Case Files 25: Olivia Gant Part 2

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's Andrea, and it's been a big news week over here.

Speaker 1 So before we get into the second half of our conversation with Melissa Williamson, lead detective on the Olivia Gant case, I wanted to give you a few updates. First, the good news.

Speaker 1 And it's really good news. On Wednesday, October 29th, I woke up to the news that the $213 million verdict in Kowalski v.
Johns Hopkins All Children's had been reversed.

Speaker 1 I will record a full episode on this soon, breaking it all down, but the gist is that the appeals court ruled that the majority of what went to trial two years ago should never have ended up there and only did so because of a series of errors by Judge Carroll.

Speaker 1 There are four counts that the appeals court ruled could be retried, those related to Maya Kowalski only. None of the counts on behalf of Jack or Beata's estate can move forward.

Speaker 1 This is a big win for those of us who care about children and believe that they deserve to be safe in their homes, and who believe that those who step in to protect them shouldn't face spurious lawsuits.

Speaker 1 But of course, the battle to protect kids and uphold mandatory reporting continues.

Speaker 1 And this week, Serial Productions published their series reported by Diane Neary called The Preventionist, which forwards the cause of one of the numerous copycat lawsuits that's gained steam in the wake of Kowalski.

Speaker 1 To say that I'm concerned about this coverage is an understatement. Frankly, I think the entire team at Serial should be ashamed of platforming this.

Speaker 1 So for the next several weeks, I'll be with you, breaking down each of the three episodes in detail with some expert help.

Speaker 1 You may notice, if you're listening to The Preventionist, that there are many names and details left out of Neri's reporting. And as I fill in the gaps for you, I think you'll see why.

Speaker 1 I've received one initial response from the Serial team and have sent them several emails with additional information, including the Kowalski opinion.

Speaker 1 I will be sharing much of this in coming episodes, but I'm also going to post my emails to them in full on the free tier of Patreon if you want to check those out.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to keep reaching out to them, especially if you're someone who is directly affected by this kind of media coverage.

Speaker 1 An abuse survivor or family member, a mandated reporter, the parent of a sick child, or any parent of any child.

Speaker 1 You can leave them reviews on Apple and Spotify or email them at serialshows at nytimes.com. You can also find that in our show notes.

Speaker 1 And if you'd like to leave us a review while you're at it, those really help us out. And likewise, if you have thoughts to share with us, you can do so at hello at nobodyshouldbelieveme.com.

Speaker 1 We love hearing from you. You can also listen to some exclusive episodes about all of this by subscribing on Apple Podcasts and Patreon.

Speaker 1 And that's in addition to our coverage this month of Unknown Number and the Kendra Lucari case.

Speaker 1 I have to say that it feels rather poignant to be talking about Olivia Gamp this week, a child who died because the doctors caring for her failed to speak up. Let us never forget the stakes.

Speaker 1 Let us never forget who we're fighting for.

Speaker 2 I'm 32, juggling family, working full-time, and earning a bachelor's degree. At University of Phoenix, I earn career-relevant skills with every five-week course.

Speaker 2 Skills I can use now, not just after graduation.

Speaker 3 Earn skills in weeks, not years. Visit Phoenix.edu.

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

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

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

Speaker 1 Immigrants make this country great. Just as a note, we have bleeped out the names of some of the children in this story to protect their privacy.

Speaker 1 In the last episode, Melissa Williamson, the lead detective on the Olivia Gant case, told us about her shocking and harrowing investigation into the child's death.

Speaker 1 The patterns of abuse in these cases are always so similar. from unnecessary wheelchairs and leg braces to unexplained feeding issues and increasingly drastic interventions.

Speaker 1 To, in the most extreme cases, the death of a child from an illness that either wasn't terminal or never existed.

Speaker 1 But while the medical abuse patterns are almost always predictable in these cases, the chaos of these offenders and their myriad deceptions aren't confined to the medical realm.

Speaker 1 As the detectives in the Gant case investigated the faulty narrative Kelly Turner had been telling about her daughter's health, they uncovered a pervasive web of lies that touched every corner of Turner's life and left a wide swath of victims in her wake, starting with the financial fraud.

Speaker 4 We first came across that when her blogs, when she first started writing the blogs, and then it turned to a GoFundMe account for Olivia.

Speaker 4 So the blogs we noticed that people were donating money and like those were written pretty much primarily when she was in Texas.

Speaker 4 And so I know the community, especially the church community, because we went down there and talked to them, they did bake sales or, you know, they raised money in their church for Kelly for and then Olivia because they were both having issues, according to Kelly's information that, you know, had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that Olivia was having some other issues going on as well.

