JonBenét Ramsey's Father, "Dopesick," and "Family Annihilators" - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode

Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's mega true crime episode. We are going into the archives and bringing you a deep dive into the John Bene Ramsey case with her father, John Ramsey. We also have our episode about Dope Sick and the opioid crisis in America.

This happens to be one of my favorite episodes ever, the Dope Sick episode, incredible incredible

story and the filmmaker like you're going to love us. As well as an episode we call family

“annihilators. You know what that is, right? Remember when Alec Murdoch was on the stand, it was one of the”

final questions, the prosecution asked him, are you a family annihilator? He denied it. We now know of course he is and was, well he's not the only one. This was an intense episode on some of the worst of the worst criminals, including Chris Watts. I mean, that story is so chilling, but whenever it's on, I cannot turn away in an event. Enjoy the true crime episode mega and we will be back tomorrow. Live, we'll see you then. Today on the program we are speaking with John Ramsey, the father of

little John Bene Ramsey. John Mane's murder remains one of the most covered stories of the 20th and 21st centuries, yet despite decades of intense media, attention, police investigations and over

“20,000 tips in this case, we still don't know the person or person's responsible for her death.”

But there are several new developments in the case, and John is here to walk us through what they are and whether he believes they could lead to finding his daughter's killer after all these years.

First a reminder of how this story began. It was Christmas night, 1996, Boulder, Colorado.

The Ramsey home was decorated with holiday reeds tied with bows. John and his now late wife, Patsy Ramsey had put six-year-old John Mane to bed after returning home from a Christmas dinner with friends. When Patsy woke up early the next morning and went downstairs, she found a ransom note at the bottom of the steps. It read in part we have your daughter in our possession. Patsy ran to John Bene's room, she would later tell authorities, but she was nowhere to be found.

Patsy called 911, her voice was hysterical, begging for police to come as soon as possible at the end of the call you can hear Patsy praying and pleading, "Help me, Jesus, help me." You're on here? Oh my God, please. Okay, I am honey, please. Take the pizza, please.

“Okay, here we are. I think Patsy, Patsy, Patsy.”

Couldn't hear it as well there, but she is on there saying, "Help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus." Oh, hours later, their little girl's body was found in the basement of their home, not by police but by John, who was sent around by the detective, who was there saying, "Go look for any belongings of hers that may be out of place and he found his own child." John Bene had been strangled and left her dead on a concrete floor. Police focused their investigation almost solely on John

and Patsy. Believing there was no way an intruder was responsible. Why? That's one of the big questions here. Why did they believe that? There's a lot of evidence suggesting the opposite. They believed the parents did it. Case pretty much closed in their eyes. It would take years

before DNA evidence would clear them in 2008. But Patsy would never live to see that day.

She died of a very incancer two years earlier, 10 years after the death of her little six-year-old. Oh, so tragic. To this day, John's hope is that this case will be solved and that hope remains in the hands of the same police department that pointed the finger at him wrongly. John Ramsey is here today. John, thank you so much for being with us. Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me alone.

I've been following you for so many years following the case and seeing so many of your interviews. You've handled it with such dignity. I appreciate the fact that here we are 25 years later

You think to solve it. And there's breaking news. I should say about the detectives involved in your case. That's extraordinary. The very guy who interviewed you and Patsy, who you've been kind of complaining about like he didn't follow up on leads. It didn't do this. It didn't do that. There's news about him today. I assume you've heard what's happened to him.

“Yes. Yeah, it was a big step forward. I think in this case because he was a roadblock.”

When he was assigned to this case 25, 26 years ago, he was at that time a auto theft investigator

and now he's put on the investigation of a murder of a child. And I've never criticized the

boulder police for not knowing what they're doing or not having any experience. They didn't have a homicide department. But I have criticized the over the years and for the reason that they would not accept help from those who offered it. And lots of help was offered right in the beginning. The Denver police offered to put two experienced homicide detectives on boulder staff at Denver's expense for as long as they needed them. Boulder said, "Now we don't need that. We've got this under control."

That's been going on for 26 years and we just kind of had it. It's time to do something different. Put some people in charge that know what they're doing and be willing to put their ego and areas aside and accept help. Yeah. The detective's name was Tom Trujillo. He was one of the lead investigators in John Benese case. He just received an involuntary transfer to another division where he's going to be working the midnight shift, not a promotion. In addition to a three-day

suspension, and they've basically said that he and another were not, they were not investigating

appropriately investigating several cases. They said John Benese case was not one of them. These are the cases that he's being accused of half-assing it on. We're not homicide cases. But he is being accused of not doing his job and not following through on leads and so on in

“other significant investigations. Do you feel validated at all by that?”

Well, in a way, yes. We've known that he's been a problem and not really capable of thinking he had with walks and more importantly, his arrogance, I guess, and ego prevented anybody from coming into help. Our system, the way it's set up, it's kind of crazy. But there's 18,000 police jurisdictions in this country. Each one's a little island of authority, and if crime happens on that island, it's up to the local police to deal with it.

With the acceptance of a few things like bankruptcy, nobody can come in and help them unless they're invited. That's a real crazy system because there's tons of qualified help that could have come in, wanted to come in, but unless they were invited and asked to come in to help, they can.

And as many huge frustration and that's really going to have a very critical of the police

department on that issue. Of course, as you see, the bigger cities tend to have a higher homicide rate and thus more experienced homicide detectives and people who know how to preserve a crime scene and preserve evidence. And that's the problem. That was one of the major problems right from the get-go with this, which let's take a step back now and talk and set up the crime so that people have a better feeling for what they did and didn't do and why you really kind of want this case

rested from them right now. I mean, it's been 26 years. It's kind of time. There should be a statute of limitations for the police. If they haven't solved it, they should be able to be compelled to give the evidence to the family or to somebody else who might be able to have a go to, but we'll get to that. Let's go back. Let's go back to December 26, 1996. You were living in Boulder, Colorado with Patsy, your wife, with Little John Bené, who was

six. You had a son to Burke at the time, who was 10. And things are going well for you. You were a successful business executive. Was Patsy a stay at home, wife? Yes. Yes, she was. Okay. She's very devoted mom. We've seen the videos of her. She seemed like a very loving mother and you just

“celebrated Christmas day. Was it was there anything out of the ordinary on that day? Christmas day?”

No, it was a very normal day. We had gotten up early, of course, and had made a breakfast and

new toys and very normal or a normal Christmas day for us. So, you went out over to a friend's house

to eat Christmas evening dinner, dinner on the 25th with the kids? Yes. Okay. You go ahead. Well, I say the friends we visited have kids, our age, our kids age, and so that they were buddies, and it was a logical place to have a family yet together. So, what time did you get home

“from that dinner? Well, I think if I recall, it was about 930. Jumping an A had fallen asleep”

on the way home, and it was only maybe six blocks, but she was tired. She'd been up all day and hadn't fun and play it. And so I cared her upstairs and put her on her bed and then Patsy came up and got her ready for bed and tucked her in. So, Patsy put on John Bennings pajamas that night, and this would later become an issue what she was wearing. What did Patsy put John Bennings in? I don't remember. Quite frankly, I'd have to look at the pictures, but it was

just night close. But my understanding of the reason I asked you, John, is that I've been reading up in the case that there was an allegation that Patsy said she put her in a red outfit, like red PJs, and when she was found, she was in white. Is that familiar to you? Yeah, well, I didn't

know, but I don't know about the red, and I got ahead and never heard that. But when I found her

shale, I'm like a black and white pants and top. Okay, so Patsy put your bed so probably by 10 o'clock,

“John Bennings was in her bed. Oh yeah, yeah. And what time did you guys go to bed and burped, too?”

You've been shortly after that, probably 10 30, I guess. Yeah. And you're son, too. Yes, yeah, we went to bed at really when we got home. Yeah, he's also a little guy, isn't it? Like you have a teenager at that point who likes to stay up a little. Oh, he was nine years old. A little bit more now from Christmas Day as well. Okay, so everybody goes to bed by 10 30. And you, like in our house, before we go to sleep,

we lock all the doors and make sure the security's on, you know, all that stuff. Did you have any of that on your house? We had a alarm system. It was in the house when we bought it. And it was the type that at that time the theory was you scare the everybody out of the house, including the intruder. It was just this horrible loud noise. And so we didn't use it. It went off once, John but A, about dinner time, six supposed or eight months before was playing, we didn't know it,

but she was punching the buttons on the alarm system. And this horrible sound came up and I

“ran into where the control box was. And I remember John but A, looking at me, like I said,”

this makes my ears loud. So, but we've all done, those security systems can be, they can definitely be more annoying than, you know, they, they, they go off when you don't want them to. In this case, this would have given you heart attack if it were off. So, what about, what else was there? Did you, were there locks on the doors or the windows? What, what was the security setup? It was an old house built in 1927. It, yes, there are locks on the doors. And just typical window locks, but I didn't

check them at night, and that's to my deep regret. We retired and, and, you know, we always assumed

bolder was kind of a, you know, azine area, flowers coming up, quiet, safe place, and it's to get complacent. And we're, you know, regretfully admit we are complacent. No, I know it. I know it. I mean, I grew up in upstate New York. We never locked our doors, ever. We, we go away from vacation for a week and not even locked the door. And there's never an incident. It's, you know, I, I've told people, I said, you know, just be aware of there are,

are bad people everywhere. Not just because you live in a nice neighborhood or don't live in South LA that you're safe, but don't be paranoid, but just be aware of that. And your home should be your sanctuary. And, and that's a huge regret on my part to, to become complacent. Do you know, if, do you know if you had locked just the doors? Of course, you said you didn't check the windows, but had you locked the doors? Well, I thought I did. Yeah. The, yeah, there was a door

The kids were playing and went through it and didn't close it. I doubt it because that was kind of

“in a sub baseman area. They wouldn't have been going down there. But I think the killer was in”

the house and we got home. And it, it, he waited until we were bed and, and, to jump in any from her room. It's a chilling thought. It's a chilling thought just to have him lying and wait there for, for murder. Can I ask you two, just before we leave the subject of security, was there a dog, was there any, you know, any other layers? Jumping in. I had a little dog, his name was Jock, and we had taken over the neighbors before we went up to dinner because we

were going to leave town in the next morning and have a second Christmas with my older children.

And then we had a reservation for the family on the Disney big red boat. And that was our, take place, you know, right after Christmas. So we were, we took the dog and took into our neighbors and they were going to take care of him until we got home. Right. That's, oh gosh, I'm certain, like all these things you'd like to have back and who knows whether they would have made a difference. But, you know, the dog, they basically say, as many layers as you can put between a potential

bad guy and those you love, the better. Yes, you're, you're most vulnerable at night when you're asleep, for sure. And it's just prudent to pay attention to that, regardless of where you live. How far away were your children's bedrooms from your bedroom? Well, they were, it was an old house.

There were basement ground floor, second floor, and the second floor, the kids were, and then

the upstairs attic we converted into a master bedroom. So in terms of distance, I don't know, 30 feet, maybe something like that, 40 feet, but also on a different level. Did you sleep with the doors closed to your bedrooms? Like, do you believe if you were, if you

“know, they were, they were open. So do you believe if she had yelled, you would have heard it?”

I think so. Yeah, I really do. I think, with virtual certainty, we're, we're sure a stun gun was used perhaps when she was asleep in her bed. I don't know that for a fact, but but I think if she's screamed or there'd been noise, we would have heard it, I think. There were marks on her face, and I think her neck too, that suggested a stun gun had been used on her, trying to forgive me because I don't know the answer to this, but what would a stun gun

do to a person when used? I mean, would it incapacitate you for a time? What would it do? Well, apparently it does, I don't know, but we had it looked at, police discounted that idea, and we had it looked at by a doctor who specializes in that kind of stuff somehow, and he said

“with 99% certainty those are stun gun marks. Yeah, but I think because we didn't hear anything,”

we, you know, you would think at least if the creature had come in and started to take Germany from her bed, she would scream and we would certainly have heard that. Yeah, even if we covered her mouth, you know, you could hear something, some sort of signs of a struggle, but if the stun gun were used, and of course, I know that you found her with duct tape on her mouth, you could have kept her quiet. All right, so let's back up, so you, so Patsy comes downstairs early,

they say it was 552 a.m. was that nine-month-long call? So it was early in the morning,

you say you were going to take in a trip, and was that your first sign that something was wrong?

She finds this ransom note at the bottom of the stairs, and then what does she come find you or what happens next? Well, she screamed, and it was, you know, I was getting ready to get dressed, and she screamed, and I could tell from the scream, it was something was very, very wrong, and I ran down, and she had this ransom note, and, you know, it was just an unbelievable

because his bedroom was on kind of the other end of the house, and he was still in bed and appeared

to be asleep, so he knew he was safe, and so I, you know, I took the note, and I mean, she, Patsy explains that, "Hey, this is a ransom note, Jim, and he's gone in character room, so I tried to grasp what was in the ransom note, it was three pages, and just told Patsy to call a police call, police call 911, and of course, funny thing, we're as criticized for that, because the ransom note told us not to do that,

but that's silly, of course we did." Of course, of course, you're not gonna call the police, and you don't follow the directions of a, you can have Berkler to not call law enforcement.

Yeah, so that Patsy calls immediately, she was standing by the phone at that time, and

I was still trying to comprehend what the note said, and what was going on.

“I'll get to the note one second, I think it's worth reading, so that the gun is going to”

understand how bizarre it was. Before we do that, I want to play the longer Patsy, and I'm one-one call, because to this day, even though you've been totally exonerated, people say, "Oh, the parents did it, you know how to, you know how to do it." That'll, I mean, I just think, even after the killers arrested and convicted, that'll still be, of course. And DNA has exonerated you, so it's like, okay, but I, as a mother,

you hear Patsy Ramsey in this 911 call, and you can hear the sheer panic in her voice, and especially if you listen to the longer version, which I'll play here, it sounds by too. This is a note with Mark Robertson, and note with left and you die already on. Hold this in honor, next you go, support, next you go. I want to go with this. I don't know, I just feel them down.

I'm like, "Oh, this is the same chapter." What? This is the same chapter? I don't know. This is a little bit of a ransom note here. It's a ransom note. It says, "It's a Patsy, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy." Okay, what's your name? Are you going to have to lay in here in the front?

Oh, my God, please! Okay, I'm sending an office to film, okay? Do you know how long she's been gone? Oh, I don't. Please, we just got out from she run here. Oh, my God, please.

Okay, I am running. Please, take the Patsy away. Oh, my God, please, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy. Oh, that's where she says, "Help me, Jesus. She's in a sheer panic. You were there." She all she knew at that point was John Benin was missing because she wasn't in her bed.

“And you must have been feeling the same, John, just the slow reveal of”

weight, a ransom note, and weight. She's actually not in her room. What on earth is going on here? Well, we didn't know. We knew she, according, we believed what the note said that she, that they have our daughter, and we were not to call a police, and if we did, she would be headed. And it was dark. It was cold out. It was a horrible feeling. I tell people, it's like when

if you're with your child and you're at a department store, grocery store, and you look around and the child's gone, you have this instinctive, just horrible feeling or stomach that, you know, where's my child? And it's terrible feeling. I think all parents have experienced that from time to time when their little ones go on out of sight. They don't know where they are. And that was the feeling we had. And how it went on for, tell under one of the afternoon.

And then an even worse feeling came. We've all had that. We've all had that in the moment of relief when you find your child well, it's overwhelming. And you kept waiting, kept waiting for that, for that to happen. And you can hear Patsey waiting for it with the 911 operator

“and doing the only thing you can do at that point, which is pray to Jesus. Just pray, pray, pray,”

it's not as you think it is. The note, the note is one of the most important and bizarre things

of this whole case. The handwritten note, which for our listening audience, we've put on the screen,

And we're going to read it just so the audience understands what you guys read. It was addressed

to you, you John Ramsey, right, dear Mr. Ramsey. And then it reads his follows, "Listen carefully, exclamation point. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We do respect your business spelled wrong, but not the country it serves. At this time,

“we have your daughter in our possession spelled wrong. She is safe and unharmed. And if you want to”

see her, if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter. You will withdraw $118,000 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills, the remaining $18,000

in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size atta-shay to the bank. When you get home,

you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting. So I advise you to be rested. If we monitor, you getting the money early, we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence a earlier delivery pickup of your daughter. Another grammatical error. Any deviation of

“my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied”

her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you. So I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you will learn bank authorities, she dies. If the money isn't anyway marked or tampered with, she dies, you will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies.

You can try to deceive us but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement, countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to out smart towards us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow a brain john. You are not the only fat cat around. So don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us, john,

use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now, john, victory, exclamation point, SBTC. Absolutely bizarre. When you read that other than the obvious, was there anything you have a chance to read it and read it? What jumped out of you? Well there are several things that you want to what that mean to the killer. One was the amount of the ransom money requests,

118,000, why not a million? 100,000, what are why 118? That had some significance to the killer.

And then the other course was the the the beheading concept, you know, that's very un you don't think about that as a as a punishment or a penalty be at that's very common thing nowadays. We read about some of the terrorists and stuff that goes hause. Even when it will are they, is it really a terrorist group or terrorist individuals and that's a common threat they can make. And then of course the final thing was SBTC, what does that mean? Victory. That's sign off. So those are

kind of the three elements in my mind that this didn't make sense. And the 118,000 was happy to be my annual bonus that year and I was paid in January of 1996. And that is somewhat of logical where that number came from they would have had to know that. But the rest of it just didn't make sense. It was bizarre to me. I've been told too that in a way it's gift because it's I've been told by handwriting experts that with that long of a sample three pages, if we had the

handwriting of the killer it'd be very easy to conclusively say this person wrote this note. It's a big sample of their handwriting. What did the handwriting say analysts say could be gleaned about the writing

“could they could they tell anything about age, gender, psychological, state, any of that?”

Well we didn't get that from the handwriting people. Typically they just tell us, told us what

this person wrote it when they're doing comparison. A five is absolutely no way. And I was a one,

“they said absolutely you did not write it. Pass you as a four and a half. And they say well I”

have four and a half. And I was told that there's depending on whether you're taught to write what generation there are certain things that are kind of common but they're not significant and they're not a lot of them. So the police for told you guys better look somewhere else because we don't see the either parent wrote the note. We but we would back up because I thought you said one means you wrote it five means no way. Is it the and that you then you just said that you were

a one suggesting. Oh no I was a five sorry yeah. Okay. Yeah. You were a five. That's useful.

And Patsy was a four and a half. Okay so you were both on exactly the scale of you didn't write it or there's virtually no chance that you wrote it. Right. Yes. Okay got it. So what about what about since then this psychologist the psychiatrist I'm sure you've had people

“like that FBI profileers who have read it. And were they able to glean any sort of a profile from it?”

Yeah. John Douglas who started the whole FBI profiling program and is pretty pretty much considered the top of the heap as far as that skill set and accomplishments. We spent a couple of three days

with him earlier on. Sorry attorneys asked him to dispense some time with us.

And but his conclusion was in prediction as it's a young person fascinated by movies. You know probably in these 20s maybe early 30s. And he said this was not about jambine. This was directed at you to hurt you, John. Somebody is either extremely angry with you or extremely jealous of you and this was done to hurt you and I thought like I couldn't possibly know anybody that I've made angry that to that degree and he said you may not even know who they are. They

either observed you in newspaper or you know whatever and they developed this either anger,

“anger, anger or jealousy it made. That was John's conclusion and I think he's right.”

Now Luc Smith who is the legendary detective from Colorado out of retirement and was put on this case by the district attorney early on. And Luc's felt it was a kidnapping going wrong. And now he said well those are two opposite theories. And Luc is a legendary detective in Colorado. And so many point up to me recently that well that could be those two are not in the paddles. Those two theories. That well you're right. They're not. Yeah. So that's somebody who

wanted to hurt you when in there to kidnap your child. Right. And that thought hadn't occurred to me in a good while because I thought we're here. You got two top experts saying to give me two to their theories but they're compatible. Yeah, they're compatible. But what about I mean the thing about just random intruder coming in that doesn't make sense. If you look at the note is how do they know? You are from Atlanta originally. You are from the south. The 118,000,

how would they know your bonus? I mean it has to be somebody who and I realize this is a chance they just randomly picked the number that was your bonus. But it seems like a small chance. So much more likely if somebody were to your company or had reason to know that that was your number. Well the two ways I guess they could have known that they worked in our company that that amount was on my paycheck stub. Since the previous January as a deferred compensation bonus.

So we weren't careful with that kind of stuff in our house. We could have been tucked in a drawer or somebody that knew that from some connection inside of our company. To me that's the logical explanation. The only other explanation I heard was Psalm 118 is the right middle of the Bible. It references the stone. Stone becomes the cornerstone. It's one of the passages and you know that could that be the SPTC and it's that's possible as well.

One of the suspects that we are interested in signed his high school yearbook.

and I want to know like what did they go and speak to everybody or company? That'd be the first place

“I would start as a detective. Somebody knows what he made. Somebody doesn't like him. They've made”

that clear. They know where his roots are. They know you're from the south. So let's talk to everybody from the company. Well that kind of stuff just wasn't done. They should have done a neighborhood survey that morning gone around the houses to the neighborhood and you know if you see anything unusual what if you know they didn't do any that. So they basically affect the detective. The only detective so-called it was there that morning concluded that I was the killer because

quote she saw it in my eyes and that became the conclusion before they even looked at evidence or investigator thing. This is Linda Aren't. Yeah and just we were just dealing with incompetence. Well in Linda's case not just incompetence but maybe a desire to cover up her incompetence because she isn't she the one who said search the house after seven hours of sitting there and she she didn't search the house. The foot patrolman

who got there per the nine one call earlier he didn't search the house adequately. She didn't do it and that's the reason you you were putting the position of finding your own little girl. Well that's exactly right. In fact to show you what kind of an environment she was working in the chief of police said we didn't treat this as a crime scene because it was a kidnapping.

“And you you shake your head think. Where do these people come from?”

Horrible. I mean just because at that point they didn't know that it was a homicide. You got a six-year-old girl's been taken from her bed in the middle of the night that's five alarm fire. Yeah exactly that's not a crime I don't know what it is. That was the quote but because I have I could give you a dozen quotes that were just astounding

from the police department over the years. That was really the first one that was just unbelievable.

