S03 E18: What Jack Knew

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

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

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

Speaker 1 Hello, it is Andrea Dunlop, and welcome back to season three of Nobody Should Believe Me. I guess we are technically in season three and a half here.

Speaker 1 While we are working away on season four, and that, by the way, will be premiering on June 20th, which I am so excited about.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, I wanted to bring you some updates on the ongoing drama of the Kowalski case.

Speaker 1 And just as a reminder, if you want even more new content in the meantime, you you can subscribe on Apple or Patreon, where you will get at least two bonus episodes a month.

Speaker 1 Right now, I am deep diving the Justina Pelletier case with Dr. Becks.

Speaker 1 And as always, if monetary support isn't an option for you, rating and reviewing the show and sharing it on social media are great ways to support us.

Speaker 1 And you can now find us on YouTube, where we've got full episodes of the show as well as lots of bonus content. I'm doing it, guys.
I am getting with the video content.

Speaker 1 And if you want to get in touch, you can do so by emailing us at hello at nobodyshouldbelieveme.com or leaving us a voicemail at 484-798-0266. And I will leave both of those in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1 We have a mailbag episode coming up, so we would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1 If you are just joining us, the next few episodes are essentially a continuation of our third season, in which we covered the Maya Kowalski case out of Florida, which was featured in the Netflix movie Take Care of Maya.

Speaker 1 So just as a recap, Maya Kowalski's father, Jack, sued Johns Hopkins All-Children's Hospital in Florida last fall after his wife Beata died by suicide in the midst of being investigated for munchhausen by proxy abuse.

Speaker 1 We covered that whole trial, which ended up with a verdict in the Kowalski's favor. But this situation is complex and ongoing.
as you will see.

Speaker 1 So as I said, these episodes will make a lot more sense if you have listened to all of our third season.

Speaker 1 But if you're just joining us and you really can't wait to dive in, you can get up to speed on the backstory by listening to episodes one through four from last season.

Speaker 1 And I will put a link to our Spotify playlist with those episodes in the show notes.

Speaker 1 One of the big challenges in reporting on this case is that there's just so much to go through.

Speaker 1 This story involves years of complicated medical history, litigation, deception, and just flat out weirdness.

Speaker 1 And the impacts of this verdict, again, the court as it stands, has awarded the Kowalski family over $200 million, are playing out all across the country.

Speaker 1 In places like Lehigh, Pennsylvania, where there is now a class action lawsuit against a hospital that really mirrors this situation.

Speaker 1 And that, by the way, is a story that we're going to dig into in an upcoming episode.

Speaker 1 And this story is reverberating in my own backyard as well, where Sophie Hartman, a mother who was criminally charged for medically abusing her child, is now suing the police department, DCF, the Washington CASA program, that's court-appointed special advocate, i.e., the people who represent children's interests in court, and Seattle Children's Hospital.

Speaker 1 This lawsuit came about after the King County prosecuting attorney claimed there was not enough evidence for a felony charge against Hartman and subsequently dropped it down to a lower court where the charges were ultimately dismissed.

Speaker 1 So Sophie Hartman is now suing for being, quote, falsely accused of medical abuse, alleging that the doctors at Seattle Children's colluded against her.

Speaker 1 I have to say this one hit extra hard for me because not only is it where I live, but Hartman is working with the same lawyer, Adam Shapiro, who represented my sister Megan Carter in court.

Speaker 1 And at one point, my sister was helping out with this case as a paralegal. So yeah.

Speaker 1 People believe their eyes.

Speaker 1 That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something.

Speaker 1 If you questioned everything that everyone told you, you couldn't make it through your day.

Speaker 1 I'm Andrea Junlop 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 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 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.

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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.
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Speaker 1 If you have been following along, you'll know that I ended up spending spending a lot of time covering this case over the last six months. I originally was going to just cover the Netflix film.

Speaker 1 That ended up becoming a four-part series, that ended up becoming a 14-part series, that ended up with me doing weekly trial coverage and watching every single moment of the trial.

Speaker 1 So this is one of these stories where rabbit holes just lead to more rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 And the deeper I get into this whole thing, the more that this story, at least as it's been portrayed portrayed in most of the media, the story where an aggrieved family triumphs over a heartless group of doctors, just goes up in smoke.

Speaker 1 There just isn't anything about this story that is as it seems.