Speaker 4 So I remember talking to them and

Speaker 4 they had bake sales for them. They helped raise money, I believe, for Olivia to get a

Speaker 4 service dog.

Speaker 4 for her for her seizures and then you know just donated money when they could as you know, good people that they were down there, that they were just trying to help this family who had sick children.

Speaker 1 There was also an element of Medicaid fraud in this case, wasn't there?

Speaker 4 Correct. And then I'll continue.
So when she moved up to Colorado, she moved into GoFundMe. So there were these long posts and money donated to

Speaker 4 her for Olivia's care or final, you know.

Speaker 4 expenses for her burial for all that stuff, which was never, we found was never used on anything for Olivia or her medical expenses.

Speaker 4 So for the Medicaid fraud, we also learned that, so when we talked to Jeff, her husband, and the kid's father, he had great insurance. And so he just worked.

Speaker 4 He, when I talked to him, he's like, I can work, I can make money, and I have really good insurance. So that's how I can take care of my kids.
My wife takes care of them.

Speaker 4 I go to work, and that's what I can provide. So he had them covered up through Colorado when she moved up here because

Speaker 4 it was cured but Olivia started having these skin issues so they came up here to Colorado for the children's hospital because Olivia started having skin issues and didn't know what was going on so then Kelly found out that

Speaker 4 she can get Medicaid coverage for the kids and everything's taken care of so she told Jeff hey

Speaker 4 The kids can call the children's hospital will cover them. You just have to drop the kids.
So I have insurance. The hospital will cover them, but you don't need to cover them anymore on your plan.

Speaker 4 So Kelly, he's like, okay, if that's better, you don't have to pay any medical bills. That's fine.
So he didn't enroll them or he had them dropped. So then Kelly had them enrolled in Medicaid.

Speaker 4 And Kelly first did two applications. And one was that she was a single mother and not married.
And another one was she was divorced. and a single mother.

Speaker 1 So basically her,

Speaker 1 so kind of walk me through how that works. So her,

Speaker 1 her husband's insurance was still paying for the kids and she was just collecting and keeping the Medicaid money?

Speaker 4 No, she fraudulently

Speaker 4 applied for Medicaid Front, told Jeff, hey, Children's Hospital is going to cover them. That's according to him when we talk to him, hey, Children's Hospital has insurance.
It's great.

Speaker 4 We don't have to pay anything. They're going to cover the kids for all their needs.
Don't cover, but they can't be covered under your insurance.

Speaker 4 So drop them so they're not covered under yours and I'll get them under this hospital insurance. That's what Kelly explained to him.

Speaker 1 Do you think that she did that in part to sort of hide what she was doing from Jeff?

Speaker 4 I think so, yes.

Speaker 1 Like many previous offenders we've covered on the show, including Lisa McDaniels, Sophie Hartman, and Beada Kowalski, Kelly Turner was an avid chronicler of her woes and her daughter's illnesses on a blog she maintained.

Speaker 1 And much like the others, some of the people Kelly roped into her chaos were parents of legitimately sick children.

Speaker 1 This element of her blog that you discovered and how did that piece?

Speaker 1 Because she wrote about both girls on the blog and it looked like there was, it looked like there was a friend that was sometimes writing posts on her behalf.

Speaker 4 So Kelly bonded with her because they both had sick children. And so

Speaker 4 when we talked to her, you know, again, it broke my heart because to all this truth that they had learned about Kelly to find out that these girls weren't sick and that they didn't, you know, Livy didn't need to die and never had cancer and all of this, that she was, you know, she felt betrayed and hurt because she's like, I had a sick child and unfortunately my daughter passed and I would do anything I could to give, to have my kid back.

Speaker 1 This friend named Michelle bonded with Kelly at the hospital over their shared life experience, only to later learn during the police investigation that Kelly's story had not only been a lie she'd been exploiting stories like Michelle's for her own gain

Speaker 4 I think Olivia were born around the same time or Michelle's daughter was

Speaker 4 like maybe a year older but they were still going through these you know, traumatizing things at the hospital and treatments and everything. So I think they kind of bonded like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And that's a really heartbreaking piece of these cases, which we saw, you know, we see in a lot of them, right? Is that

Speaker 1 they will sort of infiltrate these communities of people who

Speaker 1 have legitimately sick children and then they are exploiting their experience to get their, you know, to their own ends. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I believe the blog was called Pray for the Gantt Girls. So

Speaker 4 she started, it was, you know, journey through her non-Hodgkins lymphoma and then Olivia came. And then, you know, some things with Olivia weren't right.
So then it just became, you know, was cured.

