Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - DEAD IN WALMART: Teen girl chased, stabbed dead in aisle

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

A 15-year-old girl dies after being stabbed at a New Orleans Walmart. Four girls, a 12-year-old, two 13-year-olds, and a 14-year old, have been arrested. One of the girls is charged with second-degree murder and the other three are charged with principal to second-degree murder.Footage of the stabbing, which was posted on Facebook and Instagram live, shows one girl armed with what appeared to be a knife as the victim approaches and lunges at her. Video shows the group of girls fleeing the store in a getaway car as one of them screams, “Just stabbed somebody at Walmart.”Joining Nancy Grace today: Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney Phil Chalmers - True Crime Writer, Counter Homicide Trainer & Criminal Profiler, PhilChalmers.com, Where The Bodies Are Buried Podcast, Author: “Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer” and “The Teen Killer Whisperer.”  Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Marriage and Family Therapist www.drbethanymarshall.com,  Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network  Levi Page - CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. How many times have you let your child go just a few aisles over at, let's just say, Target or the grocery store? How many times have my children, John, David, and Lucy, run away to go pick out some sugary cereal while I'm in the organic veggie section all the time. You'd think that would be safe, right? Wrong. How does a young teen girl end up dead at Walmart? Walmart, where you go, where I go, where the twins go. We're always in and out of Walmart for one reason or the other. How does someone get stabbed dead at Walmart?

I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Take a listen to this. Oh, Lord Jesus Christ. She's leaking, y'all. Oh, my God. Every time you heard a ting, that's our friends here in the studio and at Fox Nation, beeping out all the curse words. But I learned on about day two, trying cases in front of an inner city Atlanta jury, that I had to say every single thing the defendant and others said to the jury.

With me, an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again. Renowned psychoanalyst joining us out of Beverly Hills, the star of a brand-new Netflix show, Bling Empire. You can find her at drbethanymarshall.com. Joe Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, star of his own new program on the Street Crime Network, Poisonous Liaisons.

Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor turned defense attorney, no stranger to a courtroom. Partner at Cohen Cooper, Estep, and Allen. Also with me, Levi Page, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter with his own podcast, Crimes and Scandals. But first, to special guest joining us today, his name is Phil Chalmers. He wrote the book, Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer on Amazon. Criminal profiler, counter homicide trainer, specializes in teen killers, Where the Bodies Are Buried podcast. You can find him on social media at True Crime Phil.

I mean, I could go on and on and on about field chalmers, but Phil, Daryl, Bethany, Joe Scott, and Levi, I want you to listen to just a tiny bit. I don't want to isolate this tiny bit of what you just heard. Jackie, please do the honors. Yeah, we're about to come out as soon as my sister's come. F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out!

F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out!

F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out!

F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! F***ing check it out! Christ. What you're hearing at the end is the perps fleeing Walmart into a getaway car as one of them is screaming, hold on just a minute, field chalmers, to you, Daryl Cohen, I remember the first mass murder I ever worked on. I think it was the first. And there were three dead bodies.

There was so much blood. It was literally running down the gutter on a playground. And there were five defendants. And that was the first time I had heard the phrase wilding, wilding. In other words, when you get a group together, they do things they would never, I don't think, have done on their own. It's a whole different mentality. And now I've got this little girl bleeding out at Walmart. Number one, it's sad. Number two, it's tragic. Number three, it's unbelievable. And

number four, it is the most criminal act that ever happen. We used to call it mob psychology. It doesn't matter whether it's mob psychology or wilding. It is unbelievable that these girls, and where the heck was their mom, where the heck was their dad, if they exist, because these girls didn't get a knife by themselves. Oh, yeah, they got a knife. Hold on just a moment. Levi Page, this little girl is stabbed dead at a Walmart.

Where did the murder weapon come from? It came from Walmart, Nancy. They're in Lake Charles. They stole the knife. They stole what? A knife of that caliber? That dangerous weapon is out on display where you can just grab it? Apparently so, because according to law enforcement, the weapon came from inside the

store. They stole it. Well, I'm not sure I understand. To you, Justice Scott Morgan, forensics expert, what could have possibly been like a kitchen knife out in the cutlery area? Or is this a full onon butcher knife do we know with a serrated edge no i have i don't know specifically the type of knife that it was however it's easily accessible uh just go to the kitchenware section and you can find very sharp butcher knives are on display i mean you may be right i'm just not recalling it. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we are talking about a little teen girl getting stabbed dead in one of everybody's favorite stores, Walmart.

