Hidden True Crime - Beyond The Veil: Chad Daybell's Big Disconnect

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

In this second episode we dig deeper into Chad Daybell's psyche, examining his struggles to develop close relationships and how this social and emotional detachment increased his risks for future criminal behavior.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit Verizon.com today. Additional terms apply. Service and required for Apple Watch and iPad. Hidden, a true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden. hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. Welcome back to our second episode of Hidden, where Lauren and I explore some of the hidden motivations behind unimaginable crimes. This is Dr. John Matthias. And this is Lauren Mathias.

So last week, I mentioned I would discuss three elements that I think played a major role in Chad Daybell's eventual crimes. The first one we discussed last week, and that was a denial of being human. Over the weekend, we received information from Carl Danger that was quite specific about Chad Daybell's excommunication from the Mormon Church. And that information was interesting because we had already completed our podcast. And essentially what we learned was that Chad did indeed believe he was a prophet. The Chad not only believed he was a prophet, but apparently he believed he should be leading the Mormon church. And that information was interesting to us, because it confirmed this whole idea of Chad denying his humanness,

denying his limitations, even showing so much grandiosity that he believed that based on his books and his ideas and his visions and his promptings that he should be in charge of the entire Mormon church, which I believe is, what, 35 million members, 40 million members? Oh, you think I'd know that, but I don't. I'll pull it up. Anyway, let's just say this. He wasn't content being in charge of award of, you know, I don't know, 200 people in Rexburg. He wanted to run the whole show. So apparently 200 people wasn't enough.

He believed that 35 million would have been more suitable. 16 million members. I just looked it up. That was just confirmation of what we talked about last week. So when I reflected on the last podcast, I actually thought about the myth of Icarus. And in the myth of Icarus, Icarus is imprisoned with his father. And in order to escape, they create wings. made of wax and feathers,

and his father warns his son not to fly too close to the sun, and he warns him not to fly too close to the ocean, because if he flies too close to the ocean, he'll drown, and if he flies too close to the sun, the wax will melt. And Icarus, when he took flight, was consumed by the experience.

He flew too close to the sun, as the story goes, as we now know, and his wings melted, and he fell to his death, drowning in the ocean. Obviously, this is a tale about hubris, And so the idea, Icarus, like Chad Dayball, denies or avoids the fact that he's human. He avoids his limitations. Flying too close to the sun is obviously a metaphor for avoiding our limitations.

I would say in the case of Chad Dayball, not only did he deny the fact that he had wings made of wax, but I think he actually thought he was the sun. So, you know, he wanted to oversee the entire show. So I guess that would be similar to wanting to run the Mormon church. Chad Daybill certainly wasn't content just flying to the sun. He wanted to own the sun and take it over. Another interesting moment this week occurred today when Lauren and I watched the hearing, the court hearing. There were charges of two felony accounts, actually, to conspire, to conceal evidence, two charges.

So additional charges were being levied, and I couldn't help but notice that Chad smiled several times during the proceedings. saw it too. And wow. That's what I thought. Smug. Yeah. Wow. If after the last podcast, there's any doubts about Chad's avoidance of being human or his arrogance or smugness, then that was confirmation.

Because to smile under those circumstances just seems absurd to me. I might be willing to give him the slight benefit of the doubt and say maybe he smiled because he was anxious. but it certainly didn't come off that way. It certainly seemed like he was smiling because he knows something that none of us, none of the rest of us know, which, who knows what that is, but I'm sure it has something to do with his visions.

I'm sure there's plenty that we don't know that he knows. So the smile was just more confirmation of, I think a lot of what we talked about last week with this whole idea of denying one's humanity. And I think if you deny that, I think the offshoot or the upshot of that is if we avoid the fact that we're human and we have limitations, that can lead us in a lot of wrong directions. No doubt that led Chad Daibel in a really bad direction. So that was the first thing I wanted to cover.

Today, I'm going to focus on the second element that I believe had a major influence upon Chad's eventual behaviors in this situation. And the term I'm going to give, I mentioned this term last week, the term I would use to describe that as disconnect. From a psychological standpoint, the way I would get into that would be to refer to literature described as attachment. So the basic idea, psychological idea behind attachment is that children and even infants as young as two minutes old are influenced by their interaction with their caregivers. Male or female, typically that tends to be female, but it could go either way. It could be a male. And in those first moments of life, the infant is seeking some type of comfort. They're seeking some type of interaction, incredibly enough.

They need some type of acknowledgement of their existence. And there was a British psychoanalyst. His name was Donald Winnicott, DW Winnicott, who had this idea of what he called annihilation anxiety. And annihilation anxiety occurs in those very first moments of life, maybe even within the first few days of life when the infant's born and the infant is searching for something to connect with. The infant is in a position where its survival depends upon a caregiver. The infant is looking for comfort. It's looking for acknowledgement. And without that, it's precisely what the term suggests.

Without that acknowledgement, there's this deep sense of annihilation. There's this deep sense of non-existence. It's almost just at the self. Of course, no child that's 24 hours old is going to have any sense of themselves, but they need some type of affirmation to know that they exist. And I think the most interesting manifestation of this is found with orphans from Romania and Russia that were born and placed in these massive orphanages, and they're simply worn enough caregivers to attend to them. So often they would be left for days or weeks at a time without any human contact. They would sit in a crib. They would sit in a crib and cry and cry, and they, They didn't receive any human contact.

