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Dr. Drew

Jodi Arias Revealed

Aired January 21, 2013 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DREW PINSKY, HOST (voice-over): She`s accused of brutally murdering her ex-boyfriend, but who is the real Jodi Arias? Who was she before all this?

We are speaking exclusively to a woman who says she was Jodi`s babysitter. She tells me what she saw in Arias as a child and how that behavior may be reflected in what we`re seeing as an adult.

And later, the Manti Te`o hoax -- still more questions than answers. I`m going to try to make sense out of it.

Let`s get started.

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINSKY: And welcome to the program. I hope you`re having a nice Martin Luther King Day. I had a chance to look at the inauguration today. It was really a nice ceremony.

And my co-host for this week is Lisa Bloom, attorney with bloomfirm.com and legal adviser with avo.com.

Also joining us: psychologist Wendy Walsh; attorney Mark Eiglarsh from speaktomark.com. And author Shanna Hogan, her book is "Picture Perfect." It`s about the Arias case.

But, first, as we said in the intro, I will be speaking exclusively to Beth Hawkins who says she babysat for Jodi Arias and her little brother several times.

Beth, I know we`re having a little technical problem with your Skype. And I see the phone on your ear there. I appreciate you kind of putting up with the dual tasking here. We wanted to see you while we talked to you.

So, tell me this. Were you a neighbor? What happened here? How did you end up babysitting and what did you see?

BETH HAWKINS, SAYS SHE BABYSAT JODI ARIAS: Well, Dr. Drew, first of all, thank you so much for having me on.

With Jodi, I actually became acquainted with her through our next-door neighbor, and she was originally babysitting for her, and there was a point in time when she was not able to baby sit for her so they had called and asked if she had known anybody, and she referred me.

And for about a year or so, we -- I had babysat for Jodi and her smaller -- her little brother Carl, and that`s pretty much how I knew her. Then later on found out that actually Jodi`s father and my brother-in-law were cousins.

PINSKY: Oh, how interesting.

Now, we`re looking at a picture of Jodi there as a young girl with the pigtails. Is that her dad? It must be her father we`re seeing in the picture there.

Now, I understand you observed some interesting interaction between she and her brother. Tell me about that.

HAWKINS: Yes, absolutely. There were several times that I had observed, when I was babysitting, sort of very aggressive behavior from Jodi towards her brother.

One incident in particular, I was called to babysit on a weekend night, I believe it was, and I was in the kitchen cooking them dinner, and they were in Jodi`s room, I believe, and they were just kind of interacting with each other. And all of a sudden, I just heard Carl just let out this bloodcurdling scream. I went in there and he had a pretty good knot on the top of his head. Jodi was standing there and Carl was crying, and he kept trying to tell me that she hit him. He was probably about three or four at the time.

PINSKY: Hit him with what, like her fist?

HAWKINS: No, with a baseball bat.

LISA BLOOM, ATTORNEY: Whoa!

PINSKY: Baseball bat. And she was how old at the time?

HAWKINS: She was probably five, six years old at the time.

PINSKY: OK. Just a reminder, we can`t independently confirm nor refute what is being said here, but let me ask another couple quick questions about this. Did Jodi, the child, then apologize or seem contrite?

HAWKINS: No, absolutely not. In fact, when I asked her, Jodi, did you hit your brother, she`s like, no, I don`t know why he`s crying.

PINSKY: Wendy Walsh, warning sign or do you think this is just child play, so to speak?

WENDY WALSH, PH.D., PSYCHOLOGIST: I think this is very developmentally normal. I think that it`s really hard to judge somebody`s personality type, first of all, by -- at the age of 5 years old because they`re all dimpled, curly lunatics at that age. They -- and I think even looking at a slice of it is very hard.

Although I would say that if there`s violence and aggression, I`m wondering, was it something that was a learned behavior? Was -- do you happen to know --

PINSKY: Right.

WALSH: -- whether there was some corporal punishment happening in the house?

PINSKY: Beth?

HAWKINS: Well, you know, I can`t say that I ever saw any type of corporal punishment between the parents and Jodi and/or Carl. What I can say is that just about every occasion that I babysat, I pretty much couldn`t leave the two of them alone. I mean, if they were in the living room and I was in the kitchen or vice versa or they were in their bedroom, there was always an incident.

I mean, there were times I felt like I couldn`t even go to the bathroom without some sort of incident going on.

PINSKY: Lisa, go ahead.

BLOOM: So I have a question. I think it is pretty normal for kids to bang each other over the head, brothers and sisters. But what about afterwards? Did she show any empathy? Did she feel bad that her little brother had been hurt by her?

HAWKINS: You know, I don`t think so. I was a young woman at the time, I was 14, 15 years old when I babysat for them, and, you know, just growing up and I was (INAUDIBLE) them to my family, and when incidents like that happened in our group, there was always some kind of, you know, sort of regret or something, and I never really saw that in her.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOM: Isn`t that significant to you?

PINSKY: It is a little significant, but again, it`s hard to judge what a 14-year-old is seeing in a 7-year-old.

But let me ask you, were you surprised to hear about the Jodi Arias case, Beth?

HAWKINS: Absolutely. In fact, when I learned about it, I was absolutely floored by it. I could not fathom that this had actually happened.

