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

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00:00:29.180 connexontario.ca. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at

00:00:35.640 New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's mega true

00:00:46.760 crime episode. We are going into the archives and bringing you a deep dive into the JonBenet Ramsey

00:00:53.420 case with her father, John Ramsey. We also have our episode about dope sick and the opioid crisis

00:01:00.540 in America. This happens to be one of my favorite episodes ever. The dope sick episode, incredible,

00:01:06.480 incredible story. And the filmmaker, like you're going to love this as well as an episode we call

00:01:12.060 family annihilators. You know what that is, right? Remember when Alec Murdoch was on the stand,

00:01:18.340 it was one of the final questions. The prosecution asked him, are you a family annihilator?

00:01:23.420 He denied it. We now know, of course, he is and was. Well, he's not the only one. This was an

00:01:29.020 intense episode on some of the worst of the worst criminals, including Chris Watts. I mean,

00:01:35.920 that story is so chilling, but whenever it's on, I cannot turn away. In any event,

00:01:42.620 enjoy the true crime episode, mega, and we will be back tomorrow live. We'll see you then.

00:01:47.920 today on the program we are speaking with john ramsey the father of little john benet ramsey

00:01:55.180 john benet's murder remains one of the most covered stories of the 20th and 21st centuries

00:02:01.260 yet despite decades of intense media attention police investigations and over 20 000 tips in

00:02:08.360 this case we still don't know the person or persons responsible for her death but there are

00:02:15.560 several new developments in the case, and John is here to walk us through what they are and whether

00:02:20.020 he believes they could lead to finding his daughter's killer after all these years. First,

00:02:26.240 a reminder of how this story began. It was Christmas night, 1996, Boulder, Colorado.

00:02:33.640 The Ramsey home was decorated with holiday wreaths tied with bows. John and his now late wife,

00:02:40.080 Patsy Ramsey, had put six-year-old JonBenet to bed after returning home from a Christmas dinner

00:02:44.760 with friends. When Patsy woke up early the next morning and went downstairs,

00:02:49.700 she found a ransom note at the bottom of the steps. It read in part, we have your daughter

00:02:56.540 in our possession. Patsy ran to JonBenet's room. She would later tell authorities, but

00:03:01.180 she was nowhere to be found. Patsy called 911. Her voice was hysterical, begging for police to

00:03:08.060 come as soon as possible. At the end of the call, you can hear Patsy praying and pleading,

00:03:13.180 help me, Jesus. Help me.

00:03:43.180 You couldn't hear it as well there, but she is on there saying, help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus.

00:04:03.760 Oh, hours later, their little girl's body was found in the basement of their home,

00:04:09.160 not by police but by John who was sent around by the detective who was there saying go look for

00:04:15.940 any belongings of hers that may be out of place and he found his own child. John Benet had been

00:04:22.200 strangled and left for dead on a concrete floor. Police focused their investigation almost solely

00:04:28.800 on John and Patsy believing there was no way an intruder was responsible. Why? That's one of the

00:04:35.080 big questions here. Why did they believe that? Because there's a lot of evidence suggesting the

00:04:38.820 opposite. They believe the parents did it. Case pretty much closed in their eyes. It would take

00:04:44.740 years before DNA evidence would clear them in 2008. But Patsy would never live to see that day.

00:04:52.820 She died of ovarian cancer two years earlier, 10 years after the death of her little six-year-old.

00:04:59.000 Oh, so tragic. To this day, John's hope is that this case will be solved. And that hope remains

00:05:06.980 in the hands of the same police department that pointed the finger at him wrongly.

00:05:18.160 John Ramsey is here today. John, thank you so much for being with us.

00:05:22.840 Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

00:05:25.960 I've been following you for so many years, following the case and seeing so many of your

00:05:29.360 interviews, and you've handled it with such dignity. I appreciate the fact that here we are

00:05:34.120 25 years later, and you're still, still trying to keep interest on the case and try to call

00:05:40.680 attention to what you need, you think, to solve it. And there's breaking news, I should say,

00:05:44.620 about the detectives involved in your case. That's extraordinary. The very guy who interviewed you

00:05:51.460 and Patsy, who you've been kind of complaining about, like he didn't follow up on leads, he

00:05:56.100 didn't do this, he didn't do that. There's news about him today. I assume you've heard what's

00:06:04.120 Yeah, it was a big step forward, I think, in this case, because he was a roadblock.

00:06:14.580 When he was assigned into this case 25, 26 years ago, he was at that time a auto theft investigator.

00:06:22.620 And now he's put on the investigation of a murder of a child.

00:06:26.840 And I've never criticized the Boulder police for not knowing what they're doing or not having any experience.

00:06:34.700 They didn't even have a homicide department.

00:06:36.120 But I have criticized them over the years for the reason that they would not accept help from those who offered it.

00:06:43.820 And lots of help was offered.

00:06:45.940 Right in the beginning, the Denver police offered to put two experienced homicide detectives on Boulder staff at Denver's expense for as long as they needed them.

00:06:55.940 Boulder said, no, we don't need that.

00:06:57.420 We've got this under control.

00:06:59.420 That's been going on for 26 years, and we've just kind of had it.

00:07:04.000 It's time to do something different, put some people in charge that know what they're doing,

00:07:09.180 and be willing to put their ego and arrogance aside and accept help.

00:07:15.680 Yeah.

00:07:16.640 The detective's name was Tom Trujillo.

00:07:19.940 He was one of the lead investigators in JonBenet's case.

00:07:22.520 He just received an involuntary transfer to another division where he's going to be working the midnight shift, not a promotion, in addition to a three-day suspension.

00:07:33.420 And they've basically said that he and another were not – they were not investigating, appropriately investigating several cases.

00:07:41.940 They said JonBenet's case was not one of them.

00:07:44.780 These are the cases that he's being accused of half-assing it on were not homicide cases.

00:07:50.700 but he is being accused of not doing his job and not following through on leads and so on and other

00:07:58.280 significant investigations do you feel you know validated at all by that well it in a way yes

00:08:07.080 um we've uh we've known that he's been a problem and not really capable of uh thinking out of the

00:08:15.160 And more importantly, his arrogance, I guess, and ego prevented anybody from coming in to help.

00:08:27.000 You know, our system, the way it's set up, it's kind of crazy.

00:08:29.780 But, you know, there's 18,000 police jurisdictions in this country.

00:08:33.360 Each one's a little island of authority.

00:08:35.700 And if crime happens on that island, it's up to the local police to deal with it.

00:08:41.160 And with the acceptance of a few things like bank robberies, nobody can come in and help them unless they're invited.

00:08:48.200 And that's a real crazy system because there's tons of qualified help that could have come in, wanted to come in.

00:08:57.740 But unless they were invited and asked to come in to help, they can't.

00:09:03.520 And it's been a huge frustration.

00:09:07.840 And that's very critical of the police department on that issue.

00:09:14.400 Of course, because you see the bigger cities tend to have a higher homicide rate and thus more experienced homicide detectives and people who know how to preserve a crime scene and preserve evidence.

00:09:24.760 And that's the problem.

00:09:26.020 That was one of the major problems right from the get-go with this, which let's take a step back now and set up the crime so that people have a better feeling for what they did and didn't do and why you really kind of want this case wrested from them right now.

00:09:42.600 I mean, it's been 26 years.

00:09:44.000 It's kind of time.

00:09:44.860 You know, there should be a statute of limitations for the police.

00:09:46.780 If they haven't solved it, they should be able to be compelled to give the evidence to the family or to somebody else who might be able to have a go at it.

00:09:53.320 But we'll get to that.

00:09:54.580 Exactly.

00:09:54.840 So let's go back.

00:09:55.900 Let's go back to December 26, 1996.

00:09:59.000 You were living in Boulder, Colorado with Patsy, your wife, with little JonBenet, who was six.

00:10:04.100 You had a son, too, Burke at the time, who was 10.

00:10:07.380 And things are going well for you.

00:10:09.780 You were a successful business executive.

00:10:12.220 Was Patsy a stay-at-home wife?

00:10:14.520 Yes.

00:10:15.160 Yes, she was.

00:10:15.940 Okay.

00:10:16.280 She's very devoted to her.

00:10:17.260 She was taking care of the children.

00:10:18.800 Okay, very devoted mom. 0.96

00:10:20.100 We've seen the videos of her.

00:10:21.940 She seemed like a very loving mother.

00:10:23.580 and you just celebrated Christmas Day.

00:10:26.720 Was there anything out of the ordinary on that day, Christmas Day?

00:10:31.540 No, it was a very normal day.

00:10:33.560 We had gotten up early, of course, and had made a breakfast.

00:10:39.020 And then all day long, kids were in and out of the house with their friends,

00:10:43.640 coming and going and playing with new toys.

00:10:46.000 Very normal Christmas Day for us.

00:10:50.980 So you went out over to a friend's house to eat Christmas evening dinner, dinner on the 25th with the kids?

00:10:58.200 Yes.

00:10:59.520 Okay.

00:11:00.100 So you go over there and you go ahead.

00:11:03.300 Well, I say the friends we visited have kids our age, our kids' age.

00:11:07.960 And so they were buddies and it was a logical place to have a family get together.

00:11:14.260 So what time did you get home from that dinner?

00:11:16.620 Well, I think, if I recall, it was about 9.30.

00:11:23.520 JonBenet had fallen asleep on the way home, and it was only maybe six blocks, but she was tired.

00:11:29.800 She'd been up all day and having fun and playing, and so I carried her upstairs and put her on her bed, 0.54

00:11:36.440 and then Patsy came up and got her ready for bed and tucked her in.

00:11:41.460 So Patsy put on JonBenet's pajamas that night, and this would later become an issue.

00:11:46.480 what she was wearing. What did Patsy put JonBenet in? I don't remember, quite frankly.

00:11:56.940 I'd have to look at the pictures, but it was just nightclothes.

00:12:02.280 But my understanding, the reason I ask you, Jon, is that I've been reading up on the case that

00:12:06.120 there was an allegation that Patsy said she put her in a red outfit, like red PJs.

00:12:10.420 And when she was found, she was in white. Is that familiar to you?

00:12:15.440 Yeah. Well, I didn't know, but I don't know about the red nightgown. I hadn't never heard that, but when I found her, she had like a black and white pants and, and a top.

00:12:31.420 Okay. So Patsy puts her in bed. So probably by 10 o'clock, JonBenet was in her bed. 1.00

00:12:38.420 Oh yeah. Yeah.

00:12:40.300 And what time did you guys go to bed and Burke too?

00:12:42.560 uh even shortly after that probably 10 30 i guess um yeah and your son too

00:12:51.000 yes yeah he went to bed immediately when we got home yeah he's also a little guy it's not like

00:12:58.640 you have a teenager at that point who likes to stay up like 10 year olds nine years old

00:13:02.400 worn out from christmas day as well okay so everybody goes to bed by 10 30 and you you like

00:13:11.980 in our house, before we go to sleep, we lock all the doors, make sure the security's on,

00:13:15.860 you know, all that stuff. Did you have any of that on your house?

00:13:19.640 We had an alarm system that was in the house when we bought it. And it was the type that

00:13:25.160 at that time, the theory was you scare everybody out of the house, including the intruder.

00:13:32.360 It was just this horrible, loud noise. And so we didn't use it. It went off once.

00:13:40.660 John Bonet, about dinnertime, I don't know, six months or eight months before, was playing.

00:13:47.720 We didn't know it, but she was punching the buttons on the alarm system.

00:13:51.340 And this horrible sound came up, and I ran into where the control box was.

00:13:57.480 And I remember John Bonet looking at me like, and said, this makes my ears loud.

00:14:04.760 We've all been there.

00:14:05.680 Those security systems can be, they can definitely be more annoying than, you know, they ought to be when they go off.

00:14:10.540 Yeah, they tend to go off when you don't want them to.

00:14:12.020 In this case, this would have given you a heart attack if it went off.

00:14:15.000 So what about, what else was there?

00:14:16.660 Did you, were there locks on the doors or the windows?

00:14:19.000 What was the security setup?

00:14:20.360 Well, it was an old house built in 1927.

00:14:23.040 And it, yes, there were locks on the doors and just typical window locks, but I didn't check them that night.

00:14:36.200 And that's to my deep regret.

00:14:39.840 We retired and, you know, we always assumed Boulder was kind of a, you know, Ozzie and Harriet, flowers coming up, quiet, safe place.

00:14:52.980 And so you get complacent.

00:14:55.400 And I regretfully admit we are complacent.

00:14:59.000 No, I know it.

00:14:59.960 I know it.

00:15:00.420 I mean, I grew up in upstate New York.

00:15:01.780 We never locked our doors, ever.

00:15:03.580 We'd go away for vacation for a week and not even lock the door.

00:15:07.060 And there was never an incident.

00:15:09.160 It's, you know, I've told people, I said, you know, just be aware there are bad people everywhere.

00:15:16.120 Not just because you live in a nice neighborhood or don't live in South L.A. that you're safe.

00:15:22.420 But don't be paranoid, but just be aware of that.

00:15:24.820 And your home should be your sanctuary.

00:15:27.060 And that's a huge regret on my part to become complacent.

00:15:33.400 Do you know if you had locked just the doors?

00:15:37.080 Of course, you say you didn't check the windows, but had you locked the doors?

00:15:41.700 Well, I thought I did.

00:15:43.300 Yeah.

00:15:43.860 Yeah, there was a door found open that morning, not by me, but by the police.

00:15:55.320 It shouldn't have been open.

00:15:57.320 It's possible the kids were playing and went through it and didn't close it.

00:16:00.680 I doubt it because that was kind of in a sub-basement area.

00:16:04.660 They wouldn't have been going down there.

00:16:06.440 But I think the killer was in the house and we got home.

00:16:09.400 And he waited until we were in bed and took JonBenet from her room.

00:16:24.480 It's a chilling thought just to have him lying in wait there for murder.

00:16:31.440 Can I ask you, too, just before we leave the subject of security, was there a dog?

00:16:36.440 Was there any other layers?

00:16:38.740 JonBenet had a little dog.

00:16:42.840 His name was Jock.

00:16:44.860 And we had taken him over to the neighbors before we went out to dinner because we were going to leave town the next morning and have a second Christmas with my older children.

00:16:53.860 And then we had a reservation for the family on the Disney Big Red Boat.

00:17:00.740 And that was our, you know, take place, you know, right after Christmas.

00:17:04.740 So we took the dog and took him to our neighbors, and they were going to take care of him until we got home.

00:17:13.500 Right.

00:17:15.620 Oh, gosh.

00:17:16.780 Like all these things you'd like to have back, and who knows whether they would have made a difference.

00:17:20.580 But, yeah, the dog, they basically say as many layers as you can put between a potential bad guy and those you love, the better.

00:17:29.440 Yes.

00:17:31.080 You're most vulnerable at night when you're asleep.

00:17:34.740 For sure. And it's just prudent to pay attention to that, regardless of where you live.

00:17:46.120 How far away were your children's bedrooms from your bedroom?

00:17:50.960 Well, it was an old house. There were basement, ground floor, second floor.

00:17:57.460 And the second floor was where the kids were. And then the upstairs attic, we converted it to a master bedroom.

00:18:02.380 So in terms of distance, I don't know, 30 feet, maybe something like that, 40 feet, but also on a different level.

00:18:17.400 Did you sleep with the doors closed to your bedrooms?

00:18:19.900 Like, do you believe if you had, if she had, so do you believe if she had yelled, you would have heard it?

00:18:27.860 I think so.

00:18:28.900 Yeah, I really do.

00:18:29.660 i think with virtual certainty we're we're we're sure a stun gun was used perhaps when she was

00:18:43.660 asleep in her bed uh don't know that for a fact but but yeah i think if we if she had screamed or

00:18:51.200 or uh um there'd been noise we would have we would have heard it i think

00:18:58.300 There were marks on her face and I think her neck, too, that suggested a stun gun had been used on her.

00:19:03.940 John, forgive me because I don't know the answer to this, but what would a stun gun do to a person when used?

00:19:10.900 I mean, would it incapacitate you for a time?

00:19:14.320 What would it do?

00:19:15.460 Well, apparently it does.

00:19:16.880 I don't know, but we had it looked at.

00:19:24.760 Police discounted that idea.

00:19:27.200 And we had it looked at by a doctor who specializes in that kind of stuff somehow.

00:19:33.660 And he said with 99% certainty, those are stun gun marks.

00:19:39.560 But I think because we didn't hear anything, you know, you would think at least if this creature had come in and started to take Jomanea from her bed, she would have screamed.

00:19:53.220 And we would certainly have heard that.

00:19:54.660 Yeah. Even if he covered her mouth, you'd hear something, some sort of signs of a struggle. But if the stun gun were used, and of course, I know that you found her with duct tape on her mouth, that could have kept her quiet.

00:20:07.020 All right. So let's back up. So Patsy comes downstairs early. They say it was 5.52 a.m. was that 911 call. So it was early in the morning. You say you were taking a trip.

00:20:18.820 And was that your first sign that something was wrong?

00:20:22.020 She finds this ransom note at the bottom of the stairs.

00:20:24.540 And then what?

00:20:25.300 Does she come find you or what happens now?

00:20:26.980 Well, she screamed and it was, you know, I was getting ready to get dressed and she screamed.

00:20:34.040 I could tell from the scream it was something was very, very wrong.

00:20:38.900 And I ran down and she had this ransom note.

00:20:42.640 And, you know, it was just an unbelievable thing.

00:20:52.980 And we went, or I did, I think I did, looked to make sure Brooke was okay because his bedroom was on kind of the other end of the house.

00:21:01.220 And he was still in bed and appeared to be asleep.

00:21:04.120 So he knew he was safe.

00:21:07.560 And so I, you know, I took the note and Patsy explained, said, hey, this is a ransom note, Gemini's gone.

00:21:18.360 I checked her room and so I tried to grasp what was in the ransom note.

00:21:24.980 It was three pages and just told Patsy to call the police, call the police, call 911.

00:21:33.020 And, of course, funny thing, we were as criticized for that because the ransom note told us not to do that. 0.84

00:21:39.060 Well, that's silly.

00:21:40.580 Of course, we did. 0.93

00:21:41.800 Of course, of course.

00:21:43.320 You're going to call the police and you don't follow the directions of a kidnapper to not call law enforcement.

00:21:49.460 Yeah, so that Patsy called immediately.

00:21:53.160 She was standing by the phone at that time.

00:21:55.300 And I was still trying to comprehend what the note said and what was going on.

00:22:02.080 I'll get to the note in one second.

00:22:03.560 I think it's worth reading so that the audience can understand how bizarre it was.

00:22:07.360 Before we do that, I want to play the longer Patsy 911 call because to this day, even though you've been totally exonerated, people say, oh, the parents did it.

00:22:15.980 You know how that, you know how it was done.

00:22:17.600 That'll continue even after the killer's arrested and convicted.

00:22:22.000 Of course, of course.

00:22:23.680 DNA has exonerated you.

00:22:25.860 So it's like, OK, but I as a mother, you hear Patsy Ramsey in this 911 call.

00:22:31.120 And you can hear the sheer panic in her voice.

00:22:36.080 And especially if you listen to the longer version, which I'll play here, it's sound

00:22:39.580 by two.

00:22:40.560 911 emergency.

00:22:41.760 We need him.

00:22:43.100 Police.

00:22:43.780 What's going on?

00:22:44.340 By 515th Street.

00:22:45.760 What's going on there, ma'am?

00:22:46.900 We have a kidnapping.

00:22:48.520 All right, please.

00:22:49.280 Explain to me what's going on, okay?

00:22:51.260 There we have a, there's a note left and our daughter's gone. 0.92

00:22:54.780 A note was left and your daughter is gone?

00:22:56.920 How old is your daughter?

00:22:58.080 She's gone.

00:22:59.420 She's gone.

00:23:00.080 pictures on how long ago was this i don't know i put it on the note oh my god is it say who took

00:23:09.440 her what does it say who took her i don't know there's a ransom note here it's a ransom note

00:23:17.200 It says S-B-T-C. Victory.

00:23:24.620 Please.

00:23:25.480 Okay, what's your name?

00:23:26.880 Are you...

00:23:27.320 Patsy Ramsey, I'm the mother.

00:23:29.020 Oh, my God.

00:23:30.640 Please.

00:23:31.520 Okay, I'm sending an officer over, okay?

00:23:33.600 Please.

00:23:34.020 Do you know how long she's been gone?

00:23:35.340 No, I don't.

00:23:36.780 Please, we just got out and she's right here.

00:23:39.200 Oh, my God, please.

00:23:40.560 Okay, girl.

00:23:41.320 Patsy Ramsey, I am, honey.

00:23:43.080 Please.

00:23:43.620 Take a deep breath with me, okay?

00:23:45.080 Please, hurry, hurry.

00:23:45.820 Patsy, Patsy.

00:23:47.200 Patsy? Patsy?

00:23:57.300 That's where she says, help me, Jesus. 1.00

00:23:59.500 She's in a sheer panic.

00:24:01.320 You were there.

00:24:03.620 All she knew at that point was JonBenet was missing because she wasn't in her bed.

00:24:07.620 And you can feel, you must have been feeling the same, Jon,

00:24:09.920 just the slow reveal of, wait, a ransom note, and wait, she's actually not in her room.

00:24:17.200 What on earth is going on here?

00:24:21.700 Well, we didn't know.

00:24:22.700 We believed what the note said, that they have our daughter, and we were not to call the police.

00:24:33.280 And if we did, she would be beheaded.

00:24:38.220 And it was dark. 0.99

00:24:40.020 It was cold out.

00:24:41.840 It was a horrible feeling.

00:24:43.220 I tell people it's like when if you're with your child and you're at a department store or grocery store and you look around and the child's gone, you have this instinctive, just horrible feeling in your stomach that, you know, where's my child?

00:24:57.540 And it's a terrible feeling.

00:25:00.060 And I think all parents have experienced that from time to time when their little one's gone out of sight.

00:25:07.180 You don't know where they are.

00:25:09.480 And that was the feeling we had.

00:25:11.180 And, you know, it went on for until, I don't know, one in the afternoon.

00:25:18.380 And then an even worse feeling came.

00:25:21.180 We've all had that.

00:25:22.240 We've all had that.

00:25:22.880 And the moment of relief when you find your child well is overwhelming.

00:25:27.380 And you kept waiting, kept waiting for that to happen.

00:25:31.840 And you can hear Patsy, you know, waiting for it with the 911 operator and doing the only thing you can do at that point, which is pray to Jesus.

00:25:38.280 Just pray, pray, pray, pray.

00:25:39.400 It's not as you think it is.

00:25:41.180 The note, the note is one of the most important and bizarre things of this whole case.

00:25:47.040 The handwritten note, which for our listening audience, we've put on the screen and you can

00:25:51.560 see it on YouTube. It's handwritten. It's three pages long, as you point out. I'm going to read

00:25:58.740 it just so the audience understands what you guys read. It was addressed to you, you, John Ramsey,

00:26:05.700 right, dear Mr. Ramsey. And then it reads as follows. Listen carefully, exclamation point.

00:26:12.600 We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We do respect your business,

00:26:20.420 spelled wrong, but not the country it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession,

00:26:26.260 spelled wrong. She is safe and unharmed. And if you want to see her, if you want her to see 1997,

00:26:32.080 you must follow our instructions to the letter. You will withdraw $118,000 from your account.

00:26:38.280 $100,000 will be in $100 bills, the remaining $18,020 bills. Make sure that you bring an

00:26:44.520 adequate size attache to the bank. When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag.

00:26:50.680 I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will

00:26:56.880 be exhausting. So I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early, we might

00:27:02.960 call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence a earlier delivery pickup

00:27:09.240 of your daughter. Another grammatical error. Any deviation of my instructions will result in the

00:27:15.380 immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial.

00:27:20.380 The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you. So I advise you not to

00:27:25.860 provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, etc., will result

00:27:30.640 in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert 1.00

00:27:36.640 bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies.

00:27:41.000 You will be scanned for electronic devices, and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive

00:27:45.940 us, but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement, countermeasures, and tactics.

00:27:50.360 you stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart, two words, us.

00:27:58.520 Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back.

00:28:02.860 You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow

00:28:08.380 a brain, John. You are not the only fat cat around, so don't think that killing will be difficult. 1.00

00:28:14.860 Don't underestimate us, John. 0.97

00:28:17.080 Use that good Southern common sense of yours.

00:28:20.200 It is up to you now, John.

00:28:22.480 Victory, exclamation point, S-B-T-C.

00:28:28.220 Absolutely bizarre.

00:28:30.840 When you read that, other than the obvious,

00:28:34.400 was there anything, you know,

00:28:35.280 if you had a chance to read it and reread it,

00:28:37.160 what jumped out at you?

00:28:38.740 Well, there's several things that you wonder,

00:28:41.440 what did that mean to the killer uh one was the amount of the ransom money request 118,000 why

00:28:50.880 not a million why not you know 100,000 whatever why 118 that has some had some significance to

00:28:58.620 the killer uh and then the other course was the uh the uh the beheading concept you know that's

00:29:08.040 And that's very – you don't think about that as a punishment or a penalty, but yet that's a very common thing nowadays.

00:29:21.640 We read about some of the terrorists and stuff that goes off.

00:29:24.900 So you wonder, well, are they – is it really a terrorist group or terrorist individuals?

00:29:30.100 And that's a common threat they can make. 0.53

00:29:34.580 And then, of course, the final thing was SBTC.

00:29:37.160 What does that mean?

00:29:38.040 Victory. That's sign-off. So those are kind of the three elements in my mind that just didn't make sense.

00:29:45.580 And the $118,000 happened to be my annual bonus that year, and I was paid in January of 1996.

00:30:02.200 And that is somewhat of a logical where that number came from.

00:30:09.740 They would have had to known that, but the rest of it just didn't make sense.

00:30:14.880 It was a bizarre note.

00:30:16.140 I mean, I've been told, too, that in a way it's a gift because I've been told by handwriting experts that with that long of a sample, three pages, if we had the handwriting of the killer, it'd be very easy to conclusively say this person wrote this note.

00:30:35.380 It's a big sample of their handwriting.

00:30:37.440 What did the handwriting analysts say could be gleaned about the writing?

00:30:41.720 Could they tell anything about age, gender, psychological, state, any of that?

00:30:48.300 Well, we didn't get that from the handwriting people.

00:30:50.620 Typically, they just told us what their findings were.

00:30:55.820 And they rank their findings on a scale of one to five.

00:31:00.940 One is absolutely this person wrote it when they're doing comparison.

00:31:04.860 A five is absolutely no way.

00:31:07.360 And I was a one.

00:31:09.440 They said, absolutely, you did not write it.

00:31:11.380 Passy was a four-and-a-half, and she said, well, why four-and-a-half?

00:31:15.320 And I was told that there's – depending on who you're taught to write, what generation, there are certain things that are kind of common, but they're not significant, and there are not a lot of them.

00:31:30.020 So the police were told, hey, you guys better look somewhere else because we don't see – either parent wrote the note.

00:31:41.380 Wait, but wait, wait, wait, back up, because I thought you said one means you wrote it, five means no way.

00:31:47.440 Right.

00:31:48.360 And then you just said that you were a one, suggesting.

00:31:51.320 Oh, no, I was a five, sorry, yeah.

00:31:53.800 Okay.

00:31:54.220 Yeah, I was a five, Patsy was a four and a half. 0.88

00:31:56.240 And Patsy was a four and a half.

00:31:57.500 Okay, so you were both on exactly the scale of you didn't write it, or there's virtually no chance that you wrote it.

00:32:04.380 Right, yes.

00:32:05.540 Okay, got it.

00:32:07.140 So what about since then, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, I'm sure you've had people like that, FBI profilers who have read it, and were they able to glean any sort of a profile from it?

00:32:17.960 Yeah, John Douglas, who started the whole FBI profiling program and is pretty much considered the top of the heap as far as that skill set and accomplishments.

00:32:30.960 We spent a couple, three days with him early on because our attorneys asked him to spend some time with us.

00:32:39.280 and um but his conclusion was and prediction is it's a young person fascinated by movies

00:32:47.040 you know probably in his 20s maybe early 30s um and he said this was not about john benet this

00:32:54.420 was directed at you to hurt you john uh somebody is either extremely angry with you or extremely

00:33:03.760 jealous of you and this was done to hurt you um and i thought well i couldn't possibly know anybody

00:33:11.580 that i've made angry that to that degree and he said you may not even know who they are they've

00:33:18.240 either observed you in the newspaper or you know whatever and they and developed this uh either

00:33:26.760 anger or jealousy

00:33:29.080 at me. That was John's

00:33:31.040 conclusion and I

00:33:32.240 think he's right.

00:33:35.120 Now, Lou Smith, who was the

00:33:36.920 legendary detective from Colorado

00:33:38.820 out of retirement

00:33:39.780 and was put on this case by the

00:33:42.740 district attorney early on

00:33:43.960 and Lou felt

00:33:46.640 it was a kidnapping going wrong

00:33:48.540 and I always thought, well, those are two

00:33:50.380 opposite

00:33:51.360 theories and Lou was a

00:33:54.760 legendary detective.

00:33:56.760 In Colorado. And somebody put it up to me recently that, well, that could be, those two are not incompatible, those two theories.

00:34:04.340 I thought, well, you're right. They're not.

00:34:06.880 Yeah. Yeah. Somebody who wanted to hurt you went in there to kidnap your child.

00:34:11.120 Right. And that thought hadn't occurred to me in a good while because I thought, well, here you got two top experts saying, giving me two different theories, but they're compatible.

00:34:24.920 Yeah, they're compatible.

00:34:26.220 But what about, I mean, the thing about just random intruder coming in that doesn't make sense, if you look at the note, is how do they know?

00:34:33.700 You are from Atlanta originally, no?

00:34:35.500 Like, you are from the South.

00:34:37.420 Right.

00:34:37.640 The 118,000, how would they know your bonus?

00:34:40.460 I mean, it has to be somebody who, and I realize there's a chance they just randomly picked the number that was your bonus, but it seems like a small chance.

00:34:46.900 It seems much more likely somebody worked at your company or had reason to know that that was your number.

00:34:51.120 Well, there's two ways I guess they could have known that.

00:34:55.760 They worked in our company.

00:34:57.140 That amount was on my paycheck stub since the previous January as a deferred compensation bonus.

00:35:09.840 So we weren't real careful with that kind of stuff in our house.

00:35:13.200 We could have been tucked in a drawer or somebody that knew that from some connection to the start of our company.

00:35:25.080 To me, that's the logical explanation.

00:35:30.800 The only other explanation I heard was Psalm 118 is right in the middle of the Bible.

00:35:38.380 It references the stone.

00:35:41.060 Stone becomes the cornerstone.

00:35:43.200 is one of the passages and you know that could that be the sptc and it's that's possible as well

00:35:49.520 um one of the suspects that we are interested in signed his high school yearbook uh

00:35:57.400 stone becomes his cornerstone so whoa it's a very bizarre note and and uh well what did they say

00:36:07.980 john what did they say about um and i want to know like did they go and speak to everybody

00:36:12.880 your company? I mean, that'd be like the first place I would start as a detective, right? Like

00:36:17.240 somebody knows what he made. Somebody doesn't like him. They've made that clear. They know

00:36:22.160 where his roots are. They know you're from the South. So let's talk to everybody from the company.

00:36:27.800 Well, that kind of stuff just wasn't done. They should have done a neighborhood survey that

00:36:32.520 morning, gone around the houses to the neighborhood. And, you know, if you see anything unusual,

00:36:36.480 what have you, you know, they didn't do any of that. So they basically, in fact, the detective,

00:36:42.320 The only detective, so-called, that was there that morning concluded that I was the killer because, quote, she saw it in my eyes.

00:36:52.220 And that became the conclusion before they even looked at evidence or investigated anything.

00:36:59.340 This is Linda Arndt.

00:37:01.060 Yeah. 1.00

00:37:02.280 And we were just dealing with incompetence. 1.00

00:37:08.320 Well, in Linda's case, not just incompetence, but maybe a desire to cover up her incompetence because she isn't she the one who said search the house after seven hours of sitting there? 1.00

00:37:19.600 She didn't search the house. The foot patrolman who got there per the 911 call earlier, he didn't search the house adequately. 0.64

00:37:26.460 She didn't do it. And that's the reason you you were put in the position of finding your own little girl.

00:37:32.320 Well, that's exactly right.

00:37:33.700 In fact, to show you what kind of environment she was working in, the chief of police said, we didn't treat this as a crime scene because it was a kidnapping.

00:37:42.320 And you shake your head and think, where do these people come from?

00:37:49.400 Horrifying.

00:37:50.120 I mean, just because at that point they didn't know that it was a homicide.

00:37:53.200 You've got a six-year-old girl who's been taken from her bed in the middle of the night.

00:37:56.160 That's a five-alarm fire.

00:37:58.660 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:59.420 If that's not a crime, I don't know what it is.

