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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 6: History and the authors that have written about them. Crime
Speaker 6: is as horrific as mesmerizingly perplexing as a child's murder
Speaker 6: at the hands of a parent. In most cases, the
Speaker 6: perpetrator is the father. A veteran journalist explores five examples
Speaker 6: of family annihilators in this troubling snapshot of American crime
Speaker 6: twisted by the dark trajectory of machismo in economically stressful times.
Speaker 6: Her research includes some fifty in depth interviews of victim's
Speaker 6: friends and family, an examination of police files, and detailed
Speaker 6: profiles of the researchers who track these killer dads. She
Speaker 6: also presents expert's theories on the causes that drive men
Speaker 6: to commit these heinous acts, ranging from economic pressures, the
Speaker 6: stress of perceived failure and distorted egos, to the disturbing
Speaker 6: statistics on abuse of adopted children by stepfathers and the
Speaker 6: connection between murder and pregnancy. Finally, she discusses factors in
Speaker 6: contemporary society that may foster such crimes and measures we
Speaker 6: can and should be taking to prevent them. Welser researched
Speaker 6: and often shocking Killers Dads provides disturbing insights into the
Speaker 6: dark forces that can turn family dynamics into the worst
Speaker 6: imaginable nightmare. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 6: Killer Dads. The twisted drive that compels Fathers to murder
Speaker 6: their own kids, by my special guest journalists and author
Speaker 6: Mary Pappenfuss. I just got an email from Mary just
Speaker 6: moments ago, and she the number I had given her,
Speaker 6: she said didn't work, so there was some problem. I
Speaker 6: resent the number in case I did somehow give her
Speaker 6: the wrong original and number. So I guess she is
Speaker 6: calling in now with that number, I imagine. So again
Speaker 6: I apologize, ladies and gentlemen, for another technical error brought
Speaker 6: to probably my heir her. But how about we just
Speaker 6: blame blog talk radio for right now and wait for
Speaker 6: Mary to come on here. She is. Good evening, Mary.
Speaker 7: Thanks so much for having me. You actually gave me
Speaker 7: a phone number with the numbers transposed, but being the
Speaker 7: good sleuth that I am, I figured it out.
Speaker 6: So did you just? I just sent you another email
Speaker 6: a second ago.
Speaker 7: So oh, right, right, and here it is.
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, anyway, I apologize because I probably did give
Speaker 6: you the wrong number, and I'm very sorry for that.
Speaker 6: And welcome to the program. I had already done the introduction.
Speaker 6: Now let me get this right. What is the proper
Speaker 6: pronunciation of your last name, Mary Popenfoos? Okay, I wasn't
Speaker 6: too far off at all. Okay, welcome to the program.
Speaker 6: And like I said, we did the introduction, which is
Speaker 6: basically the synopsis of your book. So what I'd like
Speaker 6: to do first is again congratulate you on a very
Speaker 6: unique and very very interesting and different book. I want
Speaker 6: to congratulate you on that it's going to be a
Speaker 6: treat for our audience, I think tonight.
Speaker 7: Well, thanks so much. Yeah, it was kind of an
Speaker 7: odd niche publication. I think publisher didn't quite know how
Speaker 7: to market it because it's sort of a true crime
Speaker 7: meet sociology book.
Speaker 6: Yes, but there are more and more books like that
Speaker 6: as people's I think what has happened over the years
Speaker 6: of dedicated true crime readers is that people underestimate the
Speaker 6: capacity for these people too. Year after year desire to
Speaker 6: hear more, and so after you hear the actual rough
Speaker 6: details of crimes, the next step is the why, right.
Speaker 7: And that's exactly why I love true crime because I'm
Speaker 7: really you know, I'm constantly searching for clues, something that
Speaker 7: unlocks the behavior of these killers. You know, somebody who
Speaker 7: didn't never picked up the tab for Pete. I don't know,
Speaker 7: is that a clue. That's why I'm so interested in
Speaker 7: the details. But most of your crime books don't go
Speaker 7: much beyond simply the narrative of the crime. So I
Speaker 7: wanted to try something different.
Speaker 6: Now exactly now, we're not going to go exactly the
Speaker 6: way the book has been laid out chronologically, But what
Speaker 6: I wanted to do was that because this is probably
Speaker 6: the most unique thing about your book is some of
Speaker 6: the information that's been brought together. Like I mentioned to
Speaker 6: you in an email, I had heard something about these
Speaker 6: languor studies, but you put it all together and it's
Speaker 6: amazing the context you put this in. So tell us
Speaker 6: about the studies, who the researchers were, and tell us
Speaker 6: basically how you came to these studies and then now
Speaker 6: how you've used them as sort of a well a
Speaker 6: basis for the start or the beginning of sort of
Speaker 6: a connection evolutionary wise, between this violence that we're talking about,
Speaker 6: the sevening killer dads, the twisted drives that compel fathers
Speaker 6: to murder their own kid. In the synopsis, it really
Speaker 6: doesn't hint at this, and I think this is one
Speaker 6: of the most fascinating aspects of your book. So please
Speaker 6: tell us about how you discovered this or when you
Speaker 6: discover this, and tell us about these fascinating studies and
Speaker 6: involving these languor is it monkeys or apes? Tell us
Speaker 6: about the languors.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that is actually probably my favorite part of the
Speaker 7: book too, So it's interesting you were drawn to that.
Speaker 7: I really the whole idea of killer dads has been
Speaker 7: on my mind for like twenty years. I used to
Speaker 7: work at the New York Post and the New York
Speaker 7: Daily News as both a reporter and an editor, and
Speaker 7: I think when you're an editor you see the amount
Speaker 7: of crime that comes across your desk, especially domestic violence.
Speaker 7: You can always do a domestic violence story that I
Speaker 7: think we're largely blind to. And then years later later,
Speaker 7: when I was in California, I covered the Scott Peterson trial, who,
Speaker 7: as you know doubt remember, killed his very pregnant wife Lacy,
Speaker 7: and I was again every day I went into that courtroom,
Speaker 7: and I thought, how can this happen? I thought this
Speaker 7: was against every conceivable instinct that you know, I thought.
Speaker 7: I was convinced the guy was guilty from day one,
Speaker 7: and I thought, he's going to go to death row
Speaker 7: and he's never going to have another baby. How does
Speaker 7: this happen? I thought? Is it something in us innately
Speaker 7: or is it something we do to people in our society?
Speaker 7: And I just started, you know, I started doing some
Speaker 7: internet searches, and the things that the thing that really
Speaker 7: resonated me with me were some of the theories by
Speaker 7: the evolutionary psychologists who found actually reasons in our ancient
Speaker 7: past and our ape like paths of relationships to the
Speaker 7: people we love the most, of both our spouses and
Speaker 7: our children. So I started looking into that and I've
Speaker 7: been actually reading about it for years The most fascinating
Speaker 7: study I found was the Langer monkeys in India, who
Speaker 7: are very easily observable because they are the monkeys you
Speaker 7: see in the city. So scientists have actually studied them
Speaker 7: for probably since the beginning of the century, if not,
Speaker 7: I mean the nineteen hundreds, probably even earlier. And something
Speaker 7: that was noted about these langers that that because people
Speaker 7: saw them. A lot people remark that they would see
Speaker 7: apparently male langers killing baby monkeys and they couldn't understand
Speaker 7: why it was happening, and a lot of scientists dismissed
Speaker 7: it as you know, psychopathic monkeys or you know, a
Speaker 7: barreant behavior. They couldn't come up with any theory. Now,
Speaker 7: a woman in northern California, Sarah Herdi start was really
Speaker 7: fascinated with us. It was something that really intrigued her
Speaker 7: and she studied the langers over several years, and indeed
Speaker 7: she saw this happen. She would see a new male
Speaker 7: come into a and systematically kill the infants that were
Speaker 7: already in the troop before he would mate with the females.
Speaker 7: Now today this is known this is well known as
Speaker 7: a male reproductive strategy that a like a male lion
Speaker 7: comes into a pride and he instantly destroys the rival
Speaker 7: male's infants, so the female becomes receptive to him and
Speaker 7: he can raise his own DNA. Of course, he's not
Speaker 7: thinking about DNA. He's just thinking about accessibility to the female.
Speaker 7: But Sarah Hardy Hardy, this was like in the seventies.
Speaker 7: She was the first one who actually came up with
Speaker 7: this theory that this wasn't crazy, it was actually a
Speaker 7: reproductive strategy that the Langer's practice in a way to
Speaker 7: gain access to a female and that sort of monkey
Speaker 7: immortality by continuing to pro create, and then following that
Speaker 7: this was really a breakthrough that we've found this is
Speaker 7: the case, and at least fifty different species know that.
