True Crime Campfire - Sharpening Your Spidey-Sense: De Becker's Gift of Fear

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Today you get a sneak peek at what our Patreon-exclusive episodes are like. This was last June's patrons-only offering. We do one of these every month, just for our Patreon angels!Today we've decided to zero in on a subject that comes up all the time on our show: Intuition. That “gut feeling” that tells us our best friend’s new boyfriend is a wrong ‘un, our kid’s new basketball coach is creepy, we should have this Uber driver pull over and let us out…right now. I’m sure you’ve heard us mention former Secret Service agent and security expert Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence. It’s basically the True Crime Campfire sacred text, and today’s episode will be a sort of “Cliffs Notes” version, with some true crime tie-ins and personal stories mixed in.Sources:The Gift of Fear by Gavin de BeckerFollow 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 patrons. As you all know, some months we like to give you a regular extra case for your patron exclusive, and sometimes we like to shake things up and give you something a little different. Today we've decided to zero in on a subject that comes up all the time on our show. Intuition. That gut feeling that tells us our best friend's new boyfriend is a wrong-in. Our kid's new basketball coach is creepy. We should have this Uber driver pull over and let us out right now. I'm sure you've heard us mention former secret service agent and security expert and all-around badass Gavin De Becker's book The Gift of Fear, Survival Signals that protect us from violence. It's basically the true crime campfire's sacred text, and today's episode will be a sort of clist notes version, with some true crime tie-ins and personal stories mixed in. We hope you enjoy. This is sharpening your spidey sense, De Becker's Gift of Fear. So, campers, we've decided to divide this discussion into two categories, strange. Danger Danger and when it's someone you know. Part one is Stranger Danger, and I've got a story that I think perfectly illustrates what we're going to talk about here.

So we all know who Ted Bundy was, right? Yes. Glad to be able to say was. He's no longer polluting our planet. The yoga pants and avocado toast and pumpkin spice latte of the serial killer world, Mr. Bundy. And we know that one of Bundy's little tactics was he would pretend to be injured. he'd have his arm in a fake sling or he'd be on crutches and stuff and he would go up to young women and ask them oh could you help me carry my books or could you help me carry my briefcase to my car and you know nine times out of ten because he was Mr. Charming they would say sure and I guess he felt he seemed non-threatening because of the crutches or the sling or whatever and then you know when they leaned over to put the books or the briefcase into that VW bug he would hit them on the head and then the rest would be history right so there was one woman though who was walking home from a party one night and met this handsome you know charming young man who said he was a law student and i don't remember if he was using the sling trick or the crutches trick in this particular story but he was using that same stick and he asked her if she would help him carry his books i keep dropping them and oh i'm such a klutz but you know it's the sling and so she said you know he seemed really nice and nothing really set off her radar

initially. So she said, okay, and they were walking and talking, and everything seemed fine. And then suddenly she just made eye contact with him and immediately knew, she just knew that he was dangerous. And this awesome woman, she didn't worry about being rude. She didn't worry about looking crazy. She just dropped the books and ran. Wow, good for her. I know. She literally He dropped his books on the sidewalk and ran. And I love this story. And it was only later, of course, that she realized who he was and was Ted Bundy. So if she hadn't listened to her intuition in that moment, she would probably be dead.

Yep. Yeah. And I really think that illustrates what Gavin DeBecker calls the gift of fear, which is that innate sense that we have that alerts us to danger. You know, part of our lizard brain. We've had this as long as we've. we've been around, right? So what is the gift of fear? What is intuition and how does it work?

Well, Gavin DeBacker describes intuition as knowing without knowing why, which I really love. I think that explains it really well. But although that makes it all sound very mysterious and kind of hard to figure out, he says it's really not. Intuition isn't a mystery. It's a cognitive process, just like logic is. It just works a lot faster. And the way he puts it is that intuition takes you from A to Z without having to

to stop at all the letters in between. Whereas if you use your logic, you've got to think very linearly, you've got to kind of go step by step. It takes a lot longer. Intuition's just going to zoom you there. It's going to beam you over in two seconds, right? Right. And basically what it is is like a subconscious totting up of lots of little details. And in the book, he gives this really chilling example of a woman who very narrowly escaped being murdered by a serial killer and rapist and unfortunately she was sexually assaulted by him but he he didn't murder her she escaped him and her nightmare began when she got home from the grocery store one afternoon when she got to her apartment building she was irritated to find that her neighbors had left the front door unlatched

so it hadn't like shut and locked so she made sure she you know shut it all the way and locked it and then she started up the stairs to her floor and she had heavy grocery bags and you know was kind of struggling to hold them and then a couple floors up she dropped one of her bags and like groceries went everywhere and a few cat food cans kind of bounced down the stairs and suddenly this guy just kind of appeared out of nowhere like coming up the stairs like hey i've got this don't worry and immediately she said there was something in his voice that kind of made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up even though he seemed super nice and friendly and charming and non-threatening but he just gave her a bad feeling immediately

And some of us, I'm sure, have had that experience before, right? Where somebody just sends your hackles up. Yes. So she knew something wasn't right. And so she was like, no, no, that's fine. I've got it. But he was so nice and so friendly. And he was like, no, it's no problem at all.

Let me help. What floor are you on? And when she told him what floor, which she did kind of reluctantly, but, you know, you don't want to be rude, right? So she said, I'm on the fourth floor. And he said, hey, that's where I'm going to. And he said, you know, I'm running late. watch is broken it's not my fall but I'm really late so let's hurry up let's get a move on

kind of rushing her along and he'd seen the cat food so he was kind of joking with her about her cat and despite the fact that she'd already said no a couple of times he offered again to help her with her bags and he said come on hurry up we've got a hungry kitty up there and kind of held on to the bag that he'd helped her pick up and when she put her hand on it and you know assumed he would give it back to her he just kind of held on to it and then he said you know there's such a thing as being too proud. And eventually he just kind of wore her down. She didn't want to be rude. She didn't want to seem crazy. So she shoved that bad feeling down and let him carry her bag up the stairs to her apartment. And once they got to her door, he was like, just let me come in

and I'll drop this on the kitchen counter and then I'll leave, I promise. You can even leave the door open. And of course, once they were inside is when the assault began. And later, the survivor of this awful thing met with Gavin De Becker to try to understand how this had happened because he has a firm that helps people prevent violence, stay safe, he works with companies and individuals. It's very, very cool actually. And she wanted to make sure this never happened to her again. And she said, you know, I knew something was off about the guy, but I don't know how I knew. And as she told him the story, Gavin De Becker was able to help her see that actually it wasn't that mysterious and he breaks it down in the book and it's fascinating he says okay so for one thing

he just appeared in the stairwell so subconsciously she knew that that was wrong because she hadn't heard a buzzer and she knew that if he was there to visit somebody the neighbor would have had to buzz him in because she had made sure the front door latch just a moment ago she knew he didn't live there so what was he doing there nobody buzzed him in obviously so he'd just been waiting there for like probably some time which is super creepy. And on top of that, he'd repeatedly refuse to take no for an answer. So he was pushy. And there's more than that. And we're going to get to that bit by bit as we go along. We're going to bring this up again. But for now, let's put a pin in that for a second and talk

about one of the biggest barriers to safety, which is denial, that tendency we all have to talk ourselves out of our bad feeling or to logic ourselves out of our bad feelings. And logic can really be the enemy of intuitions. Not that it doesn't have his place, but we don't want to be Vulcans here. We got to listen to our gut. Logic can really be the enemy of listening to those intuitive gut feelings. And if you analyze it like De Becker started to do with this rape survivor a moment ago, you start to realize that the gut feeling is actually a series of really sophisticated observations that you just weren't aware of consciously at the time. so there's nothing illogical about gut feelings it's just that intuition works faster than logic

