Hidden True Crime - STAMPIN' UP HEIRESS SHANNA GARDNER UNMASKED - PART TWO of Stampin' Up Heiress charged with murder

Episode Date: September 30, 2023

THE SECOND EPISODE delving into the hidden motives behind dad-of-four Jared Bridegan's murder. The Microsoft exec was gunned down in front of his 2-year-old daughter. Hosts Lauren and John Matthias are husband and wife, as well as a journalist and forensic psychologist. New info from insider sources as we delve into the woman charged in the murder of her ex husband Jared Bridegan. #SHANNAGARDNER #JAREDBRIDEGAN DIVORCE DOCS: Hidden's Patreon Account, where you can find full case file of contentious divorce and custody docs between Jared and Shanna: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime National Domestic Violence Hotline Hours: 24/7: 800-799-7233 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 has been an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program since 2007. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in East Idaho, Boise, Idaho and 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 the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Your support helps us produce these podcasts/videos. We have some big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way that no one else has attempted. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us 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. LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in East Idaho, Boise, Idaho and 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 the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/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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Anders Lair Stort. Moronroutin little enclare when you're ingrader

and you're good and the business, it is Happiness Work from AI

productel. Hidden, 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. Hello, Gens. Happy Hidden hour as we always start. Can everyone hear us? That's our classic beginning, but we really mean it, because sometimes we're surprised. Thank you, everyone, for being here. We have been preparing and preparing. We have so much to cover tonight. We have talked to people this week, that new Shanna Gardner. We have talked to people. We have talked to so many people. Let's just leave it at that.

We have information you have never seen before. I think that John has a little smirk on his face. We have been preparing. We've talked to demonstrators. We've talked to as many people as we can talk to or could have talked to. So we feel like we have some more insights into this situation. Yes. As always, and it's true, the greatest support you can give us is to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

It means a lot. It helps us and to also like this video. We also want you to know that we have been delving into hundreds of pages of divorce documents between Shannon Garner and her murdered ex-husband, Jared Bridigan. All 740 pages of a contentious divorce and custody battle can now be found on our Patreon page. Patreon.com slash hidden true crime. There's a link to that in the description of this video as well. We wanted to share that with our patrons.

And you see, you can find those 700 pages there for you to also pour over if you're interested in seeing those. For those new to this case, this is the second week of us covering this case. But for those that are new to the Shadna Garner-Fennandez case, or also known as the Jared Breitigan murder, or known as the might as the might. Microsoft exec, you might have seen those headlines. Microsoft exec that was murdered. Three arrests have been made in his deaths. So let us take you back. This happened in February of last year. Let's call him not just a Microsoft exec, but a father, a husband, a family man.

Someone with his whole life ahead of him. He had a six-month-old daughter waiting at home with a wife and he had his two-year-old daughter, Bexley, in the car. He's driving in Florida, driving home after a date night with, one of his twins who are staying at his ex-wife's home, Shanna Gardner, Fernandez, who's married to Mario Fernandez. He sees a tire in the middle of the road. He stops at the one-way road. He stops. He puts one foot out of the car, and he is shot, ambushed.

Killed. It didn't take long for police to arrest Henry Tenon, who was the tenant of Mario Fernandez and Shannon. Garner. And then after that, they arrested Mario Fernandez, Shanna Garner, the ex-wife's new husband. And just last month, now it's September, just a few weeks ago, they arrested Shanna Gardner-Fernandez, the ex-wife of Jared Bridegan. From murdering Jared, her ex-husband in front of his two-year-old daughter, who was in a car seat in the car. This case has touched our hearts. We recommend going back to our last show, and we are going to bring you so much more. John and I do believe that we have been digging into this. Nobody else has.

And I think that we're grateful for those that are here with us tonight. We have a lot of clips to show you today. This is the first clip we're going to talk about. Shelley Gardner is a mother to Shannon Gardner and the founder of the family business and company Stampin Up. It's an MLM. we'll play it for you right now. And then we'll let John talk about it. Try to balance it and it doesn't always work just the way you plan. It's something, like I said, I wouldn't go back and try. Stampen Up has been a blessing in all of our lives.

And I think our girls, while when they were teenagers, they might have resented it because I wasn't there for them as much. They now recognize the huge blessings, not just monetarily, but the relationships that they have. that is Shelly Gardner. Shelly is a mother to Shanna Gardner and the founder of the family business and company Stampen Up, it's an MLM.

She's no longer the CEO. She was a longtime CEO. Her daughter, Sarah, is now the CEO. But we find it interesting that people are referring to Microsoft so often when it comes to this case in the headlines rather than stamping up. Because Shanna Gardner was a stamp. And I can actually use that word because that's actually what was written in her pre-up, that she is the heir to the Stampin-Up, one of the heirs, the family heir, one of the family

member heirs to the Stamping Up Fortune. That is Shelley Gardner, her mother, in a KSL interview years and years ago talking about how her teenagers, her teenage daughters, had some resentment towards the business early on. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about what's known as the Stampen Up bubble. Why don't you replay the one that you just played a minute ago? Let's start with that. Try to balance it and it doesn't always work just the way you plan. It's something, like I said, I wouldn't go back and try it.

Stamping up has been a blessing in all of our lives. And I think our girls, while when they were teenagers, they might have resented it because I wasn't there for them as much. They now recognize the huge blessings, not just monetarily, but the relationships that they have. I always say that during forensic evaluations and interviews, people, I work with criminals mainly, but in general, when people give interviews, a lot of times they'll slip. They'll say things they don't intend to. People tend to over talk. They tend to clay their hand a little bit.

They tell on themselves. Yeah, they tell on themselves. I think this is one of those moments. And we'll talk about why this is an important moment. But she says that the children resent the fact that she wasn't around. So that's interesting. It's interesting, I think, especially because we're talking about Shanna, that last time we talked about how Shanna was born in 1987 and then Stampin Up was started, founded in 1988. And we speculated that Shelley was extremely busy. We've heard that she wasn't really around that much during those early years. So presumably that meant that most of the parenting responsibilities were handed over to. I guess, either her older sisters or Sterling, who is Jenna's father. What's interesting about this to me is last time I speculated about the possibility of maybe some neglect.

I don't know how severe that would have been, but you have a moment here where publicly Shelley is saying, our kids resented us because we just weren't there for them. And I want to say, too, this isn't all Shelly. No, I was just going to bring this up. The resentment, she's not just talking about the fact that she's not around. She's also talking about the fact that Sterling is not providing whatever they need. The resentment is not just Shelly. It's also Sterling.

Correct. We'll talk a little bit more about the family culture in a minute. For those new to our channel, we've discussed a lot about attachment. And a lot of people in comments might think, oh, you're blaming parents for the choices of an adult or now this is because she didn't get the way she. she wanted. Can you clarify what we're discussing about just briefly so people understand? Because this does set the stage and it's important. So if we're talking about criminals in general, this idea of attachment is really a critical idea. And attachment means that it's defined by the child's relationship with a parent or caregiver in the earliest years of their existence,

of their upbringing. And generally speaking, there's two types of attachments that the children will have. One is a security attachment, secure attachment. Secure attachment is when the mother or father or caregiver is attuned to the child's needs. They meet those needs for the most part. There's something that a psychologist by the name of Winnicott calls good enough parenting is basically meeting a child's needs. You don't have to meet all their needs. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be, let's use the word attune to the child. If the child is hungry, you don't let the child. You don't let the child starve for the next two days. You feed the child in a reasonable amount of time. You

sassiate, you satisfy that hunger and the child calms down. So there's this idea of attunement. There's been a lot of research showing that, for example, that mothers experience depression or postpartum depression, they are not well attuned. They're not particularly attuned to their children. And their children then suffer as a result of that. Typically, that would have to go on for a while that we're not talking about two days of depression. We're talking about something a little more prolonged, maybe months or maybe even years, where there's this general lack of interaction or attumment with a child, which has been shown to result in later, potentially later mental health issues. And for those again, also new to our channel, Dr. John is a forensic psychologist who has

actually been assessing criminals for 30 years. This is what he does. And attachment plays a big part in understanding that early development of a criminal. Thus, it's often something we consider when assessing a criminal, and we are assessing an alleged criminal right now. Shanna Gardner-Fernandez has been arrested and charged in her ex-husband's death, murder, to be exact, and while she has not been convicted and is innocent until proven guilty, we are discussing what could have led up to this, when it comes to what seems from the outside a healthy family. Maybe that also helps people understand the direction we're going to, understanding your background and what we're doing.