What about the misspellings and the improper grammar and the use of the word attache which is not really a thing we say in America. It can be either you know diplomatic assistant or it can mean bag in the way they're using it here but it's a bizarre they say that were a small foreign

“faction just for people who think you know forgive me again for raising your son he”

too was ruled out as I understand it by the DNA in 2008 but this is not the writing of a nine-year-old were a small foreign faction and like like people you got to use your head. But anyway these misspellings and improper grammar throughout tells us something could be used intentionally but this doesn't sound like a very well educated person. No I got a letter we had a lot of people trying to help and I had a letter from a teacher of actually taught English to non and non-English speaking

people and she said the misspellings in this are typical of a Hispanic person migrating to English based on her experience teaching them to read and write English and speak English and that was pretty interesting and possibly could explain that and you know we were a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and or at that time just Lockheed you know I take that you'll see well anyway Lockheed Martin bought Lockheed some time in there but we had to they required us to put a sign on the

front of our building which is was downtown Boulder a Lockheed Martin corporation and at the time I thought that's like weaving a red flag in front of a bowl of Boulder's ultra-liberal place and to put a I'm sure their minds a manufacturer of weapons sign in downtown Boulder was was just inviting trouble it made me nervous frankly to do that at the time right and they reference your company we we we do respect your business spelled wrong spelled B U S S I

at W S S I any S S but not the country that it serves so interesting they they clearly

yeah and they they're never ever never ever anything something about what you do

yeah that that was bizarre as well and he said if he and I started I of course trying to think who this possibly had been and and I've wondered at times where this was kind of a amateur terrorist group or person that fantasized some things and

he's the right about himself as we and suggest it was some sort of international thing like he wanted

“to make himself sound bigger and more important than just an eye and this guy slips into the first”

person later in the ransom note but yeah there's it wouldn't be unusual for an individual to try to make themselves sound bigger more nefarious and sway true now and you know I really do subscribe to John Douglas's theory that this is some of the one to hurt me and that's that's a tough burden to carry but thankfully John said you may not even know you know we'd been in the paper a few weeks before having hit a process of significant sales goal and our Barkley people

wanted to put it in the paper and I started to have this got feeling that that's not really a good idea but I wanted our people to be proud of their company and and so we did it and that could have targeted me because I was had a picture of me and it quotes the stuff in the paper that could have

been a you never know how you're affecting a sick mind who's going to transfer on to who knows

yeah that's that's the problem we had people you know we we hired two detectives to to work this early on because we knew the police weren't capable of it and in fact we tried very hard early days to get the case move somewhere else to another jurisdiction they could put it in the sheriff's department's office which is a competent organization or was it the time and had dual authority or we could have very easily had a sheriff's officer come to our home

that morning instead of the city police department and that that was a tragic first mistake I guess

“that's what that's what that's what happened so you know it it just wasn't ever”

properly handled and to this day is still not properly handled well and the theory that it's someone who didn't like you because of course the the other theory is that it's some pedophile right that's what a lot of it and I thought the time to conflicting theories between John Douglas and Lusman but I thought we were talking about someone who knew you versus random intruder but random intruder doesn't necessarily mean pedophile there to get your little girl right because that's one

of the questions in the case about whether she was the victim of of somebody who was a pedophile or whether it was somebody who just hurt her right because it was unclear forgive me for the details John but it was unclear whether she was sexually penetrated by a man. Well first of all this was not a random intruder this is somebody who had watched this was has knew what our patterns were you know knew we were going to be out that evening

left the note on the back stairway which is the stairway we always used which but would not have

been obvious to somebody that's came into the house we had a front stairway but we never used that and so why did they leave the ranch on the back stairway how do they know that's where we would be coming down in the morning so it would have I mean there's some elements where somebody could have come in our home it was not an hard home to break into and regret to say and really understood where things were and or they they could have been in the house for hours before

we at home we sure that are we sure that the person that sexual gratification was a goal of the

“killer. I don't know I think you know there's another case seven months later that happened in the”

neighborhood yes I know that me and I want to talk to you about me forgive me for interrupting you because I want to go down this line but I want to give us the proper time and I got to squeeze in a quick commercial break so I'll pause you right there John Ramsey and we'll come right back so much more to discuss it's an honor to have you here I know it's not easy to discuss even 26 years later even just losing any love one is tough to discuss and certainly under these circumstances even

harder stand by John couple things we're going to discuss when John comes back on in a minute and that is on the ransom note do the police believe it was written before or after the murder that's one of the big questions because I know the police had said originally not even a serial killer would have the steadiness to write a note like this after a murder so what do they think and by the way a draft of

in the Ramsey house by saying do your Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and then started over addressing it just

“a Mr. Ramsey and then you heard what followed so there are a lot of questions still about this”

note and what can be gleaned from it before we get to all that I'm going to play you Patsy Ramsey's describing of the ransom note in a 1997 interview with CNN I didn't um we couldn't read the whole thing I I just gotten up we were on our it was the day after Christmas and we were going to go visiting and it was quite early in the morning and I got in drafts and it was on my way to

the kitchen to make some coffee and we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas and I always

come down that staircase from the mutually the first one down and the note was lying across the three pages across the run of one of the stair trips and it was kind of

“dimly lit it was very early in the morning and I started to read it and it was addressed to John”

the Mr. Ramsey and it said we have your daughter and I you know it just was it just wasn't registering and I I may have gotten through another sentence like we have your daughter and I I don't know if I got any further than that and that's when she called 911 the whole thing is just I mean what what was on the note were there fingerprints was there touch DNA of any kind uh John Ramsey's been saying even if you didn't find fingerprints there might have been DNA even if the person had worn

gloves there there might have been DNA on that letter has had been tested if not why not apparently there are several crime scene items that have not been tested for DNA even in 2022 when touch DNA is out there DNA is evolved so much we're going to discuss all of that with John plus the neighbor Amy a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a man in her bedroom in the middle of the night just months after John been a wait until you hear what the police did in that case

so John on the subject of the the ransom note before we leave that there had been a draft addressed to both of you then the final was just you it was written on a legal pad found in your home and that's the question whether was it were there any fingerprints has it been tested for DNA do you know where it came from in the house and was that area tested for fingerprints

“et cetera at the time i don't know i think the my feeling was that the uh forensics people”

that came in did a pretty good job in finding uh a palm print that was at a different life during track to anybody uh foot prints that don't match any shoes of ours in the house things like that but whether this stuff was ever tested or not i don't know we know there's five or six maybe seven items that were originally taken from the crime scene sent to an outside lab for testing along with others and five or six of those items were not tested they were

turned to the police i don't know why it is the police didn't want to pay for it because the back then it was expensive to do DNA testing but we know there's five or six items that

had never been tested and so what else was i do know that the the forensic people spent about

with the detective spent a couple hours in the house and then told the DA what we're finished and he said you can't be finished i get back in there so they took a very cursory look at it and then we're ordered back in by the DA uh forensic uh investigate or experience when told me they'll spend three days on a murder site looking for evidence not two hours so it got only knows what was compromised and i know Linda aren't the detective also didn't secure the scene

she let your friends come over and come into the house she sent you to look around as we discussed and then after you found john benay as i understand it she actually moved john benay's body again

from one spot to closer by the christmas tree which just should never be done when you're dealing

criticized for disturbing the crime scene when i found john benay by picking her up and holier

“and what parent wouldn't do that it's just insane to be to that kind of uh”

level of misunderstanding of a parent's look for a child no that's it's not possible not to pick up your child and a holder and and at that point you didn't know whether she was gone can we can we spend a minute on that because talked about how Linda said okay search the house it's one

o'clock now in the afternoon no one's called you know no kid never and i understand the the

note said well call tomorrow so it was unclear whether they meant the 26th of the 27th but you're sitting there and you're waiting and nothing's happening and now it's one o'clock in the afternoon she says go look around the house and the the people who who want to say oh do you

“know look at john one of the things they say is oh he went right to the room he went to the basement”

and he went right to there's a storage room off the basement where she was found is that true like what did what did you do after Linda said go search the house well we i friend of mine that was there to help console us uh we she said for both of us to go uh search the house and so we

went to the basement which to me was a logical place to start third floor he couldn't get into the

third floor from outside so we went to the basement and uh went into what we called the train room where the kids had a train set up and um there was an open window and a suitcase popped up under the window as if it were to be a step and i told my friend i said that suitcase should not be there that's way out of place we wouldn't have put it there and so we then i went into the um the only other room in that basement was this we called it a wine seller but there was no cool seller uh door one door

going into it no uh interests us from the outside and i opened the door and of course immediately found johnman A and uh you know i don't we heard Linda aren't say on the media or on an interview that well i told him to go from top to bottom and he started out in the bottom why do you do that

“that's just was logical to me but um yeah it you remember that moment i mean do you remember”

was it did it switch from concern to panic you know do you remember emotionally what was it a switch from from panic and and uh that it was a relief thank god if on my child and um that was the immediate uh feeling that i found her if she's safe and um but it fairly quickly concluded that she wasn't all right and um so i just picked her up and right character screaming access screaming uh to upstairs to take her to help i mean i don't know

i just uh instinctive action i guess but uh and we later down on the floor the uh living room front of the Christmas tree and uh Linda aren't and looked for a pulse and uh looked up at me and uh said no she's she's going and uh i guess it was that moment when she saw in my eyes that that was the killer so um and then we're all sure that out of the house uh pretty quickly and um

we never went back in that home uh that was the last time we were in that home and i asked you

because i know that one of the things that jambony was wearing was her cross or cross necklace and um according to what i read and and we heard patsy brain to jesus you know to help her help her and i wondered if you were a family of faith and if you know what this did to that right if you were able to carry that on well that's that's a good question uh and i really had to face that issue when my oldest daughter was killed in car accident about four years before

and the first words that came out of my mouth was there is no god there is no god how could how could a loving god let this happen to a beautiful young child she was 2021 um but it really forced me to think about my faith and um i spent i had the friend Kim alongside of me and said i'm going to help you study the Bible and and uh he was a real uh mentor to me and that

club you know if you're in the club it you shouldn't be subject to to harm or tragedy and of course

“that's not at all what the Bible says you're going to get uh persecuted but i struggle with that”

for really for three or four years uh it is there an afterlife uh will i see Beth my oldest daughter again uh i was it was tough for three or four years uh and but i'd kind of wrestle that down to the other there's there's mortal life and just what we see here and um and so when we lost John Beney uh i didn't have to i didn't have to go through that struggle you know i'd already been through why did god let this happen um so it was it was my face well faith was not challenged

uh when John Beney was killed only because i'd gone through that challenge when i lost my oldest daughter um then you then you go through the added pain of being not outright accused by the authorities but pretty close i mean the DA earlier before Mary Lacy the DA said they didn't do it the DNA

“rules them out um four months after John Beney died the DA Alex Hunter said um patsy and”

John are the focus they're the focus open the grand jury proceeding and the grand jury came back it's a don't see anything that you're going to be able to pursue as a you know beyond a reasonable

down the DA ultimately had to admit that but i mean you're going through being accused and then

on top of all that john you've got the media coverage right which basically tried to make john Beney and patsy into this bizarre daughter mother team you know she was exploited she was sexualized the beauty page of videos on endless loop on endless loop so talk about that for a bit and what that was like for you well you know the media of course jumped on it but they were being fed information that was misleading wrong and we were told by Mary Lacy several years after she got

“into her position as the do DA she said that was the police strategy that was defined to them”

by someone or there's FBI or some wacko psychologist put in the pen's pressure on the family

we know it's one of the two they're in the house either the father killer or the mother did one of them will confess eventually if we put enough pressure on them and Mary Lacy the DA said that was their strategy to solve the case and so they released a lot of information misleading information incorrect information to the media and of course the media ran with it and we were quickly convicted in the court of public opinion we didn't know that's exactly

what was happening but it was confirmed with the DA and the problem for the police was they did a great job of conveying some of the court of public opinion with the assistance of the media but they couldn't charge us they we would have it a bit of bloodbath for them in a court because the evidence was quite contradictory to that as they got into looking at the evidence because they'd made their inclusion lead on the day or the day after of gentlemen as murder and then when about let's find

the evidence to prove it well the evidence here of finding was contradictory to that conclusion and that became a problem for him because you know the media and the public was you know screaming hey you rest on can you know charge him and they they couldn't well and meanwhile in the interviews you you held firm I mean patsy they got all up in her grill and when I watch her because I I've spent a lot of time with this guy's name is Phil Houston he invented the CIA's

deception detection technique that they still use today because there's 25 years all sorts of ways you can tell somebody's lying and they're pretty foolproof if you know how to apply them and one of the things is just sort of no BS you don't you don't do convincing behavior you're just hardcore no no you know stop like I mean I'm sure if I showed him the patsy Ramsey tapes with the cops he'd be like why did they waste so much time with her right like it was pretty

obvious and I'll just show some to the audience a clip this is from 1998 to two years later please interview a patsy they're telling her falsely that they have trace evidence linking her or you to the murder I'm suggesting if I if I had that how would you react here it is up five if I told you right now that we have trace evidence that appears to link you to the death of John but hey don't tell me you're really awesome how was it he was retested I did not kill my child

some room or some store I don't care what you're talking about talking about I don't give a

“flying flip half night to pick it up go back to the day I'm drawing board I didn't do it John”

Ramsey didn't do it and we didn't have a clue of anybody who didn't do it my life has been held from that day forward and I went nothing more than find out to this response school for this okay I mean I want to work with you not against you okay this child was the most precious thing in my life and I can stand the thought thinking somebody's out here walking on the street God doesn't make sure again there's no other child you know quit screw it around left and

man about things that are ridiculous what's finding the person is this well the frustration it's palpable because it's like as she's points out he could be hurting other children all right yes and probably did there's a high probability I'm told that that

“creature kind of creature doesn't just stop with one maybe has done it before her”

the um this is right around the time where loose met walked out the detective the retired detective who they brought in because they couldn't solve the case and he solved every single case he ever worked on except for this one they brought him in take fresh eyes what do you think and loot took the for his fresh eyes at every it looked at everything and said they didn't do it this is not patsy and ramsie are that's the wrong tree to bark up yep and they didn't listen to him to the

point where he quit he called as a travesty and said they were trying to railroad you it's crazy John that that wasn't the end of the story it would take another 10 years for Maryly see to get that DNA test and say just stop stop with the obsessive focus on the ramsies mm-hmm now that's true uh loot told me you know after he resigned and we were able to talk to him freely uh that uh he looked at the case uh for several months and all the evidence and said no

please you go in the wrong direction so he said he went to their war room where they were strategizing this assault frankly and said you know you guys have looked at this case longer than I have but you know I've looked at it and if you ever thought maybe you're going the wrong direction and he said it was like pouring a bucket of water on the on the participants they wouldn't talk to him after that they banned him from their war room and this wouldn't listen

“and uh that's what he said I'm not going to be part of persecuting an innocent person”

and resigned and continue to work on the case for the rest of his life which I was very grateful for

and uh he was an amazing fellow well on the the on um I think it was a 60 minutes australia piece I

watched um they had all tapes of him and he what he went to the crime scene to your old house and he went to that window that was broken in your basement because one of the theories was nobody got in through that window that that was a window you had broken not long before because you locked yourself out of the house and you were trying to get in that's true um so so so people were saying no somebody said only a midget could get through a little person could get through that window

that wasn't it this is back on it had to be one of the mother the mother of the father and he goes right through it he the the video shows him going right through it was that something by the way I'm not asking you did you go through it when you would lock yourself out you gone through that window to get in yes uh I had yeah so of course you could lock myself out one I don't know when the day and nobody was home and so I that was the way I got into the house so I could unlock the door I had

to navigate you know the person that said no that no it's impossible for someone to get through that window was the detective investigated in the case it's purely misleading purely false information but it biased everybody in the public the media towards us once more that was the whole strategy and so that was confirmed by the district attorney to us that was that was the whole strategy and she also said there only evidence that they would present and it's really not evidence

that led them to think that we were guilty was we did not act right that morning and that's that's the allegation was that patty was distraught but that you didn't cry

and one of the cops on the scene said I never saw them console each other and in my presence I never saw

when I lost my first daughter Beth I got a phone call from my brother and he said John a

Beth is gone she's killed and there's nothing I could do I couldn't get her to the best doctors I couldn't rest her side it was over that morning with John and A it wasn't over yet I could get her back if I kept my wish about me and focused on getting her back to whatever I could possibly do I didn't I was focused on getting her back and I felt I could get her back and to raise for the

“ransom money to be available almost immediately one of the again this winter and I think”

they wrote in a report that John was observed casually going through the mail that morning there was a mail drop and the mail came to the house that's for the front door and I was going through I was looking for another community possible communication from the kidnapper the police should have been doing that I was not casually going through the mail but that was her interpretation of that

again biased perspective by someone who has never been in that situation to evaluate whether

someone's acting right or not so that was my focus you know Pat she was rough she was in bed shape she had a bowl in front of her in case she threw up but I was focused 100% on whatever I

“could do to get job on a back that was my job can we talk about two things we've touched on the”

Maryly see exoneration of 2008 based on DNA DNA came along thank God they did get some DNA and preserve it back in 96 DNA's come leaps and balance since then and it had to some extent by 2008 so she said we've tested it and we've identified the perpetrator as one possibly two unidentified mails so nothing no hit in the database but they could tell it was a mail and they could tell it was one possibly two that's when she said it's not the Ramsey's can I just say for the

record does did that include Burke yeah it did and Burke was exonerated early on he had to be interviewed by the child psychologist we're associated with the police department they said absolutely no way Burke was not involved this he's he was a nine-year-old 60 pound child and because 60 because CBS would do a piece really pointing the finger at Burke in 2016 and he sued over it and they settled I don't know what they settled for but you know in later years you know it's armchair

detective wannabes have decided maybe it was him maybe it was the nine-year-old but the Maryly Casey conclusion was it was not Burke right and that was a conclusion that even the police came to very early on they ruled out that possibility yeah I don't support us in this suit against CBS if we needed their help wow just count that uh ridiculous accusation so he he went on Dr. Phil not long not long after that and then it just stirred up more you know people like he

wasn't acting right I'm going to play a sound by I love to get your thoughts on I don't I really don't know I don't know how people sort of fly into the case you've been living it in the worst way for 26 years so put this in perspective for us this is Burke on Dr. Phil in 2016 the police officer comes in your which I was the first time in your entire life that a police officer is coming to know with a flashlight looking around and you still just stay in bed to be fair I didn't know

is the police officer is just kind of but somebody comes in your room with a flashlight

and you never get up and say what is going on here I guess I kind of like to avoid

conflict or I don't know I guess I just don't say for there were you curious I'm not the worry type I'm not the it's part of me doesn't want to know what's going on critics would say you weren't curious because you already knew he didn't have to get up to check because you

“knew exactly what I've had I was scared I think I didn't know if there's some bad guy downstairs”

my dad was chasing off like gone or you know I had no idea let's clear this up once and for all did you do anything to harm your sister job but I did you murder your sister job but I and just for listening audience Berks answers are all said through what looks like a smile

Berks smiles all the time when he talks he just naturally smiles and those are just laughable

criticisms this was a violent vicious sexually assault case not something that a nine-year-old could even possibly do so it's just it's really disgusting that people jump to that kind of conclusion let's let's move on because one of the other storylines as we touched on a minute ago was the pageants and whether a pedophile was you know she captured the the attention of a pedophile and they do say that some of these pageants can be very attractive to pedophiles in the same way

“that you know most pedophiles like if you want to find a pedophile you don't go to like an AARP meeting”

you know they wind up they volunteer for the Boy Scouts and they they you know it's sad but it's true they go to they go where children are um so that was forget the blame right I'm not interested in that that's the storyline uh but it is possible that this person was a pedophile and it seemed John but John but he had one of these pageants where she she was a darling I mean she was winning them she was an absolutely beautiful in every way so what do you make of that theory if we're thinking of the

possible intruder maybe they also knew you but a possible intruder pedophile it's possible we patsey had been diagnosed with stage-forward cancer a couple of years before this happened and she was went through some pretty rough chemotherapy treatments and it was declared remission

“and she didn't say it but I know she was trying to pack a lot of mother daughter type into what she”

maybe felt was a limited lifetime and um I didn't really care for these little patch and I mean I'm a father and I had to prefer my daughters were burgers teller about 30 but that what my choice it up and I thought well this is a this is just a wonderful mother daughter time for uh patsey and jambanay they didn't excuse me didn't take it seriously yes so we got a win we got a win in fact patsey and I joke it'd be good if she lost a few

of these pageants because she needs to understand she'd always win in life and but she was she just

patched jambanay love doing it it was fun she was an extreme extrovert and um you know people accused us or accused patsey of you know dragging jambanay to these pageants for her own satisfaction I went through at all just something jambanay enjoyed doing and uh patsey wanted her to try a lot of different things which she did but I always thought the people at these little pageants were just moms and grandmoms that's quite there was one indication of course we learned later

that yeah there's some there was at least one guy there that wouldn't wouldn't air for his daughter based on some questioning that came out in some some comments uh but it's possible and um

“but I still fall back to uh I think John Douglas is theory and and uh lose uh loose man's”

it might have targeted who jambanay is and she was my daughter and

she was obviously I'm told and I never read the autopsy I just couldn't break myself to do that

but I of course hear through the news that she was sexually assaulted and um that that that wouldn't have been necessary to hurt me uh as much as to satisfy this creatures uh desires so this is why I forget me and if you don't want to go here we don't have to but this is why when I was reading the autopsy report and you know how to get into the details but the one thing they said it was unclear to me whether they had seamen whether that was one of the DNAs that they were

able to retrieve and there was a suggestion that maybe there was some sort of you know they hurt her in some way sexually that didn't involve uh you know a male body part and that that's kind of interesting if you think about this being a person whose goal was just to hurt you like maybe it wasn't a pedophile maybe it was somebody who was just trying to hurt her as opposed to sexualize her or or do anything sexual with her yeah it's possible and there was no seamen found

but um not dissimilar to this situation in case similar break in that happened a few months later in the same neighborhood with Amy yes okay so let's talk about that there are many people who loose met had been taking a hard look at you know the honest investigator who

which is how we know who he's looking at and the daughters are here oh she's running around

getting these people's DNA without them knowing it's like kind of amazing this people's story but

yes so I'm so grateful for that group before we get to Lou and his daughter on what that would happen there there's this there's this neighbor and that we're calling and the papers are calling the daughter Amy her parents don't want her out it understandable this is sexual assault

“victim but Amy I think was very young too nine or twelve right around there and I don't you know”

