Hidden True Crime - Mica Miller: Dr. John Reacts to JP Miller's Bizarre Interview on NewsNation

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Warning: This episode discusses topics related to suicide and self-harm. Please listen with caution. Listen to JP Miller's Full Interview with NewsNation on Banfield https://youtu.be/_SRhuC5-66w?si=bbsitgY-JyYbdUZV Mica Miller's Family Reaction Interview with NewsNation on Banfield https://youtu.be/-paFNkHxmHw?si=Fls8JyG4XJyOg3mZ Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and has followed the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell case since 2019. She and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to Rich McHugh, actually. He did the interview and then it was aired exclusively on Banfield on News Nation. Why now, why the decision to speak now after all this time has passed, where's your head at? Well, I think part of it is I finally got the approval of my attorneys to do so. The ones working on the defamation cases, they said it's easier to win a defamation case, the more the people talk. And so they've been collecting a lot of evidence over the past while. And also I think that now that some of the emotion has died down in the world and with people

that are led by their feelings, I think now they deserve to hear some logic and some truth. and make their own assessment. Do you miss her? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Did you feel, did you see this coming? Yes, but it doesn't change at all the the power of the pain of reality. I saw it coming for years. I told them for years,

this would happen over there. If she gets off her medicine, suicide is the next thing. She tried it in the past, but with me, she always remained. okay with me she was under meds with me she was healthy and happy and even if she did get lower stopped taking her medicine i would help her get back on it and things would be fine without me and with her family she's off meds and she committed suicide and and i told them this would happen over and over again um i tried my best to stop her from getting a gun i went to judges i have have copies of all the the police i talked to her counselor the pastor she was going to

her family her friends i told them all don't let her get a gun do whatever it takes prevent her from getting a gun and and when she was with me she was never able to go that far but with them that's that's exactly what happened and it and it destroyed me and I still honestly I still haven't really grasp it like it hasn't I kind of keep putting off the reality of it and I try not to think about it as much as I can what was going on in your marriage the week Micah died the week She had we didn't talk that entire week. I'd emailed her several times that week, and my regular emails are sending her letters

telling her that I love her. And she came over to the house. The last time I saw her was a few weeks before she passed away. We spent about four hours together. And we hugged and kissed, and she was in and out of psychotic conversations. She would say, you know, one thing about double agents that are following her.

That was one of the phrases she would use when she was off her meds, double-edged. The other phrase, she would say she wants to come home so bad, her family won't let her. She told me she wanted to live in Africa and asked me if I'd live with her. I said, sure, if you take your medicine, you know. And so she told me if I'd give her some money and if I would write her a letter saying certain things in this letter that she would take her medicine. And so I tried that. But she desperately wanted to come home. She was just so afraid her family would disown her. And so the week before she passed away,

I probably emailed her maybe seven or eight times that week just saying, I love you. You need your lithium. Don't forget who you are when you're on medicine versus who you are when you're off. She had lost 40 pounds in a month, and nobody, it was in her life, thought to take care of her. Nobody. She was living with a former registered nurse. Her family, quote unquote, were taking care of her. She lost 40 pounds in one month, and no one thought she needed help.

She was talking about living in Africa. No one thought she needed help. She's making videos on Facebook. And if you see the videos, you know it's not her because she has a different cadence, a different tone, a different amount of words per minute when she's healthy and on medicine than when she's off. And the way she was even looking into space when she's taking those videos, you knew she was delusional. And if somebody loved her enough to take her to a professional and say, okay, this woman says she's being abused or this woman says, you know, this or she's lost 40 pounds in a month, if someone thought I need to take her to a professional,

that professional would have known that she needed medicine. And the reason I know that's true is because I took her a few months before, a few weeks. before she passed away, I took her to probate court. And in three minutes time, three minutes time, she went in, she walked back out. When I went in, they said, your wife is mentally ill and she needs medicine desperately. And I said, okay, let's do it. Let's get her the medicine. Let's get her help.

And they said she's not a danger to anybody in society, so we can't force her to do it. But if one of her family members or friends had taken note of the way she was acting and seeing what was happening to her physically and taking her to just one professional, they could have saved her life. where were you when Micah died? It was on a Saturday. I was in Charleston with about 100 people from my kids. What was it?

Oh, soccer. It was a soccer tournament. Okay. So we know, you know, I've gone through Micah's last day, pretty much almost down to the minute. Bring us through your last day. You said soccer. Do you have any documentation that they were there? Oh, you're asking because, of it?

Okay, I got you. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I can't believe people. Oh, my Lord. So yeah, I was with about 100 people. We had dinner that night. We were all together at the soccer fields that day. Afterwards, after the soccer game, I was, somebody was with me the entire time who I can't name due to legal purposes, but I will say it's somebody that I love more than anything else on planet Earth. Man or woman? Young person that I cannot name due to legal purposes. But somebody that I am responsible for. love very, very much. And that person was with me. And we went shopping in Charleston. And we got food in Charleston. And there's all the receipts from that throughout the time. I think we might have gotten gas to. And then I made it back to, and made it back to Myrtle Beach. And I even, I was just

actually looking today at emails that I sent her that day. I sent her four emails that day. And I just noticed today that two of those, she wasn't able to read because it was after it had happened. What do you think happened that day? So according to what she's tried to do in the past, and according to her doctors who have taken care of her for years, and according to me who's seen it over and over again, I imagine that she was in an incredibly euphoric attitude. I saw her pictures on the Dick's pawn shop. Someone sent me screenshots of the Dick's pawn shop pictures where she's smiling, which out of the six or seven times that she tried to commit suicide in the past, only one of those times was she depressed. the other times she was very euphoric and she would wake up and say

I think I'm supposed to die today and I said no no no honey you're not you're not going to do that she said well my mind tells me that I'm supposed to kill myself I said we're not going to listen to your mind we're going to take you to a doctor and get you help and I discover of course that she had stopped taking her meds each time but either way she was in a euphoric attitude

and so you see the Dick's pawnshot video where she's wearing her her work clothes and with a smile on her face so they sold her a weapon And then I assume that she drove. She told one of her best friends. So far, the four people she spent the most time with every week,

no one's interviewed or talked to those four people. And one of those people that I talked to told me that she told her two years ago, if I ever commit suicide, I'm going to go to this place in Lumberton, the State Park or something like that. Which friend is that? I probably wouldn't want to name her because I saw this friend one time here in public for 30 seconds. And of course, Robbie, as Harvey, as usual, got somebody, take a picture and destroyed the girl's life, brought up her past and horrible things about her.

So people are scared to tell the truth or to talk about the good things of Micah because of the social media. So this friend says that Micah told her if I'm going to take my life, I will probably do it in Lumberton, River State Park. She told me that after Micah passed away, but she told me that Micah told her that two years ago, yeah. Did she say why? Why that location?

