S06 E01: The Advocate

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 munchhousensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 3 here we are. Here we are.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 It was like, this feels so surreal.

Speaker 4 Where would you like to begin?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 5 I don't know. Where do you begin?

Speaker 1 Meet my friend, Michelle. Michelle lives in a small town in Georgia with her husband, where she works as a hairdresser.

Speaker 1 But despite her baby face and ever-changing rainbow hair, Michelle has the kind of wisdom that can come from surviving a series of unimaginable horrors.

Speaker 6 Why would I believe it was something I can't overcome?

Speaker 8 Because you can.

Speaker 8 Because mama, please listen, please listen. You're asking me to listen to you.
Please listen to me.

Speaker 1 For most of her life, Michelle has been living under the weight of her family's terrible secrets. A story that only a small group of confidants and licensed professionals have known about.

Speaker 1 The long and complicated saga of her mother, Lisa McDaniel, is one Michelle and I have been talking about covering on this podcast for years.

Speaker 8 Please listen to me.

Speaker 9 Okay, I will, but here's what I want to say first.

Speaker 8 Much housing by proxy is something that even borker says you cannot recover from and she doesn't even agree with that anymore mama she doesn't even agree with that anymore

Speaker 8 you're wrong and we don't ruin my damn life we can leave b yorker out of this that's what i'm telling y'all didn't hear me when i said it the first time but i'm serious i have talked to everybody and Bjorker and I literally told her at one point I didn't want to speak to her anymore because I needed distance from her because I knew how you felt about her.

Speaker 8 You have talked about her for years and I tried to understand your point of view going into this whole thing.

Speaker 8 I am here in your living room because I have empathy for you, and I believe

Speaker 8 that there is good in you.

Speaker 8 And I love you. I would not be sitting here right now if I didn't feel that way.

Speaker 1 Coming forward wasn't an easy choice for Michelle. There has been a heavy silence over the horrifying events that have reverberated throughout generations of her family.
But that silence ends today.

Speaker 5 Where do you begin?

Speaker 12 Um,

Speaker 12 geez.

Speaker 1 This season on Nobody Should Believe Me, we're covering the complicated story of Lisa McDaniel, her husband Carrie, and their three children, Michelle, Angelyn, and Colin, and attempting to unravel what happened.

Speaker 1 Whether this is a story of a medical mystery or a different sort of mystery altogether.

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.

Speaker 1 Hello, I have exciting news. I am officially taking this show on the road next year.
I'm going to to be doing a series of Nobody Should Believe Me live shows next March.

Speaker 1 I will be in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Regent Theater. I'll be in my hometown, Seattle, at the Triple Door on March 18th.
Then I'm headed to New York City for a show at Sony Hall on March 25th.

Speaker 1 And I'll be wrapping up in Chicago on March 26th at The Den. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
You can find a link in the show notes or on our website.

Speaker 1 We're going to have special guests, meet and greets, and more at these shows. We're going to to have a great time.
So, go get your tickets now. Hope to see you out there.
Hey, it's Andrea.

Speaker 1 It's come to my attention that some of you have been served programmatic ads for ICE on my show.

Speaker 1 Now, podcasters don't get a lot of control over which individual ads play and for whom on our shows, but please know that we are trying everything we can to get rid of these by tightening our filters.

Speaker 1 And if you do continue to hear them, please do let us know. In the meantime, I want it to be known that I do not support ICE.
I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants.

Speaker 1 Immigrants make this country great.

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Speaker 5 Now that's special.

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Speaker 12 I got home last night, Britt's like, so how are you feeling? And I was like, I'm so nervous.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I think it's normal. It's normal to be nervous.

Speaker 1 Michelle and I first met when we were part of the pilot support group for Munchausen Support, the non-profit organization that I founded in 2021.

Speaker 1 These days, my mentor Bea Yorker, a professor emerita and longtime psychiatric nurse, is the sitting president. I still serve on the board and Michelle is getting involved in the work as well.

Speaker 1 Bea has been devoted to this cause for decades, and she's the one who brought Michelle and I together.

Speaker 1 Michelle and Bea reconnected many years after the events that first brought B into the McDaniels' lives.

Speaker 13 You and I talked a little bit about

Speaker 13 things when I first contacted you, and that was like what 2019, I believe, after we found the records.

Speaker 15 Yes, I believe that's how I first even learned that your sister was still alive, that you were okay.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 15 I gave the nurse, the NICU nurse, my email information and I said I would love to hear from both of the girls.

Speaker 1 What do you hope for with Michelle coming forward with her story publicly, really for the first time?

Speaker 1 What do you hope that that can accomplish?

