Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Gypsy Rose Blanchard explains Munchhausen mom's murder & the odd disappearance of Courtney Roland

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is talking again about her involvement in her mom's murder. Dee Dee Blanchard, 48, suffered from Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, a mentalcondition marked by a caregiver making up illnesses in a child to win attention. Speaking from prison where she is serving a 10-year-sentence, Gypsy Rose describes how her mom chained her to a bed and what it was like hearing her die. Nancy Grace discusses the case with psychologist Dr. Chloe Carmichael, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, and reporter John Lemley, RadarOnline.com reporter Alexis Tereszcuk joins Nancy to discuss the odd disappearance of Courtney Roland. The Texas journalist was found disoriented, unaware of a search for her. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. She had a very sweet personality, very convincing. She would call it Southern Charm charm and she would use her Southern charm to get them to be friendly and get on their good side. Did you hate your mother at that point? I didn't hate her. You wanted her dead. Yes, but it was not because I hated her. It was because I wanted to escape her. Everything went quiet. A young girl describes listening as her mother is stabbed to death by a boyfriend she meets on a Christian dating website.

But that is just really the beginning of the story. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. How do we get to the point where a young girl is describing how she meets this boyfriend on a Christian dating website, and she listens as, quote, everything went quiet as her mother, after calling out her name, Gypsy, that's the daughter's name, repeatedly everything goes quiet and she just waits in the next room as her mother is stabbed dead again. That's just the beginning of the story.

This is what we know. A syndrome called Munchausen by proxy comes into play. Joining me right now, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, New York psychologist and creator of anxietytools.com, Joseph Scott Morgan, renowned forensic expert, John Limley, Crime Stories contributing reporter, all joining us on this all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again let's start with you john limley the murder of the mother is really just the beginning of the story this story started when gypsy blanchard was just a tiny little girl with gypsy in and out of the hospital over and over and over. A feeding bag, intravenous tubes.

It goes on and on, multiple life-threatening surgeries and infections. Let's start at the beginning, John Limley. What happened? Gypsy Rose Blanchard grew up, Nancy, really not knowing much about the world outside of a doctor's office or hospital rooms. And a pink house in Missouri where she lived with her mom, Dee Dee. By the time she was eight, Gypsy Blanchard was allegedly suffering from leukemia, muscular dystrophy, vision and hearing impairments, even seizures. Gypsy used a wheelchair to get around and a feeding tube for nutrition and medicine.

In her world of constant medications. Hey, John Limley, you left out the fact that she's bald. The little girl is bald wearing a little skull cap on her head, which indicates to me, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, that the little girl had cancer. And from her treatments has gone bald. I mean I'm looking at her and photos of Gypsy as just a little girl with the skull cap on extremely pale dressed she looks like she's about 10 years old but she's dressed like about a five-year-old and she looks extremely ill. I think even some of her teeth have fallen out.

Yes. Well, Nancy, what's really terrible is that essentially she is extremely ill. However, the illness doesn't have to do with a physical ailment. The illness has to do with a terrible form of denial and break with reality that's been forced upon her by her own mother, which is so incredibly sick. Back to John Limley. John, so she is suffering from leukemia, muscular dystrophy, a host of health impairments. Her head is bald.

She's being fed through a feeding tube. What does that entail, Joseph Scott Morgan, to be fed through a feeding tube? Feeding tube is a source of conveying nutrition into someone where this literally has to be surgically implanted into the digestive tract of an individual so that they can absorb the nutrients from liquefied food. If you can imagine something along the lines of Ensure that people take as a nutritional supplement. I don't even know what you're saying. I mean, I hate to kick it off like this, Joe Scott Morgan, but I think what you're trying to say in your doctor talk is you get a tube and you surgically create, you cut a hole in the person's stomach

and it goes into their stomach. Just talk in regular people talk, Joseph Scott Morgan. What is a feeding tube and how does it work? It has to be inserted into the body nancy and uh this is generally done for people that are so um debilitated they're so sick that they can't eat for themselves and that's what had been put forth inserted in the body how well surgically nancy so you cut a hole you know what you cut a hole in the stomach and you put a tube in there and it goes into your stomach is that right yes i'm having to cross examine you know what you are you're a hostile witness

i'm having to cross examine my own witness your honor may i have permission to cross-examine joe scott morgan because he's being very very uh let me just say um you're not working in harmony with me joe scott morgan when i say how does it work i don't mean insert a feeding tube into the for all i know you could swallow it okay i don't even know what you're saying or it could be an intravenous drip that's not what this mom did to this girl she had her a feeding tube stuck in her stomach cut open and a feeding tube put in that's how the little girl ate and there's nothing wrong with her joe scott there's nothing wrong with the girl no there is nothing wrong with her, Joe Scott. There's nothing wrong with the girl. No, there is nothing wrong with the girl.