Speaker 1 And I'm certainly not the only person who questions all of this, but I do seem to be the only person interested in devoting airtime to it.

Speaker 1 as evidenced by the fact that Maya Kowalski, along with her father Jack, the film producer Caitlin Keating, and one of their lawyers, Nick Whitney, are headlining CrimeCon this year.

Speaker 1 CrimeCon, for those of you who don't know, is a massive fan convention for all things true crime that draws thousands of people each year and features lots of big names in the space, including many podcasts.

Speaker 1 I went last year, had a good time. Anyway.

Speaker 1 So listen, at some point, I know I'm going to need to let this case go, and I am not under any delusion that I'm going to affect the outcome of anything here or change any of the too credulous media folks' mind about this story.

Speaker 1 But the time has not come to let it go yet because this thing is not over.

Speaker 1 And the truth about this case, it's about a hundred times weirder than the story that most people have heard.

Speaker 1 So we are going to be checking in with Ethan Shapiro, who is the lead attorney for Johns Hopkins All Children's, about what happened with the request for retrial, the quote, juror interview that happened after the verdict, and where everything stands with the appeal, that'll be in an upcoming episode.

Speaker 1 But first, I wanted to discuss some of what has come out about this situation in between now and the last time that I was on the air with Dr. Sally Smith.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 things about this case continue to emerge, and I want to give a shout out to the tenacious Reddit community that has remained invested in this case.

Speaker 1 I feel like what's going on with the Kowalski case is worth unraveling.

Speaker 1 And the more I've learned about Jack Kowalski in particular, the more distressed I've become about his involvement in this whole thing.

Speaker 1 You know, no matter what happens in this case, my heart goes out to Kyle and Maya.

Speaker 1 I really think they are the victims and I feel for them so much for everything that they've been through, especially on such a huge stage.

Speaker 1 And initially, believe it or not, I felt a fair amount of sympathy for Jack.

Speaker 1 Watching the film, I thought, you know, he was wrong about Maya's illness and I thought he was wrong to pursue this lawsuit, but I really maintained the possibility that he was genuinely credulous about Beada's story of Maya's illness.

Speaker 1 And we see this all the time. We see dads who, for whatever reason, just are not clued in to their kids' medical care and just believe what the mom is telling them.

Speaker 1 And they're not always at fault for doing that. But we know now that this is not the case with Jack Kowalski.
So, again, we interviewed Dr. Sally Smith last season.

Speaker 1 She is the child abuse pediatrician who wrote a 47-page review of Maya Kowalski's medical records and made the determination that Munchausen by proxy abuse was happening.

Speaker 1 And she discussed with us Jack's somewhat unusual involvement in this case. Here is that part of the episode.

Speaker 1 Beata had been the main subject of the investigation, and all of the data that we have about medical child abuse points to a very high proportion of female perpetrators. But by the time Dr.

Speaker 1 Sally Smith had finished looking at all of the records she'd collected on Maya, she'd really begun to question Jack's initial presentation of himself as the dad that was just pretty clueless about his daughter's medical care.

Speaker 4 Since he had been the parent who took her to,

Speaker 4 I think, at least half of these unconventional treatments. I mean, I didn't really know what the dynamic was there and what

Speaker 4 his level of complicity might be and, you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 At this point, it just doesn't stand to reason that Jack didn't know that something was off.

Speaker 1 Here, for example, is a clip from his interview with Detective Stephanie Graham from the Sarasota Sheriff's Department, who was investigating Beada.

Speaker 1 And he's talking about his reaction to the Munchausen by proxy allegations.

Speaker 7 Have you ever heard of the term Munchausen by proxy? Yes.

Speaker 8 I didn't know what it was until. Until when?

Speaker 7 And who brought that up? Who brought that term up to you?

Speaker 8 That's when

Speaker 8 this all happened. And then

Speaker 8 it was in the court thing, in a court document. And then I read it, and it's like, well, you know, I could see where they're going with it.
Okay.

Speaker 9 As I said at the very beginning, you know, I don't have any jurisdiction here in St.

Speaker 10 Pete.

Speaker 7 Door's unlocked. You're welcome to leave.
You're not under arrest. Yeah, I know, I know.

Speaker 10 I just wanted to repeat that because we've been talking for a while.

