Hidden True Crime - Beyond the Veil: The Many Extremes of Lori Vallow Daybell Part II

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

In this second half of dinner we explore the relationship between borderline personality disorder and violence potential. We also make the connection between Lori’s extremism and research on terrorists and terrorism. Is Lori a terrorist? Is Chad a terrorist? What makes a terrorist? We conclude our lengthy two-week dinner with a tribute to the many victims of crime and the emotional impact of delving deeply into crime. 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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A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fear. along the way. Hello, this is Lauren Matthias. This is Dr. John Matthias. Before we begin, if you haven't listened to our episode, the many extremes of Lori Velo Daybell, Part 1, we suggest stopping and going back and listening to that episode first before listening to this one.

Everything will make a lot more sense since we cut this dinner into two parts. I want to let you guys know that there are a lot of people behind the scenes helping us. that have reached out people close to this case. People that are quiet about their research, that aren't there sharing it with thousands of people, but working so hard to help us understand this case.

And one of those people is Cheryl Wheeler, and we want to say thank you to her for helping us find a lot of the documents we needed to understand this case better. We want to make sense of this tragedy and to possibly prevent future crimes or something like this happening again. so that we can see the warning signs. So thank you for everyone that has been helping us. Thank you, Cheryl.

It was very valuable talking to you and getting some of your feedback and information. We're very grateful. Here is part two. So it's one thing to have borderline personality disorder. In fact, John knows I have a good friend who is aware that she has borderline personality disorder

and goes to therapy and works on it. There are a lot of people with borderline personality disorder out there that would have murdered somebody. Yeah, in fact, one of the most committed patients I've ever worked with was a borderline personality disorder patient. And she struggled. It was a long, difficult process, but in the end, she did change. She did find a greater degree of contentment in her life.

Although I think she recognizes it's probably going to be a lifelong battle. I think she was able to change, and she was able to develop a certain measure of peace in her life that she didn't have before. So I think it's important to keep in mind that even personality disorders are capable of change. There's actually been a really long-standing debate in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis about whether borderline or any personality disorders can change. And the consensus has been for many years since Freud, in fact, that most can't. so why bother? But that hasn't been my experience. I've actually witnessed borderline personality patients change, and it's been gratifying, although difficult at times, it's been fulfilling and

hopeful at the same time. So do you think Lori could have changed? The difference between Lori and the patient I worked with is that the patient I worked with wanted to change more than anything else. She was very dissatisfied with her life. She knew that she didn't want to go on the way she was living her life. So she sought therapy out because she wanted to change. Lori has no interest in changing. Lori is a diva who sees herself as perfect or near perfect. And so I can't even imagine Lori seeking out psychotherapy of any kind. In answering this question, it's important to point out that in the diagnostic and statistical manual. One of the criteria, or actually several of the criteria that are necessary to diagnose

any mental disorder include impairment or distress. And so with Lori, I don't think there's much distress. I don't think with Lori that she would see any diagnosis she might have as a problem. Really? Yeah. She would think of it as a gift? No, she just, she wouldn't think of it at all. It's just her life.

that she's perfectly content living her life the way she does in total chaos and on the extremes and that's who she is, that's how she runs her life. I could argue that to some extent she enjoys all the drama. So Lori is not someone who would have changed, but how does this lead to murder? There's not a tremendous amount of research on this topic, but I do want to refer to a book by Carl Malmquist. It's an older book. It was written in 1996. Moumquist was one of the first psychiatrists to do some extensive research on the impact of diagnoses on homicide. In fact, the title of the book is Homicide, A Psychiatric Perspective.

One of his chapters is precisely on that topic about borderline personality leading to homicide. He believes that the following markers are significant in borderline personality disorder for potential homicide. Those are emotional instability. We see that with Lori. rage. We see that with Lori. Suicidal and or homicidal tendencies. Clearly. We know about her threatening to drive off the cliff with her kids. Self-destructive behavior. We see that with Lori's reckless spending. We see that with deserting her children. Right. Deserting her children. And going to Hawaii for 58 days.

How extreme is it to take off to Hawaii for 58 days and abandon your special needs child? She left Charles, left JJ, and took Tiley to Hawaii. By the way, that's actually when Charles decided to put his life insurance money into Kay's name. Another marker is impulsiveness. We obviously see impulsive behavior here. Yes, we do. A sense of emptiness and fears of abandonment. Those are classic characteristics of borderline personality disorder.

