Case Files 16: Mom and Dad

True Story Media.

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.

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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 Brittany'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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So if we could just start by getting a slate from you.

So I'm Mike and I'm Andrea's dad.

So I talked to you.

We talked to the camera.

Nope, you talked to me.

I talked to you.

Okay.

Four years ago, I set out on the journey of making this show.

I came here because I had a story to tell.

And I'd recently realized that my family's bizarre and horrifying saga wasn't actually a one in a million story.

Instead, it sounded nearly identical to all of these other stories of families experiencing Munchausen by proxy, and it's this powerful shared experience that fuels the show to this day.

I've talked about my sister, Megan Carter's case periodically throughout the show, namely in the first and second seasons, episodes that I'll link to in the show notes.

But my history follows me on this road, and it takes a new shape with each new case I learn about.

As my understanding of Munchausen by proxy deepens, so does my understanding of my past, of myself, and especially of my family.

I'm Andrea Dunlop's father.

I've been her father for a long time, in fact, ever since she was born.

And so that's who I am.

That's who I'm here today to discuss with my daughter some topics that relate to the challenge we had in our family with Munchausen's and also to help compliment my daughter on the wonderful wonderful work she's done in bringing this very difficult subject matter to a wider audience with the objective of helping people who have suffered from this and

revealing some of the difficulties we went through as a family.

And it's very difficult to discuss and I'd much prefer not to do it, but the value of doing it, I think, to explain to other parents who can see signs of this happening at an early age will, I think, make a big difference.

Aw, dad.

Season five brought me back to my sister's case, because if you don't know, she was a part of Sophie Hartman's legal team.

So Megan plays a role in this story.

But I also wanted to explore the parallels between the two families, the Hartmans and the Dunlops, and the divergence ultimately in our two paths.

Both were upper-middle-class families who grew grew up in idyllic suburban settings.

Meghan and Sophie were both gifted children of long married parents, given every material advantage one could hope for in this world, and yet somehow managed to portray themselves as constant victims.

I've always been close with my parents, and I've always admired how they handled the situation with Meghan, but it's only as I've encountered all of these other stories, Sophie's in particular, that I've really understood their emotional courage.

My parents and I have talked about what happened with Megan in depth many times over the years, but this is the first time either of them have ever talked about my sister publicly.

My dad is, in all ways, a big man.

He's a successful entrepreneur and a six foot three former rugby player, and in case you can't tell, he's British.

And if you think he gets a lot of mileage out of that accent, you'd be right.

He's an indefatigable optimist and irrepressibly outgoing.

He collects friends everywhere he goes.

Airplanes, restaurants, his UPS delivery guy, my dad is chatting them up.

But even though my dad loves to talk, now you know where I get it, I didn't think he'd ever want to talk about this.

Through the years, especially as I've become a parent myself, I've come to a deeper appreciation of what it must have cost my parents to accept who my sister is.

And this potent mix of shame, fear, and grief, I believe, holds people like the Hartmans back from ever facing the truth.

You heard a bit from my folks in season five, but today I wanted to share more of my conversation with them, because particularly after meeting Chalice last season, I've come to believe that courage is contagious.

And my parents are two of the most courageous people I know.

We've all spent years wondering where things went wrong with Megan.

Was there a moment we could have helped her?

before this all escalated.

For me, those disquieting memories go back to high school, but for my parents, they go back much earlier.

We've certainly gone back through our own history with Megan many, many times.

And,

you know, I think one of the things that's the most complicated for me is I have like many really nice memories of her from when we were growing up.

And I wonder if you could just sort of talk about what was Megan like when we were kids?

Like, what are some of your memories of her when we were kids?

She was relatively just a normal kid,

but very early on, we started to

see symptoms of

becoming a hypochondriac how she

wanted the attention of illness very early on and the early example was

when she needed glasses or she said she needed glasses and so we took her to an eye specialist and

an optometrist and he said she doesn't need glasses at all.

She's not telling the truth.

I think I'm fairly observant and I thought this there's something strange about this.

