Hidden True Crime - Megan Boswell Unmasked with Criminal Psychologist Dr. John Matthias

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

The trial of Megan Boswell for the murder of her daughter, Evelyn Boswell is just wrapping. Join Dr. John and Lauren as they discuss the psychology of Megan's crimes. About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias, a former television reporter, and her husband Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Sources: WJHL News Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Quince uses premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day of returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. This episode we're about to listen to with Dr. John Matthias was recorded live on February 12, 2025, while the jury deliberated the fate of in Boswell. And we did not know at the time of this recording whether or not she would be found guilty. Well, less than 12 hours after recording this episode, a verdict was reached. This morning,

February 13th, 2025, guilty on all counts. Those charges included first degree premeditated murder, first degree murder in the perpetration of aggravated child abuse, first degree murder in the perpetration of aggravated child neglect, aggravated child abuse, aggravated child neglect, tampering with evidence, 11 counts of false report, abuse of a corpse, and failure to report a death under suspicious, unusual, or unnatural circumstances. Guilty on all counts. News Channel 11, WJHL reports. Boswell's attorney Gene Scott told the jury that while he did not like the verdict, he respected it. Hello, Hidden Jens. Hello. Hello. Hello. It has been a while since the two of us, two of us co-hosted a show together.

So for those of you that are new to our channel through following the Megan Boswell case in trial, this is my co-host as well as my husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist. And this is what we do here at Hidden 2 crime. We delve into the hidden motives of unimaginable, unfathomable crime. And we are going to do that today with Megan Boswell. We are going to unmask and unpack everything we know about Megan Boswell and how, if she did this, we are still waiting for a verdict. If she is found guilty of killing her 12-month-old daughter, 13-month-old daughter, how, how is that possible?

I know, John, that you wanted to start with a interview between Megan and a detective that was played during trial. So we will start with that. Take a lesson. What's probably? Mom. I'm worried. I'm going to tell you. Okay.

How's Evelyn? Good. Mean it's fuck. She hates me. I don't have a child to inform you to inform you about, sadly. Not yet. What? When do you don't have a child to inform you about?

That's what somebody said to you. Did I see that? You can. How's that one? Good. Me as fuck. January 26th. Okay, what you're pointing, please.

Tell me about it. I didn't want to tell you about it. that and know where she was that so instead of saying I don't know where she is you say me she's mean is fuck excuse me god that's that's that's new information last night she was the sweet of the baby to ever grace this earth now she's mean that's what you said you said she's a sweet baby she's never cried was never a problem all the period of now she's mean it's fun any day to break tell us tell us about it Yeah. So I want to lead with that because I often talk about these moments in trial or these moments when I'm, if I'm in a jail or a prison interview room with a felon or an inmate,

oftentimes there's these little statements or these little moments that come out that really put everything together. They put everything in the right context. And I think this is one of those moments. this is one of those epiphanal moments that that really, I think, can help us understand this crime and maybe even some of the motivations. You know, one interesting thing about this trial is that nobody's really touched on that, the motivations.

I mean, it's the crime in and of itself is somewhat vague anyway. It's a little nebulous, and, you know, the defense is playing on that, obviously. But I think that, This moment in that interview, I think it really helps us, to me at least, it really helps to frame this crime and what happened. And in fact, I can speculate. It'll be speculation, of course, because we don't know exactly what happened.

But I could speculate about potentially what I think happened. And so we'll use this moment to unpack this situation. Thank you. For those that are listening on our podcast and might not have been able to. to see close captions. The detective is calling Megan Boswell out while her daughter is missing, then referred to as a 15-month-old daughter, Evelyn, and saying that she said this about her daughter, that she is mean as fuck, to quote, to quote Megan. And then she admits to saying that, well, yes, she is mean. She is mean. And it is shocking to hear. We are going to dig deep tonight.

John has a lot to say. Admittedly, I was like most people shocked that we are already on verdict watch. I'm a little bit grateful that this trial will only last a total of seven days because it has been some intense reporting in our house, hasn't it, John? So yes, yes. So let's get to helping all of us understand Megan. So I started with this clip. where Megan acknowledges that she sees her 13-month-old daughter Evelyn as being mean,

which is in and of itself is really peculiar. So we'll dig into that more. But let's back up a minute and talk about Philicide because, as you know, Philicide, unfortunately, Philicide is something we talk about way more than I would like to. I wish we saw fewer of these cases. But we do talk about Philicide quite a bit. And this is a case of philicide, which usually over 90% of cases of suicide are involved mothers murdering their children.

There are cases of filicide where boyfriends, husbands, spouses murder their kids as well, but they're less common. The other thing about filicide, these are just some statistics to kind of orient us towards this topic. but younger children that are higher risk of murder than older children. So typically you'll see philicide occurring in children that are 24 months or younger. And so this kind of fits that category as well. Presumably some of the reasons for that are that children are more helpless and vulnerable

and require more attention. They're more dependent when they're younger. And they're less dependent as they get older. So obviously if you have a 13-year-old, and even though that 13-year-old might be belligerent and acting out in a pain in your butt, you know, you're not going to just murder the 13-year-old because you find that 13-year-old to be mean, right?

So there is a higher risk of suicide occurring with children in the age range where Evelyn fits, roughly. And another statistic that I think is interesting is that roughly 40% of Philicide cases involve postpartum psychosis. So a lot of the cases we talk about with Philicide, the first thing we always focus on

is whether this is some type of postpartum situation. So the statistics on that are, there's something called the baby blues or postpartum blues, and that would be described as sort of a mild case of depression. A lot of women suffer from this. You had a little bit of this after you gave birth, but roughly half, 50% of women who give birth suffer from some type of baby blues. Okay.

