Hidden True Crime - Mackenzie Shirilla Unmasked | The DARK Psychology Behind Netflix’s ‘The Crash’

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Dr. John, a forensic psychologist, reacts to The Crash and breaks down the disturbing psychology behind Mackenzie Shirilla — the Ohio teen convicted after driving her car into a wall at 100 mph, killing her boyfriend and another friend. While Netflix explores the case itself, this episode goes deeper into the relationship dynamics, emotional possession, attachment, control, and psychological warning signs that may help explain why this tragedy happened. Was this obsession, rage, desperation, coercive attachment… or something even more complex? Dr. John analyzes the hidden behavioral patterns, emotional mindset, and forensic psychology behind one of the most shocking cases now reignited by Netflix’s The Crash. Sponsors: Goodr- Head to https://goodr.com/HIDDEN to claim $10 off your first order. OneSkin- Get 15% off OneSkin with the code HIDDEN at https://www.oneskin.co/hidden #oneskinpod 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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You're trying to change them into some image or version of yourself oftentimes. Hello, Hidden Gems. We are back at the table and we're going to try not to laugh because we actually, we good? You good? We were just giggling over something. And we're good. Yep.

We're good. I'm all laughed out. Did you say that? No more SpongeBob today. We look like we met. We look like we're going to like a golf tournament or something. Neither of us golf. But, I mean, that was my first thought.

I don't know. But we do not plan our outfits, whether people believe that or not. We don't. We are talking today about, the crash, a huge on Netflix, in the top 10 on Netflix. Wow. I just finished watching it today. It was Grayson who told us that we had to watch it. And this is like real-time reaction. I had heard about McKenzie's case. McKenzie Shrilla, who was convicted of murder for crashing a car that had her boyfriend Dominic and Davian, friend Damien in the car, killing them both. She survived. And how this

crash ultimately ended up being shown to be on purpose. And she was convicted of murder. It was interesting because I had heard of this case, but I hadn't really delved into it, wondering actually how you could prove something like that when you have the witnesses both dead. So, woe, for those of you that have watched it already, I'm sure you're saying that too or for those that have followed it. We've got we've got questions. I've got I've got questions. I by the way I didn't I knew nothing about this case until I saw this documentary. So I don't know why I haven't heard about it, but I guess I just wasn't paying attention, but I were not TikTok.

Yeah, I wasn't on TikTok. So I didn't know this case. So this is the first time I learned about it. So what'd you think? I have thoughts for sure. Yeah, so why? I think I want to start, as I usually do. I want to start with a lead that I believe will help us understand, or at least something that will be important to unpack to understand this case. So I presume people watching this,

have seen the documentary. So I guess there might be spoiler alerts, right? Yeah, spoiler alerts. If you haven't, go watch the documentary on Netflix if you want to first. If not, hang out with us. We are just as cool as Netflix. So you'll learn what happened here. I think it was well done.

Yeah, their editing and writing was incredible. Well done. So the second half of the documentary has an interview with McKenzie. Yeah. And I'm going to read one statement she made. You know, I always say or I often say that when I do interviews with criminals, a lot of times there's there's statements that are made, statements criminals made that really kind of put the whole picture together. They kind of tells, but they say a lot about the person. And oftentimes, not always, a lot of times it's a lot of evidence, right?

it's a lot of pieces of information, but sometimes there's certain statements that are made that are unbeknownst to the criminal that are incredibly revealing. And this is one of those statements. So I think if we want to understand McKenzie, they just call her Kenzie through most of this show, by the way. So this is a statement we need to really understand and unpack.

And here it is. I'm going to read it. Quote, I wanted to heal him and he wanted to heal me. Yeah. Unquote. I noted that. I heard that too.

I thought that was interesting. Right. So what does she mean by that? Right. There's so much in that statement that's going to really help us understand this case and the situation that we're going to, I think, will slowly unpack. that statement and understand it and we'll kind of build some momentum to understand, I think, why this happened.

So the other thing in this documentary is Davian's father, Scott. Yeah. Scott Flanagan. He says near the end, he says something very interesting. He says he would give anything just to know, he wants to know the truth. And he would give anything to hear the truth from McKenzie because supposedly she blacked out, right? she lost her memory during this incident. And he said that he could forgive.

Yeah. But he just wants the truth. He wants the truth. He says he wants the truth so he can have closure. He just wants to know what happened. Right. And I think we're going to. So that's going to be another goal today.

I think we're and I want to let me give a disclaimer here. I haven't interviewed McKenzie. I haven't talked to her. They didn't talk about her childhood. We saw her parents on this documentary. I'm going to be speculating about a lot of things. I'm not going to be diagnosing. I'm not even going to come close to diagnosing,

but I'm going to make some assumptions that criminal psychologists make about upbringing and attachment and those types of things, as I usually do. Scott Flanagan tells us that he wants to know the why. And it's so important to him because he feels like he can't get closure until he knows the why. And the problem with discerning the why in this case

is that you have the perpetrator, the convicted murderer, who claims to have blacked out during the murders. So it's hard to know what the why is because the perpetrator is not going to tell us or she's not going to tell us at least what she was thinking about prior to or during the actual crime. Yeah.

Scott, however, Scott starts filling in this puzzle a little bit. He says at one point, when he's talking about the accident and McKenzie, he says that, quote, she was volatile and angry and desperate, right? That's interesting. That's that's a piece of this pedal that's going to be important. Desperate is an interesting word. Right. Desperate.

So I think that's how I want to start, is I want to start thinking about what is this, this idea of wanting to heal him and he wanted to heal her is really loaded. Yeah, it is. Well, it implies they're both broken, right? Well, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you're jumping ahead here, but, yeah, so let's start. Let's think about it. right you're you're beginning from a place of deficit right you're beginning from a healing means you're trying to heal something healing means that there's something inadequate about the

person or there's there's deficits about the person that you're trying to change right so actually maybe the best way to think about you're trying to give that person something so that they're different right and i i think if you if you have a relationship where you begin with the premise that there's something that needs to heal or change, you're already on shaky ground. You're already in a position where you're already, to use Scott's term, you're already in a position where there's going to be volatility because you're going to have this dance back and forth of, I need to heal you, no, you need to heal me, right? She claims that he wants to heal her too.

That's somewhat disputable, I think, but that's what her claim is. I mean, it's possible. Maybe he does. But I think behind, one interesting way to think about this statement is if you change the word heal, if we swap the word heal and put in the word change, right, then now we're really approaching something more important. I think the word heal here actually means change. I want to change him and he wants to change me. But I think it's more, I mean, there's,

There could be this element with Dominic, but I think she feels, I think for her it's more perception. She feels like he wants to change her. Yeah. And if he does want to change her, I mean, we don't have a clear picture of this.

I'm sure that there's moments when he's controlling, right? I'm sure there's moments when he's frustrated with her, but we don't see it in this documentary. We see him actually being, she's attacking him, she's asking to come into the house, she's raising her voice, she's yelling at him, she's demanding,

she's calling him a little bitch, right? She's doing this repeatedly. And he's calm. He's just like, no, I'm not going to let you in. I'm not going to deal with this, right? He maintains his composure. So we don't have a big sample of these types of fights, so maybe there's times when he loses his composure,

that seems reasonable. But based on what we know and what we've seen, it does appear. at least in that particular instance, it does appear that he's much more composed. He doesn't seem as invested in changing her as she seems invested in changing him or healing. Let's use the term healing.

Right, from what we saw in the documentary and it seems to be the case, yeah. So in that sense, there's very much, there's very much a sense here, I think, in which it's not just change, it's also control. Right. If you want to change someone, you're trying to not only control them, but you're trying to change them into something that you perceive to be important to you. In other words, it becomes a projection.

