109: Why Are We Obsessed with Serial Killers? | A Death Investigator Explains

Why are we so drawn to all of this? The actual dark things, the serial killers and the psychopaths, it is all this morbid curiosity that we have. This is why I think psychopaths are also sometimes called monsters. Monsters originally were... viewed as omens warnings for society you know you talked about monsters being omens i wonder do you think that's an appropriate lens to look through this at why do we obsess over psychopaths and i think it's because they have a very modern mythic component to them i decided to go back into my past and look at some of those cases and situations i found out from a relative that was 37 years ago The person that was involved in that case, one of the detectives was my uncle, who actually was there when the legs were called in that they found in the river.

Two active serial killers in the area where I live. Crazy, unique homicide story. Then there was that missing girl. And I started to go, like, what is this? Why are these things so close to home? There's something wrong with me that I'm drawn to all of these dark things.

I guess, what were you hoping to do becoming a medical legal? death investigator and what does what does that work look like is this cumulative research or are you looking into specific cases what are what are you doing with all that i've had a lot of loss death tragic situations in my entire life from suicides to homicide there's a darkness that devours and a darkness that delights but darkness is not what we've been taught to believe those are some of the words of dr melissa kim corder our guest today who is a depth psychologist and certified medico -legal death investigator who has researched missing persons cases, psychopaths, narcissists, serial killers, and the darker sides of humanity.

So a little spookiness today. This is Dr. Melissa Kim Corder. Just so we have a working definition, I think for me to make sure I'm on the same page with you and for everyone else to follow along because I'm... expecting this to be a little out there for all of us.

What, what is the shadow? What is shadow work? And maybe how does that all tie into Jungian psychology? Cause I know that's seems to be a particular interest of yours. Yes, for sure. And I'm actually really happy to answer this question because there are lots of different perspectives on shadow, shadow work, what that means.

And so when I speak to it, I come from a very specific Jungian perspective. So Carl Jung essentially is the one that coined the term the shadow self. And in depth psychology, it's basically this entire discipline that believes there is this other side to us. this hidden part to us that is beneath our conscious awareness.

So that's really the key of understanding that it's something that impacts us. It's something we feel, we sense, we see it play out in our lives, but it isn't something that we can point to specifically and say, there it is in this very concrete, linear kind of manner.

So that's really the essential idea of shadow is beneath our conscious awareness. Then a little bit. sort of further into that dynamic is that it's also sort of a, we like to think of it as like a field of consciousness or awareness, not necessarily an entity or this dark part of us, or there's a lot of misinterpretation about shadow.

And so through the Jungian lens, it's more about this container that holds possibilities. And some of those possibilities certainly might be our impulses. Our triggers, our traumas, the unprocessed aspects of life, the feelings, the emotions, the things that we have yet to bring to awareness. Within shadow is also our deepest impulses.

We might say why we think the way we do, how we're influenced in ways through our family lineage, through society, things of that nature. But it's essentially just saying there's this line within us. There's the things above it that we see in everyday life. And then there's the things beneath it.

But essentially through a Jungian lens, it's neutral. So it's actually not negative. It's not bad. It's not terrible or horrific. Although it might contain some of those elements. But everything within the shadow essentially lives on a spectrum. And is there, because there's the collective. shadow the collective consciousness or however that is attributed but is there also supposed to be on a on an individual level as well that is what is essentially the unconscious mind or how it is labeled or is that a separate thing Yes, yeah, that's actually, it's spot on.

So there is a personal shadow, which basically is kind of our own ideas, our thoughts, our influences from our environments, our family dynamics. There's, let's say, the way we feel about something uniquely and deeply within ourselves. And then the collective is more, a little bit deeper than that.

So for example, if I say the word mother, we all have a different idea of what that means. But when we go deeper into the specifics of who is mother, how did mother show up in life for us? Was mother kind? Was mother nurturing? Then we start to kind of get into the specifics.

But collectively, there's sort of this greater idea, a wider idea of what these archetypes and these elements are in shadow. So collectively, we like to use the word archetypal, meaning we all kind of get what that means essentially. But then the personal is. How do we interact with that?

How did that manifest in our lives? What does it look like day to day? And that's sort of that middle ground between what is in the collective psyche versus the individual and personal. So Alma, where the objective would be the definitive, almost like the language base of the phrase, and then the individual model is the subjective experience tied to whatever that is.

Yeah, that's a great way to say it. Okay. So as the, you mentioned it being all, all of possibilities kind of laid out, is that supposed to be down the lane of all of past, present and future is, has laid out somewhere and we are reaching into that almost like a, you know, quantum theory suggests that there might be multiple dimensions kind of thing, or am I getting way too into the, into the weeds with that?

I'd say through a Jungian lens, it's probably a bit into the weeds. Although he was very, Jung was very metaphysical and had a beautiful way of grounding scientific, psychological theory. But there is a bit of a metaphysics kind of side to that. So I'd say it's not that it's not accurate, but maybe more of that gray territory that wasn't really clearly defined by Jung.

I think it's more about. Not trying to speak on his behalf or anything, but from the material and from the readings and things that I've researched and been exposed to. It looks like it's more this field of potential where things can sort of move in and out of it.

This is where the archetypes come in a little bit in that dialogue or conversation. And dimension, I would say maybe a parallel word to that are thresholds. In that language where there's just these different seasons of life we experience, there's different types of initiations, there's different hurdles we go through.

So you could kind of see it through that same type of lens. I wouldn't say it's that far off, but. Young definitely wouldn't use the language of, he wouldn't go too metaphysical. For example, like if we were to say today the word empath, he would probably roll his eyes and have no idea what that is or just not agree with that terminology.

Okay. I mean, it seems, he seems like he was very. I guess it's really not that more or not much more fringe than Freud assigning everything to sexuality and like repressed, repressed childhood, you know, things it's, but it does, it feels, I think because of the labeling and that it like, to me, especially shadow to me, like, it sounds like, I don't know.

It's to me, I feel like that makes it feel more obtuse and out there to where it's like. more woo woo. And so it's, he, I guess he strikes me as being a little more, more afraid, especially for the time, I guess, you know, having suggested that there might be this, this collective thing going on, which, you know, if you really stop and think about the human race, I mean, we are an organism.

constantly outside of you know furthering or passing our genes along like our the only reason we are able to continue pushing forward is because we are built on layers and layers of knowledge by it that has been built up over the years by our ancestors and it seems to be working towards this thing right and where it's some people talk about it being you know maybe that thing was we were chimps to people and then we are supposed to be giving birth to this next level of intelligence that is artificial intelligence as broad as a term of that is but that you know it does seem like we are working towards something because that that collective organism that we are has this drive to always want more and always want better and to be making more and be making better things and really to be constantly improving for not i mean really no there's really not a lot of reason like we have the technology that we have now is absolutely insane and so for us to just have this natural want to be doing that it is there is something I mean, it is a collective dynamic that's going on, but it does feel like there's something pushing us in that direction almost.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that, actually. That speaks to even just going back just a couple steps to the connection with Freud. That was one of their big departures was the Freudian perspective on certain things was a little bit too much of a hard line in the sand where Jung was more like, no, not everything can be traced back to sexuality.

