Introducing Valley of Shadows: The Devil’s Punchbowl

Hello, and welcome to La Not So Confidential, the premiere forensic psychology podcast. My name is doctor Shiloh.

And I'm doctor Scott, and we host a podcast that explores the intersection of forensic psychology, true crime, and how those concepts are represented in entertainment. We wanted to take a moment and update this very first episode for anyone just discovering our little pod and starting off at the very beginning with us. No matter what year you're currently

We were hoping to find an audience that would be interested in us sharing some real clinical research that found endlessly fascinating. This has been an eight year project of creative growth, professional growth, and an enormous amount of data being put out into the world in these relatively small bites.

Starting at the beginning of a podcast can be daunting. This is why we wanted to take a step back and address episode one.

We are so happy that you're listening, but maybe with some of this orientation it will allow you to get even more value out of our catalog of work. Yes, there is a ton of benefit you can get from binge listening through our archives, and we believe that this content builds upon itself, but really there's no need to

We are super excited that you're here and you're about to start on a journey of getting to know what the real forensic psychology world is like and also getting to know us. We would love for you to subscribe to the show right off the bat, but we also know there's a ton of other material that lives on

And you can also go over to our YouTube channel where we hosted a live show called Behind the Couch, where we typically talk to other people in the true crime criminal justice world. Our Patreon is also still up and running and anyone can join for just a dollar a month to have access to all of that content there as well. With that, we hope you enjoy this bumbling first introductory episode to get to know who we are and why we started doing this in the first place.

We hope that you'll show us some grace with the technology, the sound quality or lack thereof, and also with us finding our way as hosts. Trust us, it gets better with time, and we hope that you have as much fun listening as we did recording. Let us know what you think, thanks, folks. Hi, folks, welcome to the intro podcast of La Not So Confidential. This is a podcast devoted to the subject of forensic psychology. I'm doctor Scott.

Doctor Shiloh, and I am also a licensed psychologist in the state of California and a forensic psychologist.

So we're here because we want to.

Provide some education on the subject of forensic psychology. In the podcast world, there's a lot of great podcasts about different kinds of psychology, different.

Areas, different areas of study.

And research, but there's virtually nothing on the field of forensic psychology by people who are actually working in the field. This is what we hope to bring to you. We hope to bring some fun as well as some maybe some education. Hopefully you'll enjoy this the way we enjoy the exploration of the work that we're very passionate about. I'm a licensed m FT. I'm also a licensed psychologist.

Shiloh, so I hold a master's and a doctorate in forensic psychology and those are both from Alliant International University here in Los Angeles, and as far as my expertise in working with forensic clients, I've really focused on.

Working with offenders and so I have worked.

With them before they go to prison. I actually still have a private practice in which I do this, and then working with them when they get out of prison, primarily evaluations and then treatment. So I have recently shifted to working in law enforcement psychology this year and I have a whole new clientele. So looking at the world of forensic psychology, I think between the two of us, we have quite of experience from different environments, and that's what we really want to bring.

To this podcast.

We should almost mention that we both come to this field from very different fields. We came to psychology as adults, as opposed to some people who go right into doctoral work from undergrad. I was an entertainment professional in southern California for twenty years, working as an agent's assistant, a casting director, a talent manager, and eventually a line producer for DVD content. And Shiloh has additionally a fascinating background as well.

Tell us about that well.

I worked in law enforcement for ten years and seven of those ten years I was a police.

Officer, and you come from a.

Very heavy law enforcement family, So I like to tell my clients now, I am a daughter, sister, wife of law enforcement officer, so I have lived and breathed that life for a long time, which brings a really unique perspective.

I'm sure, But yeah, I was just a normal patrol cop for seven years.

Which is really going to be a fascinating perspective on everything that we talk about.

Sure, I think you know.

When I came to you with this idea, it was really trying to marry a few things that were interested in. Obviously true crime, obviously some of the entertainment and media around it, even if it is fiction, and looking at the forensic psychology topics that are kind of weaved in there.

It's just entertainment based.

