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Dr. Drew
Confessed Murderer of Jacob Wetterling; Sixteen Year Old Dies in Jell Cell of Rare Heart Condition; Austin Harrouff Remains in Hospital. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired September 07, 2016 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jacob at 11 years old went missing on October 22, 1989. It was St. James, Minnesota. He and his brother and a friend rode
down to a local store that night. They planned to rent a movie like most kids might. But on their way home, a man named Danny James Heinrich pulled
over in his car.
Yesterday as part of a plea deal with federal and state authorities, this monster described what he did. How he approached the three boys, wearing a
mask, carrying a revolver, letting two of the boys run off, but hand cuffing little Jacob.
His hands behind his back. Throwing Jacob into his car. Jacob had one question for him, apparently, and that was, what did I do wrong? Jacob was
then taken to a rural area, where that monster sexually assaulted that 11- year-old child. This is according to the monster himself, Heinrich.
Little Jacob told his captor that he was cold. Jacob started crying. Jacob said he wanted to go home. Heinrich says he never loaded that actual
revolver until later in the day when he heard a police car nearby and apparently that got him scared, and in a panic, he shot and murdered little
Jacob.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN HOST: Heinrich, the monster in question here is no longer just a person of interest. He is now the confessed murderer of Jacob
Wetterling. Twenty-seven years after the boy went missing, Heinrich is going to jail, but not for murder, not with a life sentence. My question
is, is that what we think is justice?
Joining me, Loni Coombs, attorney, Jena Kravitz, neuropsychologist, Brad Cohen, attorney, also Pat Lalama, managing editor, Crime Watch Daily with
Chris Henson. Now, this man will not be tried for the murder of this little boy, instead he will get 20 years in prison for child pornography. Do we
have Pat by audio yet?
PAT LALAMA, MANAGING EDITOR, CRIME WATCH DAILY: Yes.
PINSKY: Okay. Pat, explain this deal for me. I don`t get it.
LALAMA: Okay. Essentially it`s a deal with the devil, one, the prosecutors, I believe everyone on your panel is going to agree, or at least I think,
they had no choice. They always suspected him. Now, let`s go back to 2015 when they were able to match DNA from a jacket of another victim, a young
man who actually survived, so that allowed them by matching that DNA to get a search warrant to go into his home and find child porn.
So now they can go to him and say, you know what? We suspect you in this murder, but the prosecutors knew they couldn`t get him on murder without a
body. So he said fine, you just drop 23 of those child porn charges, I`ll confess to one and I`ll take you to the murder scene, and that`s how they
were able to do the deal.
PINSKY: All right. Well, the family approved the deal, and I want you to hear what Jacob`s mother said. Take a look.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
PATTY WETTERLING, JACOB WETTERLING`S MOTHER: He`s taught us all how to live, how to love, how to be fair, how to be kind. He speaks to the world
that we -- that he knew that we all believe in and it is a world that`s worth fighting for. His legacy will go on. I want to say, Jacob, I`m so
sorry.
It`s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes. We love you, Jacob. We will continue to fight, our hearts are hurting. We will
try and pull -- I would -- I would love to talk to you all, I`m just not ready yet. Because for us, Jacob was alive until we found -- until we found
him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: It is heart wrenching to watch that. Loni, is it customary for a family to be involved in the plea bargaining?
LONI COOMBS, ATTORNEY: Well, for something like this, absolutely. Because as Pat said, they had to make a deal with the devil, and they had to decide
what was more important, holding out to see if they could ever get enough evidence to go out for the murder case, or to find out now where he was,
what happened to him, and give the family some closure.
As the mother said, he was still alive in their minds, until they actually found his body. And I think that that meant more to the family to be able
to know for certain and to be able to give some closure to that than to even see that this man go away on the murder charge.
I always tell, you know, victims, the families of murdered victims, don`t look to the criminal justice system for, you know, the perfect closure
here, or for revenge, it`s not going to ever give you exactly what you need.
You have to get that yourself, from knowing, okay, this is the person and something has happened, and now we know what`s happened to your -- your
child.
PINSKY: The best you could do. Brad, do you agree with that?
[19:05:00] BRADFORD COHEN, ATTORNEY: Yeah, I mean, it`s a horrible story. It is a horrible details about it. But it`s true, these deals are made all
the time in the justice system. We don`t have a perfect justice system. We try to do the best that we can. These deals are constantly made. And movies
are made about deals like this.
