True Crime Campfire - No Harm: The Case of Dr. Richard Karpf

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

In the winter of 2002, Dennis White suddenly found himself in a bizarre predicament. His prominent Long Island psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Karpf, seemed to be unraveling: showing up to appointments looking disheveled and distracted. Dennis was concerned about the doctor he'd come to trust over the past six years. But he had no way of knowing what would happen when, one afternoon, he offered Dr. Karpf a listening ear. Seething over a recent conflict with a female patient--and still angry about a whole series of grudges from his past--Karpf began to pull Dennis into an elaborate and terrifying revenge plot involving a gun, a silencer, a murderous dinner party, ravenous sharks, and a bizarre theory of murder as a therapeutic tool. Sources:NBC's "Dateline," Episode "Murder on the Mind"NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/nyregion/authorities-say-li-psychiatrist-told-patient-of-plot-to-kill-6.htmlhttp://psychwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/NY Post: https://nypost.com/2004/07/02/psycho-shrink-guilty-l-i-doctor-avoids-jail-in-slay-plot/https://psychrapereporter.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/ny-state-refuses-to-reinstate-psychiatrist-richard-karpf/https://www.legalrightsadvice.com/psychiatrist-threatens-rampage/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Jody Pico once wrote, When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself. The idea of getting vengeance against somebody who's wrong to you can be really seductive, but the obsessive anger it takes to brew up a good revenge plot can eat you alive. And of course,

there's an old saying that the best revenge is living well, but as Niles Crane once pointed out on Frazier, I just don't know how true it is. You don't see it popping up in a lot of opera plots. For some people, it's just not enough to feel smug about their own successes and hope their enemies are green with envy. They want to get even. For some, it becomes. a singular focus, the only thing they can think about, and they're determined to pursue it, even if it ruins their lives. This is no harm, the case of Dr. Richard Karp. So, campers, for this one, we're in the little town of Westbury on Long Island, New York. January 8, 2003.

Richard and Dennis were driving to meet a man named Mike in the parking lot of Home Depot. As they pulled into the lot and spotted Mike waiting for them in his car, Richard started getting a little fidgety. He seemed nervous. How was this going to work, he wanted to know? Dennis tried to calm him down. Let's go introduce us. How's that? Okay.

Well, I don't want any names, Richard said. Dennis nodded. Well, no, I meant... Okay, well, we know he's much. Mike, he already knows my name is Dennis. Fair enough, but Richard was insistent. He didn't want this guy to know who he was. They sat in silence for a second.

Then Dennis said, okay, your name is, how about this, Pete. This seemed to chill Richard out. He was ready to go talk to this Mike. Richard reached into the back seat and pulled out the duffel bag he'd brought with him. The cash was all there, and when the deal was done, he could put his purchase in there where nobody could see it. Mike motioned them to get into his car, and they said their hellos. Then Mike got down to business. He wasn't at all convinced this Richard dude knew what the hell he was doing.

Mike pulled out the gun. This is a 22 caliber. Then he pulled out the ammo and the silencer and started to talk Richard through the steps. He said, okay, let me show you. You're going to put your clip in. Richard said, okay. Dennis was sitting totally silent in the back seat. Richard was trying to pay attention to the gun loading lesson,

but he looked like he was about 10 seconds away from a nervous breakdown. Mike stopped. He eyed the guy for a second. Then he said, let me ask you something. Do you know what you're doing? I mean, you're ready to do this? Richard said, yeah, yeah.

Mike said, because this is a really big step. Richard didn't say anything, just sat and looked at the 22 in Mike's hand. Finally, Mike said, look, do you want me to do this job for you? Richard didn't hesitate this time. No, no, I didn't. I don't. I don't want you to do the job. I'm going to do the job. Well, who is it you're planning to kill, Mike wanted to know? Is it your wife? Richard looked away. I can't say. I don't

want to. I don't want to say. Well, you've got to be seriously pissed, Mike said, to want 40 rounds in a silencer. You've got to be madden hell. Now, I can't tell you if Richard was planning on answering that campers, because at this point, all hell broke loose. Cops were suddenly all over the landscape, almost a dozen of them, popping out of every nook and cranny. Get your hands up, hands up, you're all under arrest. They hauled Mike, Richard, and Dennis out of the car, and cuffed him. So what just happened, exactly? A scene from the new Cohen Brothers movie, or what?

Well, let's put a pin in this unfolding triple habeas gravis for a minute and give you a little background on how we got here. Whatever you're expecting me to tell you right now, my guess is you're going to be surprised to learn that our nervous gun and silencer buying Richard is actually prominent Long Island psychiatrist Dr. Richard Karp, and that Dennis, the guy who brought him to meet shady gun dealer Mike, is one of his longtime patients. It all started for Dennis White in 1996. He'd struggled off and on with depression and anxiety for most of his life, but around the mid-90s, it started really ramping up,

affecting his relationships and his work as a master car mechanic. He was having chronic migraines, panic attacks, and sometimes his depression would hit him so. hard that he couldn't get out of bed for days. So, in 96, after a short stay in the hospital, he went looking for a psychiatrist who could help him climb out of the pit he'd fallen into. He found Dr. Richard Carpf, and he liked him from day one. He felt like the guy was really hearing what he had to say. Dr. Carp didn't seem nearly as detached as Dennis had expected him to. He felt like the doc was genuine, really interested in helping him work through his feelings.

