"Pastitsio" w/ Dr. Laura Pettler

This week we recap episode 5 of "The Patient" with forensics expert, Dr. Laura Pettler!
From Straw Hut Media

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Straw media. Here we are torecap episode five of The Patient. If
you have somehow not seen an episodefive of The Patient, stop this podcast
right now, Go to your viewingdevice of your choice watch episode five of

(00:21):
The Patient, then comes straight backhere. Do not do anything else.
Come directly back here and begin listeningto this podcast without Ben or we will
know. In episode five of ThePatient, Sam goes on a drive to
get away from this potential victim thathe has in his house, and he

(00:44):
goes to visit his ex wife,Mary, who is more than a little
surprised to see him. He tellsher that he's in therapy, which seems
like welcome news to her, andshe welcomes him into the house. They
have a conversation about their adopted daughter, Hara, who is a daughter who

(01:04):
lives in Bangladesh. I would sayit's blessed of an adopted daughter and more
of a sponsored daughter, but that'sanother conversation. They may be getting a
second child. They have a secondchild that they'll be working up that they
are adopting. But she's not reallyallowed to say anything about how Mary and

(01:26):
Sam got a divorce. It's avery awkward conversation. Between the two of
them that is largely kind of silent, and you can tell that Sam is
not sure what to say. Heeventually decides he's going to leave and go
back home, and inexplicably, Marysays, oh, hey, don't forget

(01:49):
your lazy boy chair that you lefthere at some point, and so then
you see Sam and Mary wrestling alazy boy chair, which, if any
of you've forgotten, is a veryheavy chair into Sam's trucks so he can
bring it home. Meanwhile, Eliasand Sam are trying to figure out what
they're going to do. Elias andAlan are trying to figure out what they're

(02:13):
going to do when Sam comes home, and Elias has the idea, which
is two ask Sam if Elias canbe brought into a therapy session, and
then at a moment in which Samis not fully paying attention, Alan and
Elias can attack Sam and hopefully subduehim so that they can escape. They

(02:38):
talk a little bit about what theywant to tell their families if they don't
make it out, if one ofthem makes it out and the other one
doesn't, and each of them sortof talk about who they what they want
to say, and we learn moreabout Alan in this story in terms of

(03:04):
how he had difficulty with Ezra becomingan Orthodox Jew and how it was difficult
for his wife Beth to adjust tothat. But before they can finish the
story, Sam comes home. Theyhave a quick conversation where Sam summarizes what
happened within the conversation with Mary,and then Sam is extremely agitated and really

(03:34):
thinks that it's time for him tojust go in there and kill Elias.
He just feels like that's what heneeds to do, and so he gets
up, goes towards the room,and Alan just starts screaming to try and
get him to stop. And suddenlyCandice, Sam's mother at bears and gets
him somehow to stop, like shesort of speaks to him very strongly and

(04:00):
claps her hands and somehow that sortof snaps Sam out of it, like
for a second. Sandis tells Cannistells him to go to his room,
and he does. He goes tohis room and he listens to Kenny Chesney
to try and calm down. Alantries to get some sleep, but he

(04:25):
keeps having these different memories or dreamsabout his family when they were younger,
about a young Ezra joining Beth atthe synagogue to sing a song, but
Sam can't stop thinking about Elias.He gets up in the middle of the
night and he comes out in thebasement. Alan immediately gets up and they

(04:45):
begin to have a conversation. Alansort of directly confronts Sam to say that
he thinks he understands how his mindworks, that he's angry that his father
treated him so badly, and thatanger has made him violent, so he's
looking for ways to take his angerout on others, much in the same

(05:06):
way that his father took out hisanger on him. Sam disagrees he thinks
that all the people he's killed areworthless, that they deserved it, but
Alan is trying to convince him tosearch more deeply. Alan convinces Sam to
bring Elias out into the room sothat he can be a part of the

(05:28):
therapy session. He's hoping that byshowing Sam that Elias is not just a
person who behaves badly, but isactually a real person with thoughts and feelings
and family, that he won't deserveto die anymore than Sam deserved to be
beaten by his father. Sam andhe began to talk, and Alan suggests

(05:51):
that Elias talk about how he makesthe pastizio and the way in which he
makes it and the reasons why hedid it the way he did in order
to please his family. But Samcan't take it, and he doesn't get

(06:11):
very far into the story at allbefore he just suddenly lunges at Elias and
we watch Sam literally strangle Elias todeath in front of our eyes. Alan
is traumatized and screaming. He's tryingto get Candice to come back down to
get it stopped. We see abrief flash of Candace in bed and you

(06:38):
can tell that she is unable toget out of bed to stop this.
No one can stop this, andso as the episode ends, we see
that Elias is dead and this isno longer a theoretical of Sam has these

(06:59):
urges. We now see firsthand howSam can murder someone because of his compulsive
urgess. That's how it's very upsetting. I think, I think, you
know, I'm not the only onewho was rooting for Sam to like show
some self control. I mean,I probably wouldn't be a very exciting show

(07:23):
if he didn't kill him. ButI felt really disappointed, you know,
myself, that that happened yeah.I mean in a way, if we
hadn't been doing this show and Ihad sort of just my own life experience
to draw on, I think Iwould have just been like, no,

(07:46):
how could this happen? I can'tbelieve it. But because we've been talking
to all of these psychological experts whohave been saying over and over again,
there's only one way that ends,it was I felt a much different feeling.
It wasn't so much shock and surpriseas much as it was just a

(08:11):
sadness and regret of just like,oh, of course it ends this way.
Of course Elias is dead. Ohthis is awful. I feel terrible.
It was really difficult to watch.I sent you. We were talking
about it, and I said toyou, I don't know how Alan is

(08:31):
going to come back from that,because he's, you know, maybe responsible,
he's witnessed the whole thing. Andyou responded to me that you weren't
sure how you were going to comeback from that. It's true. It's
true. I'm halfway through this thingand I've watched this man actually die in
front of my eyes, and Ijust like, ah, I don't I

(08:56):
think it's fair to say that youand I look at these things slightly differently,
because you're like, oh, showabout murder, I can't wait,
whereas I'm like, oh, god, murder seems uh, murder seems bad
and perhaps I should avoid it,you know what I mean? Like,
um, so I uh. Idefinitely felt like ah, but now I'm

(09:16):
stuck. I'm that's the thing aboutthis cursed show. And I'm yes,
I'm cursing the show that I'm actuallyhosting a podcast about, which is um,
you're hut. I feel multiple I'mhut, and I feel multiple ways
about these characters. I'm like rootingfor Sam, but I'm upset with Sam.

(09:37):
I'm angry about Sam and and Candice. What was going on there?
She could have come done something,And why didn't Alan try and you know,
jump on him when he had thechance on Like, I feel like
I'm watching a sports game where itall just went badly and everyone lost.
Well, I think I think wereally need a professional now to explain to

(10:01):
us, you know, what weshould think about this episode and Sam and
Alan? Do we have a professionalto doctor today? As a matter of
back, We Dowie is forensic criminologist. Doctor Laura Pettler is on the show
today. Doctor Pettler is an expertin crime scene analysis and forensic reconstruction of

(10:26):
blood stain evidence and bullet trajectory evidence, behavioral analysis of homicide offenders and their
crimes, and the sociology of murder. Her groundbreaking work in staging behavior in
homicide cases, death investigation methodology,and crime scene reconstruction has led to recognition
as one of the top experts inthe world. Welcome Laura. We're so

(10:52):
excited that you're here today. Hi, Stacy, thank you so much for
having me. Yes, we areexcited. We have a ton of questions
for you. Well, let's getstarted then. I mean, I just
want to say every word I justsaid to introduce you as everything in the
world I'm interested in. We're gonnatry to be only about the show today,

(11:15):
but then, you know, Iwant to like spend five hours with
you and talk about blood staining evidenceand sociology of murder and all that stuff.
But we'll do that another time.Well, thank you for having me
today. Thank you for inviting methat I've been watching the show and I
you know, I'm totally hosed onit, so I'm excited to talk about

