Time to Call in an Expert
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Today, we are going to be speaking with a forensic psychiatrist about Coco Berthman's life and the stories that she told in this podcast. We will be discussing a variety of topics, including sexual violence against children, rape, and murder. Listen with care. ♪

Before we wrap up our last few episodes, we wanted to delve a little more deeply into some of the mental health themes in this series. From Coco's inpatient care in Germany to typical care for mental health patients and even a little speculation about what might actually be going on with Coco. Dr. Shahom Das is a forensic psychiatrist known online as a psych for sore minds.

He says that he uses his platform to, quote, explore the crossroads between mental illness and the criminal justice system. He's also based in England, so he can give us an insight into the international aspects of Coco's story. But don't worry. This is still Believable, The Coco Berthman Story, episode eight and a half. Time to bring in an expert. ♪

Should I call you Shahom? Should I call you Dr. Da? Should I call you Psych for Sore Minds? Call me Shahom. Okay. Well, thank you for reviewing all of this material for us. We know it's a lot. It's a lot for us and we've been doing it for 10 months. So I know asking you to review this volume of material in a couple of weeks is a big ask and I really appreciate it.

No problem. It's a very interesting case. Even though there is a lot of material, there's also patterns that I can see about Coco's interactions and her behavior as well. Can you from the top just give us like a 30,000 foot review? Like, what do you see here?

So I think the one thing that stands out more than any other character traits or pattern is manipulation. So I think Coco is very adept at manipulating different people in different circumstances in different ways. So a lot of that is about individuals where she gains sympathy and empathy from them. So she will make up a story on the spot that will draw people in.

And it's sometimes about being sexually abused. Sometimes it's historical. Sometimes it's something that's happened to her very recently. But regardless of what the context is, the intention, the point of it is I need you to show me sympathy. And such intense sympathy, such an extreme kind of story that people are not going to question it because you don't typically question the survivor of sexual abuse. I mean, you talk about manipulation. Do you think she knows the difference between right and wrong?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the reason I think that is because, well, first of all, there's no psychiatric reason why she should not understand that she's lying if she says something that's clearly untrue. There's a difference between slightly fabricating or putting a twist on the truth and coming out with outright lies. So that's one thing. I've heard of people who believe their own lies. Do you think that's the case? No, no. And the other thing is the fact that she shuts down when she's being...

confronted, I think is very telling. You know, if somebody does believe their own lies, then they would continue arguing their case. But there's been several times where Coco is challenged. So one that jumps out to me is when Becky confronted Coco, she just left the house. It was the whole card of lies came crashing down. So it's easier for her to walk away than it is to actually confront the truth. So to me, that absolutely indicates somebody that knows that she's what she's doing wrong and that doesn't believe her lies.

And so what? She just doesn't care? Well, there's a subtle but important difference between somebody believing their own lies and believing their own hype, right? So I think that she knows deep down that what she's saying is untrue, but...

because what it gives her, she's still emotionally invested in. So it gives her an identity. She's not really anybody of significance. She's certainly not a celebrity without this massive backstory. So I think it gave her like a sense of purpose and a sense of identity. She is like an activist now. She's somebody that people want to talk to. She's somebody that gets to meet Chris Hansen, that gets to go on these podcasts, that gets to go on these award shows. So I think that's what it's about. It's relatively straightforward, really. I don't think there's any sort of

psychological self-deception going on. I think it's just she likes the attention. That's what I think. We just had a discussion, a lengthy discussion, Karen and I, about like what the goal was. When we started this project, we thought it was fame. And then we thought it was love for a while, like a replacement mother. And Karen kind of added on like she enjoys the manipulation. She enjoys watching people suffer. Did you see that?

I think I wouldn't say that she necessarily enjoys watching people suffer. I think she's kind of indifferent to whether people suffer or not. So yeah,

it's almost like she doesn't care if she hurts other people or if she leads, either hurts them reputationally or pulls out all of the sympathy and empathy from them. And then, you know, changes their mind or changes the story or walks away from the situation. But I don't think, I don't think she's doing it because she gained some sort of perverse pleasure from that. I think she's so narcissistic and so egotistical that just the possibility of being well-known, being famous, being respected, being invited to speak on these platforms. I think that is her main drive. Well,

When we talk about the admissions of guilt, Karen has this theory that like even those are lies that she... So like let's say I got to sit down with her, which probably will not happen, but we're going to try, right? We're going to try to talk to her. And...

