Lee SharmaChief Medical Officer, PATHS · Physician, Conflict Analyst,Host of the “Scalpel and Sword: Conflict and Negotiation In Medicine” Podcast, Co-Founder of Lintel Health. Conflict IS the doorway.

Ep62 | True Crime Crossover: Rachel Nickell and Anchoring Bias with Heather Packer

20 Jul 2026 · 40 min

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39:39

In this episode of the Scalpel and Sword podcast, host Dr. Lee Sharma welcomes Heather Packer, a nurse and true‑crime enthusiast, to dissect the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell in Wimbledon Common. The conversation uses the case as a vivid illustration of anchoring bias and confirmation bias in investigative work. The police fixated on Colin Stagg after a superficial suspect description, employing entrapment tactics and ignoring contradictory evidence, which led to his wrongful conviction and the eventual loss of two additional lives when the real killer, serial offender Robert Napper, was later identified through DNA analysis. Sharma draws parallels between this investigative failure and medical diagnostics, emphasizing how premature anchoring on a diagnosis can harm patients. He introduces his SPARK framework (Stop, Pause, Ask, Don't assume, Reflect, Respond, Keep moving forward) as a tool for handling high‑stakes conflict in healthcare settings. The episode also contrasts the London investigation with the more methodical Idaho 4 case, highlighting the importance of humility, curiosity, and systematic evidence gathering. Throughout, the hosts stress learning from past mistakes, fostering supportive professional relationships, and applying the lessons of bias awareness to both clinical decision‑making and everyday conflict resolution.

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Hello, my Peaceful Warriors, and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst. And I'm very excited for this episode today because if you listen to our normal Monday drop, that episode was about a really important issue, not just in medicine, but in conflict resolution. Which is the whole concept of anchoring into a particular diagnosis. And the last episode that we did where we had our true crime crossover got so many positive comments about that. And so I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast Heather Packer. Hello. Thank you so much for being here.
Of course.
Like, I'm gonna reintroduce you in case people, first timers are listening, but Heather Packer is a graduate of Auburn University in criminal justice. She is a longtime beloved nurse at our practice at Gynecology and Wellness, and she's one of my favorite people. Our patients just love her, rightly so. But she's also my true crime partner in crime.
Yes.
So like, I'm just so happy you're here. So thank you so much.
Of course.
So we're gonna dive into a story, which I think is really interesting, but this story was really well known. In the UK, for people in England, this story was like everywhere. And for me, I'd never heard of this story until this Netflix episode dropped. And so we're talking about the story of Rachel Nickell, who was a woman who was killed in London. And this story, just from a true crime standpoint, is pretty mind-blowing. But I think the concept we're going to be talking about today with what happened. With the person who actually did end up killing her and how they got to that really does illustrate how powerfully this concept of anchoring not only affects diagnosis and conflict, but also literally recognizing that anchoring was happening in this case would've saved lives.
Yes.
100%.
Absolutely.
What happens if you get the wrong diagnosis and you get treated for years? Right?
Yeah.
If that happens, people suffer from that.
Absolutely.
When we latch onto a diagnosis and we're not willing to let it go, patients suffer.
Yes.
This is where they start to lose faith in the healthcare system because they feel like the healthcare system isn't answering. This happened with a murder investigation. So we're talking about the murder of Rachel Nickell, who was murdered in 1992 on the Wimbledon Common in London. So Wimbledon Common is basically a big park, kinda like Central Park in London.
Okay.
People go walk around, they go run, they take their kids on walks. And Rachel Nickell was one of those people. She would take her little boy there on walks, and that was like a big thing for him.
Yeah.
That he would go. Of course, like, kid doesn't wanna go walking with his mom or her mom. This case, this murder became one of the most famous investigative failures in British history. Not because they didn't have resources, not because they didn't have opportunity. But because what happened with who killed her.
Yes.
So let's think about the story for a second, because there may be a lot of people who are watching this episode that don't know about the story, just like I think you and I did not.
Yeah.
So this happened on July 15th, 1992. So this is an old case. So she was walking with her son in Wimbledon Common in this park in a pretty good part of town.
Yeah.
Wimbledon Common is in a pretty good part of town.
Right.
So she's walking through the park and somebody grabs her from behind and attacks her with a knife and stabs her. Her son witnessed part of this attack. He was 2 at the time. It's heartbreaking. And so this man in broad daylight, by the way, this happened early in the morning. She's not out there by herself with her son. I mean, there are other people out there walking.
