In season 5, we shared a bit of Andrea’s conversation with her parents, and we’re releasing even more in this episode of case files. If you’ve been with us from the beginning, you’re familiar with Andrea’s sister's case. Today we hear from Megan and Andrea’s parents as they reflect on their experiences and share their hopes for their grandchildren. *** Listen to the NSBM episodes about Megan: Season 1 Episode 1 Season 1 Episode 2 Season 2 Episode 7 Order Andrea's new book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/sponsors/ Follow Andrea on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI To support the show, go to http://Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe or subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nobody-should-believe-me/id1615637188?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=larjmedia_podcasts) where you can get all episodes early and ad-free and access exclusive ethical true crime bonus content. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit http://MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the focus of this episode?
True Story Media. Just a quick reminder that my new book, The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, is on sale right now wherever books are sold. The book was an Amazon editor's pick for nonfiction, and the Seattle Times called it a riveting deep dive into MVP.
And if you are an audiobook lover and you like hearing my voice, which I'm assuming you do since you're listening here, You should know that I narrate the audio book as well. If you have already read the book, which I know so many of you have, thank you so much.
Please let me know your thoughts and questions at helloandnobodieshouldbelieveme.com and we will bring my co-author, Detective Mike Weber, on for a little book Q&A and post-retirement tell-all special. Thanks for your support. So if we could just start by getting a slate from you. So I'm Mike and I'm Andrea's dad.
So I talk to you or talk to the camera?
No, you talk to me.
I talk to you, okay.
Four years ago, I set out on the journey of making this show. I came here because I had a story to tell. And I'd recently realized that my family's bizarre and horrifying saga wasn't actually a one in a million story.
Instead, it sounded nearly identical to all of these other stories of families experiencing Munchausen by proxy, and it's this powerful shared experience that fuels the show to this day. I've talked about my sister Megan Carter's case periodically throughout the show, namely in the first and second seasons, episodes that I'll link to in the show notes.
But my history follows me on this road, and it takes a new shape with each new case I learn about. As my understanding of Munchausen by proxy deepens, so does my understanding of my past, of myself, and especially of my family.
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Chapter 2: What early signs of Munchausen by Proxy did Megan show?
And I can picture exactly now looking at her in the bed and her being kind of pleased that everybody was looking at her and concerned about her. And not concerned about what happened, but concerned about that we were concerned. And I started piecing pieces together. And it was this medical attention-getting that had a number of instances.
One where she claimed she couldn't walk and almost had to be in a wheelchair and Eventually got her to walk, took her to a doctor at University of Washington. He was a very strange doctor, had a long ponytail, but was a very good doctor and asked her to walk down the passageway. He said, we deal with cases like this, there's nothing wrong with her back, it's in her mind.
And that was when I decided I was either going to pay $30,000 for this course that he had where he would make them swim and run and jump.
But you sort of, it was like a sort of physical therapy, occupational therapy.
Well, he asked her to walk and hop down the passageway. And then he took me aside and said, you know, there's absolutely nothing physically wrong. You can't do that if you have what she claimed that she had, this serious back problem.
Right, right. And was this probably around the time that she was wearing a back brace for on and off? Yes.
And that, again, drew attention to it. And then... I decided well do I spend X thousand dollars on this course or do we head off to Club Med in Huautulco in Mexico and I decided that was the better option.
Yeah I mean I remember that trip as well because I remember specifically that piece of it like oh Megan's been having all this trouble with her back and then now she's like having fun and doing you know doing all this stuff and I remember her going on runs with you. Yeah, and I mean, for you and mom at the time, do you remember having conversations about your concerns about Megan?
And what were those? Or were those just sort of like something's off?
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Chapter 3: How did Andrea's parents respond to Megan's behavior?
But it was like, you know, if one of us needed help with rent or something like that, like you guys were always able to provide that and willing to provide that. So I remember it seeming, you know, because by this time we're both in our 20s. And I remember it seeming so strange of like, why would you get yourself in, like with her, like, why would you get yourself into credit card debt?
Why would you, like, there was an incident where she was writing bad checks. Like, why would you do that? When like, I know you could just ask mom and dad. And like, it wasn't like she was doing, it wasn't like she was like living some crazy high life and driving. So it wasn't anything like super obvious. It was just these like weird things that would happen.
And then when she forged the checks, that was bizarre. And it was so easy to find out.
right i mean not a mastermind not exactly not a mastermind and that was when that the boy that boyfriend appeared yeah her her boy that was when she was with him yes with scott yeah and i mean i remember that like so there was and again i you know it's like there's all these incidents but that one where she was writing the bad checks and then got in trouble and i mean she got in like legal trouble
That was a bigger deal than just like, oh, she was indebted.
