Hidden True Crime - MURDAUGH MOTIVES: Moving Forward with psychologist Dr John Matthias

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

A psychologist's take on the Murdaugh family crimes. Recorded LIVE in front of our YouTube audience: Saturday March 11, 2023 Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of killing his wife and son. Now you ask Dr John -- what comes next? Will Buster and others in the family system be able to move forward? HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join a forensic psychologist and journalist (who happen to be husband and wife) on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves.  DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California.  Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day.  Dr. Matthias is an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. LAUREN MATTHIAS worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in Idaho & Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce Hidden True Crime with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Your support helps produce our podcasts/videos. We have big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way no one else has attempted.  WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ YOUTUBE:https://www.youtube.com/hiddentruecrime TO SUPPORT:  https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$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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A true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind. unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. What an incredible week. A lot of people discovering our podcast, a lot of people sharing our podcast, podcast and YouTube video. And YouTube does an interesting thing. They let you see all sorts of data and information. I don't even know how they gather all of it, but they let you know how people find your channel. And I don't know necessarily how maybe it's when they share a link, when someone shares a link or

someone clicks on a link that was sent to them. It'll tell you that it was a referral or someone recommended the channel. And last week, like I said, we had the most incredible week of growth, and it was from people sharing our podcast and sharing our YouTube channel. And we want to thank you. For those new to our channel, we are a husband and wife team. So I am a journalist. I was a TV reporter for 10 years. and Dr. John, Dr. Babe, my babe, is a forensic psychologist. There you go. There's a smile. I was watching people say, why doesn't he smile? Because he's such a serious psychologist.

Because I'm in such a serious profession. Tonight we have an exciting show planned for you. We're going to answer a lot of your questions, and we'd love for you to subscribe. All right, John, the show is yours. No pressure. Since we're talking about how serious I am, maybe we should start on a little bit of a light note with the correspondence we received from Karen Rose and her wonderful dog, Cookie. We want to give Cookie a shout out. Cookie is watching tonight. Cookie, let's make this bigger, is a fan of ours, watches us each week.

And her friend Karen let us know that Cookie was a little disappointed that we did not thank Bubba and Cash in our last episode, as we thanked so many that have researched this case and Cookie wanted us to think Bubba and Cash in rightfully so it is true that it's because of Bubba and Cash that Paul not only filmed those last minutes of his life, Alec spoke on them speaking to Baba and we know how much both Paul and Maggie love those dogs. So Cookie, thank you for reminding us to thank those important animals in our life, who truly did solve this case. And I should mention, too,

that Bubba and Cash were instrumental in helping the jury understand that the so-called vigilante intruder was probably someone in the family because Bubba and Cash did not bark or did not, right, they didn't create any type of disturbance or commotion. And so that seemed to indicate that whoever murdered Paul and Maggie was someone that the dogs knew.

So that was another little bit of credit that goes to the dogs. Cookie is a fernzic psychologist. That's great. Yes, indeed. Thank you for that. Maybe we'll have Cookie live with us one day. We love Cookie. Yes, we do. Thank you, Karen, for sending that into us. Let's start with one of the questions we've received during the week.

This is a question from Anne Burling. Anne, thank you for this question. She asks, could Paul have gotten away from this family? Yeah, this is, you know, this, it's such a simple question, but it has so many implications. I really love this question. It's a great question. It's going to really force us to dig a little bit of, deeper into family systems. We've talked a lot about family systems and we've talked about the

multi-generational transmission of trauma and families and shame and how that impacts families over time. But I really haven't talked about more specifically about what a family system is and how a family system operates. So this question I think is going to send us down that path a little bit. I want to introduce a couple of terms or I want to introduce one term that's going to really stay with us tonight for our discussion, and that term is homeostasis. Homeostasis essentially means balance, or maybe a better term would be equilibrium. So in every family, there's tremendous tendency or need to achieve homeostasis. The way that happens is that families have different feedback loops.

So when information or in family systems work, it's sometimes called when deviations, when deviations are introduced into a system, the system has to respond to those deviations. The system has to process that information in some way that they can maintain homeostasis or balance. This question about Paul is really a question about how this family maintains homeostasis and what they do when information or deviations enter the system.

In other words, how they process information. So that's what I kind of want to talk about in answering this question. And I think it will actually help. us understand the Murdoch family a little better as well. I want to start with, since we're talking about the low country, I want to start with something that's roughly referred to as the crab bucket effect. I'm sure some of you guys have probably heard of this, but the crab bucket effect is basically what occurs when you take a group of crabs. Let's say that these crabs are family.

