Hidden True Crime - 95-Year-Old Woman CHARGED With Murder—Used Wheelchair as Weapon & Hid Evidence | PSYCHOLOGIST REACTS

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

A 95-year-old woman in New York has been charged with the murder of her 89-year-old roommate at her nursing home. Dr. John Matthias is here with some thoughts regarding this case and what the drive is for female killers. Sponsors: Simplify your kids' mealtimes. Go to:  http://littlespoon.com/htc and enter our code HTC at checkout to get 50% OFF your first Little Spoon order. For a limited time, save up to $300 on the Tovala smart oven when you order meals 6+ times, by visiting https://www.Tovala.com/HIDDEN and using code HIDDEN. About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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atora.com slash remove. Today's story is both heartbreaking and deeply troubling. And after we go over everything you need to know, we're going to have Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, come on to help us understand. So this story is about a woman who had already survived one of history's greatest atrocities, the Holocaust, only to lose her life decades later under horrifying circumstances inside what was supposed to be a place of care and safety. We're talking about the murder of 89-year-old Nina Krastoff, a Holocaust survivor, originally from Ukraine, who was brutally beaten to death inside a Brooklyn nursing home this past September. Please say her roommate, a 95-year-old woman who had only just been admitted

to the facility, is responsible. There is now newly released information about Nina's life, the night of the attack, the charges now facing the suspect, and many questions being raised about nursing home oversight and the care of dementia patients. And before this tragedy, Nina Krafstoff had already lived through more than most of us can imagine. Born in Ukraine, she was just five years old when she and her family were forced into a ghetto during World War II. Most of her large family didn't survive. Nina did in part because her 16-year-old sister caught the eye of the ghetto manager and was able to keep moving their names to the bottom of the deportation list. And every time new Jewish people arrived, her family's names were pushed down

Those at the top were sent to concentration camps. Nina's family survived, but only barely. And after the war, Nina became a nurse in Ukraine and raised her daughter Lucy as a single mother. Lucy has said, quote, she sacrificed a lot. She had me when she was 18 years old. She came here to give me a good education. She was a very dedicated mother, end quote. In 1979, Nina immigrated to the United States.

Settling in Brighton Beach, the heart of New York's Russian-speaking community. She remarried, gaining a stepson and stepdaughter, and built a new support system. But after her husband died and after suffering a stroke about five years ago, Nina could no longer live on her own. In 2020, she moved into Seagate Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Coney Island, a facility where staff in residence spoke Russian and where she could get the care she needed. And for five years, Seagate was her home. She was known as a friendly resident with a long history of helping others.

Friends and neighbors remember her as kind and resilient. And even her step family, who weren't related to her by blood, they loved her dearly. Seagate Rehabilitation and Nursing Center is located on West 29th Street in Coney Island. And according to Medicare reviews, the facility has long struggled with staffing levels. last October, state health inspectors cited Seagate for not having enough nursing staff to, quote, attain or maintain residence well-being. Licensed nursing staff reportedly spend on average of only 18 minutes per resident per day, less than half the state and national averages.

The facility has faced multiple lawsuits in recent years, alleging negligence and wrongful death. It's against that backdrop that in September, a new, resident arrived, 95-year-old Galena Smirnova. And according to court documents, Mernova had dementia. She had only been in the facility for about 48 hours before the incident. So she and Nina Krastoff were placed in the same room, likely because they both spoke Russian. And that decision, paring an elderly dementia patient whose behaviors were unknown with a frail 89-year-old is now at the center of the outrage from Nina's family and their attorney Randy Zaline. Zaline recently said, quote, you can never leave a dementia patient,

unsupervised, unattended, particularly a brand new one when you know nothing about the woman. You certainly don't leave her with an 89-year-old woman, end quote. So the night of the attack was Sunday, September 14th. And according to the arrest affidavit, a nursing home employee checked on the woman's shared room at 8.55 p.m. Well, at that time, Nina was asleep in her bed. Nothing seemed unusual. Roughly one hour later, around 9.55 p.m., that same employee returned. And what she found was horrifying. Nina Kraftstoff was still in her bed, but now she was covered in blood with deep gash marks to her face and head. A wheelchair, a wheelchair in the room was missing its foot pedals. One was outside on the ground under the window, thrown out of the window, in other words,

and the other was inside the room stained with blood. In the bathroom, the employee found Gleina Smirnova washing blood off her hands. Her hospital gown was spattered red. She allegedly also had blood on her legs. So a 911 call went out at 1027 p.m. New York police department officers responded and found the same scene. Paramedics rushed Nina to a hospital in Brooklyn, but the injuries were catastrophic. She had fractures to her face and head. She died the following morning at 5.39 a.m.