She said because Micah told her it was peaceful and outdoors, and Micah did love the outdoors, loved out tours. Vacations were outdoory vacations because that's what she loved. Has she ever been there? No, not that I know of. Not ever that I know of. Do you guys have any connection to that area?

Not at all. Have you ever been there? Nope. I've never even heard of the place. I never even heard of what was the city? Robinson County. I never been heard of there before.

So did it strike you as before you heard this? Did it strike you as odd when you heard that she, where she went and what they say allegedly happened? Did you question it at all? Well, I didn't think it was real. I thought her family had made it up

and had somebody call me and say that. So that's one big thing. I didn't think it was real. When I found out it was real, you know how like you tell somebody something, you tell him, you tell him, you tell him, you tell him. Then when it happens, you don't want to say I told you so

because it's a horrible thing. That's what I felt like. I felt like I told you, Like I told her family this so many times you can't imagine. I told her friends this. I told everybody. I said if y'all don't get her lithium, she's gonna commit suicide.

Her doctor told her this on paperwork where her doctor said this. And then when I get the call, I feel like the world's biggest failure because I spent the past three months when her family got her out of the hospital and didn't bring her home. And her dad talked her into buying him a car

and all this stuff was happening. and it was all crazy. I made a vow that I was going to do something every single day to try to get her back on her lithium and save her life. And so every day I did something. Sometimes I did four, five, six, seven things. Some days it's just one thing. But every day. There was an email, a text, visit someone, talk to a family member, talk to her friend, go somewhere, go to a judge, go to probate. I'm going to do something to save her life. And I spent every single day for those three months doing that. So getting that phone call made me feel like the world's greatest failure. I was against the whole world because everyone told me that it wasn't true. and that I was making it up and that whatever they were saying. So it was me against the world for three months, and I failed. What was the call? Who was the call from? And what did they say? Oh, man, it was a man.

I got a call, and it was, I think it was a detective, I think. I remember screaming really loud and throwing up everywhere. and what did they tell you I remember throwing up spaghetti that day it was a lot of throw up it was something red

I'm sorry what did they tell you I don't remember that no no I don't remember that hold on I don't remember he said my family member called the hospital

and spoke to I think you the head nurse or medical examiner somebody and that lady read me stuff that the Robinson County, I guess, had wrote on a piece of paper. And she was reading me suicide and the weapon and where it was at and all these different facts. And so then I, because the detective would not tell me it was suicide. And then I called him back and told him what the hospital told me. And he was pissed off and asked me who that lady's name was. And I didn't know her name.

And if I didn't know, I wasn't going to tell him anyway, because I'm glad she told me. Anyway, and so, and I said, is this stuff true? And I can't remember if he said yes or just hung up. I don't remember. I don't remember. One of the things that raised eyebrows initially for the public was when you gave a sermon here and you announced publicly that she had committed suicide. And you talked about, you attributed it to her mental health.

why do you feel the need to come out with that at that moment? That's a great question. So first let's discuss why I preached that morning. Is that okay? Okay, so people have been asking that. So have you ever taken any psychology classes or anything like that? Very few. Okay, yeah, I haven't taken any.

So I would love to find a book or a psychology professor or someone that could tell me the correct response when you spend seven years trying to keep someone alive by just taking a few pills that their family tells them not to take. Then when they don't take it, they go into a hospital. Their family takes them out, and then you spend three months trying to get them help when her family's telling them that you're evil and the bad person. And then it finally happens the thing that you've been dreading for seven years, then you're trying to prevent for seven years. Then it happens. I don't know what the correct response is, right?

Am I supposed to stay home and cry? Am I supposed to go out with my friends? Am I supposed to go to a bar and drink? I don't know what the right thing is. Right? as a pastor, so I just get on my knees and pray. I mean, I want to die in that moment. And so the next morning, I remember thinking, okay, if I stay home, I'm probably going to kill myself. I'm probably going to just go to heaven and be with her and be done because I need to be around

people, but I don't want to be around people and come to church and I'm not going to preach because then I'll be judging the guy that's preaching the whole time, and I can preach just as easy as I can breathe. So I'm just going to go in the mode of what I'm normally going to do and just continue my life normally until I finally have to deal with what's going on. And so I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know the right response. I wish somebody had told me if I, in hindsight. If I go back in time, I probably would have done the same thing and still preached. Another point of concern, let's say for people watching, was when you give a eulogy, there was something concerned. People said that was concerning that you said that you tried to

raise Micah from the dead. And I believe at another point you said you laid next to her body in the morgue. Is that true? I didn't lay next to her body. I mean, I laid, I couldn't, you can't lay next to her because she's, her body's up on this thing. But I mean, I hugged her. and I sat on the floor, you know, next to her and just talked to her for a while. But yeah, I tried raising her from the dead. Because you know what? If it had worked, we'd have a whole different story. But God forbid me not try it and always wanted the rest of my life, would it have worked?

Jesus did it. Elisha did it. A few other people in the Bible. And so, yes, if somebody I love more than anything in the world has passed away, what I believe to be in early death, you better believe I'm going to try. try to, in Jesus name, raise him from the dead. I believe in healing. I believe in miracles. I believe in the raising of the dead.

I'm a one God apostolic tongue-talking, holy rolling, born-again, heaven-bound believer in the liberator power of Jesus' name. I'm not ashamed of it. Well, you can't argue that it would certainly be a different story if he'd been able to raise Micah Miller from the dead. Would you characterize your relationship with Micah as healthy? Oh, man. When she was under medicine, we had the greatest marriage you could ever imagine.

We spent every day together. Have you ever abused your wife? Never, not once in any way, shape, or form. I took better care of her than anybody could ever take care of her. I never made her ask her to clean the house, not once in seven years of marriage. She never had to cook a single meal. She never had to work. She was never harmed physically in any way.

In a letter or in an email you wrote to Micah, you apologized. Yes. You apologized for hiring, for tracking her, for messing with her. their tires for posting the picture. So that's all true, right? So if I wanted, if a great question, I'm so glad you asked that actually. If I wanted to lie about that, I would just say I never wrote the letter, right? Because how can you prove that I wrote somebody a letter? There's no signature, there's no name. It's not in my handwriting. But I 100% wrote the letter. And I did it because the night that she was with me, the last night we were together for four hours at one point, because

the whole four hours I'm trying to get her to take her medicine. And then she's saying my family doesn't want me to, they don't want me to come inside the house, maybe it's your house coming inside. So if I want to get to a point, she says, you know what, I'll take my medicine and I'll come home, if you'll give me $10,000 and if you'll write me an apology letter. So let me understand this correctly. The letter, the email that you wrote to Micah, apologizing for hiring a PI, tracking her, messing with her tires, and posting a topless photo of her, you wrote that, you say. Yes, sir.