Speaker 4 And then things moved into Olivia, you know, having all these issues and seizure issues and all of this growing up.

Speaker 4 And that's how she got her service dog, you know, that she needed a seizure service dog.

Speaker 1 And again, that's another element that we see in the season six case. And I've seen a few service dogs.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think it's just really, um, It just really plays into that idea of like having a prop, right, that people notice.

Speaker 1 So you're out and about with a service dog and you kind of can make a big deal about, can the service dog come in here?

Speaker 1 And, you know, there was like some stories in the blog about the service dog and people noticing the service dog. And,

Speaker 1 and yeah, it just really sort of fits into that like, oh, the more sort of props you can have to show externally that your kid's sick, the more sort of attention you're going to get for being out and about.

Speaker 4 And it was just interesting because I remember talking to, because I think the dog's name was Hero, you know, because he was a hero for Olivia.

Speaker 4 So, and I did some research and we talked to people and like service dogs take a while, especially seizure service dogs.

Speaker 4 It's a lot of training and then they do a lot of one-on-one training with the person who they're going to be assigned to with the seizure disability. So there, it takes years of training.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden, you know, Hero went away for training for, I think, six weeks. And all of a sudden he's come back and he's this great service dog to Livy and does all these things.

Speaker 4 However long he was sent away for training, that wasn't enough to be a service service dog, but they still played him off as a service dog.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oof.

Speaker 1 Melissa has a haunting memory from the investigation of this dog dying from a mysterious intestinal injury, just like Olivia. We weren't able to independently confirm this piece.

Speaker 1 However, animal abuse is a known factor in these cases.

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Speaker 1 Just like Lisa McDaniel and Sophie Hartman and many others, Kelly was vocal about her faith. especially when talking about the death of her child.
But Kelly wasn't exactly a true believer.

Speaker 4 I believe Kelly was not religious, but she was using the words to, like you said, it's the ethos they're built on. She's part of our community.
She's a struggling mom.

Speaker 4 You know, she's writing these blog posts. We're good people.
Let's reach out and help them.

Speaker 4 Knowing that people think like that and these churches think like that and they help, I think Kelly was just using that to,

Speaker 4 you know, predatory to prey on these churches for money and support and get what she needed out of it and out of from the, you know, the good-hearted people that helped donate to the cause.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think also, because, yeah, even Kelly mentions like in the blog that, you know, oh, I haven't, I had sort of strayed from Jesus for a long time and now I've come back to Jesus because my kids are sick.

Speaker 1 And I also think, you know, something that struck me in reading these blogs and these writings by perpetrators around the religious stuff is that it sort of gives you an out

Speaker 1 for not

Speaker 1 trying to get your child well, if that makes sense. Because,

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 you have then this setup where it's out of your hands. It's God's will.
This child is, I'm sacrificing my child just like God sacrificed his only son.

Speaker 1 And it's okay that she's dying because she'll be well in heaven. Where if you take that out of a religious context for a parent who's agnostic or an atheist, they're like, no, my child's going to die.

Speaker 1 And that's just the, that's, there's, there's nothing to sort of cushion that blow, I guess. And so it really seems like this narrative around,

Speaker 1 you know, oh, it's okay because they are going to go be with Jesus.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of talk about like, there's often a lot of talk about the child wanting to go and be with Jesus and wanting to end their pain.

Speaker 1 And so it seems opportunistic just in the framing, in addition to sort of being a mechanism to fundraise.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I remember Kelly used to say that Olivia said, I don't want any more Owies, no more Owies. And that she used to say, yes, I want to go be with Jesus.
I want to go live with Jesus.

Speaker 4 Not really understanding what that means, but she's just, or what no more Owies means. But, you know, Kelly took it as, okay, this is what we're going to do.

Speaker 1 Blaming the victim is a well-known tactic in any form of abuse.

Speaker 1 Even if those victims are small children, abusers will justify their behavior by saying that a child deserved the abuse, that it was what was best for them, or even that they were asking for it.

Speaker 4 And that's what Kelly, when we interviewed her, she said that. She goes, my daughter wanted it.
So I wanted to give her what she wanted.

Speaker 4 She goes, I know a lot of people gave me criticism because, but I'm like, at the same time, your daughter was six years old, you know, and she didn't have all these things you said.

Speaker 4 But, well, she's like, well, I just wanted to give her what she wanted. And I'm like.