Speaker 15 What I hope is that when

Speaker 15 the general public and when child abuse professionals hear from somebody's lived experience, that it is so much more impactful than reading data in a book. So I want you to be able to share

Speaker 15 your emotional reactions

Speaker 15 to your journey of coming to this place where now, you know, you're, oh my gosh, you're just blossoming and you're resilient and you're amazing. And

Speaker 15 it's not because you had a safe childhood.

Speaker 1 You proud of Michelle?

Speaker 15 Oh my gosh. I'm so proud.

Speaker 1 So proud.

Speaker 1 Most of what can readily be found online about Michelle's mom and the woman at the center of this season, Lisa McDaniel, relates to her work as the director of patient advocacy for a nonprofit called the Guthy Jackson Foundation.

Speaker 16 How are y'all doing? Did y'all enjoy our breakout sessions today? I encourage you to call up your primary care physician. Use your family and friends who may work at medical offices.

Speaker 16 Ask for referrals. Get out there, knock on doors, and don't give up until you get someone who will let you in their office to tell them more about NMO.
You do not have to be a public speaker.

Speaker 16 You just have to be able to talk to your doctor, talk to their staff, and just share your story. Because, as Christine just told you, she has a story.
But guess what?

Speaker 16 Each one of us in this room have our own story.

Speaker 1 That's Lisa McDaniel presenting at the Guthy Jackson Foundation's NMO Patient Day. NMO, or neuromyelitis optica, is a rare autoimmune disease.

Speaker 1 Lisa is in her mid-50s with a youthful round face and the red hair that she passed along to her three children.

Speaker 1 You'd never know from her carefully crafted public image that Lisa has done jail time for child abuse. Rather, her image centers on her advocacy around NMO and her work at the foundation.

Speaker 1 Work which, as it says in her bio, was informed by her own experiences as a caregiver for her son.

Speaker 17 My son Colin was five years old when he had his first symptom of vision loss in 2007. We're going to go in here and get some of the stuff we talked about done, okay?

Speaker 17 And we're there to take pictures and see how the blood works in your body. Okay.

Speaker 17 Colin's always been healthy, never had problems. He just lost his vision completely in about two days.

Speaker 17 We ended up coming to Birmingham, Alabama to the Center for Pediatric Onset Demyelinating Diseases and saw Dr. Jane Ness there.
She told us nearmyelitis optica, and we had never heard of it.

Speaker 17 She explained to us that it was used to be thought it was a severe form of multiple sclerosis, that it's a very difficult disease, and proceeded to tell us that there could be times where Colin could be paralyzed in the future, he could lose his vision again, and just varying degrees of disability that he could have.

Speaker 1 This video begins with a shot of Lisa and her husband Carrie walking their son Colin down a hospital hallway in a wheelchair, then cuts to a professionally shot interview of Lisa in a leopard print blazer and a statement necklace.

Speaker 1 Dr.

Speaker 17 Ness wants to talk to you today.

Speaker 1 the pediatric neurologist who diagnosed Lisa's son Colin with NMO.

Speaker 1 The picture Lisa presents online is of a gentle, soft-spoken Southern mom whose mighty struggles as the mother of a sick child led to her career as a dedicated advocate for other families.

Speaker 1 But nothing about Lisa is what it seems. Lisa McDaniel has worked very hard to bury her past, but that's the thing about the truth.

Speaker 1 You can spin it, you can push it down, but it has a way of catching up to you.

Speaker 1 A life built on lies just isn't very durable, because sooner or later someone might come along and put all the pieces together.

Speaker 5 I don't know how this is going to land

Speaker 9 and I hope I know you're probably not going to understand it.

Speaker 9 I've been in some support groups for probably two or three years

Speaker 9 and a really close friend of mine runs a podcast and she asked me to go on her podcast and kind of talk about

Speaker 9 everything that we grew up with and I agreed to do it.

Speaker 9 I

Speaker 9 hope that it will be an opportunity to kind of air some things out and heal from a lot of things that I still don't have answers to.

Speaker 9 I know there's been some things and it's not all old stuff for me but I just wanted to let you know

Speaker 9 before any of it came out or happened

Speaker 9 because I do love you and I do have respect for you and I didn't want it to just be out there and you find it

Speaker 20 somewhere and have that.

Speaker 18 So did you give any consideration as to what this is going to do to Angelin's life, to your daddy's life, to my life?

Speaker 1 This is Michelle talking with her mother Lisa.

Speaker 2 I have.

Speaker 9 A thousand percent. I have.

Speaker 4 Because you could literally be taking away our income and everything.

Speaker 18 You could literally be ruining everything that we've worked hard for, that I've tried to overcome and work hard for after all these years.

