September 12, 2025 • 21 mins
This episode covers extremely sensitive topics, including violence. Listener discretion is advised. Please prioritize your well-being while listening.
What would you do if someone you loved confessed to an unthinkable crime? Claudia St. John faced this impossible question when her father casually admitted to murdering her grandmother – 26 years after the fact.
With raw honesty, Claudia shares the month-long moral crisis that followed – consulting doctors, prosecutors, priests, and even the brother of the Unabomber as she grappled with an impossible choice. Should she protect her father or report him? The decision she and her sister ultimately made speaks to profound questions about family loyalty, moral responsibility, and personal integrity.
This powerful testimony isn't just about trauma. it's about resilience in the face of unimaginable betrayal. While few will face circumstances as extreme as Claudia's, her story offers profound insights for anyone confronting difficult truths or painful choices. Listen and discover how even the darkest experiences can ultimately lead to growth, wisdom, and healing.
Guest Bio:
Claudia St. John, SHRM-SCP, SPHR is the Founder and CEO of The Workplace Advisors™, a leading HR consulting and training firm specializing in equipping businesses with the consulting support and people skills they need to grow.
She is an SPHR (Senior Professional in HR), SHRM-SCP (SHRM Senior Certified Professional), and Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst who empowers organizations with evidence-backed insights, so they can navigate the evolving landscape of talent acquisition, engagement, and retention with confidence and foresight. Known as The Workplace Advisor™, she helps organizations zoom out, shift their mindset, and build businesses that lead their industry.
A frequent keynote speaker, Claudia is a regular media contributor on the topic of HR. She wrote the book, Transforming Teams: Tips For Improving Collaboration and Building Trust, a book for leaders that addresses why fundamental breakdowns happen within organizations, and what they can do to correct them.
Claudia holds an Undergraduate degree in Employee Benefits & Labor Relations from The American University and a Master’s degree in Business & Public Administration from The George Washington University, in addition to numerous HR and behavioral science certifications.
Connect with Claudia:
Connect with Theresa and Ivana:
Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com
LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants
Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com
LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeing
SITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com
LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to Step Into the Pivot.
We have a tremendously braveguest with us today Claudia St
John and Claudia, I want towelcome you to the show and say
a massive thank you for being ayes-let with your story that
we're going to get into in amoment.
(00:20):
Claudia, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thank you so much, and it's absolutely my pleasure
to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I am starting off here by highlighting, you know,
that you're so brave and thatI'm so grateful that you are a
yes-lets for talking about, youknow, some of the most, you know
, profoundly painful things thathave happened to you, that I
know that when our guests, whenour guests shares our audience,
will, will, you know, perhapsnot relate by way of you know oh
, that happened to me too,because you have some very
(00:54):
unique experiences but yourwillingness to talk to us about
your, the depths of yourfeelings, that's going to be
relatable.
I know that and I know that inyour work as the founder and CEO
of the Workplace Advisors,there is a lot of this.
You know navigating theevolving landscape of people's
(01:15):
experiences with regards to allthings HR, and there's going to
be a lot of stories that run inthe background of people.
You know there's going to be alot of stories that run in the
background of people, you knowlooking for jobs and hiring.
So, when you work with talentacquisition and with engagement
and with retention, what I thinkis just so interesting to
highlight from your bio that, ofcourse, our audience can read
(01:38):
more about you on our website isthat I'm sure that you are the
one.
You're someone who can reallytap into the magnitude of the
human experience, given whatyou've been through.
So, without further ado, I'llpass it over to Teresa to
further introduce you.
Yeah, we'll get into the story.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, so.
So Claudia and I have knowneach other for a number of years
and actually I was one of yourclients, right and so, when I
owned my TPA firm, so we justgot to know each other.
Over the years We've done a fewevents together, which is
amazing.
You told this story last yearat a conference I was at and I
was blown away, and I don't knowif that was the first time you
(02:20):
told this story, but I think itwas.
Probably it was the first time,and first time for sure, in
front of a live audience that Iknew.
So I don't want to really, Ireally want you to tell this
story and just for our listeners, we're going to let Claudia
kind of tell the story Doesn'tmean we won't break in and then
in the second part, which willbe in a couple of weeks, we're
going to talk more about howthis has affected her and made
(02:43):
her pivot in a lot of ways.
So, claudia, thank you againfor being on and it's all yours,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thank you so much.
