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The Therapist That Prescribed Murder!

March 10, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett unravel the chilling murder plot orchestrated by a psychiatrist with a sinister agenda.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband.

Well, I'm looking out the window right now, and it's snowing. It's like… not good snow. It's snowing and then just not sticking. Like slush.

It's sloppy. Snow sucks.

But hey, everybody! I hope everyone is—I mean, it's Monday, so I hope everyone has a good week. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

You ever thought about the fact that we're just, like, bumping into people's ears or speakers? That’s weird.

Like, I listen to Toast, and the other day I had this weird experience where I was listening, and I was like, Wait… there are people where this is my voice.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting.

I don't know. I guess I don't really think about it. I just—I just do, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, but it is kind of weird.

It is weird.

For anyone interested and who wants bonus episodes and ad-free content, you can check out our Patreon, Apple subscriptions, or Spotify subscriptions in the link below—wherever you're listening or watching.

And I think we still have some Ghosty sweaters left—at least as of now. Could be gone by the time this episode's out, but you can check those out as well.

You guys, those are the announcements. Bonus episodes mean you get extra Murder With My Husband episodes and ad-free content on all of our shows.

It’s true. That’s a double-click right now.

You're dumb if you don't double-click right now.

I'm just kidding! You're not dumb. You are loved and so good and smart.

You got your ten seconds.

I don’t know if I can follow that.

The crowds are saying, Shut her up!

Yeah… I got a Whoop.

For those who don’t know, a Whoop is like an Apple Watch without a screen, but it just tracks all your health. And I like it a lot.

It’s not an ad, it’s just—I got a Whoop, and I like it because the Apple Watch is a little too heavy. Also, I don’t check my messages on there. I don’t check calls. I do everything on my phone. I always have my phone with me, so it’s nice. The Whoop just does everything. I think it even does more than what the Apple Watch does and puts it all on the app.

And yeah, so anyway, I got a Whoop. I’ve been using it for pickleball and weightlifting.

So I guess that’s my fun fact of the day.

For those who are curious, I am still eating healthy and weighing my food. It’s depressing, but it’s also happy at the same time.

Hard to explain.

I have a lot of energy. I feel good.

But do I want to just go and eat a dozen donuts? Yes. Yes, I do.

Did I want to order three pizzas last night? Yes. Yes, I did.

I didn’t, though.

I blame the USA for having a lot of good food. That’s all.

I don’t know. Nothing else other than that. That’s what I got going on.

On that note, let’s hop into today’s episode.

Our sources for this episode are The New York Post, CBS News, ManhattanDA.org, ABC News, PYSear.ch.net, CaseText.com, Medscape.com, ABC7NewYork.com, NBCNewYork.com, The New York Times, The Times of Israel, The Miami Herald, WTVR.com, LJ ustia.com, and Syracuse.com.

If you know me at all—actually, if you know me and Garrett—you know that we are big on mental wellness.

I think it's important to journal, check in with yourself, and give your mind a day off when you need it. And frankly, I think we are lucky to live in a world where mental health is finally being taken a little more seriously.

Just a few short decades ago, if you were to ask for a day off work for mental health reasons, you probably would have been laughed out of the office or fired. But now, people understand that mental well-being is just as—if not sometimes more—important than physical well-being, especially in cases where the mind affects the body.

But when it comes to the nuances of mental health conditions—really understanding how they all work and operate—we have a long way to go.

That’s where therapy and psychiatry come in. Sometimes, the only option someone has is to place all their trust in these professionals, and I have definitely been there. Sometimes, that is the only path toward a normal life.

What you never expect is for a mental health professional to break that trust—to manipulate that bond for their own gain—especially when you're at your most vulnerable.

And especially when they are also a member of your own family.

Okay, let's get into it.

Let's take a trip to New York City.

We’re going to dial back the clock to 2012.

Garrett is about to graduate high school.

True.

He’s wearing—he’s wearing—he’s wearing—

He’s wearing skinny jeans and Vans.

What were you wearing?

2012? Senior year?

I don’t know if I was wearing—was I wearing skinny jeans in 2012? No, I think I was wearing more slim-fit jeans. The skinny phase was, like, 2007, 2008.

