The Megyn Kelly Show - Alex Murdaugh Crimes, Jodi Arias Trial, ＂Bad Vegan＂ Deep Dive - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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00:01:00 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12 Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly, and welcome to today's true crime mega episode.

00:01:17 We are diving into three wild stories. The shocking criminal history of Alec Murdoch,

00:01:24 Unbelievable case.

00:01:25 The Jodi Arias trial over the murder of her boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

00:01:30 And did you watch Bad Vegan on Netflix?

00:01:35 We talked to the woman at the center of that entire bizarre drama.

00:01:41 Love the true crime shows.

00:01:44 Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday.

00:01:46 Today, we are diving deep into the case of Alec Murdoch, and there are updates in this

00:01:51 incredible case, believe it or not.

00:01:53 His story begins much earlier than the crimes that made national headlines over the past

00:01:58 few years, and no one has covered the story quite like the Wall Street Journal's Valerie

00:02:03 Borlein, who wrote the book The Devil at His Elbow.

00:02:07 We get into everything from Murdoch's family history to the details of his downfall and

00:02:12 the new info.

00:02:15 Valerie, welcome.

00:02:15 Thank you so much for being here.

00:02:17 Thank you.

00:02:19 Okay, so this is all so fascinating.

00:02:20 And one of the most eye-opening things I read was about Alec Murdoch's background.

00:02:28 He comes from a long line of deeply ethically problematic people, which I did not know.

00:02:36 All you ever heard about him was that he came from this very storied family.

00:02:40 They were lifelong solicitors or like the prosecutors in their town in South Carolina,

00:02:45 very well respected.

00:02:45 They controlled everything.

00:02:47 It was far more nefarious than that.

00:02:48 Can you take us back?

00:02:50 Oh, it absolutely was. I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises I had researching this book was that every crime that was eventually convicted of had some echo in the past. And that includes like violence against women or overtures of violence against women. That includes insurance fraud.

00:03:08 Like by the side of the road, there was an act of insurance fraud that started the family dynasty, stealing from clients, drug trafficking.

00:03:17 There were echoes in the past for every single crime we're talking about, even a boat wreck that caused really a traumatic injury.

00:03:25 So that surprised me, too.

00:03:27 It wasn't just Alec.

00:03:28 It was the history going back to 1920 of this family.

00:03:33 Yes.

00:03:33 I mean, it really does show you, you know, if you have a family, a father, a grandfather who are committing crimes and teaching you either explicitly or implicitly that that's OK, your odds of becoming a criminal are obviously much higher.

00:03:48 But hello, women of the world, pay attention, pay attention to your your spouse, the guys you're dating. 1.00

00:03:54 It can work the other way around, too. And what they come from, who they come from.

00:03:58 So his great-grandfather, Randolph Murdoch Sr., basically committed suicide and insurance fraud at the same time?

00:04:11 That's right.

00:04:11 And I was in Hampton just last week.

00:04:13 I actually was standing at the train tracks just south of Almeda, the home place that Alec went the night of the homicides.

00:04:21 His great-grandfather, Randolph Sr., was a very prominent man.

00:04:25 I mean, every meal he ate was front-page news.

00:04:27 Like, where was he now? He was the district attorney for four counties in the low country

00:04:32 of South Carolina. He was, he was very sick. He was 53 years old. He was, he was dying. He was

00:04:39 at the end of his life. He had kidney failure at a time when there just, you didn't, there was no

00:04:44 cure, right? There was no dialysis. He was broke. He had been a big investor in the, in a bank and

00:04:50 then the bank failed. And through the depression, he was just, I found documents down at the

00:04:55 courthouse in Hampton, where he just would say, there's no chance I can ever pay these people

00:04:59 back. So he was broke, he was dying, and he knew how to do one thing incredibly well, which was

00:05:05 sue the railroad, which at that time in 1940 was one of the only entities worth suing.

00:05:11 So what happened was he was driving back from a poker game in Yemesee, a little town right on the

00:05:16 Hampton County line, at one in the morning, hottest day of the summer, 90 some degrees.

00:05:21 He stops short of his home and turns onto a deserted train tracks and is at the base of it.

00:05:29 And as the train is coming, and y'all, if you grew up in a small town near a railroad, you know what time the train comes through.

00:05:36 The train is coming north, and you can hear it for miles.

00:05:40 It's coming north.

00:05:41 It's bearing down on those train tracks.

00:05:42 He speeds up onto the tracks themselves, and they're blowing the whistle.

00:05:47 They're flashing the light.

00:05:48 It's a clear moonlit night, and he sees them, and instead of driving off, he waves at them.

00:05:55 And what happens is there's a coroner's jury, and the coroner, of course, was a protege of Randolph

00:06:01 Sr. The sheriff was a protege of Randolph Sr. There was an inquest the next morning, and guess what?

00:06:08 The local coroner's jury found that in spite of the testimony of the engineer and others,

00:06:13 It was an accident, and it cleared the way for Randolph Murdoch Jr.,

00:06:18 Alec's grandfather, to sue the railroad for the equivalent of millions of dollars,

00:06:23 which is what he did successfully.

00:06:25 Is Randolph Murdoch Jr. Buster?

00:06:30 Randolph Murdoch Jr. is old Buster, and old Buster was a real force to be reckoned with.

00:06:36 He was solicitor from 1940, when he was 25 years old, to 1986.

00:06:41 So Roosevelt to Reagan.

00:06:44 And he even stayed in that office beyond that time.

00:06:46 The legislature finally essentially forced him.

00:06:48 They created a rule that essentially forced him to retire, but he kept going into the

00:06:52 office as a volunteer solicitor.

00:06:54 So Randolph Murdoch Jr., Old Buster, Elec Murdoch idolized him.

00:06:59 He told many people that he wished he'd been born in Old Buster's day, because in those 0.66

00:07:03 days, what you said was what the truth was.

00:07:06 And Old Buster, he ruled with an iron fist.

00:07:11 He was one of those guys that would rather be feared than loved.

00:07:15 And he also continued fraud and potential violence against women.

00:07:22 So Old Buster, I was able to pull 900 pages from the National Archives of the records from his trial, his federal trial.

00:07:31 The feds charged him with bootlegging, actually running the largest bootlegging ring in the South.

00:07:37 He was the ringleader.

00:07:38 They charged two dozen people.

00:07:40 Old Buster, Ellick's grandfather, was charged with leading this entire ring in Colleton County.

00:07:46 And he was accused of taking a cash bribe in the hallway of the Colleton County Courthouse, which is the hallway that we went in and out every day of Ellick's Murdoch trial.

00:07:57 He was accused of intimidating witnesses, buying off witnesses, and eventually of tampering with

00:08:05 the jury by buying off the foreman. And he was one of the only people in that entire weeks-long

00:08:10 federal trial that was acquitted. So there's a history of, you know, Alec Murdoch was convicted

00:08:19 of drug trafficking. His grandfather was credibly accused and narrowly escaped being convicted of

00:08:25 bootlegging. So again, there's echoes in the past. Tell us about the mistress who got on the wrong

00:08:30 side of Alec Murdoch's grandfather. So there was testimony in Alec's trial, as you remember,

00:08:38 there was testimony that Alec was somewhat of a philanderer. And that certainly is a history in

00:08:43 the family going back generations. His grandfather, Old Buster, had a mistress, several, but one in

00:08:51 particular, who he was in touch with for many, many years. And her name was Ruth Fox. And Ruth

00:08:57 Fox was married to a local, like a Northern baron who came down and bought a plantation. And she was

00:09:05 from one of the nation's first families, a really impressive woman in her own right. And she had

00:09:11 been in the Navy during World War II, like training pilots, which is kind of wild to think

00:09:17 about what kind of woman was doing that in the 40s. And she met Buster and asked for his help 1.00

00:09:22 in getting out of her obligations. He's like, I know everybody. I'll know all U.S. senators. I'll

00:09:26 help you get out of this out of this bind. They got to know each other. And what you know, a year

00:09:31 later, she is pregnant with his child. She goes to it's just such an incredible story. She goes to

00:09:37 the house and we're talking about the same house that Alec went to the night of the homicides at

00:09:42 He goes, she goes to the house, knocks on the door, speaks to Alex's grandmother and says, you know, you have a son.

00:09:50 I have a son. These boys should meet. And the grandmother says, you know, don't let my name come out of your mouth ever again.

00:09:56 Go away. And it was it was a stunning thing because she had survived, essentially, when she had told old Buster that she was pregnant.

00:10:06 He had tried to have her killed. He had a fixer, the story goes, he had a fixer of one of many

00:10:12 who laid in wait underneath her porch one night and got a little bit too drunk and fell asleep

00:10:19 and didn't kill her. So there was just like this incredible, incredible echoes throughout this

00:10:23 story. Isn't it amazing? Yes, it is amazing. I mean, I cannot, you must've been just slack-jawed

00:10:29 when you read up about the direct line from which he came and it makes sense of everything.

00:10:35 So it didn't stop there. It didn't even skip a generation.

00:10:39 Alec's father also had a history of paying people off to cover up a boat accident, which, of course, would set off Alec's own story with a different boat accident as well.

00:10:52 Well, there was certainly a terrible boat accident in 1998 from the same island, like Murdoch Island, where you'll remember the tragic boat wreck that killed Mallory Beach in 2019.

00:11:05 They took the Murdoch family boat from the family compound, which is called Murdoch Island.

00:11:10 Back in 1998, Alec's younger brother was having a party on Murdoch Island.

00:11:17 There was a boat there, and it's incredible.

00:11:19 I couldn't believe it when I saw the documents.

00:11:20 It had been seized in a drug raid by the solicitor's office, so by Old Buster, and he liked the boat.

00:11:27 So he kept it for his own use at the island, and everyone, the family used it.

00:11:32 So it's late at night.

00:11:34 There's some guests there that wanted to take the boat home rather than the roads because they didn't want to get in trouble.

00:11:40 They've been drinking for many hours.

00:11:42 And these young men set off on a boat ride home, and it's tricky.

00:11:48 We know from what happened with the wreck that killed Mallory Beach.

00:11:51 It's very shallow waters and places.

00:11:53 They hit a shoal and stopped and then immediately started back up and didn't realize that one of the guests had fallen overboard and it got run over by the motor and sustained a traumatic brain injury.

00:12:05 And, you know, I've got hundreds of pages of documents from the state that show that the Murdochs were involved in trying to make that wreck go away.

00:12:16 even some of the same DNR, the natural resources officers, even some of the same officers who were

00:12:22 involved in the Mallory Beach Rec were, and they were working that night as well. So the echoes in

00:12:28 the past are just, sometimes I couldn't believe it. I really was gobsmacked many times in a row.

00:12:33 Yes, same. I'm having the same reaction just sitting here. So then of course we get to Alec

00:12:39 and this whole thing that we watched, this double murder trial in which he was found guilty,

00:12:46 of killing his wife and his own son

00:12:48 was set off by that boating accident.

00:12:52 The second one, not the one you discussed

00:12:54 where the woman was run over,

00:12:56 but more recently with the younger generation

00:12:59 while Alec was out on a boat, was drinking

00:13:03 and they had an accident

00:13:06 and Mallory Beach was thrown from the boat

00:13:08 and wasn't found for some time later

00:13:11 and she was dead.

00:13:12 and that old Murdoch instinct to cover it up, run cover for those involved, or especially

00:13:20 for Alec, kicked in and would set off a chain of events that would ultimately destroy the Murdoch

00:13:27 family. And it's so poignant to look at pictures of Mallory. She was 19 years old when she died.

00:13:34 She was just full of life. I've gotten to know her family over the course of reporting this story.

00:13:40 And it was it was Alex Boat, but it was his son, Paul Murdoch, who was 19 at the time, who was who was who was driving.

00:13:47 I mean, I think the facts established that he was driving.

00:13:49 He was criminally charged with it.

00:13:51 And so he he's he is incredibly drunk.

00:13:55 He drank a lot.

00:13:56 I talked with people that knew the family.

00:13:59 He had been sneaking beer since he was eight years old and at a certain point, not even sneaking them.

00:14:05 So he was he was he was very, very drunk.

00:14:08 He had 19 drinks that night.

00:14:10 His BAC when he got to the hospital was 0.286.

00:14:14 But he was a person, even at 19, who'd been drinking for numbers of years and had been

00:14:20 driving drunk for numbers of years, according to people I talked to who were involved in

00:14:25 wrecks with him before.

00:14:27 But so he gets angry at his girlfriend, who's one of the passengers on the boat, confronts

00:14:33 her.

00:14:34 She says, you're too drunk to drive.

00:14:35 Give everybody the keys. 0.94

00:14:37 Slaps her.

00:14:37 spits in her face, goes back to the wheel of the boat and floors it, the equivalent of 28 miles 0.81

00:14:44 an hour. And they're going through a very narrow, very shallow path and hit a bridge that fast. And

00:14:50 Mallory is thrown overboard and never resurfaces. And what all the evidence, I've got thousands of

00:14:56 pages of documents, some of them public, many of them not, not many of them that had not been

00:15:03 reviewed before that just showed that there was when elec got to the hospital that night where

00:15:08 these young people had been on the boat was he went room to room to room trying to get everyone

00:15:13 on the same page he had his his his grandfather old buster's badge outside of his pocket pretending

00:15:20 to be a law enforcement officer and i have his cell phone records and have tracked his path that

00:15:24 night do you remember when he testified that he put blue lights blue lights and siren on the

00:15:28 suburban that he was driving. It was almost physically impossible for him to get from

00:15:34 Moselle, where he and Maggie were living at the time, to the hospital unless he was going

00:15:41 fabulously fast, 80 or 90 miles an hour. And I think it stands to reason, and I argue this in

00:15:46 the book, that he almost certainly used lights to get to the hospital before the other families and

00:15:52 get everyone on the same page. But it really was his undoing. The reason that he said he wanted

00:15:57 to live in old Buster's time is that, you know, there was so much evidence in the video cameras

00:16:02 in the hospital that night, so many statements, there was so much, everything is recorded, right?

00:16:07 You know, and he could not outrun modernity. And in the end, that night and his actions,

00:16:13 the night of the boat wreck really was the beginning of the end of the family.

00:16:17 For among other reasons, he was then sued by the Beach family. And that in the course of

00:16:23 that lawsuit, he would have to produce discovery, speaking to his economic status, his financial

00:16:30 data, and so on. And he was, we know, separately now, running a massive fraud, stealing from his

00:16:35 law firm, had a massive drug problem, or so he testified, and was very worried this was all

00:16:42 going to come out. He would be exposed. And at the same time, his law firm, was this coincidental?

00:16:48 Was this coincidental, Valerie, that the law firm started an investigation of Alec at the same time

00:16:53 for possible ethical breaches, or were those two things related, the lawsuit and the law firm

00:16:58 getting interested in him? Well, it's all kind of woven together. And what happened in the

00:17:03 immediate aftermath of the boat wreck is that Mallory's family was having a tough time finding

00:17:08 a lawyer to represent their interest. And Renee Beach, Mallory's mom, tells the story of being down

00:17:14 at the landing where the boat had come to rest and wanting to go down there and see

00:17:21 where her daughter was, where she was the last time she was spotted. And the police were very,

00:17:27 very kind, but said, I'm sorry, you can't go down there. Here's a case of water for you and your

00:17:31 family while you wait. And there was a moment where Randolph Murdoch III, Alec's dad, and Maggie,

00:17:38 his wife, came down in their pickup truck. And he waves at the officer and waves him through.

00:17:45 And Renee Beach realized then, oh my gosh, this is not a vigil. I thought I was at a vigil

00:17:50 mourning my daughter. This is a crime scene. And the family that's been the law in this area for

00:17:57 100 years is in charge of it. I need a lawyer. And she made a critical decision, which is to

00:18:03 hire a lawyer to represent the family's interest. And that lawyer was a key player and a big

00:18:08 character in this book. And his name is Mark Tinsley. And there's no enemy like your former

00:18:13 friend. He was very close to Ellick. He knew the playbook. He had a card key to get in and out of

00:18:20 Murdoch Law Firm at will. And he recognized those relationships. He's like, oh, I know he knows

00:18:25 these particular officers because of my own personal information. And once he decided to

00:18:30 take the case, take the Beaches case, he was relentless in showing that Alec and potentially

00:18:38 the officers who were involved in protecting the scene were really, really protecting Paul

00:18:45 from charges. And so he filed a lawsuit in very short order. And that lawsuit sought, like you

00:18:51 said, all of Ellick's financial records. It's just a standard part of a civil lawsuit to say,

00:18:55 how much insurance do you have? What resources could you potentially pay if there was a judgment?

00:19:00 And Ellick knew more than anyone else that he had been robbing his personal injury clients,

00:19:06 the poorest of the poor, for more than a decade. And he knew what any serious inquiry would do.

00:19:11 And so he had to stave that off. And in the end, it was his undoing.

00:19:17 So he killed his own wife and his son, Paul, who had been at the helm for that boating accident.

00:19:25 And it was an attempt to garner sympathy, like to make him a sympathetic character so that his law firm would move away, would stop investigating him.

00:19:39 so that the lawsuit involving Paul would be less strong

00:19:44 because, you know, the main culprit would be gone

00:19:48 and who would put this poor man now through the torture

00:19:51 of seeing a civil lawsuit through.

00:19:53 It was an effort to just change his own financial

00:19:56 and reputational fortunes.

00:19:59 No, I think the prosecution argued that very effectively.

00:20:04 And one of the things that I think that Mark Tinsley said

00:20:07 on the stand is, you know, personal injury lawyers don't think like other people. Their gift,

00:20:14 their understanding of a successful one is understanding emotion, like what might motivate

00:20:20 a jury to pay blood money and a lot of it in a case. They understand what makes people tick.

00:20:28 And he knew that, you know, the day of the homicides, June 7th of 2021, and I'm sure we'll

00:20:34 talk about this, he had been confronted over some of that missing money that he had been stealing,

00:20:38 $792,000, not a small amount. He knew that the law firm was on to him. And he knew also that his

00:20:47 father was dying, the patriarch of this family who had also loaned him a million dollars over time,

00:20:53 and who he had just been texting with his buddy at the bank, oh, I'm going to get another loan

00:20:57 from my dad for some money he was short. And his dad was dying. He knew this lawsuit was pending

00:21:04 about his financials. He had been confronted over the missing money. And he also knew that Paul was

00:21:08 a mess. I mean, sadly, and may he rest in peace, Paul's actions, drunken actions, did not cease

00:21:17 with the boat wreck. There's testimony that even just 10 days before he was killed, he was on a

00:21:23 boat drinking, taking some people out, and he had to call his father to get out of it. So Paul's

00:21:29 behavior was not de-escalating. If anything, his behavior is getting worse. So yes, I think that

00:21:36 the state made a really effective argument that he needed to do something to become, instead of the

00:21:41 object of suspicion, an object of sympathy. And what more would do that except becoming, instead

00:21:47 of somebody, a potential thief, a grieving father, a grieving husband, someone who was the victim of

00:21:55 horrible crime. And for months, he was right. It completely changed the subject.

00:22:01 And he had, prior to getting arrested, done what I guess it was his great-grandfather did,

00:22:09 which was attempt to create a suicide situation that would lead to an insurance payout. I mean,

00:22:15 now it's like kind of all connecting. It's all connecting. And it really is extraordinary. So

00:22:21 over the course of the summer of 2021, he did almost get away with the murder of Maggie and

00:22:26 Paul. He really did. And he almost got away with the thefts that he's now admitted to

00:22:30 dozens and dozens of people, millions and millions of dollars by borrowing more money,

00:22:36 borrowing money from his best friend, Chris Wilson, borrowing money from getting fronted

00:22:42 money and trying to repay the $792,000 back to the law firm, which he did. And they stopped,

00:22:48 They kind of let it go until, and that goes in July and in August, until the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, his paralegal is in his office looking for some paperwork, which she knows he doesn't like, but she really needed it.

00:23:02 She lifts up this folder, finds the check that was missing that proved that he had been stealing.

00:23:08 So what happens then is the gig is up.

00:23:11 Alex confronted by his brother, his law partner, and many other law partners. And they say,

00:23:16 you've been stealing, we've got evidence you've been stealing from the firm, you have to go.

