← Juicy Crimes with Heather McDonald
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- [00:00]
A
You guys, this movie, Passenger. Oh my God, the jump scares all of it. It's so scary and it's like so creepy because I like horror movies that are set in a realistic setting. Like this could be any of us. You're on a road trip. You're with your loved one or your friend, and then you get in that weird space where maybe you're driving at night, it's dark. This is the perfect movie to freak you out about going on a road trip. But that's why you have to see it so you can be aware. Go see Pat Passenger only in theaters starting May 22nd.
- [00:36]
B
Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door and they found a way to combine THC with carefully selected functional ingredients to create gummies, baked goods and flour for whatever type of buzz you'd want. I'm talking about mood.com they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and you can get 20% off your first order@mood.com with free promo code Juicy Crimes. So forget the one size fits all supplements that only get you high. Mood's functional gummies are optimized to kick in in as little as 15 minutes and take you to a mood that you're looking for. My favorite is Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies because this is for a mind soothing calm each night. It is one of their best sellers and I can see why. I just have some times when my mind just doesn't turn off or I'm stressed about something the next day. But most importantly, I need a good night's slee and I have found this
- [01:35]
A
has really worked perfectly.
- [01:37]
B
Best of all, not only is every Mood product backed by a hundred dollar day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code juicycrimes. So head over to mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for and let Mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use promo code Juicy Crimes when you check out to save 20% off your first try it today@mood.com did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door and they found a way to combine THC with carefully selected functional ingredients to create gummies, baked goods and flour for whatever type of buzz you'd want. I'm talking about mood.com they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and you can get 20% off your first order@mood.com with promo code Juicy Crimes. So forget the one size fits all supplements that only get you high. Mood's functional gummies are optimized to kick in in as little as 15 minutes and take you to a mood that you're looking for. My favorite is Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies because this is for a mind soothing calm each night. It is one of their best sellers and I can see why. I just have some times when my mind just doesn't turn off or I'm stressed about something the next day. But most importantly, I need a good night's sleep and I have found this
- [03:08]
A
has really worked perfectly.
- [03:10]
B
Best of all, not only is every Mood product backed by a hundred dollar day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code juicycrimes. So head over to mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for and let Mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use promo Code Juicy Crimes when you check out to save 20% off first order. Try it today@mood.com.
- [03:52]
A
Hello and welcome to Juicy Crimes. I'm very excited to have a return guest from the hit podcast Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea Dunlop. Welcome back to Juicy Crimes.
- [04:02]
C
Thank you so much Heather. Fantastic to be back.
- [04:05]
A
I'm really grateful that you reached out because there's some really juicy things that have happened in cases that you have had a huge deal with. One of a very talked about Netflix I think it was Netflix documentary about. What was the full title of it about Maya. What was it?
- [04:25]
C
Take care of Maya.
- [04:26]
A
Yeah, Take Care of Maya. Which was this incredible true story about a young girl who was very very sick and her mother was trying to find out what was wrong with her. And in doing that several hospitals and doctors questioned if the mother might have munch houses by proxy. And based on the events that happened by them, inquiring if this could be a possibility in protecting the child, she then got to such a depressive state that the mother ended her life. The family of the mother then went after all these doctors and hospitals and then. Why don't you take it from there, what happened?
- [05:05]
C
Yeah, so this is a really complicated story and the events, the main events took place about 10 years ago. So yeah, so this was a family of a 10 year old girl who they brought to a hospital in Sarasota, Florida, Johns Hopkins Hall Children's and you know, brought her in with complaints of severe stomach pain. She was being treated for this condition of crps. She was being treated with a great deal of ketamine. So ketamine was a big part of this story, which has been back in the news, because I don't know if you saw this, but, you know, the. Obviously was involved with the beloved death of the beloved actor Matthew Perry. One of his ketamine doctors just was sentenced to a lengthy, some lengthy present time. So, yeah, so this was, this was a child who had gone through.
- [05:52]
A
No, I don't think that. Wait, the doc, Wait, hold on. The doctor was. The doctor was also sentenced, but then also the ketamine queen, the woman who was supplying this enormous amount of drugs to these other doctors. And I remember there was a little bit of controversy about that in that it seemed like she got more time than the actual doctor.
- [06:10]
C
Yeah, yeah, I believe, I believe you're right. But there's been a couple of people that have been held criminally accountable in that, in that case. And I think there's a lot of interesting parallels with that, but nonetheless. So this was, you know, the, the ketamine treatments were a big deal in this case. When the mother came into the hospital, into Johns Hopkins, All Children's, she was demanding that her daughter be given a huge amount of ketamine that, you know, none of the doctors had ever even heard of someone giving a person that much ketamine, let alone a child. You know, what came up at trial, that this was 20 to 100 times the recommended dosage. And, you know, her mother was also threatening to take the child away from the hospital and put her in home hospice care so that she could, quote, finally die because she doesn't want to live like this anymore. So it was a very scary situation. The hospital intervened, as they should. Right. And yeah, and it sort of devolved into this situation where the child was sheltered in the hospital. There was a lot of back and forth with the parents. The parents were being investigated by cps, they were being investigated by law enforcement. And then about three months into Maya Kowalski's stay at Johns Hopkins, the mother tragically died by suicide, as you said. About a year later, her husband, Jack Kowalski, the surviving parent, filed an enormous lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children's Dr. Sally Smith, a number of other defendants. This all went to trial after the Netflix film. The Netflix film Take Care of Maya told a story that actually didn't even include some of the details that I just told you. Sort of played down the role of ketamine. Said she was being given low dose ketamine, you know, purported, you know, presented Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, who is this doctor in Florida, who has an all cash ketamine clinic that he runs where he hands out this diagnosis of CRPS that's the main focus of his work in many occasions, including Maya Kowalski's where numerous other doctors have evaluated that patient and said no, this patient does not have CRPs. Importantly, you know, Maya Kowalski was seen by three other world class hospitals during the medical odyssey that led up to this. And they had diagnosed her something called conversion disorder, which is a condition where a patient is having real symptoms. So they have pain, they can, it can cause blindness, it can cause, you know, real physical symptoms, but it's because of a psychological reason. So that's what, that's sort of a basic understanding of conversion disorder. So that was the diagnosis she'd been given by three places. You know, she'd been seen in two hospitals in Florida and then she took her to Lurie Children's in Chicago where they had some family members and they all said the same thing. And then she found Dr. Kirkpatrick. The mother, Biata Kowalski had been to by her account, networking with other parents and decided her daughter had CRPs. Decided, you know, Beata was an infusion nurse. So she did have some medical training. Decided this was a condition. The mother was a nurse, the mother was an infusion nurse. Yeah. So that was what she was working at. Which sort of added a really scary element to this case as well. Right.
- [09:12]
A
Because she was, had this extra knowledge. It's like a person that is just smart enough to be dangerous in the legal field. Like maybe they didn't go to law school but then they're like the most sue happy people because they know just enough.
- [09:25]
C
Yes.
- [09:26]
A
I feel like that was an element here.
