Hidden True Crime - From Cheerleader to Murderer - Inside the Mind of Laken Snelling | Psychologist Reacts

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

In this episode, Dr. John explores not only the case of Laken Snelling, but the topic of neonaticide as a whole. What is the psychology behind pregnant women who give birth and murder? Are there red flags we could be picking up on? Sponsors: OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code HIDDEN at https://www.oneskin.co/ Remi: Go to http://shopremi.com/HIDDEN and use code HIDDEN  at checkout for 50% off. Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to http://smalls.com/HIDDEN About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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testimonials creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. 3.3%. Base API as of January 30th, 20206 is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boosts for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. These and eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features of the cash account. Hello, hello. And hello to you, my co-host and husband.

Dr. John Matthias, definitely noticing the new haircut. You're looking shy, you're looking down. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a new haircut. It's been a long time coming. It's one of those things where every day I'd be like, I got to get a haircut, but then I would get inundated with other things and never get a haircut. So here, six weeks later.

I went out of town. Yeah, I went out of town. and took our son and lo and behold showed back up. I was off the grid and National Park showed back up and you have a new haircut. Yeah, look at that. I actually had some free time then. Yeah. I snuck in to get a haircut.

Yes, you look great. And now it's time to talk about crime. Okay. And what I've been wanting to talk to you about, what many other people have been wanting to discuss, is Lakin Snelly. The questions I have about Lakin, I think are more universal. Lakin Snellin gave birth. She seemed to have it all, 22 years old. And on the college stunt team, successful, beautiful boyfriend.

friend has a baby boy and then puts the baby boy in her closet. Very heartbreaking. And this isn't the first case we've seen like this. So yeah. So she actually put the baby boy in a trash bag, right? Which turns out to be one of the most common means of disposing of a baby, by the way. So in cases of, so let's start with defining some terms. So we always talk about, we talk a lot about Philicide. Philicide is when a parent murders a child. So typically, philicide could be any age, right? It could be the ones we talk about are mostly children that are, not babies, children that are over a year old. And so, so we deal a lot with filicide. So Lori, Valadeba would be an example of phylliside.

Maybe I should jump in here just in case nobody knows you are a criminal psychologist. Clinical psychologist, forensic psychologist, beyond just being my co-host. So, okay, keep going on. Fill aside. Yes. Yeah, that might be good to know. People may not know that. So, yeah, I have a lot of experience talking about felons, criminals, violent criminals, sexual offenders, all that.

I've done groups, evaluations. I've served as an expert many times in many different ways at the federal and state level. So, philicide is when a parent murders a child. Typically, that would be defined as anywhere between the ages of birth to 18, when they would be considered an adult.

Then there's something called infanticide. Infanticide is when a child is murdered in the first year of life. And then there's something even more specific, something that we haven't actually talked about until now. So this will be our first time actually talking about in depth about neonaticide. Neonaticide. So a neonate is a baby in the first four weeks.

So a neonate is a child that's been alive for a month. But neonaticide is, murder that occurs in the first 24 hours of birth. And one of the things about neonaticide is that it's widely believed that neonaticide is tremendously underestimated for many, many reasons. You know, obviously a child at birth is extremely vulnerable and extremely small. And so there's many cases, the most common, cause of death

and neonaticide is suffocation. There's many ways probably to suffocate a baby that wouldn't necessarily be considered neonaticide. There's a high percentage of SIDS

cases that are determined to be neonaticide. So roughly 10% of SIDS cases, so Sudden SIDS is sudden infant death syndrome, but it's believed that many more cases of cids are probably neonaticide. So because babies are so vulnerable, and it's fairly easy to, if a pregnancy is concealed, as it was with Lake and Snelling, if his pregnancy is concealed, sadly, it's fairly easy to dispose of the remains. If nobody knows about it, right, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's

barely easy to dispose of the remains of a baby in the sense that their bones are softer. They degrade faster, right? They're smaller, so there's less remains to deal with. They're less conspicuous. They're easier to hide. There's so many ways in which neo-native site is probably much more common than we realize. From not only the way that babies are potentially murdered, but, in terms of dealing with the remains and how to dispose of them so that they're not detected,

it's just, it's frightening. And obviously, a baby at birth is absolutely one of the most vulnerable human beings on the planet. And even without a parent that wants to murder their baby in the first 24 hours of being born, babies are still vulnerable. Their immune systems are trying to kick in. They're trying to breathe. There's a lot of ways that babies can die in that first 24 hours. In fact, most of the deaths of babies occur quite quickly within that time frame within 24 hours.

So neonaticide is a murder typically in the first 24 hours after birth. There are some things we know about neonaticide. There are recent, there's a spate of recent articles that deal with this topic. like in the last three to five years. So we have more information about it. Not all the findings are consistent, by the way. So I'm going to present probably different ideas and findings from some of the research. Some of it I think is really fascinating.

Infanticide is, again, that's the first year of life, is mainly males. It's mainly men that are murdering infants in the first year. However, neonacide, almost all females. In terms of infanticide, the number of concealments, in other words, the number of infants that are murdered where the parents try to conceal the existence of the baby and the death of the baby, it's roughly 5% for infanticide. For neonaticide, it's 50%. So think about that for a minute. Wow. Wow. That means that of all neonaticides, most of, well, half of the murderers are trying to conceal the fact that they're pregnant and that they've given birth.