Speaker 21 You can literally take our whole entire life away and you don't understand it.

Speaker 2 well i'm not here to hurt you feels that way i'm not

Speaker 11 because you've always been very rebellious your whole entire life

Speaker 6 mama

Speaker 20 all i'm asking

Speaker 11 is some accountability that nobody is irredeemable i mean what do you want access to all my medical records no i don't i don't i don't know mama but

Speaker 9 I don't believe you and I don't trust you.

Speaker 18 And if you're and it doesn't matter what I say, you're not going to believe that to me.

Speaker 20 I've been gaslipping gaslipping my whole life

Speaker 20 by anybody and everybody

Speaker 7 things still don't make sense to me they're never going to but she don't because you have lied to us yeah I have I told you I mean it's like you 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

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 5 I did. I exaggerated it.

Speaker 11 Does that mean it's much happened by proxy? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but here's the thing: why label me with something?

Speaker 6 Why?

Speaker 7 Why label me with something I can't overcome?

Speaker 8 Because you can. Because, mama, please listen, please listen.
You're asking me to listen to you, please listen to me.

Speaker 1 The story we're covering this season gets at many of the core questions of this show. How do you cope with the truth when the truth is unfathomable?

Speaker 1 Can dragging long hidden horrors into the light help us heal? Bring us peace, even maybe reconcile with those who've harmed us?

Speaker 1 Or are there things that, even for the most compassionate among us, simply can't be forgiven?

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Speaker 1 We tend to think of the past as fixed, immutable, but the reality is more complex. Our history with our own parents shifts as we get older and reach new milestones.

Speaker 1 As we become ages, we actually remember them being. And particularly if we become parents ourselves, everything about our family of origin suddenly appears in a new light.

Speaker 1 I've learned this is an especially dramatic process for people like Michelle, whose childhoods were traumatic, whose memories buried themselves out of self-protection.

Speaker 1 As Michelle has found hard-earned stability and safety in her adult life, disturbing memories have begun to re-emerge.

Speaker 1 She has questions about what happened to her and her siblings, and leaving them unanswered has become unbearable.

Speaker 1 So we got to work looking for the truth in the small rural town where we lay our scene, Hazlehurst, Georgia.

Speaker 9 We had a Walmart and a huddle house.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, okay.

Speaker 1 What is a huddle house?

Speaker 2 Because we do not have huddle households. We do not have huddle house in the north.
No.

Speaker 1 I've heard a lot about Hazlehurst, the town where generations of McDaniels were born and raised. It's a sleepy, rural town three hours outside Atlanta.
Now it was time to see it for myself.

Speaker 2 Do you know what a waffle house is?

Speaker 1 I just learned.

Speaker 1 I mean, I know what a like a waffle house is.

Speaker 1 I had to really explain a waffle house last night when we were driving.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That is my producer, Mariah, who was also raised in in the south, and Michelle enjoying me being a fish out of water as we chatted in a hotel room in the quaint little college town of Valdosta, where Michelle now lives.

Speaker 1 I also discovered the uniquely southern miracle that is Bucky's on this trip. So it was quite the cultural exchange.
These are just not things we have in the north.

Speaker 1 And then I was trying to sing her the Jonas Brothers song and she was like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 A waffle house? Yeah. Waffle House.
We're doing a lot of working it out. Yeah.
I was like, no.

Speaker 1 She's like, I know. She's like, I don't listen to Jonas Brothers.
And I was like, I don't listen to Jonas Brothers either.

Speaker 2 But it's just

Speaker 1 businesses everywhere.

Speaker 2 So a huddle house is like a huddle house is a waffle house.

Speaker 2 It's like a waffle house.

Speaker 1 A waffle house adjacent to it.

Speaker 5 Don't say that in the South because you'll get in trouble. But I personally believe that a huddle house is just a better waffle house.

Speaker 5 However, that is probably the most controversial thing I will say on this podcast.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 you're talking about the home, the hometown in

Speaker 2 Walmart County.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Walmart and a huddle. A huddle house.

Speaker 5 Okay. Which is, I mean, that's where we hung out.
Like as teenagers, we hung out in the Walmart parking lot or at the huddle house at 2 a.m.

Speaker 4 That was, that's what we did.

Speaker 5 And we had, that's why we had babies so young.

Speaker 2 There's nothing to do.

Speaker 2 There was nothing else to do. Like

Speaker 5 the cops would get mad and run us off from Walmart and then where else are you gonna go? You went home and had babies.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I don't even remember where I was going with that.