00:38:01.360 But that was the quote, because I could give you a dozen quotes that were just astounding from the police department over the years.

00:38:10.480 But that was really the first one that was just unbelievable.

00:38:16.700 What about the misspellings and the improper grammar and the use of the word attache, which is not really a thing we say in America?

00:38:27.400 It can mean either diplomatic assistant or it can mean bag in the way they're using it here.

00:38:32.720 But it's a bizarre – we're a small foreign faction.

00:38:36.140 Just for people who think – forgive me, again, for raising your son.

00:38:39.580 He, too, was ruled out, as I understand it, by the DNA in 2008.

00:38:42.680 But this is not the writing of a nine-year-old.

00:38:45.180 We're a small foreign faction.

00:38:46.900 Like people, you've got to use your head.

00:38:49.540 But anyway, these misspellings and the improper grammar throughout tells us something.

00:38:54.260 It could be used intentionally.

00:38:56.600 But this doesn't sound like a very well-educated person.

00:39:00.880 No, I got a letter.

00:39:02.920 We had a lot of people trying to help.

00:39:05.000 And I got a letter from a teacher of she taught English to non-English speaking people.

00:39:14.440 And she said the misspellings in this are typical of a Hispanic person migrating to English based on her experience teaching them to read and write English and speak English.

00:39:30.840 And I thought that was pretty interesting and possibly could explain that.

00:39:35.540 And, you know, we were a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and or at that time, just Lockheed.

00:39:42.600 you know i take that you'll see well anyway lockheed martin bought lockheed at some time

00:39:46.700 in there but we had to they required us to put a sign on the front of our building which is

00:39:51.980 was downtown boulder uh a lockheed martin corporation and at the time i thought that's

00:39:57.440 like waving waving a red flag in front of a bull boulder's an ultra liberal uh place and uh

00:40:06.580 And to put a, I'm sure in their minds, a manufacturer of weapons sign in downtown Boulder was just inviting trouble.

00:40:20.640 It made me nervous, frankly, to do that at the time.

00:40:23.500 Right, and they referenced your company.

00:40:24.820 We do respect your business, spelled wrong, spelled B-U-S-S-I, a double S, S-S-I-N-E-S-S, but not the country that it serves.

00:40:35.600 So interesting.

00:40:36.200 They clearly – they're referencing something about what you do.

00:40:41.900 Yeah, that was bizarre as well.

00:40:45.020 And I start – I, of course, trying to think who this possibly could have been.

00:40:49.920 And I wondered at times whether this was kind of an amateur terrorist group or person that fantasized some things.

00:41:03.860 I'm sure you've got to consider everything.

00:41:05.420 I mean, the guy, you know, the Unabomber, he used to write about himself as we and suggest it was some sort of international thing.

00:41:14.900 Like he wanted to make himself sound bigger and more important than just an I.

00:41:18.700 And this guy slips into the first person later in the ransom note.

00:41:22.780 But, yeah, there's it wouldn't be unusual for an individual to try to make themselves sound bigger, more nefarious in this way.

00:41:29.400 Very true.

00:41:29.840 Now, you know, I really do subscribe to John Douglas's theory that this was somebody that wanted to hurt me.

00:41:38.280 And that's a tough burden to carry.

00:41:42.940 But, frankly, John said you may not even know him.

00:41:46.500 You know, we'd been in the paper a few weeks before having hit, for us, a significant sales goal.

00:41:53.340 And our marketing people wanted to put it in the paper.

00:41:56.180 And I sort of had this gut feeling that that's not really a good idea.

00:41:59.840 But I wanted our people to be proud of their company, and so we did it.

00:42:06.960 And that could have targeted me because I had a picture of me in quotes and stuff in the paper.

00:42:16.700 That could have been a—

00:42:17.660 You never know how you're affecting a sick mind who's going to transfer onto you.

00:42:23.040 Who knows?

00:42:24.280 Yeah, that's the problem.

00:42:25.780 We had people, you know, we hired two detectives to work this early on because we knew the police weren't capable of it.

00:42:35.040 And, in fact, we tried very hard in the early days to get the case moved somewhere else to another jurisdiction.

00:42:40.360 They could have put it in the sheriff's department's office, which is a competent organization, it was at the time, and had dual authority over it.

00:42:47.460 We could have very easily had a sheriff's officer come to our home that morning instead of the city police department.

00:42:54.420 And that was a tragic first mistake, I guess, or luck of the draw, that that's what happened.

00:43:04.300 So, you know, it just wasn't ever properly handled and to this day is still not properly handled.

00:43:17.360 Well, and the theory that it's someone who didn't like you, because, of course, the other theory is that it's some pedophile, right?

00:43:23.260 Well, those are the two conflicting, and I thought at the time, conflicting theories between John Douglas and Lou Smith.

00:43:33.360 Well, I thought we were talking about someone who knew you versus random intruder, but random intruder doesn't necessarily mean pedophile there to get your little girl, right?

00:43:43.380 Because that's one of the questions in the case about whether she was the victim of somebody who was a pedophile or whether it was somebody who just hurt her, right?

00:43:53.460 Because it was unclear, forgive me for the details, John, but it was unclear whether she was sexually penetrated by a man.

00:44:02.760 Well, first of all, this was not a random intruder.

00:44:07.460 This is somebody who had watched us, knew what our patterns were, knew we were going to be out that evening, left the note on the back stairway, which is the stairway we always use, but would not have been obvious to somebody that just came into the house.

00:44:25.660 We had a front stairway, but we never used that.

00:44:29.700 And so why did they leave the ransomware on the back stairway?

00:44:32.260 How did they know that's where we would be coming down in the morning?

00:44:37.460 Um, so it would have, I mean, there's some elements where somebody could have come into

00:44:44.620 our home.

00:44:45.280 It was not a hard home to break into and regret to say, um, and really understood where things

00:44:53.020 were and, or they, they could have been in the house for hours before, uh, we got home.

00:44:58.300 But are we sure that, are we sure that the person that says sexual gratification was

00:45:03.180 a goal of the killer?

00:45:05.160 I don't know.

00:45:06.040 I think, you know, there's another case seven months later that happened in the neighborhood.

00:45:12.800 Yes, I know about Amy, and I want to talk to you about Amy.

00:45:16.100 Forgive me for interrupting you because I want to go down this line, but I want to give us the proper time.

00:45:20.400 And I got to squeeze in a quick commercial break.

00:45:22.160 So let me pause you right there, John Ramsey, and we'll come right back.

00:45:25.020 So much more to discuss.

00:45:26.580 It's an honor to have you here.

00:45:27.920 I know it's not easy to discuss even 26 years later.

00:45:30.860 Even just losing any loved one is tough to discuss.

00:45:33.840 and certainly under these circumstances, even harder. Stand by, John.

00:45:41.840 A couple of things we're going to discuss when John comes back on in a minute,

00:45:45.400 and that is on the ransom note, do the police believe it was written before or after the murder?

00:45:51.420 That's one of the big questions, because I know the police had said originally,

00:45:54.400 not even a serial killer would have the steadiness to write a note like this after a murder.

00:45:59.480 So what do they think? And by the way, a draft of this had been found. He had started

00:46:03.720 the killer had started on a legal pad that was found in the Ramsey house by saying,

00:46:08.840 dear Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, and then started over addressing it just to Mr. Ramsey,

00:46:13.380 and then you heard what followed. So there are a lot of questions still about this note and what

00:46:17.440 can be gleaned from it. Before we get to all that, I'm going to play you Patsy Ramsey's

00:46:21.760 describing of the ransom note in a 1997 interview with CNN.

00:46:27.580 I didn't, um, I couldn't read the whole thing

00:46:32.260 I, I'd just gotten up

00:46:35.740 We were on our, it was the day after Christmas

00:46:37.640 And we were going to go visiting

00:46:39.840 And it was quite early in the morning

00:46:43.780 And I'd gotten dressed

00:46:45.740 And was on my way to the kitchen to make some coffee

00:46:50.600 And we had a back staircase from the bedroom areas

00:46:57.200 and I always come down that staircase

00:47:01.580 and I'm usually the first one down

00:47:03.640 and the note was lying across

00:47:09.840 the three pages across the run

00:47:13.920 of one of the stair treads

00:47:16.980 and it was kind of dimly lit

00:47:22.340 because it was very early in the morning

00:47:24.420 and I started to read it

00:47:27.940 and it was addressed to John

00:47:30.640 it said Mr. Ramsey

00:47:32.340 and it said

00:47:37.480 we have your daughter

00:47:39.520 and I

00:47:43.700 you know it just wasn't registering

00:47:47.180 and I may have gotten through another sentence

00:47:51.260 It's like, we have your daughter, and I don't know if I got any further than that.

00:48:01.820 And that's when she called 911.

00:48:05.760 The whole thing is just, I mean, what was on the note?

00:48:09.640 Were there fingerprints?

00:48:11.280 Was there touch DNA of any kind?

00:48:13.840 John Ramsey's been saying, even if you didn't find fingerprints, there might have been DNA.

00:48:18.160 Even if the person had worn gloves, there might have been DNA on that letter.

00:48:24.000 Has it been tested?

00:48:25.300 If not, why not?

00:48:26.240 Apparently, there are several crime scene items that have not been tested for DNA, even in 2022, when touch DNA is out there.

00:48:33.320 DNA has evolved so much.

00:48:34.920 We're going to discuss all of that with John, plus the neighbor Amy, a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a man in her bedroom in the middle of the night, just months after John Benet.

00:48:44.380 Wait until you hear what the police did in that case.

00:48:48.160 so john on the subject of the the ransom note before we leave that there had been a draft

00:48:58.640 addressed to both of you then the final was just you it was written on a legal pad found in your

00:49:03.120 home um and that's the question whether was it were there any fingerprints has it been tested

00:49:09.000 for dna do you know where it came from in the house and was that area tested for fingerprints

00:49:14.440 et cetera at the time i don't know uh i think the my feeling was that the uh forensics people

00:49:23.200 that came in did a pretty good job in finding uh a palm print that was unidentified drawn to

00:49:30.720 track to anybody uh um footprints that don't match any shoes of ours in the house things like that

00:49:39.640 But whether this stuff was ever tested or not, I don't know.

00:49:43.440 We know there's five or six, maybe seven items that were originally taken from the crime scene, sent to an outside lab for testing along with others.

00:49:53.820 And five or six of those items were not tested.

00:49:56.460 They were returned to the police.

00:49:58.700 I don't know why.

00:49:59.720 The police didn't want to pay for it because back then it was expensive to do DNA testing.

00:50:04.960 But we know there's five or six items that have never been tested.

00:50:08.020 And so what else was it? I do know that the forensic people spent about, the detectives spent a couple hours in the house and then told the DA, well, we're finished.

00:50:17.920 And he said, you can't be finished. Get back in there.

00:50:22.640 So they took a very cursory look at it and then were ordered back in by the DA.

00:50:28.000 A forensics investigator experienced one told me they'll spend three days on a murder site looking for evidence, not two hours.

00:50:40.720 So God only knows what was compromised.

00:50:44.400 And I know Linda Arndt, the detective, also didn't secure the scene.

00:50:48.220 She let your friends come over and come into the house.

00:50:50.760 She sent you to look around as we discussed.

00:50:53.020 And then after you found JonBenet, as I understand it, she actually moved JonBenet's body again from one spot to closer by the Christmas tree, which just should never be done when you're dealing with a homicide victim.

00:51:05.920 Right.

00:51:06.380 No, I, yeah, she just was way in over her head.

00:51:10.680 And, you know, I was criticized for disturbing the crime scene when I found JonBenet by picking her up and holding her.

00:51:19.580 And what parent wouldn't do that?

00:51:21.580 It's just insane to be, to that kind of level of misunderstanding of a parent's love for a child.

00:51:31.700 No, it's not possible not to pick up your child and hold her.

00:51:35.520 And at that point, you didn't know whether she was gone.

00:51:39.600 Can we spend a minute on that?

00:51:41.300 Because we talked about how Linda said, okay, search the house.

00:51:44.180 It's one o'clock now in the afternoon.

00:51:46.240 No one's called, you know, no kidnapper.

00:51:48.040 And I understand the note said, well, I'll call tomorrow.

00:51:50.220 else. It was unclear whether they meant the 26th or the 27th. But you're sitting there and you're

00:51:55.220 waiting and nothing's happening. And now it's one o'clock in the afternoon. She says, go look around

00:51:58.960 the house. And the people who want to say, oh, you know, look at John. One of the things they say

00:52:05.380 is, oh, he went right to the room. He went to the basement and he went right to, there's a storage

00:52:09.300 room off the basement where she was found. Is that true? Like, what did you do after Linda said,

00:52:14.440 go search the house well we a friend of mine that was there to help console us uh we she said for

00:52:24.900 both of us to go uh search the house and so we went to the basement which to me was a logical

00:52:31.020 place to start third floor you couldn't get into the third floor from outside um so we went to the

00:52:37.000 basement and um went into what we called the train room where the kids had a train set up

00:52:43.220 And there was an open window and a suitcase propped up under the window as if it were to be a step.

00:52:51.200 And I told my friend, I said, that suitcase should not be there.

00:52:54.720 That's way out of place.

00:52:56.240 We wouldn't have put it there.

00:52:57.580 And so we, then I went into the, the only other room in that basement was this, we called it a wine cellar, but it was an old coal cellar, dark.

00:53:12.500 One door going into it, no entrances from the outside.

00:53:17.400 And I opened the door and, of course, immediately found JonBenet.

00:53:21.180 And, you know, I don't – we heard Lindar say on the media or on an interview that, well, I told him to go from top to bottom, and he started out in the bottom.

00:53:32.360 Why did he do that?

00:53:35.240 This just was logical to me.

00:53:36.940 Do you remember that moment?

00:53:45.040 I mean, do you remember, did it switch from concern to panic?

00:53:49.780 Do you remember emotionally what that moment was?

00:53:51.700 It was a switch from panic, and it was a relief.

00:53:57.400 Thank God I found my child.

00:54:00.020 And that was the immediate feeling that I'd found her.

00:54:05.640 she's safe

00:54:06.900 and

00:54:08.420 but it fairly

00:54:11.340 quickly

00:54:12.100 concluded that she wasn't all right

00:54:15.500 and

00:54:17.320 so I just picked her up

00:54:19.700 and carried her

00:54:21.340 screaming actually I was screaming

00:54:22.820 to

00:54:25.900 upstairs

00:54:27.440 to take her to help I mean I don't know

00:54:29.380 just an instinctive reaction I guess

00:54:31.600 but

00:54:31.960 and we laid her down on the

00:54:35.360 floor of the living room in front of the Christmas tree, and Linda Art had looked for a pulse

00:54:42.840 and looked up at me and said, no, she's gone, and I guess it was that moment when she saw

00:54:53.400 in my eyes that I was the killer, so, and then we rushed her out of the house pretty

00:55:01.560 quickly. And we never went back in that home. That was the last time we were in that home.

00:55:09.240 John, can I ask you, because I know that one of the things that JonBenet was wearing

00:55:13.320 was her cross, her cross necklace. And according to what I read, and we heard Patsy praying to

00:55:21.620 Jesus, you know, to help her, help her. And I wondered if you were a family of faith and if,

00:55:28.120 you know what this did to that right if you were able to carry that on well that's that's a good

00:55:33.980 question uh and i really had to face that issue when my oldest daughter was killed in a car accident

00:55:40.000 about four years before and the first words that came out of my mouth was there is no god there is

00:55:46.680 no god how could how could a loving god let this happen to a beautiful young child she was 20 21

00:55:52.860 And, but it really forced me to think about my faith.

00:55:58.460 And I spent, I had a friend came alongside of me and said, I'm going to help you study the Bible.

00:56:03.040 And he was a real mentor to me in that struggle to understand why this would happen.

00:56:13.980 You know, I was a Christian.

00:56:16.600 I had joined the club.

00:56:17.860 You know, if you're in the club, you shouldn't be subject to harm or tragedy.

00:56:24.180 And, of course, that's not at all what the Bible says.

00:56:26.100 You're going to get persecuted.

00:56:29.440 But I struggled with that for really for three or four years.

00:56:34.180 You know, is there an afterlife?

00:56:36.300 Will I see Beth, my oldest daughter, again?

00:56:39.820 It was tough for three or four years.

00:56:41.800 But I'd kind of wrestled that down to, yeah, there is more to life than just what we see here.

00:56:48.840 And so when we lost JonBenet, I didn't have to go through that struggle.

00:56:57.240 You know, I'd already been through, why did God let this happen?

00:57:03.780 So it was, my faith was not challenged when JonBenet was killed, only because I'd gone through that challenge.

00:57:11.800 When I lost my oldest daughter.

00:57:13.860 Then you go through the added pain of being not outright accused by the authorities, but pretty close.

00:57:21.500 I mean, the DA earlier, before Mary Lacey, the DA, said they didn't do it.

00:57:26.300 The DNA rules them out.

00:57:28.620 Four months after JonBenet died, the DA, Alex Hunter, said Patsy and Jon are the focus.

00:57:34.620 They're the focus.

00:57:35.240 opened up a grand jury proceeding

00:57:37.220 and the grand jury came back

00:57:39.660 and said, don't see anything

00:57:41.660 that you're going to be able to pursue

00:57:42.700 beyond a reasonable doubt.

00:57:44.360 The DA ultimately had to admit that.

00:57:46.520 But I mean, you're going through

00:57:48.160 being accused.

00:57:50.020 And then on top of all that, John,

00:57:51.500 you've got the media coverage, right?

00:57:53.080 Which basically tried to make

00:57:54.520 John Benet and Patsy

00:57:56.720 into this bizarre

00:57:58.040 daughter-mother team.

00:58:01.280 You know, she was exploited. 1.00

00:58:02.760 She was sexualized. 0.98

00:58:04.040 The beauty pageant videos on endless loop, on endless loop. 1.00

00:58:09.820 So talk about that for a bit and what that was like for you.

00:58:12.100 Well, you know, the media, of course, jumped on it, but they were being fed information that was misleading, wrong.

00:58:20.920 And we were told by Mary Lacey several years after she got into her position as the due DA, she said that was the police strategy that was defined to them by someone, whether it was the FBI or some wacko psychologist.

00:58:33.320 put intense pressure on the family we know it's one of the two they're in the house either the

00:58:40.340 father killed her or the mother did one of them will confess eventually if we put enough pressure

00:58:46.320 on them and and mary lacy the da said that was their strategy to solve the case and so they

00:58:51.820 released a lot of information misleading information incorrect information to the media

00:58:57.360 And, of course, the media ran with it, and we were quickly convicted in the court of public opinion.

00:59:07.760 We didn't know that's exactly what was happening, but it was confirmed by the DA.

00:59:12.820 And the problem for the police was they did a great job of convicting us in the court of public opinion with the assistance of the media, but they couldn't charge us.

00:59:21.500 We would have – it had been a bloodbath for them in a court because the evidence was quite contradictory to that as they got into looking at the evidence because they'd made their conclusion early on the day or the day after of JonBenet's murder and then went about, let's find the evidence to prove it.

00:59:41.680 Well, the evidence they were finding was contradicted to that conclusion.

00:59:47.500 And that became a problem for them because, you know, the media and the public was, you know, screaming, hey, arrest them, you know, charge them.

00:59:56.900 And they couldn't.

00:59:59.300 Well, and meanwhile, in the interviews, you held firm.

01:00:03.540 I mean, Patsy, they got all up in her grill.

01:00:06.940 And when I watch her, because I've spent a lot of time with this guy's name is Phil Houston.

01:00:11.280 He invented the CIA's deception detection technique that they still use today.

01:00:15.280 It was there 25 years.

01:00:17.020 There's all sorts of ways you can tell somebody's lying.

01:00:19.120 And they're pretty foolproof if you know how to apply them.

01:00:22.560 And one of the things is just sort of no BS.

01:00:26.100 You don't do convincing behavior.

01:00:28.140 You're just hardcore.

01:00:28.900 No, no, you know, stop.

01:00:31.460 Like, I mean, I'm sure if I showed him the Patsy Ramsey tapes with the cops, he'd be like, why did they waste so much time with her?

01:00:39.640 Right?

01:00:39.960 Like, it was pretty obvious.

01:00:40.880 And I'll just show some to the audience, a clip.

01:00:43.520 This is from 1998, two years later, police interview with Patsy.

01:00:47.460 They're telling her, falsely, that they have trace evidence linking her or you to the murder.

01:00:54.040 Suggesting, if I had that, how would you react?

01:00:57.060 Here it is, top five.

01:00:58.520 If I told you right now that we have trace evidence that appears to link you to the death of JonBenet, what would you tell me?

01:01:07.760 that is totally impossible

01:01:11.280 totally impossible

01:01:14.280 how is it impossible?

01:01:16.320 do a retest

01:01:16.880 I did not kill my child

01:01:18.900 I didn't have

01:01:20.660 a thing to do with it

01:01:23.500 and I'm not talking

01:01:27.260 you know somebody's guess

01:01:29.460 or some rumor or some story

01:01:31.280 I don't care what you're talking about

01:01:33.400 I'm talking about scientific evidence

01:01:36.280 I don't give a flying flip how scientific it is. 1.00

01:01:40.240 Go back to the damn drawing board. 0.99

01:01:42.800 I didn't do it. 0.99

01:01:44.500 John Ramsey didn't do it, and we didn't have a clue of anybody who did do it.

01:01:50.280 My life has been hell from that day forward,

01:01:54.720 and I want nothing more than to find out who was responsible for this.

01:02:01.040 Okay?

01:02:01.720 I mean, I want to work with you, not against you.

01:02:05.240 Okay?

01:02:05.800 this child was the most precious thing in my life and i can't stand the thought thinking

01:02:13.880 somebody's out here walking on the street god knows they might do it again to some other child 0.98

01:02:19.520 you know quit screwing around asking me about things that are ridiculous and let's find the 0.94

01:02:25.680 person that did this wow the frustration it's palpable because it's like as she points out 0.98

01:02:35.400 he could be hurting other children.

01:02:37.940 Right.

01:02:39.340 Yes, and probably did.

01:02:41.460 There's a high probability, I'm told,

01:02:43.520 that that creature kind of creature

01:02:45.260 doesn't just stop with one.

01:02:48.380 Maybe has done it before.

01:02:53.140 This is right around the time

01:02:54.460 where Lou Smith walked out.

01:02:57.220 The detective, the retired detective,

01:02:59.500 who they brought in

01:03:00.400 because they couldn't solve the case.

01:03:01.500 And he solved every single case

01:03:03.000 he ever worked on except for this one.

01:03:04.220 they brought him in take fresh eyes what do you think and Lou took the his fresh eyes at every

01:03:10.380 looked at everything and said they didn't do it this is not Patsy and Ramsey are that's the wrong

01:03:15.940 tree to bark up and they didn't listen to him to the point where he quit he called this a travesty

01:03:23.480 and said they were trying to railroad you it's crazy John that that wasn't the end of the story

01:03:28.460 it would take another 10 years for Mary Lacey to get that DNA test and say just stop stop with 1.00

01:03:34.160 obsessive focus on the Ramseys. No, that's true. Lou told me, you know, after he resigned and we 0.98

01:03:41.780 were able to talk to him freely, that he'd looked at the case for several months and all the

01:03:49.520 evidence and said, no, please, you're going the wrong direction. So he said he went to their war

01:03:54.760 room where they were strategizing this assault, frankly, and said, you know, you guys have looked

01:04:00.080 at this case longer than I have, but, you know, I've looked at it, and have you ever thought maybe

01:04:04.940 you're going the wrong direction? And he said it was like pouring a bucket of water on the

01:04:09.660 participants. They wouldn't talk to him after that. They banned him from their war room and

01:04:15.680 just wouldn't listen. And that's what he said. I'm not going to be part of persecuting an innocent

01:04:21.680 person and resign and continue to work on the case for the rest of his life, which I was very

01:04:28.420 grateful for, and he was an amazing fellow. Well, I think it was a 60 Minutes Australia

01:04:37.320 piece I watched. They had old tapes of him, and he went to the crime scene, to your old house,

01:04:44.540 and he went to that window that was broken in your basement because one of the theories was

01:04:50.400 nobody got in through that window. That was a window you had broken not long before because

01:04:54.900 you had locked yourself out of the house and you were trying to get in.

01:04:56.780 That's true.

01:04:57.360 Yeah. 0.65

01:04:58.180 So, so people were saying, no, somebody said only a midget could get through, a little

01:05:02.220 person could get through that window. 0.75

01:05:04.600 That wasn't it.

01:05:05.500 This is back on.

01:05:06.340 It had to be one of the mother, the mother of the father.

01:05:08.380 And he goes right through it.

01:05:10.800 He, the video shows him going right through it.

01:05:13.640 Was that something, by the way, I meant to ask you, did you go through it to when you

01:05:16.260 had locked yourself out?

01:05:16.980 Had you gone through that window to get in?

01:05:19.080 Yes.

01:05:19.820 I had.

01:05:20.540 So of course you could.

01:05:21.500 Locked myself out one, I don't know, one day and nobody was home.

01:05:27.040 And so that was the way I got into the house so I could unlock the door.

01:05:30.820 I didn't have a key.

01:05:32.660 You know, the person that said, no, it's impossible for somebody to get through that window was the detective investigating the case.

01:05:40.240 It was purely misleading, purely false information, but it biased everybody, the public, the media towards us once more.

01:05:49.300 That was the whole strategy.

01:05:51.500 and so that was confirmed by the district attorney to us that that was that was her

01:05:56.660 whole strategy and she also said their only evidence that they would present and it's really

01:06:02.580 not evidence that led them to think that we were guilty was we did not act right that morning

01:06:08.440 and that's that's the allegation was that patsy was distraught but that you didn't cry and one

01:06:17.040 of the cops on the scene said i never saw them console each other and i in my presence i never

01:06:22.540 saw them hold one another yeah well look they've watched too much uh crime scenes movie uh or tv

01:06:30.140 i think when i lost my first daughter beth i got a phone call from my brother and he said john

01:06:37.220 beth is gone she's killed and i there's nothing i could do i couldn't get her to the best doctors

01:06:43.740 I couldn't rush to her side.

01:06:45.940 It was over.

01:06:48.100 That morning with JonBenet, it wasn't over yet.

01:06:51.600 I could get her back if I kept my wits about me and focused on getting her back to whatever I could possibly do.

01:07:00.360 I didn't – I was focused on getting her back, and I felt I could get her back.

01:07:06.860 I'd arranged for the ransom money to be available almost immediately.

01:07:10.620 um one of the again this linda art i think wrote in her report that john

01:07:17.700 was observed casually going through the mail that morning yeah there was a mail drop and

01:07:24.600 where the mail came through the house or the front door and i was going through i was looking for

01:07:29.360 another possible communication from the kidnapper the police should have been doing that i was not

01:07:35.000 casually going through the mail, but that was her interpretation of that.

01:07:38.920 Again, biased perspective by someone who has never been in that situation to evaluate whether

01:07:48.420 somebody's acting right or not.

01:07:51.460 So that was my focus. 0.85

01:07:53.100 You know, Patsy was rough. 1.00

01:07:55.960 She was in bad shape. 1.00

01:07:56.880 She had a bowl in front of her in case she threw up.

01:08:00.880 But I was focused 100% on whatever I could do to get JonBenet back.

01:08:05.000 That was my job.

01:08:07.640 Can we talk about two things? 0.79

01:08:10.020 We've touched on the Mary Lacy exoneration of 2008 based on DNA. 0.94

01:08:13.820 DNA came along.

01:08:14.900 Thank God they did get some DNA and preserve it back in 96.

01:08:18.800 DNA's come leaps and bounds since then, and it had to some extent by 2008.

01:08:23.100 So she said, we've tested it, and we've identified the perpetrator as one, possibly two, unidentified males.

01:08:32.060 So no hit in the database.

01:08:34.000 but they could tell it was a male and they could tell it was one,

01:08:37.840 possibly two.

01:08:38.960 And that's when she said,

01:08:39.700 it's not the Ramseys.

01:08:41.160 Can I just say for the record,

01:08:42.540 does,

01:08:42.820 did that include Burke?

01:08:45.320 Yeah,

01:08:45.840 it did.

01:08:46.320 And Burke was exonerated early on.

01:08:48.600 He had to be interviewed by the child psychologists that were associated with

01:08:54.140 the police department.

01:08:54.940 They said,

01:08:55.280 absolutely no way.

01:08:55.980 Burke was not fault.

01:08:58.500 He was a nine year old,

01:09:00.260 60 pound child.

01:09:01.420 and because 16 because uh cbs would do a piece really pointing the finger at burke in 2016 and

01:09:08.420 he sued over it and they settled i don't know what they settled for but you know in later years

01:09:14.620 you know armchair detective wannabes have decided maybe it was him maybe it was the nine-year-old

01:09:21.180 but the mary lacy uh conclusion was it was not burke right and that was a conclusion that even

01:09:28.240 And the police came to very early on, and they ruled out that possibility.

01:09:33.640 Yeah.

01:09:34.200 In fact, they offered to support us in this suit against CBS if we needed their help.

01:09:40.140 Wow. 0.91

01:09:40.680 To discount that ridiculous accusation. 0.96

01:09:44.660 So he went on Dr. Phil not long after that, and then it just stirred up more. 0.65

01:09:50.420 People were like, he wasn't acting right.

01:09:52.440 I'm going to play a soundbite.

01:09:53.660 I'd love to get your thoughts.

01:09:54.640 I really don't know.

01:09:55.960 I don't know how people sort of fly into the case.

01:09:58.460 You've been living it in the worst way for 26 years.

01:10:01.180 So put this in perspective for us.

01:10:03.100 This is Burke on Dr. Phil in 2016.

01:10:06.140 A police officer comes in your room, which I assume is the first time in your entire life that a police officer has come in your room with a flashlight looking around and you still just stay in bed.

01:10:18.020 To be fair, I didn't know it was a police officer.

01:10:20.260 is just kind of...

01:10:21.420 But somebody comes in your room with a flashlight

01:10:23.160 and you never get up and say,

01:10:25.200 what is going on here?

01:10:27.660 I guess I kind of like to avoid conflict

01:10:31.960 or I don't know, I guess I just felt safer there.

01:10:38.260 Were you curious?

01:10:39.780 I'm not the worry type.

01:10:41.240 I'm not the, I guess part of me

01:10:43.020 doesn't want to know what's going on.

01:10:45.420 Critics would say you weren't curious

01:10:47.460 because you already knew.

01:10:49.140 He didn't have to get up and go check because he knew exactly what had happened.

01:10:51.940 I was scared, I think.

01:10:53.700 I mean, I didn't know if there was some bad guy downstairs

01:10:56.660 and my dad was chasing off with a gun or, you know, I had no idea.

01:11:02.200 Let's clear this up once and for all.

01:11:06.060 Did you do anything to harm your sister, JonBenet?

01:11:10.940 No.

01:11:11.880 Did you murder your sister, JonBenet?

01:11:16.400 No.

01:11:18.480 And just for the listening audience, Burke's answers are all said through what looks like a smile, which is one of the things his critics would react to.

01:11:26.980 Go ahead, John, your thoughts on it.

01:11:28.240 Well, Burke smiles all the time.

01:11:30.380 When he talks, he just naturally smiles.

01:11:33.660 And those are just laughable criticisms.

01:11:37.480 This was a violent, vicious, sexually assault case.

01:11:42.660 Not something that a nine-year-old could even possibly do.

01:11:46.700 so that's just it's really disgusting that um people jump to that kind of a conclusion

01:11:55.200 let's let's move on because one of the other storylines as we touched on a minute ago was

01:12:02.240 the pageants and whether a pedophile was you know she captured the attention of a pedophile

01:12:10.740 And they do say that some of these pageants can be very attractive to pedophiles in the same way that, you know, most pedophiles, like if you want to find a pedophile, you don't go to like an AARP meeting.

01:12:22.420 You know, they wind up, they volunteer for the Boy Scouts and they, you know, it's sad, but it's true.

01:12:27.460 They go where children are.

01:12:30.660 So that was, forget the blame, right?

01:12:32.740 I'm not interested in that storyline.

01:12:34.260 line. But it is possible that this person was a pedophile and had seen JonBenet at one of these

01:12:39.320 pageants where she was a darling. I mean, she was winning them. She was absolutely beautiful

01:12:43.600 in every way. So what do you make of that theory if we're thinking of the possible intruder? Maybe

01:12:49.120 they also knew you, but a possible intruder pedophile. It's possible. Patsy had been 0.93

01:12:57.400 diagnosed with stage four cancer a couple of years before this happened. And she went through

01:13:02.200 some pretty rough chemotherapy treatments and was declared in remission.

01:13:06.700 And she didn't say it, but I know she was trying to pack a lot of mother-daughter time

01:13:12.600 into what she maybe felt was a limited lifetime.

