Joseph Duggar: FBI Experts Break Down the Psychology of Admission

This is the Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers podcast and true crime today.

This is Hidden Tillers Live with Tony Brusky and Robin Dree.

Now on to this, two brothers from the same house, two sets of child-ess abuse allegations, one family with a decade-long documented history of managing harm quietly.

Until the legal system finally catches them, Joseph Duggers arrest and interstate extradition to Florida isn't just another chapter of the long-running scandal of the Duggers.

It's the moment a lot of people are asking the question, no one in that family's orbit apparently wanted to ask, how deep does this go?

How many people knew and is anyone with real investigative power finally going to find out?

Joining me to discuss this case, Robin Dreeck, retired FBI Special Agent, and Jennifer Coffin-Daffer, retired FBI Special Agent.

Guys, is this a case where more investigative power can be put into it at this point to dig deeper, to take a, I don't know, take a good close look at the digital devices of anyone in that house?

I'd be really curious to see how deep we can get on this and how many other monsters we might find.

Again, all conjecture, there's only been the two that have been charged, ones in prison, the others being charged, and a central proven guilty.

But we're talking interstate travel here at this point. He's going to be sent back to Florida.

Does the FBI get involved at some point and start digging deeper than they've ever dug before on the Duggers?

Digging the Duggers.

Yeah.

I took the words right out of my mouth.

Dig the Duggers.

That is so funny. We almost said it simultaneously.

You know what?

There's, first of all, in any investigation, there's almost, there's never a thing as too much investigation.

You can never dig deep enough.

Even when you think you dig it all up, you can still find more.

I'm a huge believer in that.

There's more there.

This is one of those nasty cases.

Yeah.

I think one of the biggest challenges of this, because I'm with you, there's got to be more here.

These are just two that bubbled to the surface.

I don't think it took a whole lot of digging to get these two.

You know where there's smoke, there's probably even more fire.

That's like a question.

Yeah.

No, I'm with it, Tony.

It's like, how do you penetrate the closed wall?

I mean, of this society to inspire people to feel safe enough to share that kind of information.

Well, you know, in a sense, and I'm not drawing a true analogy to this, but to your question, will they dig more?

Look at the Adelson's.

I understand two very different cases.

All I'm saying about it is what it takes is a prosecutor.

Good prosecutor, man.

And if you have an aggressive prosecutor that wants to make sure everybody who was involved in something is brought to the surface, that's really...

That's what it's going to take in this case.

They've got to have execution too.

Yeah, a really good point.

What kind of power do they have to dig beyond Joseph here?

Obviously, Joseph and his wife, I mean, they've both been charged the different crimes here.

And one's Arkansas charges, one's Florida, one's a far more extreme.

But what sort of power do they have to get a digital devices to look beyond just those two?

I mean, can they get the digital devices of other family members, of other people within this orbit?

And I guess what are the bounds as to which they can look and who they can ask for those devices of?

Do they have to be people who are living in the house of these two?

Or if they find some interesting things on those devices that they link over to other folks, can they compel people to give them their devices there?

I mean, obviously, a warrant or some sort, but I guess how far can they dig without other charges against other people before they get to other charges against other people if they ever get there?

Well, two things. First of all, the biggest thing here is the standard.

And the standard here is only probable cause to be able to get a warrant and really less than that for subpoenas.

You know, I mean, the fact of the matter is so basically you have a very low bar for investigative procedurally for them to get this type of information.

The other thing is there's a spider web effect when it comes to digital information and it's going to lead to other people.

It's whatever you want to say, birds about feather, you know, they are, they're going to be drawn into the web.

That's what I think the web will spread and it's just how aggressive their prosecution team is.

Yeah, I'm hopeful on that one too, Jen, because when you were saying that it really made me think, all right, the spider web.

So if you think about, again, Robyn's thought experiment conjectured time, right?

If you think about how closed off this society is and how insular they are, if one person learns one thing, it stays within that community.

So if one nutter knows how to use the dark web and all these horrendous things for these horrendous images, that pattern of how they do that is going to be the thing that perpetuates.

And so being able to see a pattern from where they got Joseph and Josh on Joshua, right?

Yeah.

You know, that same methodology they use is probably something they learned maybe in a small little group.

And so that kind of replicating patterns and seeing similar patterns is I would definitely do it too from that spider web mentality.

Is there a crime committed if we're to to look at their structure of the umbrellas of they got the church and and gothard and God, you know, hanging out together.

