SEASON 06 | EPISODE 06

On this week’s episode, we hear Mishelle’s phone call with Dr. Jayne Ness, Collin’s treating physician, who shares concerning insights into Collin’s treatment—notably, that she was never certain Collin had NMO and that she had serious concerns for abuse. Andrea then speaks with Dr. Kenneth Feldman, a Child Abuse Pediatrician and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, about how physicians become entangled with Munchausen by Proxy perpetrators. Dr. Feldman also discusses the online behavior of perpetrators.

Andrea then traces Lisa’s advocacy efforts following Collin’s death, starting with a now-defunct 501(c)(3) organization and eventually leading to her work with the Guthy Jackson Foundation. Mishelle goes on to describe how, after Collin’s passing, Lisa began faking her own illness.

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This season covers sensitive subject matter involving allegations of child abuse, medical child abuse (also known as Munchausen by proxy), and the death of a minor. All information presented is based on court records, first-person interviews, contemporaneous documentation, and publicly available sources.

The podcast includes personal statements and perspectives from individuals directly involved in or affected by these events. These accounts represent their experiences and interpretations, and some statements reflect opinions that may be emotionally charged. Where appropriate, the reporting team has verified claims through official records or corroborating sources.

Nothing in this podcast should be interpreted as a legal conclusion or diagnosis. All subjects are presumed innocent unless convicted in a court of law. This podcast is intended for informational and public interest purposes.

This podcast contains audio excerpts from two phone conversations recorded in the states of Georgia and Alabama, respectively. Both recordings were obtained by a third-party source, who acted in accordance with the relevant one-party consent laws of those states, which allow for the lawful recording of a conversation with the consent of one participant.

These recordings were subsequently shared with the producers of this podcast after the fact, and were not made by or at the direction of the podcast team or its parent organization.

The podcast producers have made good-faith efforts to confirm the legal compliance of the original recordings, and are presenting these materials in the context of public interest reporting. The inclusion of this audio is intended for journalistic, educational, and documentary purposes in alignment with the principles of fair use and First Amendment protections.

Listeners are advised that the views expressed in the recordings are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or affiliated entities.

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[00:00:00] Trigger Warning[00:00:00] Cold Open

[00:00:05] Mishelle: ​So it’s one thing for me to have all these thoughts about like what happened to my brother and if, if mom had a hand in it and knowing that like on paper it’s likely that she really did. I guess I haven’t had to like process it in a real tangible way and having other people like talk about it and care and like really think these things like experts, professionals, not just me.

[00:00:40] Mishelle: I’ve always felt like, of course you think that way you’re bias and like, even though logically like I know on paper, like I know what it looks like, right? But like having other people look into it and also wanna know the answers and also wanna know the truth and it just, it’s just a lot. ’cause there’s no coming back from that.

[00:00:59] Mishelle: There’s no [00:01:00] relationship I can have with my mom if we get the answers that I’m terrified of. It is like losing my brother all over again knowing that something could have been done, but also losing a mom on top of it.

[00:01:18] Andrea: For over a decade, Michelle has lived in a liminal space around her brother’s death, feeling in her bones, something she could never quite say aloud.

[00:01:28] Andrea: But as we’ve revisited this all in depth for the show, as we put together the thousand piece puzzle, the picture began to come clear. Suspecting something is different than knowing it. Once you have the details, you come to know the devil within them, and you have to face her head on. As we gathered more answers, we had new questions.

[00:01:52] Andrea: Namely, given the innumerable red flags that he was being abused, including Lisa’s previous conviction for medical child abuse, [00:02:00] how did no one else see it? How did his doctors not suspect that there was something very wrong? Or did they?

[00:02:12] Andrea: people believe their eyes? That’s something that is so central to this topic because we do believe the people that we love when they’re telling us something. If we didn’t, you could never make it through your day. I’m Andrea Dunlop, and this is, nobody Should Believe me.

[00:02:39] Ad Break – Act 1

[00:02:39] Andrea: In the last episode, we covered the lengthy torturous medical odyssey Colin McDaniel endured leading to his eventual death in March of 2012, all of which was documented in explicit gruesome detail by his mother, Lisa. And when we lay it all out, none of it adds up. [00:03:00] As Michelle has learned more about Munchausen by proxy over the years, these discrepancies haunted her and eventually she got up the nerve to call the one person who might be able to tell her once and for all what actually happened to her brother, Dr.

[00:03:14] Andrea: Jane Ness from Children’s of Alabama.

[00:03:18] Mishelle: I don’t know how much you can talk to me or how much you’re willing to talk to me. I really just wanted to know like a couple of things. ’cause like I know that from my understanding of NMO and you’re the daughter here, so you tell me. But from my understanding of it, like it’s super duper rare and the more I’ve kinda looked into it, it’s not just rare, but it’s like rare for men.

[00:03:36] Mishelle: It’s more rare and white people, it’s more rare, especially for kids. And then I know mom had said some things about some of his antibody tests being negative until after some

[00:03:46] Ness: of, some of ’em had been negative and there had been one that had been positive, which I never saw. ’cause it was done someplace else, I think in Texas.

[00:03:57] Ness: So I don’t have results. So do I have [00:04:00] definitive proof of what he has? No. Because I don’t have the test results.

[00:04:07] Andrea: A note here that both Michelle and Dr. Ness live in one party, consent states, Georgia and Alabama respectively. And Michelle recorded this conversation legally and of her own volition and then later shared it with our team.

[00:04:21] Andrea: We have edited portions of this call for clarity and length. We made numerous attempts to contact Dr. Ness for comment and by the time of this recording had not received a response. So back to the call. This alleged positive test that Ness is talking about here is something that we did manage to get to the bottom of more on that it a bit, but as Ness says here, she did not see any positive tests for NMO including this one.

[00:04:47] Andrea: So what did Colin have?

[00:04:50] Ness: We’ve seen, uh, probably maybe a thousand some kids with various flavors of what we call the [00:05:00] Myelinating disease and. There are a bunch of mystery kids out there. He is not, he’s not the only one. He is got some company of like, man, I wonder what that kid really had. And that’s, he’s in that club.

[00:05:10] Ness: What did he really have?

[00:05:13] Andrea: Lisa Blogs about the questions surrounding Collins NMO diagnosis in the final year of his life. And indeed, thanks to her own dedicated Chronicles, we can see for ourselves that even in Lisa’s own words, a number of Collin’s most severe symptoms didn’t fit with an NMO diagnosis, which Ness clocked as well.

[00:05:30] Ness: He had a bunch of weird things like his gut didn’t work, which I never, I didn’t even know if there are other kids who have it. I, I don’t know what the hell he had. But yeah, it is a lot to process and, and even now, I mean, I wish I could give you a better answer because he, he kind of haunts me.

[00:05:55] Andrea: Collins unexplained gastrointestinal issues and his repeated septic [00:06:00] infections don’t match with NMO.

[00:06:02] Andrea: These symptoms are however nearly ubiquitous in Munchausen by proxy cases. And furthermore, Lisa had been caught on video poisoning her daughter’s line, so it’s not a huge leap to think that she might be doing it here. Munchausen by proxy is a compulsive behavior with a distinct pattern, and Lisa fits it to a T.