The medical examiner later determined that she died of blunt force trauma. A metal piece of a wheelchair is blocked off by blue crime seam tape, possible evidence in alleged nursing home murder. The NYPD now investigating what unfolded inside the Seagate community in Brooklyn just steps away from the beach. Authorities with knowledge of the situation say Sunday night two residents had an argument and it ended with a 95-year-old using some kind of metal from a wheelchair to hidden 89-year-old multiple times in the head. This is terrible. Now I'm really a nervous wreck for my sister. Elaine doesn't know anyone involved, but her sister moved in about a month ago.

Like so many who visit the seaside facility, she's processing this news. Poor family. A poor family, you put them in here and you think they're going to be, okay and they're not while workers took the 95 year old suspect to coney island hospital for observation sources telling us the investigation continues lucy flam nina's daughter was in florida when she got the call she rushed to new york hoping to reach her mother before it was too late and her last call with her mother was over face time from the hospital bed she said quote they told me she would not respond but they think she could hear. So I told her the final words. I told her I loved her. Her face was just completely obliterated. I just told her I loved her and I will miss her forever. But she did not

respond. She was still breathing. I saw it just gave me nightmares. I cannot sleep since then. end quote. Lucy has also explained that her mother could not have argued with Snernova before the attack because she barely even spoke anymore. Lucy also said quote she listens she nods but she does not speak she recognizes me when I come I show her pictures I tell her about her grandkids about everybody end quote detectives quickly reviewed surveillance footage from the hallway outside the room and no one had entered or left between the two welfare checks. So combined with the bloody wheelchair part and Smynova's condition in the bathroom cleaning off blood, police arrested her on the spot. Galena Smynova was charged with second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal

possession of a weapon. She was arraigned in Brooklyn criminal court, and during the hearing, Smyrna was shouting in Russian as she sat in a wheelchair. Court officers wheeled her out of the courtroom, for being disruptive. Her long white hair was in twin braids. She was wearing light blue pants and a gray sweatshirt and scowled at observers in the court's gallery as she was rolled back in to face a judge a short time later. She's ultimately pleaded not guilty and is one of the oldest people ever to face a murder charge in New York City. Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Orville Reynolds granted prosecutors request that Sermova be ordered held without bail on murder and weapon possession charges. Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg told the judge, quote,

The nature of the charges and the evidence strongly suggests that no amount of bail will reasonably guarantee the defendant's return to court, end quote. No relatives showed up in court to support Smyrnava. No relatives. And legal aid defense attorney Aaron Darcy said, Her team needs to consult, gather medical history, and speak to their client further before they petitioned the judge at a future court appearance to set bail. Darcy said, quote, I believe we will be in a position in the very near future to present a robust bail application to the court on behalf of our client once we can find an appropriate placement for her given her age and ultimately our interest in humanity, end quote. Reynolds denied prosecutors request that Smyrnova undergo a psychological exam and instead recommended that she be held in a secure floor at Bellevue Hospital guarded by the city department of correction as the case continues. Prosecutors are now saying that Smyrnova struck Nina multiple times in the head with the metal foot pedal before throwing the other pedal out an open window. Spirnova moved into the nursing home just two days before the attack, reportedly after a hospital stay.

Lucy Flom has been blunt, saying, quote, I just think they didn't do enough due diligence. They probably just filled a spot, end quote. And they probably did. Advocates for the elderly say this case underscores a systematic problem. Facilities struggling with chronic understaffing may be forced to make unsafe roommate assignments. Dementia patients are especially vulnerable to behavioral outbursts and pairing them with frail residents without sufficient supervision can be deadly. And tonight a lawyer for the victim's family is talking to eyewitness news reporter Sonia Rincone about the tragedy. The way she died is like in a Stephen King horror movie.

