Family Annihilators and the Tragic Case of Emily Long

In our season finale episode we explore the shocking case of Emily Long, a New Hampshire mother who killed her husband, two of her children, and herself in August 2025.

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Secret Passage Podcast is hosted by Dana Vespoli and Shannon Rogers

Producer: Tim Rogers

Editor: Mitch Silver

Episode Transcript

(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 to the Secret Passage podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vispoli, and with me, as always, the extraordinary Shannon Rogers.
Hello everybody!
I love these adjectives!
I'm inspired by Brett, but I've got to come up with like the weird ones.

(00:59):
Yeah, he says inimitable.
You said that last time.
Yeah.
He said that one, like, like he'll also do funny ones, like, like capacious, you know, I'mlike, I guess she's capacious.
Sure.
She's capacious.
You know, it's funny.
It is our last episode of the summer season before we go on a short break.

(01:21):
If you hear some barking, is Bruno.
Those are Pucci's little feetsies along the floor.
But yes.
We are gonna be going on a short break and then we'll be back for spooky season, fall, myfavorite time of year and my birthday month.
This month is my birthday month.

(01:42):
But yeah, we are, what we're discussing today, well, there's a very specific case that wefelt compelled to talk about, cause it's all over the news and it's blowing people's
minds, so to speak.
I know.
Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's baffling, but it also brings up uh a largerconversation point that Shannon and I have been talking about since we first had the idea

(02:14):
of even doing a podcast.
Um, and that is the subject of family annihilators and the unusual it's, less common, caseof female family annihilators and
Recently, Emily Long, a uh mother from New Hampshire, killed her entire family, two of herthree children, her husband and then herself uh in August.

(02:44):
But before we get to that heavy ass topic, Shannon, did you happen down any interestingsecret passages this past week?
Tim came home yesterday with this thing he found in a book.
We find the best thing in books, like things in books like letters and photos and it's myfavorite thing to collect them.

(03:06):
And he opened a book and he opened this just regular printer paper and on it, it was likethis Mac early, early print off of a Mac screen where there was this, I guess it was a
program for Macs way back in the day.
And it was like pornography.

(03:26):
And it was like, said something like Matt, I forget what the name of it was, but it had awoman just like, like a digital image of a woman, not like, mean, like, you know, dot
matrix image of a woman naked like this.
And it was like, would you like to touch me?
And it's all yes, no.
And you could like push yes or no.
And it was like a game or something you could play.
Oh, wow.
I know.
I wanted to, didn't do any research about the game, but it was pretty cool to see what oldporn looked like.

(03:54):
It was so tasteful.
She had like a normal body.
I mean, she was a drawing basically, but it was just a little time capsule.
I will go through books of mine.
I have books going back to like my freshman year of college and I'll see like, I'll flipthrough and I'll see notes that I've written in the margins.

(04:14):
I'll see like sticky notes of like stuff.
And then I will see the weird things that I've used as bookmarks.
Like a canceled check, a receipt.
I'll like open up the receipt and be like, what?
This is a receipt from
from 101 Coffee Shop, which no longer exists, from 2003, used as a...

(04:42):
So it's funny the things that you've, shit.
When I think about books I've donated, I'm like, what?
I hope I didn't leave anything weird in there.
We found money once, a card from a grandma to a granddaughter and it was, had a check init that she never cashed.
And I wanted to find her and I looked them up and I think I did find them, but I didn't doanything with it because it's weird.

(05:05):
Was it like super old too?
maybe it's already...
It's probably past the point that you could even...
I think that grandma's dead.
I saw it in a picture.
If it's really grandma's
Yeah, yeah here this is from your grandma who passed you never cashed the check
How are you?
What was your secret passage?
Do you have one?

(05:25):
Yes, I do.
Maybe this is a topic that we should save for our Patreon episode.
This topic.
I've always got other secret passages, but this particular one is one that we can savebecause it's another one that has everybody just flummoxed.

(05:45):
oh
So another secret passage that I have happened, there's so many like little weird things.
One is my love of Sabrina Carpenter, which just feels strange because I'm gonna be 53 in afew weeks and her music is so poppy and bubblegum, but I just love her so much.

(06:07):
I've been listening to her latest album called Man's Best Friend.
Mm-hmm.
The best driving music, Sabrina Carpenter is just the best driving music.
It's so like evocative.
It makes me nostalgic.
There's a lot of her music has a very eighties pop sound to it.
It's just a, yeah, it's the opposite of listening to Radiohead.

(06:33):
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause like Pink Floyd or like Radiohead or even the Pixies for me.
Yeah, this is hard for me.
um
Oh shit, like it puts me like in a very intense like head space.
And Sabrina Carpenter, just like her music coupled with Southern California, blue sky,palm trees, sunshine and all that.

(06:59):
It's just like so, I don't know, I love her.
Hmm.
It's funny, because the twins, so, Adam's getting himself to and from school and all histhings, because he's older now.
So it's me with the twins and they're 15.
And we get in the car and I don't know why I'm more self-conscious about my musical tastewith Adam, because he's become that like, he likes good music.

(07:26):
Yeah.
And I remember that I just had ah like a playlist on.
And there was some music, because we liked a lot of the same music.
He has a uh big kind of like, yeah, like he loves the Pixies, he loves Smashing Pumpkins,that.
And then a Sabrina Carpenter song popped up when I was driving with him.

(07:47):
He was like, he's like listening to it.
And I'm like.
I like Sabrina Carpenter.
And he's like, I like the song.
I get it.
I get it.
And then he revealed like, he goes, no, like I have it.
I have like a whole playlist that is, uh what did he call it?

(08:09):
Something, something like, uh, teen girl music.
oh So he has like Lady Gaga on there and he goes, I have like a, he goes, I'm to add thisto that.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
And then with the twins, it's totally different.
I'm like, hey guys, we're going to listen to Sabrina Carpenter.
And they're like, OK.
They don't care.
They're like, OK.
That reminds me of when we were all living at Jet the Jackie apartments.

(08:34):
Yeah.
In like 19...
was it 1999 or 2000?
1999 or 1998?
Okay.
Remember my secret?
My big secret was...
Music?
Alanis Morissette.
You like Alanis Morissette?
I liked her back.
I do.
There's a song that I really like that she sings that's so amazing.

(08:55):
like, you know, that she, this song called You're Uninvited.
So good.
It's a pretty epic song and it was an anthem at Mitchell Brothers for dancers.
You'd get like good dancers, like dancing really well to like a song like that.
You better be a good dancer.
You know what I mean?

(09:16):
Because it's very, it's like very, it builds and it builds and it builds.
And if you're just like shaking your ass, it doesn't work.
So we get like these, these kind of ballet-ish strippers.
Yeah.
That's cool.
But all that to say that I am a big Sabrina Carpenter fan.
just love her new album and I was listening to it, driving back home.

(09:38):
uh yeah, the twins, uh they're gonna listen to it when I pick them up.
Maybe I'll try it.
I've been hesitant.
I really think she's beautiful.
think she's really pretty.
Yeah.
There's this, you would love her on TikTok.
She goes by DJ Hungry Human.

(10:00):
I love her.
Like I would love to be friends with her.
She's so fucking funny.
And her kind of takes on things are hysterical.
And she refers to Sabrina Carpenter as uh sexed up Polly Pocket.
And I'm like, accurate.
She's like five feet tall and looks like Skipper.

(10:22):
you know, like from the Barbies.
she's, you know, she's this kind of, she's very adorable, you know?
You just kind of want to pick her up with one hand and like, pat her hair.
I want to brush her hair.
want to put her in my pocket, pull her out, brush her hair, like put makeup on her, sether down and go, entertain me, entertain me, sing, sing, Sabrina.

(10:46):
She's adorable.
But that's it, not anything crazy, just enjoying Sabrina Carpenter's music.
The last adorable thing that's about to happen for the next hour and a half.
Yes.
So please everyone hold tight to that thought of Sabrina Carpenter singing.
um We are going to talk about family annihilators, but mainly, mainly we are talking aboutEmily Long.

(11:16):
Yeah.
sorry, I have a correction from last time.
Okay.
I misspoke.
I watched a very old documentary and did not factor in that the documentary was only a fewyears after Columbine.
So based on that documentary, I said that Dylan Klebold's mom and Brooks Brown's parentsstill lived in um Columbine, but they did not.

