Dr. Miracle I 5. Alternative Facts

Summary

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Episode Overview

Chameleon: Dr. Miracle | Episode 5: Alternative Facts
This episode delves into the aftermath of Dr. Robert Young’s arrest for practicing medicine without a license and grand theft, examining the legal battles, victims’ stories, and the courtroom drama that unfolds around his Miracle Ranch and controversial “alkaline diet” cancer cure. The episode focuses on the stories of Dawn, a former patient and believer whose faith is shattered, and Bebe Fell, the attorney fighting on her behalf. The theme is manipulation, misplaced trust, the persistence of belief, and the challenge of holding charismatic con artists accountable—set against the wider backdrop of bogus alternative medicine.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Robert Young’s Arrest and Jailhouse Mindset

• Young faces charges of fraud and unlicensed medical practice, but remains defiant, boasting about forthcoming media interviews and maintaining bravado even from jail ([00:46]).
• He minimizes his situation, focusing on the “nutritional” intent of his treatments and framing the legal battle as a government overreach.

Notable Quote:

“Does the government really need to be interfering in people’s care?”
— Robert Young, [00:46]

2. The Irony of Young Complaining about Medical Care

• Young laments the poor conditions and “amateur” medical services in jail ([01:33]), highlighting the hypocrisy given his own unqualified treatments.

Notable Quote:

“This place is the filthiest place I’ve ever been in. The medical services are amateur… The food wouldn’t even be classified as food.”—Robert Young, [01:33]

3. Trial Preparation: Divided Loyalties and Witness Dilemma

• Some former employees willingly cooperate with prosecutors (June), while others, like Mary the cook and Dawn, struggle with guilt and emotional fallout ([05:00]–[05:58]).
• Many current followers are unwaveringly loyal to Young, complicating the DA’s case.

Notable Quote:

“You leave those gates and you’d sit out there and you’d cry… when you drive out the gates again.”
— Dawn, [05:25]

4. Dawn’s Emotional Journey and Medical Turnaround

• Dawn, initially a zealous believer, is shaken after an oncologist’s PET scan reveals her cancer has spread—contradicting Young’s assurances ([07:23]).
• Chemotherapy, once demonized by Young, brings her into remission (“NED — No Evidence of Disease,” [09:17]).
• Dawn’s realization of Young’s deceit is cemented when he co-opts her survival story as an ad for his protocol ([10:48]):

Notable Quotes:

“The first time I had chemotherapy was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life… for the first time, I was getting help.”
— Dawn, [08:00]
“He went on to say… the reason she had this response was because she did the PH miracle program.”
— Dawn, [10:48]

5. The Moment of Betrayal and Honesty

• Dawn chooses honesty over loyalty and becomes a pivotal witness after entering recovery for alcoholism and reaffirming her commitment to truth ([12:08]–[12:44]).
• She details clandestine medical procedures and the cult-like belief system that justified Young’s actions ([13:08]–[13:52]).

Notable Quote:

“If my job was just to be honest, then that’s what I was going to do. Well, me being honest was open up a can of whoop ass on him.”
— Dawn, [12:21]

6. Criminal Trial: Charges, Tactics, and Outcomes

• Prosecutors paint Young as a predator who leads patients to sickness and death; his defense frames the case as an attack on medical choice.
• Past misdeeds surface: earlier arrests, fake credentials, financial improprieties ([16:40]).
• The jury convicts Young of practicing medicine without a license, deadlocks on grand theft.
• Young is sentenced to 3 years and 8 months, but only serves 5 months due to time on house arrest ([18:18]).

Notable Quote:

“He was good enough to make the team, but he wasn’t good enough to be one of the starting guys.” — Robert Young on his own embellished tennis career, [17:21]

7. Civil Case: The Burden of Guilt and Persuasion

• Dawn seeks civil redress. Attorney Bebe Fell highlights Dawn’s vulnerability—her participation in recruiting others and trusting Young over medical doctors ([19:40]–[20:33]).
• Bebe strategizes: paint Young as plausible but manipulative, not so crazy that the jury blames Dawn for believing him ([20:46]).

8. Courtroom Drama: The Hair Loss Showdown

• Young’s self-contradictions unravel on the witness stand. Bebe highlights the snake-oil nature of his claims—curing everything—and catches him in a telling lie with his own book’s author photo ([24:41]–[26:30]).
• This “Legally Blonde” moment exposes Young’s disingenuousness, especially around his “cure for hair loss” claim.