So over the course of the next few years, Dennis laid it all out for the doctor. His rough childhood, his family's history of mental illness, his divorce, the awful spiraling feeling of the panic attacks. And he always felt like Dr. Karp was really hearing him. He started to look forward to his sessions. Afterward, he always felt lighter and cleaner, like he'd vacuumed the cobwebs out of his brain. And the therapy was working, no doubt about it. He was doing better, way better.

After six years of once-a-week therapy with Dr. Karp, Dennis was getting his life back together, and he trusted that any time things got bad again, the doctor would be there for him. Therapists are supposed to maintain a professional distance from their patients. It's necessary. If they develop any kind of personal relationship, it can wreak havoc on the patient. The balance of power is just too far off, and if you're coming to see a therapist, chances are you're emotionally vulnerable on some level. But a lot of people who've been in therapy with the same doctor for years will tell you that you can develop a real emotional bond with your doctor.

And that's not always a one-way street. At its best, that just means that the therapist genuinely cares about you and wants the best for you. Maybe they come to like you as a person, appreciate your sense of humor or admire your kindness. And in the worst-case scenario, a doctor can breach that invisible wall between the therapist and the patient and stomp through your emotional landscape like a bull in a china shop. And that is what Dr. Carp was about to do with Dennis. First, Dennis started noticing that Dr. Carp just wasn't looking so good. He'd show up to the session kind of looking unkempt,

or he'd just flop in his chair like a sack of potatoes, barely paying attention to what Dennis was saying. For the first time in six years, Dennis would leave feeling unsatisfied, because the doctor had barely said anything. It was like talking to a depressed-looking mannequin. He wondered what was going on with the doc, but he didn't feel like it was his place to say anything. And then one afternoon, Dennis was about to leave at the end of the session when Dr. Carp stopped him. He wanted to talk to him about something.

And to Dennis' surprise, he launched into, like, a sales pitch. You can make a lot of money here, he said. And at first, Dennis was intrigued. I mean, dude is a doctor. He probably knows what he's talking about. about, right? But as Dr. Carp went into a spiel, Dennis realized he was basically pitching him a pyramid scheme. Ugh. Awkward. But, you know, Dennis felt kind of obligated, because this man had helped pull him out of the swamp of despair. He felt like he had to pony up something,

so he ended up giving carp for a few thousand dollars. Just just, ugh, it's worse than when the meanest chick from your high school, like DMs you on Facebook and invites you out for coffee so she can try to get you in her lula row downline hashtag boss babe hashtag bankruptcy hashtag alienate your friends okay but just for the record those leggings were butter i'm not going to lie i'm telling you there are amazon dupes that are just as buttery without the dead fart smell okay well the ones i bought never had the fart smell thank god but i hear it was gnarly so anyway forgetting for a minute the ethical ickiness of a psychiatrist trying to hook one of his patients into a business venture, totally in-apropes, given the power dynamics between doctor and patient, and the fact that

the doctor probably knows just what emotional buttons to push to manipulate. But beyond all that, this was just weird. Dude's suddenly showing up to sessions, looking like he just rolled out of bed, and now he's trying to get patients to give him investment cash. What the hell is going on here? Dennis was starting to wonder if something sticky was going on in the doctor's personal life. And when he showed up for a session on the day after Christmas in 2002, he took one look at Dr. Carp and knew it for sure. The guy was a hot mess. His disheveled, bags under his eyes, hair all messed up, he hadn't even buttoned his shirt all the way. He looked like he'd been put through a clothes dryer. And he was just radiating gloom just out of every pore. Dennis hated to

see his normally polished and put together doc looking like Eeyore's clinically depressed cousin, and he decided his own stuff could wait for now. He sat down and he was like, hey, Doc, you look like you're having kind of a tough time. You want to talk about it? Because you can, if you want to. And for the next hour, in a sort of bizarre world therapy session, Dr. Carr spilled it. He didn't give a ton of detail, not right then, but he said he was having some trouble with a former patient. A woman.

Rettro. She was unstable, he said, an alcoholic and a drug abuser, and she'd come on to him. sexually and well he knew it was wrong but he gave in and now she had him right where she wanted him she was such a loose canon he didn't trust her as far as he could throw her and he was afraid she was going to get him in trouble he could lose his license now campers i know some of y'all are going to be tempted to judge dr carp here you know for committing a gross breach of his professional ethics violating his hypocrite oath not to seduce a patient you might even go so far as to argue taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person to satisfy his own sexual needs. But, hey, hang on a

second. She came on to him, okay? And she was a woman and stuff. It was like boobs and everything. What was he supposed to do, saying no? And remember, from previous episodes, folks, it's actually illegal for a man to reject an attractive woman's sexual advances. I mean, he can face heavy fines, even jail time. So, I mean, the guy had no choice. He's the real victim. He's the real here so just back off okay yeah you don't sleep with a vulnerable patient straight to jail you control your gross impulses ten thousand dollar fine that's right do the bare fucking minimum to uphold your job's ethics death penalty mm-mm god how do you go to school for so long and end up so fucking dumb oh it's so gross so poor dentist just

sat there and listened to all this, and when he went home that afternoon, he felt pretty good. He later told Dateline's Hoda Kotby that he felt like he'd given a little something back to the doctor who'd done so much for him over the years. I don't know, Dennis, man. I think I would have been looking for a new psychiatrist myself, but fair enough. You know, he liked the guy, he respected him. I guess he just felt like, you know, dude made a mistake, and he could forgive him for that. But that cozy feeling didn't last long, because apparently, that first conversation opened the floodgates for Dr. Carp. At his next session, he asked Dennis if he could help him find a used van.

