Shock Lawsuit Against "The Tell" Author, Kouri Richins Bombshells, and Nancy Guthrie Investigation Mess, with MK True Crime Hosts | Ep. 1271

28:57Okay, I guess by suing, which is, by the way, under Jane Doe. For its part, the Times took full advantage of publicizing this inaccurate narrative despite receiving many red flag warnings. Daniel Rhodes Ha, a Times spokeswoman, said in response, we're confident in the accuracy of our reporting. So just before I bring in my legal panel, I want to just tell you, I just want to spend a minute on the media around this, okay? Because it was ubiquitous in terms of these high-powered women who are in Amy Griffin's circle. And you really do have to be careful when you're dealing with somebody with this kind of money and these kind of connections that you don't get used and made a fool of.

29:41And really, truly, if this had happened to me, if she had come on this show and now we had seen these allegations, I would absolutely come on the air and say, I have to tell you that this lawsuit has been filed. I wouldn't take a side. I wouldn't feel the need to stab somebody who had come on the show in the back or a friend in the back. But I would absolutely feel the obligation to tell you that there's now been a woman who on the record is making allegations that this entire story was stolen from her. And it's not just a random allegation. The woman says she met with Amy in 2019 after having not seen her for 30 years at Amy's request.

30:15that Amy bought a postcard and had her, and filled, Amy's the one who filled out the address and said, oh, please mail it to me, which would wind up in the tell, being misrepresented as somebody like secretly postcarding her saying, you know, kind of me too, which this Claudia, again, that's not her real name. We don't know what her real name is, says was not what the postcard said and also was all orchestrated by Amy. And then that two years later, three years later in 2022, two, she, quote Claudia, was contacted by someone claiming to be a Hollywood talent agent and pumped for all the details about her story, which she gave to this person under the auspices of potentially selling it to him.

30:56He said he might want to buy it and make a book out of it or a movie out of it, and that he would pay her for the rights to her life story. But then she eventually contacted a lawyer of her own, and that lawyer said, let's get this in writing. Let's get a contract, and let's make sure this guy is who he says he is. and she alleges he disappeared. Now, who was that guy? There is an allegation in the complaint that they know his name. It's Dominique something, I'll pull it up. And that in fact, he was a private investigator hired by Amy Griffin. Well, we're gonna know all that. We are definitely going to get to the bottom of that.

31:28And if it comes out that Amy Griffin hired this guy and she admits in the book that she hired private investigators to help like track down some stories and that she sicked him on an unknowing Claudia and had him lie about what he really was. A private investigator working for Amy Griffin, trying to find out what, you know, stories in Amarillo versus talent agent who was misrepresenting what he wanted the story for to this woman who grew up in foster care so that actually it could be stolen by Amy Griffin, allegedly, she's fucked. Sorry. She's just like, that better not have happened. She denies it.

32:09She says the woman's the liar. That's quite an elaborate lie by so-called Claudia. That's quite an elaborate lie to make up that they met, to make up that this person who she has phone records for, who's going to be identifiable. Again, there's a name in the complaint. We're going to know whether this is a real person and whether Amy hired him. This is like the defense is going to have a different story to tell. But in any event, you can see that the story, speaking of red flags, has red flags all over Amy's story. Amy's story. They say it's all over Claudia's complaint. But let me just give you a little bit more, a sample of how she was treated by the media.

32:49She went on Drew Barrymore. I got to tell you, I like Drew Barrymore now. Notwithstanding the fact that I've made fun of Drew Barrymore with her Dylan Mulvaney interview, I got to admit it. I met her on vacation a couple months ago. She could not have been nicer. She was actually very cool. And we actually kind of talked about politics a little. I'm not going to repeat what she said because it was private, but she was quite reasonable. And I've developed a fondness for her. I'm not going to lie. But I am going to show you her interview of Amy Griffin because I am trying to make a point about the media treatment she received on her book tour.

33:23Here it is, Satu. It reads like the most compelling mystery, while it is also the most relevant, relevatory, can't even say the word, journey. I have chills. Literally, my God, you wrote the most fascinating book. It is a literary masterpiece, how it unfolds. The book was a gift to myself to realize that vulnerability is actually power. The power that I have and the vulnerability of sharing this. You're so afraid to tell our secrets, especially the traumas that have happened to us in a very unjust way, such as it has to you. How taking that wall down, telling that truth is what has brought your family together in ways that are so powerful.

34:18and you were the age that your daughters were, it's like, God, we just, if we've been through stuff, we're so worried for our kids to go through those things. We just think, how can we protect them? Have we even dealt with the stuff that has happened to us? And the way that you walk through this is so, again, it's such an incredible, compelling read, But it is also, I think, going to really, truly be a catalyst to others finding the bravery to come out with their truth. Okay, again, Drew Barrymore is not a journalist, and I actually feel bad for her because her empathy was clearly taken advantage of if this is true.

35:08If Amy Griffin made this whole story up, she took advantage of what she knew would be Drew Barrymore's empathy and kindness toward her. And, you know, they're not – they don't operate on that show under journalistic standards. You're not required. You would never get a note from a producer saying, this is not – you're not being fair. We better test this story a little, right, in a talk show. I think I've told you this, that one of Tamron Hall's producers tried to get me on that show once. Obviously, it was a no. But in trying to lure me over there, they were saying, don't worry. She's not a journalist.

35:41Like, she had crossed over to talk show host. So we can give you all the questions in advance. You know, we can stay away from anything that's sensitive for you. I was like, what is this? Like, that's not how I operated my show at NBC, that's for sure. but that's how they book guests. Like, don't worry, there'll be no hard questions and your story won't be tested. And here are the questions in advance. So that's just so you know what you're watching when you watch these so-called talk shows as opposed to journalistic shows. Jenna Bush Hager, she was deeply problematic as well. Jenna Bush Hager does work for a news organization and her show I think is considered under the news umbrella of NBC.

36:19And NBC, trust me, they are going to need to comment on this. We're reaching out to all these people, Oprah, NBC, Gwyneth Paltrow will go down the list, and we will ask what, if anything, they are going to do to alert their audience that there's been this allegation now, that this entire story is made up. But here's how Jenna Bush Hager and Brooke Shields, I guess who was in for her co-host at the time, interviewed Amy Griffin in SOT3. They're obsessed with that same story about the daughter. It's one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my life, but it was that moment when my 10-year-old said to me, Mom, I need you to participate in our life in a way that you're not right now.

36:58And so in that moment, she was parenting me. And it was a wake-up call for me. Think about the beauty of that kind of parenting. You put her in a position to feel like she could say something that vulnerable to you. That is a testament to you who is a parent as well. Totally. You know, don't lose sight of that. I think that idea of giving our kids agency is, like, wildly important. Okay. That's because in the story, she writes a book about her— she writes a story about how her daughter came to her and basically said, Mom, where are you? You're here, but you're not here. Like, I'm looking for you, and I want to know you, but you're never around.

37:34She writes, Mom, Gigi said, I don't know how to say this, but I feel like I don't know you. Know me, I said. What do you mean? I don't know, she said Gigi. I feel so disconnected from you. Really, I said, after all that I do for you? My life revolves around trying to keep you safe and taking care of you. Mom, she's trying to tell you something, Gracie interjected. She was 13 and reminded me of myself at that age, serious, driven, focused. We know you do everything for us, but we don't feel like we know who you are, said Gigi. You're nice, but you're not real. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have you as a mother?

38:05You do everything perfectly. You make everything look so easy. How are we supposed to relate to you? I'm just trying to be there for you, I said. You're here, but you're not here, Gigi cried. Where are you, mom? All right. This is what the kids call the humble brag. It's the daughter being like, you're so perfect and you're such an amazing mom, but I just want to know you better. And this allegedly led to her journey of self-reflection and discovery. This reads like self-aggrandizement to me. I can't imagine myself writing such a passion in a book about myself and my daughter and such a private conversation that makes me look like, coincidentally, this wonderful mother who just needs to let down her veil of perfection so that she can bond with her child.

38:53and let's face it, like let me just tell you, these two live a jet setting life, jet setting where they travel all over the world and there is a question, I'll just leave it at that, about why the daughters don't feel they know their mother and I don't think it has anything to do with her alleged veneer of perfection. She also happens to be like best friends with Savannah Guthrie so yet another reason why the Today Show is gonna need to comment on how they put this person on the air without any questions, and it appears many were necessary. Again, Amy Griffin says, no, they aren't. My entire book is true.