And then you start going up in severity. Then you went from the baby blues, which is just kind of a normal hormonal hangover from giving birth, you get into postpartum depression, which is more significant. Now you're approaching something more like clinical depression. It's becoming harder to function. So postpartum depression affects roughly 10% of mothers who experience live births. And then the next step up from that is postpartum psychosis, which is the most severe. And postpartum psychosis affects roughly 1 to 2% of mothers, typically about 1%

but 1 or 2% of mothers giving live birth, you know, who have children. And those mothers are at greatest risk of engaging in philocyte because oftentimes, depending on how severe it is, they can become divorced from reality. They can hallucinate. You can imagine that if you're experienced psychosis and you're hallucinating, it's going to be very hard to take care of a child. So the risk of injuring a child goes up dramatically if you're in some type of psychosis, some type of postpartum psychosis.

And so for philicide, the numbers are fairly high. 20 to 40 percent of phyllisides occur with mothers experiencing postpartum psychosis. So when you and I first started talking about this case, the first question I always ask with any phylliside is, is there some type of postpartum situation? Is the mother been diagnosed with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis? And that's the first question I want to know because statistically that is the highest likelihood of filicide. And so your answer to that was, no, I don't think so. I don't think Megan Boswell had postpartum depression or psychosis. And it's interesting to think about, though, because in this particular case, a lot of times

when it's really clear cut that a filicide or murder of an infant has occurred, a defense might latch on to this idea of postpartum psychosis as a defense because it's, it brings in questions of sanity, right? It brings in possible insanity defenses. A current case right now is out of Lindsay Clancy. The defense is arguing psychosis where the state is saying, no, she knew what she was doing. Another well-known case is, as you point out, Andrea Yates. Yeah. Right, exactly.

And so in this particular case, even let's just say hypothetically there was some type of postpartum psychosis. I don't think there is. But let's just say that there was. Because the evidence isn't clear cut, they're not going to latch on to that as a defense. because it's admitting guilt, right? Once you admit guilt, then you have to find a way to, you know, mount a defense that can get you acquitted in some way. And, you know, if she acknowledges that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis,

and somehow that was implicated in the murder of her daughter, then in many ways that's a confession of guilt. And that's not what the defense here wanted to do. They wanted to avoid that. And that's why you're not seeing any type of mental health. evaluations or any type of mental health issues being brought up directly in this case or certainly being brought up as a defense. Yeah, yeah, not at all.

We really haven't. And so on that note, the, the, the, generally speaking, and this is, this is just based on my own experience and research, there's a book, there's a really well-known book. It's called Why Mother's Kill, a forensic psychologist case book. It's by Jeffrey McKee. It was published in 2006. And McKee's book is probably the standard reference for most psychologists. It lays out a lot of research.

It's now almost 20 years old, so it's a little dated. But research since then has more or less been consistent with McKee's typology of philocyte, philicidal mothers in particular. But I don't want to use McKee's typology directly. I want to use kind of my typology. And for me, there's three broad categories of philicide. The first is what I would call the traumatized mother or the traumatic philocyte. And that would involve, typically involve a mother who's had a traumatic background

who's often gone through a period of insecure attachment or is insecurely attached. I talk a lot about how important it is for infants to, if they're lucky, to experience secure attachments, meaning that they have, they get the love and nurturing they need and they feel safe and secure in the world because their parents are able to meet their needs, especially their emotional needs for a love and attention and safety. And so attachment is always a really important issue in criminals in particular. And it's something I really like to look at and to look at its impact on criminal behavior. But for phyllisides, so the first category here is typically some type of trauma or traumatic experiences that often create insecure attachments in infants, which then create a host of problems later in terms of developing healthy relationships, feeling safe about the world, right?

feeling secure about their place in the world and who they are. And so that's my first category. The second category that's important for explaining philocyte would be what I would call the mentally ill mother or mental illness more broadly. And this would include this would include postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. So this category would explain specifically philocyte that occurs with very severe mental illness. oftentimes that's going to be postpartner depression or postpartum psychosis. It could be just clinical depression.

It could be a very severe case of depression. But typically it's some type of mental illness. And then the third category that explains philocyte is the personality disorder mother or personality disorders. So there are mothers that have personality disorders, not unexpectedly, and the most common personality disorder that helps explain phyllis. side would be the psychopathic mother. And this is a category that McKee talks a lot about, that there are mothers that have no empathy towards their babies,

towards their infants. They show psychopathic traits. And for whatever reasons, whatever the triggers are, they're much more likely to commit murder because they simply don't really have a strong conscience to prevent the murder from occurring. And so most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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make sense of it. And, you know, in some ways you guys can decide what category you think that she might fit best within. Oh, they're deciding. They're deciding right now. Yeah. I also want to point out, this is in McKee. McKee, in spite of these different types and these different categories, the attempt to explain some of the underlying elements that go into fill aside, McKee also says there's three commonalities across all of these categories. And it's important, I think, to mention these quickly. The first is McKee believes that almost all cases of vilocyte involve some type of mental illness at the time of the crime. And I don't mean, I'm not talking about my second type that the mentally ill mother that has severe psychosis.

I mean just mental illness in general. It could be depression that may not. not rise to the level of clinical depression. It could be anxiety, just some type of mental illness at the time of the crime, which by the way, in looking at Megan Boswell's case, and again, I haven't interviewed her. I haven't evaluated her, so this is speculation, but it seems reasonable to think that she has some type of depression. Not depression rising to the level of postpartum depression. But I think, and we'll talk about this more a little bit later,

but I think there's probably some depression going on here. Maybe a low-level depression, just a thought. Well, Moth's mummy did state, it's no fun living in your own home at age 17 to 18, lonely with the responsibility of a baby. She must have been depressed. So, you know, it's not far-fetched to think. Yeah.

I think given her upbringing and her, her abusive childhood and the family she grew up with where there was violence, there was domestic violence, there was attempted murder with her father and her one of her brother. And I mean, this is not the healthiest family. So given those constraints or given that environment, given kind of a this very dysfunctional family, It seems like Megan really struggled to carve out an identity and she struggled to really kind of feel safe and secure. And so in that context, and I think she probably struggled to find some measure of self-worth.

