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Where Is the ‘A Friend, a Murderer’ Killer Now? Inside Philip Patrick Westh's Life Today · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to take a second and just picture
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: your absolute best friend.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good place to start. Right.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Like, think about the person you've known for over a decade.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The one you call when everything goes wrong. The one
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you trust implicitly with your darkest secrets.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: The person who just gets you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The person whose character you feel you understand right
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: down to their very core. I mean, you've celebrated birthdays together.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You've navigated the messy parts of growing up, the breakups.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The career changes.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: You've got all that history.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You probably feel like you can predict exactly what
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: they're going to say before they even open their mouth.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: You know their cortex, their humor, their moral compass. You
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: know them. You are safe with them.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Now, I want you to imagine waking up tomorrow morning,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: brewing your coffee, looking down at your phone, and discovering
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that this exact person, your best friend, your confidant, maybe
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the person who was a groomsman at your wedding is
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a convicted serial killer. and a predator.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: God, it just, it completely breaks the brain's predictive software.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Because to accept that premise, to look at that news
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: alert and believe it, you have to simultaneously accept that
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: your own reality, your own internal radar for human nature
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: is completely fundamentally flawed.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Like your whole compass is just broken.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You haven't just been lied to. Your entire conceptual
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: framework of the world has been compromised.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Right. Because if the person you know best in the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: world is a phantom, then what else is fake? It's
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: not just a betrayal. It is reality breaking.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And that absolute nightmare scenario, that shattering of the social contract,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: is exactly what we are exploring today.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It's a heavy one today.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It is. We are pulling apart the threads of a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: staggeringly dark true story that recently culminated in a brand
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: new three-part Netflix docuseries called A Friend, A Murderer. which
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: premiered on March 5, 2026.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Highly recommend watching it, by the way.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. We're using that docuseries along with a massive,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: incredibly detailed piece of investigative journalism published by People magazine
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: as our primary sources for this deep dive.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: The People article really goes into the weeds on the timeline,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: which is helpful.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: It really does. But we aren't just here to do
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: a grim rundown of a crime timeline. We are looking
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: at this From a deeply psychological, deeply sociological angle.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: We are heading to a quiet coastal town in Denmark
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to analyze not just the horrific, unthinkable crimes committed by
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a man named Philip Patrick West, but the devastating, almost
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: unimaginable collateral damage inflicted on his closest friends.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: The people who thought they knew him.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: The people who loved him. Okay, let's unpack this. Because
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: location is everything here. It is.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We are looking at the blast radius of a predator
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: who hid in plain sight, and specifically the psychological architecture
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of his disguise. And to really grasp the gravity of this,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: you have to understand the specific environment where this happened.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Right. Corsair, Denmark.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Corsair. Because this isn't a sprawling, anonymous metropolis where
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: you don't know your neighbor.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: No, it's the exact opposite.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Right. When sociologists study Scandinavia, and Denmark in particular, they
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: often talk about this concept of tillid.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Tillid. T-I-L-L-I-D, right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yes. It translates roughly to trust, but it is much
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: deeper than how we use the word in English. It
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: is a foundational institutionalized social trust.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, like the reason people in Denmark can comfortably leave
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: their babies in strollers outside cafes.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You see those viral videos of strollers lined up
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: on the sidewalk while the parents are inside drinking coffee.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Which Americans always freak out about.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Right, because it's so foreign to us. But it's just
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a society that functions on the baseline assumption that your
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: neighbor is looking out for you, that people generally follow
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the rules, and that the community itself is a safety net.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And Corsair is a small, tight-knit town that embodies this.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Kids ride their bikes home at dusk. People know each
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: other's families. So the concept of a serial predator operating
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: in the shadows of a place like Corsair feels completely
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: alien to the natural order of things there.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of place where safety isn't something you
