S03 E13: What Now?

Speaker 1 True Story Media.

Speaker 2 Hi, it's Andrea.

Speaker 8 Before we get into today's episode, I want to address some comments about episode six of this season. In that episode, I recommend a podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K.

Speaker 9 Rowling.

Speaker 7 So, just for clarity, I recommended this show in the context of the Kowalski trial and talking to people you disagree with.

Speaker 16 I am in full agreement that J.K.

Speaker 19 Rowling is a problematic person and I absolutely disagree with her beliefs about trans issues in that community 100%.

Speaker 1 Additionally, our guest in that episode was Laura Richards, who I've also heard from a number of folks after that episode aired that she said some things about the transgender community that I deeply disagree with.

Speaker 25 So I wanted to let that be known.

Speaker 3 So just to clarify, I absolutely believe that trans people deserve human rights.

Speaker 27 I believe trans women are women.

Speaker 7 End of story.

Speaker 15 So without further delay, here's our episode.

Speaker 29 Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of Large Media.

Speaker 21 That's L-A-R-J Media.

Speaker 12 Before we begin, a quick warning that in this show, we discuss child abuse and this content may be difficult for some listeners.

Speaker 27 I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me.

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Speaker 23 If monetary support is not an option, rating and reviewing the show helps a ton, as well as sharing on social media or wherever you talk to people.

Speaker 35 If you or someone you know is suffering from medical child abuse, please go to munchhausensupport.com.

Speaker 36 We have lots of resources there for survivors, families, and professionals.

Speaker 20 We also accept donations if you would like to help us continue to do that work.

Speaker 18 And we love hearing from you.

Speaker 38 So do reach out.

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Speaker 27 And we may use that voicemail in the show, so please be sure to let us know if you do not want us to do that.

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 43 If you questioned every thing that everyone told you, you couldn't make it through your day.

Speaker 1 If you just can't get enough of me in your ears, first of all, thank you. I have a job because of you.
And secondly, did you know that I have a new audiobook out this year?

Speaker 1 The Mother Next Door, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber, is available in all formats wherever books are sold.

Speaker 1 It's a deep dive into three of Mike's most impactful Munchausen by proxy cases, and I think you'll love it. Here's a sample.

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Speaker 1 But in that moment, a new horror was dawning. For nearly a decade, hope had been lying.

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Speaker 36 In any legal drama, we all know that the story comes to an end when the jury's verdict is read.

Speaker 48 The good guy wins or doesn't, and we all go home.

Speaker 34 Maybe we just learned a lesson about justice or its failings, but it's the end of the story either way.

Speaker 20 And with the stunning November 9th verdict in the Kowalski case, it seemed like that was it.

Speaker 27 This legal drama that I'd been watching for nine weeks straight was over.

Speaker 33 I've been handed a note from the jury that reads as follows. We have reached a verdict.

Speaker 47 And now it was time to grapple with the fallout.

Speaker 20 I knew there was likely to be a whole series of appeals from Johns Hopkins. This is a massive award.

Speaker 47 It is precedent setting in a whole bunch of different ways.

Speaker 32 You know, this is a quarter of a billion dollars.

Speaker 47 It's enough to really make an impact on Johns Hopkins' all-children's and their ability to function.

Speaker 53 And it also can set all kinds of legal precedent, you know, affecting everything from mandatory reporting to the idea that an institution can be liable for a person's death by suicide.

Speaker 3 But I really figured that this portion of the process would be this long, anticlimactic, drawn-out process.

Speaker 44 But late in the day on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the docket for the Sarasona County Clerk, which I have still been watching like a hawk, started filling up with all of these new filings for the defense.

Speaker 34 And these weren't for appeals.

Speaker 17 They were asking for an entirely new trial.

Speaker 7 And the contents of these filings was pretty shocking.

Speaker 34 I famously am not a lawyer, but this really seemed to me like, oh, this is more serious than just kind of legal posturing, like big things to to sort of move things along.

Speaker 47 It actually really seemed like reading through these that something had actually gone down here.

Speaker 38 So as I was metabolizing what was in here, I started to think like, is this bizarre reality show of Kowalski versus Johns Hopkins going to get a second season?

Speaker 9 Are we going to get an entirely new trial, start from day one, new jury and all?

Speaker 32 So to get some answers about all of the stuff that went down during this trial, what's happened since and what's coming next, we went straight to the the source.

Speaker 33 Hi, I'm Ethan Shapiro. I'm an attorney at the law firm of Hillward Henderson in Tampa, Florida, where I've been practicing law here for 20 years.

Speaker 33 I specialize in the defense of healthcare providers and practitioners. In the Kowalski case, my role was as trial counsel for Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.

Speaker 1 Just a couple of notes.

Speaker 23 My producer, Tina, and I met Ethan in his downtown Tampa offices where we chatted in a conference room with really beautiful views of Tampa Bay.

Speaker 65 I'm going to have you get pretty close up to that microphone.

Speaker 7 Ethan has been involved in this case since it began back in 2018, and he's been working in healthcare law for decades.

Speaker 15 He said he's always loved this work, but the past several years have definitely brought a whole bunch of new challenges to the job.

Speaker 33 Based on what I've seen, but I'm certainly part of groups that are talking about national trends.

Speaker 33 And the national trends in terms of verdicts and outcomes of trials for healthcare providers is certainly tracking tracking in the wrong direction from our perspective.

Speaker 33 The days of people banging pots and pans for healthcare providers as they leave the hospital seem to have been fleeting, and there's a lot more skepticism of the healthcare profession that we're seeing from jurors.