I'm so grateful for thisopportunity.
It's a story that I think doeshave a shock value and I'll go
straight into it, but the reasonfor telling it I'd like to
start off by saying is that theworst thing that's ever happened
to me in my life is the worstthing that's ever happened to me
(03:13):
and, I think, other people.
They've had really hard thingshappen to them in their lives.
That may not be the same or maynot be as big as this story is,
but it's still the mostimportant thing and the biggest
things that ever happened intheir life and it brings me
great, great comfort to knowthat.
(03:35):
If other people can see theresilience I don't know, courage
doesn't necessarily.
I feel like if it's courage, Iwould be wearing a cape and
running into fires and I don'tfeel that I'm a particularly
brave person that way, but I ama very resilient person and I
didn't.
You wouldn't have expected thatI needed to be resilient
(03:57):
because I was raised in, from anoutward perspective, a very
comfortable environment and,from an outward perspective, a
very comfortable environment.
My parents were professionals,my grandmother I come from a
family of significant wealth,new York City, born and raised
(04:19):
all of the trappings of a prettyupper income family, but my
family was always dysfunctional.
My mother was an only child,lonely and kind of isolated, and
my father was a Texan who hadmoved to New York City to
(04:42):
achieve a higher level of lifeto New York City to achieve a
higher level of life and myparents, my grandparents,
weren't particularly happy aboutthe marriage.
My grandmother and grandfatherwere displeased because my
father really wasn't up to theirstandard of expectation from my
mother, who went to Harvard andhad a great pedigree and so,
(05:06):
being raised in that environment, there were the trappings of
comfort, but it wasn't acomfortable upbringing.
My parents were very volatile,my mother in particular was very
volatile, and I learned very,very early on and I didn't even
realize this until later in lifeI learned early on that my
(05:30):
superpower, my superhero, thecape is I'm able to really pick
up a mood very, very quickly andnavigate it, know how to stay
safe, know how to keep myselfsafe and others safe, how to
shift a mood, how to change amood and really how to please
(05:55):
others so that there was aslittle conflict as possible.
And that really is how Ideveloped into the person that I
am, how I went into humanresources, how I connected
people.
I was very, very close with myfather, incredibly close with my
father, and we sharedeverything, everything that he
was interested in I wanted topursue, so things such as
(06:17):
fishing and hiking and theoutdoors.
When I was a senior in college,went home for christmas one year
and I had lived with mygrandmother for a couple of
years.
She had a place in sutton placein manhattan and the last
(06:37):
couple of years of my college itwasn't comfortable for me to go
home.
I didn't particularly feel safeat home, not physically, but
emotionally safe and so I wouldlive with my grandmother, and my
grandmother had shared with mein the last couple of years of
her life that she didn't trustmy father and that she suspected
that he had been embezzlingmoney from her and that my
(07:01):
mother was somehow complicit inthis and not protecting her.
And I didn't believe it.
I couldn't fathom that thatwould be true and I pooh-poohed
her concerns.
I shared them with my family,but they disregarded them, and
so on Christmas I was home andshe had stayed with us.
(07:26):
We lived out just outside of ofManhattan, on the Hudson river,
in Piermont, new York, and theday after Christmas she was to
go back to Manhattan and myfather had insisted that it was
time for her to go back.
And my mother wanted her to goback.
But she didn't want to go back.
She was sad, she was lonely,she didn't want to go back to
(07:49):
this big house by herself in thecity.
So there was a big dust up andthey got into a disagreement and
eventually my father said youknow what?
It's fine, just spend the night, it's fine, we don't, you don't
(08:09):
have to go back.
And so I was irritated becauseof the disagreement and I ended
up being very harsh with mygrandmother and saying why are
you being this way?
You know you should.
We have a lovely holiday.
Why are you pushing it?
You know things can go sideways.
Why are you pushing it?
And I upset her and I broughther to tears, which was
horrifying to me because I'dnever done that before.
And so that night was the dayafter Christmas, that was the
(08:31):
26th, and the next morning, whenit was about seven o'clock in
the morning, my parents cameinto my room and brought me the
news that my grandmother haddied, that she had apparently
gotten up in the middle of thenight and perhaps gone to go to
(08:53):
the bathroom.
She was staying in our den thatwas converted with the sofa bed
into the room that she wasstaying in, and she had gotten
out of bed and walked over andperhaps fainted, perhaps had so
many words, but had implicitlyasked that I clean it up.