Karen was like, yeah, journalistically, we have to ask. And of course, you know, it'd be interesting audio. But like, is she ever going to tell anyone the truth? And Karen's thought was no, like there's nothing I could say or do or ask her that would get her to be honest with us. What do you think?

I think that because she's so kind of crafty and deceitful and manipulative, she will only ever tell the full truth if she gained something from it, if there is a benefit for her. And right now I can't really see any benefit. If she was able to spin it, and this is potentially possible in the future,

to make it look as if she is going on an arc of redemption, for example. So I've learned so much and I admit now that I used to lie and I've changed and I've, I've been introspective and I've, I've grown as a person and this is why, and get me on your podcast to talk about why this is, is get me on Oprah, get me to see Celine Dion because I've changed as human. If there's a reason, if there's a benefit for her telling the truth, then I think she will, but I don't think she'll do it purely out of regret, uh,

or remorse because she's had so many opportunities to do that and she's not taking them. So why would she suddenly change her entire outlook and stance and perspective now? I don't think that would happen. So like if I sat down with her and I asked her a question, you think she would tell me what I want to hear?

Yes. Yeah, I do. I do. Obviously, she knows that she's been caught out telling many lies and she would probably know that, you know, a lot of her lies for the very fact that you've been investigating it so assiduously for such a long period of time. So I imagine that if you were talking to her, I imagine that she'd be doing this this instant kind of calculation in her head of what she can admit to you, what she has to admit to you versus what she can get away with, I think.

Yeah. And I think she's quite good at that, actually. I think she's probably more able to do that than the average person. Okay, let's go to the root of her behavior. Obviously, we can't definitively say one thing or another, but like, do you feel this is born of a circumstance, like born of something that happened? Or is it biological?

So you're asking nature versus nurture, right? Is it her intrinsic kind of character traits or the experiences she's had? I think the answer to this question, the vast majority of situations is it's both, it's nature and nurture. So I think her natural characteristics are somebody who lacks empathy, impulsiveness, I suppose a lack of fear or maybe not a lack of fear, but at least a lack of caring about the consequences of their actions.

So in life, there are people who are anxious, neurotic, who care a lot about what people think of them, but also the consequences of what they do and of hurting people. And there are people like Coco, I think, who don't really care about that. They just don't plan ahead for the future. They only really care about what's benefiting them in the moment.

But in terms of her traumatic childhood, tell me if I'm correct. In terms of what we know to be true, her parents divorced when she was four, right? Three.

Three apologies. Her father was an alcoholic. We know that is correct. She moved around a reasonable amount at the age of sort of 11 or 12. She was deliberately self-harming by the age of 12. So there is something there. I don't think she's had a completely normal and stable background by any means. There is some kind of trauma. I know she was a little bit alienated by some of her peers at school. And I think that can have a profound effect on people. Sometimes it's not even being normal.

overtly or physically beaten up or bullied by children. But if you feel othered, if you feel that you're strange or you're living on the margins of society, then that can really cause insecurity in the average person.

But having said all that, the average person who's bullied doesn't go on to tell these, you know, absolutely mind-blowing lies. So I think it's a combination of all of those things. It's the trauma she felt, feeling different, wanting to fit in, wanting to impress people, plus her natural character traits. I think it's a combination of all of those things. So...

could be caused by a trauma that is not something criminal, like being sexually abused. Like, you think this could be rooted in a trauma that was a little, like, of an unstable family life.

The way I'd answer that question, Sarah, is in my line of work, I've assessed, I'd say, dozens, possibly even over 100 individuals that have been sexually abused, usually when they're in their 40s and 50s. And it's happened decades ago. And there's been a case against the perpetrator, scouts, school, that kind of thing.

And I definitely would say that Coco doesn't fit the normal, typical quote unquote profile of what I see. So what I see is people who have post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. And aside from actual psychiatric diagnoses, they have character traits. So they're often quite promiscuous.