I was -- and since then I`ve been kind of following it and it`s so surreal to me that I`m watching this on TV.

PINSKY: Beth, I`m going to interrupt you and I`m going to ask Shanna to fill this in for us. You`ve written books about this. Can you take us from what Beth was observing to what you know the facts to be?

SHANNA HOGAN, JOURNALIST, TRUE-CRIEM AUTHOR (via telephone): Yes. Well, after her childhood, she grew up kind of normal. She dropped out of high school, as we know. She had maintained jobs, she had long relationships.

I`ve seen her kind of as a relationship hopper. She went from one boyfriend to the next and kind of was never single in her life. But these guys, her past boyfriends describe her as gentle and nice and kind. There wasn`t this crazy, violent streak in her.

She did have quite a manipulative streak. She would use lies to get what she wanted, but the violence thing was something that happened when she became, you know, with Travis.

PINSKY: OK. I want to show everyone a clip from the Jodi Arias police investigation video, and this, again, may or may not shed a little light on what we`ve been talking about here in that home. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JODI ARIAS, ACCUSED MURDERER: I don`t really remember except Travis was screaming. I think I got knocked out, but I don`t think I was out long. I know I got knocked in the head and I`d gotten knocked in the head once by my dad when he was just really mad. And it wasn`t like -- actually he didn`t knock me in the head, he just pushed me against the wall and I hit my head and I fell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINSKY: Wendy, I`ve got just 20 seconds. You know, she`s liar and she`s lying during this interview, maybe she was lying about that.

But that is the big question, isn`t it? Was there aggression or violence in that home?

WALSH: Yes, and I have to actually ask you this, Dr. Drew, is that how much do you think these personality disorders, if in fact she does have one, are more genetic or more environment? Because we`re talking about environment here.

PINSKY: You`re asking a really great question. In my understanding, there is always a genetic environment interaction, and a given individual has varying inputs from both.

My understanding is that psychopathy, Lisa, where people don`t have any empathy for people, that`s a brain structural thing that has a genetic primarily base --

BLOOM: And if you see that in a child, 4-years-old, 7-years-old, that they don`t have empathy, that they can`t feel --

PINSKY: Well, empathy is what develops --

BLOOM: -- isn`t that something to be concerned about?

WALSH: Yes, that`s actually taught.

PINSKY: Yes, empathy develops much later.

BLOOM: Really?

PINSKY: And the kids do seem to tend to see come to the aid of other children.

BLOOM: Yes.

PINSKY: It comes quite a bit later. But the fact is it`s difficult - - listen, bumping your brother over the head with a mallet was not the same as pulling, you know, the whiskers out of a kitten. You know what I mean? One is way worse than the other. We just don`t know.

But thank you. I appreciate, Beth, the report. Thank you for joining us. And it`s interesting.

Coming up, we heard reports that Jodi was, quote, "dabbling in Mormonism". We`re also maybe hearing that she was into witchcraft.

And later on line and in love, was a pro-football prospect a victim in the hoax of all hoaxes? Have you been catfished? Call us now, 855- DRDREW5.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I made a little reach to find out if she was making thong panties or not. So, when I realized that she was, I made a little joke and I said that`s not magic anywhere. And she said, but there`s magic in them. So, I thought, OK, this is fun. She`s going to be fun.

VERONICA: Boy, when I went to retrieve the cat after two weeks. I said, what do you mean, retrieve the cat after two weeks to retrieve the cat? She said, well, I left it in a room with enough food and water. I said, for two weeks?

ZION LOVINGIER: She was into Wicca and she was very into energies and positive energy, and she was into a lot of self-help books.

I had a couple conversations, I remember, with her about her studies in Wicca.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

PINSKY: Wiccan and energies, Lisa --

BLOOM: And leaving the cat for two weeks? Remember we were just talking about cats and the lack of empathy?

PINSKY: Yes.

BLOOM: I mean, who leaves a cat alone for two weeks? With food and water, but come on.

PINSKY: And she told veronica the cat was so sick -- stressed, that she was surprised -- Jodi was saying she didn`t feel bad and thought maybe she should.

BLOOM: That`s very telling.

PINSKY: Very telling.

All right. Let`s get more of this Wiccan thing from investigative journalist Shanna Hogan. Her new book, "Picture Perfect" is about the Arias case.

Shanna, what about Jodi and Wiccan?

HOGAN: Let me tell you, Dr. Drew, this just came out but I`ve been hearing about this for over two years. When she converted to Mormonism, she told a lot of people, a lot of Travis` friends, too, that her background was -- religious background was very tacky (ph) and that she was always into spiritualities and that she actually studied Wicca. One of the things she liked about the Wiccans` philosophy and what she told people was that the creed, that everything you do comes back to you threefold.

And it`s kind of interesting when you think about it, like the way Travis treated her, maybe she thought a mechanism of how he treated her was going to come back at him threefold in this awful way and she was (INAUDIBLE) putting that at him.

PINSKY: Very interesting. Mark Eiglarsh, I`m actually going to go to you on this. I know you and I have discussed what we think spirituality really is. This young lady seems to have gotten way off the track.

