Hidden True Crime - Catcalling Turned Deadly?! The Psychology Behind a Deadly Encounter

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

In July of 2024, 42-year-old Nikki Loffredo was shot while out on a walk, after rejecting catcalling by James Bernard Johnson. Join Dr. John and Lauren as they break down what happened and how this incident escalated from catcalling to murder within seconds. About Hidden True Crime: What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Sponsors: Get 15% off OneSkin with the codeHIDDENathttps://www.oneskin.co/#oneskinpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We are going to discuss today with Dr. John Matthias, one that certainly grabbed John's attention and one that he has been wanting to discuss, the cat call killer. John, take it away. Let me just say from the outset that while this particular case is of interest to me, in many ways it's of interest because it's similar to many other cases, that have a similar underlying psychological dynamic.

So this case was a total tragedy, and it was completely unnecessary, but it's very similar to many other cases that we'll talk about just briefly as we go along. But I think it's important because it alludes to a lot of potential underlying motives and dynamics that drive the criminal mind. And so for that reason, I really wanted to discuss this case. Let's start with the crime. Let's talk about what happened. In July of 2024, 43-year-old male, James Bernard Johnson, he got into a fight with his girlfriend early in the morning.

This is around 3 a.m. This is in Des Moines, Iowa. And he left upset, presumably angry. He had been smoking marijuana. He had been doing cocaine that evening. He was, by the way, a convicted felon. for, and I don't have the information on this, so I don't know the exact details,

but he, according to some of the local papers, he had some previous felonies for drug convictions. I don't know exactly what they were. I don't know if he was on probation. I think it's a reasonable guess to say that he may have been on probation, and he was using drugs against his probation agreement,

so he may have been violating his probation terms here. I'm not sure, though. So James Johnson, he leaves the home. He's in his car. He drives the GMC, Yukon. He's driving around the neighborhood early in the morning. He's upset. He's intoxicated with these various types of drugs.

And according to the prosecutor during the trial, he went out with quote, he went out, quote, intending to use his gun. So the prosecutor believed that the combination of the drugs and, his anger and potentially some violent ideation that he had by bringing a gun, suggested to the prosecutor that his motive, one of his motives was to actually use his gun. When he's driving around, he notices a 42-year-old woman, her name is Nikki LaFredo.

She's out walking in the early morning hours by herself in the same neighborhood where he's prowling around. he spots Nikki LaFredo, and he has really at that point, he just notices her, she's on his radar, and at some point as he circles the neighborhood, he develops this intention to talk to her. That's one of his goals. But he doesn't do so immediately. He sort of, I guess he's circling around and kind of marking his turf. There's something very territorial about this behavior, by the way, and we'll talk about that in a minute. but she comes to an intersection and he pulls up to the same intersection and this is the moment

where his intention becomes fulfilled. He rolls down his window and he's going to say something to her. He says, come get high to her at the intersection. And Nikki LaFraeda responds, quote, who are you? never mind F off. To that, James Johnson picks up his gun, fires four shots at her. He wounds her very severely.

In two days, she will be dead from the results of those gunshot wounds. All four bullets, I believe, hit her. He speeds off. They find out who he is. During interviews, he essentially tries to mislead law enforcement. He argues that I don't know exactly what he said. I don't have those statements, but he argues that it was an accident that he didn't

mean to harm her in any way, even though the prosecution finds text on his phone where he's not only fleeing from the crime scene and avoiding any type of arrest, but on his phone he had text to his girlfriend saying, I think I just pop someone. So he believes, he shows that he believes that he actually murdered her, which he did. So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of elements of this story, I think, that are of interest to me from a broader perspective. One is what I call an Anton Chigur moment. So that may or may not mean something to people, to our listeners, but Anton Chigur is a psychopathic killer in Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men. And the reason I think that's relevant to our discussion here is because

Chigur is for McCarthy, he is kind of the personification of evil. In fact, some critics have argued Lydia Cooper wrote a book called No More Heroes, where she has an excellent chapter on No Country for Old Man. She actually argues that McCarthy goes further than suggesting that Shiger is the symbolic of evil. She says that he represents evil. He is evil itself. He is a virtual killing machine. He has no empathy, he has no more. and he's essentially a hitman in this novel. But one of the things that Shiger does when he finds some of his victims is he takes a coin out of his pocket.