What about shoes?

Vans. Definitely had Vans.

Yeah. I was wearing eyeliner—dark black eyeliner all the way around my eyes. Absolutely no makeup on my eyebrows. And Toms.

Toms! So many people—

I never—

You never got into Toms?

So many people in my school wore Toms, and I was like, You know what? I’m not wearing Toms.

Girl through and through.

Guess what, though? Kind of happy about it, because Toms fell off and Vans never did.

Oh, see, I’m happy about it because I can be like, No, I was one of the Toms girls.

Oh.

I think I was just—not that I was anti-Toms, they just—I don’t know.

Conversation for another time.

But sorry—before we get back into it—they did donate a lot of shoes, so it was a good thing.

So, we’re in New York City. 2012.

It’s there that we meet a 20-year-old man named Jacob Nolan.

Now, Jake did not have an easy time up until this point in his life, though you might not have predicted that from his early years.

Seemingly, Jake grew up in a stable household—the third of three children to Debbie and Jim Nolan, a wealthy real estate investor.

But it was clear from an early age that money and wealth aside, Jake was not like the other children.

He was incredibly smart—gifted, by some accounts—but if you asked his parents, he was an innovator, always looking to build or create something new.

By the time Jake turned five, his parents noticed a few signs in him that became alarming. And while I don’t know exactly what Jake’s symptoms were, I do know that he was diagnosed at that early age with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—better known as ADHD.

Now, let's just be clear—ADHD is a fairly common condition, affecting about 11% of kids between the ages of 5 and 17.

It can lead to a lack of focus, make it hard to pay attention in school, and cause difficulty controlling impulses, as well as mood swings and hyperactivity. But it is one of the better understood disorders, which means it's a bit easier to treat than other conditions—though not in everyone's case.

Like Jake Nolan’s.

As Jake got into his teenage years, his family noticed that his mood swings were becoming more unpredictable. The highs were higher, and the lows were a lot lower.

For example, while in high school, Jake put his innovative side to the test and actually created an iPhone app designed as a study tool for his classmates. He even won a prestigious award for it.

But that feeling of success only lasted so long.

A month later, Jake was struggling to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone pack his bags and head off to school.

It was at that point that he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. And while I don’t know what Jake’s treatment plan was, I do know that by age 17, he had attempted suicide.

Jake was hospitalized after the attempt, but afterward, he was given a more severe diagnosis—bipolar disorder.

Now, bipolar disorder can include drastic mood swings, from elevated euphoria to severe depression, along with other symptoms like anxiety, irritability, and even cognitive issues such as memory loss or poor judgment.

By the time Jake entered his college years, his doctors had tried upward of 30 different medications to help manage his condition.

That’s a lot.

But none of them really seemed to help in the way he had hoped.

And honestly, this is devastating. It’s absolutely devastating.

Things only got worse for Jake once he was alone. That’s when he began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, and making it to class became the least of his problems.

That’s when his parents had an idea.

Maybe Jake should go stay with his cousin Pamela in her New York City apartment for a bit.

After all, if anyone could help Jake full-time, it was her—because she was a psychiatrist.

They were thinking, Get him out of his environment. Switch things up. Have him go stay with his cousin Pamela, who knows more about this, and maybe she can help him turn things around.

Okay, but I don’t think bipolar disorder is as simple as, Let’s just turn things around.

But they were hoping this could help.

Pamela Buckbinder was about 23 years older than Jake, but the two had seemingly been close for much of Jake’s life—so close that he was practically the godfather to her 4-year-old son, Calder.

So, 43-year-old Pamela made an agreement with Jake and his parents.

He could come stay with her, get daily therapy sessions, and she would help monitor his medication.

Which—on paper—sounds amazing.

In return, he could help around the house and help care for Calder.

Now, Pamela wasn’t married. In fact, she and her ex-boyfriend, Michael Weiss, were co-parenting Calder together. Since they had broken up about a year or so prior, they had been splitting custody of their son.

So, in a way, this situation was beneficial for both Jake and Pamela. The two could rely on one another, and it seemed to be helping Jake—at least at first. He moved there and started holding himself to a higher standard. Now that Calder was looking up to him, he felt a sense of purpose, like he had to set a good example.

