Believe in Magic - Episode 3: Proof

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

The sleuths reveal their findings. Believe in Magic’s supporters defend Megan. Some terrible news breaks, that forces the sleuths to reconsider everything they’ve discovered.

So just talking me through the morning, we were monitoring the weather and making sure the boat was on time. Yeah, and looking at the clock and going, oh my goodness, the light will come in now. And I wonder if he's suspect and I wonder if he can see the guy stood there in a mac and he's counting, or if it was going to be, oh sorry, we missed them, or they didn't get off the boat, you know, who knows. didn't get off the boat, you know, who knows. At 350 meters long, and nearly 150,000 tons, the Queen Mary 2 is the largest ocean liner ever built. A one-way Atlantic crossing costs somewhere between 1,,200 and £3,500. For that, you get 15 restaurants and bars, 5 swimming pools, a casino, ballroom, theatre,

planetarium, and even a hospital. As this floating city slowly approaches Southampton Docks on Saturday, November 19, 2016, Joanna Ashcroft and the sleuths are at home, nervously checking their phones. They're waiting for a message from the private detective, who's loitering just outside the arrivals terminal, scanning the passengers streaming off the ship, looking for Megan Jean. If they are on board, how well will Megan look when she disinvarks? In the weeks before they left America, Jean claimed she was at Megan's bedside as she fought multiple life-threatening infections.

And just as they were about to travel home, Jean wrote how Megan was still on. Constant intravenous antibiotics, as well as intravenous fluids, intravenous steroids, and many other IVs too, and constant oxygen. Jean later described how they were carrying five suitcases of medication and medical equipment as well as a huge oxygen concentrator.

If they're not on board, the sloths will be back to square one. They'll have nothing to show that Megan Jean are lying about mexilness. And Joe will have just spent £1,000 on a private detective for nothing. He can send me anything initially and I was like, please. 0715, intercrew's terminal. The arrivals area is located on the ground floor of the terminal. Information from the terminal staff is that all passengers must leave by one exit. Passengers are already leaving from the ship.

This is the Private Detectives Report. 0935, Megan and Jean are observed exiting the arrivals area. They are talking and laughing with each other as they walk through. They are pushing luggage trolleys. Megan has three suitcases and a handbag on hers. Jean has two suitcases and a large carrier bag on hers. And then these photographs started to come through. Joe hands me several photos of Megan Jean walking out of arrivals.

Meg isn't in a medical gown, she's wearing a blue sweater and a beige scarf with red hearts. She looks a little pale and she's put on a lot of weight. She's pushing three large suitcases on a trolley and smiling at Jean who has two suitcases and is carrying a Disney backpack. There are no intravenous tubes, no oxygen tanks. They just look like a couple of happy tourists arriving home. I mean she doesn't look well but she doesn't look. No, no. And there's no oxygen. I asked Joe what she was expecting to see based on Jean's updates. So she would be in a wheelchair that we'd had a photograph of and she would be on oxygen because she was on 24-7 oxygen. So that means she'd have a big

cylinder somewhere in the face box. Yeah and she'd be extremely weak. 09-34, a porter service to assist with passenger luggage was available and a lot of people with disabilities were making use of this facility. Megan and Jean did not use this facility. And they walked straight past the people that are there to help you, you know, anybody with walking difficulties or that kind of stuff. They didn't need any help, any assistance. Megan and Jean exit the cruise terminal. They pushed Trolleys to the left side of the terminal in the direction of the car parks. Megan was observed walking normally and unaided. She did not appear to show any discomfort. O-944, both Megan and Jean unload the suitcases into their vehicle. Megan appears

to have no difficulty in doing this. Image retaken. Jean looks tanned and you know she's been a bi-herdotist bedside. Megan and Jean leave the dock and drive away from Southampton Port Crew Terminal in a westerly direction. For the sloths, this is the proof they wanted that Megan Jean have been lying. And what do I think? It might be possible to be critically ill one week and be capable of walking the next. But if Meghan was as ill as they claimed, could she really have pushed that many suitcases unaided and lifted them into the car herself? And if she wasn't that ill, what were Meghan world for over four months.

I'm Jamie Bartlett. This is Believe in Magic, Episode 3. Proof. After Joe called the Disney Hotel and Jean picked up the phone. Something extraordinary happened. Joe expected Jean would confess or apologize. After all, she'd been caught at Disney at the very moment she was telling the world she was at Megan's side in hospital. If she had confessed, things might have gone very differently. But Jean did the opposite.