But I feel like a lot of times I'm sitting in my car kind of screaming at the radio because a term is wrong. I am writing letters to Karen and Georgia on my favorite murder because I want to just kind of set something straight. And they're so wonderful by the way to read these letters and take the input, but for us to really be the subject matter experts and apply that.

To all of the above.

So hopefully we're going to be able to give you a perspective on what we do in our work and what we want to do to keep it really interesting.

Is we're going to vary.

We're going to go back and forth between true crime, things that are actually going on right now, that are in proceedings that would be known to a larger audience, and maybe some things that are kind of obscure. They might be subjects or crimes proceedings trials that you don't know anything about, but we think that they're really interesting, and we'll tell you why these are particularly interesting. It may relate to how law is going to change or

Absolutely, I think it's also important to note that because we are licensed psychologists and we are not just somebody starting a podcast that doesn't have any obligation to any professional guidelines, we do. Absolutely, so there may be some carefully worded sentences coming from us because we need to make sure we are not crossing or breaking any guidelines or rules or.

Ethics standards that we do have to abide by.

So we can't, as much as we're going to keep this casual and kind of you make it very personal and colorful, we can't just really fly by the seat of our pants in a lot of different areas. We may even have to stay away from certain cases that are sensitive to the agencies.

That we work with.

So forensic psychologists are most commonly are licensed psychologists who specialize in applying psychological knowledge to areas in the criminal and civil arenas that are directly related to legal matters.

We hold graduate.

Degrees in psychology, and those are either a PhD or a society. Sometimes you can have an EED which is an educational psychology degree, but that's very rare.

Yeah, I would say the simplest way to think about it is anywhere where psychology and the criminal justice system overlap, which.

Could be huge.

I mean, I have friends that are doing child custody evaluations for courts, your experience with working in the prisons, just doing evaluations for courts, competency to stand trial, insanity evaluations, sexually violent predator evaluations.

Anywhere when those areas overlap, that's going to be your forensic psychology.

So right, And I should have said that earlier. I did work in the state corrections system for many years, so in this line of work, sometimes forensic psychologists are integrally involved in helping to design newer prisons. Unfortunately, that does not happen enough, and a lot of what happens in the prison system now is they're sort of trying to use an old prison the physical design of the building for treating their mentally ill inmates, and that doesn't

So just kind of distinguishing with criminal psychology. I think for the audience, probably most people think of criminal profiling when they think of something like that very rare, something that is, you know, probably not even done by psychologists.

For the most part.

You're going to find the most criminal profilers working with the Behavioral Analysis Unit in the FBI, and they often are not psychologists, and they're special agents that are specially trained. But there are case specific type of consultations that law

I'm sorry, Labby, but because I always think I have to explain to people were not Bed Wong kind of like just hanging out around the Law and Order Police office, those episodes where Bead just suddenly shows up and drops some wisdom on.

When I got this most recent job.

My brother goes, you're that guy, That's exactly what I was talking about.

No offense to be d wom. He's a wonderful actor.

We just wish it was a little bit more accurate about how law enforcement psychologists are fold into that.

Don't worry if this part seems dry, We're gonna weave in a hefty amount of entertainment.

For you with all of those shows that you guys love so much.

But yeah, so, I guess I didn't say that.

Currently I work for a large law enforcement agency where my job is divided between clinical services for law enforcement.

As well as training and then soon to be part of crisis negotiation team.

Right, You're going to love that there's options for a case specific consultation that I was just speaking about.

We're both really really lucky in that we get to do some of the most amazing trainings, really hardcore trainings for our job. Shiloh's about to come up on a training that I got to do last year with the FBI. I'm incredibly jealous because I would I would pay to do it again.

It's the.

Crisis Negotiation Tactics or Christious Negotiation Team training for the FBI, and it's really really amazing because the FBI has a standardized protocol for or how to handle full on SWAT situations and de escalation of really really tense situations, you know, which can include someone you know that's a hostage situation or a barricade situation, or someone that's about to you know, not only cause harm to themselves, but their attempt to

Share with you as we get to go to these different trainings. I have lovingly referred to myself as a training whore throughout my career because I think it's part of just loving to learn and how much it motivates me to want to put these new skills to task.