(11:37):
They do not.
They moved away.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was gonna say at the very least, think Brooks Brown's parents stayed so he couldfinish high school.
But he didn't have much further to go with that.
So those of you who are not familiar with the case of Emily Long, I'm going to give you auh quick summary.

(12:02):
So this story uh is out of Madbury, New Hampshire.
Emily Long,
34 year old mother was involved in a devastating murder suicide that claimed the lives ofher husband and two young children.
Authorities believe she shot her family before turning the gun on herself, leaving behinda three year old toddler, a little boy who was unharmed.

(12:28):
This case has layers, including the fact that her husband was battling with brain cancer,uh terminal brain cancer.
There's also allegations that Emily embezzled over $600,000 from her job at a localrestaurant chain.
Wingets.
Wingets.

(12:51):
And so that's a summary.
A few details about the family.
Emily Long is 34, married to Ryan Long, who was 48.
uh Three children that they had, Parker, eight years old, Ryan, who's a girl.
named after her father, six years old and a three year old boy uh whose name is not beingreleased for privacy reasons.

(13:18):
The husband was, um as I said, fighting terminal brain cancer.
And Emily had a social media presence where she was um sharing these struggles of...
I'm like talking endlessly about her problems.

(13:38):
Yes.
Yeah.
You could almost say she was pontificating about her problems, if that's possible.
You said it in such a kind way, but I watched a bunch of the videos last night and I wasjust like, oh, it's exhausting.
So much to say about them.
So the incident happened on August 18th of this year, 2025.
The police responded to the family's home on, don't, Moharamet Drive, if I pronounced thatcorrectly.

(14:06):
Let me know anybody that knows ah that area of New Hampshire.
Moharamet Drive.
Okay.
There was a call about multiple deaths.
They found four bodies, Emily, Ryan, Parker, and young Ryan, all from gunshot wounds.
The toddler was safe and is now with relatives.
I'm not clear on if that three-year-old was wandering around the house or if he wasasleep.

(14:34):
Hoping that he was just asleep and had no idea.
So the autopsy findings are that Ryan Long died from multiple gunshot wounds.
The two kids, each from single gunshots and Emily from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

(14:55):
No motive has been officially confirmed, but sources point to family stresses, includingRyan's illness.
And then some additional context.
uh Just days before on August 11th, Emily was accused of stealing hundreds of thousandsfrom her employer, Wing-It's.
She was an operations manager there.

(15:16):
This embezzlement allegedly happened over several years and was reported to police.
So we've got the added
pressure of financial problems, looming financial problems.
And that was like a week before.
Yes.
And so there's some speculation that these factors might have contributed.

(15:40):
They were seen as a normal family.
Ryan was, was he a software engineer or a teacher?
I'm confused.
a school psychologist.
Okay, yeah, have no idea why this is saying he was a software engineer.
Okay, school psychologist, which I doubt was very lucrative.
Emily worked in restaurant operations.

(16:00):
That can pay well.
I mean, can pay not supremely well, but, you know, it seems like that company was verysuccessful, you know, because she was able to embezzle 600,000 and they didn't go under.
So it seems like they have, it was quite, you know, a success.
was a chain, yeah.
yeah, it's interesting because I'm hearing that, I mean, aside from the fact that it'shard to know like what's just the media trying to dress up for clicks, know, like they

(16:30):
seemed like they had everything, you know, uh the seemingly perfect family.
And I'm like, did people actually think that or is that just like the headline so thatlike people are like, they.
They were rich, they were doing great.
And then she went crazy.
And I'm like, rarely is it ever that cut and dry.

(16:50):
Like clearly there were issues.
I mean, aside from the husband's terminal brain cancer, the costs of dealing with that.
She a little bit reminds me of, um what's her face?
The one who drank and crashed the van with all the kids in it.

(17:10):
Wasn't she also an operations person?
think, or something.
was, so I think that the-
did really well.
Diane Schuller did really like she first of all, she was the breadwinner.
she aside from the drinking, like aside from this, from the, the, the severe alcoholism,the, that high functioning alcoholism, um, she kind of did everything right.

(17:34):
Do you know what I mean?
She was very self-sacrificing.
Yeah, that's what this person, well, this person doesn't seem self, Emily Long does notseem self sacrificed.
But she seems very like Diane on the outside.
even in her testimonial videos that she's making, you just do not detect any emotion.

(17:55):
she's, even though she's this horrible thing's happening to her and she's describing howhorrible it is, the face she presents to the world looks okay.
Like she looked okay.
She kind of, bet she's hyper functional in her life.
It seemed like their house was amazing.
I saw a photo of it.
The interior of their house was gorgeous.

(18:16):
And so I think they do look like the perfect family.
The guy, her boss apparently loved her kids and was very, like felt very close to them.
He trusted her wholeheartedly.
She does remind me of one of those people that have a lot going on inside, like the duck,you know, going across the water with their legs.
um

(18:36):
yeah.
So, so it's, but Diane Schuller came to mind because of that, hyper independence almost orsomething or hyper uh competence.
Yeah.
Right.
And hers, her secret was her alcoholism, whereas, uh, I mean, in denial about heralcoholism, but Emily's secret was all that money.

(18:57):
Yeah.
Some things I'm, and again, there's no confirmation, but you know, cause again, you couldalmost have sympathy in a way.
At first I thought, the month, the embezzling money is because of medical bills.
And it's like, no, this was going on long before his diagnosis.
I wonder if the birth of the third kid, if she had a shopping addiction or something likethat, or keeping up with people addiction.

(19:22):
You mentioned the shopping thing this morning.
That did not even cross my mind.
That was what someone had, I don't know if it was like they opined or if there was someconfirmation of it, but at the very least it's speculation.
Like where did the money go?
Cause I don't think it was present in her.

(19:43):
The house was huge.
Like from the photo looked huge and well-kept, know, like they probably had help.
For sure.
And the other part I was going to mention is, oh yeah, so that I guess the embezzlingstarted in 2023 and that must have been, so if they caught it in 2025, it was like after
the birth of her last child.
And I wonder if just the financial burden or the like kicked it off.

(20:07):
I don't know.
I was wondering what would precipitate.
you know, her starting to embezzle because he didn't have his diagnosis then.
Right, right.
Or, and it's a question too of was she in charge of finances?
Like was she handling all the money where this, I mean, it had to have been because I feellike it's escaping, it escaped the husband's notice, I think.

(20:33):
I'm not sure if he, well, did he know?
I don't think so.
guess he's like a super, people loved him at the school.
I wonder about their relationship.
I mean, I don't know.
Did he know?
I don't know.
Yeah.
If he did, he was carrying it with him, you know.
Ooh, yeah, that adds an interesting element.

(20:55):
There's so much we don't know.
Like, if he knew and they got caught, if they decided together that this was somethingthat they would do.
I don't know, but that's really interesting.
It's interesting that she shot him multiple times, but the children each once.
I was like, that seems like anger to me.
Like, you know, yeah, for whatever, don't know, leaving her, getting sick, I don't know.

(21:18):
In her videos, oh, it's so me, me, me, me, me.
And, you know, she was talking about the things she'll miss about her husband and what shewould miss about him is the things he was doing for her.
know, like, when I come home at the end of the day, just, some weird stuff always happensto me, you know, I just.

(21:39):
And I tell him the stories and then he makes fun of me and laughs and me, me, me, me, me.
There's this interesting quote from one of them.
So the control piece, like how control is often a piece.
Well, coercive control is often a piece that is evident in family with familyannihilators.
It's like the thing with male family annihilators, but with female family annihilators,they say that they're motivated by different things.

(22:03):
But with her, you can just hear the control stuff.
So she said,
It's hard, it's just hard to have this life and to have absolutely nothing in my control.
And she mentions control a bunch of other times.
em She's obviously, know, we all, mean, anxiety makes us all want to have a controlagenda.

(22:23):
She said, I'm not ready to be everything for everyone all at once.
This was supposed to be my husband's part.
So he was supposed to be there, right?
You can hear the court sort of like disappointment, grievance.
And she kept.
fish.
referring to her situation as such a bummer, which I thought was so-

(22:44):
Cancer is a bummer, I guess.
Like maybe a little more serious than that.
She has that classic psychopath or narcissist, like Chris Watts, right?
I was bawling my eyes out.
Is him describing what was happening for him when he, you know, but he's not, it doesn'thave any emotional weight.