(11:37):
it today. Awesome, did youwatch that last episode. Yeah, yes,
yes, I did. You know, there are so many things that
go through my mind as I'm watchingthis because you know, there's so many
things that ring true for offenders andhow they operate. And you know,
while there are no two offenders thatare alike, you know completely, everybody's

(12:01):
an individual person. At the sametime, there's so many strains of things
that run concurrent among them, andI couldn't believe. Like the first episode
I thought was was great, andthen I emailed Tyler and Ryan and said,
thank you guys so much, youknow, for inviting me to do

(12:22):
this and hook me on this showbecause it's it is really really well done,
you know, so I have alot of ideas and thoughts about it.
You know, I think it's castvery well. I think the scripting
is brilliant. I think the setsare designed very well, you know that
really just give an emotional feel toit. So, you know, I've

(12:45):
been in lots of death scenes andserial killers scenes and serial killers homes and
sitting with them talking with them,and so you know, I can definitely
see where they where they're going withthis awesome. Okay, so before we
get too deep into the show.I feel like I have to ask this

(13:07):
because I would love to know moreabout this as a basis for how we
figured this out. Can you tellus what a forensic criminologist is? And
as a follow up question, ifI'm watching an episode of Law and Order,
where do you show up in thatepisode? Like? How far into
that episode should I be looking foryou? Okay, So a forensic criminologist

(13:31):
is kind of like trifold. SoI'm part forensic scientist, I'm part forensic
psychologist and part forensic sociologist, andall in relation to law. So the
word forensic means forum in Latin,and it's basically the application of science to
law. So my education is thefoundation of it is in psychology because that's

(13:58):
where as everything stems from. Andthen the forensic science kind of overlaps with
that because behavior creates evidence and behavioris evidence. And so then all of
this behavior and the cognition, thepersonality, the emotionality of both the victim
and the offender. When it comesto homicide, a forensic criminologist who specializes

(14:22):
in homicide or particular type of homicidethe way that I do synthesizes all that
information post analytical processes that require atremendous deep dive into various aspects of every
piece of the event, from thebehavior to the physical evidence, all the

(14:46):
way through the sociology of it,and then basically building this mosaic that is
palatable and applicable to prosecutors, defenseattorneys, forensic pathologists, corners, detectives,
people like that. So if you'rewatching Law and Order, um,
I'm kind of like a partner forpeople who are trying to understand who might

(15:11):
have committed a crime, but they'rethat they're investigating up. I specifically specialized
in homicide, so that's all Ido is death investigations and a lot of
serial investigations because obviously a lot ofstage cases that get missed up front.
It's not until a later death ofanother intimate partner of that's discovered where um,

(15:37):
you know, they they realize thatthey probably have a serial killer there.
So like, um, that's beenthe most of my work in the
hundreds and hundreds of cases that I'veworked over, you know, more than
two decades now. So are thepolice calling you? Are are district attorneys
calling you? Like who who reachesout to you and says I think we

(16:00):
need your services. So we're retainedby both criminal and civil parties. So
sometimes we're retained by families and wrongfuldeath suits where a case has not gone
criminal, where they don't feel lawenforcement doesn't feel like they have enough,
you know, to probable cause toarrest, so the case will come here

(16:21):
and be processed civilly and we gothrough the murder room process, and the
murder room is six stages, sothen basically they're they're not only taking it
to trial on the civil side,but then sometimes that civil case that we
build for them then turns into thecriminal case. So yes, it can
be it can be civil attorneys first, or it can be sheriff's offices.

(16:48):
You know, we're attained by alot of law enforcement agencies, corners offices,
prosecutors. Mostly on the criminal side. It's going to be a law
enforcement agency rather than a medical examiner'soffice per se. But we work very
very closely, hand in hand withall those agencies in tandem because our process

(17:10):
is systematic, scientific, multidisciplinarian,discedent centered. So in order to accomplish
all of those foundational principles and keepthe pillars of you know, validity and
reliability forefront in our investigations so thatit can reach support system and be admissible.

(17:32):
Everybody's necessary to be at the roundtable. Wow, wow, super
fascinating. It's it's it's definitely aninteresting field. It's become way more interesting
over the past ten years, forsure. You know, the first fifteen
years we're nothing compared to the pastten years for sure. And is that

(17:56):
due to technology or is that dueto just like more murdering is happening.
Well, I think it's really justa no, it's really more the media.
You know, it's the media.The media has changed crime. It's
changed murder. It's changed the waythat juries perceive evidence. Before, you
know, we had OJ and theand like the CSI effect, you know

(18:19):
back in the nineties where everybody waslike kind of like got this idea of
forensic science and everybody created this interestin it. There was just like this
huge influx into forensic science. Andnow we're seeing more with like this true
crime revolution, a tremendous difference inthe way that people are speaking to us

(18:41):
as experts. It's it's mind bogglingsometimes to me some of the things that
people say to me, of whichthey here on podcasts or TV on TV
shows, um that are like realitybased true crime shows, yea, and
they think that that is the like, that's what's going to happen in court,

(19:06):
you know, that's how that thisworks. And it doesn't. It's
that's not how it works at all, you know. So in order to
understand it, you have to beworking in the field and the experts that
work in the field that render theseopinions, especially on credible shows, you
know, incredible networks. You know, yeah, I would say believe them,

(19:27):
but it's just changed the way ourjuries are perceiving things. So then
we have got to adapt to thaton our end as experts. Because there's
so many true crime podcasts out therejust providing and putting information out into the

(19:48):
public that is just completely false.Wow. So I'm I'm worried that my
first question is is going to bean example of that? But I'm going
to go for it anyway. SoI'm a psychologist, but I'm not a
forensic psychologist or anything like that.And I was going to say everything I

(20:10):
know about serial killers is not justfrom reading murder mysteries, which I know
are not based in fact. Butyou know, I read John Douglas a
long time ago, things like thatanyway, So my burning question is I'm
under the impression that serial killers donot kill out of anger, but they

(20:33):
kill out of an obsessive urge.It becomes a very ritualized thing that they
do. They develop a fixation,and it's there's often a sexual, sadistic,
sexual component to it. So that'smy my novice idea of serial killers,
which Sam does not fit that profile. So I'm hoping that you can

(20:56):
explain, you know, clear clearup my misconceptions on that. I would
I'd be happy to take a shotat it, Stacy. I think that
you have a lot of really goodideas, like as far as you're the
foundation of murder in general, thatit's most often connected to anger, and

(21:17):
statistically and in the research, themost common emotion reported by offenders who kill
other people are is anger, ofcourse, and so it's definitely murder is
definitely about the offenders need to satisfyanger or some kind of revenge in a
lot of cases, but not allso. So when it comes to serial

(21:41):
homicide, the number one, like, as far as I know, unless
it's changed, you know, recently, and I'm not aware of it.
But the number one serial homicide motiveis typically is personal gain, like financial
or money, so it actually doesn'thave to do with anger. And the

(22:04):
definition of a serial offender maybe definedsomething like an offender who kills one or
more people on more than one occasion. So like I think, you know,
to obviously be serio, you'd haveto have one offender or one victim,

(22:26):
two victims, three victims, andthen of course not all together.
They have to be spread out overa period of time. So it's a
longitudinal type of offense, and itcan be very short. You know,
sometimes they become active and we catchthem really fast, and then you know,
like just two off the top ofmy head, you know, the

(22:48):
one that I have is spanned overfifty two years, and then the one
that we had that just died hererecently a couple of weeks ago. He
killed in nineteen ninety seven, andthen we had two victims in two thousand
and six, and then we caughtthem. We caught them in two thousand
and six. So yeah, solike it can be short, it can

(23:14):
be long. But it's the definitionreally from like a working definition is that
they're going to kill one or morepeople on one or more occasions with you
know, separated by a period oftime. And then from that standpoint,
you know, why are they doingthis? So there's all types of different
reasons why they do this. Thenumber one reason to my knowledge is property