Now you're saying that you didn't actually do these things. I did the PI thing. But so over the years what I've learned with her is when she's in a delusional state of mind, I have to play into it in order to get her to get it back in medicine. So the first year or two when she'd say something, I'd say, that's not true. That's not real. She'd get mad and blow up and, you know, knock a hole in the wall or something like that. So then by December, December 2019, I think it was, she, we were watching.

and she just stopped and said, you're a double agent. And I said, no, I'm not. She said, yes, you are. She said, and I'm going to call the police. You're a double agent. You've stolen my things. And I'm going to put you in jail. And I was like, oh my goodness, what I do?

She hadn't been taking her medicine. So just to be clear, you wrote this to Micah, but now you're saying you didn't do those things. No, I did not slash the tire. I did not. I don't think there was a naked picture of her anywhere, ever, anywhere. I think that it was just a made up thing. And I think that her tire just got something ran over

from what I understand. I don't know. I didn't see anything. But I did hire the PI before. I did everything I could to stop her from getting a weapon. Everything you could imagine. I hired a private eye and I said, put a tracker on her car. And if she gets anywhere near a gun store, please let me know.

I did everything I could think of. Did that private eye alert you that day? No, I had stopped paying for it about three weeks beforehand, four weeks beforehand. Yeah. Why? Running out of money and people telling me that she was totally fine and I'm wasting my So what do you say to the doubters and critics who say you drove her to suicide? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

So wait, wait, she wasn't with me. Because listen, with me, she didn't commit suicide. Apart from me for three months and with her family, she did commit suicide. One of the last things she showed me, she showed me a book she's reading called, I love Jesus, but I want to die. And I said, why do you want to die? She said, because I can't come home because my family won't let me. That's what I say to them.

Do you feel that you did anything? that you would change? Do you feel any part responsible? God, that's a great question. Man, that's such a good question. Wow, what a good question. Can I have a second to think about it? Sure.

Okay. Oh, my gosh, that's such a good question. What would I do differently? Oh, man. Oh, I know what I do. I know what I do. I know what I do. I would not involve her family

when she's having mental episodes and is schizophrenic and, you know, it's off off her men. I would never have text them. We've seen you dressed as Spider-Man, In videos. Okay, let me just go away.

Hold on. I'm not Spider-Man. In your text to me, it says Spider-Man as the person who's texting me. So we've seen you in videos dressed as Spider-Man. We know there's a Spider-Man character in your back, the back of your house somewhere. Her family says wonders if you have identity issues and this need to align with superheroes. What's your reaction? And what's the reason for the Spider-Man?

Well, first of all, I can neither confirm nor deny that I've ever put on a Spider-Man costume. But you'll never see me in the same room with Spider-Man. I will say that. One of the videos that has surfaced recently is from years ago. I'm sure you know what it is. You're sitting face down on the ground,

and you're freaking out, and you're talking about You're really squealing about being eaten by ants. Taking the wrong meds, that you missed your family. I mean, for viewers, for people watching it, the common thought is, what is going on here, and do you have a drug problem? So I fell out of a tree, a giant magnolia tree. It was like 300 years old.

I broke 12 bones. It was 10 to 12 bones. I don't know if you count finger. Yeah, it was count. Anyway, I have all this metal in my body, and I'd never taken pain meds in my life, and I'd just had my body cast taken off, and so I took a little bit too much pain meds that day. It fell out of a tree, broke a bunch of bones, took to me pain meds. Now is that story.

Not hallucinogenic. Not. What would hallucinogenic be? Make you hallucinate. What makes you hallucinate? Drugs. Like illegal drugs? Illucidgenic drugs, yeah.

Oh, I've never done illegal drug my whole life. Okay. Oh! That was a lie. I'm sorry. That was a lie. When I was 16 years old, one time I was in a truck with two of my friends, and they were both smoking pot. I didn't smoke any, but they do a thing called Hot Box.

And so I got some of that. And I tried steroids one time. That is the interview. We are going to discuss today. Dr. John has already given his full analysis of what we have so far, as far as understanding what this is and has discussed a lot about course of control. before we go any further, John, Dr. John requested that I start with a video that he says is key to it all. Key to this entire interview we are about to discuss. And I will bring that up right now.

JP, you're all right, man. It's your medication something they gave you. I will be good if I never hear that again. As painful as that is to watch, I think that video really holds the key to understanding John Paul Miller. We're going to break that down a little later, and we're going to talk about why it's so important. And so I think it's interesting that in the interview he did with Rich McHugh, which was a great interview, by the way. Thanks, Rich. Rich asked him about that.

And he, you know, this was for. Ashley Banfield on News Nation. And his response was that he had fallen out of a tree previously, and he had a number of broken bones, so he was put on pain medication. So he told Rich essentially that he was acting that way because of the pain medication. I think there's this prevailing assumption

when people watch that because it's so bizarre that he's doing drugs. But that's not my take, by the way. First of all, let's go with his explanation with the pain meds. You know, I don't want to discount the possibility. Maybe he's being honest. I don't know for sure. I mean, I guess only he would know, but, you know, pain meds do they can cause peculiar

reactions, you know, maybe that's one of them. But my experience with people that take large amounts of pain meds is that they're not going to, they're going to be more subdued. They tend to be more, let's use the term catatonic. They tend to be more non-responsive. And he's obviously not tracking the environment well, but he's being vocal. He's aware.

So it's interesting that everyone assumes that this is drug-related. You know, there could be a little bit of that. People rich in the interview presume that it was maybe some type of hallucinogens like LSD or, you know, or marijuana, even large amounts of marijuana, can create hallucinations. So there's this underline assumption that that's what this is. This peculiar incident, which everyone is trying to explain, is really a drug-induced type of delusion or something of that sort.

But that's not my take. We'll get to this in a little bit, but I think we really need to understand that moment, to understand the larger picture here and understand what's really going on with JP Miller. And I think the other thing that people aren't really talking about in this case is the broad implications of this entire situation. I know Ashley talked about when she introduced the interview, she talked about, and let's reiterate this point.

She talked about the fact that J.P. Miller has not been charged with anything. He hasn't committed any crimes. This does appear. All the evidence points to the fact that this is likely a case of self-harm, that Micah engaged in some type of self-harm and that he has a sound alibi. One of the things that Ashley kind of implied is, why are we still talking about this case? Three months after the fact, when it seems fairly open and shut in terms of what happened in terms of self-harm, why is this still relevant? I think some of it is, certainly some of it has to do with J.P. Miller's behaviors and how peculiar he is.

And people are always endlessly fascinated by mental health issues, if that's what this is, around somebody like him. And I think another reason people are probably still interested is because the family. The family has certainly expressed their opinion that they believe more was occurring here and that they have some belief that perhaps he was involved. As far as we know, there's no evidence of that. The FBI has joined the investigation. So maybe they'll find something making a connection. But right now, it appears fairly open and shut.

And Ashley pointed that out. And she raised this question about, what's the fascination here? Like, why are we still, this happened in April? Why are we still discussing this in July? And I'll talk about that too. I think there's a very, very important reason why we're still discussing this case. And there's a very important reason why looking at John Paul Miller's behaviors and how he engaged in that relationship. It has some real consequences and it's very important.

