Anatomy of an End – Episode 1, Part 3: Susan – The Final Days

In the final installment of our first case, we examine the days and hours leading up to Susan's death.

By this point, we have explored the scene and the life that preceded it. Now, we turn our attention to the events immediately before her death—the relationships, decisions, conflicts, and circumstances that may help us better understand how this tragedy unfolded.

While no investigation can fully answer every question, examining the final chapter of a person's life can sometimes reveal patterns, warning signs, and opportunities for intervention that are only visible in hindsight.

To understand how a life ends, we must first understand how it was lived. To prevent future deaths, we must be willing to examine the difficult realities that precede them.

This episode contains discussion of suicide, self-harm, mental illness, and death.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 in the United States or contact your local crisis service.

 Additional Voices Provided By:

-Major Trakida Malodonado, MA LPC Unit Commander Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office Mental Health Task Force

-Ra'Sheia Parker, MA LAPC

Follow us on TikTok!  https://www.tiktok.com/@anatomyofanend

Subscribe on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@AnatomyOfAnEndPod

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Have you thought of me, mate? Why? Have you? Look, you leave her alone. For asking me for money. You know every guy you're locked up here. You make yourself a pain in the ass for everyone. Just because you were locked up doesn't mean everybody's supposed to stand by for whatever you want. I never fucking fit that. Yes, you fucking did. I don't know what's worse. You being locked up or you being out and out here doing your fucking face. I learned it from you.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome to Anatomy of an End, a podcast where we retrace the final days of those lost to suicide through the lens of forensic psychological autopsy. Each episode, we take a step back through time to understand what was happening beneath the surface and what might have brought someone to the edge. Our goal is not to cast aspersions or assign blame, rather, we want to understand. We hope to shine a light on warning signs, missed opportunities, and the delicate complexity behind these all-too common tragedies. This series contains discussion of suicide, drug use, and mental illness. Listener discretion is advised. Well, uh, it appears that Mother Nature has decided to deploy all of her pollen reserves today, so I'm on the struggle bus a little bit, but elsewhere I'm not doing too bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:41

It's not about you, Davis. It's about the bees.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

That's right. Well, so in in this is part three, the final part of a three-part series on a young woman named Susan R. who tragically took her own life while incarcerated back in 1997. In part one, we laid out the setting, a large metropolitan jail, and we walked through the discovery of the scene, the response from officers in EMS, and the physical evidence as it was found in the room. In part two, we got to know Susan. We unpacked her development, her psychological history, and the dynamics of her relationships, both inside the jail in Unit Zebra one, and on the outside. Today, though, is where everything is going to come together. At this point, the missing piece isn't so much the what or the where, it's the why and the how. In the days following her death, multiple interviews were conducted with people who were close to her, and we're going to start working through those. But before we do that, just to re-anchor ourselves, Danett, can you take us back to that room in Z1 and briefly walk us through what the space looked like when she was found?

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Sure. It was um early morning. It was a cloudy day, and the windows into that unit are translucent, you know, for security purposes. So it was already a bit dark. The cell itself was typically what one would call a six by nine. I'm not sure of the exact measurements, but that's typically what they're called. A small cell, single bunk, and a metal bunk that came out of the left wall attached and welded in. Next to that, in the corner near the left side of the door, is a one-piece stainless tarlet sink combination. And then on the other side of the opposite wall from the from the bunk is a stainless metal, kind of like a bench and a little desk. It's probably, you know, 16 by 16 inches, and there's a little uh seat that comes out of the wall as well that one may sit on to sit and write and what have you. Uh several things stood out if you remember us talking. Um it was the meticulous way in which the room was kept. Uh her bed was made military hospital style, tight and and tucked. The her toiletries, her shampoo, her soap, her toothbrush, all that was lined up by height along the back side of the sink. The sink was clean. The desk had some letters on it. It had one letter that was ready for post, another that was not complete, uh, neither were suicide notes, however. The only thing uh else that was noticeable, really, was that there was hair on the floor uh near the door and hair in various areas that it appeared to be more hair than one would expect. It was, of course, Susan's hair. The floor had a lot of uh was damp because there was a lot of condensation, a cement floor with um some of the paint was missing on it. As I arrived, Susan was there, of course, laying on her back and CPR efforts had begun. Her top was pulled off in order to attach the AED electrodes in efforts to save her life as well. The room was, as I said, was a bit dark, and it was obvious that a ligature had been wrapped through the hatch of the door, a metal door, outside of the door, under the hinges of the hatch, which opens outwardly from the cell and back into the cell. They had cut the ligature, but pieces still remained in that position. And I learned later the exact position it was uh found upon discovery.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Interesting. And and the medical examiner had not been there yet, but something interesting did happen before the Emmy actually made it there. Her her mother was contacted, correct?

SPEAKER_04 5:33

Oh yes. Back in those days, they they typically did not remove a body, even yeah, no matter the cause of death, from the facility until a medical examiner uh was uh allowed to arrive and and and take a look. In this case, it took a long time. Um efforts were continued to save her life for at least 20, 25 minutes of very powerful efforts. But it was ultimately it was clear that the efforts were going it going nowhere. And so while waiting for the medical examiner, an interesting thing happened. It took so long that the administration didn't realize that she was that Susan was still in the building, still laying on that cold floor. And they made notice. They made um confirmation notice to the next of kin. In this case, the next of kin listed was her mother, and they did the death notice. For most people, that would be obviously a horrific phone call to receive, right? But for Susan's mother, her first exclamation to the sergeant who was tasked with making that call was somebody murdered her child, and she said something very interesting to me that was even more telling later. She said, Susan, she would never do that to me. No, not to herself, but to me, meaning this was about her, not Susan.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

And that's the first that's the only time you ever experienced that in your career, correct? A mother reacting.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Yes. I never heard that again. Also, I had never heard of what her next steps were.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Right. And as I said in episode one, uh part one, rather, you you you don't have to be a mental health professional to realize that that's very strange and disturbing.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Very strange and very incongruent to the gravity of the situation. The first thing her mother did after she hung up on the officer was getting her car and rushing to the facility, which was probably 20 minutes from where she lived, running to the front desk and demanding all of Susan's money off of Susan's inmate account. Now, for those who don't know, every person in a jail or prison has an account. It's like a banking system. From that account, money is subtracted so that the detainee or whomever can order food off the store call, is what they call it. It's, you know, it's kind of like they order off a list of items, you know, potato chips, honey buns, and what have you, cigarettes in those days they smoked in those facilities. And she probably maybe had $30, $40 on that account. And the first thing her mother wanted was not to see Susan, not to find out where the body was going, not to find out what the arrangements would be, but she wanted that $30 or $40 or whatever it was. She wanted it right now. She didn't she pitched a fit when they told her they would mail a cashier's check to her. She did not like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