Notable Quote:

“Did you use your theory to regrow your hair? … He was like, yes, but I also did get surgery.” — Bebe Fell, [26:30]

9. The Pain Behind the Con

• Testimony and Bebe’s argument emphasize the harm done: Young isolated and brainwashed patients, denied pain relief, and profited from their suffering ([27:42]).
• Dawn’s journals and testimony show how victim blaming and guilt compound the trauma ([29:05]).

Notable Quotes:

“What he did… took people away from their families… he took away their comfort. He took away their pain medication… he was literally torturing these people.”
— Bebe Fell, [27:42]

“How stupid are you that you followed this man… how come it took so long for the wool to come off your eyes?” — Dawn, [29:37]

10. The Verdict and Its Meaning

• The civil trial brings emotional closure. The jury is asked not just to blame, but to affirm that Dawn was a victim, not the architect of her own tragedy.
• Bebe reframes the verdict as a message of truth and exoneration for Dawn ([33:19]).

Notable Quote:

“The word verdict is actually from the Latin verdicto, to speak the truth, and there’s nobody in the courtroom who needs to hear the truth more than Dawn… their verdict needed to tell Dawn that it was not her fault.”
— Bebe Fell, [33:19]

11. Cliffhanger and Thematic Final Thoughts

• The episode ends on a cliffhanger—the verdict awaits, and the larger question of accountability, deception, and belief remains.
• Closing teasers highlight Young’s persistent narrative of being a victim of a government conspiracy—and the unresolved harm to those he deceived ([35:03–35:38]).

Notable Quotes:

“This whole thing was a setup. A governmental setup, an FBI, CIA, state to take me down.” — Robert Young, [35:03]
“He played with every aspect of their life, and he preyed upon people who were weak and vulnerable and desperate. And he’s still doing it.” — Bebe Fell & Dawn, [35:25 – 35:32]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Jailhouse Call & Media Bravado: [00:20–01:11]
• Young Complains About Jail Conditions: [01:33–01:52]
• DA’s Investigation and Employee Testimonies: [05:00–05:58]
• Dawn’s Diagnosis and Chemotherapy: [07:23–09:17]
• Young Publishes Dawn’s Success as His Own: [10:48–11:23]
• Dawn’s Turn to Honesty and DA Interview: [12:08–13:52]
• Young’s Previous Misdeeds Emerge: [16:40–17:21]
• Verdict, Sentencing, and Disappointment: [18:18–19:08]
• Bebe Fell Explains Civil Case Strategy: [19:08–20:46]
• Courtroom Drama: Hair Restoration Claim: [24:41–26:30]
• Bebe on Abuse and Torture of Patients: [27:42–28:45]
• Jury’s Instruction—Reframing Dawn’s Guilt: [33:19–33:58]
• Episode Cliffhanger and Closing Montage: [35:03–35:38]

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “Listen, GMA wants to interview you next week… does the government really need to be interfering in people’s care?” — Robert Young, [00:46]
• “This place is the filthiest place I’ve ever been in. The medical services are amateur.” — Robert Young, [01:33]
• “I lit up like a Christmas tree. It was a distance metastasis, which makes it stage four.” — Dawn, [08:00]
• “He went on to say… the reason she had this response was because she did the PH miracle program.” — Dawn, [10:48]
• “What he did… took people away from their families… he was literally torturing these people.” — Bebe Fell, [27:42]
• “The word verdict is actually from the Latin verdicto… there’s nobody in the courtroom who needs to hear the truth more than Dawn… their verdict needed to tell Dawn that it was not her fault.” — Bebe Fell, [33:19]
• “This whole thing was a setup. A governmental setup… to take me down.” — Robert Young, [35:03]

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Tone and Style

The episode mixes investigative clarity with emotional gravitas. The hosts maintain a journalistic, somewhat incredulous tone about Young’s continued bravado and the vulnerability of his patients, while allowing moments of dark humor (the “Legally Blonde” courtroom moment) and deep empathy for Dawn’s suffering and disillusionment. The interplay between cynicism, heartbreak, and hope for accountability frames the episode’s narrative.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode of Chameleon: Dr. Miracle exposes the tangled web of deception spun by Dr. Robert Young—and the very human cost for believers like Dawn. Through courtroom spectacle, testimony, and a final push for justice, the show dissects the anatomy of a con, the persistence of belief in “alternative facts,” and the struggle for truth—and redemption—in the aftermath of fraud.