The violent death in a Coney Island nursing home of an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor and great-grandmother, allegedly at the hands of her 95-year-old roommate has left her family broken. This didn't have to happen. This should never have happened. 95-year-old Galena Smyrnova was arraigned on a murder charge today in Brooklyn Criminal Court. According to prosecutors, she was discovered by a staff member at Seagate Nursing Home, washing blood off herself and around the room she had shared with Nina Kravzov for only two days. Nina Kradsoff was dead, according to the medical examiner of blunt. force trauma. She was asleep at some time around 9 o'clock and by 10 o'clock she was beaten to a pulp.

The alleged murder weapon, a leg rest from Smyrnova's wheelchair found discarded outside the building. Kravsov's family's attorney Randy Zelen is normally a defense lawyer and tells us dementia plays a legal role here in two ways. First in a likely civil suit against Seagate, which had been Krabsoff's home for several years, arguing that it shouldn't have paired a patient with dementia with a roommate in a brand new environment without some supervision. And second, if the defense makes the case Smyrnova didn't know what she was doing. Dementia can bring on unprovoked, out of nowhere, a fit of complete rage. So defensively, that's the defense. Now, it'd be interesting to see how that plays in against the backdrop of apparently discard.

the piece of the wheelchair, washing her hands in the bathroom. Now suddenly we begin to see, maybe I do know what I was doing. Attorney Randy Zellon says a team here at his office will be seeking justice for the family, looking to hold Seagate accountable if it could have prevented the tragedy with different protocols or staffing. We've reached out, but there has been no comment from the nursing home. In the wake of the tragedy, the nonprofit blue card, which provides financial assistant to Holocaust survivors stepped in to help cover funeral costs for Nina's family. They wrote, quote, we were deeply sadden to learn of the tragic passing of Nina Kraftstoff,

and to honor her memory and to ensure she is laid to rest with dignity. We have committed to assisting her family during this difficult time. They have set up a go-fund me to help with the remainder of the cost. Honestly, this story is devastating on so many levels. a woman who survived the unimaginable violence of the Holocaust lost her life in a placement to protect her. And another woman, also elderly and ill, may spend the rest of her life behind bars or in a psychiatric ward. For an act, she may not even comprehend. We don't know.

It's very confusing because she also, let's be honest, looks to have been hiding evidence by throwing that pedal out of the window and washing blood off of her hands. raises questions about how we care for the elderly, especially those with dementia. Our facilities adequately staffed, our new residents being properly assessed before being paired with roommates, and our regulators doing enough to prevent tragedies like this from happening again. We may never know exactly what triggered the violence that night, but we do know this. Nina deserves safety and dignity in her final years. She didn't get that. And unless charges are made, there are countless other Nina's and countless other galinas, too. at risk. How many galinas are there, though? Because this is a case that I have rarely

have ever heard of. I have never heard of a 95-year-old female murderer ever. And neither is New York City being that she's one of the oldest people to have ever stood trial for murder in that city. I think that we need to now turn the time over to Dr. John Matthias. I have questions. At that moment when at 6 p.m., the kids are hungry, you're sitting into the fridge holding half a snack pouch, two grapes, and zero dinner plans. Yeah, I have been there way too many times. And that's why I have started using Little Spoon. Today's sponsor, and it has completely taken the stress out of meal time. Little Spoon delivers real food for babies, toddlers, and big kids, straight to your door.

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and even their exclusive frozen line. Think Colt favorite chicken nuggets, meatballs, and sliders. Here's the deal. Try Little Spoon today and get 50% off your first online order at, little spoon.com slash htc with code htc at checkout that's little spoon l-i-t-t-l-e-l-es-p-p-o-o-on dot com slash htccccc simplify your kids meal times it's one less thing to worry about there's a nursing home in coney island called sea gate and an 89-year-old holocaust survivor was basically found bludgeon to death in her room her name is nina Krestov, K-R-A-V-T-S-O-V-K-R-A-V-K-S-O-V. She was 89.

