S06 E07: Cleaning Out the Basement

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 1 Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse, and this content may be difficult for some listeners.

Speaker 1 If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchhausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

Speaker 1 Once Michelle told Lisa about the podcast, Lisa tried everything she could to stop Michelle from digging.

Speaker 1 She made empty offers to go to therapy and tried guilt-tripping Michelle about how Lisa would lose everything, about how it would hurt not only her and Carrie, but Michelle's sister Angeline as well.

Speaker 1 But Michelle kept looking for answers, which led her to call Dr.

Speaker 1 Jane Ness, who, after making the series of stunning disclosures we heard in the last episode, told Michelle she would do anything she could to help her get to the bottom of what really happened to Colin.

Speaker 1 And after Michelle hung up with Ness, she called me. To say I'm on the edge of my seat, it's like, I'm off my seat.
I'm off my chair. I'm out the door.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, she started out being very as vague as what she could, but then it dawned on me very quickly. I'm sitting there and I'm looking at Brent and I'm just like,

Speaker 3 am I losing my mind? Because this sounds like she's telling me point blank she knew. She kept bringing up the line infection.
She kept saying the line infection didn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 She brought up sepsis.

Speaker 3 His gut problems, she said, I couldn't make sense of the gut problems he kept having.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Both Michelle and I were stunned by what Ness told her, because neither of us thought we'd get these kind of answers from someone who'd been right at the center of Colin's care.

Speaker 1 And while what Ness told her gave Michelle a sense of validation and relief, it also brought into sharp focus the scope of how the medical system had failed her brother.

Speaker 1 He'd seen dozens of doctors during his treatment, and none of them intervened. And the sense of gratitude Michelle felt for Dr.
Ness's frank disclosures quickly curdled.

Speaker 5 Because as a doctor, you'd take an oath to protect kids and she didn't. She didn't protect kids.
She didn't protect my brother. She didn't do her job to the fullest extent.
She didn't report.

Speaker 5 There are probably hundreds. of things she could have done to intervene to save my brother's life and she should have and she did not.
But at the end of the day, she was a doctor.

Speaker 5 And not just her, but like multiple doctors. There were so many people involved in this that should have done their damn jobs and they didn't.

Speaker 5 I had all the empathy in the world for her and just how difficult it is because it's rare that you encounter somebody in this world that is willing to take responsibility to that degree and willing to say it admit like I should have done more.

Speaker 5 My mother tortured my brother

Speaker 5 and these doctors and this hospital went along with it and they co-signed on it and they helped her torture him.

Speaker 5 And the longer it sits with me and the more I think about all these things that that doctor said, the more I am so pissed off.

Speaker 5 Because he shouldn't have died. He shouldn't have died.
He wasn't supposed to die. There was intervention in my sister's case and it did save her fucking life.

Speaker 5 But nobody did that for my brother.

Speaker 5 And honestly, fuck the judges who gave us back. Fuck the judge who decided it was okay for this woman to walk around and have another child in her house.

Speaker 5 Fuck the people who didn't follow up. Fuck the people who didn't bother to listen to outcries and pleads for somebody to intervene.
Dr.

Speaker 5 Ness got a phone call from another doctor and it still wasn't enough for her?

Speaker 1 People believe their eyes. That's something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

Speaker 1 If we didn't, you could never make it through your day. I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

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Speaker 1 All of that information can be found in our show notes. Thanks for listening.
Hey, it's Andrea. It's come to my attention that some of you have been served programmatic ads for ICE on my show.

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I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants.

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Speaker 1 Many of you know that I was an author before I was a podcaster, and those worlds collide with my new audiobook, The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber and which I narrate.

Speaker 1 If you want to dive into these three fascinating cases, you can listen wherever you get your audiobooks. Here's a sample.

Speaker 1 You busy? Alana said, leaning against the doorway of Mike's office. We got another Munchausen by proxy case.
This one is ours. You interested?

Speaker 1 Of course, Mike told her, somewhat taken aback. Wasn't this abuse vanishingly rare?

Speaker 1 Alana deposited the voluminous CPS report about Hope Yabara on his desk. Mike had worked dozens of child abuse cases by this point in his life.
He'd seen children subjected to unimaginable horror.

Speaker 1 He thought he had seen the absolute worst of humanity already, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to discover about hope.

Speaker 1 As I've said in previous episodes, this story has been in the making for years. I met Michelle before I even launched this podcast, way back in 2021.

Speaker 1 This was not long after Michelle had moved back to Georgia and her parents had followed close behind.

Speaker 1 Michelle remembers Carrie and Lisa claiming that because they had financially assisted with her divorce, they were no longer able to afford their home home in Alabama, which, if you'll remember, they were given for free.

Speaker 1 Michelle, her husband Brent, and a now grown-up Angelin went to their parents to help them clear out for the move. And it was during all of this that they made an alarming discovery.

Speaker 4 We were over there like helping them clean out the house and get ready.

Speaker 4 to get all their stuff out really and it was me and my sister and Brent I think were down there and

Speaker 4 I think my sister found them like she came across all these court court records and she was like, what is this? And I knew immediately.

Speaker 4 Like I walk over and there's this like huge like 1500 page, if not more, stack. It was the same stack of records that actually Allie and her mom helped me.

Speaker 6 3,000? 3,000 to 5,000 pages, not 15 pages.

Speaker 1 This is Michelle, her husband Brent, and her friend Allie.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they helped me. put all of that into a computer to read digitally, but they were just paper records that we found that my mom had just held on to for all these years.
And I mean, this is like,

Speaker 4 I think the most recent one of those records were dated like 2003. And this would have been in like, like, it's 2018 that she had just kind of held on to them and like moved states with them.

Speaker 4 Like, all of this also happened in Georgia. This was a house in Alabama.
And so my sister's like, holy crap, what is this? And I'm like, okay, these are all

Speaker 4 the records. These are all like your medical records are in here.
The stuff where they took like DHR or DFACs or whatever. CPS had intervened.
Like, this is all these records.