Speaker 1 The next morning, we make the drive out to the town where both Michelle and her mother, Lisa, grew up. Hazlehurst is in rural South Georgia, and we head there on a bright, chilly winter day.

Speaker 1 There are few signs of life between Valdosta and Hazlehurst. Mostly, it's long stretches of beautiful country roads.

Speaker 1 On the day we drive there, there's sunlight sifting through the rows and rows of white pine, many of them bent at tortured angles following the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like there's a stop saying that there is like a, I think there's going to be a good just little moment of like, Hazlehurst, Georgia is known for.

Speaker 2 Well, there was a murder. There was a murder at an American Idol star.

Speaker 1 American Idol star and

Speaker 2 Angela from 90 Day Kansas.

Speaker 2 That wraps it up.

Speaker 1 Remote as it is, I'm not the first true crime podcaster to come through Hazlehurst.

Speaker 1 In 2021, Foxhunter covered the murder of Ronda Sue Coleman, a girl in Lisa McDaniels' high school class who who was killed just before they graduated.

Speaker 1 Michelle is also one degree away from another famous Hazlehurst native, Will Mosley, the 2024 American Idol runner-up, who is her husband's brother.

Speaker 1 They don't have any known connection, however, to the woman who is perhaps Hazlehurst's most famous resident, the truly iconic Angela from 90 Day Fiancé. We're done.

Speaker 2 Angela. Angela sits back.
Angela, chill down and respect us, please. I'm a fing elder.

Speaker 1 He's an idiot.

Speaker 8 You think it's funny, Michael?

Speaker 1 As we make our way into town, Michelle points out landmarks from her past. The turn off to her granny's house, her mother-in-law's home, and the church where her parents got married.

Speaker 1 Then, we finally arrive at the pizza joint where we're meeting Michelle's aunt Sabrina, her mother, Lisa's younger sister.

Speaker 2 She just realized how hungry I was. Hello!

Speaker 12 Listen, this one's not on me, and I don't know why you're surprised I'm late to everything, but we're only a few minutes late.

Speaker 5 You're always late, Branny. I know, but Andrea is too.

Speaker 2 So it's a combine before y'all watching.

Speaker 1 In my defense, part of the reason we were late was because our hotel had coffee but not breakfast, and then the breakfast place had food but no coffee.

Speaker 1 And this conversation with Sabrina was going to be intense. Between that and my jet lag, tea was not going to cut it.

Speaker 1 Sabrina, did you, you're born, raised, lived all your life in Hazelhurst or

Speaker 1 at 47, Sabrina is a few years older than me, and we have daughters the same age. I never know exactly how someone's going to feel about me coming around asking them to relive their worst traumas.

Speaker 1 But Sabrina puts us all immediately at ease with her funny, acerbic charm as we settle into one of the only restaurants in town, a dimly lit pizza joint with dark wood paneling and narrow booths.

Speaker 1 We post up in the empty party room, likely more used to hosting end-of-the-year sports banquets than nosy northerners with podcasts. Sabrina explains how she and her sister Lisa grew up.

Speaker 4 How would you describe the town?

Speaker 2 That's loaded.

Speaker 4 It

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 4 quiet country until something happens and then everybody knows.

Speaker 4 Everybody knows it.

Speaker 4 And because everybody knows everybody, it's kind of like everybody tries to know your business all the time.

Speaker 4 So if something major ever happens, it's not, it's talked about for decades and decades and decades.

Speaker 4 So people do not forget it until something new happens and then they'll talk about that and bring up.

Speaker 5 You know, that's so-and-so that did so-and-so back in 1977.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and it's always like, um,

Speaker 4 Well, you know, that person is related to that, you know,

Speaker 4 you always have that kind of relation and I've always said man if I can ever move

Speaker 4 and then because you go other like Savannah or Atlanta or somewhere and nobody cares who your mama is nobody cares who your grandma is or your grandpa or whatever they're just like oh where are you from you know so it's just it's different because it's everybody knows everybody so which is a good thing sometimes

Speaker 4 but then

Speaker 4 people try to get in in your business too much.

Speaker 2 Nobody has anything else to do.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's like there's nothing else to do which is the downfall because there's really nothing to do. So we don't have a theater.

Speaker 4 We used to have a theater and a skating ring. We don't have either one of those anymore.

Speaker 4 So it's for kid, kid-wise and stuff like that. It's quiet, but nothing to do other than go to school and do like the school activities or stuff like that.