Jake had always wanted to have his own family, but his mental health seemed to stand in the way of making that possible. But now, in a way, he had achieved that dream by getting closer with Calder and Pamela.

Over time, though, it became clear that something was wrong with the dynamic between Jake and his cousin Pamela. It seemed to start with a photo of Jake and Pamela in bed together with Calder one morning. Whether or not he posted this on social media, I’m not really sure, but I know the image started to circulate.

It definitely made Jake’s parents stop and think—why was he in bed with his 43-year-old cousin and her son? This didn’t look like cousins casually hanging out with a child. This looked like something else entirely.

They became even more suspicious when they found some texts between Pamela and Jake on Jake’s phone—messages that read things like:

"You are remarkable."

"My love for you is huge."

"You're the most fun person to love."

What is going on? I have so many thoughts about this.

But here’s the thing—Jake tells everyone that he and Pamela were never physical or romantic with one another. That it was just words, nothing more. But the truth was, Pamela did have an agenda. She knew exactly what she was doing by sending Jake these flirty, affectionate texts.

Pamela, a psychiatrist, was not actually falling in love with her cousin. She was trying to manipulate him, weaponize him—all for her own gain. Knowing that he was struggling with his mental well-being, she took advantage of that.

Okay, but what I don’t understand is—what was she gaining from this? I mean, I guess we’ll get into it, because if she wasn’t in love with him, what was the purpose? That’s my question.

A little backstory on Pamela: As I mentioned, she was a psychiatrist who had fallen in love years before with another New York City psychiatrist named Michael Weiss. He was the father of her four-year-old son.

I’m not sure how long Pamela and Michael were together, but I know it was a while. While they never got married, Michael was seen as family. He had attended parties for Jake and had been around for at least close to a decade, if not longer, since Jake was now in his 20s.

Despite both of them being mental health professionals, their relationship was actually pretty toxic. Not only was it on-again, off-again, but both sides claimed there were instances of domestic violence from the other.

Pamela had actually been arrested for it before. During one fight, she attacked Michael with broken glass, and he ended up needing stitches. On another occasion, Michael was arrested after Pamela reported him for attempting to assault her.

Which, you know—maybe I’m opening up a can of worms—but it’s really interesting. It happens a lot.

Whether you're a mental health professional, a doctor—whatever industry you're working in—there are a lot of professionals who struggle themselves. There are doctors who are really unhealthy, mental health professionals who are great at teaching what they do but are struggling or having issues in their own marriages.

So, it’s really interesting. I don’t know—it just happens in every industry.

I will say, though, there are a lot of people who are really good at inspiring and teaching but not necessarily doing. You know what I mean? And I do think that’s a talent in and of itself. There are dance coaches who cannot dance to save their lives, but they can teach dance really well. I think that applies to any profession, which is kind of interesting.

Don't worry, you guys—I can teach you how to podcast, and I can podcast.

It’s basically "do as I say, not as I do," right?

So, that’s kind of what was going on with them. Both of them had been in trouble with the law for hurting each other. The whole thing was really ugly—not the kind of loving partnership you’d want to bring a child into.

Nonetheless, Pamela had their son in 2008, but she and Michael actually broke up for good shortly after she had the baby. By 2012, during the time Jake was in New York City living with Pamela, she and Michael were in a heated custody battle over Calder.

Jake was hearing every single update about what was going on—or at least Pamela’s side of things. She told Jake that Michael was refusing to pay child support, that he wouldn’t sign the financial aid papers she needed to get Calder into school. These were supposedly all lies.

And then, it got a lot more intense.

Pamela told Jake that Michael had been abusing Calder when he stayed with him.

So Pamela tells Jake—the boy she’s sending sweet, affectionate messages to, who also happens to be her cousin—that her ex-husband is abusing her child when he stays with him.

Okay. There was absolutely zero evidence of that.

But Pamela didn’t tell Jake that. She just told him, over and over, practically daily, how horrible it was—until Jake was really worried about Calder. It became all he could focus on.

But Pamela knew exactly what she was doing.

This seemed to be a part of a long con she had been assembling for months. She welcomed Jake into her home. She preyed on his mental health struggles. She manipulated him into believing her and taking her side.