and there is a really heartbreaking story in the book as well that illustrates why it's so important to trust those intuitive feelings so this woman had to bring her little boy to a very renowned you know very prestigious hospital for a really simple little routine ear operation. And they had met all the doctors, they'd met the surgeon and the nurses, and everybody seemed super nice. And then the anesthesiologist came in. And her little boy was usually real gregarious, and he'd asked a million questions of all the other doctors and everything. But when this guy came in, she could tell the little boy immediately was freaked out by him and didn't like him. He went real quiet, and he wouldn't look at the doctor. And that was really odd for this little boy. And there

was something about him that bothered the mom, too. And she said, suddenly had this very clear thought like it's just a bell going off in her head like cancel it cancel the operation which is a drastic move right yes i mean can you honestly say that you wouldn't talk yourself out of such a thought i think i probably would have done exactly what she did which was to think what am i talking about like this that's just nerves you know i'm just nervous because my kid's going to be operated on it's i of course i shouldn't cancel this is a prestigious hospital. I'm sure this doctor is great. And I'm sure you can predict what I'm about to say, which is that the little boy died during this very easy routine procedure. And later it came out

that many, many, many of this doctor's colleagues had been concerned about him for a while. Like he would make really glaring mistakes during surgeries. He fell asleep during surgeries. I don't know if it was because he was high or just really bad at his job or what. But yeah, I mean, it's, apparently people had been worried about him for some time. And I guess everybody had been doing exactly what this mother did, which is to kind of tamp down those bad feelings. And this poor little boy died from it. So, yeah. And you had like the opposite experience when you had your ankle surgery, right? Yeah. So about a year ago, I had surgery on my ankle. My tendons were basically just like cooked spaghetti noodles at this point. They were not. That's vivid? Yeah, sorry. So I had to get

a surgery to go in and, like, tighten everything up. And the day of the surgery came, I was really, really anxious. I was hungry. Like, they were getting me ready. And, like, I was being bombarded with questions from professionals. And they were completely routine questions. The anesthesiologist was asking me about, like, if I needed a certain nerve, like, numbed. And I was just so anxious. And the surgeon, who is actually one of the top surgeons for this surgery, in the state I was in came over and he could tell I was nervous. Like, I think he could just clock it just looking at me. And he, like, that bedside manor mask came down a little bit and he, like, held my hand,

not in a creepy way. He held my hand and he said, Katie, like, it's okay. Like, we're going to get through this and you're going to have a great new ankle. And it made me, like, it immediately washed away my anxiety. See, Doc. That's all we need. We just need a little human. Yeah. So you had the opposite experience of what this poor mother had. And, you know, unfortunately, like so many of us do, she just, to her, I guess in that moment, it just would have been much too drastic in act to say, you know what, we're bowing out. I mean, he's already there. He's already been prepped. I get it. But man, do I wish that, you know, she had listened to that little, little voice. I think you, I think we forget sometimes, especially with medical issues that, like, these people are

working for us. No, absolutely. Yeah, they are not the boss of you. It's your body. You can say, hey, you know, he's really feeling anxious. We're going to go home and talk about it a little more, and then we'll come back. Yeah, that's okay. That's allowed. Absolutely. So those are, I think, very vivid stories, all of them that illustrate how important that intuition is. And, you know, De Becker says, look, learning to more accurately predict violence. Actually, you would think that, oh, if you're just living in fear, you don't want to live like that. But it's the opposite. When you learn how to predict these kinds of things, you're actually free from unwarranted

worry. You're free from fear. So it's not about becoming like more of a stress case or, you know, never trusting anybody. It's about honing these very specific skills so that you're better informed and then you can walk around feeling a lot more confident. This is a good thing, right? Yeah, because suddenly the world isn't unpredictable anymore. Exactly, exactly. People say all the time, like, oh, there's no way we could have seen it coming. He just snapped. That is absolute horseshit.

Never the case. It's never the case. Absolutely. Ever. So, you know, you have barriers to your intuition. One of them is logic like we were talking about that tells you, hold on, slow down. We're jumping to conclusions. They're being silly. Right. Exactly. The, oh, I'm being ridiculous effect. Now, these are the things that stop us from trusting our gut. And the first thing I want to talk about. about is judgment or pigeonholing. So this is the kind of situation where you are fooled by what you see, essentially. So you look out the window and there is a cop on your front porch, a police officer. He appears to have a badge. He appears to have a uniform. You open the door. You talk to him and your gut feeling is pinging. Yeah. Like it's telling you this is a bad situation. But your judgment is telling you, hey, he's a police officer. You can trust him. He's here for a good reason. He says there was a burglary next door. He just wants to come in and talk to you. Yeah, you're reading

Uniform Badge. So what was it the quote in the book? And I forget who's, this isn't De Becker's original quote. It comes from something else. But we see not with the eyes, but with the mind. Yes. And so, you know, it's like what your eyes are seeing is one thing. This is the context of that is there's a complete stranger on my doorstep wanting to come in my house. But then your mind is saying, oh, but this person has a badge and there's been a burglary and blah, blah, blah. And it would be a really simple matter, wouldn't it, to say, hang on a second, let me call your precinct before you open your door. When you're just looking through your peephole or your window, say, okay, let me just call your precinct and verify that. You know, and a good cop is going to understand that.

Yes. And if they don't understand that, then, you know, maybe your gut feeling is going off for a reason. Yeah, exactly. Some other examples are, oh, that man is acting strange. He must be drunk. Yeah. Or I've, you know, walked across campus at 2 a.m. a million times and nothing bad has happened. Absolutely. Yeah. Or, you know, that guy is from what I know to be my cable company. He has the patch on his shirt. I wasn't expecting someone today. But he must need something because he's wearing. in a uniform. Yeah, or that's the maintenance guy from my apartment complex, you know, and so there must be a legitimate reason when he's here, right? And we've talked about this

before, the study that happened where somebody... Oh, God, the guy in a band uniform. Yes, somebody put on his, mm-hmm, he put on his band uniform and he was telling people, you can't park here, and people were just like, okay, that makes sense. Yep, it was a band uniform. Guy in a band uniform and people were assigning him authority because, yeah, I guess the epaulettes were just too... too difficult to resist. Yeah, it's bonkers. We do assign so much bizarre kind of trustworthiness to uniforms in general.

So, yeah, that can definitely be a problem. Or, you know, it's safe to hitchhike because I've done that a dozen times and I've never had a problem. Well, maybe just because you've been lucky in the past doesn't mean you're going to be lucky next time. Now, I've had a situation where my judgment, I don't know if they got me in trouble, but it definitely pinged, my intuition pinged, and I was like, I'm at work, nothing bad's going to happen to me here. I worked at a certain big box bookstore that rhymed with harms and

cobalds. I'm completely baffled as to what that could be. I know, right? It's confusing. And I was working at the customer service desk, and when we see somebody, you know, wandering around, we're supposed to greet them and ask them if they need any help. Well, I approached this gentleman and he looked at me and my blood went cold. Yeah. He was, this man was a full foot shorter than me. He was dressed normally. He just looked at me like a predator and I did not appreciate it.

And he goes, oh no, sweetheart, I'm okay. Oh dear. Sweetheart's a red flag. I hate it. Yeah. So I walk away, start shelving some books probably about an hour later. I see a flash and hear a shutter behind me. Oh, hell no.