MARK EIGLARSH, ATTORNEY: I agree. Drew, I`m sitting here watching both as a guest and a viewer of your show, and I have more questions than answers. I mean, Wicca, the bat over the head, the leaving the cat, none of that says to me, OK, so you can expect someone to slash someone`s throat from ear to ear and stab them 29 times and shoot them.

I don`t have the answers here. Help us. I don`t know.

PINSKY: That`s why you`re here, we`re all here. We`re all shaking our head the same way. I agree with you.

As you heard, I think it was Shanna or Beth was saying, that there was no antecedent history of violence, that people described her as relatively quiet.

BLOOM: And how about after they had sex, too? I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but they had sex and she killed him right after that. That`s a very unusual time for somebody to fly into a rage and kill somebody, right?

EIGLARSH: Right.

BLOOM: Whether it was satisfying or not satisfying, I find that very odd.

PINSKY: Lisa wouldn`t normally do that.

BLOOM: Most women or men -- we watched a lot of murder cases over the years. I have, you have, Mark, right?

EIGLARSH: Right.

BLOOM: I can`t think of anyone where somebody right after having sex, that`s when they decided to kill someone.

PINSKY: Let`s go to a caller. I`ve got Jenny in Florida. Jenny, what do you got on your mind?

JENNY, CALLER FROM FLORIDA: Hey, Dr. Drew. I`m curious. Does anybody know why Jodi dropped out of high school?

PINSKY: Shanna, do we know the answer to that question.

HOGAN: Well, it wasn`t because she wasn`t smart enough. I have been told that she was preoccupied with a guy she was dating.

PINSKY: Hold on a second. You mean she gets obsessed with guys? I`m shocked.

Mark, there`s something at least we can hang our head on there. The other thing as I heard was she, quote, "ran away" from home a lot, Shanna.

Now, for me, when kids run away from home and stay away that -- I don`t mean permanently, necessarily, but really try to stay away, not just --

BLOOM: Where it`s real.

PINSKY: Right, where they`re really trying to get away. Something good is not going on in the home, typically. Do we know anything about that?

HOGAN: I heard she had a really acrimonious relationship with her parents, that she didn`t like being controlled, she didn`t like being told what to do, and that what drove a lot of the running away. That`s also why she moved back to her grandparents, not her parents when she moved back to Yreka.

She, in spite her own childhood is very idyllic, but I heard it was the opposite. She told a lot of people that she had a bad relationship with her parents and was working on that.

PINSKY: Rose in Pennsylvania -- Rose.

EIGLARSH: Drew, you know --

PINSKY: One second, Mark.

Hey, Rose.

ROSE, CALLER FROM PENNSYLVANIA: Hi. I have a question.

PINSKY: Yes?

ROSE: OK, now, has she ever taken any street drugs in the past or any kind of drugs over time?

PINSKY: Shanna -- yes, let`s ask Shanna who has written the books on her. I don`t know of any history or suggestion that`s been part of the story. The only feature that`s consistent with that is the lying, but I`ve never really felt that was part of the story here. What do you think?

HOGAN: I have not heard that she was into drugs, alcohol or anything like that. She was a bartender. But when she became, quote-unquote, "Mormon", however devoted she was to it, she wasn`t drinking alcohol. She wasn`t doing drugs. So that hasn`t been a factor that I`ve discovered.

BLOOM: It sounds like men were her drugs. Some women really latch on and their whole identity is built around the actual man.

PINSKY: It`s a love addiction.

Mark, you wanted to say something?

EIGLARSH: Yes, we were talking about her past and possible abuse. Where you`re going to hear that is in the penalty phase, because I`m certain she`s going to be convicted. And then from her lips via her attorneys, you`re going to hear all these horrible stories, again, because it`s about saving her life. And her attorneys will tell her, listen, anything you can give us.

If she`s willing to trash the victim the way that she has by alleging self-defense, that he was abusive, you know she`s going to manufacture whatever it takes about her history to save her from the death chamber.

PINSKY: And a reminder, we`re speculating here. We cannot confirm nor deny really almost everything we`ve been talking about here tonight. We cannot independently confirm these things.

Next, Jodi Arias possibly says she`s prepared for the ultimate punishment. A family friend goes on the record about that issue.

And later, could you fall in love with a person you`d only met online? It apparently allegedly happened to this gentleman, a college football star, and it did happen to my guest. You`ll meet her.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The person that I had known was a very quiet, soft-spoken, gentle person.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s very mysterious. She knew to win somebody over that you should get them to talk about themselves, and she was really good at asking you questions about you and keeping it on you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jodi is not afraid to die because then she`s with her maker.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINSKY: Wow, that`s sort of a stunning statement. We are talking about the real Jodi Arias with my co-host this week, Lisa Bloom.

And our guests -- what do you make of those words when did Jodi say she`s not afraid to die?

WALSH: She seems to disassociate a lot. So, the most common human fear isn`t her fear of dying? And she`s disassociating from that fear now, too?

PINSKY: Or she`s so delusional and so grandiose that she feels like, you know, I don`t know, that she`ll go on living. Who knows what she`s talking?

BLOOM: Or she`s just a tough talker. Oh, I`m not afraid to die, right?

WALSH: Exactly.

PINSKY: Wendy, you wanted to comment about what we were talking about before the break. Go ahead.