Oh, uh-uh. Nope, nothing good's going to come to that. Nope. Especially, since the reason he wanted Dennis to find it is so it wouldn't be registered under his own name. Oh, God. Red flag, Dennis. Red flag.

Yeah. But Dennis was like, okay, sure. I guess I can do that. Like, I feel like, I feel like of all of the red flags, asking someone to buy you, buy them a van is like the largest red flag. Nothing good happens in vans. No, well. No. Yeah, probably not.

Okay. I was going to argue with you, but I, you don't need to argue with me. I've been, I've been trapped in a van, a 15 passenger van with, you know, 12 other. Teenagers, nothing good. Okay. And, okay, maybe the good doctor had a perfectly innocent reason for needing a secret van. Side note, secret van is the name of my upcoming folk punk project. Our album, Sliding Door, Sliding Hearts, is coming out in November.

Keep an eye out. But a few days later, it got weirder. He showed up at Dennis's auto body shop, something he'd never done before and asked if he could talk to Dennis alone. Now he wanted Dennis to help him rent a boat. Same deal. He didn't want the name Richard Carf anywhere near the transaction.

And then, as if that wasn't shady enough, he said, I need to find some shark-infested waters. Um, do what now? I need. To find some shark-infested waters. Okay. That's what I thought you said. Yeah.

Now, obviously, Dennis must have realized the possible murdery implications of what he was hearing, but this was his psychiatrist, a guy he'd always thought of as a fountain of serenity and wisdom, so he managed to lie to himself. Maybe, hear me out, maybe, he wants to go shark. Shark fishing, right? Shark fishing. I'm sure that's all it is. That's a totally normal phrase to use when you're going shark-fishing. Shark-infested water. Yeah. That's how fishermen always talk. That's not how a dateline episode starts. No. The more Dennis agreed to help Dr. Karf with these weird-ass errands, the more the doctor seemed to want to confide in him. He started coming to Dennis's shop every day and every day. And every thing,

day, he spilled more red, hot tea about his problems with this female patient. And then one day, as Dennis was trying to work on a car, his job, and listen attentively, at the same time, Dr. Karp blurted out, would you be willing to help me take care of a problem? Dennis didn't like the sound of this, he said, is it about your patient? Sort of, Dr. Karp said. It involves her, but not just her. There's a few others, too. Then he said, I need to get a hold of a gun. Do you know anybody?

And by anybody, Dennis could tell he didn't mean respectable gun shop owner who follows all federal and state laws with regard to background checks and registration. No. Dr. Karf wanted a gun that was off the radar. Dennis froze for a second.

Later, he told Dateline that his first thought was, maybe this is some kind of test, like part of his therapy or something. But then the doctor dropped a bombshell. He said, and it's got to have a silencer, a big one. There can't be any noise at all. A big one. That's a technical term.

Can I go on a rant for a second? Because it's literally, since the word silencer has come up in the show, it's been fighting to get out of me and I need to let it out or we won't put anything to Because silencers, dear campers, don't fucking remove sound. It slightly dampens it. And I mean slightly. The 22 caliber they were looking at earlier in this episode probably clocked in at around 140 decibels. With a silencer, it would reduce the noise to anywhere from 125 to 100 decibels.

That's like going from a tornado siren in your ear to like a police siren or a jackhammer it's it's still going to be audible movies make it seem like it's going to take a gun and make it sound like a mouse fart so i understand the allure but that's just not how that works you're barely masking an explosion it does make it seem like that and like on tv it's like that noise so that's not true at all then why doesn't every criminal use a silencer That's a no-brainer. But no, it doesn't work like that. It's like very slightly.

So poor Dennis was being asked by his therapist about various ways to murder somebody. And from the way he said it, Dennis could tell this wasn't a therapy exercise. This was real. The sharks, the boat, the van, and now a gun with a silencer? There was only one possible explanation. His doctor was plotting to kill somebody. His shrink had lost his damn mind. Yeah, what the hell do you do in that situation?

I can't even imagine. Dennis felt like he was right on the edge of a panic attack, but he managed to hold it together. He thought, if I blow him off, he's just going to go find somebody else to help him do this, and I can't have that on my conscience. Yeah, you got to give Dennis some major credit here, campers. I mean, how many cases have we seen where somebody goes around telling everybody in the tri-state area that they're planning to kill somebody, and nobody does a damn thing?

maybe they go tell the cops later like after the person's already dead but it seems like hardly anybody actually tries to stop a murder from happening in the first damn place but dennis did you know he decided he'd string dr carp for long just long enough to tell the cops what was happening and then he'd be out of it the police would swoop in and take care of the guy so he said sure he knew where they could get a gun and the next time dr carf came by the shop dennis was ready for him with a voice activated tape recorder in his pocket and carp walked right into the trap. Because he has oatmeal where his common sense is stored. Mm-hmm. Like unfavored oatmeal, too. Ew. Not even maple and brown sugar going on up there. And after he left, Dennis beeline for the police station and played him the tape.