Speaker 1 I just sound weird. Yeah, no, it's, it's just, it's so, it's so far away from like what a normal parental experience would be.
It's normal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's not to, you know, that's not to take anything away from parents who are, you know, have a legitimately sick child or a child that dies and find comfort in their faith and find comfort in the idea that their children are no longer suffering.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think that that's very real.

Speaker 1 And I don't want to sort of, you know, frame that as problematic in itself, but it's like, it's another thing that they, it's another narrative that they exploit.

Speaker 4 And with these cases, types of cases.

Speaker 4 Because I guarantee those parents who have legitimately sick children and have lost a child, they would give everything to have that child back, you know, to have that child not be sick anymore.

Speaker 4 They would give everything they could or what they could do to do it, to make it so that their child was still with them.

Speaker 1 Munchhausen by proxy abuse is overwhelmingly committed by mothers. And we see a wide spectrum of behavior from the fathers in these cases.

Speaker 1 From fathers like Ryan Crawford and George Honeycutt from season one, who would spend their last dime and their last breath fighting for their children, to perpetrators like Lisa McDaniels' husband, Carrie, who are so complicit, they become literal partners in crime.

Speaker 1 And then there are fathers like Olivia's, who've been so completely cut out of their children's daily lives that they have no idea what's happening.

Speaker 4 When we talked to dad, I completely destroyed his world and what he knew was the truth.

Speaker 4 Because to hear that his daughter didn't have these diseases and she didn't need to die, you know, I could see like defeat and almost failure in his part.

Speaker 1 Like, I should have done more.

Speaker 4 My daughter didn't have to die. You know, I, it just, a lot of people were shocked when we told them that, hey, Olivia didn't have these diseases.
We're doing this investigation.

Speaker 4 They were like, oh my gosh. Some of them, there were a couple that were like, you know, there was something off about it.
Don't know what it is.

Speaker 4 And it's usually the ones that were in the medical community that were like, I'm not believing that this child has all of these ailments.

Speaker 4 I'm looking at this child jumping up and down on her bed, excited, singing, you know, frozen songs, you know, along with the movie.

Speaker 4 They're like, I'm not seeing this in what is being portrayed on paper to what I'm actually seeing in the child.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 4 it was more shock and awe and like, oh my gosh, I wish, I wish I would have seen it or I failed more on that end than I. I had a feeling, but I didn't want to say anything.

Speaker 1 However you feel about the fact that Kelly's husband so thoroughly abdicated his responsibilities as an active parent, especially considering Kelly's past having done jail time as a child sex offender, he wasn't there to see the escalating signs of abuse.

Speaker 1 But as Melissa talks about here, the doctors were. So why didn't they do something?

Speaker 4 Well, it was interesting because half of the medical team, it was torn. So half of them were like, we need to intervene.
Something's going on. This isn't right.

Speaker 4 Let's make a report, at least to DHS, you know, and start that like separation thing to see if this is actually legitimate or if Olivia has these or if we separate from mom and Olivia starts to get better and then half of them were like well we have to treat mom's saying she's in pain mom's saying she's this so we're treating the pain we're treating the symptoms that mom is saying so we err on the side of caution that every parent has

Speaker 4 you know, they want the good and, you know, the benefit of the doubt that parents are trying to get the good for their kids. And so that's what they were erring on.

Speaker 4 and then some of them you know like the nurses for sure were like we want to make a report we need to report something and they're you know the hospital and the legal team was like nope we're not doing that you're not doing that and so half of them were like well we're just gonna let mom do what she wants remove her from the TPN and the feeding tube.

Speaker 4 And, you know, she's going to be terminal because we're going to can't do much and mom won't let us start over. And she said, no, we've done this.
We've done this.

Speaker 4 And so they're like, we're just going to let mom do what she needs to and take,

Speaker 4 you know, let her child pass away if that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 People don't realize how much parents get a say in even that piece, right? Like, I think that's something where you just think, well, like a doctor would have had to direct that decision.

Speaker 1 And that's just not the case because for that exact reason that most parents would never. But this is, I think this is what happens when people don't recognize that people like Kelly Turner exist.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And Kelly signed a DNR, you know, insisted that a DNR be put on Olivia and all this.

Speaker 4 And, you know, what she had eventually would have been terminal because the TPN can only go so far, you know, and I learned talking to the doctors that it's not so great on your veins and arteries.

Speaker 4 You know, it'll start to. erode them away.
So they have to, you run out of where the TPN can go to feed the heart, to feed the body.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, if they're not getting nutrition, your body can only go so long without nutrition, proper nutrition.