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: actively have to think about. It's just the air you breathe.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Precisely. So framing this story against the backdrop of Courser
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: is crucial. This isn't a story of a stranger lurking
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: in a dark alley in a chaotic city where anonymity
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: is the default.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: This is a story about a parasite infecting a perfectly
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: healthy organism. It completely shatters the fundamental assumptions about safety,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: about community, and most importantly, about our ability to spot danger.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And before we can even begin to understand the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: monster that Philip Patrick West was. And let's be clear,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: based on the sources, the evidence proves he is a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: monster of the highest order we have to look at
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the mask.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, disguise.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You have to understand the perfectly crafted, utterly convincing mask
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: he wore every single day. And we need to look
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: at the people who looked at that mask and believed
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: with all their hearts that it was his true face.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Because if we just write him off as a glaringly
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: obvious creep, we do a huge disservice to the intelligence
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: and the genuine trauma of the friends he fooled.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The illusion of intimacy is the central paradox of
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: this case. It is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: everything we reviewed in the People article and the documentary.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Let us introduce those friends.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about them.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: The documentary centers around three main individuals who bravely, and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I mean incredibly bravely, spoke out about their experience, Amanda, Curie,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: and Nicholas.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And these weren't just casual acquaintances.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: No, these were people who just bumped into Philip at
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the pub every other month. These were his people, his
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: core group. And the most devastating admission comes from Nicholas.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that part was hard to watch.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Nicholas and Philip were best friends for 15 years. I mean,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: let that number sink in. 15 years of shared life.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Nicholas actually states on camera that he's spent more time
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: with Philip than anyone else in his entire adult life.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: If we break down the timeline, the mathematics of this
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: friendship are deeply disturbing from a developmental psychology standpoint.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, so?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Well, Philip Patrick West was 33 years old when he
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: was finally convicted in June of 2024. If Nicholas and
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Philip had a 15-year friendship, that means they bonded in
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: their late teens.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So they were around 17 or 18 years old when
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: they became best friends.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The exact time when your brain is literally wiring
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: itself for adulthood.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, that's a huge developmental window.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: The prefrontal cortex is still developing. That window, late teens
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: to early 20s, is the crucible of your adult identity.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: When you are figuring out your moral boundaries, you are
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: transitioning into independence and you are forging the relationships that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: will define your trajectory.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And they did all of that together.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Right. Nicholas and Philip went through that entire critical window
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: side by side. They were building their adult selves together.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: So while Nicholas was forming a genuine human connection, figuring
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: out who he was, building a life, going to work,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: navigating adult relationships, Phil was doing something entirely different.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: He was building a parallel architecture.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: The psychology of compartmentalization here is just staggering to me.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: It is. We often talk about compartmentalization in a very
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: benign way. It's a coping mechanism, you know?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Like keeping work and home separate.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You put your work stress in one mental box
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and you put your family life in another so you
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: don't snap at your kids after a bad day at
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: the office.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: But in the context of a predator, compartmentalization is a
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: weaponized survival strategy. Philip maintained long-term, seemingly genuine, incredibly close
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: platonic relationships, not for connection, but to anchor himself in normalcy.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I was reading through the source material and I kept
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: trying to find a good way to picture this. The
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: analogy that kept coming to mind wasn't camouflage in the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: traditional sense.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Well, When we think of camouflage, we think of a
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: hunter wearing a ghillie suit, hiding out in the woods,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: blending in with the leaves and the dirt so the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: prey can't see them.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But that implies you're hiding in the background. Philip wasn't
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in the background. It's more like a computer simulation. He
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: built an entire resource-intensive virtual reality for his friends to