There wasn't enough there to make an arrest, because you can't arrest somebody for asking you to find them an illegal weapon or hinting that you're thinking about, throwing somebody to the sharks. but Dennis definitely had the cop's attention and much to his sorrow they wanted his help nailing Dr. Carp. So very, very reluctantly and with a promise of police protection

if things got hairy, Dennis agreed to wear a wire and tried to get Carp talking again. And talk he did. He quizzed Dennis on the reliability of his gun guy was he sure it'd be a good gun, not going to jam on me or anything like that. And when Dennis tried to talk him out of what he was plotting,

Carp launched into his personal philosophy of murder as a therapeutic tool. Yeah, I swear to God, I'm not making this up. Quoting from one of their recorded conversations here, per Dateline NBC, Dennis says, you're a good doctor. You've got a good practice. I've seen your degrees. You worked so hard to get that, okay? Actually look up to you for that.

And it troubles me that maybe you're going to throw it away because of what somebody else did. Reasonable, right? Yeah. but Dr. Carp was not in the mood to be reasoned with. He said, there are a lot of things that are very, very moral that are very, very emotionally unhealthy. The fact is, it may be the right thing to do

in order to have the most emotionally healthy situation. Murder therapy. That's the latest thing. I'm sure all the Hollywood types will be trying it soon. You know, Paltrow will do an article on it for goop.com. I don't know. Is that really Peltro style? Yeah, I think as long as you do it with a rose quartz, it's okay.

All-natural, organic free-range murder is the best way to restore balance in your life. That or, jade vagina eggs. Or why not make it both? Right? So, it was

pretty clear to Dennis that there was no talking this guy out of what he wanted to do. And what was it he wanted to do exactly? Well, over the next few days, Dr. Carve told him. First, he assured Dennis that he wasn't asking Dennis to do any murders for him. He was very definite about that. He wanted to do the killing himself. And one hell of a lot of killing it was, he had six victims in mind, he said,

six people who'd fucked him over royally and were going to get what was coming to him. And the plan he had in mind campers, well, it was pure class. He wasn't going to pop him in a dark alley like some kind of common criminal, okay? He was going to invite all six victims to a dinner party at his Manhattan apartment. Stuff them full of foie gras and tiramisu and good wine and then shoot each one in the chest, cold as ice. Pop-de-pop, pop, pop, pop. It's like something out of a Brett Easton Ellis novel, isn't it?

You know, American psychotherapist. I think there's literally an episode of Hannibal like this. I know it really does have a Hannibal air to it. So his plan was to shoot them all at the dinner table. Did he expect them all to just sit? there and wait politely for their turn or what my dude this will never work as soon as you bring out the gun people are going to scatter i know it's the worst plan but you know at least you thought of the silencer you got to give him some credit people be screaming like banshees but at least the gun won't

make a peep although now i've learned it will it's a it's a it's a james bond silencer super special from an alternate universe peep peop peop in his head this is how you know he's thinking He's like, okay, they won't move. Yeah, they're just going to, they're just all going to sit there and wait politely for their turn. Choo, chute, chute. Whereas in reality, people are going to be knocking over chairs and screaming and, like, it's in an apartment building. What's he thinking? So, so dumb.

Why. After the murders, Dr. Karp said he was planning to dismember the bodies, a lot of work, a lot of limbs there. Pack the pieces into garbage bags, take him out on the boat, and sink them in Shark Alley. And that would be that. His enemies would be passing through the digestive systems of a dozen or so happy sharks, and no one would suspect a thing. Oh, and if Dennis could put together a cleanup kit for him, he'd appreciate it. Some bleach and stuff, you know. And obviously expected Dennis to help with the cleanup and possibly the body disposal to pick up an axe, too, while you're at it.

Jesus Christ. Poor Dennis was still trying to talk him out of it. At one point, he asked Karp what these people could have possibly done to make him so mad that he'd risk his freedom to get revenge on them. Karp said, quoting again from the recording, They physically hurt me. He'd taken a beating, he said. Not bad enough to land him in the hospital, but pretty bad, and humiliating. It's something I've never forgotten about, and I'm never going to forgive them.

I'm turning him into Hannibal, basically. this voice I'm putting on. It's very Hannibal. Like Hannibal Lecter kills people just for being a little rude. Yeah. Yeah. Carp wouldn't say who these people were, but the ones who beat him up weren't the only ones on the guest list for the dinner party from hell.

There was his former patient slash lover, too. He talked about her a lot. You might even say obsessively. It seems like he spent a lot of time trying to justify why he had sex with her. I guess he didn't want Dennis to judge him. for breaking the psychiatrist's code. She used to take her breasts out during our sessions, he said.

And she was spoiled and entitled, the kind of girl who, quote, does whatever the hell she wants. He said when he dropped her as a patient, she got mad, and now she was threatening him, saying she was going to go to the medical ethics board and say they had a relationship. He'd lose his license.