(23:40):
gain, is personal gain. Andthen I would say the second second probably
reason is is anger or you know, some type of a power and control
for me personally, because I've specializedin intimate partner homicides that are staged as
missing persons or another kind of murderor suicides, accidents, natural things like

(24:07):
that. It's it's interesting because they'revery clear cut. You know, murder
is very simple in general. It'sit's conflict resolution for the offender. And
so when it comes to Sam,Sam is resolving conflict. Even though he
is a serial offender, he's stillresolving conflicts. So this murder is simple

(24:29):
for him. It's conflict resolution forthe offender. So that's kind of like
a a short version of just serialhomicide just in general, and just to
answer your question about why do theydo it? Most often property gain,
personal gain, that's the most commonreason, common motive, most common emotion

(24:56):
reported his anger. He's just notacting like some of the big people that
you know, we've seen, youknow, really highly publicized like Ted Bundy,
Ted Bundy or Joseph DeAngelo, youknow, people who have this very
ritualistic pattern. And plus he doesn'tseem to have animosity that we've seen yet
towards women. So I'm just someof the things I've been you know,

(25:21):
reading on Facebook comments and things likethat, have have asked about that.
So I was curious about that too. I think he does show some ritualistic
pottern you know, as far asserial killers goes, he does do that,
you know, like the the distortedthinking, like where he sits outside
I forget it was a couple episodesago, but he was sitting outside the
restaurant I think it was Elios's restaurant, and he was going through his in

(25:45):
his head, you know, whathe would do to him, and then
said, no, no, no, I'm not going to do this,
you know, I'm gonna go home. And so he did come back and
talked to the psychologist. Yeah,Alan, Yeah, he's talking to Alan,
and there is for me, asyou know, from my side of

(26:08):
the house, I think he isvery ritualistic. Interesting. Why do you
say that because he says things thatall of his victims deserve it. So
every single thing he justifies and ractualizes, they all have wronged him in some
sort of way, like where theylook at him wrong, they speak to

(26:30):
him wrong. There's something that theydo that offends him. And oftentimes sero
homicide offenders or you know, youfind it with rape as well, you
find it with sex offenses. Theyhave this pattern of learned behavior. It
murder and these types of offenses doesn'treally deviate very far from the same drives

(26:52):
that we have every single day thatdrive us in our regular behavior. And
then of course, you know,for them, it's a combination of a
trigger and an emotion, a thoughtand a behavior, you know, this
kind of sequence that goes along withthis ritual. So the first thing is
he goes into us in a restaurantto who inspect it, and then somebody

(27:17):
in the restaurant offends him. Thenhe perceives that person as picking on him
or you know, disrespecting him insome way. Then he begins to he
he leaves and begins to fantasize aboutseeking revenge on that person. And then
in the past, before he metAllan, he was killing them all and

(27:41):
then now that he's met Allen,he's trying to stop that cycle of violence
where he meets them, they offendhim, he perceives he perceives himself to
be victimized or offended. He beginsfantasizing about their murder. Then he rashed
ones and justifies it by saying,you know, they deserve it. They're

(28:03):
terrible people. Look how they're treatingother people in the world. So he's
he's eradicating, you know, somethinggood. You know, he's doing something
good for the world. And thenof course you know he has a temper
and he can lives it as wellas we saw yesterday, well this week
in the episode this week, rightright, Yeah, well that was really
helpful. Yeah, in terms ofwhen when you were talking about the number

(28:30):
one motive for murder is generally personalgain. Yeah, very homicide for sure.
Yeah, So one could assume thatin most of those cases, the
reason the motive behind those crimes isspecifically about that gain. It's not necessarily
that those people are compulsive murderers.They are doing it with an end goal

(28:55):
in mind, which is to eliminatethat other person who's standing in their way
of that personal gain. And thatSam, on the other hand, seems
to be a person who is hauntedby a compulsion and personal gain is not
the option here. It's not it'snot what he's looking for in your experience.

(29:15):
And this may be an impossible questionto answer, but if personal gains
the number one motive and you stripthat away, how many of the cases
have you dealt with where you orwhat are percentage would be where you've been
like, you know what, thisis not something that someone did in order

(29:37):
to receive personal gain or in orderto receive from some personal benefit from it.
This is a compulsive thing. Thisperson is not in control of themselves.
Several cases that we've worked over theyears have fallen under that category that
what you're talking about, that's nonpersonal gain, but it's it's definitely a

(30:00):
conflict resolution based pattern of behavior.And then secondarily it's it's saving the emotionality.
You know, he's feeling this rageand the only way to relieve that
rage is to kill. Just likeyou're talking about, like this compulsion and
so there are a lot of killersthat definitely have a compulsion to abuse,

(30:22):
and so we see a lot oftimes they have these histories of domestic violence.
They have petty crimes starting you know, when they're teenagers, maybe sex
offenses, a lot of property crimes, and then you can see the pattern
of behavior deteriorate over time as theybecome an adult, where then they end
up completely you know, antisocial,with note, with complete disregard for others.

(30:45):
And so then they embark on meetingtheir needs no matter what it takes.
If it's about property, it's aboutmoney, if it's about anger,
if it's about sex. You know, yes, I mean that we definitely
set out all the time in ourwork here. You know, why is
one particular killer killing, but theykill for so many different reasons. You

(31:08):
know, their motives change. Allthese things change all the time. You
know, they don't they don't doit all the same way every single time.
You know, the ritual can bethe same, but there's various changes
up to the ritual. If avictim isn't going to suffer, well,
if they're not suffering the way thatthey're supposed to be suffering. If you

(31:30):
perceive the if you can imagine theserial killer as an executive producer and the
executive producer of his own show,and he casts a show and he scripts
it, and he hands everybody,all these victims, the script and they're
supposed to do exactly what he saysbecause he's directing it now, and they
don't do that. The ones thatwe get their bodies back, you only

(31:52):
get bodies back from a serial killerthat they want you to have. So
the ones that we do get back, you know, they you can tell
which ones maybe went along with thescript a little bit more than maybe some
of the other ones. You know, when we had here, you know,
two victims. All the victims weremutilated, their breasts were renewed from

(32:17):
their bodies very coarsely, very coarseknife. But then one was beheaded completely,
and she was beheaded because she didnot follow the rules, you know,
his rules. So the beheading waskind of almost a punishment or in
an additional release of rage or controlthat he couldn't get in his normal way

(32:43):
of doing his end. Draining herand then cutting off her feet, cutting
off her hands, you know,just doing all these things to her.
Yes, he definitely was showing thatsituation. We had an officer that had
seen them in a in a storeand warned her said, you know,
we've got a guy out here killinggirls, and she said, you know,

(33:05):
I'm not stupid enough to be killedby no serial killer. And she
was with him, She was withthe circular in the store. The three
of them were standing together. Theythe officer had no idea that he was
the guy that we were looking for. And she turned up dead three days
later. But because of her behaviorin that store, she paid dearly for
that. It was very sad.Wow, Wow, that's awful. Yeah,

(33:29):
that's awful. So I have afew questions, some of which are
from some people on Facebook. Lindsayand I belonged to fan page, the
Patient fan page on Facebook, andoh, We've had some really wonderful interactions

(33:50):
with people there, and so I'mgoing to read a couple of their questions.
So Christie asked, what you thinkof the gin dnamic between Sam and
his mom. Oh, I mean, I think it's, you know,
a mother who has tried very hardto just, you know, keep the

(34:12):
peace. And we see this inso many cases where you're dealing with a
son that has behavior like this fromfrom a very early age. In the
one episode, she was talking about, you know, Sam has always been
Sam. You know, he's alwaysbeen a little bit different or I forget
how she put it, but sheshe made some reference to that. A

