Believe in Magic - Episode 4: Doctors

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

The news creates shock waves. Could the sleuths have got it wrong? Jamie gains rare access to doctors’ reports, which could reveal what happened to Megan.

Megan's dad. I was like, wow, what like the shock because as far as I was concerned, Megan didn't have a serious illness. Jean had posted the news on Facebook. On the 28th of March 2018, my whole world changed. At 11.53, Megan's heart stopped beating and I knew she was on her way to heaven. We prayed and we prayed but nothing could help my baby girl and I held her hands as she died. Inside I too was dying all I kept saying is darling if you want to go please go and be happy. The sleuths wanted, but not like this. There was a lot of questions that day

and a lot of sadness that this wasn't supposed to end like this. We did a group call and just discussed it, but we were all completely baffled and shocked and throwing different, maybe it was this, maybe it was that, maybe she is. Did the group come to some conclusion about what you thought it might have been? No, no. We had absolutely no idea what happened. I'm Jamie Bartlett. This is Believe in Magic, episode 4, The Doctors. We used to say to her, you'll be late for your own bloody funeral, and there we all were on our way to her funeral and her funeral was stopped.

But, do you mean you're at literally on the way? Oh yeah, in the car. In April 2018, believe in magic supporter and Jean and Meg's friend Lucy Petagini was driving to Meg's funeral just outside London. Dozens of other families and supporters from all over the country were en route. Lucy was just a few miles away when she heard the news

that the funeral had been halted. We were messaging people that we knew were on their way to say, obviously you need to turn around, it's not happening. Did you, were you told what had happened to make it stop? I don't know if Jean had intervened or someone may have said the police were involved. I don't know. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Megan's friends and family to have to turn around and go home that day having no idea what was happening. I've never heard of a funeral being cancelled at such late notice.

Whatever the reason, Jean must have had no choice. or whatever the reason, Jean must have had no choice. For the families who support Megan Jean, her funeral being stopped was more evidence of how the sleuths ruined Meg's life. Their online campaign prevented a poorly young woman from raising money for life-saving treatment and led to her charity being investigated, and now a shadow has been cast over her funeral. Did you hear that Megan died? She had such an awful year before she passed away. She was hounded to death sadly. In the last year we have seen the best of humanity tortured and defiled by the worst of humanity. Just hope this bastard is satisfied now. They need pushing down.

humanity. Just hope this bastard is satisfied now. They need pushing down. Eventually, there's a second funeral. This one went ahead. Megan Jean had attended lots of funerals over the previous five years, nearly all children they'd helped. Now, it was Jean's turn to mourn. Lucy Petagini, whose daughter died of a brain tumour, was there. How was it? It was sad. It was really sad. It was really sad. It was kind of like the end of the... Although obviously they'd been all this trouble,

it was the rear end of all the magic for these children. I think that's the really sad thing. I'm talking about the poorly children that absolutely a dold make that was still obviously going through treatments and It was hard for them because she was like she was like a fairy godmother to these children. That's how she was That's how these children very ill children saw her It was yeah, it was really sad Really sad and as I haven't heard from Jane, I did message her a couple of times just

to see how she was and she never replied. The sluths have no idea how Meghan died, but they are confident that whatever she died of, it wasn't a brain tumour. Despite everything I've seen, the photos of Meghan Jean getting off the Queen Mary 2, the receipts from Disney. Meg's death makes me wonder, what if the sleuths got it all wrong? I've seen this with online detectives before. They come up with a theory, and then go online to find evidence that backs it up. We all do it, I've done it before too. When I first came across this story, I wondered

how we'd ever actually get to the truth. Because apart from Jean, the only people who really know whether Meghan had a brain tumour are her doctors. Patient doctor confidentiality is so strict, even after a patient dies, I knew they'd never speak to us. But there is one circumstance when they're allowed to talk. In fact, they have to talk. If someone dies in unusual circumstances, a coroner, which is a kind of judge, opens legal proceedings to determine how that person passed away. Every day in the UK, over 100 coroners' conclusions are made. Susan's legal proceedings to determine how that person passed away.