Speaker 33 If it's a larger distrust of authority in society, it's certainly something that's above my pay grade, but we have to factor it in as trial lawyers trying cases for healthcare providers.

Speaker 19 Having watched Ethan throughout this trial, I've been really impressed by how he laid out this really complicated story with so much clarity.

Speaker 33 Our focus was to make sure that we had a very good timeline for the jury to understand that by the time the Kwalskis had presented to All Children's Hospital in October of 2017, for example, Maya hadn't walked, according to their testimony, in over a year, that other providers had raised red flags.

Speaker 33 And as you saw, as you followed the trial, some of that evidence came in and some of that evidence was restricted from coming in.

Speaker 15 So obviously this was a massively complicated case.

Speaker 20 This trial went on for nine weeks.

Speaker 51 And Ethan Shapiro, in his closing arguments, put together a PowerPoint really laying out the defense's case.

Speaker 12 And I thought this was so crucial.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to include a link in the show notes because I just thought this really distilled it down to the facts, basically.

Speaker 9 I mean, he had all of these different medical providers from different institutions and what they had said about Maya's symptoms, about conversion disorder, about the behavior.

Speaker 19 And he also had just all of these really key pieces of evidence where the Kowalskis themselves, in their own words, had contradicted the plaintiff's narrative.

Speaker 38 And even with everything that was omitted from the defense because they weren't allowed to share it, I still couldn't understand how people could look at all that laid out so clearly and hold on to the idea of Beata's innocence.

Speaker 27 But the truth is, they were missing a really big piece of context that I had.

Speaker 33 The court ultimately ruled that evidence of medical child abuse was largely irrelevant to the proceedings in this case.

Speaker 33 The court laid out its reasons why the defense disagreed with those reasons in real time.

Speaker 33 To the extent that that influenced the jury, we'll never know for sure because we didn't have an opportunity to talk with the jurors individually, at least at this point.

Speaker 1 What were the reasons that the judge gave?

Speaker 33 The judge ultimately decided that this case was more about medical malpractice and how Maya was treated at the hospital and believed that the allegations of medical child abuse had been disposed of by a grant of statutory immunity, which from the mind of the defense was partial at best.

Speaker 17 What he's referring to here is a directed verdict that the judge made, ruling that the initial call that was made to the DCF hotline by the hospital was made in good faith, and that dispensed with the false accusation and malicious prosecution charges that were originally included in the plaintiff's filings.

Speaker 33 The court tried to respect

Speaker 33 the

Speaker 33 statutory immunity that mandatory reporters are afforded in Florida by saying in general that we're not liable for the phone call.

Speaker 33 And so if all children's providers cannot be sued for the phone call, then in the court's mind, whether there was a good faith basis for it, meaning whether there was evidence of medical child abuse, was no longer relevant for the jury's consideration.

Speaker 33 And while I understand where the court was coming from,

Speaker 33 the problem from the defense perspective, and again, I'm only speaking for the defense, I'm not speaking for the court or my client, but the problem from the defense perspective was that for the first four and a half weeks of trial, and including through opening statement, the plaintiff repeatedly told the jury, We're going to show you that these false allegations of medical child abuse caused Biata Kowalski to go into this tailspin, caused the unnecessary separation of Maya from her family.

Speaker 33 So the jury had heard from the plaintiff that these were unsupported allegations, but when it came time for the defense to put on evidence that would support the medical provider's decision making, the court found that that was no longer relevant to the case.

Speaker 27 So even with the false allegation and malicious prosecution charges off the table, these concepts really remained very central to the plaintiff's narrative.

Speaker 48 The plaintiff, who had been presenting for weeks by the time the defense got up, had gone on at length about how these accusations about Munchausen by proxy with Beata were false.

Speaker 6 They mentioned Munchausen by proxy dozens of times.

Speaker 20 Gregory Anderson, in his opening statements, said, we will prove

Speaker 54 that

Speaker 13 these accusations were false.

Speaker 49 Right.

Speaker 44 And Dr.

Speaker 20 Chopra specifically was asked if Beada had Munchausen by proxy, to which of course he said no.

Speaker 6 They also talked about Dr.

Speaker 12 Duncan's psych report, where she said that Munchausen by proxy could, quote, safely be ruled out.

Speaker 46 And they even included a videotaped deposition from Dr.

Speaker 29 Eli Neuberger, who is a well-known expert in the field who almost always sides with alleged offenders.

Speaker 3 And he testified about why Beada didn't have Munchausen by proxy.

Speaker 62 So Dr.

Speaker 30 Neuberger's deposition is actually mentioned in one of the new defense filings, specifically because the language he used was very extreme.

Speaker 13 He said, among other things, that these doctors were all in a, quote, conspiracy, that Dr.

Speaker 52 Sally Smith was leading the charge, that it was cruel to wean Maya off her medications, which just to remind you, she has never been back on since.

Speaker 46 And he also said that the actions of these doctors propelled Beata to take her own life.

Speaker 67 This is very strong testimony.

Speaker 12 It's worth pointing out that he was wrong on a number of the basic facts of this case, including that Maya suffered from severe asthma.

Speaker 20 This is a claim of Beata's that's not supported by any of the documentation as we now know from her medical records.

Speaker 30 And Dr.

Speaker 18 Elai Neuberger said that Maya had had her port removed while she was in the hospital under the direction of, you guessed it, Dr.

Speaker 13 Sally Smith.

Speaker 18 So just to clarify, the request to remove Maya's port was made by one of her treating physicians, not Dr.

