← The Megyn Kelly Show
The Megyn Kelly Show
Shock Lawsuit Against "The Tell" Author, Kouri Richins Bombshells, and Nancy Guthrie Investigation Mess, with MK True Crime Hosts | Ep. 1271
01:59:27
Megyn Kelly is joined by Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve, to discuss a new lawsuit accusing author Amy Griffin of "stealing" a story of sexual assault and using it as her own in her memoir "The Tell," her claim that she acquired the "memories" by using psychedelic drugs, the details of the lawsuit against Amy Griffin over "stolen" memories, the evidence that Griffin may not have had the experiences in her book herself, how Griffin has gotten such easy treatment during her book tour from Oprah, Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow, whether outlets like NBC will now have to correct the record, and more. Then Dave Aronberg, Phil Holloway, and Ashleigh Merchant of MK True Crime join to discuss the explosive Kouri Richins trial moments, the best arguments for Richins' innocence and guilt, the witnesses we've seen so far, and more. Then Mark Geragos and Matt Murphy of MK True Crime to talk about why the Nancy Guthrie investigation has been a "clown show," how the bungling of the messag...
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- [00:01]
Megyn Kelly
Lifelock. How can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
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Mark Garagos
One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
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Megyn Kelly
What do I do? My refund, though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this.
- [00:12]
Mark Garagos
LifeLock fixes identity theft, guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.
- [00:18]
Megyn Kelly
I'm so relieved.
- [00:19]
Dave Aronberg
No problem.
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Megyn Kelly
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [00:21]
Mark Garagos
One in four was a fraud. Paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Specialoffer terms apply.
- [00:31]
Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show. We are on day four now at a remote location where my family is celebrating spring break. But I am not because I am with you fine people. And that's exactly where I want to be. It actually has been working out well because we've been normally doing the show live 12 to 2, but we've been taping it and in the mornings 10 to 12 and then I can spend the day with the fam. And as you know, I kind of feel like the show is my therapy most days and if I don't do it, I actually feel off. Start twitching, start like developing ticks. So thank you for allowing me to behave like a normal human after I finish this. I'm also drinking my coffee, staving off my Alzheimer's and it's delicious. Highly recommend. I am so looking forward to today's show. It's a, it's a Kelly's court and we have the most interesting cases. I kind of feel like it needed to be a four hour show, but it's only a two hour show and it's going to prove that truth is stranger than fiction. Okay, well, first. Well, not first, we're going to get to the Corey Richards trial in Utah. She is the mom. She has three children. She wrote a children's book about dealing with grief after her husband, their dad, tragically died. It was very sad. She was such a caring mom. Well, now she's charged with his murder. I mean, you of course saw it coming. MK True Crime has been covering this thing and live streaming, streaming every minute of the trial, which is underway. We'll get into it. But first we have got to bring to you the story of Amy Griffin. Disclosure up front. I know her, okay? Pretty much anybody in New York who's like, well known or who has sort of a ton of money in financial circles, knows Amy Griffin because of her husband John, who is literally probably the richest man in New York, big hedge fund guy worth something like $6 billion. And she is his wife. And she. This is relevant to the story. She didn't really have her own thing going on, but then she took John's money, obviously it's their money now, and started investing in companies like Meghan Markle, Spanx by Sarah Blakely, which was already well established, but like my estimation is well established female companies where she could say she had participated. But most of these people already had their own thing going on, like Reese Witherspoon's company, like these. Okay, whatever. That was her thing. And she started calling herself an entrepreneur, kind of like founder, whatever. It's what a lot of rich wives do. She was trying to contribute, but apparently that wasn't enough. And she decided to write a memoir. I'm going to use that term, memoir in quotes. Just consider air quotes around that from this point forward. And she did write that book called the Tell. In this book, the Tell, she claimed that she underwent MDMA therapy. That's an illegal psychedelic drug. And she said using the drug unlocked years of memories, including of being sexually assaulted by a middle school teacher more than 30 years ago where she grew up in Amarillo, Texas. She came from relatively well off family, from what I know. And this was like a horrific memory, couple of them, of being abused by this teacher. Well, kind of extraordinary to see somebody of that amount of privilege and connection and wealth and all that come out with such a memoir. And the descriptions were harrowing. And it seems like sort of a raw thing to reveal about oneself. And therefore, you're not going to be surprised to learn she was universally embraced and praised by many of the same women in whose company she had invested, like Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon. She went on the Drew Barrymore Show. She didn't invest in anything Drew has, as far as I know. But there was no bigger booster than Oprah Winfrey. This is an Oprah Book of the Month. It was her book club. She featured it. She lavished praise on the book and on Amy Griffin. And. And she began, when she had Amy on her show, by telling a story about Amy's daughter that Amy purports to recount in the book. Just watch this.
- [05:03]
Phil Holloway
And then one night, her young daughter
- [05:05]
Megyn Kelly
tells her, mom, you're really nice. You're here with us, but you're actually not here. And then she starts to embark on this incredible journey that leads to discovery of a childhood secret. That's how deeply the secret was buried, that she didn't even remember the secret. And as she struggles to find out what's true and not true, she discovers how silence and shame fueled her obsessive
- [05:31]
Ashley Merchant
need to always be perfect.
- [05:33]
Megyn Kelly
I was just floored when I read Amy's story. What she discovered about herself, about her past, made me recognize how powerful the desire to forget is and also how powerful the desire to remember is and how your life can change when you reconcile the two. Pretty amazing, right? I mean, what Oprah forgot to do in much of that little recitation was to attribute the claims to Amy Griffin. And that is something we are pretty vigilant about in the journalism business, which Oprah's not in, because we don't know when we repeat allegations like the ones in Amy Griffin's memoir whether they are true. We only know that the author says they are. So typically, you would say, Amy says she suffered this terrible abuse. Amy tells a story about. Amy says, Amy writes, you gotta be careful. You do. We're not always perfect at it. And, you know, I'm wondering whether Oprah would like to have some of that phraseology back, because last week, a woman who goes only by Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed a complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court against Amy Griffin, her publisher and the man believed to be her ghostwriter. This is a classmate of Amy Griffin's back in Amarillo, Texas. And she alleges that the sexual assault described in the tell actually happened to her, not to Amy. And she is heavily suggesting that Amy stole this entire story from her and that she willingly stole it, that it wasn't an innocent recovery of memory by Amy that happened to dovetail uniquely with this woman's story, but that she met with this woman shortly before publication and that she may have sent a private investigator to go meet with this woman to get her story, you know, down. Down pat. And then came the book, the tell, without any attribution to this woman, crediting that it's actually her story, but instead, allegedly, according to the plaintiff, stealing this woman's stories of sexual assault because she did know her when they were kids in Amarillo and pawning them off as her own. She says, again, she. She remembered it while under this psychedelic. The therapy. Well, the plaintiff alleges in the lawsuit that, quote, the book also acts as a de facto advertisement for the efficacy of MDMA therapy, which the author concedes she and her husband have a financial interest in. Her husband John is a big investor apparently in this psychedelic industry in a drug being offered. So Jane Doe is now suing for intrusion. Intrusion, invasion of privacy, publication of private facts, negligence and infliction of emotional distress. There's a lot to unpack here and we're gonna do it with our legal panel in just a minute. But we are going to begin with MK Media's own Maureen Callahan. She's host of the Nerve with Maureen Callahan. And the Nerve deserves a ton of credit because it was Maureen Callahan who first smelled a rat on this story. Amy says there's no rat, no rat to be smelled. She says she's telling the truth. We'll get to all that. But Maureen is the first one who said this does not ring true to me. And you guys who listen to the Nerve know that. And then the New York Times wrote an in depth piece about it. I'm sure that we, we've long suspected that there are writers at the Times who love Maureen show. There's a lot of evidence of it actually. But sure enough, the New York Times got interested, wrote a long in depth piece kind of blowing the lid off of this because originally Maureen, when report on this did not know that these might have been stolen memories. She, you know the, the act of thought I think at the time was like this is probably just made up. Which she denies. She says they're real. But the New York Times added a whole new layer in back in September saying no, there's a woman who does have these stories who she grew up with. Now they stopped short of saying she stole them. But now we get the lawsuit from the woman saying I think she stole this, she stole these memories from me. And it's not just my supposition. I had a meeting with her in 2019. The book came up in 2025 and some PI who alleged she was a Hollywood talent agent saying he really wanted to talk to me about my very compelling life story, who then took off when she asked for his identifying information and suggested that she wanted to bring her own lawyer in to look at everything after he'd already gotten all the details. But many of which she alleges wound up in the tell Relief actor loves hearing from pain free customers and hopes they can help you next. One user Bill said, quote, I've been crawling under sinks and working long hours for decades. My back and knees took the punishment and I thought pain was just part of the trade. But relief actor surprised me. Within weeks I was working without wincing. I could get down on the floor and get back up again without thinking twice. Bill knows hard work. He knows pipes, tools, and long days on the job. What he didn't know is how good life feels when pain stops tagging along. Maybe it's back pain or knee issues that's slowing you down, but Relief factor may be able to help. Relief factor is 100% drug free. It targets the inflammation that causes pain so you can move better, feel better, and actually enjoy life again. Try the three week quick start for just $19.95. Go to relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief. And let's see if you're next in getting out of pain. Maureen, this is unbelievable. It's not unbelievable to you because it didn't take much for you to sniff around this story and say, this doesn't seem right. So why? What was it that made you say, I'm not sure about this one.
- [11:33]
Ashley Merchant
Two things. One was Amy's deliberate depiction, my opinion, in her quote unquote memoir as just being a regular child of regular means. And she depicted Amarillo, which I've never been to, as a very small town, rural, like she's some hick. And I learned pretty quickly that Amy Griffin came from one of the most prominent families in Amarillo. Amarillo is a cosmopolitan place that's full of money. Predators typically do not go after children of means and prominence. It's too dangerous. They look for the broken ones, they look for the neglected ones. They look for the ones that are like, quote, unquote, soft targets. Secondly, she recounted violent incidences of sexual assault. I mean, one in which she said the, what she calls the teacher she names Mr. Mason, it's a pseudonym, she says threatened in a school bathroom to knock her teeth out. You know, violence that would leave a child with bruises, marks that would raise alarm among adults in this child's orbit. She also depicted these, again, violent, violent sexual assaults in public places, in the school and, you know, classrooms again, bathrooms, locker rooms, places where at any moment a janitor could have walked in, another classmate, a teacher, none of it rang true. None of it felt true. And even just the way she wrote about it. If anybody knows anyone who is a survivor of sexual assault, especially childhood sexual assault or knows somebody, the way she wrote about that trauma, it just, it, it didn't sit right. And it, it felt like this third rail in the media, especially because it had the backing of someone like Oprah Winfrey and then this constellation of powerful, famous women that Amy Griffin, in my opinion, has purchased, the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world The Reese Witherspoons, et cetera, et cetera. And so nobody wanted to say, hey, wait a minute, this doesn't sound right. This isn't adding up.
- [14:02]
Megyn Kelly
Yep. Fourthly, and she's married to such a rich person that, you know, I'm sure many of these people also thought, I'll get sued if I say I call bullshit on this.
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Ashley Merchant
Exactly. And the final thing is if you are truly, truly recovering these memories and you believe there is a violent sexual predator targeting children, I think especially a woman of means like that, you do everything in your power to bring that person to justice. Because as we all know, child abusers, sexual predators, they're not. You can't rehabilitate them. There's no therapies.
- [14:41]
Megyn Kelly
That's not a one time deal. So she alleges. The point I'll give her in her favor is that when she reportedly, according to the Times, when she shopped this memoir, again, air quotes, she did name the teacher in the book, the tell. She calls him Mr. Mason, which she says is a pseudonym. But reportedly, when she shopped the memoir, she named the teacher, and the teacher is still alive by the time they actually got to the memoir. She didn't name them. She changed the name him. So, I mean, that. That is in her favor because that would be a reckless thing to do if you knew you had just stolen this story. And by the way, I left out an important detail. The woman, Claudia, to whom this actually did happen, says, Claudia says it wasn't Mr. Mason, it was a different teacher who then left the school shortly after that after the sexual assault of Claudia. And so, you know, that's pretty bold. Like, that's an Amy's defense, don't you think?