Speaker 4 And so they're like, yeah, it would have been terminal because also the TPN and the tube wear on your liver and your kidneys. But talking to doctors, Olivia wasn't there.

Speaker 4 She wasn't even close to having liver problems or being on the, you know, transplant list or, you know, starting to go down that route of how it would be terminal.

Speaker 4 So they just, mom wanted these things and said, this is what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 I think medical providers,

Speaker 1 there's a really fine balance, right? Because obviously separating a child from their parent is a big deal and it causes trauma and it is, you know, can cause all kinds of problems for the hospital.

Speaker 1 And like there, there are risks to that, right? It's not a risk-free option. Yes.

Speaker 1 However, you know, in the cases that I've spoken to colleagues about that, people are always asking me, well, what about a fake, you know, what about a false allegation of munchausen?

Speaker 1 Are you ever going to cover one of those? And I always tell people, I'm like, I'll cover one as soon as I can find one.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, there's not much of a story when it's a, when it's a, not a false allegation, but when it's a wrongfully suspected parent, like when, when doctors become concerned about a parent who's not actually causing the problems, because what happens is there's a separation and it becomes clear immediately, you know, in a very short period of time.

Speaker 1 If that child's issues all persist the same way without the parent, it becomes very immediately obvious that that parent is not causing the problems. And so it's a really,

Speaker 1 in terms of interventions,

Speaker 1 I think it's a pretty low-risk intervention because then like, if you have a child, you know, who

Speaker 1 like there was a case that my, you know, one of my mentors, Betty Yorker, talks about that was like one of her first cases of suspected munchausen where the child was bleeding from his ears and they thought mom was causing it and his, he had a sibling that had passed away, which can be a red flag, right?

Speaker 1 And from like a mysterious thing. And

Speaker 1 they separated the mom and the symptoms persisted. And so, you know, really quickly they knew that it was not that.
And they did a bunch of testing and they figured out what was wrong with the kid.

Speaker 1 And it was this rare genetic condition that his sibling had died from. And so then they were able to like properly treat the kid too, right?

Speaker 1 So it's like, it's, it's medically helpful also to have that, that separation. And so I do

Speaker 1 wish that doctors and everyone involved would sort of look at that for what it is, right?

Speaker 1 Because it's like, if you have that suspicion, that's going to cause a lot of trouble with you and the medical team. And it's going to inhibit the medical team from being able to treat your kid.

Speaker 1 So if you're an innocent parent and you're like, well, yeah, oh my God, like, yeah, I'll be willing to not see my kid for like a week or whatever to,

Speaker 1 you know, to clear this up, right? So I feel like

Speaker 1 I wish people would reframe that.

Speaker 4 I agree. And we did that with, you know, we took mom.
away from she wasn't allowed to be in the home and she had to go somewhere else.

Speaker 4 And then all of a sudden, symptoms and everything stopped she wasn't having any issues and through the whole time you know i talked to grandpa and lonnie and he's like no she's great you know she's at the time she's like she's active in jiu-jitsu and soccer and i mean she just is very active so she's getting bumps and bruises from that but nothing like kelly was reporting prior to when we had the case and so with her with her other daughter you know she was really her first victim right?

Speaker 1 She was saying that she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She was saying all of this when she was in Texas.

Speaker 1 And then after they moved to Colorado, the focus really turned to Olivia, which is again like a common pattern that we see where the younger child, because they have less capacity to be vocal, less capacity to sort of fight back in any way, that they will fixate on the younger sibling and kind of have this pattern.

Speaker 1 But after Olivia died, she really started up again with the older daughter, right?

Speaker 4 Yes, yeah, the middle child. So she is three.

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Speaker 1 Kelly claimed she needed to move to Colorado to seek specialized care for both of her daughters. But after she headed north, the scenery wasn't the only thing that changed dramatically.

Speaker 1 Kelly was legally married to her husband throughout this whole time, right? Correct.

Speaker 1 Yep. But she

Speaker 4 until he filed for divorce after she was arrested.

Speaker 1 Okay. So they're still legally married, but her husband's living out of state.
And

Speaker 1 very shortly after

Speaker 1 Olivia dies,

Speaker 1 Kelly

Speaker 1 starts up a new romantic relationship. Kelly met her new paramour, Kathy, on an online dating site about 10 days after Olivia's death.

Speaker 4 Kathy said, yeah, she told me that she recently had a child pass away. I think she took me to the grave once, but, you know, saying, oh, we're getting this headstone.
It's in the works.