Yeah.
This guy attacks her from behind with a knife and murders her, stabs her to death brutally.
In front of her baby.
In front of her son. So her son is witness to this. And I'm only going to say this once because I don't want to say it again because it is horrible. But after this guy murders her and runs away, so happened in broad daylight, they immediately, you know, this gets reported. Somebody sees the son there with his mother who's passed away.
Yeah.
They do call the police, they get medical help, they try to get the mom to the hospital. Unfortunately, by that time she's already passed away. But because this happened in broad daylight, they've able to cordon off the park. They're trying to stop people. They're trying to get a description of this guy of, okay, who saw this guy? And of course this poor little boy who's traumatized.
Oh.
You know, they're calling the dad and the dad is Now having to deal with not only the fact that his wife has been murdered, but his poor son has been traumatized.
Yes.
So because of this such public attack, there was a lot of scrutiny about what's going on. Let's think back to the Idaho 4, the 4 college students, right? This was an attack that happened in a college town. Somebody's stabbed to death. This is outrage.
Yes.
Right? This is the public watching this and they are outraged by what had happened. This is the same thing that's happening in the Malden Common. People are absolutely— They're terrified too. For 100%.
Yeah.
Because people walk in this park all the time. And do they have, I mean, a serial killer? Who's he gonna attack next?
Exactly.
Of course they are trying to identify a culprit as fast as they can.
Yes.
This is the pressure. So whenever you have this kind of pressure, you gotta know what's going on right now. I think that's hard.
Very.
Because unfortunately, if we have that pressure of time that we have to know exactly what's going on, we may not have the information. That just may not be possible. And I think that's one of the hardest things, especially in this day and age with true crime. We think it should have an answer immediately.
Yeah.
And that's just unfortunately maybe not how that process is gonna work.
No.
I think about us all day. I think about when someone's having an emergency. And you have to try to figure out as quickly as you can what's going on. But you also know that you wanna be fast, but you wanna be accurate.
Absolutely.
I mean, those two, while yes, they're very important, sometimes don't always travel together.
Right.
But yes, in this situation, these police are trying to get an answer to who killed this woman. And they're trying to do as quickly as they can because the public is screaming.
Yes.
Okay.
So, yes, because of this, they do have a description of this guy walking through Wimbledon Common. They said, oh, somebody saw him. He was wearing like an apron. He had a white t-shirt on. They noticed him because his belt was like up high on the shirt.
Yeah.
Like it wasn't like on his waistband. It was like up over the shirt. And so people really noticed him.
Yeah.
And they said, you know, this guy was walking around, he looks kind of sus, so maybe it was this guy. So they start circulating this guy's picture and they come up with a name and his name is Colin Stagg.
Okay.
Yeah.
So they come up with this guy, he's acting weird.
Mm-hmm.
Which I feel like you've been enough in this true crime world that you get this, right?
Yeah.
A lot of people act weird.
Yeah.
Does weird mean you're guilty?
No.
They're probably scared and like, oh, they're looking at me. Right. You know?
And I think that's kind of what Lucy Letby is. Yeah. Honestly, people thought that she was kind of weird. I'll admit, I kind of thought she was weird when I was watching some of that stuff.
Me too.
But weird does not mean guilty. No.
So she was scared. She was shy and it came off as weird when, yeah, it wasn't like that.
But unfortunately, I think the same thing happens to Colin's dad.
Yeah.
He gets, you weird.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll agree with you.
Yeah.
I think we're all weird on some level. Absolutely.
But we're not all— that doesn't make us murder. Right.
But this is what happens. So as they like, okay, we think we have a suspect.
Great. Yeah.
This is awesome. We think we know. So this is the problem with anchoring is once they have decided that Colin Stagg is a suspect, the window of curiosity Closes. And what I mean by that is that you go from a thought process of who else could be looking at, what other data can we collect? They transition to how can we prove it's Paul and Stag?
Yep.
And as soon as you start doing that, as soon as you get into this, how can we prove that we're right?
Yeah.
Welcome to anchoring. Anchoring has entered the chat. This is one of the biggest things that I think happened as you're watching this is as soon as the police go into this thought process of we know Colin Stagg did it, we just have to prove it. You have locked yourself off to any other possibility.