You take a group of crabs in a bucket with water, and let's say that the bucket isn't that high, let's say it's a reasonably tall bucket or medium-sized bucket. Invariably what happens is some or many of the crabs attempt to climb out of the bucket. But when they do that, one or several of the crabs will grab them and pull them back in the bucket. So you have this family of crabs and the crabs try to get out and they get pulled back in. That's called the crab bucket effect. And the reason I mentioned that is because that's about equilibrium. That's about homeostasis. The crabs don't want other crabs to leave the bucket because they want the equilibrium of having all the crabs in the bucket. So I think there's some analogies there with families.

When I think of the crab bucket effect, I actually think of a quote from Tolstoy. This is the first sentence from Anna Karinina, which is one of Tolstoy's great novels. He says, this is a quote from Tolstoy, first sentence, famous sentence, very famous sentence. Tolstoy says, quote, Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. For those who know Tolstoy, you probably know that Tolstoy was a deeply unhappy human being. It's not clear why that was the case. I mean, there are some, there's a lot of speculation about why, but he was a very wealthy person. He achieved a level of fame that most people never would. He had a wonderful family, had a wife that loved him, and yet he was still really unhappy.

So this quote actually, to me, I think it's somewhat sarcastic. I think what Tolstoy is saying is happy families are rare if they exist at all, but every unhappy that most families are unhappy and they're sort of unhappy in their own way. And the reason why this quote is relevant and why the crabbucket effect is relevant to our discussion is because I think it indicates that in many ways we're all kind of stuck with our families. and no matter how much we try to escape our families, we're still stuck in that bucket with the crabs. So this speaks to this idea of equilibrium and maybe this idea of unhappiness. I mean, yes, there are some families that are happy

and exceptionally healthy, but they're not a high percentage of those families. I want to introduce this idea of equilibrium and it'll become important as we continue tonight. So that'll be our theme. equilibrium. I think what happens in the Murdoch family is that things really start changing with the boat crash. Well, actually, let me back up a little bit and explain what makes the Murdoch family so unusual is the fact that the family system and the judicial system are in some ways connected.

And the reason that's true is because the solicitor position, which was created in 1920, in many ways for Randolph I first. That's when he becomes the solicitor, which is essentially the position of being a DA. In the Murdoch family, this is a unique situation because the judicial system is controlled by the family. They have a law firm, which is controlled by the family,

and then you have the family system. So in some ways, the law firm connects the judicial system to the family system. There's so much overlap there in terms of how things are understood, how information gets processed, right? So that, for example, let's go back to 1956 when Buster I was accused of bootlegging. Because he was the solicitor, he had the capacity to suppress a lot of that information in the judicial system, right? And because he was working in the law firm, he was able to figure out who some of the witnesses were going to be that were going to testify against them.

And so you had this overlap between the information that was in the judicial system, the information that was available to the law firm, and the information that was in the family system. It's very unusual that you'll see this kind of overlap. You know, like, for example, in our family, you know, I might have some ties to the judicial system in terms of doing forensic evaluations and knowing some judges. But I have no, I have really no control over how, how, that information gets interpreted and controlled. But that's not true in the Murdoch family because the solicitor position essentially allows

the family to control all the information. When Randy or John Marvin or a lot of these folks in the family say, hey, we're just regular people. This is just a normal family. They're kind of neglecting to tell you that that's not true because this is a family that has a great deal of overlap between their private. issues in the family system and the public issues in the judicial system, which are both in some ways connected by the law firm. So you've got all this overlap, you've got all this power because of

this overlap, you've got all these conflicts of interest, right? So this brings us to our story about the boat crash and how that's so important in this family. So you have this boat crash involving Paul. And in terms of talking about homeostasis, you have an anomaly or a deviation introduced into the system which is that Paul committed a crime right this is this is very unwelcome

information this is information the system does not want to know and so what's the first thing that the family system does with this information they try to suppress it right they go handsome

and Alec they show up at the hospital they're trying to they're trying to see Connor Cook. They're trying to convince Connor that he was the one driving the boat. They're trying to say to him, hey, look, don't worry about this. We got your back. Just say that you were driving the boat. It's no big deal.

The police will come in and will take your statement. When you have this deviation or this introduction of unwelcome and unwanted information in the system, the first thing that the system tries to do is to get back to equilibrium. So the way they're doing that is they're suppressing. that information. They're trying to deny that it's happening. They're trying to put this on Connor Cook. Right away, the family system of the Murdox is the Murdoch system is trying to achieve some sort of equilibrium by denying or neglecting the importance of that information, that deviation that's already entered the system, right? You know, it's interesting because

in the in the first documentary called Deadly Dynasty, there was a guy that in there that's identity wasn't revealed. And did you remember that? He was sort of blacked out. Yes. He made a comet. So he was blacked out because he was friends of the family and he knew the family very well. And he said, he said something to the effect of if Buster 1 was alive,

Connor Cook would have either confessed to driving the boat or he would be crab meat. So let's go back to this idea of equilibrium. You have this unwanted information that enters the system, and this is how the system deals with it. They try to suppress it. They try to cover it up. They're trying to get rid of that information, so the system can go back to the way it was. And the way it was was, you know, a family of power and prestige and privilege. So they don't want any change.