- [15:42]
Ashley Merchant
I'm of two minds about that, really. I mean, I'm very skeptical of this woman. I think on the nerve the other day, I called her an amoral husk of a human being. And I think she is. She's been swanning around Paris Fashion Week while this lawsuit breaks with Oprah and Gail just looking at any given camera and waving and smiling like she is not a care in the world. This is if this is, if this book is a lie, and if she in fact did steal Claudia's sexual assaults and has in fact, accused an innocent man who is under a pseudonym in
- [16:18]
Megyn Kelly
the book, but who.
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Ashley Merchant
Everyone in Amarillo knows who this guy is. That's reported. The New York Times reported that she has committed a moral injury for the ages. And not just against these people, not just against Mr. Mason, Claudia, but against Every survivor of childhood sexual abuse, especially those who find the courage to come forward and confront their abusers and take them to court. This is disgusting. And here's the thing about book publishing. I think that a lot of people don't know. You wouldn't know unless you're in the industry. Any author of any book, a memoir, a non fiction book, I've had to do it. You have to spend your own money to hire a fact checker. Book publishers do not fact check books. So if she's floating a real name in the proposal stage, it means nothing.
- [17:06]
Megyn Kelly
That's exactly right. Doug, my husband, who writes nonfiction books, and they're in depth. I mean, he has so much to research, he has to fact check them. And he fact checks them to high heaven. It takes him forever. It's his least favorite part of the book. I mean, he's done the research along the way. But before you actually hit print, then you've got to go back again and make sure that everything is shored up, that you've got a citation for every claim. And you know, the publishing company may say, you need a citation here, you need a citation there. But they're not the ones who are going to go run it down. And in a memoir, they just rely on you. Like you say you were sexually assaulted by Mr. Mason. Okay. Which is crazy. But then they do say, if we get sued by Mr. Mason, you, author have to indemnify us, the publisher. Like in this case, it's Random House. So that'll be a cross claim asserted. Because Random House has been dragged into the lawsuit too. For sure. Random House and the ghostwriter are gonna cross claim against Amy Griffin whether they think she's guilty or not. Because they're not gonna wanna have to pay for this. And it's Amy who's been making the allegations. So the thing that's such a crazy, like, turn on this though, Maureen. Cause like you, I remember when you did this on the nerve, because I know this one, right? So I was like, oh my God, what's going on with her? And there were these reviews on Amazon of the Tell after it hit by a lot of women who actually had survived sexual assault, saying this does not ring true. And also saying what you said, which is they never pick the richest girl in town. They don't pick the prom queen. And she was very popular, very rich, very well connected. And then it turns out what you didn't know at the time was that there actually is Claudia who was sexually assaulted. Says Claudia, that the New York Times would later manage to track down. And that Claudia is saying not only did Amy steal the story from her, that these are her memories, but now we learn from her lawsuit they met like it can't even be. We'll see what Amy has to say about this. But to me it looks like Amy can't even get out of this by being like, I, I knew this story somehow from when I was 12. And I guess these, this drug brought it out as my memory when really it belonged to another girl, to Claudia, who I mentioned in the book is just an associate of mine. Because Claudia is alleging Amy went and found her in 2019 and they sat down and they chatted. And Amy writes in the book about a postcard that she received from Claudia, like later or no. Or it was, it was unsigned, I think she says, and the person who wrote the postcard was just like, it happened to me too. Or suggested it happened to her too. But meanwhile we find out from the lawsuit that this girl with whom she met and who she knew at Amarillo was given the postcard when Amy met with her in California in 2019. And like, oh, wouldn't it be cute if we each mailed each other a postcard? And that's. So this woman did mail her a postcard which she says said nothing about sexual assault. And then it winds up being misrepresented, she alleges in the book. And on top of that, two years later, an alleged talent agent calls Maureen wanting to meet with Claudia and get the specifics of her life story, which, you know, he's. He allegedly heard from somebody in Amarillo, I guess, and she gave it all up only to then read about it in the tell. This is very damning.
- [20:31]
Ashley Merchant
Doesn't that happen all the time? Megan, a small town girl with no connections, out of the blue gets a call from a big time talent agent. When something as like, and I hate to say it, but it is like childhood sexual abuse is all too common. So what would differentiate you? You have to be an Amy Griffin to get a book deal like that. You have to have all of the, apparently in her proposal, Amy name checked, all of her very famous, powerful friends, including Oprah Winfrey. Because part of the deal when you're trying to get a book deal in this world now is you have to prove that you're marketable, that you're commercial, that you have a built in audience, whether that's on social media or elsewhere. What's truly diabolical, Diabolical and I think will be the key part of this Lawsuit. Is Claudia being able to prove that Amy solicited her for this lunch back in 2019 to extract all of these details? Because I think the diabolical nature of this, just my opinion, how premeditated it is for Amy to claim in the book that these memories came back after an MDMA trip, guided though it may have been allegedly by a therapist. That's kind of a shield, right? Oh, but it was drug induced. So I don't know, maybe in a drug haze, I conflated Claudia. Oh, my bad. Like, no harm. No, no, there's a lot of harm. There's a lot of foul in the book. I think I said in the original Nerve segment, you know, Claudia returned the dress that Amy had loaned her for this dance, the dance at which Amy says she was sexually assaulted, but at that dance, Claudia was the one allegedly who was really sexually assaulted. And that dress had a stain on it from that assault that Claudia says she returned to Amy. So not only did Amy take the dress back, but she took the story back with it. Allegedly. I hope that also Mr. Mason, who everyone in Amarillo knows, who, is apparently a married father, children, possibly grandchildren. He will have no problem finding a shark of a lawyer who would take his case pro bono and, you know, launch a lawsuit against Amy Griffin, too. I would love to know, Megan. Love to know. Do you remember when Oprah took James Fry to the woodshed?
- [22:56]
Megyn Kelly
Over a million little.
- [22:58]
Ashley Merchant
A million little pieces, and all he did was, like, exaggerate his drug addiction. Is she gonna do the same thing to her great friend Amy Griffin if this turns out to be a complete lie?
- [23:08]
Megyn Kelly
Yep, we've. First of all, I definitely want to comment on that, but first, I just want to point out the irony here is that to Claudia, the one to whom this stuff actually did happen, says Claudia is from the other side of the tracks, Grew up in foster care, had no connections, no real parents, and no money. Or like, I'm sorry to say that is the profile of someone to whom this would happen, unlike the Amy Griffin childhood profile. And now she lives in, I think, was it Palm Springs? Like the area of Palm Springs, California? And I don't know what she's doing, but it doesn't sound like she's made it big in the way that Amy Griffin has, marrying one of the richest men on Earth. And so, like, if this. If this is true, if Amy Griffin really did this, there is zero chance she can let this go in front of a jury. Zero. Because there is no way they are going to like her. Right? Like, You've got this one girl to whom this actually did happen, or so she's been saying her entire life. And she had proof at the time of a stained dress with the guy's semen. And who now gets taken advantage of by this rich lady with all the connections and Oprah and the Oprah Winfrey thing. Maureen, here she is. We pulled it of her after the interview with James Fry, who, yeah, was found to have exaggerated some of the details in his book. You know, with her mea culpa. She was so upset. Here's that moment. I don't know what is true and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with the smoking gun report titled the man who Conned Oprah. And I want to know where they write. I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate. Absolutely.
- [24:51]
Ashley Merchant
I did that show and I was pretty defensive.
- [24:55]
Megyn Kelly
I was defending my turf and defending every single viewer who had bought that book. I am standing here on behalf of the reader who's pissed off that it wasn't what we thought it was. Yeah. Looking forward to her doing that here or at least alerting her readership to the fact that there has been a lawsuit and now two New York Times articles raising questions about whether any of this is true.
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Ashley Merchant
Oprah's so full of. Number one, by that point, she was, she was a big player in the publishing industry. Right. Every publisher, every author wanted to get chosen as Oprah's Book of the Month. So Oprah would well know that one of the trends in publishing at the time was memoir. And publishers were often pushing novelists who submitted books. They would say, it's good, but it won't sell. You know how we'll get it to sell? We'll frame it as memoir. So just try to reframe it that way. That's what happened with James Frey. It was, it was, it was an publishing industrial media complex, you know, plan to make this book break through and make money, which in that world is really the only thing that matters. And it's the only thing that matters to Oprah, who, like we cannot remind people enough, is a self proclaimed survivor of childhood sexual abuse. So this either is sacred to her or it is not. And it's so important that the media stays on this story because I think you're exactly right. There's no way Amy Griffin and her husband aren't going to cut a big fat check to make this go away with, with, you know, Amy, this is probably, I'm going to guess Again, just my opinion, a calculation in her head that were the worst to happen, that were these people unlikely though it may be, with no means to come after her. Well, that she could just kind of check because her friends in the media aren't going to prosecute the case and her husband's a billionaire and. And so even those of us who maybe aren't in the inner fold of her world, people like me in the digital lane might be cowed by her husband's money for daring to say anything. I think that's exactly what somebody like this is relying on.
- [27:11]
Megyn Kelly
Well, we will stay on it. I mean, because, look, I didn't cover it when it first came out. I wasn't sure what the story was. But now we've had, I mean, not one, but two New York Times articles. Deep dive. They found this woman and now she's sued and it's fair game. Amy Griffin is denying it. I'll read you her. Her lawyer statement, but I know Maureen's got to run. Thank you so much, my friend. Great job.
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Ashley Merchant
Thanks, Megan.