Speaker 46 Smith, but Beata denied it and the port stayed in until after Maya was out of Johns Hopkins.

Speaker 51 So this is all in the jury's head, and the defense halfway through the trial is barred from sharing the considerable evidence that this was Munchausen by proxy or medical child abuse.

Speaker 36 So it was really strange to watch this trial play out, knowing so much more than the jury was allowed to know.

Speaker 43 And even so, I just wondered how anyone could reasonably think that there wasn't something amiss with Maya's medical care before she ever got to Johns Hopkins All Children's.

Speaker 33 How do so many health care providers across multiple states, across multiple times, arrive at the same conclusion, specifically their diagnoses?

Speaker 33 And I think that's one of the things that the defense was trying to focus on was that this is not a multi-state conspiracy against the Kowalskis, that this was

Speaker 33 very clearly a number of physicians at world-class institutions, whether it's Liverie Children's Hospital, Tampa General Hospital, Lee Memorial Health System, and Dr. Mendez,

Speaker 33 including the providers at Nomorras Children's Hospital, that were also talking about evidence-based approaches to medicine. This is what we mean about standard of care.

Speaker 33 What do similarly reasonable, prudent physicians believe is a diagnosis?

Speaker 33 And the fact that a number of physicians came to the same conclusion was something that the defense felt was very compelling in our argument to the jury that this was proper medical care given to Maya Kowalski.

Speaker 41 This testimony from all of these doctors reflected an astoundingly consistent pattern of the symptoms from Maya, concerning behavior from Beada, and resoundingly that her diagnosis was conversion disorder, not CRPS.

Speaker 47 We did hear from nurse practitioner Bonnie Rice from Tampa General and from Dr.

Speaker 36 Elvin Mendez about their previous reports and or concerns about medical child abuse specifically.

Speaker 43 But in terms of the conclusions about that abuse, we didn't get to hear it.

Speaker 25 And Dr.

Speaker 3 Sally Smith, who didn't just report suspicions, but investigated them thoroughly and issued a 47-page report on them, never got to explain herself.

Speaker 33 Her role versus that of the medical providers, both at All Children's Hospital and at Lurie Children's Hospital or Tampa General Hospital or anywhere, this is a very important distinction because what a mandatory reporter does is

Speaker 33 report what they believe is a reasonable suspicion of medical child abuse or neglect. It's then up to the child protective team to decide whether to investigate it, how far to investigate it.

Speaker 33 to compile the evidence that they have either in support or not in support of a potential allegation of medical child abuse, and whether that should be put together in a petition to petition a judge of local competency to intervene on behalf of the child.

Speaker 22 So the other person who was investigating these charges, again, the crime of medical child abuse, not Beada's psychological condition, was Detective Stephanie Graham.

Speaker 36 And she was similarly limited in what she could testify about, i.e., she couldn't talk about what she found about whether abuse was happening or not during her investigations.

Speaker 5 She could never weigh in on what she found to support or not support Dr.

Speaker 12 Smith's conclusions.

Speaker 24 Now, on paper, I guess this makes some kind of sense that you wouldn't really need to put Bianca on trial to determine whether or not medical malpractice had happened.

Speaker 47 And that was essentially the argument that the court gave.

Speaker 9 But the plaintiff claimed all along that the hospital kept Maya there on purpose to punish the Kowalskis and get insurance money for her CRPS.

Speaker 36 So without that context of the very real danger that Maya was in, what is a jury supposed to make of the fact that they kept her there for three months?

Speaker 69 So those of us watching this trial got to see a lot of things the jury didn't.

Speaker 20 We got to see in some cases, you know, exhibits or pieces of testimony that were included as a proffer, which Ethan explained to us.

Speaker 33 So to give you a real simple example of what a proffer means, let's say you have a situation where two cars collide at an intersection and three witnesses say that light was red and that driver Shapiro was responsible.

Speaker 33 And one witness says that the light was green and driver Smith was responsible. And the court ultimately decides that the person saying driver Smith was responsible is an unreliable drunk.

Speaker 33 and has prior convictions for perjury. And therefore, where that person was standing is unreliable and is not going to come into evidence.

Speaker 33 And so the plaintiff stands up in closing argument and says, driver Shapiro is clearly liable for this. All three witnesses said that the light was red and he ran it.

Speaker 33 Well, what I can do is put on the testimony of the person who said the light was green outside the presence of the jury so that that way I can have that testimony on the record.

Speaker 33 Were you at the intersection? Was the light green? Were you standing? Was it lit where you were standing? Were you sober at the time?

Speaker 33 So that way I have a record I can then bring to the appellate court and tell the appellate court that I was prejudiced at my trial because I had competent testimony from an eyewitness that said the light was green when I approached the intersection.

Speaker 33 And if I don't proffer that testimony, if I don't put that on in the record, then I don't have a record to go to the appellate court and say there was competing evidence that the judge excluded.

Speaker 27 The defense was so hamstrung by the various rulings around which evidence could be included that it was difficult to make the key point that the doctors and the state intervened because if they hadn't, Maya could have died.

Speaker 33 So one of the benefits for everybody in looking at this case was, to her credit, Beata Kowalski was a very detailed historian. And so despite the fact of a Dr.

Speaker 33 Kirkpatrick trying to downplay the dangers of giving ketamine at those doses in the office, Biata Kowalski had simultaneous notes where she documented the hallucinations, where she documented the saturations, the ability ability of the body to take oxygen falling rapidly

Speaker 33 and really dangerous vital signs in real time, which is part of the fear of medical providers hearing of these doses and wondering, is the next dose going to be the one that's fatal.