And so given that context, it seems probable that there could be some depression there. Yeah. So that would fit McKee's three commonalities. The second commonality is that mothers fail to develop an emotional bond with their children. And I think we see that with Megan Boswell in the sense that when you see your child as mean, you're clearly making some assumptions about that child's nature and that child's temperament. When you see the child as mean in many ways, I would say right away, you know, if I heard someone say that, if somebody came into therapy with me and they described their child as mean,

that would be a red flag. because it would suggest that they've already created some distance between themselves and that child. Yeah. And so is there a failure to develop an emotional bond, probably? The third commonality, McKee says, that almost all philosophize involved inadequate parenting practices. And again, I don't think it takes a genius to see that Megan Boswell is not necessarily the best parent. again, she grew up in a very abusive home. She's labeled her child as mean and perceives her to be mean.

She's very young at the time. She's 17 when she gets pregnant. She gives birth a little bit later than that. But she's in foster care at age 17. This is someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family. This is someone who's not necessarily well equipped to be a good parent. She doesn't have any role models. She doesn't have any examples of good parenting.

And so I think those three commonalities are in play with Megan Boswell. Let's go back. So I want to go back a little bit to the three categories. So hopefully I've showed that the three commonalities apply. But let's go back to the typology. Let's talk about the traumatic. Okay. Let's talk about the traumatic category, the traumatized mother that can lead to philicide.

I think there's a strong case. I don't know what people are saying, but I think there's a strong case to be made here that she would fit this category. And the reason I say that is because, again, she grew up in a very dysfunctional home. She was placed in foster care for truancy. She wasn't going to school regularly. My guess is she wasn't going to school because she felt, you know, I don't know if there was any bullying, but she probably felt very inadequate in school.

and it probably was a very difficult environment for her. So I'm not sure if she had a lot of friends. If I had to guess, I'd probably say she struggled to have close friends or she struggled with friendships. So to me, school was probably a fearful place for Megan Boswell, and especially given her abusive childhood. So I think a strong argument can be made that this violent family she grew up in,

specifically there was a lot of domestic violence apparently there was infidelity there was substance abuse my guess is you probably have some intergenerational violence there's probably some cycle of violence going here that predates her parents that might go back some generations and there might be some cycle of substance abuse that's continuing and so she inherits all that you know she's she's the unfortunate inheritor of all this intergenerational probably violence and abuse You know, some other risk factors that for Philicide would include not only these dysfunctional histories, you know, these dysfunctional families with histories of violence, but poverty, lack of education, substance abuse. We know that there was cocaine use in this family. We know there was methamphetamines used.

As I mentioned earlier, Tommy, her father was charged with attempted murder for trying to run someone over with. the vehicle. He was charged with domestic violence. I'm not sure if there were substance abuse charges, but we know from detectives and we know from from Megan's own statements that there was a lot of drug use in this family. And so all of this, all of this, I think, really creates problems, you know, for a child to feel safe, for a child to feel secure. It creates potentially insecure attachment. You know, I've talked a lot about attachment styles in the past, there are three insecure attachment styles. The first is anxious ambivalent.

The second is avoidant and the third is disorganized. If I had to guess, I think Megan probably fits into the anxious ambivalent category, which is a category where the child feels a lot of perpetual anxiety is very ambivalent about developing relationships, struggles to develop healthy relationships because they don't ever feel secure. They don't ever feel like they have the social skills to really, connect to other people. So intimacy is something in children with insecure attachments, intimacy is a real struggle. It's a real difficulty. But having said that, it is something that children really aspire to. So assuming that Megan fits this category of someone who is a child

that's insecurely attached, they really, they crave this intimacy. They just don't know how to do it. They don't know how to find it. And so in the case of Megan, you know, when this, this This guy, when Hunter arrives in her life, I think she sees him as a ray of hope. She sees him as someone who's going to potentially solve all of her problems, that he's going to offer that, that hope of intimacy and love that she's never experienced in her family. And let's put a book, let's put a mark in that. We'll come back to that idea. So I would make a strong case that there's a lot of trauma here.

there's probably insecure attachment. And so I think she predominantly would probably fall into this category of the traumatic philocyte category. But let's look at the other two just quickly, mental illness. You know, I mentioned that she might have some depression. So certainly that would fit into the mental illness category. I just don't think it's the predominant issue that she's experiencing. I don't think it would be the driver of philicide.

But again, you know, there could be some mental illness here. I don't think it's overwhelming. As I said, maybe depression. Again, I kind of rule out postpartum psychosis or postpartum repression, although I could be wrong. Again, I don't know her and I have an interviewed her. And then the last category, let's examine the personality disorder category and specifically like psychopaths or antisocial personality disorders.

One thing that, you know, there is an argument to be made here. And these categories, by the way, are not mutually exclusive. A lot of times they overlap. So, you know, you'll see the, and this is one of the problems with all typologies. It's sort of like when you look at the DSM and you look at cluster B personality disorders, they all share certain elements. So borderline personality disorder shares elements of narcissistic personality disorder, which shares elements of antisocial personality disorder, which shares some elements of histrionic personality disorder.

those are all cluster B. So you don't, you really, in the DSM and here, in any typology, you have overlap. And so the argument for personality disorder would be, obviously, she's a liar. She lies persistently. She lies to detective. She lies to authority figures. She lies to her parents. She lies to anyone.

We still don't know what's truth and what's a lie. Nothing that comes out of her mouth. You don't know. Like the lies are like the only thing that's certain about Megan Boswell, in my opinion, as you point out. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

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Again, ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. The lies, yeah. So the line, you know, the line starts moving things away from the trauma, you know, the traumatic philocyte category more into this personality disorder category. One element of antisocial personality disorder in the DSM is precisely this, just this, this, this constant lying and this constant manipulation and this constant you know this belief that you can

get others to you can lie to other people and they're just going to believe you and she clearly thinks that because she lies to everyone and i mean she changed and she changes obviously it's not just lying she's changing her tune all the time right like she's she's telling detectives well you know my mother was trying to extort me she's with my mother but you know and my mother trying to extort me, she wants money from me. Or she's saying, well, Ethan has Evelyn, right? Like, she can't get her story straight. And she's just, there's this underlying manipulation.