Right. So attachment is one of the fundamental elements or variables that I always begin to look for. And when you have somebody like Shelley saying, and again, let me make it clear, I'm speculating here. I don't have enough details about their upbringing to really assess this in depth. but I've done enough of these. I've done hundreds of forensic evaluations. And I think there's enough concern here to raise this issue about potential neglect or at least

potential insecure attachment. So you have secure attachment and you have insecure attachment. On the insecure attachment side, which is the side that leads to problems, you essentially have three different insecure attachment styles. You have, in childhood at least, you have a voice. You have anxious, ambivalent, and then you have disorganized attachment. So those three attachment styles typically lead to, potentially they lead to future problems. For example, it's been shown that insecure attachment, people with insecure attachment

have more relationship instability. They have more relationship problems. They experience more separation anxiety. They have lower self-esteem and self-worths. They generally have more. distrust in relationships. I could go on and on. But the point is that if you have an insecure attachment style, you're potentially setting yourself up for failure later on. And by the way, this is going to become a really important issue because I'm going to speculate about whether

Shauna Gardner has, is or could be considered a domestic violence offender or abuser. And so that's really, when I've had a chance to reflect on this case over the week, I really started moving in the direction of seeing Shanna Gardner as more of a female perpetrator of domestic violence. The term nowadays is IPV or interpersonal violence, but I'm going to use interpersonal violence and domestic violence interchangeably. So one of the variables that predicts whether a female will become violent in a relationship, and by violent, by the way, for the most part, it could be physical, but most female perpetrators engage in emotional abuse. I'm going to read from article 2008 called female perpetrators of violence in heterosexual intimate relationships,

adolescence through adulthood. Their main finding is that, and I'm going to quote them, emotional abuse is generally the most common form of interpersonal violence reported by female perpetrators across populations, followed by female perpetrators. Followed by physical and then sexual interpersonal violence. So I think one of the reasons it's really difficult or tricky to assess female offenders of domestic violence is because the abuse is primarily emotional and psychological. So you're not going to see somebody like Jared with black eyes necessarily. What happens, though, with female perpetrators is, or what's called them female offenders,

is that the likelihood of physical and violence increases over time. The longer there's emotional abuse, the more likely it is, that emotional abuse is more likely to evolve or transform into physical and even possibly sexual violence. So it should be pointed out to that this emotional abuse or that's typical of female offenders, it's regardless of age, it's regardless of ethnicity. And in the same article, they talk about some statistics that this, by the way, is fairly

controversial. The percentage of female perpetrators of domestic violence is not clear. The statistics are all over the maps. But generally speaking, the statistics show roughly 3%, to say 30, 35% of offenders of domestic violence are female. Now, having said that, I should qualify that and say that the number of offenders of domestic violence in general that commit seriously violent crimes and that commit murders are almost exclusively males. So it's important to recognize that females do engage in domestic violence. Females can be violent, especially emotionally.

but for the most part, when it comes to severe violence and when it comes to murders and killing partners in intimate relationships, males own that, males definitely own that distinction. So as Ozzy Tad is saying, when emotional abuse is included in the stats, it becomes clear gender isn't necessarily as relevant to abusiveness. It's more, it becomes similar. In other words, the stats shift with emotional abuse. Yeah, exactly. the staff start shifting, but this is where it becomes really tricky in the sense that in most surveys,

people aren't looking necessarily for emotional or psychological abuse. And it becomes even trickier when you consider that emotional and psychological abuse doesn't get reported to the police as a crime. In the same way that if you have violence in a marital relationship saying there's children, and that violence, let's say one of the partners calls the police and reports it, that when CPS comes to the home, they might recognize there's violence between the parents, but they don't assess how that violence, which is emotional, because the children aren't necessarily being physically abused, they don't assess how that violence emotionally impacts the children. So it doesn't necessarily get reported or it doesn't become a statistic that someone

would consider. Because, for example, with Shana Gardner, we know from talking to a number of people, she was very disparaging of Jared. We know that she belittled him. We know that she mocked him. The things, all these issues around emotional abuse seem to be occurring in that marriage and in that relationship, both during the relationship and after. This is such an important thing to talk about too. I did do an interview with Debbie Heisler on our channel for those that are interested in learning more about domestic abuse when it comes to the perpetrator being female,

which is what we're discussing tonight. I do recommend the Debbie Heisler interview that I did. But thank you for covering this, John, and explaining these stats. And in that case, too, he was murdered as well. Debbie's son was murdered. But again, it was through a hitman. Right.

That's not the woman that does it. It's the plotting. Yeah, we'll get into that a little bit sooner. We'll get into that. Jumping ahead. Sorry about that. So let me back up to this idea of attachments. A couple of people wrote us and said,

hey, you guys are, because Shelly's the CEO and this businesswoman, it seems like you guys are blaming her and not Sterling. And so let me make a comment on that. The issue is not whether it's Shelly or Sterling that are creating this environment. It's the lack of attunement. I'm going to talk a little bit about Sterling for a moment. I'm going to read, this is actually from a blog that Shelly has called So Shelly. This is a post she has from August 4th, 2008, called Meet the Gardner. She's talking about, here she's talking about her husband, Sterling. She describes him as, quote, he's gentle and strong, wise and calm and steady.

They say opposite to tract, and that's certainly the case in our marriage. That is not to say, of course, that I can't be calm and steady, but those who know me know that I tend to be passionate and emotional. She goes on. Sterling is a simply spiritual man who loves his family and horses, exclamation point. If he can't be spending time with us, the second choice is off on a ride, exclamation point. Now, I don't want you to think that Sterling's perfect,

although he's probably as close as they come. There's a lot of interesting things in that. So that's her introducing her family and her blog in 2008. Interesting. And when you're introducing your husband in a blog, I presume you're going to say the kindest, most positive things you can, right? Because you're trying to put a positive spin on your husband and your family. Your business is all about your family. But what's interesting to me is some of the adjectives we've heard from people that knew the gardeners.

Several of these were demonstrators over the years have described Sterling as being passive. submissive, stoic, unemotional, socially awkward. And one person, I don't want to be cruel here, but one person said he's a total dormant. So anyway, you can, you can, you can gather some of those qualities from Shelley's descriptions about him being gentle, quiet, right? This is not an extrovert. This is not someone who's expressive.

This is not someone who appears to be particularly comfortable in social situations. In fact, she tells us that, right? She says this is someone who would rather be riding horses, which is to say that he prefers animal interactions potentially to humans. So let me make clear, when I talk about this potential for neglect, you have a situation where Shelley is starting this business in less than a year after Shanna Gardner is born in 1988. So Shelley is not around her daughter that much.

by Shelly's admission there. She says there's resentment among my kids for not being around enough. So let's bring Sterling into this equation. So you have Sterling who presumably takes over parenting responsibilities. And if these descriptions of Sterling are accurate, you have someone who's not particularly social. He doesn't seem particularly comfortable in social situations. And most importantly, you have someone who appears fairly unemotional.

He seems pretty stoic. That's one of the adjectives we heard about Sterling. And let me reiterate, Sterling sounds like a decent human being to me. So I'm not trying to be critical here. I'm just trying to assess how somebody like Shanna Gardner can go from being raised in this type of environment to deciding to murder her husband years later. We're not assessing Sterling and Shelly necessarily. We're just assessing them when it comes to their daughter. We're trying to assess the family system or family dynamics.

And so what's important here is you have a mother who's a CEO who's absent and you have a father who's stepping in to the parental role who doesn't seem particularly attuned emotionally to his children. For whatever reasons, probably his upbringing, I'm sure, but he's asked to fill this role for Shelley. And my guess is that I'm sure Sterling sees his job as being quite competent. But the question is somebody like this going to be capable of really tuning in to the needs of very young children and the siblings that are a bit older and raising them in a really healthy, responsible matter? I think I would have to say Sterling is clearly someone who's going to protect them. Sterling is someone who's going to care about them a lot. He probably loves them a great deal. But is he tuned into them emotionally?

And I have to come to the conclusion that somebody like this probably isn't. And that's, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to denigrate him, but I'm just trying to say, look, I think the potential for neglect is here in the sense that these children, in particular Shauna, because she's the one who has her mother absent the most, that she's not getting the level of emotional attumment and nurturance that she probably needs to become really healthy. So I think we're setting the stage here and saying, look, is if Shelly's out of the picture, and I don't even know, honestly, if Shelly's around all the time for Shanna, I don't even know if that's going to be good enough either. And we'll talk about the family culture a little more in a minute.