And this would be a classic example of when it caught. And later, Melanie Klein talked about when they talked about annihilation anxiety, which is that the infant literally feels like they're dying. They literally feel like there's this abyss that they've fallen into and there's no end to it. And it's a really fascinating idea to me because it suggests that even in the first 24 hours of life for a human child that you can do irreparable And I mean, that to me is just mind-boggling. You know, think about that for a moment. Child born doesn't receive any intention for 24-48 hours.

It's crying for comfort. It's crying for food. It's crying for attention. For acknowledgement, it gets none of that. And in those 48 hours, according to Winnicott, you can irreparably damage that child. That child will never get over that. And so when you think about that, you know, people, some of my students say to me, all this unconscious stuff is nonsense.

I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. All this stuff that has nothing to do with the rational mind, this is just hocus pocus, it's nonsense. And my response to that is, what about a child in the first year or two years of life when they have no language, when they have no way to express themselves rationally or verbally? I say to my students, do you, don't you think that in those first two years of life that there's some influence? Don't you think that children that are being abused during those first two? years show the effects from that later and some of them say no but for the most part I think there has to be some acknowledgement that those years matter we have memories in other words we not might not have those

conscious memories of oh I remember what I did when I was one but we have a forming brain and memories of how we felt right exactly feels to be alive yeah exactly and so attachment is exactly what you just said attachment is largely about a felt sense of the world so that child that experiences annihilation in those first 48 hours will never be able to articulate that, but they'll feel it. They'll feel as if they don't belong in the world. They'll feel as if they're disconnected. And they won't be able to explain it. You know, and it's an interesting question about whether that child could ever go back

and fill that void. But I think it's possible as a psychologist who also does clinical work. I want to say that, yes, I think it can be filled. It's hard. But as you and I, you and I both know, we have friends who have adopted. kids from orphanages and those kids are pretty damaged not to get too specific about this but it's heartbreaking it's heartbreaking we love these children and these kids have been given a lot and the the parents that adopted them have tried so hard and yet they just can't bring them back from the precipice and

it's it's really sad and it's not the children's fault it's not the parents right so if a child is laying in that orphanage and is ignored for the first week of its life according to winnicott that child is going to, for lack of a better term, feel the abyss. That child is going to feel as if it does not exist, as if it's not, as if it's never been acknowledged by another human being. The reason I bring this up is because we're talking about disconnection. We're talking about attachment. So I think that's a really stark metaphor for attachment and the importance of infants to connect with their caregivers. There's two types of attachment. There's secure attachment and insecure attachment. And there's three types of insecure attachment. But for the sake of simplicity, let's divide it up into secure and insecure.

What happens in attachment is that children begin to develop mental maps of the world, and they begin to develop mental maps of relationships. And so that sets the stage for everything else. They begin to develop a sense of trust in the world, and they begin to develop a sense of security and safety. All of those things, that sense of safety, security, and trust are a part of that mental map. As early as two or three years old, that map will set the stage for every other relationship in that child's life. So the idea of becoming attached is becomes really important for later life because in some ways it's the precursor to everything else. Securely attached children tend to show good self-esteem. They're capable of intimacy. They're capable of sharing their

emotions with others. They're capable of seeking out support. They're capable of developing connections to other people in a healthy way. And insecure attached children, on the other hand, tend to be very disconnected. All of the things I just mentioned for securely attachment children, the opposite would be true for insecurely attached children. They have poor self-esteem because they can't connect to other human means. They struggle with intimacy. They are very uncomfortable expressing their emotions. In fact, most of them will bury their emotions and they'll see their emotions as a sign of weakness, they aren't able to connect to others. They aren't able to develop ties to the community. If we're wondering how attachment plays into later

criminal behavior, I hope this begins to explain some of that. The reason why it's relevant to later criminal behavior is precisely because the lack of a secure attachment essentially leads to disconnection. Or another way to think of it is, if you're not attached, you're detached. And if you're detached, you're disconnected. And if you're detached, you're disconnect. The more disconnected you are from others, and the more disconnected you are from the community, the more antisocial you're likely to become. And we know that antisociality is the number one risk factor for future criminal behavior. It's very easy to tie this idea of attachment back to potential criminal behavior and as a risk factor for potential criminal behavior because there's no connection to others. And without being connected to others, you're much more likely to be comfortable engaging behaviors where you harm others.

To clarify, that does not mean that someone that has an insecure attachment is going to be a criminal. Right. Yeah, absolutely. It's a risk factor. You can be insecurely attached and you can express that in other ways. You can become a drug addict or you can use it to become a CEO. It can drive you to... It can drive you to therapy. It can drive you to therapy, right. Where you can discover more about yourself and learn how to have better relationships. Right. So insecure attachment. is it's not a guarantee of future problematic behavior.

It's just a risk factor. And actually in the last couple of years, there's been some really strong research suggesting that insecure attachments are highly correlated with future behavior. And I would say of all the assessments I've done in the past year, I would say every one of them, 100% of those. Of the people that I've interviewed in the judicial system in the last year have had insecure attachments.

