August 22, 2025 • 76 mins
In this episode of the Secret Passage Podcast, we dive into the chilling case of Paris Lee Bennett who murdered his four-year-old sister in 2007. We explore the psychological and environmental factors that may have contributed to his actions, drawing parallels to the recent murders of Jessica Lyman and her son Eli Painter. We look at the neuroscience of psychopathy, referencing Dr. James Fallon’s research on the “psychopath brain” and the potential for early intervention to prevent violent outcomes.
Links:
James Fallon's book The Psychopath Inside:
Greater Good Science Center interview with James Fallon:
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Secret Passage Podcast is hosted by Dana Vespoli and Shannon Rogers
Producer: Tim Rogers
Editor: Mitch Silver
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This podcast may contain discussions of graphic violence, unsettling themes, supernaturalphenomena, and other topics that some listeners may find disturbing or triggering.
Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
The opinions expressed are simply those of the individual hosts and do not represent theprofession of psychology or constitute professional advice.
(00:38):
Welcome back everyone to the Secret Passage Podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vespoli.
With me is my amazing co-host, Shannon Rogers.
Hello everyone.
Well, here we are.
This is an exciting time.
My twins go back to school as high schoolers on Wednesday and it's almost fall, which ismy favorite time of year.
(01:12):
Summer ween, yeah.
I love hearing that.
I love spooky season and lots of things going on.
You have an office change, right?
office change god i bought i got my own office full time in walnut creek and tim and i arepainting it which is a total nightmare but it's okay i'm gonna be done soon and i will
(01:35):
have my own office yeah so i'll have it all day i'm only gonna be there like three days aweek but that's it's gonna be great to just have the space
any secret passages that you wandered down this past week?
I had a couple I was thinking of.
So it's funny, you left me a message yesterday and you were saying how you think of me ashigh functioning.
(02:00):
And then I'm over here living my life like a total teenager.
Like Tim and I, we own our own home, but we really, there's so much we don't know how todo.
Like we don't know how, we got a gas grill years ago and we've probably used it like threetimes.
And so we started, we,
(02:21):
replace this little cord thing that like needed to be replaced to the propane thatwhatever it's not even a cord it's like something is called something else but goes to the
propane and so we started using it the other night and we were grilling and all of asudden I hear this little voice I'm upstairs our house is like backwards like our kitchen
and stuff is upstairs and then there's downstairs it's like bedrooms and there's a bedroomupstairs too but so I hear this little voice Shannon we have a problem just very calm
(02:50):
And it's Tim and I go outside and there's like a giant inferno.
The whole grill is on fire, like right next to the house.
Tim's like, I guess we should move it.
And he's like scooting it back.
And I'm looking at these flames and there's the propane tank right next to it.
And I'm just like, my god.
And so we managed to live and turn it off and not burn our house down.
(03:11):
But he cleaned the grill like yesterday.
So we will not have that problem again.
But em there you are.
We don't know how to do very basic things like keep our grill clean to avoid grease firesand stuff like that.
Dude, feel that.
I really feel that.
You know, know in Zoolander when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are like trying to figure outthe computer and they're like apes and they're like, that's me.
(03:44):
Like basic.
Tasks.
I always talk about how I had deficits growing up, like deficits in my learning where I'mwell-versed in some stuff that gives the impression that I know what I'm talking about or
whatever.
then things where I'm like, don't get it.
(04:06):
Things that my children understand 100 times over.
And I'm like, can you explain that to me?
I don't understand.
So I'm right there with you.
I don't know how to do some shit at all.
Like the pudding.
We have a weed whacker.
Well, we never figured out how to put it together.
(04:30):
Jay and I, another one who is like high functioning in some ways.
And then when it comes to like normal, we were both just late to the game, like late tothe game on stuff.
And you know, so we can't figure it out.
I got it for cheap off Amazon and then I was like super impatient.
(04:50):
then we just went to, what's the name of the store?
fucking love this place.
Tractor supply.
So yeah.
Yeah.
And got, and got one that was already put together.
know, I don't like, there's some shit I just, I can't figure it out.
I just don't know.
So I
Thank god Tim's good at figuring things out.
(05:11):
But he also doesn't have this intuition.
OK, so I feel like I have really good intuition about stuff that is, it's my OCD kind ofthing.
It's like our dishwasher, our dish disposal, our garbage disposal broke.
And so we've just been not replacing it because Tim wants to replace it.
(05:34):
And I'm like, no, you can't do that.
I'm so anxious about him doing it.
feel like a plumber.
Dude, I'm thinking about the grill.
Yeah.
Now I'm thinking about a fucking garbage disposal in his hands.
you see where I'm going with that?
Yeah.
No, he's actually so good at stuff like this, which this is I'm getting to the intuitionpart.
For me, I'm like, he left the grease pan in that thing that had been in there for threeyears, had never been changed, turns it up full heat, shuts the thing, and doesn't even
(06:00):
think about that going off.
I would think about that.
So basically, we had rice one night.
And we have the thing that blocks the sink from stuff going down the drain that doesn'tget ground up because it's not working.
He's like, what?
It's just a little rice.
And he like, don't let that rice go down the drain.
It's going to plug the drain.
And he's like, whatever.
He just ignores me.
(06:21):
two days later, it's all backed up.
And I'm like, you put rice down there, didn't you?
And he's all quiet.
And in my mind, I'm like, of course, rice is glutinous.
You put a bunch of it down the drain.
It's going to get bigger.
It's going to block the energy.
Yeah.
So this is the kind of thing he does not have intuition about.
So together, I feel like we have one functioning.
(06:41):
homeowner brain.
Anyway.
A few things, a few things.
One is, everything is happening so quickly with just passage of time, it's insane.
so have you ever heard of this show called The Chosen?
(07:05):
Yes, I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.
Okay, so I started watching it and it's really fucking awesome.
And the people that made it, the way they did it, it's really cool.
for anyone that just wants to watch like a good series, it's a good series.
You don't have to be like a Christian to watch it.
You can just enjoy it as a series, historical drama, whatever.
(07:30):
um
Hang on a second.
Siri, be quiet.
No, Siri.
Siri fucking popped up.
If you say serious, it will pop up.
Yeah.
Because it thinks you're saying Siri.
I'm so mad at you, Siri.
But I didn't hear her.
(07:50):
We don't hear her on our end.
Okay, Mine has an Australian accent because I pretend that it's my bearded dragon talking.
Anyway.
So what's cool about it is someone who's like, you know, well, I already read uh the NewTestament.
(08:11):
I'm almost done with the Old Testament.
And then I'll go back and reread the New Testament using my study guide.
But what's cool about it is that it shows, so it's basically, it's the New Testament,right?
The show starts with you meet the apostles first.
(08:34):
I mean, no, no, yeah, the apostles.
And you get to see historically what's happening.
You get to see, these characters.
And they use...
vernacular, you know, they speak in like this kind of like more modern vernacular.
It doesn't feel anachronistic really.
It's you're just able to kind of see these relationship dynamics.
(08:56):
You're able to see what life was like.
the guy that plays Jesus is just awesome.
You get to see like this kind of dry sense of humor.
And if you, you know, when you read the
New Testament, you see it.
(09:17):
Like if you're able to kind of like look at what is being said, he's got a sense of humor.
He's very dry.
Can be sarcastic.
All that just seems like a really laid back, really cool dude.
Matthew is so interesting in it because he's presented as being on the spectrum.
He's a tax collector, right?
(09:38):
He start, you know, when you meet him, he's a tax collector and I'm watching him and he's
He's kind of got, you he's, stems.
He, is very preoccupied with things being factual.
And I was like, this is interesting.
So I Googled it.
I'm like, is Matthew depicted as being on the spectrum?
And then the response that came is yes.
(09:59):
Like that was done intentionally based, based on reading the book of Matthew and kind ofdeciphering like some certain things.
Now, definitively we don't know, but.
the creators of the show, number one, felt that as one of them is on the spectrum, reallyfelt that and then was like, well, let's just, let's present him this way because it seems
(10:25):
that way.
And also it goes to the point of also just some representation and so it's just reallygood.
I highly recommend it, you know, even for people that are not interested in Christianity.
As a show, it's really entertaining.
It's really good.
Wow.
So why did that?
I'm always wanting to learn more about the Bible and Christianity and stuff like that.
(10:48):
that's a good way, right?
Yes.
It's pretty true to the actual New Testament.
For the most part, I mean, of course there's gonna be some things where there are, itfollows it, yes.
So, you know, whether you wanna know precisely how he ended up, let's say curing the manof his, know, he couldn't walk and Jesus, you know, cures him.
(11:17):
It's one of those things where like we know biblically that happened the way it happened.
They probably took some creative liberties With which is it's fine, you know uh It justit's a way of bringing the Bible to life and in a way that Will be of interest to people,
you know, and certainly for anybody that can't you know, they they don't want to sitthrough You know, they don't want to necessarily sit and read scripture they can
(11:44):
a show that is presented in this very exciting way.
Cool.
So that's, I binged a few episodes of that.
And that was, guess, my secret passage.
I mean, I already told you guys that I'm gearing up for the new school year, so.
Speaking of school year, uh Paris Lee Bennett, you know, didn't see the rest of JuniorHigh.
(12:11):
I'm trying to find a way into our episode.
Oh, you know I was going say?
Tim said last time that when we talked about, you talked about in our last episode, whatled us to do the episode.
That'd be interesting just to talk a little bit about why we're interested.
We love psychopaths on this podcast.
Right.
(12:32):
Well, you guys, listeners and viewers, may already know about the Lyman case that thisevent that happened in March of this year to the Lyman family.
It's very brutal.
There's still not a lot of information and the alleged perpetrator is a minor, so he'sunnamed.
(12:56):
This, this, uh
woman Jessica Lyman and her son Eli were found murdered, shot to death in their home byJessica's 17-year-old daughter.
(13:17):
So the 17-year-old girl came home, found her mother and eight-year-old little brother shotto death, and the mother was found with her pants down.
The police were called and the 15 year old son had been at home but had said he didn'thear anything.
(13:39):
He'd been on his phone and I think went to sleep and didn't hear the gunshots, anything.
So yeah, so this woman, Jessica, lived at this house with her 15 year old, her eight yearold and her 17 year old daughter.
And when the police further investigated the case, it...
On the security camera, you could see a guy wearing a mask entering the home.
(14:05):
And when they were investigating, searching the house, they found that mask in the son,the 15 year old son's room.
They found a really some weird note saying this is a murder story and all this kind ofstuff.
Some of her intimate clothing was found in his room.
(14:28):
and male DNA semen was found next to her body.
So that's all that we have.
The murder happened in March.
The 15 year old again, he's a minor so he's unnamed as of now and there's still aninvestigation ongoing but everything kind of points to the 15 year old boy.
(14:52):
And when I read about this case,
It reminded me of Paris Lee Bennett, a 13 year old boy who in 2007 murdered his four yearold sister in their Abilene, Texas home.
And his semen was found near her body, the four year old's body.
(15:16):
So that reminded me a lot.
We still don't, there's still more questions around the Lyman case, but what this bringsup is
Again, we always want to know why these things happen.
And some people just want to say, well, you know, well, in Paris's case, he's, he is adiagnosed psychopath.
And you and I have spoken at length about how can these things be prevented?
(15:43):
Not the psychopathy, obviously, but the homicide, right?
The homicidal stuff.
So we, we have been discussing that.
quite a bit, but I will go ahead and give you kind of the summary and timeline listenerswho maybe are not familiar with the case of Paris Lee Bennett.
(16:06):
Paris Lee Bennett is a 13 year old boy living in Abilene, Texas with his mother CharityBennett and his little sister Ella Bennett.
Paris is a verified genius with an IQ of around 142.
and did exceedingly well in school, was a very cute and precocious uh little boy.
(16:33):
There's a documentary called The Family I Had, which is about this case and it's availableto watch.
can even watch, I've watched it free on YouTube.
But Paris came from a family of smart people.
Like charity somehow...
you know, she had, she'd been like a struggling, she struggled with drugs as a teen, stillmanaged to graduate early from high school.
(17:01):
And at the point that Paris was around 13 or so around that time, Charity was getting hermaster's degree while also working at a local restaurant.
And then Paris's grandmother, uh high, high functioning, just a...
uh
really intelligent, ambitious, very successful, very well-to-do businesswoman.
(17:26):
Was it a trucking company?
Yeah, uh a large trucking company, successful.
Yeah, the largest I think in the region or something.
co-owned with her ex-husband.
Yeah, coned with her ex-husband, we'll get into that.
Paris's father, on the other hand, was mentally ill.
He schizophrenia.
(17:46):
oh
And the thing with schizophrenia is, it doesn't always, it doesn't skip generations.
It's not 100 % transmittable, I guess.
I don't know about the skipping generations, but that's an interesting point.
Because Paris is not schizophrenic.
No, but he said he had, it's interesting because he said he had delusions that he saw hissister rising up as like a demon or something.
(18:13):
that was him trying to, yeah.
Because as of even now, there's nothing to indicate that he sees anything.
He's a master manipulator.
He's very, he's good at assessing situations and then behaving in a way that benefits himthe most.
And he was doing that from a very early age.
(18:35):
But you see in the home movie footage, Paris being just adorable.
I he really was.
You're so cute!
So very cute, very creative, seemed to really relish social interaction.
He was very social.
(18:56):
even had, he had friends at the point that he committed these crimes.
was a kid.
One woman in the documentary said that, if you kind of looked at Paris, then he seemedlike kind of a skater kid.
He was active, uh really artistic, very articulate, et cetera.
Charity was a single mom and what has been said, but you know, it's still up for debate.
(19:23):
We may never know exactly why it happened.
Cause Paris, I see him sometimes just sort of wanting to give like a pat answer.
Mm-hmm.
