The Megyn Kelly Show - Family Annihilators: Alex Murdaugh, Chris Watts, and More Men Who Murdered Their Families, with Laura Richards | Ep. 519

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Laura Richards, criminal behavioral analyst and host of "Crime Analyst," to talk about the horrific topic of "family annihilators" who are men who murder their families, the prevalence of "coercive control," the signs that Alex Murdaugh was a family annihilator, the way the Murdaugh family was above the law for so long, the way Murdaugh seemed to have it all together to the average person, the disturbing Chris Watts story, the way the Watts family dynamic shifted, major mistakes in Gabby Petito police stop, the shocking details of the Jeff MacDonald case, stalking and other signs of a potential psychopathic man, victim-blaming over domestic violence, red flags and warning signs about men who may be potentially dangerous, tips for women,and more.More from Richards: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCksfRSwfwFqUCjcxKYju6_QFollow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Family annihilator. It's a term you may have heard recently during the Alec Murdoch trial. The prosecutor even asking Alec directly if he qualified as one. Do you remember this? Watch. Are you a family annihilator?

A family annihilator? You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son? Yes. No. I would never hurt Maggie Murdoch. I would never hurt Maggie Murdoch. I would never hurt Paul Murdoch under any circumstances. Say that. Hmm. Of course, the jury rejected that assertion, finding Murdoch guilty of fatally shooting his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul.

Maggie was 52, Paul was 22, and he's now serving life in prison. Murdering those close to you is an unimaginable act to most people, but Alec Murdoch is not the first or the last to kill his family. He's one of many in a gruesome group of family annihilators. And when I heard that term, uh, in that trial, it got me. I never heard that term before. And I'm in the news business and we cover crime a lot. It's a thing. It's an actual thing, uh, in criminology and those who study it. And it's just extra, right? I mean, murder is terrible under any circumstances, but what kind of a person can kill their entire family or a huge portion of it? What makes a seemingly well-liked, successful man, These are not all derelicts. In fact, they tend to be successful

people. Blow up his life in this manner. Kill the people who are supposed to be most important to him. What kind of psychology makes you do that? How do we recognize this potential in a mate, a man, a partner? Today, we're going to do a deep dive into the motivations and the psyche of these individuals. We are also going to discuss what can be done to prevent this kind of violence. What are the warning signs? How do you know if you are potentially with somebody like this? Joining me now to dig into it all is Laura Richards. Laura is an award-winning criminal behavioral analyst and expert on domestic abuse and coercive control. She also hosts the popular podcasts Crime Analyst and Real Crime Profile.

Laura, so great to have you here on the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Good to speak with you, Megan. So since he used that term in the Murdoch trial, Creighton Waters, the prosecutor, I've gone down a dark rabbit hole. And I know you've been there for years studying these people and figuring out what makes a family annihilator, what makes them tick. And I have since watched everything I can get my hands on about. I've already I'm already there on Alec Murdoch, but on Chris Watts, uh, who murdered his entire family in Colorado a few years back, uh, in 2018, his wife, his two beautiful daughters in the most disgusting, awful way. And, um, then started picking up the case of

Jeffrey McDonald, which I have covered over the years as a journalist. Uh, but this is a guy back in 1970. And you could go, I mean, you could pick so many cases, unfortunately. These are just the ones that got my interest. And Jeffrey McDonald was a very successful surgeon, Green Beret, who was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters as well in just the most brutal fashion. And the thing about these three cases, Laura, that jumped out to me, the ones that, the reason they pulled me in is because all three of these guys were super successful, you know, on paper. They were doing well, like Chris Watts wasn't rich like the other two, but the other two, and well, I mean, Jeffrey McDonald wasn't rich

either, but he was going to be because he was a surgeon. Just accolades, professional success, very well liked. No one would go back and say, oh, yeah, yeah, I could have seen it coming. The opposite. So let's start with what it is. Define for us what makes one a family annihilator. Well, I think we have to work on the basis that if you understand what domestic abuse and domestic homicide is about, the motivation is power and control. And that's really what the perpetrators are seeking to achieve. They want power and control, and they're trying to control the person or the people and the narrative. So I've studied many, many cases. I've worked on many, many cases. They are absolutely horrific.

I think people really do struggle to understand how what the media might describe as the perfect dad, a good dad, a good dutiful husband, or I've even heard a general public to really understand how it happened. But actually, when I door knock and speak to the grandparents and those who have survived, and I've done that across my 27-year career, I find a very different picture emerge. And the picture is always the same. And that's of a man, because we are talking about men this is very much a a male related issue it's a man who wanted to coercively control and coercive control are the key hallmarks and what we should be asking about rather than physical assaults and i want to tell people just a little bit more about your credentials because they are impressive. Founder of Paladin, the world's first national stalking advocacy service as a survivor. I don't really love that term.

But as somebody who has had a very bad stalker who went to jail and then a mental facility for 10 years. So it was a serious case. I appreciate what you do. There aren't enough experts like you. You also created, you mentioned DASH, the Domestic Abuse, Stalking, and Honor-Based Violence Risk Identification Assessment and Management Model, which was implemented across all police services in the UK. The DASH checklist is credited with having reduced domestic murders by 58% in London across 13 years. So you know what you're doing.

You are a true expert in all of this. And it's all kind of related, the stalking, the domestic abuse. This is not an indictment of all men. This is an indictment of abusers and helping both men and women recognize the signs because you may be a great guy who's never abused anybody,

but you might have a daughter who a man like this comes into her life or a sister, or, you know, it could be a friend. And so men can be advocates of women in this situation as well, even if it's not, you know, them personally. Absolutely. And thank you for sharing your own experience of stalking, because it is important we do talk about it. It's why I created an advocacy service, because a lot of victims don't get the support that they need, the psychological and emotional support that when they're trying to survive something, and bearing in mind when I tend to

work with people, they haven't survived it. So I agree with you. Survivor is the wrong term, particularly when someone's going through it, and trying to ensure law enforcement understand the behaviours. Well, that's everything that Paladin is set up to do and changing the law to make sure the laws reflect women's lived experience when they are subjected to abuse. And that's a really important part of my work and ensuring that men work alongside us because yes, it takes all men to help with changing and challenging and holding men to account when they are abusive. And that's when they're sexist, misogynistic. These are the types of mindsets and the types of behaviors that we want people to be challenging because it can lead

to much more serious things happening when a man feels that they are not getting their way or they are being disrespected in some way, or they feel that they're losing their control over someone. Well, that can be when something catastrophic occurs. And too often, like I said, when we ask the right questions of grandmothers and grandfathers, and it might be brothers and sisters. And when I ask them the questions, I always see a pattern emerge. And like I said, the media often report on things and they just do a very cursory look at what's gone on. And they may talk to a neighbor who might turn around and say, oh, he was a lovely dad, or he took the children to the sweet shop. And yes, he was a really nice man, or he was fearful that he'd

lose the children. And that's why he killed them. And then this narrative goes in the media and the newspapers. And that's what people then take as what's gone on. But it's a really dangerous narrative because oftentimes the warning signs are there and women can be framed and really blamed for something that's happened to them. And I'll give you an example. There was a recent horrific murder in the UK, an incredible woman called Emma Patterson and her seven-year-old daughter who were killed. And the media, first of all, reported on three people who died in Epsom, Surrey. They didn't say how, but there was a whole load of social media traffic about, was it carbon monoxide poisoning? But the police put out a statement, said they're not looking for anybody else in connection with their deaths. And they said

it's an isolated incident. So from all my work, I always hear police say that, and that means that it's domestic violence related. That's the code word. And it's not an isolated incident because it's a pandemic of women being killed. And it turned out there were gunshots heard just before the emergency services turned up and George Patterson shot them both dead. And the male had put an article together and the headline was, because she was a very successful headmistress of a school in Epsom, did her overachieving and putting him in the shadow, did that lead to this tragedy? And I wrote on the headline and fixed it and said, no,

he did this all on his own. Because we very quickly get into excusing someone's behavior when it is unacceptable. This was something that he planned, premeditated. But the dominant narrative then is in the media that perhaps she's to blame and she's framed intentionally and that she's to be blamed in some way. And for me, that's just unacceptable. I've seen it over and over and over again. And it gives a very forced narrative of what's gone on. We can do that when it comes to divorce, right? Was she overbearing? Was she difficult to live with? Was she, okay, we're not all perfect. We can't do that when it comes to domestic violence. No annoying, negative, unfortunate behavior by the woman justifies domestic violence of any kind.