They often struggle with boundaries. They often self-harm either physically by cutting themselves or in their behavior, like spending lots of money or being reckless. Those are really typical. I'd say of the hundred odd patients I've assessed, almost all of them would fit one of those categories. What we're seeing with Coco is different to that. You know, this is a manipulation. So I suppose it's a long-winded answer of saying that I can't say definitively that she was never sexually abused. I don't think anybody can really say that with absolute certainty, but

But I can say that it's not a typical reaction for somebody that's been through those experiences. Really? That's not what I expected you to say. We have quite a bit of evidence from people who knew her that they believed they were suspicious that it was sexual trauma. I'm not saying that she didn't have sexual trauma. I'm saying that that doesn't explain why she would turn into such a manipulative person. Ah.

And seek this kind of crave this attention. In fact, to be honest, I probably even go even further than that. I would probably say that most of the people that I've assessed that have been through that kind of trauma are the opposite. They have this huge self-loathing. They often blame themselves on some level, even if it's subconsciously about the abuse they've suffered. So they shy away from attention. You know, they're not narcissists. Coco is a narcissist.

Interesting. Okay, let's talk about the kind of care that she has gotten throughout her life, which is not insignificant. I mean, she spent six months inpatient as an adolescent in Germany in a hospital for children who were traumatized. And then as near as we can tell from investigating her life, there were...

large periods of her life where she was getting therapy. She's always seeing a therapist, but she doesn't ever seem to be getting help. So can we talk about what your assessment is about the quality of her care? Sure. I had a look at the inpatient notes that you sent me. I've got them in front of me here. So when we look at the handwritten documents from her time, which I believe was in 2009 when she was an inpatient patient,

They said that there was a reaction to this stress and adjustment disorder. So that is basically what it sounds like. An adjustment disorder is when somebody has a situation where

And it's not yet necessarily developed into something like an anxiety or depression, but they're struggling with that social situation. So it can be somebody being relentlessly bullied. It could be somebody that's grieving from a fatal car accident, lost family members. It could be somebody that's experiencing domestic violence. It's just something that's very, very traumatic. And that person is adjusting to that. And they have psychological symptoms, but it's not yet a mental illness. This is Believable, the Coco Berthman story.

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Can I give you two examples that I'm pulling from what we know about her life? One is that her mom said when they moved to the south of Germany, to Stuttgart from Hanover and the north, that it was when everything started that she didn't feel that she fit in. So that seems like it could be a possibility. Yeah, yeah. I suppose from my experience in my career, adjustment disorders tend to be something that's very traumatic.

Just going into a different environment, like moving house or having to come to get used to a

a stepfather or your mother's new boyfriend, that in itself I don't think would be enough of a emotional trauma for most people to become an adjustment disorder. What if that new boyfriend is abusing you? Yeah, then absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. My understanding is that she first self-harmed at the age of about, I think it was 12. And people don't self-harm for no reason. So something is happening. It is one of two things, I think. It's either a genuine external expression of some kind of internal distress or

So that could actually be explained by having experienced sexual abuse or it is attention seeking. I would never say that for a 12 or 14 year old girl that's presenting with self-harming, but if it is the beginning of a pattern that you see that comes out more in her adulthood, then we could have something there. I suppose another very real possibility is that he might not have been abusive in the way that Coco claimed, but he still could have been lecherous. So it could be that she wasn't

You know, she didn't suffer the sexual abuse that she claimed, but she still felt an air of discomfort and she still felt that she was being, you know, sexualized in his mind rather than by his actions. That's very feasible, isn't it? Yes, it is. And I know you don't want to quote from the documentation, but in terms of what the areas that they...

and the therapy that they offered, it all seems pretty standard to me. This is what I would expect from an inpatient admission, at least in the UK. Not immediately after, but not a long time after we believe she ended up living with her therapist.

We've talked to a professional in Germany who explained the ethical problems with that. But like from a 30,000 foot view, could that make things worse? Even though it seems like you're in a, you know, in a situation where you're all the time with someone who's really knowledgeable about giving you help. But I mean, could that actually make things worse for her? Yeah. And this person apparently helped her escape. Apparently.

helped her escape like what her situation beforehand is in her family yeah so she was in Stuttgart and what's been told to us is that she helped her plan her escape runaway back to Hanover where she had grown up and that's where she went into the institution where she was in inpatient care

Categorically, I can say that it's 100% inappropriate for a therapist to rescue a patient from a home without having police involvement and even more so to live with that individual. It completely indicates a lack of boundaries.

