EP148: Navigating the Aftermath of Homicide & Suicide with Dr. Canty

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast, where trauma survivors
become healthy thrivers. Each month will feature a theme in
the trauma recovery and empowerment field to promote your recovery, healing,
and learning how to build dreams. Here's your host, Karen Robinson,
transformational coach and therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hi, Welcome to the Heel Thrived Dream Podcast. Today. Our
guest is a native of Detroit. Her name is Jan Canty.
Jan is a psychologist, writer, photographer, educator, consultant, and cancer survivor.
She holds a terminal degree in psychology as well as

(00:48):
a post doctoral fellowship from Wayne State University School of Medicine. Sorry,
I should say that again, fellowship from Wayne State University
School of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine. Then life happened
and grew dark. It was July of nineteen eighty five.

(01:09):
Herspose of eleven years went missing and was found murdered
two hundred and fifty miles away. The media exposure was
immedia and relentless reporters tailed her to the Medical Examiner building,
disrupted the funeral, and published a map to her house
on the front page of the news. After the trial

(01:32):
and convictions. In December, she quietly moved deep into the
Midwest and began her thirty year redacted life. Well that
was quite the opening when you say i'll accurate, Yeah,
I guess I'll start with I didn't read your complete bio,

(01:53):
of course, because it's really long, and that will be
on the show notes. But is there anything else in
your bio that you want to share with the audience
from the get go? Not?

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Really, that's a pretty good summary of.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
It, Okay, Yeah, I just did the first two paragraphs.
Of course. The second paragraph is very captivating, maybe triggering
for anyone listening who's had a murdered loved one or
a deceased loved one from suicide. And of course I
don't like it when headcasters I'm losing my words today.

(02:33):
I don't like it when they dig too deep and
wound their guests, and so I want to be conscientious
of that. Like, I know you've had many years of
healing and working on yourself, but you've also had other traumas.
What do you feel comfortable and sharing about what happened
with your husband? Like? What feels okay to share? At

(02:54):
this point?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
There's no limitations I will share whatever is useful to
help others.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
So what was your relationship with him before he passed
by the two of you doing okay?

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I thought so. He was very supportive of my aspirations.
I thought he was very supportive of us, of us financially.
That turned out not to be true. And I thought
he was faithful. That also turned out not to be true.
So the point I'm making is from my perspective. While
he was alive, I was happy. And the only change

(03:31):
I could say I saw towards the end of his
life was he became more preoccupied, more quiet, more introspective,
and I attributed to our eighteen year age difference, and
I thought maybe he wasn't feeling well. I suggested he
get a physical. He postponed that, but he did stop smoking.
He was of average weight and so far as I know,

(03:54):
average health. That was about the only red flag, and
it was pretty subtle. But after he died, I just
was inundated with news about him. He was leading a
double life and much of what I thought to be
true wasn't. And I came away from that experience after

(04:15):
a couple of months of feeling like I didn't even
know who i'd been married to.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Okay, so I would probably label this, not that you
need a label it, because you're like, oh, this is
my life. I know what it's what the label is,
but it's in my field, we call that complicated trauma. Well,
you're a psychologist, you know it's very complicated to lose
someone unexpectedly and then for it to be a murder,
and then for to find out all this information about

(04:45):
his double life like that, just.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
While you're in the public spotlight. I mean, all this
was unfolding in the news and on television, and I
avoided them the best I could, but it was difficult.
They followed me. I had to change my phone number
so often I had to start writing it down. After
the map to my house was published in the news,

(05:09):
we had what we'd call in the death in the
homicide survivor community. We had death tourists come by and
they'd stop and point and get out of their car
and have their picture taken in front of my house.
And in time they started stealing things like mementos for
them from my house on the outside. And I think
what comes with that is a sense of entitlement. The

(05:32):
more your story is in the news, the more people
feel entitled familiar with you and that you have an
obligation to fill them in if they bump into you
in real life. And that became another source of being
upset is I lost my privacy on top of everything else,

(05:53):
so I became more isolated in the process. And this
was easier to do that back then, because this was
nineteen eighty five. The Internet had not yet come about,
so it was easier to get your privacy than it
is today.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
So you learned that your spouse had another family as well,
another wife. Did he have other kids?