This is about change, too. Equilibrium is about maintaining the status quo, and it's about keeping things the way they are. The problem here with the Murdoch family is Alec is no longer the solicitor. He's a volunteer solicitor. And this is a family with less power. This is a family now that doesn't control the information coming in and out of the judicial system as much as they used to. They still have power. They still know people in places of power.

They still know politicians. But they're not as powerful as they were. And so what's going on is the judicial system is now focused more on facts, and they're more willing to acknowledge these deviations in the system than they were previously. The judicial system is now kind of taking precedence over the family system's ability to control it. You have all this information about the boat crash. You have, thankfully, you have Mallory Beach's attorney, Mark Tinsley, who's persistent and, pursuing this law you know he's pursuing this issue doggedly he's not going to let the family just

whitewash this information or suppress it so his persistence keeps this thing alive too you're seeing a clash here between the mernot family system trying to really suppress this information and the judicial system moving forward with facts rather than distortions and what's occurring during this process is because the family system is no longer able to control that information in the judicial system, you're seeing a lot of stress buildup. That this is becoming a really stressful situation for the Murdox. In addition to that, you have Alec and his financial crimes. They're starting to come out.

You have Paul continuing to act out. He's still drinking like crazy. He's not really stopping his behavior at any major extent. You're getting these deviations in the system that the family system can't handle. And this is some, in family systems, this is something called a runaway feedback loop, meaning that when the deviations become so large that the system is now out of control, there's no way to gather, there's no way to get equilibrium back. So this idea of homeostasis is so important here because the Murdoch family for generations

has really tried to keep things the same. They tried to maintain the status quo. And now with the boat crash, you're getting all. all of this unwanted information in the system, all these deviations, the information is just spiling out of control. It's, like I said, it's called a runaway feedback loop. People also call it an amplifying deviation, but think of it as a runaway train, right? When the engine on the train fails and the deviations and making that engine work properly are too severe, the train is now careening over the end of the, like something has to stop.

that train. The train hasn't just left the station. It's going. Right. You have a family system that's essentially unable to contain this information in a way that suits them. And so you have this runaway feedback loop and something's got to give. You know, if we go back to the crab bucket effect metaphor or analogy, the way I would perceive this is that the Paul doesn't really want to climb of this bucket, by the way. The better way to see this is, think of it is that Paul's injured. And somehow that injury is now becoming toxic for the other crabs in the bucket.

The system has to deal with this some way. You've got to either take the crab to the doctors, you've got to get the crab out of the bucket. I think in the Murdoch family system, you know, the way to see this is something severe has to happen to stop this runaway feedback loop. It's either gonna be prison, it's going to be death, which we know was the end result.

Or maybe there's another solution like sending them to South America. I don't know. You know, to me, the better option here would have been just to face the consequences. Yeah. Paul is a first time offender. You know, my guess is they probably could have, they could have gotten them a plea deal that was very favorable. You know, I think the Murdoch simply did not want to have Paul spend any time in prison. What's remarkable about this is that the Murdoch family was able to take these deviations in the system and suppress them for over two years.

There were literally no hearings. I'm sure they tried endless times to get this thrown out. It's quite easy to imagine that if Buster 1 was in power, that none of this, no charges would have been brought. The whole thing would have been completely thrown out. Paul would have walked Scott free. And that was Paul's expectation, by the way. So I think the family understood this point very well, that when there were anomalies or deviations in the system,

that it was very easy for this family to squash that information and to get back to equilibrium, to maintain the status quo. So this is about in some ways change. Having a system that's on the cusp of change or has to change and adapt to really survive. And because they want to maintain the family legacy, they don't adapt. In fact, even now, Jim Griffin made a statement after the trial essentially saying they're even more convinced of Alex's innocence and they're steadfastly behind them, right?

That's that's a crazy thing to say after this trial. This is a family that will not adapt. They will not acknowledge that with the boat. crash and with their lessening of power that in some ways things have changed. This is a family that's clinging to power at all costs. They're clinging to this delusion. These murders didn't take place. This is their way of trying to maintain homeostasis. And that's that's kind of the idea behind family systems. Randy, though, let's clarify that because a lot of people are saying, oh, Randy doesn't support the family anymore, not Randy, not Randy. But I, I, I would,

I want to say I read that New York Times article that interviewed Randy, and he never said that he knows his brother is guilty. I mean, there's a big difference. I mean, he might not be standing steadfast with him saying he's completely innocent and he's faultless. But I think it's all so smooth, right? He's got to worry about his own reputation. And his brother does lie. And he admitted that on the stand. and he admitted of his drug addiction.

So he's pretty much just repeating what Alec has already said about himself, saying, yes, he's a serial liar and he's a drug addict. And I don't know what he knows. But I guess I just want to throw that out there too, because I keep hearing that Randy's turned on his brother. And I don't know if that's... Yeah. We're going to talk about that in a second, actually.