There was a lot of blood, itwas very gory, it was very
(09:30):
traumatic, and I did that.
That led me to a lot of trauma,a lot of trying to drown the
visions that I had in my head,the memories of just seeing such
things, in alcohol and justtrying to move on on.
(10:00):
But eventually I did, and Ialso had this terrible shame
that I had somehow or anotherdone this to her because I had
made her cry the night that shehad passed, and so that was
about 30 years ago now and maybeeven more, and then life moved
on.
We never really talked about itagain.
That was how she passed.
(10:21):
It was traumatic.
People die in their homes.
It happens, and that was thatuntil about 10 years ago, in
2015, which would have been 26years.
So it's been 35 to 26 years.
After my grandmother had died,I was visiting my parents my
(10:41):
sister and I were there and myfather.
We were talking about mygrandmother and my father had
had a big vodka and was sittingout in the back porch and we
were talking about grandma andhe said I have a story if you
want to hear a story aboutgrandma.
And we turned to him and hesaid I have a story if you want
to hear a story about grandma.
And we turned to him and hesaid, yeah, I killed her.
(11:02):
I killed her because she wasselfish.
I killed her because shewouldn't give us money and I
needed money.
I killed her because she hatedme and I hated her, me and I
hated her, and she was an only alonely old woman and she needed
(11:25):
to die.
And to hear that from my father, who I was so close to, and to
immediately be revisited by allof the images of my
grandmother's body, and to knowthat my father had intentionally
put me in that situation and tonot have any sense of my
(11:45):
mother's involvement in it was,I can say, the worst thing
that's ever happened to me.
And then I was met with a reallyhard question, which is what do
you do when you discover thatyour father is a murderer and is
(12:07):
not at all apologetic regrets?
Nothing other than having toldus, having told us, and so I
spent about a month reallyinvestigating what were the
early.
My father was 90 at this time.
(12:30):
What does dementia look like?
How does it show up?
Is there anything I can pointto as a mitigator or an excuse?
(12:55):
Is this dementia?
Can I find anything?
I talked to geriatric doctors,I talked to prosecutors, I
talked to priests.
I even talked to DavidKaczynski.
David Kaczynski was theUnabomber.
I talked to his Ted Kaczynskiwas the Unabomber and I ended up
talking to his brother, who wasthe person who turned him in.
All trying to figure out what doI do with this information?
And after about a month ofincredibly deteriorating health,
I realized I'm raising two boys.
(13:15):
They were 13 and 15 at the timeand if I didn't say anything or
do anything, if I didn't tellanybody, it would essentially be
my decision and my sister'sdecision.
She was very much a part ofthis.
It would be our adjudicatinghis fate.
It would be us deciding whetherhe should pay in societal terms
(13:42):
for his actions.
And so, the day after my fatherconfessed, I told him I would
never see him again and I toldhim that I had every intention
of going to the police, and thenI did all of the research and
(14:04):
then one day my sister calledand said I started the process.
I called our local police inPennsylvania.
They told me that we either hadto turn him in or they were
going to notify the local police.
And so my sister and I calledthe local police department and
turned our father in for murder.
We knew the detective.
He had actually been a rookieshowing up at my grandmother's
(14:26):
death at that moment when he wasfresh out of out of police
academy, and they took aboutfour months to investigate it.
And then they went up andarrested my father.
He confessed all of it.
He told them everything that Ihad told him.
He had written me letters.
(14:47):
There had been a full courtpress to try to keep me from
turning him into the police,even though they didn't know
that I already had.
But they kept sending meletters and threatening phone
calls.
My mother and he and I ended upturning him into the police.
He ended up confessing toeverything and then moving to
(15:08):
Canada.
They left, they moved out ofthe country, confessing to
everything and then moving toCanada.
They left, they moved out ofthe country and then the
district attorney decidedactually not to pursue it.
After the detectives hadinterrogated him and gotten the
record and gotten his sworntestimony as they dropped him
off, he turned to them and saidyou do know that an old mind is
(15:31):
a very fickle one.
And what did you say?
Your name was again when am I?
And then he smiled at them.
And that was when they droppedhim off and the detective told
me that they were all justhorrified by how cold and
calculating it was.
And the district told me thatthey were all just horrified by
(15:51):
how cold and calculating it was.
