Original subtitles

Are you a family annihilator?

You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son?

-Yes. -No.

[man 1 speaking]

[man 2 speaking]

[man 3 speaking]

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

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

feeling...

the hunger.

[dramatic music playing]

[Tussey] When we think about family,

we think about people who love us

and care for us and support us

and someone who's going to be there to protect us.

And keep us safe.

On the contrary, family annihilators

and individuals who have psychopathy,

their motives are the opposite.

They are manipulative and cunning,

and while they might appear loving,

they are not, and often they are scheming and planning

to destroy their entire family,

usually out of rage or vengeance.

[Sahni] We don't think about the person

who sits across the dinner table from us,

the person who sleeps down the hall from us,

the person who watches our children when we can't be there,

is the most dangerous person in our life.

We're going to cover a unique and particularly chilling group of murderers.

Individuals who are not only psychopathic

but what we think of as family annihilators.

The people they turn on,

are the people that are closest to them.

[dramatic music playing]

[reporter] In South Carolina, a major fall from grace

for a member of a prominent legal family.

-Guilty... -Alex Murdaugh found guilty on all counts.

For the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul,

on the family's sprawling hunting estate,

back in 2021.

[Bardey] Alex Murdaugh, from the outside

had all the trappings of an incredibly successful, wealthy,

well-connected member of his community.

Prominent law firm.

Happy family. Beautiful real estate.

It all looked pretty perfect.

And it was his image that he worked very hard to maintain.

And a fantasy which eventually started to crack.

[reporter 2] Murdaugh is already facing a slew of charges

involving millions of dollars in alleged theft,

fraud and money laundering.

Some stemming from the death of Murdaugh's former housekeeper.

Psychopaths, especially if they're at the head of the family,

will use their family

to bolster their self-esteem, their image.

So the importance of having a beautiful wife,

a nice car, successful children...

it becomes fused

with their desire to appear successful,

and it becomes more important to protect that image,

than to really care about the family members.

He had worked so hard to create this image,

it became necessary for him to do anything he could to preserve that,

including the murder of his family,

for financial gain.

And to shift the attention away

from all of the other misdeeds that he had committed.

And there's a chronic failure to take responsibility

or of lack of willingness to take responsibility.

But there's also a lack of remorse, or guilt.

He just doesn't feel bad.

There's no real emotions, despite the fact

that his wife and his younger son

have been brutally attacked and killed.

[reporters clamoring]

[reporter 3] After a dramatic day in court, Murdaugh

led out into a van in handcuffs

to continue his life behind bars.

[Sahni] Alex Murdaugh chose fantasy over family

and stopped at nothing

to preserve that image, that fantasy life he had built.

Grant Amato did the same thing.

And both of these men showed a willingness

to take that need to the ultimate extreme.

[reporter 4] Breaking news.

A murder mystery emerges in the woods.

Three people are dead.

In a house in Chuluota,

police discovered a family murdered.

A couple in their 50's,

and their son in his 30's were found dead.

And now, this just in.

The prime suspect is a family member.

Grant Amato.

[Tussey] He's an adult male living with his parents

and not only is he living off of them,

but he's actually using their money for this cam girlfriend.

But online, to this cam model,

he is this online gamer.

He creates this impression that he's a much more independent,

successful individual than he is in reality.

[Tussey] His father gives him an ultimatum,

which includes a list of rules

that he's going to have to follow

if he's going to stay in the house.

[Tussey] Amato is on the brink of being discovered.

His family's going to reach out to this cam model,

and he knows he's going to be exposed.

So this entire fantasy world,

this persona that he's created,

and that this cam girlfriend

believes is him,

is about to be completely blown up in his face.

[dramatic music playing]

[Bardey] What's amazing here is completely the lack of any emotional response,

the lack of any sense of guilt or remorse.

He killed one member of the family after the other.

Over the course of nearly four hours.

That's a dedication. That's cold-blooded.

Nobody likes to be picked last or to feel left out.

But to a psychopath,

sometimes even the most minor slight or element of rejection

can feel like an enormous transgression,

like we see in the case of Paris Bennett.

In reality, he seemingly knew very well what he was doing.

And he did it in a very calculating manner.

So on the night that this happened,

he actually manipulated the babysitter.

So that she would leave him alone with his sister

so that he would be able to commit this crime.

What makes it capital murder is the victim's age.

Any child under the age of six that is murdered,

carries the weight of capital murder.

[Sahni] While we classically think of a family annihilator

as somebody who kills at least two members of their family,

the Paris Bennett case is unique.

