S06 E06: Dr. Ness

True Story Media

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

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

So, it's one thing for me to have all these thoughts about like what happened to my brother and if

if mom had a hand in it and knowing that like on paper, it's likely that she really did.

I guess I haven't had to like

process it in a real

tangible way

and

having other people like talk about it and care and like really think these things like experts, professionals, not just me.

I've always felt like of course you think that way, you're biased.

And like, even though logically, like, I know on paper, like, I know what it looks like, right?

But like, having other people look into it and also want to know the answers and also want to know the truth.

And it just, it's just a lot because there's no coming back from that.

There's no relationship I can have with my mom if we get the answers that I'm terrified of.

It's like losing my brother all over again, knowing that something could have been done,

but also losing

my a mom

on top of it.

For over a decade, Michelle has lived in a liminal space around her brother's death, feeling in her bones something she could never quite say aloud.

But as we've revisited this all in depth for the show, as we put together the thousand-piece puzzle, the picture began to come clear.

Suspecting something is different than knowing it.

Once you have the details, you come to know the devil within them, and you have to face her head on.

As we gathered more answers, we had new questions.

Namely, given the innumerable red flags that he was being abused, including Lisa's previous conviction for medical child abuse, how did no one else see it?

How did his doctors not suspect that there was something very wrong?

Or did they?

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.

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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All of that information can be found in our show notes.

Thanks for listening.

Many of you know that I have a new book out this year called The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, which I co-authored with friend of the show, Detective Mike Weber.

Did you know that it's also an audiobook that I narrated?

All true.

You can find the Mother Next Door Ears Edition anywhere you find audiobooks.

Now, here's a sample.

Unlike with Hope, there was no carefully crafted facade of a loving mother doing her best.

Brittany's abuse was in plain sight, observable by all who interacted with her.

But no one knew what to do.

It seemed impossible to prove that Alyssa didn't have these medical issues.

And after all, why weren't the doctors doing something?

But even if people in Britney's life suspected she was mistreating Alyssa, they had no idea what she was truly capable of.

And the darkness in Brittany would shock them all.

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In the last episode, we covered the lengthy, torturous medical odyssey Colin McDaniel endured leading to his eventual death in March of 2012, all of which was documented in explicit, gruesome detail by his mother, Lisa.

And when we lay it all out, none of it adds up.

As Michelle has learned more about Munchausen by proxy over the years, these discrepancies haunted her.

And eventually, she got up the nerve to call the one person who might be able to tell her once and for all what actually happened to her brother, Dr.

Jane Ness from Children's of Alabama.

I don't know how much you can talk to me or how much you're willing to talk to me.

I really just wanted to know like a couple of things because like I know that from my understanding of NMO, and you're the daughter here, so you tell me, but from my understanding of it, like it's super duper rare.

And the more I've kind of looked into it,

It's not just rare, but it's like rare for men.

It's more rare in white people.

It's more rare, especially for kids.

And then I know mom had said some things about some of his antibody tests being negative until after.

Some of them had been negative and there had been one that had been positive, which I never

saw because it was done someplace else, I think in Texas.

So I don't have results.

So do I have definitive proof of what he has?

No,

because I don't have the test results.

A note here that both Michelle and Dr.

Ness live in one-party consent states, Georgia and Alabama, respectively.

And Michelle recorded this conversation legally and of her own volition, and then later shared it with our team.

We have edited portions of this call for clarity and length.

We made numerous attempts to contact Dr.

Ness for comment, and by the time of this recording, had not received a response.

So back to the call.

This alleged positive test that Ness is talking about here is something that we did manage to get to the bottom of.

More on that in a bit.

But as Ness says here, she did not see any positive tests for NMO, including this one.

So what did Colin have?

We've seen

probably maybe a thousand some kids with various flavors of what we call the myelinating disease.

And there are a bunch of mystery kids out there.

He's not the only one.

You've got some company of like, man, I wonder what that kid really had.

And he's in that club.

What did he really have?

Lisa blogs about the questions surrounding Colin's NMO diagnosis in the final year of his life.

And indeed, thanks to her own dedicated chronicles, we can see for ourselves that even in Lisa's own words, a number of Colin's most severe symptoms didn't fit with an NMO diagnosis, which NASCLOC as well.

He had a bunch of weird things,

like his gut didn't work, which I never, I didn't even know if there are other kids who have it.

I don't know what the hell he had.

But yeah, it is a lot to process.

And even now, I mean, I wish I could give you a better answer because he kind of haunts me.

Colin's unexplained gastrointestinal issues and his repeated septic infections don't match with NMO.

These symptoms are, however, nearly ubiquitous in Munchausen by proxy cases.

And furthermore, Lisa had been caught on video contaminating her daughter's line, so it's not a huge leap to think that she might be doing it here.

Munchhausen by proxy is a compulsive behavior with a distinct pattern, and Lisa fits it to a T.

As we've discussed previously, Lisa's move to Alabama was very likely precipitated by questions and or reports from the doctors in Savannah.

So had she just been able to escape her past by going to Ness?

To be frank with you, I was told through the grapevine that you had found out about some of my mom's background and past.

Yeah,

I knew about stuff, you know, with Angelin.

And, okay, so we never know a whole family.

We never know the whole thing.

Right.

But, you know, I think he had real disease.

What it was, I do not know.

And beyond that, I can never prove that,

you know, there, you know, it's something we always, I mean, I don't,

I think, you know, do you have real disease?

Was it made better or worse by anything?

Listen, I'm never going to know.

You might know, but I'm never going to, you know, and there's, you know, we're never going to, you know, but I think there, you know,

you know,

I mean, and that's, you know, it's going to be something, you know.

It's, you know, I'm going to moll over.

We're all, I'm going to moll over forever.