00:23:20 So he gets fired that Friday of Labor Day weekend. And what happens the next morning?

00:23:24 Saturday morning, he tries to fake his own death on the side of the road. And what he said was an

00:23:29 insurance fraud attempt to get money for his surviving son, Buster. But what really looks

00:23:35 like another way to change the subject just like he had done back June 7th with the homicides of

00:23:41 his wife and son. It really is stranger than stranger than fiction.

00:23:53 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick. I like to

00:23:58 be prepared. That's why I remember 988 Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know just

00:24:04 in case anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder

00:24:09 anytime 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in canada

00:24:14 do we think he did not intend to die then when that that guy who was next to homeless i mean

00:24:23 that guy seemed you know not like a sophisticated character when he got him to quote shoot him but

00:24:30 just grazed his head. That was always so confusing to me. And I'm like, was this some sort of a

00:24:35 sharpshooter? How did the guy manage to actually barely connect with him to the point where it

00:24:40 looked like he actually had been shot at, but not so much that he actually killed him?

00:24:46 Yeah. No, there are many theories about what happened actually at the side of the road,

00:24:51 but the man you're talking about, Curtis Eddie Smith, will tell you, and he said it. He's like,

00:24:57 if I'd shot him, he'd have been dead. So that what he believes happened is there was a struggle,

00:25:02 there was a struggle over the gun. And he has said, he thinks that Ellick was trying to frame

00:25:08 him, that they were, they were struggling over the gun and maybe Ellick was going to,

00:25:12 Ellick was bigger, like 6'4", 200 pounds. I mean, can he overpower this? And Curtis Eddie Smith,

00:25:19 his cousin Eddie is a smaller guy. He's been out on disability for a number of years. Ellick was

00:25:24 a disability lawyer, and then frame him. And you remember when Dick Harpoulian and Jim Griffin,

00:25:31 Ellick's lawyers, they said in court filings, they're like, you know, the real killer is Eddie

00:25:36 Smith. He was the one who killed Maggie and Paul. And so one of the theories is that Ellick may have

00:25:43 been trying to kill Eddie and then say, see, he was coming after me to kill me the same way that

00:25:47 he killed my wife and son. And it's strange. I don't know if you remember, but he was paying,

00:25:52 Eddie was cashing a lot of checks for ELEC over a number of years, and the checks accelerated that summer, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that ELEC was effectively paying Eddie in a way.

00:26:05 So was he going to say, he was blackmailing me, look at these payments?

00:26:08 There are multiple ways to look at what actually happened there.

00:26:12 But one of them is that if you look at the photos, and the defense released the photos, they signed a HIPAA release and released all the photos.

00:26:21 there are people locally that say, that's not a cut in his head. He fell, and that's the gravel

00:26:28 on the side of the road that caused him to be cut. But one thing I should add about Cousin Eddie

00:26:34 is that he's actually a cousin. I could not believe it, but if you go back more than 100

00:26:41 years to the Civil War, Ellick's great-great-grandfather, so Randolph Sr.'s father,

00:26:46 was an officer in the Southern Army.

00:26:52 And so was Eddie's great-great-grandfather.

00:26:56 And they were brothers.

00:26:57 His great-great-grandfather was named Lazarus Murdoch.

00:26:59 He was what they call a fire eater.

00:27:02 So he was an especially virulent anti-union.

00:27:08 He made these incredible speeches

00:27:11 that got picked up by national media

00:27:13 and actually were read by Abraham Lincoln.

00:27:15 So Eddie is, he says, he's like, I'm half Murdoch, and he's right.

00:27:19 He's a part Murdoch.

00:27:22 Do we know, do we ever figure out, and by the way, just for the audience, I'm talking

00:27:25 today to Valerie Borlein.

00:27:27 She wrote the book, The Devil at His Elbow, Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty.

00:27:33 Do we know where all the money went?

00:27:36 This is one of the mysteries, right?

00:27:37 It just seemed like Alec was taking in so much money via fraud from the law firm, the

00:27:42 clients, and so on.

00:27:43 Yeah.

00:27:43 And where did it go?

00:27:45 Like, it seemed like he claimed he just spent it on drugs.

00:27:49 But the conclusion by many was always how many drugs could that could he possibly have taken?

00:27:56 He took in more than he could ever have spent was the layperson conclusion on the on the funding.

00:28:03 No, and I think I think, you know, one of the key voices in the book is Blanca Simpson, who was the house, the housekeeper at Moselle for many years.

00:28:11 And I think the evidence establishes that Alec was using drugs.

00:28:14 But I think there's no evidence that he was using the amount of drugs and opioids in particular that he says he was.

00:28:21 And I had the benefit of 10 years of spending.

00:28:25 I could see his through some federal exhibits.

00:28:27 I could see what he and Maggie spent over the course of 10 years down to like when they when they would go to the Honey Baking Ham store at Thanksgiving.

00:28:34 You could see what that expenditure was and what was so shocking about it.

00:28:39 And I think we probably know people like this in our own lives is as soon as money came in the door, it went out.

00:28:45 He was he was overdrawn tens of thousands of dollars multiple times in a year.

00:28:51 Maggie would have to call him and say, can you call the bank?

00:28:54 I need to be able to I'm at the grocery store.

00:28:56 I need to be able to cash this chain to be able to pay for my groceries.

00:28:59 You know, it's it's it's extraordinary.

00:29:03 It was, you know, they would take a private plane to a USC bowl game instead of flying first class.

00:29:11 Or, you know, Blanca told me, and there's farm equipment out on Moselle, which is 1,700 acres, a huge, huge property, twice the size of Central Park.

00:29:22 And rather than fix, you know, a big piece of heavy equipment, they would just put gallons of oil in it every day.

00:29:27 So he was spending hundreds of dollars on oil.

00:29:29 It was just, it's hard to even understand where the money was going.

00:29:35 But there is missing money, you know, millions of dollars, the feds say that's still missing.

00:29:40 So he spent a lot of it.

00:29:41 He spent some of it on drugs.

00:29:43 He, I think there is, I do subscribe to the idea that he buried some of it at Moselle

00:29:50 and PVC pipes.

00:29:51 I've talked with people who've been there when those pipes had been dug up, but that

00:29:55 you can't, I mean, cash is tough.

00:29:56 It's tough to bury millions of dollars in dirt over time.

00:30:01 There is a theory, and I think the feds have been pursuing it, that some of the money is offshore.

00:30:07 And was he going to run that summer is one of the ideas.

00:30:11 But the feds say about $6 million that's still missing.

00:30:16 That makes more sense that we've got millions missing than that he spent it all on the drugs.

00:30:21 All right, so then we go to trial.

00:30:24 He does wind up arrested.

00:30:25 This all comes out. There is the moment he is found guilty. Actually, we have that. Let's just watch that.

00:30:34 The state of South Carolina, County of Colleton, in the Court of General Sessions, the July term of 2022, the state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch, defendant, indictment for murder, SC code 16-3-0010, CDR code 0116, verdict guilty, signed by the four lady.

00:31:00 okay and that's interesting for a few reasons one he was found guilty two old becky hill

00:31:08 reading the verdict would come to play a major role in this story which no one knew at the time

00:31:15 but becky almost got this verdict thrown out because of her behavior behind the scenes with 1.00

00:31:22 the jurors and could it still her behavior get this verdict thrown out is that totally settled

00:31:29 I know that we had a hearing in which a different judge said, no, I'm not throwing out the verdict.

00:31:36 But could that be reversed on appeal?

00:31:39 I imagine Alex lawyers are taking that out.

00:31:42 No, it's incredible to watch that footage.

00:31:45 I was sitting there that night and I was leaning forward on the edge of my seat just listening to it because I remember that emotion.

00:31:51 And all of the docket numbers and numbers were like, but what's the answer?

00:31:56 So spit it out.

00:31:57 Yeah. But we had been in that courtroom. It's very tight corners. It's these soaring ceilings.

00:32:03 It was built and it was designed in the 1820s, but very tight quarters. And we had been in there

00:32:08 every day for six weeks. And by we, I mean, the lawyers, the law enforcement officers,

00:32:13 the jury, the Murdochs, they were across the aisle from me. I could, you know,

00:32:19 exchange pleasantries every day. And so it was an extraordinary result to be there that night

00:32:25 and listen to the verdict read by Becky.

00:32:27 And Becky was really like the den mother of the courtroom 0.66

00:32:29 because the clerk of court makes sure the jury has lunch,

00:32:34 makes sure that the press has the credentials,

00:32:36 or, you know, do they, there's so many people

00:32:39 in downtown Walterboro didn't have places to eat.

00:32:42 What about food trucks, which they ultimately bought in?

00:32:45 She was sort of the principal of an elementary school

00:32:49 is what it felt like a little bit.

00:32:50 So it's surreal for Becky to be the center of so much scrutiny.

00:32:55 But what that scrutiny is about is her relationships and potential talking out of school with members of the jury, many of whom she knew beforehand.

00:33:04 And many of the jurors knew each other.

00:33:05 It's a small town.

00:33:07 I always, you know, I'm from a relatively small town myself in the South.

00:33:11 And, you know, if you had 100 people in church the day before jury selection, you know, five of them would have gotten a jury summons.

00:33:20 So, you know, people knew each other and the jury wasn't sequestered.

00:33:23 Everybody in town knew who they were.

00:33:25 And Becky, you know, knew a lot of them personally.

00:33:28 And so the question was, did she talk to them out of school?

00:33:31 And did she say things that would prejudice them against Ellick, particularly when he took the stand?

00:33:37 And you had jurors come forward to say, yes, at least one of them said, she influenced my verdict.

00:33:43 And it is a small town.

00:33:45 And we talked a little bit about the bootlegging case involving Old Buster.

00:33:49 You know, it's extraordinary.

00:33:50 But Becky's grandmother and grandfather and her uncle, who was a teenager, were charged, federally charged with felony with felonies in that bootlegging ring.

00:33:58 They were on Buster's payroll. And everything is connected.

00:34:02 Everything's connected there. But to your question, Megan, I think that we did have a first answer.

00:34:07 There was a hearing back in January where the former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jean Toll, was asked by her former colleagues on the Supreme Court to take a listen to this request for a new trial.

00:34:19 She denied it, but the defense is appealing it back to the Supreme Court.

00:34:24 They've agreed to hear it, even though it seems unlikely they will overturn their own special, the person that they trusted with this decision.

00:34:33 And then also they're very close allies with Judge Newman, who presided over the initial proceeding.

00:34:39 He's very tight with the Chief Justice, Don Beatty.

00:34:44 So I spoke with Dick.

00:34:45 I saw him recently in Columbia, Dick Harpootlian, and they see their best chance at a new trial at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, just a little bit further removed from South Carolina, which is such a small state.

00:34:57 And getting fresh ears at this idea of not just did Becky Hill say things to the jurors that were prejudicial, but also did the state apply the wrong standard? 0.87

00:35:07 And it was a degree that was it's a measure of degrees.

00:35:11 Like, yes, we acknowledge that she talked with a jury, but did it did it move the needle?

00:35:15 And so what they hope is that the federal court will apply a different standard.

00:35:20 Yeah, that they they're going to argue they were held to to too high a burden of proof to prove jury tampering and that a lower standard should have been applied, which would have allowed them to prove jury tampering, which would allow him to get a new trial.

00:35:33 The Justice Toll was great when she came in and held that hearing over Becky Hill. 0.97

00:35:38 The allegations against Becky Hill just got weirder.

00:35:40 And Justice Toll, I will say, was, I'm sorry, she's just such an extraordinary figure in

00:35:45 South Carolina history.

00:35:46 I used to cover South Carolina politics when I was a reporter at the state newspaper in

00:35:51 Columbia, and she was the chief justice at the time, former Speaker of the House. 0.94

00:35:55 She's been in public life there for 60 years and came, was a young lawyer, and this is

00:36:01 so extraordinary to me was a young lawyer in a day, in a time when women weren't even allowed

00:36:05 to serve on a jury until 1968. And so she was, she, she did project when she was up there. I

00:36:12 say this lovingly. She, she seemed like a tough old broad in the best sense, you know, like she 1.00

00:36:17 wasn't going to tell her to hear you say that she knew the Murdoch, she knew the Murdoch and she had

00:36:23 actually both in the legislature. I talked with her about this, both in the legislature and on

00:36:29 the bench had pushed for laws that would kind of claw back some of the power that they were using 0.95

00:36:38 inappropriately, in her view. So she knew the Murdochs quite well over the course of decades.

00:36:45 She made the comment about Becky Hill that would become very well known. Here it is,

00:36:52 SOT 52. I find that the clerk of court is not completely credible as a witness. Ms. Hill was

00:37:01 attracted by the siren call of celebrity. She wanted to write a book about the trial and express

00:37:07 that as early as November 2022, long before the trial began. And that led to bad behavior by

00:37:15 Becky Hill, which got this whole thing, you know, mucked up. But do you remember, can you, I'm just,

00:37:21 it's been a while since we've covered this, but she also has a son who worked in the courthouse

00:37:27 and there was an allegation about him wiping his phone and wiping her phone on the day that they

00:37:35 were supposed to turn them over for an internal ethics investigation. It smelled to high heaven.

00:37:42 You know, it is, um, I think it's, if you're not from a small town in the rural South, maybe it

00:37:48 just, it boggles the mind. But her son was the information technology director for the county.

00:37:55 And that was, you know, she's an elected official. She is, but she's also, you know, 0.96

00:38:03 politically powerful. And some of those jobs are patronage jobs. And he was in that role

00:38:07 and is, you know, accused of tapping the phone of an county administrator that was communicating

00:38:14 with the state ethics board to try to find out what was going on in the investigation with

00:38:17 his mother. There were all sorts of wiping the phone, which, you know, the lawyers will tell

00:38:23 you is a fairly standard move in some defense cases, but it looked highly irregular to a lay

00:38:30 person. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because it's such a big case. It captivated so much attention

00:38:37 that the center ring of the circus is really Elec Murdoch and the trial, but there's so many

00:38:43 Outer Rings. With the Mallory Beach case, for example, there's another case that's ongoing

00:38:48 about whether the convenience store where Paul bought beer, whether the owner of that convenience

00:38:54 store has been trying to harass the Beach family over the years. That's been going on for several

00:38:59 years. Becky is facing an investigation into her behavior, and that's been going on. So we're in

00:39:06 multiple layers of drama with this story, and it's just incredible. I remember sitting in court

00:39:13 and watching Alec during a break.

00:39:15 He was six feet away from me.

00:39:17 And he's the center of this,

00:39:18 he's the eye of this hurricane.

00:39:20 And there's so much swirling around him

00:39:21 that one person could stir up so much chaos

00:39:23 is really amazing.

00:39:25 So now here we are where he's appealing.

00:39:28 He's going to argue Becky Hill mucked up the trial 0.86

00:39:31 to the point where he gets another trial.

00:39:34 We don't love the chances, but one never knows.

00:39:37 And in the meantime, the wrongful death lawsuit

00:39:41 that Mallory Beach's family brought against Alec.

00:39:44 Is that totally resolved?

00:39:47 That was, the remnants of that were resolved this week

00:39:51 with a $500,000 payment from her,

00:39:55 from Alec's insurer that had been tied up.

00:39:58 And that was paid to the lawyers this past,

00:39:59 the paper was filed this past Monday.

00:40:02 So that case is pretty well wrapped up.

00:40:05 Did the family get a payment too?

00:40:09 The family did.

00:40:10 And not this past summer, but summer of 22, they, I'm sorry, summer of 23, they received a payment largely from Parker's convenience store, this convenience store where Paul bought beer, on the order of $14 million.

00:40:24 So it was a significant civil judgment that, and I learned a lot about personal injury law in the course of this, of reporting this book.

00:40:35 But, you know, this was considered, you know, what was Mallory's life worth?

00:40:42 It is blood money.

00:40:43 And so it's a difficult fact of personal injury law that the more money that you get paid is a reflection of what, you know, a jury might think your loved one's life is worth.

00:40:55 I'm sure it's a special form of sentencing for you because every time you get into the car that money bought or the bed that money paid for, it's got to make you feel awful.

00:41:10 And they will tell you, and they will tell you, Mrs. Pamela Pinckney, Hakeem Pinckney's mother, Hakeem was the paraplegic teenager who died in a nursing home and was robbed by Alec Murdoch twice.

00:41:23 She would tell you, she would give back all of it for time with her son.

00:41:29 It's just, it's the proxy we have in our judicial system to make a family as whole as possible, knowing that nothing really ever will.

00:41:38 So what, if anything, is happening with the other piece of this story, which is the possible murder by Buster, Paul's older brother of a young gay classmate who was killed on the road.

00:42:00 But there's just only speculation that it was Buster Murdoch, not actual proof.

00:42:05 And they were going to reopen that investigation in the wake of all of this.

00:42:09 Where does that stand?

00:42:12 Well, you know, you mentioned the missing money.

00:42:15 There's also the question of the missing guns and the homicide.

00:42:17 But the biggest unanswered question is what happened to Stephen Smith.

00:42:21 He was the he was a 19 year old young man who was found in the middle of a road in the summer of 2015.

00:42:26 in the course of the investigation, the Murdoch name came up 40 different times.

00:42:31 People would say one of the boys or another was involved somehow.

00:42:34 But I should be clear, there is no evidence that Buster or Paul,

00:42:38 there's no proof that either one of them had anything to do with the death of this young man.

00:42:44 Buster has gone so far to say, you know, that he had nothing to do with it.

00:42:48 He wasn't close to it.

00:42:49 He wasn't there that evening.

00:42:51 And he's even sued some of the documentary filmmakers who he alleges have said that he had a role in some way, shape, or form.

00:42:59 They certainly have laid those breadcrumbs.

00:43:02 But it is, you know, you can go through, you know, it's 90-some pages of a police report where the name comes up over and over again in very strange ways.

00:43:12 So there's always been a rumor that the Murdochs were involved somehow in his death or in making it impossible to find out who killed him.

00:43:23 But I can tell you that the state grand jury has still been meeting over this case and is eager to figure it out.

00:43:30 It is one that still haunts Hampton County.

00:43:33 So we may never know, but it won't be for lack of interviews and lack of trying because they're actively working the case from what I understand.

00:43:40 so in the time we have left what's what life like right now for buster murdoch the one who

00:43:48 the son whose entire family is has been killed or is now in jail and for alec murdoch who is living 0.93

00:43:55 this life of excess and now is convicted of double homicide not to mention all the fraud

00:44:00 charges that were brought against him separately which he was also found guilty on

00:44:04 no it's very poignant i was i've mentioned i was in hampton last week and went by the cemetery

00:44:10 And I saw, it took a while, but Maggie and Paul's gravestones have been put up, and people will leave flowers there.

00:44:18 There's a ceramic dog that looks like Bubba, the yellow lab that belonged to the family that's there.

00:44:25 And most pointed of all, it's, you know, on Maggie's headstone, it says, you know, Margaret Branstetter, Murdoch, mother.

00:44:33 And on Paul's, it says, Paul, Terry Murdoch, son.

00:44:36 And it's incredible that that is how you'd be defined.

00:44:41 But the person I was with said, what happens to Alec?

00:44:44 You know, where is he in this picture?

00:44:46 So will he be remembered as a father?

00:44:49 Will he be remembered as the person that killed them?

00:44:52 But he's in prison in the upstate.

00:44:55 He has acclimated to prison life well, according to what I'm told.

00:45:02 And by that, I mean, he has, Alec Murdoch is the type of a person who works the system and he has, he has relationships. He does, he's, he's a disbarred lawyer, but he's a law, he knows the law and he helps other inmates with their questions.

00:45:18 He's he's using his notoriety to. To to to his benefit, he he was, you know, accused by or, you know, the prisons system of prisons found that he had been, you know, essentially bribing other inmates to let him use their pin number to make phone calls.

00:45:39 He's figuring things out on the inside, but he will never, ever see the light of day, even if there's another trial in the homicide case.

00:45:48 The state effectively got an insurance policy.

00:45:51 You remember back in November when he pled guilty to those dozens of financial crimes and they got a sentence that will take him, keep him in prison until he's roughly 80 years old.

00:46:01 So regardless of whether the homicide is ever turned.