39:30And by the way, in my book, I disclose that my memories might actually be fake, and it's even possible that I borrowed them from someone. She actually does write that in the book, like, gee, disclaimer, it's possible this isn't true because it's discovered under this psychedelic drug, and maybe I borrowed them from somebody. Okay. So that's supposed to save her. You can't just steal somebody's story. We'll get into that with our legal panel. I want to show you one more. Here's Gwyneth Paltrow in SOT 10. A journey that started with listening to her inner knowing and taking the brave leap from there.

40:09So I'm really deeply thrilled and honored to have Amy on our podcast today. It's an unbelievable book. I'm so deeply proud of her. And that's what's been so amazing about watching you go through this process is like the real you, this you that we have now, that is just like this strong, amazing, integrated person, unbelievable process that I've been so honored to witness. I cannot encourage you all enough to order and read The Tell. It's available for pre-order now. and I found it personally life-changing. Okay. She owes it to her audience as well. I'm sorry, but if these women actually do care about survivors of sexual assault, then they owe it, to quote Claudia, to update the audience that a serious allegation of theft, of theft, you know, there's stolen valor in the military.

41:07What is this? Like stolen victimhood, allegedly denied by Amy. they have an obligation to their audience and to the actual victims of sexual assault to update their audiences that this has now happened. There's been an in-depth New York Times piece, which none of them updated their audience on in September. They got away with completely ignoring it back then. And now we have the lawsuit. What's it going to take? If and when there's a civil judgment or more likely a settlement, then do you update your audiences? that someone has come forward saying all of these exact same things happened to her and that some alleged Hollywood talent agent came into their lives the year or two before Amy wrote this book and got all the details that just happened to wind up in Amy's book as Amy's story?

41:57Come on. This is so, I'm sorry, but in my opinion, this stinks to high heaven and she better not have fucking stole this woman's story. And these so-called journalists or TV hosts better get out on their shows, exactly the forums in which they promoted this story, and tell their audiences that there's been a massive and material update. And they can include Amy's denials about Claudia's allegations as well. And I remain open-minded to hear her innocent explanation for how all of that happened. It was a man named Dominique Price. The allegations of the complaint say the individual who contacted Claudia claiming to be a talent agent gave a phone number and that they called this phone number.

42:42It is connected to a, quote, Dominique Price, who, according to California's Secretary of State Records, is the registered manager of Sleeved LLC, a California LLC company with its principal place of business at the following place in Marina del Rey, California. If that person is in fact connected to Amy Griffin and was sent by her to go contact Claudia, she's toast. She's toast. She's going to have to settle this case, in my opinion. Maybe Amy's going to say, I disclosed in the book even that I used private investigators to help me nail down my story. Your story? Your story? Like that might be fine if in the book she said, I wasn't the only one.

43:23I can't prove that Mr. Mason alleged sexually assaulted someone other than me, but I can tell you that I know of at least one other girl who was sexually assaulted at the school. I don't know by whom. And here are some details of her story that you're already out on the nice if you offer the details without getting the woman's permission. But what happened here allegedly is she stole Claudia's details, retold them as her own sexual assaults, and made Claudia a periphery character. They are just to support Amy's narrative about what happened to Amy. This is crazy. All right, I wanna bring in our legal panel and talk about the legalities of this because this is gonna be a rather big lawsuit.

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46:17minds to dissect all of this stuff for you guys. Great to see you all. This is really stunning. I mean, it's really crazy if you think about it. And I have to say, I feel like we're in a privileged position to discuss it because I think most of the mainstream media is afraid of John and Amy Griffin. And they don't want to step on the toes of a couple of multi-billionaires by repeating the allegations of this complaint or repeating the allegations in the New York Times. And to did break this story. Maureen broke the story, but they did then follow up and do an in-depth piece, and they found the woman.

46:54They found Claudia, and now Claudia is pissed. Okay, I do want to read one thing that's in Claudia's complaint, again, not her real name, about Amy. She writes, throughout the memoir, defendant Griffin questions the validity and accuracy of her own memory. She further writes that she is not only uncertain whether her memories of abuse actually happened, but that she is also unsure of whether her memories are her own or Claudia's or are her own projections. So I'll start with you on it, Ashley. Does that save Amy Griffin from this lawsuit? No, not at all. I mean, this is atrocious. What this woman did is horrible, and I don't think it saves it from the lawsuit.

47:39You know, and I think what's interesting, you were talking earlier about how this comes down to money. I think this does come down to money, you know, and the fact that there was a plaintiff's lawyer out there that was willing to take this. And I think it's important for the viewers to understand what plaintiff's lawyers do, how they evaluate cases. They don't get paid. So the lady hired a lawyer, and this lawyer believed enough in her case that he's taking this, and he doesn't get paid unless she wins. So you counter that with Amy Griffith's lawyers who are fighting hard for her, but they're being paid per hour.

48:05She's paying them to fight hard. So it's very different to me, and I think that's very telling. about the success, the likelihood of success of this lawsuit. But there's really three big issues that they have to prove that's going to decide these lawsuits. Whether or not there was a misappropriation of her life story, which is really better explained as an invasion of privacy, whether or not there was fraud. And what does that mean? That means this whole fake agent allegation, this person who called, which is awful, that called her and tried to pry these stories out so that they could use them for a book.

48:35Was that deceptive? And then also this defamation. And that's going to be the hardest one, obviously, you know, as you were talking about these false memories. But that's going to be the biggest issue and where this case really comes down to, Megan. The fraud, here's another allegation on that, which I forgot about, and this is actually quite relevant. They allege in the complaint, this is quote unquote Claudia, or now Jane Doe, alleges in her complaint that in Amy's memoir, defendant Griffin states that she hired private investigators via her husband's hedge fund after her MDMA therapy in order to track down information and find corroborating witnesses who could help prove that her alleged repressed rape memories were true.

49:21So Amy's story, I guess, will be that she went under psychedelics, Phil, recovered the memories of her own rape, which just weirdly happened to dovetail perfectly with what allegedly happened to Claudia, then hired a PI who contacted Claudia and Claudia, oh, oh my God, had exactly the same details, which then Amy wrote all about as her own story without mentioning that it was also Claudia's story. And she had sent a PI to go specifically steal this story from her. I mean, I don't like, I think to me, this reads like somebody, Amy Griffin, who was writing the memoir, understanding she could get pinched on some of these things.

49:55Like Claudia could come out upset and that she was going to own some pieces of what she did, but not the theft. But you tell me your take on this case. Yeah, so it's going to be interesting, Megan, to see what the defense to this lawsuit is. We haven't seen the answer yet that will be filed. According to the complaint for damages, and it says, quote, the memoir depicts Claudia as being aware she was speaking with investigators working on behalf of defendant Griffin, voluntarily providing information for use in the memoir, and supportive of the publication of her private traumatic experiences. So look, if these investigators, and I'm just going to use the term loosely, look, if the answer says, all right, here's the documents that this Jane Doe signed, stating that she knew that she was, you know, we were investigating this, and it's all on video.

50:52And so if the defense did their homework and they were smart about the way they interviewed her, then maybe they can successfully defend this by portraying the lawsuit as being untrue. But I seriously doubt that they're going to have that level of documentation to back up what they're saying happened in researching this book. And I'm going to use the term loosely, but can we just go back to the very premise of this just for a minute? Because anybody who thinks it's a good idea to write a book, especially one on this subject matter, and they're going to say that they are recovering memories using MDMA.

51:35Look, on MK True crime, we've talked in many instances about junk science and how junk science has no place in courtrooms. I'll go a step further and say junk science has no place in writing of books because, look, the science that we have seen says that the risks of recovering memories with MDA, it's been shown to increase the rate of false memories. There's increased suggestibility. Users under the influence of MDMA, even on this supposed guided therapy, they're often more open to suggestion, which leads them to unintentionally fill in gaps. And there's also impaired detail recall. So look, I think that the risk of using MDMA to try to recover repressed memories is just a bad idea.

52:28And certainly to write a book and claiming that these things are what truthfully, in fact, happened. And very risky for the publisher. It's just a bad idea to start with. Very risky for the publisher. Yeah, so she claims she went under the therapy. All these memories came flooding back. Claudia says, I told her those stories earlier when we were kids. She knew this happened to me, and then she sent a PI my way. Stand by. We'll back more and we'll hear what Dave thinks. Don't go away. Let's talk about what's really happening right now. New data shows that financial stress is at an all-time high for some.