Speaker 4 And that was it. But then she said, I have two other kids.
So I think eventually like the relationship moved on. and they, you know, she said, we had talked about having kids.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden she said,

Speaker 4 Kelly showed up one day and said, hey, I went and got inseminated and I'm pregnant. And, you know, was showing pictures.
And then it turned into twins, you know, and so then things weren't adding up.

Speaker 4 And I believe Kelly and her kids were moved, had moved in with Kathy at this point. And so Kathy's friends were like, something's not right.

Speaker 4 And Kathy's like, well, I was excited, but it just happened so fast. You know, we hadn't really talked, and all of a sudden, Kelly shows up and she's been inseminated.

Speaker 4 And a couple months later, she's got twins and, you know, is going through this stuff. And so some of Kathy's friends were like, something's not adding up.

Speaker 4 And so then. Kathy actually ended up doing a background check on one of those online ones you pay for and came up with all of Kelly's background and her felony charge and all of this stuff.

Speaker 4 And she's like,

Speaker 4 she thought listening to how Kelly would talk about Olivia when she would, it wasn't very often, she thought something was kind of weird there.

Speaker 4 She goes, but I didn't want to question it because, you know, a mom, a parent just lost her child.

Speaker 4 So she's like, I just, she had a weird feeling something wasn't right about how Olivia passed or what was going on with Olivia.

Speaker 1 We're no stranger to a fake twin pregnancy on this show. Another common thing, fake nursing credentials.

Speaker 4 And Kathy also mentioned, like, Kelly said she was an ER or a, you know, a nurse. You know, that's been her whole thing.
She's been a nurse at children's hospital.

Speaker 4 And, but, you know, Kelly was taking some time off because Olivia had passed and, you know, the pregnancy and everything. So, but Kathy did say that

Speaker 4 Kelly was spending, she'd spend lots of money.

Speaker 4 So there was one time that I think her daughter had a birthday party and she got a limo and they went downtown and went to this big restaurant and, you know, paid all this money for her birthday party.

Speaker 4 And that she spent, got Kathy new tires for her Toyota 4runner. You know, the big, rugged, thick tires, you know, spent money on that as a gift for her car.

Speaker 4 And she just said, she just always seemed to be spending on these elaborate things. And

Speaker 4 I think that came from the GoFundMe donations.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because as far as we know, Kelly, at no point during all this, had a job, right?

Speaker 4 Correct. No jobs.

Speaker 1 In another callback to both seasons five and six, there was a lot of spending with no apparent job having.

Speaker 1 Although, I guess you could argue that this level of scamming is a job in and of itself. But flashing ill-gotten cash wasn't Kelly's only sleight of hand when it came to her life with Kathy.

Speaker 1 And I was also very intrigued by, you know, during this time when they're dating,

Speaker 1 Kathy starts getting text messages from

Speaker 1 a bunch of people.

Speaker 1 and these are in part related to kelly sorry it's hard with the kelly and kathy kelly's ex-wife

Speaker 1 allegedly alleged ex-wife who she was in an alleged custody battle with

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 Kelly starts getting, sorry, Kathy starts getting these messages from a husband and wife legal team. She starts getting messages from two sisters of

Speaker 1 Kelly's and everyone's saying, you know, what what a great person Kelly is.

Speaker 1 And so she starts hearing from sort of all of these people, but she never actually talks to any of these people on the phone and never actually meets any of them.

Speaker 1 So can you kind of walk us through this collection of other characters that spring onto the scene in this part of the story?

Speaker 4 I forgot about thank you for

Speaker 4 that was just crazy. So yeah, so she started,

Speaker 4 Kathy said that Kelly's sisters were reaching out saying, oh my gosh, you're so good, you know, all this stuff.

Speaker 4 And then this wife and husband attorney team show up and that they're representing, they're good friends with Kelly and they're representing her, you know, for like the birth and all this stuff, if I recall correctly.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 Kelly was explaining that she had been married before to an abusive, it was abusive relationship. I believe it was a Danielle.

Speaker 4 So, but Kelly said that she was married to Danielle. They've been married for 16 years.
It was a very,

Speaker 4 you know, traumatizing, abusive relationship.

Speaker 4 What I recall is that part of the stuff that broke up with them, why their marriage ended, and it was violent, is that, you know, Danielle, they were into a fight.

Speaker 4 Danielle stabbed her and she was in the hospital for several days. And then, you know, Kathy was like, but...

Speaker 4 And she, the way she described it, it would have like a big, ugly star in her, scar in her abdomen. And Kathy said, I didn't see any scar on her abdomen that she would when she told this story.