Hence the motive a little bit is why it's a female crime. Yeah, it's right. It's very much a female crime. Some of the risk factors for neonaticide, according to one study, Johnson, Ed Al, 2025, recent study. Some of the risk factors are young age, which not unexpectedly with, you know, most neonaticides occur with young women. That would be the case, obviously, with Lakin Snelling. There seems to be some mental health issues, although there's not a lot of consensus on

this. There's actually some research showing that neonaticide offenders are less likely to experience mental health problems. So it's not clear-cut. It does seem that some of them may have some history of depression, but the research is mixed on that point. The mental health issues aren't clear-cut. It seems like compared to many other types of infant murder,

which would be infanticide and thylicide in general with older kids, that mental health issues seem to be fewer among the women basically killing their babies. So that's interesting. One of the commonalities is there's there's typically a lack of social and emotional support during pregnancy. And that would make sense because if you're trying to conceal the pregnancy, you're probably not going to have much emotional and social support. Right. So but even in cases where there were, there are murders of babies, there does tend to be an overall lack of social and emotional support for the newborn child.

So that's a bit of an overview of neonaticide. Just general statistics and interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. And it certainly seemed like Lakin was trying to hide her pregnancy, according to sources. But, huh. Yeah. How sad.

Yeah, and in that sense, by the way, the most common means of when pregnancies are concealed and netonaticides occur, the most common means of disposing of the body are a trash bag or placing the infant in the garbage. And she obviously used a trash bag. So she kind of fits, she tends to fit a lot of the pattern that you might expect to see. I'm not going to say profile because there's really no specific profile. profile for neonadicide offenders, but there are some common patterns. And on that issue, there was a study that reviewed a number of the most recent studies in 2022. This is by Milia and Noonan in 2022, and it's in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. The title of this article is

Experience in Perspectives of Women Who Have Committed Neonaticide, Infanticide, and Philicide, A Systematic Review, and Qualitative Evidence Synthesis. That's a mouthful for a title of the study. Quite the title. So here, I'm just going to throw out their major finding to start this discussion off. This probably is not going to surprise anyone.

Their number one finding, across a number of studies and in doing interviews with some of the neonaticide offenders was that most of them are not ready to be mothers. That's their, that's their main finding, right? And so I think we can definitely apply that or at least presumably apply that to Lake and Snelling in the sense that she's this active, popular college student who's on the stunt team. She's on the competitive stunt team. And presumably I would guess that part of this has to do with the fact that she's not ready to switch roles from college student to mother.

In some ways, I think those are conflicting roles. Yeah. And so I think that that theme would be potentially quite pertinent in this particular case. To me, it seems fairly straightforward to say that she probably wanted to maintain her status as a college student and to maintain that lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's likely motive. And so that's across many studies,

this idea of kind of role switching plays into this. I think it certainly is true with her. But, you know, of course, we're hidden true crime. We want to dig a little deeper and find out what's hidden here. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start.

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brokerage LLC member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. These and eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features of the cash account. You go a little deeper than just this issue of not, you know, she's not ready to be a mother, I think then you start getting into things like the potential stigma of an unwanted pregnancy, right? I think that could play a role here too. That one of the other findings is that there's a fear of social repercussions. So in other words, there tends to be some social and family disappointment and even shame around the fact that someone is getting pregnant and And it's not planned, it's not wanted, and that's part of the concealment, is that mothers that engage in neonaticide probably perceive some stigma around their pregnancies in the sense that the pregnancies are unwanted. And by the way, that unwanted pregnancy is often considered the primary motive for neonaticide.

So it's not just concealing, it's the fact that the mother doesn't actually want the child. And it doesn't mean that she wouldn't want a child later because one thing people pointed out as a vision board that Lakin made where she referenced motherhood. And so it would just be a timing issue. Yes, it would be, again, that would get back to the idea of role. Taking on the role of being a mother is, right? It's a very serious and time concerns. responsibility to be a mother and to step into that, step into that role. And I, I don't think this, Lincoln is a 21 year old and immersed in college that, yeah, it seems to me that she may

not have been ready to fully engage that role. That's not to say that in five years or whatever after she's out of college and settled down and in a serious relationship, maybe she would have been. So it wouldn't be surprising to see that on a vision board. the question is not the question is not whether she wants to be a mother. The question is whether she wants to be a mother now, whether she wants to be a mother in this moment.

And I think it seems again, we don't know, we haven't seen the results of the autopsy, right? So we don't know a lot of details here. Right. We know that Lakin in her interview with police alleged that

the baby was born alive, the baby boy, and that she fainted or went unconscious and when she woke up. The baby boy was deceased, but we don't know what happened, honestly. And then she, of course, as you point out, put this infant into a trash bag and hid that rather than calling 911, she actually tried to hide the remains. So, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's one of, her initial story, as I understand it, was that the baby fell onto the floor. Oh, right. That's right.

You are correct. And then she said that she fell on top of the baby and the baby turned blue. So there's some implication from that that this was an accident. However, there's also some belief that or some evidence that she cleaned up, she tried to clean up the crime scene, right? She started to clean up the crime scene, right? She started to clean it with blood. She placed the baby in a trash bag. All that would suggest that she's trying to cover something up.

