Some would ask why I watch these. Isn’t it triggering? Sometimes it is and, at the same time, they are informative and validating.
#LloydEdwinRichmond comes from a family of notoriety. His father was a prominent figure in the finance and FAA industry. He was also abusive.
It has been an interesting journey to note that, several criminals chose that path because they have a desire for others to feel what they feel and to experience what they experienced or continue to experience.
This does not make what they do okay. It does not justify what they did by any stretch of the imagination. Just because people have been through a horrible childhood does not make it okay for us to perpetuate that cycle. In contrast, it is a part of their conditioning.
While wading through the news archives, it was shocking how insensitive our elder’s prose could be. Why do so many people older than Millennials behave the way they do with a lack of empathy? We were conditioned that way:
• Man it out
• Pull yourself up by the bootstraps
• Get comfortable with uncomfortable because that’s just how life is
• I had to and I turned out okay, why shouldn’t you? (very wrong, BTW)
• Let go and let [insert name of deity] (relinquishing all accountability of doing any of the hard work that is uncomfortable)
• Stiff upper lip!
The list carries on with the various gaslighting that many of us are familiar with. The result is emotional dysregulation with the effort to appear perfect in comparison to others.
We point fingers to draw attention away from ourselves so we won’t have to do the work to acknowledge and identify how we really feel because feeling scared, hurt, and vulnerable is unacceptable according to our generational conditioning.
What several of Lloyd’s victims went through was predominantly dismissed. It’s a frequent occurrence with family units that have a public persona to upkeep. It’s the image for title, status, and notoriety in a social structure that demands perfection which creates stressors that often lead to covering up how imperfect we really are behind closed doors.
Then we perpetuate a cycle of abuse that has been passed down from generation to generation as we parrot the phrases that have wounded us deeply. At the same time, we are adults and we do have a choice and it’s up to us to choose and choose wisely.
After Thanksgiving, I found myself being drawn to these police interviews with a deeper interest and I wondered why. It’s common for victims of malignant narcissists to watch criminal minds at work and how they will attempt to continue the cycle of entitlement to do what they do.
It feels like Lloyd desired approval and acceptance from his father and he never got what he felt he deserved. Lloyd announced his marriage in 1956 to Carol Lee just after High School which kickstarted additional events. He dropped out of college his junior year and as prominent as his dad was, I’m sure that didn’t fly well for such a ‘perfect’ family of status and notoriety.
Lloyd wasn’t special then and he isn’t a special criminal now. His adult mind is probably stuck in some stage of infancy that still craves the attention and acknowledgment that he feels entitled to. Except–his crimes, as horrific as they are, they are ordinary and unimaginative.
Even in the criminal world, he’s rather insignificant. He’s so insignificant that it’s not even social media noteworthy. There’s some interesting dynamic with that.
While, to the victims, it may feel very dismissive, to me I feel comfort in recognizing how ordinary Lloyd really is. It doesn’t make what he did okay. However, there is some satisfaction in realizing how much of a parrot Lloyd is.
He and his conspirators are just a parrot of other criminals. He’s not worthy of social media viral attention. In the big picture, as notable as his father was, as big as his father was in Cuba and in Montana–Lloyd is nothing more than a common criminal without a single notable quality.
It feels good to realize how insignificant Lloyd Richmond and his conspirators are. May they have the life and afterlife they deserve.