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Transcript

[Robert Young]

There is another way.

[Bebe Fell]

What is going on?

[Larison Campbell]

You found Chameleon Season 8. And this is Dr.

[Robert Young]

Miracle, a production of Campside Media.

[Dawn]

Oh.

[Bebe Fell]

The bench.

[Robert Young]

Hello, this is a collect call from Robert Young, an inmate at San Diego Central Jail.

[Larison Campbell]

Robert Young is on a payphone in a room with white walls and linoleum floors. Instead of his usual Italian loafers, he now wears orange plastic slides. But he still has his loyalist. In fact, he's on the phone with one of them now.

[Robert Young]

Listen, GMA wants to interview you next week. They were on your side. They want to say, does the government really need to be interfering in people's care?

[Larison Campbell]

This seems unlikely. Good Morning America wouldn't want someone who was just arrested.

[Robert Young]

Listen, we have gotten bombarded with people that want to interview you.

[Larison Campbell]

So listen, we're just going to ride.

[Robert Young]

Alex Jones one interview. You're going to be back on George Norrie. I mean, you name it, we're doing it.

[Larison Campbell]

Alex Jones. We all know who that is. And George Norrie is the host of the conservative late night radio show coast to Coast.

[Robert Young]

The only thing I'm not happy about is my passport, but I wanted to talk to him to see if we could file something or give some more evidence to the judge.

[Larison Campbell]

As Young continues chatting, his energy changes. He grows irritated.

[Robert Young]

I just want to tell you, this place is the filthiest place I've ever been in. The medical services are amateur. I mean, it is amazing how bad the food is. I mean, if anything, this food wouldn't even be classified as food. I mean, they treat people like animals here.

[Larison Campbell]

He's complaining about the dirty accommodations and poor medical care. That's pretty ironic.

[Robert Young]

And I know this is being recorded so you can all pass this on to the DA because this is going public, but the bottom line is, you know, I'm just like. My attorney says, we are going to fight this and we are going to win.

[Larison Campbell]

Now, Young knows by this point that he's going to face an uphill battle in the legal case mounting against him. But he's confident. He doesn't just want to win the case. He wants to keep the Miracle Ranch business afloat and growing.

[Robert Young]

We need to get the order that the judge said today. He said that you can't see patients that are sick.

[Bebe Fell]

So I.

[Robert Young]

So as long as that's all right. I'm not gonna take. We can take patients that are not sick, you know.

[Larison Campbell]

And it also becomes clear in these calls that Young sees these sick patients just as dollar signs. Weak, sick, gullible dollar signs.

[Robert Young]

They're all lo People that owe us money.

[Larison Campbell]

Pretty quickly, he posts bail. And Robert Young is ready to fight back with everything he has. From sony music entertainment, campside media, and dorothy street pictures, I'm larison campbell, and this is Dr. Miracle. Episode. The DA's office officially charges Robert Young with multiple counts of practicing medicine without a license and grand theft. Theft because he took money from people and delivered something fraudulent. Young is on house arrest. He hires a high powered lawyer, Paul Finst, a former San Diego county da, to represent him for the trial.

[Robert Young]

He's a good attorney and he knows the law very well.

[Larison Campbell]

Jim Clark, the investigator in the DA's office, says Young's lawyer had a lot of pull in San Diego.

[Robert Young]

He's, you know, he can be intimidating to go up against the courtroom. Some people do not believe in alternative medical treatments. Other people believe in them very strongly.

[Larison Campbell]

This is Young's lawyer talking to reporters.

[Robert Young]

The state of California allows the patient to choose how they want to approach their healing process.

[Larison Campbell]

Over the course of many months, Robert Young's attorney and the DA's office prepare for the trial. With motions flying back and forth to get their witnesses in order, Jim talks to people around the ranch to see who will cooperate. Some disgruntled former employees, like June, were happy to talk, but others, like Mary the cook, didn't want to testify.

[Dawn]

The district attorney and her assistant. I went down there to the courthouse and they took me in the room and they asked me a bunch of questions and I said, I can't do this. I don't want to do this. It's too.

[Bebe Fell]

I'll just sit up there and cry.

[Dawn]

I'm like, I ain't. I can't do it. I'm sorry. Cause when you tell stories about those people, it just upsets me.

[Larison Campbell]

Meaning the people on the ranch who were dying and often in so much pain.

[Dawn]

You leave those gates and you'd sit out there and you'd cry.

[Larison Campbell]

Because of the patients.