There's this underlying, I don't want to say grandiosity exactly, but there's this kind of this underlying narcissistic quality where she thinks she can bend, she can deceive other people. She can bend other people's perceptions of reality to fit hers. Yes. You know, another element of a possible personality disorder that would kind of fit the psychopathic category would be just the gruesome nature of the crime. If you assume that she committed this crime, which a jury will determine, I mean, even if a jury acquits her, that doesn't mean she didn't commit it. It just means they didn't have enough evidence to convict her.

But if you assume that she was the one directly responsible for murdering her daughter, then you, you know, you'd have to consider the brutal nature of this crime is over the top. It's something that would fit more with a psychopath. This is not somebody who's just maybe, there's no good way to murder someone, I guess, but like, you know, there's something called overkill, which is when a murderer commits, kill someone, and their behavior exceeds what's necessary to create,

to lead to someone's death. that's called overkill. And so you see this a lot with people that are enraged. You see it with serial killers that want to leave behind the signature or mark that, you know, the detectives will notice. So they gain some notoriety. But the basic idea is that overkill is unnecessary. And overkill, if you're going to kill your daughter for whatever reasons, you don't want to do that in a way.

You know, obviously nobody wants to have any children die. But if someone does that, you don't want to do it in a way that's going to create unnecessary pain and cruelty for your daughter, in this case, for her daughter. And this murder involves what appears to be unnecessary pain and cruelty. Yeah. And so that would be consistent with a personality disorder or maybe someone that would have more psychopathic traits. Has losing weight and getting healthier been on your mind lately? Have you heard about groundbreaking GLP1? treatments like OZempe and WeGO with Effecti, getting access to these powerful medications

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And so that would be an argument for the third category of maybe a potential personality disorder or some type of psychopathic traits. The other thing is, you know, she's placed in foster care for truancy. And truancy is not super antisocial, but I mean, it is antisocial. It is it is bucking the social norm of attending school until a legal age. And she simply refuses to go to school. So there is something a little antisocial in that. It's not necessarily something that would predict murder later on. But those would be some arguments for why.

Megan Boswell might fit some of the third category as well. Okay. The third category being... The third category being the personality disorder, the suicide offender. Meaning antisocial traits, too. Right. Well, in this case,

the personality disorder would be antisocial personality disorder. It would be something in cluster B. You know, I don't, without doing any type of interview, I couldn't diagnose, but clearly, clearly it would be something in the cluster B personality disorders. It would be probably involve some antisocial traits. We know she lies all the time. That's consistent with antisocial personality disorder. However, you know, one element of antisocial personality disorder is typically you need a diagnosis of conduct disorder before the age of 18, and she has no criminal record.

So, you know, unless we don't know enough about her and perhaps there's some issues in school we don't know or a juvenile record, but she doesn't seem to have that. So she doesn't seem to have any prior juvenile record. She doesn't seem to have any particularly strong acting out behaviors. She hasn't, right, she hasn't engaged in any thefts or robberies or anything particularly on a social outside of the line. So, again, that would kind of, that would kind of push us back to that first category of the traumatized Thilocyte offender. Yeah. So. So, I love it when you say so.

Moving on. What is next? So let's, do we want to jump into, do we want to, are we ready? Should we jump into the explanation of what I think. happened here? I would like that. Just remember we have one more sound bite too. Yes. Yes. Coming up? Yeah. Yeah, let's

play that. Right now? Yep. There we go. This is during this time. Erica Stacy. Her friend Erica Stacy, they don't show Erica. Erica's on the stand. They show Megan Boswell at this moment, which is interesting. I also just want to point out

because she does seem emotional during this moment with her friend, Eric on the stand. Okay. So I'll go ahead. And that you're around Megan. Did she ever say anything about Evelyn that surprised you? She would always say that Evan Helden was mean as crap. Okay. And is that the word she used crap?

No, she would say mean as shit. Okay. Did she say that more than once? Yes. Okay. And that would have been around the time that Evelyn was a year old? Yes. Okay. Why did that surprise you? I was raised. You just don't say that about a child. Was Evelyn? Was Evelyn, I mean, maybe? Not that I ever saw. What type of baby was Evelyn? Very happy, very smiley. All right, so let's get into the heart of this thing. So I started with that clip of the detective confronting her about saying that Evelyn was mean AF. And, you know, it's interesting. So let's talk a little bit about that.

She's confronted with that. And she doesn't deny it, right? No, she doesn't deny it. Yeah. So normally, you know, if I'm just thinking of the criminals I get in front of, you know, normally if I confront it with something like that, they'd probably deny it. They'd be like, I never said that. Like, they would understand that that wouldn't make them look good.

So even if I had a text and showed them a text, they'd probably say, well, I don't think that. I never thought she was mean. But what does Megan, what does Megan say? She confirmed. She says, yeah, she was mean. She said that's a detective. Right. Yeah, we know what she means because I have to be honest, too.

As a mother, I've said something to you before. He's being so mean to me. but I don't really mean it. Like, I'll say it privately to you, but I don't really mean it. And if confronted, I would be like, no, no, no. I was just complaining he is the sweetest thing ever. So I do think this is important in explaining to the detective, she is stating, yes, she is mean. She is mean.

So I just want to point out that difference. That's important. You're right. So let's analyze why I think this is the key to this entire case. And a lot of times I talk about this idea that sometimes these little nuggets of information open up the door to understanding everything else. And this is one of those moments.

And here's why. Because first of all, when we're talking about a 12, 13-month-old child, right? The problem with calling a child mean is it implies agency. It implies intention. It implies choice. So in other words, what she's saying by saying that is that this child is deliberately being mean to her. Now, I don't know about, so I would challenge my listeners on this, but are listeners on this, our gems?