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53:51Back now with our guests, Dave Ehrenberg, Phil Holloway, and Ashley Merchant. Dave Ehrenberg, former prosecutor for Palm Beach County, your take on this case. Yeah, good to be back with you, Megan, with my cohorts, Ashley and Phil. So I was wondering what the defense would be, and we discussed it a bit. And I think it's going to be subjective sincerity that she's not lying. Amy Griffin's not lying because she genuinely believes the memories are real. So she'll frame the book as more of a journey of therapy rather than a forensic report so that she can talk about that this is an internal experience, which is harder to litigate as a factual lie.

54:29But the problem is that MDMA and other psychedelics can cause suggestibility. You get a mix of real emotions and false details suggested by the environment or previous stories that you've heard. So you could say that her brain didn't actually recover a memory. It absorbed one. And also, as a high-profile author, she has a duty to fact-check her recovered memories against school records before publishing them as a definitive memoir. And she also has a problem in that if she did, in fact, speak to the real victim here, which is what the evidence tells us, before her MDMA session, then the whole repressed memory defense sort of looks like a calculated cover for plagiarism.

55:13Well, here's what I think we know, that they knew each other in school and that she allegedly may have learned of the plaintiff's stories back then when they were children, because that dress that got the semen stain on it from a different teacher committing allegedly a sexual assault against Claudia was Amy's. And this girl, according to Amy's memoir, returned the dress to Amy at the time. So there is reason to believe Amy knew the girl's story when they were kids. Then it looks like Amy had the MDMA therapy and then sent private investigators out to meet with this woman under false pretenses.

55:57These are the allegations as spelled out in the complaint. and also it seems like before Amy's MDMA therapy, she did herself meet with Claudia. She flew out to Palm Springs and allegedly was like, oh, you know, Amarillo girls, let's get together. But at that meeting, there doesn't seem to be an allegation they spoke about sexual assault. But Amy clearly like reestablished contact with this girl and that's when Amy was like, let's buy postcards and send each other a postcard. And each gal filled out her home address on the postcard and gave it to the other. And this gal, Claudia, actually did allegedly send Amy the postcard.

56:34And she said, let's see. And defendant Griffin told plaintiff Doe that after writing a message in the postcard, she should put it in the mail. A few days later, plaintiff Jane Doe wrote a brief sentence on the postcard related to their mutual church youth group and placed it in the mail. She did not receive a return postcard from defendant Griffin, however, to her knowledge, she never received contact from defendant Griffin again after that meeting. But now in the tell, Amy spins this postcard as like evidence that Amy wasn't alone and there's another girl who got sexually assaulted. So this woman's like, what kind of bullshit is this?

57:07This whole thing was a setup to steal my story. That's how it's going potentially to look to a jury, Dave. Yeah, I agree. You know, you see there's a lawsuit and they're claiming that Amy Griffin used the woman's life story for commercial gain without consent. And this is sort of like the stolen valor of trauma here. And if the plaintiff can show the specific details are unique to her and were used to sell books, then, yeah, you have a strong argument for commercial theft. The thing on the other side, Amy Griffin could hold up the First Amendment, which does provide broad protections for memoirs.

57:44And courts are generally wary of owning facts or historical events. But if you can show manipulation that you sent an investigator in there under false pretenses, you have these conversations that you're really mining the information and then hiding behind your psychedelics as a way to explain it all. Yeah, I think a jury is not going to like the defendant in this case. But, Phil, if it is other than as alleged in this complaint, if Amy Griffin sent a PI to go meet with Claudia, Claudia willingly shared the details of her childhood story. Maybe she even potentially signed something saying here are the rights to it.

58:19Now, this is just me making things up. That's not been specifically alleged by anybody. But let's say Amy Griffin's got a signed document from this woman, Claudia, saying, here's what happened to me, and yeah, you can use it. And Amy's like, you know, I said in the book that these might actually be Claudia's memories. Is she going to be okay legally? Yeah, so if they have that kind of bulletproof sort of defense where they've papered everything and they've got Jane Doe's signature on everything, that would fly directly in the face of all of the claims in the lawsuit. And in that situation that you've presented the hypothetical, then Jane Doe and the lawyer who filed that lawsuit would be on the hook for money for filing such a frivolous claim.

59:06I want to touch, though, also— Then they would get sued for defaming Amy, right? Correct. They sure could. Then they're potentially going to be liable for defaming Amy. But the conversation between Jane Doe and Griffin, that is why we see, though—I think, to me, that's one of the more compelling claims in this lawsuit because that gives rise to what we call the false light tort. And this requires proving that a defendant has publicly disclosed with actual malice a highly offensive false representation of the plaintiff. And in that situation, they have to prove that there was public disclosure, that it was widespread, that there was a false – that the information was false or it created at least a false impression, and that it's highly offensive to the reasonable person.

59:52And if the claims can be proven regarding that in-person meeting between those two, between the plaintiff and Griffin, then I think that's one of the more powerful claims in this lawsuit. So as you pointed out when you started this question, it's just going to depend on who has the receipts that they can bring to this lawsuit. Megan, can I ask? Thank you. Phil mentioned actual malice, but I always thought that actual malice only applies to when the party is a public figure. Jane Doe is not a public figure, so I would think – No, but in California, that's what it requires. Oh, even for a private citizen.

1:00:34Oh, interesting. So that's a high bar, but you might be there. I mean, what she's alleging, the thing that the audience needs to know is that Claudia's alleged two sexual assaults by a different teacher, not Mr. Mason, are identified exactly by Amy Griffin as her own. When you read the complaint, you read the allegations of what allegedly happened to Claudia by this other teacher, it's dark. It's extremely dark. It's harrowing. And it appears in the tell as Amy's story. Plaintiff Jane Doe alleges in this lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted in a closet by one of the school's teachers, that she was seen by numerous attendees of the dance leaving the dance area.

1:01:19This is where she borrowed the dress from Amy. At the behest of this teacher, she was seen by numerous attendees returning to the dance with her dress soiled and her hair tussled. Plaintiff Doe was too scared to report the sexual assault to authorities at the time. Soon after the school dance, just prior to one of their church youth group meetings, Plaintiff Doe brought the dress she had borrowed from defendant Griffin and returned it to Griffin. Said dress was still stained with bodily fluids from the teacher who had sexually assaulted her. And she goes on to say that during the said church youth group meeting, which both plaintiff Doe and defendant Griffin attended with a number of others, plaintiff Jane Doe asked for Jesus' forgiveness due to the sexual assault by the teacher at the Sadie Hawkins dance.

1:01:57So she's alleging Amy Griffin knew from the church group meeting that this girl, Jane Doe, Claudia, was the one who got sexually assaulted by a teacher, that Amy knew that from their church group meeting. She writes that approximately one month later, plaintiff Jane Doe was again sexually assaulted by the same school teacher. Again, this is not Mr. Mason. This time in the bathroom of the Stephen Austin Middle School. This assault was more violent. And during the incident, the teacher put his boot on her back, stuffed a bandana in her mouth, which later caught on her braces, slammed her against the wall and whipped her with a belt.

1:02:26Plaintiff, who was only 12 at the time and was living in a children's home, was too scared to report the details. Plaintiff alleges that these sexual assaults were also falsely attributed by defendant Griffin to a different perpetrator who she calls Mr. Mason. And then she said we'd had no contact for 30 years. Then Amy contacted me out of the blue, said she wanted to meet just to go over like what life was like in Amarillo in late 2019. We did meet and discussed that we'd been part of this church group together. She doesn't say that she disclosed all of the details again of the encounter. She says that Amy Griffin explicitly referred to herself in the meeting as a girl boss and then told plaintiff Doe that she was a girl boss too.

1:03:10Then they did the thing with the postcards. Then she says in April, 2022, she plaintiff was contacted by telephone by someone who didn't say he was an investigator, but said he was a talent agent and said that he had heard from an unidentified third party that she led a fascinating life and expressed an interest in using her life story for commercial exploitation. The phone number, which was provided to her, was rooted back to this California corporation, which I mentioned, and that the individual in question spoke with plaintiff Jane Doe for multiple hours a day, a few times a week over approximately a one-month period, soliciting detailed stories from her about her life, including her childhood in Texas, which she discussed with him under the understanding and belief that her info would remain private unless she entered in an agreement with him for her life story.

1:03:54You know, obviously she was considering selling it to him, depending on the price, depending on the terms, but she says that after multiple phone calls and soliciting stories from plaintiffs past, a female individual called her plaintiff to schedule a meeting in Los Angeles, and then she contacted a lawyer, and she asked for more information, and they ghosted her. They ghosted her, and she couldn't find any information online about either of these individuals, so she was starting to suspect they weren't who they said they were. She also says she didn't tell anybody else, no third parties about her sexual assaults, and then was shocked to read about them in Amy's book as her own.

