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Michelle
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Andrea Dunlop
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Sabrina
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a.
Michelle
Very happy half off holiday because right.
Andrea Dunlop
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Lisa McDaniel
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Michelle
To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.
Lisa McDaniel
So that means a half day.
Michelle
Yeah, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront.
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Sabrina
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Andrea Dunlop
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Andrea Dunlop
Afterweightloss.Com before we begin, a quick warning that in this show we discuss child abuse and this content may be difficult for some listeners. If you or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, Please go to munchausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help. Well, here we are.
Michelle
Here we are. It's crazy. I was like, this feels so surreal.
Andrea Dunlop
Where would you like to begin?
Michelle
I don't know. I don't know. Where do you begin?
Andrea Dunlop
Meet my friend, Michelle. Michelle lives in a small town in Georgia with her husband, where she works as a hairdresser. But despite her baby face and ever changing rainbow hair, Michelle has the kind of wisdom that can come from surviving a series of unimaginable horrors. Why?
Lisa McDaniel
Why, like, leave with something I can't overcome?
Michelle
Because you can. Because, mom, please listen.
Sabrina
Please listen.
Michelle
You're asking me to listen to you. Please listen to me.
Andrea Dunlop
For most of her life, Michelle has been living under the weight of her family's terrible secrets, a story that only a small group of confidants and licensed professionals have known about the long and complicated saga of her mother. Lisa McDaniel is one. Michelle and I have been talking about covering on this podcast for years.
Sabrina
Please listen to me.
Lisa McDaniel
Okay, I will. But here's what I want to say first. Munchausen by proxy is something that even Bjorker says you cannot recover from.
Andrea Dunlop
And she doesn't agree with that anymore, Mama.
Michelle
She doesn't even agree with that anymore. We can leave Bjorker out of this.
Andrea Dunlop
That's what I'm telling y'. All.
Michelle
Didn't hear me when I said it the first time, but I'm serious. I have talked to everybody, and Bjorker, and I literally told her at one point I didn't want to speak to her anymore because I needed distance from her, because I didn't know how you felt about her. You have talked about her for years, and I tried to understand your point of view going into this whole thing. I am here in your living room because I have empathy for you, and.
Sabrina
I believe.
Michelle
That there is good in you and I love you. I would not be sitting here right.
Sabrina
Now if I didn't feel that way.
Andrea Dunlop
Coming forward wasn't an easy choice for Michelle. There has been a heavy silence over the horrifying events that have reverberated throughout generations of her family. But that silence ends today.
Michelle
Where do you begin?
Lisa McDaniel
Jeez.
Andrea Dunlop
This season on Nobody Should Believe Me, we're covering the complicated story of Lisa McDaniel, her husband, Carrie, and their three children, Michelle, Angelyn, and Colin, and attempting to unravel what happened. Whether this is a story of a medical mystery or a different sort of mystery altogether, 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.
Michelle
I got home last night and Brent was like, so how are you feeling? And I was like, I'm so nervous.
Sabrina
Yeah, I think it's.
Andrea Dunlop
It's really normal to be nervous. Michelle and I first met when we were part of the pilot support group for Munchausen Support, the nonprofit organization that I founded in 2021. These days, my mentor, Bea Yorker, a professor, emerita and longtime psychiatric nurse, is the sitting president. I still serve on the board. And Michelle is getting involved in the work as well. Bea has been devoted to this cause for decades, and she's the one who brought Michelle and I together. Michelle and Bea reconnected many years after the events that first brought BEA into the McDaniels lives.
Michelle
You and I talked a little bit about things when I first contacted you, and that was like, what, 2019, I believe after we found the records, Yes.
Hope Ybarra
I believe that's how I first even learned that your sister was still alive, that you were okay. And I gave the nurse, the NICU nurse, my email information, and I said I would love to hear from both of the girls.
Andrea Dunlop
What do you hope for with Michelle coming forward with her story publicly, really, for the first time? What do you hope that that can accomplish?
Hope Ybarra
What I hope is that when the general public and when child abuse professionals hear from somebody's lived experience that it is so much more impactful than reading data in a book. So I want you to be able to share your emotional reactions to your journey of coming to this place where now you know, you're. Oh, my gosh, you're just blossoming and you're resilient and you're amazing. And it's not because you had a safe childhood.
Andrea Dunlop
You proud of Michelle?
Hope Ybarra
Oh, my gosh, I'm so proud.
Lisa McDaniel
So proud.
Andrea Dunlop
Most of what can readily be found online about Michelle's mom and the woman at the center of this season, Lisa McDaniel, relates to her work as the director of patient advocacy for a nonprofit called the Guthy Jackson Foundation.