Speaker 3 (06:15):
No, he had when I say led a double life.
For the eighteen months prior to his death, he had
developed a friendship I guess you could call it a
friendship with a man who was a pimp and his
prostitute girlfriend and started financially supporting them to the tune

(06:39):
of buying them cars and paying rent and groceries, and
led them to believe that he was a widower and
that his name was doctor Miller, and that he worked
at Detroit Receiving Hospital, and that he had a daughter
that was estranged from him, none of which was true.
They eventually did find out that truth and when the

(07:00):
two collided. He panicked, as he should. So the double
life he led was really this split between his presentable
life with me being married, living in the suburbs and
going to work every day, and he really wasn't at
work towards the end. He was spending a lot of
time with them and supplying them, like I said, with

(07:21):
all kinds of money to the tune of in nineteen
eighty five dollars, it was about one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, so we were in debt. After he died,
there was financial repercussions. We owed years of taxes. We
were behind on the mortgage, we were behind on his

(07:42):
office rent, we were behind on car payments. His father's
coin collection was missing, and so was an emergency album
that I Towards the end of his life. I got
the vibe something was happening, some danger was approaching. I
never thought what it was turned out to be the case,

(08:05):
but because I had this sense that something was bad
that was going to happen, I assembled an album of
our house, listing all of the all the contents and
their approximate value in case the house should burn down
or get burglarized. I mean that was where my head
was going. And I mean I had included in that

(08:26):
open drawers, open closets, open cupboards, a map to the house,
so that if I had to report everything to the
insurance company, I could be very precise about what we
had lost. He had given that album to them, so
they not only knew what we had, where it was located,
the layout of our house, they figured out where he worked,

(08:47):
and about a week before he died, I had been
followed home, but I didn't connect it. I didn't think
anything to do with him. And a few days before
he died, my parents were supposed to arrive soon for
vacation in July to our house, so I was getting

(09:08):
the yard ready and pruning, and I found footprints on
the side of our house. That can It's like, there's
no sidewalk or anything here. It's the common lawn between
my house and my neighbors, with a small fence in between,
and not near a sidewalk. There was no place where
a pedestrian could have easily tossed three fresh cigarettes that
were on the ground or near the footprints, And we

(09:30):
had had days of rain. That's how I knew that
they were fresh cigarettes, and they were partially smoked, and
I knew that a cigarette takes approximately twenty minutes to smoke,
so somebody had been there at least an hour, if
not more, beneath our kitchen window. That concerned me. So
I just had to sense something sappening, but I couldn't

(09:52):
put my finger on it. And when I brought it
up to al he was rather dismissive. And you have
an active imagination, just the typical gaslighting stuff, and so
he kind of humored me. And we had an alarm
system installed, and he offered to get a dog, and
I said, that's not what I want. What I want
is to feel safe, and that's not.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Going to do it.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
So there were I guess you could say there were
quote red flags or warning signs, but it didn't connect
in my mind. I was very busy at the time too.
I was finishing up my postdoctoral fellowship. I was working
sixty hours a week and commuting. I wasn't even a
home lot, so there wasn't a lot of time to
just sit down and dwell.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Right, right, did you ever find out like why he
was living this lifestyle? Was it about drugs? Sucks? Money?

Speaker 4 (10:47):
Like?

Speaker 2 (10:47):
What was it about for him? Did you ever find
that out?

Speaker 3 (10:51):
I have a chapter in my book on this, and
I believe, after pouring over documents that were available to me,
and interviewing people who knew him as a high school
student and so forth, what I believe was the driving
force behind all of this was, and this is going
to oversimplify it a little bit, but I had outgrown him.

(11:12):
He needed me as an audience, He needed me to
look up to him. And when I because when we met,
I was a high school grad, I was eighteen years younger.
I was impressed with his standing in life. He had money,
and at the end, I had more education than him.
I had no need for his money. I could make

(11:33):
my own. I was on the brink of that, I
should say, because I was just finishing my postdoctoral fellowship
and I started to talk more about what I knew
and theories and research that I'd read, and he wanted
no part of that. It ruffled his feathers when I
did that, so I stopped talking about those things. And
I think what happened was he turned to somebody else

(11:57):
who needed him in the same way I used to
need him, which was Big Daddy. Somebody to sit there
and impress and financially support. And who better than a
couple of drug addicts because they need your money. He
never did drugs. He was tested because he had a
psychotic break during all this and was sent to a hospital.

(12:18):
He was tested for drugs. There wasn't any in his system,
but he willingly supplied them with it. So I think
he needed an audience because I wasn't feeling that bill
anymore and striking to me, how when I look at
a photo of the woman who was the sex worker,

(12:39):
she looked a lot like I did when we met
and was about the same age.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Now was it that man or did that couple? Are
they the ones that killed him?

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yes, he ran out of money. They didn't take to
that well, and they were high. And I think I'll
never know this. I think he suspected he was going
to die. And here's why I say that. After he
went missing, I went down to his office to find

(13:13):
out where he'd been and try to piece together what
had happened. And it's the only time in his life
where he really just detailed his office and got it
all ready and fixed up. And he had left certain
things out in a very orderly like his check book,
and phone book, and it wasn't like him. That was

(13:36):
very out of character. He tended to be kind of disorganized.
And the fact that he knew he had no money
left to give them, and that he willingly went to
their house that night, and that he knew at that
point in time that the gig was up because they
had discovered his real name, they had his address, they

(13:58):
had my real name, they had the address of my office.
I think he knew it was up, and he provoked him.
This was a guy, the guy who killed him was
twice his size. My husband was not a big guy.
He looked a little bit like Woody Allen, kind of
small and big glasses, and this guy looked like mister Clean.