WALSH: Yes. I think that, you know, she -- the question s she`s never out of a relationship. She seems to never be a single woman and never able to be on her own. I`m interested with the biographer, but what were the lengths of her relationships?

I know she went from man to man to man, but did she stick it out for two years, did she have any tolerance for conflict resolution, any tolerance for real closeness?

PINSKY: Shanna, what do you know?

HOGAN: The shortest relationship I know is Travis. She had a boyfriend for two years and then she had a boyfriend for four years. So she was involved in long-term relationships.

PINSKY: And, Beth, let me go back to you. You babysat Jodi when she was a child.

The thing that sets up love addiction sometime is abandonment. She ended up with her grandparents. Do you know anything about that part of her story?

HAWKINS: You know, the last time I saw Jodi was when she was probably about 10 or 11 years old, and it was at a family reunion, and she seemed very distant, very unsociable. She didn`t really want to hang out with the other children at a family reunion.

PINSKY: How did you end up at a family reunion? You were a babysitter.

HAWKINS: Well, I was kind of related through marriage, like I said before. My brother-in-law`s mother`s sister --

PINSKY: It`s OK, I don`t have a pen and paper. I can`t figure it out, but go ahead.

HAWKINS: Yes, I went to various family reunions. I probably went to probably five, six, seven of them, I can`t really begin to tell you, but throughout the years. The last time I saw her, she was about 10 or 11 and just really disassociated and not really sociable with the other children.

PINSKY: Interesting, there is that word again, the disassociation, the sort of disconnect.

Janet, do you want to ring in in here?

JAN, CALLER FROM MICHIGAN: Yes, I do. I noticed the picture you have of Jodi when she was a child being held by her father, isn`t there a striking resemblance between the father and Travis Alexander?

PINSKY: There`s the father. Boy, that would be interesting. Can somebody put up for us a picture of Travis where he perhaps -- I don`t know where you get a picture like that. They`re getting one up there.

Jan, that is very, very interesting, because I dealt with a stalker once, a woman who was love addicted and stalking, and she stalked a guy who looked like her father.

I don`t know. What do you think, Lisa?

BLOOM: I don`t necessarily see it. Maybe if you took the sunglasses and the facial hair off the father.

WALSH: Oh, yes.

PINSKY: Oh, Wendy is seeing it.

WALSH: I see it.

(LAUGHTER)

PINSKY: Now you`re scaring me, Wendy. But go ahead.

WALSH: But listen, it`s not just a visual trigger. Some things that can trigger an anxious attachment as I like to call it, could be vocal tone.

PINSKY: Yes.

WALSH: It could be a way of approaching, touching, being with the personality. It could trigger -- yes, all kinds of remembrances of, really, what they lost, because obviously every child loves their parents, they are meant to be attached to their parents, and I think you`re absolutely right, Dr. Drew, that abandonment is one of the things that leads to love addiction.

But the other thing could be intrusive parenting who actually don`t see the child as their own independent person but as a pawn of theirs.

BLOOM: OK. But I have a question. So what`s the difference between love addiction, which sounds so terrible --

PINSKY: Yes.

BLOOM: -- and people who just like to be in love? Don`t we all want love in our lives?

PINSKY: Yes, listen, romantic love is based on pathology, for the most part. And listen, we will romance in our culture. Let me just -- this is the way I explain to people. Let me just put it this way.

BLOOM: Romantic love is based on pathology?

PINSKY: Let me say it more clearly. Wendy agrees with me.

BLOOM: That`s not going to be the takeaway --

WALSH: It`s the world`s biggest illusion.

PINSKY: Let me just say it this way. Wait, Lisa, hold me on this. If Romeo and Juliet had been my and Wendy`s patient, not only would we have malpractice cases, we`d probably go to prison. These were two very sick individuals who acted out a very sick pathology and ended up dying.

BLOOM: OK, but --

PINSKY: So, that`s our notion of romantic love and it is as sick as can be in that Shakespeare play.

BLOOM: OK. But I`m in love. I`m in a happy relationship. Am I pathologized?

PINSKY: We`re not going to pathologize. Relax.

WALSH: No, but you`re in mature, companionship love, Lisa.

BLOOM: So how do you know the difference?

PINSKY: Apparently, in HLN, we`re not interested in healthy love. So hold on a second.

I`ve got to take a break. I want to thank Beth, I want to thank Shanna for joining us.

Next up, what is catfishing and what makes someone vulnerable to it? I`ll tell you what it is and we`re going to get into the Manti Te`o hoax, after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PINSKY: Notre Dame football star Manti Te`o says he`s the victim of an apparent hoax, which went like this -- I`m going to ask, everybody, Lisa, sit tight while I explain this thing. In case people have not heard it, it takes a couple of seconds to go through it.

Four years ago, she, quote, "met" a girl online. She became, quote, "his girlfriend". They never met. He spoke about her numerous interviews last year, and then she apparently died of leukemia.

Now, the story evoked lots of sympathy. He was a top football player. Then it was revealed that this girl never even had existed. He had never met her, in spite of he and his father kind of talking about a physical encounter with her. Having met her, that is.

Now, a man reportedly admitted to Te`o this week that he had invented the woman and really been behind the hoax.