00:46:04 As for Buster, my understanding is, you know, he's living in Bluffton, a community just adjacent to Beaufort with his fiancée is a woman who was in court with him every day, his girlfriend from law school, who is a lawyer.

00:46:20 He got a substantial settlement from his mother's estate, roughly $500,000.

00:46:26 There's a payment, I document in the book, where he participated in a documentary and got several hundred thousand dollars from that.

00:46:34 So he has a small amount, not a, sorry, not a small, but, you know, a significant amount of money to, you know, start a life.

00:46:43 Although it is difficult to see how he does so separate from his family because his last name is Murdoch and he's got that red hair.

00:46:52 He's so just, he, he, it would be hard with that, that name and that hair to make an, make a new life.

00:47:00 You'd have to go someplace else.

00:47:02 I mean, there's a brother, Alex's brother, seemed non-sociopathic.

00:47:10 Perhaps there's some hope there.

00:47:12 I don't know.

00:47:13 Raised by that man with that family lineage, that's-

00:47:16 Well, and you're right about his brother's, his older brother, Randy, and his younger

00:47:21 brother, John Marvin, are still in the community as well.

00:47:25 You know, I went by the law firm the other day and his brother, his older brother, Randy,

00:47:30 is a partner there and is actively working cases.

00:47:32 His younger brother, John Marvin, runs a heavy equipment business.

00:47:36 And as you go down the main drag from Linkinghampton and Varnvale, you see Murdoch Rentals right there.

00:47:40 So they're still in the community and, you know, well regarded to a degree.

00:47:47 But I think that everything's changed with a downfall.

00:47:52 Is anyone living at the estate where it happened?

00:47:56 So Moselle is the estate where it happened.

00:47:58 It actually has been sold, and it's been sold in two pieces.

00:48:00 The house itself was sold, along with roughly 20 acres, to an out-of-state buyer whose name was not revealed.

00:48:09 And the Delta, the other acreage, was sold to a neighboring landowner who wanted the land.

00:48:18 You know, I went by there the other day, too, just to take a look.

00:48:22 I had been onto the property during the trial.

00:48:26 I accompanied the jury on their visit to see the place.

00:48:29 it still feels, it still seems like there's a heaviness in the air out there. It is still

00:48:36 a haunted place, really. Dick Harbutlian said so, and I felt it as well.

00:48:44 Always will be. Wow, great reporting. Valerie, thank you. Her name is Valerie Borlein,

00:48:48 and the book, again, is The Devil at His Elbow, Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty.

00:48:56 google it check it out devil at his elbow thank you so much for coming on and telling

00:49:00 us the story and the updates thank you so much for having me all the best

00:49:04 getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick i like to

00:49:16 be prepared that's why i remember 988 canada's suicide crisis helpline it's good to know just

00:49:22 case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder anytime.

00:49:28 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government in Canada.

00:49:35 Today, a deep dive into the Jody Arias case. This month marks 15 years since Travis Alexander was

00:49:44 viciously murdered by his ex-girlfriend Jody Arias. We revisit the case with criminal defense

00:49:49 attorney and longtime Kelly's Court contributor, Mark Eiglarsh. We'll take a look back at the

00:49:54 events leading up to Travis's murder, what Jody's life is like in prison today, and Mark will dissect

00:50:00 the defense and prosecution in a way that only Mark can. I'm going to kick it off with a little

00:50:10 walk down memory lane because you used to come on Kelly's Court back then as now. This one doesn't

00:50:16 involve you. This Kelly's Court doesn't involve you, but it's a scene setter. Now we're 10 years

00:50:20 post-verdict right now. Here's a little flashback to I was on the air when we got the guilty verdict

00:50:26 and covered it with the court then, which was Mercedes Colwyn that day and Jonna Spillbore.

00:50:31 Look at this sweet delivery. She's so concerned about their happiness and their peace now.

00:50:38 Listen. I hope that now that a verdict has been rendered, that they're able to find peace,

00:50:44 Some sense of peace

00:50:46 That's great

00:50:47 And the Oscar goes to

00:50:48 Because this is a woman

00:50:50 Who stabbed him 27 times

00:50:53 In the heart as well 0.92

00:50:55 Then shot him 1.00

00:50:56 And look at the bloody sink 0.99

00:50:57 Not to be sensationalist

00:50:58 But prosecutors say

00:51:00 The man was standing at the sink

00:51:01 Watching himself get stabbed to death

00:51:04 Watching himself get murdered 0.96

00:51:06 And bleed out over the sink

00:51:08 Oh but Mercedes

00:51:09 She's so concerned about the family's peace

00:51:11 Give me a break

00:51:14 a very pregnant Megyn Kelly in that clip. But that gets to it, right? I mean, the thing,

00:51:22 because I've been asking myself, Mark, what is it about the Jodi Arias case that kept people so

00:51:27 riveted? And in part, it's this mousy little woman who committed one of the most heinous 0.99

00:51:35 murders that ever came before the national eye. You left out one thing, which is obvious,

00:51:41 and maybe you intentionally did it, but Americans like pretty packages. Okay. If she wasn't pretty 1.00

00:51:49 and I put that in quotations, I mean, it's not how I feel, but there is some type of objective,

00:51:54 you know, in Hollywood, what people look for, people found that she was attractive. And if she 1.00

00:51:59 wasn't, and she looked differently, I don't know if people would have been as interested. So let's,

00:52:05 let's bring that out. That's, that's gotta be something that you concede, right?

00:52:08 and the sex i mean it was like an r-rated trial it was like cinemax back in the day

00:52:15 oh yeah no there was a lot of that yes and and she really threw punches i mean she really you 1.00

00:52:24 know dead man can't tell tales he was dead she was free to say whatever the hell she wanted

00:52:28 so whether it be you know allegations of him being involved in kitty porn which he can't defend

00:52:35 or him wanting to do, which really was documented because you heard those horrible audio tapes of

00:52:42 him, some of the things he would do to her, which weren't meant for public viewing. It was just

00:52:47 horrible. All right. So let's start at the beginning. These two meet in 2008, I think it

00:52:55 was, 2008 at a business convention. And 2006, sorry, these two meet in September 2006 at a

00:53:03 work conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander. And then they start dating

00:53:12 out a few months after that. As far as I can tell, Mark, they were only dating for like four months,

00:53:18 but they continue to sleep with each other. Yeah. It sounds like it became very physical,

00:53:26 very quickly. And, you know, she's the manipulative type, right? So I can't imagine 0.87

00:53:31 this was pure love. I think this was lust. I think this was her, you know, playing the angles,

00:53:37 looking to manipulate him. And she jumped all in real quick.

00:53:41 Did we have any evidence that prior to that relationship, because I think she was like

00:53:45 28, he was a couple years older than that, that she was some sort of a psycho, that she had,

00:53:51 you know, problems with other partners in turning into a stalker or any other criminal history?

00:53:58 I don't remember hearing anything like that. I heard little stories, but, you know, everybody comes out of the woodwork on high profile cases. Nothing that I attributed as credible and believable.

00:54:11 So he was a Mormon and she wasn't until after she met him. Right. Right. Right. She became a drive through Mormon. You know, all of a sudden I'll convert. I'm sure that was, you know, again, to somehow take one step further into his good graces. 0.63

00:54:28 So they meet. Yeah, here she is getting her, you know, I don't know. Is it a baptism into the

00:54:35 Mormon faith? I'm not exactly sure how we would refer to this, but they date from February of

00:54:40 2007 to June 2007. And then they break up and maintain a physical relationship. One year later,

00:54:47 one year later, she appears to stage a burglary at her grandparents' house. This would become

00:54:54 important because it was one week before the murder. And what happened in that burglary?

00:55:01 Yeah, next level stuff. She's thinking, okay, they stole a gun from my grandparents. So that

00:55:08 gun's out there in the criminal world. So that's the gun, however, she'd like to use to potentially

00:55:14 execute her boy. This is relevant because she would later claim when she was on trial, 1.00

00:55:21 a bunch of different things, intruders, accident, self-defense. And if she intentionally staged a

00:55:28 burglary at her parent, her grandparents' house a week before the murder, then it's very clearly

00:55:33 a premeditated act. Absolutely. The best she's got is, well, I brought it with me for protection.

00:55:39 I was going on the road, whatever. I didn't mean to kill him. I had it with me. Doesn't necessarily

00:55:43 mean she wanted to kill him, but it's strong evidence of it. But I got to go back. There's

00:55:48 something that's bothering me and it'll bother me tonight, Megan. I had brought out that she has a

00:55:54 pretty shell to many people. Did you concede that? Is she what you would call attractive?

00:56:01 And I'm not talking about her soul. I'm not talking about, I'm just saying, don't you think

00:56:04 that that played a role in why people cared so much? Why the media? Yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. If

00:56:11 you have an attractive defendant or victim, I mean, I think she was prettier when things started.

00:56:17 And then when she took the stand, when she was at trial, she tried to make herself look

00:56:19 very plain Janey, mousy, you know, but like the blonde and, you know, the naked pictures, 0.99

00:56:24 obviously she's got a very good body. 1.00

00:56:27 All those things play into, oh, what's happening there?

00:56:30 What, that kind of a person, right?

00:56:32 All right.

00:56:32 I got what I needed.

00:56:33 You can move along.

00:56:33 I got it.

00:56:34 I just need to know that.

00:56:35 Okay.

00:56:36 So the date of that burglary was May 28th, 2008.

00:56:41 June 2nd, 2008, which is now two days before the murder.

00:56:44 She rented a vehicle from Budget Rent-A-Car in Redding, California, and then on June 4th, 2008,

00:56:52 Travis Alexander was killed in Mesa, Arizona. So, I mean, to me, this does all look like

00:56:58 premeditation. She looks like a jilted lover who became a stalker, who became obsessed with him. 0.99

00:57:04 We're told that in, I think, April, right before the fake burglary at her grandparents' house,

00:57:10 he was going to go with her on some trip that right and then he bailed cancun everybody wants 0.93

00:57:18 to go to cancun baby and then he she thought she was in the money she was going to go with him it's 1.00

00:57:24 going to be romantic he's gonna really spend the dough on me he's gonna he's gonna it's gonna be 0.88

00:57:29 romantic and he picked another girl that was it and that really can be the catalyst for a lunatic 0.66

00:57:37 Like, you never know what's going to set some crazy stalker off to the point of murder.

00:57:42 It'll disappoint any normal gal who has strong feelings for someone for whatever reason. 0.97

00:57:47 But when you take someone who's, you know, got 51 cards and isn't all there, that can really amp it up.

00:57:54 Yes.

00:57:55 All right.

00:57:55 So that's as near as we can tell, like, one of the last final acts he does that gets in her head somehow.

00:58:01 But they had met on again, off again with the sex after breakup.

00:58:05 So, you know, who knows how this exactly files in June 4th, 2008.

00:58:10 That's the day of the murder.

00:58:12 And we'll get to what happened that day.

00:58:14 But weirdly, his body was not found for another five days.

00:58:19 Why do we know why that was like, did he not have a job?

00:58:23 Did he not have friends?

00:58:24 How do you sit in your, you know, how is it that a body's five days in the apartment without

00:58:28 anybody noticing?

00:58:29 Yeah, it was like that.

00:58:30 I'm trying to think of the specifics, but they, he was supposed to be somewhere and

00:58:34 then they checked in on him. I think a friend did. Finally, he wasn't there. But yeah, I don't

00:58:39 think he had any place that he had to be. He didn't have roommates. He didn't have nosy,

00:58:43 you know, parents coming around. So yeah, it just happened.

00:58:48 Wow. All right. So the day of the murder, June 4th, what happened? She goes over there.

00:58:55 And what happened?

00:58:57 Well, I don't know. Meaning, you know, we have what was alleged by the prosecution.

00:59:01 the jury found her guilty you never really know exactly what took place um but what it looked like

00:59:09 was um she had a plan to execute him and that's exactly what happened she tried to defend with 0.95

00:59:16 he was attacking me and that was malarkey initially though i think she was on inside

00:59:21 edition and told a few people i wasn't there i was framed like the mona lisa i had nothing to do with

00:59:26 it and then when the evidence comes out like most of my clients do they go oh wait you got that

00:59:31 evidence okay okay okay okay i was there but that's what happened so initially you know the

00:59:39 murder happens on june 4th she leaves we we know i mean she winds up confessing on the stand we know

00:59:44 she did this crime now um but she left the crime scene no one finds travis until his friends

00:59:52 realize like he's not showing up at events etc and they go to his house they the friends find his body

01:00:00 in a crumpled heap in his shower, an incredibly bloody crime scene, and called 911.

01:00:08 Here's a bit of that call.

01:00:10 Hello?

01:00:11 Hi, so what's going on?

01:00:13 He's dead. He's in his bedroom in the shower.

01:00:18 Okay. How did this happen? Do you have any idea?

01:00:21 No, we have no idea. Everyone's been wondering about him for a few days.

01:00:25 She said that there was blood. So is it coming from his head?

01:00:27 No, it's all over the place.

01:00:34 And right away, Mark, the friends suspected her.

01:00:37 They described her to the authorities as a potential stalker.

01:00:42 And that's what Travis had been saying about her.

01:00:44 But they did have sex that day, right?

01:00:47 I mean, like, it appears that they had hours and hours of some sort of sexual interlude prior to the murder.

01:00:52 That's what's so unusual.

01:00:53 Well, listen, you know, this guy clearly was a guy with strong emotions, which is the nicest thing I can say about him in terms of that.

01:01:00 And, you know, they went at it. And my guess is there were some discussions.

01:01:05 Maybe that was her way of trying to convince him to pick her and replace the gal that he did select for Cancun to go. 1.00

01:01:12 I don't know, but something happened and she snapped if if she didn't plan on doing this anyway, no matter what.

01:01:20 because you have hours and we know this because they found a camera the two had been taking

01:01:26 pictures of the sexual acts there's pictures of her posing totally nude for the camera i mean 0.70

01:01:34 very consensually does not look like a forced situation on either end so for sure and it looks

01:01:39 like it went on for hours what do you make of that in other words i want to know what you think

01:01:46 Why are they having sex?

01:01:47 The next minute, she's executing him 0.99

01:01:50 in a horrible, horrible, tragic way,

01:01:51 which we're going to get to.

01:01:52 But why do you think, what's the sex about?

01:01:55 What do you think?

01:01:56 I think it was like a goodbye gift from her to him,

01:02:00 though he didn't realize that's what it was.

01:02:02 I think he thought it was just a genuine hookup.

01:02:04 And I think she had this whole thing planned. 0.90

01:02:06 She went there to murder him. 1.00

01:02:08 And this was her farewell, you know, send off to the guy.

01:02:13 I do.

01:02:13 that's why she's a sick effort and so i think she had the whole thing planned out and this was

01:02:18 there's no other reason okay that is just cold as ice baby wow that's her that's what's interesting

01:02:27 about her i mean from a you know that's i never thought humanity perspective like why in fact in

01:02:32 my mind i couldn't wrap my head around that theory and so i then thought okay she's got it

01:02:39 just in case, whatever, and then things go awry, and then she kills him, either second degree or

01:02:47 she just said, okay, it's part of my plan that I'm now going to implement. And she had time to

01:02:52 think about it when she's there and she does it. But I don't know, man, you think she knew she was

01:02:57 going to kill him prior to having sex with him? Yes, I do. I think the whole thing was planned 0.99

01:03:03 out in great detail, but she's a bad murderer. I mean, she was effective at committing the murder, 0.99

01:03:09 but very bad at covering up her tracks. And she should have spent more time in the planning and

01:03:14 the lying phase because she turned out to be a disaster at that. Now, she very shortly thereafter

01:03:20 gets arrested. The friends are like, it was Jodi Arias. She's a stalker. Meanwhile, the day after

01:03:26 the murder, she went and saw another love interest, some guy named Ryan Burns, a former coworker of

01:03:31 of his of hers in utah that guy i think he also took the stand it's like that's how cold she is

01:03:37 mark like she now at this point there's no doubt she committed this brutal murder the day before

01:03:42 she goes off to see another lover oh no problem i mean like yeah consistent with what you were 0.99

01:03:47 saying like to be able to have sex with with with this guy before she she kills him you know there's 0.97

01:03:52 travis all right he's dead she she seems to just manipulate and this is also what i know after the 0.99

01:03:59 fact. I'm jumping ahead of how she manipulates everybody in prison and stuff like that. But 1.00

01:04:04 that seems to be her MO. I don't know that type of person, but someone who can't have an honest 0.81

01:04:09 relationship and it's all about manipulation. So she probably had numerous fellas in her life, 1.00

01:04:15 including the guy you just mentioned, where, okay, onto him. What do I need from him? Let

01:04:19 me manipulate him to get it. And they tend to be narcissistic personalities, right? It's all

01:04:25 about them. You only matter to the extent you reflect off of them. You cannot leave them. You

01:04:31 certainly cannot dump them the way Travis did with Jody. And that's why you can't process it as a

01:04:37 normal person because we normal people don't react that way when they get dumped. It's sad,

01:04:41 but we don't kill anybody. So she goes to see Ryan Burns. Let me tell you this. Yeah. That type

01:04:46 of person gets very misunderstood because the average juror who's arguably like you and me,

01:04:53 you know, who's got sensibilities, the right moral compass, who goes to work every day,

01:04:58 kids, family, normal, they come in and they're trying to analyze the actions of some of these

01:05:02 people. And a lot of times like, well, wait, that doesn't make sense. I wouldn't do that.

01:05:07 There's no way that happened. I couldn't have done that. Even with the Murdoch trial to this

01:05:11 day, I know he killed his wife and kid and OJ killed. It's hard for me to actually see it because

01:05:19 it's so foreign to me and what I would do

01:05:22 and what the average juror can wrap their heads around.

01:05:26 Well, that plays into the brutality of the crime

01:05:28 because you look at this beautiful, tiny woman

01:05:33 and you do not think she would be capable of this.

01:05:37 You know, you see like two big, muscly men 1.00

01:05:41 with the tats in the prison in their background

01:05:44 and you think, oh, okay.

01:05:45 Teardrops from the eye, yeah, the tattoos.

01:05:47 Yeah, you see Jodi Arias, you think, no, because the level of violence that went down at this crime scene was unbelievable.

01:05:56 How did she carry this out?

01:05:57 27 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot to his face.

01:06:03 And the medical examiner testified that the actual slicing was extremely deep, three to four inches deep into his neck.

01:06:15 trying to find the exact description of it, but it was absolutely merciless. She nearly

01:06:24 decapitated him while he was in that shower. She clearly went in there while he was showering 1.00

01:06:28 and nearly decapitated him, stabbed him 27 times. And then the medical examiner said,

01:06:33 after that, shot him in the face. So, I mean, the level of anger behind that mark speaks to what?

01:06:41 I mean, I don't know.

01:06:43 What do we glean from the level of violence?

01:06:46 It goes back to what I keep trying to do in my head, maybe as a defense lawyer, as a compassionate soul, to believe that something went down before that happened, that he said something that set her off.

01:06:59 I find it hard to believe, although I'm not relating to this type of person, that she, and this is probably what she did, that she had the whole plan.

01:07:07 And this was, as you say, her goodbye love session.

01:07:10 And then I'm going to get him in the shower.

01:07:11 And she did.

01:07:12 It just seems more consistent with someone who is set off by some words or action.

01:07:18 How can that be?

01:07:19 Okay, but how can that be?

01:07:20 Because we've seen the crime photos.

01:07:21 And among the photos that they found on the camera, which she left behind,

01:07:26 is there are photos of Travis in that shower.

01:07:29 And it appears to be after the lovemaking, you know, he's in the shower.

01:07:33 He's not wearing his clothing.

01:07:34 And that's, of course, we know where he was killed.

01:07:36 And he's okay. There are photos of him in the shower. He's okay. So you don't have a fight.

01:07:41 I mean, like an errant word from the shower as she was photographing him naked after their

01:07:46 lovemaking. That doesn't make sense. My theory makes much more sense.

01:07:50 No, it might. Again, listen, I'm not defending this woman at all. I'm just saying as a human

01:07:56 being, I'm just opening up and telling you how it's still hard for me to wrap my head around

01:08:00 what she did. It's so challenging. And it's hard to understand how she, this life thin little thing

01:08:07 could, could kill him, could kill a man. He wasn't overly large, but he was bigger than she was.