In fact, they disagreed on. libido being sexual energy instead it was just life force energy to young so another word that came to mind that might be kind of helpful to give it context is young would probably say the unknown you know the great mystery of life the unknown versus shadow kind of It can be very ominous, like you stated.

Yeah, it sounds eerie. It does. And I think for some people, that's why it also might sound inherently negative. You know, it's where the mind goes sometimes, especially because it's very protective. But it's more about his confrontations with. Darkness and shadow being about what has yet to move into awareness.

So if we kind of think about that, it can be metaphysical. It can be scientific. It can be about personality and development and evolution, like as you mentioned. And Jung had a term for that. He would call it individuation. And so essentially it's this idea that we are not necessarily moving towards something in an outward way.

but more of that internal unfolding into who we've always meant to become. So thinking of it almost like releasing the layers between who you think you are and who you're becoming, shifting your orientation from the outer world about what society thinks and how society expects you to be and to act, and starting to kind of follow that deeper impulse.

And Jung would call it the self and others have attributed that to the soul. So there is an unfolding. There is this sort of evolution and progression, if you want to call it that. And that was his individuation. So the becoming individualized. And it's not that we're necessarily seated with this perfect plan or anything of that nature, but just that there is something really deeply organic within each one of us.

that we can achieve and unfold into. I even don't really like to say achieve too much because then that sounds very much like chasing after some, you know, external goal, but just really maybe unfolding with the authentic self is a better way to say it. So that would be the self -actualization essentially that is right.

Like that's, and maybe it's not ever finished, right? Like we as humans. you should always be growing regardless of like, you should exactly. But like that is when you've achieved like, you know, I guess optimal humanness and, and being aligned, I guess with, with in that where it's, you know, you're not, I hopefully, I guess you're the, most of the work is that the heavy lifting is done is when you've reached individuation.

And in a sense, I like to think of it as we still are going to be challenged. We're going to have life lessons. We're going to have things that happen to us. We're going to have ordeals and challenges that we have to navigate. But there's something about having an emotional intelligence as we go through that.

You're still going to get angry or sad or upset and move through this range of feeling or emotion or reaction. But when we're aware of that, it feels very different. Instead of being under the grip of it. And that was a big differentiation with what Jung also referred to as complexes, which are these energetic structures that tend to sit in shadow.

So they just sit beneath our conscious awareness. And they form as we go throughout life when we get into a situation that leaves an impact on us. Another way to say that, some might identify more with trauma or traumatic incidents. But impactful moments change us. And so sometimes they create this complex, this little energetic structure.

Think of it as that feeling that you have when you get a little too close to something that activates you, that upsets you. You might not have an understanding of why a certain topic or a look in someone's eye or the way somebody says something just gets under your skin, but it does.

And you start to pay attention to the patterns of, okay, it's not even maybe that person, but every time this thing comes up, I find myself slipping into this. That's an indicator of a complex. And so along the way, doing the work, the self -actualization, trusting in that natural unfolding, the individuation, we don't stop having complexes.

But we learn how to relate to them differently. We become a little more patient with ourselves and others. We might even recognize that there's a different level of tolerance needed in certain circumstances. And when you kind of deal with the complex, it actually part of healing or shifting it is dissolving that layer.

And when you feel the complex activated, it's almost like an electric fence, right? It's that feeling of like, wow, why did I just overreact? They said something so simple, but I caught myself really getting heated very quickly. So a lot of people describe it as this feeling of heat or intensity or reactivity.

That's protective. That means we're close to something that the ego. is trying to protect us from. And it's likely trying to keep us from finding that complex. Because to the ego, which is another structure within the psyche, the ego is actually what's responsible, by the way, for allowing that information to come through from the unconscious to consciousness.

So think of it as this little gatekeeper in between. And when the ego senses a threat, a perceived threat, it's going to sort of... activate and create different forms of different defenses, different responses. So individualism, coming back to the idea of that natural unfolding and all of that individuation, part of it is addressing our complexes and learning to not necessarily deal with things head on all the time, but to start moving around it, looking around it, getting curious.

Why do I feel this way? I wonder what's going on here. And it starts to soften those defenses. And the more we do that kind of work with ourselves, in whatever capacity works for us, those charges that live at the center of that complex begin to dissolve. And then it's no longer held within the psyche.

It's actually liberated. And Jung believed that that could become a source of inspiration. We could then take that traumatic moment, that event. And once we've kind of broken down some of these layers, it can become fuel for something amazing in our lives. Yeah, it's interesting on two fronts here.

So yesterday I had. I recorded another episode yesterday and I'm not sure if it'll come out before this or not. They might get moved around a little bit, but this, this gentleman, Christian Straka has worked. He was a professional tennis player himself and then now works with other professional athletes specifically on, on mindset and mindfulness.

And, um, you know, like this is his whole thing. And we really, you know, a lot of our conversation really boiled down to, to self -awareness yesterday, obviously in different capacities, but this is essentially what. you're talking about is we're developing self -awareness and hopefully being able to distance yourself from a thought enough or create some distance between a thought and a feeling and develop that awareness the other side of that is like the interesting thing and i'm curious to pick your brain on this is you know with really all of the these psychologists that have established these frameworks that that we operate on today like we're talking about with freud and younger all They they've identified the things that we need to work towards.

They're all just doing it a little bit differently. And so like when you decide to go down a path like I'd never heard of depth psychology, honestly, until I started researching for you to come on. And as you start to decide where you're going to go down in a lane, how do you is it just something that a pathway because they are, again, identifying like the different stops along the path.

all for the most part or at least on the same lines like how how do you decide what is what you're going to specialize in does it just it spoke to you i know there's the the darkness side of things which i really i want to dig into kind of moving forward with this but i'm curious what sucked you into this I love this because they're so intertwined, the darkness piece of it and what drew me to this work.

You know, there are a lot of people that choose a specialty. They'll kind of go through these different schools of thought, right, because they're all unique and they all have a lot of value. Of course, there's different points of contention and things that really they don't always get along.

But usually there is something that kind of strikes us where we go, you know what, I think I want to go down that road. I never set out to do any of this. For me, I kind of will answer it a little bit differently, I suppose, and say that I really was drawn into it, not even fully knowing exactly what it was.

Now, I am a researcher. I do love to study and I love to learn. I excel in learning environments. I'm just kind of a weirdo like that. I just love the pressure and the interaction with others. the going back and forth and, you know, why do you think this way?

And curiosity and things of that nature. But all of this really started when I was a child. And I'm not going to go through my whole entire childhood or anything, of course, but feel free to like pulling out the world's smallest violin to start. Like six of them.

