Profiling Evil

Lindsay Clancy has never denied killing her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old. That's not what this trial is about. The real question in front of the jury is whether she knew, in the legal and moral sense, that what she was doing was wrong — and whether a mental disease or defect took that capacity away from her.

Let’s step past the emotion and dig into the actual legal question of wheth...

In this episode of Profiling Evil, I’m joined by veteran crime reporter Caroline Lowe to discuss the unsolved disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, the 27-year-old morning news anchor who vanished outside her Mason City, Iowa apartment on June 27, 1995. Jodi had overslept and told her producer she’d be right in for the morning newscast at KIMT-TV. About 20 minutes later, investigators believe she made it to her red Mazda M...

The Lindsay Clancy trial has moved into the psychiatric care she received before she killed her three children, and the testimony is raising difficult questions about fragmented treatment, repeated medication changes, telehealth and what people mean when they accuse a patient of “doctor shopping.” In this episode, I lay out how many providers were involved, what Lindsay may have been seeking, what the treatment history ...

Chris Watts is serving life without parole for murdering his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their daughters, Bella and Celeste. Now, Lizzie Henderson has publicly confirmed that she is in a relationship with Watts, while reporting says she moved from Ohio to Wisconsin, visited him 23 times in about fifteen months, sought to change her surname and joined him in requesting permission to marry. In this episode, I separate what Henderson ...

Why can two people walk through the same place and notice completely different warning signs? In this special Profiling Evil episode, we’ll draw on lessons from law-enforcement and behavioral-analysis alongside a fascinating peer-reviewed study by Robert A. Chaney, PhD, Alyssa Baer, MPH, and L. Ida Tovar, MPH. The researchers asked 571 college students to examine campus walking environments under changing conditions of lighti...

Days seven and eight of the Lindsay Clancy trial brought the jury toxicology results, DNA findings, testimony from the children’s former nanny, friends and relatives, and deeply difficult medical evidence concerning the murders of Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy. In this episode, I explain what that testimony added to the prosecution’s case, what it may have handed to the defense, and why the emotional force of this tria...

Lindsay Clancy spoke in court for the first time during her trial and personally agreed to a broad stipulation covering important parts of the Commonwealth’s forensic case. That was not a guilty plea, and it did not abandon her defense. It simply means prosecutors will not spend days proving evidence the defense does not seriously dispute. In this episode, I look at what Lindsay agreed to, what we learned from the medical, me...

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has released two messages connected to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie. One demands millions in Bitcoin and threatens her life. The other claims she died shortly after being taken and was “buried in nature.” In this episode, we examine the communications using forensic linguistics, behavioral threat-assessment princ...

This week’s lead story is the Nancy Guthrie investigation, where Sheriff Chris Nanos says testing of a hair recovered from her Arizona home did not point to a suspect and a separate DNA mixture involving as many as four people remains under examination by laboratories across the country. The forensic update follows Savannah Guthrie’s new video asking whoever took her mother to tell the family where to look, language tha...

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy begins with two radically different accounts of the same tragedy. Prosecutors allege that Clancy deliberately created a window of time, sent her husband away, and methodically killed their three children before attempting to take her own life. The defense does not dispute that she caused the children’s deaths. Instead, it argues that months of deteriorating mental health, severe insomnia, su...

This week, we’re looking at four cases that have reached very different points in the legal process. In Los Angeles, a judge is hearing the evidence prosecutors say connects musician David Anthony Burke, known as D4vd, to the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. In Buffalo, Hadi Matar is on trial on federal terrorism charges stemming from the 2022 attack on author Salman Rushdie. In Brooklyn, longtime Sinaloa Cartel ...

n 1911, the Mona Lisa vanished from the wall of the Louvre Museum in the center of Paris. One morning she was hanging in the Salon Carré, and shortly after, the most recognizable painting in the world was gone. What followed was a two-year investigation filled with bad assumptions, conflicting witnesses, media pressure, false suspects, radical artists, wealthy collectors, and one ordinary man who may have fooled everyone by looking...

Today I’m looking at the targeted killing of five relatives in East St. Louis, the evidence presented against the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk, the fatal shooting of Deputy U.S. Marshal Drew Hanson in Louisiana and the robbery-homicide case involving American marine biologist Kent Carpenter in the Philippines. Along with the basic facts and current court status, we’ll discuss the behavioral patterns investigators...

In this episode of Profiling Evil, I sit down with Sarah Edmondson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames from A Little Bit Culty for a raw and honest conversation about cult behavior, coercive control, undue influence and the slow erosion of personal autonomy. They were inside NXIVM, the organization led by Keith Raniere, who was convicted in federal court in 2019 of racketeering, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, forced l...

The Nancy Guthrie investigation continues to generate questions, speculation, and plenty of opinions. Over the last several days, we’ve learned more about one man who admitted sending fraudulent communications connected to the case, but it doesn’t answer the larger questions that still haunt Nancy’s family and investigators. Let’s examine the behavioral differences between genuine offender communications and...

Federal prosecutors have announced arrests tied to an alleged plot to attack the #UFCFreedom250 event at the White House. According to the Department of Justice, the alleged plan included explosive-laden drones, forced crowd movement, and sniper fire aimed at government officials and others attending the event. This episode is not about politics. It is about behavior. Let’s look at this case through the lens of criminal behav...

The Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing is less about dramatic testimony and more about the fight over what the judge, the public, the media, and eventually a jury pool should be allowed to hear before trial. Investigators testified about the investigation after Robinson turned himself in, Robinson’s roommate and his statement and whether it will be admitted into evidence. Prosecutors wanted the audio played in open court and ...

Agent Hull’s testimony in the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing gave us a much better look at how prosecutors are trying to move this case forward. The judge is not deciding guilt at this stage, instead he’s trying to determine if there is reasonable cause to bind Tyler Robinson over for trial in the shooting death of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. Pay attention to the way investigators place Robinson on the U...

Day one of the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing in Utah was exactly what I expected it to be, slow, procedural, and at times rather painful. This was not opening statements in a trial. This was the prosecution beginning the process of showing the judge that there is enough probable cause to send the aggravated murder case against Tyler Robinson forward to trial in the shooting death of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. Let&...