We call it La Not So Confidential because living in a large urban area, there's a lot of crime here and even though it's a better environment than it was in the past, you know, this city, the juxtaposition between criminality and entertainment has long existed, and there's a lot of great material to pull from. We're both obsessed with a lot of very well known cases such as Heaven's Gate that was a major event that happened here years ago.

We got to talk talk about Calton involvement.

Southern California seems to be a breeding ground for.

Cults, Yeah, definitely, But just the history.

I mean, I love the history of.

The city now that we're both working downtown proper in LA, you know, from famous cases like the Black Dahlia case, just to no locations of driving by the area where USC now is and thinking, oh, that's where her body was dumped, or she hung out.

At this bar and some of those locations.

Are still there, or the old architecture and buildings are still there.

All of that I think comes into.

Just the interest and fascination with it all, and weaving that into our title I.

Think is fitting as well.

Right, So I think it's really important to talk about why, just leading up to doing this, how we got interested. I mean, obviously we have a career that mirrors some of our sort of nerdy interest in this stuff. Like you had mentioned before, I grew up in law enforcement family, so it was just there in front of me, parents talking in code, talking about different events that had happened

So yeah, it really rancam it right when.

You said that is like great, she's talking about coming from law enforcement and I come from a family of mental illness.

Well, just what got me into psychiogy? And yeah, right exactly, So.

That was always around. I don't know that necessarily sparked my interest. That just felt kind of normal, but really early. I mean I grew up in the eighties, so my parents would watch things like Unsolved Mysteries, which was the creepiest shit.

Now, yeah, for again, Yeah, that was You're right, I.

Mean just and I know there's other podcasts to talk about how nostalgic hearing the host's voice or hearing the music.

To me, it's frightening.

I mean, I just.

Especially the unsolved crimes and there's people still out there, and that was really scary.

Well, and that was also very different from any other show at the time, any other cop show, any other mystery, any other supernatural show, because it was dark and you're sitting there watching it knowing this happened.

These are real now, you know.

He made it a little bit more lurid, but really I was sucked in by that as well.

Yeah, yeah, I think another big point for me, I don't know if it sparked my interest or just also scared the shit out of me, was I remember being at my dad's house and the news coming on and they had the breaking news that the night stocker, Richard Marris, had been caught, and I remember being very frightened and.

My dad saying, no, it's okay, he's caught now.

But something about that.

News broadcast just really stuck with me.

And I also think that's just such a fascinating case and taking place in all kinds of southern California.

Areas and then eventually ending up in East LA was really interesting.

When I decided to major in criminal justice and undergrad I eventually got a job as a police cadet at a local police department and I was put in charge of property and evidence, and I really I think my

And I still to this day if.

I feel like God would say, Hey, what.

Question do you want to answer before you die?

I want to know who child?

No money arounds because with as much research and reading, and even with kind of the new look at it that was done earlier this year and the.

TV show they put together on that, I'm still as clueless as I.

Was day one.

Well, it's confusing, it's completely because they I mean, we'll go into it. We definitely have to do an episode on that because the crime scene got so polluted. I mean, it's if we'll ever know.

And that's what the experts have really said.

You know, you look at doctor Henry Lee and he has re examined that scene and just said, this will never be solved, Yeah, because of the evidence being destroyed.

So but for me, I mean, that was a real big obsession.

And after that I ended up graduating and getting a job as a.

Police officer, and then you know, a couple of years later started my graduate studies.

So it stayed with me. I remember, you know, turning to podcasting. I mean that is sort of new for me. I know it's not for you, but you want to talk a little bit how you got.

Interested in true crime.

Well, yeah, there my intro to it was a little bit different because I wasn't obviously, I wasn't from a law enforcement family, and I worked in entertainment, and I think that there were there were two seminal things that

And I became obsessed with that. But that was you know, before we had so much.