But there was this weird kind of thing that happened. Two of them. One very much so is that I was obsessed with other people's basements. I don't know what it was. I didn't have my own basement. I grew up on the East Coast. So these were like those old school stone mossy kind of scary looking little root cellars, you know, things of that nature.

And I was fascinated by them because my grandparents, both grandparents on either side had. Two different versions of that kind of root cellar and basement. And I would spend a lot of time just kind of going down into the darkness, the underground. It was cool. And it was just, I always felt safe.

I never felt afraid. I never felt like I shouldn't be here. Now, thankfully, I also had amazing, you know, grandparents on both sides that knew I was this weird little kid hunting around and rummaging around down there. But at the same time, I never had my own basement in my house.

And so then when I started meeting other people, friends, kids from school, that was like my thing, like, hey, can I go in your basement? And they were like, no, that's weird or it's scary down there or, you know, things of that nature. Now, fast forward, it wasn't until years later that I discovered that the basement in Jungian psychology is the shadow and the unconscious.

There's been patterns like that throughout my life of strange interests that I had that I had no idea that were sort of reflective of where I would end up going later. Another one was I spent a lot of time in the woods because my household really wasn't the best household to be in.

I'll put it that way. And when I was in the woods, I always felt safe and I would play this game and it would really bring up equal parts of. absolute fear and absolute like magical curiosity. Every kid loves being terrified in the woods alone. Yeah. I'd like flip these rocks over.

I just kept like flipping over stones. Like what am I going to find under there? You know, one day it might be a salamander or some special little plant or something or a snake, right. Or some other type of creature or a bunch of little bugs or, but it was always something different.

same kind of thing I find myself doing that with other people and trying my best to be objective and now we all inherently have bias and perspectives and all these different things but I try to come back to what is under there what's behind that Those two things became essential as I just kept following this really windy road where I started in forensic psychology, actually more so criminalistics, and I wanted to become an FBI profiler and do all that kind of thing.

And then life, you know, Clary Starling, Silence of the Lambs, who doesn't want to be her at some point? But life had a different trajectory. And I somehow found myself, well, first of all, small child, got married. and went back to school. And here I was like in the healing arts, going for like massage therapy, just trying to find a way to make a living and to contribute to my family.

Working with people physically still led me back to working with them mentally. So there's like these weird paths that some of us just, you kind of look around and go, why am I doing this? Why am I here? Why am I, you know, on this road with this potential career that looks nothing like what I wanted?

But as I kept staying with it, another door would open. And eventually it led me to hypnosis, which then led me back to psychology, which led me back to my darker interests that I had. Because even as a kid, I wanted to understand why people do what they do for better, for worse.

And there was a whole lot of studying the worst. And I think part of that also comes with when you're surrounded by people who all different levels of mental illness or. sometimes medicated, sometimes undiagnosed, you start to develop a hypervigilance, right? This sense of intuition, if you want to call it that, awareness, if you want to call it that.

And coupling that with my curiosity, I just started to direct it more and more toward the mind of human nature. So that's really... I mean, there's lots more in there, but that's really the way I stumbled into it. So even when I decided all these years later during COVID to go back to graduate school, I had been aware of this college.

I had heard of depth psychology and it wasn't so much depth psychology itself, like the title that was appealing or anything of that nature. But I never forget like looking through some of the materials and seeing the unconscious and the shadow. And I had this intuitive, whatever, instinctual maybe feeling or sensation of always being deeply attuned to the emotional states of others.

Often. in ways they didn't appreciate um i always kind of could read the room or know what people weren't saying or why are they saying that not saying this i'm feeling this but they've got this smiley face right or this persona that's saying one thing and in my body i'm feeling sick and i'm feeling like no there's more here yeah depth psychology was kind of a home for those of us that resonate with that subtle layer of insight and have the logical associations to say, oh, these are patterns, right?

These are just these patterns. So it became kind of this avenue to explore that that was legitimate, too, because when I started to realize like, oh, what sets depth psychology apart from other disciplines or theories? One of the main things is simply they just acknowledge there's a hidden side to us.

And I had always been tapped into that hidden side from a young age. So that's really kind of what brought me to it. Yeah. I wonder, I've never had this thought before until you were explaining all that, but like the, you know, the, with the unconscious side of things, I mean, I think a lot of that functioning, you know, the intuition that we have and things like that is, is probably some survival traits that we had over.

you know in the past and maybe we're even more in tune with or at least that's where that stems from but i do wonder with some of it at least in the context of the ego that we were talking about if it is i'm curious to hear your thoughts on that do you do you think that again in the context of the ego that the unconscious mind is almost a protective measure like we talked about with how people get defensive when they're not aware of those things.

And that is why it is running almost on this background processing thread of your mind that is there to protect you in your image of yourself. Absolutely. I do feel that. And I think we all have different, you know, it comes back to our psyches are incredible. They are incredible in the way that they will protect us, whether it's the ego or even the shadow.

You know, Jung even had this, I don't think he would use the specific language I'm going to use, but just to kind of like simplify it and make it a bit concise. The shadow is connected to the ego, it's connected to the persona, and it's connected to the authentic self or the soul.

And so there are these layers of shadow that are working on our behalf and not necessarily sort of just oppositional. And so when I do believe that as we go through certain things, there can be a mixture of things. It might be, for lack of a better way to say this, but in one moment, it could be something that appears like an intuitive, uncanny knowing.

could equate to just hypervigilance in a very sophisticated form. I have a lot of curiosity around that myself, even as much as I've studied it because of living it, being really young and not having these certain thoughts and yet operating as if I knew things that I know I hadn't been told.

I mean, I would have strangers. I just wrote a book on this, but I had strangers used to like come up to me when I was a little kid. I would have this strange ability to I would just attract people or however you want to say it. That would just unburden their hearts.

I'd be like this little kid in a bathroom at like some random restaurant in the middle of nowhere. And some woman would just come into the restroom and just start telling me things. Usually it was like. Where they were sad, where they were unfulfilled, where they were hurt or confused or conflicted.

And I'm kind of like this little kid, like I'm just trying to wash my hands for a Sunday dinner with my family. I'm still having chocolate milk and eating spaghetti or whatever. So, yeah, it's hard to say. Sometimes I... I tend to go more scientific and think instinct and be protective and think driven by protective measures of the ego.

And other times it feels deeper than that. And I think something that might kind of help differentiate this is what Jung referred to as synchronicity. the alignment of certain things that are really uncanny when we pay attention. And it isn't just a sign. It isn't just we look into the sky and all of a sudden a bird is flying over.

Like, sure, anybody could find a symbol in that. But synchronicity, he was extremely specific about the alignment of things. And it had to be timing like that in the universe where maybe there is a bird that's flying above. But a deeper meaning, something that you can't really reason away.

Like maybe that bird isn't from this region of the planet. And maybe that bird is carrying something significant in its mouth that you were discussing 45 minutes ago. Like it has to be sort of this collection of not rules, but essentially just more meaning than than just a.