I mean, it happens. I think it was important for the family to get some closure on this, and it was more important to them to get closure by giving
him the 20 years and having the possibility that he`s going to stay in jail most likely the rest of his life, with the Jimmy Ryce Act, with a civil
commitment.
Than, you know, taking the chance of losing that murder case not knowing where their son ever was or not knowing the details of their son. It must
have been heart wrenching just listening to those details and listening to it. It was heart wrenching for me.
PINSKY: Jena, a lot of my viewers say that this is evidence that you should attempt to treat sex offenders. It`s a pretty complicated topic.
JENA KRAVITZ, NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST: Yeah, so treating sex offenders is really difficult for a number of reasons. Sex offenders commit those acts for
various reasons, whether psychopathic or predatory, a lot of sexual offenders don`t even come clean with what their doing because they are
afraid of the legal consequences.
But there is some evidence that suggests treatment using behavioral management, empathy building, and relapse prevention can -- can actually,
you know, prevent future acts, but.
PINSKY: That`s for non-pedophile. That`s for somebody that`s maybe a sexual offender, but not a committed pedophile, right?
KRAVITZ: Right. And I think, you know, for these types of sex offenders that are using children as their victims.
PINSKY: Yeah.
KRAVITZ: . you know, there`s also a neurological basis for this and not, you know, in normal human -- in non sex offender human brain.
PINSKY: Yeah.
KRAVITZ: . we`re not excited or stimulated by children.
PINSKY: We`re horrified. We actually have a sort of aversive reaction. Yeah, yeah.
KRAVITZ: Exactly. When we see children, we think, you know, compassion and empathy and nurturing.
PINSKY: Yeah.
KRAVITZ: . and so there`s actually a neurological basis for this behavior.
PINSKY: Loni, I got to say this. It`s so -- it`s so weird to hear Brad, for just go, oh, yeah, it`s a deal making. And then hear you say something I
was watching the 30 for 30 with O.J. Simpson. And remembering just how weird it was watching the system work.
COOMBS: Yeah.
PINSKY: And we just the rest of us have the sort of idealized version of what justice is.
COOMBS: Yeah -- yeah, because you see on T.V. where you know all of the DNA and all of the evidence just pops up in there and people can get up and
give speeches.
PINSKY: You were there when the O.J. thing came down, right? You thought that was going to be a plea bargain too, right?
COOMBS: I thought it was going to be a plea bargain at the very beginning when Robert Shapiro was on the case.
PINSKY: Shapiro was a plead maker. He never even tried a case.
COOMBS: He was known to be a schmoozer, and he got great deals for his clients, you know, but that`s what he did.
PINSKY: How weird that sounds. He got great deals for those murders. That`s awesome. It just sounds weird. It sounds -- I`m just saying, it just sounds
weird.
LALAMA: Drew.
PINSKY: Pat, real quick. I got to go to break. Go ahead.
LALAMA: I just want to say you have to understand the pressure in this case, that the prosecutors were under, because they referred to Heinrich as
a very volatile guy who would talk and then clam up and he really gave them a hard time. So time was of the essence for them to make this thing.
PINSKY: All right. Well, somebody did the right thing for this particular situation. It`s hard to get your head around. Next up, the mother of a
little girl who was murdered by a sex offender will sound off about this case.
And later, the shocking tale of a teen who was accused of cannibalizing his victim. The boy`s father is here with us. He is speaking out about missing
signs of mental illnesses. He`s here with us. We`re back after this.
[19:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Heinrich became a suspect almost immediately in the Wetterling case because he was already a suspect in a series of unsolved
attacks on young boys in the late 1980s in the nearby city of Paynesville. Even more significantly, Heinrich was also already a suspect in the
abduction of a 12-year-old boy named Jared in nearby Cold Spring nine months earlier.
That boy was abducted, sexually assaulted, and then released. The FBI said in 1989, they believed the same person was responsible for both Jared and
Jacob`s abductions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And these facts match up with Jacob`s abduction.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A year ago, investigators decided to do a thorough review of the Wetterling case and decided to take another hard look at
Heinrich, whose 1990 picture bears a strong resemblance to the sketch of the Wetterling abductor.