And it's been a part of my report in every single case. That doesn't prove anything, but statistically it's significant. In talking about attachment, one of the more interesting experiments on attachment, and it's also kind of a heartbreaking experiment, the Harlow. Harry Harlow was a psychologist, came to prominence in the 1950s for experiments he did on Rhesus Monkeys. Notice how cautiously he enters the room. He's searching for comfort, but nothing relieves his disturbance. Some of you may have some familiarity with these experiments,

because any psych 101 class would talk about these. Harlow wanted to figure out if he took two wire mesh monkeys and he put cloth, comforting cloth around one of them, and he gave the other one food, which one would the monkey be attracted to? Which one would the monkey spend more time with? And Harlow found, without question, that the cloth-covered monkey was more popular.

Despite the fact that the wire mother nursed him, she could offer this infant nothing in the way of affection of security. The monkeys spent well over 90% of their time with the cloth monkey. They would go to the surrogate mother monkey with food only when they needed food. But they would spend almost all their other time with the terry cloth monkey. When Harlow was doing these experiments, it was a popular belief that children did not need human contact. The belief at the time was that children were spoiled, that they didn't need to be hugged, they didn't need to be comforted.

And so Harlow set these experiments up to really challenge that notion. It was actually very controversial because Harrow. Harlow started throwing around the term love, which in the 1950s was the height of behaviorism and psychology. And, you know, using a term as emotionally loaded as love was not a popular thing to do. Frankly, Doctor, if it comes to a choice between wire and cloth, it's reasonable to expect that any child will go to the cloth. That's a matter of creature comfort like a baby with its blanket. But is this really love?

Well, what do you mean by saying that a baby love? It's mother. Certainly one thing we mean is that it gets a great feeling of security in the presence of the mother. So Harlow received a lot of criticism. Of course, it didn't help that Harlow was sort of this mad scientist that had no emotion. You know, Harlow would describe some of these experiments with a very detached scientific demeanor. You know, I mean, I remember Harlow in some of these videos of the experiments, Harlow would, you know, objectify the pain of these monkeys.

You know, a monkey would be in the corner cowering and clearly in pain, and Harlow would be like, and we now see that this monkey is clearly suffering. Lacing eyes, loud sound, moving mechanical parts, all of these things are designed to frighten a monkey. Isn't that interesting? That's awful. Right. So Harlow, there's some...

Controversy. Yeah, there's some controversy. Some people even argue that Harlow, because of... Harlow was so harsh on these monkeys that Harlow was the impetus for a lot of the animal rights movements. And certainly he was an impetus for animal rights and psychological research. Harlow is certainly no hero of mine. But on the other hand... But what did we learn from him?

Well, we learned from Harlow was the same thing we learned from the orphanages. And by the way, this idea of annihilation anxiety is somewhat controversial because it hasn't... You can't experimentally prove this idea because you can't grab an infant from the mother's arms at birth and put them in isolation, right? You can't throw an infant in a sensory deprivation tank for the first, for the first 48 hours of their lives. So you can't, there's no way to experimentally examine the impact of extreme deprivation on a child in the beginning of their life because it's extremely unethical. So the best we can do is we can look at retrospective studies or, in some cases, longitudinal studies of orphans that had very little contact in the beginning of their

lives. Again, what do we learn from this? We learn that human beings in comfort. We learn that they need attention. We learn that they need nurturance. We know that humans respond to mother's cues. We know that there's an intricate dance going on between mother and child. We know that the mother is giving off a lot of facial cues to the infant and the infant's reading those and the infant's responding with their own cues. And so you've got this really intricate dance going on. That's the dance of connection. That's the dance that leads that child to either trust human beings or not. It leads that child to feel safe in the world or not. It sets the stage for everything else. If we're bringing this back to Chad Daybell, which of course we are since this is my second. This is my second variable

in explaining Chad Daybell. The inner working is. He's finally getting the attention he always wanted. Yeah. Everyone's talking about Chad Daybell. Yeah. Even though every time I do one of these podcasts, my number keeps getting worse and worse. So I think I'm definitely. I think I'm like a 6.6666 dark. I think we're at seven. Let's just be on. Yeah, seven. I don't know.

Did he go to seven? No, I don't think so. He gave a system. There are no sevens. I think, I think six and changes. John Matthias came along. Yeah, I think six and change was about the worst you could do.

So I'm like six and change. By the way, one complaint with our podcast is not explaining some background. So for those that aren't as familiar with the case, Chad Daybell created a light and dark scale. to judge people on, which is tragic because he judged the victims. Tiley, Ryele, Ryan, 16-year-old Tiley was a dark, in other words, an evil spirit. For those of you who may be listening that aren't as informed about the Daybell case, I certainly encourage you to get into some of the Facebook groups where these issues are

talked about in depth. Let me try to tie this idea of attachment to Chad Daybell. The most obvious place I would start would be with his autobiography. After I read the autobiography. I closed the book and I thought this is absolutely incredible. I just spent, I don't know, four hours and 200 pages reading this really nonsensical biography, but putting that aside, my first impression was that Chad barely talked about relationships. In almost every other autobiography I've read, relationships are central. In fact, if you think about most biographies, it's the parental relationships and the sibling relationships and the relationships with spouses and children that are highlighted. And Chad Dable's biography, what's highlighted are his near-death experiences, his visions,

the New Jerusalem. Like essentially, Chad Dable's autobiography is, I think, in many ways, a set up for his later bid to become a prophet. He spoke more about his ancestors, his great-grandfather and grandfather that had died than he did his own siblings or parents or wife. Yeah, he barely talks about his children. He doesn't talk about his children with any depth. If you were to ask me, can you tell me how Chad feels about one of his kids? I'd say, no. I mean, I knew that they were born. I knew that he expected them to come into the world, but that's it.