Absolutely not. Well, if you follow the narrative through, what did seven-year-old Lettie do? I mean, I can't even imagine the fear and the terror that she must have felt, understanding that, you know, was mom killed before her and she watched, or was Lettie killed first? You know, that fear and terror for a child to know that they're not safe and they're unsafe, something catastrophic is about to happen at the hands of the man who's meant to love and care for them. And these are the things, the places I spend, you know, my time and my mind working out what's happened, but also the psychology. What makes a man become this way? Because the vast, vast majority of men are wonderful,

beautiful human beings, just like women, and would never hurt a woman that they love or in their life at all. In fact, they would want to hurt a man who did that. But there is an unhealthy contingent. And it's always, you know, I mean, it's not always, but it's just I grew up in the 70s. And every night on the news, there were stories about the serial killers killing all these women. It's always like a series of women who get killed by these weird men. Something's gone wrong with them. So what is it that's in their background that makes these guys be able to succeed in life, able to be well liked? But instead of being a loving, caring husband, they go this route? Yeah, so my background is in forensic and legal psychology. So I have spent a lot of time in the

psychological research and analysis and the psychopathology of men who kill. And I will say they're not all homogenous. So we can't say it's all for the same reason. Specifically, contexts are different. But what I can see is what is the thing that really is the motivator is this need for power and control. And that power and control, well, you know, I'm going to mention the P word, the patriarchy, because we all live in the patriarchy where laws and systems and processes are created by men for men. And that's why women have a very tough time because our lived experiences aren't included in laws, for example. So that's why we're having to change laws on stalking and on coercive control. So it is this overriding need to have to control things, to have power over.

And Megan, you mentioned serial killers. I mean, it's all the same thing, right? Because men who harm women in their significant lives, as in women who are significant to them, can also harm women who are not significant to them. And this connection is one that I made at New Scotland Yard by profiling domestic violence rapists. And I spent a lot of time profiling 450 of them, looking at them and doing a psychological autopsy backwards of who are they and what do they do. The first five years of my career were trying to identify the serial rapist, the serial killer, the serial perpetrator who abducts children. And the one thing I found

in their background consistently was domestic abuse and coercive control. So these things do interconnect. And Dr. Robert Hare, who created the psychopathy checklist, he in 1993, his research showed us that 25% of domestic violence perpetrators are psychopaths. And I would expect that to be far higher as a figure now. And when I'm training police and others, I'm always talking about psychopathy because we don't screen enough for it. So there are, unfortunately, many psychopaths who we may have relationships with, and they have this need for power and control, and they have no empathy. They have no remorse, and it's all about them, me, myself, and I, the narcissism. So that's what I see as the thing that interconnects, that law enforcement are trained, well, this is domestic violence here, and these are the domestic violence perpetrators,

this is child abuse here, this is sexual violence here, and they're taught in boxes and categories, but that's not how offenders offend. So the more that we understand the traits of psychopathy and the more that we screen for it and that we take domestic violence perpetrators seriously and we see it as serious crime and we hold them to account and we challenge their behavior looking for coercive control, then we start to get into proper threat assessment and risk management. Can I just say a couple of things? It actually used to be the lie. I was criticizing Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Trump, for having said this as recently as 2007 or 2008, saying the law is you cannot rape your wife. That is not true in the state of New York, even as of 2007. But at one point in our history, it was true. So to your point of the laws, the laws actually are really, I mean, they don't protect women in the way that they need. Yes, certainly when it comes to murder, but on domestic abuse, no, the stalking, the requirements were I was going to have to I had to appear in person if I wanted to make this complaint against my stalker who was dangerous, who was already a felon, who was trained in weapons. There was and the number one rule of dealing with a stalker is don't deal with the stalker. Don't talk to the stalker.

Don't have interactions with the stalker. Anything you have will be perceived as a yes. And it was like they were wanting me to show up in court and deal with him. I'm like, you got to be crazy. And I've talked to so many domestic abuse victims who have the same requirement. There's no way they want to show up in court with the husband who's been beating them behind closed doors and doesn't want this to become a known thing at all. And I have to say it publicly, it's absurd. Yes. And that's everything the stalker wants. They want you to be in that courtroom.

And the same with the domestic abuser, you know, that power and control and being able to see you terrified and have that power and control over you. And this is exactly why every legal process, be it court, you have to have special measures that reflect women's experiences. And by the way, and you know this, but laws that protect us at the point of murder is too late. You know, what I've been trying to do is prevent murders in slow motion. It's the what happens before that we get in and we early identify, intervene, and we prevent so that we don't have, particularly in America, four to five women who are murdered every day by a current or former male partner. That is a stark finding. And yet most people

don't even realize how bad it is, but it's just increasing. And most people don't know about the family annihilators or familicide. And obviously what's reported in the media is what people pay attention to. So we've got a long way to go, but a lot of my work in the UK has had some, you know, very good results. But unfortunately in law enforcement, you can bring something in and the leaders sign up to it and then they move on and someone else comes in and you get this constant cycle and churn of staff. But it is important to have these conversations about coercive control and stalking. And there is a lot that we can do to early identify, intervene and prevent.

And a lot of it comes from listening to the victims. It's the problem with a lot of abuse victims is they, of course, like when you look at the situation, you think, oh, and I used to be one of these people. If he hit me, I'd be gone. I'd be out of there. One hit. But it doesn't happen that simply. They build the control over the woman over time. They love bomb you. They come into your life, this wonderful man. So the woman falls in love with this seemingly wonderful person, sometimes marries this seemingly wonderful person. And then bit by bit, the erosion of the woman, her autonomy,

her independence begins. And you make the small sacrifices first. Only later do they turn into the big sacrifices. And eventually, in many of these cases, it turns violent. But by that point, the woman is so lost versus where she was a year earlier when they met, etc. She does not have the same power or resolve or confidence or just strength that she once had. They're very, very effective manipulators, these abusers. Yes, and you use the word there, manipulators. And, you know, this is a very, it's a behavioural regime, really, when we're talking about coercive control that a perpetrator will use to make someone fall in love with them. So the love bombing, that is a strategic campaign to make someone fall in love

with them, the gaslighting, and the charm, because many of these individuals are actually charming and that's a trait of psychopathy. So the charm can happen. The victim can feel that they've met the right person. This is the love of their life. And that can be a chemical reaction to the endorphins, the dopamine, all of these good chemicals so that we mate with somebody. So there is this thing of crazy love when somebody is love bombing us. We want to feel special, of course we do. And then we start to spend more time with that person. And then gradually, we may become more dependent on that person. And that can be a strategic campaign. The setup can start from day one when we meet the perpetrator. And then once we are in, we tend to be in deep. And so it's very conflicting and it's very confusing. And we

think that we love that person, but oftentimes we don't really know who they are because they're also forcing intimacy very quickly. So the whirlwind relationship that happens. So I often say to women and girls who I mentor, slow down, enjoy the honeymoon period, get to know that person in every situation possible, get to meet their family, their friends, understand exactly who they are. Where's the rush? Why jump in? And I always say intimacy takes time to build. So some of the warning signs, if you've got someone who's trying to push the relationship very quickly, who's making these grand declarations of love, like John Meehan did to Deborah Newell, I want to die in your arms. I love you. I want to be with you forever, he says on date number two and three. Well, that's forced intimacy. And that's not authentic. It's an

artificial and superficial thing that's happening. So slowing things down and really taking our time to get to know somebody is really important and not giving too much information away about ourselves. You know, enjoy the courtship. That's what I always say. It takes at least a year to really get to know someone. But the coercive controller can be very good at bringing their A game to manipulate. And it can all seem very plausible as well. But once they've got you under their control, and once you are dependent upon that person, and normally they isolate you, they want to take you away from your mom and your dad and your best friends. So once you're isolated, you're very much within their monopoly. Your perception is monopolized by them. And actually, Biderman, who studied prisoners of war, the eight principles of what he saw, what happens to someone who is having their autonomy and their agency eroded, he's put together these eight principles of the charter coercion. It's exactly what I see. You overlay it with the victims of a coercive controller, and it's exactly the same

traits that you see. So we should take it seriously. And some of these men are psychopaths, and they've learned their trade craft very well. I always say, look around. Okay, after a year, look around. Do you still have friends? Are you still in touch with your family? If not, why not? Like take a hard look back and say, yes, okay. You fall in love. You prioritize the other person. It's this mad, like, oh, I only want to be with him. Okay. But most normal people do not want to steer you away from your family. Find reasons for you not to take the trip home to see mom, divert the phone call to or from mom or dad, none of that is normal. That's the beginning. Yes, a healthy relationship is very much,

and I might sound a bit LA woo-woo here, but it's very much about opening someone's world up and helping them reach their full potential. If you genuinely love someone and care for them, you want their world to be bigger. You want them to experience everything in life. But what I see with the coercive control is they do the opposite. They shrink the victim's world down. They want to micromanage and microcontrol every part of it. And they don't want other people interfering like the mums and the dads and the best friends. So they shrink the world down and it's actually much more about what they're taking away from the woman. It's an unfreedom that happens because yes, the victim might not be in shackles or chains, but they're invisible chains. So what are some of the questions to determine whether you're looking at coercive