His life would be ruined. She was getting off on having this power over him. She was trying to punish him. On a recording carp says She's very, very pretty But the thing is, I've never felt so threatened in my whole life He says You've got to be careful who you

who you bed down with I don't care how good they look There are some very dangerous girls Who are incredibly just Good looking And this is one of those very dangerous ones Oh boy Wow

Yeah, I think we're getting into physician and heal thyself territory here me dude good looking and dangerous that ain't some insale shit right there and of course he's not taken one electron's worth of responsibility for sleeping with a patient who came to him for help i just hate this guy so bad y'all i hate him it's the worst i hate this guy oh dennis took one more desperate stab at trying to talk him out of the whole idea he was like look man you know that old saying the best revenge is living well Well, you are living well. You've got a good career, a good life.

Why don't you just sit back and enjoy all that? Say, fuck him. They didn't beat me. Dr. Carp's response? Hell no. These people had done him, quote, psychological damage. He had to live with it every day of his life, and he was sick of it. Oh, no.

Not psychological damage to the man experiencing consequences for the first time in his life. God forbid. Shut up, loser. Keep your parts in your pants and stop whining about women, Dr. Barf. Dr. Barf, oh, my God, that is solid. How did I not think of Dr. Barf myself? I'm supposed to be the punstress. But, you know, it's good to know that you'll catch me when I fall, KT.

I love you, man. I love you, too. Right, so he's aw, bless. He said, I'm not going to stand for it anymore. I'm tired of being humiliated after 50 years. Dennis told Dateline, he said, even if it meant him going to the electric chair, he was going to finish and complete his task. Even if it meant him dying, it had to be done.

This man was determined to self-destruct, and Dennis, poor bugger, was going to have to watch. You know, it's ironic, actually, that the Dennis who first came to see Dr. Carve probably wouldn't have had, like, the emotional fortitude to handle this situation, like getting sucked into a murder plot by somebody he'd come to trust and used in a police sting operation on top of it. But his six years of therapy with Dr. Carp had done him so much good that he was able to do all this and still stave off the panic attacks, which it's really kind of a shame, isn't it? It's like he was a good doctor when he wasn't sleeping with his patients or plotting to murder him. Fucking weirdo. You know, some people are just determined to torpedo themselves. Yep. So all this was more than enough to convince the police that they needed to take this guy seriously. Nobody who listened to those recordings had

any doubt that Richard Carp was dangerous. The frustrating thing was when he talked about his creepy Hannibal Lecter dinner party, he was real specific on what he wanted to do to his guests, but real vague about who in the hell these six people were. He never used any names. Now, it didn't take the investigators long to figure out who the female patient was, the one carp described as very pretty and very dangerous. I wish y'all could hear me rolling my eyes from here. But as for the other five potential victims, they had no idea. And by the way, sometimes there was an extra person. Like, once or twice it was like seven people. but usually it was six.

It's like one person he didn't make up his mind about. So this made everybody nervous, so they decided to try and move things forward as quickly as possible, to try and get what they needed to make an arrest. Enter Detective Michael O'Leary. O'Leary was Old Hat at undercover work, and his job in this case would be to pose as Dennis' friend Mike,

illegal gun dealer and all-around shady guy. Dennis, who by now was starting to worry about his own safety if Dr. Karp decided he'd told him too much, was relieved to finally have an undercover detective in the mix. And in early January, he told the doctor he'd found him a guy, somebody who could get him an unregistered gun, bullets, and a silencer. A big one. Carp seemed cagey at first.

You sure this guy's okay? You trust him? But once Dennis reassured him, he was all in. Said he couldn't wait to get his hands on the gun. Yikes. And a day or two later, Mike called Dennis's shop while Carp was there. After a brief conversation with the undercover, he handed the phone to Dr. Carp. And here are just a few highlights from their recorded conversation.

Thanks again to Dateline NBC for the transcript. Katie, you be Dr. Carve. Mm-hmm. Okay? I'll be shady gun guy, Mike. Mm-hmm. All right, Mike. I have something I need to get from you.

I need a small gun with a silencer, which should fit into a, say, jacket pocket. We're talking up close and point-blank range. Okay. Does your guy know you're coming? Well, uh, of course not. And Karp told Mike he wanted four clips of ammo. Now, a clip has 12 bullets each, which is a lot of ammunition. So Mike says,

What the fuck is this with four clips? What are you going to do? Sit there and reload? Do you know how to load one, first off? I've never actually loaded one, no. Are you sure you're up to this? It seems like you're taking a big step here, and you really don't know what you're getting into.

Well, it's not going to be used tomorrow. Let's put it that way. The undercover detective decided to prod Karp a little about his inexperience. See how determined he really was to do this. Plus, he figured maybe he could find a way to make sure Karp wouldn't go through with the murders before the police could gather enough evidence to arrest him. He said, why don't you just give me more money and let me do the hit for you? But Karp wasn't having it.

No way, he said. He wanted to do the killing himself. He said, the thing is, somebody fouled me, all right? Do you understand that? Somebody fouled me. And unfortunately, the system is kind of failing me. And when O'Leary tried to get him to name the people he was planning on killing, he just flat out refused. I don't want you involved in the case. He said, if I fuck up, that's my problem, not your problem. Yeah, I heard you laugh at him.

Somebody fouled me, all right? Somebody fouled me. Do you understand that? That's like one of the funniest fucking things any of our dipshits have ever said since murder is a very sticky business. Was he think he's in a movie? Somebody failed me, all right? Fowled me is such a weird thing to say. Like, it's like, he's like.

how he thinks a shady gun dealer would expect him to talk. Right. I think he's like, so funny. He's watching too many movies, obviously. Oh, yes. All in all, it wasn't bad for a first encounter. They didn't get the names of the possible victims, but they did have carp on tape asking for a gun, the silencer, and the ammo, and talking about somebody fouling him and wanting to do the murders himself. Plus, they'd arranged a time to meet and exchange the gun and accessories. for $1,600 cash.

