Original subtitles

The thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite, It's like a wolf that's...

feeling... the hunger.

What we do know about Mr. Johnson is that,

at the age of 18, he was convicted of rape,

and served 10 years in prison for that.

Knowing his history, and then hearing this story

in the context of a missing person situation

is the fact that, you know, the story already

doesn't really fit together, right?

She broke her neck in the shower, like,

you would have a reaction to that.

But then the response being, like, "Oh, so I cut her up

and put her in several different storage bins."

It's just such a... disconnect.

But then, when you add in the layer of, like,

this is somebody who has a history of disregard

for somebody else's bodily autonomy.

That's the piece that sort of, I think is the most relevant.

He gets distressed a little bit

whenever he's picked up by the police to be interviewed,

but until then, he's really not doing much

about his wife missing.

That-- leads into this idea that he has this mask,

so to speak, of being one person,

this caring, loving, doting husband and father.

But in reality, there's a very different side to him

underneath that mask.

He's trying to figure out how he wants to play this.

He's neither paying attention to what's going on around him,

nor is he really paying attention to his feelings and emotions,

which we probably suspect that he probably doesn't have

the ones that we might be expecting for

somebody whose wife is missing.

But it's more like he's trying to figure things out.

And that's, like, occupying so much of his computing power

that he's got to put the rest of the stuff just on autopilot.

2 The fact that he uses the phrase,

"He doesn't really care,"

is the almost dictionary irony, in that he probably

has no connection to it.

But he's, again, probably in his mind, trying to implicate

his friend, and just sort of tossed off this phrase.

But from what we know about what happened, it is...

incredibly poignant for him to use those words,

because he's the one who doesn't seem to care.

It's kind of like he's decided, "I'm gonna to have

"this very sort of poster child perfect family life,

"but I still want to do what I want when I want to do it.

"And so I'm gonna to sneak off, and have that thrill seeking,

"and that indulgence, because that's what we know

psychopaths crave." They want that stimulation.

They want to have that gratification.

So he's gonna do what he wants, but the way that he's sort of

utilized his charisma, if you will, is to kind of

have created these two separate lives

that he gets to live, kind of almost in parallel.

Even though he's the perpetrator,

he actually seems, like he's trying to elicit some sympathy.

But it's interesting, because here he's accused

of murdering her, yet he's talking negatively about

some of her characteristics that he perceives.

When he says her words hurt, and she's so cold,

it really seems, like, a narcissistic injury.

His fragile ego is getting impaled

by these cold words that she's saying.

And when Johnson is constantly talking about

what she was doing to him, he's trying to portray

this victim scenario and he's trying to really curate

what the detectives are thinking about him and saying,

"OK, this is a man who was at his wit's end because his wife

was trying to be overly controlling of him."

2 He can't help but see things through the lens

of his own interest, because I think he's trying

to come across as sympathetic by kind of acknowledging, like,

"Oh, what have I done?"

But then it has that narcissistic overlay,

'cause it's told in that way of, like, "I lost this, I lost this,"

as opposed to, like, "What have I done to her family?"

But he just can't help himself.

He just can't get out of his own point of view.

The truest things he said, the most kind of direct from

the psychopath's mouth, "I was angry, I wanted some control,"

and sort of, "Well, she had the card."

I think the baby represented sort of a trophy in a way.

Like, he didn't want her to be able to exert that kind of

mastery over the situation.

If anybody's gonna be in control, it's supposed to be him.

And I think that's what he found difficult to tolerate.

The separation between what he does,

and his actions after, especially when he is in Menards,

that just sticks out to me the most.

He doesn't look stressed.

The level of callousness, the lack of responsibility

or emotion that goes along with that is almost unfathomable.

2 He's talking at the end about, "'I'm sorry' just being words."

But the way he has been talking throughout this entire interview

seems, like, just words.

It's not clear that there's remorse or true sorrow

for what he has done.

And there's no indication that Johnson has any amount

of empathy for the pain that he has caused,

and will cause his son as his son gets older,

and realizes what's happened.

But also the pain that he's caused both families,

whom he just described as wonderful.

For psychopaths, they exist in the world

solely seeking out their own interests.

And so, as long as somebody is serving their interests,

they'll get the benefit of being treated sort of

externally the way the person in that role would be treated.

And so, i.e., in this case, he treated her like his wife,

so long as she played the character of his wife

in the way that he wanted and needed.

But as soon as that stopped happening,

the character to which he has no emotional connection

now becomes expendable.

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