we didn't get that from the handwriting people. Typically, they, they just tell us, told us what, what their findings were. And they, they ran rank their findings on a scale of one to five, one is absolutely, this person wrote it. When they're doing comparison. A five is absolutely no way. And I was a one. They, they said, absolutely, you did not write it past. He was a four and a half. And you say, well, why four and a half? And it's just there I was told that there's, depending on who you're taught to write, what generation, there are certain things that are kind of common, but they're not significant and they're not a lot of them. So the police were told, hey, you guys better look somewhere else because we don't see the, that either parent wrote the note.
- [32:00]
A
Wait, but wait, wait, back up, because I thought you said one means you wrote it. Five means no way is it, is it the, and that you, then you just said that you were a one suggesting.
- [32:10]
E
Oh, no, I was five. Sorry. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you were five. Patsy was.
- [32:15]
A
And Patsy was a four and a half. Okay, so you were both on exactly the scale of you didn't write it or there's virtually no chance that you wrote it.
- [32:23]
E
Right? Yes.
- [32:24]
A
Okay, got it. So what about, what about since then, the psychologist, the psychiatrists, I'm sure you've had people like that, FBI profilers who have read it and were they able to glean any sort of a profile from it?
- [32:38]
E
Yeah, John Douglas, who started the whole FBI profiling program and is pretty, pretty much considered the top of the heap as far as that skill set and, and accomplishments. We spent a couple, three days with him early on because our attorneys asked him to, to spend some time with us. And, but his conclusion was, and prediction is it's a young person fascinated by movies, you know, probably in his 20s, maybe early 30s. And he said, this was not about JonBenet, this was directed at you to hurt you. John, Somebody is either extremely angry with you or extremely jealous of you, and this was done to hurt you. And I thought, well, I, I couldn't possibly know anybody that I've made angry that to that degree. And he said, you may not even know who they are. They've either observed you in the newspaper or, you know, whatever and developed this either anger, angry anger or jealousy at me. That was John's conclusion. And I, I, I think he's right. Now, Lou Smith, who was the legendary detective from Colorado out of retirement to put up to, and was put on this case by the district attorney early on. And Lou felt it was a kidnapping gone wrong. And I always thought, well, those are two opposite theories. And Lou is a legendary detective in Colorado. And somebody pointed out to me recently that, well, that could be. Those two are not incompatible, those two theories. I thought, well, you're right, they're not.
- [34:26]
A
Yeah. So, yeah, that's somebody who wanted to hurt you, went in there to kidnap your. Your child.
- [34:31]
E
Right. And that. That thought hadn't occurred to me in a good while because I thought, well, here you got two top experts saying two giving me two different theories. But they're. They're. They're compatible.
- [34:44]
A
Yeah, they're compatible. But what about. I mean, the thing about just random intruder coming in. That doesn't make sense. If you look at the note is how do they know? Are you. You are from Atlanta originally. No. Like, you are from the south. The 118,000. How would they know your bonus? I mean, it has to be somebody who. And I realize there's a chance they just randomly picked the number that was your bonus, but it seems like a small chance. Seems much more likely if somebody worked at your company or had reason to know that that was your number.
- [35:11]
E
Well, two ways, I guess they could have known that, you know, they worked in our company, that that amount was on my paycheck. Stubborn since the previous January as a. As a deferred compensation bonus. So those, you know, we weren't real careful with that kind of stuff in our house. We could have been tucked in a drawer or somebody that knew that from some connection inside of our company. I. To me, that's the logical explanation. The only other explanation I heard was Psalm 118 is right in the middle of the middle of the Bible. It references the stone. Stone becomes the cornerstone, you know, is one of the passages. And, you know, could that be the sptc? And it's. That's possible as well. One of the suspects that we are interested in signed his high school yearbook. Stone becomes his cornerstone. So, Whoa. It's a very bizarre note. And.
- [36:25]
A
And what did they say, John? What did they say about. And I want to know, like, did they go and speak to everybody at your company? Did they? I mean, that'd be, like, the first place I would start as a detective. Right? Like, somebody knows what he made. Somebody doesn't like him. They've made that clear. They know where his roots are. They know you're from the South. So let's talk to Everybody from the company.
- [36:47]
E
Well, that kind of stuff just wasn't done. They should have done a neighborhood survey that morning, gone around the houses to the neighborhood and you know, if you see anything unusual, what have you, you know, they didn't do any of that. So they basically, in fact, the detective, the only detective so called that was there that morning concluded that I was the killer because, quote, she saw it in my eyes. And that became the conclusion before they even looked at evidence or investigated anything.
- [37:18]
A
And this is Linda Arndt.
- [37:20]
E
Yeah. And just, we were just dealing with incompetence and.
- [37:27]
A
Well, in Linda's case, not just incompetence, but maybe a desire to cover up her incompetence because she. Isn't she the one who said search the house after seven hours of sitting there and she, she didn't search the house. The foot patrolman who got there, per the 911 call earlier, he didn't search the house adequately. She didn't do it. And that's the reason you, you were put in the position of finding your own little girl.
- [37:51]
E
Well, that's exactly right. In fact, to show you what kind of environment she was working in, the chief of police said we didn't treat this as a crime scene because it was a kidnapping. And you shake your head and think, where do these people come from?
- [38:08]
A
Horrifying. I mean, just because at that point they didn't know that it was a homicide. You got a six year old girl who's been taken from her bed in the middle of the night. That's a five alarm fire.
- [38:18]
E
Yeah, exactly. If that's not a crime, I don't know what it is. But that was the quote. But because I have, I could give you a dozen quotes that were just astounding from the police department over the years, but that was really the first one that was just unbelievable.
- [38:36]
A
What about the misspellings and the improper grammar and the use of the word attache, which is not really a thing we say in America. It can mean either, you know, diplomatic assistant or it can mean bag in the way they're using it here. But it's a bizarre. They said that we're a small foreign faction just for people who think, you know, forgive me again for raising your son. He, he too was ruled out, as I understand it, by the DNA in 2008. But this is not the writing of a nine year old. We're a small foreign faction. Like, like people. You got to use your head. But anyway, these misspellings and the improper grammar throughout tells us something could be Used intentionally. But this doesn't sound like a very well educated person.
- [39:20]
E
No. I got a letter. We had a lot of people trying to help. And I got a letter from a teacher of. She taught English to non. Non English speaking people. And she said the misspellings in this are typical of a Hispanic person migrating to English based on her experience teaching them to read and write English and speak English. And I thought was pretty interesting and possibly could explain that. And you know, we were a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and. Or at that time just Lockheed. You know, I take that. Let's see. Well, anyway, Lockheed Martin bought Lockheed some time in there. But we had. They required us to put a sign on the front of our building which is. Was downtown Boulder, a Lockheed Martin corporation. And at the time I thought that's like waving. Waving a red flag in front of a bull. Boulder's an ultra liberal place. And to put a. I'm sure in their minds a manufacturer of weapons sign in downtown Boulder was. Was just inviting trouble. It made me nervous, frankly, to do that at the time.
- [40:43]
A
Right. And they reference your company. We, we. Yeah, we do respect your business spelled wrong. Spelled B U S S I, A double S S I N E S S. But not the country that it serves. So interesting. They. They clearly.
- [40:56]
E
Yeah, they.
- [40:57]
A
They're referencing something about what you do.
- [41:01]
E
Yeah, that, that was bizarre as well. And if you and I start, you know, I, of course trying to think who this possibly could have been. And, and I wondered at times where this was a kind of a amateur terrorist group or person that fantasized some things. And
- [41:23]
A
you know, you got to consider everything. I mean, the guy, you know, the Unabomber, he used to write about himself as we and suggest it was some sort of international thing. Like he wanted to make himself sound bigger and more important than just an eye. And this guy slips into the first person later in the ransom note. But yeah, there's. It wouldn't be unusual for an individual to try to make themselves sound bigger, more nefarious in this way.
- [41:48]
E
Very true. No, I, you know, I really do subscribe to John Douglas's theory that this was somebody that wanted to hurt me. And that's. That's a tough burden to carry. But frankly, John said you may not even know him. You know, we'd been in the paper a few weeks before, having hit a, for us, a significant sales goal. And our marketing people wanted to put it in the paper. And I sort of had this gut feeling that that's not really a good idea. But I wanted our People to be proud of their company. And. And so we did it. And that could have targeted me because I was. Had a picture of me in quotes and stuff in the paper. That could have been a.
- [42:37]
A
You never know how you're affecting a sick mind. Who's going to transfer on you. Who knows?
- [42:43]
E
Yeah, that's. That's the problem. We had people, you know, we. We hired two detectives to. To work this early on because we knew the police weren't capable of it. And in fact we tried very hard early days to get the case moved somewhere else to another jurisdiction. They could have put it in the sheriff's department's office, which is a competent organization it was at the time and had dual authority over. We could have very easily had a sheriff's officer come to our home that morning instead of the city police department. And that that was a tragic first mistake. I guess that that's or luck of the draw that that's what happened. So you know, Just wasn't ever properly handled and to this day is still not properly handled well.
- [43:37]
A
And the theory that it's someone who didn't like you because of course the, the other theory is that it's some pedophile. Right. That's what a lot.
- [43:43]
E
Well, those are the two conflicting and I thought the time conflicting theories between John Douglas and. And Lou Smith.
- [43:53]
A
But I thought we were talking about someone who knew you versus random intruder. But random intruder doesn't necessarily mean pedophile there to get your little girl. Right. Because that's, that's one of the questions in the case about whether she was the victim of a. Of somebody who was a pedophile or whether it was somebody who just hurt her. Right. Because it was unclear. Forgive me for the details, John, but it was unclear whether she was sexually penetrated by a. By a man.
- [44:22]
E
Well, I. First of all, this was not a random intruder. This is somebody who had watched us, was, has. Knew what our patterns were. You know, knew we were going to be out that evening, left the note on the back stairway, which is the stairway we always use, which but would not have been obvious to somebody that came into the house. We had a front stairway, but we never used that. It was just. And so why did they leave the ransom on the back stairway? How do they know that's where we would be coming down in the morning? So it would have. I mean there's some elements where somebody could have come into our home. It was not a hard home to break into and regret to say and really understood where things were and. Or they could have been in the house for hours before we got home.
- [45:17]
A
But are we sure that. Are we sure that the person that says sexual gratification was a goal of the killer?
- [45:24]
E
I don't know. I think, you know, there's another case seven months later that happened in the neighborhood.
- [45:32]
A
Yes, I know about Amy, and I want to talk to you about Amy. Forgive me for interrupting you, because I want to go down this line, but I want to give us the proper time. And I gotta squeeze in a quick commercial break. So let me pause you right there, John Ramsey, and we'll come right back. So much more to discuss. It's an honor to have you here. I know it's not easy to discuss. Even 26 years later, even just losing any loved one is tough to discuss. And certainly under these circumstances, even harder. Stand by, John. A couple things we're gonna discuss when John comes back on in a minute, and that is on the ransom note. Do the police believe it was written before or after the murder? That's one of the big questions, because I know the police had said originally not even a serial killer would have the steadiness to write a note like this after a murder. So what do they think? And by the way, a draft of this had been found. He had started. The killer had started by. On a legal pad that was found in the Ramsey house by saying, Dear Mr. And Mrs. Ramsey, and then started over, addressing it just to Mr. Ramsey. And then you heard what followed. So there are a lot of questions still about this note and what can be gleaned from it. Before we get to all that, I'm going to play you Patsy Ramsey's describing of the ransom Note in a 1997 interview with CNN.
- [46:48]
E
I didn't.
- [46:50]
A
I couldn't read the whole thing. I just gotten up. We were on our. It was the day after Christmas, and we were going to go visiting. And it was quite early in the
- [47:03]
E
morning, and I had gotten dressed and
- [47:07]
A
was on my way to the kitchen to make some coffee. And we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas, and I always come down that staircase, and I'm usually the first one down. And the note was lying across the three pages, across the run of one of the stair treads. And it was kind of dimly lit. It was very early in the morning. And I started to read it, and
- [47:48]
E
it was addressed to john.
- [47:50]
A
It said, Mr. Randy, and it said, we have your daughter. And I. You know, it just was. It just wasn't registering. And I. I may have gotten through another sentence. Like I Can't we have your daughter and I. I don't know if I got any further than that. And that's when she called 911. The whole thing is just. I mean, what was on the note? Were there fingerprints? Was there touch DNA of any kind? John Ramsey's been saying, even if you didn't find fingerprints, there might have been DNA. Even if the person had worn gloves, there might have been DNA on that letter. Has it been tested? If not, why not? Apparently, there are several crime scene items that have not been tested for DNA. Even in 2022, when touch DNA is out there, DNA has evolved so much. We're gonna discuss all of that with John, plus the neighbor, Amy, a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a man in her bedroom in the middle of the night just months after JonBenet. Wait until you hear what the police did in that case.
- [49:08]
E
UnitedHealth Group is bringing in home treatment directly to patients, closing care gaps, identifying risks earlier, and improving patient outcomes. In 2025, patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more@unitedhealthgroup.com Commitment hey, everyone, it's me,
- [49:24]
A
Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life, and just a warning, I'm gonna be giving my opinion on everything.
- [49:34]
B
I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun.
- [49:37]
A
The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube. So, John, on the subject of the. The ransom note before we leave, that there had been a draft addressed to both of you, then the final was just you. It was written on a legal pad found in your home. And that's the question. Whether was it. Were there any fingerprints? Has it been tested for DNA? Do you know where it came from in the house? And was that area tested for fingerprints, et cetera, at the time?
- [50:12]
E
I don't know. I think the. My feeling was that the forensics people that came in did a pretty good job in finding a palm print that was unidentified, Footprints that don't match any shoes of ours in the house, things like that. But whether this stuff was ever tested or not, I don't know. We know there's five or six, maybe seven items that were originally taken from the crime scene, sent to an outside lab for testing, along with others, and five or six of those items were not tested. They were returned to the police. I don't know why either. The police didn't want to pay for it. Because back then it was expensive to do DNA testing, but we know there's five or six items that have never been tested. And so what else was. I do know that the, the forensic people spent about the detectives spent a couple hours in the house and then told the D.A. well we're finished. And he said you can't be finished, get back in there. So they took a very cursory look at it and then were ordered back in by the da. A forensics investigator experience when told me they'll spend three days on a murder site looking for evidence, not two hours. So
- [51:37]
A
God only knows what was compromised. And I know Linda Arndt, the detective also didn't secure the scene. She let your friends come over and come into the house. She sent you to look around as we discussed. And then after you found JonBenet, as I understand it, she actually moved JonBenet's body again from one spot to closer by the Christmas tree. Which just should never be done when you're dealing with a homicide victim.
- [52:00]
E
Right? No, I, I, yeah, she just was way in over her head and you know, I was criticized for disturbing the crime scene when I found John Bay by picking her up and holding her. And what parent wouldn't do that? It's just insane to be to that kind of level of misunderstanding of a parent's love for a child.
- [52:26]
A
No, it's not possible not to pick up your child and hold her and at that point you didn't know whether she was gone. Can we spend a minute on that? Because we talked about how Linda said okay, search the house. It's one o' clock now in the afternoon. No one's called, you know, no kidnapper. And I understand the note said, well, I'll call tomorrow. So it was unclear whether they meant the 26th or the 27th.
- [52:47]
E
Right.
- [52:49]
A
You're sitting there and you're waiting and nothing's happening. And now it's one o' clock in the afternoon. She says go look around the house. And the, the people who, who want to say, oh, you know, look at John. One of the things they say is oh, he went right to the room, he went to the basement and he went right to, there's a storage room off the basement where she was found. Is that true? Like what did, what did you do after Linda said go search the house?
- [53:10]
E
Well, we, I, a friend of mine that was there to help console us, we, she said for both of us to go search the house. And so we went to the basement which to me was a logical place to start Third floor. You couldn't get into the third floor from outside. So we went to the basement and went into what we called the train room, where the kids had a train set up. And there was an open window and a suitcase propped up under the window as if it were to be a step. And I told my friend, I said, that suitcase should not be there. That's way out of place. We wouldn't have put it there. And so we. Then I went into the. The only other room in that basement was this. We called it a wine cellar, but it was an old coal cellar. Dark, one door going into it, no entrances from the outside. And I opened the door and of course, immediately found Jominnet. And, you know, I don't. We heard Linda say on the media or on an interview that, well, I told him to go from top to bottom and he started out in the bottom. Why'd he do that? This just was logical to me. But, Yeah, you remember that moment.
- [54:39]
A
I mean, do you remember. Was it. Did it switch from concern to panic? You know, do you. Do you remember emotionally what it was a switch from.
- [54:47]
E
From panic? And. And it was a relief. Thank God I found my child. And that was the immediate feeling that I'd found her. I. She's safe. And. But it fairly quickly concluded that she wasn't all right. And so I just picked her up and carried her screaming. Actually, I was screaming to upstairs to take her to help. I mean, I don't know, it's just a. Instinctive reaction, I guess, but. And we laid her down on the floor of the living room in front of the Christmas tree. And Linda Art had looked for a pulse and looked up at me and said, no, she's. She's gone. And I guess it was that moment when she saw in my eyes that I was a killer. So. And then we were ushered out of the house pretty quickly and we never went back in that home. That was the last time we were in that home.
- [56:04]
A
Can I ask you. Because I know that one of the things that JonBenet was wearing was her cross, her cross necklace. And according to what I read, and, and we heard Patsy praying to Jesus, you know, to help her, help her. And I wondered if you were a family of faith and if you know what this did to that, right. If you were able to carry that on.
- [56:27]
E
Well, that's. That's a good question. And I really had to face that issue when my oldest daughter was killed in a car accident about four years before. And the first words that came out of my mouth Was, there is no God. There is no God. How could, how could a loving God let this happen to a beautiful young child? She was 20, 21. But it really forced me to, to think about my faith. And I spent. I had a friend came alongside of me and said, I'm going to help you study the Bible. And, and he was a real mentor to me and that struggle to, to understand why, why this would happen. You know, I, I was a Christian. I had joined the club. You know, if you're in the club, you shouldn't be subject to, to harm or tragedy. And of course, that's not at all what the Bible says. You're going to get persecuted. But I struggled with that for, really, for three or four years. You know, is there an afterlife? Will I see Beth, my oldest daughter, again? I was. It was tough for three or four years and. But I'd kind of wrestled that down to, yeah, there's, there is more to life than just what we see here. And, and so when we lost JonBenet, I didn't have to, I didn't have to go through that struggle. You know, I'd already been through. Why did God let this happen? So it was, it was my face. Faith was not challenged when John Bonet was killed, only because I'd gone through that challenge when I lost my oldest daughter.
- [58:08]
A
Then, then you go through the added pain of being not outright accused by the authorities, but pretty close. I mean, the D.A. earlier, before Mary Lacy, the D.A. said they didn't do it. The DNA rules them out. Four months after JonBenet died, the D.A. alex Hunter, said, patsy and John are the focus. They're the focus. Opened up a grand jury proceeding and the grand jury came back and said, don't see anything that you're going to be able to pursue as a, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt. The D A ultimately had to admit that. But, I mean, you're going through being accused. And then on top of all that, John, you've got the media coverage, right, which basically tried to make JonBenet and Patsy into this bizarre daughter mother team. You know, she was exploited. She was sexualized. The, the beauty pageant videos on Endless Loop. On Endless Loop. So talk about that for a bit and what that was like for you.
- [59:07]
E
Well, you know, the media, of course, jumped on it, but they were being fed information that was misleading, wrong. And we were told by Mary Lacey several years after she got into her position as the 2 DA she said that was the police strategy that was defined to them by someone. Whether it was the FBI or some wacko psychologist put intense pressure on the family. We know it's one of the two. They're in the house. Either the father killed her or the mother did. One of them will confess eventually if we put enough pressure on them. And Mary Lacey, the DA said that was their strategy to solve the case. And so they released a lot of information, misleading information, incorrect information to the media. And of course, the media ran with it. And we were quickly convicted in the court of public opinion. We didn't know that's exactly what was happening, but it was confirmed by the D A. And the problem for the police was they did a great job of convicting us in the court of public opinion with the assistance of the media, but they couldn't, they couldn't charge us. We would have. It had been a bloodbath for them in a court because they had. The evidence was quite contradictory to that as they got into looking at the evidence because they'd made their conclusion believe on the day or the day after of JonBenet's murder and then went about, let's find the evidence to prove it. Well, the evidence they were finding was contradictory to that conclusion. And that became a problem for him because, you know, the media and the public was, you know, screaming, hey, you arrest them. Can, you know, charge them? And they, they couldn't.
- [60:54]
A
Well, and meanwhile, in the interviews, you. You held firm. I mean, Patsy, they got all up in her grill. And when I watch her, because I, I've spent a lot of time with this guy's name is Phil Houston. He. He invented the CIA's deception detection technique that they still use today. It was there, it's 25 years. All sorts of ways you can tell somebody's lying. And they're pretty foolproof if you know how to apply them. And one of the things is just sort of no B.S. you don't, you don't do convincing behavior. You're just hardcore. No, no, you know, stop. Like, I mean, I'm sure if I showed him the Patsy Ramsey tapes with the cops, he'd be like, why did they waste so much time with her? Right? Like, it was pretty obvious. And I'll just show some to the audience a clip. This is from 1998 to two years later, police interview with Patsy. They're telling her falsely that they have trace evidence linking her or you to the murder. I would be suggesting, if I, if I had that, how would you react? Here it is 5.
- [61:53]
E
If I told you right now that we have trace evidence that appears to link you to the death of JonBenet.
- [62:01]
B
What would you tell me?
- [62:04]
A
Totally impossible.
- [62:10]
E
How is it impossible? Test.
- [62:11]
A
I did not kill my child. I didn't have a thing to do with it.
- [62:21]
E
And I'm not talking, you know, somebody's guess or some rumor or some story.
- [62:26]
A
I don't care what you're talking about.
- [62:28]
E
I'm talking about scientific evidence.
- [62:31]
A
I don't give a flying flip how scientific it is. Go back to the damn drawing board. I didn't do it. John Ramsey didn't do it. And we didn't have a clue of
- [62:42]
E
anybody who did do it.
- [62:45]
A
My life has been hell from that day forward and I want nothing more than to find out who is responsible for this.
- [62:55]
B
Okay?
- [62:56]
A
I mean, I want to work with you, not against you. Okay? This child was most precious thing in my life. And I can't stand the thought thinking that somebody's out here walking on the street. God knows they might do it again to some other child. You know, quit screwing around, asking me about things that are ridiculous, and let's find the person that did this. Wow. The frustration, it's palpable because it's like, as she's points out, he could be hurting other children, right?
- [63:34]
E
Yes, and probably did. There's a high probability, I'm told, that that creature kind of creature doesn't just stop with one, maybe has done it before.
- [63:46]
A
The. This is right around the time where Lou Smith walked out. The, the detective, the retired detective who they brought in because they couldn't solve the case. And he solved every single case he ever worked on except for this one. They brought him in, take fresh eyes. What do you think? And Lou took his fresh eyes, looked at everything and said they didn't do it. This is not. Patsy and Ramsey are. That's the wrong tree to bark up. And they didn't listen to him to the point where he quit. He called this a travesty and said they were trying to railroad you. It's crazy, John, that that wasn't the end of the story. It would take another 10 years for Mary Lacey to get that DNA test and say, just stop. Stop with the obsessive focus on the Ramses.