Okay. Good. I want to stay with this idea of Paul getting out of the system because this is such a critical idea for family systems. My short answer to this question is it would have been really, really hard for Paul to leave this family system. And that brings me to another idea that I think is really important here. And that is there's a family system theorist. His name is Murray Bowen.

And he has this term called emotional cutoff. Emotional cutoff is basically when we try to distance ourselves from our families, either emotionally or physically. Let's go back to the crab bucket analogy. Since we're talking about low country, I think that's a good one I want to stay with. So imagine that one of the crabs escapes from the bucket in South Carolina, and somehow the crab is able to wiggle its way into the ocean. And let's say it swims to, I don't know, let's say it goes to France. Let's say it goes to a foreign country, very far away.

Okay, France. It crawls up on the beach in Normandy. from South Carolina, and the crab thinks I finally did it. I got away from my family. I'm in a foreign country. I don't have to talk to them. I don't have to deal with them. I'm finally free of all my family dysfunction, right?

So that's called emotional cutoff. Now, that seems like a good idea, except there's one major problem with that attempt to escape from the family, And that is that even though that crab is on the beach in Normandy, the crab feels like they're still in the bucket. That emotionally, that crab cannot, in many ways, cannot get out of that bucket because no matter what, no matter how far away it goes, no matter whether or not that crab talks to the family of other crabs in the bucket, the crab feels like it's still in the bucket. And that's the issue. And so Murray Bowen had this idea of what he called differentiation of self.

And Murray Bowen's idea was, yeah, that crab can swim to France and get away, but it's still stuck in the emotional system of the family, the family dynamics. And it will never get away from that unless that crab spends a lot of time thinking about its life, dealing with its emotions, reflecting on the family, and trying to distance itself in a healthy way, in a healthy, reflective. way from its family of origin. And a big part of Bowen's approach was he would work with people on differentiation, on separating themselves from their families in some ways, mainly emotionally, but he would assign homework

where he would have people go back to their families and kind of test out whether they were caught up in the dysfunction or caught up in the arguments or all the family, you know, shenanigans. And so that was how Bowlin perceived it, that, yes, that crab can escape the bucket, but usually the crab still feels like it's in the bucket. And it takes a lot of work to differentiate yourself from the other crabs in that bucket. And so this issue, getting back to the question, could Paul have gotten away? There's many ways in which I think in some ways this was sort of a, I don't want to say predetermined, but it was, In many ways, I think it was kind of a fatalistic outcome after the boat crash because Paul, as we talked about, Paul was very much scapegoated. Paul was perceived as sort of the weak crab in the bucket, right?

I think it would have been really, really difficult to get away for Paul. And not only that, I think, more importantly, I think Paul didn't want to get out of the bucket. I think Paul would have had to really have some strong desire to get away from his family and to sort all this out. And as far as I can tell, he actually liked being associated with this family and their power. And he would flaunt that. So Paul really had no interest in removing himself from that bucket as dysfunctional as it was. Well, let me ask you this then. Let's take a different scenario.

You sort of mentioned, not sort of, you mentioned earlier that what he should have done is face the consequences. He was a first time offender. you wish he had gotten help. What would that have been like? Let's say they accepted this fate. He was convicted sentence for manslaughter and he was able to get help. What then? What would that help? To me, that would have been the best path here. You know, the problem with that path is that the risk is that there was some talk that the charges taken together could land Paul in prison for up to 25 years. So the consequences were very severe. Now that could be negotiated, I assume. This is the Murdoch family. They can negotiate anything. So there were a lot of reasons why they didn't want to take that

path. One was the shame, right? If Paul was driving that boat and had something to do with the death of Mallory Beach, then that's deeply embarrassing to this family. They just don't want deal with that. This family just lacks the capacity to process emotion or to deal with difficult emotions. So a lot of things would have had to happen for them to go down that path. They would have had to one, work as closely as a family.

They would have had to be able to process the magnitude. I called it a deviant. Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-D-com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis

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That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. But they would have had to really process the magnitude of that deviation or what that meant in the system. And what that would mean in the system is that the family would have to change. The family would have to be healthier. The family would have to really deal with the trauma of that incident. They'd have to deal with the reality of it, that it's a crime. They'd have to deal with the shame associated with it, that it's deeply in Paris. embarrassing to them as a family, right?

They'd have to deal with all these issues that they've tried to cover up for generations. A permanent lemmage on their legacy. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app

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From bedroom looks to living room styles and every room in between. Our hot buys make saving big and styling your space easier than ever. Only at Ashley in North Charleston and Mount Pleasant. Subject to credit approved. Minimum monthly payments required. Minimum purchase required. See store for details. I think for us, I mean, hopefully for, I don't know, I don't want to say normal, but for reasonably normal people that are facing something like this, I think hopefully, you know, you look at the options and the consequences and you kind of weigh them and you deal with the emotional repercussions and hopefully you make a good decision.