- [09:28]
C
Yeah. And it is, it's, it's extra scary for a couple of reasons. Number one, because as you said, they have extra medical knowledge. Although now, you know, everyone has access to the Internet and ChatGPT and can find symptoms pretty easily. It used to be that perpetrators of this form of abuse were really sort of confined to the medical field. But we still do see a lot of, you know, nurses and medical professionals in, in sort of these perpetrator population. You know, in this case, the mother also had access to her daughter's ports. One thing that we really look for in terms of like, you know, medical child abuse, Munchausen by proxy situations that could be possibly headed towards, you know, a really serious harm and or death is when a child has an indwelling port. So if you're, if you're a patient who's getting a lot of medications. You know, you think about the cancer patients and people who are getting regular infusions, which. Maya Kowalski got 55 high dose ketamine infusions in the year leading up to her hospitalization at Johns Hopkins. So she was getting a lot of treatments. So she had an indwelling port. So that means it gives you access directly to the bloodstream. So this is very dangerous. In Munchausen by proxy cases, you know, we see instances of poisoning. You know, perpetrators can introduce all kinds of things into their child's bloodstream. That's something that comes up a lot in these severe cases. And in this case, you know, her mother had reported to various hospitals that they'd seen that she had been accessing this port on a regular basis. So she was giving her daughter drugs through this port, including liquid ketamine. So this was just a very scary and from my vantage point, pretty clearly life threatening situation of abuse. Yeah, so sorry, go ahead.
- [11:07]
A
No, so. So where are we now? So the case did turn into at first in favor of Maya's family.
- [11:15]
C
Yeah, that.
- [11:16]
A
That they, they inadvertently caused this woman to end her life.
- [11:20]
C
Yeah. So basically, you know, so Jack, quality initiates. Initiates this. That is for, you know, a bunch of things that eventually get winnowed down to just Johns Hopkins, all children's. Was the plaintiff at the end, or, excuse me, was the defendant at the end. And you know, they're making like these sort of broad claims. There's a bunch of counts, I think there was like 20 different counts, you know, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, you know, false imprisonment. Right. Because she was sheltered in the hospital and sort of all these other claims. So medical malpractice for not giving her, you know, this high dose ketamine that her family was requested, even though that's beyond the, you know, outside of the scope of practice. So Jack Kowalski and his lawyer Gregory Anderson, you know, took this to court and in advance of going to court, they did a massive PR blitz which included this film. This film came out before this went to trial. So importantly, you know, number one, this film left out a lot of the facts that I've just told you, which are pretty important to understanding what actually happened to this child. And number two, the hospital and the doctors and all of these people who had cared for this child legally could not comment on this case unless the Kowalski signed a HIPAA saying that they could and they didn't. So there was no way for the doctor or hospital to respond to any of this until it went to trial. So this. That's so.
- [12:39]
A
Wait, that's so interesting.
- [12:42]
C
Yeah.
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A
Which really made it. Whether it was the documentarian's goal or not, they really had no choice but to tell just one side.
- [12:51]
C
Yes. Well, the thing is, you know, as a, when you're doing a documentary, you know, as a journalist, you can decide whether or not you're able to tell, tell a fair story. And if you, you know, what Caitlin Keating, the film's producer has said in interviews was, well, there was thousands of pages of court documents and, you know, years of court filings by the time they, you know, started making this film. Right. This, this dragged on for years before it ever saw a court date. And so she did actually, you know, I know this from having followed this case for years, reading thousands of pages of what happened in pretrial. Even if they had not been able to talk to the doctors, even if that hurdle of talking to them directly, there was still a lot of information that they had to deal with. And one of the things, I rewatched the film recently because we're talking about the film again in my new season because we focused on the other four families, you know, in the film, most of it's focused on Maya Kowalski's case. But then they do this sort of setup where they say, oh, there's a big problem with this doctor, Dr. Sally Smith, who is the doctor who wrote the reports in Maya's case. She's a child abuse pediatrician based out of Florida. And they really made her kind of the villain of the film. And one of the ways they did that is they sort of expand the scope late in the film and you hear in sort of rapid fire succession from these four other parents, and they don't include almost any details about what happened to their children. But they're all saying, I was falsely accused by Sally Smith. Me too. She ruined my life. Da, da, da. So you sort of hear from this other group of parents and, you know, so they like watching, rewatching this film and then watching the way they told the Maya Kowalski story. You know, they're using a lot of archival footage from, you know, Bianna Kowalski's phone or where, however they got it from, you know, from Jack Kowalski, from the surviving parent, because Bianna Kowalski, like many perpetrators, really cataloged this whole thing and put a lot of stuff online. You know, a lot of the online stuff has been taken down. Some of it was admitted as a person in the court.
- [14:51]
A
Sorry, why do you think that someone that's, you know, in this position of a sick child and Munch houses by proxy, it's so interesting. I guess it's because it really is all about attention. And the best way to get attention by the most amount of people is to put it on social media and online. But I'm always so surprised when somebody is doing some sick shit and they share it. Like, I'm surprised about the whole sharing of children porn and things like that. I'm like, wouldn't you just want no one to know that you are a sick shit? But then I was like, I don't know, maybe they want to know that they're not the only six piece of shit. And. Or they, you know, and so for the same reason that someone might do that, that's a pedophile. I guess someone that's doing this too just needs to get the love and care from other mothers who actually are like, oh, you're a saint. I don't know how you do it.
- [15:48]
C
I mean, one of the most disturbing things, Heather, about having been on this beat for the last several years is seeing the ways in which perpetrators find one another and share resources and sort of form these online affinity groups. Wait, okay, so stop.
- [16:08]
A
I did not realize this existed. So there are just like, there's a pedophile group. There are Munchausen by Proxy mothers that find each other.
- [16:19]
C
Yes.
- [16:20]
A
But they. Do they ever admit that they're doing
- [16:22]
C
this or, I mean, in the privacy of their own spaces? I don't know. What I can tell you is that, you know, I have sort of seen these, as I like to say now I am sort of all out of red string after this season because I just started realizing there were so many connections. And so with Munchausen by Proxy perpetrators, which we'll talk about first, and then we'll talk about some of these other people who have said they've been falsely accused of abusive head trauma or fracturing the. Their baby's bones because they're sort of two separate and overlapping groups. With Munchausen by Proxy, a lot of times these parents will coalesce around rare diseases. So that's unfortunately, a huge target for these perpetrators. So something like crps, Right? Crps. This condition that Maya allegedly had. And I say allegedly because the way that this, you know, I cannot tell you for sure whether or not she has it or had it. But I know that three, you know, hospitals, including Lurie Children's, that had a, you know, a specialist who dealt with a lot of CRPs, case cases, examined her and said, no, she does not have CRPs. And, you know, someone from Stanford was on the stand testifying about this person does not meet the diagnostic criteria for CRPs. But it's a rare pain disorder where someone will have an initial injury. So, you know, say you break your elbow or something. Normally it should heal. But if you have CRPs, you have, you know, inflammation and pain sort of ongoing in a chronic manner. But it's very rare. And so, of course, you know, she was saying, and this was always the case in these, in these cases is she's saying she has this rare disorder. It's the most rare version of it. She has whole body CRPs, which does not exist. You know, experts testified to that you cannot have CRPs in your whole body. It's chronic regional pain syndrome. It's right there in the name, excuse me, complex regional pain syndrome, you know, and that she needs the most extreme treatment. So, you know, right away she's getting her these ketamine infusions. She takes her to Mexico for this five day ketamine coma procedure where she's, you know, told, where the doctors tell them that her child has a 50, 50 chance of death. And, you know, again, details that were not included in the film but known to the filmmakers. None of this was a secret at the time they were making the film. So I really, at this point, you know, there's a lot of. I have a lot of questions for these filmmakers. They have never responded to any of my requests for comment. Be interesting to see if anyone ever else asked them these sort of same questions, you know, just really these outrageous things. And so where you see a lot of sort of community forming is around these rare diseases. And where this is