And then when Megan went to the alternative school she became absolutely obsessed with one of the students who was severely handicapped and sort of

started saying that she was the only one who could understand what he was trying to say and spent a lot of time with him and wheeled him around and every time we went to the school she was with him.

And I thought this is either someone incredibly compassionate or someone who just

wants to be the center of medical attention.

So I started to see things very early on.

I didn't say anything, but

I just felt that

something was not right.

Just to clarify what my dad is talking about here, my sister and I went to this hippie-dippy alternative elementary school.

Kind of unconventional for my straight-laced parents, honestly.

But this place was awesome.

There were always a ton ton of parents in the classroom.

We went on a million field trips and did wacky art projects and for some reason called our teachers by their first names.

We also had a special needs sister school next door whose students we spent a lot of time with.

Again, this was awesome.

And I remember this boy that my dad's talking about.

I just thought, oh, my sister has such a big heart.

It's one of a million little details that looks different in the rear view.

But it sounds like maybe there was like

some unease about Megan even when she was little.

Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, not only that, but as she grew up,

you know, one of these incidents would have been fine.

You just sort of brushed it aside.

But I have a very good memory of detail.

And I started piecing a lot of these pieces together, that there was something, there was definitely something wrong.

The next one, the next incident was the knee.

And there's this wonderful doctor who went to see Dr.

Holland and Megan was complaining of terrible pain in her knee and

she did an arthroscopic surgery, said there's absolutely nothing here.

Everything is perfect.

So that was the first.

And then

that was when she was in high school, right?

Yes, I think she was about 12 or 13.

And then in a gym class, she said she hurt her back.

And that was,

she claimed she fell and hurt her back.

And that was the series of just

a number of just very traumatic situations.

One where she had a back operation and the doctor turned out to be a complete flake anyway.

So that didn't exactly help the situation.

And then she got all this attention with everybody coming to the hospital and asking how she was.

She went home.

And then she had an infection.

And we think it was self-induced because it was just,

something that was so unusual.

And then she went back in, had another operation.

And I can picture exactly now looking at her in the bed and her being kind of pleased that everybody was looking at her and concerned about her.

And

not concerned about what happened, but concerned about

that

we were concerned.

And I started piecing pieces together, and it was this medical attention getting

that

we had a number of instances, one where she claimed she couldn't walk and almost had to be in a wheelchair and

eventually got her to walk, took her to a doctor at University of Washington.

And

he was a very strange doctor, a long ponytail,

but was a very good doctor and asked her to walk down the passageway.

and

he said we deal with cases like this there's nothing wrong with her back it's in her mind and that was when i decided i was either going to pay thirty thousand dollars for this course that he had where he would make them swim and run and you sort of it was like a sort of physical therapy occupational therapy well he asked her to walk and hop down the passageway and uh then he took me aside and said you know there's absolutely nothing physically wrong you can't do that

if you have what she claimed that she had this serious back problem.

Right, right.

And was this

probably around the time that she was wearing a back brace for

on and off?

Yeah.

And that again drew attention to it.

And

then

I decided, well, do I spend X thousand dollars on this course or do we head off to Club Med in Waltuco in Mexico?

And I decided that was the better option.

Yeah, I mean, I remember that trip as well because I remember specifically that piece of it of like, oh, Megan's been having all this trouble with her back, and then now she's like having fun and doing the, you know, doing all this stuff.

And I remember her going on runs with you.

Yeah, and I mean, for you and mom at the time, like, do you remember having conversations about your concerns about Megan?

And like, what were those?

Just what were those just sort of like some things off?

Well, that she was, you know, an incredible hypochondriac and that she got

appeared to get pleasure for being involved in medical

intervention.

So at the time, your framing of it was

she's convincing herself she's sick, not this is deliberate deception.

She knows she's not sick.

Because of course, we would not have had any of that framing at the time.

I think it was, I had the feeling it was deliberate, that it was a

prescription in order for her to get attention.

And

it just became so obvious.

And it was the next thing, then the next thing, then the next thing.

Yeah.

Was it just sort of not clear what to do?

Or like, let's just try and redirect her as much as possible?

We had no idea what to do.

We thought it would be resolved when she eventually went to university and went up to Western State, is it?

