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Lindsay Clancy Psychologist Drops BOMBSHELL Testimony · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine I mean, just try to imagine holding a tape
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  Speaker 1: recording that could that could prove definitively whether a mother
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is a calculating killer or or the victim of this
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: completely devastating psychotic break. Right. And now imagine that tape
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  Speaker 1: is locked away like it's completely hidden from the public
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: while lawyers and clinical psychologists are in open court just
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  Speaker 1: arguing over what it means. And they're deciding a woman's
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  Speaker 1: entire fate just based on fragments of that audio. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It's incredibly unsettling. It is.
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  Speaker 1: It really is. And we're looking at a diagnostic landscape
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  Speaker 1: today that is, it's just totally fractured. Because usually, you know,
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  Speaker 1: when we talk about a medical diagnosis, there's this expectation
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  Speaker 1: of precision. Like you break your arm, right? And an
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  Speaker 1: x-ray shows the jagged white line and a doctor just
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  Speaker 1: points to it and it says broken or not broken.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is incredibly comforting to have things visible and,
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  Speaker 2: you know, categorized. But when you step into the world
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  Speaker 2: of severe mental illness and trauma and just subjective human experience,
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  Speaker 2: that that x-ray machine just shatters.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: We are dealing with the absolute definition of diagnostic muddy
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  Speaker 2: waters here. Yeah. And that ambiguity becomes really dangerous when
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  Speaker 2: you force that murky science into the rigid... sort of
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  Speaker 2: black and white machinery of the legal system.
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  Speaker 1: Which is exactly our mission for this deep dive. Because
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  Speaker 1: in criminal trials, the core question is almost always who
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: did it. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Who's the perpetrator?
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. The jury is there to solve a puzzle of
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  Speaker 1: physical evidence to find the person. But the trial of
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  Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy just flips that entirely. The who is an
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  Speaker 1: established fact.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: She admitted to strangling her three young children. So the
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  Speaker 1: physical act is not in dispute at all. The entire
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  Speaker 1: legal battle hinges completely on the why. and more specifically
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  Speaker 1: on what her exact state of mind was during those
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  Speaker 1: fatal moments.
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  Speaker 2: Because in our legal system, that why determines absolutely everything
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  Speaker 2: about culpability. The jury is facing this stark binary choice
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  Speaker 2: with unimaginably high stakes here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Because on one side, the prosecution is arguing that the
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  Speaker 2: defendant is a woman who retains criminal responsibility for her actions.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: You know that she's essentially a cold-blooded killer. And on
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  Speaker 2: the other side, the defense argues that she's a severely
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  Speaker 2: mentally ill mother who who suffered an acute psychotic break
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  Speaker 2: to the point where she completely lacked criminal responsibility.
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  Speaker 1: And the outcome dictates the rest of her life. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: a finding of criminal responsibility means punitive incarceration, right? She
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  Speaker 1: spends the rest of her life behind bars in a
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  Speaker 1: traditional prison. Right. But lacking criminal responsibility, that sends her
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  Speaker 1: to a mental health facility for institutional psychiatric treatment.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: So to understand how a jury even begins to weigh this,
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  Speaker 1: our sources today are courtroom transcripts from Court TV. And
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  Speaker 1: we're zeroing in on the highly contested testimony of forensic
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  Speaker 1: psychologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrunn, who was brought in as an
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  Speaker 1: expert witness for the prosecution. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Prosecution star witness, basically.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly. So we have his direct testimony and we have
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  Speaker 1: the intense cross-examination by the defense.