Speaker 5 I told him yesterday that's why we all have babies so young because there's nothing else to do

Speaker 4 I've never really thought about it that way

Speaker 4 but okay I mean that probably is what it is

Speaker 2 Adria didn't even know what a what a huddle house or waffle house was until this she said what now she didn't know what a huddle house or a waffle house was how wait what

Speaker 1 I'm going to get emails about waffle house for the rest of my life aren't I

Speaker 1 Hazlehurst only has about 4,000 residents, so it's no surprise that everyone is up in each other's business. Timber is the main industry and families and communities are tight-knit out of necessity.

Speaker 1 Tell us about your parents.

Speaker 4 It's weird because

Speaker 4 as you get older, like as I've gotten older and grown and had my own kids, I realized that a lot of things, especially my mom, would do was not normal, but you think it's normal because that's what you grow at Eppium.

Speaker 4 But like my dad, he always, he worked, it was called Cooking Company over in Lumber City, and he worked there until it closed.

Speaker 4 So my dad, when I was younger, he worked what they called the swing shift, so he would work days and nights.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he just expected you to behave, do what you were told, and you just really didn't have any problems at that.

Speaker 4 My mama,

Speaker 4 everybody thought my mama was great. Let me just say that.
Like, my friends thought she was fabulous. Everybody thought my mama was fabulous.

Speaker 4 But my mama would be like, if you don't do this, you don't love me.

Speaker 4 And y'all just don't love me the way

Speaker 4 you love your daddy, but you don't love me because you don't treat me the same as you treat your daddy.

Speaker 4 If y'all love me, I wouldn't do that. And it would be nothing other than we wouldn't have all the clothes washed or we wouldn't do the dishes immediately.
Typical kid things.

Speaker 4 Well, y'all just don't love me.

Speaker 4 And like then when you're growing up, you think, okay, that's just normal. Everybody kind of deals with that.
But then when you get older, you realize, that's not normal at all.

Speaker 4 But like I say, all my friends loved her growing up. They thought, oh, your mama is great.
But my mama always said my mama had a switch.

Speaker 4 It was like she was one person when she was around you and she flipped the switch when your friends were around.

Speaker 1 Do you think maybe that set up kind of a dynamic where you felt like you had to take care of your mom's feelings?

Speaker 4 Yes, yes, it definitely was a... Let's tread lightly, let's not do anything to upset her because that just

Speaker 4 made the days even worse. But

Speaker 4 it was a delicate balance because

Speaker 4 looking at it now, I see a lot of Lisa's personality was the same as my mom's.

Speaker 4 But then it was always a delicate balance. You had to dance around mom and her feelings, but you had to tiptoe around Lisa too because Lisa always had a keen way.
She could manipulate my mama. Just,

Speaker 4 you know, she could, and she would have my mama convinced that something she did,

Speaker 4 that I did, or my little sister did.

Speaker 4 And so when my daddy came home, it was like, well, what did you do that before? And I'm like, but I didn't. I didn't do it at all.
You know, but she would, it was just,

Speaker 4 you always had to just tread the water, tread the water, tread the water.

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Speaker 1 Spending this time with Michelle's aunt Sabrina was only my second opportunity to get to speak to someone who'd grown up with a perpetrator.

Speaker 1 The first being my conversations with Hope Yebara's siblings way back in season one.

Speaker 1 The sisters' history is lengthy and dark, and though they're not fully estranged, their relationship seems unlikely to survive Sabrina's decision to be with me today.

Speaker 1 Because Lisa's child abuse conviction more than 20 years ago, that's just the beginning of this story.

Speaker 1 And did you have any like health issues growing up?

Speaker 4 Who?

Speaker 1 Lisa.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 Well, when she got to be a like maybe 14 or 15 and maybe it was 16,

Speaker 4 she went through the trying to make herself throw up

Speaker 4 stage. Yeah.
And my daddy got really got upset and got aggravated with her

Speaker 4 and kind of got in her face about it and so she kind of quit doing it.

Speaker 4 So I think it was more of a I'm just gonna do it to see the attention I can get off of it because she loved some attention.

Speaker 1 And like can you think of sort of some other examples of stuff that really struck you as like her trying to get attention?

Speaker 4 She did a lot. She would just do random things.

Speaker 4 We were at one of my dad's friends house. Their phone rang and it was Lisa and she's like somebody's threw a brick through

Speaker 4 the window. And daddy's like, well, let me go.
Y'all stay here. Let me go see, you know, what's going on.
He's like, call the police, you know.

Speaker 4 and well he got there and yeah there was a big

Speaker 4 hole in the picture window where she had threw a brick through it and tried to throw a brick through the window next to it

Speaker 4 and she's she will never say it was her but it was her I mean she just

Speaker 4 because they found no evidence of anybody else being in the yard, no other shoe prints, no

Speaker 4 anything like that. She would do stuff like that all the time.
Anything to call and say, oh, I need help.