I was just in Walmart going up and down the aisles because they were the only place in town that said they had a Genio turkey. Right there. I could have been one aisle over from this little girl. Levi Page, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. What happened exactly? And Nancy, just to answer your previous question, you know, knives at Walmart, some of them can come in a package that's similar to maybe a toy that you would buy for your child if you rip it uh rip those packages open it's fairly easy they could have done that right there in the store but Nancy what happened was this was 7 30 not even that late at night in Walmart a group of teenagers had been to a movie theater and then they went to Walmart. And that is when

this attack went down and they were live streaming this on social media. Okay. Whoa, wait, wait, wait right there. Isn't it bad enough that you stab a defenseless unarmed girl in the eyes of Walmart dead with a knife? You swipe, but you have to live stream it. That's where we got all that sound. They live streamed it. That's a whole nother layer of callousness, of disregard to murder somebody and live stream it. It's that Nancy, but it's also a glimpse into the mind of these homicidal teenagers, how young they really are, that they would live stream it and not think that they would get caught. The immaturity, the lack of big picture thinking, the lack of a sense of consequences in their life. Also, I think of the wish to triumph over the

victim, which is often the case with teen girls who murder. They want to deface, to diminish, to defigure, to knock the victim off her pedestal. I often think with girls who kill, envy is a strong motivator. You're popular, you're beautiful, you're smart. You're not all that. We're going to prove that you're not all that. We have power over you. And not only do we have power over you, we're going to make you look terrible in front of the entire world. We're going to expose your suffering. So they never thought that they would get caught by live streaming it. They thought that they would devalue and denigrate the victim by live streaming it. Phil Chalmers with me, special guest.

He wrote Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer on Amazon. Criminal profiler, Star of Where the Bodies Are Buried podcast. Phil, Bethany said something about, and I agree with everything she just said, by the way, they didn't think they would get caught. I don't know that they thought at all. It just sounds like just a pack of hyenas running through Walmart, chasing down this girl and stabbing her dead. It's almost like they don't even think of the consequences anymore. Females in the last eight years, according to CDC, their suicide rate has doubled. A lot of young ladies don't care about living themselves.

And so what we're seeing is an increase in homicide. When we see a generation, a population increase their suicide rate, their homicide rate usually increases. And so these kids grow up in poverty, abuse, family breakdown. They have no reason to live without. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Phil, do you know any of that about these killers? It's just what I see as I talk to killers for the last 35 years. I mean about these specific girls that chased this 15-year-old girl through Walmart and stabbed her dead, leaving her to bleed out.

Do you know that they are deprived somehow because they had all just been out for a night out at a movie theater where they not only paid for their tickets, but got a truckload of treats and snacks. I mean, I don't know if you've been there lately, but just to give and drinks, it's like 40 something dollars. All right. Enough said right there. And I'm looking at them and they are wearing designer athletic gear. I don't even buy that for my children or much less me. But so, you know, you're saying, oh, poverty. And I mean, Phil, they chased the girl down at Walmart. You know, there's security footage there. And they live streamed it. They're not upset that this girl bled out. Nancy, they may not have been deprived.

They were certainly depraved. We're very fortunate that they were stupid enough not only to commit this horrible crime, but also to live stream it because it certainly gave law enforcement an arrest. Well, you know what? You're right.

I don't like the conviction. You're right, Daryl Cohen. But what do you think? How do you think the parents feel seeing their girl chased down and stabbed dead? I mean, Phil, I don't want to come down on you, but please. I mean, this girl bled out on the floor at walmart and you're telling me the killers may have been deprived uh they've been deprived something of course it may not be money but something is not right that they would do something like this and yeah they're criminals

they're they're very much in the culture, because even the terms like she leaking, all that is culture, the violent culture that surrounds these kids. We're raising a generation of killers with with everywhere. These kids look at violence, murder, rape, sodomy, and they don't think twice as soon as themselves. Just to come in on this. Yeah. And Bethany, that is not remorse. That is not remorse. You know, I just went to a conference Saturday on the 21 gradations of evil. It was a neuropsychoanalysis conference, and we took a look at social media, depravity, homicide, and really there's no correlation between social media and video games and all of that and homicide. But that's not what Phil was saying, Dr. Bethany.