What is the word? Coincidence. You know, coincidence, things coincide, they come together. But synchronicity is like there's something in it that leaves us going. What was that? And I do believe in that, too. So I don't have a fixed position on instinct or intuition, but I do resonate with what you're saying about the relationship between those things and trauma, too, and environments.

It was pretty apparent that you believed in synchronicities as you explained your path to getting here. I've had, I think, one other guest on that was really big into Jungian psychology. dr betty kovach was a pretty pretty recent episode i don't know maybe 15 or 20 episodes ago but like very it was interesting you know so i i had a framework from talking with her for two hours and then you kind of talking through i was like this is all clicking like this is definitely this is your thing it's it's funny uh i don't know it's interesting what you said with the almost the hypervigilance uh maybe presenting itself at least consciously in our minds as an intuition even though our body is probably subconsciously noticed a bunch of things as it is you know analyzing the surroundings even though we're not paying attention and i i realized i don't think i don't think since i've been blind obviously i'm thinking on the spot here but so could be wrong and it's been seven and a half years so i definitely could be missing something but i don't think i've had the feeling that someone is staring at me where you know, like people who can see, get that.

I used to get that. And I wonder, you know, it's that same thing. It's all of that is, is that you saw something out of the corner of your eye and didn't realize it, or at least your subconscious mind didn't and knows, okay, someone's looking at me. And so when you look over and they are looking at you and then they turn away and you're like, okay, how did I know?

It's because I've been told out in public, like people stare at it all the time, like when I'm out there and I just realized, yeah, I don't think I've ever felt that. Interesting. That's a great example. Yeah. But with the ego and some of the darker side of things, I know you wrote your dissertation on psychopathy and kind of in the framework of some of these things.

So let's talk about it. I guess on one hand, why are we so drawn to all of this? As humans, we are drawn to the actual dark things, the serial killers and the psychopaths. It is this morbid curiosity that we have, and I'm sure you probably have some of that, and that's why you became a death investigator.

But let's dig into psychopaths in your dissertation. I was not able to find a full version of it, but I was able to read the abstract. Oh, excellent. Yeah, it's currently loading, which I think they said takes up to three months because they technically just finished it June 5th.

So it should be ready by September, hopefully. As far as on ProQuest, and that's where people can find it. So, yeah, psychopaths, you know, and darkness and why we're drawn to these things. There's a lot of pieces in there I did cover on true crime and our attraction to certain things and aversion as well.

Right. And why we might find things really disturbing, why we are kind of magnetized to them. And I like to just say in full transparency, I can kind of only really speak to this through my own lens, right? That's the only view I have. And so if this doesn't resonate, of course, it's not the only way.

But when I was a kid, I did have some really interesting things happen where I grew up. There was a missing woman. who ironically, she disappeared when I was, I have to look it up. I did the research on my dissertation. I was somewhere between 8 and 11 years old.

She was 27. I know that to be a fact. And she disappeared. A couple months later, they found her body. And unfortunately, you know, it was a homicide. So that was a cold case for 37 years. And it's one of those moments where I just remember being a kid and having this strange feeling of like, oh, that can happen.

The world isn't what I think it is anymore. This idea, right, this enchanted view all of a sudden is sort of shattered. And sometimes we have a single moment and other times it's lots of those things. But that for me was a defining like, why would somebody hurt somebody like that?

Then the weird, there's also a dark side to the synchronicities. Because then all of a sudden, and I didn't know this until I started writing this dissertation, I started discovering there were family connections to this woman, to the bank that she worked at. That's where we used to go when I was a kid.

And all these detail after detail, let's just say, so many synchronicities between a missing woman who I thought was a complete stranger to me, only to discover there were these layers of connection. So there's that incident. But then there were two others. I actually I actually got in trouble when I was like six, seven years old.

We used to do this thing called show and tell, you know, where you bring something in and you show the kids and people are like, my dad's an officer. Here's my, you know, dog, you know, bow or whatever. I'm like, here's a newspaper article where they found legs in the river down the street from the house.

And I didn't think of it as edgy or cool. I just it was. I remember the instructions being something like world events or local news. And I just like a little kid with those little safety scissors cut in this demented, morbid article out of a newspaper, bringing it to school.

And then the teacher saying to my mom, like, you know, what's this about? I had the little talk at home of, you know, we can't do these things. But I always had that. It wasn't necessarily. And it was a curiosity. It wasn't, there wasn't a ton of fear.

There was more like, what, what is going on here? And so anyhow, there were multiple incidents and events, two active serial killers in the area where I lived, a crazy, unique homicide story. Then there was that missing girl, right? So all of these different layers just put me on that path of wanting to study these behaviors.

So fast forward, I'm in the school and, you know, this depth psychology program. And it's like, well, what are you going to write about? What is your dissertation going to be? And I'm like, well, probably the shadow and maybe psychopathy. We'll see. And I'll tell you what they tell you when you're writing a dissertation that the subject chooses you.

And I felt haunted by those things. It's as if they came back around in my mind and my memory. And we're like, look at us. Not literally, but symbolically. It's just how I felt. And so when I took that on, I decided to go back into my past and look at some of those cases and situations.

Well, here's the crazy part. That article I brought in, I found out from a relative who I didn't know any of this until the research. Now, mind you, that was 37 years ago. The person that was involved in that case one of the detectives was my uncle who actually found was there like when the legs were called in that they found in the river from that article that I got in trouble for submitting to school and then there was another friend of the family that was killed and by the other serial killer in the area so again the synchronistic weird connection started coming to my awareness through the research and I started to go like what is this why are these things so close to home And I just wanted to write about it.

I wanted to dive into it and I wanted to understand it, which began with me thinking there was something wrong with me. Like, is there something wrong with me that I'm drawn to all of these dark things? And when I got really honest with myself, I realized that I am someone that loves the truth.

I got in a lot of trouble for exposing the truth and people in my household. you know, family unit and things growing up because I didn't understand secrets. I didn't know how they were supposed to work. I just wore my heart on my sleeve. And so it was kind of strange to be like this very loving, deeply feeling person who's like, I'm going to take on death and these horrific crimes.

But what I realized. is that some of us really do believe in justice and telling the truth about difficult things. And I held that as my anchor the entire time I wrote that dissertation. So I did my best to be honest, but not glorify the perpetrators, not go down these rabbit holes of making them like superheroes.

In fact, I deconstructed that as well. Like, why do we obsess over psychopaths? And I think it's because They have a very modern, mythic component to them. Now, Jung did say something to the effect of, actually, it was James Hillman. It wasn't Carl Jung. James Hillman was the founder of archetypal psychology, very much in alignment with Jungian psychology and archetypes and things of that nature.

But pretty Jung. But yeah, but very Jungian. And said something to the effect of, you know, the gods haven't disappeared. They've just come back as diseases. And I was like, oh, that's so interesting. We think about the gods of mythology. We used to tell stories. We used to study myth.