Lisa McDaniel
How are y' all doing? Did y' all enjoy our breakout sessions today? I encourage you to call up your primary care physician, use your family and friends who may work at medical offices, ask for Referrals. Get out there, knock on doors, and don't give up until you get someone who will let you in their office to tell them more about nmo. You do not have to be a public service speaker. You just have to be able to talk to your doctor, talk to their staff, and just share your story. Because as Christine just told you, she has a story. But guess what? Each one of us in this room have our own story.
Andrea Dunlop
That's Lisa McDaniel presenting at the Guthy Jackson Foundation's NMO patient day. NMO, or neuromyelitis optica, is a rare autoimmune disease. Lisa is in her mid-50s, with a youthful round face and the red hair that she passed along to her three children. You'd never know from her carefully crafted public image that Lisa has done jail time for child abuse. Rather, her image centers on her advocacy around NMO and her work at the foundation. Work which, as it says in her bio, was informed by her own experiences as a caregiver for her son.
Lisa McDaniel
My son Colin was 5 years old when he had his first symptom of vision loss in 2007. We're going to go in here and get some stuff we talked about done, okay? They're going to take pictures and see how the blood works in your body, okay? Colin's always been healthy, never had problems. He just lost his vision completely in about two days. We ended up coming to Birmingham, Alabama, to the center for Pediatric Onset Demyelinating diseases and saw Dr. Jane Ness there. She told us neuromyelitis optica and we had never heard of it. She explained to us that it was used to be thought it was a severe form of multiple sclerosis, that it's a very difficult disease, and proceeded to tell us that there could be times where Colin could be paralyzed in the future, he could lose his vision again and just varying degrees of disability that he could have.
Andrea Dunlop
This video begins with a shot of Lisa and her husband Carrie walking their son Colin down a hospital hallway in a wheelchair. Then cuts to a professionally shot interview of Lisa in a leopard print blazer and a statement necklace.
Lisa McDaniel
Dr. Ness wants to talk to you, babe.
Sabrina
I gotta do a couple of things I'm gonna do as quick as I can, but I gotta look in your eyes, okay? I know you feel awful.
Andrea Dunlop
The other voice you hear in this clip is Dr. Jane Ness, the pediatric neurologist who diagnosed Lisa's son Colin with nmo. The picture Lisa presents online is of a gentle, soft spoken Southern mom whose mighty struggles as the Mother of a sick child led to her career as a dedicated advocate for other families. Lisa. But nothing about Lisa is what it seems. Lisa McDaniel has worked very hard to bury her past, but that's the thing about the truth. You can spin it, you can push it down, but it has a way of catching up to you. A life built on lies just isn't very durable, because sooner or later, someone might come along and put all the pieces together.
Michelle
I don't know how this is going to land, and I hope I know you're probably not going to understand it. I've been in some support groups for.
Andrea Dunlop
Probably two or three years.
Michelle
And a really close friend of mine runs a podcast, and she asked me to go on her podcast and kind of talk about everything that we grew up with, and I agreed to do it.
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Michelle
Hope that it will be an opportunity to kind of air some things out and heal from a lot of things that I still don't have answers to. I know there's been some things, and it's not all old stuff for me, but I just wanted to let you.
Andrea Dunlop
Know.
Michelle
Before any of it came out or happened, because I do love you and I do have respect for you, and I didn't want it to just be out there and you find it somewhere and have that.
Lisa McDaniel
So did you give any considerations of.
Sabrina
What this is going to do to.
Lisa McDaniel
Angela's life, to your daddy's life, to my life?
Andrea Dunlop
This is Michelle talking with her mother, Lisa.
Michelle
I have a thousand percent.
Sabrina
I have.
Lisa McDaniel
Because you could literally be taking away our income and everything. You could literally be ruining everything that we've worked on, that I've tried to.
Sabrina
Overcome and work hard for.
Lisa McDaniel
After all these years, you can literally take our whole entire life away. If you don't understand.
Michelle
Well, I'm not here to hurt you.
Lisa McDaniel
Feels that way.
Sabrina
I'm not.
Lisa McDaniel
Because you've always been very rebellious your whole entire life.
Sabrina
Mama, all I'm asking is some accountability.
Michelle
Nobody is irredeemable.
Lisa McDaniel
I mean, what do you want? Access to all my medical records? No, I don't.
Michelle
I don't know, Mama, but I don't believe you. And I don't trust you. And if you're.
Lisa McDaniel
And it doesn't matter what I say, you're not gonna believe it.
Michelle
I've been gaslit my whole life by anybody and everybody. Things still don't make sense to me.
Lisa McDaniel
They're never going to. Don't.
Michelle
Because you have lied to us.
Lisa McDaniel
Yeah, I have. I told you. Just like you've lied to me. He's lied to us. She's lied. You're right.
