Hidden True Crime - CHAD DAYBELL TRIAL: Dr John breaks down Pathologist Expert Witness, plus Joe Murray on cross exam

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Defense calls Pathologist as an expert witness as well as Emma Daybell Murray's husband Joe Murray. Join Hidden True Crime as we follow Chad Daybell's trial from beginning to end. Host Lauren Matthias is in the courtroom daily, doing lunch lives on YouTube and summarizing each day and week right here on Hidden: A True Crime Podcast. Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and has followed the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell case since 2019. She and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic 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 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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that the cause of death is indeterminate. She's not saying that Tammy died of natural causes, which is what the defense is trying to prove. She's just saying it's indeterminate. So I guess if you're trying to introduce a shred of doubt that indeterminate is better than murdered, you know, prior, he's trying to pull on that strand that says,

well, you know, this may not have been murder, this may have just been something else. Of course, she couldn't really explain the bruises. She actually helped the prosecution when she said that the, when she talked about how much weight would be necessary to kind of crush someone's lungs essentially to asphyxiate them and, uh, which opened the door for the prosecution to say, oh, so you think there could have been multiple people, meaning Alex Cox and Chad Daybell. That's what I thought too. That's where my mind went. I'm like, so you're saying it took two people. So you're implicating Chad DeBell.

You're saying the chat had to help. Sat on her chest or whatever they did, put pressure on her chest, however they did it, and collapsed her lungs leading to her death. There was foam coming out of her mouth, which, you know, of course, is completely natural. So the pathologist, I mean, the other things, so let's talk about expert witness here in general. One of the things, if I'm going to testify, I want everything. I want to know the context. I want to know, I don't just want what the defense is going to give me.

So if I'm working for a defense attorney, I'll say, have you sent me everything? Have you given me everything to, have you given me all the discovery you have? That's my question always, because I don't want to be surprised, and I want to know the context in which the evidence occurs. So like a perfect example of, let's, if people were asking, what does that mean? A perfect example of context would be, let's say that someone stabbed in the heart. So technically you can say, if someone stabbed in the heart, you can say, okay, the person died from a structural anomaly to the heart. Or you can say that they died from heart failure or structural failure with a puncture wound.

Right. Technically, I guess from a medical standpoint, you can say that. but if you know that the husband was estranged, the husband was making death threats, the husband was stalking, that you have police reports saying the husband was stalking, if you know that the husband broke into the house the night that the so-called structure anomaly to the heart occurred,

right, then you're going to make different conclusions because the context, technically medically, I guess, a pathologist or a coroner could say, heart failure or they could say the cause of death was right that it was a puncture wound to the heart, whatever. So, but if you understand this history of the relationship where the husband's a stalker and making death threats and all of a sudden the wife or the spouse or the partner dies is stabbed presumably by the husband or ex-husband, then you would rule it a homicide.

Right. And any reasonable pathologist or coroner would come to the conclusion, given the context of the situation I just mentioned, that it wasn't, the person wasn't, the death was not a result of a heart failure. The death was a result of someone murdering the person in question. Right. Matter of death homicide. Cause of death is fixy. Right. So prior, prior was playing, he was doing a version of that with his expert witness.

He was, he was trying to show, you know, he was trying to create doubt, but he was, he was ignoring context. And when the prosecution, when the prosecution referenced, I don't know how many reports, like 40 reports or 50 reports, pieces of discovery that the, the coroner used to make the determination of homicide that the expert witness didn't know about, didn't have access to, didn't read, didn't reference, didn't. using research. I mean, I actually felt bad for her. I mean, I think she certainly understands that she needs to have all the discovery, but I guess she decided not to have the discovery. I don't know why she didn't have all the discovery. It may have been as simple as prior,

just kind of feeding her information that he thought was useful to his conclusion. I don't know. It was a medical examiner's report. you would think that he would give him all the discovery in the medical examiner's report. That beyond what John Pryor said at the end of this question about confirmation bias, which we'll get to, let's remove that last word murder, which everyone's asking about is Freudian slip.