Like, does anybody know a 12 or 13 month old child that has the type of agency to be mean, deliberately mean to an adult, to the, to the, to the, mother? Never. As Misty says, babies don't have the ability to be spoiled or mean. They do what they see. They cry when they need something. And so, exactly. And so that's the point.

Is a child doesn't have mean, doesn't have mean intentions. A child may respond to someone, if a child's being hit or abused, or neglected, that child may look like they're being mean because for them, they're trying to resolve that pain. They're trying to get out of that trauma, right? And so that's a reaction to something they're experiencing, but that's not a disposition. In other words, if a child is mean, it's typically reactive. It's not because they are intrinsically mean.

They don't, a child, a 13-month-year-old child does not have the agency or the capacity to be mean. And so what does that, what does that entail? That entails that when Megan says that her daughter, Evelyn, is mean, it's a projection of her own aggressive impulses. What she's really saying is, I am being mean to my child. Wow. And if we look at this, if we look at this even from a broader perspective, she's saying more than that. What she's saying is the world was mean to me. I grew up in a dysfunctional home that was violent.

This is what I saw. I saw meanness in my home. I experienced violence. I never felt safe. So the world is mean. my family is mean my family is not trustworthy my family is cruel so naturally growing up in that environment and this again this would be an argument for the traumatized felicide offender if you see the world is cruel and mean then you're going to see the players in it your daughter specifically

in this case as being mean also because she is a part of that environment yeah she's now her family So this is a projection. You know, what we know of a lot of, it's interesting, there's a forensic psychologist, a well-known forensic psychologist in the UK, I think she's deceased now, but her name is Yudora Weldon. And she talked a lot about this idea that many mothers

have aggressive impulses, but they have to conceal those impulses because it's not socially acceptable to have those aggressive impulses. So they get concealed. And then if the mother can't contain those impulses, she will at some point act them out. If there's a trigger that's big enough or large enough or upsetting enough or frustrating enough, those impulses, those aggressive impulses get acted out.

So by calling her daughter mean what she's saying essentially is, this is how I feel about myself. Her daughter is a projection of all those aggressive impulses that she has to conceal, but she feels. And so when there's a trigger, and I don't know what that trigger is, but when there's some type of provocation that she perceives, let's say, I mean, and this is where it gets crazy. So let's say her daughter, let's say she hasn't fed her daughter for two days and she's hungry.

And let's say that Evelyn is begging for food and maybe hitting her and say, mom, I want to eat, I want to eat, right? But Megan sees her as mean. Megan sees that as a provocation. It could be something as simple as feeding her or changing her diaper, whatever, that when there's a trigger or a provocation and you see a 13-month-old as mean, what are you going to do? Right? What happens when somebody mean hits you?

What do you do? Me? No, just in general. You fight back. Yeah. You fight back. So in a peculiar way, Megan Boswell sees her own daughter as an adversary. Wow.

Megan Boswell, because everyone in her family was adversarial and they were fighting with each other and they were violent, she doesn't know what it means to have a healthy relationship. She sees her daughter as mean and cruel and adversarial. And when her daughter provokes her, she fights. back. Wow. And so how do I think this happened? How do I think this played out? Let me introduce another idea here. There's something that psychologists sometimes called the Medea syndrome, which is based on, in Greek mythology, for those who know Greek mythology, there's, Medea is a character or a figure who helped this guy.

Jason locate the golden fleece through the maze when he was trying to find the minotaur was chasing him, and he finds the golden fleece, and he returns it, and Medea and Jason get married. But then Jason decides that he doesn't want to be with Medea anymore, and he leaves her. And so Medea, out of revenge, essentially murders their children. She murders their sons. And so the Medea syndrome is when a mother seeks revenge on a spouse, typically, for infidelity or just out of anger and frustration. However, that's too literal of interpretation. So the Medea syndrome also encompasses, it's more subtle.

It can be more broadly defined in terms of essentially if a mother is not getting what they want, if there's obstacles, in their way. They may harm a child to remove those options. And so you see a subtler version. This is a subtler version of the Medeusin syndrome, I believe, in the sense that Megan starts a new job in December and she meets Hunter in December and she perceives Hunter as kind of her prince in shining armor, right? Her knight in shine armor. Someone that's going to rescue her maybe. Right. Someone who's going to rescue her. His family owns this restaurant. They seem to be stable. They seem to be everything that she didn't have as a child. But there's a big problem with this scenario because Hunter is completely indifferent. If you listen to the trial, it's brought up all the time.

Did Hunter know about Evelyn? No. He says, Hunter said in earlier interviews, he never met Evelyn. Did Hunter ever ask about Evelyn? No. Did he ever talk about Evelyn? No. In other words, Hunter is completely indifferent to Evelyn. Hunter isn't interested in Evelyn. He doesn't care about Evelyn. If he has a future, if he's going to have a future with Megan, he doesn't want Evelyn in the picture. He's not interested in Evelyn.

Right. He's not interested in Evelyn. And so, Megan, if she wants this fantasized future with her knight and shining armor, who happens to have a daughter who's mean, then Megan has to figure out a way to overcome that obstacle. And this is a version of the Medea syndrome in the sense that I believe potentially, again, I'm speculating here. But part of this murder, I think, is because she perceives that her daughter is an inconvenience to realizing this fantasy of the perfect life with Hunter. So it's not revenge, it's not revenge, but it's killing a child as a means to an end.

So the child is seen not as an end to be loved in and of themselves, but as a means. The murder is a means to get what she wants in her life. Just as Medea murders Jason and her children, actually. Medea murders the children as a means to get back at Jason. The means, the goal is revenge. The means is murder of her children so that Jason will suffer the rest of his life. the means here is murdering her daughter Evelyn to have this fantasized perfect life that she never had when she was a child.

And the most, by the way, so one of the most blatant examples of this type of behavior is there's a, I know we have some listeners in the UK. There was a well-known case, Luis Porton, who was 23 years old. She murdered her two daughters. And the reason she did it was because, quote, they got in the way of my sex life, unquote. Gosh. So the end is the same. She wants to be independent.

