Collier Landry
- Jan 21
- 35 min read

Ana Walshe, Her Kids & What Healing Looks Like w/ Gabby Fedora of True Crime Replay

The investigation surrounding the missing person's case of Ana Walshe took a dark turn this week when her husband, Brian Walshe, already in police custody, was arraigned and charged with her murder. Police still have yet to recover her remains. It is now being concluded that they were possibly incinerated after being sent to a trash distribution center outside Cohasset, MA.

Detectives used the suspect’s internet search histories, blood and DNA evidence, and footage of Bryan Walshe purchasing cleaning supplies at a local Home Depot with the couple's three young children to secure the arrest warrant and indictment.

Gabrielle Fedora joins host Collier Landry in discussing this case and others. Gabby is the founder of True Crime Replay, a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting families searching for loved ones and shedding light on existing missing person cases. Gabby channeled her childhood story of abuse at the hands of a family member into the work she is currently doing to help others.

You can find more on Gabby and True Crime Replay here:

Website: https://www.truecrimereplayinc.org/

Twitter: @truecrimereplay

Facebook: facebook.com/truecrimereplay

Email: gabrielle@tcrinc.org

In addition to these resources, it's also important to consider seeking support from a licensed mental health professional or support group. Talking with a trusted friend or family member can also be beneficial in overcoming trauma and its aftermath.

Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/
GoodTherapy: https://www.goodtherapy.org/
Trauma-Recovery.org: https://trauma-recovery.org/
American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/
National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml

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They need to be allowed to process this cuz they're gonna process this much later. They're going to process this as young adults as adolescents, the college age, twenties, thirties. They're gonna constantly be processing this and going through a wave of emotions because as someone whose father murdered his mother and was consistently.

Consistently processing those emotions. It is a rollercoaster because there is no playbook for this shit. There is no manual that you can download on your iPhone to figure out how you're supposed to deal with these situations, whether you are the adult in their life trying to be there for them, or whether you are the child who has lost everything, who is trying to process it because they don't even realize what they've lost.

Testimony continued. Today in the most notorious criminal trial in Richland County history. Dr. John Boyle is accused of killing his wife Noreen, and burying her body in the basement of his new home in Erie, Pennsylvania. The 12 year old son finally took the stand as I heard a screen. I heard a thud was about this loud.

We the jury, find the defendant guilty. When I was 12 years old, my testimony sent my father to prison for murdering my mother. This podcast serves as a type of therapy and reconciliation for myself, and it is my hope that it helps anyone who has experienced deception, betrayal, and dark trauma. I'm Collier Landry, and this is Moving Past Murder.

Hey movers. Welcome back to another episode of Moving Past Murder. I'm your host, Collier Landry, and what? Let's go When along. Happy Friday everyone. It has been a week, but I have a great episode for you guys. My guest today here name is Gabrielle Fedora. She is the founder of the nonprofit organization.

True crime replay, and she is gonna talk to us about her inspiring story to create her organization and move through her trauma. Speaking of trauma, there is a case that I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and unfortunately it has all come to a head this week. That is the missing person's case of Anna Walsh from her home in Cohasset, Massachusetts.

Now, I became aware of this case because I was reached out to by a friend who. There's a lot of similarities in her case and in her disappearance with that of your mother's. And, um, they were right , and as I delved more into it, I was, it was just very eerie. And she has three sons, uh, two, four, and six. And what happened this week is a couple of days ago, her husband who had.

Arrested or taken back into custody because her husband, who was awaiting sentencing in a previous case for fraudulently selling Andy Warhol paintings, he was then issued an indictment for her murder. Police have been looking for her body. For a while they did not find anything, but there was a lot of DNA n evidence that had been uncovered.

There was a bloody knife that was found apparently in the couple's basement of their home that they were renting in Cohasset, Massachusetts, and there were also blood stains that were found as well in the basement, and apparently also retrieved from a distribution center for trash in the area where police recovered a bloody.

Rug or carpet and a hacksaw. Apparently, forensic investigators looked into his search history online and they found, uh, multiple searches for how to dismember a body, disposing of a body. Now, I've been interviewed about this over the past couple of days, and I probably will continue to be interviewed about it, but I was on a podcast called Surviving the Survivor.

The interviewer, Joel Walman. He asked me something that many people have asked me and he said, what would you say to the children? What advice would you have to the children? And here's the thing, these kids are two, four, and six. I don't really have any advice for them right now. They're too young. My relationship with my mother was very good, and it was, it lasted for almost 12 years and until her murder.