- [64:32]
E
Now, that's true. Lou told me, you know, after he resigned and we were able to talk to him freely, that he'd looked at the case for several months and all the evidence and said, no, please, please, you go in the wrong direction. So he said he went to their war room where they were strategizing this assault and said, you know, you guys have looked at this case longer than I have. But, you know, I've looked at it and if you ever thought maybe you're going the wrong direction. And he said it was like pouring a bucket of water on the, on the participants. They wouldn't talk to him after that. They banned him from their war room and just wouldn't listen. And that's what he said. I'm not going to be part of persecuting an innocent person and resign and continue to work on the case for the rest of his life, which I was very grateful for. And he was an amazing fellow.
- [65:27]
A
Well, on the, on, I think it was a 60 Minutes Australia piece. I watched. They had old tapes of him and he was. He went to the crime scene, to your old house, and he went to that window that was broken in your basement. Because one of the theories was nobody got in through that window. That was a window you had broken not long before because you had locked yourself out of the house and you were trying to get in.
- [65:51]
E
That's true, yeah.
- [65:53]
B
So.
- [65:53]
A
So people were saying, no. Somebody said only a midget could get through, little person could get through that window. That wasn't it. This is back on. It had to be one of the mother, the mother of the father. And he goes right through it. The video shows him going right through it. Was that something, by the way? I meant to ask you, did you go through it to when you had locked yourself out? Have you gone through that window to get in?
- [66:14]
E
Yes, I had.
- [66:15]
A
Yeah.
- [66:15]
E
So of course you could lock myself out one, I don't know, one day and nobody was home. And so that was the way I got into the house so I could unlock the door. I didn't have a key. You know, the person that said, no, that, no, it's impossible for someone to get through that window was the detective investigating the case. It was purely misleading, purely false information, but it biased everybody in the public, the media, towards us once more, that was the whole strategy. And so that was confirmed by the district attorney to us that that was, that was her whole strategy. And she also said their only evidence that they would present, and it's really not evidence that led them to think that we were guilty, was we did not act right that morning.
- [67:04]
A
And that's, that's the allegation was that Patsy was distraught, but that you didn't cry. And one of the cops on the scene said, I never saw them console each other and I, in my presence, I never saw them hold one another.
- [67:18]
E
Yeah, well, look, they've watched too much crime scenes, movie or TV I think when I lost my first daughter Beth, I got a phone call from my brother and he said, john, Beth is gone, she's killed. And I, there's nothing I could do. I couldn't get her to the best doctors. I couldn't rush to her side. It was over that morning with JonBenet. It wasn't over yet. I could get her back if I kept my wish about me and focused on getting her back to whatever I could possibly do. I didn't. I was focused on getting her back and I felt I could get her back and arrange for the ransom money to be available almost immediately. One of the, again, this Linda and I think wrote in her report that John was observed casually going through the mail that morning. There was a mail drop and where the mail came through the house, through the front door and I was going through, I was looking for another possible communication from the kidnapper. The police should have been doing that. I was not casually going through the mail. But that was her interpretation of that. Again, biased perspective by someone who has never been in that situation to evaluate whether somebody's acting right or not. So that was my focus. You know, Patsy was, was rough, she was in bad shape. She had a bowl in front of her in case she threw up. But I was focused 100 on whatever I could do to get Jomin back. That was my job.
- [69:02]
A
Can we talk about two things we've touched on the Mary Lacey exoneration of 2008 based on DNA. DNA came along. Thank God they did get some DNA and preserve it back in 96. DNA's come leaps and bounds since then and it had to some extent by 2008. So she said, we've tested it and we've identified the perpetrator as one, possibly two unidentified males. So nothing, no hit in the database. But they could tell it was a male and they could tell it was one, possibly two. That's when she said it's not the Ramses. Can I just say for the record, did that include Burke?
- [69:40]
E
Yeah, it did. Burke was exonerated early on. He had to be interviewed by the child psychologists that were associated with the police department. They said absolutely no way. Burke was not involved in this. He was a 9 year old, 60 pound child.
- [69:57]
A
And because 60, because CBS would do a piece really pointing the finger at Burke in 2016 and he sued over it and they settled. I don't know what they settled for but you know, in later years, you know, armchair detective wannabes have decided maybe it was him, maybe it was the nine Year old. But the Mary Lacy conclusion was it was not Burke.
- [70:21]
E
Right. And that was a conclusion that even the police came to very early on. And they ruled out that possibility.
- [70:28]
A
Yeah.
- [70:28]
E
In fact, they offered to support us in this suit against CBS if we needed their help.
- [70:35]
A
Wow.
- [70:35]
E
Count that ridiculous accusation.
- [70:39]
A
So he, he went on Dr. Phil not long, not long after that. And then it just stirred up more, you know, people were like, he wasn't acting right. I'm gonna play a soundbite. I'd love to get your thoughts on it. I really don't know. I don't know how people sort of fly into the case. You've been living it in the worst way for 26 years. So put this in perspective for us. This is Burke on Dr. Phil in 2016.
- [71:00]
E
A police officer comes in your room, which I assume is the first time
- [71:04]
A
in your entire life that a police
- [71:06]
E
officer has come in your room with
- [71:08]
A
a flashlight, looking around, and you still
- [71:11]
E
just stay in bed. To be fair, I didn't know it was a police officer. It's just kind of.
- [71:16]
C
But somebody comes in your room with
- [71:17]
A
a flashlight and you never get up
- [71:19]
E
and say, what is going on here? I guess I kind of like to avoid conflict or I'm. I don't know. I guess I just felt safer there. Were you curious? I'm not the worry type. I'm not the. I guess part of me doesn't to want. Want to know what's going on. Critics would say you weren't curious because you already knew. He didn't have to get up, go
- [71:45]
C
check, because he knew exactly what had happened.
- [71:46]
E
I was scared, I think. I mean, I didn't know if there's some bad guy downstairs my dad was chasing off with a gun or, you know, I had no idea.
- [71:57]
C
Let's clear this up once and for all.
- [72:01]
E
Did you do anything to harm. Harm your sister JonBenet? No. Did you murder your sister JonBenet?
- [72:11]
A
No. And just for the listening audience, Burke's answers are all said through what looks like a smile, which is one of the things his critics would react to. Go ahead, John. Your thoughts on it.
- [72:23]
E
Well, Burke smiles all the time when he talks. He just naturally smiles. And those are just laughable criticisms. This was a violent, vicious sexually assault case, not something that a 9 year old could even possibly do. So that's just. It's really disgusting that people jump to that kind of a conclusion.
- [72:51]
A
Let's, let's move on because one of the other storylines as we touched on a minute ago, was the pageants and whether A pedophile was, you know, she captured the, the attention of a pedophile. And they do say that some of these pageants can be very attractive to pedophiles in the same way that, you know, most pedophiles. Like, if you want to find a pedophile, you don't go to like an AARP meeting. You know, they wind up, they volunteer for the Boy Scouts and they, they, you know, it's sad, but it's true. They go to, they go where children are. So that was. Forget the blame, right? I'm not interested in that storyline. But it is possible that this person was a pedophile and had seen JonBenet at one of these pageants where she was a darling. I mean, she was winning them. She was absolutely beautiful in every way. So what do you make of that theory? If we're thinking of the possible intruder, maybe they also knew you. But a possible intruder pedophile.
- [73:48]
E
It's possible we. Patsy had been diagnosed with stage four cancer a couple years before this happened and she was. Went through some pretty rough chemotherapy treatments and was declared in remission. And she didn't say it, but I know she was trying to pack a lot of mother daughter time into what she maybe felt was a limited lifetime. And I didn't really care for these little pageants. I mean, I'm a father and I had preferred my daughters were burgers until they were about 30, but that wasn't my choice. And I thought, well, this is a, this is just wonderful mother daughter time for, for Patsy and JonBenet. They didn't. Excuse me, they didn't take it seriously. Yeah. So we gotta win. We gotta win. In fact, Patsy and I joked it'd be good if she lost a few of these pageants because she needs to understand you'd always win in life. And. But she was, she just. JonBenet loved doing it. It was fun. She was an extreme extrovert. And you know, people accused us or accused Patsy of, you know, dragging JonBenet to these pageants for her own satisfaction. That wasn't true at all. It was just something John. But I enjoyed doing and Patsy wanted her to try a lot of different things, which she did. But I always thought the people at these little pageants were just moms and grandmoms and that's quite. There was one indication, of course, we learned later that, yeah, there's some. There was at least one guy there that wasn't, wasn't there for his daughter. Based on some questioning that came out, some, some comments but it's possible. And, but I still fall back to, I think, John Douglas's theory and, and lose Lou Smith's. It might have targeted who JonBenet is. And she was my daughter and she was obviously, I'm told, and I never read the autopsy. I just couldn't bring myself to do that. But I, of course, hear through the news that she was sexually assaulted and that that wouldn't have been necessary to hurt me as much as to satisfy this creature's desires.
- [76:14]
A
So this is why, forgive me, and if you don't want to go here, we don't have to. But this is why when I was reading the autopsy report and we don't have to get into the details, but the one thing they said, it was unclear to me whether they had semen, whether that was one of the DNAs that they were able to retrieve. And there was a suggestion that maybe there was some sort of, you know, they hurt her in some way sexually that didn't involve, you know, a male body part. And that, that's kind of interesting if you think about this being a person whose goal was just to hurt you. Like, maybe it wasn't a pedophile. Maybe it was somebody who was just trying to hurt her as opposed to sexualize her or, or do anything sexual with her.
- [76:53]
E
Yeah, that's possible. And there was no semen found, but not dissimilar to this situation. A case similar break in that happened a few months later in the same neighborhood
- [77:10]
A
with Amy. Yes. Okay, so let's talk about that. There are many people who Lou Smith had been taking a hard look at, you know, the, the honest investigator who quit before he died, unfortunately, at, in 2010, and he gave the list of suspects to his daughter, which is how we know who he's looking at. And the daughter's a hero. She's running around getting these people's DNA without them knowing it. It's like, kind of amazing, this piece
- [77:37]
E
of the story, but it's so absolutely grateful for that group.
- [77:41]
A
Before we get to Lou and his daughter and what that, what happened there, there's this, there's this neighbor and the, we're calling and the papers are calling the daughter Amy. Her parents don't want her outed. Understandable as a sexual assault victim. But Amy, I think, was very young too. Nine or 12, right around there.
- [77:59]
E
I don't, you know, I, I didn't know a whole lot about that case. I knew that it happened, but I think she, they were, she and JonBenet were in a dance class Together. And I think she was a year older than JonBenet maybe.
- [78:11]
A
Oh, I know. Actually, my producers are telling me she's 12. So she's a little, she's a young girl and she's at home. This is months after JonBenet was killed. Amy is in the same neighborhood and she had a man wake her up dressed in black in the middle of the night who tried to muzzle her so that she couldn't scream and sexually assaulted her. And by the grace of God, her mother heard something. By the grace of God, truly her mother heard something and heard muffled voices coming from her 12 year old daughter's room in a way that sounded very unsafe. The mother grabbed pepper spray and went into the room. I mean, it's an extraordinary story. And the guy jumped out the second floor window and ran. I mean, it's a miracle, thank God, that unfortunately the daughter was molested, but she was not killed. And they went to the Boulder cops and said, we think this might have had something to do with JonBenet. Like it's too close in time. And you know, here's our evidence. And the dad is on record as saying the Boulder cops could not have cared less, were not interested in pursuing any link between the two cases. And they really felt like it was because they were just focused on YouTube.
- [79:32]
E
Right. That's what I've learned. When I first heard about this, I thought, well, that's a very similar MO for the, the criminal as it was in our case. He was in the house when they came home that night. They went to bed and then at three in the morning, he entered the little girl's room. And I thought, that's, man, that's so similar to what I think happened in our case. And Chief Beckner, who was the police chief, Chief of police was asked, is there a connection? He says, oh no, these cases aren't the same because the second little girl wasn't murdered. And it was one more of the unbelievable statements that came out of the police department. Of course it's similar and thankfully she wasn't murdered. But I had heard that the father was quoted as saying, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of police performance, I'll give him a minus 5. So he was very unhappy with them as well, but only because they just, just kind of blew off the case and went on.
- [80:43]
A
And there's a real danger when the police get tunnel vision. They're really, I mean, every defense attorney who's ever represented a murder defendant argues they had tunnel vision on my guy. My guy didn't do it. They had tunnel vision on him. But in some cases, it really is true, and it can result in the wrong person being arrested and put on trial. Thankfully, not in your case. But you were heading down that lane.
- [81:02]
E
Oh, absolutely. And we were. We weren't worried about this. I mean, it was. It was distressing. But our attorney said, look, the system's broken. The police don't know what they're doing. I. We cannot promise you you won't be charged with the murder. We'll promise you one thing. With 100% money back guarantee, we will destroy him in court. So don't worry about that. But it's not going to be fun. But do not worry about being convicted. We'll kill him because we knew what the evidence was and what they're trying to. To do. We had one, one experienced district attorney tell us, look, I have never, ever seen police try to explain away unidentified male DNA in a sexual assault case. Never. That's the key piece of evidence. And yet that's what the Boulder police tried to do, is that was a real problem for him that we had this unidentified male DNA.
- [81:55]
A
Yes, that's a. That's a massive problem. And it's the reason you've never been charged, and it's the reason Mary says it wasn't you guys. On the subject of DNA, I read that the coroner did not examine the body until seven hours after she was discovered, and that the Coroner only spent 10 minutes at the crime scene. That's a crazy amount of time. That's. I mean, seven hours is a long delay. And I wonder, John, whether they. Have you ever been told whether they were able to determine the time of death?
- [82:32]
E
I've never been told. No. I don't know.
- [82:36]
A
Any reason to believe there's any chance she was alive in the morning, you know, before. Like, I hate to go there, but, like, when the first cop got there, you know, is there any chance she was alive?
- [82:46]
E
I don't think so. She was strangled to death is my interpretation of what I've heard. And then struck with the object that created a pretty good crack in her skull, to be totally accurate. So I don't think she could have possibly been alive that morning.
- [83:18]
A
Okay. But that's another area of DNA that absolutely should be examined, because there was a murder weapon. There was like a rope, they call it a garrotte, and it was tied to a little piece of wood. And so that. One of the questions I know, John, people are asking is, do they ever. One of the one end of the rope had a knot and one had two knots or something like that. But the question was, did they ever untie the knots and test in there for DNA?
- [83:48]
E
To my knowledge, no. They had sent a number of samples like that to Bode Labs, which is a, you know, outside DNA lab, and for some reason chose not to test or not to pay for the tests of five or six items, one of which was the Garo. And that's one of the things we're asking the governor to make happen, is let's get those items tested. Why weren't they tested? Was it because it was too expensive? They want to save money? I don't know.
- [84:20]
A
What do you think is in the. Is in the box of things that have not been tested?
- [84:24]
E
I don't know. I don't know. One journalist has followed this case almost in the beginning, has that information and I need to get that from her, but I don't know exactly what it is. She said there's five or six items that have been tested it and the police keep referring back to, well, it's just a minute amount of DNA. We don't want to ruin it. Well, that just tells me they've either, well, they haven't tested the other items or they've lost them or misplaced them for some reason. They always stay away from these other five or six items that have never been tested or checked for DNA evidence. And that's what we're asking to be done. And their reluctance even mention those items makes me think they've either misplaced them or lost them.
- [85:13]
A
Oh, goodness. I know. And you're on a push to have the governor remove this case from the Boulder PD and let these sophisticated DNA labs have access to this as opposed to relying on the same cops and detectives that have blown it thus far. There are really sophisticated DNA labs. Do you have confidence that if they had access to this box, for lack of a better descriptor, they could, they could make whatever progress is possible? They could make it.
- [85:41]
E
And that's really all we're asking the governor to do, is push the case either out of the boulder hands or in require them to take this evidence to be tested by one of the one or two really cutting edge labs in this country and see what we get. If we can get some more good DNA evidence, then you take that evidence and put it in the public database and see what you come up with. Yes, this has been done in the last few years with remarkable success. And really what got me, took, had me in my mind, take the gloves off with the police is we had spent some time with the regional FBI folks there in Denver and got a relationship where we should look, this is what needs to happen. In fact, they're the ones who said, look, the government does not have the latest DNA technology. We'll get it eventually, but we don't have it. We don't have it at the FBI. They certainly don't have it at the state level. And of course, not even ridiculous to think they have it at the police level. They told us that we've got to get this DNA testing done by one of these one or two very cutting edge labs outside and then use this new approach of genealogy tracing. And there's a hope that would move this case along to conclusion. They went to the Boulder police and we're here to help. We'd like to make this happen. We'd help you. You can take all the credit. And the Boulder police blew them off, said, no, we don't need your help. And that was when that was. The game's over as far as I'm concerned. We got to start.
- [87:22]
A
When was that?
- [87:22]
E
How long ago? Oh, it's probably six months ago.
- [87:27]
A
Just so people know, I had this woman on my show at NBC, Cc Moore is her name. And I know you, You've. You must have talked to her. She's the one who was really at the center of this genealogy research. And what they do is they take a piece of DNA. And we already know that the DNA that they found on JonBenet does, has not. It did not produce a hit in the databases that are available, at least as of the last time they told us. So the perpetrator had not gone into the system yet. But they don't need that. All they need is for somebody related to the perpetrator to be in the DNA system. So if I were in the DNA system, let's say I wanted to do 23andMe, let's see what my ancestry is, whatever. Then if my results got uploaded on this other website that CC Moore uses, that, that a lot of people who upload the DNA results use because you get more information from it. It's not 23andMe, it's something related. So let's say they're sitting there, she can access them. She may not, you know, she, she can see a lot of things on there. And let's say I have a relative who commits a crime. That relative's DNA was not going to pop up. Like maybe they committed a crime, but the crime scene, they didn't see him because he didn't. He hadn't been arrested yet, but mine will. And this is what CC Moore, she's like. All I can tell you is that Megyn Kelly is related to this killer. And so I'm gonna build this big family tree around Megan and Kelly. I'm figuring out who her grandfather, what great grandfather. Look at her husband's side I'm gonna look at. Because all this stuff is publicly available. She looks at their wedding announcements and birth announcements. It's crazy. Great detective work. And she gets her man. I mean CeCe Moore is like they solve a case a week doing this. And so if we could take a fresh look at the JonBenet DNA from that perspective.
- [89:12]
E
Right.
- [89:12]
A
Even if the guy's never gotten into the system from the last time they tested it, somebody might be in the system that could lead us to him.
- [89:18]
E
That's right. The COVID system that the FBI uses, the federal database of criminals or, or arrested felons is fairly small. And the states can contribute or not to that database. It takes nine markers out of 15 to be accepted in the database. But it's, it's a. People that are. Have already been found criminal or at least arrested for felonies. And it depends on the state what that rule is. But it's not a very big database. And what the. The. The public database of the like the 23andMe. Both Jan and I submitted our 35 get our ancestry to that database. They find a reasonably, you know, close match or something. The least is interest of interest and they do almost a backwards family tree and then they find out hey, here's a relative that lived in Boulder in December 2020 1996. And then they start looking at that guy or that person and get his DNA. And, and these remarkable success solutions to these old, old cases have been using that technique. And most of these people were not on anybody's radar. They weren't in the. The COVID or the federal database and back the, the Golden State Killer, which was. I think the first one found this way was a yes 40 year old case and he was retired cop. So he wasn't in, in the criminal database.
- [91:06]
A
Relative was.
- [91:09]
E
And, and we're, that's what we're asking the governor to make happen. I don't care how it happens. That's what has to happen.
- [91:14]
A
And now, now what he's saying, John, is well, he doesn't said anything as I understand it. But the Boulder PD there are, they're like hey, we have great news. We're now going to refer this case to the Cold Case Unit and the Cold Case Unit, we believe is going to do better than the other case unit. Why?
- [91:32]
E
Don't know. I don't know. I've never heard of this Cold Case Unit. Why? They said we're going to refer to them next year. Well, that could be 12 months from now. But I guess you say, well, it's no big rush. It's been 26 years. What's the hurry? It's a huge frustration for us.
- [91:48]
A
And do you believe that's just, is that just cover? Is that a cya?
- [91:51]
E
Yeah, it is. Absolutely. That was put out before I even released the governor's letter, which I only released because he never responded. I thought that was. I would have at least expected to say, yeah, we'll take a look at it. Or I received your letter.
- [92:05]
A
Still hasn't responded.
- [92:07]
E
No, no.
- [92:08]
A
And we're gonna follow up with him.
- [92:11]
E
You know, I'm not asking him to, you know, apologize to us for the faulty performance of the Colorado justice system. I don't, I don't want that. I just want to do the right thing. This is what can be done. You need to do it.
- [92:28]
A
Yeah, well, we're definitely going to follow up with his office and find out what, what is his response, and we'll stay on it and we'll annoy him to the point where he's going to have to respond, because I know a lot of people in media who would be very happy to help me annoy him. I would love it.
- [92:41]
E
That's what it's going to take. It's going to take public pressure to do the right thing. That's all.
- [92:46]
A
Our. None of them will do anything unless forced to by the public. And the people of Colorado and the country are on your side. They're not on the side of some law enforcement group that's trying to protect its own backside. So I actually think we can make progress with this. But first, I have to squeeze in a break. All right, stand by, John. A quick break. I'll be right back to you after this. John, Dylan Howard put together an extraordinary podcast called the killing of JonBenet Ramsey, and it's a 12 part series in which he took a very deep dive into possible suspects in the case. I recommend it to everybody. And in part based off of Lou Smith's work and the work of his daughter, having listened to all of that and cooperated with that, do you have a chief suspect?
- [93:40]
E
You know, it's easy to, to say, well, that's the guy, based on circumstantial evidence. In fact, that happened fairly early on. A person was brought to our attention by his girlfriend, former girlfriend, and had some pretty compelling data that would lead you to believe, hey, this. This is the guy. In fact, I said that to our attorneys. I said, whoa, this is the guy. And they said, no, no, no, don't do a Boulder Police on us. We can't jump to conclusions. It was a reminder that that's ex. And that we got to be careful, too. And so there's been four or five people like that that have come up on the radar, in our radar, and. But it's never been enough evidence. And, you know, private individuals can only do so much. They need the authority of the government to really dig into stuff.
- [94:29]
A
Yeah.
- [94:29]
E
And so we can only go so far in some of these investigations. And so these people are still, in my mind, suspects of interest, people of interest. But, you know, they need to be investigated.
- [94:43]
A
That's the point. One of the things, one of the things Lou Smith suggested was that there was that window broken in the basement, saw there was a scuff mark below the window. There was a suitcase there, which we talked about briefly, that wasn't normally there. And in it they found a duvet, a Dr. Seuss book, and fibers of the outfit JonBenet was wearing that night, indicating perhaps the murderer might have tried to kidnap her or remove her from the scene in the suitcase, but it was too big. But that would explain quite a bit about the crime scene, if only we had a talented investigator devoted to following up on these leads. The point is, the governor must get involved. The governor must remove this case from the Boulder pd. They must get the fibers and the DNA that is available to a qualified lab and start working with the family instead of against them. After all these years, in the time we have left, how do you do it? Because I know you said you've forgiven whoever did this to JonBenet, and Jon, it just seems. It just seems like a mountain too high. How do you do that?