You're trying to change them into some image or version of yourself oftentimes. Yes. Well, she would say that. She would say he was a terrible communicator. So I'd get angry at him. Right. Because he had this deficit. And it made me angry.

Right. She was explaining, yeah, just to clarify that point, she was explaining that when they would argue, they would argue because, quote, he didn't have good communication skills. That's what she said. Right. So something that she sees as a deficit in him that she needs to change. She's blaming him. Blaming him. Right. She's blaming him for their fights, essentially. So that was another moment. That was another interesting moment, I think, when, right. Where she's saying that, exactly. She's saying he's the one who needs to change. I don't. Even though he thinks I do, I probably don't.

because clearly he's the one who's deficient in communication and i'm not so in some ways so this this starts moving us i think towards some of the really important elements of this situation um this idea of healing this idea of changing someone this idea of in some ways making him her creation making him like almost you know if i think of that this is her he He's her project, right? She wants to transform him into somebody who's compliant, somebody who's obedient, somebody who kind of, right, there's definitely this control element. And so I think that that kind of brings me to, if we're going to look at this psychologically,

and we can talk about specific issues as we go, but this idea of possession, right, or even what's call it possessive attack. attachment, that this idea of changing someone is very closely aligned with this idea of possessing someone. That she sees, if you see someone as an extension of yourself, which is often can be a function of narcissistic qualities, that you don't see that person as separate. You don't see that person as independent. You see them as an extension of yourself. And therefore, because they're an extension of yourself and they're connected to yourself image. You want to control them. You want to possess them so they don't do something that could embarrass you or they don't do something like reject you,

right? That could cause a lot of issues. They could cause a lot of abandon you. They could pray. It wouldn't be abandoning, but that's how it would be perceived. Well, and that's the other part. So possession often goes with abandonment. I am absolutely one of those people who always has sunglasses on if I am outside and always have them on hand. In the car, in my running stuff, in my purse, and as an official soccer mom, because once you find a pair that actually stays put, it changes everything. We're teaming up with Gooder, makers of active eyewear for anyone. And I have genuinely been loving these for running because they do not slip or bounce around while I'm moving. I love how light they are in my purse too. I even wore them all weekend at my son's soccer tournament out in the

desert heat and they were perfect, lightweight, comfortable, polarized, and I wasn't constantly adjusting them every five seconds. Honestly, they just look good too. There are so many fun styles and colors, but they still feel really functional for everyday life. Ready to upgrade your eyewear to something functional, fashionable, fun, and affordable. Head to gooder.com slash hidden, G-O-O-D-R dot-com slash hidden to claim $10 off your first order. That's Go-O-O-D-R dot com slash hidden. So you've got, I think you have this possessiveness going on here and you have this fear of abandonment. And this is important, by the way, this becomes super important in this documentary because

we learn that in the last couple of months in particular, so the accident happens at the end of July, that Dom is talking about leaving her. And he's talking about this repeatedly. So this idea of abandonment comes into the foreground because we know that Dominic is at the very least, he's communicating with people about finally leaving, which indicates, by the way,

that he's thought about this before, or he's attempted it before. But she keeps pulling them back in. So one of the things I think that that seems possible here is this idea of, you know, there's, there's in domestic violence cases, we often hear about the perpetrator or the abuser saying, well, if I can't have her, then no one else will or can't. Right. So that's obviously possession too. So it becomes, it becomes, we've talked about this a lot in domestic violence cases. we've talked about the importance of dependency,

how human beings are naturally dependent because that's as infants, that's how we need our caretakers to survive. Dependency is one of the fundamental issues of being human. And so this idea of abandonment and rejection are in some ways instinctual. They're hardwired into us as human beings for our very survival.

And so you get the sense that this idea of if I can't have him, then nobody else will, you have the sense that that's in play. So it's interesting because a lot of times in domestic violence cases, there's this distinction between people often think, well, and I say mail, I'm describing this in terms of males typically because that's more common. I think that's another interesting component. One thing that makes this case unusual is the fact that it's a female who's more possessive or seems to be more possessive. That's not to say that Dom isn't possessive at times.

I don't really know that. And this can happen, right? But the woman being the possessive one. The female being the possessor, right? It's a little bit atypical in terms of domestic violence, especially in domestic violence, homicide cases. They're almost all males. most of their adult males, but even in... It comes a homicide.

Right. Even in... And this is a homicide. So one way to think about this, this is a... You could argue that this is a domestic violence case, but the car is the weapon, not a gun. Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm just pointing out that there are women that abuse men often, but it's not...

It's the statistics. I'm trying to point out. Homicide, you're referring to... Can you share some of those statistics that when a woman abuses, it's a little bit different than what a man abuses. So you're saying that this is unusual with the dynamics. Right. Usually males account for 90 plus percent of domestic homicide cases. Right. So there are female cases. They're just not, they're just much smaller. And so here, I think that that role reversal makes this interesting too. Yeah. Because you have this,

this young girl who, by all accounts, is, doesn't seem like someone. who necessarily would engage in a violent act, although we see TikToks and we see different elements of her that suggest aggression, suggests bullying, we see some of that. She's a bully, yeah. But I think some people think in domestic homicide cases, with adults in particular, I think there's this perception that the men, that involves hate, right, that the men hate their partners.

They're doing it because they hate them. But that's not the case. What's more common is for the perpetrator to say something like, they don't say this, but this is what's driving it. It's more about dependency. To say, I can't tolerate the, it's about possession. They'll say something like, I can't tolerate the fact that you're separate from me. If you're leaving me and you're separate, I can't cope with that.

So I'm going to kill you. It's sort of the idea of. If I can't have you, no one can. But it's like a literal feeling. It's possession. It's deep. It's possession. It's real, that feeling. Right.

And so this idea of someone leaving becomes existential. Not only is it a type of narcissistic injury because the person often sees that person as being a part of themselves. And she'd been with them since she was a freshman too, pointed that out throughout her growing up. So that might feel very much like her identity. Right, exactly. Not only is there, not only is there this potential for an narcissistic injury from the rejection, but there's potentially there's humiliation. And maybe even at a deeper existential level, which we talk about a lot too, is this idea of annihilation. Well, even her parents, oh, this is who she was going to marry. Everybody assumed in her life that she was going to marry Dom.

She was living with Dom at 17 years old. So it would be some sort of humiliation, too. right. Everybody in her life assumes this will last forever while he's actually attempting to end it or move on. So a narcissistic injury. And narcissistic injury and but but even deeper. And by the way, social media amplifies all that. Yeah. Because you're you're you're creating this image on social media. You're carrying and curating this image about your relationship with Dom. And that that becomes a part of this too in the sense that it's her. It's her online persona. It's her online persona and it's about status and identity and social meaning,

right? All of that comes into play. She's unwrapping the gifts, the Louis Vuitton he's giving her on TikTok, right? You're right. This whole thing is about her boyfriend spoiling her. He loves her. So you're right. It would be. Right. If your romantic identity is basically socially staged on social media, then it becomes more humiliating when there's abandonment or there's rejection. And it seems here. So it amplified it, the social media. Right. It amplifies it because it becomes a public.

It takes the relationship to the level of being on stage for the public to see. Yeah. And so it makes it even worse, right? And I think it becomes even more problematic when you have someone like McKenzieley potentially who's young, she gets in this relationship when she's very young who maybe is like most adolescents she's trying to figure out who she is right she's confused

she wants to be a model maybe she wants to be an influencer right she want like I don't think she right I don't think she knows and this is part of adolescence I think that's that's another part of this case is you have young love and you have

adolescence right you have the adolescent brain which is you know of itself immature, right? You've got all these elements kind of coming into play here. And you're right, she doesn't. Again, at 17 years old, she's moving in with him. She has no direction that I can see minus TikTok, which isn't much, you know. Right.