He didn't say this as anything to do with a video game. All it does is desensitize you. It doesn't turn you into a homicidal person. It desensitizes you. That's all. It's just up to the ante. Wait, somebody's jumping in on you. Who is that?

Is that Phil or Daryl? That's me. Phil, go ahead. No, it definitely desensitizes you, doctor. I'm not disagreeing with you there. But when you're desensitized to the rate that these kids are, you can tell they're in the culture. They're in the violent culture by yelling things like she's leaking. That is all.

That's the culture. Wait, yelling things like what? The videos they watch. Okay. Slow it down, Phil. Yelling things like what? Well, they're saying a term, she's leaking. That means she's bleeding.

Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Phil, I'm sorry. Talking to you is like drinking from the fire hydrant. It's just too much too fast. Let me understand this. Joseph Scott Morgan, Phil Chalmers has written the book. We cannot argue with that inside the mind of a teen killer. It's on Amazon. But to stab someone, a girl unarmed in Walmart, where you're surrounded by video cameras and you're live streaming it,

I would try every one of them as adults, every single one. Jump in. Nancy, they'll be tried as adults. They're going to go to prison for 25 years. And I've been interviewing them for 35 years. I've been talking, I've interviewed over 200 kids face to face, teen killers, school shooters, serial killers, you name it. And when you say, what are they thinking? They're not thinking. That's the problem. Until they get to prison and sit their ass in a cell,

then they start thinking. It's too late then. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we are talking about the murder. And I'm saying it. I know many of you may think I prejudged it, but the perps live streamed the attack. What, should I believe their defense attorney or my lying eyes?

Chasing down a little teen girl in Walmart where shoppers are all around, stabbing her in the heart, then running away saying she's leaking. In other words, bleeding out to her death. As a matter of fact, Jackie, if you could play our cut 10. Listen to this. You are hearing afterwards, that is their idea of remorse.

She's dead, I will. I would play that over and over and over to a jury. I'd play it fast, I'd play it slow. I'd have it as I did in every single thing I played for a jury, transcribed so they could read it and hear it at the same time while they look at the defendants and look at a picture of the dead victim. You darn right. And I will tell you another thing. On the front row, I would have this teen girl's mother. So she would see justice unfold in a court of law. Justice Scott Morgan, you were saying?

Yeah, dovetailing with what Phil had mentioned earlier, he's absolutely right on the money. They're not feeling anything at that moment in time. But let me describe to you when they are feeling. One of the things that stays with you about blood, and I've been around blood my entire adult life in the morgue on crime scenes, is that it has a distinct smell to it. It is metallic. And when you're around a lot of it, which you are, particularly on sharp force injury cases. It is something that stays with you. Not only that, it has a tactile sense to it, too.

When they're in that car and they're driving down the road and maybe the adrenaline is wearing off a little bit, at some point in time, somebody's going to look down at their arms, their bare skin. They're going to see dry blood on themselves. Some of these girls are going to have blood. You know what you just reminded me of? You remember, guys, I know all of you remember this. Dr. Bethany Marshall, remember Jodi Arias after she stabbed Travis Alexander, her lover, dead in the shower.

She drove across the desert to literally hop on and mount her new boyfriend. She still had blood on her hands under her fingernails. These girls will see the blood, and I would disagree that they're going to think it's bad. I think that it's a badge of honor. Look what we have just done. Yay us. And I further ask you, where were the parents?

Because this type of behavior did not just manifest itself one time. One or more of these girls had problems and mommy and or daddy didn't do it. Problems? I think like biting your nails or talking back is a problem. I hear Bethany. Jump in, Bethany. I have to say something about this. Phil Chalmers said something so important about histories of deprivation.

And I know we all hate to say, oh, they came from poverty or crime. They've got on more designer. No, no, no. You know how much those tennis shoes cost? I mean, Bethany, I know you're there in all your St. John's outfit and you're perfectly manicured and all the. Those shoes cost over $100. I wouldn't even buy them for me please deprived of what well nancy here what i want to break down is what the true correlation

is between one's history and committing homicide and one of the things we know is that young people who have a trauma history, they don't think. They have kind of a blank screen in their mind. They don't conceptualize accurately what's happening to them and to the world. And everybody on the panel kept saying they weren't thinking, they weren't thinking. And what I want to break down a little further is that in an office who have a trauma history, they don't appreciate. Even a shred, a shred, a scintilla of evidence, Dr. Bethany Marshall, that any of these girls have been traumatized.