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today. All right. Well, we're excited. Thank you everyone for being here. Please let your friends know about our channel too. And thank you for liking, subscribing and hitting notifications. It means a lot to us and to our channel. And for the work that John does and puts into each episode, this one, he has put a lot of work into it. So we are looking forward to what you have to say, me included. I watched the interview with John and the family's reaction, but I do not know. I watched him take a note, but I don't know what you're going to say today. Yeah, you watched in disbelief. That was one of my favorite parts of the interview, too, by the way,

is that I felt like Rich was pretty stoic. You know, he's pretty poker face. But then, you know, they would cut to Ashley Vanfield, and Ashley would just kind of stare at the camera. You know, Ashley had the dramatic pause, like, you know, like, what the hell was that? She didn't necessarily say that. Ashley's extremely professional. but I got a kick out of the fact that they would cut back to Ashley and she was just like,

even like the, you know, the stare of disbelief. Like, can you believe what we just saw? That's just crazy, right? So, you know, Ashley's fantastic and I'm glad she did this. But I appreciate the stare of disbelief. Yeah. And for those asking, yes, you can watch this interview. It's in the description.

So let's dig into this. We'll get back to that video in a moment. But let's just start with the nonverbals here. So he's holding a ball. When I first saw it, I wasn't sure what it was. I told you, I asked you, is that a stress ball of some sort? His little soccer ball, his little squishy soccer ball. We found later that it was a little soccer ball.

And so I think it did serve that purpose. It was a bit of a stress ball. I thought it was like a spider web at first. I was like, is he flicking a spider web, you know, for his Spider-Man? You thought he was going to go full Spider-Man and exit the interview with, yeah. But I guess you like soccer too. Yeah. And so, you know, when you're on a national program like Banfield and you've got,

you're starting the interview with the stress ball, let's call it that. That's interesting to me because that's so unusual. You know, most people in these types of situations, they want to come across as composed. They want to come across as somewhat stoic, right? I think there's always issues in these situations with image management. And here you have a guy who just doesn't care. You know, he's going to, he's going to enter that room with his little soccer stress ball, and he's going to use it to calm himself.

So that's interesting because it. It suggests that this guy, it really struggles with self-regulation. And you start you right away, without even a word exchange in this interview, you have a guy with a stress ball who's trying to self-sooth. So what that tells me is this is someone who, obviously, he's extremely anxious. You can see that throughout. But he's really using that to try to regulate his emotions and self-soothe. And that's really interesting because already, without saying a word,

we've learned a lot about him. Before the interview even began, they went back. and showed him crying hysterically. And again, this is before the interview started. And Rich and Ashley Banfield were both interested in this moment. And it gets to that issue too. I think that part of the tears were anxiety. I think part of the tears were an attempt to find some type of emotional release

to calm himself before the interview. There's this kind of excessive emotionality. One of the things I wrote in my notes is there's some histrionic elements here in the sense that I feel like this is this type of excessive emotionality is potentially attention-seeking. You might see that with historionic components. I'm not, by the way, I wouldn't go to that place and say that I wouldn't make a diagnosis of histrionic personality disorder here.

I don't have enough information, obviously, and it's not something I would ever do to diagnose without doing a lot of testing and an interview. But there are elements of the successive emotionality. We'll talk more about that, too, later in terms of there's also elements of borderline personality disorder. I think the elements of borderline personality disorder are more prominent. They're more salient than histrionic elements. But again, you and I have talked a lot about cluster B personality disorders and histrionic and borderline.

There's a lot of overlap and they're both in the same clusters. So they're not mutually exclusive. But if I had to guess, I would kind of move in the direction of more borderline features. And again, I'm not trying to diagnose here. I could be completely off base. Well, Candy is asking, would this be described as histrionic? And other people have mentioned this. So you are responding to internet questions.

You're not diagnosis. Yeah. So I think there's some histrionic behavior here. So let's call it histrionic elements. And, you know, it's funny because I just finished a webinar before we came on today that was about alexothymia and men. And elixothymia is a lack of emotions that most men are actually quite unemotional. And so there's a lot of research showing that men by and large, they struggle

with emotions. And here you have a guy that's overly emotional. And so, you know, by contrast, you have someone who kind of doesn't quite fit the mole in terms of maybe what we would call traditional masculinity. However, I think it's important not to confuse the successive emotionality with the ability to express emotions. Because if you see this type of emotionality as part of his personality, that's a different presentation than the capacity to feel and express emotions. which, by the way, I'm not sure he's good at that. I'm not sure he's good at the latter. So in other words, this way of approaching the world for him

is a pattern of behavior that he's developed to cope with the world. And ironically, that doesn't mean that he's very good at expressing his emotions. So it's important not to confuse this kind of overly excessive emotionality and this emotional volatility with some capacity to express himself emotionally. because I think that's lacking. So let's go back to the nonverbals. So there's a lot of anxiety. He's got the soccer stress ball.

After the interview, Ashley Banfield had Rich McHugh go to talk to the family and have them respond to it. And one of the things that the sister, Anna Francis, said, was that, quote, this is a way for him to control the narrative. And so I think you saw that too. He's not really responding to Rich's questions that he's really interested in putting forth his narrative. And his narrative can be summarized quite simply, which is when Micah is not taking her meds, that she's a danger to herself and that her family, Micah's family, is responsible for trying to convince her or telling her that she doesn't need to take her meds. And he's the hero in this story. Because what you heard repeatedly for 40 minutes in this interview was that he just

wanted her to be on her meds so that she could be safe and that she wouldn't harm herself. That everything in their marriage and their life was great when she was on her meds and when she wasn't on her meds and the implication by the way he mentioned lithium so the implication is that she has bipolar disorder when she wasn't taking her meds she was a mess and everything was bad and when she was everything was great and his job as he saw it as a dutiful and loving husband was to keep her on her meds and that's what he always tried to do and so he's the hero and the family micah's family they are the villains because they don't want her meds. And so that's the narrative that he goes back to over and over again.

It doesn't matter what the question is that Rich is asking. It's the same narrative. So let's get back to the nonverbals. This anxiety and the soccer ball. And, you know, people noticed, I noticed, you and I both noticed that he kept scratching his nose. He kept fidgeting. That's a function of anxiety. And I do that, but not as much as him.

Like, he beat me. that that's a function of anxiety. But I think the most interesting part for me is the fact that I didn't ever feel like he was present for the interview. All the non-verbals, the soccer ball, the stress ball, he's squeezing. Like, it's all taking him away from being in the moment. It's all making him not present. So in other words, this is a bit of a performance.

He's giving Pat answers. He, he, it's scripted. in a way, in the sense that he says he could do the interview because he talked to his lawyer. And obviously his lawyer told him, or he, they talked about it. I'm sure they agreed that the response he needed to give to every question some way was that this is an issue because Micah wasn't taking her meds. Yeah. And so what you get is someone in an interview who's not really responding to the questions.