It is believed that Paris was jealous of the attention that Ella was getting from hismother.
(19:44):
It's also said that he was upset because his mother had relapsed not long before oncocaine and he wanted to hurt her.
And he had thought about killing his own mother and then he thought, well, no, cause thenshe'll be dead.
What's something that would hurt her?
(20:06):
Okay, well, I'll kill Ella and then she'll lose both her children.
Her daughter will be dead and then Paris will be put away or sent away.
But also he had thought just generally about killing.
He had thought about killing his babysitter, thought about killing Charity, mother,thought about killing one of his friends, which really goes to show that, you know, that
(20:30):
lack of empathy and also that very calculated mind.
Yeah, the interesting part about the way he described it was he was saying, I was angryall day and I wanted to hurt someone.
And it's like he could feel it coming, right?
He wanted to hurt someone.
(20:51):
He wanted to complete that action.
You know how emotions make us do things, right?
And most of us can cap it off, right?
I would love to slit the tires of anybody who blocks my driveway, but I don't because.
You know, em and I'm all because I don't want to get caught.
Just kidding.
But I don't because it's not more.
(21:11):
It's not the ethical thing to do.
you know, he was it was building in him, building in him, building in him.
And it's almost like it felt like it didn't have a stopper.
Right.
Like he was going to act it out.
And it was just a yeah.
So but I don't know if I believe anything he says.
I don't either.
Because there's also the point where a month, about a month before this happened, he triedto stab his mother.
(21:39):
Yeah.
I mean, he was definitely harboring.
He definitely had, but that's so interesting, right?
Like, we can get into this more when we do our commentary.
But after that action, what action was taken to help him?
Do we know?
The action that was taken to help him was they took him to essentially a hospital, afacility.
(22:02):
That facility wanted to keep Paris and his mother said no and took him home.
they were adamant with her.
They were like, he, this is a real problem.
They told her, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, also, also, did it even need to fucking be
Try to stab me.
You're going to...
(22:23):
Yeah.
I know.
like, and I understand as a mother, the dumb ass things that parents sometimes do to tryto protect their children, except that she had a four year old at home.
A four year old.
then the night of the murder, sorry listeners, we'll get back.
So what ends up happening is charity leaves Paris and Allah in the care of a babysitter.
(22:48):
We know nothing about this babysitter.
I'd love to.
Well, I'd love to know, it an adult babysitter?
Was it a teen babysitter?
I get the impression that the baby- Okay, well this babysitter did not know anything aboutParis having tried to stab Charity or anything.
I think any babysitter would say, I'm not gonna do this job then because that's scary.
(23:12):
So this happened February of 2007.
Charity left Paris and I'll end the care of a babysitter.
Later on, Paris convinced the babysitter to just go home, that he's got it from here,which he's 13.
I remember babysitting kids when I was 12.
You know, so whatever.
Maybe it's like the mom was going to be home soon.
(23:33):
I have no idea what he said to her.
Again, master manipulator, babysitter.
She was scared of him.
I wondered if if she was like, I'm getting the hell out of here.
Like, right.
Since anyway.
Yeah, like maybe not so much that Ella was gonna, oh, cause Ella was asleep.
So probably she thought, well, worst case scenario is Paris is just gonna, you know, duckaround with his toys or whatever and then Charity will be at home.
(23:58):
The babysitter leaves and then Paris grabs a kitchen knife, goes into Ella's room, stabsher 17 times.
He confessed to sexually assaulting her.
I'm not sure if that was pre or post-mortem.
And then he called 911 and you you can find the 911 call.
(24:22):
He sounds appropriately frantic.
I don't believe he actually was.
They suggest giving her CPR.
He probably didn't give her CPR.
And then, yeah, and then he was taken into custody and he was
you know, he pled guilty.
He was taken to a juvenile, essentially a juvenile prison and then was moved to an adultprison, Ferguson, in Midland, Texas, right?
(24:56):
Yeah, when he was 18.
And that is where he still is.
He is eligible for parole in 2027.
Not sure if he'll actually be granted parole.
I don't think so.
think it's pretty obvious to everyone that he is still very, very dangerous.
(25:17):
There's a chilling interview with him and Pierce Morgan.
There's a couple actually.
There's one with Pierce and then one with another news organization, I think.
But there's the Pierce Morgan one.
It's a good one.
Good.
Yeah.
Even for those that don't like Pierce Morgan, it's done really, really well.
He is very measured.
(25:37):
He's very deliberate in his speaking.
Again, highly intelligent.
He has like the best posture I've ever seen.
He's like this.
Yeah, and the way he moves.
You see him at the end of the interview, he takes off his microphone and he carefully putson his glasses and he stands up and he just walks out of the room.
(25:57):
Perfect posture, very, very, very conscious of every little thing he does.
And I don't know if it's the behavioral specialist that point this out or if it's Pierceor even his mother, I can't remember who.
who says this, that like, he's careful with what he's saying because he is aware that hisparole hearing will be coming up soon.
(26:23):
So his word choices, he's careful to say, I made a mistake.
It's like stabbing your four-year-old sister 17 times and sexually assaulting her.
Being a mistake is an interesting take.
Really trying to get-
of, yeah.
Did you catch the thing that he said?
(26:44):
This is the crate.
This to me was so chilling.
So Piers Morgan was pushing, pushing, pushing and being very pushing for something, right?
And he showed a little anger.
But in the very end, when he was putting his sunglasses or his glasses on and standing up,Piers said, thank you so much for sitting here with me.
(27:08):
you know, basically thanked him.
And he looked at him and he's all, you're welcome.
And the way he said, you're welcome was so different to me from how he'd been talking.
It was like he had stepped out of the role and it felt much more, much less controlled,much more casual.
Yes, like it sounded conversational, the you're welcome, as opposed to consideringeverything that was sort of coming at him.
(27:36):
lizard dressed in a human suit.
Right.
his...
He's looking and his countenance is interesting in the way that it is similar in some waysto Brian Coburger and then, but not in others.
Like, I mean, obviously Paris is...
(27:56):
I don't see, I don't find him scary looking.
I mean, in his prison garb, sitting there and knowing what he's done, sure.
Right.
But if you were to just sort of see him walking around in street clothes...
he wouldn't look frightening, I don't think.
He has a pleasant face.
He's contained.
He's not erratic.
Yeah, he's very conscious of how he comes across.
(28:19):
Whereas Brian Coburger is like, like that's his default face.
He's like.
Ryan Coburger is so explosive, right, with the students, you know, and the responses hewas giving to them and just the way that people talk about going to his office hours and
how he just ignored and was rude to the girl, but would talk to other people, men.
(28:39):
It seems, and I don't know, we don't see, we don't get to see Paris really outside of aninstitutional setting.
which he's been in since he was 13, which is going to shape him in some ways, even as apsychopath, he's still shaped by his environment, coming into it at such an early age, his
formative years.
(29:00):
Which, you I was thinking about that because there was the flat affect thing, you know,that was so obvious.
he, the flat affect, I thought, you he said during the interview, he's smart enough,right, to say, you know, I can't let my guard down in here in this interview because that
does not serve me in this context when I leave this room.
If I'm undone from this interview and I go back there, that's a liability for me in thispsychopathic environment I'm in with people who prey on weakness.
(29:28):
And he made that point.
And I was like, that's a good point.
And I actually let myself really think about this first.
I'm like, that's why the strength, he's so good at the manipulation, because there is atruth to that.
It does not serve you in that environment to be emotional.
That's a liability to look weak.
And which came first?
(29:51):
He looked like a kid who could laugh and play and.
he did.
Then this thing happens.
Then he gets institutionalized, which his mother and grandmother were very much against.
They felt like he should be in a more of a mental health setting, which they took him outof before.
That's where I'm like, bitch, that ship fucking sailed.
Like, they were telling you, keep him here.
(30:12):
And then now after your daughter's dead, you're like, wait, he needs help.
You didn't think so.
I know.
A months ago.
What the hell?
I feel like the mental health people.
So you have to think that someone is a danger to a specific person or a specific event.
(30:33):
Like if you heard someone's going go bomb the Boston Marathon, you'd have to stop them.
You could report to the police.
But I think maybe when he was in that setting, there wasn't enough of a.
specific threat.
I don't know why they didn't say he's a danger to others.
We cannot let him out and keep him in or be more forceful with her and really drive it.
(30:54):
It could be that they're taking her word for it.
Like they don't necessarily have any evidence except her own words.
We also don't know what she said to get him out of there.
She could go, I'm exaggerating.
It was actually not a knife.
It was a toy knife.
he was just, I just got, I mean, we have no idea what she said to them to get him out ofthere.
Or he could just have lied and said, I'm not a danger and proven over time.
(31:18):
Yeah, it's like, you can get out of those settings.
But that's the thing is they won't let you out if you're actively psychotic.
But if uh you're a uh psychopath, you can easily get out because you look contained.
You can play a good game of like, no, I'm OK.
I just had this bout of whatever, wanting to stab my mom to death.
Now I'm fine.
(31:39):
em But so he's in this setting.
it makes sense to have a flat affect in that setting and to be a robot person.
But I think he's smart enough to know that that he, I think he was anxious in thatinterview when he was supposed to be answering questions that normal people, normal,
(31:59):
whatever that is, but normal people would have emotion about.
And I think he knew that in that interview, you can kind of see he gets thrown off andfalls back on these sort of rehearsed answers when
is
Yeah, and he's like, I feel, and in his head he's like, what do normal humans say?
(32:23):
And he kept saying, it's so complex, know?
He kept going into this intellectual thing, right?
I could give you a simple answer, but people really love simple answers, you know, thatkind of thing.
yeah.
Oh, God's chilling.
Yeah.
It's interesting too, when you think about like the brand of psychopath that Paris Bennettis versus, know, if we're going to say brand, like the brand of psychopath that Brian
(32:49):
Coburger is, Paris is, you can see that maybe had he never, you know, been, beenhomicidal, if he hadn't, hadn't killed his sister.
the way in which he could have been like a charming, manipulative, but charmingunderstanding and very aware of the way he moves through life.
(33:17):
Philosophy professor.
I think it would have been like a philosophy professor or a comp lit or you know like
He's, he, you know, he's, he was an adorable child.
knew he was a cute child.
Like you could tell he knew he was cute and that he's going to use what he has tomanipulate his way through life.
And then you look at Brian Coburger, who was terribly awkward, terribly awkward, picked ona hundred pounds overweight, filled with, with so much rage and entitlement.
(33:50):
Yeah.
And the way in which he can't easily nag, he was never easily able to navigate throughlife.
And then you see Paris who
You can see how things could have gone differently for him.
Right, like how we act on the environment and we get something back and how theenvironment, and then the way we act on the environment changes the environment.
(34:15):
Like I think Brian Koberger, he was awkward and he got that feedback back from theenvironment, which exacerbated.
And then he continued to be awkward, continued to get that feedback.
And he never learned.
I mean, I think he tried to get it together by getting skinny, by working out, but theynever socially, he just could never make it work.
(34:42):
And it's interesting the way the murders happened.
Like he was very stabby, very impulsive, obviously, like wasn't calculated, didn't grabthe sheath back.
I can imagine Paris, cause Paris, say the way he stabbed his sister was not like stabby,stabby, stabby.
It was like slow stabs.
Yeah, was very much probably like, I wonder what happens if I put it in like this.
(35:07):
I wonder what she'll do if I do this.
It was like relishing the experience.
Whereas Brian was, it was clear, it was very rage fueled, like to the point where he waseven like striking one of the victims in the face.
(35:28):
It was, yeah, just this attack.
Whereas I don't think that Paris's was rage-filled.
I think it was a sick kind of curiosity.
And also he was looking at violent pornography.
He had all kinds of access to the internet, being uh a young, really young boy and accessto not just pornography, like violent, violent pornography that he had been watching
(35:55):
probably stirred up his feelings, you know?
And so that...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you want, should we talk about the psychopath, like, brain?
Yes.
OK.
So I'm going to pull this up because I just, like most people, when people start talkingto me about neuroscience, I'm really interested in the first sentence.
And then I just, like, glaze over.
(36:16):
Like, I'll never remember this.
Like, the anterior cingulate and all these things.
So I'm going to read this part of this article so it's not more confusing for people andfor me.
So.
um
There's this man, uh James Fallon.
So he wrote this book called The Psychopath Inside, a neuroscientist's personal journeyinto the dark side of the brain.
(36:40):
It's a good book.
I've started it.
I haven't finished it.
But there's a really good article in the, you know, the Greater Good Science Center at UCBerkeley.
They've got a great article about him.
They interview him for the article.
So basically he, James Fallon, describes himself as a pro-social psychopath.
And he makes the case that biology is not destiny.
(37:03):
And even that some of the traits that are associated with psychopathy might make positivecontributions to society.
basically when they're talking about psychopaths, all of them, he discovered that all ofthem had a loss of activity in the limbic system.
That's the emotional brain.
And for the most part, that was the most obvious difference, including a lowering activityof activity in the orbital cortex.
(37:29):
and adjacent ventromedial prefrontal cortex, that part that sits right over your eyes andyour nose.
And there was also abnormal and generally lower activity in the amygdala at the end of thetemporal lobe.
So plus lower activity in a small strip of the cingulate cortex that looks like a big Cthat connects the orbital cortex and the amygdala.
(37:50):
So basically, like their brains are different and they have different things going on indifferent parts of their brain and different connectivity than a
quote-unquote, normal brain.
And so what James Bellin discovered when he was doing his research on psychopath brains ishe had these control subjects and some of them were his family members.
And he was looking at the control brain scans against the psychopath brain scans and hesaw one of his family members had a brain scan that matched the psychopath brain scan.
(38:18):
And he got curious so he dropped the blind part of the study so he could see who it wasand it was himself.
So he discovered that he has a psychopath brain.