I know nothing about his children. He barely talks about his wife. He mentions his dad a little bit, but he mentions his mother three times in the entire book with no depth. Not only is his mother a minor character, she's like a, she's not even a cardboard character. I don't even know she's a character. I thought the most interesting story that he told about his mother, one of the three times she was mentioned, was his birth story, which was, you know, his mother was pregnant.

And so his father took his mother on a bumpy ride in the car and that induced labor. Thus, his dad is even responsible for his birth story. Right. The father's the hero in the birth story. The mother was this passive passenger in the car who happened to be bumped enough to give birth to Chad. So, you know, the credit goes to dad. Welcome to the world, Chad. Another interesting moment in the book occurred when Chad talked.

about his wife's, he called it an addiction, but his wife's addiction to an app called Farmville. The interesting thing about that story was just the way Chad communicated with her. So they'd been married for 20 plus years. He notices that his wife is playing this game a lot, like all the time. In his mind, it's an addiction and it's a waste of time. So he wants to confront her about it. So what he does, he gets a vision or prompting her deceased grandmother saying, hey, Tammy's wasting her time doing this. You know, you need to really get her off. He takes that vision and he goes to Tammy's mother and he tells the mother, hey, I got a visitation from grandma and she really thinks Tammy needs to stop this. What do you think? And of course, the mother said, yeah, well, you know,

if grandma gave you this sign, then of course you better stop. So let's go talk to Tammy. So mom and Chad go to Tammy and confront her and they say, hey, you know, grandma thinks this is a really bad idea. You should stop. So manipulative. And so and she stops. Because she agrees that, oh, well, you know, if you're talking to my dead grandma, then, of course, this has to stop. That was the story, according to Chad. Who knows what Tammy really thought. Right. But I mean, if you think about this in terms of attachment, the issue here is why doesn't he just go talk to her directly? Why doesn't he just say to her, hey, Tammy, I noticed you're playing this game a lot. Are you depressed? Yes, because I'm married to you.

Right. Let's talk about this. What's going on? The reason why he doesn't go to her directly is precisely. It goes back to those issues I talked about with being disconnected or being insecurely attached, which is the struggles with intimacy, the inability to express emotions directly, the inability to, in some cases, to even identify emotions, the struggles to identify social cues, just that sense of disconnection. He doesn't go to her because he's not comfortable with it. So after 25 years of marriage or whatever it is, after 20 plus years of marriage to Tammy Daybell, his wife, he can't even go directly to her.

her and express his feelings or emotions about his concerns because he's afraid because he's he doesn't have that secure attachment he doesn't feel comfortable enough to go in there and say hey are you depressed are you okay i'm really feeling sad about this right or something normal i don't know whatever but he's incapable of that because he's not securely attached so does that what creates a manipulation too because not only did he not do that what he did do was incredibly manipulative yes for sure so people that insecurely attached, they're going to struggle much more to express themselves directly. You're going to see much more passive, aggressive type communication. If he's afraid of this type of confrontation with his wife, it's much easier to bring in, you know, the ghost of Tammy's grandmother and to use that, to use that as a prop or a ruse to get her to act. If Tammy says, you know what, I want to play this game, I don't care what you think, he's not being rejected. And then let's just throw a cherry on top, the lack of self-awareness, because he would actually take this story right. it down and put it in his autobiography like it was something great to share with others. Yeah, right. Chad discusses the story in his autobiography like this is a model type of communication.

Right. It's just like, you're really telling this? I hope you, I hope all of you readers out there, you know, start invoking deceased relatives to use as scapegoats for communication because that's what I do. With those closest to you, right? He actually sees it as a positive because it shows his gifts, his gift to communicate with the dead and to relay messages from beyond the veil. Ironically, like Lauren and I sit here and joke about this interaction and find it funny because all we do is directly confront each other all the time. You know, when you take two independent people, hopefully with some degree of emotional intelligence,

you know, sometimes there can be fireworks there too. But everything's out in the open for sure. This show is supported by Odu. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up, and it gets complicated and confusing. Odu solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on features you need.

Check out Odu at O'Don. O-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O- dot com. Ironically, Chad is using this story as an example of his prophetic gifts. And to say something about Tammy, because she was not there to tell her side of the story, nor is she with us now because she likely murdered by Chad. I just want to say this too. I once played a video game a lot.

And it was when I was in an extremely abusive relationship, emotionally abusive relationship. and I did not know what else to do, and I was so depressed. And so I just want to give that voice to Tammy a little bit as well. When you were in that relationship and your ex was gone all the time, I know you talked about, this is ironic that we're doing a true crime podcast, because didn't you talk about watching Dateline? Every night. You watch Dateline every night.

Every night. Right. So you became obsessed with true crime. And here we are doing a true crime podcast. And then I met John, and then I just was able to talk to him about all the Dayline episodes I had just watched and be able to. to move on and never need to watch one again until Chad Debo. Right. You don't you didn't want to watch when we wanted to do one. Right.