- [27:33]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, this is what her. She's hired Tom Clare of Clare Lock, and this is like the best defamation law firm you can hire. Of course, she's got all the money in the world to buy the best that money can buy. I wonder who Claudia, quote, unquote is represented by. It's going to have to be a good lawyer. So this is what Tom Clare told the New York Times because they wrote up the lawsuit when it hit last week. We look forward to exposing these meritless claims in court as well as the deeply flawed New York Times reporting that is at the center of it, referencing back to that article they had in September. Just like the New York Times manufactured a false narrative about Amy Griffin and the tell, it also engineered the premise for this absurd lawsuit after two New York Times reporters instigated this whole situation by bringing the book to. To her attention, the plaintiff made her own choice to publicize her narrative to a global audience. Okay. I guess by suing, which is, by the way, under Jane Doe. For its part, the Times took full advantage publicizing this inaccurate narrative despite receiving many red flag warnings. Daniel Rhodes ha. A Times spokeswoman said in response, we're confident in the accuracy of our reporting. So just before I bring in my legal panel, I want to just tell you, I just want to spend a minute on the media around this, okay? Because it was ubiquitous in terms of these high powered women who are in Amy Griffin's circle. And you really do have to be careful when you're dealing with somebody with this kind of money and these kind of connections that you don't get used and made a fool of. And really, truly, like, if this had happened to me, if she had come on this show and now we had seen these allegations, I would absolutely come on the air and say, I have to tell you that this lawsuit has been filed. I wouldn't take a side that would be. I wouldn't feel the need to stab somebody who had come on the show in the back or a friend in the back. But I would absolutely feel the obligation to tell you that there's now been a woman who on the record is making allegations that this entire story was stolen from her. And it's not just a random allegation. The woman says she met with Amy in 2019 after having not seen her for 30 years at Amy's request, that Amy bought a postcard AM and had her and filled Amy's the one who filled out the address and said, oh, please, you know, mail it to me. Which would wind up in the tell being misrepresented as somebody like secretly postcarding her, saying, you know, kind of me too. Which this Claudia, again, that's not a real name. We don't know what her real name is. Says was not what the postcard said and also was all orchestrated by Amy. And then that two years later, three years later, in 2022, she, quote, Claudia was contacted by someone claiming to be a Hollywood talent agent and pumped for all the details about her story, which she gave to this person under the auspices of potentially selling it to him. He said he might want to buy it and make a book out of it or a movie out of it, and that he would pay her for the rights to her life story. But then she eventually contacted a lawyer of her own and that lawyer said, let's get this in writing, let's get a contract and let's make sure this guy is who he says he is. And. And she alleges he disappeared. Now, who was that guy? There is an allegation in the complaint that they know his name. It's Dominique something. I'll pull it up. And that in fact he was a private investigator hired by Amy Griffin. Well, we're going to know all that. We are definitely going to be get to the bottom of that. And if it comes out that Amy Griffin hired this guy and she admits in the book that she hired private investigators to help track down some stories and that she sicced him on an unknowing Claudia and had him Lie about what he really was. Private investigator working for Amy Griffin, trying to find out what you know, stories in Amarillo versus talent agent who was misrepresenting what he wanted the story for to this woman who grew up in foster care so that actually it could be stolen by Amy Griffin. Allegedly. She's fucked. Sorry. She's just like that. That better not have happened. She denies it. She says the woman's the liar. That's quite an elaborate lie by so called Claudia. That's quite an elaborate lie to make up that they met. To make up that this person who's she has phone records for who's going to be identifiable. Again, there's a name in the complaint. We're gonna know whether this is a real person and whether Amy hired him. This is like the defense is going to have a different story to tell. But in any event, you can see that the story, speaking of red flags, has red flags all over Amy's story, Amy's story. They say it's all over Claudia's complaint. But let me just give you a little bit more a sample of how she was treated by the media. She went on Drew Barrymore. I got to tell you, I like Drew Barrymore. Now, notwithstanding the fact that I've made fun of Drew Barrymore with her Dylan Mulvaney interview, I gotta admit it. I met her on vacation a couple months ago. She could not have been nicer. She was actually very cool and we actually kind of talked about politics a little. I'm not gonna repeat what she said because it was private. But she was quite reasonable and I've developed a fondness for her, I'm not gonna lie. But I am gonna show you her interview of Amy Griffin because I am trying to make a point about the media treatment she received on her book tour. Here it is set to. It reads like the most compelling mystery. While it is also the most relevant relevatory. Can't even say the word Journey. I chills.
- [33:07]
Mark Garagos
Literally.
- [33:08]
Megyn Kelly
My God, you wrote the most fascinating book.
- [33:11]
Ashley Merchant
It is a literary like masterpiece.
- [33:14]
Megyn Kelly
How it unfolds. The book was a gift to myself to realize that vulnerability is actually power. The power that I have and the vulnerability of sharing this. So afraid to tell our secrets. Especially the traumas that have happened to us in a very unjust way. Such as it has to you. How taking that wall down, telling that truth is what has brought your family together in ways that are so powerful. And you were the age that your daughters were. It's like, God, we just. If we've been through Stuff we're so worried for our kids to go through those things. We just think, how can we protect them? Have we even dealt with the stuff that has happened to us? And the way that you walk through this is so, again, it's such an incredible, compelling read. But it is also, I think, going
- [34:18]
Ashley Merchant
to really truly be a catalyst to
- [34:21]
Megyn Kelly
a others finding the bravery to come out with their truths. Okay, again, Drew Barrymore is not a journalist and I actually feel bad for her because her empathy was clearly taken advantage of. If this is true, if Amy Griffin made this whole story up, she took advantage of what she knew would be Drew Barrymore's empathy and kindness toward her. And you know, they're not, they don't operate on that show under journalistic standards. You're not required. You would never get a note from a producer saying this is not, you're not being fair. We better test the story a little. Right. In a talk show. I think I've told you this, that one of Tamron Hall's producers tried to get me on that show once. Obviously it was a no. But in trying to lure me over there, they were saying, don't worry, she's not a journalist. Like she'd crossed over to talk show host. So we can give you all the questions in advance. You know, we can stay away from anything that's sensitive for you. I was like, what is this? Like, that's not how I operated my show at NBC, that's for sure. But that's how they book guests. Like, don't worry, there'll be no hard questions and your story won't be tested. And here are the questions in advance. So that's just so you know what you're watching when you watch these so called talk shows as opposed to journalistic shows. Jenna Bush Hager, she was deeply problematic as well. Jenna Bush Hager does work for a news organization and her show I think is considered under the news umbrella of NBC and NBC. Trust me, they are going to need to comment on this. We're reaching out to all these people. Oprah, NBC, Gwyneth Paltrow will go down the list and we will ask what, if anything, they are going to do to alert their audience that there's been this allegation now that this entire story is made up. But here's how Jenna Bush Hager and Brooke Shields, I guess, who was in for her co host at the time, interviewed Amy Griffin in SOT3. They're obsessed with that same story about the daughter. It's one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my life. But it was that moment when my 10 year old said to me, mom, I need you to participate in our life in a way that you're not right now. And so in that moment, she was parenting me. Yeah. And it was a wake up. It was Gigi. It was a wake up call for me.
- [36:34]
Ashley Merchant
Think about the beauty of that kind of parenting.
- [36:37]
Megyn Kelly
You put her in a position to feel like she could say something that vulnerable to you. That is a testament to you as a parent as well. You know, like, don't lose sight of that. I think that idea of giving our kids agency is, like, wildly important. Okay? That's because in the story, she writes a book about her, her, her. She writes a story about how her daughter came to her and basically said, mom, where are you? You're here, but you're not here. Like, I'm looking for you and I want to know you, but you're never around. She writes, mom. Gigi said, I don't know how to say this, but I feel like I don't know, you know me. I said, what do you mean I don't know? Said Gigi. I feel so disconnected from you. Really? I said, after all that I do for you, My life revolves around trying to keep you safe and taking care of you. Mom, she's trying to tell you something. Gracie interjected. She was 13 and reminded me of myself at that age. Serious, driven, focused. We know you do everything for us, but we don't feel like we know who you are, said Gigi. You're nice, but you're not real. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have you as a mother? You do everything perfectly. You make everything look so easy. How are we supposed to relate to you? I. I'm just trying to be there for you. I said, you're here, but you're not here. Gigi cried, where are you, Mom? All right, this is what the kids call the humble brag. Like, it's the daughter being like, you're so perfect and you're such an amazing mom, but I just want to know you better. And this allegedly led to her journey of self, self reflection and discovery. This is. This reads like self aggrandizement to me. I don't. I can't imagine myself writing such a. Such a passage in a book about myself and my daughter and such a private conversation that makes me look like, coincidentally, this wonderful mother who just needs to let down her veil of perfection so that she can bond with her child. And let's Face it, like, let me just tell you, these two live a jet setting life. Jet setting where they travel all over the world. And there is a question, I'll just leave it at that. About why the daughters don't feel they know their mother. And I don't think it has anything to do with her alleged veneer of perfection. Um, she also happens to be like, best friends with Savannah Guthrie. So yet another reason why the Today show is going to need to comment on how they put this person on the air without any questions. And it appears many were necessary. Again, Amy Griffin says, no, they aren't. My entire book is true. And by the way, in my book, I disclose that my memories might actually be fake and it's even possible that I borrowed them from someone. She actually does write that in the book. Like, gee, disclaimer, it's possible this isn't true because it's discovered under this psychedelic drug. And maybe I borrowed them from somebody. Okay, so that's supposed to save her. You can't just steal somebody's story. We'll get into that with our legal panel. Want to show you one more. Here's Gwyneth Paltrow in Sat 10, a journey that started with listening to her inner knowing and taking the brave leap from there. So I'm really deeply thrilled and honored to have Amy on our podcast today. It's an unbelievable book. I'm so deeply proud of her. And that's what's been so amazing about watching you go through this process is like the real you, this you that we have now that is just like this strong, amazing, integrated person, unbelievable process that I was, I've been so honored to witness. I cannot encourage you all enough to order and read the tell. It's available for pre order now. And I found it personally life changing. Okay. She owes it to her audience as well. I'm sorry, but if these women actually do care about survivors of sexual assault, then they owe it to quote Claudia, to update the audience that a serious allegation of theft, of theft. You know, there's stolen valor in the, in the military. What is this, like stolen victimhood allegedly denied by Amy. They, they have an obligation to their audience and to the actual victims of sexual assault to update their audiences that this has now happened. There's been an in depth New York Times piece which none of them updated their audience on in September. They got away with completely ignoring it back then. And now we have the lawsuit. What's it going to take if and if and when there's a civil judgment or more likely a settlement. Then do you update your audiences that someone has come forward saying all of these exact same things happened to her and that some some alleged Hollywood talent agent came into their lives the year or two before Amy wrote this book and got all the details that just happened to wind up in Amy's book as Amy's story? Come on. This is so if. I'm sorry, but in my opinion this stinks to high heaven and she better not have fucking stole this woman's story. And these so called journalists or TV hosts better get out on their shows exactly the forums in which they promoted this story and tell their audiences that there's been a massive and material update. And they can include Amy's denials about Claudia's allegations as well. And I remain open minded to hear her innocent explanation for how all of that happened. It was a man named Dominique Price. The allegations of the complaint say the individual who contacted Claudia claiming to be a talent agent, gave a phone number and that they called this phone number. It is connected to a quote. Dominique Price, who according to California's Secretary of State records is the registered manager of Sleeved llc, a California LLC company with its principal place of business at the following place in Marina del Rey, California. If that person is in fact connected to Amy Griffin and was sent by her to go contact Claudia, she's toast. She's toast. She's going to have to settle this case, in my opinion. Maybe Amy's going to say I disclosed in the book even that I used private investigators to help me nail down my story. Your story? Your story, like that might be fine if in the book she said I wasn't the only one. I can't prove that Mr. Mason alleged sexually assaulted someone other than me, but I can tell you that I know of at least one other girl who was sexually assaulted at the school. I don't know by whom. And here are some details of her story that you're already out on thin ice if you offer the details without getting the woman's permission. But what happened here allegedly is she stole Claudia's details, retold them as her own sexual assaults and made Claudia a periphery character. They are just to support Amy's narrative about what happened to Amy. This is crazy. All right, I want to bring in our legal panel and talk about the legalities of this because this is going to be a rather big lawsuit. We're going to take a quick break first and they come back on the backside with our MK True Crime hosts. And then we are going to get into a couple of other big cases. Today I want to tell you about veracity. It's transforming the way we think about health by focusing on the real root cause of so many issues. Metabolism. Their metabolism ignite formula has become the go to for many. It's the number one doctor recommended GLP1 booster and a natural GLP1 alternative. Verasity says there are no side effects, no allergens, that it's just a plant based blend clinically shown to reduce hunger by 85% and help people lose an average of 9 pounds in 90 days. Consider making the switch to GLP1's the Natural Way. Head to VeracityHealth Co and use the code MEGAN for up to 60% off your order. Once again, that's VeracityHealth Co for up to 60% off. And make sure you use my promo code Megan, so they know I sent you. We're gonna stay on the Amy Griffin case and this bombshell lawsuit with our legal panel, the hosts of MK True Crime, Dave Aronberg, Phil Holloway and Ashley Merchant. Go to mktruecrime.com to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you love True Crime, you're gonna wanna check out MK True Crime. They've got the best cases and literally truly the best legal minds to dissect all of this stuff for you guys. Great to see you all. This is really stunning. I mean, it's really crazy if you think about it. And I have to say I feel like we're in a privileged position to discuss it because I think most of the mainstream media is afraid of John and Amy Griffin and they don't want to step on the toes of a couple of multi billionaires by repeating the allegations of this complaint or repeating the allegations in the New York Times. And to the New York Times credit, they did break this story. Maureen broke the story. But they did then follow up and do an in depth piece which. And they found the woman. They found Claudia. And now Claudia is pissed. Okay, I do want to read one thing that's in Claudia's complaint. Again, not her real name, about Amy. She writes, throughout the memoir, defendant Griffin questions the validity and accuracy of her own memory. She further writes that she is not only uncertain whether her memories of abuse actually happened, but that she is also unsure of whether her memories are her own or Claudia's or are her own projections. So I'll start with you on it, Ashley. Does that save Amy Griffin from this lawsuit?