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: live in.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a really good way to put it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: His camouflage was Nicholas. His camouflage was Amanda and Kiri.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Being the quote-unquote normal guy at the backyard barbecue was
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: his ghillie suit.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: That's a very apt way to look at it. He
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: used the mundane reality of friendship as a structural shield
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: against suspicion.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: But that brings up something I really struggle with, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I want to push you on this.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: When you spend 15 years with someone, you share mundane,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: quiet moments. You share vulnerabilities. Is it possible neurologically or
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: psychologically— that Philip genuinely loved his friends in some compartmentalized
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: corner of his mind? Or is that just me, as
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a normal, empathetic person, trying to project humanity onto someone
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: who has none? Or are they just completely disposable props
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in his play?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and it's actually the crux
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: of the debate in criminal psychology when we deal with
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: high function of psychopaths or individuals with severe antisocial personality traits.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: And to answer it, we have to split empathy into
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: two distinct categories. Cognitive empathy and affective empathy.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. Cognitive versus affective. Break that down for me.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Affective empathy is what you and I experience. It is
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: the emotional resonance.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Like feeling what someone else feels.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If you see your best friend crying because they
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: lost their job, you actually feel a pang of sadness
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: in your own chest. Your nervous system mirrors theirs, you
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: feel their pain, and that feeling drives you to comfort them.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: That is affective empathy.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Okay. Got it.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, is purely intellectual.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see where this is going. It is the.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Ability to look at someone crying and understand objectively why
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: they are crying and what social response is expected without
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: actually feeling a single drop of sadness yourself.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: It's like a hacker understanding a computer system.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: The hacker knows exactly how the system works, what inputs
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: trigger what outputs, but the hacker doesn't care about the computer.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to phrase it. A high-functioning
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: predator with a severe lack of effective empathy uses cognitive
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: empathy to navigate the world.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So did Philip love his friends. He likely valued them,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: but he valued them the way you value a very
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: reliable car or a highly effective tool.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: That is so dark.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: It is. A predator understands that to move through the
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: world undetected, they need to present a complete, socially acceptable picture. Friends,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: a social life, a steady demeanor, inside jerks. These are
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: all credentials of normalcy.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: So he just learned the script.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: He learned the script of friendship. He learned when to laugh,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: when to offer comfort, when to act supportive. He was
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: hacking their effective empathy using his cognitive empathy.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: But the presence of his horrific secret life proves that
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: the core component of true love, which fundamentally requires valuing
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: the physical safety and humanity of others, was entirely absent.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That is deeply chilling when you realize how flawless the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: script was. Let's look at Kiri's words from the documentary.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Her quote just stops you in your tracks.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: She says... You think you know everything about a person,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and it turns out he's someone else. Nothing makes sense anymore.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I was completely fooled. I mean, imagine the cognitive dissonance.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: It's impossible to wrap your head around.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: You have 15 years of memories. Road trips, moving furniture,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: sharing meals, talking about your futures. And suddenly, in a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: single moment, every single one of those memories is completely contaminated.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Contaminated is exactly what happens. It is a retroactive poisoning
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: of a person's autobiography.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Boy, wow. retroactive poisoning.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: For Kiri, Amanda and Nicholas, their brains are forced to
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: reconcile two entirely incompatible realities. Reality A, the friend who
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: helped them move, who laughed at their jokes, who was safe.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And reality B, the monster who hunted children in their
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: own town.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And the human brain hates paradoxes. It literally fights against them.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Cognitive dissonance isn't just a state of confusion, it's a
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: state of physiological and psychological distress. The brain's predictive coding fails.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Like a short circuit.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you hold two deeply conflicting beliefs about the
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: exact same object or person, your brain misfires. It causes
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: profound anxiety. It makes you question not just the person
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: who deceived you, but your own sanity.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Because you start wondering, what else did I miss?