Every day in the UK, over 100 coroners' conclusions are made. Each one its own story, a detailed examination into a person's final moments. They usually involved testimony under oath from doctors that were involved in a deceased person's care. And we discover that on the 16th of November 2018, nearly eight months after Meghan Barley died, Mary Hassel, the coroner for Inner North London, held an inquest into her death. Surely that will reveal what happened to Meghan. The only problem is that getting hold of Inquest recordings is almost impossible. The producer Ruth has been trying to work out if we can get access. Now the issue with these hearings is that if you know they're about to happen and you

want to go, anyone can go including journalists and you can take notes and listen. You can't make a recording and the only people who are granted recordings afterwards are what's called interested parties and that might include a family member, but it doesn't necessarily include journalists. We apply for permission to hear a recording of the Inquest, but it was more in hope than expectation. And then one morning I'm working with Ruth and we get some news. So I've just got an email from the coroner's court in St. Pancras in London. Thank you for your email dated 8 February.

You've requested a recording of the Inquest touching the death of Meghan Barley that was held on the 16th of November 2018, Inquest are public hearings and journalists like other members of the public are very welcome to attend any Inquest in Inner North London. But we missed it. These days Inquests are recorded and rarely transcribed, so there is a recording. It can be disclosed to interested persons, but unfortunately, a definition of interested persons does not include journalists, so I'm afraid you're not entitled to the recording or documents. We don't have access to Meghan's medical records, so without the coroner's inquest, we might never fully understand how Meg died.

But check this out. However, given the nature of this inquest and your request in these very exceptional circumstances, coroner Hassel is prepared to allow you to listen to a recording of the inquest, I can facilitate this for you at St. Pancras Coroner's Court. This is amazing and look, I shall play the recording once through and I shall sit in court with you during that time. Just one time we got one chance to listen. You will not be allowed to make any sort of recording but you are very welcome to take notes. I mean, amazing. So we've basically got to make as many notes as we possibly can.

You need to learn short-hand. What a strange thing as well, that you have to go into a court and listen to a recording, but you can't have a recording yourself. Such a strange rule, isn't it? I wonder what they mean when they say given the nature of this inquest. Yeah, well let's phone her before she changes her mind. I've never been to Coroner's Court before. I've never been to Coroner's Court before. No. One rainy day in March 2022, Ruth and I head to St. Pancras Coroner's Court.

It's an old municipal building. You've seen the kind before. The red bricks, window frames in need of repair, the busy notice board. It's tucked away, almost embarrassed by the shiny new developments that surround it. Google's brand new million square foot mega campus, a shrine to our modern love affair with tech is being built just around the corner. As the court clerk sets up the sound system for us, we wait nervously outside, hoping we'll get the answers we've been looking for. If she didn't have a brain tumor, I'm hoping that it will give us

clues as to what we should be asking next. So the lady who is going to play as the recording has just told us that in the 10 years she's worked here, she's never heard of anyone being allowed to hear a recording of an inquest after it's happened. Normally they would just tell us what the findings of the inquest were. We're led into a large wood-panelled room

with red leather seats. Something like a cross between a court and an old pub. There's me, the producer Ruth, and Claire. Claire is our secret weapon here. We aren't allowed to record what we're about to hear, so we ask Claire to come. She's a stenographer. Someone who, using a small machine called a steno that looks a bit like a typewriter,

but without letters, can take notes so fast and so accurately that it's as good as having a tape recorder. For over two hours, we sit and listen to the intimate details of a case we know so much about and yet so little. Finally, it feels like we're in the consultation room with Megan Jean and their doctors. And what I heard, it wasn't what I expected. Oh, it's just awful. It was just really not nice listening to that, was it?

It felt quite intrusive. It was really somber. It was also the account of her death. The actual death, that was so grim. It was such a long and drawn out affair that the anithetists and the surgeons and stuff basically had to give up with exhaustion after two and a half hours. You stop thinking about all the investigation and you're just thinking, what is this co-going through? It's easy to get carried away with interesting concepts and big ideas and you know, sleuthing and different conditions but when you hear the details of someone's

death it becomes very real. I understand now a bit better where they don't just hand out recordings of these things. But look here are some of the things I think we just learn. First, Megan died at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. It specialises in treating brain conditions, but she wasn't there because of a brain tumor. She was there being investigated for idiopathic intracranial hypertension, the condition she claimed to have before the brain tumor. Remember the one she used to post about on an I.I.H. forum before believing magic started. Because we couldn't record the inquest, actors are reading out the words of the doctors