really sad is that a lot of these rare diseases, you know, some of them are a little questionable as to whether they exist at all. But some of these rare diseases, you know, exist and people are really affected by these things. In our sixth season, you know, which I was on your show talking about, there was this condition of neuromyelitis optica, which is a rare disease that happened to affect the child of a billionaire. So there's this whole well funded Guthy Jackson foundation. And the perpetrator in that case, who claimed her son had it, you know, ended up being their director of patient advocacy for 13 years almost until I called them and let them know she had a criminal history. But, you know, you see a lot of this, like they really infiltrated these rare disease spaces, right? And they say, oh, my child has the rarest version of this. And even though they meet any of the criteria. They're a new case that science is going to learn so much from. And there was a lot of this talk about Maya. And the reason we know there was a lot of this talk about Maya was that in addition to, you know, I think Beata, they subpoenaed the law enforcement, collected I think, nine social media accounts that she had for her daughter. Most of many of them in her daughter's voice. So, you know, her daughter was, was 10 years old at the time. So she had this blog that she wrote, a WordPress blog that biota wrote in Maya's voice, talking about all of these treatments and all of these medical things that she was going through. And she talked frequently on that blog about how she wanted to die, you know, talking as her daughter. And this blog was extremely disturbing. And as you've said, you know, it's, it's strange that people put this stuff out there, but it's also like the ways in which our social media climate has made all of this work worse. It's like incalculable because, you know, as you see in a lot of the stuff you talk about, both, you know, cases that you talk about on juicy crimes, but also in your pop culture focused work, people will do a lot of crazy things for attention. And when we live in this world where the more dramatic your story is, the more attention it gets, you know, that really puts fuel on this fire. And so I think these perpetrators that just want to tell these, you know, incredibly dramatic stories and their child's gonna die and it, you know, is the most extreme thing and they're kind of on this whole odyssey. But yeah, I found that they really, you know, that's how Beata found Dr. Kirkpatrick was she found other parents who said, oh, well, you know, Dr. Kirkpatrick will give you this diagnosis basically, if you go to him, he will give the, you know, because then they position as, oh, he's the only doctor that understands CRPs. Now, mind you, you know, Dr. Herpatrick is not board certified in anything. He has no hospital admitting privileges. He is, is questionable at, you know, at best. And so, you know, you really see these sort of affinity groups, you know, coalescing around this idea of my child has a rare disease and I'm the victim of false allegations of abuse. And this also came into play with the other families that were featured in Take Care of Maya because they have, you know, these four other families which we've, you know, we, I've reported on all these, those cases in detail. Let me tell you, those do not appear to be false allegations of abuse at all. They, you know, had different outcomes in the criminal justice system, as abuse cases always do. But they definitely, there's no evidence that that doctor, the doctor Sally Smith was wrong about any of these cases. You know, and then in the credits of the film, they show all these other families, you know, from around the country that, you know, oh, we've all been, you know, we also were falsely accused of abuse. And so, you know, what the viewer is being presented with is this idea that, oh, this is a real systemic problem. This is, you know, this is, you know, doctors everywhere falsely accusing, you know, white middle class parents of abusing their children and taking them away.
- [22:20]
B
This episode of Juicy Crimes is sponsored by Zenny. Let's talk about glasses. Maybe it's time you need to get yours replaced. You're squinting through a scratched lens. That is why I want to tell you about Zenny, because Zenny is an online eyewear shop shop prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses starting at under $30. You go to zenni.com, pick a frame, upload your prescription, and they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter. And if you've ever bought glasses online before, Zenni has the virtual try on so you can see exactly how a frame looks on your face before you commit. I know that I need a certain kind of frame for my face face because I don't like my bridge of my nose, so it has to hit a little higher. And that is why I love Zenning, because I could go right try on
- [23:12]
A
different frames and saw the ones that
- [23:14]
B
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- [23:36]
A
You guys, I just saw the trailer for Passenger and we've all taken a road trip, right? You've driven and then you get in that weird space where maybe you're driving at night, it's dark, and the trailer starts out and this guy's pulled over with his friend and he's just, you know, taking a picture and oh, my God, the jump scares all of it. It's so scary and it's like, so creepy because it's kind of like this weird passenger is a demonic presence. And I do like scary movies, especially when it's like the opposite of St. Christopher, who's the patron saint of travelers. You know how I'm into saints. This would be the demonic version of that. And there's just the mysterious symbols shown throughout the trailer that I think are really juicy and I'm very excited. Watch this. I'm definitely going to have to go and see it with a few people, but that's what is fun about seeing a scary movie. So bring someone that likes to be squeezed and go see Passenger only in theaters starting May 22nd.
- [24:40]
B
Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? And they found a way to combine THC with carefully selected functional ingredients to create gummies, baked goods and flour for whatever type of buzz you'd want. I'm talking about mood.com they have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and you can get 20% off your first order@mood.com with promo code Juicy Crimes. So forget the one size fits all supplements that only get you high. Mood's functional gummies are optimized to kick in in as little as 15 minutes and take you to a mood that you're looking for. My favorite is Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies because this is for a mind soothing calm each night. It is one of their best sellers and I can see why. I just have some times when my mind just doesn't turn off or I'm stressed about something the next day. But most importantly, I need a good night's sleep and I have found this
- [25:40]
A
has really worked perfectly.
- [25:42]
B
Best of all, not only is every Mood product backed by a hundred dollar date day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code juicy crimes. So head over to mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for and let Mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use promo code Juicy Crimes when you check out to save 20% off your first order. Try it today@mood.com and what this is,
- [26:15]
C
you know, without ever Can I just
- [26:17]
A
interrupt for a second? Is it a white middle class problem?
- [26:22]
C
Munchausen by proxy abuse?
- [26:24]
A
Yes. Like is it. Is that a thing where it's really. It's not. It's not, you know that that is the demographic and why if so why do you think that is? And then. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to ask that.
- [26:35]
C
Yeah, no, it's a good question. And I mean no, it's not in that this abuse takes place place all races, all socioeconomic classes. I will tell you that I think where I think middle class white perpetrators have a lot more success with lawsuit, you know, frivolous lawsuits because they can afford attorneys. They have a lot more, they get a lot more mileage getting the media rallied to their side. So I think, I think the, the, the abuse sort of knows no, knows no distinctions with class or race. But I think the, you know, there's that you could take someone like Biata Kowalski who just is doing things that I think any parent who's looking at that straight. Right. Writing that kind of blog, subjecting your child to a treatment that she doesn't need that has a 50% chance of death. I mean, I just think these are things most parents could never imagine doing.
- [27:33]
A
I also think like a mom that, you know, has more kids or jobs or anything thing like, I mean there is an element of like the same reason where it's like I don't have the, you know, when someone's like, I don't have the luxury to be, to be depressed. I don't have the luxury to. So I'm like, I just don't think hardworking people that are like, you know, doing hourly type jobs have the luxury to visit 12 hospitals and around for attention.
- [28:04]
C
Yeah, I mean, certainly the time and access thing is huge. And I think, you know, what you see is when people don't necessarily, you know, sometimes people have wealthy parents, like that was the case in, you know, in the Sophie Hartman case that we covered in season five. And sometimes they just do a crazy amount of fundraising and grifting. It's like grifting is the job in these cases. Right. These, let me tell you, these ladies do not like to, I mean, Miata was employed during this, which actually kind of makes her an outlier a lot of times. A lot of the cases I've looked at that have gotten this severe. They make it their full time job to sort of caretake their child and then they do.
- [28:41]
A
And then they make money too. By the lie.
- [28:44]
C
Yeah. So they're just like people getting money from churches, they're fundraising and GoFundMes, you know, which Bata Kowalski and Jack Kowalski also did a fair amount of, you know, they collected money from their church.