[Bebe Fell]

Yep.

[Dawn]

And then you pull yourself together and go, and then go back, go check.

[Larison Campbell]

You know, when you drop off to.

[Dawn]

Shake some food, some people would just be way worse. And then when you keep so busy and then you drive out the gates again.

[Larison Campbell]

But even though Mary felt this way, many of Young's followers still believed in him, even as they watched his patients get sicker. Jim Clark, the investigator for the da, approached some of them, too.

[Robert Young]

I did try to interview some of these people and they were hardcore believers, just on his side, gave glowing statements about him, saying, I know what he's done. I've Seen it. I've seen people improve. He does good work. He does great things for people. What you're doing to him is wrong. He is a doctor.

[Larison Campbell]

When Don gets a call from the DA's office asking her to talk to them, she doesn't really tell them anything.

[Robert Young]

She came across acting like she was cooperative, but she was holding back a lot of information.

[Larison Campbell]

Dawn still believes Young was trying to help people. Anyway. The trial isn't top of mind for her now because dawn is worried about herself. After Young had gone off on her in that microscopy class, dawn was shaken. For the first time, she began to believe that she could really die. That fear was growing so big that it was starting to outweigh her fear of chemo and radiation. Finally, she booked an appointment with an oncologist.

[Dawn]

I remember walking into the office. It was this beautiful office in San Francisco. It had so much beautiful art and. And just you felt like you were in the spa. My aunt used to call the oncologist the devil. My first thought was, this doesn't really look like the devil's office.

[Larison Campbell]

The oncologist recommended a PET scan, but dawn wasn't sure she wanted to do that. She still trusted Young, even loved him. But it didn't seem like she was getting better. So she got the PET scan.

[Dawn]

I lit up like a Christmas tree. It was a distance metastasis, which makes it stage four. He said, you know, normally I'd be comfortable sending people home to think about it. He said, with you, you're in danger of just stepping out of the car and your hip snapping. He's basically saying he wanted to start chemo right that minute. The first time I had chemotherapy was one of the most spiritual experiences of my. It was because for the first time in my life, I was getting help. I was going to be had a chance to live and be healed. I went and I sat in the chemo chair, and within a couple hours, I was getting chemo for the very first time. I realized later that I was finally on a path that could actually save me. And I had an amazing response to that chemo. The side effects were very minimal. None of which he scared me about came true. I went into complete remission. They call it Ned. No evidence of disease.

[Larison Campbell]

Finally, years after she first set foot on that ranch, dawn is cancer free. But even though it's now obvious that the chemo worked and Young's protocol didn't, dawn hasn't turned her back on him. She's not an angry person who blames others for her situation. And she still feels close to Young, still looks to him for approval. So she sends her scans to him.

[Dawn]

I sent him some photos of my PET scans that show before and after. And it shows my back all lit up with cancer. And then the other one shows it all gone.

[Larison Campbell]

After the chemo, dawn was worried that Young would be angry with her for getting conventional treatment, but he wasn't. Dawn told me that Young seemed genuinely happy for her, which was odd. I mean, she had done exactly what he'd told her not to do, so why wasn't he furious? Maybe he felt those fatherly feelings towards her. Maybe they were reciprocated. Maybe he was relieved that someone in his orbit had been saved. Or maybe it was something else. Soon, Dawn's scrolling on Facebook and she sees something. Young has taken her private scans and posted them on his own page.

[Dawn]

He went on to say, you know, the reason she had this response was because she did the PH miracle program.

[Larison Campbell]

He's selling Don's success story as his own. Now, he does say that she took Taxol, a chemotherapy drug. But he spends a lot more time in the post emphasizing that she was on the alkaline diet. He's saying he cured her. And in this moment, a switch flips for Dawn. She sees that he's lying. And as she continues her chemo, she finds more of Young's lies.

[Dawn]

I'm starting to realize, you know, as I'm going through treatment that all these things he said would happen to me didn't happen.

[Larison Campbell]

What are the things?

[Dawn]

Well, just that the chemo would kill me. The chemo would make the cancer come back 10 times more aggressive. And I realized that after all that treatment, my hair didn't fall out, I didn't have side effects. All these things didn't happen. None of it came true.

[Larison Campbell]

At the same time that dawn is facing treatment, she decides to face other problems in her life. She'd been drinking heavily, but now she started a 12 step program and got sober.

[Dawn]

It came very clear to me that in my AA life was to be honest.