Speaker 7: And I think what I drew from this is that
Speaker 7: the primal relationship for a male, at least in our
Speaker 7: among our ape ancestors, is with the love interest, you know,
Speaker 7: and the human case would be a wife or a lover,
Speaker 7: because that's really the way that the male reproduces himself,
Speaker 7: is the love interest. Whereas a female, because she has
Speaker 7: many fewer children in her offspring, is very tied to
Speaker 7: her children and has to protect those few offspring. If
Speaker 7: her DNA is to survive beyond her lifespan. So Sarah
Speaker 7: Hurdie reassured people after her first study that, you know,
Speaker 7: don't worry. Men aren't out there, you know, wiping out
Speaker 7: rival men's infants, so don't worry about it. But some
Speaker 7: other researchers in Canada, Margot Wilson and Martin Daily, started thinking, well,
Speaker 7: you know, this is kind of interesting. Are there other
Speaker 7: kind of evolutionary drives behind male violence? Are behind you know,
Speaker 7: what fuels violent familial relationships? And they said, well, let's
Speaker 7: look at step children, because that's what Sarah Herdy has
Speaker 7: found that stepchildren essentially are the ones that are wiped out.
Speaker 7: So let's take a look at step children. And they
Speaker 7: noted all the fairy tales in human culture across cultures
Speaker 7: about evil stepparents, and in fact it's probably more frequently
Speaker 7: the evil stepmother. But they theorized that because the mother
Speaker 7: was telling the tales typically in cultures, that they were
Speaker 7: warning their children if a stepmother is brought into your life,
Speaker 7: be careful. It could be dangerous. So they began to
Speaker 7: look at Canadian statistics and American statistics and they found
Speaker 7: shockingly that having a stepparent was the number one risk
Speaker 7: factor for both severe child abuse and murder by a parent.
Speaker 7: They they weren't using the same sort of perspective that
Speaker 7: Sarah Herd he was. Her strategy or her theory was
Speaker 7: that male wanted access to the female. Their idea was
Speaker 7: that another evolutionary drive is this specific bond between our
Speaker 7: biological children, and that we will you know, if there's
Speaker 7: a burning building, we're more likely to save our own
Speaker 7: biological children over someone else's child. But in fact, I
Speaker 7: think there is an issue of access to the female
Speaker 7: because I think men can frequently they get jealous of
Speaker 7: They can get jealous of stepchildren. You know, if there's
Speaker 7: a if their a household is full of children from
Speaker 7: another male and their new wife or their new lover
Speaker 7: is paying too much attention to those kids, I think
Speaker 7: they can get angry. And in fact, one of the
Speaker 7: cases in my book, I think a man who cut
Speaker 7: the throat of his stepchild talks about how in the
Speaker 7: middle of an argument with his wife, the stepchild sort
Speaker 7: of intervenes and he becomes so angry he takes her
Speaker 7: and he kills her, and in his mind he sees
Speaker 7: that stepchild is coming between himself and the woman he
Speaker 7: calls his soulmate. So it's a fascinating theory because I
Speaker 7: think it does give us kind of a platform to
Speaker 7: analyze all kinds of relationships among humans. And you know,
Speaker 7: now I see it everywhere, like you know, any kind
Speaker 7: of Shakespeare play, or for me, I see, like you know,
Speaker 7: women wearing burkas as part of this whole Langer thing
Speaker 7: that men are very possessive of women and they want
Speaker 7: them for themselves because it's very important for their DNA immortality.
Speaker 6: Now, the other thing that I found interesting too is
Speaker 6: that you also look, you said there was an initial
Speaker 6: resistance to these theories that because of sort of the
Speaker 6: division between creationists and again intelligent design or evolutionary or
Speaker 6: people that believe Darwin and obviously people that don't so
Speaker 6: and basically this idea that we evolve from apes is
Speaker 6: not is pretty distasteful to a big portion of people
Speaker 6: as well, And there was a certain again, certain bias
Speaker 6: that kept people from looking at maybe what was now
Speaker 6: seems kind of obvious that in every fifty species there's
Speaker 6: this evolutionary drive and it involves killing their own children.
Speaker 6: But what you included is not the dismissal, but you
Speaker 6: discuss how poverty, drug abuse, and mental illness really weren't
Speaker 6: as big a factors as maybe thought of before, or
Speaker 6: at least these other things in society that we're supposed
Speaker 6: to be key factors. So tell us a little just
Speaker 6: a little bit about that.
Speaker 7: You know, I think they are definitely exacerbating factors, but
Speaker 7: I think there is sort of a sort of an
Speaker 7: essential human nature that, you know, we just have to
Speaker 7: be alert to it. And certainly, you know, I feel
Speaker 7: a little bad because I don't mean to be attacking men,
Speaker 7: and you know, like my husband, never in a million
Speaker 7: years would I ever worry about him hurting one of
Speaker 7: my children. But I think there's there is a sort
Speaker 7: of proclivity that we have. And some of these researchers
Speaker 7: I spoke to said, you know, at one point it
Speaker 7: was just no one would ever accept the fact that
Speaker 7: there is an essential human nature, that we're all free
Speaker 7: and independent and we create our natures. But I think
Speaker 7: there is, and I think we to protect children in
Speaker 7: their homes, I think we have to be alert to
Speaker 7: some of that. And in a larger sense, sometimes I
Speaker 7: think that all of society has this sort of proclivity,
Speaker 7: like there's this sort of acceptance of a certain amount
Speaker 7: of violence that that that we think, well, you know,
Speaker 7: some that are going to be violent, what can we
Speaker 7: do about it? Rather than saying this violence is unacceptable?
Speaker 7: Or you know these rapes going on in India now there,
Speaker 7: you know, some cities are talking about banning lingerie lays
Speaker 7: and windows. You know, instead of saying violence is unacceptable,
Speaker 7: we're saying men are going to be violent and we
Speaker 7: have to figure out how not to provoke them. So,
Speaker 7: in a sense, I think we're all sort of you know,
Speaker 7: we're sort of in the thrall of this alpha male
Speaker 7: that you know that violence is acceptable. I think today,
Speaker 7: I think, whether whether people were creationists or not, or
Speaker 7: intelligent design, I think it was all a little It
Speaker 7: was distasteful to everyone to think that we were as
Speaker 7: brutish as we may have been tainted by these evolutionary psychologists.
Speaker 7: But today it's interesting whenever I talk to people and
Speaker 7: I mentioned a stepchild killing, people say, oh, well, a stepchild.
Speaker 7: So it's it's almost as you said, it seems so
Speaker 7: obvious to people now, but it was unheard of at
Speaker 7: that point. I think some of these same evolutionary psychologists
Speaker 7: since though, have also said that we also have a
Speaker 7: capacity for great co operation and intelligence that can overcome
Speaker 7: some of these things. You know, I'm embarrassed to say now.
Speaker 7: I'm a child of the sixties, So I used to
Speaker 7: believe that there were there was no difference between men
Speaker 7: and women other than physical, or that if there were,
Speaker 7: we had no idea because we had been so tainted
Speaker 7: by social expectations. And now I'm completely convinced that we're
Speaker 7: practically different species. And I think society could be our
Speaker 7: way to grow and evolve further, and as long as
Speaker 7: we're alert to some of these tendencies, that we can
Speaker 7: change things and make things for the better and protect
Speaker 7: the most vulnerable in our society. You know, a six
Speaker 7: month old baby who's killed by a father. We have
Speaker 7: to we have to start taking over, taking charge from
Speaker 7: that sort of alpha male mindset.
Speaker 6: Well, I you know, I agree with everything you're saying,
Speaker 6: but you also do have when you say that men.
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Speaker 6: And then women seem to be of different different well
Speaker 6: you know these radically different species, but you can also
Speaker 6: look within men these days, there's it is as different
Speaker 6: as the I don't know, the lion, and the and
Speaker 6: the housecat in terms of one is domesticated, understands it
Speaker 6: never been, has never been violent in their whole life.
Speaker 6: It doesn't I don't even know, has a capacity for
Speaker 6: it in terms of innately where another person, like you say,
Speaker 6: the alpha male. If you ever watch a hockey game,
Speaker 6: and you know Canadians are supposed to be so meek
Speaker 6: and mild and polite, if you watch a hockey game
Speaker 6: and they take their five year olds to the hockey
Speaker 6: game watching people get punched out, so violence, there's a
Speaker 6: certain level of violence in sport, and of course sport
Speaker 6: is celebrated, and then you get the phenomenon of OJ
Speaker 6: sort of an OJ Simpson not realizing you know. You know,
Speaker 6: so I agree with you with that. But at the
Speaker 6: same time, like you say, we did, man has this
Speaker 6: great capacity, but I don't think it's a far cry
Speaker 6: from the savagery and barbarism that we see from men,
Speaker 6: especially today and in the past. So there have been
Speaker 6: a lot of studies as well that when you look
Speaker 6: at the overwhelming ability of men to murder versus women.
Speaker 6: Then I don't think you have to apologize for saying, jeez,
Speaker 6: I'm beaten up on men here when we talk about violence.