- [95:50]
E
Well, I've dealt with forgiveness a lot over the few years after Jomini was killed, and. And I looked back at how I felt and progressed with that challenge. Certainly in the first couple years, there was no forgiveness. In fact, I've told people, if you put this guy in the same room with me and I know he's the killer, he won't come out alive. And I. I would be able to do that with no remorse. And that's not right, but that's how I felt. And then I got to the point where I said, okay, well, forgiveness belongs to the victim, and I'm really not the victim. JonBenet was a victim, so only she can forgive. And that's, of course, not possible. And that kind of got me off the hook. And then I finally realized forgiveness is really a gift you give yourself. You release that anger and that desire for revenge doesn't mean you feel sorry for the. In our case, the killer. I still want him held to the justable to the account, to held to accountability to the extreme level of our justice system. But I've released that anger, and it still crops up every now and then. But it's a benefit to myself to release that and in the form of forgiveness. Don't want him held.
- [97:12]
A
Staying connected to God helps. I know. And I'm sure this time of year, even all these years later, is very tough on you. I know you've remarried. I'm so happy to hear that. God bless you, John, and your family. And I think there's a way of finding a merry Christmas. You know, I hope that you've found that way, and I'll be praying for you this year in particular.
- [97:35]
E
We. We. We had a hard time with Christmas for several years far. And I didn't realize you got to remember what Christmas is for. And that's. That's reassuring in our case that we know JonBenet is safe and we'll see her again.
- [97:51]
A
Amen to that. Take care. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story, and we'll stay on it.
- [97:56]
E
Thank you, Megan. I really appreciate it.
- [97:58]
A
Wow. Keep them in your prayers and keep their family in your prayers. That little girl's with her mama now. For that, we can be thankful.
- [98:10]
E
Here's a shift worth noting. Better health care is care that meets patients where they are. UnitedHealth Group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing. By closing those care gaps, administering in home exams and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can improve. In 2025 alone, UnitedHealth Group patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com commitment hey, everyone,
- [98:41]
A
it's me, Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life, and just a warning, I'm gonna be giving my opinion on everything.
- [98:51]
B
I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun.
- [98:54]
A
The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube. We have a very different kind of crime story to bring to you today. Have you heard about the Sackler family? By the end of this show, you will. You'll know their story well, and the story of the opioid crisis in America. It's stunning, it is devastating, and it is indeed criminal. I was so moved by the recent Hulu series Dopesick. If you haven't seen this, you must. You must that I wanted to do a show on it. And today I'm very, very to be joined in just a bit by the author of the book that inspired the series, as well as separately, the creator of the series, Dopesick. Danny Strong is the director, executive producer of Dopesick, and he joins me now. Danny, thank you so much for being here. You're the creator, you're the showrunner. And let me just kick it off with, you know, we're going to get into it, but it's basically about how the opioid crisis in America unfolded. What attracted you to that subject matter?
- [100:02]
C
Well, first off, thanks so much for having me on your show. And, you know, I'm so thrilled you watched the show, and we're so taken by it, so it's all very appreciated. It all began when a producer named John Goldwyn, who's a really terrific producer, he came to me and said, do you want to write and direct a movie on the opioid crisis? And I had read this New Yorker article by Patrick Reagan Keefe that came out in 2017 that basically blew the story up. As far as the Sackler family's involvement with Purdue Pharma with OxyContin, in a very damning way, I think that that article was a major turning point in sort of the history of the opioid crisis and who was ultimately responsible for sparking it and setting the flames and then keeping that fire going for at least a decade, if not longer. And so I went back and I had reread the article, and I read very closely this time as far as a potential adaptation or not adaptation, but just as a research. And I was fascinated, stunned, shocked, appalled. I then went on and got some books that had already been written on the opioid crisis, a book called Painkiller, book called Dreamland. My horror grew even more, and I just thought, I have to do this. I have to figure out a way to dramatize the story for as big an audience as I can, because this is one of the most stunning crime stories in the history of the country. And at the time, this was 2018, when I was really deep diving into it, and Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, the prescribing had started to come down in the United States, but they were now using their same dishonest, manipulative false techniques, advertising techniques, and marketing techniques in foreign countries. So when I first started, I had viewed the show as a warning to the rest of the world that Purdue Pharma is coming to lie to you and to addict you to OxyContin. So that's sort of what sparked the journey.
- [102:16]
A
Hmm. You come by your storytelling skills honestly. It's funny because when I saw your name, I'm like, I know that name. I know that name. And I know you've worked with Jay Roach, who was, of course, the director of the movie Bombshell, which I have a connection to. I have nothing to do with the movie, but there was a person playing me in it. But that's not how I knew you. It was from Gilmore Girls.
- [102:39]
E
There you go.
- [102:40]
A
Which you were on for a while playing Doyle McMaster. But you've also written several, several big movies, Right. Game change. Recount. And you, you wrote the Butler. You're co writer and maybe producer on Empire as well. I mean, like a lot of big hits in your past.
- [102:57]
C
Thank you.
- [102:57]
A
But this is like, this is your project, so it's got to feel different to you in a way.
- [103:02]
C
Yeah.
- [103:03]
D
Was.
- [103:03]
C
It was. I knew that I would be doing heavy lifting. I had directed an independent film before that had gotten the Sundance, which was very exciting, but this was on a much, much bigger scale as far as creating show running. I knew I was going to be directing the last couple episodes, and it was great to just sort of take the reins of it. And partly why I felt like, okay, this is a good project for me to do that with for my first time was because I was so passionate about it and I was so enraged by what had happened. And it seemed like, well, if you're going to, you know, for me, I always worry. I always get a worst case scenario. Right. You know, what's going to happen if the whole thing's a disaster and a massive failure. And so I thought, well, if this thing explodes in my face, I'd rather go down swinging on something that I feel really, really passionate about.
- [103:57]
A
This feeling is what makes you a success. They say that there was a Kaiser poll that said 56% of Americans either know someone who is an addict or who died from addiction. I feel like it's probably even higher than that. I Have someone. I've revealed to my audience that someone in my family, my family of origin, fell into the opioid crisis. And when a family member falls into it, the entire family falls into it. As you know, you're. As you know from being the storyteller of this series, I wondered whether you had any personal experience that made you want to do the show. I didn't.
- [104:35]
C
And I'm so fortunate to be able to say that sentence. I don't know anyone close to me that had opioid use disorder. I myself have not fallen down any kind of rabbit hole like that. The rabbit hole I fell down was the rabbit hole of the crimes of Purdue Pharma and the culpability of the Sackler family. And that was a rabbit hole that a number of people have fallen down. You know, when I start talking about this to different people that have written books on them, who may have had a personal experience with addiction or a family or friends that has. But what we all have in common is once you start deep diving into what happens, you can't believe it. You can't believe what this company did and how literally a group of, I don't know, 20 people, 30 people from one family made billions and billions of dollars off of the suffering of an entire nation. And, you know, when you talk about how the whole family gets affected by this, when it happens to one person, it's so true. You know, everyone talks about the statistics of now, it's over 700,000 people have died from some type of opioid overdose since the crisis essentially began. However, that number doesn't even begin to tell the story of the families that are devastated, the family members that lose years of their life of suffering, of loved ones who have fallen into this, and the people that are still alive that didn't die from an overdose, but are either still struggling with opioid use disorder or lost years of their life to it and are now just trying to put the pieces back together. I mean, the sort of. The victims of it continue to splinter on and on and on in a way that's extremely profound. I know many people think that the homeless issue that is plaguing so many major American cities is heavily sparked by the opioid crisis and people that have fallen into opioid use disorder.
- [106:46]
A
No, it's so true. Because even if you're one of the, quote, lucky ones who doesn't get killed by an overdose, I mean, I've seen it happen firsthand. It changes you. It changes a person. It can at least radically to where the person you knew is all but gone, replaced by someone else who's a stranger to you, who you have to get to know and who that person, him or herself, has to get to know. It's just like a new version of you that doesn't tend to be new and improved like these drugs are, do so much lasting damage. And then the drugs you have to take to get off of them and stay off of them can, can do damage as well. It's just a cycle that even if you manage yourself, pull yourself out of it, it's very hard to shake the effects of it. And the movie and the book and this whole series of sort of research and writings about it are an attempt at accountability, at storytelling and explanation. How did. How did it happen? And accountability. And what I loved about it, Danny, is when you go through it, you don't know you're part of a national story, right? You just think, oh my God, something's terrible is happening in my family or to my people. And. And it took years, I think, for most of us who were sucked into it, to realize, oh my God, this was a thing, this was a national epidemic. And now this is the next piece which is caused by specific individuals because it was. And I agree with your demonization of the Sacklers, who we'll get into. So let's, let's talk about the film itself because you basically, the characters are fictional, right? You know, you made them up, some of them. But they're kind. They're loosely based. Yes, on real life people.
- [108:22]
C
Some are not even loosely based. Some are just the actual people. I mean, the Sackler family, I use the real names. And then the key prosecutors out of the Western District of Virginia, the U.S. attorney there and two of his prosecutors, those are real people as well. And then the people in the town, Finch Creek, that is. It's a fictional name, Finch Creek. I wanted to do this sort of every town usa Appalachia concept just to have a couple of people be our victims. That represented millions of people in that case.
- [109:01]
A
The star originally in the sort of beginning episodes is a young female minor named Betsy, played by Caitlin Deaver, who suffers an injury. She's the daughter of a minor as well. She lives with her parents. She's not a drug addict, she's not an alcoholic. She's a sweet, you know, dreamy faced young minor. You know, it's just such an interesting job for a young woman like that sympathetic character, for sure. And I love that you chose her because this was representative of, I think, the Opioid crisis for most people. These weren't back alley deals. These were people who were prescribed a drug by a doctor they trusted to treat an injury that was real. And then the spiral came.
- [109:48]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And partly why I did this approach was because this is where Purdue Pharma, that was their phase one areas where they targeted, which were rural areas filled with people that had a higher prescription rate of opioids because they just got injured a lot on the job. So miners, loggers, farmers, those were basically the three areas that Purdue Pharma initially targeted. And so it was southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and rural Maine were kind of the ground zero spots. And I chose Appalachia and I chose mining. I thought it was very sort of emblematic of our iconic view of how this all began. And I started watching YouTube videos of different people in these areas. And these YouTube videos, it's a technique I use for research because there's something so authentic about them. They're often amateur videos that are just taken by real people trying to put some kind of short subject documentary together about their lives. And I was so taken by so many of the minors and the pride they had and what they did and that there was this sort of magical connection to the mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the mountains in Appalachia. And, you know, when I went on a research trip up there, I understood where that connection came from because they're really beautiful. It's just this very beautiful part of the country and very sort of isolated and on its own. So it seemed to me, oh, this is a great way into the story. And I, you know, in one of the videos, I saw this young woman who was a minor being interviewed. She struck me as someone who seemed like she was a lesbian. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting being a lesbian in a very, you know, conservative part of the country, where that may not be as accepted as, say, it is in New York City where I live. And I just wanted to explore these different issues. And so what happens when the issue begins? Her arc begins about her sexuality and what that means to her and her family, but it quickly takes a left hand turn when the drug use completely consumes it and takes it over. And that was so very much kind of the early stages of me putting this together. And I do want to throw a huge shout out to Beth Macy and her incredible book, Dopesick. We ended up getting teamed up after I'd come up with these initial ideas. And I read the book and I loved it. And Beth has been an incredible part of the project and the process. She was in the writer's room and her and I kept doing interviews all the way throughout the entire process. So a big shout out to Dopesick author Beth Macina. Anyone listening to this? If you've seen the show and you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it.
- [112:40]
A
Yeah, she's coming up next, so they're gonna meet her momentarily. But she does get it. I mean, she, she sort of. Her book is not totally dissimilar from hillbilly Elegy by J.D. vance. You know, it just takes a hard, honest, and sometimes unfavorable view of Appalachia and what's happened there. And it' not, it's not critical of the people. It's just there's joblessness and there's disability claims and there's globalization and there are all sorts of things that have affected this part of the country that gets ignored too often. And then people are like, how did Trump get in office? And it's like, well, it's, it's complicated, but it's understandable if you take the time. Okay, so you've got. She's. Betsy is one of our main stars. And then you've got Dr. Samuel Phoenix. Right. I'm. Yeah, just want to make sure I'm pronouncing it right because I know I'm Sam and that's played by Michael Keaton and I. This character is trying to help his community. He loves West Virginia, he loves Appalachia, he loves the miners. He's trying to help. But like so many doctors in the opioid crisis really didn't. Right. He was pulled in by Purdue Pharma, as so many real life doctors were. And it's dazzling, snazzy drug reps who are saying all sorts of things about this drug, which is so exc. That they fooled even the doctors, which was a critical part of their plan.
- [114:05]
C
Yeah, 100%. I think there's this perception of that all Doctors that prescribed OxyContin were evil pill mill doctors that were, you know, essentially legal drug dealers. And those people certainly did exist. And there were, there were many pill mills and a number of people that had been arrested and gotten massive jail sentences. 30 years, 25 years. However, I believe that the majority of the doctors prescribing OxyContin were not that they were completely well intentioned doctors that believed what Purdue Pharma had told them. And even the sales reps at Purdue Pharma believed, at least initially, the information that they were given there was Basically this elaborate con in which Purdue Pharma. Well, I'll start with these independent pain societies. These independent pain societies were creating this new movement that pain has been wildly undertreated in this country and that opioids are much safer than we have perceived them for decades. And that this movement went so far as to term pain as the new fifth vital sign. So this was a huge campaign that was happening late 80s into the mid 90s, into the late 90s, right. During this whole period that coincided with Purdue Pharma coming up with a new opioid that they were marketing as non addictive, which tied into the national movement of yes, and opioids are much safer. And then these pain societies would put out studies, certain doctors would write articles that would end up in these really respected news, medical news journals. And it was, and it gave this a labyrinth, elaborate appearance that this. There's a whole new movement in medication and in pain treatment. And what we have learned is that these pain societies were not independent. They were partially or fully, in some cases, funded by Purdue Pharma. The doctors that were writing articles were funded by Purdue Pharma. And in some case, the periodicals that these articles would come out in were funded by Purdue Pharma. So it was like an elaborate shell game, a conversation. And then when you go back in time to the 1950s and the 1960s, there was a man who basically created all of this, this entire elaborate shell game of having fake studies being written about by doctors on your payroll, put in periodicals that are also on your payroll, that you would then use that to convince doctors of whatever you're trying to convince them. And this man was Arthur Sackler, the uncle of Richard Sackler, who was the godfather of OxyContin. Right. So you see. Oh, no, this is what the family, they've been doing this for the last 50 years. This is just their playbook. And when you get into that, that this is a generational scam, I view it as sort of like pharma grifters. They're a family of pharma grifters, Right. And then it goes back generations. It gets to be incredibly fascinating that there's this long history of it and quite devious. You know, this is covered in the book Dopesick, but there's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur sackler in the 50s and the 60s in such exquisite detail. I call it Charles Dickens in Hell. I mean, it's very fascinating, the entire family history of what they've Done.
- [117:37]
A
Obviously, the Sacklers in Purdue Pharma are. They do not come out favorably in the movie or the book or life. Their lives are pretty good. Their lives are pretty damn good. But I'll tell you, the biggest villain right after them is the fda. And. And you will not believe how Purdue Pharma managed to convince all these doctors that OxyContin was less addictive. That the doctors could feel totally comfortable prescribing it to young minors who may have hurt their backs and so on. Freeform. Just go for it. It's totally safe. How did they do it? With the help of. Of a complicit fda, which the movie exposes brilliantly. We have more with Danny after this quick break. Don't go away. So, Danny, before I get to fda, Richard Sackler, can you help me? I love this actor. Michael. Is it Stulberg?
- [118:32]
C
Stuhlbarg.
- [118:33]
A
Stuhlbarg. Okay. Because I always see it written and I never hear it spoken. He's. I loved him in Boardwalk Empire. He was totally brilliant and that series. He was in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, many other films. You'll recognize him. He's such a good villain. He's amazing at being a villain. So he plays Richard Sackler and Richard Sackler, what you learn is more than any other Sackler, and that's saying something. Is hugely ambitious. He's incredibly driven, and he's also very smart. But he was determined once he created this baby, OxyContin, because a patent on another drug they owned was running out. Purdue Pharma needed a new star in the Purdue Pharma family, and OxyContin was it. So he was determined to make sure it got marketed out there, that the. That the sales were exponential. And here's just a clip from the movie. This is sound bite 1 of Michael Stoberg as Richard Sackler.
- [119:28]
E
Listen, board doesn't seem to understand I'm trying to make this a blockbuster drug, which I can't do without more sales reps. Dr. Richard with all these new sales reps, we won't even have enough doctors for them to target. IMS is about to release a 3.0 version that tracks daily prescriptions instead of quarterly. So if we double our sales force, we can use this data to target doctors prescribing Lortab and Vicodin and flip them to oxycontin. The upgrade is a million dollars. Do you know who created the IMS database? Arthur Sackler. It's been kept secret for years, but this is a family invention that was sold off Years ago. And now you're telling me we should deny all this data that only exists because of my fucking uncle. Purchase the upgrade and increase the sales force. Thank you.
- [120:39]
A
And that's exactly what they did. And that salesforce went out there and did his bidding in a way that was pretty sickening. It was pretty gross.
- [120:50]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first off, thanks for all your compliments for Michael's performance. I think he is. Is unbelievable in this show. And it's funny. He plays all these villains in person. He's literally the sweetest guy you'll ever meet. And, yeah, he's so sweet. And Michael Keaton and Caitlin Deaver both give staggering performances. They were actually just nominated for critics choice awards for their performances. It's just an incredible group of people. So I just want to give my. My love to them and my entire cast who I think. I think is amazing. You know, one of the things that.
- [121:24]
A
Mare Winningham, she was amazing, too.
- [121:26]
C
Pardon?
- [121:27]
A
Mary Winningham. Amazing. She plays Betsy's mother.
- [121:29]
C
I mean, come on. It's Mayor Winning Ham. She's unbelievable, right?
- [121:32]
D
Everything.
- [121:33]
A
She's great in everything.
- [121:34]
C
Yeah, yeah. And Rosario Dawson, too, is just killer.
- [121:38]
A
She's the. Rosario Dawson plays the badass DEA agent who will not be. Shut up. She just is like. She's a dog with a bone. And while everybody's like, shut up. Go away. Purdue pharma is very powerful and rich. She just doesn't give. She doesn't give a damn. She just continues on that.
- [121:53]
C
Not having it. Not having. And a really cool person, too. But. So the one of the things I really wanted to do with Richard Sackler, Right. Is he so demonized in everything you read and so despised by so many people? And then I was able to interview a number of people that knew him and worked with him, and they seemed to hate him even more than the people.
- [122:14]
D
I thought you were taking a different turn there.
- [122:16]
C
Yeah. He's not like the most loved individual when you know him one on one. And what was important to me was, well, what really made him tick? What's really going on here? Is it just money? Because it's hard for me to believe that it's just money because he's already rich. They're already rich before OxyContin even existed. Right. So I went on a deep dive to do everything I could to try to figure out, so what makes this guy tick. And I went to the. To the extent of I did a therapy session where I role played that I was Richard Sackler. I'd never done anything like this before. And a friend of mine, a really successful screenwriter, and his wife is a therapist, and he had done this with her. So he was like, why don't you try doing a session with my wife where you role play your Richard Sackler? And it was incredible to try to get under the skin of this person. And I think that. I think Stuhlbarg did a great job of that as well, and that there's some really interesting layers to what's happening here. You know, he grew up with this famous uncle that we discussed earlier, and he. I think he desperately didn't want to be a dilettante. He wanted to prove that he could succeed on his own. And what he ends up doing is he ends up succeeding probably beyond anyone's wildest expectations, and maybe the most successful person in the history of this family as far as the revenue that he brought in. But that drive to succeed, well, it had consequences. And those consequences were the opioid crisis and the devastation that it brought to this country. And if you were to point to one individual most responsible for it, I think the blame has to go directly to Richard Sackler. And I think that these. Many of these books that have been written, they back that up. This isn't my own conclusion. It's sort of the historical record at this point.
- [124:12]
A
Yeah, I think Beth Macy's gonna say that, too, that it's not that OxyContin was the only drug being abused during the op crisis, but it was certainly patient zero, if you will. It was the biggest and most important and most effective and widespread. And the way they did it is indicative of how many problems there were with the system, including the fda. So the fda, they're supposed to be on our side, that's supposed to be a government watchdog that looks out for the little guy. But in the same way, so many people have been distrusting many government agencies over the past ten years or so. This agency's on that page, too, because they weren't looking out for the little guy, and they looked out for Purdue and in particular, a guy named Dr. Curtis Wright at the FDA. Well, why don't you tell us what they did for OxyContin? And then what happened to Dr. Wright?
- [125:03]
C
This story is it's one of the first jaw droppers of the opioid crisis origin story, when you start to research it. So one of the most effective tools that Purdue Pharma had in marketing the drug and getting doctors to feel comfortable that this opioid was less addictive than other opioids was because the FDA granted them a label that said that was the case. It was an unprecedented label that essentially said that this drug is less addictive than other opioids. And so a doctor seeing this label, being told this, it was a major part of the sales pitch. Well, that's going to really make them feel much more comfortable trying it. Besides that elaborate shell game that I talked about earlier, this is what takes it over the edge in a very significant way. And the wording of this warning label was highly unusual. It barely makes sense. It's a little confusing. It says is believed oxycontin is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug because or the time release system is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug. Well, believed. Believed by who? Who believes it? You know, Megan, do you believe it? Do I believe it? I mean, it doesn't even say who. Who believes it. And so when you scratch the surface. So how could this unprecedented label that. That gave them a blank check to say that the drug was less addictive? Well, how does that come to be? Well, clearly there were studies that were done that showed that was. Again, no, there were no studies. It was the time mechanism was able of just. Just this time release system and convince the FDA of the case. Well, what happened was the guy that approved this label, Curtis Wright, he goes and 18 months later gets a job at Purdue Pharma for $400,000 a year. I'm guessing he was making about $100,000 a year at the FDA. So the appearance of corruption is so staggering. I still feel like there needs to be a major investigation into Curtis Wright and the failures at the FDA and rule change.
- [127:14]
A
They should not be allowed to take jobs with big pharma within 10 years of leaving the FDA.
- [127:21]
C
Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons why I thought this story is so profound, because it goes beyond a criminal company and it goes beyond the dishonesty of a few people. It ends up tying into the very broken nature of our government's relationship with private industry. And that if someone could have a job at the FDA in which they are directly overseeing pharma companies and then they can immediately go work for those pharma companies. The revolving door. You end up with situations like what happened here. And I think that it's not even just Curtis Wright, but the FDA stayed really lenient on Purdue pharmacists for many years, siding with them over and over and over again. And how could Curtis Wright's massive salary and job not have some sort of influence on These future decisions where people are working at the FDA thinking, either A, there's a job for me at Purdue Pharma when I get out, or B, a job at a consulting company that can be hired by Purdue Pharma, or in one case, a person was put on a board at Tufts University that Purdue Pharma was in charge of that board. Right. And being put on these boards, well, that's really helpful for the person's career. So there's all sorts of goodies to be had for your career, your future, your pocketbook by playing ball with Purdue Pharma. And I think that. I think looking at the revolving door, coming up with new rules that could not enable someone to oversee their warning label and then go work for them within 18 months, she could have gotten work for them the next day.