[00:06:23] Andrea: As we’ve discussed previously, Lisa’s move to Alabama was very likely precipitated by questions and or reports from the doctors in Savannah. So had she just been able to escape her past by going to Ness,

[00:06:36] Mishelle: to be frank with you, I was called through the grapevine that, that you had found out about some of my mom’s background and past.

[00:06:42] Ness: Yeah, I knew. I knew about stuff, you know, with Angeline and. Okay. So we never know a whole family. We never know the whole thing.

[00:06:51] Mishelle: Right.

[00:06:51] Ness: But, you know, I think he had real disease, what it was I do not know. And beyond that, I can never [00:07:00] prove that, you know, there, you know, it’s something we always, I mean, I don’t, I think, you know, do you have real diseases that made better or worse by anything?

[00:07:13] Ness: Listen, I’m never gonna know. You might know, but I’m never gonna, I, you know, and, and there’s, you know, we’re never gonna, you know, but I, I think there, you know, um, you know, I mean, and that’s, you know, that’s gonna be something, you know, it, it’s, you know, I, I’m gonna roll over. We’re i’ll, I we will roll over forever.

[00:07:41] Andrea: So a recap. A five-year-old child is diagnosed with a vanishingly rare disease, for which he’s then subjected to four years of grueling and invasive treatment, a disease that he likely didn’t have but Ness, thinks he had a quote, real disease. What disease, no idea. [00:08:00] The only person reassured by this is maybe ness herself.

[00:08:05] Andrea: It’s generally impossible to disprove that someone has any disease, which is why that’s not how Munchausen by proxy is diagnosed. You don’t rely on ruling out every possible disease a child could have. If there is ample evidence that a child is being harmed and that their life is at risk, Colin could have had some real disease.

[00:08:25] Andrea: It seems highly unlikely at this point that it was NMO, but we can’t rule that out. But even if Colin did have NMO, it doesn’t make any sense that that’s what killed him. While NMO is not considered a fatal diagnosis per se, there is a risk of death from complications. So what do we know about how people die from NMO?

[00:08:47] Andrea: According to published case studies, patient deaths happened because of complications of an attack, the most common being respiratory failure due to severe lesions on the brainstem or spine, or because of a secondary [00:09:00] infection, which they are at a higher risk of because of immunosuppressive therapy. And the literature emphasizes that the risk of death is greatly heightened when patients get a delayed diagnosis and don’t have access to care.

[00:09:11] Andrea: Neither of which was true for Colin. It’s also dramatically higher in patients with African ancestry, who, despite making up 40% of the cohort in one study, accounted for 90% of the deaths. But Colin’s death wasn’t the result of an acute attack or a complication from one, but rather happened over a period of three months where he wasted away in hospice care.

[00:09:35] Andrea: It didn’t line up with anything I could find in the literature. We also know that Colin was the child of a perpetrator who’d been proven in court to be capable of putting her other child’s life at risk. By the time I listened to this call, I’d been researching this case for months and it was making me crazy, wondering how doctors didn’t see what looked like such an obvious abuse pattern.

[00:09:59] Andrea: But [00:10:00] it turns out, actually they did see it

[00:10:03] Ness: whenever a kid comes in with a line infection, and again, it’s really hard to prove. We’ve definitely had kids who’ve come in with. Strange infections, like his gut not working and what the hell is that all about? I don’t know the, the gastro again, but it’s like, okay, could you make that happen?

[00:10:21] Ness: The, the ly infections are the biggest things I worried about and also because it been happen, you know?

[00:10:26] Mishelle: Yeah, it happened a lot and UTI did as well.

[00:10:29] Ness: That was the biggest thing I worried about is did that happen before he came in septic a couple of times and, uh, yes. That’s the

[00:10:37] Mishelle: same thing that happened to my sister.

[00:10:39] Mishelle: Darn. That’s, that’s how they caught my mom was because my sister kept gonna the hospital in septic shock

[00:10:45] Ness: in sepsis, and she, and he had a couple of those and that I don’t remember the specific number of times there. Remember a couple of times he was fairly sick. It’s something, you know, that I definitely, because again, it’d be, you know, like talking about the a CU, is there anything, [00:11:00] is it, does this make sense?

[00:11:01] Ness: Could this be caused by anything else? What else? You know, what else are we missing here? Medical child abuse was always a concern of mine. And it’s really, it’s really hard to, I probably don’t think about it enough in a other kids. The other thing is I probably don’t think about drug abuse enough. Those are kind of my, where I think of like my weaknesses

[00:11:21] Mishelle: Yeah.

[00:11:22] Ness: Are that I giving people the benefit of the, you know, benefit of the doubt more than I should.

[00:11:29] Andrea: I am more shocked by this phone call than perhaps anything I have come across in my years of work on this show. As I researched this case, I just kept thinking, how can they not know? And here’s where my own bias towards doctors shows, I guess.

[00:11:45] Andrea: I’ve seen so many doctors in these cases put their careers reputations and even their personal safety on the line to intervene when a child’s life is in danger. Dr. Sally Smith in the Maya Kowalski case, Dr. Rebecca Wester, in the Sophie [00:12:00] Hartman case, Dr. Elizabeth Woods, who I believe saved my own niece’s life.

[00:12:06] Andrea: But I forget that all doctors aren’t that brave, that some of them know and say nothing. And those doctors I mentioned above, they weren’t dealing with convicted perpetrators and ness for however much she equivocates in this phone call. She knew who Lisa was. We were able to corroborate through another source that a Savannah doctor reached out to Ness directly.

[00:12:30] Ness: I knew there were charges pressed, but I don’t think I knew much beyond, you know, exactly what the consequences were.

[00:12:36] Mishelle: Uh, like I said, I started doing some digging through the years and it’s never added up to me and it’s never made it sense. And I guess my question for you then is like, no, and all of that, like, I mean you said you guys talked about it, but like, were there tests that being ran or not being ran that could have it just, and I’m not trying to be rude, it just feels like there could have been, there’s more that could have been done that wasn’t done and he slipped through the cracks and [00:13:00] now he’s dead because of it.

[00:13:02] Ness: That is a fair. That, that, I mean, I think that’s a fair question. You know, did we, did we sort of overlook something in plain sight? Did I did, yeah. Did I cause the death of a child? Your question is fair. Did I miss something? Did I, yeah. Did I cause the death of your brother by trying to explain stuff?

[00:13:26] Ness: Giving your mom too, but to the benefit of the doubt, believe me, I’m gonna go to my grave. Never being a hundred percent sure that I did a hundred percent right by him.

[00:13:38] Andrea: Michelle’s bravery on this call and throughout this whole process has been staggering. I am in awe of her. I was reminded listening to this exchange about my conversation with Colt expert Rachel Bernstein, which we aired a few months back.

[00:13:52] Andrea: I asked her why some people are so resistant to seeing the truth even when they’re being presented with extraordinarily compelling [00:14:00] evidence or definitive proof. She said that it comes down to whether or not someone possesses the emotional courage to look at something that’s so hard to accept.

[00:14:09] Andrea: Michelle has an extraordinary amount of emotional courage, and as for Dr. Ness, I suppose we can be grateful that she located whatever sliver of it. She does have to have this conversation with Michelle. I just wish she’d found it when it really mattered.

[00:14:28] Ness: I’m willing to take responsibility. For being blind or being blinded because you know, I could have protected him if I did not.