- [46:08]
Maureen Callahan
No, not at all. I mean, this is atrocious. What this woman did is horrible. And I don't think it saves it from the lawsuit. You know, and I think what's interesting, you were talking earlier about how this comes down to money. I think this does come down to money, you know, and the fact that there was a plaintiff's lawyer out there that was willing to take. And I think it's important for the viewers to understand what plaintiff's lawyers do, how they evaluate cases. They don't get paid. So the lady hired a lawyer, and this lawyer believed enough in her case that he's taking this and he doesn't get paid unless she wins. So you counter that with Amy Griffith's lawyers, who are fighting hard for her, but they're being paid per hour. She's paying them to fight hard. So it's very different to me. And I think that's very telling about the success, the likelihood of success of this lawsuit. But there's really three big issues that they have to prove that's going to decide these lawsuits. Whether or not there was a misappropriation of her life story, which is really better explained as an invasion of privacy, whether or not there was fraud. And what does that mean? That means this whole fake agent allegation, this person who called, which is awful, that called her and tried to pry these stories out so that they could use them for a book, was that deceptive? And then also this defamation, that's going to be the hardest one, obviously, as you were talking about these false memories. But that going to be the biggest issue and where this case really comes
- [47:19]
Megyn Kelly
down to Megan the fraud. Here's another allegation on that which I forgot about, and this is actually quite relevant. They allege in the complaint this is quote, unquote, Claudia or now Jane Doe, alleges in her complaint that in Amy's memoir, defendant Griffin states that she hired private investigators via her husband's hedge fund after her MDMA therapy in order to track down information and find corroborating witnesses who could help prove that her alleged repressed rape memories were true. So Amy's story, I guess, will be that she went under psychedelics Phil, recovered the memories of her own rape, which just weirdly happened to dovetail perfectly with what allegedly happened to Claudia, then hired a PI who contacted Claudia. And Claudia. Oh, oh, my God. Had exactly the same details, which then Amy wrote all about as her own story without mentioning that it was also Claudia's story and she had sent a PI to go specifically steal this story from her. I mean, I don't like. I think to me this reads like somebody, Amy Griffin, who was writing the memoir, understanding she could get pinched on some of these things. Like, Claudia could come out upset and that she was gonna own some pieces of what she did, but not the theft. But you tell me your take on this case.
- [48:39]
Phil Holloway
Yeah. So it's gonna be interesting, Megan, to see what the defense to this lawsuit is. We haven't seen the answer yet. That will be filed according to the complaint for damages. And it says, quote, the memoir depicts Claudia as being aware she was speaking with investigators working on behalf of defendant Griffin, voluntarily providing information for use in the memoir and supportive of the publication of her private traumatic experiences. So, look, if these investigators. And I'm just going to use the term loosely, look, if they. If the answer says, all right, here's the documents that this Jane does signed stating that she knew that she was, you know, we were investigating this. And. And it's all on video. And. And so if the defense did their homework and they were smart about the way they interviewed her, then maybe they can successfully defend this by portraying the. The lawsuit as being untrue. But I seriously doubt that they're going to have that level of documentation to back up what they're saying happened in researching this book. And I'm going to use the term loosely, but can we just go back to the very premise of this just for a minute? Because anybody who thinks it's a good idea to write a book, especially one on this subject matter, and they're going to say that they are recovering memories using mdma. Look, on MK True Crime, we've talked in many instances about junk science and how junk science has no place in courtrooms. I'll go a step further and say junk science has no place in writing of books. Because, look, the science that we have seen says that the risks of recovering memories with mda, it's been shown to increase the rate of false memories. There's increased suggestibility. Users under the influence of mdma, even on this supposed guided therapy, they're often more open to suggestion, which leads them to unintentionally fill in gaps. And there's also impaired detail recall. So, look, I think that the risk of using MDMA to try to recover repressed memories is just, you know, a bad idea. And certainly to write a book and claiming that these things are what truthfully, in fact happened.
- [51:08]
Megyn Kelly
Very risky for the publisher.
- [51:09]
Phil Holloway
It's just a bad idea to start with.
- [51:11]
Megyn Kelly
Very risky for the publisher. Yeah. So she claims she went under the therapy, all these memories came flooding back. Claudia says, I Told her those stories earlier when we were kids. She knew this happened to me and then she sent a PI my way. Stand by. We'll back more and we'll hear what Dave thinks. Don't go away. Let's talk about what's really happening right now. New data shows that financial stress is at an all time high. For some, many Americans are at a breaking point. Debt maxed out, no extra money, no room to breathe. And some people are running out of options. Listen, if debt has been weighing on you, you are not alone. And when it comes to debt, waiting usually makes it worse. Interest piles up. Minimum payments keep you stuck. But you do not need another loan or bankruptcy. You need a strategy. This is why I want to tell you about Done with Debt. They build a smart, personalized plan around you. They know what it takes to get you the biggest reductions possible, whether you owe $10,000 or much more. Done with debt has one clear goal. Lower what you owe, so you keep more of your paycheck every month. Start with a free consultation. It takes minutes. You share your situation and find out what's possible. You don't have to stay stuck. Go to donewithdebt.com that's donewithdebt.com back now with our guests, Dave Aronberg, Phil Holloway and Ashley Merchant. Dave Aronberg, former prosecutor for Palm Beach County. Your take on this case.
- [52:35]
Dave Aronberg
Yeah. Good to be back with you, Megan, with my cohorts Ashley and Phil. So I was wondering what the defense would be and we discussed it a bit, and I think it's going to be subjective sincerity that she's not lying. Amy Griffin's not lying because she genuinely believes the memories are real. So she'll frame the book as more of a journey of therapy rather than a forensic report so that she can talk about that. This is an internal experience which is harder to litigate as a factual lie. But the problem is that MDMA and other psychedelics can cause suggestibility. You get a mix of real emotions and false details suggested by the investigation environment or previous stories that you've heard. So you could say that her brain didn't actually recover a memory, it absorbed one. And also, as a high profile author, she has a duty to fact check her recovered memories against school records before publishing them as a definitive memoir. And she also has a problem in that if she did in fact speak to the real victim here, which is what the evidence tells us before her MDMA session, then the whole repressed memory defense sort of looks like a calculated cover for plagiarism.
- [53:48]
Megyn Kelly
Well, here's what I think. We know that they knew each other in school and that she allegedly may have learned of the plaintiff's stories back then when they were children, because that dress that got the semen stain on it from a different teacher committing allegedly a sexual assault against Claudia was Amy's. And this girl, according to Amy's memoir, returned the dress to Amy, you know, at the time. So there is reason to believe Amy knew the girl's story when they were kids. Then it looks like Amy had the MDMA therapy and then sent private investigators out to meet with this woman under false pretenses. These are the allegations as spelled out in the complaint. And also, it seems like before Amy's MDMA therapy, she did herself meet with Claudia. She flew out to Palm Springs and allegedly was like, oh, you know, Amarillo girls, let's get together. But at that meeting, there doesn't seem to be an allegation. They spoke about sexual assault, but Amy clearly, like, re established contact with this girl. And that's when Amy was like, let's buy postcards and send each other a postcard. And each gal filled out her home address on the postcard and gave it to the other. And this gal, Claudia, actually did. Did allegedly send Amy the postcard. And she said, let's see. Defendant Griffin told plaintiff Doe that after writing a message in the postcard, she should put it in the mail. A few days later, plaintiff Jane Doe wrote a brief sentence on the postcard related to their mutual church youth group and placed it in the mail. She did not receive a return postcard from defendant Griffin. However, to her knowledge, she never received contact from defendant Griffin again after that meeting. But now in the tell, Amy spins. This postcard is, like, evidence that Amy wasn't alone, and there's another girl who got sexually assaulted. So this woman's like, what kind of is this? This whole thing was a setup to steal my story. That's how it's going potentially to look to a jury. Dave.
- [55:48]
Dave Aronberg
Yeah, I. I agree. You know, you see, there's a lawsuit, and they're claiming that Amy Griffin used the woman's life story for commercial gain without consent. And this is sort of like the stolen valor of trauma here. If the plaintiff can show the specific details are unique to her and were used to sell books, then, yeah, you have a strong argument for commercial theft. The thing on the other side, Amy Griffin could hold up the first Amendment, which does provide broad protections for memoirs. And courts are generally wary of owning facts or historical events. But if you can show manipulation that you sent an investigator in there under false pretenses. You have these conversations that you're really mining the information and then hiding behind your psychedelics as a way to explain it all. Yeah, I think a jury's not gonna like the defendant in this case.
- [56:38]
Megyn Kelly
But, Phil, if it is, other than as alleged in this complaint, if Amy Griffin sent a PI to go meet with Claudia, Claudia willingly shared the details of her childhood story. Maybe she even potentially signed something saying, here are the rights to it. Now, this is just me making things up. That's not been specifically alleged by anybody. But let's say Amy Griffin's got a signed document from this woman Claudia, saying, here's what happened to me, and, yeah, you can use it. And Amy's like, you know, I said in the book that these might actually be Claudia's memories. Is she going to be okay legally?
- [57:12]
Phil Holloway
Yeah. So if they. If they have that kind of bulletproof sort of defense where, you know, they've papered everything and they've got, you know, Jane does signature on everything, that would fly directly in the face of all of the claims in the lawsuit. And in that situation that you've presented the hypothetical, then, now, Jane Doe and the lawyer who filed that lawsuit would be on the hook for money for, you know, filing such a frivolous claim. I want to touch, though.
- [57:42]
Megyn Kelly
And then they would get sued for defaming Amy, right then. Correct. They sure could be liable for defaming him.
- [57:48]
Phil Holloway
But the conversation between Jane Doe and. And Griffin, you know, that is why we see, though, I think, to me, that's one of the more compelling claims in this lawsuit, because that gives rise to what we call the false light tort. Okay. And this requires proving that a defendant has publicly disclosed with actual malice, a highly offensive false representation of the plaintiff. And then that situation, they have to prove that there was public disclosure, that it was widespread, that there was a false. That the information was false, or it created at least a false impression, and that it's, you know, highly offensive to the reasonable person. And if the claims can be proven regarding that in person meeting between those two, between the plaintiff and Griffin, then I think that's one of the more powerful claims in this lawsuit. So, as you pointed out when you started this question, it's just going to depend on who has the receipts that they can bring to this lawsuit.
- [58:49]
Megyn Kelly
Maggie, can I ask.
- [58:51]
Dave Aronberg
Thank you, Phil. You. Phil mentioned actual malice, but I always thought that actual malice only applies to when the party is a public figure. Jane Doe is not a Public figure.
- [59:02]
Phil Holloway
So I would. In California, that's what it requires.
- [59:05]
Matt Murphy
Oh.