The emptiness speaks exactly to the idea of the false self that we've been talking about. And the most interesting one that Momquist discusses is what he calls a disturbed sense of reality. This is interesting because people keep asking us about this issue too. Is she psychotic? Is she hallucinating? Is she delusional? This comes up all the time. And it's a really, really tricky question to answer because on the surface, she appears

capable of interacting with the world in a way that appears to be normal. We see that in her interview with the police officers. When she's placed on a psychiatric hold and she has to go in and talk to the police officers, she's more than capable of presenting herself as normal when she has to. Very manipulative. Right, very manipulative. A lot of people have said to thought that she was the perfect mother. That's a great example of being able to adapt.

Even though she has these extreme religious beliefs, she's able to adapt to her environment well enough to deceive people. That would not be considered psychosis in the traditional sense. That would not be hallucinatory. That would not be delusional necessarily. I think some of her religious beliefs probably were delusional. But in the classic sense that people are asking about her, is she delusional? Not in the standard sense that she can't cope with the world and present enough of a facade to get other people to believe it.

Let's listen to Momquist on this issue, on this disturbed sense of reality. Momquist says, quote, Another characteristic that may emerge in those with borderline personality disorder organization is a disturbance in their sense or feeling of reality. This is different than their reality testing being impaired, such as in psychotic organization, where differentiation from others is difficult. Borderline personality disorder individuals are usually capable of distinguishing their inner life from the world of external events, apart from during any psychotic episodes that may be experienced.

This is different than their reality testing being impaired, such as in psychotic organization where differentiation from others is difficult. It leads people and organizations with whom they deal to misjudge their actual social capabilities based on external behaviors. What goes for social poise may be a thin veneer for lurking misinterpretations. So what Momquist is saying is they have a very distorted sense of reality, but it doesn't rise to the level of being psychotic, that they're able to present this facade, or as he says, veneer to people so that they believe that they're oriented in the world. And so this is how she comes

across to many people as a healthy human being when they first meet her, or someone that wouldn't murder her children. Right, that she has a disturbed sense of reality, but as Malmquist says, their social capabilities are sufficient to mislead people to not see it, unless she's talking about her extreme religious beliefs. And I think she probably is astute enough to know the discussion of her extreme religious beliefs with the police officers, for example, would present her in a negative light. She understands this. She understands that.

She doesn't talk to the police about past probations or reincarnation. Reincarnation or the fact that Tiley is her reincarnated older sister Stacy. Now a zombie. She's not bringing these things up right now. She doesn't talk about zombies or portals. Except that she actually did bring it up once, showing that she couldn't completely hide it. Right. She was able to mask it with the police.

She was able to hide it on the surface. But in situations where she was asked to spend some time with people, as in her interview for the psychosexual evaluation for Joe Ryan, the evaluator was able to, over the period of an hour, discover these extreme beliefs. True. The reason we even know about these beliefs. Tiley being the reincarnation of Stacey is because of this interview. Here's what part of the evaluation says about Lori's extreme beliefs.

Quote, the mother, Ms. Vallow, has explained to me on many occasions that she speaks with her deceased sister and believes that Tiley is reincarnation of her sister. Ms. Vallow is deeply religious and seems genuinely so. However, she has also explained that her last attorney, Mr. Ted Terry, has come to her instructing her to attend his funeral and explain to his ex-spouse that he loved her. So did I hear that right? In other words, she wanted to go to her attorney's funeral just to tell his ex-wife that he loved Lori. She wanted to make it clear that everyone loved Lori.

So this isn't just everyone loves Raymond. Everyone also apparently loves Lori. And don't tell her otherwise. And those are bizarre religious beliefs beyond LDS or Mormon doctrine. Malmquist goes on. This is really important in terms of understanding Lori. It is well known that borderline personality individuals oscillate and their assessment of others between idealizing the others as good and devaluing them.

The shift to badness raises the potential for their seen another as a persecutor. Diverse primitive defenses related to omnipotence, omnipotent control, and devaluation and denial are common. These defenses induce an unevenness in personal relationships that contributes to impulsive behavior. The individual's shift from manipulativeness and arrogance to helplessness and seeking to blame others for their predicaments. And here's the line I really want you to pay attention to.

In the midst of poorly regulated anxiety, depressive states and rage emerge with the possibility of acting on the murderous rage. Let me repeat that. Last line. Momquist gets us to the place where we can understand how a borderline personality disorder would kill someone. In the midst of poorly regulated anxiety, depressive states and rage emerge with the possibility of acting on the murderous rage. It's the rage. It's the devaluation in this case of Tiley and JJ, treating them as zombies, idealizing them as wonderful children

one minute, as portraying herself as the perfect mother one moment, and then devaluing them. as zombies and nuisances and problems in the next minute. Wow, yeah. When police do the initial welfare check and police are asking about JJ's welfare and his whereabouts, Lori goes into some entire history of how they adopted JJ. I don't know of any mother that would talk about her child in such a distant way. Not to mention, the police weren't even asking about his history. Take a listen.