So the problem arises here because I could use analogy with like postpartum depression. Obviously Sterling's not female. He's not going to experience in that. But the problem with postpartum depression is that the women who experience that, they struggle to raise their kids because they just don't understand how to do. They're not able to develop those emotional connections with their children, with their newborns, with their one-year-olds, toddlers, whatever. And so that's the issue. And as long as I'm talking about that, I'm going to read from, this is a research I'm called, Review of research on women's use of violence with male intimate partners.

It's by Swan et al, 2008. It's from a journal called Violence Victims. I'm reading from page 9 of this article. The subheading or the beheading of this particular part of the article is characteristics of women who use violence. Evidence from several studies indicates that rates of childhood trauma and abuse are very high among women who use violence. Among Swan's sample of women who used intimate partner violence, 60% experienced emotional abuse and neglect,

58% were sexually abused, 52% were physically abused, and 41% were physically neglected. I'm going to continue on in this article about psychological functioning. Four psychological conditions have been associated with traumatic experiences in general and domestic violence victimization in particular. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The prevalence of all these conditions is very high among women who use intimate partner violence.

For example, Swanette L. in their 2005 study of women who use violence against mal partners found that 69% met criteria for depression on a a screening measure. So this article is pointing out emotional abuse and neglect, which is what we're potentially talking about here, is, has a 60% of females who engage in intimate partner violence have had some type of emotional abuse or neglect, and they've also suffered from depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and or post-traumatic stress disorder. So I'm trying to set the stage here that there's some type of emotional abuse or neglect, which is, again, an absent mother and a father who's not particularly tuned in to his daughter.

So we're talking about Shanna, obviously. You're setting the stage for later problems. You're setting the stage for relationship difficulties. You're setting the stage for depression, which, as long as we're talking about that, I should mention that we talked to someone who saw that quality in Shana quite strong. This person described Shanna as being emotionally volatile, and this person said that she experienced, quote, periods of depression and sadness. Many people often tried to cheer her up, but she still experienced mood swings. I speculated last week that I believed that I believe there was some depression.

And so that was confirmed. We talked to submission companions that knew her quite well, that interacted with her quite a bit. it and they agreed that she seemed to be depressed quite often, that she would be up and down. So one of them speculated that perhaps there might be some bipolar disorder, but that's not clear. Asked the person, were there ever episodes of really manic behavior where she didn't sleep, where she went off on, she went off on, I don't know, spending sprees or whatever. And the person said that they did not see any manic episodes, which if that's accurate, and again, this is purely speculation, but if that's accurate, if there were no manic episodes,

then that would move us more in the direction of a personality disorder. So something more like borderline personality disorder, let's say, there's more emotional ability and there's kind of these fluctuations in emotions between sadness, say, and kind of euphoria, that people are idealized and then they're devalued. One person told us that this person said that they believe that Shanna lacked a sense of self and that she needed constant reassurance. So constant reassurance.

Yeah, let's go to the letter. Yeah, I just pulled up a letter, everyone. This is something we were given. I'll make it bigger here. or attempt to in just a second. Yeah, this is something Shanna wrote on her mission. Let me begin by saying, she states, and we chopped off the top where it said who it was to and from.

So some stuff is redacted. All the personal stuff has been redacted. So those little chopped off sentences, we're protecting our sources. She states, let me begin by saying, I will probably be the coolest person that comments in your journal. So you really have no need to continue to read. beyond my entry. So as promised, I have included some of the recipes I have gathered over the

past few months. I hope you enjoy them. Thank you so much for your redacted. Can't say that I have ever been in a better district. Oh, and thanks for putting up with all my waterworks. I will never forget those good old redacted. Thanks again for everything, Hermana Shadna Gardner. They were serving in Spain, Madrid, Spain 15 years ago. There you go. What say you, John? There's a couple of things that really stand out. Again, you have a very short letter,

and yet you can draw all kinds of really interesting inferences about her from this letter. The first, I think, the first thing that stood out was this whole idea about no one else needs to comment. Or I don't, where is this being written again in some type of? It says, this is, so the person that gave this to us, it was in their journals. Think of it as like a yearbook. When you're on a mission, you have different companions and different groups of people in a district.

And you serve around people you're assigned to serve around. And so it's almost like before you get transferred to another district, you're signing a note in somebody's journal. Think of it, I think similar to a yearbook. Okay. So she begins, yeah, I've written in a few yearbooks, not a whole bunch of years. yearbooks, but I've never, it would never occur to me to begin a journal entry in a yearbook by saying clearly I'm the coolest person here. So really there's no need for you to ask other people to write in this yearbook because I'm it. Like once I write in here, it's done. We're done. We're just

going to close this. You can move on. So that's peculiar. I think that's consistent with someone who is, she's trying to be humorous, obviously. She sees this has been being a little funny. Definitely. Yeah, she's trying to be lighthearted and silly. Yeah, she's trying to be a little silly. But of course, I think that falls flat. To me, this is someone who I think believes this, that there is an attention-seeking quality to that.

There is the sense of being self-centered. I wrote in your book, I'm so cool, you can move on. She's being silly about it. But for those who know Freud, Freud said jokes are really masking a reality behind them. And I think you can see some of that reality here. People tell on themselves, as you see, yes. So there's that element that you see the self-absorption. You see some people have, I am hesitant to use this term because it's thrown about so readily these days.

But you can see a little bit of two narcissistic traits there, perhaps. That was a word that several mission companions used to describe her entitled, narcissistic, self-centered. So I think you see some of that here. And then with the part about the bit about things for putting up with all my waterworks, again, you're a couple things. Number one, that would suggest, like I just mentioned earlier, potentially some depression, that she seems to be down a lot. She cries a lot.

So that's one symptom of depression, that this constant sadness or this inability to regulate that sadness, this crying all the time. But I also have the sense that the way she phrases this, I think this is not just about crying and sadness. I think there's also perhaps an attention seeking component to that too. She's crying as the person told us to get reassurance. In other words, there's a relational component to the tears. It's not just that she's sad. It's that she wants to connect to someone through that sadness. So there's almost, there's a bit of of a manipulative quality there. I agree.

She wants people to recognize her. So if she just wants to be sad and cry and be depressed, typically we can do that in our rooms and shut the door and brood or whatever. But this is more than that. When she cries, we've heard. When she has these episodes of sadness, she typically tends to do them in front of other people. Waterworks, right?

Waterworks is not crying. And nor is a crying once. I think what we can all see from this is that she's emotional. I have a, what does she say exactly? I just want to read it one more time. It's a little far from me. But she states, thanks for putting up with all my waterworks. This somebody that is crying a lot.

In that sense, you could imagine that she's, this crying isn't just about depression. It might be partly about depression. It probably helps her to express those emotions in front of other people. But it sounds like she's trying to draw other people into her, let's call it pathology. She's trying to draw people into these emotions and these dramas and whatever she's experiencing. And so I think there's a bit of a manipulative element to that as well. Yes. Interesting. Thanks, babe.

One thing I want to do before we go further, and we'll come back to this in a minute, but we'll come back to this issue of female perpetrators of domestic violence. But we did hear, people did speak positively about her as well. And I think it's important to humanize people and offenders and to recognize that, although presumably she's only being accused at the moment and she's still innocent, she has to go to trial. But it's important to humanize people like Shannon Gardner. and to see some positive qualities as well.

And that's something that I certainly have done in my groups with violent offenders over the years. And that's the only way I can really work with them and help them affect change. So I do want to mention that several mission companions talked about many positive qualities. They talked about the fact that she was funny, that she had a good sense of humor,

that she could be fun. She was fun to be around. She was extroverted. They described her one person. described her as, quote, an amazing cook, which... A couple of people described her as an amazing cook. So she went, we know she went to culinary school, apparently, before her mission. So she would have been a teenager when she went to culinary school.

And apparently she did well because people really thought she was an extraordinary cook. People described her as being musical, that she let a choir in the park in the dream, that she's the one who actually planned that and executed it. And other people described her as a good storyteller. So, Shannon Gardner has these positive qualities as well. And you can see why people did connect to her. And she had a certain amount of charisma.