So to recap, a five-year-old child is diagnosed with a vanishingly rare disease, for which he is then subjected to four years of grueling and invasive treatment, a disease that he likely didn't have.

But Ness thinks he had a, quote, real disease.

What disease?

No idea.

The only person reassured by this is maybe Ness herself.

It's generally impossible to disprove that someone has any disease, which is why that's not how Munchausen by proxy is diagnosed.

You don't rely on ruling out every possible disease a child could have if there is ample evidence that a child is being harmed and that their life is at risk.

Colin could have had some real disease.

It seems highly unlikely at this point that it was NMO, but we can't rule that out.

But even if Colin did have NMO, it doesn't make any sense that that's what killed him.

While NMO is not considered a fatal diagnosis per se, there is a risk of death from complications.

So what do we know about how people die from NMO?

According to published case studies, patient deaths happened because of complications of an attack, the most common being respiratory failure due to severe lesions on the brainstem or spine, or because of a secondary infection, which they are at a higher risk of because of immunosuppressive therapy.

And the literature emphasizes that the risk of death is greatly heightened when patients get a delayed diagnosis and don't have access to care, neither of which was true for Colin.

It's also dramatically higher in patients with African ancestry, who, despite making up 40% of the cohort in one study, accounted for 90% of the deaths.

But Colin's death wasn't the result of an acute attack or a complication from one, but rather happened over a period of three months where he wasted away in hospice care.

It didn't line up with anything I could find in the literature.

We also know that Colin was the child of a perpetrator who'd been proven in court to be capable of putting her other child's life at risk.

By the time I listened to this call, I'd been researching this case for months, and it was making me crazy wondering how doctors didn't see what looked like such an obvious abuse pattern.

But it turns out, actually, they did see it.

Whenever a kid comes in with a line infection, and again, It's really hard to prove.

We've definitely had kids who've come in with strange infections like like his gut not working, and what the hell is that all about?

I don't know.

The gastrophorase, again, but it's like, okay, could you make that happen?

The line infections are the biggest things I worried about, and also because it's been a habit, you know.

Yeah, it happened a lot, and you two guys did as well.

That was the biggest thing I worried about

is did that happen before?

Did he come in septic a couple of times?

Yes, that's the same thing that happened to my sister at once.

That's how they caught my mom, was because my sister kept going to the hospital in septic shock.

He had a couple of those

and that

remember the specific number of times.

I remember a couple of times he was fairly sick.

It's something, you know, that I definitely, because again, it be, you know, like talking about the ACU.

Is there anything, is it, does this make sense?

Could this be caused by anything else?

What else, you know, what else are we missing here?

Medical child abuse was always a concern of mine, and it's really...

It's really hard to prove.

I probably don't think about it enough in

other kids.

The other thing is I probably don't think about drug abuse enough.

Those are kind of my, where I think of like my weaknesses.

Yeah.

Are that I'm giving people the benefit of the doubt, you know, benefit of the doubt more than I should.

I am more shocked by this phone call than perhaps anything I have come across in my years of work on this show.

As I researched this case, I just kept thinking, how can they not know?

And here's where my own bias towards doctors shows, I guess.

I've seen so many doctors in these cases put their careers, reputations, and even their personal safety on the line to intervene when a child's life is in danger.

Dr.

Sally Smith in the Maya Kowalski case, Dr.

Rebecca Wiester in the Sophie Hartman case, Dr.

Elizabeth Woods, who I believe saved my own niece's life.

But I forget.

that all doctors aren't that brave, that some of them know and say nothing.

And those doctors I mentioned above, they weren't dealing with convicted perpetrators.

And Ness, for however much she equivocates in this phone call, she knew who Lisa was.

We were able to corroborate through another source that a Savannah doctor reached out to Ness directly.

I knew there were charges for us, but I don't think I knew much beyond, you know, exactly what the consequences were.

Like I said, I started doing some digging through the years and it's never added up to me and it's never made sense.

And I guess my question for you then is like, knowing all of that, like, I mean, you said you guys talked about it, but like, were there tests that

being ran or not being ran that could have, it just, it, and I'm not trying to be rude, it just feels like there could have been, there's more that could have been done that wasn't done, and he slipped through the cracks and now he's dead because of it.

That is a fair,

I mean, I think that's a fair question.

You know, did we, did we sort of overlook something in plain sight?

Did I, did I, yeah, did I cause the death of a child?

Your question is fair.

Did I miss something?

Did I, yeah, did I cause the death of your brother?

By trying to explain stuff, giving your mom too much of the benefit of the doubt.

Believe me, I'm going to go to my grave never being 100% sure that I did 100% right by him.

Michelle's bravery on this call and throughout this whole process has been staggering.

I am in awe of her.

I was reminded listening to this exchange about my conversation with cult expert Rachel Bernstein, which we aired a few months back.

I asked her why some people are so resistant to seeing the truth, even when they're being presented with extraordinarily compelling evidence or definitive proof.

She said that it comes down to whether or not someone possesses the emotional courage to look at something that's so hard to accept.

Michelle has an extraordinary amount of emotional courage.

And as for Dr.

Ness, I suppose we can be grateful that she located whatever sliver of it she does have to have this conversation with Michelle.

I just wish she'd found it when it really mattered.

I'm willing to take responsibility

for

being blind.

or being blinded because

you know I could have protected him if I did not because again yeah the most pathological people are the most charming.

The nicer they are, the less you can trust them.

It haunts me.

I mean, I'm not going to lie.

Lisa is responsible for whatever abuse she subjected her children to.

But she didn't do it alone.

She couldn't have.

Doctors signed off on all of these treatments.

Doctors prescribed the many medications Colin was taking.

Doctors signed off on hospice care for a child who didn't have a terminal illness.

There are so many doctors who get caught up in these cases who are not to blame.

Doctors who were just doing their jobs and were pulled in by a perpetrator who exploited their trust and the fractured medical system they operate in.