And I turn around and it was, you know, it was the sweetheart guy. Oh, my God. And he's shaking and he's holding his phone. He clearly did not mean for the flash to go off. Oh, no. Yeah. And I turn around and I say, did you just take a picture of me? Oh, my God.

And he goes, no. Oh, dear. And I walked up to him and I just said, delete it. Hell yes. I wish I would have watched him deleted. Yeah. But the important thing is to stay safe, you know. Yeah.

I was super panicky. My boss, I told him about it. I was the only woman working that night. Oh, God. My boss pulled me back, had me review security tapes. He got a lifetime ban. Wow, good for your boss. So often.

I mean, there would be a lot of employers out there that would say, eh, just shrug it off. No big deal, right? Right. And, like, my brain was like, it was just a photo, right? Like, it's not like, but it felt so violating at the time. and the way he reacted to me. Oh, absolutely. The fact that he was shaking is super creepy to me.

Yeah. And so my boss had my co-worker walk me to my car, got to go home early. But, you know, it was one of those situations where I knew that guy was bad news. Yeah, yeah, you absolutely, from the minute you saw him. And who knows why? I mean, I'm sure if Gavin was here, he could talk us through every little tiny thing that, you know, all the little reasons why. Like, maybe you'd seen him there two hours earlier. and your subconscious remembers, like, he's still here? That's weird. Maybe you picked up subconsciously that he wasn't really looking at the books. He was just kind of wandering around. I mean, there could be a million things. But there's always this weird tension when stuff like this happens. And I think part of that is because women are just conditioned to be nice and agreeable and amenable and to not make waves, not make a fuss. We're supposed to smile and make nice, right? So there's this weird tension between the gut feeling, the intuition, which is what we should really be listening to.

And then that, oh, I'm probably being dramatic. I'm probably being silly. That lack of confidence that a lot of us have in ourselves that makes us feel that way. So, yeah, that's a creepy story. And I'm glad your employer took it seriously. Yep, me too. And, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand with what we were talking about with judgment. But red herrings are another thing that you should definitely pay attention to.

So red herrings is information that you think is relevant, but might actually be irrelevant or actively placed there to fool or manipulate you. So going back to the uniform of the fake police officer. Yeah, I could order a cop uniform online right now and look completely convincing. So, I mean, you remember back to the writing high episode about Sherry Dalley's murder, her abductor and killer was wearing a police outfit and managed to lure her into the car because of that furniture that she had on. Yeah.

So another example of a red herring. just buckle up for this because it's flippin terrifying is the case of Colleen Stan and some of you may have heard of it she's sometimes referred to as the woman in the box and when she was in college I think she was about 18

at the time she was hitchhiking to go and see her friend to surprise her for her birthday which right there that's a problem because nobody knew she was coming nobody knew where she was going she just kind of decided it on a whim so she was hitchhiking she had her thumb out and she'd hitchhiked many many times

before and nothing bad had ever happened. And she'd rejected a couple of rides because they were single men, you know, smart girl. She's saying, no, no, I'll wait for, you know, a woman or something. And this man and woman drove up suddenly with a baby in the car. And she said later that immediately the guy gave her the creeps. Like there was something in his eyes she didn't like. She was immediately put on her guard by him. But she'd been out there for forever and she hadn't managed to catch a ride. She was getting really tired. And she said, you know, I just thought nobody would do anything bad with their wife and baby in the car, right? Like no man is going to abduct me or do something horrible to me with his kid right there and with his wife right there. So again, we have someone

who is tamping down the gut feeling that's telling her the truth about the situation by using those sort of red herrings of, okay, well, it's a family. It's not a single man in a car. And bless her heart for seven years after that Colleen Stan was held prisoner and used as a sex slave by this man Cameron Hooker and his compliant wife. And she spent a lot of those seven

years living in a box under their waterbed which is one of the worst things I've ever heard. There's a book about it called Perfect Victim, which I'm pretty desensitized after 20 years of true crime, but this is one of the roughest reads I've ever encountered. So big content warning on it. But it's a fascinating story.

Yeah, it is rough, especially if you have trouble with descriptions of sexual assaults and things like that. I mean, she went through a lot. And eventually she managed to escape, thank God, and she's an amazing survivor. She's told her story to help other people. She has a daughter now, and she's managed to salvage a life, but oh my God, she went through hell. So that's a great, I think, example of a red herring. So remember always to think about the true context of the situation. We're bombarded by information all the time, and things can distract us from what's really going on. So, for example, you're on a date, and the guy's been really sweet and charming and funny

all night, but you've asked him to leave now twice, and he's not leaving. He's changing the subject. He's, you know, charming you some more and talking to you and not leaving. You've asked him to leave twice. He's not respecting your wishes. That's the context. If there's a maintenance guy in your house, however nice he may be, however safe you may feel based on the idea that the management knows he's there or whatever.

Again, context is, there's a stranger in your house. And this is a big theme of De Becker's book in general, that one of the keys to staying safe is to train yourself to see what's really in front of you. Not what someone wants you to see, not how society is trained you to see a situation. Not your own personal spin on the situation based on red herrings, but what you actually do see in front of you. And that is harder than it sounds. yes it's not an easy thing to do you got to train yourself because you know we're social creatures

yeah absolutely and we want to be liked we want to be accepted absolutely so I had a maintenance guy in my house literally an hour ago yep and that's why I kept texting you every five seconds and it was so hard to not you know I I made sure he knew I have a large dog I made sure he knew somebody was expecting me, you know, within the next two hours. I made sure because he was like, oh, and I have no doubt that this man was completely friendly. Sure. He did not set off any red flags for me, but, you know, you lose sight of the context of, I want this person to like me. It's a stranger in your house. There's a stranger in your house. And you don't know what their motives are and you have no idea who this person is or what they're like. And he points out that when people become

victims of violence or even, not even violence, sometimes just shitty, abusive relationships. or shitty situations that they later get out of, they'll often say things like, it just came out of nowhere. I had no idea this was going to happen. But again, it didn't come out of nowhere. There are always signs. We just don't see them sometimes.

And even when people will claim they had no idea that this was coming, then in the same breath a lot of times they'll say, well, you know, actually I knew there was something off about this guy at the start, but then he was so nice and he won me over. Or all my friends liked him, so, you know, he won me over. He brought me around. And this is really interesting to me. Apparently, one really common way for intuition to kind of rise to the surface is with dark humor. And De Becker tells this story about when the Unabomber was wreaking havoc all over the place by sending mail bombs to people that he thought were like destroying the world with technology, one guy actually managed to escape being killed.

So this package had arrived at the office and nobody there was really expecting a package and it was kind of weird. There was like a bunch of extra postage on it. and something about it obviously felt off to this dude because they were all standing around getting ready to open it and he joked well you guys can open it if you gotta I'm going back to my office before the bomb explodes and a minute or two later the bomb exploded so that guy knew on a subconscious level

but because it was a quote unquote crazy idea he made a joke about it I mean I know this is crazy but but he was right so pay attention to those little jokes that really aren't jokes. Because sometimes the truth is in there. And De Becker talks about tactics that manipulative people, dangerous people, can use to control you and manipulate you and get you into a situation you don't want to be in. And he calls them survival signals.

And we're going to talk about some of them. And man, is this fascinating. And it's important to note that a person using one of these doesn't necessarily have any nefarious intent. In fact, most of the time they probably won't. Sometimes they might just want to get your phone number because they think you're cute or they just want to spend more time with you or they want to sell you a car, you know what I mean? Or something like that.