She doesn't want her daughters around because apparently she wants to date and have sex with a lot of men. And her two daughters, at least with Louise Porton, they present an obstacle. So again, most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. And that's a version of the Medea syndrome. I think you have something similar here with Megan Boswell. She's young. She gets pregnant at a very young age. Probably it wasn't a planned pregnancy. 17 years old. 17 years old in foster care.

Right. Right. 17 years old. She gets pregnant. It wasn't planned. There's no father in the picture. She probably feels like she has few options. She sees her daughter as mean, right?

Like in many ways, this is a situation where she just sees her daughter as an inconvenience in her life. And so that's the tragedy, right? The tragedy here is not valuing this child who's completely innocent, not valuing this child, which her best friend said in court, is a happy, go lucky, wonderful, beautiful child, not valuing this child for who she is. Right. And so the tragedy here is that Megan Boswell, because of her past and her childhood and the trauma she experienced and everything I explained is that she can't, she's incapable, apparently, of seeing her child as this loving, beautiful creature that she is. Yeah. Blue-eyed baby girl that all of us fell in love with in the photos when she went missing. So one of her explanations for why she didn't report Evelyn as missing to the detective was that she was, quote,

I was afraid of being seen as a bad mother, unquote, right? That's interesting. That is interesting. That's interesting in the sense that and she does cry several times. She cries in court. She cries in the interviews with the detectives to some degree. She has some emotion. Right.

Right. She has some emotion. It wasn't like watching the Lori Vallow trial when there was only one day she had a motion and it was for seemingly herself. But yeah, there's emotion. And so the reason I bring this up is because these would be arguments against the third type, the personality disorder mother or the psychopathic mother, right, in the sense that she does seem to have some genuine emotion. She does seem to care to some degree about her daughter being gone. she's inventing this idea or she's more concerned.

I mean, clearly there's a bit of narcissism here because she's concerned about how she comes across rather than her daughter. Her father, her father pleads with her to tell. Her father says, if this is an accident, you need to tell me. I will love you regardless. Like he's doing everything he can to get her to say what she did, to confess, and to tell everyone where Evelyn is.

and she just won't go there. And she won't go there because she doesn't want to, in her word, she doesn't want to be seen as a bad mother. I guess I could argue that there is something a little psychopathic in that, in the sense that she knows that her daughter is in this trash can and has been decaying in this trash can and she just won't acknowledge it. She's doing impression management. She's more concerned about her how people will perceive her

and how it affects her than she is about finding her. daughter. But on the other hand, I could argue that part of the reason she's, she's afraid of being seen as a bad mother is because she grew up in such a dysfunctional family and she was so traumatized that she's trying to, in some ways, just save a little part of herself that she's probably having a hard time hanging on to, this good part of herself, this part of herself that she likes that she sees as a good person, as a good mother. She's trying to cling to that for dear life because of her traumas and because of her experience,

her negative experiences as a child. So I could make an argument that this would also kind of fit into the traumatized Philicide mother category. Okay. I have a question. Is now a good time?

Or do you want to keep going? I think... Why don't you keep going? I'll hold on to it. I think those are my main... those are my main points. So let's open it up. Let's let's take some questions.

Those are my main points, I think, about why I feel like she fits into that category and why, you know, if I had to guess, just in reconstructing this crime, my guess is that there was some trigger, which could have been something simple, like Evelyn wanting to be fed. and being excessively hungry

or even maybe he wanted her diaper change, something very simple. And she, her daughter became frustrated and perhaps maybe hit her or scratched her or something. And Megan became enraged because Megan already has this perception of her 13-month-old daughter as being mean and cruel. Megan fought back.

fought back. She's got this other fantasy, this fantasized life with Hunter kind of on the horizon. She's got this job at Hunter's restaurant, right? She's, she's picturing this way out of her current life. She's picturing this way out of all this pain and trauma she experiences a child. She's picturing this path to happiness. And Evelyn doesn't fit on that path. So you have this provocation. She overreacts. It may have been impulsive. I think she may have been thinking about this. I think there may be some premeditation in the sense that she probably was thinking about this crime for a little bit, but it was the provocation of a moment and a moment. I think she overreacted, kind of like shaken baby syndrome. A lot of times that happens for similar reasons. It's impulsive.

So I think in a moment, she probably acted impulsively. She harmed Evelyn, murdered her, may or may not have been an accident. I don't, you know, I think there probably was some degree of premeditation. With the overkill, I don't think it was an accident. And so it didn't, you know, the tragedy here is that it didn't, whatever the provocation was, it probably didn't take much for, you know, this was like an accident waiting to happen. with Megan's background and the traumas she experienced and the violence in her home, like she knew violence.

Yeah. And the world, she saw the world as threatening. She saw her daughter as threatening. I just, I don't think it took much to push her over the edge. And so I think that's how this happened. Let me ask you this question and give some thoughts about it. What's the psychology behind the way she hid? the body in the playhouse. And I'm going to suggest that you already answered this when you said

that everything was her own projection and she, she is the one that was mean and she is, she believes her family is mean and her upbringing is mean and her parents are mean. It is interesting to me and to other people that not only did she put her daughter, or allegedly, excuse me, innocent until proven guilty. but allegedly, according to the state, put her baby. Well, she could be, she could be acquitted and still have, she still could have committed crime. Right. I don't want to have to take our video down.

Right. Right. She's, she allegedly, allegedly, right. Allegedly. Allegedly. Then put the trash can in her childhood playhouse in the backyard, not throwing it away and not going back and getting it. So I think that people do want to understand is there some symbolism there to putting her daughter in a place that she knew as a child? Yeah, that's an interesting question.