Yep.
That's always dangerous. I mean, I think that's dangerous in medicine. I think that's dangerous in conflict.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's sometimes even dangerous, like dealing with people.
Oh, for sure. You know?
You assume or you attribute a particular act or characteristic to somebody, and then all you're trying to do is prove that that's what they did or what they tell us. I'm right and you're wrong.
Yeah.
And I think that's what happened here.
I do too. And that's dangerous. Admit it. When you're messing with somebody's life, especially murder.
But you said something really important, and I want to drill down on that. If at any point in time the police had said in the course of this story, maybe you were wrong.
Yeah.
Maybe we're making a mistake. Maybe it's not this guy and we should consider another possibility. What you just said is the antidote to anchoring. And what that requires is a tremendous amount of not just curiosity, it's humility.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because on some level you're having to say, if I'm branching out and saying, I think this is what's going on and I'm wrong, right? I have to be able to say, yep, I was wrong.
Yes.
I made a mistake. I was wrong. It's clearly not what I thought it was. It's clearly something else.
Absolutely.
That's hard to do. But if we see ourselves marching down this path, the only antidote on some level is to be that humble person and question yourself.
Yes. He messed his life up pretty much still because the media gets involved just like Lucy Letby and they Made her out to be somebody she wasn't. Or we think that.
We think that. We could be wrong.
We could be wrong. And we will be humble and say it.
Absolutely. Go back and listen to Lucy Letby episode if you haven't, because it's a good one. So they anchor onto this guy. We've got to prove that Colin Stagg did this. And so anchoring this idea that we got to prove that this guy did it also becomes tunnel vision. We stop looking at anything else, even if we have evidence to the contrary, which we're going to find out later that we totally did.
Yeah.
We are now firmly fixed on this idea and we are going to try to confirm it.
And they might not see the other stuff, right? They won't to you.
So now we're unfortunately in this spiral with Colin Stagg. And there's another bias that goes hand in hand with anchoring. And it's this idea of what's called confirmation or Confirmation bias.
Yes.
I know who killed Rachel Nickell. I just have to prove it. I am now going to collect every piece of evidence that confirms what I think is right.
Yeah.
And I'm going to ignore the stuff that doesn't agree with what I think is going on. And that second part where we ignore The stuff that actually makes us have a different thought or a different idea about what happened. Super dangerous.
Very.
But that's what they did in this case. So they are now trying to confirm that Colin Stagg did this. So they set up this, we'll call it the honey trap operation.
Okay.
So they find that he is into like deviant sexual behavior.
Okay.
And they also find that he's a big letter writing guy. Like there's a club where people write letters about this kind of stuff that they want to do.
Okay.
They find somebody who actually wrote a letter to Colin's dad and they get one of the police to start corresponding with him.
Okay.
And at first they're like, so what do you like to do?
Oh my goodness.
What do you like to do?
So 1992.
Isn't it?
Before texts or anything, the writing.
We are totally hitting people up on snail mail right now. So they're writing back and forth and they're asking him to talk about like what he likes to do.
Okay.
And he is responding, but then the police start introducing this idea of, do you have fantasies about attacking people in broad daylight? They're basically trying to get him to say in these letters that he wants to attack somebody. The way that Rachel Nickell was attacked in Wimbledon Comet. So as they're kind of leading him down this path, it's like, yeah, okay, I could do that. He thinks he's flirting.
Yes.
He thinks, and I mean, I think he's in his 30s.
I don't know.
He doesn't date a lot. Like, I feel like in this day and age we would call him an incel.
Yeah.
You know, that term just didn't exist in 1942.
No.
But I feel like in this day and age we would be calling him an incel if we did.
Yeah.
So.
They basically get him to write these letters saying, yeah, I'd be down. And it's like, yep, he did it.
It's him.
He did it. He did it.
He did it.
And they go and arrest him. So when they arrest him, they're basically saying the evidence of the letter, plus the way the crime went down, plus the fact that he was in Wimbledon Common means he is the one who killed Rachel Nickell. I mean, that's literally the thought process. And so they throw him in prison for this. Now, I do think it's also interesting watching the Netflix show, listening to podcasts about this case. And plug for Red Handed. If y'all don't listen to Red Handed, Red Handed is one of my favorite true crime podcasts. My 2 British girls that I love, I will put the link in the show notes. They did one of the best deep dives on this.