1:04:34In the book, Defendant Griffin states Claudia is the key link to understand and confirm her own drug-induced suppressed memories. Her first journal entry after her first MDMA session involved Claudia in a borrowed dress. Through the prism of Claudia, I had experienced the horror of what was being done to me, which includes all those same details, you guys, about the alleged Sadie Hawkins dance, about the alleged bandana, about the alleged boot on the back, and quotes about knocking your teeth out, all of which Claudia says are hers. This is quite devastating if it's real. And there are two issues here, the legal issues, which will be fought in court or more likely settled if there's any semblance of truth, and the journalistic issues on how the media fell down and just giving a complete pass to this story without pressing and then didn't update its audiences once this came out by the Times in September, by the Times again this month in the wake of this bombshell lawsuit.

1:05:31Okay, let's move on because I know you guys over on MK True Crime have been covering the Corey Richens case, which is also extremely compelling. So this woman, by the way, this has been blowing up on MK True Crimes. You can watch the trial live every day with great coverage by all of our team here. She's a Utah mom of three. She self-published a children's book called Are You With Me? in March of 2023. It was two months before she'd be arrested for the murder of her husband. She said she wrote that book to help children, hers, deal with grief after losing a parent, a father. Her children did because she allegedly killed him.

1:06:03This was not disclosed at the time when she wrote it, but two months later, she was under arrest. And this was one year after the passing of her husband, Eric, the father of her kids. Here is this woman promoting Corey, the book in April of 2023 on Salt Lake City's ABC affiliate. Corey, I want to start with your story. What happened in your personal life? So my husband passed away unexpectedly last year. So it's March 4th was a one year anniversary for us. And he was 39. It completely took us all by shock. and we have three little boys, 10, 9, and 6. And, you know, we kind of, my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced last year.

1:06:53Well, I opened up your book and one of the first pages I saw is a little boy. It looks like he's standing in a hallway at school and he's saying, are you still here? Yes, yeah, and it's, you know, and that was like the first day of school. And, you know, all the nerves that kids face on the first day of school with new, you know, and just hoping, you know, dad, like walk with me, like help me get through today. Like give me the strength to do that. Unbelievable. There was definitely something off about her affect there. And just over a month after that clip, she was arrested and charged with aggravated murder for allegedly poisoning Eric to death.

1:07:27She allegedly put five times the lethal dose of fentanyl into a Moscow mule, which she is accused of serving him in his bed. Like he was in bed, she gave him the drink, and he was dead by three in the morning. So back now with our panel. Here's the thing I wonder about, Ashley. Where does a housewife in Utah get her hands on a ton of fentanyl that she could just slip into the drink of her husband and kill him? Well, that's one of the many mysteries in this case that we really don't have answers to. I mean, this is not really a murder mystery. This is a group of people who are deeply unreliable, and they're trying to explain this very chaotic situation around someone who has a drug problem.

1:08:12The husband had a drug problem. He has this medical history where he has been doctor shopping, essentially. He said he had Lyme disease, nerve pain, mysterious allergies, all of this stuff, which are the type of diagnoses that are notoriously difficult to verify, but they're very useful in getting doctor shopping for pain pills. So we know he had an addiction issue. So the real question is whether or not she's the one that put this pill in his Moscow mule, in his sandwich, in whatever it is that they're saying that she did, or whether or not this was just an overdose. And the problem, what you're asking about the credibility of who gave these drugs, it's a cast of characters.

1:08:46You've got the wife, you know, you've got Ms. Richards who is struggling with this house flipping business. You've got the business partner. You've got the cleaner. You've got a sister. You've got the doctors. Everybody has different stories. None of them add up. None of them make any sense. You've got paranoia in the husband who died. You've got financial stress. You've got this man. He believes that he's got all of these issues. He believes he's being poisoned. I mean, this is just crazy. So you got to ask yourself at the end of the day, is this really a case about a murder or is this a case about addiction?

1:09:15Is this a case about a drug overdose? And all of these people who are giving him pills, helping him get pills, but maybe nobody actually had a motive to kill him. Maybe he just overdosed. Vess, she's doing a good job, Phil, of defending Corey Richens, but I think we all know she did it. Okay, that's my opinion. She totally did it. No, she actually did a great job of laying it all out there. I think that all those things can be true that Ashley Merchant just said, but also it can be true that Corey Richens is a cold-blooded killer. Because look, now we have hush puppies in this case, Megan. that were given to Corey Richen's longtime boyfriend the day before her husband died.

1:10:04And the boyfriend suddenly blacks out, loses track of time for a number of hours, and finally comes to around 11 p.m. Phil, what is a hush puppy? Oh, you don't know what a hush puppy is. Okay, it's a little ball of succulent, delicious bread often served with fish. It's deep fried, baby. When you come to the house the next time, I'll make sure you get some. No, I don't like fish. Wait, are you using it like metaphorically or an actual hush puppy? It's a food dish. It's called a hush puppy, right? So she gave it to her boy because she had a boyfriend. I neglected to mention Corey was definitely having an affair with somebody.

1:10:39And they were loving texts. Long time affair with this guy. And yes. And so there's that. And then there's also the Valentine's Day prior to the husband's death. There's the allegation, the claim is that she tried to do a trial run or maybe attempted to murder her husband on Valentine's Day by spiking his food, a sandwich. And so he got sick after that. And so we have all these things. And then you've got the financial crimes, which are legion in this case. We've got insurance fraud. We got bank fraud. We got loans taken out in his name that he didn't know anything about. you know, all these things that she's accused of doing.

1:11:20Now, they're not tribe in this case. They're going to be a separate trial. But this woman is facing eons in prison just on the financial crimes alone, which appear to be also a slam dunk case. The only problem that the prosecution has that I see proving her guilt in this murder case is tying Corey Richens directly to the fentanyl that we know killed her husband. And what the issue is, is the housekeeper, who was supposedly the go-between, who Corey contacted, and of course she contacted another guy. Well, that other guy, who's the actual supplier of the alleged drugs in the case, he's a convicted felon.

1:12:02He's back and forth, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth about whether or not he provided oxycodone or did he provide fentanyl. And he's given different accounts at different times, depending on who you asked. And so if there's reasonable doubt about the fentanyl being connected all the way back to Corey Richens, then it's probably going to be a not guilty. But if they can get over that hump, the rest of it, particularly the circumstantial evidence is, I think, really, really compelling and she'll be found guilty. I am using my housekeeper all wrong. I just have her clean. I had no idea.

1:12:40Yeah, you could be getting oxycodone and fentanyl through such a person. So here is in SOT 18. This is the housekeeper, Carmen, claiming that Corey did okay her purchase of fentanyl. What, if anything, did you ask Robert Crozier for? If he knew anybody who had any pain pills for sale. And how did he respond? He said he would reach out to a couple people. He said he had a buddy that had some fentanyl pills.

1:13:18What then did you do? I had texted Corey back and told her that I had a friend that could get them, but they were fentanyl pills.

1:13:33so you told cory you you had a friend a hookup for fentanyl pills yes how did cory richens respond she said okay go ahead and get is that good enough dave yeah this case is not hard you have a young woman who had a lover who wanted money was desperate for money so clear motive who hated her husband and who tried to poison him previously. She's also being charged for that. She made him a sandwich. He felt sick and he called her and she said, don't go to the hospital, just sleep it off. And he survived. And then weeks later, she managed to finish the job with a Moscow mule because she went to the housekeeper and said, give me some of that Michael Jackson stuff.

1:14:19Now, that's what she wants. So they've got this. Plus, there's this letter called the Walk the Dog letter. And in this letter, it was found in Corey's jail cell. She instructed her mother to tell her brother to testify that he knew that Eric, the victim, got pain pills and fentanyl from Mexico and that he gets high every night. So they're fabricating this whole drug abuse thing. There is no real evidence that Eric was a real drug abuser. In fact, business partners and medical experts have not supported it. So I think she's going down for these crimes, and it really does take a lot of chutzpah, and that's a technical legal term, Megan, for her to go on TV and write a book and say, you know, please support me in my grief.

1:15:04It's like the story of the child who kills both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. Right. We have that a little bit about the walk the dog letter. So first of all, why is it called the walk the dog letter, Dave? it's it's I think there's some talk they talk about hey make sure you walk the dog in there and that's just I guess that's why it mentions it but it's really a smoking gun because of the other stuff that's in there all right let's listen to a little bit of the testimony about this about Corey Richens walk the dog letter about her husband Eric allegedly getting fentanyl in Mexico This is Detective Jeff O'Driscoll on the stand, SOT 26.

