In Cycles That Kill, true crime is examined through the lens of the formative adversity, generational conditioning, & inherited survival patterns that can quietly escalate into violence. Hosted by Dr. Dylesia, a licensed therapist and expert on mother-daughter trauma, the show explores family dynamics, normalized dysfunction, and the childhood experiences that precede disturbing and deeply confounding crimes. Each episode examines how cycles pass from one generation to the next until someone gets hurt and how those patterns shape victims and criminals long before violence begins.
Doctors Blamed a Genetic Disorder for Marybeth Tinning's Dead Children. Then Her Adopted Son Died.
Marybeth Tinning grew up feeling unwanted, deprived of affection, and desperate to be seen, and over fourteen years, nine of her children died while the community repeatedly mistook a disturbing pattern for unimaginable misfortune. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Marybeth Tinning case through the lens of chronic emotional deprivation, attention as survival, maternal rejection, institutional and community blindness, and the psychological rewards of performing grief. This is not just a story about a mother convicted of killing her infant daughter and suspected in the deaths of her eight other children, it's a story about a daughter who learned that love and attention were not freely hers, onlookers who repeatedly offered sympathy instead of scrutiny, and the deadly consequences of a cycle of puzzling tragedy no one interrupted.
11 Oct 2026
Corey Pujols vs Central FL's Most Heartless Child Predator
Corey Pujols spent twenty-seven years learning how to regulate his anger, protect his dignity, and take accountability for his actions, until one racist slur from a man with a decades-long history of entitlement and predatory behavior pushed that regulation to its limit. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Corey Pujols and Vonelle Cook case through the lens of racial battle fatigue, regulated aggression, malignant narcissism, predatory grooming, entitlement rooted in racial hierarchy, dignity preservation, and the accountability reflex. This is not just a story about a Dunkin Donuts manager who punched a seventy-seven-year-old customer to death, it’s a story about two men whose completely different formations collided over a cup of coffee, the difference between entitlement and dignity, and how what gets built into us long before a consequential moment can determine who we become when that moment arrives.
27 Sept 2026
Christa Pike Invited Her Job Corps Classmate to Blockbuster So She Could Brutally End Her Life
Christa Pike entered the world with neurological damage, survived a childhood marked by abandonment, abuse, and repeated failures of protection, and at 18, she brutally murdered her Job Corps peer, Colleen Slemmer. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Christa Pike case through the lens of prenatal maternal failure, disrupted primary attachment, the absent protection pattern, maternal disbelief, the loss of a secure attachment figure, and chronic failures of protection. This is not just a story about a teenager who tortured and killed her classmate, it’s a story about a seizing child whose mother chose a bar over coming home, a daughter who repeatedly learned that her pain was not worth responding to, and the deadly consequences of a cycle of neglect no one interrupted.
12 Sept 2026
From Adoption to Death Row | The Wade Wilson Story
Wade Wilson entered the world through two children who were not equipped to raise him, and by twenty-five, years of identity disruption, neurological trauma, addiction, and escalating violence culminated in the murders of two women in a single night. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Wade Wilson case through the lens of adoptee identity disruption, cumulative traumatic brain injury and impulse dysregulation, predatory access through socialization, sadistic excitement, attachment-seeking through confession, and identity construction. This is not just a story about a man who strangled two women and called his father to brag, it’s a story about a child who grew up searching for where he belonged, a son who sought connection with an absent father through the most horrific thing he had ever done, and the deadly consequences of a formation no one was able to interrupt.
24 Aug 2026
Martha McKay’s Radical Forgiveness Cost Her Everything
Martha McKay spent twenty-four years believing that even the man who murdered her mother could be redeemed, and when he was finally released from prison, she welcomed him back onto the very property where her mother had been killed. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Martha McKay case through the lens of boundary collapse in the name of grace, misplaced grace, traumatic bonding with a proxy, savior complex rooted in maternal loss, narrative foreclosure, and projection. This is not just a story about a woman who forgave her mother’s killer, it’s a story about a daughter who tried to turn devastating loss into redemption, a belief system that made forgiveness easier than discernment, and the deadly consequences of extending grace without limits.
10 Aug 2026
When Mother's Fail, What Can the System Do? Feat. Joe Wilson, LCSW-C
All season, Cycles That Kill has traced what maternal failure can let in, what generational cycles can produce, and what they can cost when no one intervenes early enough. In this episode, Dr. Dylesia closes Season 1 with social worker Joe Wilson, LCSW-C, examining the power of community intervention to interrupt cycles that families cannot break alone. This episode is not just about what happens when mothers fail, it’s a conversation about what happens next: what systems miss, what children need when home cannot provide it, and what it actually takes for someone outside the family to interrupt a cycle before its consequences become irreversible. Connect with Joe at https://joseph-wilson.clientsecure.me/ (https://joseph-wilson.clientsecure.me/)
5 Aug 2026
How Teen Love Led to 5 Family Member Executions: Psychoanalyzing the East St. Louis Bonnie & Clyde
WT's attachment to her teenage boyfriend became so consuming that she came to see the people who loved her most as obstacles, and over the course of one week, the two executed five members of her own family. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the East St. Louis Bonnie & Clyde case through the lens of attachment displacement, dyadic coercive control, folie à deux, flat affect, disorganized attachment, and the devastating consequences of attachment trauma. This is not just a story about two teenagers accused of murdering five family members, it’s a story about what can happen when a child’s need for safety, belonging, and connection transfers to from family to a partner that becomes her world.