Michelle
I have lied to 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 lie. But a lie is very different when you are causing yourself direct harm or causing the children in your life direct harm.
Lisa McDaniel
I did. I exaggerated it. Does that mean it's much housing by proxy? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But here's the thing. Why label me with something? Why label me with something I can't overcome?
Michelle
Because you can.
Andrea Dunlop
Because.
Michelle
Mama, please listen. Please listen. You're asking me to listen to you.
Sabrina
Please listen to me.
Andrea Dunlop
The story we're covering this season gets at many of the core questions of this show. How do you cope with the truth when the truth is unfathomable? Can dragging long hidden horrors into the light help us heal? Bring us peace? Even maybe reconcile with those who've harmed us? Or are there things that even for the most compassionate among us, simply can't be forgiven?
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Lisa McDaniel
Shh.
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Andrea Dunlop
We tend to think of the past as fixed, immutable, but the reality is more complex. Our history with our own parents shifts as we get older and reach new milestones. As we become ages. We actually remember them being and particularly if we become parents ourselves, everything about our family of origin suddenly appears in a new light. I've learned this is an especially dramatic process for people like Michelle, whose childhoods were traumatic, whose memories buried themselves out of self protect. As Michelle has found hard earned stability and safety in her adult life, disturbing memories have begun to re emerge. She has questions about what happened to her and her siblings and leaving them unanswered has become unbearable. So we got to work looking for the truth in the small rural town where we lay. Our scene Hazlehurst, Georgia.
Michelle
We had a Walmart and a Huddle House.
Andrea Dunlop
Like okay, what is a Huddle House? Because we do not have.
Michelle
We do not have Huddle House in the North.
Andrea Dunlop
No. I've heard a lot about Hazlehurst, the town where generations of McDaniels were born and raised. It's a sleepy rural town three hours outside Atlanta. Now it was time to see it for myself.
Sabrina
Do you know what a Waffle House is?
Andrea Dunlop
I just learned. I mean, I know what a. Like a Waffle House.
Michelle
I had to really explain a Waffle House last night when we were driving.
Andrea Dunlop
Yeah, that is my producer Mariah, who was also raised in the south, and Michelle enjoying me being a fish out of water. As we chatted in a hotel room in the quaint little college town of Valdosta, where Michelle now lives. I also discovered the uniquely Southern miracle that is Bucky's on this trip. So it was quite the cultural exchange. These are just not things we have in the North. And then I was trying to sing.
Michelle
Her the Jonas Brothers song, and she.
Andrea Dunlop
Was like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Sabrina
It's a Waffle House.
Michelle
Yeah, we're gonna work it out.
Sabrina
Yeah. I was like.
Andrea Dunlop
She's like, I know. She's like, I don't listen to Jonas Brothers. And I was like, I don't listen.
Michelle
To Jonas Brothers either, but it's just gonna miss this.
Andrea Dunlop
This is everywhere. So Huddle House is like a Huddle.
Michelle
House is a Waffle House.
Andrea Dunlop
It's like a Waffle House. Waffle House adjacent.
Michelle
Don't say that in the south because you'll get in trouble. But I personally believe that a Huddle House is just a better Waffle House. However, that is probably the most controversial thing I will say on this podcast.
Andrea Dunlop
Okay, so you're talking about the home, the hometown.
Lisa McDaniel
Yeah.
Andrea Dunlop
We got a Walmart and a Huddle House. Okay.
Sabrina
Which is.
Michelle
I mean, that's where we hung out. Like, as teenagers. We hung out in the Walmart parking lot or at the Huddle House at 2am that was. That's what we did. And we had. That's why we had babies so young. It was nothing else to do.
Sabrina
Like.
Michelle
The cops would get mad and run us off from Walmart. And then where else are you going to go? You went home and had babies. I don't know. I don't remember where I was going with that.
Andrea Dunlop
The next morning, we make the drive out to the town where both Michelle and her mother, Lisa, grew up. Hazlehurst is in rural South Georgia, and we head there on a bright, chilly winter day. There are a few signs of life between Valdosta and Hazlehurst. Mostly, it's long stretches of beautiful country roads. On the day we drive there, there's sunlight sifting through the rows and rows of white pine, many of them bent at tortured angles. Following the devastation of hurricane Helene. Yeah, I feel like there's. There is like a. I think there's gonna be a good, just little moment of like Hazlehurst, Georgia is known for.
Michelle
Well, there was a murder.
Sabrina
This murder.
Michelle
American Idol, American Idol star and Angela.
Andrea Dunlop
From 90 Day Fiance.
Michelle
That wraps it up.