And the person interviewing him said, what is the significance of this lower brainactivity?
And he said, in looking at it all, it makes some sense as psychopaths have a problem withemotional regulation and its integration with the cold cognitive thinking part of the
(38:42):
upper half of the frontal lobe.
That area of the brain, the orbital cortex controls impulsivity, but also controls thesense of ethics and morality.
It's a part of the brain that keeps you from doing things considered morally wrong.
that helps to stop inappropriate behavior that is outside acceptable in social context fora particular society.
(39:03):
The other part of the brain that was lower in activity was the amygdala.
So I don't, this part confuses me, but I think it makes sense he's the expert.
But he said, that's like your id.
It controls rage, aggression, eating, drinking, sexuality, predatory behavior, and all thethings that our inner animal finds necessary.
(39:25):
But if that's turned on and it's not being inhibited by the orbital cortex, you've got areally wild raging person.
Normally in a balanced brain, they inhibit each other.
But if they're both down, the pattern is associated with the psychopath.
So then she goes, and he goes on, I'm going to read a bunch of stuff.
Is that OK?
Sure.
OK.
So aren't, I'm basically reading you the whole article.
(39:48):
But aren't psychopaths notorious for not wanting treatment?
He said, yeah, usually they're just pissed that they got caught.
I don't know of any really consistent finding of treating psychopathy unless you starttreating them perhaps when they're three or four years old.
After that, the brain connections are so fundamentally flawed, they're actually missingfunctional parts that nothing seems to really work.
(40:10):
You can do temporary things, but I think the disconnection is too fundamentally flawed.
So there's these genes that are associated.
They're called like the warrior genes.
And one of them is the MAOI gene and one of those is a CERT.
This is not really, and other things I've read, this CERT one is not really considered awarrior thing.
basically, recent research on one of the serotonin system warrior genes, the serotonintransporter promoter gene, has shown that while those with high risk, this high risk
(40:42):
allele, this is really interesting.
This is like, this is for our conversation about like, how do we prevent this?
It has shown that while those with
this high-risk allele who undergo early abuse or abandonment will be at risk for laterviolence and aggression.
But those with the same allele who undergo a positive, loving, early environment will beat lower risk for such behaviors.
(41:07):
It's as if in the first two or three years of life, the vulnerable prefrontal orbital andventromedial cortex sees whether the environment one is born into is hostile or nurturing.
and then tunes the cortex through the serotonin system to prepare for a lifetime in thatenvironment.
So this is good news because it means that you have the power to change in a positivedirection.
(41:31):
Benign or positive situations can offset genetic influences and environmental influencessignificantly, which is so cool, right?
But here's the thing, so when he says that you have to essentially begin treatment early,as in three, four, five years old, what's the treatment?
(41:57):
Yeah, well, he said in his case, it was luck.
Like he's like, I just ended up in a family where they gave me a lot of attention and Iwas actually handsome, had a good body, was the best dancer, was very smart.
So he could like, he wasn't a Brian Coburger, right?
So like Brian Coburger also might've had a great family, right?
But I think everything else he experienced socially, you know, contributed to pushing himin the direction that isn't healthy.
(42:26):
His ideas for treatment sort of resonate with what we know about brain plasticity inanyone is that we have a lot more opportunity to change the earlier the intervention.
The later we intervene, the harder it is to change because we're set in our ways,basically old dog new tricks thing.
His idea is that we need to, we could, if we wanted to.
(42:48):
everybody, parenting, think, is the great cultural change.
piece that we need.
mean, if people could be supported in parenting and parent their kids in a way that theirkids don't feel neglected, abused, abandoned, then we would have a lot better outcomes.
like with that gene he was talking about, the cert gene, know, that like, actually, ifthey have a good environment, they have less of a chance of being violent than the normal
(43:17):
population does.
But if you send them into an abusive situation, they become more violent than the generalpopulation.
So
They're just, if you think about it, feels like vulnerabilities.
We all have different vulnerabilities.
They are really vulnerable to the context they're in.
And so if you are born into a sort of psychotic world where your parents are addicted todrugs and there's no food in your house and you have economic insecurity and you're
(43:43):
getting beaten and the people around you are hurting each other, it's like, are you gonna,any people with a normal brain would tend to.
be shaped in a direction of, right, not such a behavioral repertoire being built there.
psychopath it's going to the the the repercussions are greater.
(44:05):
Yeah, mean, because of the system not really having breaks.
And so his idea is through a saliva test, this is where it gets controversial becausepeople don't even like to talk about these genes as warrior genes because people don't
want to think about it as like, you have this gene, you're a criminal, and start profilingpeople that way.
But he's saying we could take swabs.
(44:28):
Because he said the early signs for psychopathy in kids, and this is true, are
It's not, they're not easy.
Like if you saw chronic early sexual activity or chronic animal torture or something likethat, that would probably tell you that your kid is a, is is a, could be, have this gene.
Brian Coburger's case, he was already like robbing homes as a little kid.
(44:53):
was, he was breaking into people's homes and stealing.
And yes, it's funny because I sent you a message about this, like the, the, you know, thiswhole like stigma, like the stigma around being branded as a potential psychopath or even
doing the saliva test to see because of, essentially what it
(45:16):
what it says about your child, except we screen for autism in two-year-olds.
And the idea being the earlier you screen, the earlier you find out, the more likely thatyour kid will lead a well-adjusted life, have an easier time, uh get what they need to be
(45:37):
able to function in society without being branded a weirdo.
Right?
that's why I feel like his work is so important because when we think of psychopaths, wefear them.
They do a lot of destructive things, but our world is probably full of high functioning.
So many.
You know, like he makes this comparison.
(45:58):
He's like, you have people like, you know, JFK and Clinton.
And then you have people like Jimmy Carter, who are like the mensches.
But the other people have the psychopath gene.
They're people that'll take more risks and be a leader.
A lot of the stuff associated with psychopathy is also associated with leadership.
(46:20):
And so what he's saying really is let's actually look at these people as though they havea chance and treat them early.
And he goes even further to say that in a warrior,
in the world.
Warrior cultures fight and kill each other off quickly.
(46:43):
They die.
But in modern society where you have, you know, potentially that gene being propagated,you know, people reproducing, cultures reproducing it, like that we could have an issue
with a population.
(47:04):
that's growing of untreated psychopaths.
So why not just identify people young with a test like you do for autism and you, youknow, make sure that they have adequate parenting and support and then they don't get
bullied in high school or elementary school.
And then you, then they stand a chance of being shaped into like a courageous functionalperson potentially rather than.
(47:30):
Yeah, that's the thing.
mean, it's, I guess we could say like, you know, we've managed, I think, to do a prettygood job of destigmatizing autism.
Yeah.
To the point where there's people who like want to be autistic.
Like they're like, I'm an undiagnosed autistic.
And I'm like, really?
(47:51):
Well, no, mean, it's funny.
know.
took the autism test once because of my sensory stuff.
yeah, I mean, it's neurodivergent if you look at what they're saying.
Not that genetics predetermined.
Genetics is so cool because experience does impact the expression of the scenes.
And so it's that whole nature nurture dance.
(48:13):
And rather than.
you know, incarcerate people after they've already done a bunch of harm, which is whatwe're doing now with psychopaths, right?
It start young and make sure that they get what they need from the environment and that,you know, that they can be learned, they can learn and be shaped in another direction.
I mean, that's so, it's so like a no brainer.
love to know like what percentage of winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are probablypsychopaths.
(48:40):
You know, he was saying this about cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy.
He's like, I'm really good at cognitive empathy.
And he's like, and you have people like, you know, if you got rid of everybody that hadthis gene or this brain, you would lose people.
Like he's a, you said Gandhi, he thinks of as a person who has a lot of cognitive empathyand maybe not like a lot of emotional empathy.
And he named some others.
(49:02):
Yeah.
Lennon is no, I mean, the peace love guy that is like, would probably have identifiedhimself as a feminist was terrible to his ex-wife, to his own son, Julian, just completely
wrote him off, but wrote some of the best fucking music and preached about love and all ofthat kind of stuff.
(49:27):
Like, like that's.
that is somebody who recognized that we need peace.
Like in this sort of universal kind of way.
And then in a personal way is just incapable, I think, of empathy, it seems.
Yeah, yeah, Yes.
Like Paris.
Well, so with Paris, what's so interesting and you see this and here's the thing, likethere are things, I guess this goes without saying, but I'm just gonna say it.
(49:58):
And that is that there are things we absolutely don't know.
And there's things that I'm sure charity doesn't want out there, you know?
And I get it.
You're the mother of somebody that did something absolutely terrible and there are thingsyou are going to wanna keep.
you know, close to the vest that you don't think that anybody isn't entitled to know I getthat.
(50:18):
There's a lot that I think that has not been said, but I think we can even just look kindof, and these are assumptions, like I'm making these assumptions, we know.
Yes, Paris didn't want for much materially.
His mother had a lot, I think from her mom, like the family had, like, you had likeessentially generational wealth, like coming down.
(50:42):
And so he didn't go without food.
He was thought of as adorable and cute.
You can see he looks good.
He's well physically well taken care of, precocious, does well in school.
So we don't see anything of somebody who is struggling academically or not getting theirhomework done, anything like everything was sort of happening.
(51:03):
What we know is that his mother had a drug problem.
And so she was in and out of sobriety.
We know that there are long stretches of time he spent away from her living with hisgrandmother.
So there was this moving around piece.
We know that his mother had a string of boyfriends that were living with Paris.
(51:25):
She was married a few times.
That has to affect you.
Ella's father was an alcoholic and then was like out of his life.
Paris's father, I don't think he ever had a relationship with his dad, but his father.
uh mental illness out of his life.
And then I want to see there was another person I may be forgetting that kind of came andwent.
(51:48):
I'm not sure.
But at the very least, you know, there was, he was observing an alcoholic in his home.
have no idea if there was abuse.
Charity didn't say that there was.
We have no idea.
But there was a lot of upheaval in his young life.
Absolutely, like not lot of stability emotionally.
And I think she had gone unrelapsed right in the period before he killed Ella.
(52:14):
Yes, about a three, she, think she says it's like a three month cocaine binge, likerelapsing on cocaine.
She kind of downplays it a little bit.
I get it.
You know, this is embarrassing.
You're broadcasting this out there.
ah And then there's stuff that she doesn't say, but that the grandmother tells everyone inthe documentary about charity and about Paris.
(52:36):
Like she's the one that talks about the knife thing, about the institution.
I think she brings it up and then Charity has to kind of address it later.
And Charity says she does not regret taking Paris out of the institution.
And I'm like...
Defensive much?
Yeah, also like, you know what happened when you took him out, Like your daughter, thatthing.
(52:58):
It's okay to have regrets.
Yeah, it's okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe things would have gone differently had he stayed there.
But I think it's worth mentioning too the interesting kind of fact about Paris'sgrandmother.
It is widely believed that she had her ex-husband.
(53:20):
killed that she hired a hit on him and had him killed.
And then she has a slip that I don't know if it's a slip.
She says it with almost like a smirking tone in her voice where she says, look, I just hadto fool a jury.
Dude, and did you see her face in that interview?
Right after she says it, she's all, and I had no jury to manipulate.
(53:42):
And then she pauses and then she goes and looks at the camera and smiles.
Psychopath.
I do too.
Like I'm not gonna lie.
There is this.
She's...
The murder is whatever, right?
(54:03):
But it's that type of psychopathy that this is a problem.
I must get rid of the problem.
No remorse, cleans it out.
You know what I mean?
She's just like, my ex-husband cheated on me throughout our marriage.
He is, I'm not sure you know more about that case where what the reason why she would havehad him killed, it didn't really have much to do with the cheating.
(54:29):
It had to do with the business aspect, right?
Yeah, well apparently he had mob ties, so everything was in her name.
So the whole business was in her name, but they had divorced and he had a fiancee he wouldput up in an apartment and who he was, you know, sort of, it's so mob like, right?
Right.
All the girlfriends put up in the apartments.
And so apparently he was getting into drugs and drug trafficking and people speculate thatshe was afraid that he was going to ruin their whole business situation.
(54:57):
And then that both of them agreed to get remarried.
I don't know.
This is not known to each other, I don't think, but both of them were motivated by seizingcontrol of the business.
So they got remarried in Las Vegas within the same weekend that he was killed.
And ah that was strictly, I think, to protect her interests in the business.
(55:19):
And he was trying to protect his interests.
then she...
But she gets to be next of kin.
So everything goes completely over to her power.
so she got off.
She got off.
And that's the kind of wink at the camera about essentially manipulating a jury.
it's, they're an interesting family.
(55:40):
Like you can see like young Mrs.
Bennett, the grandmother was like a good looking woman, charity in her youth.
Like I know she's got that jaw thing, but like she's, she was an attractive.
attractive young woman.
Parrish was a cute kid.
Ella was a gorgeous child.
They're an interesting kind of like good looking family.
(56:02):
a lot, I've seen a lot of commentary on the grandmother being a psychopath.
then, I mean, some people think that Charity has something going on.
mean, well, clearly she has something going on.
She's,
been married multiple times.
I'm not saying that people that get married multiple times or have mental illness, but alot of issues going on.
(56:27):
But despite the issues, like with the drugs or the multiple relationships with bad guys,highly intelligent, you see her in the documentary and she's like leading like some sort
of a class.
Yes, she her master's in education.
And yeah, she was great.
I thought she was really great.
And she was helping those women.
Yeah.
And then even in the Piers Morgan interview thing, had Piers interviewing him.
(56:51):
They had those two behavioral analysts who were analyzing Paris.
And then she was listening in and commenting.
Right.
And she looks great in that.
I think that's a newer.
It was a more recent one from the documentary when it was done.
Okay.
looks great and she seems like she's made progress in her, what am I going to do whenParis gets out if he gets out?