Speaker 28 And what about what Beata had to say about all this?

Speaker 52 One of the most compelling documents in some of this newly publicly released stuff from the post-trial motion that came out right before Thanksgiving is a lengthy string of emails between Beada and a bunch of different medical professionals, mostly Dr.

Speaker 13 Kirkpatrick. There are also some to Dr.

Speaker 20 Hannah, who is the practitioner who administered the 55 high-dose ketamine infusions during this time period, and also Dr.

Speaker 51 Cantu, who is the doctor in Mexico who administered the ketamine coma.

Speaker 6 So I'm going to include a link to these documents in the show notes in case you want to take a deep dive.

Speaker 34 But these are, and I feel like I'm overusing this word in this episode, but these are shocking.

Speaker 13 So I read through this entire packet on the way to Florida when Tina and I were going to do this interview.

Speaker 7 And once we got there, Tina and I sat down to unpack what was in there.

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Speaker 20 Okay, like one of the biggest questions that I had

Speaker 16 going in when I was trying to, you know, trying to go into this case with an open mind and having always questions about Dr.

Speaker 20 Kirkpatrick and his all-cash clinic, et cetera, was like, was Beada witnessing these things with her daughter and she's an overanxious mom and she got bad advice from a doctor who escalated, who suggested that she escalated.

Speaker 20 What's very clear in these emails is that Beata was driving the escalation.

Speaker 68 Beata was talking about the ketamine coma three weeks in from the diagnosis. So, not like six months down the road.

Speaker 20 You know, and

Speaker 65 you found something else that was like only a couple of weeks into the diagnosis, right?

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 62 So

Speaker 10 there was,

Speaker 68 you know, we'd known previously about this conversation about

Speaker 25 Beata trying to label Maya as terminal.

Speaker 68 So, what we now have is a copy of a prescription that was written and signed on Dr.

Speaker 18 Kirkpatrick's prescription pad.

Speaker 20 Now, importantly, both he and the pharmacist who was included in this whole conversation say that they did not order Maya to be labeled as terminal.

Speaker 30 Nonetheless, we have a prescription.

Speaker 3 It's for a large amount of dilauded, and she is labeled as terminal.

Speaker 17 And that is from the 5th of November.

Speaker 66 So this is a couple of weeks after she originally gets diagnosed by Dr.

Speaker 72 Kirkpatrick with CRPS.

Speaker 65 And Dilaudid isn't something you just get. I mean,

Speaker 65 my only context, you know, not a doctor, I don't know anything about any of this, except that I remember that word so vividly because when my aunt was in hospice, she was given dilauded.

Speaker 65 And I remember it was sort of part of the protocol and my sister kind of arguing with the doctor around Dilaudid.

Speaker 65 It just rings a bell. I don't know anything about it.

Speaker 53 Well, I did.

Speaker 57 I checked with Dr.

Speaker 68 Becks, and it is an extremely powerful opioid.

Speaker 20 And I think that actually it's sort of the presence of the opioid medications in this conversation were a little underplayed.

Speaker 25 We all know now, if you've paid any attention to the news, like how dangerous opioids are.

Speaker 65 It's nuts that she was being given both ketamine and dilaudid.

Speaker 67 Well, and Biana at one point suggests fentanyl.

Speaker 59 Oh my God.

Speaker 29 I mean, it's just like, and then there's this conversation about her.

Speaker 65 Why would she, why would she suggest fentanyl? Like, was something not working?

Speaker 25 Well, she said that she didn't respond well to morphine.

Speaker 20 So again, this is like, this is like in the first month of the diagnosis.

Speaker 20 And we're talking about, you know, and she also says, oh, she's already been on high doses of oxycodone i mean so it's just like the the the dosages

Speaker 66 and how old is and she's nine she's nine at the time this is a nine-year-old and like there's also this comment about you know there's this conversation back and forth about opioids and benadryl because i think that was something maya was taking for her alleged allergies i have no idea about the allergies And Beata said, oh, well, she's been on large doses of Benadryl since she was two or three.

Speaker 13 Wow.

Speaker 66 That was very striking.

Speaker 20 And then that, and that was the context that Dr.

Speaker 56 Kirkpatrick said, probably a good idea to keep Narcan on hand.

Speaker 10 And of course, probably again, if we are all familiar with Narcan, because like libraries and all these places keep it on hand, because there's so many opioid overdoses.

Speaker 66 So, I mean, like, it's just like the idea that this girl was not in danger is so blown away by these emails.

Speaker 26 Right.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 20 So, then the other thing that is in these emails is a whole bunch of stuff about Dr.

Speaker 54 Kirkpatrick.

Speaker 57 So Dr.

Speaker 68 Kirkpatrick is the key witness on the doctor side, right?

Speaker 25 For the dependency hearing and then even for the trial that just happened.

Speaker 65 Hold on. Did the jury get to see any of these emails? No.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 25 No, these have been introduced in the post-trial motions.

Speaker 32 So we saw a couple of emails from Biata.

Speaker 57 The emails that we saw, and some of those were included in this chain, the emails that we saw were draft posts of her blog writing in Maya's voice during her academy combat.

Speaker 20 They did not see any of these communications.

Speaker 40 And

Speaker 49 I mean, like, truly, Dr.

Speaker 54 Kirpatrick,

Speaker 66 he's wild.

Speaker 49 I mean, so, so, a couple of things about him.