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when it comes to quality and it shows. For a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com. That's happy H-A-P-P-Y mammoth. M-A-M-M-M-O-T-H.com. Just use the code hidden true crime at checkout. That's code hidden true crime. Use that with Happy mammoth.com for 15% off today. The second idea of what I call disconnection is related to the psychological insurance attachment. To me, at least, it seems fairly clear that the second variable we need to look at and understanding Chad is attachment.

And in this case, his lack of attachment or his detachment from healthy relationships, his detachment from... Or any relationship. Right. That was another theme in his autobiography was there's definitely a sense in there that he didn't have a lot of friends in childhood. You get the sense that he was a very isolated child. I mean, he didn't really talk about that. But you get the sense that he was very isolated as a kid. And then he felt he was special. You know, this theme of being special, this theme of

denying his humanness is a very common theme in that book. And then people not noticing when he was young, not noticing him. Right. The world is full of people that are detached. And they don't all end up with two innocent dead children in their yard. How does this make Chad Daybell? What Chad Daybell did was so evil. You can't draw a direct relationship between being detached and killing kids, but it's a foundation. We have to take a series of steps. We have to take a series of small steps to get to the point where he kills these kids. I mean, and honestly, we don't even know. We don't know who killed them. We know that he was involved, but we don't know, we know that they were in his backyard. But did he actually commit the murders? Probably not.

For those that aren't as aware as others, Alex Cox was Lori Vassie. Dabo Dabell's brother who lived with her and they believed that he might have been the one that killed the kids. But there was Chad who was involved and there was Lori, the mother who was involved. Right. We don't know who did what. To answer your question, I think we're building to a crescendo here. But we're setting the foundation. You know, the question is for me and for a lot of people, how does Chad Dable get to the point where he can murder these kids? And so last week we started with this avoidance of being human. I think that's an important step

because it allows him to get to the point where he feels like a God or a prophet. And then today we're talking about being detached or non-attached. Being detached. It puts him in a better position to get involved in a murderous scheme because he doesn't feel connected to these kids. He doesn't feel connected to other human beings.

It's easier for him to do something like this or become involved in this because he doesn't have as much empathy as a normal person should have. He doesn't feel the compassion or sympathy or empathy that most of us would have. When I watch the Harlow experiments, it's very difficult. You know, I want to just run into the lab and pull Harlow out and say, what are you doing? You know, there's a lack of empathy there, too, I think. And that's one of the things that people didn't like about Harlow.

We're trying to put these pieces together. We're taking some steps. We're building the foundation. next week we're going to have the third step in that foundation. That step is close-mindedness, for lack of a better term. And we're going to talk about that in the next podcast. But I want to cover the three foundational steps first. And then I want to start building upon those with additional pieces until we get to the point where all of this makes sense.

But I don't think we can put the pieces together without building that foundation. That makes sense. And thinking about this podcast this week, I thought about a little boy I worked with many years ago, 20 years now. I finished grad school. This was one of my first jobs. I was working for the state in their early childhood services division. And my job was to work with little ones between the ages of four and six or in some cases, four and eight. A lot of times I would go to the homes. There's a place in Southern Nevada called Child Haven, which is part of the DCFS, where they place kids that have been removed from the home temporarily. You know, many people in Southern Nevada refer to it as a type

of orphanage. There was a little boy there. And before I talk about this, I should mention that any time I'm talking about a case on this podcast, and I'll be doing this a lot, by the way, I'll be talking about clients. These are not going to be the names of the clients. The identifying information is going to be disguised. This case I'm talking about is the general tenor of this case is true. The specifics are going to be changed to protect the identity of these children and the people I talk about. So speaking of attachment, mom, where are you? Maybe I'll go take care of our little boy. Okay. And you tell this story and we'll be back. Over 20 years ago, I was assigned a case in Child Haven with a five-year-old boy. And I remember receiving the case file the day before I was going to meet this little boy. Let's call him Bradley.

That's not really his name. But for our purposes, I'm going to call him Bradley. I was supposed to meet Bradley, and I reviewed his case file, which was very lengthy at that point. He had been in and out of foster care for many years by then. A five-year-old, which is unusual for a five-year-old because he had been removed between one and two years old. And then he had gone to a number of foster care placements. He never found a home in any of those placements. He was back in Child Haven because in the previous week, he was living with the foster family that had a dog. This little five-year-old, I don't know why.

He was upset. The foster parents left the home or one of them left the home for a little bit. One was somewhere in the home, but apparently not with him. He became extremely upset and he killed the dog. And not only did he kill the dog, but I'm not going to get into details, but he literally shredded this dog. It was horrific. There was blood all over the floor. I remember reading the case file and thinking, what kind of monster am I going to be working with? And that's a strange thing to think about a five-year-old. I tried not to think that, of course, but it's hard to imagine a five-year-old doing something as horrific as that. But he did. So I met with Bradley the next day, and he came across as a perfectly normal little boy. He didn't do well with the other kids.

There was a playground in Child Haven, and outdoor playground. And I remember Bradley and I would sit on the edge of the playground and watch the other kids, and I would try to encourage him to go play, but he wouldn't. So getting back to this idea, being disconnected or detached. This is classic. He can't get in the playground with the other kids. He can't interact with them. He's not comfortable with them. I had to find other ways to engage with him.