They're not really present. They're not emotionally present. They're not intellectually present. And the stress ball is part of that. part of the reason he's experienced so much stress is because he's got to come into this interview with the scripted answers. He knows he's going to get answers that aren't going to be, you know, he can't predict what the answers are, I presume. I presume the answers weren't given or the questions weren't given to him in advance. But I think that was the most interesting part of this interview is that you really had someone who, you know, when you and I do interviews and when I do interviews in jails and prisons, my goal is always to get the person in the moment to be present with them, no matter what we're talking.

talking about so that they can give me a more truthful, genuine, authentic, honest answer. If somebody's not present, if they're engaged in something that their lawyers told them to say, then it's obvious. And it's going to detract from the quality of the interview. It's going to provide answers that aren't believable. And so it makes my job much more difficult. And I know you feel the same way when you interview people for our channel. So I think that was one of the things that really struck me as unique about this is not just the anxiety, but the fact that he couldn't be in that room with Rich, responding to questions in a really authentic,

in the moment type of way. He doesn't know how to converse is how I looked at it. Like, he knows how to preach. He does that well. He knows how to command a room or that's what he likes to do. I don't know if he knows how to. It's what he likes to do. But he didn't really have a.

conversation. He felt like it was a big monologue and when Rich was able to fit in a question, he fit one in. I don't think J.P. Miller wanted Rich to talk very much. He's more comfortable just saying what he wants to say. Yeah. I think that goes to this idea of this being somewhat scripted by by J.P. Miller that he knows what he wants to convey. He keeps coming back to the same point. He's like a politician of sorts. He keeps coming back to the same narrative about the meds. And if Mike is not taking the, it's not his fault, he was just trying to help her. The family was

trying to hurt her. So when she wasn't taking her meds, what did you expect to happen? This is what happened. She harmed herself, right? And so that's the theme. That's the motif that keeps recurring here. And there's a moment though, let's talk about this. There's a moment where Rich asks a question about kind of challenging him a little bit and asking, he says,

quote, did you do anything you would change? And J.P. Miller's kind of, he's taken aback by that because it Yeah. He's taken a back and he's stunned. And he, like, he has this over top, over the top reaction. Like, his voice goes up and he says, oh, that is such a great question. Like, it's just, it's just really weird, emotional over the top response.

And I think Rich is just looking at him like, what the, you know, Rich is like, should I, do you leave the room? Like, am I safe? I know, it's a pretty basic question. Anything you would have done different, you know? It's like a job interview question. So, you know, anything you would have done different at your last job? What a great question. You know.

But what's interesting about that question and his response to it, what's most fascinating about that question is I think that's the one question that really threw him off guard. That's the one question because the question is asking, do you think you played any role in what happened here? And he never thought about that. So I think he's completely thrown off. out guard by this question. It's a total surprise to him. Like, Rich, how can you ask you, you know, how can you ask if I'm culpable in any way? I mean, never mind that all of America or all,

you know, everybody around the world that are familiar with this case, they're trying to figure out his culpability. But he, you know, he can't wrap his mind around that. He's stunned. He's like, wait a minute. I need, I need a minute to think about it. And so for me, you know, that moment was really fascinating to me because I feel like, because he was kind of thrown off balance a little bit. I feel like there was almost a moment of recognition. I feel like there's, there was, you know, perhaps there's some guilt there. But it felt to me like there was a moment of recognition. He was kind of pushed off balance. And now he's got to find his way back to his script. So that that's a moment when he goes off script. Yeah, I think you're right. You didn't know

what to say. He was kind of shocked. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. And then he starts racking his brain, sort of like when you're in that interview. What's my weakness? What a great question. What a great question, Rich. You just totally got me on that. My weakness is that I have too many strength. So Krista said that she would like HTC to respond to all questions with. What a great question. Yeah, I'm not sure we could do it in such a peculiar way that he did, that JP did.

But he's thrown off by this question. You know, he's surprised by it because he's been pouting this narrative of the meds. That's all we've been hearing until this moment. You mean her not being on meds? Not being on meds. The entire, right, the entire narrative of this entire interview for those that want the Cliff Notes versions because too long didn't watch or whatever, Micah should have been on her meds. Everything would have been solved if she had been on her meds.

And if she had stayed with JP, he would have made sure of that and all would be well. This was just, you know, Micah and Micah's family's fault. So anyway, go ahead. There's your cliff notes. But it's the family's fault because the family encouraged her to not take her meds, apparently. And you and I obviously don't have access to any medical records. So I don't know the history of her health.

I don't know the mental health. I don't know if she was taking meds or not. I mean, well, the bottom line is there is no history of some really solid mental health issues. That's the problem. There is no. She was.

No, she was hospital. We don't, I mean, I don't know. She was hospitalized. She was hospitalized, but there are no records. records that the public has seen.

The public, yeah. To solidify anything. That's my point. And I want to point out that in our full story with Micah Miller, she was hospitalized after JP figured out a way to admit her, which, darn it, I don't have it, but I'm reading a book. I'm going to do the next book club. Go ahead.

Put a pin in that. In fact, Anna Francis, the sister says that Micah was hospitalized through only, the first time she was ever hospitalized was three or four months after he married Micah. And then she claimed that there was a pattern of hospitalizations, but it only happened after her marriage to him. The implication being that, and this was true of the last hospitalization, the implication being is that he was responsible, that he somehow convinced medical staff that she had these issues and that she needed to be hospitalized. And perhaps the hospitalizations were unnecessary. But to the question that Rich asked, did you do anything you would change? This is what he says, quote, it took him a minute to regroup, but he says, quote, I would not involve her family when she's having mental episodes and she's schizophrenic and off her meds.

So here he's claiming that she's schizophrenic. I mean, we've never heard that, but he's, he refers to her as delusional. He refers to her as schizophrenic. But again. Yeah, he's just all over the point. place. Once he regains his composure from that question, he comes back to the same narrative and blames the family or letting her get off her meds, and then he calls her schizophrenic. So he does recover, but it's not much of her recovery in the sense that he's just, he keeps repeating the

same line over and over. Pretty much the message he wanted to drill home without the questions asked by Rich. Just he was a hero and Micah's family were the enemies. Right. Exactly. There's some other really peculiar moments in this interview, I think we should talk about. One is this idea that Rich asked him about, and you and I talked about this in our first episode, but that he went to visit her after she was deceased, and he stayed, he was with her when her body was in the morgue. And he had this belief, he tried apparently at least on one or two occasions to bring her back from death. And Rich asked him about this. and he says, quote, Jesus did it, so why can't I?