What's her affect like here? Because I mean, on the surface, these words are obviously very strange. It's a weird way for a mother to react to getting the news that her daughter is dead, but like was she crestfallen at all, or did she just seem inconvenienced? Because that's what it feels like. You know, by all accounts, it was anger.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Her affect was anger. Her approach to the situation was anger and irritability at the process. She did not show up at the jail tearful. She did not show up with other people. Many people, of course, receiving news like that, would reach out to family members, and I've seen whole families come up to gather the belongings or to talk to the officials about what happened. She showed up alone and mad.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Well, we spoke about her mother at in in some depth in episode two and how she her her personality played a role in the development of Susan. And so so she comes, she's concerned about the money, she leaves. And you you have a lot of work to do at this point, obviously. You have you have you have to interview everybody that interacted with Susan in the in the weeks leading up to this day, correct? I do.

SPEAKER_04 9:35

And in that moment, I'm still, excuse me, but I'm I'm still standing up there. I'm uh looking at the scene, I'm looking around, I'm observing, and I'm also just moments past the the life-saving measures that were uh attempted. So I'm still emotionally, and I'm not supposed to say that obviously, but I'm still emotionally tied to the life-saving portion of this event. This is your this is your first psychological autopsy, right? My very first one. And now as we sit here 308 psychological autopsies later, I still remember it uh so vividly. We can agree that's too many. It is three hundred and eight too many.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Right. So you you have to reach out and sit down with everybody that interacted with her, personnel and inmates alike. You you you speak to the deputy who made the discovery initially. What what was that like?

SPEAKER_04 10:28

This is a new deputy, someone who um had only been on the job, I I would venture to say a couple of months, and she was very efficient. She was really about doing things by the book. She wasn't informed of the nuance of some of the detainees, such as Susan, and neither did she care because she was by the book. She was going to follow the rules. So when I interviewed her, one, she was reeling from the scene itself. She was crying. She was upset. And when I gave her time to pull herself together, obviously, and told her I could check back with her later. And she sat and professionally answered all my questions. You know, she was really taken aback by the death. And people don't understand that this is not a number. This is a person. And even though this is a an officer who's charged with supervising a hundred and fifty detainees in a unit and going by the book, as I said, she still cared that this was a loss of a human being. Even though this human being was someone that had been very, you know, unpleasant to her. I I use that term, you know, almost facetiously because it was way more than unpleasant. And she was very verbally aggressive and even threatened physical aggression towards this officer. Yet ironically, this same officer did everything in her power to save Susan's life. She had structured Susan, and Susan wasn't accustomed to that. Most officers who had been there a long time had reached a point with detainees like Susan that, you know, they find a middle ground. They let her fudge on a few rules here and there because you know what? It's just quieter. It's just easier to let Susan go sometimes and let Susan do what she does. She's well known to everyone, but not this officer because she was relatively new and and brand new to that particular unit. So one day they moved uh this officer moved uh Susan's cellmate out to another person because she realized doing her job that the cellmate's store call was um going to Susan.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Okay. Then you can't do that, right? You can't like give your store call to your your cellmate.

SPEAKER_04 12:47

No, you can't be enterprising, right? And you what you order is supposed to be yours. Well, Susan had a stockpile of things from all kinds of people in there that they were giving to her through Susan's manipulation and threatening and other things she does, you know. She had her ways and she had several minions. You know, Susan prided herself being the kingpin of the unit and for various reasons, and she was well known to some inmates. So her cellmate who was going and receiving and getting store call from other inmates and bringing them to Susan, as well as her own giving them to Susan, this seemed to be apparent to this officer and doing her job. She said, No, we're not doing this. Now, other officers may say, Who cares? It's their honey buns, it's their cigarettes, if that's what they want to do. But, you know, being a new person and being a person with integrity, she was trying to do the right thing. She was trying to do the right thing, and she didn't want to see anyone taken advantage of is what it was really about. It wasn't so much about, hey, I'm going to show Susan who's the boss in this unit. It was more like I'm seeing other people being taken advantage of by Susan and her minions. So she confronted, she moved the cellmate out, Susan just completely, you know, started her threatening, cursing, became verbally aggressive, demanded a grievance form immediately, which is why was she so upset by this?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Loss of control. What was her relationship like with the cellmate?

SPEAKER_04 14:20

Well, that that's something that's up for question. Uh I wouldn't say it was romantic. I would say though that uh the cellmate was perfect for Susan. She knew how to pick people and she worked another deputy to get this girl into her cell, and once in the cell, this girl was, you know, automatically pliable. So was it a a dependent type of relationship? I believe the the young lady that was the cellmate, I believe she had a dependent type of personality, I believe she was easily manipulated, and she was tailor-made for Susan. But when Susan didn't have control and was losing face in front of all her minions and everyone else in the unit, that's a big deal. You know, you may have heard me use the term narcissistic wound. Well, for Susan, I mean, or for people displaying these narcissistic features along with that borderline feature, I mean, I gotta tell you, that's a big deal. It may not seem like a big deal to you and I, but in her world, remember her world or that is that unit. Okay. Her world is not even the facility. It's not the community, it's not her home life, it's that unit. And in that unit, she cannot be denied in her mind.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Well, let's just for our listeners unpack narcissistic wound or narcissistic injury, as some people call it. What what is that, what can that compel somebody to do who does have narcissistic features? There's really no limit to it.

SPEAKER_04 15:48

It will always be incongruent to the situation for you and I to look at.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

It will seem like an overreaction from the outside.