And again, hiding her pregnancy, not calling 911, not going to a hospital while in labor. And so this, but this idea of a fall is interesting because if you look at the research on this, it actually shows that the most common method or the most common cause of, I mentioned earlier, the most common cause is suffocation, but typically, if you look at the most common method of neonaticide, the most common cause is suffocation, the most common cause of death is suffocation. But the way that's accomplished is typically by using their hands. So the murder weapon would be the hands. Typically, obviously, because babies are so helpless, right?

it wouldn't be difficult to accomplish that. But another very common method, and this ties in completely to Blaken's story, is what's described as an intentional fall. So in other words, baby, that it appears that in New Native Side, many mothers want to say that the baby fell or there was a fall, but the fall is intentional.

the mother is actually dropping the child with the intent of murdering that child. And that's precisely the story she tells. And the reason that's a, I think the reason that's a common story is because you can't, it's hard to disprove. I mean, I think if a baby falls from a certain distance, you can say,

well, okay, that's how you figure it out. You look at the, you probably look at the trauma, the impact of the trauma and whether, you know, the height from which the baby had to fall?

And whether that, right, like, how is a baby going to fall from, say, I don't know, 12 feet? If you throw a baby, I don't right, this is crazy. But if you throw a baby up in the air, the baby falls from 12 feet, I think you can deduce that that's intentional, that you're trying to create the impression that the baby fell and died that way when the reality is that it was premeditated. And the fall was engineered. Well, it also in many ways, and maybe I'm jumping. Tell me if I'm wrong, but for someone who doesn't think of themselves, so somebody who's going to hurt a newborn, I mean, they've dehumanized this moment in their mind.

Maybe they almost believe it too. Like, it's a way for them to believe this is how it happened as well to erase their conscience and like what they really know is happening. Maybe they almost convince themselves of this? Yeah, that's a really good point. I think if you make it look like a fall, even though, as I said, the method here is intentional fall. So in other words, you're manufacturing or you're creating a fall that leads to the death of the infant, and then you're arguing that it was just a fall,

so therefore an accident, right? That's, I agree. It allows someone to rationalize the murder. It allows someone to explain away the murder in a way that doesn't really involve their responsibility, their accountability. So it helps themselves as well. It doesn't just help them in their charges, but it helps them in their own moral belief system. If you suffocate a baby, if you strangle a baby, so you could imagine that, maybe a mother gets a pillow and suffocates a baby, right?

Like, that might be hard in some cases to distinguish from SIDS. So you have to figure the corner is going to have to really kind of, you know, I'm sure they have ways to do it, but like it's going to be trickier. If you strangle a baby, let's say you strangle the baby around the neck, you're going to leave marks, right? So the corner is going to figure that out. And so I agree in the sense that if you create this, if you engineer or manufacture a fall,

then you can't just argue away a strangulation. There's marks on the neck. But a fall, you can say, well, I don't know how you'd explain it exactly. If it's a fall from a height, from a significant height, you can't say, you know, I put the baby on the,

I put the baby on the bookshelf that's 12 feet high. fell like that would be hard to justify right but but still i agree um that that it's but it's what's fascinating about that explanation is the fact that lake and riley uses it right right right like uh and and it's not and so in that sense it's not atypical she's not saying the baby stop breathing right she's she's arguing so that if they do find trauma on the baby she can argue that it was a fall. Right. Right. And it helps, it helps the investigation, but it also helps their conscience. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Why, and I know you have more to say, so I'm interrupting, but I think, I mean, I think I know the answer, but I have a couple of questions. Why a

trash bag is my general question, but more particularly, wouldn't that be the common thing to place a newborn infant too if you're trying to clean up a mess? What else is there? So I guess in general, why a trash bag, I think I know the answer, but then at the same time, wouldn't that also just be a general? So sad. I'll stop. Just Yeah, I mean, a trash bag is the most common means of disposal, I think, for a lot of obvious reasons. Number one is, you know, I presume, like, it's convenient. Yeah. You have a baby.

So you have, you're dealing with a less conspicuous body. You're dealing with a smaller body, right? I talked about that earlier in terms of it's easier to conceal a baby, which is one of the reasons, again, why I think that the statistics on neo-enabled. decide are way, they're much, they're greatly underestimated, probably. So, but I think the short answer is it's, it's easy, it's convenient. And I think there's some intention, obviously, like, the goal here is if you're trying to, if nobody knows about the baby and you're trying to get away with murder, the obvious step would be to put it in a trash bag and throw it in the, to have it thrown in the dump, right?

I mean, and once, once something is in, it probably, probably varies by city, but at least like in our, with us, the dump site that we're familiar with, if, if a trash bag with a baby's body and it gets there and there's no detection of that body. it's going to be really, really, really unlikely that it's ever going to be found. I also want to point out that another case we're covering that many people have wanted updates on and there hasn't been updates. Emmanuel Harrow, a little baby, has not been found. And I suspect, unfortunately, that this might be why.

And this is how they disposed of Emmanuel. And, yeah, as you point out, investigators have not been able to find this baby boy. So in terms of Lake and Snelling, I mean, I know this sounds horrible, but it seems to me like she had this child or this baby murdered this baby, presumably. We don't know for sure. Maybe it was an accident. Who knows?

It seems like she was definitely thinking about eliminating this child, this baby. She was certainly, as it seems from witnesses trying to conceal a pregnancy. Right. Or not let people know about it. Exactly. So we know that she's trying to, we know that the pregnancy is concealed. And again, right that alone, 50% of neonaticides are pregnancies that are concealed. And they're concealed because, as I said earlier, because they don't want the stigma of pregnancy, of unwanted pregnancy. They don't, they're not ready to be mothers. They don't want to disrupt their lifestyles. I think all that is in play here. you know, there's some, if we dig a little deeper, I think there's some other reasons that probably are less obvious too. And let's kind of talk about some of those as well. You know, one, one interesting thing is that sometimes in neonaticide and in concealing a pregnancy, it has to do with the father in the sense that some of the pregnant women, they're,

they fear abuse or retaliation from someone who doesn't, who want them to get pregnant, from the boyfriend or the, whoever it is, the, the, the baby daddy, the husband. The baby daddy, the baby daddy doesn't want a child, doesn't want to think about a child. They don't want to, they don't want to be responsible to the child, right? And so in some of these cases, you get retaliation.