Okay.
Along this plus the Netflix documentary, but okay. The Red Handed episode is fire. It's so good.
I love it. That's the one you were telling me about.
Mm-hmm.
And I love their voice.
I mean, I love the accent. Yeah. I could listen to it all day. Same. But one of the things that happens as a result of this is when he is in prison and he's about to go to trial, the judge threw it out.
Thank God.
I mean, you have no evidence.
Yeah.
You have no evidence. You have no DNA evidence, which DNA, 1992, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But there was nothing apart from the fact that police Trapped him.
Yeah.
And the Metropolitan Police, and I think the police chief did end up resigning over this.
I'm pretty sure. And he was probably embarrassed. He got cold.
Because they got caught with entrapment.
Yeah.
So they anchored so hard into this guy that they ignored somebody else.
Okay.
So now we gotta talk about Robert Knapper. So Robert Knapper was a violent offender. He was somebody who had a history of attacks.
In that area? Was he in the same area?
In Wimbledon Common. He had been already reported for 2 attempted rapes in Wimbledon Common preceding the attack on Rachel Nickell. So he'd already tried to do this twice.
Oh my gosh, that is terrifying.
It's worse than that. His mother called the Metropolitan Police. This is before Rachel Nickell died and said, my son just confessed to me that he is the one who did the rapes of Wimbledon Common.
I didn't know that.
Ask me if the police followed up on it.
They didn't, did they? Nothing.
So they already had a track record where they had somebody Who was assaulting women on Wimbledon Common before Rachel Nickell's murder. So this guy already has a track record. We already know he's tied to the rapes on Wimbledon Common. The police have his name from his mother because she called the police and said, my son just confessed to this.
Okay.
The police did not go investigate this at all. So we talked about DNA.
Yeah.
So in 1992, while we didn't necessarily have the DNA capabilities we have now, they did collect DNA. And when they collected the DNA, they had DNA from the body.
Yeah.
They had DNA from the scene. And one of the things they told the DNA experts at this time, this was in '92, said there's no DNA on anything.
Okay.
I want to think about that for a second. No DNA? Not even the kid's DNA? Not even mom's DNA? Not even the dad's DNA? There's no DNA? That makes no sense at all. So a couple of decades later, so that maybe 15 years later, I have, I don't remember the exact time, but when the case is revisited, yeah, they have another DNA expert who actually looked at that and went, there's no way that there's no DNA on this.
Yeah.
And went back and looked and found DNA that was not our first guy. It was not Colin Gregg's DNA.
Okay.
It was another guy's DNA.
Was he in jail when they figured this out? I'm just—
oh my gosh. It was another guy's DNA. So they go and they start looking and they went, wait a second, we have a guy. And this is all much later and something very bad has happened in the interim. And the thing that's very bad that's happened in the interim is that another woman has been murdered. Another woman who looks very much like Rachel Nickell.
That's it.
She's a really, really pretty young mom and her daughter.
Yes.
Were found murdered. in her apartment. They're at home in their apartment. They figure out that the person who murdered these 2 people had been stalking them for a long period of time. They actually found drawings in Robert Knapper's apartment where he had actually sketched out where he was going to be stalking them from.
Oh my gosh.
To watch them. But when they went back, 'cause when somebody questioned, why was there no DNA at all on the scene? That makes no sense. They go back and they look and there was DNA everywhere.
Okay.
Of Rachel Nickell.
Okay.
They go back and they look and they check that DNA and it's Robert Napper's DNA.
Wow.
It's Robert Napper's DNA.
The whole time he kept thinking of St. 2 Lives.
And that's it. That's precisely why we're talking about this today, especially talking about this idea of anchoring, because in this case, Anchoring onto somebody cost 2 more lives.
Yep.
That's exactly it. Cost 2 more lives because we were so latched onto something we couldn't let go of. And to think that we ignored— we ignored DNA evidence.
Yeah.
We had a mom who called the police saying, I know who did it. And we ignored that. It was never followed up on.
Why?
Because we have the guy.
Yeah.
He's in prison. We have the guy.
Got to be now.
And I think what's so scary about it is the idea that we can get so attached to that one thing that even we have something else flapping us in the face, can't see it.
Yep.
That's exactly it.