Western, yeah.

Western and

started

studying to become a nurse.

And we thought, finally, this is an avenue where she can be involved in medical stuff, but not have to,

you know, that's what she does.

And so, all the attention related to medical.

And

she

has and had an incredible memory.

I mean, she's kind of like me, she has this detailed memory, so she remembered drugs and dosages and things that the average person can maybe do two or three, but not a whole pharmacy full of drugs.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's really smart.

Yeah.

Remember the names and everything.

And

so

I thought finally that was the diversion.

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We didn't have language for it, but this whole series of incidents with the knee and back surgeries and then the infection, it was confusing and worrying for my parents.

And to this day, we can only wonder how much of it was real.

But Megan was pretty and smart and had a ton of friends.

So while there was always a low hum of worry between crises, my parents just hoped she'd grow out of it.

And I think we all felt like becoming a nurse would fix it somehow.

Like if her seeming obsession with medical stuff could just be contained, it could all be fine.

But it wasn't just the medical stuff that was concerning.

She was always running out of money and always

seemed to just have no connection between

what she should have done in terms.

So she collected the rent in the apartment she had in Kirkland, but she didn't pay the landlord.

And so

all these sort of this strange sort of behavior

tied in.

And it was, she would get so far and then there would be this sort of breakdown.

And she would,

you know, not connect the dots.

Yeah.

So, yeah, if you can talk a little bit more about kind of the financial piece of it,

because, you know, she wasn't, as at least as I remember it, and I remember the incident with her because I was when she was roommates with quite a close friend of hers.

And so that was a sort of big betrayal of that friend that then they got in trouble for not paying the rent.

And she'd been giving her her rent money every month.

And I mean, it always seemed, that always seemed so strange to me because,

you know, Megan and I were really lucky in that we always had everything we needed, right?

I mean, you guys paid for school for both of us.

You, you know, we always had that safety net, right?

We weren't like trust fund kids where we were just got given a pile of money, but it was like, you know, if one of us needed help with rent or something like that like you guys were always able to provide that and willing to provide that so i remember it seeming you know because by this time we're in both in our 20s and i remember it seeming so strange of like why would you get yourself in like with her like why would you get yourself into credit card debt why would you like there was an incident where she was writing bad checks like why would you do that when like i know you could just ask mom and dad like it wasn't like she was doing it wasn't like she was like living some crazy high life and driving so it was it wasn't anything like super obvious.

It was just these like weird things that would happen.

And then when she forged the checks, that was,

it was bizarre.

It was so easy to find out.

Right.

I mean, not a mastermind, not exactly.

And that was when that, the boyfriend, that boyfriend appeared.

Yeah, her, her boyfriend.

That was when she was with him.

Yes.

With Scott.

Yeah.

And I mean, I remember that.

Like, so there was, and again, I, you know, it's like, there's all these incidents, but that one where she was writing the bad checks and then got in trouble.

And I mean, she got in like legal trouble for that.

That was, that was a bigger deal than just like, oh, well, she's in debt.

I managed to paste over that.

Right.

You bailed her out.

But I remember that she was in that instance.

So she was with this boyfriend that, you know, was, I think we had questions about.

And

she

got in trouble for writing fake checks.

And then I remember that like, that was kind of the first time like she stopped talking to all of us for like three months because she was mad.

She was mad that I didn't defend her against you guys.

And then she was so furious at me that she didn't talk to me for like three months.

This was another thing that struck me as a parallel between Sophie and Megan.

Not to say that you can't suffer just because you come from a place of economic privilege.

Of course, you can.

But with both of them, there was this insistence on seeking out opportunities to position themselves as the victim that seemed pathological in and of itself, like Sophie choosing to become a single mom of two, or my sister fabricating and then pretending to lose a twin pregnancy after her fiancé left her.

I've covered this story in depth in previous episodes, but when my sister was in her 20s, she pretended, very convincingly, to be pregnant with twin girls, and then called my parents and me while we were all out of town, a theme that would repeat itself over the years, to tell us that she'd lost the babies six months in.