control? We'd never ask someone direct, are you being coercively controlled? Because it's a very new term. But what you're trying to understand is whether somebody has their own autonomy and freedom to make their own choices. So, you know, and do they feel safe to make their own choices? I.e., could they just go to work or could they go and see a friend without having to check in with their partner? Can they decide what they want to wear and what they're going to eat? And when they go to the gym, are they under micro surveillance and every detail of their lives is being regulated by somebody else? And there's a fear of consequence if they breach any of those rules that are being put in place by the abuser. And what I also see about

these rules that get put in place, i.e. what you can eat, who you can see, when you can see them, how you dress, how you have your hair. If you have a job, then maybe you're only allowed to interact. If you're a hairdresser, you're only allowed to cut women's hair, not men's hair. These are all the rules that I've seen laid down for victims. So you're really trying to check on somebody, have they got their own agency? Have they got their own autonomy? Have they got freedom to make decisions about their own life and how they conduct themselves on a day-to-day basis? And normally with the victims, it's the smallest things that are so insidious that they're not allowed to do. Or there's this unfreedom where they have to check in with that other person at all times. Even if they go and see a friend, they have to

take a picture to show where they are and who they're with. Or like with Oscar Pistorius, with some of his previous girlfriends, he used to make them take a photo of themselves wearing their pyjamas to prove that they were sat at home. I've even seen a perpetrator say to a victim, they have to flush the toilet at home so that he knows that they are at home and they haven't left because the toilet had a very specific sound. And these are all the micro rules and regulations that you're trying to understand. Is that how somebody is having to live their life? Are they isolated? Are they closed down and closed off? Even if the victim says it's how they want to live their life. Well, as human beings, we like to interact with people. So even when I hear someone telling me that, I know that there is likely coercion there. I not long ago was at a social event where they were serving hors d'oeuvres. And this particular husband said to his thin, in-shape wife who was grabbing an hors d'oeuvre,

do you really think you need that? And it just made my skin crawl because it's not, yes, it's rude to suggest this thin woman, you know, to, to, to monitor what she's eating at all thin or fat. Um, but it, to me, it just telegraphed. There's, there's way more there that there, if he's doing that in public in front of me and others, I can only imagine what happens behind closed doors. So there are these little red flags, even for us outsiders with our friends. they fall off the radar. We think, well, maybe it's something we've done rather than actually, are they being told not to speak to Laura? And they're not allowed to speak to me, but we tend to look inwardly first. It's probably something I've done, so I'm not going to overstep, where I always say to people, check in with your friend, just see how they're doing. Don't think it's something that you've done. Ask them about that comment and how it made them feel. Because

oftentimes we isolate the victim even more by not asking them that question. But yes, that is red flag behavior. It's up to us as adults to choose if we want to eat something or not. We don't have to check in with someone, but just sowing that seed and corralling that seed in someone's head. Well, maybe I shouldn't eat this. And it's like a closing down of someone and making them second guess themselves. And before you know it, these little behaviors become bigger and a victim doesn't even know which way is up anymore. They're gaslit and they've got this reality distortion. They don't know what they like anymore and they can't make their own decisions. And Laura, I think an important point too, is that this can happen to any woman. I know some women think, oh, I'm too well-educated.

I am too rich. I come from too good a family. I have too good a support system around me. It can happen to any woman. It can. And what I'll say is oftentimes these individuals are attracted to very strong women. So that can be a barrier for someone sharing their experience because they'll say, well, everyone thought I was such very strong women. So, you know, that can be a barrier for someone sharing their experience because they say, well, everyone thought I was such a strong woman. I had it

together. It couldn't possibly happen to someone like me, but it does. It can happen to anybody. There's no particular profile when it comes to the victim. And yes, I think we carry these stereotypes in our head about the type of person that will suffer and be subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control. But there is no type. But with the perpetrator, there is more of a psychopathology. It is about them needing to control things, needing to have things their way. And some women would tell me they have to win at all costs. And these are some of the key things that when I'm listening to women describe what's happening to them, they have to win at all costs. It's their way or the highway. For them, it's no way at all. And it ends when I say it ends. And we will live together as man and wife until I decide otherwise. That tells me really there's only one person in the relationship. What's fascinating about this, this is a serious problem and well worth discussing.

I'm glad we're doing it, obviously. But as I listen to this, not a ton of this relates in my mind to Alec Murdoch or Chris Watts or this guy, Joe McDonald. And we can outline the details of those second two cases. I mean, I think most people at this point understand what happened with Alex Murdoch. But in case you don't, he was just found guilty of murdering his wife and his son, his 22-year-old son. He shot them both, shot his son Paul in the face. Shot his son's head off was the testimony. Shot his wife, Maggie, at least five times. It was a painful death.

And was this very well-respected attorney, fourth generation, money, law. His whole family had been the solicitors in this so-called low country in South Carolina. And that means like the chief prosecutor. So they really were the law. And he had a decent amount of dough. We later found out he was on drugs or so he said, had tons of money problems. He'd been stealing all this money from his law firm. So his life was imploding. But just on paper, the guy looked like he had it all together. And I listened to the whole trial. There was no allegation of domestic abuse. There was definitely outside of the trial, an allegation of that he cheated on her that did not wind up in front of the jury. Um, the sister of the, of Maggie, the murder victim

said that she was happy. She said, you know, they had their problems, but she was happy. So, you know, it wasn't, there was no evidence of a controlling personality when it came to her, I guess. I mean, not that you'll tell me, but, and then the son, of course, it wasn't, there was no evidence of a controlling personality when it came to her, I guess. I mean, not that you'll tell me, but. And then the son, of course, I don't, the son had gotten him in trouble. The son had been driving the boat in his fatal boat crash that killed a 19-year-old girl, Mallory Beach. They were being sued for it. It was really upending Alex's life. But I just, let's start there.

Do you see coercive control in the Alec Murdoch case? Yes. And the clue is in the fact that he controlled everything. Their family controlled everything. That name in that region is a very powerful name and we mustn't lose track of that. They created the laws, they were the law. So he always got his way. And that's a very important point because when someone always gets their way, they don't have to be irate or upset about something because they can just control things through their power, their personal power, but also their family power. And just looking at what happened with Paul and what a horrific situation with Mallory on the boat. And I first just want to say, she really is the primary victim,

the first victim. And that Paul put the boat into gear, having assaulted his ex-girlfriend and assaulted her in front of everybody. And that was the first time that others saw that he was abusing her. Well, where did he learn that behavior from, of abusing her? Multiple times, it was a whole history. He was 22, or he was younger then, but he was abusing her. And she gave testimony about horrific abuse that she suffered. Well, where did he learn that from? And his entitlement was- She's come on camera. She's now in a special talking all about it. I saw it too. It was chilling. And it was repeated. And horrific abuse. And I applaud her for speaking out, but I don't think the apple falls far from the tree. And he's learned that behavior somewhere

in his name. He's learned that he calls his granddad up and his dad and they fix everything for him. So there's no accountability, no responsibility taking. And that's what that family have been doing for generations because they were the law and people were scared of them. And I've spoken to people in that area. They've told me this themselves. So we mustn't forget the name and their wealth and what that means to what they can have power over and who they can have power over. Here you have a situation where Paul and that particular civil case, well, all of that was coming home to roost in that the accounts were going to be audited and they were part of that civil trial and they had been requested.

Alec had also been challenged by the chief financial officer to the tune of $800,000 going missing in legal fees. And he was challenged about that. Right. So his world is starting to unravel. Maggie had left him. She was living in the beach house. She wasn't living at Moselle.