- [129:03]
A
It's obvious. It's so clear, right when you spell it out, what happened. Just as a. As a complement to all of this reporting and discussion, 60 Minutes did a piece not long ago taking a deep dive on all of this. It was in 2019, and they interviewed a whistleblower from within Big Pharma. This guy himself was a big Pharma kind of a guy who was selling drugs. I mean, legal drugs. His name was Ed Thompson, and he. He was telling 60 Minutes that when Oxy was first approved in 1995, it was based on science. 1995, this is the very first time we've met Oxycontin. It was based on science that only showed it was safe and effective when used short term. Okay. But six years later, in 2001, pressured by big Pharma and pain sufferers, the FDA made a fateful decision and expanded the use of OxyContin to just about anybody with chronic ailments. Anybody with chronic ailments like back pain, arthritis could now use it. And 60 Minutes got their hands on a court order that would demand the production of the documents it showed. There were secret meetings between the FDA in which they bowed to Purdue Pharma's demands to ignore the lack of scientific data and change the label to. You can use this around the clock for an extended period of time. Ed Thompson said it opened the floodgates. It was the point of no return for the fda. They were in bed under the covers, naked, next to the Sacklers for the duration. And as you point out now, not just because of Oxy, but 700,000Americans are dead. I mean, yes, Oxycontin and other opioids did help some people. We should point that out. But those in Charge knew it was also extremely deadly and they denied it at every turn.
- [130:47]
C
Yeah. And OxyContin has real, there's some real good use for OxyContin and opioids. Severe pain, cancer pain, post surgery treatment. It's very effective for it. But Purdue Pharma had already had a drug, Mississippi Cotton, that did that. And they knew how much money you could make by having a drug for severe pain, for cancer treatment, for post surgery treatment. And it's a pretty small market, but by opening it up to chronic pain. And here was the other element to it. It wasn't just chronic pain, but moderate pain. Right. Because it's now non addictive. It could be used for all sorts of ailments like wisdom teeth surgery or migraine headaches or all sorts of things that an addictive narcotic never should have been used for. And that combination of that and using it for chronic pain, which meant you had to be on it on an ongoing basis, you know, opened it up. This skyrocketing of addiction and overdoses. And I will put another. There is another category too, of people which are people with severe chronic pain that have been able to effectively use OxyContin to treat their chronic pain that now can't get access to it either. So now there's like another set of victims because of the dishonesty that occurred in the marketing and promotion of this drug.
- [132:16]
A
The other villain inside of Purdue Pharma, in addition to the other sacklers who are 100% on board with drug, they were just worried about how much money it would make. They weren't worried about people's health from, from the sound of it, was the drug reps. Now the drug reps are the people who go out to the doctors and try to convince them that this is a great drug and that they should prescribe it to all their patients. And the film does a great job of showing people the pressure on them by their top guy to push, push, push. We're making bigger, bigger pills of Oxy, more and more Oxy in each pill. The answer, if you're starting to feel withdrawal, is not less OxyContin, it's more OxyContin. That's your body telling you you need OxyContin. And the drug reps, I mean, basically they were told, do whatever you need to do, Push, push, push. Like you've got to get not necessarily people hooked, but you've got to push this drug and you've got to sort of convince people to push it no matter what. You have to Give them. Trying to look for the exact sound bite we have. Oh, is it. Is it SAT too? Okay, listen, satu.
- [133:27]
E
Make your doctors feel special. Get dolled up, take them to expensive dinners, offer to fill up their car with gas just to get 10 minutes to pitch, and bribe the receptionist with a mani pedi so she'll let you in the office. But you have to get to know your doctors, which is why we will give you full psychological profiles on each of them. If they've got kids, get them tickets to Disney World. If they're going through a divorce, get them laid. Whatever it takes to win their friendship and their trust.
- [134:06]
A
They were important. Really important.
- [134:08]
C
Oh, yeah. They were a very, very significant part of the process. And what Purdue did, they did a couple things that was very clever and very devious. One was, was they were the. It was the first time where, in selling a Class 2 narcotic, where people's bonuses were tied into the number of milligrams that they sold.
- [134:26]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [134:26]
C
So the more milligrams that they sold, the higher the bonus they got. Then they also went out of their way to not hire people that had a background in opioids or in narcotics, because one could argue those people would have been suspicious of the claim that it was less addictive than other opioids. And I interviewed a number of Purdue pharma reps, former Purdue pharma reps, and there's been a lot written about them. And the sort of. The theme that comes up frequently is they believed what they were told. They believed the studies. But then at a certain point, it becomes clear to them that it's not true. And I remember I asked one of them, I said, what was the moment. What was the moment where you realized, oh, there is something very wrong with this drug? And he remembered the exact moment of what it was. He said it was when he pulled up to a pain clinic and it looked like a tailgate party out front, that there were a massive amount of people grilling meat, hanging out beer. It was like a giant party outside of a pain clinic when everyone was waiting to go get their OxyContin. So they were definitely culpable at a certain point. Even though Purdue did go out of their way to try to. To trick the pharma reps as well.
- [135:47]
A
Well, yeah, I mean, if they could be sincere and earnest in the pitch, so much the better, right? If not everybody has that acting ability, right, Like. Like the people in your cast, most people would have to actually believe it in order to be Effective at selling it. The. The series does a great job of painting the relationship between Michael Keaton's character, this well meaning West Virginian doctor, and one of those sales reps. This. The character's name is Billy Cutler, played by Will Poulter. And Billy is sort of this. He's a fresh faced kid who's trying to make it and get a good salary and so on. And he starts off believing in the drug and you sort of see that, that change over time. And his relationship with Michael Keaton is very good, and that changes over time. And even Michael Keaton is touting the drug as a doctor to his community early on in the film, saying, you know, trust me that you guys, these are good people. I know you're good people. Come by pain honestly, and I'm gonna help you fix it honestly. And. And by the end of the movie, there's a tumultuous exchange between the Michael Keaton's doctor character and this Billy Cutler character, the drug rep, where you can feel the deterioration. You can feel the crisis that they are in, that the nation is in. It's sound bite nine. No, no, sorry. Forgive me. Yeah, it's sound bite eight. Take a listen.
- [137:03]
E
He's so poisoned. What's that? That's all it says. He's so poisoned.
- [137:09]
B
That's what she. That's just poison.
- [137:13]
E
No, Doc. Yeah, no, that's what it is.
- [137:18]
B
Yeah, it's poison.
- [137:21]
E
I can talk you through it, Doc. It's a new concept. It's all in here. Oh, no.
- [137:25]
B
These are good, hardworking people.
- [137:28]
E
These are good, hard working people. You have FDA label this. Doc, anything in here that you don't understand, I can talk to you. Okay? Get out. Get out.
- [137:40]
C
All right, Billy,
- [137:46]
E
you got to get going. They're never coming. Doc. Doc, get out of here. Doc, get out, please. You come back, here's these mountains.
- [137:56]
C
I'll kill you.
- [137:57]
E
Yeah, I'll kill you myself.
- [138:01]
A
Mm. The anger, you're feeling it yourself as an audience member by that point in the series.
- [138:09]
C
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that was. I remember when I was writing that scene and I hadn't planned on him punching him. And then I wrote the scene and I felt like it didn't capture the true rage of what this doctor would be going through. And so I rewrote it with him punching him and it becoming the sort of melee that it turns into. And there's a number of moments throughout the show that are in many ways my rage and my anger and some of the dialogue that people say is very much a product of the anger that I have about what happened. And there's something, you know, I feel so fortunate that I'm able to express that anger to millions of people in the work that I do. It's a very unusual situation to be in. And I remember someone asked me, so do you get it out of your system? Is it, is it. Are you released, like in a therapeutic way? And I said, no, but it does feel. It does feel good.
- [139:04]
A
It does feel good. It's a temporary release. I can relate in my job too, frankly, but I appreciate outlets like yours for helping me do it without having to be firsthand involved in it. So what happened? What happened to Purdue Pharma? Like, what happened to this company, to Richard Sackler? That's the part that outrages Danny the most, from what I read. And that's where we're going to pick it up right after this quick break on where they are now. And remember, folks, you can catch the Megan Kelly show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east, and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, go subscribe to ours. It's doing really, really well. Thanks to all of you. You can subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full archives. With more than 220 shows, Now would be a good time to ask you what dopesick means. I just sort of blindly started watching it, not even asking that question. And then it gets explained in the series. It is a thing. What is it?
- [140:11]
D
Yeah.
- [140:12]
C
So dopesick is the condition one feels that has an opioid use disorder. The withdrawal pain they feel that is so severe and staggering that they feel like they're gonna die if they're not able to get their next fix of some type of opioid. And it's so all empowering, all overwhelming. People will turn their back on everything in their life to not get dope sick. Their family, their children, their jobs. This is how people end up up living under a bridge in a tent is because that withdrawal pain overwhelms every sense of their body, soul, et cetera. And it's one of the deviousness, the diabolical nature of opioids when you become addicted to them is that they hijack your brain, they change your brain chemistry. So sort of the, the stereotype or the perception that many people have is that Someone who's addicted to opioids that they can't get off. They're weak, they're maybe lazy, and they just want to get high. They're losers, they're junkies. It's a lot of judgment, but when you dig into it, what you learn is, oh, no, their brain has been hijacked and they cannot live without it. And that's what makes it so uniquely difficult to overcome opioid use disorder. And that's where the word dose it comes from.
- [141:51]
A
Yeah. Another word is like, they're kidnapped. They've been kidnapped by this drug, the real person, and it's so hard to get them back, no matter how much the ransom you pay. So the series takes us through the progression that one of the characters has and that the country has as well, which is past OxyContin. The next drug of choice is heroin. It's sort of the gateway to heroin. And then in more modern times, illicit fentanyl, which is where we are now. This is what people are dealing with currently. And it's incredibly hard to get off of.
- [142:30]
C
One pill can kill you.
- [142:32]
A
So go ahead. Yeah. What were you saying?
- [142:33]
C
Oh, I was just saying fentanyl is so dangerous, literally one pill can kill you. I mean, that's how severe and dangerous this whole crisis has become. Yep.
- [142:43]
A
So the progression happens for one of the characters and it happens for the nation too. In the meantime, you're asked, you're shown the EFF by some law enforcement agents. You mentioned the West Virginia prosecutors. Certain people at the higher levels of the federal government were on the good guys side, and certain people were not. It's never fully explained what was happening, but we're led to believe that Purdue Pharma had connections even there. They hired Rudy Giuliani. He knew how to work the government. This is at the height of his popularity, right after 9 11. And he tried to work his magic on Purdue's behalf, used his good name on their behalf, which is just. Oh, hurts. And ultimately the civil lawsuits and finally the criminal prosecutions against Purdue Pharma got us where, Danny?
- [143:27]
C
Well, the criminal prosecutions, so. And that's where the show ends. The season basically ends around. It's in 2007, which is a settlement that Purdue Pharma has with the US Government. Three executives plead to misdemeanors and does from this settlement in which the company pleads to a felony, $600 million in fines. So is this. Do they change their ways? Are they reformed by this settlement? The answer is a definitive no, in fact. And this is where, for me, I start to think that these people are sociopaths because they. They have had this massive investigation against them. They have pled guilty to a felony. There is so much data at this point in 2007 of overdoses, crime rates, communities devastated. Do they change their ways? Do they make any sort of adjustments? No, they hit the gas and they sell even harder, and they triple their sales in two years. And like I said, that's where I start to think. Oh, oh, They're. They're literally sociopaths where they just do not care. They don't care about any of the damage that they're causing. They are just trying to make as much money as possible. So then that brings us now to 2021 and 2020. Lo and behold, they have to plead guilty to two more sets of felonies, and instead of $600 million in fines, it's $8.5 billion in fines. Partly this settlement was because they blew off the safeguards of the 2007 settlement. The company goes into bankruptcy. They end up getting this very favorable judgment in which the Sackler family will pay out. I believe it was 3.4 billion. 4.5. 4.5 billion. Yeah, yeah. Billion dollars in fines. However, they are now immune to all future civil. Civil litigation. However, here's where it gets a little interesting. Very interesting, depending on your point of view, is that they are not immune to criminal liability, and they could still be prosecuted. The Sackler family. And there was a big rally outside the Justice Department just a few days ago, filled with activists, filled with Rick Mountcastle, the real prosecutor who we dramatized in the show was there gave a speech. I actually gave a speech. There were three former us, Three former Justice Department prosecutors giving a speech to push the Justice Department to file criminal charges against members of the Sackler family. So this isn't over. And now the common belief has always been amongst, I don't know who, but that this will never happen if they'll never be charged. However, there is a push now. I think that the TV show has put a lot of attention on it and given it some momentum, and it's really emboldened the activists who threw this rally. And supposedly there's going to be a just Justice Department meeting in the next week with the lawyer for these activists and some of the activists. And they're better. They better meet with them because literally, Purdue Pharma certainly has met with the Justice Department many times. So I would think these activists should be able to get this meeting. But so there is a push right now for criminal charges. There is a huge sense amongst these activists that justice is not been served. The company has now pled guilty to three felonies, but no individuals have. And the company didn't make these decisions. Individuals made these decisions.
- [147:13]
A
And Sackler, the Sacklers paid money toward that bankruptcy settlement of Purdue, but they still have plenty of money. It's not unlike the Epstein case with justice on the wrong side for a lot of years and now getting it right. Danny Strong, thank you so much for being here and for telling this story and all the best with it.
- [147:31]
C
Oh, thank you so much, Megan. I had a great time talking about this with you, so thank you so much for having me here.
- [147:37]
A
All the best. Take care. Up next, the journalist who wrote the book Dopesick, Beth Macy. Don't go away.
- [147:47]
E
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- [148:10]
A
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- [148:16]
A
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E
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A
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- [148:28]
E
the peace of mind part covered.
- [148:32]
A
Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show. Joining me now, Beth Macy, journalist and author who wrote the book Dopesick, which was recently adapted into the TV series that you've been hearing us talk about. Beth, thank you so much for being with us today. I, I loved your book and I love your work. And I think you have this sage ability to see things that the rest of us can't necessarily see. So we're lucky to have journalists like you.
- [148:58]
D
Thank you.
- [148:59]
A
That's the truth. I mean, you saw something here when it came to these small distressed communities in Appalachia and similarities that were in all of these towns and then similar ways of dealing with the problems. So first, can you just describe sort of what were, what were some of the problems they shared that sort of preceded the opioid crisis.
- [149:24]
D
So one of the factors about where the crisis first broke out was the fact that Purdue Pharma bought data that showed them which communities were sort of rife to be exploited by their products. That is, they picked the communities in America. These tended to be distressed rural towns where the jobs were going away. And these were places that had furniture factory making, coal mining, logging, fishing. So you first see the crisis break erupting in places like Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, rural Maine, Because Purdue knew that doctors in those communities were already prescribing competing opioids at a higher rate. And with their FDA label that we now know is quite in question, they went out and they tried with the reps, they tried to flip the doctors from prescribing Percocet, Vicodin, Loratab to oxycontin, which they said was safer because of this continuous release mechanism.
- [150:33]
A
And they got the doctors to flip thanks to that FDA insert, which was completely bought and paid for by Purdue Pharma to the great expense of really lower, not even, I mean, maybe lower to middle income Americans to begin with. And then it spread and spread and spread. I know you write about a study that took a look at the, the life expectancy of people in these regions and how like the difference between the bottom fifth in terms of income and wealth and the top fifth in income and wealth in this country is huge. It's something like a difference of 13 years in life expectancy. And so these people, really, they've been overlooked by a system that has been focused on globalization, that's been trying to kill coal, and no one's been paying any attention to them. And then Purdue Pharma did and managed to manipulate their very doctors to sort of turn on them without understanding that's what they were doing, doing right.
- [151:37]
D
And that was a real double whammy if you've already lost the majority of your job. Some of the communities I was reporting on for my first book, Factory man, which came out in 2014, which is about the aftermath of globalization. As I was wrapping up that reporting, I was starting to hear things like, we've got a heroin crisis in Martinsville, Virginia. We're talking like a tiny town about an hour south of me here in Roanoke, Virginia. And I didn't understand it at the time, nor did most journalists, that the OxyContin story was so related to the heroin epidemic story, because they're basically chemical cousins. And when the drugs start to get harder to get More expensive around 2010, 2012, you and I may not have known that Oxycontin and heroin were chemical cousins, but the cartels did. And so they bring them in and start converting people to heroin because it's cheaper, it's easier to get. And they know that one's fear of becoming dope sick that is this excruciating Feeling of withdrawal that they all say is like the worst flu times 100 really is one hell of a good business model.
- [152:50]
A
And can you explain what the cartels, which we already know are evil, do to the drug in order to make sure the clientele gets high, hooked and keeps coming back?
- [153:01]
D
Well, first they just. I remember the story from a young woman named Tess Henry that I followed for dope sick. And she could pinpoint the month that the DEA started cracking down Hydrocodone products had been upscheduled. I think it was like 2014. And she said all of a sudden she couldn't get the pills on the black market from her dealer. And so he personally showed her how to snort heroin. Which you think, heroin, yuck. You know, if you're her. Which she did at first. But really if you're snorting in a line, it was just the same as she had been snorting the pills. And once because of, because with opioids, you, you need more and more in order not to get dope sick. Then when the snorting the heroin didn't work, her dealer taught her how to shoot it up. And that, you know, times, times a million across our country. That's the way it went down. And now we have fentanyl poisoning the drug supply because it's smaller, more potent and easier to smuggle in.
- [154:09]
A
In the book you write about how they would. They'll sort of pack the initial dose with some extras and you get this big high and you love it. And then you come back and they lower the dosage in your next, your next delivery. So then you start to get the feeling you need the next, next hit sooner you pay more, you know, and now they've got you. I mean, now you're, now you're a customer for life. Is heroin a lot cheaper than OxyContin? And I mean, obviously you don't get a prescription for it, so you just get it like on the streets. But it's more accessible and it's cheaper.
- [154:42]
D
Absolutely, it's a lot cheaper. And forgive me, I don't remember exactly how much it's going for right now, but of course fentanyl is in all of the drugs right now. So you're getting people overdose with cocaine that's laced with fentanyl MDMA drugs. And these are so much easier to get on the black market than the treatment, the medicines, the medication assisted treatment that science says is the gold standard of care for treating people with opioid use disorder. I mean, that's, it's so much easier to Just go out and get dope again rather than it is, is to be treated like a human being with a medical condition in our healthcare system.
- [155:26]
A
And so you get hooked on something like OxyContin thanks to Purdue and its fancy marketing skills and its manipulation of the FDA and doctors and its own sales reps. And then when you either run out of money or the ability to get more prescriptions, once the government cracked down on these, you know, pill pushers, then where are you? Because you're still addicted and you can't get your drug anymore. So you turn to heroin or you turn to fentanyl and you have a high, high likelihood of dying. I mean, that's the thing. So we didn't solve the opioid crisis by cracking down on some of these characters.
- [155:58]
D
No, absolutely. Nor did we solve the opioid crisis by reducing prescriptions. Even a lot of people thought that would help with overdoses because maybe it does help with not starting new cases. But for the people who are already addicted, that horse is long out of the barn. So that's why we need to make these addiction treatments and modalities so much more accessible than they are.
- [156:25]
A
Yeah, well, we'll get to it. We'll get to the treatment in just a little bit. But the. The book, also, the series based on the book, does a great job of showing you how it can corrupt your life, how it can corrupt the life of somebody who is innocent, you know, who. Who is, well, meaning, who is not. I don't know, you know how it is when you grow up. At least in the 70s, you talked about people who got addicted to drugs. You think of somebody who was kind of dirty, kind of a dirtbag, you know, like, oh, gross, who does drugs? That's not what happened with the opioid crisis. And it's one of the things I love about the storytelling because it accurately represents that, you know, whatever, moms, daughters, you know, innocent high school kids getting sucked into this. The path in the movie of the main star takes us. Her name is Betsy, played by Caitlyn Deaver, takes us to a really low moment when her parents figure she's still on drugs. They've tried to get a rehab and she's still on drugs. And if you've ever had an addict in your family, you've been through something like this because they don't get clean right away first time they try. You go through this over and over, lies and sneaking and cheating with more and escalating to other drugs, and it's captured powerfully in what we have labeled as soundbite 9 watch. I sold all of it. Mom. Mom, You've been.
- [157:47]
B
You've been going to aa. That's where I get my pills.
- [157:54]
A
What?
- [157:56]
E
Your whole tongue? Dad. Get your goddamn pills.
- [158:00]
B
Dad.
- [158:01]
A
No. No. The only thing you care about.
- [158:04]
E
Your hands off of me. Where are you, goddamn pill. Uhhuh. Out here. You sold your mom's precious heirlooms for this trash? Huh? What the.
- [159:14]
C
I hate you. I hate you. I hope I've been burning hell.
- [159:25]
A
My God. It's upsetting to watch. It Sense makes mean. It's upsetting to watch because it's. It's too realistic. And I know you.
- [159:32]
D
It's too realistic. And I've heard from parents who have been triggered by watching it, who are on Twitter warning other parents. I mean, this is such a common story. Folks like this stealing from their relatives. You know, they've been stigmatized and made to feel ashamed. And. And parents, many of whom, just like Betsy's parents, don't really understand the science behind opioid use disorder. So they, too, are ashamed. I mean, I was talking to somebody at the rally just Friday night who works with families in Massachusetts, and she said people will still call her and they're dealing with it in their family, and they'll want to meet her four towns over from where she lives because they're so stigmatized by the hoax that the Sacklers did on families in America, stigmatizing the wrong people.
- [160:26]
A
The. The thought of the doctor telling an innocent patient who comes in there earnestly seeking the treatment of pain, and the way they pitched oxy as non addictive and. And totally safe. And first they'd give you, you know, these small units, and then when the small. And there's. They were supposed to last. They were supposed to last overnight even. And then people said, well, I. They're not last. They're not lasting. I need help. And Purdue said, well, let's call that breakthrough pain. That's breakthrough pain. And the way we're gonna address that is with, take a guess, more oxycontin. And then they kept making the pills bigger and bigger, and even the initial dosages given to the patients would be bigger and bigger. And all I can think watching that scene is, you know, imagine saying to a patient who came in for minor back pain just looking for some relief. I'll give you this drug. It will turn you into a bomb. You will become a human bomb that will blow up your entire family, your life, as, you know, all of your loved ones. You will turn you Into a thief, into a liar, into a felon and possibly into a dead corpse. Here you go. That's, that's the warning that these drugs should have had on them.
- [161:33]
D
Absolutely, absolutely. And I say this to physicians groups, maybe not quite that forcefully as you Megan, but I will say that, you know, 5,000 of you went out, out to fancy resorts, courtesy of Purdue Pharma and learn how to become good prescribers of their drug. They took gifts, they took fancy dinners and you know when journalists aren't even allowed to go to take somebody out for lunch. Right. And, and yet these doctors that, that make a lot of money already are doing, taking these free trips, they becoming paid speakers for the company. And what I say to doctors is I know you were lied to to, but you helped get us into this mess and you need to help get us out.
- [162:19]
A
And what's the answer to that? How can they.