and coronamary hassle who speaks first. I now call to give evidence, Lewis Thorn. Can you please give me your full name, your professional role and your professional address? My name is Lewis Ward Thorn. I'm a consultant neurosurgeon and I work at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Queen Square in London. Lewis Thorn saw Megan the morning she died, but he first met her five years earlier, soon after she'd had her brain shunt fitted. So, Meghan was being investigated and treated for idiopathic intracranial hypertension, raised brain pressure, a condition which has many of the symptoms of a brain tumour, but

without the tumour. When Lewis Thorn first saw her, Megan was reporting painful headaches whenever she lay down. He carried out some tests to find out whether raised brain pressure could be responsible. But he couldn't find anything. Her shunt, which drained fluid from the brain to the abdomen through a hole in the skull, seemed to be working normally. through a hole in the skull seemed to be working normally. And when Meghan arrived at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, just four days before she died, doctors were again concerned her brain shunt wasn't working properly, that pressure could be building up in her brain and pressing on her optic nerve.

Lewis Thorn wanted to test Meghan's brain pressure by inserting a needle into her spine to draw off some cerebral spinal fluid under general anaesthetic. He told her she was at risk of losing her sight. One day Meghan would say yes, the next day she'd withdraw her consent, saying she was too nervous to have the procedure. This went on for some days, and in the end, she never had the test, because unexpectedly, in the evening of the 28th of March 2018, Megan went into cardiac arrest. She was rushed to the operating room, where for over two hours doctors battled to save her life. When it was clear there was nothing more they could do, Jean was rushed in to see Megan

one final time, and Megan was pronounced dead just before midnight. Reliving the harrowing resuscitation efforts, the consultant and east the test who tried to revive her sounds distraught. My team and myself gave it absolutely everything we could and I'm so sorry that we weren't able to get Meghan back. Different medical professionals involved in her care give evidence as the Inquest tries to determine how it got to that point. Dr. Shivon Burns, an immune system specialist, was involved in Meghan's care from September 2013 until April 2017. I assessed her from unodeficiency and concluded that she had no significant immune deficiency.

Yet when Meghan went to America in 2016, she claimed she was seriously ill in hospital with sepsis because of immunodeficiency caused in part by her tumour. Meghan would go to Dr. Burns reporting symptoms, mostly recurrent sore throats. When Dr. Burns tested her, she never found any proof of infection. But Dr. Burns was worried about something else. I had significant concerns about her opiate seeking behavior, the validity of her medical history,

and the nature of her engagement with medical services. My concerns were shared by other professionals with whom I had many multidisciplinary team discussions, which finally resulted in a referral to her local mental health team. We saw a prescription for morphine in the evidence documents sent to the sleuths. I assume that was about pain relief,

but this seems to suggest possible addiction. Dr. Shavon Burns even brought up these concerns with Louis Thorn, the specialist in brain pressure, and it turns out he was worried about it, too. I was concerned that she was vulnerable and that she was taking a higher dose of opiates than was required, and I wondered whether that was part of the reason that she was unwell. Louis Thorn got together the many doctors involved in her care to find out who was responsible for the morphine prescription. But they couldn't figure it out.

At the Inquest, another consultant, Megan's endocrinologist, offers a clue. In November 2017, I was contacted by Harrod's Pharmacy. I was told that there had been an attempt to obtain Oromorf with my name on the prescription. I was later sent a copy of the prescription and the signature was clearly a poor forgery. I was later contacted by the police in this regard. So a forged prescription for liquid morphine. There are more revelations like the fact that Megan had a breast reduction aged just 17. The sheer number of doctors Megan was seeing, but also the number of appointments she missed.

Louis Thorn also picked up on this. It is concerning the number of doctors that were involved in her care. Opinions taken from abroad that we did not have any documentation of made it very difficult to look after her. Louis Thorn tried to arrange to see Meghan as part of a large group, to make sure all her doctors were getting the same information and work out what was going on. But Meghan stopped turning up to his clinics. When the forensic pathologist Alan Bates conducted his post-mortem, he found something shocking. He found nothing.