- [59:05]
Megyn Kelly
Even if even for false privacy claims. Oh. Oh, interesting. So that's a high bar. But, I mean, you might. You might be there. I mean, what she's alleging. The thing that the audience needs to know is that Claudia's alleged two sexual assaults by a different teacher, not Mr. Mason, are identified exactly. By Amy Griffin as her own. When you read the complaint, you read the allegations of what allegedly happened to Claudia by this other teacher. It's dark. It's extremely dark. It's harrowing. And it appears in the tell as Amy's story. Plaintiff Jane Doe alleges in this lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted in a closet by one of the school's teachers. That she was seen by numerous attendees of the dance leaving the dance area. This is where she borrowed the dress from Amy at the behest of this teacher. That she was seen by numerous attendees returning to the dance with her dress soiled and her hair tussled. Plaintiff Doe was too scared to report the sexual assault to authorities at the time. Soon after the school dance, just prior to one of their church youth group meetings, plaintiff Doe brought the dress she had borrowed from defendant Griffin and returned it to Griffin. Said dress was still stained with body bodily fluids from the teacher who had sexually assaulted her. And she goes on to say that during the said church youth group meeting, which both plaintiff Doe and defendant Griffin attended with a number of others, plaintiff Jane Doe asked for Jesus forgiveness due to the sexual assault by the teacher at the Sadie Hawkins dance. So she's alleging Amy Griffin knew from the church group meeting that this girl Jane Doe Claudia, was the one who got sexually assaulted by a teacher. That Amy knew that from their church group meeting. She writes that approximately one month later, plaintiff Joan Jane Doe was again sexually assaulted by the same school teacher. Again, this is not Mr. Mason. This time in the bathroom of the Stephen Austin Middle School. This assault was more violent. And during the incident, the teacher put his boot on her back, stuffed a bandana in her mouth, which later caught on her braces, slammed her against the wall, and whipped her with a bell. Plaintiff, who was only 12 at the time and was living in a children's home, was too scared to report the details. Plaintiff alleges that these sexual assaults were also falsely attributed by defendant Griffin to a different perpetrator, who she calls Mr. Mason. And then she said we'd had no contact for 30 years. Then Amy contacted me out of the blue, said she wanted to meet, just to go over, like what life was like in amarillo in late 2019. We did meet and discussed that we'd been part of this church group together. She doesn't say that she disclosed all of the details again of the encounter. She says that Amy Griffin explicitly referred to herself in the meeting as a girl boss and then told plaintiff Doe that she was a girl boss too. Then they did the thing with the postcards. Then she says in April 2022, she plaintiff was contacted by telephone by someone who didn't say he was an investigator, but said he was a talent agent and said that he had heard from an unidentified third party that she led a fascinating life and expressed an interest in using her life story for commercial exploitation. The phone number which was provided to her was routed back to this California corporation which I mentioned, and that the individual in question spoke with plaintiff Jane Doe for multiple hours a day, a few times a week over approximately a one month period, soliciting detailed stories from her about her life, including her childhood in Texas, which she discussed with him under the understanding and belief that her info would remain private unless she entered in an agreement with him for her life story. You know, obviously she was considering selling it to him, depending on the price, depending on the terms. But she says that after multiple phone calls and soliciting stories from plaintiff's past, a female individual called her plaintiff to schedule a meeting in Los Angeles. And then she contacted a lawyer and she asked for more information and they ghosted her. They ghosted her and she couldn't find any information online about either of these individuals, so she was starting to suspect they weren't who they said they were. She also says she didn't tell anybody else, no third parties about her sexual assaults, and then was shocked to read about them in Amy's book as her own. In the book, defendant Griffin states Claudia is the key link to understand and confirm her own drug induced suppressed memories. Her first journal entry after her first MDMA session involved Claudia in a borrowed dress. Through the prism of Claudia, I had experienced the horror of what was being done to me, which includes all those same details, you guys, about the alleged Sadie Hawkins dance, about the alleged bandana, about the alleged boot on the back, and quotes about knocking your teeth out, all of which Claudia says are hers. This is, this is quite devastating if it's real. And there are two issues here. The legal issues which will be fought in court or more likely settled if there's any semblance of truth, and the journalistic issues on how the media fell down and just giving a Complete pass to this story without pressing and then didn't update its audiences once. This came out. By the Times in September. By the Times again this month in the wake of this bombshell lawsuit. Okay, let's move on. Cause I know you guys over on MK True Crime have been covering the Cory Richens case, which is also extremely compelling. So this woman, by the way, this story has been blowing up on MK True Crimes. You can watch the trial live every day with great coverage by all of our team here. She's a Utah mom of three. She self published a children's book called are you with me in March of 2023. It was two months before she'd be arrested for the murder of her husband. She said she wrote that book to help children hers deal with grief after losing a parent, a father, her parents, her children did because she allegedly killed him. This was not disclosed at the time when she wrote it, but two months later she was under arrest. And this was one year after the passing of her husband Eric, the father of her kids. Here is this woman promoting Corey the book in April of 2023 on Salt Lake City's ABC affiliate.
- [64:54]
Ashley Merchant
Corey, I want to start with your story.
- [64:56]
Megyn Kelly
What happened in your personal life? So my husband passed away unexpectedly last year. So it's March 4th, was a one year anniversary for us.
- [65:06]
Ashley Merchant
And he was 39.
- [65:08]
Megyn Kelly
It completely took us all by shock. And we have three little boys, 10, nine and six. And you know, we kind of, my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced. Last year, well, I opened up your book and one of the first pages I saw is a little boy. It looks like he's standing in a hallway at school and he's saying, are you still here? Yes. Yeah. And it's, you know, and that was like the first day of school and you know, all the nerves that kids face on the first day of school with new, you know, and just hoping, you know, dad, like walk with me, like help me get through today, like give me the strength to do that. Unbelievable. There was definitely something off about her affect there. And just over a month after that clip, she was arrested and charged with aggravated murder for allegedly poisoning Eric to death. She allegedly put five times the the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule, which she is accused of serving him in his bed. Like he was in bed. She gave him the drink and he was dead by three in the morning. So back now with our panel. Here's the thing I wonder about Ashley, where Does a housewife in Utah get her hands on a ton of fentanyl that she could just slip into the drink of her husband and kill him?
- [66:32]
Maureen Callahan
Well, that's one of the many mysteries in this case that we really don't have answers to. I mean, this is not really a murder mystery. This is a group of people who are deeply unreliable and they're trying to explain this very chaotic situation around someone who has a drug problem. The husband had a drug problem. He has this medical history where he has been doctor shopping. Essentially he had said he had Lyme disease, nerve pain, mysterious allergies, all of this stuff, which are the type of diagnoses that are notoriously difficult to verify. But they're very useful in getting doctor shopping for pain pills. So we know he had an addiction issue. So the real question is whether or not she's the one that put this pill in his Moscow Mule, in his sandwich, in whatever it is that they're saying that she did or whether or not this was just an overdose. And the problem, what you're asking about, the credibility, credibility of who gave these drugs. It's a cast of characters. You've got the wife, you know, you've got Ms. Richards who is struggling with this house flipping business. You've got the business partner, you've got the cleaner, you've got a sister, you've got the doctors. Everybody has different stories. None of them add up, none of them make any sense. You've got paranoia in the husband who died. You've got financial stress, you've got this man, he believes that he's got all of these issues. He believes he's being poisoned. I mean, this is just crazy. So you gotta ask yourself at the end of the day, is this really a case about a murder or is this a case about addiction? Is this a case about a drug overdose? And all of these people who are giving him pills, helping him get pills, but maybe nobody actually had a motive to kill him. Maybe he just overdosed.
- [68:00]
Megyn Kelly
That she's doing a good job, Phil, of defending Corey Richards, but I think, I think we all know she did it. Okay? That's my opinion.
- [68:09]
Phil Holloway
Well, look, no, look, now she did a, actually did a great job of laying it all out there. I, I think that all those things can be true that Ashley Merchant just said, but also it can be true that Corey Richards is a cold blooded killer. Because look, now we have, we have Hush puppies in this case, Megan, that were given to Corey Richards longtime boyfriend the day before the, her husband died. And, and the in the. The boyfriend suddenly blacks out, lose time for a number of hours and finally
- [68:45]
Megyn Kelly
comes to around 11pm Phil, what is a hush puppy?
- [68:50]
Phil Holloway
Oh, you don't know what a. Okay. It's a little ball of succulent, delicious bread often served with fish. I'll make sure you get some.
- [69:00]
Megyn Kelly
I don't like fish. Wait, are you, is you using it like metaphorically or.
- [69:05]
Phil Holloway
No, it's a food dish. It's called a hush puppy.
- [69:08]
Megyn Kelly
Right.
- [69:08]
Phil Holloway
So she said gave it to her
- [69:10]
Megyn Kelly
boy because she had a boyfriend. I neglected to mention Corey was definitely having an affair with somebody and they
- [69:14]
Phil Holloway
were long time affair with this guy. And, and yes. And, and so there's that. And then there's also the Valentine's Day prior to the husband's death. There's the, the allegation, the claim is that she tried to do a trial run or maybe attempted to murder her husband on Valentine's Day by spiking his food, a sandwich. And so he got sick after that. And so we have all of these things. And then you've got the financial crimes, which are legion in this case. We've got insurance fraud, we got bank fraud, we got loans taken out in his name that he didn't know anything about. You know, all these things that she's accused of doing. Now, they're not tried in this case. They're. They're going to be a separate trial. But this woman is facing eons in prison just on the financial crimes alone, which appear to be also a slam dunk case. The only problem that the prosecution has, that I see proving her guilt in this murder case is tying Corey Richards directly to the fentanyl that we know killed her husband. And what the issue is is the housekeeper who was supposedly the go between who Corey contacted. And of course she contacted another guy. Well, that other guy who's the actual supplier of the alleged drugs in the case, he's a convicted felon. He's. He's back and forth blowing, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth about whether or not he provided oxycodone or did he provide fentanyl. And he's given different accounts at different times, depending on who you asked. And so if there's reasonable doubt about the fentanyl being connected all the way back to Corey Richards, that it's probably going to be a not guilty. But if they can get over that hump, the rest of it, particularly the circumstantial evidence is I think, really, really compelling. And she'll be found guilty.
- [71:07]
Megyn Kelly
I Am using my housekeeper all wrong. I just have her clean. I had no idea you could be getting oxycodone and fentanyl through such a person. So here is in Sat 18, this is the housekeeper Carmen claiming that Corey did okay her purchase of fentanyl. What, if anything, did you ask Robert Crozier for if he knew anybody who had any pills, pain pills for sale. And how did he respond? He said he would reach out to a couple of people. He said he had a buddy that had some fentanyl pills. What then did you do? I had text Corey back and told her that I had a friend that could get them, but they were fentanyl pills. So you told Corey you had a friend a hookup for fentanyl pills? Yes. How did Corey Richards respond? She. She said, okay, go ahead and get him. Is that good enough, Dave?
- [72:21]
Matt Murphy
Yeah.
- [72:22]
Dave Aronberg
This case is not hard. You have a young woman who had a lover, who wanted money, was desperate for money. So clear motive, who hated her husband and who tried to poison him previously. She's also being charged for that. She made him a sandwich. He felt sick, and he called her. And she said, don't go to the hospital. Just sleep it off. And he survived. And then weeks later, she managed to finish a job with a Moscow mule because she went to the housekeeper and said, give me some of that Michael Jackson stuff now. That's what she wanted. So they've got this. Plus there's this letter called the Walk the Dog letter. And in this letter, it was found in Corey's jail cell. She instructed her mother to tell her brother to testify that he knew that Eric, the victim, got pain pills and fentanyl from Mexico and that he gets high every night. So they're fabricating this whole drug abuse thing. There is no real evidence that Eric was a real drug abuser. In fact, business partners and medical experts have not supported it. So I think she's going down for these crimes. And it really does take a lot of chutzpah, and that's a technical legal term, Megan, for her to go on TV and write a book and say, please support me in my grief. If it's like the story of the child who kills both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.
- [73:48]
Megyn Kelly
Right. That we have that a little bit about the Walk the Dog letter. So first of all, why is it called the Walk the Dog letter, Dave?
- [73:57]
Dave Aronberg
I think they talk about, hey, make sure you walk the dog in there. And that's just, I guess that's why it mentions it. But it's really a smoking gun because of the other stuff that's in there.
- [74:07]
Megyn Kelly
All right, let's listen to a little bit of the testimony about this about Corey Richards walk the dog letter about her husband Eric allegedly getting fentanyl in Mexico. This is Detective Jeff O' Driscoll on the stand. 26. Is this an accurate depiction of a six page letter to Lisa Darden written on either side September 12th or 13th, 2023 that investigators recovered on September 14th, 2023 from a book that was among Corey Richards personal possessions?
- [74:46]
Dave Aronberg
This is that letter.
- [74:47]
Megyn Kelly
It has redactions, but yes, this is that letter. Letter one, walk the dog but take vague notes.