I was living in New York at the time, and I can picture exactly where I was, in my first tiny apartment with the ceiling that leaked prodigiously in heavy rains, when my dad called me to tell me that Megan's story about the babies had unraveled, that she'd never been pregnant at all.

But even as the evidence mounted that my sister was capable of very serious deception, my dad second-guessed himself.

I always felt in the back of my mind that have I made a dreadful mistake as this my daughter who's just having all these terrible things happen to her?

And am I being unsympathetic?

And then I look at the probability of two or three of them, let alone 15.

And then that formed a pattern.

And I remember at the wedding, and I definitely remember I had some

inkling of fear.

that if she had children, they might be at risk.

And I suppressed it a number of times, but I felt because I'd seen the entire history, you know, right from when she was a child.

And

it made me very nervous

of how she would care for a child.

And so

when she got really pregnant,

got actually pregnant, pregnant for real,

I was concerned.

And it's actually very similar to the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross,

the

Swiss psychiatrist on her thesis on dying.

When people know they're going to die, the first thing is denial, then it's anger, and then it's prayer, and then it's acceptance.

And I think that's a very natural human trait.

And I think for parents of children that have Munchausen's disease,

you keep on replaying it and replaying it, and it's more comfortable to be in a state of denial.

It's absolutely horrifying when you confront it and you realize that it's not, and it is the real thing.

My mom also remembers Megan's early forays into medical deception.

And she remembers this pattern of Megan being in proximity to someone having a medical issue and then suddenly co-opting it.

She was a kid, and

I just thought they were anomalies.

So I think she was very susceptible to suggestion about medical things like going for an eye exam because somebody that she knew got glasses and the eye doctor saying, you know, I can't prescribe anything because your answers, he basically said your answers aren't consistent.

So she was just making it up.

And then, you know, any medical thing, the only thing I can think of that was truly,

you know, a problem was her tonsils.

And she had a tonsillectomy, and I don't remember what age.

She was pretty young, and she really did have infected tonsils.

But I just think anything, and then she had, people on swim team had asthma, so she had asthma, and

somehow she managed to get prescriptions for things.

And there were just looking back, there were many

instances of that sort of thing.

Any medical thing turned into a big deal.

And we didn't really put that all all together until her son started having trouble right off the bat, starting with being born prematurely and then having various medical problems.

My mom and I have always had an easy relationship and we've always been close.

My mom is tall and slim with salt and pepper hair.

She's kind of the opposite of my dad, reserved and self-contained.

She loves gardens, books, and most of all, she loves dogs, her gorgeous German shepherd, Jenna, in particular.

My mom stayed home with my sister and I growing up, doing the unglamorous but important work of taking care of everyone in the family's needs.

My dad is an entrepreneur and he worked a lot while we were growing up, so it was my mom who was there for everything, driving me to tennis after school and taking my sister to swimming at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m.

She is the emotional rock of our family, and she's honestly just the best mom ever.

Even as the troubling incidents with Megan piled up, my mom remained hopeful for her daughter.

And I think what we have to remember is sometimes I look back and I think, why did we not realize there was a real problem earlier?

But it was incidents and then there would be a long period of seeming normalcy, you know, where everything was great and she was

this intelligent, vibrant girl.

And, you know, and I think the other part of it is when she met her husband,

I thought, oh, he's a nice, normal guy.

And she's going to settle down now.

She's going to settle down and live a good life, which was really

stupid in retrospect to think that she would just suddenly turn a corner.

But I guess

that's what I hoped.

Your dad and I used to walk up in the trails across the street, walk the dogs, and we started talking about it and putting all these pieces together.

And that's when we decided that...

And

this is when her son was about a year old?

No, it was earlier than that.

So

sometime in the summer or fall after he was born,

we started to worry about this.

And then I contacted

a couple of the doctors and I went to a doctor's appointment with her and her son.

And

what she heard and what I heard was completely different.

She was really pushing for a G-tube at that time.

And I think I only

babysat him once

when he was very young, and he just screamed the entire time.

And looking back on it, I realize it was because he was hungry.

I contacted a pediatrician that she was seeing and a GI doctor.

that she was seeing and started to sort of say that something's wrong.