So they might not have any nefarious intent. But sometimes they will. Sometimes their control tactics used by people who want to do something bad to you. So the first one that we want to talk about is what he calls forced teeming. Okay. And we talked about this in season one. So it was something that our favorite narcissist Bill Braddard. field used with his little

minions. So we've talked about this before, but force teeming is creating a dynamic where we're in this together. So creating a we where there is no we. So with this rapist that we talked about at the very

beginning, he said, oh, you know, let me help you. Oh, cat food? Yeah, I used to have a cat too. And his name was Skippy. And it's a long story. Anyway, let me grab this. We've got a hungry kitty up there. we've got a hungry kitty up there so suddenly even though you didn't sign up for this team

you're on the team we're in this together we'll get through this in no time we'll just rush up there and we'll just put everything down and then I'll be out of your hair we've got a hungry kitty up there so that's forced teaming watch for that the second one is too much information and you can see that in that previous example too

where he's a cat food yeah I used to have a cat too his name was Skippy and you know he died when he was only seven years old it was really sad anyway lots of just kind of flood of details bombarding you with information so you don't have time to think and it's also important to note that liars know they're lying and so they operate under the assumption that they won't be believed because they know they're lying so they need to convince you so they talk more than they need to they give more detail than they need to and that is a really common deceptive tell that people who've like trained CIA agents to identify liars will tell you

about and also detectives will tell you that when people are giving you a flood of information they lie in a lot of the time yeah yeah like i didn't ask about your your cat skippy sir exactly oh and the guy you know the the rapist guy from the beginning he was like um talking about how oh i'm running late my watch is broken like that's extra information she didn't need to know that. That's not germane to the situation. That's just a weird little detail. And I've found that if I'm ever in a situation where somebody is talking to me or talking at me and I can't get a grip on the conversation, just say stop. Oh, that's, yeah. It's such a useful skill. It sounds so simple. But because of the way like conversations work, it actually usually stops

people in their tracks. Oh, I bet, because nobody ever does that. It's so abrupt. Yeah, in my past life at Schmarmes and Schnobles, I was at the cash register, and this guy tried to do that cash swapping scam on me. Oh, yeah, yeah. Basically, the con man comes to the register with an inexpensive item, like a candy bar, and says, you know, I'd like to buy this.

He gives me $10 in cash. and tries to, like, keep the cashier, in this case, me talking with this bombardment of too much information. Basically trying to distract you from the fact that he's just giving you a 10. Right. And then, you know, you, the cashier gives them their change. And the con man will say, um, I gave you a 50. And then this is the key, starts making a scene. Yeah. Doesn't let the cashier think, calls the cashier name.

The guy in this case was like, I, I, he's like, he's like, It's ridiculous that kids these days can't do math. It's like, okay, I have a computer doing it for me, but thanks. And I just told him stop. And there was a line behind him, so kind of causing a scene said, stop. And it shocked him into stopping the steamrolling. I called a manager, and the manager dealt with it. You're such a badass.

I would find that, I have to admit, I would find that really difficult to do. I don't know if it's the Southerner in me, but I'm such a people pleaser, like to the core. And I hate being seen as rude. So this is a real challenge for me. I have to work on this. You know, stop. You know, I would have that. You know, I played.

You know, I played sports in college. And, you know, if there was a situation where a ball was rolling under someone's feet as they were jumping, that's a dangerous situation. That's kind of where I learned this. Okay. Because other words, don't grab our attention like stop does. So, you know, if a ball was rolling under someone's feet and you just yell, ball ball they're like yeah there's balls everywhere we're playing we're playing a sport and in that situation we were taught by my coach to say stop because that gets our attention yeah i suspect there's

some neurolinguistic programming magic in that that that's one of those strong words that just sort of there's this moment of magic where there's immediate compliance and then a second later the spell might be broken and you don't have compliance anymore but sometimes you don't need any more than that split second. So that's very cool. Yeah, I like that. And in speaking of being rude, literally one of the lessons my parents taught me growing up was like, be rude. I don't care. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, my parents did not teach me that, but they should have probably. If you're uncomfortable, be rude. I love it. Better rude than dead. Yep. Yes. So moving on to the next tactic is trauma and niceness. And I know you campers have heard us talk about O4 that

charm, according to De Becker, is a skill and not an innate quality. You know, charm is a verb. Think, this person is trying to charm me versus, oh, this person's so charming. And keep in mind that niceness is not a personality trait either. Oh, no. Niceness doesn't mean goodness. No, niceness is a choice. Niceness is what you should be.

It's not, oh, he was so nice. He couldn't have done that. Well, he wasn't nice if he did do that. Yes, and nice people can be horrible people underneath. Yeah. Next, we have the refusal to hear no. Now, if someone refuses to hear no, it's because they are trying to control you. They are trying to assert their will over yours.

Now, the purpose could be, oh, I just want to spend a little more time in your company. But the purpose could also be that they want to come in. inside your house and rape or murder you. Regardless, it's fucking gross. Exactly, because they're trying to, like you said, assert their will over yours. What right do they have to do that? Right, because it's the person that won't take no for an answer that meets your declinations with just more excuses is not a good person.

No. And steamrolling over your wishes as a huge red flag. Now, this next one just absolutely fascinates me. Yeah, this sounds really interesting. It's called loan sharking. Now, loan sharking is the act in which someone puts you in their debt so you'll feel like you can't say no. The absolute gold standard of this is, well, I bought you dinner, so you have to come home with me. That's the classic.

Yeah, that's the classic one. And this is used by people who think that. that, oh, if I put in niceness coins, sex will fall out. Exactly. If I get my niceness card punched five times, I can redeem it for a night of sex. Yeah, that's not how this works, Bucco. Now, it's not always the dinner thing. Sometimes it's, oh, the creepy neighbor that's asked you out repeatedly, like notices your backstep is broken.

And then one day you come home and it's fixed with a note that says, oh, I fixed this for you. you and refuses to accept payment. Now, this also makes you forget the context of the situation. Yeah. You don't owe anyone money or attention. Or your body or your time. No. Or, you know, or anything.

You didn't ask that dude to fix your back deck. You know, he did that on his own. You didn't ask for that. And yet then there's this guilt trip. Like, well, I did so much for you. How dare you say no to me? Well, you chose to do that. I didn't ask you to. And there's a story in the De Becker book about this woman who was, you know, kind of trying to let this guy down easy.

He was coming on really, really strongly and, you know, not getting the message. And she had mentioned offhandedly on one of their first dates that she wanted some bookshelves built. And one evening, he just showed up at her door with his arms like full of lumber and nails and stuff. And he's like, hey, I came to build your bookshelves. didn't ask him to build a damn bookshel. Right. And she was surprised he'd even remembered that comment. It was just like on offhand remark in one of the first states.

But because he was standing there and he was dropping lumber on the floor and, you know, it was a lot and it was sweet on paper. She just let him in and let him do it, you know, because she felt like she'd be a robo bitch if she didn't. Right. So that's not sharking. Here's something to remember, too, is like if you can apply, I didn't actually. ask to a situation, or you are allowed to say no. Yep. Period. You can say, sorry, not a good

time. Yeah. You made the choice to come over here. Be a robo bitch, is what I'm saying. Yep. Yep. I love being a robo binge. Yeah, better rude than dead. Absolutely. It's so true. So another tactic that these folks can use is what De Becker calls typecasting. And this one cracks me up because it reminds me a lot of negging in the pickup artist world, you know, where basically you say something that's a little bit of a, like, backhanded, you know, compliment or a little bit of a dis to make the girl feel a little bit insecure and then you build her back up again. It's the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. And anybody who does it in real life should be ashamed of himself, for God's sake.