Nina Krestov was Ukrainian. She survived, so Hitler invaded Ukraine during World War II. She ended up in one of the ghettos in Ukraine. In other words, a ghetto that was earmarked for people to go to concentration. concentration camps. She was actually designated to go to a concentration camp, but for whatever reasons, I don't know why, but she did not end up going to a concentration camp. And then after the war ended, she actually worked as a nurse. She was married at age 18. She had a daughter, Lucy. Her name is Lucy Flom. She remained a single mother for many years after the war until she

moved to the US in 1979 and she settled in Little Odessa, which is in Brooklyn, New York, where she stayed until five years ago around 2020, she had a stroke. And the stroke meant that the family believed she needed extra care so they placed her in this facility, C-Gate. So what happens is that, and by the way, Nina, Nina, Krastov speaks Russian. So what happens is she gets a new roommate. Her roommate is 95-year-old Galena Smyranova. Galena Smyranova enters Seagate nursing facility

and they place her in the same room as Nina. It's believed that they were roommates because Galena Smyranova also spoke Russian And they thought that perhaps the two would have that in common or have some things in common. So they placed them together. And within 48 hours, Nina is murdered by her 95-year-old roommate Galena Smearnova. It turns out that crime is quite horrific, by the way. Right.

This isn't a mistake. this is a horrific violence. Well, that's part of the issue. So we'll talk about that in a minute. But the apparently what happened is allegedly what happened is that Galena, the 95-year-old roommate, removed the foot pedals from her wheelchair. And she essentially bludgeoned Nina to death

with the foot pedals from her wheelchair. Nina was found with severe head injuries, lacerations all over her head. So she seems to have been attacked and brutally murdered by Galena Samirnoff, the 95-year-old with the foot pedals from the wheelchair. One of the, so one of the statements or beliefs around this case is that the 90s,

25-year-old roommate Galena had severe dementia, advanced dementia, and therefore could not have known what she was doing, that she simply, you know, it's, and this would tie in with Shane Tamera to some degree, maybe, that, again, if your frontal lobes are compromised, you're going to be more impulsive, you're going to be more prone to fits of rage, right? you're going to, there's a lot of bad things that can happen when you, when your frontal robes are impaired. And when you have severe dementia, you know, typically your front of lobes can be impaired. And so the, it seems that some people, Galena Smyranoff's attorney is already kind of saying, well, she didn't know what she was doing. It seems like the defense is going to

be something around dementia. She didn't know what she was doing. She has severe dementia. She just acted out violently. The argument, the argument is. The argument is, you know, she's going to be severe dementia. the argument against that is that one of the foot pedals was found covered in blood in the room next to the victim Nina and this is a picture of Nina that I keep showing this is the victim I keep showing go ahead yeah that that's the victim right that's the victim I love her hair and I know right like she's she's right she's this you can tell just from looking at that picture, she seems like someone with a big personality, right? People really loved her.

Her, Lucy, her daughter, was just absolutely distraught over this murder because she was very close to her mother. And to just, you know, you don't think that you're going to put your, you believe that one of the reasons you place an elderly parent in a nursing home is because they're going to be safe.

Right. They're going to be protected. If that elderly parent is living alone, themselves, there's a lot of bad things that can happen. So you put them in a nursing home so that people watch over them and, right, and protect them and make sure they're safe. And obviously, that wasn't the case here. But so one of the, one of the foot pedals was found covered in blood in the room and another was actually, apparently it was outside the facility below the window. So it looked like somebody had discarded it. In other words, they apparently tried to hide.

one of the murder weapons and so and and also the the offender galena smirnova in this case she was washing herself she was covered in blood they found her um they found blood all over her gown and on her legs and she was trying to wash herself and and she was trying to wash the room to rid herself and the room of some of apparently right of some of the evidence some of the blood. So those elements discarding the murder weapon, washing herself,

all of those elements would kind of indicate she knew what she did. All of that would seem to indicate premeditation and knowledge of like an awareness, right, of this crime. Yes. It is so odd

because at first you just think dementia and she's hiding the weapon. hiding the weapon, washing the blood off herself, washing the blood from the crime scene. I mean, she's 95, right? She's obviously not going to be super efficient in anything. And in a wheelchair, 95 and in a wheelchair. And in a wheelchair, right, with at least, I don't know what level of dementia, but at least mild dementia, right, probably more advanced. But so let's talk about the reason I think this crime is interesting and we're talking about is because it's such an outlier.

so bizarre. Like, let's start with the very idea. Let's talk about, I think one of the things that this allows us to talk about is female violence. We don't talk about female violence that much. Almost all of our cases, aside from phyllicides where women murder their children, almost all of our cases involve male violence. So I think it's fascinating, like a 95-year-old taking a foot pedal and bludging her roommate to death is so strange. I can't even like wrap my mind around it from like let's just talk about female violence in general because I think this opens the door to that discussion. First of all, female violence is fairly rare.