And the thing for me is that I have those wonderful memory. And I talked about a process of doing this podcast and also making my film a murder in Mansfield, which brought other relatives into my life that I had never known because I was abandoned by both sides of my family was in the foster care system and eventually was adopted.

But, I don't know a lot about my mother or my father, and I can't trust my father to ask him these things because he's incarcerated for her murder. He's also a psychopath and a, and a narcissist, and a and a world-class pathological liar. So nothing that he could tell me. I can really believe in the first place.

So one of the things that has really been unique about doing this program and about creating content is these relatives that are second cousins or cousins once removed or twice were whatever the, the, the genealogy is there. But a lot of them have said to me when they've watched these videos on YouTube or they've listened to my podcast or they've seen my film, they said, you are a spitting image of your mother.

And that's amazing to hear these boys' lives right now. They're in the custody of the state. The father has been arrested for this murder, they're never gonna get to know that family. So what I would say is to the people surrounding them, that they need to support them. They need to listen to them, they need to let them grieve.

And this isn't the thing about trauma that's really interesting. And the thing that I discussed in this program, This is an ongoing process. This might not affect them until they're in their twenties or thirties, and it probably will affect them sooner, but it might not really hit them until they're older.

For me, I was constantly processing it and my involvement in my father's arrest, my involvement in his prosecution, my involvement in trying to connect with him over the years and my involvement in holding him accountable for what he did was all the way of catharsis for me. And then creating the film, creating this podcast, but also for me in a lot of ways.

I still was coping with all of these things, and I feel that's what these boys are gonna do. So to whoever takes them in and tries to give them some sort of sense of normalcy, it's not possible what, in a lot of ways, because they're not gonna have their mother, they're not gonna have their father. And really, these are three boys.

Boys are very close to their mother. They're not gonna have that. They're gonna have very faint memories. Unfortunately, there's a couple of things that come with that is one is that they will be able to find out these beautiful memories of their mother eventually, but they also need to be allowed to grieve.

Consistently processing those emotions. It is a rollercoaster because you grieve for that loved one you lost, but you also grieve for the fact that your father did this, and then you grieve for the fact that you never got to know your father and your whole family dynamic is, well, it's screwed up. allowing the children to go through that naturally, you know, we have a really big tendency of like, suck it up, move on.

Just be strong. No, you've gotta process it. It's the only healthy way to do this, or else that leads to negative situations occurring in your life. You don't process the emotions, you don't process the grief, you don't mourn, you don't process the trauma and therefore, One of the, the, the key things with trauma and when they talk about this in epigenetics and uh, especially with Holocaust survivors, is that trauma is passed down through generations.

And this would be no different where these kids are experiencing this trauma. They're gonna have to be allowed the space. To process that. So for whoever comes into their life and their support system, they're gonna have to understand that they're gonna have to make space and create space for that. And they're gonna have to let them know that that's okay, because there is no playbook for this shit.

There is no manual that you can download on your iPhone to figure out how you're supposed to deal with these situations. Whether you are the adult in their life trying to be there for them, or whether you are the child who has lost everything, who is trying to process it because they don't even realize what they've lost until, I mean, for me, when I think about it, and I was very fortunate to be adopted when I was 13 by a loving family, a a very large family actually, with all the brothers and sisters that my parents have.

And, and that was incredible cause I didn't have a large family. I gave her a very small family. You have to process all of these things. You're not gonna get to know about your family. And I often, and I talk about this a lot on this program I have before where I wonder like what my mother would be like at this age with me right now if things were different.

is what I wonder about a lot if my father hadn't committed this crime. Cause he had no reason to do so. If my mother had been allowed to live, had been allowed to be, my mother had been there to see me graduate high school and going to college and have a career as a filmmaker and et cetera, et cetera. I wonder about that a lot.

And these kids are gonna do the same thing because they, they got robbed of that opportunity by their father and also for both their parents. So they don't get to know him as well. They have to process that. They have to grieve for that. And I'm gonna get into this a lot more in the episodes, in the next couple of episodes because this is a big case and I don't normally comment on these things.

I am very intrigued about this, and I'm very supportive of this because I just, it hits so close to home. I know what it's like. So anyways, as I said, my guest today is Gabrielle Fedora. She is the founder of the nonprofit organization, true Crime Replay, and she started this organization to process her own trauma that she experienced.

As a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse. As a child, she ran away and now she's working with people with missing persons cases and to bring light to these cases. So I'm pleased to welcome to the program Gabrielle Fedora. So Gabby, thank you so much for joining the program.

I'm happy to be here and I'm glad that these conversations have started happening.