And when she's referring to her or she in this, note that it's K, JJ's biological grandmother, who called for the welfare check. Now, the person who called is by sister-in-law, but she's his natural grandmother. He's adopted by us. Okay, so her son, who's a drug addict, had a baby with a girl who's a drug addict, and they took him from, you know, CPS took him, gave him to the grandmother. she came about him and then she wanted us to adopt him which we did. By us.

My husband and I. That's not normal, is it, for a mother to talk about her baby boy that way? And we adopted him. Maybe if she's trying to establish some distance between herself and that child. Which it seems like she was trying to do. Right. And so I think it's this tendency to overvalue and then devalue. MomQuist points out that this extreme shift in perceptions often leads to rage because she feels betrayed by these kids.

When JJ is an angel one minute and then a zombie the next, the response is rage. Why isn't this child behaving the way I want him to? Why isn't this child obeying me? Why isn't this child being normal? Lori's incapable of seeing her children as they are, just as we talked about with the Cox family. The Cox family was incapable of seeing their children for who they really were. Now we see that with these kids, with Lori's kids. So she goes from in love with Piley one moment to...

To be a zombie, to be in someone who's interfering with her ability to lead the new Jerusalem with Chad. So in other words, look out, Chad. You might be next. You might be in the crosshairs, Chad. I hate to tell you that. But I hope you're not listening to this because... Let's see how this goes down. So is this well known that borderline personality disorder has a tendency towards violence?

And do they have a bigger tendency than say, another personality disorder? There's not a lot of research, aside from Malmquist and a few other studies, there's actually a study that I think is probably one of the best studies looking at this. The study from 1984 by Andrew Lohnas and Vogel, they had a fairly large sample of borderline personality disorder patients, 106 patients, psychiatric patients that they separated into various groups to examine the tendency to act out violently. They did a really excellent job of sorting out these patients based on their methods. So I appreciate the study. And they found that 70% of the borderlines had a tendency to act out. What they meant by acting out was to engage in violence towards others or

property to commit criminal acts or to engage in promiscuity. This was a huge number compared to the other impatience in this study who had schizophrenia or mood disorders or other mental health issues that borderlines by far had the largest tendency to act out violently. And so I think this is an interesting study in the sense that it suggests that a large number of borderline personality disorders probably based upon their rage and impulsiveness have some reasonably high probability of acting out violently. That's interesting because I would think it would be the psychopath that is likely to be the most violent. And that's that's absolutely true. Psychopaths are by far the most likely to commit criminal acts. Okay. No question about it. And there's a ton of research supporting that.

The studies I'm referencing, what they suggest, is that borderline personality disorders probably have a greater propensity towards violence than we're aware of. I see. The point is there's not a lot of research connecting borderline personality to violent acts or homicide. I had to dig deep to find these studies. Why is that, by the way, more women are diagnosed borderline than men, and there always seems to be more studies with men. Is this one of those things?

There's a psychologist named Adrian Raine, who's done a lot of research. on homicide. And one of Rain's big findings is if you're a male, your risk of killing someone is exponentially higher. So for the man out there listening, you know. Don't kill anyone. Yeah. Don't fly off on the handle and kill someone by accident. Being a male, for whatever reasons, is a risk factor for violence. If you throw in antisocial tendencies, the risk go up tremendously. Okay. But, and this is where I think it's interesting. You're right. There's some bias. I don't know why there hasn't been more research on borderline personality and homicide, but I think one of the reasons might be that fewer females commit murder. Right, and more females are borderline than

males. Right. More females are definitely borderline. In the study I cited, however, there were male borderline patients, and the females still had the larger tendency to act out violently. Really, over the male borderlines. With, in addition to the male borderlines. In other words, gender wasn't the distinguishing factor. It was the diagnosis. That's fascinating. As long as we're talking about the idea of extremes and how borderline personality is, as I said, it's a personality of extremes, extreme behaviors, motions,

extreme lack of self. I want to tie this in. Some of you have asked about this. I want to tie this in with the idea of terrorism. One thing that's interesting about some of the research on terrorism is, and I'm referencing a book by Adam Langford here called The Myth of Martyrdom. It's an examination of,