You get, there's a fear of retaliation or abuse, the baby daddy even harming the mother to harm the child. And in fact, you know this, that pregnant, the greatest risk factor for losing a child during pregnancy is the spouse or the partner or the, right, the boyfriend, that almost every female that's pregnant, this was true of you. I was in the room when your, your doctor asked you this question. She said, was there any violence in your relationship? And the reason they asked that is because it's a tremendous risk factor.

Well, you had to leave the room during those questioning, too. They asked you to leave the room during those moments in appointment so that I could feel safe to share. I was like, you have no idea. No, just kidding. This is sharing, no. I think my baby daddy's good. I think she asked it in front of me once. Well, usually she'd ask you to leave.

though. But there is a reason, well, it's not just losing the pregnancy is losing their lives. A top risk factor for death of a pregnant woman is murder. Right. But it's murder. It's correct. And it's, yeah, and this would be, this would be another really long discussion, by the way. But the partner of the pregnant woman typically, if that person is very dependent, an unhealthy, then actually you get, you can potentially kind of a competitive situation where the partner resents the pregnancy and the partner sees the unborn child as a competitor, right?

I know that's strange, but that can lead to violence. So a lot of times you'll see physical violence and domestic violence during pregnancy, and it is a tremendous, it's one of the absolute top risk factors for you're right not only the the death of the mother but of the child as well yeah um right so you have that dynamic and we don't know much about that dynamic either we actually know that there were two boyfriends um that she seemed to have some people have suspected that what if it was child, not the other too, right? And just a lot of, but we don't know. We don't know that situation.

And the father has not spoken up. Right. So I throw that out there, though, as if we're, if we're trying to dig into neonaticide and figure out kind of the hidden motives, we can't totally rule that out. We don't know enough about it. Again, I think the Lake and Snelling case is, is it, although we don't know specific because I think it can provide us a platform to talk about this issue. And as you, as you discussed in our first show on this, there's many, many, this isn't just her. There's many women in similar circumstances. This is much more common than you would think. So, as I said earlier, especially in a pregnancy that's being concealed, 50% of those are going to end in the murder of the baby. So that's astronomical. If,

So that's a warning sign then, too. If you see someone that's trying to conceal a pregnancy, that's a warning sign. Right, exactly. And it might provide an opportunity to intervene and to maybe discuss that with the person, right? And to bring it into the open because once it's in the open, it's much harder to, it would be much harder to murder a baby, a newborn. I want to talk a little bit about, so as I said earlier, there's different, there's kind of different ideas about neonaticide and the causes of neonatocide. I'm going to reference a study from 2022.

It's by Greenwood, Katie Greenwood et al. It's in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. published, as I said in 2022, the title of the article is content analysis of infanticide and neonaticide cases in the UK. And after looking at a number of cases between 1989 and 2020, so they looked at a number of cases over a period of over 30 years, they developed a they developed

after their analysis they came to the conclusion that there's three themes that drive neonaticide and I think it's I think it's worthwhile talking about these because again if we're trying to explain neonaticide I think it's useful to kind of

throw out the best research and the best ideas on this So their first theme in neonaticide and infanticide is what they call the desperation phase. So the desperation phase is characterized by a combination of distress or perceived necessity. Distress or perceived necessity. So that would dovetail nicely with the idea of not being, you know, the theme of not being ready to be a mother. in the sense that I think for potentially for Lake and Snelling, and again, we don't know exactly what happened here,

but there's probably a lot of anxiety and there's probably a lot of perceived necessity around solving this problem so she can get on with her life, right, that if she's not ready to be a mother and now all of a sudden she's confronted with this birth, her perception is that she needs to do something quickly. She needs to solve this problem. So that's the desperation phase.

So there's a certain amount of desperation. When you have a pregnancy that's concealed and not wanted, that usually is accompanied by a certain amount of desperation. So you have this perceived necessity. The other side of that, and I'm, these are my, this is kind of my two cents. I'm adding to this a little bit, but I think the other side of that is that there's also a lack of resilience. that the person that's giving birth really doesn't see a lot of other options, right? They're not resilient enough and open-minded enough and flexible enough to solve this problem

in a way that somebody else might. So I think there's kind of this lack, there's this cognitive rigidity and lack of resilience that, you know, somebody might say, well, I may not want this child, but in many states you can, if you don't want a child, you can put the child at the steps of a church or fire station, right? There's different places. It depends on the state, but there's different places

where you can give up a child in a way that's safe and humane, right? Like you don't have to resort to murder. And so either Lakin, Snelling doesn't quite understand that or she's not aware of that or she's simply so caught up

in how to, again, that she's so caught up in this desperation phase, and I think that's a great way to describe it. There's such desperation that she can't see her options. Right. She doesn't have the cognitive flexibility to solve this problem. She sees her only option as being murder, unfortunately. So that's one of their themes.

The next theme they found to be true in almost all these cases of neonaticide is what they call disturbance. So this would go, hand in hand with the idea of not being ready to be a mother in the sense that the caregiving role or the role of the mother is they say it's disturbed. So in other words, it's often denied in the sense that the person that's going to murder that baby is really unable to adapt to the parenting role.