And he throws the coin up. He asks the victims to call the coin toss, hedge or tails. And if they're wrong, he murders them. If they're correct, they live. There's a moment in this book. I'm going to read from No Country for Old Men for a minute here. This is a moment when Shiger can. confronts one of his victims, Carla Jean,

and Carligeen happens to be the wife of someone that he had murdered earlier, by the way. So he sees this as a bit of a reckoning that he told Carligeen's husband that he would come back and kill her if he didn't cooperate and he didn't. So this is on page 258. Chigur finds her, quote, he straightened out his leg and reached into his pocket and drew out a few coins and took one and held it up he turned it for her to see the justice of it he held it between his thumb and forefinger and weighed it and then flipped it spinning in the air and caught it and slapped it down on his wrist call it he said

so she calls it wrong by the way and she gets murdered and the reason this is an antin sugar moment for me is because you have this element of randomness here. You have this element of someone's out walking, minding her own business, trying to collect her thoughts, doing no harm. And this guy pulls up, like Anton Scherger,

he pulls up, he flips a coin, essentially, right? He's asking her a question. If it's heads, then she says, okay, I'll party with you.

If it's tails, she says, F off, right? So she loses, the coin toss. I mean, the coin is loaded because there's only one answer this guy's going to take, right? But like that element of randomness is present here. And, you know, it raises to me, this is something we talk about fairly often. It raises that question of evil. Is it a reasonable conjecture to say that this guy was evil and murdering her over the fact that she wouldn't get in

his truck and party with them, right? Like, Shiger, is clearly the symbolic, he's the personification of evil, as I said earlier. It's not so clear cut here. But this element of randomness, I think, is interesting because there's something to me very unsettling about these types of moments in life, right? Like, you go out for a walk and you do this all the time. This is another reason this case appealed to me. You go out early on walks.

You get up early. You go out at 5 a.m. sometimes in our neighborhood by yourself, just to collect your thoughts. get some exercise. Like, I thought of you. You know, there's no way that if somebody pulls up to you and they have, and they want to take the same coin toss, the sugar moment, and they ask you to get in the truck and you say no, you know, there's no way to prevent that, right?

In all of our lives, we have these random moments that, you know, I actually kind of refer to this as the intersection of fate and chance because we don't really know most of this is chance, but some of this could be fate, fate too. Some of this could be preordained and McCarthy kind of plays with those two issues. Shiger believes that fate is in play, but Carlo Jean, whom he murders, believes it's chance. And so here you have this moment, a complete random chance where Nikki LaFredo, this victim, shows up at an intersection at the same time as this guy that murders her for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that she rejects him. right and i think it's unsettling because it when i think of you going on these walks like

there's always this risk of being harmed or losing your life at any moment i mean we all confront that risk it's a very existential issue like we could wake up and you know i could be i could be getting the mail and it you know a cement truck runs me over it doesn't see me right we don't know but my point is like there is something very disturbing and unsettling about these types of moments And so I think this is kind of an Anton Sugar moment that, you know, is unpredictable and it's hard to control. And it's what makes crime, I think, so appealing to many people is that we all kind of to some degree want to control these types of moments or foresee these moments. We want to avoid the Antan sugars as much as possible because we want to live, right? Yeah.

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So, you know, that, when I first heard this case, that was something that popped in my mind immediately, is that there are these cases with these types of moments that are really kind of, you know, as I said, unsettling and difficult to process. And so I wanted to talk about that a little bit. You know, there's many other issues here at play that we're going to get into that I think are relevant to criminal psychology and to assessing crime, too, that if we dig a little deeper, You know, we'll find what those are. So I think the first question here is, is this evil in some ways? And, you know, to me it turns out, so Johnson takes the stand. Johnson is not sugar. He's actually on the stand.

