Caleb Flynn's 100,000 Messages and Kohberger's Family Just Spoke

Tony Brueski (0:02)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

Tony Brueski (0:09)

Today we are digging into one of the most twisted aspects of the Caleb Flynn murder trial, his phone records. The prosecution brought out over 100,000 texts between Flynn and his mistress, including messages where he explicitly talks about staying up till 4 a.m., trying to figure out how to kill his wife, Ashley, without going to jail or hell. Meanwhile, the defense claims he was just saying ugly things to appease his lover, pointing out that he was sending Ashley warm, loving messages at the exact same time. So it makes it all so good. It's all that makes it more creepy to me. Joining us to look at the psychology of this bizarre double life and the mindset of the woman receiving these dark texts is psychotherapist and author Shavaun Scott, along with Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent, Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and Master Class Instructor. Break down the madness that is the Caleb Flynn trial.

Let's start by talking about the mistress' mindset, because that's really kind of what's been standing out to me. We've been looking at him, how could he do this? How could he like, let's talk about her for a moment.

We got to talk about the woman on the receiving end of the messages. When your man or the man you're having an affair with texts you that he's actively trying to figure out how to kill his wife, how does someone rationalize that and accept it and just stay in the relationship? I mean, what's going on in someone's head when their partner in their illicit affair starts bringing up the M word?

Shavaun Scott (1:50)

And she's 23, do I have that right?

Robin Drake (1:53)

Yes, now she is, and she was, I think, 22 at the time.

Shavaun Scott (1:57)

Okay.

Tony Brueski (1:57)

Well, there's the answer.

Shavaun Scott (2:04)

You can say lack of life experience, lack of wisdom, and somehow had been bamboozled by this guy into, I don't know what kind of charm he uses or what he says, when he's romancing someone. But it's easier to bamboozle somebody in their teens or 20s than it is 10 years later, right?

But yeah, with motivated reasoning, when somebody has an emotional attachment or an emotional drive to be with someone, they can rationalize just about anything and interpret reality through a lens that is distorted.

That's my best at this point. I'm very eager to hear her testify and we'll get a better sense of who she is and what this was about. But I've been in relationships where I got to a point of really wanting out of the relationship, and I've never once thought of killing the person in order to get away. I mean, that's above and beyond. I mean, I'm sure there are people who have those random thoughts, but when it moves into fantasy that they're really entertaining the fantasy, they're talking about it to other people. Yeah, a bit of a red flag there.

Robin Drake (3:23)

I'm having such a hard time with this one, Shavaun. We were just talking beforehand and just studying this guy day in and day out, which has been its own reality show really.

Here's my hard time and hopefully you can help me understand what's going on and what kind of human being, a personality type and disorder, whatever is going on makes this because I'm very used to, in my own line of work in the Bureau and in all the cases we cover here, I'm used to seeing secret place. Every human being's got secret place, which is their own place that they've identified their own shame. Things are embarrassed out, whether they took a couple of dollars off a counter from someone in your family, or you have something, some little secret thing. In the cases I've investigated, you're identifying secret place because secret place is where sometimes the various things go on because you're trying to hide it. This case is another case. This guy had secret place slash secret life. But what I'm struggling with is that typically, people that have that kind of big hidden secret, there's a lot of leakage, and the leakage comes in forms of the types of relationships, resentment, in other words, bad emotional baggage that goes along with their communication with those individuals that they are keeping secrets from. And in this case, he's keeping a massive secret of an affair with this 23-year-old or 22 at the time from an entire family who's completely entrenched in his life and witnessing the testimony over the last couple days of family members, completely oblivious, with no leakage that they're picking up on of this complete double life. And it was a complete double life. She is a worship leader inside his own congregation.