- [162:22]
D
So we know that not everyone responds the same to addiction. We know that a person with heroin addiction, a typical person, it's going to take them five to six treatment attempts and over eight years to get just one year of sobriety. So that's one thing is we have to get realize is this is a chronic relapsing disease. We know that buprenorphine and methadone, which call MAT for medication assisted treatment, reduce overdose deaths by 50 to 60% or more in some cases. But that also it's really important to get people housing and social supports and counseling along with this. These are all things we don't do very well in this country. As we see the homelessness rate skyrocketing and many of the young people that I followed in my book ended up in prison, ended up doing sex work, living homeless. I mean people who were doctor's kids, people who were civic leaders kids, wealth didn't protect anyone in this case, in fact, because of the stigma attached to wealthier families, in some cases it made it worse. People would send their kids away to these abstinence only rehabs, spend a fortune for them. A lot of middle class families would remortgage their homes to send them to exactly the kind of treatment that science says doesn't really work for. Opioid use disorder. You've seen that in the Keaton story when he's there. I forget if it's episode six or seven. He's like, hey, you've been back here a lot, right? In rehab. And the guy says yeah, five or six times. And he says, but it worked, it worked for me finally. And he says, well Were you alcohol? And he says, yeah, alcohol. So we know that the rehab works better for abstinence. Only modalities work better than for opioids, which really most people need. Need the medication assisted treatment.
- [164:18]
A
See, that's another thing that we didn't know when going through this, right? Like, I. I remember being one of the, like, you know, you gotta go cold turkey. You know, you gotta. You gotta let this person hit rock bottom. I don't reveal who it was in my family because I don't have the permission of the person or the person's other family members. But, you know, I was of the mind of, like, tough love. You know, you can't keep picking up the pieces. You can't give this person the home that they lost because of all the lies and all the. And all the bankruptcies and all. You can't do that, you know, like, let them deal with the laws of natural consequences. And it's only now, with some distance, that I start to see it's just not that simple. And you can't really apply the rules you may have thought applied to a disease like alcoholism. And you could take issue with my. My plan even there to this addiction.
- [165:09]
D
That's absolutely right. And I saw that over and over and over again, and it's still happening. You know, parents are sort of beating their heads against the wall, and they're being told, many of them are being told, that that's the way to do it. I tell the story of this mom in my new book, Raising Lazarus, which comes out next August, who had this critical moment where she knew her son was going to die if he didn't get help. And her best friend had a teenage daughter who had cancer. And she said, I'm going to treat. Treat him the way Lisa treats Amelia. I'm not gonna just kick him out of the house. I'm gonna feed him. If he comes home and he's high, I'm not gonna engage, but I'm also not gonna be cruel. And then we're gonna have a conversation the next day, and I'm not giving up on him. And she says, now he's six years into sobriety. She says her only regret was that she hadn't approached. Approached his addiction like the medical condition. It was much.
- [166:12]
A
Wow, it's so hard that she's a strong woman, because unlike the cancer patient, this patient is lying and cheating and stealing and bankrupting other family members. And, you know, you. You're angry with them, right? It's like how you have to check your anger because what you really want is to solve it. You know, you don't. You don't want to just punish. It's not about retribution. It's. It's like, I want this all stop. And the way to stop is. Is your friend's approach. But men, it's so hard.
- [166:46]
D
You're right. And they mess up your Christmas dinner and your Thanksgiving dinner and.
- [166:52]
A
And they hurt everyone you love. Everyone you love.
- [166:55]
D
Yeah. Yeah. I will never forget. With. With Tess was the young woman I followed the most in Dopesick. She would disappear and live homeless, and then she come home every now and then. In the last Thanksgiving, they had to get together. She had hurt her siblings so much that. And they were very much kind of had come up in tough love that they were just done with her. And even though she made the whole meal, she did all the shopping, and her mom just sent me a picture the other day after Thanksgiving, she goes, remember this? It was Tess's last. She called it the thankless Thanksgiving. She made the whole meal and no one thanked her. And you know, shortly after, she had another break down. And you know, she went back out in the streets. And, you know, I know her mother wishes she would have acted sooner with love. And she now says, you know, rock bottom has a basement. The basement has a trap door. I wish I knew now what I knew then, what I knew now.
- [167:53]
A
It's a good line. Coming up, we're going to talk about how the system is not positioned, not at all, to help people who've been. Find themselves addicted to opioids get out of it and get their lives straight and clean to the contrary. It's built, I think, to keep them down, and it does a really effective job at it. We'll pick it up there with Beth Macy coming up right after this. So, Beth, just to take a step back, the book does a good job of explaining how we. We've had some shifts as a country. This isn't the first time that we've been, I guess, dope.
- [168:29]
B
Nope.
- [168:30]
A
Sick. And you talk about how. One of the things that struck me in the book was that you talked about how they used to. It was. I'm looking at my here. In 1899, Bayer. Bayer, as in Bayer aspirin, was cranking out a ton of heroin a year and selling it in 23 countries. And you write that in the US cough drops and even baby soothing syrups were laced with heroin. So this is in the late 1800s. We were given heroin to our baby. Babies.
- [168:58]
D
Yeah. So this kind of comes about as the result of civil war, war wounds, and women who had lost their families. And heroin is actually introduced by Bayer as a cure for morphinism, which is doctors would give morphine away along with needles to patients and have them use them as needed. And of course, course, just as then, even though then it was much a lighter dosage than the heroin we have certainly now is. But people would need more and more. And then when the Harrison Narcotics act came along in 1914, outlawing most of the black market uses of the drug, people then went to the black market. That's when there became this dichotomy between legitimate white market users who were prescribed and so called black market users. For most of the 1900s until 1996, when Purdue comes out with OxyContin, we knew that opioids were addictive and should only be used in instances of cancer, end of life post surgery, but just for a few days because doctors were rightly worried about addiction, which we've known for centuries, actually. Actually. And yet Purdue managed to flip the narrative not just for OxyContin, but through the pain societies that they funded a lot of, and through things like the Joint Commission, which they had a role in, things like consumer surveys where patients would give a hospital a bad thing. You see that playing out in the show when our character Randy is in the hospital first, prostate cancer. They just shifted that narrative right away and it all blew up again.
- [171:00]
A
So in other words, just to add to that, you're saying, because this is portrayed in the film, the movie too, that if you go to the hospital and you have a negative experience and you give them a bad rating because they didn't address your pain, that hurts the hospital. And so there was a big push started by oxycontin to produce, to get doctors and nurses on it. If you feel pain, there's no more like just dealing with it. And there's no more like, all right, well, let's titrate it a little bit. You know, it's give them, why not, why not more, why not more oxycontin. And if you're worried about it, here's the special FDA label that says don't worry about it. But like, there was a consumerist response to this pain problem that the hospitals had to worry about because they are, after all, businesses.
- [171:43]
D
Absolutely. They could lose their ratings, they could lose reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid if they didn't treat a person's pain. And still today, I was at the ER with a friend not long ago. You still See that rate your pain scale with the smiley faces, 1 to 10. So there are still elements of it, although I think most doctors and nurses are much wiser about it.
- [172:07]
A
And one of the things we've done since the mid-90s to the early aughts is we've gotten around the problem of doctor jumping. Right. I don't know what the technical term for it is, but I get a prescription from Dr. Smith for OxyContin and he fills it, but he knows only to give me 30 days worth or one. Back then they were giving a few refills. But then I go to Dr. Jones because Dr. Smith's not going to give me any more when I ran out of it after a week. And I get one from him and then I got one from this, this other female doctor. You can't do that anymore, right? Technically you're not supposed to be able to do that.
- [172:38]
D
All the states now have, they're called PDMPs for prescription monitoring programs. I think only one state is a holdout. But you see Michael Keaton doing that at the height of his addiction because he's in the corner of far southwest Virginia and it's just a half hour drive to get to Tennessee, this way to Kentucky, this way to West Virginia. And they would really take advantage of that. And you also see in the show this idea that, oh, they're cutting down, they're cutting back on prescribing at home. Home. But people would rent vans to drive down. They called it, what did they call it, the Pillbilly Express or the OxyContin Express. They've drive down to Florida, which had no restrictions at the time, and you would see these strip mall office setups with doctors prescribing without hardly even doing exams. And they would be running pharmacies out there, their back door, I mean, sometimes in like the equivalent of a food truck, you know, because you could get
- [173:39]
A
rich as a doctor by doing that happened. You could get rich as a doctor by doing that. And by the way, one of the things that's happened in the news recently, just a couple weeks ago, was a judgment of liability against cvs, Walgreens and Walmart for their role in the opioid crisis. Their pharmacies and a couple other ones like Rite Aid and another had settled. So they were also swept in, in just indiscriminately filling all these prescriptions when. And we're not just talking about mild abuse, but in abuse of these drugs that should have been obvious to any pharmacy then, yet they turned to blind Eye because they too made a lot of money off of this.
- [174:17]
D
Absolutely, that's right. And what you have now. And every time I do an interview, I'll hear from the chronic pain community. But when I. And, and, and they're angry because a lot of folks who are actually on stable dosages of legit pain medications are being abandoned as well. And so you see some of those folks either suffering in pain or going to the black market and getting heroin laced with fentanyl or committing suicide. So that's a concern too. But that's directly because of the actions of Purdue making it so over prescribed to start with. That it's, and it's, it's, it's hard to suss out for some doctors who's legit and who isn't. But so just, just a nod to the fact that, you know, there are other unintended victims of this.
- [175:05]
A
That's right.
- [175:06]
D
Today. And, and I hear from them a lot.
- [175:09]
A
The, the lawsuits started to come against Purdue as people started to feel it, as communities started to put together that entire towns were falling apart and found themselves addicted. I mean, in particular in Appalachian Balacha. And the big one we mentioned a minute ago with Danny Strong was the 2007 settlement with Purdue where the three executives pleaded guilty to. Was it a felony? It was a felony, yes. Yeah, to a felony.
- [175:38]
D
No, I'm sorry. The executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. They were on probation for a few years. They had fines. The company made it. And then the holding company, not Purdue Pharma rather, but Purdue Franklin Frederick, pleaded guilty to a felony. Now, if Purdue Pharma would have pleaded guilty, I mean, their lawyers were so ahead of everybody else on this. They cunningly knew that Purdue Pharma wouldn't be able to continue to sell OxyContin if it had a felony. So they did the deal with the
- [176:09]
A
holding company, Purdue Frederick, and it was allowed. And by the way, none of those executives was last named Sackler. It was three other guys.
- [176:17]
D
Absolutely, absolutely. And if you talk to the activists now, because Danny and I were just with a bunch of them on Friday at this rally on December 3rd, they didn't even know the name Sackler back then. And think about that like, you know, you've got all these museums and wings and whatnot, but back then, if you went to the Purdue Farmer website, you wouldn't even see the name Sackler on anything. They were very clever. And as word that these lawsuits were coming up, they cleverly, you know, resigned from their board position. And in a way allowed their philanthropy to sort of cloak their villainy.
- [176:57]
A
So how did they come back? You know, we were just talking with Danny about how they I think tripled their sales within a couple of years. They went forward, the Sacklers in Purdue, like nothing had ever happened.
- [177:08]
D
That's right. Well, a lot of the government regulators that should have been monitoring their corporate integrity agreement. I mean, corporate integrity agreement, the very phrase is kind of laughable when you see how they just continued to do what they were doing before and in many ways amped up their sales. Richard Sackler personally went on sales calls at least one time that we know of. And they hired McKinsey to double down to sell, sell, sell, sale. And, and we didn't have, we don't have structures in place to, to make sure that the proper checks are happening such that in 2020 the company pleads guilty to more felonies, which are basically the same kind of fraudulent behaviors in,
- [178:04]
A
in between those two times. I mean, I don't. When would you say we became aware of the opioid crisis? You know, we as a nation had the national impact consciousness that this was a thing.
- [178:13]
D
That's a really good question. In 2015, the Nobel winning economist Ann Case and Angus Deaton wrote about was a bombshell study was on the COVID of Time magazine. Deaths of despair. So we realized that for the first time in American history Since World War I, our life expectancy was going down. And it was going down largely due to opioid over overdose, alcoholism related diseases like cirrhosis of the liver and to suicide. But by far the biggest of those three factors was opioids. You had Sam Canoni's book Dreamland came out in 2016. I believe my book came out in 2018. And then the lawsuits started happening and a lot of those, most of the suits ended up over 2,600 lawsuits were brought by cities and counties and state governments. They ended up in the multi district litigation under the direction of Judge Pollster in Cleveland. But Purdue was able to pull their case out by filing bankruptcy. And where did they file bankruptcy? Not in a location where they actually conduct business, but they filed it in the jurisdiction of a bankruptcy judge named Robert Drain, who is known for being one of the minority of judges who allows what's called a third party release, which. So it's like a bankruptcy loophole. They file in White Plains because they know Drain is one of the few judges that allows the Sackler to attach to get civil immunity from further litigation in exchange for their son settlement.
- [179:58]
A
Yeah. And just to make clear this is an issue because the Sacklers individually were not filing for bankruptcy. They're billionaires. Just Purdue Pharma was. But they wanted to sort of glom on to their company and say, oh, and no lawsuits against us and no more criminal, no, no trouble for us of any kind because we've contributed $4 billion or we've contributed to this massive bankruptcy settlement. But they, they basically. But that was backfunded, as I understand, by Purdue anyway, so it's all fungible. These are still, still going to be billionaires. And now if this goes through, they
- [180:30]
D
can't be sued.4 billion. So if you take that 10.4 and then you let them pay off the four and a half over nine years, by the way, they have nine years to pay it. So with investments at the going rate, they could be richer at the end of the nine years than they are right now. I mean, where is the justice in that?
- [180:49]
A
Oh, my gosh, they're clever. I mean, that's definitely something we saw in all of this. They're clever. Clever. One of the things you point out in your book, and I think it's good too, is a couple of very famous deaths. You know, sometimes I don't want to say these people were used, you know, by a higher power to sort of underscore the dangers of drugs to us. But you point out in the book Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. I mean, this incredibly promising actor who was just stunning when he died, Prince died. I mean, both of them swept up in this same crisis that we're talking about. And sometimes seeing somebody there that famous and talented, seeing their life cut short, can really be, I don't know, it gets your attention and it focuses you in a way that can be productive.
- [181:35]
D
Yes. It's a wake up call. And as I think somebody in the book said, nobody wants to tell Prince that he has an opioid problem. Right. So back to this idea that wealth and power can protect you from this. Nobody's protected from this. That's why we all need to pay attention and become, you know, advocates for our own medical treatments.
- [181:56]
A
Yep. So then it morphs, you know, from oxy to the heroin scene. And you write in your book about how this is like the suburban heroin scene, the young teenage girl heroin scene would shock people. Can you talk about that a bit? Because it's hard to believe that, you know, young cheerleaders are doing heroin. But they are.
- [182:17]
D
Yeah. And of course, not all of them, but, you know, unlike you and I growing up in the 70s and 80s when kids would experiment with alcohol or weed, maybe some mushrooms or something, I don't know. But you talk about kids that grew up in the 90s and the aughts they had pills at their disposal because Purdue had massively talked doctors into massively over prescribing these drugs. So a kid could just experiment like the way a kid in years yore would have done without alcohol or marijuana, but only now they're using a much more dangerous drug. And so, I mean, actually I was just at a premier event here in Roanoke with the first person I ever knew who this had happened to. And he was a young man named Spencer Mom Power. And when I first met him, he was from a wealthy family, his mom was a civic leader, had a chain of jewelry stores, and he was about to go to federal prison for five and a half years, years for having sold heroin to his former private school classmate who died. And I spent the summer hanging out with him trying to learn about this nascent cell of heroin users in the, in the wealthy white suburbs of Roanoke. And he said, dude, I'm the one that told you what the word dopesick meant. And I was like, you're absolutely right. I didn't know what it meant then. But I remember him describing, describing how if, if he said, if your dope man wasn't coming until, you know, for three more days and you only had this little, this much left, you would parse it out so that you would still have a little bit at the end. Because the, the driving fear of all of it was this fear of withdrawal and this fear of dope sickness.
- [184:05]
A
Of course this, like any addiction is more likely to affect you if you have a parent who is an addict. Your book points out that I think you have, have a 50 to 60%, you're 50 to 60% more likely to become addicted if you have a parent who is an addict. So, you know, there is, of course, as with any addiction, an extra special red warning label to people who have that in their family. But there is a treatment and we talked about how, you know, the version of AA doesn't work so well for the opioid addicts. But there is a treatment called Suboxone that does help. Now it too is considered a controlled substance, right? Like an opiate. It's an opioid. So it will show up in your blood. If you want to do a job that tests your blood before they hire you, it will show up and it will show up as Suboxone. And then they'll know that you're on that drug which helps you get off of another opioid. So you've got sort of an opioid in your blood, which is helping you get off of probably a more serious opioid. And boom, Bob's your uncle. I mean, these jobs aren't going to hire you. That's a real problem. But that drug seems to be to be very much part of the solution to this crisis.
- [185:12]
D
Absolutely. It's protective. And Megan, it has buprenorphine in it, which is the opioid that kind of gloms on to the opioid receptor. But it also has naloxone in it, which is the generic name for Narcan, so that if somebody does go out and use, it's not going to work for them. And so it is protective in that way. And you see in our show the way the Michael Keaton character is stigmatized for being on it. And he said, it's what's keeping me clean. I've never felt clearer than I have in my life. You see Betsy go to the AA meeting and be told that she's considering going on it. But somebody says to her that's just treating a drug with another drug. And this happened over and over to the young people that I was following for my book. And it is a real problem, especially among law enforcement people who have seen it diverted and sold. But I would argue, and many experts argue, that the reason it is so widely diverted is because it largely isn't available to the people who need it. So there is this big market demand for it. Only one in five people with opioid use disorder has access to. To it. So that's something. We know it works. We know it's dangerous to go off of harder opioids without being on it. So we really need to make it available at a scale to match the crisis.
- [186:47]
A
How long can one stay on it?
- [186:50]
D
So everyone's different and some people think it's okay. You might have to be on it for the rest of your life. Life. Dr. Van Zee, the doctor who's portrayed in the show, he. He told me years ago, he said he's got patients weaned down very, very slowly, and they might just be on a teeny little bit every day. But he's afraid because he's seen people, you know, even when they're on a small amount, when they go off, they. Some have relapsed, and so he's very, very cautious about it. He only does it when a person, voluntary want, voluntarily wants to taper off. But it's something to be done with all caution. But he, I mean, he does have some amazing success stories, as do all mat doctors. I mean, the thing about law enforcement is they only see the bad side of it, the people breaking the law side of it. They don't see the people who are getting jobs back, getting their kids back.
- [187:44]
A
Well, and I think employers need to see that drug and maybe have a different reaction instead of seeing like, oh, drug addict, and they've got an opioid in them. Now it's no. Someone who has actively taken steps to change their life. And you can find out for how long they've been clean and been on it. Because you're not taking opioids in addition to Suboxone, if you're taking Suboxone. But, you know, to me, it's just so frustrating because you see, Beth, you know, it's like you, these companies, they get you addicted. They get you addicted to their drug. Your life spirals. So many of these people wind up committing crimes, whatever, whether it's shoplifting or something with cars, what have you, because they're desperate, you know, selling drugs, buying drugs. Now they have a criminal record record. Then they get on Suboxone, which is the way out for a lot of them. Then they can't get a job because they've got that in their blood, which is a tell. So now you, you know, your employers are looking at somebody who's got a criminal past, who's got this drug, which is a tell, who probably doesn't present all that well physically because they've been an addict for all this time. And it's an impossible spiral to pull yourself out of. You need so much support, so much love, so much understanding from your family, from society, from employers, from law enforcement, from the judicial system and from. We didn't even touch the story of expanded Medicaid. And I, you know, your, your book is really smart on that. I love people to read your arguments for Medicaid expansion.
- [189:04]
D
It's just the number one tool for, for reducing overdose deaths in, in various states. But we still have 12 states that haven't expanded it, right?
- [189:13]
C
Yep.
- [189:13]
A
Yep. They think it's. Again, I think they think it may be tough love, but it may just be cruel and a way of stopping people from getting out of a really tough situation. Situation.
- [189:22]
D
Right. And as this opioid litigation money as the funnel start, as it starts to funnel down is so important that states and communities get together, people who really understand the science and aren't just, you know, spouting off this tough love crap which isn't working and is starting to meet people where they are. We know that people who visit needle exchanges. I know that sounds kind of counter intuitive. Why are you going to give a drug user a clean needle? Well, because they're going to use regardless until they get real help. So why don't we make sure they use safely and that's going to cut down on the spread of Hepatitis C and hiv, which is skyrocketing in some communities.
- [190:04]
A
Yeah, no, I heard you say they're
- [190:06]
D
also five times more likely to enter treatment when they go to a needle exchange.
- [190:10]
A
Oh, and on top of that, you've said it's cheaper to pay for the needle than it is to pay for the disease. The treatment of the disease they're going to get from dirty needle. So it's like society's in. We're in this whether we want to be or not. And the only question now is what is the smart way of dealing with it. Beth Macy is one of the people who has been calling attention to it for a long time with thoughtful diagnoses and possible solutions. I'm grateful for you, Beth. Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [190:35]
D
Thank you, Megan. Really appreciate it.
- [190:38]
A
All the best.
- [190:40]
E
UnitedHealth Group is simplifying healthcare by investing in tools to help patients know to how more and pay less. These tools help patients find providers and compare costs and save hundreds of dollars annually. Learn more@unitedhealthgroup.com commitment.
- [190:56]
A
Hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart, and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life and just a warning, I'm going to be giving my opinion on everything.
- [191:07]
B
I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun.
- [191:09]
A
The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on your YouTube. Family Annihilator. It's a term you may have heard recently during the Alec Murdoch trial. The prosecutor even asking Alec directly if he qualified as one. Do you remember this watch? Are you a family annihilator?
- [191:36]
E
A family annihilator? You mean like did I shoot my wife and my son? Yes. No. Would never hurt Maggie Murdoch. I would never hurt Paul Murdick under any circumstances.
- [192:02]
A
Say that. Of course, the jury rejected that assertion. Finding Murdoch guilty of fatally shooting his wife Maggie and his son Paul. Maggie was 52. Paul was 22 and he's now serving life in prison. Murdering those close to you is an unimaginable act to most people. But Alec Murdoch is not the first or the last to kill his family. He's one of the many in a gruesome group of family annihilators. When I heard that term in that trial, it got me. I'd never heard that term before. And I'm in the news business and we cover crime a lot. It's a thing, it's an actual thing in criminology and those who study it and it's just extra. Right. I mean, murder is terrible under any circumstances, but what kind of a person can kill their entire family or a human. Huge portion of it. What makes a seemingly well liked, successful man? These are not all derelicts. In fact, they tend to be successful. People blow up his life in this manner, kill the people who are supposed to be most important to him. What kind of psychology makes you do that? How do we recognize this potential in a mate, a man, a punishment partner? Today we're going to do a deep dive into the motivations and the psyche of these individuals. We are also going to discuss what can be done to prevent this kind of violence. What are the warning signs? How, how do you know if you are potentially with somebody like this? Joining me now to dig into it all is Laura Richards. Laura is an award win winning criminal, behavioral analyst and expert on domestic abuse and coercive control. She also hosts the popular public podcasts Crime Analyst and Real Crime Profile. Laurel, so great to have you here on the show. Thanks for being here.
- [194:03]
B
Thank you for inviting me. Good to speak with you, Megan.