suicide bombers, terrorists who are willing to go so far is to kill themselves. The general belief prior to Langford's research, which was in 2013, was that suicide bombers killed themselves for a cause, that they become so wrapped up in the ideology or the cause of whatever it was that they were doing, that they were willing to go to the extreme of killing themselves. What Langford found actually was mental health issues were the decisive variables. So Langford found suicide bombers shared a lot of mental health problems in common, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, some history of traumas. Many of them had the death of a loved one in their pasts. Some of them were sexually abused. But the point Langford raises is that people act in extreme ways, not necessarily

because they're committed to a cause, although Lori was, I believe obviously committed to a cause. People act in extreme ways because of past wounds and mental health issues. I think with Lori that the mission of Chad's cult, it allowed her to avoid feeling fear. It gave her the safety to act on her extreme mental health problems. So this empowered her. It empowered her, but it wasn't the motivation. I think this is really fascinating because Langford kind of reverses this and says that many of these suicide bombers would have committed suicide anyway. They just use the mission of whatever it is.

They're able to hide behind the cause to justify their extreme behaviors that are really based on mental health issues. But they want to fill it with a purpose. I think they want to transform their psychological pain into something meaningful. Right. And that brings me to a fascinating study by Gambetta and Hurtag called Engineers of Jihad. It's probably one of the most extensive studies of extremism. available. What the authors did was they went back and they looked at 4,000 cases of radical terrorists

who were involved in jihads. And they attempted to discover some of the underlying patterns that drove their behaviors. Almost all of them were involved in some type of jihad or holy war. We could say, I think, the same thing about Chad and Lori, actually, to some extent, that they were engaged in a jihad. Absolutely. The first time you wrote about this, case. Well, and you have always from the beginning said, these are terrorists. They are terrorists. Yeah. And Chad and Lori are terrorists.

And here we're going to get really close to this idea. They found three psychological characteristics of terrorists. The first was this overriding sense of disgust, this need for things to be clean and pristine. The second thing they found was that these terrorists tended to divide the world up into us versus them.

And the third and most important factor they found was a need for closure. Herthag discusses these things, let's take a listen. And the three traits that are identified in the literature and that we also find using our own survey and data analysis are, in the case of Islamist and right-wing ideology's a prowness to be easily discussed it. It's something that, interestingly, is quite closely affiliated

with having right-wing conservative attitudes, so it's sort of need for cleanliness, for order. order than the rigid need to draw in-group out-group boundaries. So to draw a clear distinction between yourself and your own group and people outside of that group. And there's quite a bit of evidence for that. We find, for example, that engineers on average have much stronger anti-migrant attitudes all across Europe than people from other disciplines.

And we see that as a proxy of this desire to draw strong social boundaries. The final trait, which is the best analyzed and the best documented, both in our own research and the literature, is what's called need for closure by cognitive psychologists. And that's essentially a need to avoid ambiguity, to see clear answers, and to think of questions in a certain black and white fashion to caricature it. And again, the indicators for that kind of trait are quite strong. So I'd like to revisit each one of these characteristics quickly. The sense of disgust is really interesting to read.

Remember at the other end of Chad's portal in the book, Reclaiming Liberty that we read a few episodes ago, where he talked about this pristine world that was clean. Once he got out of the portal, yes. Here we see this notion of disgust playing out. As far as the us versus them mentality, obviously the 144,000, they're going to go to the New Jerusalem. We see that.

Us versus them extremism. The need for closure, that is precisely the topic we talked about in our third podcast about closed-mindedness. It's the same variable we're discussing here. The need for closure is this desire to believe that our view of the world is the correct one and that it's fixed, that we don't need to look at ideas outside of our worldview because we have the answers. We are right.

You are wrong. Right. Us versus them. And so what's fascinating to me here about this study and a about Lori and Chad is that they meet all the criteria for terrorists. Both Chad and Lori meet all the criteria for terrorists. So I think it would be fair to say to some degree that what they were engaged in was his jihad. They weren't necessarily doing the killings, although I suspect that to 20,000 zombies

that Chad identified as existing in the United States, I suspect that he wanted to eliminate them at some point before the rapture. So would that mean that every cult or cult kill? killing is more of a terrorist situation. Are all cults terrorists or are a lot of terrorists just cults? I think there's a lot of overlap between the aims of terrorist groups and cults. But no, terrorists by definition want to terrorize and create fair. They act in extreme ways because their goal is to paralyze people through terror, whereas cults could have more benign objectives. There's a wide variety of cults that don't necessarily engage in terror. But I think here, I mean, it's

interesting here to see that in this cult, when Melanie Gibb was consulted and interviewed, she was afraid for her life. We see a lot of this. She said she was in hiding. Here's Melanie explaining her fears to East Idaho news reporter Nate Eaton. And you've been hard to find. I know. Would it be fair to say that you've been in hiding? Yes. Why? When you realize that the people that you know and you're you're close to in love have been involved in something that has to do with kidnapping and people dying, you start to think, oh my gosh, are they going to come after me? Like, everything closes in and you start to think about your own safety and you start to think about what really happened

and could this really be true? I had all kinds of fears. When people started dying, these cult members all started becoming afraid. And so that would be terror. That would be more common of terrorism, right. 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.

