Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Alex Murdaugh’s Personality: Is He a Sociopath, Psychopath, Antisocial?
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California, where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In this two-part series, we are discussing what just about everyone in the US has been focused on the past couple of months, the trial of Alex Murdoch, or as he likes to call himself Alec Murdoch . In this episode, we'll discuss aspects of his personality and try to get an understanding of his actions. In the next episode, we'll talk about how his colleagues and others around him were basically conned and how to avoid being conned yourself. But first, a couple of notes. If you have a question about a high conflict situation, send it to podcast high conflict institute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Please give us a rate or review and tell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're in a high conflict situation. We're very grateful. Speaker 1 (01:34): So, for our US listeners, most of you have surely heard about the Alec Mur trial in South Carolina that wrapped up in early March. I know we have lots of listeners in other countries who may or may not have heard about this case, although it has gained worldwide detention. So first we'll share a little background for those of you who don't know about it. Alex Murda is an attorney, or was an attorney. He's now a disbar attorney in what's called the low country of South Carolina. His family went back several generations in this small community as both community minded members and as the legal powerhouse in a multi-county wide region as prosecutors and in other aspects of the legal profession. Apparently, this family ruled, so to speak, the legal arena and reviewed as a power family, a dynasty with Alex's father and grandfather before him serving in the legal profession. Speaker 1 (02:32): In fact, at least one of them had their picture hung in the courthouse, um, and other family members, members such as a brother who serves as an attorney and his son Buster, who was in law school, although that didn't turn out so great for him so far. Anyway, Alex was tried, uh, in a case over the span of six weeks for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and his son Paul, or as Alex referred to Paul, kind of when convenient for him as Paul Paw, uh, with a very thick southern accent. Alex was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences in the South Carolina correction system before and throughout the trial. Many other crimes were revealed, crimes of a financial nature, crimes of which he stole money from his law partner's family, and most disturbing, he stole from his clients, which is bad enough. But these clients were vulnerable adults, meaning they had disabilities. Speaker 1 (03:32): He stole millions from them. Technology provided an inside. Look at Alex, his phone calls, video from officer, cameras on the scene, text messages, emails, Snapchat videos, and live streaming of the entire trial. From start to finish, we watched over 70 witnesses testify, heartbroken, disturbed, angry, sad, and then unbelievably, or was it Alex himself, took the witness stand for two days to sob moan and explain, or was it con his way through the questioning. Today, Alex sits behind bars in a minimum security prison, one in which many felons he prosecuted also reside. In this episode, we want to talk about his behavior, his personality, and share our thoughts with you. Keep in mind, we're not diagnosing him, we're just talking about our thoughts based on our experience with personality and behavior. So with all that, let's get started. Bill, there's a lot to talk about here. Speaker 1 (04:37): I think you've watched the Netflix Limited series on Alex. Is that where the one you watched? Yes, the three part series. Three part series, okay. Yeah, I watched that too, and I'm sure you've seen lots on the news about him and read about him. Um, I watched bits of the, of the trial, much of the final week when he testified, and I watched this, this Netflix series and lots of post-trial videos from various experts and from those involved in the trial and, and others in the community, like Maggie's nail technician , who did her, her Manny's and pennies. Um, now because we have expertise in personality disorders and high conflict personalities, it's habit for us to assess his actions and behaviors through that lens of personality and high conflict personality. I know I picked up on a lot, but I realized how his testimony and actions could be confusing to someone who doesn't know about personality. Speaker 1 (05:31): So let's start there. You know, off the top of my head, a few things I noticed were mixing lies with trues, admitting lying to just about everything while he was testifying on the stand, but claiming to be telling the truth. Now, as he looked the jurors in the eyes and saying things like, I would never harm my wife or my child, said, with, I mean like the best acting voice and, you know, facial expression and language, and I, all of it, um, using nicknames for his son, uh, when it made him kind of look endearing. You know, uh, there are lots of, so much we'll talk about. How about you, bill? What did you see? Speaker 2 (06:08): I saw what you're, what you're describing. Uh, I wanna just say that there are people on the planet who can lie persuasively. I call them persuasive blamers. That's not a diagnosis, but people with, for example, anti-social traits can really be persuasive. And I have many cases I'm consulting on right now where lawyers, judges, mediators get persuaded by people like this. The first thing that jumped out at me, and I didn't see much, but I did see a news clip of him testifying in which he admitted he lied when he said he wasn't at the scene of the crime. And then he says, I, I was, I was there. I lied before. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry about that. But as you said, I would never, ever kill my wife and my child. Well, what's always interesting to me is the remorse people have when they're caught lying. Speaker 2 (07:13): They're not remorseful until they're caught. And then the display of remorse, and I've seen this in news programs where police have caught other people and they've said, yes, I have so much remorse for having killed killed so-and-so yesterday, but they didn't have it yesterday when they killed the person. And so when people say, I have remorse, or people say I lied, and I would, I would never lie, things like that, those are really what jump out at me, make me wanna know more about the case. But it also always triggers three theories of the case to me. Before Speaker 1 (07:52): We go there, can I, we just explain one thing to our listeners who might not, might not know how Alex got caught in this lie that he was at the, he said he wasn't at the scene, and then he was at the scene. So it was later revealed somewhere along the way that his son, who was murdered, had taken a Snapchat video and put it out on Snapchat that showed Alex, his father, was there on the scene just minutes before the murders happened. And he'd claimed the entire time in recorded interviews with police, with lawyers on the stand everywhere that he had not been there. Speaker 2 (08:28): Yes, yes. And that he, he actually, I think, was visiting his parents who were elderly and ill, and which sort of course gets sympathy, and that's where he was. And when he came home, he discovered them had been killed on the property, Speaker 1 (08:47): Or so he said, or Speaker 2 (08:48): So you said, yes, . So it's contradictions like that that jump out at me. But the, the thing, the thing is so much about lying and, and we can get into that in more depth, but when I see people saying, yeah, I lied, and they don't have a good reason to me for why they lied, they just, you know, I shouldn't have done that. And I'm sorry I lied. Lying is, to me, the biggest tip off that there's a con artist at work here, and you've gotta check all the facts and you can't rely on tone of voice, how fast he answers questions, how sincere he looks. The the thing that gets me is people don't realize there are people like this. People get conned all the time, which I know we're gonna talk about next time, but to me, when I start feeling conned is when I start thinking, okay, there's a lot of secrets here. There's aggressive behavior here, and there's more will be revealed. Speaker 1 (09:53): Interesting. And one of the things I feel that's kind of a tip off for me is when I feel confused. Yeah. Like, oh, things aren't adding up. And I tend to be quite a, um, you know, at least in the past, a a pretty naive person. And I just wanted to believe people. And I, I think most people are that way, not everyone. But if, if you feel that confusion, I know I'll, I'll fill that, and I'm like, wow. But maybe he didn't do it. Uh, but oh, there was all this line. Oh, 90% of other people would never lie like this . Oh, okay. Now, uh, that we could be dealing with a, a con artist here. So, um, interesting. So let's talk about, you know, a lot of words have been thrown around in the media, psychopath, sociopath, antisocial personality, um, narcissist, what's your take bill? And I know you can't diagnose this. I anyone, I can't diagnose anyone, but we're going to discuss it, Speaker 2 (10:48): Right? I am a licensed clinical social worker, licensed currently in California, have been since of the mid 1980s, although I only practiced as a therapist for 12 years, but I can't diagnose someone I haven't met. And the chances are pretty good. Now, I will never meet Alice Myrto. So Speaker 1 (11:11): Alex, yep. Speaker 2 (11:13): Alex. So here's the possibilities. And I always go through this in my mind, when someone lies a lot that goes with antisocial personality. That fact, it's one of the characteristics. Number two, on the list of seven criteria for antisocial personality disorder is deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying use of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure. So when someone lies or not, that's what I think of. Now, when somebody's doing something for very selfish reasons, many people think of narcissists or narcissistic personality, or narcissistic personality disorder. And what's interesting, because I've, I've studied personality disorders since 1980 when I was trained in the diagnostic manual, third edition, and now we're on the fifth, uh, tax revision edition. And narcissistic personality has a lot of self-centered characteristics, grandiose, arrogant, belittling of others, all of that lack of empathy. But interestingly, the diagnostic manual says that narcissistic personality disorder is distinguished from antisocial because they're not as deceitful and they're not as aggressive, and they're not as impulsive. Speaker 2 (12:50): Now, narcissists can be deceitful, but it's not the fundamental pattern, fundamental pattern is that I'm superior to everyone around me. And so they exaggerate. So I've had many consultation clients that say, I think my husband's a narcissists, and, but he lies all the time. And I go, aha, maybe dealing with a deeper problem, antisocial, which is more dangerous, although narcissists can be