[Larison Campbell]

So when dawn gets a second call from Jim Clark in the DA's office, she knows what to do.

[Dawn]

And if my job was just to be honest, then that's what I was going to do. Well, me being honest was open up a can of whoop ass on him. It was like basically all so much information. The DA couldn't believe that Jim Clark had let me get away the first time. And so they interviewed me and I just told the truth.

[Larison Campbell]

Jim was recording their conversation. Here's part of it.

[Robert Young]

I just kind of thought of him as, you know, like a saint or a God or something, you know? Okay, now, did you. Did you believe him to be a doctor? Well, his name was Dr. Robert Young.

[Dawn]

So I wasn't sure whether he was a medical doctor.

[Robert Young]

I don't really know if I thought much about it past that, I think.

[Larison Campbell]

She tells him that Young would give her IVs in secret because he knew he was under investigation.

[Robert Young]

Actually inserts the needle through your skin into the vein? Yes. Okay.

[Larison Campbell]

Jim Clark is experienced, unflappable. He's been working on this case for years at this point, but even he is shocked at some of the stuff Don is telling him.

[Robert Young]

Dr. Young was such a big thing.

[Dawn]

About colonics, and he believed that constipation.

[Robert Young]

Was the cause of all sickness and disease. I'm sorry, he said what? That constipation was the cause of sickness and disease. Constipation, yeah. It was a major contributor, you know, like huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. So I can understand that.

[Dawn]

Dr. Young says if you're not going.

[Robert Young]

Three to five times a day, you're constipated. That's insane.

[Larison Campbell]

But as Jim listens to her speak, he realizes it's too late to incorporate all of her account into the criminal trial. So will the DA have enough to win against Young? After nearly two years of back and forth and motions, in late 2015, Young's trial finally takes place in a downtown courthouse in San Diego. Robert Young is the only one on trial. The DA's case against a couple of ranch employees didn't stick. And they didn't prosecute Shelley Young, even though she was Robert's business partner, the chef creating all those alkaline concoctions like avocado pudding. And according to dawn, she did more than that.

[Dawn]

She lived off that blood money. You know, she got her breast implants and she. When she would come to the ranch, she would. Everyone would scurry and hide like she was. Like, she hated having patients at the ranch. She hated having patients up near her house in the pool. I mean, I was at the pool, pool every day.

[Larison Campbell]

Unlike Robert, Shelley didn't treat patients. In fact, it seems like she didn't want patients at the ranch at all. She just wanted to make her recipes and sell diet books and supplements. According to Jim Clark, she didn't seem like she was involved with billing patients either or day to day care. So they did not prosecute her. And by the time of the trial, Robert and Shelley's marriage was ending. By 2016, they were officially getting a divorce. In the San Diego courthouse, the prosecutor says that Robert Young is a charlatan and a con man, a wizard of fraud. She argues that Young should receive a heavy sentence for leading so many people to sickness and even death. But Young's attorney says that this case is nothing more than an attack on alternative medicine, and people have the right to choose how to treat their own bodies. During the case, prosecutors also reveal that this isn't Young's first brush with the law. As we said earlier, he had been arrested before. He was living in Utah, then about to publish his runaway bestseller, the Ph Miracle, when he was prosecuted for the same thing he's on trial for now, practicing medicine without a license. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were all of his fake degrees, but there were also other run ins with the authorities, like the time in the 1990s when he admitted to mishandling over $100,000 from a pension fund he managed. In the criminal trial, it became clear that Robert Young would lie. Not just important stuff, like whether he could cure cancer, but also really dumb stuff, too. Like how he said he'd always been a star tennis player in college.

[Robert Young]

He was. He was good enough to make the team, but he wasn't good enough to be one of the starting guys.

[Larison Campbell]

Each side calls up their witnesses, former patients and their families. People telling their horror stories about getting sicker, dying, and people who still worshiped Young. The jury deliberates for a long time. Two weeks. They agree that he should be convicted of practicing medicine without a license. But they are split on whether to convict him of grand theft, meaning stealing money from the patients that he was treating with his miracle cure.

[Robert Young]

The jury was just. We had two jurors on there that were just not with the program. And I think one of them had a grudge against law enforcement, and another one just couldn't, you know, he was unable to connect the dots.

[Larison Campbell]

They're deadlocked. This means there will be another trial. But rather than face that trial, Young is finally willing to make a deal. He's sentenced to three years and eight months in prison, but because he's been on house arrest for so long, he'll only serve five months.