Their actions. The fact that they might have been. In other words, no, you're assuming that because they committed a crime. And let me just remind everybody under the law thinking they didn't think. Yeah. Phil Chalmers, Dr. Bethany Marshall, I hear you. And in the street sense of the word, the vernacular, they didn't think, yes, you're right. But under the law, a long thought out plan is not needed to prove murder one premeditation is formed. And the twinkling of a moment, the blink of an eye, the time it takes you to go steal a knife, chase the girl down and stab her in the heart, then

run away gleefully bragging, cursing about her leaking her life's blood leaking out of her heart. That's premeditation. Let's just get it back in the middle of the road. Let's get out of the weeds and look at what has happened. Yeah. You want to feel sorry for the girls that did this? I feel sorry for the dead girl and her family. Okay, field charmers. What about that? Well, Nancy, I have 13 causes. It's the 13 reasons why kids kill and a lot of you yesterday are naming they're peppering a lot of these things no father unstable abusive home victim of bullying obsession with violent entertainment obsession with deadly weapons the wrong friend peer pressure

poverty all this mental illness it all comes into play You can't just point to one thing, but usually there's four or five in each murderer that I see. It's different than adult killers. Adult killers will wake up tomorrow and say, I'm going to go kill the neighbor. Do I hear? There's no warning sign. There's nothing. Do I? Just explain to me.

Put yourself. Let me say something to you that I can never say to a jury because it's reversible error. You, Chalmers, you, Bethany Marshall, you put yourself in the shoes of this girl's mother. This girl, mom thought, going to Walmart. Then she gets the call, her baby is dead. Let me just remind everybody, my twins have just turned 13. This dead girl is about a year and a half older than my twins. We're worried that they grew up without daddy and peer pressure and they got bullied in the third grade. Are you serious? Really? I mean, what is... Am I the one crazy, Jackie? Nope.

Okay, you better say something different. Okay, Bethany Marshall, I would like to hear a different thought from you than they may have grown up without a father. Well, what I can say is that these crimes are so horrific and inexplicable is that we do have to do a lot of research to find out who commits these murders. That way we can stop these killers dead in their tracks during their developmental years. We have to, by the time they entered Walmart, they were going to commit the act. And Nancy, I would imagine if you look at their social media that they were stalking this girl, they were cyberbullying her.

This poor victim had probably been in their sights for a long, long time, maybe perhaps even for the last year or two. So this crime was set in motion before the girls walked into Walmart, stole the knife and literally stabbed her in the heart. So when did it start? When they were 5, 6, or 7, 11, or 12? Where do we intervene in society so this doesn't happen? Phil Chalmers brought up something so perfect, and Phil, we all argue with each other on this show, so don't take it personally. Nancy taught us all bad manners a long time ago.

She has very bad manners. I'd like to apologize before we finish the program, Phil, because it's probably going to happen again. Okay, go ahead, Bethany. Yes. Okay, so he said that there was an increase in suicide amongst teens, and the listeners might be saying, well, so what does that have to do with homicide? It is true.

Aggression towards the self and aggression towards others is correlated. When there's a rise in suicide, there's always a rise in homicide. The suicidal and homicidal instincts lie side by side. So carefully delineating what's happening in society, it's like the seismic shift before the earthquake. That's why we take a look at all of these factors. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, how does a 15-year-old girl end up dead in the aisle at Walmart after a pack of teen girls attack her. One of the attackers as young as 12 years old. Another one as young as 13 years old. This all goes down in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I don't really know what to say because field trauma somehow I've gotten sideways with you.

And I know that everything you're saying is true, but I guess the overarching thought of mine is everything you say may be true, but these girls knew what they were doing was wrong. You think if Dr. Bethany Marshall ran up to me with a knife and said, let's go stab Jackie, you think I'd run along gleefully skipping down the aisles of Walmart and do it? No, I would not. You might if you were abused and you were in a certain situation that these girls are, and Dr. Marshall has the right idea, we need to be more proactive than reactive. So if we don't want teen girls getting stabbed to death at Walmart, we need to start being more proactive,

noticing the signs, noticing the issues, and getting these kids' health before they kill. Precisely. So where was mom and dad when these girls were acting out? This didn't come out of a, they didn't come out from under a rock. They've been acting out before this. Well, I agree with that, Daryl. Go ahead.