And people recognize that. This is not someone who's just pure evil. This is a human being who lost her way. And she probably had a number of issues early on that we're going to talk about more, but that led to this outcome, unfortunately. But I think it's worth saying that people did talk, speak highly of her, and it wasn't all negative. Yeah, it wasn't like she went on her mission and then traumatized everyone.

Some people are shocked. Okay. Yeah. On the traumatized issue, by the way, people did tell us that she struggled with her mission companions. Yes, he did. One person said her relationships was always, quote, too intense. Almost all those relationships failed.

She was never promoted to businesses of leadership. And even beginning her mission, this is something else we learned, even beginning her mission was a manipulation. We heard that. Yes, this is interesting. This is an interesting story, everyone. Here you go. Yeah.

Here you go. So the reason why Shanna went on her mission in the first place is because she believed it would provoke her then boyfriend to marry her. She believed that once she drove over to the, what, MTC or wherever she was going, Richard Training Center. We're talking about, for those just joining an LDS or Mormon mission, where young college-age students choose to serve for two years or 18 months. This was a choice for her.

None of her siblings went. This is something unique about her, too, that she chose to do this. and go ahead. Yeah, why did she go, though? So she has this Disney-like fantasy that she's going to drive over to the mission training center and all of a sudden out of nowhere her boyfriend is going to appear in another car and cut her off and stop her and say, I can't live without you. I need to marry you.

Please don't go on your mission, Shanna. I'm here. I love you so much. And, of course, he never showed up. So the mission, the mission occurred. Yeah, and the way she tells the story allegedly from the people who told it to us is first off, they say she was a very good storyteller, that she told great stories. And she told this story more than once. And the story always was that she thought she would get the call and he'd say, no, don't go proposing.

And that she thought as she was driving to that Mission Training Center, just as John said, that means the moment you're going. You're going. You don't just change your mind at this moment. This is like being walking down the aisle on your wedding day and changing your mind. They're driving to the Mission Training Center and she thought that he would pop out of the bushes and be like, wait, never mind. And she was dreaming of that moment until she flew to Madrid. And so I think it's she thought it was going to be like a movie. She thought and which by the way, her return she felt like was going to be a movie as well.

Yes. Her return she also thought was going to be a movie. When she returned home from her mission, she thought she was going to have another, to quote one of the people we talked to that she was going to have another magical moment when she returned home and she apparently focused on fitness and she wanted everyone in her family to show up. And she wanted this huge crowd when she got off the plane thinking that somehow

she was going to appear to this boisterous round of applause from the people greeting her. And so she had this, she has this other kind of magical Disney moment when she returns home as well. It kind of mirrors that. So when both, when she left for her mission and when she came back, she has these fantasies about being special and being in, being in, being the center of attention. But the story about expecting her boyfriend to show up, it's not just, I think there's a little more to it also. And there's a certain level of impulsivity there and even recklessness.

Very much. And the sense that she's not thinking through the mission. She's just deciding at the last moment to go on this mission, which is going to be 18 months. So that's no small commitment of time. But she's thinking, if I can't get this guy to marry me. So the mission is secondary to this goal of getting her boyfriend to marry her. And so that's a really impulsive, almost reckless decision. So you can see that someone who's thinking this way could potentially make some really impulsive reckless decisions down the row.

And obviously getting charged for murder again, she's alleged to be the murderer. But you can see how this type of thinking process can potentially contribute to a really reckless decision to murder someone potentially. Susan Bell, by the way, she shares a personal experience. She says, I have a charismatic friend with borderline. She does not see her talents and gifts. She only sees what she doesn't have. That's interesting. Yeah, that's a good point.

You had too, or at least she talked a lot about what she had, according to mission companions on her mission. She would often talk about the money she had and the things she had waiting for her at home as well. Everyone knew she had money. She made that very clear. As long as we're talking about the importance of money, maybe we should dive a little bit into her family culture. We started talking about that last week, but could you play the clip?

Yes. This is, we're going to, let's just play it a couple times for kicks too. Okay. Sarah says. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah is the CEO now. So, Shanna's sister. Sarah says here. In terms of my path, I think that mine has been, of course, within this stampout bubble,

I will point out, though, my husband went. to college. One more time now. This is not a completed thought because the thing I want to everyone to notice is this odd term that she refers to as the Stampin'Up bubble. Stampin up bubble. Here we go again. Again, Stampin up is the name of the family business. In terms of my path, I think that mine has been, of course, within this Stampin' Up bubble, I will point out, though, my husband went to college, right? Stampin' a bubble. What she's talking about, I don't even know why she had to throw in a stamping up bubble term in there,

talking about her husband's education. But she wanted everyone to know that and what she was about to say had to do within the stamping up bubble. Yeah, so let's talk about the stamping up bubble because this is absolutely amazing to me. Yeah, we're fascinated with the stamping up bubble. We've been hearing a lot about the stamping up bubble. bubble. It's a thing. So if we're going to understand, if we're going to understand Shanna, we need to understand the Stamping Up bubble because the stamping up bubble has a lot to do with the family

culture and it has a lot to do with understanding Shanna. The stamping up bubble, which Sarah says here, I don't know if she meant to say that publicly, but the stamping a bubble is essentially the way the family is trying to represent this company. So the family sees this idea of a bubble around their company and a bubble around their family as being a positive quality. And so what the stamping of bubble is among demonstrators, and we've heard this from multiple demonstrators now, by the way, that this was a saying that within the company, they would talk about staying in the stamping up bubble. And what that means is you don't share anything on social media. You keep all communications internal to the company that you don't

make negative comments. According to one person, negative comments are, quote, confusing to them. That you delete all negative comments if they are posted on social media. You censor demonstrators when they make negative comments. Part of the bubble is apparently that there was, according to one demonstrator, quote, a tattletel culture in the sense that members of this stamping up community would essentially tell on bubble violators. Yeah, bubble violators.

If you don't keep things in the stamp in a bubble, you're going to get tattled on. People are going to let you know if you, jump outside that bubble if you're trying to poke the bubble. One one demonstrator who talked to us, I'm going to use her language here because obviously I wasn't a demonstrator, but one demonstrator said that the culture was quote, insular and cult, cult, I'm sorry, let me repeat that.

The demonstrator said that the culture was quote, insular and culty. Okay, so this idea of containing your culture, company culture and probably your family culture within a bubble is I can't even, and being so open about it, right? Like it's one thing to say, oh, yeah, we want to exist within a bubble, but to share that publicly with all of your demonstrators and all your people and say, yeah, we want to keep this in a bubble. It seems to me absurd.

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So what's important about this idea of the bubble is that you have a company culture that basically has what I would call impermeable boundaries with the outside world. So in other words, no information, so this is a family systems idea. In family systems, we talked about this a little bit last time, but this is a system that's disengaged. So they're cut off from the world and they're cut off from each other. They don't want information to flow into the system and the information that flows out, they want to control. So this is all about impression management and control in the sense that they're trying to

control perceptions of the company and they're trying to control perceptions of the company and they're trying to control perceptions of the family. So when Shelley, in the blog I just read, when Shelley says that Sterling's about as near to perfect as you can get, that's part of this bubble. This idea of perfection in the family and perfection in the company culture, the only way you can possibly maintain that is with this type of bubble. They see this bubble as being very real and very important.

And that's how they're trying to filter information. And so actually, I'm going to read a memo. Yeah. And by the way, that was Shelly Gardner and Sarah. Sarah is the CEO now. And that was Shelly Gardner. So that was Shanna's sister and Shanna's mom in that video for those. Yes.

And Liz, I love it. Liz said, so basically bubble wrap your business. And your family, Liz. Like just bubble wrap everything. And if you bubble wrap it, then you will not be subjected to the normal wear and tear and suffering and ills of the world. You can just protect your family from everything. So just, yeah, do that. This is a statement that was put out to demonstrators by Shelly and Sterling Gardner after Shana's arrest. I'm just going to read a little bit of this.

Quote, Shelly and Sterling respectfully request privacy regarding this personal matter as they focus on providing love and support to their family. I'm going to keep going. here. This is all a quote. Read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. Okay. This is to demonstrators. Dear demonstrator, the recent news about the gardener's daughter, Shanna, is difficult. Shelley and Sterling have shared a statement in which they respectfully request privacy regarding this personal matter as they focus on providing love and support to their family. Words cannot accurately express the depth of our sadness. Family is our top priority. We love our daughter and are focused on supporting her and our entire family.

as we help our grandchildren navigate this difficult and very confusing time. For their sake, in all involved, we caution against further speculation and request privacy as the legal process runs its course. In the meantime, we are thankful for the continued support, thoughtfulness, and prayers being so generously shared by friends and loved ones. I pulled it up there, too. So people can see that as the actual email. right there. What's interesting here is twice they talk about the importance of privacy.