[Robert Young]

We were pretty disappointed in the trial.

[Larison Campbell]

Dawn was devastated by the verdict. Her life would be shorter because Young had treated her instead of a real oncologist, and now the guy gets only five months in prison. But some people are telling dawn she has a chance to get justice. She can pursue a civil case and try to get a monetary settlement. From Young, she starts calling attorneys like Bebe Fell.

[Bebe Fell]

Before I met dawn, the only thing I had heard about the alkaline diet was people pushing alkaline water, which was really expensive.

[Larison Campbell]

BB Fell is an attorney in San Diego. Like Dawn. She's also a mom. She has three kids.

[Bebe Fell]

My impression, initial impression of dawn is that she was just beaten up. I mean, she just seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. She felt very responsible and guilty for having gone through this.

[Larison Campbell]

Phoebe knew that winning the case would be a challenge.

[Bebe Fell]

I mean, I knew that there were areas where dawn was vulnerable. Number one, she participated in bringing other people to the ranch. So I thought that made her very vulnerable to a jury thinking, wait a minute, you're not a victim, you're part of the problem.

[Larison Campbell]

Dawn had worked for Young. She brought more people to the ranch and to the diet and made money from it. Bebe would have to work extra hard to convince the jury that dawn was a victim and that Young had ruined her life. That was the first challenge.

[Bebe Fell]

And then number two is that she was seeing medical providers who were giving her the right advice. She had an initial surgery. They said, the margins are not clear. You need to have another one. And then somewhere in relying on and trusting traditional, medical, scientific based advice, she took this left turn.

[Larison Campbell]

The jury might look at dawn and think it was her own fault for following Young. So Bebe would have to make the jury understand and empathize with dawn and her choice to originally skip the chemo and follow Young instead.

[Bebe Fell]

I want to make him sound crazy because he is crazy, but I don't want to make him sound so crazy that people fault Don for believing him.

[Larison Campbell]

The civil case began on October 22, 2018, at the hall of Justice, a courthouse in downtown San Diego. From the outside, under a San Diego blue sky, the place looks like more like a hotel than a government building. It's white and modern with long blue glass windows. The only thing that suggests courthouse are the big white columns that line the front of the building.

[Dawn]

We would walk to the courthouse each day, and it was just like a TV court thing. You know, the press was there. It felt so exciting, but at the bottom of it. So this time was something so tragic inside the courtroom.

[Larison Campbell]

It was a weird scene, different from other trials Bebe had worked on.

[Bebe Fell]

There were all sorts of moments where it was like it was. It didn't feel real, like we had all these very weak looking people. Patients come into the courtroom during the trial, and they were sitting there as Robert Young's little You know, cheering squad, I think to show, visually show the jury that Dr. Young was helping people. I mean, they are staunch supporters. They like believe him and follow him and think that he knows a secret that nobody else knows.

[Larison Campbell]

We didn't talk to these supporters, but we know a lot of what Young's flock believes in from Rick Lorenzi, who we talked to on the phone. He's the guy who made a feature length video about his weight loss journey on the alkaline diet.

[Robert Young]

As soon as you get notoriety, they will follow you, chase you, push you into a hole or eradicate you with Dr. Young. Two court cases, two and a half years in court, six months in jail for feeding people avocados grapefruits. And take a drop of blood out of your finger and recommend the sodium bicarbonate drip.

[Larison Campbell]

Rick is talking about the baking soda IVs Robert Young administered. He sees Young's legal troubles as part of a vast conspiracy to keep the alkaline diet a secret and keep the population sick.

[Robert Young]

Every decade, an AMA doctor or a holistic practitioner that found the link between alkalinity and cancer and got attacked. You have to realize that there is no money in you being healthy. The only money is you being really sick, but alive. And right near death is when you spend the most on health care. So they want you really sick but alive. Unfortunate but true.

[Larison Campbell]

One reason Young supporters were so devoted is because he's a good talker, charismatic. And for Don and Bebe, that was a problem.

[Bebe Fell]

I was worried that the jury was going to find him charming and find him believable. I mean, the other thing he does is he uses big words and he leans on, quote, unquote, science.

[Larison Campbell]

Young took the stand and of course did a great job talking himself up and supporting his theories with, quote, unquote, science. So when it's Beebe's turn to cross examine him, her strategy is to make him say as little as possible.