And so there's, in many cases, not only are the pregnancies unwanted and concealed, but there's a lot of denial around it. There's a total lack of recognition of the pregnancy. Even though they might know they're pregnant at some level, they'll mistake some of the signs of pregnancy for other illnesses. So just denial. Just denial, right.

Just outright denial. Right. Just outright denial of the pregnancy. They're not even admitting it themselves. This is concealing it from themselves, even. Just there's, it's not happening. Right, exactly. And so you have, you have, not only do you have this issue of not,

you're not ready to be a mother, but there's a complete denial that you're pregnant. In some cases, in some cases, it might not be total denial, but in many cases, some of these women don't even know they're going to give birth. Some of these women, and again, and this would speak, by the way, to the idea of reproductive awareness, right? Like, some of these women, I think, some of this would be education, right? in the sense that some of these women don't even know what pregnancy looks like.

Some younger mothers, they don't know what it looks like. They don't know the signs and symptoms of pregnancy. They don't know what it feels like. Yeah. In some cases, I don't even think they understand fully, like the reproductive process, right? So some of this can be just an absolute lack of reproductive education. And so part of it is, part of its denial, but part of it could be just not knowing. Yeah.

Not knowing and thinking that the signs and symptoms of pregnancy are something else. They're ill or they're sick. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, they're water breaks and there's a baby on the floor and they're just shocked, right? They don't know what that is. So you have this disturbance stage. So the disturbance is that their normal role, in this case, with Lakin Snelly and the normal role of being a student and kind of living this,

let's say, carefree lifestyle and having this popularity, that's disturbed. And there's generally speaking this inability to adapt to the new role that would be required, which would be the role of the mother. And then the other disturbance, obviously, is this total denial of pregnancy or at least some denial of pregnancy. And the disturbances, you give birth

and you don't understand why or how to happen, and now you have to do something about it or you feel like you have to do something about it because you're just not prepared for what happened. The final phase, which I think is consistent with a lot of crimes we talk about, is what they call, or the final theme is what they call the rejection phase or the rejection theme, which is that there's even before, even if they're aware of the pregnancy, and it's, you know,

again, it's probably unwanted, but there's an awareness of it, not total denial. There's already before the murder, before the child is born, there's already rejection going on. In other words, there's maternal rejection of the infant. Yeah. And the way that that kind of meshes with a lot of crimes we talk about is if you're rejecting a baby before it's born, you know, you're dehumanizing that child, right? Like it's this is maternal rejection before a baby's born, even if your pregnancy isn't wanted, maternal rejection is essentially a complete lack of empathy, right?

It's dehumanizing that child. It's seen that child as an object. And that's important for a lot of reasons, but I think one of the most important reasons is that if you're rejecting the child before it's born and you have no empathy and you dehumanize this baby, then you're going to have even when that, so when the baby's born, a lot of times the first instinct of the mind, is going to be to grab the infant, right, and the baby and press it close against you, right, skin to skin contact, to protect it, right, to protect it, to love it, right? That's your instinct. But if you've rejected that baby before it's born, then you're really preventing any possible attachment or bond to the baby.

and if you're not, if you, if before, again, if, if your, if your mind, if your mental map is set up before the birth to reject the baby and not, and objectify the baby, then you're going to have no desire to bond with that child. When the child starts crying and, you know, gasping for breath and air, like the normal reaction is to hold the baby, protect it. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. And so that's where, I think that's where this thing, that's where neonaticide, this is the, at the end there, this is where it really starts to become possible to murder a baby is because you've already decided. You've already rejected this baby and you've already decided that whatever the baby needs at birth, you're going to reject it and you're not going to bond with that baby. Okay.

And if you're not willing to bond with that baby, you're also, given all these other factors, you don't want to be a mother, you don't want your life disrupted, there's a certain amount of desperation about how the problem, meaning that you're, you're close-minded about how to solve it. You're not going to give the baby up for adoption, right? You're not going to place the baby at a fire station, all of that. And now, finally, you're not, you have no desire to bond with that baby. now I think you're getting closer to the possibility of murder. Yeah.

That makes sense. Awful sense. But we always talk about how all crime sort of starts with dehumanization. Yeah. And the rejection of this baby starts well before birth. Exactly. A denial, a rejection, which is also a dehumanization. You know, we always say all crime is dehumanizing.

Every crime. It starts with humanizing someone or something. There's some criminologists that argue that at least every violent crime or every significant crime. But even some white collar crimes where you're stealing other people's money, like Bernie Madoff. Even that involves dehumanization. Absolutely. You're leaving a group of elderly adults destitute who gave you millions of dollars. You just ruined their lives.

That's dehumanizing too. And so almost every crime, I don't want to say every because there's probably, there's always exceptions, but almost every crime involves some level of dehumanization. And yeah, here you see that with neonaticide, that there's really this objectification of the baby and no desire. So you would think, like most of us would think that when the baby's born and they're crying and they're needy and they're desperate and they're gasping for air, you would think that like instinctively you want to help that. Instinctively, right? From an evolution standpoint.

At that moment, it would kick in. Kick in. You're like, oh, well, you know, I was going to murder the child. Now I'm going to love on it and nurture it. And I want this child after all. Nope, the reason they don't. The reason murder occurs is because they've already decided. Mothers that engage in new and they decide have already decided that they're not going to bond with that child.

They feel desperation. they don't want to be mothers, so they're much more likely to take that final step and murder the baby. Okay. Yeah. Well, you've answered a lot of my questions as to why this happens again and again and again. But I saw you turn on a page there. You're not done. I'm not done. I'm going to jump into let's let's jump into some, I think, a little more speculative hypotheses that really kind of caught my attention. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm here for that. Bring it. Let's do this. Some of these may have may have direct relation to Lake and Snelling, by the way. You would mention in one of your shows that, and I'm glad you urge caution around this, but some of her friends said things about her, like she's a bully.