(57:12):
Because she admits in that series or that show with Piers Morgan that she is nowconsidering moving her and her son where Paris could not find them.
Yeah, and she had never been considering that.
She wasn't sure before.
So it sounds like she's, it's dawning on her.
(57:34):
I'm like, babe.
Think so.
I don't have any confirmation of this, but I saw a somewhat recent within the last fewyears that you can't find her now.
Okay.
she has, she has essentially done it.
The thing is, is, I agree with a lot of the, I guess, Reddit community that, that I, whenI've gotten in and read some comments that, that, you know, Paris,
(58:04):
would absolutely, if not kill Charity, kill his little brother that she had after Pariswas incarcerated.
Phoenix, the little boy.
Yeah, Paris' little brother.
That the dumbest fucking thing she could have done is let Paris know that she had a baby.
And then also encourage a relationship between Paris and this little boy who has spoken tohim.
(58:30):
On the phone, Paris would write letters to him.
I don't know if she ever showed Phoenix these letters, but Paris is really already fromprison sort of ingratiating himself into this little boy's life, which again, it feels
manipulative and God, it's just very dangerous.
So here's my thing.
(58:51):
Yeah.
All right.
So they say with, like, say you have an older psychopath.
This happens a lot in forensic work with people who are released from prison.
I think in some ways, the best you can hope for where the die has been cast and someone isolder is that you're managing it.
You're not curing it.
Right.
You're basically, and usually the way you manage it is you
(59:14):
you work with that person and you say, it's in your best interests if you want to live alife outside of prison and, you know, have a girlfriend potentially, you know, any kind of
normative life that you don't do these behaviors.
So let's work on that.
And it's very much about managing.
It's not there.
There's not a cure.
(59:35):
So this is my problem with that analysis.
I'm so naive.
Like, I'm glad I don't work in a forensic setting because I'd probably get more.
I have sociopaths who, psychopaths who tricked me into thinking they were better.
But like I am, I'm so naive.
But this is what I think though really, is like, if you're a psychopath, right?
It was in his best interests as a child to kill his sister who was his competition.
(01:00:01):
If he wanted his mother's love and he wanted to be the only kid, that makes total sense tome in terms of why he did that.
With all these pressures, total chaos.
I think there might have been something sexual between him and his sister, just watchingthose early videos of him with her and the way he was touching her.
I just felt something like, are his wires crossed about their relationship?
(01:00:24):
Is there something?
I don't know.
Well, you can see there's a lot of hostility that grew in the later videos where she'slike, you know, there's that when she's a teeny tiny baby and just sort of like, you know,
just this immobile mushy thing and he's fine with her.
Then you see when she's mobile that he becomes very rough with her.
(01:00:46):
He's like screaming in her face.
He's like grabbing her head and moving it side to side.
uh He's showing aggression.
like touching closely, all body, know, like bodies touching.
And I, that to me was like, okay, that's interesting, you know?
I don't know.
(01:01:07):
This is where I wonder though with what you're saying is once puberty hit, it's likethat's when shit really fucking hit the fan because you've got like this massive influx of
testosterone, you have sexual arousal starting to crop up and easy access to onlinepornography.
And all of that together was a recipe for disaster.
(01:01:32):
And then the comment, I'm sorry, I wanna bring this up.
Yeah.
In the documentary, there's that weird moment.
He's little in it.
He's probably like seven or eight years old.
And he's like pacing around the kitchen and he's asking Charity, his mom, to what's a wordshe doesn't like.
And she's busy washing the baby, right, in the sink.
(01:01:52):
And she's like, I don't know.
And he goes, what about a sentence that you don't like?
And you can see the little genius kind of thinking about language and all that kind ofstuff.
And she's like, I don't know, And he goes,
What about kill charity's children?
And then she like shuts the thing off, the video.
Paris.
(01:02:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, like it's interesting.
gonna kill you.
In this one he's like has the baby.
Yeah, and he's telling her, I'm going to kill you, which was foreshadow.
man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is the point that though I was making is like, I don't really know if thosedoctors are right because I don't know that his, doesn't need his mother in the same way
(01:02:37):
as he did as a kid.
Like would that be the object of his aggression anymore?
I don't know.
Like he seems singularly focused on getting out and you know, he wouldn't take.
any of the tests to test for like the warrior gene or any of the brain scans.
He wouldn't do that because he's afraid it's going to impact his parole.
(01:02:58):
So he's playing a good game.
I mean, I would too.
I'd be like, I want out of here.
But so I don't really know if she's in danger anymore.
mean, in the right circumstances, I think he would do it again.
I don't know that the right circumstances are his family.
Like I could imagine if he got out, got a friend and that friend, you know, and him werereally close.
(01:03:19):
And then that friend,
went and became friends with someone else or a girl broke up with him or something, thenmaybe.
I just don't know if that's the context in which he would act out anymore, but I guessthere's enough of a danger to warn her off of it.
I think so.
This is where, and again, I don't know, and we'll never know the exact reason why he didwhat he did.
(01:03:43):
I don't know that Charity herself is in danger.
I do think that the little one is in danger.
And here's the thing.
First of all, he read Infinite Jest, which means he has patience.
He read it multiple times, right?
He knows how to play the long game.
(01:04:07):
There is a world in which I could see him playing the long game, hunting, finding out who,where Phoenix is, finding out Phoenix's new name and seeing if he could get away with
killing him.
And seeing if he could get away with doing it not getting caught because Paris is very, ifnothing else, he's incredibly arrogant.
(01:04:31):
He thinks he's smarter than everyone else.
And I could see him thinking,
well, I'll play the long game.
When Charity's defenses are down, when enough time has passed that she thinks she's okay,when she thinks Phoenix is okay, and then he just makes it look like something else, but
(01:04:54):
he knows that deep down Charity will be wondering if it was Paris who is now out ofprison.
And of course on parole, right?
So you would have to be past a certain...
He'd have to, but he's, I could see him doing something, but also we just, because he wasincarcerated at such an early age, we don't know if this is, if this is a homicidal, like
(01:05:16):
tendency, like a drive to kill, or if this was just a case of wanting to deeply hurt hismother.
Yeah, and being an impulsive kid.
Yeah, like, like, but I mean, he's, he's clearly a psychopath and he, and he delights intormenting and he spent a lot of time tormenting her up to this point.
(01:05:39):
there's also just with a lot of psychopaths, I think there is like an, an odd nihilisticbent where he might just decide to kill Phoenix and just go right the fuck back to prison.
Cause he spent most of his life there anyway, you know?
So that's, that's the thing too.
But I do wanna say that I think it's incredibly hopeful that there is this belief in placeby this guy that wrote the book, that there's a way to prevent this.
(01:06:10):
And if we screamed for it, like you scream for anything, for genetic testing, even whenyou know the odds are unlikely that you carry such and such gene.
A lot of times, when I was pregnant with the boys, I went ahead and submitted to a...
huge thing of genetic testing.
Because you never know.
(01:06:31):
And you want to be prepared.
And so if we could treat like the psychopathy gene the same way that we treat screeningfor autism, it doesn't mean that if your kid has a psychopath gene that he's going to
become like Brian Coburger.
It just means that you have a shot at making sure that, like safeguarding him in a way.
(01:06:55):
That's the thing with the, if the Kobergers had known that their son had this in place,the way that they would have gone about helping him in these situations where he was just
relentlessly, ruthlessly bullied, that the, know, I know his dad took him to get boxinglessons, thought it would help him get in shape.
I mean, all of that works for a normal person, right?
(01:07:18):
For a normal kid.
But in Brian's case, clearly he needed something more in addition to, you know,
getting in shape and learning how to defend himself.
He needed something more than that.
And maybe had they known, hey, know, he has a, he may have a propensity towards reallysevere antisocial behavior in the future.
(01:07:38):
Here are some things you can do.
They probably would have done it.
seem like good parents to his sisters.
Like they seem all right.
I don't know.
This is the thing about like self-reporting.
There's somebody, oh who was this?
I can't remember who it was.
It was somebody who behaviorist, but also an evolutionary biologist person.
(01:07:59):
But they were saying like, I don't believe a single thing people tell me about themselves.
I look at their behavior.
And I think that we can be delude ourselves and other people really easily withself-reporting.
can hide a lot.
about what's going on inside of ourselves.
So the swabbing and the looking at the actual brain functioning is useful in that you seethe vulnerabilities.
(01:08:21):
You see how someone with that brain would do this thing.
And you don't have to get concerned so much with, they're drawing pictures of monsters andthey're thinking about this torturing women or whatever.
It's like you look at the brain and you say, well, this person has a vulnerability, solet's make sure that we do these interventions so that we shape them in a direction that's
pro-social.
(01:08:41):
You want to hear this interesting part?
I don't want to take too much time, but this is so freaking cool.
Okay.
So he's also doing research looking at violence in neighborhoods and countries around theworld.
so I'll just read what he says.
Oh no, my thing.
want it to be smaller.
This note thing opens up and blocks my whole screen.
(01:09:02):
Okay.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Oh, here we go.
You're doing research looking at violence in neighborhoods and countries around the world.
Can you describe it for me?
My colleagues and I are putting together large grants to study the impact of living indifferent neighborhoods and of being in the military on the interaction between genes and
brain imaging and all sorts of outcomes.
We've been putting together proposals to study the hot spots around the world, including,this is a hot issue, but I'm going to say it anyway, including, this is what he said.
(01:09:30):
Palestine, North Africa, Europe, and a couple of places in the United States to see theeffect of trauma, abuse, micro traumas, and bullying over the long haul on individuals and
transgenerationality in part of society in these hot spots.
So they're looking at transgenerationality.
We want to answer the question, does the effect of an early positive environment reallyovercome genetics?
(01:09:56):
We look at the positive and negative outcomes.
For example, we're now studying the brains and genetics of people who've committedsuicide.
And we know of generals and colonels for whom combat war actually helped them, a kind ofpost-traumatic growth instead of depression.
And we look at their brains to see how they're different.
(01:10:17):
There are people undergoing tremendous stressors in hot spots like the West Bank and NorthAfrica.
This is like 2014, I think.
who for some reason come out smelling like a rose.
And so the idea that how much of this is genetic and how much is early environment, someof it is taking people who are older and who've been through it.
Sorry, this is him speaking.
(01:10:38):
Also, if you have a population in one area or neighborhood with constant violence and yougo a mile away where it hasn't been that way, you can see that they have the same kind of
age, ethnic, educational pattern without the violence.
Then you can see how the behaviors are affected or how the genetics are different.
You can look for epigenetic markers or tags associated with changes in gene expressionthat have to do with traits that jump generations.
(01:11:07):
The more new research that comes out, the more it seems that this epigenetic jumping mayhappen in areas of the brain like the orbital cortex that are connected to social
behavior.
Those are exactly the ones that have to do with psychopathy, with violence and antisocialbehavior.
So the social brain is modifiable.
And for someone who has been in a war zone or bad neighborhood, these traits can startconcentrating and you can see a buildup of a kind of warrior culture, which is so
(01:11:36):
interesting.
And then he says, the only way you can urge action is by showing something scientifically.
We know warrior cultures don't last.
They end up beating themselves up.
So if you can show that the result of making a culture of violence in an area of a city orin a city, country or government is that they're going to kill themselves because they are
(01:11:57):
encouraging a psychopathic brain pattern to develop and allowing a warrior culture to takeroot and reproduce, then people will take notice.
Of course, we're not going to make up that data.
It's got to come out that way.
If it doesn't, then well, flame on.
What else are you going to say?
But the idea of showing why we must reduce the violence of war and stop poor parenting,well, that's my real motivation for attacking it this way.
(01:12:24):
So cool, right?
Like, basically, if we don't address this, we're going to get a really violent culturewith a bunch of psychopaths, like, ruling it.
You know I mean?
And a large population of psychopaths.
So culturally, it would benefit us to work on parenting, skills in parenting, and on nothaving wars.
(01:12:44):
and on dealing with violence.
It reminds me of that documentary that your mom recommended that I watch uh where like apsychopathic fucking killer was thrilled to be in Afghanistan.
know, it was easy to write things off as, well, look, this guy was going to attack us.
(01:13:05):
And what he was doing was scalping these, these guys oh and like stealing trophies.
I forgot the name of the documentary, but it was a good one.
But it's like, of course you're going to find psychopaths right there, in real gung-ho tokeep.
out there your companies, leading in the military.
(01:13:27):
Running your country.
What was other thing?
Like uh CEOs running, yeah, it's,
brain surgery.
But like, here's the thing, you kind of want that person with all the confidence in theworld that sees themselves as being like a god operating on your brain, not somebody
(01:13:49):
that's nervous, not somebody that has any kind of self-doubt.
You want someone that thinks they are the bee's nays fucking doing major surgery.
And they tend to be, like not all of them, but many of them tend to be psychopaths.
Yeah, mean, Paris looks like he has a very steady hand.
Yeah, he does.
I'm sure he does.
Sure he does.
Wow.
(01:14:10):
Well, anyway, I guess that wraps it up, guys.
Thanks for joining us on this amazing journey of discussing the psychopathic brain andParis Lee Bennett, the unnamed.
Well, we don't know anything about the Lyman case, about that child, but it reminded me ofParis.
Yeah, and that's a great suggestion because I knew nothing about Paris really before westarted this research this week.
(01:14:34):
he's the perfect case for studying.
If you want to see psychopath behavior, watch the Piers Morgan episode.
it's you can find it on YouTube.
It's you just have to kind of it's like part one, part two.
Each part is like about five minutes long.
So there's like many parts, but it is absolutely worth watching.
So much food for thought.
(01:14:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, gang.
Well, thank you for joining us.
And uh please follow us on Instagram at Secret Passage podcast.
Follow us on X at Secret Pass Pod.
please subscribe to our Patreon where we have never before seen like content.