Privacy obviously goes hand in hand with this bubble idea. So they're talking to demonstrators, but they're really sending the message to demonstrators that this is a private affair. Please don't talk about it. And they're also requesting they're saying, we caution against further speculation. Caution against further speculation to me. sounds like an implicit threat. But. And a list even says the statement's in a bubble. Yeah, the statement.

Keep them the stamp in a bubble, they're saying. What's missing from this is any mention of what happened. What's missing from this is any mention of Jared. What's missing from this is. And so this statement about for their sake and all involved, we, I mean, it, it's so. Kind regards. Kind regards. Yeah.

No mention of Jared. No mention. of the situation. Just sad news. It's difficult. And don't speculate. Don't talk about this. And we're not going to say anything else.

Let's keep this in the stamping up bubble. And also an important part of this letter is that if you want to support our entire, they say, quote, as we help our grandchildren navigate this difficult and very confusing time. So you're helping your children, your grandchildren navigate this time by keeping them away from their sisters? Correct. For those new to the case,

again, they're half-sisters here. Jared had four children, three girls, one boy. Two of the two youngest were with his new wife, and his twins were with Shanna. The night that Shanna, or excuse me, the night that Jared was killed, Kirsten, his wife,

Jared's wife never saw the twins again. And, you know, this, when I read this letter and I think about this family culture and this company culture, it reminded me a little bit of the Brian Laundry letter from his mother, Roberta. For those of you who aren't familiar with that letter, Roberta writes a letter to her son, Brian. after she harbored him or kept him at their house to protect him, when he fled from, was it Wyoming, a Montana, I forget. Wait, they were in Florida.

He was in Florida. He strangled Gabby in Montana or Wyoming and fled to Florida to stay with his parents. His parents essentially protected him during that period until he went off to the swamp and took his own life. But. Correct. There's a lot of questions. questions in here about what this family knew, what they suspected, whether they're, to what

degree they're willing to go to protect Shanna, like why they're holding the grandchildren without allowing them to see their siblings. And so I think it raises a lot of questions for me about I guess it goes back to the idea of the bubble, trying to keep her in the bubble, trying to keep the grandchildren in the bubble, trying not to deal with the reality. A bubble, that's what a bubble is. A bubble is a way to protect yourself from reality, from the real world, from real world consequences, right?

It's creating a false reality within that bubble that you don't want to share with the outside world. And that's very similar to what Roberta Londry did with her son Brian. Actually, I'm just going to read a little bit of that letter. Here's what she told her son in that letter. If you're in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags, right? That's from Roberta Laundry to Brian Laundry.

Brian Laundry is the person that strangled Gabby Petito. Murdered his girlfriend that he so loved, according to him. viral. And so I think this is the problem with the bubble. Yes. The bubble really impedes our ability to manage the world and to make sense of the world and interact with the world. And if you're in that bubble, you're going to protect your daughter at all costs. Even if Shannon went to her parents, I doubt she did this, but if she went to her parents and said,

look, I had Jared murdered, I couldn't take it anymore. Can you help me? the response is we're going to do everything in our power to help you, even though potentially, even though there's all this evidence, or at least there seems to be a lot of motivations here to implicate their daughter and some involvement in this murder. People told us, too, that Mario really, first of all, Mario doesn't have the money to pay Henry Tennant to commit these murders.

So the money is an issue. Where did the money come from? clearly you can tie I think you can tie the money back to the Gardner family that's one issue but keep that in the stamping up bubble though that's just and the other issue is that

Shanna was involved in a seven year contentious custody of dispute the jurid never relented from I'm sure she got to a point where she'd had enough in other words Mario doesn't have that type of motivation Mario unless Mario just becomes

this lone wolf actor who decides, oh, my wife isn't such pain over this. I'm just going to take care of this. That seems really unlikely to me. But what are the obligations of the parents here? Are they, should they be funding the best defense possible if they think that their daughter murdered someone or had involvement with a murder? Should they do what Roberta Laundry did? I don't know.

That's, that's, this is the problem with the bubble culture. or bubble family. Right. And some people might say, isn't that what loyalty is? Isn't that what family is? Family first. But honestly,

the moment my family member I learned might have been involved in something like that, I would say I will love and support them and be there for them, but I will make sure justice is served and I will hold their hand while they confess. I will support them

while they tell police what they know. There's a difference. There's a difference there. to say, look the other way. Let's not talk about this. And we're going to stand by this daughter because of the sad news. I think it's important to recognize the impact of this culture. That when you're in this bubble,

one thing we know about Shelley is that she was extremely competitive. Do you want to actually play the clip? Yes. This would be. Once again, sometimes. people tell on themselves. I don't think it was clear the first time we shared a bit of this interview. And by the way, every interview we shared tonight,

we got from a YouTube video and all of those YouTube videos are linked in the description of this interview. Or sorry, this is an interview. Am I interviewing you? No, the description of this live hidden hour. So I interview them after. I'm like, okay, sit down, babe. No.

So you can check out all of those videos into those are linked. This is Shelly Gardner, Shanna's mother. The woman who said Stampin'Up Bubble is the Stampin' up CEO, Sarah, who is Shannon's oldest sister, or older sister, excuse me, Megan's the oldest. So this is Shelly Gardner, Shanna's mother talking in this interview. And again, all of these videos are linked in the description of this video. You can go check them out. Here we go.

One of our suppliers said early on in our business, you have not. no business being in business. And he said those words to us. And he was right. We did not have business backgrounds. I told you my education was, how can I be the best mom? And so we didn't have the background.

Having said that, though, I since bought his company. So a little bit of sweet-weregrimbs. That's maybe not the right thing. It's really negative. I think it was just a full-circle moment. Yeah, yeah. It was one of those, what goes around, comes around,

But I. So there you go. Sweet revenge. Then Sarah corrects her and says, that's a little negative mom. Let's call it a full circle moment. And then Shelley goes to, oh, yeah,

what goes around comes around, because that sounds much better. Right. This is one of those moments that's way more revealing, I think, than she anticipated. But it does show,

And I'll describe why this is relevant in a second, but it does show that there's some vindictiveness in this family. So within the bubble, there's a couple things we can get from that, this idea. So somebody questions whether they should be in business. They buy them out, essentially. And she says she calls it sweet revenge. So clearly there's a very competitive element to that. There's an element of vindictiveness. Yes.

And there's an element of even maybe vengeance. They want to get back at this guy. And so this whole idea of the things I read earlier about we're all about family and love and all blah, blah, blah. And even in the first clip we read where she says, my kids resented me. But later on they were grateful, not just because of all the money we made. Yeah, it is because of the money you made. You don't change resentment. because you made a lot of money.

She tries to dismiss that. But anyway, so this is important because it's going to help us understand Shanna a little bit more. We heard from somebody who knew her really well on our mission who said that Shanna was obsessed with performance. She was obsessed with her numbers. That she wanted to be, quote, the top everything. The top missionary, the top, when she got home, She wanted to be the top business person.

She wanted to be, she was deeply upset when she didn't become a trainer or didn't enter any leadership positions on her mission. So the person who told us this said that her goal was always to be the very best at everything. And oftentimes she couldn't accomplish that. So there was this deep insecurity. Yeah. That in many ways, she constantly bragged about her wealth. She saw money as a measure of her self-worth, but she never quite lived up to those expectations. And so I think part of this family culture is this, there's this really competitive of

economic-based family culture here that puts money at the center. They give stipends to the kids. We talked about that last week. They give stipend of the kids to the kids for different accomplishments, such as getting married, having children, having grandchildren. It's all kind of a reward system. Correct. So you're, not only do you have this bubble, but you're raising a daughter who's obsessed with performance. She's not getting, probably not getting enough attention as a child. And she fills this deep sense of inadequacy, I'm sure, that she can't keep up. Her sister Sarah

becomes the CEO. There could be some resentment over not having that opportunity. And we have heard from somebody that knew them when they're younger, that Sarah was always put on stage. John, we both heard this from some different people we spoke to that Sarah was always put on stage, always highlighted. Shiana was younger. Sterling and Shelley go on an LDS mission themselves years ago and they make Sarah the CEO then. And right. So there is this favoring. I don't know if it's favoring, but this sort of Sarah is clearly on a pedestal of sort. And Shanna isn't. I think that's one reason by the way that Shanna starts this cookie business. I think she's looking for acceptance. She's looking for validation. In fact, do you want to play a little bit of that? Yeah, let me pull up the screen to share this YouTube video.