1:15:48Is this an accurate depiction of a six-page letter to Lisa Darden written on either September the 12th or 13th, 2023, that investigators recovered on September the 14th, 2023, from a book that was among Corey Richen's personal possessions? This is that letter. It has redactions, but yes, this is that letter. Take one. Walk the dog, but take vague notes so you remember. Here is what I'm thinking, but you have to talk to Ronnie. He would probably have to testify to this, but it's super short, not a lot to it. He will need to tell Sky at the meeting next week. Upon information and belief, just like they say, A year prior to Eric's death, Ronnie was over watching football one Sunday, and Eric and Ronnie were chatting about Eric's Mexico trips.

1:16:48Eric told Ronnie he gets pain pills and fentanyl from Mexico from the workers at the ranch. Not to tell me because I would get mad because I always said he just gets high every night and won't help take care of the kids. So there we have the letter. That's from Corey Richens to her mom, Lisa Darden, saying, hint, hint, it would be great. This is the allegation. It would be great if we could get this testimony that Eric, my husband, loved fentanyl and got it in Mexico, Ashley. That's what's happening there. It is, and he did. He loved fentanyl. He was a pain addict. I mean, that's the elephant in the room.

1:17:31He was addicted to pain pills. He had been since he was in high school. That addiction had not gone away. He hadn't been treated for it. And I mean, what happens is paranoia goes along with opioid addiction. So it's very predictable that he thought he was going to be poisoned by a sandwich. And quite frankly, you asked about the credibility of this housekeeper. I think the only reliable witness in this entire case might be the actual sandwich. I mean, there is no reliable witness in this case. They're not. The business partner's not reliable. The housekeeper's not reliable. Nobody is. This drug dealer's not reliable.

1:18:00I remember giving fentanyl. I don't remember giving fentanyl. Yeah, it was fentanyl. I mean, they're not. And that's who the prosecution is bringing to prove this. and they have a significant motive issue. I mean, why would she kill him? Their whole motive is, oh, it's for money. He was funding her house flipping business. Her house flipping business, it was not doing well, but he was the one funding it. That's all she had. Why is she gonna go and off him? You know, it just, it doesn't make any sense. What makes sense, what's the most reasonable explanation is he got fentanyl from the housekeeper.

1:18:27He got fentanyl from someone. He was addicted. He's gonna take whatever meds he can. He's saying he has Lyme disease. He's saying he has this mysterious allergies. He is pain pill shopping. He's going to put whatever he can in his body because he was addicted and he overdosed. Here is the prosecutor, Brad Bloodworth, in his opening statement saying, in addition to allegedly murdering Eric for his money because she was$4.5 million in debt on her house flipping business and thought her husband was worth$4 million and that she'd get his life insurance policies, et cetera, there was another motive, which I've now alluded to, and here it is in Sot 12.

1:19:00March the 3rd, 2022. The defendant, Corey Richens, her husband, Eric Richens, and their three children, nine-year-old Carter, seven-year-old Ashton, and five-year-old Weston, are at their home in Camas. Eric Richens live for his three boys. At 7.22 p.m., Corey Richens' boyfriend, Robert Josh Grossman, texts Corey Richens an image of two people romantically kissing. The image is captioned, love you. At 8.36, Corey Richens replies, love you. The boys go to bed. Corey Richens makes Eric a drink and takes it to him in their bedroom. He drinks on the bed. She departs the bedroom. Corey Richens returns to the bedroom at about 3 o 'clock a.m.

1:20:22She feels that Eric is cold. She nudges him. He does not respond. Well, Dave, he's not exactly a font of personality, our friend Brad Bloodworth. But I get it. You know, he's getting it done. He's getting the facts out there. Is there proof that she is the one who brought him the drink? I mean, is that – does it come down to that? Or do we – does everyone admit she brought him the drink and it's just a question of who put fentanyl in it? Yeah, I didn't think there was any dispute over who brought him the drink. She made him a drink, and then her argument is that he spiked it with fentanyl because he was such an addict.

1:21:01Apparently, there was five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. I mean, who does that? I mean, even if you are addicted to opioids, do you really do that? In fact, they didn't find any other drugs in the place when they searched the place. They didn't find that he was a drug abuser. And Ashley's an excellent criminal defense lawyer. She really is. But I don't know how you can— She is. We know that. But she's the reason the whole case against Trump and the other defendants went away by Fannie Willis. So, yeah, she is very good. Keep going. Yeah, but I don't even think Ashley Merchant can pull the rabbit out of this hat.

1:21:31I mean, when we're talking about that walk the dog letter, I mean, why do you put walk the dog on that letter? It's like code, you know, there's nothing to do with walking the dog. And you know what her explanation was for that is that, well, this was a manuscript she was writing, that she was writing like another book, like the fake book she wrote the first time. And it was a fictional mystery novel, even though she used the actual names of a real family in there. So she just can't help herself, this defendant. She's pathological. That's how it seems to me. All right, well, we shall see. Where are they in the case, Ashley?

1:22:04And when do we expect the jury to get it? Oh my gosh, this case is going on forever. It looks like we have about two more weeks of testimony. They think that they're gonna wrap it up probably the end of March. So it's about a three or four week trial. there's been a lot there's been a lot of witnesses and every single one has credibility issues so i think it's gonna i think it's gonna come down to whether or not the jury believes this motive um and i think it's gonna come down to whether or not they believe these witnesses that she she hasn't taken the stand right she's not she has not no she has not taken the stand that'll be a very interesting decision um i can't wait to see if she does take the stand and see how she comes across that's a very tough decision this thing is giving alec murdoch vibes it's given And Alec Murdoch vibes.

1:22:45Like she's in all sorts of financial trouble. In her case, she's got an affair partner, which is sort of a different wrinkle, but that she allegedly bumped off the husband to get money. I mean, Alec did it for sympathy so that people would not continue looking into his financial crimes. So she seems pathological to me. All right. Everybody can continue following the Corey Richens trial on MK True Crime. It's a podcast. You can download it wherever you get your podcast for free. It's also a YouTube show. So if you go to mktruecrime.com, you will see all the info and you will get to enjoy our guests and their great legal analysis as well as live coverage of the trial.

1:23:19Thanks, guys. Coming up next, Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy, two other contributors over at MK True Crime, are here to discuss a couple of very interesting cases. We'll tell you on the back end of this break. Think about this. In 2006,$20 ,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price. At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about$165 ,000. That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals. And it's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group. For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth. And today, it's a crucial part of any balanced strategy.

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1:24:31Now sign this saying that I trained you or you're fired. Yes, ma 'am. Work relationships are too messy. I just met the woman of my dreams. You've got to chill out and not come on too strong. That goes against my entire personality, but I'll try. Watch Not Suitable for Work, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside? Maybe even explore the layout. envision the natural light streaming through the windows or plan where your vinyl record collection would go at apartments.com you can with tools like their 3d virtual tours you can see the exact unit you could be living in really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com the place to find a place now we turn to the latest in the search for nancy Guthrie, which has entered day 40.

1:25:27We've got some of the best here to discuss the very latest, and that's Mark Garagos, criminal defense attorney. We have yet to hear his take on this case. And Matt Murphy, former homicide prosecutor, both are hosts at MK True Crime. And we have some big announcements over there coming soon. So Garagos, I haven't heard your take on the Nancy Guthrie case. What is it? Not that different from my friend and partner, Matt Murphy. This sheriff, I think all roads lead to the sheriff. And I think that, you know, it's not a surprise that I have some criticism of law enforcement. But in this particular case, this may be kind of a blueprint for how you don't investigate a case, how you don't handle the messaging around a case.

1:26:12And it's a tragedy. Anyway, everybody has their heart goes out to it. But the sheriff has just been atrocious, in my opinion. Do you have any theory, Garagos, just given your lifetime in criminal defense work, on whether this was a likely kidnapping, a likely murder, and then removal of the body? I always thought that the focus on the family first, which I understand and I get, but I thought that being a bicoastal elite and living between L.A. and New York, I missed what people were saying initially who were on the ground there. that, look, this is, you're very close to the border. These things happen.

1:26:54I think there was another, I won't call it similar case, but something that had kind of the earmarks of an abduction and that it probably was a stranger abduction for money at a certain point. And it spiraled out of control because of the supersizing of the case itself. Interesting. Okay. So Matt Murphy, you have been covering this from the beginning. And And yesterday here on our show, we dropped a bit of a bombshell ourselves where we found video of Nancy Guthrie's bedroom, which aired on the Today Show in 2013. I mean, we were stunned to see it ourselves. We're putting together this Nancy Guthrie bit, and we were doing some deep research.