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  Speaker 2: And it is fascinating source material because we get to
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  Speaker 2: see not just what a highly credentialed evaluator believes, but
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  Speaker 2: how psychological theory holds up or totally crumbles under aggressive
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  Speaker 2: legal scrutiny.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, okay, let's unpack this. Because to figure out
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  Speaker 1: if she is criminally responsible, we have to start with
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  Speaker 1: the defense's primary claim.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: They are arguing that she was experiencing acute psychosis, specifically
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  Speaker 1: this thing called command hallucinations. Right. She claimed she heard
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  Speaker 1: a voice instructing her to do this. So how does
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  Speaker 1: a psychologist, or a court for that matter, test if
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  Speaker 1: a voice inside someone's head is actually authentic?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that is the multi-million dollar legal question, isn't it?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Because Dr. Heilbrunn evaluated her. He reviewed the extensive medical records,
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  Speaker 2: and his conclusion was that her account of these command
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  Speaker 2: hallucinations did not align with genuine clinical psychosis.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: And his most damaging point against the defensive theory involves
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  Speaker 2: a very specific timeline. So according to her own account,
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  Speaker 2: she heard this commanding voice for the 18 to 20
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  Speaker 2: minutes it took to end the children's lives.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, wait.
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  Speaker 2: She reported that she had never heard this voice before.
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  Speaker 2: That specific window on that specific day, she has never
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  Speaker 2: heard it since.
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  Speaker 1: See, I have to say, just looking at that from
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  Speaker 1: the outside, that it's a bit like claiming you only
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: suffer from sleepwalking during the exact 15 minutes you happen
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  Speaker 1: to be robbing a bank.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it is very convenient.
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  Speaker 1: Right, it sounds incredibly convenient for a symptom to manifest once...
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  Speaker 1: for less than half an hour precisely during the commission
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  Speaker 1: of a crime and then just banished forever. So, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: how rare is that actually in clinical practice?
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  Speaker 2: Well, according to Dr. Heilbrunn, who, you know, he's conducted
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  Speaker 2: these forensic evaluations for decades, it is profoundly unusual. Evaluators
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  Speaker 2: are trained to be highly skeptical when a defendant reports
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  Speaker 2: experiencing a severe psychiatric symptom exclusively during the course of
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  Speaker 2: committing an offense.
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  Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Because when we look at the clinical literature on schizophrenia
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  Speaker 2: or severe postpartum psychosis, auditory hallucinations don't typically operate on
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  Speaker 2: a convenient momentary timer like that.
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  Speaker 1: Right. They don't just clock in and clock out.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The sudden onset and immediate permanent disappearance is a
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  Speaker 2: massive red flag for malingering.
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  Speaker 1: Malingering. That's faking it, right? Right.
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  Speaker 2: It's the intentional production of false symptoms or at least
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  Speaker 2: a severe exaggeration of distress to avoid consequence.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so the timeline definitely makes it suspicious to
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  Speaker 1: the prosecution. But Hubbard didn't just stop there. Our sources
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  Speaker 1: show he actually evaluated the characteristics of the voice itself
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  Speaker 1: against clinical standards.
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  Speaker 2: He did. He used a sort of psychological checklist. And
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  Speaker 2: the first thing he noted was how the story of
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  Speaker 2: the voice shifted.
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  Speaker 1: Right. The inconsistencies.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. Initially, she reported that the voice repeated a single
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  Speaker 2: specific phrase. She said it was saying, this is your
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  Speaker 2: last chance you have to kill the kids so you
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  Speaker 2: can kill yourself.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, OK.
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  Speaker 2: And she claimed that phrase repeated over and over for
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  Speaker 2: the 18 minutes. But later, when she was talking to
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  Speaker 2: a psychiatric attending at the hospital, the narrative expanded.
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  Speaker 1: Right. She added more to it.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. She said the voice was saying other things, too,
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  Speaker 2: like the children will suffer without you or you have
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  Speaker 2: to take the kids with you.
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  Speaker 1: And so in clinical terms, I assume that kind of
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  Speaker 1: inconsistency suggests it's not real.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. It suggests inaccuracy.
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  Speaker 1: Hmm.
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  Speaker 2: If a person experiences a genuinely traumatic auditory hallucination, especially
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  Speaker 2: one that drives them to an unthinkable act, the core
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  Speaker 2: content of that hallucination usually remains fixed in their memory.
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  Speaker 1: Because it's so terrifying.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it is a defining, terrifying moment. So when the
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  Speaker 2: details of the command change significantly between retellings, it weakens
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  Speaker 2: the clinical confidence that the voice was a true, fixed
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  Speaker 2: sensory experience.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of just like a post-hoc justification.