You know, I think in many cases of filicide, like all of the crimes we talk about, things are not totally clear cut. So even though she may have had this provocative moment where she murders her daughter, she still loves her. There's still a part of her that feels very connected to her daughter. There's a part of her that wants her daughter to have a, believe it or not, even though she murdered her, there's a part of her that has this fantasy that her daughter is going to have a happy childhood. And I think part of this is trying to preserve that. There's definitely a high level of denial here.

If there wasn't, you know, her father pleading with her to say, hey, where is she? even if this is her father pleads with her and says look Megan if this was an accident come clean it's okay well you know the courts will sort it out we need to know where your baby is and she can't do it and I think yeah I think part of putting her in the playoffs is trying to preserve this fantasy that nothing went wrong that nothing happened she's trying to yeah it's there's something really regressive about it yeah she's trying to rewrite history. She's got a dead baby. But by putting her there, I think, yeah, I think you're right. I think she's trying to like, she's trying to rewrite the past and feel as if this didn't happen

and feel as if, you know, maybe she's, obviously she probably recognized that what she did was a mistake. She certainly, I think, recognized the wrongfulness of it. Yeah. But it's, so the short answer is it's a reflection of the turmoil and the conflict she feels about having murdered her child and finding a way to have it make sense to her and specifically a way in which she can somehow preserve her daughter's memory and create this fantasy that maybe what she did wasn't that bad or that wrong, something like that. Okay. Another question, and I can't find it right now, so I'm not going to pin it.

But somebody asked, and there have actually been many questions about Hunter, the alleged ex-boyfriend Hunter that we've been talking about that Megan was allegedly obsessed with. And motive, possibly, a relationship with him. he has been involuntarily, you know, put into a psychiatric hospital and has been now been told that we've been told in court that he has been diagnosed as with schizophrenia. And a lot of people have wondered and asked, well, could stress bring on schizophrenia? And I don't think that's the case that stress creates schizophrenia. So maybe can you talk about that a little bit too?

Because this is a question I've seen over and over again in the chat. in Facebook groups during the trial that people are trying to understand. Because certainly there's like two teams here that, you know, he didn't want to testify. So all of a sudden he's mentally ill and other people like, oh my gosh, did this cause it? Being called, you know, being accused of doing something to Evelyn. Help us understand this when it comes to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. So assuming that that's an accurate description of what's going on with him, that he's in a mental institution. I know that, you know, there was some.

talk in trial that he, by I believe it was it his father, that there's days when he doesn't know who he is, he doesn't remember his name, right? That if, let's assume this is fairly severe schizophrenia. And schizophrenia occurs on a spectrum in the same way that autism does. But let's, so you, there's different levels of schizophrenia. And we talked about that and psychosis too. We talked about that during the, the, the, Delph I try a whole lot.

But that was a big issue. But I think current research would suggest that schizophrenia often develops in young adulthood. So that would be consistent with Hunter. But there tends to be a genetic propensity towards schizophrenia. And there's something called the diathesis stress model, which is that the manifestation of schizophrenia is going to be more likely and more severe if you're experiencing. to a large amount of stress or stressors. So one of the elements of treating schizophrenia is not just medication,

which would include antipsychotics, but trying to reduce stress in the environment. So someone who's schizophrenic, you know, years ago I worked with a very severe schizophrenic veteran, and he had a really abusive mother. And he kept, you know, we have this love-hate relationship with his mother. He kept wanting to go home and visit her. And every time he would go home and visit her, he would come back forwardly psychotic. He would stop taking his medication.

He would be disoriented from reality. He would get drunk. It was a disaster. He would become suicidal. And so one of the parts of treatment is to talk about ways to regulate or reduce that stress. And, you know, how can he start limiting his, you know, I mean, going to see his mother, of course, is something I'm not going to argue against, but every time you want to see her, she would pile on abuse, more abuse after abuse. And so, you know, the question is, how do you reduce stress

in the environment? How do you create an environment that's less stressful so that you can regulate or you can kind of modulate these symptoms of schizophrenia? I mean, medication is going to be the first step, obviously, that's the main intervention, but after that. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. Ora actively

removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove.

You definitely want to try to create an environment that's relatively calm and balanced. So arguably, if Hunter, my guess is that Hunter has some genetic tendency towards schizophrenia. and I don't know his family obviously, but there might be some family history of that. And so he finds himself in this quagmire with, you know, he starts dating Megan, and he finds himself in this very difficult quagmire that's just filled with stress.

And whatever, that propensity was towards schizophrenia was exacerbated by this situation, you know, the online trolls, the, right, the, the people that

were labeling him as a killer, all of that, you know, it didn't create the schizophrenia. I don't think it created, I don't think it created the psychotic break, but I think it was certainly a contributing factor to if he had this underlying genetic propensity towards schizophrenia, it could have accelerated

the onset of schizophrenia. Yeah. Thank you. Butterbiscuit asks, by the way, I love your name, Butterbiscuit, either that or I'm really hungry. Maybe that's it. We haven't had dinner. But Butterbiscuit is asking, Dr. John, is there a condition that Megan could have to be

able to lie so much and be so convincing. I know you touched upon how it could be traits of something, but, but yeah, what, I mean, it is mind-blowing watching her just lie and lie and lie and lie, and we will never know what's true and what isn't. Yeah, that, that condition would be called severe denial. Okay. That condition would be, I mean, it's not, it wouldn't be unexpected. Again, going back to this idea that she wants to see herself as this loving mother.

So you clearly have this dissonance or the discrepancy between being a loving mother and having murdered your child or allegedly murdered your child. Right. And so in order to cope with that reality, something has to give. Right. And what gives is the fact that she's going to downplay and deny and minimize the, the fact that she murdered her daughter, right? So she's created this alternative reality about giving her mother to, I mean, giving her daughter to her mother or giving her daughter to Ethan or like anything she can,

any of these far-fit scenarios she can create, which by the way, her father, you know, Tommy, Tommy's a, you know, Tommy's a, whatever else his issues are, Tommy's an astute guy, right? and he's talking to her and he's pleading with her. And he says, you need to stop playing me. He said, you need to stop playing me, girl. I see right through this.