01:13:17.480 And I didn't really care for these little passions. 0.94

01:13:21.260 I mean, I'm a father, and I had preferred my daughters wear burqas until they were about 30. 0.85

01:13:27.000 But that wasn't my choice.

01:13:29.000 And I thought, well, this is just wonderful mother-daughter time for Patsy and JonBenet.

01:13:36.020 They didn't take it seriously.

01:13:40.060 Yeah, so we got to win.

01:13:41.080 We got to win. 0.99

01:13:41.560 In fact, Patsy and I joked, it'd be good if she lost a few of these pageants because she needs to understand you'd always win in life. 0.90

01:13:48.000 But she just, JonBenet loved doing it.

01:13:50.760 It was fun. 1.00

01:13:51.200 She was an extreme extrovert, and people accused Patsy of dragging JonBenet to these pageants for her own satisfaction. 0.55

01:14:02.000 That wasn't true at all. 0.71

01:14:03.580 It was just something JonBenet enjoyed doing, and Patsy wanted her to try a lot of different things, which she did. 0.98

01:14:09.760 But I always thought the people at these little pageants were just moms and grandmoms.

01:14:14.620 And that's quite, there was one indication, of course, we learned later that, yeah, there's some, there was at least one guy there that wasn't there for his daughter based on some questioning that came out and some comments.

01:14:31.580 But it's possible.

01:14:33.340 But I still fall back to, I think, John Douglas's theory and Lou Smith's.

01:14:44.080 It might have targeted who JonBenet is, and she was my daughter, and she was obviously, I'm told.

01:14:52.100 And I never read the autopsy.

01:14:53.760 I just couldn't break myself to do that.

01:14:56.040 But I, of course, hear through the news that she was sexually assaulted. 0.85

01:15:02.420 and that wouldn't have been necessary to hurt me as much as to satisfy this creature's desires.

01:15:19.080 So this is why, forgive me, and if you don't want to go here, we don't have to,

01:15:23.260 but this is why when I was reading the autopsy report, and we don't have to get into the details,

01:15:27.080 but the one thing they said, it was unclear to me whether they had semen, whether that was one of

01:15:31.800 the DNAs that they were able to retrieve. And there was a suggestion that maybe there was some

01:15:36.640 sort of, you know, they hurt her in some way sexually that didn't involve, you know, a male

01:15:41.520 body part. And that's kind of interesting if you think about this being a person whose goal was

01:15:48.340 just to hurt you. Like maybe it wasn't a pedophile. Maybe it was somebody who was just trying to hurt

01:15:53.780 her as opposed to sexualize her or or do anything sexual with her yeah that's possible uh and there

01:16:02.060 was no semen found um but um not dissimilar to this situation a case similar break-in that

01:16:11.880 happened a few months later in the same neighborhood with amy yes okay so let's talk about

01:16:18.720 that. Um, there are many people who Lou Smith had been taking a hard look at the, you know,

01:16:25.460 the honest investigator who quit, um, before he died, unfortunately at, in 2010. And he gave the

01:16:32.600 list of suspects to his daughter, which is how we know who he's looking at. And the daughter's a

01:16:37.180 hero. She's running around getting these people's DNA without them knowing it. It's like kind of

01:16:40.920 amazing this piece of the story, but it's so, I'm so grateful for that group before we get to Lou

01:16:47.380 and his daughter and what that what happened there there's this there's this neighbor and

01:16:51.980 that we're calling and the papers are calling the daughter amy her parents don't want her outed

01:16:57.300 understandable as a sexual assault victim but amy i think was very young too nine or 12 right around

01:17:03.240 there i don't you know i i didn't know a whole lot about that case i knew that it happened but

01:17:08.180 i think she they were she and john bonet were in a dance class together uh and i think she was a

01:17:14.360 year older than JonBenet maybe. Oh, no. Actually, my producers are telling me she's 12. So she's a

01:17:19.780 little, she's a young girl and she's at home. This is months after JonBenet was killed. Amy is in the

01:17:27.580 same neighborhood and she had a man wake her up dressed in black in the middle of the night

01:17:35.140 who tried to muzzle her so that she couldn't scream and sexually assaulted her. And by the

01:17:42.380 grace of God, her mother heard something. By the grace of God, truly, her mother heard something

01:17:48.500 and heard muffled voices coming from her 12-year-old daughter's room in a way that

01:17:52.240 sounded very unsafe. The mother grabbed pepper spray and went into the room. I mean, it's an 0.99

01:17:59.160 extraordinary story. And the guy jumped out the second floor window and ran. I mean, it's a

01:18:06.420 miracle thank god that unfortunately the daughter was molested but she was not killed and they went

01:18:13.220 to the boulder cops and said we think this might have had something to do with john benet like it's

01:18:20.440 too close in time and uh you know here's our evidence and the dad is on record as saying

01:18:26.580 the boulder cops could not have cared less were not interested in pursuing any link between the

01:18:32.660 two cases, and they really felt like it was because they were just focused on you two.

01:18:37.940 Right. That's what I've learned. When I first heard about this, I thought, well, that's

01:18:43.060 a very similar MO for the criminal as it was in our case. He was in the house when they came home

01:18:54.280 that night. They went to bed, and then at three in the morning, he entered the little girl's room.

01:19:00.680 And I thought, oh, that's – man, that's so similar to what I think happened in our case.

01:19:08.540 And Chief Beckner, who was the police chief, chief of police, was asked, is there a connection?

01:19:15.860 He said, oh, no, these cases aren't the same because the second little girl wasn't murdered.

01:19:20.380 And it was one more of the unbelievable statements that came out of the police department.

01:19:24.780 Of course, it's similar, and thankfully she wasn't murdered.

01:19:29.400 But I'd heard that the father was quoted as saying on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of police performance, I'll give him a minus 5.

01:19:39.320 So he was very unhappy with them as well, but only because they just kind of blew off the case and went on.

01:19:48.560 There's a real danger when the police get tunnel vision.

01:19:51.040 I mean, every defense attorney who's ever represented a murder defendant argues they had tunnel vision on my guy.

01:19:56.520 My guy didn't do it.

01:19:57.360 They had tunnel vision on him.

01:19:59.160 But in some cases, it really is true, and it can result in the wrong person being arrested and put on trial.

01:20:04.900 Thankfully not in your case, but you were heading down that lane.

01:20:07.920 Oh, absolutely.

01:20:08.940 And we weren't worried about this.

01:20:11.760 I mean, it was distressing, but our attorney said, look, the system's broken.

01:20:15.720 The police don't know what they're doing.

01:20:18.200 We cannot promise you you won't be charged with the murder.

01:20:21.460 We'll promise you one thing with 100% money-back guarantee.

01:20:24.820 We will destroy him in court.

01:20:26.200 so don't worry about that but it's not going to be fun but do not worry about being convicted 0.99

01:20:34.420 we'll kill them because we we knew what the evidence was and what they're trying to to do 0.90

01:20:39.380 we have one one uh experienced district attorney tell us look i have never ever seen police try to 0.99

01:20:47.400 explain away unidentified male dna in a sexual assault case never that's the key piece of

01:20:53.380 evidence. And yet that's what the Boulder police tried to do is that was a real problem for him

01:20:57.580 that we had this unidentified male DNA. Yes. That's a massive problem. And it's the reason

01:21:04.120 you've never been charged. And it's the reason Mary Casey says it wasn't you guys. On the subject

01:21:10.280 of DNA, I read that the coroner did not examine the body until seven hours after she was discovered

01:21:19.440 and that the coroner only spent 10 minutes at the crime scene,

01:21:25.020 that's a crazy amount of time.

01:21:28.160 That's, I mean, seven hours is a long delay.

01:21:30.380 And I wonder, John, whether they,

01:21:32.640 have you ever been told whether they were able to determine the time of death?

01:21:37.040 I've never been told.

01:21:38.560 No, I don't know.

01:21:40.960 Do you have any reason to believe there's any chance she was alive in the morning,

01:21:44.720 you know, before, I hate to go there,

01:21:46.900 But, like, when the first cop got there, you know, is there any chance she was alive?

01:21:51.720 I don't think so.

01:21:54.620 She was strangled to death is my interpretation of what I've heard.

01:22:02.400 And then struck with an object that created a pretty good crack in her skull, to be totally accurate.

01:22:16.900 Um, so I don't think she could have possibly been alive, uh, that morning.

01:22:22.980 Hmm. Okay. But that's another area of DNA that absolutely should be examined because there was a murder weapon.

01:22:33.400 There was like a rope, they call it a garotte. And, um, it was tied to a little piece of wood.

01:22:39.040 And so that one of the questions I know, John, people are asking is, do they ever, one of the, one end of the rope had a knot and one had two knots.

01:22:46.880 or something like that. But the question was, did they ever untie the knots and test in there

01:22:51.740 for DNA? To my knowledge, no. They had sent a number of samples like that to Bode Labs, which

01:23:00.120 is an outside DNA lab, and for some reason chose not to test or not to pay for the tests of five

01:23:08.680 or six items, one of which was the groat. And that's one of the things we're asking the governor

01:23:14.480 to make happen is, let's get those items tested.

01:23:17.360 Why weren't they tested?

01:23:18.420 Was it because it was too expensive?

01:23:21.760 They wanted to save money?

01:23:23.020 I don't know.

01:23:25.480 What do you think is in the box of things that have not been tested?

01:23:29.760 I don't know.

01:23:32.420 I don't know.

01:23:33.760 One journalist that has followed this case almost in the beginning

01:23:37.880 has that information, and I need to get that from her,

01:23:42.440 but I don't know exactly what it is.

01:23:44.000 She said there's five or six items that have never been tested.

01:23:47.600 And the police keep referring back to, well, it's just a minute amount of DNA.

01:23:53.560 We don't want to ruin it.

01:23:54.580 Well, that just tells me they've either, well, they haven't tested the other items or they've lost them or misplaced them.

01:24:00.240 For some reason, they always stay away from these other five or six items that have never been tested or checked for DNA evidence.

01:24:07.800 And that's what we're asking to be done.

01:24:09.560 And their reluctance to even mention those items makes me think they've either misplaced them or lost them.

01:24:18.580 Oh, goodness.

01:24:20.280 I know, and you're on a push to have the governor remove this case from the Boulder PD

01:24:25.120 and let these sophisticated DNA labs have access to this as opposed to relying on the same cops and detectives that have blown it thus far.

01:24:34.700 There are really sophisticated DNA labs. Do you have confidence that if they had access to this box, for lack of a better descriptor, they could make whatever progress is possible, they could make it?

01:24:46.760 And that's really all we're asking the governor to do is push the case either out of the boulder hands or require them to take this evidence to be tested by one of the one or two really cutting edge labs in this country and see what we get.

01:25:07.160 If we can get some more good DNA evidence, then you take that evidence and put it in the public database and see what you come up with.

01:25:16.760 This has been done in the last few years with remarkable success.

01:25:23.560 And really what got me, had me, in my mind, take the gloves off with the police is we had spent some time with the regional FBI folks there in Denver and got a relationship where we said, look, this is what needs to happen.

01:25:40.040 In fact, they're the ones who said, look, the government does not have the latest DNA technology.

01:25:45.960 We'll get it eventually, but we don't have it.

01:25:47.760 We don't have it at the FBI.

01:25:48.900 They certainly don't have it at the state level.

01:25:50.780 And, of course, not even ridiculous to think they have it at the police level.

01:25:55.100 They told us that we've got to get this DNA testing done by one of these one or two very cutting-edge labs outside and then use this new approach of genealogy tracing.

01:26:09.780 And there's a hope that would move this case along to conclusion.

01:26:13.800 they went to the boulder police and we're here to help we'd like to make this happen we'd help

01:26:18.900 you you can take all the credit and the boulder police blew them off said no we don't need your

01:26:22.900 help and that was when that was the game's over as far as i'm concerned we got to start when was

01:26:27.600 that how long ago oh it's probably six months ago just so people know i had this woman on my show

01:26:35.620 at nbc cc moore is her name and i know you you've you must have talked to her she's the one who was

01:26:41.540 really at the center of this genealogy research. And what they do is they take a piece of DNA,

01:26:47.380 and we already know that the DNA that they found on JonBenet did not produce a hit in the databases

01:26:53.240 that are available, at least as of the last time they told us. So the perpetrator had not gone

01:26:58.900 into the system yet, but they don't need that. All they need is for somebody related to the

01:27:06.100 perpetrator to be in the DNA system. So if I were in the DNA system, let's say I wanted to do 23andMe,

01:27:12.600 let's see what my ancestry is, whatever. Then if my results got uploaded on this other website that

01:27:18.820 CC Moore uses that a lot of people who upload the DNA results use, because you get more information

01:27:23.700 from it, it's not 23andMe, it's something related. So let's say they're sitting there, she can access

01:27:28.580 them. She may not, you know, she can see a lot of things on there. And let's say I have a relative

01:27:33.300 who commits a crime that relative's dna was not going to pop up like the maybe they committed a

01:27:39.920 crime but the crime scene they didn't see him because he didn't he hadn't been arrested yet

01:27:43.880 but mine will and this is what cc more she's like all i can tell you is that megan kelly is related

01:27:49.700 to this killer and so i'm gonna build this big family tree around megan kelly i'm gonna figure

01:27:54.860 out who her grandfather what great-grandfather look at her husband's side i'm gonna look at

01:27:58.300 because all this stuff is publicly available she looks their wedding announcements and birth

01:28:01.140 announcements. It's crazy great detective work. And she gets her man. I mean, CeCe Moore, it's

01:28:07.840 like they saw a case a week doing this. And so if we could take a fresh look at the JonBenet DNA

01:28:14.320 from that perspective, even if the guy's never gotten into the system from the last time they

01:28:20.060 tested it, somebody might be in the system that could lead us to him. That's right. The COVID

01:28:25.100 system that the fbi uses the federal database of criminals or arrested felons is fairly small

01:28:32.740 and the states can contribute or not to that database uh it takes nine markers out of 15

01:28:41.180 to be accepted in the database but it's it's of people that are have already been uh found

01:28:49.120 criminal um or at least arrested for felonies and it depends on the state what that rule is but

01:28:55.500 it's not a very big database and what the the the um public database of the like the 23andme

01:29:03.620 both jan and i submitted our 35 dollars get our ancestry to that database they find a reasonably

01:29:13.300 you know close match uh or something the least is interest of interest and they do

01:29:20.760 almost a backwards uh uh family tree and then they find out hey here's a relative that lived

01:29:29.120 in boulder in december uh 2020 1996 and uh then they start looking at that guy or that person

01:29:37.800 and get his DNA and these remarkable success solutions to these old, old cases have been

01:29:45.060 using that technique. And most of these people were not on anybody's radar.

01:29:51.700 They weren't in the COVID or the federal database. And in fact, the Golden State Killer,

01:30:01.580 which was, I think the first one found this way, was a 40-year-old case and he was a retired cop.

01:30:07.440 So he wasn't in the criminal database.

01:30:10.580 Exactly, but our relative was.

01:30:14.640 And that's what we're asking the governor to make happen.

01:30:17.220 I don't care how it happens.

01:30:18.300 That's what has to happen.

01:30:20.300 And now what he's saying, John, is, well, he doesn't say anything, as I understand it.

01:30:24.140 But the Bulletin PD, they're like, hey, we have great news.

01:30:27.800 We're now going to refer this case to the cold case unit.

01:30:31.680 And the cold case unit, we believe, is going to do better than the other case unit.

01:30:35.540 Why?

01:30:37.440 I don't know. I don't know. I've never heard of this cold case unit.

01:30:41.460 Why? And they said, we're going to refer to them next year.

01:30:43.940 Well, that could be 12 months from now. But I guess you say, well, it's no big rush.

01:30:46.860 It's been 26 years. What's the hurry? It's a huge frustration for us.

01:30:53.700 Do you believe that? Is that just cover? Is that a CYA?

01:30:56.600 Yeah, absolutely. That was put out before I even released the governor's letter,

01:31:01.900 which I only released because he never responded.

01:31:03.880 I thought that was – I would have at least expected to say, yeah, we'll take a look at it, or I received your letter.

01:31:10.520 Still hasn't responded?

01:31:12.220 No.

01:31:13.380 No.

01:31:14.280 We're going to follow up with him.

01:31:17.000 I'm not asking him to apologize to us for the faulty performance of the Colorado justice system.

01:31:27.000 I don't want that.

01:31:27.960 I just want to do the right thing.

01:31:29.240 This is what can be done.

01:31:30.580 You need to do it.

01:31:33.880 Yeah, well, we're definitely going to follow up with his office and find out what is his response, and we'll stay on it, and we'll annoy him to the point where he's going to have to respond, because I know a lot of people in media who would be very happy to help me annoy him.

01:31:45.400 I would love that.

01:31:46.460 That's what it's going to take.

01:31:47.460 It's going to take intense public pressure to do the right thing.

01:31:51.980 That's what we're asking them to do.

01:31:54.380 None of them will do anything unless forced to by the public.

01:31:58.360 And the people of Colorado and the country are on your side.

01:32:02.540 They're not on the side of some law enforcement group that's trying to protect its own backside.

01:32:06.840 So I actually think we can make progress with this.

01:32:09.740 But first, I have to squeeze in a break.

01:32:12.140 All right, stand by, John.

01:32:13.560 Quick break.

01:32:14.200 I'll be right back to you after this.

01:32:20.760 John, Dylan Howard put together an extraordinary podcast called The Killing of JonBenet Ramsey.

01:32:26.500 And it's a 12-part series in which he took a very deep dive into possible suspects.

01:32:31.080 In the case, I recommend it to everybody, and in part based off of Lou Smith's work and the work of his daughter.

01:32:37.720 Having listened to all of that and cooperated with that, do you have a chief suspect?

01:32:45.280 You know, it's easy to say, well, that's the guy based on circumstantial evidence.

01:32:50.820 In fact, that happened fairly early on.

01:32:53.260 A person was brought to our attention by his girlfriend, former girlfriend, and had some pretty compelling data that would lead you to believe, hey, this is the guy.

01:33:03.220 In fact, I said that to our attorneys.

01:33:04.660 I said, whoa, this is the guy.

01:33:06.700 And they said, no, no, no, don't do a bolder police on us.

01:33:08.940 We can't jump to conclusions.

01:33:10.800 It was a reminder that that's exactly what happened and that we've got to be careful, too.

01:33:15.020 And so there's been four or five people like that that have come up on the radar, on our radar, but it's never been enough evidence.

01:33:27.280 And, you know, private individuals don't do so much.

01:33:30.360 They need the authority of the government to really dig into stuff.

01:33:34.760 And so we can only go so far in some of these investigations.

01:33:37.740 And so these people are still, in my mind, suspects of interest, people of interest.

01:33:46.020 But, you know.

01:33:47.800 They need to be investigated.

01:33:49.060 That's the point.

01:33:49.520 They need to be investigated.

01:33:50.300 One of the things Lou Smith suggested was that there was that window broken in the basement.

01:33:56.540 Saw there was a scuff mark below the window.

01:33:58.680 There was a suitcase there, which we talked about briefly, that wasn't normally there.

01:34:03.080 And in it, they found a duvet, a Dr. Seuss book, and fibers of the outfit JonBenet was wearing that night, indicating perhaps the murderer might have tried to kidnap her or remove her from the scene in the suitcase, but it was too big.

01:34:20.240 But that would explain quite a bit about the crime scene if only we had a talented investigator devoted to following up on these leads.

01:34:28.480 The point is, the governor must get involved.

01:34:31.120 The governor must remove this case from the Boulder PD.

01:34:33.660 They must get the fibers and the DNA that is available to a qualified lab and start working with the family instead of against them after all these years.

01:34:41.480 And the time we have left, how do you do it?

01:34:45.260 Because I know you said you've forgiven whoever did this to JonBenet.

01:34:50.520 And, Jon, it just seems like a mountain too high.

01:34:54.320 How do you do that?

01:34:55.380 Well, I dealt with forgiveness a lot.

01:34:58.480 over the few years after John Manet was killed.

01:35:01.380 And I looked back at how I felt and progressed with that challenge.

01:35:08.360 Certainly in the first couple of years, there was no forgiveness.

01:35:11.560 In fact, I've told people, if you put this guy in the same room with me

01:35:15.860 and I know he's the killer, he won't come out alive.

01:35:18.340 And I would be able to do that with no remorse.

01:35:22.100 And that's not right, but that's how I felt.

01:35:24.800 And then I got to the point where I said, okay, well,

01:35:27.120 forgiveness belongs to the victim. And I'm really not the victim. JonBenet was a victim. So only she

01:35:32.960 can forgive. And that's, of course, not possible. And that kind of got me off the hook. And then I

01:35:37.580 finally realized forgiveness is really a gift you give yourself. You release that anger and that

01:35:43.080 desire for revenge. Doesn't mean you feel sorry for the, in our case, the killer. I still want

01:35:51.160 I'm held to accountability to the extreme level of our justice system, but I've released that anger, and it still crops up every now and then, but it's a benefit to myself to release that in the form of forgiveness.

01:36:15.240 Don't want him held—

01:36:17.200 Staying connected to God helps, I know.

01:36:19.880 And I'm sure this time of year, even all these years later, is very tough on you.

01:36:24.820 I know you've remarried.

01:36:26.160 I'm so happy to hear that.

01:36:28.120 God bless you, John, and your family.

01:36:30.880 And I think there's a way of finding a Merry Christmas.

01:36:36.260 You know, I hope that you've found that way.

01:36:38.200 And I'll be praying for you this year in particular.

01:36:41.160 We had a hard time with Christmas for several years.

01:36:44.260 And finally, I realized you've got to remember what Christmas is for.

01:36:47.440 and that's reassuring in our case.

01:36:52.980 We know Jomanae is safe and we'll see her again.

01:36:56.560 Amen to that.

01:36:57.960 Take care.

01:36:58.840 Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story

01:37:00.600 and we'll stay on it.

01:37:01.880 Thank you, Megan.

01:37:02.460 I really appreciate it.

01:37:03.920 Wow.

01:37:04.400 Just keep them in your prayers

01:37:05.320 and keep their family in your prayers.

01:37:07.340 That little girl's with her mama now.

01:37:09.220 For that, we can be thankful.

01:37:17.440 We have a very different kind of crime story to bring to you today.

01:37:21.640 Have you heard about the Sackler family?

01:37:24.700 By the end of the show, you will.

01:37:26.160 You'll know their story well.

01:37:27.820 And the story of the opioid crisis in America.

01:37:31.380 It's stunning.

01:37:32.620 It is devastating.

01:37:33.640 And it is indeed criminal.

01:37:35.260 I was so moved by the recent Hulu series, Dope Sick.

01:37:38.880 If you haven't seen this, you must.

01:37:41.040 You must.

01:37:42.260 That I wanted to do a show on it.

01:37:44.500 And today, I'm very, very happy to be joined in just a bit by the author of the book that inspired the series, as well as, separately, the creator of the series, Dope Sick.

01:37:57.360 Danny Strong is the director, executive producer of Dope Sick, and he joins me now.

01:38:01.640 Danny, thank you so much for being here. You're the creator. You're the showrunner.

01:38:06.240 And let me just kick it off with, you know, we're going to get into it, but it's basically about how the opioid crisis in America unfolded.

01:38:12.780 what attracted you to that subject matter uh well first off thanks so much for having me on your

01:38:19.160 show and uh you know i'm so thrilled you watched the show and we're so taken by it so so it's all

01:38:24.760 very appreciated um uh it all began when a producer named john goldwyn had who's a really

01:38:31.240 terrific producer he came to me and said do you want to write and direct a movie on the opioid

01:38:34.940 crisis and i had read this new yorker article by patrick rayden keith that came out in 2017

01:38:41.480 It basically blew the story up as far as the Sackler family's involvement with Purdue Pharma, with OxyContin in a very damning way.

01:38:53.700 I think that that article was a major turning point in sort of the history of the opioid crisis and who was ultimately responsible for sparking it and setting the flames and then keeping that fire going for at least a decade, if not longer.

01:39:10.040 And so I went back and I had reread the article and I read very closely this time as far as a potential adaptation or not adaptation, but just as a research.

01:39:21.480 And I was fascinated, stunned, shocked, appalled.

01:39:26.260 I then went on and got some books that had already been written on the opioid crisis, a book called Painkiller, a book called Dreamland.

01:39:35.460 And my horror grew even more. And I just thought, I have to do this. I have to figure out a way to dramatize the story for as big an audience as I can, because this is one of the most stunning crime stories in the history of the country.

01:39:53.080 And at the time, this was 2018 when I was really deep diving into it and Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, the prescribing had started to come down in the United States, but they were now using their same dishonest, manipulative, false techniques, advertising techniques and marketing techniques in foreign countries.

01:40:16.340 So when I first started, I had viewed the show as a warning to the rest of the world that Purdue Pharma is coming to lie to you and to addict you to OxyContin. So that's that's sort of what sparked the journey.

01:40:30.520 You come by your storytelling skills, honestly. It's funny because when I saw your name, I'm like, I know that name. I know that name. And I know you've worked with Jay Roach, who is, of course, the director of the movie Bombshell, which I have a connection to. I have nothing to do with the movie, but there was a person playing me in it. But that's not how I knew you. It was from Gilmore Girls, which you were on for a while playing Doyle McMaster.

01:40:57.540 and but you've also written several several big movies right game change um recount and you you

01:41:03.100 wrote the butler you you're a co-writer and maybe producer on um empire as well i mean like a lot of

01:41:09.200 big hits uh in your past but thank you but this is like this is your project so it's got to feel

01:41:15.600 different to you in a way yeah it was it was i knew that i would be doing heavy lifting i had

01:41:21.520 directed an independent film before that had gone into sundance which was very exciting uh but this

01:41:27.280 was on a much, much bigger scale as far as creating show running. Uh, I knew I was going

01:41:34.420 to be directing the last couple episodes. Uh, and it was great to, to, to just sort of take the

01:41:40.780 reins of it. And partly why I felt like, um, okay, this is a good project for me to do that

01:41:48.420 with for my first time was because I was so passionate about it. And I was so enraged by

01:41:53.620 what had happened. And it seemed like, well, if you're going to, you know, for me, I always worry,

01:41:58.640 I always got a worst case scenario, right? You know, what's going to happen if the whole thing's

01:42:02.900 a disaster and a massive failure. And so I thought, well, if this thing explodes in my face,

01:42:07.820 I'd rather go down swinging on something that I feel really, really passionate about.

01:42:12.780 This feeling is what makes you a success. They say that there was a Kaiser poll that said 56%

01:42:19.920 of americans either know someone who is an addict or who died from addiction um i i feel

01:42:26.820 like it's probably even higher than that um i i have someone i've revealed to my audience that

01:42:32.740 someone in my family my my family of origin um fell into the opioid crisis and when a family

01:42:38.640 member falls into it the entire family falls into it as you know you're as you know from being the

01:42:43.400 storyteller of this series i wondered whether you had any personal experience that made you

01:42:48.060 want to do the show? I didn't. And I'm so fortunate to be able to say that that sentence.

01:42:54.740 I'm I don't know anyone close to me that had opioid use disorder. I myself have not fallen

01:43:01.800 down any kind of rabbit hole like that. The rabbit hole I fell down was the rabbit hole

01:43:07.540 of the crimes of Purdue Pharma and the culpability of the Sackler family. And that was a rabbit hole

01:43:15.320 that a number of people have fallen down.

01:43:17.860 You know, when I start talking about this

01:43:20.060 to different people that have written books on them

01:43:22.520 who may have had a personal experience with addiction

01:43:26.180 or a family or friends that has,

01:43:29.060 but what we all have in common

01:43:30.320 is once you start deep diving into what happens,

01:43:35.120 you can't believe it.

01:43:36.100 You can't believe what this company did

01:43:39.800 and how literally a group of, I don't know,

01:43:43.520 20 people, 30 people from one family made billions and billions of dollars off of the suffering

01:43:52.320 of an entire nation. And, you know, when you talk about how the whole family gets affected by

01:43:58.040 this when it happens to one person, it's so true. You know, everyone talks about the statistics of

01:44:05.100 Now it's over 700,000 people have died from some type of opioid overdose since the crisis essentially began.

01:44:15.140 However, that number doesn't even begin to tell the story of the families that are devastated,

01:44:20.800 the family members that that lose years of their life of suffering of loved ones who have fallen into this

01:44:28.280 and the people that are still alive that didn't die from an overdose,

01:44:32.360 but are either still struggling with opioid use disorder or lost years of their life to it and are now just trying to put the pieces back together.

01:44:41.760 I mean, the sort of the victims of it continue to splinter on and on and on in a way that's extremely profound.

01:44:49.540 I know many people think that the homeless issue that is plaguing so many major American cities is heavily sparked by the opioid crisis and people that have fallen into opioid use disorder.

01:45:00.500 No, it's so true, because even if you're one of the quote lucky ones who doesn't get killed by an overdose, I mean, I've seen it happen firsthand. It changes you. It changes a person. It can at least radically to where the person you knew is all but gone, replaced by someone else who's a stranger to you, who you have to get to know and who that person, him or herself has to get to know.

01:45:24.840 It's just like a new version of you that doesn't tend to be new and improved.

01:45:28.720 Like these drugs do so much lasting damage.

01:45:31.920 And then the drugs you have to take to get off of them and stay off of them can can do damage as well.

01:45:36.780 It's just a cycle that even if you manage to put yourself out of it, it's very hard to shake the effects of it.

01:45:43.300 And the movie and the book and this whole series of sort of research and writings about it are an attempt at accountability, at storytelling and explanation.

01:45:54.320 How did it happen? And accountability. And what I loved about it, Danny, is when you go through it, you don't know you're part of a national story, right? You just think, oh, my God, something's terrible is happening in my family or to my people. And it took years, I think, for most of us who were sucked into it to realize, oh, my God, this was a thing. This was a national epidemic.

01:46:14.920 And now this is the next piece, which is caused by specific individuals, because it was. 0.96

01:46:22.320 And I agree with your demonization of the Sacklers, who we'll get into.

01:46:26.020 So let's let's talk about the film itself, because you basically the characters are fictional, right? 0.97

01:46:32.140 So, you know, you made them up, but they're kind of loosely based.

01:46:35.860 Yes.

01:46:36.120 On real life people.

01:46:37.300 Some are some are not even loosely based.

01:46:38.860 Some are just the actual people.

01:46:40.060 I mean, the Sackler family, I use the real names.

01:46:42.180 And then the key prosecutors out of the Western District of Virginia, the U.S. attorney there and two of his prosecutors, those are real people as well.

01:46:51.480 Uh, and then the people in the town, Finch Creek, that is, it's a, it's a fictional name, Finch Creek. I wanted to do this sort of, um, every town, USA, uh, Appalachia, um, concept to, to have a couple of people, uh, be our victims that represented, you know, millions of people in that case.

01:47:14.920 um the star uh originally in the in the sort of beginning episodes is a young female minor

01:47:22.700 named betsy played by caitlin deaver who suffers an injury she's the daughter of a minor as well

01:47:28.320 she lives with her parents she's not a drug addict she's not an alcoholic she's a sweet

01:47:33.340 you know dreamy-faced young minor you know it's just such an interesting job for a young woman

01:47:38.860 like that. Sympathetic character, for sure. And I love that you chose her because this was 1.00

01:47:45.420 representative of, I think, the opioid crisis for most people. These weren't back alley deals.

01:47:51.900 These were people who were prescribed a drug by a doctor they trusted to treat an injury that was

01:47:58.700 real. And then the spiral came. Yeah, absolutely. And partly why I did this approach was because

01:48:06.960 this is where Purdue Pharma, that was their phase one areas where they targeted, which were rural

01:48:14.440 areas filled with people that had a higher prescription rate of opioids because they just

01:48:21.600 got injured a lot on the job. So miners, loggers, farmers, those were those were basically the three

01:48:28.760 areas that Purdue Pharma initially targeted. And so it was in southwestern Virginia, eastern

01:48:35.420 Kentucky and rural Maine were kind of the ground zero spots. And I chose Appalachia and I chose

01:48:41.980 mining. I thought it was very sort of emblematic of sort of our iconic view of how this all began.

01:48:49.620 And I started watching YouTube videos of different people in these areas. And these YouTube videos,

01:48:56.600 it's a technique I use for research because there's something so authentic about them.

01:49:00.680 There are often amateur videos that are just taken by real people trying to put some kind of short subject documentary together about their lives.

01:49:09.700 And I was so taken by so many of the miners and the pride they had and what they did and that there was this sort of magical connection to the mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the mountains in Appalachia.

01:49:25.400 And, you know, when I went on a research trip up there, I understood where that connection came from because they're really beautiful.

01:49:30.840 It's just this very beautiful part of the country and very sort of isolated and on its own.

01:49:36.320 So it seemed to me, oh, this is this is a great way into the story.

01:49:41.360 And I, you know, in one of the videos, I saw this young woman who was a minor being interviewed.

01:49:46.740 She struck me as someone who seemed like she was a lesbian.