And even if that involves, you know, if you think that has spent two or three years in prison, that's a better option than just in. denying the whole thing and pretending it didn't happen. So I think a lot of things would have had to change within this entire family system for them to really confront this in a rational, productive manner. This question about whether Paul could have escaped or gotten away from the family system, I think it's a great question because it really gets to the heart of the meaning of family systems and this idea of equilibrium and how important is for families to maintain that, even if it means losing everything. We talked about this in our last book club meeting,

but one of the stories in the book, one of the true stories in the book, was that a woman was in one of the towers at the World Trade Center, and she witnessed the plane hit the, you know, the first plane hit. The book you're referring to really quickly is... The Examined Life by Stephen Groke, G-R-O-S-Z.

Yeah, this was last month's book. Yeah, last month's book. The woman, her name, he's a real woman, he talked about in the book. Her name is Marissa Pana Grosso, and she was in one of the towers, the plane hits. She drops everything, heads for the exits, her life is saved. But all her coworkers are trying to process the information and they can't make sense of it, and they stay. They don't head for the exits. One of them says, I have to get my stuff, I've got to get, you know, the pictures of my family. They all hesitate. And as a consequence, tragically, her co-workers all died when the second plane hit the second tower.

And the point that he was trying to make is that even when something is so obvious as a plane hitting the world Trade Center Tower, it's really hard for us to change. It's really hard for us to process that information. And even if it means that we lose everything, that the idea of change for so many of us is so difficult. And I think for a family that's had power for so many generations, like the Murdox, this idea of maintaining equilibrium and power and resisting change is just so compelling that this is a family that if they're in the, you know, the World Trade Center Tower and the first plane hits, they probably don't leave. So, you know, it's a really interesting dynamic that in family systems, this idea of homeostasis explains a great deal about why change is so difficult. truth teller says you don't know different unless you see different so would would that be the same

scenario with paul if he got help would he be able to get away i don't know you know he did actually go into therapy for a little bit but it didn't affect any change at all and i think for for paul to really get out of this family system the family would probably have to work together as a unit if we go back to our crab bucket analogy the family would have to actually support him leaving the bucket. And that's the hardest part. The hardest part is that most families don't have the resilience and the emotional intelligence to really support their members and lift them up to leave the bucket. Most families are more like the crabs that pull the members back in, right? Because it's hard. If one member changes in a family, oftentimes other members are forced to confront

their own issues and they're forced to change to some degree also. I have a great question here from a Caroline. Caroline Williams asks, now that Alex has been convicted, how will the family, and especially Buster, deal with this shame? And several other people in chat were also asking a similar question. How will the family, especially Buster, deal with the pain? There's some overlap between that question and the last one about Paul, but I think the short answer is not well. We started talking about Randy in his New York Times interview. Randy, he sort of approaches talking about the fact that his brother may have done it, but he never gets there. Right. So in that sense, he's still avoiding that issue. It reminded me of the way

Alec avoided the question from Creton Waters that we discussed, was it last week. Tell me a time you looked at someone in their eyes and lied to them. And he would say, I can't tell you a time. I can say that I stole a lot of money. I admit that. I did that. And I know that I lied to people. Well, tell me about one time. He couldn't go there. It's the same thing. They can't. It seems like they have this limit. I think this is a family that really hasn't dealt with or faced any painful emotions over the generations. I mean, not directly, maybe indirectly, but And I think that really leads to this, the term we sometimes use in psychology, it's called Alexothymia, which is the inability to really process or understand emotions.

And I think this is a family that may be on a family level. This is a family that really doesn't want to deal with difficult emotions. And that gets passed down through the generations, by the way, because when you avoid dealing with difficult emotions, let's say it's sadness. When anytime someone in a family is sad and you just, just ignore that, or you overlook it, or you, or you, even better, even worse, I should say, even worse, you say, let's say a child's becoming sad. And you say to the child, we don't get sad in this family, right? You're telling the child, you can't be sad and it's not okay. It's not

what we do in this family. Or if a child says, I'm feeling embarrassed, right? That's a form of shame. If you say to a child, we don't acknowledge embarrassment in this family. You need to be strong. I could see something like that in the Murdoch family. When you do that over generations and the families learn not to process difficult emotions, this is where you land. So Randy, in his interview, it feels like he wants to say it. It feels like there's a part of him who's tempted to say, yeah, I think my brother did it. But he can't.

He simply can't because I think it would be too painful for him. We talked about this idea of equilibrium. It would upset the family equilibrium. This is a family that's expected to. together, they're a mesh, they're expected to maintain the same family myth. The family myth is that they're powerful and they're perfect and they're above the law. It would really require him to kind of step outside of the bucket. To acknowledge that his brother committed murder when every other one of the members of the family is, to quote Jim Griffin, they're steadfast in his innocence.