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  Speaker 2: Right, or a fluid memory that's being colored by the
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  Speaker 2: aftermath of what happened.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, but wait, I'm looking at the data in our
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  Speaker 1: sources here, and there's something that really confuses me. Because
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  Speaker 1: Heilbrunn talks about whether the voice was internal, like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: her own inner monologue, or external, sounding like it was
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  Speaker 1: coming from the physical room. And she perceived the voice
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  Speaker 1: as external. And Heilbrunn actually admits that external voices are
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  Speaker 1: more consistent with genuine hallucinations.
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  Speaker 2: That's true, yes.
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  Speaker 1: So shouldn't that be a massive win for the defense? Like,
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  Speaker 1: why is Heilbrunn dismissing that detail?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you are hitting on a really vital nuance here.
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  Speaker 2: Because while external voices are indeed a hallmark of severe psychosis,
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  Speaker 2: the broader clinical context matters immensely. The source data shows
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  Speaker 2: that in about 88% of cases involving genuine command hallucinations,
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  Speaker 2: the voice is accompanied by a related delusion.
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  Speaker 1: A delusion, so like a belief.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. A delusion is a false fixed belief about the
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  Speaker 2: world that the brain constructs to make sense of the hallucination. So,
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  Speaker 2: for example, someone hears an external voice commanding them, they
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  Speaker 2: usually possess an accompanying belief that the voice belongs to
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  Speaker 2: an angel or a demon or government agent.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I see, because the brain needs to explain it.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The brain needs a framework to explain why a
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  Speaker 2: disembodied voice is speaking to them.
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  Speaker 1: And she didn't have that framework.
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  Speaker 2: No, she reported no accompanying delusions regarding the source or
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  Speaker 2: the nature of the voice. She just heard it. So,
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  Speaker 2: from a diagnostic standpoint, Having a severe external command hallucination
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  Speaker 2: sitting entirely in isolation without a delusional architecture supporting it
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  Speaker 2: while it cuts against its authenticity.
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  Speaker 1: It's just a symptom existing in a vacuum.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely.
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  Speaker 1: Which honestly, that makes the frequency of it even stranger
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  Speaker 1: to me because genuine psychotic hallucinations are typically intermittent. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Like a patient will hear them, then they stop, then
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  Speaker 1: they start again, depending on stress or whatever. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Neurochemistry, environmental factors, things like that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but her report was that the voice was just
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  Speaker 1: constant unending for exactly 18 to 20 minutes and then
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  Speaker 1: just shut off like a faucet.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. And furthermore, we really have to look at how
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  Speaker 2: a human being naturally reacts to a terrifying, intrusive sensory
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  Speaker 2: experience like that. Right.
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  Speaker 1: They probably fight it.
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  Speaker 2: They do. People who genuinely suffer from these voices usually
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  Speaker 2: try to fight back. You know, in cognitive behavioral therapy
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  Speaker 2: for psychosis, we see patients developing spontaneous coping mechanisms.
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  Speaker 1: Like a what? Like talking back to it?
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. They might pray aloud to drown it out. They
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  Speaker 2: might listen to incredibly loud music, cover their ears, or
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  Speaker 2: literally actively argue with the voice. They seek a way
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  Speaker 2: to stop the influence.
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  Speaker 1: And she reported no attempts to stop the voice or
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  Speaker 1: distract herself? None.
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  Speaker 2: No coping mechanisms at all.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. So when you pile all this up, you've got
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  Speaker 1: the changing story, the lack of a related delusion, the
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  Speaker 1: strange constant frequency, and then this total lack of resistance.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, Heilbrunn is basically providing the jury with a
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  Speaker 1: scientifically backed checklist to suggest this command hallucination was fabricated.
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  Speaker 2: He is. He is methodically dismantling the defense's core shield.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: But what's fascinating here is that the prosecution cannot simply
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  Speaker 2: dismantle the defense's theory automatically. and just leave an empty room.
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  Speaker 1: Right. They need a counter story.