(14:22):
He was huge with him. He's a biker guy. And
when they started arguing, when they discovered he had no money,
and al reportedly pushed him and said it's my money,
I'll do whatever I want with it. And when he
pushed John Carlfry, he accidentally tripped over a small stool
on the floor, which enraged him and got a bat

(14:46):
and clubbed him to death and then dismembered him and
ordered his girlfriend Dawn go out and make some money,
get out of here. So she went out, but she
came back. That was her chance to flee if she wanted.
She came back. She helped with the packaging of his

(15:07):
remains and driving him north to Potoski to dump them
in near the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So she was
she was involved as well, but not directly in the homicide.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
I can't even imagine what your life was like learning
that were you.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
I was fuzzy, I was I was disbelieving. I kept thinking,
they got the wrong guy, this isn't right, it's they're
making mistakes. I needed that, I think, buffer, to let
it sink in because it was because remember that this
is just part of the I mean, I still had
the financial pressure on me. I wasn't feeling well. I

(15:51):
had people parading by my house. I had detectives at
my door. I had my patience to think about. Who
were wanted to know are you going to come back?
My parents were worried about me because they hadn't yet arrived,
and I was alone in this big house that I
never even really wanted. He wanted it, so we bought it.
But it was a big house. It was six bedroom,

(16:14):
six bathroom house and I was alone in it, and
I never even wanted it, and it was it felt
like a public building, and I didn't know, and the
police told me they didn't know if they had everybody involved.
So for a while they were following me, and they

(16:34):
would occasionally drive by my house and have a spotlight
just to check the shrubbery and stuff in the windows.
And that was I mean, it was good, but it
was also unnerving, and I'd see the light on the inside.
So there was a lot of irons in the fire.
And it certainly did not give me a moment to grieve.

(16:56):
It did not give me a moment to try to
even piece it together. I was so busy trying to
survive physically, financially, safety wise, legally, that I had no
time for anything that could have been postponed.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
For you, how did you not have your own psychotic
break with all that going on.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Early on? Well, my parents were very wonderful parents, and
they raised me to be strong and independent, and they
did eventually come into town. They did come early. They
helped me a great deal. My dad, bless Us Hardy,
took over the phone in the front door. My mom
insisted I start eating again, and politely told me, you

(17:38):
really need a shower. I don't know how long it
had been days since, because in my mind it wasn't days.
My mind, it was one long day that spanned a
week or ten days, or because I wasn't sleeping, I
was kidnapping. So the night and day pattern was totally gone.
And I couldn't remember the last time I ate, or

(17:58):
drank water or took a shower, and that was meaningless
to me. I was so busy putting out fires that
was way at the bottom of my list. So I
attribute my ability to withstand this a lot to my
parenting that I had. I had wonderful parents. Yeah, and
also anger and the feeling that you know, you got

(18:21):
our money, you got my privacy, you got my husband.
I can't afford this house. You've probably ruined my vocation,
which I have been in school with for ten years
to earn, and I'm right on the edge of opening
my practice. That's probably gone. My physical health is suffering,
but that's it. You are not allowed. I will not

(18:43):
allow you to take one more thing from me. I
draw a hard line right here, and I don't know
what that means. I don't know how I'm gonna get
past that line. I don't know what it is I
need to do yet, but I was bound and determined
not to be any more collateral damage than I already was,
and I kept my promise to that. From that moment on,

(19:07):
I looked out for me. I did what was right
for me, up to and including tell detectives. I don't
want to be interviewed anymore. You've had my field today.
I'll tell you more tomorrow. I'm done. I can't absorb anymore.
I don't want to talk about it anymore. My friend,
bless her heart, she ad to my before my parents

(19:28):
could come. I should say they were very kind. Then
they offered me their guest room upstairs, and they had
a back entrance to that room, and they said, here's
the key. Use it whenever you want, no questions asked,
Come and go as you want. Use it like a
hotel room. You don't even have to interface with us.

(19:48):
And that was wonderful because I knew if I was there,
I wasn't home, so nobody could reach me. They didn't nowhere,
and I'd go over there at night in the dark.
I'd walk over there and keep my car in the
driveway and that was. That was very comforting.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah. I was going to ask you if you had
some good friends to support you.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
That can help get you through too. M Yeah, okay,
So after all this trauma, like, when did you end
up getting diagnosed with cancer? Was it many years later
or right after? Like many years? Do you contribute any
of the stress from what happened? It's it been susceptible
or is there a family?