And then below that is the father and then it's the mother and then if you're under your umbrella, that's how you handle it.

You bring your problems to the next person up on the umbrella and they decide if they're going to go to the police or they're just going to handle it internally.

And it seems most things get handled internally.

Is it a crime?

If let's say a father had knowledge of these sort of things that were going on and did not report it to the police, like if they start to go through the digital history, emails, texts, whatever, anything.

And it turns out that let's say a father, again, this is all just complete conjecture.

You know, this is necessarily happened.

But let's say they find some sort of email, oh, okay, if you found out you did this to this kid, you know, say your, you know, Hail Mary's or whatever and you know, you're forgiveness.

Oh, essentially the word camp, whatever.

I mean, yeah, or you're going to go hang some dry wall and, you know, mud and tape the as predator out of you.

If they have the knowledge of the crimes and they don't report it, is that a crime in itself? Could that be prosecuted?

Yes, two charges that just go back to me are one is failure to report.

Yep.

That's a violation.

Child endangerment.

Those are violations.

So those just jump off the board to me.

But to me, some of the other things to consider is, is there something even more egregious?

Because I will say that typically people who are capable of sort of looking the other way.

Sometimes they become capable of much more.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going back to, and I'm thinking of Jim Bob when he was on the stand at Josh's, he was on the stand at a hearing prior to Josh's trial.

And, and just claimed, you know, ignorance of, I don't remember. I don't remember.

I don't remember.

Then the judge eventually said, get out of my courtroom.

You're not going to be a credible witness here. Goodbye.

That's what I'm wondering about.

I mean, I'm sure there are statute of limitations on certain things.

And I look back on that and I'm going to go, why wasn't he ever prosecuted?

I mean, you know, he went with the, I don't remember thing.

And maybe there just wasn't a digital trail or something.

And if he's publicly said he doesn't remember.

But we've seen the interviews where he did know about what was going on with Josh and, and his own daughters.

And in court into their religion, he handled it and didn't report anything.

They just dealt with it, you know, insularly within their, they're the brethren.

That's what they say. Don't stir up the brethren.

And I don't know. I'm not accusing Jim Bob of knowing anything that would Joseph is up to.

Joseph is a grown-ass adult, too. It's not their little kids living underneath his roof anymore.

But I guess I'm just theoretically saying here, if, if, if, let's say Joseph did come and talk to dad about this and, and dad handled it internally.

And they just had a conversation and he didn't report it.

I would wonder what could happen there with, with the current day situation that's going on where there, there may be digital evidence.

There may be digital trails of conversations and knowledge that people have.

And, and it being very much a crime to not, to not report these sort of things, but it does follow their religion.

Is there anything that saves them with it being their religion from, from them not reporting things out properly to prevent this sort of behavior

where they think they're preventing it internally because of, of regard?

No.

Good.

I mean, they don't know.

Yeah.

But again, and I hate to keep throwing this on the prosecution here.

It really does come to, because I'll tell you what, these agents, officers, whoever works these cases.

We're always in there, man. We want the obvious guy. We want the low-fraining fruit guy.

And then we want to get everybody in the web.

I mean, these conversations are hilarious that you have with the prosecutors.

Yeah, but, and, and we always joke, at least I joke, joke down our squad.

God, he won't take anything but a whale in the bucket.

You know, he's got to have blah, blah, blah, you know.

And it's very frustrating as an investigator said, what do you do?

You just keep digging and give them the well in the bucket.

If it's something, you know, you feel that it should be prosecuted.

They got a lot to work with on this one, I think, because if you just watch this special as well,

especially how it looks like they handled Josh was issue years ago,

with sending him to the work camp as his cure, which is back to headquarters.

And everything you're seeing on here, there's also potential.

If they dig deep again, I'd love your point, Jen, on the prosecutor comes out to that.

There's potential trafficking in here as well, potentially.

Do you think they should be concerned if they have anything bad going on?

That they're going to be discovered very shortly.

Do you think that there is going to be a thorough FBI investigation

into the Ducker family beyond just Joseph being triggered by this?

Is that likely road that they're going to be going down here soon?

When you look right now at the priorities in the bureau,

being human trafficking is still up there.

They would love to make a case beyond these two.

So I think definitely that case agent that's spent all this time,

yeah, they want to dig their teeth in.

Well, that's good news. I like that.

