Richard Doss's Attempt to Hire a Hitman to Kill Mate

Richard Doss’s attempt to hire Quentin Goad to kill Eldon Mate is revealed not as a completed attack but as an act Richard tries to shrink into a forgivable error. In conversation with Alex Delaware, he admits paying Goad to murder the “death doctor,” then frames the episode as folly and insists that he learned from it. The contrast between the gravity of the plan and Richard’s insistence that nothing happened makes the attempt a measure of his need to control both events and their meaning.

The admission and its target

Richard’s admission identifies the essential act: he paid Quentin Goad to kill Eldon Mate. The intended victim was the doctor who had helped Joanne Doss die, a source of Richard’s anger after her death. In Alex’s interpretation, Richard felt aggrieved and wanted retribution; the attempt belonged to a conflict in which Richard’s sense of injury could become a license for violence. The evidence establishes the hiring and its intended target, but does not describe an attack carried out by Goad. The distinction matters: Richard’s plan was murderous, even if he later insists that it produced no further action.

The surrounding exchange shows how Richard handles the admission. He speaks of the arrangement as a hypothetical matter and brushes it off as an act of folly, while Alex recognizes that this account is not the whole story. Richard’s explanation does not erase the decision to seek Mate’s death; instead, it makes the effort to minimize that decision part of the event’s significance. He wants the act treated as finished and inconsequential, although its target and purpose remain unmistakable.

A defense taking shape

Richard’s conversation also turns toward diminished capacity. Alex hears the possibility of a temporary-insanity defense in the way Richard discusses his mental state, and Richard acknowledges that such a defense might become relevant. The exchange suggests that legal mitigation is already present in his thinking, rather than an explanation introduced only after the fact. The attempt is therefore accompanied by a second kind of preparation: Richard is not only describing what he says he did, but anticipating how his conduct might be judged.

That preparation complicates his effort to call the episode a mistake. Richard’s account is selective: he characterizes himself as sufficiently impaired to raise temporary insanity, but also presents himself as someone who recognized the error and stopped. Alex does not accept that framing at face value. He notes that Richard had an alibi prepared and was already talking about a defense, details that make the calm dismissal less reassuring. The conversation does not establish the legal outcome or settle every question about Richard’s mental state; it shows him trying to shape the interpretation before the investigation has run its course.

The children and the language of minimization

Richard shifts the discussion from his own conduct to its possible effect on his children. He says that, whatever he can manage about his own peccadilloes, the children need help. The choice of scale is revealing: murder-for-hire is reduced to a personal failing, while the family’s needs become the more pressing subject. Richard’s concern may be genuine, but it also redirects attention from the intended victim and toward the consequences Richard fears within his own household.

When Alex questions the claim that nothing happened, Richard’s insistence grows more emphatic. He recasts the proposed arrangement as well-trained, well-paid babysitting, explaining it as care for the children until matters settle down. The euphemism converts a troubling family arrangement into a practical service, just as his earlier language converts a murder solicitation into folly. In both cases, his wording tries to make an alarming situation manageable by renaming it. The children’s welfare becomes a reason to discuss what Richard needs done around the family, rather than a resolution of what he did to Mate.

Denial, contradiction, and significance

Richard insists that he did not actually do anything, that he learned from his mistake, and that he did not try again. Alex’s response distinguishes the absence of a completed killing from the seriousness of soliciting one: a failed or abandoned plan is not the same as innocence. Richard’s denial concerns repetition and outcome; it cannot undo the original payment or the intended murder. His account thus depends on defining the event narrowly enough to exclude its most consequential fact.

Alex’s assessment hardens as he connects the denial to Richard’s preparations and temper. He sees a ruthless, self-centered man accustomed to control and convinced that he has been wronged. Richard’s anger at Mate is set against his attempt to present himself as repentant and finished with the scheme. This does not prove that he made a second attempt, but it gives Alex reason to distrust the assurance that there was none. The episode’s unresolved tension is between Richard’s claim that he stopped and the evidence of a man already arranging an alibi and contemplating a defense. His attempt to hire Goad therefore remains consequential even without an attack: it exposes how readily grievance became a plan for murder, and how insistently Richard tried to make that plan sound harmless.