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: You start running a brutal internal audit. If I couldn't
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: see the monster sitting right across from me at the
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: dinner table sharing my food, what else am I completely
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: blind to? Is my spouse safe? Are my parents who
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: they say they are? The collapse of trust generalizes to everything.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And to really grasp the magnitude of how completely fooled
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: his friends were, we have to look at what Philip
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: was secretly doing right there in Courser. Right under their
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: noses while running this elaborate friendship simulation. We have to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: look at the shadow that fell over this high-trust town.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: The 2016 case. This is where the story shifts from
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: a psychological character study into an absolute community-wide trauma.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In July of 2016, a 17-year-old girl named Emily
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Meng goes missing in Courser. Now, the documentary itself keeps
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Emily's identity anonymous out of respect for the family, but
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: public records and the extensive People magazine cover to confirm
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it was Emily.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: She is just a teenager. She vanishes in the middle
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of the summer after a night out. She says goodbye
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: to her friends at the train station, and she is
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: just gone.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Just vanished.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: For six agonizing months, nobody knows where she is. The
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: town is plastered with missing posters. Search parties are organized.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: It becomes a communal trauma.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Then, in December 2016, on Christmas Eve of all days,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: her body is discovered in a lake about 40 miles away.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Which is horrific.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And then the trail goes totally cold. Yeah. For years,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the police have no answers. The killer is a ghost.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I want you to put yourself in the shoes of
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: the people living in Corsair during those years.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It must have been terrifying.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: A 17-year-old girl, a local, is murdered, and the person
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: who did it is simply allowed to disappear back into
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: the fabric of the community. The psychological weight of a
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: cold case on a small, high-trust community is suffocating. It
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: breeds a very specific, very corrosive kind of communal paranoia.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Because the tillard, that Danish social trust we talked about,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: is completely shattered.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Shattered into a million pieces. When a violent crime is
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: solved quickly, there is immense grief, yes, but there is
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: also a pathway to closure.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Right, there's an ending.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: The community can point to the bad guy, the bad
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: guy is removed from society, the system works, and the
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: community can begin the long process of healing.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: But that didn't happen here.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: No. When a violent, sadistic predator is left uncaught in
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: a small town, the tension never breaks. The nervous system
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: of the entire town is stuck in a state of hypervigilance.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Everyone is a suspect.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Every single person becomes a suspect in your mind. The
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: man scanning your groceries. The neighbor watering his lawn across
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the street. The person driving behind you on a dark road.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: The community turns inward.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And we know exactly how that localized paranoia affected Phillips'
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: inner circle. Amanda speaks incredibly candidly about it in the docuseries.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: She says, and this is a direct quote, For years
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I feared the perpetrator was still out there and that
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I could be the next victim.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Let's really analyze the morbid irony and the sheer horror
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: of Amanda's reality here.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Amanda is living in absolute terror of this nameless, faceless
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: boogie man that the media is talking about. She is
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: a young woman living in a town where a young
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: woman was just abducted and killed.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So of course she's terrified.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Naturally, evolutionarily, she is going to be hypervigilant. And what
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: do humans do when we are terrified? What is our
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: biological response to fear? We turn to our in-group. We
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: seek comfort and protection in our inner circle of friends.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. I am trying to visualize this, and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: it is honestly making me sick to my stomach. It's awful.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate horrifying realization of the horror movie
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: trope where the call is coming from inside the house.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: The terror here wasn't just that killer was loose and coarser.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The terror was that the killer was actively comforting the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: people who were afraid of him. Picture the scene. Amanda
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: is sitting in the living room. Maybe she's having a
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: glass of wine on a Friday night with her core group.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: She is looking Philip in the eye, and she's expressing
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: her deep, visceral, paralyzing fear of the monster who killed
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Emily Meng. And Philip is sitting right there, looking back
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: at her. Maybe he is nodding sympathetically.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Playing the good friend.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe he reaches out and pats her arm, telling her
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it was going to be okay and that she was safe.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: What is happening in his brain in that moment? Is
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: he laughing at her internally?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: No. Psychologists often refer to a concept called duper's delight.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Duper's delight.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is the thrill, the micro-expression of pleasure that
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: a psychopath or a narcissist feels when they are successfully
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: deceiving someone.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So he was enjoying it.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: By comforting Amanda, he wasn't just hiding. He was actively