I think it'll be really interesting, too, because they have, again,

they have such a closed society and a closed insurer society.

It also be curious what kind of language they're using for potential code,

for talking about these things, because they use a lot of that,

because they have their own special language for discussing things,

for sharing things.

I would think that, you know, you have people like these girls

that have come out and talked about it, you know,

could actually give a huge amount of insight,

because, again, I keep going back to the special in the book,

and it's not even, that's literally the very tip of the iceberg

of what we are seeing and things that were insinuated.

It could go very deep.

It's going to be interesting.

I mean, I hope to God, it's isolated.

I have a feeling it's not, but it's amongst my conjecture,

who the hell knows?

Well, 219 in one family.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Oh, it's Robin.

I know.

Is that crazy?

It's going to be, it's going to be telling.

It's going to be very telling in the future to see what happens here.

Your thoughts in the comment section on Substack in YouTube,

please do weigh in, and we'll continue our conversation right there.

Jennifer Koffendaffer, Retired FBI Special Agent.

Thank you for being with us, and Robin, of course, always.

Thank you for being here, and you guys weigh in in the comments

and Substack in YouTube.

We'll continue the conversation there until next time for Robin Todd.

And Jen, I'm Tony Brusky.

We'll talk again real soon.

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and the Hidden Killers podcast.

One more case.

We're going to cover here today, the Duggers, counting the charges.

We put a new podcast out today too, by the way.

If you want to just follow the Dugger saga, the Duggers counting the charges.

That's the graphic you'll find it wherever you get podcasts.

The Duggers name was built on a very specific promise that a family rooted in faith structure

and absolute moral authority was worth putting on television and holding up as a model.

For years, it worked.

Then the things started happening behind the scenes and that image started to change.

Children who were victims, parents who knew a system designed to keep all of it quiet.

Now another Dugger is facing criminal charges.

His wife has been arrested in the family's response.

From some quarters, is that this is persecution.

The one question nobody seems to answer.

The one thing at the center of all of this is whether anyone in that family ever actually chose the children first.

That's a question I want to pose to you guys out there in the comments section.

And you guys please give us your questions as we work through this on Substac YouTuber wherever you're watching us.

Robin Drake, Retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis program is with us.

Josh is in federal prison.

Joseph is facing charges.

Jim Bob knew what Josh did and handled it himself.

Josh, no police, no real consequences until until there was.

Is there any world where he ever actually answers for that?

Don is asking that via Facebook and if people are already confused because everybody's name starts with a J.

Josh is the one from a couple years ago.

He's the one who admitted to doing things with his sisters.

His sisters have come out and said, yes, he did that to us.

And then he got busted for material on his computer as used car dealership.

CSAM material that some local investigators here have said is some of the worst stuff they've ever seen involving.

Very young.

I mean, just disturbing as hell.

And he he cordoned off his hard drive.

So nobody could find it because he already had a tracker on it because people are already watching him.

He's also had the Ashley Madison account.

I mean, he's in prison now until like 2032.

That's Josh.

Joseph now charged with doing inappropriate things with what would have been at the time a nine year old.

And has since admitted to that allegedly with local police on the line.

He's not being extradited back to Florida.

So is there a world in which we go back in time to which Jim Bob ever faces any sort of consequences for not reporting Josh to police.

Now that we've kind of defined the roles here.

I don't know.

You know, it's going to come down to as the great Bob modest says the prosecution.

You know, do they have a prosecutor involved here kind of like in the Adelson case where we're just going to go down one one domino at a time.

I think I think there's a I'm glad you started a whole podcast series on this.

Because there's going to be more.

How could there not be more?

You have two in one family.

All brought about because of a a sect of a religion.

What was it?

What was it?

And and an IDLP IDLP, which is really extreme.

The curious charge.

I'm curious whether this comes up in this with what Jim Bob may or may not get involved with with others is trafficking.

Because because again, I'm just looking at at the limit of data we see.

So Josh gets accused by his sisters or sisters reported to the dad that they were abused by him when they were younger.

The dad solution Jim Bob solution was not to inform law enforcement, but to handle internally.

This is what the church did.

This is their IDLP preaches.

We handle it.

You know, we don't we don't rustle up the brethren or whatever.

And so their solution is sent them to a work camp, handle that IDLP headquarters.

Yeah.

I wonder what he's learning there.

So again, it's just conjecture.

So they kept everything as an organization in house.

You got to promise in house.

And so if you start moving people from one state to another state.