An email, Joe, a 20-page dossier full of medical documents and receipts to prove that Megan did have a life-threatening brain tumour. Right, so I'm going through this 20-page dossier. And wow, there is a lot in here. Doctors letters, receipts, prescriptions, test results, gene is not back in down. She opens by saying, I'm going through all of your unthinkable and huge mistakes. You do mistaken beliefs one by one and providing evidence for each and every one. There are a lot of doctors letters on headed paper, 14th December 2015. Megan's being seen about an ear problem. 7th of June 2016.

She's got a walking clinic saying her right arm hurts. 30th of June 2016. She's prescribed flu clocks are sill in. 4th of June 2016, she's prescribed flu clocks as sill in. Fourth of August 2016, she's having tests to measure lactic acid levels. She's in and out of medical settings constantly. That's also something we've been told by people who knew her. And there are a lot of prescriptions in here too.

Again, official looking letters. I don't know if I can actually say all of these, but in a sill in, Clindamaiicin. Clindamaiicin, Sofredexin, Betnacil drops, Pipericillin IV, Ondancertrone, Promethazine, Sojimclaw ride, Dexamethazone, Morphine. I suppose it's possible to make some of this up. But people like Lucy Petagini saw Megan taking a lot of medication. She was always taking tablet.

I mean, her handbag was so heavy, no one, none of us could ever carry it. And it was full of medicine, full of pills and liquid medicine. She was always taking them. There is also what looks like the record of a diagnosis of a type of tumour called an adenoma of pituitary. Although this isn't cancerous, it can be harmful. And as I later find out, it is something that gene maintains to this day

that Meg had been diagnosed with. The name of the medical facility where the diagnosis was made is blanked out, but it looks from the spellings as if it's in America. Meg was misdiagnosed with just raised intracranial pressure before they realised it was actually high due to a tumour and she didn't ever have idiopathic intracranial hypertension. She, as many children with brain tumours do, has a VP shunt after having an LP shunt that broke because the pressure was so high. Inserting a shunt is a very serious operation. It involves drilling a hole in the skull so a tube can carry excess fluid into the abdomen.

Based on what I've heard, I think Megan did have a shunt. Lots of people saw it, including her old friend, Natalie Garrett. She really, really, 100% did have a shunt in her brain. Meg's immune system is so weak that she continues to develop new infections. The second midline broke and a new 38cm pick line was inserted completely away without any sedation. Please see pick information below. Her blood results constantly show that her body is fighting infections, and that she's been both neutropenic, see blood results, with very high white blood cells. A pick line is an intravenous tube that carries drugs directly into the bloodstream. And in that video Meg sent the sleuths to prove she was ill. I can clearly see that Megan does have a pick line fitted. I have my hospital letters, my documents, my pick line here, it's way ahead.

And there are all these photographs too that Jean took of their hotel room. And looking at it, I mean it looks like a hospital stock cupboard, to be honest, the Meg's got three full bags of syringes. I can see alcohol, prep pads, which are used for cleaning cuts. There's maybe 20 or 25 oxygen cylinders, wheelchair, intravenous tubes, and the box of what looks like portable intravenous drips. looks like portable intravenous drips. If they were on a holiday in Disney, what on earth were they doing with all of that? That part just blows my mind

because they know that they're not being honest about pyrrheonuses. But by the looks of it, all the photographs that was sent towards us proof were all the medicines and oxygen tanks and I think maybe she had kind of a can you're going into her arm. I believe that Megan was taking a lot of medicine. It's hard to understand how someone could pretend to be sicker than they are to steal money. But why I find even harder to comprehend is why Meg would have all this treatment, see

all these doctors and take all this medication if she didn't need to. Looking through the evidence Jean sent, I'm wondering whether Megyn doesn't just love Disney. Maybe she also loves doctors. Maybe she was fundraising to go to America to have genuine medical treatment, some or all of which she didn't actually need. But why would anyone want to do that?

I have a slightly strange relationship with doctors. I definitely classed myself as a bit of a hyperchondriac. One of those people who feels a slight pain, Googles it, and ends up in A&E three hours later. I once got told by a specialist to stop coming back. There was nothing actually wrong with me. I'd always heard there was another group of people like us hyper-conductor, who also keep going back to the doctors again and again, except with one important difference.