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  Speaker 2: They have an obligation to provide a credible alternative narrative
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  Speaker 2: for her state of mind.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Because if she wasn't hallucinating... they still have to answer
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  Speaker 2: the lingering, horrifying question of motive.
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  Speaker 1: See, that is the massive void I'm struggling with here.
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  Speaker 1: Because logically, why would a mother strangle her three children?
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  Speaker 1: If we say there's no psychosis, no voice forcing her hand,
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  Speaker 1: what could possibly drive someone to do this?
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  Speaker 2: And that brings us to the prosecution's alternative explanation. And
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  Speaker 2: it's a chilling concept. They argue it's suicide combined with
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  Speaker 2: altruistic filicide.
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  Speaker 1: Altruistic filicide. So the term altruistic usually implies something selfless, right?
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  Speaker 1: Or done out of love. While filicide is the killing
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  Speaker 1: of one's own child.
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  Speaker 2: Right. So Dr. Heilman argues that her actions were not
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  Speaker 2: the result of a sudden 18-minute psychotic break. Instead, they
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  Speaker 2: were the tragic culmination of months of severe worsening and
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: documented depression. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: So she was already deeply depressed. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: She had been suffering from dark intrusive thoughts for a
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  Speaker 2: long time. She actually possessed a deep-seated belief that her
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: brain was fundamentally damaged beyond repair. She was in a
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  Speaker 2: state of just profound psychological agony and desperation.
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  Speaker 1: Which then led her to plan a highly lethal, very
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  Speaker 1: serious suicide attempt. Like she just wanted to end her
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  Speaker 1: own suffering.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the altruistic element enters because her depression had
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  Speaker 2: completely distorted her worldview.
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  Speaker 1: How so?
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  Speaker 2: Well, according to this clinical theory, she loved her children
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  Speaker 2: so fiercely that she believed they could not survive the
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  Speaker 2: trauma of her suicide. Her depressed mind convinced her that
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  Speaker 2: they would be left to suffer in a cruel world
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  Speaker 2: without their mother, and that no one else, not even
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: her husband, was capable of caring for them properly.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So the logic, as warped as it is
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  Speaker 1: by the disease, is that killing them was actually an
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  Speaker 1: act of protection.
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  Speaker 2: In her mind, yes.
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  Speaker 1: Taking them with her out of a distorted sense of
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  Speaker 1: mercy rather than out of malice or, you know, in
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: response to a hallucinated command. Right. I mean, I understand
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  Speaker 1: the psychological framing of that. It's incredibly dark, but I
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  Speaker 1: get it. But how does this translate legally? Like, Does
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  Speaker 1: acting out of distorted love make you a criminal?
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  Speaker 2: Legally speaking, the distinction is absolutely everything. Because if she
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: acted out of a distorted sense of love and despair,
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  Speaker 2: Heilbrunn concludes that she actually retained moral awareness.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, she knew it was wrong.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, she knew that the physical act of strangulation would
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: cause death. She knew that causing death was illegal. She
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: knew it was morally wrong by societal standards, even if
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: her deeply depressed mind convinced her it was a practical
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: necessity to save them from future suffering. Wow. And because
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: she retained that awareness, the prosecution argues she had the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: capacity to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.
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  Speaker 1: Which means criminal responsibility.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. The theory acknowledges her severe mental illness. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it acknowledges the crushing depression. But it draws a hard
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  Speaker 2: line stating that depression, even when it leads to altruistic filicide,
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  Speaker 2: does not legally equal the total detachment from reality that's
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: required for an insanity defense.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: But wait, I have to push back on the prosecution's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: strategy here because Vinny Palatin, he's one of our sources
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: analyzing the trial, and he points out this massive glaring contradiction.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It's a big one.
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  Speaker 1: Because earlier in the trial, during opening statements and initial arguments,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: The prosecutors were adamant that her jump from the window
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: was not a real genuine suicide attempt. Right.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: They actively downplayed it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. They wanted to paint a picture of a calculating
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: killer who maybe staged a jump or hesitated just to
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: make it look like she wanted to die after committing
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the murders.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Which is a very common strategy. You know, to portray
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: the defendant as manipulating, prioritizing their own survival while feigning
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: despair just to build a defense.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: But then, so what does this all mean for the jury?