- [28:53]
A
So Munch Houses by pro. Munch houses by proxy is, is when you're doing it to someone else, a child or whatever.
- [29:00]
C
Yes.
- [29:00]
A
Munch Houses is you're doing it to yourself.
- [29:03]
C
Yeah.
- [29:03]
A
And then there's just where you really believe that you're like sick when you're not.
- [29:08]
B
Right.
- [29:08]
A
And then. Then there's the people that just fake cancer for attention who grift. Like, yeah, there's.
- [29:15]
C
There's some distinctions here. And then, yeah, there's crossover. I mean, I think, like, I think with the Elizabeth Finch case, who's the Grey's Anatomy writer that said, you know, she had cancer and said she had been, you know, at this. At this horrific shooting at a synagogue and sort of told all these wild stories. I think there's a. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not her psychologist. I would not presume to diagnose her. I think there's a pretty good case that. That could be made for Munchausen. There's some interesting cross where if someone is only faking something for tangible benefits, so say they are, you know, faking an injury so they can get out of military service or get off work or they're fundraising and saying they have cancer. But that's sort of the extent of it. Right. It's just a fake. GoFundMe. It's not, you know, they're not manipulating doctors. They're not pulling other people into it. They're not in this, you know, they're not living this entire lie. That's a behavior called malingering. So that's when you're just doing it for a tangible benefit. So, like, the why is pretty easy to understand.
- [30:12]
A
Yeah.
- [30:13]
C
Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy cases often involve a huge amount of financial fraud and fraudulent fundraising. But that's not. They would sort of. It's. That's not the only motive, and it's not really thought to be the primary motive. The primary motive is thought to be getting the person's emotional, you know, and psychological needs met for, you know, attention, sympathy, the ability to control others. You know, that's something I've said to you before that I think that's what having. Many looked at many of these cases, I think a lot of it is about really having control over other people, not just the child, but you using the child's illness to control doctors, to control their spouse, to control their family members, to control their, you know, really everyone in their life.
- [30:54]
A
So. So just to sum this up, so at first, they. They did win.
- [31:00]
C
Yes. Like, so they went. They win like a historic victory.
- [31:04]
A
How much money was it?
- [31:05]
C
$226 million was the original.
- [31:09]
A
Yeah.
- [31:09]
C
And, you know, this jury was. It was a wild trial. I watched every day of it. It went on for, you know, know eight. More than eight weeks. And, you know, the judge made Some pretty curious decision decisions. Number one, letting this go to trial. And I'll get to that piece in a minute. But you know, he also ruled that the hospital couldn't talk about, couldn't really talk about the abuse that she'd suffered and couldn't, you know, they never. Dr. Sally Smith's full report on the abuse this child had suffered was never admitted into evidence. So they were really limited in what they could talk about. Which when, you know, you, when you're being told, told this emotional story of this family, which is essentially, you know, medical kidnapping is the term, right? Oh, they just took our daughter just because they just didn't like the mom or they didn't, you know, our rights have been violated. And this whole really inflammatory. And it is sad. I mean, of course it's sad. You're looking at these two children who lost their mother, who've been totally traumatized. They play the 911 call in the opening statements where it's heartbreaking, you know, to listen to. You can hear. This is when they discovered the mother's body and you can hear her, you know, then I think seven or eight year old son in the background. It's heartbreaking. It's like this is how people are, right? If you tell them this big emotional story and their heart's already with the family, right? There's almost nothing you can tell people that, you know, that will dissuade them. Even though the evidence was of this abuse was so strong and you have doctor after doctor getting up on the stand and saying, you know, this is not, this is not reality. This child was being given. This child's life was at risk for this reason. And, and you know, but testimony that was very compelling to me. But I think, you know, people get their emotions swept away. I think also a lot of people, you know, were at a really low point in terms of trust in institutions. And I think even though people like have, you know, maybe a lot of positive feelings for doctors and hospitals, hopefully there's still mistrust in the medical system and kind of these, these kind of cases can get caught up in like people have bad experiences with health insurance companies or they see this as this sort of institutional, you behemoth. And it's just harder for people to sort of emotionally connect to that story. And so I think like they just told this incredibly inflammatory story about them losing their mom. And then you have, you know, Maya Kowalski, the beautiful teenager crying on the stand and her poor brother. And it's just this very, it's like It's. It's hard in court to just have, like, well, we, you know, to counter that. And so, you know, you get this huge, huge jury verdict. And then last fall, so two years later, an appeals. An appeals court vacated the entire thing. So this has now been overturned. And so basically, that appellate decision, you know, essentially said, and obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but, you know, essentially said that that much of this conduct was protected by Chapter 39 immunity. You know, mandated reporters are. Should be protected from civil lawsuits for as long as they're acting in good faith, which these providers were. Um, and so they ruled that four of these counts could go back to a retrial potentially. So that's where it stands right now. And the four counts are, you know, see if I can rattle them off. So there's medical malpractice. So they basically would have to argue that the hospital committed medical malpractice by not giving her this massive dose of ketamine that was being requested. I think it would be. I think that would be a case that would be hard to make in court without all of the other, you know, sort of emotional. Emotional pyrotechnics going on. And then I think account related to the social worker at the hospital, account related to Maya having photos taken before she left the hospital for court, and then a false imprisonment claim when she was in a video monitored EEG room for observation for, like, 48 hours. So they're pretty minimal. And again, the. The appellate court is not saying. Saying that the hospital did these things. They're saying, if you choose, you can take the only these counts back to court. So now Maya Kowalski is the only plaintiff. Jack Kowalski is no longer a plaintiff. In the meantime, as this whole thing has been playing out, there has been.
- [35:18]
A
Why do you think that is? Wait, why is it only Maya now and not Jack? Because it doesn't have to do with her suicide or what?
- [35:24]
C
Well, for a bunch of reasons. So, you know, when Jack. When Jack. Jack initiated this lawsuit, you know, both of his kids were still minors, so it was him on behalf of. And much of these lawsuits where you see parents suing doctors you're seeing on behalf of your children for the.
- [35:42]
A
For the cost of the lifetime cost of losing a mother.
- [35:45]
C
Yeah. So there was a whole bunch of calculating.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:49]
C
So there was a whole bunch of things, you know, that with the original trial, it was like, Jack Kowalski on behalf of himself, Jack Kowalski on behalf of his minor children and on behalf of the estate of Beyonce, a quality was like the original plaintiff. You know, list. And you know, so a lot of these claims were, you know, in the original lawsuit had like 14th amendment claims and all this sort of very strong parents rights stuff which I would argue made it through in spirit, if not in, you know, the letter. And so Jack was, you know, part of it was the, again, the intentional infliction of emotional distress. They were blaming the hospital for Beata's suicide. They were saying that, you know, their behavior towards Biata was so outrageous that it caused her to commit su. To die by suicide. So that was the part where then Jack was being renumerated. She knew he had these accountants in there that were tallying up these like, lifetime of care and you know, what Batta would have made, you know, if she'd kept working and all these sort of ways that Jack should be reimbursed for the loss of Biata and then the kids and then, you know, emotional distress and sort of all of these. And they also allowed punitive damages the first time around. So that's just when they say, okay, we're trying to, basically we're gonna sort of allow the damages to be such that it makes a point that it would be prohibitive. Other institutions doing this, which all of this was very scary for all those reasons to mandatory reporters throughout the country. So you had this sort of two year period where, number one, a lot of other lawsuits got filed that were very similar by parents who'd been, you know, accused and or convicted of abuse, suing child abuse pediatricians. A lot of media stories about evil kidnapping child abuse pediatricians came out in places like the New York Times and ProPublica and sort of all these outlets. And it really just sort of caused this firestorm. And mandatory reporters were caught in this thing of like, well, we're supposed to be able to be protected if we, if we report abuse in good faith because we're scared of, you know, they're coming like harm coming to a child. They're people who are dealing with vulnerable populations, you know, teachers, doctors especially. And now we have this fear that we are, you know, not only gonna become potentially the villain of a Netflix film and have to deal with the kind of harassment that Dr. Sally Smith has had to deal with.