She's obsessed with her appearance and her image. She's obsessed with being popular. She's competitive, and she's a perfectionist. So, you know, I mean, the problem I have with friends saying that stuff is it's only one side of the coin. Absolutely. And they could be saying it out of jealousy or just perception or whatever the case, which is why I cautioned the one side of the story. And we're not hearing them. We're not hearing them describe some of her positive attributes. Like people would say that she was very upbeat, you know, she was very.

optimistic. She was very supportive, right? We're not hearing any of that. Extraordinarily talented, clearly, and driven. Yeah. Yeah, I think there was a bit of dehumanization in their comments about Lakin, and I didn't want her to be one-dimensional, hence my caution of just this one-dimensional. Right. Right. Exactly. But let's, let's assume that some of those qualities might have, you know, I think there's some overlap. Perfectionism would probably want that I would suggest. is closely tied to shame, right? And shame definitely could be one of the underlying emotions here that's driving, potentially driving some of this behavior.

Right. Shame and fear, you know, fear of having a child and disrupting her life and shame around having unwanted pregnancy that, you know, as we mentioned earlier, the stigma of that could be very shameful to her. But this is from an article entitled, Denial of Reproductive Potential, a predictor of unperceived pregnancy in an Austrian neonaticide sample.

So this is looking specifically at neonaticide in Austria of all things. The data was obtained between 1995 and 217, so it's a decent sample. I also, by the way, so I like the term unperceived in the sense that unperceived, so unwanted would be different than unperceived in the sense that unperceived is that denial we talked about, that they don't even know they're pregnant necessarily.

They don't even perceive that they write the symptoms of pregnancy are confused for symptoms of illness or some other health issue. And as we said earlier, that might speak to issues around reproductive awareness or education, contraception, right, all of that. But they talk about some of the research on that. I just want to read some of the more interesting studies that haven't really necessarily been replicated. So I would caution people not to necessarily see these as conform. but is more speculative.

But there was one study that, quote, found that inadequate conflict resolution skills, conflict avoidance tendencies, and high harmony-seeking traits and low self-esteem were all contributing factors to neonaticide.

So that's interesting, right, in the sense that if you struggle to put that, to summarize that, if a young mother, who's pregnant or a young woman who's pregnant struggles with essentially with assertiveness. They don't like conflict. They seek harmony.

So in other words, they're kind of people pleasing and they have low self-esteem. They're more likely to engage in need on naticide, which I think is fascinating in the sense that it makes sense, right? Because if they're pregnant and they're worried about the stigma of that pregnancy. Absolutely. And they want to avoid conflict with their parents or their friends, right? Like they're much more likely to conceal it. Absolutely. Shame.

Shame. Right. Shame. That if there's a lot of shame around the pregnancy and there's this inability to be assertive. So part of this, too, is that one of the risk factors for neonaticide is the lack of social and emotional support. But what this study indicates is that the, the females that are doing this, they're not seeking that support either because their conflict avoidant. So in other words, they lack the capacity probably to go to their parents or friends and say,

I'm pregnant, you know, I need help. I need your support, right? They don't want to do that because they just want to get along. They're, they're quote, high harmony seeking, they have high harmony seeking traits and low self-esteem. So they don't want the conflict. They don't want the pushback from parents and friends. They just want to get along. They're probably more people pleasers. And so bringing up an unwanted pregnancy in Kentucky

and or Tennessee where the family lives, you know, that I don't know for sure, but that might be an unpopular thing to do, especially when she's in college and she's right, she's she needs to finish school. she's planning her life. It's probably a situation that may not be, again, I don't know. My guess is that her family might be more supportive than she thinks.

Sure. But I think her fear of the stigma and her fear of disrupting kind of this high harmony that she wants in her family or her in a life is probably greater than the reality. but still, she doesn't seem, and again, I'm not talking about Lakin here specifically, just women in general, they don't seem to want to create that conflict that an unwanted pregnancy would provoke. Yeah, and in this state, abortion is now illegal, not, which I think puts more of a stigma, family, this is a family value state. At least that's what the politicians share.

preach and want that every baby should be wanted, right? And every baby should be. I agree with that. Every baby should be. But the truth is, what you're saying is not every baby is. And so you have this conflict right there with every baby matters. Abortion's illegal. That's got to create more shame. If she feels the opposite and she wants to be a mother one day and yet she's not feeling that towards this baby and this pregnancy, that would create such conflict and even more shame. Well, and also the expectation that you, presumably, if she does have the baby and presuming she knows who the father is, I don't know, you know, it seems like she'd be an unwed mother. She might be a single mother. She wouldn't have the support of necessarily.

And again, I don't know. I'm just, speculating here, but, but. If the relationship, if the relationship isn't ideal to a family unit. Right. All of those could be, could create shame. All of those could be a stigma in this particular case. So hypothetically, right. So, so that's interesting.

It gets better, though. These are some really fascinating, these are some really fascinating takes on neonaticide. There's the next one. this this this this this blew me away but here it is um this is from a couple of studies um clire et al 2019 bonnet 1993 quote a history of trauma abuse and neglect in childhood our current life is reported by up to 48 percent of neonaticide perpetrators so in other words and we how often do we see this right the trauma, the relationship between past trauma and some type of criminality. And let me clarify, because we get pushback on that every time.