Information accessible from a computer, where now you can get all sorts of stuff. But that stayed with me for years, all through my other career and entertainment, just always wondering. And there's some other things that have recently come up about that that are really shocking, I mean shocking in that that family, the BUCkies, the mc martin's, they were completely failed by the justice system and by the mental health system as well.

And we'll talk more about that.

Did I ever tell you that my dad was called in as a special investment?

No shit, Okay, yes, okay, we got to get your dad.

I did not know that those I know.

And then the other thing was a show that was you know, people who aren't who are not familiar with it, or you know, watch a lot of reality television now, don't realize how little of it there was back in the early nineties. And you know, as cable expanded, the networks had to generate content content, you know, so one of the earliest ones was a show called Citydial so good. Oh my god, that was such a great show. And it was a great show, not because it was perfectly

It turned them into the most lurid things, oh so salacious.

I could sit there and lay in bed and probably watch six episodes and not even know the times.

It's like forensics files, like forensic files, like completely addictive. But the thing that hooked me in as I'm sitting there, you know, living in my crappy apartment in Hollywood, you know, with like I think it was the middle of a heat wave or something and I didn't have any air conditioning, but I remember that one of the episodes came on and Paul Winfield, God rest his soul, he had a most wonderful voice. It was a voiceover artist that worked for years in television and film, and he had a

Low life trash from Birmingham coming in which one were you by the life?

Well that's little LEVI I was not rich, upper crust of a Hunt school. But the thing that was amazing was it was a crime. It was my optometrist, and he had been he had been murdered, and it was set up by his family members. And so we'll we're gonna explore out in a little bit later too. But I also like other podcasts.

I know you like.

I love my Favorite Murder. I mean my favorite Murder, not those women are hilarious, and yeah, I just I adore them.

I adore everything about the podcast that I.

Listened to that they are.

There's so much entertainment value there that I don't mind that podcasts don't get everything right or that they're not subject matter experts. And that's where we're coming in obviously, right. But I don't want to listen to me talk necessarily. It's like when I come home.

I don't watch cop shows.

I don't really like anything too heady. My husband loves like quantum physics, Discovery Channel stuff. I just want to veg out when I listen to entertainment or watch entertainment.

And see I'm the opposite.

I'm a bit of the opposite though, because I will get obsessed with those shows and you know, if there's nothing on, and how is it possible that there's nothing on with Netflix? I mean, we have so many options, but Investigation Discovery has changed the landscape for me and my husband will walk through and just shake his head and go, you deal with this all day? Why are you watching these shows? Because I just I mean I completely get immersed.

And it's hard.

I mean, there are people out there like.

Him that don't give a shit about true crime.

Yeah, oh yeah, and I don't understand how those people exist.

It's amazing and it's fascinating.

But I think that's one of our questions too, kind of coming to the table here is why are people so interested in this?

Okay, well my theory.

I mean there's a lot written on this and you know, and I come from now the podcast you know, you like, right, my favorite murder, you know my I think Criminal has an amazing podcast. I mean it is short, sweet, She's a wonderful producer, does great stories. Cereal changed the landscape that non say Ed's trial has was just riveting for a year and a half.

I remember listening to that.

You and I were on our way to this therapist mixer, and You're like, have you listened to Cereal yet?

It's great?

And I was kind of like no, And then finally.

I did and just burned through that baby, and then ended up listening.

To Disclosed and Discloses another Rabba Chadrey does a wonderful job. Sure, And then I mean I also like and then s Town or shit town, right, Okay, shit town. Also my connection to that is I went to school with that guy at Birmingham Southern in Birmingham, Alabama. So that is a story that is a wonderful you know, psychological profile and criminal aspects to it.

But I like some weird stuff too.

I like mysterious universe right with these two wonderful Aussies that talk about you know, sort of high what do they call it?

High? Strangeness is all over the place.

Laura Lore is great, We love lare coming out on Amazon as a show.

Yeah, good job.

Aaron Mankee who sounds like a teenage William Shatner Captain Kirk, we love him and what else? Yeah, that's kind of that keeps me pretty busy those fourth podcasts.