Doctors in all 50 states are required by law to report a reasonable suspicion of abuse, not to provide evidence of abuse.

That's the job of CPS and law enforcement.

As I combed through Lisa's accounts of Collins' medical treatments, I noticed, as I mentioned previously, the crossover crossover between the reported symptoms he was having and the potential side effects of the medications he'd been prescribed.

And that's to say nothing of any other possible substances Lisa could have introduced as she did with her daughter.

Ness evidently also had this thought.

You know,

I think he came to me once.

In fact, I remember one of the weird situations.

And

because I think there was like, hey, what's going on with him?

And I think there was some

kind of strain that he got weirdly sick and had one of these weird spells that, again, were like, what's this?

Can any drug make your kid do this?

And I remember that was like, is that real?

Not real?

And

what am I missing?

Yeah, it's,

yeah, it is.

Yeah, you can get, yeah, I think more enmeshed.

inadvertent you know unintentionally or but

again it's like yeah that I could see how the little claws stick in yeah fast past well I want you to know wholeheartedly I'm not doing this because I want to put my mom in jail or anything it's not about that but like just hearing you I want you to know that I I don't think you killed him

but my mom used you could have prevented

definitely my mom used you as a tool and that's what's so important

yeah going forward

absolutely you know you suffered a lot I mean I'm proud of you for going through this.

I mean, it took a lot of courage for you to call me.

I felt like I was going to throw up sending you that text message, so I appreciate that.

Not to let Ness off the hook even a little bit here, which I'm not inclined to do, but the current climate doesn't exactly encourage doctors to report, especially in the wake of Kowalski v.

Johns Hopkins, the lawsuit against Rady Children's, and countless others that have not made headlines.

And perpetrators are very good at finding doctors whose boundaries are a little more malleable than they ought to be something michelle has some notable memories of with ness as she told us on one of our drives around her hometown um i remember her being in and out and around like when he was on hospice and like not in just like a doctor way like i distinctly remember her being in there like cleaning my mom's oven because we had there were people in and i didn't even live there at the time but like i would we would go up and visit and there were people just like in and out of the house all of the time.

And her being on the floor in my mom's kitchen scrubbing the oven.

So, and they were very good friends.

This closeness is mirrored in Lisa's blog, where Ness is portrayed as the one sainted doctor who truly understands Colin's complex illness and who Lisa constantly praises and depicts as going out of her way to help them.

Ness doesn't quite remember it this way.

I was under the impression this whole time that you and my mother are still close friends.

No, no, see, I think that is, you know, and I guess that may be a error, you know,

you know, we certainly, you know, I mean, Curse is kind of the whole Gussie Jackson thing, you know, I mean, it's sort of limited.

I mean, so buddy, buddy, I mean, more, yeah, and again, you know, is that a red flag?

Probably.

If you are feeling exhausted by Dr.

Ness's mental gymnastics here, just know that the combined two plus hours of the two calls Michelle shared with us contained an Olympic amount.

There is no world in which what Dr.

Nest is describing here doesn't constitute a reasonable suspicion of abuse.

So how did Dr.

Jane Ness, an experienced and respected physician, get pulled into all of this?

I spoke to child abuse pediatrician and clinical professor of pediatrics from the University of Washington, Dr.

Kenneth Feldman, about the research he and his colleagues have done on the subject.

You mentioned in the paper that these perpetrators are extremely adept at pushing the boundaries of providers and also, you know, sort of building connections with some providers, turning them against the other providers.

Yeah, can you talk about just even sort of a more general way of just like the importance of pediatricians maintaining good boundaries with parents of their patients?

Yeah, I

sort of think of these cases as the mom who comes to a new doctor and says, my child has all of these terrible problems, and none of the doctors have been able to figure out what's going on.

But I hear you're a great doctor, and here's some cookies to seal our bargain.

That

you're starting out the interaction by crossing boundaries.

I think of these caretakers with the kids in the hospital all the time, that the caretaker sometimes sort of becomes the cruise director for the parents of other

more short-term sick children in the hospital, again, seeking attention there.

And the caretakers often establish social interactions, say with the nursing staff or physicians for that matter,

where they're socializing outside of the hospital or exchanging gifts that are inappropriate.

So we pass from a professional interaction to a social interaction

going on.

In my attempts to unravel what happened to Colin McDaniel, Lisa's own writings, all 170,000 words of them, have been instrumental in putting together this whole disturbing picture.

And writings like this from perpetrators play a key role in not only investigating Munchausen by proxy cases, but also in spotting red flags for this abuse to begin with.

This is also something that Dr.

Kenneth Feldman has researched, along with Anna Brown, who co-authored this paper, and other social worker colleagues who were some of the first people to clock this phenomenon.

Characteristics, we found that the blogs typically sought sympathy from the readers of the blogs, and these were public blogs that were seeking sympathy from the general public.

And in doing so, they tended to focus on the trials and tribulations of the caretakers rather than on the illnesses or the problems of the child.

While Lisa's blog includes plentiful and graphic details about Colin's medical problems, there is a heavy emphasis on how it is affecting her, her battles with insurance, her heroic search for answers, the stress and sacrifice she makes for Colin, and how no one can understand what she's going through.

And reading this, you don't get to know Colin.

After reading this blog multiple times, I would struggle to tell you anything about what he is actually like.

All we hear about is his suffering.

And the few times Lisa recounts anything Colin actually says or does, it's always to reinforce this suffering.

He's more of a symbol of Lisa's pain than a human being.

I have have a daughter who's currently six and a half.

This period of time is when a kid's personality starts to really take shape.

They say and do the most extraordinary things, especially as they learn to read and write and build friendships.

It's one of the miracles of being a parent, watching your kid's full self start to emerge.

But Colin never has a good day.

He never gets to just be a kid.