I mean, first of all, he's not Jesus, so that would be a good reason why he's not going to raise her from the dead. But, you know, the first time we talked about this and this idea of raising her from the dead, you know, I thought, well, maybe, you know, maybe he's just, maybe that's metaphorical, right? Maybe that's just a peculiarity. Maybe I got this wrong. But no, here we see, this is not metaphorical, that he really believes he can raise her from the dead,

and he tries repeatedly to do so. Unsuccessfully, by the way, Ashley Vanfield points out that if he did, in fact, succeed at raising her from dead, that would truly be newsworthy. That would be a different story. That would be a different story. Right.

That would be a story that would grab headlines everywhere, I'm sure. So he says Jesus did it, so why can't I? You know, last time we talked about the idea that if that's accurate, if he's not seen that as metaphorical, then clearly there's some narcissistic features going on here. I mean, when you compare yourself to Jesus and think you can raise people from the dead, you're not particularly oriented to reality.

You know, this is a guy who keeps talking about Micah being delusional, and yet here's the guy who thinks he can raise people from the dead. So you have to wonder if that's projection. Projection. You know what we need? We need, I need like a buzzer to hit. Projection. I have some buttons here, but I don't know.

None of them are a connection button. Remember how was it, I don't know, there used to be, like I think Staples had like the, that was easy button or something and you'd hit it. I have some buttons here, but I don't think there's a. Well, it has to have a buzzer on it. We need like the projection button. So, yeah, we'll work on it.

So obviously, if you think you can raise people from the dad, including your now deceased wife in his case, I don't even know what to say. I think our listeners would all know that that's a little bit narcissistic. Again, I'm not arguing that he has narcissistic personality disorder. I don't know. But certainly some narcissistic traits to believe that. one of the favorite parts after following this discussion,

I'm going to read you, I'm going to quote you what J.P said in the interview that this is one of my favorite parts of the interview. Is this the part you were wound again and again and again and again? And we had to take it slowly so you could get every word. Yeah, yes. So here it is. First part. I believe in healing. I believe in miracles. I believe in raising the dead.

And then here's how he did. The next part is how he defines himself. So if you want to understand J.P. Miller, here you go. This is a quote directly from the sources. This is from J.P. Miller himself. Quote, I'm a one God apostolic, tongue-talking, holy roller, born again, heaven-bound believer in the liberated power of Jesus. Okay. So that's how he explains himself. That is who he is. That's how he sees himself. I'm a one-god, apostolic, tongue-talking, holy roller, born-again, heaven-bound believer, and the liberated power of Jesus. When he said that, I couldn't help thinking,

first of all, I had to kind of back up on that and think about it for a minute. Like, what the hell is he saying, right? Like, if you want to understand J.P. Miller, I think you need to understand that, because that's how he sees himself. And so if you look at that, if you, if we dissect that, Clearly, this is someone who's extremely fundamentalist. They probably have very literal beliefs about the Bible and religion. He believes, obviously, that he can raise people from the dead.

This is important because this colors his perception of the world. This is how he sees. It is through this lens that he sees the world. So he talks in tongues. He's a holy rower, apostolic. I presume apostolic, first of the apostles, but there's a branch of the church that there's kind of an apostolic Christian church that is kind of Baptist, neo-baptist, I think.

And maybe that refers to the branch of the church he's in. I'm not quite sure. But to say the least, this is an extremely narrow view of the world. And it's the view through which he filters everything. So I think if we want to understand J.P. Miller, this is important because one of the elements, I'm sure, of this worldview is the role of women. And he's going to tell us, he's going to tell us more about that later. But this idea is important because in his world, women are secondary, they're inferior.

They take a backseat to man, essentially. And so I think that that's important because it gets us closer to really, we're going to start talking about this issue of coercive control a little later. But it gets us into that. Yeah, coercive control is what this case is about. And I want to point out that Mel flips the St. South Carolina. allows another to commit you to an institution with an affidavit in order for another person in Oregon, another person cannot do that. It's much stricter.

And there is belief that he also, not believe there is an idea from her father, Micah's father, that there was a fake power of attorney for her taking care of her health. We won't move anything beyond that. We won't, but I'll just throw out those facts for people. to decide. So in our first show on Micah Miller, we showed the clip where Micah talked about all the abuse that she endured. Micah said abuses abuse, right? She said there was emotional abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse, physical. She defined every type of abuse. And she said it was horrible. And she endured it for a long time. And it's important to note, too, that not only

did Micah say it on that video, but Allison Williams, J.P. Miller's first wife, talked about some of the abuse that she apparently was subjected to. She talked about abuse that Micah disclosed to her, and so did the family attorney. So Regina Ward, who was on this interview afterwards, was representing Micah for her divorce prior to what happened, prior to her self-harm. And she also said that Micah disclosed all types of abuse before what happened to her. So you have multiple corroborating sources all saying more or less the same thing. Nobody has yet disclosed what exactly those incidents of abuse were.

Alison Williams, the first wife, has talked about some specific incidents of sexual abuse that he apparently engaged in with underage, minors in his congregation. But we talked about that in our first episode, so I'm not going to go there at the moment. But what's important here is that Rich McHugh asks J.P. Miller, tell me about the abuse that Micah discussed. And of course, he had an answer. He had a pat answer, which was he had a scripted answer, which was, well, she was delusional when she made that video because she wasn't taking her meds. So according to him, she's off her meds. What she said was false because she was delusional so we can discount it. And so Rich asked, well, have you ever abused her?

And here's what J.P. Miller said to that. Of course, he strongly denied the abuse. He said, absolutely not. He's never abused her. And then he said, and this is so peculiar. Here's what he says. Quote, she never cleaned the house. She never cooked.

I never made her work. So apparently J.P. Miller is associating housework, cooking, and work. If he's forcing her to do that. And I mean, well, let's back up a little bit. So getting back into how he sees the world is this one God, tongue-talking holy roller. He's also now giving us his views of women that, according to him, like the traditional masculine view of women would be that they cook, they clean, right, all that type of stuff.

They don't work. They raise kids, whatever, right? So he's essentially saying, how could I have abused her if I didn't have her do all these traditional feminine tasks? So in other words, consistent with his view of religion, He's also saying that women should fit into this very narrow compartment of acting a certain way, behaving a certain way, which includes cleaning the house, cooking, right, all the traditional kind of feminine roles. And he couldn't have possibly abused her if she didn't do any of those things.

I'm going to read a little bit. This is the book that redefined the issue of course of control. This is coercive control. This is the classic test work textbook written by Evan Stark on this topic. This was published in 2007. Let's hear from Evan Stark himself. So he's the one who really made this an issue. This is the textbook that redefined this issue for just about everyone.

This is page five. So let's talk a little bit. Now that we're talking about this, let's talk about coercive control. Coercive Control I defined in our last show as a pattern of behavior with the intent to exert power and control over another. Here's what Evan Stark says right out of his textbook, page five. It's key dynamic.

involves an objective state of subordination and the resistance women mount to free themselves from domination. So in other words, Stark is calling coercive control a state of subordination. In other words, it's trying to essentially get women to fill a certain role and perform certain behaviors such as cooking and cleaning, right? Let's let me go on. The same page five, this is the next paragraph, quote, quote, men deploy coercive control to secure privileges that involve the use of time, control over material resources, access to sex, and personal service. Like assaults, coercive control undermines a victim's physical and psychological integrity.