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there's a tremendous irony here, which is that terrorists create fear, and yet they're acting from their own terror and their own fears and insecurities. Those are the things that compel them to murder. Are their own fears? Their own terror of being helpless and vulnerable, their own fear of humiliation, their own insecurities, all those wounds from childhood come back to haunt them. Terrorists, if we go back to the Langford study about mental health issues, the sexual abuse and the death of a loved one like Lori experienced, she lost two sisters.

It's these things. It's growing up in the shadow of a major narcissist. It's the helplessness that Lori experiences a child and the vulnerability. It's her terror of these vulnerabilities that compels her to murder in the end. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns.

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They don't want to deal with the world that challenges them or that challenges their beliefs. They want the world to be snug and safe and predictable. And so that issue I talked about in our last episode, the major defense mechanism for borderline personality disorder patients is omnipotent control. And Momquist mentioned that too. the need for omnipotence and omnipotent control. That is the defense mechanism that covers up the helplessness and the vulnerability and all the childhood wounds that both Chad and Lori experienced.

What's interesting about this situation is the children become scapegoats. The children become scapegoats to express their own humiliations and resentments from childhood. Tyler and JJ. Right. The children become a projection of their wounds that by killing the children in some ways, I know this sounds strange, but by murdering the children, they're trying to murder their ghosts from their own past. That's awful.

They're trying to exercise their own wounds. Well, yeah, I mean, it is awful because it's so impulsive and non-reflective. And, I mean, it's, yes, right. Well, and it's evil. I'll say it. It's evil and it's sick. I agree. I agree.

But that's the world we live in. Could we have known this about Lori, that she was capable of murdering her children? I mean, clearly many people saw red flags about her, but was there enough to know she was capable of this? I think the rage and the instability probably left some clues. I think when she started talking about murdering people in her divorce papers and custody battles, when she started talking about murdering Charles or murdering people,

we're definitely were picking up clues about that. Well, as she mentioned in her custody battle all the way back with Joe Ryan, Tyley's father that death would be an option before she gave Tyley to Joe. And Joe is now dead. I think all this talk of harming others was a clue. If we go back even further, though, there's a really fascinating statement by Lori from her second marriage where she filed a criminal complaint with the courts about her ex-husband William. This would be Colby's biological father, her oldest son.

So they were having problems. Lori claimed that there was physical abuse in this relationship. She is moving towards divorce here. She is trying to reclaim some of her property. And the fascinating thing about Lori's statement is that when I see it now, when you have a false self, you don't know yourself well enough to really express your values very well. That oftentimes if you have a false self and you're talking about the people closest to you, you, they become a projection of you. They become a reflection of how you really feel about yourself.

So this quote, grab my attention, because I feel like Lori isn't talking about her second ex-husband, William at all. I feel like she's talking about herself. Okay. She says, quote, William is void of any consciousness of right or wrong and lacks any virtue of good character. William's lifestyle is similar to a pathological liar and sociopath. He's, sees no wrong in using people for any purpose to get gained for his own needs and ambitions. He lacks integrity or any desire to accomplish or live a worthwhile or productive life. William is void of any light and intelligence to know the difference between right or wrong. That sounds a lot like Lori, and that would not be the only time we've seen her project onto

others what she really thinks about herself. That's not the only time she said that about an ex-husband. her ex-husband, Joe Ryan, she had told the evaluators that he was extremely manipulative and that he would twist how the evaluator saw things. So she would do this a lot. I believe you're right that she was talking about herself there. She projects all the time with the police officers. She claimed that Charles Vallow was having an affair when she was. She was already with Chad at that point. Well, and simply saying that she was concerned for Tiley's safety in the hands of Joe Ryan when clearly what we should have all been concerned about was

Tiley in the hands of her mother. And the guardian ad litem pointed that out quickly in saying, get Tiley out of this home. Was Lori forecasting her own diagnosis back then? Was she telling us, was she telling the courts that she was a psychopath? Well, she did say that Joe Ryan was a sociopath, and that's why he manipulated people. Right. So she's saying the same thing about her third husband. Another projection, the police officer showed up for that initial welfare check. She claimed that Charles Vallow, who was now deceased at this time because he was ambushed and killed by Lori and Alex, she claimed that Charles had been wanting to kill Lori for her life insurance money. My other brothers that was in with my husband who was trying to kill me for my two-l-lindler

life insurance. When in the end, we have multiple recordings of her claiming how upset she was that she didn't receive Charles's insurance money. Switched his life insurance policy to her, right? To his sister who got a million dollars when he died. And we got nothing for me to raise JJ and all the kids got nothing and everybody got nothing. She got a million dollars. So many projections. They go on and on.