Speaker 59 I mean, I hardly know where to begin.

Speaker 72 I feel like I could start an offshoot podcast about weird doctors with cash clinics.

Speaker 66 But anyway, a couple of things about him.

Speaker 38 And this, this seems in the weeds, but I promise it is actually very important.

Speaker 60 So there was so much conversation and the plaintiff really got a lot of mileage out of this idea of who is qualified to diagnose CRPS, right?

Speaker 20 Dr. Smith didn't know CRPS.
Johns Hopkins didn't, and that was like the whole actually premise of the medical malpractice thing.

Speaker 60 It's like these, she has CRPS, these doctors didn't know how to treat it.

Speaker 14 So Dr.

Speaker 3 Kirpatrick was their expert. There, he's the guy, he's the CRPS guy, right?

Speaker 68 We now know, obviously, he's not board certified in anything.

Speaker 55 Like, so what was really interesting that came through in this this is there's a whole back and forth.

Speaker 20 So some of these emails take us into the period where she's being sheltered in Johns Hopkins.

Speaker 20 And there's this question of the Budapest criteria.

Speaker 13 The Budapest criteria, it seems to be like one of the only things that both sides can agree upon is the medically accepted way to diagnose CRPS.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 20 And there was a whole bunch of stuff even about Dr.

Speaker 42 Sally Smith's report about her not making a note that Dr.

Speaker 30 Kirkpatrick had talked about diagnosing her with the Budapest criteria.

Speaker 20 And even in his own testimony, he was like, yep, the Budapest criteria, that's how we diagnose CRPS.

Speaker 10 In these emails, he basically says the Budapest criteria is bullshit.

Speaker 49 The doctor who invented it is very controversial.

Speaker 66 He only testifies that people don't have CRPS.

Speaker 67 And he said this isn't the way to diagnose CRPS.

Speaker 2 And he gives his own protocol instead that's like a link to his blog.

Speaker 20 The only other doctor that he seems to respect is Dr. Cantu.

Speaker 30 He says all this stuff about Dr.

Speaker 20 Sally Smith. You know, he says, Dr.
Smith is a dangerous doctor and must be disqualified as a medical expert. In this case, her statements on the record contradict well-established scientific facts.

Speaker 30 This is what Dr. Kirkpatrick says in an email about Sally Smith.

Speaker 20 So her statements on the record contradict well-established scientific facts about CRPS, especially in children.

Speaker 60 Also, he says to Beada, there isn't well-established science on children.

Speaker 67 So it's just like, like, he just,

Speaker 26 medicine to him is whatever he says it is.

Speaker 65 Okay. Yeah, that's a lot.
So what, was there anything else in these emails that were like, was super bonkers to you?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I mean, I think it's been interesting to read anything in Beata's voice. It just speaks volumes.

Speaker 72 And we're not hearing from her except these communications.

Speaker 25 So she basically has this like

Speaker 6 very noticeable difference in how she talks about medical providers.

Speaker 73 On the one hand, you have any medical

Speaker 13 providers who've disagreed with her or questioned her.

Speaker 26 So specifically, Bonnie Rice at Tampa General Hospital, who we know eventually reported her.

Speaker 15 She says that she is a witch.

Speaker 29 She says Tampa General tortured her daughter.

Speaker 26 She has this whole back and forth about one of the GI specialists, Dr.

Speaker 66 Willsley, and how bad he is.

Speaker 25 And that was the office that she was fired from because of her behavior.

Speaker 26 So you can see, and then like Dr. Sally Smith is evil.

Speaker 10 She uses this very sort of religious language to describe these doctors.

Speaker 30 And then in Dr. Her emails to Dr.

Speaker 54 Kirkpatrick, they're very over-familiar.

Speaker 56 She's signing them with X's and O's and angel emojis.

Speaker 15 And it's, God bless you. You're a hero.
You saved us.

Speaker 60 So it's like, if a doctor's agreeing with her, they're God.

Speaker 49 And if a doctor is disagreeing with her, they're the devil.

Speaker 25 There's no sort of like, oh, we're trying to get to the bottom of it. It just totally goes abens.

Speaker 60 It's like, if you question Beata, you're the devil.

Speaker 3 You tortured her daughter.

Speaker 25 You're evil.

Speaker 52 And if you go along with with her, um, you're good, you're good, okay.

Speaker 65 So, what else, like, specifically? Because,

Speaker 65 you know, when you hear this, I think in some people's minds, they can be like, Yeah, of course, if somebody disagrees with you, disagrees with you, you don't like them, but if they agree with you, you like them, or whatever.

Speaker 65 So, I know that there are some other really specific things that stuck out to you that were never tied to me before.

Speaker 14 Number one, it's really clear she's driving all of the escalations and that she wants them.

Speaker 15 Because, again, it's the email blog post that we saw.

Speaker 22 It's cheerful when she gets, when Maya gets her pick line, her port put in, Beata's emailing the doctors to let them know that.

Speaker 20 And she says, Yay, in all caps, five exclamation points.

Speaker 18 She got her port in.

Speaker 31 And it's like, that's not, I'm so relieved my daughter's gotten the thing I need.

Speaker 25 That's, I'm excited about the way that this is escalating.

Speaker 43 And again, it's like, if any of these things were one instance,

Speaker 20 you could say weird day, weird tone, weird use of exclamation points. But like, that is consistently from Beada's communications, what we have seen.

Speaker 65 Did she talk to anybody else back and forth about Maya or like what was going on?