1:27:35And there it was in 2013. There's Nancy. Look at this, standing in her bedroom. This is in the house from which she was taken back in 2013, though. And it shows her bed. It shows the nightside table. It shows the window right next to the bed, very tight quarters there. And in this long back and forth she did with the Today Show anchors on the set of the Today. And to me, I wondered whether law enforcement even knew this existed because you and I, after having looked at this, could credibly convince law enforcement that we knew what Nancy's bedroom looked like, how it was set up. and if we wanted to write, let's say, a demand for ransom in Bitcoin and send it in and sound credible, we might take a detail from the outside of the house that was readily identifiable to anybody, like the floodlight that was dangling, and couple it with a few details from the inside of Nancy's bedroom, which we had seen thanks to a little bit of research prior to sending our notes and convince somebody that we were the kidnappers.

1:28:35Well, that's right. I mean, there's, as they say, the internet lives forever, right? And, you know, I think that, number one, I totally agree with Mark that all roads lead back to this sheriff. And look, I want to be fair, Megan, but this has been a clown show from day one. You've got really good law enforcement on the ground, especially in the FBI. But I've dealt with Pima County on a big murder case out of Orange County, and they were top notch. They were absolutely professional. I don't know what has happened to Pima County since - Well, reportedly a bunch of cops fled and did not like working for him, and that he's lost a lot of his more experienced homicide investigators.

1:29:16Yeah, who could have ever guessed that based on the performance that we've seen? I mean, it's just, I mean, I think Mark put it perfectly. It's just, it's so sad. But yeah, all, so many of these, I think all of them, but if not every single one of them, most, all of these ransom notes were all fake. All the stuff to Marksfarn and Harvey Levin, I think those were all fake. And the Nancy Guthrie home video adds to that possibility. That's my point. It's like, did they know? Did the sheriff know? Because they were like, oh, they had a detail like where her watch was. I mean, I could easily say her watch was on the small bedside table right next to her bed with the old style sort of lantern looking lamp feet away from a window that was over a bookshelf that had electronics on it.

1:30:05I mean, I guarantee you Chef Nanos did not know about that video and could easily have bought the whole thing as credible evidence that this guy had been in her room. Well, well, Chris Nanos demonstrated the entire nation that he didn't know what a DNA mixture was in one of his interviews, which when he said the lab is having problems with the mixture in Florida, which is there's some lab director who's pulling his hair out or her hair out when they heard that, which is just it's absurd. So this guy's, you know, I don't know how old he is. I don't know. I don't know what the deal is. But it just there are hardworking, you know, women and men in law enforcement on the ground level on this that probably haven't slept a full eight hours since this thing started.

1:30:46And they're being misserved. I think the family's being misserved. And, you know, you call in the media, you got to expect, you know, the loonies are going to come out and say the vampires abducted or you got a lot of well-meaning people that are going to come in with tips trying to help that almost never go anywhere. And Mark and I have dealt with a million of those where it's like I heard noises down the street and it turns out it's the raccoons in the trash can again. Or I heard a lady screaming, but it could be my neighbor's wife. You know, you deal with all those. You got to devote resources to those.

1:31:14And now in the modern era, we have scammers who attempt to take advantage and profit from the apoplectic grief of families that are going through the worst thing that a family can go through. And at the helm of this sinking ship is this guy that keeps taking to the microphones, although I think he stopped doing that a little bit. He's doing one-on-one interviews. And now he's coming back blasting the media on stuff. He brought the media in at the very beginning of this. and I've got no criticism of that. But it's like, dude, you've got to be prepared to answer some questions, know your evidence, and take a little bit of heat and criticism.

1:31:53That goes with the job. I mean, honestly, every missing person, their family in this nation would give anything to have the kind of media coverage of the case that Nancy Guthrie has received. The media is a blessing, not a curse. There's some downside of it. I don't deny that, but it's way more upside in having this much media attention on the case because they require 400 officers. That's how we got 400 officers on Nancy Guthrie. It wasn't just because Savannah was the daughter. It's because the media was constantly out there, constantly peppering them with demands for more information. So please spare me on the media blame.

1:32:25And I don't love the media, even just because I'm a part of it. I wouldn't say this if I didn't actually believe it. But speaking of the media, there's been a report now by Radar Online, but they're citing Rob Schuster, who's a British-American celebrity reporter and royal insider. He's a frequent guest of The Nerve and our pal Maureen, and he hosts his own show called Naughty But Nice. And he had reported this, and now Radar Online is reporting it as well, that Savannah Guthrie's family is actively exploring the possibility of legal action against our pal Ashley Banfield following Ashley's exclusive about the brother-in-law, Tommaso Sione, who's married to Savannah's sister, Annie, being at that time, maybe, she said, the prime suspect in this case.

1:33:15Here's the reporting of February 3rd, SOT 28. But they have towed Annie Guthrie's car. And there is some connection to Annie Guthrie's car and Nancy Guthrie's son-in-law. That would be Annie's husband, Tomaso Sione, age 50. from Tucson, Arizona, married to Annie P. Guthrie, Savannah's sister. And my law enforcement source tells me that Thomas Oceone is the prime suspect in this case. Again, law enforcement source tells me that Nancy Guthrie's son-in-law, married to Annie Guthrie, Savannah's sister, is maybe, maybe a prime suspect in this case. At the very least, let me tamp that down, because sometimes it's the first person you're looking at, not prime as in there's no one else.

1:34:17OK, so let's be really mindful of that. When anything happens like this, familial abductions, the families looked at first. And Annie and or Thomas Oceone were the last people to see Nancy Guthrie at 945 at night. But it's very distressing to think that they that this law enforcement source is telling me that Thomas Sione is maybe a prime suspect in this case at this point and that the car belonging to Annie has been towed and impounded and is in evidence. Now, I have not been able to confirm that the Guthrie family wants to sue Ashley Banfield, but I have confirmed that Savannah is livid about that report and definitely does not suspect her sister or her brother-in-law.

1:35:05Can you blame her? I mean, of course, you know, she loves her sister. I'm sure she loves her brother-in-law, and I'm sure she genuinely doesn't believe they had anything to do with it. All of us are in a different boat. you know, we have to be more objective in assessing the possible suspects, the possible people connected with it. And law enforcement certainly does. And Ashley based this claim, Mark, on what she said a senior law enforcement source who had been a source for her for years, who she described as an impeccable source, told her. She's, you know, so do you think there actually could be a, it would be a defamation claim by the Guthries against Ashley Banfield?

1:35:42Let me tell you what I would do if Savannah came into my office or called me and asked me that question. I would say, look, I know you're out of your mind about this. I know you can't believe that this is being reported. But the tape that we just watched together couldn't be more protected under the law. And there is no way this any thought that you have about suing any claim that you think you have is going to be met by, depending on the jurisdiction, it's brought in what's called an anti slap, which is a strategic lawsuit against. What that will do is it will freeze the case and a judge, when he gets it or she gets it, is going to rule that you have no ability to pursue a claim that as framed, by the way, Ashley framed it.

1:36:36It's dead on arrival, pun intended, in terms of any kind of legal action. There's no there there. Why? Because you have the ability, number one, because you could find any judge who's looking at this, any lawyer who's involved is going to tell you, of course, they're looking at the family members. It would be malpractice not to. And that's exactly what Ashley said. Number two, the media is, as long as they are reporting and they have source protection, you're never going to be able to disprove what Ashley Banfield said. Source protection. This has been, by the way, Megan, one of the great frustrations when I'm trying a high-profile case.

1:37:19When a judge gags me and says, you, Mr. Garragas, your team and the prosecution team as lawyers cannot comment on this case. This is attorney's eyes only on some discovery. Well, what ends up happening, what ends up happening, the law enforcement leaks the information. How do I ever prove that? I can't because there is source protection. So that source protection, which is robust, is always going to be a wall that you're never going to be able to climb over. So what about it, Matt? I mean, what if they did sue, saying this turned into a complete shit show where this poor guy who is a victim, as the sheriff said, when you do this kind of thing, somebody who may not be the prime suspect, he may actually be just a victim, who was a victim, had all this focus on him.

1:38:08I mean, everybody, yours truly, Brian Enten, everybody who's been in depth covering this story started talking a lot more about the brother-in-law as a result of that report. and if they say we don't believe her we don't believe her law enforcement source we think she made it up or we think her law enforcement source ought to be sued as well because that was complete bullshit from the beginning that caused us to come under undue scrutiny might they have a case well i think mark's exactly right um they we we both dealt with this in california it's called anti-slap i don't know what what they would call it in arizona but but basically what did she say She said he's a suspect.