We used to look at fairy tales and look at these narratives to tell us something about the psyche. And so that became a big part of my research was looking at one particular serial killer's psyche from the research, from video, from audio, from all the materials, the crime scenes, all of it, and applying that through a mythic framework.

to say what is going on here. And one of the reasons I think we're so drawn to this, specifically in Western culture, speaking more specifically about the United States, because we have the number one, we rank number one for serial killers. It's over 3 ,500. And second, I believe, was the UK with like 130.

So we're just by far, we have the most serial killers that are produced. in our country. And I think there is a lot to be said about our blind spots and our shadow collectively and why that figure gets away with what they do and operates the way they do.

And by looking at ourselves and our blind spots, I think we start to expose some of those vulnerabilities that they exploit. So all of this is... It has a very mythic component, like I mentioned. There's mythology that's layered in. There's symbolism I used. There's something, a phenomenon in astrophysicists or astroscience, whatever you want to call it, the black hole, right?

When we study the black hole, we don't have the equipment strong enough to do so. Anything that gets close is destroyed by this phenomenon in nature. And so the way that we study the black hole is by looking at the path of debris that surrounds it, the damage that's done.

And the same thing goes for psychopathic personalities. These people are really difficult to catch. They are highly intelligent. And for that reason, there's often a wake of chaos. pain that surrounds them. So we kind of trace them through looking at that path of debris. So there's things like that, some symbolism, mythic components, and then real forensic case studies that I layered together to kind of put this whole piece together.

And then I titled it, Who Carries Our Darkness? Now, that's not to say that serial killers are scapegoats because they have obvious responsibility and the horrific nature of crime and what they're contributing to. And there is a bit of collective denial in how we do similar things to our planet, to each other, to our resources, consumerism and these other things.

And so I drew the parallels between all of that. But it all started from these earlier interests in seeing. The ego defenses and other people, I wouldn't have called it that when I was 7 or 10 or 15, but I did. I would see, sense, and feel where people would shut down, where they would go quiet, where they would get angry, right?

So that was the driving force. Yeah, so let me direct this a little bit more. What do you think, in any sense, because in the... It wasn't clear from the abstract. It seemed like, and I know you just explained probably or granted some light on how you maybe abstracted some of this or separated certain things or drew these parallels between how we view psychopaths.

But I got the sense that maybe. I mean, you just used it as well, the word the scapegoat. Do you believe that they play the role of the scapegoat in society? Or can you speak more to that part specifically of your thesis? Absolutely. So specifically, I would have to say then that the case study was Jeffrey Dahmer for my thesis.

I chose him just because it was one of the most abhorrent crimes that has been sort of... talked about and revisited and doesn't seem to go away, right? It's like everything that happens over time through the media, through the news, he's just sort of up there in the horrendous nature of what the crimes he committed.

So he kind of stood out as a focal point for the study. One of the ways that I addressed that and took that on is also looking at the patterns between Dahmer's personality. And these mythic tales. So we have dark fairy tales and things of that nature, which the originals were not watered down.

They weren't changed. They weren't altered. Well, they were changed because there's many versions. So I guess a different way to say that is they were altered, but they were kept intact with the horrific, terrible things that would happen. We as a society have this tendency to turn away from the contrast of life.

We don't want to look at the negativity. We're told to focus on the light, focus on the positive, which is valuable. We want to do that. We want to be optimistic. We want to have a destiny or drive or desire, things of that nature. But along the way, we are met with these different opportunities and experiences.

And the scapegoat idea is essentially that there's always a figure. And it can be within the family. It can be within the community, the government, you know, these different organizations or bodies of people, family units, things of that nature that sort of are enacting the hidden part of the group.

And so that's the idea. And it's not always so literal to say. Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal who was murdering people. It's not to say that is exactly who all of we are in collective unconscious or anything of that nature. But if we come back to patterns and the mythic behavior, the looking at what the underbelly is of some of these things, we can trace different components.

When specifically, though, in Dahmer's personality, what I looked at is potential driving forces, not excuses, not just saying trauma, things of that nature. I got away from nature versus nurture because that is ongoing and we will never really, I don't think, ever settle that debate. I think it's both.

I think it's always both in these different situations. But specifically with Dahmer, what I saw. was that when people did speak up and try to say, hey, there is something wrong here, they were ignored. They were shut down. They were denied. They were dismissed. When people in the community who happen to be gay men would say, our friends are missing.

Our brothers are missing. Our sons are missing. Same thing. And so again, these are the blind spots we can see when we look a little closer going, okay, why are we? devaluing this one facet of human life? Why do we look at this group as being less valuable than this group over here?

And those types of predators bank on that. They want us to be blind. They want us to be divided. They want us to be able to argue and to devalue certain... people because it allows them then to get away with these crimes. So I looked at those kind of patterns as well because Dahmer, there were so many, there were so many different layers of communities that were impacted with those blind spots and with, there's a question of race.

Why were the victims chosen? This is like all like very common themes in the, these narratives too is. hey people were people were surviving attacks and then coming out and telling the police and being ignored people who were and it's always you know these again you said these these killers are very intelligent that's how they are able to become serial killers and they're being it's common they typically they'll go after sex workers or homeless people or like obviously in dahmer's time he could go attack gay men because it was a different time and that wasn't widely accepted and so it was still this group that wasn't looked after the same but these are all very very it's it's like the the classic prototypical serial killer you know mo to find the some that you know this this subsect of society that people don't care about as much you go after them which is interesting but with this so you're oh i guess what so what are you saying with the blind spot you're pointing out that these are the commonalities and i know there's more to it with the and with the other things that you describe but i'm trying to get more directly to what your assessment of psychopaths was in the context of our larger or our collective Western society.

Absolutely. Yeah. There's two main reasons or two main facets that I could kind of like summarize pretty easily. One of them was a fear of intimacy. And that isn't just sexual in nature. Intimacy means into you, I see, right? It requires proximity to people, to understanding. It requires empathy.

It requires compassion. It requires us to say, I want to feel vulnerable enough to be seen. And I'm willing to be present and grounded enough to see you. And in a fast -paced, moving society where people are a little narcissistic, right? A little overly concerned with themselves. Less tolerance for others.

We see it on social media and the online world. Forget it. It's everywhere. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody's judging and shaming. So those blind spots. But that main piece of it was intimacy. And our fear of that can cause us to do absolutely... horrific things. It can be pathological, not saying we're all pathological, but even just that one idea alone gives us plenty of ground to look at to say, okay, how does this show up?

Where is my fear of intimacy? Is it in being vulnerable with the people I care about? Is it being more honest and authentic in the way I show up in the world or something else? And then the second thing was about disconnect. We also will do absolutely terrible things when we are deeply disconnected from ourselves.

Now, this could equate to, on a pathological level, severe dissociation. It could... Like Dahmer hiding that he was gay. Right. Because of that nature, distancing ourselves from things. Now, remember, that's what the ego does. One of the ego's primary functions is to distance us from something that could be perceived as painful.