Well, I managed to paste over that.
Right, you bailed her out. But I remember that she was, in that instance, so she was with this boyfriend that, you know, was, I think we had questions about him. And she got in trouble for writing fake checks. And then I remember that like that was kind of the first time like she stopped talking to all of us for like three months because she was mad.
She was mad that I didn't defend her against you guys. And then she was so furious at me that she didn't talk to me for like three months. This was another thing that struck me as a parallel between Sophie and Megan. Not to say that you can't suffer just because you come from a place of economic privilege. Of course you can.
But with both of them, there was this insistence on seeking out opportunities to position themselves as the victim that seemed pathological in and of itself. Like Sophie choosing to become a single mom of two, or my sister fabricating and then pretending to lose a twin pregnancy after her fiancé left her.
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Chapter 4: What led to the intervention regarding Megan?
Right. And it's just, it's really difficult.
Nobody Should Believe Me is proud to partner this month with the American Civil Liberties Union. With more than 1.1 million members, 500 staff attorneys, thousands of volunteer attorneys, and offices throughout the nation, the ACLU is at the forefront of fighting government abuse and defending the freedoms we all hold dear. Freedoms of speech and religion,
a woman's right to an abortion, the right to due process, citizens' rights to privacy, and much more. In the two months since Donald Trump took office, the ACLU has filed over 20 lawsuits to protect people from the administration's abuse of power and attempts to strip away our most fundamental rights. And right now, they are at the forefront of protecting immigrants' rights.
The ACLU sued to stop Trump's attacks on birthright citizenship, to end the deportation of immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, and they're providing legal counsel to those currently detained there. They also block him from using an archaic wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act from 1798, to arbitrarily deport immigrants and deprive them of due process.
The ACLU is also partnering with the legal teams fighting to free Mahmoud Khalil and Rumesa Ozturk who were targeted by ICE for exercising their legally protected rights to free speech and political dissent. The ACLU is fighting for all of us. And with so much on their plate, they could really use your support. So head to aclu.org backslash action at the link in our show notes.
You can donate to help the cause as well as find volunteer opportunities and actions you can take in just minutes to help defend the country we all love. This ad was provided pro bono. In the Hartman case, we saw a family of privilege make the opposite choice, to defend their daughter's indefensible actions and pour millions of dollars into her legal case.
The result was that two vulnerable children remain at home with an unsafe parent, and Sophie was free to pursue an opportunistic lawsuit. In my family, Though I know how hard this was on my parents, once they had the information in front of them, once they realized what was at stake, the priority was protecting Megan's son.
I think on some level, we all knew that this could cost us our relationship with Megan, even if there was some part of us that was hoping it could go another way, as my mom and I discuss here with my wonderful lead producer, Mariah Gossett. So, you know, we get this call and we were down in the desert and actually Megan and her son were supposed to join us.
And then we get this call from Andy and he's hysterical. And, you know, they've taken... CPS came and did an emergency removal, which we did not know was going to happen. We did not.
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Chapter 5: How has Andrea's understanding of her family history evolved?
He was given over to the grandparents like very fast. But like the idea of like a child being in state custody in your families.
Yeah, it's terrifying when you know something about foster care and how that turns out so many times. So I think to go back to when Daddy decided to pay fees to the lawyers originally, we were trying to help and looking back on it, I wish we hadn't, but that was that. Our family's always been eager to help and support our kids
And so that's what we were trying to do, and then it ended up not going so well.
This is definitely a top-shelf problem, but for families with resources, the line between helping and enabling isn't always crystal clear. And my dad is a man who is used to being able to fix things, to take charge of a situation. And in this moment of crisis, it makes sense that he thought he might be able to fix this one.
Chapter 6: What parallels exist between Megan and other cases discussed?
Well, what I told the attorney, I told Shapiro, this is what I want. I want Megan to get treatment. There's no doubt in my mind she's seriously ill. And his job is to make sure that she gets treatment. And unfortunately, he went completely against my wishes. And he sort of claimed that he's representing Megan, even though I was paying the bills.
Right. I think they have to do that. If he gave you the impression in your first conversations with him that he could do that, that he could like, because you were paying the bills, sort of act on your behalf. I mean, I don't think that would be legal or ethical.
Well, it's not. It wasn't. It was what I wanted him to create as an outcome. And to first, this was an incident that we could utilize to help Megan. And that was...
Right, sort of things have come to a head now. Yes.