01:08:16 Sure. And how do you stab a man 27 times? I mean, he was in the shower, I guess. So he's vulnerable

01:08:20 and he's not expecting it. But I mean, if that, if that, you know, slice across the neck was number

01:08:25 one, then that would have been the end of it. And it probably wasn't. I think the medical

01:08:30 examiner said that those defensive wounds on his hands likely came first, which would make sense.

01:08:36 He's caught off guard. He goes like this. She continues to stab. But you just said it. He's

01:08:42 off guard. He doesn't expect it. He's vulnerable. He's got nothing to defend himself except a bar

01:08:48 of soap. You know, what do you do? She knew what she was doing and she's passionate and aggressive 1.00

01:08:53 and, and, and wanted it done. And then to shoot him after the fact, as Emmy said that he didn't

01:09:00 see a brain hemorrhage from the bullet in Travis's head. And he said there would be if, if the

01:09:06 bullet had gone in there while he was alive and his blood was pumping. So she shot him. She just

01:09:11 made sure, you know, he was a hundred percent dead. She wanted this guy dead. She was very angry with 0.99

01:09:16 him, which again suggests, I think my theory, you know, she was angry. She was dumped. She was angry. 1.00

01:09:23 she wasn't going to Cancun. You don't dump somebody who's a narcissistic sociopath like 1.00

01:09:27 Jodi Arias. And the whole thing was a setup. That's, you know, that seems to be what the 0.96

01:09:33 evidence suggests. I agree. I just, I just cannot relate. It's going to take me some time to process

01:09:38 probably tonight as I'm laying down writing my gratefuls. Wait a second. She had sex with him 0.88

01:09:43 as a goodbye. Megan said that. And I trust Megan. I believe her. And then executes him in the most 1.00

01:09:49 violent manner. In other words, after stab number 16, that apparently wasn't enough for her. You 1.00

01:09:55 know, it required another few jabs right now. We're at 21, 22, still not enough. I need about

01:10:01 six more. And then I'm going to slash his throat and shoot him. You really do have to think about 1.00

01:10:06 what she actually did to appreciate how abhorrent this was. My God. And then, and then leave his

01:10:12 crumpled dead body in the shower like he was trash. She did get arrested a month and a couple 0.95

01:10:20 of days after the act. Then more bizarre behavior came out. I'll get to the interrogation room,

01:10:29 but she gave an interview to Inside Edition, Mark's number one advice to all of his clients,

01:10:35 do not talk. Shut up. Let me do the talking if there's going to be any talking. She talks. 0.98

01:10:40 The fish who kept his mouth shut never got caught, right?

01:10:46 That's right.

01:10:47 That's right.

01:10:47 And I'm not saying that certain interviews aren't beneficial.

01:10:53 I've done it in many cases, but that's after you know what the evidence is, you know the

01:10:58 parameters, you know how you can and can't get hurt.

01:11:01 What she did was just reckless.

01:11:04 So she gives an interview to Inside Edition, which actually makes some sense knowing her

01:11:10 in the way we do. She did, she was a narcissist. She wanted to be a star. She cared about how she

01:11:15 looked, how people were perceiving her. I think she was seeing an opportunity to like see her name

01:11:20 in lights as opposed to just like, oh my God, keep yourself out of bars. Here is a bit of what

01:11:26 she told Inside Edition. This is well before the trial after she'd just been placed in jail.

01:11:31 Did you kill Travis Alexander? I absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do

01:11:36 with his murder i didn't harm him in any way i witnessed um travis being attacked by two other

01:11:42 individuals who i don't know who they were i couldn't pick them out in a police lineup so what

01:11:48 happened um they came into his home and attacked us both you did not shoot travis no i've never

01:11:56 even shot a real gun you did not stab him 27 times that's that's heinous or slit his throat

01:12:02 from ear to ear i can't imagine slitting anyone's throat no jury is going to convict me why not

01:12:07 because i'm innocent and you can mark my words on that one no jury will convict me

01:12:11 oh man oh man we could we could have we could do an hour just on that there is so much there

01:12:21 right so wait all right so let me just go first of all the one thing she asked for

01:12:27 was for makeup prior to her mugshot. That's what she's thinking about, right? I'm not thinking

01:12:35 about a life of having to never take a shower ever again in a jail or prison because I'm too

01:12:42 pretty. She's worried about her mugshot. She needs to mix. There we go. It is a nice mugshot.

01:12:49 So it goes to the point how she's so narcissistic. She wants the world to love her and believe that

01:12:55 she's Snow White. But look at the way she acted. This is why you never know anyone. You just know

01:13:02 how they want you to see them because she looks believable. If you know nothing about the facts

01:13:09 of the case and you look and you go, yeah, how could she have done that? So beware, folks. You

01:13:14 never really need. I watched that interview, Mark, and all I can think of is Phil Houston,

01:13:19 the human lie detector, CIA guy who invented the deception detection method that's still used

01:13:25 there. He was at CIA for 25 years. And what he talks about, I'll set it up for you. I'll play it

01:13:29 again. But listen to how, okay, she does a couple of the things. Convincing behavior. If I say to

01:13:35 you, Mark, did you kill this guy? You say, no. You don't try to convince me you would never kill

01:13:41 anybody. That's not what a normal non-killer does. So the convincing behavior, the deflecting

01:13:49 behavior the qualifying statements the trying to convince you she's a good person listen listen to

01:13:55 it again understanding those are signs of deception did you kill travis alexander i absolutely did not

01:14:01 kill travis alexander i had nothing to do with his murder i didn't harm him in any way i witnessed

01:14:05 um travis being attacked by two other individuals who i don't know who they were i couldn't pick

01:14:13 them out in a police lineup so what happened um they came into his home and attacked us both

01:14:20 you did not shoot travis no i've never even shot a real gun you did not stab him 27 times

01:14:26 that's that's heinous or slit his throat from ear to ear i can't imagine slitting anyone's throat

01:14:31 no jury is going to convict me why not because i'm innocent and you can mark my words on that

01:14:36 one. No jury will convict me. Classic. That's heinous. That's convincing. I can't imagine

01:14:46 ever slitting someone. Who says that? You wouldn't say that. You'd say, no, no, I didn't do it,

01:14:51 period. Listen, in retrospect, you see all these signs. You don't really see it up front. But she

01:14:57 did, you know, listen, there's one thing that she did say that really bothers me. I know it's

01:15:00 probably for other cases, but when I can't stand when people blame other people for their crimes

01:15:06 and worse, I actually think there should be an enhancement, a penalty enhancement when you pick

01:15:11 somebody of a certain race or gender. It's always like, oh, black man. It was two Latino women who 0.98

01:15:18 did this, or it was two black males who I can't stand that. All right, I'm done. Yeah. No, it 1.00

01:15:24 happens all the time. Yeah. Two Latino women. Who is that? That was the blonde lady, the wife who 1.00

01:15:30 staged her own disappearance what's her name you so now thinking about this so how many how many

01:15:36 hispanic latina women are stopped and questioned and harassed in that area because of what she said 1.00

01:15:43 right i can't stay at least jody area said i i couldn't pick them out of a lineup like don't

01:15:47 bother don't worry we won't oh sherry papini sherry papini was the one that said the two

01:15:53 She's not wasting precious judicial and law enforcement resources on her trying to identify 1.00

01:15:59 someone. Give her credit for that.

01:16:01 Yes. Okay. So she gives that BS interview. I mean, it's so weird. And you can take it right

01:16:06 now. I'm not going to be convicted. What the hell? This is not a sports game. This is a crazy person

01:16:11 sitting there, though not legally. But on the subject of craziness, there was video of her 0.81

01:16:16 in the interrogation room at the police station doing a headstand. And I want to ask you, why

01:16:24 did she do this? They left her alone in the interrogation room. For the listening audience,

01:16:29 she goes down, headstand, legs up against the wall. She's got no shoes on. She's in civilian

01:16:34 clothes. She holds it for 30 seconds. They said she then began to walk around the little

01:16:39 interrogation room and sing a Dido song and search through the trash. So Mark, what's that about?

01:16:45 Well, whenever I've done that, Megan, I have no idea.

01:16:51 I should know what that means.

01:16:53 That's a nut job there. 0.99

01:16:55 Well, is she going for an insanity thing? 0.99

01:16:56 My first thought was, is she trying to look like a nutcase in the most serious of circumstances? 1.00

01:17:01 She's doing headstands? 1.00

01:17:03 No, no, no, no, no.

01:17:04 I eliminate that.

01:17:05 Listen, of all your theories, that one I don't like because that would mean this narcissist

01:17:09 who has consistently said that it wasn't her, she wasn't there.

01:17:14 I was framed like the Mona Lisa. She's not going to then say, I'm nutty. I'm crazy. I did it,

01:17:20 but I did it because I'm, you know, I don't know right from wrong. And I have a mental illness 0.99

01:17:23 or defect. There's no way that that's what she was doing. So could it just be, she's been in

01:17:28 there for hours and somehow in her apartment, she does that. I don't know. There's women who 1.00

01:17:33 do headstands like that for some purpose, I think. Right. Isn't that part of some pose?

01:17:40 Yeah. I mean, it could have been a stress reliever. I don't know.

01:17:42 It could have been a stress, I'm sure she was stressed.

01:17:46 You heard in that interview with Inside Edition,

01:17:48 she claimed for the first time,

01:17:50 two intruders killed Travis and that she was there as well.

01:17:54 The ones she would never be able to pick out of a lineup.

01:17:57 She continued to claim a home invasion 0.98

01:18:01 and that we'd been there having a consensual sexual interlude

01:18:05 using the camera before the intruders got there.

01:18:08 The camera is one of the most interesting things

01:18:10 about the whole day.

01:18:11 they took pictures of each other she took pictures of him post injury like post at least one picture

01:18:23 they say of it was of him in the shower like while he was being attacked and so we have crime scene

01:18:29 photos that the police took that show us actually what happened to him but the reporting was that

01:18:32 there was at least one photo post initial injury how does this person leave the camera there and

01:18:40 I think they eventually found it like in the washing machine.

01:18:43 Yes.

01:18:44 I'm glad you said that.

01:18:45 I was getting that vibe.

01:18:46 It was either washing machine.

01:18:47 I'm thinking back all these years.

01:18:48 It was either washing machine or dryer.

01:18:50 So I think it was the washing.

01:18:51 And somehow the, I don't know, the little disc or whatever they use was still good.

01:18:57 And they were able to get those photos.

01:18:59 And again, once that evidence came in, that's it.

01:19:02 She's done all her story.

01:19:04 I don't get it, Mark.

01:19:05 She leaves.

01:19:06 She's got all the time in the world.

01:19:07 She leaves.

01:19:08 They don't find the body for five days.

01:19:10 she knows there's a camera with all these photos of her at a minimum with him moments before he

01:19:16 dies. Nah. Why? Washing machine. Why? Why would she live it? Bye-bye. That's what I think happened.

01:19:24 Why wouldn't she just take it with her? I don't get it. It's too stupid. Is she a moron?

01:19:29 She left a lot of clues and she's serving a life sentence. I wouldn't put her up there with Einstein. 1.00

01:19:33 Yeah.

01:19:40 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.

01:19:44 I like to be prepared.

01:19:46 That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline.

01:19:50 It's good to know, just in case.

01:19:52 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

01:19:57 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.

01:20:06 She gets arrested.

01:20:08 She goes on trial.

01:20:10 So once she takes the stand, and was it a surprise? Do you remember? Because the prosecution went on for two weeks before the defense had to offer its side. Was it a shock when she took the stand?

01:20:22 I don't think I was shocked. No. In fact, the type of person that she was, very outspoken, very passionate. I think she needed to. I think that she, I think it was expected. I don't think I was shocked.

01:20:34 okay because somebody's going to have to say what happened inside of that room and she's going to

01:20:40 have to admit she was there now thanks to the photographic evidence yeah and also anytime

01:20:46 there's any element of self-defense which is pretty much what she was saying that she was

01:20:49 attacked and then she you know had to do something that that can't be brought out by a lawyer you got

01:20:55 to put them up there okay because because she started with intruders to inside addition uh she

01:21:00 continued with home invasion uh and you know i was an innocent victim that saw him you know get

01:21:05 attacked and then she switched she switched to travis attacked me and i killed him in self-defense

01:21:14 she in august of 2010 she submitted a request to the court to have letters allegedly from travis

01:21:22 alexander admitted into evidence the letters were meant to help prove her new theory of self-defense

01:21:28 The prosecution objected, saying the defendant argues that the letters are relevant to her claim of self-defense and that she was a victim of previous sexual and physical abuse by Mr. Alexander.

01:21:37 But they denied that and they said these letters should not be allowed.

01:21:42 Her new theory was that Travis Alexander became angry when she dropped his camera and she was forced to kill him in self-defense.

01:21:53 That was ultimately, Mark, what she did claim in front of the jury, was it not?

01:21:57 That's all that was left.

01:21:58 In other words, okay, the two intruder theory didn't work.

01:22:02 Everything else didn't work.

01:22:03 Then you're left with, all right, I'm there.

01:22:05 I can either do insanity, which works in a fraction of 1% of the cases.

01:22:10 And in this case, with all the planning and all the, you know, lies after the fact would

01:22:14 absolutely not work.

01:22:16 So by, you know, the same way I took the bar exam, I might not have known the answer, but

01:22:20 I eliminate those that definitely aren't the right answer.

01:22:22 And what's left is the only thing I got to go with.

01:22:24 So that's what happened.

01:22:25 she starts to try to demonize Travis. He abused me. He sexually pressured me. He treated me like

01:22:35 I was his sexual play thing. I didn't enjoy it. He was this Mormon who, you know, made me do dirty 1.00

01:22:41 things that I didn't want to do because he, whatever, he had some beliefs that he didn't 0.50

01:22:45 want to cross. Here's some of that. Okay. We have, first of all, she accuses him of being a pedophile

01:22:50 just to set the jury's expectation of him, you know, where she wanted it.

01:22:56 Right. Absolutely no proof of that whatsoever other than her weird word. 0.99

01:22:59 Here that is sought for. 0.86

01:23:01 I walked in and Travis was on the bed masturbating. 0.89

01:23:06 And I got really embarrassed. 0.99

01:23:08 It was a picture of a little boy.

01:23:12 Oh, five-ish, five-six. I'm not a good judge of age.

01:23:16 He was dressed in underwear, like briefs.

01:23:19 i was frozen there for a minute and i just ran i didn't stay i felt nauseated

01:23:27 ran inside and threw up in the bathroom

01:23:29 that's a clip from hlm which is why there's music over the weird testimony but yeah so she tries to

01:23:37 condemn him as a pedophile before she gets started and had spider-man pajamas ordered to the house 0.99

01:23:43 like she was very specific she's dangerous because she's not an idiot i mean she's dumb but she's not 1.00

01:23:48 an idiot. I don't know what that means, but you know what I'm saying? She's very cunning. 1.00

01:23:52 She's not a criminal mastermind. 0.99

01:23:54 What's that?

01:23:56 I said, she's not a criminal mastermind, but that doesn't mean she's not smart. 0.79

01:24:01 She's correct. She's creative. She's, you know, cunning. She, she plans these things out. She

01:24:06 had plenty of time to, to plan how she was going to lower him in the eyes of the jury. And you dig

01:24:14 from the pedophile card deck. 0.53

01:24:16 That's about as low as you go. 0.62

01:24:18 That was the worst.

01:24:19 So then she tries to say

01:24:21 that she had to give him

01:24:23 certain forms of sex 0.96

01:24:24 because he was a Mormon.

01:24:27 And this is what he required of her.

01:24:29 I'll let her tell it.

01:24:31 This is thought five. 0.99

01:24:32 Sex is sex. 0.95

01:24:33 There's just different ways to have sex. 0.96

01:24:35 And it seemed like,

01:24:37 it seemed like Travis was kind of

01:24:41 um i don't know how to put it um but it just seemed like he sort of had like the bill clinton 0.99

01:24:54 version whereas over here it seemed like you know oral and anal sex were also sex to me but not for 0.99

01:25:04 him so now she's jody the librarian right she's got her little glasses on he made me do it this 0.99

01:25:12 way and the other way this pedophile right so she this is the defense and this is one of the

01:25:18 reasons why america was riveted so transparent what she's doing to me anyway and i think to the 0.77

01:25:24 jurors also but you still got to do it you know you dealt the cards that you have you got to play 0.86

01:25:30 him and you have a horrible defendant, but there's no other way to advance that ridiculous 0.61

01:25:36 self-defense theory. Well, is that true? I mean, if you had been her defense attorney, 0.97

01:25:41 what would you have done? Not write a tell-all book and get disbarred. We'll get to that.

01:25:49 What would I do? Probably what happened here. It would be obvious painfully to me that my client is

01:25:55 guilty as they come. And I would say to that person, first of all, there might be offering

01:26:02 you life. You might want to take that instead of risking the debt penalty, try to persuade her

01:26:07 that her chances are very low of prevailing. She, the narcissist would say, I'm not going to be

01:26:12 convicted. So I'd go and I'd say, okay. And to myself professionally, I'd say winning is defined

01:26:17 by doing everything I can to achieve the best possible outcome for this client. Whether they

01:26:22 say guilty or not guilty is not in my control. And so testifying is her option. If she wants

01:26:27 to testify, she testifies. In other words, yeah, I might lose this case. And you know what? I'm

01:26:32 fine with that. This is the problem. I mean, basically you try to cut a deal with a client

01:26:38 like this because there's just no question that the jurors are going to find her guilty.

01:26:45 Juan Martinez was the prosecution. And one thing I do remember is you did not like him. You did not

01:26:51 like the way he behaved. Listen, the main reason why I accepted your invitation is because I get

01:26:57 another crack at talking about his cross-examination. Okay, so let's set it up before we play the

01:27:04 soundbite of that. He had two weeks to present his case. It's kind of open and shut. What should

01:27:11 he have done? What would you have preferred to see a prosecutor do? Okay, ready? And I'm talking

01:27:17 to the Murdoch prosecutors, you know, everybody gives both Juan Martinez and those guys such

01:27:23 accolades, and they did good things. I'll give them credit for that. I'm merely talking about

01:27:28 cross-examination, which is an art form. I have taught my students that you don't wing it. You

01:27:36 carefully craft every single question that you're going to ask, knowing that it could go this way

01:27:42 or this way, and then you are ready with the follow-up. Isn't the fact that on such and such

01:27:46 a day you said this and you boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it's a lean filet mignon. You

01:27:51 don't present a big fatty steak wandering around. Hey, Mr. Martinez, your ego is not your amigo.

01:27:58 You don't get up there and make it about you. You don't take days. You don't, you know, try to

01:28:03 grandstand like he did. I thought his cross-examination was horrible. And people are

01:28:10 going to say, oh, you're jealous, this and that. I'm not. I don't care. I wish him well.

01:28:15 I'm simply saying that it was a D minus on the scale.

01:28:20 And I'm telling you this, don't go by the outcome.

01:28:23 This case could have been won by rookie prosecutors.

01:28:26 I'm talking about how he did on cross.

01:28:28 Both he and the Murdoch prosecutors sucked in cross-examination.

01:28:33 Yes, I've said it publicly again.

01:28:35 Yes, I know.

01:28:36 I agree with you.

01:28:37 And now I have to tell you, I listen to some of these friends of the Murdoch prosecutors

01:28:41 on their little podcast and they're like, oh, people just didn't get it.

01:28:44 If they just didn't get how brilliant that cross was, it's like, no, people know how

01:28:48 to do a proper cross-examination and they could have, it would have been over and done

01:28:53 with had they done it properly.

01:28:54 They let him go on.

01:28:56 There was a chance the jury could have bonded with the guy.

01:28:58 They took unnecessary risks in that cross of Alex.

01:29:01 I agree with you.

01:29:02 Okay.

01:29:03 So here's one.

01:29:04 You don't take credit because the guy, either the guy, or in this case, Jody looked bad.

01:29:09 Oh, look at me.

01:29:09 I made her look bad.