But I think sometimes you need, not this extreme, but when that does happen, sometimes you need to be humbled. Like you need it to happen a couple of times and realize if I'm wrong, just say it, figure it out, get to the bottom of it. It is so much easier, especially when it comes to stuff like this too.
It costs What you said, I think, is so powerful because when we have an experience where we realize that we've anchored onto something.
Yeah.
And completely missed the point that what we should take away from that experience is not necessarily shame, although I think shame is so normal.
We can't help.
Yeah. When stuff like this happens.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I think if you're not ashamed and just a hot crying mess after something like this, Oh, I think there's something wrong with you.
Absolutely.
But at the same time, I think once you have that moment of really feeling, oh man, I feel horrible that I did this, then the follow-up should be, what can I learn from it?
Absolutely.
And I think those two go hand in hand, like you said, that you have this happen, you get humbled.
Yes.
And then the next time you're in the situation, you feel yourself anchoring onto something that you can think about, oh, I remember Rachel McHale.
Yeah.
I remember Colin Gregg. I remember what happened and how we lost 2 more lives because we anchored onto a suspect rather than exercising curiosity and humility.
100%.
So if you just even sit and think about it, how many times have we delayed a diagnosis? How many times have we gotten stuck in a conflict situation because we've made assumptions or anchored onto our ideas about a person or a situation? But in this case, that it really did cost 2 more people their lives and really 3. And honestly, if you watch the Netflix episode, you and I both thought this.
Yeah.
That a lot of what they were doing to try to collect evidence was interviewing the son.
And from the first interview from him, it was killing me. I mean, you don't know how to express that to really, but keep on and on every day. It messed him up in the long run. There for a minute, at the end, him and his dad does, they do, they're close, very close, but there for a minute, I feel like it messed him up.
I agree.
When he got older.
And the lengths they went to, again, if they had actually taken into consideration and been open-minded about all of the possibilities.
Yep.
If they'd said, you know what, this may be a case that we don't solve tomorrow. But to solve it, we have to look at everything in front of us, just latch onto the first suspect that we find.
Right.
And I feel like part of what happened to that poor kid was that inability to widen the gaze. The only way they thought they were gonna get evidence was from the son.
Yeah. And he's 2.
And they're interviewing him with a psychiatrist. They're trying to make him draw pictures, which I can't even—
I can't.
They take him to the scene of the crime. Oh, I probably broke down. Like, I broke down several times watching this episode, but probably the main one that I broke down on was when he goes to the scene of the crime and he's crying. He's running to his father, his dad, like, we're done.
I was so proud of his dad. I was like, enough is enough.
Yes. Leave him alone.
He's 2, y'all. This is his life now. That's all he knows is y'all asking him questions.
Right.
And here you are, you're gonna get sloppy and ask the wrong question. He, he says, he's 2, that this man had a big horn or something crazy.
Are you gonna believe that? Yeah.
Yeah. That was hard to watch them doing that. But, and same thing, they had never had this situation too, so they didn't really know what to do. I get that. But 2 years old.
I do wanna contrast this really quickly with the Idaho 4. Because I think one of the things that the Moscow Police Department did, that's a whole nother true crime. I'll put a link to that, to an episode about that as well, because there's so much. I think that was one of those that also unfolded in real time on social media. But that was another one where it was such a horrific crime that there was a lot of pressure on the Moscow Police Department.
Absolutely.
To find somebody quickly. And There were all sorts of theories. There was a lot of criticism of the police department, but the police department was doing their due diligence. That's how they caught Bryan Kohberger. They looked at the police cams, they found the license plates, they found the car. They were able to go and find where were these cars and they were able to track cell phone footage. They had their person to the point that they followed him and stopped him, what, twice for speeding tickets?
Yeah.
Just to make sure that it was the guy.
Yeah.
But I think to contrast what Moscow did with what the Metropolitan Police in London did is really interesting because it was the same pressure of time. It was the same national spotlight. But Moscow was like, we're going to do our due diligence. We're going to look at everybody. We're going to make sure we really know what and who we're looking for.
Yeah.
And then once we've collected solid evidence, Then we're gonna bring the guy in. And it was almost like they said, yes, we have a tremendous amount of public pressure and we're not ignoring that. Right. We know everybody's scared.
Yeah.
We're still gonna do it right.
Yes.
And I feel like that was missing.
Yes. So I wondered if they learned from stuff like this. You know, I wonder if sometimes they have cases where they teach people, hey, this is what they did wrong and these 2 people died. Let's learn from that.