[00:14:41] Ness: Because again, yeah, the most pathological people are the most charming. The thanks who they are. The less you can trust him. It haunts me. I mean, I’m not gonna lie,

[00:14:51] Andrea: Lisa is responsible for whatever abuse she subjected her children to, but she didn’t do it alone. She couldn’t have [00:15:00] doctors signed off on all of these treatments.

[00:15:02] Andrea: Doctors prescribed the many medications Colin was taking. Doctors signed off on hospice care for a child who didn’t have a terminal illness. There are so many doctors who get caught up in these cases who are not to blame doctors who were just doing their jobs and who were pulled in by a perpetrator who exploited their trust and the fractured medical system they operate in.

[00:15:25] Andrea: Doctors in all 50 states are required by law to report a reasonable suspicion of abuse, not to provide evidence of abuse. That’s the job of CPS and law enforcement. As I combed through Lisa’s accounts of Collins medical treatments, I noticed, as I mentioned previously, the crossover between the reported symptoms he was having and the potential side effects of the medications he’d been prescribed.

[00:15:49] Andrea: And that’s to say nothing of any other possible substances Lisa could have introduced as she did with her daughter ness. Evidently also had this thought. Y

[00:15:59] Ness: you know, [00:16:00] that, that I think he came to once, in fact, I remember one of the weird situations, in fact, ’cause I think there was like, Hey, what’s going on with him?

[00:16:08] Ness: And there, I think there was some, there’s some some kind of strain that he’d gotten weirdly sick and had one of these weird spells that again, we’re like, what’s this? Can a drug make your kid do this? And, and it, and so that, and I remember that was like, is that real? Not real? And what are we, you know, what am I missing?

[00:16:28] Ness: Yeah. It’s, yeah, it, it is. Yeah. You can get, yeah, I think more me enmeshed inad, you know, unintentionally or, but again, it’s like, yeah, I could see it a little claw Stick in.

[00:16:46] Mishelle: Yeah.

[00:16:46] Ness: Pass past.

[00:16:47] Mishelle: Well, I want you to know wholeheartedly, I’m not doing this because I wanna put my mom in jail or anything. It’s not about that.

[00:16:54] Mishelle: But like, just hearing you, I want you to know that I. I don’t think you killed him. [00:17:00] Okay. But my mom used You could

[00:17:02] Ness: it have pre, could definitely. My mom used you as a tool

[00:17:05] Mishelle: and that’s what’s so important. Definitely. Yeah. Going forward. No, no.

[00:17:09] Ness: I absolutely, you know, they suffered a lot. I mean, I’m proud of you for going through this.

[00:17:14] Ness: I mean, it took a lot of you courage for you to call me.

[00:17:16] Mishelle: I felt like I was gonna throw up sending you that text message, so I appreciate that.

[00:17:22] Andrea: Not to let Ness off the hook even a little bit here, which I’m not inclined to do, but the current climate doesn’t exactly encourage doctors to report, especially in the wake of Kowalski v Johns Hopkins, the lawsuit against Rady Children’s and countless others that have not made headlines and perpetrators are very good at finding doctors whose boundaries are a little more malleable than they ought to be.

[00:17:46] Andrea: Something Michelle has some notable memories of with Ness as she told us on one of our drives around her hometown.

[00:17:53] Mishelle: Um, I remember her being in and out and around like when he was on hospice and like, not in just like a [00:18:00] doctor way. Like I distinctly remember her being in there like cleaning my mom’s oven because we had, there were people in and I didn’t even live there at the time, but like I would, we would go up and visit and there were people just like in and out of the house all of the time.

[00:18:15] Mishelle: Um, and her being on the floor in my mom’s kitchen scrubbing the oven. Um, so, and they were very good friends.

[00:18:23] Andrea: This closeness is mirrored in Lisa’s blog where Ness is portrayed as the one sainted doctor who truly understands Collin’s complex illness and who Lisa constantly praises and depicts as going out of her way to help them. Ness

[00:18:37] Andrea: Doesn’t quite remember it this way.

[00:18:39] Mishelle: I was under the impression this whole time that you and my mother is still close friends.

[00:18:42] Ness: No, no. See, I think that, you know, and again, that may be her, you know, um, you know, we certainly, you know, I mean, Chris’s kind of the whole Guthy Jackson thing, you know, I mean, sort limited.

[00:18:56] Ness: I mean, so buddy, buddy, I mean [00:19:00] more, yeah. And again, you know, is that a red flag? Probably

[00:19:05] Andrea: if you are feeling exhausted by Dr. Ness’s mental gymnastics here, just know that the combined two plus hours of the two calls Michelle shared with us contained an Olympic amount. There is no world in which what Dr.

[00:19:18] Andrea: Ness is describing here doesn’t constitute a reasonable suspicion of abuse. So how did Dr. Jane Ness an experienced and respected physician get pulled into all of this? I spoke to child abuse, pediatrician and clinical professor of pediatrics from the University of Washington, Dr. Kenneth Feldman, about the research he and his colleagues have done on the subject.

[00:19:43] Andrea: You mentioned in the paper that these perpetrators are extremely adept at pushing the boundaries of providers and also, you know, sort of building connections with some providers, turning them against the other providers. Yeah. Can you talk about just even sort of a more general way of just like the importance of [00:20:00] pediatricians maintaining good boundaries with parents of their patients?

[00:20:04] Andrea: Yeah.

[00:20:05] Dr. Ken: Yeah, I, I, I sort of think of these cases as, as the mom who comes to a new doctor and says, my child has all of these terrible problems and none of the doctors have been able to figure out what’s going on, but I, I hear you’re a great doctor and here’s some cookies to seal our bargain. That you’re, you’re starting out the interaction by crossing boundaries.

[00:20:33] Dr. Ken: I think of these caretakers with the kids in the hospital all the time, that the, the caretakers sometimes sort of becomes the cruise director for the parents of other, more short term sick children in the hospital. Again, seeking attention there and, and the caretakers often, I. Establish social [00:21:00] interactions, say with the nursing staff or physicians for that matter where, where they’re socializing outside of the hospital, uh, or exchanging gifts that are inappropriate.

[00:21:14] Dr. Ken: So, so we pass from a professional interaction to a social interaction going.

[00:21:23] Andrea: On in my attempts to unravel what happened to Colin McDaniel, Lisa’s own writings, all 170,000 words of them have been instrumental in putting together this whole disturbing picture and writings like this from perpetrators play a key role in not only investigating aches and by proxy cases, but also in spotting red flags for this abuse to begin with.

[00:21:45] Andrea: This is also something that Dr. Kenneth Feldman has researched along with Anna Brown, who co-authored this paper and other social worker colleagues who are some of the first people to clock this phenomenon.

[00:21:55] Dr. Ken: Characteristics. We found that the vlogs [00:22:00] typically sought sympathy. From the readers of the blogs, and these were public blogs that were seeking sympathy from the general public, and in doing so, they tended to focus on the trials and tribulations of the caretakers rather than on the illnesses or the problems of the child.

[00:22:26] Andrea: While Lisa’s blog includes plentiful and graphic details about Collin’s medical problems, there is a heavy emphasis on how it is affecting her, her battles with insurance. Her heroic search for answers, the stress and sacrifice she makes for Colin, and how no one can understand what she’s going through.

[00:22:46] Andrea: And reading this, you don’t get to know Colin. After reading this blog multiple times, I would struggle to tell you anything about what he’s actually like. All we hear about is his suffering and the few times Lisa [00:23:00] recounts, anything Colin actually says or does, it’s always to reinforce the suffering. He’s more of a symbol of Lisa’s pain than a human being.