He's actually somewhat apologetic. He said he feels bad. He feels terrible about what he's done, right? He feels some remorse. So this is not, I don't believe this is, this is not a case of some evil-doer committing an act. However, in people that do, psychologists that do talk about evil, sometimes they don't talk about necessarily, they don't talk about an evil doer. So in other words, we wouldn't necessarily say that the perpetrator here is evil. What we might say is that he committed an evil act.

And by that, so we're making a distinction between the person and the behavior. And we might say that this is an evil act of sorts because it's unthinking, it's unfeeling, it's unrepentant. right there's no remorse there's no empathy in that moment it's just a purely impulsive violent act senseless violent act that takes someone's life and so i i think it's not unreasonable then to maybe say that this is an evil act but not necessarily an evil doer so i think that's an important distinction a lot of times in in the groups i run for phallens they'll say you know your behavior doesn't define who you are. And I think there's some truth to that. Sugar would be an extreme because he has no remorse whatsoever. He is the embodiment, as I said,

he's the embodiment of evil in literature. And so for those of you who have read this book, you'll know what I'm talking about, that he just simply eliminates everything and everyone in his path. So this guy, James Bernard, Johnson doesn't do that. He's never killed someone before. There's no, he has a bit of a rap sheet, I guess, but it's struggled. So this is not something you necessarily expect from somebody like him. If we dig a little deeper into this, I think the next level I would consider,

the next level I'd want to look at, would have to do with evolutionary psychology. And specifically, there's a psychologist by the name of David Boss who wrote a book called The Murderer Next Door. And he argues that this type of crime has deep evolutionary roots for human beings, that it goes back to some of our tribal past, you know, where we lived in small groups and we roamed around. And one of the things that was really important back then when human beings were, you know, first finding our way and trying to survive was turf, territory, that humans were very

territorial and we would do almost anything to defend our turf. And part of that, part of this idea of diffining on turf has to do with identity. Not only does the group have an identity, but the individuals in that group also have an identity. And the individuals in the group, they vie for social status. So bus believes that a lot of crimes and many murders occur when there are violations of social status, that when our social status is somehow threatened or imperial, then there's a higher risk of violence. Because our social status in a group is vitally important

in terms of our capacity to obtain resources. And when I say resources, I mean things as simple as food, you know, to obtain healthy and viable mates so that we have healthier children, right? All of this is tied to social status in groups or social hierarchies. And so I think you see some of this in play here. You know, this isn't, by the way, this isn't an idea that would obtain specifically to this particular case. This is a broader idea that you see with road rage.

You know, in road rage, a lot of times people perceive their cars as extensions of themselves. Their cars are social status symbols. And when you cut someone off or when there's some incident with your car, a lot of people take that very personally. They see that as a personal affront. And they become enraged. They believe that you're trying to undermine their space, their turf, their car, and their identity to some degree.

And there have been a lot of murders, by the way, horrible. But there have been a lot of murders where people have become so enraged when they're cut off or when, you know, There's many instances, there are many types of road rage, but it's a similar notion that a lot of times the person will pursue the victim until the victim, they force them to stop and that they have a gun, they'll shoot them, they'll kill them. And the numbers, by the way, on road raids are astronomically higher than you'd expect. But it goes back to this idea of group identity and personal identity and social status that Buzz talks about. I'm going to quote Buss from his book here. As Buss puts it, quote, the sheer frequency throughout all of recorded human history of killing as a male strategy, so it's mainly men, by the way, as a male strategy for attaining the status of dominant power speaks to the provocative conclusion that this behavior has been over a long time period adaptive in terms of evolutionary competition.

buses point and there are other instances like many bar fights for example involve the same dynamic this same dynamic of social status there's been an increase in violence at sporting events sports fans get into it with other fans who challenge their status right if if their team is better or worse than another team they can be threatened by that one example i can think of in sports recently was the university of Michigan played Ohio State at Ohio State at Ohio State Stadium and Michigan won. And after the game, several of the Michigan players took the Michigan flag from the band, one of the band members, they took the flag and they planted it right in the middle of Ohio State Stadium where they have this big O for Ohio. And the Ohio State players became enraged by that. They saw that as an encroachment upon their turf. this was, as they put it, this was our, this is our house, right?