But ultimately he is still a family annihilator.

Paris Bennett told authorities his true hatred was towards his mother.

And while he had fantasies and thoughts about killing her,

he realized that if he could take her child away,

that would be far more painful to his mother,

than anything he could actually do to her.

He managed to destroy his entire family

with that one action on that one day.

Bennett responded

to his perception of rejection from his mother

in a very cold, callous way

by murdering his four-year-old sister.

We see a similar pattern in Russell Overlin,

where he has lived off of his father and stepmother for many years.

And whenever they confront him about that,

he's angry about it.

What we see here is a rejection

or perceived rejection,

and he responds in a very cold, callous way.

In 2007, Russell Overlin, a middle aged man

who lives most of his adult life

off his elderly father and stepmother.

He lives this parasitic life of continuing to rack up financial debt.

And expects his father to bail him out.

And when his elderly parents expect him to straighten up

and fly right and be an adult.

Russell Overlin reacts with a level of rage

and callousness, and decides to kill them.

[Morgan] Russell Overlin says, "I've been thinking," about killing his stepmom

for a very long time, and then he tells us why.

His room smells and he-- it needs to be cleaned up.

It smells like an outhouse.

That's her crime.

That's her sin and it offends him.

She merits being killed because she doesn't accept the way he wants to live.

But he's living in her house, on her property.

And this is the view...

This is the selfish point of view from the psychopath.

They don't acknowledge that other people have rights about what they feel.

[Tussey] What's disturbing about Overlin describing this murder

is that he's talking about it as if he's talking about

going to the store and buying a new jacket.

I mean, there's really no emotion behind what he's talking about.

There's certainly no indication of remorse

so that he feels bad about any of this.

[Morgan] A psychopath will view the family members

as useful to them in the moment to get what they want.

They don't have any concern for your feelings.

If you happen to disagree with them,

you are simply an obstacle and an impediment.

They figure out how to get rid of you, get you out of the way

so that they can accomplish their goal.

[Sahni] While Paris Bennett's case and Russell Overlin's case

maybe look very different on some levels,

what we see in both of these family annihilators is the same motivation.

Which was to eliminate the people that rejected them.

But it is also important to remember that it was their perception.

It was how they saw the world because they weren't able

to do things exactly the way they wanted.

[soft music playing]

[reporter 5] Three-year-old Michael Smith

and his 14-month-old brother, Alexander,

reportedly kidnapped Tuesday night.

The boys' mother, Susan Smith, told police a lone gunman

forced her to get out of her car without her children.

I would like to say to whoever has my children...

That they please...

I mean, please bring them home.

[reporter 5] After a massive 72-hour search, police are baffled.

[man] Except for the mother, there were no witnesses.

We are going to look at everything and rule out nothing

until we can do it with evidence.

[Tussey] Susan Smith ultimately killed her children for her own desires.

She wanted to date an individual who said he didn't want children.

So in order to be able to date him,

she just took her children out of the equation.

These types of behaviors match what we see in psychopathy.

Whenever we see individuals that are manipulative,

deceitful, callous, cold,

failure to accept responsibility for their actions

and ultimately pursue their own agenda,

no matter what it costs to anybody else in their lives.

[woman] Killing her two children.

I mean, uh... You carry them children for nine months,

and then all of a sudden, you kill them.

This just ain't right.

[Sahni] When psychopathic individuals engage in conventional life,

they get into relationships, they maybe go on to get married.

They go on to have children.

But for psychopathic individuals, their narcissism.

Their focus on themselves and meeting their own needs

really remains intact even when they become parents.

[Tussey] Like Susan Smith, John Hummel is another family annihilator

who wanted to be a free agent.

This is an individual who he perceives his family as a prison,

that he has to escape.

[siren blaring]

[man whooping]

John Hummels saying, "Well, I'm not sure if they got out, my family of four.

"It was four of us that were in there.

Oh, and, by the way, my wife is pregnant, also."

He seems eerily calm.

It's not the reaction you would expect

if someone were watching their house burn down,

with their family in it.

[Sahni] John Hummel doesn't seem to be concerned.

There's no panic in his voice.

He's matter of fact, and he just says "There are four people

who live in this home, including me."

[reporter] Police say three bodies,

including one of a small child,

were found inside this flame engulfed home early this morning.

Family members identified the victims,

as 34-year-old Joy Hummel and her

six-year-old daughter, Jody.

Hummel's father Eddie Bedford, is also among the deceased.

[woman] She'd just been, uh...

She was pregnant with her second baby.