(01:15:16):
We delve further into subjects.
You can email us.
Please leave us a five star review and always let us know episodes you'd like us to do.
If you have anything to add to the conversation, please do.
Cause we're trying to build a community here where we're also learning more information.
(01:15:38):
We love it when people have some inside info about places, people, other points of view,et cetera.
It's pretty awesome.
But we will see you next week.
This podcast may contain discussions of graphic violence, unsettling themes, supernaturalphenomena, and other topics that some listeners may find disturbing or triggering.
Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
The opinions expressed are simply those of the individual hosts and do not represent theprofession of psychology or constitute professional advice.
(00:38):
Welcome back everyone to the Secret Passage Podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vespoli.
With me is my amazing co-host, Shannon Rogers.
Hello everyone.
Well, here we are.
This is an exciting time.
My twins go back to school as high schoolers on Wednesday and it's almost fall, which ismy favorite time of year.
(01:12):
Summer ween, yeah.
I love hearing that.
I love spooky season and lots of things going on.
You have an office change, right?
office change god i bought i got my own office full time in walnut creek and tim and i arepainting it which is a total nightmare but it's okay i'm gonna be done soon and i will
(01:35):
have my own office yeah so i'll have it all day i'm only gonna be there like three days aweek but that's it's gonna be great to just have the space
any secret passages that you wandered down this past week?
I had a couple I was thinking of.
So it's funny, you left me a message yesterday and you were saying how you think of me ashigh functioning.
(02:00):
And then I'm over here living my life like a total teenager.
Like Tim and I, we own our own home, but we really, there's so much we don't know how todo.
Like we don't know how, we got a gas grill years ago and we've probably used it like threetimes.
And so we started, we,
(02:21):
replace this little cord thing that like needed to be replaced to the propane thatwhatever it's not even a cord it's like something is called something else but goes to the
propane and so we started using it the other night and we were grilling and all of asudden I hear this little voice I'm upstairs our house is like backwards like our kitchen
and stuff is upstairs and then there's downstairs it's like bedrooms and there's a bedroomupstairs too but so I hear this little voice Shannon we have a problem just very calm
(02:50):
And it's Tim and I go outside and there's like a giant inferno.
The whole grill is on fire, like right next to the house.
Tim's like, I guess we should move it.
And he's like scooting it back.
And I'm looking at these flames and there's the propane tank right next to it.
And I'm just like, my god.
And so we managed to live and turn it off and not burn our house down.
(03:11):
But he cleaned the grill like yesterday.
So we will not have that problem again.
But em there you are.
We don't know how to do very basic things like keep our grill clean to avoid grease firesand stuff like that.
Dude, feel that.
I really feel that.
You know, know in Zoolander when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are like trying to figure outthe computer and they're like apes and they're like, that's me.
(03:44):
Like basic.
Tasks.
I always talk about how I had deficits growing up, like deficits in my learning where I'mwell-versed in some stuff that gives the impression that I know what I'm talking about or
whatever.
then things where I'm like, don't get it.
(04:06):
Things that my children understand 100 times over.
And I'm like, can you explain that to me?
I don't understand.
So I'm right there with you.
I don't know how to do some shit at all.
Like the pudding.
We have a weed whacker.
Well, we never figured out how to put it together.
(04:30):
Jay and I, another one who is like high functioning in some ways.
And then when it comes to like normal, we were both just late to the game, like late tothe game on stuff.
And you know, so we can't figure it out.
I got it for cheap off Amazon and then I was like super impatient.
(04:50):
then we just went to, what's the name of the store?
fucking love this place.
Tractor supply.
So yeah.
Yeah.
And got, and got one that was already put together.
know, I don't like, there's some shit I just, I can't figure it out.
I just don't know.
So I
Thank god Tim's good at figuring things out.
(05:11):
But he also doesn't have this intuition.
OK, so I feel like I have really good intuition about stuff that is, it's my OCD kind ofthing.
It's like our dishwasher, our dish disposal, our garbage disposal broke.
And so we've just been not replacing it because Tim wants to replace it.
(05:34):
And I'm like, no, you can't do that.
I'm so anxious about him doing it.
feel like a plumber.
Dude, I'm thinking about the grill.
Yeah.
Now I'm thinking about a fucking garbage disposal in his hands.
you see where I'm going with that?
Yeah.
No, he's actually so good at stuff like this, which this is I'm getting to the intuitionpart.
For me, I'm like, he left the grease pan in that thing that had been in there for threeyears, had never been changed, turns it up full heat, shuts the thing, and doesn't even
(06:00):
think about that going off.
I would think about that.
So basically, we had rice one night.
And we have the thing that blocks the sink from stuff going down the drain that doesn'tget ground up because it's not working.
He's like, what?
It's just a little rice.
And he like, don't let that rice go down the drain.
It's going to plug the drain.
And he's like, whatever.
He just ignores me.
(06:21):
two days later, it's all backed up.
And I'm like, you put rice down there, didn't you?
And he's all quiet.
And in my mind, I'm like, of course, rice is glutinous.
You put a bunch of it down the drain.
It's going to get bigger.
It's going to block the energy.
Yeah.
So this is the kind of thing he does not have intuition about.
So together, I feel like we have one functioning.
(06:41):
homeowner brain.
Anyway.
A few things, a few things.
One is, everything is happening so quickly with just passage of time, it's insane.
so have you ever heard of this show called The Chosen?
(07:05):
Yes, I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.
Okay, so I started watching it and it's really fucking awesome.
And the people that made it, the way they did it, it's really cool.
for anyone that just wants to watch like a good series, it's a good series.
You don't have to be like a Christian to watch it.
You can just enjoy it as a series, historical drama, whatever.
(07:30):
um
Hang on a second.
Siri, be quiet.
No, Siri.
Siri fucking popped up.
If you say serious, it will pop up.
Yeah.
Because it thinks you're saying Siri.
I'm so mad at you, Siri.
But I didn't hear her.
(07:50):
We don't hear her on our end.
Okay, Mine has an Australian accent because I pretend that it's my bearded dragon talking.
Anyway.
So what's cool about it is someone who's like, you know, well, I already read uh the NewTestament.
(08:11):
I'm almost done with the Old Testament.
And then I'll go back and reread the New Testament using my study guide.
But what's cool about it is that it shows, so it's basically, it's the New Testament,right?
The show starts with you meet the apostles first.
(08:34):
I mean, no, no, yeah, the apostles.
And you get to see historically what's happening.
You get to see, these characters.
And they use...
vernacular, you know, they speak in like this kind of like more modern vernacular.
It doesn't feel anachronistic really.
It's you're just able to kind of see these relationship dynamics.
(08:56):
You're able to see what life was like.
the guy that plays Jesus is just awesome.
You get to see like this kind of dry sense of humor.
And if you, you know, when you read the
New Testament, you see it.
(09:17):
Like if you're able to kind of like look at what is being said, he's got a sense of humor.
He's very dry.
Can be sarcastic.
All that just seems like a really laid back, really cool dude.
Matthew is so interesting in it because he's presented as being on the spectrum.
He's a tax collector, right?
(09:38):
He start, you know, when you meet him, he's a tax collector and I'm watching him and he's
He's kind of got, you he's, stems.
He, is very preoccupied with things being factual.
And I was like, this is interesting.
So I Googled it.
I'm like, is Matthew depicted as being on the spectrum?
And then the response that came is yes.
(09:59):
Like that was done intentionally based, based on reading the book of Matthew and kind ofdeciphering like some certain things.
Now, definitively we don't know, but.
the creators of the show, number one, felt that as one of them is on the spectrum, reallyfelt that and then was like, well, let's just, let's present him this way because it seems
(10:25):
that way.
And also it goes to the point of also just some representation and so it's just reallygood.
I highly recommend it, you know, even for people that are not interested in Christianity.
As a show, it's really entertaining.
It's really good.
Wow.
So why did that?
I'm always wanting to learn more about the Bible and Christianity and stuff like that.
(10:48):
that's a good way, right?
Yes.
It's pretty true to the actual New Testament.
For the most part, I mean, of course there's gonna be some things where there are, itfollows it, yes.
So, you know, whether you wanna know precisely how he ended up, let's say curing the manof his, know, he couldn't walk and Jesus, you know, cures him.
(11:17):
It's one of those things where like we know biblically that happened the way it happened.
They probably took some creative liberties With which is it's fine, you know uh It justit's a way of bringing the Bible to life and in a way that Will be of interest to people,
you know, and certainly for anybody that can't you know, they they don't want to sitthrough You know, they don't want to necessarily sit and read scripture they can
(11:44):
a show that is presented in this very exciting way.
Cool.
So that's, I binged a few episodes of that.
And that was, guess, my secret passage.
I mean, I already told you guys that I'm gearing up for the new school year, so.
Speaking of school year, uh Paris Lee Bennett, you know, didn't see the rest of JuniorHigh.
(12:11):
I'm trying to find a way into our episode.
Oh, you know I was going say?
Tim said last time that when we talked about, you talked about in our last episode, whatled us to do the episode.
That'd be interesting just to talk a little bit about why we're interested.
We love psychopaths on this podcast.
Right.
(12:32):
Well, you guys, listeners and viewers, may already know about the Lyman case that thisevent that happened in March of this year to the Lyman family.
It's very brutal.
There's still not a lot of information and the alleged perpetrator is a minor, so he'sunnamed.
(12:56):
This, this, uh
woman Jessica Lyman and her son Eli were found murdered, shot to death in their home byJessica's 17-year-old daughter.
(13:17):
So the 17-year-old girl came home, found her mother and eight-year-old little brother shotto death, and the mother was found with her pants down.
The police were called and the 15 year old son had been at home but had said he didn'thear anything.
(13:39):
He'd been on his phone and I think went to sleep and didn't hear the gunshots, anything.
So yeah, so this woman, Jessica, lived at this house with her 15 year old, her eight yearold and her 17 year old daughter.
And when the police further investigated the case, it...
On the security camera, you could see a guy wearing a mask entering the home.
(14:05):
And when they were investigating, searching the house, they found that mask in the son,the 15 year old son's room.
They found a really some weird note saying this is a murder story and all this kind ofstuff.
Some of her intimate clothing was found in his room.
(14:28):
and male DNA semen was found next to her body.
So that's all that we have.
The murder happened in March.
The 15 year old again, he's a minor so he's unnamed as of now and there's still aninvestigation ongoing but everything kind of points to the 15 year old boy.
(14:52):
And when I read about this case,
It reminded me of Paris Lee Bennett, a 13 year old boy who in 2007 murdered his four yearold sister in their Abilene, Texas home.
And his semen was found near her body, the four year old's body.
(15:16):
So that reminded me a lot.
We still don't, there's still more questions around the Lyman case, but what this bringsup is
Again, we always want to know why these things happen.
And some people just want to say, well, you know, well, in Paris's case, he's, he is adiagnosed psychopath.
And you and I have spoken at length about how can these things be prevented?
(15:43):
Not the psychopathy, obviously, but the homicide, right?
The homicidal stuff.
So we, we have been discussing that.
quite a bit, but I will go ahead and give you kind of the summary and timeline listenerswho maybe are not familiar with the case of Paris Lee Bennett.
(16:06):
Paris Lee Bennett is a 13 year old boy living in Abilene, Texas with his mother CharityBennett and his little sister Ella Bennett.
Paris is a verified genius with an IQ of around 142.
and did exceedingly well in school, was a very cute and precocious uh little boy.
(16:33):
There's a documentary called The Family I Had, which is about this case and it's availableto watch.
can even watch, I've watched it free on YouTube.
But Paris came from a family of smart people.
Like charity somehow...
you know, she had, she'd been like a struggling, she struggled with drugs as a teen, stillmanaged to graduate early from high school.
(17:01):
And at the point that Paris was around 13 or so around that time, Charity was getting hermaster's degree while also working at a local restaurant.
And then Paris's grandmother, uh high, high functioning, just a...
uh
really intelligent, ambitious, very successful, very well-to-do businesswoman.
(17:26):
Was it a trucking company?
Yeah, uh a large trucking company, successful.
Yeah, the largest I think in the region or something.
co-owned with her ex-husband.
Yeah, coned with her ex-husband, we'll get into that.
Paris's father, on the other hand, was mentally ill.
He schizophrenia.
(17:46):
oh
And the thing with schizophrenia is, it doesn't always, it doesn't skip generations.
It's not 100 % transmittable, I guess.
I don't know about the skipping generations, but that's an interesting point.
Because Paris is not schizophrenic.
No, but he said he had, it's interesting because he said he had delusions that he saw hissister rising up as like a demon or something.
(18:13):
that was him trying to, yeah.
Because as of even now, there's nothing to indicate that he sees anything.
He's a master manipulator.
He's very, he's good at assessing situations and then behaving in a way that benefits himthe most.
And he was doing that from a very early age.
(18:35):
But you see in the home movie footage, Paris being just adorable.
I he really was.
You're so cute!
So very cute, very creative, seemed to really relish social interaction.
He was very social.
(18:56):
even had, he had friends at the point that he committed these crimes.
was a kid.
One woman in the documentary said that, if you kind of looked at Paris, then he seemedlike kind of a skater kid.
He was active, uh really artistic, very articulate, et cetera.
Charity was a single mom and what has been said, but you know, it's still up for debate.
(19:23):
We may never know exactly why it happened.
Cause Paris, I see him sometimes just sort of wanting to give like a pat answer.
Mm-hmm.
It is believed that Paris was jealous of the attention that Ella was getting from hismother.
(19:44):
It's also said that he was upset because his mother had relapsed not long before oncocaine and he wanted to hurt her.
And he had thought about killing his own mother and then he thought, well, no, cause thenshe'll be dead.
What's something that would hurt her?
(20:06):
Okay, well, I'll kill Ella and then she'll lose both her children.