Karp insisted on bringing Dennis along. By now, it seems like his patient had become a sort of security binky for him, and he told Mike he didn't feel safe coming to their meeting alone. Can you imagine your psychiatrist using you as an emotional support patient? Yeah, it is very strange. This was not great news for Dennis, who had hoped his part in this whole weird circus would be over once he handed Karp over to Detective O'Leary.

On January 8th, Dennis and Dr. Carp drove to their shadowy meeting with Mike in the Home Depot parking lot. We say shadowy. I don't really know how shadowy you can really get in a Home Depot parking lot in the middle of the afternoon, but it was at least like a little bit shady. Sepeatone. Even the hot dog guy outside looked suss. Okay, that works. It was immediately clear to Detective O'Leary, aka Gun Guy Mike,

that Dr. Carp didn't know anything about the gun he was buying. But what he lacked in skills he made up for in enthusiasm and determination to make his grisly little murder fantasy come true. As Mike showed Karp the gun and demonstrated how to use the clips and the silencer, Dennis sat in the back seat sweating buckets. Even though he knew they were surrounded by plane-clothes cops who'd promised to protect him, he was scared to death. Carp was so off the rails these days. He wasn't sure what would happen when the cops moved in to arrest him. What if he grabbed for the gun and started shooting? So he was hugely relieved when the arrest went down without any problems.

A couple of cops hauled Dr. Carp out of the car and had him handcuffed before he even knew what hit him. They cuffed undercover Mike and Dennis, too. Just as a little bit of theater for Carp, so he wouldn't know Dennis had set him up. Dennis was glad the hard part was over, but it was strange. Later, he told Dateline he felt kind of guilty, or sad at least. I mean, this guy was his doctor for six years, pulled him out of the toughest depression he'd ever had in his life. It must have been weird to suddenly lose that support, especially to lose it in this way,

where he had to watch the doctor he admired and trusted go all Mr. Hyde. Yeah. Once they had Dr. Karp in custody, the investigation reached out to the attorney of the female patient Dr. Karp had obsessed about in the recorded conversations with Dennis. Just to let her know, she seemed to have a starring role in his murder plot. She was freaked out, of course, but she wasn't surprised. She told the investigator she was scared of Dr. Kroft. her carve. She was in a really vulnerable place when she first went to see him, and over the

course of a year, he'd manipulated her into a sexual relationship, told her the sex would be, quote, therapeutic, and when she tried to break it off, he freaked out. He was furious. She ran out the door to get away from him, and he chased her. Jesus Jones. Yeah, I'm sure everyone is just flabbergasted that this man was lying about her coming on to him. Yeah. She'd actually reported him to the police after that incident, but we couldn't tell from our sources whether anything came of that. Within a week of that encounter, though, Karp was plotting her murder. As I'm sure y'all can imagine, the story hit the media like a hurricane. A prominent psychiatrist conspiring to kill half a dozen people, including at least one former patient? Holy shitballs. People

were eating it up. Karp's lawyer, Glenn Morack, whose last name, makes him sound like a Klingon general, told the New York Times that his client, quote, is a non-violent person. And we believe that these allegations will not be borne out. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he sounded like a real peace lover talking about those shark-infested waters he was going to dump the body parts in. You know, I'm sure he was just chasing after that female patient

so he could give her some literature on the Hari-Krishna's. Slow down, wait, where are you running? I just want to show you my recipe for vegan impanadas. Nonviolent. See, he's a lover, not a fighter. By the way, his patient later told the New York Post that when she told him she'd confided in her mom and another one of her doctors about their affair,

he threatened to, quote, fucking kill her and called her a bitch. So, yeah, nonviolent. Carpf was charged with multiple felonies, conspiracy to commit murder, buying an illegal firearm, and right off the bat, his lawyer, his Clingon lawyer, wanted him examined by a psychiatrist. And boy, did he have a story to tell him. See, according to Dr. Carp,

he never really intended to kill anybody. The whole thing, from the very first time he confided in Dennis about his affair with a female patient all the way to buying a gun in the Home Depot parking lot was nothing more than a strategy to wait for it buddy up to Dennis White. He was lonely, he said, he was going through some stuff and he thought Dennis was a cool guy, kind of a tough guy type, somebody you wouldn't want to mess with, the opposite of how he saw himself, and Dennis was, as he put it, easy to talk to. He wanted to impress him, and this, or so he claimed was what he came up with to do it.

Now, campers, I know some of y'all are skeptical. But, you know, this is actually how Katie made friends with me when we first met. Oh, yeah, it's true. Murder plot, sharks, dinner party, the whole thing. Wanted my advice, you know, because you know so much about this stuff, I'm so impressed. And I thought about calling the cops, obviously, but she was just so cute. So I just, you know, kind of played along for a while. And eventually I suggested that instead of slaughtering everybody who bullied her in high school, we could just start a podcast instead.