And here's the next sentence is the most important here. Remember what JP said about cleaning and cooking. quote, but the main means used to establish control is the micro-regulation of everyday behaviors associated with stereotypic female roles such as how women dress, cook, clean, socialize, care for their children, and perform sexually. So in other words, Stark is essentially sane. Well, J.P. is essentially confirming his view not only of kind of these traditional feminine roles that women need to occupy.

But he's literally repeating what Stark says about coercive control. And he's saying that because he's not making her do these things, it's not abuse. But, you know, if you look at what Stark is saying here, by the way, he doesn't address the issue of how she's dressing. So does he control that? He doesn't address the issue of caring for the children. We know she does that. So she's bringing up his kids.

I wonder how she feels about that. They're not her children. And he's having her care for them, raise them, spend inordinate amounts of time with them. That's controlling. That was my first thought when he said that, she took care of my kids. I'm like, well, she doesn't, I mean, that's good.

Bless her soul. I love a good stepmother. But she's not really necessarily her responsibility. Also, Stark mentions the sexual component. We know that Micah in the video says that there was sexual abuse. And first of all, I don't think it's believable, by the way, that he's not having her cooking clean because he probably is. But let's say that she doesn't cook and clean all the time for him. She's certainly engaged in exactly these types of, quote, micro-regulations that Stark defines as being associated with course of control and stereotypic female roles.

So part of course of control is having women fall into these stereotypic roles and not deviate from them at all. And that's exactly what J.P. Miller is doing. I was upset. I was upset. Thank you for addressing this when his response to abuse was, well, I don't make her clean my house. And I, or I don't demand she clean it every day or cook for me every day. I'm like, wait.

So, wait, yeah, it was very strange to me that that was his response, that she's not abused. And so it's important. to realize, like if you step back a little bit and look at what he's saying here, it's important to realize that domestic violence and coercive control is essentially an inflexible mindset. It's a perception of the world. It's a, it's a perception of the world that sees women as inferior and it sees women as essentially falling into these stereotypic roles and meeting masculine needs and desires. So in that sense, what's, what Stark is saying is it's a form of dominance and submission.

So I think we're now ready to revisit. Do you feel like we're ready to revisit the video? Oh, we're going to revisit it after I said, I never want to hear it again. Well, we've been going a while. Do you want to, let's just just play a little bit of it because I need another taste. Well, I actually got rid of it. Oh, you got rid of it. Oh, man, as in like expunged it for it for.

No, it's on your heart. It's in our playlist. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Let's see how fast I can be. Okay, we're good. We're good. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I don't.

I'm seriously trying not to laugh. I'm sorry. It's not professional. If I was in front of the guy, I wouldn't do that. But, oh, man, oh my gosh. I said earlier, the key to this case is understanding that moment. Let's talk about that moment. So he's saying that he's on pain meds.

I want to preface my explanation here with an undisputable element of human behavior and human beings. And that is that human beings were the only primates with an extensive history of helpless, of a helpless infancy, and an even longer period of dependency during childhood. So in other words, we are the only animals, we're the only creatures, primates, who's very, survival depends upon our caregivers for years. So if one of our caregivers abandons us, let's say when we're one years old or 18 months, we will die. So our very survival is dependent upon other people. And I go back to this a lot. You and I talk about attachment in its role in criminal behavior. So some of this is about attachment, but it's

deeper than that. The fact that we are dependent creatures, that our dependence on other people is a condition of our survival, that has profound implications for our entire lives. We never, ever overcome that. We never forget that. And so one of the critical components of being human is dependency. We are dependent upon other people, whether we like it or not, especially in those early years, but later too. We never, ever get away from the fact that we are social creatures, that we, you know, human beings, we began in tribes, we continued to find tribes online and offline.

And so this idea of dependency is really, really critical for human beings. And I want to say that before I start talking about this video, because let's set the context for this video. So everybody thinks it's drugs, but I'm going to give you an alternative. I'm going to give you a different point of view. And that is, this is after his divorce. So his first wife finally divorces him.

He doesn't have access to his family. He's feeling rejected. He's feeling helpless, right? But what I want our listeners to do when they see this video is don't think of it in terms of drugs. Think of it in terms of abandonment from his family, from his tribe. I think what you're seeing here. So the psychological, the psychological terms I would use would be,

this is an example of regressive infantile behavior. The translation for that, to put that as simply as I can, the translation for that is he's acting like a baby. So that's what you're seeing here. Putting drugs aside, you know, maybe there's drugs, maybe there's not, it doesn't matter. This is behavior that's consistent with being a baby. He's babbling.

He's incoherent. He can't use language. His affect, right, his emotion. This looks like a 12-month-old to a 24-month-old infant. And you might say, okay, so what? Why is that important? And the reason that's important is because the primary issue that J.P. Miller confronts is precisely related to this issue of helplessness during childhood

when we're dependent upon other people for survival. The primary issue for him, and I would suggest for almost every other abuser in a domestic violence relationship is dependency. And as someone who's run groups for violent men for many, many years, the one issue that kept coming up was dependency. And what I mean by that is men that are engaged in coercive control, they essentially try to take those feelings of dependency. So let's think of dependency as a sense of helpless. a sense of vulnerability, a sense of fear. Dependency often fills us with shame because we feel like we need other people to survive. So what happens in our culture and in our families is, especially for men, is we try to overcome that sense of dependency. We try to transform it.

This is, I talk about this a lot. I talked about it in our first, this is what I call compensatory strategy. In other words, because we feel dependent and we can't tolerate that emotion, we try to compensate by going in the opposite direction of feeling strong and powerful and in control. And that's where closer control originates. So in the case of J.P. Miller, Allison Williams mentioned this in her affidavit for custody of the kids and her concerns about J.P. Miller being a risk to harm her children. She mentions that he was sexually abused by his father. Now, I can't confirm it. This is based on Allison Williams and her claim.

We don't have factual evidence of this, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that that's accurate. Let's assume that there was sexual abuse in his childhood. So you have this huge wound. And not only that, you have this real sense of shame and vulnerability, not just the dependency we have because we need people to survive, but beyond that, you have this betrayal of trust that deepens that sense of shame, that deepens that sense of vulnerability. So when you combine this alleged abuse that occurred with J.P. Miller with these misogynistic attitudes about women, these stereotypic attitudes about women, you're now creating the conditions that Micah had to confront. You're now creating the conditions for coercive control. If we really want to understand J.P. Miller, the reason that video is so important is because you're

looking at someone who is feeling a tremendous amount of helplessness and vulnerability and independency. And you have to see that as the foundation for what happens later with Micah. And I think it's important to see that as the very thing that he's trying to run from and transform into something else. And that brings us to Spider-Man. JP walking around is Spider-Man outside his house. All right. So one of the other things that people are baffled about with J.P. Miller is this issue with Spider-Man. Apparently he dresses like Spider-Man. He walks around the house like Spider-Man.