I think that would be a deviation in this family system and he doesn't do it. So he steps up to the edge, but he doesn't cross that line. He doesn't acknowledge that his brother's a murderer. I think you're right. I think there's a political component to that in the sense that he has a law firm and there might be clients that are upset. If he sticks with the family and says, you know, my brother's innocent, then he might lose some business. So yeah, you know, there's a political component. But I think more importantly, there's an emotional component that he won't allow himself to deviate from the family myth, and he won't allow himself to really deal with all the painful emotions

that might go along with admitting that your brothers are murderer. I'm seeing a lot of stories from survivors in chat, and I want to thank everyone for being brave enough to share, and also we're always in awe that people feel like this is a safe space for survivors, and so thank you. Paula, I hope it's okay that I read this out loud, Paul Marie, but she says, my father walked up to me, and almost slapped me across the face while he said,

we don't have feelings, and we most certainly will never talk about them. Thanks for sharing that, Paula. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If you want to potentially create generations where they're not dealing with shame and they're not dealing with sadness and they're not dealing with feelings,

that's exactly how you would do it. I hope Paula Marie was able to challenge that and overcome that. And for that, I give her a lot of credit. The question here is now that Alec has been convicted, how will the family and especially Buster deal with shame? So I think the same would apply to Buster here. If we're talking about Buster, I think the plagiarism issue has to be deeply shameful for him. And yet, as far as I can tell, he's never, at least not in the jailhouse conversations, he's never talked about that with his father.

And he's never gone back to law school. So I think the evidence seems to indicate that Buster's struggling, that Buster's not going to deal with his shame from that. that Buster thinks that, you know, we know from his taking the stand, he thinks that Paul was not driving the boat. There's certainly a huge level of denial in that and probably an avoidance of shame there. He seems to believe his father's innocent. Again, that would be a complete negation of any type of emotion or shame or pain around the fact that his father probably or did murder his brother and his mother. I mean, all of that would certainly suggest that this family is really struggling to process. what happened at a meaningful level, and they're just not going to budge from this level of equilibrium

that they're so used to, which is, you know, this is a family with a lot of power, maybe family that it used to have a lot of power, but they're going to struggle. They're going to really struggle to process this information and to deal with it in a healthy manner. And from all we can tell, it seems like they're not. Kathy stated, unfortunately, I know too many people who escaped the family bucket, but unfortunately climbed into another bucket that was unhealthy. The crab can't adapt to any other surroundings other than this bucket. And even if you do escape, you might find yourself in another or a situation that's familiar to you. That's the idea of the crab swimming to France.

The crab can go as far away from the family as you can imagine. And yet it's still not healthy because the crab is still connected. to the bucket, it still feels like it's in the bucket. And so, yeah, that would be a very common scenario for the crab that has not processed those emotions or differentiated from the family, the crab more than likely will crawl in a similar dysfunctional bucket. So I like that analogy that, you know, you keep going from one unhealthy bucket to the next unless you've learned to differentiate yourself and to really deal with some painful emotions

and maybe some shame, too. Taylor asks, what advice would you give to help a family that may be experiencing this sort of dysfunction so they can make better choices for themselves and future generations? That's a great question. Thank you, Taylor. The first step would have to be some recognition of the dysfunction. It would have to be some recognition or identification or awareness of the problem. If you don't recognize the problem, then you certainly can't deal with it.

That's part of the issue with the Murnax, too. You know, when you hear John Marvin or Randy saying, and they both said a version of this, you know, John Marvin said it on the stand. But when they say, oh, we're just so normal, we're just like everyone else in this community, there's a lot of denial in that. There's a lot of distortion in that. You're not going to possibly deal with the problem if you don't acknowledge it or recognize it. Right.

So in some ways, by trying to claim, by the Murdoch's trying to claim that we're so normal, you know, we're just like you. they're really avoiding that there is dysfunction. They're really avoiding that this is an issue to begin with. And I think that's part of the tragedy here. And again, this gets back to the idea of homeostasis, right? That they want to maintain their image at all costs and they're willing to do anything to kind of avoid any unwelcome information

from entering their system that, you know, they're making statements like that. We're just, you know, we're just normal like you. Well, you're not. You control the judicial system in this county in Hampton County for nearly 100 years. You know, so by saying that, I think they're really negating that there's a problem. So I think the first step, to answer this question by Taylor, the first step is there has to be some awareness of the problem. Otherwise, there's nothing you can do. So actually, I'm thinking of what we call the stages of change.

James Pajasca was the first person to kind of articulate these. but there's the first stage is called the pre-comptimplation stage. And that's a state, these are the stages of change. Pre-comptimplation means you're not even thinking about change. It's not even on your mental map. It's just, it's not even imaginable. And so I think the Murdox would seem to be in that stage of change. There's not even a thought of change.

