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Today, we have a special bonus episode to accompany the wrap-up of our Point Blank series about the spree killing of Rancho Tehama. This is a conversation between me and Candace DeLong, host of the brilliant podcast Killer Psyche. In her podcast, Candace draws on her decades of experience as an FBI agent to explore and reveal why murderers and criminals commit horrific acts, diving deep into their psychological profiles and patterns to help us better understand the nature of these crimes.
as well as give us tools to prepare for when the unthinkable happens. In this bonus episode, Candace and I discuss the spree killing featured in our Point Blank series, and cover the many questions surrounding Kevin Jansen Neal, the shooter, as we try to unpack and make sense of what happened.
You'll see that we reference episodes from the series, especially the final episode with Sheridan Orr, the sister of the shooter. So if you haven't listened to that episode or the series already, I encourage you to do so before listening to our conversation. So here it is, me, Witt Misseldein, in conversation with the host of the Killer Psyche podcast, Candace DeLong.
So, Whit, I listened to your series. It's really, really gripping. How did you get into this? I mean, it's a fascinating deep dive.
Yeah. I do this show where we feature people who have had massively life-changing experiences, and all of our episodes feature one person, one story, one traumatic or massively life-changing event of some kind. And a couple years ago, we thought we want to do multiple stories, multiple people affected by one event. Instead of just having one event, one story, one person, what happens if multiple people are in on it? And so we wanted to do something in a small town that
And I've always had this personal fascination with gun violence. I think it's something that's just in our culture. It's something that we're saturated by. And it's something I've always wanted to know more about from a more intimate perspective.
And I felt like the last people that we often hear from when there's a mass shooting or some sort of gun violence is the victims. And we often will hear about the killers, we'll hear about gun laws and gun violence, but the victim's stories often get overlooked. So that was one of the main motivations. And I live in California, and we were researching some of these incidents. And this story from Rancho Tehama came up.
So, yeah, I was curious, too, just about Killer Psyche. I love the show. I'm such a fan. And I think you're just brilliant. I'm so excited to be talking to you. And I was just curious, what got you motivated to start Killer Psyche? Well, before I was an FBI agent, I was a psychiatric nurse for 10 years. And I
It was in that role, in that profession, where I first started interacting with people that had committed crimes. And I was just fascinated with two things, mental illness and why do some people do horrible things? I was just fascinated by that.
And then I was recruited by the FBI. And about four years into my career, I started being trained as a profiler. And so for years, I had a show on investigation discovery, Deadly Women. My role on the show was to explain to the viewers the motivation and the behavior and the psychology of the offender that we were talking about. And then COVID happened.
And actually, a gentleman that is a server at one of my favorite restaurants, he listened to a true crime podcast that he liked. So one day, I took a long walk and listened to this particular show. And by the time I got back from my walk, the person talking about it was not an expert in any way, just relaying the story. And I thought to myself, gosh, I know so much more about this case.
because of my training as a profiler. So that's how the whole killer psyche thing started, was what crimes could I talk about? And how would I go about doing it? So it was really, for me right now, I'm doing what I love to do the most, which is explaining the really odd things, the psychology, the behavior of people that do these kinds of things. And also, in doing that,
Pretty much every crime that I've ever been involved with as a profiler or interviewing murderers was, is there anything that a listener or a viewer learning about this story knows
could use to keep themselves safe if that ever happened to them. That strikes me so much because the people that show up on my show have often been so massively unprepared for the situations they're facing. And that's really what I tend to want to explore most is what happens when we are faced with a circumstance in which we have no training, no mental models, no way of making sense of what happened.
And how does that affect people? I think there's something amazing about diving into this psychology. I think for you and I both, you're looking a little bit more at the perpetrator side. I'm looking more at the victim side. But I think we both then cross that boundary as needed. So, Whit, what is your background, your professional background, notwithstanding the podcast?
Sure. So I got my PhD in social psychology, and it's actually really the root of the podcast in many ways. I was in New York City. It was the 2000s. I was there 2001 to 2007. And I
I was doing research on HIV positive men in New York City who are drug abusers. And we were looking at interventional methods to help reduce drug use, especially because, of course, that exacerbates HIV. And we were all on the behavioral and psychological side, like what psychological interventions can we do? So they were...
experimenting with a method called motivational interviewing, which has shown a lot of success in helping people in reducing drug use. And I would sit there and I would just listen to stories for hours and hours. And so I just had hundreds of hours of just listening to these men having these incredibly complicated lives. And so I had always been looking for a format where I could just tell the raw story.
I always talk about it as at the time when you're in grad school, you're learning all of this stuff. You're filling your brain with knowledge.
And I was learning the most by sitting in those rooms more than I was in many ways in my classrooms. And I kind of had this idea of like, I'm not just a student of knowledge here. I'm a student of other people's experience. And I think there's something that's so important about when we don't just try to learn everything and become masters and try to understand something from an intellectual point of view, but really allowing ourselves to be humbled by something
Mm-hmm.