(34:34):
lot of times we see a lotof enabling behavior from people who are who
surround these these kind of offenders becausethey just they're just constant, constantly,
constantly, you know, doing thingsthat are just putting everybody in danger and
at risk. And you know,now he's now taking the victim's home,

(34:55):
you know. So I think thatshe I think she has tried to stay
alive. I think she has triedto survive. We see that in real
life in the field. We seeoffenders, people that are married to offenders,
serial killers that never knew they weremarried to them. Um. You

(35:16):
know, my good friend Melissa Mooreis the daughter of Keith jess Person and
she never knew he was killing anybodyduring her childhood until the day he was
arrested for them for nine murders.Wow. Yeah, they don't know a
lot of times. But I thinkshe obviously she does know now, yeah,

(35:37):
you know, but I think thatshe's still afraid of him. Yeah.
A lot of a lot of thefans were saying things like she should
go to jail two, and II was commenting, like, but I
think she's been traumatized herself. She'sa victim as well, and I think
as well, yeah yeah, sure, yeah yeah she. I mean,

(35:59):
she's definitely gonna charge she's you know. I mean I sit there, like
as a person who you know,came from the DA's office. You know,
I sit there and in my head, I'm thinking about the the the
long list of all the charges thatthey are both going to be facing.
You know, if if Alan Strousssurvives this, and you know it is

(36:19):
it is a very very long list. And she in North Carolina, under
North Carolina law, she would becharged with almost everything that he is.
Wow. I wonder if she knowsthat, you know, I don't think
that's part of her on her radar. You know, it never seems to
be like with with our paces,like when there's accomplices or other people that

(36:45):
are attached that are charged with accessory, they are charged with the murder of
you know, you don't actually haveto pull a trigger to be charged with
murder. You can just be partof the felony. And it's still it's
still like that. So um,I don't think she's looking at it from
that standpoint. She's not called thepolice for herself. I mean, she
has tremendous power here to stop allof this, and she's not doing that,

(37:07):
you know, to your points space. You know, she's blinded by
trauma and blinded by protecting her son. And I can tell you from years
in the field, even the parentsof killers will protect their children. Yeah,
I mean we're definitely seeing that onthis show right now. Yeah.

(37:27):
Wow, very common? Really something, yeah, very very common. Can
I ask a question just in termsof how you do your job? So
obviously, a great deal of yourjob is about looking at evidence, and
it's about analyzing, you know,crime scenes and how things are set up
and things like that, but italso sounds like a big part of your

(37:47):
job is actually sort of trying tobe in the mindset of a killer.
You are, you're actually trying tounderstand their psychology so that you can sort
of figure out how to how tofind them. Um, And I'm just
curious how much of how much ofeach of your job do you do?

(38:07):
Of that is, how much ofit is about just trying to figure out
the psychology and how much of itis looking at the evidence? And then
also sort of is a follow upquestion to that, does it ever get
weird to be thinking like a killerall the time, Like does it?
I mean, like the story thatyou just told us about the women who

(38:29):
were mutilated is horrifying, and um, I mean does that? How do
you handle that? How do youhow do you work with that and not
have that affect you? Or doesit affect you? Um? I'm going
to break the question apart, Okay, lindsay sorry, and that's okay,
that's okay. I'm just going tobreak it apart and response to it,

(38:50):
you know, in pieces, sothat I can I can answer your question.
Um. The first the first pieceof my first response is I have
a very famous quote that everybody knowsthat comes from me and that I've said
for years, and that is,swallow the darkness, to see through their
eyes, deal with their hands,and think through their minds. And in

(39:14):
order to catch these killers and huntthese killers the way that we do here
at LPA, you have to doit. You have to be willing to
do it. You have to figureout how to do it and come back
from it. So, like,to answer your question, there's, yes,
they're swallowing the darkness. There's there'sall of these elements that go into

(39:37):
having to do that and to putyourself in a position to see through their
eyes, deal with their hands,think with their minds, so that we
can find them, you know,so we can resolve the issues that are
of course legally pending, but thenall of the context issues that everybody always

(39:57):
asks us about, you know,not only all the legalities, but then
all of the context. So andthen you know, to come back out
of the darkness, you know.I think that there are a lot of
people who are very affected by it. I would say that I'm definitely different
than I was twenty five years ago. There's no question there's I don't think

(40:22):
that you can ever go into thisand come out the same way. And
I do deal with it. Ido resolve it in lots of different ways
that are you know, are towardsthe emotional wellness and health, you know,
for my own brain, because itis very difficult to do this kind

(40:43):
of work and to see traumatized familiesconstantly just in tremendous agony, because we
can't restore life, and sometimes wecan't help law enforcement. We can't give
them enough where it's going to resolvea case legally, and it's it's very
difficult it's very hard, very veryhard. Wow. Yeah, I can

(41:07):
only imagine. And so when you'rewhen you're trying to figure out the mind
of the killer, are you doyou have to sort of shut away what
your own responses of I mean,like the concept of swallowing the darkness,
which I'm still sort of trying tosort of really actually figure out what that
means, um Like, is isit a constant struggle for you to to

(41:34):
push away your own personal feelings aboutthat what you're seeing and focus solely on
I've got to stay focused on whatthe killers motivations and techniques are because that's
how I'm going to find them andget to them. No, no,
no, I don't have I don'tstruggle with that personally, Lindsay, like,
I don't feel, like, youknow, my own personal feelings come

(41:58):
into play at all. I'm I'ma I'm a person that is very very
I guess. I don't know ifit's because I've been doing it for so
long. I don't know if it'sbecause my life revolves around death. I
don't know. I don't know why. But when I see what I see,
I see so many things in allof that information, A lot of

(42:22):
times I see the reflection of thepersonality of the offender, you know,
staring back at me from the woundpatterns or on the victims, or the
way that things are, the waythat the offender uses spatiality and applies the
use of space arrangement and occupancy ofobjects in a scene or in multiple scenes.

(42:49):
But you know, I don't Idon't really think about my own personal
feelings towards it because I'm like ona mission, so I'm very very focused
and very very driven to to domy piece of the job. Like and
and here we are a roundtable fromChrimestein to courtroom. And you know,

(43:14):
my position on the roundtable is laterin the game, you know, where
the death investigations and Christein is upfront, and it goes clockwise and it
goes literally everybody sits there. There'ssixteen seats at the roundtable and it goes
literally through all the experts. Wehave a big lazy Susan in the middle

(43:36):
of the table where all the evidencegoes on there. And you know,
we all kind of we all worktogether on the walls, you know,
the murder room walls. Everything goesup there. So it's it's I don't
know that any of us are reallylike that about our personal feelings. I
particularly am not. My daughter isnot, you know, and she sits
actually directly across from me at theroundtable. Wow. Wow, Yeah,

(44:04):
Well I had this thought as youwere talking, because everyone, you know,
a lot of people have asked,and we've asked our previous guests.
We've had two other psychologists on theshow. You know, will will Alan
be able to maybe not cure Sam, but you know, get him to
stop doing this? And you know, we saw in this last episode that

(44:29):
you know, not yet. ButI started thinking from what you were saying,
because I don't think Alan is gettinginto the mind and the soul of
Sam in order to try to gethim to stop. He's coming from his
own experience, even though he mightbe an expert. I'm not quite sure
what he's an expert in, buthe might be an expert. But I

(44:51):
knew the minute he said, well, you know, think of your mom,
that that wasn't going to work.You know, that's not going to
get you know, Sam to stop. But maybe you know, and Alan
is not a violent man. He'shaving these fantasies, but I don't think
he's going to be able to acton those fantasies. But he maybe is
going to have to really get intothe evil mind of Sam in order to

(45:15):
figure out how to get him tostop. And that just came to me
as you were talking. I don'tknow what you think about that. Yeah,
I'm I'm not a big proponent onrehab for some types of killers.
The recidivism is very high for violentcrime. And I have worked many cases