SPEAKER_04 15:54

It will seem like an overreaction, a waste of energy, uh nonsense, actually, to some people. But you must remember this is their driving force, control, and they receive all of their self-concept from the outside in. So for her to be shut down immediately in front of all these people, uh without without discussion, for her efforts of barking as she always did, suddenly not to work, and for her to look around and see all of these people looking at her getting shut down, taking the wind out of her cells, this is huge for her.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Sure. She basically collapsed in on herself. She did. And and incidentally, that's why she was put in disciplinary for going off on the officer.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

That's right, making threats and going off and making demands. And the officer in my interview with her explained to me, you know, I really didn't have time for that that morning. We're about to serve breakfast. We're trying to line up for uh we had just lined up for pill call, and we're behind on serving the breakfast. And what, you know, what else can I do? And I have this person yelling and screaming, and I can't have that in the unit. I can't have people talking to me like that. And I think the officer was really trying to make excuses for putting her up there. And I thought about that afterwards, and I wonder why was she really determined to explain to me that she had no choice but to put her up there? And I realized that the officer took on some guilt. She didn't want to do that. I put her up there alone, and she's now dead, and I'm the one that put her there. And that was quite a bit for her to deal with. Now, some people listening may say, well, it's not as bad as Susan's family losing her, and you'll learn later that's actually not really comparable. But for this officer who is embarking on this career, who is only doing her job, and then it results in her mind, results in a death, which is not really a a really good equation there. Her putting her in up there, it's not the only reason this happened.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Sure. So so Susan's having breakfast in the box that day.

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Up on the second tier in the back of the unit where there's about eight cells that are alone and not visible to the rest of the unit.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

How many days between when she got put in disciplinary and she took her own life? What what time frame are we with? Two days. Two days. So it was two days later and she was dead. Correct. From the deputy's perspective, what is she seeing when she gets to the cell? She's not she doesn't witness it happen. She discovers it, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:23

That's correct. She discovers it. She goes up to make her rounds. When people are in isolation for whatever the reason, they're to be rounded on X number of times, you know, in a given period of time. Uh uh generally it's about randomly every 30 minutes when possible, sometimes more. And according to the security uh video, Susan was rounded on by the overnight officer on the proper time. And then this officer taking the day shift comes aboard and makes her first rounding up there and discovers Susan.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

And incidentally, these surveillance videos, much to her mother's chagrin, proved that she was not, in fact, murdered in jail by the officers. That's correct.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

Uh they're undeniable. No one entered up there at any given time during those two days except for the house lady, who, uh, if you remember that term house lady is generally equated with something similar to a trustee.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

Who is and helps the officer arrange things, get things together, cleans the common areas and and so on. It's it's a quite a job, it's a lot to do. Usually there's two or three uh on a unit that size. In this case, it was just one. And she had been up there, and and it was visible that from the security cameras that I view that she either had conversations with Susan when she was upstairs cleaning and taking, checking and delivering Susan's meals, but she had not been up there yet that day.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Well, we're gonna come back to the house lady. Um I I want to ask, is is there anything else uh in the interview with the deputy that that stood out to you when when she's describing the discovery? Is there anything else that you think we need to go into on that front?

SPEAKER_04 20:05

I think that uh it was surreal to her in in that interview because she saw the ligature uh the hatch was open as she walked towards it, but it nothing looked amiss. The door's closed, obviously it's locked, but the hatch was open, and there was a white cloth of some sort, rope-looking cloth that came through the hatch outwardly, under the hatch, back into the hatch, into the cell, and kind of wrapped under around the hinges of the hatch. And that caused her to rush over there because she was wondering, what the heck is going on? What is that? And when she looked through the hatch and through the window, she could see Susan sitting and leaning forward away from the door with her rear and lower back still against the door, and one leg kind of tucked onto the other, the other out a bit, but not moving. And so she banged on the door and no move, banged on the door, no move. She couldn't open the door because Susan's attached to the door, and so she had she cut the ligature in one spot and it was stuck in the hinge a bit, and then she pulled the door open, she said, and Susan fell forward and and and to the left a bit, and she pulled her by her, if I'm remembering correctly, she pulled her by her un you know, reached under her arms and pulled Susan completely out into the day area uh outside the cell door, just outside the cell door, as she and you can see on the security camera, she pulls her, she reaches to her collar where the radio receiver is, makes the call, the emergency call, uh, to the entire facility, and then immediately begins uh CPR.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

So radio call EMS, you come, and we're back to where we started in part one. Yes, we are. So you look at you look at everything, you you make your initial observations. What what are your first doubts? What starts to not fit that would allow this to just be written off as uh It's a cut and dry suicide.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Well, the room, first of all, uh, the room was um so incredibly neat. And so I needed to learn more. I'm like, is this always the case? Is this new behavior that just took place on her way out of this world, or is this how she kept everything? The ligature was odd to me the way it was done. There were other places in the room that would be an easier place to tie off on when you are attaching a ligature. I mean, there was the racks that came out of the wall for the bunk bed, there was the racks that came out of the wall for the desk, you know, to reach through the hatch and around was different in my training. And this was due to my inexperience in psychoautopsies at the time, probably. But my knowledge of her and her antics gave me a false sense of her being someone who probably would not take her own life. More than likely, she would be someone who, having not known a lot about her, should probably be someone who would rather fight others than harm herself. But I was obviously very wrong about that.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

And and obviously you haven't made any conclusions yet. What you're primarily noticing is the incongruence between the appearance of a completed suicide and the details in that room.

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Yes. I mean, there was no note, but you know, there's not always notes, but there was no note. There was uh a letter that was unfinished to someone that mentioned nothing about distress or reaching an end or anything like that. The other letter was pretty much of uh asking for money for her to be put on her books. These are daily type conversations that looked like, if you took a snapshot, it looked as though she stood up from writing a letter wanting some money and having a basic conversation with someone else, put her pencil down, walked over and arranged for her own death.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

And which one of these details bothers you the most?

SPEAKER_04 24:00

And that moment, what bothered me the most was the unfinished letter and the and the content of the other letter having nothing to do with distress, having nothing to do with she didn't even gripe about the officer in those letters. She was making future plans, what we call future talk. She was arranging for more money to be put on her books. You know, remember now she just lost a bunch of store call. She just lost a bunch of merchandise, we'll call it, because of the intervention of the officer. So now she's busy. I got to get some more money on my books. I got things to do. You know, that this is this is the initial assessment there looking around. The neatness of the cell was such it seemed out of place, the neatness of the cell. We're talking about a dingy, dark cell in an isolated area with just pretty much perfect arrangement of things in the cell. Sure. Uh not nothing out of place except for the hair. Now, what struck me, and it may seem insignificant, but why didn't she pick up the hair? She cleaned everything else. Why didn't she pick her hair up? Several things like that. So, yeah, things didn't make complete sense to me, but in that moment, you're trying to take in and observe as much as you can because it's going to change. They're going to come in, they're going to clean this place, it's going to be turned upside down, it becomes what we call uh a pseudo-crime scene, right? And so they they're going to be boxing everything up and personal belongings, things like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Now, Joseph, the the mental health clinician who was with a with a good degree of success was able to break through to her. What where does he come into this at this stage and what did he think was going on here?