- [37:58]
B
True.
- [37:58]
A
I mean, I don't think people realize is that like, how many see this and then know that you like, live down the street from them and, and it.
- [38:05]
C
I will tell you, Heather, like, I've talked to a lot of child abuse doctors and I was just at a conference where I was presenting, talking to these people I mean, it's really, it's really chilling what they go through. I mean, they have to do things like purchase their house through an LLC so people can't find out where they live or they'll show up at their door. They have to have police escorts to their car. They really like. We, I, I think we need to really ask ourselves as a society, do we to want, want to be putting doctors who are in the position that we, you know, are protecting children, to have to ask them to put their personal safety at risk?
- [38:41]
A
Yeah.
- [38:41]
C
This is already a stressful job. It's not terribly well paid. And then on top of that, now they have to deal with death threats and harassment and people doxing them online. Like, I mean, the stories I heard just made the hair on the back of my neck. Oh. People were posting pictures of my kids and saying, we know where you live. And, you know, and it's just, it's outrageous. I mean, Sally Smith had harassing phone calls to her pediatric practice and death threats, and people were, you know, threatening to burn it down and, you know, picketing outside. Just a crazy amount of, of harassment. And she had not done anything wrong. I mean, that's. I have looked into the Sally Smith cases and there is no evidence that she did anything other than her job. And the evidence says that she's quite good at that job.
- [39:24]
A
Wow. So. So in inclusion of this, when we were talking about doing this podcast, you were like, I'm also kind of want to talk more about the whole Taylor
- [39:34]
B
Frankie Paul of it all.
- [39:36]
A
And can you kind of explain how this ties together?
- [39:39]
C
Yeah. So it was really interesting to see, you know, and heartbreaking. Obviously. It was interesting to see the Taylor Frankie Paul story in the news just as I was releasing, you know, our seventh season for. So for our seventh season, you know, our previous six seasons, we've talked about all Munchausen by proxy cases. That's where I have a personal connection. So that's sort of where I got into this work. I ended up looking at this, the case of this man, John Stewart. So a man from Florida, not the beloved late night politician or, excuse me, talk show host. So Jon Stewart is another person who has publicly identified himself as a victim of Sally Smith. When I was originally covering the Kowalski case a couple of years ago, I had briefly mentioned that these four other families who claimed they had been falsely accused of abuse. You know, when I looked up the police records from their case, this did not look so much like a false allegation of abuse. This looked pretty, you know, it was pretty disturbing when you actually read about what happened to their kids or the film does not mention, for instance, the existence of Nolan Kelly, who John Stewart was, who's a 15 month old baby, who was the child of his girlfriend at the time, who Jon Stewart was charged with the murder of. It just doesn't mention that case at all. It doesn't mention what happened to the other child. You're just hearing from their parents, you're just hearing their parents say, this ruined my life, this bankruptcy at us, we were wronged, whatever. And so I thought, well, it would be interesting to know kind of what happened in these cases since we just didn't get any of that information. So I had mentioned it briefly and then last summer Jon Stewart emailed me and said, oh, you're dear misguided wannabe journalist. You know, you're like, you're wrong about this. You're doing, you know, your shame on you for promoting Sally Smith, you know, do better, what have you. So, you know, I will tell you like I, as a person who covers true crime, this is real people in their real lives and I'm very sensitive to that. And I never want to get something wrong or tell an incomplete story. And I take it really seriously. If I ever hear from someone who's, you know, in most stories, especially if I'm talking about them in depth, I will call the person, give them a chance, you know, in advance, give them a chance to tell their side of the story, ask if they have comment, let them know it's coming out. And so when John got in touch, I said, well, thank you so much for getting in touch. If you want to share your side of the story with us, if you want to share documentation of this alleged, you know, wrongful allegation by Sally Smith, we're happy to look at it. So he did a lengthy interview with us. We ended up getting never before released records from the sheriff's office in the case. This was, this case happened 10 years ago. John was charged, but then the prosecutor decided not to prosecute the case. It's called a Noel Prose.
- [42:18]
A
So what was the story?
- [42:20]
B
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A
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B
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- [43:55]
A
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- [44:11]
C
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com yeah so this was a story. You know, Jon Stewart had been with the mother, Danica.
- [44:32]
A
How old of a guy was he? John was gosh and approximately, I mean
- [44:38]
C
he was like, I think he was like 40 like but like late 30s when this happened. I think he's late fort. So yeah, so he, you know he met this, he met this woman Danica. She you know had really had a lot of struggles in her life. She had four children with her former partner Chris Kelly. You know they had both struggled a lot with addiction. She was in a pretty like tenuous recovery and she was on you know methadone. So she was kind of like on the road but had had a lot of struggles and her, so she had four children and was living with her father Larry Crawford who had mostly sort of had off and custody of the kids and he'd sort of Been the stable adult in their lives throughout all of this with Danica. And so Danica and John met online. They took all their kids with them on their first date and just were.
- [45:28]
A
How many kids did John have?
- [45:29]
C
John had one, so he had a three year old daughter at this time. And you know, and they were sort of like off to the races. And the story John presented was that he really, you know, was this kind of like knight in shining armor and he had, you know, a college degree and was sort of swooping into Danica's life to kind of, you know, save her. And you know, Danica, I think in my read of this was very vulnerable. And you know, she was recovering from addiction. She had these four kids. She just really had. She'd had struggled holding down a job. So John came in and then they'd only been together for about five months when this incident with her son Noel and Kelly happened. And, and you know, the series of events that led up to it, you know, John had said, which is really common in these cases. You know, I think it's really important for people to understand with any especially crime of interpersonal violence, the fact that that crime hasn't been prosecuted or that there's not a criminal conviction doesn't mean that that person is innocent. That's not how our justice system works. And it certainly doesn't mean that nothing happened. Because in this case you had a 15 month old baby who died. And, and when he was seen at the hospital, you know, he was evaluated by Dr. Sally Smith, but he was also, you know, there's a medical examiner in the case and what ultimately came down. And we talked to both of those doctors at length, you know, with John's permission. And I'll, you know, applaud John for having the transparency to let me investigate the case in this way and said, you know, you can share the records I've shared with you with other professionals. So we had some other professionals weigh in. You know, this was their, was, you know, these two incidents that happened. One, you know, the, the first, the first sort of point on the injury timeline was when John was alone with Nolan. And so that's what you're always trying to. With these cases where a child's injured, you know, when the child comes in and they have broken bones or they have abusive head trauma or, excuse me, they have head trauma that's unexplained and the parents just say we don't know what happened. And that was a case like this. So the child, you know, deteriorates and Then they bring him to the hospital, and they say, we don't know what happened. And then the investigators and the doctors were trying to piece together what happened. And so in this case, you know, there was extremely strong evidence against John, not only from the medical examinations, but from the fact that he took photos and videos of the child. It's, you know, he was watching. He was watching the children while Danica was at work. She had just started a new job. She was on, like, her second day at a new temp job. John was home with the children, and he texted Danica to say, hey, Nolan just had a seizure, you know, then sort of says, okay, I think he's fine now, and sort of keeps texting her throughout the day. Importantly, we later learned that Danica doesn't see any of these text messages until she's off of work. So she doesn't see it till the end of the day. So the child who does not have a seizure disorder or any other medical issue, you know, a child who's especially 15 months old, you know, has a seizure, I think most people would call 91 1. Most people would call, take that child to the doctor. Right. John doesn't do that. And he takes a series of photos and videos of the child. And the doctors that I spoke to, I've seen some of the photos. They're really upsetting. They're clearly. What are they like?