We played with blocks. They had toys there. I tried to talk to him. He had low frustration tolerance. He was a little impulsive, but you would never know that this was a child capable of killing a dog. It was never talked about with him directly. I think he was ashamed of it. Did you try to talk to him about it directly? No, I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to enhance his shame in any way. Okay. I just thought if he brought it up, that would be fine, but he never brought it up. You know, with a child, I think you have to be really careful.

This is a kid with so much shame and so much trauma. His background was that he was sexually and physically and emotionally abused, almost from birth. He had cigarette butt burns all over him. I don't want to get into his history too much, but it was horrific. He probably should have been removed before a year. He wasn't. He was removed after a year.

So here he was in the sister. And I would get down on the floor with him and play. And I just tried to get to his level and tried to relate to him. And I was, obviously, I just tried to be kind and to normalize whatever negative experiences he was having with adults. There were a couple times when foster parents were considered for placement and they would come in and I would meet with them and I would see how they interacted with him. I think it was after about four months. Another foster parent entered the picture and he was going to go live with them. And at that point, I was going to actually going to actually.

I was going to exit the scene. And I remember my last day with Bradley, we were out on the playground and there was this little turtle, plastic turtle. Bradley went over to the turtle and he sat on it. And I remember going over there with him

and he was sitting down and I was standing up. And it was probably the last five minutes of my time with him. And I remember he looked up at me and he was so sad. And he said, Mr. John, Mr. John, could you take me home?

I remember thinking in that moment, would that be an option? I had grown attached to this child. I felt very badly for him. But I was fresh out of grad school and I was single. It just wasn't a realistic possibility. And I think, honestly, I was probably a bit afraid about approaching that idea. But this is a kid who once again was reaching out for some type of connection to another person. And he felt comfortable with me and he felt close to me after only four months, which that in and of itself is sort of sad.

That moment still haunts me to some degree because it always makes me think about Bradley and how he's doing. I hope he did well. I hope he's doing well. A couple of times over the years I reached out to some of my contacts and child protective services to see if they knew anything about him or if he'd been in the system. And it appeared that he hadn't. And that was a good sign. But he could have moved.

He could have left the state. It's hard to know. But I think probably the most important thing that Bradley taught me is that he really forced me to think about the idea of home. that Bradley was looking for a home. The only thing this kid wanted was a home. And when I say home, I don't mean a building. I don't mean four walls and a door. I don't mean that.

What I mean by home is something more metaphorical. I remember I was up at a Riders conference in Idaho of all crazy things, not far from Rex Perg. I was up in Idaho. Day Bell Country. Yeah. One of the speakers was Colin McCann. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning writer.

And he talked about the idea of home. And I remember it very well because it made me think of Bradley at the time. And what he said, which still resonates with me, is the most important issue for all human beings is finding home. And that can mean a lot of things. But for a psychologist, for me, what that means is figuring out who we are and figuring out where we belong. Those are two really hard questions. Most human beings never figure out who they are and they never figure out where they belong. And McCann said that his job as a writer was to try to bring that issue into play time after time because it's the thing that we struggle with the most.

In thinking about this issue the other day, I thought about Bradley, and I thought about this idea of home. And I also thought about Chad Daybell, and I thought about something that one of my mentors used to talk about, which was a Buddhist idea. It's called Hungry Ghosts. And I thought about Daibel because Chad Daibel

was obviously obsessed with ghosts and believed that he communicated with ghosts and that he lived on the edge or with or around ghosts, and that idea comes up in his books over and over. If you think about this metaphor of hungry ghosts, in Buddhism, the idea is that you're never filled. A ghost, a hungry ghost can never be filled up. Hungry Ghost can never be satisfied. You can give a hungry ghost all the food on the planet.

It will still be hungry. You can give a hungry ghost all the wealth on the planet. It will still want more. You can give a hungry ghost everything. And the hungry ghost will never be filled up. The hungry ghost will wander the planet aimlessly forever, never finding a home. So I thought about Bradley. I thought about hungry ghosts.

I thought about home and tying this all back to this case. I think my thought was Chad Daybell was profoundly lost. Chad Daybell was a hungry ghost looking for a home. He was looking for a place where he could belong. He never found that place. Even though he was married with five kids, Chad Debo was utterly lost. He was utterly orphaned from the world.

And I think that when he received some attention for his books, when he received some attention from a bow, and when Lori Vallow comes along, I think for the first time in his life, Chad Daybell had some experience of what it felt to belong. And I think in that moment, Chad Daybel also started to discover wrongly, I think, but he started to think that he was figuring out who he was. Unfortunately, that discovery entailed him being a prophet, and we obviously know where that led. Once he became convinced that he was a prophet and he felt some sense of belonging, I think in some sense he was unstoppable. But the common theme here is that Chad Dayball really underneath all this, Chad Dayball was lost. Chad Dayball never found his home.

There's irony there because the first thing I remember seeing about Chad Dayball was a video that's now on YouTube, someone interviewing him in Idaho about one of his books, one foot in the grave, his time as a cemetery sexton. And he spoke very matter-effectly about a ghost in the graveyard that wouldn't go away. or wouldn't go home and that Chad had to take the responsibility of telling this ghost to leave. And so right when you told me that that was the first thing that came to my mind. He was buried right next to my office. Well, about four days after his burial, I think he stuck around. Because I started having locks picked here and there.