So you have. But he would be a part of that world. Yeah. This possessiveness and this fear of abandonment are important because she obviously wants to prevent this breakup. from occurring or seems to want to prevent it. And to that extent, if her identity is completely wrapped up in this relationship and he's threatening to leave, then she's losing her identity, right?

Her identity is collapsing. So in that sense, it becomes existential because Dom, in many ways, is not only a part of her life in every way in terms of like social status, social groups, his identity is closely align with hers. But there's also an element, and you see this, there's also an element of emotional regulation. I think he helps. She's screaming at him to open the door and he's like, calm down, right? Like he's also helping her regulate emotionally. Yeah. Right. And she's going to lose that. She's going to lose potentially this calming influence, this person who I think is, right, is kind of a a firewall in some sense and kind of helps her

find, right, so I find some element of peace, find some element of belonging, find some element of calm. And so you have, you have these elements coming together to create this potential catastrophe, right? And young love. Yeah. Young love. Adolescence, right?

Identity issues. Social media. You've got like this perfect storm aligning, this. this young girl that's confused that's trying to figure out who she is, like most adolescents, who, as to quote Scott Flanagan, who's volatile and angry and desperate, right? You've got all of those elements here. So in that sense, you know, there's also, if we take it a step further, there's also this idea of what I would call all-consuming love.

So this is this idea of among adolescents, right, that this is maybe your first significant relationship. Absolutely. Since she was a freshman in high school, that's 14 years old. She doesn't know what it's like to be in another relationship. She doesn't know what it's like to, there's an intensity in this relationship too. She's, right, they're always fighting. In some ways, they're kind of going back and forth. It becomes their dance.

Intensity becomes control. the more she escalates, the more she forces him to back down to some degree. Right. So you have this emotional intensity and it becomes a part of their dance, but it also becomes all-consuming, right? And I think, so this is where I think of this case in a way, kind of like, of course, people that know me will know I'm going to pull on Shakespeare references, but this is like Romeo and Juliet to an extent, right?

That's sort of forbidden love because the families don't allow it. families here are fine or apparently fine with it. But the intense passion. Right. Right. Exactly. The absolute all-consuming quality. This idea of you're my everything, you're my identity, I can't live without you,

and I'm willing to die for that. Right. That's where Romeo and Julia come into play. Yes. Because it's identity-defined, I'm sorry, it's identity-defining and it's death-linked, right? That's true of Romeo and Juliet. There's a lot of differences, but the commonality is with Romeo and Juliet, you have this fusion of love, identity, impulsivity, because they both commit suicide and death, right? And you have that here.

So you have these elements of kind of this destructive, all-consuming love, right? that's a feature, I think, of adolescence to some degree, as it is in Romeo and Juliet. And kind of, let's call it immaturity. You know, the developing adolescent brain, the adolescent brain that's still developing the capacity to make decisions and that's still forming the ability for executive functioning, right? There's a lot about the adolescent brain that's not going to function as well as the adult brain. And it's not going to have, Adolids and brains not going to have, right, the life experience and the wisdom and the

way, the restraints. And that's not to say that a lot of adults don't have that. Certainly the criminals I work with don't have, they don't have the ability to, you know, put any limits on their, their behaviors. But, you know, with adolescence in particular, I think you have, there's, there's more likely. to you're more likely to be on the extremes right and so that's where romeo and julia comes into play there's more risk right you've got more intense emotions you've got more instability with identity you're trying to figure out who you are you've got more peer pressure more concerns with status we see this on our social media right like how are our buddy's going to take it how are

how's our social group going to take it right you have that you have um adolescents generally speaking, not always, right? But you have this, there's more of a struggle to plan the future. There's more, like I said, there's typically, not always, but there's less executive functioning, the brain's still developing, which means that the capacity to kind of plan and develop future plans is more difficult. So there's weaker impulse control, typically, not always. And so when you take all of those elements and you put them together with a relationship crisis

and an all-consuming love like this, like Romeo and Juliet, again, like you're starting, I think you're really kind of setting the stage for the crash, right? This is all about the crash. Why does this crash happen? How does it happen? Right. And so the other, since I'm talking about all of this together. Please.

And I'm going to take some notes. I have questions. Keep going. Let me give you the red pen. No, let me give you the black pen. I have a pen. Look at this. Oh, look at that.

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So you've got young love, you've got this Romeo and Juliet all consuming absolute quality, right? And also, by the way, like this, in Romeo and Juliet, there's this skewed idea of romance. That romance becomes this ideal, right? Or romantic relationship becomes this ideal where that person is everything to you. Right? That person, that person, you can't live with. without them, right?

Like, in watching this movie, unfortunately, I, you know, I was brought back to some of my first relationships and with some embarrassment, I should say. But, like, I don't know if I didn't have moments this extreme. They were not with me. I didn't have moments this extreme, but I had some extreme moments that I had to kind of recall. And, you know, I think this is a very common thing.

So I think that's important. What's a very common thing? The clash is not common. This kind of stormy, emotional interaction with somebody that you're with your first love. High school. High school, right. High school. Baba, actually, who's part of this social group, Baba says it well.

He says they had a stormy immature relationship. As he says, quote, a high school relationship, right? I mean, he's kind of saying this is standard fair for Canby. you don't have any relationship history. You're kind of testing the waters, right? You know, but the difference is that a lot of teenagers, a lot of adolescents may think this way. They may have this kind of tumultuous quality

in their relationships, right? But it doesn't lead to murder. That's what makes this atypical. Not only obviously do you have kind of, it seems like the female being more possessive, but she is the one who seems incapable of separating and she's the one who apparently plans, at least to some degree,

they show it's premeditated to some degree. She plans the murder, right? And so what makes this atypical is you get a lot of this type of, you get, you know, constant breakups, right? Everything you see here is not atypical. But it obviously becomes,

the reason we're watching this documentary it becomes atypical because it leads to the death to the murders. It's terrible. Of two young people, right? And that's the tragedy. But, you know, Davian was a new friend. That was so bad during that moment. Yeah, the mother.

Yeah. Yeah, that was. So, you know, I want to bring up. So I've got this, when I think about, when I was thinking about this case, I thought, okay, there's another reference here. When I talk about the possessiveness, I thought, again, if I'm thinking of Shakespeare, I think of Othello. So Othello sees love as possessive. Othello sees love is all-consuming.

And in that sense, right, Othello sees Desdemona, who's his wife, as an extension of himself. And when Desdemona, when he believes falsely that Desmondona has been unfaithful, he can't accept that. That threatens his very being. That threatens his very identity. that threatens his sense of masculinity. He can't handle it because Othello is this great warrior. So this loss or this in his mind, in Othello's mind, this fantasy of loss becomes unbarreled with him,

becomes unbearable because it threatens his identity, becomes a type of ego death. And you have that here too, I think. You have it at an adolescent level, but you have this idea that love becomes about possession and losing that love becomes a type of annihilation. It becomes a type of ego death. And that's true of Othello.

So when I thought about this case, I thought, you know, in many ways this is like Othello meets Romeo and Juliet, but in a car and all over social media, right? And TikTok, right? And TikTok, right? A fellow meets Romeo and Juliet on TikTok. Yeah, awful. If Othello was female too, right?