Speaker 4 And my sister had been asking for like information because she also like had a lot of gaps in her memory.

Speaker 4 And so she had been like questioning mom about like wanting to have a conversation with her about what happened to her and like why it happened and all these things. And my mom just refused to do it.

Speaker 4 So when she found these records, she's like, I'm keeping these.

Speaker 4 Like, and so the first thing on her mind was like getting these out of the house because I really felt like she deserved and like my own records were in there.

Speaker 4 Like some of my, like, my psychological evaluation was in there.

Speaker 1 And I was like, we have a right to look at these and so we grabbed them and stuff them in the back of her trunk this discovery was crucial to michelle and angelin uncovering the truth about their own past because memory for all of us is an unreliable narrator but lisa had worked so hard to bury her past why keep all of this michelle's husband brent has thoughts Have you ever been to like a thrift store?

Speaker 9 It was, it was several years of accumulated stuff. Some of ours was down there.
So a lot of theirs was down there. Our grandparents' stuff was down there.

Speaker 9 All of Colin's stuff, I mean, we're talking down to the wreath that was at his funeral was still down there.

Speaker 9 So, you know, every time we go downstairs to try and find a, I don't know, like a controller for a remote control car, here's this giant, you know, reminder. Yeah, there was two of them.
That's right.

Speaker 9 There's these two giant reminders of like this very, very awful moment.

Speaker 9 His whole his race car bed was still down there, I believe.

Speaker 2 All of his clothes.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, yeah,

Speaker 2 full of stuff

Speaker 9 and she had decided at that point she was getting rid of everything that they couldn't take and there was still a lot of things down there you wanted so that was that was really the background for how we ended up down there with them not there and found the documents looking back on it a little bit of context i wonder if that wasn't entirely lisa's intention for us to find them

Speaker 1 and what do you think

Speaker 1 are some reasons that Lisa might have wanted the girls to find those

Speaker 9 So,

Speaker 9 to avoid the what I'm sure is a commonplace mistake that people make, I'm by no means a psychologist or a psychotherapist, and I'm not qualified to psychoanalyze anybody.

Speaker 9 However, the folks who are qualified, what do they do?

Speaker 9 They go to school and they train and they learn these behaviors, these habits, they see a practical example of what they might encountered in the field.

Speaker 9 I've spent over 10 years now analyzing that woman.

Speaker 9 So, I will give you my genuine thought.

Speaker 9 Lisa is very, very concerned with her ability to control the narrative. That's important to her.

Speaker 9 And if it was intentional,

Speaker 9 or even if it was subconsciously intentional, that was why. It was very much about her controlling the narrative in some way.
It was a little bit more information because Angelin was looking.

Speaker 9 There were conversations had prior to this where Angel had asked questions and they were being kind of froggy on the answer, not really wanting to be 100% accurate or kind of giving her just in general answers.

Speaker 9 And then all of a sudden she finds a treasure drove of information.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 it's hard to imagine.

Speaker 1 I mean, even to your point, I think what strikes me about the story is like the moving with boxes. Like that's not a small amount of things to move.

Speaker 1 And with like the physical copies, it's kind of really different than having it in the copyright.

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 9 Why would you take that

Speaker 9 with you? I mean, you know, legitimately, the worst moment of your life, why would you have such a

Speaker 9 visceral physical manifestation of that in your home?

Speaker 1 Munch housing by proxy abuse is characterized by intentional deception. Perpetrators know what they're doing and they know it's wrong.

Speaker 1 But they are also, as I've learned from my psychologist colleagues, extremely adept at compartmentalization.

Speaker 1 The Museum of Horrors that Lisa kept in her own basement is an almost too perfect metaphor for this.

Speaker 1 Lisa had adeptly buried her past, rebranding herself not as a convicted abuser, but as a heroic advocate. But ultimately, she knows the truth.
She's just been keeping it in a literal box.

Speaker 1 There's also the fact that Munchausen by proxy perpetrators get a thrill from deceiving people. And I've never seen someone pull off quite the coup that Lisa has here.

Speaker 1 Her horrific abuse didn't stop her from getting her kids back.

Speaker 1 It didn't stop her from having another child and then using his death to rebrand herself as a hero and to cozy up to rich and powerful people like Victoria Jackson.

Speaker 1 Maybe these reminders of her past were a point of pride, evidence of just how much she could get away with.

Speaker 1 But Lisa is also the architect of her own downfall, to whatever extent that happens in the wake of this podcast. Getting public records in Georgia is notoriously difficult.

Speaker 1 They have some of the most onerous record laws in the country, and there is no whisper of this case on the internet, at least not that I found.

Speaker 1 Lisa kept this vast archive right in her own home for her daughters to find, and one of those daughters couldn't let it lie.

Speaker 1 And while there's no digital record of her previous crime, Lisa left an extensive history of her potential abuse of Colin in her endless interviews, blogs, and social media posts about him.

Speaker 1 My guess is she assumed no one would ever read all of this. But she guessed wrong.

Speaker 1 And without these two pieces, this puzzle would not have been solvable. I always believed what Michelle was saying, but without corroboration, I couldn't have reported on it.

Speaker 1 And as for the call with Dr. Ness that helped us put the remaining pieces of the puzzle together, well, Michelle didn't call her at her office.
She called her on her cell phone.

Speaker 1 And why did she have that number? Because years ago, Lisa gave it to Brent in case their son happened to need a good neurologist.

Speaker 1 Brent, by the way, wanted to make sure that you knew that, that Lisa knew that. Lisa is a master at finding ways to blame other people for not only her misfortune, but her own misdeeds.

Speaker 1 But if she'd like to blame someone for all of this becoming public, she can, at long last, take a look in the mirror.

Speaker 1 Being a true crime podcaster is a weird job.

Speaker 1 We've covered some cases on this show where things worked as they should, but mostly were a last resort when the system has failed miserably, when sunlight is the only tool left.

Speaker 1 Lisa had a million chances to face the truth before it ended up here. She didn't take them.
And at some point, it's too late for empty promises and guilt trips.