(23:07):
You don't feel like he's feeling it.
He's describing it.
She does the same thing.
There's no, like, there's hardly any tears ever.
She says in one video that she was crying.
but she was crying and she was kind of wiping her eyes, but I didn't see any tears.
Maybe there are videos where she's crying, but she has a lot of describing about how hardit is for her and how not ready she is for it.

(23:31):
Nothing like I love my husband so much.
gonna, you I don't listen to all of them, but it's very self-centered, very much abouther, very much about not having control.
So that all really tracks in terms of motivation, right?
Like the control, what does she have control over?

(23:51):
know, pushing a reset button.
She even says that in one of her videos.
You were talking yesterday and I was like, it almost feels like when people do this, it'slike a video game.
Like they're hitting the reset button.
Like they're like, this didn't work out.
Or like when you did Choose Your Own Adventures and you would read and you would get tothis terrible end and you're like, and you go back and you do it over.

(24:12):
It almost feels like that.
And she says something like that.
Like, this can't be my reality.
I wish I could just push a button and start over, something like that.
oh So those are sort of the signs in all of her videos.
That's really interesting because like you had said, men make up 90 % of familyannihilators, which leaves, of course, like this really small percentage of women that

(24:40):
actually do this.
Just why this case stood out.
I mean, it's brand new.
We're still learning stuff as it comes out.
One thing that has perplexed a lot of people,
is the fact that she didn't kill the three-year-old.
And I've heard a few different theories.
One is that she ran out of ammunition and that if there was gonna be one more bullet, shewas going to save it for herself to make sure she wasn't gonna fucking stick around.

(25:09):
So ah that it was, another theory is that she was just so kind of out of it at this point.
Presumably she's never killed anybody before.
So it's just that overwhelming feeling of, know, I just shot these two of my children andmy husband.

(25:31):
I gotta go, you know, not even thinking like that.
She, someone else said, maybe she thought that she had killed the three year old.
Cause we don't know where people were in the house when this happened.
So it could be the reason why your husband sustained so many gunshots is because he was

(25:52):
Could be that she's not adept with guns.
And so she's like, ah you know, and listing off these shots.
And then finally, you know, kind of is able to get some control and like narrow it down.
Maybe he was coming towards her like, what are you doing?
Because it's not stated, was he shot the front of the head, back of the head, in thechest, like where on his person?

(26:16):
And that the little kids were easier because maybe they were asleep.
So she was able to get off a single shot each.
So, I mean, there's still things we don't know about that, but it's interesting becausethis particular case kind of uh mirrors to some degree the candies, Jonathan candy and his

(26:42):
wife in Oklahoma, which happened.
Let see.
When did that happen?
I think it was this year.
There's not a lot of like info about that.
You know, let me say a little bit about the different motivations between men and women.
Okay.
So for male family annihilators, like they're like 90 % of the perpetrators tends to becontrol and power.

(27:09):
So coercive control is often a part of their, um, the situation, the relationshipsituation.
If you look at it, sometimes it's revenge.
like punishing.
So that happens a lot with custody cases and stuff like that kind of thing.
uh Altruistic delusions, like I'm saving my family from the coming apocalypse.

(27:32):
And then financial stress.
So, and the guys actually often exhibit narcissistic personality disorder, antisocialpersonality disorder or borderline personality.
They tend to externalize blame, viewing themselves as victims of circumstances orbetrayal, probably.
may have a history of domestic violence.

(27:53):
So with women, the motives tend to be different, which I don't, not all, you know, it'snot all one, or not a monolith.
They're not, they're not a monolith.
So it's usually like altruistic or psychotic motives.
So motivated by like delusional or altruistic beliefs, it's often tied to mental illnessand they believe they're protecting their children from harm and.

(28:19):
Sometimes it's linked to their maternal role, which I thought was interesting.
So it might be like distorted perceptions of their role as caregiver.
So seeing death as like a mercy to their kid.
So it's like Munchausen by proxy kind of thing.
And then emotional distress.
So overwhelming despair, depression, postpartum psychosis.

(28:40):
So it's interesting because they tend to be impulsive, but depressive.
which is just interesting.
It's linked more to like depression, postpartum psychosis, less likely to havenarcissistic or anti-social traits when you compare them to males.
And they tend to internalize the blame and seeing themselves as failures.

(29:04):
So it's interesting.
I mean, it just tracks, right, with what we know about our socialization as men and women,you know?
Sure.
I mean, that makes sense in the case of like Andrea Yates, had, you she was having likereligious psychotic episodes, struggling with mental illness, struggling with postpartum
and believed that she had to save her children's souls by drowning them all.

(29:26):
So like you see that, I see that a little bit also with John List, who the, in 1971 hadkilled his wife, his children and his own mother in New Jersey.
and believed that he had to kill them, but he couldn't kill himself because suicide is asin.

(29:50):
But he killed them.
His wife had, I they were having mounting financial problems.
His wife was dealing with this weird kind of mental shit from having syphilis for so longthat she kept secret and was an alcoholic and like all of these things.
He was diagnosed with OCD though.

(30:10):
He seemed like he was like this woman to me, like that he was pushing the eject button.
He's like, get me out of here.
I want to start over.
I mean, she killed herself.
she didn't.
for her, maybe that was a starting over.
But if it had that sort of vibe of functional, everything looks on the outside, has a job.

(30:32):
And then, so what contributed to that one, did they To John Liz?
Yeah.
It was a few things.
Some of it was severe, severe financial problems.
He had lost his job, was funneling money from his mother's account to cover the mortgage.

(30:52):
He was encouraging his kids to get jobs and saying, know, this is to help you guys learnfinancial literacy and maturity and discipline.
He was actually hoping that they would be able to help contribute, but it was just, was,was too much.
And his wife had, this isn't to shame the victim.

(31:16):
These, these are just what, what, what the information that's presented that she had ohlied to him that she was pregnant and that they needed to get married, told him that they
needed to get married.
She wanted to get married in this other state, but it's a state that didn't requiretesting for syphilis, which she had untreated.
got married to him, they had their kids, her syphilis was now at a point where it wasaffecting her thinking.

(31:43):
She was drinking and drinking and drinking, becoming very reclusive and verbally abusiveand humiliating John in front of their friends about his bad sexual prowess and comparing
it to her first husband, who I guess was better.
And who also had syphilis maybe.
Yeah, probably maybe who gave her the fucking syphilis, which is weird.

(32:04):
I'm like, why are you?
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not, don't know the details of syphilis.
I just knew that I don't think John List had it.
So maybe at the point that they got together, she wasn't contagious anymore, but she neverdisclosed that she had it, you know?
So, and then, things got to a point where he was like, all right.

(32:30):
Fuck this.
The way he went about it was crazy.
he, this is his OCD at work.
He'd already planned everything out.
He ah went to the bank, closed out his mother's account, set notes or alerted the schoolsand the kids various jobs that they were going to be going out of town to be with their um

(32:57):
ailing grandmother.
I think on the mother's side.
She wasn't ailing.
She was supposed to actually come visit them for a trip and then something got in the wayand she couldn't, the mother's mom.
So that fucking saved her life because she would have been killed.
Then he went to, uh daughter came home, shot her.

(33:20):
Well, first shot his mother, shot his wife, shot his daughter that came home from school.
shot his other son that came home from school, sat down, had lunch, went to the otherson's school who was having a soccer game, sat and watched the soccer game, took the kid

(33:41):
out to eat, came home, shot him.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
turned the air conditioning at a temperature to preserve the potties, stacked them allneatly in the ballroom.
They had a really big old house in the ballroom, turned on all the lights, turned onreligious music and left.

(34:01):
Got on a train, left town, changed his identity.
This was the seventies where you could do that.
It makes me wonder if this was the seventies, if Emily Long would have just straight upleft and
started a new life somewhere else because you could get away with it then.
And oh yeah, and then he went and got a job like doing accounting type shit in Colorado,got married.