Back with me to discuss, my co-host this week, Lisa Bloom, legal advisor for Avo.com, attorney, Mark Eiglarsh with speaktomark.com, psychologist, Wendy Walsh. Wendy, I want you to explain this phenomena we call catfishing, and can you explain how someone has a four-year relationship with a girl he`s never met and he`s a football star. How does that all fit together?

WENDY WALSH, PH.D., PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, it`s really possible, and believe it or not, it happens all the time. Not necessarily catfishing where they`re falling in love with a fictitious person but falling in love with someone on line that they never -- or they think it`s love that they never meet. It`s because we have this urge and desire to bond. People are starting to compartmentalize their relationships.

They`re putting their sex into hookups. They`re putting their emotional needs online in a very safe place. They may have friends elsewhere and intellectual stimulation elsewhere, and this is a very busy student athlete with a huge life. So, it satisfied some of his psychological needs. Now, you and I know it`s not really love.

He was in love with his own projections, because when you`re just dealing with a keyboard, you can read anything into what they write back. You know, it`s not a partner who leaves the cap off the toothpaste or their underwear on the floor or you have to deal with their chronic lateness, it`s somebody who`s available when you need them, when you go to the keyboard.

So, it`s actually an artificial way to satisfy yourself emotionally but not have a relationship.

PINSKY: All right. I want to show you some footage of Manti talking about his girlfriend. Take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANTI TE`O, FOOTBALL PLAYER: My girlfriend is a God-fearing woman. She put Heavenly Father first, and if there`s anything I learned from her, it`s that. She loved her Heavenly Father more than anything. And I was just very blessed to be part of that and to share that with her, to sleep on the phone with her every night and to hear her say, through all the pain of chemo, can we say a prayer?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINSKY: So Lisa, what is this thing? How do we make sense of this?

LISA BLOOM, ATTORNEY, BLOOLMFIRM.COM: Please, please. I mean, my BS detector is going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

PINSKY: OK.

BLOOM: All right.

PINSKY: So, you don`t think -- he was so focused on his religious culture that this is a possibility --

BLOOM: -- both in the possibility. He`s going to speak this week, I`m going to listen to what he has to say, but let`s put this together and be realistic. He had a girlfriend who was dying and he never went to visit her in person? He never went to her hospital room? He has this whole relationship via technology but never on Skype, never on Facetime?

He`s a healthy young male. He`s an athlete. He doesn`t want to see his girlfriend much less be near her or touch her? Come on, Dr. Drew, come on.

PINSKY: I`m concerned that there is some --

MARK EIGLARSH, CRIMINAL; DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Wait, hold on.

PINSKY: Oh, Mark. Go ahead, please. Bring us back around.

EIGLARSH: I got to jump in.

PINSKY: Go ahead.

EIGLARSH: Lisa, who usually gives people the benefit of the doubt, is throwing this guy under the bus.

BLOOM: I said I`m still going to hear it now.

EIGLARSH: I`m skeptical, too. Good. I appreciate that.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOM: And I want to know if any laws have been broken.

PINSKY: Mark, any laws have been broken? Lisa?

EIGLARSH: Not that I see. There`s no grand theft of somebody`s emotion, you know?

BLOOM: Right. And he didn`t get any money out of it.

(CROSSTALK)

PINSKY: Mark, try -- but defending him is not the issue. The issue is, was he a part of this thing or not? And it`s hard to believe he wasn`t.

BLOOM: He got a lot of good PR out.

EIGLARSH: Listen, first of all, he was a victim of the hoax initially. Lisa`s points go to the fact that these catfishers were very good at what they did. Google it, understand it, it`s a real phenomenon that people are very good at sucking someone in to a fake relationship. He didn`t know. Now, the problem is, towards the very end, he started to suspect.

And there, he felt that he would be judged if he somehow came forward and said, by the way, I never physically saw her, and so, he kept it to himself. That`s where we part company. He should have come forward and he should have announced it. But he was a victim from the very beginning, I think, mostly throughout this relationship.

PINSKY: If he had never had another relationship in his life, I would go oh, maybe, but he had a girlfriend almost immediately following this thing. We`ve got his father saying at one point that he met the girl, and then saying he didn`t meet the girl. Karen in California.

EIGLARSH: And he shouldn`t have said that.

PINSKY: Well, Karen, what do you got?

KAREN, CALIFORNIA: I carried on a two-year online relationship. It`s now turned into a 10-and-a half-year marriage. And I would do the same thing all over again. Am I just one of the lucky ones?

BLOOM: No, but you actually met the guy you married, I assume, right?

PINSKY: How long before you met him, Karen?

KAREN: Two years.

PINSKY: Two years before you met him. How about before you Skyped him or had some like sort of interaction where you could actually see each other?

KAREN: About a year and a half.

PINSKY: Year and a half. Lisa, you told me you`ve got something to say.

BLOOM: Well, you know, I didn`t really fall for somebody online, but it was a real person. And I think -- you know, the thing about online is, I love words, I write books, I read books, and somebody who`s a terrific writer can really dupe me.

PINSKY: And -- how long before you --

(CROSSTALK)

PINSKY: How long?

BLOOM: A few months, and then, in person, it wasn`t so much.

PINSKY: OK. So, Mark, she went out and met the guy.