[00:23:11] Andrea: I have a daughter who’s currently six and a half. This period of time is when a kid’s personality starts to really take shape. They say and do the most extraordinary things, especially as they learn to read and write and build friendships. It’s one of the miracles of being a parent, watching your kids’ full self start to emerge.

[00:23:31] Andrea: But Colin never has a good day. He never gets to just be a kid. There is also the question of the intended audience that Dr. Feldman mentions here because I thought many times, who is reading this, while Lisa’s family members were likely reading some of it, the sheer volume and the gruesome nature of it makes it hard to believe that they read all of it.

[00:23:52] Andrea: This would be extremely upsetting to read about someone you love the blog shows as having more than [00:24:00] 150,000 views. I’m not exactly sure how those are tabulated over time. Its reach had obviously gone way beyond people that Lisa knew in real life. This is also evidenced by the comments on the blog, some of which are clearly from people who don’t know them personally.

[00:24:15] Andrea: Lisa also frequently mentions about a dozen other sick children and links to their Caring Bridge blogs. One of these is a family she does know, but the rest are a mystery, which makes me very curious about Lisa’s online activity during this time.

[00:24:34] Andrea: Lisa’s descriptions of Colin’s suffering are graphic, and she also includes a large number of photos of Colin in the hospital in a wheelchair and in various states of medical distress.

[00:24:45] Dr. Ken: We frequently saw that medical details that normally a family wouldn’t put out for general information and view would be put out on the blog.

[00:24:58] Dr. Ken: We also saw a lot of [00:25:00] what I considered medical pornography, where the child often in a partially dressed state or in a hospital gown, partially covering them, would be displayed in photographs with the more tubes and child the better, and at times caretaker. Would have the stethoscope around their neck or be in medical garb as if they were the, uh, medical provider for the child.

[00:25:30] Dr. Ken: But it, I felt invading the privacy of the child and using them in a very negative way. Often the blogs would contradict the information that medical providers. To the caretaker where the test was negative. The provi or the caretaker might say that there was an abnormal test. They tended to be very dramatic [00:26:00] in their presentation and they often described a progressive downhill course for the child.

[00:26:09] Andrea: Lisa mentions frequent battles with providers other than Dr. Ness, such as this entry from January of 2010 when Lisa is pushing for Colin to have a high dose cytoxin treatment or high SI treatment and encounters pushback, likely because this treatment is experimental and extremely risky, especially in children.

[00:26:28] Andrea: Here’s what she says. A couple of the docs, not Dr. Ness, she is great, are not so sure about doing the high si. They want us to try rituximab. Been there, done that failed miserably. Basically, they want Colin to take more chemo, be sicker, and maybe have a week of feeling good, then start all over. Do they realize this kid has no life?

[00:26:51] Andrea: Lisa is always positioned as the authority on Colin’s health. Notably, she’s angry whenever someone suggests he might be less sick than what she’s presenting. [00:27:00] Like this entry from June 22nd, 2009. She was a neuro but not our neuro. She didn’t listen to anything we said nor anything. Colin’s neuro said she wanted him running down the hall.

[00:27:12] Andrea: Now those of you who know Colin know he doesn’t even run on a good day. Not to belabor this point, but there are videos of Colin running around both before and after this post, and perhaps most worrying of all is the constant talk of death, which starts pretty much immediately after Colin is diagnosed in March of 2008.

[00:27:33] Dr. Ken: Despite all of the medical tests and medical in. Interventions. We really started worrying when the blog started talking about the child being likely to die, being put on hospice, being made a no code, that these were indications that things were really coming to a head o. Often the caretaker would go on websites like [00:28:00] GoFundMe to seek support for the child, and often found that the support that was being provided was being used by the caretaker, not for the child.

[00:28:12] Dr. Ken: We saw that the kids were often asking for Make-A-Wish activities. At times, uh, the medical providers were portrayed negatively, being unable to figure out the child’s complex problems and where the caretaker themselves had the skills to handle things.

[00:28:35] Andrea: And this brings us to yet another can of worms, the fundraising.

[00:28:40] Andrea: In addition to the Make-A-Wish trip to Disneyland in October of 2009, there are a number of other special excursions and activities Colin participates in that are sponsored by others, including a special NASCAR trip where Colin gets to meet one of his favorite drivers and an outing in March of 2012 to see a live show of the cartoon Phineas in [00:29:00] Ferb.

[00:29:00] Andrea: Lisa posts a photo from the latter event on her Facebook with the caption, the Last Family Photo we will ever have with Colin. He died 12 days later. There are innumerable references to receiving financial help from the community peppered throughout the blog. In M of 2009, Lisa starts selling bracelets to raise funds for Collin’s treatment, and a month later she starts a formal fund posting this on her blog.

[00:29:28] Andrea: Oh, also, many have emailed, called and asked about starting a fund for Colin. After much prayer, we have finally agreed to do this, so it is in the works. For the time being, there has been a donate button added to Collins Quest for those who keep asking about helping us. This fund eventually became a non-profit called the Colin McDaniel Hope Foundation, which carried on in the years after Colin’s death.

[00:29:52] Andrea: This is the foundation’s mission statement according to its website. One, to financially assist families and children diagnosed with [00:30:00] NMO through fundraisers and donations. Two, to educate communities, families and friends, about NMO and three, to assist with funding to the Colin McDaniel HOPE Grant for pediatric NMO Research.

[00:30:11] Andrea: The nonprofit had its 5 0 1 C3 status revoked in May of 2016 for failure to file its financial disclosures for three consecutive years according to the organization’s Facebook page. However, they were still actively soliciting donations as recently as 2018. Interestingly, the donate tab on the website no longer works, but in a 2018 Facebook post, Lisa includes a different PayPal link for donations.

[00:30:38] Andrea: That does still work. The recipient is Melissa McDaniel, which is Lisa’s full name.

[00:30:45] Dr. Ken: We certainly have seen in the past that many of these moms will take a role in advocacy organizations for some. Unusual disease in thinking about the [00:31:00] internet. I think the other thing that is apparent is that it can allow a maybe non-medical person or somebody with limited medical knowledge to gain a lot of detailed information about some very unusual diseases, and then present a false history based on that information, and that sort of knowledge is much more accessible because of the internet.

[00:31:33] Andrea: The Colin McDaniel Hope Foundation also claims to have partnered with Guthy Jackson, which became Lisa’s employer in 2013, a little over a year after Colin’s death. Lisa’s work history before Guthy Jackson is murky to say the least, and appears to have consisted of selling jewelry for Premier designs.

[00:31:52] Andrea: A Christian jewelry MLM founded in the 1980s that targeted stay-at-home moms with the promise of being able to work while also [00:32:00] being home with their children. Despite Lisa’s posts about how she needs to sell a lot of jewelry to cover Collins medical expenses, it’s unlikely that this was a source of any income.

[00:32:10] Andrea: A major analysis of 350 MLMs by the Consumer Awareness Institute showed that 99.6% of people who join MLMs. Lose money and that only somewhere between 0.1 and 0.01 of participants make anything like a full-time income. Carrie was likewise, pretty sporadically employed throughout Collins illness and Lisa recounts on her blog his struggles to find and keep a steady job.