And the district attorneyrealized that any first year law
student would be able to gethim off because of his age if he
were to play the senility card.
And that was it.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, that was it.
Yeah, so can I one of thethings I know you talked about
that I'd love for you to talkabout before we kind of break in
.
You know, for this, for thispiece of the story.
You talk about that day on theporch and you talk about how,
after he told you you know, ofcourse you and your sister were
very upset and how then he triedto pretend that it was a joke.
(16:27):
Yes, yes, can you talk just alittle, because I think it's
just it's very interesting to methat that he kind of played
that there too, especially afterwhat you just said.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, he after he told us that night, he, I, I ran
out of the room and collapsedin the front lawn and my sister
reached me and I was gettingsick in the lawn and you know
things that happen in incredibletrauma.
And so we ended up sittingoutside and my mother came and
(17:00):
joined us, thinking what youknow, just trying to process it.
We were absolutely in shock.
And yet I knew that he had doneit.
I just knew it.
There were things about thescene where my grandmother lay
it didn't make sense.
She wasn't where she had fallen, she had been moved, she was on
(17:23):
the wrong side of the bed.
There was so much blood.
But so many things about itdidn't make sense to me.
So after we were sittingoutside, we went inside and my
father was inside watchingtelevision, eating dinner, and I
(17:44):
walked into him and I wasfurious, I don't know what I was
, and I said you didn't do it,did you?
And he looked at me and he saidI don't know, do you think I
did?
And smiled.
And then my mother came inbehind him and said no, brad,
you didn't do that, did you?
(18:04):
You didn't do it.
And he looked at her and saidno, honey, of course I didn't,
of course I didn't, did I,claudia?
And it was then that I realizedhe was a and he had these.
His eyes were dead.
You know, he was playing catand mouse and I was just a part
(18:27):
of the, a part of the landscapereally, as were we all, and he
was a pure unadulteratedpsychopath and I never knew it,
I hadn't known it, but it wasquite evident that this.
In the last days, I should say,I did have communication with
(18:49):
him.
I did talk to him a few timesbefore I finally cut it off
entirely, and when I did, henever denied that he killed her.
He would just play this cat andmouse with it.
But when it was just the two ofus because I sat down with him
before I left, that the timethat he told us before I, before
(19:10):
I finally left and never wentback I said I need to know
everything, I need to know why,I need to know how.
I need to know everything.
And he sat down and told meeverything about it, how he had
suffocated her, how he plannedit, how he had wanted to kill
her for years, how he had wantedto kill her on Christmas Eve,
and he said he was too afraidand he was too weak.
(19:32):
And he didn't do it again onChristmas night because he was
afraid.
And so when she stayed, shegave him one more opportunity.
It was all part of this masterthing.
And I asked him.
I said why did you tell us?
And he was, you got away withit.
And he said do you know howhard it is to commit the perfect
(19:54):
murder and never tell anybody?
And I thought, jesus, this islike a bad, a bad true crime
movie on television.
So yeah, he, I forgot what yourquestion was, teresa.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That's okay.
I think this is a really greatplace for us to pause for this
episode and to our listenerslisten in a couple of weeks when
we come back with the secondpart of our story with Claudia
St John.
Hello everybody and welcome to Step Into the Pivot.
We have a tremendously braveguest with us today Claudia St
John and Claudia, I want towelcome you to the show and say
a massive thank you for being ayes-let with your story that
we're going to get into in amoment.
(00:20):
Claudia, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thank you so much, and it's absolutely my pleasure
to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I am starting off here by highlighting, you know,
that you're so brave and thatI'm so grateful that you are a
yes-lets for talking about, youknow, some of the most, you know
, profoundly painful things thathave happened to you, that I
know that when our guests, whenour guests shares our audience,
will, will, you know, perhapsnot relate by way of you know oh
, that happened to me too,because you have some very
(00:54):
unique experiences but yourwillingness to talk to us about
your, the depths of yourfeelings, that's going to be
relatable.
I know that and I know that inyour work as the founder and CEO
of the Workplace Advisors,there is a lot of this.
You know navigating theevolving landscape of people's
(01:15):
experiences with regards to allthings HR, and there's going to
be a lot of stories that run inthe background of people.
You know there's going to be alot of stories that run in the
background of people, you knowlooking for jobs and hiring.