Speaker 2 I need help.

Speaker 1 So even if Lisa didn't have the health history in her youth that we often see with perpetrators, there's always this common theme of deception and finding, or creating, opportunities to be a victim.

Speaker 1 One of the perpetually confusing things for me about looking back at my own childhood with my sister Megan, whose case I've covered in depth on this show previously, is that even though I do see signs of trouble looking in the rear view, my experience of our childhood together was mostly good.

Speaker 1 But for Sabrina and Lisa, not so much.

Speaker 4 And see,

Speaker 4 that's the thing.

Speaker 4 People assume that

Speaker 4 what happened,

Speaker 4 what she did to Angelin was like the first sign, but there were so many signs when we were going up. My dad had this butcher knife.
It was probably 10 inches long with a three or four inch handle.

Speaker 4 She would get it and chase us.

Speaker 1 And you're the youngest.

Speaker 4 I'm the middle. I'm the middle of three.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 like I said, that butcher knife, she would take it, especially my little sister.

Speaker 4 She would do it more to my little sister, but she would, for no reason, she would just randomly grab it when my parents were gone and just chase.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, those old cast iron frying pans, she would get them and chase you around the house.

Speaker 4 And she would just do all kind of like mean stuff like that. But it was never her fault.
It was never well i just did it because i was mean

Speaker 1 because she was it's well they did x y or z and that's why i did it i think we were excited to get rid of her just to interject by get rid of her sabrina is talking about when lisa disappeared into her relationship with her then boyfriend now husband carrie nothing more sinister than that at least not yet I mean, but

Speaker 4 then you have to understand she was just so mean to us. I mean, she she did.
It was never her fault. It was always somebody else's fault.

Speaker 4 You said something to her out of the way, or you looked at her funny, or, I mean, it was just random stuff, like little things that shouldn't trigger being chased by a butcher knife or a cast iron frying pan

Speaker 4 that she would do. And then as she got older and started dating Carrie, That was when, you know, everybody wore class rings, like their boyfriend's class rings.

Speaker 4 And she would take it and turn it around, and she would hit my little sister, especially inside the head with it. And just

Speaker 4 she just always wanted attention.

Speaker 1 It becomes clear as we dig into Lisa's backstory with Sabrina that chaos and drama have been a constant theme. And Lisa's relationship with Michelle's father, Carrie, was no exception.

Speaker 4 When she started dating Carrie,

Speaker 4 she told my mom and dad that Carrie was four years older than she was.

Speaker 4 And Carrie was

Speaker 4 almost 11 years older than she is. So he was closer.
26 and 15. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he was closer to like my dad and mom's age category than my seat because it was, you know, if you look at it.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 2 I did the math one time and he was closer to Nana's age than like, I think, four or five months.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.
So that was the first lie. That's how it started.

Speaker 1 The fact that this relationship began with a lie is fitting for reasons that will become clear as we go.

Speaker 1 Today, this relationship would be a crime, but at the time in Georgia, the age of consent was 14. Yikes.

Speaker 4 And then it just, it just, it was one, one lie after another lie after another lie after another lie.

Speaker 4 And then you just get, my mom and dad just got to the point that they just didn't believe anything.

Speaker 4 By the time she got married, she had caused so much chaos and drama with her relationship with Carrie that you were just, you just got tired of hearing the arguing at night time.

Speaker 4 You just got tired of hearing it. And so it was just like, yeah, let's get rid of it.

Speaker 1 Once Lisa was out of high school and married to Carrie, it wasn't long before they got busy doing what the rest of Lisa's peers were doing, making babies.

Speaker 2 And then, so they got married after high school.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 she gets pregnant with...

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I was excited. She was having Michelle, you know.
And, you know, everything was good for a little while. I don't know if you remember, but.

Speaker 2 Y'all remember when I was born?

Speaker 4 No, I mean, you were born

Speaker 4 and you were just a few months old. She started getting left with like at our house all the time.

Speaker 4 Like I did. Yeah, you did.
Yeah, but even before that, theybby, which is Carrie Zed, had money and they were spending it left, right, and sideways.

Speaker 4 So they were kind of always going somewhere when she got pregnant with Michelle that brought her a lot of attention you know and so she was good to stay at home for a little while because you know it got her so much attention you know

Speaker 4 um and then when Michelle got a few months old it was like okay the attention kind of faded away so it was like okay and of course you know she's a baby everybody wants to keep a baby

Speaker 4 Yes, we liked you because you were a baby.

Speaker 1 There is always a pattern of troubling behavior that precedes Munchausen by proxy abuse. And that's why these narratives from family members are so crucial.