There is also the question of the intended audience that Dr.

Feldman mentions here.

Because I thought many times, who is reading this?

While Lisa's family members were likely reading some of it, the sheer volume and the gruesome nature of it makes it hard to believe that they read all of it.

This would be extremely upsetting to read about someone you love.

The blog shows as having more than 150,000 views.

I'm not exactly sure how those are tabulated over time, but its reach had obviously gone way beyond people that Lisa knew in real life.

This is also evidenced by the comments on the blog, some of which are clearly from people who don't know them personally.

Lisa also frequently mentions about a dozen other sick children and links to their Caring Bridge blogs.

One of these is a family she does know, but the rest are a mystery, which makes me very curious about Lisa's online activity during this time.

Lisa's descriptions of Colin's suffering are graphic, and she also includes a large number of photos of Colin in the hospital, in a wheelchair, and in various states of medical distress.

We frequently saw that medical details that normally a family wouldn't put out for general information and view would be put out on the blog.

We also saw a lot of what I considered medical pornography, where the child, often in a partially dressed state or in a hospital gown partially covering them, would be displayed in photographs with the more tubes and lines the child had the better and at times the caretaker would have the stethoscope around their neck or be in medical garb as if they were the medical provider for the child but it

I felt invading the privacy of the child and using them in a very negative way.

Often the blogs would contradict the information that medical providers have given to the caretaker where the test was negative.

The caretaker might say that there was an abnormal test.

They tended to be very dramatic in their presentation, and they often described a progressive downhill course for the child.

Lisa mentions frequent battles with providers other than Dr.

Ness, such as this entry entry from January of 2010, when Lisa is pushing for Colin to have a high-dose cytoxin treatment or high-sci treatment and encounters pushback, likely because this treatment is experimental and extremely risky, especially in children.

Here's what she says.

A couple of the docs, not Dr.

Ness, she is great, are not so sure about doing the high-sci.

They want us to try rituximab.

Been there, done that, failed miserably.

Basically, they want Colin to take more chemo, be sicker, and maybe have a week of feeling good, then start all over.

Do they realize this kid has no life?

Lisa is always positioned as the authority on Colin's health.

Notably, she's angry whenever someone suggests he might be less sick than what she's presenting.

Like this entry from June 22, 2009.

She was a neuro, but not our neuro.

She didn't listen to anything we said nor anything Colin's neuro said.

She wanted him running down the hall.

Now, those of you who know Colin know he doesn't even run on a good day.

Not to belabor this point, but there are videos of Colin running around both before and after this post.

And perhaps most worrying of all is the constant talk of death, which starts pretty much immediately after Colin is diagnosed in March of 2008.

Despite all of the medical tests and medical interventions.

We really started worrying when the blogs started talking about the child being likely to die, being put on hospice, being made a no-code, that these were indications that things were really coming to a head.

Often the caretaker would go on websites like GoFundMe to seek support for the child, and we often found that the support that was being provided was being used by the caretaker, not for the child.

We saw that the kids were often asking for make-a-wish

activities.

At times,

the medical providers were portrayed negatively, being unable to figure out the child's complex problems and where the caretaker themselves had the skills to handle things.

And this brings us to yet another can of worms.

the fundraising.

In addition to the make-a-wish trip to Disneyland in October of 2009, there are a number of other special excursions and activities Colin participates in that are sponsored by others, including a special NASCAR trip where Colin gets to meet one of his favorite drivers and an outing in March of 2012 to see a live show of the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.

Lisa posts a photo from the latter event on her Facebook with the caption, the last family photo we will ever have with Colin.

He died 12 days later.

There are innumerable references to receiving financial help from the community peppered throughout the blog.

In March of 2009, Lisa starts selling bracelets to raise funds for Colin's treatment, and a month later, she starts a formal fund, posting this on her blog.

Oh, also, many have emailed, called, and asked about starting a fund for Colin.

After much prayer, we have finally agreed to do this.

So it is in the works.

For the time being, there has been a donate button added to Colin's quest for those who keep asking about helping us.

This fund eventually became a non-profit called the Colin McDaniel Hope Foundation, which carried on in the years after Colin's death.

This is the foundation's mission statement according to its website.

1.

To financially assist families and children diagnosed with NMO through fundraisers and donations.

2.

To educate communities, families, and friends about NMO.

And 3.

To assist with funding to the Colin McDaniel Hope Grant for Pediatric NMO Research.

The nonprofit had its 501 status revoked in May of 2016 for failure to file its financial disclosures for three consecutive years.

According to the organization's Facebook page, however, they were still actively soliciting donations as recently as 2018.

Interestingly, the donate tab on the website no longer works, but in a 2018 Facebook post, Lisa includes a different PayPal link for donations that does still work.

The recipient is Melissa McDaniel, which is Lisa's full name.

We certainly have seen in the past that many of these moms will take a role in advocacy organizations for some unusual disease.

In thinking about the internet, I think the other thing that is apparent is that it can allow a maybe non-medical person or somebody with limited medical knowledge to gain gain a lot of detailed information about some very unusual diseases and then present a false history based on that information.

And that sort of knowledge is much more accessible

because of the internet.

The Colin McDaniel Hope Foundation also claims to have partnered with Guthy Jackson, which became Lisa's employer in 2013, a little over a year after Colin's death.

Lisa's work history before Guthie Jackson is murky to say the least, and appears to have consisted of selling jewelry for Premier Designs, a Christian jewelry MLM founded in the 1980s that targeted stay-at-home moms with the promise of being able to work while also being home with their children.

Despite Lisa's posts about how she needs to, quote, sell a lot of jewelry to cover Colin's medical expenses, it's unlikely that this was a source of any income.

A major analysis of 350 MLMs by the Consumer Awareness Institute showed that 99.6% of people who join MLMs lose money, and that only somewhere between 0.1 and 0.01 of participants make anything like a full-time income.