- [48:47]
A
What do you mean? So he's, like, taking it. You think he took the photos and the videos to protect himself in this, or. He just didn't really know what was
- [48:54]
B
wrong with the child.
- [48:55]
A
So he was taking the photos and videos to maybe ask the mom or show a doctor later.
- [48:59]
C
I mean, it's what, there's sort of what he, what he says, you know? Cause I, I asked him, right? And I, I, I said, you know, you're reporting to the mom that he's having all these issues, and you're sending these photos and the photos, you know, when he sent the messages with them, he's like, oh, he's doing better now. Still not happy, but he ate a little bit. But you look at the photos, and the kid's like, you know, the one that really sticks with me is, you know, he's sitting in the high chair, and he's like his head's lolled back, and this does not look like a child that's doing well. And then there was a series of videos that he took, and I don't believe he did not send the videos to Danica. So there's a Big question of, like, why would you take these videos? And all I can tell you.
- [49:44]
A
Did you see them?
- [49:45]
C
So they did come through in the record request. I did not watch them. I opened one inadvertently, and that was enough. The two doctors in the case, the medical examiner and doctor Seller Smith, have both seen the videos, and they described them, and they said they were really shocking and really disturbing. And this was something that John pointed to as exculpatory evidence because he said the child could still move in the video. But both doctors agreed that by the time these photos and videos were taken, which was a period where John was alone with the baby or was the only adult present with the baby, that this child had been grievously harmed. So, so basically, then, you know, the mom gets home from work, and it's very. It's one of these cases that are so confounding because none of the witnesses ended up being reliable. None of the adults in this timeline ended up being very reliable narrators, because I think, you know, there were just. And unfortunately, I was not able to talk to Danica and Larry. I wish I had been able to. But they did talk at length to the police. So, you know, basically, basically, John goes and picks Danica up from work, and, you know, Nolan's not doing well, but they sort of explain it away as, oh, we had a cold. Oh, he's sick. And. And then by the next morning, you know, Nolan's throwing up that evening. Just never, like, never normal after that, you know, after that morning. So the last time everyone agrees, you know, Nolan was normal was on the Friday morning. And then by the time the Saturday morning morning comes around, he leaves him with the grandfather, and Nolan has a second seizure, and then he. Then someone finally does take him to the hospital, and then, you know, and then that's where he. He continues to deteriorate and is taken off life support. So John had really positioned this as well, because this wasn't prosecuted. This was a. You know, and the. The prosecutor wrote a memo called a no pros memo. And, you know, this was one of these cases where it's just like, the more threads I pulled, I just sort of found more threads, and unfortunately, the prosecutor's. I think John got a lot of mileage out of that in terms of. This was a wrong accusation. It sort of mischaracterized the ME's stance, the medical examiner's stance, and said that sort of like, while the timing of these injuries can't be determined, and there was a pretty narrow disagreement between the child abuse pediatrician and the medical examiner on the timing of the fatal injuries, but both of them agreed that the child had been. Been grievously injured while John had sole custody. So it just is this sort of morass, you know, but ultimately there was very strong evidence that John, at minimum, harmed this child. And the sort of second theory was, you know, what John will say is, oh, the grandfather did it. And, you know, when you have sort of three adults in the timeline and none of them are terribly reliable narrators, it can be really hard to prove who did it beyond a reasonable doubt. Um, but, you know, I have a lot of questions about why the prosecutor didn't move forward with this, except that if you have your doctors disagreeing with each other about anything at all, you know, any candy defense attorney can kind of come in and exploit that. Um, but I think it, it just is a, it's a really sad case. Um, John also, you know, has a really violent history. He, you know, that was another thing that came through. He had, you know, multiple restraining orders, some from his former partner, you know, and, and had like other, you know, reports of assault and, you know, altercations with people and just a, just a really long history of being, you know, not in control of his emotions. And even my interactions with him, you know, after we spoke at length and then, you know, when we're having some back and forth and I was asking him some follow up questions, he became really enraged at me that I was not just sort of taking his word for it. He sort of kept saying, well, I've sent you everything that proves that I was falsely accused. And I was just like, well, no, I mean there's, there's a lot more to this and I'm going to do my due diligence and I'm trying to get to the bottom of everything. And he just, you know, sent me just email after email saying, you know, everyone's a lying C word and B word and just, you know, these like lengthy screeds. And you know, even when I talked to him just became, was very agitated. It's just someone who clearly is sort of demonstrably not in control of himself. And so I think that domestic violence connection, you know, you're asking why the Taylor, Frankie, Paul. And then another of the cases that was presented in Take Care of Maya as a false allegation. Jeremy Graham was a parent with again, a lengthy history of domestic violence against his partner. And you know, really like, the details that were included were so horrifying and there's a lot of harm that can come, I think, right. Brightly, people are pointing this out with the Taylor Frankie Paul case. Even if, you know, number one, domestic violence, you worry about people also that escalating to harm, to physical harm to the children. But even in cases where that escalate to physical harm against the children, it's still very traumatizing for children to witness that and to be in a home where that's happening.
- [54:56]
A
Yeah. I think what's so horrible when this does happen, which I always think is also so interesting, is the parent or the parents who are abusing the child, and then they look over and the child really isn't bouncing back. And then they're like, my God, now we have to take them to the hospital. I'm always like, now, do you love them? Or is it like you literally, you broke something and you're trying to put it back together? I mean, that's the way it feels.
- [55:28]
C
Yeah.
- [55:28]
A
You know, and then, like, you're trying to, like, are you hoping that they're fine and that you just won't get caught as the perpetrator? And you say they rolled off the couch or whatever those different cases are. But, you know, I also know in the past, the shaken baby syndrome, there were a lot of false prosecutions about that too, you know.
- [55:51]
C
Well, actually, that is kind of part of what we touch on this new season. So I had heard that a lot as well. And there's a lot of media stories about that. As it turns out, that is almost exclusively a media and courtroom controversy. The scientific consensus on how to abuse, how to diagnose abusive head trauma injuries is remarkably widespread. I mean, basically, like, you have this, you know, technical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is consensus documents amongst, you know, child abuse doctors, radiologists, you know, ophthalmologists, all of these subspecialties that. That interact with children who have these injuries. There's a very strong scientific consensus about how to diagnose these injuries. So it's not a controversy within science and medicine. What you have, and this is what we reported on this season, you have these outlier doctors who are making their living primarily as expert witnesses in abuse cases. One of the most frequent flyers is a guy called Dr. Joseph Scheller, who is a pediatric neurologist who hasn't treated children regularly in quite a long time. And he makes. Let me see if I can remember this off the top of the dome, but he makes about $375,000 a year testifying in abuse cases. He always testifies for the defendants. He has never diagnosed a case of abusive head trauma in his life. And he does not believe that it exists. He does not believe this is a medical diagnosis that you can make. There are these outlier doctors who just say, oh, you can't know if it's abuse because you can't know the parents intent or whatever. You know, the fact is there's a robust body of medicine that's been evolving since the 1960s when you had the battered child syndrome was the first sort of introduction of this as a, you know, being able to diagnose injuries as abusive when you had, you know, babies with fractures and you know, just injuries that don't, don't happen through normal, you know, care and handling. And then you have these outlier doctors. I know Another one is Dr. Michael Hollock, who's very well known as an expert witness who says that a parent having Ehlers Danlos syndrome can cause their 2 month old baby to have a bunch of fractures. I mean, it's just completely unscientific. They're theories.