SPEAKER_04 25:39

Well, if you remember, you know, he was not at work for a couple of weeks. I believe it was illness, but I'm not sure. And I that's why I ended up meeting her because I had to go down and uh see what she wanted a couple of times, and he wasn't there. And when I told him what happened when he came back, and uh he was quite shocked. Like a lot of clinicians, he took immediate responsibility. His questions were, what did I do wrong? What did I miss? What should I have said? And and so on. So first we had to go through a period of consoling him and educating him that that's not what how this really works. It wasn't about him doing anything wrong or missing something. I read his notes. He did an outstanding job. He it may not seem like much to many people, but he got this person to come to therapy eight times in a row on schedule and not allow himself to be manipulated and didn't give her what she wanted because she tried all the time and got her to open up.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

And let's not discount the fact that she apparently trusted him so much that she was actually angry when you subbed for him that those couple of times, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_04 26:46

She had exposed herself psychologically and emotionally to someone. Wow. What you get with a person of her personality type is something that they think you want to see because why? They need that their self-concept reinforced by your reactions to them. You very seldom get to see the real person, and yet he got a peek behind the curtain, and she still came back to see him again. That's weakness to her, that's exposure to her, and that's very, very scary more than more than anything to a person like her with those with those issues. Very scary to really expose yourself and be vulnerable. And she did that. And then, of course, as soon as they would leave their session, she'd have to turn back on Susan the the kingpin when she walked back out into the unit.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Did Joseph see anything in her behavior or her words that would indicate she might have done something like this in the days leading up to it?

SPEAKER_04 27:42

Well, that's a good question. That went a couple of directions, that subject. One was he started reading into things they talked about and then incorrectly attaching them to potential suicidal acts, you know, things she may have said, and he he said, Oh, I should have paid attention to that. That might have been her calling for help. And and it was understandable. He really felt a lot of responsibility because he was a very conscientious clinician. But what he did know that many of us didn't is that in the past, in that facility, years before and other places, she did cut herself. She did self-mutilate. Now, they were very superficial, extremely superficial. She never required stitches or a trip to the ER, but she did do that, and that's considered parasuicidal behavior. A lot of folks incorrectly separate those two. They think, well, this person's a cutter. Once they get that label, especially in jails, oh, she's a cutter. That means she's attention seeking. She'll never actually hurt herself because cutters just cut, and that's uh a big mistake. A very big mistake. One thing Joseph did, though, you know, when he received that knowledge about her past uh cutting, is that he he did what he's supposed to do. He reasserted a safety agreement with her. Uh and it's not like a contract that you sign and expect somebody to hold to it. It's a trust-building tool when we say that. He always questioned her about self-harm potential, self-harm ideation. Every session, she denied self-harm ideation. And in denying that's not enough in a session, she has to give us future talks, she has to give us her reasons for wanting to stay alive and not hurting herself, and she always fulfilled that obligation by uh expressing uh numerous uh real-world things that would keep her from wanting to hurt herself. So he had no reason to put her on suicide watch or any uh type of precaution like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Interesting. I mean, you know, I feel really bad for Joseph just for for the reason that like here's this young clinician, and he's making significant headway, and this individual that by all accounts is very difficult to break through to, and and then all of a sudden it ends like this. That has to be not just absolutely devastating emotionally, but also frustrating professionally, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Yes, very frustrating and devastating, as you said. You gotta think about this. You're in a place where breakthroughs are very few and far between uh for several reasons. One, the acuity of the individuals. Two, they leave. They bond out. You may go uh see someone and have sessions going weekly, and then suddenly you go down to the unit and they're not there anymore because they bonded out, or the judge sent them home, what have you. Because a jail is not a prison. A prison is long term, a jail's more like an ER. So here's a guy thinking, hey, I'm getting somewhere. I have this tough case, and I and I'm I'm you know, maybe we're getting somewhere. Maybe this is doing some good. And then the rug is pulled out from under him.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

That is, it's very heartbreaking. Um but the key thing is that even the people close to her did not seem to think it was going to end in death.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

No, um, and that makes sense because what is a narcissist, what is a borderline personality do? What does a histrionic personality do? They put up a front, they put up a projection that they perceive is the projection will get them the most out of whatever situation they're in.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Well, we've we've got the room now, we've got the discovery, and we've got at least one person around her who didn't seem to think it was going to end this way. So so what are we missing now? Who who else did you talk to after this?

SPEAKER_04 31:35

Oh, well, you know, uh having circled back to her therapist and s and even circle back to the whole therapeutic team to get some ideas on what they thought of this, and also part of doing that was to help Joseph's uh in his peer group there help him through this situation. I uh spoke to the former cellmate and I also spoke to the house lady because I had seen her on video speaking to Susan the day before. So this is one of the only people besides an officer that actually spoke to Susan, well, maybe the last person besides an officer to ever speak to Susan, and and as it turns out, after reviewing the video, she was.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

And being the house lady, that comes with certain privileges, even though it's a lot of responsibility as well.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

Yes, they're out of their cell most of the time. They get extra helpings on meals sometimes. They just in generally, they in general rather they they can they're watching T V more. They are in a position that's appears less stressful because they're walking about and kind of have the favor of the of the officers sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

And they know where everything is outside of the cells and stuff like that. They're not allowed everywhere, but they they kind of like clean the floors and stuff outside.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

Well, absolutely. They they may go and and retrieve the the trays from meals. They um also, you know, they are out and about, so time goes by a little easier for them. They're not locked down as long. So their days are busy, not just like Susan's days were busy in manipulation, control, and vengeance and retribution for perceived wrongs against her, while a house lady's day is, you know, goes by pretty quick because she's busy, she's doing constructive things and so on.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

And what was the interview with her like? What did you what did you glean from that?