And then, she was going to use him as a weapon to carry out a sadistic plan.

And it was working.

Okay, I think I know where this is going now.

From what I could gather—

It took me a second.

—this was at least a year. Jake lived with Pamela for a year, and this was happening the entire time.

By November 2012, Jake was fully indoctrinated into Pamela’s way of thinking. She had told him enough horror stories about Michael that she had completely—honestly, kind of brainwashed him.

That’s so sad.

And that’s when she sat Jake down and told him: There’s only one way to keep Calder safe. This has gotten way too far. This is such a dangerous situation. We need to get rid of Michael Weiss once and for all.

This is such a long con plan. It’s so messed up.

No, but also—the fact that she’s sticking to this, like, I’m going to brainwash him into killing my ex-husband.

Yeah, that’s wild.

Now, I’m just going to quickly point out—Jake is a full-grown adult, but he is in a power dynamic. Not only is Pamela years older than him, in her 40s, but she’s also established. She’s a psychiatrist.

She has seen him and helped him through extremely hard times. So, you automatically look up to that person and put them on a pedestal for "saving" you.

It is, honestly, a really easy situation for a therapist to manipulate a patient—especially if she’s kind of flirting with him and almost leading him to believe that their relationship is even more than that.

Uh-huh.

So, Jake listened patiently as Pamela laid out different plans.

See, she didn’t just want Michael out of the picture. She actually told Jake that she wanted Michael—her ex-boyfriend—to suffer.

She talked about gruesome possibilities—injecting him with poison, making him die a slow death, burning him alive in front of a crowd.

How can this lady be a psychiatrist?

"Do as I say, not as I do."

But, I mean—another can of worms, I’m going to open it.

I think for certain professions—being a doctor, a psychiatrist… I don’t know, attorneys too. I know they have precautions in place, but you almost need to—like, if you’re a psychiatrist, every year you should have to go in for a psych eval. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah, but do they know how to lie?

They do. They do. So, I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t stop it.

That’s crazy.

Okay, there are a lot of people out there who offer guidance—sometimes they’re not even licensed to do so—and people will follow them.

Yeah. Look at cult leaders.

Yeah.

So, damn.

Pamela was showing no mercy, but she also knew that none of these plans were fast or practical.

So, on the night of November 11, 2012, she and Jake settled on a plan that they could actually execute.

That night, Jake went to Home Depot and bought a 10 lb sledgehammer.

Holy crap.

When he got home, Pamela hand-drew him a map of how to get to Michael’s West 57th Street high-rise, where he both lived and worked.

The following morning, Jake woke up early. He lay in bed as Pamela stroked his back, fed him words of encouragement—remember, they're cousins—telling him how much she loved him, how he was saving their lives, and how life was going to get better once Michael was, quote, "terminated."

She gave Jake a knife to take along with the duffel bag filled with his 10 lb sledgehammer and that hand-drawn map.

She even told Jake what song she wanted him to play when the murder was committed.

What is going on?

"Maxwell’s Silver Hammer" by The Beatles.

And then she sent 20-year-old Jake on his way.

Jake said he started to have second thoughts about the whole thing while he was on the way. He was nervous. He wanted to back out.

The problem was, he knew he couldn’t go back to Pamela without saying the job was done.

So, he kept moving forward.

When Jake got to 57th Street, he checked the map Pamela had drawn for him. It showed multiple entrances to the building, including the ones with the least security measures.

Now, whether or not Jake actually followed those instructions is unclear because, when he got inside, he checked in with the security guard at the front desk.

He said he was heading to a tutoring center called Bright Kids. He even signed in using his real name.

Then, Jake got in the elevator, hit the button for the 12th floor, and headed straight for Michael Weiss’s psychiatry office.

When Jake arrived, he noticed that Michael was in session with a patient. Rather than take a seat in the waiting room, he left the office and went into the building’s stairwell to wait for Michael’s session to end.

After the patient left, Jake went back inside.

Now, remember—Michael knows Jake. He’s known him since he was a kid, so, of course, he immediately recognizes him.

When he sees Jake, he’s like, What are you doing here? Why did my ex-girlfriend send you?

But Jake and Pamela had planned for this.