1:38:46Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. What exactly is that? He was the last person to see her. That's not Ashley's fault. And full disclosure, I really like Ashley Banfield. Same. I know her personally. And she's a solid reporter. She's a solid reporter. And what she's doing is she's reporting what a source told her. She doesn't say he did it and here's why. She says, I've got information from a law enforcement source who says he is a prime suspect. And even though we've heard that, I think there's even TV shows called Prime Suspect at one point or another. What exactly does that mean? What is a suspect? A suspect means it's somebody that the police are looking at that they suspect is right there in the word might have done it.

1:39:27And the entire world is a suspect in a whodunit like this. And Mark's right. It goes nowhere. These are incredibly emotional situations for the family. Wouldn't be the first time that Radar Online has been radically wrong. But again, going back to what Mark said originally, and I think he's exactly right, all roads lead back to the sheriff. If this is a leak from his shop, it's kind of rich that the guy who brought the media in, his department is leaking information. I mean, it could be the FBI, but still it's his show. He wanted to be at the helm of the ship. He's responsible for that at the end of the day.

1:40:01And I had a great quote once on a high-profile case I was working on where high-placed people in the Orange County Sheriff's Department kept leaking information under an old sheriff who actually wound up going to a federal prison that Mark knows all about. They kept leaking information on my Samantha Runyon case. It was driving everybody crazy. And my old boss pulled me in, and he said, leaks are like ghosts. They seem really scary at first. At the end of the day, they'll never hurt your case. And chasing them is like chasing ghosts. You're never going to catch one. Nobody's ever going to admit it.

1:40:32But at the end of the day, who who is responsible for the integrity of this investigation? It's the same sheriff that's complaining about it. I think Mark's right. It goes nowhere. I would also counsel them. You know, this is a terrible situation and you're very emotional. Of course, they're going to look at everybody in the family. This is not a hill to die on, guys, because they're not it's not going to go anywhere. They would lose, in my opinion, and then it winds up even more brokenhearted because now, in addition to all the horror that they're experiencing, they can throw a tanked lawsuit on top of all that.

1:41:07I would give the family some advice. You have the fact that he was the last person to see her alive. And also, they towed the car that he and Annie Guthrie drive, and it's remained in police custody this entire time. In fact, just yesterday, Brian Enten reported that they may be getting ready to release that car back to them. And they searched their car in the dark of night with flashbulbs going off or they were photographing a bunch of stuff. The media would have asked itself whether these two were under scrutiny by law enforcement from day one as soon as we found out that they towed that car, which happened to be the same day that she said Tommaso was a prime suspect at the time.

1:41:48Like this was not this was coming with or without Ashley Banfield. And the other thing, Matt, is if they did, let's say they said, we don't care. We're suing anyway. I got to be honest. It's kind of a dream for a person in Ashley's situation, because then I get all sorts of discovery from you on whether what I said is true. Now I'm now I'm really going to get up in your business and find out everything law enforcement knows about whether you, in fact, may have done this. Yeah, I hope they don't go down that road. I really do. It's such a it's it'd be a tragic distraction to all of this. But but also, look, if they didn't tow the car, Megan, we'd all be wondering why they didn't tow the car.

1:42:30You know, he was he dropped her off. You know, he's presumed innocent. And I certainly have no information to indicate that he's anything but. But somebody sure did this. And the police must, in order to exercise professional competence, they've got to systematically eliminate everybody, including Savannah Guthrie, including the sister, including every gardener, every neighbor. They've got to it's it's like concentric rings of eliminating potential suspects. That's how you investigate these things. And the idea that he's one of those people that has to be eliminated isn't shocking that that is a rare moment of professional competence that we've seen in this.

1:43:05I was pointing out that Radar Online often reports so and so is considering legal action. They even said it about her at News Nation against Chris Cuomo and News Nation. And she's like, it's a lie. You know, so big grain of salt. But yeah, I agree with you. There's no lawsuit there. I know, Matt, you got to run. Mark, I want to talk to you about our last case. I have to take a quick break. We'll continue on the opposite side. But there's been another mix up at an IVF clinic. And this is just a nightmare. We'll get to it right after this break. Don't go away. Thank you, Matt. Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly.

1:43:36I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly Channel. and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with The Megyn Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

1:44:08Mark Garagos remains my guest, And Mark, there's been another IVF clinic mix-up. This is every parent's worst nightmare who goes through any sort of fertility help. This one is out of Orlando in Florida, the Fertility Center of Orlando. That's what it's called in Longwood, Florida. The doctor is Milton McNichol. And he's now getting sued along with his clinic by Tiffany Score and her husband, Steve Mills. They had a baby girl through IVF on December 11th, 2025. So just two months ago or so, three. And after the baby was born, they realized this little girl, Shay, was not theirs because their baby is not white and they are.

1:44:58We're showing a picture for the listening audience where you clearly have, I don't know if the child is Indian or black, but definitely has dark skin and the parents are as white as I am. And this is just a nightmare. Now the mother knows she's, the mother's already in love with this child very clearly. You carry a baby for nine months, you deliver it, you think it's yours, it needs you just as much as a baby that would be biologically yours. You're probably breastfeeding it. And like the horror of this, and by the way, it would take a few days to know, because I'll tell you something. One of my children was very dark when I first gave birth to her, my daughter, her.

1:45:31And we were laughing. We're like, my God, you know, is she's also IVF? We're like, oh no, uh-oh. She wound up, like the skin got much lighter in the first week of her life. But like, it would take a few days for you to realize, okay, this is not just birth related. This child actually is darker skin than we are. And sure enough, Shay is not biologically there as they did have the test done. And they allege that they were able to produce and store three viable embryos at this clinic. They even know that there was one male and two female embryos, all of which are viable, right? So they must've had the genetic testing done on them before they froze, I guess, I don't know how many they had put in them.

1:46:13Well, actually they say they produced one viable male and two viable female embryos, which have been frozen and stored all this time. I mean, I guess the others, I don't know how many they put in her to get a baby. Sometimes they'll put more than one inside of you. But they thought that they had at least two other embryos in storage, I think. And now they're told there's only one embryo in storage. And it's not even confirmed whether it's really theirs. So they don't know what happened to their three embryos. And they don't know whose embryo this is. And they've gone back to the clinic saying, please go out and like find all the couples who are going through IVF when we were going through IVF.

1:46:53but that doesn't necessarily answer the questions because I guess potentially it could have been like a frozen embryo they got from somebody else and their embryos could have been frozen. You know, there may be thousands of frozen embryos at the clinic. Like, how do you even begin to sort this out? Well, look, this is, as you mentioned, kind of your worst nightmare as a parent. I've got a close friend who's going through this right now. I know the amount of genetic testing that they go through before they do any of this. So my guess is here that there probably is a way for them to get to the point where they can kind of unravel all of this.

1:47:34But what a heartbreaking situation to be in. And by the way, from a legal standpoint, this is not going to end well for the clinic. I can tell you what's going to end. give you a preview. They either have to settle or the insurance company is going to have to settle or it's Katie bar the door there. The liability and damages is off the charts in a case like this. I wonder whether they even have insurance. Do you think insurance companies are even insuring IVF clinics anymore? Well, they probably would defend under what's called a reservation of rights and then they'll try everything possible as insurance companies do to try to exclude providing coverage.

1:48:23But I can't imagine that the insurance companies or that the hospitals and the clinics would be able to go forward or move forward in this area unless they had some kind of insurance, usually with a high retention or a deductible. But I would be shocked if they were operating in this area without insurance. And I will tell you the scary thing about this, the frightening thing about this is you hear about this all too often in this area of medicine. We've had in our backyard, literally in Matt Murphy's backyard, there was a horrific scandal involving these kinds of things. And this is, you know, it's almost meme if it wasn't just such a tragedy.

1:49:11It's a throwback to so many memes and so many stories. But in this case, you, I think, put your finger on it and gave kind of the opening statement that I listened to is, can you imagine being a mother and having that bond and then finding out it's not your child and that potentially your child is out there with somebody else? I mean, that's the other, the flip side of the coin that just makes this heartbreaking. Well, that just happened in California. Maybe that's the Casey reference, because we did a long, long piece about it here on the MK Show. Because a California couple, same thing, they gave birth to a baby.