Carrie was, likewise, pretty sporadically employed throughout Colin's illness, and Lisa recounts on her blog his struggles to find and keep a steady job.

So, where was all the money coming from?

this summer went by so fast.

2025 is both flying by and has already been 100 years long.

Don't ask me how, I'm not an astrophysicist.

That's just my truth.

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Morning decisions.

A creamy mocha frappuccino drink?

A sweet vanilla?

Maybe a smooth caramel or that white chocolate mocha.

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From the timeline we've been able to assemble, it looks likely that the McDaniels move to Alabama was precipitated by some suspicions, if not formal reports, from the doctors treating Colin.

But this move also brought them a fresh new group of people to seek financial help from, as Lisa's sister Sabrina Sabrina remembers

when Angelin first got sick or when she was first born and she was first there a pile of money

got went to them like a bunch of money my mom worked at Walmart the store here took up a bunch of money like

an ungodly amount of money it was a lot of money my dad's job in Lumber City which at that time employed probably three to four hundred people I mean it was a huge facility over there.

They took up money, everybody gave them money.

All the local churches was giving them money.

I mean, like, they money was coming from.

And he was still preaching, or he was still the pastor.

And he was still the pastor of that church in Jacksonville.

So, all this money was coming in when she first had her and everything, and everybody was just doing, you know, oodles and oodles for them.

But by this time,

all that had started kind of slowing down, you know, because

eventually people just get tired of giving, be honest.

When word of Lisa's conviction got back to the McDaniels many supporters, that was obviously the end of that.

But despite Lisa frequently bemoaning their finances on her blog, when they moved to Alabama in the first year of Colin's treatment, their living situation appeared to get a pretty big upgrade.

So they moved into this really super nice neighborhood that it wasn't a gated community but all you needed was a gate.

And I point that out because

they didn't have the money to pay for that.

Okay.

Carrie's dad at one point had money but he before he died they had went through so much of his money he actually had to sell off land and stuff to pay for them an attorney for the angel and stuff.

So they didn't have money for that.

And neither one of them had credit to buy a house.

So I don't know how they ended up with this house.

So how did the McDaniels afford their spacious three-bedroom brick home on Avalon Lane?

According to county records, it was sold to them for zero dollars in June of 2010.

We don't have any additional information about this odd transaction, but it's easy to imagine that the narrative of needing to move for their sick child may have played a role role in getting someone to give Lisa and Carrie a free house.

But the fact that they got this house for free didn't stop them from using it as a different kind of leverage.

We did not understand how they got this house.

It seemed very much out of their like price range.

So after my brother died anyway, I ended up getting blamed for them losing their house, which is another whole like rabbit hole.

It's this whole thing.

Like I was going through a divorce and so they and they did help me financially during my divorce, but then that turned into when they started to lose their house, then it was my fault because they helped me financially with my divorce.

The McDaniels appear to have sold their house back to its owners for $0 in 2018.

So this whole financial situation is just a mystery.

But Lisa was seemingly gainfully employed by that time, working for the Guthy Jackson Foundation.

Lisa was hired by Guthy Jackson in 2013, but she'd connected with the organization almost as soon as it existed, attending their very first patient day in November of 2009.

It appears Lisa also began volunteering with the organization sometime in the months following Colin's death in March of 2012.

Her Facebook posts show her enthusiasm for her new mission, being an advocate for NMO.

In August of 2012, five months after Colin's death, Lisa writes this in a Facebook post.

I have realized I love speaking to the groups God has sent me to.

I love sharing Colin's story with others, his love for life, his amazing spirit, the joy God gave him through very tough struggles.

We can all learn so much from an amazing little boy.

To the groups asking me to come speak, thank you so much for allowing me to tell you about my boy, raise awareness of NMO, and share our story.

You are part of something big, and I can hardly wait to see how God uses our foundation to help others.

Grieving parents don't look any one particular way, and many parents find solace in helping others in the wake of their child's death.

This is laudable.

But Lisa's framing of Colin is extremely similar to other perpetrators we've seen.

Their child is special not because of who they are or were, but because of their illness or death, because they were sent by God to teach through their suffering.

And as a whole, Lisa's Facebook posts, while Colin is on hospice and immediately after, just feel off.

In February of 2012, while he's on his deathbed, Lisa is posting about her frustrations with the customer service at the company she's using to sell the Colin's Quest bracelets, and then asking if anyone has a nice condo she can sneak off to.

She really needs a vacation.

Days before Colin's death, she posts a Billy Graham quote that reads, a child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

Three days before Colin dies, Lisa shares a picture of his funeral pamphlet.

And her her social media doesn't get any less weird following his death.

For example, the day after Colin's funeral service in Hazlehurst, Lisa posts this on her Facebook.

Okay, all you plant people, I posted pictures of plants from the funeral that I don't know how to take care of.

Can you help, please?

What can I keep on my back porch and what needs to be inside?

How much water?

Thanks.

Then in September, Lisa posts that she's excited that her NMO advocacy materials have arrived in the mail.

It becomes clear that NMO advocacy is now a pillar of Lisa's life.

In the months leading up to his death, Lisa herself wrote about doctors' disagreement as to Colin's diagnosis, and she'd said on her Facebook that Colin was seronegative for NMO, meaning that he'd tested negative for the antibodies.

But NMO is crucial to Lisa's story, and it's especially important to her new job with the Guthy Jackson Foundation, which is dedicated to NMO research.

And though she talked about doubts before, posthumously, in November of of 2012, Lisa doubles down on her claim that Colin had NMO.

She posts this.

Colin's ALISA assay came back positive for NMO, peeps.

This is after all the negatives on IgG all these years.

We all knew what it was the whole time, but to finally have lab proof is very emotional.