So there's separation. And we know that with separation, 76% of murders happen at the point of separation. And when Alec had actually messaged her to say, I want to meet up with separation, 76% of murders happen at the point of separation. And when Alec had actually messaged her to say, I want to meet up with you, she had texted her sister saying, I wonder what he's up to. He's up to something. And that's why she goes to meet him up at the kennels. But there were rumors that she wanted a divorce. There were rumors that she had a forensic accountant coming in and things were unraveling. And therefore he is now in a situation where he feels like he's losing control. Well, that

can be a catastrophic set of circumstances for a man who is a lawyer. So let's not forget equally, you know, good trial lawyer, someone who's very good at reading people and situations. And up until this point has not got into trouble. But I believe he was trying to control the situation and the narrative. He was trying to control Paul and he was angry at him, hence the injuries. And crime scene assessment, I look at how someone's killed because that paints a picture, the way that he was killed and the way Maggie was. And he was the one that was there at that time. That was proven through Snapchat, through the videos that Paul took, him and Maggie

talking. So he lied about being present, but he was there. And he lied about whether he checked their pulses or not. He didn't have time to check their pulses and he'd changed his clothes. So this, to me, is somebody who is very controlling, very manipulative. And of course, there are 99 charges that are still outstanding, the financial charges. So for me, this is a, and I don't like to use the word classic, but it is a classic domestic violence murder. And yes, there's debt, there's money issues and so on. And it was unraveling,

but it's got all the hallmarks. And in terms of psychopathy traits, well, they all seem to be there, particularly lack of empathy and remorse and responsibility taking. family videos of the birthday parties and everyone seemed to really love him. His kids seemed to really love him. He seemed to show love for his children as well. I don't know that he was in the running for father of the year, but there was testimony that they seemed like a very loving family. It wasn't outwardly, at least perceived by anybody who took that witness stand as a damaged, dysfunctional family in the sense of abuse or i don't in that in that sense um so what but it depends what you're looking for doesn't it megan totally it's to the point you know that we've been discussing for 40 minutes but what makes a man who i'm just going to say that he did love his son paul i don't know how he felt about maggie but i'm going to say he loved

his son like i don't know maybe not maybe he's of it. How can a man who does love his son shoot his head off like that one day, you know, seemingly out of the blue? Well, my first question before we get to that one is why was Paul drinking to such excess? You know, a kid who's drinking that amount of alcohol to blot stuff out tells me there's more that's going on. And I don't profess to know the family. Can I just say no one's asking that? That's like all the coverage I have done of this case and listened to of this case. No one I have drinking to absolute excess that his friend said that this Timmy character came out, this very angry, abusive drunk. Why was he drinking to that level and why were his family letting him? That tells me a lot. And if I were to go in and ask questions, I think I'd probably uncover a lot, well, a different story and the narrative to this happy, healthy family dynamic, because there's nothing healthy in a young boy not taking responsibility for his actions and a grandfather and a father who are just happy to sweep it all under the carpet, no matter how bad,

no matter who gets injured and hurt. There's very little empathy or care for anybody else other than them. It's all about circling the wagons and protecting themselves, even when Mallory died. And I do think that that is the biggest fear and threat for Alec Murdoch is all of it is unravelling. And it's about the reflection on him. He wants to do what he's always done, which is circle the wagons, close everybody down, shut everything, take their voices away so that no one says what's really gone on. But it is all about to come out in a civil case, particularly the forensic accounting. So it's all about to be laid bare. And I think that when someone feels they are at that stage and the psychopathology for someone like him, where they're about to lose everything, as he sees it, he's the most important person

and he's eliminating the problem. The problems are Paul and Maggie because Maggie's there. It's all a means to an end, which tells me that there's a high probability that he would score highly on the psychopathy checklist. What kind of questions are on that list? That seems like an interesting list to have, like for your first date. Well, they are, and I do indirect assessments of perpetrators, particularly when we talk about psychopathy,

because one of the traits is that they're a pathological liar, right? So you wouldn't want to rely on them, their self-report, because they lie. And that's everything I've seen about his behavior, right? That's what he did. And superficial charm, that's the first trait that you ask about, where somebody has a glee sense of charm. It's not really who they are. And charm is very much a manipulator. It's a choice. We're not born with charm. A grandiose estimation of self. So thinking you're bigger and better than who you really are. Pathological liar, proneness to boredom and impulsivity, manipulation, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of responsibility taking,

shallow effect and superficial emotional response to things. So oftentimes the emotional range is very limited. So with family annihilators, that's what I tend to see. Their emotional range is limited. Parasitic lifestyle, sexual promiscuity. So if there's infidelity, I'm always very interested in that. Happened in all three of the cases, all three that I mentioned, Murdoch, Watts, and McDonald. And it's often they want what they want. And like with Chris Watts, who's in a relationship with Nikki, and lots of people blamed her, where actually it's his behavior, it's his actions, even though what he did makes no sense in terms of a long-term plan.

And perhaps we'll get to that because psychopaths, in fact, I'll say it now, but psychopaths are very good in the moment, but they're not good long-term planners. And they have early behavioral problems and lack of realistic long-term goals. So that's what I was talking to with good in the moment, but not very good on a longer term. Can I just jump in and ask you a quick about one you said before that shallow affect? What do you mean? of a reaction to things because they can be chameleonesque. So what they tend to do is mimic other people, particularly when it comes to empathy. So they will describe things like Chris Watts did. He said, I was bawling my eyes out. Well, if you're crying, tell us the emotion of that crying, not describing the crying. And when he first interacted with law enforcement, when they appeared, everything was shallow effect. There was no, he described having emotions, but he didn't

show us the emotion. There was no sign of him crying. This reminds me of a show I did when I was on NBC. I call it the Mothers of Sparta show. It's a long story, but essentially it was Mothers of Sociopaths. It was Mothers of Teenages and the mothers knew the mothers knew. And we're jumping up and down saying, I am the mother of the next school shooter. I'm telling you, there's no place for me to go. I can't get help. Nobody will take this person. They haven't yet committed a crime, but they can't yet be committed civilly. So, so one of the moms was saying her 16 year old who was obsessed with child pornography, she knew she was, she was at her wit's end. She was trying to get him help or arrested at that point. She said he was doing better because he was learning how to feign empathy. She's like,

you know, he's doing a little better now because he's learning how it looks on someone's face and when to use that facial expression in this certain tone. She saw that as a possible ticket into the, quote, normal world for him. And I never forgot that thinking, is that a good thing? No, is the answer. And your reaction is right. Children are taught how to think about emotions when they're little, and I think that is very important. But it's a feeling, it's not a description, and it's not a mirror mirroring back of. And yes, she might be putting it in the positive because maybe she thought that he was getting a sense of the feeling rather than just acting the emotion.

And that is one of the clear signs of psychopathy. And we know it when we see it, when someone's not authentic in that feeling. That's everything I saw about Chris Watts describing emotion, not feeling it. There was no point where he said, I just can't bear this. She's got lupus. I'm so worried. She's got lupus. I'm so worried. She's got the children. Okay, you're giving me your business card, but where are you going to go? And what are you going to do? We've got to find her. There was no emotion at all. He had cognitive load because he just remembered everything that he was meant to do and say. And that's why it was a

very inauthentic interaction right from the start. I'm going to show a soundbite from him in one second, but I want to let you finish your list. I interrupted because that shallow affect sounded interesting to me. So you keep going. Yes. Well, the next one actually, Megan, relates to exactly what you just said, juvenile delinquency. So when a kid's constantly getting into trouble, and yes, moms do know. And what I will say is that when moms reach out out for help, you know, there really is a problem. You know, because fierce mums, momma bears, you know, I'm a mum. You want to protect your child. And, you know, oftentimes they may be protected.

But and we've seen that with Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, right, to the nth degree where they say that they love Gabby and she was like a daughter to them, but yet she doesn't return any of the Petito family's calls to where is Gabby when Brian returns home in their daughter's van, not even in his own van, without his fiancée. So there we've got a clear example of a mum and dad protecting son. But equally, if you have somebody saying, I need help, and it's because of all these traits that I'm seeing, that's when we can actually work together to intervene and prevent something more serious happening and help with someone's psychosocial development. extramarital relationships, irresponsibility, I think I said, and impulsivity and criminal revocation, breaching orders. So not ever able to control their impulsivity and criminal versatility. So if they score 30 or over, they're a psychopath. And unfortunately, they're more than what Dr. Hare originally said about

1% in the population because we rarely screen for psychopathy. I think it's a really important thing that professionals really do up their game, particularly when we're talking about domestic violence because some of the individuals we've talked about, I believe are psychopaths. And right now, there isn't a cure for psychopathy. That's not that some psychologists say, well, just because we haven't found it yet, it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't exist. Do you, is there a distinction for you between sociopaths and psychopaths? Yes. I mean, the lack of empathy is the biggest tell of a psychopath. I mean, sociopaths don't believe the rules apply to them. And there is a diagnostic test, again, that you can do. They don't believe the rules apply to them,

but they tend to understand what they're doing is wrong. And they may still have empathy, but with psychopathy, they genuinely do not feel. They have no ability to put themselves in that other person's shoes and feel upset or distressed. That's why appealing to them just doesn't work or a victim's family. But tell us where her body is. They won't emote at all. They won't have that feeling. So empathy is the biggest flag out of the 20 that somebody's a psychopath. Would you say Alex Murdoch is a psychopath? I mean, I have to be careful here because I haven't indirectly assessed him of putting together everything that others who know him best, because I rely on the people in that person's life to report on everything they know

about that person. But seeing the lack of empathy, again, the fact he can sit there in court, the fact everything that he did thereafter, and the way that even when an officer appeared, the first responder to that call, he basically said, how are you doing? And just went into this mode of chatting normally to him when his wife and son had been brutally murdered. And he's approaching it, how are you doing? All very casual. And then getting out, just like Chris Watts, getting out the narrative that he needs to convey and seeing very little emotion. And what emotion he did show in court, I don't believe the jurors bought it. I think they felt that that was shallow effect. It wasn't authentic. It didn't seem authentic to me, I have to say, but people emote in different

ways. But everything that happened after the shooting, he alleged that he was shot and came out with this whole narrative that seemed to connect with the first narrative when he said it was, you know, revenge because of Paul's crash. That's what he said originally to the first responder as to why Maggie and Paul were dead. And he seemed to have this story that he was sticking to, but a real lack of empathy and, you know, devastation for the fact that Maggie and Paul are dead. It's comforting to know that there is a checklist, because you don't want to think, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there thinking, am I married to a psychopath? How do I know? Because Alec Murdoch was such an effective manipulator, as you point out, that's a common trait that they have. All these people were taking this stand and saying, I feel totally duped.