Right. He knows that this is denial. He knows she's lying. I mean, everyone knows that. But, yeah, the condition is just, this is, denial is a form of self-protection. Denial is a defense mechanism for our inability. to deal with reality.

And the reality is that she murdered her child or allegedly murdered her child. And that's a reality that's not pleasant to her because she wants to think she's a good mother. And so as long as she can invent this alternative reality and stick to it and deceive people, she's going to do that. Right. Okay.

Interesting. Let's see what else. We have some great questions here. Thank you, everyone, for asking your questions. Well, people want to, I will just say, say for those that are asking, is she borderline? Is she psychopathic? Is she a sociopath? John will say, I'm not diagnosing. So we can't ask those. You can give you trick things, but we stop on saying

this is what's going on. Yeah, I would say, so, I mean, the question's a good one because the question is asking, again, of the three buckets that I talked about that you could kind of place philicide offenders into the third bucket is the personality disorder bucket. And, you know, I made a bit of an argument about why she fits into that in terms of her line and her manipulation. But I don't know. Yeah, I don't, unless I sat down with her and did some testing and did a full clinical and forensic interview, it's hard to really know.

You know, I'd want to see, I'd want to see the results of like an MMPI and some other tests and Aurora shock and, you know, some other things I would use. in a forensic evaluation to really make that kind of determination. But yeah, but I mean, you know, I'd leave that up to our viewers. I think there's an argument to be made here that she fits into the bucket of personality disorders. The argument against her being a psychopath is she does seem to have some genuine emotion. Yeah, she does.

She does seem to have some history of connection to her daughter in spite of the fact that she sees her as mean. You know, there's, again, with a lot of criminals, nothing, yeah, throw in, I know. A lot of times with criminals, things are not entirely clear cut. You know, you can, she can see her daughter as mean, and yet more than anything, she can desire to have a healthy, loving relationship with her. The problem is she doesn't know how to do that, because she doesn't have the experience or the template or the model from her own upbringing. to enact healthy, you know, to enact any type of a loving, intimate relationship with her daughter. She just doesn't know how to do it.

So I think that's got to be a frustration to her. I would say that, so in that sense, I would say that's less psychopathic and more related to attachment failures. Do you think that she valued Evelyn at times when she received positive attention from people on social media or for being Evelyn's mom? And some people mentioned that they thought that she used Evelyn to try to get Ethan back and then tried to get rid of Evelyn when she was trying to, you know, get Hunter's attention. But maybe that's different. I mean, so the question is, did you, yeah, I mean, now you're getting into some real psychopathic stuff. The question is, does she see her daughter as an object to be used to get what she wants?

I don't know. I mean, if that's the case, now you're really crossing, now you're really getting into that third bucket because using her, I believe she sees her daughter's an obstacle, I guess, which would be similar to objectifying her. You know, yeah, but I mean, I don't know. That's for us to decide in other words. Yeah, that's a tough one.

I'm going to leave that up to our gems to figure out. And Stella Bella says she was desperate. for a home, which is interesting too. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's an, sure, that's an interesting dynamic that Evelyn could have been loved in a way that she never felt like she was by, by Tommy and Angela, by her parents. And so there could have been some jealousy, which, by the way, would contribute to this perception that Evelyn was mean.

Thank you, everyone. It's, like I said, been a long time since we've gone live with you. For those wanting more of Dr. John, we are going, uh, We are doing behind the scenes episodes weekly on Patreon, patreon.com slash into crime. So, but we are also going to continue, of course, to have our hidden hour here. Dr. John, I think I covered everything at this time. Anything you would like to end on? I think I scribbled down a note here that I was thinking about.

I'll just read this, but I just kind of ending thoughts here. I put at Love's gravitational center is the unconditional love of the innocent child. And then I said, speculated that maybe Megan felt unloved and incapable of expressing love at her core, at her gravitational center. And I think the tragedy of this is the question I sometimes ask with Philicide is, if you can't love a child unconditionally, then who can you love? Right. And I think that kind of question gets to the heart of this case. You know, I think Megan, first and foremost, this is going to sound a little cliche,

but she didn't love herself. And she didn't feel a tremendous amount of love from her family. family or her family. There's really kind of an absence of love all around this case. And this is the, unfortunately, this is the tragic consequence. So I don't know. The question is for me is if you can't love, if you can't love a child unconditionally, then who can you love? Thank you, babe. It is a great question and a heartbreaking one. And I think the reason why cases like this get our attention again and again and again because it is unimaginable and unfathomable that anyone could do this to a child, let alone your own. So, yeah, thank you, everyone. I just posted,

we're grateful for your support. It means a lot to us. Thank you for being here. And mostly, I just want to thank you, John, for helping us make sense of this while we wait for the verdict. Like I said, I've been reporting on this every day. It's been really hard. And I think I've really needed this. So like our listeners here, I needed this too. So thank you. Thank you for helping us to make sense of the census. It's been a while since, it's been a while since I've been alive. So I'm glad to to come back and talk about as heartbreaking as this case is. I mean, it's you and I, it's five, six weeks ago, you and I were talking about needing a break from cases where children were murdered. And yes, we took a, we took a little break, but.

Not really. A little, I said a little break. I tried. I tried to take a little break. Unfortunately, they're the cases that draw me in. But I think it's because I can't fathom it. And it's, yeah, let's pray for justice. I think that, I think the reason why people are so fascinated by those side cases,

including myself. I mean, I don't mean that in a gloomy way, but it really cuts against kind of all cultural and maternal kind of stereotypes and instincts, I think, you know, that it's just, it's hard to fathom, you know, that this idea that a mother would some, a mother would somehow murder their child or children because children are the lifeblood of society and our futures.

And most maternal instincts are the complete opposite, which is to protect their children and to sacrifice for their children. And so I think it's always an oddity. Philicide is always an oddity because it really goes, against the grain of normal behaviors and normal expectations. All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us. And now let's go get some dinner.

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