01:49:50.400 And I thought, wow, that's really interesting being a lesbian in a very conservative part of the country where that may not be as accepted as, say, it is in New York City where I live.

01:50:02.020 And I just wanted to explore these different issues.

01:50:05.320 and so what happens when the issue begins uh her arc begins about her sexuality and what that means

01:50:12.820 to her and her family but it quickly takes a left-hand turn when um the drug use completely

01:50:21.000 consumes it and takes it over and that was so very much kind of the early stages of me putting

01:50:25.840 this together and i do want to throw a huge shout out to beth macy and her incredible book dope sick

01:50:32.440 We ended up getting teamed up after I'd come up with these initial ideas and I read the book and I loved it. And Beth has been an incredible part of the project, the process. She was in the writer's room and her and I kept doing interviews all the way throughout the entire process. So she gets a big shout out to Dope Sick author Beth Mason. Anyone listening to this, if you've seen the show and you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it.

01:50:55.580 Yeah, she's coming up next. So they're going to meet her momentarily. But she does get it. I mean,

01:50:59.420 she she sort of her book is not totally dissimilar from Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. You know,

01:51:06.080 it just takes a hard, honest, and sometimes unfavorable view of Appalachia and what's

01:51:13.980 happened there. And it's not it's not critical of the people. It's just there's joblessness and

01:51:18.320 there's disability claims and there's globalization. And there are all sorts of things that have

01:51:22.560 affected this part of the country that gets ignored too often. And then people are like,

01:51:27.120 how did Trump get in office? And it's like, well, it's complicated, but it's understandable if you

01:51:32.380 take the time. Okay, so you've got, she's, Betsy is one of our main stars. And then you've got Dr.

01:51:39.740 Samuel Phoenix, Phoenix, right? I just want to make sure I'm pronouncing it right, because I

01:51:44.320 know I'm a Sam. And that's played by Michael Keaton. And I, this character is trying to help

01:51:49.560 his community. He loves West Virginia. He loves Appalachia. He loves the minors. He's trying to

01:51:54.220 help. But like so many doctors in the opioid crisis really didn't. Right. He was pulled in

01:52:01.080 by Purdue Pharma as so many real life doctors were. And it's dazzling, snazzy drug reps who

01:52:09.760 are saying all sorts of things about this drug, which is so exciting that they fooled even the

01:52:15.660 doctors, which was a critical part of their plan. Yeah, 100 percent. I think there's this perception

01:52:22.520 of that all doctors that prescribed OxyContin were evil pill mill doctors that were, you know,

01:52:30.500 essentially legal drug dealers. And those people certainly did exist. And there were there were

01:52:35.520 many pill mills and a number of people that have been arrested and gotten massive jail sentences,

01:52:40.600 30 years, 25 years. However, I believe that the majority of the doctors prescribing OxyContin

01:52:47.920 were not that. They were completely well-intentioned doctors that believed what Purdue Pharma had told

01:52:55.000 them. And even the sales reps at Purdue Pharma believed, at least initially, the information

01:53:01.520 that they were given. There was basically this elaborate con in which Purdue Pharma,

01:53:06.800 Well, I'll start with these independent pain societies. These independent pain societies were creating this new movement that pain has been wildly undertreated in this country and that opioids are much safer than we have perceived them for decades.

01:53:25.140 And that this movement went so far as to to turn pain as the new fifth vital sign.

01:53:31.840 So this was a huge campaign that was happening late 80s into the mid 90s into the late 90s.

01:53:38.160 Right. During this whole period that coincided with Purdue Pharma coming up with a new opioid that they were marketing as non-addictive, which tied into the national movement of, yes, and opioids are much safer.

01:53:51.820 And then these pain societies would put out studies. Certain doctors would write articles that would end up in these really respected news, medical news journals.

01:54:01.600 And it was and it gave this elaborate, elaborate appearance that this there's a whole new movement in medication and in pain treatment.

01:54:09.140 And what we have learned is that these pain societies were not independent.

01:54:14.220 They were partially or fully, in some cases, funded by Purdue Pharma.

01:54:19.540 the doctors that were writing articles were funded by purdue pharma and in some case the periodicals

01:54:26.440 that these articles would come out in were funded by purdue pharma so it was like an elaborate shell

01:54:31.780 game a con and then when you go back in time to the 1950s in the 1960s uh there was a man who

01:54:39.820 basically created all of this this entire elaborate shell game of of having having fake

01:54:46.240 studies being written about by doctors on your payroll, put in periodicals that are also on your

01:54:51.280 payroll that you would then use that to convince doctors of whatever you're trying to convince

01:54:55.120 them. And this man was Arthur Sackler, the uncle of Richard Sackler, who was the godfather of

01:55:02.560 OxyContin. Right. So you see, oh, no, this is what the family they've been doing this for the last

01:55:09.580 50 years. This is just their playbook. And when you get into that, that this is a generational

01:55:15.440 scam i view it as sort of like pharma grifters they're a family of pharma grifters right and

01:55:21.260 then it goes back generations uh it gets to be incredibly fascinating uh that there's this long

01:55:28.560 history of it um and quite devious you know this is covered in the book dope sick but there's

01:55:33.240 another book called empire of pain that came out not too long ago that goes into arthur sackler

01:55:38.180 in the 50s and the 60s in such exquisite detail i call it uh charles dickens in hell i mean

01:55:45.320 It is very Dickensian and quite fascinating, the entire family history of what they've done.

01:55:52.200 Obviously, the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma, they do not come out favorably in the movie or the book or life.

01:55:59.460 Their lives are pretty good.

01:56:02.260 Their lives are pretty damn good.

01:56:03.720 But I'll tell you, the biggest villain right after them is the FDA.

01:56:07.220 And you will not believe how Purdue Pharma managed to convince all these doctors that OxyContin was less addictive,

01:56:14.520 that the doctors could feel totally comfortable prescribing it to young minors who may have hurt

01:56:19.440 their backs and so on. Freeform, just go for it. It's totally safe. How did they do it? With the

01:56:25.240 help of a complicit FDA, which the movie exposes brilliantly. We have more with Danny after this

01:56:31.160 quick break. Don't go away. So Danny, before I get to FDA, Richard Sackler, can you help me?

01:56:43.520 i love this actor michael is it stolberg stolberg stolberg okay because i always see it written and

01:56:49.660 i never hear it spoken he's i loved him in boardwalk empire he was totally brilliant in that

01:56:54.460 series um he was in woody allen's blue jasmine many other films you'll recognize him he's such

01:57:00.240 a good villain he's amazing at being a villain so he plays richard sackler and um richard sackler

01:57:06.860 what you learn is more than any other sackler and that's saying something is hugely ambitious he's

01:57:12.520 incredibly driven, and he's also very smart. But he was determined once he created this baby, 0.99

01:57:20.940 OxyContin, because a patent on another drug they owned was running out, Purdue Pharma,

01:57:25.840 and they needed a new star in the Purdue Pharma family, and OxyContin was it. So he was determined

01:57:32.800 to make sure it got marketed out there, that the sales were exponential. And here's just a

01:57:37.460 clip from the movie. This is soundbite one of Michael Stolberg as Richard Sackler. Listen.

01:57:43.860 Board doesn't seem to understand. I'm trying to make this a blockbuster drug,

01:57:48.280 which I can't do without more sales reps. Dr. Richard, with all these new sales reps,

01:57:54.180 we won't even have enough doctors for them to target. IMS is about to release a 3.0 version

01:58:00.860 that tracks daily prescriptions instead of quarterly.

01:58:05.100 So if we double our sales force,

01:58:08.160 we can use this data to target doctors prescribing Lortab and Vicodin

01:58:13.380 and flip them to Oxycontin.

01:58:16.860 The upgrade is a million dollars.

01:58:23.280 Do you know who created the IMS database?

01:58:28.520 Arthur Sackler.

01:58:31.860 It's been kept secret for years, but this is a family invention that was sold off years ago. 0.99

01:58:37.520 And now you're telling me we should deny all this data that only exists because of my fucking uncle. 0.96

01:58:45.940 Purchase the upgrade and increase the sales force. 0.95

01:58:50.740 Thank you.

01:58:54.240 And that's exactly what they did.

01:58:55.980 And that Salesforce went out there and did his bidding in a way that was pretty sickening. 0.88

01:59:02.620 It was pretty gross. 0.83

01:59:05.300 Yeah, absolutely.

01:59:06.600 I mean, first off, thanks for all your compliments for Michael's performance.

01:59:10.640 I think he is unbelievable in this show.

01:59:14.440 And it's funny, he plays all these villains in person.

01:59:17.080 He's literally the sweetest guy you'll ever meet.

01:59:20.460 Yeah, he's so sweet.

01:59:21.960 And Michael Keaton and Caitlin Deaver both give staggering performances.

01:59:25.700 they were actually just nominated for Critics' Choice Awards for their performances.

01:59:29.840 Right.

01:59:30.340 As was the series, right?

01:59:31.460 It's just an incredible group of people.

01:59:32.760 So I just want to give my love to them and my entire cast, who I think is amazing.

01:59:38.360 You know, one of the things that I...

01:59:39.560 Mare Winningham, she was amazing, too.

01:59:41.400 Pardon?

01:59:41.980 Mare Winningham, amazing. 1.00

01:59:43.360 She plays Betsy's mother. 0.56

01:59:44.320 God be it. 1.00

01:59:44.720 Come on. 1.00

01:59:45.200 It's Mare Winningham. 0.99

01:59:46.080 She's unbelievable, right?

01:59:47.440 Everything. 0.81

01:59:47.980 She's great in everything.

01:59:49.440 Yeah.

01:59:49.880 Yeah. 0.82

01:59:50.020 And Rosario Dawson, too, is just killer. 0.92

01:59:52.100 yeah she's that rosaria dawson plays the badass dea agent who will not be shut up she just is

01:59:57.860 like she's a dog with a bone and while everybody's like shut up go away purdue pharma is very powerful 0.99

02:00:03.380 and rich she just doesn't give she doesn't give a damn she just continues on them not having it

02:00:08.760 not having uh and a really cool person too but so the one of the things i really wanted to do

02:00:14.220 with richard sackler right is he's so demonized in everything you read and so despised um by so

02:00:20.800 many people. And then I was able to interview a number of people that knew him and worked with

02:00:25.520 him. And they seem to hate him even more than the people that don't know him. Yeah. He's not like

02:00:33.600 the most loved individual when you know him one-on-one. And what was important to me was,

02:00:40.040 well, what really made him tick? What's really going on here? Is it just money? Because it's

02:00:46.380 hard for me to believe that it's just money because he's already rich. They're already rich

02:00:50.980 before OxyContin even existed, right? So I went on a deep dive to do everything I could

02:00:58.400 to try to figure out, so what makes this guy tick? And I went to the extent of, I did a therapy

02:01:05.480 session where I role-played that I was Richard Sackler. I'd never done anything like this before.

02:01:10.940 And a friend of mine, the really successful screenwriter and his wife is a therapist,

02:01:15.020 and he had done this with her.

02:01:16.800 So he was like, why don't you try doing a session with my wife

02:01:20.280 where you role play Richard Sackler?

02:01:22.460 And it was incredible to try to get under the skin of this person.

02:01:26.880 And I think that Stuhlbarg did a great job of that as well.

02:01:31.740 And that there's some really interesting layers to what's happening here.

02:01:35.620 He grew up with this famous uncle that we discussed earlier.

02:01:39.940 And I think he desperately didn't want to be a dilettante.

02:01:43.500 He wanted to prove that he could succeed on his own. And what he ends up doing is he ends up succeeding probably beyond anyone's wildest expectations and maybe the most successful person in the history of his family as far as the revenue that he brought in.

02:01:59.040 But that drive to succeed, well, it had consequences. And those consequences were the opioid crisis and the devastation that it brought to this country. And if you were to point to one individual most responsible for it, I think the blame has to go directly to Richard Sackler. And I think that many of these books that have been written, they back that up. This isn't my own conclusion. It's sort of the historical record at this point.

02:02:27.440 Yeah, I think Beth Macy is going to say that, too, that it's not that OxyContin was the only drug being abused during the opioid crisis, but it was certainly patient zero, if you will. It was the biggest and most important and most effective and widespread. And the way they did it is indicative of how many problems there were with the system, including the FDA.

02:02:48.560 So the FDA, they're supposed to be on our side. That's supposed to be a government watchdog that looks out for the little guy. But in the same way, so many people have been distrusting many government agencies over the past 10 years or so. This agency is on that page, too, because they weren't looking out for the little guy. They looked out for Purdue. And in particular, a guy named Dr. Curtis Wright at the FDA. Well, why don't you tell us what they did for OxyContin? And then what happened to Dr. Wright?

02:03:17.920 And this story is it's one of the first jaw droppers of the opioid crisis origin story when you start to research it.

02:03:27.360 So one of the most effective tools that Purdue Pharma had in marketing the drug and getting doctors to feel comfortable that this opioid was less addictive than other opioids was because the FDA granted them a label that said that was the case.

02:03:44.060 It was an unprecedented label that essentially said that this drug is less addictive than other opioids.

02:03:51.700 And so a doctor seeing this label, being told this, it was a major part of the sales pitch.

02:03:57.680 Well, that's going to really make them feel much more comfortable trying it.

02:04:02.140 Besides that elaborate shell game that I talked about earlier, this is what takes it over the edge in a very significant way.

02:04:08.300 And the wording of this warning label was highly unusual.

02:04:12.480 It barely makes sense.

02:04:14.120 It's a little confusing.

02:04:15.780 It says, you know, is believed, OxyContin is believed to reduce the abuse liability of

02:04:21.260 the drug because, or the time release system is believed to reduce the abuse liability

02:04:25.260 of the drug.

02:04:25.700 Well, believed, believed by who?

02:04:27.700 Who believes it?

02:04:28.440 You know, Meg, do you believe it?

02:04:29.560 Do I believe it?

02:04:30.060 I mean, it doesn't even say who believes it.

02:04:33.220 And so when you scratch the surface, so how could this unprecedented label that gave them

02:04:40.380 a blank check to say that the drug was less addictive well how does that come to be well

02:04:44.940 clearly there were studies that were done that showed that was again no there were no studies

02:04:49.160 it was the time mechanism was able to just just this time release system convince the fda of the

02:04:55.140 case well what happened was the guy that approved this label curtis wright he goes and 18 months

02:05:03.260 later gets a job at Purdue Pharma for four hundred thousand dollars a year. I'm guessing he was

02:05:10.720 making about one hundred thousand dollars a year at the FDA. So the appearance of corruption

02:05:16.600 is so staggering. I'm I'm still feel like there needs to be a major investigation into Curtis

02:05:26.180 Wright and the failures at the FDA and rule change. They should not be allowed to take jobs

02:05:31.680 with big pharma within 10 years of leaving the FDA. Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons

02:05:38.060 why I thought this story is so profound, because it goes beyond a criminal company

02:05:44.940 and it goes beyond the dishonesty of a few people. It ends up tying into the very broken nature

02:05:52.880 of our government's relationship with private industry. And that if someone could have a job

02:05:58.620 at the FDA in which they are directly overseeing pharma companies, and then they can immediately

02:06:06.560 go work for those pharma companies, the revolving door, you end up with situations like what

02:06:12.360 happened here.

02:06:13.080 And I think that it's not even just Curtis Wright, but the FDA stayed really lenient

02:06:17.860 on Purdue Pharma for many years, siding with them over and over and over again.

02:06:22.940 And how could Curtis Wright's massive salary and job not have some sort of influence on these future decisions where people are working at the FDA thinking either, A, there's a job for me at Purdue Pharma when I get out, or B, a job at a consulting company that can be hired by Purdue Pharma.

02:06:43.560 Or in one case, a person was put on a board at Tufts University that Purdue Pharma was in charge of that board, right?

02:06:51.240 And being put on these boards, well, that's really helpful for the person's career.

02:06:55.440 So there's all sorts of goodies to be had for your career, your future, your pocketbook by playing ball with Purdue Pharma.

02:07:03.680 And I think that I think looking at the revolving door, coming up with new rules that can not enable someone to oversee their warning label and then go work for them.

02:07:15.940 She could have got to work for them the next day.

02:07:18.360 It's obvious. It's so clear. Right. When you spell it out, what happened just as a is a compliment to all of this reporting and discussion.

02:07:26.840 60 Minutes did a piece not long ago, taking a deep dive on all of this.

02:07:31.240 It was in 2019.

02:07:32.540 And they interviewed a whistleblower from within Big Pharma.

02:07:36.180 This guy himself was a Big Pharma kind of guy.

02:07:38.740 He was selling drugs.

02:07:39.680 I mean, legal drugs.

02:07:40.920 His name was Ed Thompson.

02:07:42.060 And he was telling 60 Minutes that when Oxy was first approved in 1995, it was based on science.

02:07:48.840 1995 is the very first time we've met OxyContin.

02:07:51.480 It was based on science that only showed it was safe and effective when used short term.

02:07:56.740 OK, but six years later in 2001, pressured by big pharma and pain sufferers, the FDA

02:08:04.800 made a fateful decision and expanded the use of OxyContin to just about anybody with chronic

02:08:09.840 ailments, anybody with chronic ailments, like a back pain, arthritis could now use it.

02:08:13.960 And 60 Minutes got their hands on a court order that would demand the production of

02:08:18.220 the documents.

02:08:18.680 It showed there were secret meetings between the FDA in which they bowed to Purdue Pharma's demands to ignore the lack of scientific data and change the label to you can use this around the clock for an extended period of time.

02:08:32.640 Ed Thompson said it opened the floodgates.

02:08:34.860 It was the point of no return for the FDA. 0.98

02:08:37.160 They were in bed under the covers, naked next to the Sacklers for the duration. 0.78

02:08:43.480 And as you point out now, not just because of Oxy, but 700,000 Americans are dead. 0.96

02:08:50.240 I mean, yes, OxyContin and other opioids did help some people.

02:08:54.380 We should point that out.

02:08:55.620 But but those in charge knew it was also extremely deadly and they denied it at every turn.

02:09:02.280 Yeah.

02:09:02.460 And OxyContin has real there's there's some real good use for OxyContin and opioids, severe

02:09:09.020 pain, cancer pain, post surgery treatment.

02:09:13.280 It's very effective for it.

02:09:14.900 But Purdue Pharma had already had a drug, MS Cotton, that did that.

02:09:19.120 And they knew how much money you could make by having a drug for severe pain, for cancer

02:09:25.820 treatment, for post-surgery treatment.

02:09:27.900 And it's a pretty small market.

02:09:29.560 But by opening it up to chronic pain, and here was the other element to it.

02:09:34.440 It wasn't just chronic pain, but moderate pain, right?

02:09:37.760 Because it's now non-addictive, it could be used for all sorts of ailments like wisdom teeth surgery or migraine headaches or all sorts of things that an addictive narcotic never should have been used for.

02:09:52.440 And that combination of that and using it for chronic pain, which meant you had to be on it on an ongoing basis, you know, opened it up this skyrocketing of addiction and overdoses.

02:10:04.960 And I will put another there is another category, too, of people which are people with severe chronic pain that have been able to effectively use Oxycontin to treat their chronic pain that now can't get access to it either.

02:10:20.160 So so now there's like another set of victims because of the dishonesty that occurred in the marketing and promotion of this drug.

02:10:28.460 Mm-hmm. The other villain inside of Purdue Pharma, in addition to the other Sacklers who 1.00

02:10:35.940 are 100% on board with this drug, they were just worried about how much money it would make. They 0.71

02:10:41.520 weren't worried about people's health from the sound of it, was the drug reps. Now, the drug

02:10:47.140 reps are the people who go out to the doctors and try to convince them that this is a great drug and

02:10:51.860 that they should prescribe it to all their patients. And the film does a great job of

02:10:56.340 showing people the pressure on them by their top guy to push, push, push. We're making bigger,

02:11:02.940 bigger pills of Oxy, more and more Oxy in each pill. The answer, if you're starting to feel

02:11:08.360 withdrawal, is not less OxyContin. It's more OxyContin. That's your body telling you you need

02:11:14.540 OxyContin. And the drug reps, I mean, basically they were told, do whatever you need to do.

02:11:20.720 um push push push like you've got to get not necessarily people hooked but you've got to push

02:11:27.120 this drug and you've got to you've got to sort of convince people um to push it no matter what you

02:11:32.600 have to give them trying to look for the exact sound bite we have oh is it is it sought to

02:11:38.660 okay listen sought to make your doctors feel special get dolled up take them to expensive

02:11:46.000 dinners offer to fill up their car with gas just to get 10 minutes to pitch it bribed the

02:11:52.960 receptionist with a mani-pedi so she'll let you in the office but you have to get to know your

02:11:59.300 doctors which is why we will give you full psychological profiles on each of them if

02:12:05.480 they've got kids get them tickets to disney world if they're going through a divorce get them laid

02:12:11.520 whatever it takes to win their friendship and their trust

02:12:17.700 they were important really important oh yeah they were a very very significant part of the

02:12:26.080 process and what purdue did they did a couple things that was very clever and very devious

02:12:30.640 one was they were the it was the first time where in selling a class two narcotic where people's

02:12:36.240 bonuses were tied into the number of milligrams that they sold. So the more milligrams that they

02:12:43.040 sold, the higher the bonus they got. Then they also went out of their way to not hire people

02:12:49.160 that had a background in opioids or in narcotics, because one could argue those people would have

02:12:58.020 been suspicious of the claim that it was less addictive than other opioids. And I interviewed

02:13:03.500 a number of Purdue Pharma reps, former Purdue Pharma reps, and there's been a lot written about

02:13:08.860 them. And the sort of the theme that comes up frequently is they believed what they were told.

02:13:16.360 They believed the studies, but then at a certain point, it becomes clear to them that it's not

02:13:23.480 true. And I remember I asked one of them, I said, what was the moment? What was the moment where you

02:13:28.000 realized, oh, there is something very wrong with this drug. And he had he had he remembered the

02:13:33.780 exact moment of what it was. He said it was when he pulled up to a pain clinic and it looked like

02:13:38.560 a tailgate party out front that there were a massive amount of people grilling meat, hanging

02:13:45.360 out beer. It was like a giant party outside of a pain clinic when everyone was waiting to go get

02:13:51.600 their Oxycontin. So they were definitely culpable at a certain point, even though Purdue did go out

02:13:57.980 of their way to try to to trick the farmer reps as well well yeah i mean if they could be sincere

02:14:04.040 and earnest in the pitch so much the better right if not everybody has that acting ability right like

02:14:08.560 yeah like the people in your cast most people would have to actually believe it in order to

02:14:12.920 be effective at selling it the the series does a great job of painting the relationship between

02:14:17.660 michael keaton's character this well-meaning west virginian doctor um and one of those sales reps

02:14:22.480 The character's name is Billy Cutler, played by Will Poulter. And Billy is sort of this, he's a fresh-faced kid who's trying to make it and get a good salary and so on. And he starts off believing in the drug. And you sort of see that change over time. And his relationship with Michael Keaton is very good. And that changes over time.

02:14:41.940 And even Michael Keaton is touting the drug as a doctor to his community early on in the film, saying, you know, trust me, you guys, these are good people. I know you're good people. Come by pain, honestly, and I'm going to help you fix it, honestly.

02:14:53.360 And by the end of the movie, there's a tumultuous exchange between the Michael Keaton's doctor character and this Billy Cutler character, the drug rep, where you can you can feel you can feel the deterioration.

02:15:06.840 You can feel the crisis that that they are in, that the nation is in.

02:15:10.740 It's soundbite nine. No, no, sorry. Forgive me. It's yeah, it's soundbite eight. Take a listen.

02:15:18.140 So poison, Billy.

02:15:19.520 what's that that's all it says it's a poison that's what you do it's just poison

02:15:25.840 no doc yeah no that's what it is

02:15:30.580 yeah it's poison

02:15:34.440 i can talk you through it doc it's only a concept it's all in here

02:15:39.520 these are good hard-working people these are good hard-working people

02:15:44.540 you have fda label this doc anything in here that you don't understand i can talk to you

02:15:49.140 okay get out get out all right 0.65

02:15:55.660 get away

02:15:58.700 you're gonna get going they're never coming talk talk get out of here

02:16:05.040 please 1.00

02:16:06.120 i'll fucking kill you yeah i'll fucking kill you myself 1.00

02:16:13.800 the anger you're feeling it yourself as an audience member by that point in the series 1.00

02:16:22.980 yeah yeah no i mean that was uh i remember when i was writing that scene and and uh i hadn't

02:16:30.600 planned on him punching him uh and then i wrote the scene and i felt like it didn't capture

02:16:35.980 the true rage of what this doctor would be going through and so i rewrote it with him punching him

02:16:41.900 and it becoming the sort of melee that it turns into.

02:16:44.760 And there's a number of moments throughout the show

02:16:48.120 that are in many ways my rage and my anger

02:16:51.760 and some of the dialogue that people say

02:16:54.320 is very much a product of the anger that I have

02:16:57.660 about what happened.

02:16:59.100 And there's something, you know,

02:17:00.260 I feel so fortunate that I'm able to express that anger

02:17:03.560 to millions of people in the work that I do.

02:17:06.800 It's a very unusual situation to be in.

02:17:09.340 And and some I remember someone asked me, so so do you get it out of your system?

02:17:13.460 Is it are you are you released like in a therapeutic way?

02:17:16.360 And I said, no, but it does feel it does feel good.

02:17:19.360 It does.

02:17:19.880 It's a temporary release.

02:17:21.200 I can relate to my job, frankly, but I appreciate outlets like outlets like yours for helping

02:17:26.300 me do it without having to be firsthand involved in it.

02:17:29.060 So what happened?

02:17:30.200 What happened to Purdue Pharma?

02:17:31.780 Like what happened to this company, to Richard Sackler?

02:17:35.680 That's the part that outrages Danny the most from what I read.

02:17:40.120 And that's where we're going to pick it up right after this quick break on where they are now.

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02:18:07.020 And there you'll find our full archives with more than 220 shows.

02:18:15.440 Now would be a good time to ask you what dope sick means.

02:18:18.720 I just sort of blindly started watching it, not even asking that question.

02:18:22.060 And then it gets explained in the series.

02:18:24.320 It is a thing.

02:18:25.180 What is it?

02:18:25.720 Yeah, so dope sick is the condition one feels that has an opioid use disorder, the withdrawal pain they feel that is so severe and staggering that they feel like they're going to die if they're not able to get their next fix of some type of opioid.

02:18:46.200 Um, and it's, it's so all, uh, all empowering, all overwhelming, uh, people will turn their

02:18:53.780 back on everything in their life to not get dope sick, their family, their children, their

02:19:01.460 jobs.

02:19:02.040 This is how people end up, you know, living under a bridge in a tent, uh, is because that

02:19:08.320 withdrawal pain, uh, overwhelms every sense of, of, of their body, soul, et cetera.

02:19:14.740 And it's one of the deviousness, the diabolical nature of opioids when you become addicted to them is that they hijack your brain.

02:19:26.760 They change your brain chemistry.

02:19:29.280 So the sort of the stereotype or the perception that many people have is that someone who's addicted to opioids, that they can't get off, they're weak, they're maybe lazy and they just want to get high. 0.99

02:19:43.180 They're losers. They're junkies. It's a lot of judgment. But when you dig into it, what you learn is, oh, no, their brain has been hijacked and they cannot live without it. 0.99

02:19:56.480 And that's what makes it so uniquely difficult to overcome opioid use disorder. And and that's where the word dopesick comes from.

02:20:06.500 Yeah, it's another word is it's like they're kidnapped. They've been kidnapped by this drug, the real person. And it's so hard to get them back no matter how much the ransom you pay. So the series takes us through the progression that one of the characters has and that the country has as well, which is past Oxycontin.

02:20:28.300 the next drug of choice is heroin it's sort of the gateway to heroin and then in in more modern

02:20:36.160 times uh illicit fentanyl which is where we are now uh this is what people are dealing with

02:20:41.000 currently and um it's incredibly hard to get off one pill can kill you sorry go ahead yeah what

02:20:48.080 were you saying oh i was just saying fentanyl is so dangerous literally one pill can kill you

02:20:52.840 I mean, that's how that's how severe and dangerous this whole crisis has become.

02:20:57.420 Yeah. So the progression happens for one of the characters and it happens for the nation, too.

02:21:02.860 And the meantime, you're asked you're shown the effort by some law enforcement agents.

02:21:07.060 You mentioned the West Virginia prosecutors.

02:21:09.800 Certain people at the higher levels of the federal government were on the good guy's side and certain people were not.

02:21:15.080 It's never fully explained what was happening, but we're led to believe that Purdue Pharma had connections even there.

02:21:19.740 They hired Rudy Giuliani. He knew how to work.

02:21:22.220 the government. This is at the height of his popularity right after 9-11. And he tried to

02:21:26.440 work his magic on Purdue's behalf, used his good name on their behalf, which is just, oh, hurts.

02:21:33.160 And ultimately, the civil lawsuits and finally the criminal prosecutions against Purdue Pharma

02:21:40.300 got us where, Danny? Well, the criminal prosecutions. So and that's where the show

02:21:46.360 ends, the season basically ends around, it's in 2007, which is a settlement that Purdue Pharma

02:21:55.500 has with the U.S. government. Three executives plead to misdemeanors and does from this settlement

02:22:04.520 in which the company pleads to a felony, $600 million in fines. So is this, do they change

02:22:12.200 their ways? Do they are they reformed by this settlement? The answer is a definitive no. In

02:22:19.460 fact, and this is where for me, I start to think that these people are sociopaths, because they

02:22:26.800 have had this massive investigation against them. They have pled guilty to a felony. There is so

02:22:33.940 much data at this point in 2007 of overdoses, crime rates, communities devastated. Do they

02:22:41.620 change their ways? Do they make any sort of adjustments? No, they hit the gas and they sell

02:22:47.020 even harder and they triple their sales in two years. And like I said, that's where I start to

02:22:53.180 think, oh, oh, they're literally sociopaths where they just do not care. They don't care about any

02:22:59.660 of the damage that they're causing. They are just trying to make as much money as possible. So then

02:23:04.340 And that brings us now to 2021 and 2020.

02:23:08.940 Lo and behold, they have to plead guilty to two more sets of felonies.

02:23:12.940 And instead of $600 million in fines, it's $8.5 billion in fines.

02:23:18.700 Partly, this settlement was because they blew off the safeguards of the 2007 settlement.

02:23:24.320 The company goes into bankruptcy.

02:23:26.380 they end up getting this very favorable judgment in which the Sackler family will pay out.

02:23:33.680 I believe it was three point four billion, four point five, four point five, right?

02:23:39.060 Yeah. Yeah. Billion dollars in fines. However, they are now immune to all future civil letting

02:23:46.140 civil litigation. However, here's where it gets a little interesting or very interesting,

02:23:52.920 depending on your point of view, is that they are not immune to criminal liability and they could

02:23:58.560 still be prosecuted, the Sackler family. And there was a big rally outside the Justice Department

02:24:04.520 just a few days ago, filled with activists, filled with Rick Mountcastle, the real prosecutor who we

02:24:12.200 dramatized in the show, was there, gave a speech. I actually gave a speech. There were three former

02:24:17.480 U.S. three former Justice Department prosecutors giving a speech to push the Justice Department

02:24:26.100 to file criminal charges against members of the Sackler family. So this isn't over. And now

02:24:34.040 the common belief has always been amongst I don't know who, but that this will never happen if

02:24:39.820 they'll never be charged. However, there is a push now. I think that the TV show has put a lot

02:24:45.560 of attention on it and given it some momentum. And it's really emboldened the activists who

02:24:49.940 threw this rally. And supposedly there's going to be a Justice Department meeting in the next week

02:24:55.100 with the lawyer for these activists and some of the activists. And they're better,

02:25:00.140 they better meet with them because literally Purdue Pharma certainly has met with the Justice

02:25:05.360 Department many times. So I would think these activists should be able to get this meeting.

02:25:10.040 But so there is a push right now for criminal charges. There is a huge sense amongst these activists that justice has not been served, that the company has now pled guilty to three felonies, but no individuals have. And the company didn't make these decisions. Individuals made these decisions.

02:25:28.480 And Sackler, the Sacklers paid money toward that bankruptcy settlement of Purdue, but they still have plenty of money.

02:25:35.060 It's not unlike the Epstein case with justice on the wrong side for a lot of years and now getting it right.

02:25:40.300 Danny Strong, thank you so much for being here and for telling this story and all the best with it.

02:25:46.460 Oh, thank you so much, Megan. I had a great time talking about this with you.

02:25:50.480 So thank you so much for having me here.

02:25:52.400 All the best. Take care.