I feel like I did not know him at all. Once his terrible financial crimes came out, I mean, taking care of kids who had just lost their mother, taking care of kids with cancer, you know, kids in terrible car accidents and so on. These people say, I just, I had no idea who he actually was. And so there'll be a lot of people thinking, am I married to somebody who I don't actually know? But there's a long list. And so you've got to be able to tick off a bunch of these things before you get to the point of I might be with a psychopath. This is all like amazing. Let's talk about Chris Watts, because we mentioned him a few times, and I'm sure the audience is looking for a reminder on him and his story. So this was Colorado, um, 19, I want to get the, get it in front of me. Hold on a second. Page 18, I think, uh, Colorado, 2018 and, uh, Frederick, Colorado, he was 33 and he strangled his wife, 34 year old, uh, Shanann Watts, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their third child, who was a boy. They had two girls. They had a three-year-old daughter, Celeste, and a four-year-old daughter, Bella. And this guy, this relationship, this whole story so

confuses me. Again, I've gone down the rabbit hole on this. Look at him. He's a good looking guy. He had a job. It wasn't like a surgeon, like we're going to get to with Jeff McDonald. Um, he was, he worked at the Weld County oil site and she had a good job too. Middle-class family, um, had some financial problems, but not overwhelming, uh, and pervasive had what looked like the perfect family, the neighbors and the Netflix documentary. I think it was described in that they were saying like, I watched Chris Watts. I thought I got to up my game as a parent. I got to spend more time with my kids. Got to get out there and throw the ball with him. Look at him. Look at this guy. He, according to the reports, was the more subservient one. I'm not sure if that's the right word, but she seemed more dominant than he did. She seemed more in control in terms of family decision-making. You know, this is where I want to live. This is what I want for the girls. This is what I want you to do. And he seemed more of like a yes man than someone who is engaging in

coercive control. This is my lay person's opinion. You can take this apart in a second. That's my approach, my takeaway, watching it. Then he loses a bunch of weight. It's never a good sign in a marriage. Loses a bunch of weight and starts an affair with a coworker. And his wife, Shanann, goes away with the girls for six weeks to visit family in North Carolina. He falls for this other woman pretty hard. And we know, I think it's from his Google searches that he was Googling things like, when do you say I love you? Like what, what does it feel like to, to be in love? Weird searches that a normal person would not be doing that are definitely a flag. And then the wife comes back from the business trip at two in the morning. She'd been with the girlfriends on a, on a true

business trip, comes back at two in the morning. And what we know is now, because he ultimately confessed, he strangled her to death. They had a, they had a fight. They had some sort of an argument. He strangled her to death. He says he took his two daughters who were alive in the backseat of the truck over their dead mother's body, which was on the floor of the backseat, drove to the oil site, smothered his three-year-old and his five-year-old. The five-year-old said, are you going to do to me what you just did to Cece, the three-year-old, and said, daddy, no, it's too horrific to even really conjure. And he did it anyway. He did it anyway. And then he disposed of the daughter's bodies in the oil tanks.

Put one in one oil tank and one in the other. So gruesome he could even describe the sound of their little bodies hitting the liquid and buried his wife in a shallow grave nearby. This guy who had friends, who again was perceived by some as his model father, who doesn't have some long criminal history, I don't get it. And I'm desperate to get it. Would you help me get it? Yes. And I think the way you describe it, you know, again, people should remember what he did and what he said he did too. And he has changed his narrative at least four times, but the way that he described putting their bodies into that oil tanker, I believe that version of what happened. And for us all to think about the

fear and the terror that the children must feel having seen what happened. And for us all to think about the fear and the terror that the children must feel having seen what happened. I believe Bella saw what happened to her mum. And then having this sense that these horrific things are going to happen to you at the hands of your daddy, someone who's meant to care, love you and look after you. And those moments are just so haunting. And I think when we understand how the media characterized him as a good father, a good dad, this perfect dutiful husband. And of course, there were all these different videos of Shanann because her business was on Facebook of her and she was described as bossy and oh this nagging woman and too strong and instantly we get into the victim blame and the empathy of excusing what he did and that is everything wrong with the

way these cases are not only understood but the way that they're talked about in the media and when we think about when Chris and Shanann first got together, she was very ill with lupus and she was heavily dependent on him. She thought he was her saviour. And that's what she said. She couldn't have got by without him. So the relationship dynamic was very different. She was wholly dependent on him. They got married. She didn't know whether she could have children. And then by a miracle, because of lupus, she had two children, two girls. And then the relationship dynamic started to change and she started to work more. And yes, they had debt and that's another important point, but the dynamic shifted and she was working, she was going out, she was no longer as dependent on him. And as you described,

the dynamic shift, and that can happen in a relationship. He then starts this Thrive program, which is something that she's advocating for as well as part of her business. And he starts to lose all this weight. And then he starts to feel himself more. And he's taking this introvert is now becoming someone quite different. Even Shanann said that she didn't know. He was taking videos of himself working out. Then he meets Nikki and he falls for her hook, line and sinker. He's writing her these love notes at a time where Shanann is sensing that things are going terribly wrong in their relationship. then she finds out she's pregnant. And maybe that pregnancy is used as a way to try and bring them closer. But of course, what we know is that babies don't tend to bring you closer. They tend to add more stress and pressure. And he, by other people's

opinions, didn't want the baby. They had a gender reveal party that was cancelled, and she sensed that he didn't want the baby and even the video of them announcing the baby, he just clearly wasn't happy about the whole thing. And you can say he was shy on camera, but you can see that he was not excited about it. He cancelled this gender reveal. He was seeing Nikki. He wanted to invest in that relationship. He told Nikki that he had separated or was separating from Shanann, which wasn't happening. Shanann goes off, she's writing these letters to him saying, I'll do anything to fix it. Tell me what you need, Chris. He's withholding sex from her. He is completely out of the relationship and she's desperate to restore the relationship and his attention is elsewhere. He's doing these Google searches. When do you tell someone that

you're in love with them or how? Well, that tells you about shallow effect. It's not really a feeling because you just say it and you do it. You don't research it to understand it, right? So that's the shallow effect. Well, what did you make of his, this is my own antiquated notion of control. You know, I didn't feel like he was the one controlling because she's writing him these notes like, I've been gone for six weeks. You've called me twice.

You'd think a man would want to talk to his wife and daughters. And he writes back, you're so right. I'm so sorry. I love you, honey. I'll do better. All of his notes back during that six week period. And this is all leading up to the murder. It's right before he murders them. He's, you know, he's using the emojis. He's really, you know, kind of sweet. Yes, he's ignoring her, but when he texts, it always seems to be from like a beta role, you know, that just how I read those texts. And the reason I found it alarming is it just didn't sound like someone who's going to go commit a murder. I don't know what somebody sounds like who's going to go commit a triple murder, but I just don't picture them using emojis. And so where am I going wrong?

Well, they tend to be very cool, calm, and collected, actually. Every case I've seen, when we've had even CCTV footage of them in the act, it's cool, calm, and collected. But where are you going wrong? I wouldn't say you're going wrong. You're interpreting what you're seeing, but my interpretation would be he's managing her. He's manipulating her. He's keeping her at arm's length, telling her what she needs to hear to get off his back because he's cheating on her. He's going sand dune surfing with Nikki. He clearly wants to be with Nikki. He's telling Nikki that he's going to leave Shanann. Nikki suspects he's cheating on her because as women, we know. we know the signs. We may not tell people about it, but Shanann actually did. She did go to that conference after that trip.

And that's where she was when she came back at one o'clock or whatever it was. She had found that on her, on their credit card, because they didn't have much money. There was, I think it was something like $60 that the lazy dog had been spent. She believed he was cheating on her. I believe that she came back to confront him because she came back early and her best friend said she wasn't herself. At the conference, she was just really out of sorts. She wasn't eating. She was really upset. I believe she came back to confront him. And it's at the point of being confronted. He says that he pushed her off of him or he, yeah, he put, he got himself off of her. And I believe that they were having sex. There was some attempt to restore the relationship, but his account, he said, I told her I didn't love her and I didn't want to be with her anymore.