And an adolescent. So, I mean, it's, it's, so in some ways you have, you already kind of have the narrative, like, this has been written about, right? This is not uncommon. I think it's just these, these elements kind of coming together in this way make it atypical. Right. Yeah. A lot of. One thing, one thing, you know, I say is, I often say is that every crime is a failed love story.

behind every crime, you'll find a failed love story. And I think that's true here. Now, I'm presenting this broadly. I haven't started to unpack kind of her family. There's, I think there's a lot of interesting elements here about, so how does, how does someone like McKenzie get to the point where she's, how does she get so possessive, right? I mean, we can explain in broad terms maybe psychologically what this is,

but it's still not answering the question about how did she get there, right? And I can't really answer that definitively because I don't know. I don't have a family history. I don't, but we did see her family in this documentary. And one thing we learned about her family is that they talked about on the last day of school. Well, okay, let's back up. The prosecutor, Tim, Tim. Tim Troop.

Tim Troop's great, by the way. He was fantastic. He was an interesting interview. Tim tells us that she showed constant disrespect to teachers and fellow students, and she has the school record of incident after incident. They showed some of it, right? Most of the stuff seemed pretty minor. But apparently on the last day of school,

she gets into trouble. We don't know why. They don't tell us what it is. And the parents come to school. He asks, did you do it? And right, the father says, Did you do it? And she says, no.

And they're like, we're good, we're out of here, don't worry about it. They basically tell the principal, hey, you know, we're cool. She didn't do it. Oh, really? I took it. Is that how you took it? I took it as him saying, I know when my daughter's lying. He said that right before.

And then did you do it? No, okay, we're good. We're out of here. As in like, I believe she did it. But you're, maybe you're right, but you're right. But I actually was confused by that. So you're probably right. You're probably explaining it to me because I was confused by that sort of.

Well, I think the larger point is you have parents here that won't hold this person because they won't hold their daughter accountable. Right. There's no limits. There's no boundaries. There's no accountability. This is someone who appears to have the capacity to just roam free, right? And do whatever she wants.

To bully, to do drugs. They say that, you know, it's okay. They, you know. show the difference between, you know, McKenzie's parents and Davian's parents who implied that, you know, that was something they were very concerned about. Right. And so, you know, right, exactly.

And so we get a little taste for what this looks like when Divine, who's Davian's sister tells us, basically she tells us, she gives us some insight into McKenzie because she's younger, but she goes to school with her. So she tells us that she can be that her reputation is. And again, I can't confirm this with evidence, but this is Divine's opinion, that she's aggressive, that she's bullied kids.

They show, by the way, they show comments on social media. She told people to kill themselves. She talked, according to Divine, she talked poorly about a lot of other people. so she trash talked other classmates. It's not just according to Divine. They're showing other people writing on social media that these things were said.

And then this is the quote from Divine that I particularly like. I'm going to quote her here. She says, quote, she would act, quote, act of being high up and better than everyone else. So you have this, you have this combination of aggression and bullying, but also in Divine's mind, that she's kind of, she's arrogant, right? Yeah. She sees herself as better than everyone else. And you just have the sense that this is someone who's entitled, right?

There's a lot of entitlement here. There's a lot of insecurity. She's self-absorbed, right? She seems afraid in many ways. I mean, a lot of this is a cover, a screen for being fearful. A lot of this is a screen for being insecure. She's self-centered, right? She seems self-centered.

And I think all this kind of comes out in her behavior and people's perceptions of her to some degree. Divine, I think, does a particularly good job of summarizing that. But again, let's get to the question of why, though. And like, we don't know exactly why, but we do know that she's got these parents that are very permissive. So it used to be that the parents like this. McKenzie's parents would be called, the term used to be laissez-faire, laissez-faire parents. that is parents who basically don't, they don't set limits. There's no accountability.

They don't do anything. And actually Scott Flanagan, Davian's dad, brings us up too. He says, well, if she's in prison for 15 years and nobody holds her accountable, she's not going to learn a damn thing. Right. She's going to come out the same entitled, self-centered little brat, basically, is what he doesn't say that. He doesn't say that. He actually speaks a lot more.

Yeah, he's. He's very reasonable. He's a very reasonable voice in this documentary. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah. he had a great job. But let's talk about this idea of permissive parenting. Permissive parents, by the way, they tend, children that grow up with permissive parents

tend not to do as well as kids that have parents that are a little stricter. And one of the reasons for that, I know this is going to sound a little paradoxical, but one of the reasons for that is that children with no limits don't feel safe. Children with no limits have no containers. So the term psychologists would sometimes use, and this is a term therapist in particular use, is we use the term that therapists often see themselves sometimes as acting as containers for a client's emotions. as a container. For the things that the clients can't absorb themselves

or that they can't constrain in themselves, it's the therapist job to kind of take that on, right? To kind of teach them how to navigate those emotions and those behaviors. And that's true, by the way, for parenting, that if the parent has no capacity to contain the child's emotions or behaviors, and there's no limit setting,

then the child will test the limits repeatedly to see how far the child can go. To see, because the child knows ultimately that if the parent isn't setting limits, the child in some ways feels fearful and unsafe because the parent is not, by not sending limits, the parent's sending the message in some ways,

I don't care about you. You can do whatever you want. You can roam free. You can break the law. You can act. at school and I'm not going to do anything because I don't really care, right? It sends the message that you're not important enough for me to take a stand with you. That's one element. It goes beyond that. The other message is that I don't, I don't feel comfortable with my emotions,

so I'm not going to try to help you contain yours. I'm not going to help you deal with your emotions because I can't. So just go crazy with your emotions, right? There's no, figure it out. There's no containment. And so the problem with the problem with this lack of limits is without this type of restraints that a parent limits that a parent would impose is you get a self potentially. You get a self that's going to be a little

it's going to test the boundaries more. They're going to be more insecure because they don't know where the limits are. There's going to be more insecurity. There's going to be probably more issues around self-esteem. there's probably going to be a greater sense of inadequacy, again, because there's no boundaries, not even around homework, right? Like, I don't have any expectations. The parent who said doesn't set limits says,

I don't have any expectations for you. So you figure it out on your own. Children need help with expectations. They need help with, right, another term psychologist sometimes uses mirroring. A healthy parent will mirror back emotions, will mirror back perceptions, will mirror back sometimes appropriate behaviors. All of that is an attempt to enforce some moral code with the child.

If you're not setting limits, you're not developing or help that child develop a moral code. Right. And so, and again, I'm talking in general terms here. I'm not talking, I don't know specifically what happened in this family, but you can see enough to see, and Scott Flanagan sees it, that you have a child that's out of control. Yeah, he didn't want his child hanging out with her. I actually thought he had some really good advice, by the way, too, for his child, Davin.

He realized that Davian had been injured in football and he was depressed and he was out of sports and he had met new friends and he said, Davy, like, who your friends are is what your future is. Yeah, I'm going to quote him, actually, because I have never heard that term. You know, I've been doing this a while and I've never heard that term. But I learn, I love this term. Here's what he said, quote. this is from Scott, quote, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. Right. He was very concerned that his son was hanging out with McKenzie.

Right. He was very concerned that Davian's friends were a reflection of a change in his life that was for the worse. Yeah. The Davian was playing football. He got injured. He became depressed. He didn't see. I think he wanted to maybe attend college and play football. and that dream was taken from him. And then he started hanging out with people that Scott didn't necessarily approve of. Yeah. Right. He didn't approve of the constant marijuana

and the experimented drugs. Whereas McKenzie's parents said, yeah, she'll figure it out, you know. It's fine. And McKenzie's parents say when the issue of marijuana comes up, McKenzie's parents are like, ah, so what? It's better than alcohol. Right.

And again, like this is, McKenzie seems to me child that because there's no limits in that home, McKenzie's going to test the boundaries every possible way she can. She's getting on social media. I were just surprised alone that she was living with her boyfriend at 17. That was surprising. In the same hometown, it wasn't, you know, that he was moving away, thus she was going to go with him, right? It was. There's so many areas here, though, right. Again, yes, you're right. Living with a boyfriend at such an early age is unusual. What about getting on social media? Maybe her parents didn't know this,

but getting on social media and smoking marijuana quite publicly all over the place. All the time. I presume, I don't know Ohio, but I presume in Ohio it's probably not legal. Maybe it is. Maybe I don't know. Probably not for minors. Well, and she said that. She said on TikTok that she gave the minors that showed up for parties illegal stuff, you know.