I mean, that's brilliant.
We do it here too sometimes, you know, in medicine. We learn from mistakes and we know how to fix it this time.
And I think that's a brilliant insight. This case was in 1992.
Yeah.
And all the stuff that happened later, you know, Idaho 4, that's a recent case that I am sure at some point these detectives are studying these previous cases. And it's like, well, this is what happened when you anchored on to Colin Gregg. You missed all the evidence you had with Robert Napper. I think that's a brilliant insight. I love that. So what can we learn? Like, as we're looking at this story of Rachel Nickell and this idea that we were so focused on the wrong person that the right person went free, and unfortunately lives were lost because of it. Like, what do we learn looking at this story? So the first thing I think about is that your first theory is dangerous. Just because it's your first story doesn't mean it's your best story.
True.
Because, I mean, that was what Colin Drake was.
Yeah. Just because he looked like the guy.
Seriously. I agree with you. He's like, he looked like a weirdo.
Yeah.
His belt was too high.
So he murdered people.
Yeah.
So the second thing is that with the meth fall, the police did is they actually said, we're going to look for evidence that proves our point and what we all need to do is actively look for things that disagree with us.
Okay.
So I know what I think is right. I want you to tell me everything that doesn't agree with my theory.
Yeah.
Give me everything that doesn't agree with this theory. That's hard to do. And like you said, it requires great humility for us to be able to say, tell me everything that I might have wrong. Yeah. And I think that's hard to do.
It is.
But anytime we do that, if that's in conflict, I mean, I think conflict especially is really powerful because if I've made assumptions about a situation And then I actively go back and look for everything that doesn't agree with my point of view. That's really powerful.
Yeah.
Because I'm gonna understand the situation better. I'm gonna understand you better.
Yeah.
I definitely wanna be that person. Like, where am I wrong?
Yeah.
Learn from it. Don't do it. It could hurt somebody.
And I think along with that is surrounding yourself with people who encourage you and love you, but are willing to say, you know what, maybe that's not right.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
One of the things I love most about my husband, and I probably was the reason I married him, is the first time I came home thinking that I had missed a diagnosis and I was really upset and I was really pissed off about the fact that I thought I'd missed it. And about 20 minutes later, somebody called me from the hospital and said, you actually were the one who got it right and everybody else got it wrong. And I hang up the phone and I was like, you're a button.
Yeah.
And my husband said to me, didn't you just tell me that someone still miscarried?
And I just got chills.
Part of the reason that I met that man is because he was willing to say to me, you're missing the point.
Yep.
It's not about you being right or wrong. And anybody who can say that to you in love, yes, keep them.
Absolutely.
Keep them.
Absolutely.
Keep them. Put a ring on it.
And somebody that loves you, when they say something like that to you, like if I ever come to you, which I never have to, but I know you can handle, you You're not gonna think I'm trying to do anything. All I'm trying to do is to help you be the best and you do the same for me. Just tell me, please tell me, don't let me mess up.
Yeah.
Part and parcel of that is number one, we're aligned in our goals.
Yeah.
We both want the best for the patient.
Yes.
As long as you've got that as a goal, you can't really go wrong.
True.
I mean, that's the first thing. But the second thing that goes hand in hand with that, which I love that you said that, is that we love each other.
Yeah.
If you are saying that to me, I know you love me. I don't question that. So anything that goes like that, it's like, I'm not going to take that and go, I'm not going to do that. I know where it's coming from. I know the way it's being offered and that's why it's okay. So like, if you're in a work situation and you are walking down that anchoring tunnel and somebody at work says to you, should we consider X? And if your response to that is, What do you mean I'm not right? There's a lot you have to go back and look at if you're feeling that way.
Absolutely.
You have to go, I mean, there's some introspection that's involved in that, but you also want to look at that relationship. I mean, maybe time to sit down and maybe have a heart-to-heart with that coworker and go, I want to talk with you about this conversation we had. I want to talk to you about the way that I responded. You know, not pointing fingers. I can't believe you said, that's not what it's about. I want to share with you the way I responded. Because then you're inviting that person to say, I love working with you. I care about you. It might actually strengthen your working relationship to be able to have that conversation with somebody.
I agree.
Absolutely. And I think the other part of that I want to kind of get into is that if you're certain, if you are absolutely confident that this is right, well, be careful.