Her daughter will be dead and then Paris will be put away or sent away.
But also he had thought just generally about killing.
He had thought about killing his babysitter, thought about killing Charity, mother,thought about killing one of his friends, which really goes to show that, you know, that
(20:30):
lack of empathy and also that very calculated mind.
Yeah, the interesting part about the way he described it was he was saying, I was angryall day and I wanted to hurt someone.
And it's like he could feel it coming, right?
He wanted to hurt someone.
(20:51):
He wanted to complete that action.
You know how emotions make us do things, right?
And most of us can cap it off, right?
I would love to slit the tires of anybody who blocks my driveway, but I don't because.
You know, em and I'm all because I don't want to get caught.
Just kidding.
But I don't because it's not more.
(21:11):
It's not the ethical thing to do.
you know, he was it was building in him, building in him, building in him.
And it's almost like it felt like it didn't have a stopper.
Right.
Like he was going to act it out.
And it was just a yeah.
So but I don't know if I believe anything he says.
I don't either.
Because there's also the point where a month, about a month before this happened, he triedto stab his mother.
(21:39):
Yeah.
I mean, he was definitely harboring.
He definitely had, but that's so interesting, right?
Like, we can get into this more when we do our commentary.
But after that action, what action was taken to help him?
Do we know?
The action that was taken to help him was they took him to essentially a hospital, afacility.
(22:02):
That facility wanted to keep Paris and his mother said no and took him home.
they were adamant with her.
They were like, he, this is a real problem.
They told her, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, also, also, did it even need to fucking be
Try to stab me.
You're going to...
(22:23):
Yeah.
I know.
like, and I understand as a mother, the dumb ass things that parents sometimes do to tryto protect their children, except that she had a four year old at home.
A four year old.
then the night of the murder, sorry listeners, we'll get back.
So what ends up happening is charity leaves Paris and Allah in the care of a babysitter.
(22:48):
We know nothing about this babysitter.
I'd love to.
Well, I'd love to know, it an adult babysitter?
Was it a teen babysitter?
I get the impression that the baby- Okay, well this babysitter did not know anything aboutParis having tried to stab Charity or anything.
I think any babysitter would say, I'm not gonna do this job then because that's scary.
(23:12):
So this happened February of 2007.
Charity left Paris and I'll end the care of a babysitter.
Later on, Paris convinced the babysitter to just go home, that he's got it from here,which he's 13.
I remember babysitting kids when I was 12.
You know, so whatever.
Maybe it's like the mom was going to be home soon.
(23:33):
I have no idea what he said to her.
Again, master manipulator, babysitter.
She was scared of him.
I wondered if if she was like, I'm getting the hell out of here.
Like, right.
Since anyway.
Yeah, like maybe not so much that Ella was gonna, oh, cause Ella was asleep.
So probably she thought, well, worst case scenario is Paris is just gonna, you know, duckaround with his toys or whatever and then Charity will be at home.
(23:58):
The babysitter leaves and then Paris grabs a kitchen knife, goes into Ella's room, stabsher 17 times.
He confessed to sexually assaulting her.
I'm not sure if that was pre or post-mortem.
And then he called 911 and you you can find the 911 call.
(24:22):
He sounds appropriately frantic.
I don't believe he actually was.
They suggest giving her CPR.
He probably didn't give her CPR.
And then, yeah, and then he was taken into custody and he was
you know, he pled guilty.
He was taken to a juvenile, essentially a juvenile prison and then was moved to an adultprison, Ferguson, in Midland, Texas, right?
(24:56):
Yeah, when he was 18.
And that is where he still is.
He is eligible for parole in 2027.
Not sure if he'll actually be granted parole.
I don't think so.
think it's pretty obvious to everyone that he is still very, very dangerous.
(25:17):
There's a chilling interview with him and Pierce Morgan.
There's a couple actually.
There's one with Pierce and then one with another news organization, I think.
But there's the Pierce Morgan one.
It's a good one.
Good.
Yeah.
Even for those that don't like Pierce Morgan, it's done really, really well.
He is very measured.
(25:37):
He's very deliberate in his speaking.
Again, highly intelligent.
He has like the best posture I've ever seen.
He's like this.
Yeah, and the way he moves.
You see him at the end of the interview, he takes off his microphone and he carefully putson his glasses and he stands up and he just walks out of the room.
(25:57):
Perfect posture, very, very, very conscious of every little thing he does.
And I don't know if it's the behavioral specialist that point this out or if it's Pierceor even his mother, I can't remember who.
who says this, that like, he's careful with what he's saying because he is aware that hisparole hearing will be coming up soon.
(26:23):
So his word choices, he's careful to say, I made a mistake.
It's like stabbing your four-year-old sister 17 times and sexually assaulting her.
Being a mistake is an interesting take.
Really trying to get-
of, yeah.
Did you catch the thing that he said?
(26:44):
This is the crate.
This to me was so chilling.
So Piers Morgan was pushing, pushing, pushing and being very pushing for something, right?
And he showed a little anger.
But in the very end, when he was putting his sunglasses or his glasses on and standing up,Piers said, thank you so much for sitting here with me.
(27:08):
you know, basically thanked him.
And he looked at him and he's all, you're welcome.
And the way he said, you're welcome was so different to me from how he'd been talking.
It was like he had stepped out of the role and it felt much more, much less controlled,much more casual.
Yes, like it sounded conversational, the you're welcome, as opposed to consideringeverything that was sort of coming at him.
(27:36):
lizard dressed in a human suit.
Right.
his...
He's looking and his countenance is interesting in the way that it is similar in some waysto Brian Coburger and then, but not in others.
Like, I mean, obviously Paris is...
(27:56):
I don't see, I don't find him scary looking.
I mean, in his prison garb, sitting there and knowing what he's done, sure.
Right.
But if you were to just sort of see him walking around in street clothes...
he wouldn't look frightening, I don't think.
He has a pleasant face.
He's contained.
He's not erratic.
Yeah, he's very conscious of how he comes across.
(28:19):
Whereas Brian Coburger is like, like that's his default face.
He's like.
Ryan Coburger is so explosive, right, with the students, you know, and the responses hewas giving to them and just the way that people talk about going to his office hours and
how he just ignored and was rude to the girl, but would talk to other people, men.
(28:39):
It seems, and I don't know, we don't see, we don't get to see Paris really outside of aninstitutional setting.
which he's been in since he was 13, which is going to shape him in some ways, even as apsychopath, he's still shaped by his environment, coming into it at such an early age, his
formative years.
(29:00):
Which, you I was thinking about that because there was the flat affect thing, you know,that was so obvious.
he, the flat affect, I thought, you he said during the interview, he's smart enough,right, to say, you know, I can't let my guard down in here in this interview because that
does not serve me in this context when I leave this room.
If I'm undone from this interview and I go back there, that's a liability for me in thispsychopathic environment I'm in with people who prey on weakness.
(29:28):
And he made that point.
And I was like, that's a good point.
And I actually let myself really think about this first.
I'm like, that's why the strength, he's so good at the manipulation, because there is atruth to that.
It does not serve you in that environment to be emotional.
That's a liability to look weak.
And which came first?
(29:51):
He looked like a kid who could laugh and play and.
he did.
Then this thing happens.
Then he gets institutionalized, which his mother and grandmother were very much against.
They felt like he should be in a more of a mental health setting, which they took him outof before.
That's where I'm like, bitch, that ship fucking sailed.
Like, they were telling you, keep him here.
(30:12):
And then now after your daughter's dead, you're like, wait, he needs help.
You didn't think so.
I know.
A months ago.
What the hell?
I feel like the mental health people.
So you have to think that someone is a danger to a specific person or a specific event.
(30:33):
Like if you heard someone's going go bomb the Boston Marathon, you'd have to stop them.
You could report to the police.
But I think maybe when he was in that setting, there wasn't enough of a.
specific threat.
I don't know why they didn't say he's a danger to others.
We cannot let him out and keep him in or be more forceful with her and really drive it.
(30:54):
It could be that they're taking her word for it.
Like they don't necessarily have any evidence except her own words.
We also don't know what she said to get him out of there.
She could go, I'm exaggerating.
It was actually not a knife.
It was a toy knife.
he was just, I just got, I mean, we have no idea what she said to them to get him out ofthere.
Or he could just have lied and said, I'm not a danger and proven over time.
(31:18):
Yeah, it's like, you can get out of those settings.
But that's the thing is they won't let you out if you're actively psychotic.
But if uh you're a uh psychopath, you can easily get out because you look contained.
You can play a good game of like, no, I'm OK.
I just had this bout of whatever, wanting to stab my mom to death.
Now I'm fine.
(31:39):
em But so he's in this setting.
it makes sense to have a flat affect in that setting and to be a robot person.
But I think he's smart enough to know that that he, I think he was anxious in thatinterview when he was supposed to be answering questions that normal people, normal,
(31:59):
whatever that is, but normal people would have emotion about.
And I think he knew that in that interview, you can kind of see he gets thrown off andfalls back on these sort of rehearsed answers when
is
Yeah, and he's like, I feel, and in his head he's like, what do normal humans say?
(32:23):
And he kept saying, it's so complex, know?
He kept going into this intellectual thing, right?
I could give you a simple answer, but people really love simple answers, you know, thatkind of thing.
yeah.
Oh, God's chilling.
Yeah.
It's interesting too, when you think about like the brand of psychopath that Paris Bennettis versus, know, if we're going to say brand, like the brand of psychopath that Brian
(32:49):
Coburger is, Paris is, you can see that maybe had he never, you know, been, beenhomicidal, if he hadn't, hadn't killed his sister.
the way in which he could have been like a charming, manipulative, but charmingunderstanding and very aware of the way he moves through life.
(33:17):
Philosophy professor.
I think it would have been like a philosophy professor or a comp lit or you know like
He's, he, you know, he's, he was an adorable child.
knew he was a cute child.
Like you could tell he knew he was cute and that he's going to use what he has tomanipulate his way through life.
And then you look at Brian Coburger, who was terribly awkward, terribly awkward, picked ona hundred pounds overweight, filled with, with so much rage and entitlement.
(33:50):
Yeah.
And the way in which he can't easily nag, he was never easily able to navigate throughlife.
And then you see Paris who
You can see how things could have gone differently for him.
Right, like how we act on the environment and we get something back and how theenvironment, and then the way we act on the environment changes the environment.
(34:15):
Like I think Brian Koberger, he was awkward and he got that feedback back from theenvironment, which exacerbated.
And then he continued to be awkward, continued to get that feedback.
And he never learned.
I mean, I think he tried to get it together by getting skinny, by working out, but theynever socially, he just could never make it work.
(34:42):
And it's interesting the way the murders happened.
Like he was very stabby, very impulsive, obviously, like wasn't calculated, didn't grabthe sheath back.
I can imagine Paris, cause Paris, say the way he stabbed his sister was not like stabby,stabby, stabby.
It was like slow stabs.
Yeah, was very much probably like, I wonder what happens if I put it in like this.
(35:07):
I wonder what she'll do if I do this.
It was like relishing the experience.
Whereas Brian was, it was clear, it was very rage fueled, like to the point where he waseven like striking one of the victims in the face.
(35:28):
It was, yeah, just this attack.
Whereas I don't think that Paris's was rage-filled.
I think it was a sick kind of curiosity.
And also he was looking at violent pornography.
He had all kinds of access to the internet, being uh a young, really young boy and accessto not just pornography, like violent, violent pornography that he had been watching
(35:55):
probably stirred up his feelings, you know?
And so that...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you want, should we talk about the psychopath, like, brain?
Yes.
OK.
So I'm going to pull this up because I just, like most people, when people start talkingto me about neuroscience, I'm really interested in the first sentence.
And then I just, like, glaze over.
(36:16):
Like, I'll never remember this.
Like, the anterior cingulate and all these things.
So I'm going to read this part of this article so it's not more confusing for people andfor me.
So.
um
There's this man, uh James Fallon.
So he wrote this book called The Psychopath Inside, a neuroscientist's personal journeyinto the dark side of the brain.
(36:40):
It's a good book.
I've started it.
I haven't finished it.
But there's a really good article in the, you know, the Greater Good Science Center at UCBerkeley.
They've got a great article about him.
They interview him for the article.
So basically he, James Fallon, describes himself as a pro-social psychopath.
And he makes the case that biology is not destiny.
(37:03):
And even that some of the traits that are associated with psychopathy might make positivecontributions to society.
basically when they're talking about psychopaths, all of them, he discovered that all ofthem had a loss of activity in the limbic system.
That's the emotional brain.
And for the most part, that was the most obvious difference, including a lowering activityof activity in the orbital cortex.
(37:29):
and adjacent ventromedial prefrontal cortex, that part that sits right over your eyes andyour nose.
And there was also abnormal and generally lower activity in the amygdala at the end of thetemporal lobe.
So plus lower activity in a small strip of the cingulate cortex that looks like a big Cthat connects the orbital cortex and the amygdala.
(37:50):
So basically, like their brains are different and they have different things going on indifferent parts of their brain and different connectivity than a
quote-unquote, normal brain.
And so what James Bellin discovered when he was doing his research on psychopath brains ishe had these control subjects and some of them were his family members.
And he was looking at the control brain scans against the psychopath brain scans and hesaw one of his family members had a brain scan that matched the psychopath brain scan.
(38:18):
And he got curious so he dropped the blind part of the study so he could see who it wasand it was himself.
So he discovered that he has a psychopath brain.
And the person interviewing him said, what is the significance of this lower brainactivity?
And he said, in looking at it all, it makes some sense as psychopaths have a problem withemotional regulation and its integration with the cold cognitive thinking part of the
(38:42):
upper half of the frontal lobe.
That area of the brain, the orbital cortex controls impulsivity, but also controls thesense of ethics and morality.