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Has I've asked I've asked on cologists about that, and
if you ask five, you'll get three saying yes and
two saying no. I don't know, but I do know
this that one of my strategies to get beyond this,
to grow around it, was to get myself together physically.
So I started going This is years later. I started

(20:50):
going to the gym six at six thirty in the morning,
four days a week, and I belonged to a group
of five women and we worked out religiously and if
you weren't there, they'd be on the door on the
phone calling You're like where are you? And we did
that for years and finally we decided, hey, let's do
some triathlons. Why not, We're ready? Wow, So we started

(21:12):
doing triathlons, and I started doing some very intense weightlifting,
and with intense weightlifting, you have bone density, bone growth,
and the kind of cancer I had disintegrate your bones.
And every oncologist has told me that that's probably what

(21:33):
saved my life because my bones could withstand and respond
to the treatment that they needed to give me, which
was a bone marrow. I had many bone marrow aspirations
of my hips which to determine the degree of cancer
in my bones, and I had to undergo a stem
cell transplant. And the kind of transplant I had is
called an autologous, which means you donate your own stem cells.

(21:59):
It's a very involve procedure. It takes months to prepare
for it, and while you do not have the risk
of rejection like you do with a donor stem cell
transplant procedure, the downside of it is it never will
cure what the cancer you have. What it will do
is kick the can down the road. What it does
is destroy your immune system, so you can grow a

(22:20):
new one, but not everybody does, and those that don't
regrow one die, so it's a crapshoot. But if you're
going to die anyways, how I looked at it, So
why not do this? You know, how painful is it?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
All that procedures?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Pardon?

Speaker 2 (22:36):
How painful was going through that process?

Speaker 3 (22:39):
It was painful in parts the bone male aspirations because
my bones were incredibly dense. They were very painful. They
couldn't even use the usual tool on my hip bone
to extract the bone marrow to get it out. They
had to get a bigger one. It kind of looked
like a quirkscrew wine thing that you put in your body,

(23:00):
but it's a canula, so it's hollow, and they pull
out like a spoonful of bone marrow from that through
the canula and analyze it under a microscope. But they
can't anesthetize that your bones. There's no drug that's going
to take the pain out of the bone. It will
take the pain out of the tissue getting to the bone,

(23:20):
but not once they're in there, and it's extremely cold,
which is kind of a weird thing. That part was painful,
And then the other part that was very painful, which
I wasn't expecting, was in order to prepare for the
stem cell transplant, they have to eradicate your immune system
and one of the drugs that they use for that
is malfoline. Malfoline is a derivative of mustard gas. They

(23:46):
just change a few molecules in it. And what that
does is a side effect, not the intention, but the
side effect of that is you shed all of the
mucous membrane lining of your GI system. And that's incredibly painful.
And that lasted three days. I was on IV morphine.
It didn't even cut it, and that was bad. But

(24:08):
they told me there's no short you just got to
do it, you know, So I did. That was at
Christmas time. I remember that, and I had an incredible
and incredible treatment team. I was so grateful to them.
And that's one of the points I want to make
is that what got me through the murder, that the
strategies I took to get me through the murder, I

(24:30):
re employed them to get me through the cancer and
it works for me. One of which is it was
two things in particular. One is to focus on what
was right, what had not changed as a result of
the murder, What was still right in my world after
the cancer? What did it not change? Could you tend
to focus on the negative? And secondly, to be grateful

(24:53):
for resources that you do have, and that was drilled
into me because another strategy I used in order to
get myself back on track after the homicide was to
volunteer internationally in remote areas of the world. And I
saw things, heard things, smell things I never would have

(25:13):
ever dreamed. It's different than seeing it in national geographic
documentary and being there and the situations you find yourself in.
And I came home from those remote places, remote villages,
so appreciative of clean water, electricity, having rights as a woman,

(25:35):
being able to travel and walk freely without a male
on my arm, having my education, having a roof over
my I could go on. And so it was. With
the cancer treatment, It's like I was grateful I had insurance,
I had a world class facility within an hour of me.
I had my bone strength from the triathlon that I

(25:56):
had done, and just eleven years to my diagnosis, there
was no treatment for the kind of cancer I had.
They would just say, basically say get your affairs in order.
That's how far it had come in eleven years. Geraldine Ferraro,
who was a woman that ran for president and did
not succeed, came down with the diagnosis of multi myloma

(26:19):
during her campaign and thought, like the rest of us, oh,
I'm just tired. I ache And she was told when
it was diagnosed, gets your affairs in order, and she died.
Tom broke as another one that had the same diagnosis.
He broke his back. That's the typical injury. With me,
it was my arm. I was in training to do

(26:39):
my fifth triathlon and I was climbing up a muddy
hill and slipped and caught myself with my right arm,
and it fractured a spiral break in my right arm,
and it was through and through, and I remember zip
unzipping my sweatshirt and stuffing my arm in there like
a sling and getting to nine to one one and
getting to the hospital, and I just thought it was
a broken arm. I thought it was that I broke