A search warrant was executed at Heinrich`s home in July of 2015. Inside, investigators found no evidence that linked Heinrich directly to Jacob
Wetterling but they did find volumes of child porn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: It`s a mystery that lasted 27 years, now solved. Jacob Wetterling`s killer is going to prison, but Heinrich will not be tried for murder, a
plea deal allowed him to be locked up for possession of child pornography.
Back with Loni, Jena, Bradford, and Pat, and joining us on Skype, Diena Thompson, her daughter, Somer, was abducted and murdered by a sex offender
in 2009. Diena, thanks for joining us.
DIENA THOMPSON, MOTHER OF SOMER THOMPSON: Thank you for having me.
PINSKY: Tell us why a family accepts a plea deal and maybe speak personally why you accepted a plea deal with your daughter`s killer?
THOMPSON: I knew that without a doubt he was going to get the death penalty, but in getting a death penalty, I know that he`s assured a certain
amount of plea deals and I wanted to spare my children and I just wanted the truth and I wanted it to be over with.
PINSKY: Yeah, I`ve heard that was sort of your motivations, you just wanted to get this thing done and behind and not put the kids through any more
trauma. And now you`re pushing now for stronger penalties for sex offenders, is that correct?
THOMPSON: Absolutely. I mean, they`re not -- they`re not able to be rehabilitated. We can`t fix what`s wrong with them and then they`re
corrupting our society because our children are 100 percent of our future. They`re only 24 percent of our population right now, but they are 100
percent of our future.
PINSKY: And my heart goes out, it`s such a hard thing to talk about. I mean, my heart is hurting for you when I -- when I think about this even.
Our viewers are calling for extreme penalties, they want death penalty for child abusers, what do you say to that?
[19:15:00] THOMPSON: Amen. I`m not, I mean I don`t understand if he confesses to this, that he only gets 20 years. Simply on child pornography
charges. He reminds me a lot of my monster.
He`s willing to say that he abducted, raped, and murdered a child and he just wants some of those child pornography charges taken off, because
that`s the lesser of two evils in their minds. And I will never be able to grasp that -- that -- that concept.
PINSKY: Thank you, Diena. I want to talk to my attorneys here. Now, Bradford, civil commitment could keep this guy in prison longer than 20
years. Explain to me how that works.
COHEN: Under a Jimmy Ryce Act, essentially what happens is at the end of his term, about 180 days before his term actually ends, he would be
evaluated and there`s different routes to the evaluation, but usually it`s two psychiatrists or psychotherapists that would evaluate him to determine
whether or not he has that propensity to still be dangerous.
And if he that propensity to still be dangerous, they cab recommend a civil commitment and then depending on the state, the state attorney would then
go back into court and ask for him to be civilly detained, essentially holding him in a jail for an undeterminate amount of time until he can
prove or show that he is not a danger.
It`s a civil commitment. It`s been challenged constitutionally, whether there`s a due process violation or anything like that, and it has been held
up in court that it is legal to do. The likelihood that someone like this gets around that is very slim.
You can tell from his past, his history, that he was not going to be able to pass a Jimmy Ryce-type situation, and he probably will spend the rest of
his life in some sort of commitment, even after he does his 20 years.
PINSKY: All right. That`s reassuring, do you agree with that? When I hear you guys speak dispassionately about the system, it makes my skin crawl a
little bit. You have professional procedures you guys go through but I would much rather talk to Diena, who I feel emotionally connected to. My
outrage matches hers.
COOMBS: Yeah. Once again, the criminal justice system is not the place to always get the best answer or the best solution, but yeah, what he was
talking about, these civil commitments essentially were created for situations like this, where they felt like there`s somebody really
dangerous, and we can`t keep him locked up anymore, because his sentence is over.
So, if we can prove that they`re still a danger to the community, and they will go out and do something like this again, you can put them under civil
commitment. Now, they have the right to an attorney and to fight it and to try to get out. But usually in situations like this, they`ll stay in for a
long time.
PINSKY: Jena, what`s your bet on this guy? Somebody that when they come around and reassess him, they`re gonna go, this is broken. This is
something I`m holding in my hand. This is broken. And it`s a structural problem and it`s not something you`re going to be able to treat him out of.
KRAVITZ: Not only that, Dr. Drew. He hasn`t receive any treatment that we know of to date.
PINSKY: It`s not treatable. He`s not a treatable guy.