Speaker 7: Now, I know, but there are I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: some of these researchers are males, who are you know,
Speaker 7: they're appalled by it. And I don't know there's but
Speaker 7: you know, there's been a viral video going around with
Speaker 7: John Patrick Stewart, who the actor, a British actor who
Speaker 7: grew up with a very abusive father, and he did
Speaker 7: something very moving. He said, men, if you know, if
Speaker 7: you want to stop violence, it's up to us. And
Speaker 7: now I found that very moving. You know. Part of
Speaker 7: the reason I focused on men is because there are
Speaker 7: more of a black box to me. I think, you know,
Speaker 7: women do kill. They tend to kill when they're I
Speaker 7: think in the throes of postpartum depression, or they feel wrapped,
Speaker 7: or you know, of course there's you know, mental illness cases.
Speaker 7: But something that struck me about men as this sort
Speaker 7: of cold calculated planning to kill. And there's a lot
Speaker 7: of murder of biological children to punish the you know,
Speaker 7: the lover or the woman who is divorcing. And I
Speaker 7: just can't understand that. I can't understand, you know, like
Speaker 7: losing control and wanting to kill or being in such
Speaker 7: a rage that I could hurt someone. So I decided
Speaker 7: to study that. But you know you do have to.
Speaker 7: I mean it is I think, you know, we have
Speaker 7: brains that we can override our emotions sometimes, I hope.
Speaker 6: Yeah. What you do is a great job with this
Speaker 6: book is that you do take very different cases as
Speaker 6: your case studies. And it was interesting that you did
Speaker 6: cover the case the lace, the Scott Peterson case, and
Speaker 6: then you do say that this is a again a
Speaker 6: sort of an extreme If there is an extreme example
Speaker 6: of a killer dad, it's this one. And let's first
Speaker 6: talk about Scott Peterson and why you chose this case
Speaker 6: and what you want the audience or the reader to
Speaker 6: really what you're trying to convey with this particular case study,
Speaker 6: and then we'll go to another case that's like say James,
Speaker 6: which is much much different. So let's start off with
Speaker 6: Scott Peterson and the case itself. For those internationally and
Speaker 6: our fans everywhere, outline the case a little bit because
Speaker 6: it's particularly bad when you talk about the timing of
Speaker 6: it and his behavior and the affair, and so let's
Speaker 6: get into how bad Scott Peterson and what his case
Speaker 6: particularly shows in this examination of killer dads.
Speaker 7: Well, I definitely picked him because the case just sort
Speaker 7: of riveted the nation, and also because I was assigned
Speaker 7: to it. I sat in court every single day, and
Speaker 7: it was fascinating. I determined, I mean, I made up
Speaker 7: my mind through that case that Scott was, in fact
Speaker 7: his wires were bad. I think he was a psychopath.
Speaker 7: I think he Yeah, there were a lot of things
Speaker 7: about that case that galvanized the American public because Lacey
Speaker 7: went missing. She was almost eight months pregnant. She went missing.
Speaker 7: I believe it was Christmas Eve. So there's the holiday
Speaker 7: time and Scott crying looking for his you know, very
Speaker 7: pregnant wife, and it was sort of this sad, tragic
Speaker 7: holiday story. People were looking, you know, they were reporting
Speaker 7: sightings of Lacey, hoping to find her, hoping the baby
Speaker 7: would be okay. And I don't know, I was suspicious.
Speaker 7: Of course, when you're a journalist, you know, you see
Speaker 7: you see these vigils, and you see the spouses crying,
Speaker 7: and of course, and any cop will tell you, you know,
Speaker 7: anytime there's a kid murdered or a spouse. The number one,
Speaker 7: you know person they look at is the family member,
Speaker 7: the spouse or the other father or the mother. So
Speaker 7: you know, I was suspicious right away. And then he
Speaker 7: was kipping some vigils, and you know, it turned out
Speaker 7: that he had a mistress on the side. And after
Speaker 7: the end of the case, I thought that Scott was
Speaker 7: a psychotic all's life. He was very us a very
Speaker 7: spoiled child. He was the last child of a uh,
Speaker 7: the last late child of a of a late marriage
Speaker 7: to people married who had previous children, and Scott's mother
Speaker 7: had put up two or I think two or three
Speaker 7: children up for adoptions, so Scott was sort of her baby.
Speaker 7: And I think this was the He was a modesto,
Speaker 7: a fertilizer salesman. He had rather a mundane life. He had.
Speaker 7: He met Lacey in southern California while they were both
Speaker 7: in college, and he for a while he ran a restaurant,
Speaker 7: and uh, I think when he you know, he was
Speaker 7: in Modesto and he thought he had a baby on
Speaker 7: the way, and he thought, you know, I just don't
Speaker 7: like this life. It's a little too pedestrian. And he's
Speaker 7: a very handsome guy. And when you see him in person,
Speaker 7: you know, in the courtroom, I just thought he was
Speaker 7: kind of stunning. Really, he looked like an actor or something.
Speaker 7: He was very handsome, so I'm sure he, you know,
Speaker 7: had a lot of looks from women. So after Lacey
Speaker 7: was pregnant, and this was just you know, a few
Speaker 7: months before she disappeared, he set out to find a lover.
Speaker 7: It's not like he saw his lover across the crowded
Speaker 7: room and thought, I can't live without this woman. I'm
Speaker 7: going to have to excrete myself from this marriage. I
Speaker 7: think he decided he wanted to end the life he
Speaker 7: had and start a new one. And I think to
Speaker 7: do that takes a particular lack of emotion. And as
Speaker 7: far as I could tell, and as far as anyone
Speaker 7: could tell, there was absolutely no hint of trouble in
Speaker 7: that marriage and Lacey. Everyone said that Lacey's best friend
Speaker 7: was her mother, Sharon Roach, and Lacey never shared any
Speaker 7: problems with her mother. In fact, her mother's husband, they
Speaker 7: were Ron Gransky. I don't think they were married, but
Speaker 7: they've been living together. He actually raised Lacey. He said
Speaker 7: at one point that Scott put up with too much
Speaker 7: from Lacey. Because Lacy sometimes could be a little pushy
Speaker 7: and talked a lot. He called her jabber jaws. Scott
Speaker 7: never argued with her at all, So they had a
Speaker 7: two perfect relationship, I think. And then just some of
Speaker 7: the trial transcripts that I have in the book are
Speaker 7: you know he was like a pathological liar. So he
Speaker 7: started to woo this woman, Amber Fray, And you know,
Speaker 7: of course he had to explain away his double life
Speaker 7: because he had to be with Lacey, had another life.
Speaker 7: So he would tell Amber that he was traveling to
Speaker 7: Europe for work, and he would call her on his
Speaker 7: cellphone saying that he was looking at the new Yar's
Speaker 7: the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, and meanwhile, you know,
Speaker 7: people were dragging the canal for the bay for Lacey's body.
Speaker 7: And he keeps saying, what I can't hear you, Amber,
Speaker 7: I can't hear Like he's having a bad Internet connection,
Speaker 7: and he's talking about the cobblestone streets and Brussels and
Speaker 7: and he says that, you know, his family has a
Speaker 7: compound in Maine and he's going to go fly fishing
Speaker 7: in Alaska. And I mean, just the lies were just
Speaker 7: appalling and yet he was a totally attentive, incredibly creative,
Speaker 7: romantic partner to Amber, just the way he was with Lacy.
Speaker 7: He took Amber one night out on a hike with
Speaker 7: her three year old daughter and they, you know, looked
Speaker 7: at the stars, and he made dinner for and bought
Speaker 7: her groceries. I mean, like romantic flourishes that my husband
Speaker 7: wouldn't have a clue. But you know, there's something about
Speaker 7: that sort of psychopath that's very predatorial and knows exactly
Speaker 7: how to get what he want wants so and I
Speaker 7: think there's very few killer dads like that. I mean,
Speaker 7: the ones I mentioned in the book are Jeffrey MacDonald
Speaker 7: who killed his three, his two daughters and his wife,
Speaker 7: and Joe mcguinnis did one of my favorite true crime
Speaker 7: book is A Fatal Vision, and I think the most
Speaker 7: fascinating aspect about that book is what Jeffrey McDonald says
Speaker 7: about himself. He's like such a liar and he doesn't
Speaker 7: realize it. You know, he talks about they have a
Speaker 7: perfect marriage, and then chapters later he'll say, you know,
Speaker 7: the affairs had stopped, and I thought, oh, what affairs?
Speaker 7: He hasn't mentioned this before and Neil Entwissel who shot
Speaker 7: his wife and baby in Connecticut, the same sort of thing,
Speaker 7: this sort of really chilling lack of any real emotion,
Speaker 7: and of course, you know the the that's the definition
Speaker 7: of a psychopath, that they don't have human emotions, though
Speaker 7: they're very good at mimicking them, and they know how
Speaker 7: to satisfy by people, to give them what they want
Speaker 7: without having those needs themselves.
Speaker 6: What was very interesting is Jeffrey McDonald that you put
Speaker 6: him in the book because he's a fascinating case. It's
Speaker 6: interesting that most people true crime fans have seen him
Speaker 6: on TV lying and he's very much like Scott Peterson.