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: exerting control over her reality. He was absorbing her fear.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: And it is highly probable he was deriving a profound
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: sense of power from it.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: That is just.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: He knew he was the architect of her nightmare, and
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: he knew he held the absolute power to turn that
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: nightmare on or off. He controlled the information. That asymmetry
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of knowledge is an aphrodisiac for a predator.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And as a listener, just imagine that. Imagine living through
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: a localized cold case. You spend your day looking over
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: your shoulder, jumping at shadows. You finally get home, you
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: lock your deadbolt, you sit down with your best friends,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and you let out a sigh of relief because you
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: are finally safe.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: But you aren't.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: You are completely oblivious to the fact that you didn't
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: lock the monster out. You locked the monster inside the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: house with you. How do those friends ever rewire their
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: sense of safety after realizing that?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: It's a lifelong process.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Because for years, this was the terrifying status quo. From
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: 2016 onward, the case goes completely told and Philip's mask
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: holds firm. No one suspects him. He goes about his
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: life playing the good friend, playing the normal guy. blending
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: perfectly into the background of Courser.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: But the thing about predators of this specific violent nature
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: and criminological history behavioral analysis shows us this time and
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: time again is that they rarely stop completely.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Right. They can't just turn it off.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: The mask might hold perfectly in their social life. They
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: might go to work and pay their taxes. But the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: internal compulsion, the violent deviant drive, it doesn't just evaporate
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: because they successfully evaded capture.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: It's still there.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: In fact, getting away with a crime of that magnitude
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: often acts as an accelerant. It breeds a powerful sense
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: of invulnerability. They escalate.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And escalate he did. Because we have a gap in
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the timeline, a period where the surface of the water
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: was totally calm, but the shark was still swimming underneath.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: From the murder of Emily in 2016, we fast forward
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: six years to 2022 and 2023. This is where his
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: methods become more brazen and where his absolute arrogance grows.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: which is what ultimately leads to his downfall.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Six years of silence. Six years of maintaining the simulation.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: But in 2022, the violence violently breaches the surface again.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Philip is involved in the abduction and attempted rape of
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: a 15-year-old girl.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: He attacks a 15-year-old, but she manages to escape.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Thank goodness.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: And then, the very following year, in April 2023, we
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: reach the event that finally breaks the dam. The kidnapping
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of a 13-year-old girl.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: This is the turning point.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And the details of this specific crime, the methodology that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: was revealed by the prosecution during the trial, are just staggering.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Because he didn't just grab someone off the street in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the dark of night. The prosecution revealed that Philip intentionally
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: hit this 13-year-old girl with his car while she was
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: riding her bicycle.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Let's stop and unpack. the sheer predatory calculation of that maneuver.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, please. Because it feels entirely different from a standard abduction.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It is entirely different.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: He used a two-ton vehicle as a weapon to incapacitate
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a child, but he did it under the guise of
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a mundane traffic accident. And then, in the ensuing chaos
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and confusion... Playing the role of the panicked, apologetic driver,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: he took her back to his home in Courser and
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: held her captive.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: The tactical shift here is something we really need to analyze.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Intentionally causing a vehicular accident to acquire a victim is
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: a highly calculated, incredibly brazen move.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're literally drawing attention to yourself.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It requires a predator to operate out in the open,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: in daylight or near a roadway. But the genius, and
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: I use that word purely in a tactical, evil sense,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: is that it manipulates the social contract.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Well, we are conditioned from childhood regarding a stranger banger. Right.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: If a man jumps out of the bushes, a child runs.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: The defenses are up.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: But we're also conditioned to understand that car accidents happen.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: If someone hits you with a car, gets out, looks
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: horrified and says, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Let
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: me help you. Let me take you to a doctor.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: The victim's brain processes it as an accident, not an attack.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So the adrenaline is from the crash, not
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: from a perceived predator. Exactly.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And any witnesses driving by see a fender bender,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: not a kidnapping. It's a predatory adaptation designed to completely
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: lower the defenses of both the victim and the public.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: That is horrifying. It's hijacking our natural instinct for empathy
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and assistance.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: But the most damning, the most chilling piece of evidence
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: that came out of the 2023 arrest wasn't just the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: methodology with the car. It was what the police found