(45:43):
where I have looked in the eyesof a killer and ask them questions or
you know, just said, youknow, why didn't you just divorce them?
You know that's another alternative. Youknow, you don't have to kill
them. You could have just divorcedthem, you know, stuff like that,

(46:06):
and you know that's not an optionbecause that doesn't actually give them what
they need. And you know,with Alan as the psychologist, I don't
know what he specializes in either,Stacey, I'm guessing it's probably not serial
homicide. But you know, thisSam is the type of killer that I

(46:30):
that's not my role in it,Like, I don't see it. First
of all, I don't think there'sany therapeutic value when somebody is detained.
You know, that was a partof my you know, in college,
when I was in psychology, Idid several internships and I worked in a
juvenile justice center with kids that weredetained and trying to like do some level

(46:53):
of like learn how to do counselinginside of prison because that's exactly what I
want to do it first. Andit was not long that I realized that,
Okay, this is probably not goingto work because there I just did
not feel like there was any therapeuticvalue when somebody is attained, and in
this case it's actually Alan, youknow, that's detained, and so then

(47:15):
he's like deep thing. He's likegoing through this deep dive of himself,
pulling out all these skills that hehas and all these ideas that he knows
how to do with people to tryto influence behavior, you know, for
this cognitive behavioral type of approach thathe's using with Sam. You know,
in my opinion, you're this psychologistssay stay star. I mean I could

(47:37):
be completely wrong, but like frommy standpoint, you know, as a
criminologist, like he's trying to getinto his mind, but he's also trying
to influence his emotionality. He's alwaystrying to influence his behavior from this very
cognitive behavioral type, you know,dual approach. And I agree, I
agree that's an idea. But Imean, I've had plenty of serial killers

(47:58):
and none of them have rehabed,and I would never let any single one
of them out. And there's beenseveral that I've thought tooth and nail to
keep in over the years. Imean I've I've gone all the way,
all the way to the top,fighting to keep people in prison that I
knew as stud as they got outthey were going to re offend. It

(48:22):
was just part of who they are. Some people's lindu systems are not set
up properly. Their amygdalas are notproperly set up. It's like something,
you know, some biological component.They can't be popped out of that compulsion
to kill. Right. Then Ihave other offenders that will never kill again
that I'd be like, oh,yeah, you could let that one out

(48:43):
that was that was never going todo it again. Okay, this question
may seem slightly off topic, butI promise it isn't. Okay. I
know I was researching your website todayand on top of being a forensic criminalologist,
you're also a professional musician. Yeah, and you you've toured and you

(49:07):
have had records out and stuff.So okay, just bear with me here.
I'm dying to talk about Kenny Chesney. That's really what I want to
talk about. Yeah, oh mygosh, what its fist? Right?
Right? Okay, So first ofall, the first thing I want to
say is I have this fantasy ofKenny Chesney at home relaxing and somebody calling

(49:29):
him and saying, hey, Kenny, there's this new show on Hulu that
with Steve Carell. They want touse your music? Is that okay?
And He's like, yeah, sure, what's the show about? And they're
like, uh, let me callyou back. You know what I mean?
Because the further we get into thisshow, we see that Kenny Chesney's
music is not just music. It'sa plot device, and his fan club

(49:51):
is a plot device. And like, especially in episode five where we are
right now, we're seeing and whenSam is talking about I went to go
see concerts in Chicago and in Raleigh, I'm like, somebody better check the
morgue in Chicago and Raleigh. Youknow what I mean? After these things,
absolutely, I know, yes,absolutely, I completely I'm feeling slightly

(50:16):
bad for Kenny Chesney right now,who I'm sure did not sign up for
this. But nevertheless, how doesmusic ever play a part in finding these
people? Because if anybody could lockinto the fact of that Kenny Chesney is
the secret behind Sam's ability to killor not kill, I feel like that

(50:37):
would be a way to get himright. You know. I think that
it was very cathartic, you know. You see, we always see in
these kind of kills that, likethe kind of kill that we had with
Elias, you know, that's avery specific type of holding life and death
in your hands. You know,it's strigulation and the killer. You know.

(51:02):
Another thing that is important I thinkto recognize when we're talking about the
music is the intimacy of music todifferent people, Like you hear Kenny Chesney,
Stacey, here's Kenny Chesney. Ihear Kenny. Like we all hear
him differently, you know what Imean, Like we all experience him,
and like maybe Stacey's like, Nope, not a fan, Lindsay You're like,

(51:23):
oh yeah, I love playing Chesneyor whatever. You know, Like
everybody has their own opinions about musicand what resonates in their mind, and
like the way they feel it becausemusic is just an emotional ride. You
know, every song I think isjust it's about connectivity. It's human connective

(51:44):
tissue like food. People share food, people share music, and those are
connective tissues, you know, betweenall of us as people. I think
that Kenny Chesney Heath like Kenny ofall music. You're not going to listen
to metallicum. You know, you'renot listening to like Mare was miss right.

(52:07):
You're not listening to something that's veryhard and like that has all of
these other characteristics that are that areyou know, similar to him. You
know that he's listening to No ShoesNation. Yeah right, you're right,
not the most aggressive sounding thing.Yeah, but it's very cathartic in the

(52:28):
in like that whole euphoria thing thatwe saw after the kill and this whole
relief that's very normal Sometimes when wefind them when it's a big bloody mess.
You know, they're covered in blood, and you look at him and
say, hey, what you're doing, you know, walking down the street.
Where are you going going home?Oh? Okay, well you know
you're covered in blood and they don'teven know that. They oftentimes blow stop

(52:52):
lights, wedding lights, stop signs, they speed, there's all these traffic
in fractions. And it's like whenI was looking at where I was watching
the episode five and he was talkingabout when he left and he went in
his room, you know, andhe turns the music up and he's like
blasting the music. And it wasso different, you know, because it's

(53:15):
like you went, you just strangledsomeone. You held the life and death
and you held it in your hand. You held that balance between your hands,
and you chose death. And thatwas the most intimate experience that Elias
could have with any other human onEarth. There's no one else that can

(53:37):
experience Elias's death. Accept the person, you know, holding his hands around
Elias's throat. Yeah, and thenhe goes in there and listens to this
like beach music, Like he listensto like you know what I mean,
Like he has a picture of theguitar the beach on the wall and he's

(54:00):
listening to it was something about sanI believe that the song was like something
about fan right and beaches and likehappiness, and and he was just yeah,
yeah, and he's like hugging thebox of all the you know,
all that represent all of his victims, and you know, he's like wrapping

(54:22):
himself Arama, and you see thislike tremendous relief, you know, from
from all this anxiety and all thisstuff is built up, you know of
and then you know, I mean, that was a bad idea to bring
him in there. That was abad idea. I knew that was a
bad idea when when Alan was sayinglet's bring him in, I knew that

(54:43):
I was going to go badly.Well, it was Elios's idea originally,
although I don't know that that's whatSam thought that that's what Alan thought he
was gonna do when he brought himin. I think he thought he was
going to have like another fanly session. It's like putting a stake on one
side of the one side of theroom and putting a hungry lion on the
other side of the room and belike, okay, let's talk this out

(55:04):
right. Yeah, you're talking abouta predator. You know, you're you're
claring a great white shark and explainexpecting him to sit there and deal with
something bleeding. You know, it'sjust not going to happen. There's just
certain triggers for them, you knowthat. I mean, in the field.
I can tell you, you know, when when we're out finding them

(55:25):
and interviewing them, and it's youknow, it's very strategic. But things
go wrong all the time. Thingsdon't go to plant all the time.
Somebody shows up in a death scenethat you're not expecting, or another witness
is present with the witness that you'retrying to talk to you or the killer

(55:45):
that you're trying to talk to.You know, they've got a captive witness
there. Something like, there's allkinds of things that can happen. And
that's kind of what I felt whenI was watching this. I was just
like, yeah, see, thiswould go on in the field, you
know, in an investigation that we'reconducting or something, And like, I
would have never put them together underany circumstances. You know, I wud