It's even rare. So the statistics on female violence for offenders over the age of 65 show that it's like less than one percent of female crimes. if you look at female violence over the age of 90, it's not existent for many reasons. Also, like one of the things I know from doing forensic work over many years is that age, age is a risk factor when you're younger, but it declines over time. So in other words, the older you get,

the more age actually works against violent offending, that it's a protective factor. The older you get, the less likely you are to engage in violent crime. And here you have a 95-year-old engaging in the most violent crime you can imagine. 10% of the prison population in the United States is female. In the UK, it's only 4%. It used to be, which, by the way, it's increased a lot over the last decade. So the number of the prison population of female violent offenders was around the same, like 5, 6%,

but it's gone up a lot. So there's been way more female violent crimes in the last decade. Interesting. It's roughly of all violent crimes committed, female offending is roughly about 15, 16% of all violent crimes. Violent crimes means an assault, murder, something that would be considered, something that would be considered sufficient to rise to the last. level of to injure someone and to rise to the level of a felony. And so women typically, they do commit crimes, but when they do, it's not what type of crime is it then,

just out of curiosity? Well, interesting you asked that because I just happened to be, in thinking about this crime, I just happened to be reading a book, a really good book, by the way, that addresses specifically female violence. It's called A Love That Kills. It's by Anna Mott's MOTZ. A Love That Kills, Stories of Forensic Psychology and Female Violence. Always interesting what Dr. John is reading.

Never know. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, she says in the book, she argues in the book that almost all violent crimes by female is either directed at, this is self-directed so in other words females tend more than males to internalize their aggression so in other words they will take their own lives so it's either self-directed it's directed towards a spouse or a partner or it's directed towards children right and if if you think of that and you think of this crime I mean again like this crime is just so bizarre because you have

none of that is true here right this isn't self-directed it's not towards a partner or spouse and it's not towards a child so you you have a 95-year-old engaging in premeditated murder with a victim she doesn't know a stranger that she met 48 hours ago that's the other part of this story so so the the offender enters this nursing home and 48 hours later within two days less than two days, she's already murdered this innocent victim who survived the Holocaust. Think about the irony of that. You survive the Holocaust. You're 89 years old.

You're in the home stretch, heading towards the finish line, and you get violently murdered. It's crazy. Awful. And so I think, like, if you look at typical female violence, right, again like this is such an outlier in terms of females typically don't murder strangers almost all female violence is directed towards partners self or children and so I think again this is really fascinating like this so for me of course the without I don't I don't know a lot about this case nobody does we know that there's this murder the question is what is driving this right

what's the motive I mean you can't really say you can say dementia plays a role I would definitely say that in terms of impulse control. So presumably this offender Galena has limited impulse control. But I think what's not being talked about here, what probably is beneath what's hidden here is her past, right, and how that's impacting this crime. And so at the very least, I would have to say that there's some type of violent ideation.

You just don't go from entering a room with a stranger to deciding you're going to brutally murder them. In other words, I think there's probably some type of trigger here that involves threat. So at some level, for whatever reasons, Galena Smirnova feels threatened by Nina Kravstov. And I don't know why. I don't know if we're going to ever know why. but you know there's there's a lot of psychologists sometimes talk about something called transference which is it's kind of a version of projection we talk about projection a lot but transference is when you your own past your kind of own your own mental maps of the world you bring those wherever you go

in order to make sense of the world you have to you have a mental map otherwise you can't function right like even driving a car that's on your mental map where you live your address that's all on a memo maps. So we store that in memory. We have these maps that really kind of help us make sense of the world. Some of our maps are more rigid than others. Some of our maps. Some of us have more openness to kind of adapting or changing those maps. But I think you'd have to say that the offender here, for whatever reasons, maybe it's because of her mother, maybe it's because of her siblings. There's something in here about the transference or about the, this perception she has of the victim being a threat in some ways, I think.

It could have been something that Nina said to her, that she found offensive, that reminded her something in the past, that enraged her. Could have been something related to a sibling, right? Maybe her mother, her father. I don't know. But this kind of brings us to another point in this book, A Love That Kills. Anna Mott's says, believes quite strongly that almost all female violence is involves past abuse or past trauma that the perpetrators of female violence are almost always

victims of some type of violence themselves. And her plea in her book is to, to really understand that and to see that female violence in many ways get swept under the rug because we want to portray females as these violent monsters that kind of betray the stereotype of motherhood. We don't take it as seriously because we see them as outcast and monsters, and therefore we don't have to really think about it. And so her book is really kind of a plea for understanding that female violence almost always involves past abuse. And so I wouldn't be surprised. So it involves acting out past abuse.