02:25:53.760 up next uh the journalist who wrote the book dope sick beth macy don't don't go away

02:26:00.560 welcome back to the megan kelly show joining me now beth macy journalist and author who wrote the

02:26:10.140 book dope sick which was recently adapted into the tv series that you've been hearing us talk about

02:26:15.580 beth thank you so much for being with us today i i loved your book and i love your work and i think

02:26:22.020 you have this sage ability to see things that the rest of us can't necessarily see. So we're lucky

02:26:28.900 to have journalists like you. Thank you. That's the truth. I mean, you saw something here when

02:26:35.440 it came to these small distressed communities in Appalachia and similarities that were in all of

02:26:42.560 these towns and then similar ways of dealing with the problems. So first, can you just describe

02:26:47.980 sort of what were some of the problems they shared that sort of preceded the opioid crisis?

02:26:55.520 So one of the factors about where the crisis first broke out was the fact that Purdue Pharma

02:27:04.300 bought data that showed them which communities were sort of rife to be exploited by their

02:27:10.740 products. That is, they picked the communities in America, these tended to be distressed rural

02:27:15.860 towns where the jobs were going away. And these were places that had furniture factory making,

02:27:22.200 coal mining, logging, fishing. So you first see the crisis erupting in places like Southwest

02:27:31.780 Virginia, West Virginia, rural Maine, because Purdue knew that doctors in those communities

02:27:37.880 were already prescribing competing opioids at a higher rate. And with their FDA label that we now

02:27:47.000 know is quite in question, they went out and they tried with the reps, they tried to flip

02:27:52.340 the doctors from prescribing Percocet, Vicodin, Loratab to OxyContin, which they said was safer

02:28:00.580 because of this continuous release mechanism.

02:28:05.300 And they got the doctors to flip thanks to that FDA insert, which was completely bought

02:28:11.620 and paid for by Purdue Pharma to the great expense of really lower, not even, I mean,

02:28:18.680 maybe lower to middle income Americans to begin with.

02:28:21.780 And then it's spread and spread and spread.

02:28:23.120 I know you write about a study that took a look at the the life expectancy of people in these regions and how like the difference between the bottom fifth in terms of income and wealth and the top fifth in income and wealth in this country is huge.

02:28:44.440 It's something like a difference of 13 years and life expectancy.

02:28:48.000 And so these people really, they've been overlooked by a system that has been focused on globalization, that's been trying to kill coal, and no one's been paying any attention to them. And then Purdue Pharma did and managed to manipulate their very doctors to sort of turn on them without understanding that's what they were doing.

02:29:07.740 right and that was a real double whammy if you've already lost the majority of your job some of the

02:29:14.800 communities i was reporting on from my first book factory man which came out in 2014 which is about

02:29:20.940 the aftermath of globalization as i was wrapping up that reporting i was starting to hear things

02:29:27.300 like we've got a heroin crisis in martinsville virginia we're talking like a tiny town about

02:29:33.400 an hour south of me here in Roanoke, Virginia. And I didn't understand it at the time, nor did

02:29:39.740 most journalists, that the OxyContin story was so related to the heroin epidemic story because

02:29:47.260 they're basically chemical cousins. And when the drugs start to get harder to get, more expensive

02:29:52.960 around 2010, 2012, you and I may not have known that OxyContin and heroin were chemical cousins,

02:29:59.940 but the cartels did. And so they bring them in and start converting people to heroin because

02:30:06.520 it's cheaper, it's easier to get. And they know that one's fear of becoming dope sick,

02:30:12.260 that is this excruciating feeling of withdrawal that they all say is like the worst flu times

02:30:18.300 a hundred, really is one hell of a good business model. And can you explain what the cartels,

02:30:24.300 which we already know are evil, do to the drug in order to make sure the clientele gets hooked

02:30:30.580 and keeps coming back? Well, first, I remember the story from a young woman named Tess Henry

02:30:38.060 that I followed for Dope Sick. And she could pinpoint the month that the DEA started cracking

02:30:43.860 down. Hydrocodone products had been upscheduled. I think it was like 2014. And she said all of a

02:30:50.860 sudden she couldn't get the pills on the black market from her dealer. And so he personally

02:30:56.640 showed her how to snort heroin, which you think heroin, yuck, you know, if you're her, which she

02:31:03.580 did at first, but really if you're snorting in a line, it was just the same as she had been

02:31:08.160 snorting the pills. And once because of, because with opioids, you, you need more and more in order

02:31:15.440 or not to get dope sick. Then when the snorting, the heroin didn't work, her dealer taught her how

02:31:23.160 to shoot it up. And that, you know, times a million across our country, that's the way it

02:31:27.940 went down. And now we have fentanyl poisoning the drug supply because it's smaller, more potent,

02:31:37.060 and easier to smuggle in. In the book, you write about how they would,

02:31:43.060 And they'll sort of pack the initial dose with some extras and you get this big high and you love it.

02:31:50.120 And then you come back and they lower the dosage in your next your next delivery.

02:31:55.880 So then you start to get the feeling you need the next hit sooner.

02:31:59.040 You pay more, you know, and now they've got you.

02:32:01.600 I mean, now you're now you're a customer for life.

02:32:04.040 Is heroin a lot cheaper than Oxycontin?

02:32:07.800 And I mean, obviously, you don't get a prescription for it.

02:32:09.960 So you just get it like on the streets.

02:32:11.420 but it's more accessible and it's cheaper? Absolutely. It's a lot cheaper. And forgive

02:32:17.220 me, I don't remember exactly how much it's going for right now. But of course, fentanyl is in all

02:32:22.500 of the drugs right now. So you're getting people overdosing with cocaine that's laced with fentanyl,

02:32:28.460 MDMA drugs. And these are so much easier to get on the black market than the treatment,

02:32:38.580 the medicines um the medication assisted treatment that science says is the gold standard of care

02:32:45.460 for treating people with opioid use disorder i mean that's it's so much easier to just go out

02:32:50.660 and get dope again rather than it is to be treated like a human being with a medical condition in our

02:32:56.400 health care system and so you get hooked on something like oxycontin thanks to purdue and

02:33:01.820 its fancy marketing skills and its manipulation of the fda and doctors and its own sales reps

02:33:06.180 And then when you either run out of money or the ability to get more prescriptions, once the government cracked down on these, you know, pill pushers, then where are you? Because you're still addicted and you can't get your drug anymore. So you turn to heroin or you turn to fentanyl and you have a high likelihood of dying. I mean, that's the thing. So we didn't solve the opioid crisis by cracking down on some of these characters.

02:33:29.280 No, absolutely. Nor did we solve the opioid crisis by reducing prescriptions even. A lot of people thought that would help with overdoses. And maybe it does help with not starting new cases, but for the people who are already addicted, that horse is long out of the barn. So that's why we need to make these addiction treatments and modalities so much more accessible than they are.

02:33:57.280 Yeah, well, we'll get to the treatment in just a little bit. But the book, also the series based on the book, does a great job of showing you how it can corrupt your life, how it can corrupt the life of somebody who is innocent, you know, who is well-meaning, who is not, I don't know, you know how it is when you grow up, at least in the 70s, you talk about people who got addicted to drugs, you think of somebody who was kind of dirty, kind of a dirtbag, you know, like, oh, gross, who does drugs?

02:34:23.560 That's not what happened with the opioid crisis.

02:34:25.460 And it's one of the things I love about the storytelling because it accurately represents that, you know, whatever, moms, daughters, you know, innocent high school kids getting sucked into this.

02:34:37.180 The path in the movie of the main star takes us, her name is Betsy, played by Caitlin Deaver, takes us to a really low moment when her parents figure out she's still on drugs.

02:34:49.960 she's she's been they've tried to get a rehab and she's still on drugs and if you've ever had an

02:34:54.560 addict in your family you've been through something like this because they don't get

02:34:57.340 clean right away first time they try you go through this over and over lies and sneaking

02:35:02.720 and cheating with more and escalating to other drugs and uh it's captured powerfully in what

02:35:09.140 we have labeled a soundbite nine watch i sold all of it

02:35:14.260 mom you've been you've been going to a.a

02:35:20.760 this part of my pills

02:35:24.640 what

02:35:27.020 dad

02:35:29.880 dad no no no no

02:35:34.300 the only thing you care about

02:35:35.300 Put your hands off on me. 1.00

02:35:37.360 What a goddamn pill. 1.00

02:35:38.960 Please, no, you can't. 1.00

02:35:40.700 Uh-huh, right here. 1.00

02:35:42.260 You sold your mama's precious heirlooms for this trash. 1.00

02:35:47.360 Huh? 1.00

02:35:48.340 Get in there.

02:35:49.520 Dad.

02:35:50.340 Dad.

02:35:51.160 Becky.

02:35:52.080 Dad.

02:35:52.520 Dad.

02:35:54.980 No, no.

02:35:56.400 Dad.

02:35:57.440 Dad, no.

02:35:58.420 No. 1.00

02:35:59.840 I want you to die. 1.00

02:36:01.600 Dad. 1.00

02:36:02.620 There's nothing more.

02:36:03.920 I can't.

02:36:04.760 Please, please!

02:36:20.140 No!

02:36:31.640 No!

02:36:34.760 oh my god it's upsetting to watch i mean it's upsetting to watch because it's

02:37:02.460 it's too realistic. And I know you- It's too realistic. And I've heard from parents who have

02:37:07.980 been triggered by watching it, who are on Twitter warning other parents. I mean, this is such

02:37:12.700 a common story. Folks like this stealing from their relatives, you know, they've been stigmatized

02:37:19.840 and made to feel ashamed. And parents, many of whom, just like Betsy's parents, don't really

02:37:27.380 understand the science behind opioid use disorder. So they, too, are ashamed. I mean, I was talking

02:37:33.200 to somebody at the rally just Friday night who works with families in Massachusetts, and she

02:37:37.940 said people will still call her, and they're dealing with it in their family, and they'll

02:37:43.160 want to meet her four towns over from where she lives because they're so stigmatized by the hoax 0.80

02:37:51.180 that the Sacklers did on families in America, stigmatizing the wrong people. 0.87

02:37:58.260 The thought of the doctor telling an innocent patient who comes in there

02:38:02.360 earnestly seeking the treatment of pain and the way they pitched Oxy as non-addictive and totally

02:38:10.560 safe. And first they'd give you, you know, these small units. And then when the small,

02:38:15.200 and they were supposed to last, they were supposed to last overnight even. And then people said,

02:38:19.320 well, they're not lasting. I need help. And Purdue said, well, let's call that breakthrough

02:38:24.680 pain. That's breakthrough pain. And the way we're going to address that is with, take a guess,

02:38:29.640 more OxyContin. And then they kept making the pills bigger and bigger. And even the initial

02:38:33.900 dosages given to the patients would be bigger and bigger. And all I can think watching that scene

02:38:39.160 is, you know, imagine saying to a patient who came in for minor back pain, just looking for

02:38:43.340 some relief, I'll give you this drug. It will turn you into a bomb. You will become a human

02:38:48.420 bomb that will blow up your entire family, your life as you know it, all of your loved ones. It 1.00

02:38:54.080 will turn you into a thief, into a liar, into a felon, and possibly into a dead corpse. Here you 1.00

02:39:00.800 go. That's the warning that these drugs should have had on them. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I

02:39:08.180 say this to physicians groups, maybe not quite that forcefully as you, Megan, but I will say that

02:39:14.040 you know, 5,000 of you went out to fancy resorts, courtesy of Purdue Pharma, and learned how to

02:39:22.220 become good prescribers of their drug. They took gifts, they took fancy dinners. And, you know,

02:39:28.400 when journalists aren't even allowed to go to take somebody out for lunch, right? And, and yet

02:39:33.820 these doctors that make a lot of money already are doing, taking these free trips, they're becoming

02:39:40.320 paid speakers for the company. And what I say to doctors is, I know you were lied to,

02:39:46.540 but you helped get us into this mess and you need to help get us out.

02:39:51.400 And what's the answer to that? How can they?

02:39:54.340 So we know that not everyone responds the same to addiction. We know that a person with heroin

02:40:01.120 addiction, a typical person, it's going to take them five to six treatment attempts and over eight

02:40:07.000 years to get just one year of sobriety. So that's one thing is we have to get realized that this is

02:40:12.240 a chronic relapsing disease. We know that buprenorphine and methadone, which people call

02:40:18.060 MAT for medication-assisted treatment, reduce overdose deaths by 50 to 60 percent or more

02:40:25.160 in some cases. But that also, it's really important to get people housing and social

02:40:31.480 supports and counseling along with this. These are all things we don't do very well in this country

02:40:36.040 as we see the homelessness rate skyrocketing.

02:40:39.540 And, you know, many of the young people

02:40:41.060 that I followed in my book ended up in prison,

02:40:44.040 ended up doing sex work, living homeless.

02:40:46.960 I mean, people who were doctor's kids,

02:40:49.480 people who were civic leader's kids.

02:40:52.820 Wealth didn't protect anyone in this case.

02:40:55.600 In fact, because of the stigma attached

02:40:57.620 to wealthier families, in some cases, it made it worse.

02:41:01.520 People would send their kids away

02:41:03.300 to these abstinence-only rehabs,

02:41:05.480 spend a fortune for them. A lot of middle-class families would remortgage the homes to send them 0.95

02:41:10.740 to exactly the kind of, uh, treatment that science says doesn't really work for opioid use disorder.

02:41:16.900 And you've seen that in the Keaton story when, when he's there, I forget if it's episode six

02:41:21.300 or seven, he's like, Hey, you've been back here a lot. Right. In rehab. And the guy says, yeah,

02:41:26.300 five or six times. And he says, you know, but it worked, it worked for me finally. And he says,

02:41:32.180 well, were you alcohol? And he says, yeah, alcohol. So we know that the rehab works better

02:41:37.980 for abstinence only modalities work better than for opioids, which you really, most people need

02:41:47.980 the medication assisted treatment. See, that's another thing that we didn't know when going

02:41:53.220 through this, right? Like I remember being one of the like, you know, you got to go cold turkey,

02:41:58.860 You know, you gotta, you gotta let this person hit rock bottom. I don't reveal who it was in my family because I don't have the permission of the person or the person's other family members. But, you know, I was of the mind of like, tough love, you know, you can't keep picking up the pieces. You can't give this person the home that they lost because of all the lies and all the drugs and all the bankruptcies. And you can't do that, you know, like, let them deal with the laws of natural consequences.

02:42:24.460 And it's only now with some distance that I start to see, it's just not that simple. And you can't really apply the rules you may have thought applied to a disease like alcoholism, and you can take issue with my plan even there, to this addiction.

02:42:41.620 That's absolutely right. And I saw that over and over and over again, and it's still happening.

02:42:46.860 You know, parents are sort of beating their heads against the wall and they're being told,

02:42:51.520 many of them are being told that that's the way to do it. I tell the story of this mom

02:42:56.520 in my new book, Raising Lazarus, which comes out next August, who had this critical moment where

02:43:02.880 she knew her son was going to die if he didn't get help. And her best friend had a teenage

02:43:10.300 daughter who had cancer. And she said, I'm going to treat him the way Lisa treats Amelia. I'm not

02:43:17.460 going to just kick him out of the house. I'm going to feed him. If he comes home and he's

02:43:24.400 high, I'm not going to engage, but I'm also not going to be cruel. And then we're going to have

02:43:30.880 a conversation the next day and I'm not giving up on him. And she says now he's six years into

02:43:36.340 sobriety, she says her only regret was that she hadn't approached his addiction like the medical

02:43:42.980 condition it was much sooner. Wow. It's so hard that she's a strong woman because unlike the

02:43:50.900 cancer patient, this patient is lying and cheating and stealing and bankrupting other family members.

02:43:58.820 And you're angry with them, right? It's like how you have to check your anger

02:44:03.920 because what you really want is to solve it you know you don't you don't want to just punish

02:44:08.440 it's not about retribution it's it's like i want this all to stop and the way to stop

02:44:13.540 is is your friend's approach but man it's it's so hard you're right and they mess up your christmas

02:44:20.340 dinner and your thanksgiving dinner and and they hurt everyone you love everyone you love

02:44:26.880 yeah yeah i will not forget with with tess was the young woman i followed the most and dope sick 1.00

02:44:32.780 she would disappear and live homeless and then she'd come home every now and then and the last

02:44:38.300 Thanksgiving they had together she had hurt her siblings so much that and they were very much

02:44:45.680 kind of had come up in tough love that they were just done with her and even though she made the 0.93

02:44:52.200 whole meal she did all the shopping and her mom just sent me a picture the other day after

02:44:56.620 Thanksgiving she goes remember this it was Tess's last she called it the thankless Thanksgiving she

02:45:01.960 made the whole meal and no one thanked her. And, you know, shortly after she had another breakdown

02:45:07.700 and, you know, she went back out in the streets and, you know, I know her mother wishes she would

02:45:14.200 have acted sooner with love. And she now says, you know, rock bottom has a basement. The basement

02:45:19.300 has a trap door. I wish I knew now what I knew then what I knew now. It's a good line. Coming

02:45:26.980 up, we're going to talk about how the system is not positioned, not at all, to help people who

02:45:33.260 find themselves addicted to opioids get out of it and get their lives straight and clean. To the

02:45:40.320 contrary, it's built, I think, to keep them down, and it does a really effective job at it. We'll

02:45:44.820 pick it up there with Beth Macy coming up right after this. So Beth, just to take a step back, 0.97

02:45:54.040 The book does a good job of explaining how we've had some shifts as a country.

02:45:59.000 This isn't the first time that we've been, I guess, dope sick.

02:46:02.620 And you talk about how one of the things that struck me in the book was that you talked about how they used to,

02:46:08.140 I'm looking at my note here, in 1899, Bayer, as in Bayer Aspirin,

02:46:13.480 was cranking out a ton of heroin a year and selling it in 23 countries.

02:46:17.940 And you write that in the U.S., cough drops and even baby soothing syrups were laced with heroin.

02:46:26.140 So this is in the late 1800s.

02:46:27.880 We were given heroin to our babies.

02:46:30.140 Yeah. 0.51

02:46:30.540 So this kind of comes about as the result of civil war wounds and women who had lost their families.

02:46:39.920 And heroin is actually introduced by Bayer as a cure for morphinism, which is doctors would give morphine away along with needles to patients and have them use them as needed.

02:46:56.920 And, of course, just as then, even though then it was much a lighter dosage than than the heroin we have certainly of now is, but people would need more and more.

02:47:09.900 And then when the Harrison Narcotics Act came along in 1914, outlawing most of the black market uses of the drug, people then went to the black market.

02:47:22.440 And so that's when there became this dichotomy between legitimate white market users who were prescribed and so-called black market users.

02:47:33.580 So for most of the 1900s until 1996, when Purdue comes out with OxyContin, we knew that opioids were addicted and should only be used in the instances of cancer, end of life, post-surgery, but just for a few days because doctors were rightly worried about addiction, which we've known for centuries, actually.

02:47:55.880 And yet Purdue managed to flip the narrative, not just for OxyContin, but through the pain societies that they funded a lot of and through things like the Joint Commission, which they had a role in, you know, things like consumer surveys where patients would, you know, give a hospital a bad thing.

02:48:19.180 You see that playing out in the show when our character Randy is in the hospital for his prostate cancer.

02:48:24.880 We just they just shifted that narrative right away and it all blew up again.

02:48:32.460 So in other words, just to add to that, you're saying because this is portrayed in the film, the movie, too, that if you go to the hospital and you have a negative experience and you give them a bad rating because they didn't address your pain, that hurts the hospital.

02:48:44.160 And so there was a big push started by OxyContin to Purdue to get doctors and nurses on it.

02:48:52.100 If you feel pain, there's no more like just dealing with it.

02:48:54.520 And there's no more like, all right, well, let's titrate it a little bit.

02:48:57.740 You know, it's give them why not?

02:49:00.000 Why not more?

02:49:00.780 Why not more OxyContin?

02:49:01.900 And if you're worried about it, here's the special FDA label that says don't worry about it.

02:49:05.380 But like there was a consumerist response to this pain problem that the hospitals had to worry about because they are, after all, businesses.

02:49:15.340 Absolutely. They could lose the ratings. They could lose reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid if they didn't treat a person's pain.

02:49:22.780 And still today, I was at the ER with a friend not long ago. You still see that rate your pain scale with the smiley faces one to 10.

02:49:30.680 So there are still elements of it, although I think most doctors and nurses are much wiser

02:49:38.220 about it.

02:49:39.200 And one of the things we've done since the mid-90s to the early aughts is we've gotten

02:49:44.800 around the problem of doctor jumping, right?

02:49:47.100 I don't know what the technical term for it is, but I get a prescription from Dr. Smith

02:49:50.800 for OxyContin and he fills it, but he knows only to give me 30 days worth or one back

02:49:55.140 then they were giving a few refills.

02:49:57.040 But then I go to Dr. Jones because Dr. Smith's not going to give me any more when I ran out

02:50:02.140 of it after a week and I get one from him and then I get one from this other female doctor. 0.99

02:50:06.480 You can't do that anymore, right? 0.99

02:50:08.380 Technically, you're not supposed to be able to do that.

02:50:10.040 All the states now have, they're called PDMPs, Prescription Monitoring Programs.

02:50:15.360 I think only one state is a holdout.

02:50:17.680 But you see Michael Keaton doing that at the height of his addiction because he's in the

02:50:23.340 corner of far southwest virginia and it's just a half hour drive to get to tennessee

02:50:27.800 this way to kentucky this way to west virginia and they would really take advantage of that

02:50:33.040 and you also see in the show this idea that uh oh they're cutting down they're cutting back on

02:50:38.480 prescribing at home but people wouldn't rent vans to drive down they called it um that uh

02:50:45.200 what did they call it the pillbilly express or the oxycontin express they've drive down to florida

02:50:50.580 which had, which had no restrictions at the time. And you would see these strip mall office setups

02:50:58.920 with doctors prescribing with, without hardly even doing exams. And they would be running

02:51:04.620 pharmacies out their back door. I mean, sometimes in like the equivalent of a food truck, you know,

02:51:10.980 because you can get rich as a doctor by doing that. You could get rich as a doctor by doing

02:51:14.880 that. And by the way, one of the things that's happened in the news recently, just a couple of

02:51:19.140 weeks ago was a judgment of liability against CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart for their role in

02:51:26.780 the opioid crisis, their pharmacies, and a couple of other ones like Rite Aid and another had

02:51:31.120 settled. So they were also swept in, in just indiscriminately filling all these prescriptions

02:51:36.420 when, and we're not just talking about mild abuse, but in abuse of these drugs that should

02:51:41.560 have been obvious to any pharmacy, and yet they turned a blind eye because they too made a lot

02:51:47.600 of money off of this. Absolutely. That's right. And what you have now, and every time I do an

02:51:53.060 interview, I'll hear from the chronic pain community, and they're angry because a lot of

02:51:58.660 folks who are actually on stable dosages of legit pain medications are being abandoned as well.

02:52:08.180 And so you see some of those folks either suffering in pain or going to the black market

02:52:14.520 and getting heroin laced with fentanyl or committing suicide. So that's a concern too,

02:52:19.740 but that's directly because of the actions of Purdue making it so over-prescribed to start with

02:52:27.060 that it's hard to suss out for some doctors who's legit and who isn't. So just a nod to the fact

02:52:34.140 that there are other unintended victims of this today, and I hear from them a lot.

02:52:40.220 the um the lawsuit started to come against purdue as people started to feel it as communities

02:52:46.680 started to put together that entire towns were falling apart and found themselves addicted i

02:52:51.720 mean in particular in appalachia and um the big one we mentioned a minute ago with danny strong

02:52:57.760 was uh the 2007 uh settlement with purdue where the three executives pleaded guilty um to was it

02:53:05.520 felony it was a felony uh yes yeah to a felony no i'm sorry the executives pleaded uh guilty to

02:53:13.120 misdemeanors they were on probation for a few years they had fines the company made it and then

02:53:19.000 the the holding company not purdue pharma rather but purdue frederick uh pleaded guilty to a felony

02:53:25.800 um now if purdue pharma would have pleaded guilty i mean their lawyers were so ahead of everybody

02:53:31.260 else on this. They cunningly knew that Purdue Pharma wouldn't be able to continue to sell

02:53:36.200 OxyContin if it had a felony. So they did the deal with the holding company, Purdue Frederick.

02:53:43.080 And it was allowed. And by the way, none of those executives was last name Sackler. It was all it

02:53:47.200 was three other guys. Absolutely. And if you talk to the activists now, because Danny and I were

02:53:52.980 just with a bunch of them on Friday at this rally on December 3rd, they didn't even know the name

02:53:58.400 Sackler back then. And think about that. Like, you know, you've got all these museums and wings

02:54:03.920 and whatnot, but back then, if you went to the Purdue Farmer website, you wouldn't even see the

02:54:09.160 name Sackler on anything. They were very clever. And as word that these lawsuits were coming up,

02:54:17.400 they cleverly, you know, resigned from their board positions and, you know, in a way allowed

02:54:25.900 uh, their philanthropy to sort of cloak their villainy. So how did they come back? You know,

02:54:30.940 we were just talking with Danny about how they, I think, tripled their sales within a couple of

02:54:35.020 years. They went forward, the Sacklers and Purdue, like nothing had ever happened.

02:54:40.300 That's right. Um, well, a lot of the, the government regulators that should have been,

02:54:45.240 um, monitoring, uh, their, their corporate integrity agreement. I mean,

02:54:51.080 corporate integrity agreement, the very phrase is kind of laughable when you see how they just

02:54:58.320 continued to do what they were doing before and in many ways amped up their sales. Richard

02:55:04.440 Sackler personally went on sales calls, at least one time that we know of, and they hired McKinsey

02:55:09.760 to double down, to sell, sell, sell. And we don't have structures in place to make sure

02:55:21.260 that the proper checks are happening, such that in 2020, the company pleads guilty to more felonies,

02:55:30.940 which are basically the same kind of fraudulent behaviors.

02:55:34.580 hmm in in between those two times i mean i don't when would you say we became aware that of the

02:55:40.440 opioid crisis you know we as a nation had the national consciousness that this was a thing

02:55:44.240 that's a really good question in 2015 the nobel winning economist ann case and angus deaton

02:55:51.080 wrote about uh was a bombshell study was on the cover of time magazine deaths of despair

02:55:56.580 um so we realized that for the first time in american history since world war one

02:56:03.500 our life expectancy was going down. And it was going down largely due to opioid overdose,

02:56:10.060 alcoholism-related diseases like cirrhosis of the liver, and to suicide. But by far,

02:56:15.160 the biggest of those three factors was opioids. You had Sam Canoni's book, Dreamland,

02:56:20.760 came out in 2016, I believe. My book came out in 2018. And then the lawsuits started happening.

02:56:28.060 And a lot of those, most of the suits ended up over 2,600 lawsuits were brought by cities and counties and state governments.

02:56:39.540 They ended up in the multi-district litigation under the direction of Judge Polster in Cleveland.

02:56:45.940 But Purdue was able to pull their case out by filing bankruptcy.

02:56:53.600 And where did they file bankruptcy? Not in a location where they actually conduct business, but they filed it in the jurisdiction of a bankruptcy judge named Robert Drain, who is known for being one of the minority of judges who allows what's called a third party release, which so it's like a bankruptcy loophole.

02:57:12.880 They file in White Plains because they know Drain is one of the few judges that allows the Sackler to attach to get civil immunity from further litigation in exchange for their settlement.

02:57:29.920 Yeah. And just to make clear, this is an issue because the Sacklers individually were not filing for bankruptcy.

02:57:34.900 They're billionaires. Just Purdue Pharma was. But they wanted to sort of glom on to their company and say, oh, and no lawsuits against us and no more criminal, no trouble for us of any kind, because we've contributed four billion dollars and we've contributed to this massive bankruptcy settlement.

02:57:52.260 But they basically, but that was backfunded, as I understand, by Purdue anyway. So it's all fungible. These are still going to be billionaires. And now if this goes through, they can't be sued.

02:58:02.420 $4 billion. So if you take that $10.4 and then you let them pay off the $4.5 over nine years, by the way, they have nine years to pay it. So with investments at the going rate, they could be richer at the end of the nine years than they are right now. I mean, where is the justice in that?

02:58:21.280 Oh, my gosh. They're clever. I mean, that's definitely something we saw in all of this. They're clever. One of the things you point out in your book, and I think it's good, too, is a couple of very famous deaths. You know, sometimes I don't want to say these people were used, you know, by a higher power to sort of underscore the dangers of drugs to us.

02:58:40.120 but you point out in the book Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. I mean, this incredibly promising

02:58:45.600 actor who was just stunning when he died. Prince died. I mean, both of them swept up in this same

02:58:52.740 crisis that we're talking about. And sometimes seeing somebody that famous and talented,

02:58:58.520 seeing their life cut short can really be, I don't know, it gets your attention and it focuses you in

02:59:05.200 a way that can be productive. Yes, it's a wake up call. And as I think somebody in the book said,

02:59:11.020 nobody wants to tell Prince that he has an opioid problem, right? So back to this idea that wealth

02:59:17.560 and power can protect you from this. Nobody's protected from this. That's why we all need to

02:59:23.220 pay attention and become, you know, advocates for our own medical treatments. Yep. So then it morphs,

02:59:31.740 you know, from oxy to the heroin scene. And you write in your book about how this is like the

02:59:37.620 suburban heroin scene, the young teenage girl heroin scene would shock people. Can you talk

02:59:43.100 about that a bit? Because it's hard to believe that, you know, young cheerleaders are doing 0.97

02:59:47.120 heroin, but they are. Yeah. And of course, not all of them, but, you know, unlike you and I 0.97

02:59:53.900 growing up in the seventies and eighties, um, you know, when kids would experiment with alcohol

03:00:01.220 or weed, you know, maybe some mushrooms or something, I don't know, but, but you talk

03:00:07.340 about kids that grew up in the nineties in the aughts, they had pills at their disposal because

03:00:12.400 Purdue had massively, uh, uh, talk doctors into massively over prescribing these drugs. So

03:00:19.340 a kid could just experiment like the way a kid in years your would have done with alcohol or

03:00:25.760 marijuana, but only now they're using a much more dangerous drug. And so, I mean, actually,

03:00:33.560 I was just at a premier event here in Roanoke with the first person I ever knew who this had

03:00:39.600 happened to. And he was a young man named Spencer Mompower. And when I first met him,

03:00:45.500 He was from a wealthy family. His mom was a civic leader, had a chain of jewelry stores,

03:00:49.920 and he was about to go to federal prison for five and a half years for having sold

03:00:54.000 heroin to his former private school classmate who died. And I spent the summer hanging out

03:01:01.160 with him trying to learn about this nascent cell of heroin users in the wealthy white suburbs of

03:01:07.820 Roanoke. And he said, dude, I'm the one that told you what the word dope sick met. And I was like,

03:01:13.680 you're absolutely right. I didn't know what it meant then. But I remember him describing

03:01:18.100 how if he said, if your dope man wasn't coming until, you know, for three more days,

03:01:24.200 and you only had this little, this much left, you would parse it out so that you would still

03:01:28.860 have a little bit at the end, because the driving fear of all of it was this fear of withdrawal and

03:01:35.080 this fear of dope sickness. Of course, this, like any addiction,

03:01:38.740 is more likely to affect you if you have a parent who is an addict. Your book points out that I

03:01:44.100 think you have a 50 to 60 percent, you're 50 to 60 percent more likely to become addicted if you

03:01:50.320 have a parent who is an addict. So, you know, there is, of course, as with any addiction, an

03:01:54.380 extra special red warning label to people who have that in their family. But there is a treatment,

03:02:01.060 and we talked about how, you know, the version of AA doesn't work so well for the opioid addicts,

03:02:05.880 But there is a treatment called suboxone that that does help.

03:02:09.960 Now, it, too, is considered a controlled substance, right?

03:02:14.620 Like an opiate.

03:02:15.960 It's an opiate.

03:02:16.840 So it will show up in your blood if you want to do a job that tests your blood before they

03:02:22.180 hire you.

03:02:22.580 It will show up and it will show up as suboxone.

03:02:25.100 And then they'll know that you're on that drug, which helps you get off of another opiate.

03:02:28.300 So you've got sort of an opioid in your blood, which is helping you get off of probably a

03:02:31.860 more serious opioid.

03:02:33.360 And boom, Bob's your uncle.

03:02:34.600 I mean, these jobs aren't going to hire you. That's a real problem. But that drug seems to be very much part of the solution to this crisis.

03:02:44.460 Absolutely. It's protective. And Megan, it has buprenorphine in it, which is the opioid that kind of gloms on to the opioid receptor.

03:02:54.380 But it also has naloxone in it, which is the generic name for Narcan, so that if somebody does go out and use, it's not going to work for them.

03:03:02.960 And so it is protective in that way. And you see in our show, the way the Michael Keaton character is stigmatized for being on it. And he said, it's what's keeping me clean. I've never felt clearer than I have in my life.

