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Speaker 1: Hi, Happy Face fans, Melissa Moore here, I wanted to share the exciting news that I have a new bi weekly podcast out called Lipstick and Lies. This week, I go inside the double lives of serial killers with doctor Michelle Ward. We cover the Long Island serial killer case, where we uncover what if anything, his family knew. Subscribe to Lipstick and Lies to hear the entire conversation. Here's a snee peek. So I don't know if you know my background, but my father is known as the Happy Face serial killer. And that's why I'm so excited actually to be talking with you, because I get numerous questions that I can only speak from my experience but not from a scientific approach, and that's why I'm excited to talk to you about it. But the one question I get all the time is nature versus nurture, That's what makes a serial killer. And then the second question is aren't she scared that you're going to give that genetic gene to your children, that you're going to, you know, raise a serial killer. So when I found out doctor Ward, that you have a podcast on how not to raise a serial killer, I'm like, she is a perfect guess. Two days. Yeah, for my own curiosity, you know, because of my background, but also for the topic we're going to talk about, which is Rex Humans Double Life, because another question that I wish would just go to bed already is how did you not know? How you know? In Rex humans case, how did the wife not know? Yeah? I think not And thank you, by the way, I didn't know about your dad. I wasn't going to lead with that because it's awkward, like, hey, nice to meet you here, yet surprised so many people who are into crime, probably a crime ciller, maybe like oh my god, dude, I was a SERI killer, Like what was it? Like? I mean, you know what's awkward, though, Michelle, is when I go to parties and they don't know my background, they'll be like, oh, you know, on holiday parties, especially, what do you do with your parents for the holidays? And I want to say, well, you know, my mom's from cancer. Yeah, and my dad's in prison, and then retreats into themselves. They yeah, they retreat with curiosity. Yeah. Oh yeah, They're like, God, please tell me more. But yeah, yeah. Well, and it's also like does that is that contagious? Like are you going to throw those genes on me if you sneeze, and there's all this misconception about you know, you either you are from such an abusive background that you're going to be weird, or you are carrying this constellation of genes. Said that because people say, oh, you're so normal, Like I'm not really, but but in the context of what they're referring to, yes, I am normal, but you know, it's that's one of the questions that they are one of the observations that they made. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up, because what I also do is I'm also a jury consultant, a litigation consultant, and I work on high profile crimes a lot. You know, those court cases, and the kids of the criminals will come to court and they'll get harangued by the media, they'll get stocked. So it's not just casual kind of true crime fascination. Actually, even in the legal world, if you are the offspring of a criminal. I remember Phil Spector's kids came and like one twin sat on this side and the other twin sat on that side and took different positions in the case, and they it was so popular the consumption people wanting to be near somebody who's related to a killer. Is it's a bit of a negative cachet, but a cache none the last. Yeah, that's creepy. I think that. Well, we have so many questions for you. What specifically got you interested in predatory behavior? Cat? Well, gosh, I feel like I have to be a little bit careful Melissa. This is you know, it's personal stuff. Oh you know. I mean it's actually like your dad is the type of Yeah, there's two different kinds of killers. That well, there's several different types of killers. But if you were to make it break it down to its rudimentary level, at least when we would teach undergrad courses, it's like you have your impulsive type killers. You know, they get into a bar fight and they kill our girlfriend in a fit of rage, and then you have your predatory type of killers. The cold blood and the operating systems couldn't be further apart. What makes we're fascinated by women killers? Hence slipstick and lies? What makes a woman a predator killer? So women are fascinating. It's easier to become a killer if you're a male. The wall is as smaller to be a female. Usually our female serial killers and our female stalkers are more dangerous than their male counterparts. That's confusing because they're very rare and they're often not as prolific, but they're general they're usually better at it. So if one does decide to become a very good female serial killer, they're usually going to get away with it. I was just on a podcast talking. No, I'm sorry, I was on Pierce Morgan's show, Pierce Oh he had killer women this way he did, no, no, no, he it was uncensored. I did not think of his show, and that was yesterday, and they had this question like, well, why would someone nurse Lucy let me? Why would she kill babies? How could you kill a baby? Would you be a baby? I'm like, you're thinking of her as a nurse. She's a serial killer who's in a place where there's victims everywhere. And I hate saying this, it's really rude, but it's low hanging fruit. So sex workers, homeless people, and babies are really easy to kill. So if you're thrill seeking and that's what you're looking for, you go where you have a great not a breeding ground, but kind of like a hunting ground for that. So The way I got into that is people had talked a lot about the environmental issues that kind of contribute to killing. But for me, it's like, but why why can one person grow up in the most abusive environment and become a total dick and then I mean a totally wonderful person and another person could have a perfect family and become a What is the individual differences? And that's usually biology and genes. Now, you can't study biology, biology and genes without understanding the environment. So it's not studying one without the other. It's just that nobody was at the time really like to say. What people say to me, is there a serial killer gene? There's a constellation of genes that recombine. So this was my dissertation. I looked at it in children. I looked at psychopathic behavior in nine to eleven year olds, and I used identical and fraternal twins so that I could isolate how much of it is genetic and how much is environment. We do that mathematically. This is where I nerd out. So this is gonna be fun. Identical twins share one hundred percent of their non segregating genes, so genetically they're almost identical. Fraternal twins are just like regular brothers and sisters, but born at the same time. So mathematically you have one hundred percent genes fifty percent genes, and then you have shared environment and individual environment. So you can look at large, massive groups of these people and study how similar identical twins are to each other versus how similar for nal twins are to each other. And if in any given trait from reading, ability to killing, if identical twins mathematically are more similar to each other than for eternal twins, it suggests a genetic component involved. Now, this can get really boring and convoluted, but essentially what we figured out is if you look at a pedigree, if you look at the pedigree of a serial killer, you might or psychopathy. Let's make it broader, let's make it psychopathy, and that occurs in about one out every one hundred people. But most of us are pro social psychopaths. If we're going to be psychopaths, and I say we because I don't like to exclude the psychopaths among us, listen protected group now, so you will find it's not so much fathered a daughter. You'll see great uncle Larry, and two to three generations later, a little psychopath pops up again. So if I look at my family tree, I have another psychopath in my tree, another serial killer in my tree. You do, or you're saying no, Well, you might have somebody with that constellation of genes. So what we learned is that it's inherited. It's a group of genes. We don't know which, but it's a group of genes that kind of turns it on or not. So you might find throughout your pedigree that you have people with psychopathic features, but not usually. It's not usually one generation to the other. Now, this is all broad, it's not exact, but this is what the tendencies is what we're seeing. Well, this is fascinating because that isn't There's another question. I get asked, are you afraid of spawning a serial killer? And I never was afraid of that. I really wasn't afraid. And thankfully my children are fabulous, and you'd know by now, yeah, I would absolutely know. They're super empathetic, they have all of the markers of being regular, nice, good people. But then I guess the question would be, knowing what you just explained to me, could it be genetically passed down through them to another generation, then