And that person's vulnerable. You know, even if she's 18 years old, she is technically an adult. But in many people's eyes, she's still a child. She's a vulnerable child who clearly has emotional issues, has self-harm in the past. I just if this is true, then there's no version of that that's not completely incompetent in my view. And it's dangerous as well, because you put yourself in a situation where somebody can accuse you of something.

being sexually manipulative. And so do we know if, do we know if Caroline wasn't a sexual relationship with Coco? Is that just what she's alleging? I mean, we don't know anything for sure, but, but no, we, we've seen that she's made that allegation. We've also seen her take it back, like retract it. Okay. Well, look, even if it's not true and from what it sounds like on balance, it probably isn't true. She's retracting it. It's still really inappropriate because you're putting yourself in a situation where you can be accused of these kinds of things. And,

I've worked in psychiatry exclusively since 2007. So in all those years, I've never once heard of one situation where a therapist has lived with one of their patients. It's even a bit of a gray area for them to be friends outside of therapy because there needs to be boundaries. What if the therapy has ended? If the therapy has ended...

And I suppose if Coco was 18, then I still think it's very poor practice, but I don't think you're doing anything professionally damaging. One of the times that I went to Germany, I was able to meet with someone who was trained to deal with children who are going through difficulties. And this person flagged Coco. And she said it wasn't because of

of anything, any specific allegation that Coco made, which is very different from the Coco that we know now because the Coco we know now is very detailed and specific about her allegations. But back then, when she was in her early teens, preteen years, it was just her behavior that made this person suspicious of what was going on in her life.

And Karen and I have had a talk about like what if she was lying during that time, what that would mean. It would mean that at 12, 13, 14 years old, she knew to behave a certain way in order to get people to believe that there might have been sexual abuse happening there.

Which is different than just saying it, which could be more believable as a lie. But to know to behave that way, I wonder what you think about that. Do you mind giving me a couple of examples of what she was doing or how she was behaving that made them feel that way? So this person said that whenever her care was going to end, an inability to get the extra care at the end,

with this person that she would start freaking out. You know, it was like clockwork. At the end of the week, Coco would have some sort of crisis. Okay. So I've got a couple of quite strong ideas of Coco's potential diagnosis in my mind. But what you're saying really very, very clearly fits into one of my diagnoses.

So a fear of abandonment is one of the many features and it's quite a unique feature as in lots of mental illnesses or personality disorders overlap, right? But fear of abandonment is almost diagnostic for one particular personality disorder, which is borderline.

or emotionally unstable personality disorder. I'm sure you've heard the term. And there's quite a few things about Coco's background that makes me think that she is potentially got borderline personality disorder. Obviously, I've not had the benefit of assessing her in person, but you can still tell some of her behaviours. So that's one of them, a fear of abandonment.

unstable relationships so they tend to be intensely close to some people until you have a big blowout and then you kind of cut that person off from your life or vice versa but you just have explosive kind of tumultuous relationships there's never a dull time or a dull interaction it's always intense that absolutely sums up Coco I think

you have a unstable identity. So you kind of change who you are or what you're about. So for Coco, she was like this intense activist when it suited her. She was like this passionate Mormon at some point in her life when it suited her. Then she was a celebrity singer who was going to, you know, sing with Celine Dion and be a celebrity at some point in her life. So that very much fits into this pattern. They tend to have splitting or idealization. So everyone's either a hero or a villain in their story. Nobody's somewhere in between.

and the kind of countertransference to that. So the impact that that has on other people is exactly the same. So other people either think that a person with borderline is like amazing and needs to be believed and needs support and needs help.

and has like a fascinating story to tell or the opposite or they're a fraudster. So I think you'll probably know more about the Snyder in the research that you do, but I suspect that Coco probably is loved by some people and hated by some people, but very few don't have an opinion on her. We've heard of these people that still believe her and still love her.

I don't think we've talked to any of them. All the people that we've talked to are in some degree of critical of her. I wanted to ask you this now that we're sort of talking about diagnoses, you know, people, some psychological terms have become very commonly used when they probably shouldn't be. So we've had a lot of people say things like she's a pathological liar or she's a psychopath. We have one person say, you know, she's just like Ted Bundy, to which I was like, well,

Well, she didn't kill anybody. What do you make of statements like that? I don't think she's a pathological liar. The reason being is because there is a reason, there is a benefit, there's a purpose for almost all of her lies. Sometimes it's just for sympathy. Sometimes it's just kind of to emotionally draw people in and exploit them and get them

get them like buried in her drama so that they can't leave, which goes back to a fear of abandonment. And sometimes it's even more simpler than that. It's because she wants to be invited to these fundraisers that we've talked about. And she wants to meet Chris Hansen and, you know, be on these TV shows and on these podcasts. So there's a reason, there's a target for her lies. Somebody who's a pathological liar by definition doesn't have a reason. It's the act of lying.