Speaker 7 So that term has come up. Were you aware, or did your attorneys ever tell you there is a possibility of a criminal investigation?

Speaker 8 I'm trying to think of anything. Ms.
Cordone, she didn't think so.

Speaker 7 She did not. And why?

Speaker 8 I don't know. Okay.
I asked her in court, and that was the first time I met the woman.

Speaker 8 And then I honestly didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 7 So when you heard this term, you saw it. Did anybody explain to you what it was?

Speaker 8 I looked it up.

Speaker 7 Where did you look it up at?

Speaker 8 On my phone.

Speaker 7 WebMD?

Speaker 8 Or something?

Speaker 8 I just typed in.

Speaker 7 And what do you recall it saying about Munchausen by proxy?

Speaker 8 For what it said, it was almost textbook of what we went through.

Speaker 1 Jack's apparent involvement in Maya's medical care really gets to the heart of one of the problems with casting Munchausen by proxy primarily as a mental illness rather than as a form of abuse.

Speaker 1 Because if Beata was behaving like this because she was ill, then did Jack also have Munchhausen by proxy if he went along with it?

Speaker 1 And we also know that the enabling of abuse by a parent, even if they're not the main person who is perpetrating it, is seemingly not uncommon. This happens, for example, in child sex abuse cases.

Speaker 1 A mother, for instance, does not need to have pedophilic disorder, which is also in the DSM, to enable her husband's abuse of her children.

Speaker 1 And as we talked about in some of those other cases that came up in the film, abusive head trauma cases, physical abuse cases, it's sadly just not uncommon for a parent to cover for their spouse in those situations.

Speaker 1 So again, I think the thing that strikes me is how seemingly involved Jack was in Maya's care, both in taking her to her actual appointments and also with the fundraising efforts.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that's come out in this interim period is that during this period between her ketamine coma in Mexico in early 2016 and her, quote, relapse in October that sent her to Johns Hopkins, Maya was supposedly doing much better as a result of the ketamine coma.

Speaker 1 But what's come out in the meantime is that the Kowalskis, along with their church, organized another big fundraiser in April of that year to send Maya back to Mexico for a second ketamine coma treatment.

Speaker 1 So again, these treatments that she was getting were very dangerous and very extreme. And we have every reason to believe that Jack was very involved, even if he wasn't the person driving it.

Speaker 1 We also know that Jack was not the sort of typical passive dad that you sometimes see in these cases. And that shows up in some of the literature about these cases.
Jack was retired.

Speaker 1 He said he retired because he wanted to spend a lot more time with the kids, which he seems to have done. He was very involved.

Speaker 1 So why in the hell would someone not question this treatment plan for their own child?

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't he have listened to the doctors at Tampa General and Lurie Children's that this was a conversion disorder?

Speaker 1 We know now that Biata Kowalski was specifically looking for the diagnosis of CRPS, that is, complex regional pain syndrome, a rare pain disorder that usually stems from an initial injury and affects a person's extremities.

Speaker 1 She sought out Dr. Kirkpatrick, who was the person who originally gave her the diagnosis, to get that diagnosis after being referred to him by parents on a CRPS message board.

Speaker 1 So as much as I do believe that Beata was the one who is driving this treatment plan, I'm not comfortable blaming her for Jack's actions. So what is up with this guy?

Speaker 1 You know, something that really struck me during the trial was how little we heard from people who actually knew Beata.

Speaker 1 The only friend of hers we heard from was someone who'd never even met her in real life, but just known her through an online support group for parents with children who have CRPS.

Speaker 1 Here is a brief clip from the testimony of that friend.

Speaker 14 How did you first get to know Beata Kowalski?

Speaker 12 My son started a nonprofit when he was 10 years old, and I've been running it ever since. And I run our parent support groups.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 14 And what is this for?

Speaker 12 My son has complex regional pain syndrome, and he started ferocious fighters to make sure other kids didn't have to feel as alone as he did.

Speaker 1 There was also a brief bit of deposition from one of Beata's sisters, Renata, towards the end of the trial.

Speaker 1 And of course, we heard about her from Maya and Kyle, who were 10 and 7 at the time of her death, and from a few others who testified towards the beginning of the trial.

Speaker 1 We heard from the uncle, the school teacher, and that very colorful church friend, who I have to say was one of the more entertaining witnesses.