03:03:18.080 you see Betsy go to the AA meeting and be told that she's considering going on it. But somebody

03:03:24.340 says to her, you know, that's just treating a drug with another drug. And this happened over

03:03:29.960 and over to the young people that I was following for my book. And it is a real problem, especially

03:03:38.420 among law enforcement people who have seen it diverted and sold. But I would argue and many

03:03:45.200 experts argue that the reason it is so widely diverted is because it largely isn't available

03:03:51.620 to the people who need it. So there is this, this big market demand for it. Only one in five people

03:03:59.100 with opioid use disorder has access to it. So that's, that's something we know it works. We

03:04:04.860 know it's dangerous to go off of harder opioids without being on it. So we really need to make

03:04:16.740 it available at a scale to match the crisis. How long can one stay on it? So everyone's

03:04:23.200 different. And some people think it's okay, you might have to be on it for the rest of your life.

03:04:29.080 Dr. Van Zee, the doctor who's portrayed in the show, he told me years ago, he said he's got

03:04:34.480 patients weaned down very, very slowly, and they might just be on a teeny little bit every day,

03:04:40.140 but he's afraid because he's seen people, even when they're on a small amount, when they go off,

03:04:47.600 some have relapsed. And so he's very, very cautious about it. He only does it when a person

03:04:53.880 voluntarily wants to taper off. But it's something to be done with all caution. But he, I mean, he

03:05:01.660 does have some amazing success stories, as do all MAT doctors. I mean, the thing about law

03:05:07.520 enforcement is they only see the bad side of it, the people breaking the law side of it. They don't

03:05:11.900 see the people who are getting jobs back, getting their kids back. Well, and I think employers need

03:05:17.600 to see that drug and maybe have a different reaction instead of seeing like, oh, drug addict,

03:05:21.700 and they've got an opioid in them now, it's no, someone who has actively taken steps to change

03:05:26.740 their life. And you can find out for how long they've been clean and been on it. Because you're

03:05:31.380 not taking opioids in addition to Suboxone, if you're taking Suboxone. But you know, to me,

03:05:36.320 it's just so frustrating, because you see, Beth, you know, it's like you, these companies, they

03:05:39.920 get you addicted, they get you addicted to their drug, your life spirals. So many of these people

03:05:45.040 wind up committing crimes, whatever, whether it's shoplifting or something with cars, what have you,

03:05:49.280 because they're desperate, you know, selling drugs, buying drugs.

03:05:53.320 And now they have a criminal record.

03:05:54.880 Then they get on Suboxone, which is the way out for a lot of them.

03:05:58.220 Then they can't get a job because they've got that in their blood, which is a tell.

03:06:01.220 So now you can, you know, your employers are looking at somebody who's got a criminal past,

03:06:04.780 who's got this drug, which is a tell, who probably doesn't present all that well physically

03:06:09.000 because they've been an addict for all this time.

03:06:11.200 And it's an impossible spiral to pull yourself out of.

03:06:14.740 You need so much support, so much love, so much understanding from your family, from society, from employers, from law enforcement, from the judicial system.

03:06:25.080 And from we didn't even touch the story of expanded Medicaid.

03:06:29.060 And I, you know, your book is really smart on that.

03:06:31.660 I love people to read your arguments for Medicaid expansion.

03:06:35.860 It's just the number one tool for for reducing overdose deaths in in various states.

03:06:42.300 but we still have 12 states that haven't expanded it. Right. Yep. Yep. Again, I think they think it

03:06:48.440 may be tough love, but it may just be cruel and a way of stopping people from getting out of a

03:06:53.200 really tough situation. Right. And as this opioid litigation money, as the funnel start, as it

03:06:58.020 starts to funnel down, it's so important that states and communities get together people who

03:07:03.480 really understand the science and aren't just spouting off this tough love crap, which isn't

03:07:11.440 working and is starting to meet people where they are. We know that people who visit needle

03:07:17.720 exchanges, I know that sounds counter on intuitive. Why are you going to give a drug user a clean

03:07:22.880 needle? Well, because they're going to use regardless until they get real help. So why

03:07:28.060 don't we make sure they use safely and that's going to cut down on the spread of hepatitis C

03:07:33.380 and HIV, which is skyrocketing in some communities. But we know they're also five times more likely

03:07:39.220 to enter treatment when, when they go to a needle exchange. Oh, and on top of that, you, you've said

03:07:44.380 it's cheaper to pay for the needle than it is to pay for the disease, the treatment of the disease

03:07:48.220 they're going to get from dirty needle. So it's like society's in, we're, we're in this, whether

03:07:51.980 we want to be or not. And the only question now is what, what is the smart way of dealing with it?

03:07:57.440 Beth Macy is one of the people who has been calling attention to it for a long time with

03:08:01.960 thoughtful diagnoses and possible solutions. I'm grateful for you, Beth. Thank you. Thank you so

03:08:07.520 much. Thank you, Megan. Really appreciate it. All the best. Family annihilator. It's a term

03:08:17.500 you may have heard recently during the Alec Murdoch trial. The prosecutor even asking Alec

03:08:24.060 directly if he qualified as one. Do you remember this? Watch. Are you a family annihilator?

03:08:30.600 A family annihilator? 0.99

03:08:35.560 You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son? 0.91

03:08:38.500 Yes.

03:08:39.000 No.

03:08:42.240 I would never hurt Maggie Murdoch.

03:08:45.320 I would never hurt Paul Murdoch.

03:08:47.620 Under any circumstances.

03:08:58.260 Say that.

03:09:00.600 hmm of course the jury rejected that assertion finding murdoch guilty of fatally shooting his

03:09:11.020 wife maggie and his son paul maggie was 52 paul was uh 22 and he's now serving life in prison

03:09:19.120 murdering those close to you is an unimaginable act to most people but alec murdoch is not the

03:09:24.780 first or the last to kill his family. He's one of many in a gruesome group of family annihilators.

03:09:31.280 When I heard that term in that trial, it got me, I never heard that term before. And I'm in the

03:09:36.620 news business and we cover crime a lot. It's a thing. It's an actual thing in criminology

03:09:42.540 and those who study it. And it's just extra, right? I mean, murder is terrible under any

03:09:49.160 circumstances, but what kind of a person can kill their entire family or a huge portion of it?

03:09:57.580 What makes a seemingly well-liked, successful man, these are not all derelicts. In fact,

03:10:05.380 they tend to be successful people, blow up his life in this manner, kill the people who are

03:10:11.800 supposed to be most important to him. What kind of psychology makes you do that? How do we recognize

03:10:17.800 this potential in a mate, a man, a partner.

03:10:23.560 Today, we're going to do a deep dive

03:10:25.380 into the motivations and the psyche of these individuals.

03:10:28.780 We are also going to discuss what can be done

03:10:30.940 to prevent this kind of violence.

03:10:32.440 What are the warning signs?

03:10:33.600 How do you know if you are potentially

03:10:36.480 with somebody like this?

03:10:38.420 Joining me now to dig into it all is Laura Richards.

03:10:41.840 Laura is an award-winning criminal behavioral analyst

03:10:44.880 and expert on domestic abuse and coercive control.

03:10:48.440 She also hosts the popular podcast's Crime Analyst

03:10:51.760 and Real Crime Profile.

03:10:56.820 Laura, so great to have you here on the show.

03:10:58.500 Thanks for being here.

03:10:59.820 Thank you for inviting me.

03:11:01.100 Good to speak with you, Megan.

03:11:02.900 So since he used that term in the Murdoch trial,

03:11:07.440 Creighton Waters, the prosecutor,

03:11:08.820 I've gone down a dark rabbit hole.

03:11:10.760 And I know you've been there for years

03:11:12.700 studying these people and figuring out

03:11:14.540 what makes a family annihilator, what makes them tick. And I have since watched everything I can

03:11:21.880 get my hands on about, I'm already there on Alec Murdoch, but on Chris Watts, who murdered his

03:11:29.600 entire family in Colorado a few years back in 2018, his wife, his two beautiful daughters in

03:11:35.080 the most disgusting, awful way. And then started picking up the case of Jeffrey McDonald, which I

03:11:41.480 have covered over the years as a journalist, but this is a guy back in 1970. And you could go,

03:11:45.980 I mean, you could pick so many cases, unfortunately. These are just the ones that got my interest.

03:11:50.200 And Jeffrey McDonald was a very successful surgeon, Green Beret, who was convicted of

03:11:56.980 murdering his wife and two daughters as well in just the most brutal fashion. And the thing about

03:12:02.160 these three cases, Laura, that jumped out to me, the ones that, the reason they pulled me in

03:12:06.860 is because all three of these guys

03:12:08.760 were super successful, you know, on paper.

03:12:11.440 They were doing well.

03:12:12.200 Like Chris Watts wasn't rich like the other two.

03:12:15.080 But the other two, and well, I mean,

03:12:16.740 Jeffrey McDonald wasn't rich either,

03:12:17.940 but he was gonna be because he was a surgeon.

03:12:20.600 Just accolades, professional success, very well liked.

03:12:24.180 No one would go back and say,

03:12:25.940 oh, yes, yeah, you could have seen it coming.

03:12:29.520 The opposite.

03:12:30.940 So let's start with what it is.

03:12:32.800 Define for us what makes one a family annihilator.

03:12:36.860 well i think we have to work on the basis that if you understand what domestic abuse and domestic

03:12:43.760 homicide is about the motivation is power and control and that's really what the perpetrators

03:12:50.400 are seeking to achieve they want power and control and they're trying to control the person or the

03:12:55.440 people and the narrative so i've studied many many cases i've worked on many many cases they are

03:13:02.780 absolutely horrific. I think people really do struggle to understand how what the media might

03:13:09.580 describe as the perfect dad, a good dad, a good, dutiful husband, or I've even heard a perpetrator

03:13:17.080 described as being good at DIY. And the media tend to eulogize and memorialize the perpetrator,

03:13:23.240 which makes it harder for the general public to really understand how it happened. But actually,

03:13:28.580 when I door knock and speak to the grandparents and those who have survived, and I've done that

03:13:36.880 across my 27-year career, I find a very different picture emerge. And the picture is always the

03:13:43.040 same. And that's of a man, because we are talking about men. This is very much a male-related issue.

03:13:51.520 it's a man who wanted to coercively control and coercive control are the key hallmarks

03:13:58.320 and what we should be asking about rather than physical assaults and i want to tell people just

03:14:04.280 a little bit more about your credentials because they are impressive founder of paladin the world's

03:14:08.700 first national stalking advocacy service as a survivor i don't really love that term but

03:14:14.540 as somebody who has um had a very bad stalker who went to jail uh and then a mental facility for 10

03:14:20.580 years. So it was a serious case. I appreciate what you do. There aren't enough of experts like

03:14:26.240 you. You also created, you mentioned DASH, the domestic abuse, stalking, and honor-based violence

03:14:31.000 risk identification assessment and management model, which was implemented across all police

03:14:35.800 services in the UK. The DASH checklist is credited with having reduced domestic murders

03:14:41.920 by 58% in London across 13 years. So you know what you're doing. You are a true expert in all

03:14:49.080 of this. And it's all kind of related, you know, the stalking, the domestic abuse. This is not an

03:14:54.220 indictment of all men. This is an indictment of abusers and helping both men and women recognize

03:15:00.220 the signs because you may be a great guy who never abused anybody, but you might have a daughter

03:15:05.780 who a man like this comes into her life or a sister, or, you know, it could be a friend. And

03:15:11.520 so men can be advocates of women in this situation as well, even if it's not, you know, them

03:15:16.320 personally. Absolutely. And thank you for sharing your own experience of stalking, because it is

03:15:23.340 important we do talk about it. It's why I created an advocacy service, because a lot of victims don't

03:15:28.280 get the support that they need, the psychological and emotional support that when they're trying to

03:15:33.180 survive something, and bearing in mind when I tend to work with people, they haven't survived it. So

03:15:37.480 I agree with you. Survivor is the wrong term, particularly when someone's going through it

03:15:42.180 and trying to ensure law enforcement understand the behaviours.

03:15:46.580 Well, that's everything that Paladin is set up to do 1.00

03:15:49.400 and changing the law to make sure the laws reflect women's lived experience 1.00

03:15:54.380 when they are subjected to abuse.

03:15:56.640 And that's a really important part of my work

03:15:58.960 and ensuring that men work alongside us

03:16:02.000 because, yes, it takes all men to help with changing and challenging

03:16:07.120 and holding men to account when they are abusive.

03:16:10.380 and that's when they're sexist misogynistic these are the types of mindsets and the types of

03:16:16.560 behaviors that we want people to be challenging because it can lead to much more serious things

03:16:22.980 happening when a man feels that they are not getting their way or they are being disrespected

03:16:30.140 in some way or they feel that their control they're losing their control over someone well

03:16:36.120 that can be when something catastrophic occurs. And too often, like I said, when we ask the right

03:16:42.640 questions of grandmothers and grandfathers, and it might be brothers and sisters. And when I ask

03:16:50.120 them the questions, I always see a pattern emerge. And like I said, the media often report on things

03:16:57.640 and they just do a very cursory look at what's gone on. And they may talk to a neighbor who

03:17:03.780 might turn around and say, oh, he was a lovely dad or he took the children to the sweet shop and

03:17:08.380 yes, he was a really nice man or he was fearful that he'd lose the children and that's why he

03:17:14.500 killed them. And then this narrative goes in the media and the newspapers and that's what people

03:17:20.700 then take as what's gone on. But it's a really dangerous narrative because oftentimes the

03:17:27.220 warning signs are there and women can be framed and really blamed for something that's happened 0.54

03:17:34.060 to them. And I'll give you an example. There was a recent horrific murder in the UK, an incredible 1.00

03:17:40.760 woman called Emma Patterson and her seven-year-old daughter who were killed. And the media, first of

03:17:47.580 all, reported on three people who died in Epsom, Surrey. They didn't say how, but there was a whole

03:17:54.220 load of media, social media traffic about. Was it carbon monoxide poisoning? But the police put out

03:18:00.080 a statement, said they're not looking for anybody else in connection with their deaths. And they

03:18:06.420 said it's an isolated incident. So from all my work, I always hear police say that. And that means

03:18:11.140 that it's domestic violence related. That's the code word. And it's not an isolated incident

03:18:15.960 because it's a pandemic of women being killed. And it turned out there were gunshots heard

03:18:20.480 just before the emergency services turned up and George Patterson shot them both dead.

03:18:27.760 And the male had put an article together and the headline was, because she was a very successful

03:18:33.640 headmistress of a school in Epsom, did her overachieving and putting him in the shadow,

03:18:40.540 did that lead to this tragedy? And I wrote on the headline and fixed it and said, no,

03:18:46.060 he did this all on his own. Because we very quickly get into excusing someone's behavior

03:18:51.540 when it is unacceptable. This was something that he planned, premeditated. But the dominant

03:18:56.680 narrative then is in the media that perhaps she's to blame and she's framed intentionally

03:19:02.640 and that she's to be blamed in some way. And for me, that's just unacceptable. I've seen it over

03:19:09.600 and over and over again. And it gives a very forced narrative of what's gone on.

03:19:14.180 We can do that when it comes to divorce, right? 0.85

03:19:17.080 Was she overbearing? 1.00

03:19:18.960 Was she difficult to live with?

03:19:20.880 Was she, okay, we're not all perfect.

03:19:22.920 We can't do that when it comes to domestic violence.

03:19:25.660 No annoying, negative, unfortunate behavior by the woman 0.99

03:19:29.880 justifies domestic violence of any kind.

03:19:33.960 Absolutely not.

03:19:34.860 Well, if you follow the narrative through, 0.94

03:19:36.380 what does seven-year-old Letty do?

03:19:38.720 I mean, I can't even imagine the fear and the terror

03:19:41.680 that she must have felt, understanding that, you know, was mom killed before her and she watched

03:19:48.160 or was Leti killed first? You know, that fear and terror for a child to know that they're not safe

03:19:53.200 and they're unsafe, something catastrophic is about to happen at the hands of the man who's

03:19:58.060 meant to love and care for them. And these are the things, the places I spend, you know, my time and

03:20:03.480 my mind working out what's happened, but also the psychology. What makes a man become this way?

03:20:08.680 because the vast, vast majority of men

03:20:10.820 are wonderful, beautiful human beings,

03:20:13.080 just like women,

03:20:14.200 and would never hurt a woman

03:20:15.940 that they love or in their life at all.

03:20:18.860 In fact, they would want to hurt a man who did that.

03:20:21.120 But there is an unhealthy contingent.

03:20:24.920 And it's always, you know,

03:20:25.800 I mean, it's not always,

03:20:26.800 but it's just,

03:20:27.800 I grew up in the 70s

03:20:29.700 and every night on the news,

03:20:31.320 there were stories about the serial killers

03:20:32.680 killing all these women. 0.94

03:20:33.760 It's always like a series of women 1.00

03:20:35.220 who get killed by these weird men.

03:20:36.820 Something's gone wrong with them.

03:20:37.860 So what is it that's in their background that makes these guys be able to succeed in life, able to be well-liked, but instead of being a loving, caring husband, they go this route?

03:20:48.880 yeah so my background is in forensic and legal psychology so I have spent a lot of time in the

03:20:55.500 psychological research and analysis and the psychopathology of men who kill and and I will

03:21:02.440 say they're not all homogenous so we can't say it's all for the same reason specifically contexts

03:21:07.680 are different but what I can see is what is the thing that really is the motivator is this need

03:21:14.160 for power and control. And that power and control, well, you know, I'm going to mention the P word,

03:21:19.540 the patriarchy, because we all live in the patriarchy where laws and systems and processes

03:21:25.040 are created by men for men. And that's why women have a very tough time because our lived 0.96

03:21:30.120 experiences aren't included in laws, for example. So that's why we're having to change laws on 1.00

03:21:36.300 stalking and on coercive control. So it is this overriding need to have to control things,

03:21:43.640 to have power over. And Megan, you mentioned serial killers. I mean, it's all the same thing,

03:21:48.680 right? Because men who harm women in their significant lives, as in women who are significant

03:21:54.900 to them, can also harm women who are not significant to them. And this connection is

03:21:59.860 one that I made at New Scotland Yard by profiling domestic violence rapists. And I spent a lot of

03:22:05.220 time profiling 450 of them, looking at them and doing a psychological autopsy backwards of who

03:22:10.720 are they and what do they do? You know, the first five years of my career were trying to identify

03:22:16.220 the serial rapist, the serial killer, the serial perpetrator who abducts children. And the one

03:22:22.720 thing I found in their background consistently was domestic abuse and coercive control. So these

03:22:28.920 things do interconnect. And Dr. Robert Hare, who created the psychopathy checklist, he in 1993,

03:22:35.560 his research showed us that 25% of domestic violence perpetrators are psychopaths. And I

03:22:43.140 would expect that to be far higher as a figure now. And when I'm training police and others,

03:22:47.560 I'm always talking about psychopathy, because we don't screen enough for it. So there are,

03:22:53.120 unfortunately, many psychopaths who we may have relationships with, and they have this need for

03:22:59.700 power and control, and they have no empathy, they have no remorse. And it's all about them,

03:23:04.360 me myself and I the narcissism so that's what I see is the inter you know the thing that

03:23:10.380 interconnects that law enforcement are trained well this is domestic violence here and these

03:23:15.520 are the domestic violence perpetrators this is child abuse here this is sexual violence here

03:23:19.760 and they're taught in boxes and categories but that's not how offenders offend so the more that

03:23:27.780 we understand the traits of psychopathy and the more that we screen for it and that we take domestic

03:23:33.300 violence perpetrators seriously, and we see it as serious crime, and we hold them to account,

03:23:39.200 and we challenge their behavior looking for coercive control, then we start to get into

03:23:44.400 proper threat assessment and risk management. Can I just say a couple things? It actually used

03:23:50.460 to be the lie. I was criticizing Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Trump, for having said

03:23:55.460 this as recently as 2007 or 2008, saying the law is you cannot rape your wife. That is not true 0.55

03:24:02.220 in the state of New York, even as of 2007. 0.84

03:24:05.060 But at one point in our history, it was true.

03:24:09.100 So to your point of the laws,

03:24:10.340 the laws actually are really, 0.97

03:24:12.800 I mean, they don't protect women 0.90

03:24:15.120 in the way that they need.

03:24:16.520 Yes, certainly when it comes to murder,

03:24:17.960 but on domestic abuse, no.

03:24:19.640 On stalking, no.

03:24:20.780 I remember in my case, the stalking,

03:24:23.320 the requirements were I was going to have to,

03:24:25.440 I had to appear in person

03:24:27.160 if I wanted to make this complaint

03:24:28.880 against my stalker who was dangerous

03:24:31.860 who was already a felon, who was trained in weapons.

03:24:35.720 There was, and the number one rule

03:24:36.880 of dealing with a stalker is don't deal with the stalker.

03:24:39.280 Don't talk to the stalker.

03:24:40.260 Don't have interactions with the stalker.

03:24:42.040 Anything you have will be perceived as a yes.

03:24:44.800 And it was like, they were wanting me to show up in court

03:24:47.400 and deal with him. 0.98

03:24:48.060 I'm like, you gotta be crazy. 0.98

03:24:49.220 And I've talked to so many domestic abuse victims 0.97

03:24:51.480 who have the same requirement.

03:24:52.800 There's no way they wanna show up in court 0.51

03:24:54.500 with the husband who's been beating them

03:24:56.420 behind closed doors and doesn't want this

03:24:57.860 to become a known thing at all.

03:24:59.460 And I have to say it publicly, it's absurd.

03:25:01.860 yes and that's everything the stalker wants they want you to be in that courtroom and the same with

03:25:08.920 the domestic abuser you know that power and control and being able to see you terrified and

03:25:13.140 have that power and control over you and this is exactly why every legal process be it court you

03:25:18.680 have to have special measures that reflect women's experiences and by the way and you know this but

03:25:24.200 laws that protect us at the point of murder is too late you know what i've been trying to do is

03:25:29.780 prevent murders in slow motion. It's the what happens before that we get in and we early

03:25:34.800 identify, intervene and we prevent so that we don't have, particularly in America, four to five

03:25:39.780 women who are murdered every day by a current or former male partner. That is a stark finding.

03:25:47.680 And yet most people don't even realise how bad it is. But it's just increasing. And most people

03:25:54.180 don't know about the family annihilators or familicide and obviously what's reported in the

03:25:59.640 media is what people pay attention to so we've got a long way to go but a lot of my work in the UK

03:26:06.160 has had some you know very good results but unfortunately in law enforcement you can bring

03:26:13.220 something in and the leaders sign up to it and then they move on and someone else comes in you

03:26:17.520 get this constant cycle and churn of staff but it is important to have these conversations about

03:26:23.920 coercive control and stalking. And there is a lot that we can do to early identify,

03:26:30.100 intervene, and prevent. And a lot of it comes from listening to the victims.

03:26:34.820 The problem with a lot of abuse victims is they, of course, like when you look at the situation,

03:26:41.720 you think, oh, and I used to be one of these people. If he hit me, I'd be gone. I'd be out

03:26:47.200 of there. One hit. But it doesn't happen that simply. They build the control over the woman

03:26:56.060 over time. They love bomb you. They come into your life, this wonderful man. So the woman falls in 1.00

03:27:03.560 love with this seemingly wonderful person, sometimes marries this seemingly wonderful

03:27:07.480 person. And then bit by bit, the erosion of the woman, her autonomy, her independence begins. And

03:27:14.420 You make the small sacrifices first, only later do they turn into the big sacrifices.

03:27:19.800 And eventually, in many of these cases, it turns violent.

03:27:23.020 But by that point, the woman is so lost versus where she was a year earlier when they met, etc.

03:27:30.240 She does not have the same power or resolve or confidence or just strength that she once had.

03:27:37.400 They're very, very effective manipulators, these abusers.

03:27:40.540 yes and you use the word they're manipulators and you know this is a very it's a behavioral regime

03:27:47.960 really when we're talking about coercive control that a perpetrator will use to make someone fall

03:27:54.420 in love with them so they so the love bombing that is a strategic campaign to make someone

03:27:59.340 fall in love with them the gas lighting and the charm because many of these individuals are

03:28:05.840 actually charming. And that's a trait of psychopathy. So the charm can happen. The victim

03:28:10.680 can feel that they've met the right person. This is the love of their life. And that can be a

03:28:15.500 chemical reaction to the endorphins, the dopamine, all of these good chemicals to so that we mate

03:28:23.060 with somebody. So there is this thing of crazy love when somebody is love bombing us. We want

03:28:28.840 to feel special. Of course we do. And then we start to spend more time with that person. And

03:28:34.680 then gradually we may become more dependent on that person and that can be a strategic campaign

03:28:41.180 the setup can start from day one when we meet the perpetrator and then once we are in we tend to be

03:28:49.640 in deep and so it's it's very conflicting and it's very confusing and we think that we we love that

03:28:56.080 person but oftentimes we don't really know who they are because they're also forcing intimacy

03:29:00.060 very quickly. So the whirlwind relationship that happens. So I often say to women and girls who

03:29:07.500 are meant to slow down, enjoy the honeymoon period, get to know that person in every situation

03:29:12.300 possible, get to meet their family, their friends, understand exactly who they are,

03:29:16.680 where's the rush? Why jump in? And I always say intimacy takes time to build. So some of the

03:29:23.380 warning signs, if you've got someone who's trying to push the relationship very quickly, who's making

03:29:27.360 these grand declarations of love, like John Meehan did to Deborah Newell. I want to die in your arms. 0.99

03:29:34.160 I love you. I want to be with you forever, he says on date number two and three. Well, that's forced

03:29:40.100 intimacy. And that's not authentic. It's an artificial and superficial thing that's happening.

03:29:47.020 So slowing things down and really taking our time to get to know somebody is really important and

03:29:53.380 not giving too much information away about ourselves, you know, enjoy the courtship.

03:29:57.460 That's what I always say. It takes at least a year to really get to know someone.

03:30:01.980 But the coercive controller can be very good at bringing their A game to manipulate.

03:30:08.160 And it can all seem very plausible as well. But once they've got you under their control,

03:30:13.460 and once you are dependent upon that person, and normally they isolate you,

03:30:19.160 they want to take you away from your mom and your dad and your best friends.

03:30:22.600 So once you're isolated, you're very much within their monopoly, your perception is monopolized by them. And actually, Biderman, who studied prisoners of war, the eight principles of what he saw, what happens to someone who's having their autonomy and their agency eroded, he's put together these eight principles of the charter coercion.

03:30:45.720 it's exactly what I see. You overlay it with the victims of a coercive controller and it's exactly

03:30:51.400 the same traits that you see. So we should take it seriously. And some of these men are psychopaths

03:30:57.940 and they've learned their trade craft very well. I always say like, look around. Okay. After a 0.96

03:31:04.240 year, look around. Do you still have friends? Are you still in touch with your family? If not,

03:31:09.000 why not? Like take a hard look back and say, yes, okay. If you fall in love, you prioritize the

03:31:13.120 other person. It's this mad, like, oh, I only want to be with him. Okay. But most normal people do

03:31:18.680 not want to steer you away from your family, find reasons for you not to take the trip home to see

03:31:23.020 mom, divert the phone call to or from mom or dad. None of that is normal. That's the beginning.

03:31:32.020 Yeah. So healthy relationship is very much, and I might sound a bit LA woo-woo here,

03:31:36.820 but it's very much about opening someone's world up and helping them reach their full potential.

03:31:42.300 if you genuinely love someone and care for them you want their world to be bigger you want them

03:31:47.460 to experience everything in life but what I see with the coercive control is they do the opposite

03:31:52.580 they shrink the victim's world down they want to micromanage and micro control every part of it

03:31:58.520 and they don't want other people interfering like the mums and the dads and the best friends

03:32:02.440 so they shrink the world down and it's actually much more about what they're taking away

03:32:07.140 from the woman. And it's an unfreedom that happens because yes, the victim might not be

03:32:13.500 in shackles or chains, but they're invisible chains. So what are some of the questions to

03:32:18.980 determine whether you're looking at coercive control? Well, we'd never ask someone direct,

03:32:24.560 are you being coercively controlled? Because it's a very new term. But what you're trying

03:32:29.100 to understand is whether somebody has their own autonomy and freedom to make their own choices.

03:32:34.460 so you know and do they feel safe to make their own choices i.e could they just go to work or

03:32:40.380 could they go and see a friend without having to check in with their partner couldn't can they

03:32:45.440 decide what they want to wear and what they're going to eat and when they go to the gym or under

03:32:51.400 are they under micro surveillance and every detail of their lives is being regulated by somebody else

03:32:57.980 and there's a fear of consequence if they breach any of those rules that are being put in place by

03:33:04.440 the abuser. And what I also see about these rules that get put in place, i.e. what you can eat,

03:33:10.960 who you can see, when you can see them, how you dress, how you have your hair.

03:33:17.300 If you have a job, then maybe you're only allowed to interact. If you're a hairdresser,

03:33:21.440 you're only allowed to cut women's hair, not men's hair. These are all the rules that I've

03:33:26.280 seen laid down for victims. So you're really trying to check on somebody, have they got

03:33:31.400 their own agency? Have they got their own autonomy? Have they got freedom to make decisions about

03:33:37.720 their own life and how they conduct themselves on a day-to-day basis? And normally with the

03:33:43.360 victims, it's the smallest things that are so insidious that they're not allowed to do, or

03:33:49.140 there's this unfreedom where they have to check in with that other person at all times. Even if

03:33:56.160 they go and see a friend, they have to take a picture to show where they are and who they're

03:34:00.700 with. Or like with Oscars Pistorius with some of his previous girlfriends, he used to make them

03:34:06.500 take a photo of themselves wearing their pajamas to prove that they were sat at home. I've even

03:34:11.740 seen a perpetrator say to a victim, they have to flush the toilet at home so that he knows that

03:34:16.440 they are at home and they haven't left because the toilet had a very specific sound. And these

03:34:21.080 are all the micro rules and regulations that you're trying to understand. Is that how somebody's

03:34:26.640 having to live their life. Are they isolated? Are they closed down and closed off? Even if the

03:34:32.220 victim says it's how they want to live their life. Well, as human beings, we like to interact

03:34:39.600 with people. So even when I hear someone telling me that, I know that there is likely coercion there.

03:34:47.040 I, not long ago, was at a social event where they were serving hors d'oeuvres. And this

03:34:54.020 particular husband said to his thin in shape wife who was grabbing an hors d'oeuvre. Do you really

03:35:01.800 think you need that? And it was, it just made my skin crawl because it's not, yes, it's rude to

03:35:09.700 suggest this thin woman, you know, to monitor what she's eating at all, thin or fat. But it, to me,

03:35:17.840 it just telegraphed there's, there's way more there that there, if he's doing that in public,

03:35:22.600 in front of me and others,

03:35:25.180 I can only imagine what happens behind closed doors.

03:35:27.640 So there are these little red flags

03:35:29.160 even for us outsiders with our friends.

03:35:33.180 Yes, and oftentimes we don't pick up on those things, right?

03:35:37.320 And even if a victim, we're friends with someone

03:35:39.860 and then they fall off the radar,

03:35:41.480 we think, well, maybe it's something we've done

03:35:43.200 rather than actually,

03:35:44.600 are they being told not to speak to Laura?

03:35:47.340 And they're not allowed to speak to me,

03:35:49.360 but we tend to look inwardly first.

03:35:51.060 It's probably something I've done,

03:35:52.220 so I'm not going to overstep where I always say to people check in with your friend just see how

03:35:56.520 they're doing don't think it's something that you've done ask them about that comment and how

03:36:00.500 it made them feel because oftentimes we isolate the victim even more by not asking them that

03:36:06.040 question but yes that that is red flag behavior you know it's up to us as adults to choose if we

03:36:12.680 want to eat something or not we don't have to check in with someone but just sowing that seed

03:36:17.120 and corralling, you know, that seed in someone's head.

03:36:20.300 Well, maybe I shouldn't eat this.

03:36:21.760 And it's like a closing down of someone

03:36:24.020 and making them second-guess themselves.

03:36:25.940 And before you know it,

03:36:27.040 these little behaviors become bigger

03:36:28.980 and a victim doesn't even know which way is up anymore.

03:36:32.600 They're gaslit and they've got this reality distortion.

03:36:35.500 They don't know what they like anymore

03:36:36.780 and they can't make their own decisions.

03:36:39.260 And Laura, I think an important point too

03:36:41.480 is that this can happen to any woman.

03:36:43.880 I know, you know, some women think, 1.00

03:36:46.140 oh, I'm too well-educated. I am too rich. I come from too good a family. I have too good 0.97

03:36:51.840 a support system around me. It can happen to any woman. It can. And what I'll say is oftentimes 1.00

03:36:59.480 these individuals are attracted to very strong women. So, you know, that can be a barrier for

03:37:04.980 someone sharing their experience because they say, well, everyone thought I was such a strong

03:37:09.260 woman. I had it together. It couldn't possibly happen to someone like me, but it does. It can

03:37:15.060 happen to anybody. There's no particular profile when it comes to the victim. And yes, I think we

03:37:22.680 carry these stereotypes in our head about the type of person that will suffer and be subjected to

03:37:28.720 domestic abuse and coercive control, but there is no type. But with the perpetrator, there is

03:37:34.540 more of a psychopathology. It is about them needing to control things, needing to have things their

03:37:40.660 way, you know, and some women would tell me they have to win at all costs. And these are some of 0.98

03:37:47.480 the key things that when I'm listening to women describe what's happening to them, they have to 1.00

03:37:51.900 win at all costs. It's their way or the highway, you know, for them, it's no way at all. And it 1.00

03:37:58.480 ends when I say it ends and we will live together as man and wife until I decide otherwise. That

03:38:04.520 tells me really there's only one person in the relationship.