Well, that much I understood. Okay, back to you, Limley. Now, in between these hospital stays, Nancy, Gypsy and Dee Dee really created their own universe of support. Oh, you're on a first-name basis with a mom? Who's Dee Dee? Dee Dee is Gypsy's mom. What is her real name? Her full name is Claudinea Dee Dee Blanchard.

Everyone knew her as Dee Dee. Well, I know her as defendant number 1234 in the penitentiary. That's how I'd like to think of her. But back to Gypsy's mother. How did she manage to fake? You know, hold on. Hold on just a moment. Let's just get right down to it.

Take a listen to this girl describing the night her mother is murdered. I heard her scream once. And there was more screams, not like the kind in a horror film, just like a startled scream. And she called out to my name about three or four times,

and at that point, I wanted to go help her so bad, but I was so afraid to get up. It's like my body wouldn't move, and then everything just went quiet. Were you excited that your new life was about to begin? I was excited, but at the same time, it was overwhelming. Did you feel a rush of joy? It would come in little spurts of happiness,

but I would have breakdowns where I'd start crying, feeling remorse, guilt, also missing her at the same time. That's from ABC's 2020. But before you judge this girl, listen to her describing being chained, chained, C-H-A-I-N-E-D, chained to her bed as a child. Listen. She physically chained you to the bed. Physically chained me to the bed and put bells on the doors and told anybody that I probably would have trusted that I was going through a phase and to tell her if I was doing anything behind her back. To John Limley, Crime Stories investigative reporter, how did the mom fake the daughter's illnesses? It was a lot of doctor

shopping, Nancy. They would go from doctor to doctor in cities that would either be next doctors spend so much time with Gypsy. And there was a lot of prep between Gypsy and her mom before they would go to a doctor's visit about what she should say, what she shouldn't say, what she should do, how she should appear immobile or nauseated. It was a lot of theater, a lot of preparation, and a lot of staying on the move. Quote, the prison that I was living in before with my mom, it was like I couldn't walk, I couldn't eat, I couldn't have friends, I couldn't go outside, you know, and play with friends or anything. She kept her daughter chained to a bed, confined to a wheelchair. With drastic steps to convince the world her daughter's illness included leukemia, muscular dystrophy. She would shave her daughter's head, rub numbing cream on her gums to make her drool. Think about it.

She said Gypsy had a mental age of a child much younger than she was. And in fact, it was so convincing, dozens, dozens of doctors, 36, 40 doctors were fooled and prescribed medication for this child. She even underwent surgery to have her salivary glands removed. What does that mean, Joe Scott Morgan? And let me warn you ahead of time, speak in regular people talk. We are not in one of your forensic classes, okay? What does it mean to have salivary glands removed? Salivary glands exist within our mouth, and these produce saliva, or in common speak, spit, is what it comes down to. It helps moisten the mouth and it helps with us digesting food. And it is amazing to me that any physician would go in and surgically remove these without some kind of scientific basis, Nancy, because this really inhibits our ability to not just digest food,

but even chew food. We kind of take for granted every day our ability to swallow things. Saliva, in one sense, acts almost like a lubricant to get food down our throat. So this makes it even more horrific. Can you imagine trying to eat a hot dog and you're doing it with a completely dry mouth? And that's what this young girl was going through. And I'm horrified by what the mother has done, but equally, I am horrified at what the medical community allowed to happen. And I don't abide people standing up and defending the medical community in all these cases. I don't care how much they have doctor shop.

Every time doctors would get suspicious, she would talk them down, scream at them, and then leave. In fact, Joe Scott, one time she went so far as to leave and tell the next doctor that they had been living in Louisiana and all of the medical records were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, so they were having to start over from scratch. She would tell the little girl, Gypsy, quote, Don't talk. Just sit there and play with your stuffed animal,

and we'll do something fun after this, she'd tell the daughter. As a matter of fact, listen to Gypsy, the girl, describe lying for her mother on ABC's 2020. You know a lot of people see this and just wonder why. Why didn't you say anything? I know I beat myself up about that all the time, but I have to understand my mind frame then. I was always so afraid of her, afraid of the consequences after. My friend Dr. Phil asked Gypsy, listen to what she said. She taught me how to be a good liar, a very good liar without any conscience. And I'm changing that.