- [58:07]
A
What is Ehlers, what is Ehlers.
- [58:09]
C
Ehlers Danlos syndrome? It's a connective tissue disorder. Um, and it does not, it does not cause fractures. I've spoken to, you know, one of the, like a couple of experts on this. Sometimes older children can have a higher instance of fractures because it can make them clumsier and so they fall down more. And so, you know, you have this doctor who sort of extrapolated this to say that like, oh, well, this two month old baby that came in, you know, and you can't, you can't diagnose Ehlers Danlos syndrome in a, in a baby. It's not a clinical diagnosis you can make in an infant. And yet he will say, well, the parents have Ehlers Danlos syndrome or the mom has Ehlers Danlos syndrome. So obviously, obviously that's what. So they basically come up with some other medical condition that they're saying is the real reason for the injuries or saying that, you know, John J. Plunkett was another one. He's deceased now. But he, you know, wrote this paper about playground injuries that comes up all the time. And people are like, well see, this guy said that, you know, and of course this was also with older children. Babies are not on playgrounds, you know, but said that like, oh, shortfalls can cause these injuries. Well, they, I mean they, they can't. And there's sort of this robust medical literature. But then because you have these outlier dogs, doctors, if you are a parent in a court case who can afford to hire one of them. And because I've had a source for the last two years in the Facebook group of this group, Fractured Families, which is this advocacy group I was telling you about. So they purportedly advocate for, you know, families who are falsely accused of abuse. Almost all the parents featured in Take Care of Maya, other than Kowalski's, are members of Fractured Families. And what they do in this Facebook group is a parent will come in. One of the most common types of posts, from what I can tell in this group is a parent will come in in, and they're saying, we're false. We're being falsely accused of abuse. Who do we see for a Ricketts diagnosis? Who do we see for an Ehlers Danlos syndrome? And then they all, you know, parents weigh in and they go, go see Dr. So and so he'll write you a report for $4,000. You know, go see this person. Oh, this is how much it costs to bring them to court. See so and so for this diagnosis. Oh, this sounds like this. And it's very clear in the world of this group that this group doesn't consider any anything a legitimate diagnosis of abuse. And they think, you know, caps are evil and they're kidnapping babies. It's a whole sort of medical kidnapping, which is a QAnon conspiracy theory that doctors are kidnapping babies.
- [60:23]
A
What does this QAnon conspiracy tell me about kidnapping?
- [60:26]
C
And so this is really like. This is the root of all of it. It's the root of. It's really like, Take care of my, in my opinion, was a propaganda piece for this conspiracy. Conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy theory that's related with QAnon. If users want to know more, you can go to medicalkidnap.com, that is built around this idea that doctors are kidnapping children. Doctors are collaborating with CPS to kidnap and traffic children, and they're doing that by falsely accusing their parents of abuse. So not even the idea that a lot of the media stories, oh, this doctor was just wrong about these cases, and we just want to hold her accountable. This conspiracy theory is, you know, quite a lot more sort of fringe, and it's been around for a long time, but it is going mainstream. And Take Care of Maya has been the vehicle for it to go mainstream. And, you know, you even saw these headlines which, like, I couldn't believe when I was seeing this, you know, that People magazine that, you know, was the former employer of Caitlin Keating, the film's producers, and did a whole bunch of very, like, you know, puff pieces on the family and put Maya Kowalski on the COVID And they said, you know, they used the word medically kidnapping. She will say, I was medically kidnapped, snapped from my family. So I was like, this is, you know, just completely kind of out in the open. And it's buffeted much in the same way that like the anti vax, you know, related conspiracy theories are, it's buffeted by these very fringe doctors that often make a great deal of money doing expert witness work. David Ayoub, who is a very famous anti vaxxer, transitioned to being an abuse denialist. You know, and this group has like a referral list of doctors that go see this person for this, go see this person for that. And so they have really built this controversy out of nothing. And so you'll see all these headlines, oh, the shaken science behind shaken baby and et cetera. And it's just a complete fallacy. They'll say, oh, it was this triad of symptoms. And it's just totally, you know, incorrectly describes the way that doctors go about abusive head trauma diagnoses. And this is just medical misinformation that's kind of run amok. And so I think, you know, much like you, right, like people just sort of see these stories and you go, okay, okay, well this is like some of this is legitimate and as far as I can tell, none of it's legitimate. And they all reference these same, you know, several debunked studies and they all quote these same doctors and a lot of these families. When I've looked, you know, I can't possibly look into every single individual case that's in the news. It's just too time consuming. But every time I do, you know, they're number one. You read the police reports and you read what actually happened to the child and you're like, like it's not, you know, that does not sound like, that doesn't sound like a plausible story. And then you read, you know, the guy has a lengthy history of domestic violence. And they're saying, you know, this child required brain surgery because they fell out of a chair. And I think just, you know, again, like, not even as a doctor, but just as a parent. You know, you've, you have kids. I, I have little kids. They fall down all the time. Kids get injured, especially once they're up and moving around. You know, I have a three year old boy, they're just always trying to off themselves, you know, basically. And like the stories that these families tell just don't make any sense. I Mean, Ashley Finnegan's another good example. She was another one of the moms in Take Care of Maya. So again, they tell you, you know, she's telling you, oh, how many lives are you allowed to ruin? And everything else ranting about, you know, Dr. Sally Smith. And in her case, you know, she had a two month old baby that was brought to the hospital bleeding from the head and with skull fracture, who required brain surgery. And her story was that, that her, you know, and they sort of told this shifting story where they couldn't get quite the details right, but her and her boyfriend had gotten in a fight because her boyfriend George Kalashenko came home and saw a message on her. I mean, again, I think this is what I was thinking of the Taylor, Frankie, Paul things that are these just like really sort of toxic, volatile relationships.
- [64:13]
A
It's always about the phone.
- [64:14]
C
It's always about. And I'm like, Heather, like, I have to say, like, I, like I've been with my husband for 12 years. I've never felt the urge to look through his phone. I just, I. Is that just something think people do, like looking through their partner's time?
- [64:26]
A
I think every relationship is different and if there's one that starts for whatever reason someone's paranoid or they really do have a reason to think that they cheat. And then in their case, I think they both kind of were cheaters and, and very toxic and. But anyway, go back to your.
- [64:46]
C
Yeah, so anyway, I guess he sort of described this as like the most normal thing in the world to do. Like, I was just going through my girlfriend's phone like you do, and I was like, do people do that? So he was going through her phone and saw a Facebook friend request from a guy and, you know, then allegedly, you know, went into the bedroom where the baby was and then accidentally threw his phone at the baby's head hard enough that she required brain surgery. And you know, their story was, oh, well, this is not abuse because it was an accident. And he just didn't see the baby on the bed. I mean, number one, the baby was wearing, wearing a bright pink onesie. And then it's like, so it was just this bizarre story where I'm like, okay, even if we take everything that you said at face value, and there's plenty of reasons not to. Like, one of the, you know, one of the. She was reported overhearing. Someone reported overhearing in the car on the way over. So they call 911 and then they decide not to wait for the ambulance and they get in the car. And then on the way over, Ashley's overheard telling George, just say it was an accident and don't go back to the house because you'll be arrested. So just, you know, like questionable, you know, they tell a shifting story about, whoa, was he standing in the doorway and tossed it? Oh, no, he was standing directly over the baby and spiked it into her head. And that's why it was so hard. So I mean, even if you take the story at face value that it was an accident, that's.