It's a part of the brain that keeps you from doing things considered morally wrong.
that helps to stop inappropriate behavior that is outside acceptable in social context fora particular society.
(39:03):
The other part of the brain that was lower in activity was the amygdala.
So I don't, this part confuses me, but I think it makes sense he's the expert.
But he said, that's like your id.
It controls rage, aggression, eating, drinking, sexuality, predatory behavior, and all thethings that our inner animal finds necessary.
(39:25):
But if that's turned on and it's not being inhibited by the orbital cortex, you've got areally wild raging person.
Normally in a balanced brain, they inhibit each other.
But if they're both down, the pattern is associated with the psychopath.
So then she goes, and he goes on, I'm going to read a bunch of stuff.
Is that OK?
Sure.
OK.
So aren't, I'm basically reading you the whole article.
(39:48):
But aren't psychopaths notorious for not wanting treatment?
He said, yeah, usually they're just pissed that they got caught.
I don't know of any really consistent finding of treating psychopathy unless you starttreating them perhaps when they're three or four years old.
After that, the brain connections are so fundamentally flawed, they're actually missingfunctional parts that nothing seems to really work.
(40:10):
You can do temporary things, but I think the disconnection is too fundamentally flawed.
So there's these genes that are associated.
They're called like the warrior genes.
And one of them is the MAOI gene and one of those is a CERT.
This is not really, and other things I've read, this CERT one is not really considered awarrior thing.
basically, recent research on one of the serotonin system warrior genes, the serotonintransporter promoter gene, has shown that while those with high risk, this high risk
(40:42):
allele, this is really interesting.
This is like, this is for our conversation about like, how do we prevent this?
It has shown that while those with
this high-risk allele who undergo early abuse or abandonment will be at risk for laterviolence and aggression.
But those with the same allele who undergo a positive, loving, early environment will beat lower risk for such behaviors.
(41:07):
It's as if in the first two or three years of life, the vulnerable prefrontal orbital andventromedial cortex sees whether the environment one is born into is hostile or nurturing.
and then tunes the cortex through the serotonin system to prepare for a lifetime in thatenvironment.
So this is good news because it means that you have the power to change in a positivedirection.
(41:31):
Benign or positive situations can offset genetic influences and environmental influencessignificantly, which is so cool, right?
But here's the thing, so when he says that you have to essentially begin treatment early,as in three, four, five years old, what's the treatment?
(41:57):
Yeah, well, he said in his case, it was luck.
Like he's like, I just ended up in a family where they gave me a lot of attention and Iwas actually handsome, had a good body, was the best dancer, was very smart.
So he could like, he wasn't a Brian Coburger, right?
So like Brian Coburger also might've had a great family, right?
But I think everything else he experienced socially, you know, contributed to pushing himin the direction that isn't healthy.
(42:26):
His ideas for treatment sort of resonate with what we know about brain plasticity inanyone is that we have a lot more opportunity to change the earlier the intervention.
The later we intervene, the harder it is to change because we're set in our ways,basically old dog new tricks thing.
His idea is that we need to, we could, if we wanted to.
(42:48):
everybody, parenting, think, is the great cultural change.
piece that we need.
mean, if people could be supported in parenting and parent their kids in a way that theirkids don't feel neglected, abused, abandoned, then we would have a lot better outcomes.
like with that gene he was talking about, the cert gene, know, that like, actually, ifthey have a good environment, they have less of a chance of being violent than the normal
(43:17):
population does.
But if you send them into an abusive situation, they become more violent than the generalpopulation.
So
They're just, if you think about it, feels like vulnerabilities.
We all have different vulnerabilities.
They are really vulnerable to the context they're in.
And so if you are born into a sort of psychotic world where your parents are addicted todrugs and there's no food in your house and you have economic insecurity and you're
(43:43):
getting beaten and the people around you are hurting each other, it's like, are you gonna,any people with a normal brain would tend to.
be shaped in a direction of, right, not such a behavioral repertoire being built there.
psychopath it's going to the the the repercussions are greater.
(44:05):
Yeah, mean, because of the system not really having breaks.
And so his idea is through a saliva test, this is where it gets controversial becausepeople don't even like to talk about these genes as warrior genes because people don't
want to think about it as like, you have this gene, you're a criminal, and start profilingpeople that way.
But he's saying we could take swabs.
(44:28):
Because he said the early signs for psychopathy in kids, and this is true, are
It's not, they're not easy.
Like if you saw chronic early sexual activity or chronic animal torture or something likethat, that would probably tell you that your kid is a, is is a, could be, have this gene.
Brian Coburger's case, he was already like robbing homes as a little kid.
(44:53):
was, he was breaking into people's homes and stealing.
And yes, it's funny because I sent you a message about this, like the, the, you know, thiswhole like stigma, like the stigma around being branded as a potential psychopath or even
doing the saliva test to see because of, essentially what it
(45:16):
what it says about your child, except we screen for autism in two-year-olds.
And the idea being the earlier you screen, the earlier you find out, the more likely thatyour kid will lead a well-adjusted life, have an easier time, uh get what they need to be
(45:37):
able to function in society without being branded a weirdo.
Right?
that's why I feel like his work is so important because when we think of psychopaths, wefear them.
They do a lot of destructive things, but our world is probably full of high functioning.
So many.
You know, like he makes this comparison.
(45:58):
He's like, you have people like, you know, JFK and Clinton.
And then you have people like Jimmy Carter, who are like the mensches.
But the other people have the psychopath gene.
They're people that'll take more risks and be a leader.
A lot of the stuff associated with psychopathy is also associated with leadership.
(46:20):
And so what he's saying really is let's actually look at these people as though they havea chance and treat them early.
And he goes even further to say that in a warrior,
in the world.
Warrior cultures fight and kill each other off quickly.
(46:43):
They die.
But in modern society where you have, you know, potentially that gene being propagated,you know, people reproducing, cultures reproducing it, like that we could have an issue
with a population.
(47:04):
that's growing of untreated psychopaths.
So why not just identify people young with a test like you do for autism and you, youknow, make sure that they have adequate parenting and support and then they don't get
bullied in high school or elementary school.
And then you, then they stand a chance of being shaped into like a courageous functionalperson potentially rather than.
(47:30):
Yeah, that's the thing.
mean, it's, I guess we could say like, you know, we've managed, I think, to do a prettygood job of destigmatizing autism.
Yeah.
To the point where there's people who like want to be autistic.
Like they're like, I'm an undiagnosed autistic.
And I'm like, really?
(47:51):
Well, no, mean, it's funny.
know.
took the autism test once because of my sensory stuff.
yeah, I mean, it's neurodivergent if you look at what they're saying.
Not that genetics predetermined.
Genetics is so cool because experience does impact the expression of the scenes.
And so it's that whole nature nurture dance.
(48:13):
And rather than.
you know, incarcerate people after they've already done a bunch of harm, which is whatwe're doing now with psychopaths, right?
It start young and make sure that they get what they need from the environment and that,you know, that they can be learned, they can learn and be shaped in another direction.
I mean, that's so, it's so like a no brainer.
love to know like what percentage of winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are probablypsychopaths.
(48:40):
You know, he was saying this about cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy.
He's like, I'm really good at cognitive empathy.
And he's like, and you have people like, you know, if you got rid of everybody that hadthis gene or this brain, you would lose people.
Like he's a, you said Gandhi, he thinks of as a person who has a lot of cognitive empathyand maybe not like a lot of emotional empathy.
And he named some others.
(49:02):
Yeah.
Lennon is no, I mean, the peace love guy that is like, would probably have identifiedhimself as a feminist was terrible to his ex-wife, to his own son, Julian, just completely
wrote him off, but wrote some of the best fucking music and preached about love and all ofthat kind of stuff.
(49:27):
Like, like that's.
that is somebody who recognized that we need peace.
Like in this sort of universal kind of way.
And then in a personal way is just incapable, I think, of empathy, it seems.
Yeah, yeah, Yes.
Like Paris.
Well, so with Paris, what's so interesting and you see this and here's the thing, likethere are things, I guess this goes without saying, but I'm just gonna say it.
(49:58):
And that is that there are things we absolutely don't know.
And there's things that I'm sure charity doesn't want out there, you know?
And I get it.
You're the mother of somebody that did something absolutely terrible and there are thingsyou are going to wanna keep.
you know, close to the vest that you don't think that anybody isn't entitled to know I getthat.
(50:18):
There's a lot that I think that has not been said, but I think we can even just look kindof, and these are assumptions, like I'm making these assumptions, we know.
Yes, Paris didn't want for much materially.
His mother had a lot, I think from her mom, like the family had, like, you had likeessentially generational wealth, like coming down.
(50:42):
And so he didn't go without food.
He was thought of as adorable and cute.
You can see he looks good.
He's well physically well taken care of, precocious, does well in school.
So we don't see anything of somebody who is struggling academically or not getting theirhomework done, anything like everything was sort of happening.
(51:03):
What we know is that his mother had a drug problem.
And so she was in and out of sobriety.
We know that there are long stretches of time he spent away from her living with hisgrandmother.
So there was this moving around piece.
We know that his mother had a string of boyfriends that were living with Paris.
(51:25):
She was married a few times.
That has to affect you.
Ella's father was an alcoholic and then was like out of his life.
Paris's father, I don't think he ever had a relationship with his dad, but his father.
uh mental illness out of his life.
And then I want to see there was another person I may be forgetting that kind of came andwent.
(51:48):
I'm not sure.
But at the very least, you know, there was, he was observing an alcoholic in his home.
have no idea if there was abuse.
Charity didn't say that there was.
We have no idea.
But there was a lot of upheaval in his young life.
Absolutely, like not lot of stability emotionally.
And I think she had gone unrelapsed right in the period before he killed Ella.
(52:14):
Yes, about a three, she, think she says it's like a three month cocaine binge, likerelapsing on cocaine.
She kind of downplays it a little bit.
I get it.
You know, this is embarrassing.
You're broadcasting this out there.
ah And then there's stuff that she doesn't say, but that the grandmother tells everyone inthe documentary about charity and about Paris.
(52:36):
Like she's the one that talks about the knife thing, about the institution.
I think she brings it up and then Charity has to kind of address it later.
And Charity says she does not regret taking Paris out of the institution.
And I'm like...
Defensive much?
Yeah, also like, you know what happened when you took him out, Like your daughter, thatthing.
(52:58):
It's okay to have regrets.
Yeah, it's okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe things would have gone differently had he stayed there.
But I think it's worth mentioning too the interesting kind of fact about Paris'sgrandmother.
It is widely believed that she had her ex-husband.
(53:20):
killed that she hired a hit on him and had him killed.
And then she has a slip that I don't know if it's a slip.
She says it with almost like a smirking tone in her voice where she says, look, I just hadto fool a jury.
Dude, and did you see her face in that interview?
Right after she says it, she's all, and I had no jury to manipulate.
(53:42):
And then she pauses and then she goes and looks at the camera and smiles.
Psychopath.
I do too.
Like I'm not gonna lie.
There is this.
She's...
The murder is whatever, right?
(54:03):
But it's that type of psychopathy that this is a problem.
I must get rid of the problem.
No remorse, cleans it out.
You know what I mean?
She's just like, my ex-husband cheated on me throughout our marriage.
He is, I'm not sure you know more about that case where what the reason why she would havehad him killed, it didn't really have much to do with the cheating.
(54:29):
It had to do with the business aspect, right?
Yeah, well apparently he had mob ties, so everything was in her name.
So the whole business was in her name, but they had divorced and he had a fiancee he wouldput up in an apartment and who he was, you know, sort of, it's so mob like, right?
Right.
All the girlfriends put up in the apartments.
And so apparently he was getting into drugs and drug trafficking and people speculate thatshe was afraid that he was going to ruin their whole business situation.
(54:57):
And then that both of them agreed to get remarried.
I don't know.
This is not known to each other, I don't think, but both of them were motivated by seizingcontrol of the business.
So they got remarried in Las Vegas within the same weekend that he was killed.
And ah that was strictly, I think, to protect her interests in the business.
(55:19):
And he was trying to protect his interests.
then she...
But she gets to be next of kin.
So everything goes completely over to her power.
so she got off.
She got off.
And that's the kind of wink at the camera about essentially manipulating a jury.
it's, they're an interesting family.
(55:40):
Like you can see like young Mrs.
Bennett, the grandmother was like a good looking woman, charity in her youth.
Like I know she's got that jaw thing, but like she's, she was an attractive.
attractive young woman.
Parrish was a cute kid.
Ella was a gorgeous child.
They're an interesting kind of like good looking family.
(56:02):
a lot, I've seen a lot of commentary on the grandmother being a psychopath.
then, I mean, some people think that Charity has something going on.
mean, well, clearly she has something going on.
She's,
been married multiple times.
I'm not saying that people that get married multiple times or have mental illness, but alot of issues going on.
(56:27):
But despite the issues, like with the drugs or the multiple relationships with bad guys,highly intelligent, you see her in the documentary and she's like leading like some sort
of a class.
Yes, she her master's in education.
And yeah, she was great.
I thought she was really great.
And she was helping those women.
Yeah.
And then even in the Piers Morgan interview thing, had Piers interviewing him.
(56:51):
They had those two behavioral analysts who were analyzing Paris.
And then she was listening in and commenting.
Right.
And she looks great in that.
I think that's a newer.
It was a more recent one from the documentary when it was done.
Okay.
looks great and she seems like she's made progress in her, what am I going to do whenParis gets out if he gets out?
(57:12):
Because she admits in that series or that show with Piers Morgan that she is nowconsidering moving her and her son where Paris could not find them.
Yeah, and she had never been considering that.
She wasn't sure before.
So it sounds like she's, it's dawning on her.
(57:34):
I'm like, babe.
Think so.
I don't have any confirmation of this, but I saw a somewhat recent within the last fewyears that you can't find her now.