They know they aren't ill, they're faking it. So I get in touch with a woman called Cindy, hoping she might help me understand what Megan might be doing. For years, doctors thought Cindy was suffering from epileptic seizures and fainting episodes until she admitted that she was making it all up. I don't want to be sick because I hate being sick, but I want to be sick so that I get that legitimate attention.

That desire to be sick is always there. Cindy says she was always fascinated with being sick and hurting herself. She loved the show ER of course, but there was something more. I think it was just the idea of being a patient appealed to me. I remember wanting to go for Halloween in a wheelchair. And I just had that fascination and that desire to be in that role. But the faking really started when Cindy was 15 and with her boyfriend. They had an argument one evening on his front lawn.

And I just pretended to faint. I just fell forward into the grass. And I was nervous. And I remember him coming as sitting down beside me. And he was all worried about me and scared. And we got up and he rushed me to the hospital. The following week, she pretended to faint again in math class. The teacher tried to wake her up, but she didn't respond. So he got me to the floor and they called an ambulance.

They came. I was taken into the same hospital. And it just escalated from there. Cindy started going to more extreme lengths to get back into hospital. She started faking epileptic seizures on the bus in the street. What were you thinking? Were you worried about getting found out? It wasn't so much worried about being found out as I was worried about being believed. I just felt like I needed to have somebody

believe me that I was really sick, even though I wasn't. She says she loved the attention, being believed by people in positions of authority and power. Almost as if the world is somehow nicer when you're not well. It was hard work, says Cindy, keeping up with your own lies can be exhausting. But how come the doctors believed her?

So I would go to the library, which had quite a bit of information. And I did research there, and that's how I figured out you cry out, you whiter pants, you poop your pants, things like that. And so I did all that and you know, I know it's kind of gross, but it was, you know, it made it more convincing. Also, quite often when I'd go to a doctor, they would say, did this happen? And so I'm like, okay, that was supposed to happen. And so I'd adopted a little bit. Yeah.

With careful planning, Cindy managed to fall doctors for years and underwent numerous hospital stays and tests. Did you ever though feel like you were sort of pushing it too far? Like you've done stuff that was actually starting to make you genuinely sick as a result of your sort of feeling. Yeah, yeah, I've had probably at least 20 concussions. One time Cindy swallowed Tiger Bar. Another, she tried to contaminate her own breathing machine, but she couldn't stop. She says it's like a drug. It's addictive and you always want a bigger hit.

Having their attention did fill out loneliness, but that was why I kept craving so much more and more and more because it was never enough. It's almost like having a beer when you're an alcoholic rate and then it just kind of escalates. Eventually Cindy was diagnosed with a rare and mysterious disorder. It was first identified in 1951 by a brilliant endocrinologist from Central Middlesex Hospital called Richard Asher. Asher was fascinated by the relationship between mental and physical health. For years he'd been in charge of the mental observation unit at Central Middlesex, where he saw thousands of patients. He noticed that a small but consistent number of them complained of various symptoms,

but on closer inspection, were perfectly healthy. Asha wrote up his findings in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. Here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchhausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly, the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the Baron and named after him. He called it Munchhausen Syndrome.

Munchhausen Syndrome is not the same as Hypercondria explained asher. Hypercondriax exaggerate and panic, but they really do think they're ill. Munchhausen patients know they aren't, but they come anyway for the attention, for the gratification, to fulfill some deep need to be believed. The sluths don't know what's driving mech's behaviour.

If it's munchhausen or some kind of simple fraud, they may not know the whole truth, but they're utterly convinced that Meg and Jehine are lying. People are still donating to believe in magic, many of them are bereaved or caring for sick children. So the sluths make a big decision. It's time to tell everyone what they've discovered to lay it all out on the line. The Truth About Meg and Jean Facebook page, December 2016. The page is an honest attempt to establish a truth about Meg and gene and their summer of 2016 spent in America. Mechs 10 for magic were set up to raise money for them because mech was supposedly

receiving critical medical care in America. There are many who have concerns about the brosity of their story and its dramatic and incredible nature. Having been blocked and deleted from mechs 10 for magic, this is an open page where everything that is known can be seen and read and people can make their own minds up. They post all the evidence they've carefully gathered over the previous few months. Their messages and email exchanges with Megan Jean,