(34:27):
Did he have kids again?
I can't remember.
Got married and then America's Most Wanted happened.
I think it was the first season they aired and someone recognized him and that's how hewas captured.
he kind of, people were like, well, why didn't you kill yourself?
And he's like,
I didn't want to go to hell, it's a sin, but I wanted to save their souls and all of that.

(34:53):
Imagine being his fucking second wife, And it's like, oh, okay.
Yeah, I was thinking maybe you were having an affair uh that would have been preferable tothis.
You killed your whole fucking other family.
uh
No, I know.

(35:13):
I think about this all the time.
Like people in this world are dating people or married to people who have raped people,molested children, killed someone potentially.
It's like, you know, I just listened to a crime junkie episode about this.
It happened to a woman.
But yeah, so like these, it's interesting because he had that accountant, he's accountant,right?

(35:34):
OCD, accountant thing.
She has the operations person vibe.
As a former operations person, I can tell you.
just seems, you know, just like a, like she would go into an interview.
People would trust her with everything.
She seems so sturdy and solid and it's wild looking at her in those videos and seeing thatshe went from that state to just blowing everyone away.

(36:00):
Did you want to say something about the other guy though?
ah Jonathan Candia.
Just that he kept that he another case of a seemingly perfect family killed his wife,killed two of his children, spared the 10 year old.
The 10 year old woke up in the morning to find his family killed.

(36:23):
So he had a fan, I guess a fan on, I'm not sure how big their house was, but wherever hewas his room and like this loud, like one of the swamp coolers or whatever.
drown out the noise and he slept through it.
And so no one knows why he was spared, the 10 year old.
Here's just a quick like report about it.

(36:44):
So this was ah in April of 2024.
So Jonathan Candy, 42, that was the father, killed his wife, 39 year old Lindsay Candy andsons, 18 year old Dylan, 14 year old Ethan and 12 year old Lucas.
And then the 10 year old who's unnamed was spared.

(37:07):
And they don't know what happened.
The husband and wife were having an argument.
So that might've been the inciting incident.
Let's see.
uh Investigators believe the shooting began after an argument between the parents lateSunday night or early Monday morning.
At some point he armed himself with a gun, shot his wife multiple times, killing her.

(37:32):
At that point, he systematically went through the home shooting and killing the children.
Investigators said it's not known why the fourth child was spared or a motive for theshootings to begin with.
Whenever we talk about this stuff, think about how it happens in nature too, like animals,usually for like survival of the species related stuff like resources and if one of the

(37:56):
babies it has, has like an injury, you they'll sort of dedicate resources to the otherones and kick them out of the nest or what.
It just is so similar to me that the behavior in humans, it's seen, a lot of it seems tobe motivated around resources, whether it's like emotional resources or time or money that

(38:17):
leads to these kinds of pressures.
I wonder, I haven't really thought this through, but like, I would wonder if there's athrough line if we looked at every single, aside from the psychotic ones.
like the delusional murders that are kind of altruistic.
I'm thinking like, wow, yeah, is that a thing?
Like where a lot of these do revolve around a resource management issue.

(38:41):
Well, you think about like in, uh shit, Spartan women, I think, taking their children andjumping off a cliff to avoid being raped and murdered by these armies coming in.
And that's honorable, right?
You think that makes sense because it's the degree of urgency and...

(39:06):
It's altruistic.
It's 100%.
Oh, you get it.
It's like, I, this is preferable to yes, raped and murdered by the soldiers.
That makes sense.
In something like Emily Long's case, it's, really, it became an issue of shame, right?

(39:27):
Being shamed.
so narcissistic.
I mean, I have not treated her.
I am not diagnosing her, but she seems quite narcissistic.
Can I read you a few comments?
These are the best.
Yes, yes, yes, comments about her videos.
Yeah.
So these are some YouTube people responding.
I have to admit, and I'm not trying to like dis her, but I really, she evoked, thesepeople evoke, I mean, of course they evoke anger in all of us because they, you know, they

(39:51):
just are a very selfish, narcissistic thing to do, to take your children's land, yourhusband's life.
So I am going to be a little hard on her.
So this one user jlawalker897 says, what a needy, weak, self-indulgent, selfish, entitledwoman.
People nowadays can't handle anything anymore, and everything has to be vlogged, and everysingle thought has to be shared with everyone.

(40:16):
Now the sole surviving child has to bear what she could not.
I thought that was really insightful.
Yeah.
And this other one is like, every single one of her TikToks is all about her.
Even when she said what she'd miss most, she said telling him about my day, not hearingabout his day, WTF.
And then another one is like, watch me brag about my husband.

(40:39):
That was the title of the said in her video.
She's like, watch me brag about my husband.
Then it's like dot, dot, dot proceeds to talk about herself the whole time.
So anyway.
Yeah, that's but that that is the thing.
What what was going to happen?
She was going to face jail time.
Right.
Kids would probably have to go live with one of like her parents, his parents, whatever.

(41:02):
Lose the house.
It's not the end of the fucking world.
But imagine that's the worst fucking thing that could happen to you.
Like your husband is dying of brain cancer.
You have the luxury of being alive.
The time you're gonna do, and look how fast time goes.
But it is, it is about her shame, her embarrassment, her humiliation.

(41:29):
I'd like to add, what did she think was gonna happen with the $600,000?
Like that was gonna go unnoticed?
I know they had a bookkeeper, but yes, I know, no, that's also reckless.
She remembers
the narcissism, it's thinking in the moment.
It's always immediate gratification, immediate gratification.
Over the course of three years, it kept adding up, but it's just, that impulsiveness andthat need to sate whatever hunger she's having at the moment and not thinking at all

(42:02):
about, it's probably like, I'll deal with it when I get to it.
And then $600,000 later, here we are.
Yeah, not being able to look at consequences down the road, not being able to reallytolerate being exposed as someone who would do something like that.
I think she fits the profile for a male perpetrator because she's got so many of thesecharacteristics.

(42:30):
I don't know if she was controlling at home.
We don't know anything about that.
it's like...
a lot in the videos was about control and I get it like yeah it's out of control you'reout of control this whole you're now the law is involved and you're going to lose your job
and have to pay the price of this and she wasn't falling apart I mean visually like and ifyou look at her on the outside her insides must have been burning otherwise she wouldn't

(42:59):
have done this but it's such a it's such a testament to like the things we talk about
on here about like how we all have an aversion to difficult feelings, right?
whenever things feel out of control, we all wanna control things.

(43:19):
But most of us stop before we would like injure someone to protect ourselves.
And the fact that she could, know, that was her one solution was to kill her whole family.
It just speaks to her psychology and how rigid it was.
It's interesting too with narcissists, narcissistic parents, because the children are justsimply an extension of themselves and they don't sort of exist as their own people.

(43:49):
So for her, her shame was going to include the entire family, her shame and not thinkingabout how maybe if she just did herself in.
Right, she could stare down.
Yeah, she did herself in the kids had had a real shot at I mean, it's it's it's it's it'sa trauma, but they

(44:11):
why she killed them though, because she couldn't bear for them to see her in that way.
Again, making it about herself and not that they will need therapy, they will go on withtheir lives, but they, like so many of us, will find a way to overcome and move on and
shit.
She robbed them of that because yeah, it's her shame, her embarrassment, her not wantingto be seen in any kind of a negative light.

(44:35):
So she's gonna take them out and convinced herself that it was an act of fucking love orwhatever.
But yeah, it screams narcissist.
I mean, I'm not a therapist either and all that, but that's overwhelmingly what I've beenseeing as um speculation on what kind of a, very Chris Watts actually.

(45:00):
It's, yeah, this is very, you know, interesting thing is it makes me think about my mindjust went to like when we're under stress, how we just are not our best selves.
You know, when we have a massive screw up like that, it's terrifying to get caught and tohave to pay the price.
I can so empathize with her.
My stomach hurts thinking about it, you know, and some people when they get stressed andthey're everything narrows and it's like

(45:29):
Oh my God, what am going to do?
Some people can find a bit of flexibility in that.
They can go, I can call my mom or I can like actually go to my boss and say, I reallyscrewed up.
I have a gambling addiction or whatever.
And I want to, I want my job.
I know you probably can't trust me.
You know, can I make it up to you?
Can I pay you back or whatever?