And she needs legal representation because it's in the hands of the state. And one of the things I've compartmentalized is the horror that this man, in my opinion,
not represent her best interests, in my opinion, but actually defend her against something that she did and then has now tried to make a career out of it and now is probably behind a lot of these lawsuits because the one way that lawyers make a lot of money is they take a percentage of the lawsuit And I don't know how many of these are going to be successful, although in your podcasts, some have.
And this now seems to be almost a modus operandi for shaking down hospitals.
This was what really drew me to the Hartman case. The way that my sister and her lawyer, Adam Shapiro, set a blueprint for how to attack a hospital who reports abuse, and the way they took what they learned in Megan's case and directly put it to use in Sophie's. The deeper I get into the cases I cover on this show, the more I am both intrigued and dismayed by their interconnectedness.
the way the same lawyers and experts and groups keep showing up in these cases. There is a playbook for perpetrators with means, or the ability to procure means. Hire experts and lawyers to attack the hospital and exploit the judiciary's lack of knowledge on these cases.
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Chapter 7: What role did Andrea's mom play in seeking help for Megan?
And I, of course, saw her at the meeting after the case. That was the last time I saw her. But that was it. And we haven't had any contact since then.
The state's dependency petition for my nephew was dismissed. The social worker tried to reassure my mother afterwards that they had nonetheless, quote, implemented a safeguard to protect my nephew and get Megan the help she needs. Whatever that means. Over the next few years, my sister gave birth to two more babies, both very premature. One of them died. The other, my niece, survived.
And five years later, my sister was back in court after reports of her abusing my niece. This time, there was a police investigation that included an expert review of my then five-year-old niece's 73,000 pages of medical records. They also had video evidence of my sister disposing of an anticoagulant medication meant for my niece.
Following this incident, my niece had developed a life-threatening blood clot that hospital staff reported would not have been possible if she'd received the intended dose. This led to yet another lengthy stay in the PICU. The detective reached out to my family, and even after the previous disaster, we thought this time would be different.
And we talked to the detective and gave him all the background we could. Yeah, I was really hopeful. I just was listening to a book in the car, and one of the comments was the danger of getting your hopes up is that they could be... And I thought that very much applies to this because I was very hopeful in that case. But it didn't go anywhere.
Throughout all of this, through the death of one baby and yet another investigation at a different hospital than the first one, Megan's husband and in-laws stood by her. During the second investigation, Megan's father-in-law even told the police... This is a witch hunt, just like last time.
Their commitment to remaining in denial and their financial support of Megan has cost the kids any hope they had of a safe childhood. No one person could have stopped her, but all of us together could have.
We could have originally, but I can understand their being reluctant. I don't know if they were ever inclined to do that, but I could understand their being reluctant because they saw first investigation, nothing happened. Second investigation... Nothing happened. Right.
And as grandparents, they don't have any rights, you know?
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Chapter 8: How do the Dunlops reflect on their family's journey?
You're not just an enabler. You... You are the person that could have stopped this. You're the person who has legal rights, and you didn't. And you had a duty to protect your children. She had one job. You have one job, Andy. And that's to protect your kids. To protect your kids, and you didn't do it. And you abdicated that 100%.
You've been presented with so much evidence about the abuse, so much evidence about her deception, and you have chosen to disregard all of that. I always wonder what story Megan and Andy tell their children about where the rest of their family is. I know we're the villains in that house. That we, in addition to all of those scheming doctors who keep reporting her, are the scapegoats.
And sometimes, it's hard not to think about what might have been. I know what good parents you were and grew up in the same house. And like, I know how much we would have loved to be in those kids' lives.
Oh, we would have.
And they missed out on so much.
Yeah. I feel like we had so much love to give and didn't have the opportunity. So, and I think about how much we love your kids now and how much we enjoy spending time with them. And it's such a special relationship. And it's just a shame that Megan's children have missed out on that, and we've missed out on that.
The interesting thing in the future is going to be as the children get older and older, they are obviously going to be exposed to a lot of what happened to me when I was younger. And in the daughter's case, that was her entire early life was spent in hospitals. So I think the, I think it's gonna be interesting to watch and I, you know, hope springs eternal.
And I think that, I don't think we'll be reunited with Megan, but I look forward to the possibility of being reunited with the children. And, but I think they're, you know, time is a great healer because once they're outside a certain age group, they're protected by themselves. I mean, why are you giving me this? Why are you doing this to me? Why I don't feel ill, et cetera, et cetera.
And you've done some really interesting interviews with the recognition And I think part of the great work that you're doing and part of the resources that we're very happy to provide for the surviving children, because talk about a crisis and a catharsis when they realize that all the stuff they've been through was created. And, you know, I think they come from strong genes.
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