Yeah. So I met you, full disclosure, I met you on Twitter spaces, I believe like a week and a half. Yeah,

it was that beginning of that discussion about Anna Walsh. I know that you got brought in because you had been looking into her on your own and had heard that Yeah. This discussion was happening.

Yeah.

What happened is I had a friend reach out to me who actually testified at my father's murder trial for the murder of my mother, and she was the one who pulled the dental records to identify my mother's. and she reached out to me and she goes, have you seen this? Because it's really eerily familiar. And for my audience, just to let you know, you have a little baby on your lap.

And her name is Natalie. Yes. Aw. Yeah. So I became really interested in, not only, so my friend Shelly reaches out to me, she tells me about this, and I just started diving into it and I was like, oh my God. And I. The now suspect who's been arraigned on murder charge with her husband, and I thought, God, he just has those same dead eyes as my father had and just the eerie similarities.

Look, she disappeared on New Year's. On New Year's Day, actually at four in the morning got was going to the airport in a ride share thing cuz I guess she commutes back and forth from Washington DC and that was his story. Which was eerily familiar to my father's, which was literally my mother got into a waiting car.

He was hypothesizing that she went to Washington DC later on after the trial and after he was convicted. His brother, my uncle, my godfather, who was best friends with my mother, came out and said, oh, I saw her in Washington dc, which is just very odd, but it's just, it's all these really eerie parallels.

and I started thinking like, oh my God. And then I delve in. She's got the three kids, which of course, two, four, and six. They're just little babies that are literally, I don't know, but I mean, I know they all know that their mom's not there. But the six year old, obviously I was 11 and turned 12 and all of this happened.

I can't imagine what's going through their, like, how do, how are people even explaining this to them? And that's in my heart. Goes out to them because it's just like, what do you, and today, listening to the, the charges being read to him in court, seeing his sort of, again, dead eyed reaction to it, it just made me think of my father.

And it made me think of, they don't, I don't think, and this is something I was very passionate about, people don't understand or look at the consequences of violence like now this has impacted his family, his children. It's forever changed the course of their lives. If he is in fact guilty of doing this, and if she is in fact dead and it's horrible,

think what really sticks out to this case and why we had gotten those spaces that day was everyone's repulsion by.

That was the morning that he. Taken into custody and he walked past, or he was walking into the jail and he was smiling and acting like there was nothing wrong. And people were so repulsed by that initial reaction that you're here under these charges and you're smiling for the paparazzi and the news as you're walking into court.

That was

really, well, he wasn't Well, yeah, but what was interesting is that he wasn't, he was, For being for misleading officers. And the reason why is I think is it has nothing to do with her. Yeah, it had to do with the fact that he's supposed to report his whereabouts because he's already getting ready to be sent to the clink for defrauding people, overselling phony, Andy Warhol.

So he's already up to be sentenced to go to prison for fraud. So he's supposed to report his whereabouts. He didn't have an ankle monitor, like how do you report your whereabouts when you leave the house? He

did, he had a radius of areas that he was allowed to go. So this, when this played out, he had said he gotten lost on the way to his mother's house.

Oh, that's, and that was what the kicker was, is because that's where they discovered the dumpster, which led them to. The transfer station, and that's what led to the finding of the various tools that he had used. And then it just kind of Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Well, yeah, with D N A that they're saying supposedly had been used to commit a crime.

Yeah. So that's where that's all came from.

I know that you guys have been really active in this Idaho 4K too, and I think that's the thing that as a true crime survivor in a lot of ways, like my father was a little bit different because I witnessed my father, I heard it happen. So for me to make judgment on him like, yeah, you murdered my mother, like I know he did, which was so fascinating to me after the fact, his just years of gaslighting.

That my feelings weren't valid or that I didn't hear what I heard or insinuating that I was coached in that trial, which is just utterly fanciful, I thought to myself, wow. So I could firmly say that, yeah, he did it, but we can't ever, we can't say that cause there's no witnesses. Right. So to me it, it makes me feel like, oh, this is, we're so quick to judge, we're so quick.

Just like with Brian Koberg, and I always feel that's dangerous. What if they're innocent? Now I would say that this guy's already been found guilty of one crime , and it happens to be fraud and lying. So he's obviously quite capable of lying and defrauding the public and it's an interesting story. But anyway, how did you come into all of them?

So originally when I grew up, I went through my own trauma being a child sex abuse survivor, and then. During that trauma, I had run away from home several times, so I knew what it was like firsthand to be missing. So when I was an adult and really started to delve into what happened to me when I was younger, I really picked up on missing persons cases.

