Original subtitles

[eerie music playing]

[conversation over call]

[opening music playing]

[man 1 speaking]

[man 2 speaking]

[man 3 speaking]

[man 4] The thing inside of me, it's like...

The appetite, it's like a wolf that's

beyond the hunger.

[opening music concludes]

[call recording playing]

[Balcer chuckles]

[Dr. Sahni] Given that it was Halloween,

I think it's always in the mind of dispatch

that there may be a prank or a hoax

when a phone call comes in that is shocking,

and extraordinary, and outside of what they might normally expect,

particularly in a small community in a small town in Maine.

And pretty quickly, I think,

the detective realizes that this is likely not a hoax.

It starts to give us a very early indication that

Andrew Balcer has a lot more going on to him,

psychologically, than what may meet the eye, initially.

[Balcer chuckles]

[Dr. Tussey] Balcer sounds jovial. He's laughing.

You can almost see him smirking

even though you can only hear him.

The detective is trying to keep Balcer on the phone

to give him some time to figure that out.

Determine if there are any other potential victims nearby,

and to decide how best to move forward.

[male reporter 1] It is an all-too-real Halloween horror story.

A Winthrop teen is now charged with murdering a couple.

[female reporter] State police say they found the bodies

of 47-year-old Alice Balcer and her husband Antonio Balcer

inside their home on Pine Knoll Road in Winthrop.

They're a very generous, kind people.

Antonio was a retired Coast Guardsmen.

Alice worked at the Winthrop Veterinary Hospital just down the road.

[female reporter] The couple's 17-year-old son

has been charged with their murders.

[woman] He was a great kid. Smart, brilliant,

good in school, um,

focused, uh, he was planning going to college.

Uh, so it doesn't make sense.

It's a shocker that this could happen.

[audio recording playing]

[Balcer chuckles]

[Dr. Fox] He self-admits that he's not really connected to other people.

He really lacks that ability to form inter-personal relationships.

It could be because he doesn't have the empathy to do so.

He just doesn't have even the motivation

to have that kind of, uh, inter-personal interaction

that most of us all crave and want.

He doesn't desire it.

[knocking on door]

[door opens, closes]

[audio recording resumes]

[audio recording playing]

At this point, he's completely dissociated from what's going on.

He has this clarity when it comes to

what he did after he took a shower, specifics.

But as soon as it comes to the murder,

it's all blurry and he doesn't remember.

"And I assume that I commit the murder

'cause I had a knife in my hand."

These are things that somebody is doing

to try to distance themselves.

It seems like he's trying to come up with a reason why he's not responsible

or trying to defer responsibility,

but he doesn't quite know it yet.

[audio recording playing]

[Det 2] Yeah.

[high-pitched ringing]

[audio recording resumes]

So, it's unclear if he's starting to lay the grounds

for being incompetent,

and that maybe he's hearing auditory hallucinations.

Or if he's talking about this tone as

it's a symptom of tinnitus or some medical condition

and it has a parallel to him feeling agitated.

We just don't know.

But what is also very interesting to hear

and shows that he has some self-awareness and insight

is that he's saying to the detectives that he should feel bad.

He understands that what he just did

was significant by society's standards,

but he's admitting he doesn't feel anything.

[audio recording playing]

[Dr. Tussey] So, just a few moments ago,

we heard him describe being unclear of the details of the night.

Saying that it was, "blurry."

But as they're unfolding now,

they actually seem crystal clear.

Balcer sounds excited about recounting the story.

Almost proud of an accomplishment,

like he's talking about a fish he caught in a tournament,

but he's describing killing his mother.

[audio recording playing]

[Dr. Sahni] While there are aspects of Balcer's decision-making

that seem premeditated, planned,

there's an impulsivity, overall, to what he's done.

He's acknowledging that there really wasn't anything specific that set him off

on that specific evening at the specific time.

When Balcer talks about his parents as, "these effing people,"

what that may give us is a glimmer into how Balcer sees himself

relative to most human beings.

That may be because of his intelligence and his academic performance

and accomplishments he's smarter than most people.

He may feel he's smarter than both of his parents

and disregards them accordingly.

And this starts to show us some of that narcissism

that we see sometimes in psychopathic individuals,

where they think that they are above everybody else.

[audio recording playing]

[audio recording playing]

So, Balcer is starting to, you know,

show his true side again here

in how he's failing to accept responsibility.

See, he's really blaming the victim here,

and saying that his mother was condescending.

But at the same time, it makes me wonder

if there was some narcissistic injury that he suffered.

Like, he has such a high perception of himself

and he's so superior,

that when she interacted with him,

perhaps it came off as condescending.

And he didn't like that because it insulted his ego.

[audio recording playing]

[Balcer laughs]

[Dr. Sahni] He acknowledges he doesn't read people very well.

But the disconnect there is that he can't consider

or contemplate that it's possible

his feelings of contempt and annoyance at what he saw

of his mother being hypocritical,

or hypercritical towards him,

were possibly just his perceptions

and not actually based in fact.

He can't draw that link even though he acknowledges,

"I don't read people very well."

And as a result, he makes a decision based on his rage.

[audio recording playing]

[audio recording playing]

[indistinct]

Yeah, it's...

[chuckles] Uh...

[indistinct background chatter]

[Dr. Sahni] What you never hear from Andrea Balcer is any acknowledgement

about truly the seriousness of this when she's making light of it

by drawing parallel to cookies and milk.

It's misplaced, it's not an off the cuff statement.

It really is some indication that

Balcer might use the words of remorse,

but really has no clue what that's about.

[Dr. Tussey] She says, "Well, I'm not happy this happened,"

as if she has suffered in this scenario.

When in fact, again, she's the one that inflicted the harm.

[Dr. Sahni] While it's not uncommon for adults

who have been abused as children

to avoid disclosing that abuse,

the timing of Balcer's disclosure

doesn't really support that that is what happened.

That there was a delay in reporting.

It's important to remember, at the outset of this investigation,

detectives asked Balcer if there were ever

any experiences of trauma or abuse.

And Andrea's words were, "Not that I can think of."

It suggests that, more consistent with how psychopathic individuals

lie and fabricate information to try and gain an advantage,

Balcer's now decided this is the newest version

of what happened during the crime

in the hopes that the court will give a more lenient sentence.

[male reporter 2] One by one, family and friends spoke up in court.

They say Ali and Tony Balcer were kind, caring, and loving.

[reading]