(27:00):
it because the hill was so steep. I shouldn't have
even gotten a bruise, because it was like leaning against
a wall. You fall against a wall five inches away,
you shouldn't break a bone. But the one good thing
that came out of all of that was my husband
and I were commuting. That's another story. I remarried. My

(27:20):
husband and I were commuting and my daughter volunteered to
be with me because you had to have a caregiver
during the three month procedure. They wouldn't do it, and
she volunteered to be my caregiver, and it really brought
us close. We still talk about it. She dropped everything
and came and was exhausted in the process. When I

(27:41):
look back on her photos, she looked ten years older
at the end than the beginning. But we've talked about it,
and she said she would do it again in a heartbeat.
I mean, we went through that together, and I was
very grateful to have her. I adopted two children. She
was two sisters. She was the youngest of them too,

(28:01):
and we're very close, and I think some of it
has to do with that. So there are silver linings
some of the times to this. You know, it's not
all you know, negative, but it's all not. It's not
something you'd wish on anybody either.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Right. Well, when I think if I try to pretend
to be you for a minute, I think about my
low pain tolerance that I have, or used to be low.
I'm getting tougher as I get older, and I think
about the like you have survived intense emotional pain, intense

(28:34):
physical pain probably spiritual pain around that, but you're but
your spirit like you are just such a tough cookie,
you know, to be able to focus on gratitude, to
be able to look around the world and say, you
know what, there is worse suffering, like there's always somebody

(28:54):
than a herder us.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Absolutely no.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
And I if I focus on my support, my resources,
my gratitude, I'm going to be okay.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah. That was very instrumental to me.
In fact, three years later, my other daughter, the older
one of the two, she started getting this little princess
attitude and I wasn't having it, like I only want
clothes from aber Crime and Finch, and I thought, oh no,
we're not going down this path. So I said to her,

(29:24):
how would you like to go to Kenya and look
at the animals? Oh you mean like a safarig kinda. Yeah,
we can do that night. And there's a girls school
I want to visit, okay, because she was complaining about
her school and the bus ride and anything. And while
we're on the plane going over there, I said, oh,
by the way, there's no electricity where we're going, no
running water. You won't have a phone or a hair curler,

(29:47):
and we're going to be working to build trusses for
a girls' school. We're going to be living in a tent.
I could just see the color draining from her face,
and she was dumbfounded. And we had some funny things happen.
One story, I've got it. It's a funny.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Now.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
We had this tent and there was no fence around
the air. We were in near Olipiki Donggae on an
outlook over the rift valley and it's the waterhole area,
and they tell you stay in your tent dawn to
dust because the animals come to get the water and
they're not friendly. Okay, so we stayed in our tent.
We're not supposed to have food in our tent. Fine,

(30:26):
And one night I heard this sniffing outside my tent
or our tent, like what is that? And I said
to my daughter, do you have any food in here?
And she goes, just licorice, red vines, and I go,
I told you not to bring any food, and she said,
you always told me that wasn't food, which I probably

(30:46):
did say at some point. So we're stuffing our face
with this red vine. I don't know what it do
in the morning, I don't even like this stuff. And
in the next morning I asked one of the mass
I warriors who was guarding the camp area, what kind
of animal tracks are around our tent and he said
it was one of those warthogs like poomba. And I'm like,

(31:09):
oh glad, we hate that stuff, but at any rate
finished the My daughter. She came out of that experience
not only wanting to go back, but by the time
we got on the plane, the only clothes she had
left to wear because she'd given them all up, was
what was on her back. She was trying to talk

(31:29):
me into adopting more children, and she said it changed
her life. When we got home, I asked her, so,
what's changed. What do you think about your school and
what looks different to you now that we're here, and
she said, I love my toilet, and I love paved roads,
and I love having a hot shower at any time

(31:51):
I want. And I said, don't ever take those things
for granted. I won't if you won't, and she she
dropped the attitude. It was great, it worked, and she
felt proud of herself. I love this one photo I
have of her carrying a truss on her shoulders, you know,
as she's built it. I was so proud of her,

(32:14):
and she didn't know she was capable of that, and
I was glad to see she was so. My point
being that it worked for me and her to do
the international traveling as a volunteer is how I afforded
to do it and seeing things that I never would
have seen, experiences I never would have had, and it
changed my perspective on life. It reinforced my gratitude, and

(32:36):
it changed my perspective on my situation tremendously.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
I cannot tell you how much I love that.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I do it
all over again in the heartbeat. My goal, my bucket
list is to make every continent before I die. Then
COVID happened and accept me back, but maybe I will.
I don't know. I still left two. I want to
go to South America and Antarctica, and I think.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
I just have I just have the one left the Antarctica,
I think, Yeah, I've been to South America, Africa. Yeah,
I think I just have Antarctica left.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
I see, it's it's life changing.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, I have a huge I call myself a gypsy
I just love traveling, seeing and experiencing new things, hard things, adventure,
different types of food, different people. It's amazing. I went
to Miranamar, which used to be called and the Karens
with the gold rings on their necks. I was like,