- [74:53]
Dave Aronberg
So you remember
- [74:57]
Phil Holloway
here is what I'm thinking.
- [74:58]
Dave Aronberg
But you have to talk to Ronnie. He would probably have to testify to this.
- [75:03]
Phil Holloway
But it's super short, not a lot to it. He will need to tell sky at
- [75:08]
Megyn Kelly
the meeting next week.
- [75:09]
Phil Holloway
Upon information and belief, just like they
- [75:12]
Dave Aronberg
say, a year prior to Eric's death,
- [75:14]
Phil Holloway
Ronnie was over watching football one Sunday
- [75:17]
Dave Aronberg
and Eric and Ronnie were chatting about Eric's Mexico trips. Eric told Ronnie he gets pain pills
- [75:25]
Phil Holloway
and fentanyl from Mexico from the workers at the ranch not to tell me
- [75:31]
Megyn Kelly
because I would get mad because I always said he.
- [75:37]
Phil Holloway
He just gets high every night and
- [75:40]
Megyn Kelly
won't help take care of the kids. So there we have the letter that's from Corey Richards to her mom, Lisa Darden saying hint, hint. It would be great, this is the allegation. It would be great if we could get this testimony that Eric, my husband, loved fentanyl and got it in Mexico. Ashley. That's what's happening there. It is.
- [76:00]
Maureen Callahan
And he did. He loved fentanyl. He was a pain addict. I mean, that's the elephant in the room. He was addicted to pain pills. He had been since he was in high school. That addiction had not gone away. He hadn't been treated for it. And I mean, what happens is paranoia goes along with opioid addiction. So it's very predictable that he thought he was going to be poisoned by a sandwich. And quite frankly, you asked about the credibility of this housekeeper. I think the only reliable witness in this entire case might be the actual sandwich. I mean, there is no reliable witness in this case. They're not. The business partner's not reliable. The housekeeper's not reliable. Nobody is. This drug dealer's not reliable. I remember giving fentanyl. I don't remember giving fentanyl. Yeah, it was fentanyl. I mean, they're not. And that's who the prosecution is bringing to proven this. And they have a significant motive issue. I mean why would she kill him? Their whole motive is oh, it's for money. He was funding her house flipping business. Her house flipping business. It was not doing well. But he was the one funding it. That's all she had. Why is she going to go and off him? You know, it just, it doesn't make any sense. What makes sense, what's the most reasonable explanation is he got Fentanyl from the housekeeper. He got Fentanyl from someone he was addicted. He's going to take whatever meds he can. He's saying he has Lyme disease. He's saying he has this mistake, serious allergies. He is pain pill shopping. He's gonna put whatever he can in his body cuz he was addicted and he overdosed.
- [77:15]
Megyn Kelly
Hmm. Here is the prosecutor Brad Bloodworth in his opening statement saying in addition to allegedly murdering Eric for his money because she was $4.5 million in debt on her house flipping business and thought her husband was worth 4 million and that she'd get his life insurance policies, et cetera. There was another motive which I've now alluded to and here it is. In Sat 12, Mar 3, 2022. The defendant Corey Richins, her husband Eric Richins and their three children, 9 year old Carter, 7 year old Ashton and 5 year old Weston are at their home in Camas every Eric Richens live for his three boys. At 7.22pm, Corey Richens boyfriend Robert Josh Grossman texts Cory Richens an image of two people romantically kissing. The image is captioned love you. At 8:36, Corey Richards replies love you. The boys go to bed. Corey Richards makes Eric a drink and takes it to him in their bedroom. He drinks on the bed, she departs the bedroom. Corey Richards returns to the bedroom at about 3 o'clock am. She feels that Eric is cold. She nudges him, he does not respond. Well Dave, he's not exactly a font of personality, our friend Brad Bloodworth, but I get it, you know, he's getting it done, he's getting the facts out there. Is there proof that she is the one who brought him the drink? I mean is that, does it come down to that or does everyone admit she brought him the drink and it's just a question of who put fentanyl in it?
- [79:26]
Dave Aronberg
Yeah, I didn't think there was any dispute over who brought him the drink. She made him a drink and then her argument is that he spiked it with fentanyl because he was such an addict. Apparently there was five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. Who does that? I mean, even if you are addicted to opioids, do you really do that? In fact, they didn't find any other, like, drugs in the place. When they searched the place, they didn't find that he was a drug abuser. And Ashley's an excellent criminal defense lawyer. She really is, but I don't know.
- [79:55]
Megyn Kelly
We know that she's the reason the whole case against Trump and the other defendants went away by Fanny Willis. So, yeah, she is very good. Keep going.
- [80:02]
Dave Aronberg
Yeah, but I don't even think Ashley Merchant can pull the rabbit out of this hat when we're talking about that walk the dog letter. I mean, why do you put walk the dog on that. That letter? It's like code. There's nothing to do with walking the dog. And do you know what her explanation was for that? Is that, well, this was a manuscript she was writing, that she was writing another book, like the fake book she wrote the first time. And it was a fictional mystery novel, even though she used the actual names of a real family in there. So she just can't help herself, this defendant.
- [80:34]
Megyn Kelly
She's pathological. That's how it seems to me. All right, well, we shall see. Where are they in the case, Ashley? And what's. When do we expect the jury to get it?
- [80:42]
Maureen Callahan
Oh, my gosh, this case is going on forever. It looks like we have about two more weeks of testimony. They think that they're gonna wrap it up probably the end of March. So it's about a three or four week trial. There's been a lot. There's been a lot of witnesses, and every single one has credibility issues. So I think it's gonna. I think it's gonna come down to whether or not the jury believes this motive, and I think it's gonna come down to whether or not they believe
- [81:01]
Megyn Kelly
these witnesses that she hasn't taken the stand. Right? She's not. She has not.
- [81:05]
Maureen Callahan
She has not. No, she has not taken the stand. That'll be a very interesting decision. I can't wait to see if she does take the stand and see how she comes across. That's a very tough decision.
- [81:16]
Megyn Kelly
This thing is giving Alec Murdoch vibes. It's giving Alec Murdoch vibes like she's in all sorts of financial trouble in her case. She's got an affair partner, which is sort of a different wrinkle. But that she allegedly bumped off the husband to get money. I mean, Alec did it for sympathy so that people would not continue looking into his financial crimes. But she didn't. She seems pathological to me. All right, everybody can continue following the Corey Richards trial on MK True Crime. It's a podcast. You can download it wherever you get your podcast for free. It's also a YouTube show. If you go to mktrucrime.com you will see all the info and you will get to enjoy our guests and their great legal analysis as well as live coverage of the trial. Thanks, guys. Coming up next, Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy, two other contributors over at MK True Crime, are here to discuss a couple of very interesting cases. We'll, we'll tell you on the back end of this break. Think about this. In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price. At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about 165,000 bucks. That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals. And it's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group. For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth and today it's a crucial part of any balanced strategy. Even better, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax sheltered retirement account in gold. Just text MK to the number 989-898 to receive your free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, just useful information with an A rating from the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers. Let Birch Gold help you diversify with gold. Now that's peace of mind. Again, text MK to the number 989898.
- [82:56]
Mark Garagos
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- [83:32]
Megyn Kelly
Now we turn to the latest in the search for Nancy Guthrie, which has entered day 40. We've got some of the best here to discuss the very latest. And that's Mark Garagos, criminal defense attorney. We have yet to hear his take on this case. And Matt Murphy, former homicide prosecutor, both our hosts at MK True Crime. And we have some big announcements over there coming soon. So Garagos, I haven't heard your take on the Nancy Guthrie case. What is it?
- [83:55]
Mark Garagos
Not that. Not that different from my friend and partner, Matt Murphy, this sheriff. I think all roads lead to the sheriff. And I think that, you know, it's not a surprise that I have some criticism of law enforcement, but in this particular case, this may be kind of a blueprint for how you don't investigate a case, how you don't handle the messaging around a case. And. And it's a tragedy anyway. Everybody has their heart goes out to it, but this sheriff has just been atrocious, in my opinion.
- [84:30]
Megyn Kelly
Do you have any theory, Garagos, given your lifetime in, you know, criminal defense work, on whether this was a likely kidnapping, a likely murder? You know, and then I always love the body.
- [84:42]
Mark Garagos
I always thought that the focus on the family first, which I understand and I get, but I thought that being a bicoastal elite and living between LA and New York, I missed what people were saying initially who were on the ground there that, look, this is. You're very close to the border. These things happen. I think there was another, I will call it similar case, but something that had kind of the earmarks of a. Of an abduction and that it probably was a stranger abduction for money at a certain point, and it spiraled out of control because of the super sizing of the case itself.
- [85:23]
Megyn Kelly
Interesting. Okay, so, Matt Murphy, you have been covering this from the beginning. And yesterday here on our show, we dropped a bit of a bombshell ourselves where we found video of Nancy Guthrie's bedroom, which aired on the Today show in 2013. I mean, we were stunned to see it ourselves. We're putting together this Nancy Guthrie bit, and we were doing some deep research, and there it was in 2013. There's Nancy. Look at this, standing in her bedroom. This is in the house from which she was taken back in 2013, though. And it shows her bed. It shows the nightside table. It shows the window right next to the bed, very tight quarters there. And in this long back and forth she did with the Today show anchors on the set of the Today. And to me, I wondered whether law enforcement even knew this existed, because you and I, after having looked at this, could credibly convince law enforcement that we knew what Nancy bedrooms, what Nancy's bedroom looked like, how it was set up, and if we wanted to write, let's say, a demand for ransom in Bitcoin and send it in and sound credible, we might take a detail from the outside of the house that was readily identifiable to anybody, like the floodlight that was dangling. And couple it with a few details from the inside of Nancy's bedroom, which we had seen thanks to a little bit of research. Research. Prior to sending our notes and convince somebody that we were the kidnappers.
- [86:44]
Matt Murphy
Well, that's right. I mean, there's. As they say, the Internet lives forever. Right. And, you know, I think that, number one, I totally agree with Mark that all roads lead back to the sheriff and in. Look, I want to be fair, Megan, but this has been a clown show from day one. You've got really good law enforcement on the ground, especially in the FBI. But I've dealt with Pima county on a big murder case out of Orange county, and they were top notch. They were absolutely professional. I don't know what has happened to Pima county since.
- [87:19]
Megyn Kelly
Well, reportedly a bunch of cops fled and did not like working for him and that he's lost a lot of his more experience.
- [87:24]
Matt Murphy
Yeah. Who could have ever guessed that based on the performance that we've seen. I mean, it's just. I mean, I think Mark put it perfectly. It's just. Just. It's so sad. But, yeah, all. So many of these. I think all of them. But. But if not every single one of them, most all of these ransom notes were all fake. All the stuff to Mark Stern, Harvey Levin, I think those were all fake.
- [87:50]
Megyn Kelly
And the Nancy Guthrie home video adds to that possibility. That's my point, is like, did they know the sheriff know that? Because they were like, oh, they had a detail like where her watch was. I mean, I could easily say her watch was on the small bedside table right next to her bed with the old style sort of lantern looking lamp feet away from a window that was over a bookshelf that had electronics on it. I mean, I guarantee you Chef Nanos did not know about that video and could easily have bought the whole thing as credible evidence that this guy had been in her room.