That female victims are typically abused. They have all this pain and suffering. There's this wound. And, you know, and they act out. They repeat that same violence elsewhere. And that's what leads to female crime, which, by the way, is obviously a common theme with all of our stories, right? All of our cases that there usually is often is some type of past abuse that gets repeated or acted out. And there's a lot of research on that on the cycle of violence showing that that's true that and let me say just because I know people always question me on this just because you're abused doesn't mean you're going to engage in violent crime. What I'm saying is Yes. That for a certain subset of people that experienced past abuse, they might be at more risk to act out in fact the numbers are roughly 20%.

So of all the people that have been abused and in the past, roughly 20% have some risk to act out. It doesn't mean it's not 100%. It doesn't mean that if you're abused, you're going to act out. There's a lot of, there's also something called post-traumatic growth, which is that if you're abused, you actually grow from that and you learn from it and you reflect on it and you become stronger. So I think people, when I make this argument, people fail.

They don't, I don't talk about that enough, but I think people don't understand that there's a flip side to this, which is that past abuse doesn't mean you're going to be violent, a violent offender. It could mean that you're actually going to grow, post-traumatic growth. There's a lot of research on it, that there's, it shows that a lot of victims actually benefit, benefits not the right term, a lot of victims actually learn. Improve themselves after. They become more resilient because of the past abuse. You know that dreaded 5 p.m. question.

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promo code hidden. With Tavala, dinner is taken care of. I think it's, it's, I, again, I don't know, I don't know this offender here, but just based on kind of what we know about female violence and what an outlier this is, it seems like there's probably something in here that has to do with violent ideation that is a result of something in her past.

I don't know what that is. It could be past abuse. Maybe she was abused by her spouse. Right. So it could be domestic violence. It could have something to do with, I would imagine, there might be something territorial here in terms of she's being put in a room with a stranger. And for some reason, she would, for whatever reason,

she feels threatened. Maybe she's not used to having a roommate. Maybe any roommate would threaten her. Maybe she's not comfortable being around other people. There's so many things here. But I think the essence of this or the core of this, and my main takeaway that I want to talk about, is when we think about female violence,

and I get this from the Mott's book and from looking at female violence, which we don't talk about enough, but when you look at it quite often, It does involve past trauma and past abuse that then becomes reenacted in violent crime. So do we know anything? Do we know anything about this killer then? No, we don't.

We really don't. So we don't. So I'm speculating here. And I'm just basing this on research and kind of this book by Anna Mott's that I've read. but um because a lot of people i think a lot of people are going to be saying um i was asking the question right like i got out people who are saying oh it's dementia right or or they'll be saying why did this happen like how is this even possible so lucy lucy flam who's nina's daughter she did some interviews after this happened and she was just perplexed right she was like i don't i don't

understand and in many ways she's right because given the offenders age and given the fact that she's female like this i don't even know the chances of this happening are way less than one percent i don't even like one thousandth of one percent the numbers are astronomical right and so for me when i see something like this you and you know that like i'm always interested in the outliers because that's where we can learn right right that's where we can learn the most right so What is it we can learn from this? I mean, one thing is that I think in a nursing home, they're probably, when you put a new patient into a room with a stranger,

you should probably vet that person, you know, to, I don't know how much, but you should vet them to some degree so that if there is some past history of abuse or violence, you don't want to put them in a room with someone else. So some of this has to be on the nursing home in the sense, that they put this offender in the same room with the victim, with Nina, without supervision, right? I'm sure that staff goes in and checks every few hours. I'm not sure what their schedule is. That's typically going to be a part of a nursing home schedule.

However, my guess is that the nursing home knew nothing about her history, nothing about her past. Was there any past history of violence? Was there any past traumas? Were there any past traumas? Was there any past history of abuse? Was there any past history of her being a victim of domestic abuse? Was there any past history of suicidal ideation?