- [194:06]
A
So that since he used that term in the Murdoch trial, Creighton Waters, the prosecutor, I've gone down a dark rabbit hole and I know you're, you've been there for years studying these people and figuring out what makes a family a note annihilator, what makes them tick. And I have since watched everything I can get my hands on about I've already, I'm already there in Alec Murdoch, but on Chris Watts, who murdered his entire family in Colorado a few years back in 2018, his wife, his two beautiful daughters in the most disgusting, awful way. And then started picking up the case of Jeffrey McDonald, which I have covered over the years as a journalist. Journalist, but this is a guy back in 1970. And you could go, I mean, you could pick so many cases. Unfortunately, these are just the ones that got my interest. And Jeffrey McDonald was a very successful surgeon, Green beret, who was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters as well in just the most brutal fashion. And the thing about these three cases, Laura, that jumped out to me like the ones that the reason they pulled me in is because all three of these guys were super successful. You know, on paper they were doing well. Like Chris Watts wasn't rich like the other two, but the other two. And well, I mean Jeffrey McDonald wasn't rich either, but he was going to be because he was a surgeon. Just accolades, professional success, very well liked. No one would go back and say, oh yes, yeah, yeah, you could have seen it coming. The opposite. So let's start with what it is. Define for us what, what makes one a family. Family annihilator.
- [195:42]
B
Well, I think we have to work on the basis that if you understand what domestic abuse and domestic homicide is about, the motivation is power and control. And that's really what the perpetrators are seeking to achieve. They want power and control and they're trying to control the person or the people and the narrative. So I've studied many, many cases, I've worked on many, many cases. They, they are absolutely horrific. I think people really do struggle to understand how what the media might describe as the perfect dad, a good dad, a good dutiful husband, or I've even heard a perpetrator described as being good at diy. And the media tend to eulogize and memorialize the perpetrator, which makes it harder for the general public to really understand how it happened. But actually when I door knock and speak to the grandparents and those who have survived and I've done that across my 27 year career, I find a very different picture emerge and the picture is always the same and that's of a man because we are talking about men. This is very much a male related issue. It's a man who wanted to coercively control and coercive control are the key hallmarks and what we should be asking about rather than physical assaults.
- [197:06]
A
And I want to tell people just a little bit more about your credentials because they are impressive. Founder of Paladin, the world's first national stalking advocacy service. As a survivor, I don't really love that term, but as somebody who has. I had a very bad stalker who went to jail and then a mental facility for 10 years. So it was a serious case. I appreciate what you do. There are enough of experts like you. You also created, you mentioned dash, the Domestic Abuse Stalking and Honor based violence Risk Identification assessment and management model which was implemented across all police services in the UA in the uk The DASH checklist is, is credited with having reduced domestic murders by 58% in London across 13 years. So you. You know what you're doing. You. You are a true expert in all of this. And it's all kind of related, you know, the stalking, the domestic murder, abuse. This is not an indictment of all men. This is an indictment of abusers and helping both men and women recognize the signs. Because you may be a great guy who never abused anybody, but you might have a daughter who a man like this comes into her life, or a sister, or, you know, it could be a friend. And so men can be advocates of women in this situation as well, even if it. If it's not, you know them personally.
- [198:21]
B
Absolutely. And thank you for sharing your own experience of stalking, because it is important we do talk about. About it. It's why I created an advocacy service, because a lot of victims don't get the support that they need, the psychological and emotional support that when they're trying to survive something. And bearing in mind when I tend to work with people, they haven't survived it. So I agree with you. Survivor is the wrong term, particularly when someone's going through it and trying to ensure law enforcement understand the behaviors. Well, that's everything that Paladin is set up to do and changing the law to make sure the laws reflect women's lived experience when they are subjected to abuse. And that's a really important part of my work and ensuring that men work alongside us. Because, yes, it takes all men to help with changing and challenging and holding men to account when they are abusive, and that's when they're sexist, misogynistic. These are the types of mindset and the types of behavior behaviors that we want people to be challenging because it can lead to much more serious things happening. When a man feels that they are not getting their way or they are being disrespected in some way, or they feel that their control. They're losing their control over someone, well, that can be when something catastrophic occurs. And too often, like I said, when we ask the right questions of grandmothers and grandfathers, and it might be brothers and sisters, and when I ask them the questions, I always see a pattern emerge. And like I said, the media often report on things, and they just do a very cursory look at what's gone on, and they may talk to a neighbor who might turn around and say, oh, he was a lovely dad, or he took the children to the sweet shop, and yes, he was a really nice man, or he was fearful that he'd lose the children and that's why he killed them. And then this narrative goes in the media and the newspapers and that's what people then take as what's gone on. But it's a really dangerous narrative because oftentimes the warning signs are there and women can be framed and really blamed for something that's happened to them. And I'll give you an example. There was a recent horrific murder in the uk, a incredible woman called Emma Patterson and her seven year old daughter who were killed. And the media first of all reported on three people who died in Epsom, Surrey. They didn't say how, but there was a whole load of media, social media traffic about was it carbon monoxide poisoning? But the police put out a statement, said they're not looking for anybody else in connection with their deaths. And, and they said it's an isolated incident. So from all my work, I always hear police say that, and that means that it's domestic violence related. That's the code word. And it's not an isolated incident because it's a pandemic of women being killed. And it turned out there were gunshots heard just before the emergency services turned up and George Patterson shot them both dead. And the male had put an article together and the headline was, because she was a very successful headmistress of a school in Epsom, did her overachieving and putting him in the shadow, did that lead to this tragedy? And I wrote on the headline and fixed it and said, no, he did this all on his own because we very quickly get into excusing someone's behavior when it is unacceptable. This was something that he planned, premeditated. But the dominant narrative then is in the media that perhaps she's blame and she's framed intentionally and that she's to be, to, to. To be blamed in some way. And for me that's just unacceptable. I've seen it over and over and over again and it gives a very forced narrative of what's gone on.
- [202:17]
A
We can do that when it comes to divorce, right? Was she, was she overbearing? Was she difficult to live with? Was she okay? I mean, yeah, we're not all perfect. We can't do that when it comes to domestic violence. No. No annoying, negative, unfortunate behavior by the woman justifies domestic violence of any kind?
- [202:37]
B
Absolutely not. Well, if you follow the narrative through, what does seven year old Letty do? I mean, I can't even imagine the fear and the terror that she must have felt understanding that, you know, was mum killed before her and she watched or was Letty killed first? You know, that fear and terror for a child to know that they're not safe and they're unsafe. Something catastrophic is about to happen at the hands of the man who's meant to love and care for them. And these are the things, the places I spend, you know, my time and my mind working out what's happened, but
- [203:09]
A
also the psychology, what makes a man become this way? Because the vast, vast majority of men are wonderful, beautiful human beings, just like women, and would never hurt a woman that they love or in their life at all. In fact, they would want to hurt a man who did that. But there is an unhealthy contingent. And it's always, you know, I mean, it's not always, but it's just. I grew up in the 70s, and every night on the. On the news there were stories about the serial killers killing all these women. It's always like a series of women who get killed by these weird men. Something's gone wrong with them. So what is it that's in their background that makes these guys be able to succeed in life, able to be well liked, but instead of being a loving, caring hunter husband, they go this route?
- [203:54]
B
Yeah. So my background is in forensic and legal psychology. So I have spent a lot of time in the psychological research and analysis and the psychopathology of men who kill. And, and I will say they're not all homogenous. So we can't say it's all for the same reason. Specifically. Contexts are different. But what I can see is what is the thing that really is the motivator is this need for power and control.
- [204:18]
E
Control.
- [204:19]
B
And that power and control. Well, you know, I'm going to mention the P word, the patriarchy, because we all live in the patriarchy, where laws and systems and processes are created by men for men. And that's why women have a very tough time, because our lived experiences aren't included in laws, for example. So that's why we're having to change laws on stalking and on coercive control. So it is this overriding need to have to control things, to have power over. Over. And Megan, you mentioned serial killers. I mean, it's all the same thing, right? Because men who harm women in their significant lives, as in women who are significant to them, can also harm women who are not significant to them. And this connection is one that I made at New Scotland Yard by profiling domestic violence rapists. And I spent a lot of time profiling 450 of them, looking at them and doing a psychological autopsy back of who are they and what do they do? You know, the first five years of my career were trying to identify the serial rapist, the serial killer, the serial perpetrator who abducts children. And the one thing I found in their background consistently was domestic abuse and coercive control. So these things do interconnect. And Dr. Robert Hare, who created the Psychopathy Checklist, he In 1993, his research, research showed us that 25% of domestic violence perpetrators are psychopaths. And I would expect that to be far higher as a figure now. And when I'm training police and others, I'm always talking about psychopathy because we don't screen enough for it. So there are unfortunately many psychopaths who we may have relationships with and they have this need for power and control and they have no empathy, they have no remorse. And it's all about. About them, me, myself and I, the narcissism. So that's what I see as the inter. You know, the thing that interconnects that law enforcement are trained. Well, this is domestic violence here, and these are the domestic violence perpetrators. This is child abuse here, this is sexual violence here. And they're taught in boxes and categories, but that's not how offenders offend. So the more that we understand the traits of psychopathy and the more that we screen for it and that we take domestic violence perpetrated seriously and we see it as serious crime and we hold them to account and we challenge their behavior, looking for coercive control, then we start to get into proper threat assessment and risk management.
- [206:51]
A
Can I just say so a couple things. It actually used to be the live. I was criticizing Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Trump, for having said this as recently as 2007 or 8, saying you, the law is you cannot rape your. Your wife. That is not true in the state of New York even as of 2007. But at one point in our history, it was true. So not so long ago, the laws actually are really. I mean, they, they don't protect women in the way that they need. Yes, certainly when it comes to murder. But on domestic abuse, no. On stalking, no. I remember in my case, the stalking, the, the requirements were I was going to have to. I had to appear in person person if I wanted to make this complaint against my stalker who was dangerous, who was already a felon, who had. Was trained in weapons. There was. And the number one rule of dealing with a stalker is don't deal with the stalker, don't talk to the stalker, don't have interactions with the stalker. Anything you have will be perceived as a yes. And it Was like they were wanting me to show up in court and deal with him when I'm like, you got to be crazy. And I've talked to so many domestic abuse victims who have the same requirement. There's no way they want to show up in, up in court with the husband who's been beating them behind closed doors and doesn't want this to become a known thing at all and have to say it publicly. It's absurd.
- [208:07]
B
Yes. And that's everything the stalker wants. They want you to be in that courtroom. And the same with the domestic abuser. You know that power and control and being able to see you terrified and have that power and control over you. And this is exactly why every legal process, be it court, you have to have special measures that reflect women's experiences. And by the way, and you know this, but laws that protect us at the point of murder is too late. You know, what I've been trying to do is prevent murders in slow motion. It's the what happens before that? We get in and we early identify, intervene and we prevent so that we don't have, particularly in America, four to five women who are murdered every day by a current or former male partner. That is a stark finding. And yet most people don't even realize how bad it is. But it's just increasing. And most people don't know about the family annihilators or familicide. And obviously what's reported in the media is what people pay attention to. So we've got a long way to go. But a lot of my work in the UK has had some very good results. But unfortunately in law enforcement you can bring something in and the leaders sign up to it and then they move on and someone else can comes in. You get this constant cycle and churn of staff. But it is important to have these conversations about coercive control and stalking. And there is a lot that we can do to early identify, intervene and prevent. And a lot of it comes from listening to the victims.
- [209:39]
A
The problem with a lot of abuse victims is they, of course when you look at the situation, you think, oh, and I used to be one of these people, if he hit me, I'd be gone, I'd be out of there. One, one hit. But it doesn't happen that simply. They, they build the control over the woman over time. They love bomb you. They, they come into your life this wonderful man. So the woman falls in love with this seemingly wonderful person, sometimes marries the seemingly wonderful person and then bit by bit, the erosion of the woman Woman, her autonomy, her independence begins. And you make the small sacrifices first, only later do they turn into the big sacrifices. And eventually in, in many of these cases it turns violent. But by that point, the woman is so lost versus where she was a year earlier when they met, etc, she's, she does not have the same power or resolve or confidence or just strength that she once had. It. They're very, very effective manipulators, these abusers.
- [210:45]
B
Yes. And you use the word they're manipulators. And you know, this is a very. It's a behavioral regime really, when we're talking about coercive control that a perpetrator will use to make someone fall in love with them. So the love bombing, that is a strategic campaign to make someone fall in love with them. The gaslighting and the charm, because many of these individuals are actually charming. And that's a trait of psychopathy. So the charm can happen. The victim can feel that they've met the right person. This is the love of their life. And that can be a chemical reaction too. The endorphins, the dopamine, all of these good chemicals so that we mate with somebody. So there is this thing of crazy love when somebody is love bombing us. We want to feel special, of course we do. And then we start to spend more time with that person. And then gradually we may become more dependent on that person. And that can be a strategic campaign. The setup can start from day one when we meet the perpetrator. And then once we are in, we tend to be in deep. And so it's very conflicting and it's very confusing. And we think that we love that person, but oftentimes we don't really know who they are because they're also forcing intimacy very quickly. So the one whirlwind relationship that happens. So I often say to women and girls who I meant to slow down, enjoy the honeymoon period, get to know that person in every situation possible, get to meet their family, their friends, understand exactly who they are, where's the rush? Why jump in? And I always say intimacy takes time to build. So some of the warning signs are if you've got someone who's trying to push the relationship very quickly, who's maybe making these grand declarations of love, like John Meehan did to Deborah Newell, I want to die in your arms. I love you. I want to be with you forever. He says, on date number two and three, well, that's forced intimacy, and that's not authentic. It's an artificial and superficial thing that's Happening. So slowing things down and really taking our time to get to know somebody is really, really important and not giving too much information away about ourselves. You know, enjoy the courtship. That's what I always say. It takes at least a year to really get to know someone. But the coercive controller can be very good at bringing their A game to manipulate. And it can all seem very plausible as well. But once they've got you under their control and once you are dependent upon that person, and normally they isolate you, they want to take you away from your mom and your dad and your best friend. So once you're isolated, you're very much within their monopoly. Your perception is monopolized by them. And actually Bideman, who studied prisoners of war, the eight principles of what he saw, what happens to someone who's having their autonomy and their agency eroded. He's put together these eight principles of the charter. Coercion. It's exactly what I see. You overlay it with the victims of a coercive controller and it's exactly the same traits that you see. So we should take it seriously. And some of these men are psychopaths and they've learned their trade craft very well.
- [214:05]
A
I always say, like, look around, okay, After a year, look around, do you still have friends? Are you still in touch with your family? If not, why not? Like, take a hard look back, say yes, okay? You fall in love, you prioritize the other person. It's this mad, like, oh, I only want to be with him. Okay. But most normal people do not want to steer you away from your family, find reasons for you not to take the trip home to see mom, divert the phone call to or from mom or dad, that, that none of that is normal. That's the beginning.
- [214:35]
B
Yes, a healthy relationship is very much. And I, I might sound a bit la woo woo here, but it's very much about opening someone's world up and helping them reach their full potential. If you genuinely love someone and care for them, you want their world to be bigger. You want them to experience everything in life. But what I see with the coercive control is they do the opposite. They shrink the victim's world down. They want to micromanage and micro control every part of it. And they don't want other people interfering like the mums and the dads and the best friends. So they shrink the world down. And it's actually much more about what they're taking away from the world.
- [215:11]
E
Woman.
- [215:12]
B
And it's an unfreedom. That happens because, yes, the, the victim Might not be in shackles or chains, but they're invisible chains.
- [215:20]
A
So what, what are some of the questions to determine whether you're looking at coercive control?
- [215:26]
B
Well, on we'd never ask someone direct, are you being coercively controlled? Because it's a very new term. But what you're trying to understand is whether somebody has their own autonomy and freedom to make the their own choices. And do they feel safe to make their own choices? That is, could they just go to work or could they go and see a friend without having to check in with their partner? Can they decide what they want to wear and what they're going to eat and when they go to the gym? Or are they under micro surveillance and every detail of their lives is being regulated by somebody else and there's a fear of consequences if they breach any of those rules that have been put in place by the abuser. And what I also see about these rules that get put in place, that is what you can eat, who you can see when you can see them, how you dress, how you have your hair, if you have a job, then maybe you're only allowed to interact. If you're a hairdresser, you're only allowed to cut women's hair, not men's hair. These are all the rules that I've seen laid down for victims. So you're really trying to check on somebody having have they got their own agency, have they got their own autonomy, have they got freedom to make decisions about their own life and how they conduct themselves on a day to day basis. And normally with the victims, it's the smallest things that are so insidious that they're not allowed to do. Or there's this unfreedom where they have to check in with that other person at all times. Even if they go and see a friend, they have to take a picture to show where they are and who they are. Or like with Oscar's pistorius with some of his previous girlfriends, he used to make them take a photo of themselves wearing their pajamas to prove that they were sat at home. I've even seen a perpetrator say to a victim, they have to flush the toilet at home so that he knows that they are at home and they haven't left because the toilet had a very specific sound. And these are all the micro rules and regulations that you're trying to understand. Is that how someone, somebody's having to live their life? Are they isolated? Are they closed down and closed off? Even if the victim says it's how they want to live their life well. As human beings, we like to interact with people. So even when I hear someone telling me that, I know that there is likely coercion there.
- [217:50]
A
I, not long ago was at a social event where they were serving hors d' oeuvres nerves. And the, this particular husband said to his thin, in shape wife who was grabbing an hors d', oeuvre, do you really think you need that? And it was, it just made my skin crawl. Because it's not. Yes, it's rude to suggest this thin woman, you know, to monitor what she's eating at all, thin or fat. But it, to me, it just telegraphed there's, there's way more there that there. If he's doing that in public in front of me, me and others, I can only imagine what happens behind closed doors. So there are these little red flags even for us outsiders with our friends.
- [218:36]
B
Yes. And oftentimes we don't pick up on those things.
- [218:40]
D
Right.
- [218:40]
B
And you know, even if a victim, we're friends with someone and then they fall off the radar, we think, well, maybe it's something we've done rather than actually are they being told not to speak to Laura. And they're not allowed to speak to me. But we tend to look inwardly first. It's probably something I've done. So I'm not going to overstep where I always say to people, check in with your friend. Just see how they're doing. Don't think it's something that you've done. Ask them about that comment and how it made them feel. Because oftentimes we isolate the victim even more by not asking them that question. But yes, that, that is red flag behavior. You know, it's up to us as adults to choose if we want to eat something or not. We don't have to check in with, with someone, but just sowing that seed and corralling, you know, that seed in someone's head, well, maybe I shouldn't eat this. And it's like a closing down of someone and making them second guess themselves. And before you know it, these little behaviors become bigger and a victim doesn't even know which way is up anymore. They're gaslit and they've got this reality distortion. They don't know what they like anymore and they can't make their own decisions.
- [219:43]
A
And Laura, I think an important point too is that this can happen to any woman I know. You know, some women think, oh, I'm too well educated, I am too rich, I come from too good a Family, I have too good a support system around me. It can happen to any woman.
- [220:01]
B
It can. And what I'll say is oftentimes these individuals are attracted to very strong women. So you know, that can be a barrier for someone sharing their experience because they say, well, everyone thought I was such a strong woman, I had it together. It couldn't possibly happen to someone like me. But it does. It can happen to anybody. There's no particular profile when it comes to the victim. And yes, I think we carry these stereotypes in our head about the type of person that will suffer and be subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control. But there, there is no type. But with the perpetrator that there is more of a psychopathology. It is about them needing to control things, needing to have things their way. And some women would tell me they have to win at all costs. And these are some of the key things that when I'm listening to women describe what's happening to them, they have to win at all costs. It's their way or the highway for them. It's no way at all. And it ends when I say it is. And we will live together as man and wife until I decide otherwise. That tells me really there's only one person in the relationship.
- [221:16]
A
What's fascinating about this, this is a serious problem and, and well worth discussing. I'm glad we're doing it obviously. But I, as I listen to this, not a ton of this relates in my mind to Alec Murdoch Doc, or Chris Watts or this guy Joe McDonald. And we can outline the details of those second two cases. I mean I think most people at this point understand what happened with Alex Murdoch, but in case you don't, he was just found guilty of murdering his wife and his son, his, his 22 year old son, he, he shot them both. Shot his son Paul in the face. Shot his son's head off, was the testimony. Shot his wife Maggie at least five times. It was a painful, painful death. And was this very well respected attorney, fourth generation money law. His whole family had been the solicitors in this so called low country in South Carolina. And that means like the chief prosecutor. So they really were the law. And he had a decent amount of dough. We later found out he was on drugs or so he said, had tons of money problems. He'd been stealing all this money from his law firm and so on. So his life was imploding. But just to, on paper the guy looked like he had it all together. And I listened to the whole trial. There was no allegation of domestic abuse. There was definitely outside of the trial, an allegation of that he cheated on her. That did not wind up in front of the jury. The sister of Maggie, the murder victim, said that she was happy. She said, you know, they had their problems, but she was happy. So, you know, it wasn't. There was no evidence of a controlling personality when it came to her, I guess, I mean, not that you'll tell me, but. And then the son, of course, I don't. This son had gotten him in trouble. His son had been driving the boat in his fatal boat crash that killed a 19 year old girl. Mallory Beach. They were being sued for. It was really upending Alex's life. But I just. Let's start there. Do, do you see coercive control in the Alec Murdoch case?
- [223:11]
B
Yes. And the clue is in the fact that he controlled everything, therefore family controlled everything. That name in that region is a very powerful name and we mustn't lose track of that. They created the laws. They were the law. Right. So he always got his way. And that's a very important point because when someone always gets their way, they don't have to be irate or upset about something because they can just control things through their power, their personal power, but also their family power. And just looking at what happened with Paul and what a horrific situation with Mallory on the boat, and I first just want to say, you know, she really is the primary victim, the first victim. And that Paul put the boat into gear, having assaulted his ex girlfriend and assaulted her in front of everybody. And that was the first time that others saw that he was abusing her. Well, where did he learn that behavior from? Of abusing her multiple times. There was a whole history. He was 22 or he was younger then, but he was abusing her. And she gave testimony about horrific abuse that she suffered. Well, where did he learn that from? And his entire.
- [224:25]
A
She's come on camera, she's now in a special, talking all about it. I saw it too. It was chilling and it was repeated and horrific abuse.
- [224:34]
B
And I applaud her for speaking out, but I don't think the apple falls far from the truth tree. And he's learned that behavior somewhere in his name. He's learned that he calls his granddad up and his dad and they fix everything for him. So there's no accountability, no responsibility taking. And that's what that family have been doing for generations because they were the law and people were scared of them. And I'd spoken to people in that area, they've told me this themselves. So we mustn't forget the name and their wealth and what that means to what they can have power over and who they can have power over. And here you have a situation where Paul and that particular civil case, well, all of that was coming home to roost in that the accounts were going to be audited and they were part of that civil trial and they had been requested and Alec had also been challenged by the Chief Financial Officer for to the tune of $800,000 going missing in legal fees. And he was challenged about that. Right. So his world is starting to unravel. Maggie had left him. She was living in the beach house. She wasn't living at Moselle. So there's separation. And we know that with separation, 76% of murders happen at the point of separation. And when Alec had actually messaged her to say, I want to meet up with you, she had text her sister saying, I wonder what he up to. You know, he's up to something. And that's why she goes to meet him up at the kennels. But there were rumors that she wanted a divorce. There were rumors that she had a forensic accountant coming in and things were unraveling. And therefore he is now in a situation where he feels like he's losing control. Well, that can be a catastrophic set of circumstances for a man who is a lawyer. So let's not forget each other equally. You know, a good trial lawyer, someone who's very good at reading people and situations and up until this point has not got into trouble. But I believe he was trying to control the situation and the narrative. He was trying to control Paul and he was angry at him, hence the injuries and crime scene assessment. We look at. I look at how someone's killed because that paints a picture, the way that he was killed and the way Maggie was. And he was the one that was the there at that time. That was proven through Snapchat, through the videos that Paul took him and Maggie talking. So he lied about being present, but he was there. And he lied about whether he checked their pulses or not. He didn't have time to check their pulses. And he'd changed his clothes. So this, to me is somebody who is very controlling, very manipulative. And of course, there are 99 charges that are still outstanding, the financial charges. So for me, this is a. And I don't like to use the word classic, but it is a classic domestic violence murder. And yes, there's debt, there's money issues and so on, and it was unraveling but it's got all the hallmarks and, you know, in terms of psychopathy traits. Well, they all seem to be there, particularly lack of empathy and remorse and responsibility taking.