And she was so excited.

We know that psychopathic individuals

have a higher threshold for excitement.

They experience boredom more intensely

and sooner than most of us that conventional life

oftentimes ends up feeling boring to them.

That everyday routine and monotony

oftentimes challenges a psychopathic individual.

But it's hard for many of us to understand how somebody who could be driven

to killing members of their family,

particularly, their own children,

when it's about a need to be in a new relationship.

Why not just file for divorce?

Those are still options that are far better

than annihilating your family members by killing them.

[Tussey] There's nothing about the way

he's saying this that would make you think

that he was describing murdering his family.

There's just really no expression.

There is no emotional drive behind it.

He's just very calmly stating it.

Violent psychopaths hold no value for human life.

Hummel writes,

"I feel a strong bond with you that I've never had with anyone else."

And the girlfriend asked, "Not even with your wife?"

"Nope." "Then why did you marry her?"

And Hummel said, "I truly cannot think of a reason except for my kid."

It's really striking because in these text conversations with the girlfriend,

Hummel is painting himself in some ways as a victim,

almost like he just married her because she was pregnant.

You know he's stuck and he's trapped almost by this pregnancy and his wife

that he doesn't really want.

[Morgan] The family's getting in the way.

And so, rather than asking for a divorce,

leaving or just having an affair, all of which is

in the normal range of possibilities.

He kills them and burns them in their beds

and sets the house on fire.

And he has no remorse about it at all.

And if you're shocked by that, that's a good sign,

because it means you're normal.

[Sahni] They want what they want when they want it,

and they will take out anything that presents an obstacle.

Another reason that Family Annihilators

act on those urges and impulses

is simply to maintain control.

We see this sometimes in child custody cases,

when a parent fears that they're going

to lose custody of their children,

they take out their entire family.

They take out their children, and then they turn to themselves.

[reporter 6] Today, a special accident investigation team,

is using drones to figure out

how the Harts' plunged off this 100-foot ocean overlook.

The county sheriff says the parents' bodies were found in the front seats.

Three of the children's bodies were found along the shoreline.

[Tussey] From the outside, the Hart family seemed magical.

These mothers have adopted these children,

rescued them from otherwise bad situations,

and are providing them memories of a lifetime.

[Sahni] In the case of Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart.

This is a family that seemed picture perfect on the surface.

All social media accounts and public accounts of this family

are that these were two women

who loved their six adopted children.

But what we also know from the investigation

is that there were no brake marks.

There were no skid marks.

Which means Jennifer stopped,

paused, and made the decision to drive the entire family of eight

over a cliff to their death.

The public image of the family and all the social media accounts of the Harts,

was that they were a loving, close family.

But what we also know is that the truth of what was going on

for the Hart family, was far more dark.

[reporter 7] In 2011, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty

in Minnesota, to domestic assault.

According to court records, a teacher saw bruises

on the couple's six-year-old daughter.

It gets uncovered that this family

had actually been... being investigated by Child Protective Services.

And every time these services would catch up with them

and try to investigate allegations of abuse,

the mothers would keep things under wraps

by basically moving frequently,

[Sahni] By all accounts, Jennifer was the disciplinarian.

She was the one who determined what the punishment and interventions

would be for the children.

But she was also the one who enforced them.

[woman] They portray this happy little family.

And yet, their daughter is telling us.

"Please, please, please," begging us

not to make her go back and that they are abusing her.

And then Devonte coming over here

and telling us that you know he's being starved to death.

Psychopathic individuals sometimes exhibit an intense amount of impulsivity.

And when we think about the decision-making of Jennifer Hart,

what we see is the decision to flee their family home

because CPS is becoming aware that there is child abuse happening.

I was trying to help them and protect them and this is the result.

[Sahni] Ultimately, Jennifer Hart was a parent

who felt she was losing control of the situation.

And was at risk of losing her children.

She made the ultimate decision

that if she could not have them, no one would.

[Tussey] We see in individuals with psychopathy is they become

very myopically focused on their goal, whatever their goal is.

And in this case, retaining control.

Like Jennifer Hart,

another mother that was unwilling to relinquish control

of her children was Elaine Campione.

[dramatic music playing]

[crying]

Miss Campione appears sort of lost and confused,

as though she doesn't really understand how her two daughters ended up dead.

She looks a little upset, but certainly not, in any way,

in a manner that would be consistent with that genuine loss.

I think she's trying to think on her feet in terms of, "How do I handle this?"

She had a very deliberate plan in terms of how this was all going to happen.

And it didn't work.