Speaker 1 Not that that stopped her from trying one last time when Michelle told her about the podcast.

Speaker 8 Just please ask.

Speaker 8 Really think about

Speaker 8 that podcast. At At least put a pin in it for now so we can get through some therapy because it is going to make a big difference in all of our lives.

Speaker 2 Yours too, even though you may not see how much of a difference it's going to make.

Speaker 8 Mine, Angela, is yours. It's going to affect Angela's future.
It's going to affect your future. It's going to affect our future.
And your kids' future. And

Speaker 4 future.

Speaker 7 Down the road, we could all be in a better place to face it then if we wanted to.

Speaker 6 That's all I ask at this point is just to really think about that.

Speaker 1 But Michelle did really think about going public with this story. She thought about it for years as she was putting the pieces of her own fractured past together.

Speaker 1 Her mother wouldn't answer her questions, so she found other people to ask, such as Judy, the NICU nurse who had cared for Angelin, whose name Michelle came across in the records from her parents' basement.

Speaker 10 Michelle found me on Facebook and reached out to me and asked if I remembered. And I was like, oh my gosh.
Like I ended up calling them and talking to them. And I said, I have never forgotten you.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I've never forgotten you, ever. They were stunned and very touched to hear that.

Speaker 10 And so we corresponded back and forth through Facebook and through emails for a little bit, probably like a year and a half, maybe.

Speaker 10 And then, of course, I put her in touch with some of the other nurses that really loved her and took care of her, which ultimately led to Angela and her boyfriend coming to visit.

Speaker 10 us and we set up a tour for her at the hospital. We started a neonatal and she got to meet some of her neonatal nurses because neonatal nurses at my hospital stay there forever.

Speaker 10 So they all remembered her. She got to meet all of the doctors that took care of her personally, got to hug them and shake their hand.
And then she got a tour of the PICU.

Speaker 10 And then we all met a few days later and sat around a table and took her to lunch. Now, at that particular time, we had never told her what her mother had done.

Speaker 10 And apparently the way that they found me was they had,

Speaker 10 the mother was moving and they found a box in the basement and it had a whole bunch of the papers from that particular time. So they they didn't really have any idea about all of that.

Speaker 10 And I didn't feel like it was my place to tell Angeline either. So that's when I reached out to Dr.

Speaker 2 Bea

Speaker 10 and put her in touch. And then they started having conversations and I think that's how she got involved with the support group.

Speaker 1 So at long last, Michelle and Angeline met the woman who'd been the villain in their house, Bea Yorker.

Speaker 1 Bea at this time had just joined the board of a brand new nonprofit called Munchausen Support and was heading up the pilot support group for the organization along with its founder, me.

Speaker 1 The three of us recalled this fateful trajectory earlier this year at the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's annual colloquium in San Diego.

Speaker 11 I believe that's how I first even learned that your sister was still alive, that you were okay,

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 I gave the NICU nurse my email information and I said I would love to hear from both of the girls.

Speaker 1 So who did you hear from initially?

Speaker 11 I remember hearing from Angel the first.

Speaker 11 She

Speaker 11 emailed me, so we scheduled a FaceTime and it was very emotional.

Speaker 11 It was just, oh my gosh, my biggest worry, because whenever you work in the field of child protection and you make placement recommendations, you just agonized, did I do the right thing?

Speaker 11 And I had made that home visit. So the last time I saw Angel and you

Speaker 11 was when she was maybe 18 months old at your grandparents.

Speaker 12 See, I never realized you did a home visit on us. Like, I somehow missed that.
Like, I never knew, and I guess that's it, right?

Speaker 12 Like, I never knew for sure what your involvement was in reality versus what I was told your involvement was, right?

Speaker 11 Part of the emotion is that the last time that I had seen Angel was

Speaker 11 she was 18 months old. She had a hole for her trache.
She had to close her hole up to breathe in and to be able to talk, just like when you see people on television who have a trache.

Speaker 11 She had her beautiful little red ringlets. She had a little walker that she used because to your grandparents credit they took a medically fragile child after she'd been in a medical foster home.

Speaker 11 Then the grandparents said we'll step up, we can do this.

Speaker 12 I think B is the reason why my sister's here, absolutely.

Speaker 12 I think

Speaker 12 unfortunately

Speaker 12 there was not a B Yorker around when my brother was sick. And I think that could have greatly impacted how things went with him.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 12 so I feel incredibly fortunate and so lucky. And just I have so much gratitude for you to be here

Speaker 12 and a little bit of grief because I wish my sister should be here too. You know, like she should be on that path of healing.

Speaker 12 And I hope in some world she can hear me where I'm at now and understand that, like, there are people who care. There are people who really deeply care in a way that she's never known.

Speaker 12 And they're here and they will always be here for her.

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Speaker 1 I met Angelin at the same time I met Michelle. I would have loved to have her on this journey with us.
But for reasons we'll get to in a moment, this wasn't possible.

Speaker 1 After Angelyn grew up and moved out of her parents' house, her life got complicated.

Speaker 1 Bea has been in touch with Angelyn all these years as well, and she remembers seeing her in person for the first time as an adult.

Speaker 11 I was in Georgia for a child abuse conference, and so

Speaker 11 we were emailing and I said, can we meet? I'll drive down to Macon. And you said, yeah, I'll drive us up to Macon.

Speaker 4 So we had a lovely lunch together.

Speaker 11 Angel was pregnant. And that was before

Speaker 11 we had made decisions and sort of pressured her to make decisions about putting her unborn baby in a safe place.

Speaker 11 And then I saw Angel again. at the home in Savannah and that was lovely.
She gave me a tour. I got to cuddle with her,

Speaker 11 got to give her gifts and she showed me around and she seemed,

Speaker 11 she seemed in such a good place.

Speaker 1 I really agonized over whether or not to include the details of Angelin's story and importantly, use her real name. I've known Angelin for years and I really care about her.

Speaker 1 When she got pregnant, Bea, Michelle, Judy, and I coordinated to try to help her break free from her parents, finding her a safe place in a maternity home in Savannah to spend her postpartum months.