Here we are. So now you know our origin story. Yeah, I mean, I realized I have no reason to kill anyone. They're living, sad, boring lives, and I have a podcast where I get to call bad people fuck wits. No competition, really. There you go. So this is the actual excuse the Stingis gave, which is clearly absurd, especially given

what the police found when they search Karp's house. On a notepad with the words to-do at the top, he'd read. written a list titled motives for murder. These included revenge, humiliation, and homicidal mania. And he'd researched what parts of the ocean were the most shark-infested. Downloaded the research to his computer. Now, Dennis, wasn't there when he did that, no was he? He did that at home, all by himself, with nobody around to impress.

And one of the other reasons why I call mega bullshit on this excuse is that Dennis tried to talk him out of it like a million times. I mean, you can hear it on the recordings. Come on, you don't have to hurt any. body, the best revenge is living well, et cetera, and Carp always doubled down. I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm sick of being humiliated, blah, blah, blah.

So you can shove your dumb ass. Oh, I just wanted a friend, excuse, just right up your ass, Dr. Carpf. Because Dennis wasn't impressed, and he made that clear when he tried to talk sense into you every damn time you talk to him. And by the way, even if it was true, which I don't believe for a second it was, but even if it was,

he fucking traumatized his patient. Like, this was a guy who was already struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, and he does this, sucks him into a murder plot, whether fictional or otherwise, so fuck him either way, you know? Not to mention what he put his poor female patient through. Karp told the psychiatrist that he'd been bullied and humiliated pretty much his whole life. He was a socially awkward kid, he said, and there was this kid in his neighborhood who decided to target him, used to push him down, take his schoolbooks and toss them so he'd have to scamper after them and pick him up. And apparently, things didn't get much better even after he grew up.

up people tended to use and abuse him he claimed he told his lawyer about a former roommate who just locked him out of the apartment one day when he tried to get in the roommate told him he'd found a roommate he liked better wow it's a little funny sorry that was mean i shouldn't be laughing no it's a little funny um because for everything that he's saying here there's more we don't know like especially with the roommate thing like oh it was probably because he was like leaving turds in the toilet bowl and never doing the dishes. Like, we don't know the roommate's side of the story. When he tried to stay on, the guy just made such merciless fun of him, and he made his

life so miserable that he finally gave in and moved out. He had terrible luck with women, he said. Women would take offense at the things he said, including the women he treated. Quoting from an interview with Hoda Kotby, I might have said something that might have been sexually suggestive to two or three different girls. He lost job over at once. According to him, these women, these patients, let's be clear, had just, quote, misunderstood his compliments. Yeah, when he says different girls, the girls he's referring to were patients in his care.

Ugh. Dr. Insel even had a grudge against his sister for telling him he couldn't bring a date to his niece's birthday party. Oh man, yeah Nothing hurts worse than not getting to mac on the ladies At a five-year-old's birthday party I can see why that one heard Dr. Insel the worst Spider-Man villain from the franchise All he does go online and post angry comments on feminist TikTok

Blah blah blah cop carousel blah blah red pill But yeah I mean how does she how dare she Deprive him of a chance to woo his lady and that kind of red-hot, romantic atmosphere hanging out by the bouncy castle or whatever. I was just about to say, I mean, the bouncy castle alone, be still my heart. If you can find part of it that's not soaked in, like, child vomit or pee-p-p-p-y. Like, okay. We just made jokes about killing people who were mean to me, but I want to be clear,

I literally went to therapy about it. I got over it because that's what you. you do. You don't dwell on something that assholes did to you decades ago because that's loser shit. Royalty shit is discovering that you were the cool one all along and that the approval of smooth-brain teen terrorists that get off on cruelty and have no self-identity doesn't fucking matter. You go to college, meet new people, start a podcast, and then when you think of them, you laugh knowing that you have better things to do than twirl your mustache and vow revenge on 16-year-olds in your head, Dr. Pathetic.

Yeah, you meant all of that. I'm holding up a lighter right now to do the concert. So, according to Karp, this pretty mundane series of events, plus the dissolving of his affair with one of his patients, sent him into a spiral toward the end of 2002, and he remembered something he'd done in medical school in Mexico back in the 70s. He and some of his classmates were wandering around an open-air market after class. One of the vendors was selling knives. Dr. Karp picked it up and started talking about using it to get revenge on somebody who'd screwed him over.

His classmates played along, he said, and for the next couple hours, they all rift back and forth about a revenge murder and how they'd carried out. And then they all laughed about it. And for a few minutes, Karp was the center of attention. And it was the most fun he'd ever had in his whole life. supposedly, which is kind of sad. And he always remembered that day, the day he felt like one of the boys, for God's sake, barf.

Just guys being dudes. So basically, what he was asking the police and prosecutors to believe was that his conversations with Dennis White and his purchase of the gun and silencer was basically the same kind of thing, just an attempt to be one of the cool kids again. And he said he got his ideas about sharks and dismemberment and silencers and whatnot from movies like jaws and dirty hair. I mean, we know he likes movies, right? He particularly liked movies about vigilantes who got even with bad people by, quote, eliminating them. His psychiatric evaluation suggested he might have had a psychotic episode toward the end of 2002

and that he was probably suffering from at least one undiagnosed mental disorder, which fair enough, okay? But as we've said before on this show, your mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. If he was having a hard time, if he was having that much of a hard time, he's a psychiatrist, himself. Why didn't he reach out for help? I mean, let's contrast what he did with what Dennis White did when he was struggling with panic attacks. When Dennis was having a hard time, he went out and got treatment. And he's not even a trained mental health professional. So I'm sorry, I don't think we can excuse this behavior because of whatever mental health issues he may have had.