[Bebe Fell]

My goal was to put him up there, ask him questions I knew he had to say yes to, and then get him off the stand. And it was impossible. I mean, he got up there and it was like he was on stage, right? He took every opportunity to grandstand, talking directly to the jury, blowing right over my questions and not answering them, instead using it as his own platform.

[Larison Campbell]

So Bebe tries another approach. She cracks open one of Young's books, goes straight to the source of all his bs.

[Bebe Fell]

One of the things that was very unique about Robert Young's theory is, is that it really was like snake oil. It cured everything. It was the cure all. And so when I was reading through his books, I was like, oh, wow. Oh, it cures cancer. Oh, it also cures aids. Oh, it also cures obesity. Oh, it also cures diabetes. So it also cures hair loss was one of the things that he talked about in his book. And so he's on the stand with a full head of hair.

[Larison Campbell]

So Bebe is standing there reading from Young's book about curing hair loss. She finishes the passage, closes the book, flips it over, and for the first time, she sees something she'd never noticed before. I just want to pause for a second here, because this moment in the case is kind of like that big scene in the movie Legally Blonde.

[Bebe Fell]

Ms. Windham, what had you done earlier that day? I got up, got a latte, went to the gym, got a perm, and came home. Well, you got in the shower.

[Larison Campbell]

Yes.

[Dawn]

Isn't it the first cardinal rule of.

[Bebe Fell]

Perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet.

[Dawn]

Your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk.

[Bebe Fell]

Of deactivating the ammonium thygloccolate?

[Larison Campbell]

Yes.

[Bebe Fell]

And if, in fact, you weren't washing.

[Dawn]

Your hair, as I suspect you weren't, because your curls are still intact, wouldn't.

[Bebe Fell]

You have heard the gunshot?

[Larison Campbell]

That is a lot like what happened with Bebe in that courtroom. So Bebe finishes reading a passage from Young's book, one that mentions curing hair loss with his diet. She closes the book, looks down at the back cover, and notices for the first time that the man in the author's photo is bald. But the man sitting before her on the witness stand has a full head of hair.

[Bebe Fell]

So I just asked him on a whim, did you use your theory to regrow your hair? And I showed the jury the picture of his bald head. Did you use your theory to regrow your hair? He was like, yes, but I also did get surgery. But of all the things I threw at him, of all the accusations that I made during the course of his cross examination, that was the one that got him mad. When I pointed out that he used to be bald, he turned bright red. He was shaking. He was angry.

[Larison Campbell]

Bebe had just shown the jury that Young knew the alkaline diet wasn't a cure all. He knew it wouldn't make his hair grow back. That's why he had surgery. And if he knew the alkaline diet didn't grow hair, he probably also knew it didn't cure cancer. As the trial went on, it became clear to BB Phil that what Young did wasn't just quackery, it was sinister.

[Bebe Fell]

What that did was that that took people away from their families, brought them to the ranch, took them away from their medical providers, and then he took away their comfort. He took away their pain medication. So in my mind, he was literally torturing these people by, you know, taking them away from their support system and then causing them extraordinary amounts of pain that they shouldn't have had to go through. That went beyond anything that I could square in terms of why he does what he does. Like, why do that, That I wouldn't think that got him more money. That seemed to take somebody who is dying away from their family and then to take away their pain medications just seemed so evil beyond anything necessary for his fraud. There was zero humility to him, zero humility. And I asked him if he had any regrets about Don, and he said no.

[Larison Campbell]

As for dawn, all she had were regrets and guilt, and this had just been her normal state for so long. Bebe illustrated that for the jury by reading passages from Dawn's diary. She'd written them while she was struggling to stay on the alkaline diet.

[Bebe Fell]

She talks about how she's so mad at herself and how what a horrible mother she must be to put food, those small morsels of food, over her kids having a mom.

[Larison Campbell]

She believed everything that Young had said about her cancer being her fault for not following the alkaline diet. Strictly enough, clearly that's completely untrue. But was Dawn's cancer her own fault because she did follow the diet instead of using conventional medical treatments?

[Dawn]

A lot of people say, how stupid are you that you followed this man? And how did you not know after seeing so many people die? Or how did you not, you know, like, how come it took so long for the wool to come off your eyes?

[Larison Campbell]

On the day that dawn walked from her seat in the courtroom to take the stand herself, Bebe had to prove to the jury that dawn was a victim of Young's.

[Dawn]

It was abuse, what he did, that he isolated you, he brainwashed you, and that's what he did to all his patients.