Their stories and the publics tend to be, oh, very blase. Oh, they're just a missing kid. Oh, they chose to run away. And that really stuck with me as someone who had been there and done that and what actually had led me to do that. So with that in mind, I started looking into Jennifer Duos because I'm based out of Connecticut, and that was a big case near me.

And then there was the Tony Tope family that went missing. That had been originally from the town I live in now. And with that having happened, it kind of started just as a Facebook thing. And then we picked up case after case and we realized there was just this need, especially for families that don't have a lot of money or don't have a lot of things, there's a great divide in resources.

Especially with missing majors, which is what led me to start the nonprofit organization so we could really start helping people bring kids back home. And then we do adults and everything else as well. But what you find out very quickly is doing missing persons. Missing persons, and true. Right hand in hand because normally these people are missing because of some crime, whether it's barter, which is the big grab on true crime, but there's so many other things as well.

That's how my mother's case started. It was treating a treated as a missing person's case, which I remember when police came and then they were asking me questions and I'm trying to say, no, she's not missing, but they, I mean, she is missing, but she's not missing. I know what. But treated as a missing persons case.

And I interviewed a woman, her name is Nina instead, and she has a podcast called Already Gone. She, I believe that's what it's called. And she contacted me because she is in the Michigan area and works with, works with missing persons cases there, which is very close to Ohio, right? Michigan's our neighbor and one of the things we discussed, How rare it is, first of all, that these missing cases, missing persons cases, even get reported, even get, because it's the amount of time, right, that goes by.

Well, I think there's a show called the First 48, right? When they, I guess they're investigating murder suspects, for example, but it's those initial times when someone does go missing that they. You only have a small window before, for example, they can't find her body that they believe that she's been murdered.

Now there's there so much time has passed. Right? She was reported and in the case of Anna Wall, she was reported missing days later after she went missing. I think it was like January 4th I believe, or fifth I'm her by her employee and her employer, and. That's three days, four days, right? That, that she's gone.

And so when I was talking to this woman, Nina nsaid this, the podcast host, she was saying not only is it that these PA cases don't get reported, but they don't get reported in a certain amount of time. And then it just goes on top of paperwork. On top of paperwork, on top of paperwork, right? Because so many missing cases, missing cases, cases get reported, but they don't get reported initially when it happens.

Then loved ones are without their loved ones for a long period of time. They're like, okay, we need to report them missing. And by that time it's just like the trail goes cold and then they want answers and it's, it's been a month. Why did you wait this long? Well, that's what law enforcement ends up saying to them.

I'm just so fortunate because police, like I said, that one detective believed me because I don't know what would've happened if a week had gone by. And

it's something that happens so often and it gets fought back and forth both directions. Like this whole concept of, oh, well you need to report things faster.

And then people that try and go and report and the police are like, you don't have enough evidence to say this person is missing. So it's like a double ledged sword of misconceptions on both parties. There are so many cases, even just recently that all have to do with missing persons like Alina Kojak, who's a missing child, and she wasn't reported missing for five weeks until the WOW School stepped in.

And this was like before she hadn't been seen since the day after Thanksgiving, and she was only reported missing right around Christmas. And this is a like a repetitive issue. I mean, I could go down a list of names of people, especially children in the last couple of years where there wasn't so much oversight that have just disappeared essentially off the face of the earth and no one's been able to find them.

And

why do you think that is, that people wait is they're holding out hope? They want it to be a private matter? Is it that they feel that?

Like I, if it's children, it has tended to be that the person that was in charge of them has done something. Serenity, McKinney's case she went missing after the Christmas of 2019 or 2020 and wasn't reported for eight months.

There's a lot of these sort of issues where it. In kids' cases, normally the parent has done something, which is why they didn't report in adult cases. It's an issue of, okay, well adults, Classic line that families here is Adults have the right to go missing. Yeah. . So there a lot of times, depending on the department that they're working with, it's okay.

They have the right to go missing, but they're missing and we're losing that valuable time. Oftentimes it's just a matter of lack of education on what to do. Because they're like, oh, well maybe this person is just busy and they're not answering, like they don't realize that that person is missing normally until it's been a couple of days.

So can we talk a little bit about what drove you to this work? To start this foundation? Yeah. What happened to you as a child? So

when I was really young, my mom was a single working. My dad had been an alcoholic and had lost custody, so when she would leave me with my grandparents because she was working her butt off to try and provide a steady household for me, and then that grandparent ended up being my abuser, she did eventually go.

Court and was charged with sexual abuse. But by that point it had been going on for two or three years. And then during that process my, my grandmother had caught him red-handed and had promised. Oh, I'll go to the police. We'll tell your mom everything will be okay. It's not gonna happen anymore. And then it just kept happening.