Anyone who tests negative on IgG, I would encourage you to have it redone with the ALISA assay.

Love to you all.

The ALISA assay test Lisa mentions in this post was a newer, more sensitive version of the antibody test for NMO.

The test result she's claiming to receive here was allegedly from a blood sample collected from Colin on January 24th, 2012, two months before he died.

The sample was collected to be entered into a UT Southwestern study, and in a Facebook post on this date, Lisa gives a shout out to the nurse, Martha Mann, who collected the sample.

Both the study and Martha are real, and there's no reason to doubt that Colin was a part of this study.

But the idea that Lisa received a positive NMO test for Colin a full 11 months later doesn't track.

For one thing, samples collected for a repository like this don't return individual diagnostic results.

Here's Martha Mann herself explaining the process.

The blood is sent to one lab in Maryland that maintains it and processes it and distributes it in a very uniform fashion, which is important.

And also, just to let you know, just that little bit of blood that we take can fuel 100 studies and it can last indefinitely.

So that little bit of time and effort on your part makes a giant difference in the world of research for this rare disease.

The sample requests come in, but we don't just send them out.

There's an advisory board that that evaluates every project for that it's ethically conducted and it's a sound study.

So when someone does receive samples, their agreement with the repository is when they finish their work, they return the findings back to Accelerated Cure Project so that they are made available to other researchers.

They can build on the work that's gone before, so every study is more dynamic, and we hope to accelerate the cure in that way.

And without the freezing technology that a facility like UT Southwestern would have, there would be no way for a blood sample to be viable for testing this long after it was taken.

And also, suspicious delayed test results are another hallmark of Munchausen by proxy.

So why did Lisa decide to suddenly announce this presumably made-up test result?

Were people starting to ask questions about Colin's death?

Once Colin was gone, Lisa threw herself into her advocacy work, and to this day, she frequently invokes what she refers to as Colin's legacy.

When he was alive, Lisa's identity revolved around him being sick.

And now that he's gone, it appears to largely revolve around him being dead.

In 2019, Michelle's life was beginning to move in a better direction.

She'd found stability and was engaged to a wonderful man she'd known since childhood, her now husband, Brent.

But things with Lisa didn't stay calm for long.

Brent and I had, we got engaged in August of 2019.

So it wasn't long after that, I believe.

She, there was like an incident with her.

She like was in the Walmart parking lot and like ran into a poll

and like the police were called.

It really messed up her car.

Like,

um, and we, she kind of like they told us about it, but it was just like very strange.

Like, it was, they were saying that, like, she had some sort of weird, like,

she like fell asleep, or like, something like was crazy, kind of went on, like, very weird with her.

And she, like, slammed it in this pole, and we weren't working line.

So, she, so she sat us down, like I said, after me and Bray got engaged and told us that she had been diagnosed with this thing.

It was like AL

amylois, and I'm butchering that.

Amyloidosis is a rare disease that occurs when a protein called amyloid builds up in organs.

This amyloid buildup can make organs not work properly affecting the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system, and digestive tract.

Like she was claiming at the time like it affected her like vocal cords and so her voice was like very raspy and she had a hard time speaking.

And there was like painful for her.

And then

like I said, she had like this thing with her leg.

And then I even remember going to

wedding dress shopping and to start with she had said she wasn't going like she was really like mad about the whole thing and she's like I'm not going and

I just can't do this and like I don't even remember what the reasoning was but anyway of course at the very last minute she decided she was she was gonna go so we drove to Atlanta we were still living in Alabama we drove to Atlanta it was me her and my sister and we met like my bridesmaids and my other aunt at the time up there and like we went wedding dress shopping and even then I remember like at this point I think it had escalated like she had a cane with her at all times and was really like dragging her leg um and she said it like some sort of nerve damage um and again I was very like it's bizarre to to tell it now because I asked as little detail as possible um I just kind of let her tell us what was going on but I think at a certain point just being around it for so long I really started to believe it

I mean, Adrian, how many times have we heard people believe their eyes?

So it's in front of my eyes and like, I'm, I start to truly believe like, yeah, she's sick.

Like this is real and I'm going to lose my mom.

Brent remembers this whole incident as well.

And I actually remember hearing about this as it all took place not long before I met Michelle in 2021.

This fits with a very common pattern from not only Lisa's life, but many other stories we've heard on this show.

Anytime the attention is on someone else, as with Sabrina's pregnancy, Michelle's pregnancy, and now her wedding, it's time for a new drama.

We went on this beach vacation and because she had kind of sold, like it was in the middle of the pandemic, but she had just kind of sold us that this may be the last summer we get to have with her and let's go.

Like they got this condo that like some people from the church they were going to at the time like had like they let us use the condo.

So she is crazy bizarre to look back at now because she has no hair.

She has a feeding tube coming out of her nose, like that she would just remove

sometimes.

Like, when I guess she didn't need it, like, she would literally remove herself, which I can't even like imagine doing that.

Well, it was actually that beach vacation, and um, my sister kind of pulls me aside and she's like, Hey, like, um,

I don't think dad said anything to you yet, but she's been like faking stuff.

And I'm like, what do you mean?

And she's like, well, dad put like a tracker in her car because he started noticing that like he didn't think the car was moving and that she wasn't actually going to these doctor's appointments.

And I was like, you got to be kidding me.

Why are you telling me this when we are all literally trapped in this house together?

a few hours from home.

He just kind of unloaded all of this on her and then was like, don't tell Michelle.

Like, don't, don't say anything.

Like, I just need some time to sort some stuff out and then I'll confront her.

And she begged me, she was like, please don't say anything while we're here.

Like, because I am just like stunned by what to do and in total shock.

And like,

how do we handle this?

And what do we do?

And I need to understand the parameters of it.