We had a lock on our compound where we'd keep the backhoe. And I would check it every night. but once Eddie had passed away and it started opening every night and then another lock on a shed nearby he had actually unlocked and hung about two feet above the door and I know I know it was Eddie it just had to be and I kind of told him it's time to go to the light Eddie and he gave one last ditch effort I guess the next morning I found the garbage can shoved in front of my door the locks were all open again and finally I just was quite stern with him and said go to the light it's time to move on and that stopped the lock picking how much projection is there in that moment when he says yes I you know I spoke to

ghost at the cemetery and there's this ghost and I had to tell him to go home I started off by talking about annihilation anxiety in orphanages and here now I'm returning to this idea an orphan is someone without a home Chad Debel was an orphan to the world, and I think that created a lot of problems. Is there a direct connection between being lost and an orphan in the world or homeless and murder? Probably not, but I think it's a theme that recurs in many criminal cases. You're painting, to me, a pretty bleak picture for those that are insecurely attached or thinking that they might be insecurely attached.

Any hope at all? I don't believe I would have entered this field if I wasn't. hopeful about human beings' abilities to change. So yes, there's hope. On the one hand, there's a fairly significant amount of research showing that attachment styles are stable over one's lifespan. So I guess that's the bleak part. Some research suggests that we can predict with up to 85% accuracy someone's attachment style is if we know what that attachment style is as early as age six. It's definitely a very stable pattern of relating that tends to stick with us, throughout life. However, there is some good news. The good news is we can change it. My evidence for that

comes from a psychiatrist by the name of George Valiant. He was a major part of the Harvard study of adult development, which followed a group of Harvard graduates from the 1940s over the course of their lifespan. Most of them now are quite old, and they're near the end of this study. Many of them have died, but many of them are still alive. And Valiant was able to look at, among other things, mental health issues, economic issues, employment issues. He looked at probably more variables than anyone has ever considered in a longitudinal study. So it gives it a lot of validity. The downside is that it's only men. So typical. In terms of being able to generalize from this study, perhaps it's somewhat limited. What Valiant discovered, which I think is extraordinary, is that

there's essentially two ways that we can change. One of those ways is that as we move out into the world and we interface with larger systems, jobs, organizations, clubs, groups, religious organizations, churches. As we move out into the world and we interact with larger systems, those systems in some ways become surrogate families. And it's within those systems. If we can find healthy systems that can serve as surrogate families, we have the chance to really grow and develop and change within those systems. I can give you an example of five or six years ago. I was the clinical director of a community counseling agency in Las Vegas,

and we had decided to hire a therapist who we had some reservations about, but for the most part, the staff liked this person. We hired this person. Our clinical staff consisted of about 12 therapists. We were a tight-knit group. We would interact a lot. We were very open. I'd like to say that I think we had a lot of qualities of healthy families.

She joined us. Every week she was coming into my office and telling me everything I was doing wrong and that was fine. I'm happy to get feedback. She was criticizing me about my group. She was criticizing me about some of my advice or thoughts in our clinical staff meetings. So that was fine. It might have been a little bit of a red flag, but I wasn't too concerned about it. Then within about three months, she showed up to work drunk a few times. And now we had a more serious problem because obviously a therapist has to do some, some difficult emotional work and I don't want someone showing up at work who's impaired. But things became dire when two of her clients called me and complained that she was being abusive towards them. Wow. Once that was confirmed, we had to let her go, quite obviously, we're not going to retain a therapist who is being emotionally abusive towards her clients. During the accident interview with this person, I asked her for some feedback about

our organization and she proceeded to tell me that it was me and it was the therapist. and we were all incompetent, we didn't know what we were doing, that she had all the answers. I think the reason I bring this up is because our organization was an example of a fairly healthy organization that was able to bring several therapists into the fold and at some level give them a chance

to really examine themselves and to get healthier over time, and I think they would be quite open about the fact that that's what happened. This therapist, however, is a perfect example of someone entering a healthy system, who's not prepared to adapt or change or look at herself in any meaningful fashion and therefore is losing that opportunity to really change. I don't know for sure that this person was

insecurely attached, but I could surmise that based on her behavior. So Valiant demonstrated in his study that the men in his project that found healthy systems on the one hand and on the other hand that found healthy relationships, that's the other case. There's two ways you can change attachment style. One is to find a healthy system with hopefully managers or leaders that are healthy and a group as a whole that's healthy and that can embrace you. And if there's certain areas where you need to learn and grow, you can receive some of that feedback. And the system will be happy to adopt you or bring you into the fold and to improve your mental health. The other way is through finding a healthy partner. So many of the men in the study who had significant psychiatric problems

early on and really struggled when they found healthy partners, they became healthier. If they were open, again, the key here is they were willing to listen to feedback from their partners to change for the better. And what Valiant found is that many of the defense mechanisms that had been impeding their progress, such as denial, blaming others, rationalizing certain negative behaviors, Valiant found that these defense mechanisms became lessened over time and their ability to attach to their partners increased. Harvard's study of adult development suggests that we can change. It's difficult. The key is being open to feedback and being open to changing. If we interact with larger systems that are healthy or we find