[00:32:37] Andrea: So where was all the money coming from?

[00:32:49] Act 2 – Ad Break

[00:32:49] Andrea: From the timeline we’ve been able to assemble, it looks likely that the McDaniels move to Alabama was precipitated by some suspicions, if not formal reports from the doctors treating Colin. [00:33:00] But this move also brought them a fresh new group of people to seek financial help from as Lisa’s sister, Sabrina remembers

[00:33:09] Sabrina: when Angel Lynn first got sick or when she was first born and she was first there, a pile of money.

[00:33:17] Sabrina: Got went to them like a bunch of money. My mom worked at Walmart, the store here took up a bunch of money, like Abu an ungodly amount of money. It was a lot of money. My dad’s, uh, job in Lumber City, which at that time employed probably three to 400 people. I mean, it was a huge facility over there. Um, they took up money.

[00:33:39] Sabrina: Everybody gave them money. All the local churches was giving ’em money. I mean, like they money was coming from everywhere and he was preaching, or he was still the pastor over there. And yeah, he, he was still the pastor of that church and Jacksonville. So all this money was coming in when she first had her and everything.

[00:33:57] Sabrina: And everybody was just doing, you know, oodles and [00:34:00] oodles for ’em. Um, but by this time all that had started kind of slowing down, you know? ’cause eventually people just get tired of giving, be honest.

[00:34:14] Andrea: When word of Lisa’s conviction got back to the McDaniel’s, many supporters, that was obviously the end of that.

[00:34:20] Andrea: But despite Lisa frequently bemoaning their finances on her blog, when they moved to Alabama in the first year of Collin’s treatment, their living situation appeared to get a pretty big upgrade.

[00:34:30] Sabrina: So they moved into this really super nice neighborhood that it wasn’t a gated community, but all you needed was a gate.

[00:34:40] Sabrina: And I, I just point that out because they didn’t have the money to pay for that. Okay. Carrie’s dad at one point had money, but he, before he died, they had went through so much of his money, he actually had to sell off land and stuff to pay for them, an attorney for the angel and stuff. So they didn’t [00:35:00] have money for that, and neither one of ’em had credit to buy a house.

[00:35:03] Sabrina: So I don’t know how they ended up with his house.

[00:35:15] Andrea: So how did the McDaniels afford their spacious three bedroom brick home on Avalon Lane? According to County Records, it was sold to them for $0 in June of 2010. We don’t have any additional information about this odd transaction, but it’s easy to imagine that the narrative of needing to move for their sick child may have played a role in getting someone to give Lisa and Carrie a free house.

[00:35:40] Andrea: But the fact that they got this house for free didn’t stop them from using it as a different kind of leverage.

[00:35:47] Mishelle: We did not understand how they got this house. It very, it seemed very much out of their like. Price range. So after my brother died anyway, I ended up getting blamed for them losing their house, which is another whole like rabbit hole.

[00:35:59] Mishelle: It’s this whole thing [00:36:00] like I was going through a divorce and so they, and they did help me financially during my divorce, but then that turned into when they started to lose their house and it was my fault because they helped me financially with my divorce.

[00:36:09] Andrea: The McDaniels appeared to have sold their house back to its owners for $0 in 2018.

[00:36:15] Andrea: So this whole financial situation is just a mystery. But Lisa was seemingly gainfully employed by that time, working for the Guthy Jackson Foundation. Lisa was hired by Guthy Jackson in 2013, but she connected with the organization almost as soon as it existed. Attending their very first patient day in November of 2009, it appears Lisa also began volunteering with the organization sometime in the months following Collin’s death in March of 2012.

[00:36:42] Andrea: Her Facebook posts show her enthusiasm for her new mission, being an advocate for NMO in August of 2012, five months after Colin’s death. Lisa writes this in a Facebook post. I have realized I love speaking to the groups God has sent me to. I love [00:37:00] sharing Colin’s story with others. His love for life, his amazing spirit, the joy God gave him through very tough struggles.

[00:37:07] Andrea: We can all learn so much from an amazing little boy to the groups asking me to come speak. Thank you so much for allowing me to tell you about my boy. Raise awareness of NMO and share our story. You are part of something big and I can hardly wait to see how God uses our foundation to help others.

[00:37:29] Andrea: Grieving parents don’t look any one particular way, and many parents find solace in helping others in the wake of their child’s death. This is laudable, but Lisa’s framing of Colin is extremely similar to other perpetrators we’ve seen. Their child is special not because of who they are or were, but because of their illness or death, because they were sent by God to teach through their suffering.

[00:37:56] Andrea: And as a whole, Lisa’s Facebook posts while Colin is on [00:38:00] hospice and immediately after, just feel off. In February of 2012, while he’s on his deathbed, Lisa is posting about her frustrations with the customer service at the company she’s using to sell the Collins Quest bracelets, and then asking if anyone has a nice condo she can sneak off to.

[00:38:17] Andrea: She really needs a vacation. Days before Colin’s death, she posts a Billy Graham quote that reads, A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone. Three days before Colin dies, Lisa shares a picture of his funeral pamphlet. And her social media doesn’t get any less weird following his death.

[00:38:40] Andrea: For example, after Collin’s funeral service, Lisa posts this on her Facebook. Okay, all you plant people. I posted pictures of plants from the funeral that I don’t know how to take care of. Can you help please? What can I keep on my back porch and what needs to be inside? How much water?

[00:38:57] Andrea: Thanks. Then in [00:39:00] September, Lisa posts that she’s excited that her NMO advocacy materials have arrived in the mail. It becomes clear that NMO advocacy is now a pillar of Lisa’s life in the months leading up to his death, Lisa herself wrote about doctor’s disagreement as to Colin’s diagnosis, and she’d said on her Facebook that Colin was seronegative for NMO, meaning that he’d tested negative for the antibodies.

[00:39:24] Andrea: But NMO is crucial to Lisa’s story, and it’s especially important to her new job with the Guthy Jackson Foundation, which is dedicated to NMO research. And though she talked about doubts before posthumously in November of 2012, Lisa doubles down on her claim that Colin had NMO. She posts this Collin’s Elisa Assay, came back positive for NMO peeps.

[00:39:48] Andrea: This is after all the negatives on IgG all these years. We all knew what it was the whole time, but to finally have lab proof is very emotional. Anyone who tests negative on [00:40:00] IgG, I would encourage you to have it redone with the Elisa Assay. Love to you all. The Elisa Assay test Lisa mentions in this post was a newer, more sensitive version of the antibody test for NMO.

[00:40:13] Andrea: The test result she’s claiming to receive here was allegedly from a blood sample collected from Colin on January 24th, 2012. two months before he died. The sample was collected to be entered into a UT Southwestern study and in a Facebook post on this date, Lisa gives a shout out to the nurse, Martha Mann, who collected the sample.

[00:40:33] Andrea: Both the study and Martha are real, and there’s no reason to doubt that Colin was a part of this study. But the idea that Lisa received a positive NMO test for Collin a full 11 months later doesn’t track for one thing. Samples collected for a repository like this don’t return individual diagnostic results.

[00:40:52] Andrea: Here’s Martha Mann herself explaining the process.

[00:40:56] Nurse: The blood is sent to one lab in Maryland that maintains it and processes it [00:41:00] and distributes it in a very uniform fashion, which is important. Uh, and also just to let you know, just that little bit of blood that we take can fuel a a hundred studies and it can last indefinitely.