Speaker 2 So we've been led to believe, right, that like Johns Hopkins was the one who was holding things up, that they were the reason that Maya stayed at that hospital for three months.

Speaker 25 That's a huge piece of this case that speaks to the false imprisonment claim.

Speaker 15 What these emails tell us is that one of the main reasons this got held up was because Dr.

Speaker 20 Kirkpatrick couldn't be nailed down to testify and he wouldn't testify until they paid him an $8,000 retainer.

Speaker 60 And Deborah Salisbury says specifically, like, I just filed a 45-day continuance for a bunch of reasons.

Speaker 20 The biggest one is that they haven't been able to get you to testify.

Speaker 34 So it wasn't the hospital that was prolonging things.

Speaker 26 It was Dr.

Speaker 64 Kirkpatrick.

Speaker 20 I'd like to think that hearing all of this additional evidence would have made a difference to the outcome of this case.

Speaker 47 But as we learned really quickly after this verdict came down, it may not have.

Speaker 29 According to one of the numerous post-trial motions from the defense, this jury might have been tainted from day one.

Speaker 6 So this all has to do with the now infamous foreman of the jury, juror number one, who the defense attempted to swap out for an alternate.

Speaker 15 So the motion for his removal happened right before the jury was set to deliberate.

Speaker 27 It was a lengthy motion, and it included evidence that the defense argued showed that the juror had made up his mind before the defense even began presenting their case.

Speaker 33 An essential tenet of our jury system is to have jurors that come in fair and impartial and to keep their impartiality until the defense case is put on.

Speaker 33 And we had a concern based on some of the questions that had been laid forth

Speaker 33 whether this particular juror had been able to satisfy that obligation.

Speaker 42 You know, watching all of this go down in the courtroom was strange.

Speaker 16 At first, both parties seemed like they were fine with swapping out juror number one for an alternate.

Speaker 15 But then Gregory Anderson, who is the lead attorney for the Kowalskis, just suddenly kind of changed course and said he needed to discuss it with his client.

Speaker 33 You know who I didn't check with through this whole thing?

Speaker 31 My client.

Speaker 33 Well, that would be important.

Speaker 3 So Anderson goes back to the desk, talks it over with Jack Kowalski.

Speaker 8 He comes back and they've changed course.

Speaker 3 He said his client is more comfortable keeping juror number one.

Speaker 24 So they are now objecting to the motion to get rid of that juror.

Speaker 32 And then the judge ruled that juror number one could stay.

Speaker 33 I'm going to deny the motion to remove juror number one.

Speaker 56 And now we know what happened next.

Speaker 18 Two days later, massive ruling in favor of the Kowalskis.

Speaker 73 So, you know, unlike those of us at home whose only experience of the jury was hearing the questions that they asked, Ethan and the other attorneys could see their faces and their body language as they were listening to everything that was said.

Speaker 68 So, you know, I have a hunch maybe Ethan was not as shocked as the rest of us when this verdict came down.

Speaker 47 But right away, because of his background, he understood the ramifications.

Speaker 35 The hospitals keeping Maya there under the orders of the court had been turned into something else, imprisonment, medical kidnapping.

Speaker 33 So

Speaker 33 the evidence regarding the first few days of the hospital I thought were very compelling for the defense.

Speaker 33 The hospital recommended a weaning schedule for Maya, and we have ample evidence that the family agreed to that schedule.

Speaker 33 And it wasn't just one doctor or one health care provider that documented the family's agreement with the weaning schedule.

Speaker 33 It was several across several different specialties and across several different units from the emergency department to the ICU and so forth.

Speaker 33 Again, you know, we feel confident that when the evidence is weighed and re-weighed by the trial court and eventually the appellate courts, that they'll come to the same agreement that there was nothing approaching a false imprisonment and that the family agreed to a very evidence-based approach to a plan of care.

Speaker 33 We heard Mr. Kowalski testify that he was told he was threatened by an armed security guard with arrest.
All Children's Hospital does not have armed security guards at care planning meetings.

Speaker 33 That was a piece of evidence that we felt that we could adequately refute, did adequately refute, and we're confident in our appellate rights on that point.

Speaker 22 And messages from Beata, ever the prolific communicator, also back this up.

Speaker 33 We had documented evidence from Beata Kowalski as late as October 11th that they had agreed with the plan of care. We also have additional evidence that didn't come in about Mr.
Kowalski praising Dr.

Speaker 33 Elliott, who is one of the pain management specialists and his role in the case.

Speaker 33 So again, in real time, we have very good evidence that the Kowalskis agreed to the plan of care at All Children's Hospital up and through when the court sheltered Maya Kowalski on October 13th, finding that her release back to the family presented an imminent danger to Maya.

Speaker 44 You know, the plaintiff's narrative

Speaker 2 really was that everything the hospital did was cruel, including taking Maya off these medications.

Speaker 44 You know, Dr.

Speaker 2 Eli Neuberger, the expert who gave that deposition, used that word that it was cruel that they took her off all these medications, but the Kowalskis agreed to this plan.

Speaker 34 Ethan and I agree that the reverberations of this verdict go so far beyond just this family.

Speaker 18 And I know from hearing from people, Dr.

Speaker 32 Beck said this, all my colleagues said this, Shapiro said this, that there was just this wave of panic that went out amongst healthcare workers this day.

Speaker 2 I have not met any healthcare healthcare workers that are unaware of this case in pediatrics.

Speaker 3 So, you know, part of this is because pediatric hospitals are in this really unique position.

Speaker 19 The government considers hospitals a safe place for children.