KRAVITZ: Why would we ever assume that he`s now somehow safe in the community? I think he`s even worse because with aging, he`s going to be
more disinhibited, impulsive. I wouldn`t trust him. I don`t want him out there with my kids.
LALAMA: Dr. Drew?
PINSKY: Yes, mam?
LALAMA: Can we just say a couple of things about this family? Their grace through all of this and the fact that because of the vigilance, everything
they have done has resulted in launching the national sex offender registry.
Let`s not forget their contribution. And one personal thing, I like to say, that brother, the other brother who survived this, imagine what he must go
through every single day surviving this and knowing what happened to his little brother. This is an extraordinary family.
PINSKY: Do you know how much older the older brother is, like couple of years old or?
LALAMA: He was just a few years older.
PINSKY: But he knew what this man, he was probably 15 or something?
LALAMA: They put the gun to his head and his buddies head and Heinrich said you guys run. They ran. They looked back and his little brother was gone.
And all because he wanted to go rent a movie that night, the older brother. My heart is with this family.
PINSKY: They walk among us, guys. These people walk among us. It may not be a perfect system. But you guys got to help us with this. We know whether
they can be treated or not. This is --- I`m with Diena, who`s I think is still with us out there somewhere.
THOMPSON: Absolutely.
PINSKY: Yeah, I`m with you. Next up, a girl died in juvenile detention. Now, one of her jailer is accused of watching her suffer while doing
nothing about it.
And later, the father of a teen who`s accused of eating parts of his alleged victims is here. Back after this.
[19:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen, found dead in her cell. She had been brought in 17 hours earlier following an altercation with her
mother. Surveillance video shows Gynnya being retrained at 6:17 a.m. She entered her cell five minutes later.
It wasn`t until 10 a.m. the following morning that officers realized she was dead. An investigation determined that she had died as a result of her
rare heart condition. But the family has filed a lawsuit, claiming that one of the correctional officers watched Gynnya take dying gasps of air and did
nothing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: The family of 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen wants answers after she was discovered in her cell unresponsive 27 hours after entering jail. Back
with Loni, Jena, and Bradford. Joining us, Randy Sutton, retired lieutenant, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He is the spokesman
for Blue Lives Matter.
Let me go through a time line here. These are from video pictures. At 6:17, she`s restrained after she resists. 6:22 at a cell. That`s in the morning.
11:39 p.m., she appears to roll over, and the officer looks at her through the window.
She is awake and alive then. At 8:07 a.m. the next morning, the officer checks on her. At 9:36, the officer opens the door and appears to speak to
her. And then at 9:55, the officer opens the door and appears to speak to her again. At 10:00 a.m., they find her unresponsive and unarousable.
So, Randy, the officer looked in on her multiple times, what is their responsibility to assess? Did they fall down procedurally?
[19:25:00] RANDY SUTTON, FORMER LAS VEGAS METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT LIEUTENANT: Yes, they did. When you have someone in your custody, it --
they are your property, basically. And you have to -- you have to make sure that they`re okay. They are in your charge.
And so it is incumbent upon -- I`m not sure as corrections officers. They refer to them as workers. So I`m unsure what their exact capacity was. But
it was up to those people to make that that young lady was okay.
At some point, they -- they -- they never communicated with her. In fact, at one point, one of the workers tried to give her a sandwich, and there
was no -- there was no comment made by the young lady. And so he ate the sandwich. There was -- there was -- there are serious issues here that
really need to be addressed.
PINSKY: So when he appears, these people, these workers so called appear to be speaking to her, she doesn`t respond or she does respond? We don`t know
what level of assessment they applied, right?
SUTTON: According to the reports that I read, she did not respond and they attributed that to her attitude, that she had been uncommunicative from the
very moment she came in, so they attributed it to that.
PINSKY: The sister wants these people to be held accountable. Doesn`t believe that her sister died of a heart condition. Take a look.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel like any time that someone is dealing with children, and they are not doing their job, they should be held
accountable. Especially when a child loses her life. I don`t believe it. I don`t believe it. And I feel like if something was wrong with her heart,
it`s because of the stress or the physical altercation or whatever they did when they restrained her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: I think the sister`s kind of right, Loni. I mean, what she has, a long QT interval disorder, which causes life threatening cardiac
arrhythmias where you really die suddenly. But at that age group, typically if you have the drugs or chemicals or medication or something, we don`t
know if she got anything here, or some kind of extraordinary stress, or banging, or something striking her chest.