Speaker 1 They were there for all of the foreshadowing. But there is the question of why and how pregnancy and motherhood kicks this into high gear.

Speaker 1 My kids are six and two, so I've been through this period of my life pretty recently.

Speaker 1 In the best case scenario, pregnancy and having a brand new baby aren't crisis situations in and of themselves, but they command a similar sort of all-hands-on-deck attention, especially on your first one.

Speaker 1 People send food and gifts and go out of their way to come and meet and hold your precious little potato.

Speaker 1 So it's easy to see why this could kick attention-seeking behaviors into high gear.

Speaker 1 And after this period of attention ended, Lisa didn't seem to have much attachment to or interest in little baby Michelle.

Speaker 4 She was at our house so much. She called me mama before she called her mama mama.

Speaker 2 Is that real? Are you?

Speaker 1 I'm dead serious.

Speaker 4 i'm dead serious you started saying mama one day at mama well i wasn't married then i was still in my home and it was my she was calling me mama and i'm like

Speaker 4 i love you but i'm not your mama

Speaker 4 because you're a teenager yeah i'm a teenager so i'm like i love you but i'm not your mama yeah most of the time when we got her um like they would drop her off on the weekend i guess like when he would be off

Speaker 4 and she would stay three or four days and they would come get her and then the week when the weekend come she'd stay three or four days and they'd get back. I don't know Lisa really

Speaker 1 Never worked like how how was Lisa as a mom in that time period

Speaker 4 Well, it's kind of hard to say because

Speaker 4 When she when Michelle was first born and was a baby she seemed to be attentive and everything but then she started you know leaving her at everybody else's house. So

Speaker 4 I would say you know part-time mom maybe I mean, for lack of better,

Speaker 4 because it was just hard to get that feel because she was always at our house or at W.M. and Bernice's house.
So she was never really

Speaker 4 around parenting her. I mean, like I say, it's hard to kind of gauge what kind of parent she was because she always left her.
And then I got pregnant with my oldest one, and she was born in 96.

Speaker 4 I mean, she was born in October of 96, but when I got pregnant with her, of course, you know, you get a lot of attention when you, announce your pregnant and everything.

Speaker 4 And you could just tell in Lisa's face and how she acted that she could not stand it. She absolutely hated it.
She could not stand it.

Speaker 4 And just how dare you take any spotlight away from her, which of course was not my intent. Then the next thing we know, She was pregnant with Angelin.
Fabulous. You know, I was happy for her.

Speaker 4 Who wouldn't, you know, be happy for somebody, you know, having a child if that's what they want to do. My oldest was born in October.

Speaker 4 And then right after that, it was one thing after another, after another.

Speaker 4 I fell down the doorsteps. I need to go to the ER.

Speaker 4 I fell down the doorsteps again.

Speaker 4 I've called the ambulance.

Speaker 4 Just all kind of little things like that.

Speaker 4 The reality is she never fell down the doorsteps. She threw herself down the doorsteps one time.

Speaker 4 The reason why I think she threw herself down the doorsteps is because the way they said she landed right with the edge of the doorstep right directly in her stomach.

Speaker 4 Anyway, that triggered the whole series of events with Angelin coming early.

Speaker 1 She fell and she went into labor.

Speaker 4 She got pregnant on purpose as a way to get attention for herself,

Speaker 4 but I don't know

Speaker 4 that she ever really planned on

Speaker 4 actually the baby surviving, if that makes sense, what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 This insinuation that Lisa got pregnant with Michelle's little sister Angelin and then interfered with that pregnancy to draw attention to herself might sound shocking, but to me, it's all too familiar.

Speaker 1 Fake pregnancies followed by fake dramatic miscarriages, along with real pregnancies followed by induced obstetrical complications and premature births, are absolutely textbook in these cases.

Speaker 1 The timing of my older sister's pregnancy hoax is a good example of this.

Speaker 1 It came right in the middle of a falling out with my parents after she had committed check fraud, which for the record, they did bail her out of.

Speaker 1 And it also came right on the heels of her boyfriend breaking up with her after discovering she'd been abusive with his son.

Speaker 1 Most people would never use it, but a pregnancy can be a pretty powerful trump card. And Lisa was a master at dragging people into her warped version of reality.

Speaker 4 When you get so good at telling a lie,

Speaker 4 she has an uncanny ability to make people believe. Well, not us anymore, but she can make people believe just about anything she wanted to about anybody.

Speaker 4 And I'm, you know, it's.

Speaker 4 How do you get that dark? Like, how do you, I don't, I don't understand

Speaker 4 how people cannot see the true color she is. It's a never-ending cycle.
It's one thing. It's one thing after another, after another.