01:29:10 she would have looked just as bad without the opportunity to then explain, humanize, 0.99

01:29:17 go on and on. There's no need for that. There's no reason to take a risk on a single question.

01:29:24 Good lawyers carefully craft everything. We think about everything we're doing. These guys look

01:29:30 like they were winging it and they were. That's unacceptable. And you stay in control the whole

01:29:35 time. You're the one who's speaking. The witness is just there to say yes or no. That's it. You

01:29:39 You are the one who's telling the jury the story.

01:29:40 They're really listening to the prosecutor.

01:29:43 With limited exceptions, when I know no matter what they do or say, they're hanging themselves.

01:29:49 So every now and then I'll throw that in just to switch it up, because I know there's not a single answer that's going to score points for them.

01:30:00 Well, here's let's let the audience get a flavor of Juan Martinez.

01:30:04 is here is uh the prosecutor one trying to have jody demonstrate travis's alleged attack because

01:30:14 she's claiming i dropped his camera then he came for me he chased me that's why i had to kill him

01:30:20 here's just a little bit of that exchange and then i'll play the feisty one ma'am if you would 1.00

01:30:25 mind stand up go to the left and show me the posture of uh mr alexander immediately before

01:30:32 he rushed you according to you um as he was running just show me that's what i'm asking you

01:30:38 to do not talk show me show me the linebacker pose he got down well show me show me the linebacker

01:30:46 pose that's what i'm asking for you to do okay he went like that and he turned his head and grabbed

01:30:51 my waist just like that correct pretty much and he grabbed your waist right i can't say it's just

01:30:56 like that but that's what i remember just just i want it without talking just show me the pose

01:31:02 he got down like that like that all right go ahead and have a seat

01:31:07 he's already annoying megan let me add him okay first of all nobody likes a bully

01:31:16 and i'm telling you i i've actually doing jury selection excuse jurors one woman i saw when i 0.76

01:31:23 was speaking, because I was like, you know, I turned to this woman, I said, you know, you said

01:31:27 you could be fair to my client. But I'm really wondering, ma'am, I get a sense that and I really

01:31:32 questioned her very firmly, because I really wanted her out if she wasn't going to be on board

01:31:36 with the plan of being fair. There was a tear that fell down from her eye. And I realized in that

01:31:43 moment, I asked her, go, is everything okay? She goes, I don't know, it's just your energy. Like,

01:31:47 I feel like you're and I realized, oh, my God, I'm too much for people at certain times. Similarly,

01:31:53 What Juan Martinez is doing is being so overly aggressive unnecessarily that that has to turn

01:32:00 certain jurors off. There's no reason to be that way in a case like this. That's the first

01:32:05 criticism. I've got more with what I just saw. Okay, there's more coming. I'll play another

01:32:10 soundbite and then you can resume. There was this tense moment where she got after him for his

01:32:15 style. You know, it got to the point where she actually had to call him out. Here's a little

01:32:19 bit of that on SOT7. What factors influence your having a memory problem? Usually when men like 1.00

01:32:28 you are screaming at me or grilling me or someone like Travis doing the same. So that affects your

01:32:32 memory problems, right? It does. It makes my brain scramble. So you're saying that it's the cool,

01:32:38 basically what you're saying is Mr. Martinez's fault that you can't remember things that are

01:32:42 going on. It's not your fault. I'm not saying that. You're saying that, isn't it? No, I'm not

01:32:47 saying that is there something about a certain decibel of the voice that creates problems

01:32:52 decibel tone content sort of a combination of those factors

01:33:00 go ahead god it's so horrible and the public doesn't understand because 0.68

01:33:08 they don't see great cross-examinations when they're watching these high-profile cases i

01:33:13 haven't seen it recently there's been some examples there's some exceptions none that

01:33:17 come to mind right there johnny depp johnny depp's lawyer with uh what's that which one

01:33:23 johnny depp's lawyer cross-examining amber heard very effective probably i'm trying to remember

01:33:30 remember i can't remember her name she became a star she's now an nbc contributor but she did it

01:33:35 exactly the way we're discussing it was textbook mark it was isn't this true isn't that true and

01:33:40 then you did this and then this isn't that true misheard your honor please direct the witness to

01:33:44 answer my question and not not to go on like this you know like she controlled the witness

01:33:49 what's what's her name steve camille vasquez yeah she was good she was solid i agree so two things

01:33:57 one in the first clip that you played you're asking the defendant now to give her version

01:34:04 again giving her another opportunity to then display for the jurors why she's not guilty i

01:34:12 would never do that. I just make fun of it. And the second clip, you look at him, he doesn't have

01:34:18 those questions prepared. He's just winging it. That's what a rookie lawyer does or someone who

01:34:23 doesn't do cross-examination. It's not to say there's not room for spontaneity, but I plan

01:34:29 my spontaneity. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's what I do.

01:34:33 You sound like a great person to hang out with for a wife.

01:34:39 Not always.

01:34:40 I'm talking about not in the bedroom, in the courtroom.

01:34:42 Come on.

01:34:45 And on three.

01:34:47 Okay.

01:34:49 Let's talk about the fact that your friend, Juan Martinez, in addition to the defense

01:34:55 lawyer, have both been disbarred since then.

01:34:58 They've both lost their law licenses.

01:35:01 Yeah.

01:35:02 Yeah.

01:35:03 Different reasons.

01:35:03 But can we back up a little bit?

01:35:05 because we left out one of the biggest things in the trial.

01:35:09 Well, yeah, I'm not done with the trial,

01:35:10 but I do think it's interesting

01:35:11 that your friend lost his law license.

01:35:14 And I think when people look at that cross-examination,

01:35:16 it's very interesting to know,

01:35:18 quoting now on the AP,

01:35:21 that Martinez was accused later,

01:35:24 this is why he lost his law license,

01:35:26 of leaking the identity of one of the Jody Arias jurors.

01:35:30 He leaked the identity to a blogger

01:35:33 with whom he was having a sexual relationship,

01:35:36 then lied to investigators about it.

01:35:38 That's what he was accused of.

01:35:40 And of sexually harassing a bunch of female law clerks 0.99

01:35:44 in his office, he chose not to defend the charges

01:35:48 and consented to disbarment.

01:35:51 And what's happening?

01:35:52 What are you doing?

01:35:53 It's a fog, Megan.

01:35:55 Like Jodi Arias, don't you remember?

01:35:57 She was in a fog.

01:35:59 What?

01:36:00 Did you?

01:36:01 You don't think I've been props out for you?

01:36:03 come on you got dry ice in your office it's a little machine i gave to my son it's like 13th

01:36:12 birthday but so appropriate really when we're talking about the fog and how jody arias was in

01:36:18 a fog she didn't remember anything don't you remember the famous fog come on yes she was in

01:36:23 a fog okay a lawyer too all right the lawyer too was in a fog as he was sexually harassing all the

01:36:31 female law clerks to the point where they were, they had to run. He was staring at the chest of 0.99

01:36:36 some female employees in the county prosecutor's office, looked them up and down as they walked 1.00

01:36:39 away. Some female employees would hide in the bathroom, duck into cubicles, or engage in busy 1.00

01:36:43 work to avoid encountering Martinez. He got fired after 32 years as a prosecutor, then lost his law

01:36:49 license. That's the man I'm going to have to say, tip of the hat, your instincts were dead on.

01:36:54 What an unsubtle pig. You know, I read that to my wife. She's like, 1.00

01:36:58 what a horrible and i looked at it from her perspective and and women don't like that 1.00

01:37:04 you know and a horrible place to be you know where we're all day long you have this guy staring at

01:37:11 you and he's not subtle and it just it's just horrible you know i know it's creepy well so you

01:37:17 i mean i think your instincts were dead on you understood this is not a good lawyer and this is

01:37:21 not a good man and you had a revolt in watching him that was well placed but the the evidence was

01:37:26 so strong against her, it didn't wind up hurting his case. He did ultimately get a confession

01:37:37 on the stand, which was rather helpful. I mean, we knew that she killed him because she was

01:37:41 claiming self-defense by that point. But here is the moment of confession on the stand when

01:37:47 she breaks down Sod 8. Would you agree that you're the person who actually slit Mr. Alexander's 0.83

01:37:55 throat from ear to ear?

01:38:01 Yes.

01:38:03 Would you also agree

01:38:05 that you're the individual

01:38:07 that stabbed him

01:38:08 in the upper torso?

01:38:15 Yes.

01:38:18 And you're doing all of this

01:38:20 according to your

01:38:21 version of events.

01:38:23 you're doing this to this individual after you have already shot him right

01:38:29 what do you make of that credit again megan that was her whole theory she was admitting that she

01:38:43 did the abhorrent acts for which she's accused if anything he could have artfully said all right

01:38:49 just so these jurors are crystal clear, the first stab that went into his body, you did that. Not

01:38:55 two strangers that you initially said, these two intruders, right? Then another jab, and then

01:39:01 another jab. This one over here by the heart. That was you, not somebody else. And then he could

01:39:06 have gone on and on and on about every stab that she did. And then to really highlight the brutality,

01:39:13 especially since he's going for the death penalty after. So you really want to highlight it. The

01:39:18 best he had was you stabbed him in the torso. Yes, yes. No, 27 times. And then you did this or 0.99

01:39:25 whatever order he wants. That was you're giving him credit. And yeah, OK, he did that. But again,

01:39:32 it was wasn't the most effective. He lost a huge opportunity. That's a good point. Drive it home.

01:39:37 And I found the medical examiner's testimony that I was looking for earlier. Kevin Horn

01:39:41 testified about the stab wounds and said the slash wound to Travis's throat was three to four

01:39:48 inches deep and went to the spinal cord in the back of the neck had two major vessels that had

01:39:53 been sliced he would have lost a great deal of blood very quickly and then lost consciousness

01:39:59 within seconds and died a few minutes later and then of course she shot him as well but he talked

01:40:06 about the wounds to Travis's hands that must have been before the fatal injury so the guy fought for

01:40:10 his life. He must've been terrified. This person he trusted who was, you know, he was undressed

01:40:16 with, had had this interlude with surprises him in this place that's supposed to be, you know,

01:40:22 inviolate, the shower, my God. So you're right. And his failure to bring home the brutality did

01:40:27 come back to haunt him at the penalty phase. Yeah. I'm still actually thinking of ways that

01:40:34 I would have done this differently. I would have said, I'm sorry, Ms. Arias. I see that you're

01:40:37 crying. Do you need a moment? And by the way, Ms. Arias, were you crying? Stab number seven.

01:40:43 Were tears running down your eyes then? When you did this, were you crying then? Okay. Do you need

01:40:48 time? I'll ask the judge if you need a few minutes, but I'm not going to let her hide her face in that 0.99

01:40:53 tissue and put on that act. Ms. Arias, can you look at me? I'm asking you some questions. If you

01:40:57 need time, I'll give you some time. She's hiding her face. The jurors need to judge her credibility, 1.00

01:41:02 your honor, assuming the judge wouldn't allow me to control her that way. I'd go sidebar and say, 1.00

01:41:07 judge. They're judging. She's hiding her face. I want them to see her face. She needs time.

01:41:12 I'll give her time, but I'm not going to let her bury her face when I'm asking her to talk about

01:41:17 the most intimate of brutality that she committed. No way. That's a good point. Does anyone have a

01:41:23 scrunchie? Who's got a scrunchie? Let's get that hair back. No, you're right. That was clearly a 0.97

01:41:30 tactic. Well, the jury didn't buy it because after she'd been on the stand for, they say,

01:41:36 18 days, 18 days between direct and cross-examination. Many felt that was a tactic by

01:41:42 her defense lawyer to create a bond between Jody and the jury to where they could not

01:41:47 vote for death. Do you agree that was a strategy?

01:41:51 A hundred percent. And let me just say this. I just finished a federal trial.

01:41:55 My client wanted to take the witness stand. My direct was extremely long. Number one,

01:42:02 I'm humanizing my client. Number two, there was a lot to talk about, right? Number three,

01:42:08 it is difficult when they don't know who your client is. The prosecutors will always call

01:42:13 him the defendant. I'm here to humanize my client. And yes, in that case, they want to slaughter her. 0.87

01:42:19 They want to kill her, right? The ultimate sanction. So that serves a purpose. Kudos 1.00

01:42:24 for the defense lawyer, not the prosecutor, the defense lawyer. I don't care how long he takes,

01:42:29 As long as it's productive and it's routine, they've rehearsed it all, it's choreographed, she could look great on direct, long, long, long, long.

01:42:37 Cross, not the same.

01:42:40 What do you mean?

01:42:42 Cross needs to be tight.

01:42:45 It needs to be planned out.

01:42:47 It shouldn't go for more than a day.

01:42:49 And certainly within that day, I'd say a few hours you can make your points.

01:42:53 That's it.

01:42:55 Days?

01:42:55 You don't want to premise.

01:42:57 Juan Martinez show?

01:42:58 this isn't about you dude stop making it about you you don't want to prolong the relationship

01:43:04 between this person and the jurors any more so than than the defense lawyer did on the direct

01:43:09 all right so the jury gets the case uh ultimately the jury was read in court here's soundbite nine

01:43:15 state of arizona versus jodian arias verdict count one we the jury duly impaneled and sworn

01:43:22 and the above entitled action upon our oaths do find the defendant as to count one first degree

01:43:27 murder guilty. Five jurors find premeditated. Zero find felony murder. Seven find both

01:43:37 premeditated and felony. Signed, four person. Is this your true verdict? So say you want it all?

01:43:48 I mean, it wasn't a shock. She actually looks kind of surprised to hear the verdict.

01:43:52 It wasn't a shock to anybody.

01:43:54 Don't credit her with having real emotion

01:43:56 and equating whatever she just did to how you and I,

01:43:59 she's in a whole different area code psychologically. 0.89

01:44:02 I don't know what that was.

01:44:04 I don't.

01:44:04 Right.

01:44:05 There's more acting.

01:44:06 Well, then we moved on to the penalty phase.

01:44:09 Will she get life in prison

01:44:10 or will she get the death penalty? 1.00

01:44:12 And that is in Arizona is up to the jury,

01:44:17 at least on the initial go around.

01:44:19 And so the jury had to wrestle with that.

01:44:23 She got to say how she felt about the death penalty

01:44:28 in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix

01:44:30 the week she was found guilty.

01:44:32 Listen to this, Sod 11. 0.92

01:44:33 I believe death is the ultimate freedom.

01:44:35 So I'd rather just have my freedom

01:44:37 as soon as I can get it.

01:44:39 So you're saying you actually prefer

01:44:41 getting the death penalty

01:44:42 to being in prison for life?

01:44:44 Yes.

01:44:45 and here she is a brilliant wait addressing the jury yeah go ahead no no no no megan come on

01:44:54 that was brilliant the ultimate in manipulation that's what nicholas cruz should have done i want 0.93

01:45:01 death you know for killing all those kids at marjory stoneman douglas again it's reverse 0.97

01:45:07 psychology she doesn't want to die she doesn't want to be a death row she's going to be the

01:45:11 the queen in, in, in prison. She wants to live out her life. And so she just does the twist. 0.98

01:45:18 That's the ultimate manipulation for that. I'm sure. So she, she did it, um, with the jury as 0.95

01:45:26 well. Here's a couple of soundbites I've heard addressing them. We'll start with SOT 12.

01:45:31 This is the worst mistake of my life. It's the worst thing I've ever done. You think it's the

01:45:38 worst thing I ever could have seen myself doing. In fact, I couldn't have seen myself doing it.

01:45:41 before that day i wouldn't even want to harm a spider i'd gather them up in cups and put them

01:45:48 outside to this day i can hardly believe i was capable of such violence

01:45:53 but i know that i was and for that i'm going to be sorry for the rest of my life

01:45:58 probably longer

01:46:00 oh lord all right let me add on to that one i'm offended for her making me feel guilty for 0.99

01:46:07 killing spiders very offensive i do it and number two come on she's again she's i see how manipulative 0.99

01:46:16 she is i keep coming back to that word and she couldn't drum up any real tears either it's like

01:46:22 if you really are unjustly convicted it's you you just look and sound entirely different

01:46:28 here she is um wait and one more thing bothers me i gotta get these things off i'm sorry to

01:46:32 keep interrupting like if i don't i'm gonna think about them later mistake i can't stand

01:46:37 know people call like something as complex and abhorrent and as planned out and as you know just

01:46:43 gory as a mistake right 27 stabs those were mistakes like like Hitler calling the holocaust

01:46:50 you know an inconvenience you know a minor blemish on my record you know like stop minimizing things

01:46:56 it's not a mistake right that's a good point like what what was the mistake the three inch

01:47:01 you know cutting of the carotid artery after you stabbed him 27 times like the number number two

01:47:06 through 26 those were the like in any event um now here she is asking them for uh well you'll

01:47:13 listen you'll hear it's not 13. I've made many public statements that I would prefer the death

01:47:17 penalty to life in prison each time I said that though I meant it I lacked perspective

01:47:24 until very recently I could not have imagined standing before you all and asking you to give

01:47:29 life. To me, life in prison was the most unappealing outcome I could possibly think of. I thought

01:47:39 I'd rather die. But as I stand here now, I can't in good conscience ask you to sentence

01:47:45 me to death because of them. Asking for death is tantamount to suicide. Either way, I'm

01:47:55 going to spend the rest of my life in prison it'll either be shortened or not

01:48:00 she was pointing to her parents when she said because of them so a change of heart mark

01:48:08 yeah how convenient i just that's just so silly i don't even have anything to say i think i've

01:48:14 said it already manipulator this person is a household name i mean think about that this

01:48:18 woman is a household that most people in america know who jody arias is because the media took to 1.00

01:48:23 this case, like moths to a flame. She was the star. She's a sociopath. You can see it's 1.00

01:48:29 fascinating to see the mind in, you know, working, like doing its manipulation. And you know what?

01:48:36 It worked because the jury ultimately did not sentence her to death. They were, it was a hung

01:48:40 jury. And then they brought in another jury to try to decide. And they too could not decide on

01:48:48 giving her death and without a unanimous vote for it. You don't get it. And that's why she got life

01:48:52 in prison without the possibility of parole where she is right now what we don't know is the split

01:48:58 right was it one lone juror was it a few likely it was a few because you know there was a lot of

01:49:04 mitigators i i didn't see any of that testimony but you know the lack of priors um i don't want

01:49:12 to start naming them because it'll look like i'm being sympathetic but whatever the defense said

01:49:16 there was stuff to work with here you know the crime was especially heinous atrocious and cruel

01:49:21 and cold calculated and very premeditated.

01:49:24 The state had that going for them.

01:49:27 You know, everything else, you know, the mitigators,

01:49:30 it was probably a couple people said,

01:49:31 no, she should get life instead.

01:49:33 And then that's it.

01:49:34 They only needed a few there.

01:49:36 I mean, is it true that generally

01:49:38 they don't like to give you the death penalty

01:49:40 if it's just one murder as opposed to a serial killer

01:49:45 or like the guy who takes out his family,

01:49:47 you know, something like that?

01:49:48 There's that.

01:49:49 And statistically, you know, how many women actually get the death penalty? 1.00

01:49:53 You know, it's very rare.

01:49:55 And don't you tell me that looks don't matter and how she acts. 1.00

01:49:59 People consider that.

01:50:01 They just do.

01:50:07 So we talked about the fact that the prosecutor is now disbarred and you mentioned it in passing.

01:50:11 Her lawyer, too, is now disbarred.

01:50:14 What did he do?

01:50:15 This bothers me.

01:50:16 Another reason why I was looking forward to doing this. This really bothers me. So he writes a book, A Tell All, and included in that book are intimate details that she shared with him while he was representing her.

01:50:30 he then writes this book and you know she's objecting to it naturally and apparently

01:50:37 they knew about it the bar did and said listen you're either going to for putting this out there

01:50:43 your idea of two options one will suspend you for four years but you cannot then put this book out

01:50:49 there or you can lose your law license forever give it up and then you know obviously then you'll

01:50:57 be free to publish that book. He chose option number two. And I'm not going to out anybody,

01:51:01 my wife, who said, good for him for putting that out there. Because I'm sure many people feel that

01:51:06 way. And I was so upset about that. Because yeah, do I care that Jody Arias' thoughts are put out

01:51:14 there? No, because I don't like Jody Arias. But it's so much bigger than that. He is eroding the

01:51:19 attorney-client privilege where now either my clients or other future clients feel like, wait,

01:51:25 is this going to be the lawyer who liked that guy, that Nimrod?