SPEAKER_04 33:30

Well, I had two interviews with her, you know, because I went back later and we'll talk about that. But my first interview was pretty um pretty basic. You know, she told me things that I probably already knew. She said that she delivered the meals up to isolation because, you know, they don't get to get in line like everybody else. She delivered the meals up there. She had uh knew Susan from other stays there that because she also had been there several times, like Susan. She knew about Susan's activities uh in such a way that, you know, she too could have got in trouble just for knowing about them, but she didn't. She was not um very forthcoming. I sense that she knew more about Susan, but she like you know, listen, this is a jail. You don't want to be seen giving up too much information to anyone that's not locked up.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

That makes sense. You don't want to be that person in jail.

SPEAKER_04 34:22

Exactly. And so she said she volunteered to pack up Susan's stuff, but the officers wouldn't let her. And she said Susan always says, you know, outrageous things, but she just learned over time not to really listen to her. You know, she Susan threatens many things to many people.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Just going back just a second, what is it that made you think she knew more than she was letting on?

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Well, her refusal to make eye contact with me when we talked, she was so guarded in her emotions. Uh I uh she got choked up a couple of times, but then pulled herself back in. She asked me questions. She asked me questions like, Did I think it was an accident? How would she pull such a question? She didn't even know the cause of death yet when I interviewed her. She knew that there's a bunch of people ran upstairs. Later, Susan's dead. Susan's being brought down on a on a gurney, and she said, Was it an accident? And I that could mean anything. It could mean did she slip down and bump her head, you know. But I was thinking suicide, right? Because I had seen the scene. So my I was tainted in that direction already. Okay. That makes sense. She said was it an accident? That was uh interesting to me. Why? Because I was wondering if it was an accident too, an accidental suicide, though. Now, she had a long conversation with her on that video, though. They were talking a bit. And when I asked about what you were talking about, it didn't make sense because the conversation was too long for that subject. She told me that ask she asked Susan, why aren't you eating? Because I found out through her uh and by looking at the sale, and I failed to mention again, like I did in the beginning, that there was a pile of trays with uneaten food in there. And she had also not been taking her medication. She had not been taking her medication, which is not uncommon for her, but eating she's pretty commonly would eat. So she had not eaten for at least two days or day and a half. And I see the house lady talking with her for like five minutes. And when I asked, What were you talking about? She said, I asked her if she wanted me to take her trays, and she said no. Well, that takes about 10 seconds, that conversation. So something was missing there.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

So at this point, you're starting to get you're starting to get an intuitive inkling that what you're looking at is not just as straightforward as a simple suicide anymore, as if to say any suicide is simple. So what are we actually looking at here?

SPEAKER_04 36:45

Well, at that moment, I didn't know. Now, you have to keep in mind that people who live in those situations, they have their own world, right? They have a world that they live within, they have rules they live by, they have unwritten guidelines to survive in such a place in a safe manner. There's a hierarchy, a hierarchy of people in these units, you know. Um, not everybody's the same in these units. There's followers, there's leaders, there's aggressors, there's manipulators, you know, there's a cast of characters. So it wasn't outrageous to me that I believe she wasn't telling me everything, or that maybe she knew more about Susan than she let on. I that that's not uncommon at all. But in this circumstance, it was still so fresh coming from what I witnessed, my knowledge about her, and what I saw on the video, I felt like I needed to go further with that.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

So you start you start drawing the curtains back just a little bit, and and she starts to give you a little bit of something that she wasn't giving you before.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Right. Her emotions about death and in particular Susan's death, I think um brought up some things that made it very difficult for her to um not tell me everything. And so as we find out that there was a plan in place, it won't make sense to those listening to this, but you have to understand it doesn't have to. She had been placed up there and and Susan's was, as we said, uh suffering a narcissistic wound. She had lost her pedestal, she had been shut down, it did her no good to go off. She it no one cared at that moment because the officer wasn't like the other ones who had dealt with her. So the first time the house lady went up there after Susan was placed in there, a plan was hatched. And it went like this. Every day that lady, the house lady, is sent upstairs to retrieve old trays and clean at the same time. When is that it's that shift change? Shift change, she's always, every day, starting her day in the isolation area and then working her way, cleaning and doing whatever back down the stairs to the main unit. Okay? As all inmates do, they know like clockwork. What officer's working when, what officer does this, that, or the other, what officer doesn't like this, that, or the other, and so on. They also know the schedules are pretty firm and pretty much you can count on them. Across from Susan's cell on the wall, about 10 yards away, is a clock. Every day this lady comes upstairs at the same time. So here was the plan regarding time. On that given day, she told the house lady that when she comes up, she's gonna be hanging. And she wants her to really put on a big show. She wants her to scream so all the inmates can hear her screaming. She wants her to really make a scene because typically in the situation like this, the inmates won't know what's going on. They can't see up there. She wants to make sure the whole unit knows what's happening. She wants her to scream, she's hanging, she's hanging. Susan's plan was to make a very serious, serious, serious attempt staged such that she would be not only pulled out of isolation, right, because she had, by the way, had promised the officer in front of everyone that she would get out of there. That you can't keep me in isolation. And the officer said, Oh, you'll be in there, you'll be in there one month. And she cursed the officer out, you can't keep me in there. So she needed a big scene, she needed everyone watching, and she needed to make an attempt that was serious enough that sent her to the emergency room. And then upon leaving the hospital, she would be placed in the infirmary, not back in isolation. This was her plan, as maladaptive and dangerous and ill-conceived as one may think. This is the links that that a person with her personality type will go to write a narcissistic wound and an injury of that type. Now, I said, Did that make any sense to you? I told her that. She says, you know, Susan says all kind of things. She says all kind of things that make no damn sense. I don't even listen anymore. Susan's crazy. That these are her words. She'll Susan just does any damn thing. I don't pay her any attention. I was gonna go up there and this is where she broke down crying. She says, But I didn't go up there. The officer changed it. She went up there and she told me she'll get the tray. I didn't need to go up there. And I said, Oh, I'll go, I'll go. And she said, No, no, you stay down here. So now we have a second person taking responsibility for Susan's death. Okay. But nonetheless, um questions abound now. Was this all an accident? She just went too far? Did she want to go to the hospital so bad that she thought she would time it just right to where she would be just near death and they would take her to the hospital and it go too far? Or did something else happen?