So I grew up having that distrust in the system. And distrust. Yeah. In my family because I thought they knew and just kept sending me, I'm so sorry. They did eventually find out during seventh grade, I had written it in my diary and my mom had read my diary. Yeah, and pulled me from school and took me to the police and we went through the whole process and in that process I was a kid.

I was 12 at the time. There's a lot of things that happen that they don't make you really aware of to try and protect you through the court system. Sure. If you don't want to. If you don't wanna be able to have to testify. What I didn't realize is by letting him plea, he got essentially no time. I think he served a total of three months in a jail and three months in a mental health institution before he was released for something that, I mean, had happened for such so,

Yeah.

Oh, so and

no, I'm sorry. Go ahead. During that, oh yeah, so during that seventh to eighth grade time period is when I ran away several times, which is what led my mom to look into my diaries, which led to the discovery of what had been happening. But that first time I ran away, it was particular awful because the police, when they did find.

Had to drag me out of a girl's crawlspace addict. And when they were dragging me, it was because they were like, oh, he brought your favorite person. They brought my grandfather with them to retrieve me from having run away. So not only did I run away to try and escape him, and I didn't get to. He was there waiting outside and rode in the police car.

So I didn't even get the opportunity to tell them why I ran away because he was there.

And do you think he was there to protect himself, obviously? Oh,

absolutely. Because he knew if they had me in that car alone and asked why I ran away and he wasn't there, I would've told him.

Yeah. I'm so

sorry. I'm sorry.

It's one of those things where. It's hard, but at the same time, I know that it's given me tools to do things Yes. In my life to be something bigger because it kind of puts things in perspective. I, when I friend out, I was having girls, I have three girls, and every single time I broke down, Being a girl and having gone through what I went through, the world hasn't changed that, and I was hoping to create, it really hasn't the world.

No, it really hasn't. So I'm just, it's really

unfortunate. It's it. A sexual assault has become something that is so, so common. And when I made my film and my film was out there, and it's obviously a murder Mansfield about the murder of my mother by my father and the uh, and the consequences of violence, but the people that reach out to me that see the film that it resonates with the most because there's not gonna be many people whose father murdered their mother.

Right. Yeah. I would say, and I was astonished and heartbroken when. Started like looking at message after message over the years, the majority of these people are sexual assault survivors and sexual abuse survivors, and they're 90% female and it's 90% perpetrated on by the person who is caring for them, right?

Whether that be the uncle that was babysitting them, whether that be the stepfather, whether that be the mother's boyfriend. , or whether that be somebody who is blood related, the like the grandparents or whatever, or even their own father. And just gives me a lot of hope in a lot of ways because the story resonates with them and therefore they see my story and they go, well, if you can make it, I can make it through this.

And that gives them hope, which to me is gobsmacking in a lot of ways. Okay. I, I mean, I'm glad, but I'm just saddened for what they've gone through. But do you get that same thing as you begin to sort of let your story out? You have this nonprofit as you begin to sort of share your story more and Yeah,

I think it's one of those things where I was already hyper aware of how common it was because of all the support groups I've gone to, even being a teenager, hearing other feedback.

But then coming onto bigger platforms and really starting to see how widespread it is, has been eyeopening and heartbreaking at the same time, because I'm glad to see people are starting to talk about it because for so long it was just not spoken about. My extended family had that mentality of. We don't talk about these things.

You tarnish the family's name and really didn't allow me into the family for that reason, because I wasn't willing to not talk about it and continued to let him attend events after his jail time and be around children, which was particularly. Heartbreaking for me to watch happen over the years, up until his death just a year ago.

Oh, why do you feel, why you're so, I met you in this true crime, this true crime group on Twitter's basis. And obviously you have true crime replay, which is your Twitter handle, and what is true crime replay, by the way.

So it was originally supposed to be a podcast Uhhuh, and then I tried doing it on my own and realized podcasting is a lot of work to do alone.

Oh, it's a lot of work. Oh yes. It's the job that doesn't pay anything. the full-time job

that doesn't pay anything. So then I went back focusing on our network, and then we started getting families reaching out to us because we covered other people's stories. Third party. And then we started getting families proactively reaching out to us.

And then it kind of evolved into this, realizing there's this need for people that are in that trauma and in that moment they don't know how to verbalize what they're going through. They don't know how to haul resources. There's no handbook for what they're going through. So that's kind of how that progression evolved.