01:51:28 You're going to put it out there in some book to capitalize?

01:51:31 And then that doesn't give any confidence when anybody goes to speak to an attorney.

01:51:35 I'm really bothered by it.

01:51:37 Yeah.

01:51:38 I mean, it's amazing that two of the main characters in this cast wound up disbarred.

01:51:44 And the third, the true star, is behind bars for the rest of her life without the possibility of parole.

01:51:49 There have been some reports that behind bars, she's in a medium security prison.

01:51:55 She's been making friends and lovers and tattooing her name on her jail cell mates. 1.00

01:52:05 Lifetime is actually just now, 10 years later, coming out with a docudrama about Jodi Arias and the case and gets into some of that, like her life in jail.

01:52:15 We managed to pull a clip, Mark Iglarch, for the entertainment of the audience.

01:52:19 Here's a bit.

01:52:20 A Lifetime original movie ripped from the headlines.

01:52:24 Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. 0.98

01:52:26 Jodi Arias.

01:52:27 Jodi.

01:52:28 Jodi Arias.

01:52:29 I'm Jodi.

01:52:31 You know her name.

01:52:32 It's worth doing whatever it takes to gain my freedom. 0.97

01:52:35 You're the worst.

01:52:36 We do what we have to do.

01:52:38 But not this story.

01:52:39 When you get out, maybe you can help me get the word out about my innocence.

01:52:42 Share whatever you need.

01:52:43 I thank God for you.

01:52:45 I knew you came into my life for a reason.

01:52:47 Based on a true story.

01:52:49 There is no question.

01:52:50 Jodi killed Travis Alexander. 1.00

01:52:52 This January.

01:52:53 Everything you said, it was a lie.

01:52:55 I was worried that if I told you what really happened, I'd lose you.

01:52:59 It's in the past now, and I love you.

01:53:01 I can't defend you.

01:53:03 Did you believe she was innocent?

01:53:05 Yes.

01:53:05 Was she innocent?

01:53:06 Hell no.

01:53:08 I feel like you betrayed me.

01:53:12 I will never forgive you.

01:53:14 Bad Behind Bars, Jodi Arias.

01:53:18 Bad Behind Bars.

01:53:20 She's manipulating half the jail. 1.00

01:53:23 social media posts, all sorts of bad stuff. Good casting. I mean, you know, I was like,

01:53:31 wait, that looks like her. What happens in a medium security prison? How are you able to

01:53:36 make friends and, you know, tattoo one another and do social media? Yeah, she's probably living

01:53:42 a pretty damn good life. Number one, medium security. She wasn't high. They brought her

01:53:46 down to medium. So that's much better for her. Orange is the new black, you know. And then

01:53:51 secondly, she didn't kill any children. In the pecking order, she killed a man that many think

01:53:58 might have done something bad to her. At least that was her story. In prison, she's at the top 0.77

01:54:04 of the pecking order. With her manipulation and beauty, she's probably living large. When I say

01:54:10 beauty, I use that in quotations. I'm talking about objectively to others. I know she's using

01:54:15 that for her own benefit. Is it possible to have a co-ed prison? Because this is where I get

01:54:22 confused. They said she met somebody named Donovan Baring while serving time. Donovan was serving

01:54:30 time for accessory to arson in the Maricopa County Jail, where they were cellmates for six months.

01:54:37 Oh, they're both girls. Okay. Then this duo became really close and stayed in touch.

01:54:40 afterward, Donovan, who I guess is a girl, and Jodi. They stayed tight. Then they were at Estrella,

01:54:47 another prison, where this other gal, Tracy, met Donovan for the first time. They got romantically

01:54:53 involved. They say by their own admission, Jodi used her good looks and sexuality to get what she 1.00

01:54:57 wanted and inserted herself into their union as well. Although they never engaged in actual sex

01:55:03 acts together, she once delivered a striptease with Tracy for Donovan and then often refused to

01:55:10 leave their cell when they wanted alone time together, from getting them to manage her social

01:55:14 media accounts, again, why does she have them, to ultimately officiating their wedding ceremony, 1.00

01:55:20 she did it all for the couple, quoting from thecinemaholic.com. So all of this is documented,

01:55:28 I mean, on and on it goes, Mark, once a master manipulator, always a master manipulator.

01:55:34 She does, and she has nothing but time on her hands, so she's playing all those games, 0.97

01:55:39 And I, too, by the way, found it confusing at first. I'm like, Donovan, she with a dude? How'd that happen? No, Donovan's a female. And then you play it along and you figure out what happened. I think as an aside, I read she's got something going on with a guy on the outside. And that's easy to do because there's nut jobs out there sending letters, wanting to be with her phone privileges. Right. And then eventually she's looking to get married to get the conjugal visits. That's all going to happen.

01:56:05 And we saw that with Lyle and the other Menendez.

01:56:08 That's what they do.

01:56:09 It just goes to show you, though,

01:56:11 the media is still obsessed with this case.

01:56:12 I mean, here we are 10 years later.

01:56:13 You don't always do a 10-year retrospective on every case.

01:56:16 But I remember covering in this all the time

01:56:17 that America was into it

01:56:20 and wanted more, more, more, more, more.

01:56:22 And here we are 10 years later,

01:56:23 and she's still providing material from behind bars. 1.00

01:56:27 So what's our takeaway?

01:56:29 When you look back and you say,

01:56:30 okay, what lessons can be learned from this case?

01:56:33 Anything come to mind?

01:56:35 Okay. So number one, you never really know anyone. Do not judge someone based upon how they look.

01:56:41 And even when you think that you're a good judge of character, you never know. You got to look at

01:56:47 the evidence. So once you get the evidence, that speaks volumes. Don't judge somebody based upon

01:56:53 their demeanor, what they say and how they look, which coincidentally is exactly what courts are 0.84

01:56:58 about. And that's why they get it wrong all the time. But the court of public opinion, wait,

01:57:03 listen to all the evidence and then you can decide but we don't do that the second takeaway i got is

01:57:10 you know i can't say enough about this prosecutor again uh he won the case good for him and by

01:57:16 winning i mean he got the guilty verdict that anyone would have gotten but his cross-examination

01:57:20 to this day still is was horrible i don't even want to put it in the same category as the murdoch

01:57:26 prosecutor. His was not great, but Martinez's was to me offensive, you know, that he took a case

01:57:35 that was a slam dunk and just took days and days and days to do this horrible badgering bullying

01:57:41 cross. So prosecutors beware. I'm available. You want to reach out to me? We'll make arrangements

01:57:46 to make sure that in a very important case that you prepare and all the questions are right there

01:57:52 and you've thought them out, that's what matters.

01:57:55 You've got to prepare.

01:57:56 Those are two thoughts off the top.

01:57:57 You know, the rule is that the jury is supposed to like you

01:58:00 more than the defendant.

01:58:02 You know, that's your goal.

01:58:03 When you're cross-examining somebody,

01:58:05 that they will like you, the lawyer, more than the person.

01:58:07 And that the way to get there is not usually to berate them,

01:58:13 to shout at them, to telegraph with every question

01:58:16 that you have nothing but dripping disdain for them.

01:58:19 They know that.

01:58:19 They know that if you're the prosecutor.

01:58:22 this is going to be deep and you're going to say it's flaky and hokey, but I think first

01:58:26 for you to be liked by a jury or anyone, you've got to thoroughly and unconditionally like yourself.

01:58:32 And I don't know that Juan Martinez did. Well, it's interesting that he did turn out to be a

01:58:37 bad guy. You know, he did such a bad job and he wasn't likable in there. And it's just always

01:58:43 interesting when like the outward persona winds up matching with what's going on behind closed

01:58:48 doors. It is an affirmation that maybe you can sometimes trust your instincts. I don't believe

01:58:53 you can't ever know somebody. My God, Doug, we need to talk. I have to wait to see the evidence.

01:59:00 I love Doug too, but I love what Doug has shown me Doug to be. Doug's got stuff inside of Doug,

01:59:07 and so do you, and so do I. We've never let out, not necessarily consciously,

01:59:11 but sometimes subconsciously. Again, all we're seeing, and I adore my wife. I love her.

01:59:18 But I love what I know about her.

01:59:21 There's stuff I don't know about her.

01:59:22 And I love her for that, too.

01:59:23 And I love her unconditionally.

01:59:25 But again, all we know is what we know.

01:59:27 That's it.

01:59:28 Turn back on the fog.

01:59:29 The fog needs to go back on.

01:59:34 Mark Heiglarsch.

01:59:36 It's always a pleasure, my friend.

01:59:38 Thank you.

01:59:39 Thank you, Megan.

01:59:48 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.

01:59:52 I like to be prepared.

01:59:54 That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline.

01:59:58 It's good to know, just in case.

02:00:00 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

02:00:05 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.

02:00:12 My guest today built one of the most successful vegan food empires in the Big Apple.

02:00:18 but her dramatic rise and fall would become the focus of the hit Netflix, quote,

02:00:24 documentary, or so they call it, Bad Vegan, a series she says got major parts of her story

02:00:30 wrong. By the way, this always happens on Netflix. Sarma Melngiles has a new memoir.

02:00:37 It is called The Girl with the Duck Tattoo. In it, she aims to set the record straight by 0.79

02:00:43 laying out what she says is the real story behind the fame, the manipulation, and the fallout of her

02:00:50 unbelievable saga. Sarma, hi. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so

02:00:55 happy to be here. Well, I'm sorry that you had an unfortunate experience with Netflix, but you are

02:01:01 not alone. We've covered so many of these cases on Netflix where they lure you in and they really

02:01:07 do sell a documentary and it's nothing of the kind it's a mockumentary it's a docudrama it's

02:01:15 something that is not committed to journalistic fact-based reporting so i will give you that

02:01:23 right off the top but i'm super interested to find out what is true um as is i i'm just like

02:01:30 to give a two-line encapsulation of your story to the audience as i understand it you're very

02:01:36 well educated. You went to Wharton. You worked at Bear Stearns, Bain Capital. Then you went to the

02:01:42 French Culinary Institute. You learned how to be a serious chef. You open up this banger of a

02:01:47 restaurant with raw food, pure food and wine. Everyone in New York loved it. It was going

02:01:53 really well. And then you met this man, this man who came into your life, who was somewhat sketchy

02:02:01 And notwithstanding your sophistication, bit by bit, he eroded your sense of self,

02:02:08 your understanding of what was real.

02:02:10 And before you knew it, you had lost everything.

02:02:15 Is that a fair summation of how this thing went down?

02:02:18 Yeah, that was an incredible summation.

02:02:20 That was, you know, better than I can do it in a concise way.

02:02:24 But yeah, that's what happened.

02:02:25 And what I've learned is that my story was an extreme version of something that happens to people a lot more than people realize.

02:02:34 And I know this now from all the messages I've gotten in my DMs since the show came out and since it became much more public is that this type of manipulation can happen a lot more than people realize.

02:02:45 And it also can happen to men and women alike.

02:02:50 And so part of my telling of the story is to, you know, is to really help educate people how it happened. And that was the most important part that the show on Netflix left out and that the filmmakers left out is any explanation of how this happens, which is what would allow people to help protect themselves.

02:03:09 And which is so unsatisfying, because what's most interesting about the story to many of us is how someone as sophisticated and well-educated and successful as you would fall for this guy's lies.

02:03:26 That's what we all want to know, right?

02:03:27 Because in our heads, we want to say, oh, I would never.

02:03:31 But I mean, I have covered enough of these stories to know.

02:03:33 don't ever say that because nine times out of 10, the person being targeted has a bio not unlike

02:03:41 yours. For some reason, these con men go for the sophisticated smart types. Yeah, absolutely. It's

02:03:48 similar with cults. They actually need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence because

02:03:54 it's almost like you can't train a... You need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence

02:04:02 to be able to pull off this long, slow manipulation.

02:04:06 And I mean, I've spoken to people who have PhDs

02:04:09 in clinical psychology, attorneys even,

02:04:13 who've had their world turned upside down

02:04:16 in a way that they never expected.

02:04:17 And so, again, that's what I write about in my book

02:04:20 is really taking the reader along with me

02:04:24 through this sort of nightmarish journey

02:04:27 about getting manipulated over time

02:04:31 and really trying to, you know, as honestly as I could, even in places where I felt it didn't

02:04:38 reflect well on me to help people understand how this happens and also the psychology behind it.

02:04:44 And that's really also what was left out of the show. Have you ever, have you ever heard the story

02:04:51 of, I'm going to mess up, is it Anderson Benita is her first name, NBC journalist who got lured

02:04:57 in by this doctor who said he had figured out a way to do prosthetic, Benita Alexander,

02:05:04 to do prosthetic tracheas on people. And long story short, he was a big fraud. And he convinced

02:05:11 her that they were going to go and be married in Rome by the Pope, even though she was divorced.

02:05:18 And also, she's a newswoman. You can't find more cynical mofos than news producers. And she got 1.00

02:05:26 lured in and and what she said at the end sarma is something that you of our interview you might

02:05:31 relate to which was because she's also very smart he needed her to be smart because that's where the

02:05:39 jones came from like it wasn't going to be fun for him if she were too easy a mark yes i mean 0.99

02:05:47 part of what i think part of why this can happen is because certainly you know whether it's my

02:05:54 wiring or whatever it is, but I almost couldn't, it's like, I couldn't fathom that somebody could

02:05:59 be so diabolical. And also his motivation, it wasn't that clear because, you know, it's not

02:06:06 like in the end of this, he walked away with all of this money that he took from me. He just,

02:06:09 you know, spent it, gambled it away. That wasn't the point for him. The point for him was

02:06:14 the thrill that he and people like this get from the takedown, you know, because I'm not a

02:06:21 psychologist, but when you're wired a certain way and you don't have empathy and you go around in

02:06:26 this world, it's like life is a game. And to manipulate people is, I think, what gives people

02:06:32 like this a rise. And so, you know, again, the bigger the takedown, the bigger the high they get,

02:06:38 I suppose. And that's really the point of it is the destruction. Well, and I want people to

02:06:42 remember this. I want people to remember Benita, again, a hard-nosed NBC journalist who was doing

02:06:48 journalism at the, you know, the toughest levels he can, who was convinced by this fraudster

02:06:54 that the Pope was going to marry them in the Vatican, notwithstanding the fact that she was

02:06:59 divorced and that Bill Clinton was going to go and Barack Obama was going to go. And the only

02:07:04 reason she found out it was all a lie is a friend at NBC was like, Bonita, we checked the president's

02:07:10 schedule. He's not going to, even the Pope's not even going to be in Rome on the date of your

02:07:14 wedding. Hello. And the, and sort of the, the mask finally started coming off and she started

02:07:19 realizing she'd been totally manipulated. So the point is simply, while the lies may sound

02:07:23 so obviously outrageous to those of us on the outside, these fraudsters build slowly to gain

02:07:31 your trust and control over you before they really start with the huge whoppers to where,

02:07:37 you know, you're really believing what looks like to the outside world, obvious nonsense,

02:07:42 but when you're in it, you're so far removed from your original self, it can happen.

02:07:48 So, okay, let's talk about how it happened to you.

02:07:50 So you did the corporate stuff using your Wharton degree,

02:07:54 and then like everybody, you decided you hated that.

02:07:56 You go to culinary school, you open up this raw restaurant, and it's a hit.

02:08:03 It's like doing really well in Manhattan.

02:08:05 This is what, the early aughts?

02:08:07 Yeah, it opened in 2004, and it was a beautiful restaurant.

02:08:12 what i was so proud of is that it wasn't a restaurant for you know it was a raw vegan

02:08:17 restaurant it wasn't a restaurant for vegans it was a restaurant for everybody and you know the

02:08:23 the food that we made now i realize kind of how ahead of its time it was because this was 15 years

02:08:29 ago and it really was about clean ingredients so there were no fake meats there was no processed

02:08:35 food whatsoever. So, you know, and there were no, you know, 15 years ago, there were no seed oil.

02:08:42 So it was really about showing people how incredibly good, really, truly clean,

02:08:48 nutritionally dense food can be, not just in the restaurant, but through the brand One Lucky Duck,

02:08:52 where we had products that were sold through Whole Foods and kids loved them, which meant a

02:08:56 lot to me. So, you know, and this was my whole life's purpose. It wasn't like I just started a

02:09:03 business and wanted to make money this was my life's purpose was hopefully being able to have

02:09:09 a positive impact and you know it was a beloved restaurant because people came there and there was

02:09:15 you know it was very important to me that there was zero judgment we weren't dogmatic about anything

02:09:20 so half the staff or more probably weren't vegan most of our you know half our customers it wasn't

02:09:26 like that there was no you know we weren't like annoyingly dogmatic about it there was no judgment

02:09:32 whatsoever. It was just sort of showing people how good this can be. And, you know, we were doing

02:09:37 great with it. And I had all these opportunities to expand and take it global and open in other

02:09:42 locations, but I was running it on my own in a way and very overwhelmed. And I now understand more

02:09:49 about my psychological wiring too, that, you know, I just, I always needed a trusted partner to help

02:09:57 me grow the business. And I didn't have that. And I was overwhelmed and then also went through

02:10:02 a painful breakup and was at a particularly vulnerable moment when this man slid into my

02:10:10 DMs. They can smell it. They can smell vulnerability. They absolutely know how to

02:10:16 exploit women who are down and it can go the other way too, but it's in this case,

02:10:21 it's a man taking advantage of a woman. All right. So, right. You're just out of a relationship

02:10:24 that didn't work out. You're growing your business, but that's tough. It's challenging

02:10:28 on any individual. But it's succeeding. And there's a little bit of this. I'm going to show

02:10:33 some Netflix clips because it's just interesting how they documented some of the, we can see the

02:10:38 B-roll of the restaurant and so on. Let's take a look at SOT 51, which is about the beginning

02:10:43 of your career. My undergrad major was economics. And I feel like I got there by process of

02:10:50 elimination. So I went to UPenn, Wharton, and Philadelphia. I think what happened is when I was

02:10:57 there, it was like, what is everybody else doing? Everybody's gunning to go work in investment

02:11:03 banking. I got hired by Bear Stearns. Somebody that I'd worked with said to me, do you really

02:11:11 like this work? I mean, is this what you really want to do? And my first thought was, do you like

02:11:16 it i don't do people like it he sort of confronted me on that nobody else had really done that he

02:11:22 said you seem to be interested in food people that i worked with had subscriptions to the wall

02:11:28 street journal and i had a subscription to gourmet magazine and food in line that might have been a

02:11:34 clue i wasn't going into the right field i left after a year and a half at that time i wasn't

02:11:41 under any pressure to get a job financially, so I went to culinary school. I finished at the

02:11:48 French Culinary Institute in 99 and then focused on working in food. Now, I understand you don't

02:11:56 love this clip. What is it about this that's off? Well, that clip I didn't have any issues with.

02:12:03 The parts that I had issues with were mostly what they left out of the series, including any

02:12:09 explanation of the psychology of it and uh and then they misused a call at the end and they

02:12:16 they moved they actually moved my words around so hold on because the audience isn't ready for that

02:12:22 yet yeah we will definitely get there okay so there you are you're making the restaurant the

02:12:26 the documentary requires attention the fact that tom brady giselle uh alec baldwin came in and

02:12:33 actually wound up hitting on you but you weren't really in a place where you thought you could do

02:12:37 that this is before Hilaria or at least was like there was some sort of a vibe going there it was

02:12:42 potentially an option but didn't happen I mean he's got his own issues but they're not quite as

02:12:47 bad as the one you the man you wound up with um so then enters the guy who is kind of the other

02:12:55 star of the Netflix documentary who was going by Shane Fox um but actually has a different name

02:13:05 anthony is it bergalis no uh his name his name was anthony strangers he's since changed it to

02:13:11 anthony yeah he's changed it to anthony knight which i always point out just because if anybody

02:13:16 out there comes across a dude that a very large dude uh named anthony knight he's he legally

02:13:24 changed his name i think to try to hide further yeah how did you meet him what was his name when

02:13:30 you met him? Well, he said his name was Shane Fox. And I met him through Alec Baldwin through

02:13:36 our Twitter conversations, which is part of why, you know, I write about Alec in my book and our

02:13:41 relationship. And then how, oddly enough, I met, it was just through DMs and Twitter. Alec had just

02:13:47 joined Twitter. And I think that this guy just got lucky enough that he got there early. And so Alec

02:13:53 followed him back, which in a way gave him at least some kind of a credibility that made him

02:14:01 a little bit more, I don't know, legit. So I wasn't quite as suspicious as I might have been

02:14:06 otherwise. And that's something that people like this always look for is any kind of sort of

02:14:11 validation that they can get. And how did he explain to you that his name wasn't Shane Fox?