I didn't know a whole lot about that case I knew that it happened but I think she she and John but Aaron is in a dance class together and I think she was a year older than John but A baby oh you know actually my prisoners are done she's twelve so she's a little she's a young girl and she's at home this is months after John Bene was killed Amy is in the same neighborhood and she had a man wake her up dressed in black in the middle of the night

who tried to muzzle her so that she couldn't scream and sexually assaulted her and by the grace of God her mother heard something by the grace of God truly her mother heard something and heard muffled voices coming from her twelve-year-old daughter's room in a way that sounded very unsafe the mother grabbed pepper spray and went into the room I mean it's an extraordinary

story and the guy jumped out the second floor window and ran I mean it's a miracle thank

God that unfortunately the daughter was molested but she was not killed and they went to the bolder cops and said we think this might have had something to do with John Bene it's too close in time and you know here's our evidence and the dad is on record is saying the bolder cops could not have cared less were not interested in pursuing any link between the two cases and they

“really felt like it was because they were just focused on YouTube right that's what I've learned”

when I first heard about this I thought let's very similar M.O. for the the criminal as it was in our case he was in the house where they came home that night they went to bed and then at three of the morning he entered the little girl's room and I thought that's and that's so similar to what I think happened in our case and Chief Beckner who was the police chief police was asked is there a connection he said oh no these cases aren't the same because

the second little girl wouldn't murdered and it was one more the unbelievable statements that came out of the police department of course it's similar and thankfully she wasn't murdered but I had heard that the father was quoted as saying on a scale of one to ten in terms of police performance I'll give him a minus five so he was very unhappy with them as well but only because they just kind of blew off the case and went on and I think there's a real danger when

the police get tunnel vision they're real I mean every defense attorney who's ever represented a murdered defendant argues they had tunnel vision on my guy my guy didn't do it they did tunnel vision on him but in some cases it really is true and it can result in the wrong person being arrested and put on a child thankfully not in your case but you were heading down that lane oh absolutely and we were we weren't worried about this I mean it was it was just stressing but

our attorney said look the systems broken the police don't know what they're doing we cannot promise you you won't be charged with the murder we'll promise you one thing with a hundred percent money back guarantee we will destroy him in court so don't worry about that but this is not going to be fine but do not worry about being convicted we'll kill him because we we knew what the evidence was and what they're trying to do we have one one experience district

attorney tell us look I have never ever seen police try to explain away unidentified male DNA

“in a sexual assault case never that's the key piece of evidence and yet that's what the”

border police try to do is that was a real problem for me we had this unidentified male DNA yes that's a massive problem and it's the reason you've never been charged and the reason Mary says it wasn't you guys on the subject of DNA I read that the coroner did not examine the body until seven hours after she was discovered and that the the coroner only spent 10 minutes at the crime scene that's a crazy amount of time that's I mean seven hours a long delay

of death and there have been told no I don't know many people even believe there's any chance

“she was alive in the morning you know before I hate to go there but like when the first cop got there”

you know is there any chance she was alive? I don't think so she was strangled to death is my interpretation of what I've heard and then struck with the objects that created a pretty good um crackner skull took to be totally accurate so I don't think she could have possibly been alive that morning hmm okay but that's another area of DNA that absolutely should be examined because there was a murder weapon there was like a rope they called a garot

and it was tied to a little piece of wood and so that one of the questions I know John

people are asking is do they ever the one one of the one end of the rope had a nod and one had two nods or something but the question was did they ever untie the nods and test in there for DNA

“to my knowledge know they had sent a number of samples like that to body labs which is a”

you know outside DNA lab and for some reason chose not to test or not to pay for the tests of five or six items one of which was the growth and that's one of the things we're asking the governor to make happen is let's get those items tested why weren't they tested was because it was too expensive and they wanted to save money I don't know what do you think is in the box of things that have not been tested I don't know I don't know I don't know one journalist

this is followed this case almost at the beginning has that information and I need to get that from her but I don't know exactly what it is treats she said there's five or six items that have been tested and the police keep referring back to well that we know it's just my new amount of DNA we don't want to ruin it well that just tells me they be there well they haven't tested the other items are they've lost them or misplaced them for some reason they

always stay away from these other five or six items that have never been tested or checked for

“DNA evidence and that's what we're asking to be done and there are reluctance even mentioned”

those items makes me think they've either misplaced them or lost them well goodness I know and you're on a push to have the governor remove this case from the boulder PD and let these sophisticated DNA labs have access to this as opposed relying on the same cops and detectives that have blown it thus far there are really sophisticated DNA labs that do you have confidence that if they had access to this box for lack of a better descriptor they could make whatever

progress is possible they could make it and that's really all we're asking the governor to do is push the case either out of the boulder hands or require them to take this evidence to be tested by one of the water to really cut against labs in this country and see what we get if we can get some more good DNA evidence then you take that evidence and put it in the public database and see which come up with yes this has been done in the last few years with remarkable success

and really what got me took had me in mind my take the gloves off with the police is we had spent some time with the regional FBI folks there in Denver and got a relationship where we should look this is what needs to happen and if they're the ones that said look the government does not have the latest DNA technology we'll get it eventually but we don't have it we don't have it at the FBI they certainly don't have it at the state level and of course not even ridiculous

to think they have it at the police level they told us that we got to get this DNA testing done by one of these one or two very cutting-edge labs outside and then use this new approach of genealogy tracing and there's a hope that would move this case along to conclusion they went to the bull replaced and we're here to help we'd like to make this happen we'd help you you can take all the credit and the bull replaced blew them off said now we don't need your help

and that was that was the games over far as I'm concerned we got to start when was that how long ago oh it's probably six months ago hmm they're just so people know I had this woman on my

really at the center of this genealogy research and what they do is they take a piece of DNA and we

“already know that the DNA that they found on John Benet has not it did not produce a hit in the”

databases that are available at least as of the last time they told us so the perpetrator had not gone into the system yet but they don't need that all they need is for somebody related to the perpetrator to be in the DNA system so if I were in the DNA system let's say I want to do 23 in me let's see what my ancestry is but ever then if my results got uploaded on this other website that C C Moore uses that that a lot of people who upload the DNA results use

because you get more information from it it's not 23 me it's something related so let's say they're sitting there she can access them she may not you know she can see a lot of things on there and let's say I have a relative who commits a crime that relative's DNA was not going to pop up like the maybe they committed a crime but the crime scene they didn't see him because he didn't he hadn't been arrested yet but mine will and this is what C C Moore she's like all

I can tell you is that Megan Kelly is related to this killer and so I'm going to build this big family tree around Megan Kelly I'm going to figure out who her grandfather what great grandfather look at her husband side I'm going to look at because all this stuff is publicly available she looks they're wedding announcements and birth announcements it's it's crazy great detective work and she gets she gets her man I mean C C Moore's like they saw the case a week doing this

and so if we could take a fresh look at the job in a DNA from that perspective

even if the guy's never gotten into the system from the last time they tested it somebody might

be in the system that could lead us to him that's right the COVID system that the FBI uses the federal database of criminals or arrested felons is fairly small and the states can contribute or not to that database it takes nine markers out of fifteen to be accepted in the database but it's it's of people that have already been found criminal or at least arrested for felonies and it depends on the state what that rule is but it's not a very big database and

what the the public database of the like the 23 and me and way both Janet and I submitted our $35 get our ancestry to that database they find a reasonably you know close match or something at least visit interest of interest and they do have almost a backwards family tree and then they find here's a relative that lived in Boulder in December 20 1926 and then they start looking at that guy or that person and get his DNA and these remarkable success solutions to these

old locations have been using that technique and most of these people were not on anybody's radar they were in the the COVID or the here federal database and the Golden State killer which was I think the first one found this way was a yes 40 year old case and he was retired cop so he wasn't in the criminal database but it was and we're that's where asking the governor to

“make happen I don't care how it happens that's what has to happen and now what he's saying”

John is well he doesn't set anything as I understand it for the Boulder PD they're they're like hey we have great news we're now going to refer this case to the cold case unit and the cold case

unit we believe is going to do better than the other case unit why don't know I've never heard

of this cold case unit why they said we're going to refer to them next year well that could be 12 months for now but I guess you say well it's a little bit worse it's been 26 years what's the hurry and it's a huge frustration for us oh and do you believe that's just a is that just cover was that a C YA yeah yeah absolutely that was put out before I even released the governor's letter which I only released because he never responded I thought that was I would have at least expected

to say well we'll take a look at it or I received your letter good enough still hasn't responded no no and follow up with him yeah and I'm not asking him to you know apologize us for the quality performance of the Colorado justice system I don't I don't want that I just sort of do the

“right thing this is what can be done you need to do it yes well we're going to definitely”

gonna follow up with his office and find out what what is his response and we'll stay on it and we'll

who would be very happy to help me annoy him I would love to admit this one is going to take it's

“going to take of course of the pressure to do the right thing the politicians do is no they”

none of them will do anything unless forced to buy the public and the people of Colorado and the country are on your side they're not on the side of some law enforcement group is trying

to protect its own backside so I actually think we can make progress with this uh the first time

that I have to squeeze in a break all right so to have my John quick break I'll be right back to you after this John um Dylan Howard put together an extraordinary podcast called the killing of John Bony Ramsey and it's a 12 part series in which he took a very deep dive into possible suspects in the case I recommended to everybody and in part based off of loose myths work and the work of his daughter um having listened to all of that incorporated with that do you have a chief suspect

you know it's easy to uh say well that's the guy based on circumstantial evidence in fact that happened fairly early on of uh person was brought to our attention by his girlfriend former girlfriend and had some pretty compelling data that would leisurely hey this this is the guy in fact I said that to our attorneys and I said whoa this is the guy and they said none of them don't do a bolder police honest we can't jump to conclusions and it was a reminder that that's exactly

what happened and that we got to be careful too and um so there's been four or five people like

that that have come up on the radar and our radar and um but it's never been enough evident and

you know private individuals don't do so much that either the authority of the government to really dig into stuff uh and so we could only go so far in some of these investigations and um so these people are still in my mind uh suspects of interest people of interest but you don't mean investigated that's the point one of the things one of the things Lou Smith suggested was that there was that window broken in the basement saw there was a scuff mark below the window

there was a suitcase there which we talked about briefly that wasn't normally there and in it they found a duvet a doctor sussbook and fibers of the outfit jump and a was wearing that night indicating perhaps the murderer might have tried to kidnap her or remove her from the scene in the suitcase but it was too big but that that would explain quite a bit about the crime scene if only we had a talented investigator devoted to following up on these leads the point is

the governor must get involved the governor must remove this case from the boulder PD they must get the fibers and the DNA that is available to a qualified lab and start working with the family instead of against them after all these years and the time we have left um how do you do it because I know you said you've forgiven whoever did this to jambine and john it just seems it just seems like a mountain too high how do you do that well I dealt with forgiveness a lot over the few years

after jambine was killed and now and I've looked back at how I felt and progressed with that

challenge certainly in the first couple of years there was no forgiveness in fact I've told people

if you put this guy in the same room with me and I mean I know he's the killer he won't come on

“life and I would be able to do that with no remorse and that's not right but that's how I fell”

and then I got to the point where I said okay well forgiveness belongs to the victim and I'm really not the victim jambine was a victim so only she can forgive and that's of course not possible that kind of got me off the hook and then I finally realized forgiveness is really a gift to give yourself you released that anger and that desire for revenge doesn't mean you feel sorry for the in our case the killer I still want him held to the adjustable to the count

held your accountability to the extreme level of our justice system but I've released that anger and it still crops up every now and then but it's a benefit to myself to release that and in the form of forgiveness don't want him held staying connected to God helps you know and I'm sure this time of year even all these years later is very tough on you I know you've

“remarried I'm so happy to hear that God bless you John and your family and I think there's a way of”

finding a Merry Christmas you know I hope that you've found that way and I'll be I'll be praying

not even realize you've got to remember what Christmas is for and that's that's reassuring in our case that we know jambine is safe and we'll see you again amen to that take care thank you so much for coming on and telling your story and we'll stay on it thank you may and I really appreciate it wow keep him in your prayers keep their family in your prayers uh that little girls with her mom and now but that we can be painful

we have a very different kind of crime story to bring to you today have you heard about the sacclair family by the end of the show you will you'll know their story well and the story of the opioid crisis in America it's stunning it is devastating and it is indeed criminal I was so moved

“by the recent Hulu series dope sick if you haven't seen this you must you must um that I wanted”

to do a show on it and today I'm very very happy to be joined in just a bit by the author of the book that inspired the series as well as separately the creator of the series dope sick Danny Strong is the director executive producer of dope sick and he joins me now Danny thank you so much for being here you're the creator you're the show runner and let me just kick it off with

you know we're gonna get into it but it's basically about how the opioid crisis in America unfolded

what attracted you to that subject matter uh we'll first off thanks so much for having me on your show and uh you know I'm so thrilled you watched the show and we're so taken by it so it was all a very appreciated it all began when a producer named John Goldwin had who's a really terrific producer he came to me and said do you want to write and direct a movie on the opioid crisis and I had read this New Yorker article by Patrick Reagan Keith that came out in 2017 they basically blew the story

up as far as the the sacchar family's involvement with Purdue Farm a with oxycon in a very

“damning way I think that that article was a major turning point and sort of the history of the opioid”

crisis and who was ultimately responsible for sparking it and setting the flames and then keeping

that fire going for at least a decade if not longer and so I went back and I had reread the article and I were gonna read very closely this time as far as is a potential adaptation or not adaptation but just as is a research and I was fascinated, stunned, shocked, appalled I then went on and got some books that had already been written on the opioid crisis a book called a painkiller, book called Dreamland my horror grew even more and I just thought I have to do this I have to figure out a way to dramatize

the story for as big an audience as I can because this is one of the most stunning crime stories in the history of the country and at the time this was 2018 when I was really deep diving into it and Purdue Farm a and oxycon the prescribing had started to come down in the United States but they were now using their same dishonest, manipulative false techniques advertising techniques

and marketing techniques in foreign countries so when I first started I had viewed the show

as a warning to the rest of the world that Purdue Farmah is coming to lie to you and to a

“dipjuga oxycon so that's sort of what sparked the journey you come by your storytelling skills honestly”

it's funny because when I saw your name I'm like I know that name I know that name and I know you work with Jay Roach who is of course the director of the movie "Bom Shelwich" I have a connection too I have nothing to do with the movie but there was a person playing me in it but that's not how I knew you it was from Gilmore Girls which you were of a well-playing Doyle McMaster and but you've already written several several big movies right game change recount and you you wrote

the Butler you your co writer and maybe producer on Empire as well I mean like a lot of big hits in your past but this is like this is your project so it's got to feel different to you in a way yeah it was it was I knew that I would be doing heavy lifting I had directed an independent film before that had gotten the Sundance which was very exciting but this was on a much much bigger scale as far as creating show running I knew I was going to be directing in the last couple episodes

and it was great to just sort of take the reins of it and partly why I felt like okay this is a

and I was so enraged by what it happens and it seemed like well if you're going to you know I

“from being I always worry I was going to worst case scenario right you know what what's going to”

happen if the whole thing's a disaster and a massive failure and so I thought well if this thing explodes in my face I'd rather go down swinging on something that I feel really really passionate about this feeling is what makes you a success um the they say that there was a Kaiser Paul that said 56% of Americans either know someone who is an addict or who died from addiction I feel like it's probably even higher than that I have someone I've revealed to my audience

that someone in my family my my family of origin fell into the opioid crisis and when a family

member falls into it the entire family falls into it as you know from being the storyteller of the

series I wondered whether you had any personal experience that made you want to do the show I didn't and I'm so fortunate to be able to say that that sentence I don't know anyone close to me that had opioid use disorder I myself have not fallen down any kind of rabbit hole like that uh the rabbit hole I fell down was the rabbit hole of the crimes of Purdue Farma and the culpability of the sackboard family and that was a rabbit hole that a number of people had fallen

down you know when I start talking about this to two different people that have written books on them who may have had a personal experience with addiction or or a family or friends that has but what we all have in common is once you start deep diving into what happens you can't believe it you you can't believe what this company did and how literally a group of I don't know 20 people 30 people from one family made billions and billions of dollars off of the suffering of an entire nation

and you know when you talk about how the whole family gets affected by by this when it happens to to one person it's so true you know everyone talks about the statistics of uh now it's over 700,000 people have died from some type of opioid overdose since the crisis essentially began however that number doesn't even begin to tell the story of the families that are devastated the family members that that lose years of their life of suffering of of loved ones who have fallen into this

and the people that are still alive uh that didn't die from an overdose but are either still struggling with the opioid use disorder or lost years of their life to it and are now just trying to put the pieces back together I mean the sort of um the victims of it continue to splinter on and on and on uh in a way that's extremely profound I know many people think that the homeless issue that is plaguing so many major American cities is heavily sparked by uh the opioid crisis and people

that have fallen into opioid use disorder. No it's so true because even if you're uh one of the quote lucky ones who doesn't get killed by an overdose I mean I I've seen it happen firsthand it changes you it changes a person it can at least radically to where the person you knew is all

“but gone replaced by someone else who's a stranger to you who you have to get to know and who that”

person the hammer herself has to get to know it's just like a new version of you that doesn't tend to be new and improved like these drugs do so much lasting damage and then the drugs you have to take to get off of them and stay off of them can can do damage as well it's just a cycle that even if you manage yourself put yourself out of it it's very hard to shake the effects of it and and the movie and the book and and this whole series of sort of uh research and and writings

about it are an attempt at accountability at storytelling and explanation how did how did it happen and accountability and what I loved about it Danny is when you go through it you don't know you're part of a national story right you just think oh my god something's terrible is happening in my family or to my people and and it would took years I think for most of us who were sucked into it to realize oh my god this was a thing this was a national epidemic and now this is the next

piece which is caused by specific individuals because it was and I I agree with your demonization

of the sacklers who will get into so let's let's talk about the film itself because you basically

the characters are fictional right it's you you know you made them but they're kind they're loosely based yes one really cool summer summer not even loosely based summer just the actual people I mean

“the sackler family I used the real names and then the key prosecutors out of the western”

district of Virginia uh the US attorney there and two of his prosecutors those are real people as well

I wanted to do this sort of on every town USA apple latcha concept to have a couple of people be our victims that represented you know millions of people in that case the star originally in the in the sort of beginning episodes is a young female minor named Betsy played by Caitlyn Deaver who suffers an injury she's the daughter of a minor as well she lives with her parents she's not a drug addict she's not an alcoholic she's a

sweet you know dreamy faced young minor you know it's such an interesting job for a young woman like that sympathetic character for sure and I love that you chose her because this was representative

“of I think the opioid crisis for most people it what these weren't back alley deals these were”

people who were prescribed a drug by a doctor they trusted to treat an injury that was real and then the spiral came yeah absolutely and and partly why I did this approach was because this is where Purdue pharma that was their phase one areas where they targeted which were rural areas filled with people that had a higher prescription rate of opioids because they just got injured a lot

on the job so miners, ladders, farmers those were basically the three areas that Purdue pharma

initially targeted and so it was in southwestern Virginia Eastern Kentucky and rural Maine were kind of the ground zero spots and I chose apple latcha and I chose mining I thought it was very sort of emblematic of sort of our iconic view of how this all began and I just sort of

“want in YouTube videos of different people in these areas on these YouTube videos it's a technique”

I use for research because there's something so authentic about them they're often amateur videos that are just taken by real people trying to put some kind of short subject documentary together about their lives and I was so taken by so many of the miners and the pride they had and what they did and that there was this sort of magical connection to the mountains the blue ridge mountains the mountains and apple latch and you know when I went on a research trip

up there I understood where that connection came from because they're really beautiful it's just this very beautiful part of the country and in very sort of isolated and on its own so it seemed to me oh this is this is a great way into the story and I you know I'm one of the videos I saw this

“young woman who was a miner being interviewed she struck me as someone who seemed like she was a”

lesbian and I thought wow that's really interesting being a lesbian and a very you know conservative part of the country where that may not be as accepted as say it is in New York City where I live and I just wanted to explore these different issues and so what happens when the issue begins her arc begins about her sexuality and what that means to her and her family but it quickly takes a left-hand turn when the drug use completely consumes it and takes it over and that was

so very much kind of the early stages of me putting this together and I do want to throw a huge

shout out to Beth Macy and her incredible book Dope Sick we ended up getting teamed up after I'd

come up with these initial ideas and I read the book and I loved it and Beth has been an incredible part of the project the process she was in the writer's room and her and I kept doing interviews all the way throughout the entire process so she gets a big shout out to Dope Sick author Beth Macy and anyone listening to this if you've seen the show and you haven't read the book yet I highly recommend yeah she's coming up next so they're going to meet her momentarily but she does

get it I mean she she sort of her book is not totally dissimilar from hillbillionity by JD Vance you know it just takes a hard honest and sometimes unfavorable view of Appalachia

and what's happened there and it's not it's not critical of the people it's just there's

joblessness and there's disability claims and there's globalization and there are all sorts of things that have affected this part of the country that gets ignored too often and then people are like how did Trump get in office and it's like well it's it's complicated but it's understandable if you take the time um okay so you've got um she's Betsy is one of our main stars and then you've got Dr Samuel Finnex Finnex right okay I'm just want to make sure I'm pronouncing it right because I

know Miss Sam and that's played by Michael Keaton and I this character is trying to help his community he loves West Virginia he loves Appalachia loves the miners he's trying to help

as so many real life doctors were and it's dazzling snazzy drug reps who were saying all sorts of

things about this drug which is so exciting that they fooled even the doctors which was a critical

“part of their plan yeah a hundred percent I think there's this perception of that all doctors”

that prescribed oxycontin were evil pill mill doctors that were you know essentially leave old drug dealers and those people certainly did exist and there were there were many pill mills and a number of people that had been arrested and gotten massive jail sentences 30 years 25 years however I believe that the majority of the doctors prescribed an oxycontin were not that they were completely well intention doctors that believed what Purdue Farma had told them and even

the sales reps at Purdue Farma believed at least initially the information that they were given

there was basically this elaborate con in which Purdue Farma well I'll start with these independent

pain societies these independent pain societies were creating this new movements that pain has

“been wildly undertreated in this country and that opioids are much safer than we have perceived”

them for decades and that this movement went so far as to to turn pain as the new fifth vital sign so this was a huge campaign that was happening late 80s into the mid 90s into the late 90s right during this whole period that coincided with Purdue Farma coming up with a new opioid that they were marketing as non-addictive which tied into the national movement of yes and opioids are much safer and then these pain societies would put out studies certain doctors would write articles

that would end up in these really respected news medical news journals and it was and it gave this elaborate elaborate appearance that this there's a whole new movement in medication and in pain treatment and what we have learned is that these pain societies were not independent they were