EIGLARSH: Right. Two things. Number one, it wasn`t just online. He spoke for hours on the telephone with this girl who was really good at what she did.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOM: Well, you know, Mark, if we don`t believe his story about the dying, why do we believe his story about the rest of it?

PINSKY: Well, hold on. Hold on.

EIGLARSH: I`m with you. And my prospective, my childhood friend carried on the same type of relationship, and he`s extremely bright. He went to your alma mater, Drew. He`s very smart guy.

PINSKY: Wow.

EIGLARSH: Yes. Very bright guy. And when they finally met, she looked at him and he looked at her. Obviously, wasn`t the same girl -- I mean, she posted pictures that were not her, and she pathetically looked up at him and said, haven`t you ever wanted to be something more than who you really are?

BLOOM: Oh.

PINSKY: Yes. That`s what the internet is doing these days. People are doing that. This is all came from a movie and now an MTV TV series called "Catfishing." Apparently, a young man went to meet a woman that he`d been developed this kind of relationship with line, and she turned out to be a 48-year-old woman.

BLOOM: Yes.

PINSKY: You know, who is somebody other what they said they were. And so, she`s to be catfisher and the fish couldn`t be kept alive long enough. They put the catfish in with the fish, and he adopted the term "catfish."

So, here we go, next up, a woman who said she got tricked by an online hoax herself more so than Lisa, perhaps, or some of the people that have been calling in here. This one, apparently, has a couple of sad twists to it, so stay with us. I`ll get to it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TE`O: I really got hit with cancer. I don`t like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend of cancer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINSKY: That was Manti Te`o talking about his grandmother who actually did die from cancer, and we now know a girlfriend who, well, didn`t have cancer, didn`t even exist. My next guest, Dori Hartley, author of "Angels and Echoes" was herself a catfishing victim.

Now, Dory, please tell us your story and help us understand how this happens to someone.

DORI HARTLEY, FELL IN LOVE WITH ONLINE SUITOR: Yes. I was there as a catfish victim maybe for (INAUDIBLE). I had run into someone online. I bumped into them shortly after I, myself, was in remission for cancer. And it was a very dark time in my life, and I was very lonely, and I felt very isolated, and it was just me (ph). And I really felt that I needed someone, I needed attention, I needed to feel loved.

And this very weird, crazy woman named Teresa, she put together this entire persona where she posed as a guy, and she told me that she had leukemia, which what is it with the leukemia? I mean, is that -- that`s like part of the catfish manual? I had leukemia (ph). So, she has told that me she had leukemia, brain tumors, that she was absolutely impoverished, just gets starve and -

PINSKY: Was she trying to get money?

(CROSSTALK)

HARTLEY: I`m thinking it was this nice-looking man, too, who she`s described herself as. Doesn`t use a photograph, just uses other people`s artwork which is very romantic and very beautiful. And, we got on a phone and I heard the voice, and it was definitely male-sounding to me. She had a southern accent, which is very different to me because I`m a New Yorker.

But wow, it was convincing, and as far as my not seeing a photo, every time I asked, the routine was, oh, you know, I`m too sick to be photographed. I have leukemia and I`m dying and I don`t want you to see me in my poor, sad state.

BLOOM: And so, she preyed on you when you were in a difficult time in your life.

PINSKY: Right. And --

HARTLEY: I wanted to just be like, oh, hey, don`t worry about me, I`m not demanding.

PINSKY: And Lisa, you were bringing up the point that Manti was sort of isolated from his peers, you heard?

BLOOM: Well, I know that he`s a religious Mormon young man.

PINSKY: Yes.

BLOOM: And he had a reputation for not partying and drugging and drinking like the other guys. You know, I`ve heard some people proposed a theory that an online relationship might be good for him, keep him away from temptation a little bit. He might be more likely to succumb to that - -

PINSKY: And Wendy, that sort of the case you were building, that people -- because they can project all their needs to these online sort of buckets, you know, these sort of receptacles, and then, there`s no real relationship there.

WALSH: Exactly. And just like your guest said, we have to analyze ourselves and how much are we in a vulnerable position, how whole are we before we enter into any kind of online relationship which we probably shouldn`t, anyway. And the rules of the game should be get many photographs very quickly, Skype and telephone very quickly if they`re in another city, so you can at least verify it`s a human at the other end.

PINSKY: Yes.

BLOOM: Yes.

WALSH: And meet and start a real world relationship. I think, probably, the biggest misnomer out there are online dating sites. You`re not supposed to date online. You`re supposed to meet online and then date in the real world.

PINSKY: Right. And by the way, those flesh meetings need to be very carefully manicured --

BLOOM: Flesh meetings?

PINSKY: That`s what they`re called. Meeting in the flesh.

BLOOM: Flesh meeting --

PINSKY: Not so it`s meeting of the flesh. It`s so you can meet in the flesh.

BLOOM: It reminds me of my old-time favorite cartoon, two dogs sitting in front of a computer and one says to the other, on the internet, no one knows you`re a dog.

PINSKY: There you go.

BLOOM: Right?

PINSKY: We`re talking about (INAUDIBLE). Simon in California, you have a comment?