And I'm also in the moment, like, processing how angry I am with my dad because how like dare you unload this on my little sister and I'm also very protective of my little sister so I'm just like how dare you unload this on her I've seen one of the videos from this beach vacation Lisa is as bald as a cue ball and has a feeding tube dangling from her nose.

One thing about Lisa, she does not do things halfway.

Once they finish up what sounds like one of the weirdest vacations to happen outside of a real housewives franchise, Michelle sat down with her father, Carrie, to get to the bottom of things.

So we literally met it at McDonald's and he told me, yeah, like he had put a tracker in her vehicle, found out she was not leaving the house.

She would like have these like like bandages like her arm would be wrapped like when you when you have blood drawn like her arm would be wrapped in like those like bandages um

and she would have never left the house um and she was taking massive amounts of laxatives Earlier in this episode, we talked about the many medications that may have contributed to Colin's illness presentation, but those were only the prescription medications that we knew about.

When you start to factor in over-the-counter medications and other common available substances, the mind goes to some very dark places.

Lisa took this ruse of a new illness to extremes, poisoning herself and even subjecting herself to a possibly completely unnecessary surgery.

So, and again, at the time, like, I'm just sitting here like, okay, this is strange.

So, like,

what do you, you know, like, how what do you do?

Like, am I going to confront her about these laxatives here?

Like, when it's just the two of us, she's also healing from surgery.

Like, now's not really the time, but like, that's kind of strange.

And you you just kind of put it in the back of your mind and you kind of like and she really did have surgery she really did have surgery yeah i i did drop her off at the hospital and like she yeah a nurse like brought her out to the car afterwards so she had yeah some sort of like yeah surgery michelle wondered if this revelation the one that had driven even him to subterfuge and surveillance might be the thing that finally put carrie over the edge Sat down with my dad at McDonald's that day and I was just like,

like Angelin told me like we really need to have a conversation about it and he was like yeah like um I had some concerns and I did put the tracker in the vehicle which is wild to have to do to your spouse and he was like I you know I had some concerns um she hasn't been going to the doctor and I'm like okay so what does this mean because

it's not just like she's not just going to the doctor like she's going she's telling us she's going to the doctor she's telling us she's on all these meds medications and all these things but then she's going the extra like wrapping her arms up and all these bandages like she's had blood drawn she's never left the house um so then it you know it throws into question like well if she's not going to the doctor to get her meds like how'd she lose her hair yeah so i i had this conversation with my dad and and he was just a mess and i was like look

you know

If you go back and read, like, I was like, you are smart.

You are smart enough to hide all of this from her and get all of this like evidence.

And like, you know what's going on.

And I just looked at him and I was like dad you and I both know this is literally textbook definition Munch Hausen and he looked at me and he said I know and he like dropped his head and that and that was like

such a crazy moment for me like hearing him acknowledge that and like admit that and like I had so much grief and like empathy for him in this moment of like I cannot imagine like

the years like he has spent defending her and like choosing her over his children and the years he has spent just like backing her up on everything and then to just all of that in that moment like to hear him acknowledge and admit to that was just so profound for me um

and so i i said listen she needs severe help like this is not something we're just going to be able to surround her and love and help her with like this goes beyond what we can do for her as a family like she needs some sort of like intense like inpatient therapy like i don't know like i said i don't know what it is she needs but i will definitely help you find it

michelle eventually confronted her mother about all of this and lisa confessed to lying michelle told her dad that the jig was up and hoped they could finally get on the same page I was so under the impression at this point that like my dad was still processing and like trying to take steps to like get her in treatment and like make his his own life and whatever that was gonna like whether he was gonna leave her or not leave her like whatever that was gonna look like was still what I was under the impression and he came over and it was just I mean he gave me a hug and he was like tearful and just like he's like I love you so much and I was like I love you and I am here for you and like we can get through this together but as Michelle prepared to move back to Georgia at the tail end of 2020 whatever hope she had about her father evaporated.

I was just very like hopeful and very just like

we're just leaving.

We're just leaving this chapter behind us.

And I'm going to have my dad and I'm going to have my family.

We're going to be able to heal.

I text my dad and I said, hey, I'm dropping this off.

And like, will you just come outside and give me a hug?

Because we're leaving.

Because I had not heard from him really.

Like, or the last conversation we had about it was he's just like, I just still need time to like sort everything out like financially.

And like,

he's like, I, you know, I'll keep you updated as I can.

I was like, okay, like, well, I'm just going to move.

Like, you know, I've got to do this for for my own life, and like, I hope that you will at some point join us.

Or, like, I will help, you know, it's still very much like I'll help you, but like, I've still got to go.

And so, I was like, We're loading up the car, like, this is the U-Haul's loaded up, we're leaving, and this will be the last time we're here.

And I'm like, Will you just come outside and give me a hug?

And he's like, I just don't think I can see you right now.

And, like, for me, that was a very clear moment that like he had chosen again, and it wasn't me.

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Lisa kept choosing lies and destruction, and Carrie kept choosing Lisa.

And the one thing neither of them ever chose was accountability.

And Lisa being caught red-handed in this lie about her illness did not dissuade her from trying to rewrite history a few years later.

One

situation in 25 years?

That one situation.

There were some things I lied about in that, but I was sick and your dad knows that he talked to my damn doctors.

Okay, so what's wrong with you now?

Are you just magically cured from this thing?

I'm not cured, no.

Then what happened?

I mean, her hair is still falling out.

Literally, I'm still losing my hair.

There's still stuff going on in the shower.

We just don't tell you about everything because I lose her hair falling out.

still i mean i go in the shower and there's hands full of hair so she's i mean that's not even the point the point is i wish you would have talked to us about this i have begged you for how long to come and talk to us and let's have a conversation about stuff and you keep putting it off

i have asked you to go to therapy with me and every time i've asked you you've not asked me to go to therapy yes i have i go to therapy with you and everyone said

well we can still do that Michelle has tried many times before and after this conversation to get Lisa into therapy and she has has never taken her up on it.