Speaker 36 And that means that their role goes far beyond just reporting abuse.

Speaker 33 My fear is it's not just a chilling effect.

Speaker 33 Because if you're a healthcare provider looking at a questionable situation and wondering, if I make the call, what's going to happen, especially children's hospitals, Andrew, because you have to remember that, you know, as opposed to police officers and firefighters that can make a call, they're not going to be responsible for the child if the court orders them sheltered.

Speaker 33 So you have a situation where a hospital has to make a decision, or a health care provider has to make a decision, do I call this? I am reasonably suspicious, but do I call this in?

Speaker 33 If they call it and Child Protective Services decides to investigate it and decides that there's reasonable grounds to pursue a shelter order, and the judge agrees with them that the child's in imminent risk and danger, you're creating a situation now where the hospital or healthcare provider is going to be the custodian of the child with parents who already disagree with the decision.

Speaker 33 And now what?

Speaker 33 What if you end up in a situation like with the Kowalski family, where you know, after all children's hospitals successfully weaned Maya off what they thought were unnecessary and dangerous medications, We're in a position where they say to the court, we're ready to transfer the child, but

Speaker 33 the state and the dependency court and the family can't agree. And it goes on and on and on.

Speaker 33 And when you look at what can happen in a situation where the parties can't agree on where a child can be discharged to, the hospital can face tremendous exposure, even though they do not have control over the decision for discharge.

Speaker 38 People just have no idea

Speaker 48 what this actually means,

Speaker 57 how dire this is for abused children.

Speaker 69 And the fact that like, people say I'm fear-mongering when I say this, but every single professional I've talked to in this space knows that this means that children are going to die.

Speaker 49 And thankfully,

Speaker 31 the Johns Hopkins people and their lawyers understand the gravity of this verdict.

Speaker 29 This isn't just like a, you know, this isn't just like a case to win or lose and you take some, you lose some, whatever.

Speaker 19 This is really has such serious implications.

Speaker 47 And I think that's a big reason that they're keeping up the fight.

Speaker 20 I've joked about watching this trial kind of being like watching a reality show, but I think it really occurred to me as soon as this was over that this effect was actually very real for a lot of the people who were spending all that time in the courtroom.

Speaker 64 So what happened after the verdict, you know, juror number one immediately revealed his identity and his wife posted a photo of him all in his fancy suit for verdict day or for deliberation day.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 55 he really gave off this vibe of being pretty ready for his 15 minutes and was like very into the hero worship that he was receiving for all of these people who were cheering on this verdict and for sticking it to Johns Hopkins as they saw it.

Speaker 3 So this new motion that popped up on the docket the night before Thanksgiving, it's not some dry appellate motion, but it is a call for a whole new trial.

Speaker 22 And what it was based on was this call for a new trial based on juror misconduct.

Speaker 62 So this is the lengthy motion.

Speaker 16 And Tina and I took a look through this when we were back in the office.

Speaker 65 Okay, so this whole thing is definitely not over. There is a motion for a full-on new trial, which means new juror, everything.
So that juror number one, I still don't really get it all.

Speaker 65 Like juror number one is in or out.

Speaker 65 What came out about this dude?

Speaker 62 Well, so, right, they tried to get him off.

Speaker 68 Judge said no.

Speaker 48 So he stayed on the jury. And now what's come out is that his wife,

Speaker 34 Yolanda, who goes by the name Hippo Lover

Speaker 1 on social media.

Speaker 26 Hippo. Like hippopotamus.

Speaker 3 Like hippo lover.

Speaker 66 Yeah, I think the icon is a hippo.

Speaker 2 Hippos are great.

Speaker 13 Hippos. I also love hippos.

Speaker 69 But yeah, basically she is posting all the way through the trial and it looks like also in some kind of, there's a lot of like pro-plaintiff groups, right?

Speaker 15 So these take care of my Facebook pages.

Speaker 42 Like this, this, this trial is just a continuation of this movie.

Speaker 10 I mean, I, I can't emphasize enough how it's just all one thing at this point.

Speaker 65 It reeks of like the Clarence Thomas stuff, right? Like where his wife was doing all this stuff and he's on the Supreme Court. So there's a juror whose wife is out there

Speaker 65 doing some bananas behaviors.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 27 And so she's, you know, she's on these, like it's become very clear which social media forums are pro-plaintiff and which ones are like pro-defense.

Speaker 68 And so it's become very much like a team sport.

Speaker 60 So she's on YouTube chats.

Speaker 44 She's doing super chats, which is when you actually donate money to a YouTuber to get your question answered.

Speaker 20 And she's like making all these posts and, you know, in some cases, prefacing questions that the juror is going to ask.

Speaker 27 And she talks about juror Leo, which is the law enforcement officer, because he has some law enforcement background.

Speaker 70 So she's like, juror Leo is going to ask Detective Graham about ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

Speaker 69 So obviously.

Speaker 31 During the trial. She's not going to be.
During the trial.

Speaker 15 So obviously they are under oath.

Speaker 47 We heard Judge Carroll say this like a thousand times every single time the jury comes in and every time they leave, he says, you're not supposed to talk to anybody about it.

Speaker 50 You should receive no information. Don't talk to each other.

Speaker 37 Don't talk to anyone.

Speaker 31 so he says that and he confirms every time they come back and he says you didn't talk to anybody you didn't blah blah blah blah so if he was talking to his wife and now like on the one hand like this trial was nine weeks they're not sequestered sure he's going to talk to his wife but fine right not fine but whatever you're not supposed to do that you are home but then if she's going out into the world right there's just like a line here that seems pretty clearly to have been crossed and the other thing is that's interesting is so in some cases Yolanda, his wife, actually showed up in court and was sitting in court.