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: when they finally got a warrant, got inside his home,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: and seized his personal computer.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: The list. Yes.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: The Kidnapping Planning List. According to the documentary and the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: extensive coverage and people, police crack open his computer, they
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: bypass whatever passwords he had, and they find a literal
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: digital spreadsheet.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: An administrative planning list.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: An administrative planning list. And it's not just vague fantasies
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: or dark thoughts scribbled in a journal. It contains the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: specific names of young girls in the area. It contains
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: their exact ages, their home addresses.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: And something even worse.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, perhaps most terrifyingly of all, their daily bus schedules.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Let's break down exactly what the existence of that spreadsheet means,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: both psychologically and from a legal prosecutorial standpoint. When a
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: defense attorney is trying to mitigate a violent crime, they
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: will often look for any shred of evidence pointing to
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: a crime of passion or a crime of opportunity. They
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: will argue their client had a momentary snap in judgment,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: a loss of impulse control.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Right. The I didn't mean to do it. It just
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: happened defense.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. This list completely unequivocally obliterates any defense of opportunity
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: or impulse. You do not accidentally research and document the
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: public transit routines of multiple children.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: No, we don't.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: The inclusion of bus schedules indicates relentless, patient, methodical stalking.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: It means he was actively watching them over long periods.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: He was learning their routines, noting when they would be isolated,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: walking from the stop to their front door, calculating when
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: they would be most vulnerable.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So cold.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: He was applying the mundane, organized administration of a middle
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: manager to the horrific enterprise of serial predation. It is
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: the absolute banality of evil.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, but I want to push back on something here
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: because this is where my brain gets stuck.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: In pop culture, in the movies, in the true crime
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: stuff we all watch, we always have this trope of
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the brilliant serial killer, the mastermind playing 3D chess with
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the police, the Hannibal Lecter type who is 10 steps ahead. Right.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: The evil genius.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: But keeping a digital spreadsheet of victims on your primary
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: personal computer in your own house with names and addresses,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: that is incredibly arrogant. It's actually quite sloppy, digitally speaking.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: It leaves a massive, undeniable footprint.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: So my question is, does this kind of digital record
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: keeping point to him being a mastermind or does it
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: point to a profound feeling of invincibility? Was he just
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: so convinced he was smarter than everyone because he had
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: successfully gotten away with the 2016 murder of Emily Meng
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: for seven years?
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: You've hit on one of the biggest myths in true crime,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: and your analysis is spot on. It is not brilliance.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: It is hubris.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Hubris. The fatal flaw.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If we connect this to the bigger picture of
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: criminal psychology, the brilliant mastermind is largely a Hollywood invention.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Real predators get sloppy because their arrogance outpaces their caution.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: A cold case can absolutely embolden a predator. Think about
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: the feedback loop he was experiencing. For seven years, he
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: lived with the ultimate godlike secret.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: He sat in living rooms with people talking about his
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: crime and no one knew. He watched the police hold
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: press conferences failing to find him. He walked past missing
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: posters that he caused.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: He probably felt untouchable.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: After a while, that creates a highly dangerous psychological state.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: The predator begins to believe they are uniquely untouchable. They
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: believe they possess a superior intellect to the police, to
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: their friends, to society at large.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: So he fell safe in his own home, behind his
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: computer screen, treating human lives like inventory on an Excel sheet.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Because for seven years, the universe had essentially told him
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: there were no consequences.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Precisely. This hubris leads to escalation. And escalation inevitably leads
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: to mistakes. He didn't hide the spreadsheet effectively because he
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: never truly believed anyone would ever be smart enough to
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: kick his door down and look for it.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: But the consequences finally arrived. The 2023 kidnapping of that
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: 13-year-old girl was the catalyst. She was rescued. Philip was arrested.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: And once the police had him in custody, the entire
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: virtual reality he had built, the 15-year double life, the camouflage,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: it all crashed.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: It just evaporated.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It disintegrated in a matter of days.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Because once he was in the system, human intuition and
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: social trust were no longer relevant. Science took over.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Explain the mechanics of that, because this is where the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: cold case breaks wide open.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: When Philip was arrested in 2023, the police finally had
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: the legal right to take a sample of his DNA.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Just a simple cheek swab.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: A simple cheek swab. And they run that sample through