(45:50):
She doesn't even go.
It's like the old, thing in her mind is to.
she's created this TikTok channel which I think is really interesting.
In the midst of this is she trying to become an influencer with some kind of fantasy oflike making that a viable income for her.
I don't know what the motivation to share this was you know and

(46:13):
No, you can actually, I have no idea if this is the thing that you see a lot of people goto TikTok and there's one woman, she's like her whole kind of thing is I'm a single mom
trying to get my life together after this horrible thing happened, right?

(46:36):
And so she vlogs about the realities of doing these.
know, DoorDash, Postmates, Instacart, all that kind of stuff to try to earn money to paybecause she has a special needs child and she has these other kids and like there's the
different things she's doing.
People donate to her.
Yeah.
You know, and she's being vulnerable online.

(46:58):
I don't get the impression there's anything and since she's very humble, she's verygrateful for the help.
You see that.
You see that with people.
There's one gentleman who, ah
made a TikTok sharing about the fact that he had a terminal illness and was trying to getdonations so that people would help his wife and his child, his unborn child, because he

(47:22):
died before, no, ah he died right after, pretty shortly after his uh baby was born.
And what's incredible, and this again is a testament to.
I think just in general, people are good.
Like I fundamentally believe that.

(47:43):
There's some shitty things that happen, but I think by and large human beings are at theircore good.
And this guy, his GoFundMe raised enough money.
I wanna say it might've raised somewhere in the ballpark of a little over $800,000.
he wanted to, he's like,

(48:04):
please guys, I can't be there for my daughter's high school graduation, but you can.
Basically like her graduation, her prom, her college, his wife's expenses trying to dealwith the fact that, you know, his life insurance probably wasn't much uh considering what
she had to do on her own.

(48:25):
But all that to say, getting back to Emily Long.
that I think she probably consumed a lot of social media like TikTok and then saw all ofthis and then was like, okay, well, my husband has a terminal illness, so maybe I can make
a go of this.
Like, did she explicitly ever, mix?
Was she just trying to, like, share her story?

(48:47):
That, that I don't know.
And maybe it's a case of, uh, her account.
I don't, couldn't access her tick tock.
So her stuff is just whatever's been pulled, I think.
So I have no idea if she had to go fund me in her bio or if she was too prideful for that.
And so was hoping that people would just do the cash app thing, Venmo, cause you can putthat in your, in your LinkedIn or whatever.

(49:13):
It could be also just, just for the f****g attention to elicit.
sympathy to elicit, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Cause that's another big thing with narcissists is they fucking love attention.
And it was just a way for her to get attention and get some validation through thecomments.
Like, Oh, you know, mama's you're doing the best you can, you know, Hey, keep your chinup.

(49:37):
You look beautiful.
You look so great.
my gosh.
I love your car.
You know, that kind of shit that comes through.
It's just seemed very much like a diary.
And at one point she was like, had a friend who's a therapist and she's telling everybody,I know people would probably wonder why I'm not going to therapy, but my friend who's a
therapist said when I'm ready, she's going to give me a referral.

(49:58):
And she said something like, you you guys are my therapy.
I'm like, no, that just does put a warning out.
Like sharing your most intimate details of your life with a bunch of internet strangers isnot therapy.
It might be therapeutic, but I
She actually has a friend who's a therapist.
make sure that the therapist friend is like, I therapy.

(50:20):
now.
Probably.
And you know, probably feels terrible about not pushing harder, maybe now.
Oh yeah.
But there were probably no signs.
This person looked cool as a cucumber man.
I mean, I guess that was just sort of like buried.
The story was buried with her and her boss.

(50:43):
I don't know where her parents were.
don't know how many, know, anything about her life.
yeah, the, it's the keeping the secret, like needing to keep the secret to keep her, keepher view, well, to avoid shame and to keep her view of herself, you know.
Is it possible that also just this culmination into the family annihilation wasnarcissistic collapse?

(51:10):
Yeah, it seems like that to me.
It seems like I'm not willing to have this experience like this.
I'm not willing or able.
And this is my best option here.
Like that's, mean, that's the move she made.
I don't know if she entertained any other moves, like coming clean, you know, asking yourfamily to forgive you, doing your time, you know, like.

(51:36):
I guess none of those things were bearable to her.
And the most bearable thing would be to wipe out her entire family except for her toddler.
Just erasing everything.
It's like wiping it clean.
Yeah, it speaks to the power of avoidance.
Like what I always say to my clients is like, nothing that happens inside of our skin isdangerous.

(51:59):
But we respond to it like it's dangerous.
What's actually dangerous and what really ruins people's lives is trying to get rid ofthose things or avoiding those things.
And it's just the power of like, you know, just like, cannot go there.
I would rather, you know, this spares me.
ever being known in their minds as a failure.

(52:21):
Yeah, and the reset button, the like, we talked about the Hart family.
It reminds me of a bit of them, but they seemed more motivated by, well, that was alsonarcissism.
Dude, yeah.
was everything.
Cause that's the thing with Emily.
And again, it screams narcissism is that everything that's on the outside is all thatmatters.

(52:44):
The appearance of the beautiful home, the beautiful family, the things and the stuff,right?
Cause clearly they're living beyond their means.
If she's embezzling $600,000, it's their living beyond their means.
And public shame.
or any kind of shame that is seen from the outside is not tolerated and usually leads tothe narcissistic collapse.

(53:14):
So like the walls closing in, like the boss saying, okay dude, like I have no choice butto get the police involved, right?
Because like just after that is when this happened.
So she's got that, she's got her husband's terminal illness.
And then she has what I'm guessing are like mounting bills because she can no longerembezzle any more money.

(53:38):
So where's the money coming from?
She's about to lose her fucking job and go to jail.
So she can't see anything outside of how bad this looks and how embarrassing this is andhow humiliating this is.
And what are people going to say?
She's living in this affluent neighborhood.
People think she's got it, got everything.
And now how's this going to look?

(54:00):
It's so like how it is for all of us, right?
Like we have these strategies that we use to avoid certain feelings and things, right?
And most of the times they work.
You know, we're able to sort of like not go to the places we, you know, and I'm notadvocating that we do that.
I think we should actually just be able to like learn to have our feelings and accept themand not be phobic of them.

(54:25):
But we all have those strategies.
And then all these stressors pile on, right?
And that strategy for bullying herself, the grandiose sort of, I'm a super mom, I'm a, youknow, now I'm a vlogger.
And, you know, that just collapses, like you said, it just crumbles because there's no wayout.
Like there's no way it wasn't gonna get out.

(54:46):
It reminds me of this episode I just watched last night of this show where a cop...
went and killed someone who he was having an affair with because it was a man.
And because the person he was having an affair with said he was going to make public thefact that he was having sex with him.
And the guy was married to a woman, had a kid.

(55:07):
So it's like being forced.
It's almost like, you know, like it's like a wild animal or something, you know, justlashing out from the place of just you're pinned down.
And yeah, she couldn't
find it in her to do something less destructive.
I do wonder if she told the husband that night or something and then something happenedand that's why she shot him.

(55:31):
like he's like, I can't believe you did this.
You know, I mean, maybe we'll never know.
clearly it happened impulsively.
It feels like it was an impulsive act because no one has, no one has said anything about anote.
Even John List left a note, you know, tidy.

(55:52):
Perfect.
stationary monogram stationary.
the Candy family, the husband.
mean, again, that sounded like there was a uh verbal altercation that led to this.

(56:12):
So very impulsive.
So it could be that this was an impulsive act where she maybe had a conversation thatdidn't go well with her husband.
Maybe he probably understandably would have been like, I cannot fucking believe you didthis.
Like, what's gonna happen now?
I'm dying.
I have X amount of time.
How could you do this?

(56:32):
Why did you do this?
And then she's like, ah.
You know, I'm being verbally attacked.
can't take it.
So who knows?
Or maybe she was like, in her head, was ramping up, ramping up, ramping up.
This pressure to try and keep it all in just exploded when she was like, I have exactly Xamount of time before I'm supposed to go meet with my former boss at the police station or

(57:00):
wherever, you know, like it was mounting.
And then the Hart family.
Real quick rundown for those of you who don't know.
Okay, the Hart family murders.
The Hart family murders was a murder suicide which took place on March 26th, 2018.
This was in Mendocino County, California.
Jennifer Hart 38 and her wife, Sarah Hart 38 killed themselves and their six adoptedchildren.