This is, there used to be an underarmor ad that said, protect our house. That's what they were doing. So this massive fight broke out and the police had to come in and break it up, right? It was a similar dynamic. You had this turf that they were defending and they had this group identity that, you know, the Ohio State was this strong team. They ended up ironically, Ohio State ended up winning the national championship. In spite of that moment, and Michigan didn't, but it's the same dynamic.

You have this threat to status that's being challenged, and the response typically, not always, but response oftentimes can be some type of violence or aggression to try to compensate for that lack of status or for that loss of status or failure of status. So I think in some ways with this crime with the catcaller killer, I think you see some of that too. He's roaming around in his SUV, right? He's so in some ways he's kind of staking out his turf and he rolls down his window, he has this expectation that she's going to say yes or come join him as as ridiculous as that expectation is. He still has that expectation.

So there's this form of dominance. there's this kind of sexual dominance going on where he wants to be acknowledged for some type of status that he thinks he has and she rejects him he says quote he said this in court during his trial he said quote it pissed me off and I quote felt disrespected

right that's the exact dynamic we're talking about here and there you go yeah You know, the crazy part of that, though, is to react, for him to react so quickly, to him to resort to murder so quickly after rejection is somewhat unusual, right? Like, most people have some mechanisms in place, like self-awareness or self-reflection or thinking that, you know, that allow us to kind of put the brakes on that type of violence or that type of aggression. But obviously James Johnson was unable to do that. Well, that's why I wondered a little bit too if perhaps there was sort of some premeditation in taking his gun and doing it so quickly.

Did he consider that he was angry enough to perhaps kill the first person he deemed as disrespectful? Did that thought already cross his mind before seeing? her. Well, that's what the prosecutor. The prosecutor argued that he had the intent of using his gun. So I think if there was going to be a trigger, it would have been some type of rejection, presumably, you know, it could have been another man. Could have been anyone, really. And again, this gets back to kind of the randomness of this event and how unsettling that is. You know, as the prosecutor later said, you know, the prosecutor said something to that effect. The prosecutor said that Nikki LaFredo was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,

which is absolutely true. Like, there's no, there's no win for her there. I guess maybe if she was, and I don't, I'm not blaming her in any way because it clearly there's nothing she could have done, but her response was pretty dismissive. I don't think it helped the situation necessarily, but on the other hand, she has every right to tell the guy off. The older I get, the more important good skincare becomes. I am sold on one skin.

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So please support our show. Tell them we sent you. Invest in the health and longevity of your skin with one skin. Your future self will thank you. I find it interesting too that typically, when we've heard of other cases like this, there's a sexual component. He was asking her to come get high with him. I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I would have thought he might want to kidnap her or look her in the face first and say, you disrespected me, but it was just simply this burst of anger and killing her. So, I mean, I guess in some ways you're right, This is more like road rage. Right. Unless I'm missing something and there was a big sexual component. I mean, I don't know.

It's just interesting. I think the sexual component is part of social status and dominance. You know, if you go back into our evolutionary past and bus talks about this in his book to some degree, you know, typically dominant males are the ones that get more resources, get more mates, right? And there's many ways to be dominant. But I think that I think some of this is definitely kind of that expectation that his status and his dominance are going to prevail. Yeah.

So how many mates do you have then? I'm just kidding. Sorry, I joke. Okay. I agree. One is all I can handle. Amen to that. So you have, you know, there's there's this part.

So that's another element. So we looked at the sugar moment asking questions about evil. And then I think here you have sort of this genetic, hardwired territorial element of human beings that were very territorial. We're very status seeking. Right. And in many ways, as Buss points out, in many ways, that's been true for thousands and thousands of years with human beings. And it hasn't changed that much. So I think you have, arguably, you have kind of this element that we would say is related more to nature than nurture that's hardwired in us.

And it has to do with seeking dominance, seeking status, right, defending our turf. and I think those are kind of all elements in play here. They're all, as I said, too, they're all elements in play. And road rage, there are many elements often show up in domestic violence altercations. Exactly. This is very, skip the road rage. This is TV. This is exactly what happens in a domestic violent relationship.