And somebody with pathological lying generally continues or might continue to do it to that same person after they've been caught.

Whereas Coco, she's telling the same lies after she's been caught, but she's doing it to a new set of marks, of targets. So she moves on. So a pathological liar doesn't need to move on because they're kind of almost indifferent to whether the lies work or not, a pathological liar. Whereas I think Coco is just a liar. I don't think it's a psychiatric diagnosis. I think she just tells lies. She's just deceitful. And so she cares about whether the lies work or not.

What about the psychopath? I think she's definitely got some of the characteristics of a psychopath. People assume that psychopaths are just people that commit unspeakable violence. Actually, it's not the case. Psychopath is charming, conning, manipulative, deceitful. They lack empathy. They don't care about the rights and wrongs of other people. And they'll do pretty much anything, including breaking the law or not even breaking the law. You know, there's lots of CEOs, lots of

people in the corporate world who are good psychopaths because they will stab other people in their back. They will tell lies so that they get the promotion. So Coco, as I'm sure you'll agree, is pretty much all of those things. I do think there's some features of a typical psychopath that either she's not or that I don't know about. So they tend to be quite criminally versatile.

So they're usually sort of con artists and sex offenders and, you know, burglars and violent individuals. And as far as I can tell, Coco's only really got one modus operandi, which is basically lying, isn't it?

And also they tend to be sexually promiscuous. And as far as I'm aware, that doesn't really describe Coco, does it? No. So that would be an argument against Coco being a psychopath would be the fact that she wasn't, as far as we know, sexually promiscuous. Do you think she is a psychopath? It's really, I'm reluctant to give a definitive answer simply because I don't know enough about all her different areas. But if you really push me into a corner and if I had to make a black and white yes or no call, I'd say yes. I think on balance, she's more likely to be a psychopath than not. Yeah.

but not a typical one. But she doesn't have all the traits of them. Okay, let's talk about her mother Renata. What do you make of their relationship, Coco's relationship with her mother? I know we shared a lot of their text exchanges. Well, I suppose it's really hard to kind of put a finger on what's going on with their relationship. It does feel like there's something quite inexplicable about the way she treats her mother. So she, on the one hand, she tries to leave her and get away from her as young as possible.

She tells all these stories about her mother was a sex trafficker. But on the other hand, there's photos of them together in an airport. So it's quite hard for me to really get my head around that. What is her mother to her? Is she somebody that she wants to manipulate and use when she can? Or is she somebody that she actually cares about, but it's more important to get her narrative of being a victim out? And the impact that it might have on her mother and her mother's reputation is irrelevant. It's got to be one of those things, I think.

Do you have a hunch? Yeah, what do you think, first of all? I felt different ways about that relationship during the 10 months. You know, at times I felt kind of like I was being manipulated by Renata. She would be moody, you know, she would like have unexpected reactions to some of my questions and be like super, super happy to chat and then go to like really angry that I asked her something super basic.

You know, and I'm sensitive to the fact, I think I'm empathetic to Coco, that that was her mother. And like, there is a power imbalance to me. Yeah. I can't say this definitively because to really know the answer, you have to ask Coco herself. But I think it's fairly likely that she blames her mother for a lot of her unhappiness from when she was a child.

right, from having to leave her father. Perhaps she kind of projects her hatred of her alcoholic father onto her mother. The fact that she had to move around so much when she was young. Maybe she feels a slight bitterness that her mother chose a partner. I wouldn't say she chose her over Coco because Coco's still living there, but Coco clearly didn't like this person, didn't get on with them, but her mother sided with or made the decision to stay with Gregor. And in Coco's mind, that might have been her siding with or choosing him over her.

So I suppose if you take all of that into account, you can get a picture of somebody who is getting these character traits that eventually become borderline personality disorder, where they form kind of explosive, inconsistent relationships, hot and cold, lots of arguments with a mum on some days, probably gets on with it quite well on other days when they're a child.