03:38:10.660 What's fascinating about this, this is a serious problem and well worth discussing.

03:38:17.380 I'm glad we're doing it, obviously.

03:38:18.280 But as I listen to this, not a ton of this relates in my mind to Alec Murdoch or Chris Watts or this guy, Joe McDonald.

03:38:30.000 And we can outline the details of those second two cases.

03:38:32.660 I mean, I think most people at this point understand what happened with Alec Murdoch.

03:38:35.260 But in case you don't, he was just found guilty of murdering his wife and his son, his 22-year-old son.

03:38:40.660 He shot them both, shot his son, Paul, in the face,

03:38:44.880 shot his son's head off, was the testimony.

03:38:48.580 Shot his wife, Maggie, at least five times. 0.95

03:38:50.600 It was a painful death.

03:38:53.140 And was this very well-respected attorney,

03:38:55.220 fourth generation, money, law.

03:38:58.100 His whole family had been the solicitors

03:39:00.000 in this so-called low country in South Carolina.

03:39:03.920 And that means like the chief prosecutor.

03:39:06.780 So they really were the law.

03:39:08.540 And he had a decent amount of dough.

03:39:11.680 We later found out he was on drugs or so he said,

03:39:14.440 had tons of money problems.

03:39:15.940 He'd been stealing all this money from his law firm and so on.

03:39:17.780 So his life was imploding.

03:39:19.120 But just on paper, the guy looked like he had it all together.

03:39:22.500 And I listened to the whole trial.

03:39:23.960 There was no allegation of domestic abuse.

03:39:26.280 There was definitely outside of the trial

03:39:28.760 an allegation that he cheated on her

03:39:30.320 that did not wind up in front of the jury.

03:39:33.380 The sister of Maggie, the murder victim,

03:39:36.100 said that she was happy.

03:39:38.100 She said, you know, they had the problems, but she was happy.

03:39:40.920 So, you know, it wasn't, there was no evidence of a controlling personality when it came

03:39:44.720 to her, I guess.

03:39:45.800 I mean, not that you'll tell me, but, and then the son, of course, I don't, the son

03:39:50.040 had gotten him in trouble.

03:39:51.620 The son had been driving the boat in his fatal boat crash that killed a 19-year-old girl,

03:39:55.860 Mallory Beach.

03:39:56.560 They were being sued for it.

03:39:57.660 It was really upending Alex's life.

03:39:59.720 But I just, let's start there.

03:40:02.180 Do you see coercive control in the Alec Murdoch case?

03:40:06.520 yes and the clue is in the fact that he controlled everything their family controlled everything that

03:40:15.740 name in that region is a very powerful name and we mustn't lose track of that they created the

03:40:22.680 laws they were the law right so he always got his way and that's a very important point because

03:40:29.560 when someone always gets their way they don't have to uh be irate or upset about something

03:40:36.320 because they can just control things through their power,

03:40:39.480 their personal power, but also their family power.

03:40:42.160 And just looking at what happened with Paul

03:40:44.280 and what a horrific situation with Mallory on the boat.

03:40:48.620 And I first just want to say, you know,

03:40:50.540 she really is the primary victim, the first victim,

03:40:54.320 and that Paul put the boat into gear,

03:40:57.820 having assaulted his ex-girlfriend

03:41:00.020 and assaulted her in front of everybody.

03:41:02.300 And that was the first time that others saw that he was abusing her.

03:41:05.840 Well, where did he learn that behavior from of abusing her?

03:41:09.140 Multiple times, there was a whole history.

03:41:11.140 He was 22, or he was younger then, but he was abusing her.

03:41:15.620 And she gave testimony about horrific abuse that she suffered.

03:41:19.900 Well, where did he learn that from?

03:41:21.680 And his entitlement was off the...

03:41:22.180 She's come on camera.

03:41:23.120 She's now in a special talking all about it.

03:41:25.320 I saw it too.

03:41:26.140 It was chilling, and it was repeated.

03:41:29.020 And horrific abuse.

03:41:30.460 And I applaud her for speaking out.

03:41:33.000 But I don't think the apple falls far from the tree.

03:41:35.840 And he's learned that behavior somewhere in his name.

03:41:38.800 He's learned that he calls his granddad up and his dad,

03:41:41.620 and they fix everything for him.

03:41:43.540 So there's no accountability, no responsibility taking,

03:41:46.320 and that's what that family have been doing for generations

03:41:48.740 because they were the law, and people were scared of them.

03:41:52.520 And I've spoken to people in that area.

03:41:54.360 They've told me this themselves, so we mustn't forget the name

03:41:57.320 and their wealth and what that means to what they can have power over

03:42:03.160 and who they can have power over.

03:42:04.640 And here you have a situation where Paul and that particular civil case, well, all of that was coming home to roost in that the accounts were going to be audited and they were part of that civil trial and they had been requested.

03:42:20.320 And Alec had also been challenged by the chief financial officer for to the tune of eight hundred thousand dollars going missing in legal fees.

03:42:29.140 And he was challenged about that. Right.

03:42:32.320 So his world is starting to unravel. Maggie had left him. She was living in the beach house. She

03:42:38.320 wasn't living at Moselle. So there's separation. And we know that with separation, 76% of murders

03:42:43.900 happen at the point of separation. And when Alec had actually messaged her to say, I want to meet

03:42:49.760 up with you, she had texted her sister saying, I wonder what he's up to. You know, he's up to

03:42:54.100 something. And that's why she goes to meet him up at the kennels. But there were rumors that she

03:43:00.360 wanted a divorce. There were rumors that she had a forensic accountant coming in and things were 0.99

03:43:06.320 unraveling. And therefore he is now in a situation where he feels like he's losing control. Well,

03:43:11.960 that can be a catastrophic set of circumstances for a man who is a lawyer. So let's not forget

03:43:18.880 equally, you know, a good trial lawyer, someone who's very good at reading people and situations

03:43:24.100 and up until this point has not got into trouble. But I believe he was trying to control the

03:43:29.980 situation and the narrative. He was trying to control Paul and he was angry at him, hence the

03:43:35.260 injuries and crime scene assessment. We look at, I look at how someone's killed because that paints

03:43:41.760 a picture, the way that he was killed and the way Maggie was. And he was the one that was there

03:43:47.360 at that time. That was proven through Snapchat, through the videos that Paul took, him and Maggie

03:43:52.760 talking. So he lied about being present, but he was there. And he lied about whether he checked

03:43:58.320 their pulses or not. He didn't have time to check their pulses and he'd changed his clothes.

03:44:03.080 So this to me is somebody who is very controlling, very manipulative. And of course, there are 99

03:44:09.700 charges that are still outstanding, the financial charges. So for me, this is a, and I don't like

03:44:16.480 to use the word classic, but it is a classic domestic violence murder. And yes, there's debt,

03:44:21.480 there's money issues and so on. And it was unraveling, but it's got all the hallmarks.

03:44:25.980 And, you know, in terms of psychopathy traits, well, they all seem to be there, particularly lack of empathy and remorse and responsibility taking.

03:44:35.020 Yes. Well, let's go there because this is what I don't get it.

03:44:38.980 I don't get how because they showed the family videos of the birthday parties and everyone seemed to really love him.

03:44:46.200 His kids seemed to really love him. He seemed to show love for his children as well.

03:44:50.700 I don't know that he was in the running for father of the year, but there was testimony

03:44:54.520 that they seemed like a very loving family. It wasn't outwardly, at least perceived by anybody

03:44:59.960 who took that witness stand as a damaged, dysfunctional family in the sense of abuse or

03:45:05.680 in that sense. So what makes a man- But it depends what you're looking for,

03:45:11.500 doesn't it, Megan? Totally. To the point that we've been discussing for 40 minutes. But

03:45:15.880 what makes a man who, I'm just going to say that he did love his son, Paul. I don't know how he

03:45:20.540 felt about Maggie, but I'm going to say he loved his son. Like, I don't know, maybe not, maybe he's

03:45:26.000 not capable of, how can a man who does love his son shoot his head off like that one day, you know,

03:45:32.520 seemingly out of the blue? Well, my first question before we get to that one is why was Paul drinking

03:45:39.700 to such excess? You know, a kid who's drinking that amount of alcohol to blot stuff out tells

03:45:46.940 me there's more that's going on. And I don't profess to know the family. That is such a good

03:45:49.720 point. Can I just say no one's asking that? That's like all the coverage I have done of this case and

03:45:54.400 listened to of this case. No one, I have yet to hear anybody ask that question. That's a very

03:45:58.900 good question. Because he wasn't just drinking to socialize, was he? He was drinking to absolute

03:46:04.280 excess that his friends said that this Timmy character came out, this very angry, abusive

03:46:10.140 drunk? Why was he drinking to that level? And why were his family letting him? That tells me a lot.

03:46:18.240 And if I were to go in and ask questions, I think I'd probably uncover a lot, well, a different

03:46:23.140 story and the narrative to this happy, healthy family dynamic. Because there's nothing healthy

03:46:30.340 in a young boy not taking responsibility for his actions and a grandfather and a father who are

03:46:36.460 just happy to sweep it all under the carpet, no matter how bad, no matter who gets injured

03:46:41.180 and hurt, you know, there's very little empathy or care for anybody else other than them.

03:46:47.740 It's all about circling the wagons and protecting themselves, even when Mallory died. And I do think

03:46:54.300 that that is the biggest fear and threat for Alec Murdoch is all of it is unravelling and it's about

03:47:01.320 the reflection on him. He wants to do what he's always done, which is circle the wagons, close

03:47:06.720 everybody down, shut everything, take their voices away so that no one says what's really gone on.

03:47:12.740 But it is all about to come out in a civil case, particularly the forensic accounting. So it's all

03:47:18.660 about to be laid bare. And I think that when someone feels they are at that stage and the

03:47:23.720 psychopathology for someone like him, where they're about to lose everything, as he sees it,

03:47:28.880 he's the most important person. And he's eliminating the problem. And the problems

03:47:35.340 are Paul and Maggie, because Maggie's there. So it's all a means to an end, which tells me

03:47:42.980 that there's a high probability that he would score highly on the psychopathy checklist.

03:47:49.900 What kind of questions are on that list? That seems like an interesting

03:47:53.460 list to have, like for your first date? Well, they are, and I do indirect assessments of

03:48:00.080 perpetrators, and particularly when we talk about psychopathy, because one of the traits is a 0.88

03:48:05.180 pathological, that they're a pathological liar, right? So you wouldn't want to rely on them,

03:48:10.160 their self-report, because they lie. And that's everything I've seen about his behavior, right?

03:48:17.280 that's what he did. And superficial charm, that's the first trait that you ask about,

03:48:23.140 where somebody has a glebe sense of charm. It's not really who they are. And charm is very much

03:48:28.880 a manipulator. It's a choice. We're not born with charm. A grandiose estimation of self,

03:48:34.780 so thinking you're bigger and better than who you really are. Pathological liar, 0.99

03:48:39.000 proneness to boredom and impulsivity, manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, 0.73

03:48:47.300 lack of responsibility taking, shallow effect and superficial emotional response to things.

03:48:54.060 So oftentimes the emotional range is very limited. So with family annihilators, that's

03:49:00.540 what I tend to see. Their emotional range is limited. Parasitic lifestyle, sexual promiscuity.

03:49:07.720 So if there's infidelity, I'm always very interested in that when someone.

03:49:12.240 Happened in all three of the cases, all three that I mentioned, Murdoch, Watts and McDonald.

03:49:16.960 And it's often they want what they want.

03:49:19.400 And like with Chris Watts, who's in a relationship with with Nikki and lots of people blamed her were actually it's his behavior.

03:49:26.480 It's his actions, even though what he did makes no sense in terms of a long term plan.

03:49:32.420 And perhaps we'll get to that because psychopaths, in fact, I'll say it now, but psychopaths are very good in the moment, but they're not good long term planners and they have early behavioral problems and lack of realistic long term goals.

03:49:46.520 So that's what I was talking to with good in the moment, but not very good on a longer term.

03:49:51.840 Can I just jump in and ask you a quick about one you said before that shallow affect?

03:49:56.100 What do you mean?

03:49:56.720 yeah so again it's it's a very superficial sense of a reaction to things because because they can

03:50:04.280 be chameleon-esque so what they tend to do is mimic other people particularly when it comes

03:50:11.000 to empathy so they will describe things like chris watts did he said i was bawling my eyes out

03:50:16.240 well if you're crying tell us the emotion of that crying not describing the crying

03:50:23.120 And when he first interacted with law enforcement

03:50:25.020 and they appeared, everything was shallow effect.

03:50:27.340 There was no, he described having emotions,

03:50:30.300 but he didn't show us the emotion.

03:50:33.200 There was no sign of him crying.

03:50:35.180 This reminds me of a show I did when I was on NBC.

03:50:37.520 I call it the Mothers of Sparta show.

03:50:39.240 It's a long story, 0.96

03:50:40.220 but essentially it was mothers of sociopaths. 0.95

03:50:42.640 It was mothers of teenage sociopaths. 0.61

03:50:45.260 And the mothers knew, the mothers knew.

03:50:48.500 And we're jumping up and down saying,

03:50:49.880 I am the mother of the next school shooter.

03:50:51.820 I'm telling you, there's no place for me to go.

03:50:53.400 I can't get help.

03:50:54.440 Nobody will take this person.

03:50:55.380 They haven't yet committed a crime,

03:50:56.920 but they can't yet be committed civilly, so on.

03:50:59.200 So one of the moms was saying,

03:51:02.100 her 16-year-old who was obsessed with child pornography, 0.83

03:51:06.900 she knew she was, she was at her wit's end.

03:51:09.840 She was trying to get him help or arrested at that point.

03:51:13.260 She said he was doing better

03:51:15.380 because he was learning how to feign empathy.

03:51:19.200 she's like you know he's he's doing a little better now because he's learning the how it

03:51:24.820 looks on someone's face and when to use that facial expression in this certain tone she saw

03:51:32.080 that as you know a possible ticket into the quote normal world for him and I just I never forgot that

03:51:38.760 thinking is that a good thing no is the answer and you know your reaction is right and you know

03:51:47.320 children are taught how to think about emotions when they're little. And I think that is very

03:51:52.040 important, but it's a feeling. It's not a description and it's not a mirror mirroring

03:51:59.020 back of. And yes, that she might be putting it in the positive because maybe she thought that

03:52:04.640 he was getting a sense of the feeling rather than just acting the emotion. And that is one of the

03:52:11.060 clear signs of psychopathy. And we know it when we see it, when someone's not authentic in that

03:52:16.520 feeling that's everything I saw about Chris Watts describing emotion not feeling it there was no

03:52:21.920 point where he said I just can't bear this she's got lupus I'm so worried she's got the children

03:52:27.640 what okay you're giving me your business card but where are you going to go and what are you

03:52:31.480 going to do we've got to find her there was no emotion at all he was had cognitive load because

03:52:36.440 he just remembered everything that he was meant to do and say and that's why it was a very

03:52:41.160 inauthentic interaction right from the start so yeah I'm going to show a soundbite from him in

03:52:45.900 one second, but I want to let you finish your list. I interrupted because that shallow affect

03:52:50.260 sounded interesting to me. So you keep going. Yes. Well, the next one, actually, Megan relates

03:52:54.440 to exactly what you just said, juvenile delinquency. So when, you know, a kid's constantly

03:52:58.700 getting into trouble and yes, mums do know. And what I will say is that when mums reach out for

03:53:04.660 help, you know, there really is a problem, you know, because fierce mama bears, you know, I'm a

03:53:09.740 mama, you want to protect your child. And, you know, oftentimes they may be protected.

03:53:16.320 But, and we've seen that with Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, right, to the nth degree where

03:53:22.040 they say that they love Gabby and she was like a daughter to them, but yet she doesn't return any

03:53:26.780 of the Petito family's calls to where is Gabby when Brian returns home in their daughter's van,

03:53:32.960 not even in his own van, without his fiance. So there we've got a clear example of a mom and

03:53:39.460 are protecting some but you know equally if you have somebody saying I need help and it's because

03:53:45.320 of all these traits that I'm seeing that's when we can actually work together to intervene and

03:53:52.420 prevent something more serious happening and help with someone's psychosocial development

03:53:57.120 so yeah the juvenile delinquency short-term extramarital relationships irresponsibility I

03:54:04.340 think i said an impulsivity and criminal revocation um breaching orders so not ever able to control

03:54:14.180 their impulsivity and criminal versatility so if they score 30 or over um they're a psychopath

03:54:22.180 and unfortunately there are more than what dr hair originally uh said about one percent in

03:54:29.080 the population because we rarely screen for psychopathy. I think it's a really important

03:54:40.020 thing that professionals really do up their game, particularly when we're talking about domestic

03:54:44.340 violence, because some of the individuals we've talked about, I believe are psychopaths. And right

03:54:50.140 now there isn't a cure for psychopathy. That's not that some psychologists say, well, just because

03:54:54.680 we haven't found it yet it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't exist do you is there a distinction

03:55:01.720 for you between sociopaths and psychopaths yes i mean you know the the lack of um empathy

03:55:10.460 is the biggest tell of a psychopath i mean sociopaths don't believe the rules apply to them

03:55:16.980 and you know there is a diagnostic test again that you can do they don't believe the rules apply to

03:55:22.000 them but they tend to understand what they're doing is wrong and they may still have empathy

03:55:28.080 but with psychopathy they genuinely do not feel they have no ability to put themselves in that

03:55:33.680 other person's shoes and feel you know upset or distressed that's why appealing to them just

03:55:39.300 doesn't work or a victim's family but tell us where her body is you know they won't emote at

03:55:44.120 all they won't have that feeling so empathy is the biggest flag out of the 20 that somebody's

03:55:51.920 a psychopath. Would you say Alex Murdoch is a psychopath? I mean, I have to be careful here

03:55:59.400 because I haven't indirectly assessed him of putting together everything that others who

03:56:03.960 know him best, because I rely on the people in that person's life to report on everything they

03:56:11.240 know about that person. But seeing the lack of empathy, again, the fact he can sit there in

03:56:18.380 court the fact everything that he did thereafter and the way that even when an officer appeared

03:56:24.120 the first responder to that call um he basically said how are you doing and just went into this

03:56:31.800 mode of chatting normally to him when his wife and son had been brutally murdered and he's

03:56:37.420 approaching it how you're doing all very casual um and then getting out just like chris watts

03:56:43.220 getting out the narrative that he needs to convey and seeing very little emotion. And

03:56:49.800 what emotion he did show in court, I don't believe the jurors bought it. I think they felt that that

03:56:55.280 was shallow effect. It wasn't authentic. It didn't seem authentic to me, I have to say, but people

03:57:00.520 emote in different ways. But everything that happened after the shooting, he alleged that he

03:57:05.280 was shot and came out with this whole narrative that seemed to connect with the first narrative

03:57:10.240 when he said it was, you know, revenge because of Paul's crash.

03:57:14.860 That's what he said originally to the first responder

03:57:17.100 as to why Maggie and Paul were dead.

03:57:19.440 And he seemed to have this story that he was sticking to,

03:57:22.380 but a real lack of empathy and, you know, devastation

03:57:27.180 for the fact that Maggie and Paul are dead.

03:57:31.000 It's comforting to know that there is a checklist, you know,

03:57:33.760 because you don't want to think,

03:57:36.260 I'm sure there's a lot of people out there thinking,

03:57:37.660 am I married to a psychopath?

03:57:39.080 How do I know?

03:57:39.520 Because Alec Murdoch was such an effective manipulator, as you point out, that's a common

03:57:44.180 trait that they have. All these people were taking this stand and saying, I felt totally duped. I

03:57:49.600 feel like I did not know him at all once his terrible financial crimes came out. I mean,

03:57:54.840 taking care of kids who had just lost their mother, taking care of kids with cancer,

03:57:58.300 you know, kids in terrible car accidents and so on. These people say, I just, I had no idea who

03:58:03.700 he actually was. And so there'll be a lot of people thinking, am I married to somebody who

03:58:07.360 I don't actually know, but there's a long list. And so you've got to be able to tick off a bunch

03:58:12.180 of these things, um, before you get to the point of, I might be with a psychopath. Um, this is all

03:58:18.660 like amazing. Let's talk about Chris Watts because we mentioned him a few times and I'm sure the

03:58:21.900 audience is looking for a reminder on him and his story. So this was Colorado, um, 90, I want to get

03:58:29.380 the, get it in front of me. Hold on a second. It's page 18. I think, uh, Colorado, 2018 and, uh,

03:58:36.540 Frederick, Colorado. He was 33 and he strangled his wife, 34-year-old Shanann Watts, who was 15

03:58:43.580 weeks pregnant with their third child, who was a boy. They had two girls. They had a three-year-old

03:58:48.440 daughter, Celeste, and a four-year-old daughter, Bella. And this guy, this relationship, this whole

03:58:55.420 story so confuses me. Again, I've gone down the rabbit hole on this. Look at him. He's a good

03:58:59.760 looking guy. He had a job. It wasn't like a, like a surgeon, like we're going to get to with

03:59:06.500 Jeff McDonald. Um, he was, he worked at the Weld County oil site and she had a good job too.

03:59:14.160 Middle-class family, um, had some financial problems, but not overwhelming, uh, and pervasive

03:59:20.500 had what looked like the perfect family, the neighbors and the Netflix documentary. I think

03:59:25.980 it was described. And they were saying like, I watched Chris Watts. I thought I got to up my

03:59:30.460 game as a parent. I got to spend more time with my kids. Got to get out there and throw the ball

03:59:34.760 with him. Look at him. Look at this guy. He, according to the reports, was the more subservient

03:59:42.860 one. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but she seemed more dominant than he did. She seemed

03:59:47.520 more in control in terms of family decision-making. You know, this is where I want to live. This is

03:59:53.040 what I want for the girls. This is what I want you to do. And he seemed more of like a yes man

03:59:58.280 than someone who is engaging in coercive control. This is my lay person's opinion. You can take

04:00:04.140 this apart in a second. That's my approach, my takeaway, watching it. Then he loses a bunch of

04:00:09.560 weight. Never a good sign in a marriage. Loses a bunch of weight and starts an affair with a

04:00:16.080 coworker. And his wife, Shanann, goes away with the girls for six weeks to visit family in North

04:00:20.940 Carolina. He falls for this other woman pretty hard. And we know, I think it's from his Google

04:00:28.680 searches that he was Googling things like, when do you say I love you? Like, what does it feel

04:00:35.060 like to be in love? Weird searches that a normal person would not be doing that are definitely a

04:00:42.240 flag. And then the wife comes back from the business trip at two in the morning. She'd been 0.93

04:00:47.140 with the girlfriends on a true business trip. Comes back at two in the morning. And what we

04:00:51.760 know is now, because he ultimately confessed, he strangled her to death. They had a fight. They had

04:00:58.520 some sort of an argument. He strangled her to death. He says he took his two daughters who 0.51

04:01:05.140 were alive in the backseat of the truck over their dead mother's body, which was on the floor of the

04:01:11.800 back seat, drove to the oil site, smothered his three-year-old and his five-year-old.

04:01:18.120 The five-year-old said, are you going to do to me what you just did to Cece, the three-year-old,

04:01:23.880 and said, daddy, no. It's too horrific to even really conjure. And he did it anyway.

04:01:31.900 He did it anyway. And then he disposed of the daughter's bodies in the oil tanks,

04:01:37.420 put one in one oil tank and one in the other.

04:01:41.040 So gruesome, he could even describe the sound

04:01:43.540 of their little bodies hitting the liquid

04:01:47.240 and buried his wife in a shallow grave nearby.

04:01:51.260 This guy who had friends,

04:01:54.400 who again was perceived by some as his model father,

04:01:58.200 who doesn't have some long criminal history,

04:02:01.960 I don't get it.

04:02:03.540 And I'm desperate to get it.

04:02:05.140 Would you help me get it?

04:02:07.420 Yes, and I think the way you describe it, you know, again, people should remember what he did and what he said he did too. And he has changed his narrative at least four times, but the way that he described putting their bodies into that oil tanker, I believe that version of what happened.

04:02:25.040 And for us all to think about the fear and the terror that the children must feel, having seen what happened, I believe Bella saw what happened to her mum, and then having this sense that these horrific things are going to happen to you at the hands of your daddy, someone who's meant to care, love you and look after you.

04:02:46.360 And those moments are just so haunting. And I think when we when we understand how the media characterized him as a good father, a good dad, this, you know, perfect, dutiful husband.

04:02:58.480 And of course, there are all these different videos of Shanann because her business was on Facebook of her and she was described as bossy and this nagging woman and too strong.

04:03:10.900 and instantly we get into the victim blame

04:03:14.460 and the empathy of excusing what he did

04:03:17.380 and that is everything wrong

04:03:19.660 with the way these cases are not only understood

04:03:23.060 but the way that they're talked about in the media

04:03:25.620 and when we think about

04:03:27.040 when Chris and Shanann first got together

04:03:29.680 she was very ill with lupus

04:03:31.460 and she was heavily dependent on him

04:03:34.420 she thought he was her saviour

04:03:35.960 and that's what she said

04:03:37.480 she couldn't have got by without him

04:03:39.400 so the relationship dynamic was very different she was wholly dependent on him they got married

04:03:45.760 she didn't know whether she could have children and then by a miracle because of lupus she had

04:03:50.520 two children two girls and then the relationship dynamic started to change and she started to work

04:03:58.420 more and yes they had debt and that's another important point but the dynamic shifted and she

04:04:03.620 was working she was going out she was no longer as dependent on him and as you described you know

04:04:11.980 the dynamic shift and that can happen in a relationship he then starts this thrive program

04:04:17.340 which is something that she's advocating for as well as part of her business and he starts to

04:04:21.860 lose all this weight and then he starts to feel himself more and he's taking this introvert is

04:04:27.100 now becoming someone quite different even Shanann said that she didn't know he was taking videos of

04:04:32.900 himself working out. And then he meets Nikki and he falls for her hook, line and sinker. He's

04:04:39.740 writing her these love notes at a time where Shanann is sensing that things are going terribly

04:04:44.360 wrong in their relationship. And then she finds out she's pregnant. And maybe that pregnancy is

04:04:49.540 used as a way to try and bring them closer. But of course, what we know is that babies don't tend

04:04:55.540 to bring you closer. They tend to add more stress and pressure. And he, by other people's opinions,

04:05:02.160 didn't want the baby. They had a gender reveal party that was cancelled and she sensed that he

04:05:06.800 didn't want the baby. And even the video of them announcing the baby, he just clearly wasn't happy

04:05:13.980 about the whole thing. And you can say he was shy on camera, but you can see that he was not excited

04:05:19.980 about it. He cancelled this gender reveal. He was seeing Nikki. He wanted to invest in that

04:05:25.580 relationship. He told Nikki that he had separated or was separating from Shanann, which wasn't

04:05:32.600 happening. And Shanann goes off. You know, she's writing these letters to him saying, I'll do

04:05:38.880 anything to fix it. Tell me what you need, Chris. And he's withholding sex from her. He is completely

04:05:45.440 out of the relationship and she's desperate to restore the relationship. And his attention is

04:05:51.520 elsewhere. He's doing these Google searches. When do you tell someone that you're in love with them

04:05:55.260 or how. Well, that tells you about shallow effect. It's not really a feeling because you just say it

04:06:01.720 and you do it. You don't research it to understand it, right? So that's the shallow effect.

04:06:10.600 Well, what did you make of his, this is my own antiquated notion of control. You know, I

04:06:17.160 didn't feel like he was the one controlling because she's writing him these notes like,

04:06:23.040 I've been gone for six weeks. You haven't, you've called me twice. You'd think a man would want to

04:06:27.640 talk to his wife and daughters. And he writes back, you're so right. I'm so sorry. I love you, 1.00

04:06:34.260 honey. I'll do better. All of his notes back during that six week period. And this is all

04:06:40.340 leading up to the murder. It's right before he murders them. He's, you know, he's using the 0.78

04:06:45.840 emojis. He's really, you know, kind of sweet. Yes, he's ignoring her, but when he texts,

04:06:51.520 it always seems to be from like a beta role, you know, that just how I read those texts.

04:06:57.720 And the reason I found it alarming is it just didn't sound like someone who's going to go

04:07:01.020 commit a murder. I don't know what somebody sounds like who's going to go commit a triple

04:07:04.160 murder, but I just don't picture them using emojis. And so where am I going wrong?

04:07:10.040 Well, they tend to be very cool, calm and collected, actually. Every case I've seen,

04:07:14.840 when we've had even CCTV footage of them in the act, it's cool, calm and collected.

04:07:20.120 But where are you going wrong?

04:07:22.080 I wouldn't say you're going wrong.

04:07:23.160 You're interpreting what you're seeing.

04:07:25.380 But my interpretation would be he's managing her.

04:07:28.000 He's manipulating her.

04:07:29.420 He's keeping her at arm's length, telling her what she needs to hear

04:07:33.120 to get off his back because he's cheating on her.

04:07:35.880 He's going sand dune surfing with Nikki.

04:07:39.320 He clearly wants to be with Nikki.

04:07:41.040 He's telling Nikki that he's going to leave Shanann.

04:07:44.300 Nikki suspects he's cheating on her.

04:07:47.340 Because as women, we know.

04:07:49.120 We know the signs. 0.96

04:07:50.640 We may not tell people about it,

04:07:52.260 but Shanann actually did.

04:07:53.780 She did go to that conference after that trip

04:07:56.940 and that's where she was when she came back

04:07:58.720 at one o'clock or whatever it was.

04:08:00.720 She had found that on their credit card,

04:08:03.860 because they didn't have much money,

04:08:05.000 there was, I think it was something like $60

04:08:06.400 that the lazy dog had been spent. 1.00

04:08:09.380 She believed it was, she was cheating.

04:08:12.180 He was cheating on her.

04:08:13.560 I believe that she came back to confront him

04:08:16.220 because she came back early

04:08:17.420 and her best friend said she wasn't herself at the conference she was just really out of sorts

04:08:22.680 she wasn't eating she was really upset and I believe she came back to confront him and it's

04:08:28.720 at the point of being confronted he says that he pushed her off of him or he yeah he put he got

04:08:36.020 himself off of her and I believe that they were having sex there was some attempt to restore the

04:08:41.400 relationship but his account he said I told her I didn't love her and I didn't want to be with her

04:08:46.220 anymore. And I pushed her away and I found my hands around her neck. Well, even that account

04:08:52.200 is inauthentic because you don't just find your hands around someone's neck and it takes 0.99

04:08:56.420 minutes, not seconds to strangle someone and asphyxiate them and kill them. And the girls 0.97

04:09:01.660 were shallow sleepers. And I believe one of them came in and he took those decisions. That was all

04:09:07.260 on him. And it may not have been someone that was something that was premeditated, but it unfolded.

04:09:13.040 and the worst thing that he then did was put load Shanann into the car and load the two girls into

04:09:20.260 the car and he had 45 minutes to make the right decision but he took those two girls with their

04:09:26.820 mother dead in the car and he then strangles them and asphyxiates them one by one and then disposes 0.84

04:09:33.540 of their body as if they're rubbish as if they're just trash and he buries Shanann and it's in those 0.94

04:09:40.600 moments that he makes those decisions but he carries on the lie even when the police are called 0.97

04:09:46.500 he's carrying on the lie she was 15 weeks pregnant you know there was no care or concern my wife's

04:09:53.380 mission she's got lupus 15 weeks pregnant my two girls everything was about maintenance and he was

04:09:59.540 cool calm and collected and it was the neighbor who spotted his behavior who said that he's more

04:10:04.580 animated than usual, that he pulled the car up, the truck up to the door. And it was the neighbor

04:10:10.880 saying, I don't know, there's something, it's just not right. I don't know. The neighbor was a star.

04:10:16.060 He's saying they argued and she just left with the children. Well, there was no evidence that

04:10:19.960 she had just left with the children. Her phone was there. The car was there. How would she even

04:10:24.440 be able to get the children out without the car? Where would she go? It was all lies, but it was

04:10:30.100 the neighbor on his behavior who spotted that everything he was saying and doing was not

04:10:36.540 accurate. And then he pulls the video up to show the police. And then you see Chris looking very

04:10:40.980 awkward. But he, I don't believe, planned the whole event in terms of killing Shanann. She

04:10:47.980 confronted him. And I think she probably said to him, I'm leaving you and I'm taking the children.