But, like, examples would be a guy saying, you probably wouldn't give a guy like me the time of day. You know, subtext, you look like a stuck up bit. bitch. Or you don't look like somebody who reads the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. It puts you like on a, on your, it puts you on the defensive. And I've found a good way to get them to stop is to just agree with them. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I wouldn't give you the time of day. How perceptive. Yeah, you're right. I don't read the Wall Street Journal. I'm just holding it. Yeah, I'm one of those fake financiers you get. Yeah. Yeah. So, and you can, it's really funny when you do this because you, and by funny, I mean, actually, abjectly terrifying.

Because you can watch the mask come off. Oh, yeah. They get immediately hostile a lot of the time. Fucking, fucking bitch. Okay. Good one. So if you're going to use this tactic, don't do this if you're not in a safe position. Yeah. Oh, that's always. That's always good advice. Yeah. Yeah. Because we can have a lot of bravado sitting here right now, but in the real world, saying no to men is not always safe. correct and in the story i told at the start the rapist in the stairwell he said if you recall there's such a thing as having too much pride you know so in other words god don't be such a stuck up bitch let me help you already and sometimes when you hear that there's this knee-jerk desire to prove them wrong you know and you got to fight through that shit because you don't owe this

person anything and you're never going to see him again as long as you live so who gives a shit if you think you're stuck up be stuck up pretend it doesn't bother you. It's a tactic. It's manipulative. Don't fall for it. So the next one is unsolicited promises. This one creeps me out. This one very much illustrates that old saying, if someone says trust me, don't. I think that's a damn good rule of thumb. If somebody says trust me, don't. It definitely applies here. So unsolicited promises imply that the person knows about a deception that you are not aware of. So, for example, just have one. drink with me and I promise I'll leave you alone, right? How many of us have heard that? I've heard

that a hundred times. So many times. And if we go back to the rapist in the stairwell from the beginning of the episode, this is so creepy. After assaulting this woman multiple times, he suddenly got up and said, I have to go get something in the kitchen. Stay here and don't move and I promise I won't hurt you. And the woman said that she immediately knew when he said that, that if she didn't get out of that apartment right then he was going to kill her. So she had an absolute certainty of that, and she stood up, completely naked, if I recall, and just silently, slowly, I'm sure with her heart and her throat, followed him down the hall right behind him, and he didn't know she was there.

And he veered off and went to the kitchen, and she heard him turn on a radio real loud, and she heard him rummaging around in a drawer and her intuition knew that that I won't hurt you I promise was a damn lie and that these noises she was hearing now were the proof of that those were the danger signals

he was turning up the music to drown out and he's screaming and he was rummaging in a drawer for a knife and thank God she was able to get to that front door and get out and get into a neighbor's apartment and escape and the guy turned out to be a serial killer

so if she hadn't trusted her gut right then she'd be dead no question reading that story like i felt oh god it's because like she initially says i don't know why i knew he was going to kill me but then she starts to think about it she's like well i knew he was worried about noise yeah and he goes why well he had a gun but he went to the kitchen to get a knife he turned up the music he shut the window So it is amazing what our intuition can do. So again, a subconscious totting up of small details that at the time you can't articulate. You can only articulate it later. So like De Becker says, it's knowing without knowing why.

It's going from A to Z without stopping at any of the letters in between. When you trust it and trusting it can be scary, it's like walking a tightrope, you know. And also, I mean, she got a very clear validation that her instincts were. we're right. Most of us will never get that. Most of us, we get a bad feeling about a guy in an elevator and we're never going to find out if we were right or not. Yeah. So, you know, that's why we struggle to not be rude and not seem silly and not act crazy

because we're not going to get validation most likely. And something De Becker always says when he is describing talking to his clients, they have come to him to tell them who's my stalker, who's giving me creepy calls in the middle of the night. And his response is always, no, you're going to tell me. Yeah. And oftentimes it's the first guy they think of. And they'll say, it can't be this guy, but, and it'll always be that guy. Yep.

That's crazy. And there's another creepy story to illustrate this last little tactic. The serial killers and sexual sadist Fred and Rosemary West killed at least a dozen young women in England. They had a torture basement. They buried bodies under the bricks in their back garden. They were monsters. horrible story. And there's a story where a hitchhiker was thumbing her way around England back in the 70s or 80s, and a man stopped and offered her a ride. And he told her to throw her bag in the

back of the van. And she said she usually preferred to keep it with her in the front seat. And the guy was like, it's okay, just throw it in the back. I promise you'll be safe. And that was just kind of a weird thing to tack on to the end of the sentence. I promise you'll be safe. And it was at that point that she got a bad feeling that something about him promising she'd be safe bothered her. So she told him, actually, I've changed my mind, I don't need the ride, and she went on her way. And later, she saw him on the news, and it was Fred West. So again, we have yet another person who, if she had ignored that bad feeling, she'd have ended up in that torture chamber. She probably wouldn't be here today.

So that's all terrifying and fascinating. And De Becker also talks about favorable versus unfavorable behaviors for somebody like a maintenance guy or an air conditioner repair person or somebody who shows up. so remember the first thing you have to do is keep the context in mind that there is a stranger in your house but an example of a favorable behavior would be for the guy to get straight to work not to make a lot of extraneous conversation you know if there are questions they're only questions about the work at hand unfavorable would be to kind of dally around ask personal questions like so do you live here alone red flag so are you married what time does your husband get home red flag red flag red flag it would be unfavorable to go into a room that you didn't invite him into stuff like that so pay attention you know to behaviors like that and a great piece of advice take a self-defense class yes and de becker recommends a program called impact which you can find in most good-sized cities and that's where there are usually male volunteers that you know put on padded gear and they actually have you grapple with them and they teach you the moves and whatnot so yeah i

think that is super important. A lot of self-defense classes are also free. They put on free workshops and stuff, which I have gone to, and they are super fun. Yeah, I've never taken a self-defense class, but I did take Ikeido in college, and they use a lot of the same moves. Yeah. So, but I am campers going to talk to you about the proper way to throw a punch, because a lot of people don't know. I have no idea. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to put your hand out in front of you, extended, you're going to tuck your fingers, top four fingers, into your palm. You're going to take your thumb and cross it over those fingers. Yeah. And you don't want to put your thumb under your fingers because that is a great way to get a broken thumb. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

If you have long nails, I'm sorry. You're going to break one. That is, yeah, you're going to break one. And they also can, yeah, they will dig into your palm. So there are other ways to defend yourself, but also consider maybe not having long nails. But then your instinct is just to use your arm to punch. But that's not the proper way because you don't have a whole lot of power in your one noodle arm. You want to torque back, twist at your hips, and then move forward like your arm is on a spring. Right. So you're using actually the momentum of your body, not just moving your arm.

That makes sense. Mm-hmm. It's also better to aim for the soft parts of the body than the face. Such as. Your tummy. The groin. The neck. Ooh, the neck.

Punch them in the neck. I like that. Yeah. So because if you punch the face, faces are not squishy. They're hard. You can hurt yourself pretty badly. And punching is, it hurts a lot. Oh, I bet.

And another important thing that I've loved. learned in self-defense classes is always yell at them. I don't want to hurt you back away. Okay. What if I do want to hurt them? You could face charges. The problem is that in a situation in which you have inflicted harm another person, the police are going to be looking for evidence that you, this was a matter of last resort. We can never do anything fun. No, I know. I want to make a meet their own face. You could do that. that after you've told them, I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you back off.