Speaker 6: These people have been successful their whole lives, and I
Speaker 6: think that's part of their pathology, you know that they
Speaker 6: the psychopathology that they believe, well, this just keep going.
Speaker 6: It's worked so far, and they come up with the
Speaker 6: most fantastic tales. Scott Peterson's tales were sickening, but he
Speaker 6: was still trying to spin these yarns. And Jeffrey McDonald's
Speaker 6: the same thing with his wild band of drug crazed
Speaker 6: hippies killed his wife and you know, so right, and.
Speaker 7: Who knows, you know, if their lives have been a
Speaker 7: little different. I feel like, you know, Scott Peterson might
Speaker 7: have gone through his entire life without you know, harming
Speaker 7: or killing anyone if something had been different, you know,
Speaker 7: he you know, if he had really wanted a baby
Speaker 7: and he was excited about the baby, or Jeffrey McDonald.
Speaker 7: I just think for the first time in their lives,
Speaker 7: they hit an obstacle they couldn't get around easily, and
Speaker 7: they thought, you know, I'm just going to eliminate it.
Speaker 7: And that was the first time people realized, Hi, you know,
Speaker 7: there's something really wrong with this person and they just
Speaker 7: don't operate by the same moral compass that the rest
Speaker 7: of us do.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, Now, you's a couple of interesting things that
Speaker 6: you put in the introduction, and we'll talk about those,
Speaker 6: and then we'll talk about James. And we'll also talk
Speaker 6: about how you talk about that a woman that was
Speaker 6: killed by her suicidal husband visited you from the grave
Speaker 6: basically through emails, So we want to talk about that
Speaker 6: very profound but also the relationship that you again you
Speaker 6: found quite odd that you'd be having any kind of
Speaker 6: relationship with the person that had killed anyone. So again,
Speaker 6: tell us about either one of those right now.
Speaker 7: Well, I'll start with James because he really for me,
Speaker 7: he was a real contrast with Scott Peterson and James
Speaker 7: is you know, one of his names. He asked me
Speaker 7: to go by James because he's actually he's in a
Speaker 7: state prison and he's in a particular part of the
Speaker 7: prison because he says if his identity is known by
Speaker 7: his fellow inmates, he would be killed because he's a
Speaker 7: child murderer. He cut his you know, five year old
Speaker 7: stepdaughter's throat. It. You know, he's easy to find if
Speaker 7: he read the book. His you know, his victim's name
Speaker 7: is in the book, and also his photos in the book.
Speaker 7: I said, are you sure you want this photo? And
Speaker 7: he said, yeah, don't worry about it. I just I
Speaker 7: don't know. That was the line he drew, but I
Speaker 7: happened to find. You know, it was just the case
Speaker 7: that drew me because it was particularly brutal. And one
Speaker 7: of my evolutionary psychologists, Martin Daly, had been interviewed about
Speaker 7: this case and he said, wow, you know, that's really brutal,
Speaker 7: and that's something he Martin Daly had found in his
Speaker 7: research that step children the level of brutality tends to
Speaker 7: be much higher with the murders of stepchild children or abuse.
Speaker 7: There's there's even a higher level of viciousness in those attacks.
Speaker 7: So they reached out to him, you know, the reporters
Speaker 7: reached out to him after that case. So I looked
Speaker 7: up James on the internet and I sent him an
Speaker 7: email and I said, you know, I'm working on this book.
Speaker 7: I'd love to talk to you because, of course, a
Speaker 7: couple of my killer dads are dead. They committed suicide,
Speaker 7: and I really was looking for insight. And you know,
Speaker 7: he wrote back to me, he said, sure, if it
Speaker 7: would help anybody. And he's pretty amazing because he feels
Speaker 7: horrible about what he's done and he makes no excuses
Speaker 7: for it. Although you know, he was troubled. He knows
Speaker 7: he had issues with rage. He shortly before he murdered
Speaker 7: a stepdaughter, he was being treated. He was diagnosed as bipolar.
Speaker 7: And the good news about that case is that he
Speaker 7: did reach out for help. He was seeing an anger
Speaker 7: management therapist. He knew he was having trouble, and you know,
Speaker 7: he says, the therapist said, well, our work is done here,
Speaker 7: and James said, you know, I didn't think it was
Speaker 7: done you know, if he had connected with the right professional,
Speaker 7: maybe this wouldn't have happened. But he was someone you know,
Speaker 7: his sister was on the scene. He killed his stepdaughter
Speaker 7: during a family vacation, which he said was always really
Speaker 7: stressful for him, and he and his wife, who he
Speaker 7: loved desperately, were arguing on the vacation and he was
Speaker 7: feeling sort of a build up of stress. They both
Speaker 7: worked full time. She had two young daughters from a
Speaker 7: previous marriage, and he felt like he was being exploited
Speaker 7: a little bit in taking care of the kids. His
Speaker 7: wife was a nurse, and you know, he told me
Speaker 7: she rolled out of bed in the morning and he
Speaker 7: had to get the kids ready for school, ready for preschool,
Speaker 7: and feed them. And he felt like he was being
Speaker 7: disrespected a little bit or unappreciated. And his wife, meanwhile,
Speaker 7: they both spanked the kids to discipline them, and his
Speaker 7: wife was concerned because she thought he was a little
Speaker 7: too angry when he spank the kids. So these are
Speaker 7: some of the issues that happened. And he actually, you know,
Speaker 7: I asked him, he wrote a chapter of the book.
Speaker 7: I said, if you can just write down everything you
Speaker 7: can think of that might have something to do with
Speaker 7: what with why this happened? And he turned out to
Speaker 7: be a very articulate writer. And yes, I think most
Speaker 7: of the issues. I mean, he came you know, he
Speaker 7: came from a broken family and there's a lot of
Speaker 7: drinking and some abuse. I don't think it was you know,
Speaker 7: it didn't seem extreme, although interestingly there were two step
Speaker 7: parents in his life. He did he was worried about
Speaker 7: his rage. He said, you know, he pushed his brother
Speaker 7: down the stairs one time. You know that can happen.
Speaker 7: I don't know, but but things like that made an
Speaker 7: impression on him. He said, looking back on it, I
Speaker 7: think that was wrong. And when it came to the
Speaker 7: actual Murphy had a hard time writing about it, and
Speaker 7: he sort of dictated what happened to me. So I
Speaker 7: took that down. He got very very upset, you know,
Speaker 7: his voice started shaking and sadly, now, I think you
Speaker 7: know he would he would like to do something to
Speaker 7: make amends for what he's done. He knows he can't
Speaker 7: make up for it, but he would like to do
Speaker 7: something to make up for maybe a fraction of it somehow,
Speaker 7: and he just doesn't have that opportunity in prison. I mean,
Speaker 7: he just sits and waste time, just sits in the cell.
Speaker 7: That's all he does. And we really off you know,
Speaker 7: we don't offer people any any way out, any way
Speaker 7: towards some kind of redemption. But what really struck me
Speaker 7: about James after, you know, the whole Scott Peterson thing,
Speaker 7: is that he's he's very personable and you know, he's funny.
Speaker 7: And he talked about his sister was at the cottage
Speaker 7: where the murder occurred, and he said, you know, my sister.
Speaker 7: He was very close to his sister. He said, my
Speaker 7: sister hasn't talked to me since that happened. And he said,
Speaker 7: that's really hard on me. And he said, but of course,
Speaker 7: you know it's much harder on her. So I thought,
Speaker 7: you know, that's the kind of thing Scott Peterson wouldn't
Speaker 7: have said because he was thinking about someone else's feelings.
Speaker 7: It wasn't all you know, me, me, me, and for me,
Speaker 7: my sister's not talking to me. It's like, well, you know,
Speaker 7: I brought this on and what a bad guy I am.
Speaker 7: And you know, my sister's so horrified she can't talk
Speaker 7: to me. It's funny though. Once the book was probably
Speaker 7: I thought gee, was he a psychopath? Did he just
Speaker 7: like totally lead me on? But I don't think so.
Speaker 7: He just seems really genuine, and you know, he's friendly
Speaker 7: and and he just you know, he was in a rage.
Speaker 7: He killed his stepdaught. He was having this fight with
Speaker 7: his wife and the five year old is being kind
Speaker 7: of needy and he just picked her up. He told
Speaker 7: the kids he knew he was going to kill her.
Speaker 7: And I asked him about it, and he said, in
Speaker 7: his mind, he kept thinking her name was Claire. He said,
Speaker 7: if Claire's not here, then Sarah and I can't fight.
Speaker 7: If Claire's not here, Sarah and I can't fight. So
Speaker 7: I thought, there's that sort of you know, access to
Speaker 7: females again. Like the most important person in James's life
Speaker 7: was his wife, and he wanted to get the kid
Speaker 7: out of there because he wanted to relate better to
Speaker 7: his wife. And you know, he thought she would die instantly,
Speaker 7: and she didn't, so he sort of came out of
Speaker 7: his whatever it was. And then he hoped desperately that
Speaker 7: his wife could save her daughter's life because she was
Speaker 7: a nurse. Unfortunately it didn't happen. I think partially because
Speaker 7: responders were concerned that the killer was still in the house.