Right. Exactly. When the perception is that a spouse or a partner or a mate might have more power, or at least some power, power to financially, I used to see this all the time, where certain people would marry, in this case women, who had better jobs and made more money and felt some sense of dominance, the men in those situations were quite clear that they weren't going to let that happen. And one of the ways they could equal, they could level the plane field was through violence.

And they did. You know, they resorted to violence to attempt to put their partners in place and to show that they were the ones that were in charge and they were dominant, even if their spouses made more money or were more successful. And so I think, yeah, you see this all the time in domestic violence. You see it in altercations among sports fans. You see it in altercations among athletes, as I just pointed out, the Michigan-Ohio State game. But this dynamic, so what's of interest to me here is this hidden or underlying dynamic of status, reputation, territoriality, and dominance, and how that, I think, in many ways, is kind of a primal element of human beings and very much hardwired into us. And so I think you're seeing, you see some of that here.

If we dig a little bit deeper and look for more psychological roots to this crime, I'd refer to, there's a psychiatrist named James Gilligan, who I talk about quite a bit. And Gilligan interviewed hundreds of murderers, and he was looking for common themes among many of the murderers he talked to. And surprisingly, he found one theme that seemed to hold no matter what. And I'll read that to you. Here's how Dr. James Gilligan describes why murderer's murder.

He said, quote, inmates explain when I asked them why they assaulted another person that it was because, quote, they disrespected me. I concluded that there is one experience that has never. necessary for the causation of violent behavior. It is an emotion. It is the emotion of shame and humiliation. So if we dig even a little bit deeper, if we kind of go beneath what's kind of wired into our DNA, this need for dominance, now we're, I think now we're getting to more of the psychological roots, and that would be shame. That, and again, Again, shame, by the way, is arguably some psychologists dispute this, but there's been research showing that shame is also hardwired.

It's one of our primary emotions. And so murder becomes a reaction to this feeling of shame, which is often horrible for many males, that, especially males that are concerned with, you know, social status. Because it makes people feel weak and it makes people feel vulnerable. And it makes people feel out of control. And one thing about murder that I can say pretty clearly is that when you murder someone, there's no ambiguity. You're in control of the situation, right?

Like if somebody, if you pull up to someone and you can't call them and you expect them to get in your car and party with you and have sex with them or whatever you're going to do and they reject you, one way to get control of that situation really quickly is to murder them, right? And I mean, it's the worst way to get control of the situation. But if you're feeling shame and you're feeling rejection, and I don't know anything about this guy, this perpetrator here, my guess is that there were probably some issues around detach. growing up for him.

He probably had some difficult issues in childhood. And I'm not excusing his behavior here, but I think it's a reasonable conjecture to think that he, you know, he may have been, he may have himself been overwhelmed by feelings of shame from not feeling loved enough or not feeling significant enough or whatever it was in his childhood.

You know, that, in other words, to have this kind of extreme reaction when you experience rejection and shame is almost always going to be related to some childhood issues that are going to make that, they're going to amplify that sense of shame based upon shame you experience as a child that could have been related to some humiliating experiences or, you know, more than likely just something to do with feeling love. probably or unlovable. There's a lot of shame attached to that. And in this particular moment, you know, I could argue that when he's being rejected by this woman, he doesn't know, she's a stranger, that it's triggering all of that negative emotion, all of that negative affect, all of that sense of being unloved and unlovable is coming back. It's flooding back. So I, if I'm looking for deeper psychological roots, if I want to go beyond, if I want to look at the, the nurture component of this, then I'm going to start looking at shame as being an underlying element, a psychological element of this crime. Because I think there's probably some issues in here about attachment. And while attachment can be a very biological element, it's the parent, it's the parent, it's the parent, it's the parent. mental capacity to be attuned to a child, to mirror a child, to reflect back a child, their emotions, right, to develop emotional intelligence and a child that's nurturance, that moves us into the

nurtureance area and into the, you know, the, the, the qualities, hopefully the healthy qualities that a parent should display towards a child. a child, in other words, should look to a parent for some ability to feel loved or some capacity to feel loved. And when they feel ashamed, some capacity to manage that shame rather than picking up a gun and murdering someone. So then do you think this all goes back to his childhood and he then certainly didn't feel those things? The nurturing? I don't know if it all goes back to his childhood. I think I'm trying to put together. I'm trying to put together kind of the layers of this.