And now that we have a podcast and discussions again, and we have all these things going on, personally, I have people that I've been letting run other stuff so I can focus more on survivor work and reform work and that sort of thing, which is a little less triggering for me.

No, a hundred percent. And it's.

I am alwa. I've for years never really even realized I'm so new to the true crime space cuz even though I made this film, I was making a film about my story and what happened to me. I wasn't like a true crime hoone it type person. And I just sort of kind of got into this true crime community less than a year ago because I started interviewing fellow survivors, all started with Tara renewal from Dirty John and just sort of sort of continued after.

I was astonished about a couple of things because I didn't realize how popular it was with women for sure. I mean, 90% of my audience must be female, and I think the true crime in general, they knew this. I became aware of this when I was traveling around with, with a murder in Mansfield to the different film festivals.

I didn't really understand it and then I started thinking like, why is. I started thinking like, why is that? Why are we obsessed with true crime? And then I started realizing, as many women have told me, they're fascinated by it, but it's also, they want to be aware of it so they can recognize it and so they can be prepared.

Yeah, and I think another thing you'll find really common, True crime is really popular with trauma survivors. Sure. I think there's a rush of, especially with survivors that haven't really spoken out much or might have not seen justice, there's that rush of, thank God. That this person, somebody said it did something awful and someone did something and someone, and like they're gonna see jail time.

And there's that sense of relief that there's some justice happening somewhere.

And you know what, and that's what I, that's where I arrived with it after so long because I'm, I know that so many people are fascinated with it. But yes, it's that it, it gives them hope and it gives them a. Because they might not be able to find that piece in their own lives.

Hearing y their story, your story, my story, whatever other people's stories and seeing something being done about it really gives them a sort of sense of satisfaction. And I have kind of twisted my brain to understand that. And I guess I, I can completely understand it as a victim and as a survivor of all this, but I guess.

And this is, goes back to numerous podcasts that I've been on. It always makes me so keenly aware of how fortunate I am that somebody listened to me. That one Detective David Mamore saying, I believe this kid. I believe this kid. Exactly.

It's like there's some people that have gotten so lucky. They, they.

And I hate to say lucky, because it shouldn't be

luck. No, it shouldn't. Shouldn't be.

Every single person shouldn't be believed because Yes. How many times has false reporting happened versus how many times has un verbal? Things not been reported. Correct. Like, okay. So at that point, yeah, maybe we'll get a few false reports, but how many people will see justice and how many people would be taken off the streets that have done horrible things, that the system is just not necessarily very victim friendly.

The and that. Exactly. And that's the conversations that I really love. About these things is that you raise this awareness of the consequences of violence. Cause that was my passion growing up. Nobody cares because it's like the next case comes along, okay, now we're fascinated with this. That's distracted us into something else.

And it is human nature. I don't resent it at all, but I go, we don't think about these things cuz we're not educated about these things. We don't see what happens to victims. We don't see the destruction. That occurs due to this behavior. You know my, you go, oh yeah, your father murdered your mother. Get over it.

Which is, I get a lot, by the way, all the time still. That's it. Why are you talking about it? Why are you talking about it? And I'm like, I am over it. I'm talking about it because I'm helping other people because they resonate, because people have said to me for a very long time, you don't see the people that you really help by doing your podcast, by talking about these.

Those are the people that are silent, that are going, wow, that really hits me. They don't say anything. Like, that's the people that you're really speaking to, the people that don't reach out. And I'm like, well, that's a real, it's a very poignant statement and it's very powerful too. But you know, I think for me, talking about these things is obviously very cathartic, right?

And sharing the story and giving other people hope that, hey, like. Here's the spoiler alert. You're gonna be okay. You're gonna make it through. No matter what you're going through, you're gonna survive and you're gonna be o, you might be bumped, bruised, you might have some broken bones, you might have some scars, but you're gonna make it.

You're gonna survive. You're gonna be okay. And I always wanted to speak to that one kid, but on the flip side, I wanted to raise that awareness because they do not understand. Because for example, we talk about what happened to. And obviously you're not perpetuating the cycle of abuse, but oftentimes people's coping mechanisms, and correct me if I'm wrong, what will often be they will repeat the cycle of abuse as their way of coping.

It's

all too common. I mean, I've worked so many cases now and some of the cases I'm working on recently have people involved in these cases. It's that it's either people who have been traumatized that then turn to alcohol and drugs, or it's people that have been traumatized and then continue that abuse, and then they say, oh, well this is what happened to me, so I'm gonna do this to others.

And it just continues to happen generation after generation. Yeah. I mean, even in my situation, It was my grandfather, but he did not, I was not his only victim. And it is speculated or ReMed in my family that my grandmother had been witnessed to her own trauma or trauma in the family and her generation, which is what made it acceptable to her to look the other way.