SIMON, CALIFORNIA: Yes. I just wanted to give a little bit insight on to this whole saga with Manti. Basically, I kind of grew up in the same area in Hawaii, and what happened is you have a lot of these kids come out of Hawaii. They`re Mormon. They definitely believe in their religion, and the whole thing about Mormons is sexual relationship (ph) is taboo. There`s no way --

EIGLARSH: Drew, I want to comment on that.

PINSKY: OK. Mark, go ahead.

EIGLARSH: I think he makes a good point. I think that what made Manti a greater mark for somebody to use him is because of his faith. He explains, actually, in one interview that because of his faith, he takes vertical leaps. He accepts things that he cannot see, and I think that that made him the perfect victim in this case.

PINSKY: Yes, Simon, thank you. We have another call out there? Thank you for that call. I appreciate it. Yes. Barry in Georgia -- Barry.

BARRY, GEORGIA: Hey, Dr. Drew.

PINSKY: Barry.

BARRY: Yes, hello?

PINSKY: Go right ahead.

BARRY: OK. Yes. I`ve been following this and watching a lot of football, love it. And, you know, my thing is I believe that instead of him being a victim, he was part of the hoax from the beginning because --

PINSKY: Well, Barry, let me ask you. I`m going to interrupt and ask you, why? Why? What would motivate him to do this? Why would he be a part of something like this?

BARRY: Because of the Heisman trophy.

BLOOM: Hmmm.

BARRY: He was attempting, in my opinion, that he was going to win the sympathy vote and win the Heisman trophy --

BLOOM: And he did. He did get a lot of very favorable press as this was all going down about the girlfriend --

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOM: -- journalists actually checked their facts. They even picked up the phone to call the girlfriend, but he did get a lot of very good media from them.

PINSKY: Chantelle in Oklahoma -- Chantelle. Chantelle, are you there? Do we have her, in the control room --

CHANTELLE, OKLAHOMA: Oh, yes, I`m here. I`m here.

PINSKY: There you are. Go right ahead.

CHANTELLE: Well, my situation is a little different. I have an ex- friend who seemed to have taken my face and created -- with my face.

PINSKY: Oh, boy. Yes. This is -- you know, we`re getting into this whole area of internet being -- particularly for young people, you can imagine how dangerous the place could become.

(CROSSTALK)

BLOOM: -- was used for Mr. Te`o is now very upset.

(CROSSTALK)

PINSKY: No doubt. Mark, go right ahead and then we got to go to break.

EIGLARSH: Can you help us understand why these people are doing that? Why are they committing hoaxes? Why are they posing? What are they getting out of it?

PINSKY: Some people -- well, there`s so many different reasons, Mark. I mean, sometimes, people actually -- listen, we started tonight talking about Jodi Arias. Some people get a thrill out of -- listen, when you were a kid, did you ever do a prank call, Mark?

EIGLARSH: Sure.

PINSKY: OK. Remember that feeling --

EIGLARSH: Is your refrigerator running, Drew?

PINSKY: There you go.

(LAUGHTER)

PINSKY: Yes. Something in the can, whatever.

BLOOM: Prince Albert in a can.

PINSKY: It`s satisfying that same sort of grandiose, immature sort of need to be tickled by other people`s discomfort. There`s some of that. There`s some more sinister aspects of it. As you heard some people say this evening, it`s to be something bigger. Wendy, you have information about this whole cloud world? Can you tell us briefly about that and then we got to go to break.

WALSH: Well, there are so many people that want to compartmentalize their relationships or have a fictitious hot girlfriend online that now it`s become big business online. You can go to cloudgirlfriend.com. I don`t mean to promote that one. There are many more. And you can pay a fee to have a girlfriend regularly write, very publicly lovely, complementary things on your Facebook wall.

They`ll hit you up on Twitter, and it`s a real person, apparently. We don`t know if this person is a female or how old they are. It doesn`t matter, but it will appear that you`ve got an online girlfriend.

PINSKY: Right. Instead, Mark, she`s a rodeo cloud from Wisconsin. That`s all. So, OK, thank you, guys.

Next up, I`ve got an NFL star who`s going to weigh in on the story. He`s got advice about what Manti could be in for as a pro and what the pro teams would think about someone that either participated in this or was the victim and gullible enough to be hoaxed like this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PINSKY: I`m back with my co-host this week, Attorney Lisa Bloom from Avo.com. Joining us, NFL star, Michael Robinson. He is a running back with the Seattle Seahawks. He has -- he`s the host of his own sports talk show called "The Real Rob Report," and I want you to know I was pulling for those Seahawks. I was pulling for you guys.

(LAUGHTER)

PINSKY: But now you`re able to focus on your media career.

MICHAEL ROBINSON, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS: Yes, sir --

(CROSSTALK)

PINSKY: So, thanks for joining us. Michael, here`s my question. We can`t hear him right now. Do we have a technical problem, anybody in the control room? OK, you`re good now. Michael, here`s my question. I heard someone on one of the NFL talk shows say, my goodness, some of these teams may think twice before they hire a guy who`s gullible enough to fall for something like this because he may not be ready for the kind of stuff that comes out on an NFL player.

ROBINSON: Well, you know, personally, I think that his play on the field is going to speak for itself. I don`t think that this will have anything to do with the guys receiving him in the locker room, anything like that. I do think that he has to know who he is as a person. You know, I know his faith is a big part of what he does, but be transparent about it.