And in that process, of course, we all went to see our family doctor and talked to her because there was no information out there, really.

I'd heard about Munchausen's by proxy in some TV movie or something, and that's about it.

There was no real research to look into.

So then ultimately, the pediatrician that I talked to said, do you think it's time for an intervention?

And I said, yes.

In my head, I thought, okay, we'll all sit down at a conference table and confront the issue and we'll solve it.

Well, that's not what she meant.

She meant that she was going to call CPS.

And of course, the rest is history.

I remember this moment really well.

And having no idea that this was the beginning of the end of my family, I remember thinking, well, okay, now we're finally going to do something.

But it was my mom who took action, my mom who had the courage to make the call.

I was living with you guys at the the time because I just moved back from New York and

you know you said like you and daddy were going on a walk and and then you had this meeting with Dr.

Druckman and like I remember you guys walking in and telling me about your conversation with Dr.

Druckman.

What do you remember about that conversation?

Well she was very helpful

and you know, we were absolutely convinced at that point that Megan was causing harm to her son.

And that was kind of the framing we had, right?

Like a bad feeling

and that she was the cause of it.

Not necessarily specifically Munchausen by proxy, which we didn't know that much about.

Like, no.

Dr.

Druckman kind of helped give us that framing.

But when we put, yes, she put a name to it.

When we put all the pieces together, that, you know, from her childhood on up, all of a sudden the puzzle came together.

And

Dr.

Druckman was very helpful, believed us, and she gave us the name of somebody at Children's who is on, there's a committee.

A scan team.

Yeah, probably a scan team.

And I contacted that person.

So we were doing everything we could to raise the alarm.

And so at least she gave us a framework to work with.

It's not like a next step to take.

Right, and it's just, it's really difficult.

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In the Hartman case, we saw a family of privilege make the opposite choice, to defend their daughter's indefensible actions and pour millions of dollars into her legal case.

The result was that two vulnerable children remain at home with an unsafe parent, and Sophie was free to pursue an opportunistic lawsuit.

In my family, though I know how hard this was on my parents, once they had the information in front of them, once they realized what was at stake, the priority was protecting Megan's son.

I think on some level, we all knew that this could cost us our relationship with Megan,

even if there was some part of us that was hoping it could go another way.

As my mom and I discuss here with my wonderful lead producer, Mariah Gossett.

So, you know, we get this call and we were down in the desert and actually Megan and her son were supposed to join us.

And then we get this call from Andy and he's hysterical and, you know, they've taken, CPS came and did an emergency removal, which we did not know was going to happen.

We did not.

You had said you had thought when an intervention was brought up that it would be like that sitting around the conference table and all that how naive is that i mean that's what they show us on tv when they say it's an intervention right i think it's like what you think it is but i think i i would love to know

in a world where

like what would have that solution look like what would have been the idealistic version of this where it was to sit down at the table what would have happened well the idealistic you know concept would have been that we all sit around and Megan suddenly said, oh, yeah, I do need help, which looking back at it, of course, is incredibly naive and naive to think that that would have been an intervention that they were talking about.

But,

you know, I guess at that point, you know, she's my daughter, and we were hoping we could turn this around.

But

obviously it wouldn't have been successful if it had been done.

It wasn't even successful when CPS came and took her son, you know, so and nothing was was ultimately done.

So it's, it's, would have been very unlikely for that to have had any good effect.

But I think we were like, and I think we all sort of fell on different places of how realistic we thought this was even at the time.

And certainly now we all see it in a different lens.

But like

we were thinking of Megan as sick.

We were thinking of her as

she has, and this is something we've talked about at great length on the show of like, do you classify this as a mental illness or not?

and we were thinking of her as like oh she needs help like she needs help and support to be able to parent safely like that's how we were looking at her right and we needed her husband and her family to recognize that she needed that help so that they could be a part of that support system right

and

so in the very beginning, like we were having these conversations.

I mean, I mean, I remember like this was our first,

lucky the lives we led until then, I guess, but like this was, this is our first interaction with like the state and CPS.

And that's a very, like, I wouldn't be scared of them now, but like, that's a very scary thing, right?