And we form ideas around that as we're growing up, as we're influenced, inner world, outer world, all that kind of stuff. So for sure, there's that idea. And with that disconnect. There's all sorts of things. There isn't necessarily one linear path that says this is what disconnect looks like, right?

For some of us, it might be the way we lose ourselves into an addiction or a substance, right? To numb, to not feel, to calm or quiet an inner voice, a feeling, a sensation. Dahmer did that too. He was a severe alcoholic at a young age. And again, these aren't excuses, just interesting sort of parallels.

But that disconnect, I feel, is something that we hear all the time about how we have the Internet, social media and all of these things and yet feel more separate than we ever have. So one other thing I just want to say quick on the scapegoat. This is why I think psychopaths are also sometimes called monsters outside of them just doing terrible things that deserve to be looked at and held accountable for.

Monsters originally were viewed as omens, warnings for society that something... was out of alignment, that something was wrong. They would actually come to tell us to say, hey, look at this. There's a problem here. So if we look at that sort of mythically in that way, we could say these figures represent a really deep problem.

We don't need to have a serial killer in every household to demonstrate this, which is, I think, part of the reason why we have the ones that we have that stand out in the media. It's that, again, that collective sort of like. Here's all these layers. But that was sensational.

Yeah, exactly. We glorify instead of understand. I think a lot of that is a more of an issue of our media system. And again, the both, both conventional or, you know, classical media and social media in the sense of, you know, clicks are what make money for. news organizations now and social media is algorithmic and trying to do anything to keep you engaged a lot of which is driving division and echo chambers so it's i wonder because it's you know it's that you what you see and on it in a digital world is very different from the world that you see when you actually go out and interact with your community and i wonder how much of it is that do you know with the the serial killer numbers that you posed Were those adjusted for population?

The last, the most recent number I want to say came from 2023 from that specific statistic. I'll have to go back to see in my references which website it was from. I just, that's the one detail that stands out. It was the most recent one I could find and it was updated last in like 2023.

Okay. Cause I'd be, I mean, you know, if we've had 3 ,500, but the UK has only had a hundred something like population wise, I wonder if that actually checks out or not once you adjust it to, but I'm also curious, you know, as we look at this, it is interesting looking at it mythically, but you know, when that, I think you, you mentioned fairy tales earlier.

I think fairy tales were allegories that we've used to convey these. these stories and these warnings in a you know way that can be consumed in different formats and in that kind of transcend one specific event these are lessons being passed down through story so but also with the you know you talked about monsters being omens i wonder Do you think that's an appropriate lens to look through this at, given that those when that was the way that people view the world, that those monsters being omens, we're talking on a much smaller scale of population.

So you might have one monster in the community. And so it's not necessarily representative of things being any worse today than they were back then. You know, the world has on. all measures, quality of life is better now than it ever has been before. You know, we're less violent than we ever have been and all of these other things that, that isn't an appropriate way to look at, you know, the number of serial killers that we have necessarily being the world is in this, this much more tumultuous place simply just because of the scale and that, you know, there are sick humans that will do these things.

And so when you scale up the number of humans, that number scales up alongside it. Hmm. You know, it is an interesting thought, and I'm sure there's always going to be those hidden influences and divers. And also, depending on community, depending on what's more rural, what's more suburban, you know, things aren't like they used to be.

They're not as spread out. There's not as much required for us to get around, to be with one another. There was a lot more in the past ways for people to... hide. We didn't have the technology. We didn't have DNA. We didn't have these different test methods that we have today that allow people to be exposed more quickly.

So there's certainly factors, things of that nature, I would say that influence all of this, which is why I kind of went more with just what are the patterns between them? What is it speaking in the modern time? So one of those things that stood out to me is even how we try to change literature.

So we've tried to kind of water down those older tales through movies and shows and things where we took the meaning from, let's say, Cinderella or Snow White that we wanted to see and made it more fairy tale in this way of magical thinking instead of what it...

actually was meant to be. You mentioned allegory, but also reflecting psychological patterns, which is something unique to Jungian psychology is they go really deep into the different patterns that are being shown in how to deal with predatory behavior. What is done when something happens in a community? You know, it's these tales didn't shy away from it.

And I do think that's something different. For modern day, where we are trying to shield our children, wrap them in bubble wrap and keep them safe. And of course, we should do our best to raise them well and make them see the beauty in this world and not just be afraid.

And I wish someone would have told me the truth about life. I found out anyway. So there's something along the lines, too. And this could also be in full transparency. me viewing life through the lens of a female in the world who doesn't always feel safe depending on these different circumstances.

So that's something else I noticed in this study was the increase of women in law enforcement and the FBI in the justice system and working with violent crime. There's a huge spike. And the amount of women that are drawn into these areas. And I think a big part of it is because it gives us this sense of being able to do something with what we might feel about being in the world with so much violence and chaos.

But my argument around the fairy tale piece of it is I've watched women who have suffered greatly from horrific and terrible things find themselves in a story. And not in a fantasy way of escape, quite the opposite. Not only do the old school fairy tales show you where you're lost, where you're dismembered, where you're cut to pieces, where you're buried, where all these terrible things happen.

They always show you how to redeem yourself. And I don't mean by being rescued by a prince or something of that nature. But there's this belief in Jungian psychology that there's always a redeemable quality. And so if you stay with the original tale, and they're disturbing, they're difficult to get through, you sort of balance the idea of light and shadow and darkness and things of that nature instead of avoiding it.

And I think that's a central component to this entire conversation is avoidance. how we approach things. And I think that's one of the pieces that keeps us from seeing the truth about things that we don't want to see back to the ego. Right. Yeah. So it's complicated, but yes, of course I do think there's layers like you're speaking to.

We have all these senses and like the world is out there. It's, it's interesting. i've been reading this really great book called the coddling of the american mind by jonathan i think it's height or hate it's h -a -i -d -t uh he's got a co -author but um i think he read the book and so that's why his name is stuck in my his name is stuck in my head of the two authors but he's a social psychologist and he really he picks this apart um specifically with the you know the rise it started in in 2015 of the very very sensitive and also very activist slash social justice culture that came started to rise on college campuses around 2015 and then you know during that what was what is was the woke era and that he draws it all back to that this all has all stemmed from the same thing this safetyism that has arisen in our society and it was all through good intentions of trying to protect protect people from the hard things and it's the uncomfortable things and these challenging things in life.

So far as at the extremes of, hey, there are no winners at this soccer game and we're not keeping score to whatever other thing could be watering down these fairy tales over time. And that it does have a negative impact on people's resilience and their endurance of things, whether that be just general discomfort in a social situation or, you know, up to whatever it, we have to go through these lessons in life, you know, experiencing your first breakup in high school where you get your heart broken and like, you realize what it's like to, to lose someone or to lose a dog.