Speaker 10 And you said that there was some dark force. You're not talking about the room was dark.
You felt some sort of darkness.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it was like the devil was behind me. We were the light coming in and there was the devil behind me.
It's what it was.

Speaker 1 It was was dark.

Speaker 9 There's just

Speaker 1 the devil.

Speaker 1 But with the exception of her sister, who spoke through Translator, none of these people struck me as people who actually knew Beata very well. Where were her friends? Where were her family members?

Speaker 1 In reviewing all of these thousands of pages and attempting to put the picture of this case together, it strikes me that Beata seemed pretty lonely.

Speaker 1 What we do have of her, which is a lot of blog posts and a lot of emails, really just speaks to her absolutely consuming obsession with Maya's medical treatments.

Speaker 1 We don't hear anything else about Maya as a person in these documents, but we also don't hear anything about Beada.

Speaker 1 One of my biggest remaining questions after covering this case was what Beada's older brother, Peter, thought about the relationship between Piata and Jack and the strange circumstances surrounding her death.

Speaker 1 He was the person who discovered her body, who was present during those strange events leading up to and right after Beata's death.

Speaker 1 And just a note here that we referred to him as Piotor in a previous episode because that's how he was listed in the paperwork, but he appears to mostly go by Peter.

Speaker 1 So that is what we are going to call him going forward. Peter was never brought to court to testify, but he did give a deposition and we do have his interview with the police.

Speaker 1 And he had a lot to say about what went down here.

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Speaker 1 Peter was the only boy out of four siblings in Beata's family, all of whom emigrated from Poland at various points in their younger years.

Speaker 1 And this family appears to have been fairly close, especially when they all lived in the Chicago area, where Peter was still living during the time of this case.

Speaker 1 Peter was very busy at the time, apparently, with work, and he was also getting an MBA at the time.

Speaker 1 But with all this going on, he appeared to have made a really big effort to try and visit often and help the family out while Maya was under the separation order.

Speaker 1 And during one of these visits, he made a really alarming observation about the behavior of Maya's younger brother, Kyle. This clip is from his deposition.

Speaker 16 Can you estimate how many times you went to court in 2016 or 2017?

Speaker 5 I remember one series that actually it was a week. It was at the time that parents were in the court and I took Kyle to Dr.
Lee to St. Petersburg.

Speaker 5 I remember it was basically after the court, within the court, my sister and me, we drove Kyle to the hospital in Fort Myers to emotionally support my sister.

Speaker 16 Why did you have to take Kyle to a hospital in Fort Myers?

Speaker 5 A very good question, sir. Basically, Kyle would complain on the pain quote or over

Speaker 5 but I observe Kyle was playing all day under his father's supervision he was not complaining or anything Beata is coming from work Kyle has a pain over screaming pain over and remember discussions with Beata asked him where he want to go so we decided we're going to go to the Fort Miles and we're going to gather two separate cars in case one of us needs to stay in the Fort Miles with the Kyle in hospital.

Speaker 16 You're claiming that in 2016, Kyle had some pain. You didn't necessarily observe him to be in pain, but Beata thought that Kyle was in pain.

Speaker 16 So you guys got into a car and went down south to Fort Myers to get Kyle some health care?

Speaker 5 With his father's approval, because Jack was at the time.

Speaker 16 Okay, so you had Mr. Kowalski's approval to take Kyle down to Fort Myers, right?

Speaker 5 Yes, sir.

Speaker 16 What did you observe about Kyle's pain complaints?

Speaker 5 So, Kyle acted very strangely. Jack had the table outside his garage on the chair, he was sitting, and Kyle was playing with the Maya schoolmates.
Her name is Julia.

Speaker 5 They were dancing like a kid. And Beata, my sister, came after all they.
And Kyle is that, quote, pain all over.

Speaker 16 Do you know what year this was?

Speaker 5 It was between the time that Maya was locked up

Speaker 5 and before Beata passing away.

Speaker 16 Okay, so at some point while Maya was at Johns Hopkins All-Children's Hospital and before your sister's passing, Kyle began to complain of pain all over, is that correct?

Speaker 5 Yes, sir.

Speaker 16 And why did you decide to go down to Fort Myers, which is pretty far south of Sarasota? rather than just going to Sarasota hospitals?

Speaker 5 They were discussing with Kyle and Kyle afraid that if he goes to the Jack Hopkins, he is going to be also stripped off like Maya from both parents.