02:14:17 Well, that came out later, but he crafted this whole sort of persona that he

02:14:22 you know worked in these clandestine operations which of course is the perfect cover if somebody's

02:14:27 a con artist because you know they have an immediate excuse to not explain anything

02:14:32 um and so eventually i found out his real name but when that happened by the time that happened

02:14:37 i was already ensnared and uh and and also by that time it was as if you know well of course

02:14:45 that's not my real name of course i have to have you know different identities because of what i do 0.76

02:14:49 or whatnot i mean a load of crap but at the time um i allowed sarma did he love bomb you because 0.72

02:14:56 usually that's what these guys do yes in my case it wasn't so much love bombing as it was 0.96

02:15:02 more like validation bombing because what this man did it wasn't that i was so in love with him

02:15:10 or it was about some sort of romantic delusion it was more that he knew he had clocked me as

02:15:18 somebody where what meant the most to me in the world was this business and what I wanted it to

02:15:24 do for the world. And then at the same time, he figured out what all of my weaknesses and

02:15:29 vulnerabilities were. And so what people do like this, and I think cult leaders do this as well,

02:15:34 is they present to you your goals and ideals and the best version of you and what you want to be

02:15:41 ultimately, and then somehow attach themselves to it as if the only way to get there is through

02:15:47 them. So I would say in my case, it was more of like, I don't know, it was like a validation

02:15:53 bombing, like sort of overwhelming me with feeling like he recognized and understood what I wanted to

02:15:59 do and understood all of my hopes and dreams and my frustrations, and that he would be able to

02:16:04 remove all of those frustrations and enable me to grow my business into the business that I wanted

02:16:10 it to be without, you know, the influence of sort of unsavory investors or because I was in a

02:16:17 position where a lot of people wanted to come help me expand the business, but they were not

02:16:22 the right people or they were predatory in one way or another. Well, the restaurant industry is

02:16:26 notoriously sketchy and you don't know who to trust. So I can see how it would be difficult

02:16:32 to understand, like, is this somebody whose money I want? Is this somebody whose partnership I want?

02:16:37 Yeah. Enters this guy who's charming. You didn't then know about his criminal history

02:16:43 or what he'd done to another woman.

02:16:46 So I get it.

02:16:47 You're, you know, kind of willfully blind

02:16:50 to some of these things about him.

02:16:52 Many women go through this when they're, you know, 1.00

02:16:54 first coupling with a man

02:16:56 who may be the answer to their problems.

02:16:58 But you married him, which was not a good decision.

02:17:03 The Netflix documentary covers that a bit.

02:17:06 Here's a little bit in Sot 52.

02:17:09 Anthony would tell me that that $2 million debt

02:17:12 that I'd taken on to buy the restaurant,

02:17:14 that's like nothing.

02:17:15 He could just take care of that

02:17:16 and make that go away.

02:17:18 So he would be there with me

02:17:20 and help, you know, support me

02:17:21 to do all the things that I wanted to do.

02:17:24 You know, I would be protected,

02:17:27 at least in one significant way, financially.

02:17:31 And I remember thinking that would be, like,

02:17:33 some sort of dream come true.

02:17:36 I remember asking the accountant,

02:17:39 would he be able to just give me that money

02:17:41 or would that be taxable and how could we do that and um he sort of jokingly but half seriously said

02:17:51 well you should just marry him and then he can give you the money without without it being taxable

02:17:56 in a taxable situation and very quickly it was like the next day we went and got the license

02:18:01 they have to wait 24 hours and it was like boom 24 hours we did it and got married

02:18:05 we got married in november of 2012 so it was close to a year that i had known him

02:18:12 oh so you you're married now yeah and this was one of the parts where they edited they i mean

02:18:21 there was a whole there was two totally different parts of the interview so it wasn't that the

02:18:26 accountant said that and then 24 hours later what we were married what i had said was that he had

02:18:31 later subsequently really pressured me and badgered me to marry him saying that I would

02:18:38 be protected and it would make everything easier and it was a whole different part of the interview

02:18:43 where I and then I made the point that so I finally agreed like fine I'll marry you and we

02:18:49 went to city hall to get the license and then 24 hours later we were married so this wasn't even

02:18:55 one of the most egregious examples of where they changed the narrative but this was it was just one

02:19:01 that in a way it made me look a bit suspect to the audience because it made it seem like I just

02:19:06 married him for the money that I thought he had when in reality it was later on and he really

02:19:12 badgered me to marry him for uh for other reasons what did you think he did for a living

02:19:19 I mean that's a good question I write about it in my in the memoir how you know what he did was

02:19:27 always vague. And anytime I asked him questions, I would always get vague answers. And what he did

02:19:34 was drop, you know, he would say things in a very word salad-y way. So you get an answer, but it's

02:19:40 not a real answer. And you're almost left to connect the dots and figure it out on your own.

02:19:44 So I know that sounds weird, but that's kind of how he addressed every question that I had about

02:19:51 everything so you know and again later on what he did was almost irrelevant because you know he

02:19:58 spun the delusion to such a extent that you know he kind of had me believing that there's you know

02:20:04 parallel realities and nothing is real anyway um so yeah what he did was almost irrelevant

02:20:12 mm-hmm so he kind of spun a bunch of bull and but like how long into the relationship did he start

02:20:22 asking you for money because he definitely said he was very very wealthy and that you know you

02:20:27 were going to be super wealthy too but the money only ever went one way from you to him yeah so

02:20:32 how early on in the relationship did that start um it took a while before he ever asked me to

02:20:38 for money. And the first time it was as if it was an emergency, like some last minute thing,

02:20:43 and there would be dire consequences and he needed my help. And I, so I, you know, again,

02:20:50 I'm the type of person where if you need my help and I can do it, I'll do it. And in retrospect,

02:20:55 it was a way of getting me tethered because then he never paid me back. And then, you know, he

02:21:01 It was another way for him to get me, you know, what the show didn't cover adequately, too, is that this took a really long time.

02:21:11 And multiple times after I first got to know him, I thought, all right, well, this is it.

02:21:16 You know, something feels off about this guy.

02:21:18 And my gut was telling me something feels off about this guy.

02:21:21 And so I'd tell myself I'm going to cut off communication or I won't see him again.

02:21:25 But once he borrowed that money, it was like a tether.

02:21:28 So then he would say, well, I'm going to pay you back. So, you know, let me come back and see you this weekend because he didn't live in New York. So he always when he came, he was coming from out of town. Let me come back. I'll pay you back. And so I'd agree. And then he'd do whatever, you know, mind sorcery he did that somehow by the end of the weekend, I'd have loaned him more money.

02:21:49 um and and over time i just got in deeper and deeper and you know he always had these ever

02:21:55 changing stories about how he was he had money but he didn't have access to it or he was gonna

02:22:01 have it and again it just got deeper and deeper when you had given him i mean the the final number

02:22:11 is a lot bigger than this but when you realize you've given him more than a million dollars

02:22:15 did the light bulb go off like was there any point when the numbers got huge that you were like

02:22:20 what am i the bigger the numbers got the more terrifying the whole thing was and again part

02:22:27 of what these people do is they they weaponize fear and so you know the deeper in the hole i am

02:22:36 the more i need him to get me out or the way that he's promising he's going to get me out of it and

02:22:42 So it's almost like, you know, it's a terrible analogy because I'm not a gambler, but it's like, if you think that if you just keep going, it's all going to be absolved and you'll get out of it.

02:22:54 If you just keep going, that's part of how they, you know, he got me trapped is I just, I mean, how, and by that point, I couldn't even explain what happened.

02:23:04 And so if I had walked away from him and gone and ran to somebody and said, look, I need help, I'm in a bad situation, and they said, well, what's going on? What happened? I wouldn't even know how to explain it.

02:23:16 And that's the part that, you know, it takes, it almost takes having been through something like this to really understand how it happens. So, again, that's, you know, why I'm writing, why I've written this book is to try to help people understand so they can hopefully avoid it or potentially recognize if it's happening to somebody that they care about or a loved one and be able to help them sooner.

02:23:40 Because people around me knew that something was wrong, but they didn't know what was wrong.

02:23:43 i'd love to believe that your book can do that and that this segment can do that i have my doubts

02:23:50 i think people make their own mistakes for all sorts of deep psychological reasons they need to

02:23:56 pursue this terrible pattern of choices and most people have to learn individually it's

02:24:03 unfortunate but maybe you know we have a shot maybe we'll get one or two who are happy to hear

02:24:07 us and read the book and feel differently when they get approached by a guy like this

02:24:12 Can you just put some color on how he was reeling you in?

02:24:17 You know, like when I talked to Benita, she talked a lot about how this doctor was just over the top with like the rose petals and the gifts.

02:24:26 And she had tape of him like, my love, my love.

02:24:29 And she thought he was this world class doctor saving lives with this, you know, brand new breakthrough technology.

02:24:35 You know, so you could kind of see how, you know, any young woman to be like, oh, this is a pretty good catch. 0.95

02:24:41 He's hanging out with the Clintons and the Obamas, allegedly.

02:24:44 But I remain somewhat mystified about what this guy had to recommend him, like how he mind wormed into your psyche.

02:24:53 Well, a couple of things.

02:24:54 One is that because I met him through Twitter, now X, DMs, there was at least a month or more before I saw him in person.

02:25:04 And so he was able to sort of do a number on me before I even met him, which was smart on his part, because if I had met him, a lot of things in my intuition might have told me that he wasn't right.

02:25:14 But by that time, he'd gotten me sort of hooked on this fantasy.

02:25:19 And what he really did was weaponize my ambitions, because I really believed in my business and what we were doing for the world.

02:25:28 And he effectively love-bombed me with validation.

02:25:32 and knew what I wanted to hear and saying that he believed in me

02:25:37 and that my business was so important to helping the world

02:25:42 and helping to heal people and helping to change the way people eat.

02:25:47 And that's really what got me

02:25:50 and making me believe that he would help me be able to realize those dreams.

02:25:57 Forgive me for the psychoanalysis,

02:25:58 But when you look back at how you were when you were a little girl, have you, in retrospect, been able to explain your susceptibility to that kind of, you know, your need for that kind of outside flattery and, I don't know, building you up?

02:26:15 Yeah, absolutely.

02:26:16 I mean, I've done a lot of my own psychoanalysis to try to figure these things out.

02:26:20 And I always tell people the most important work that you can do is this sort of this deep self-reflection and looking at your childhood and whatever your specific wounds are, because even if you grew up and had good parents who weren't, you know, abusive or cruel in any way, shape or form, you know, perhaps they're, you know, emotionally unavailable in some way or you're not getting the validation you want.

02:26:43 or, you know, for whatever reason I grew up, you know, I might present a certain way, but I really

02:26:49 was also probably deeply insecure in a lot of ways and needed that sort of validation. And then on

02:26:57 the other side of the show, one of the things that happened on the other side of this show coming out

02:27:02 is that people bombarded me asking me if I'd ever had an autism diagnosis. And I thought like that

02:27:09 had never occurred to me and so I went and got a an evaluation and ended up getting a diagnosis

02:27:15 it used to be called Asperger's and now they call it autism one for whatever reason but that's

02:27:20 another thing that shed a lot of light on whatever it is about my particular wiring that makes me

02:27:26 um you know that sort of allows for that paradox of being objectively reasonably intelligent yet

02:27:34 also unable to see certain things that other people might have seen. Right. It's almost like

02:27:41 a social, uh, I don't want to say handicap, but like a social struggle that when you have Asperger's

02:27:48 social, it does not come easy to you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I can, again, and women, 0.90

02:27:52 I think are, are better at masking. So people don't see it as easily. You know, I can, I can

02:27:57 go out there and talk to people and nobody would necessarily think, oh, she has Asperger's, but yet

02:28:02 certain things, you know, I, certain things, I don't clock people's intentions as well as other

02:28:10 people might, or it takes me a little bit longer sometimes to process things. And I just walk into

02:28:16 interactions and have a default setting that I trust people and that I assume that they would

02:28:23 operate the way that I would, which is in good faith. And so I just don't see,

02:28:28 you know there's a thing called betrayal blindness and very very very silly i have to trust no one

02:28:34 yeah no one's operating in good faith no no i have the same deficiency in some way so i can

02:28:38 understand yeah and i mean i it this wasn't an isolated event this has happened to me there's

02:28:43 like that saying you know fool me once shame on you but for me it's like i have to take

02:28:50 responsibility for the fact that this has happened to me over and over and over again and so i really

02:28:55 have had to do a lot of deep analysis on understanding the how and the why. I mean,

02:29:01 even what happened with the filmmakers, I blindly trusted that they would make an accurate show and

02:29:08 that they wouldn't have done something that was on the other side of it, such a betrayal.

02:29:13 But, you know. I mean, they do it all the time over on Netflix.

02:29:19 Yeah. I mean, in this case, the filmmakers made the show and then sold it to Netflix,

02:29:24 but netflix and their market well but netflix has a responsibility they're the error of it like

02:29:28 that they're the ones putting it out there like i'm sick of this because netflix has done so many

02:29:32 people who even i know it's a pattern do not believe the word documentary when netflix slaps

02:29:38 it on any film it's always going to be docudrama that i will never believe them when they say

02:29:44 documentary ever uh just given what i've seen but let me go back to the the fraud because

02:29:50 near as I can tell, he was taking all this money from you and he was telling you like he needed it

02:29:55 for an emergency. And he talked about like there being kind of like another side. There's some

02:30:01 sort of family that sounded more like an ethereal family, not like a mob family, not like a family

02:30:06 of origin, but like some quote family that was evaluating you and you had to pass these tests.

02:30:11 And this was after he had ratcheted up the trust factor. He didn't just drop that on you on email

02:30:16 One, but eventually he got you believing that your sweet dog, Leon, a pit who you adopted, who was absolutely beautiful and very sweet and who you were in love with, that he could somehow provide immortality for for Leon.

02:30:37 Here's Sot 54 from the Netflix show.

02:30:40 what eventually happens is that anthony promises her that if she just followed along with the

02:30:47 program he was suggesting kept going along with what was instructed he is going to make both

02:30:52 sarma and her dog immortal just like anthony is there was some magical force in play here

02:31:02 and he's already in this special ethereal world because he's passed through the tests

02:31:08 into this new state of being it's like some fantastical magical future where my dog is

02:31:17 going to live forever and like this reality didn't really matter because it would all be

02:31:22 reset to some sort of utopia his happily ever after that he always referred to

02:31:28 now when people watching this say oh come on right like that would be a bridge too far

02:31:36 Everyone knows there's no such thing as immortality. How do you explain that?

02:31:40 Well, what I would say is that, you know, I think unless you've been through it, the effects of things like cognitive dissonance and over time, a ratcheting up level of dissociation.

02:31:54 It's not that it's not that I believed things he told me necessarily, but they were things that you can't disprove.

02:32:02 disprove and so i didn't not believe him i just didn't know what to believe and again he he had

02:32:09 gotten me in so deep that i didn't see a way out and so you start to cling to whatever

02:32:14 solutions and fantasy that they operate you because by this point you're desperate

02:32:19 so again it wasn't so overt that he said you know leon's gonna live forever my dog but it was all

02:32:27 things that he implied. And I think that the more afraid I got, the more I dissociated and wanted

02:32:34 to believe that none of this was real because I was in so deep financially. I mean, the most

02:32:39 painful part is that this wasn't my money. It's not like I had this money saved and he got it.

02:32:44 That would have been, you know, for me, comparatively, that would have been great if that

02:32:48 was the only consequence. The most painful part is that this was money that came from the business,

02:32:54 which ended up destroying it and you know all of these other people that were hurt through me was

02:32:59 the most painful grueling part of this whole situation because you had investors you had

02:33:06 employees yeah and yeah you were not the only one who would go down as a result right and he got

02:33:12 money out of my mother your company had to close twice not one but twice one time because of all

02:33:17 the money he sold then you reopened and then it happened a second time and that second time was

02:33:21 the last time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and because he took me away. So when he took me away from the

02:33:28 city, I mean, when I was arrested a year, almost a year later, nine months later, if you had told

02:33:33 me that people had stepped in and the restaurant was still running, I would have, I would have

02:33:38 been relieved. But the point is that the entire time that I was away, I never Googled what happened

02:33:44 or, you know, whether or not the restaurant had closed or what happened after I left.

02:33:50 And, you know, again, that's something I go into detail in the book

02:33:55 so people can better understand how it happened.

02:33:59 Because eventually, as—and by the way, we should cover this.

02:34:03 Do we believe that he was taking all those, you know, $10,000, $100,000, $14,000 checks

02:34:08 you were sending him, and eventually your mom was sending him and just gambling it?

02:34:14 I believe so. Again, because I think people like him, it's not about the money. It would all make

02:34:20 much more sense if he had been stashing the money somewhere and then had just dumped me and gotten

02:34:27 on a plane and traveled, left the country, but he didn't. Again, I think the point was the

02:34:33 takedown. In some ways, it almost feels like the point was to destroy me, to absolutely obliterate

02:34:41 me and to, you know, beyond just the financial side of it, but it's almost as if he wanted me

02:34:47 to be so utterly humiliated and broken and to have burned all of my bridges so that any chance for

02:34:54 me to recover and come back and rebuild would be, you know, as small as possible. And I'm still

02:35:00 trying to do that, but he made sure it would be as difficult as humanly possible.

02:35:06 Because not only did he destroy your business, but he destroyed your reputation.

02:35:10 and no investor is going to give you money.

02:35:14 You say this in the documentary now

02:35:15 and employees are going to have a care or two

02:35:20 about taking a job with you.

02:35:22 Yeah, well, I mean-

02:35:23 With your employees, though,

02:35:24 I know you want to add something about,

02:35:25 I guess, did you pay the employees back their back pay?

02:35:28 Yes, so I agreed to participate in the show.

02:35:33 I said I just wanted enough money to repay my employees.

02:35:36 So as a condition of participating,

02:35:38 I got the amount of money that the employees were owed, which was just about $75,000, and all of it went to them because that's the part that weighed on me the heaviest because, you know, of course, that they are not getting paid is more significant than, you know, maybe a wealthy investor being out some of their money.

02:35:55 I mean, that weighs on me as well, but what happened with my employees weighed the heaviest.

02:35:59 And, you know, all of those people that work there, the ones who are available want to come back if I can reopen.

02:36:06 You know, I'm I'm in contact with. So they forgave them. Yeah, because they knew. I mean, the people that work there and the people who were longtime customers of the brand, they knew me. They knew that whatever happened, they knew something really crazy happened, but they knew that I would never, ever, ever hurt that business or the people who work there. It's the other way around. I would have sacrificed myself for them and for that business. So they knew that it didn't make sense.