Was there any past history of violent ideation? Was there any past history of assaults against other people, assaults towards her? These are all things, right? Was there a criminal history, in other words? That's what we want to know. That's what I would want to know. But you'd want to know that. It's one thing to want to know that now after this horrific murders.

been committed because ultimately when you look at punishment here too like what are you going to do with the 95 year old offender that's demented well that's what's a little bit shocking too and i want to go back to the demented thing because i actually have questions about the dementia and what that could have done but you asking what do you do she's right now being held at rikers without bail and that's notoriously like a bad prison so a 95 year old woman who indeed all evidence points to her being a violent murderer now. Right. But as being, do we hold a 95-year-old woman with dementia at a notoriously horrendous prison without bail?

Is that what we do? No, right. It raises, again, again, this case is such an outlier. It raises so many questions, not only about. why this happened, the crime itself, which I think, I think, I'm, you know, I think I'm developing some hypotheses about it. I don't know her past at all, but, but yeah, what about punishment? What do you do with the 95-year-old who's apparently has some dementia? I don't know how severe it is, but some dementia, right? Like putting her at Rikers really isn't going to solve

this problem. I mean, we're not going to, we're not going to put her up at the four seasons hotel, right but like I don't know we're going to let her stay at a nursing home with you know other roommates right right but clearly clearly she has to be isolated

from any other people but I mean but on the other hand putting her in solitary confinement in a women's prison isn't going to solve a lot of problems either it'll it'll certainly I mean if you do that you're going to expedite her death

is going back to dementia, you say that she could have felt threatened. Could the dementia add to that feeling threatened? For sure. Yeah, for sure. Because with dementia, you're not going to process information the same way. With dementia, I mean, again, I don't know, you know, there's so many different types of dementia and there's different parts of the brain that's going to impact.

The part of the brain that I would be most interested in, and a forensic psychologist would be interesting would be the frontal lobes you know that the part of the brain that's responsible for like I said decision-making problem-solving right the part of the brain that that really would have the capacity to put on the brakes when you have any types of homicidal impulses or violent impulses right that you if there's anything that's going to stop it it's going to have to be that part of the brain and so if that part of the brain's impaired like it may have been with Shane Tamara, you know, it's going to be much more difficult for her.

If she's feeling rage, there's some violent ideation. And again, keep in mind, like, that type of rage and that type of violent ideation, it could take, that could be seconds. It only takes a moment. It only takes seconds for someone to act out, for someone to have violent ideation, fail to, you know, fail to kind of identify it and process it and make sense of it. in order to stop it in other words put the brakes on the impulses um it just takes seconds for them to act out on the violent ideation and so dementia there's no i think there's no doubt dementia

plays a role here the question is what is it in her past that led to this right like it seems to me like people want to argue or one of the attorneys wants to argue that's just a dementia that you know demented people just have these rageful moments where they act out and there's nothing you can do about it, right? But that's not really true. I mean, every violent crime, almost every violent crime. I mean, there might be a few really outlier exceptions that are extreme outliers, but almost every violent crime in order to get to the place where you take a foot pedal off a wheelchair

and you bludgeon your roommate repeatedly to death, that takes some effort by the way it's not that easy to murder i mean i've never done it thankfully but it my understanding is talking to homicine homicide detectives is you it's not that simple to like just murder someone especially if you're 95 years old and you're working with you have a foot pedal you have to have some strength to do that right and so there's there's some rage here people just don't become totally enraged. I know. And then murder someone.

There's some rage here. And the question is, where is that coming from? It's coming from somewhere. Almost every violent crime involves some type of violent ideation that, part of my job, by the way, is to track that and to try to, you know, try to backtrack and try to figure out where is that violate ideation coming from. Is it situational? In other words, is it something that maybe Nina did? or said that provoke something in the offender? I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's still murder, but like, or is it, is it something more permanent? Is it, is it something to do with her personality?

Does she have, does this, does this roommate Galena have a history of violence? Does she have a history? Does she have no empathy, right? Like, is she coming into that room? Right. Is she coming into that room with the history of violence and even, let's say, psychopathy, where she has no remorse, no conscience, right? I don't know. Maybe you're putting a psychopath, the 95-year-old psychopath in a room with someone. Right. There's not a lot about Helena.