Because there are things mama that just don't add up and they've never added up.

I need to know

I need to know if my mother has made herself sick for years.

I need to I do feel like I need I had a right to know that if any of that was ever true

I can't prove to you one way or the other it is.

But you've never tried.

You've never asked to see proof.

You've never asked any of that stuff.

And here's the thing.

You've never really had this discussion.

Like you said, we've not talked about it.

Even though I've said to you, let's talk about it.

What do you want me to do?

What is it you want from me?

What do you want me to do?

I want to know the truth.

And I don't think me and you sitting there.

I don't know whatever I say to you, you're not going to be able to do it.

Well, that's why I think we need professionals in the middle of it because you're right.

I don't, because you have lied to us.

Yeah, I have.

I talked to you.

I mean, it's like, you've lied to me, he's lied to us, she's lied to us.

You're right.

I have lied to you, but I have not lied to you to that point.

And that is not the same thing.

Lying

lie.

I understand a lie is a lie, but a lie is very different when you are causing yourself direct harm or causing the children in your life direct harm.

I do not cause myself direct harm.

I have to fundamentally disagree with Lisa here that a lie is a lie.

Everyone does lie, that's true.

There's very much a normal spectrum of lying.

Calling in sick to work because you just really need a day to yourself, for example.

But Lisa trying to minimize her behavior this way is like a bank robber pointing out that someone who finds a $5 bill on the street might pocket it without attempting to find its rightful owner and saying that that's pretty much the same thing as what he does.

And at one point in this conversation, Lisa also points out to Michelle that she has broken the law before.

Michelle's crime, a shoplifting incident when she was 20.

And Carrie is about as adept at Lisa at minimizing her behavior.

I have decided that the past three years of my life, I have spent in countless script therapy sessions and countless therapy of my own, that all the signs are there all of them you sat there across from me that mcdonald's and admitted to much that it didn't make sense i said i had some concerns and i looked at you in your face and i said dad you know as well as i knew that everything we were experiencing her was textbook definition much health of vibroxy and you looked at me and agreed with me i said i had some concerns and you looked at me and you said i know

but you know what

and that's what and that right there is the reason why i've been in therapy for years because i don't want to be that and I want to make sure I want to make dad as true that I'm not but that's the thing and that's why I've been in therapy for years and spent years of my life in it to try and better myself and be better.

Well then I guess I'm just wrong.

No, you're right.

You're right.

You're absolutely 1,000% right Michelle if that's what you want to call it.

But that's not what my doctors diagnosed me with and my doctors is who I have to listen to.

Did I do a hell of a lot of shit wrong?

Absolutely.

But I'm not did I do things that were horrible to angel?

Absolute freaking losing idea and I have owned that and I've never not owned that.

And I've worked hard to deal with that, deal with the emotion of that and examine myself to make sure everything was appropriate and the way it was supposed to be with my doctors, with Angelin, with you, with everybody, with your dad, with everybody.

I had them see myself and examine myself very closely.

Well then what happened?

Whatever self-reflection Lisa has done is not in evidence in this confrontation with Michelle or anywhere else I could find.

Lisa has never come anywhere near a full acknowledgement of what she did to Angelin, let alone what came next.

Lisa manages to position herself as a victim by claiming over and over again that she, quote, owns her past and that she has, quote, paid the price.

It's always someone else's fault.

Be Yorker or the nurse who reported her, the doctors who didn't understand her, and even the person who has given her a thousand chances, who's treated her with an almost boundless compassion, her oldest daughter.

No, I going to say the stuff with Anna was isolated incident.

I absolutely agree with you that I exaggerated and made things worse in whatever 2019 or 2019.

Okay, thank you.

I absolutely agree with that.

I absolutely agree with that.

But you can't go with I was 100% lying because I was not okay but that seemed but yes did I exaggerate it?

Absolutely.

Why?

Because I like to feel love and that's the only time in my life I ever felt like you loved me.

That you cared enough about me.

I'm gonna love you when you're well.

It doesn't seem that way.

It didn't sing that way then.

When Michelle made the brave choice, after years of thoughtful consideration and weighing all the possible consequences to drag all of this into the light on this podcast, she did another equally brave thing.

She drove a few streets over to where her parents now live.

They relocated from Alabama shortly after Michelle did, to tell them to their faces.

And Lisa begged her to go to therapy first, talking about how hard she had worked on herself.

Michelle agreed.

I have worked really hard and been in therapy for years and years and years to try to deal with my guilt and everything that I did and to come to terms with that.

And I worked really hard to overcome that, to get in a path where I can make a difference.

And now you can literally take everything of that, all of that away.

Are you seeing a therapist right now?

You would be happy to find a new one here.

However, this therapist that Lisa had allegedly been seeing evaporated the moment the scheduling conversation appeared.

I have asked you to go to therapy with me and every time I've asked you to.

You've not asked me to go to therapy.

Yes, I have to.

I go to therapy with you.

And every single day,

well, we can still do that.

Hell, I've got lockers.

I've got four different appointments in January.

Michelle followed up on this conversation to try to schedule an appointment, but she could never nail Lisa down.

Because Lisa, it would seem, didn't actually have any interest in healing her relationship with her daughter.

She was just trying to stop Michelle from telling the truth about her.

Because Lisa's whole life, and especially her career, had been built on a lie.

And she would say anything to keep it buried.

I will lose my job, which means we're going to lose our home, which means we're going to lose everything we have.

And I just need you to listen to me before you decide to do this.

Because my work does not know about all this shit.

My work does not know about my past.

That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me.

Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dumlop.

Our senior and executive producer is Maria Gossett.

Our producer is Taj Easton.

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.

Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, SoundSnap, and Slipstream Media.

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