What I really love, though, about your bakery as is really found it in the basis of what's your grandmother's recipe, her trainings, that's really a heritage that's been like just born and raised with you. Yeah. In fact, my logo, I just got it updated. And the font for the word typography is modeled after my grandmother's handwriting. My brother-in-law, who's an amazing graphic designer, was able to sketch out and hand-draw and create her handwriting because when it came down to it, this came about and this flexible through what started with cooking with my grandma in the kitchen. And then it turned into a labor of love and a way to show people that we care about them and to share happiness, make people happy. Everyone's happy when they get little children and they get food.

Let me tell you the samples that we had and tried around the office made everybody happy. And my favorite cookie that you brought by was the strawberry lemonade. That for a cookie, it was refreshing. It was surprising. Yeah. So this clip, again, like these small moments can be so revealing. But a couple of things about this clip that really stand out for me. One is she's really basing her business in this kind of family lore about her grandmother.

and her grandmother's cookie recipes. And right, so it's got this foundation in that has deep roots in the family. So I think, and so let's start with the idea that she doesn't. Sweet story. I liked it. Yeah, no, I don't, she's fine on this interview. She does great. But I think that if you dig a little deeper, I think part of the reason she's starting this company,

she doesn't have to start it. No, she doesn't have to start it. She's getting, we learn later from. some of the court documents. She's getting $8,500 a month as a stipend from her parents. And she has trust funds and God knows how much money that she has, about access to. But she clearly doesn't need to start this business. But I think she's starting this business because she wants some validation from her family. She's looking for acceptance. And you'll notice when the interviewer compliments, her response is so over the top. She's so giddy and so happy. That's what she wants.

wants that validation. She wants those kudos. She wants to feel special and important. And it's like, I don't know, I don't know if I'd call it over the top, but like her reaction to the smallest compliments of that interview is amazing. Like she's just really giddy and it's genuine. This is someone who's just right up those compliments. And it's just she appears to be so starved for attention and praise. And it makes you really want. wonder if this is someone who got any praise as a kid. Or if praise is the love language, money is praise, yeah. Although Shelly tells us the love language is money so much in her block.

Yeah. And in fact, as long as we're talking about this, I should tell the story about that we learned from someone that Shanna was obsessed with the book, The Twilight Series books. But so was Lori Vallow. Sorry, that's another story. Yeah. She was obsessed with the Twilight series books. And in fact, I guess the family knew the author who is, who's the author of the Twilight books? Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer. Okay. So the family, because this family's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, they use those connections to meet and to develop a relationship with the author. So this isn't just about loving the Twilight series. This is also about having a relationship with the,

the author and knowing the author. And apparently, was she on her mission? I'm trying to remember. She was on her mission, yes. So on your mission, you're not reading regular books. You're reading church literature. It's a timely life, but you're not reading the most recent books that come out. So she was going to have to wait to read the next installment of Twilight once she was home from her mission.

She couldn't read it. Okay. So she doesn't have access. The last installment of the Twilight Series was released. She couldn't read it. She didn't have access to it. And her father, Sterling, told her the ending. While on the mission.

While on the mission. She could read it first. Yeah. Sterling revealed, he had a big reveal, told her the ending, and she was livid. She was so angry that she cut off all communication with him for months. I don't know how many months, but months, she would not talk to him. She would not acknowledge him. And this is someone who wrote hundreds of letters to family during her mission.

So only to, you can't make this stuff up, only when Sterling purchased her a home. And we're not talking like a small starter home. We're talking like a home with. as we were told, a home with a grand piano upstairs on the balcony of the house. As in you go in and there's a stairway and it comes up and there's a grand piano at the top. There's a spiral staircase, yeah.

And that she allegedly loved this home for a long time even before the mission. So when it came up for sale, Sterling was like, I better snag that one while I can, especially since I've ruined that Twilight book for her. So the impasse is resolved once Sterling buys. I have no idea how much this home costs, but I'm sure it was a lot. And so she apparently believed that was sufficient to reopen the channels of communication with her father.

And again, if we're thinking about, I talked about Sterling earlier. And again, it seems like a nice enough guy. But if you're solving problems like this with money, I think that just reinforces my point about is this guy attuned emotionally to his daughter. So anyway, I think that story kind of reinforces that point as well. There's also, yeah, that story is fascinating to me. I also want to point out, too, that Laura, I have to bring up the similarity now because I find it so interesting that Lori Ballo-Daybell, someone else we deep dive into,

was obsessed with Twilight, according to her family. And here is Shanna also allegedly obsessed with Twilight. And Twilight is a fantasy in itself. It's a story about immortal love. It's a love that is an absolute fantasy. And I think that is an interesting aspect of this, too. Both women ended up killing their allegedly.

We'll see. but killing or their husband or ex-husband is just interesting to me. If I'm evaluating someone like Shana, I want to go back to this issue of whether this is interpersonal violence or domestic violence. And I think one of the things I started thinking about, so let's talk a little bit about the way researchers now conceptualize interpersonal violence. And so typically these days there's four categories of domestic violence research. The first sees domestic violence now has been a function of coercive control. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. The second sees violence in an intimate relationship or interpersonal violence has been reactive.

So reactive violence would typically be, it would occur when someone in a relationship is responding to, the abuse, typically physical abuse, with their own violence. So in other words, it's a reaction. It's a response to a situation where they feel disempowered and they feel abused. And it's a way for someone to try to regain some control in the relationship. The third category for interpersonal violence is typically referred to now as situational couple violence, sometimes called retaliatory violence. So that situational couple violence is based upon a situation that leads to a fight that can become violence. So for example, let's say a couple's

talking about, let's say somebody in a relationship or a marriage goes on a shopping spree and they don't have the money. And so somebody, one of the partners becomes upset about it and says, why did you do this and they go back and forth. So it's the situation that leads to the argument. And sometimes those arguments become so severe that they can lead to pushing and shoving and maybe even physical violence. So those types of violent episodes would not be considered to be ingrained. And then the last category of interpersonal violence is what's called,

in some of the literature, it's what's called pathological violence. and pathological violence is, would we refer to someone who's antisocial or someone who has more psychopathic traits, someone who's violent kind of indiscriminately. So for those who know our podcast, our show, we've talked about some of the, I've talked about research by Jacobson and Gottman about different types of abusers or domestic abusers. And I've talked about the difference between pit bulls and cobras. that cobras are violent everywhere. They don't care about the context. Pit bulls tend to be... You're not talking about the real animals.

No, it's a category. In research, right? Yeah, no, in research. These are types of domestic offenders. And so the pit bull tends to confine their violence to the family. They tend to not be indiscriminately violence. They contain their violence. I remember I've done groups with domestic violence offenders for many years.

I remember I had a guy who was a cobra who he went to get his tires changed. So he was violent in all his relationships, but he was violent outside of that. He got into bar fights all this time. I remember one time he came into the group. He had missed the group for a couple weeks and he came into the group because he had been arrested. when he went to Firestone to get his tires changed. And the guy, the Firestone representative, made a comment that he took personally.

It was like a completely inane comment, but he took it personally. He jumped the counter. He grabbed the guy's neck. He tried to strangle him to death in front of all kinds of people. It was in public. That's a cobra. A cobra is someone who,

who fits more of the category of a psychopath, they're indiscriminately violent. I think the reason this is relevant is because I do see a lot of elements with Shanna, Gardner of coercive control. And one thing we know about coercive control is that it can be more subtle, not for the person in the relationship, not for Jared, but coercive control can be largely emotional and psychological, like I said earlier about female initiating domestic violence.