And so by repeating and not speaking to you and continuing. Cycle of abuse. It's how these traumas continue to just pile on top of each other, then add in mental illness. Yep,

exactly. And that's the thing is you know, the, is letting people know that they can feel empowered to speak up too. Like I spoke up, I spoke up until I was the annoying little kid who I'm sure people were tired of, but.

And I think like my mother's friends also were not fans of my father either. But I think that, but really it was law enforcement's ear who I had to bend and just the faith that Dave Mamore had in me as a detective to go, there's some th this kid firmly believes this . There's a reason this is an articulate young man, and I think that if you can, we should always listen to children, right.

Just becomes to be able to let people know that you should speak up. Say something, do something. Don't be passive about this. I mean, even with the missing person, oh, we'll handle this internally, which happens of course, all the time, right? Oh, it'll be a family matter. We won't involve him. Then it, it, and it.

I engage with a lot of people about these subjects. It happens a lot in communities of color too. Definitely because of, definitely, obviously there is a socioeconomic factor to all of this as well. You look at this Anna Walsh case, this was not that. This is a wealthy white woman. I mean, she's Serbian, so, but you know, she's ethnic, but this is a person from a good neighborhood, a good family, or at least on the surface, right?

There was still just this reticence to do something about it. I don't know. It's, I was listening to, there were some people talking about that were friends with them and said, we don't understand why this happened. The weer, they were so happy they were together, this, that and the other. I'm thinking to myself, people were keenly aware that my father was, they were very aware that my father was a womanizer for sure, because he wasn't shy.

He had a girlfriend that was pregnant at the time that all of this occurred. I have a half sister that was born 12 days before my father was arrested. So there is literally, it was just brazen and I don't know about this guy, Brian Wash. Like I said, I don't know anything really about this case other than I've just briefly read and listened to, but all of the characteristics, just looking at him is just, it reminds me of my father a

hundred.

Ethic, especially with Anna's case. The part that has kept me up at night is some of the footage that they found that have supported the case is the, it was Home Depot, I believe. Uhhuh , and she had the three boys with him. Oh, I in Home Depot buying the supplies and I can't. Are you serious? Imagine to be that kid trying to grow up after that?

That being public knowledge. Oh my God. I think that's the part that kills me with her case because they already had to lose her.

I didn't know that. Oh my God.

They're already victims. But to then make

accomplices. Yeah. And of course they're not accomplices. Let's be very clearer. Are they? They are complete victims in all of this.

I just see the conjecture that is leveled towards survivors and victims. I can't imagine the scrutiny that just the, it's poor children. That's what makes me, there's no reason to do these things. There's no reason. Get a divorce, it's done over, move on with your life,

and it, it's just time after time of the same story and a lot of time.

We end up having a lot of people reach out that are various trauma survivors, but my heart hurts. Like how many times that they're women that are in DV that are like, they're fascinated by these cases where you know that it's led to the woman's St. Mice, but they're like, that's not gonna be me. And I'm like, yeah, it very well could.

Please let us help you. We will do anything we can. Let's make a. Let's get you in touch with resources. Let's do whatever we need to do, but, and how many times, it's not me. That's not gonna be me. It's not like that. And I'm like, it wasn't like that for her either, until it was like there's no stepping stone to that.

It just, this is not that, and then it's that. And there's nothing you can do about

it. Yeah, exactly. This is National Stalking Awareness Month, January. It's again, that that is another crime is national stalking awareness month, and that is another crime. That is just something that, it goes very under-reported, not pursued by law enforcement, I think at all.

I think it's not only, maybe it isn't taken seriously, but I, they even say, come back to me when he does something. Well, when this person does something, I'll be dead. That's what will happen. But also the world is flooded with these types of situations. Unfortunately, it, I don't know what the answer is.

And the internet, the internet has made it so much easier to do that.

Yeah. I mean, It. It's so easy to like, and people don't even notice that they're making it easy just by leaving their notifications on Snapchat or Twitter or anything. Like they're just giving up that information because there's that push by social media to live that lifestyle of, look at me, look what I'm doing, which just feeds that information to anyone that might have melanin.

But also there's a flip side to this. , and you're absolutely correct, but there's a flip side to you don't wanna live in fear either, because there's something to be said for that as well. And I think that's the other flip, like that's the other side of the coin for me with true crime, is that people become so obsessed with it, they almost become xenophobic or a agoraphobic.