28 Jul 2026
When You Didn’t Pull the Trigger But You’re Still Guilty: The Psychology of a Mass Shooter's Parents
The choices parents make can create conditions that allow their children’s violence to reach innocent people. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the cases of Ethan Crumbley (the Oxford High School shooter), the 6-year-old who shot his 1st grade teacher in Newport News, and Robert Crimo III (the Highland Park Parade shooter) through the lens of transferred lethality, willful ignorance as a parenting strategy, self-parentification, environmental neglect, developmental incongruence, complicit enabling, fear-based passivity, and access as a love language. These are not just stories about parents whose children committed acts of gun violence, they’re stories about the overlooked ways parental neglect, avoidance, and emotional absence can become the pathways through which harm impacts others.
19 Jul 2026
When Me Mammy Said, We Killed: The Mulhall Sisters
Linda and Charlotte Mulhall grew up believing that protecting their mother was their responsibility. So when their mother asked them to kill the man who had abused her, they did. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Mulhall Sisters case through the lens of emotional parentification, instrumental parentification, the intergenerational transmission of domestic violence, trauma-conditioned caregiving, and the absent protection pattern. This is not just a story about two sisters who dismembered a man, it’s a story about daughters who were trained to carry a burden that was never theirs to hold, a mother who raised her children to become her protectors, and the deadly consequences of a cycle no one interrupted.
12 Jul 2026
Why a Mother Drowned Her Two Sons: The Susan Smith Case
Susan Smith spent her childhood learning that love required silence and sacrificing herself, and one day, she came to believe that her children were standing between her and the life she desperately wanted. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the Susan Smith case through the lens of loyalty conditioning, betrayal trauma, fear-based bonding, abandonment schema, and image-driven family systems. This is not just a story about a woman who drowned her sons, it's a story about a woman who learned she wasn’t worth protecting, a mother who chose family image over her daughter’s safety, and the deadly consequences of a cycle no one interrupted.
28 Jun 2026
Who Makes a “Straight” Man Go to a Gay Orgy, Be Pleasured, & Shoot the Witnesses: Devon Robinson
Devon Robinson attended a gay party, got his rocks off, left in distress, and returned less than an hour later to eliminate everyone who'd saw. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines what happened during the Memorial Day Weekend that shattered Detroit's LGBTQ community, and explores the deadly outcomes of selfhood and humiliation colliding. This is not just a story about internalized homophobia. It’s a story about a nervous system in crisis, a fragile masculine identity, and the catastrophic consequences of shame-based violence.
Karmelo Anthony turned a dispute over a seat at a high school track meet into a murder case. Vickrum Digwa convinced police to handcuff a dying man after claiming he was the real victim. Ruben Whitworth threatened to kill his roommate over mozzarella sticks, and two weeks later, he did. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines these cases through the lens of hypervigilance, threat perception distortion, rage dysregulation, and the maternal modeling of conflict. The episode also includes a bonus case from Ottawa, Canada, where a fatal stabbing ruled self-defense raises many of the same questions about anger, escalation, and the absence of an emotional brake. These are not just stories about race, self-defense, or who started "it." They're stories about nervous systems organized around threat, homes that failed to teach central nervous system regulation, and the deadly consequences of cycles no one interrupted before they became fatal.
12 Jun 2026
Why a Woman with an Unstable Identity Killed Her Friend to Steal Her Unborn Baby | Taylor Parker
Taylor Parker didn’t just fake a pregnancy, she manufactured a false identity, and when that identity began to collapse, Reagan Simmons-Hancock and her unborn daughter, Braxlynn Sage, paid the price. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the case featured in Netflix’s Maternal Instinct through the lens of identity disturbance, emotional dysregulation, compulsive deception, and maternal emotional unavailability. This isn't just a story about fetal abduction, it’s a story about a woman whose real self never felt like enough, a mother who watched her daughter’s lies grow, and the deadly consequences of a cycle no one interrupted.
7 Jun 2026
What Got a Working Mother Buried Alive? Delois Anderson | Tony Carruthers' Triple Murder Case
Thirty years ago, 43-year-old Delois Anderson was abducted from her Memphis home, taken to a cemetery, and buried alive alongside her son and his teenage friend. While public attention has focused on the men connected to the crime, almost nobody has stopped to ask about Delois herself. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia uses her clinical framework, Origin Mapping, to explore the intergenerational beliefs, survival strategies, and family dynamics that may have shaped Delois’ life. This is not just a story about a triple murder, it's a story about a working mother, the loyalty she may have inherited from the women before her, and the deadly consequences of family rules that go unexamined.
30 May 2026
How Parental Enabling Created a Murderer: The Mackenzie Shirilla Case
Netflix’s coverage of the Mackenzie Shirilla case, The Crash, left viewers with a big, unanswered question: What the f#@k is wrong with this family? In the premiere episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines exactly that, exploring the family dynamics that conditioned Mackenzie Shirilla to commit vehicular homicide, taking the lives of her long-term boyfriend, Dominic Russo and friend, Davion Flanagan. This episode explores how entitlement, enmeshment, image protection, relational aggression, and a lifetime without meaningful accountability created a murderer. It's not a story about one bad moment, it’s a story about a problematic family system, a daughter who was never truly corrected, and the deadly consequences of a cycle no one stopped.
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
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