And I pushed her away and I found my hands around her neck. Well, even that account is inauthentic because you don't just find your hands around someone's neck and it takes minutes, not seconds to strangle someone and asphyxiate them and kill them. And the girls were shallow sleepers. And I believe one of them came in and he took those decisions. That was all on him. And it may not have been something that was premeditated, but it unfolded. And the worst thing that he then did was load Shanann into the car and load the two girls into the car. And he had 45 minutes to make the right decision. But he took those two girls with their mother dead in the car and he then strangles them and asphyxiates them one by one and then disposes of their body as if they're rubbish, as if they're

just trash. And he buries Shanann. And it's in those moments that he makes those decisions, but he carries on the lie. Even when the police are called, he's carrying on the lie. She was 15 weeks pregnant. There was no care or concern. My wife's missing. She's got lupus. 15 weeks pregnant. My two girls, everything was about maintenance and he was cool, calm and collected. It was the neighbour who spotted his behaviour, who said that he's more animated than usual, that he pulled the car up, the truck up to the door. And it was the neighbor saying, I don't know, there's something is just not right. I don't know. And he's saying they argued and she just left with the children. Well, there was no evidence that she had just left

with the children. Her phone was there. The car was there. How would she even be able to get the children out without the car? Where would she go? It was all lies, but it was the neighbor on his behavior who spotted that everything he was saying and doing was not accurate. And then he pulls the video up to show the police. And then you see Chris looking very awkward. But he, I don't believe, planned the whole event in terms of killing Shanann. She confronted him. And I think she probably said to him, she confronted him. And I think

she probably said to him, I'm leaving you and I'm taking the children. And he said that, right? He said she said something to the effect of you'll never see the children again. Of course, if she thinks he's cheating on her and the marriage is falling apart and he's trying to leave her, that's the kind of thing a wife and mother might say. Yeah. And a good father would say, well, look, we have to work this out, but I don't want to be with you anymore. And we have to work the children out of who, you know, and when we get custody, but let's talk about that another time, but let's separate for now. But that's not what he did. He put his hands around her neck. He strangled her for a period of minutes

to the point that she wasn't just unconscious, that she was dead and she was carrying his baby. And then he took the two girls and put them in the car and he chose to kill them too. And he could have made very different choices. There were other choices on the table, but if I can't have you know one will. Is that psychopathy? Is it evil? Like, I don't understand. I even get, forgive me, I don't know how to justify it. I get killing the wife. I mean, like anybody who listens to Dateline knows that happens all the time.

I don't understand what can then make you kill your three-year-old and your five-year-old in the manner that we've just been discussing. What is that? Yes, well, only he and those men who do it know it, but I believe that for Chris Watts, it was about wiping them all out. And he believed that he had a chance of a new relationship with Nikki. And in his mind, although it makes no sense to anybody else, that that's why he took the choices that he did. And of course it's with catastrophic consequences, but this wasn't in red mist. This wasn't a moment where he makes a decision. It's over 45 minutes plus where he makes those choices and then he sticks to that story. And there were other choices that he could have made, but he didn't. And that tells

me about him. That tells me about the type of person he really is. And I have scored him on the psychopathy checklist and he scores lower than 20, but I don't have all the information available. But what I did see was the lack of empathy and that he was even flirting with one of the CBI officers who was interviewing him and he was attempting to manipulate. And that's why he changed his story multiple times. He believed that he was capable of getting away with it. And that's what he was trying to do. Let's show the audience a clip of him. This was before he confessed and he was still playing the game with the media of, I have no idea where they went.

They just, she took off with the children, you know, in the middle of the night. Here's Chris Watts before his confession. I hope that she's somewhere safe right now and with the kids. But I mean, could she have been, could she have just taken off? I don't know. But if somebody has her and they're not safe,

like I want them back now my god that is so obviously untrue and not how a real grieving father and husband would act not authentic at all and that's where you would be pressing to get more answers from him you know she pregnant, 15 weeks pregnant and with lupus, with his two daughters. And I do believe he felt he could control the narrative and that he could control other people and manipulate them. So the question is, did we ever really know, or, you know, did anyone really know who Chris Watts was? Is this really who he is now? And this was him and that's what he was masking for many years. And he didn't let people in because of who he truly was. And that's what I believe, what we're

seeing after the fact, that's him, him making those choices, those decisions. Don't you think it's like a Scott Peterson situation? Yes, I do. And I've talked about Lacey and Connor Peterson. Again, she was pregnant and the choices that he made where there were other choices on the table. But they're the choices that he made, and that the woman who ran the lie detector on him was, she was crazy good. I mean, she was, she put him at ease. She was, oh, this is all just fun. You know, you know, the one of us knows the truth and now we're both about to know the truth. I thought she did a great job and she did with, along with her partner, extract the confession, but they had a lot of evidence. You know, they had the GPS. They knew where he had taken, he'd gone to the oil tanks. Uh, they had a lot. So he winds up confessing. They bring in his dad.

He confesses to his dad. And in that moment, one of the themes of our discussion has been the blaming of the woman. What did she do? What'd she do? In that moment, listen to what he said. I know you're familiar. Play it for the audience. Here's his confession.

You lost it and you choked her? You lost it and you choked her or what? Ask the dad. Scraped. Here's his confession. and that I put my hands around my wife's neck and did that same thing. So it's hard to understand there, but what he's saying is she, Shanann, killed my babies. So I put my hands around her neck and did the same thing to her. In that moment of confession, he's blaming Shanann. Which tells you everything you need to know about him. It's very rare for a woman to behave in that way. And under these circumstances, it's highly unlikely. But he was happy for Shanann to take the blame for his actions and his behavior. And later admitted that that wasn't true anyway. So I mean, we know it was a lie.

He's serving life sentences and will not be getting paroled. Let's jump to the case of McDonald, Jeff McDonald. This turned into the book Fatal Vision, which I really recommend. I listened to it via audio. It was done so well by Joe McGinnis. Fascinating story with the book too. Joe McGcginnis basically got recruited by mcdonald to write the book and then turned on mcginnis turned on mcdonald i think mcdonald thought it was going to be an exonerating type of tome it wound up going the other way and um mcdonald sued mcginnis who did have to pay him some sort of a settlement um because i'm i didn't look deep into it but i think it's because it was like a breach of contract.

They basically suggested you lured him into thinking you were going to make it sound a different way. Anyway, it's a great book. It's very interesting. Jeff McDonald, surgeon, went to Princeton, went to Northwestern for his med school, went to Columbia Presbyterian for his internship, then joined the green berets and was serving and training, jumping out of airplanes. It's going to be a surgeon for the

army and then go out into the world and make a bunch of money at Yale. He hoped to get a job at Yale and his wife Colette was his high school sweetheart. She was nice, nice lady from all the accounts was also very bright, uh, had been studying in college herself, winds up getting pregnant, which puts her life on hold, sacrifices for him. This is back in the 60s. So, you know, the society was kind of set up this way. And they had two beautiful daughters, Kimberly and Chrissy. And they're living right off of campus on base, or I think on or off campus on base. And one night, in the middle of the night, he kills them. He kills all three of them in a

very similar situation, the wife and the two daughters to the Chris Watts case. This guy's got everything going for him. And by all accounts, a lovely wife, who's very supportive of him and beautiful daughters, same and says it was hippies that it was a Sharon Tate site type situation where this woman and three men came into the apartment in the middle of the night, stabbed him. He had like a punk, like one puncture wound that a surgeon like McDonald would have known had a place without killing himself. And the women were absolutely slaughtered. His wife and his two girls, absolutely slaughtered with a number of puncture wounds and ice pick. I mean, just absolutely

brutal. And they wind up saying first, oh, we don't have, you know what? He didn't do it. We're going to, we buy the hippie story, but his wife's father would not let go of it. He initially defended McDonald, but when he got a hard look at the evidence that had been submitted to the preliminary hearing turned and spent the rest of his life making sure that the, that the justice was done. And ultimately it was, and Jeff McDonald went to prison. But here's Jeff McDonald on the Dick Cavett Show, taking us back now in time to 1970, December 15th, the murders that happened a month earlier. This is a month after his wife, say again? Okay. Oh, oh yeah. Okay. It happened in February. The murders happened in February. So it was less than a year later. Talking about the murders of his wife and daughters as follows. Could you talk about what happened on that night last February? Well, I can skim through it briefly to get deep into it.