Speaker 1 But despite our efforts, Angelyn ended up right back with Lisa and Carrie. You may have noticed a child's voice in some of the audio of Michelle's confrontation with her parents.

Speaker 1 That's Angelyn's two-year-old son. He has flaming red hair and is the spitting image of Colin.

Speaker 1 For Michelle, going public was a last resort, and her nephew was a huge motivator in this decision. No one intervened with her brother, and now he's gone.

Speaker 1 And the people who failed him have been able to keep their unforgivable negligence a secret. Until now.

Speaker 1 We've named Angelyn here because as much as what happened to her should be her story to tell, it's a necessary piece of understanding what happened to Colin and what could happen to her own children under Lisa and Carrie's roof.

Speaker 1 Allowing Lisa to bury what she did to Angelin, to rebrand it as a little mental health crisis that she has, in her words, worked so so hard to overcome has allowed her to continue on in this world unchecked.

Speaker 1 Telling this story here is Michelle's attempt and mine to see that history doesn't repeat itself.

Speaker 1 And hopefully if Angelin does listen, she too will know that there are so many people who care about her and people who fought for her.

Speaker 11 One of the confusing things when we all met and we were seeing each other in a support group is that

Speaker 11 I had not known about Colin until that group. Until that group.
And I also realized when you guys saw the medical records that you felt like we had abandoned you after they moved with Colin.

Speaker 11 And let me just tell you,

Speaker 11 NICU nurse, she went up to the state level in Georgia to try and protect Colin. I have a letter that I will share that shows how fiercely

Speaker 11 cared about Colin being born and your parents taking you across state lines.

Speaker 1 Did you know that before?

Speaker 4 No, I knew

Speaker 12 I knew always followed my sister, but I had no idea that she

Speaker 12 tried to intervene with our brother that way.

Speaker 4 Like that is just

Speaker 12 I don't even know how to process that.

Speaker 12 Because it just brings the question, right? Like, there were people, there were, I mean, she was a NICU nurse. She saw who my mother was and the things she did.
Why was her opinion not enough?

Speaker 12 You know what I mean? Like, it just, it makes me grateful there was always somebody truly looking out, even when we didn't know it.

Speaker 12 But at the same time, it makes me furious because there was no follow-up. There was no follow-through.
And like, there was somebody telling them to do this follow-through.

Speaker 12 And still, nobody, you know, cared enough to do anything about it.

Speaker 6 And that just, wow.

Speaker 11 And to me, it speaks of how devious

Speaker 11 parents can be when they cross state lines. They know,

Speaker 11 they know that they cannot be followed.

Speaker 1 We see so many perpetrators cross state lines in these cases.

Speaker 1 And because of these massive holes in the system, their paths, especially with child protective services, often simply evaporate the moment they move. It's maddening.

Speaker 1 In this period of discovery, both girls got to see and reconnect with Judy and fill her in on what else had happened.

Speaker 10 And when they came to visit, after we all went out to lunch, we walked in the park. They told me a lot of stuff, Angeline did and then Michelle did on the phone about

Speaker 10 lots of things that had happened over those years and that they also thought that their mother had been doing some things to their brother.

Speaker 1 And the implications of Lisa's career trajectory after Colin's death were deeply unnerving.

Speaker 10 But the fact that

Speaker 10 how she got to that place by what she did to her children is just, I mean, if I knew someone was having lecturing me in, you know, in a big hall with a whole bunch of other nurses or doctors, and then after the lecture was over, you know, by the way, and then after I heard that, I would think everything that that person just talked to me about is gone.

Speaker 10 They have no credibility, none. I think it's terrifying.

Speaker 1 What Judy is referring to here is Lisa's position as the director of patient advocacy for the Guthy Jackson Foundation, which was established by Bill Guthy and Victoria Jackson, two extremely successful marketing entrepreneurs whose daughter, Allie, was diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica in February of 2008, just a month before Colin.

Speaker 1 By August of that year, the foundation had been established and was up and running. Many families launch nonprofits dedicated to a cause that has personally impacted them.

Speaker 1 But this is no small-scale effort.

Speaker 1 Since its inception, Guthy Jackson has invested more than $70 million into NMO research, funded more than 90 research studies at universities and clinics worldwide, and formed an international panel to revise the diagnostic criteria for NMO, designed and recruited patients for clinical trials, and helped to develop three NMO therapies that were approved by the FDA in 2019 and 2020.

Speaker 1 Patients and caretakers have always played a big role in Guthy Jackson's work.

Speaker 1 They hosted their first patient day in Los Angeles in November 2009, where they brought patients and families to meet with a panel of world-class doctors and experts that they'd rallied to help find better treatments and hopefully a cure for the rare disease that their daughter was diagnosed with.

Speaker 1 Lisa writes about attending this and many subsequent patient days with Guthy Jackson, and she's even featured in video footage of the event.

Speaker 6 My name's Lisa McDaniel.

Speaker 14 I think I know most of you.

Speaker 6 My project right now is called Lunch and Learn. And what I do is I go out and I talk to doctors and hospitals, really anybody who wants to listen to me in my southern tarn, right?

Speaker 6 So the way I started was with my son's pediatrician. I asked her, I told her what I was going to do.

Speaker 6 I asked her about coming into her office and just tell them a little bit more about NMO because as you guys know, sometimes our doctors don't know.

Speaker 6 And as patients and advocates, we have the responsibility to teach our doctors.

Speaker 1 In its early years, the Guthy Jackson Foundation was mostly funded by Victoria and Bill's massive personal wealth.

Speaker 1 Both members of the couple are very successful entrepreneurs, she in cosmetics and Bill as one half of the direct-to-consumer giant Guthy Ranker.

Speaker 1 My fellow millennials will almost certainly remember the ubiquitous proactive infomercials of the 1990s and early 2000s. That's Guthy Ranker.

Speaker 1 Though both parents funded the Guthy Jackson Foundation, it's Victoria who's become the face of the organization, writing two books about the foundation and its origins and giving dozens of interviews on the topic.