[00:41:12] Nurse: So that little bit of time and effort on your part makes a giant difference in the world of research for this rare disease. Um, the sample requests come in, but they’re, we don’t just send them out. We, uh, there’s an advisory board that, that evaluates every project for that. It’s ly ethically conducted, and it’s a sound study, so when someone does receive samples, their agreement with the repository is when they.

[00:41:36] Nurse: Finish their work, they return the findings back to accelerated cure projects so that they are made available to other researchers. They can build on the work that’s gone before. So every study is more dynamic and we hope to accelerate the cure in that way.

[00:41:50] Andrea: And without the freezing technology that a facility like UT Southwestern would have, there would be no way for a blood sample to be viable for testing this long after it was taken [00:42:00] and also suspicious.

[00:42:02] Andrea: Delayed test results are another hallmark of Munchausen by proxy. So why did Lisa decide to suddenly announce this presumably made up test result? Were people starting to ask questions about Colin’s death? Once Colin was gone, Lisa threw herself into her advocacy work, and to this day, she frequently invokes what she refers to as Colin’s legacy.

[00:42:25] Andrea: When he was alive, Lisa’s identity revolved around him being sick. And now that he’s gone, it appears to largely revolve around him being dead. In 2019, Michelle’s life was beginning to move in a better direction. She’d found stability and was engaged to a wonderful man she’d known since childhood, her now husband Brent.

[00:42:46] Andrea: But things with Lisa didn’t stay calm for long.

[00:42:49] Mishelle: Brent and I had, we got engaged in August of 2019, so it wasn’t long after that. I believe she, there was like an incident with her, she like was in the Walmart parking lot and like ran into a pole. [00:43:00] Um, and like the police were called, it really messed up her car.

[00:43:04] Mishelle: Like, um, and we, she kind of like, they told us about it, but it was just like very strange. Like it was, they were saying that like she had some sort of weird, like she like fell asleep or like, something like was crazy. Kind of went on like very weird with her and she like slammed it in this pole in the Walmart parking lot.

[00:43:21] Mishelle: So she, so she sat us down, like I said, after me and Greg got engaged and um, told us that she had been diagnosed with this thing, it was like Al Amyloid amyloidosis and I’m butchering that

[00:43:33] Andrea: amyloidosis is a rare disease. That occurs when a protein called amyloid builds up in organs. This amyloid buildup can make organs not work properly affecting the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system, and digestive tract.

[00:43:46] Mishelle: like she was claiming at the time, like it affected her like vocal cords.

[00:43:50] Mishelle: And so her voice was like very raspy and she had a hard time speaking and there was like painful for her. And then she, like I said, she had like this, this [00:44:00] thing with her leg. And then I even remember going to wedding, wedding dress shopping. And to start with, she had said she wasn’t going, like, she was really like mad about the whole thing.

[00:44:11] Mishelle: And um, she was like, I’m not going and, um, I just can’t do this. And like, I don’t even remember what the reasoning was. But, um, anyway, of course at the very last minute she decided she was, she was gonna go. So we. Drove to Atlanta. We were still living in Alabama. We drove to Atlanta. Um, it was me, her, and my sister.

[00:44:28] Mishelle: And we met like my bridesmaids and my other aunt, um, at the time up there. And like we went wedding dress shopping. And even then, I remember like at this point I think it had escalated, like she had a cane with her at all times and was really like dragging her leg. Um, and she’s. Said it was like some sort of nerve damage.

[00:44:45] Mishelle: Um, and again, I was very like, it’s bizarre to, to tell it now because I asked as little detail as possible. Um, I just kind of let her tell us what was going on. But I think at a certain point, just being [00:45:00] around it for so long, I really started to believe it. Um, I mean, Andrea, how many times have we heard people believe their eyes so that it’s in front of my eyes and like I am, I start to truly believe like, yeah, she’s sick.

[00:45:14] Mishelle: Like this is real and I’m gonna lose my mom.

[00:45:20] Andrea: Brent remembers this whole incident as well, and I actually remember hearing about this as it all took place not long before I met Michelle in 2021. This fits with a very common pattern from not only Lisa’s life. But many other stories we’ve heard on this show, anytime the attention is on someone else, as with Sabrina’s pregnancy.

[00:45:40] Andrea: Michelle’s pregnancy, and now her wedding, it’s time for a new drama.

[00:45:46] Mishelle: We went on the beach vacation and because she had kind of sold like it was in the middle of the pandemic, but she had just kind of sold us that this may be the last summer we get to have with her and let’s go. Like they got this condo that like some [00:46:00] people from the church they were going to at the time, like had like they let us use the condo.

[00:46:03] Mishelle: So she is crazy, bizarre to look back at now ’cause she has no hair. She has a feeding tube coming out of her nose like that. She would just remove sometimes like when I guess she didn’t need it, like she would literally remove herself, which I can’t even like imagine doing that. Well it was actually that beach vacation and um, my sister kinda pulls me aside.

[00:46:25] Mishelle: And she’s like, Hey, like, um, I don’t think dad said anything to you yet, but she’s been like, faking stuff. And I’m like, what do you mean? And she’s like, well, dad put like a tracker in her car because he started noticing that like he didn’t think the car was moving and that she wasn’t actually going to these doctor’s appointments.

[00:46:47] Mishelle: And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Why are you telling me this when we are all literally trapped in this house together a few hours from home? And you just kind of unloaded all of this on her. And then was like, don’t tell Michelle, [00:47:00] like don’t, don’t say anything. Like, I just need some time to sort some stuff out and then I’ll confront her.

[00:47:05] Mishelle: And she begged me. She was. Like, please don’t say anything while we’re here because I am just like stunned by what to do and in total shock and like how do we handle this and what do we do? And I need to understand the parameters of it. And I’m also in the moment like processing how angry I am with my dad because how like dare you unload this on my little sister?

[00:47:25] Mishelle: And I’m also very protective of my little sister, so I’m just like, how dare you unload this on her?

[00:47:30] Andrea: I’ve seen one of the videos from the speech vacation. Lisa is as bald as a Q ball and has a feeding tube dangling from her nose. One thing about Lisa, she does not do things halfway. Once they finish up what sounds like one of the weirdest vacations to happen outside of a real Housewife’s franchise, Michelle sat down with her father, Carrie, to get to the bottom of things.

[00:47:53] Mishelle: So we literally met her at McDonald’s and he told me, yeah, like he had, um, put a tracker in her vehicle, found out [00:48:00] she was not leaving the house. She would like have these like bandages, like her arm would be wrapped like when you, when you, um, have blood drawn. Like her arm would be wrapped in like those like bandages.

[00:48:10] Mishelle: Um, and she would have never left the house. Um, and she was taking massive amounts of laxatives.

[00:48:18] Andrea: Earlier in this episode we talked about the many medications that may have contributed to Collin’s illness presentation. But those were only the prescription medications that we knew about. When you start to factor in over the counter medications and other common available substances, the mind goes to some very dark places.

[00:48:36] Andrea: Lisa took this ruse of a new illness to extremes poisoning herself and even subjecting herself to a possibly completely unnecessary surgery.

[00:48:44] Mishelle: Um, so, and again, at the time, like I’m just sitting here like, okay, this is strange. So like, what do you, you know, like, how, what do you do? Like, am I gonna confront her about these laxatives here?