partners that are healthy, we can move from an insecure attachment to a secure attachment. In fact, I have Valiance book right in front of me. This is on page 370. And yes, Lauren will tell you that I do bring books and reading material to our dinner table every now and then. Don't even tell him to try Kindle. It is not allowed. We have bookshelts full of books. Yeah, this is not a Kindle. I'm not quoting it from a Kindle. I'm old school. I like the feel of a book. So page 370, this is one of his major conclusions. Valant says the most important contributor to joy and success in adult life is love or in theoretical terms attachment. So there you go. Many of these men were not healthy and they became healthier. And the way to do it is to find healthier systems if you can,

even though it's uncomfortable, try to engage with these healthier systems through work and or to find a partner or spouse or somebody who can love you and accept you for who you are and is willing to work with your flaws and your vulnerabilities and to help you become healthier. Well, Chad Daybell had a healthy partner. I do definitely think she was healthier than him. My question about her would be whether he was willing or open to learning from her. and my guess is no. Based on his autobiography, it appears to me

that he had most of the control in that relationship. Although, ironically, she ran his business, for the most part, he told her what to do, he told her how to do it, he told her when to do it. So it's not really a reciprocal relationship. Although, unfortunately, the study is just men, this is not a case of women rescuing men.

It simply happens to be a situation where these men were willing to look at their flaws and to change with whoever that partner was. rescuing men is not a healthy relationship. No, no, right, exactly. If Tammy had taken on chat as a project, then obviously that would not have been healthy.

In the study, most of the spouses were much more emotionally and mentally healthier than their husbands. It wasn't as if they were forcing them to change, or it wasn't as they saw them as a project. It was more that they saw the potential in these men, and more than anything, the men saw their shortcomings and were willing to change because they wanted love, because they wanted to be attached to these healthier spouses.

What's that quote you always say when we have disagreements? Not the one about me being right, the other quote. Right. The one about you being right is just a given. I think the quote you're talking about is sometimes when we're disagreeing over certain things. And I feel like maybe we're being a little too stubborn with each other. Never happens. Yeah, right.

Neither of us are stubborn. I don't know where our son got it. Yeah, right. I don't know why our son is so stubborn. I have no idea. The quote comes from E.M. Forster, a well-known British novelist who wrote a number of well-received books. The quote is Only Connect. I think it's a great quote because it says so much with only two words.

So in a lot of Forrester's work, he discussed issues around ethnic and racial divisions, issues around aggression and violence, issues of men and women and how they relate to each. other and his solution to all that was only connect he saw connection is love he saw connection as compassion and acceptance and understanding and so since we're talking about crime Forrester often perceived love as the force that could counteract violence and aggression and division to him disconnection would consist of social and psychological alienation and connection would be the opposite and I think If you look at the Daybell situation, obviously you're talking about someone who was immensely disconnected in every way. So if you ask me, I would say he's disconnected from himself.

He's disconnected from the larger community, although obviously he tried to create his own community. You know, the story of him lecturing the Bishop Rick about how he was a prophet shows how utterly disconnected he really was. We learned about that story from Carl Danger. He runs one of the Facebook groups that I would recommend. True Crime Underground Lori DeBell cult mom. Ted DeBel was completely disconnected from himself. He was disconnected from the larger community that he longed to be a part of. Also, I would say that he was disconnected from reality.

If you're disconnected in all those ways, there's probably trouble brewing on the horizon. And obviously, we know that there was. And that's where this quote-only connect comes in. I think the antidote to disconnection is to only connect. That's a quote that I throw out a lot. It reminds Lauren and I, hopefully, sometimes, that connection is more important than disconnection. It's a goal we always work towards in our relationship.

I think if I had to throw out a closing thought, it might be that quote to only connect. I think that if Chad Dayball had learned that lesson, not only would we not be doing this podcast, but a number of lives that never should have been taken would have been. saved. If I had a wish for our listeners, it would be to stay open, to keep going, to find where you belong, wherever that is. It could be anywhere. Could be anywhere, but not in Chad Daybell's cult. Yeah. Well, especially if you're Chad Daybell. My wish would be to keep going, to try to find that place where you belong, to try to figure out who you are, even if that's a really difficult journey. If we find that place, we call home, I think it brings us a certain amount of peace

in contentment. I feel reasonably confident in saying that Chad Dable never found that place. I think he may have thought he did, but it's hard to imagine that there was anything but turmoil in Chad's life. And so I think if you can find some measure of peace and contentment and joy in your life, I think that's what I would call home. On that note, dinner is coming to an end. It was a longer dinner tonight. Right. Last week, I think we had like two courses. This week we had like a five course meal. I didn't notice a lot of people leaving early. Yeah, thank you for those who stayed. And if you did stay through dinner,

we are up now on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, is that right? And so if you listen to any of those, if you wouldn't mind leaving us a review, that would mean a lot. We do want to continue doing these and hope that you'll continue listening, and we love the feedback. Thank you for all the feedback.

Thank you for all the great questions. many of your insights have been amazing. They've been totally consistent with some of my thoughts, and I've just been really impressed by the community of listeners out there who have so much insight into this case. If we can make this into a dialogue at some point about this whole situation, I think that would be really fantastic. Also, we now have a Facebook page,

Hidden a True Crime podcast, as well as a Twitter account at Hidden Crime. Please go like us there, and share with your friends that there is a seat for them next week. And we hope you'll join us next week. We'll have a seat open. Good night. Good night.

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