By the way, that's incredible to me. If that's accurate, it's incredible to me because this is a family that's had to deal with so many stressors. So many challenges to the family system, so many deviations, so many anomalies. Systems change when they come under stress. The family that's come under so much stress. And yet, they're saying things like, oh, we're just as normal as you. It seems to me like they're in the pre-comptimplation stage of change,

which means they're probably not really considering it. There's a scale. It's called the Homes and Ray Stress Scale. It was developed many years ago, like 1967. It's kind of a famous scale. They did some research on what they perceived to be the most stressful life events you could ever experience. Their number one stressor, which is scored at 100 points,

is the death of a spouse. Child deaths were not researched that well in terms of the stress that they created, but they don't even include that as a stressor. If the death of a spouse is 100, the death of a child is probably even more. But they don't even have that on their scale because I don't know why.

Think of it like this. You've got the death of a spouse is the most stressful thing you could ever experience. The death of a child, which isn't on their scale. It's an oversight, I think. But that would be even worse, right? And then you have, in order, you have a divorce, separation. All those are stressful. Prison term, death of a close family member, personal injury or illness, a marriage. So that could be a positive thing, but it's stressful. And then number eight is you're fired from work. You're have three. financial problems. So if you think about the stress scale and the Murdox, they have almost every one of those. Like this is a family that's experienced so much stress. It's even unimaginable, right? And yet they're not changing. They're not budging an inch. It's amazing. You know, you said two things. You state they're not like us because they have this privilege and this power that very few families have. But at the same time, you're saying they're not like us because they've experienced so much stress.

And, you know, there's two extremes here, I feel like the privilege, so much stress, not showing emotions, unhealthy. Do they go together? I think that's a different idea. I think that when they're saying we're just, we're so normal just like you, I think they're minimizing or avoiding the fact that they're not. In other words, they're avoiding the fact that maybe they should develop some awareness of their dysfunction and their problems and they're not willing to do that. The stress part is the reason I bring that in is because I think it shows how the Murdoch family system is so inflexible.

Any family system, I think, subjected to the kind of stress that the Murdox have been subjected to would probably at least, it would at least force them to think. about who they are, right? And think about their family system. And for most families, this kind of stress would force a readjustment. Let's put it that way. It would force them to kind of rethink their system and who they are, or at least to get help. I don't know. But like, this system isn't budging. You can just throw stressor after stressor at them. But I mean, of course, the end result of this type of dysfunction was murder. So clearly, dealing with stressors was not, coping with stress was not a big part of this family sister. It was not something they did very well.

I just have to bring this up because this is something John and I have talked a lot about in private. So Venus gal says, I keep forgetting there's a sister. And I mentioned this to John a lot. Well, actually, you know, John's brought this up. And since he's brought it up, I've noticed. But he has stated, if you want to know how patriarchal this family is, how many times do you hear about Lynn? Right. Never. Although she's... She attended court every single day of the trial. She's really supportive of Alec. She, you know, toes the party line about how he's innocent and how Paul was not driving the boat. And so, you know, she, you'd have to think that she's perpetuating this family myth, too.

Since we're moving over into the arena of change a little bit, I just want to mention that I've talked about this before on other shows and podcasts, but the idea of a mental map, I think, is really important to me in terms of explaining some of this, which is that psychologists use different terms for this. I like the term mental map because I think it's a little more descriptive, but sometimes psychologists will say scripts or schemas or cognitive networks. Unfortunately, we're not really unifying on what to call this. But we all develop these mental maps of the world,

and those maps include beliefs, emotions, kind of everything we use to interpret the world. It's interesting to me that stress is one of the major components of forcing us to kind of shift our mental maps a little bit, to force change, whether we like it or not. It's oftentimes a reflection of mental health in terms of the degree to which we can change or adapt our mental maps. You know, changing our mental maps is called resilience.

When we lose a spouse, for example, So I said that's the number one stressor. When we lose a spouse or a child that have been a part of our lives for a long time, somehow we have to adapt or change those mental maps to reflect the fact that that spouse is no longer there. That doesn't mean that we won't still value them and they won't be a part of the map. It's just that we may not come home every day to our spouse and get a lot of support or a hug or right. that you have to change that map to some degree. And it's sometimes you still think of families

as having that kind of map as well. And in some ways, in a mesh family, they all kind of have the same mental map. The Murdox, for example, they probably all have very similar mental maps. And again, like the thing that's incredible to me about this family is that I don't think those maps have really changed.

In spite of all the losses and all the stressors, they just keep going back to that same narrative. They keep going back to the same beliefs. There's really no attempt to deal with emotions. At some level, in order for the family to really change or for any of us to change, and this gets back to the question about how can a family change, you have to really explore whatever that mental map is you have of the world. And it takes time, by the way.