Yeah, that makes sense. And then once you've incapacitated them, run like Hill. Yes, the entire point of self-defense is to get to a point where you can incapacitate them and run away. Absolutely. Do not do the revenge thing. Don't do the badass women in movies thing where you just keep punching them. No, get up and run. Absolutely.

So moving on to part two, when it's someone you need. know. Now, our guard can be down when we're dealing with someone we know or someone we meet through someone we know, even more so when it's a close friend, a lover, spouse, or family member. Yeah, and one thing that I want to add here is, you know, you mentioned meeting somebody through a friend. Remember, abusers groom allies just as successfully as they groom victims. So just because you meet somebody through a friend and they vouch for them and say, oh, this is a great guy. I know him from work or whatever, that does not mean that that's a safe person. Yeah, don't write somebody off as, oh, they're probably fine.

Yeah. I mean, what I can tell you is that I was in an abusive relationship for several years, and I lost friends when I finally dumped him because they sided with him, because he was able to convince them that I was lying, that I was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So some of those people I lost permanently, and they believed the lies that he told them about me. So, yeah, it's, I think that's an important point.

It's so important because you can't just let somebody co-sign on your own intuition. Absolutely. Don't ever substitute somebody else's judgment for your own. Mm-hmm. So sometimes you need to be on the lookout for certain earmarks, namely narcissists. And narcissism. Yeah. So narcissists are grandiose, self-absorbed.

They have a lack of empathy. They have some traits in common with like sociopaths and psychopaths. In fact, narcissism is one of the so-called, ominously called, dark triad, which psychologists use to describe a trio of dangerous traits. Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, aka the type of people that are like, oh, the ends justify the means. people who are ruthless and selfish, and narcissism. Now, narcissists frequently lie and exaggerate most especially about their own accomplishments,

but also about your supposed shortcomings and sins. Yeah, if you'd never met me and you talked to my abusive ex about me, you would think I was the worst human being who ever walked the planet, and also probably the ugliest. And I'm perfectly attractive, come on. No, you're gorgeous. They also have a tendency toward projection. They accuse you of stuff they've done themselves, like cheating or forgetting to do chores, or, you know, just a whole laundry list of bullshit.

They also rarely admit flaws and can be very hostile and aggressive when criticized, challenged, or confronted. Now, narcissists have certain traits. and tactics in common, one of which is love bombing, and we've talked about this several times before. Now, love bombing is when someone floods you with attention, gifts, praise, the type of affection that seems too good to be true. You know, the too much too fast type of people. This goes back to bombardment, giving you no time to think. Absolutely. Not only used by narcissists and sociopaths in one-on-one relationships, the term was actually coined by the Reverend Sun Young Moon, the leader of the 1970s unification church cult, aka, yeah, the Moonies, and is often used by pimps and gang leaders and human traffickers to lure vulnerable young women into trafficking. That's right. Yeah, so love bombing is a very insidious tool.

Mm-hmm. Because you start to question, oh, is this just the honeymoon phase or is this something more nefarious? Now, there are two types of love bombing. One is the desperate, lonely, needy type. Now, these love bombers have genuine feelings, somewhat. We call them the sad sex. But they aren't necessarily harmless. They can develop unhealthy fixations. and even turn into stalkers. Yeah, sad sack doesn't mean harmless. And De Becker actually devotes a whole chapter in the book to why we shouldn't try to let him down easy, as they say. What we need to practice doing is giving a clear, unequivocal, no, I'm not interested in a relationship with you, period, and then sticking to it. And nobody's saying it can't be scary or even dangerous.

I mean, women have been attacked and killed and put through hell for saying no to men at bars. I mean, it happens. So do what you can to make sure you're in a safe situation. when you say no so don't do it in a dark alley obviously but letting him down easy is not going to work if somebody's determined and the problem too is that Hollywood has taught us that persistence pays off so men get this message that you know if you really engage in some kind of creepy stalkery behavior you'll get the girl don't give up make the grand gesture yep and it goes back into being explicit it versus being vague. No is a complete sentence. Just no. No, thank you. Yep. Because what does someone

who has been inundated with these images of the, you know, persistent guy getting the girl when you say, I'm just not ready for a relationship right now? Yeah, he's going to hear right now and think, well, maybe next week. Or he hears, so you're saying there's a chance. Yep, exactly. And if, and if a stalker calls you 99 times and you pick up on the hundredth time, then you have taught that person that the price of interacting with you is 100 phone calls. And they'll be willing to pay that price. Yep. The best thing to do is to shut it down. Yeah. Don't answer. Don't engage. It's so fucking hard, you guys. It is. It is the hardest thing to do because you think you're going to teach them a lesson. Yeah, or you can reason with them. If I just

explain, you know, and again, what De Becker says is do not negotiate. It can't be in negotiation because they're not going to hear what you want them to hear. They're going to filter it through their stalkery, you know, obsessive desire to be with you. And they're going to hear something totally different than what you wanted them to hear. Like if you say, I'm just not ready for a relationship right now. All they're going to hear is the right now. And they're going to keep trying. Or I'm thinking of moving cities.

Oh, we'll come with you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So the only thing to do is an unequivocal no and then cut off contact completely. Mm-hmm. Now, the second type of love bomber is the narcissist or sociopath. Now, they don't love or care for you. They are only interested in controlling you for their own purposes, whether the purpose is their own validation, or they want to possess you as a trophy, or they want to bleed your bank account dry, or they want to kill you for your life insurance money. Yep, and shockingly, I know you guys are all going to just be stunned by this, but I actually have to. an example of one of those cases. No. I know. It's shocking. Paul Curry was a brilliant nuclear scientist who played virtuoso piano, was a great cook, had won 25 grand on Jeopardy, of all

things. He was in Mensa, and I swear to God if I had a damn nickel for every creep killer that I've read about who bragged about being in freaking Mensa. Holy shit. He's at least the second one we've talked about on the show, I know, and I can think of about a dozen others. I'm in Mensa. I mean Mensa. Well, you know what? You're also a murderer, so just fuck off. And Paul, bless him, he poisoned his wife, Linda, with nicotine for her life insurance money. And he was a huge love bomber. He swept her off her feet. She'd have, you know, a lot of bad luck in love. And, you know, I think she'd had, like, a couple failed marriages maybe. And he just charmed the pants off of her and would, you know, run bads for her and cook her gourmet meals

and just really seemed to be devoting his entire being to her happiness. Right? and then they got married shortly after they got married they both came down with this really gnarly illness they were both having really horrible nausea and diarrhea and fatigue and weakness and dizziness and all this he was sick too right and both ended up in the hospital and then he got better and she didn't and over the next two years she would just start to get better and then it would hit her again. And then a couple times when she was in the hospital, nurses noticed things like after he'd been in the room with her, her IV would look like it had been tampered with. And one time the IV bag was like cloudy, like the liquid in there was cloudy, which is not

normal. And so people started to get suspicious. And in fact, at the end, all of Linda's friends believed that this man was poisoning her. Like it was no secret. They were telling her, you need to get out of that house he's poisoning you it happens every time you come home get out of that house but linda just couldn't bring herself to believe it number one because it's crazy you don't think your spouse is going to poison you you think that's the kind of thing that happens to other people that happens in the movies doesn't happen in real life doesn't happen to me but also because he was love bombing the crap out of her you know he'd run her bath and he would insist get in relax soak for a while she had no idea he was putting nicotine and

her bubble bath and when he would make her those fancy gourmet salad dressings she had no idea they were seasoned with nicotine and this poisoning went on like I said for two years with just horrible torturous symptoms and this man tortured her and it turned out in the end this man had married Linda Curry solely to kill her that was literally the only reason he married her from the start and he had tried it before with another woman and then when he found out that she couldn't get life insurance because of some condition she had, he just dumped her instantly. Like turned on a dime, went from love bombing to just gone. Oh, it's so creepy. And I think the creepiest part of it is that he made himself sick at first.