“partially or fully in some cases funded by Purdue Farma the doctors that were writing articles”

were funded by Purdue Farma and in some case the periodicals that these articles would come out and were funded by Purdue Farma so it was like an elaborate shell game a con and then when you go back in time to the 1950s and the 1960s there was a man who basically created all of this this entire elaborate shell game of having having fake studies being written about by doctors on your payroll put in periodicals that are also on your payroll that you would then use that to convince doctors

of whatever you're trying to convince them and this man was Arthur Sackler the uncle of Richard Sackler who was the godfather of oxycontin right so you see oh no this is what the family they've been doing this for the last 50 years this is just their playbook and when they get into that that this is a generational scam I view it as sort of like pharmac rifters there are family of pharmac rifters right and then it goes back generations it gets to be incredibly fascinating

that there's this long history of it and quite devious you know this is covered in the book dope sick but there's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the 50s and the 60s in such exquisite detail I call it Charles Dickens in Hell I mean it's very dedicated and fascinating the entire family history of what they've done obviously the Sacklers in Purdue Farmer are they do not come out favorably in the movie or the book or

life although there their lives are pretty good their lives are pretty damn good but I'll tell you the biggest villain right after them is the FDA and and you will not believe how Purdue Farmer managed to convince all these doctors that oxy content was less addictive that the doctors could feel totally comfortable prescribing it to young minors who may have hurt their backs and so on free form just go for it it's totally safe how did they do it with the help of of a complicit

FDA which the movie exposes brilliantly we have more with Danny after this quick break don't go away so Danny um before I get to FDA Richard Sackler can you help me I love this actor Michael is it

stole barge stole barge okay because I always see it written and I never hear it spoken

he's I loved him in boardwalk empire he was totally brilliant in that series um he was in

amazing at being a villain so he plays Richard Sackler and Richard Sackler what you learn is

“more than any other Sackler and that's saying something is hugely ambitious he's incredibly”

driven and he's also very smart but he was determined once he created this baby oxy content because a patent on another drug they owned was running out Purdue Farmer and they needed a new star in the Purdue Farmer family and oxy content was it so he was determined to make sure it got marketed out there that the that the sales were exponential and here's just a clip from the movie this is sound bite one of Michael stole barge as Richard Sackler listen board doesn't seem

to understand I'm trying to make this a blockbuster drug which I can't do without more sales reps Dr Richard with all these new sales reps we won't even have enough doctors for them to target I am this is about to release a 3.0 version that tracks daily prescriptions instead of quarterly so if we double our sales force we can use this data to target doctors prescribing the Lord

tab and vicar in and flip them to oxy common the upgrades are million dollars

you know who created the IMS database Arthur Sackler it's been kept secret for years but this is a family invention that we sold off years ago and now you're telling me we should deny all this data that only exists because of my fucking uncle purchase the upgrade and increase the sales force thank you and that's exactly what they did and that sales force went out there and did his bidding in a way that was pretty sickening it was pretty gross yeah absolutely I mean

“first off thanks for all your compliments for Michael's performance I think he is unbelievable in this show”

and it's funny he plays all these villains in person he's literally the sweetest guy you'll ever meet and yeah he's so sweet and Michael Keaton and Caitlin D for both give staggering performances they were actually just nominated for critics choice awards for their performances I was really excited just incredible group of people so I just want to give my love to them and my entire cast who I think I think it's amazing you know what are the things that marijuana

ham she was amazing too pardon marijuana him amazing she plays back to his mother I'd be a cmon's marijuana ham she's unbelievable right everything she's great and everything yeah yeah and Rosario Dawson too is just you know she's that Rosario Dawson plays the badass DE agent who will not be shut up she just is like she's a dog with a bone and while everybody's like shut up go away Purdue Farmers very powerful in rich she just doesn't give she doesn't give it

them just continues on not having it not having a and a real cool person too but so the one of the things I really wanted to do with Richard Sackler right is he's so demonized in everything you read and so despised by so many people and then I was able to interview a number of people than new him and worked with him and they seemed to hate him even more that people that you were taking a different turn they were yeah he's he's not like the most loved individual when you

know him one-on-one and what was important to me was well what really made him tick what's really going on here is it just money because it's hard for me to believe that it's just money because he's already rich there already rich before oxycontin even existed right so I went on a deep dive to do everything I could to try to figure out so what makes this guy tick and I went to the

extent of I did a therapy session where I roleplayed that I was Richard Sackler I never done anything

like this before in a friend of mine the really successful screenwriter and his wife is a therapist and he had done this with her so he was like why don't you try doing a session with my wife where you roleplayer Richard Sackler and it was incredible to try to get under the skin of this

“person and I think that I think you know a stool bar did a great job of that as well and that”

there's some really interesting layers to what's happening here you know he grew up with this famous uncle that we discussed earlier and he I think he desperately didn't want to be a dilatant he wanted to prove that he could succeed on his own and what he ends up doing is he ends of succeeding probably beyond anyone's wildest expectations and maybe the most successful person in the history of this family as far as the revenue that he brought in but that drive to succeed

that it brought to this country and if you were to point to one individual most responsible

“for it I think the blame has to go directly to Richard Sackler and I think these many of these”

books that have been written they they backed that up by this isn't you know my own my own conclusion it's sort of the historical record at this point yeah I think Beth Macy's going to say that too that it's not that oxycontin was the only drug being abused during the opioid crisis but it was

certainly patient zero if you well it's it was the the biggest and most important and most effective

in widespread and the way they did it is indicative of how how many problems there were with the system including the FDA so the FDA they're supposed to be on our side that's supposed to be a government watchdog that looks out for the little guy but in the same way so many people have been distrusting many government agencies over the past 10 years or so this agencies on that page too because they weren't looking out for the little guy they looked out for Purdue and in particular

a guy named Dr Curtis Wright at the FDA well you want to you tell us what they did for oxycontin

and then what happened to Dr Wright? This story is it's one of the first jaw droppers of the

opioid crisis origin story when you start to research it so one of the most effective tools that Purdue Farmah had in marketing the drug and getting doctors to feel comfortable that this opioid was less addictive than other opioids was because the FDA granted them a label that said that was the case it was an unprecedented label that essentially said that this drug is less addictive then other opioids and so a doctor seeing this label being told this it was a major part of the sales pitch

well that's going to really make them feel much more comfortable trying it besides that elaborate

shell game that I talked about earlier this is what takes it over the edge in a very significant way

and the wording of this warning label was highly unusual it's a barely make sense it's a little confusing it says you know it's believed oxycontin is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug because for the time release system is believed to reduce the abuse liability to believe believes by who

“who believes it you know negative do you believe it do I believe it I mean doesn't even say who who believes it”

and so when you scratch the surface so how could this unprecedented label that that gave them a blank check to say that the drug was less addictive well how does that come to be well clearly there were studies that were done that showed that was to get no there were no studies it was the time mechanism was able just just this time release system convinced the FDA of the case well what happened was the guy that approved this label Curtis Wright he goes in 18 months later uh gets a job at

pretty farma for $400,000 a year I'm guessing he was making about $100,000 a year at the FDA so the appearance of corruption is so staggering I'm I'm still feel like there needs to be a major investigation into Curtis Wright and the failures at the FDA and and real change they should not be

“allowed to take jobs with big pharma within 10 years of leaving the FDA yeah and I think that's one”

of the reasons why I thought this story is so profound because it goes beyond a criminal company and it goes beyond the dishonesty of a few people it ends up tying into the very broken nature of our government's relationship with private industry and then if someone could have a job at the FDA in which they are directly um overseeing uh pharma companies and then they can immediately go work for those pharma companies the revolving door uh you end up with situations like what happened

here and I think that it's not even just Curtis Wright but the FDA stayed really lenient on Purdue pharma for many years sighting with them over and over and over again and how could Curtis Wright's massive salary and in job not have some sort of influence on these future decisions where people are working at the FDA thinking either a there's a job for me at Purdue pharma when I get out or be a job at a consulting company that can be hired by Purdue pharma or in some in one case a

person was put on a board a tough university that Purdue pharma was in charge of that board right and it being put on these boards but that's really helpful for the person's career so there's all sorts of goodies to be had for your career your future your pocketbook by playing ball with Purdue

can uh not enable someone to oversee their warning label and then go work for them. Right.

“It's obvious it's so clear right when you spell it out what happened just as a uh is a”

compliment to all of this uh reporting and discussion 60 minutes to the piece uh not long ago taking a deep dive on all of this it was in 2019 and they interviewed a whistleblower from within big pharma he this guy himself was a big pharma kind of guy he was selling drugs I mean legal drugs

his name is Ed Thompson and he he was telling 60 minutes that when oxy was first approved in 1995

it was based on science 1995 is a very first time we've met oxycon it was based on science that only showed it was safe and effective when used short term okay but it six years later in 2001 pressured by big pharma and pain sufferers the FDA made a faithful decision and expanded the use of oxycon to just about anybody with chronic ailments anybody with chronic ailment like a back pain our threat is good now use it and and 60 minutes got their hands on a court order

“uh that would demand the production of the documents it showed there were secret meetings between”

the FDA in which they bowed to Purdue pharma's demands to ignore the lack of scientific data

and change the label to you can use this around the clock for an extended period of time Ed Thompson said it opened the floodgates it was the point of no return for the FDA they were in bed under the covers naked next to the sacklers for the duration and as you point out now not just because of oxy but 700,000 Americans are dead I mean yes oxycontin and other opioids did help some people we should point that out but but those in charge knew it was also extremely deadly

and they denied it every turn yeah an oxycontin has real there's there's some real good use for oxycontin and opioids severe pain cancer pain post surgery treatment it's very effective for it but Purdue pharma had already had a drug MScon the did that and they knew how much money you could make by having a drug force of your pain for cancer treatment for post surgery treatment and it's a pretty small market but by opening it up to chronic pain and here was the other

element to it it wasn't just chronic pain but moderate pain right because it's now non-addictive it could be used for all sorts of ailments like wisdom tea surgery migraine headaches or all sorts

of things that an addictive narcotic never should have been used for and that combination of

that and using it for chronic pain which meant you had to be on it on an ongoing basis you know opening it up the skyrocketing of addiction and overdoses and I will put another there is another category two of people which are people with severe chronic pain that had been able to effectively use oxycontin to treat their chronic pain that now can't get access to it either so so now there's like another set of victims because of the dishonesty that occurred in the marketing and

information of this drug the other the other villain inside of Purdue pharma in the addition to the other sacklers who were 100% on board with this drug they were just worried about how much money it would make they weren't worried about people's health from from the sound of it was the drug reps now the drug reps are the people who go out to the doctors and try to convince them that this is a great drug and that they should prescribe it to all their patients and the the film does a great job

of showing people the pressure on them by their top guy to push push push we're making bigger bigger pills of oxy more and more oxy in each pill the answer if you're starting to feel with draw is not lex oxycon it's more oxycon that's your body telling you you need oxycon and the

“drug reps I mean basically they were told do whatever you need to do push push push push like you've”

got to get not necessarily people hooked but you've got to push this drug and you've got to sort of convince people to push it no matter what you have to give them trying to look for the exact sound bite we have oh is it is it sought to okay let's ensus it's not to make your doctors feel special get dolled up take them to expensive theirs offered to fill up their car with gas just to get ten minutes to pitch it bribe the receptionist with a many pay so you'll let you in the office

but you have to get to know your doctors which is why we will give you full psychological profiles

divorce get them laid whatever it takes to win their friendship and their trust

“um they were important really important oh yeah they were very very significant part of the process”

and what Purdue did they did a couple things that was very clever and very devious one was

they were the it was the first time where in selling a class two narcotic where people's bonuses

were tied into the number of milligrams that they sold oh my god one milligrams that they sold the higher the bonus they got then they also went out of their way to not higher people that had a background in opioids or in narcotics because one could argue uh those people would have been suspicious of the claim that it was less addictive uh than other opioids and I interviewed a number of uh Purdue pharma reps uh former Purdue pharma reps and there's been a lot written about them

and the the sort of the theme that comes up frequently is they believed what they were told

they believed the studies but then at a certain point it becomes clear to them that it's not

“true and I remember I asked one of them I said what was the moment what was the moment where you”

realized oh there is something very wrong with this drug and he had a he had to remember the exact moment of what it was he said it was when he pulled up to a pain clinic and it looked like a tailgate party out front if there were a massive amount of people uh grilling meats uh hanging out beer it was like a giant hearty outside of a pain clinic when everyone was waiting to go get their oxycon so they were definitely culpable at a certain point even though Purdue did go out of their way to try to

to trick the pharma reps as well hmm well yeah I mean if they could be sincere and earnest in the

pitch so much the better right if not everybody has that acting ability right like like the people in your cast most people would have to actually believe it in order to be effective at selling it the the series is a great job of painting the relationship between Michael Keaton's character this well meaning West Virginia and doctor um and one of those sales reps this the character's name is Billy Cutler played by Will Polter and uh Billy is sort of this he's a fresh face kid who's trying to

make it and you get a good salary and so on and he starts off believing in the drug uh and you sort of see that that change over time and his relationship with Michael Keaton is very good and that changes over time and even Michael Keaton is touting the drug as a doctor to his community early on in the film saying you know trust me that you guys these are good people I know you're good

“people and yeah come by pain honestly and I'm gonna help you fix it honestly and by the end of the”

movie there's a tumultuous exchange between the Michael Keaton's doctor character and this Billy Cutler character the drug rep where you can you can feel you can feel the deterioration you can feel the crisis that that they are in that the nation is in um it's sound by nine no no sorry for for giving me it's uh yeah it sound by eight um take a listen what's that that's all this is so poison that's just poison no doctor yeah yeah it's poison I can talk you through a doctor

that's all in here these are good hard-working people these are good hard-working people you have the label that's done anything in here you don't understand I can talk to you okay you're feeling yourself as an audience member by that point in the series yeah yeah no I mean that was uh I remember when I was writing that scene and and uh it I hadn't planned on him punching him uh and then I wrote the scene and I felt like it didn't

capture the true rage of what this doctor would be going through and so I rewrote it with him punching him and it becoming the sort of melee that it turns into and there's a number of moments throughout the show that are in many ways my rage uh in my anger in some of the dialogue that people say it is very much a product of of the anger that I have about what happened and there's something you know I feel so fortunate that I'm able to express that anger to millions of people in the

so do you get it out of your system is it are you are you released like in a therapeutic way and I said no

but it does feel that it does feel good it does feel good it's a temporary release I can relate for my job too frankly but I appreciate outlets like you it's like yours for helping me do it without having to be firsthand involved in it so what happened what happened to Purdue Farmer look what happened to this company to Richard Sackler that's the part that outrageous Danny the most from what I read and that's we're gonna pick it up right after this quick break uh on where they are now

“and remember folks you can catch the Megan Kelly show live on series XM Triumph channel 1111”

every weekday at new needs and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel youtube.com/megankelly if you prefer an audio podcast go subscribe to ours it's doing really really well thanks to all of you you can subscribe and download on Apple Spotify Pandora stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts for free and there you'll find our full archives with more than 220 shows now it would be a good time to ask you what dopsick means I just sort of blindly started watching

it not even asking that question and then it gets explained in the series it is a thing what is it yeah so um dopsick is the condition one feels that has an opioid use disorder the with draw pain they feel that is so severe and staggering but they feel like they're gonna die if they're not able to get their next fix of of some type of opioid um and it's it's so all all empowering all overwhelming people will turn their back on everything

in their life to not get dopsick their family their children their jobs this is how people end up you know moving under a bridge in a tense uh is because that would drop pain uh overwhelmed every sense of of of their body soul etc and and um it's one of the the deviousness the diabolical nature of opioids when you become addicted to them is that they hijack your brain they change your brain chemistry right so this the sort of the uh the stereotype or the

perception that many people have is that someone who's addicted to opioids that they can't get off their weak their baby lazy and they just want to get high their losers their junkies it's a lot of judgment but when you dig into it what you learn is oh no their brain has been hijacked

“and they cannot live without it and that's what makes it so uniquely difficult to overcome”

opioid use disorder and uh and that's one of the word dopsick comes from yeah it's all it's another word uh is it's like they're kidnapped they've been kidnapped by this drug the real person and it's so hard to get them back no matter how much the ransom you pay so the the series takes us through the progression that um one of the characters has and that the country has as well which is past oxycontin the next drug of choice is heroin it's sort of the gateway to heroin

and then in in more modern times uh illicit fentanyl which is where we are now uh this is what people are dealing with currently and um it's incredibly hard to get off i'm talking to you sorry to go ahead you know what are you saying oh i was just saying fentanyl is so dangerous literally

“one pill can kill you i mean that's how that's how severe and dangerous this whole crisis has become”

yep so the progression happens for one of the characters and and it happens for the nation too and the meantime you're asked uh you're shown the the effort by some law enforcement agency mentioned the West Virginia prosecutors um certain people at the higher levels of the federal government were on

the good guys side and certain people were not uh it's never fully explained what was happening

but we're led to believe that Purdue farmer had connections even there the hired Rudy Giuliani he knew how to work the government is at the height of his popularity right after 9/11 and he tried to work his magic on produced behalf used his good name on there we have which is just oh hurts um and ultimately the the civil lawsuits and finally the the criminal prosecutions against Purdue farmer got us where Danny well the criminal prosecutions so that's one of the

show ends uh the season basically ends around it's in 2007 which is a settlement that Purdue farmer has with uh the US government uh three executives plead to misdemeanors um and does from this

settlement and which of the company pleads to a felony 600 million dollars and fines so is this

no in fact and this is where for me I start to think that these people are sociopaths because they have had this massive investigation against them they have played guilty to a felony there is so much data at this point in 2007 of of overdoses crime rates communities devastated I do they change their ways do they make any sort of adjustments no they hit the gas and they sell even harder and they triple their sales in two years and like I said that's where I

start to think oh oh they're they're literally so scared past where they they just do not care they don't care about any of the damage that they're causing they are just trying to make as much money as possible so then that brings us now to to 2021 in 2020 low and behold they

have to plead guilty to two more sets of felonies and instead of 600 million dollars and fines

it's 8.5 billion dollars and fines partly this settlement was because they blew off the safeguards of the 2007 settlement uh the company goes into bankruptcy they end up getting this very favorable

“judgements in which the sacrifice family will pay out I believe it was 3.5 billion dollars and fines”

however they are now immune to all future civil litigation however here's where it gets a little interesting for very interesting depending on your point of view is that they are not immune to criminal liability and they could still be prosecuted the sack or family and there was a big rally outside the justice department just a few days ago uh filled with activists filled with uh Rick Mount Castle the real prosecutor who we dramatized in the show was there a gave a speech I actually gave

a speech there were three former uh US uh three former justice department prosecutors giving a speech to push the justice department to file criminal charges against members of the sack or family

so this isn't over and now the common belief has always been amongst I don't know who but that

“this will never happen if it will never be charged however there is a push now I think the TV show”

has put a lot of attention on it and given it some momentum and it's really involved in the activists who threw this rally uh and supposedly there's going to be a justice department meeting in the next week uh with uh the lawyer for these activists and some of the activists and they're better they better meet with them because literally Purdue Farmers certainly has met with the justice department many times uh so I would think these activists should be able to get this meeting

but so there is a push right now for criminal charges there is a huge sense amongst these activists the justice is not been served the company just not like guilty to free families but no individuals have and the company didn't make these decisions individuals made these decisions and sackler the sacklers paid money toward that bankruptcy settlement of Purdue but they still have plenty of money it's not unlike the FTN case with justice on the wrong side for a lot of years

and now getting it right Danny Strong thank you so much for being here and for telling this story and all the best with it uh thank you so much Megan I had a great time uh talking about this with you so thank you so much for having me here uh all the best take care uh best uh the journalist who wrote the book Dope Sick Beth Macy don't don't go away welcome back to the Megan Kelly show joining me now Beth Macy journalist and author who wrote the book Dope Sick which was

recently adapted into the TV series that you've been hearing us talk about but thank you so much

“for being with us today I I loved your book and I love your work and I think you have this”

sage ability to see things that the rest of us can't necessarily see so we're lucky to have journalists like you thank you that's the truth I mean you you saw something here when it came to these small distressed communities in Appalachia and similarities that were in all of

these towns and then similar ways of dealing with the problems so first can you just describe

sort of what were what were some of the problems they shared that sort of preceded the opioid crisis so one of the the factors about where the crisis first broke out was the fact that Purdue Pharma bought data that showed them which communities were sort of right to be exploited by their products that is they picked the communities in America these tended to be

factory making coal mining logging fishing so you first see the the the crisis break erupting

in places like southwest Virginia west Virginia rural Maine because Purdue knew that doctors in those communities were already prescribing competing opioids that at a higher rate and with their FDA label that we now know is quite in question they went out and they tried with the reps they tried to flip the doctors from prescribing per cassette viking and lower tab to oxycontin which they said we'll say for because of this continuous release mechanism and they got they they got the

doctors to flip thanks to that FDA insert which was completely bought and paid for by Purdue Pharma to the great expense of really lower not even I mean maybe lower to middle in come Americans to begin with and then it's spread in spread spread I know you write about a study that took a look at the the life expectancy of people in these regions and how like the difference between the bottom fifth in terms of income and wealth and the top fifth in income and wealth in this country

is huge it's something like a difference of 13 years in life expectancy and so these people really they they've been overlooked by a system that has been focused on globalization that's been trying to kill coal and no one's been paying any attention to them and then Purdue Pharma did and managed

“to manipulate their very doctors to sort of turn on them without understanding that's what they were”

doing right and that was a real double whammy if you've already lost the majority of your jobs

some of the communities I was reporting on from my first book factory man which came out in 2014

which is about the aftermath of globalization as I was wrapping up that reporting I was starting to hear things like we've got a heroin crisis in Martin'sville, Virginia we're talking like a tiny town about an hour south of me here in Roenard, Virginia and I didn't understand it at the time nor did most journalists that the oxycon story was so related to the heroin epidemic story because they're basically chemical cousins and when the drug start to get harder to get more expensive around

2010 2012 you and I may have not have known that oxycon in heroin were chemical cousins but the cartels did and so they bring them in and start converting people to heroin because it's cheaper it's easier to get and they know that one's fear of becoming dope sick that is this excruciating feeling of withdrawal that they all say is like the worst flu times a hundred really is one hell of a good business model and can you explain what the cartels which we already

know are evil due to the drug in order to make sure the clientele gets hooked and keeps coming back well first they just I remember the story from a young woman named Tess Henry that I followed for dope sick and she could pinpoint the month that the DEA started cracking down hydrocodone

