What Relationship Dynamics Did The Mackenzie Shirilla Trial Ignore?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:17)
The psychology of the relationship itself, that's what I want to get into as we're talking about Mackenzie Shirilla, the subject of The Crash, on July 2nd of 2022, less than a month before the crash, Dominic Russo texted Mackenzie that he didn't think they should be together anymore. He was 20, she was 17 They've been together for about four years, high school relationship. In a relationship, family members described as explosive, full of breakups and threats. 29 days later, Dominic was dead in the passenger seat of her car. I want to talk about this a little bit. I know we touched on it a little in our first chapter, but let's dive deeper now into some of her interpersonal relationships, especially the romantic relationship that she had with Dominic. And what it means when this type of personality is confronted with something like that, with a breakup, with somebody saying, I'm not going along with this anymore. This isn't for me.
This is because everybody likes to put themselves in the other person's shoes without considering the psychology of the person. It's like, well, if that was me here, so I would handle it. Do you have a Cluster B personality disorder?
Like, if you don't, then doesn't really matter what you think or feel. Because this person's prism, the way they're seeing and interpreting this information, the cause and effect is a very different process than a healthy brain.
So, when we're coming to this, when we have this confrontation, and it seemed like it was pretty light, it seems like Dominic was trying to handle it with his kid gloves of hands as he could, and he seemed to know why. She was explosive. You know, this isn't working out. When she gets that information, why is that so different to somebody with Cluster B than somebody who isn't? Why does it feel so catastrophic? What can the consequences be when they're met with it?

**Shavaun Scott** (2:20)
Yeah, it's a great area to explore. I have the sense from so much that we saw in the people that described them that, yes, the relationship was very volatile, but it was also very enmeshed. They spent a lot of time together.
I mean, she was living with him at 17

**Tony Brueski** (2:42)
That's another why mom and dad said this is okay.

**Shavaun Scott** (2:46)
That's okay, yeah. But they tend to enmesh with their partner in a way that rejection feels like a loss of themselves because there isn't much of a self there. And so they're incredibly dependent on their partner. And when the partner starts distancing, they start throwing tantrums and they start getting more controlling it, which is really the last thing you want to do if you want to attract someone back to you is become abusive and controlling and threatening.
But you see a lot of tantrums. And I think that we saw that going on too. People will do the suicide threats attempt to, I can't tell you how many times I've seen people having a big fight in the car over something like this. And one of them tries to jump out of the car on the freeway. I mean, there's, you know, there's no real thinking going on because there's just not enough of a person inside there. And so they're very, very enmeshed and dependent on this partner.

**Tony Brueski** (3:48)
I mean, it almost, it sometimes feels like scared animal from the perspective of a healthier brain when you're with a partner like that, where it's, when they're confronted with that, you know, like sometimes if you have like your dog in your lap or whatever animal, cat, you know, or bell rings, that animal is going to like flail and get from point A to point B however they have to. They don't give a shit who they're going to scratch, what they're going to knock over, what could fall on top of them. Like, it's just, it's just react.
And that's it. Is that a fairly accurate way of describing how a Cluster B type thinker works, especially in this type of a situation, when confronted with that sort of information? It's just, it's sheer reaction. And I guess, why, why, why is there this incapability of taking a breath, evaluate the situation before reacting, however they may end up reacting? Let's start there.

**Shavaun Scott** (4:53)
Yeah, it's a really good analogy. And that just shows that, you know, the part of the brain that thinks, that can be grounded in reality, that can come up with coping skills, that's all the prefrontal cortex, you know? That's the thinking brain. And it just shows how much a person like this is controlled by their emotional brain. And the development of that thinking brain, it's just not there. It's just not happening. And you'll see this extreme reaction. There was a case here in Portland this week, again, another familicide, where this is when it's usually a woman is trying to leave a relationship with a cluster B man.