She woke up and now she's dealing with the aftermath.

In both, the Hart case and the Campione case,

the children are objectified

and used for the emotional wellbeing of the murderers.

In the Hart case, the children are used

to bolster the image of this perfect family.

And when that image gets destroyed,

then the kids get destroyed as well.

In the Campione case, the children are used

specifically as weapons to harm another individual.

It's brutal in that the very children that she gave birth to

that she had such pride in raising,

that she repeatedly asked them who they loved.

Her needs...

Her psychopathic needs are so strong

that she'd rather kill them

than deal with losing to her ex-husband.

[Sahni] When we look to family annihilators,

we understand that while most of us have

an expectation and presumption of safety,

and trust within our family units...

For the family that has a psychopath in their family circle,

that's simply not necessarily true.

[reporter 8] Good afternoon. A 19-year-old man has admitted killing his parents

and then using their credit cards

to spend £30,000 on trips to the US and Caribbean.

Brian Blackwell was suffering

from a serious personality disorder,

when he beat and stabbed his parents to death at their home on Merseyside.

[reporter 9] When Brian Blackwell was arrested,

it was a shock for staff and students

here at Liverpool College,

they'd seen him just days earlier

when he came in here, alone, to pick up his A-level results.

[man] When Brian came in, Obviously his results were very good.

He seemed very happy.

He was part of a group of...of youngsters who were very pleased

with what the results they had

and it seemed perfectly normal.

[Tussey] Brian Blackwell was an individual who,

growing up, was labeled as very bright.

He was nicknamed The Brains.

His parents were really proud of him.

And excited for his future.

They thought he could be a great surgeon,

and unbeknownst to them,

this outcome for him could not be further from that projection.

[Morgan] He's told, "You can't go on a trip with your girlfriend."

Then the solution to this problem is to kill the parents

so that he can go on a trip with his girlfriend.

Most people who are normal, would say there's another solution.

But with the psychopath, they want what they want,

when they want it.

There's usually lower impulse control.

And so the action in Blackwell's case of killing the parents

is the immediate solution to the problem.

And it surprises people that-- when they hear that someone

who is apparently normal has murdered their parents.

We still have this longstanding belief

that if you're going to commit a murder,

there's a long track record of you

creating havoc all along the way.

Although that's true, sometimes, it's...

it's not necessarily the norm with people with psychopathy.

[Tussey] Andrew Balcer.

This is another example of a good kid gone horrifically bad.

[reporter 10] It is an all too real Halloween horror story

a Winthrop teen is now charged with murdering a couple.

He was a great kid. Smart, brilliant, good in school, focused.

He was...

planning on going to college.

So it doesn't make sense.

It's a shocker that this could happen.

[Morgan] I think what-- what we learned, looking over multiple cases

of people who are psychopaths,

is that the families

that they are linked to, often, don't know

how much of a psychopath their loved one is.

They're normal, and one of the things we do when we're healthy

and sometimes it works to our detriment

is that we tend to assume the good in other people.

You can tell he's articulate, he responds very, very quickly.

He appears to be quite nimble, intellectually,

and if we do hear the superficial affect, he giggles, laughs.

But it's just a matter of fact.

He discusses walking into his parent's room

and his mom hugging him

and then him stabbing her

in a very a shallow and glib way.

He almost sounds proud in a way

as he's describing what he did.

He certainly doesn't sound remorseful.

[Morgan] People with psychopathy do know that they're different

and they do not connect easily to other people.

They usually have a superficial relationship with them.

Other people may feel that they know them,

but from the person with psychopathy is perspective...

They don't.

People don't know them and they don't feel connected to other people.

[Tussey] There is zero remorse, still, for the fact

that she murdered her parents,

and this attitude at the end.

It's very glib.

She's almost joking.

There is an air of entitlement, also,

that comes across.

Because she is most important,

and it really doesn't matter who was damaged along the way.

She has gotten to where she wants to be,

and everybody else should just overlook any dead bodies along the way.

I think what we learned from the from the cases

where people have killed

either one or several members of the family is,

that we learn that it's well within the realm

of psychopathy--

that it's a myth that they'll only kill people,

that they don't know.

[Sahni] Just because somebody is a member of your family,

doesn't mean that you're automatically safe.

People shouldn't underestimate their gut instinct.

And if you have a family member

that doesn't connect to the rest of the family,

hasn't been exhibiting

any real conscience or sense of guilt or remorse

for things they've done that have brought harm,

and problems to the other members of the family...

Pay attention to them.

Sometimes the risk is within.