dangerous also. So I think about narcissistic personality, think about antisocial. Now, some people say, well, what about psycho sociopath? Well, sociopath is similar to antisocial personality disorder. This is someone who is also violating rules, is deceitful, uh, aggressive, reckless, et cetera. The subtle difference that some people say is that a sociopath may have empathy for their family, whereas an antisocial personality very likely not to have empathy for their family. So think of, think of mafia guys who, who go, you know, I'm standing by my wife and I'm standing by my children, but I'm happy to mow down half the community if they disagree with me. Speaker 2 (14:23): And so they may have 20 murders under their belt, but they actually may care about their family a little bit. So that may be a the narcissist. The sociopath. The sociopath. Okay. Yes, because I wanna talk about this when you're done. Anti-social personality and sociopath are fairly equals. Psychopath is like a quarter of people with anti-social personality. And this is not a technical diagnosis, but it's one that's used a lot in looking at the criminal population. And psychopaths seem to have more aggressive energy, more, uh, enthusiasm for harming others. They have poorer behavioral controls. They have a higher need for stimulation. So they need to be excited. Pathological lying. They may go even farther than the normal anti-social failure to accept responsibility for their actions, uh, short-term relationships, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, all of that. But let me back up on the empathy thing. Narcissists may have relationships, but one of the characteristics is lack of empathy. Antisocial. One of the characteristics is lack of remorse. Sociopaths mostly lack remorse. So they may have some empathy for their family. Psychopaths are the most extreme, and they may really enjoy, like serial killers are often psychopaths. So we've got four possibilities here that, uh, come up in my mind in thinking about Alex. Speaker 1 (16:12): Okay, so lemme run this past you. I noticed in the trial that, you know, that when he was on the, the stand, it was just, I love my family so much. I would do anything, uh, for my family. I would never hurt my family. You know, there were those in the courtroom who said that the, the tears weren't there, but there was a lot of, you know, snot coming outta his nose, to be very, very, uh, blunt. But, um, others did say, yeah, I, I actually did see some tears in his eyes on occasion, but it was, it was, it was interesting. Now, this man who comes across to the community for years as this wonderful community, civic-minded individual and family man, and he's, you know, that wife and two sons and the family legacy and all of that, what I noticed, as much as he talked about his love for his son, when he was found guilty at the end of the trial when he was escorted from the courtroom, he did not look at his son the next morning when he was sentenced to two life terms in prison. His son was sitting in the courtroom. Now, mind you, the son's in his mid twenties, he's a young man. This is his father. He's lost his mother and his brother. Alex did not turn and look at his son when he left the courtroom. Now, I think most people in the world would turn and look at their son and say, I love you, or I'm sorry, or give a smile or something, right? Speaker 2 (17:41): Yeah. But you're talking about people that have empathy and remorse, and I think what you're seeing really reinforces the idea. To him, it was all about him. And there's no one he disappointed, no one he heard in his mind, because he is not even thinking about that. That's what we see with these extreme personalities. So I think this may be another indicator of how much it really was about him and his, his sons, his wife. They're just like specs on the wall to someone who's all consumed with his own power, uh, image and life. Now, one thing to throw in here, and I don't know if you have thoughts about it as his opioid addiction, if that played Speaker 1 (18:30): A role. Yeah, I forgot to mention that. . Yeah. Speaker 2 (18:33): That can make people antisocial in their behavior around the, the substance. In other words, that becomes, you know, people steal from their parents who they love. Uh, people who don't have personality disorders steal from their parents, who they love to support an addiction. So I don't know what part that may have played, and I don't know whether he was still using opioids at the time of the trial, but that can also influence people's, uh, social behavior significantly Speaker 1 (19:07): On that opioid use. You know, I, I, I heard a, a journalist break down the, he calculated out how much, how many pills Alex would've had to have taken based on the claims he made of money. He spent on, on pills, on illegal sub, you know, I guess they were prescription substances, but he was taking them without prescription. Um, and, and claimed to have this opioid addiction. There seems to be some testimony to support that he have did have an addiction, but this, this journalist calculated and they said it would, had would've taken 114 years to take all those pills, , you know, and so, okay, that's unrealistic. And if someone's taking this much mind altering drugs, right? Yeah. And there, he, he claimed to be spending $50,000 a week US dollars on, on the illegal drugs, um, and taking them. How could he function? How do you function as a lawyer, as a human? Uh, it doesn't ma it doesn't add up. Speaker 2 (20:06): It's, it's interesting about substances and, uh, addictive substances and opioids are some of the most