(56:06):
never put a victim and an offenderlike that together. So I have to
what I think, our related questionsand I'm aware of the time. I
could really talk to you for hours. Yeah, me too. It's fun.
It's so fun. Yeah, whoknew? Who knew? Talking about

(56:27):
serial killer? It could be somuch fun. Yeah, that's what Lindsey
said that in episode one. Sohow does Alan come back from what he
just saw? And and how soif we just assumed that he's not going
to be able to cure him,how does he escape? I have a

(56:52):
theory, but I want to hearwhat you think. You know, serial
killers are very very specific as faras like you know, like I said,
I mentioned, you know that weonly get the bodies back that they
want us to have back, andthey have these scripts typically that they they're

(57:15):
in acting. And that's not everysingle one of them, but that is
a lot of them, you know, a lot of them, especially the
kind that we in particular deal withhere at LPA, and we don't deal
with like lust killers, We don'tdeal with a lot of other types of
killers that a lot of other typesof experts deal with because ours are primarily

(57:36):
staged murders one after the next,after the next, after the next,
and then they finally get caught onone of them, and then all those
other cases are brought forth to beconsidered and looked at again. So we're
kind of in a different, differentarea of serial homicide, so to speak.
You know, I think Alan hasa lot of experience variance in doing

(58:00):
what he's doing. I think hewrote that book, and you know,
he had a lot of respect fromwriting the book, and I just I
don't see him coming back from it. But I think that there when,
you know, I think people definitelytry to save himselves. So I don't
think he's just going to give upand get give in to Sam and be

(58:22):
like, oh yeah, okay,well you know, you can just kill
me now it doesn't matter. ButI don't I don't know that he comes
back. I think there's a tremendousshift here. I think there's a turn,
a corner that is turned. Nowthere's no going back once you strangle
somebody in front of somebody else.He leaves the body lying on the floor

(58:44):
with Alan and retreats back to thebedroom to listen to Kenny and to hug
the wallets. And again you know, he has complete Sam has complete disregard.
I just don't know that. Ihaven't gotten that far face, Like
I've never I haven't thought about likethe survival element, like if there is
a survival element. I just Idon't know that there is, because like

(59:07):
in my in my world, thereisn't right, you know, And so
I don't see that. So it'spossible that I don't actually see it just
because it's I'm not used to seeingit, Like I don't see I would
definitely think he's gonna try to savehimself though. Yeah, that's that's a
good point. I wanted to askyou about the wallets. Actually, the

(59:29):
wallets are really fascinating to me.And I found his embrace at the wallets,
like I was struggling to understand whatthat was, because it is he
Do you think he's embracing the walletsas a way of like, uh,
does he receive comfort from the walletsof the of the lives of people he's

(59:52):
killed? Does he? Or ishe? Is he? Does he feel
remorse for with those wallets? Like? What are those wallets? Meanti?
So the you know killers, andthis this is just in general, you
know killers, The murder really doesn'tstop until the killer is finished being satisfied
from it or finished enjoying it,or however you want to speak or you

(01:00:15):
know, however you want to saythat. So if you go to a
prison, you sit down with akiller and they're still like all entrenched in
the murder and they'll be living itover and over and over again, that
murder really hasn't ended. You know, per se, because it's not ended
for that offender. It's ended forthe victim, but it's really never over

(01:00:35):
for the family either, So youkind of like have to look at like
the people that are involved in howit's really never over. So for me,
when he goes in there and he'slooking at these these pieces of these
people's lives that represent them to him, he is enjoying the murders again.

(01:00:57):
He's continuing to gain satisfaction from thekills, and he's continuing to embrace his
behavior as being justified. These aremy kills, these are my people.
I killed them, These are theyall belong to me. I have the
ultimate power and control. Now.They can never reoffend. They can never
offend me again, they can neverlook at me wrong, they can never

(01:01:21):
say this thing to me wrong.I own you. You're in a box
in my closet up on the shelf, and you know, I just you
know, I want to experience itagainst So he like embraces it, you
know, like that's the way itfeels to me. So Elias is while
it is ultimately just going to endup in that box and then we're going

(01:01:42):
to move on to the next person. To when as the compulsion kicks in
over all over again. Right,It's just it's just like a circle,
you know. They go like,it's always connected to some traumatic event too.
There's always something, lindsay that youcan trace back to them, like
when you you know, I Itell all the operatives here that are out
in the field looking for people,I'm like, find me something in the

(01:02:04):
past seven days. Like they'll bringme something and they'll say, this is
what we got talk, this iswhat the body looks like, or this
is what the steam looks like.I'm like, okay, go find me
what happened in that person's life sevendays from now, and if you have
to go back thirty because most ofthe traumatic event we can tie back to
like some kind of thing happening.And so with Sam, we see this

(01:02:27):
because Sam says, I go tothe restaurant in to inspect it and while
I'm there, these people look atme wrong, they talk to me wrong,
and he then becomes offended by them. Then he begins this, you
know, so that's like he's startingdiscycle. You know. You can start
to see him circle in this circleof violence. So then he has this

(01:02:50):
just sort of thinking you know whena mind said, we have one survivor
of one of the serial killers thatI had, and she said that the
serial killer told like they were theywere involved in a sexual act. And
he said to her, you know, you just called me a particular name,
and she's like, what are youtalking about. I didn't say anything.

(01:03:12):
I wasn't talking at all. Ididn't say anything. But in his
mind, that's the script. Sothey're very very scripted in a certain way.
And I think that, you know, Sam's script is very specific,
you know, for his pattern andhis ritual, even if he's killing them
all differently. You know, nowwe know that he likes to triangle people

(01:03:36):
because that's definitely the most intimate wayof having the ultimate power and control over
somebody. And that's basically what Alansaid to him. You go looking for
this, you know, and itprobably doesn't take much for you to now
assume that someone has offended you.And so I think that I was thinking

(01:03:57):
that, but it didn't actually helpfor him to say that, you know,
um, and then to compare himwith Dad, you know, Sam
really hated that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just think the
whole thing's going badly. I thinkjust the whole thing is it's I mean,
it's so crazy. There's stasy becauselike it's like this little thirty minute

(01:04:18):
episode, you know, it's justso short, and I find myself completely
glued to it. And I'm noteven a TV person and had Ryan and
Tyler and I said, hey,Doc, you know, watch this show
and blah blah blah, and I'mlike, okay, is it. Where
is it? Because I don't havea regular TV I on they have streaming
things and they're like, no,no, no, you can get it

(01:04:38):
on Hula. Okay, great.I watched Hula and then I watched the
first episode was like, oh,this is so interesting, you know,
and I loved it. You know, it was really interesting from from the
site standpoint, stasy like from fromthe behavioral standpoint, and you know,
this this scenes and stuff like obviouslywe haven't seen a lot of his scenes,

(01:05:00):
but he's a very organized, methodicalOCD like type person. So he's
going to maintain all this control overthese scenes. He's going to keep it
clean, he's gonna be and he'sgonna be out. He's gonna bring the
weapons to the scene, he's gonnatake the weapons from the scene. You
know, there's not gonna be allany of this opportunistic stuff going on with
this guy. That's not who heis at all. You know, he's

(01:05:21):
a calculated hunter and killer. Wow. Well, to me, if I
say it's a I hope that Ihope that the people who make the patient
are listening to this, because Ithink it's the highest compliment for someone with
your background, who has clearly seenit all and more more than I think

(01:05:43):
I would want to even know.And you have seen it all and you're
watching it still being like gosh,I wonder what happens, So like,
yeah, congratulations to them. Yeah, well, yeah, they've done a
good job. My daughter and Iwere just talking about it before our call
here today and I asked her,you know, have you have you watched

(01:06:04):
it? And she was like,no, but I heard it was really
good. I'm like, it's reallygood, and I would typically never watch
a show like that. You know, I don't. I don't really,
I don't watch any type of crimerelated media at all, and so you
know, no, I don't.I just am not involved in that particular

(01:06:25):
piece of the media. So youknow, yeah, to catch my attention,
You're exactly right, lindsay, likeit's it's it's especially on it like
a true crime thing for me towatch something in true crime and then also
be like, oh, oh mygosh, I can't believe like how this
is going. So yeah, I'mI'm definitely hooked on it for sure.
That is great. I have tosay, if I had your job,

(01:06:47):
I would probably not watch anything butthe Food Network and the care Bears or
something, just like now, I'ma Game of Thrones VI games like,
I'm all like game yeah, likeall medieval stuff for me. That's the
only thing, you know that Ithat I watch on like the you know
TV. I guess you could callit, but no, I don't.
This is the first true crime thingI've watched I don't even know years.