But they didn`t -- you know -- and that`s okay -- that`s not their responsibility, but they should notice when somebody was dead on their
hands.
COOMBS: Exactly. And we do know that they applied this to restraint her, fairly early on when she came in and they were trying to book her and they
need to do a search on her. They were trying to get her sweatshirt off and she wouldn`t take it off. So instead of talking to her or trying to use
some other method, they immediately went to this physical restraint with their arms up.
Four deputies did this to this young woman, this 16-year-old girl, so they could do the search they felt they needed to do, then they throw her into
this isolation cell. Now, their own policy is that for someone in the isolation cell is supposed to be checked on for their welfare every 15
minutes. They didn`t do that throughout the night, but they falsified the records, so they are in trouble for that too.
PINSKY: Yeah, they lied about certain things, they missed bed checks, they falsified 65 logs, they left her for one ten-hour period, in one position
without really checking on her. Bradford, again, they aren`t responsible for the heart condition, but they are responsible for a certain level of
care.
COHEN: Yeah, absolutely. And that`s why it`s so refreshing to hear from Randy when he says, you know, this is wrong. What happened was wrong. You
find this a lot with training with juveniles, especially a lot of training is lacking when dealing with a juvenile, how to deal with juveniles.
PINSKY: Why, why, why with juveniles?
COHEN: Just because they are specifically a class that needs to be protected more than an adult. This is an individual who came in, who was in
there for 27 hours, I have no idea why she was there for 27 hours on a domestic dispute.
Obviously, they had to restrain her for some reason. She should have been checked on every 16 minutes but she wasn`t. And when you`re looking at
juveniles, they have to be treated a little bit differently than adults. These are usually kids that are not familiar with the system, are not
familiar with how things work, and I don`t know her criminal history, but I`m saying, you know, you have do treat them differently.
Now, that being said, in this case, even if this was an adult, someone should have been checking on this individual. The way that they are trained
to check on them.
PINSKY: Listen, you just lie -- an adult lying in a bed, if they can get a blood clot in their leg, they would be dead, that happens easily to people
with restraints.
KRAVITZ: Yeah. Exactly, Drew. I don`t think that these people in the system are trained in medicine. This is the problem.
[19:30:00] PINSKY: I agree with you, but they at least should have an assessment procedure. I got to go to break. I don`t like the attorneys
talking. This is bad enough with all that drama. Come on.
COOMBS: I agree with you.
PINSKY: Next up, the conversation will go on. And later, what is it like when your child is accused in animalistic killings of two people? I`ll
speak to the father of a young man who`s been called the cannibal killer. He`s here, back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Victor Holt and Reginald Windham were working at the Lincoln Village Juvenile Detention Center in Hardin County when 16-year-old
Gynnya McMillen died there. The Kentucky medical examiner says she died from a heart condition in January.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With such a highly secured building, there are cameras everywhere. And you mean to tell me that no one saw anything, no one heard
anything, no one knows anything? No, we need justice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:35:00] PINSKY: The 16-year-old died in her jail cell. It was determined she has a rare heart condition. As I mentioned, it`s called congenital long
QT interval. It`s when electrically, the heart has a more vulnerable fear period sort of recovery from a contraction where it can hit a rhythm
disturbance that can result in things like ventricular fibrillation and sudden death.
But, that doesn`t diminish the fact that she was there for extended period of time without getting assessed. Tonight, her family claims in a lawsuit
that the jailers just watched her, what the attorneys called take her last breath and did nothing.
I`m back with Loni, Jena, Bradford, Randy. Jena, I think the fact that they didn`t attend to her for a long period of time is incredulous than they
watched her do something that they didn`t even understand what it was. They didn`t follow procedure.
COOMBS: Right. They didn`t follow procedure, and she needed to be -- she needed to be watched after. One worker, what do we call it? Said he heard
her coughing and he went over to check on her and that`s where the attorney said, oh, she was taking her last dying gasp.
PINSKY: Is that the way it work with this. By the way, you are there and then you are gone. That`s how it works. Now, listen to the 911 call when
they finally discovered she is unresponsive. Take a listen.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You all need an ambulance?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes we do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s going on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Non-responsive female.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is she still breathing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nurse, you want to talk to 911?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a patient here that is unresponsive. She is cold and she is stiff, there`s no respirations, no vital signs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is CPR in progress?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, it`s not.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay. Are you going to attempt CPR?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: Wow. Bradford, she is cold and she is stiff. That means she`s been dead for a long time.