- [88:23]
Matt Murphy
Well, Chris Nonos demonstrated to the entire nation that he didn't know what a DNA mixture was in one of his interviews, which when he said the lab is having problems with the mixture in Florida, which is there's some lab director who's pulling his hair out or her hair out when they heard that, which is just. It's absurd. So this guy's, you know, I don't know how old he is. I don't know. I don't know what the deal is, but that it just. There are hardworking, you know, women and men in law enforcement on the ground level on this that probably haven't slept a full eight hours since this thing started. And they're being missserved. I think the family's being missserved. And, you know, you call in the media, you got to expect, you know, the loonies are going to come out and say the vampires abducted her. You got a lot of well meaning people that are going to come in with tips, trying to help that almost never go anywhere. And Mark and I have dealt with a million of those where it's like, I heard noises down the street and it turns out it's the raccoons in the trash can again. Or I heard a lady screaming, but it could be my neighbor's wife. You know, you deal with all those, you got to devote resources to those. And now in the modern era, we have scammers who attempt to take advantage and profit from the apoplectic grief of families that are going through the worst thing that a family can go through. And at the helm of this sinking ship is this guy that keeps taking the microphones, although I think he stopped doing that a little bit. He's doing one on one interviews. And now he's coming back blasting the media on stuff. He brought the media in at the very beginning of this, and I've got no criticism of that. But it's like, dude, you gotta, gotta be prepared to answer some questions, know your evidence, and take a little bit of heat and criticism. That goes with the job.
- [90:04]
Megyn Kelly
Mm. I mean, honestly, every missing person, their family in this nation would give anything to have the kind of media coverage of the case that Nancy Guthrie has received. The media is a blessing, not a curse. There's some downside, I don't deny that, but it's way more upside in having this much media attention on the case because they, they require 400 officers. That's how we got 400 officers on Nancy Guthrie. It wasn't just because Savannah was the daughter. It's because the media was constantly out there, constantly peppering them with demands for more information. So please, spare me on the media blame. And I don't love the media, even just because I'm a part of it. I wouldn't say this if I didn't actually believe it. But speaking of the media, there's been a report now by Radar Online, but they're citing Rob Schuster, who's a British American celebrity reporter and royal insider. He's a frequent guest of the Nerve and our pal Maureen. And he hosts his own show called Naughty but Nice. And he had reported this. And now Radar Online is Reporting it as well that Savannah Guthrie's family is actively exploring the possibility of legal action against our pal Ashley Banfield. Following Ashley's exclusive about the brother in law, Tommaso Sioni, who's married to Savannah's sister Annie being at that time, maybe she said the prime suspect in this case. Here's the reporting of Feb. 3, Sat. 28. But they have towed Annie Guthrie's car. And there is some connection to Annie Guthrie's car and Nancy Guthrie's son in law. That would be Annie's husband, Tomaso Sione, age 50, from Tucson, Arizona. Married to Annie P. Guthrie, Savannah's sister. And my law enforcement source tells me that Thomas Oscione is the prime suspect in this case. Again, law enforcement source tells me that Nancy Guthrie's son in law, married to Annie Guthrie, Savannah's sister, is maybe. Maybe a prime suspect in this case. At the very least, let me tamp that down because sometimes it's the first person you're looking at not prime as in there's no one else. Okay? So let's be really mindful of that. When anything happens like this, familial abductions, the family's looked at first. And Annie and or Thomas Oscione were the last people to see Nancy Guthrie at 9:45 at night. But it's very distressing to think that they. That this law enforcement source is telling me that Thomas Sione is maybe a prime suspect in this case at this point. And that the car belonging to Annie has been towed and impounded and is in evidence. Now I have not been able to confirm that the Guthrie family wants to sue Ashley Banfield. But I have confirmed that Savannah is livid about that report and definitely does not suspect her sister or her brother in law. Can you blame her? I mean that's of course, you know, she loves her sister. I'm sure she loves her brother in law. And I'm sure she genuinely doesn't believe that had anything to do with it. All of us are in a different boat. You know, we have to be more objective in assessing the possible suspects, the possible people connected with it. And law enforcement certainly does. And Ashley based this claim, Mark, on what she said. A senior law enforcement source who had been a source for her for years, who she described as an impeccable source, told her she's. You know. So do you think there actually could be a. It would be a defamation claim by the Guthrie's against Ashley Banfield.
- [93:52]
Mark Garagos
Let me tell you what I would do if Savannah came into my office or called Me and asked me that question. I would say look I know you're out of your mind about this. I know you can't believe that this is being reported but the tape that we just watched together couldn't be more protected under the law and there is no way this anymore thought that you have about suing. Any claim that you think you have is going to be met by depending on the jurisdiction it's brought in, what's called an anti slap which is a strategic lawsuit against. What that will do is it will freeze the case and a judge when he gets it or she gets it is going to rule that you have no ability to pursue a claim that as framed by the way Ashley framed it. There's, it's dead on arrival, pun intended. In terms of any kind of legal action there's no there there because you have the ability, number one because it's, you could find any judge who's looking at this, any lawyer who's involved is going to tell you of course they're looking at the family members that it would be malpractice not to. And that's exactly what Ashley said. Number two, the media is as long as they are reporting and they have source protection, you're never going to be able to disprove what Ashley Banfield said. Source protection. This has been by the way Megan, one of the great frustrations when I'm trying a high profile case when a judge gags me and says you Mr. Gerris, your team and the prosecution team as lawyers can not comment on this case. You can't hear this is attorney's eyes only on some discovery. Well what ends up happening? What ends up happening? The law enforcement leaks the information. How do I ever prove that I can't? Because there is source protection. So that source protection which is robust is always going to be a wall that you're never going to be able to climb over.
- [95:58]
Megyn Kelly
So what about it Matt? I mean what if, what if they did sue saying this turned into a complete shit show where this poor guy who is a victim, as the sheriff said, when you do this kind of thing the, the somebody who he may not be the prime suspect, he may actually be just a victim who was a victim, had all this focus on him. I mean everybody, yours truly, Brian Enten, everybody who's been in depth covering this story started talking a lot more about the brother in law as a result of that report. And if they say we don't believe her, we don't believe her law enforcement source, we think she made it up. Or we think her law enforcement source ought to be sued as well because that was complete bullshit from the beginning that caused us to come under undue scrutiny. Might they have a case?
- [96:42]
Matt Murphy
Well, I think Mark's exactly right. We both dealt with this in California. It's called anti slap. I don't know what they would call it in Arizona. But basically, what did she say? She said he's a suspect. And so what?
- [96:56]
Megyn Kelly
Maybe.
- [96:57]
Matt Murphy
Yeah. What exactly is that? He was the last person to see her. That's not Ashley's fault. And full disclosure, I really like Ashley Banfield. I know her personally. I think she's a great journalist, she's a solid reporter. And what she's doing is she's reporting what a source told her. She doesn't say he did it. And here's why. She says, I've got information from a law enforcement source who says he is a prime suspect. And even though we've heard that, I think there's even TV shows called Prime Suspect at one point or another. What exactly does that mean? What does a suspect. A suspect means it's somebody that the police are looking at that they suspect is right there in the word, might have done it. And the entire world is a suspect in a whodunit like this. And Mark's right, it goes nowhere. These are incredibly emotional situations for the family. Wouldn't be the first, first time that Radar Online has been radically wrong. But again, going back to what Mark said originally and I think he's exactly right, all roads lead back to the sheriff. If this is a leak from his shop, it's kind of rich that the guy who brought the media in his department is leaking information. I mean, it could be the FBI, but still, it's his show. He wanted to be at the helm of the ship. He's responsible for that at the end of the day. And I had a great quote once on a high profile case I was working on where High place people in the Orange County Sheriff's Department kept leaking information under an old sheriff who actually wound up going to federal prison that Mark knows all about. They kept leaking information on my Samantha Running case and it was driving everybody crazy. And my old boss pulled me in and he said leaks are like ghosts. They seem really scary at first. At the end of the day, they'll never hurt your case. And chasing them is like chasing ghosts. You're never going to catch one. Nobody's ever going to admit it. But at the end of the day, who is responsible for the integrity of this investigation? It's the same sheriff that's complaining about it. I think Mark's right. It goes nowhere. I would also counsel them. This is a terrible situation you're in. You're very emotional. Of course they're going to look at everybody in the family. This is not a hill to die on, guys, because it's not going to go anywhere. They would lose, in my opinion. And then it winds up, they're even more brokenhearted because now, in addition to all the horror that they're experiencing, they can throw a, you know, a tanked lawsuit on top of all that. I would give them.
- [99:17]
Megyn Kelly
But you had to get two things. First of all, you have the fact that he's. He was the last person to see her alive. And also they towed the car that he and Annie Guthrie drive, and it's remained in police custody this entire time. They. In fact, just yesterday, Brian Enten reported. Reported that they may be getting ready to release that car back to them. And they searched their car in the dark of night with flashbulbs going off or they were photographing a bunch of stuff. The media would have asked itself whether these two were under scrutiny by law enforcement from day one. As soon as we found out that they towed that car, which happened to be the same day that she said Tommaso was a prime suspect at the times. Like this was not. This was coming with or without Ashley Banfield. And the other thing, Matt, is if they did, let's say they said, we don't care. We're suing anyway. I gotta be honest. It's kind of a dream for a person in Ashley's situation because then I get all sorts of discovery from you on whether what I said is true. Now I'm. Now I'm really gonna get up in your business and find out everything law enforcement knows about whether you, in fact, may have done this.
- [100:25]
Matt Murphy
Yeah, I hope they don't go down that road. I really do. It'd be a tragic distraction to all of this. But also, look, if they didn't tow the car, Megan, we'd all be wondering why they didn't tow the car. He dropped her off. He's presumed innocent. And I certainly have no information to indicate that he's anything but. Somebody sure did this. And the police must. In order to exercise professional competence, they've got to systematically eliminate everybody, including Savannah Guthrie, including the sister, including every gardener, every neighbor. They've got a. It's like concentric rings of eliminating potential suspects. That's how you investigate these things. And the idea that he's one of those people that has to be eliminated. Isn't shocking that that is a rare moment of professional competence that we've seen in this, I was going to say
- [101:14]
Megyn Kelly
pointing out that Radar Online often reports so and so is considering legal action. They even said it about her at News Nation against Chris Cuomo and News Nation and she's like, it's a lie, you know, so big grain of salt. But yeah, I agree with you. There's no lawsuit there. I know, Matt, you got to run. Mark, I want to talk to you about our last case. I have to take a quick break. We'll continue on the opposite side. But there's been another mix up at an IVF clinic and this is just a nightmare. We'll get to it right after this break. Don't go away. Thank you, Matt. Hey, everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius xm. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel. And it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly show, you're gonna hear from people like Mark Halperin, link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily jasinsky, Jesse Kelly, RealClear Politics and many more. It's bold. No BS news only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, SiriusXM 111 and on the Sirius XM app, Mark Garagos remains my guest. And Mark, there's been another IVF clinic mix up. This is every parent's worst nightmare who goes through any sort of fertility help. This one is out of Orlando in Florida, the Fertility center of Orlando, that's what it's called in Longwood, Florida. The doctor is Milton McNiccol and he's now getting sued along with his clinic by Tiffany Score and her husband Steve Mills. They had a baby girl through IVF on December 11, 2025. So just, you know, two months ago or so three. And after the baby was born born, they realized this little girl Shay was not theirs because their baby is not white. And they are. We're showing a picture for the listening audience where you clearly have I don't know if the child is Indian or black, but definitely has dark skin and the parents are as white as I am. And this is just a nightmare. Now the mother knows she's the mother's already in love with this child very clearly. You carry a baby for nine months, you deliver it, you think it's yours. It needs you just as much as a baby. That would be biologically yours. You're probably breastfeeding it. And like, the horror of this. And by the way, it would take a few days to know because I'll tell you something, one of my children was very dark when I first gave birth to her, my daughter. And we were laughing. We're like, my God, she's also ivf. We're like, oh, no. Oh. She wound up like the skin got much lighter in the first week of her life. But it would take a few days for you to realize, okay, this is not just birth related. This child actually is darker skinned than we are. And sure enough, Shay is not biologically theirs. They did have the test done and they allege that they were able to produce and store three viable embryos at this clinic. They even know that there was one male and two female embryos, all of which are viable. Right. So they must have had the genetic testing done on them before they froze. I guess. I don't know how many they had put in them because they. Well, actually they say they produce one viable male and two viable female embryos which have been frozen and stored all this time. I mean, I guess the others, I don't know how many they put in her to get a baby. Sometimes they'll put more than one inside of you. But they thought that they had at least two other embryos in storage, I think. And now they're told there's only one embryo in storage and it's not even confirmed whether it's really theirs. So they don't know what happened to their three embryos and they don't know whose embryo this is. And they've gone back to the clinic saying, please go out and like find all the couples who are going through IVF when we were going through ivf. But that doesn't necessarily answer the questions. Cause I guess potentially it could have been like a frozen embryo they got from somebody else and their embryos could have been frozen. You know, there may be thousands of frozen embryos at the clinic. Like, how do you even begin to sort this out?