So what about television now, what are you watching anything in particular that's true criming or or something that you would recommend.

Well from a fiction standpoint. This is we're going to have to do a show on this in the future. Is The Sinner. It is a short form like single series that may get I guess pulled into a separate series or it's a series two, but they're kind of a lot of television shows are following the American horror story where it's a different story every season but uses the same actors. I cannot recommend this show enough because

She did an awesome job with this. But we're going to go into depth on.

Topic because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about that.

There's a lot it's so exceedingly rare.

It's so rare, but when it's real. It's real, and it's always it's always due to trauma, you know. But yeah, a lot of things get it wrong. We'll talk about some of the shows that really entrance the country but really got it wrong, like Sybil. Sybil was something that I watched when I was young, and we all fell for it right and it was all disproved and it made great television, made a great book one Sally and Emmy, but not accurate.

I feel like there's a lot being revisited, like we're at the twentieth year anniversary of a lot of things. So I think most recently what I've been interested in, there's been recaps and kind of updates like I'm a Natalie Holloway case.

Oh yeah, and.

The new show that's going to come out about the Menandos Brothers.

I cannot whoa that's going to be a good one. So we will definitely cover that. But I think we're probably going to focus even in our first real episode, on the Lacy Peterson case, which also has some updates to it and some stuff in the works, and that they're revisiting in a TV show.

And we really want to touch on that.

I mean that Scott Peterson looking at his profile as an example of someone who truly led a double life out in the open, right, that's going to be my trademark phrase as he read a double life, but out in the open. It wasn't like he was the BTK killer who had a double life, had a double life that was you know, completely subsumed, subsumed in night and serial killing. This guy, you know, he's a special kind of personality that we're going to go in depth.

On the podcast I'm late to is the Missing Mara Murray podcast, which is going to be the next episode or next season of Disappeared.

Which was a Natalie Holloway on Oxygen and they're going to do a Missing More Murray season and it is for you guys that haven't heard about it. I believe late nineties.

College student in.

New Hampshire just crashed your car and went missing. And there's a lot of interesting, strange twists along the way that made it get not so run of the mill and it's still unsolved.

To this day. So wow, that sounds great. People really like cold cases.

Yeah, they really do, well, I do. I mean it's fascinating and it's scary. That's I think one of the things that's scary about is like when there's not a black and white, clear cut answer for something that you know, it makes it uncomfortable.

A Fester's theory, and yeah, you're right, it makes people uncomfortable.

I think that's one of the things.

The hallmarks of what brings those of us that are into this is that we look at it and it's alien to us.

You know.

That's why I like the more weird end of the spectrum as well as you know, some of the more violent crimes. Is like really understanding that there are certainly people who are one off criminals, that are they commit crimes of passion, But then there are other people that really are psychologically they are wired differently, they are formed differently from an internal stance, and that can be alien. I mean, it's more it's getting we're getting more used

The average person does not have exposure to that, and so it's so hard to wrap your mind around that this is a human being.

Doing these that makes these choices right.

And so we like to label them and categorize them as monsters or psychopaths or evil or whatever. But the real scary part is that it's just a real person.

Yeah, it's not a supernatural monster. It actually exists, right, So, folks, we've been a little bit over the map in our introduction today and thanks for bearing with us. We're really excited about bringing this project to you. This is it for our introduction podcast. We're really excited and looking forward to bringing you our absolute official first episode, which is going to be focusing on criminals who lead double lives.

So we're going to definitely explore Scott Peterson and I really would like to get into some of the new theories that are out there now and developing about the murder.

But please let us know what you want to hear about.

Definitely, we want your ideas, we want your input. So here's a.

Few ways that you can contact us.

Our email address is LA not So Confidential at gmail dot com. Our Twitter handle is La not So Pod. You can find us on Instagram at La Not So Podcast, and then on Facebook you can find us on the page La not So Confidential. So, thank you so much, and this has been La not So Confidential.

Thanks a lot, folks,