Yeah. It does produce a lot of emotion on my part. But very briefly, my wife came home and we had a before bedtime drink, really. And watch the beginning of a late night talk show. He's smiling. The audience is laughing. And Laura, he did the thing you said. He said, getting into it brings up a lot of emotion. You know, like, trust me, wink, wink, trust me, I'm not actually going to show you that. Yes. I mean, that short clip just reminds me of Scott Peterson and the Diane Sawyer interview where it's clear to me that he thought he, in both situations, they can control and influence and manipulate. And like with Diane Sawyer, I don't know if you

saw that interview with Scott Peterson that he did months later, bearing in mind Lacey was still missing. And he laughs inappropriately. He smiles inappropriately. He doesn't declaratively say he didn't kill Lacey and Connor and Diane Sawyer is just not buying any of it. I mean, her bullshit detector was pretty well honed. And there's an 11 minute clip where it's very clear there was deception. And a lot of the work that I do, I look for indicators for veracity and deception. So without knowing that individual's baseline behavior, but knowing that, did you say he was in the Marines? He was in the military? Yeah, he was a Green Beret. Yeah. He was a Green Beret, right? So he's used to power and control. He's used to influencing.

He's intelligent. I can see that. He believes that people are going to buy what he's selling, but the leakage that's there is telling us something quite different. And that's why you're always looking for words, actions, behavior that are congruent, but also facial expressions, micro expressions, etc. Are they describing the emotion or are they living and feeling the emotion? I mean, you don't talk briefly about and skim through the brief details of your wife and your daughter's absolute slaughter. I've never heard someone say that before unless they're lying. What about the brutality of the murders? Like that, in a way, that to me is evidence

that he didn't do it. I mean, he did it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying no one could believe that somebody would take an ice pick and over and over and over stab their three-year-old. Like this just doesn't, that would lead somebody to

believe it had to be an outsider. Do you think that's why those murders were so brutal? It's quite possible. I mean, if you choose to use things like that that point to looking at someone outside the house because of the way it was done. But I don't know the case in detail. But from looking at him and the way that he presents, and the fact that he invited a journalist in to write a book that was supposed to exonerate him, and the journalist who deep dived into the case, and of course, a lot of investigative journalists are very good at what they do. And the journalist didn't buy it based on the facts and the evidence. And more importantly, the jury didn't buy it based on the facts and the evidence. And more importantly, the jury didn't buy it based on the facts and the evidence.

And all my work is about going on the facts and the evidence. You have to look at everything, forensically deconstruct everything, you know, about the behavior and as well as forensic opportunities. But oftentimes it's not always what's present. It's what's absent. You know, what's absent at the scene or what's absent in terms of emotion and who's trying to control the narrative. And controlling the narrative also is a very interesting thing that I see coercive controllers

do after the event, that they want to get their story out there. And oftentimes because they're a man and they're cool, calm and collected, people gravitate to their narrative. But the victims aren't here to tell us otherwise, are they? There's no one alive. His wife can't tell us what happened. That's why the forensics have to tell us what was the sequence of events, what happened, and equally the dynamics of the relationship. Was she looking to separate? Was she saying to him, I've had enough for whatever reason? Had he abused one of the children, for example,

and she said, Colette said, I've had enough and I'm going to leave you. And we know at the point of separation with these coercively controlling men, they want to control the situation. And if I can't have you, no one will. And how dare you make that decision? I'm the one who makes the decisions and it ends when I say it ends and how it ends. And that's equally 76% of the murders happen at the point where the woman says enough. That case, according to the book, again, Fatal Vision, the father of Colette, the wife, saw Jeff McDonald go on Dick Cavett, saw him smirking, working the crowd. Again, not even a year after the murders. And it was his first turn, you know, like I,

I might be dealing with a killer. Like he might actually have killed them and then stayed on him to get the transcript from this preliminary hearing that was done inside the military that determined he didn't do it. And the father poured over these 2000 pages word by word by word and found so many inconsistencies in Jeff's story and started to piece it together. And then these prosecutors went back and did this in-depth investigation of Jeff McDonald to see kind of along the lines of what you're saying, whether these wonderful accounts of him, oh, he's so wonderful at Princeton, wonderful at Northwestern and the greatest surgeon ever really matched up with, was it really true? If you just dug a little deeper, like you were saying about why was Paul Murdoch drinking so much? Why were the parents allowing that? Dig a little deeper what's there.

And they found out he had completely downplayed his number of infidelities. They'd only been married, they were young. He'd been cheating all over the place in disgusting and pervasive ways. He had been seen abusing her. And I know you've called attention to this in particular, at least once seen smacking her across the face, like hands on the face, hands on the neck. I know you've said that's a special red flag. And we saw it in the Gabby Petito case too. Can you speak to that? Yes. Well, any hands going around the face, you know, if a man puts his hands around a woman's face, it covers your nose and your mouth. And that's what Brian Laundrie did to Gabby. And of course, we've seen photographic evidence

subsequently that her family's lawyers have released for purpose just before the police were called that showed that she had an injury. But the police didn't follow up when Gabby told them about the hand around the mouth and where the cuts came from. And any attempt to strangle or asphyxiate by a man to a woman, it increases the risk sevenfold. And it increases the risk to serious harm and femicide. So it really is a high risk factor. And I would imagine with Colette, whatever was seen or witnessed was probably the tip of the iceberg to what she was really experiencing behind closed doors. And if he were womanising, cheating on her, disrespecting her, and she had two little girls, she may well have said enough is enough.

And with his psychopathology and used to being in control and wanting to be in control, I would imagine that he's a man who wants to win and things are on his terms and she's there to meet his needs. And how dare she make a decision that is not within her gift to decide. And that could be the point where he then assaults her. It could have been one of the girls. I don't know, but something happened and with catastrophic consequence and what a horrific case. And I'm so glad that her father followed his instincts and that he kept asking questions. And that's what I ask all my listeners on Crime Analysts to do,

ask questions, be curious and always trust your instincts. And the people who know someone like Jeff McDonald the best, the father who's observed him in different situations knows when something's not right. And thank goodness he was there to advocate on behalf of his murdered daughter and grandchildren. Sometimes that's exactly what it takes to get to answers, the real answers and the truth of what went on. Just like we saw Chris Watts confessing to his dad when everything is stacked against him and he's got nowhere to go. His dad was the one that

ultimately got the answer out of him by flipping it onto Shanann. And then he confesses. So again, the people who know the perpetrator the best, they're the ones who should really be asking questions and working with professionals to make sure the right questions are asked and not to let something go when something seems off. Let's spend a minute on Gabby because, you know, I have to admit to you, I've done a lot of interviews of domestic violence victims. And when I saw that police stop, you know, where she was trying to say he hit me first and so on, I understood what was happening there, but I also felt bad for the cops. I know that's not right. I know the cops did not handle it. We had a whole debate with lawyers on whether they should be sued and so on. I don't know. I had conflicting feelings about it. They seemed like caring

individuals, but the truth is they really mishandled that entire scenario. And I'm not blaming them for Gabby's death, but you know, one can only wonder had they intervened more aggressively, would it have led to her escape? You know, her, just a different result again, not to blame them, but just to call attention to there's a warning sign here. There's a really clear warning sign in her interaction with these cops. Somebody had called 911. They had said that they had seen a man hit a woman. The cops went, they pulled him over and they found a man hit a woman the cops went they pulled him over and they found a crying gabby petito with a mark on her face and then we later found out a mark on her neck and um she tried to blame herself we have we have a bit of that here

it is we want to know the truth if he actually hit you. I guess, yeah, but I hit him first. Where did he hit you? Don't worry, just be honest. Well, he like grabbed my face. He slapped your face or what? Well, he like grabbed me with his nail and I guess that's why it was... I didn't really have a cut right here because I could feel it. Yeah. It's a saturated burn.

She gets really worked up and when she does she swings and she had her cell phone in her hand so I was just trying to push her away. Well to be honest I didn't wake him first. Where'd you hit him? I slapped him. You slapped him first? And then just on his face? He just kind of shut up. What do you make of that whole thing? I spent a long time on Crime Analyst going through the case and dissecting forensically the police stop, because of course it is on their body cam footage. And the first thing that struck me about Gabby was just how emotionally dysregulated she was. And, you know, I trained law enforcement.