So, you know, the first layer would be like Anton Chagherr, it would be a moment of absolute senselessness and unthinking and unfeeling impulsive behavior that he's not controlling. Because if he's feeling shame, he just wants to get rid of that emotion. So he picks up a gun and he kills someone, he murders someone. Right? So there's, I think you have, you have, it begins with this impulsive behavior that he can't control. But then beneath that, you have this issue around social status and reputation and identity that's kind of hardwired into us. That obviously this is important to him.

He's making a bid here for acceptance. He's making a bid here for status. He wants this woman that he doesn't know to get in his car showing that he's, you know, a virile, you know, sexually desired man, right? That's part of this. That's what he wants. That's a bid for dominance. And then if you dig a little deeper, you know, you get to the shame.

You get to the Gilligan issue. You get to the shame and the humiliation. And I think a lot of that has to do with childhood experiences and the way he was raised. So even though I would say shame is an emotion that's hardwired, the way we deal with that shame and express it and cope with that shame is largely a question of nurturance and parenting. And I think you'd probably want to throw in some other elements to that he goes out that night. He gets in a fight with his girlfriend.

He's already upset. He's primed for he's already probably got some violent ideation. Right. He's got some violent thoughts. He's doing drugs. drugs are going to impair his capacity, his judgment. It's going to impair his capacity to put the brakes on, perhaps, these impulsive thoughts of harming someone. So cocaine is a stimulant, right?

That's going to, that's going to kind of propel him towards this type of behavior, towards this impulsive behavior, towards a quick trigger, right? Whereas marijuana can be more of a disinhibitor. So when you combine those two, when you combine something that may increase your impulsivity with something that takes it away, in other words, it doesn't inhibit it, then you have a volatile situation because there's no controls on the behavior and the cocaine means that whatever, with those controls gone, that he's more likely to act impulsively. So drugs are a huge part of this. drugs, however, are just a catalyst.

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he's going out with the intent of using that gun. If that's true, then he's already has these violent thoughts, this violent ideation. That's really what's driving a lot of this. He's got this violent ideation. He's using drugs. He's angry. He's driving around, kind of marking his turf, right? So you've got this territory element.

And then he has this expectation. He has this sense of entitlement when he rolls down his window. And he flips the coin because it is a random moment. When he flips the coin, he has this expectation that she's going to join him in the car. And when she doesn't, it triggers his shame. It triggers his, it triggers issues around his reputation and identity that in some ways this is a failed bid for more dominance. And at that point, I think, unfortunately, I think the victim is, you know, the victim is really in a dire situation. So in other words, he really was expecting her to get in his car.

He really was. Go get high with him. He had to be. I mean, he's he, he, why would he murderer if he didn't have that expectation? I guess he could have murdered her just to use his gun.

I think prosecutor kind of implied that that that you don't think that. Yeah, but you don't think that you think this is about territory and turf. I think he's, he's, when he leaves his home with that gun. Also, he doesn't have to take the gun. I mean, this is where the prosecutor's

correct. Why doesn't he leave the gun behind? I mean, if he's a felon, he's not supposed to have a gun. So that presumably, I assume, unless he gets an exemption, most terms of probation prohibit the use of a gun or owning a firearm. So whatever this gun is, it's illegal, probably. He's not supposed to have it. He's obviously not supposed to own it or use it. But he does. So by taking the gun out, it would show, like the prosecutor thought that perhaps he thought he would use it. It shows that there's, as the term I use or forensic psychologist would use, it shows violent ideation. He's having some violent thoughts. You don't take a gun out, typically, without some expectation that you're going to commit a violent act. Right. Or if he doesn't commit a violent act,