- [227:38]
A
Yes, well, let's go there because this is what the.
- [227:40]
B
This.
- [227:41]
A
I don't get it. I don't get how. Because they showed the family videos of the birthday parties and everyone seemed to really love him. His kids seemed to really love him. He seemed to show love for his children as well. I don't know that he was in the running for father of the year, but there was testimony that they seemed like a very loving family. It wasn't outwardly at least, perceived by anybody who took that witness stand as a damaged, dysfunctional family. In the sense of abuse or. I don't. In that. In that sense. So what?
- [228:13]
B
It depends what you're looking for, doesn't it, Megan?
- [228:16]
A
Totally it. To the point, you know, that we've been discussing for 40 minutes. But what makes a man who. I'm just going to say that he did love his son Paul. I don't know how he felt about Maggie, but I'm going to say he loved his son like, I don't know, maybe not. Maybe he's not capable of. How can a man who does love his son shoot his head off like that one day, you know, seemingly out of the blue?
- [228:39]
B
Well, my first question before we get to that one is why was Paul drinking to such excess? You know, a kid who's drinking that amount of alcohol to blot stuff out tells me there's more that's going on. And I don't profess to know such a good point.
- [228:53]
A
Can I just say no one's asking that. That's like all the coverage I have done of this case and listened to of this case. No one. I have yet to hear anybody ask that question. That's a very good, good question.
- [229:04]
B
Because he wasn't just drinking to socialize, was he? He was drinking to absolute excess that his friend said that this Timmy character came out this very angry, abusive drunk. Why was he drinking to that level? And why were his family letting him? That. That tells me a lot. And if I were to go in and ask questions, I think I'd probably uncover a lot. Well, a different story and a narrative to this happy, healthy family dynamic, because there's nothing healthy in a young boy not taking responsibility for his actions. And a grandfather and a father who are just happy to sweep it all under the carpet, no matter how bad, no matter who gets injured and hurt, you know, there's very little empathy or care for anybody else other than them. It's all about circling the wagons and protecting themselves, even when Mallory died. And I do think that that is the biggest fear and threat for Alec Murdoch is all of it is unraveling. And it's about the reflection on him. He wants to do what he's always done, which is circle the wagons, close everybody down, shut everything, take their voices away so that no one says what's really gone on. But it is all about to come out in a civil case, particularly the forensic accounting. So it's all about. About to be laid bare. And I think that when someone feels they are at that stage and the psychopathology for someone like him, where they're about to lose everything, as he sees it, he's the most important person and he's eliminating the problem. And the problems are Paul and Maggie, because Maggie's there. So it's all a means to an end. Which tells me that there's a high probability that he would score highly on the psychopathy. Check that list.
- [230:53]
A
What kind of questions are on that list? That seems like an interesting list to have, like for your first date.
- [231:00]
B
Well, they are, and I do indirect assessments of perpetrators and particularly when we talk about psychopathy, because one of the traits is a pathological. That they're a pathological liar. Right. So you wouldn't want to rely on them. Qualifies there because they lie. And that's everything I've seen about his. Yeah, his behavior.
- [231:20]
A
Right.
- [231:20]
B
That's what did. And superficial charm. That's the first trait that you ask about where somebody has a glebe sense of charm. It's not really who they are. And charm is very much a manipulator. It's a choice. We're not born with charm. A grandiose estimation of self. So thinking you're bigger and better than who you really are. Pathological liar. Proneness to boredom and impulsivity, manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of responsibility taking, shallow effect and superficial emotional response to things. So oftentimes the emotional range is very limited. So with family annihilators, that's what I tend to see. Their emotional range is limited. Parasitic lifestyle, sexual promiscuity. So if there's infidelity, I'm always very interested in that.
- [232:14]
A
When someone shoots all three that I mentioned, Murdoch, Watts and McDonald.
- [232:20]
B
And it's often they want what they want. And like with Chris Watts, who's in a relationship with Nikki and lots of people blamed her, where actually it's his behavior, it's his actions even though what he did makes no sense in terms of a long term plan. And perhaps we'll get to that because psychopaths, in fact, I'll say it now, but psychopaths are very good in the moment, but they're not good long term planners and they have early behavioral problems and lack of realistic long term goals. So that's what I was talking to with good in the moment but not very good on a longer term.
- [232:55]
A
Can I just jump in and ask you a quick about one you said before that shallow affect. What do you mean?
- [233:01]
B
Yeah. So again it's a very superficial sense of a reaction to things because, because they can be comedian. So what they tend to do is mimic other people, particularly when it comes to empathy. So they will describe things like Chris Watts did. He said I was bawling my eyes out. Well, if you're crying, tell us the emotion of that. Crying, not describing the crying. And when he first interacted with law enforcement, when they appeared, everything was shallow effect. There was no. He described having emotions but he didn't show us the emotion. There was no sign of him crying.
- [233:38]
A
This reminds me of a show I did when I was on NBC. I call it the Mothers of Sparta show. It's a long story but essentially it was mothers of sociopaths. It was mothers of teenage sociopaths. And the mothers knew, the mothers knew. And we're jumping up and down saying I am the mother of the next school shooter. I'm telling you and there's no place for me to go. I can't get help. Nobody will take this person. They haven't yet committed a crime. Crime but they can't yet be committed civilly. So on. So one of the moms was saying her 16 year old who was obsessed with child pornography, she knew she was, she was at her wits end. She was trying to get him help or arrested at that point. She said he was doing better because he was learning how to feign empathy. She's like, you know, he's, he's doing a little better now because, because he's learning the how it looks on someone's face and when to use that facial expression in this certain tone. She saw that as you know, a possible ticket into the quote, normal world for him. And I just, I never forgot that thinking is that a good thing?
- [234:45]
B
No is the answer. And you know your reaction is right. And you know children are taught how to think about emotions when they're little. And I think that is very important. Important that it's a Feeling, it's not a description and it's not a mirror mirroring back of. And yes, that she might be putting it in the positive because maybe she thought that he was getting a sense of the feeling rather than just acting the emotion. And that is one of the clear signs of psychopathy. And we know it when we see it. When someone's not authentic in that feeling. That's everything I saw a about Chris Watts describing emotion, not feeling it. There was no point where he said, I just can't bear this. She's got lupus. I'm so worried. She's got the children. What? Okay, you're giving me your business card, but where are you going to go and what are you going to do? We've got to find her. There was no emotion at all. He was had cognitive load because he just remembered everything that he was meant to do and say. And that's why it was a very inauthentic interaction right from the start.
- [235:47]
A
So I'm going to show a sound bite from him in one second. But I want to let you finish your list. I interrupted because that shallow affect sounded interesting to me. So you keep going.
- [235:56]
B
Yes, well, the next one actually, Megan, relates to exactly what you just said. Juvenile delinquency. So when, you know a kid's constantly getting into trouble and yes, mums do know and what I will say is that when mums reach out for help, you know, there really is a problem, you know, because fierce mamas mama bears, you know, I'm a mama. You want to protect your child child. And you know, oftentimes they may be protected but. And we've seen that with Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, right to the nth degree where they say that they love Gabby and she was like a daughter to them, but yet she doesn't return any of the Petito family's calls to where is Gabby when Brian returns home in their daughter's van, not even in his own van without his fiance. So there we've got a clear example of a mum and dad protecting son. But you know, equally if you have somebody saying I need help and it's because of all these traits that I'm seeing, that's when we can actually work together to intervene and prevent something more serious happening and it help with someone's psychosocial development. So yeah, the juvenile delinquency, short term extramarital relationships, irresponsibility, I think I said and impulsivity and criminal revenge, provocation, breaching orders. So not ever able to control their Impulsivity and criminal versatility. So if they score 30 or over, they're a psychopath. And unfortunately, there are more than what Dr. Hare originally said, about 1% in the population. Because we rarely screen for psych psychopathy,
- [237:38]
E
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- [238:07]
C
And verified reviews mean real feedback from real VRBO guests. So you know exactly what you're booking.
- [238:13]
D
Honestly, I just booked my VRBO because
- [238:15]
E
there was a sweet wine fridge.
- [238:16]
C
Hey, we all have our reasons. Don't walk into a surprise if you know you. VRBO terms apply. See vrbo.com trust for details.
- [238:27]
B
I think it's a really important thing that professionals really do up their game, particularly when we're talking about domestic violence, because some of the individuals we've talked about, I believe are psychopaths. And right now there isn't a cure for psychopathy. That's not that some psychologists say, well, just because we haven't found it yet, it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't exist.
- [238:49]
A
Is there a distinction for you between sociopaths and psychopaths?
- [238:56]
B
Yes. I mean, you know, the lack of empathy is the biggest tell of a psychopath. I mean, sociopaths don't believe the rules apply to them. And you know, there is a diagnostic test again that you can do. They don't believe the rules apply to them, but they tend to understand what they're doing is wrong. And they may still have empathy, but with psychopathy they genuinely do not feel. They have no ability to put themselves in that other person's shoes and feel, feel, you know, upset or distressed. That's why appealing to them just doesn't work. Or a victim's family but tell us where her body is. You know, they won't emote at all. They won't have that feeling. So empathy is the biggest flag out of the 20 that somebody's a psychopath.
- [239:42]
A
Would you say Alex Murdoch is a psychopath?
- [239:46]
B
I mean, I have to be careful here because I haven't indirectly assessed him of putting together everything that others who know him best because I really rely on the People in that person's life to report on everything they know about that person. But seeing the lack of empathy again, the fact he can sit there in court, the fact everything that he did thereafter, and the way that even when an officer appeared, the first responder to that call, he basically said, how you doing? And just went into this mode of chatting normally to him when his wife and son had been brutally murdered. And he's approaching it, how you doing? All very casual. And then getting out, just like Chris Watts getting out the narrative that he needs to convey and seeing very little emotion. And what emotion he did show in court, I don't believe the jurors bought it. I think they felt that that was shallow effect. It wasn't authentic. It didn't seem authentic to me, I have to say. But people emote in different ways. But everything that happened after the shooting, he alleged that he was shot and came out with this whole narrative that seemed to connect with the first narrative when he said it was revenge because of Paul's crash. That's what he said originally to the first responder as to why Maggie and Paul were dead. And he seemed to have this story that he was sticking to, but a real lack of empathy and devastation for the fact that Maggie and Paul are dead.
- [241:19]
A
It's comforting to know that there is a checklist, you know, because you don't want to think. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there thinking, am I married to a psychopath? How do I know? Like, because Alec Murdoch was such an effective manipulator, as you point out, that's a common trait that they have. All these people were taking this stand and saying, I felt totally duped. I feel like I did not know him at all once his terrible financial crimes came out. I mean, taking care of kids who had just lost their mother, taking care of kids with cancer or, you know, kids in terrible car accidents and so on. These people say, I just. I. I had no idea who he actually was. And so there'll be a lot of people thinking, am I married to somebody who I don't actually know, but there's a long list. And so you've got to be able to tick off a bunch of these things before you get to the point of, I might be with a psychopath. This is all, like, amazing. Let's talk about Chris Watts, because we mentioned him a few times, and I'm sure the audience is looking for a reminder on him and his story. So this was Colorado 19. I want to get the. Get it in front of me. Hold on a second. Page 18 I think Colorado 2018. And Frederick, Colorado. He was 33 and he strangled his wife, 34 year old Shanann Watts, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their third child, who was a boy. They had two girls, they had a three year old daughter Celeste and a four year old year old daughter Bella. And this guy, this relationship, this whole story so confuses me again. I've gone down the rabbit hole on this. Look at him, he's a good looking guy. He had a job. It wasn't like a, like a surgeon like we're going to get to with Jeff McDonald. He was, he worked at the Weld county oil site and she had a good job too. A middle class family, had some financial problems, but not overwhelming and pervasive. Had what looked like the perfect family. The neighbors in the Netflix documentary I think it was described and they were saying like I watched Chris Watts, I thought I got to up my game as a parent. I got to spend more time with my kids. Got to get out there and throw the ball with him. Look at him, look at this guy. He, according to the reports was the more subservient one. I'm not sure if that's the right word but she seemed more dominant than he did. She seemed more in control in terms of family decision making. You know, this is where I want to live. This is what I want for the girls. This is what I want you to do. And he seemed more of like a yes man than someone who is engaging in coercive control. This is my layperson's opinion. You can take this apart in a second. That's my approach. My, my, my takeaway, watching it. Then he's loses a bunch of weight, never a good sign in a marriage. Loses a bunch of weight and starts an affair with a co worker and his wife. Shannan goes away with the girls for six weeks to visit family in North Carolina. He falls for this other woman pretty hard. And we know, I think it's from his Google searches that he was googling things like when do you say I love you? Like what, what does it feel like to, to be in love? A weird searches that a normal person would not not be doing that are definitely a flag. And then the wife comes back from the business trip at 2 in the morning. She'd been with the girlfriends on a true business trip, comes back at 2 in the morning. And what we know is now because he ultimately confessed, he strangled her to death. They had a, they had a fight, they had some sort of an argument. He strangled her to death. He says he took his two daughters, who were alive, alive in the backseat of the truck, over their dead mother's body, which was on the floor of the back seat, drove to the oil site, smothered his three year old and his five year old. The five year old said, are you going to do to me what you just did to Cece, the three year old? And said, daddy, no, it's too horrific to even really conjure. And he did it at anyway. He did it anyway. And then he disposed of the daughter's bodies in the oil tanks, put one in one oil tank and one in the other. So gruesome he could even describe the sound of their little bodies hitting the liquid. And buried his wife in a shallow grave nearby. This guy who had friends, who again, was perceived by some as his mother, model father, who doesn't have some long criminal history. I don't get it and I. I'm desperate to get it. Would you help me get it?
- [245:56]
B
Yes. And I think the way you describe it, you know, again, people should remember what he did and what he said he did too. And he has changed his narrative at least four times. But the way that he described putting their bodies into that oil tanker, I believe that version of what happened. And for us all to think about the fear and the terror that the children must feel having seen what happened. I believe Bella saw what happened to her mum. And then having this sense that these horrific things are going to happen to you at the hands of your daddy, someone who's meant to care, love you and look after you, and those moments are just so haunting. And I think when we understand how the media characterized him as a good father, a good dad, this perfect, dutiful husband. And of course, there are all these different videos of Shanann because her business was on Facebook of her and she was described as bossy and, oh, this nagging woman and too strong. And instantly we get into the victim blame and the hympathy of excusing what he did. And that is everything wrong with the way these cases are not only understood, but the way that they're talked about in the media. And when we think about when Chris and Shanann first got together, she was very ill with lupus and she was heavily dependent on him. She thought he was her savior. And that's what she said. She couldn't have got by without him. So the relationship dynamic was very different. She was wholly dependent on him. They got married. She didn't know whether she could have children and Then by a miracle, because of lupus, she had two children, two girls. And then the relationship dynamic started to change and she started to work more. And yes, they had debt, and that's another important point, but the dynamic shifted and she was working, she was going out, she was no longer as dependent on him. And. And as you described, you know, the dynamic shift and that can happen in a relationship. He then starts this thrive program, which is something that she's advocating for as well as part of her business, and he starts to lose all this weight, and then he starts to feel himself more. And he's taking this introvert is now becoming someone quite different. Even Shanann said that she didn't know he was taking videos of himself working out. And then he meets Nikki and he falls for her hook, line and sinker. He's writing her these love notes at a time where Shanann is sensing that things are going terribly wrong in their relationship. And then she finds out she's pregnant. And maybe that pregnancy is used as a way to try and bring them closer. But of course, what we know is that babies don't tend to bring you closer. They tend to add more stress and pressure. And he, by other people, opinions, didn't want the baby. They had a gender reveal party that was canceled. And she sensed that he didn't want the baby. And even the video of them announcing the baby, he just clearly wasn't happy about the whole thing.
- [249:03]
A
That's true.
- [249:04]
B
You can say he was shy on camera, but you can see that he was not excited about it. He canceled this gender reveal. He was seeing Nikki. He wanted to invest in that relationship. He told Nikki that he. He had separated or was separating from Shanann, which wasn't happening. And Shanann goes off, you know, she's writing these letters to him saying, I'll do anything to fix it. Tell me what you need, Chris. And he's withholding sex from her. He is completely out of the relationship. And she's desperate to restore the relationship. And his attention is elsewhere. He's doing these Google searches. When do you tell someone that you're in love with them or how. How well, that tells you about shallow effect. It's not really a feeling because you just say it and you do it. You don't research it.
- [249:52]
C
Right.
- [249:53]
B
To understand it.
- [249:55]
D
Right.
- [249:57]
B
So that's the shallow effect.
- [249:59]
D
Well, what.
- [249:59]
A
What did you make of his? This is my own antiquated notion of control. You know, I didn't feel like he was the one controlling because she's writing him these notes. Notes Like, I've been gone for six weeks. You haven't. You've called me twice. You'd think a man would want to talk to his wife and daughters. And he writes back, you're so right. I'm so sorry. I love you, honey. I'll do better. All of his notes back during that six week period. And this is all leading up to the murder. It's right before he murders them. He's, you know, he's using the emojis. He's really, you know, kind of sweet. Yes, he's ignoring her, but when he texts, it always seems to be from like a beta role, you know, that just how I read those texts, it. And the reason I found it alarming is it just didn't sound like someone who's going to go commit a murder. I don't know what somebody sounds like who's going to go commit a triple murder, but I just don't picture them using emojis. And so where am I going wrong?
- [250:59]
B
Well, they tend to be very cool, calm and collected. Actually, every case I've seen, when we've had even CCTV footage of them in the act, it's cool, calm and cross. But where are you going wrong? I wouldn't say you're going wrong. You're interpreting what you're seeing. But my interpretation would be he's managing her, he's manipulating her, he's keeping her at arm's length, telling her what she needs to hear to get off his back because he's cheating on her. He's going sand dune surfing with Nikki, he clearly wants to be with Nikki. He's telling Nikki that he's going to leave Shanann, Nikki suspect he's cheating on her. Because us women, we know, we know the signs. We may not tell people about it, but Shanann actually did. She did go to that conference after that trip and that's where she was when she came back at one o' clock or whatever it was. She had found that on her, on their credit card because they didn't have much money. There was, I think it was something like $60 that the lazy dog had been spent. She believed it was. She was cheating. He was cheating on her. I believe that she came back to confront him because she came back early and her best friend said she wasn't herself at the conference. She was just really out of sorts, she wasn't eating, she was really upset. And I believe she came back to confront him. And it's at the point of being confronted, he says that he pushed her off of him or he. Yeah, he put. He got himself off of her. And I believe that they were having. There was some attempt to restore the relationship. But his account, he said, I told her I didn't love her and I didn't want to be with her anymore, and I pushed her away, and I found my hands around her neck. Well, even that account is inauthentic, because you don't just find your hands around someone's neck. And it takes minutes, not seconds, to strangle someone and asphyxiate them and kill them. And the girls were shallow sleepers. And I believe one of them came in and he took those decisions. That was all on him.
- [252:56]
A
Him.
- [252:57]
B
And it may not have been someone. That was something that was premeditated, but it unfolded. And the worst thing that he then did was put load Shanann into the car and load the two girls into the car. And he had 45 minutes to make the right decision. But he took those two girls with their mother dead in the car, and he then strangles them and asphyxiates them one by one, and then disposes of their bodies as if they're rubbish, as if they're just trash. And he buries Shanann. And it's in those moments that he makes those decisions. But he carries on the lie. Even when the police are called, he's carrying on the lie. She was 15 weeks pregnant. You know, there was no care or concern. My wife's mission. She's got lupus. Fifteen weeks pregnant, my two girls. Everything was about maintenance. And he was caught. And it was the neighbor who spotted his behavior, who said that he's more animated than usual, that he pulled the car up, the truck up to the door. And it was the neighbor saying, I don't know. There's something. It's just not right. I don't know.
- [254:02]
A
The neighbor was a star.
- [254:04]
B
He's saying they argued and she just left with the children. Well, there was no evidence that she had just left with the children. Her phone was there. The car was there. How would she even be able to get the children out with. Without the car? Where would she go? It was all lies. But it was the neighbor on his behavior who spotted that everything he was saying and doing was not accurate. And then he pulls the video up to show the police. And then you see Chris looking very awkward, but he, I don't believe, planned the whole event in terms of killing Shannan. She confronted him, and I think he. She probably said to him, I'm leaving you, and I'm taking the Children.
- [254:43]
A
And it's at that point he said that, right? You'll never see your. He said she said something to the effect of, you'll never see the children again. Of course, you know, if she thinks he's cheating on her and the marriage is falling apart and he's trying to leave her, that's the kind of thing a wife and mother might say.
- [254:56]
B
Yeah. And a good father would say, well, look, we have to work this out, but I don't want to be with you anymore. And we have to work the children out of who you know, and when we get custody. But let's talk about that another time. But let's separate for now. But that's not what he did. He put his hands around her neck. He strangled her for a period of minutes to the point that she wasn't just unconscious, that she was dead and she was carrying his baby. And then he took the two girls and put them in the car, and he chose to kill them, too. And he could have made very different choices. There were other choices at the table. If I can't have two.
- [255:35]
A
Is that psychopathy? Is it evil? Like, I don't understand. I even get. I forgive me. I don't know how to justify. I get killing the wife. I mean, we, like anybody who listens to Dateline, knows it. That happens all the time. I don't. I don't understand what can then make you kill your three year old and your five year old in the manner that we've just been discussing? What is that?
- [256:01]
B
Yes. Well, only he and those men who do it know it. But I believe that it. For Chris Watts, it was about wiping them all out. And he believed that he had a chance of a new relationship with Nicky. And in his mind, although it makes no sense to anybody else, that that's why he took the choices that he did. And of course, it's with catastrophic consequences. But this wasn't in Red Mist. This wasn't a moment where he makes a decision and it's over 45 minutes plus where he makes those choices and then he sticks to that story. And there were other choices that he could have made, but he didn't. And that tells me about him. That tells me about the type of person he really is. And I have scored him on the psychopathy checklist, and he scores lower than 20, but I don't have all the information available. But what I did see was the lack of empathy and that he was even flirting with one of the CBI officers who was interviewing, and he was attempting to Manipulate. And that's why he changed his story multiple times. He believed that he was capable of getting away with it and that's what he was trying to do.
- [257:07]
A
Let's show the audience a clip of him. This was before he confessed and he was still playing the game with the media of. I have no idea where they went. They just. She took off with the children, you know, in the middle of the night. Here's Chris Watts before his confession.
- [257:24]
E
I hope that she's somewhere safe right now and with the kids, but I mean, could she event. Cuz she just taken off, I don't know. But if somebody has her and they're not safe, like I want them back now.
- [257:39]
A
My God, that is so obviously untrue. And not how a real grieving father and husband would act.