(57:26):
Sierra 12, Abigail 14, Jeremiah 14.
Devante, 15, Hannah, 16, and Marcus, 19.
Jennifer intentionally drove their SUV off a cliff, killing everyone in the family.
Jennifer was in the driver's seat and Sarah was in the front passenger seat.

(57:46):
So they were famous because they sort of gained some attention because there's this famousuh image of Devante who was
the time the picture was taken maybe 13, 14.
And he was at a, they were at a rally and he had a sign that said free hugs I think and acop went up to him and hugged him and the picture, Devante's face, like when you know what

(58:16):
was going on in his life.
Yes.
The face, know, first it looks like the face, crying, and it seems like this is about, youknow, wanting like racial justice and all that.
This was like a lot of shit was going on with protests and marches and things around likeTrayvon Martin and police violence.

(58:39):
And so you see his face and it's this face of like, he's crying, right?
And he sees this cop is hugging him.
And then you see that and you're like, this is...
This is because it's a very intense, this is an intense topic and there's so much, youknow, uh discord in this country and blah, blah.
And then you find out that he was being fucking abused by his- it.

(59:01):
It does.
I ran out, just ran out of the torture basement.
So for those who don't know, all of the children are black and Sarah and her wife arewhite.
So you've got two white lesbian women adopting all of these black children and preachingpeace, love and harmony.

(59:25):
And what they were doing was abusing these children and using them for clout, basically.
Like, look at us, we're progressive.
We're progressive white.
uh
lesbians who want everyone to be happy and we have, we host these events and you know,we're just such a wonderful, diverse, peace-loving family.

(59:49):
And they were starving the kids, they were abusing the kids, they were isolating the kids.
Some of the children would sneak out and go to neighbors' houses and knock on the door andask for food because they were being starved.
And so calls would be made.
from different neighbors and stuff calling like CPS, CPS would come that they wouldn't bethere.

(01:00:11):
So they kept dodging these calls, they kept moving around.
And this was a situation where then the walls were closing in.
They were running out of shit to do.
And so I don't know how much I have the impression, again, this may be worthy of its ownepisode.

(01:00:32):
Mm-hmm.
I have the impression that Jennifer was kind of the driving force in that relationship.
And Sarah was the, the sub basically would kind of go along with what, Jennifer wanted,but of course is, is, is equally guilty in this.
But, Jennifer had given everyone in the car, like Benadryl to go to sleep and then drovethe car off of the cliff.

(01:01:01):
And.
Devante and I believe Sierra's bodies have never been recovered.
But that was Jennifer's solution.
I have no idea if Sarah knew this was happening or if Sarah was also given Benadryl.
But they were just driving.
Oh, she did, okay.
That was Oregon, right?
Was that, they in Oregon and then drove to California?

(01:01:24):
that, I think that.
The one on one.
Yeah, the one or the 101, I can't remember, but over those cliffs.
And Jennifer had alcohol and Benadryl in her system.
So she was fucked up.
Yeah, yeah, oh, that's a heartbreaking story.
No pun intended.

(01:01:45):
I know so by accident we keep pulling up pulling all this shit like this will blow yourmind.
It's totally by accident guys we're not trying to be to be funny or clever it is but but
Broken Hearts is that podcast about the...
Great one.
It is so good.

(01:02:06):
Highly recommend uh Search, Broken Hearts podcast.
It's all about them.
It's uh several episodes.
Really, really gets into the heart of like the women's backgrounds, uh details about them.
I listened to it, but it was a long time ago.

(01:02:26):
listened to it.
But again, another case, we bring it up because this is a case of another female familyannihilator.
and narcissism being at the the root of it seems.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
I did a little tiny bit of research just earlier when we were talking and I looked up allknown female family annihilators dating back to 1930.

(01:02:52):
All known American.
Sure.
And then it tells you, you know, I gathered sort of the information about like motive andthe information about like the different kind of psychology of male and female
perpetrators.
It's from the FBI and uh professionals, so I trust it.
But I think there are outliers.

(01:03:13):
It definitely seems like this to me and the Hart family.
They have a much more male profile.
That was what I was going to say.
It screams like, again, like Chris Watts type vibes.
That the candy one is mysterious still.
We still don't know what the motive beyond just what a fight.

(01:03:37):
There had to have been something more.
Yeah, and why, it's interesting that some cases get so much traction and others don't.
And it makes, you know, just, wonder why, how that and why that died out, that story.
It never took hold like some do.
People just weren't gonna talk, I guess.
I mean, I don't know what kind of community they lived in, but I think people have to besomewhat forthcoming with details about the family and all anybody would give is that John

(01:04:09):
Candy was the kind of guy that, man, if he saw that you were in trouble, your car brokedown, he would come out and try and help you fix it.
Like pillar of the community.
Like they're just tight-lipped.
Anyone in his circle.
or in her circle won't talk.
And I think that's the reason why.
Whereas, you know, the Hart family had some, what of a physical, like they also wereattention seekers.

(01:04:34):
Hart, CPS was involved.
They had a bad reputation with their kids.
And there were plenty of people willing to talk because they were outraged about thetreatment of those children and this weird fucking phony representation that they are just
like about peace, love and happiness.
The worst part is that an aunt of one of the children wanted to take the children and theCPS people prevented her from taking the children and gave them to them.

(01:05:02):
They interview her in one of the documentaries I watched.
That's another element, right?
Because two white ladies versus a family member.
Well, there's such a racial component here.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, they're white.
Yeah, it's wild.
they'd already, yes, I think they'd already adopted another kid or something.

(01:05:24):
And that's, yeah, so.
And overwhelmed, think Sarah was overwhelmed with like, I mean, there's a lot of fuckingkids.
Well, this is the thing that ties into this situation that's in a lot of these cases.
You'll see custody-ish family court issues, basically, that precipitate or put pressure onpeople.

(01:05:47):
There are a lot of, I can't think of the names of the people who have done this, but youhear frequently there's a custody dispute, like Travis Decker.
Right.
right?
Like he there was an issue with the custody they were having to
That seems like definitely because I know that no one knows where he is, if he's stillalive.

(01:06:10):
I firmly believe he killed his daughters and then he went and he killed himself somewhereremotely where he would not be found.
Recently though?
Yeah.
three days ago, they're checking to see if they are his.
Cause that's the thing.
I don't think he's trying to live.
Like I don't, I don't think his, his life was shit.

(01:06:31):
had mental health issues.
He was living out of his car.
He was broke.
All of this shit.
Yes.
And so you've, you've got all that.
And so I absolutely see, again, everything closing in on him.
can't keep a job.
He was as, a, as former military being dishonorably discharged from the, was it thenational guard?

(01:06:55):
Yeah, he had joined the National Guard and then he was losing that for some reason.
Okay, yeah, he was supposed to go and meet like once a month or something and he hadstopped doing that.
So he was dishonorably let go from that, is a blow to somebody who is like formermilitary.
Oh, he was a reservist.

(01:07:16):
Uh huh, yeah.
Oh the Army Reserve.
Is that different?
Oh yeah, I know.
My mind made them one thing.
Right.
he was, yeah, had uh been a pretty like elite level survivalist training.
He seemed like a Rambo.

(01:07:36):
They were like, wait, don't approach him.
There were all these warnings.
It might have been like a seal or something, or I don't know what.
I don't think he was a SEAL, but he had definitely had a pretty serious militarybackground.
So it's just, it seems to me that he's like, maybe it's like a thing where it's like,everything's been taken from me.
I have no home, I have no wife.

(01:07:57):
have no, now I'm losing my children.
I've lost any kind of whatever honor that he had once in the military.
So he takes out his daughters.
If I can't have them, no one will.
could have been revenge too like if he was pissed off at his wife
Well, exactly.
it's that it's like, okay, well, you're saying I don't get to have access to them anymore.

(01:08:19):
Well, then you're not going to have no one's going to have access.
And then, then, you know, no, no one's going to tell me how I'm going to live in thisworld.
I'm taking myself out and I'm going to hide and you'll never fucking find me and you'll belooking for me.
Like almost like trying to have, trying to go out with, with an upper hand, so to speak,you know, like, like, I determine.