The brain itself, apart from the shunt, appeared morphologically normal. It had a normal weight and there were no signs of either cerebral edema or raised intra-cranial pressure. Her brain appeared normal, no swelling, no high pressure, and no brain tumour mentioned anywhere. So what did Kilnegen? Histologically, I didn't find any significant changes except in the liver, where I saw very severe fatty change, replacement of the normal tissue of the liver by fat. So in conclusion, the only pathological change of note was fatty liver disease.

And I offered probable cause of death as one A acute cardiac arrhythmia, an abnormality of the rhythm of the heart due to 1b, fatty liver disease. I think in this case it's most likely related to the deceased having had a high body mass index. There was a second postmortem too and I wonder if this was why Megan's funeral was abruptly cancelled. That one found the same as the first. As the Inquest draws to a close, Coroner has all hands down her determination. I make the determination that death rose from natural causes, and I confirm this by signing the record of Inquest this 16th day of November 2018.

Coroner's Inquests don't always cover everything, this 16th day of November 2018. Coroners in quests don't always cover everything, but neither the pathologists, Megan's neurosurgeon, endocrinologist, or GP, mention a brain tumor. As we walk out of the court, we now have other even bigger questions. We now have other even bigger questions. No sign of serious infections, no sign of other abnormalities with any other of her,

with her organs, no sign of immunodeficiency, which was another thing that was claimed. I still am left wondering what really killed her. Like, I know what didn't kill her, it wasn't a brain tumor, it wasn't into cranial hypertension. I know that what she died of technically in the ICU, but I don't know how it came to be still that a 23-year-old has such serious fatty liver disease that it results in them dying. That is suddenly a kind of a new mystery really. I don't want to say one in a million because it sounds a bit cliché, but you're getting close to those odds. It's extremely rare.

Professor Gavin Sandakok from the University of Essex is a sports scientist. He spent years studying the causes of fatty liver disease. On a purely medical level, cardiac arrhythmia caused by fatty liver disease in a 23-year-old is a natural cause of death. But it's so unusual for someone so young to die in this way that it doesn't feel like the end of the story. I've never even experienced it. I've only heard of it, so it's very rare in my experience.

Wow, okay. Professor Sandercock explains that fatty liver disease so severe that it could be linked to death is typically caused by living extremely unhealthy for years and years. It's a chronic disease, and it's from chronic exposure to risk factors like obesity, like high blood glucose

from diabetes and high cholesterol. So if you think of it as a sort of, you know, a gradual injury to the liver, it's like the liver's being punched, it's being punched by glucose, being punched by cholesterol. But unlike a brain tumour, it's a preventable condition. And in the early stages, treatable through lifestyle change, especially at a young age. It's Professor Sandercox Hunch that doctors would have tried repeatedly to encourage Megan

to change her lifestyle. This advice will have been received time and time again, not just by the individual but also by their parent. She dies at 23. I mean, dies at 23. I mean, dying at 23 is rare. Dying at 23 of something chronic is even rarer. We learned a lot at the inquest, but there's still so many things I don't understand.

Why wasn't the fatty liver disease dealt with sooner? Why did Meghan refuse Louis Thorn's procedure if she was at risk of going blind? How serious was her opiate seeking behaviour? As I read back through the coroner's inquest, I realised it wasn't just about Meghan. It was also about her mother, Jean. Jean was the constant presence in Meghan's life. She was always there for every hospital visit or GP trip. She was at the Inquest 2 of course. She asked a lot of questions, which is completely understandable. But at times she seemed to contradict and argue with the

doctors. To find out why Megan ended up dying at just 23. I need to go back into her past and understand more about her life away from the believe in magic spotlight. Jean is the person who can answer these questions, but she hasn't answered any of our emails. In fact, we're still trying to work out where she is. But there are other people besides Jean, who might know. Although she was brought up alone, Megan wasn't an only child. She had four older siblings. We tried to contact Megan's two sisters right at the start of this project. We'd been told they were very private people,

and for a whole year we waited for an answer. We'd almost given up until one day the sisters finally agreed to talk. I don't think people realize how dangerous she is, how manipulative she is, how much of an effect she's had on people and how entitled she is. For the first time, they've decided to go public with their side of the story. It's like that good, Jamie Bartlett. The series producer is Ruth Mayer. The producer is Lucy Greenwell. Music by Jeremy Wormsley.

Sound designed by Peregrine Andrews. The executive producer is Innes Bowen. you you