“products had been up schedule I think it was like 2014 and she said all of a sudden she couldn't get”

the pills on the black market from her dealer and so he personally showed her how to snort heroin which you think heroin yuck you know if you're her which she did at first but really if you're snorting in a line it was just the same as she had been snorting the pills and once because of because with opioids you you need more and more in order not to get dope sick um then when the snorting the heroin didn't work her dealer taught her how to shoot it up and then you know times

times a million across our country that's the way it went down and now we have fentanyl poisoning

the drugs supply because it's smaller, more potent and easier to smuggle in. See in the book you write about how they would they'll sort of pack the initial dose with some extras and you get this big high and you love it and then you come back and they lower the dosage in your next your next delivery so then you start to get the feeling you you need the next hit sooner you pay more you know and it's now they've got you I mean now you're now your a customer for

“life is heroin a lot cheaper than oxycontin and I mean obviously you don't get a prescription for it”

so you just get it like on the streets but it's more accessible and it's cheaper. Absolutely it's a lot cheaper and forgive me I don't remember exactly how much it's going for

with cocaine that's lace with fentanyl MDMA drugs and these are so much easier to get

“on the black market than the treatment the medicines the medication assisted treatment that”

science says is the gold standard of care for treating people with opioid use disorder I mean that's it's so much easier to just go out and get dope again rather than it is to be treated like a human being with a medical condition in our healthcare system and so you get hooked on something like oxycontin thanks to Purdue and its fancy marketing skills and its manipulation of the FDA and doctors and its own sales reps and then when you either run out of money or the ability to get more

prescriptions once the government cracked down on these you know pill pushers then where are you

because you're still addicted and you can't get your drug anymore so you turn to heroin or your turn to fentanyl and you have a high likelihood of dying I mean that's the thing so we didn't solve the opioid crisis by cracking down on some of these characters no absolutely or nor did we solve the opioid crisis with by reducing prescriptions even a lot of people thought that would you know help with overdoses because and maybe it does help with not starting new cases but for the people

“who are already addicted that force is long out of the barn so that's why we need to make”

these addiction treatments and modalities so much more accessible than they are yeah well we'll get to it we'll get to the treatment just a little bit but the the book also the series based on the book does a great job of showing you how it can corrupt your life and how it can corrupt the life of somebody who is innocent you know who who is well-meaning who is not I don't know you know how it is when you grow up at least in the 70s you talk about people who got addicted to drugs you

think of somebody who was kind of dirty kind of a dirt bag you know like gross who does drugs that's not what happened with the opioid crisis and and one of the things I love about

“the storytelling because it accurately represents that you know whatever moms daughters you know innocent”

high school kids the getting sucked into this the path in the movie of the the main star takes us uh her name is Betsy played by Caitlyn Deaver takes us to a really low moment when her parents figure out she's she's still on drugs she's she's been they've tried to get a rehab and she's still on drugs and if you've ever had an addict in your family you've been through

something like this because they don't get clean right away first time they try you go through

this over and over lies and sneaking and cheating with more and escalating to other drugs and it's captured powerfully in what we have labeled a sound bite nine watch - Hands off of me. - Wow, damn fat. - Oh, no, you see me, shuffling. - Oh, oh, right, you stole it.

- Your mom's precious heirlooms for this crack. - Huh, get her in there. - Yeah, yeah, that's it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - What the hell? - What the hell? - Don't let me go. - Don't let me go. - Don't let me go. - Don't let me go. - Oh, no, no, no, no. - I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. - I hate you, sorry, I hate you. - Oh, my God, it's upsetting to watch. I mean, it's upsetting to watch because it's too realistic. And I know you-- - It's too realistic. And I've heard from parents who have been triggered by watching it, who are on Twitter warning, other parents.

I mean, this is such a common story. Folks like this stealing from the relatives, you know, they've been stigmatized and made to feel ashamed.

So they're too ashamed. I mean, I was talking to somebody at the rally just Friday night who works with families and Massachusetts.

“And she said, people will still call her, and they're dealing with it in their family, and they'll want to meet her four towns over from where she lives,”

because they're so stigmatized by the hoax that the sacklers did on families in America, stigmatizing the wrong people. - The thought of the doctor telling an innocent patient who comes in there, earnestly seeking the treatment of pain. And the way they pitched oxy as non-addictive and totally safe. And first they'd give you, you know, the small units, and then when the small-- and they were supposed to last, they were supposed to last overnight, even.

And then people said, well, they're not lasting. I need help. And I produced said, well, let's call that breakthrough pain.

And the way we're going to address that is with-- get-- take a guess, more oxy-content, and then they kept making the pills bigger and bigger, and even the initial dosages given to the patients would be bigger and bigger. And all I can think watching that scene is, you know, imagine saying to a patient who came in for a minor back pain, just looking for some relief. I'll give you this drug. It will turn you into a bomb. You will become a human bomb that will blow up your entire family, your life as you know it.

All of your loved ones, you will turn you into a thief, into a liar, into a felon, and possibly into a dead corpse. Here you go. That's-- that's the warning that these drugs should have had on them. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I say this to physician's groups, maybe not quite that forcefully as you've making. But I will say that, you know, 5,000 of you went out to fancy resorts courtesy of Purdue Pharma and learned how to become good prescribers of their drug. They took gifts. They took fancy dinners. And, you know, when journalists aren't even allowed to take somebody out for lunch, right?

And any of these doctors that make a lot of money already are taking these free trips. They'd be coming paid speakers for the company.

“And what I say to doctors is, "I know you were lied to, but you helped get us into this mess, and you need to help get us out."”

And what's the answer to that? How can they? So we know that not everyone responds the same to addiction. We know that person with heroin addiction, a typical person, it's going to take them five to six treatment attempts and over eight years to get just one year of sobriety. So that's one thing as we have to get realizes this is a chronic relapsing disease. We know the bubonorphine and methadone, which people call MAT for medication assisted treatment, reduced overdose deaths by 50 to 60% or more in some cases.

But that also, it's really important to get people housing and social supports and counseling along with this. These are all things we don't do very well in this country as we see the homelessness, rate, skyrocketing. And, you know, many of the young people that I followed in my book ended up in prison ended up doing sex work, living homeless. I mean, people who were doctors, kids, people who were civic leaders, kids, wealth didn't protect anyone in this case. In fact, because of the stigma attached to wealthier families, in some cases, it made a worse.

People would send their kids away to these abstinence-only rehabs, spend a fortune for them, water-middle-class families would re-morgage the homes to send them to exactly the kind of treatment that science doesn't really work for opioid use disorder.

“And you see that in the key in story when he's there, I forget if it's ex-epsut six or seven, he's like, "Hey, you've been back here a lot," right? And rehab and the guy says, "Yeah, five or six times."”

And he says, "But it worked. It worked for me finally." He says, "Well, were you alcohol?" And he says, "Yeah, alcohol."

So we know that the rehab works better for abstinence-only modalities, work better than for opioids, which you really most people need the medication-assisted treatment. See, that's another thing that we didn't know when going through this, right? Like, I remember being one of the, like, you know, you got to go cold turkey. You got to let this person hit rock bottom. I don't reveal who it was in my family because I don't have the permission of the person or the person's other family members. But, you know, I was of the mind of, like, tough love. You know, you can't keep picking up the pieces.

You can't give this person the home that they lost because of all the lies and all the drugs and all the bankruptcies. And you can't do that. You know, like, let them deal with the laws of natural consequences.

That's absolutely right. And I saw that over and over and over again. And it's still happening, you know, parents are sort of beating their heads against the law. And they're being told, many of them are being told that that's the way to do it.

“I tell the story of this mom in my new book, Raising Lazarus, which comes out next August, who had this critical moment where she knew her son was going to die if he didn't get help.”

And her best friend had a teenage daughter who had cancer. And she said, I'm going to treat him the way Lisa treats Amelia. I'm not going to just kick him out of the house. I'm going to feed him.

If he comes home and he's high, I'm not going to engage, but I'm also not going to be cruel. And then we're going to have a conversation the next day. And I'm not giving up on him. And she says, now he's he's six years into sobriety. She says her only regret was that she hadn't approached his addiction like the medical condition that was much. It's so hard that she's a strong woman because unlike the cancer patient, this patient is lying and cheating and stealing and bankrupting other family members.

“And you know, you're angry with them, right? It's like how you have to check your anger because what you really want is to solve it. You know, you don't want to just punish.”

It's not about retribution. It's like, I want this all to stop and the way to stop is your friends approach, but men, it's hard. You're right. And then that's up your Christmas dinner and you're Thanksgiving dinner. And and they hurt and they when you love everyone you love. Yeah, yeah, I will not forget with with tasks was the young woman I followed the most in dope sick. She would disappear and live homeless and that she come home every now and then and the last Thanksgiving they had together. She had hurt her sibling so much that and they were very much kind of had come up in top love that they were just done with her. And even though she made the whole meal. She did all the shopping and her mom just sent me a picture the other day after Thanksgiving. She goes remember this it was Tessa's last. She called it the thankless Thanksgiving. She made the whole meal and no one thanked her.

And you know shortly after she had another breakdown and you know she went back out in the streets and you know I know her mother wishes she would have acted sooner with love. And she now says, you know, rock bottom has a basement. The basement has a trap gore. I wish I knew now what I knew then what I knew now. It's a good line. Coming up we're going to talk about how the system is not positioned not at all to help people who find themselves addicted to opioids get out of it and get their lives straight and clean.

“In to the contrary it's built. I think to keep them down and it does a really effective job but it will pick it up there with Beth Macy coming up right after this.”

So Beth just to take a step back. The book does a good job of explaining how we we've had some shifts as a country. This isn't the first time that we've been my guess dope sick.

And you talk about how one of the things that struck me the book was that you talked about how they used to. It was I'm looking at my note here in 1899. Bear bear as in bear aspirin was cranking out a ton of heroin a year and selling it in 23 countries.

And you write that in the US cough drops and even baby soothing cerebs were laced with heroin. So this is in the late 1800s. We were given heroin to our babies.

So this kind of comes about as the result of civil war war wounds and women who had lost their families and heroin is actually introduced by bear. As a cure for morphinism, which is doctors would give morphine away along with needles to patients and have them use them as needed. And of course, just as then even though then it was much a lighter dosage than the heroin we have certainly of now is. People would need more more. And then when the Harrison narcotics act came along in 1914 outlawing most of the black market uses of the drug people then went to the black market.

And so that's when there became this dichotomy between legitimate white market users who were prescribed and so called black market users.

And yet Purdue managed to flip the narrative, not just for oxycontin but through the pain societies that they funded a lot of and through things like the joint commission which they had a role in you know things like consumer surveys where patients would you know give a hospital a bad thing you say that playing out in the show when our character Randy is in the hospital first prostate cancer.

“And just they just shifted that narrative right away and it all blew up again.”

So in other words just to add to that you're saying because this is portrayed in the film the movie too that if you go to the hospital and you have a negative experience and you give them a bad rating because they didn't address your pain that hurts the hospital. And so they there was a big push started by oxycontin to Purdue to get doctors and nurses on it if you feel pain there's no more like just dealing with it and there's no more like alright well let's titrate it a little bit you know it's given why not why not more why not more oxycontin and if you're worried about it here's the special FDA label it says don't worry about it.

But like there was a consumer is response to this pain problem that the hospitals had to worry about because they are after all businesses.

Absolutely they can lose the ratings they could lose reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid if they didn't treat a person's pain.

“And still today I was at the ER with the friend not long ago you still see that rate your pain scale with the smiley faces one to ten. So there are still elements of it although I think most doctors or nurses or much wise are about it.”

And one of the things we've done since you know the mid 90s the mid you know to to the early odds is we've gotten around the problem of doctor jumping right I don't know what the technical term for it is but.

I get a prescription from doctor Smith for oxycontin and he fills it but he knows only to give me 30 days worth or one back then they were giving a few refills.

But then I go to doctor Jones because doctor Smith's not going to give me any more when I ran out of it after a week.

“And I get one from him and then I get one from this this other female doctor you can't do that anymore right I'm technically that's supposed to be able to do all the states now have their call PDMP's prescription monitoring programs.”

I think only one state is a hold out, but you see Michael Keaton doing that at the height of his addiction he's because he's in the corner of far south west Virginia and it's just a half hour drive to get to Tennessee in this way to Kentucky this way to west Virginia and they would really take advantage of that and you also see in the show this idea that.

Oh, they're cutting down they're cutting back on prescribing at home but people wouldn't rent their hands to drive down they called it.

What did they call the pill billy express or the oxycontin express they've drive down to Florida which had which had no restrictions at the time and you would see these strip mall office setups with doctors prescribing with without hardly even doing exams and they would be running pharmacies out there back. door but sometimes in like the equivalent of a food truck you know because you can get rich as a doctor. You can get rich as a doctor by doing that and by the way one of the things that's happened in the news recently just a couple weeks ago was.

Judgment of liability against CVS wall greens and Walmart for their role in the opioid crisis their pharmacies and a couple of other ones like right eight and another had settled so they were also swept in. In just indiscriminately filling all these prescriptions when and more than just talking about mild abuse but in abuse of these drugs that should have been obvious to any pharmacy. And yet they turn to blind eye because they too made a lot of money off of this absolutely that's right and what you have now and every time I do an interview all here from the chronic pain community.

And they're angry because a lot of folks who are actually on stable dosages of legit pain medications are being abandoned as well and so you see some of those folks either suffering and pain or going to the black market and getting heroin lace with federal or committing suicide. So that's a concern too, but but that's directly because of the actions of Purdue making it so over prescribed to start with that it's it's hard to set out for some doctors who's legit and who isn't but so just just a nod to the fact that you know there are other unintended victims of this today and I hear from them a lot.

No, I'm sorry the executives pleaded guilty to mismet demeanors they were on probation for a few years they had finds the company made it and then the holding company not Purdue pharma rather but Purdue Frederick pleaded guilty to a felony. Now if Purdue far out would have pleaded guilty, I mean their lawyers were so ahead of everybody else on this they they couldn't only knew that Purdue pharma wouldn't be able to continue to sell oxycontin if it had a felony so they did the deal with the holding company Purdue Frederick.

“And by the way none of those executives was last name sackler it was all three other guys. And if you talked to the activist now because Danny and I were just with a bunch of them on Friday at this rally on December 3rd.”

They didn't even know the name sackler back then and think about that like you know you've got all these museums and wings and whatnot but back then if you went to the Purdue pharma website you wouldn't even see the name sackler on anything they were very clever and as word that these lawsuits were coming up. So how did they come back you know we were just talking to Danny about how they I think tripled their sales within a couple of years they went forward the sacklers and Purdue like nothing it ever happened.

Well a lot of the the government regulators that should have been monitoring their corporate integrity agreement I mean corporate integrity agreement there's the very phrase like is this kind of laughable when you see how they just continued to do what they were doing before and in many ways.

“That's what they said and up their sales Richard Sackler personally went on sales calls at least one time that we know up and they hired McKinsey to double down to sell sell sell and.”

We didn't have we don't have structures in place to to make sure that the proper checks are happening such that in 2020 the company.

So that's a kind of fraudulent behavior and in between those two times I mean I don't when would you say we became aware that of the opioid crisis you know we as a nation had the national consciousness that this was a thing.

“15 the Nobel winning economist and case in Angus Deaton wrote about was a bombshell study was on the cover of time magazine deaths of despair.”

I was going down largely due to opioid overdose alcohol was in related diseases like cirrhosis of the liver and to suicide but by far the biggest of those three factors was opioids you had Sam Kannoni's book Drainland came out in 2016 I believe my book came out in 2018 and then the lawsuit started happening and a lot of those. So the the suits ended up over 2600 lawsuits were brought by cities and counties and state governments they ended up in the multi district litigation under the direction of judge post or in Cleveland but Purdue was able to.

And then the rule there case out by filing bankruptcy and where did they filed bankruptcy not in a location where they actually conduct business but they filed it in the jurisdiction of a bankruptcy judge named Robert Drain who is known for being. I think it's an opportunity of judges who allows what's called a third party release which so it's like a bankruptcy loophole they filed in white planes because they know drain drain is one of the few judges that allows the sacchar to attach to get civil immunity from further litigation in exchange for their settlement.

And it's an issue because the sacklers individually were not filing for bankruptcy they're billionaires just Purdue farmer was but they wanted to sort of go on to their company and say oh and no lawsuits against us and no more criminal no trouble for us of any kind.

Now they can't be so if you take that 10 point four and then you let him pay off the four and a half over nine years by the way they have nine years to pay it so with investments at the going rate they could be richer at the end of the nine years than they are right now I mean where is the justice in that.

“They're clever I mean that's definitely something we saw in all of this they're clever one of the things you point out in your book and I think it's good to is a couple of very famous deaths you know sometimes.”

I don't want to say these people were used you know by a higher power to sort of underscore the dangers of drugs to us but.

You point out the book Philip C. Moore Hoffman's death I mean this incredibly promising actor who was just stunning when he died Prince died I mean both of them swept up in this same crisis that we're talking about and sometimes seeing somebody that famous and talented. Seeing their life cut short can really be I don't know I get your attention and it focuses you in a way that can be productive. Yes it's a wake up call and as I think somebody in the book said nobody wants to tell Prince that he has an opioid problem right so back to this idea that wealth and power can protect you from this.

You know advocates for our own medical treatments yep so then it morphs you know from oxy to the heroin scene and you write in your book about how this is like the suburban heroin scene the young teenage girl heroin scene would shock people. Can you talk about that because it's hard to believe that you know young cheerleaders are doing heroin but they are. Yeah and of course not all of them but right you know I'm like you and I growing up in the 70s and 80s. You know when kids would experiment with alcohol or weed you know maybe some mushrooms or something I don't know but but you talk about kids that grew from the 90s in the odds they had pills at their disposal because Purdue had massively.

Talk doctors and to massively over-prescribing these drugs so a kid could just experiment like the way a kid in years your would have done with alcohol or marijuana but only now they're they're they're using a much more dangerous.

And so I mean actually I was just at a premiere event here in Rona with the first person I ever knew who this had happened to and he was a young man.

Who in the Spencer mom power and when I first met him he was from a wealthy family his mom was a civic leader had a chain of jewelry stores and he was about to go to federal prison for five and a half years for having sold heroin to his former private school classmate who died. I spent the summer hanging out with him trying to learn about this nascent cell of heroin users in the in the wealthy lights suburbs of road oak and he said. I do don't the one that told you what the word dobsick met and I was like you're absolutely right.

“I didn't know what it meant then but I remember him describing how if if he said if you don't man wasn't coming to you know for three more days and you only had this little.”

So this much left you would parse it out so that you would still have a little bit at the end because the the driving fair of all of it was this fear of withdrawn this fair of dope sickness. Of course this like any addiction is more likely to affect you if you have a parent who is an addict.

Your book points out that I think you have a 50 to 60 percent you're 50 to 60 percent more likely to become addicted if you have a parent who is an addict.

You know there is of course as with any addiction and extra special red warning label to people who have that in their family. But there is a treatment and we talked about how you know the version of AA doesn't work so well for the opioid addicts but there is a treatment called suboxone. That that does help now it too is considered a controlled substance right it.

“Like an opioid it's an opioid so it will show up in your blood if you want to do a job that test your blood before they hire you it will show up.”

And it will show up as suboxone and then they'll know that you're on that drug which helps you get off of another. So you've got sort of an opioid in your blood which is helping you get off of probably a more serious opioid and boom bobs your uncle. I mean these jobs aren't going to hire you that's that's a real problem but that drug seems to be very much part of the solution to this crisis. Absolutely it's protective and they're going to have a buponorphine in it which is the opioid that kind of gloms on to the opioid receptor but it also has.

It's not going to work for that and so it is protective in that way and you see in our show.

“The way the Michael Keaton character is stigmatized for being on it and he said it's it's what's keeping me clean I've never felt clear than I have in my life.”

You see Betsy go to the AA meeting and be told that she's considering going on it but somebody says to her you know that's just treating a drug with another drug. And this happened over and over to the young people that I was following from my book and it is a real problem especially among law enforcement people who have seen it diverted and sold.

But I would argue and many experts argue that the reason it is so widely diverted is because it largely isn't available to the people who need it so there is this this big market demand for it.

Only one in five people with opioid use disorder has access to it so that's that's something we know it works we know it's it's it's it's dangerous to go off of.

“And so we're going to be able to do that.”

And so we're going to be able to do that and we're going to be able to do that. You know even when they're on a small amount when they go off they some have relapse and so he's very very cautious about it he only does it when a person voluntary want voluntarily wants to taper off but it's something to be done with all caution. But he I mean he does have some amazing success stories as do all MIT doctors I mean the thing about law enforcement is they only see the bad side of it the people breaking the law side of it they don't see the people who are getting jobs back getting their kids back.

I think it requires need to see that drug and maybe have a different reaction instead of seeing like oh drug addict and they've got an opioid in them now it's no someone who has actively taken steps to change their life and you can find out for how long they've been clean and been on it. And you're not taking opioids in addition to suboxin if you're taking suboxin but you know to me it's just so frustrating because you see Beth you know it's like you these companies they get you addicted they get you addicted to their drug your life spirals.

So many of these people wind up committing crimes whatever whether shop lifting or something with cars what have you because they're desperate you know selling drugs buying drugs.

And now they have a criminal record then they get on suboxin which is the way out for a lot of them then they can't get a job because they've got that in their blood which is a tell so now you. You know your employers are looking at somebody who's got a criminal past who's got this drug which is a tell who probably doesn't present all that well physically because they've been an addict for all this time. And it's an impossible spiral to pull yourself out of you need so much support so much love so much understanding from your family from society from employers from law enforcement from the judicial system and from we didn't even touch the story of expanded Medicaid and I you know your your book is really smart and I love people to read your arguments for Medicaid expansion.

Yeah, just number one tool for reducing overdose deaths in in various states, but we still have 12 states that haven't expanded it right.

“Yeah, because I think it may be tough love, but it may just be cruel and a way of stopping people from getting out of a really good situation.”