Just take that, take that what he stated without murder at the end. Just the idea that it's confirmation bias to look at all the discovery or the interviews. That's that's preposterous. That's the exact opposite. If you don't look at all the, like the pathologist has confirmation bias because she's not looking at all of the evidence. And she's choosing to look at only certain aspects of evidence. So you also explain what collateral evidence or discovery is because some people are like, well, you wouldn't include these interviews and, you know, assessing.

this, the manner of death, which is homicide, but you would because those things matter. It is evidence when assessing manner of death. What the experts should be doing in this case is weighing in on that determination, that opinion of homicide. And the only way you can do that is if you have access to all the information. So collateral means collateral information would be information from, outside sources. So it would be,

of course, what I do is a little bit different. So for example, let's say that I want to learn, let's say I'm doing an evaluation of someone who committed murder. My goal, let's say it's an insanity case. So I want to make some determination

of whether that person was, was responsible at the time of the crime. I want to assess their mental state. I need to know their history. in depth. I need to know, is there a history of mental health issues? Is there a history of violence? Is there history of relationship problems? And so collateral information in that case would be police reports, previous police reports, previous arrest reports. It would be interviews with spouses, interviews with people that know the person, friends, neighbors, children. So in other words, collateral information is information that outside information, that can provide some perspective on the situation I'm trying to evaluate. And again, to get back to my example, if somebody punctures the heart,

you can say that that's, that might be the technically that might be the cause of death, but it doesn't help you understand, it doesn't help you make a determination of why. Right. The manner is why. I mean, his point was that he's trying to question the idea of homicide. And homicide is an interpretation. Right. And so that's where you have to get collateral information.

If you're going to make some type of interpretation, which is what I do, you know, that with psychology, it's much more complicated. We can't, you know, we can't pull off. a ruptured spleen or right and say that this is the cause so we have to get different types of information from as many sources as possible including testing so here's a i have it so jennifer b says that collateral information is still data and contributes to the scientific conclusion here are the five and thank you for your wording not so daring devil homicide self accidental natural and undetermined. Those are the five manners. The collateral data is evidence that leads to the scientific conclusion. There's a, there's a field called hermeneutics, which is all about

interpretation. Hermannutics is essentially the art and science of interpretation. And the basic premise behind Hermanunix is that we have to, even if it's scientific data, it still has to be interpreted. There's still a context around which that information occurs. When you get into the of the five that were just listed, you're still making an, you're making an interpretive judgment based on the information. But again, even if you, her conclusion is that it's indeterminate, right, which doesn't really help the defense. I mean, it could sow some seeds of doubt, but it's not definitive, obviously. Indeterminate means it could be murder, could be homicide. So I think the important point, though, is that, you know, that when a defense team brings out experts or witnesses and they present, they try to pull information out of context, it's a risk because it can really backfire.

I think you're seeing some of that with this defense case. And you see when the prosecution is trying to challenge the contact, and presented in a different light, Pryor's objecting every time because he doesn't, you know, he doesn't want, he doesn't want the prosecution to reestablish the larger context in which these murders are occurring

in which this case is occurring. Let me ask you about Joe Murray's testimony. Or his, it was actually his cross. We started with his cross today with Wixom. I, um, I, I didn't, I didn't think he was, I thought he was kind of a weak witness for the defense. I don't, clearly. I mean, he actually, again, that's a situation where context matters.

You know, we talked about one of the most interesting things about what he said and Cross was, he basically said that, you know, that Pryor wants to hammer home this idea that with the paintball gone and even with the murders that why didn't anybody see people? why didn't anyone see who had the paintball the so-called paintball gun right and and joe murray basically answered that he said well there's parts of the yard that you can kind of get into where nobody can see you and there's poor visibility right like he basically said yeah there's there's a lot of ways to get away with not being seen around the daybell property and so he kind of undermined one of the points priors trying to make which is the nobody saw any of these people do anything? I thought Joe's cross was jaw-dropping. I took what you said about Emma yesterday and felt similarly with Joe.

Now, you testified also that at some point in time, Detective from a seal had been seen driving by this property. Yep, before and after Chad's arrest. And that was something that you had observed personally. Yep. And at that point, had you met Detective Hermesio? Yes.

And that's how you were able to identify him? Yep. And I've also seen him on Facebook. Okay. Did you see Detective Hermesiel the day that Tiley and GIG were found? I can't recall for sure on that day. You don't have any reason to disagree that Detective Pharmacio was one of the lead investigators in this case.

No, I have no reason to disagree on that. No reason to disagree that, in fact, he was there the day that the bodies were found. I would assume so. So you wouldn't disagree that for law enforcement to drive back and forth by this property that they may have suspected the bodies were and, in fact, found the bodies there. That wouldn't necessarily be unusual, would it? Perhaps no. However, this was even true. after the bodies were taken out that he would slowly drive by the property.