Speaker 7: Of course, even his wife says on the nine on
Speaker 7: one call, he's fine, he's not any threat. It was
Speaker 7: like over, he had this rage and then it was
Speaker 7: over and spent. So yeah, now I feel like I'm
Speaker 7: the only conduit to the outside world for this guy,
Speaker 7: and someone who's just going to suffer for the rest
Speaker 7: of his life.
Speaker 6: Really, what was the I'm sorry, how actually did he
Speaker 6: kill his child? And how? Again, I'd like to know that.
Speaker 6: I think the audience would like to know that, But
Speaker 6: also I like to know how in his mind, And again,
Speaker 6: not that we can really ever ask for definitive answers,
Speaker 6: but how could he get quite that mad and then
Speaker 6: tell us what he did exactly? And but how does
Speaker 6: he explain how he got that mad?
Speaker 7: Well, he actually cut his daughter's throat with a kitchen knife.
Speaker 7: He took her into the kitchen and put her down
Speaker 7: on the floor and cut her throat. And I don't know,
Speaker 7: you know, when he talks about it, it's almost like
Speaker 7: it was almost like a nightmare. There were a lot
Speaker 7: of things building up. I think, you know, he was
Speaker 7: having these continual fights and he talks about I mean
Speaker 7: during the murder. He says he was really anxious before
Speaker 7: they went on the trip that he said, you know,
Speaker 7: he says he never does well on vacations. His wife
Speaker 7: had talked him into calling in sick and extra day,
Speaker 7: so I think Monday was like a holiday. He called
Speaker 7: in sick Friday, which he felt guilty about and anxious about.
Speaker 7: And then as he was packing up, he said someone
Speaker 7: had lit a brush next to him on fire next
Speaker 7: to his house on fight. So he said he was
Speaker 7: very sort of discombobulated and nervous. And his wife even said,
Speaker 7: should we just call this off and do it another
Speaker 7: time because you're so agitated, and he said no, no,
Speaker 7: because he wanted to see his sister. And his stepbrother
Speaker 7: also went along, and it was, you know, it was
Speaker 7: pleasant for a while, and then he said he and
Speaker 7: his wife got into it. They just you know, started fighting,
Speaker 7: and she threatened at one point to take the kids
Speaker 7: and you know, leave him behind, get in the car
Speaker 7: and go home. And and then he said it calmed down,
Speaker 7: and then the five year old is being you know,
Speaker 7: she was sort of misbehaving and causing it more anxiety.
Speaker 7: And then he went up to his wife was up
Speaker 7: in the bedroom and he went up to talk to
Speaker 7: his wife about making dinner, barbecuing something, and they started
Speaker 7: fighting again. She was still angry at him. And then
Speaker 7: his stepbrother walked up with his stepdaughter and like, you know, saying,
Speaker 7: you know, Claire needs something, and he said, I felt
Speaker 7: like everyone was calling me a bully. And he picked
Speaker 7: up Claire and he went down the kitchen and he said,
Speaker 7: the one thing he said to me was I wanted
Speaker 7: everyone to hurt. And yeah, I don't think he understands it,
Speaker 7: you know, he and he says he thinks about it
Speaker 7: every day of his life. And you know, he said
Speaker 7: if he could give his life for Claire, as he would,
Speaker 7: and he knew, you know, he was on some kind
Speaker 7: of medication for bipolar. He said, he knew he was
Speaker 7: getting angry again and agitated, and he said, you know,
Speaker 7: maybe I needed other medication. He said, you know, I
Speaker 7: don't want to blame the medication. It was totally my fault,
Speaker 7: but he was aware that things were starting to spin
Speaker 7: out of control. And shortly before that, he said, he
Speaker 7: slapped his wife, something he had never done in his life.
Speaker 7: And he said they were both stunned by it. So
Speaker 7: just you know, a man who didn't really have very
Speaker 7: good control of his rage and you know, whatever things
Speaker 7: in this life were building up to trigger that.
Speaker 6: Now another case study, again is much different because you
Speaker 6: even touch on what was once considered an honor killing,
Speaker 6: or what was first regarded as an honor killing, and
Speaker 6: you explain that's not really what it was. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about quickly about Bill Parente, because that's another type of
Speaker 6: again you talk about the family annihilator. Talk about Bill
Speaker 6: Parente and that case.
Speaker 7: Please, Well, another expert whose writings are really enjoyed, we
Speaker 7: are appreciated, or Neil Websdale. He's a professor at Northern
Speaker 7: Arizona University who has studied like two hundred of these
Speaker 7: family annihilations and he has come up with it's interesting.
Speaker 7: You know, he likes what the evolutionary psychologists have come
Speaker 7: up with, but he says they don't go far enough.
Speaker 7: He said, we still don't know out of this vast
Speaker 7: population of fathers, which ones are going to become killers.
Speaker 7: And he said, we need to refine a little bit about,
Speaker 7: you know, what might be leading to these And Websdale's
Speaker 7: addition to that body of thought is, you know, he
Speaker 7: thinks there's something in the American culture that might be
Speaker 7: particularly tough on males. He feels like, you know, we
Speaker 7: have the sort of rugged individualist culture that you know,
Speaker 7: we have to stand on our own two feet, and
Speaker 7: we don't got to. We don't get a lot of
Speaker 7: support from you know, we don't get a lot of
Speaker 7: financial support or social service support, and that that men,
Speaker 7: you know, the the demands and men are really difficult
Speaker 7: to meet. You know, men have to be super competitive.
Speaker 7: They've got to be financially successful. They've got to be
Speaker 7: aggressive in the workforce. But they've got to be nurturing
Speaker 7: and kind at home and romantic. They've got to help
Speaker 7: raise the kids. So he says that there's two types
Speaker 7: of family nihilators, one which he calls he goes the
Speaker 7: livid coercive, which is the man who murders his family
Speaker 7: and rage, and the civil reputable, which was William Parente.
Speaker 7: They they tend to be white males in their fifties.
Speaker 7: They tend to be very successful businessmen and very devoted
Speaker 7: to their families. Probably maybe too devoted. I mean, one
Speaker 7: thing I found out about William Parrent is that he
Speaker 7: didn't seem to have much of a life outside work
Speaker 7: and family, and there's usually absolutely no history of abuse
Speaker 7: or no complaints of any kind of abuse, psychological or physical,
Speaker 7: but there is frequently some sort of financial fall or
Speaker 7: in some particularly humiliating financial issue, like maybe you know,
Speaker 7: a lawsuit or a firing at work, or maybe fraud
Speaker 7: or something like that. So in William Prente's situation, he
Speaker 7: lived in Garden City, Long Island, he worked in Manhattan,
Speaker 7: and he had been running maybe a tenure Ponzi scheme,
Speaker 7: maybe longer than that, and he wrote, he wrote several
Speaker 7: checks before this family and notilation and worth hundreds of
Speaker 7: thousands of dollars, which he knew were going to all bounce.
Speaker 7: And he collected his wife and his eleven year old daughter, Catherine,
Speaker 7: and drove to Loyola College in Baltimore so that his
Speaker 7: college age daughter could die with the family in a
Speaker 7: hotel room. And of course that case struck me because
Speaker 7: it was family annihilation. But also this college daughter, Stephanie,
Speaker 7: is so heartbreaking because this was the one member of
Speaker 7: the family who was almost beyond the orbit of the family,
Speaker 7: someone who was striking out on her own, and you know,
Speaker 7: at the beginning of her adult life and also the
Speaker 7: thought of driving down there, and he spent like four
Speaker 7: or five days before he killed them all, and you know,
Speaker 7: to think what was going through his head, like you know,
Speaker 7: taking them shopping and taking them out to dinner and
Speaker 7: thinking I'm going to kill my family when this is
Speaker 7: all over. It's and Websdale talks about those kinds of
Speaker 7: murders really shake society because these people tend to be
Speaker 7: pillars of themmunity. But they also you know, they're clearly
Speaker 7: I think, suffering in silence. They are strong, but he
Speaker 7: knew his world was crumbling. And the idea is that
Speaker 7: their egos are so big. Typically that's partially why they're successful.
Speaker 7: They're very they can get things done, and they think
Speaker 7: they have the power and see themselves of having the power.
Speaker 7: That they have a hard time seeing where their egos
Speaker 7: end and their families begin. And they think if they're suicidal,
Speaker 7: and the best thing for them is suicide, and the best
Speaker 7: thing for everyone is suicide. But I think too, they
Speaker 7: don't want their families talking behind their back. They don't
Speaker 7: want their families to say negative things about them once
Speaker 7: they commit suicide. So I think there's a lot of
Speaker 7: narcissism involved. And the other family annihilation Do you want
Speaker 7: me go into the Josh Publl case. So the other
Speaker 7: example of the livid coerce of family annihilation with Josh
Speaker 7: Paul who his wife went missing, his presumed murdered in
Speaker 7: near Salt Lake City, and then he blew up himself
Speaker 7: and his two young children in Washington State in a
Speaker 7: very notorious case. His wife's body has never been found.