Parents aren't setting boundaries around that. there's nowhere in this in her life where boundaries are being set where boundaries are being set and I think that the real the problem with that is you need boundaries to develop a sense of self you need boundaries morality is in some ways about

developing some set of rules or values that make sense to you you're not going to do that if nobody helps you with it and nobody's helping work you know her parents are just like, okay, you know, yeah, you got in trouble at school. You're good. Don't worry about it. Summer's here. Just go do your thing, man, you're cool.

Okay. It's not helping her, right? And so I think this is a big clue. If we want to understand how we get to the crash, we need to also see this peculiar relationship with her parents and this inability to set boundaries and how that impacts this person or this you know this child presumably that's not getting any boundaries what she does want and she's getting is she wants a lot of attention right validation she wants validation she's she's trying to get that on social media i'm sure you know she's acting out to try to get our parents

attention but she's also saying to her parents if you really love me that i think there's an implicit message here if you really love me please set a boundary yeah like do something something help me help me do something to show me that you really love me and you just don't care if i kill myself right like yeah it's she said something really interesting in her jail interview okay she said that she wakes you know she wakes she wakes she's not happy in jail kind of or prison um not happy they're behind bar she's talking about her life in prison and she says you know i wake up and i try to stay out of trouble oh by the way on that issue So I did come across.

There's a list of, she's had a number of violations in prison for rule breaking, for contraband. Like she's, I was going to ask about that. She's acting out in prison. Surprise, surprise. She said her main goal is to wake up and try to stay out of trouble. I thought that was really. She's not doing a good job of it, by the way. But it also shows that they're trying to, it almost is like saying, look, I know they've set limits for me.

and I'm trying to adhere to them. I don't know. It was... But I can't. She's not. She's not. I mean... She tries.

She says she tries. She tries. But again, here you go. Like, you have someone... It doesn't... If you have someone who's incapable of following the rules or accepting limits, that's not going to change just because you put them in prison. And, I mean, the crazy thing about that is...

She knows. So she gets 15 years for each murder. But they're not consecutive. They're concurrent, which means the 15 years run together. So talk about, I mean, I don't know if that's a light sensor. I think there's probably, there's some people, there's a free McKenzie. No, I know. There is for every case.

It's a thing. Yeah. But she knows that it. If she's a model inmate, she'll get good time, which means that her prison sentence will reduce. So in theory, 15 years could be half of that. Right. But here's she acting out.

Like, she can't even, I mean, think about that. She's her 20s. She could technically get out like by the time she's 30. I know. And if she's never held responsible and her parents always, like she's innocent, then you're right. What does she learn? she never apologizes. She doesn't feel remorse.

She doesn't heal. Right. She doesn't. She doesn't heal. If prison is about rehabilitation, which I believe it is. And even Scott said it, you know, he believes in second chances. He's so reasonable. He believes in forgiveness.

I know. But in order to get there, he's saying, I need to know what happened. I need to see the remorse. I need to feel it from you. I want to see change. How does she get there if nobody holds her accountable? Right. And her statement?

Oh, I actually, was that edited or was that her whole statement? That was terrible. It was terrible. Let me read that, by the way. So this is her apology. She says, quote, it's very short, but this is probably the most important. part of her apology. She says, quote, I hope one day you can see, I would never let this happen

or do it on purpose, and I'm so sorry. What? I hope one day you can see. Who's you, first of all? Yeah, all the people in the courtroom. Yeah, one day you can see. When she said, I'm like, the victim's parents. Is she telling that to the, like? I think she's telling the victim's parents, you know, the family of the victims. I would never let this happen. Well, you did let it. happen and it was premeditated so that's false or do it on purpose you seemingly did it on purpose number two and i'm so sorry well you're her sorry for what yeah so sorry for what if you would not do this you know and she'll also always say it's not my character i'm not a monster she's always saying i'm not this person i'm not a murderer right i know which also just of a denial of what well yeah

She's capable of. Right. On that denial issue. So here's one thing she says during the interview. She doesn't say this in court, but she says this in her jailhouse interview or president interview, she says, quote, I was a driver of a tragedy, but I'm not a murderer. Think about, like, think about the wording. I was a driver of a tragedy.

Like you caused it. That means you caused a tragedy. Right. She didn't say, I caused the, I created this. when she says, I was a driver. There's like, she's saying it from third person. In other words, she's trying to create distance. Like I am the, this is all, I was just as much part of this tragedy, too.

And I was the driver and there's a tragedy. I was a driver of a tragedy. I'd cause this in no way. I was a driver. Like, she's saying that as an observer. Yeah. Talk about denial, right? That we've talked about, our last show, we talked a little bit about Ted Bundy.

When Ted Bundy was asked to talk about his crimes, he couldn't. But when he talked about it in the third person, he could, right? When he created distance, she's kind of doing that here. Same thing. Right? She's distanced herself from this crime by saying, well, you know, there was a driver. Yeah, that driver could have been me. I guess I was a driver, right?

But like, what? You clearly were the driver. Like, just say you did it. Yeah. She can't even say she did it. But so she's saying, I was a driver of a tragedy, but I'm not a murderer. She said before that,

I'm not saying I'm innocent. Well, yeah. You are actually. Yeah, right. You are saying you're innocent. If you're just the driver of a tragedy, you're saying you're innocent of everything. Well, and then at the end,

she's got the lawyer in the room, and she just makes this, they make this huge point about saying there's no lack of intent. I said, quote, I want to make sure that I'm big on no intent. There was no intent. there whatsoever. I have excessive amounts of remorse.

This was not intentional, and I will prove that, unquote. Well, she still stands by her innocence. Let's look at this issue of intent, right? She slams into the wall 100 miles per hour. There's no attempt whatsoever to break. And clearly that's someone who's trying to harm someone. because the natural instinct of a human being, almost any human being that wants to survive

that's in an accident is going to be to put on the break to some degree. Even if it's just a moment before the collision, before an impact, you're going to slam on the break probably in an attempt to save yourself. I know I was actually going to ask you this. So do you think that she was self-harming too? Or do you think, because they also said it didn't hit her as much? Well, they didn't talk about that in the documentary, but it was obvious that the way it seemed like she did turn.

Seems like she turned to hit the side of the car that they were on. Right. Because her side of the car was not as damaged. Yeah, she survived. Do I think that she was trying to self-harm? That's a really interesting question. I think the- Clearly a little bit because she knew. She couldn't control.

If you're going to hit a wall at 100 miles per hour, even if you're talking, you can't control the outcome. Right. Right. Like the outcome of that could be that she goes along with them. Exactly. And so, in that sense you'd have to say yes. I think there is definitely an impulsive.

Right. Exactly. The way I see this going down is maybe they were fighting at this party. Who knows over what? My guess is Dom is probably, first of all, why do you, so why are they leaving that party at five? Right. Something's going on at that party. Right. Why go at 5?

Why leave the party at 5.5.30 a.m. So they're leaving this party for no apparent reason. They could be asleep on the couch or the floor. But something's going on where they're leaving. So this is my guess. There's probably some conflict at this party between Dom and Kenzie. Davian, who lived with them, she's close to them. Davion has probably been in the middle of this, right?

he's probably like the middleman. He's probably the... He just wants to go home and get a shower. Well, but no, think about... Like, he feels responsible for maintaining that relationship. He's probably... It could be that Dom wanted him to go, too. Could have been Dom just, like, just, bro, come with me.