(33:43):
who would have thought I would ever get to meet
some Karens. They're called the tribes Colle Karens, and my
name is Karen, and so I have I have photos
of them with all the rings around their neck, you know,
because that was their version of beauty, having a really
long long neck. And I was just like, wow, just
fascinating stuff.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
Yes it is, Yes it is, And well I always
hoped I left the situation better than I found it.
Also by helping them. Not only with that, but I
also volunteered in a medical clinic. I had my daughter
do that as well in different countries. I went to
India and volunteered there, but in Kenya we did triage

(34:25):
and she got to see what starvation does to kids
and she didn't complain as much. After that we got home.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, well maybe I need to book my kids right
on a plane today. So I feel like I understand
how you were able to heal. And that's really giving back, giving.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
Back and also connecting. As I said, this all happened
before the Internet, so one of the pieces that was
still left over after I got myself together physically, and
so was the psychological piece. I didn't know anybody who'd
ever been in my shoes. I didn't know if I
ever would. And I had a relative who I'm very
close with who recommended I do a podcast, and I'm like,

(35:14):
I don't even listen to podcasts, no pop filter from
a microphone. I don't know anything about it. But she said,
really you want to, That way you can help other
homicide survivors. And I played around with the idea. I
didn't jump into it, but I got encouragement to do
it from others and I did. And that was a
godsend because through that I learned a lot. From my guests.

(35:40):
I found amazing people with amazing stories, and it healed me.
I found that I found my tribe. That's what it
felt like, like, these are people that speak my language.
I don't even have to finish the sentence of They
know what I'm going to say, and I still learn
from them and them, I respect them and I appreciate them,

(36:04):
and that has been. That was like another huge piece
of the puzzle that I didn't even initially recognize was
needing to be filled, but that was filled by having
the podcast. It's very important to me, and I don't
believe I could be wrong on this, but I don't
believe there's another one like it out there that focuses

(36:25):
merely on the aftermath of violent death on the family
members and loved ones. I don't know of one that does.
There might be, but I've not heard of it.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I don't know either. What's the name of your podcast?
For people listening.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Domino Effective Murder? We finished? If all my interviews lined
up for the fourth season, it'll be done, and then
next season in January, I'm starting season five and I'm
already don enough interviews still about March. And it's not
limited to people who have grieved a murder. I've also

(37:05):
had experts on I've had homicide detectives and attorneys and
so forth. But I think the sweet spot still is
homicide survivors, and their stories are all different. In fact,
one time, I sit down and listen to all my
two seasons of podcasts back to back to back, and
I was trying to listen for the I wanted to
answer the question is there a theme? Is there something

(37:27):
that comes up again and again? And I came away
with a conclusion after listening to this for hours, that
every homicide is unique, but the aftermath is not. They
go through the social stigma, the isolation, the fear, the
physical aftermath, The financial ramifications are awful, and nobody talks

(37:51):
about the financial repercussions of it, but they're real. And
there is such a lack of resources, and I think
that's partly because we hide. We as a group, we
homicide survivors stand in the corner. We don't want the spotlight.
We're tired of courts, we're tired of lookiluse coming by

(38:12):
and pointing their finger at us, and we're feeling who's next.
I don't want to have another person die that We
tend to pull away, and so we don't have resources.
We don't speak out. There's a lot that is not
known about us, and it's in part because of us,
but it's also in part because society doesn't know what
to do with us. People act real different when they

(38:33):
find out, yeah, that you've had a murder.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
It's both contagious, right, like they could catch it from you, right.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
In spite of the fact that we just gobble up
true crime and murder on TV.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yes, but that's not real. Yeah, tell us about your book.
What's the title I have?

Speaker 3 (38:53):
I have two. The first one is called A Life Divided,
and that is a crime true crime memory where I
felt like the story had never been told from the
inside looking out, and it was more complicated than And

(39:14):
it was not only more complicated, there were questions that
were never answered by the media, like what would prompt
him to do what he did? And the one question
that always gets to me is how could you not
know that he led a double life? So I took
upon myself to look at this much like an interview.
Like if I was going to write a book about

(39:35):
somebody else's life, what would I do. I would dig
up news stories, I would interview people. I would look
at old photographs, look at microfiche of newspapers, piece it together,
lay it out a timeline, and let it write itself
and be accurate as possible. And so that's what I did.
I tried to be very accurate with facts and dates
and times and names, but infuse it with my very

(39:57):
subjective personal reactions. To what was going on, for example,
exiting the morgue when I went down to identify him.
The fact was it was a Sunday morning at six
point thirty, and the news was camped on the sort
of steps of the morgue with their tripods and their cameras.