Andrea Dunlop
Remote as it is, I'm not the first true crime podcaster to come through Hazlehurst. In 2021, Fox Hunter covered the murder of Rhonda Sue Coleman, a girl in Lisa McDaniel's high school class who was killed just before they graduated. Michelle is also one degree away from another famous Hazelhurst native who Will Mosley, the 2024American Idol runner up who is her husband's brother. They don't have any known connection, however, to the woman who is perhaps Hazelhurst's most famous resident, the truly iconic Angela from 90 Day Fiance.
Michelle
We're done, Angela.
Sabrina
Angela sits. Bastard.
Michelle
Angela, chill down and respect us, please.
Lisa McDaniel
I'm his elder.
Andrea Dunlop
He's an idiot.
Sabrina
You think it's funny, Michael?
Andrea Dunlop
As we make our way into town, Michelle points out landmarks from her past. The turnoff to her granny's house, her mother in law's home, and the church where her parents got married. Then we finally arrive at the pizza joint where we're meeting Michelle's aunt Sabrina, her mother Lisa's younger sister.
Michelle
Did you just realize how hungry I was?
Sabrina
Hello.
Michelle
Listen, this one's not on me. And I don't know why you're surprised.
Andrea Dunlop
I'm late to everything, and we're only a few minutes late.
Sabrina
You're always late for.
Michelle
I know, but Andrea is too.
Sabrina
How are you?
Andrea Dunlop
In my defense, part of the reason we were late was because our hotel had coffee but not breakfast. And then the breakfast place had food but no coffee. And this conversation with Sabrina was going to be intense. Between that and my jet leg, t was not going to cut it. So, Sabrina, did you. You're born ra, lived all your life in Hazlehurst, or.
Hope Ybarra
Yes.
Andrea Dunlop
At 47, Sabrina is a few years older than me, and we have daughters the same age. I never know exactly how someone's going to feel about me coming around asking them to relive their worst traumas. But Sabrina puts us all immediately at ease with her funny acerbic charm. As we settle into one of the only restaurants in town, a dimly lit pizza joint with dark wood paneling and narrow booths. We post up in the empty party room, likely more used to hosting end of the year sports banquets than nosy northerners with podcasts. Sabrina Explains how she and her sister Lisa grew up.
Sabrina
How would you describe the town? That's loaded. It is quiet country until something happens and then everybody knows everybody knows it. And because everybody knows everybody, it's kind of like everybody tries to know your business all the time. So if something major ever happens, it's not. It's talked about for decades and decades and decades. So people do not forget it until something new happens. And then they'll talk about that and bring up, you know, that's so important.
Michelle
And so that did so and so back in 1987.
Sabrina
Yeah. And it's always like, well, you know, that person is related to that. You know, you always have that kind of relation. And I've always said, man, if I can ever move. And then because you go other like Savannah or Atlanta or somewhere and nobody cares who your mama is, nobody cares who your grandma is or your grandpa or whatever. They're just like, oh, where are you from? You know. So it's just, it's different because it's. Everybody knows everybody, so. Which is a good thing sometime. But then people try to get in your business too much. Nobody has anything else to do. Yeah, it's like there's nothing else to do. Which is the downfall because there's really nothing to do. So there's. We don't have a theater or we used to have a theater and a skating rink. We don't have either one of those anymore. So it's for kid. Kid wise and stuff like that. It's quiet. But nothing to do other than go to school and do like the school activities or stuff like that.
Michelle
I told them yesterday that's why we all have babies so young. Cause there's nothing else to do.
Sabrina
I've never really thought about it that way, but okay. I mean that probably is a legit reason.
Michelle
Adria didn't even know what a Huddle House or Waffle House was until this year.
Sabrina
You said what now?
Michelle
She didn't know what a Huddle House or a Waffle House was.
Andrea Dunlop
Wait, where I'm going to get emails about Waffle House for the rest of my life, aren't I? Hazlehurst only has about 4,000 residents, so it's no surprise that everyone is up in each other's business. Timber is the main industry and families and communities are tight knit out of necessity. Tell us about your. Tell us about your parents.
Sabrina
It's weird because as you get older, like as I've gotten older and grown and had my own kids, I realized that a lot of things, especially My mom would do was not normal. But you think it's normal because that's what you grow it up in. But like, my dad, he always. He worried. He was called cooking company over in Lumber City, and he worked there until it closed. So my dad, when I was younger, he worked what they called the swing shift, so he would work days and nights. So he just expected you to behave, do what you were told, and you just really didn't have any problems at that. My momma, everybody thought my mama was great. Let me just say that. Like, my. My friends thought she was fabulous. Everybody thought my mama was fabulous. But my mama would be like, if you don't do this, you don't love me. And y' all just don't love me the way y'. All you. Y', all, you love your daddy, but you don't love me because you don't treat me the same as you treat your daddy. If y' all love me, I wouldn't do that. And it would be nothing other than other than we wouldn't have all the clothes washed or we wouldn't do the dishes immediately. Typical kid things. Well, y' all just don't love me. And, like, then when you're growing up, you think, okay, that's just normal. Everybody kind of deals with that. But then when you get older, you realize that's not normal at all. But like I say, all my friends loved her growing up. They thought, oh, you're my mama is great. But my mama, I always said my mama had a switch. It was like she was one person when she was around you, and she flipped the switch when your friends were around.