You know what I mean? Don't leave me alone with her. I think he's sort of the middleman trying to mend fences in that relationship. He lived with them for a while. He knows what their relationship is like. He knows it's stormy. I think he's trying to keep them together.

Dom could have done that, but here's what I think. There's conflict. They're fighting. Dom's probably finally at the point where he's like, I'm over this, right? He wants to break up with her. She knows this. Davian gets word of this. He wants to go with them because he thinks he can help mend it.

He ends up with them because to the bitter end, he wants to help them. Think about that. He's trying to pacify them. He's trying to calm them. He's probably trying to negotiate their conflict. He seems like that type of person, by the way. He does.

So he ends up in this car because he's trying to help. And so they get in the car. Again, I don't know. This is just my take. Right. I'm just speculating here. She's going slow. at first. She's going to look first. They're fighting. Dom and Kenzie are in the front. They're

fighting. Davion's in the back. He's trying to help. He's sensing the tension. They're escalating. At this point, things are uncertain. I think at some point, Dom's like, it's over, right? Davion is trying to intervene probably. At some point, and this is where it becomes confusing, right? Is this entirely impulsive? Is it partly impulsive? I think Kenzie has planned this to some degree. There's some evidence apparently that she's driven this route before. Right.

She's thought about this. She's driven this route before. That wasn't brought up in the documentary. But there's definitely some premeditation here. So whatever is going on in that car, it's not being resolved. Yeah. Well, even premeditating. Yeah.

Keep going. I'll say this. Yeah. So she takes the turn. At some point she makes a clear decision. She makes a hard decision to punch the accelerator and to carry out this plan. And when she does that, as the parents, as we all saw the video, like finding that video, by the way, was just crazy. heartbreaking, but it's like this bullet, right?

It's this rocket. Mother threw up after. Yeah. It's this rocket that just goes into this wall at 100 miles an hour with no breaking, no attempt to stop it. And so my guess is that when Kenzie realized that there was no bringing this relationship back from the brink, when she realized that this was final and this was the final rejection and that she was on her own, that's when she decided to punch the accelerator and perform and to engage in

the crash. Yeah. Another, I, you know, thought that she had been thinking about it for a while, is texting, that felt like such a Darva move, texting Dom's mother, Dominic's mother and saying, We learned that at the end that she had texted Dominic's mother and said that, you know, he was driving erratically two weeks before the crash. Yeah. That actually felt really manipulative to me because she had been called out for driving erratically. And so a bit of a dark.

But that also makes me think she'd been thinking about it. So I think I think you have, you do have elements of impulsivity here. but clearly the intent, I think the intent was to carry this act out. And in terms of whether this is self-harm, you'd have to think that at some level, she can't control the outcome here, right? So yes, there's certainly that possibility.

I think she doesn't fully want that to happen, but if it happens, she's prepared for it. And calling herself a driver of a tragedy. I think that's, what she wanted in the end, for it to be a tragedy, for this, for these deaths to bring attention, for it to be heartbreaking and a tragedy rather than, you know, a violent ending of two people's lives or whatever, three people in the end. But, right, even the end is a show. Right. It's, a curated stage, you know.

Romeo and Juliet. Yeah. Right. Like if she's going to go, if she's going to go out, she's going to go out as the, as a heartbreaking, yeah, a heartbreaking young teenager who who did it for love. Right. I'm the driver of a tragedy. Right. The driver of a tragedy. Right. Exactly. She's curating what this is. She would get attention for this horrendous crash. He knew that. It did get attention. Yeah. You know, one of the more peculiar parts of this documentary, by the way, is a couple days after this horrible accident, this horrible crash. I shouldn't say accident. It wasn't an accident. This horrible murder.

A social media or some company reaches out to her and says, well, you, can we use this picture of you? I know. And she's like, oh, my God. I can't believe you guys reached out to me. That's fantastic. Like, then you wonder, okay. Right. Did she do this for a test?

so that she can become an influencer? Right. Like, was she, she sees it at this point, she sees herself as a rowing. Yeah. That's easy too. At this point, a couple days after crash, she's portraying herself as the hero that survived this horrible accident, right? Like, we don't know what's happened at this point, but, but social media, companies are reaching out to her and saying, hey, can we use these pictures? Can you be a model for, right?

her dream is starting to come true. And so you wonder, I wonder, like, was part of this deliberate in the sense that she did want this attention so that she could become this major influencer? Right. Yeah, that part really affected me because I was in a severe car accident, as you know, when I was a senior in high school. Yeah.

Where my dear friend was in the hospital for months and almost died. And I was walking the next day. I didn't want to see anyone for weeks. I didn't do anything. I was just by my friend's side in the hospital. Well, that was also the... And it was so traumatic. Right, exactly.

And that, by the way, was also one of Scott Flanagan's points about the Halloween videos. Like, really? You're going to be dressed up... You're going to betray yourself. As corpses. As corpses. when your potential future spouse was just killed in this accident,

like at the very least, you should probably be respectful and mourn, right? I mean, I don't know what a normal, there's no particularly normal course of mourning, but. There's no particular course of warning, but. Morning. Morning. Morning. Morning. Morning.

Morning. Morning. I'm, it's heavy, you know. And also this idea, this issue of losing her memory. Yeah, let's talk about that too. My friend, for example, in the hospital, she doesn't completely remember the crash. I do.

But she remembers all the way up to the moment. You think she'd remember why she was escalating. Is it possible that there's some dissociative, component to this. Sure, it's traumatic. It's, but there's no, as far as we know, there's no head injury. Right. Like, it's, it's debatable. I think, isn't it? I think, I don't think people believe it. Yeah, my friend was unconscious. She never. Right. Yeah. There's a difference. She wasn't. Yeah. She was injured. She had some physical injuries, right? She had some serious injuries.

Very serious. But as far as we know, her brain wasn't traumatized. And again, that's not to say that's not to say that during the incident, during the crash, that there wasn't some dissociative element that maybe she passed out or blacked out. I don't know. I mean, it seems to me if there was that element, they would have used that in her defense. And they didn't. Just like, and also the fact that they go to this medical emergency argument about her having pots that caused a blackout, like they didn't bring in an expert. No, they didn't. They didn't examine her for that.

If they thought that was completely relevant, they would have brought it into her defense. Well, how about somebody else diagnosing her except for her mother? I didn't even see a single medical record because it goes from her mother saying, I've always thought she had pots to then saying she was diagnosed in 2017. Let's see, let's see the diagnosis. Where's the doctor that diagnosed her? Why are you having the mother diagnosed her?

Is there really a diagnosis? But maybe they're, you know, I don't know. I just, it's just, it's too. convenient, right, to argue that, I mean, again, is it possible that she lost some memory? Sure. But on the other hand, like, is it believable that she lost every bit of her memory from that night, from the party, all of it, right? And, I mean, without, Any brain trauma that we know of without a brain injury? I don't know.

Yeah. Seems a little dubious. I had questions. Social media, though, man. I mean, you know, I just, I didn't hate social media already. Do I use it? Yes. Are we on YouTube right now?

Yes. Hello. Thank you for watching us on social media. But I don't know. It's affecting a lot of us. Was that your question? Was your question in social media affecting us? Yeah.

It's affecting this world. I mean, you have to wonder, I would have to wonder if she wasn't publicly staging this relationship in such a social manner, would this have happened? Right. If there wasn't social media where she was putting on the relationship on display all the time. Would she have felt so desperate? Right. exactly would she have felt the need to do to to to engage in this type of behavior yeah what about our friend too can I just talk about her friend who says yeah we met by you know on we

Instagram first that's how they met you know I thought she was cute she thought I was you I was a model she wanted to be a model like me you're talking about Rosie Rosie and then Rosie wouldn't talk to police. That was a great edit, by the way, when he said, wow, I would love to talk to her. You talk to her? I'd love to know what she said. So she'll talk to the documentary crew, but she won't help in the investigation. I know. Right. She's like, put me on camera. For Netflix. Put me on camera. Make me a star on Netflix. But I'm not going to talk to law enforcement because I could hurt my friend. Just a lot of, a lot of lack of self-awareness from a lot of these people. You could say.