Jake told Michael he needed him to print out and sign some forms for Calder’s financial aid.

Michael, not thinking too much of it, says, Okay, let’s get this over with.

Jake responds, Great, I’m going to use the bathroom while you do that.

Once inside, Jake locks himself in the bathroom and starts pulling out his weapons.

Then, he steps out, approaches Michael, and swings the sledgehammer at him—

But he misses.

Michael sees the attack coming and ducks out of the way. Jake only manages to graze his shoulder.

Michael immediately starts fighting back.

Eventually, Jake drops the sledgehammer—it’s not exactly a practical weapon in a fight—and grabs his knife instead.

He starts stabbing Michael.

He stabs him about seven or eight times—in the stomach, the back, the chest—before Michael, despite his injuries, starts to overpower him.

Oh, shoot.

Despite being stabbed, Michael fights back.

Now, Michael is 6’3” and 205 pounds. Jake is nowhere near that big.

Let’s go.

So, Michael, despite his wounds, wrestles the knife out of Jake’s hands and starts stabbing him back.

Yeah—self-defense.

By this point, the two men aren’t even inside Michael’s office anymore. They’ve fought their way out into the hallway.

Obviously, this is loud.

A neighbor comes out, sees what’s happening, and actually gets the two men separated before calling 911.

911 Call:

"There’s a guy screaming like crazy for help. I think it’s a psychologist. Might’ve had a client who went nuts. Both men are stabbed…"

Oh, this is a mess.

Which—I’m glad no one died.

First of all.

Second of all, Pamela is clearly insane.

I don’t even know what to say about Jake. I mean, obviously, he was brainwashed. Sure, he made his own choices, but when you’ve been manipulated that deeply, do you really have full control over them?

I mean, can you even say it was his choice?

Well—what happens next really makes you question whether Jake was in his right mind.

So, after the fight, when they’re both stabbed and the neighbor is calling the police—

Jake doesn’t try to run. He doesn’t try to escape. He just sits there, right next to Michael, waiting for the ambulances to arrive. And in the meantime he pulls out his phone.

He takes a selfie of himself covered in blood and sends it to Pamela, asking her, "Okay, he's not dead, we're just like, I'm just sitting here, the police are coming, what should I do?"

Oh, poor guy. I mean, they’re both alive... so I kind of say poor guy, but I know he... no, he's clearly brainwashed, like he's clearly 100% brainwashed. He is an adult, but like, no adult in their right mind would sit and ask Pamela what to do next. You would be like, 'Shoot, I gotta get out of here,' but he is looking to her so much for what to do. Insane.

Pamela doesn't respond, so the police arrive. Jake's like, "Well, I don't know what to do." He says, "No, no, I came over here to get this signed and Michael tried to kill me first. Michael initiated this fight." Meanwhile, Michael's saying to the police, "Are you kidding? He came in here with a sledgehammer. I had to fight back. I got the knife from him, but that's all."

That's all the police get out of them before they are both taken to the hospital. Now, none of them have suffered life-threatening injuries, though ironically, Jake actually was more banged up out of the two of them.

Yeah, so it's from the hospital bed that Jake texts Pamela again, since he still hasn't heard back from her from the first text, which now he's growing frantic. He feels like he's been abandoned. He writes to her in the hospital, "Please come. Michael bleeding badly. Same. I walked into office, he stabbed me with my knife in the heart."

This time he gets a response from Pamela, but it's just one word: "Where?"

Pamela does eventually go down to the hospital. Oh, wow, but she's told at that point that she's not allowed to see Jake because not only is Jake under arrest for attempted murder and handcuffed to his hospital bed, but doctors are determining that he is definitely currently suffering from a mental break that was triggered during the attack. He is now in a very manic state.

Later, Jake says, "I was in a full-blown psychotic episode. Yeah, like that's what is happening at the hospital now."

Michael is stitched up and is discharged within a day or so, but Jake stays in the hospital for the next four days. One of his first stops when he's released is to the courtroom to appear before a judge. He is charged with second-degree murder. His bail is set at $200,000. He meets it, and in the meantime, he heads to his parents' house in Miami to stay with them.