Andrea Dunlop
Do you think maybe that set up kind of a dynamic where you felt like you had to take care of your mom's feelings?
Sabrina
Yes. Yes, it definitely was. Let's tread lightly. Let's not do anything to upset her, because that just made the days even worse. But it was a delicate balance, because looking at it now, I see a lot of Lisa's personality was the same as my mom's. But then it was always a delicate balance. You had to dance around mom and her feelings, but you had to tiptoe around Lisa, too, because Lisa always had a keen way she could manipulate my mama. Just, you know, she could. And she would have my mama convinced that something she did that I did or my little sister did. And so when my daddy came home, it was like, well, what did you do that for? And I'm like, but I didn't. I didn't do it at all, you know, but she would. It was just. You always had to just tread the water. Tread the water. Tread the water.
Lisa McDaniel
Shh.
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Andrea Dunlop
Spending this time with Michelle's aunt Sabrina was only my second opportunity to get to speak to someone who'd grown up with a perpetrator. The first being my conversations with Hope Ybarra's siblings way back in season one. The sister's history is lengthy and dark, and though they're not fully estranged, their relationship seems unlikely to survive. Sabrina's decision to be with me today because Lisa's child abuse conviction more than 20 years ago. That's just the beginning of this story. And did you have any, like, health issues growing up?
Sabrina
Who, Lisa?
Jay Shetty
No.
Sabrina
Well, when she got to be like, maybe 14 or 15 and maybe it was 16, she went through the trying to make herself throw up. Stay. Yeah. And my daddy got really got upset and got aggravated with her and kind of got in her face about it, and so she kind of quit doing it. So I think it was more of a I'm just gonna do it to see the attention I can get off of it because she loved some attention.
Andrea Dunlop
Can you think of sort of some other examples of stuff that really struck you as like, her trying to get attention?
Sabrina
She did a lot. She would just do random things. We were at one of my dad's friend's house. Their phone rang and it was Lisa. And she's like, somebody threw a brick through the window. And daddy's like, well, let me go. Y' all stay here and let me go see, you know, what's going on. He's like, call the police. You know, when he got there, yeah, There was a big hole in the picture window. She had threw a brick through it and tried to throw a brick through the window next to it. And she's. She will never say it was her, but it was her. I mean, she just. Because they found no evidence of anybody else being in the yard. No other shoe prints, no anything like that. She would do stuff like that all the time anyway, thing to call and say, oh, I need help. I need help.
Andrea Dunlop
So even if Lisa didn't have the health history in her youth that we often see with perpetrators, there's always this common theme of deception and finding or Creating opportunities to be a victim. One of the perpetually confusing things for me about looking back at my own childhood with my sister Megan, whose case I've covered in depth on this show previously, is that even though I do see signs of trouble looking in the rear view, my experience of our childhood together was mostly good. But for Sabrina and Lisa, not so much.
Sabrina
And see that, that's the thing, people assume that what happened, what she did to Angelin was like the first sign, but there were so many signs. When we were growing up, my dad had this butcher knife. It was probably 10 inches long with a 3 or 4 inch handle. She would get it and chase us.
Andrea Dunlop
And you're her, you're the youngest.
Sabrina
I'm the middle, I'm the middle of three. Yeah. So like I said, that butcher knife, she would take it, especially my little sister. She would do it more to my little sister, but she would, for no reason, she would just randomly grab it when my parents were gone and just chase. And then, you know, those old cast frying pans, she would get them and chase you around the house and she would just do all kind of like mean stuff like that. But it was never her fault. It was never. Well, I just did it because I was mean, because she was. It's. Well, they did X, Y or Z and that's why I did it. I think we were excited to get rid of her.
Andrea Dunlop
Just to interject by get rid of her, Sabrina is talking about when Lisa disappears into her relationship with her then boyfriend, now husband, Carrie. Nothing more sinister than that, at least not yet.
Sabrina
I mean, but then you have to understand, she was just so mean to us. I mean, she did. It was never her fault. It was always somebody else's fault. You said something to her out of the way or you looked at her funny or. I mean, it was just random stuff like little things that she didn't trigger. Being chased by a butcher knife or a cast iron frying pan that she would do. And then as she got older and started dating Carrie, that was when, you know, everybody wore class rings, like their boyfriend's class rings. And she would take it and turn it around and she would hit my little sister especially upside the head with it. And just, she just always, she wanted attention.