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: their national database. Now, back in 2016 and 2022, investigators
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: had collected DNA from the crime scenes. Often, this is
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: what we call touch DNA or biological fluids left by
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator. Forensic scientists analyze these samples to look at
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: specific markers called short tandem repeats, or STRs. These are
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: tiny sections of our DNA that vary wildly from person
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: to person.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a unique identifier.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Yes. When they generate a profile from a crime scene,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: it looks like a series of numbers. For years, the
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: police in Corsair had this string of numbers from Emily
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Mang's murder and from the 15-year-old girl's jacket in 2022,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: but they had no name to attach it to. It
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: was a lock without a key.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And Philip's cheek swab was the key.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: The exact key. The database system flags a hit. The
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: STR profile from the 33-year-old man sitting in lockup for
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: kidnapping matches the biological evidence from the 2016 murder and
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: the 2022 attempted rape with astronomical mathematical certainty.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: The ghost of Courser finally had a name, and it
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: was Philip Patrick West.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: The speed at which a fabricated reality can fall apart
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: is just breathtaking. For 15 years, he completely controlled the narrative.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: He was the director, the producer, and the star of
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: his own play.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: He was in total control.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And in the span of a single DNA test, a
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: process that takes a few hours in a lab, he
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: was exposed to the world, and far more importantly, to
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: his friends, as exactly what he was.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: The infallibility of the science collided with the utter fallibility
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: of his human mask.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So we move to the trial. In June of 2024, Philip,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: who is 33 years old, sits in a courtroom and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: faces the evidence. He is found guilty of multiple horrific crimes.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: He is convicted of the murder of Emily Meng, the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: abduction and attempted rape in 2022, and the abduction and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: rape of the 13-year-old in 2023. The judge sentences him
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to life in prison.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: He's put away for good.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: He is permanently removed from society. But I want to
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: pivot our focus because the criminal justice system did its job.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: But the emotional fallout is just beginning.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: The aftermath is huge.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: When that DNA match finally hit, it didn't just solve
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: a case for the police. it instantly triggered a psychological
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: earthquake for the people who thought they were his family.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: The collateral damage we spoke about at the very beginning.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Yes. Amanda's reaction to the sentencing is documented, and it
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: is so deeply, agonizingly complex. She says, and this is
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: a quote that I haven't been able to stop thinking about,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the relief doesn't outweigh the grief. The grief is too profound.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: That was my friend.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: That quote encapsulates one of the most difficult, uncharted psychological
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: terrains a human being can navigate. In clinical psychology, we
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: often refer to this kind of experience as dual grief
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: or ambiguous loss.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I was actually reading about this concept of dual grief.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It seems like a situation where you aren't just mourning
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the victims of the crime, but you're actually mourning the
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: death of the fake persona your friend created.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: It sounds like grieving a ghost. Am I understanding that right?
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: You are understanding it perfectly. And it is incredibly painful
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: because it is what we call disenfranchised grief.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: When a tragedy like this happens, society expects the friends
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: and family of the perpetrator to feel nothing but white-hot anger, disgust,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: and pure relief that a monster is off the streets.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: The public wants a clean narrative. Bad guy goes to jail,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: good people cheer.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: But human emotion doesn't conform to clean narratives.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: It never does. Amanda, Kiri, and Nicholas are absolutely mourning
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: the horrific suffering of Emily and the other victims. The
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: guilt they likely feel by sheer association is crushing. But simultaneously,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: their nervous systems are mourning a death of their own.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: The Philip they love. the friend who was there for
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: them for 15 years, is dead.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Or rather, he never existed in the first place.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The tragedy, the real mind-bending cruelty of his deception,
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: is that the friend they are crying for was an avatar.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: But the memories they have, the laughs they share, the
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: deep comfort they felt when they were down those feelings,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: those chemical releases of oxytocin and serotonin in their brains
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: over 15 years, those were real to them.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Right. You can't just undo the biology of that connection.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: You cannot just command your brain to erase a decade
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: and a half of emotional investment overnight just because the
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: premise was a lie. So they are left standing at
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: the grave of an illusion. They are sobbing for a
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: friend who was actually a predator in a mast.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: It's just devastating.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: It is a profoundly isolating type of grief. Society often
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: looks at the friends and spouses of serial killers with
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: deep suspicion and People whisper, how could you not know?