Right, and as this opioid litigation money as the funnel start as it starts to funnel down is so important that states and communities get together people who really understand the science. And aren't just, you know, spouting off this tough love crap, which isn't working and is starting to meet people where they are we know that people who visit needle exchanges. I know that sounds counter on intuitive why you're going to give a drug user a clean needle well because they're going to use. Regardless, until they get real help, so you can make sure they use safely and that's going to cut down on the spread of hepatitis C and HIV, which is skyrocketing in some communities.

Yeah, no, I know there are also five times more likely that enter treatment when when they go to a needle exchange. Oh, and on top of that, you've said it's cheaper to pay for the needle than it is to pay for the disease, the treatment of the disease they're going to get from dirty needle. So it's like societies in, we're in this, whether we want to be or not, and the only question now is what, what is the smart way of dealing with it.

I'm grateful for you, Beth, thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Megan, really appreciate it. Oh, the best. Annihilator, it's a term you may have heard recently during the Alec Murdoch trial.

“The prosecutor, even asking Alec directly, if he qualified as one, do you remember this? Watch.”

Are you a family annihilator? A family annihilator? You mean, like, did I shoot my wife and Macy on? Yes, no.

It would never hurt Maggie murdered. I would never hurt Paul murdered.

Under any circumstances. Say that. Of course, the jury rejected that assertion, finding Murdoch guilty. Afaitly shooting his wife Maggie and his son, Paul, Maggie was 52, Paul was 22. And he's not serving life in prison.

Murdering those close to you is an unimaginable act to most people. But Alec Murdoch is not the first or the last to kill his family. He's one of many in a gruesome group of family annihilators.

When I heard that term in that trial, it got me, I never heard that term before.

And I'm in the news business. We cover crime a lot. It's a thing. It's an actual thing in criminology and those who study it. And it's just extra, right? I mean, murder is terrible under any circumstances.

“But what kind of a person can kill their entire family or a huge portion of it?”

What makes a seemingly well-liked successful man, these are not all derelicts. In fact, they tend to be successful people. Blow up his life in this manner, kill the people who are supposed to be most important to him. What kind of psychology makes you do that? How do we recognize this potential in a mate, a man, a partner? Today, we're going to do a deep dive into the motivations and the psyche of these individuals.

We are also going to discuss what can be done to prevent this kind of violence. What are the warning signs? How do you know if you are potentially with somebody like this? Joining me now to dig into it all is Laura Richards. Laura is an award-winning criminal behavioral analyst and expert on domestic abuse and coercive control. She also hosts the popular podcasts crime analyst and real client crime profile.

Laura, so great to have you here on the show. Thanks for being there. Thank you for inviting me. Good to speak with you, Megan. Since he used that term in the Murdoch trial, Creighton Waters, the prosecutor, I've gone down a dark rabbit hole. And I know you've been there for years studying these people and figuring out what makes a family annihilator, what makes them tick. And I have since watched everything I can get my hands on about, I've already, I'm already there in Alec Murdoch.

But on Chris Watts, who murdered his entire family in Colorado, a few years back in 2018, his wife is two beautiful daughters and the most disgusting awful way. And then started picking up the case of Jeffrey McDonald, which I have covered over the years as a journalist. But this is guy back in 1970, and you could go, I mean, you could pick so many cases, unfortunately, these are just the ones that got my interest. And Jeffrey McDonald was a very successful surgeon, green beret, who was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters as well in just the most brutal fashion.

And the thing about these three cases, Laura, that jumped out to me, the reason they pulled me in, is because all three of these guys were super successful, you know, on paper. They were doing well, like Chris Watts wasn't rich, like the other two, but the other two, and well, I mean, Jeffrey McDonald wasn't rich either, but he was gone and because he was a surgeon. Just accolades, professional success, very well-liked. No one would go back and say, "Oh, yes, yeah, you could have seen it coming." The opposite. So let's start with what it is, to define for us what makes one a family annihilator.

“Well, I think we have to work on the basis. If you understand what domestic abuse and domestic homicide is about, the motivation is power and control.”

And that's really what the perpetrators are seeking to achieve. They want power and control, and they're trying to control the person or the people and the narrative.

or I've even heard a perpetrator described as being good at DIY, and the media tend to utilize a memorialized perpetrator, which makes it harder for the general public to really understand how it happened. Actually, when I door knock and speak to the grandparents and those who have survived, and I've done that across my 27-year career, I find a very different picture emerge, and the picture is always the same, and that's of a man, because we are talking about men. This is very much a male related issue.

“A man who wanted to coerceively control, and coerceive control are the keyhole marks, and what we should be asking about rather than physical assaults.”

And I want to tell people just a little bit more about your credentials, because they are impressive. Founder of Paladin, the world's first national stocking advocacy services survivor. I don't really love that term, but as somebody who has had a very bad stocker who went to jail, and then a mental facility for 10 years. He was a serious case. I appreciate what you do. There aren't enough experts like you. You also created you mentioned dash, the domestic abuse stocking and honor-based violence. Risk identification assessment and management model, which was implemented across all police services in the UK. The dash checklist is credited with having reduced domestic murders by 58% in London across 13 years. So you know what you're doing.

You are a true expert in all of this. And it's all kind of related, you know, the stocking, the domestic abuse. This is not an indictment of all men. This is an indictment of abusers.

And helping both men and women recognize the science, because you may be a great guy who never abused anybody, but you might have a daughter who a man like this comes into her life or a sister.

You know, it could be a friend and so men can be advocates of women in the situation as well, even if it's not them personally. Absolutely. And thank you for sharing your own experience of stalking because it is important we do talk about it. It's why I created an advocacy service because a lot of victims don't get the support that they need the psychological and emotional support that when they're trying to survive something and being in mind when I tend to work with people they haven't survived it. So I agree with you. Survivor is the wrong term, particularly when someone's going through it.

And trying to ensure law enforcement understand the behaviors without everything that Paladin is set up to do and changing the law to make sure the laws reflect women's lived experience when they are subjected to abuse.

“And that's a really important part of my work. And ensuring that men work alongside us because yes, it takes all men to help with changing and challenging and holding men to account when they are abusive.”

And that's when they're sexist, misogynistic. These are the types of mindset and the types of behaviors that we want people to be challenging because it can lead to much more serious things happening. When a man feels that they are not getting their way or they are being disrespected in some way or they feel that they're control, they're losing their control over someone. Well, that can be when something catastrophic occurs.

And too often, like I said, when we ask the right questions of grandmothers and grandfathers and it might be brothers and sisters and when I ask them the questions, I always see a pattern emerge.

And like I said, the media are often report on things and they just do a very cursory look at what's gone on and they may talk to a neighbor who might turn around and say, oh, he was a lovely dad or he took the children to the sweet shop.

“And yes, he was a really nice man or he was fearful that he'd lose the children and that's why he killed them.”

And then this narrative goes in the media and the newspapers and that's what people then take as what's gone on. But it's a really dangerous narrative because often times the warning signs are there and women can be framed and really blamed for something that's happened to them.

And I'll give you an example. There was a recent horrific murder in the UK, incredible woman called Emma Patterson and her 70 year old daughter who were killed.

And the media, first of all, reported on three people who died in Epsom, sorry. They didn't say how, but there was a whole load of media, social media traffic about, was it carbon monoxide poisoning.

And they said it's an isolated incident. So from all my work, I always hear police say that and that means that it's domestic violence related.

That's the code word and it's not an isolated incident because it's a pandemic of women being killed. And it turned out they were gunshots heard just before the emergency services turned up and George Patterson shot them both dead. And the male had put an article together and the headline was because she was a very successful headmistress of a school in Epsom.

“Did her overchieving and putting him in the shadow? Did that lead to this tragedy?”

And I wrote on the headline and fixed it and said no, he did this all on his own because we very quickly get into excusing someone's behavior. When it is unacceptable, this was something that he planned, premeditated, but the dominant narrative then is in the media that perhaps she's to blame and she's framed intentionally and that she's to be blamed in some way. And for me, that's just unacceptable. I've seen it over and over and over again, and it gives a very force narrative of what's gone on. We can do that when it comes to divorce, right? Was she overbearing? Was she difficult to live with? Was she okay? We're not all perfect. We can't do that when it comes to domestic violence.

No annoying, negative, unfortunate behavior by the woman justifies domestic violence of any kind. Absolutely not. Well, if you follow the narrative through, what does seven-year-old letty do? I mean, I can't even imagine the fear and the terror that she must have felt understanding that, you know, was mom killed before her and she watched or was letty killed first, you know, that fear and terror for a child to know that they're not safe and they're unsafe, something catastrophic is about to happen at the hands of the man who's meant to love and care for them.

And these are the things the places I spend, you know, my time and my mind working out what's happened, but also the psychology.

“What makes a man become this way? Because the vast, vast majority of men are wonderful, beautiful human beings just like women and would never hurt a woman that they love her in their life at all.”

In fact, they would want to hurt a man who did that, but there is an unhealthy contingent and it's always, you know, I mean, it's not always, but it's just,

I grew up in the '70s and every night on the news, there were stories about the serial killer killing all these women. And it's always like a series of women who get killed by these weird men, something's gone wrong with them. So, what is it? That's in their background that makes these guys be able to succeed in life, able to be well-liked, but instead of being a loving caring husband, they go this route. Yeah, so I background is in forensic and legal psychology, so I have spent a lot of time in the psychological research and analysis and the psychopathology of men who kill.

And I will say they're not all homogenous, so we can't say it's all for the same reason. Specifically, context are different, but what I can see is what is the thing that really is the motivator is this need for power and control. And that power and control, well, you know, I'm going to mention the P-word, the patriarchy, because we all live in the patriarchy,

“where laws and systems and processes have created by men, foremen, and that's why women have a very tough time,”

because our lived experiences aren't included in laws, for example. So that's why we're having to change laws on stalking and on coercive control. So it is this overriding need to have to control things, to have power over. And Megan, you mentioned serial killers. I mean, it's all the same thing, right, because men who harm women in their significant lives,

as in women who are significant to them, can also harm women who are not significant to them. And this connection is one that I made at New Scotland Yard by Profiling Domestic Violence rapists. And a lot of time, profiling 450 of them, looking at them and doing a psychological topsy backwards of who are they and what do they do. You know, the first five years of my career were trying to identify the serial rapist, the serial killer, the serial perpetrator who abducts children.

And the one thing I found in their background consistently was domestic abuse and coercive control. So these things do into connect and Dr Robert Hare who created the psychopathy checklist. He in 1993 his research showed us the 25% of domestic violence perpetrators are psychopaths. And I would expect that to be far higher as a figure now.

And when I'm training police and others, I'm always talking about psychopathy because we don't screen enough for it.

So there are unfortunately many psychopaths who we may have relationships with. And they have this need for power and control and they have no empathy, they have no remorse.

I mean myself and I, the narcissism.

“So that's what I see as the inter, you know, the thing that interconnects that law enforcement”

are trained well, this is domestic violence here and these are domestic violence perpetrators, this is child abuse here, this is sexual violence here. And they're taught in boxes and categories, but that's not how offenders offend. So the more that we understand the traits of psychopathy and the more that we screen for it and that we take domestic violence perpetrators. Seriously, and we see it as serious crime and we hold them to account and we challenge their behavior, looking for coercive control.

Then we start to get into proper threat assessment and risk management.

Can I just say, so a couple things, it actually used to be the live, I was criticizing Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Trump for having said this.

As recently as 2007 or eight, saying the law is you cannot rape your wife, that is not true in the state of New York even as of 2007. But at one point in our history, it was true. So not so long ago. Not so long ago. Not so long ago.

Actually, I mean, they don't protect women in the way that they need.

“Yes, certainly when it comes to murder, but on domestic abuse, no, on stalking, no, I remember in my case,”

stalking the requirements were I was going to have to, I had to appear in person. I wanted to make this complaint against my stalker who was dangerous, who was already a felon, who had was trained in weapons. There was, and the number one rule of dealing with the stalker is don't deal with the stalker. Don't talk to the stalker, don't have interactions with the stalker. Anything you have will be perceived as a yes.

And I was like, they were wanting me to show up in court and deal with them. And I'm like, you got to be crazy. And I've talked to so many domestic abuse victims who have the same requirement. There's no way they want to show up in court with the husband who's been beating them behind closed doors and doesn't want this to become a known thing at all. And I have to say publicly, it's absurd. Yes, and that's everything the stalker wants. They want you to be in that courtroom. And the same with the domestic abuser, you know, that parent control and being able to see you terrified and have that parent control over you.

“And this is exactly why every legal process be at court. You have to have special measures that reflect women's experiences.”

And by the way, and you know this, but laws that protect us at the point of murder is too late. You know what I've been trying to do is prevent murders in slow motion. It's the what happens before that we get in and we early identify intervene and we prevent so that we don't have, particularly in America, four to five women who are murdered every day by a current or former male partner. That is a stark finding and yet most people don't even realize how bad it is. But it's just increasing and most people don't know about the family annihilators or familiar side, and obviously what's reported in the media is what people pay attention to.

So we've got a long way to go, but a lot of my work in the UK has had some, you know, very good results. Unfortunately, in law enforcement, you can bring something in and the leaders sign up to it and then they move on and someone else comes in and you get this constant cycle and churn of staff. But it is important to have these conversations about coercive control and stalking and there is a lot that we can do to early identify intervene and prevent and a lot of it comes from listening to the victims.

But the problem with a lot of abuse victims is they, of course, like when you look at the situation, you think, oh, and I, I used to be one of these people, if he hit me, I'd be gone. But I'd be out of there one, one hit, but it doesn't happen that simply. They, they build the control over the woman over time, they love bomb you, they, they come into your life, this wonderful man. So the woman falls in love with this seemingly wonderful person, sometimes marriage, the seemingly wonderful person.

And then bit by bit, the erosion of the woman, her autonomy, her independence begins and you make the small sacrifices first.

Only later, do they turn into the big sacrifices and eventually, in many of these cases, it turns violent. But by that point, the woman is so lost versus where she was a year earlier when they met, et cetera. She's that she does not have the same power or resolve or confidence or just strength that she once had. They're very, very effective manipulators, these abusers. Yes, and you use the word the manipulators. And, you know, this is a very, it's a behavioral regime, really, when we're talking about coercive control, that a perpetrator will use to make someone fall in love with them.

So the love bombing that is a strategic campaign to make someone fall in love with them, the gas lighting.

So the charm can happen, the victim can feel that they've met the right person, this is the love of their life. And that can be a chemical reaction too, the endorphins, the dopamine, all of these good chemicals too, so that we mate with somebody. So there is this thing of crazy love when somebody is love bombing us. We want to feel special, of course we do. And then we start to spend more time with that person.

And then gradually we may become more dependent on that person. And that can be a strategic campaign. The setup can start from day one when we meet the perpetrator. And then once we are in, we tend to be in deep. And so it's, it's very conflicting and it's very confusing.

And we think that we, we love that person. But oftentimes we don't really know who they are, because they're also forcing intimacy very quickly. So the whirlwind relationship that happens. So I often say to women and girls who I meant to slow down, enjoy the honeymoon period, get to know that person in every situation possible, get to meet their family, their friends,

“understand exactly who they are, what, where's the rush, why jump in?”

And I always say intimacy takes time to build.

So some of the warning signs there, if you've got someone who's trying to push the relationship very quickly, who's making these grand declarations of love, like John Mehan did to Debra renewal. I want to die in your arms. I love you. I want to be with you forever.

He says on date number two and three. Well that's forced intimacy. And that's not authentic. It's an artificial and superficial thing that's happening. So slowing things down and really taking our time to get to know somebody is really important

and not giving too much information away about ourselves. You know enjoy the courtship. That's what I always say. It takes at least a year to really get to know someone. But the coercive controller can be very good at bringing their A game to manipulate.

“And it can also seem very plausible as well.”

But once they've got you under their control and once you are, you are dependent upon that person and normally they isolate you. They want to take you away from your mom and your dad and your best friends. So once you're isolated, you're very much within their monopoly. Your perception is monopolized by them.

And actually by them and who studied prisoners of war, the eight principles of what he saw, what happens to someone who is being, who's having their autonomy in their agency eroded, is he's put together these eight principles of the charter coercion. It's exactly what I see.

You overlay it with the victims of a coercive controller. And it's exactly the same traits that you see. So we should take it seriously. And some of these men are psychopaths. And they've learnt their trade craft very well.

Hmm.

I always say like, look around.

Okay after a year, look around. Do you still have friends? Are you still in touch with your family? If not, why not? Like take a hard look back. So yes, okay, if you fall in love, you prioritize the other person.

It's this mad like, oh, I only want to be with him. Okay, but most normal people do not want to steer you away from your family. If I'm reasons for you not to take the trip home to see mom, to divert the phone call to or from mom or dad, that none of that is normal.

That's the beginning. Yeah, so healthy relationship is very much. And I might sound a bit LA woo woo here, but it's very much about opening someone's world up and helping them reach their full potential. If you genuinely love someone and care for them, you want their world to be bigger.

You want them to experience everything in life. But what I see with the course of controllers, they do the opposite. They shrink the victims world down. They want to micromanage a microcontroll every part of it. And they don't want other people interfering like the moms and the dads and the best friends.

So they shrink the world down. And it's actually much more about what they're taking away from the woman. And it's an un-freedom that happens. Because yes, the victim might not be in shackles or chains, but they're invisible chains.

“So what are some of the questions to determine whether you're looking at the course of control?”

Well, we'd never ask someone direct.

Are you being coercively controlled? Because it's a very new term. But what you're trying to understand is whether somebody has their own autonomy. And freedom to make their own choices. So, you know, and do they feel safe to make their own choices?

I could they just go to work or could they go and see a friend without having to check in with their partner? Can they decide what they want to wear? And what they're going to eat? And when they go to the gym, or are they under micro surveillance? And every detail of their lives is being regulated by somebody else.

And there's a fear of consequence if they breach any of those rules that are being put in place by the Abuser.

I what you can eat, who you can see when you can see them.

How you dress, how you have your hair. If you have a job, then maybe you're only allowed to interact if you're a hairdresser. You're only allowed to cut women's hair, not men's hair. These are all the rules that I've seen laid down for victims. So you're really trying to check on somebody.

Have they got their own agency? Have they got their own autonomy?

“Have they got freedom to make decisions about their own life?”

And how they conduct themselves on a day to day basis?

And normally with the victims, it's the smallest things that are so insidious that they're not allowed to do.

Or there's this un-freedom where they have to check in with that other person at all times. Even if they go and see a friend, they have to take a picture to show where they are and who they're with. Or like with Oscar Spastorius with some of his previous girlfriends. He used to make them take a photo of themselves, wearing their pajamas to prove that they were sat at home. I've even seen a perpetrator say to a victim, they have to flush the toilet at home so that he knows that they are at home.

And they haven't left because the toilet had a very specific sound. And these are all the micro rules and regulations that you're trying to understand is, is that how somebody's having to live their life? Are they isolated? Are they closed down and closed off?

“Even if the victim says it's how they want to live their life?”

Well, as human beings, we like to interact with people. So even when I hear someone telling me that, I know that there is likely coercion there. But I am not long ago was at a social event where they were serving or derves. And this particular husband said to his thin, in shape, wife, who was grabbing an ordurf. Do you really think you need that?

And it was just made my skin crawl. Because it's not, yes, it's rude to suggest this thin woman, you know, to monitor what she's eating at all, thin or fat. But it, to me, it just telegraph there's way more there. That if he's doing that in public in front of me and others, I can only imagine what happens behind closed doors. So there are these little red flags even for us outsiders with our friends.

Yes, and often times we don't pick up on those things, right? And, you know, even if a victim were friends with someone and then they fall off the radar, we think, well, maybe it's something we've done rather than actually, are they being told not to speak to Laura? And they're not allowed to speak to me, but we tend to look inwardly first. It's probably something I've done, so I'm not going to overstep.

Where I always say to people, check in with your friend, just see how they're doing.

Don't think it's something that you've done, ask them about that comment and how it made them feel. Because oftentimes we isolate the victim even more by not asking them that question, but yes, that is red flag behaviour. You know, it's up to us as adults to choose if we want to eat something or not, we don't have to check in with someone. But just showing that seed and corraling, you know, that seed and someone's head, well, maybe I shouldn't eat this. And it's like a closing down of someone and making them second guest themselves.

And before you know it, these little behaviours become bigger and a victim doesn't even know which way is up anymore. They've got this reality distortion, they don't know what they like anymore, and they can't make their own decisions.

“And Laura, I think an important point too is that this can happen to any woman.”

I know, you know, some women think, oh, I'm too well educated. I am too rich. I come from too good a family. I have too good a support system around me. It can happen to any woman. It can, and what I'll say is often times these individuals are attracted to very strong women. So, you know, that can be a barrier for someone sharing their experience because they say, well, everyone thought I was such a strong woman.

I had it together. It couldn't possibly happen to someone like me, but it does. It can happen to anybody. There's no particular profile when it comes to the victim. And yes, I think we carry these stereotypes in our head about the type of person that will suffer and be subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control. But there is no type, but with the perpetrator, there is more of a psychopathology. It is about the needing to control things, needing to have things their way.

You know, and some women were telling me, they have to win at all costs. And these are some of the key things that when I'm listening to women describe what's happening to them, they have to win at all costs. It's their way or the highway, you know, for them, it's no way at all. And it ends when I say it ends, and we will live together as man and wife until I decide otherwise. That tells me really there's only one person in the relationship.

not a ton of this relates in my mind to Alec Murdoch or Chris Watts or this guy, Joe McDowell.

And we can outline the details of those second two cases.

“I mean, I think most people at this point understand what happened with Alex Murdoch, but in case you don't, he was just found guilty of murdering his wife and his son, his 22 year old son.”

He shot them both, shot his son, Paul in the face, shot his son's head off, was the testimony. Shot his wife Maggie at least five times, it was a painful death. And was this very well respected attorney, fourth generation, money, law, his whole family events, the solicitors in this so-called low country in South Carolina. And that means like the chief prosecutor. So they really were the law and he had a decent amount of dough. We'd later found out he was on drugs or so he said had tons of money problems, he'd been stealing all this money from his law from his son.

So his life was imploding, but just on paper, the guy looked like he had it all together. And while it's in a whole trial, there was no allegation of domestic abuse. There was definitely outside of the trial and allegation of that he cheated on her. That did not wind up in front of the jury. The sister of Maggie, the murder victim, said that she was happy. She said, you know, they had the problems, but she was happy.

So you know, it wasn't, there was no evidence of a controlling personality when it came to her, I guess. I mean, you'll tell me, but, and then the son, of course, I don't, this son had gotten him in trouble. The son had been driving the boat and his fatal boat crash that killed a 19 year old girl, Mallory Beach. They were being sued for it was really upending Alex's life, but I just, let's start there. Do you see cause occurs of control in the Alec murder case?