I'm just going to read, just so I clarify this point, I'm going to read a definition of coercive control. This is from an article in the Psychology of Violence, 2018, multiple authors, Christy Thomas is one of them, Karen Rhodes. Here's their definition of coercive control. So this is important for understanding this

particular case and whether Shana Gardner fits this category. Coercive control also described as intimate terrorism refers to a systematic pattern of behavior that establishes dominance over another person

through intimidation, isolation, and terror inducing violence or threats of violence. Through systematic restrictions on freedom independence, individuals experiencing coercive control are often isolated from friends, family, and other support systems. Intrapped within the relationship owing to financial, logistical, social, or emotional barriers to escaping, and fair fault for not only their own safety, but also that of family members and other people in their network. This is an important point here. coercive control can instill fear even in the absence of physical violence and can continue after the relationship ends.

So this idea of that in many ways some of the research on coercive control has shown that coercive control can escalate even after a marriage has ended. And that brings me to, I want to talk about another research article. this article is called Walking on Eggshells, a qualitative examination of men's experiences of intimate partner violence. It's from the psychology of men and masculinity's 2020. The author is Elizabeth Bates. This is really one of the first examinations that I'm aware of

that really looks at the experience of violence among men, or when men are the victims of female initiated violence. there was a sample in this particular study, there was a sample of 161 men. There were two main themes that, there were two main things that Bate found in her research. The theme, the first theme was aggression.

So her primary finding was that there was verbal aggression. As she says here, the verbal aggression often included yelling, screaming, and shouting. We know for sure that in their relationship, that Shanna was often angry, angry at Jared. She screamed at him a lot. She shouted at him. She belittled him. And in some of the court documents, he talks about that. And this is, so this is a court document we have. This is on

Patreon. Excuse me. This is from Jared's motion for temporary relief or husband's motion for temporary relief. This is from, I believe, 2015. One of the elements of this complaint is that Sherrod says that Shanna, quote, is treating the husband in a disparaging manner in front of the children. So that's part of it. So is there verbal aggression in this relationship? Absolutely. We have reports from people in the neighborhood who have told us that the screaming was so

loud that they can hear it down the street. And they describe the screaming as coming from Shanna and not from Jared. So there was a significant amount of verbal aggression. And then I want to even if it did come from Jared too, you know, when you have emotional and mental abuse and aggression, sometimes you yell back to. So even if it did. She goes on. For a significant number of men, the verbal aggression was the anteceded to the development of something more serious. This escalation is reflected situationally and that verbal aggression could do.

developed into physical aggression in many instances. If we're thinking about this in terms of a domestic violence relationship, I think we don't know for sure if there was physical aggression in this relationship. As far as we know there wasn't, but we know there was verbal. And that's a major component of interpersonal violence with females who are perpetrators. The second theme that she identifies is coercive control, which I just defined. Yes. And this is really important because we can check every one of these boxes.

So if we're comparing the behaviors of Shanna Gardner in her relationship with Jared Bridegan to men, 161 men who have experienced domestic violence and are reporting on it, he fits this to a T. This is such a great. I shouldn't say great. I'm sorry. There are so many similarities between these men and Jared. So, course of control. Jared is very much, so this is a study that looks at the experiences of men that are victims of violence. God, okay.

Thank you. Geron is very much like these victims of violence. Okay. So if we're trying to answer the question, is Shanna Gardner engaged in a relationship with interpersonal violence during and after her marriage to Jared, these are the things we want to look at. Does Jared look like a victim of violence?

Course of control. I just described course of control. I just provided a definition of that. One of the sub-thames of course of control is that the offender attempts to take control, attempts to limit personal freedom of victims. So with Jared, we obviously know that there was a lot of financial control that in the court document I just read, Jared talks about how he was

financially dependent upon Shana. He was going to school. He relied on her for survival, for tuition, for everything. So there was a huge amount of ways in which Shana could restrict his personal freedom. In addition to, and again, I'm referring to this court document, she locked him out of the master bedroom. She installed surveillance. the ailens devices in the children's bedroom and in Jared's car. I just told you about that she treated him in a disparaging manner, belittled him in front of the children. So is she trying to restrict his freedom? Yes, she is. Another element of males that have been victims of domestic violence is manipulation and isolation. And Bates gives in a research an example of the children are used as pawns,

including threats to them and using them within conflict situations, which clearly Jana was doing, that her whole purpose in the custody battle was to obtain full custody, physical custody of these children so that Jared would never see them. Another component that Man experience as victims, domestic violence is gaslighting. I think, I don't know for sure. We didn't hear that, but it seems to me there probably was some type of gaslighting going on in the sense that we've heard that, for example, Jared would question her and say that was really horrible, and she would minimize it and say, no, that wasn't, that's not what you thought it was.

That's gaslighting. Another element, denigration and humiliation. For some of the men, and this is to quote, Bakes, quote, for some of the men, and this is to quote, Some of the men, their experience of verbal aggression turned into something more controlling by the use of name calling, belittling, and demeaning them. So we know that happen. We know that happened. And we have heard other stories of them dating.

We have heard from multiple people at different events where there was tension between Jared and Chanah, even before the wedding. And she was angry at him. And he was quiet and he looked. we have heard stories. There was... Yeah, I agree. The final element of course of control for mal victims

of domestic violence is fear and uncertainty. So this is, to me, this is the most interesting one in the sense that Bates describes the uncertainty as being unpredictability. So the male victims of domestic violence believed or felt often

that they had no control over their environment. And certainly you'd have to argue that Jared must have felt that. experienced that because he didn't control the money. He didn't really control. He didn't really have control over the children, especially after the divorce, that I think there had to be, for me,

in assessing the situation, there had to be a huge amount of fear and uncertainty because I felt like Jared woke up every day with the fear that he was going to lose his children and never see them again. I don't know if he feared for his life, but I think for sure he had to deal with this uncertainty of what tomorrow would bring and how would it impact. From what we know, there's a lot we can't talk about with Jared because it's too personal and we don't want to get into it.

But I think it's fair to say that this situation really created a huge amount of potentially mental health problems with Jared and that he did have a lot of fear about his future. and what his future would look like because Shanna was, and this family, they were relentless in this custody battle. They were like the pit bulls. They wouldn't let go. Right. And it brings me back to sweet, sweet revenge. What goes around around.

This is a quote from the court docs that Jared filed seeking relief. Quote, the wife has engaged in conduct or conduct. during this marriage in an effort to starve the husband into submission. That's a really interesting word. I guess it's a legal term here, but think about that. Jared doesn't know if he's going to get any money. That's how he feels. He feels like he's starving.

He's starving for everything. He's starving for, he's probably starving for connection. He's starving for money. Maybe he's, I don't even know, I don't, I think it's a really interesting. metaphor that in some ways that his attorney sees this as some type of starvation. And it's an interesting metaphor to me because there has to be a certain amount of fear, I think, associated with starvation, going hungry, not knowing if you're going to ever eat again, not knowing if you're going to see your kids again. And when I say never eat again, I'm talking metaphorically.

that metaphorically Jared was starving for all the things he wanted in a relationship that he wasn't going to get from Shana until he meets Kirsten. And he did meet Kirsten and got married to Kirsten and had children with Kirsten and started to build a life he really loved with Kirsten. Does this all come down to anger that he was able to move on? Yeah, that's a big part of that. it. I think there's definitely, we talked about this last week, but there's definitely jealousy going on here. I think it's important on this issue of fear, by the way, I think it's really important to talk about the research by Jacobs and Gottman in the sense that they see fear as being probably the most prominent element in terms of defining whether something is domestic violence. And I'm just going to

read from, this is from, I've talked about this book a lot. It's a brilliant book on domestic violence. Men, better women. This is page 82. They say, quote, we found that only men in our sample successfully used violence as a method of control. Consistently, both in the laboratory and the home, only the women were afraid. Fear is the major gender difference between male and female violence. Without fear, there is no control. For us, fear became a barometer of control. the women consistently manifested in a laboratory during the arguments, whereas the men did not. The women consistently ported fear when describing arguments at home, whereas the men did not.

The men were the perpetrators in each and every case. This is not to say that women never battered men, but if it occurs, it is rare. And the reason I bring that up is because I want to make it clear that a couple, The reason I bring that up is because this recent research by Bates shows that fear is a factor for men in domestic violence relationships. Jacobs and Gottman didn't get there. I do think that I do see Jared as a victim of interpersonal violence or domestic violence because of that element. I think Jared was afraid. I think Jared was uncertain of his future.

And so I'm going to disagree with them a little bit here. in the sense that I do believe that there are males, and this research was confirmed by the Bates study I just pointed to, there are males in these relationships who do experience fear. However, I also think I don't want to, I don't want people to go too far with this and say, see, all these women are batterers or that all these women are violent. Because the numbers don't really support.