And then I think the very fact that she wanted to separate herself from her mother at such a young age shows that she doesn't really care about the relationship. She doesn't have a lot of emotional investment in it. I think it's very typical for the average 16 year old to have arguments with their mothers. I'm sure most people went through that. Most teenagers do. But it's not very typical to want to leave them at that young age. So there must have been a pretty big rift in there somewhere.

So I suppose taking all of that into context, plus you've got somebody who's a bit of a fantasist, who's a bit narcissistic, Coco this is, plus who's impulsive, plus who tends to lie, then she just sees her mother as a potential victim that she can make lies up about. Probably on balance, they'll never get back to her because her mother's probably not going to be watching these American kind of TV shows and podcasts. If they do get back to her, if you have a very keen journalist who's making a podcast, then, you know,

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One of the things that Coco says that kind of did ring true to me was that her mother always made things about her. She says this in the context of one of her suicide attempts, that when she woke up in the hospital, the first thing the doctor said was like, why are you doing this to your mom? And we saw, I think, like a glimpse of that. Like we would ask Renata a question about

something in Coco's life and she would take it very offensively as if we were being critical of her parenting skills. Now, I'm also sympathetic to the fact that like it's very hard to publicly talk about some horrible part of your life, your daughter accusing you of terrible crimes and, you know,

possibly never talking to you again, tearing your family apart. So it's not easy for her to talk about this publicly. But I was like, some of these questions were pretty straightforward. And it was interesting to see her kind of

take them very personally. Yeah. So a couple of things jump out to me when you said that. I'm just writing some stuff down. First of all, it sounds like Renata's probably quite sensitive, possibly even paranoid. So she's interpreting things that are neutral that you're saying as criticisms for her. Then again, that kind of ties into everything that we were talking about before, you know, mood swings, hot and cold. If she was like that when Coco was a child, which I imagine she was, then maybe Coco would

to talk to her mother at times. Maybe Coco came back from school and wanted some support because she's had a hard day and her mother might be helpful and loving and caring on some days and might just blow a lid for no reason on another day. That's one thing that jumped out to me. So that kind of might tie into why there's such this fractured relationship. The other thing is when you say it's all about her, that 100% describes Coco as well, doesn't it?

Something that really came to mind, there's so many examples, but one that really came to mind when you said that was she had this friend called Sarah, right? And they were friends at 16, although Coco was probably older. And they went to a party and Sarah's friends were at the party. And Coco seemed actually pretty jealous of the fact that Sarah was off talking to somebody else. So she leaves the party. She says somebody spiked her drink. She went to hospital and this person, Sarah, had to rescue her.

So, I mean, that is such a classic example of turning everything about her, doesn't it? She needs to be the centre of attention. She needs sympathy. She doesn't want to be in a social situation where a friend's talking to another friend. So I think it's very clear that some people kind of copy, they model the behaviour that their parents display.

So if that is what your experience was like speaking to Renata, then that kind of ties into the experience of most of the people that have met Coco as well. Do you think both things could be true? Could it be true that her mother wasn't a great mother, that her childhood home wasn't a great place to be, but also that she is lying about everything she says? Yeah.

Even the early stories about Gregor, could it also be true that she's lying about what her mother and what her mother's boyfriend did? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, it could be true. And I'll take it a step further. Not only might it be true, but they could be connected.

So the fact that she feels so disgruntled, that she feels unsupported, uncared for in her earlier years, she didn't feel like her mother was there, could be one of the reasons that she has like this spite. It might even be subconscious to a degree, this spite against her mother. And that's why she was one of the targets of the lies.

One of the things I thought was interesting about the text messages as Kirstein, our German translator and reporter, related them back to us is that Renata actually did seem to be giving Coco a lot of attention, at least later on, like in their adult interactions. What do you make of that?

So you remember I was going through the characteristics of borderline personality disorder earlier. I never got to finish actually. There's a couple more that I didn't get to, which were deliberate self-harm is really common in borderline personality disorder. Drug use, actually, which I don't think we've seen in COCA. And although it's not technically a feature and you won't see it in your textbooks, one thing from my clinical experience is this like emotional exhaustion that they cause people. Yeah.