COHEN: Right. Right.
PINSKY: I mean that is a sad call.
COHEN: It just adds -- yeah, and it adds to, you know, compiles to their negligence, that if she`s been dead for so long, this is when you just
discovered it at 10:00 a.m., you`re going in there, talking to her, you`re trying to give her a sandwich, and instead of giving her the sandwich, you
eat the sandwich.
Like, this is just moronic, and not only it is sad in terms of that they didn`t do their job. If this gets in front of a jury, just the sandwich
thing alone is so out of the world, ridiculous. Can you imagine, he`s asking the girl questions.
She is being non-responsive. She is in the same position she`s been in for almost the entire time in the morning and they don`t do a single thing. I
think it is gross, gross negligence. I don`t see this case even going to a trial. I think they are going to have to settle this case because it`s so
out of balance, what they did.
PINSKY: And Randy, they have not initiated CPR. They have access to a nurse, and the nurse is sort of casually going through the procedure here,
the child is rigor mortis. It`s just ridiculous. Is this criminal negligence?
SUTTON: I don`t think it will be -- I don`t think it will wind up to be criminal negligence, but without a shadow of a doubt. Well, actually, I
believe the officers have been charged criminally. They have been -- I think two of the workers have been charged criminally with malfeasance in
office.
But, you know, Dr. Drew, I just want to tell you this case is sadder than we even have touched on. Because this young lady had just been released
from a different home, a different facility to go back to try and visit with her mother on that weekend, to try and reconcile, to try and see if
they could live together again.
And if you heard that 911 tape from the mother`s call to police, you would be even more shocked at the way she refers to her daughter. This poor girl
never had a chance from the time she was a child.
PINSKY: Do we have that 911 call, anybody in the control room? Can we get our hands on that? We`re working on that. Okay. Thank you. The malfeasance,
tell me about that.
SUTTON: It`s shocking.
COOMBS: It`s not necessarily the death, I don`t think they have gone so far as to charge with death, but it`s about the falsifying of the records and
not checking on her. The one worker even said, you know, maybe if I had been checking on her through the night, I could have done something. He
even said that.
KRAVITZ: How about the nurse when the 911 operator said, are you going to do CPR, and she`s like, yeah.
PINSKY: I mean, to be fair, what she could have said was it`s already rigor mortis.
SUTTON: When she told him rigor mortis, there`s no point.
PINSKY: No, I understand that. And she should have said that, but instead she seems sort of casual and uncaring about the entire thing. Statement
from the Department of Justice in response to the family`s lawsuit, here it is, after reviewing the evidence, medical examiners were clear that the
child passed away in her sleep, without any signs of distress that would have prompted medical attention.
Yeah, but, you`re not a hospital, you don`t know to assess these things, but you leave this kid unattended for hours and hours. She`s dead for
extended period of time. Bad form.
KRAVITZ: Especially because she was so it sounds like combative in the beginning, that this is such a behavior change that she`s so quiet for that
long.
PINSKY: I`m gonna leave this one. I`m disgusted by all our stories today. Next up, a father can`t believe his son gnawed on someone`s face allegedly
before killing them. We will hear from the father after the break.
[19:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(START VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did Austin Harrouff turn into an alleged cannibal killer?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don`t know how to do this. My son, he`s kind of taken off.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Less than an hour after leaving this restaurant, police say he attacked a married couple lounging in their garage. Michelle Stevens
died from blunt force trauma. Her husband, John, was fatally stabbed and beaten. The suspect was also biting off chunks of John`s face and abdomen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dr. Harrouff says yes, his son did a horrific thing, but he also says he believes his son had a psychotic break that night and
is still mentally ill today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:45:00] PINSKY: Twenty-three days later, Austin Harrouff remained in the hospital. He`s unable to speak. I believe he`s on a ventilator. He`s
guarded by police. I`m back with Loni, Jena, and Bradford.
This young man`s father sat down with Dr. Phil to talk about his son. He called him a quote, gentle giant. He says he would not hurt a soul. Wade
Harrouff joins me now. Dr. Harrouff, thank you for joining us. This is such a terrible tragedy. I just -- I feel so sorry for you in particular. But
thank you for joining us.