These are reports from the neighbors that he has this obsession with Spider-Man. And now I think we're in a position. Hopefully I put us in a position to explain it. And that is, and it's true of this entire interview, that he's playing the role of hero. But Spider-Man is a symbolic manifestation of someone who is trying to feel strong.

someone who's trying to transform his weakness and his dependency into power and strength. And so walking around in that Spider-Man outfit, it allows him to feel the very things that he wasn't feeling in the video that we first showed that people mocked. The video where he's babbling and act like a child. Spider-Man is the antithesis is that. It's the transformation of that. It's taking the weakness that he was showing in the first video that I said was critical to understanding this case. And it's transforming it into strength and superhero qualities. There's the famous quote, there's the famous Spider-Man quote,

that with great power comes great responsibility. And that's exactly what J.P. Miller wants to experience here. He wants power. That's what coercive control is about. It's about dominating women. It's about exerting power. So the very thing we're seen in that first video, the babbling childlike video,

is the very thing he's trying to overcome. And that's why he's dressing like Spider-Man, because he needs to feel like he's not dependent on anyone. He needs to feel like a superhero. He needs to conquer his fear. He needs to conquer his shame. He needs to feel it, to put it bluntly, I think acting like a superhero

or makes him feel invulnerable. And again, when we contrast that with the video of him babbling on the lawn, it's the complete opposite, right? And that's what's going on here. If you want to understand how somebody like J.P. Miller can engage in coercive control, this is it. This is the transformation. From the Muppet bleaker to Spider-Man. Right, right. And I don't know when he started dressing like Spider-Man, presumably it occurred sometime during his marriage to Micah. So 2016 is the on-the-ground baby-like infantile video of him babbling and feeling, you know, abandoned.

of his divorce and missing his children. And now sometime over the course of his marriage to Micah, who he's able to apparently involuntary hospitalized, now at some point he feels like he can dress a Spider-Man. He has complete control of his family and his home. He has control of Micah, right? He's exerting coercive control. He has this very, very, very masculine, stereotypical view of women.

And he's Spider-Man. And you know what's crazy about the interview, by the way, when this question was asked. What? He couldn't say that he wasn't. In other words, Rich asked him, what's up with Spider-Man?

You walking around like Spider-Man? Right, and he's like, I don't know, maybe I'm Spider-Man. Yeah, his answer would be like, sly, like, well, no one said I'm not Spider-Man. Where's Spider-Man?

Maybe I am Spider-Man. So again, who's delusional? Is Micah delusional? I want to go back to why all of this matters. As Ashley Banfield pointed out, all the evidence points to self-harm, all the evidence points to the, you know, that JP is not, he's not being charged with any crimes.

They're not tying him in any way to what happened to Micah, at least not as of this moment. So why are we still talking about this? And I think there's a couple reasons. I think the most important reason is because they talked about it when they talk to the family is that there's this proposal for something called Micah's Law, which is a law that they're going to try to propose or pass in South Carolina that would penalize coercive control.

It's important to note, however, that there are several coercive control laws in the United States. Most of them aren't criminal. Most of those laws, there's Jennifer's law in Connecticut, which it added coercive control to penalties for domestic violence. So because it's tied to domestic violence, there are criminal components. Hawaii has a coercive control raw that is criminal. So when I say criminal, I mean essentially a lower class felony as opposed to a misdemeanor. And there are countries like Australia.

On July 1st, 2024, Australia, the entire country of Australia, criminalized coercive control. That was a huge step. Huge step. But there's one country, which is the UK, however, that has really gone a long way to implementing penalties for this type of behavior. In fact, there's a particular case that we didn't talk about last time that I want to talk about now. It involves Justine Reese. Justine Reese was subjected to stalking in roughly 2016, 2017. It was horrendous.

She got the equivalent of restraining order, and it didn't stop the stalker. The stalker's name was Nicholas Allen, is Nicholas Allen. He persisted. Even after the restraining order, there were 34 incidents of direct physical confrontations with Justine Reese, and the police didn't take any at that. action. There were over the course of a year, he made 35 contacts and attempts. He contacted Justine Reese 3,500 times, 3,500 via calls, texts and social media to try to get her attention, in addition to the 34 times that he showed up in person to try to harass her. And this is

with the restraining order. So finally, and sadly and tragically, in federal. February of 2017, Justine Reese engaged in similar behaviors as Micah. She left a note and on the note, she said, quote, I've run out of fight and then she engaged in self-harm. I feel a lot of sadness when I read that because it was so unnecessary. The police recognized that they failed her. And because of that, they passed laws in the UK criminalizing coercive control, criminalizing that type of behavior. Nicholas Allen in 2018 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for contributing

to the death of Justine Reese, 2018. And since then, course of control has been considered a serious charge in the UK with serious sentencing. But in this country, no, nothing. And so I think the reason this is relevant is because when you look at countries like Australia and you look at the UK, you have to wonder. I mean, I understand for prosecutors, this is a really difficult charge to prove and get convictions on. But my question is, would Micah Miller still be alive?

If we have these laws on the books in the United States, would Micah Miller still be alive? And what would the appropriate sentence be for someone like J.P. Miller? And I don't know. Obviously now, I'm not sure much could be done. Regina Ward, who's a family's attorney, said there might be charges coming. I think they're looking at maybe stalking. I don't know. She said they're looking at certain criminal charges. I don't know if that's going to happen

or not. I'm not sure what evidence they have. But I think this is an important issue because it really brings to the forefront this issue of course of control and how it should be penalized and punished in the United States. It's happening in other places in the world. It's happening in large Western democracies, but it's not happening here. And so the push, for Micah's law, I think maybe that's the impetus we need, you know, to start getting these on the book, getting these laws on the books and getting lawmakers to take this seriously. I hope so. And that is why Micah's story is so important and why we should be talking about it. Right. Exactly. And again, I don't, I don't have the answer for how we do this.

And I don't even know, you know, Micah's law might even be, might not even be, be, they might pass it, it might not even be criminal. You know, it might be a misdemeanor. It might not be a felony. I don't know. I think we need to push in these cases for for harsh penalties. Like they, you know, like with Justine Reese, there's, there's no doubt in my mind that her stalker and people in the UK agreed that her stalker contributed to her death. Now, I don't know in this case if that's true, but I think it's reasonable to say we should have the ability to look at this evidence and to look at the history of that relationship and let a jury make that determination, right? I mean, I don't know, but a jury would. So that's how our legal system works. I think that's why it's

important to revisit this, and that's why it's important to talk about J.P. Miller in the interview and to keep this alive, because other countries are doing this. Micah's tragedy should not be for not. I don't know if we can get justice for Micah, but things need to change. And however we can help with that, we will. 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

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