Plus, in that same videotape deposition where he talked about the med school thing, he also admitted that he was prone to revenge fantasies, preoccupied with all the perceived wrongs that had been done to him. I mean, please, if it's a fantasy, you don't go out and actually buy the gun in the silencer, and four flippant clips of ammo. You just don't do that. And for what it's worth, and I think it's actually worth a fair bit, the undercover detective who sold him the gun,

this was a guy with a lot of experience as an undercover, okay? he had dealt with plenty of bad dudes, and he was absolutely convinced that Dr. Carp fully intended to go through with the murders. I think if you spend enough time in that line of work, your radar probably gets pretty finely tuned. So I actually put a fair amount of stock in his impression, and he came away believing that Richard Carp was a dangerous guy. But because the police didn't have any way to prove Carp was actually planning to kill anybody, they knew they were going to have a hard time proving a conspiracy to commit murder charge. So in the end, they ended up letting him take a plea deal. He pled guilty to the illegal weapons charge for buying the gun and stuff from Detective O'Leary.

And on top of that, he agreed to give up his medical license, thank God, seek psychiatric care, and be on probation for five years. And he did like three months in jail. Try to get his medical license reinstated a few years ago, too, by the way. Didn't work, though, so few. You know, nobody was really happy with the deal except possibly Dr. Carr from cell. for his Klingon lawyer. The female patient that he'd seduced and later chased was completely outraged, because of course she was.

She didn't feel safe with him around, because who would? But she was happy he had to surrender his medical license, at least. She sued him later, by the way. And for some reason, I could not seem to find out how that shook down. I looked and looked, but, you know, I didn't have her name, so I suspect they settled it, but I don't know for sure. I know that before the suit was resolved, she told the New York Post that she wanted to use the money to go into hiding, change her name.

Like, she was still that afraid that he might, like, come after her and kill her. So she was really freaked out by the guy, and she had a, like, relationship with him, you know. Dennis White sued, too, as did one other unnamed patient. During a deposition, Carp had the nerve to say that Dennis had hurt his feelings by turning him into the cops. He were just fifies. He said all he felt like he was guilty of was having an inappropriate conversation with a patient. So just digest that for a second.

Can we say staggering lack of self-insight? Anywho, Dennis ended up with a $365,000 settlement, and I'm sure a lot of anxiety and stress. Didn't Carp's lawyers survey him during the lawsuit, too, to try to catch him having a good time so they could claim he wasn't traumatized? Oh, yeah, it was real classy. And Dennis came away from the whole ordeal feeling pretty jaded. He felt like Carp just got a slap on the wrist. And God knows how this affected all Carp's other patients. I mean, how do you process something like that?

I'm sure it undid at least some of the good work his patients had done in their therapy over the years. I know a lot of them ended up going to other doctors to deal with the trauma of seeing their trusted psychiatrist hauled in for Plotna murder that included a former patient, you know. And Dennis told Dateline that he often wonders if that dinner table still exists in Richard Carp's mind and if he set a place for him. This is a guy who holds grudges. There's no doubt of that. In one recorded deposition, even as he was trying to claim that he'd never intended to hurt anybody, he couldn't keep the anger out of his voice. He said, I never forgot the experience, see, it was really so intense, so humiliating that, you know, I'm not going to let him get away with it. There are some things you just don't let people get away with. So, that was a wild one. Right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to do a special shout-out today. We are heartbroken to have to tell you that

earlier this month, we lost one of our listeners to COVID-19. Her name was Heather, and she and her sister, Jessica, used to love listening to TCC together. When Heather passed, Jessica reached out and asked us to give her a shout-out, and we are more than honored to do it. And I am choking up. I'm sorry. In her sister's words, Heather was a truly giving soul who tried to bring light to those around her, which I think is one of the best things that you can try to do in this life, is to just be a light, you know, to people around you so they feel better for being with you. And it sounds like she was one of those people. Yeah. And she absolutely loved roasting marshmallows and murderers around the true crime campfire. So Jessica, our hearts go out to you and your family, and it means

so much to us that you and your sister bonded over our show. It's just an honor. We wish you love and healing, and may Heather's memory bring you joy forever. And I think we'll stop there for today, y'all. We appreciate you so much. Love you. Hi, I'm Sean McCabe. And I'm Carrie McCabe. We are, well, married, obviously, but we're also obsessed with the darker side of things.

True crime stories, alien abductions, poltergeists. If it leaves you scratching your head and keeping those lights on it, we want to hear about it. That's why we host the podcast, Ain't It Scary, with Sean and Carrie. Every week, we bring our listeners a true story guaranteed to send chills down your spine, from history's most brutal serial killers to the mystery of spontaneous human combustion. Yep, lots of these stories leave unanswered questions behind, and you'll get to poke through the rubble of the evidence with a hardened skeptic and...

Someone whose mind is more open to fun. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. The show really feels like just kicking back with us at home, and chatting about monsters and tragedies, but having a few laughs along the way. Just like we'd be doing if the mics were off, frankly. You can find Ain't It Scary with Sean and Carrie wherever you get your podcasts.

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