(40:17):
That was factual, but the subjective part of it was
for I was in such a state of mind and
so sleep deprived at that point that when I glanced
out the windows of the morgue for just a second,
I thought I saw machine guns aimed at me, and
I kind of blinked. I'm like, oh, no, those are

(40:39):
just tripods and cameras. But that's how I felt, Well,
that's not going to be known by a reporter talking
about the case. So I tried to be both as
objective and accurate and factual as I could, but at
the same time helping the person voyeuristically walk through this
whole thing, through me, and hopefully at the end make

(41:02):
it more relevant for other homicide survivors, not just my
own story. So that was A Life Divided. And then
the second book, which is newer, it was just out
this year early this year, is called What Now, Navigating
the aftermath of homicide and suicide, and that is about

(41:24):
a four hundred and seventy five page book that takes
you through the process linearly. So it starts with the
death notification, dealing with the media, understanding the investigation, preparing
for court, the physical ramifications, understanding your children's needs, understanding
the financial repercussions on down down the line to probation

(41:48):
and parole and advocacy. And in writing the book, because
of my podcast, primarily, I had the fortunate experience of
being able to tap into many experts, attorneys and detectives
and others to say is this right. For example, there's
a chapter in there on wrongful convictions of homicide survivors

(42:10):
who have been wrongly convicted of the homicide of their
loved one, and I wanted to write a chapter addressing
that as well as what to do if should you
ever feel that's what's happening. But I'm not an attorney.
So I wrote the chapter, and then I checked in
with attorneys and said, would you just least look at
this Ober and zeafit's accurate if I'd forgot anything. There's
also a chapter on probate and how to prepare your

(42:32):
house for sale because that's what I had to do.
I couldn't afford living there. And what should you consider
when you're in that process? And what if you have
to leave your house? How do you keep it safe?
How do you keep it mold free? So I have
a friend who builds houses for a living, so he
helped me write that chapter. So I had the input
of about eighteen other people, and so I pulled that

(42:54):
together and listed a lot of resources at the back.
And it's not written just for homicide survivors and suicide survivors.
It's also written for their best friends because there's a
whole chapter and what friends can do, which is a lot.
There is so much that we need them for and
that's all condensed in one chapter. There's a practical tips
on what to do when the media comes knocking your

(43:16):
options if you want no cooperation, some cooperation, or full cooperation.
So I tried to make it as comprehensive as I could.
That's just why it got to be as long as
it could. But I also wrote it in such a
way that if a chapter did not apply to you,
like crime scene cleanup, you didn't have to read it.
You still wouldn't miss any it still would can be continuity.

(43:38):
And if there was an important point there that you
might not catch, I put it in another chapter so
you wouldn't miss it. Because not everybody has to deal
with crime scene cleanup died, Yeah, but there are people
that do, and they don't know where to turn and
they don't know how they can get ripped off by
those individuals. Here's just one example that's currently in the
courts right now in Florida. There's a woman by the

(44:00):
name of Michelle Syers who lived in Florida and whose
veteran husband took his life in their own home. She
called crime scene cleanup company. They came, they cleaned it up,
and without her permission and without her awareness, they videotaped
the whole thing before and after posted it on the

(44:20):
internet on YouTube, and her twin young sons ran across
it and were mortified to learn this is where their
father died. She's taken them to court. There's no laws
against what they've done that I know of, so what
they're using is invasion of privacy. But in New Zealand
it's absolutely illegal. You cannot take video footage of a

(44:43):
crime scene cleanup without permission of the owner here, it's legal.
And so I have a blog on my website and
I write a lot of articles. And the series I'm
doing right now is different ways that homicide survivors are exploited.
The chapter I just wrote is by the funeral industry.
It's it's just repugnant what they do to separate you

(45:08):
from your money. And I'm right. I'm going to post
one tomorrow on how the media takes advantage of you.
Then there's crime scene cleanup companies that take advantage of it.
You're because you're so vulnerable. You're so vulnerable and so naive.
You're just right.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
You just want it done and just want to.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Right right. So the exploitation is another dimension of all
this that people don't understand. There's a lot of information
that is news even to clinicians, that they don't have
an inkling about that is very important, Like the financial
repercussions of death of a homicide are so incredible, nobody

(45:50):
talks about it. No, I wasn't prepared. Just as an example,
you're going to need your own attorney, you're going to
need more childcare, You're going to have more medical expenses
because your own health is going to be flaring up,
You're going to have security issues involved, so you might
want to have a security system involved. And on it goes,

(46:10):
and to the point where the average family is in
debt about five five hundred dollars from associated costs. And
it is true that many communities do offer crime victim funds,
but usually they only reimburse you, and it can take
up to two years to be reimbursed, and it's never

(46:31):
for the full amount. And if you have a crime
scene clinic in your home that can run twenty five
thousand dollars, where's that money coming from? Especially if you're
not able to work. And the breadwinner was the one
that was murdered. So how many clinicians know about that fact?