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Yeah, we're well, we're gonna we're gonna circle right back to that in just a second, but I do want to ask, why didn't the house lady tell the officer once she found out that she wasn't gonna be the one going up to the unit that uh that Susan was on that day?

SPEAKER_04 43:15

Well, that's a good question, but you have to remember the environment they're in. One, she didn't want to anger Susan, because maybe that would have ruined the plan. Two, though, the more importantly, actually, is that she could be found complicit in someone else's death, and a veteran of the system as she was knew that. So she's really between a rock and a hard place. Do I reach out and try to stop this? And then what happens if she stopped it and Susan was late putting the ligature on and nothing happened at all? They just took the ligature away and Susan's stuck up there and the plan didn't go through. Two, what if she is found complicit in a Someone to take their life. You know, here's a young lady who's there on a probation violation, waiting to hear whether they're going to violate, I mean, excuse me, revoke her probation and send her to prison, or are they going to let her probation stand and let her back out the door and get back on track? And then she's caught in some mess in a jail that has resulted partially, you know, in the death. I mean, her participation didn't result in the death, but it partially resulted in at least the officer not knowing. So what do we have here? You know, I mean, she's really between a rock and a horror place.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

I suppose none of us would be able to know for sure what we would do in that situation.

SPEAKER_04 44:45

No. We can we can take the high ground, having not been a part of that world. And say, Oh, I would have told the officer I could save a life. Right. The right thing to do would have been, you know, well But it's not that easy. It's a different culture, it's a different place, it's a different environment, and she has to live in that environment. Granted, let's say her probation was revoked and she goes to prison. Well, things about her, it travels like a a telegram. I mean, it it goes with you. People in prison will know, and it sticks with her. Secondly, well, thirdly, rather, I'm losing track of numbers here, but thirdly, her own her own feelings. She froze. She was in shock. She just spoke to her the day before, and now she's dead. She is, you know, after all said and done, she is just a young lady herself.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

So what did happen here? Was this determined or was it an accident? And how do you make that determination? Okay.

SPEAKER_04 45:46

Well, if we try to walk in Susan's shoes, you know, we've heard and we've thrown around this diagnosis borderline personality disorder, which I think some people are familiar with the diet, the true diagnostic criteria for it. And we looked at her childhood and how such a personality disorder may come about with a childhood like that, developmental life like that. But we have to remember something. The old DSMs, diagnostic statistical manuals, clustered various groups of personality disorders together because they shared features. Borderline personality disorder used to be labeled or placed within the cluster known as cluster B, which included the antisocial personality disorder, formerly known as sociopath or psychopath, the narcissistic personality disorder, the borderline personality disorder, and the histrionic personality disorder. Now, going backwards, they're listed in a hierarchy. Histrionic being probably the least, lack of a better word, dangerous maybe to society. Going up that ladder, of course, at the top, the antisocial, the sociopath, psychopath. So for Susan, borderline personality is in the middle with narcissistic personality. So we have to understand the features of narcissism that were presented by her were evident. Really, she was kind of on a borderline looking at diagnostic criteria where one could have easily said, I would, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I look in a medical chart and see that she was diagnosed as a narcissistic personality disorder, not a borderline. But, you know, a lot of people think that narcissistic personalities are just males. They're not. And a lot of people think borderline personalities are just females. They are not. They really are both uh both genders uh as labeled, can find themselves in either one of those categories. But for Susan, her narcissistic personality features were as follows. She expected to be treated as special without paying the dues to be special. She expected and demanded admiration without doing anything that should garner admiration instantly. She held grudges forever. She would not take responsibility for any behaviors that were maladaptive or hurt others. She took advantage of other people. She had a lack of empathy. She had a lack of conscience. She was even amoral in some of her dealings with people. These are all narcissistic features. She spent a lifetime in young adult life and adolescent life manipulating others and using people to their, you know, for her own needs without regardless of who they were or what they who they were in her life. The borderline personality shares those features, but in Susan's case, they were pretty dominant. The borderline parts were, you know, like most people know, you know, they have a they leave a uh a path of destruction sometimes in their life because of their inability to maintain relationships. They're on a borderline between admiration and hate. They love or hate in the same breath. So if we're going to say, well, she was a borderline personality, so she probably just wanted attention because she also shares features of the histrionic, right? Because Susan always had to be in the spotlight.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

She's very uncomfortable in situations where she was not the focal point.

SPEAKER_04 49:08

Well, that is a diagnostic criteria for histrionic personality disorder. So if we're looking at this death from the standpoint of strictly a clinical psychological autopsy, we have to take those features into account. So, where is one place that those three features together would find it most unbearable to be in the world? A place where there is no input from the outside into their psychological stability and their self-image, isolation. When she's on the unit, yes, to you and I, she's locked up. You know, who wants to be locked up? Well, in her world, that was the one place, ironically, she found control in her life. Out here in the rest of the world, Susan was just one of millions of young ladies, right, in the world. And in her mind, in competition with every single one of them, including all those in the world she's never met.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

And external input was the only thing that could bring her satisfaction. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

Now, you take that. For you and I, we go to jail, we've lost control. We've lost the ability to make our own decisions. We're told when to go to bed, when to wake up, what we're wearing that day, everything, right? In her mind, though, jail was a place where she felt like somebody.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

I don't know how necessarily appropriate this is to say, but she was the world's tallest short person in jail. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:30

She was someone in her mind. Do we understand that? Most people will not understand that, but most people will not have those personality disorders and do not understand what motivates her. There's the maladaptive part of it. What motivates her will not make sense to other people. I'm not going to use the word normal, I will say average people. And with Susan, she had suffered a blow that to you and I or most people would be like, big deal. That's the absolute worst thing that could happen to her. On top of that, the lack of control. She can control no one when she's alone. She even tried to control the one person that she could speak to for five minutes, maybe in a day, was the house lady. She even tried to pull her into a scheme, always scheming, always a plan, always a plan to get back at somebody. And in this case, I'll show you. I'll kill myself. Then who's the winner? Now, to the rest of us, that's absurd. But to her, it would make sense. Now, when we do a psychological autopsy, we're looking for certain things, as we talked about in our very first episode. We're looking to find out several things. What do we want to know? Was it a determined act? That's my first question. I have to say, yes, it was a determined act, but I'll add to that its purpose. I cannot decide. I will call it an equivocal finding. It could go either way. Okay. You know, that it was an accident while trying to do something desperate, or it was planned and she let herself go. Remember, Susan's never alone. She can't be alone. Her pathology demands that she has somebody, people around her. Suddenly she's alone. Years of this stuff going on. In and out of juvie, in and out of jail, in and out of these horrific relationships, in out of the psychological energy rather needed to keep this going and manipulate people, yet always getting in trouble, never really gaining traction in the world. Now, if you talk to her, she thinks she runs the world, but believe me, there's the narcissistic feature. Inside all narcissists, inside the historianic and the borderline, is an incredibly brittle person. That's why the bravado, it's a front. Because what's inside? Nothing.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

And she was living this tortured existence where she could only see substance in herself through the eyes of other people around her because of her upbringing, where her mother probably saw herself in much the same way, which led her to behave in ways that harmed Susan and caused her to grow up to be the same kind of person, right?