Right? And they don't, they. You have to live in society. You have to engage in the world's healthy to do that, but you also have to be smart. It's not the answer, just take everything away. It's a, it's very interesting because I think about my two sisters, right? So I have a half sister was born 12 days before my father was arrested, who I don't have any contact with.

I for six. Because it all started when I made my film, which I wanted her to be a part of. She was gonna do it. Her mother intervened. She decided not to do it all of a sudden and has never spoke to me again. The other one is my adopted sister who was adopted from Taiwan six months before my mother was murdered, and I, the last time I saw her was January, 1991.

We were separated. We were, her family did not want her to see me after a couple of visitations and supervised visit. But she grew up in the same town. I did. Both my sisters did. The thing that I think about is they were both sheltered in a lot of ways from what happened. Oh, we're not gonna, we're not, oh, that's not you.

Or that's, it's like, are you kidding me? Like for me, I couldn't get away from it. Of course, I want to, don't want people to know who I am, but can't avoid that. I was on try on television testifying against my father. I'm the one that led the investigators the whole. Gathering evidence against him. Of course, I didn't wanna do that, and this is why I left my small town 20 years ago to move to Los Angeles.

Cause I wanted to do something with the story, but I also wanted to start a place where nobody knew me. I mean, I love where I come from. I love the support network and the base that I came from. I never wanted that to define me in my life. But at the, on the flip side, you do have to interact with society.

Like I don't, I can't speak to anyone else's mental health other than my own, but I just, I. It's, I don't think it's healthy to shelter a child either or to shelter people because you're afraid of what's gonna happen. And I think there's a lot of helicopter parenting that goes on with trauma survivors over their children.

And I feel like that is also because of course you want the best for your children, right? And of course you don't want the bad things to happened, but I feel like also you do have to let them live. You can't, I think, I'm trying to think of a case recently, but I know that there have. Many cases that people have said like, why didn't you do X, Y, why would you let your child do this?

Or Why would you, like even you think about a kid who's abducted in the neighborhood riding their bicycle in their neighborhood, right? And I'm sure the parents are the first people. Like, why would you let your child out? I don't know. Because the child needs to be a child, or the child is hit by a car.

Well, the kid needs to be a kid. Like it just happened. It was horrible. But he was, without being a kid, he was riding his bike. Like, how am I supposed to. Even

my own staff knew like that I was a trauma survivor. But recently through starting to talk more about it and opening up and starting writing and doing outreach, there's that kind of shock moment of Holy cow, like there's a disconnect with reality.

And I think it's something that as more and more people, I've been seeing cases come out and people are starting to talk about it, people are talking about the, um, the child sex trafficking lately has been really big. The discussions happening about. Child sex abuse material, the csam that was up on social media.

Yeah. And as these people are talking more and more about it, I think it's kind of been a reality check for people. And I keep trying to tell them like, yes, this is happening. And people ask, is this just happening now? And I'm like, no, this is always been happening. Yeah. Better

layer of it. Yeah. You just weren't aware.

And I find that a lot too. And there's something again, I have another podcast with Tara Newell called Survivor Squad, and she was telling me when I interviewed her eight months ago, nine months ago, she was telling me , we were talking about how her mom, John Mehan, stalked both her and her mother and her family and everything prior to him trying to kill her.

And she was like, yeah, he was using trackers on our vehicles and he had downloaded things into our phones. And I said, what? And then she goes, yeah, you can get a tracker on Amazon for like $70 to track somebody's vehicle. I'm like, that was absolutely a shock to me. I was like, you can actually, what you can buy, I mean, it wasn't a shock that you could buy on Amazon, but it what?

Because I'm like, they're actually allowed to sell those things in the United States, first of all. Second of all, it's $70 on Amazon, so you can just track people's vehicle. I mean, it's Idle hands are the devil's workshop as they. And I think especially in these situations where stalking is involved, you can get really crafty.

I had a stalker. She contacted my father in prison and started a pen pal relationship with him, and then sent me the letters to throw him in my face. It, it was horrifically violating for me. I mean, I remember I, I saw it and I was in such shock, and I was in the middle of a parking lot. I was getting ready to film, and I just started vomiting.

I was so sickened. Why somebody would do something like that. It was so cruel. It was so cruel. And that's nothing that's benign compared to most people's stories Again. Yeah. And I The world. Yeah.

Sorry. No. Yeah. Like I especially what for with what we see, there's in the Missing Person community, especially a giant concern on how stalking is used with social media and how often stalkers.

Go and put out information in Dvia as well, being like, oh, this is, this person is missing. Oh, have you seen them? They make up a story and then they use those social media leads to