WADE HARROUFF, FATHER OF AUSTIN HARROUFF: Thank you.
PINSKY: Now, can you tell us about some of the strange behaviors you saw leading up to the break, the attack?
HARROUFF: That morning, I saw two tortoise shells without the animals in them. And he got his knife out and says, I sense an evil presence, get
behind me. I jokingly said, put your knife up and stop this crap and kisses me on the cheek and says, okay, bro, and then takes off running for about
200 yards. I was trying to joke him out of the mess.
PINSKY: Go ahead, Jena.
KRAVITZ: So, at this point, you had seen some strange behaviors from him and was there any part of you that thought to take him to a hospital or
that this could be that pre-acute phase of psychosis?
HARROUFF: No, ma`am, that was the morning of. That was Monday morning. I had no idea that it was that big of a problem.
PINSKY: And my understanding is that there`s schizophrenia and depression in your family, is that accurate?
HARROUFF: Depression and a small amount of schizophrenia.
PINSKY: And when you say depression, do you know was it unipolar or bipolar depression?
HARROUFF: I don`t know what the difference is. I know it took many electric shock treatments to cure it.
PINSKY: Okay. The schizophrenic, was that a close relative of your son?
HARROUFF: Yes.
PINSKY: And there is a lot of expectation that this could have been substance abuse and yet all the substances are negative. Is he somebody
that would expose to substances like Flakka or hallucinogen or steroids?
HARROUFF: I really feel strongly that Flakka wasn`t involved. And my two assumptions are, the nurses, I talked to a nurse and she said, she`s never
met a Flakka patient where his temperature wasn`t elevated and his temperature wasn`t elevated at all.
PINSKY: That is common, particularly when they get psychotic like that.
HARROUFF: He had no elevated temperature. And he gave a fake name. I guess because he was guilty of what he had done, gave a fake name of who he was
at the scene of the crime. And I have seen these Flakka victim tapes, and they`re not lucid enough to do that.
COOMBS: So you think he was lucid enough to recognize that what he did was wrong, to want to try and protect himself by giving a false name so he, you
know, wouldn`t be held accountable?
HARROUFF: I just think he used a false name because that`s what`s on his I.D., his fake I.D.
COOMBS: Okay.
HARROUFF: I don`t think he knew right from wrong at all.
PINSKY: Right. Let me play what you mentioned, what you explained to Dr. Phil about the family history of mental illness. Here we go.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
HARROUFF: People have demonized him. And I can understand why. And all I can do is try to tell the world it`s not him and it`s an example of what
can happen with mental illness. I feel guilty for not catching it earlier.
DR. PHIL, TALK SHOW HOST: Was there a history of mental illness in the family?
HARROUFF: There`s a family member who suffered from depression, one from schizophrenia.
DR. PHIL: Okay. When you say depression, are we talking mild, moderate, severe depression?
HARROUFF: Severe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: And Dr. Harrouff, you mentioned to Dr. Phil, you were in the process of getting your son help, let`s take a look at that.
(START VIDEO CLIP)
HARROUFF: I just run it back through my mind about what I could have done different to stop it. As a matter of fact, that day I called a psychologist
I know, we have decided to get him help. A psychologist called me the next day after it happened. Said Fred, you`re one day late, I guess you read it
in the paper.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: Now, Dr. Harrouff, I mean, I guess one of the things we can do with this is maybe give a message to other people that might be seeing -- is
there a message you have for anyone else out there who might be seeing signs in their loved ones.
HARROUFF: I didn`t have any chance to react. My son is a jokester, so I really had one day to react. I didn`t have variables...
[19:50:00] PINSKY: Can we turn this in any way to something that could help other people? Do you have a message or anything, anyone else who might be
struggling with a family member that`s not behaving normally. What would you recommend?
HARROUFF: I`d recommend that if your kids are really acting very, very abnormal and nothing is working, you need to get them to a health
professional as soon as possible.
PINSKY: Yeah, I think that`s.
KRAVITZ: An emergency room.
PINSKY: Right. Emergency room available. Urgent care. I mean, if somebody has.
HARROUFF: Nothing was overt. In other words, nothing was immediate. After I told you the incident of the turtle, he kissed me on the cheek and said,
okay, bro. Nothing was in concrete.
PINSKY: Religiosity, grandiosity, feelings about talk about the devil, hearing voices, anything like that? That`s a medical emergency. We have to
take break. We`ll be right back.