I'm not saying that if there's a history of trauma or abuse in the past, that you're going to do something violent or you're going to engage in criminal behavior, that's not my argument. What I'm saying is that when there is some type of criminality, oftentimes that person has had, potentially has had some trauma or abuse in the past. So it doesn't mean that trauma or abuse leads to criminal behavior. In fact, there's a much higher percentage chance when you've been abused in some way of not becoming a criminal. In fact, it's roughly, there's a 75 to 85% chance of no criminality, even though there's been,

some history of trauma or abuse. So the odds of of engaging in some type of criminal behavior or abusive behavior, even though there's been trauma or abuse, are still low. But they happen to be,

they happen to be higher than the group of people that were never abused or traumatized. I think that's the important point. So 48% 48% experienced some type of trauma abuse or neglect in childhood, which is a really high number, by the way.

So what's fascinating about that to me is I think that ties in with this idea of denial, that I think women who have unperceived pregnancies, who not just unwanted but unperceived because they don't know they're pregnant necessarily, they may not want to think they're pregnant because of their own abuse, especially if that abuse was sexual. And so I think that's a really fascinating statistic because I think that potential history, and again, I don't, I have no idea if this applies to Lake and Snelling. It seems to me like her family is pretty solid, but again, I don't know. We don't know.

We don't know. The odds are, the odds actually are 52% that she wasn't, she wasn't traumatized or abused, 48% that she may have been, but who knows. So I'm just saying, if we're talking about neonese, native site in general, then you have to think about the possibility that there's been some trauma, abuse, or neglect in the past. And that makes perfect sense to me because that means there's probably going to be more engagement with defense mechanisms. There's probably going to be more denial around the pregnancy. There's probably going to be less desire or resiliency to solve the problem in a normal

way, right? All of those elements that, all of those things you'd expect from trauma, abuse, and neglect could potentially play into this in the sense everything we talked about, right? There's going to be more anxiety around this. So that issue of desperation, again, that he talked about. So that's an interesting element of neonaticide. And then the final, this is the grand finale here. Hopefully people have waited for this moment,

Because here it is. This is, here's the big reveal. I'm here and that's all that matters and you're here too. Yeah, that's true. To our listeners. Here's the big reveal. This is cited in the paper I just mentioned, but it's a study by Barnes from 2022. It's in the archives of women's mental health, volume 25, 2022.

The title of the article is towards a new understanding of pregnancy denial, the misunderstood dissociative disorder. I'm going to quote, not from the Barnes article, but from the article that cites Barnes. And here we go. I hope you're sitting down. Quote, there's increasing evidence for the role of trauma and the psychopathology behind neonaticide, which was precipitated by an unperceived pregnancy. So let me just pause there. So we know from some previous studies that there may be some history of trauma.

so we know that. But what Barnes is now arguing is that trauma is going to be a part. It's going to be part and parcel in the neonaticide itself. Right. Yes. So I'm going to go on. The course of an unperceived pregnancy can be interpreted as a dissociative disorder and a fearful, life-defining traumatic experience. likely to be followed by a traumatic birth,

potentially leading to detrimental outcomes for the newborn and their mothers, a traumatic experience that does not necessarily end when the baby has been born. Yeah. So I think what's fascinating about this analysis of neonaticide is that you not only have this dissociative component, but you have this trauma that goes hand in hand with the dissociation. So oftentimes that's true, by the way. But I think this is important in the sense that it's not hard to imagine that women who, especially if the pregnancy is unperceived in the sense that they don't even know it's coming, right?

They don't even know the baby's coming. But even when it's not, even when it's unwanted and there's a lot of denial, My guess is that it's still hard for these women to grasp fully what is occurring in that moment. Yeah. Even if they've rejected the baby prior to birth, even if they have no empathy, right? Like they're still dealing with a live, beautiful, crying baby in their presence that needs attention. They still, like, they still have to deal with that reality. And so it makes sense to me that disassociation, disassociation would be, could be a big part of that process.

I think to murder a baby in any circumstance, I think, probably requires some level of distance, some level of dissociation from that act. And so the way that potentially happens, at least according to this interpretation or this analysis, is not only do you have disassociation, association, but you have this trauma that goes hand in hand with it. And that trauma, by the way, that trauma doesn't just, as they point out, the trauma doesn't just end. Right. So that trauma will be there forever. Right. And I'm not, again, I'm not excusing the neonate. I'm not excuse me, murdering a baby. No.

No, you're not. But, but I am, what I am suggesting is that that experience, that, I don't, that that experience is,

is going to be probably, even with maternal rejection, is going to be difficult for any mother or any female to engage in, to murder their baby without some of these mechanisms. these psychological mechanisms, denial, dissociation in place?

Yeah, there were a few things that she did after that were very confusing to people, and it would go along with this idea of disassociation, I think. She stated that she laid and held the baby for comfort for a little bit after. That was actually heartbreaking to me to read. After the baby was deceased? Yes, that she woke up. And then held the baby for comfort. And then placed the baby in the trash bag in the closet,

then drove someplace because she had a class, but then didn't go in and then ordered McDonald's and ate in the car. Like just some really, I think, behaviors that to me was show some disassociation and conflict and torment after this happened. Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting analysis. And, you know, it's, it's, it's not inconceivable that the dissociation and the trauma occur together. Because that moment, I think for a lot of women that engage in neonaticide, has to be so traumatic, no matter what. No matter the level of denial.