You're like, oh my God, the child is like, and it was very brief.

He was given, you know, over to the grandparents, like very fast.

But like the idea of like a child being in state custody in your family is like terrifying.

It's terrifying when you know something about foster care and how that turns out so many times.

So

I think to go back to when

daddy decided to

pay fees to the lawyers originally, you know, we were trying to help.

And looking back on it, I wish we hadn't, but that was that.

You know, our family's always been eager to help and support our kids.

And so that's what we were trying to do.

And then it ended up not going so well.

This is definitely a top shelf problem, but for families with resources, the line between helping and enabling isn't always crystal clear.

And my dad is a man who is used to being able to fix things, to take charge of a situation.

And in this moment of crisis, it makes sense that he thought he might be able to fix this one.

Well, what I told the attorney, I told Shapiro, this is what I want.

You know, I want Megan to get treatment.

There's no doubt in my mind she's seriously ill, and his job is to make sure that that she gets treatment.

And unfortunately, he went completely against my wishes.

And

he sort of claimed that he's representing Megan, even though I was paying the bills.

Right.

I think they have to do that.

If he gave you the impression in your first conversations with him that he could do that, that he could, like, because you were paying the bills, sort of act on your behalf.

I mean, I don't think that would be legal or ethical.

Well, it's not.

It wasn't.

It was what I wanted him to create as an outcome.

And to first, this was an incident that we could utilize to help Megan.

And that was...

Right, sort of things have come to a head.

Yes.

And, you know, she needs legal representation because, you know, it's in the hands of the state.

And he, one of the things I've compartmentalized is

the horror that this man,

in my opinion, could,

you know,

not only not represent her best interests, in my opinion, but actually take, you know, defend her against something that she did.

And

then has now tried to make a career out of it, and now is probably behind a lot of these lawsuits.

Because the one way that lawyers make a lot of money is they take a percentage of the lawsuits.

And I don't know how many of these are going to be successful, although in

your podcast,

some have.

And

this is now

seems to be almost a

modus operandi for shaking down hospitals.

This was what really drew me to the Hartman case.

The way that my sister and her lawyer, Adam Shapiro, set a blueprint for how to attack a hospital who reports abuse.

And the way they took what they learned in Megan's case and directly put it to use in Sophie's.

The deeper I get into the cases I cover on this show, the more I am both intrigued and dismayed by their interconnectedness, the way the same lawyers and experts and groups keep showing up in these cases.

There is a playbook for perpetrators with means, or the ability to procure means.

Hire experts and lawyers to attack the hospital and exploit the judiciary's lack of knowledge on these cases.

Then, in a classic bit of Darvo, turn it around so that the abuser is now the victim, suing the hospital for whatever they can throw at the wall.

And funding this lawsuit, Megan and her husband proposed, was how my parents could have their daughter and their grandson back.

That was the price.

Yeah, he wanted to meet at this restaurant.

And

I can't remember all the details of the conversation with the restaurant in Tukwila.

And

their whole motivation was how can we sue the hospital?

Yeah.

I mean, were you

surprised at the gall of that?

I mean, it's like they were in a...

it's not surprising in the context of Megan and her behavior, but like

it's a

sort of a shocking move in some way.

I think Andy saw it as a ticket out of their financial problems.

So they wanted you to fund their legal pursuit of suing children's hospital for falsely accusing her.

And what did you have to say to that?

I said, no, I believe that what they said is correct.

And

I have no intention of doing that.

And I think that is, that's extortion.

That's not just that's suing.

That's extortion.

You're trying to get money out of them when you have no rationale for it whatsoever.

And

so I believe, but I mean, was that your last conversation with Megan?

Yep.

I said goodbye.

And I, to be honest, I didn't expect to see her again.

My mom and dad faced this situation with unusual clarity and courage.

But sadly, Megan's in-laws did not and I mean I remember looking at Andy's mom

and I felt sort of instinctively like she might be the one who would listen right that's not how it turned out but I agree though I think she had some sympathy at that point but by the time Megan had indoctrinated the whole family right um they just either couldn't see it or they refused to see it.