That's a federal thing that that'll take charge.

And so I'm really curious.

Were they shuttling people back and forth?

Because again, on the special, that was the shiny happy people.

You have a few of the girls talking about how they were then abused at that headquarters once they're shuttled there by the head of the whole organization.

What was that?

Yeah.

Not the Duggers, but yeah, there's acquisitions from other people who have victims.

And so it's part of IDLP.

So to me, we have a lot of potential for other cases, at least for investigation.

That's why we have potential for a lot of investigation.

That's a good way to put it.

And I think it's important to say, I'm not accusing Jim Bob of abusing his children or doing anything like that.

What the crime here would be is being aware.

Being aware that there's abuse happening and not reporting it and not doing anything about it until he's eventually kind of forced to.

Because someone else's buddy, who's in that dock, said, you know, by your own teachings here, by your own belief system here,

that you're running for Congress on, and being all prim and proper in Jesus' sea on, your son will be going to jail.

In some cases, if you look at it even deeper, he'll be getting the death penalty.

And because that is also part of what he campaigned on and believing is that people who do this to children should face death.

I happen to agree with Jim Bob on that.

And I said before, well, looks like you got some problems with your kids.

You might be having a few less.

You might have to change that number back to 17 or something.

But the thing is, and that I think is a serious question.

Because even if he's not doing anything, and again, I'm not saying he had or did, he's never been charged with anything.

So in no way am I saying that, I know you're not saying that either.

But what we're saying is, okay, if you have knowledge of the crime, something this severe, and you are essentially by not reporting it, enabling it because it's happening repeatedly as a pattern, that's a crime.

Yeah, complicit.

That is a crime.

I don't care what your religion says about it.

I don't care what you feel about it.

I don't care what you think is better.

I can't just create my own like, it's essentially like they create their own country, if you will, with their own sets of laws and rules.

And it's all controlled by God third and God.

And then whoever else is in the umbrella that day.

And I'm sorry, that's not how it works here in the US.

You can't like kind of create your own judicial system.

Yeah, just because you're a religion.

And you're not exempt from it.

There's no world where it's like, well, you're supposed to go to court, but today I'm going to go to Lutheran court.

And the Lutherans are going to judge me because my religion says that their law is more important than the actual judicial law of the land.

No, that's not how that works.

In fact, actually, the Bible talks about the exact opposite.

The Bible talks about giving to Caesar what Caesar's, it talks about obeying the law of your land.

So he's actually violating that too.

But it's so amazing how folks like this, they could so wrapped up into their bullshit cult religion.

Can kind of just pick and choose what they like when they like and then apply it to whatever bullshit they want to do.

You know, kind of going back to your earlier theme on this.

It was really kind of shocking to see how it all started.

And then how the shift from being kids as the number one thing in the focus.

I mean, that's the whole premise of IDLP is the quiver of arrows of children being the blessings from God.

And all of a sudden, the biggest blessing in his life became what he's making off of TLC.

And that took precedent over everything.

And as anyone has children that you have a great healthy relationship with your kids, can you ever imagine in any lifespan ever having the conversations

and the vitriol he was having with his second oldest Jill, the oldest daughter, about how he was withholding money from her, about how he claimed the IRS he's paying her all these hundreds of thousands of dollars that she never got.

And then guilty never into signing shit to sign it all away.

So you could keep using her as much as he wanted to rationalize in his behavior of this is just a ministry.

I mean, just it was so as as a father of a daughter watching him listening to him and to think again, it's all according to Jill and her memory.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, caveat with that about how he was treating his children with that kind of disrespect.

Um, and it's just just focus of self.

I mean, just watching him focus so hard on himself as years went on was heart wrenching and heartbreaking.

And then to the eventual, um, you know, tart and you have one kid in prison and the others might be on his way there now.

I think it's going to be extremely telling.

And I hope to God, the FBI is because obviously we got interstate things going on here with Joseph.

Um, it's and I, I mean, we know they're looking at all the digital devices, at least from Joseph and Kendra.

Uh, and, and here's the thing.

That shit spiders out.

So if we're going to start to see, uh, I got to know anybody.

If there's text messages on there or anything, some sort of communication between Joseph and Jim Bob or anybody,

insert anybody here.

And there's knowledge of this that went on.

There's more, there's more people going down.

I would think so because first of all, you learn how to do this somewhere.

So here's, here's a great, well, it's a horrendous step, but here's a good step to know to understand how these things work.