Speaker 7: But in that case, Websdale would say, Josh Pael came
Speaker 7: from a very troubled family, broken family, He had a
Speaker 7: lot of problems. When he's a teenager, he seemed he
Speaker 7: married a pretty Mormon girl from Washington State, near where
Speaker 7: he lived. He seems set on finding a woman he
Speaker 7: could marry, wanted to start a family, which is very
Speaker 7: typical of this type of family annihilator. Websdale would say
Speaker 7: that his ticket to normalcy was his family, and a
Speaker 7: killer like Josh Paul wants to find a family so
Speaker 7: he can support them and look like a normal member
Speaker 7: of society. And yet he's a little too demanding in
Speaker 7: grasping because he's so desperate for the legitimacy of a family,
Speaker 7: and he can he can scare the family. He can
Speaker 7: you know, destroy the love he seeks so desperately because
Speaker 7: he's so grasping, and they tend to be abusive and controlling,
Speaker 7: which Josh Powell absolutely was. He moved with his family
Speaker 7: to West Valley, Utah, and his wife was actually probably
Speaker 7: the primary and often the sole breadwinner, and yet he
Speaker 7: totally can fine controlled finances. She had to fill out
Speaker 7: all for grocery purchases and an Extel and Excel spreadsheet
Speaker 7: at his desk. And the interesting thing about that case
Speaker 7: was that Susan Powell kept it a journal all of
Speaker 7: her life, and she explained what she was going through
Speaker 7: to her close friends in a series of emails. I
Speaker 7: think a lot of people say, how can a woman
Speaker 7: stay with a man like that? What's wrong with that woman?
Speaker 7: And you see in these emails which become their own chapter.
Speaker 7: So I actually have a I have a victim chapter
Speaker 7: as well as a killer chapter. She was a very intelligent,
Speaker 7: articulate woman and someone who wanted desperately to save her marriage.
Speaker 7: But to a point. So she continues to talk about
Speaker 7: how you know, she's clearly afraid of Josh. She said
Speaker 7: she doesn't specify what the threats were, but she said,
Speaker 7: you know, I worry about myself and my kids if
Speaker 7: we do try to leave Josh after what he said,
Speaker 7: And she actually left a note for in her office
Speaker 7: that police found saying, if I die, it may not
Speaker 7: be an accident, even though it might look like one,
Speaker 7: because you know, my husband's out to murder me. But
Speaker 7: she was going to give him an ultimatum that he
Speaker 7: had to get therapy and maybe medication or she was
Speaker 7: going to leave him, and I suspect, you know, she
Speaker 7: finally did give him that ultimate made him and the
Speaker 7: result was that she lost her life and he subsequently
Speaker 7: had custody of the kids, which is mind boggling. And
Speaker 7: in Washington, he moved back in with his father in
Speaker 7: Washington State and he rented a home and he booby
Speaker 7: trapped a home with several gas tanks and he set
Speaker 7: the place on flames, and they also found hatchup marks
Speaker 7: and then two boys, Bryden and Charlie. Now Susan's parents,
Speaker 7: who still live in Washington, are desperately trying to find
Speaker 7: her remains. They think she might be somewhere along the
Speaker 7: highway from Utah Salt Lake City to Seattle. So that's
Speaker 7: really heartbreaking, incredible.
Speaker 6: Now you also talk about a case study where there
Speaker 6: was a lot of another phenomena or the thing that
Speaker 6: we see that truly horrifies the public is the idea,
Speaker 6: the concept of honor killings. But you say that what
Speaker 6: once looked like in honor killing at first wasn't so.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this that you have in your in
Speaker 6: a chapter called Clash. Tell us about that that case.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a young woman, Jessica mok Dad, who was
Speaker 7: shot in the head by her stepfather, a man who
Speaker 7: had raised her since the age of seven. I believe
Speaker 7: it turned out it was first described as an honor killing.
Speaker 7: He was Muslim and she was her her mother. It
Speaker 7: was Raheem al Fadlani. His wife was a Muslim convert,
Speaker 7: actually a Polish woman who converted to Muslim. It's there's
Speaker 7: a big in Warren, Michigan. There's a big Muslim community
Speaker 7: in there. The prosecutor described it as an honor killing
Speaker 7: because Jessica I believe she was maybe twenty at the time.
Speaker 7: He felt that Raheem felt that he was she was
Speaker 7: too western. I she wasn't wearing her veil uh. And
Speaker 7: then it turned out that he had raped just at
Speaker 7: one point, so there's different issues. I think, you know,
Speaker 7: he was a stepfather, so it was a stepchild killing
Speaker 7: for one thing. And also, you know, it seems like
Speaker 7: her mother told me, you know, maybe Jesse was more
Speaker 7: like his wife, a wife who was trying to leave him,
Speaker 7: rather than rather than a daughter. I think there were
Speaker 7: definitely aspects of an honor killing, because there's this sort
Speaker 7: of control, and they did fight over, you know, whether
Speaker 7: or not to wear a veil. But I raised it
Speaker 7: because there are definitely, there have definitely been honor killing
Speaker 7: as an America. And I think it's it's another iteration
Speaker 7: of father's killing children, one that we have to look at,
Speaker 7: you know, in a strange way. It's like an inverse
Speaker 7: of a family annihilation because supposedly the father feels like
Speaker 7: his humiliation reflects badly on his family. He's trying to
Speaker 7: get them, find a way out for them, so he
Speaker 7: kills them all. In an honor killing, it's the daughter's
Speaker 7: reputation that reflects badly on the father. You know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: in both cases the daughters get killed, so there's no breaks.
Speaker 7: But I also thought, you know, this whole idea of honor,
Speaker 7: you know, isn't it isn't doesn't it exist in some
Speaker 7: of these other killings, you know, like these these men
Speaker 7: who are so angry about their wives leaving that they
Speaker 7: kill their children to punish their wives. You know, there's
Speaker 7: just Aaron Schaffhausen in Wisconsin just got three consecutive life
Speaker 7: terms for killing his three young children, three young daughters.
Speaker 7: He was furious at his wife for divorcing him and
Speaker 7: not getting back together with him, and you know, he
Speaker 7: murdered them all in her home and called her up
Speaker 7: and said, you can come home now. I've killed your kids.
Speaker 7: Of course they were his kids as well, But isn't
Speaker 7: that a kind of honor killing too? I feel like,
Speaker 7: you know, it's it's humiliating for men to lose control
Speaker 7: of their of their wives and they punish them. So,
Speaker 7: you know, this whole concept of honor, it's not just
Speaker 7: in you know, a young a young adult daughter who's
Speaker 7: you know, trying to become independent in not following her
Speaker 7: father's ways. But there have been some horrific honor killings
Speaker 7: in America. And I just noticed I think there's something
Speaker 7: in southern California right now, a young girl who ran
Speaker 7: away from home because she was going to be forced
Speaker 7: into a marriage. But you know, and you know, I
Speaker 7: don't mean to beat up and I certainly don't think that,
Speaker 7: you know, Muslims have cornered the market on paternalism, but
Speaker 7: it's something we should look at. In this concept of honor,
Speaker 7: which you know, really cuts across cultures. I think that
Speaker 7: can be deadly for females.
Speaker 6: Well, it was interesting too, because you show that the
Speaker 6: person might call it on her killing and sort of
Speaker 6: a defense, that cultural defense. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: this killer dad said that, but had another couple of
Speaker 6: excuses too, So it seemed just like a convenient thing
Speaker 6: to say, might as well try it, but it really
Speaker 6: wasn't his.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well it's interesting in that case. Two, when his
Speaker 7: wife called him, she didn't know what had happened. She
Speaker 7: called him at the police station. And she called him
Speaker 7: and said, what are you doing at the police station?
Speaker 7: Or he called her and he said, you know, I'm
Speaker 7: at the police station. And he said, well, you're probably
Speaker 7: going to hear about this. But I smacked Jessica. And
Speaker 7: what a strange word to use, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 7: like he corrected her, He gave her spanking. He smacked her, actually,
Speaker 7: you know, walked up behind her and shot her in
Speaker 7: the head. So it was a weird, sort of fatherly
Speaker 7: thing to say.
Speaker 6: Now, would you talk about in the introduction is interesting
Speaker 6: as well, and it's sort of the time where you're
Speaker 6: most passionate, I think in terms of some of your opinions,
Speaker 6: and would you started some startling statistics as well? And
Speaker 6: the article you sent me from the Huffington Post is
Speaker 6: interesting too in terms of this summer of killer dads.