But here's the thing: it takes Jake weeks to finally tell people, "I didn't—like, I wasn't actually really... I didn't come up with the idea to kill Michael. Pamela told me." And when he starts telling people this, they're like, "You were manipulated. Like, you were in a full-blown psychotic episode. You were not in a good mental place. You were manipulated." And he's like, "Okay." He starts to get his mind around it. He starts to say, "Wait, yeah, I actually think I didn't want to do this."

Pamela, on the other end, is like, "No way. I did not ask him to do this. I would never ask him to do something like this. Plus, there are no texts or emails or any evidence of conversations about it." So, it's a bit hard to prove that Jake isn't lying.

People are like, "No, he's in his right mind, and he knew what he was doing. He did this, not Pamela." The only real piece of evidence at first tying her to the crime is the fact that there was that hand-drawn map. Also, like, I mean, there were lovey-dovey messages, right? Which do spark a little bit of... that's your cousin and you're supposed to be giving him therapy, right?

Though when they confront Pamela with, "Well, why did you draw the map?" she says she has a reason. She's like, "Calder's daycare is also inside that building. Jake was supposed to pick him up." So she's like, "I just needed him to pick up my child. I had no idea he was going to do this."

But Michael, who Jake tried to kill, tells police, "I think Jake's actually pretty innocent in this, and this was 100% Pamela who... crazy... who manipulated him into doing so." He takes Jake's side.

It wasn't just custody of Calder that Pamela and Michael were fighting over at the time. In fact, they had just recently reached a custody agreement in court—one that ironed out visitation rights, child support payments, and a life insurance policy. Turns out, part of the deal was for Michael to take out a $1.5 million life insurance policy for himself, and that his son would be the beneficiary. But three days before the attack, Michael actually changed the paperwork to say that, in the case of his death, Pamela would be the trustee, who would then manage the payout for Calder until he's 18. But she was going to steal all his money—her own son's money, basically.

So when police go to Jake and they're like, "Did you know about this whole agreement they had made?" he's like, "No, I had no idea there was a life insurance policy."

So hearing during this, the court actually grants Michael full custody of Calder and they tell Pamela, "You are not allowed to make contact with Calder for the next five years."

But here's what's odd: Even though the family court thinks Pamela is a danger to society—like they start to believe this story—the police don't, at least not yet. They don't charge her with any crime. She goes on living her life, albeit not with Calder. Meanwhile, Jake is bouncing from one treatment center to another, trying to contend with his drug and alcohol addictions as well as his mental health conditions. At one point, while awaiting trial, he makes another suicide attempt, and this time his parents don't think he'll survive. He actually is in a coma for several days. Wow, but he pulls out of it, and three and a half years after the attack, in March of 2016, he finally makes it to the courtroom.

So while the prosecution paints Jacob Nolan as this sort of spoiled rich kid who didn't deserve the jury's sympathy, the defense took another approach. They went with an insanity defense—or rather, diminished capacity. This is a huge risk for Jake's defense team, and here's why: Insanity defenses are used today in less than 1% of felonies, and only 25% of those cases are usually successful for the defendant. But here's what an insanity defense means: Basically, it states that the person who committed the crime completely lacked the capacity to understand the consequences of their actions. This is hard to prove.

Now, the jury does get to hear about all the ways Pamela had manipulated Jacob leading up to the murder.

In fact, at one point, the defense even calls an expert to the stand who compares Pamela to a cult leader. He says, "Sure, it might have been a small cult, only the two of them, but the principles are the same: it's shaping someone's thought process to meet the leader's ideas."

The jury also gets to hear all about Jacob's history with mental illness, his bipolar diagnosis. But the prosecution claps back, saying, "Bipolar disorder does not keep someone from understanding the severity of their actions, nor does it make someone lose complete control over their faculties." Which, yes, is true, but when you add in manipulation, brainwashing—especially by someone who this person holds in high esteem—that could change people. Even those who are deemed perfectly mentally well fall for cult leaders. You know what I mean?