Yes. And the clue is in the fact that he controlled everything. Their family controlled everything that name in that region is a very powerful name. And we mustn't lose track of that. They created the laws they were the law, right?

So he always got his way.

And that's a very important point. Because when someone always gets their way, they don't have to be ready to upset about something. Because they can just control things through their power, their personal power, but also their family power. And just looking at what happened with Paul and what a horrific situation with Mallory on the boat. And I first just want to say, you know, she really is the primary victim, the first victim.

And that Paul put the boat into gear having assorted his ex girlfriend and assorted her in front of everybody. And that was the first time that others saw that he was abusing her. Well, where did he learn that behavior from of abusing her multiple times. It was a whole history. He was 22 or he was younger then. But he was abusing her.

And she gave testimony about horrific abuse that she suffered.

Well, where did he learn that from? And he's in touch with him. She's now in a special talking all about it. I saw it too, it was chilling and it was repeated. And horrific abuse and I applaud her for speaking out.

But I don't think the apple force far from the tree. And he's learned that behavior somewhere in his name. He calls his granddad up and his dad and they fix everything for him. So there's no accountability, no responsibility taking.

“And that's what that family have been doing for generations because they were the law.”

And people were scared of them. And I'd spoken to people in that area. They've told me this themselves. So we mustn't forget the name and their wealth. And what that means to what they can have power over and who they can have power over.

And here you have a situation where Paul and that particular civil case. Well, all of that was coming home to Roost in that the accounts were going to be audited. And they were part of that civil trial. And they had been requested. And Alec had also been challenged by the chief financial officer for to the tune of $800,000 going missing in legal fees.

And he was challenged about that. Right? So his world is starting to unravel Maggie had left him. She was living in the beach house. She wasn't living at Mozilla.

So there's separation. And we know that with separation 76% of murders happen at the point of separation. And when Alec had actually messaged her to say, I want to meet up with you. She had text her sister saying, I wonder what he's up to. You know, he's up to something.

“And that's why she goes to meet him up at the Kenos.”

But there were rumors that she wanted a divorce. There were rumors that she had a forensic accountant coming in. And things were unraveling. And therefore he is now in a situation where he feels like he's losing control. With that, can be a catastrophic set of circumstances for a man who is a lawyer.

Someone who's very good at reading people and situations.

And up until this point has not gotten to trouble.

“But I believe he was trying to control the situation and the narrative.”

He was trying to control Paul. And he was angry at him, hence the injuries. And crime scene assessment. We look at I look at how someone's killed because that paints a picture. The way that he was killed and the way Maggie was.

And he was the one that was there at that time. That was proven through Snapchat through the videos that Paul took him and Maggie talking. So he lied about being present. But he was there. And he lied about whether he checked their pulses or not.

He didn't have time to check their pulses and he had changed his clothes. So this to me is somebody who is very controlling, very manipulative. And of course, there are 99 charges that are still outstanding. The financial charges. So for me, this is a, and I don't like to use the word classic.

But it is a classic domestic violence murder. And yes, there's there's money issues and so on. And it was unraveling, but it's got all the hallmarks. And you know, in terms of psychopathy traits, where they will seem to be there, particularly lack of empathy and

remorse and responsibility taking. Yes, well, let's go there because this is what that this, I don't get it. I don't get how because they showed the family videos of the birthday parties. And everyone seemed to really love him. His kids seemed to really love him.

He seemed to show love for his children as well. I don't know that he was in the running for father of the year. But there was testimony that they seemed like a very loving family. It wasn't outwardly at least perceived by anybody who took that wouldn't stand as a damaged dysfunctional family in the sense of abuse or in that sense.

So what it does when you're looking for doesn't sit back in total. It is to the point that we've been discussing for 40 minutes. But what makes a man who I'm just going to say that he did love his son Paul. I don't know how he felt about Maggie. But I'm going to say he loved his son.

I don't know. Maybe he's not capable of it.

“How can a man who does love his son shoot his head off?”

Like that one day, you know, seemingly out of the blue.

Well, my first question before we get to that one is why was Paul drinking to such excess?

You know, a kid who's drinking that amount of alcohol to blot stuff out, tells me there's more that's going on. And I don't profess to that. So to the point, can I just say no one's asking that? That's like all the coverage I have done of this case and listen to of this case. No one I have yet to hear anybody ask that question.

That's a very good question. Because he wasn't just drinking to socialize. What's he was drinking to absolute excess that his friends said that this Timmy character came out. This very angry abusive drunk. Why was he drinking to that level and why were his family letting him?

That tells me a lot. And if I were to go in and ask questions, I think I'd probably uncover a lot. Well, a different story and an narrative to this happy healthy family dynamic. Because there's nothing healthy in a young boy not taking responsibility for his actions and a grandfather and a father who are just happy to sweep it all under the carpet. No matter how bad, no matter who gets injured and hurt.

You know, there's very little empathy or care for anybody else other than them. It's all about circling the wagons and protecting themselves even when Mallory died. And I do think that that is the biggest fear and threat for Alec Murdoch is all of it is unraveling and it's about the reflection on him.

He wants to do what he's always done, which is circle the wagons close everybody down.

Shut everything, take their voices away so that no one says what's really gone on. But it is all about to come out in a civil case, particularly the forensic accounting. So it's all about to be laid there.

“And I think that when someone feels they are at that stage and the psychopathology for someone like him, where they're about to lose everything.”

As he sees it, he's the most important person. And he's eliminating the problem and their problems are poor and Maggie because Maggie's there. So it's all a means to an end, which tells me that there's a high probability that he would score highly on the psychopathy checklist. What kind of questions are on that list? It seems like an interesting list to have like a few of your first date.

Well, they are not. I do indirect assessments of perpetrators. And particularly when we talk about psychopathy because one of the traits is a pathological, that they're a pathological liar, right? So you wouldn't want to rely on them. Well, if I was there for a poor, because they lie. And that's everything I've seen about his, yeah, his behavior, right?

And superficial charm, that's the first trait that you ask about, where somebody has a gleab sense of charm. It's not really who they are, and charm is very much a manipulator. It's a choice. We're not born with charm. A grandiose estimation of self, so thinking you're bigger and better than who you really are, pathological liar, prownness to boredom and impossivity, manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of responsibility taking, shallow effect and superficial emotional response to things.

So oftentimes, the emotional range is very limited.

“So with family annihilators, that's what I tend to see.”

Their emotional range is limited. Paracetic lifestyle, sexual promiscuity.

So if there's infidelity, I'm always very interested in that.

When someone's in an article, the cases are three that I mentioned Murdoch Watts and MacGal. And it's often they want what they want, and like with Chris Watts, who's in a relationship with Nicky. And lots of people blamed her, we're actually it's his behavior, it's his actions. Even though what he did makes no sense in terms of a long-term plan and perhaps we're get to that. Because psychopaths, in fact, I'll say it now, but psychopaths are very good in the moment, but they're not good long-term planners.

And they have early behavioral problems and lack of realistic long-term goals. So that's what I was talking to with good in the moment, but not very good on a longer term. Can I just jump in and ask you a quick about one you said before that shallow effect? What do you mean? Yeah, so again, it's a very superficial sense of a reaction to things. Because they can be comedian-esque.

“So what they tend to do is mimic other people, particularly when it comes to empathy.”

So they will describe things like Chris Watts did. He said, "I was bullying my eyes out." Well, you're crying, tell us the emotion of that crying, not describing the crying.

And when he first interacted with law enforcement and they appeared, everything was shallow effect.

There was no, he described having emotions, but he didn't show us the emotion. So there was no sign of him crying. This reminds me of a show I did when I was in NBC. I call out the mothers of Sparta Show, it's a long story, but it's actually it was mothers of sociopaths. It was mothers of teenage sociopaths, and the mothers knew the mothers knew.

And we're jumping up and down saying, "I am the mother of the next school shooter. I'm telling you, and there's no place for me to go. I can't get help. Nobody will take this person. They haven't yet committed a crime, but they can't yet be committed civilly." So one of the moms was saying her 16-year-old, who was obsessed with child pornography. She was trying to get him help or arrested at that point.

She said he was doing better because he was learning how to fain empathy. She's doing a little better now because he's learning how it looks on someone's face. And when to use that facial expression in this certain tone, she saw that as a possible ticket into the "normal world" for him.

And I never forgot that thinking, "Is that a good thing?"

No, he's the answer, and your reaction is right. And children are taught how to think about emotions when they're little.

“And I think that is very important, but it's a feeling.”

It's not a description, and it's not a mirror mirroring back of. And yes, that she might be putting it in the positive, because maybe she thought that he was getting a sense of the feeling rather than just acting the emotion. And that is one of the clear signs of psychopathy. And we know it when we see it when someone's not authentic in that feeling.

That's everything I saw about Chris Watts describing emotion, not feeling it. There was no point where he said, "I just can't bear this. She's got loopers. I'm so worried. She's got the children. "Okay, you're giving me your business car, but where are you going to go?" And what are you going to do? We've got to find her.

There was no emotion at all. He was had cognitively, because he just remembered everything that he was meant to do and say. And that's why it was a very inauthentic interaction right from the start. I'm going to show a soundbait from him in one second. But I want to let you finish your list.

I interrupted because that shallow effect was sounded interesting to me. So you keep going. Next one actually, Megan relates to what you just said, juvenile delinquency. So when a kid's constantly getting into trouble. And yes, moms do know.

And what I will say is that when moms reach out for help, you know they're really as a problem. You know, the biggest mum is a bit mum or bears. You know, I'm a mum, you want to protect your child. And you know, oftentimes they may be protected.

But we've seen that we've got to be petite.

And she was like a daughter to them.

But yeah, she doesn't return any of the potato families cause to where is Gabby. When Brian returns home in their daughters van, not even in his own van without his fiance. So there we've got a clear example of a mom and dad protecting son. But, you know, equally, if you have somebody saying, I need help. And it's because of all these traits that I'm seeing.

That's when we can actually work together to intervene and prevent something more serious happening and help with someone's psychosocial development. So yeah, the juvenile delinquency, short-term extramarital relationships, irresponsibility, I think I said, an impossibility and criminal revocation, breaching orders, so not ever able to control their impossibility and criminal versatility.

So if they score 30 or over, they're a psychopath. And unfortunately, there are more than what Dr. Harry originally said about 1% in the population because we rarely screen for psychopathy.

“I think it's a really important thing that professionals really do up their game,”

particularly when we're talking about domestic violence because some of the individuals we've talked about, I believe, the psychopaths. And right now, there isn't a cure for psychopathy. That's not that some psychologists say, well, just because we haven't found it yet, it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't exist.

Do you, is there a distinction for you between sociopaths and psychopaths? Yeah, I mean, you know, the lack of empathy is the biggest tell of a psychopath. I mean, sociopaths don't believe the rules apply to them. And, you know, there is a diagnostic test again that you can do. They don't believe the rules apply to them, but they tend to understand what they're doing is wrong,

and they may still have empathy. But with psychopathy, they genuinely do not feel. They have no ability to put themselves in that other person's shoes and feel upset or distress.

“That's why appealing to them doesn't work or evict him's family.”

But tell us where her body is. You know, they won't emote at all. They won't have that feeling. So empathy is the biggest flag out of the 20 that somebody's a psychopath. Would you say Alex Murdoch is a psychopath?

I mean, I have to be careful here because I haven't indirectly assessed him of putting together everything that others who know him best. Because I rely on the people in that person's life to report on everything they know about that person. But seeing the lack of empathy, again, the fact he can sit there in court, the fact everything that he did there after, and the way that even when an officer appeared,

the first responder to that call, he basically said, "How you're doing?"

And just went into this mode of chatting normally to him when his wife and son have been brutally murdered. And he's approaching it how you're doing, all very casual. And then getting out, just like Chris Watts, getting out the narrative that he needs to convey, and seeing very little emotion. And what emotion he did show in court, I don't believe the jurors bought it.

I think they felt that that was shallow effect. It wasn't authentic. It didn't seem authentic to me. I have to say, but people emote in different ways, but everything that happened after the shooting he alleged that he was shot and came out with this whole narrative that seemed to connect with the first narrative when he said it was revenge because of Paul's crash.

“That's what he said originally to the first responders to why Maggie and Paul were dead.”

And he seemed to have this story that he was sticking to, but a real lack of empathy and devastation for the fact that Maggie and Paul were dead. It's comforting to know that there is a checklist because you don't want to think, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there thinking, am I married to a psychopath? How do I know? Because Alec Murdoch was such an effective manipulator, as you point out,

that's a common trait that they have. All these people were taking this stand and saying, I fell totally dupped. I feel like I did not know him at all once his terrible financial crimes came out. And taking care of kids who had just lost their mother, taking care of kids with cancer, kids in terrible car accidents and so on.

These people say, I had no idea who he actually was. And so there will be a lot of people thinking, am I married to somebody who I don't actually know, but there's a long list. And so you've got to be able to tick off a bunch of these things before you get to the point of, I might be with a psychopath.

This is all like amazing.

and I'm sure the audience is looking for a reminder on him in his story. So this was Colorado. Nine to I want to get the, get it in front of me, a lot of things. I got a page 18, I think. Colorado 2018.

And Frederick Colorado, he was 33.

And he strangled his wife, 34-year-old Shanan Watts, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their third child,

who was a boy, they had two girls. They had a three-year-old daughter, Celeste and a four-year-old daughter. Bella. And this guy, this relationship, this whole story, so confuses me. Again, I've gone down the rabbit hole on this.

Look at him. He's a good-looking guy. He had a job, it wasn't like a, like a surgeon, like we're going to get to with Jeff McDonald. He was, he worked at the Weld County oil site, and she had a good job to middle class family. He had some financial problems, but not overwhelming and pervasive. He had what looked like the perfect family, the neighbors, and the Netflix documentary.

“I think it was described in that they were saying, like, "I watched Chris Watts.”

I thought I got up my game as a parent.

I got to spend more time with my kids, got to get out there and throw the ball with him." Look at him. Look at his guy. He, according to the reports, was the more subservient one. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but she seemed more dominant than he did. She seemed more in control in terms of family decision-making.

This is where I want to live. This is what I want for the girls. This is what I want you to do. And he seemed more of like a yes man than someone who is engaging in covers of control. This is my layperson's opinion. You could take this apart in a second. That's my approach, my takeaway, watching it.

Then he loses a bunch of weight, never a good sign.

In a marriage, lose a bunch of weight and starts in a fair with a coworker. And his wife's shenan goes away with the girls for six weeks to visit family North Carolina. He falls for this other woman pretty hard.

“And we know I think it's from his Google searches that he was Googling things like,”

"When do you say I love you? What does it feel like to be in love? It weird searches that a normal person would not be doing, that are definitely a flag." And then the wife comes back from the business trip at two in the morning. She's been with the girlfriends on a true business trip, comes back at two in the morning. And what we know is now because he ultimately confessed.

He strangled her to death. They had to fight. They had some sort of an argument. He strangled her to death. He says he took his two daughters who were alive in the backseat of the truck. Over their dead mother's body, which was on the floor of the backseat, drove to the oil site, smothered his three-year-old and his five-year-old.

The five-year-old said, "Are you going to do to me what you just did is to see the three-year-old?" And said, "Daddy, no. It's too horrific to even really conjure." And he did it anyway. He did it anyway. And then he disposed of the daughter's bodies in the oil tanks. But one in one oil tank and one in the other.

So gruesome he could even describe the sound of their little bodies hitting the liquid and buried his wife in a shallow grave nearby. This guy who had friends who, again, was perceived by some as his model, father who doesn't have some long criminal history. I don't get it. And I'm desperate to get it.

Would you help me get it?

“Yeah, so I think the way you describe it, you know, again, people should remember what he did”

and what he said he did too. And he has changed his narrative at least four times, but the way that he described putting their bodies into that oil tanker, I believe that version of what happened. And for us all to think about the fear and the terror that the children must feel having seen what happened, I believe Bella saw what happened to her mom.

And then having this sense that these horrific things are going to happen to you at the hands of your daddy, someone who's meant to care, love you and look after you. And those moments are just so haunting. And I think when we understand how the media characterized him as a good father, a good dad, this, you know, perfect, beautiful husband. And of course there are all these different videos of Shenan,

because her business was on Facebook of her and she was described as bossy. And oh, this nagging woman and too strong. And instantly we get into the victim blame and the empathy of excusing what he did. And that is everything wrong with the way these cases are not only understood,

And when we think about when Chris and Shenan first got together, she was very ill with lupus.

And she was heavily dependent on him. She thought he was her savior.

“And that's what she said, she couldn't have got by without him.”

So the relationship dynamic was very different. She was wholly dependent on him. They got married. She didn't know whether she could have children. And then by a miracle because of lupus, she had two children, two girls. And then the relationship dynamic started to change.

And she started to work more. And yes, they had debt. And that's another important point. But the dynamic shifted. And she was working.

She was going out. She was no longer as dependent on him.

And as you described, you know,

the dynamic shift and that can happen in a relationship. He then starts this thrive program, which is something that she's advocating for as well as part of her business. And he starts to lose all this weight. And then he starts to feel himself more.

And he's taking this introvert is now becoming someone quite different. Even Shenan said that she didn't know. He was taking videos of himself working out. And then he meets Nikki. And he falls for her hook line and sink her.

He's writing her these love notes at a time where Shenan is sensing that things are going terribly wrong in their relationship. And then she finds out she's pregnant. And maybe that pregnancy is used as a way to try and bring them closer. But of course, what we know is that babies don't tend to bring you closer. They tend to add more stress and pressure.

And he by other people's opinions didn't want the baby. They had a gender reveal party that was cancelled. And she sensed that he didn't want the baby and even the video of them announcing the baby. He just clearly wasn't happy about the whole thing. That's true.

And you can say he was shy on camera. But you can see that he was not excited about it. He cancelled this gender reveal. He was seeing Nikki. He wanted to invest in that relationship.

He told Nikki that he had separated or was separating from Shenan, which wasn't happening. And Shenan goes off, you know, she's writing these letters to him saying, "I'll do anything to fix it. Tell me what you need Chris." And he's withholding sex from her.

He is completely out of the relationship. And she's desperate to restore the relationship. And his attention is elsewhere. He's doing these Google searches.

“When do you tell someone that you're in love with them or how?”

Without tells you about shallow effect. It's not really a feeling because you just say it and you do it. You don't research it right to understand it, right? So that's a shallow effect. Well, what did you make of his, this is my own antiquated notion of control.

You know, I didn't feel like he was the one controlling because she's writing him these notes. I've been gone for six weeks. You haven't, you've called me twice. You'd think a man would want to talk to his wife and daughters. And he writes back, "You're so right. I'm so sorry. I love you, honey. I'll do better."

All of his notes back during that six week period. And this is all leading up to the murder. It's right before he murders them. He's, he's using the emojis. He's really, you know, kind of sweet. Yes, he's ignoring her.

But when he texts, it always seems to be from like a beta role.

You know, that, just how I read those texts, and the reason I found it alarming is it just didn't sound like someone who's going to go commit a murder. I don't know what somebody sounds like who's going to go commit a triple murder. But I just don't picture them using emojis. And so where am I going wrong? Well, they tend to be very cool calm and collected, actually.

Every case I've seen when we've had even CCTV footage of them in the act, it's cool calm and collected. But where are you going, going wrong? I wouldn't say you're going wrong. You're interpreting what you're seeing. But my interpretation will be his managing her. He's manipulating her. He's keeping her at arm's length.

Telling her what she needs to hear to get off his back because he's cheating on her. He's going San June surfing with Nikki. He clearly wants to be with Nikki. He's telling Nikki that he's going to leave Shenan. Nikki suspects his cheating on her.

Because us women, we know we know the signs. We may not tell people about it. But Shenan actually did. She did go to that conference after that trip. And that's where she was when she came back at one o'clock or whatever it was.

She'd found the on her on their credit cards. I didn't have much money.

“There was I think something like $60 at the lazy dog had been spent.”

She believed it was she was cheating. He was cheating on her. I believe that she came back to confront him because she came back early. And her best friend said she wasn't herself at the conference. She was just really out of thought.

She was really upset.

“And I believe she came back to confront him.”

And it's at the point of being confronted.

He says that he pushed her off of him. Or he, yeah, he put, he got himself off of her. And I believe that they were having sex. There was some attempt to restore the relationship. But he said, I told her I didn't love her.

And I didn't want to be with her anymore. And I pushed her away and I found my hands around her neck. Well, even that account is an authentic because you don't just find your hands around someone's neck. And it takes minutes, not seconds to strangle someone and asphyxiate them and kill them. And the girls were shadow sleepers.

And I believe one of them came in. And he took those decisions. That was all on him.

And it may not have been someone that was something that was premeditated.

But it unfolded.

“And the worst thing that he then did was put load shenan into the car and load the two girls into the car.”

And he had 45 minutes to make the right decision. But he took those two girls with their mother dead in the car. And he then strangles them and asphyxiate some one by one. And then disposes of their body as if they're rubbish. As if they're just trash.

And he berries shenan and it's in those moments that he makes those decisions. But he carries on the lie. Even when the police are called, he's carrying on the lie. She was 15 weeks pregnant. You know, there was no care or concern.

My wife's mission. She's got loopers. Fifteen weeks pregnant. My two girls. Everything was about maintenance and he was called calm and collected.

And it was the neighbor who spotted his behavior. He said that he's more animated than usual that he pulled the car up. The truck up to the door. And it was the neighbor saying, I don't know. There's something it's just not right.

I don't know. The neighbor was the star. He's saying they argued and she just left with the children. Where there was no evidence that she had just left with the children. Her phone was there.

The car was there. How would she even be able to get the children out without the car? Where would she go? It was all lies. But it was the neighbor on his behavior who spotted that everything he was saying and doing was not accurate.

And then he pulls the video up to show the police and then you see Chris looking very awkward. But he, I don't believe plans the whole event in terms of killing shenan. She confronted him. And I think he, she probably said to him, I'm leaving you. And I'm taking the children.

And he said then, right? You'll never see her. He said she said something to the effect of you'll never see the children again.

Of course, you know, she thinks she's cheating on her and the marriage is falling apart. He's trying to leave her. That's the kind of thing on my wife and mother might say. Yeah, and a good father would say, well, look, we have to work this out. But I don't want to be with you anymore.