[Larison Campbell]

Dawn was strong on the stand, and her oncologist, Garrett Smith, the one who had ordered her the PET scan, also gave a deposition. Dr. Smith explained why the ph of our blood has nothing to do with cancer. And then Bebe asks him about Dawn's. Was her cancer curable back in 2007, when she was first diagnosed, when she first began treatment with Dr. Young, Dr. Garrett Smith.

[Robert Young]

If we had gotten dawn early in the journey. Her ideal treatment would have been a operation to remove the tumor from her breast, and then, after surgery, removed all of her cancer. Then she would have been treated with a prescribed course, one year of a chemotherapy. But at the end of a year, she'd have been done, and she would have had a greater than 80% chance of being cancer free forever.

[Larison Campbell]

Then Bebe asked about Dawn's prognosis. Dawn had responded very well to treatment, but her cancer was stage four, which means it would come back and it would keep coming back until the treatments eventually stopped working. So how many years did she have left to live? Dawn had never heard her prognosis before. She'd been taking things one day at a time.

[Dawn]

She said, you know, are you sure you want to be in the room? He's going to talk about your prognosis. And I was. I kind of froze, clammed up, didn't know, and then I decided to be in the room.

[Larison Campbell]

Dr. Smith said, I would estimate dawn is looking at three to four years left before we lose complete control of her breast cancer, and then it is inevitable that she will die. It was at that moment that dawn realized what her future really looked like. Plain as day. There was no more hope, Just this definitive prognosis from Dr. Smith.

[Dawn]

I was totally freaked out when he said three. He said, like three hears. You know, you can't show so much emotion in the courtroom, and, you know, it just kind of makes you feel a little sick.

[Larison Campbell]

As difficult as it was, the trial was nearing its end. Bebe told the jury what she thought one last time.

[Dawn]

And Bebe had done this unbelievable closing argument. And one of the things she said that really stuck with the jury was she was like, then he was in Utah, and then he went here, and then he came here in your backyard.

[Larison Campbell]

Young had been pulling this I'm a doctor with a medical license and I can heal you thing for years in two different states. BB Said it was time to punish him, and if they found him liable, she said that would send a message not only to him, but also to Dawn.

[Bebe Fell]

One of the things that we had to address in closing was Dawn's own fault. And we had to hit that head on because clearly she had some role to play in deciding not to get traditional medical care and not follow what her doctors were advising. So the way we cover that is by acknowledging that she felt guilty. And so I told that the word verdict is actually from the Latin verdicto, which means to speak the truth, and that there's nobody in the courtroom who needs to hear the truth more than dawn and that their verdict needed to tell dawn that it was not her fault.

[Larison Campbell]

Finally, it was time to hear the verdict.

[Dawn]

So when we finally went for the verdict, we all went back, and we're just all sitting there and I'm just all nervous as anything. And then we get a call that there's a question from the jury. And then I forget exactly what the question was, but it sounded like a question in favor of him. And we were just like, oh, we lost. Everyone was feeling like we lost the case, and we're just like, oh. And then 15 minutes later, there's a verdict. We're just like, oh, my God. Everyone was, oh, my God. And we're walking back up that street just. Or she's just a block away from the courthouse. And we go in and one of the jurors looks at me and winks.

[Larison Campbell]

On the final episode of Dr. Miracle, we'll find out what the jury thinks. And I'll meet up with Young, too.

[Robert Young]

This whole thing was a setup. A governmental setup, an FBI, CIA, state to take me down. Is it of any benefit to give someone false hope?

[Bebe Fell]

I think Robert Young is guilty of knowing that his treatments were fake.

[Dawn]

He played with every aspect of their.

[Bebe Fell]

Life, and he preyed upon people who.

[Robert Young]

Were weak and vulnerable and desperate.

[Bebe Fell]

And he's still doing it.

[Larison Campbell]

Doctor Miracle is a production of Campside Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Dorothy Street Pictures. The show was hosted by me, Larison Campbell. I reported it with Lily Houston Smith, our producer, and also our field recorder. Shoshi Shmulovitz is our managing producer and editor. Our executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis and me, Laris and Campbell from Sony Music Entertainment. Our executive producer is Catherine St. Louis. Our sound designer and mix engineer is Michelle Macklem. Studio recording by Ewan Lai Trimuin. Story editing by Amy Padula. Fact checking by Julia Case Levine. Additional help from Rachel Yang and Rajeev Gola. If you're enjoying the show, please tell a friend. It really does help spread the word.