- [257:48]
B
Not authentic at all. And that's where you would be pressing to get more answers from him. You know, she's pregnant, 15 weeks pregnant and with lupus with his two daughters. And I do believe he felt he could control the narrative and that he could control other people and manipulate them. So the question is, did we ever really know or you know, did anyone really know who Chris Watts was? Is this really who he is now? And this was him. And that's what he. He was masking, you know, for many years. And he didn't let people in because of who he truly was. And that's what I believe what we're seeing after the fact, that's him, him making those decisions.
- [258:29]
A
Don't you think it's like a Scott Peterson situation?
- [258:32]
B
Yes, I do. And I've talked about Lacy and Connor Peterson again. She was pregnant and the choices that he made where there were other choices on the table. But they're the choices that he made. And that's why he's still in prison. And that's where he must remain.
- [258:47]
A
What do you make of the fact that Chris Watts, when he did confess, he was forced to confess? Let's not kid ourselves. I mean, they had him that, that, that the woman who ran the lie detector on him was. She was crazy good. I mean, she was, she put him at ease. She was, oh, this is all just fun, you know, you know the truth. One of us knows the truth. And now we're both about to know the truth. I thought she did a great job job and she did with, along with her partner, extract the confession. But they had a lot of evidence. You know, they had the gps, they knew he had taken, he had gone to the oil tanks. They had a lot. So he winds up Confessing. They bring in his dad, he confesses to his dad. And in that moment is. One of the themes of our discussion has been the blaming of the woman. What did she do? What'd she do in that moment? Listen to what he said. I know you're familiar. I'll play it for the audience. Here's a confession. You lost it? You choked her or what? Ask the dad.
- [259:48]
E
My babies are gone. And I put my hands around my watchmate and did that.
- [260:03]
A
So it's hard to understand there. But what he's saying is she, Shanann, killed my babies. So I put my hands around her neck and did the same thing to her. In that, the moment of confession, he's blaming Shanann,
- [260:18]
B
which tells you everything you need to know about him. You know, it's very rare for a woman to behave in, in that way. And under these circumstances, it's highly un. Unlikely. But he was happy for Shannan to take the blame for his actions and
- [260:31]
A
his behavior and later admitted that that wasn't true anyway. So, I mean, we know it was a lie. He's serving life sentences and will not be getting paroled. Let's jump to the case of McDonald, Jeff McDonald. This turned into the book Fatal Vision, which I really recommend. I listened to it via audio. Was done so well by Joe McGinnis. Fascinating story with the book, too. Joe McGinnis basically got recruited by McDonald to write the book and then turned on McGinnis, turned on McDonald. I think McDonald thought it was going to be an exonerating type of tome. It wound up going the other way. And McDonald sued McGinnis, who did have to pay him some sort of assistance settlement. Because I'm. I didn't look deep into it, but I think it's because it was like a breach of contract. They basically suggested you lured him into thinking you were going to make it sound a different way. Anyway, it's a great book. It's very interesting. Jeff McDonald, surgeon, went to Princeton, went to Northwestern for his med school, went to Columbia Presbyterian for his internship, then joined the Green Beret raise and was serving and training, jumping out of airplanes. Was going to be a surgeon for the army and then go out into the world, make a bunch of money at Yale. He hoped to get a job at Yale. And his wife Colette was his high school sweetheart. She was nice, nice lady from all the accounts. Was also very bright. Had been studying in college herself. Winds up getting pregnant. She puts her life on hold, sacrifices for him. This is back in the the 60s, so, you know, the society Was kind of set up this way. And they had two beautiful daughters, Kimberly and Chrissy. And they're living right off of campus on, on base or I think on or off campus on base. And one night in the middle of the night, he kills them. He kills all three of them in a very similar situation, like the wife and the two daughters to the Chris White squad's case. This guy who's got everything going for him and by all accounts a lovely wife who's very supportive of him and beautiful daughter same and says it was hippies, that it was a Sharon Tate type situation where this woman and three men came into the apartment in the middle of the night, stabbed him. He had like a punk, like one puncture wound that a surgeon like McDonald would have known had a place without killing a. Himself. And the women were absolutely slaughtered, his wife and his two girls, absolutely slaughtered with a number of puncture wounds and ice pick. I mean, just absolutely brutal. And they wind up saying, first, oh, we don't have, you know what? He didn't do it. We're gonna, we buy the hippie story. But his wife's father would not let go of it. He initially defended McDonald, but when he got a hard look at the evidence that had been submitted in the preliminary hearing, turned and spent the rest of his life making sure that, that, that, that justice was done. And ultimately it was. And Jeff McDonald went to prison. But here's Jeff McDonald on the Dick Cavett show, taking us back now in time to 1970, December 15th. The murders had happened a month earlier. This is a month after his wife. Say again? Okay. The fe. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. It happened in February. The murders happened in February. So it was less than a year later. Talking about the murders of his wife and daughters as follows.
- [264:06]
E
Could you talk about what happened on
- [264:08]
A
that on the night of.
- [264:09]
E
On that night last February? Well, I can skim through it briefly to get deep into it. Yeah. Does produce a lot of emotion on my part. But very briefly, my wife came home and we had a before bed drink, really? And watch the beginning of a late night talk show.
- [264:32]
A
He's smiling, the audience is laughing. And Laura, he did the thing you said. He said getting into it brings up a lot of emotion, you know, like, trust me, wink, wink, trust me. I'm not actually going to show you that.
- [264:49]
B
Yes. I mean, that short clip just reminds me of Scott Peterson and the Diane Sawyer interview, where it's clear to me that he thought in both situations they can control and influence and manipulate. And like with Diane Sawyer, I Don't know if you saw that interview with Scott Peterson that he did months later, bearing in mind Lacey was still missing. And he laughs inappropriately, he smiles inappropriately, he doesn't declaratively say he didn't kill Lacey and Connor. And Diane Sawyer is just not buying any of it. I mean her bullshit detector was pretty well hurt. And there's an 11 minute clip where it's very clear there was deception. And a lot of the work that I do, I look for indicators for veracity and deception. So without knowing that individual's baseline behavior, but knowing the. Did you say he was in the Marines? He was in the.
- [265:42]
A
Yeah, he was a Green Beret.
- [265:44]
B
He was a Green Beret.
- [265:45]
D
Right.
- [265:46]
B
So he's used to power and control, he's used to influencing his intelligent. I can see, see that he believes that people are going to buy what he's selling. But the leakage that's there is telling us something quite different. And that's why you're always looking for words, actions, behavior that are congruent, but also facial expressions, micro expressions, et cetera. Are they describing the emotion or are they living and feeling the emotion? I mean you don't talk briefly about and skim through the brief details of your wife and your daughter's absolute slaughter. I've never heard someone say that before, unless they're lying.
- [266:25]
A
What about the brutality of the murders like that? In a way that to me is evidence that he didn't do it. I mean he did it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying no one could believe that somebody would take an ice pick and over and over and over stab their 3 year old like this just doesn't that would lead somebody to believe it had to be an outsider. Do you think that's why those, those murders were so brutal?
- [266:49]
B
It's quite possible. I mean if you choose to use things like that, that point to looking at someone outside the house because of the way it was done. But I don't know the case in detail, but from looking at him and the way that he presents and the fact that he invited a journalist in to write a book book that was supposed to exonerate him and the journalist who deep dived into the case and of course a lot of investigative journalists are very good at what they do. And the journalists didn't buy it based on the facts and the evidence. And more importantly, the jury didn't buy it based on the facts and the evidence. And all my work is about going on the facts and the Evidence, you have to look at everything forensically, deconstruct everything about the behavior as well as forensic opportunities. But oftentimes it's not always what's present, it's what's absent. You know, what's absent at the scene or what's absent in terms of emotion and who's trying to control the narrative, you know, and controlling the narrative also is a very interesting thing that I see coercive controllers do after the event, that they want to get their story out there. And oftentimes, because they're a man and they're cool, calm and collected, people gravitate to their narrative. But the victims aren't here to tell us otherwise, are they? There's no one alive. His wife can't tell us what happened. That's why the forensics have to tell us what was the sequence of events, what happened, and equally the dynamics of the relationship. Was she looking to separate, Was she saying to him, I've had enough for whatever reason, had he abused one of the children, for example? And she said, Colette said, I've had enough and I'm going to leave you. And we know at the point of separation with these coercively controlling men, men, they want to control the situation. And if I can't have you, no one will. And how dare you make that decision. I'm the one who makes the decisions. And it ends when I say it ends and how it ends. And that's equally 76% of the murders happen at the point where the woman says enough.
- [268:50]
A
The that case according to the book, again, Fatal Vision. They the father of Colette, the wife, saw Jeff McDonald go on Dick Cavett saw him smirking, working the crowd. Again, this is not even a year after the murders, and it was his first turn. Like I might be dealing with a killer. He might actually have killed them. And then stayed on him to get the transcript from this preliminary hearing that was done inside the military that determined he did not do it. And the father poured over these 2,000 pages, word by word by word, and found so many inconsistencies in Jeff's story and started to piece it together. And then these prosecutors went back and did this in depth investigation of Jeff McDonald to see kind of along the lines of what you're saying, whether these wonderful accounts of him, oh, he's so wonderful at Princeton, wonderful at Northwestern, and the greatest surgeon ever really matched up with. Was it really true? If you just dug a little deeper, like you were saying about why was Paul Murdoch drinking so much? Why are the parents Allowing that.
- [269:55]
E
Right.
- [269:55]
A
Dig a little deeper, what's there? And they found out he had completely downplayed his number of infidelities. They'd only been married. They were young. He'd been cheating all over the place in disgusting and pervasive ways. He had been seen abusing her. And I know you've called attention to this in particular at least once, seen smacking her across the face. Face. Like hands on the face, hands on the neck. I know you've said that's a special red flag. And we saw it in the Gabby Petito case, too. Can you speak to that?
- [270:29]
B
Yes. Well, any hands going around the face? You know, if a man puts his hands around a woman's face, it covers your nose and your mouth. And that's what Brian Laundrie did to Gabby. And of course, we've seen photographic evidence, subject subsequently, that her family's lawyers have released for purpose, just before the police were called, that showed that she had an injury. But the police didn't follow up when Gabby told them about the hand around the mouth and where the cuts came from. And any attempt to strangle or asphyxiate by a man to a woman, it increases the risk sevenfold. So. And it increases the risk to serious harm and femicide. So it really is a whole high risk factor. And I would imagine with Colette, whatever was seen or witnessed was probably the tip of the iceberg to what she was really experiencing behind closed doors. And if he were womanizing, cheating on her, disrespecting her, and she had two little girls, she may well have said, enough is enough. And with his psychopathology and used to being in control and wanting to be in control, and I would imagine that he's a man who wants to win and things are on his terms, and she's there to meet his needs. And how dare she make a decision that is not within her gift to decide? And that could be the point where he then assaults her. It could have been one of the girls, I don't know. But something happened, and with catastrophic consequence. And what a horrific case. And I'm so glad that her father followed his instincts and that he kept asking questions. And that's what I ask all my listeners on Crime Analysts to do. Ask questions, be curious, and always trust your instincts. And the people who know someone like Jeff McDonald the best. The father who's observed him in different situations knows when something's not right. And thank goodness he was there to advocate on behalf of his murdered daughter and grandchildren. And sometimes that's exactly what it takes to get to answers, the real answers, and the truth of what went on. Just like we saw Chris Watts confessing to his dad when everything is stacked against him and he's got nowhere to go. His dad was the one that ultimately got the answer out of him by flipping it onto Shanann and then he confesses. So again, the people who know the perpetrator the best, they're the ones who should really be asking questions and working with professionals to make sure the right questions are asked and not to let something go when something seems off.
- [273:04]
A
Let's spend a minute on Gabby, because, you know, I have to admit to you, I've done a lot of interviews of domestic violence victims, and when I saw that police stop, you know, where she was trying to say, he hit me first and so on, I. I understood what was happening there. But I also felt bad for the cops. I know that's not right. I know the cops did not handle it. We had a whole debate with lawyers on whether they should be sued and so on. I don't know. I had conflicting feelings about it. They seemed like caring individuals, but the truth is they really mishandled that entire scenario. And I'm not blaming them for Gabby's death, but, you know, one can only wonder, had they intervened more aggressively, would it have led to her escape, you know, her. Just a different result? Again, not to blame them, but just to call attention to. There's a warning sign here. There's a really clear warning sign in her interaction with these cops. Somebody had called 911. They had said that they had seen a man hit a woman. The cops went, they pulled him over, and they found a crying Gabby Petito with a mark on her face. And then we later found out, a mark on her neck, and she tried to blame herself. We have. We have a bit of that. Here it is.
- [274:18]
E
We want to know the truth. If he actually hit you, because, you know, I guess, yeah, but I hit him first. Where did he hit you? Don't.
- [274:25]
A
Don't worry.
- [274:26]
C
Just be honest.
- [274:26]
A
He, like, grabbed my face.
- [274:28]
E
Like, slap your face or what?
- [274:30]
A
Well, like, he, like, grabbed me, like, with his nail. And I guess that's why it looks. I definitely have a cut right here, cuz I can feel it.
- [274:36]
B
Touch it.
- [274:37]
A
It burns.
- [274:37]
E
She gets really worked up, and when
- [274:39]
C
she does, she swings. And she had her cell phone in
- [274:41]
E
her hand, so I was just trying
- [274:41]
A
to push her away. Well, to be honest, I definitely hit him first.
- [274:45]
E
Where'd you hit him? I stopped. He stopped, and then just on his face, he gets kind of shut up.
- [274:55]
A
What do you make of that whole thing?
- [274:57]
B
Yes, I've spent a long time on crime analysts going through the case and dissecting forensically the police stop because, of course, it is on their body cam footage. And the first thing that struck me about Gabby was just how emotionally dysregulated she was. And, you know, I train law enforcement. I wrote the book Policing Domestic Violence that's behind me with two police officers when I was at New Scotland Yard. And it's part of the Blackstone Policing Guide series of helping officers ask the right questions and use their powers. And one of the key things is if you've got a victim in trauma, which Gabby was clearly emotionally dysregulated, find out why. And if you've got perpetrator. And bearing in mind the 911 the call that came in was about, and I. I'll quote it, a gentleman slapping the woman. Well, that ain't no gentleman for a start. But the point was that the call was a call for assistance because of the male's behavior, not the females. And Gabby instantly took responsibility, which a lot of victims do, and therefore the attempt to separate them was the right one. But putting her in the back the of of the police car, which is where you put a suspect, and shutting her off wasn't a good move. And keeping Brian out and spending 80% of their time with Brian, who straight away threw Gabby under the bus in attempt to manipulate and control the narrative. I train officers to question that. That is a very clear manipulation. And his narrative should have been challenged because at no point was it challenged challenged. And he was the first to admit that he had shoved her and that he had locked her out of her van. He took her keys and they did a van check, and it was registered to Gabby, not him. He took her keys, he took her phone, and he stopped her from getting into her vehicle. And then one of the other callers said that he took her backpack out and had put it on the outside of the van, and he'd threatened to drive off and leave her there on her own own. So who really is the person in power and with the power and control here, it's very obviously Brian, and that she was in fear and she was trying to get her keys and get her phone. She just wanted to be in the van. And he was controlling her movements and not allowing her to have the space that she needed to be in her van. And he was threatening to leave her there on her own. A lone female and that narrative should have been shown, challenged. The.
- [277:30]
A
That case is reminding me of, you know, some of these other cases that we're discussing, like. Like the McDonald one where, oh, Colette, she was so happy. She was this domestic wife of this, you know, Green Beret surgeon. And the two little girls. That's what we saw on the outside. And what we also saw in the Gabby case was the van. And I love the van and van life. And we're doing our yoga. This image that we know was untrue. We were being misled. And it's not uncommon at all for the victims of domestic violence or the perpetrators of it to mislead us actively and willingly.
- [278:11]
B
Yes, but the clues are there. I mean, when you get two independent male witnesses calling it in because they're concerned, it takes a lot to call the police. Most people don't want to get involved with the police. So for two independent men to say there's a problem, well, that's the first thing that they should pay attention to. What are they being told? Why are they even attending? You know, Officer Robbins did try and do the right thing, but he was a junior officer. He wasn't even through his training period. And Eric Pratt, the supervisor, was the one that made a very quick decision that Gabby was the primary aggressor. Well, actually, I wrote the chapter on primary aggressor because we have the same where you have to be very careful in not just believing the calm, cool, collected male narrative. And oftentimes, that's what police attend. A distraught, emotionally dysregulated female and a very calm, cool and collected individual. A male, normally. And then they gravitate to that cool, calm, collected male and their narrative, rather than thinking, why is this young woman so emotionally dysregulated? This is a disproportionate reaction to what we're being told. And hang on a minute. Didn't Brian say, she's got this little website. Isn't he devaluing her and saying, oh, she's crazy? Making out her that she's the crazy one? And even when Officer Robbins tried to challenge him, he again threw it back to Gabby being the problem. So with experience, and that's why supervisors and mentors are very important to check and to challenge. And unfortunately, with misogyny, oftentimes times. And those officers, what we saw was, yes, they may look like they are being caring towards Gabby, but they were also very misogynistic and very patronizing and condescending. And, you know, did they not realize that 16 to 24 year olds are the most at risk group of domestic violence and femicide, the women. Because in 2021, 2022 and 23, it's unacceptable of all for officers not to be trained. So for me this is a very clear training issue. But the attitudes are also problematic when they instantly go into just believing the male narrative without any challenge and they put her in the box of just being the hysterical emotional woman. And aren't all women crazy? Because that was the subtext between Brian and those officers with their fists pumping and oh, these women are, you know, know my ex wife, she's on, she's no longer my wife anymore and she's on pills because she's so crazy. These were the things that the officers were talking about with Brian and then they were laughing and joking. And for Gabby who's in the back of the car, is she hearing them laughing and joking? How does that feel to her when she's just on her own isolated and there they all are joking and laughing with Brian. That sends a very clear message to her, to her.
- [281:05]
A
You know, this is all leading me to recall something you wrote about how we, we socialize girls all wrong in some ways. You know, be a good girl, go along to get along, don't make waves. You know, the, the pain in the ass girl is somebody nobody wants to be around or promote or work with. We talk about it a lot these days because there are all these teachers who want to have secrets with our kids now. And you know, a lot of us mothers have been saying, you don't get to have secrets with my child. No adult gets to have secrets with my child. I'd raise my children to, to understand that that's a big red flag. A grown up who wants to have a secret with you. That's how kids get abused and it's how women get abused. It's just like a common theme that I'm feeling now and listening to you. And I want to leave, I want to leave it on an empowering note so that the people listening to this don't just feel like, oh, it sucks to be a woman, I'm going to get abused, no one's going to care. The laws don't protect me, I'm going to fall in love. But it's going to turn out to be some abusive psychopath. What can women do meaningful things that they can do to protect themselves, to take control of their own lives and their own safety?
- [282:20]
B
Well, I think girls are groomed to be polite, compassionate and to put other people's needs above their own. And what we need to do is, yes, you can still be polite, but to know your own needs and not be afraid to voice what you need and not be afraid to be difficult, because you mentioned the good girl. But those of us who challenge things, we're the difficult ones. We're the ones that tend to run into problems because we're asking the difficult questions. So the things that I always say are to be curious when something doesn't feel right or look right or sound right. Be curious and ask questions about the person. Don't just accept their word for it. Don't, you know, ignore what your instinct is telling you. And that's probably the biggest one, is trusting your instinct of if something feels right or somebody feels off. You know, every rape case I've worked, every time when I've gone back through the statement, the woman sensed when she was in danger and then she didn't want to upset the person. So she didn't get off the train. She didn't walk across to the other platform or go down a different street. She didn't want to upset the person. So, you know, not being polite in that way, to the detriment of our own safety and to always, always trust your instinct. We have more brain cells in our stomach than a dog has in its head. And I've got a rather lovely golden doodle called Beatrice. But when my gut's tweaking, it's telling me something. So always listen to that, because we can talk, Megan, and you can. We can try and empower women, but only women can empower themselves, right? To ask the questions, to take action. And don't be afraid to ask advice from older people. You know, older mentors, females. I mentor a number of younger women of things that. Where they say, but is this normal? Is that right? I mean, he says that that's what everybody does of sending pictures, you know, naked pictures, et cetera. But he says, I'm a prude when I don't do it. I mean, shit, should I? You know, my number one rule is never send pictures because you don't know where they're going to end up. So, again, just asking. Trusting someone, you know, like yourself, myself, and asking those questions from someone who's seen it and done it before, and to be mentored. Because I think for younger women, particularly 16 to 24, they're not taught what a healthy relationship is. There's a big information gap. They're taught how to have sex and the mechanics of it. They're not taught about emotional Safety and you know, being in a healthy relationship of what's healthy versus what's unhealthy. And I think if we were doing that piece, we would be able to spot the behaviors and we'd do it with boys as well. Boys and men. Of what behaviors are they learning that's bad, that they shouldn't be using? And it's early that we want to get into it. Age appropriate discussions, of course. And I agree with you, the secret things is a big problem. Problem. You know, that's how pedophiles and sex offenders, how they get the trust of a child, that it's a secret between me and you. So teachers should absolutely not be talking about secrets. That's a big safeguarding risk. So yes, I think it's having more conversations and girls and women, you know, stepping into their personal power and not being afraid to make a noise and get louder when there's a problem.
- [285:38]
A
Yes, get louder is a great advice. Advice. And if it's not, if it doesn't come easy to you, then practice, keep practicing because it comes easier over time. Now wait, before we go, I know about the podcast, but is there a book that the people can buy of yours you met, you mentioned the one behind you. Is that just for police or shoot, can we all learn from that one?
- [285:58]
B
I mean it's a wider book that anybody can read and a lot of people tell me they get it in and out of the chapters. It's called Policing Demand Domestic Violence and I am in discussions about updating it. I mean the actual detail of and the case studies I use in there with my co authors, it's all still relevant. But some of the laws, now we've got new laws on coercive control, on stalking, all sorts of things that we're in discussion about updating it. And I'm also running a whole series of master classes because I, I do deliver a lot of training and some of them are virtual training masterclasses where people can log on just as we're talking and I talk through lots of cases. And the dash I've got a stalking class on May 9th and 10th and dash on May 23rd, 24th and coercive control on June 6th and 7th. And you can just email laurarichardspawmail.com if you're interested in that.
- [286:56]
A
Oh great. And it's. And Your website is the laurariichards.com the
- [287:01]
B
laura richards.com and also-riskchecklist.co.uk it is at the moment being updated and it will be a dot com in the future. But yes, I put a lot of information out there to help people. And there's Paladin, the national stalking advocacy service, where there's lots of information on there. If you believe that you're being stalked,
- [287:19]
A
God bless you for all that you've done and that you continue to do. Your podcast, your book, your advocacy, your mentorship, all of it. Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure getting to know you.
- [287:30]
B
Thank you. Well, I've enjoyed it very much. And thank you for you sharing your experience. And enjoyed is the wrong word, but I think these discussions and informed discussion and conversations and interviews are so important. So thank you for inviting me on.
- [287:44]
A
Thanks for joining us today. Fascinating conversation. What I love about Laura is she's spot on. She's done her homework. Every fact she was reciting, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love people who really actually do their homework and they can recite the facts, sort of like a Victor Davis Hansen in conversation. And you can trust their info. That's Laura.
- [288:02]
D
She was great.
- [288:03]
A
Looking forward to having her back on. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
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C
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E
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E
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C
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A
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