Speaker 4 But that's how they're, according to Kelly, that's how the marriage broke up was when she decided to leave Danielle after that incident.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, again, another like strong parallel is that we see people claiming to have been victims of abuse that they were not, you know, well, in this case, just not even a real relationship and, you know, victims of crimes that were not, did not actually happen.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So did you say you talked to another of Kelly's exes?

Speaker 4 Yes. So when we arrested Kelly, you know, we got the true bill from the grand jury.
We got a warrant for her arrest. We get Kelly arrested and she's like, oh, this is my wife.
I need to talk to her.

Speaker 1 Even though Kelly was still legally married to her husband back in Texas, Melissa recalls that Kelly met a second woman online.

Speaker 1 And once again, she told her new wife that, surprise, she had gone to get herself inseminated. And this time, as Melissa remembers it, Kelly upped the ante.
Twins apparently weren't dramatic enough.

Speaker 4 It was quadruplets.

Speaker 1 Wait, so the same story she told the other acts, but now we're upping the ante to quadruplets. Yes.

Speaker 4 Quadruplets. And so

Speaker 4 I was just sitting there and I was like, okay.

Speaker 4 So she said, okay, walk me through how all this went down. And she said, oh yeah, Kelly was pregnant, you know? And so she said, I would even look at her belly and it would like move.

Speaker 4 She said it was the weirdest thing when she was still pregnant with these quads and that she was a flight for life nurse, you know, at children's hospital and that they were going to let her have the babies at children's hospital.

Speaker 4 Well, Kelly went into labor early. And of course, the wife wasn't allowed to be there.
So she went into labor early.

Speaker 1 All of the

Speaker 4 and the children's hospital let her deliver there because, you know, of Olivia and she works there and everything like that, which I'm like, okay.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 she, hang on, it gets better. So then the wife throughout this whole thing is starting to get, so Kelly has the babies.
No one can see the babies. She can't go to the hospital.

Speaker 4 Kelly said, we can't go to the hospital because they're super sick.

Speaker 1 Kelly told wife number two that the babies, allegedly born around halfway through the pregnancy, had some of the same issues that Olivia had had.

Speaker 1 And what's more, they were even being treated by the same doctors.

Speaker 4 So the wife would receive texts from the doctor saying, hey, this is, and they named them all. I can't even remember the names, but they named these babies.

Speaker 4 Hey, this is, you know, I'm just going to say name, like, Billy's doctor. He's doing great today.
You know, we're going to do an operation on this and this and this.

Speaker 4 But it was all of like Olivia's like original doctors were reaching out. But no one could see him.
She hasn't seen the babies. And then three of them passed away.

Speaker 4 And so there was one still in the NICU and they're getting updates. And Kelly's like, oh yeah, I'm getting updates from, you know, my nurse friends.
Here's this.

Speaker 4 And so the wife was getting all of these text messages from doctors, nurses, Kelly's families.

Speaker 1 If you're thinking right now that casually texting the partner of a patient this way doesn't sound very HIPAA compliant, well, you'd be right.

Speaker 4 Come to find out it's Kelly sending all of these text messages to the wife through a different app. We think it was Google app because I downloaded her phone, pretending to be all of these people.

Speaker 4 And again, these pictures of these babies were, you know, we found them on the internet. I did a Google search and I found all of these sick NICU babies on the internet.

Speaker 4 So when I asked the wife, I said, Didn't you think it was kind of odd that you couldn't see these children?

Speaker 4 She goes, well, I was just told they couldn't because they were really sick and it was the NICU.

Speaker 4 And I said, okay, well, three of them had passed and one was on the way to, it wasn't going to make it, but it hadn't passed yet. And I said,

Speaker 4 what what are they what tell me what are they doing with the babies what were you told and she said oh kelly said they're keeping them in the morgue at the hospital so that when the fourth one finally passes then we'll all have one big funeral

Speaker 1 now this is our first case of quadruplets i believe but we've had a number of stories like this one on the show dramatic pregnancies and pregnancy losses that turn out to be entirely fictional.

Speaker 1 But for Kelly's wife, this was all new. And as someone who remembers her own first rodeo with a pregnancy scam, this is massively disorienting.

Speaker 4 As I was asking questions, she was like, oh my gosh, how did I not see this? This sounds crazy. You think I'm crazy?

Speaker 4 And like, no, I said, Kelly's just really good at manipulation, that she made you believe all this stuff.

Speaker 4 And that All these doctors were reaching out and all this stuff to you, but it was Kelly reaching out to you for it.