Right. And clearly not only defensive, but clearly stonewalling law enforcement to assist McKenzie. Right. It's so obvious, right? She doesn't come off as particularly credible, by the way. No. So you add some questions? No, but I want to listen to these two jailhouse calls, these newly released jailhouse calls.

These were recorded. One of them's undated. The other was the day before the verdict. And I haven't listened yet. I've just heard that they are between McKenzie and her mother. So let's listen together. Okay. I like how they try to make it like enjoyable there.

Like I don't even like I don't want to enjoy life there. But like it's just sad. Like I don't know. No, that's a rehabilitative. See, that's how jail is supposed to rehabilitate people. But I don't need to be rehabilitated. Like, I don't need that. No, not you. I know you don't.

I feel like I want to live off the grid. Like, and I'm just, I'm just been thinking about, like, how I'm just going to be, like, old when I get out of jail. And, like, I don't know. Like, I'm not going to be able to have kids or, like, a family. What? Stop that. Stop that.

No, because I'm going to have to ask Danny if she can have, like, hold my baby for me and, like, eat healthy for me. Kansi, you're living away. Just stop, baby. Don't go there. I know it's hard not to. It's just wait, okay? We'll see. They're just trying to put me.

I'm just scared they're going to be like, do we have the death penalty or you're going to life for 40 years? I know. Well, let us, let us do what we're doing, okay? Just living right now. This is the day before the verdict. So she's in the trial. Okay, I got to tell you one more thing. What?

It was published in England. What? Yes. It's world news? I think the Daily Mail just publishes it all. all their publications, but yeah, the UK. It's on the Daily Mail. In UK.

Maybe Kim Kardashian will reach out herself. That's what I'm saying. I'm hoping. I'm hoping. That Kim Kardashian woman was particularly interesting because it was the mother-eaguing. She was, yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Also just this fantasy about a celebrity of stepping in and rescuing her, somehow, right?

Like, I mean, the combination of attention seeking and self-importance. That's what I got was the self-importance to think that Kim Kardashian is going to read because it's in the daily mail and get involved. Just the self-importance, the grandiosity there. Right, exactly. Like, it's crazy. I mean, the fantasy, too. of a celebrity picking her out, right, from any other criminal or any particular crime,

and deciding somehow that she's going to intervene on her behalf or, right? I don't know. And not, you know, not some altruistic, Kim Kardashian, too, of all the people. Yeah, it's right. So I think it speaks to a lot of what we've talked about in terms of that sense of entitlement, right? That attention seeking quality, the self-importance being self-absorbed, all of those elements that we've discussed. What was that? I mean, the rehabilitation thing was terrible.

I don't need to be rehabilitated. But what was that? I'm going to live off the grid and then I'm not going to have kids. Well, let's talk about the rehabilitation component first because, again, it speaks to this idea that they brought home in the documentary, that she doesn't have empathy, she doesn't have remorse. She didn't think she did anything wrong. There was no intent, right? Like, you don't need to be rehabilitated if you don't believe you did anything wrong. I don't think there's any question.

I mean, even if you say this is involuntary manslaughter, you'd still expect some remorse. is somebody she wanted to marry. I know. Well, I think she really did miss him in those times where she was crying. That was a question I had for you. And those times she was crying and they filmed her. I do think she's missing him. But it's selfish.

It's, I miss that he's not by my side. Right. That he's not a prop. Yeah. In her social media. Healing her. Yeah.

Yeah. But, um, no, I know that's. that's McKenzie Shirilla right there

and her mother and going back to her mother right exactly and you know not only not doing anything wrong right not needing rehabilitation but just this idea

that there's there's a very I talk about this I have talked about this about this idea of solipsism right philosophically that you're the only one who exists in your world

moral moral solipsism is basically this idea that your pain, your self's pain is the only reality that matters. I thought a lot about solipsism since you taught me about it. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. And so the other, the victims here, right? The Flanagan's. Well, according to her mother, you know, Davian Flanagan, he was the new friend, you know.

It's hard for her to even connect to his pain at all, is what I heard from that. But it, right. But the point is that only your pain matters, that the other person's lives, their families, their futures, their very identities, they vanish.

They don't mean anything to you. There's no empathy. They just disappear, right? And that's part of solipsism. That's part of narcissism. That's part of being self-absorbed, right? Like that all of it, that she doesn't,

that Kim Kardashian is going to come to a rescue, that she doesn't need to be rehabilitated, that she's, right, that she's done nothing wrong, that she can't acknowledge the fact that she's created so much pain and disruption to these other families and these other lives. None of that seems to matter to her.

The Halloween stuff, right, the insensitivity of the Halloween stuff, getting requests to be an influencer or several days after the accident. which negates context, right? And it gets the context of you just murder two people. And even if you didn't murder them, even if it was completely impulsive in an accident,

two people just died. One of them was your fiancé. Yeah. And again, like, I don't know, you know, part, one of the philosophical issues here, I think, is if there's a question here about adolescence and the role adolescence plays, and if the answer is yes,

it does, there clearly there's, there is an adolescent. influence on this crime. Okay. Right. Not feeling like you can live without our first love. Well, not. Just the things we talked about,

like the all-consuming nature of the relationship, kind of the adolescent brain being immature, right? The impulsivity of the adolescent brain, which isn't helped, by the way, by all our substance abuse. No. You have this tension, you have this philosophical tension

but between what I would call developmental mitigation, right, which is, which is in some ways like giving her a break because she's an adolescent, right? The adolescent elements of this, the extremity of being an adolescent, and moral accountability.

And those are different in terms of, you know, one way to think of it is that what the demands of, the law demands moral accountability. But psychologically, you might be able to excuse, or philosophically, you might be able to excuse more of the behavior

as developmentally related, as related to adolescence, right? And so those two are going to clash. If we acknowledge that a 17-year-old is less developmentally, you know, has more developmental issues than a fully formed adult, right?

How much are we willing to excuse, how much of this behavior are willing to excuse because of that. Yeah. But from a legal standpoint, though, the law does not treat her. The law acknowledges she's an adolescent, but on the other hand,

she's not a robot, right? She's not an automat. She can still make decisions. She can still act. She can still harm people. She can still do drugs. She can still show up on social media and present this image of herself.

And ultimately she can destroy lives, right? So which she did. So I think the real, the hard question here is how much should any of that matter? How much should the adolescent part matter versus the fact that she's committed basically an irreversible, destructive act? That's the difficulty, I think, is making that deter. Like, how much are we willing to excuse this behavior for her? being an adolescent and being impulsive and for being someone who abuses substances versus engaging in a crime that leads to irreversible consequences for two families who will never

see their kids again. Right. Right. And I don't know if the law... And to taking responsibility for that. And to taking responsibility because she takes no responsibility. She doesn't need to... That's the issue.

Right. She doesn't need to be rehabilitated, right? According to her. She's not doing herself any favors by being so unlikable. You know, show some remorse, take accountability, apologize, you know? Right. Admit that maybe you could use some rehabilitation or some boundaries or, you know, you're not just going to try to stay out of trouble. You're going to stay out of trouble and you're going to be a model prisoner and you're going to understand, you know, how to be a better citizen once you're out of there.

Well, it's what Scott Flanagan said. And it's simple. Tell the truth. Right? Just tell the truth. We know you know the truth. What happened? What happened, right?