SPEAKER_04 53:26

That's right. And isn't that ironic? The person she probably hated the most was also the person she wanted acceptance from. Now, circling back to my findings as a psychological autopsy, you know, I have to look at one, was it a determinant? Two, was it a murder? No, it was not a murder. That's evident. Three, was it an accident? They're again equivocal findings because her hair was twisted inside the weaving of the ligature. She had a lot of hair. Uh, but she was getting thin in certain areas from her trichotillomania. She was compulsively pulling it out, which as we said earlier.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Is that also why her fingernails were chewed down?

SPEAKER_04 54:11

Her fingernails were chewed down to the cuticles were swollen and some of them scarred, you know, bloody, scabbed over. So she couldn't manipulate the weaving of the undershirt she tore into strips, and she's trying to go through and around the hatch, back around, and then she placed this loop around her neck and then twisted her body round and round until it became taut on her neck. Because she wanted it to make a mark, probably. She wanted it to look so severe that they didn't just cut her down and say, hey, don't do that anymore. She wanted to trip out of there. Why? Because she to get out of that unit, to go the to the ER, you have to go through the main unit in front of that deputy, and she could say.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

That's the person that put me in this situation. Right. Look at what happened. You you're gonna you're gonna put me in disciplinary, right? Look at what happened. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 55:12

And also, I told you you couldn't keep me up there.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Part of that narcissism, she had to follow through. There was no choice for her. No choice.

SPEAKER_04 55:21

And so she's hatched a plan. Now, back to the question of accident. Could she have changed her mind, or maybe the ligature became too tight? She started to feel faint, uh, the house lady obviously wasn't coming. Uh, she may have reached around trying to undo it, and it's tangled within her hair. Now one could say, well, that looks like an accident. And and very well could have been. But we have to go one step beyond that. We have to say, who puts themselves in a position that it could even be possible that you could die just to prove a point, just to make your you make your point, just to show somebody something.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

It it it cannot register to most people that that thought process.

SPEAKER_04 56:05

What level is your self-worth that that you would do this? What level is your love of life, if any? What level is your respect of life, if any?

SPEAKER_00 56:16

She was willing to defile herself to get people in trouble.

SPEAKER_04 56:20

So that's a Exactly right. Very good point. She, if you look back in her history, she's ready to give her body meant very little to her. She had very little self-respect, though she put up a front, narcissism, some histrionic stuff there where, you know, hey, everybody look at me, and I'm in some ways, I can't be hurt, I can't be touched, but deep down, brittle.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

So we're about, you know, 60 seconds away from her losing consciousness. What do you believe was going through her head at that time?

SPEAKER_04 56:57

I would say that, and this is hard to talk about because I put myself in her shoes and I I I I put myself there right now. Did she panic and she couldn't get her nails because she didn't have any get them into the ligature and pull it apart? And then maybe for once in her short life, did want life, wanted to care for herself, wanted to probably in that moment be loved more than any time in her entire existence in that moment, and then she dies, or possibly she places the ligature, and while waiting for the house lady, reflects and maybe just bec has become so tired of her life, so tired of all she has to go through because it required so much psychological and emotional energy to keep up these fronts, to juggle all of these people, to continue these manipulations, to fight people, to fight her mother, to beg her grandmother, and so on. And while alone and no one to project all those ill feelings towards, as usual with her, she's alone with one person, the person she dislikes the most, probably herself. And if she felt out of breath, could there have been a part of her that said, I don't want to do this anymore?

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Just I'll just let go.

SPEAKER_04 58:17

I'll let go. So you have this idea of just not so much being determined to die, but actually being okay with dying. Now, there's a difference there. Some may say, Well, that's the same thing. No, it is not the same thing. I see it in a lot of folks who have had many OD episodes with their maybe heroin addiction, okay, opiate addiction, where they've OD'd, and luckily EMTs or hospitals able to bring them back from near death or even technical death, and then they go and weeks later, as scary as that might be, and when the rest of us may say, Oh wow, that that'll teach you, you know, that'll wake you up, and then they go OD again. I I talk to people who've had five, six, seven OD episodes that have been near death. And unfortunately, I've known many of those that are dead. How? From OD. So it's not that they put the needle in their arm to die, it's that they passively just care very little if they do die.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Well, regardless of why she let go, she did, and she's dead now, and she's been dead for 30 years. Yes. Could this have been prevented?

SPEAKER_04 59:33

You will always hear me say yes to that question. You will always hear many, many, many people say you can't prevent all suicides. As a c as the a clinician in the positions I've been in, my approach will always be and has always been, yes, we can prevent. And if we lend ourselves to attitudes such as, well, if somebody wants to die, you can't stop them. Or if they're really going to kill themselves, there's really very little you can do about it. Or people who are just gesturing, they don't really want to die, they just want attention. Cutters just cut themselves and so on. You if you lend yourself to all these myths, and they are myths, then your success rate of helping people is going to be minimal. Your attitude has to be that even one suicide is too many. That's a pie in the sky. I'm very much aware, anyone who's listening, of how even I'll use the word ridiculous that may sound to people, but that's the attitude we have to have to attack this phenomena, these incredible numbers of suicide. Anything short of that attitude, we're gonna let things fall through the cracks. Susan was another example. Could have been preventive. Okay, let's look at prevention. What does that mean? Uh could her mother have raised, uh done a better job of protecting her in this world? Would that have prevented the suicide? Yes, could possibly. If um if more officers had held her to the to account, maybe her stays in jail wouldn't have been just an extension of her life on the outside, uh, amplified by the ability to manipulate people that are vulnerable, you know, who can't walk away because they're locked in with her.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