And like, we have to feel those things. And it's very, it's interesting to hear you talking about it, even like down to this. this level of it's yeah i've never had someone i guess go that far back and point out that we've done this to ourselves on on such a base level as watering down old fairy tales yeah yeah it's it's it is interesting to think about and we do it in a lot of different ways and then we glorify things as well so instead of becoming curious about this figure let's say the psychopath as a individual who We could say is deeply disconnected, disturbed on some level.

That's clear, right? Any normal person is not going to respond that way or cause harm in that way unless there's something going on there. But to almost make them like a modern day superhero in a twisted kind of way is another interesting phenomenon, like a curiosity I had in.

Even myself, like, why am I drawn to these individuals? And I'll tell you one other little piece that came with that is when you meet someone or you've known someone, this could be a family member, it could be a friend, it could be whoever, a boss. And all of a sudden you see them one day at their worst.

There's something interesting about that alone. Somebody being one way who you think they are. And maybe they are that way. Or maybe it's an act. You see what they're capable of. Yeah. You know, there's something in that. And I think I don't know about you if this has happened to you, because, again, I only have my frame of reference, right?

But ever since I was a little kid, I would notice people would show me their darkest parts. And I could never quite reconcile or understand why, because other people seemed to be fooled by them. It could be. anyone from an aunt to a grandmother to a, you know, whoever, to a teacher, they would slip.

It's almost like the, they lacked control or composure. And I mean, in intense ways like violence or, or I once. found myself in a situation where this one person was screaming at this other person they didn't even know i was right there in the corner and when somebody else walked into the room they completely shifted and adjusted themselves and i was like what was that and why do i always see that so that was also a piece that kind of drove me to look at these things to go And that's what I learned in Jungian psychology about the relationship between the shadow, the persona, the ego, and those layers, which also show up in the fairy tales, which is another reason I'm kind of always looking at that psychology.

But yeah, there's a lot of layers to all of this and how we show up in the world and what we let people see. Well, it's a weird, weird thing that we do. That's why, you know, it's like dating someone, you know, like it's like, OK, once we live together, I'm going to see like what you're really like, you know, like and not in a negative way, but just like, OK, now we're not on a date for five hours or you're spending the afternoon together.

Like I will see what you're like when you're exhausted and you're tired of being around me and or whatever. Or when you've had a bad day, how you handle that. And it's it is a weird. I mean, I think that's because we are social creatures. And so that's, that it's something that we do.

And, you know, even like a dog is submissive to, to strangers to try and get, you know, approval. Like we, we seek that and it's, but it is a weird little dance that we do. Absolutely. And it, you know, the, I really do. I think the fairy tales are, are probably.

And I know we know when some of them originated and when they were written, but I think some of the older ones were probably, you know, wisdom that was being passed down before we had written language through story. Just like the Bible was, you know, whether, whether you believe that is the Bible is a, you know, a true book or not.

Like it was, it, we know it was in oral history for a long, long time before it was ever written. And that's been. How a lot of our history was recorded was through stories like that before we could actually write them down. Yeah. Yeah. The symbols and the inherent sort of meaning.

Right. And some of those things that and for the most part, we all seem to kind of collectively agree on certain themes, you know, not every detail, but there's certain overarching themes that are kind of like, how did that happen that in Egypt at this time? this story was being told while at the same time in Greece over here, the same dynamic, like there's some really interesting history like you're speaking to where we can't even determine and people will never agree on, you know, where these things originated because some of these stories were floating about in places where it was nearly impossible for them to be connected.

So I think that's kind of fascinating too to think about. Yeah, I've been getting into the ancient history stuff in the past. i don't know year or so and like seeing that and that they're all it does seem that a lot of these ancient civilizations which we continue continually are finding older ones which is kind of crazy you know the the human timeline keeps going back and back but they all seem to have this story of a flood myth and a lot of them seem to have this this story of you know there being a singular figure that comes along and is passing along knowledge and wisdom of how to live even in its entirely disconnected places of the world like all having these very similar it is it's strange and it's and elements too right like some of them like i recently did an incredible training with one of my um A woman who I've just admired, she actually kind of put me unknowingly put me on this path as well.

I read her book. Her name is Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. And she wrote this book called Women Who Run With Wolves nearly 25 plus years ago. And she's a Jungian analyst. And anyhow, I just got back from a really deep dive training with her. And she was talking about this and she mentioned, she's like, go to your far back people and do the research.

Doesn't matter where you came from. You will find back in history that everyone had a sun ritual. Everyone had some type of way that they woke with the morning light or how they closed out the day. And I thought that was interesting because I did do some of that research and on parts of my ancestry I had never even considered before.

And she's like the sun was such a central figure for a lot of these cultures that that to some was that being. And then there's this idea to others that maybe the sun became more literally viewed as the sun as in a person individual. Right. So there's. And I don't have a definitive stance on any of that.

I just find it to be really interesting to kind of think about the symbolism of these origins of some of our ideas and stories like you mentioned that are passed down. 15, 20 ,000 years ago. And that's, you know, the only no, or the only reason we can date that far back is through carbon dating.

So you can't date the rock. It's things that they're finding around the rock or the mortar that was holding the rocks together, which could have been from repairs that were done, you know, who, who knows how long after the thing was actually built. And it's just, it's, I don't know.

I really, it does make me wonder more and more like how, how many times have we done this before? Right. Yeah. But I know. You reminded me of that thing in my childhood of flipping over the stone. Like, what's behind that? Where does that come from? It's constant movement to go back to the origin of something, I suppose.

Yeah. I don't know. It's strange once you start digging to start turning over more and more rocks. And I mean, there's never been a better time to do it now. There's so much interesting stuff out there. I really I wanted to make sure I got a chance to ask you about this death investigation stuff, too.

I know you've done it on on the research side, but I mean, what I guess what were you hoping to do becoming a medical legal death investigator? And what does what does that work look like? Is this, you know, cumulative research or are you looking into specific cases?

What are what are you doing with all that? Such a good question. So first, I'll just kind of describe it because it's a very strange thing that I didn't even know existed until I found this entire training program. So a medical legal death investigator, also called death investigator for short, operates in more counties and states throughout the United States than than before in the past.

It used to be that. if there was a death, regardless of homicide or natural death, whatever, that it would fall to the law enforcement to kind of determine what happened, right? And then the medical side, the coroner's department, the cause of death. So a death investigator now will still fall underneath the medical examiner's department, but they are often called to the scene.

And they are responsible for the body. So when there's a crime scene or when there's a natural death, even like, let's say someone just passed in the hospital and it was somewhat questionable, though, maybe there was some evidence of something of tampering with equipment. So they might call in a death investigator to determine, does this look natural?

Does this look like it falls into that area? If not, then law enforcement obviously would be called in. Law enforcement would then have to figure out the scene, what happened and why. The death investigator would have to determine the cause. So law enforcement has to basically put the pieces together of what led up to that and then obviously figuring out who's responsible and those things.