Speaker 5 Kyle afraid that he will not see the parents anymore like Maya.

Speaker 16 Understood.

Speaker 1 So just to recap what Peter is saying here, during one of his visits with the family while Maya was under shelter order at Johns Hopkins, Peter saw Kyle happily playing at home for hours until Beada arrived home from work, at which point he began complaining that he was in agonizing, quote, full body pain.

Speaker 1 Peter then went with them to a hospital that was over an hour away. Evidently, this was out of the fear that Kyle may also end up in state custody if they went somewhere closer by.

Speaker 1 At that hospital, Peter explains in his testimony: the doctors evaluated Kyle and found there to be nothing wrong with him.

Speaker 1 It really sounded very familiar, and I realized that that's because this presentation, beat for beat, is what Jack Kowalski, of his own volition, described to Detective Stephanie Graham about Maya's behavior.

Speaker 1 And this confirmed what staff at multiple hospitals had observed about Maya's reports of pain, that they would often only happen when Beata was present. And this is a huge red flag for abuse.

Speaker 1 So this is a clip from Jack's interview with Detective Stephanie Graham. And just a note that Beata's name is bleeped out, but that is who they are talking about.

Speaker 7 When nobody else was in the room, and the staff, she acted completely normal.

Speaker 7 Walk in the room, she was instantly in pain.

Speaker 8 I heard that many times.

Speaker 7 There's no other explanation for that.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I noticed it too with myself being home and comes home from work.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, she's back.

Speaker 8 There'll be changes, yes.

Speaker 7 So you're at home, your guys are doing well, playing.

Speaker 8 No complaints about pain.

Speaker 7 No, no complaints.

Speaker 8 It's home. Jason Pay.

Speaker 1 It just defies credulity at this point that by the time of Beata's death in January of 2017, Jack really had no idea that there was a strong possibility that medical child abuse was happening in his home.

Speaker 1 He was witnessing both his children suddenly devolve into saying they were in excruciating pain the moment their mom walked through the door, even though they'd been fine all day.

Speaker 1 And he's been told by multiple world-class hospitals at this point that his daughter is suffering from conversion disorder, wherein the body manifests physical symptoms for psychiatric reasons.

Speaker 1 And yet, he still signs off on giving her these potentially lethal ketamine treatments. What?

Speaker 1 And we know from Dr. Smith that he was taking her to a lot of her appointments.

Speaker 1 This is not a situation like George Honeycutt, who you may remember from season one, who was deployed overseas while his wife was taking their son in for unnecessary treatments.

Speaker 1 It really begs the question: at what point does this become collusion?

Speaker 1 To the extent that the partners of perpetrators, husbands in most known cases, have been studied in the literature, many of the studies point to a dynamic where traditional gender roles are adhered to more strictly than in other families, and often where the father is pretty passive, particularly when it comes to caring for children.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, this dynamic is not unique to abusive households. This has more or less been the norm until recently.
Happily, this dynamic does appear to be shifting somewhat.

Speaker 1 A recent Pew Research study found that dads now spend three times as much time with their children as fathers did 50 years ago.

Speaker 1 But before we organize a parade in their honor, I should point out that the same study showed that moms still spend 80% more time on housework than their husbands and 75% more time on childcare.

Speaker 1 So, you know, the bar started in hell. Also, hashtag not all dads.
I should point out that my husband, Mr. Nobody Should Believe Me, is not at all represented in these statistics.

Speaker 1 It will be very interesting to see how these shifting dynamics affect this deeply gendered form of abuse.

Speaker 1 In the best case, maybe many more dads will catch on to this abuse much quicker because they're more involved. In the worst case, more of them may become enablers of it.

Speaker 1 Or they may become the perpetrators themselves. Dr.
Mark Feldman has always described this as a crime of opportunity.

Speaker 1 We have no reason to believe that this behavior is something that uniquely lives in women. So as more men have the opportunity to commit abuse in this way, they may do so.

Speaker 1 Dr. Mary Sanders of Stanford, a friend of the show and previous guest, wrote a fascinating paper about some of these dynamics called symptom coaching, factitious disorder by proxy with older children.

Speaker 1 And just to note here that factitious disorder by proxy and Munchausen by proxy are one and the same. Oh, the terminology.