I've been looking, by the way, I'm Googling here trying to find anything, and it's very difficult. You're right to find anything, you know. And so I think, yeah, I think this question raises. some really interesting issues about female violence and about dementia and about violent ideation and Trump has trauma and how it might get expressed, even in a 95-year-old, right? Like, you think, oh, she's 95. She doesn't have any energy. Like, she's in a wheelchair.

How is she going to get out of her wheelchair and have the strength to bludgeon someone to death? And even if she does have a past history of violence, like, usually, by 95, like, you're just trying to make it through the day. Well, you've even told me the age of offenders when someone gets older. Yeah. Since your job is to assess recidivism or risk factor to reoffend, you say the older they get, the less likely they are to reaffent. And so here you have a female that's, you know, yeah, I know.

Yeah. I know. 95. So it defies all odds. It defies all odds. If just her age and her gender being female alone, if you told me, John, what are the odds before this? If you told me, John, what are, what are the odds of a 95-year-old female murdering her roommate in a nursing home? I'd say low, like really very, like I said, like one-one thousandth of one percent or something?

I mean, just ridiculously low because that, I mean, even with men, like a 95-year-old male is going to be really low risk to engage in any type of violence just based on the age alone, even with a history of violence. Yeah. And so, again, like, this is just so mind-boggling. And for me, just to, I don't know, it's almost surreal. like this is not the type of crime that certainly it's certainly not the norm it's not the type of crime that I would ever really be able to predict or foresee because it's so bizarre right right um I do want to end we're here with a couple of quotes from this book by the way so I think she makes some interesting points that are worth repeating. This is from A Love That Kills by Anna Mott's,

page 11. Quote, we need to recognize the particular dynamics of female violence. What drives women to acts of extreme and unusual brutality and what can be done, both to provide individuals with treatment and to draw collective lessons? To look away from violent women is also to look away from the abuse of women and girls. And the misogyny of a society that wishes either to patronize women as helpless victims or to condemn them as heartless monsters. It is to deny women's agency, bury the trauma that drives violent women to appalling acts, and to ignore the social context that enable their original abusers.

We need to break the taboo of women's violence, making it easier for those who are grappling with dark impulses and the legacies of abuse to seek support, unquote. I think that's a brilliant quote that summarizes, potentially summarizes a lot of what we're talking about. Yeah. She also says this. So in this book, she later talks about her feelings of, so her job is to work with female offenders, primarily violent offenders mostly. And here's what she says, summing up kind of her own feelings about it.

She says, quote, her feelings about working with this group, quote, it can be difficult to reconcile my feelings about women who embody the contradiction of being both a victim and a perpetrator of terrible abuse. Many are angry, aggressive, and intimidating, but in equal parts, frightened. vulnerable and traumatized. I think that also speaks to this issue, right? That there's this, you've got these competing, you've got this pull or these competing emotions

surrounding how to handle these women, how to work with them, how to address them. So not only the people working with them, in this case, Anna Mott's, but also the feelings that the women themselves have, the offenders themselves. They're equal parts aggressive and, right, they're equally parts aggressive and vulnerable, right? Like, it's, it's in many ways, and this is something we talk about a lot. In many ways, it's the vulnerability that drives them to some degree. It's that, according to her,

the vulnerability and the trauma that drives them to engage in the violence later on when they reach kind of a tipping point and their pain and suffering, they believe that their pain and suffering has to be addressed or expressed in a way that makes sense to them. So when I hear this story, you know, again, it's a head scratcher. I'm sure a lot of people that a lot of our Patreon members probably haven't heard this story. And yet, like, when I heard it, my first thought was, what? Like, did that really happen? Are you sure?

Is that like an urban legend? Like, what happened there, right? But it's real. It's very real. Very real. And again, I think it really raises so many interesting questions about female violence and how we handle it in our society. How do we punish a 95-year-old demented female that engaged in this horrific act? Right.

What's a fair punishment? here is it is it to put her in solitary in a prison or is it to put her in kind of a restrictive um a restrictive psychiatric nursing home facility or something along those lines i don't know right it's it's a tough one yeah very tough um yeah no bail that's a tough one it's really is um clearly she's you have to you have to you have to isolate later. I think there's no question about that. That conversation was part of a subscriber-only episode that you can find at patreon.com slash hidden chew crime if you want to watch it in full.

We also cover Travis Decker as well as a few other cases that we have been following. And for more Dr. John episodes and bonus episodes behind the scenes, you can head to patreon.com slash hidden chew crime or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere.

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