Okay.
she has, she has essentially done it.
The thing is, is, I agree with a lot of the, I guess, Reddit community that, that I, whenI've gotten in and read some comments that, that, you know, Paris,
(58:04):
would absolutely, if not kill Charity, kill his little brother that she had after Pariswas incarcerated.
Phoenix, the little boy.
Yeah, Paris' little brother.
That the dumbest fucking thing she could have done is let Paris know that she had a baby.
And then also encourage a relationship between Paris and this little boy who has spoken tohim.
(58:30):
On the phone, Paris would write letters to him.
I don't know if she ever showed Phoenix these letters, but Paris is really already fromprison sort of ingratiating himself into this little boy's life, which again, it feels
manipulative and God, it's just very dangerous.
So here's my thing.
(58:51):
Yeah.
All right.
So they say with, like, say you have an older psychopath.
This happens a lot in forensic work with people who are released from prison.
I think in some ways, the best you can hope for where the die has been cast and someone isolder is that you're managing it.
You're not curing it.
Right.
You're basically, and usually the way you manage it is you
(59:14):
you work with that person and you say, it's in your best interests if you want to live alife outside of prison and, you know, have a girlfriend potentially, you know, any kind of
normative life that you don't do these behaviors.
So let's work on that.
And it's very much about managing.
It's not there.
There's not a cure.
(59:35):
So this is my problem with that analysis.
I'm so naive.
Like, I'm glad I don't work in a forensic setting because I'd probably get more.
I have sociopaths who, psychopaths who tricked me into thinking they were better.
But like I am, I'm so naive.
But this is what I think though really, is like, if you're a psychopath, right?
It was in his best interests as a child to kill his sister who was his competition.
(01:00:01):
If he wanted his mother's love and he wanted to be the only kid, that makes total sense tome in terms of why he did that.
With all these pressures, total chaos.
I think there might have been something sexual between him and his sister, just watchingthose early videos of him with her and the way he was touching her.
I just felt something like, are his wires crossed about their relationship?
(01:00:24):
Is there something?
I don't know.
Well, you can see there's a lot of hostility that grew in the later videos where she'slike, you know, there's that when she's a teeny tiny baby and just sort of like, you know,
just this immobile mushy thing and he's fine with her.
Then you see when she's mobile that he becomes very rough with her.
(01:00:46):
He's like screaming in her face.
He's like grabbing her head and moving it side to side.
uh He's showing aggression.
like touching closely, all body, know, like bodies touching.
And I, that to me was like, okay, that's interesting, you know?
I don't know.
(01:01:07):
This is where I wonder though with what you're saying is once puberty hit, it's likethat's when shit really fucking hit the fan because you've got like this massive influx of
testosterone, you have sexual arousal starting to crop up and easy access to onlinepornography.
And all of that together was a recipe for disaster.
(01:01:32):
And then the comment, I'm sorry, I wanna bring this up.
Yeah.
In the documentary, there's that weird moment.
He's little in it.
He's probably like seven or eight years old.
And he's like pacing around the kitchen and he's asking Charity, his mom, to what's a wordshe doesn't like.
And she's busy washing the baby, right, in the sink.
(01:01:52):
And she's like, I don't know.
And he goes, what about a sentence that you don't like?
And you can see the little genius kind of thinking about language and all that kind ofstuff.
And she's like, I don't know, And he goes,
What about kill charity's children?
And then she like shuts the thing off, the video.
Paris.
(01:02:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, like it's interesting.
gonna kill you.
In this one he's like has the baby.
Yeah, and he's telling her, I'm going to kill you, which was foreshadow.
man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is the point that though I was making is like, I don't really know if thosedoctors are right because I don't know that his, doesn't need his mother in the same way
(01:02:37):
as he did as a kid.
Like would that be the object of his aggression anymore?
I don't know.
Like he seems singularly focused on getting out and you know, he wouldn't take.
any of the tests to test for like the warrior gene or any of the brain scans.
He wouldn't do that because he's afraid it's going to impact his parole.
(01:02:58):
So he's playing a good game.
I mean, I would too.
I'd be like, I want out of here.
But so I don't really know if she's in danger anymore.
mean, in the right circumstances, I think he would do it again.
I don't know that the right circumstances are his family.
Like I could imagine if he got out, got a friend and that friend, you know, and him werereally close.
(01:03:19):
And then that friend,
went and became friends with someone else or a girl broke up with him or something, thenmaybe.
I just don't know if that's the context in which he would act out anymore, but I guessthere's enough of a danger to warn her off of it.
I think so.
This is where, and again, I don't know, and we'll never know the exact reason why he didwhat he did.
(01:03:43):
I don't know that Charity herself is in danger.
I do think that the little one is in danger.
And here's the thing.
First of all, he read Infinite Jest, which means he has patience.
He read it multiple times, right?
He knows how to play the long game.
(01:04:07):
There is a world in which I could see him playing the long game, hunting, finding out who,where Phoenix is, finding out Phoenix's new name and seeing if he could get away with
killing him.
And seeing if he could get away with doing it not getting caught because Paris is very, ifnothing else, he's incredibly arrogant.
(01:04:31):
He thinks he's smarter than everyone else.
And I could see him thinking,
well, I'll play the long game.
When Charity's defenses are down, when enough time has passed that she thinks she's okay,when she thinks Phoenix is okay, and then he just makes it look like something else, but
(01:04:54):
he knows that deep down Charity will be wondering if it was Paris who is now out ofprison.
And of course on parole, right?
So you would have to be past a certain...
He'd have to, but he's, I could see him doing something, but also we just, because he wasincarcerated at such an early age, we don't know if this is, if this is a homicidal, like
(01:05:16):
tendency, like a drive to kill, or if this was just a case of wanting to deeply hurt hismother.
Yeah, and being an impulsive kid.
Yeah, like, like, but I mean, he's, he's clearly a psychopath and he, and he delights intormenting and he spent a lot of time tormenting her up to this point.
(01:05:39):
there's also just with a lot of psychopaths, I think there is like an, an odd nihilisticbent where he might just decide to kill Phoenix and just go right the fuck back to prison.
Cause he spent most of his life there anyway, you know?
So that's, that's the thing too.
But I do wanna say that I think it's incredibly hopeful that there is this belief in placeby this guy that wrote the book, that there's a way to prevent this.
(01:06:10):
And if we screamed for it, like you scream for anything, for genetic testing, even whenyou know the odds are unlikely that you carry such and such gene.
A lot of times, when I was pregnant with the boys, I went ahead and submitted to a...
huge thing of genetic testing.
Because you never know.
(01:06:31):
And you want to be prepared.
And so if we could treat like the psychopathy gene the same way that we treat screeningfor autism, it doesn't mean that if your kid has a psychopath gene that he's going to
become like Brian Coburger.
It just means that you have a shot at making sure that, like safeguarding him in a way.
(01:06:55):
That's the thing with the, if the Kobergers had known that their son had this in place,the way that they would have gone about helping him in these situations where he was just
relentlessly, ruthlessly bullied, that the, know, I know his dad took him to get boxinglessons, thought it would help him get in shape.
I mean, all of that works for a normal person, right?
(01:07:18):
For a normal kid.
But in Brian's case, clearly he needed something more in addition to, you know,
getting in shape and learning how to defend himself.
He needed something more than that.
And maybe had they known, hey, know, he has a, he may have a propensity towards reallysevere antisocial behavior in the future.
(01:07:38):
Here are some things you can do.
They probably would have done it.
seem like good parents to his sisters.
Like they seem all right.
I don't know.
This is the thing about like self-reporting.
There's somebody, oh who was this?
I can't remember who it was.
It was somebody who behaviorist, but also an evolutionary biologist person.
(01:07:59):
But they were saying like, I don't believe a single thing people tell me about themselves.
I look at their behavior.
And I think that we can be delude ourselves and other people really easily withself-reporting.
can hide a lot.
about what's going on inside of ourselves.
So the swabbing and the looking at the actual brain functioning is useful in that you seethe vulnerabilities.
(01:08:21):
You see how someone with that brain would do this thing.
And you don't have to get concerned so much with, they're drawing pictures of monsters andthey're thinking about this torturing women or whatever.
It's like you look at the brain and you say, well, this person has a vulnerability, solet's make sure that we do these interventions so that we shape them in a direction that's
pro-social.
(01:08:41):
You want to hear this interesting part?
I don't want to take too much time, but this is so freaking cool.
Okay.
So he's also doing research looking at violence in neighborhoods and countries around theworld.
so I'll just read what he says.
Oh no, my thing.
want it to be smaller.
This note thing opens up and blocks my whole screen.
(01:09:02):
Okay.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Oh, here we go.
You're doing research looking at violence in neighborhoods and countries around the world.
Can you describe it for me?
My colleagues and I are putting together large grants to study the impact of living indifferent neighborhoods and of being in the military on the interaction between genes and
brain imaging and all sorts of outcomes.
We've been putting together proposals to study the hot spots around the world, including,this is a hot issue, but I'm going to say it anyway, including, this is what he said.
(01:09:30):
Palestine, North Africa, Europe, and a couple of places in the United States to see theeffect of trauma, abuse, micro traumas, and bullying over the long haul on individuals and
transgenerationality in part of society in these hot spots.
So they're looking at transgenerationality.
We want to answer the question, does the effect of an early positive environment reallyovercome genetics?
(01:09:56):
We look at the positive and negative outcomes.
For example, we're now studying the brains and genetics of people who've committedsuicide.
And we know of generals and colonels for whom combat war actually helped them, a kind ofpost-traumatic growth instead of depression.
And we look at their brains to see how they're different.
(01:10:17):
There are people undergoing tremendous stressors in hot spots like the West Bank and NorthAfrica.
This is like 2014, I think.
who for some reason come out smelling like a rose.
And so the idea that how much of this is genetic and how much is early environment, someof it is taking people who are older and who've been through it.
Sorry, this is him speaking.
(01:10:38):
Also, if you have a population in one area or neighborhood with constant violence and yougo a mile away where it hasn't been that way, you can see that they have the same kind of
age, ethnic, educational pattern without the violence.
Then you can see how the behaviors are affected or how the genetics are different.
You can look for epigenetic markers or tags associated with changes in gene expressionthat have to do with traits that jump generations.
(01:11:07):
The more new research that comes out, the more it seems that this epigenetic jumping mayhappen in areas of the brain like the orbital cortex that are connected to social
behavior.
Those are exactly the ones that have to do with psychopathy, with violence and antisocialbehavior.
So the social brain is modifiable.
And for someone who has been in a war zone or bad neighborhood, these traits can startconcentrating and you can see a buildup of a kind of warrior culture, which is so
(01:11:36):
interesting.
And then he says, the only way you can urge action is by showing something scientifically.
We know warrior cultures don't last.
They end up beating themselves up.
So if you can show that the result of making a culture of violence in an area of a city orin a city, country or government is that they're going to kill themselves because they are
(01:11:57):
encouraging a psychopathic brain pattern to develop and allowing a warrior culture to takeroot and reproduce, then people will take notice.
Of course, we're not going to make up that data.
It's got to come out that way.
If it doesn't, then well, flame on.
What else are you going to say?
But the idea of showing why we must reduce the violence of war and stop poor parenting,well, that's my real motivation for attacking it this way.
(01:12:24):
So cool, right?
Like, basically, if we don't address this, we're going to get a really violent culturewith a bunch of psychopaths, like, ruling it.
You know I mean?
And a large population of psychopaths.
So culturally, it would benefit us to work on parenting, skills in parenting, and on nothaving wars.
(01:12:44):
and on dealing with violence.
It reminds me of that documentary that your mom recommended that I watch uh where like apsychopathic fucking killer was thrilled to be in Afghanistan.
know, it was easy to write things off as, well, look, this guy was going to attack us.
(01:13:05):
And what he was doing was scalping these, these guys oh and like stealing trophies.
I forgot the name of the documentary, but it was a good one.
But it's like, of course you're going to find psychopaths right there, in real gung-ho tokeep.
out there your companies, leading in the military.
(01:13:27):
Running your country.
What was other thing?
Like uh CEOs running, yeah, it's,
brain surgery.
But like, here's the thing, you kind of want that person with all the confidence in theworld that sees themselves as being like a god operating on your brain, not somebody
(01:13:49):
that's nervous, not somebody that has any kind of self-doubt.
You want someone that thinks they are the bee's nays fucking doing major surgery.
And they tend to be, like not all of them, but many of them tend to be psychopaths.
Yeah, mean, Paris looks like he has a very steady hand.
Yeah, he does.
I'm sure he does.
Sure he does.
Wow.
(01:14:10):
Well, anyway, I guess that wraps it up, guys.
Thanks for joining us on this amazing journey of discussing the psychopathic brain andParis Lee Bennett, the unnamed.
Well, we don't know anything about the Lyman case, about that child, but it reminded me ofParis.
Yeah, and that's a great suggestion because I knew nothing about Paris really before westarted this research this week.
(01:14:34):
he's the perfect case for studying.
If you want to see psychopath behavior, watch the Piers Morgan episode.
it's you can find it on YouTube.
It's you just have to kind of it's like part one, part two.
Each part is like about five minutes long.
So there's like many parts, but it is absolutely worth watching.
So much food for thought.
(01:14:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, gang.
Well, thank you for joining us.
And uh please follow us on Instagram at Secret Passage podcast.
Follow us on X at Secret Pass Pod.
please subscribe to our Patreon where we have never before seen like content.
(01:15:16):
We delve further into subjects.
You can email us.
Please leave us a five star review and always let us know episodes you'd like us to do.
If you have anything to add to the conversation, please do.
Cause we're trying to build a community here where we're also learning more information.
(01:15:38):
We love it when people have some inside info about places, people, other points of view,et cetera.
It's pretty awesome.
But we will see you next week.
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