And that is very common for human beings with false selves who don't know themselves. they don't know what they value, they don't know what they want. They weren't given that opportunity as children to really develop in a healthy way. And so it makes sense that they would then project their fears and their insecurities and their own inadequacies or fears onto others. John knows I always like to call projection, you spot it, you got it. Apparently, she spotted a lot of sociopathy and her second husband that was contagious. Clearly, you spot it, you got it.

Speaking of projection, you look very tired, honey. You must be so sleepy and ready to go to bed, I say, as I yawn and think that maybe dinner should be coming to an end because I am exhausted. So I think you're trying to tell me that you're tired. It is getting late. We've covered a lot. There's still more to cover with Lori. As we move towards the end of dinner tonight, I keep thinking about a comment. One of our listeners wrote on Facebook.

And thank you, by the way, for your comments. They mean a lot to us. We take them very seriously. We really appreciate interacting with you guys when we can on our Facebook page. Our Facebook page hidden a true crime podcast. And I know what comment John is referring to. I actually have it right here. It's written by Paige Rogers.

In reference to our last episode, episode six, I've been waiting for this episode and you did not disappoint. Well, I have many thoughts to mull over. I can't help but be overcome by a bit of sadness. As a former professional in the field of early childhood development, I am in slaying, picking up what you are putting down. Tonight, in light of my professional experience, and that I am a devoted Christian,

and having just finished your new episode, I just can't help but be moved to grief and empathy for those who are reared in the types of families which you discussed. I mourn the childhoods that they should have had. It is all just so heartbreaking. I keep thinking about the children who are being raised in such families at present. I just wanted to say a prayer for those children. Lauren received this comment on Facebook and she was so touched by it.

She immediately took it into my office and read it to me. And actually, let me tell this story because John is going to leave something out and I want it to be talked about. I went and gave him this comment or read to him this comment from Page because I knew that it would be meaningful to John. And then I left his office, his home office, and decided to go say hi, an hour later. And you were emotional. And do you want to tell him why you're emotional?

Because that's what I want to talk about. The comment brought me back to reflecting on a lot of the evaluations I've done over the years and all of the victims on the other side. on the other side of every crime I've assessed. And I think I was experiencing some sorrow. One of the things Lauren knows about me is that when I'm experiencing some sadness or some sorrow, that oftentimes that's a good place for me to go and write.

So I began working on a blog post as a tribute to our son, Banks. I actually started an Instagram account last, year that is comprised of a series of love letters to my son, Banks, who's now three years old. The reason I did that was because around my birthday in 2019 in July, I went in for a MRI because I'd been experiencing back pain for about a year. And I thought the back pain was related to an old sports injury and it was just getting a little worse. I went in for my MRI on Thursday and on Friday night. Late, I received a call from my doctor,

which I didn't take to be a great sign, by the way. Usually your doctor's not going to call you late on a Friday night with good news. He's not going to call you to wish you a good weekend. My doctor told me that they had discovered five tumors on my spine, my lower spine, and he said that the most likely culprit was the brain. In other words, he said you probably have brain cancer and there's a type of tumor called a drop metastasis that moves from the brain into the spinal cord. In most of these cases, especially when there's multiple tumors, the diagnosis is going to be brain cancer. So that evening I was very emotional and the next day, Lauren and myself and our three-year-old banks, we decided to do what I always do when I'm trying to escape.