Speaker 1 Victoria is easily the most prominent voice on the topic of NMO.

Speaker 1 Lisa appears to have attached herself to this foundation from the moment it existed, and it's easy to see why Victoria made such a compelling target. And Lisa wasted no time in cozying up to her.

Speaker 1 In a post not long after the first patient day, she writes, I was able to talk to Victoria Jackson after Dr. Greenberg.

Speaker 1 She assured me she is willing to do do whatever needs to be done to make sure Colin gets what he needs and goes where he needs to go. She is an amazing woman and she is on a mission to find a cure.

Speaker 1 So lovely, so caring, so compassionate, and a mom to a 16-year-old daughter with NMO. She understands.

Speaker 1 Here's Victoria herself giving Lisa a shout out during their 2018 patient day.

Speaker 14 Lisa McDaniel, who has been with us from the beginning.

Speaker 6 Lisa,

Speaker 2 she

Speaker 1 obviously

Speaker 14 the most painful of losses, her son, Colin, and she has been extraordinary and there for so many patients, and we're so grateful.

Speaker 1 This couple is not only wealthy and powerful, but extremely celebrity-adjacent.

Speaker 1 Guthy launched the career of controversial self-help guru Tony Robbins in the 1990s and helped Cindy Crawford launch her wildly successful makeup line.

Speaker 1 Victoria counts Ellen DeGeneres and Megan Markle, pardon me, Megan Sussex, as close friends.

Speaker 1 DeGeneres has also shown support for her work with Guthy Jackson, as have Rhys Witherspoon, Monica Lewinsky, and Dustin Hoffman, who is also an early donor to the foundation. You get the picture.

Speaker 1 The celebrity connection wasn't lost on Lisa, who shared Guthy Jackson's video testimonials with Witherspoon and Hoffman, and there'd already been some celebrity cameos in her story, with with the NASCAR trip that was gifted to the family where they got to meet several famous drivers.

Speaker 1 And this too is a part of the Munchausen by proxy pattern.

Speaker 1 There are frequent celebrity cameos in these stories, often in the context of visiting with sick children, but also in admiring their heroic mothers. My sister has beloved ex-Seahawk Richard Sherman.

Speaker 1 Megan and Jen Beery, who were featured in the excellent podcast Believe in Magic, had one direction.

Speaker 1 Kathy Bush, who positioned herself as an advocate for healthcare reform and was later convicted for abusing her daughter, got a meeting with no less than Hillary Clinton while she was first lady.

Speaker 1 It was through Guthy Jackson that Lisa also got access to two of the most high-profile doctors in the field who had pioneered the research around NMO, Dr. Dean Wingerchuck and Dr.

Speaker 1 Benjamin Greenberg, who is seen talking to Lisa in a video from one of the patient days and who later consulted with Dr. Jane Ness about Colin.

Speaker 1 And Guthie Jackson gave Lisa a platform to tell Colin's story, or at least her version of it, to tens of thousands of people. His name and his likeness have been used in their fundraising.

Speaker 1 How did this ever happen?

Speaker 4 Because my work does not know about all this shit.

Speaker 2 My work does not know about my past.

Speaker 4 Well, I don't.

Speaker 7 I've tried to tell them before, but they are like, it is not relevant at this point, but they don't know what it is either.

Speaker 7 If they knew what it was, they may not feel that way.

Speaker 4 Well, I don't understand.

Speaker 4 I mean, I just.

Speaker 4 get that. It's really irrelevant, my opinion.
I don't think, I don't understand why they wouldn't.

Speaker 4 No, I mean, I'm not saying what you're saying is not, I'm saying I don't understand why they wouldn't have done a background technique in the first place and then have it clean it before hiring you, but we're past that point.

Speaker 4 It really doesn't matter. I mean,

Speaker 4 I get it, they didn't, but I just feel like that's such an oversight. I just can't comprehend that.

Speaker 1 Lisa's fears that she would lose her job when this went public appeared to have been well-founded.

Speaker 1 Within 24 hours of my contacting them, Lisa and Colin had mostly disappeared from the Guthie Jackson website. And according to Michelle, Lisa had been fired.

Speaker 1 And we received a statement almost immediately from Victoria Jackson, which I'll quote here. First and foremost, I appreciate you reaching out and informing us of this shocking information.

Speaker 1 We had absolutely no knowledge of this. As a result of receiving this troubling information, we are taking all appropriate action effective immediately.

Speaker 1 Our mission to find a cure remains our focus for all patients affected by NMO.

Speaker 1 In a follow-up email about Lisa's claims that they did not run a background check on her, they said this.

Speaker 1 While we follow all applicable local, state, and federal laws in terms of background checks in our hiring process, clearly her being able to join the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation is something that should never have been able to happen, especially given the incredibly sensitive world in which we operate.

Speaker 1 They also reiterated that they're taking steps to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Speaker 1 There's no legal requirement to do a background check, but there are plenty of other, very good reasons to do one, especially for someone who's in a highly sensitive and very public-facing role as Lisa was.

Speaker 1 Guthy Jackson did not directly respond to Lisa's statement that she had tried to tell them, but this is rather moot.

Speaker 1 If Lisa mentioned anything about her past to anyone at Guthy Jackson, it was almost certainly the sanitized and minimized version of the story that she's been telling other people for years.

Speaker 1 Because as she said herself, if they had known what she'd really done, it seems wildly unlikely that they would have been willing to overlook it.

Speaker 1 Hiring Lisa was a bad mistake, but I also see how it happened. The information about Lisa's previous conviction was not very accessible and it didn't come up on a basic background check.

Speaker 1 And the people at Guthy Jackson had known Lisa as a parent and then as a volunteer for the organization for years before they hired her.

Speaker 1 I cannot say that I would have done things differently in their position. I mean, okay, I would have after years of making this show.

Speaker 1 But in the absence of that, what would ever make them think that she was capable of what she'd done?

Speaker 1 According to Guthy Jackson, they never received any complaints about her, which I completely believe. Nothing about Lisa would hint at what she's capable of.
It's exactly why she's so terrifying.