- [105:18]
Mark Garagos
Well, look, this is, as you mentioned, kind of your worst nightmare as a parent. I've got a close friend who's going to through this right now. I know the amount of genetic testing that they go through before they do any of this. So my guess is here that they had. There probably is a way for them to get to the point where they can kind of unravel all of this. But what a heartbreaking situation to be in. And by the way, for from a legal standpoint what a this is not going to end well for the clinic. I can tell you what's going to give you a preview. This is you they either have to settle or the insurance company is going to have to settle or it's Katie, bar the door there. There's not the, the liability and damages is off the charts in a case like this.
- [106:13]
Megyn Kelly
I wonder whether they even have insurance. Do you think insurance companies are even insuring IVF clinics anymore?
- [106:20]
Mark Garagos
Well, they probably would defend under what's called a reservation of rights and then they'll try everything possible, as insurance companies do to try to exclude providing coverage. But I can't imagine that the insurance companies or that the hospitals and the clinics would be able to go forward or move forward in this area unless they had some kind of insurance, usually with a high retention or a deductible. But I would would be shocked if they were operating in this area without insurance. And I will tell you the scary thing about this. The frightening thing about this is you hear about this all too often in this area of medicine. We had in our backyard, literally in Matt Murphy's backyard, there was a horrific scandal involving these kinds of things. And this is, you know, it's almost meme if it wasn't just such a tragedy. It's, it's a throwback to so many memes and so many stories. But in this case you, I think put your finger on it and gave kind of the opening statement that I, I listened to is can you imagine being a mother and having that bond and then finding out it's not your child and that they and that potentially your child is out there with somebody else. I mean that's the other the flip side of the coin that just makes
- [107:46]
Megyn Kelly
heartbreaking well that that's what that just happened in California. Maybe that's the case you reference because we did a long, long piece about it here on the MK show because a California couple, same thing, they gave b birth to a baby. They were very fair and the mother at least was a redhead and they had a darker skinned child who looked slightly Asian. And then somewhere nearby there was a family in which one of the parents was Asian and they gave birth to a baby that was very fair with red hair and their baby was much larger and the Asian baby was much smaller. And sure enough there had been a mix up at the IVF clinic. So the parents were absolutely devastated, not making light of that at all. But at least when it was all said and done, they did switch the babies. Everyone had a baby and then it was actually kind of crazy. Cause they wound up kind of agreeing to co parent as a foursome because the mothers and the dads loved the baby that they had had, that they had given birth to so much, even though there was no biological relation. But here, this family has no idea whether their biological child has been born or where their three IVF embryos even are. So like, who would have the rights to this baby? Because there could be a family out there that didn't have any luck on having their embryo implanted. You know, maybe this, there's another couple that had this woman's embryo implanted in her. It didn't take. There's no baby for this complaining couple, Tiffany and Steven. And I think the law says they're going to have to give up this baby to its biological parents, even though Tiffany carried it.
- [109:28]
Mark Garagos
No, that's exactly right. Imagine what you have to go through as the parents. I mean, not only have you bonded with the child that it turns out is genetically not connected to you, but you also have this constant nagging thought that that child could be taken away, that your child, you could have a child that's out there that is bonding with somebody else. I mean, it's a story, not to
- [109:59]
Megyn Kelly
mention like the genetic concerns. You know, I think about it when we get these stories about the, the weird IVF clinic doctor who uses his own sperm on untold numbers of the female patients. And like down the line, you know that that means your, your daughter could wind up dating her biological brother and having no idea. Right. These situations lead to like very fraught societal situations, especially when the kids are gonna grow up in the same town not knowing. And like so far they haven't solved the mystery at this clinic. So far they do not know what happened to this, the other three embryos, or who the parents, the actual parents are of the darker skinned baby born to Tiffany and Steven.
- [110:39]
Mark Garagos
And by the way, this is not the amount of genetic testing, as you know, that's connected to this and the amount of testing itself. This is not a heavy lift for somebody who wants to do the genetic investigation here to get some answers and the fact that they're not working overtime 24, 7 to get those answers and then to explore databases and to explore DNA and bone marrow registries and other sorts of things. I mean, there's a world of ways that you can do this investigation, you can do it fairly quickly. And I don't know if they have, but if they haven't, that's another layer of incompetency to what's already horrific, the
- [111:25]
Megyn Kelly
parents are complaining that it's taking too long. Here we are three months later and they said this is taking too long. You're slow rolling this investigation. And the IVF clinic said we're working as quickly as possible, that we have sent notices to other patients, that some couples have been asked to undergo genetic testing and to waive certain confidentiality protections. I mean, let me ask you this, Mark. What if a family comes to you and says, mark, we had a baby right at this same time, you know, December, and we don't know whether it's ours. But we do not want to submit to genetic testing because we don't want anybody taking our baby. We don't want Tiffany and Steven claiming that our baby is their baby. We don't want any genetic testing done of our child. We don't want to submit to it. Just because this clinic messed up Tiffany and Steven's situation shouldn't involve us at all. Maybe they're scared, right, that they this is the only baby they're ever going to have and that if this isn't theirs, they don't really care. Like, can you make them.
- [112:33]
Mark Garagos
No, you. But. No but there understand if somebody comes and wants to explore this, but they don't want to get the answer, so to speak. I don't, I want to do this, but I don't want to expose myself. No, you're. You're not going to go, go down that road legally because through discovery, unfortunately for you, you're going to. That's precisely what they're going to ask for. And your case is going to be tanked if you don't do it. But you. It strains credibility for me to believe that based on at least anecdotally what I know about this area of medicine, that they don't have test results already, that in their position, possession with those test results, there is a world of things that they can do. I have, I'm closely connected to bone marrow registries, having founded a group 25 years ago, the Armenian Bone Marrow Registry. Because of the genetic. Also because of the genetic tightness and connection in the Armenian community, you have all kinds of registries that you can, can immediately avail yourself of you when you have a disease, for instance, and you need to do a, for instance, a bone marrow transplant or some kind of an organ transplant, one of the first things you do is look for a genetic match. You have the ability to do that.
- [113:56]
Megyn Kelly
There's not some national database of babies DNA, like I think they'd have to ask the parent before they took the baby's DNA after the, and by the way, the IVF clinic's not even there when you give, give birth to your baby, you're in a hospital. They're not like coordinating back with the
- [114:09]
Mark Garagos
IVF folks when they were doing the testing prior to, in the run up to the implantation, they would have done all kinds of, there's requirements that they do all kinds of industry requirements, they do all kinds of genetic testing, number one. Number two, you then go to genealogical databases and you can, you know, we've actually talked about this, Megan, in terms of the genealogy testing that is being used, that's on the forefront of cold cases. There are ways that you can go and here you're not looking to get it admissible, at least initially. You're looking to solve a problem or solve a question. You can go and you could take the DNA of the baby first.
- [114:55]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, I see, I see what you're saying. You're saying, for example, Tiffany and Steven can take the baby's DNA, the baby they have that she gave birth to. And, and whether the parents are agreeing, like the parents might be out there raising a different baby and they might not know this is their baby and they may not want to volunteer to get involved in any of this. And you're saying Tiffany and Stephen are going to be able to find the biological parents of this baby?
- [115:19]
Mark Garagos
Oh, you're. I'm going to be able to within a matter of, I don't want to say days, but very quickly, I'm going to be able to give you kind of the family at least dynamic or circle genetically, if you will, of where this baby is coming from. And from there it's old fashioned private eye work to figure out if you've got the genetics of the baby and you've, you've kind of done your investigation, you'll be able to find and reverse engineer who is the.
- [115:55]
Megyn Kelly
Okay, but here's the, here's the problem. Here's the second problem. Let's say they figure out, okay, we found this baby's biological parents and those parents don't have a baby. They had an implantation, it failed, she didn't get pregnant, they're still childless. Now, you know, you're going to have to give up your baby. This is not your biological baby and you don't have a right to it. Possession is not 9, 10 of the law when it comes to this situation. Now how are you ever going to figure out whether it was your embryo that they put in this woman that Failed or whether they put your embryo in a different would be mother and it succeeded. And that would be mother is raising your child right now. The only way would be to go look at the clinic for all the mothers who had implantations from the day they harvested your eggs and did the, you know, created the embryo. From that day forward, you have to go to present day because the clinic seems in disarray. You don't know whether they would have implanted your embryos in another woman on that day or on any of the days thereafter. It's been nine plus three months. Right. So we're 12 months later from when they created her embryos. You have to test all of them to figure out what happened to your baby.
- [117:10]
Mark Garagos
You know, it's a brilliant observation that ironically, the place that you would think would have the best records, the place that you would think you would have the easiest time of tracing is actually given the disarray that it's been reported. That would be the most difficult part of this nut to crack. It seems to me you'd have a lot more. A higher likelihood of figuring this out with the DNA of the baby that you have and then figuring out who the biological family is, as opposed to
- [117:46]
Megyn Kelly
pray that it was a. It was a tit for tat mix up. She got yours and you got hers. And then if you're. If, you know, quote lucky, I realize the whole thing is unlucky. She did have a baby and it's yours. I don't even know what you'd be rooting for. Would you? I think you'd probably did not be. You'd be rooting for your three embryos to still be in the test tube that you could go back and have yourself.
- [118:06]
Mark Garagos
I don't even know that there's a static way to understand it. Meaning I. I think one minute you could think, I want this, the next minute you could say, no, I want this. That's what's such a. What's such a conundrum about this. I. What kind of an emotional roller coaster or cluster of you're in when you're in this situation? It's almost.
- [118:28]
Megyn Kelly
It's almost one that's worth millions. Don't you agree? I mean, if you were representing this family. Millions.
- [118:34]
Mark Garagos
There is no ceiling on this. None.
- [118:36]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Yep. This. This IVF clinic will not be in business much longer, which again, is kind of scary because if you're a parent that has embryos being stored there, or you went through this clinic, you've suddenly learned a lot about them that's gonna be very disconcerting these things. I mean, it's crazy. We've all had babies. We all know how like when you're the mother in the delivery room that they check that little wrist thing and match it against that baby 20 times a day. You know, it just seems, it's funny cause I was in news, being in news and as you know, prior to that in law, both of these things make you paranoid about weird things happening to you. I was convinced we were gonna have a switch to birth situation, you know, and so I bought non toxic nail polish. And as soon as each of my kids was born, I, I painted their big toe with this non toxic nail polish so that I know it's over compensation. Mark Garagos. You know, like we get paranoid in
- [119:31]
Mark Garagos
our business if you haven't been through law school and the experience of having torts drilled into your head and that what torts does to your brain as a lawyer, I, I get it. I, I feel your pain.
- [119:45]
Megyn Kelly
Sick. Oh. Anyway, well, we'll continue to follow it and see how this winds up saying prayers for all the families involved because this is a lot of pain from people who just wanted to have children. I mean, just wanted to have a kid. Mark Garrigos, a pleasure, my friend. Great to see you.
- [119:59]
Mark Garagos
I miss you.
- [120:00]
Megyn Kelly
Bye.
- [120:00]
Mark Garagos
Bye, Megan.
- [120:01]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, I miss you too. Okay, we're back tomorrow with a pal, our pal Sagara and Jack. It's been a while since he's been on the program, but we love him and are very much looking forward to talking to him. Thanks to all of you for joining us for an extended Kelly's court. It had been too long, had it not. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
- [120:29]
Ashley Merchant
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