Andrea Dunlop
It becomes clear as we dig into Lisa's backstory with Sybrina that chaos and drama have been a constant theme. And Lisa's relationship with Michelle's father, Kerry was no exception.
Sabrina
When she started dating Kerry, she told my mom and dad that Carrie was four years older than she was. And Carrie was. Is almost 11 years older than she is. So he was closer. Yeah, yeah. So he was closer to, like, my dad and mom's age category than I see. Because it was, you know, if you look at.
Michelle
So I did the math one time, and he was closer to Nana's age.
Sabrina
Yeah.
Michelle
Like, I think four or five months.
Sabrina
Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first lie. That's how it started.
Andrea Dunlop
The fact that this relationship began with a lie is fitting for reasons that will become clear as we go today. This relationship would be a crime. But at the time in Georgia, the age of consent was 14. Yikes.
Sabrina
And then it just. It just. It was one. One lie after another lie after another lie after another lie. I mean, you just get. My mom and dad just got to the point that they just didn't believe anything. By the time she got married, she had caused so much chaos and drama with her relationship with Carrie that you were just. You just got tired of hearing the arguing at nighttime. You just got tired of hearing it. And so it was just like, yeah, let's get rid of her.
Andrea Dunlop
Once Lisa was out of high school and married to Carrie, it wasn't long before they got busy doing what the rest of Lisa's peers were doing, making babies. And then. So they got married after high school, and then she gets pregnant with.
Sabrina
Yeah, but I was excited she was having Michelle, you know, and, you know.
Michelle
Everything was good for a little while.
Sabrina
I don't know if you remember, but.
Michelle
Yeah, I remember when I was born.
Sabrina
I mean, you were born, and you were just a few months old. She started getting left with, like, at our house all the time. So, like.
Michelle
I did.
Sabrina
Yeah, you did. Yeah. But even before that, they. Debbie and. Which is Carrie's dad, had money, and they were spending it left, right, and sideways, so they were kind of always going somewhere. When she got pregnant with Michelle, that brought her a lot of attention, you know, and so she was good to stay at home for a little while because, you know, it got her so much attention, you know? And then when Michelle got a few months old, it was like, okay. The attention kind of faded away. So it was like, okay. And of course, you know, she's a baby. Everybody wants to keep a baby. Yes. We liked you because you were a baby. I'm kidding.
Andrea Dunlop
There is always a pattern of troubling behavior that precedes Munchausen by proxy abuse. And that's why these narratives from family members are so crucial. They were there for all of the foreshadowing. But there is the Question of why and how pregnancy and motherhood kicks this into high gear. My kids are 6 and 2, so I've been through this period of my life pretty recently in the best case scenario. Pregnancy and having a brand new baby aren't crisis situations in and of themselves, but they command a similar sort of all hands on deck attention, especially on your first one. People send food and gifts and go out of their way to come and meet and hold your precious little potat. So it's easy to see why this could kick attention seeking behaviors into high gear. And after this period of attention ended, Lisa didn't seem to have much attachment to or interest in little baby Michelle.
Sabrina
She was at our house.
Andrea Dunlop
They met.
Sabrina
She called me mama before she called her mama mama.
Michelle
Is that real? Are you making that mama?
Sabrina
I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. You started saying mama one day at mama. Well, I wouldn't make. Then I was still in my home and it was. She was calling me mama and I'm like, hey, I love you, but I'm not your mama.
Andrea Dunlop
Cause you're a teenager.
Sabrina
Yeah, I'm a teenager. So I'm like, I love you, but I'm not your mama. Most of the time when we got her, like, they would drop her off on the weekend, I guess, like when he would be off and she would stay three or four days and they would come get her. And then the week when the weekend came, she'd say stay three or four days and they'd come back. I don't know. Lisa really never worked.
Andrea Dunlop
Like how, how was Lisa as a mom in that time period?
Sabrina
Well, it's kind of hard to say because when she, when Michelle was first born and was a baby, she seemed to be attentive and everything. But then she started, you know, leaving her at everybody else's house. So I would say, you know, part time mom maybe, I mean, for lack of better, because it was just hard to get that feel because she was always at our house or at Debbie and Bernice's house. So she was never really around parenting her. I mean, like I say, it's hard. It's hard to kind of gauge what kind of parent she was because she always left her. And then I got pregnant with my oldest one and she was born in 96. She was born in October of 96. But when I got pregnant with her, of course, you know, you get a lot of attention when you announce you're pregnant and everything. And you could just tell in Lisa's face and how she acted that she could not stand it. She absolutely hated it. She could not stand it. And just how dare you take any spotlight away from.