highly addictive, they're like heroin. Only more so is that you develop a tolerance to them so that you need to take more to get your effect from it. And the higher your tolerance, the more you actually can function so that people could be, I mean, there's some alcoholics who had, you know, had three drink the three martini lunch, and then they've gone back to court and won a trial because they have a lot of, of three martini lunches. And so they have a tolerance that's built up. So that's, that's possible explanation that over time, slowly, uh, he could still function while on massive amount of opioids. Speaker 1 (21:03): Interesting. I really suspected that he used his addiction, um, as an excuse for his actions. Speaker 2 (21:11): I think so. Speaker 1 (21:12): Quite, quite a lot. Yeah. Speaker 2 (21:14): This country has millions of opioid addicts and we don't hear about them murdering their wives and, and adult children or younger children. So, , this is where we get to, we say behavior that 90% of people wouldn't do. It's like 99.99% wouldn't do. This isn't to me opioid. This is to me a personality disorder. Which one? I can't say . Speaker 1 (21:42): Yeah. Now back on the, the family and empathy and remorse. Um, you know, I, I, I wondered, can this man both love his family and kill his family? Because there were many expressions of love. It's seem, you know, I I, I listened to phone conversations, recorded conversations between he and his son Buster. And it seems like, you know, he wants him to do well in life. He wants him e even if he's going to do some nefarious things to, you know, get him back into law school after getting kicked out, things like that. But it seems like there might have been love and, and love for his, his wife. But on the stand he talked about this great marriage that they had. And, um, other others. I don't know if, if there was testimony during the trial, cuz I didn't listen to all six weeks, but I did see some post-trial interviews of community members who had, who claimed to have firsthand knowledge that Maggie the wife, said she was going to divorce him. Hmm. So there again is some confusion and some things that don't add up. So can, can they love their family and be like this? Speaker 2 (22:55): Well, it's a tough one and I work with a lot of divorcing spouses and they figure out their partners antisocial and they say, but did he ever love me? And my answer is, I don't know. There's a good chance that it always was a show and a con and convenient. I think of Bernie Madoff, you know, he was upstanding, looked like he cared about his wife. I honestly believe she didn't know that Bernie Madoff was totally conning the world, that he kept it from her because con artists trust no one. So I think it's quite possible that Alex never loved Maggie, but she was a good person for his life to look good. And if he has anti-social personality, that personality revolves around what I want and getting it now, regardless of what it takes. And it's very present oriented. Think three-year-olds, three-year-olds demonstrate, uh, what you could see as an antisocial personality. Cause I mommy, I won it and I won it. Now Speaker 1 (24:11): , I have a three-year-old grandson, so yes, Speaker 2 (24:14): , yeah. Fortunate, fortunately 99% or 96% of people grow out of, out of that. But the, the idea is it's possible that he never loved his sons, never loved his wife, and his life was a con. And it may be possible for some who have it less severely that they do care and love their wife and their son, even though they're antisocial, but they have a less severe dose of it. Speaker 1 (24:47): Interesting. Um, Speaker 2 (24:49): Let me, let me add something here. In defense of narcissists. Speaker 1 (24:54): , Speaker 2 (24:55): Okay, narcissists do seem to care, um, more. And, and narcissists I've dealt with, I think did honestly love their wife and love their children, but they're mostly love themselves. And that's, that's what you see there. But you may see them have some love, but lack the empathy to back it up. And a lot of it is, I love how you love me, is the message that they fundamentally may have. But they do. They care. They care what you think of them. Anti-socialist don't care what you think of them. Speaker 1 (25:33): Oh, interesting. Okay. So switching gears, uh, tad here, you know, as, as we've talked about on several episodes, this, you know, folks that, that behave in these ways just have a, they have a different operating system. And so this feels very normal to him. And you, you, you look at this and you think, how can someone believe that this is normal? So I guess we just have to accept that it feels all of his actions felt very normal and necessary to him, to him, uh, to him looked weird from the outside. But I wonder what he was thinking as he sat through that trial and listened to witness after witness testify against him. Speaker 2 (26:21): I think he was thinking, you know, I shouldn't have done that thing. I shouldn't have, you know, had my cell phone on. I shouldn't have recorded this, I shouldn't have said it that way. So I think it's really about strategy because it's all about the con. And what's interesting is what I've learned from people close to anti socials is that the antisocial see the world as a hostile place and that everybody's conning and that you can't trust anybody and you have to be a con as well. And I mentioned I think in a prior podcast about their hostility bias, that they see a neutral facial expression as a hostile facial expression and a fearful facial expression as a neutral facial expression. So they don't feel bad about