So, when you work with talentacquisition and with engagement
and with retention, what I thinkis just so interesting to
highlight from your bio that, ofcourse, our audience can read
(01:38):
more about you on our website isthat I'm sure that you are the
one.
You're someone who can reallytap into the magnitude of the
human experience, given whatyou've been through.
So, without further ado, I'llpass it over to Teresa to
further introduce you.
Yeah, we'll get into the story.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, so.
So Claudia and I have knowneach other for a number of years
and actually I was one of yourclients, right and so, when I
owned my TPA firm, so we justgot to know each other.
Over the years We've done a fewevents together, which is
amazing.
You told this story last yearat a conference I was at and I
was blown away, and I don't knowif that was the first time you
(02:20):
told this story, but I think itwas.
Probably it was the first time,and first time for sure, in
front of a live audience that Iknew.
So I don't want to really, Ireally want you to tell this
story and just for our listeners, we're going to let Claudia
kind of tell the story Doesn'tmean we won't break in and then
in the second part, which willbe in a couple of weeks, we're
going to talk more about howthis has affected her and made
(02:43):
her pivot in a lot of ways.
So, claudia, thank you againfor being on and it's all yours,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thank you so much.
I'm so grateful for thisopportunity.
It's a story that I think doeshave a shock value and I'll go
straight into it, but the reasonfor telling it I'd like to
start off by saying is that theworst thing that's ever happened
to me in my life is the worstthing that's ever happened to me
(03:13):
and, I think, other people.
They've had really hard thingshappen to them in their lives.
That may not be the same or maynot be as big as this story is,
but it's still the mostimportant thing and the biggest
things that ever happened intheir life and it brings me
great, great comfort to knowthat.
(03:35):
If other people can see theresilience I don't know, courage
doesn't necessarily.
I feel like if it's courage, Iwould be wearing a cape and
running into fires and I don'tfeel that I'm a particularly
brave person that way, but I ama very resilient person and I
didn't.
You wouldn't have expected thatI needed to be resilient
(03:57):
because I was raised in, from anoutward perspective, a very
comfortable environment and,from an outward perspective, a
very comfortable environment.
My parents were professionals,my grandmother I come from a
family of significant wealth,new York City, born and raised
(04:19):
all of the trappings of a prettyupper income family, but my
family was always dysfunctional.
My mother was an only child,lonely and kind of isolated, and
my father was a Texan who hadmoved to New York City to
(04:42):
achieve a higher level of lifeto New York City to achieve a
higher level of life and myparents, my grandparents,
weren't particularly happy aboutthe marriage.
My grandmother and grandfatherwere displeased because my
father really wasn't up to theirstandard of expectation from my
mother, who went to Harvard andhad a great pedigree and so,
(05:06):
being raised in that environment, there were the trappings of
comfort, but it wasn't acomfortable upbringing.
My parents were very volatile,my mother in particular was very
volatile, and I learned very,very early on and I didn't even
realize this until later in lifeI learned early on that my
(05:30):
superpower, my superhero, thecape is I'm able to really pick
up a mood very, very quickly andnavigate it, know how to stay
safe, know how to keep myselfsafe and others safe, how to
shift a mood, how to change amood and really how to please
(05:55):
others so that there was aslittle conflict as possible.
And that really is how Ideveloped into the person that I
am, how I went into humanresources, how I connected
people.
I was very, very close with myfather, incredibly close with my
father, and we sharedeverything, everything that he
was interested in I wanted topursue, so things such as
(06:17):
fishing and hiking and theoutdoors.
When I was a senior in college,went home for christmas one year
and I had lived with mygrandmother for a couple of
years.
She had a place in sutton placein manhattan and the last
(06:37):
couple of years of my college itwasn't comfortable for me to go
home.
I didn't particularly feel safeat home, not physically, but
emotionally safe and so I wouldlive with my grandmother, and my
grandmother had shared with mein the last couple of years of
her life that she didn't trustmy father and that she suspected
that he had been embezzlingmoney from her and that my
(07:01):
mother was somehow complicit inthis and not protecting her.
And I didn't believe it.
I couldn't fathom that thatwould be true and I pooh-poohed
her concerns.
I shared them with my family,but they disregarded them, and
so on Christmas I was home andshe had stayed with us.
(07:26):
We lived out just outside of ofManhattan, on the Hudson river,
in Piermont, new York, and theday after Christmas she was to
go back to Manhattan and myfather had insisted that it was
time for her to go back.