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  Speaker 1: Because weeks into the trial, the prosecution's own star expert witness, Dr. Heilbrunn,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: is basing his entire legal conclusion on the absolute fact
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that it was a highly serious, highly lethal suicide attempt.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, he is.
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  Speaker 1: That is the literal bedrock of his altruistic filicide theory.
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  Speaker 1: Because if she wasn't actually trying to kill herself, the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: altruistic aspect falls apart entirely. So how are jurors supposed
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to reconcile a prosecution actively contradicting its own opening theories?
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It places the jury in an incredibly difficult cognitive position.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, trial law is often a chess match. But
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: when the state's narrative shifts so drastically, it introduces a
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: profound layer of doubt.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would be so confused as a juror.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because if the prosecution tells you on day one
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: that she was faking a suicide attempt, and then on
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: day 20 their expert tells you, well, she must go
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: to prison, specifically because her genuine suicide attempt included her children,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the integrity of the prosecution's overarching narrative is deeply compromised.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: The jury is just left trying to figure out which
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: version of the state's truth they are actually supposed to believe.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Which feels like the perfect opening for defense attorney Kevin Reddington.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: Because a psychological evaluation, no matter how confident the expert
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: sounds on the stand, is really only as strong as
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the factual foundation it rests upon.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. Facts are everything.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: And Reddington's cross-examination, it was designed to methodically kick the
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: legs out from under Dr. Heilbrunn's facts. Because if the
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: facts are wrong, the psychological conclusion just collapses on its own.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And the first leg he attacked was this concept of
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: separation anxiety.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Right. So Heilbrunn anchored his altruistic filicide theory heavily on
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the idea that the defendant was pathologically anxious about being
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: separated from her kids.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: He testified that her attachment was so severe, so distorted,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: that she felt she absolutely had to take them with
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: her when she died. She simply could not bear to
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: leave them behind.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: So to dismantle that, Reddington brings the jury back to
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the mundane realities of her life. He points out that
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: she left the kids for a fifth anniversary date night
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: with her husband in 2022. She went out socializing with friends.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: She spent time shopping in Boston. She routinely dropped the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: kids off at a local school called Little Sprouts. These
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: are normal everyday activities away from our kids.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: And under cross-examination, Heilbrunn is forced to admit on the
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: stand that she did in fact do all those things.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Right. He has to agree.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The defense is strategically painting a picture of a
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: normal mother who might experience typical anxiety about leaving her
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: young kids at daycare, not a woman so pathologically enmeshed
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: with them that she would commit murder rather than face separation.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I see. So by normalizing her behavior leading up to
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the tragedy, Reddington is attempting to basically erase the altruistic
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: motive entirely.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And that was incredibly effective. But I mean, it was
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: just the warm up. Because the absolute climax of this
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: deep dive, the moment in the transcripts where the physical
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: evidence collides violently with the psychological evaluation, well, it centers
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: entirely on the 911 call.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: This part is just stunning.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: It really is. Set the scene for us. This is
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the moment right after she has jumped from the window.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Right. So she plummets from the upper floor and lands
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: in the snow outside the home. And her husband, Patrick,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: discovers her there. Okay. Now, Dr. Highburn's testimony relied heavily
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: on Patrick's account. of the interaction that immediately followed. Because
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: according to what Patrick told investigators in collateral interviews, he
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: ran up to his severely injured wife and he asked,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: what did you do?
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And according to Patrick, she clearly replied, I tried to
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: kill myself.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And Heilbrunn seized on that specific quote. Like he used
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: it as major proof that she was not experiencing a
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: command hallucination.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Yes. His clinical reasoning was that if she had genuinely
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: been under the control of a commanding voice, Her immediate
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: visceral response to her husband would have been, you know,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I did what the voice told me to do or
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: I had to do it.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Because that would have been the reality she was living in.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The fact that she allegedly said, I tried to
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: kill myself, it perfectly supports his theory of a severe
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: depression-driven suicide attempt completely devoid of active psychosis. It shows
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: she understood her own intent.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Right. OK, so enter Kevin Reddington with a completely different perspective.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Because he asks Dr. Heilbrunn a very simple procedural question
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: on the stand. He asks, did you listen to the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: 911 tape?