hurting a neutral person, and they feel it's necessary sometimes to hurt a hostile person who's not being hostile at all. I doubt that he saw his son or his wife as hostile, but it just, it had no impact on him. It was, if it's convenient to kill your wife and your son and that helps advance whatever your cause is today, that's fine. You know, do what you need to do. It Speaker 1 (27:54): Has to be done. Speaker 2 (27:55): Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (27:56): It has to be done. Yeah. It's, uh, you know, and in thinking about that a little bit, you know, the, on the, on the actual day of the murders, they were, they were committed at night, but um, his wife was out of town at their other, their beach house, um, an hour or so away. And he called her. And in the words of, I, I think the, maybe the prosecutor someone else, I, I can't be certain, you know, that he lured her to the house. He convinced her to come back to the, to what they call the Mozel property, where they have, uh, a large, you know, farm and hunting and efficient and things. Um, so she wouldn't have ordinarily been there. Um, and he, he brought her there, there were, there were so many things that, that happened in those, those moments. And it looks like, like pure strategy, um, change of clothes, uh, you know, the outright lies when law enforcement came, the immediate planting of an idea in law enforcement's mind about who possibly did this. Speaker 1 (28:56): Right. And, and I haven't even mentioned this in, in this episode yet, that there were many other dead people in the Murdoch history. There was a boat accident that his son was involved in where a young lady was killed and there was a lawsuit going on. So he planted the seed immediately in the law enforcement's mind on the scene that it was someone from the boat accident that his son was involved in who'd done this. So it seemed like he was setting things up. A couple other things that struck me, and these are things I didn't think about during the trial, but I, I, I heard others talk about afterwards that at the scene, this is a very grizzly murder, a lot of blood involved. And , one of the lawyers not involved in this particular case, but a different Murdoch case said, you know, if I were Alex and I had just come up on the scene of my wife and son being murdered, by the time law enforcement got there, I would have blood all over me because I would be trying to rescue them. I'd be hugging them, I'd be whatever, you know, didn't Speaker 2 (29:57): Cpr Yeah. Speaker 1 (29:58): Cpr, anything he had, he didn't have that. Another striking thing that I think that supports what we're talking about here is that he didn't even call his surviving son after, afterwards he called someone else first. Mm-hmm. Um, and maybe more than one, some, someone else, I can't remember. But wouldn't you, if you thought this was someone had just murdered your son and wife because of this other boating accident case, um, wouldn't you think, okay, they're gonna come after my other son and me next, or maybe my other family members, maybe I better call them and tell 'em to hide. Right. He didn't do that. So there were lots of little things like that that really support I think what we're, are, you know, talking about with personality. Speaker 2 (30:44): Uh, one thing I wanna say about personality disorders is many people are born with them. An antisocial personality disorder is the one most likely to be biological. So that his life course may have been even said at birth, just the genetic role of the dice and the diagnostic manual. I wanna read a sentence from this. Antisocial personality disorder is more common among the first degree biological relatives of those with the disorder than in the general population. So I don't know what his parents were like, but you mentioned the other dead bodies around this family. And his surviving son Buster has been, his name has been associated with someone who died probably by murder in 2015. Someone that he was close to. And we certainly don't know, and he's not been indicted for that, and this might be totally irrelevant, but he may have some traits of this. Speaker 2 (31:57): And the son, Paul, who was driving the boat drunk when his best friend's girlfriend got killed because of how it crashed, he had a history of slapping and hitting his girlfriend. And it's possible he may have had some of these traits, but I also wanna say it's possible that someone doesn't have these at all. I had a legal assistant once who's, who was just a wonderful person and is a wonderful person. Everyone loves her, and her brother was in and outta prison. So genetics may play a part in this and people need to understand, and I will talk about it next time, that some people are just driven to be con artists. They don't even understand themselves, and it's a pattern of behavior that really needs to be understood and restrained in society. Speaker 1 (32:56): Yeah. And that's where exactly where I wanted to go next is, you know, you have perhaps this biological personality that, that drives him to not be remorseful, to be aggressive, to see the world as a hostile place too. And then you combine that with being the, the, the family powerhouse of the community, the legal rulers of a whole region. And, you know, they were the law in that region and they had so many connections. And that, that to me is very bothersome when we as a community support that. And we'll talk about that in the next episode, how the legal community, how the banking, uh, community, how people all over that state were lured in by this and participated in some, participated, some were