Guys are going to -- you`re dealing with 22, 23-year-olds, 24-year- olds in the lockers room and guys see the media. Guys see the TV. And they know what`s going on. This is a very highly publicized situation. So, he has to be ready for that. And I know he`s going to answer some questions at the end of this week, but I`m interested to kind of -- if I could to be a fly on the wall and to come by and to see what he tells the team.

PINSKY: Yes, it will be interesting. But Michael, my question, I found this interesting. Do you think the NFL teams, though, in spite of the play being the ultimate deciding factor, that they would take a beat or they might move him down the roster in terms of their picks thinking, A, this guy might have participated in this kind of thing as a part of the hoax, or B, anybody this gullible could be a liability on our team?

ROBINSON: I don`t think it`s going to affect his draft stock. I really don`t. And if it does, you`ll know because he`ll slide, and you know that some of the questions at the combine, you know, may not have been answered the way the teams wanted. But we`ll see. You know, he had a great season.

So, I heard a caller talk about getting sympathy for the Heisman. You know, a Heisman is a performance-based award. I don`t know if that went too far with him. I don`t think it`s going to hurt him too far as far as draft prospects.

PINSKY: All right. Fair enough. Wendy, do you have something to say?

WALSH: I`ve got a question. You know, Dr. Drew, obviously, there`s a lot of pressure in the NFL. This guy is going to take ribbing from the guys for a very long time.

PINSKY: Well, that`s what Michael was saying.

WALSH: But they also do a lot of training. They train them how to avoid date rape, is that correct, Michael, and how to deal with women who may target them? So, maybe, he`ll be able to, you know, help himself through some of this training that he can get through the NFL.

PINSKY: Michael, how about that? Yes?

ROBINSON: Yes, I think that`s very true. Every team has a player personnel guy whose job -- I mean, his office is usually close to the locker room, and their job is to help guys through situations, and if Manti has any type of problem, that`s a guy he can go to, all the guys on the team.

But, you know, groupies and all those things at hotels, he`s going to have to deal with that and he`s going to have to, again, be strong-minded and know who he is as a person. If he`s going to be a religious guy, you know, be that guy and they`re going to respect that. But you can`t be one thing and show us another thing.

PINSKY: Right. He can`t be manipulated and he can`t back down from his faith orientation.

BLOOM: And he can`t lie. He can`t lie to the press, lie to the world if that`s what happened. We don`t know. That`s what it looks like. He can`t do that. And he`s a young guy.

PINSKY: Yes.

BLOOM: To be fair, he has not hurt anyone.

PINSKY: That`s right.

BLOOM: Let`s keep it in perspective.

ROBINSON: I mean, nothing prove (ph).

PINSKY: Michael, real quick, then I got to go.

ROBINSON: Doc, one quick question. Do you think that maybe he has some type of developmental issue?

PINSKY: Michael, I`m going to interrupt you. If that`s true, that could explain everything, but I have no knowledge to that effect. I`m going to take a break and talk about Ted after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PINSKY: Lisa Bloom from Avo.com, and I welcome you back. I also, of course, want to thank Mark Eiglarsh, Wendy Walsh, Michel Robinson, all our guests tonight because they were just great and I appreciate our conversation.

BLOOM: And I want to thank you for our flesh meeting.

PINSKY: Here it is.

(LAUGHTER)

PINSKY: This is actually flesh --

BLOOM: Whoo! Flesh meeting with Dr. Drew.

(LAUGHTER)

BLOOM: And I understand that over the weekend, my invitation, obviously, was lost in the mail, but you did something very interesting.

PINSKY: I did. I gave a TED Talk at Cal Tech this week. It`s actually called TED-X (ph). These are independent TED conferences, and what they do is they bring together people from three different worlds, technology, entertainment and design, and we talk about a wide range of topics. They give you a specified period of time, and they go, give us your best.

In my case, it was 15 minutes. And so -- and this was actually geared toward youth, too. So, it`s really fun. It`s very challenging to give a 15-minute talk that`s supposed to be your best 15 minutes.

BLOOM: And what you`re too modest to say is that this is a very prestigious event that only people who are at the very pinnacle of their careers get invited to do this.

PINSKY: That`s very kind. It was a privilege to be a part of it. Again, that`s a youth event. It`s Ted-X. Maybe one day I`ll get to do the main TED stage someday.

BLOOM: And I like the black T-shirt.

PINSKY: I look like an Apple employee or something.

(LAUGHTER)

BLOOM: They`re giving out iPads.

(LAUGHTER)

PINSKY: All right. Listen, tomorrow, we will address a medical mystery that even physicians, doctors, all kinds of scientists cannot solve. It is the case of a 20-year-old woman who appears to be four years of age. You will meet her and her family.

It`s something that, Lisa, I don`t know if you saw it on "Katie," but she came on -- when I first saw it, I said I would love to talk to these people, because imagine this, you`re raising a child, they have three other daughters, and you`re raising a child that doesn`t go pass age five and just stays there.

BLOOM: Yes.

PINSKY: It`s very interesting.

BLOOM: It`s got to be very tough on the parents, right, but they get a lot out of it, learning, growing insight --

PINSKY: You will find that out. Thank you all for watching. See you next time. "Nancy Grace" begins right now.

END