Speaker 1 The reality is that it likely never occurred to Victoria or anyone else to question Lisa.

Speaker 1 But unfortunately, charitable foundations and support groups dedicated to rare diseases are a magnet for perpetrators. Make a Wish has shown up in many of the cases we've covered.

Speaker 1 Then there were the Age C groups in season five that provided support to Sophie Hartman.

Speaker 1 And there are the even more disturbing groups such as MitoAction that provide specific advice on dealing with, quote, false allegations of medical child abuse.

Speaker 1 These groups provide funding, they provide legitimacy, and in the worst case scenario, they provide ways for perpetrators to get information about how to pull off their charade to begin with, and even to communicate with fellow perpetrators and find doctors who won't ask too many questions or will just give them a specific diagnosis, as we saw with Beada Kowalski getting her CRPS diagnosis from Dr.

Speaker 1 Kirkpatrick. So then, it's especially chilling that Lisa had such a prominent role in this foundation for over 12 years, where she was one of only a handful of staff.

Speaker 1 Lisa was entrusted with a lot, including running support groups and networking with patients, caregivers, and in her words, local advocates on behalf of the foundation.

Speaker 1 The damage Lisa has done to this organization and to this entire community feels incalculable.

Speaker 1 The swath of destruction these perpetrators leave in their wake is always massive, but I can't say I've ever seen anything like this case.

Speaker 1 I genuinely feel for Victoria and for all of the people at Guthy Jackson who are now learning this information, particularly the many caregivers and patients who have relied on Lisa over the years for information and support.

Speaker 1 No one understands better than me how Lisa pulled this off. She is a master manipulator.

Speaker 1 Even her younger daughter, who she likely would have killed if she hadn't been stopped, got sucked back in, as Judy reflects on.

Speaker 10 And then the other thing, if you think about it, so in terms of Angelin now grown up, where several years after that meeting, we had another, you know, reach out to me and told me that she was expecting a baby.

Speaker 10 And I got, you know, very involved in that part.

Speaker 10 But thinking about

Speaker 10 that part too, where

Speaker 10 during that six-month period where I would come to visit her at the maternity home and, you know, I'm sitting in the rocking chair, she's on the bed nursing her baby and we're just having these pretty intimate talks about lots of different things.

Speaker 10 I just have a real problem with a lot of the things that we talked about where her mother was desperately trying to get her to move back home and and using the same exact tactics, just in a different way, because now she's dealing with a grown-up daughter, not a vulnerable baby in a crib.

Speaker 10 It was the same stuff. It was just tailored to an adult daughter instead of a baby daughter.

Speaker 1 A lot of the work around Munchausen by proxy is rightfully focused on protecting children. But the reality is that the psychological abuse doesn't stop when someone turns 18.

Speaker 1 Children are groomed by their abuser to remain under their control, as we saw in the the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case, and as my colleagues and I have seen with countless other adult survivors.

Speaker 1 Breaking free from an abusive dynamic with a parent is often a lifelong endeavor for survivors. And over the past few years, Angelyn just keeps slipping deeper back under her mother's spell.

Speaker 1 And as I am recording this, Angelyn has just given birth to her second child, another son. Neither of the fathers are involved.

Speaker 1 Angelyn is entirely isolated with Carrie and Lisa, who was in the the operating room during the birth. This situation is terrifying.

Speaker 10 Lisa knows she has a lot of eyes on her,

Speaker 10 although that didn't stop her before in the hospital. But I'm mostly concerned because this new baby, at least she had and he was six months old before she moved back home.

Speaker 10 And then once, you know, the DeFax report was made, Lisa did not live in that home for a couple months until she was allowed to come back.

Speaker 10 And I guess DeFax felt like everything was fine but that new baby is coming straight home

Speaker 10 to that house brand new baby and Angelin will have two children it's not like she can just worry about one kid so she's going to be split between the two of them

Speaker 10 yeah she's going to be able to watch as carefully as she thinks she will

Speaker 10 I did also

Speaker 10 After the original DFAX report was made, I reached out to the Office of the Child Advocate in Atlanta and spoke to their senior investigator who put me in touch with the supervisor in the county that they are living in.

Speaker 10 And I had a long conversation with her about a lot of things and never received any kind of response back after that.

Speaker 10 But I put it out there so

Speaker 10 she knows about it. And the Office of the Child Advocate, that's a whole different story.
She's a wonderful person and I've worked with her on a number of cases when I was working at the hospital. And

Speaker 10 so she's it's on her radar.

Speaker 1 Angelin is by all accounts a loving mother but living in the house with Lisa is like moving in with a grizzly bear and hoping the baby gate that you put up will protect your children.

Speaker 1 Lisa almost killed Angelin and she should never have been allowed to be with children again. The lack of eyes on Colin almost certainly led to his death.

Speaker 1 To be honest, reporting on a story with stakes this high has been stressful, but to my great relief, I am not alone this time, as another journalist is covering the story as well.

Speaker 1 Way back in the fall of 2023, I got a very nice email from a decorated television journalist in Augusta. Meredith Anderson has won an Edward R.

Speaker 1 Murrow Award, an Emmy Award, and too many others to list here. In her email, she told me that she had recently found the podcast and binged it on a long car ride.

Speaker 1 She said that she knew I was feeling pretty disenchanted with the media.

Speaker 1 I was covering the Kowalski case at the time, so yes, but that she found my work really compelling and that I should let her know if I ever had a case in Georgia.

Speaker 1 I called her up the next day and told her, boy, do I ever have a case in Georgia.

Speaker 1 Communities like Augusta can count themselves lucky that they have journalists like Meredith looking out for them.

Speaker 1 Local journalism, which has all but disappeared from too many places, is one of the most effective ways to hold power to account.

Speaker 1 Meredith has covered everything from hurricanes to the defrauding of military families and, crucially for this story, a number of cases where systemic failures led to the deaths of abused children.

