What Did Mackenzie Shirilla's Car Record in the Seconds Before the Crash?

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Let's go to another case that has been huge this week. Mackenzie Shirilla never talked to police, she never testified. The case that put her away for two murders was built on evidence. Surveillance footage, the car's own data recorder, a digital trail of threats and what investigators piece together after the crash. The question that runs underneath all of this is how do you prove a murder when the weapon is a car and the defendant never says a word about wanting to kill her boyfriend or her friend. Joining us to discuss Robin Dreeke, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI Special Agent, host to Break the Case, available wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube. Let's start here. Mackenzie never talked to police, never testified. The whole case was circumstantial.
How do you prove someone intended to kill when they never say a single word about what actually happened? Obviously, it worked. The judge said, yeah, we knew what your intent was.
But was that the right outcome? We've talked to everybody this week about this now. Jen, I'm curious to get your reaction. It's your turn to take the bat from Negan and take a swing. At Mackenzie Shirilla, exactly how you would like.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:27)
All right.

**Tony Brueski** (1:27)
The piñata is yours.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:31)
When you're talking about cases, when you go in as a case agent, you should never think, oh, I'm going to rely on getting a confession or rely on what we're going to say.
The way to go into a case is saying, listen, I need to look at all of this evidence objectively, see what is out there and piece together a case to your puzzle that doesn't involve a confession. Because then if you get everything put together, that's when you go and talk to the person, that's when you have everything on the board that you can hopefully convince them it's in their best interest to talk to you about what happened. In this case, she was smart, never said anything. But come on, this evidence is overwhelming, her digital trail is obnoxious, but they have the car, she's done.

**Robin Dreeke** (2:22)
I like that digital trail is obnoxious. The debate all week Jen, so this is what we'd love for you to weigh in on. Here's the debate. There is no debate that her actions resulted in a death of two people.
That is it.

**Tony Brueski** (2:39)
Irrefutable.

**Robin Dreeke** (2:39)
Irrefutable. That's the word I circumvent for. Thanks, Tony.
So, irrefutable that that's what her actions caused. What we keep going back and forth on all week is what was her intent? Because, again, we keep going to that intent thing. The judge says her intent was to kill her friends. Again, kind of paraphrasing there. And some of us are saying, well, that doesn't quite fit the data sets that we're getting on this because we don't see her being suicidal. We don't see her intentionally wanting to murder someone. Although, because she's a stupid narcissist and she's using the vehicle as a fear lever of manipulation like she's already done before, that her intent was to manipulate people's compliance and they happen to die, including almost herself. And so I guess that's what we're kind of looking at is, where do you line it on that from what you're seeing from your experience? Do you think the intent was to murder or is the intent to use fear? And they died because of her stupidity.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (3:38)
I think the intent was to murder. I agree with this judge on this. Look at what we have before us. Two dead people.
Cool. So that's where I lie on it. You don't race a car at humans and not think they're going to die unless you just literally don't understand the outcomes of something like that.

**Tony Brueski** (4:02)
And that's where I think it lands. Yeah, and that's where we're going backwards, yeah. Did she understand? Just like some idiot that doesn't understand the power of a weapon, of a gun, if you will.
You know, obviously, there are certain things you do and don't do with a weapon, loaded or not, you take it seriously. There's idiots out there who don't understand that, that wave them around, that do stupid shit. And then sometimes, oh, surprise, that's a loaded weapon. And you thought it wasn't. And it fires and it shoots somebody. Now, because they were stupid and waving it around, doesn't mean that they intended to murder somebody. But the result of their stupidity and their actions and their narcissism and all of that resulted in this. Is this similar to that? How is this different than that, I guess?