maybe there's an expectation that he's going to somehow use it to overpower someone or to establish dominance. I mean, he doesn't know what that is. It could be a male. He doesn't know what he's going to encounter. He could get into it with another man. I don't know, right? Like, that's where this becomes, that's where the Anton Chigur moment becomes really important

because there's so much chance involved here, right? And as I said, that's one of the things that's really upsetting about. this case to me is because when I first heard it, it kind of reminded me of you going out for a walk every morning. And like I think, oh my God, like, what does some stranger pulled up to you and rolled down the window and had a gun? And right? Like, what could you do to prevent it? Nothing. Yeah. And you do. You go out for walks at 5 a.m. sometimes. Well, don't tell it. Not anymore. Yeah, not anymore. Sorry.

You go out for walks at 8 a.m. Anything else you want to say? This is a very disturbing case, and I do want to share with everyone that this case has affected you. You haven't stopped talking about it to the point where I said, we need to cover this.

You need to share your thoughts. Yeah. I've been thinking about it because it's a really disturbing case. And as I said it, it overlaps with so many other types of violence that we talk, road rage. bar fights, fan fights, athletes getting into it with other, right, there's so many domestic violence.

There's so many ways that these dynamics express themselves. And so I think that's important. I want our listeners to contemplate this and to think about this. But on top of all of that, you know, you have this element of chance coming into play, which in and of itself is kind of frightening. You know, we, in many ways, we can't necessarily control the terms of life and death, right? We have very little control over that. We can take all the steps we want to find some degree of safety and security, but at the end of the day,

you might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, right? And that's frightening. And so I think there's kind of this underlying existential component here that is very disturbing to me. And again, I call that the Anton Shakur moment. But that's the reality of crime. You know, I think, as you know, what's one of the reasons I'm interested in talking about crime because it brings up these types of issues all the time

and what it means to be human. You know, part of what it means to be human is that we're all to some degree, we're all as human beings are to some degree operating on shaky ground. There's a certain element of insecurity that follows all of us, no matter what we do. And so there's this underlying Kirkgaard talked about this. Many philosophers have talked about this,

Haidiger, this idea that there's kind of this underlying anxiety that human beings experience. And this is why. Crime reminds us of that. And no matter what we try to do to purge ourselves of that, we can't. So I do have a couple final thoughts. You know, sometimes in cases like this, I think what's the takeaway here?

I mean, no matter how much you try to protect yourself and be safe, you can't, really. I mean, Nikki LaFredo, she thought she was going to have this time to collect her thoughts, and right, I don't know why she was out walking. It doesn't really matter, but she just wanted some space to walk. She could never, I'm sure, not in a million years, which she anticipated that someone would murder her that night.

And so that puts the onus on the offender, right? And if I had some takeaways, if I think about like possible takeaways from this, you know, my first takeaway, my most important takeaway would be to the offenders, to the men who put themselves in these situations. And that is, don't be a jerk. It's really simple. Don't be a jerk. Like if he's not a jerk.

Yeah. Yeah. If he's not a jerk, this doesn't happen. Like the cat calling, meaning come get high with me. Yeah, exactly. And being a jerk, by the way, means, so one of the problems with social status is that it involves a lot of egotism. It involves a lot of narcissism. Like when you're the dominant guy or female, but, you know, since we're talking about males here, let's just say men, when you're the top dog, you know, there's a lot of narcissism going on there. There's often a lot of ego involved in that. And so part of don't be a jerk is you have to put. decide your ego to some degree right you have to kind of check your ego at the door a little bit and then there's another corollary of that which is be kind you know be compassionate um uh i'll read this is from niki i want to acknowledge nicky lefredo because she had she was a single mom with a daughter

yeah her daughter was gia marie lefredo um you know i i feel for her heard of that kid. Like you and I, we have a child. Like I, you know, if our son lost as you, his mom, I, I'd be torn. I'd be, I'd be inconsolable. Like I, so this whole situation, right, is so upsetting and so tragic. And so now this girl doesn't have a mom, right? And this is her obituary, quote, part of her obituary, quote, Nikki had a huge heart, was very kind and compassionate, and was always willing to help anyone in need, unquote, right? Like, it's not that hard. No. Like, the irony is, I believe, I'm sure that's true of Nikki LaFredo. And the irony is that she, her base, her fundamental instinct or impulse in life,

seems probably was this desire to help other people. And yet here she is murdered for no reason whatsoever. Wrong place, wrong time. Exactly. And which is exactly what the prosecutor said. So my final thought would be you and you and I sometimes talk about, I haven't brought this up for a long time, but on one of our earlier podcasts,