And we have to work the children out of who, you know, and when we get custody. But let's talk about that another time. But let's separate for now. But that's not what he did. He put his hands round her neck. He strangled her for a period of minutes to the point that she wasn't just unconscious that she was dead.

And she was carrying his baby. And then he took the two girls and put them in the car. And he chose to kill them too. And he could have made very different choices. There were other choices.

Because that is that if I can't say. If I can't say "combo" is that psychology? Is it evil? Like I don't understand. I even get, I forgive me, I don't understand. Just so I get killing the wife. I mean, like anybody listens to the deadline knows it that happens all the time. I don't understand what can then make you kill your three-year-old and your five-year-old in the manner that we've just been discussing. What is that? Yes, well only he and those men who do it know it, but I believe that it felt for Chris Watts. It was about wiping the mall out and he believed that he had a chance of a new relationship with Nikki.

“And in his mind, although it makes no sense to anybody else, that's why he took the choices that he did. And of course it's with catastrophic consequences.”

But this wasn't in redness, this wasn't a moment where he makes a decision. It's over 45 minutes plus where he makes those choices and then he sticks to that story. And there were other choices that he could have made, but he didn't. And that tells me about him. That tells me about the type of person he really is. And I have scored him on the psychopathy checklist and he scores lower than 20, but I don't have all the information available. But what I did see was the lack of empathy and that he was even flirting with one of the CBI officers who was interviewing him.

And he was attempting to manipulate. And that's why he changed his story multiple times. He believed that he was capable of getting away with it. And that's what he was trying to do. Let's show the audience a clip of him. This was before he confessed. And he was still playing the game with the media of, I have no idea where they went.

I hope that she's somewhere safe right now and with the kids. But I mean, could she event, could she just take it off? I don't know, but if somebody has her and they're not safe, like I want them back now.

My God, that is so obviously untrue and not how a real grieving father and husband would act.

Not authentic at all. And that's where you would be pressing to get more answers from him. You know, she's pregnant, 15 weeks pregnant and with loopers with his two daughters. And I do believe he felt he could control the narrative and that he could control other people and manipulate them. So the question is, did we ever really know or, you know, did anyone really know who Chris Watts was? Is this really who he is now? And this was him and that's what he was masking, you know, for many years. And he didn't let people in because of who he truly was.

“And that's what I believe what we're seeing after the fact that's him in making those conversations.”

Don't you think it's like a scaputers in situation? Yes, I do. And I've talked about Lacy and Connor Peterson. Again, she was pregnant and the choices that he made, where there were other choices on the table. But the choices that he made and that's why he's still in prison and that's where he must remain.

What do you make of the fact that Chris Watts, when he did confess, he was forced to confess. Let's not kid ourselves. I mean, they had him.

That that that the woman who ran the lie detector on him was she was crazy good. I mean, she was she put him at ease. She was all this is all just fun, you know, you know, the truth. One of us knows the truth. And now we're both about to know the truth. I thought she did a great job. And she did it with along with her partner extract the confession, but they had a lot of evidence. You know, they had the GPS. They knew where he had taken. He'd gone to the oil tanks. They had a lot. So he winds up confessing. They bring in his dad. He confesses to his dad.

And in that moment is one of the themes of our discussion has been the blaming of the woman. What did she do? What did she do? In that moment, listen to what he said. I know you're familiar with the audience. There's this confession. We lost it in a chapter or what? That's the day. So it's hard to understand there. But what he's saying is she, Shenan, killed my babies. So I put my hands around her neck and did the same thing.

In that moment of confession, he's blaming Shenan.

“Which tells you everything you need to know about him.”

You know, it's very rare for a woman to behave in that way. And under these circumstances, it's highly unlikely. But he was happy for Shenan to take the blame for his actions and his behavior. And later admitted that that wasn't true. Anyway, so I mean, we know it was a lie. He's serving life sentences and will not be getting crawled. Let's jump to the case of McDonald, Jeff McDonald. This turned into the book "Fatal Vision", which I really recommend. I listened to it via audio. It was done so well by Joe McGinnis, fascinating story with the book too.

Joe McGinnis basically got recruited by McDonald to write the book and then turned on McGinnis turned on McDonald.

McDonald thought it was going to be an exonerating type of tone. It wound up going the other way and McDonald sued McGinnis who did have to pay him some sort of a settlement.

“Because I didn't look deep into it, but I think it's because it was like a breach of contract.”

They basically suggested you lure him into thinking you were going to make it sound a different way. Anyway, it's a great book. It's very interesting. Jeff McDonald's surgeon went to Princeton, went to Northwestern for his men's school, went to Colombia, Presbyterian for his internship, then joined the Green Berets, and was serving and training, jumping out of airplanes. It was going to be a surgeon for the army and then go out into the world and make a bunch of money at Yale.

He hoped he could get a job at Yale. And his wife, Colette, was his high school sweetheart. She was nice, nice lady from all the accounts, was also very bright. I had been studying college herself, lines up getting pregnant, which puts her life on hold, sacrifices for him. This is back in the '60s, so, you know, the society was kind of set up this way. And they had two beautiful daughters, Kimberly and Chrissy.

And one night, in the middle of the night, he kills them. He kills all three of them in a very similar situation.

“The wife and the two daughters to the Chris Watts case. This guy's got everything going for him.”

And by all accounts, a lovely wife who's very supportive of him and beautiful daughters, same. And says it was hippies that it was a Sharon Tate type situation where this woman and three men came into the apartment in the middle of the night. Stabbed him. He had like a one puncture wound that a surgeon like Medell would have known had a place without killing himself. And the women were absolutely slaughtered. His wife and his two girls absolutely slaughtered with a number of puncture wounds and ice pick. I mean, just absolutely brutal.

And they wind up saying, first, oh, we don't have, you know what, he didn't do it.

“We're going to, we buy the hippie story. But his wife's father would not let go of it. He initially defended McDonald.”

But when he got a hard look at the evidence that had been insumitted into the preliminary hearing turned and spent the rest of his life making sure that that that justice was done. And ultimately it was in Jeff McDonald went to prison, but here's Jeff McDonald on the dick have it show taken us back now in time. To 1970, December 15th, the murders had happened a month earlier. This is a month after his wife, say again. Okay, okay, okay, it happened in February. The murders happened in February. So it was less than a year later.

Talking about the murders of his wife and daughters as follows. Could you talk about what happened on the night of her? Well, I can skin through it briefly, to get even through it to that. Yeah, that's produced a lot of emotional, my father. But very briefly, my wife came home and we had a, before bedtime, you're really. And watched the beginning of it, late night talk show. You're smiling, your audience is laughing. And Laura, he did the thing you said, he said, getting into it brings up a lot of emotion.

You know, like trust me, wink, wink, trust me. I'm not actually going to show you that. Yeah, I mean, that short clip just reminds me of Scott Peterson and the Diane Sawyer interview where it's clear to me that he thought he, in both situations they can control and influence and manipulate And like with Diane Sawyer, I don't know if you saw that interview with Scott Peterson that he did months later, bearing in mind, Lacy was still missing. And he laughs inappropriately. He smiles inappropriately. He doesn't declaratively say he didn't kill Lacy and Connor and Diane Sawyer is just not buying any of it.

I mean, her bullshit detects her was pretty well-honed and there's an 11-minute clip where it's very clear there was deception and a lot of the word that I do. I look for indicators for veracity and deception. So without knowing that individuals baseline behavior, but knowing the, did you say he was in the Marines? He was in the, yeah, he was a great. He's a greenberry, right? So he's used to parent control. He's used to influencing his intelligent. I can see that he believes that people are going to buy what he's selling.

But the leakage that's there is telling us something quite different. And that's why you're always looking for words, actions, behavior that are congruent.

But also facial expressions, micro expressions, et cetera, are they describing the emotion or are they living and feeling the emotion? I mean, you don't talk briefly about and skim through the brief details of your wife and your daughter's absolute slaughter. I've never heard someone say that before and they're lying. What about the brutality of the murders? Like that in a way that to me is evidence that he didn't do it. I mean, he did it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying. No one could believe that somebody would take an ice pick and over and over and over or stab their three-year-old. Like that just doesn't.

“That would lead somebody to believe it had to be an outsider. Do you think that's why those murders were so brutal?”

It's quite possible. I mean, if you choose to use things like that, the point to looking at someone outside the house because of the way it was done. But I don't know the case in detail, but from looking at him and the way that he presents. And the fact that he invited a journalist in to write a book that was supposed to exonerate him and the journalist who deep dives into the case. And of course, a lot of investigative journalists are very good at what they do. And the journalist didn't buy it, based on the facts and the evidence.

And all my work is about going on the facts and the evidence.

“You have to look at everything, forensically deconstruct everything, you know, about the behavior and as well as forensic opportunities.”

But oftentimes it's not always what's present. It's what's absent.

You know, what's absent at the scene or what's absent in terms of emotion, and who's trying to control the narrative. You know, controlling the narrative also is a very interesting thing that I see coercive control is due after the event that they want to get their story out there. And oftentimes because they're a man and they're called calm and collected, people gravitate to their narrative. But the victims aren't here to tell us otherwise, are they? There's no one alive. His wife can't tell us what happened.

That's why the forensics have to tell us what was the sequence of events, what happened.

And equally the dynamics of the relationship was she looking to separate.

Was she saying to him, "I've had enough," or whatever reason, had he abused one of the children, for example. And she said, "Collects that I've had enough, and I'm going to leave you." And we know at the point of separation with these coercively controlling men, they want to control the situation. And if I can't have you know one world and how dare you make that decision, I'm the one who makes the decisions and it ends when I say it ends and how it ends. And that's equally 76% of the murders happen at the point where the woman says enough.

The, that case, according to the book, again, fatal vision, they, the, the father of Collette, the wife saw Jeff MacDonald go on to Kevin. So I'm smoking, working the crowd, again, this is not even a year after the murders.

And it was his first turn, you know, like, I, I might be dealing with the killer.

Like, he might actually have killed them. And then stayed on him to get the transcript from this preliminary hearing that was done inside the military that determined he didn't do it. And the father poured over these 2,000 pages word by word by word and found so many inconsistencies in Jeff's story. And started a piece of together. And then these prosecutors went back and did this in-depth investigation of Jeff MacDonald to see kind of along that lines of what you're saying, whether he's wonderful accounts of him. Oh, he's so wonderful at Princeton, wonderful at Northwestern. And the greatest surgeon ever really matched up with, was it really true if you just dug a little deeper.

Like, he was saying about, why was Paul Murdoch drinking so much? Why are the parents allowing there? And dig a little deeper. What's there? And they found out he had completely downplayed his number of infidelities. They only been there. They were young. He'd been cheating all over the place in disgusting and pervasive ways. He had been seen abusing her. And I know you've called attention to this in particular, at least once seen smacking her across the face. Like hands on the face, hands on the neck. I know you've said, that's a special red flag.

And we saw it in the Gabby Petito case, too. Can you speak to that?

“Yes, well, any hands going round the face. You know, for man puts his hands around a woman's face, it covers your nose and your mouth. And that's what Brian Laundry did to Gabby.”

And of course, we've seen photographic evidence subsequently that her family's lawyers have released for purpose just before the police were called, that showed that she had an injury. But the police didn't follow up when Gabby told them about the hand around the mouth and where the cuts came from. And any attempt to strangle or us fixiate by a man to a woman it increases the risk sevenfold. So, and it increases the risk to serious harm and suicide. So it really is a high risk factor. And I would imagine we'd collet. Whatever was seen or witnessed was probably the tip of the iceberg to what she was really experiencing behind closed doors.

And if he were womanizing, cheating on her disrespecting her and she had two little girls, she may well have said enough is enough. And with his psychopathology and used to being in control and wanting to be in control. And I would imagine that his a man who wants to win and things are on his terms and she's there to meet his needs and how dare she make a decision that is not within her gift to decide. And that could be the point where he then assaults her. It could have been one of the girls. I don't know, but something happened and with catastrophic consequence and what a horrific case.

And I'm so glad that her father followed his instincts and that he kept asking questions.

“And that's what I ask all my listeners on crime analysts to do ask questions.”

You know, be curious and always trash your instincts. And the people who know someone like Jeff McDonald the best, the father who's observed him in different situations knows when something's not right.

And sometimes that's exactly what it takes to get to answers the real answers and the truth of what went on just like we saw Chris Watts confessing to his dad when everything is stacked against him. And he's got nowhere to go.

His dad was the one that ultimately got the answer out of him by flipping it onto shenan and then he confesses.

So again, the people who know the perpetrator, the best, they're the ones who should really be asking questions and working with professionals to make sure the right questions are asked and not to let something go and something seems off. Let's spend a minute on Gabby because, you know, I have to admit to you. I've done a lot of interviews with domestic violence victims. And when I saw that police stop, you know, where she was trying to say he hit me first and so on, I understood what was happening there, but I also felt bad for the cops.

I know that's not right. I know the cops did not handle it.

“We had to hold the bait with lawyers on whether they should be sued and so on. I don't know. I had conflicting feelings about it. They seemed like caring individuals, but the truth is they really mishandled that entire scenario.”

And I'm not blaming them for Gabby's death, but you know, one can only wonder had they intervened more aggressively. Would it have led to her escape, you know, her, I did just a different result. Again, not to blame them, but just to call attention to, there's a warning sign here is a really clear warning sign in her interaction with these cops. Somebody had called 911, they had said that they'd seen a man hit a woman. The cops went, they pulled him over and they found a crying Gabby Petito with a mark on her face and then we later found out a mark on her neck.

And she tried to blame herself. We have, we have a bit of that. Here it is.

“We want another truth of the actually hit you, because you know, where did he hit you?”

Don't don't work, we don't. What do you make of that whole thing? Yeah, so I've spent a long time on crime analyst going through the case and dissecting forensically the police stop because of course it is on their body cam footage.

And the first thing that struck me about Gabby was just how emotionally dysregulated she was.

You know, I trained law enforcement, I wrote the book, policing domestic violence that's behind me with two police officers when I was at New Scotland yard and it's part of the Blackstone policing guide series of helping officers ask the right questions and use their powers.

“And one of the key things is if you've got a victim in trauma, which Gabby was clearly emotionally dysregulated, find out why.”

And if you've got perpetrator and bearing in mind the 911, the call that came in was about and I are quote it, a gentleman slapping the woman. Well, that ain't no gentleman for a start, but the point was that the call was a call for assistance because of the male's behavior, not the females and Gabby instantly took responsibility, which a lot of victims do. And therefore the attempt to separate them was the right one, but putting her in the back of the police car, which is where you put a suspect and shutting her off, wasn't a good move and keeping Brian out and spending 80% of their time with Brian, who straight away through Gabby under the bus in attempt to manipulate and control the narrative.

I train officers to question that, that is a very clear manipulation and his narrative should have been challenged because at no point was it challenged.

And he was the first to admit that he had shoved her and that he had locked her out of her van, he took her keys and they did a van check and it was registered to Gabby, not him.

He took her keys, he took her phone and he stopped her from getting into her vehicle and then one of the other call has said that he took her backpack out and had put it on the outside of the van and he'd threatened to drive off and leave her there on her own. So who really is the person in power with the power and control here? It's very obvious that he Brian and that she was in fear and she was trying to get her keys and get her phone. She just wanted to be in the van and he was controlling her movements and not allowing her to have the space that she needed to be in her van and he was threatening to leave her there on her own alone female and that narrative should have been challenged.

That's what we saw on the outside and what we also saw on the Gabby case was the van and I love the van and van life and we're doing our yoga.

“The image that we know was untrue. We were being misled and it's not uncommon at all for the victims of domestic violence or the perpetrators of it to mislead us actively and willingly.”

I mean, when you get to independent male witnesses calling it in because they're concerned, it takes a lot to call the police. Most people don't want to get involved with the police. So for two independent men to say there's a problem.

Well, that's the first thing that they should pay attention to. What are they being told? Why are they even attending?

You know, officer Robbins did try and do the right thing, but he was a junior officer. He wasn't even through his training period. And Eric Pratt, the supervisor was the one that made a very quick decision that Gabby was the primary aggressor.

“Well, actually, I wrote the chapter on primary aggressor because we have the same where you have to be very careful in not just believing the calm, cool, collected male narrative.”

And oftentimes that's what police attend a distraught emotionally disregulated female and a very calm, cool and collected individual or male normally.

And then they gravitate to that cool calm, collected male and then narrative rather than thinking, why is this young woman so emotionally disregulated?

This is a disproportionate reaction to what we're being told. And hang on a minute, didn't Brian say she's got this little website. Isn't he devaluing her and saying, oh, she's crazy, making out her that she's the crazy one. And even when Officer Robbins tried to challenge him, he again threw it back to Gabby being the problem. So with experience and that's why supervisors and mentors are very important to check and to challenge. And unfortunately with misogyny oftentimes and those officers what we saw was yes, they may look like they are being caring towards Gabby, but they were also very misogynistic and very patronizing and condescending.

And you know, did they not realize at 16 to 24-year-olds are the most at risk group of domestic violence and femurside the women because in 2021, 2022 and 23, it's unacceptable for officers not to be trained.

So for me, this is a very clear training issue, but the attitudes are also problematic when they instantly go into just believing the male narrative without any challenge.

And they put her in the box of just being the hysterical emotional woman and aren't all women crazy because that was the subtext between Brian and those officers with their fist pumping and are these women. You know, my ex wife, she's no longer my wife anymore and she's on pills because she's so crazy. These were the things that the officers were talking about with Brian and then they were laughing and joking and for Gabby, who's in the back of the car, is she hearing them laughing and joking, how does that feel to her when she's just on her own isolated and there they all are joking and laughing with Brian, that sends a very clear message to her.

You know, this is all leading me to recall something you wrote about how we socialize girls all wrong in some ways, you know, be a good girl, go along to get along, don't make waves. You know, the pain in the ass girl is somebody nobody wants to be around or promote or work with. We talk about it a lot these days because they're all these teachers who want to have secrets with our kids now and, you know, a lot of us mothers have been saying, you don't get to have secrets with my child.

“No adult gets to have secrets with my child, I raise my children to understand that that's a big red flag, a grown-up who wants to have a secret with you, that's how kids get abused.”

And it's how women get abused, it's just like a common theme that I'm feeling now and listening to you. And I want to leave, I want to leave it on an empowering note so that people listening to this don't just feel like, oh, sucks to be a woman. And I'm going to follow, but it's going to turn out to be some abusive psychopath, you know, what, what can women do, right, like meaningful things that they can do to protect themselves to take control of their own lives and their own safety. Those are groomed to be polite, compassionate, and to put other people's needs above their own. And what we need to do is yes, you can still be polite, but to know your own needs and not be afraid to voice what you need and not be afraid to be difficult, because you mentioned the good girl, but those of us who challenge things where the difficult ones, where the ones that tend to run into problems, because we're asking the difficult questions.

Don't ignore what your instinct is telling you, and that's probably the biggest one is trusting your instinct, if something feels right or somebody fills off.

Every great case I've worked, every time I've gone back through the statement, the woman sensed when she was in danger, and then she didn't want to upset the person, so she didn't get off the train, she didn't walk across to the other platform or go down a different street, she didn't want to upset the person. So, you know, not being polite in that way to the detriment of our own safety, and to always, always, trust your instinct, we have more brain cells in our stomach than the dog has in its head, and I've got a rather lovely golden doodle called Beatrice, but my, when my guts tweaking, it's telling me something.

“So, always listen to that, because we can talk Megan, and you can, we can try and empower women, but only women can empower themselves, right, to ask the questions, to take action, and don't be afraid to ask advice from older people.”

You know, older mentors, females, I mentor a number of younger women, of things that where they say, but is this normal, is that right? I mean, he says that that's what everybody does of sending pictures, you know, naked pictures, et cetera, but he says, I'm approved when I don't do it, I mean, should I, you know, my number one rule is never send pictures, because you don't know where they're going to end up. So, again, just asking, trusting someone, you know, like yourself, myself, and asking those questions from someone who's seen it and done it before, and to be mentored, because I think for younger women, particularly 16 to 24, they're not taught what a healthy relationship is.

There's a big information gap, they're taught how to have sex and the mechanics of it, they're not taught about emotional safety, and, you know, being in a healthy relationship of what's healthy versus what's unhealthy, and I think if we were doing that piece, we would be able to spot the behaviors and we'd do it with boys as well, boys and men of what behaviors are they learning that's bad, that they shouldn't be using, and it's early that we want to get into a age appropriate discussions, of course, and I agree with you, the secret things is a big problem, you know, that's how pedophiles and sex offenders, how they get the trust of a child that it's a secret between me and you, so teachers should absolutely not be talking about secrets, that's a big safeguarding risk.

“So yes, I think it's having more conversations and girls and women stepping into their personal power and not being afraid to make her noise and get louder when there's a problem.”

Yes, get louder is a great advice, and if it doesn't come easy to you, then practice, keep practicing because it comes easier over time. Now wait, before we go, I know about the podcast, but is there a book that the people can buy of yours, you mentioned the one behind you, is that just for police or should we all learn from that one? I mean, it's a wider book that anybody can read, and a lot of people tell me that they're called in and out of the chapters, it's called policing domestic violence, and I am in discussions about updating it.

I mean, the actual detail of and the case studies I use in there with my co-authors, it's all still relevant, but some of the laws now, we've got new laws on coercive control, on stalking, all sorts of things that we're in discussion about updating it. And I'm also running a whole series of master classes, because I do deliver a lot of training, and some of them are virtual training master classes, where people can log on just as we're talking, and I talk through lots of cases and the dash, I've got a stalking class on May 9th and 10th and dash on May 23rd, 24th and coercive control on June the 6th and 7th, and you can just email Laura Richardson's [email protected] if you're interested in that.

Oh great, and it's in your website is the LauraRichards.com.

The LauraRichards.com, and also dash risk checklist.co.uk. It is at the moment being updated, and it will be a dot com in the future. But yes, I put a lot of information out there to help people, and there's Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service, where there's lots of information on there, if you believe that you're being stalked.

I'd bless you for all that you've done, and that you continue to do your podcast, your books, your advocacy, your mentorship, all of it.

Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you, but I've enjoyed it very much, and thank you for you sharing your experience, and enjoy it is the wrong word.

“But I think these discussions and informed discussions and conversations and interviews are so important, so thank you for inviting me on.”

Thanks for joining us today, fascinating conversation. What I love about Laura is she's spot on. She's done her homework.

In conversation, you can trust their info. That's Laura. She was great looking forward to having her back on you. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear. (upbeat music)