Speaker 4 So I felt really bad for her too, because she had spent like a year with this woman and all of this stuff is happening. And Kelly.
And they were legally married? No, they weren't legally married.

Speaker 1 Okay, because she was already married to her husband.

Speaker 4 But she didn't know that.

Speaker 4 I had to tell the wife that she's legally married to a man.

Speaker 1 You're saying she's the wife. So it was like, did they just have like a civil ceremony? I mean, did they do like something?

Speaker 4 I think so.

Speaker 1 Did you think that was a commitment ceremony or something?

Speaker 4 I think so. That's what they had was a commitment ceremony to each other.

Speaker 4 Because I think Sela Kelly said, well, I think she talked about her previous marriage with Danielle and that was so abusive that she didn't want to get, you know, married just yet.

Speaker 4 But we'll have this civil ceremony will be, you know, you're my wife. I'm your wife type thing.

Speaker 4 But she was still legally married to Jeff.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, hearing this story, and I think a lot of times people sort of hear these stories from the outside and you're like, that sounds so wild.

Speaker 1 How could you not know that that was a lie? But I think, you know, like when you're in it, you're just,

Speaker 1 you're in shock, right? Because it's like, it's so much happening at once and it's all so overwhelming.

Speaker 1 In case it's not clear, Kelly's first twin pregnancy, her second quad pregnancy, along with the entire relationship that ended in a stabbing by a woman named Danielle, all lies.

Speaker 1 Pathological liars may vary in their tactics, but being completely unburdened by the truth lets them stay out ahead a lot of the time because it takes time to sort facts from fiction, especially when someone is wrong-footing you at every turn.

Speaker 4 Kelly had an answer for everything. You know, or like, well, if you have any questions, well, let's text so-and-so.

Speaker 4 So Kelly would text herself and then get a response from, however that happened, you know, from the nurse or from the doctors, you know, make it seem like, oh, no, they're good, you know, but, you know, they're having seizures today and he's not going to make it because of seizures.

Speaker 4 And, you know, one of them had intestine. It's just all of this stuff.
But I, you know, I said, yes, for me to sit here and hear this story, because I know what's going on. But I said, you were in it.

Speaker 4 And Kelly is very good at lying. She's very good at manipulation and she's been doing it since, you know, she's been a teenager, at least as far back as I could know that she did it.

Speaker 1 Kelly's evidently shifting sexuality might be evidence of her having repressed something about herself.

Speaker 1 Or, as I've long suspected, her choices in partners might have less to do with their gender or anything else about who they are and more about how they might be useful.

Speaker 4 I honestly think Kelly might be gay because she's only been with Jeff. That's the only man she said she's been with, but

Speaker 4 all these women.

Speaker 4 So I think it's opportunist, whatever works for them and whatever, you know, and I know that they, it's more predatory as well on these poor people who, you know, like, cause I believe Kathy had just gotten done with another serious relationship before meeting Kelly, you know, so they're not, self-esteem might not be great, or they're going through a bad patch and they just need, they just don't want to be alone, but you know, they just are trying to find some, someone's company to be in, you know, because they going through these hard times or, you know, they just find these people to prey on and just take it from there and go, you know, that's sort of like whoever will make a good victim is who they're going to be in a relationship with.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm so grateful to Melissa, not only for taking the time to talk to us, but for her work on this case.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement in the Olivia Gant case did the right thing in the face of a complex investigation that could have easily been brushed aside in the hands of less capable and motivated detectives.

Speaker 1 Olivia Gant deserved better from the doctors who cared for her, as did Colin McDaniel.

Speaker 1 And we hope that there might emerge a detective in Alabama as courageous and committed to justice as those who solved Olivia's case. Only time will tell.

Speaker 1 I feel deeply honored to have been trusted to tell Colin McDaniel's story along with his sister Michelle and his aunt Sabrina.

Speaker 1 But I shouldn't have had to tell you the story of his death because it never should have happened.

Speaker 1 Talking here on this show can feel woefully inadequate in the face of the systems that let Colin and Olivia down and in the face of those who stayed silent about their suffering.

Speaker 1 And that's to say nothing of the many people who currently stay silent when they witness abuse or worse, actively cover for the people doing it, including, unfortunately, some of my colleagues in the media.

Speaker 1 But I'll never be one of them. And I know you won't either.
Thank you, as always, for listening.

Speaker 1 Nobody Should Believe Me is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett.

Speaker 1 Research and fact-checking by Erin Ajayi, administrative support from Nola Carmouche.

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