Speaker 6: He said in the last four years that there's been
Speaker 6: at least a ten two percent increase in child murders,
Speaker 6: and you were talking about forty two murders in like
Speaker 6: eighty four days. At least tell us about some of
Speaker 6: these statistics and some of the things that where you
Speaker 6: talk about terror, you create. You compare the example, the
Speaker 6: budget and the emphasis on terrorism homeland security, and then
Speaker 6: compared to this what maybe we might should call an epidemic,
Speaker 6: or at least should look at a lot more carefully.
Speaker 6: Tell us about some of these statistics that you found
Speaker 6: alarming and what you have to say about it.
Speaker 7: Well, right, I just you know, I thought I did
Speaker 7: this last summer when I was doing the book. I thought,
Speaker 7: I'm just going to look at news reports. There are
Speaker 7: just news reports, just cases that came to the news.
Speaker 7: And I found forty kid killings in which cases in
Speaker 7: which the fathers had been arrested. Although there were twelve
Speaker 7: twelve fathers committed suicide after killing their kids. One was
Speaker 7: shot dead by cops, the rest were charged in the
Speaker 7: murder of their kids. That's the kid every other day,
Speaker 7: And that's only in news reports in America. I tell
Speaker 7: people that and they think, and they say, oh, you
Speaker 7: mean around the world, I know, just America. And there
Speaker 7: were an additional I think thirty three fathers who were
Speaker 7: sentenced or convicted of earlier deaths, including like Aaron Schaffhausen.
Speaker 7: And I just don't get why we aren't upset about this,
Speaker 7: you know, we were so upset about Sandy Hook and
Speaker 7: that number of kids are killed every week by their parents.
Speaker 7: So I just don't know why we're so blind, and
Speaker 7: I you know, it might be just this, I don't know,
Speaker 7: you know, maybe evolutionary psychologists can explain why, you know,
Speaker 7: it just doesn't seem to ring any alarm bells, or
Speaker 7: because they you know, we read about them now and
Speaker 7: then it's not a big impact. But you know, there's
Speaker 7: approximately in the last several years, there's been about fifteen
Speaker 7: hundred kids, at least fifteen hundred kids who die of
Speaker 7: maltreatment in America. And that's you know, mothers, fathers, both
Speaker 7: mothers and fathers. Though in almost all cases I've ever
Speaker 7: come across with mothers and fathers, usually the mother is
Speaker 7: charged because she hasn't protected her child or because she
Speaker 7: knew about the abuse, and it's really the father and
Speaker 7: the others are typically lovers of the mothers who are
Speaker 7: in the home. They're not you know, married, or they're
Speaker 7: not officially step fathers, but they're males in the home,
Speaker 7: you know, And that's half the toll from ninety eleven
Speaker 7: every single year. You know, why aren't we doing something
Speaker 7: about this? And you know, in the huff Post story,
Speaker 7: I mentioned that, you know, if a three year old
Speaker 7: were kidnapped while an American family were touring the Mid East,
Speaker 7: for example, kidnaped by a terrorist and bludgeoned to death,
Speaker 7: it would be an international incident. We might go to
Speaker 7: war over that. But you know, just earlier this month,
Speaker 7: Jeremy Kramer was charged in the killing of his three
Speaker 7: year old son Brodie because in Washington State, his wife
Speaker 7: told him they couldn't go on a vacation this summer
Speaker 7: because they couldn't afford it, and he was apparently angry.
Speaker 7: And Brodie's bones were found in the Wisconsin in a
Speaker 7: Montana park later the next day, So you know, why
Speaker 7: aren't we talking about that killing? And I think there's
Speaker 7: sort of this attitude, well, you know, what can you do?
Speaker 7: You can only get violence so low, and then what
Speaker 7: can you do? But America has the highest per capita
Speaker 7: number of maltreatment deaths of any industrialized nation in the world,
Speaker 7: well second to Mexico based on UNIS of figures, so
Speaker 7: that's like twenty seven of the wealthiest countries. We have
Speaker 7: the highest per capita maltreatment and death rate. And those
Speaker 7: maltreatment death rates do not count homicide rates, like you know,
Speaker 7: like the Brody killing, because those are only cases that
Speaker 7: have come before a child welfare agency or where there's
Speaker 7: a there's already a history of abuse. And the GAO
Speaker 7: did the Government Accounting Office did a study of those numbers,
Speaker 7: and I thought that they you know, they're probably significantly
Speaker 7: undercounted because a lot of cases can never be proved.
Speaker 7: I mean, a father can drown his kid and how
Speaker 7: do you know. You know, you can say I answered
Speaker 7: the phone and my baby slipped under the water. In fact,
Speaker 7: he might have been furious at the kid and held
Speaker 7: him underwater, But who can prove that? And if people
Speaker 7: in the household are terrorized, are they going to talk
Speaker 7: about that? So I know, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 7: I don't know what the answer is, but I think
Speaker 7: we have to start with this perspective. You know, we
Speaker 7: the last campaign, all we talked about was abortion, and
Speaker 7: you know, it's like, we're so concerned about the unborn,
Speaker 7: but we don't care about the born. You know, these people,
Speaker 7: you know, these babies who are completely defenseless. All babies
Speaker 7: can do is scream, and we just don't seem to
Speaker 7: want to intervene to protect those kids. I don't get it.
Speaker 7: It's just like, you know, we have to step through
Speaker 7: the looking glass and see things very differently to do
Speaker 7: anything about this.
Speaker 6: When you say, okay, what we you know, you put
Speaker 6: we put our hands in the air, and we we
Speaker 6: don't know what to do as a result of this,
Speaker 6: And you certainly say you don't have the answers as
Speaker 6: to how we can get people to focus on something
Speaker 6: like this. What was your conclusion in terms of evolutionary drive,
Speaker 6: our primal instincts, or our throwback to our ape like ancestors,
Speaker 6: in terms of a case like James, which almost wet
Speaker 6: almost it fits right into your theories and your and
Speaker 6: your study itself in terms of this person that seemingly
Speaker 6: is remorseful, genuinely remorseful and really didn't have any any
Speaker 6: violent background that would predict anything like this. But what would,
Speaker 6: if anything, What kind of conclusion did you come in
Speaker 6: terms of this evolutionary drive and a connection to human
Speaker 6: beings now presently and their ability to kill their own offspring.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, I feel like I really feel like
Speaker 7: we are still in the throes of this evolutionary drive socially,
Speaker 7: and I think we have to think collectively about how
Speaker 7: we can change some of the rewards we get people
Speaker 7: like you know, James. The good thing about that story
Speaker 7: is that he did reach out for help, and there
Speaker 7: wasn't adequate or good enough help for him, you know,
Speaker 7: he reached out to the wrong professional or you know,
Speaker 7: there was actually a similar case in Finland which I
Speaker 7: talked about in the book. They had a real problem
Speaker 7: with family annihilations and they they decided we're going to
Speaker 7: do something about this. And one thing they did was,
Speaker 7: like healthcare workers were much more intrusive about questions, you know,
Speaker 7: like asking the mother, how are things going at home?
Speaker 7: When you bring in your baby for a well baby
Speaker 7: check up, you know, how are things going, are you
Speaker 7: stressed out? How is your husband dealing with it? And
Speaker 7: just to try to find out what's going being a
Speaker 7: little more intrusive, trying to find out what's going on
Speaker 7: in the family and reaching out, giving these people like
Speaker 7: you know, therapy or social service help or parenting classes,
Speaker 7: whatever they need, whatever they need. I think we have
Speaker 7: to be more aggressive about that. I think just some
Speaker 7: of our attitudes about violence have to change, which is,
Speaker 7: you know, really difficult to do. But you know, men
Speaker 7: I think are frequently rewarded for being violent. Like you said,
Speaker 7: you know, sports like hockey, you know, the more violent
Speaker 7: guys are, they're rewarded. They can become professional athletes. You know,
Speaker 7: they're cheered when they when they fight, you know, I'll
Speaker 7: fight on the ice, or you know, guys who fight
Speaker 7: in a bar over a woman. You know, there's a
Speaker 7: certain kind of admiration for the winner. And certainly I
Speaker 7: think you know, our culture, our culture is very competitive,
Speaker 7: you know, and very violent, and I think we've got
Speaker 7: to give up that sort of you know, pecking order,
Speaker 7: that sort of alpha male lang or mentality. And I
Speaker 7: think it's it's you know, individuals have to do it,
Speaker 7: but I think we have to, you know, we have
Speaker 7: to sort of re educate ourselves and deal with things. Interestingly,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm the whole abortion thing, I think too
Speaker 7: is kind of it's like this sort of instinctive push
Speaker 7: or this push for life. Just like the Langers, there's
Speaker 7: this constant pro creation, but it's like, you know, once
Speaker 7: the offspring are on the ground, it's like, well you know,
Speaker 7: catches catch can they're sort of on their own. And
Speaker 7: you know, like the Langer, society can be really brutal.
Speaker 7: In our society can be really brutal for children who
Speaker 7: you know, end up in the and the wrong families.