Speaker 1 I found her observations in this paper really relevant to this case and understanding the family dynamics at play here with Maya and Kyle.

Speaker 1 So this paper explains that for older children, and a reminder that Maya was 10 while this was going on, their participation participation in the ruse of an illness may fall anywhere along a continuum from complete naivete about what's going on to active self-harm where they are inducing symptoms in themselves.

Speaker 1 Furthermore, Dr.

Speaker 1 Sanders found that there's overlap between Munchhausen by proxy abuse, a possible real underlying physical illness, factitious disorder, where someone is intentionally faking or causing their own illness, and conversion disorder, which is, if you'll remember, the diagnosis that three world-class institutions gave to Maya Kowalski.

Speaker 1 I want to make a note here that collusion in the context of a child victim is not the same thing as culpability.

Speaker 1 The research notes that there are, of course, many complicated psychological and emotional reasons that a child might collude with their parent.

Speaker 1 They may feel that the parent's love is dependent on it, and they also might want to protect their parent from being found out and fear that they will lose that parent if the abuse is discovered.

Speaker 1 But what about the adults who collude? What's going on there?

Speaker 1 There are a number of known cases that involved both parents as perpetrators, and even one case study from 1993 that involves both parents and a grandparent as co-abusers.

Speaker 1 In these instances, the entire family unit becomes consumed by the story of illness in the child.

Speaker 1 And as to the why of of dads getting involved in this abuse, I asked some of my favorite expert friends about this. So my little panel included Dr.
Mark Feldman, Dr. Mary Sanders, B.
Yorker, and Dr.

Speaker 1 Jim Hamilton from Yale. And they all agreed that gender roles play heavily into this.

Speaker 1 That for many dads, if there's a suspicion that abuse has been going on by his wife under his own nose, that would mean that that man has been duped and that he has failed to be the protector of his family.

Speaker 1 So instead of doing the right thing and intervening to protect his child, he ends up doubling down and protecting the abuser. Basically, he goes down with the ship.

Speaker 1 This is something that I think a lot about in regards to my sister's husband, Andy, as I've watched, mostly from a distance, as the situation has evolved over the last 14 years and multiple investigations.

Speaker 1 I wonder if denial, if it goes on long enough, just becomes something else.

Speaker 1 After a time, I believe that denial has become so entrenched that to accept the truth at this point would be shattering to the psyche, that it would just be unbearable.

Speaker 1 And I think there are fathers who reach a point where any explanation, no matter how conspiratorial or implausible, becomes preferable.

Speaker 1 So to understand where Jack Kowalski falls on this spectrum, from in denial to active participant, it's helpful to look at what we know about the dynamic between him and Beata, especially in the days and weeks leading up to her death.

Speaker 1 Jack Kowalski has been painted by most of the media as a sympathetic and even heroic figure who's been doggedly fighting for his family. And he's been awarded a great deal of money.

Speaker 10 Madam Clerk, please publish the verdict.

Speaker 17 Madam Cross Judicial Circuit inning for Sarasota County, Florida. Case number 2018, CA 005321NC.

Speaker 17 Jack Kowalski individually, Jack Kowalski as parent and next friend of MK, a minor, and Jack Kowalski as personal representative of the estate of Beada Kowalski plaintiffs versus Johns Hopkins, All Children's Hospital, Incorporated defendant.

Speaker 17 Punitive damages verdict formed. We, the jury, return the following verdict in regard to the punitive damages.

Speaker 1 A portion of this massive award was based on the premise that Beada and Jack would have remained happily married had she not died by suicide.

Speaker 1 A suicide, which, of course, at this point has been blamed on the hospital.

Speaker 1 And there was, during the trial, a specific monetary value assigned to Jack's loss of Beada, a portion of the trial which was genuinely difficult to listen to.

Speaker 11 For a total past loss of support over over the past 6.7 years of $266,070.

Speaker 11 Then going to go to the past replacement value of household services. Right.

Speaker 11 That I've done an average of four to five hours per day.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 that in part is based on the household services questionnaire that I reviewed that was completed by Jack Kowalski, and he outlined the items and average number of hours per day that Maya spent doing doing the items of household services.

Speaker 11 I also did research on the American Time Use Survey and reviewed the deposition transcripts that I named earlier.

Speaker 11 So I allocated four to five hours per day, and that's valued at $20.10 per hour over the past time period.