E.M. Forster is a British novelist who has this famous quote about Only Connect. And sometimes when I'm feeling a little conflicted or you and I aren't on the same page, I remind myself of that. Never happens, yeah. I always am able to kind of check myself a little bit and remind myself of what's most important

and what's the most important is to is love and connection. And so that quote, as simple as it is, is extraordinarily powerful. And I feel like if somebody like James Bernard Johnson had approached this with some sense of connection and not anger and violence, that obviously Nikki LaFredo would be alive and we wouldn't be talking about this, And I will say, by the way, on that issue, there is also, on the plus side for human beings, there seems to be this hardwired desire for human beings in some cases. Many altruistic cases involve this desire to approach human beings that are in distress. When human beings are experiencing distress emotions, which include fear or sadness or

mainly fear and sadness, I'm probably going to miss a few, that we often want to comfort the person experiencing that distress. Anxiety would be another one, right? And so there is this capacity in us that's not just seeking status and wants to dominate. There's this capacity in us to soothe and comfort other human beings. and to cooperate with others. And that, too, has been rewarded from an evolutionary standpoint. So I think it's important to point that out.

It's not all bad. We do have this capacity for good as well and for empathy and for connecting to others. And so I think I would just end with this final thought about only connect. I love that. I think of that quote often, only connect. It means a lot to me. I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, it was on our first season, Beyond the Vale.

Only Connect. And it's something that we need to bring back and remember. It also makes a great, like, Wi-Fi login. Only Connect. Might be a little obvious. But, yes, the human aspect of that. Sorry. I love that.

In fact, I have to say, you're doing a good job with fatherhood, John, because we have all of our goals up in my office, my studio, which is just, you know, about 50 feet from where you are. But with that I'm in it right now. And I have all these goals and under something titled Priorities. And at the very end, our little guy came in and he added at the very end, be kind and be nice. something that I hadn't thought to put on our business goals.

But he reminded me and it's now my favorite in the long list of business priorities. And it just reminds me that to only connect. Yeah, I think if we could do a better job with that, you know, we'd probably have fewer murders, right? fewer fatalities, fewer incidents of road rage. I mean, it's just all of these things, by the way, I mean, it doesn't help that we're in a world that's so grievance-filled. It's hard to even, you know, it's hard to even imagine. And I've seen some of your road rage.

Let's not pretend that. No, I don't have road rage. But what I mean is you get frustrated with other drivers. You're not going out and punching somebody or honing. honking at them, but look, I'm just saying you're human as am I. It happens. Right. And I mean, sometimes, yeah, there's sometimes. If I'm, if I'm late to pick up our son and, you know, somebody's slogging along at five miles per hour, it can be a little frustrating. But, hey, we're human. I'm not going to. what matters is to remember to only connect.

Right. Right. I'm not going to pull out a con. I'm not going to take it personally. Like they're trying to interfere with my capacity to pick up my son on time. I'm going to understand that they're driving slowly and I need to be patient. And yeah, I can get, you know, can get frustrated. I'm just saying we're all human.

Yeah. What matters is, you know, know what we do with our emotions and our feelings. I always appreciate these episodes where I can sit back a little bit and you can share your knowledge from evaluating criminals and what this career in crime has taught you. It's a lot about human beings and that's who we are. So thank you. Thank you.

As you know, this situation has been on my mind for a few weeks. So I'm glad we had a chance to talk about it. Hopefully, hopefully some of our listeners, you know, we'll spend a few minutes reflecting on it and give us some feedback. Absolutely. Thanks, babe. All right, thank you. Let's go get lunch. Okay.

We'll see ya.