But this is ridiculous to say that it just happened by itself or even intimate that it happened once. I agree with you guys. It was planned. It happened. But these girls didn't do it by themselves without their parents knowing something was going on. And Nancy, I got to I got to say, relative to what Daryl is speaking and if we follow, you we follow Dr. Bethany's line of logic here, if this planning has been going on for this protracted period of time, there's absolutely no kind of excuse or rationale or reasoning you can make. At this point in time, if you're suggesting that planning has taken place when they entered Walmart. They're literally agents of free will at that point in time. That's what elevates this up to the adult level of criminality,

because they butchered this girl, butchered this girl in public. And more than likely, like we were saying earlier, they went over to the kitchenware. They would have picked up something equivalent to a butcher knife because you would have had to have had a robust knife like that in order to bury it in her chest, which they obviously did, assuming that they understand anything about human anatomy. She's saying that they stabbed her in the heart. For all I know, they might think the heart is located in somebody's rear end. But she's dead. She's dead and she's slaughtered. Can you imagine? We keep talking about Walmart and Target, all these places.

This girl is butchered on an aisle in Walmart where we do Christmas shopping. They have no shame. But they have chosen to do this of their own free will. Let me ask you something too, Joseph Scott Morgan. What did this girl, this unarmed school girl, go through as she lay there bleeding out to be chased through the aisles by a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old, and others with a butcher knife. What did she experience, Joe Scott? You're the death investigator.

Well, if they did, in fact, bury this knife in her chest, which it sounds like they did, not only would they have nailed her heart, which we don't know sequencing when that happened, but there's a high likelihood that may have compromised her lungs in some way. If that's the case, she would have been choking, regurgiting her blood. What we do know is that- Wait, wait, wait. You just go so fast. I've got to take it in. Hold on. Hold on. Choking on her own blood? You said regurgiting. I think what you're saying is blood would be coming out of her nose and mouth while she's lying in the floor as her lungs fill up with her own blood. Yes. And then as she expirates, which means to blow out air, she's now inhalating because the blood has gone back into her mouth and into her airway. So she's

inhalating her own blood along with a mix of oxygen. She's going to have this kind of white foamy froth that's issuing from her nose. And this is what I do know. She wasn't necessarily dead at the scene. So there was at least what we refer to as an agonal respiration, agonal heartbeat, this sort of thing. She was removed from that site to the hospital. And from a forensics standpoint, this is troubling for me because I know, look, I love EMTs. I love emergency room people. They've saved my life a couple of times. But one of the things that they're horribly guilty of is cutting up clothing and throwing it away. I'm hoping, because this is

going to be the tale of the tape, Nancy, where you marry up the sharp edged injuries through the clothing that passed through the shirt or pants or wherever it was she was stabbed, along with the injuries. And they would have needed to have taken this to the coroner's office in Lake Charles there to marry this up with these injuries, to document this. Because at this point in time, look, we can talk about all of the social impacts and all this stuff,

but now we're talking about homicide. And this thing's going to move forward and they're going to prosecute this thing. And let me tell you one letter of truth, if you want to hear it. When they put these images up on the screen of this girl's butchered body in that morgue, on the table, and they show that image of that clothing they're holding up, and it's got multiple incised injuries in it,

it is going to hit that jury in the chest like a 10-pound sledgehammer. The rarity, Phil Chalmers, statistically speaking, of women, a woman committing a violent murder with a knife at this young age in a public arena is almost unheard of, statistically, Phil. It is. There's about five teen murders every day in this country, about 12 teen suicides, about five teen murders every day. I want to take in what you're saying, Phil Chalmers. I want to go back to what you said about homicide. You say five a day. Across our huge country, five a day.

And I'd be willing to bet very few of those are by girls. Yeah, about 10% of murders are females. So 90% of the teen murders of five a day, 90% of those are male perps. And back to my assertion, a female killer of this age killing with a knife, which is a whole other psychological can of worms, in a public arena, almost unheard of.

It's rare. It happens. We've had high-profile cases, Alyssa Bustamante in Missouri, Kenyatta Jackson in Ohio. But it is rare, and it is violent. It's one thing to shoot someone. It's another thing to stab them. I think it's a very violent act,

and we're starting to see more of this rise in our country, and it's troubling. This is a murder, and there will be hell to pay. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.