The death investigator is more about the respectful care of the body. So that means evidence collection. So yes, law enforcement does that too, but the death investigator will sometimes have to be the one to draw fluid out through the eye, which is interesting for toxicology because it's more accurate to actually draw out the fluid from the eye than it is from the heart for a toxicology report, things of that nature.

So there is some medical application to it. The death investigator is often the one that will notify next of kin. So it's usually a death investigator with a officer that will go to let people know that there's been an accident or a situation. So the job really covers quite a bit of territory from letting people know what happened to really making sure everything is collected at the scene.

Photographs, specimens. Now, hardcore evidence goes with law enforcement. We're documenting and we may be packaging. So this depends on jurisdiction because these are where the details get a little kind of funny depending on what city or state you're in. The way that that operates, then there will be some crossover that looks different than how I'm describing it.

So essentially, you're really tending to the body. You're investigating the body. You're looking for blood pooling in certain areas to determine if someone was moved. The time of death is often something that the death investigator will determine. Then all of this information is fed back to the medical examiner.

Now, they do the autopsy and they do the definitive report on everything. But the death investigator can inform that information from what they see. They also determine things based on the environment. If there were animals, time of day, as far as a shift in temperature, heat, things of that nature impact the body.

So it involved intense training around all different types of death. We had to learn the difference between a body being in the water versus on the land and exposed to the elements. Different lengths and periods of time of decomposition. We had to actually study certain insects and things for decomposition.

So it's a pretty deep dive into all of that. Yeah. It's fascinating. But specifically the types of deaths. So whether you're dealing with infants and children or adults, all of those kind of things, it really falls under the care of the body. And then again, the actual if there's a crime, if there's a homicide, if there's something bigger than that, that goes outside the body where people are involved, that is where law enforcement officially.

takes over and does their thing. So we're not really, I mean, we can interview people. We're actually supposed to interview family members, separate people, get their side of the story. So there's interviews, there's following up, there's talking to different departments and things of that nature. So you're kind of, it looks like you are part of law enforcement, but still operating under the medical side.

So it's a really unique position. Wow. Go ahead. I should say that the reason that I wanted to get into that, it really my earlier interest in in science and forensic pathology and all of those things. When I started college, my first college classes were criminalistics and fingerprinting and all that kind of stuff.

I had this resurgence just a few years ago and I was still I was working on my dissertation at this time. But I had this resurgence of interest in like, I just feel if I could have more information, it would inform my decisions more scientifically versus only mythically, only symbolically.

I didn't want to go too far down the Jungian rabbit hole of everything's a reflection or symbolic of this or that or synchronicity. I love all that. But I also wanted to ground it and saying, OK, this is what this is about. This is how it works. And unfortunately, because these positions are really hard to come by, you might only have one or two death investigators for an entire state.

For that reason, I haven't been able to apply the knowledge as far as picking up a, you know, a position as a death investigator for the county. I would love to. But at this time, there just hasn't been an opening. So instead of applied it to the research and in different cases.

And so sometimes death investigators will work with private investigators to say, hey, here's the autopsy report or here's this or that, because you are you are taught on. how to fill out certain things from the crime scene, take photographs. There's evidence, there's information that a death investigator can look at to help the private investigators determine.

So that is a way you can apply it. But I wanted to understand. I wanted to... I'm very visual, and the way that I write, you know, it's... You totally just threw me off. That was so good. Oh, my God. I just I wanted to be able to be informed in my writing and speak to something of that level.

And just to be honest, too, I have always had I've had a lot of loss, death, tragic situations in my entire life. There's just been so many things that have happened in my world around me from suicides to homicides to all different things that I felt. If I could be someone that actually gives some kind of care and tends to the sacredness of the body, I care about that.

I really do. I care about that. God forbid something happens to someone I love. I want to know that the people involved took good care. Some of that comes from losing my mom to weird circumstances at a young age. I just have that compassionate side also. Yeah, that's really what kind of drove me was wanting to understand it.

And I thought it was fascinating that that entire strange in -between dynamic existed between the medical side and law enforcement. I didn't really, I didn't know that was a thing until I came across people doing that work. Yeah, I'd never heard of, I mean, specifically there was the medical legal that like threw me off where, I mean, I guess.

pretty sure i'd heard of a death investigator and i guess it was probably just that people remove the lead the lead label but it's yeah i mean it just it's another thing like we don't talk about death really so it's feels very taboo i i i got a lot of halloween vibes reading on your website stuff like this yeah it was just It's very interesting.

How much of a science is the determining the time of death? Oh, there's a lot. There's a lot that goes into that. You have to look at the insect activity. You have to look at where the location is. You know, if somebody's in the soil, are they in the sun laying in the driveway, right?

Are they in a nice, cool air conditioned room? All of those things throw off all of that. So it's always a bit of a proximate or prop. I can't even say the word. Yeah. approximate um estimation the other thing too is when you find someone and here's a weird little fact if you find two people at the same time and it looks like they both just passed you have to say that time for both of them um and you can put it as an estimate until there's some more research and things done because otherwise in court if these documents get put forward in it and they do because we do have a really difficult relationship with death and we don't always want to know or believe that somebody somebody's last breath was taken the way it was, or they were found the way they were, or they went through what they did.

And so a lot of times there's denial, right? Or there's pushback on law enforcement or what have you, the medical community, because people are grieving and they do that differently. So if things are not labeled a certain way, it can cause a lot of chaos. You know, if there's a husband and wife both found on the ground in a driveway and one of them is labeled as passing two minutes before the other.

Well, does that mean the one that died most recently, that that family gets the inheritance, right? There's weird things we wouldn't even think about associated with timing and loss. And, you know, there's a lot that goes into it. Yeah. And stuff he would never think of. Absolutely. Just part of the, one of the reasons I was so interested to talk to you.

Like, it's just, it's so, so foreign. Wild. You have a wild career just in general. 100%. Yeah. Wow. Well, congrats on the shiny new PhD. That's very, very, very exciting. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for coming on here to share all this. I know, like you said, you've written a couple books and you're doing all sorts of other stuff.

Where can people find you? Thank you so much. First of all, I just want to thank you for having me on. It's been really great chatting with you and I love what you're doing here. It's an honor to be here. And people can find me on my website.

So you can go to melissacorder .com. That's really the hub of everything. I've got like a sub stack with my writings on forensics and fairy tales. I've got all different things, my books, my programs and things of that nature. But that's really the best place to go. So you can kind of take a peek at that.

interesting website you were talking about to see the the dark fairy tale sort of halloween vibes that are going on there yeah awesome well thanks again for for coming on and sharing all this this was awesome so thank you excellent thank you and thanks everyone at home for listening to another episode of going in blind remember if you got something out of this i mean if you're probably almost you know hour and a half two hours in here I like to think you probably got something out of this episode.

So share it around. If you have someone that you think I need to talk to, have them send me an email at contact .goinginblindatgmail .com or go over to my website at zactidwell .com. But thanks for being here and I will see you next time.