I wrote the book Policing Domestic Violence that's behind me with two police officers when I was at New Scotland Yard. And it's part of the Blackstone Policing Guide series of helping officers ask the right questions and use their powers. And one of the key things is if you've got a victim in trauma, which Gabby was clearly emotionally dysregulated, find out why. And if you've got a perpetrator and bearing in mind the 911, the call that came in was about, and I'll quote it, a gentleman slapping the woman. Well, that ain't no gentleman for a start, but the point was that the call was a call for assistance because of the male's behavior, not the female's. And Gabby instantly took responsibility, which a lot of victims do. And therefore the attempt to separate them was the right one, but putting her in the back of the police car, which is where you put a suspect and

shutting her off, wasn't a good move. And keeping Brian out and spending 80% of their time with Brian, who straight away threw Gabby under the bus in attempt to manipulate and control the narrative. I train officers to question that. That is a very clear manipulation and his narrative should have been challenged because at no point was it challenged. And he was the first to admit that he had shoved her and that he had locked her out of her van. He took her keys and they did a van check and it was registered to Gabby, not him. He took her keys, he took her phone and he stopped her from getting into her vehicle. And then one of the other callers said that he took her backpack out and had put it on the outside of the van and he'd threatened to drive off and leave her there on

her own. So who really is the person with the power and control here? It's very obviously Brian and that she was in fear and she was trying to get her keys and get her phone. She just wanted to be in the van and he was controlling her movements and not allowing her to have the space that she needed to be in her van. And he was threatening to leave her there on her own, a lone female. And that narrative should have been challenged. That case is reminding me of some of these other cases that we're discussing, like the McDonald one where, oh, Colette, she was so happy. She was this domestic wife of this Green Beret surgeon and the two little girls. That's what

we saw on the outside. And what we also saw in the Gabby case was the van. And I love the van and van life. And we're doing our yoga. This image that we know was untrue. We were being misled. And it's not uncommon at all for the victims of domestic violence or the perpetrators of it to mislead us actively and willingly. Yes, but the clues are there. I mean, when you get two independent male witnesses calling it in because they're concerned, it takes a lot to call the police. Most people don't want to get involved with the police. So for two independent men to say there's a problem, well, that's the first thing that they should pay attention to. What are they being told? Why are they even attending? Officer Robbins did try and

do the right thing, but he was a junior officer. He wasn't even through his training period. And Eric Pratt, the supervisor, was the one that made a very quick decision that Gabby was the primary aggressor. Well, actually, I wrote the chapter on primary aggressor because we have the same where you have to be very careful in not just believing the calm, cool, collected male narrative. And oftentimes that's what police attend, a distraught, emotionally dysregulated female and a very calm, cool and collected individual, a male normally. And then they gravitate to that cool, calm, collected male and their narrative rather than thinking, why is this young woman so emotionally dysregulated? This is a disproportionate reaction to what we're being told.

And hang on a minute. Didn't Brian say she's got this little website? Isn't he devaluing her and saying, oh, she's crazy, making out that she's the crazy one. And even when Officer Robbins tried to challenge him, he again threw it back to Gabby being the problem. So with experience, and that's why supervisors and mentors are very important to check and to challenge. And unfortunately, with misogyny, oftentimes, and those officers, what we saw was, yes, they may look like they are being caring towards Gabby, but they were also very misogynistic and very patronising and condescending. And did they not realise that 16 to 24-year-olds are the most at risk group of domestic violence and femicide, the women, because in 2021, 2022 and 23, it's unacceptable for officers not to be trained.

So for me, this is a very clear training issue, but the attitudes are also problematic when they instantly go into just believing the male narrative without any challenge. And they put her in the box of just being the hysterical, emotional woman and aren't all women crazy because that was the subtext between Brian and those officers with their fist pumping and, oh, these women are, you know, my ex-wife, she's no longer my wife anymore and she's on pills because she's so crazy. These were the things that the officers were talking about with Brian. And then they were laughing and joking. And for Gabby, who's in the back of the car, is she hearing them laughing and

joking? How does that feel to her when she's just on her own, isolated, and there they all are, joking and laughing with Brian? That sends a very clear message to her. You know, this is all leading me to recall something you wrote about how we socialize girls all wrong in some ways, you know, be a good girl, go along to get along, don't make waves. You know, the pain in the ass girl is somebody nobody wants to be around or promote or work with. Um, we talk about it a lot these days because there are all these teachers who want to have secrets with our kids now. And you know, a lot of us mothers have been saying, you don't get to have secrets with my child. No adult gets to have secrets with my child. I'd raise my children to, to understand

that that's a big red flag, a grownup who wants to have a secret with you. That's how kids get abused. And it's how women get abused. It's just like a common theme that I'm feeling now and listening to you. And I want to leave, I want to leave it on an empowering note so that the people listening to this don't just feel like, oh, it sucks to be a woman. I'm going to get abused. No one's going to care. The laws don't protect me. I'm going to fall in love, but it's going to turn out to be some abusive psychopath. You're like, what can women do, right? Meaningful things that they can do to protect themselves, to take control of their own lives and their own safety.

Well, I think girls are groomed to be to be polite compassionate and to put other people's needs above their own and what we need to do is yes you can still be polite but to know your own needs and not be afraid to voice what you need and not be afraid to be difficult because you mentioned the good girl but those of us who challenge things, we're the difficult ones. We're the ones that tend to run into problems because we're asking the difficult questions. So the things that I always say are to be curious. When something doesn't feel right or look right or sound right, be curious and ask questions about the person. Don't just accept their word for it. Don't, you know, ignore what your instinct is telling you. And that's probably the biggest one is trusting your instinct. If something feels

right or somebody feels off, every rape case I've worked, every time when I've gone back through the statement, the woman sensed when she was in danger and then she didn't want to upset the person. So she didn't get off the train. She didn't walk across to the other platform or go down a different street. She didn't want to upset the person. So, you know, not being polite in that way to the detriment of our own safety and to always, always trust your instinct. We have more brain cells in our stomach than a dog has in its head. And I've got a rather lovely golden doodle called Beatrice.

But when my gut's tweaking, it's telling me something. So always listen to that because we can talk, Megan, and we can try and empower women, but only women can empower themselves, right? To ask the questions, to take action. And don't be afraid to ask advice from older people, you know, older mentors, females. I mentor a number of younger women of things that where they say, but is this normal? Is that right? I mean, he says that that's what everybody does of sending pictures, you know, naked pictures, et cetera. But he says, I'm a prude when I don't do it. I mean, should I?

You know, my number one rule is never send pictures because you don't know where they're going to end up. So again, just asking, trusting someone like yourself, myself, and asking those questions from someone who's seen it and done it before and to be mentored because I think for younger women, particularly 16 to 24, they're not taught what a healthy relationship is. There's a big information gap. They're taught how to have sex and the mechanics of it, but they're not taught about emotional safety and being in a healthy relationship of what's healthy versus what's unhealthy. And I think if we were doing that piece, we would be able to spot the behaviors and we'd do it with boys as well, boys and men,

of what behaviors are they learning that's bad that they shouldn't be using and it's early that we want to get into it age appropriate discussions of course and i agree with you the secret things is a big problem you know that's how pedophiles and sex offenders how they get the trust of a child that it's a secret between me and you so teachers should absolutely not be talking about secrets. That's a big safeguarding risk. So yes, I think it's having more conversations and girls and women, you know, stepping into their personal power and not being afraid to make a noise and get louder when there's a problem. Yes. Get louder is great advice. And if it's not, if it doesn't come easy to you, then practice, keep practicing because it comes easier over time. Now, wait, before we go, I know about the podcast, but is there a book that the people can buy of yours? You met,

you mentioned the one behind you. Is that just for police or shoot? Can we all learn from that one? I mean, it's a wider book that anybody can read. And a lot of people tell me they can dip in and out of the chapters. It's called Policing Domestic Violence. And I am in discussions about updating it. I mean, the actual detail and the case studies I use in there with my co-authors, it's all still relevant. But some of the laws now, we've got new laws on coercive control, um, on stalking, all sorts of things that we're in discussion about updating it. And I'm also running a whole series of master classes because I, I do deliver a lot of training and some of them are virtual training master

classes where people can, um, log on just as we're talking. And I talked through lots of cases and the dash. I've got a stalking class on May the 9th and 10th and dash on May the 23rd, 24th and coercive control on June the 6th and 7th. And you can just email laurarichardspa at gmail.com if you're interested in that. Oh, great. And it's, and your website is thelaurarichards.com. thelaurarichards.com and also dashriskchecklist.co.uk. It is at the moment being updated and it will be a.com in the future. But yes, I put a lot of information out there to

help people. And there's Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service, where there's lots of information on there if you believe that you're being stalked. God bless you for all that you've done and that you continue to do your podcast, your books, your advocacy, your mentorship, all of it. Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you. Well, I've enjoyed it very much. And thank you for your, for you sharing your experience and, uh, enjoy it is the wrong word, but I think these discussions and informed discussion and conversations and interviews are so important. So, so thank you for inviting me on. Thanks for joining us today. Fascinating conversation. What I love about Laura is she's spot on. She she's done her homework. Every fact she was reciting.

I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love people who really actually do their homework and they can recite the facts sort of like a Victor Davis Hanson in conversation. You can trust their info. That's Laura. She was great. Looking forward to having her back on. We are off for the day tomorrow. I'm actually going to be in D.C. for the day with my kids on a little educational journey. Doug and I are taking the kids and doing something for National Review. And we made it into a family trip. But I'll be back on Monday with Michael Knowles. So interesting. My gosh, poor Michael's been getting beaten up lately, but he always takes it with class. So we'll talk to him about all of that. And I'll

give you the rundown on the Brunts, the Kelly Brunt crew in DC. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.