They're exhausting in terms of time and emotion. I think if I'm correct, Renata actually said this, that she took up more time than her other siblings did. Oh, yeah. She said that. Yeah, for sure. And somebody else, was it a cousin? She was living with a cousin and a cousin just couldn't deal with the amount of time that she was taking. Most people whose homes she lived in said they could not deal with the amount of

energy she required. So energy, time and emotion. And again, that's very typical for this diagnosis. Borderline personality disorder. OK, some people want to know what more they could have done to protect themselves to maybe help someone like Coco, but also not end up feeling like victims themselves or potentially

Some people want to just know how to prevent themselves from falling for lies like this. Is there anything more that people like this could have done? I don't think so because these were all people...

who tried to engage with Coco because of their own altruism, because they cared about her story. And they all did it for the right reasons. They did it because they thought that she'd been through a lot of trauma and she'd suffered. So I don't think most people, myself included, would question this. In the interactions that she's had that I've looked at, I don't know if you could have spotted that she was

a liar at the beginning at least because why would somebody lie about this and that's what makes her such a fascinating and unusual case and that's why you're making a podcast about her because you wouldn't expect somebody in this position to do those things yeah i suppose you could argue that as her lies got a bit more twisted and convoluted some of the people could have maybe made that connection a bit earlier and maybe that's connected to them being nice people that they're slightly naive i

This might be a harsh thing to say, but I think it's probably true. If you're the kind of person that will help a complete stranger, then you might not be the kind of person that sees the wood through the trees. And if the lies start becoming a bit too bizarre, some of it was clearly unfeasible. So I suppose to answer your question, the only thing they could have done, not all, some of them could have done is maybe spotted the BS a little bit earlier, I guess. Why do you think she treated some people very differently than she treated others? We saw that some people kind of

I don't want to say got off easy, but like didn't encounter the Coco who could be very mean, who could be very, very vengeful and just nasty. One person called her like a sad puppy. You know, that was their experience. But many other people did not encounter a sad puppy. They encountered a, you know, a really mean dog.

I think this ties into what I think is her diagnosis. I mentioned before people with borderline personality disorder, they have something called splitting. So they either really like some people or they dislike other people. And they very rarely find people to be in the middle of those extremes. So I think that's part of it. I think the other part is that because she was so manipulative, she decided who she could squeeze something from.

So if you're somebody that she wanted something from, then she's got a reason to stay with you and to continue trying to, you know, suck or absorb sympathy from you. If you're somebody that she doesn't really care about, so, you know, you're not somebody that can help her get her goals of becoming this kind of famous activist in the future, then she's probably going to get bored with you and leave you alone.

That's more psychopathy, I would say, than borderline personality disorder, but it certainly shows her manipulation. I suppose another thing would be she doesn't like being challenged, even though at times she's scared of confrontation, which is why she leaves situations. You're just kind of doubting her. Then that is going to, especially with somebody with such a fragile ego and somebody so narcissistic, that's going to really annoy her. It's going to piss her off. So she's going to push back and she's going to attack you and attack your credibility.

And I suppose finally, it's also probably just her mood. I think she's got a very changeable mood, which again is another typical feature of borderline personality disorder. So it depends kind of on what day that you met her. She might be in an abrasive, argumentative mood one day and might be in a fairly pleasant mood another day.

Could it be instead of days, could it be like one month that she might be in a more pleasant mood and another month that she's not? Yeah, absolutely. And again, it could be tied to a degree to her modeling her mother as well, because we know that her mother seemed to have kind of mood swings. Is the way she's treating people considered a form of abuse? Yeah, absolutely. It is emotional abuse. So anything where you intentionally lead somebody on to believe something or hurt their feelings or indifferent to their feelings is

is a type of emotional abuse and lying to somebody, especially about things so serious and getting them so emotionally invested, not just invested in her as a victim, but I can't remember who it was now who she told somebody that they would be meeting Celine Dion themselves. Who was that? That was Emily. Emily, that's right. She said that to Emily. She told Becky that they'd be meeting the prophet within the Mormon church itself. All these things will raise your hopes and then to have them dash. So I think all of it is emotional abuse. Yeah.

Yeah, one story that we actually... is on the cutting room floor.

But it happened to Becky. She was wearing this necklace that she says was her dead sister, Anna's necklace. Of course, we don't think Anna existed, but Becky believed it. And they go for an ATV ride one Saturday and she comes home and she's all upset that she lost Anna's necklace. And Becky's family goes out and they get metal detectors. They spend the whole weekend looking for Anna's necklace and they don't find it.

of course they don't find it. Right. Because you know, the end of the story, a couple of days later, Coco miraculously finds the necklace in the driveway. And the whole thing was like, I don't know. Was it just to watch them like to see how far they would go for her? Like what lengths they would go to, to do something for her? Like what would be the point of telling that lie?