And she gives sort of the most insight into sort of how this all began, goes way back into his childhood, what she experienced, how it affected their family. And in many ways, she's a victim of it too, right? Oh, very much so. But she ends up taking on a lot of guilt and feeling she's sort of on both sides of this equation. Such a complex position to be in, and she just showed up so beautifully. But what struck me...
is just this question of why. All the victims, of course, end up with this question of why. And they'll refer to the person as a maniac and how does this happen? And they question their relationship with God. And when I got to Sheridan, I thought, well, here's where I'm going to get some more answers, right? Here's where I'm going to really find out what happened. And
Sure enough, she talks about how they come from an affluent family. He was this talented kid. The parents tried everything they could to help him from what they knew at the time. You know, this was the 80s and 90s when things were a little different around our understanding of mental health. And even till the end, the mother talked to him. The police were notified. He had his guns taken away. He was out on bail, so he was being monitored. There are just so many situations in which there were eyeballs on this person and help provided. And yet this still happens. And...
I know this is sort of a big question, but if you have any insights into this, I'm sure there's not a consistent profile of someone who does this kind of thing. But all of these resources here and still, like I was left with a larger question of why than when I came in. And I was curious about your thoughts about that. The overriding feeling I had upon completing the series was sadness.
Because, as you said, all the things that should have been done were done, and it didn't work. The vast majority of mass shooters are motivated by anger. But in this case, he was, I think, responding to the paranoia he was experiencing.
And sure, he might have been angry at the neighbors because he thought they were cooking meth. But it wasn't like the classic angry teenager who goes to his high school or angry college kid or angry co-worker, that kind of thing. It was mental illness, untreated violence.
And in the end, the paranoia and his inability to say, you know what? Something's wrong with the way I'm thinking.
People tell me what I think is happening is not happening. So maybe I have a problem. That is not something you're ever going to hear from someone who is actively paranoid because they lack the capacity to look at themselves objectively. And for them, what they are thinking, imagine that you truly believed your neighbors were out to get you.
What would you do? You would probably arm yourself. And unfortunately, in our society, that's not hard to do. I wanted to ask you, are there any insights you have as to sort of the difference between irrational thinking and paranoia? Paranoia is endogenous. It comes from within the individual's mind.
And irrational thinking is, from my point of view, it can be a spur-of-the-moment behavior. There's an explosion of emotion, and then things calm down. For a paranoiac, there's no calming down. Kevin was, with no psychiatric intervention and no pharmaceutical intervention,
Everywhere he turned, including his sister, he thought people are after me and I have to be the one to stop it to protect myself. I was so curious, too, about this paranoid aspect of.
There's something Sheridan talks about where he's arrested for the stabbing and he's out on bail. And Sheridan had really advocated for him to stay in jail before his court hearing, right, which was coming up and the trial. And the reason he was out on bail in many ways, and not to put any blame on the mother here, but, you know, the mother was talking to him every day and she was hearing these stories about people cooking meth. And
Clearly, there was a way in which he was convincing her of his paranoia, of his delusions about what was going on. Obviously, this was an act of love on her part. She felt he would be safer outside than in the prison system because part of his paranoia also was that the prison system's against me, the police are against me, and I'm injured there. So she's trying to protect him, but it's all part of his...
sort of the world that he's created. Right. And I was curious from your perspective how often...
Someone who's paranoid sort of draws others into their paranoia and it feeds this system that they're part of. I don't know if that's a pattern. You know, I know some killers are sort of on their own or more lone type people. No, actually, it can absolutely happen. Kevin was psychotic and his delusions were of a paranoid nature. He seemed like a normal person.
living a normal life, except people were after him. Now, his mother, very devoted, spending a lot of time with him and listening to him a lot. When an individual that is seriously mentally ill is living with another person, maybe a spouse or a romantic partner or some kind of family member, in this case, a mother,
It is entirely possible and absolutely can happen. And it's easy to understand how his mother got caught up in, well, I've got to get him out of jail. The police are going to kill him there. I'm guessing after the fact, she very much regretted that decision. But she didn't have an anchor or she didn't utilize her daughter Sheridan as an anchor.
where Sheridan could be the voice of reason. I started out saying my overall sense after listening to the podcast was utter sadness. Sadness for everyone. Sadness for the victim. Sadness for the family. Sadness for Kevin.
This brings up for me too, as we're speaking, the narrative that Sheridan has around his head injuries. And I know that this is something that has been linked to a lot of different behaviors, a lot of different murders as well. And, you know, from football and concussion, we've often heard this kind of thing. And there's more and more research into head injuries. It really brings up the
the sort of mysteries that come out of this. I was just curious from your research and your perspective and expertise, what role head injuries play? And I know this is very much an evolving science, but just from your experience, what do you want to say about head injuries and these killers? Let's just talk about serial killers for a minute. And Kevin was not a serial killer.
Research into serial killers, including ones that are long dead, has revealed a stunning number of them that had brain injuries as a child. Now, a brain injury doesn't have to result in hospitalization. And in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, as you mentioned, unless a kid was knocked out,
they wouldn't go to a hospital. In addition to that, medications that exist now that could immediately reduce swelling of the brain were not available back then. Sheridan, his sister, and I think his mother thought so too, Kevin suffered a concussion and she ended up as a teenager driving him to the hospital.