[00:48:57] Mishelle: Like when it’s just the two of us? She’s also healing from surgery. Like, [00:49:00] now’s not really the time, but like, that’s kind of strange and you just kind of put it in the back of your mind and you kind of like, and she really did have surgery. She really did have surgery. Yeah. I, I did drop her off at the hospital and like she, yeah, a nurse like brought her out to the car afterwards.

[00:49:13] Mishelle: So she had Yeah. Some sort of like, yeah. Surgery.

[00:49:17] Andrea: Michelle wondered if this revelation. The one that had driven even him to subterfuge and surveillance might be the thing that finally put Carrie over the edge.

[00:49:27] Mishelle: I sat down with my dad at McDonald’s that day and I was just like, um, like Angeline told me like, we really need to have a conversation about it.

[00:49:34] Mishelle: And he was like, yeah, like, um, I had some concerns and I did put the tracker in the vehicle, which is wild to have to do to your spouse. And he was like, I had, you know, I had some concerns. Um, she hasn’t been going to the doctor. And I’m like, okay, so what does this mean? Because it’s not just like, she’s not just going to the doctor.

[00:49:54] Mishelle: Like she’s going, she’s telling us she’s going to the doctor, she’s telling us she’s on all these meds, medications, and all these [00:50:00] things, but then she’s going the accident with wrapping her arms up and all these bandages, like she’s had blood drawn, she’s never left the house. Um, so then it it, you know, it throws into question like, well, if she’s not gonna the doctor to get her meds, like, how’d she lose her hair?

[00:50:13] Mishelle: Yeah. So I, I had this conversation with my dad and, and he was just a mess. And I was like, look. You know, if you go back and read like, I was like, you are smart. You are smart enough to hide all of this from her and get all of this like evidence and like, you know, what’s going on. And I just looked at him and I was like, dad, you and I both know this is literally textbook definition Muchh.

[00:50:38] Mishelle: And he looked at me and he said, I know. And he like dropped his head and that, and that was like such a crazy moment for me, like hearing him acknowledge that and like admit that and like. I had so much grief and like empathy for him in this moment of like, I cannot imagine like [00:51:00] the years like he has been defending her and like choosing her over his children and the years he has spent just like backing her up on everything and then to just all of that.

[00:51:10] Mishelle: And that moment, like to hear him acknowledge and admit to that was just so profound for me. Um, and so I, I said, listen, she needs severe help. Like, this is not something we’re just gonna be able to surround her and love and help her with. Like, this goes beyond what we can do for her as a family. Like she needs some sort of like intense, like inpatient therapy.

[00:51:35] Mishelle: Like, I don’t know, like I, I said, I don’t know what it is she needs, but I will definitely help

[00:51:39] Andrea: you find it. Michelle eventually confronted her mother about all of this, and Lisa confessed to lying. Michelle told her dad that the jig was up and hoped they could finally get on the same page.

[00:51:54] Mishelle: I was still under the impression at this point that like my dad was still processing and like trying to take steps to [00:52:00] like, get her in treatment and like, make his own life and, um, whatever that was gonna look, whether he was gonna leave her or not leave her, like whatever that was gonna look like was still what I was under the impression.

[00:52:09] Mishelle: And he came over and it was just, I mean, um, he gave me a hug and he was like, tearful and just like, he’s like, I, I love you so much. And I was like, I love you and I am here for you and like we can get through this together.

[00:52:21] Andrea: But as Michelle prepared to move back to Georgia at the tail end of 2020, whatever hope she had about her father evaporated.

[00:52:28] Mishelle: I was just very like, hopeful and very just like, we’re just leaving all, we are just leaving the chapter behind us and I’m gonna have my dad and I’m gonna have my family. We’re gonna be able to heal. I had text my dad and I said, Hey, I am, I’m, I’m dropping this off. And like, um, will you just come outside and gimme a hug because we’re late?

[00:52:43] Mishelle: ’cause I had not heard from him really. Or the last conversation we had about it was he’s just like, I just still need time to like sort everything out, like financially and like,

[00:52:51] Lisa: um,

[00:52:53] Mishelle: he was like, I, you know, I’ll keep you updated as I can. I was like, okay. Like, well, I’m just gonna move, like, you know, I’m, I’ve [00:53:00] got to do this for my own life and like, I hope that you will at some point join us or like, I will help.

[00:53:07] Mishelle: You know, it’s still very much like, I’ll help you, but like, I’ve still gotta go. And so I was like, we’re loading up the car. Like this is, the U-Haul is loaded up. We’re leaving and this will be the last time we we’re here. And I’m like, will you just come outside and give me a hug? And he’s like, I just don’t think I can see you right now.

[00:53:22] Mishelle: And like for me, that was a very clear moment that like he had chosen again and it wasn’t me.

[00:53:46] Act 3 – Ad Break

[00:53:46] Andrea: Lisa kept choosing lies and destruction, and Carrie kept choosing Lisa. And the one thing neither of them ever chose was accountability. And Lisa being caught red-handed in this lie about her illness, did [00:54:00] not dissuade her from trying to rewrite history a few years later.

[00:54:04] Mishelle: One situation in 25 years. 25 years,

[00:54:07] Lisa: that one situation, yes, there were some things I lied about

[00:54:10] Mishelle: in that,

[00:54:10] Lisa: but I was sick.

[00:54:11] Lisa: And your dad knows that. He talked to my damn doctors after. Okay, so

[00:54:14] Mishelle: what’s wrong with you now?

[00:54:16] Lisa: Are

[00:54:17] Mishelle: you just magically cured from this thing? I’m not cur no, then, then what? What happened?

[00:54:22] Carry: I mean, her hair is still falling out.

[00:54:25] Lisa: Literally. I’m still losing my hair. There’s still stuff going on, Michelle. We just don’t tell you about everything that goes on with the, or

[00:54:31] Carry: falling out still.

[00:54:32] Carry: I mean, I go in the shower and there’s hands full of hair. So she’s,

[00:54:36] Lisa: I mean, that’s not even the point. The point is, I wish you would’ve talked to us about this. I have begged you for how long to come and talk to us and let’s have a conversation about stuff and you keep putting it off.

[00:54:46] Mishelle: I have asked you to go to therapy with me, and every time I’ve asked you to go, you not asked me

[00:54:49] Lisa: to go to therapy.

[00:54:50] Lisa: I, yes, I have you. I go to therapy with you and every, you’ve never said, hey on. Well, we can

[00:54:54] Mishelle: still

[00:54:54] Lisa: do that.

[00:54:55] Andrea: Michelle has tried many times before and after this conversation to get [00:55:00] Lisa into therapy, and she has never taken her up on it

[00:55:03] Mishelle: because there are things, mama, that just don’t add up and they’ve never added up.

[00:55:06] Mishelle: You don’t know. Don’t need to know. I need to know. I need to know if my mother has made herself sick for years, I need to, I do feel like I need, I have a right to know that if any of that was ever true,

[00:55:18] Lisa: I can’t prove to you one way or the other. It is, but

[00:55:20] Mishelle: you’ve never tried.

[00:55:22] Lisa: You’ve never asked to see proof.

[00:55:24] Lisa: You’ve never asked any of that stuff. And here’s the thing, you’ve never really had this discussion, like you said, we’ve not talked about it, even though I’ve said to you, let’s talk about it.