(01:08:43):
how I live and die, you don't get to.
So the control issues.
yeah, that for custody, but yeah, it's interesting.
Is there a through line with, if we're just looking at American uh female familyannihilators, it seems to me that the through line with these two that we've spoken about,

(01:09:09):
like you were saying, it feels more like.
traditionally masculine profile.
What are some of the other examples?
Are there any?
Yeah, there are a ton, but this is interesting though.
So another thing I gathered was that female annihilators can comprise about five to ninepercent of cases.
This is a 2014 study, though.

(01:09:31):
Motives often involve mental illness, psychosis in 70 percent of the female cases versuscontrol issues in males rather than financial ruin.
So, yeah, she does seem to fit.
the more male or like less of a percentage of women tend to commit these crimes based onlike financial ruin, based on like revenge or control.

(01:09:54):
There's a bunch.
So I'm trying to get over there and see what it says.
So motive outcome.
So severe depression, postpartum psychosis, Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
um, financial disputes and revenge premeditated over money owed.

(01:10:17):
Who's this Michelle Anderson?
Um, she killed six family members, parents, brother, sister in law, two nephews.
She did that with Andrea Yates, course, postpartum psychosis,
I would put Lindsay Clancy in that as well.
I know that that's still like we're not going to know much more until her trial next year.

(01:10:37):
Yeah, but I would put her in that because she tried to take herself out as well.
And then one in 1998, fear of suicide custody thing.
it's like anything that's totally threatening, like to most women taking their kids awayfrom them is gonna stir up a ton of anxiety and feelings of like loss and need to control.

(01:11:02):
So yeah, I think it's really interesting.
That seems like most women do this and their psychotic depressed postpartum psychosis.
And then a small percentage will do it for the reasons we see men do it more often, whichare control, financial issues, that kind of thing.
Narcissism, you know, like it's hard.

(01:11:25):
I can't imagine being a mother and having somebody, having to split with someone and sharemy kids with them, especially if I didn't really like that person very much.
And especially if that person was.
an awful person, an awful person.
I didn't trust them as a parent.
People have to face really hard things in the family court system that wrecks you.

(01:11:50):
But most find a way.
So I think, I don't know what the prevention aspect would be, but I feel like the courtsshould really sort of understand that they're playing with fire here.
you these are people's lives.
And that's not the way the courts, the courts don't give a shit really about the mentalhealth of the parents.

(01:12:10):
I mean, aside from the custody issues, but they don't really know often what's going onand what's ratcheting up inside of the parent around all the interactions with the family
courts.
But then there's like inevitable stuff or stuff you can't control that, you know, I thinkabout like parents who separate like Travis Decker, right?
If they were in family court, in the family court system,

(01:12:33):
and he didn't really have work, he would still owe child support.
I think they still, and if you're making like minimum wage, they take a huge amount ofyour take home pay, and then the calculation for what you owe for child support if you end
up owing it.
um So like if she got 80 % of the custody, that changes the equation in a massive way.

(01:12:57):
I don't know if they were in court around money, but it's...
People, it's serious in terms of what it stirs up in people.
I think sometimes, wow, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, that people goabsolutely ape shit over the stuff that happens in court.
Yeah, with the Travis Decker thing, the thing that's so strange is like he and his ex gotalong as I understand it.

(01:13:25):
They got along fine.
And she was saying that, you know, she had never had any reason to not trust him becausehe would check in.
He would always answer her texts.
Like how are things going?
Like, you know, when he had the girls and he would respond.
I think it was a case where

(01:13:46):
he was slowly kind of becoming more unhinged, maybe not dangerous seeming, but like thingswere not going well for him.
And she had concerns around that, valid concerns, of course, you know, when you find outyour ex who's been having mental health issues is living out of his car and like, it's

(01:14:08):
like losing everything.
But as far as their dynamic post-
divorce and everything or post separation, whatever.
I don't know if they were divorced or separated.
I think the main thing is like they weren't able to negotiate this on their own.
had to involve the courts and that's for many families.

(01:14:30):
When you have a personality disorder or somebody has really, you know, mental health stuffstruggles, that tends to happen.
And then that's your only option.
And then it gets very weird because I think it can exacerbate the symptoms of apersonality disorder.
Yeah.
be in family court.
Yeah.
And so I wonder if there's something like weird about it being formal for him.

(01:14:51):
I don't know, but yeah.
I mean, or just involving a third party at all.
But one of the things I think that came up was, first of all, the fact that this wasnever, that there was no supervised visitation at the point that he's fucking doesn't,
like he's clearly losing it.
Like he's lost his job, he was uh kicked out of like the reserves.

(01:15:16):
He doesn't have a home.
He doesn't have the means really to do, care for these girls that these,
should have been supervised visitation.
Cause all of these are symptoms that somebody's mental health is, like rapidly declining.
Like there's no, there's no structure in his life anymore.
That was, there was some outrage around that.

(01:15:38):
Like how the fuck was this not supervised if it had been supervised.
There's some failures by CPS in these cases, you know?
Like the Hart family.
So the systems that are involved that push on and add stress to are always reallyinteresting to me.
But then what do you, I mean, that's the only system we have.

(01:15:59):
Yeah, how do you improve that?
Those kids should have been removed from that house way before the Hart family drove offthat cliff.
Yeah.
they had had CPS had been alerted plenty of times, plenty of times.
We complain about social services all the time in this podcast.

(01:16:19):
I mean, I know lot of people who worked in social services and they are hard working indoing their best.
It's overworked and underpaid and under resourced.
There's a lot that are doing the very best they fucking can.
But when they've got case files, even in the Gabriel Fernandez case, I remember that oneguy on his desk, it's just this stack, 30 cases, like 30 people, and he's one person.

(01:16:44):
And there's more.
It's easy for things to fall through the cracks, but it's just, I don't know, it's hard.
mean, obviously we're on the outside going, hi, this is glaringly obvious.
There is a serious fucking problem.
Also, why the hell do these two white women need so many children and so many blackchildren?
Like just so many.
What drives me?

(01:17:06):
Yeah, no, and they definitely used them as sort of this ticket to virtuosity,virtuousness, know?
Yeah.
Their festivals and the dancing and the, uh You know, it's funny, we have gone in all overthe place with this episode, right?

(01:17:27):
Right.
We've kind of touched all the little, you know, family annihilation, the systems that wefamilies have to engage with.
The pressures, this case also makes me feel about, think about the pressures that any ofus face who dare to have children in this country and how it's so rare for people to have

(01:17:48):
a net.
know, like if something were to fail, like losing a job and the stakes are so much higher.
I don't have kids.
The stakes are so much higher for people who have kids.
And it's, to me, makes so much sense to.
you know, want to protect them from your failures when there is an actual consequence forthem that you've caused, like being broke, you know, like, like losing everything because

(01:18:17):
she embezzled $600,000.
It makes so much sense that that cuts to the mid, like the center of you because you careso much.
I mean, I think this case, she cared a lot about her image, but she probably also caredabout her children.
as much as a psychopath can.
I'm just kidding.
like, much, you know, so I understand we live in a world where it's so precarious for somany people, I guess is what I'm saying.

(01:18:39):
And it just makes me think about, like, what do you do when the bottom drops out if fromif it's your fault or not your fault and how how some of us are just less flexible.
I mean, I think that's the part the thing about personality disorders and narcissism islike where most of us could find a way to deal with it.

(01:19:00):
That's the you know, the doesn't
involved killing our whole families.
Some people really cannot and we are walking around with them all the time and they havekids and they have stresses and they have you know so I don't know I think we live in a
world that kind of unless you're you know have some are somewhat sane and have someflexibility psychologically it can kind of break you.

(01:19:26):
Yeah, I guess not all these narcissists can be Jordan Belfort who fucking, I'm tellingyou, Emily Long could have ironically, she could have used this to her benefit.
What's Jordan Belfort?
What's that?
Wolf of Wall Street.
He completely like, it's like, hi, I fucking did this horrible, crazy, shitty, stupid assthing.