just conned, you know. But I've been personally involved in a similar case, not high profile, but one in which it was another small southern community and many in the community were supporting each other. And those who were very much like Alex Murda, um, and manipulating and conning and stealing, right? They're all just sort of supporting each other in this because it makes them look good or they're afraid to say something or they're getting some kind of benefit from it. And it's, it's very toxic. It's very sick. And I think in most cases it will crumble. It will fall apart. This stuff isn't sustainable. Speaker 2 (34:34): That's the hard thing in a legal case, like for me as a lawyer, is overcoming the con, which has settled into people's minds and showing them it's actually the complete opposite. That these are false allegations against somebody who's innocent or that this claim of innocence is actually someone who is guilty. And they're so good at deception and so aggressive and so lacking in remorse of social rules that they really are persuasive, they're persuasive blames, and they can persuade somebody. I think it was Abraham Lincoln that said, you know, you can fool everybody some of the time and some of the p you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. That's what happened here. Speaker 1 (35:32): Can you think of instances where you realize you're dealing with someone like this? I, I, I can think very specifically to three or four times in my life when I had that feeling that I'm being pressured here to do something I don't want to do, or, uh, I don't believe is true, but they're so pressuring and so persuasive. Um, and it kind of made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And in a couple of cases I made the wrong decision because of the pressure. I was much younger at the time. Now I'm a lot older and , hopefully a lot wiser. But it, it, there, uh, there's a definitely a feeling. Have, have you had that? Speaker 2 (36:21): Yeah. And I would say, again, in my younger years, I certainly think back to some times in junior high school and high school where people persuaded me to do things that I, I kind of was hesitant about and then afterwards like, absolutely should not have done that thing. I think that's when people, uh, try out drugs, young people is they don't want to, it's, oh, come on, just this once and they end up having a problem. So I think as human beings, we're biased towards trusting people. That's how we're strong together. And if you meet a stranger, you believe them on the surface. Like why disbelieve and especially a stranger in need, you know, good Samaritan aren't we taught that we're supposed to help people in need and in the helping professions, which is what we are doing, that's our focus of our work is to help people in need. So it makes us very susceptible to con artists that say, you know, just lie for me this one time, you know, or sign this. I've had people ask me to sign things for them that I knew weren't true. And once I became a lawyer, it was easy to say, I can't, my ethics say I can't do that. Sorry, . But it's an issue all, all for all people. I'd I'd say throughout our lives. Speaker 1 (37:48): Interesting. I, I would, uh, just brought a new person to mind that had asked me to lie for them on the witness stand. Mm-hmm. And they did it in front of my boss who, uh, was the county prosecutor. That was a weird position to be in . And we were standing outside the courtroom, um, very, very strange position. And I, you know, it, the, the hair went up on the back of my neck and you just, you have to do the right thing no matter what, no matter what, how much pressure you're getting. And, and when you feel that sort of pressure, it's probably a sign that you bet or bet or take some time and think about this. So anyway. Well, that has been, for me, I know a stimulating conversation. I've been fascinated with this case, and I know you have too. It's, it's kind of, uh, I mean, it's sad, it's so tragic. Uh, it just, you know, if two lives were destroyed, the whole community is, um, you know, from what I understand, there's, there's a lot of ruptures in the community and, you know, some people believe and some people don't. And I, I think it's probably the end of, of a dynasty powerhouse, which I think, you know, good or bad, I think no one should have that much power. Just my personal opinion. Yeah, Speaker 2 (39:01): I agree. And that's what we have to realize. There's people out there like that. And the only precaution against that is don't give anybody that much power. Speaker 1 (39:12): Right. Speaker 3 (39:19): So Speaker 1 (39:20): We'll wrap this up today and thank you for listening. Uh, be sure to turn tune in next episode, uh, where we'll talk about, you know, how the people close to Alex Murdoch were conned and how you can avoid being conned. I think you'll find it pretty fascinating. In the meantime, send your questions about any high conflict situation to podcast high conflict institute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And, uh, we're grateful that you listen, uh, to us and we, we do really appreciate it all your feedback that we've been getting. So keep learning about high conflict, keep practicing the skills, take care of yourself, be kind to yourself and we'll all keep striving toward the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music, by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Enz Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts, true story fm high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app Laos ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.