Lisa McDaniel
From her?
Sabrina
Which of course was not my intent. Then the next thing we know, she was pregnant with Angel. Fabulous. You know, I was happy for her. Who wouldn't, you know, be happy for somebody, you know, having a child, if that's what they want to do. My oldest was born in October, and then right after that, it was one thing after another after another. I fell down the door, so I need to go to the er. I fell down the doorsteps again. I've called the ambulance, just all kind of little things like that. The reality is she never fell down the doorsteps. She threw herself down the doorsteps one time. The reason why I think she threw herself down the doorsteps is because the way they said she landed right with the edge of the doorstep, right direction, directly in her stomach. Anyway, that triggered the whole series of events with Angeline coming early, she fell.
Andrea Dunlop
And she went into labor.
Sabrina
She got pregnant on purpose as a way to get attention for herself, but I don't know that she ever really planned on actually the baby surviving, if that makes sense.
Andrea Dunlop
On Saturday, this insinuation that Lisa got pregnant with Michelle's little sister Angelyn, and then interfered with that pregnancy to draw attention to herself might sound shocking, but to me it's all too familiar. Fake pregnancies followed by fake dramatic miscarriages along with real pregnancies followed by induced obstetrical complications and premature births are absolutely textbook in these cases. The timing of my older sister's pregnancy hoax is a good example of this. It came right in the middle of a falling out with my parents after she had committed check fraud, which, for the record, they did bail her out of. And it also came right on the heels of her boyfriend breaking up with her after discovering she'd been abusive with his son. Most people would never use it, but a pregnancy can be a pretty powerful trump card. And Lisa was a master at dragging people into her warped version of reality.
Sabrina
When you get so good at telling a lie, she has an uncanny ability to make people believe. Well, not us anymore, but she can make people believe just about anything she want them to, about anybody. And I'm. You know, it's. How do you get that dark? Like, how do you. I don't. I don't understand how people cannot see the true color she is. It's a never ending cycle. It's one thing. It's one thing after another after another. And I don't. I hardly Ever communicate with her? Because it's just every time you do, you're just waiting on that knife to get twisted a little bit further and a little bit further. And, you know, you get to the point where it's like, look, I forgave you. I have never told her I forgive her. I forgive her for my peace, not for hers. I forgave her for me, for my inner peace. But it's just constant. And that's the reason why I don't have a lot to do with her. Because every time you talk to her, it opens the gate for her to twist it a little bit more. And in my adult life, I don't have room for that. And I don't want my kids to. I don't want my kids to have to deal with that and think that that's acceptable because that's somebody who's related to you. But that doesn't mean you have to accept how they act or what they do. She's my sister. Do I love her? Yes. But I love her from a distance because I don't have to accept her in my life.
Andrea Dunlop
Making a show like this, you have to watch out for people who want to settle a score or punish someone who's harmed them. It's too precarious of a place to be in when you're taking the vulnerable step of sharing something like this. I sympathize deeply with people who want to make abusers pay, but we just don't do revenge journeys here on this show. We look for the truth and we tell it. What happens next isn't really up to me. I look for people who really share the ethos of this show, which is about bringing this abuse to light, about protecting kids and educating those who we've trusted to do so. It's why I knew that despite how harrowing this particular case is, Michelle was up for the challenge. I've watched her wrestle with the decision to go public. I've watched her interrogate her own motives, and that's why I'm so sure they're the right ones.
Michelle
I'm sitting here outside on the balcony in San Diego, preparing for a conference. I'm much hazled by proxy and being able to speak. I know that I've really struggled with doing this because my mom does this. My mom travels and she talks to doctors and she gets presentations. She's given presentations here in San Diego, and.
Sabrina
And.
Michelle
I've been so nervous and worried. Does that make me like her? I'm sitting here and just kind of hits me that this is not built on lies for me. This is not built on manipulation. I just told the truth.
Andrea Dunlop
Lisa McDaniel would like you to believe that the version of her found on online is the real her. The Lisa who has, according to the Guthy Jackson Foundation's website, educated more than 50,000 people on her son's rare disorder.
Lisa McDaniel
My name is Lisa McDaniel. I think I know most of you. What I do is I go out and I talk to doctors and hospitals, really anybody who wants to listen to me and my southern charm. So the way I started was with my son's pediatrician, told her what I was wanting to do because as you guys know, sometimes our doctors don't know. What I normally do is start with a personal story, make it personal. You need to get their attention because you want to make sure they understand your disease. I always start off with a little story about Colin. You can pick your own story, grab their attention right away. That's the easiest way to make sure they're hearing and listening to you. It's very simple and very easy to do. Any questions?