Yeah.
Be careful.
Oh yeah.
If you're not willing to even entertain the possibility that you could be wrong, Already you should be questioning.
Absolutely.
You should be questioning that.
Because when you are wrong, if you already have that feeling, that's gonna be so hard to then be humble back.
Yes. And I think where people can get locked in and hardened, I think this happens in bargaining all the time. But I think what I loved about this story, my heart broke for this family. My heart broke for this poor dad. My heart broke for the family of The mom and the daughter that were killed. But I think if you look at the story, it's not necessarily about police. Takes place in the true crime consciousness, if you will.
Yeah.
But it's really about the way we think. It's really about the fact that a thought process, a simple thought process, was involved in not only some being imprisoned. I think he was, Colin Gregg was imprisoned for a decade.
Wow.
Wrongly. But I mean, when he went to trial, the judge immediately was like, yeah, you've got no case here. You've got no case here.
And it took— Thank God.
The judge saying that, you know, they had anchored onto this guy so hard. The judge was the one to say, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
But not only, but the price that was paid because that anchoring took place. But even then, I don't want to say that the detectives were villains. I don't wanna say that anybody who's had that experience of anchoring, which I feel like is all of us.
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
It doesn't make us bad guys.
No.
It makes us human.
Yes.
And the biggest thing about having traits like this or things that are tendencies in our thought process is recognizing.
Yes.
Is understanding that this happens. And I think this case was an absolutely perfect example of how much damage anchoring can cause.
Absolutely.
I really do see that the same brains that we use to solve problems are the same brains we can become trapped by.
Yeah.
But you gotta recognize the traps. You gotta see it. So as much as we can, when we look at these stories, and I'm really, really glad, Heather, that you're here today for us to get into this case. And I think this case really does illustrate the importance of recognizing when we're anchoring onto something.
Yes.
When we're looking to confirm and not to question, when we're not exercising our curiosity and humility.
Absolutely. There could have been other people killed. I'm almost shocked that it was just 2.
Yeah.
That's enough. I'm not saying it like that, but in between the mother and daughter and Rachel and her son, because I mean, I guess he laid low. I don't know. And I know that's a whole different—
I think you're absolutely right about that. That the fact that he was eventually caught, that the right person has actually been served justice.
Yeah.
That the people actually got the right answer is an important thing to recognize. And I really love the way that you frame this is that when we look and we compare and contrast stories of recent horrible attacks.
Yeah.
Like that of before, the fact that this didn't happen. In that case.
Yeah.
That we should all remember that we learn from the past, that when we're looking at these kind of stories and yes, it's true crime.
Yeah.
But we still learn lessons that we can apply to our daily lives. We apply this in medicine. We apply this in conflict.
Mm-hmm.
So these stories, as horrific as they are, yeah, really can improve. The way that we approach our diagnostic conundrums, our conflict.
Absolutely.
And I hope that's what, as people get into this story and actually learn about what happened in the case of this murder investigation, that they will take that as well.
I agree. Kind of like they didn't do it in vain all the way. We're learning something, even if it's just us on a whole different country, taking something from it and using that.
Kind of in Rachel's name.
I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how to word that. You get what I'm saying?
I do. And that's absolutely 110%. Yeah.
They're in a better place. I hope. Crazy world.
Heather, as always, thank you so much. This is great. I enjoy this so much.
Me too.
So actually, I will say that anybody's listening. I hope that you're digging when we do these bonus episodes. What we're really trying to do is we talk about true crime all the time, but I do believe that these stories have deeper implications.
For sure.
And if you haven't already, go back and listen to the previous episode as well, because these are sister episodes.
Yeah.
So Heather, thank you so much for being here.
Of course. Thank you for having me. Anytime. Always.
Awesome. And for all of our peaceful warriors who have joined us today on The Scalpel and Sword, thank you so much for being here. If this episode resonated with you, like, share, subscribe. And until next time, be at peace.
Every episode is an invitation to speak, to negotiate, to choose. I'm Dr. Lee Sharma. Join the dialogue by subscribing to Scalpel and Sword. Until next time, peaceful warriors, may your choices be sharp. And your voice be even sharper. This podcast is a reflection of lived experience and research in conflict resolution. The Scalpel and Sword is not intended as medical or legal guidance. For personal matters, please consult a qualified professional.