Right.

Well, they just, it felt cold, I mean, it felt like we were up against a cult even then, I think.

I mean, it's like like, but Megan, and Megan always kind of like, she always kind of had that, right?

Like, she was very good at convincing you of things and she's very good at like sort of presenting her

and

manipulating people.

And manipulating people.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you've probably mentioned this in the podcast, but I think it's notable that many times big things happen

when we were out of town.

Always.

You know, her son was born on New Year's Eve.

She She lost the twins, the false pregnancy, on New Year's Eve.

And we were out of town both times, which you know sort of involved flying back and scrambling around to get back.

I just think that is not a coincidence.

It was always sort of maximum drama.

Absolutely.

And like this was something that I actually don't have memory of, but she had a big health crisis right when you guys were coming down for my college graduation, right?

During the first investigation into Megan, she was evaluated by a psychologist who also interviewed my parents and me to get a family history.

So she went and saw the psychologist.

I do remember talking to him and really having the impression that he thought something was wrong.

I mean, I believe he mentioned that he felt she had borderline traits.

Because I think that was the first time I heard her.

He said that she had a very narcissistic

personality.

Personality.

And that's what I recall.

Yeah.

And I remember feeling reassured by that because I was like, oh, they see it.

Like they see that something is wrong here.

But it just came to nothing.

And I got the sense that they sort of like sent her off with like, ma'am, you need to go to some therapy.

Yeah.

And I think it was very clear from our talking to the CASA representative that she

kind of intellectually ran rings around Andy's family and had everybody under her influence.

We have limited information about what went on during the first investigation because we were on the outs with my sister and the records for the case are sealed.

We got some insights from the social worker and the CASA, or court-appointed special advocate, who was representing my nephew.

We don't know what the results of the psychological evaluation showed, other than what the psychologist shared with us during our conversation with him.

What I now know after studying many of these cases is that a psyche valve is of limited use in a medical child abuse case, particularly if that psychologist has not reviewed the medical records.

This is not a diagnosis that can be made from conversations with the perpetrator and their family.

It's a crime for which there either is or is not evidence.

But we knew none of this at the time.

All we knew was that we were now the enemy.

When was your last conversation with Megan?

Do you remember?

I don't specifically remember because I don't even think I talked to her after the CPS thing.

Like after the removal.

Right.

And because my name was in the...

So she would talk to dad and she would talk.

She talked to me for a little bit and then right yeah and i don't believe i ever talked to her she just wouldn't even speak to you and i of course saw her at the meeting yeah after the case that was the last time but that was that was it um and we haven't had any contact since then the state's dependency petition for my nephew was dismissed The social worker tried to reassure my mother afterwards that they had nonetheless, quote, implemented a safeguard to protect my nephew and get Megan the help she needs.

Whatever that means.

Over the next few years, my sister gave birth to two more babies, both very premature.

One of them died.

The other, my niece, survived.

And five years later, my sister was back in court after reports of her abusing my niece.

This time, there was a police investigation that included an expert review of my then five-year-old niece's 73,000 pages of medical records.

They also had video evidence of my sister disposing of an anticoagulant medication meant for my niece.

Following this incident, my niece had developed a life-threatening blood clot that hospital staff reported would not have been possible if she'd received the intended dose.

This led to yet another lengthy stay in the PICU.

The detective reached out to my family, and even after the previous disaster, we thought this time would be different.

And we talked to the detective

and gave him all the background we could.

Yeah, I was really hopeful.

I just was listening to a book in the car and one of the comments was that the danger of having getting your hopes up is that they could be dashed.

And I thought that very much applies to this because I was very hopeful in that case.

But it didn't go anywhere.

Throughout all of this, through the death of one baby and yet another investigation at a different hospital than the first one, Megan's husband and in-laws stood by her.

During the second investigation, Megan's father-in-law even told the police, this is a witch hunt, just like last time.

Their commitment to remaining in denial and their financial support of Megan has cost the kids any hope they had of a safe childhood.

No one person could have stopped her, but all of us together could have.

We could have originally, but I can understand

their being reluctant.