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And the expert answers no.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: He never listened to the primary source audio. He relied
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: entirely on the collateral interview given by the husband after
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: the fact.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Is that normal, though?
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Well, relying on collateral interviews is standard practice in forensic psychology.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: But it is a known vulnerability. Because human memory, especially
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: in the wake of trauma, is notoriously unreliable.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine. And Reddington then just drops a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: hammer on the entire courtroom.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, he does.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Because he points out the physical reality of the defendant's
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: injuries from the fall. She had suffered catastrophic physical trauma.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: She had severe spinal damage. But crucially, she had a
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: hemorrhaging slit throat.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: And the anatomy of the neck and vocal cords makes
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: this detail paramount. Because a transected airway or severe trauma
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to the throat fundamentally compromises the physical ability to produce speech.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: You literally can't talk. Right. So Reddington suggests to the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: expert right in front of the jury that if you
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: actually listen to the sealed 911 tape capturing the interaction
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: between the husband and wife in the snow, she isn't
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: speaking words at all. Because of her slit throat, she
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: is only physically capable of making grunting noises.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Because if it is physically impossible for her to have
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: formed the words, I tried to kill myself due to
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: her injuries, then the husband's entire account of that conversation
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: is inaccurate.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: The defense is subtly planting a devastating idea here. They
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: are implying that Patrick fabricated the quote.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: And whether it was a lie to the police or
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a lie to the doctors or just a trauma induced
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: false memory, the result is exactly the same. The prosecution's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: star expert built his massive, legally binding psychological conclusion. on
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: a quote he never even bothered to verify against the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: actual raw audio recording.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Of the event. It is a devastating blow to the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: expert's credibility. It perfectly illustrates how insulated psychiatric evaluations can
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: become from the gruesome physical realities of a crime scene.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the physical evidence just totally undercuts it.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Right. When a psychological house of cards is built on
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: an unverified quote and physical evidence kicks out that foundation,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: the jury is left questioning everything. If Patrick's account of
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: that specific conversation is unreliable, they have to wonder what
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: other contextual details provided to the doctors might be skewed.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying. And so having cast this huge shadow
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: over the physical evidence and the reliability of the collateral interviews,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the defense pivots seamlessly back to the mental state.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And they do this brilliant maneuver where they use Dr.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Heilbrunn's own clinical notes against him to prove she was
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: suffering from severe psychosis.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Which brings the trial into the really complex realm of
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: psychiatric semantics.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Semantics, like word games.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It might seem like doctors arguing over vocabulary, but in
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: a courtroom, these specific definitions carry immense legal weight.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Right. Because Reddington brings up a quote from the medical records.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: The defendant told doctors that during the killings, she felt
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: like it, quote, wasn't her. She described the experience as
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: though she were watching herself commit the killings from outside
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: her own body and that she was just responding to
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a voice completely unable to consciously decide what to do.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: And to a layperson on a jury, that description sounds
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: like a total detachment from reality.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds completely insane.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Right. The defense categorizes this specific phenomenon as profound dissociation.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: In clinical literature, profound dissociation, this observer effect where you
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: are completely detached from your own physical actions, is a
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: hallmark symptom of a severe psychotic break. It implies the
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: conscious mind is literally fractured.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: But Dr. Heilbrunn absolutely refuses to accept that term. He
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: sits on the stand and aggressively pushes back against the defense,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: insisting that the clinically correct term for her experience is
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: paratraumatic dissociation.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Yes. The defense is pushing for profound dissociation to imply
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: a fundamental break from reality that caused the horrific event.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: But Heilbrunn is insisting on paratraumatic dissociation. Which describes dissociation
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: that happens specifically as a result of experiencing a trauma.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Wait, so he's saying the trauma came first.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Yes. Think of someone who gets into a horrific car