Speaker 37 Now, there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 36 You know, in theory, like the, it was open court, but she's sitting with this TikToker, Jules, who got very close to the Kowalskis and was like covering, she was there every day almost during trial.

Speaker 2 So they have her there, they have her talking.

Speaker 57 Thanks to the, yeah, she's like the family's advocate, basically.

Speaker 31 And they're like, there's pictures of them talking to each other. There's social media interactions where it was like, so great to meet you at court today.

Speaker 23 Can't wait to hang out.

Speaker 31 I know you have my phone number, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's just like a juror's wife hanging out with

Speaker 38 not just a juror, the foreman of the juror.

Speaker 31 So like there's all of the Yolanda stuff.

Speaker 70 And then there's also the stuff that like the juror himself did.

Speaker 11 So like the juror immediately like juror number one.

Speaker 65 Juror number one.

Speaker 16 So juror number one, his name's Paul.

Speaker 15 Lingle, I think is their last name.

Speaker 42 Pardon my pronunciation on that.

Speaker 65 There's like a lot of concepts. I think he'll forgive you after everything else we're saying about that.

Speaker 31 Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 30 So that's not the thing he's going to be mad about.

Speaker 25 So his wife's doing all of this and then like

Speaker 41 he comes out immediately and again like it's it's perfectly legal for a juror to talk about their experiences after they're released from their oath right they can go talk to the media they can go on social media they do whatever they want but like in terms of it being a good look or a bad look he's on there he's just like thank you all so much for your support because he finds out he wasn't really supposed to know or at least not during the trial that he was almost kicked off that happened while the jury was out of the room.

Speaker 65 So right after the verdict comes out, he's saying things like, thanks for supporting me. Yeah.
And now

Speaker 65 that would lead us to believe that he knew something was going on while he was juroring.

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 70 Or just like, it's, he's just taking this position.

Speaker 58 Like, I think we like to believe that this is like a clean process and he's in there liking these memes.

Speaker 65 Okay. So

Speaker 65 at what point is his wife like buddies with the Kowalskis? Like, how does she know this YouTuber? At what point does she get so involved in this case? Is it like

Speaker 65 before he becomes a juror or her husband becomes a juror and she's like, oh, he's, this case is going to be really cool or,

Speaker 65 you know, interesting or in the public eye.

Speaker 38 So what it looks like

Speaker 49 is that

Speaker 31 he

Speaker 68 wanted to get on this jury.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Because perhaps his wife had extremely strong feelings about this case.

Speaker 20 She was following the the film's producer.

Speaker 16 She was on this page before he was on the jury. Oh, okay.
I mean,

Speaker 73 right. And like, you know.

Speaker 65 So that's what the motion right now is like, this was a bad trial because the number one juror

Speaker 65 had ties to this case.

Speaker 31 And she was giving him all.

Speaker 20 So, you know, we talked already in this episode about like, oh, we saw this information, the juror didn't see.

Speaker 60 If you have your spouse and they're super invested and they're watching everything and they're reading all the social medias and they're giving you that information as a juror that you're not supposed to have, that taints the verdict completely yeah yeah okay what else okay so that's the kind of juror part of the motion and then there's another motion for a new trial that is just like basically taking issue with the court's rulings itself so they're talking about things like the size of the award you know they gave them it was already a bonker's amount of money to ask for and they gave them more um and then that just basically like they use this term manifest weight of the evidence so basically like the evidence does not match up with the decision or the award at all.

Speaker 2 Like this is not like and then they point out all these errors during trial.

Speaker 20 You know, one of the biggest claims obviously being that the judge barred them from having testimony about medical child abuse.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 65 So is that part of this motion that they're saying like because you threw that out that okay good.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Basically like you kneecap the defense and they specifically talk about Eli Neuberger's testimony that you let someone who like his only job, like the only thing Dr.

Speaker 20 Eli Neuberger does for like the last 24 years is be an expert testimony about child abuse.

Speaker 30 So like you let someone testify about that and then you didn't let their experts on, you didn't even let them answer it.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 31 Wow.

Speaker 33 Wow.

Speaker 31 All right.

Speaker 65 So new trial, hopefully. We don't know yet.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 22 So I'll include a link to the motions because I think they are interesting to look at.

Speaker 25 It's interesting to look at all of these screenshots on social media.

Speaker 68 The interplay of social media and cases in the modern day is really interesting.

Speaker 3 It names a bunch of other social media people that were involved in this case.

Speaker 18 Thankfully, not yours truly.

Speaker 11 And, you know, I have to say, like, looking through this motion and looking at all these screenshots of these memes and these conversations that were happening, which like a lot of it I tried to mostly avoid while I was covering this trial, it just really seems like the seriousness of what's happened here and what is happening here has become completely lost on most people that are talking about this story.

Speaker 66 This isn't a legal story.

Speaker 37 It's not even a medical story or a crime story.

Speaker 49 This has become a pop culture story.

Speaker 58 And it's like, this is the story starring the family from the hit Netflix movie.

Speaker 40 And

Speaker 66 that's a movie that I believe is largely fictional.

Speaker 46 And I feel like we're living in its universe.

Speaker 30 That's all next time on Nobody Should Believe Me.

Speaker 35 Nobody Should Believe Me is a production of large media.

Speaker 36 Our senior producer is Tina Knoll, and our editor is Corrine Kiltow.