Andrea Dunlop
Well, since you asked, Lisa, actually I do have a few questions for you. This season on Nobody Should Believe Me.
Sabrina
I'm actually amazed from what you're telling me that this child lived through this. He said, do you think your sister's doing something to her? I'm like, don't ever say that again.
Hope Ybarra
Neither one of those children were suffering because of a disease.
Sabrina
How somebody could do that to a child that was so little and so helpless still to this day haunts me.
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The judge gave full custody back to them. I stood up and I told him, I hope you don't sleep when you go home tonight. You have no idea what you've done.
Sabrina
And you should be ashamed of yourself.
Hope Ybarra
There's a pattern. This fits a pattern and it is lethal. Munchausen by proxy.
Michelle
The longer it sits with me and the more I think about all these things that that doctor said, the more I am so pissed off.
Lisa McDaniel
As a caregiver, you pour yourself into advocacy and helping others, other people. That's who I am at heart as a helper.
Michelle
My mother tortured my brother and these doctors and this hospital went along with it and they co signed on it and they helped her torture him.
Andrea Dunlop
Nobody Should Believe Me is written, hosted and executive produced by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our our supervising producer is Mariah Gossett. Our senior producer is Taj Easton. Assistant editor and associate producer is Greta Stromquist. Research and fact checking by Erin Ajayi. Engineering and mixing by Robin Edgar and administrative producing by Nola Carmouche. Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions, Soundsnap and Slipstream Media. Special thanks to Michelle Roberts, Aunt Serena and the fine folks at Village Pizza in Hazel for letting us monopolize their party room for many hours. Shh.
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Michelle
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Podcast: Betrayal: Seasons 1, 2, 3 & 4
Episode: Introducing — Nobody Should Believe Me: The Advocate
Host: Andrea Dunlop, iHeartPodcasts and Glass Podcasts
Air Date: November 25, 2025
This special crossover episode introduces listeners to the fourth season of "Betrayal," shifting focus to the story at the heart of "Nobody Should Believe Me." In this season, Andrea Dunlop dives into the harrowing family history of Michelle, her mother Lisa McDaniel, and their extended family in Hazlehurst, Georgia. The core themes revolve around family secrets, the complexities of abuse (specifically Munchausen by proxy), the destructive power of deception, and the quest for both healing and truth after generational trauma. The story is told through deeply personal interviews, emphasizing lived experience over abstract data, and spotlights the courage required for survivors to speak up publicly against abusers within their own families.
"Coming forward wasn’t an easy choice for Michelle. There has been a heavy silence over the horrifying events that have reverberated throughout generations of her family. But that silence ends today."
— Andrea Dunlop (04:46)
“I hope that it will be an opportunity to kind of air some things out and heal from a lot of things that I still don’t have answers to. I know there’s been some things, and it’s not all old stuff for me…”
— Michelle (12:06)
“Because you could literally be taking away our income and everything. You could literally be ruining everything that we’ve worked on, that I’ve tried to overcome and work hard for after all these years, you can literally take our whole entire life away.”
— Lisa McDaniel (12:47)
“You’d never know from her carefully crafted public image that Lisa has done jail time for child abuse. Rather, her image centers on her advocacy around NMO and her work at the foundation.”
— Andrea Dunlop (09:00)
“Everybody thought my mama was great… But my mama would be like, if you don’t do this, you don’t love me... When you’re growing up, you think, okay, that’s just normal. Everybody kind of deals with that. But then when you get older, you realize that’s not normal at all.”
— Sabrina (26:29)
“She did a lot. She would just do random things… She loved some attention.”
— Sabrina (33:51)
“She got pregnant on purpose as a way to get attention for herself, but I don’t know that she ever really planned on actually the baby surviving, if that makes sense.”
— Sabrina (44:04)
“I forgave her for me, for my inner peace. But it’s just constant… as an adult, I don’t have room for that. That doesn’t mean you have to accept how they act or what they do.”
— Sabrina (46:13)
“I know that I’ve really struggled with doing this because my mom does this. My mom travels and she talks to doctors and she gives presentations… I’ve been so nervous and worried, does that make me like her?... But this is not built on lies for me. This is not built on manipulation. I just told the truth.”
— Michelle (48:18)
Michelle and Lisa’s confrontation:
On the impact of sharing survivor stories:
Sabrina on family dynamics:
Michelle articulating her why for coming forward:
This episode sets the foundation for a season that promises to peel back the layers of a shocking and all-too-common form of familial betrayal. Listeners are invited into a family’s private reckoning with abuse and survival, where telling the truth becomes its own form of powerful, disruptive advocacy.
Next episode teasers preview upcoming revelations about undisclosed abuse, system failures, and the slow, painstaking fight for understanding and justice in cases of Munchausen by proxy.