It's very difficult to do. Yes. It's not easy. Not everyone does it. Yeah. It's very difficult. But somehow, especially when we have a loss or a major stressor, the world is not the same. And if we don't change those mental maps, then in some ways we don't adapt to the world.

And we set ourselves up for mental health problems or physical health problems or a lot of problems. In fact, on the stress scale I mentioned, they say that if you have a score of 300 or above, you're at a very high risk for any number of mental health problems and probably physical health problems too. not only to answer Taylor's last question, but to stress the importance of somehow adapting to the world around us rather than trying to stay true to a mental map that is no longer an accurate reflection of the world. Here are a few questions.

Do you think because Alex was raised to not show emotions, that's why he can lie so easily? So I think another way to ask that to us, what makes it so someone can lie so easily? Let's go back to this. since we're going back to the crab bucket analogy. It's all about the crab bucket tonight. I think that when the family or the crabs in the bucket are really dysfunctional,

and especially the parents, when the parents are giving mixed messages or the parents are so self-absorbed or narcissistic, that they're not able to really read the child's needs, line becomes a much more viable option for a child raised in that situation. So I think especially parents that are constantly in conflict or parents that are fighting, those parents will present different views of the world to their children,

and the children often get very confused about how to make sense of the world. One strategy to deal with that is to lie. Kathleen asks, do you believe there was DV in the family, marital relationship, thinking about Paul's treatment of Morgan, and that has me wondering.

This question about domestic violence is interesting. I think if the reports of Alec, supposedly abusing a sex worker are accurate and this person seems to tell a fairly compelling story, then you'd have to wonder if there was violence in the marriage for sure that for him to be physically abusive to someone he hired for sex, that's a really bad sign about what Alec is capable of. Was there violence in the marriage? It wouldn't be surprising. Obviously, I don't know for sure, but certainly one of the theories of domestic violence is that it's learned from the parent that's violent and if Paul, we know Paul was violent, so it certainly seems probable. Dr. Babe, any last

thoughts? Yes, actually. You know, I like to end with something a little literary, so tonight will be no exception. I just want to reiterate this point about how hard change is and how oftentimes change takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. Obviously, we talked about how difficult change is and has been for the Murdoch family. There's a quote here by Emily Dickinson, who I love, by the way, but a little segment of from one of her poems that I think summarizes a lot of what we've been talking about. The quote is, the truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind. And so I think the truth is difficult to bear. It's difficult to hear. It's hard, I think, to really acknowledge sometimes painful things, but it's better than being blind. And I think that,

in the Murdoch family there's a lot of blindness you know I hope they can overcome that at some point but I'm not certain thank you babe doctor babe this is funny I haven't even told John this but uh I was texting him and I was thinking about other things today and I was texting him and I put in Dr. John into my phone and I didn't know why your number didn't show up because I've never had him as Dr. John in my phone. And I laugh because I'm like, I always joke that, no, of course I don't call him Dr. John in private. And then I was thinking about something and I was like, Dr. John, where's my husband's phone number?

And so there's actually a little, maybe we should end on this. There's actually a little bit of a funny story about when we were on Dateline. Yeah. The first time. Keith Morrison. So Lauren. Lauren kept calling me Dr. John, and we were sitting next to each other, and she kept saying, you know, what do you think, Dr. John, or how about that? And so Keith Morrison, in the middle of the interview, he stopped the interview and he said, do you always call him Dr. John? Yeah, I even confuse Keith Morrison. He's like, what the heck?

What are you doing? He's like, is this a thing? Is this a thing? Yeah. And lo and behold, I was a press. frustrated that I couldn't find you in my phone this morning. I wanted to text you an article. And I'm like, where is you? I'm like, wait. I'm typing out Dr. John and I just laughed. I was like, I got to show him that. But you explained to Keith that you thought we were on alive and we weren't. Right. And that's where Dr. Babe came from too. I dubbed you Dr. John. And so I started calling you that. But then I would call you Babe. And then people were like, what in the world? You're calling this guy a doctor. And then you're calling him, Babe, help us out. And so now you're Dr. Babe. It's evolved. And by the way, I told Keith Morrison that it's a stage name.

I said, no. Whatever, you were like, yes. I demand at our house that she always called me doctor. Yeah, I said. Right. When we're eating dinner, I demand that you call me Dr. John all the time. Yes, well, I cook him dinner each night. I'm like, Dr. John, how would you like your stay cooked?

Yes, sir, Dr. John. Yeah. Anyway, thank you, everyone again for joining with us. join patreon patreon.com slash hidden true crime thank you again for telling your friends about us we're so grateful for the growth it's because of all of you so thank you so much thank you to everyone for joining us we're really really grateful and humbled by all the support and thank you so much thank you have a good night everyone good night good night your old or broken phone can let you down but at Verizon, trade in any old phone from our top brands and get iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence

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