1:49:51They were very fair. And the mother, at least, was a redhead. And they had a darker skinned child who looked slightly Asian. And then somewhere nearby, there was a family in which one of the parents was Asian. And they gave birth to a baby that was very fair with red hair. And their baby was much larger and the Asian baby was much smaller. And sure enough, there had been a mix-up at the IVF clinic. So the parents were absolutely devastated, not making light of that at all. But at least when it was all said and done, they did switch the babies. Everyone had a baby. And then it was actually kind of crazy because they wound up kind of agreeing to co-parent as a foursome because the mothers and the dads loved the baby that they had had, that they had given birth to so much, even though there was no biological relation.

1:50:41But here, this family has no idea whether their biological child has been born or where their three IVF embryos even are. So like, who would have the rights to this baby? Because there could be a family out there that didn't have any luck on having their embryo implanted. Maybe there's another couple that had this woman's embryo implanted in her. It didn't take. There's no baby for this complaining couple, Tiffany and Steven. And I think the law says they're going to have to give up this baby to its biological parents, even though Tiffany carried it. No? No, that's exactly right. Imagine what you have to go through as the parents.

1:51:28I mean, not only have you bonded with the child that it turns out is genetically not connected to you uh but you also have this constant nagging thought that that child could be taken away that your child you could have a child that's out there that is bonding with somebody else i mean it's a story not to mention like the genetic concerns you know i think about it when we get these stories about the weird IVF clinic doctor who uses his own sperm on untold numbers of the female patients. And like down the line, you know, that means your daughter could wind up dating her biological brother and having no idea, right?

1:52:09These situations lead to like very fraught societal situations, especially when the kids are going to grow up in the same town, not knowing. And like, so far, they haven't solved the mystery at this clinic. So far, they do not know what happened to this the other three embryos or who the parents the actual parents are of the darker skin baby born to tiffany and steven and by the way this is not the amount of genetic testing as you know that's connected to this and the amount of testing itself that it's this is not a heavy lift for somebody who wants to do the genetic investigation here to get some answers And the fact that they're not working overtime 24-7 to get those answers and then to explore databases and to explore DNA and bone marrow registries and other sorts of things.

1:53:01I mean, there's a world of ways that you can do this investigation. You can do it fairly quickly. And I don't know if they have, but if they haven't, that's another layer of incompetency to what's already at Horrifics. The parents are complaining that it's taking too long. Here we are three months later, and they said, this is taking too long. You're slow rolling this investigation. And the IVF clinic said, we're working as quickly as possible, that we have sent notices to other patients, that some couples have been asked to undergo genetic testing and to waive certain confidentiality protections.

1:53:40I mean, let me ask you this, Mark. What if a family comes to you and says, Mark, we had a baby right at this same time, you know, December, and we don't know whether it's ours, but we do not want to submit to genetic testing because we don't want anybody taking our baby. We don't want Tiffany and Steven claiming that our baby is their baby. We don't want any genetic testing done of our child. We don't want to submit to it just because this clinic messed up Tiffany and Stephen's situation shouldn't involve us at all. Maybe they're scared, right, that this is the only baby they're ever going to have and that if this isn't theirs, they don't really care.

1:54:22Like, can you make them? No, but understand if somebody comes and wants to explore this, but they don't want to get the answer, so to speak. I want to do this, but I don't want to expose myself. No, you're not going to go down that road legally because through discovery, unfortunately for you, that's precisely what they're going to ask for. And your case is going to be tanked if you don't do it. But it strains credibility for me to believe that based on at least anecdotally what I know about this area of medicine, that they don't have test results already in their possession. With those test results, there is a world of things that they can do.

1:55:10I'm closely connected to bone marrow registries, having founded a group 25 years ago, the Armenian Bone Marrow Registry, because of the genetic, also because of the genetic tightness and connection in the Armenian community. You have all kinds of registries that you can immediately avail yourself of. When you have a disease, for instance, and you need to do, for instance, a bone marrow transplant or some kind of an organ transplant, one of the first things you do is look for a genetic match. You have the ability to do that. Yeah, but there's not some national database of baby's DNA. I think they'd have to ask the parent before they took the baby's DNA.

1:55:54And by the way, the IVF clinic is not even there. When you give birth to your baby, you're in a hospital. They're not coordinating back with the IVF folks. When they were doing the testing prior to in the run-up to the implantation, they would have done all kinds of, there's requirements that they do all kinds of industry requirements. They do all kinds of genetic testing, number one. Number two, you then go to genealogical databases and you can, you know, we've actually talked about this, Megan, in terms of the genealogy testing that is being used that's on the forefront of cold cases. There are ways that you can go, and here you're not looking to get it admissible at least initially.

1:56:37You're looking to solve a problem or solve a question. You can go and you can take the DNA of the baby first. Oh, I see. I see what you're saying. You're saying, for example, Tiffany and Steven can take the baby's DNA, the baby they have that she gave birth to, and whether the parents are agreeing. Like the parents might be out there raising a different baby and they might not know this is their baby and they may not want to volunteer to get involved in any of this. And you're saying Tiffany and Steven are going to be able to find the biological parents of this baby. Oh, I'm going to be able to, within a matter of, I don't want to say days, but very quickly, I'm going to be able to give you kind of the family, at least dynamic or circle genetically, if you will, of where this baby is coming from.

1:57:30And from there, it's old-fashioned private eye work to figure out. If you've got the genetics of the baby and you've kind of done your investigation, you'll be able to find and reverse engineer who is the most problem. Okay, but here's the problem. Here's the second problem. Let's say they figure out, okay, we found this baby's biological parents, and those parents don't have a baby. They had an implantation. It failed. She didn't get pregnant. They're still childless. Now you know you're going to have to give up your baby. This is not your biological baby and you don't have a right to it. Possession is not nine-tenths of the law when it comes to this situation.

1:58:12Now, how are you ever going to figure out whether it was your embryo that they put in this woman that failed or whether they put your embryo in a different would-be mother and it succeeded? and that would-be mother is raising your child right now. The only way would be to go look at the clinic for all the mothers who had implantations from the day they harvested your eggs and created the embryo from that day forward. You have to go to present day because the clinic seems in disarray. You don't know whether they would have implanted your embryos in another woman on that day or on any of the days thereafter.

1:58:52It's been nine plus three months, right? So we're 12 months later. from when they created her embryos. You have to test all of them to figure out what happened to your baby. You know, it's a brilliant observation that, ironically, the place that you would think would have the best records, the place that you would think you would have the easiest time of tracing is actually, given the disarray that's been reported, that would be the most difficult part of this nut to crack. the the it seems to me you'd have a lot more a higher likelihood of figuring this out um with the dna of the baby that you have and then figuring out who the biological family is as opposed to pray that it was a it was a tit for tat mix-up she got yours and you got hers and then if you're if you know quote lucky i realize the whole thing is unlucky she did have a baby and it's yours i don't even know what you'd be rooting for would you i think you'd You'd be rooting for your three embryos to still be in the test tube that you could go back and have yourself.

1:59:57I don't even know that there's a static way to understand it. Meaning, I think one minute you could think, I want this. The next minute you could say, no, I want this. That's what's such a conundrum about this. What kind of an emotional rollercoaster or cluster you're in when you're in this situation. It's almost - One that's worth millions. Don't you agree? I mean, if you were representing this family, millions. There's no ceiling on this, none. Yeah, yep. This IVF clinic will not be in business much longer, which again, is kind of scary because if you're a parent that has embryos being stored there or you went through this clinic, you've suddenly learned a lot about them.

2:00:41That's gonna be very disconcerting. These things, I mean, it's crazy. We've all had babies. We all know how like when you're the mother in the delivery room that they check that little wrist thing and match it against that baby 20 times a day. You know, it just seems, it's funny because I was in news, being in news. And as you know, prior to that in law, both of these things make you paranoid about weird things happening to you. I was convinced we were going to have a switch to birth situation, you know? And so I bought non-toxic nail polish. And as soon as each of my kids was born, I painted their big toe with this non-toxic nail polish so that I know it's overcompensation, Mark Garagos.

2:01:20You know, we get paranoid in our business. If you haven't been through law school and the experience of having torts drilled into your head and that what torts does to your brain as a lawyer, I get it. I feel your pain. It's sick. Oh, anyway. Well, we'll continue to follow it and see how this winds up, saying prayers for all the families involved, because this is a lot of pain from people who just wanted to have children. I mean, just wanted to have a kid. Mark Garagos, a pleasure, my friend. Great to see you. I miss you. Bye-bye, Megan. Oh, I miss you too. Okay, we're back tomorrow with our pal Sagar Anjeti.

2:01:56It's been a while since he's been on the program, but we love him and are very much looking forward to talking to him. Thanks to all of you for joining us for an extended Kelly's Court. It had been too long, had it not? Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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