Speaker 11 That yields a total of $221,195 for the past replacement value of household services, which yields a total economic damages to date, including those two categories, of $487,265.

Speaker 14 And is that to a reasonable economic certainty?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 14 And what other calculations have you performed?

Speaker 11 I've also calculated the future loss of support and the future replacement value of household services.

Speaker 14 All right. You've defined that.

Speaker 1 And of course, Jack played up in his testimony how much he missed Beada.

Speaker 13 I will never replace what I had. You know, and every night when I lay in bed and roll over, I don't have somebody to hug and kiss and say goodnight.

Speaker 13 I can look down at her urn and I say a prayer instead. And it crushes you.

Speaker 1 Jack's testimony was really emotional to listen to.

Speaker 1 And Gregory Anderson, the lead attorney for the Kowalski family, really drove the monetary value of this lost home in his closing arguments, where he gave jurors some ideas on exactly how to put a price on Beada's life.

Speaker 14 And then it's the damages of the surviving spouse, Jack Kowalski. And here again, we suggest that you use our method for how to compute damages, which is to figure out for

Speaker 14 hour by hour what the value is for him to have lost his wife.

Speaker 14 Everything that goes into that.

Speaker 14 The consortium, the comfort, the support, the waking up at 4 a.m. and having somebody next to you and then not having somebody next to you.
All of those goes into your determination

Speaker 14 of how to compensate. Jack Kowalski.

Speaker 14 And so what you would do there, and I'm suggesting $100,

Speaker 14 but you can, there is evidence in the record for this, anywhere from minimum wage, which is like $12, up to, there's evidence in the record of $700 per hour.

Speaker 14 We put $100 in just to give you an idea, but you can go twice that, three times that. Whatever you determine as jurors is the most,

Speaker 14 the best way to express the loss here to these folks.

Speaker 1 The impression that one would have from watching Jack's testimony during the trial, and of course, from watching the film Take Care of Maya, is that he was fully supportive of Maya's treatments and that his and Beada's marriage was incredibly solid until the interference of the state and the hospital.

Speaker 1 Jack claims that it was the social worker, Kathy Beatty, who recommended that he divorce Beata, and he acted pretty affronted by this suggestion.

Speaker 1 And he also told Detective Stephanie Graham that if it came to it, he would choose his kids over her.

Speaker 1 He claims that he said this because this was the only acceptable answer he could give, Which, honestly, fair enough, that is perfectly plausible.

Speaker 1 I think that many parents would feel like they would say whatever they needed to say in this situation.

Speaker 1 It is undoubtedly a terrible spot to be in where you feel like you have to choose between your children and your spouse.

Speaker 1 And during his interview with the police detective who arrived at the house upon the discovery of Beada's body, Jack said that yes, they'd been stressed because of everything that had been going on, but that he and Beata had remained a united front.

Speaker 18 This whole thing didn't put a strain on your marriage. Oh,

Speaker 18 you know, it's yeah, but we're stuck together. I mean, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 However, Beata's brother Peter, who sadly was the one to make the gruesome discovery of her body in the garage, told a very different story about the state of their marriage.

Speaker 1 He, for one, did not feel that Jack's intention to divorce Beada was a show that he was putting on for the courts.

Speaker 14 Did he ever give her divorce papers?

Speaker 18 You just don't know.

Speaker 6 What it is, my oldest sister said that this was basically multiple instances. He was pressing her.
And basically, what it is,

Speaker 6 during the court hearing, he, without letting her know, he took the car,

Speaker 6 and without letting her know,

Speaker 6 he took the car and they drove, took her suitcases. They actually went to his brother.

Speaker 1 The circumstances around Beata's death have always seemed off

Speaker 1 to me.

Speaker 1 And a lot more about what happened that day and in the days leading up to it has now emerged. And like everything with this case, the more I pull at the threads, the stranger it gets.

Speaker 18 So let me bring it back to over here last night. So you get here after midnight.

Speaker 18 Who opens the door for you?

Speaker 6 The door opened after I call, Yasek opened the door after I call security company because he did not open the door. And I call him 100 times.

Speaker 1 That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 1 This episode was written and produced by me, Andrea Dunlop. Sound engineering from Andrew Kindred, administrative support from Nola Carmouche, and additional support from the fine folks at Cadence 3.