CW's odd use of language in his media interviews has been noted by pretty much everyone (much of it, I imagine, can be accounted for by stress, discomfort talking on camera and consciousness of guilt) but I'm particularly interested in his use/lack of use of personal pronouns when talking about his wife and daughters. This strikes me as extremely unusual and fundamentally dehumanising.
Even though he has a few opportunities to get this right over three separate news interviews (he's noticeably better in the shorter KDVR one), he still seems to slip up and has to repeatedly correct himself from using impersonal pronouns to choosing the appropriate personal pronouns. He constantly switches back and forth between the two pronoun types when he's describing coming back into the empty house.
Does this fit with the theory of him seeing his family as 'things' or possessions, or distancing himself psychologically from them as human beings? I mean, many people find it jarring when an animal is referred to as 'it' if the sex is known (even though that's very common) but referring to people — your own family — as it/nothing/that? Clearly, these are errors, and he wouldn't normally have used such strange pronoun choices when they were alive, but seems like it might be an example of his true feelings leaking out under pressure.
9News interview:
"And it's just like... there's... it's just like... it has vanished. Like, she's not... like, when I got home yesterday, it was like a ghost town. Like, she wasn't here. The kids weren't here. I have no idea, like, where they went."
[Talks about it being earth-shattering, trying to contact Shanann and then conversation with Nickole before returning to house.]
"Got here, got inside and nuh— [appears to correct himself; about to say 'nothing'?] nobody was here, nuh— nothing."
Denver 7 interview:
"And then walked in the house and nothing. It's vanished. Nothing was here [corrects himself], I mean she wasn't... she wasn't here. The kids weren't here. Nobody was here."
[Talks some more about his family/last night.]
"My kids are my life. I mean those... those smiles [not they or even those children] light up my life. And it's just like, I mean, last night like, during... when they usually eat dinner, it was just like, I miss them, like I mean, I miss telling... 'Hey, you gotta eat that or you're not going to get your dessert.' You know, it's just like, 'You're not going to get your snack after.' I miss that [corrects himself] like... I miss them. You know, cuddled up on their couches — they have like a Minnie Mouse and a Sofia couch that they cuddle up on and watch, you know, Bubble Guppies or something. And it's just like [incoherent] it was tearing me apart last night. And I needed that. I needed that last night."
KDVR interview:
"I came home and it was like I walked into a ghost town. Like, everything [corrects himself]... she wasn't here. The kids weren't here. It was just like... they were here and then they were gone."