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah? So I was a military social worker, so I
do know some of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
The average clinician would not. I know, they don't take
the stop at the school.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, I think we're different. I think is what it
is too, like we give a damn and so we're
gonna dig into those resources and find out like what exists.
Like I had a woman who lost her her a
husband I think he was a captain and a motorcycle crash.
It wasn't a homicide. But the bank wouldn't let her
get her money. And so she's in my office and

(47:23):
I'm like, well.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Let her get her money.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
They wouldn't let her take money out of the account
because it was in his name. And I said, well,
how are we going to do therapy if you're sitting
here worried about this financial trauma. I'm going to help
you get your money. And so I talked to tell her.
I talked to the manager and I'm like, I had
to really harshly advocate for her. And so they're like, yes, ma'am,

(47:46):
the funds will be available for her today. I'm like,
how is she supposed to bury this man?

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Right?

Speaker 2 (47:52):
No? And so they finally listened and she was And
that's the kind of support people need in the moment.
She didn't need to sit there talk about her feelings.
She needed concrete help in the moment.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
You're so busy treading water, you don't Grief is a luxury.
I had to wait two years before I could start
processing it because I had to relocate, I had to
pay off bills, I had to get my health back,
I had to start a new job. So it just
kept going as later, later, later, I'll get to it later.
And it was two years before I could really exhale

(48:25):
and sit and start processing. And even when I did,
I found myself in a relocated to a very very
tiny town on purpose where people wouldn't know me. There
was no resources there. There wasn't even grief therapy then,
I believe it. So you got to kind of figure
it out yourself, you know.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And you had some tools. Yeah, and you had some
tools because you went to go to be a psychologist.
Thank god.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
There was no training on this. There's no training on this.
There still isn't, to the I recently looked at various
graduate programs in social work and psychology and psychiatry to
find if there's even one class offered on homicide, on
grief following homicide, or grief following homicide and suicide. There isn't.

(49:16):
They consider trauma as trauma whether you're raped or whether
you survive a tsunami. It's all the same, And I'm like, no,
it isn't. If you go if you are in a tsunami,
you have different problems. You have disease, for example, immediate
concerns about disease because of the pollution and the water
all that, but you don't have to think about going

(49:37):
to court. So it's not identical. And so that's my
goal in the podcast and the book is to get
information out there, get people talking, and to beg researchers.
I could come up with a list of if anybody's listening,
I could come up with a list of twenty dissertation

(49:58):
topics that need to be explored, if any buddy is
out there hunting around for a master's thesis or a
dissertation topic, of things that we know nothing about that
should be looked at. Here's just one example. I interviewed
a woman on my show, They're All Amazing. She was amazing.
She grew up in poverty without a father. Her mother
was drug involved and they lived day to day with

(50:20):
no money, and her mom was very neglectful, and she
had an older brother, man named of Patrick. She was
about six or seven years of age when her mother
said to her, your brother's taking a nap upstairs. Go
wake them up, knowing full well she had murdered her son.

(50:42):
So this little girl was ordered to go wake her
brother up, and when she pulled the blankets back, she
saw what she saw. I'm not even gonna go into
what she saw. So she went into foster care and
then she was bounced around. And I wanted to find
out what is the developmental repercussion on sibling death at
the hands of a parent. I think I could find

(51:03):
anything on that. Oh, there are so many untouched topics
that we need to have researched, and that spend another
minute talking about serial murderers. I'm so up to my
eyeballs in that, because the chances of your dying of
a serial murderer are so infinitesimly small compared to dying
in a car crash or from cancer or heart attack,

(51:25):
that you shouldn't even be on the radar. But it
makes revenue, I guess.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
So maybe one idea, and not that you need more
work to do, but maybe one idea is just take
all your ideas and making an ebook out of it,
looking for dissertation ideas, and then you have your lesson
in the little that you do. Know it might spark
someone's interest because there's so many overdone dissertations. Like, absolutely,

(51:55):
do something that will make a difference.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
It's actually helpful. You have to do the research anyway,
so might as well make it practical.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, jan we have to start wrapping up, okay, I
think we could talk for a couple hours. Like, your
story is really powerful. I hope it helps someone listening
that's experience the aftermath of a loved one being murdered.
I hope that it provides them some comfort and hope

(52:24):
that there is life after. And you certainly are living
a really full life. So thank you for everything that
you're doing.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
You're welcome. And if I could end on my favorite quote,
I would love to please absolutely. It was from Helen
Keller and she said, although the world is full of suffering,
it is also filled with the overcoming of it.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
It's pretty powerful.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Thank you, Thank you for listening in today. Please join
us next week, same day and time. Also, I would
love for you to check out my website heel thrivedream
dot com.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Hm

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