And to that point. So you would disagree that a detective who discovers bodies on a property arrest somebody from the property might have a surveillance or investigative interest in continuing to drive by the property to identify if someone else was coming back to the property after the bodies had removed. You don't disagree with that, do you? I don't see the reason for it. You're not a law enforcement officer, are you? Absolutely not. I would rather choose any other profession. Choose any other profession. But you don't disagree that a law enforcement officer who found bodies on the property

might want to continue to observe that property to see if anything else suspicious occurred there, property. I don't, again, I don't see the reason for him returning. Do you think finding bodies on a property is a big job? Yeah, I'm going to object. It's been asked and answered at least a couple of times. He, uh, saying, uh, saying, that he was so indifferent to children being buried in the yard where he lives. He saw no reason for police officers to drive by slowly being a crime scene with children. He said there's no reason.

And they kept pushing him. You see no reason for police officers to drive slowly past a crime scene where two children were found. No, no reason. And then he goes on to say, I would, you know, know, he has disdain for police, for law enforcement, I would never, it's a terrible profession. I would never ever be on law enforcement.

The indifference is not just a disrespect to, to law enforcement. It was an indifference to the victims, in my opinion, to empathy, to seeing, to reality, to see, to understanding what exactly has happened. I don't know. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I saw that. I felt like he was being more like Emma yesterday. I think in those moments he was being a little oppositional.

And that's how Emma was during cross. I think he was being defiant and oppositional. And I think we understood better why he was being that way, because he said during cross that he talked to Emma all the time. the prosecution basically we learned that they have been strategizing about what to say and they've been talking about this case all the time together. So since things initially broke. So clearly that's why they're on the same page.

And I think that's why they're both kind of defiant because they have their narrative of how this occurred and they're going to stick with it. He's even changed his story. story, according to Cross, that he referred to the truck as Tammy's truck, which matters when it comes to the paintball gun incident, which is actually an alleged, which is actually a shooting incident. And by stating, by shifting from this was my mother-in-law's truck to Chad drove the truck, it shifted. it shifts who the target is and they did that. They did shift because some screenshots have come up.

I sent you one. I don't know if you had time to see it. Where Emma Murray, the day her mother died, did refer to it as her mother's truck. And they alleged that during the grand jury indictment, they referred to it as the mother's, as Tammy's truck. I mean, they are not looking like trustworthy witnesses

possibly lying and changing their story. Right, and that's kind of consistent with what I said yesterday, which is when your star witnesses are all family members who basically carry the defendant's water, right, or have the same belief system or buy everything he's saying, then their credibility is in question. Correct. And I think that's going to be pretty apparent to the jury.

So too. I think between Joe and Emma, they have not left a good impression on the jury. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in.

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Use that with happy mammoth.com for 15% off today. Carrie Hansen says, I'm shocked at how juvenile these people appear. They sound childish if they seem to think they're clever fifth graders. Clueless that their tactics are obvious, exaggerating, adding extra info, code, and I would say shifting stories. Any insight, John? Yeah, I agree. The whole thing is very infantile. The whole thing is very childish.

The way they talk, the way they think, the way they act. Yeah, it's peculiar. Right. I mean, it's like watching a bunch of children engaged in some type of, like, fantasy play or something. It's crazy. I agree. These people, a lot of these people are so regressed, childlike. We've been talking a lot off camera with people in court about the voice cadence.

And you mentioned a flat affect. But I just want you to know, a lot of people who have been asking a little bit about the way Emma sounds in particular. So, yeah, I don't know if you have any more thoughts on that as far. as a flat affect goes. Or maybe that's just where you want to land. It's, you know.

Yeah, I mentioned yesterday that she came off as kind of monotone. He didn't really show any affect until cross-examination occurred. And then you could tell she was being oppositional. She was being terse. She was being short with the prosecution. So, you know, there was a little bit of anger. but outside of that, I mean, yeah, she came across

is pretty flat, but that's no, when I say flat, I mean, without emotion, but that's no surprise, I think, because look at the family she grew up in. You know, her dad is the same way. And Tammy suffered, as far as we know, Tammy was on Prozac and that suggests Tammy suffered from depression. So Tammy probably struggled with her emotions too.

So, I mean, you're essentially looking at a family culture that struggles with emotions to feel them, express them, have them, deal with them, right? And so it wouldn't be surprising that the children and Emma in particular would be similar to their father. A justice collector is asking, do you believe the dislike of the police added to the idea of them being ingrained into the cult? Or that is interesting, like the idea that they'd be afraid of outsiders or authority, does that sort of imply a cult? I think it goes with the terrain, the whole, their beliefs, the religious beliefs,

probably their political beliefs, right? There's kind of this anti-outider perspective in general. So it's kind of part of that. Potentially, you know, you see that in certain areas of the country. that are probably a little more insulated. And so that would probably be pretty typical, kind of this anti-outside or anti-government type attitude. It's very oppositional.