No matter the level of maternal rejection, right, no matter whether they're ready to be a mother, I think the reality of confronting a live, crying, needy baby in front of you, and then somehow murdering it has got to be extraordinarily emotional and difficult. I actually, I found the exact wording. This is from the affidavit. Quote, Snelling said she later passed out falling on top of the baby. And when she woke up, the baby turned blue and purple. At that time, the affidavit says Snelling believed the baby was dead,

wrapped him up and lay next to him on the floor, something she said gave her comfort. in the moment, end quote. And so if, if I'm thinking about a defense here, certainly I think this idea of dissociation can be important in the sense that perhaps she could argue or say, I don't know it, it would be difficult to prove, but she could argue that the moment was so traumatic, especially if this is unperceived, if she didn't know about that she was about to give birth, if she didn't know about the pregnancy,

I mean, it seems like she probably did, but if she didn't. If the denial was with herself. If she's in tremendous denial, then, and I don't know, maybe there's some history of trauma in her past. Who knows, right? Like,

all of that would play into this, but it's not hard to imagine that in that moment, with overwhelming emotion and trauma and beer, right, and shame that she does. Maybe she faints. Maybe she collapses. Maybe she falls.

Maybe, maybe, and again, I'm not, again, I'm not excusing any of this. But it wouldn't be hard to imagine that she could dissociate in that moment and fall. Now, I don't know if she can fall and actually kill the child. I don't know, right? Like all of that would be questions for, based on evidence we don't know. That would be questions for like the prosecutors. But based on that explanation,

and again, the contradiction to that is what we talked about earlier, which is that one of the leading means or methods of neonaticide is intentional falls. Right. So what is it, right? Could it be all of the above? I don't know. But I think that description, opens the door to some potential

dissociative explanation. And if I were her defense team, that's something I would probably definitely think about. I don't know, I'm not sure what they're thinking at this point. But just the trauma and the fall, right, all that might be consistent with that type of that type of dissociative explanation. And what do you think of that part, though,

where she believed the baby was dead, wrapped him up, and lay next to him on the floor, something she said that gave her comfort in the moment. I think that also could speak to that. To lay next to a deceased baby for comfort, like there's almost something surreal about that. And the sense that she's imagining or fantasizing somehow that that baby's alive. The baby clearly isn't crying. the baby's not doing what babies do. So like, is she fantasizing that the-

But it's also, but it's also something that mothers do when they have a stillborn. It's something that mothers do when they lose their infant, that they want to sit there and hold that baby in their arms. To me, it feels like there's a bit of maternal instinct kicking in almost. I don't know. I mean, okay. I mean, maybe it feels to me, I don't know, it feels to me like there's this total, that there's this immersion in fantasy that somehow the baby isn't dead and somehow everything's okay.

I mean, she knows it's not, but like, I don't know. That's an interesting theory too, that she, it's giving her comfort in that moment. Hey, I'm open to what you're saying too there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, you know, I mean, again, a lot of the details here are not known, but even without the details, like, in many ways, I think that the show today is more about neonatocite in general and kind of the research around it and the patterns we see rather than necessarily Lakin Snelling. She's, I think, an example of it, but, but I mean, this isn't really. meant to be a deep dive into her particular case because

we have limited information. So, you know, to clue that as well, after that moment that I suggest was maternal in nature holding her baby, she also then placed her baby in a trash bag and put the baby in a closet. So it's complicated. But yeah, and this is a case more about how it happens. And I also appreciate that you shared some red flags if we see someone we care about that looks to be hiding a pregnancy or in denial of a pregnancy. Say something.

Share about places to perhaps be able to leave your baby without question in a safe spot. You know, it's so sad. Little baby boy deserved chance. And as you point out, his mother's life is forever changed as well because of this act. Even someone who has an unwanted pregnancy, right? Like to maybe try to talk to that person about, I mean, I'm not sure what they would disclose, but to talk to that person about their emotions or, or, thoughts about the pregnancy and to kind of avoid getting to that place where there's a lack of empathy

for the child, right, to kind of humanize that baby. If it appears that the, if it appears that the person with the pregnancy really doesn't want the child or seems, you know, quite pessimistic about life with that child, then it seems, it seems to me some discussion about, you know, trying to humanize that child or discuss options or adoption or other options might be, might be a good intervention. I also want to suggest, too, if you ever are in a place of this conversation, to not dehumanize the mother with an unwanted pregnancy. Because as you point out, if this is a shame-based crime or shame-based motive to not have

empathy for the mother in this situation where she is pregnant in denial, not wanting this baby, that's not going to help either. So to also show the mother with an unwanted pregnancy, empathy as well to be able to help and, you know, get them to share their emotions about it and whatever's happening. But not to shame. I mean, we obviously, we can go deeper than that. Shame with conflict avoidance, with potential trauma and abuse in childhood, right? All of that is going to make it much more difficult, potentially, for a mother who's

even contemplating neonaticide to really be open about it or to talk about it. And so I think just trying to make some connection with someone that has an unwanted pregnancy potentially could make a difference. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. You're welcome. And your knowledge and your brain and also your new haircut. My new haircut, presumably my new haircut sits on top of my brain, sits on top of my scalp, which sits on top of my brain. It's a wonderful compliment to your brain. Thank you.

You're welcome. All right. Thank you so much. You're picking up our son or am I? What's the plan? I'm picking them up. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for being with us tonight to our gents. We appreciate it. And let us know what else you would like us cover in the comments. There is so much happening right now and we have been receiving many requests, but let us know your thoughts and comments about this episode and what other crimes that I have been covering that you would like Dr. John to cover. We have been discussing those for in-depth hidden analysis. And thank you to those that subscribe, that like this episode, if it is a value to you

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