Speaker 1 So, in May, several months after our initial trip to Georgia, we headed back to film with Meredith and her team. Meredith and I sat down with Michelle for two and a half hours.

Speaker 15 Do you think she

Speaker 6 caused his death?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 How long did it take you to come to that

Speaker 15 conclusion?

Speaker 4 I don't know that

Speaker 4 I don't know that I said it out loud until the last five years.

Speaker 4 You know, I

Speaker 4 wondered and I questioned.

Speaker 4 He died in March 2012. My daughter was born in August 2011.
So I was very postpartum and I was very, like, very young mom

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 didn't have the best relationship with my child's father at the time and like just

Speaker 4 was really questioning everything about myself and so it was like

Speaker 4 I guess my mind was so twisted up and just so gaslit my whole life that I mean one day I would think

Speaker 4 there had to have been something to it like there's no way that he just like died from this with no

Speaker 4 without her doing something.

Speaker 4 And then the next day it would be like, how could I ever think that way about my own mother?

Speaker 4 I mean you know it was just back and forth and this like deep internal struggle and there were parts of me that like legitimately

Speaker 4 held a lot of guilt for even feeling that way about her

Speaker 4 you know and just really I mean when you don't have that information and you don't know what to call it and you don't have words for it and all you know is like and there was a while where I started digging Like I turned 18 and I got out and I moved out and

Speaker 4 I started digging.

Speaker 4 I mean and I was like googling everything I could and looking people up on Facebook and went to like Telfair County and dug up the old newspaper article of it just to like I was looking for any answer I could

Speaker 4 because I knew at least at that point that my mom was a liar.

Speaker 4 You know I knew that like her version of events weren't exactly true but I didn't really know what the truth was either and I couldn't trust anybody.

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Speaker 1 We returned to Hazelhurst, this time camera ready, and spent a long day filming with Meredith and her crew. Shout out to her producer Estelle and her cameraman Hector.

Speaker 1 And once again to the fine folks of Village Pizza. Our PA for the day, Michelle's husband Brent, made an emergency run and brought back approximately 100 pies.

Speaker 1 Michelle has come a long way since I first met her, and even in the months since we first began recording this podcast.

Speaker 1 So it was such a beautiful full circle moment to hear her tell Meredith about this journey.

Speaker 4 I'm very thankful

Speaker 4 for the support group and the therapy and like,

Speaker 4 I think it's of utmost importance.

Speaker 4 Like I really, I really don't believe I would have been able to like move on with my life and not be like stuck in that just searching for answers because I mean, that's what, how can you not?

Speaker 4 How can you not look at all of this chaos and not want some sort of answer as to like how this happened or what happened or could we, could we have done more? And like just to have...

Speaker 4 to sit in that support group and watch all of these people

Speaker 4 just nod along and get it and not have to like explain in a hundred hundred different ways.

Speaker 4 And like again, like you're saying, like there are people who are not going to understand like why I had any relationship with my mom ever, you know, but like to hear all these other people

Speaker 4 that just get it

Speaker 4 that just understand like what that does to your brain and how that makes you like doubt everything about yourself

Speaker 4 and everybody around you.

Speaker 15 Is that why you're speaking out?

Speaker 15 Like, are you wanting to give that to somebody else

Speaker 4 I think that's a huge reason why I'm doing it there's two reasons so that's like a big one is I know what that was like for me and I know how just like

Speaker 4 everything in my life felt like it felt fell into place during those support groups and like just hearing it and like how it just all started to fall into place and click and it was like I could breathe.

Speaker 4 It was like literally for the first, it was like taking a deep breath for the first time because it all made sense now and it was horrible like the reality of it is horrible and awful

Speaker 4 but at least it made sense at least there was like other people on the side of this instead of just being this lost girl in this town where nobody understands anything and the rumors and like everybody has their own opinion but another really big reason is because my brothers should still be here

Speaker 4 My brothers should be here and

Speaker 4 I'm fully convinced that there are other children that are still slipping through the cracks, that are still being harmed and that are still dying at the hands of perpetrators, at the hands of doctors who don't report.

Speaker 4 And if I can save even one kid,

Speaker 4 even one kid, it's worth it.

Speaker 1 I know what it is to grieve someone who's still living, to go through the years-long process of fully understanding the horror of what they've done.

Speaker 1 Every interaction I've had with Michelle since we picked up the mics for this season has told me that she's doing this for the right reasons, and it certainly hasn't made her life easy.

Speaker 15 But she lives down the street from you, right?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 15 how do you coexist?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 4 since I told her I was doing the podcast,

Speaker 4 very little communication.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 4 a lot of it. There's a lot of like nuance

Speaker 4 that I

Speaker 4 won't get into just for the sake of my kids.

Speaker 4 But I'll just say

Speaker 4 she has a very

Speaker 4 keen way of getting inside your head

Speaker 4 and threatening you without threatening you, if that makes sense.

Speaker 15 It does.

Speaker 4 But the other piece of like how hard it's been is like

Speaker 4 Realizing that my brother could have been saved that he should have been saved and like realizing that

Speaker 15 there could be some pretty heavy consequences to speaking out

Speaker 4 and oh, yeah

Speaker 15 Andrea and I have talked what if somebody opens an investigation into Collins' death?

Speaker 15 We've kind of have you thought of all the possible scenarios of what happens

Speaker 15 when this is released into the world?

Speaker 4 I don't think there's a scenario I haven't thought about.

Speaker 4 I think Andrea and I have talked about the podcast part of it for years now.

Speaker 4 I've talked to my therapists about it for well over a year. I mean, there were sessions where we would, I would literally just say,

Speaker 4 okay, I just need to talk about all the possibilities.

Speaker 4 And I have examined it every way I know how to.

Speaker 4 And ultimately,

Speaker 4 I'm not doing this to hurt her.

Speaker 4 I'm not doing this to ruin her life.

Speaker 4 I'm not doing this to go after her because I'm capable of feeling more empathy for her than she's capable of feeling for me.

Speaker 4 But at this point,

Speaker 4 I think it's about saving kids. And that may sound really dramatic, but like, my brother should literally be here.
And he's not.