Speaker 4 And I don't, I hardly ever communicate with her because it's just every time you do, you're just waiting on that knife to get twisted a little bit further and a little bit further.

Speaker 4 And, you know, you get to the point where it's like, look,

Speaker 4 I forgave you.

Speaker 4 I had never told her I forgive her. I forgive her for my peace, not for hers.
I forgave her for me, for my inner peace, but it's just

Speaker 4 constant. And that's the reason why I don't have a lot to do with her because every time you talk to her, it opens the gate for her to twist it a little bit more.

Speaker 4 And in my adult life, I don't have room for that. And I don't want my kids to learn that.

Speaker 4 I don't want my kids to have to deal with that and think that that's acceptable because that's somebody who's related to you. But that doesn't mean you have to accept how they act or what they do.

Speaker 4 She's my sister. Do I love her? Yes.

Speaker 4 But I love her from a distance because I don't have to accept her in my life.

Speaker 1 Making a show like this, you have to watch out for people who want to settle a score or punish someone who's harmed them.

Speaker 1 It's too precarious of a place to be in when you're taking the vulnerable step of sharing something like this.

Speaker 1 I sympathize deeply with people who want to make abusers pay, but we just don't do revenge journeys here on this show. We look for the truth and we tell it.
What happens next isn't really up to me.

Speaker 1 I look for people who really share the ethos of this show, which is about bringing this abuse to light, about protecting kids, and educating those who we've trusted to do so.

Speaker 1 It's why I knew that despite how harrowing this particular case is, Michelle was up for the challenge. I've watched her wrestle with the decision to go public.

Speaker 1 I've watched her interrogate her own motives, and that's why I'm so sure they're the right ones.

Speaker 22 I'm sitting here outside

Speaker 22 on the balcony in San Diego preparing for a conference on Much Housing by proxy and being able to speak. I know that I've really struggled with

Speaker 22 doing this because my mom does this. My mom travels.
and she talks to doctors and she gives presentations.

Speaker 22 She's given presentations here in San Diego.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 I've been so nervous and worried, does that

Speaker 22 make me like her?

Speaker 22 I'm sitting here and just kind of hits me that this is not built on lies for me.

Speaker 22 This is not built on manipulation. I just told the truth.

Speaker 1 Lisa McDaniel would like you to believe that the version of her found online is the real her.

Speaker 1 The Lisa who has, according to the Guthy Jackson Foundation's website, educated more than 50,000 people on her son's rare disorder.

Speaker 16 My name is Lisa McDaniel.

Speaker 1 I think I know most of you.

Speaker 16 What I do is I go out and I talk to doctors and hospitals, really anybody who wants to listen to me and my southern charm. So the way I started was with my son's pediatrician.

Speaker 16 Told her what I was wanting to do because as you guys know, sometimes our doctors don't know. What I normally do is start with a personal story.
Make it personal.

Speaker 16 You need to get their attention because you want to make sure they understand your disease. I always start off with a little story about Colin.
You can pick your own story.

Speaker 16 Grab their attention right away. That's the easiest way to make sure they're hearing and listening to you.
It's very simple and very easy to do. Any questions?

Speaker 1 Well, since you asked, Lisa, actually, I do have a few questions for you.

Speaker 1 This season on Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 13 I'm actually amazed from what you're telling me that this child lived through this.

Speaker 4 He said, Do you think your sister's doing something to her? I'm like, don't ever say that again.

Speaker 3 Neither one of those children were suffering because of a disease.

Speaker 2 How

Speaker 2 somebody

Speaker 2 could do that

Speaker 2 to a child that was so little

Speaker 4 and so helpless still to this day haunts me.

Speaker 14 The judge gave full custody back to them. I stood up and I told him, I hope you don't sleep when you go home tonight.
You have no idea what you've done and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Speaker 1 There's a pattern.

Speaker 3 This fits a pattern and it is lethal Munchausen by proxy.

Speaker 22 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 16 As a caregiver, you pour yourself into advocacy and helping other people. That's who I am at heart as a helper.

Speaker 22 My mother tortured my brother, and these doctors and this hospital went along with it and they co-signed on it and they helped her torture him.

Speaker 1 Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our supervising producer is Mariah Gossett.
Our senior 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 Karmouche.

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

Speaker 1 Special thanks to Michelle Roberts, Aunt Sabrina, and the fine folks at Village Pizza in Hazelhurst for letting us monopolize their party room for many hours.

Speaker 23 Extra-value meals are back. For just $5, get a savory and sweet sausage, egg, and cheese McGrittles, plus hash browns and a coffee.
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