screenshots of past fundraisers, the seemingly exaggerated and contradictory posts. A transcript of the conversation when Joe called the Disney Hotel. The fact Meghan Jean walked off the boat looking fine. In short, the story we've just told you. But once again, Jean doesn't confess. She doesn't apologize. Instead, she decides to tell the world what the sleuths

have put her and Meghan through. What you may not know is that for several months, we've been stalked, threatened, and blackmailed by a tiny group of people who have made our lives hell. All that communication has been recorded and any further criminal activity will be added to this. However, we are so truly grateful to have had hundreds and hundreds of messages

showing your love and support. It means more at this time than you could ever know. Love, gene and Meg. The child cancer community is ripped in two, and most people believe Meg and Gene. I'm disgusted with what's happening. It's unskumpized just being arsehole. I would trust these ladies with my kids' lives

that alone are fippin' chalice. You are either mentally ill and need medical support yourselves or you're just genuinely evil, evil, people who really hope you can live with yourself when you're proven to be the spiteful and poisonous bitch you are. Your karma is a bitch. Remember that. All right, okay. So yeah, it was, they couldn't do any wrong. Many of these families had children who were living with cancer. Some had lost children to the disease. Megan Jean had offered support and comfort

to countless families at their lowest moments. Those families couldn't comprehend how the two people who'd given them so much and who'd seen up close, while it's like to live with cancer, could have lied about it all. The sluts are worried that no one will ever believe them. They tried going undercover.

They tried going public on Facebook. Nothing seemed to work. But armed with their new evidence, they try again to get the authorities involved. Joe travels to London to present the charity commission with her information about Meg, Jean, and believe in magic. She sends the police her research to, including the report from the private detective who snapped Meg and Jean walking off the Queen Mary II ocean liner.

It takes a while, but in February 2017, the Charity Commission finally opens an inquiry into believe in magic and Hall's Jean in for questioning. There are also rumours that the police are investigating. The party stop. The donations slow to a trickle. The once-on-a-present fairy godmother's disappear from public view. In the face of the relentless effort of these amateur sluths, things are finally falling apart for Meg Megan Jean.

How are you feeling towards the end of 2017? We are happy that we've put a stop to it. And you know, there's, it was upsetting that there was so many issues within our community, that there was so much, you know, name calling and anger towards us. yn yna i'r cymunitau, ac mae'r cymunitau yn yna'n gweithio'r yna i'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna i'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna i'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna i'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna.

Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. Mae'r cymunitau yn yna. The fraud had been dumped down, but were you worried about Meghan? It had to get to a point where there's nothing more I can do. You know, as long as she's not taking vulnerable families' money or there's no ongoing scams, then who knows where Meghan is and what she's doing now is how I felt at that time.

and what she's doing now is how I felt at that time. Amongst all the uncertainty about what Meg and Jean were doing in America, we do know one thing. They were at Disney, because we've recently been shown receipts from Meg and Jean's Disney stay. On the 12th of July 2016, the day Jean said Meg was admitted to hospital with sepsis and multiple infections, Jean paid $618 for a three-bedroom grand villa with savanna views and another $59, eating at the flavours of Africa restaurant.

Later that week, they spent $180 eating at the Cinderella Royal Table in the Magic Kingdom Park. On the 29th of August 2016, the day the fundraising appeal megsturned for magic was launched, they spent $380 on a villa and room service. Between July and November 2016, as Jean updated supporters about Meg's desperate condition and pleaded for money, the pair spent a staggering $72.5,000 living at a luxury Disney resort. By the spring of 2018, the sluths are confident

that it will only be a matter of time before the authorities expose Meghan Jean for charity fraud and faking a brain tumour. Until early one morning, when Joe is at home and her phone buzzes. So I wake up and I get a text that says, evil bitch, are you happy now? Wait for the police. What?

I was like, what, what, what, so I go straight to the messenger group and Lisa says, Megan's dad. Megan's dad. Believe in Magic is a BBC studio's podcast. It's presented by me, Jamie Bartlett. The series producer is Ruth Mayer. The producer is Lucy Greenwell. Music by Jeremy Wormsley. Sound design by Peregrine Andrews, the executive producer is Inis Bowen. you