S07 E02: What Happened to Knowellan Kelly?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
True Story Media. Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners. For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org.
So you know him well enough.
Okay. Maybe I'm a bad mom for letting my boyfriend babysit my kids. I'm sorry. I apologize. It's my fault that Nolan is dead.
That is not what we are saying. Hey, no. It is the fact that we have baby Nolan. You are his mother. You are his caregiver. You are his voice. Somebody needs to stand up for Nolan.
What do you want me to say? Yes, I think he did it. I think he's capable of it. I don't know that. I don't know him that well. Obviously, I don't. He's never shown any signs of being that type of person in front of me.
What happened to Nolan Kelly? This is a question that has lingered for a decade now. Jon Stewart, a man who'd been dating Nolan's mother Danica for five months at the time of his death, was originally charged with his murder. But Jon was never prosecuted, and neither was anyone else. This case is a tragedy, and there was a grave injustice here. But much of the media coverage about this case has focused not on the fact that a baby was murdered and no one was held accountable, but on the alleged injustice done to John. And this, too, was the focus of John's email to me last July, which began, "'Dear misguided wannabe journalist,' and detailed a litany of ways in which he felt he'd been victimized by Dr. Sally Smith and, in turn, by my reporting on the case."
John is not one to mince words, as you'll hear, but I was intrigued by his email. I'd mentioned his case only briefly on the show, but John was upset at my framing of Sally Smith, who he claimed had lied about his case. I try never to lose sight of the fact that I'm reporting on real people and their real lives on this show. And if I ever hear directly from someone I've talked about, I think I owe it to them to listen. And I was curious about this case. A child had been murdered, and all these years later, there seemed to be so much uncertainty about what exactly happened. I was also increasingly aware of the deluge of media stories about alleged instances of wrongful accusations of abusive head trauma.
So I figured maybe the universe was giving me a nudge. We responded to John and told him that we'd be happy to look over any documentation he wanted to send along and happy to speak with him to get his side of the story. I didn't actually think he'd agree, but I was wrong. To start with, why don't you just tell me why you reached out to me? What was the impetus for that?
Well, I was actually watching Dateline and a show about Dr. Vega being involved came on. And I was like, you know, I started, so I started, I started thinking about some things, you know, in the past and everything. And, uh, so I contacted chat GPT. And, uh, so then I asked them, you know, about my case in particular, chat GPT, and it brought up your podcast. So I looked at it, listened to it and saw that, uh, I felt that you were basically defending Sally Smith erroneously. And I needed to, um, put it out there that Sally Smith is, I call her malpractice Sally. She, uh, she's a doctor. She's supposed to do no harm and she has done more harm to so many people. It's my environment, but we're not going to talk about any other cases.
We're just going to talk about mine in particular and what she's done to my daughter, especially. And, um. and things like that. So, yeah, so that's why I reached out to y'all, because I didn't feel that it was right.
It felt like the right thing to do to hear John out, and it was a conversation that I genuinely wanted to have. John was offering me a chance to ask the questions I wish my fellow journalists would ask in these cases. You say the doctors lied about you, so what did they lie about exactly? We presume innocence in our legal system. The bar for conviction is high, beyond a reasonable doubt. The onus is not on the accused to prove that they didn't do the crime. But in the court of public opinion, the alleged abusers are the ones making an accusation.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:04–4:48
2
What happened to Knowellan Kelly?
4:48–5:19
3
Who is Jon Stewart and what are the claims he makes?
5:19–32:01
4
What was the background of Danica Crawford and her family?
32:01–35:33
5
How did Danica and Jon meet and what was their relationship like?
35:33–48:47
6
What were the dynamics between Danica, Jon, and her children?
48:47–57:49