(01:07:11):
Probably I just don't don't watch itunless somebody asks me to comment on something
like this, And this is allI want. You guys, did though
murder Murder Murder from one murder showto another true crime fictionalized I don't care.
I'll watch it all. Yeah,La, you should definitely keep your
eye on Stacy. She's clearly payYeah, it sounds like it, Lindsay,

(01:07:33):
it sounds like every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
but I mean, I think thatthat's that's the true crime revolution, you
know, and there's so many peoplethat that feel the same way. Um.
I mean, it's the things peoplesay to me in public, you

(01:07:54):
know, that stopped me and say, heyst Peller, It's so nice to
see the question about a case.So I'm thinking about but just you know,
while I'm eating in a restaurant orwalking through Waltart or Loos or something,
you know what i mean, justanywhere, they just asked me questions
about murder. And you know thatnever that was never like that, you

(01:08:16):
know, years and years ago.It's really just been the past, you
know, maybe seven years, fiveyears of the past ten you know that
I've been because once to Lindsay's commentabout music, when I retired from professional
music, came off tour, finishedthe Trucks of a Girls' tour, I
was out of the media for abouteighteen months and then went back into television

(01:08:39):
instead of music in twenty twelve.So I'm back into music now as well
as well as television. But umyeah, I switched gears from from music
into TV and I've just seen atremendous shift, you know, in the
past ten years. In the truecrime genre. Well, and plus you
know, all of the armchair detectivesright now out and basically journalists and police

(01:09:01):
and detectives are now actually asking becausethey don't have people, they don't have
the resources, asking the public toactually get involved in you know, searching,
and so people that don't have,you know, maybe work, or
people that do have work and justspend hours and hours and hours a day
like researching things. You know,people feel very emboldened to approach you in

(01:09:27):
lows and say, so, doyou think Scott Peterson pushed his wife down
the stairs? I guess our talkingabout him? Oh my gosh. I
mean, it's it's unbelievable, youknow, the people that that s thought
me and asked me questions, It'sit's shocking sometimes, you know, I
just I'm just like, I'm justtrying to buy some tomatoes. I know,

(01:09:50):
I'm just trying to buy some tomatoes, and I just want to go
home and eat, like like it'sjust so simple. But it's not simple,
because you're right, and like Iam a huge proponent of the media
partnering with law enforcement pursuant to tryto solve cold cases and getting information out

(01:10:12):
there. To the public for coldcases. I'm a huge proponent of using
the media the right way in alaw enforcement investigation to be helpful and where
everybody can benefit society in the community. And I think that there are a
lot of armchair detectives that are very, very bright. I think that they're

(01:10:33):
very very good at what they doas far as like not being you know,
experts, like at LPA's roundtable hereor something like that, but in
general, like from the Cloud Solvedstandpoint, I've met so many brilliant people
that are true crime fans over theyears that have tremendously great ideas about cases

(01:10:56):
and things like, hey, Doc, if you guys ever thought to do
this, if you guys ever thoughtto take it this way or that way?
And it's amazing to me, andeverything they tell me, I always
take it in. I listen tothem. I want to hear what they
have to say because I'm an eclecticperson when it comes to solving murder.
That's why they have a roundtable.That's why it's not square. That's why

(01:11:18):
it has no edges because everybody's equal. Everybody's opinions are important, they have
equal weight, and that to me, at this point, you know,
includes a lot of the people thatare trying to do something very good and
use their life to leave the worldbetter than they found it. You know.

(01:11:40):
Of course, there's the flip sideof that, where there are lots
of people just doing things that nobodyshould be doing to other people. Nobody
should be accusing somebody of murder.That's not the place of a citizen to
do that to another citizen, inmy opinion. That's just my personal opinion.
But like all of the armschaired detectivesthat are dedicating themselves to cases,

(01:12:00):
they're writing books about cases, they'remaking Facebook paces pages about them, they're
trying to do everything under the sun. They can't to help a family.
Oh, I think it's it's tremendous. Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful that
people are helping other people. Thatis cool. And I mean usually on
this show at some point where youtry to point out that one of the

(01:12:20):
main lessons of this show is donot become a serial killer. That we
usually try and make sure that everybodyknows that. But then in addition to
that, I think we should weshould say this time, do leave the
world a better place, Do takean interest in a good world. But
also if you see doctor Laura Petlerbuying tomatoes, please just let her buy.

(01:12:40):
Yeah. Well, the Risings playmission. Yeah, it's like it's
just as we call it, riseand Slay or it's it's about rising up.
And the sigil of LPA is aphoenix like this, this is what
it looks like. Oh my god. You know it's a it's a phoenix
rising from fire. And you know, that's what we do with cases,
Like we take a case it's completelyashes, it's in the dirt, it's

(01:13:01):
it's got no leads, nothing,and we resurrect it and we give it
life and we give it, youknow, a rebirth type of an idea.
And in order to do that,you know, we have this thing
called it's kind of like No ShoesNation for Kenny Disney, but on a
much smaller scale, we call itRise and Slay. And rise and slay

(01:13:23):
means to use your life to leavethe world better than you found it.
And a lot of the true crimefans are definitely doing that. And I,
you know, law enforcement is too. I've worked with law enforcement for
more than two decades and last weekwe were I was in Columbia, South
Carolina, and I had thirty sixattendees to my course there and it was
Pettler's Advanced Methods for Solving Stage Murders. It was all teaching my methods to

(01:13:47):
officers who have, you know,murders that they're trying to solve, and
so they came to the class tolearn alternative ways of doing that. And
I asked them, are you awareof the true crime Revolution? Are you
aware of what's going on? Notone single one of them had any idea
what it was. They had noidea of the podcast world, They had
no idea that all this is goingon. To them, all that happened

(01:14:11):
was like O. J. Simpsonand the cside effect. They don't realize
what's actually going on in their own, you know, everywhere, and like
how their jobs are being affected bythat. Yeah, you know, so
it's important. And I told them, you know, you guys are all
doing a great job. And inmy career, I have met very few

(01:14:33):
officers who were malicious or that deliberatelyset out to sabotage a case that we're
covering things up, that were deliberatelycorrupt. Very few have I met them.
Yes, have I worked with agenciesthat turned out to be corrupt,
Yes, absolutely. Have I seenthe corruption, Have I seen cases covered
up? Yes? But the majority, you know, ninety eight percent,

(01:14:58):
ninety nine percent has never there hasnever been like that. And I've been
all over the world working on thesethese things, and it's not the way
that it's it's portrayed. It's notthat way in law enforcement. That's really
cool and it's great to hear,quite frankly, because honestly, I really

(01:15:20):
want to believe that people like thatdo get caught. I mean, it's
I mean, you know, Igot to live in this world too,
so I mean, like I Iwant to believe that ultimately, you know,
good triumphs over evil at the endof this because because I also have
to go out and buy tomatoes atsome point, and I really don't want
to be afraid while I'm doing it. So yeah, right, And you

(01:15:42):
want your you know, this worldto be a better place for you know,
I want this to be better formy grandchildren, and you know,
for my daughter and her husband,and you know, I for my my
I don't have much family anymore,but you know who work family I do
have, and you know, allof my friends and their kids, their
grandparents and their parents, you know. I mean, it's just really there's