For every one child that you've seen that was trafficked in some way or their images were traded.

There's 400 others that are those network.

And so, and so if he, he learned this being Joseph, he learned this somewhere.

Maybe you learned it from Josh, but Josh learned it from somewhere.

These two don't strike me as the type of individuals that, that would shut up and not share.

These look like blabbers that will do anything they can to get off to throw someone else under the bus.

And who they're going to throw under the bus?

Other people that taught him how to do this.

Where to do this? And so, where do you think that's going to go back to?

I'm interested.

And I'm not saying it's Jim Bob by any means.

But I don't think it's the father.

I don't think it's the organization.

I think it's, yeah.

And what I'm wondering is if, is if even they are going to be surprised by what they find out,

by where these boys got this or where this comes from.

I don't know.

I mean, I could, there's a window here where they could turn this around.

The ones who did not do this, but were so bamboozled and so drinking the coolate of their religion.

Two of the girls have already done, I think what, two or three of the girls have already done this.

They've already gotten out and they've already seen reality for realities terms.

The rest could do it.

They could be, they could, if they really wanted to do something good,

Jim Bob and Michelle and everybody, stand up and go, we were bamboozled too.

We thought this was the way to raise children.

We thought this was great.

Turns out this is an abomination of the Bible.

This is an abomination of Christianity and religion.

And we fell for it.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have to and we're sorry we did.

This is horrible, but let's expose it now.

Let's bring the people to justice because look how much it's damaged our family.

Let's prevent this from happening to anybody else because I think there is a world

where Michelle and Jim Bob are genuinely shocked by these things

and they can't figure out why it's happening, why this keeps,

but this is pattern going on with their kids.

But they're so tampered down into the IBLP and their way of thinking

and they've dug themselves so far deep in that it's so unseeable, unfathomable

to even get out, but I don't know if they're even capable of getting out mentally.

But there's a window to do it and I'd highly suggest doing it.

Otherwise, I think the wrath of the evidence of reality is going to come down

and it's going to come down hard in a lot of people.

I don't know who or where, but I would venture to say it's going to be more folks

in this ecosystem that have been part of this way of thinking

and this way of covering things up and handling everything.

Any time you have an organization that is set up for secrecy,

for not sharing information and limiting and controlling,

controlling contact between people, controlling what people does

and it's centered at the top with one individual.

I mean, it's a pyramid scheme.

I mean, where else did we see this happen into before,

which kind of shocks you? It's Kevin Frankie, Ruby Frankie's husband.

Yeah.

He was sold into all this crap that she was spewing too.

You know, it's just, when these things become your identity, you know, like Jim Bond and Michelle,

when you are so entrenched and this is your entire identity is your IDLP faith and your religion,

it can do no wrong because these doctrine that they set up and work from

are non-correcting institutions.

They don't learn from past mistakes.

They double down and say, well, it's the individual that made a mistake.

The institution organization is fine.

So that's what's happening here.

I mean, Josh was bad. Joseph's bad.

But the institution didn't know wrong.

It's them. So they don't change the institution.

They double down on it and that's why there's going to be more.

Yeah, it's like, it's not the, it's the hamburger's fault for being overcooked.

No, it's whoever cooked it.

That's because it's common to have two out of 19 turn like this.

Yeah, exactly.

Totally common.

Oh, my God.

Your odds are that high.

And it's not just, it's not just, you know, we're not talking something, you know,

like, like, like, didn't go to college or decided to become a plumber or

following the father's footsteps, all the things that, you know, can become

systemic inside families that follow in footsteps.

But this, this is a rough one.

This, I've never seen, again, I've researched it.

I don't think there's ever been another case where you had two sex abuse,

children, sex abusers as siblings in a same family.

Yeah, I don't get up.

I mean, it's somewhere I'm sure they're probably, but, but to this level here, you

know, that we're, that we're marketed to the world as, you know, wholesome.

And can I ask a more question?

This is the most important.

Why the hell does Joseph look like an adult version of the Gerber, baby?

You know, with the hair, I mean, it's like, what's going on here?

Why?

Anyway.

That's in look of the religion.

Yeah.

We're just, look, we're just children of God.

I think that's kind of, yeah.

Yeah.

Your thoughts on the comments section on Substack and YouTube.

We'd love to hear them.

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All right.

Until next time for Robyn and Todd, I'm Tony.

We will talk again real soon.