Yes. I mean, clever, you know? He comes by that Mensa on us, doesn't he? Clever, clever, clever to make himself sick so it looks like, well, we just both were exposed to something and she's just not getting better. Yeah. Well, he was a member of Mensa and now he's a member. of con college. He's in con college now. I'm sure he's regaling everyone with lots of logical word puzzles and mathematical theorems and whatnot. God. So how do you spot a love bomber? Well, constant attention, grandiose gestures. Somebody who, like you said, seems too good to be true. Y'all,

if it seems too good to be true, it fucking is, okay? I'm sorry to have to break it to you. There might be one exception in a million, and it's probably not you. You know what I mean? Right. And another perfect example of this is a guy named Dr. Paolo Makirini. This guy was a rock star surgeon. He was getting a lot of attention worldwide because he had supposedly developed this groundbreaking new synthetic trachea. So for people who were either born without a trachea or it had their trachea crushed in an accident or something like that or because of cancer.

and this woman named Benita Alexander who at the time was a producer at NBC met Paolo when she did a story on him and man he just swept her off her feed he would fly her to Paris for dates I mean that can you imagine let's go to Paris what the hell first class he would buy her amazing jewelry cook her these amazing meals rose petals on the bed expensive gift after expensive gift proclamations of fairy tale love I mean, he'd write her poems, he charmed the crap out of her young daughter. Every one of her friends just adored him. He would cook dinner for him and play the piano for him, just like Paul Curry, they're a lot of like, laid it on as thick as he possibly could.

And soon, of course, they got engaged, and Paolo announced that he had this amazing surprise for Benita. And he had told her that he was one of a small elite group of doctors who privately serviced like powerful people like the Obamas and the Pope, and he told Benita that the Pope, the flippin' Pope, had agreed to officiate their wedding. Yeah. Partly because the Pope loved Paolo and he had been his private doctor, but partly because he and Benita had both been married before, and so supposedly Pope Francis had decided to marry them to sort of, you know, herald in a new, more tolerant stance on divorce from the Catholic Church, right? So huge wedding, big, big, big money spent.

They were going to get married at a castle in Italy. Celebrities were going to be there. Elton frickin' John was going to be there. It was a dream. And Benita ended up spending a huge amount of her own money on the wedding plans because Paolo kept telling her, oh, my money's tied up, just temporarily. Right? Yeah, we've seen red flags.

And finally, with the wedding plans getting more and more elaborate and more expensive by the day, Benita saw a news story about the Pope planning a trip. somewhere, not Italy, on the weekend of their wedding. And when she asked Paolo about it, his reassurances and excuses were so lame that it hit her like a truck. Like, this whole thing is a lie. This isn't happening. And soon it got so much worse. She found out that Paolo's work on the synthetic tracheas was coming under scrutiny from other doctors. His patients were dying horrible deaths.

His research was fake. He was a complete fraud. Like he had falsified data. and he was implanting these plastic tracheas in these vulnerable patients, including a three-year-old girl, when he had to know that they were going to die horribly. And it turned out also he was married.

He's a total con man and a monster and a great example of why love bombing is such a red flag. He just flooded her with fairy tale imagery. And I maintain that they do this because these people tend to have, in my opinion anyway, I think certainly every case that I've talked about so far have psychopathic tendencies, narcissistic tendencies. I think these a lot of times are people who don't understand real human emotion. So they don't understand.

They can't feel the feelings, so they go by movies and TV. And, well, what's a big romantic gesture I can do instead of actually just showing you love and respect on a daily basis in lots of little ways? Yeah. Yeah. And if you are getting love bond, it can be really hard to resist, resist that fairy tale feeling. But you have got focus on cutting through the hormone haze and looking at the situation with your mind and your instincts. Not with your downstairs. Or your heart if you're going to get mushy, but you're downstairs. think to yourself is this person pushing the relationship forward too quickly ask yourself why they're doing that where's the fire what's the rush why do they feel the need to lock it down so quickly are your friends and family members telling you you're moving way too fast yeah that's a really

good time to maybe trust the people who care about you and not necessarily trust your heart because sometimes our hearts lie to us. Yes, our hearts are liars. Because our hearts are like, I just want you to be happy. And your instincts are like, cut and run, bitch, cut and run. Yeah. And, you know, he talks about how intuition, it always comes as a result of something. It doesn't mean it's necessarily always going to be right. But it's always, it's always responding to something. And sometimes you're not consciously seeing that something. And it also always has your best interest at heart. So, you know, something love bombers also do is they tend to carry on a lot of one-sided

conversations. You know, they'll say, they'll talk about themselves so fucking much. They'll big themselves up to you. Oh, yeah. The only exception is they will give you so many compliments. And what I've noticed is they're usually generic compliments. Oh, you're the most beautiful person in the world. Versus, you know, a genuine compliment.

Oh, you look stunning and confident in that outfit. Yeah. Or, oh my gosh, I love your hair that way. It's always, I couldn't imagine my world without you. You're so beautiful. Like, shut the fuck up. Yeah, like, if all the compliments are general and there's never anything specific, that might be a red flag.

It doesn't mean there can't be some of both, but if they're all general like that. Correct. another good yardstick is how do they treat other people do they treat people with respect oh man that's such a big one for me because if they not if they don't that's a huge red flag guys yeah if you're rude to waitstaff you're trash shut that down so obviously another big tactic is gas lighting we talked about that before you know like your significant other is cheating on you you know perfectly well you're being cheated on

and instead of admitting it like a grown-ass adult they say you're crazy, you're paranoid I don't know what you're talking about. Gross. Camelianing which is I believe a term I made up myself. You're welcome and that's like you remember Tracy Richter who would mold herself into whatever the current guy that she was trying to manipulate

wanted her to be. So transforming themselves into who they think you want them to be. Scott Peterson is another great example like When he was with Lacey, the wife that he murdered, he was real interested in, like, Martha Stewart and wine and cigars, because that was the kind of stuff she liked. Whereas when he was with his mistress, Amber Fry, he was suddenly quoting the Bible, and he pretended he had a degree in theology, got a fake diploma because she was a devout Christian. He'd never been interested in that stuff before in his life. For a previous mistress, he gave up meat, well, at least when he was around her, because she was a vegan.