I mean, firstly, that is that is bond or emotional abuse. I suppose my answer to that would be the same point is telling all of or most of her lies, maybe not all of them, but most of the lies, the same same reason that she told Becky that her within the first week of moving in, that her mother died and then her brother died just to gain sympathy is to make people not forget about her. So she wants to be the center of attention. She wants people to pity her.

wants people to listen to a story, and maybe it's almost like a drug for her. So when she goes for a few days without this kind of sympathy, she starts withdrawing because she wants this feeling. So she just makes up another lie. Some people, Becky included, when they would catch her in little lies, they would say like, or even big lies, they would say, well, I get it, but she's a victim. She's been traumatized. And the lies are a symptom of her trauma. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, again, it's like I was saying before, from my experience of assessing people who've been sexually abused, it's not a symptom of trauma. I'm not saying that, you know, nobody that's ever been through trauma lies. I'm not saying that, but it's not a sort of a typical explicable psychiatric or psychological outlet.

You know, if she hadn't done some of these little things, she would still be Coco Berthman advocate for sexual abuse survivors if she hadn't always been trying to take it to another level. And we were just talking the other day about like a potential situation where, yeah, oh my God, you know, this could have been a time where she really was harmed. But we'll never know because

She made it so difficult to figure out. And that's like, for me, that's on her. Here we are, Karen and I, trying very desperately to figure out what's true and what's not. And she's making it impossible. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And I think another thing is the fact that I think the reason it kept escalating is because she was actually quite ambitious, like as a...

whatever she was as a personality, as an advocate. She wanted to be bigger and more famous than she already was. So I think the answer to your question is why didn't she just keep to the basic lies and remain Coco the activist? It's because in her head, she wanted to be more than that. She wanted to be a bigger celebrity. And the only way she knew how to do that was to tell bigger lies. She wanted to be a singer. She wanted to be on stage with Celine. I mean, why not when she started to get the pushback, why not pull it in, reel it in a little, little bit?

Overconfidence, I think. Yeah, it's the same reason why, you know, massive con artists who have like financial services or banks or the police or the FBI looking into them continue doing what they're doing because they think they're smart enough to get away with it. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Can I ask a question before we wrap, though? Sure. We've made a lot about the fact that a lot of her, for lack of a better term, victims were mothers. And she seemed to be seeking some sort of motherly love. And then I was like, is she even capable of feeling motherly love? I'm not sure she would recognize it if she saw it. Do you think that that is...

part of what's happening here or are these mothers just good marks because they are trusting and believing? That's a good question. I don't think it's that intentional. I think that she probably, I think she'd probably want the sympathy and empathy of anybody that was in a position to give it. What she wants is more about as much attention as possible. So I don't think she'd be picky about

for who that attention comes from. So I don't think she cares whether it's male, female of a certain age or not. I think the fact that most of them are sort of mothers or mothering says more about their personalities than them and them feeling the sympathy and empathy for Coco and wanting to help her rather than her targeting those specific people would be my best guess.

Much like our other 50-some interviews, Dr. Shahom Das and I could have kept talking about this for hours. His fascination with Coco's story and mental health journey reminded me of how we felt first digging into this research. But there's still a lot that we did not tell you in this conversation because we are going to reveal those things in our final two episodes. When she said she had cancer, nothing made sense at all.

It was almost like a TV show by that point. I said, if Coco Berthman does not die from cancer, she's a fucking liar. I just said, somehow we've got to alert authorities. I'm calling the police. I mean, what else do you do? That's next on Believable, the Coco Berthman story.

Believable, The Cocoa Birthman Story is a Dear Media original series. It's reported and written by me, Sarah Ganim, and our showrunner, Karen Given. Additional reporting was done by journalists Kerstine Silm in Los Angeles and Katarina Felke in Berlin.

A special thanks to Aseel Kibbe.

Consulting producers are Simpatico Media and Infinity Rising. Executive producers are Jocelyn Falk and Paige Port for Dear Media. And finally, we know this podcast hits on a lot of difficult topics. If you or someone you know is struggling, see our show notes for a list of resources. ♪