Speaker 7: One of my one of my experts said something, you know,
Speaker 7: the best thing, the safest way kids can be is
Speaker 7: to be born in the right families, you know, the
Speaker 7: safest families. The next thing is, you know, be protected
Speaker 7: by society because they you know, they can't protect themselves,
Speaker 7: and we owe it to these kids to help them,
Speaker 7: and we owe it to these you know, the horrible
Speaker 7: the victims that I wrote about. They haunt me and
Speaker 7: I wish we could stop more from joining them.
Speaker 6: Yes, is there any fear? And I think this is
Speaker 6: where some critics might come in that would say, you know,
Speaker 6: because almost no one is deemed insane in US courts,
Speaker 6: you know, a very very very small percentage, and there
Speaker 6: clearly are some insane people before the courts for murder.
Speaker 6: Fear that they may use some of this as someday
Speaker 6: excusing the behavior murders. In terms of evolutionary drive, we're
Speaker 6: told there's so much conversation now about prefrontal cortex damage,
Speaker 6: the difference in certain offenders brains, maybe even the effect
Speaker 6: of brain damage. And again that doesn't really help you
Speaker 6: in court in murder cases too much. Do you fear
Speaker 6: any kind of excusing of behavior when you can get
Speaker 6: a person like Josh Because I know that in Canada
Speaker 6: we have a much much different system. Just for example,
Speaker 6: what was in was big media story in the last
Speaker 6: ten days or so. These were the details that were
Speaker 6: released to the public through the media. Two children were
Speaker 6: found dead killed. They presume that the mother had killed
Speaker 6: these children. Then there was a search for the mother.
Speaker 6: They were asking her to turn herself in, and they
Speaker 6: were dredging the river and they found her. I guess
Speaker 6: she threw herself in the river. But the difference between
Speaker 6: America and Canada is stark in the way that story
Speaker 6: was portrayed in the news. They weren't hunting this killer.
Speaker 6: They were looking for a mentally ill woman that must
Speaker 6: have been mentally ill to do what she did. So
Speaker 6: you can see a difference in how we are looking
Speaker 6: at something like that. But is there any fear that
Speaker 6: this evolutionary drug I might be used to excuse still
Speaker 6: the urge too, they're in the intent to kill.
Speaker 7: And in Canada, do they tend to get lighter sentences
Speaker 7: or they go to an you know, healthcare institution rather
Speaker 7: than in prison.
Speaker 6: Well, the thing is, what Americans may fear is that
Speaker 6: the perpetrator put into him an institution and then be released,
Speaker 6: where again, statistically that doesn't happen in Canada, does happen
Speaker 6: And the case that the most profound example is the
Speaker 6: Vincent Lee, the bus beheader, who is now it looks
Speaker 6: like scheduled for a couple of years from now to
Speaker 6: be released completely. He is now an unescorted passes outside
Speaker 6: of the institution, and they are they are claiming that
Speaker 6: he is making incredible strides because he is benefiting from
Speaker 6: his medication, and it looks like they're looking they're using
Speaker 6: him as a poster boy, when I say, a poster
Speaker 6: boy for psychiatric rehabilitation.
Speaker 7: And I just can't ever imagine that. Having from in
Speaker 7: the US, I don't know, how can two countries share
Speaker 7: a border and be so different.
Speaker 6: You know, I share a judicial system. How can we
Speaker 6: share the same judicial system? Is what I'm wondering. You know,
Speaker 6: I can be that much different.
Speaker 7: I look at you know, I'm always reading about these
Speaker 7: cases because this has really been on my mind for decades,
Speaker 7: and I just I never see that. You know, sometimes
Speaker 7: I think, you know, no one ever says someone's a psychopath,
Speaker 7: which I think is you know, you know, psychopath's brains
Speaker 7: apparently look very different. I mean, I wouldn't want them
Speaker 7: walking around on the street. But I think, but you know,
Speaker 7: there's actually a case in in California that's coming up.
Speaker 7: It's it's not a murder case, but I think this
Speaker 7: person is clearly psychopathic. But you know, the attorney will
Speaker 7: never make that sort of argument because it's just never
Speaker 7: made in American courts, and I don't see any kid
Speaker 7: killers who actually come to court don't ever seem to
Speaker 7: get off easily. I think the public seems more sympathetic
Speaker 7: to women because women frequently kill, you know, postpartum depression
Speaker 7: or you know, sometimes a baby, there's an exorcism going on.
Speaker 7: The woman is clearly out of her mind. The sort
Speaker 7: of case you're talking about with a family annihilation is
Speaker 7: really unusual for women there. It's like ninety six to
Speaker 7: ninety eight percent are done by men, and women almost
Speaker 7: never kill that their husbands. They don't feel that sort
Speaker 7: of ownership of their husbands. So I don't really see that.
Speaker 7: I think the thing that's happening here is that people
Speaker 7: are never even brought to court because they're very smart
Speaker 7: about you know, there's this case in Colorado now that
Speaker 7: I don't I don't know really what's going on, but
Speaker 7: the kid, Dylan Redway, when missing during a court ordered
Speaker 7: visitation with his father, and you know a few of
Speaker 7: his bones were found in the woods. I mean, how
Speaker 7: do you prove that case against anybody? So I think
Speaker 7: that's more of the issue that some people are missing
Speaker 7: and they're never found or cases are never made. But
Speaker 7: I think once they come to court. In the US,
Speaker 7: I can't think of a single kid killing case where
Speaker 7: people have gotten off easy, and I don't think that's
Speaker 7: ever going to happen on this side.
Speaker 6: Of the border. There was a case in Montreal. Case
Speaker 6: in Montreal two years ago, and I will stop at
Speaker 6: these case examples because these are profound. This guy was
Speaker 6: a doctor, his wife was He discovered his wife was
Speaker 6: having an affair with one of his colleagues.
Speaker 7: And killed those kids. I know that case.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, Well he's out, he's out of the institution.
Speaker 7: And there was an amazing honor killing case in Montreal,
Speaker 7: right the guy, the guy's wife and three children, three
Speaker 7: daughters were found at the bottom of a river and
Speaker 7: a car.
Speaker 6: And the step step wife or the former wife. So
Speaker 6: they put them all in there and he and he
Speaker 6: and the son killed and us the mother knew as well,
Speaker 6: but the father and so a family killing the other
Speaker 6: part of the family. And that wasn't honor killing. That
Speaker 6: personal likely never see the light of day. That's but
Speaker 6: this doctor Turcotte though used it was that defense was
Speaker 6: incredible and it really didn't resonate past French Canada through
Speaker 6: the One province. It really wasn't much of a story,
Speaker 6: but there was there were major protests in Quebec, but
Speaker 6: in the One province, but that was about it, and
Speaker 6: quietly that he's out, and.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I saw something difference.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the difference. Now you have a website, and how
Speaker 6: can people contact you if they're interested in what they've
Speaker 6: heard tonight and if you're are you a Facebook fan
Speaker 6: or how can people.
Speaker 7: I have I'm on Facebook, it's my name, and my
Speaker 7: website is my name, marypopinfoods dot com and there's an
Speaker 7: email on there. I'm sort of trying to do Twitter
Speaker 7: and you know, Huffington Post. I plan it write more
Speaker 7: of these sort of crime stories. I like to do
Speaker 7: something on Dylan Redwood and I think that my Twitter
Speaker 7: and possibly my emails on the Huffington Post too, and
Speaker 7: of course by the book.
Speaker 6: So it's available in ebook as well, and and it's
Speaker 6: from Prometheus Books.
Speaker 7: Right and said Amazon and Indie Bound and Barnes and
Speaker 7: Noble on online, so easy get you can get the
Speaker 7: you know, do what I do, get the Kindle version
Speaker 7: or I probably shouldn't particular brand, but that yeah, well.
Speaker 6: I think there's people that might even get both. And
Speaker 6: I think there there are people definitely there's that. I
Speaker 6: don't think the paperback is ever going to go away.
Speaker 6: I think the e book is a great edition, and
Speaker 6: it's nice that it's competitive. Sometimes some books are way
Speaker 6: out of price range, you know. Sometimes some books I've
Speaker 6: seen textbooks even, and so e books help in that area,
Speaker 6: and some people do.
Speaker 7: And they're easy on a plane, so.
Speaker 6: And long commutes. What are you going to do?
Speaker 7: Right, right? Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, it has been very thank you for a
Speaker 6: very informative interview. And again, if people been listening, we've
Speaker 6: been talking about Killer Dads and the twisted drives they
Speaker 6: compel fathers to murder their own kids, a fascinating book
Speaker 6: by Mary Pappenfus. I don't want to thank you very
Speaker 6: much for this interview. Mary, thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Well, thanks so much for having me. Dan. I'm a
Speaker 7: huge I'm a huge fan of your show, so I'm
Speaker 7: a huge fan of true crime trying to stop the
Speaker 7: killers out there. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Yes, thank you very much, great book. Congratulations on this
Speaker 6: Killer Dads, and hope to talk to you again in
Speaker 6: the near future. Thank you.
Speaker 7: Very much and good night, great, good night