(01:19:53):
And then Martin Scorsese makes a movie about me and he's interviewed.
He goes on like, he has rebranded himself.
He's the notorious Jordan Belfort.
I mean, what he did was I think humiliating and absolutely like grotesque how he fuckedpeople over.
Yes.
But he rebranded himself.

(01:20:15):
He brilliantly rebranded himself.
Yes, that's Horrible person.
But he did that.
Emily Long could have been like, hi, I set my life on fire.
Want to hear about it?
gotten a bunch of money from people she could have like gone on tik-tok and done talkedabout that
I've talked about that on TikTok.
She could have been in her jail cell and written a fucking book with a ghostwriter abouthow she set her life on fire and did all these things.

(01:20:39):
I don't know.
There's a thing of like, but again, for a lot of narcissists, it's the humiliation.
They just don't have the backbone to deal with the inevitable humiliation that they wouldhave to endure before stepping over it and into this other kind of realm.
m
whole game.
Yeah, the whole game is organized to avoid those feelings.

(01:21:01):
The whole game.
That's the whole.
I like what you said though, because it connected.
What I was saying before was not super connected to like family annihilation, but yeah,you're, think that you bring in another good, a really good point about how, how, how we
can, people can do horrible things and they can find redemption or find some way through,but this is the Jordan belt.

(01:21:27):
Balfour?
Balfour?
Balfour.
I've never watched Wolf of Wall Street.
don't know anything about this.
This so great.
But he found a way to back to the grandiosity, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's, I think he had enough notoriety that like he was a bad boy.
Like again, the wolf of Wall Street.

(01:21:48):
It's like, I mean, also he was a larger figure and living large and all of that and justwas through and through just so completely arrogant ah that he's gonna think anything he
does is really fucking awesome, right?
So I mean, he's more of a psychopath than anything else.
Yeah.
I think all like psychopaths generally as part of being a psychopath have thenarcissistic, heavy narcissistic traits.

(01:22:13):
Whereas I think that Emily Long is just strictly a narcissist.
It's funny.
I had this, I got this psychopath vibe from her because of the, you know how like, like,like they say that when psychopaths kill people, they move slowly and methodically.
You know, it's not this kind of spazzy, like emotional outburst.

(01:22:36):
You know, there's a coldness and a containment in the presentation.
And with her, it's, seemed cold and contained, but not.
She seemed like a down to earth person.
you met her somewhere, you'd like at a party or something, you'd talk to her and you'd belike, this is just a mom who her shit together.

(01:22:59):
By all accounts, she was likable.
Like from some of the people that were writing in were saying like, was her roommate.
She was a good roommate.
Like I can't really point to anything about her that was bad except that she skipped outand the other person lost their deposit because she just like bailed on paying her rent in

(01:23:21):
the last couple of months or something.
that's pretty like, thanks.
Yeah.
So the other part was that she said that her husband taught her how to love.
I could tell that she comes from a background where either she didn't learn, peopleweren't asking her about her experience, because she didn't really learn, she doesn't

(01:23:42):
really have a vocabulary to speak to the different kinds of deep feelings.
She maybe doesn't have the feelings or she doesn't have the vocabulary because she wassaying, you know, it's such a bummer.
We would probably be saying that like, it's totally devastating.
I'm terrified.
Her affect was pretty flat.
You know, she couldn't say anything that felt, I don't know.

(01:24:03):
Like if they had any weight to them, like she seemed like she would just sort of speakalmost like in idiomatic expressions and like vague language.
Yeah, I mean, who knows?
She could be neither.
She could just be like a gambling addict and just desperate and killed everyone.
But you know, she did have that sort of the present.

(01:24:23):
I mean, you see it in the comments.
Everybody can see it.
They're like, this person's really selfish.
Yeah, right.
So that's kind of like our exploration of family annihilators with the focus on women, therare few.
And these ones were particularly interesting because they do, I mean, Emily Long did justwith her kind of male presenting, there's still not a whole lot of information.

(01:24:50):
I mean, we'll probably revisit this a little bit as more comes out, if more comes out.
I fully expected more to come out.
But it's been over a year with the Jonathan Candy case out of Oklahoma, but we'll neverknow.
I don't think that anyone is going to speak openly about if they had a personal closerelationship with that family, they're not saying anything.

(01:25:12):
So I don't think we're gonna know.
But with Emily Long, I think that it's so shocking and so bizarre again, when you see awoman, seemingly normal woman.
do something this atrocious.
I think we'll probably see a little more information as it comes out.
I'm curious if there was a note.
I don't think there was.
I feel like they would have mentioned that.

(01:25:33):
feel so sad for that little boy.
I don't even know if he went to family.
I don't know what happened.
He is?
Okay, good.
He's with family.
Again, I hope he was not wandering around that fucking house.
I hope that he was like just asleep or something and that he was just, you know, althoughno, I doubt it because a wealth, I think somebody had to have called in a welfare check.

(01:25:58):
Because, which means that little boy was just probably awake in that house.
Oh geez, yeah.
Young, like still three years old, um desperately gonna need counseling.
Because already, according to her in the TikTok that I saw, the three was not dealing wellwith the fact that his father was dying.

(01:26:23):
which that sounded so fake to me when she said that.
I mean, I know the kid could have maybe had disrupted their psyche, but the way shedescribed them as handling it is very, also he was not on death's door.
He was not like, people live with that for like five years sometimes.

(01:26:43):
And so I think I read that yesterday.
I don't know where he was in terms of his treatments, but I don't think that they had beengiven like an imminent.
Death date.
So he was like functioning, walking around living.
I think we should double check that.
I'm going to double check that.
I'll say something about it next time.

(01:27:05):
Right, but yeah, so there's no way to know like, well also three years old from what Iunderstand from having three year old, my boys all, dealing with them all at the age of
three is that they're not a...
Not verbal.
They're quite, yeah, he was probably, yeah, mine were pretty chatty, but they kind of justlike go off of what you show them.

(01:27:27):
You know what I mean?
They're still like, hey, are you doing all right?
You seem quiet.
If you're quiet, you know, unless they're observing like a dynamic that's really crying,you know, if I was crying, the three-year-olds are gonna be like, ah you know, but if
you're just kind of busy, if you're doing whatever, if you're stressed, they don't.

(01:27:48):
As long as you're not affecting them too much, uh they don't pick up on shit as much.
Now, he might've been feeling, I mean, finding out that uh you have a terminal illness, Idon't know how the father was expressing what he was going through, if at all, or if there

(01:28:08):
was a lot of heightened kind of um drama between both the parents that the three-year-oldwas picking up on, then.
Yeah, they might, he might have been not handling it well.
But yeah, uh whatever he knew about that added to fucking seeing the carnage throughoutthe house.
I feel for that kid, man.

(01:28:28):
And I hope he's getting what he needs.
Shit.
On that note.
All right, folks.
We hope you enjoyed this very depressing season of the Secret Passage podcast.
Not just the episode, whole season.
The season was dark.

(01:28:49):
uh I mean, we cover a lot of like kind of dark, kind of odd, wild shit.
But yeah, like between Columbine last week and then this week.
You know, it's it.
Man, these are important topics.
I mean, we talked about Columbine and then there was the Minnesota school shooting.

(01:29:11):
Ugh, yeah.
a different kind of, you know, it wasn't students, but, but, so that, that just happened.
And then, uh, the Emily Long stuff, of course, is, is very recent as well.
It's just, you know, it's, it's part of the, it's, part of like the national conversationright now.
So we wanted to weigh in and bring up, you know, family annihilators.

(01:29:34):
That's a, that's a subject that we had been talking about for a long time.
And they just said, we hadn't, we sort of hadn't.
kind of talked about it in our, in these three seasons.
So it felt at this point with Emily Long, it was like, oh shit, we should talk about itnow.
we hope that you guys enjoy the rest of the warm weather and we'll see you in the fall.

(01:29:59):
See you in the fall.
We'll announce our uh next episode, our return date soon, but it will be soon.
And ah we thank you for your support.
Thank you for listening.
Please follow us if you don't already on our social media, at Secret Passage Podcast onInstagram, at Secret Pass Pod on X, and we are also on TikTok at Secret Passage Podcast.

(01:30:27):
And if you would...
Consider joining our Patreon, we'd love to see you there as well.
All right, Shannon, I will see you next season.
See you next season.
Bye, guys.
See you, everyone.