And I think that was probably based on what Sheridan said. She was probably right. She was very observant of her brother that he wasn't the same after that, which tells me that might have been the one. Now, let's say for the sake of argument, that brain injury caused a traumatic brain injury and led to all of Kevin's troubles that were in his future.
But there were a lot of kids who had concussions. They don't all become killers.
We don't have an answer to that yet, why some people are unaffected. I can tell you this. Part of it is what part of the brain is injured. Now, circling back to answer your question, it was a long road, huh? Research into serial killers, 50% on the low end and 75% on the high end of them suffered brain injuries as children, usually children.
because of beatings from a father or a stepfather or sometimes a really bad mom. The fact that research into serial killers has revealed, and we've had a number of them that we've had episodes of Killer Psyche on, that there is verified reporting that that person that became a killer, whoever I'm talking about, was brutalized and beaten about the head when they were a little boy.
It's so tragic, yeah. What struck me so much about this case is that from Jesse Sanders' interview, the one that happens before Sheridan's, he's living at the house next door. He walks by Kevin's house. Kevin is in his lawn and he's abhorrent.
according to Jesse, just mercilessly beating his wife. And Jesse's the type of guy that will intervene in those situations. So he says, hey man, why don't you lay off of her? And she turns to Jesse and she says, why don't you mind your own business? And from that day on, it sort of
Yeah.
The story of the neighbor that saw Kevin mercilessly beating his wife outside, I find very telling as to the relationship with the wife, because did she call the police? Did she try to leave him? No. And when the neighbor said, hey,
Leave her alone. And the wife tells him to mind his own business, speaks volumes to me as a former clinician about the intensity of their relationship.
partnership, their relation. We don't have any information that she was psychotic and delusional, but it is an absolute fact that sometimes an individual who lives with and is in love with and has a partnership, intense partnership relationship with someone that is psychotic or that is exhibiting other behaviors, that the
Well, individual becomes unwell. And it sounds like that might be something that was going on here. Yes. She, in a million years, never would have called the police on him. And now she's dead. Yeah.
Gosh, it is just infinite sadness in this story. I came away with the exact same impression. It was one of the hardest, honestly, like, you know, I've done these stories of people facing massive traumas over and over again. We have over 270 episodes now. And it's...
Something about this series left me with like a sunken feeling more really than almost any interviews that I've done. And I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people. And this one, when I was finished...
I totally understand where you're coming from, Whit, because it was a gut punch of sadness and hopelessness. And I have to say, Sheridan, I admire her so much. She loved him. To hear the way she talked about him as a little brother and to see how that intensely loving person
sibling relationship deteriorated. But then as she entered full adulthood and became a mother herself and talked about, well, she had a little boy now to raise and now she could understand her mother's perspective regarding Kevin so much better.
she had developed the insight as to what her mother had gone through. And then things just kept getting worse and worse. I mean, you've had 270 plus episodes and I've heard so many horrible things in my life, but most of them don't leave me sad. This one did. Yeah. Likewise. You know, this sadness struck me so much. And one of the saddest things to me is the complication of having grief as a family member,
member of one of the perpetrators. And I thought Sheridan, it was so heartbreaking to hear her discuss how she had this grief when she first learns that her brother is dead, right? At first, when she gets the call, he just says, Kevin's dead. And so this enormous grief comes through. And then when it's like, no, he's the shooter, he's not a victim of the shooting. And
She said it just morphs into anger. And that grief you have over this person you've lost gets kind of buried in this way. And it was buried for the mother. They weren't publicly able to sort of have a funeral. She never went back to the community again. You know, she didn't feel like she could show her face there. And there's something that's just like a complicated grief that I haven't really heard expressed that eloquently before and that deeply before.
And I wanted to ask you about, in your experience of understanding these killers, how
Do the family members often become targets of the public outrage? I know Sheridan has received lots of different letters. And as she was public about her own grief, you know, she just got a mix and range of people who were supportive to people who associated her with the situation. Right. And their anger was just then poured into this family as well.
Do you have any insights there into like what it's like for family members or how this how we react as people who are hearing these stories and trying to make sense ourselves of these killings? How do the family members often receive it? And how does that anger sort of get spread around? There is such a tendency in our society now for a few things. One is to always assign blame to someone. It has to be someone's fault. Right.
How about we blame the system, you know, and how about accepting the fact that medical science is not where it needs to be to treat this horrible illness? Maybe someday it will be. There are going to be cures, not treatments, but cures for some of the most serious illnesses known to mankind.
And the research into schizophrenia is one of them. And what happened is not anyone's fault. It is our system.
Well, and she was very reluctant to even do the interview with us. But she said the reason she's doing the interview is not for the public comments, but for the people out there silently listening who can't have their own grief. And it just really broke my heart when I heard that. And she is just so brave and courageous. I was just thinking there's one word to describe her and it's brave. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, thank you so much, Candice. This has been absolutely enlightening for me. I'm so honored to be able to speak to you today. Oh, well, thank you so much. Your podcast is fantastic. Keep up the great work. And it's been a pleasure.
Thank you for listening.
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In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.
Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.
And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