[19:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(START VIDEO CLIP)
AUSTIN HARROUFF, ALLEGED TEEN CANNIBAL KILLER: I`m going to talk to you about why I don`t do steroids and the reason is I don`t want to, you know.
It damages my health. I feel like I have to depend on it every day. That`s a life not worth living for me, you know. Appreciate your fitness, your
muscles. Stay at it, man. Stay at it. Nutrition, everything, bro. Just do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PINSKY: That is from You Tube channel of an alleged teen cannibal killer. Back with Loni, Jena, Bradford. Jena, in that particular video we`re seeing
sort of some manic features, right?
KRAVITZ: That is so manic. The first time I saw that I thought to myself, he`s got this, you know, different voice, different accent. He`s blabbing
about everything and nothing.
PINSKY: Go ahead.
COOMBS: I`m the non-mental health professional here. I recognized that. However, I`ve seen a lot of kids do things like that on You Tube videos. I
still want to see the drug results from the toxicology, you know, on the Flakka and the other stuff that has not been.
PINSKY: Right. Bradford. The routine things, Bradford, the heroin, the opioids, the cocaine and amphetamine was negative but doesn`t mean you
can`t -- you can`t detect a lot of hallucinogens. That`s another possibility. And Flakka is hard to come by too. But, again, that will come
in later.
In the meantime, this guy apparently arrived at the hospital making animal noises. People made a lot of that. The father said, it`s because his throat
was burned from drinking these toxic agents in the garage of the people he killed.
Now, Bradford, Loni was making a lot of the fact that he was able to come up with a name that was on the false I.D. that he had.
COHEN: It`s kind of interesting. Yeah, that`s kind of interesting. That fact alone wouldn`t eliminate whether or not he was on something like
Flakka. Very rarely see incidents of this without it going hand in hand with some sort of hallucinogen. I don`t know if he was on Flakka, but it
would be very rare to see this type of action.
I understand all the psychosis and psychotic things that we`re discussing. But when you get tased three or four times, I`m not saying it couldn`t
happen, but it`s very likely and it falls in line with other individuals that have been on that type of drug.
The behavior, the actions, certainly that he had the consciousness to give a false name by itself doesn`t eliminate that. It is interesting. But if
he`s been using that false name so long because the father said he had a fake I.D., maybe that was natural to him to say that.
I don`t know. I cant tell you. In my career, I`ve never seen something like this without it going hand in hand with some sort of hallucinogen.
PINSKY: That would be the most common. It`s called agitated delirium. But you can get the agitated delirium with encephalitis, you can get it with
manic or schizophrenia and things like that. But you`re not so clear. Not so sure.
KRAVITZ: No. Because in an acute psychosis like that, like a psychotic break, is not based in reality. There`s poor reality testing. Even if he
knew the name on the fake I.D., the likelihood of him recalling that particular item from his retrieval is so far fetch.
PINSKY: If he makes it through and again, he got multi-organ failure probably from all the stuff he`s ingested in the garage. When he was
released from the hospital, he is going to get charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one attempted murder for stabbing the neighbor who
intervened.
Do you think that -- I think an insanity defense is reasonable. I think dad is clinging to that defense, right? Do you think he`s setting that up?
COOMBS: I don`t know if he`s setting it up. Every time he talks, things come out different. It`s inconsistent. One thing he insists on that the son
was not actually biting the faces. He doesn`t want to say that. That would be a good factor for an insanity defense.
I don`t think he`s thinking it through clearly and say, I want to build his defense. He`s just trying to explain his son`s behavior and try to
understand it himself.
KRAVITZ: It might be hard for him to say that as a parent too.
PINSKY: Oh, my God.
COOMBS: Yeah.
PINSKY: Especially so different than the kid actually is in real life. Bradford, if you`re defending this, would you let the dad go out and talk
on television?
COHEN: No, absolutely not. I think, you know, it`s funny because in break, I was just texting with my mother and she was saying, you know, this is
ridiculous. Why is this guy talking on T.V.? She`s a part-time lawyer.
She tries to give all my clients advice. Even the common person would say, don`t go on T.V. Don`t talk about it. I know it`s heartbreaking for him to
see some kid that you raised from a little baby behave something like this. It`s so horrifying.
[20:00:00] PINSKY: Got to go. Got to go. Nancy Grace, up next.
END