But I also heard him saying in a way, like, leave us alone. Let it go. Leave us alone. You don't need to find out where the kids are. Just leave us, you know, let us. Let us go on with our lives. I mean, as you point out, there's a real lack of empathy. Like, does he, do they really want the kids to be found?

Do they really care? Yeah, they're living in the house. I don't know what they do. Also, if you wanted to go away, go live somewhere else. They don't need to live there at a crime scene. People are asking what the jury's reactions at the end of today. They were tired. They're tired and Judge Boyce apologized to them.

He said, I'm sorry, jurors, that we're not having full. days here with witnesses that yesterday we got out early and today we got out early both for the same reason why? Because defense witnesses weren't ready to go and Judge Boyce apologized to the jury because

we've got Memorial Day coming up right they could have this thing wrapped up and they don't and so I think that Judge Boyce was probably talking to the jury because of what they look tired and no one

was sleeping, I don't mean by that, they look emotionally tired. Like, they're ready for this to be wrapped up. And I think part of these witnesses coming, they're like, why? It was my thought, but they were listening. They were listening and taking notes, but I think they were very confused by a lot of the defense witnesses. Yeah, it has been somewhat disjointed. It's, it's, I think the most effective defenses are able to develop a theory of the case that's opposed. to the prosecution's theory of the case, and they're able to do that effectively.

And I don't, this is, I don't have any sense of what their theory of the case is, except for law enforcement apparently he's corrupt or somehow, I don't know, it's not super clear what they're trying to do. I mean, he's trying to poke holes in, in the prosecution's case, obviously, but he's not really developing a sound theory of what's going on here, other than Melanie Gibb being in charge.

There's been a lot of attempting to frame law enforcement as well. Melanie Gibb, the raccoon, the law enforcement, and Lori Valo have really taken the brunt. Although, I will say, I think John Pryor should pick one, you know, to really sort of point the finger at, but he's got Melanie Gibb, the raccoon, law enforcement staging things. He's got Lori Valo being too sexy. He's got Tammy being, you know, her natural death. her fault because she's too unhealthy and cheats on the Fitbit. I mean, everything and everyone's to blame. Yeah, cheating on the Fitbit's unforgivable.

But his client, you know, implying she's lazy. And that speaks to what I'm saying about a theory of the case. And I've talked about this a lot in the past, but juries are swayed by the most coherent story. The most coherent. So whoever tells the best story that's supported by the evidence usually wins. Not always, but most frequently. And so the problem with the defense putting on kind of what I would call scattershot defense is it lacks coherence and it lacks kind of a coherent theory of what's going on. And if you don't, the best defenses will give you

a coherent narrative that opposes the prosecution. And then they'll use some evidence to support it. So, but if you're not doing that, if you're just trying to poke holes in the prosecution's case, a lot of times you see what we're seeing here, which is that things get taken out of context. The prosecution comes back and, you know, undermines a lot of the testimony of the defense star witnesses, right? They're not putting this all together into a narrative that really adds up.

Barb states, it appears there's an underlying anger with the entire daybale clan. They speak in measured monotum voices, yet there appears to be some hidden rage. Thoughts, thanks. Yeah, I agree. So usually in these types of family cultures that are really constrained and insulated, and I think that would be true, the term sometimes uses a mashed, a mashed meaning that they're all kind of fused together. The family identities are kind of fused.

They're not really independent people in the family that have independent opinions. So a lot of times in those types of families, emotions get really suppressed. But anger is the one emotion that kind of seeps through. And actually, you know, that's exactly what we saw with Emma and maybe to a lesser degree with Joe Murray. But Emma was definitely on cross-examination. She was definitely angry. Joe was a little, I think Joe was a little more composed, but yeah.

Yeah, but I don't know, stubborn. Nope. No reason for any law enforcement to drive past a crime scene. Just go away. Right. Most likely culprit, the Fitbit wearing raccoon.

Yes, I know it. Anything else, Dave? So I used to wear a Fitbit. It broke. I don't have one now, but you're like, I didn't know you could. I didn't know you could do that.

I don't think you'd have, I would have done that to fool you when you asked about my steps. I would have been, you know, doing the. Except that would have been a harder workout than just walking.