If Joseph had had maybe one more session. One more session. And that's the reason he's so upset. And I don't blame him for that because I would feel the same way. Good point.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:32

Yeah. You know, you always think that when you lose someone uh as a clinician like this, you think, you know, what did I say? What did I not say? If I c could have seen them a few minutes before, I could have stopped it, and so on. For her, there were many things said about her, many things observed about her. As I've said, not a pleasant person, but she did end her journey in a manner that if one examines her journey, it's certainly believable. And that journey to that damp, cold cement floor where I saw her last. It didn't start with the day she got in trouble with the officer. It didn't start when she got arrested the very first time. That journey possibly started, you know, not the first day of jail, but maybe the first day of kindergarten.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

And that's that leads me to my or my my feelings about this whole thing. I think the saddest thing about this to me is that it seems like Susan never experienced even a single moment of genuine happiness in her entire life. And that makes the whole thing just just that much more tragic.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:48

I agree, Davis. That that's probably true. People who knew her may hear us say things like that, people who she may have hurt, people she may have manipulated, people she may have deceived may hear things like that and take offense. But most of those people don't know how she became that person. For other people, they hear about people becoming such people and will tell you, well, I had a rough life too, and I didn't do those things, you know. And that's that's that's wonderful. But everybody's different. And when you learn something is as important as what you learn developmentally, how you learn it is as important as what you learn developmentally. What we learn at certain ages are has much more impact than when we learn them later. And we there's no way of knowing who has the resilience, innate resilience to overcome their terrible situations and still become a good person or become a person who is reactive like Susan. I don't call her a bad person. I call her an unpleasant person.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:46

And regardless of whether she was bad or unpleasant, she didn't deserve to die?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:49

Not in that manner. She deserved to have a life as long as as life would allow. So her decision making was tainted by maladaptive development and behaviors. And she was willing to put herself in a position, accident or determined, that resulted in her death. Therefore, the final conclusion is it is a suicide.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

It's so, so heartbreaking. And this is one of three hundred and eight of these psychological autopsies that you've conducted in the course of your career. And I wanna I want to call something out. Earlier, when when I asked you, you know, what happened here, you went into a a discussion about personality disorders and clusters and the DSMs. And I want listeners to understand that that's the psychological part of the psychological autopsy.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:42

That's the clinical part.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:44

And that's that's the part that's important because we are trying the mission of this podcast is ultimately prevention, saving lives. And if you can understand what leads individuals to these tragic ends, if we can understand that, we can act in furtherance of prevention. And that is the goal of this podcast. And going forward, every episode is going to it's going to hinge on a different um, it's going to hinge on a different case following a different individual each time. Most of these individuals will be incarcerated because psychological autopsies are compulsory, they're mandatory in uh in these institutions, they're voluntary in the public sector. Yes. But this, these are the ones that we can look at the closest because obviously because you have access to that information, you've conducted them, but we're going to take this information and we're going to try to spread awareness, and we're going to bust the myths, we're going to bust the stigma, and we're going to let people know that it's okay to say the word suicide. We were talking about in pre production. Here we were talking about how you can't even say suicide on YouTube. YouTube finds it to be such an abhorrent uh word that you'll be demonetized for saying it, and that is so counter to what the mission should be in life as a human being to try to save the lives of our fellow man.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:20

Very, very well said. It it's very ironic to me that in their effort to not offend or to even some will tell you to not promote the idea of suicide, they say don't say the word. Now, to all the thousands of dedicated people out there who fight this fight against suicide, I always get these anachronyms wrong, but SAMHSA, which is the substance abuse uh mental uh health administration, services administration for the for the federal government, they they'll tell you that um one of the top myths about suicide is that saying the word suicide will cause suicide that will give a person the idea of suicide. When it is absolutely the opposite, we must use direct, cold, sobering language. We must remember that even to Susan, the idea of dying probably had a romantic underpinning. And the word suicide probably never even entered her mind. No, it's more of a transcending thought. I'm gonna leave this behind. I'm gonna leave these troubles. I'm gonna show those people they'll miss me over here, and they'll be sorry, these people, you see. But when you say the word suicide, when you say phrases like, do you want to kill yourself? Do you want to die? Are you trying to end your life instead of saying things like, Okay, you're not gonna do anything weird now, are you? You're gonna be okay, right? You know, tiptoeing around it. When you say it in very direct terms, and I get upset about this, but when you say it in very direct terms, it's sobering, everyone. It's sobering. It brings their feet back to the ground. No, no, I don't want to die. I know they even look at you like, well, that was a weird question you just asked me. Well, yeah, because it's a very important question. And so even for Susan, I wonder if the thought of dying, when she put that around her neck, and it got tighter and tighter, and maybe she couldn't loosen it, or maybe she didn't want to, did it cross her mind in such a way that it fed into her personality disorders, which was I'll show people this will be the ultimate revenge. You know, people will be sorry, people will miss me. Think about that a moment. People will miss me. Who do we miss? Do we miss bad people? Do we miss people that we don't like? No, we miss people that we love, we miss people that we have val we see value in. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:45

And as much as Susan probably didn't believe this, there were people in this world, and Joseph is proof of this, who did value her and wanted her to live.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:55

Yes. Jonathan Dunn, almost 500 years ago, somebody will correct that day, but nonetheless, Jonathan Dunn said so long ago, you know, in Latin, Nemo Insula est no man is an island. Do not send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. It is very true. We're all connected, whether we want to be or not, whether we strive not to be, we have no choice. We are connected. Her death diminished something in people, some people, even the house lady, even the officer. It diminished something in us because she was a human being and she took her own life, and it didn't have to be so. It did not.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

Everybody, before we end today, I just want to say if you or someone you know is struggling or thinking about suicide, you are not alone. In the United States, you can call or text 988, or you can use the online chat at 988lifeline.org to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It's free, confidential, and available 24-7. If you know someone in your life who even seems like they've been a little bit off lately, you know, they're deviating from how they normally act. They seem upset, they're troubled, you know something bad has happened in their life, check in with them, engage with them, because you and every single one of us have the power to save lives. Thanks so much for joining us, and we hope to see you next time. Thank you.