Speaker 4 And there were so many people who could have stepped in who should have stepped in and it was their literal job to step in and they didn't

Speaker 4 and I there's a lot of like talk about my children's about proxy in the media there's a lot

Speaker 4 and I think it's really really important to show people what happens when you don't step up and you don't report and this goes unnoticed And it's looked over and it's given a million justifications and reasons why you shouldn't.

Speaker 4 This is what happens.

Speaker 15 There's talk about it, but there's not a lot.

Speaker 15 There's a lot of talk about the other side of it, about medical kidnapping.

Speaker 15 The landscape for that right now is, I mean, just Georgia,

Speaker 15 there's been laws passed that kind of give parents more leeway, parents more rights, parents

Speaker 15 They're believing, I guess when it comes down to investigations, you believe the parents sometimes more than the kids or the child abuse physicians. And so do you think now is an important time

Speaker 15 to speak up? Especially since, I mean, here we are in Georgia where

Speaker 15 it's almost like things are getting harder now for these cases. They're already hard enough to be prosecuted, but

Speaker 15 it's getting even harder.

Speaker 15 And I don't think enough people see real people

Speaker 15 talking about the real consequences.

Speaker 1 And I know a lot of people who work as frontline, you know, in child protection or who are child abuse pediatricians or who have, you know, those positions, they understand that it's really traumatic to take a child away from their parents.

Speaker 1 And they understand that that alone causes harm. But there are times when it has to be done.
And I think overall we're totally losing sight of that.

Speaker 1 And we're being asked to sympathize with the parents' experience of being accused of child abuse, of having to go through a court battle, of potentially losing their children.

Speaker 1 We're asked to sympathize with that without presenting what that child has actually endured.

Speaker 1 I am guessing that many of you are feeling pretty angry about the failures of the child protection apparatus in Georgia after hearing this story.

Speaker 1 But as we allude to here, things are unfortunately headed in the direction of making it harder to intervene in cases of suspected child abuse, thanks in part to the high-profile Hernandez case.

Speaker 1 This is a complex story that I may cover in a future episode, but the thing to know about it for right now is that this case and the fervor over it has led to passing what's known as Ridge's Law, which grants parents the legal right to obtain a second medical opinion when suspected of child abuse.

Speaker 1 This law might sound benign and sensible, but in practice, laws like this prioritize parental rights over child safety and create additional barriers to emergency protective orders by slowing down the process.

Speaker 1 In the hands of an abuser, it gives them an opportunity to shop for a favorable opinion, a more thriving industry than you might imagine.

Speaker 1 And it further erodes trust in child abuse pediatricians, despite their lower error rates in diagnosing child abuse.

Speaker 1 And so, I think what Michelle's doing is so important because

Speaker 1 Colin isn't here

Speaker 1 to say what he went through.

Speaker 1 But Michelle watched it, other family members watched it. We have so much information about what he endured.
And right now, the only person telling his story is Lisa, the person who did it to him.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 it's an exact parallel, right? Like we're letting his abuser own his story.

Speaker 6 And that's not right.

Speaker 4 Not just own it, but live a life.

Speaker 1 Live because of it.

Speaker 1 I mean, Lisa's entire entire career is based off of

Speaker 1 her experience as a caregiver for her son, and she has built an entire brand and career off of that.

Speaker 15 Well, if I didn't know anything about her and I went to her Facebook page,

Speaker 15 one of the top pictures is Colin and

Speaker 15 almost like a memorial to Colin.

Speaker 15 So even as someone who doesn't know anything about her,

Speaker 15 it's right there as like part of her identity. What she presents to the world, what she publicly puts to the world attached to her name on her personal page is a memorial to Colin.

Speaker 1 Well, and she's done interviews about it. She presents through her work to doctors about this.
She's had this job for 12 years.

Speaker 1 The number of people who have talked to her and that's been their point of contact. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And now they're going to find out that, I mean, this, like she has done,

Speaker 1 quite aside from all of her other misdeeds, I mean, she has done irreparable damage to this community that has coalesced around this disease.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 the betrayal of finding out, I mean, can you imagine?

Speaker 1 you that person that you leaned on for support and that person who gave you the information and that person maybe referred you to the doctor that helped her do it.

Speaker 1 After a long day of filming in Hazlehurst, we turned in for the night before heading out for our second day of filming in Valdosta.

Speaker 1 For the duration of this season, I'd been wondering when and how to reach out to Lisa.

Speaker 1 I'd spent so many hours reading her words, listening to her voice in interviews, and talking to some of the people who'd known her best. I felt like I knew her better than I wanted to.

Speaker 1 But much as it is for the detectives to investigate these cases, I knew I had to get the timing right. I needed to know everything I possibly could before I spoke to Lisa.

Speaker 1 Trying to get the truth out of a pathological liar is complicated. But by May, when we took our second trip to Georgia, we were coming up on our deadlines.
So it was now or never.

Speaker 15 Speaking of Lisa, we're about to go knock on her door. Do you think she's going to answer?

Speaker 15 I mean, do you think she's going to be receptive?

Speaker 1 I truly don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure I would be surprised by either outcome. I think I could absolutely see her being saying,

Speaker 1 you know, I'm not going to talk to you

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 your coverage is going to be so biased. She knows the podcast is coming.
I suspect she'll kind of connect the dots that they're related, but...

Speaker 1 I think it will be interesting because the other thing about Lisa is she likes attention and she likes the opportunity to bend the narrative in her direction.

Speaker 1 So I don't know how that equation will play out kind of in real time when she's faced with that decision.

Speaker 1 That's next time on the season finale of Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 1 Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dumlop. Our senior and executive producer is Mariah Gossett.
Our producer is Taj Easton.

Speaker 1 Assistant Editor and Associate Producer is Greta Stromquist. Research and Fact-Checking by Erin Ajayi.
Engineering and Mixing by Robin Edgar. And Administrative Producing by Nola Carmouche.

Speaker 1 Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, Soundsnap, and Slipstream Media.

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