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: crash and describes feeling like they were floating above the wreckage.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: The crash caused the dissociation.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So he is arguing she didn't kill her children because
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: she was dissociated. She dissociated because the reality of what
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: she was actively doing to her children was so traumatizing
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to her own brain. Exactly.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that semantic difference is the barrier between a
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: hospital and a prison cell.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Because one means you're not in control and the other
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: means you are. Right.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: If the dissociation is paratraumatic, it means her conscious mind
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: was present and aware enough to be traumatized by her
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: own deliberate actions. It points directly back to retain moral
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: awareness and criminal responsibility.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Man, it feels like hair splitting, you know, like arguing
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: over prefixes while a woman's life just hangs in the balance.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: But the defense didn't stop at dissociation. They brought up
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: another symptom, she reported, that is truly, truly terrifying. It's
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: called thought broadcasting.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, thought broadcasting is a classic severe symptom of schizophrenia
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: and other psychotic disorders.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: What is it exactly?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute loss of mental privacy. It is
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: the delusion that your internal unspoken thoughts are actively radiating
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: outward from your head like a radio transmitter. and could
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: be heard or read by the people around you.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And the defendant was terrified that when she dropped her
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: kids off at the Little Sprout School, the teachers could
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: literally read her dark, intrusive thoughts. Yes. She was walking
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: through the world believing people could hear the horrible things
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: going on in her head. I mean, just imagine the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: sheer terror of standing in a grocery store or a
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: school and believing everyone around you has access to your
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: darkest internal monologues.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: It's agonizing. And under intense cross-examination, Reddington forces Dr. Heilbrunn
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: to admit that she genuinely reported this exact symptom.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: He had to admit it. Yes.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: She reported it to him during his evaluation. She reported
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: it to another evaluator, Dr. Mack. And crucially, she had
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: reported this terrifying experience to her husband, Patrick, long before
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the tragic event ever occurred.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Which completely vaporizes Halbrin's earlier point about her
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: symptoms only lasting 18 minutes.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Because if she's experiencing thought broadcasting days or weeks prior
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to the murders... She is deeply, profoundly detached from reality
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: long before she ever laid a hand on her children.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: It fundamentally strengthens the defense's narrative. It paints a picture
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: of a woman whose mind was deteriorating rapidly over time,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: suffering from severe, verifiable delusions that simply do not fit
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: neatly into the prosecution's theory of a rational, depressed suicide attempt.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: It is just wave after wave of conflicting interpretations. The
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: jury is drowning in dense psychological concepts. And in a trial,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: this emotionally charged, it doesn't take much for things to
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: go completely off the rails. Which brings us to a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: procedural grenade that almost caused a mistrial, because we transitioned
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: here from the nuances of psychological evaluation to the strict,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: often very rigid rules of courtroom evidence.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: And the flashpoint for this near disaster was the injection
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: of religion into the trial. Right.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: So to give some crucial context earlier in the proceedings,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: The prosecution had called the victim's grandmother to the witness stand.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: And Vinnie Paulatin notes in our sources that the prosecution
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: asked her highly inappropriately if she was Catholic and if
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: murder was a mortal sin.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that line of questioning is generally considered totally irrelevant
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: to the facts of a criminal case and highly prejudicial
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: to a jury.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: The judge recognized this immediately and instructed the jury to
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: just completely disregard the question.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: But the seed of religion was already planted in the courtroom.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So later, Dr. Heilbrunn is on the stand explaining his
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: theory of altruistic filicide. And he testifies that as she
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: was committing the act, the defendant said, go to God, baby,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: go to God.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Right. Her stated belief was that she and the children
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: would be together in heaven after she completed her suicide.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Right. But then during his testimony, Dr. Heilbrunn reveals that
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: he actually challenged her on this belief during his clinical evaluation.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: He testified that he asked her, isn't suicide a mortal sin?