So he pretended to care about that. That's chameleaning. that's a red flag and you'll start to notice little inconsistencies if somebody's doing this if you're paying attention you'll catch them at it so these folks also tend to view relationships as competitive rather than cooperative and you know the thing here is just remember a relationship is not a zero-sum game so if one of you wins an argument that means the other one has to lose is that really what we want it's not what i want i mean if my husband and i have a problem i want us teaming up against the problem doesn't mean we might not be irritated with each other but but or whatever, but it's not, I want to win and I want him to lose. And you mentioned sort of bigging themselves up and, you know, exaggerating personal accomplishments. And I want to tell you about a couple of cases where this really, really played a huge role. So Mark Hacking was a guy who everybody thought was a golden boy. He was a devout Mormon. He was smart. He was handsome, charming. And Mark killed his wife,

Lori to avoid having to tell her that he had lied about getting into Harvard Business School. This was a guy for whom the Golden Boy image was absolutely crucial to his sense of self, and he could not stand the thought of being found out by the most important woman in his life, so he killed her, as illogical as that might seem. And another guy, Neil Entwistle, who's a family annihilator, same deal, except he killed both his wife and their baby daughter. Neil was telling everybody he was making money hand over fist with an online. business. He'd bought a house he couldn't afford. In reality, he was drowning in debt. His business

was a complete failure. He was spending most of his time trawling the internet for one-night stands and escorts. And it was all coming to a head and his wife was going to find out and they were going to lose that house. Everybody was going to find out he was a failure. He couldn't have it. So he killed him and he fled back home to England where he was from. And that's a story that's played out again and again and again. There's that famous family annihilator John List. same story. Yeah, another thing to be on guard for is rule breaking and boundary violation. Now, obviously, not everyone that has a criminal record is a narcissist or likely abuser, of

course, but does the person have a history of flouting the rules or violating boundaries? There are non-criminal examples of this, of course, internet trolling or cyberbullying. This is something I've dealt with before, and the person could not believe. leave how upset I was, that they were cyberbullying. They were just shocked. I was like, yeah, you're a shitty person. They often make nasty, sarcastic comments. They cut in line.

They don't tip or under-tip waitstaff, which, oh, my God, trip down a flight of stairs if you fucking do that. You know, general rudeness, not the rudeness we're talking about where better rude than dead. Just being rude to people out of nowhere. Yeah, being a dick. Breaking promises, you know, using other people's stuff without asking or returning it. Now, these are all likely to be things that if somebody is charming enough, we might make excuses for or fail to notice. And speaking of intuition, remember Carrie Baker, whose preacher husband Matt killed her and tried to make it look like a suicide? Remember how Carrie told several people.

in the weeks before her death that she thought Matt was having the fair and she suspected he was planning to kill her. Y'all, we know when something is wrong. We just need to learn to listen to ourselves and look for the warning signs and then trust them when we find them. But sometimes despite all that, we do end up in an abusive situation and it's important to know that abuse can mean a lot of different things. It's not just the stereotype of a man beating his wife.

and men can also be victims as well. So there are different types of abuse. There's the sort of stereotypical physical abuse where you are getting hit, but also it might just be something as simple as somebody using their size to block a doorway or to just intimidate you. It's not necessarily always hitting. There's also emotional abuse, and that can take all kinds of different forms. But we were reading these Reddit posts earlier today looking for examples of this.

And one we wanted to highlight was there was this girl whose boyfriend was constantly telling her that she had B.O. God, you stink. You stink. He was just constantly telling her she stank. And she totally didn't. And she was getting really insecure about it and like showering several times a day. And she was always having her friends smell her. Do I smell? And people would say, no, you smell great. You smell like a lush store, you know. And finally, one morning they were waking up and he said, God, you stink. And she just kind of unloaded on him. She was like, look, you either have some kind of thing wrong with your nose or you're trying to make me. I don't know what is wrong with you, but everybody tells me I don't stink. You're the only person who says this. I'm fed up with it.

And when she got mad, he started kind of getting really insecure and freaking out a little bit. And he finally confessed to her that his dad, for the love of God, had told him to do this with women, that he had done it with his mom because it would make them insecure and make them less likely to go out with other guys or change. cheat on them or leave them or whatever, which is just astonishing to me. Like, great parenting there, dad. Good job. You cost this guy a relationship, because of course she dumped him on the spot. Yeah.

But that's the kind of stuff they'll do. And I have had a personal experience with that where my ex would constantly put down my looks. And then after I finally dumped him, he tried several times to get me back and he would call me drunk. And he was about, you know, 12 beers deep one night and told me that he had completely done that on purpose because he figured if I thought I was ugly, I wouldn't leave him. Well, it's like, well, thanks.

I really appreciate that two-year eating disorder that I had as a result of that. That was nice. Thanks so much for that. Ugh, God. So there's emotional abuse, putting you down, you know. Sexual abuse, and that can be a straight up sexual assault or it can be coercion. It can be pressing you into doing things that you're not ready to do or that you don't want to do. Financial abuse.

So holding the strings, you know, in terms of bank accounts and doling out an allowance, being controlling with money. And that one can be really insidious because it can really trap you in a relationship if you don't have access to money. So there's lots of different types of abuse. And incidentally, De Becker's advice for people in abusive relationships is to make yourself unavailable to your abuser. Go to a shelter, go somewhere they can't find you. And that can seem really drastic, especially if you have kids. But it's what works in his experience. And, you know, the standard cookie cutter solution that police departments usually recommend is a restraining order. but there's a lot of very valid debate about their effectiveness

and in some cases they can make things a lot worse because psychologically an abuser is likely to read a restraining order as an act of war, a means of control, a challenge and if there's one thing an abuser can't stand, it's losing control. Now that's not to say that it's never a good idea, sometimes it does work, but De Becker points out the best time to get a restraining order is if you believe that the person will honor it

and stay away from you. Yes. And if you don't believe that, it might not be the best solution. So make yourself unavailable to them. Go to a shelter. Go somewhere where they can't find you. And of course, the best thing is to avoid getting into an abusive situation in the first place. Can you tell somebody's core qualities when you first meet them?

Hell no. So go slowly. Go carefully. Keep your eyes open. Pay attention to red flags. And earlier I said that one of the key ways to stay safe is to see what's actually there, not what you want to see or what someone else wants you to see. De Becker points out that you should never judge a person or a relationship based on potential. So, well, he's really

grumpy and on edge all the time now, but he's just under a lot of stress right now. Once things slow down at work, I'm sure he'll be a lot better. So what I'm hearing from that is that you've got somebody that's being edgy and grumpy and aggressive with you. He doesn't have a job now, so I'm paying for everything, just temporarily, but, you know, he's so smart. I'm sure he'll make great money once he decides what he really wants to do. Okay, so what I'm hearing from that is that this is somebody who's choosing not to work and mooching off you. Yep.

We shouldn't judge on potential. We should look at what's stand in front of us right now. And this is another lie that Hollywood has fed us of, oh, the plucky, the plucky guy just needs a chance. You should stick by your man. Yeah. Y'all. It is better to bet on a sure thing than not.

pipe drain. What your partner is going to do tomorrow, what they say they are going to do tomorrow, isn't as important as what they've done today, what they've done in the past. History is the best indicator for future actions. Has your significant other cornered you, physically harmed you, put you down, emotionally hurt you? There is all the information you need. do not make excuses for someone that has shown you their cards. When people show you they are, believe them. And last thing I want to leave you with is there's a list in this book of the Messengers of Intuition. And they are nagging feelings, persistent thoughts, dark humor, wonder, anxiety, curiosity, hunches, gut feelings, doubt, hesitation, suspicion, apprehension,

apprehension and fear, and he points out that the one that's the most urgent and the one that should always be heated immediately is fear. Never ignore fear. If the hair's on the back of your neck are standing up, pay attention to it, because it's better to be safe than sorry. We have intuition for a reason, so use it. Don't talk yourself out of your hinky feelings. Listen to that little voice, and listen to the people in your life who care about you too, because campers, we want you to stay safe. So, favorite campers, that's it for your June patrons-only episode. We hope you enjoyed it. You know, we'll have another one for you in July.

We appreciate you all to the moon and back. 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 give a special thank you to our good friend and patron, Sylvia, who helped quite a bit with the research on this episode and made some great points. Thanks, darling. We love you. Love you, bye.