And my mother wanted her to goback.
But she didn't want to go back.
She was sad, she was lonely,she didn't want to go back to
(07:49):
this big house by herself in thecity.
So there was a big dust up andthey got into a disagreement and
eventually my father said youknow what?
It's fine, just spend the night, it's fine, we don't, you don't
(08:09):
have to go back.
And so I was irritated becauseof the disagreement and I ended
up being very harsh with mygrandmother and saying why are
you being this way?
You know you should.
We have a lovely holiday.
Why are you pushing it?
You know things can go sideways.
Why are you pushing it?
And I upset her and I broughther to tears, which was
horrifying to me because I'dnever done that before.
And so that night was the dayafter Christmas, that was the
(08:31):
26th, and the next morning, whenit was about seven o'clock in
the morning, my parents cameinto my room and brought me the
news that my grandmother haddied, that she had apparently
gotten up in the middle of thenight and perhaps gone to go to
(08:53):
the bathroom.
She was staying in our den thatwas converted with the sofa bed
into the room that she wasstaying in, and she had gotten
out of bed and walked over andperhaps fainted, perhaps had so
many words, but had implicitlyasked that I clean it up.
There was a lot of blood, itwas very gory, it was very
(09:30):
traumatic, and I did that.
That led me to a lot of trauma,a lot of trying to drown the
visions that I had in my head,the memories of just seeing such
things, in alcohol and justtrying to move on on.
(10:00):
But eventually I did, and Ialso had this terrible shame
that I had somehow or anotherdone this to her because I had
made her cry the night that shehad passed, and so that was
about 30 years ago now and maybeeven more, and then life moved
on.
We never really talked about itagain.
That was how she passed.
(10:21):
It was traumatic.
People die in their homes.
It happens, and that was thatuntil about 10 years ago, in
2015, which would have been 26years.
So it's been 35 to 26 years.
After my grandmother had died,I was visiting my parents my
(10:41):
sister and I were there and myfather.
We were talking about mygrandmother and my father had
had a big vodka and was sittingout in the back porch and we
were talking about grandma andhe said I have a story if you
want to hear a story aboutgrandma.
And we turned to him and hesaid I have a story if you want
to hear a story about grandma.
And we turned to him and hesaid, yeah, I killed her.
(11:02):
I killed her because she wasselfish.
I killed her because shewouldn't give us money and I
needed money.
I killed her because she hatedme and I hated her, me and I
hated her, and she was an only alonely old woman and she needed
(11:25):
to die.
And to hear that from my father, who I was so close to, and to
immediately be revisited by allof the images of my
grandmother's body, and to knowthat my father had intentionally
put me in that situation and tonot have any sense of my
(11:45):
mother's involvement in it was,I can say, the worst thing
that's ever happened to me.
And then I was met with a reallyhard question, which is what do
you do when you discover thatyour father is a murderer and is
(12:07):
not at all apologetic regrets?
Nothing other than having toldus, having told us, and so I
spent about a month reallyinvestigating what were the
early.
My father was 90 at this time.
(12:30):
What does dementia look like?
How does it show up?
Is there anything I can pointto as a mitigator or an excuse?
(12:55):
Is this dementia?
Can I find anything?
I talked to geriatric doctors,I talked to prosecutors, I
talked to priests.
I even talked to DavidKaczynski.
David Kaczynski was theUnabomber.
I talked to his Ted Kaczynskiwas the Unabomber and I ended up
talking to his brother, who wasthe person who turned him in.
All trying to figure out what doI do with this information?
And after about a month ofincredibly deteriorating health,
I realized I'm raising two boys.
(13:15):
They were 13 and 15 at the timeand if I didn't say anything or
do anything, if I didn't tellanybody, it would essentially be
my decision and my sister'sdecision.
She was very much a part ofthis.
It would be our adjudicatinghis fate.
It would be us deciding whetherhe should pay in societal terms
(13:42):
for his actions.
And so, the day after my fatherconfessed, I told him I would
never see him again and I toldhim that I had every intention
of going to the police, and thenI did all of the research and
(14:04):
then one day my sister calledand said I started the process.
I called our local police inPennsylvania.
They told me that we either hadto turn him in or they were
going to notify the local police.
And so my sister and I calledthe local police department and
turned our father in for murder.