And I think I agree with Jacobs and Gottman also in the sense that This issue of fear is really an important differentiator in the sense that men do instill more fear in these types of situations in relationships than women. And that's really critical. Without that fear, I'm not sure you get to something like real coercive control or violence in a relationship. Thank you, babe. there's a peculiar sense here in which Shana is acting more and she's in more of a masculine role in this relationship, I think, for whatever that's worth. Yeah, or whatever is typically considered. I'm not saying that in a sexist way. I'm just making an observation that that's not, I'm not minimizing Jared's role in this marriage.

but I think that in some ways that by Shana having complete control of the finances and complete control of so much that it must have been really difficult for Jared to have a voice.

I have shared the domestic violence hotline number in the chat. It is also now in the description of this video along with everything else

we've mentioned and our wonderful mods have mentioned that on Patreon again you can find over 700 pages of Jared and Shannon's custody battle. It's very telling. It's very telling.

And it's a lot of what we've looked into to understand the power dynamics here. And you can go through those yourself at patreon.com slash hidden true crime. Anything else, babe? It's been a long live. Yeah. A very long live. But can we all just keep this in the hidden true crime bubble tonight, guys? Yeah, let's

Reminder, this is, for what it's where, let's keep this. This is in the hidden, this is, got to keep this in the hidden true crime bubble. So are you asking people not to share this then? That would be what I'm doing. So, so I'm kidding. No, I know. Right.

No, I know. Yeah, I wish we didn't. When we started this, one of the things I never anticipated was, I don't know how, I don't want to say a lot of criticism, but a fair amount of criticism, a fair amount of pushback and someone who tends to be pretty introverted.

And I've conducted almost all my professional life in places that few people travel, which is to say jails and prisons. It's a really peculiar thing to enter a medium like this, where you're subjected to public scrutiny and it's fine because my bubble is pretty large. I value feedback and I value constructive criticism, but some of the comments are just laughable. But let's, let me offer some thoughts on this bubble idea. Yeah, and I want to say to people, no, we're the opposite of the bubble, though.

Yeah. And share, we're not afraid. We're a little afraid. Yeah. The bigger we get, the harder it gets, but still, despite that, we don't want you to keep it in the hidden true crime bubble. share away. It means a lot to us actually. So when I think of this whole bubble thing, when I first heard this whole

stamping up bubble idea, I went to some thoughts about Buddhism. And I've always had an interest in Buddhism. I wouldn't, I don't consider myself to be a Buddhist, but I have a real attraction to some Buddhist ideas and Buddhist philosophy. And one of the elements of Buddhism I always, like is this idea. So some Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition refer to there. There's a meditation called Mind Like Sky.

And it's a beautiful meditation. I've actually done it myself quite a bit. And it's, for those who know what I'm talking about, it's wonderful. And the purpose of the mind like sky meditation is to open ourselves up to everything. In other words, it's the complete antithesis of the bubble that we should subject. ourselves to everything positive negative criticism happiness suffering sadness it's it life is in many ways to it's exposure to everything that life has to offer and can throw at us and that's how we learn and grow as human beings and to me the antidote to the bubble and this is my philosophy

The antidote to the bubble is to shatter the bubble and to see our minds like the sky, to see our minds as being completely open. I don't know. I guess they, at some point in that meditation, they actually go into the mind can encompass like the universe or something. The bubble can be as big or small as you want it to be. But I think that healthy human beings are capable of expanding that bubble

beyond a very narrow family culture or a very narrow organizational mindset where the basic tenant is censorship and not sharing and shutting things down and controlling impressions and controlling everything. So the Buddhist idea is you can't control any of that. So why try? There's times when we get criticism that's a little hurtful, but it's fine. It's part of life.

We just absorb it and move on. and people, as I always say, people are entitled to their perspective. So if somebody doesn't like me, that's fine. I'm not going to change it. I'm not going to try to control it. I'm not going to delete you unless it's really bad, unless it's offensive, then we might consider it. But so I just, I laughed at this bubble idea because it's so antithetical with my

perspective on life into this notion that this Buddhist idea that healthy human beings operate more with the philosophy. that mind is like sky. It's completely open. It absorbs everything. We can, we can, good and bad, imperfect and maybe close to perfect, whatever, that life is all of these things. And trying to control those things is only going to lead to more suffering.

So why, you can't control the bubble no matter what. So why try? Right. Thank you, S.L. Conley. I agree. It is so important to hear opposing opinions. both John and I believe that. We believe in that strongly.

And we believe in, yeah, the marketplace of ideas. And we are grateful for those who share sometimes that they disagree with us and stick with us. That they're not looking for an echo chamber and neither are we. We're looking to explore and to stay open and to expand our bubble or not even have one. So thank you. Thank you for being a part of this amazing community that we are building. and thank you so much. Pizza fund. We need it. We need it. Thank you. Yeah. I'm eating crust these days too. So I definitely want them. Thank you. Everyone's a big, pizza is a big part of our bubble. Thanks. Especially with the Nandd turtles. Yeah. Many people in chat tonight asking about Ruby Frankie. Many people asking those comments did not go and notice. In fact, at one point, I think I went all caps on y'all and said, we're going to cover it. let's focus on this. And the reason is because John and I, we always say we're not in the business of breaking news, although sometimes if it's 3 a.m. and I didn't take my dream, I'll jump on and I'll break something with y'all. But for the most part, we take our time and we're methodical and we dig deep and we're proud of that. So believe us, we have been following the Ruby Frankie case. We are in, we are on it. We have made phone calls. We will be talking about that next.

week. Look forward to that. And if anybody knows anyone in that situation that you can send us, as always, write us at hidden true crime info at gmail.com while we dig deep into that. For those that care about that case, we hear you. We do too. It's so tragic. We have a new podcast episode, a Patreon podcast episode on our Patreon account where Dr. John discusses Braxton Southwick's interview for those of you that have asked John to cover that. I know some comments came this week. We did do that. We did that on Patreon. That is a place where behind a paywall, John and I feel a little bit more free to share things. It's a place for, we're so grateful for your support and we try to give back all of those documents as well about Shanna and

Jared's custody battle are also on Patreon. Galen, thank you so much for your support. Thank you, everyone. Say that saying one more time, John, the Buddha saying. That the mind like sky? Mind like sky. I love that. I think another analogy is as long as we're talking about the gardeners,

and I don't know much about scrapbooking, so maybe you can help me here. but a scrapbook is mainly positive moments in your life, right? Isn't it mostly feel good stuff? Yes. So maybe that's another way to see this, is to see if you think of life like a big scrapbook, the challenge is always, in my mind, to create a scrapbook that incorporates both positive and negative elements.

that it's not, because in many ways this bubble is about scrapbooking in the bubble go hand in hand, I think, in the sense that the gardeners are trying to create a scrapbook of all the positive, of all the perfect moments, of all the moments that they want to show the world. So in some ways, their business is not just this bubble, but it's also a big scrapbook. But the problem with that is you can have, you can create this beautiful, perfect scrapbook for almost your whole life. and then all of a sudden your daughter gets accused of murder. And again, she's innocent at the moment, but she gets accused a moment. What do you do with that page?

Yeah. Where does that page go? Does that page go in the scrapbook? No, it doesn't even go to the demonstrators as we've seen the email. Right. So when that moment comes along in your family and you're living in a bubble and you've got this perfect scrapbook, that's the question, right? What do you? And it doesn't have to be murder for most of us.

it might be losing a loved one. All of us have to deal with these traumas and difficult moments in life. And I think so. So another way to think about this is to create a scrapbook that encompasses everything. It's not, I'm not just trying to create this distorted vision or view of my life is like, this perfect, this march towards perfection.

Right. My scrapbook is going to have, a lot of dark moments in it. Like it or not, I've never done a scrapbook. So maybe that's another way to present this idea too. Yes. Maybe I'll go post a couple of things on Facebook tonight that are not flattering. We've got plenty of photos, right, to show you what real life is like.

Thank you, everyone, for being here. And until next week, we'll see you. All right. Good night. Thanks, guys. Good night. Hello, Hidden Gems. It's Lauren with Hidden a True Crime podcast.

As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, things Dr. John and I only dare say behind a paywall become a Patreon member at patreon.com slash hidden true crime. You'll find bonus episodes, early releases, and insider info. Thank you for your endless support. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions,

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