Yeah, so the prosecution actually gets some backing on this. They play a tape for the jury—it's a conversation between a different psychiatrist and Jacob in the months leading up to the trial. During one clip, Jake was asked about the zip ties that were in the duffel bag, and he explained that Pamela wanted him to tie up Michael and torture him before he actually killed him. He goes on to say, though, that he wasn't willing to torture Michael; he was just willing to kill him for Pamela. That statement right there was enough to completely discount the insanity defense. The prosecution says, "No, look—he knew well enough to know, 'Well, I don't want to torture him, but I'll kill him.'"

Here was Jake years later: "I kind of disagree with that, but okay," admitting he was aware of the decision, that he was willing to draw a line at some point—torture, no, but murder, yes.

The final nail in Jake's coffin, though, was that he told the psychiatrist in a later clip that he and Pamela were coming up with a plan, considering different ways to kill Michael. Jacob was participating in that brainstorm. When asked outright in those clips if he had helped plan the attack, he said, "In a way, yeah, I did."

So, while Jake himself never took the stand in his trial, it was still his own words that were being said. But you know who else didn't take the stand? Pamela. In fact, she was never even subpoenaed to testify. According to Jake's lawyers, that's because no one could find her to order her to court, so she just took off somewhere. Still, the jury believed they had all they needed. By the end of the two-week trial, they deliberated for less than an hour and came back with a verdict for Jacob Nolan: guilty of attempted murder. Ultimately, they felt like if Jake could back out of torturing Michael, he could have also backed out of the murder, and yet he still went and gave it a shot.

Jacob was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. He told the press he lived every day with regret for what he had done, and there was something else weighing on him. He told reporters, "Pamela's still a threat," and he thought it would only be a matter of time before she went after Michael again. But just because Jake was behind bars doesn't mean the investigation was closed. In fact, the police seemingly took what Jake said to heart, and they kept looking into Pamela, especially when one giant piece of evidence proved Jake was not alone in this after all, despite what Pamela had been saying.

It turns out Pamela went with Jacob the night before the attempted murder to Home Depot to help him buy that sledgehammer, and because she's seen on security footage standing in line next to him and paying for it with cash. There's no pinning this all on Jacob at this point, nor more he said, she said. It's clear Pamela was definitely involved in planning this. Frankly, if she hadn't gone to Home Depot with Jacob and been caught on security camera, they might not have had enough.

So instead, an arrest warrant was finally issued for the 47-year-old Pamela, and in October of 2017, almost five years since that attempted murder, police track her down to a friend's home in Fayateville, New York, about four and a half hours outside of the city. When they knock, Pam's the one who answered. She was placed in handcuffs, brought back to New York City to face the charges for her connection to the attack.

The pandemic hits, time goes on, blah blah blah, like we see in all these cases. In September of 2022, it's now nearly a decade since the attempted murder. She shocks a lot of people when she changes her tune. She goes into a courtroom and changes her plea to guilty, but the twists weren't over yet.

Pamela went back into the courtroom a month later for her sentencing hearing and says, "Ah, never mind, I withdraw my plea." You know why she said that? On the day she pleaded guilty, she had first gotten made in prison, and then she didn't take her medication. Then she got a contact high from someone on the bus ride over who was smoking drugs. So she's like, "It was just a comedy of errors." The judge is buying it. He rejects her plea withdrawal and goes forth with sentencing, giving her 11 years behind bars.

Michael Weiss was there. He witnessed the entire thing, but he's almost had a jail now at this point... well, during his impact—sorry, not Michael—oh yeah, Jake. Jake, yes.

So Michael was there. He says in an impact statement, "While I am grateful for this day that's arrived, it has not brought me the sense of relief or the feeling of closure I hoped it would. Although it's been almost 10 years since I was attacked, I still struggle with the emotional and physical scars of what happened to me on November 12th, 2012." Pamela will not be eligible for parole until 2027, and I think it's safe to say she will not be allowed to resume her psychiatry practice once she is released.

And that is the attempted murder of Michael Weiss.

It's kind of sad because the kids are also affected, and he didn't do anything. Like, now he's going to grow up basically without a mom because his mom wanted to kill his dad, which is insane. It's a huge, gigantic mess. And again, we often are talking about mental health in these cases, but this was one case where a lot of people believe that if mental health had not been a component, there actually would not have been any attempted murder.

That's crazy. I guess we'll really never know for sure though.

Alright, you guys, that is our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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