- [66:07]
A
Wait, was the baby his baby or her baby?
- [66:09]
C
Yes, it was his baby. So, you know, even if you take that story at face value, even if you say this is a domestic abuse that led to a two month old baby being struck so hard in the head that the baby needs surgery, you're like, well, that's still a problem. I mean, that's not, you know, that's not like, oh, these innocent parents. I mean, that's still a horrifying situation even if you take it at face value.
- [66:30]
A
Right. In, in the Taylor Frankie Paul case, we saw it and we know that she was trying to hit him with the barstool, but she was not even aware, I think, that her daughter was in the room. And even after the daughter got hurt, she wasn't really even tending to the daughter. And then when they're talking to her outside on the body cam, she isn't like, can, can somebody make sure that she has ice? Like, like it still wasn't anything like that because maybe she just was so out of her mind. So in the case that you're describing. Yeah. Like, I feel like if it was a girl that found her boyfriend's phone and he was cheating and she went in the room and she chucked the phone, phone, and it did hit a child that was laying on the bed, it could have. I do think that's an easy thing to defend in the sense that a, you may have meant to hit the mom, which would have been bad. You may have meant to hit nobody. You may have really just chucked it and in such a rage, not noticed that among the pillows and the blankets that the baby wasn't in the crib, but actually next to the mom.
- [67:38]
C
So. Yeah. And just to say, like, there's a lot about this story that doesn't sound. I mean, if we assume that, that, that they're tell. Which again, this, this story had such a shifting narrative that, like, I don't think that we should take this story at face value. But anyway.
- [67:52]
A
But I'm just saying I could see how someone could explain that away. And even people that have never, like, I've never thrown a glass or a dish or an inanimate object or even a pillow, like in a fight at someone I could see. And you know, once, actually, once I did throw a shoe. Okay. I threw like a, like a tennis shoe. That's about it. Like, and, and you know what? After that, I never threw it again because I did think it was, wow, what am I doing throwing anything? And so it's like. But I think a lot of people do throw things and, and that's sort of acceptable versus throwing something versus punching someone. I just, I threw it and I, you know, why, why there are holes in the walls and things like that. Because someone had an outburst, which is totally unacceptable. Acceptable. But so getting back to the case, at this case, though, you were saying,
- [68:44]
C
yeah, and I mean, he, he eventually, you know, he eventually pled no contest. So he didn't. This is someone who's been convicted. And you know, to present this as, oh, this was a false allegation by a doctor is just, it's just wild. And the child's injuries did not match that story. So that was the story they were purportedly telling. The child's injuries did not match that story. And again, you know, this is.
- [69:05]
A
So it didn't match the photo phone story, Correct?
- [69:08]
C
It did not match.
- [69:09]
A
Oh, okay, sorry. So it never matched the phone story. So the phone story was a made up story. I thought it did match the phone story. But was the phone intentional or not? Yeah, I would think even if I had the iPhone hit a little baby, it wouldn't cause brain surgery, cause a big bruise or a goose egg. Like in the case of Taylor, Frankie's daughter's case, which, you know, it was just a goose egg and she was okay.
- [69:33]
C
Yeah. And so, so much of these child abuse cases, you know, is about, is about evaluating a child's injuries. And does this match the mechanism that the parents are describing? So if the parents are saying, you know, like, the most frequent things that will come in, you know, a lot of parents just say, oh, we have no idea. They just start having symptoms and we have no idea what happened to them. Even though we were with them the whole time, we have no idea. So that obviously is.
- [69:58]
A
And like a throw up seizure type type thing can be a result of a traumatic head injury. So it's like if your kid fell off their bike without a helmet and hit their bike on the concrete, they would be like, look at their eyes. And you know, Let us know if they throw up or anything. Yeah. So then, exactly.
- [70:17]
C
So you monitor, they'll say like, you know, the Viviana Graham case was another take care of Maya. One, which was a husband with lengthy history of domestic violence, you know, and, and in that case, the mother, Viviana had told police there had been a previous incident where the police were called very close to the time these events took place. She told the police she was concerned about her husband harming the baby. She told a friend who came forward to the police that she had installed cameras in the baby's room because she was so concerned about her husband harming the baby. And then the story that she's told the media was, oh, the child suddenly had suddenly started to have a seizure and we have no idea what happened, but it wasn't, you know, I know it wasn't my husband. And so then they said, oh, this really common thing. They get this diagnosis from Dr. Scheller, who is the pediatric neurologist that I was talking about earlier. And they'll say, oh, this child has this condition where basically sometimes if babies have big heads, they'll have fluid in their. They sort of have this excess fluid in the brains. We have the doctors explain the whole thing. It's called benign enlargement of the subarachnoid space. So it's like a benign condition. But they can sometimes have some imaging that mirrors, you know, that can mirror abuse of head trauma. But it doesn't look exactly the same. And it's something that child abuse pediatricians know about. Right. They know to sort of screen for that. So, you know, this mom has been for the last decade practically diligently, you know, doxing and harassing Dr. Sally Smith. And yet, you know, in her own words, when you see the text messages that were part of the police reports, she's clearly very concerned that her husband, who had been abusive towards her and who had strangled her, you know, was going to harm their baby.
- [71:54]
A
And what did happen to the baby?
- [71:56]
C
I mean, the baby, they got in this long sort of, you know, CPS drawn out thing. They accepted a case plan from cps. That's what happens a lot of these times. If there isn't, you know, if there isn't a good path for a criminal prosecution, then it kind of gets kicked to family court. And cps, they spent, you know, they had the resources to do it. So they went and fought to get custody of their kids back and they eventually did. In 2024, Viviana Graham ended up divorcing Jeremy Graham because of his lengthy history substance abuse and violence. She was granted an emergency custody order of her children. They had three by that point, you know, because of this violent situation that the kids were being exposed to. And so, you know, was okay in
- [72:36]
A
the end, the baby was okay?
- [72:37]
C
Yeah, I mean, we think so, because the only, the only reports we have from there are the parents. Right. And there's a really built in asymmetry to these stories where the news reports about, you know, Viviana's case. Now, listen, these people had access to the same information I did, so they could have gone and got the police reports and they didn't. Or they got the. And they didn't think they were important and they just sort of printed the story as Viviana was telling it. But, you know, you can't, as a journalist get a child's medical records so the kid could, unless the parents sign a HIPAA release. So this child, you know, many children that are victims of abusive head trauma, if they survive, I mean, it's the most deadly form of child abuse. And if they survive. You know, we, we talked to a mom who had a child who was shaken by. Had a baby when she was a baby, had been shaken by her husband and, and had, you know, a whole, like, really difficult journey back to health and could have lifelong impacts from that abuse. I mean, this is really, you know, babies are very vulnerable. So this child could have had ongoing medical issues or it could have resolved on its own. I hope that it did, but we just don't know because the parent is the, the parent is the gatekeeper of that information. Right. So there's. I. I don't know.
- [73:47]
A
Yeah. Wow. Well, very interesting. So tell everybody where they can find your podcast and everything that you're doing.
- [73:56]
C
Yeah. So you can listen to. Nobody Should Believe Me. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube. We are going to be putting out some kind of extras and videos, especially about the John Stewart case. So, yeah, those are the two best places to find me.
- [74:12]
A
Thank you so much.
- [74:13]
C
Thanks for having me on. Heather. Sam.