04:10:54.620 And it's at that point. He said that, right? You'll never see her. He said she said something

04:10:57.740 to the effect of, you'll never see the children again. Of course, you know, if she thinks he's

04:11:01.060 cheating on her and the marriage is falling apart and he's trying to leave her, that's the kind of

04:11:04.640 thing a wife and mother might say. Yeah. And a good father would say, well, look, we have to

04:11:12.880 work this out, but I don't want to be with you anymore. And we have to work the children out of

04:11:17.740 who, you know, and when we get custody. But let's talk about that another time, but let's separate

04:11:22.840 for now. But that's not what he did. He put his hands around her neck. He strangled her for a

04:11:28.560 period of minutes to the point that she wasn't just unconscious, that she was dead and she was

04:11:32.680 carrying his baby. And then he took the two girls and put them in the car and he chose to kill them 0.75

04:11:38.760 too. And he could have made very different choices. There were other choices on the table, but if I 0.99

04:11:44.660 can't have you, no one will. Is that psychopathy? Is it evil? Like, I don't understand. I even get,

04:11:51.200 forgive me I don't know just about I get killing the wife I mean like anybody who listens to

04:11:55.980 Dateline knows it that happens all the time I don't I don't understand what can then make you

04:12:03.840 kill your three-year-old and your five-year-old in the manner that we've just been discussing

04:12:08.840 what is that yes well only he and those men who do it know it but I believe that it for Chris

04:12:17.320 what? It was about wiping them all out. And he believed that he had a chance of a new relationship

04:12:22.700 with Nicky. And in his mind, although it makes no sense to anybody else, that that's why he took

04:12:28.780 the choices that he did. And of course, it's with catastrophic consequences. But this wasn't in Red

04:12:36.140 Mist. This wasn't a moment where he makes a decision. It's over 45 minutes plus where he

04:12:42.060 makes those choices and then he sticks to that story. And there were other choices that he could

04:12:46.880 have made, but he didn't. And that tells me about him. That tells me about the type of person he

04:12:52.120 really is. And I have scored him on the psychopathy checklist and he scores lower than 20, but I don't

04:12:58.600 have all the information available. But what I did see was the lack of empathy and that he was

04:13:04.140 even flirting with one of the CBI officers who was interviewing him and he was attempting to

04:13:09.540 manipulate. And that's why he changed his story multiple times. He believed that he was capable

04:13:14.920 of getting away with it and that's what he was trying to do let's show the audience a clip of

04:13:20.980 him this was before he confessed and he was still playing the game with the media of i have no idea

04:13:28.660 where they went they just she took off with the children you know in the middle of the night uh

04:13:33.040 here's chris watts before his confession i hope that she's somewhere safe right now and with the

04:13:39.280 kids. But I mean, could she have been, could she just taken off? I don't know. But if

04:13:44.600 somebody has her and they're not safe, like I want them back now.

04:13:50.720 My God, that is so obviously untrue and not how a real grieving father and husband would act.

04:13:59.720 Not authentic at all. And that's where you would be pressing to get more answers from him. You

04:14:07.240 know she's pregnant 15 weeks pregnant and with lupus with his two daughters and I do believe he

04:14:13.580 felt he could control the narrative and that he could control other people and manipulate them

04:14:19.140 so the question is did we ever really know or you know did anyone really know who Chris Watts was

04:14:24.460 is this really who he is now and this was him and that's what he was masking you know for many years

04:14:30.460 and he didn't let people in because of who he truly was and that's what I believe what we're

04:14:35.880 seeing after the fact, that's him, him making those choices, those decisions.

04:14:41.060 Don't you think it's like a Scott Peterson situation?

04:14:43.420 Yes, I do. And I've talked about Lacey and Connor Peterson. Again, she was pregnant and

04:14:48.240 the choices that he made where there were other choices on the table, but they're the choices

04:14:54.940 that he made. And that's why he's still in prison. And that's where he must remain.

04:14:59.260 What do you make of the fact that Chris Watts, when he did confess, he was forced to confess,

04:15:03.620 let's not kid ourselves. I mean, they had him. The woman who ran the lie detector on him,

04:15:09.180 she was crazy good. She put him at ease. She was, oh, this is all just fun. One of us knows the

04:15:15.180 truth. And now we're both about to know the truth. I thought she did a great job. And she did,

04:15:20.400 along with her partner, extract the confession. But they had a lot of evidence. They had the GPS.

04:15:24.440 They knew he had gone to the oil tanks. They had a lot. So he winds up confessing. They bring in

04:15:29.920 his dad. He confesses to his dad. And in that moment, one of the themes of our discussion has

04:15:35.840 been the blaming of the woman. What did she do? What'd she do? In that moment, listen to what

04:15:41.940 he said. I know you're familiar. I'll play it for the audience. Here's his confession.

04:15:46.140 You lost it and you choked her or what? Ask the dad.

04:15:59.920 So it's hard to understand there.

04:16:15.960 But what he's saying is she, Shanann, killed my babies.

04:16:20.780 So I put my hands around her neck and did the same thing to her.

04:16:23.720 In that moment of confession, he's blaming Shanann.

04:16:29.920 which tells you everything you need to know about him. 0.99

04:16:32.640 You know, it's very rare for a woman to behave in that way. 1.00

04:16:36.080 And under these circumstances, it's highly unlikely. 0.89

04:16:39.100 But he was happy for Shanann to take the blame

04:16:41.340 for his actions and his behavior.

04:16:44.200 And later admitted that that wasn't true anyway.

04:16:46.780 So, I mean, we know it was a lie.

04:16:47.940 He's serving life sentences and will not be getting paroled.

04:16:52.040 let's jump to the case of mcdonald jeff mcdonald i this turned into the book fatal vision which i

04:17:05.280 really recommend i listened to it via audio who's done so well by joe mcginnis fascinating story

04:17:12.040 with the book too joe mcginnis basically got recruited by mcdonald to write the book and then

04:17:16.800 turned on mcginnis turned on mcdonald i think mcdonald thought it was going to be an exonerating

04:17:21.860 type of tome, it wound up going the other way. And McDonald sued McGinnis, who did have to pay

04:17:28.760 him some sort of a settlement, because I didn't look deep into it, but I think it's because it

04:17:34.100 was like a breach of contract. They basically suggested you lured him into thinking you were

04:17:38.320 going to make it sound a different way. Anyway, it's a great book. It's very interesting.

04:17:43.520 Jeff McDonald, surgeon, went to Princeton, went to Northwestern for his med school,

04:17:50.940 went to Columbia Presbyterian for his internship, then joined the Green Berets and was serving

04:17:58.240 and training, jumping out of airplanes, was going to be a surgeon for the army and then

04:18:02.780 go out into the world and make a bunch of money at Yale. He hoped to get a job at Yale.

04:18:06.760 And his wife, Colette, was his high school sweetheart. She was a nice lady from all

04:18:12.660 the accounts, was also very bright, had been studying in college herself, winds up getting 0.99

04:18:17.920 pregnant. She puts her life on hold, sacrifices for him. This is back in the 60s. So, you know, 0.71

04:18:24.740 the society was kind of set up this way. And they had two beautiful daughters, Kimberly and Chrissy.

04:18:31.280 And they're living right off of campus on base, or I think on or off campus on base. And one night

04:18:40.260 in the middle of the night, he kills them. He kills all three of them in a very similar situation. 0.98

04:18:47.380 the wife and the two daughters to the Chris Watts case. This guy has got everything going for him.

04:18:53.380 And by all accounts, a lovely wife who's very supportive of him and beautiful daughters, same,

04:18:58.820 and says it was hippies, that it was a Sharon Tate type situation where this woman and three

04:19:04.900 men came into the apartment in the middle of the night, stabbed him. He had like one puncture wound

04:19:11.620 that a surgeon like McDonald would have known

04:19:14.320 had a place without killing himself.

04:19:16.580 And the women were absolutely slaughtered.

04:19:20.100 His wife and his two girls,

04:19:21.760 absolutely slaughtered with a number of puncture wounds

04:19:23.660 and ice pick.

04:19:24.480 I mean, just absolutely brutal.

04:19:26.860 And they wind up saying first,

04:19:29.640 oh, we don't have, you know what?

04:19:30.640 He didn't do it. 0.85

04:19:31.500 We're gonna, we buy the hippie story.

04:19:33.280 But his wife's father would not let go of it.

04:19:38.960 He initially defended McDonald,

04:19:40.460 but when he got a hard look at the evidence

04:19:42.580 that had been submitted to the preliminary hearing

04:19:44.340 turned and spent the rest of his life

04:19:46.580 making sure that the justice was done

04:19:49.280 and ultimately it was

04:19:50.520 and Jeff McDonald went to prison

04:19:51.760 but here's Jeff McDonald on the Dick Cavett show

04:19:54.640 taking us back now in time

04:19:55.960 to 1970, December 15th

04:19:59.780 the murders had happened a month earlier

04:20:01.980 this is a month after his wife

04:20:04.900 say again?

04:20:07.780 okay

04:20:08.000 Oh, yeah, okay, it happened in February.

04:20:11.320 The murders happened in February, so it was less than a year later.

04:20:14.160 Talking about the murders of his wife and daughters as follows.

04:20:17.680 Could you talk about what happened on that night last February?

04:20:22.640 Well, I can skim through it briefly to get deep into it.

04:20:26.920 It does produce a lot of emotion on my part.

04:20:30.720 But very briefly, my wife came home and we had a before bedtime drink, really.

04:20:36.600 and watch the beginning of a late-night talk show.

04:20:44.080 He's smiling.

04:20:45.560 The audience is laughing.

04:20:47.160 And, Laura, he did the thing you said.

04:20:49.460 He said getting into it brings up a lot of emotion.

04:20:54.320 You know, like, trust me.

04:20:56.000 Wink, wink.

04:20:56.640 Trust me.

04:20:57.060 I'm not actually going to show you that.

04:21:00.700 Yes, I mean, that short clip just reminds me of Scott Peterson

04:21:04.280 and the Diane Sawyer interview, where it's clear to me that he thought in both situations,

04:21:10.020 they can control and influence and manipulate. And like with Diane Sawyer, I don't know if you

04:21:15.300 saw that interview with Scott Peterson that he did months later, bearing in mind Lacey was still

04:21:20.380 missing. And he laughs inappropriately. He smiles inappropriately. He doesn't declaratively say he

04:21:26.820 didn't kill Lacey and Connor. And Diane Sawyer is just not buying any of it. I mean, her bullshit

04:21:33.060 detector was pretty well honed. And there's an 11 minute clip where it's very clear there was 0.99

04:21:39.120 deception. And a lot of the work that I do, I look for indicators for veracity and deception.

04:21:45.740 So without knowing that individual's baseline behavior, but knowing that, did you say he was

04:21:52.040 in the Marines? He was in the military? Yeah, he was a Green Beret. He was a Green Beret, right?

04:21:57.100 So he's used to power and control. He's used to influencing his intelligence. I can see that 0.93

04:22:03.280 he believes that people are going to buy what he's selling. But the leakage that's there

04:22:08.780 is telling us something quite different. And that's why you're always looking for words,

04:22:13.760 actions, behavior that are congruent, but also facial expressions, micro expressions, etc.

04:22:19.260 Are they describing the emotion or are they living and feeling the emotion? I mean,

04:22:24.200 you don't talk briefly about and skim through the brief details of your wife and your daughter's

04:22:30.620 absolute slaughter. I've never heard someone say that before, unless they're lying.

04:22:36.520 What about the brutality of the murders? Like that, in a way, that to me is evidence that

04:22:42.800 he didn't do it. I mean, he did it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying

04:22:45.820 no one could believe that somebody would take an ice pick and over and over and over stab their

04:22:51.980 three-year-old. Like, that just doesn't, that would lead somebody to believe it had to be an

04:22:56.440 outsider. Do you think that's why those murders were so brutal? It's quite possible. I mean,

04:23:02.320 if you choose to use things like that, that point to looking at someone outside the house

04:23:08.240 because of the way it was done. But I don't know the case in detail, but from looking at him and

04:23:15.080 the way that he presents and the fact that he invited a journalist in to write a book that was

04:23:20.260 supposed to exonerate him and the journalist who deep dived into the case. And of course,

04:23:26.140 a lot of investigative journalists are very good at what they do. And the journalist didn't buy it

04:23:31.120 based on the facts and the evidence. And more importantly, the jury didn't buy it based on the

04:23:35.680 facts and the evidence. And all my work is about going on the facts and the evidence. You have to

04:23:40.180 look at everything, forensically deconstruct everything, you know, about the behavior and

04:23:44.920 as well as forensic opportunities but oftentimes it's not always what's present it's what's absent

04:23:50.460 you know what's absent at the scene or what's absent in terms of emotion and who's trying to

04:23:56.560 control the narrative you know and controlling the narrative also uh is a very interesting thing

04:24:02.760 that i see coercive controllers do after the event that they want to get their story out there and

04:24:07.860 oftentimes because they're a man and they're cool calm and collected people gravitate to their

04:24:12.640 narrative but the victims aren't here to tell us otherwise are they there's no one alive his wife

04:24:19.500 can't tell us what happened that's why the forensics have to tell us what was the sequence

04:24:23.660 of events what happened and equally the dynamics of the relationship was she looking to separate

04:24:28.320 was she saying to him I've had enough for whatever reason had he abused one of the children for

04:24:34.480 example and she said Colette said I've had enough and I'm going to leave you and we know at the

04:24:39.240 point of separation with these coercively controlling men. They want to control the

04:24:45.120 situation. And if I can't have you, no one will. And how dare you make that decision? I'm the one

04:24:51.000 who makes the decisions and it ends when I say it ends and how it ends. And that's equally 76%

04:24:56.600 of the murders happen at the point where the woman says enough. That case, according to the book,

04:25:04.580 again, Fatal Vision, the father of Colette, the wife, saw Jeff McDonald go on Dick Cavett,

04:25:13.520 saw him smirking, working the crowd. Again, this is not even a year after the murders.

04:25:20.020 And it was his first turn. I might be dealing with a killer. He might actually have killed

04:25:27.580 them and then stayed on him to get the transcript from this preliminary hearing that was done inside

04:25:33.120 the military that determined he didn't do it. And the father poured over these 2000 pages word

04:25:39.140 by word by word and found so many inconsistencies in Jeff's story and started to piece it together.

04:25:44.940 And then these prosecutors went back and did this in-depth investigation of Jeff McDonald to see

04:25:49.040 kind of along the lines of what you're saying, whether these wonderful accounts of him,

04:25:53.540 oh, he's so wonderful at Princeton, wonderful at Northwestern, and the greatest surgeon ever

04:25:57.980 really matched up with, was it really true?

04:26:00.920 If you just dug a little deeper,

04:26:03.000 like you were saying about,

04:26:04.000 why was Paul Murdoch drinking so much?

04:26:05.660 Why were the parents allowing that?

04:26:06.680 Dig a little deeper, what's there?

04:26:08.560 And they found out he had completely downplayed

04:26:11.260 his number of infidelities.

04:26:12.600 They'd only been married, they were young.

04:26:13.900 He'd been cheating all over the place

04:26:15.700 in disgusting and pervasive ways. 0.57

04:26:19.180 He had been seen abusing her.

04:26:22.180 And I know you've called attention to this in particular,

04:26:25.060 at least once seen smacking her across the face.

04:26:27.980 like hands on the face, hands on the neck.

04:26:31.240 I know you've said, that's a special red flag.

04:26:35.740 And we saw it in the Gabby Petito case too.

04:26:38.200 Can you speak to that?

04:26:40.640 Yes, well, any hands going around the face. 0.80

04:26:43.320 You know, if a man puts his hands around a woman's face, 1.00

04:26:46.000 it covers your nose and your mouth. 1.00

04:26:48.060 And that's what Brian Laundrie did to Gabby.

04:26:50.460 And of course, we've seen photographic evidence

04:26:52.680 subsequently that her family's lawyers have released

04:26:55.900 for purpose just before the police were called that showed that she had an injury but the police

04:27:01.340 didn't follow up when Gabby told them about the hand around the mouth and where the cuts came from

04:27:06.940 and any attempt to strangle or asphyxiate by a man to a woman it increases the risk sevenfold

04:27:14.280 so and it increases the risk to serious harm and femicide so it really is a high risk factor

04:27:20.400 And I would imagine with Colette, whatever was seen or witnessed was probably the tip of the iceberg to what she was really experiencing behind closed doors.

04:27:29.360 And if he were womanizing, cheating on her, disrespecting her, and she had two little girls, she may well have said enough is enough.

04:27:38.520 And with his psychopathology and used to being in control and wanting to be in control,

04:27:44.380 And I would imagine that he's a man who wants to win and things are on his terms and she's there to meet his needs. And how dare she make a decision that is not within her gift to decide. And that could be the point where he then assaults her.

04:28:03.560 It could have been one of the girls. I don't know. But something happened and with catastrophic consequence.

04:28:11.560 And what a horrific case. And I'm so glad that her father followed his instincts and that he kept asking questions.

04:28:18.360 And that's what I ask all my listeners on Crime Analysts to do. Ask questions, be curious and always trust your instincts.

04:28:25.000 And the people who know someone like Jeff McDonald the best, the father who's observed him in different situations, knows when something's not right.

04:28:34.760 And thank goodness he was there to advocate on behalf of his murdered daughter and grandchildren.

04:28:41.020 Sometimes that's exactly what it takes to get to answers, the real answers and the truth of what went on.

04:28:47.120 Just like we saw Chris Watts confessing to his dad when everything is stacked against him and he's got nowhere to go.

04:28:52.720 his dad was the one that ultimately got the answer out of him by flipping it on to Shanann and then

04:28:59.520 he confesses so again the people who know the the perpetrator the best they're the ones who should

04:29:05.400 really be asking questions and working with professionals to make sure the right questions

04:29:11.200 are asked and not to let something go when something seems off let's spend a minute on Gabby

04:29:16.960 because, you know, I have to admit to you,

04:29:20.720 I've done a lot of interviews

04:29:22.080 of domestic violence victims.

04:29:23.740 And when I saw that police stop,

04:29:25.880 you know, where she was trying to say

04:29:27.260 he hit me first and so on,

04:29:28.740 I understood what was happening there.

04:29:31.060 But I also felt bad for the cops.

04:29:33.500 I know that's not right.

04:29:34.680 I know the cops did not handle it.

04:29:36.540 We had a whole debate with lawyers

04:29:37.760 on whether they should be sued and so on.

04:29:40.180 I don't know.

04:29:40.780 I had conflicting feelings about it.

04:29:42.180 They seemed like caring individuals.

04:29:45.140 but the truth is they really mishandled that entire scenario and I'm not blaming them for

04:29:52.320 Gabby's death but you know one can only wonder had they intervened more aggressively would it

04:29:57.960 have led to her escape you know her just a different result again not to blame them but

04:30:03.580 just to call attention to there's a warning sign here there's a really clear warning sign in her

04:30:08.660 interaction with these cops somebody had called 9-1-1 they had said that they had seen a man hit

04:30:13.060 a woman. The cops went, they pulled him over and they found a crying Gabby Petito with a mark on 1.00

04:30:18.540 her face. And then we later found out a mark on her neck. And, um, she tried to blame herself.

04:30:26.120 We have, we have a bit of that. Here it is. We want to know the truth. If he actually hit you,

04:30:31.740 cause you know, where did he hit you? Don't, don't worry.

04:30:37.260 Well, he, like, grabs my face.

04:30:39.720 Did he slap your face or what?

04:30:41.280 Well, like, he, like, grabs me, like, with his nail,

04:30:43.820 and I guess that's why it was...

04:30:45.160 I definitely have a cut right here,

04:30:46.700 because I can feel it.

04:30:47.420 Yeah. 0.82

04:30:48.820 She gets really worked up,

04:30:50.300 and when she does, she swings,

04:30:51.340 and she had her cell phone in her hand,

04:30:52.340 so I was just trying to push her away.

04:30:53.680 Well, to be honest, I doesn't leave him first.

04:30:56.560 Where'd you hit him?

04:30:57.660 I slapped him. 0.98

04:30:58.900 You slapped him first?

04:31:00.720 And then, just on his face? 0.97

04:31:01.900 He gets pretty to shut up.

04:31:05.720 Hmm.

04:31:06.040 what do you make of that whole thing? Yes I've spent a long time on crime analysts going

04:31:11.580 through the case and dissecting forensically the police stop because of course it is on

04:31:18.180 their body cam footage and the first thing that struck me about Gabby was just how emotionally

04:31:23.840 dysregulated she was and you know I trained law enforcement I wrote the book Policing Domestic

04:31:29.440 Violence that's behind me with two police officers when I was at New Scotland Yard

04:31:33.360 and it's part of the Blackstone Policing Guide series of helping officers ask the right questions

04:31:40.020 and use their powers. And one of the key things is if you've got a victim in trauma, which Gabby

04:31:45.760 was clearly emotionally dysregulated, find out why. And if you've got a perpetrator, and bearing

04:31:53.260 in mind the 911, the call that came in was about, and I'll quote it, a gentleman slapping the woman.

04:31:59.920 Well, that ain't no gentleman for a start. But the point was that the call was a call for assistance because of the male's behavior, not the female's. And Gabby instantly took responsibility, which a lot of victims do. And therefore, the attempt to separate them was the right one.

04:32:16.400 But putting her in the back of the police car, which is where you put a suspect, and shutting her off wasn't a good move.

04:32:23.620 And keeping Brian out and spending 80% of their time with Brian, who straight away threw Gabby under the bus in an attempt to manipulate and control the narrative.

04:32:34.480 I train officers to question that.

04:32:38.240 That is a very clear manipulation.

04:32:40.820 And his narrative should have been challenged because at no point was it challenged.

04:32:45.320 and he was the first to admit that he had shoved her

04:32:49.180 and that he had locked her out of her van.

04:32:52.160 He took her keys and they did a van check

04:32:54.760 and it was registered to Gabby, not him.

04:32:57.300 He took her keys, he took her phone

04:32:59.920 and he stopped her from getting into her vehicle.

04:33:03.060 And then one of the other callers said

04:33:04.900 that he took her backpack out

04:33:06.600 and had put it on the outside of the van

04:33:08.760 and he'd threatened to drive off

04:33:10.200 and leave her there on her own.

04:33:12.480 So who really is the person with the power and control here?

04:33:17.820 It's very obviously Brian and that she was in fear

04:33:21.160 and she was trying to get her keys and get her phone.

04:33:25.060 She just wanted to be in the van and he was controlling her movements

04:33:28.400 and not allowing her to have the space that she needed to be in her van

04:33:32.920 and he was threatening to leave her there on her own, a lone female.

04:33:36.800 And that narrative should have been challenged.

04:33:38.700 the that case is reminding me of you know some of these other cases that we're discussing like

04:33:46.200 like the mcdonald one where oh colette she was so happy she was this domestic

04:33:50.060 wife of uh this you know green beret surgeon and the two little girls that's what we saw

04:33:55.780 on the outside and what we also saw in the gabby case was the van and i love the van and

04:34:01.960 fan life and we're doing our yoga. This image that we know was untrue. We were being misled

04:34:10.400 and it's not uncommon at all for the victims of domestic violence or the perpetrators of it

04:34:17.640 to mislead us actively and willingly. Yes, but the clues are there. I mean,

04:34:24.340 when you get two independent male witnesses calling it in because they're concerned,

04:34:29.280 it takes a lot to call the police. Most people don't want to get involved with the police. So

04:34:33.080 for two independent men to say there's a problem, well, that's the first thing that they should pay

04:34:38.080 attention to. What are they being told? Why are they even attending? You know, Officer Robbins

04:34:42.640 did try and do the right thing, but he was a junior officer. He wasn't even through his training

04:34:46.700 period. And Eric Pratt, the supervisor, was the one that made a very quick decision that Gabby was

04:34:52.520 the primary aggressor. Well, actually, I wrote the chapter on primary aggressor,

04:34:58.820 because we have the same, where you have to be very careful in not just believing the calm,

04:35:05.340 cool, collected male narrative. And oftentimes that's what police attend, a distraught,

04:35:12.600 emotionally dysregulated female and a very calm, cool and collected individual, a male normally.

04:35:20.200 And then they gravitate to that cool, calm, collected male and their narrative rather than

04:35:24.900 thinking, why is this young woman so emotionally dysregulated? This is a disproportionate reaction

04:35:30.220 to what we're being told. And hang on a minute, didn't Brian say she's got this little website?

04:35:35.780 Isn't he devaluing her and saying, oh, she's crazy, making out that she's the crazy one. 0.81

04:35:41.560 And even when Officer Robbins tried to challenge him, he again threw it back to Gabby being the 0.89

04:35:47.180 problem. So with experience, and that's why supervisors and mentors are very important

04:35:52.360 to check and to challenge and unfortunately with misogyny oftentimes and those officers what we

04:35:59.380 saw was yes they may look like they are being caring towards Gabby but they were also very

04:36:05.380 misogynistic and very patronizing and condescending and you know did they not realize that 16 to 24

04:36:12.860 year olds are the most at risk group of domestic violence and femicide the women because in 2021

04:36:21.520 2022 and 23 it's unacceptable for officers not to be trained so for me this is a very clear

04:36:27.700 training issue but the attitudes are also problematic when they instantly go into just

04:36:33.700 believing the male narrative without any challenge and they put her in the box of just being the

04:36:39.040 hysterical emotional woman and aren't all women crazy because that was the subtext between Brian 0.99

04:36:44.920 and those officers with their fists pumping and all these women are you know my ex-wife she's on 1.00

04:36:51.080 she's no longer my wife anymore, and she's on pills because she's so crazy. These were the

04:36:56.740 things that the officers were talking about with Brian. And then they were laughing and joking. And

04:37:02.200 for Gabby, who's in the back of the car, is she hearing them laughing and joking? How does that

04:37:07.060 feel to her when she's just on her own, isolated, and there they all are joking and laughing with

04:37:12.520 Brian? That sends a very clear message to her. You know, this is all leading me to recall something

04:37:20.200 you wrote about how we socialize girls all wrong in some ways. Be a good girl. Go along to get

04:37:27.280 along. Don't make waves. The pain in the ass girl is somebody nobody wants to be around or promote

04:37:32.700 or work with. We talk about it a lot these days because there are all these teachers who want to 1.00

04:37:38.460 have secrets with our kids now. And a lot of us mothers have been saying, you don't get to have

04:37:44.380 secrets with my child. No adult gets to have secrets with my child. I'd raise my children to

04:37:49.660 understand that that's a big red flag, a grownup who wants to have a secret with you. That's how

04:37:55.140 kids get abused. And it's how women get abused. It's just like a common theme that I'm feeling 1.00

04:38:00.440 now and listening to you. And I want to leave it on an empowering note so that the people

04:38:07.200 listening to this don't just feel like, oh, it sucks to be a woman. I'm going to get abused. 0.98

04:38:12.980 No one's going to care. The laws don't protect me. I'm going to fall in love, but it's going to

04:38:17.200 turn out to be some abusive psychopath. What can women do, right? Like meaningful things that they 1.00

04:38:24.180 can do to protect themselves, to take control of their own lives and their own safety? 0.98

04:38:31.960 Well, I think, you know, girls are groomed to be polite, compassionate, and to put other people's 1.00

04:38:37.060 needs above their own. And what we need to do is, yes, you can still be polite, but to know your

04:38:42.100 own needs and not be afraid to voice what you need and not be afraid to be difficult. Because

04:38:49.760 you mentioned the good girl, but those of us who challenge things, we're the difficult ones. We're

04:38:54.460 the ones that tend to run into problems because we're asking the difficult questions. So the

04:39:01.020 things that I always say are to be curious. When something doesn't feel right or look right or

04:39:05.720 sound right, be curious and ask questions about the person. Don't just accept their word for it.

04:39:12.100 don't, you know, ignore what your instinct is telling you. And that's probably the biggest one

04:39:18.780 is trusting your instinct. If something feels right or somebody feels off, you know, every

04:39:24.340 rape case I've worked, every time when I've gone back through the statement, the woman sensed when

04:39:28.500 she was in danger and then she didn't want to upset the person. So she didn't get off the train.

04:39:33.700 She didn't walk across to the other platform or go down a different street. She didn't want to

04:39:38.620 upset the person. So, you know, not being polite in that way to the detriment of our own safety

04:39:44.480 and to always, always trust your instinct. We have more brain cells in our stomach than a dog

04:39:51.000 has in its head. And I've got a rather lovely golden doodle called Beatrice, but when my gut's

04:39:56.020 tweaking, it's telling me something. So always listen to that because we can talk, Megan, and

04:40:01.700 you can, we can try and empower women, but only women can empower themselves, right? To ask the 0.99

04:40:08.120 questions, to take action. And don't be afraid to ask advice from older people, you know, older

04:40:15.280 mentors, females. I mentor a number of younger women of things that where they say, but is this

04:40:20.420 normal? Is that right? I mean, he says that that's what everybody does of sending pictures, you know, 0.66

04:40:26.940 naked pictures, etc. But he says, I'm a prude when I don't do it. I mean, should I? You know,

04:40:31.880 my number one rule is never send pictures because you don't know where they're going to end up.

04:40:35.960 So, again, just asking, trusting someone, you know, like yourself, myself, and asking those questions from someone who's seen it and done it before and to be mentored.

04:40:45.560 Because I think for younger women, particularly 16 to 24, they're not taught what a healthy relationship is.

04:40:52.100 There's a big information gap.

04:40:54.360 They're taught how to have sex and the mechanics of it.

04:40:56.860 But they're not taught about emotional safety and, you know, being in a healthy relationship of what's healthy versus what's unhealthy.

04:41:05.960 And I think if we were doing that piece, we would be able to spot the behaviours and we'd do it with boys as well, boys and men, of what behaviours are they learning that's bad, that they shouldn't be using. And it's early that we want to get into it. Age appropriate discussions, of course. And I agree with you, the secret things is a big problem.

04:41:25.160 You know, that's how pedophiles and sex offenders, how they get the trust of a child that it's a secret between me and you.

04:41:32.200 So teachers should absolutely not be talking about secrets.

04:41:35.540 That's a big safeguarding risk.

04:41:37.960 So, yes, I think it's having more conversations and girls and women, you know, stepping into their personal power and not being afraid to to make a noise and get louder when there's a problem. 0.99

04:41:49.940 Yes, get louder is great advice.

04:41:52.500 and if it's not if it doesn't come easy to you then practice keep practicing because it comes

04:41:58.220 easier over time now wait before we go um i know about the podcast but is there a book that the

04:42:03.980 people can buy of yours you met you mentioned the one behind you is that just for police or shoot

04:42:08.060 can we all learn from that one i mean it's a wider um book that anybody can read and a lot of people

04:42:14.960 tell me they can dip in and out of the chapters it's called policing domestic violence and i am

04:42:20.540 in discussions about updating it. I mean, the actual detail of, and the case studies I use in

04:42:25.720 there with my co-authors, it's all still relevant, but some of the laws now, we've got new laws on

04:42:31.840 coercive control, on stalking, all sorts of things that we're in discussion about updating it. And

04:42:38.760 I'm also running a whole series of masterclasses because I do deliver a lot of training and some

04:42:43.880 of them are virtual training masterclasses where people can log on just as we're talking. And I

04:42:49.780 talked through lots of cases and the dash i've got a stalking class on may the 9th and 10th and dash

04:42:56.060 on may the 23rd 24th and coercive control on june the 6th and 7th and you can just email

04:43:03.160 laurarichardspa at gmail.com if you're interested in that oh great and it's and your website is

04:43:09.480 the laurarichards.com the laurarichards.com and also dash risk checklist.co.uk it is at the moment

04:43:17.480 being updated and it will be a dot com in the future. But yes, I put a lot of information out

04:43:22.460 there to help people. And there's Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service, where there's

04:43:26.360 lots of information on there if you believe that you're being stalked. God bless you for all that

04:43:32.860 you've done and that you continue to do. Your podcast, your books, your advocacy, your mentorship,

04:43:38.440 all of it. Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you. Well, I've enjoyed

04:43:42.880 it very much. And thank you for you sharing your experience. And enjoyed is the wrong word,

04:43:48.660 but I think these discussions and informed discussion and conversations and interviews

04:43:52.960 are so important. So thank you for inviting me on. Thanks for joining us today. Fascinating

04:43:57.840 conversation. What I love about Laura is she's spot on. She's done her homework. Every fact she

04:44:02.740 was reciting, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love people who really actually do their

04:44:06.940 homework and they can recite the facts, sort of like a Victor Davis Hanson in conversation. You

04:44:11.020 can trust their info. That's Laura. She was great. Looking forward to having her back on. 0.51

04:44:18.520 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

04:44:29.740 In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour.

04:44:38.020 Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck

04:44:42.060 by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields

04:44:46.160 like software development and information technology.

04:44:50.820 Learn more at aboutamazon.ca.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 19, 2026

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

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