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Were you blind? Were you complicit? Which only heaps immense
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: unfair shame on top of the crushing sadness.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It's a trauma that very few people on Earth can
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: relate to. And how does Philip respond to all of this?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: To the documentary being made, to his friends laying their
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: hearts bare on international television, expressing this agonizing betrayal and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: dual grief.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: His response is very telling.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: At the end of the Netflix docuseries, there is a
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: stark title card. It notes that the filmmakers reached out
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: to Philip's lawyer, and the lawyer informed Philip of the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: documentary's criticisms and the heart-wrenching things his former friend said
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: about him.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: His response, no comments. No comments.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Two words that tell you absolutely everything you need to
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: know about the internal landscape of Philip Patrick West.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: What does that silence actually say? Because if I hurt
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: my friend, even accidentally... I would be writing a 10-page
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: letter trying to explain myself.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: When a person refuses to engage with the pain of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the people who loved him unconditionally for 15 years, what
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: is the psychological function of that silence?
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a permanent structural lack of effective empathy.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: It is the final confirmation that the avatar he built
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: was truly hollow. As you said, when a normal person
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: hurts someone they care about, there is an overwhelming, desperate
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: urge to explain, to apologize. to seek forgiveness, or at
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: least to offer context.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You want to make it right.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: But Philip's silence is a continuation of his abuse. It
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: is a continuation of his control.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Control, even from a prison cell.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He is in prison for life. He has lost
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: his freedom, his autonomy, his ability to hunt. But by
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: offering no comments, he is retaining the one shred of
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: power he has left. He is refusing to give Amanda, Curie,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: or Nicholas the one thing they desperately need to heal,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: which is an explanation.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: He's holding out on them.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: He is intentionally withholding closure. It proves that even after
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: the ghillie suit has been ripped off, even after the
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: simulation has crashed, there is no remorse underneath. There is
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: just an empty, dark void.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate final act of cruelty to his friends,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: leaving them in the dark permanently, forcing them to construct
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: their own closure. We have covered incredible ground today.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: We really have.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Just to briefly recap the staggering, terrifying duality we've explored.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Philip Patrick West was a 15-year best friend to Nicholas,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: deeply embedded in his adult life. He was a trusted,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: comforting confidant to Amanda and Carrie, literally absorbing their fears
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: about the town's cold case.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: The guy at the party.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Right, the guy at the party. And simultaneously, in the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: very same town, in the very same hours of the day,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: he was a calculating, escalating predator who utilized vehicular assault
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to bypass stranger danger and who kept a highly organized
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: administrative spreadsheet complete with bus schedules of young girls in Courser.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: He was a walking contradiction that shouldn't exist, but did.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: And his existence serves as a harrowing reminder to all
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: of us. As much as we're evolutionarily conditioned to fear
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: the stranger in the dark alley, the anomalous threat, the
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: most terrifying monsters don't always hide in the shadows.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Where do they hide?
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they hide in our living rooms, they share our meals,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: they laugh at our jokes, and they listen patiently to
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: our fears.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: It makes you question the very foundation of how we
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: interact with the world. And that is exactly where I
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: want to leave you, the listener, today. I want to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: leave you with a final thought to mull over as
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you go about your week. Something that builds on everything
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: we've talked about regarding trust. The Danish concept of tillid
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and the illusion of intimacy.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: It's a lot to process.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: It is. Think about your daily life, your commute, your workplace,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: your group chats. Our entire sense of safety in society
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: relies on a massive assumption. Our belief that we have
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: a functional internal radar. We believe that we can accurately
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: read the character and the intentions of the people closest
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: to us. If they were evil, we would just know
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: or even sense it.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: We all like to think that.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: But if a meticulously organized predator can completely bypass the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: radar of his closest, most intimate friends for 15 straight
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: years without setting off a single alarm, how much of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: our daily social trust is actually real?
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: That's the real question.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: How much of it is built purely on a fragile,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: agreed-upon illusion? a script we all just silently agree to
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: read from. And if you are someone like Amanda or Nicholas,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and that illusion shatters so violently, exposing the void underneath,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: how does your mind ever allow you to trust a
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: new friend again? Think about that best friend you pictured
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: at the start of this deep dive, the one you've
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: known for a decade. The terrifying truth is, we only
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: ever know the parts of people they choose to show us.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Until next time.