and that is to get out into nature. We went to the Kolob Canyons in Zion National Park, which is also, by the way, where we eloped three years previously. At that time, we both thought that I might not have much time left to live. There was a lot of sadness. There was a lot of tears shed. We didn't talk a tremendous amount. I think we just wanted to be in nature

to let some of that tranquility wash over us, given the gravity of the news that I had received. but one thing we talked about, one thing I committed to was that if I had a limited amount of time left, I wanted my son to get to know me because he's so young. So I told Lauren that I needed to start an Instagram account and to write a series of love letters to my son in the event that I should die so that he would know who I was. And I told Lauren that there were a couple of books I wanted to write, that I had to commit myself to doing that. Of course, I had to work to make money and support the family, but I committed to

spending all of my free time, either with my family, working on projects that would allow my son to get to know me. And that, by the way, is one of the reasons I'm writing the book, Immunity. It's primarily about a relationship between a father and a son, and it's an area I really wanted to explore, although it's not autobiographical, it's very personal, and it does talk a lot about the father-son relationship, which was something I thought would be important for my son to understand should I not survive for very long. I went in for an MRI on my brain the following Monday thinking that I probably had brain cancer. I'll never forget being in the MRI tube with all the noise and the claustrophobia. If you've ever been in an MRI tube, it feels a lot like being in a

coffin. At the moment, I thought it was a precursor to my future. So I was deeply afraid at that moment that I might not survive. That evening, Lauren's brother, who's a doctor in Salt Lake City, with a lot of contacts, he had one of his physician friends read the MRI, and he called me. And he said, John, yes, you have these tumors in your spine. We don't know where they're coming from, but your brain's clean. You don't have cancer. We'll figure out where the tumors are coming from, but you're not in immediate danger. And that was a tremendous relief to me.

It left a lasting impression on me in the sense that now I take nothing for granted. And every moment I have is important to me to spend with my family, and or to leave a legacy for my son so that should something happen in the future, or should one of my tumors metastasize and my spine, that he will know who I am? So I sat down to write this letter to my son because I was feeling such sorrow. And it also was a moment of intense reflection on all the victims that I've mourned for over the years that have been on the other side of every crime I've had to assess. I'm so glad you shared all that.

I was hoping that you would share some of that, but I wasn't sure if you would share all of that. And I'm so glad you did. And I want you to know, guys, it wasn't just starting an Instagram account. It was putting himself on social media for the very first time. he's never had any account anywhere until this Instagram account. So what seems simple, oh, starting an Instagram account to John was a huge deal. I'm also glad he talked about it because I hope that he'll continue posting more. He hasn't posted a while, but it's at Dr. John Matthias,

doctor, as in DR, John Matthias. And that's where he's put his love letters for our son. I think this might be a foreshadowing. I'm looking at him. Will you be posting something soon again? I'm working on a post called a homage to boys. I'm actually going to dedicate it to our son and to JJ. I hope to get that posted within the next several weeks. I like that you shared you're going to post it because once this podcast is published,

you have to post it. But I like that you also threw in several weeks so that you can have a little bit of It'll be posted within the next month. There you have it. At Dr. John Matthias. That's his Instagram account. When I came into your office and I saw you emotional, can I ask you what was going through your mind at that moment?

I think I was just feeling sorrow because I was remembering so many of the cases that I've been involved with where the victims were like JJ entirely. The victims were just. in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were at no fault whatsoever. Everyone failed them. Right. Everyone failed them. I don't know if there was a reason,

but I think in that moment was important to connect to some sorrow because I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is about the victims and that we started this to provide some insight into why this happened and how we might prevent. similar situations from occurring in the future.

And I think it's hard to do that without connecting to some deeper sorrow. And it's that sorrow, by the way, that connects all of us. I feel like if Lori and Chad had the ability to understand the consequences of their action and its impact on the community and to connect to some deeper sense of sorrow or grief, they never would have considered this. In other words, their lack of sorrow and lack of grief. And empathy. And empathy created this tragedy.

Right. And so I think I was experiencing a few deeply mournful moments because I need to from time to time remember why I do this and to connect to something much deeper than myself. One of the questions I get all the time from family members and colleagues is how can you do this? How have you been able to do this for so many years? Doesn't it just absolutely wreck your soul? I think it's good for me and us and to experience some sorrow over this particular case and any other true crime story where there's a victim.

I think it's important not to lose sight of that. I think it's something that allows us all to connect around grief. And in my grieving over all the victims I've worked with over the years, I actually thought about a story that the Dalai Lama told in a well-known book called The Art of Happiness, which is an interview with the Dalai Lama by Howard Cutler, who's a psychiatrist. And the Dalai Lama was asked by Howard Cutler

if there was anything in his life that he feels bad about. The Dalai Lama told him a story about how he was approached by an elderly monk who couldn't perform certain yoga poses due to his poor physical condition. He told the monk just simply to cut those positions out because he was too old to do them. And then the Dalai Lama later learned that the monk had committed suicide because he believed he would be reincarnated into a younger body. And thus he'd be