Think about that. Like that's some serious, you know, that's some Pilate stuff right there, man. No wonder Damie was buff if that's what she was doing. Yeah, I learned a new FitBick technique, but I mean, I haven't owned one for a few years, but You're like Chuck Norris, you took so many steps.

It broke. I think I inadvertently was, since I was always cheering people on, I had to do this all the time. I don't know. Yeah, hey, look, I give Tammy credit. If she was in her bed playing Candy Crush with one hand, Well, you know, doing this with the other. Like, that's some calories, dude. That's some calories and some sheer strength and some determination and some serious not, not, not laziness going on.

Like, that's all the power to her, man. That's also it's hard for me to believe that she was that wrapped up in this competition. Really? like these people are like they're fighting over who had the most steps every day. I mean, I guess, I don't know, that seemed a little, to me, that didn't seem totally believable. It didn't seem like Tammy would care that much about that competition. It's shocking to me that they would really just kind of throw Tammy under the bus to save

their dad and to find out that Emma's talking to her dad every day and there seems to be some serious coercive control in the family and people are just sort of like looking at these children just kind of with, you know, wide eyes thinking, wow, what's going on? And so my very broad question to you and perhaps you can make it less broad is how does this happen in a family. What does this mean about the family system or what does it tell you about what's been going on in the Chad and Tammy Davao family for a while? Does it does it tell you anything about Chad and how he ran his family or how this could happen with the children where they just follow his every step and guidance? I don't know. I don't know if you have anything

to say to that. But I think people are just really curious. now about Chad and how he's and his kids. How did this happen? Well, as I mentioned, so it's a very, I think it's a very meshed family system, meaning that the members are all fused. But within that structure, you have very traditional roles, I think. And so Chad played a very traditional role of the patriarch who had control of the family. He dictated, probably dictated the term the rule. He set the rules. He set the roles. He probably dictated a lot of what was acceptable behavior.

So he kind of had the moral high ground in the family. And I think on top of all that, you had what I would call a closed family system, meaning that a very healthy family system has every family has boundaries with the outside world. And some families have boundaries that are too open. They share everything. they really don't set any limits in terms of what comes in and out of the family system. Other families are extremely closed, meaning that they protect, they guard all information.

So in other words, they have a lot of secrets, and those secrets are never known. They might be known to some of the members, but they're not known to the outside world. Also, they protect information coming into the system. So if Chad has this really bizarre belief system, really extreme belief system, a closed family is going to make sure

that no ideas enter the family system that can challenge that. So you have a very closed family system that's a meshed where the members really don't have independent identities and it's very traditional. It's led by the patriarch. That's Chad.

Chad controls all the rules, all the roles, the functioning of this family. I think that's how you, you know, that's how you see children like this. That's how you get to this point. The other thing that happens in these types of families

is there's no really, there's no challenges to authority. There's no challenges to beliefs. There's no challenge. If you challenge a family, so if one of the children say, let's say a child you know, is in school and learned something different and they want to challenge the

authority of the system, in this case, Chad. Oftentimes there'll be threats. either implicit or explicit, threats about if you challenge me, you're going to be disowned by this family. If you challenge me, I won't accept you, right? There's, in many ways, there's this underlying threat of survival in the sense that you're going to get, there's this perception that if you violate or challenge the authority of the family, you're going to get thrown out of that family. You're going to be on your own. And so I think

that's how you get here. You know, you, in the, these types of families, you have a lot of denial. And again, there's no challenges. And so you see, like Emma and Garth, they're not going to challenge her dad's authority no matter what. If he says he's innocent, they're going to believe that. They're going to accept that. Katie asks, how will these kids react when if Chad is found guilty? Will they continue to defend him or see the light? They'll defend him. Again, in these types of families, there's in close systems, there's an inability to deal with reality. So in other words, outside information that challenges the family's culture or perspective

is going to be rejected. So even if there's, right, even if there's people outside their home with a bullhorn saying your father's guilty, you know, the evidence is overpowering, they're not going to, they don't care, they're not going to listen to it, they're not going to pay attention to it. they're going to reject it. Do you have concerns about Emma or any of these children passing these beliefs down to their children? Yes, for sure. Yeah, again, unless you would think that an event like this would shake the system up enough for them to challenge these belief systems and perhaps to change them.

But that doesn't seem to have occurred. In fact, it's probably reinforced them. Yes. So in that sense, I think you're absolutely going to get to look at other generations. They're going to inherit these beliefs. I sold my car on Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand.

It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch.

Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. We have, what is this tablewood? I think it's laminated. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.