We knew the detective.
He had actually been a rookieshowing up at my grandmother's
(14:26):
death at that moment when he wasfresh out of out of police
academy, and they took aboutfour months to investigate it.
And then they went up andarrested my father.
He confessed all of it.
He told them everything that Ihad told him.
He had written me letters.
(14:47):
There had been a full courtpress to try to keep me from
turning him into the police,even though they didn't know
that I already had.
But they kept sending meletters and threatening phone
calls.
My mother and he and I ended upturning him into the police.
He ended up confessing toeverything and then moving to
(15:08):
Canada.
They left, they moved out ofthe country, confessing to
everything and then moving toCanada.
They left, they moved out ofthe country and then the
district attorney decidedactually not to pursue it.
After the detectives hadinterrogated him and gotten the
record and gotten his sworntestimony as they dropped him
off, he turned to them and saidyou do know that an old mind is
(15:31):
a very fickle one.
And what did you say?
Your name was again when am I?
And then he smiled at them.
And that was when they droppedhim off and the detective told
me that they were all justhorrified by how cold and
calculating it was.
And the district told me thatthey were all just horrified by
(15:51):
how cold and calculating it was.
And the district attorneyrealized that any first year law
student would be able to gethim off because of his age if he
were to play the senility card.
And that was it.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, that was it.
Yeah, so can I one of thethings I know you talked about
that I'd love for you to talkabout before we kind of break in
.
You know, for this, for thispiece of the story.
You talk about that day on theporch and you talk about how,
after he told you you know, ofcourse you and your sister were
very upset and how then he triedto pretend that it was a joke.
(16:27):
Yes, yes, can you talk just alittle, because I think it's
just it's very interesting to methat that he kind of played
that there too, especially afterwhat you just said.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, he after he told us that night, he, I, I ran
out of the room and collapsedin the front lawn and my sister
reached me and I was gettingsick in the lawn and you know
things that happen in incredibletrauma.
And so we ended up sittingoutside and my mother came and
(17:00):
joined us, thinking what youknow, just trying to process it.
We were absolutely in shock.
And yet I knew that he had doneit.
I just knew it.
There were things about thescene where my grandmother lay
it didn't make sense.
She wasn't where she had fallen, she had been moved, she was on
(17:23):
the wrong side of the bed.
There was so much blood.
But so many things about itdidn't make sense to me.
So after we were sittingoutside, we went inside and my
father was inside watchingtelevision, eating dinner, and I
(17:44):
walked into him and I wasfurious, I don't know what I was
, and I said you didn't do it,did you?
And he looked at me and he saidI don't know, do you think I
did?
And smiled.
And then my mother came inbehind him and said no, brad,
you didn't do that, did you?
(18:04):
You didn't do it.
And he looked at her and saidno, honey, of course I didn't,
of course I didn't, did I,claudia?
And it was then that I realizedhe was a and he had these.
His eyes were dead.
You know, he was playing catand mouse and I was just a part
(18:27):
of the, a part of the landscapereally, as were we all, and he
was a pure unadulteratedpsychopath and I never knew it,
I hadn't known it, but it wasquite evident that this.
In the last days, I should say,I did have communication with
(18:49):
him.
I did talk to him a few timesbefore I finally cut it off
entirely, and when I did, henever denied that he killed her.
He would just play this cat andmouse with it.
But when it was just the two ofus because I sat down with him
before I left, that the timethat he told us before I, before
(19:10):
I finally left and never wentback I said I need to know
everything, I need to know why,I need to know how.
I need to know everything.
And he sat down and told meeverything about it, how he had
suffocated her, how he plannedit, how he had wanted to kill
her for years, how he had wantedto kill her on Christmas Eve,
and he said he was too afraidand he was too weak.
(19:32):
And he didn't do it again onChristmas night because he was
afraid.
And so when she stayed, shegave him one more opportunity.
It was all part of this masterthing.
And I asked him.
I said why did you tell us?
And he was, you got away withit.
And he said do you know howhard it is to commit the perfect
(19:54):
murder and never tell anybody?
And I thought, jesus, this islike a bad, a bad true crime
movie on television.
So yeah, he, I forgot what yourquestion was, teresa.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That's okay.
I think this is a really greatplace for us to pause for this
episode and to our listenerslisten in a couple of weeks when
we come back with the secondpart of our story with Claudia
St John.
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