(01:16:04):
a lot of things going on.You know, there's people in the world
walking around like cleof the Apston Henderson, you know from Memphis. There are
people like that all over the world, and you know, we have to
be aware of them, but notparanoid, you know, but not paranoid.
You know, stranger on stranger abductionand homicide is very rare. And
serial killers, you know, Ithink the estimate is something like out of

(01:16:28):
like the fourteen to sixteen thousand murdersin the United States per year, it's
only like I think, like umone hundred and fifty or so that are
actually attributed to serial homicide offenders.So it's it's it's actually not very many
out of thousands and thousands, youknow, the majority of them or street
crime, you know, related incidents, and then of the female and those

(01:16:49):
are mostly male victims, but thefemale victims are mostly intimate partner or current
or temporary the largest representation there.Females are killed by someone they know,
where males will also killed by someonethey know, but it's in a completely
different type of our type of homicide. UM, the majority of homicides in

(01:17:12):
our country are due to arguments.Yeah, that's the number one. That's
that's certainly when I've thought about it. Yeah, I mean, I mean
that's it. You know, it'sjust conflict resolution. Yeah, yeah,
where we started, I'm here,Yes, Yeah, it's conflict. You
know, I always say that,you know, it's it's not every it's

(01:17:32):
not all conflict. But you cansee it in Sam. I really do
think that. You can see howSam is resolving conflict for himself. You
know, he's conflicted over the waythey treated him, and he believes that
every single one of them deserved it. He says it over and over and
over again, they deserve it.And I just stacy in my opinion.
I mean, you're the psychologist,you're the expert. I I just don't

(01:17:56):
see. I just don't see howany psychologist or any professional is gonna talk
a serial killer out of being aserial killer. Yeah, agreed. So
that's just my opinion. I meanI'm not on that side of the house,
you know, I'm not like onthe there's no therapy here at all,

(01:18:18):
Pa. You know, there's nothought flow here, there's no therapy
here. That's not that's not allwhat we do here, I don't all
so we just don't. We don'tsee that, you know, we don't.
We're in the business of solving andclearing and catching and turning stuff over
to law enforcement or to the civilcourts, you know, whoever our clients
are. Yeah, I mean,plus, the stakes are so high.

(01:18:41):
Like it's one thing to talk someoneout of washing their hands three hundred times
a day, and then then ifthey wash their hands, you know,
the all they've done is wash theirhands, you know. But this guy
when he when he you know,falls victim to his own compulsion, you
know, someone loses their life.But yeah, you know what I think

(01:19:01):
that you can you would get allthese different experts, They're going to have
all these different opinions, right,I mean, that's like two PhDs in
the same room as too many.You know, that's kind of a joke,
they all say. And I thinkit's true. I think it's true.
You know, you might find somebodythat says, oh, no,
you know, Thattler's wrong about everything. Here's what I think, you know,
And that doesn't make one person rightor wrong. It just is a

(01:19:21):
difference of opinions. And yeah,I mean, we could literally go on
for probably like a whole day aboutit, but it's definitely been fun.
We are so grateful to you beingwith us today. And you know,
I'm just gonna say, if Riseand Slay is the no Shoes nation of
us, that makes you the KennyJesney forensic criminologists, I feel like that

(01:19:45):
should be your thing from now andlike, thank Butler, the Kenny Chesney
and forensic criminologists. That's hilarious.With the mean, if everybody can just
do one thing, even if it'slike just smiling, if somebody or saying
hello, how are you today,just any little thing they can do just
to make the world better. Frommy standpoint as a person whose life revolves
around death and every day is surroundedby violence and all of these things,

(01:20:10):
I really just I just implore peopleto consider, you know, let's try
to do something good, you know, because I see so much darkness and
sadness, so I stay focused onon rising and playing and trying to make
it, use my life to makea difference to make it better. That's
great, That's really great. We'reso appreciate, really appreciate your time with

(01:20:33):
us. Thank you. Thanks,Lindsey. Yeah, I'm glad to I'm
glad to be here, and youknow, thank you guys for considering me
and thanks for having me and thanksfor turning me onto this show. Yeah,
episodes left right. Man, Wow, I feel I feel better,

(01:20:55):
but also I do not feel betterafter that conversation. How do you feel?
I feel like I have to rethinkall of my interest in becoming a
forensic criminologist. I mean, I'mnot going to become one now, obviously,
but it doesn't sound as glamorous asI was thinking it was gonna sound.

(01:21:19):
No. No, I mean,like, first of all, I
want to say how grateful I amfor her and people like her who do
that job. We need those people, and I mean clearly it is a
huge burden for them to do thatjob, and I think we only scratch
the surface of that really. ButI definitely was thinking while listening to her,

(01:21:43):
like, man, I am sograteful that I do not have to
do this job. I don't thinkI could do it. I really don't,
No, And she was amazing andI learned so much from her about
you know. She told us aboutyou know, the how you know,
blah blah blah. She told usso many interesting things about you know,

(01:22:09):
um, why serial killers kill.So it's not just duh, it's not
just what we see on TV.You know, they're they're killing out of
anger, They're killing for you know, financial gain. Like I mean,
I don't I know that. Youknow, Ted Bunny didn't kill for a
financial gain, but you know that'srare, that's the rarity. Most people

(01:22:30):
are killing for financial gain. SoI'm really glad that I learned about that.
Thought that was really interesting. Yeah, I thought it was particularly interesting
to learn that her job has changedlargely because of the media. Like they
are all of these true crime peoplewho are obsessed with it. You know,

(01:22:53):
they've seen a couple of episodes ofmurder she wrote or whatever, and
now they're on the case all thetime. And there I think they those
those people with the access to theknowledge and the access to the stories that
are out there. She's suddenly havingto approach her job in a different way

(01:23:15):
to sort of distinguish herself as atrue professional against all of these amateurs who
were just like who just got abunch of theories and not a whole lot
of training. It sounds like tome, Well, and I think that
was interesting because she was talking abouthow some of this started in the nineties
with the CSI effect. I wasa huge CSI fan, and I think

(01:23:41):
the public did start to imagine thatyou could test DNA in an hour,
you know, and see if somebodyyou know was guilty, and the Dexter
effect with blood splatter analysis, andnow actually we know that you know that
is faulty. But um, sincesince then, now we have this true

(01:24:03):
crime phenomena with all of the podcastsand the and the TV shows and IT
shows like Snapped. I mean,they've been on for many, many years
on those true crime networks. ButI think that it's really led people even
more so to believe that they understandand they know what they're doing. And

(01:24:23):
while we might need people to getinvolved, you know, because there's just
only so much time that you know, real authorities have, um, it
probably is problematic as well. Yeah, And honestly, I mean, like
I I wonder in the same waythat you had the experience of like,

(01:24:45):
I think I want to rethink mycareer interests after talking to her, and
you know, sort of being likemaybe this forensic criminologist thinks not whatever.
I am curious how many other peoplewho are true crime fans would look at
that and think the same thing becausethe thing that she was talking about about

(01:25:06):
swallowing the darkness as part of hersort of life, and that she has
somehow found a way to compartmentalize herfeelings to be able to just put aside
any personal attachment to this thing.Like, on the one hand, obviously
that is what she has to doto be able to do your job.
I mean, like how you can'tdo the job unless you have the ability

(01:25:28):
to do that. But on theother hand, I really wonder if you
know, if she's had to puta part of herself away from that as
well, and is that ever reallyaway? Like are those feelings really like
never coming back? I don't know. I mean, like she seemed pretty

(01:25:49):
confident, but boy, I don'tknow. I in my in her in
my in my mind, I'm like, I don't know how this doesn't haunt
you. And she sees the darkestof the dark, so it would be
hard to put yourself in that experience, you know, all the time in

(01:26:11):
order to catch a killer. Thankyou so much for joining us. We'll
see you in our next session ofpsychoanalyzing the patient