Dr. Tristin Engels

It's strategic.

And it shows how expertly she exploited the very vulnerabilities that made her tenants trust her in the first place.

And it's more disturbing when you consider that Dorothea herself knows what it's like not to be cared for, to fend for yourself, to live on cots and be dependent on others for your next meal.

So someone like Dorothea would experience that as a direct threat to her survival.

It makes her feel exposed and betrayed, which are two emotions that instantly heighten her hypervigilance.

So when she's fearful, she becomes tactical because in her worldview, losing control of one person can feel like losing control of everything, her whole operation.

that's the point where she converts fear into justification for elimination, which in this case is murder.

It's also important to consider the entitlement that's driving her because she provides care, even if it's purely performative.

She likely believes she's owed some kind of blind loyalty and unquestioned gratitude as a result.

So anytime someone challenges her, she isn't just threatened, she gets enraged.

In her mind, undermining her authority is a violation, and that's something that she needs to correct.

I think her decision to let officers in her home or even give them a shovel to dig up her yard is her once again performing.

I think she was betting that this performance of cooperation would override suspicion.

There's also an element of psychological misdirection.

When someone invites you to search the very place that you should be suspicious of, it can be disarming.

Like, surely she wouldn't let us dig if she had anything to hide.

But frankly, there's a degree of denial or naivete woven in as well.

This was her domain, a world she had engineered and managed without interference, and I believe that led her to miscalculate the risk of this and overestimate her cleverness.

It's as if she believed she could manage the investigators the same way she managed all of her tenants and everyone else.

Dorothea is a master at rewriting her story and herself.