[00:55:35] Lisa: What do you want me to do? What is it you want from me? What do you want me to do?

[00:55:38] Mishelle: I wanna know the truth. And I don’t think me and you sitting here, but

[00:55:41] Lisa: whatever I say to you,

[00:55:42] Mishelle: you’re not Well. That’s why I think we need professionals in the middle of it, because you’re right. I don’t because you have lied to us.

[00:55:48] Lisa: Yeah, I have. I talked to like, you’ve lied to me. He’s lied to us. She’s lied. You’re right. I have lied to

[00:55:53] Mishelle: you, but I have not lied to you to that point. And that is not the same thing. Lying is a lie. I understand. A lie is a [00:56:00] lie, but a lie is, is is very different when you are causing yourself direct harm or causing your, the children in your life direct harm.

[00:56:06] Mishelle: I did not cause myself direct harm.

[00:56:10] Andrea: I have to fundamentally disagree with Lisa here. That a lie is a lie. Everyone does lie. That’s true. There’s very much a normal spectrum of lying. Calling in sick to work because you just really need a day to yourself, for example. But Lisa, trying to minimize her behavior this way is like a bank robber pointing out that someone who finds a $5 bill on the street might pocket it without attempting to find its rightful owner and saying that that’s pretty much the same thing as what he does.

[00:56:36] Andrea: And at one point in this conversation, Lisa also points out to Michelle that she has broken the law before Michelle’s crime, a shoplifting incident when she was 20.

[00:56:49] Andrea: And Carrie is about as adept at Lisa at minimizing her behavior.

[00:56:53] Mishelle: I have decided that the past three years of my life, I have spent in countless group therapy sessions and countless therapy [00:57:00] of my own, that all the signs are there. All of them. You sat there across me that McDonald’s and admitted to much that it didn’t make sense.

[00:57:08] Mishelle: I

[00:57:08] Carry: said, I had some concerns

[00:57:10] Mishelle: and I looked at you in your face and I said, dad, you know, as well as I knew that everything we were experiencing from her was textbook definition, much else about proxy. And you looked at me and agreed with me.

[00:57:19] Carry: I said, I had some concerns.

[00:57:20] Mishelle: And you looked at me and you said, I know, but you know what?

[00:57:24] Lisa: I can make

[00:57:24] Carry: you

[00:57:24] Lisa: fit that too. I, and that’s why. And

[00:57:28] Mishelle: that right there is the reason why I’ve been in therapy for years. Because I don’t want to be that. And I want to make sure, I want to make dead Astrid that I’m not. But that’s the thing.

[00:57:36] Lisa: And that’s why I’ve been in therapy for years and spent years of my life in it to try and better myself and be better.

[00:57:42] Lisa: Well

[00:57:42] Mishelle: then I guess

[00:57:43] Lisa: I’m just wrong. No, you’re right. You’re right. You’re absolutely 1000% right, Michelle. That’s what you wanna call it. But that’s not what my doctors diagnosed me with and my doctors is who I have to listen to. Did I do a hell of a lot of shit wrong? Abso freaking. But I’m not. I did I do things that were horrible to Angela, the freaking idea.

[00:57:59] Lisa: [00:58:00] And I have owned that and I have never not owned that. And I worked hard to deal with that, deal with the emotions of that, and examine myself to make sure everything was appropriate in the way it was supposed to be. With my doctors, with Angela, with you, with li, with everybody, with your dad. With everybody.

[00:58:16] Lisa: I had to see myself examine myself very closely. Well then what happened?

[00:58:21] Andrea: Whatever self-reflection Lisa has done is not in evidence in this confrontation with Michelle or anywhere else I could find. Lisa has never come anywhere near a full acknowledgement of what she did to Angeline, let alone what came next.

[00:58:36] Andrea: Lisa manages to position herself as a victim by claiming over and over again that she quote owns her past and that she has, quote, paid the price. It’s always someone else’s fault be Yorker, or the nurse who reported her, the doctors who didn’t understand her, and even the person who has given her a thousand chances, who’s treated her with an almost boundless [00:59:00] compassion.

[00:59:00] Andrea: Her oldest daughter,

[00:59:01] Lisa: no, I won’t say the stuff was isolated incident. I absolutely agree with you that I exaggerated and made things worse in whatever, 2019 or 2000. Okay, thank

[00:59:11] Mishelle: you. Agree. Because that is the first time I agree with that time. You’ve ever said that? I absolutely

[00:59:14] Lisa: agree with that, but you can’t go with I was 100% lying because I was not.

[00:59:18] Lisa: Okay. But that same. But yes. Did I exaggerate it? Absolutely. Why? Because I like to feel love, and that’s the only time in my life I ever felt like you loved me. That you cared enough about me. Go, I’ll love you when you’re well. It doesn’t seem that way. It didn’t seem that way. Then

[00:59:35] Andrea: when Michelle made the brave choice, after years of thoughtful consideration and weighing all the possible consequences to drag all of this into the light on this podcast, she did another equally brave thing.

[00:59:48] Andrea: She drove a few streets over to where her parents now live. They relocated from Alabama shortly after Michelle did, to tell them to their faces. And Lisa begged her to go to therapy first, [01:00:00] talking about how hard she had worked on herself. Michelle agreed.

[01:00:04] Lisa: I have worked really hard and been in therapy for years and years and years to try to deal with my guilt and everything that I did and to come to terms with that.

[01:00:12] Lisa: And I worked really hard to overcome that, to get in a path where I can make a difference. And now you could literally take everything of that, every, all of that away. Are

[01:00:22] Mishelle: you seeing a therapist right

[01:00:23] Lisa: now? You would be

[01:00:24] Andrea: comfortable. I. However, this therapist that Lisa had allegedly been seeing evaporated the moment the scheduling conversation appeared,

[01:00:32] Mishelle: I have asked you to go to therapy with me, and every time I’ve asked you to go, you’ve not

[01:00:35] Lisa: asked me to go to therapy.

[01:00:35] Lisa: I, yes, I have told you I have. I’ll go to therapy with you and every, you’ve never said, Hey, well, we

[01:00:39] Mishelle: can still do that. How? I’ve got locker room. I’ve got four different appointments in January.

[01:00:46] Andrea: Michelle followed up on this conversation to try to schedule an appointment, but she could never nail Lisa down because Lisa, it would seem, didn’t actually have any interest in healing her relationship with her daughter.

[01:00:56] Andrea: She was just trying to stop Michelle from telling the truth about her [01:01:00] because Lisa’s whole life and especially her career had been built on a lie and she would say anything to keep it buried.

[01:01:09] Preview

[01:01:09] Lisa: But I will ask you this. Can you at least wait over recording this podcast till we go in therapy? Because if my life gets ruined over this.

[01:01:21] Lisa: I have nothing left for it. I have nothing. I will lose my job, which means we’re going to lose our home, which means we’re going to lose everything we have. And I just need you to listen to me before you decide to do that because my work does not know about all this shit. My work does not know about my past.

[01:01:39] Andrea: That’s next time on. Nobody Should believe me.

[01:01:49] Credits

[01:01:49] Andrea: Nobody should believe me is written, hosted, and executive produced by me. Andrea Dunlop. Our supervising producer is Mariah Gossett. Our senior producer is Taj Easton, assistant editor and associate Producer is Greta Strom Quist Research and Fact Checking by Erin Ajai, engineering and Mixing by Robin Edgar.