I don't know if they were ever inclined to do that, but I could understand their being reluctant because they saw first investigation, nothing happened.

Second investigation, nothing happened.

Right.

And as grandparents, they don't have any rights.

So it's like if their son turns on them.

So if they decided to take the kids away, then they would, I'm sure at...

on some level they love the kids.

I think so.

I don't question whether they love the kids.

And on some level, it's like, I mean, I have such complicated feelings about them because like, I, I want those kids to have people that love them.

I don't want them to be alone, isolated with Megan.

And I, I think the person I have the strongest feelings about is Andy because I'm like, you are a collaborator now.

You're not just an enabler.

You.

You are the person that could have stopped this.

You're the person who has legal rights and you didn't.

And you had a duty to protect your children.

And you have job.

So you have one job.

And that's to protect your kids.

To protect your kids and you didn't do it.

And you abdicated that 100%.

You've been presented with so much evidence about the abuse, so much evidence about

her deception, and you have chosen to disregard all of that.

I always wonder what story Megan and Andy tell their children about where the rest of their family is.

I know we're the villains in that house.

That we, in addition to all of those scheming doctors who keep reporting her, are the scapegoats.

And sometimes it's hard not to think about what might have been.

I know what good parents you were and grew up in the same house, and like, I know how much we would have loved.

to be in those kids' lives.

Oh, we would have.

And they missed out on so much.

Yeah, I feel like we had so much love to give and didn't have the opportunity.

So, and I think about how much we love your kids now and how much we enjoy spending time with them.

And it's such a special relationship.

And, you know, and it's just a shame that Megan's children have missed out on that and we've missed out on that.

The interesting thing in the future is going to be as the children get older and older,

you know,

they are obviously going to be exposed to a lot of, you know, what happened to me when I was younger.

And in the daughter's case, that was her entire early life was spent in hospitals.

So

I think it's going to be interesting to watch.

And I, you know, hope springs eternal.

And I think that

I don't think we'll be reunited with Megan, but I

forward to the possibility of being reunited with the children.

But I think

time is a great healer because once they're outside a certain age group, they're protected by themselves.

I mean, why are you giving me this?

Why are you doing this to me?

Why I don't feel ill, et cetera, et cetera.

And you've done some

really interesting interviews with

the recognition.

And I think part of the great work that you're doing and part of the resources that we're very happy to provide are for the surviving children because

talk about

a crisis and a catharsis when

they realize that all the stuff they've been through was created.

And, you know, I think they come from strong genes.

I think they'll be strong children.

As I said in the finale of our last season, this show has always been a sort of love letter to my niece and nephew.

Strange though that may be to say about a true crime podcast.

And for this reason especially, it was important to me to capture my parents' voices here in this time capsule of the Dunlop family saga.

My parents are fortunately still in good health, but they're in their 70s.

There is time still, but it's not infinite.

So to my niece and nephew, just know the door is open and that we're holding holding out hope.

I hope you get to meet your grandparents someday.

They're wonderful people.

You deserved to have them in your lives.

And I'm sorry you didn't.

And I'll let them have the final word.

What would you want to tell them now?

And then what do you hope for them in the future?

I hope for good health, mental and physical.

And I hope they are able to see the situation at some point for what it really is and was.

Maybe they'll listen to your podcast and realize that

people did see, people did care.

And

we did all we could do.

So

I hope that someday they realize that.

That we're still here.

Yeah, and we'll always welcome them.

And we'll always tell them the truth.

And it's not that we hate Megan.

It's not that we we just do anything

adversarial against your mother.

It's that we know the truth.

And when you look at people, when people tell you something,

you have to look at what the motivation is.

And as they get older,

having to explain to them that what possibly could have been our motive other than to protect them.

I mean, what other possible motive,

financial,

publicity?

You know, so what did we gain from trying to protect them?

And that will be my sort of rationale explanation to them.

And hopefully, I live long enough

to see them.

But that is the message I want to pass

from a pure logical standpoint.

Why would we have ever done this?

And we did it not for Megan.

We did it for you.

We were protecting you.

Nobody Should Believe Me case files is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett.

Administrative support from Nola Carmouche.

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