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, he was using Catholic teachings to point out that
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: her expectation of going to heaven after a murder-suicide did
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: not align with standard Catholic dogma.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And the courtroom absolutely exploded. I mean, the defense immediately
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: demanded a mistrial, arguing that the expert was inappropriately introducing
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: religious prejudice to undermine her clinical state.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: And the judge refused to grant the mistrial, but the
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: transcripts show he was absolutely furious.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: I bet.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: He reprimanded the witness, pointing out that Dr. Heilbrunn is
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: a forensic psychologist... not a theologian. He has no seminary training.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: His personal understanding of Catholic dogma is completely irrelevant to
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: his expert medical testimony regarding her mental state at the
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: time of the crime.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And the judge actually sent Dr. Heilbrunn home for the day,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: like a kid in timeout. He instructed the jury to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: completely disregard the statement about mortal sin, and he ordered
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the prosecution to severely reprimand their own witness before he
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: was even allowed back on the stand. It It's an
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: incredible moment of courtroom drama.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: It is. But if we connect this to the bigger picture,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: the judge's ruling, while procedurally correct to prevent religious prejudice,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: actually highlights a massive flaw in how we try these cases.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: How so? Well, the concept of going to God wasn't
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: introduced by the prosecution to prejudice the jury against a Catholic.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: It was introduced by the defendant herself as a core
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: driving part of her state of mind during the killings.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Hyper-religiosity is a very common component of severe psychosis and mania.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So she's the one who brought God into the room.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Because her religious beliefs, however distorted by depression or
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: psychosis they may have been, were inextricably intertwined with her motive.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: By shutting down the conversation about mortal sin and Catholic dogma,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: the judge is barring the jury from fully exploring how
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: her specific religious framework interacted with her mental illness.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Because they can't even talk about it now. Right.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Did she believe she was circumventing a mortal sin because
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: a voice told her to? Was her psychosis inherently religious
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: in nature? The jury is now blocked from unpacking the
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: very delusions that may have driven the act.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. It is a perfect example of how the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: strict rules of evidence can act like blinders. Like, they
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: are designed to keep the trial fair, but in doing so,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: they prevent the jury from seeing the whole messy, complicated
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: human truth.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Which brings us back to the immense, almost impossible task
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: this jury is facing.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: They are staring down a mountain of gray area because
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: on one hand, they have to decide if a woman
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: who orchestrated a highly lethal suicide attempt and who strangled
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: her three children out of a deeply distorted, depressed sense
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: of quote unquote love retains enough moral awareness to be
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: locked in a prison cell for the rest of her life.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Or conversely, they have to decide if an auditory hallucination
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: that cannot be physically verified combined with documented delusions like
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: sock broadcasting is enough to render her legally insane and
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: and devoid of responsibility, sending her to a hospital.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: It is terrifying when you realize that psychology, a science
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: built entirely on subjectivity, on self-reporting and interpreting invisible thoughts,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: is being forced through the meat grinder of the legal
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: system because the court demands absolute black and white, guilty
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: or not guilty answers.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: It demands an objective truth from a clinical field that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: rarely provides one. And it highlights why cases involving severe
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: maternal mental illness illness are so profoundly unsettling for the public.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: We want the x-ray. We want the clean break to
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: show us exactly what went wrong in the brain. And
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: it simply does not exist here.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. And it's a thought
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I want to leave everyone with as we wrap up
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: this deep dive. Throughout this entire trial, the lawyers, the experts,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and the judge... They are sparring over a reality that
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the public isn't fully allowed to see.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: The 911 tape.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Think about that 911 tape. The raw audio of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the husband and wife in the snow moments after the tragedy.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: The defense claims she's only capable of grunting, proving the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: physical impossibility of her speaking and suggesting the husband fabricated
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: his account. While the expert built his entire legal theory
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: on the husband's quote without ever actually listening to that audio.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And yet.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: That crucial tape is sealed from the public? Only the
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: people inside that specific courtroom have heard the physical reality
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: of her injuries.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When crucial objective evidence
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: like the actual audio of the immediate aftermath is locked away,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: but its contents are heavily and publicly debated by lawyers
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: trying to spin a narrative, how can the public's perception
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of justice ever align with the jury's final verdict? I mean,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: are we as a society judging these incredibly complex mental
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: health cases based on the truth? Or are we just
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: judging them on the carefully curated fragments of truth that
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the legal system allows into the record? It is definitely
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: something to mull over.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: A profoundly sobering question to end on.