02:36:33 so then eventually this this i'm still unclear even having watched the show

02:36:42 this guy gets you to go kind of on on the run with him you leave new york for 10 months you

02:36:51 guys are down in like tennessee for some of it by dollywood you changed your name well not legally

02:36:58 but you started to go by Emma instead of Sarma. And he went, he changed his name. You covered up

02:37:04 your tattoo that had the name of your secondary restaurant on it. So what did you think during

02:37:10 those times? Did you think I'm on the lamb from the law? No, I had no idea that I was that, you

02:37:17 know, I was being sought after. And at the time, I wouldn't have even, you know, of course, the what

02:37:23 what happened with the money was incredibly unfortunate, but I would have thought it's

02:37:28 more of a civil matter not criminal because you know again you think that to to be a criminal

02:37:34 you have to have criminal intent and I had the opposite of criminal intent in this situation

02:37:40 so I didn't think that you know I wasn't aware of being sought after by um by the police but

02:37:49 what I write about in my book and what really didn't come through is that by the time he took

02:37:54 me away, I was so broken that there's a scene where he drives me away and I'm screaming in the

02:38:02 car. And by scene, I mean, I write about this part in the book because it's almost the last

02:38:07 memory I have is being in the car. And when he tells me we're driving away, I was screaming my

02:38:13 head off, which is very unlike me, but like almost like a wild animal just screaming. And he just let

02:38:19 me scream and then I wore myself out. And it's as if that was the moment when I just slid into a

02:38:27 deep, deep level of dissociation. And from then on was in a sort of autopilot. And so if you saw me

02:38:38 during that time, I could function, I could, you know, talk to a barista at Starbucks, but it's

02:38:45 like I wasn't there. And that's the part that, again, it's really hard to know how that might

02:38:51 feel unless you've been through it. And so, to answer the question, what was I thinking or what

02:38:56 was I feeling? I wasn't thinking and I wasn't feeling. It's like, that's what dissociation is.

02:39:00 You're thinking and your feeling is detached. So, you're just almost like a zombie on autopilot.

02:39:07 And then the really gut-wrenching part is when I finally was arrested and I write in my book that

02:39:13 it took getting arrested to set me free. You know, I have warm, fuzzy feelings for the detective who

02:39:18 arrested me, who's a lovely person, and I think he could see what was going on. The prosecutors in

02:39:24 New York, different story, but the detective who arrested me, he recognized the dynamics of what

02:39:28 was going on. And then once I was arrested, it was the slow process of waking back up into

02:39:36 a level of sanity and coming back into the real world.

02:39:43 to me it's it's like breaking a horse yeah you know it's like once the horse is broke

02:39:49 it does stop bucking it stops trying to get out of the corral like or it's a different horse yeah

02:39:54 or like the elephant that you know they don't realize that they've been set free they've just

02:39:59 been so trained to walk in this one area that they don't or they don't realize that they could break

02:40:03 away you know it is it is like breaking an animal in that way so what what was he getting out of

02:40:11 having you in this condition and just with him during these 10 months on the lam because you

02:40:18 were out of money now i know your mom started to get he started hit her up for dough and she did 1.00

02:40:24 it because she was so worried about you but what was why keep you in other words once like you were

02:40:29 kind of bankrupt and i have the same question more to get like you would think that by that point

02:40:34 he would have just i mean he could have just dumped me somewhere and he could have gone on a

02:40:40 plane and left the country and nobody would have ever probably gone after him, but he didn't. And

02:40:47 so, you know, I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that he was, you know, when

02:40:52 he took me away, he then also took full control. He had access before, but he took full control of

02:40:58 my phone, my devices, my email. So I was unaware of him using my phone to text people and using my

02:41:05 email to reach out to people and ask for money, which is incredibly humiliating when I eventually

02:41:12 got back into my email, you know, nine months later, however long it was. So he was still able

02:41:19 to get some money out of people through me. And I think that in the end, he realized that somehow

02:41:26 the game was over. And I can't really explain this, but I think he, it's almost as if I think

02:41:33 he might have gotten us arrested intentionally, which I know seems like it doesn't make any sense,

02:41:37 but I, my gut tells me that that's what happened because he said to me either the day before or

02:41:43 even that morning, he said to me, there's going to be one more gut shot. And I was terrified

02:41:49 because I didn't know what he meant by that, but he, it's as if he was telling me you're going to

02:41:53 have to endure one more really painful thing, um, before this is over. And then boom, you know,

02:42:00 we were arrested and you know which reminds me of speaking of things he made me endure there's a

02:42:06 whole sexual abuse component of this story that they asked me about and I spoke about in my very

02:42:12 long interviews for the for the series but they left it out which felt really strange to me I

02:42:18 didn't understand it at first but I think had they left it in then the audience would have

02:42:23 sympathized me with to the extent that they wouldn't have able to create sort of a twisty

02:42:28 ending and cast doubt on whether or not I was complicit. What was the nature of the alleged

02:42:35 abuse? Well, I think that you might have spoken to people in the NXIVM cult in the past

02:42:42 on your show. And so a similar thing happened with Keith Raynery. And, you know, they create

02:42:49 this dynamic where it's almost as if they make you believe that the sexual stuff is necessary

02:42:55 and something that you have to endure for your own benefit it's really twisted and hard to explain

02:43:01 but i i go into sort of grotesque detail in a chapter in my book about about what he did

02:43:07 because you know i was so repulsed by this man this is another thing that people didn't understand

02:43:13 and that didn't come through in the stories i was so repulsed by him the last thing in the world i

02:43:18 want to do is have sex with this guy who by the way just by which point by what point were you

02:43:24 repulsed by? I mean, it happened over time, but it was reasonably at some, you know, certainly

02:43:31 when we got married, it wasn't like we were a married couple and having sex. By that point,

02:43:35 I'm sure I had stopped wanting to have sex with him. And I don't, I think that happened pretty

02:43:40 quickly, but he, you know, so eventually it was something that he started to force me to do in a

02:43:47 really disgusting manipulative cruel way and it was um you know i mean it was incredibly painful

02:43:55 but it's something that cult leaders do as well and i think it's another it's like another element

02:44:01 i haven't read the book i only saw the documentary so i wasn't aware of that but

02:44:05 what can you provide any color on that like what what what was so awful about i mean i accept that

02:44:11 sexual abuse is awful but if you could just help us understand what you're talking about

02:44:14 Yeah, well, you know, he basically told me that I had to do things. I mean, there's a chapter in my book that goes into some gross detail about this, where I come home, you know, I'm exhausted working my ass off getting the restaurant reopened after it closed because of, you know, the actions that he put me through.

02:44:35 And I miraculously raised money, got the restaurant reopened. I'm exhausted. And I think that he felt me pulling away a bit where maybe I sensed at that point I could get away from him. And so he needed a way to exert even more dominance over me.

02:44:51 And so, you know, he told me to bring a bottle of wine home from the restaurant one night,

02:44:57 and I didn't know why, because he didn't drink a lot, and he wanted me to drink because he told

02:45:04 me that he was going to have to force me to do stuff, and it was for my own good. And, you know,

02:45:09 he had this whole long explanation, which I don't even necessarily recall. But by that point, it

02:45:15 was, you know, he had created this dynamic where I have to do what he tells me to do, otherwise

02:45:20 there's going to be horrible consequences. You know, again, what didn't come through in the show

02:45:27 and what people don't understand about situations like this is fear. There is so much fear that you

02:45:32 feel like you have to do what these people tell you to do. So it's as if he, it's as if somebody

02:45:40 said, I'm going to have to, you know, I don't know. I feel like sometimes if you use the R word,

02:45:47 it's screws with the tv but it's like somebody says i'm going to have to now sexually abuse you

02:45:53 and you have to let you have to let me and so that's you know that's what happened and that's

02:45:58 what i describe in the book did did you get a response to that allegation when you published

02:46:04 the book from him uh i mean i haven't gotten any response from i can't even imagine he's he's off

02:46:10 doing what he did to me to somebody else right now there was a show called toxic that was on

02:46:15 discovery hbo um that i i ended up i didn't want to participate at first but i did participate

02:46:20 once i learned that they were trying to track him down and figure out where he is to potentially

02:46:25 hold him accountable because at that point we knew that he was doing this to other people and so they

02:46:30 do track him down and he is doing what he did to me to somebody else and he'll continue to do that

02:46:36 he always this is post-prison time i should make clear these are allegations we do not have the

02:46:40 proof of that as an independent broadcaster, either of the sexual abuse or that he's doing

02:46:45 it to somebody else. But these are Sarmer's allegations.

02:47:10 confidential support from a trained responder. Anytime. 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded

02:47:16 by the government in Canada. He's already been to prison because at the end of this 9-10 month

02:47:23 stint in Tennessee, you did get arrested. It made headlines that it was after ordering Domino's.

02:47:30 I mean, the short form of this, as I recall, was like, she's not even a vegan. They ordered

02:47:35 chicken wings and a pizza from Domino's. Like she's the whole thing is a fraud. She's a fraud. 1.00

02:47:41 That's where your critics went with it. Yeah. Well, I want to speak to the Domino's. 0.99

02:47:45 That was a tabloid narrative. And I'll point out that even the lovely detectives who arrested me,

02:47:50 who, again, I feel very warmly towards, they pointed out to tabloids that were calling him

02:47:56 that I was in a different hotel room than him. I didn't even know about the pizza. I wasn't in the

02:48:01 same room as the pizza. And so, you know, even knowing that information, it's sort of too juicy

02:48:07 a headline for tabloids to claim that, you know, this New York City vegan was arrested because

02:48:13 of a pizza. Again, I didn't even know that a pizza existed until a girl in jail when I was 0.97

02:48:20 in the holding cell in Tennessee. And she had seen me on a news program. She came into the

02:48:25 holding cell after me and said, ain't you that girl that was on TV? You know, you got arrested 1.00

02:48:30 because of the pizza and i was like pizza i didn't know anything about it so again that was just a

02:48:36 way that the tabloids want to make a story juicier for attention to diminish you yeah some of the

02:48:43 abuse not sexual but verbal is captured in the netflix film we have some of the the language he

02:48:51 used over the phone with you captured in the following soundbite here 55 you know what the 0.97

02:48:57 fucking deal is here if i say to do something do it no no no no that's not how it works 0.94

02:49:03 i already gave you 200k on top of everything else i thought you were going along with everything 0.99

02:49:10 you wanted to happily ever after and now you're talking about this stuff it's fucking real 1.00

02:49:15 this isn't real none of this is real those wires are bullshit i took you in the fucking box 1.00

02:49:23 i fucking told you what was going on i did all your fucking hate you're fucking falling apart 1.00

02:49:29 you're fucking coming on who's making all these fucking threats telling me this and that you're 1.00

02:49:33 gonna go do this and you're gonna go do that because now i fucking talk to you who's threatening 1.00

02:49:38 who so i love you i'm threatening you if i tell you to take all your money out of the bank and 0.97

02:49:45 yeah i got i got chills listen i haven't listened to that in a long time so hearing his voice and

02:49:59 uh yeah i mean i've i've like goosebumps right now um i think these people have a certain power

02:50:07 that's really hard to understand it's it's there's something about it where it's like they get you

02:50:12 under a spell and in my case one another paradoxical element about this whole situation

02:50:19 is that i was i kept pushing back on him and yet he'd end up dragging me in and overpowering me

02:50:24 over and over again yeah he was not intimidated by your pushback yeah and and by the way there's

02:50:30 an ex-wife in the documentary or whatever we're calling it on netflix who says he did this to her

02:50:36 too, except she had a baby. Yes. And she claims in the film that he said to her, you know, if you

02:50:44 give a baby salt, it will die and it won't be detectable in an autopsy. And she said, I never

02:50:50 let him be alone with a baby after that. I mean, like, again, we don't know whether that is true.

02:50:55 It's an allegation by an ex. But if so, then this guy's got a dangerous pattern here. And

02:51:00 one might argue you should consider yourself lucky to have just escaped with debt, the loss of your

02:51:07 business, self-esteem, some anger from employers and investors, and a short stint in prison. I mean,

02:51:14 honestly, this could be the lucky outcome. Yeah, I mean, there, I, you know, I say this in all

02:51:18 seriousness, there were times where I wished that he had killed me because when I came out of the

02:51:24 other side of this, the consequences and everything being destroyed, I just felt like what, what is

02:51:30 there left for me to live for and um yeah and he was never held accountable for what he did to me

02:51:37 he spent a year in jail and i ended up having to go serve four months after he was released so he

02:51:43 was out free clean slate and i had to go in and do four months um and then he only get a year for

02:51:50 all of this he stole 1.7 million dollars minimum from you yeah i mean i saw you know the ultimate

02:51:56 damages were higher than that but like how does he only get a year in jail for that that's a good

02:52:00 question you know i i was prosecuted aggressively he was it's almost like he was an afterthought

02:52:06 because the prosecution focused on the business loss and but there was no he was never charged

02:52:14 for what he did to me or to my mother and this happened you know this was 2016 so i would think

02:52:22 that perhaps if it happened now, it might be different. On the other side of, for example,

02:52:27 Keith Raynery getting prosecuted for what he did and the way he was able to manipulate people,

02:52:32 I think maybe now it would have been different or had it been a different prosecutor or just

02:52:36 different circumstances. Did he plead guilty to something or was he found guilty of anything?

02:52:43 Well, he pled guilty. We both pled guilty. There was never any trial or anything like that. I mean,

02:52:48 And, you know, I think anybody who's been through the criminal justice system knows that pleading guilty is something that people do all the time because it's a better alternative than getting dragged through, you know, a trial that you can't afford or the prospect of the stress of a trial and, you know, perhaps things not being admitted into evidence and you end up with even more time.

02:53:14 and not to mention not being able to afford a trial so um you know i ended up pleading guilty

02:53:20 which was really painful because however they made it look i'm a deeply honest person and so

02:53:26 to stand there in court and have to plead guilty to something that i had no intention of ever doing

02:53:32 um you know what did you plead guilty to yeah i've almost like blacked it out but you know

02:53:38 the words fraud and grand larceny were involved. And that's not me. I mean, I'm like the goody

02:53:45 two-shoes who never got in trouble in school, you know, respects authority, does the right thing. 0.91

02:53:52 You know, we ran the restaurant. I had an accountant once who I was talking to about

02:53:56 doing our taxes. And he said, well, how many of your employees are on versus off the books? And

02:54:01 I said, well, they're all on. He said, no, no, really tell me how many are off. I said, no,

02:54:06 they're all on the books like we did everything by the book that's kind of just just the person

02:54:11 that i am and so well the thing that's strange about it is normally if you're committing larceny

02:54:17 you take the money and then you get a gain with it you do something i lost everything that will

02:54:23 help your life or you know i don't know help someone you love but what happened here was

02:54:29 you were taking money that he was demanding and giving it to him which he appears to have

02:54:34 gambled away which you do not appear to have benefited from at all in fact it was at great

02:54:39 cost to you and the things that you cared about you know like there's they don't have some rolex

02:54:45 watch right that you you got or some penthouse that you got you weren't taking this money and

02:54:52 lining your own pocket with it you were giving it to him yeah and even so i mean people know me

02:54:58 know that that kind of stuff doesn't matter to me what mattered to me was the business and

02:55:02 and wanting to protect it. So yeah, I mean, he's the only one who benefited. I didn't.

02:55:12 That's a nightmare. I mean, this is just a nightmare. I very much feel for you. I know

02:55:16 some people are mad at you because they don't believe that you were mind manipulated, but

02:55:21 I believe you. I've seen this happen with enough people. I believe you.

02:55:24 I really appreciate that. And, you know, I at least was lucky enough to recover enough of my

02:55:31 communications with him that I have all the backup you know it's like I naively thought that with my

02:55:37 prosecution the more evidence they dug up and the more they were able to recover that it would help

02:55:42 me they recovered a journal of mine where I was writing about what was going on and when I was

02:55:48 given a copy of it I thought oh okay finally like this exonerates me because surely they wouldn't

02:55:55 think that you know nothing logically made sense why would I have torched my own life

02:56:01 and um but you know that's not how he's got a history yeah he's got a long criminal record of

02:56:07 impersonating police officers like a very extensive criminal record and i was completely

02:56:14 the opposite um but i just got very unlucky with the the prosecution in my case

02:56:19 mm-hmm so sorry to bring this up but is leon still alive oh no he passed away a year and a

02:56:30 half ago um i was with him when it happened and you know he had a long life he was a pit bull

02:56:37 and he was 14 and a half when he passed away but at least i got to be with him

02:56:43 and um yeah that's him you gave him a lot of love yeah a lot of love but it was here in this

02:56:49 apartment yeah yet another i mean obviously no like the deluded version of you chose to believe

02:56:57 that maybe he could save your beloved pet forever and of course it's yet another lie that he told

02:57:02 you and so now where where are you and where is he you think he's still doing this to yet another

02:57:09 person because he's out of prison I would imagine the Netflix film would make that a little tough

02:57:14 for him but who knows women do what they're going to do and and what about you what are you now what 1.00

02:57:20 for you um good question i uh was moved back here to new york which was you know where what i always

02:57:27 felt was home to reopen the business in the same location and then um what i said before about you

02:57:34 know i have to take responsibility for somebody that unfortunately makes a good target and is

02:57:40 able to be deceived by some dishonest people it's happened uh sad to say again and so i've been

02:57:47 a bit reeling on how to move forward but I still have some things in the works and I

02:57:53 you know one of the things that these people look for in a good target is somebody that won't

02:58:00 give up and uh and will keep going and that is something about my personality is that I will

02:58:05 keep getting up and I will keep going and keep trying and believing in what I wanted to build

02:58:11 the first time around. And, um, so I may be able to pull it off for it to happen again. Um,

02:58:17 and, and maybe not, but that's really what I earn. If you personally can earn enough money

02:58:24 to fund yourself, no one can stop you. I mean, that would be a great outcome here. Even if you

02:58:29 have to do catering, whatever, like do something to use your skills to earn enough money to open

02:58:35 something up even if it's not in Manhattan um that could be yeah and I think you know another

02:58:41 going forward now my my mission always was around food and clean eating and healthy living but I

02:58:49 think also on the other side of this it's really meaningful to me to be to have my story be as

02:58:54 useful as possible through my book and through speaking out about what happened and um this type

02:58:59 of manipulation that again a lot of people don't realize that it could happen to them

02:59:03 And hopefully so that they might also recognize if it's happening to somebody, to a loved one or somebody that they care about and be able to intervene and help prevent somebody going through as extensive as a nightmare as this.

02:59:20 Alec Baldwin needs to help you.

02:59:23 Alec Baldwin should fund your restaurant.

02:59:25 I don't think so.

02:59:26 Somebody else should control the finances.

02:59:27 But why not?

02:59:29 He was like kind of played an early role on this.

02:59:30 In a way, he was responsible for you meeting this guy.

02:59:33 He's got a lot of money. He met Elaria at my restaurant. So, I mean, I ended up getting I adopted my dog because of him.

02:59:42 And so that's another story that's in the book. But there's a weird connection there.

02:59:45 And it's not, you know, it's it's a lot of things just need to go right.

02:59:50 But for me, it's a matter of finding the right partnership and people that I can trust, because, you know, it's not that I necessarily would need somebody else to oversee the money.

03:00:00 It's that I need, I need guardrails. I need people that are trustworthy and honest and forthright and that I could work collaboratively with and move forward. So that also so that I'm, well, I think, I think it's not, it's not for you that you need somebody to control the finances. It's that anybody who is going to be associated with a restaurant is going to want to see that it's not you controlling the finances.

03:00:22 Yeah. Or that nobody could get. Yeah. For this next phase out, you know, maybe when you're at this for 10 years and everybody sees you're you're good. You don't need that. But I think that's all part of rebuilding trust and telegraphing to the world that, you know, what happened and you acknowledge it. And but you're going to earn back trust. I think that would be a great start. Anyway, I'm going to text Alec Baldwin. I'm going to tell me. No, but I do think he should help you. And if not, then you help yourself. And you you'll you're very capable. You're well educated. You have a lot of skills.

03:00:51 I think you're, you're, you can earn money and help give yourself the next big start you need.

03:00:57 I hope you do it. Thank you for telling your story. I'm sorry this happened to you.

03:01:00 Thank you so much. I appreciate being here.

03:01:04 All the best. And we'll see you again. Thank you, Sarma.

03:01:09 Wow. Unbelievable, right? Like what a crazy story. Um, the book again, that she mentioned

03:01:14 is called the girl with the duck tattoo. And that's where Sarma aims to set the record straight

03:01:19 by laying out what she says is the real story.

03:01:22 One note for you,

03:01:22 The Megyn Kelly Show reached out to Anthony Strangus

03:01:25 for comment regarding the sexual assault allegations

03:01:28 made by Sarma.

03:01:29 As of now, we have not received a response.

03:01:31 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

03:01:33 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - March 29, 2026

Alex Murdaugh Crimes, Jodi Arias Trial, ＂Bad Vegan＂ Deep Dive - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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