She got into a fight with Dominique. Even what happened at the party? Why did you leave at 530 a.m.? Just something, anything. Right. Because she wanted to take Dom home. She could have waited until 10 a.m. I know.

Yeah, because it wasn't a party. It was a sleepover, according to Rosie. I know. It was a sleepover. Yeah, right. Get it right. It's not a party. It's a sleepover.

Well, then why aren't they sleeping? So I think if we step back from this a little bit, one of the issues that really comes up here, if I'm thinking about this philosophically, not just in terms of moral accountability and punishment and all that, but I think like one of the core elements of this, if we think about my analogy between Romeo and Juliet and Othello, right, meets social media, meets, you know, know, a speeding car. There's really this tension between love and ownership, right? And like, it really raises the question about what is love and what is love to an adolescent?

What is love to an adult? Does any of that matter? Should they be the same, right? Is it an adolescent capable of mature love? And even if they're not, right, it still raises the question of what genuine love is. And I think that to me, that issue centers around this idea that we have to see other people as separate. We have to see other people as autonomous. We have to see other people as unknowable to some degree.

And we have to be able to accept that. We have to see other people as having the capacity to leave us, to reject us, to cheat on us. Right. Like, I can't control any of that. Right. We have to see other people as having the capacity to choose their own lives and to choose differently from us, right? That's not what possessive love does.

And this is really a story about possessive love. Because possessive love can't tolerate separateness. It can't tolerate Dom saying that he wants to live a different life. And by the way, it's important to note, too, we didn't talk about this, but it's important to note that one of the elements that we learn about Dom is that. that he cheated on McKenzie in the beginning of their relationship, right? That always, I think that that's a little seed that was planted early on in this relationship that she was never able to overcome.

Right. And it always. It always stayed there. It was the origins. It was the origins of this relationship. It was the origin, right? It was the seed. And she needed his validation. It was the seed, I think, that really sort of, it was the seed, I think, that really contaminated. this relive.

It was the seed, I think. It was the seed that really became contaminated by possessiveness and anger, right? And fear, to some degree, fear of humiliation, that maybe he was going to cheat again. Right. I don't think she ever got past that. Oh, I don't think so either. I think that's why she actually always needed his validation. You know, as you point out, like, she couldn't handle it.

She couldn't handle it. It was rejection to her from the very beginning. Right, exactly. You know, and I don't know what Dom did, but she, by staying with him, right? Like Dom said that a few times in this documentary that, you know, just get over it, right? I mean, he didn't say it exactly like that, but the point is like, why did you continue? Yeah. It was almost like she held him hostage because of that too.

So I think there's always, in some ways, there's always kind of this paradox. I was think of like this paradox when it comes to love in the sense that there's always a certain element of, for lack of terror built into love, because you can always be rejected. Right? You always risk.

Any relationship. Any relationship. There's always risk. And you can't mitigate that risk no matter what you do. Because you can't, like in love, you have to give someone autonomy. But then you also want to be connected to them. Right. It's that dance.

But if you're too connected, then you become possessive. Yeah. Right. And then you start undermining the very thing you're trying to nurture. You undermine that sense of love and connection by becoming too possessive. Right. And that's what happens in Othello. I mean, in Othello, it basically ends with him murdering Desdemona.

And so I think that's one of the lessons here. Maybe I would point that in the direction of, specifically in the direction of like adolescent love, to somehow kind of recognize that it doesn't have to be all-consuming. It doesn't have to be life-defining. It doesn't have to, right? It can be more, it can be, potentially, it can be used as a growth experience. If someone can see that other person as someone that can, that's free and can make their own choices,

and they can contribute to their life that way as well. Yeah. On that topic, by the way, I just read this book called Love's Labor. It's a great book. It's by... I love Stephen Gross. Yeah, Stephen Gross. He wrote The Examined Life, which is a brilliant book.

I love that book. But this is specifically about his interactions with couples and love. This is a recent book he wrote. Does he say, put your readers on? For a good love story. So I think this is going to speak to this issue. I just talked about with this distinction between love and ownership, right? that love never involves ownership, right?

He talks about the distinction between, he calls it surrender. There's a distinction between surrendering and submitting. He says, quote, and he learned this in his own analysis, by the way. So he was seeing a psychoanalyst when he was training, because that's required of most people when they're training to be psychoanalyst. But this is from page six. He says, quote, it became clear to me that there is a vital distinction to be made between surrendering to something or someone and submitting to it. This distinction is something that I could have saved me some suffering if I'd considered it sooner.

To surrender is to let go to experience a release. When two people surrender to each other, they feel alive, empowered, accepted. They feel love. submission or submissiveness is different. It too begins with a longing to be loved, and yet submitting to another person leaves us feeling like we've fallen under their control. Submission is transactional. I'll give you what you want.

Be what you want. In return, you will love me. Because this deal is unrealized, it's doomed. And submission is usually accompanied by feeling, of resignation or depression. And what you have here with McKenzie is submission. In the sense that she's trying to get Dom to submit to her will. That's possessive love.

Surrender is a choice. Surrender is recognizing someone else's autonomy. It's recognizing their complexity. Right. It's recognizing who they are and their needs. and acknowledging that and giving them freedom and space to become who they are

or to become, right? It's allowing for growth. And so in that sense, I often associate surrender with being vulnerable, right? Because if you can't be vulnerable to some degree, then you can't open yourself up to growth.

And McKenzie, from what I can tell, from this documentary from her calls in prison, she lacks any capacity for vulnerability. She can't even be vulnerable when she's giving her apology, her statement to the judge. No, I know. She can't be vulnerable in the Netflix documentary. She actually says some things and goes, did I do okay? I want to emphasize this.

She can't, it was actually interested watching her in the interview. She was so different than TikTok, Vakenzie, but it still wasn't authentic. and it still wasn't vulnerable. I hope one day, this is her apology, I hope one day you can see, I would never let this happen or do it on purpose, but you did let it happen. And you did do it on purpose.

Like there's absolutely no, and this is true, by the way, this is true of the criminal mind in general, is that there's, the reason why many criminals engage in violence is because they're trying to transform any sense of weakness and vulnerability into strength. They try to operate from a position,

of strength and power and not vulnerability. And you see that equation here. That's interesting. You see that equation here quite clearly. So a criminal instead of being vulnerable, they're trying to be strong and essentially break the law. Right. It's what I always call the fundamental theorem of crime,

which is the transformation from vulnerability to strength. from weakness to strength through violence, through aggression, through bullying, through a crash. Yeah. But I think if I'm looking for kind of a deeper underlying takeaway from this, it has, this is really a story about love. This is a love story of sorts, right? And I think the lesson to be learned is surrender is more. powerful than submission. So well said.

So well said. You're going full library and look on you right now. I love it. You're surrendering with your librarian look. Yes. Right. Thank you. I appreciate that.

And that is why there's proof that no, we do not plan what we're going to wear together. ever because we let each other figured out on there out. No curating here. Although it does feel like we're back in high school going to like City Hawkins or something in these shirts. Thank you.

Hopefully without the adolescent brain. Yes. Thank goodness. Thank you, babe. Thank you, everyone for joining us tonight. And I like Scott Flanagan, and hope that she does process what this was, does show remorse, does share with the victims' families, what happened, and that perhaps she can have some rehabilitation in a second chance.

I thought that was very, very graceful what Scott said, that he can forgive, but this is what he needs. So let's see. Let's see. So hopefully in our own little way, hopefully maybe we assisted in answering the question about the why. I don't know if Scott's going to see this, but probably not, but just in general, maybe for our viewers, you know, that Scott wants to know the why. There's no, I don't have a definitive answer, but this is my contribution to that. Thank you. Appreciate it.

We'll see you guys. Okay. Good night. Yeah.