able to do the exercises. When the Dalai Lama expressed to Howard Cutler that he felt a tremendous amount of regret that he had unintentionally been responsible for this monk's death. And Howard Cutler asked him, he said, how do you ever get rid of that feeling? The Dalai Lama paused for a long time and he said to Howard Cutler about his grief and about getting rid of that feeling. He said, I didn't. It's still there. I just don't allow it to drag me down and pull me back. I realized that being dragged down or held back by it would be to no one's benefit, not mine or anyone else's. So I go forward and I do the best I can. And that's how I feel. I feel like it's really important for me and for all of us, I think, to some degree, to connect to our sorrow,

to remind us that we're human, that we're vulnerable, that we experience grief, that we all have losses, and to recognize that on the other end of every crime there's a victim that I think is tragic and that we, at some level, hopefully, need to mourn for. John has helped me understand that sorrow is a part of life, and he's helped me understand that I know that when I feel sorrow or grief, I try to accept it rather than try to push it away, which I'm pretty sure is something that Chad and Lori never did. Honestly, face any sorrow or grief. I know that John's talked about that in past episodes.

John and I were listening to a video of the Dalai Lama about how humans can find happiness in spite of our sorrow. And we decided together we wanted to share this tonight. It's hard to understand everything the Dalai Lama is saying, but the video on YouTube does have subtitles, so we'll have a link to that video on our Facebook page. In your experience, what makes you truly happy? I believe, you see, the peace of mind. That peace of mind also, you see, come firstly,

bomb-heartedness. That, I think, reduce ill-feeling to us other, and also reduce distrust. I always hope. I never consider myself as something special. If I consider myself something different from you, like I am Buddhist. Even more I am His Holiness Dalai Lama. Even if you consider I am Nobel laureate, then

Actually, you create yourself as a prisoner. I forget these things. I simply consider I'm one of the seven billion human being. We are mentally, emotionally, intellectually, we are saying. Let me just offer a few final reflections on the Dalai Lama's comments about happiness. idea that happiness is a function of peace of mind I think is really relevant to this podcast tonight because when you're on the extremes when you're pushing the envelope and you're on the edge like Lori all the time when you're ready to self-destruct when you get to the point where

murder seems like a good option you're not going to find peace of mind right and so peace of mind is the complete opposite of Lori and Chad also warm heart that the Dalai Lama talks about, complete opposite of Lorraine Chad. Or how about staying open? We've talked about this so many times, but staying open is also the opposite of the need for closure that we talked about tonight in terms of the most compelling reason that terrorists resort to violence. The Dalai Lama reminds us of the importance of staying open. And finally, he also reminds us that we're all the same.

We're all in this together. we're all part of the same community. When we try to set ourselves apart from the community, it's not going to go well. Chad and Lori and this cult, they obviously didn't see themselves as a part of the community. They saw themselves as separate, special, above it. So he reminds us of that.

And as we end this, my aspiration tonight will come from the Dalai Lama and his saying, quote, so I go forward and do the best I can. I think that's the most I can. ask of anyone. I think that's the most I can ask of myself. That every day I just try to go forward and do the best I can in spite of the grief, in spite of the footprints from the victims that I have to confront, I just want to move forward. I don't want to forget them. In spite of the sorrow,

I just try to move forward and do the best I can. And I wish the same for you. With dinner coming to an end, we want to remind all of you to please share with your friends. that we have a seat for them at our dinner table as well. And if you like our podcast, if you would please leave us a review on Apple or the platform that you listen, we appreciate those reviews so much. You can find our Facebook page

at Hidden a True Crime podcast or Facebook.com slash hidden true crime. Thank you also so much for your comments. We do read them, obviously. We talk about them. We bring them into our podcast. when we think it's useful. We discuss your questions.

We love your questions. We anticipate doing a live podcast at the end of this process to field all of your questions in greater depth. Yes, at the end of this season, we want to do a live Q&A. My wife looks exhausted. I think she's going to fall asleep if we don't wrap this up.

All Venus flytraps need their beauty rest. Unless they're feeding on predators, Thanks for joining us. I want you guys to stay safe. Don't forget to wear your helmets. Stay out of dark portals. Or light portals. Light portals too.

I think portals in general. Stay out of any portals. Stay sane. I'd like to have a special guest. Take us out tonight. Stay safe and wear a helmet. Don't go into portals. Remember that we're only as sane or as sick.

as the secrets we keep. We'll keep a seat open for next week. Thanks for joining us. Good night. Good night. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now boarding group A. Please have your boarding passes ready to scan. If your phone is cracked, old, or was chewed up by your Chihuahua travel companion, please refrain from holding up the line. Instead, go to Verizon and trade in any phone in any condition from one of their top brands for the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus with Galaxy AI, and a watch and tab on any plan. Only on Verizon.

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