I'm trying to be a good person now. Be like my mother. And I'm nothing like her. And it wasn't just the doctors. To Dr. Chloe Carmichael, a psychologist joining us from New York and the creator of AnxietyTools.com. Friends and even relatives had never seen the little girl walk. And they were shocked when they saw the girl arrive in court after her mother's death on her own two feet, as opposed to being pushed around in a wheelchair. So it wasn't just doctors that were fooled. Friends and relatives had no idea

the girl could even walk, Dr. Chloe. Well, Nancy, part of Gypsy herself was probably somewhat fooled. I mean, if you can imagine how warping and invalidating it would be to be told from the time that you're, you know, just a tiny baby that, you know, you have a disability and that you can't walk and that you can't mature. Moreover, to be told this by your own mother, who's your source of protection, I can't even begin to describe how disorienting it would be. So there's a part of Gypsy herself that probably actually believed this. The one thing that is absolutely universal, if you look at every single medical record is that the little girl never spoke every single medical document says mother reported mother states history by

mother and the little girl says that as she grew up her mother became more and more controlling and as i told you earlier when she tried to actually run away, the mom chained her to the bed, physically chained her and put bells on the doors and told the adults that Gypsy knew that Gypsy was going through a phase and that she was trying to do things behind the mom's back, like run away. The mom cut off all contact with friends, took her phone and computer away from her, and would greatly limit any exposure to the outside world. But somehow, she managed to get her mitts on a dating website. John Limley, what happened then?

As Gypsy continued to be defiant, she even created, as you say, an online dating profile behind her mom's back. And she eventually connected with a Nicholas Godejohn, a man from Big Bend, Wisconsin. The two fell in love, had a secret online relationship for about two and a half years, Gypsy has told. And in June of 2015, Gypsy said that while Dee Dee, her mom, took her to a routine hospital appointment, Go To John traveled back to Missouri. He then checked into a local motel where he waited for Gypsy to let him know that Dee Dee was asleep. Go to John then went to Gypsy and her mom's house where Gypsy handed him gloves, duct tape, and a knife. While Gypsy was hiding in the bathroom, Go to John went into the bedroom where he later admitted to police that he stabbed Deeede. You know, it's a horrible and tragic situation all the way around,

but I can tell you this. Joseph Scott Morgan, you know how I feel about the twins, and I know how you feel about your son. Can you imagine somebody slicing your child's stomach open and sticking a tube in it or chaining him to a bed i i'm i'm not for murder and i agree with what the daughter said she said i'm not glad my mom is dead but i'm glad i'm out of that situation i don't know i really think if this had been put to a jury they would have let her go joe scott i mean yeah i've been around enough juries they usually usually if they have

the right evidence do the right thing boy you're not kidding and there's a huge totality of of evidence here and just to back up one quick second there's also one more detail that's can you talk in regular english sure i'm not in biology one i won in in college okay i'm a lawyer not a scientist we'll make it general science thank you um it it there's a also a story that's floating around out there that from an early age, that the mama would prepare this child's meals. And this is very, very disturbing. And it's alleged that she was putting weed killer in this child's food. And going back to this idea of her hair falling out,

a lot of these diseases that this child was presenting with, everything from muscular dystrophy to asthma to all these different things, that could potentially be accounted for by the fact that she was being administered poison slowly. This is a device that's been used in movies. We think back to like the Sixth Sense, that one horrible scene in there. And you can imagine what this child was going through. So she had really been drug down this road for a long, long time, Nancy. And it gives you pause as a parent, certainly does, to think, man, what would you have done to somebody that had done this to your child? Kill them. Just a warning. Kill them in a minute and sit in jail every day for the rest of my life. And thank God I had the opportunity to kill them. There, there you go. That's what I would do. And now this girl has ended up behind bars. Now, I don't really understand that. I know she plotted to kill her mother. I know that.

But the abuse this child lived through from the beginning of her life up until her teens is documented by hospital records. Everything is documented. My friend Dr. Phil asked Gypsy if she was involved in her mother's murder. Listen to what she said. Should you be in this prison? To be honest, I have complicated feelings about that. I believe firmly that no matter what, murder is not okay. But in time, I don't believe I deserve as many years as I got. But your mother is dead. She is, yes. And she was murdered. Yes, sir.

And you were involved. I was. What would be a just punishment? I'm not really certain on that. I do believe that I do deserve to spend some time in prison for that crime, but also I understand why it happened and I don't believe that I'm in the right place to get the help that I need. Are you glad your mother's dead? No, sir.

I'm glad that I'm out of that situation, but I am not happy she's dead. She was also asked, what kind of mother was your mom? This is what she says. Very protective. Do you think she protected you? No, not in certain ways ways yes in other ways no

um i think that she was very sick in her mind for a long time i believe like we were best friends and when i was younger she was my best friend she was your only friend yes other than my stuffed animals and so i thought that she was a great mother. No complaints. We got along so perfect. You know, I saw her as an angel that can do no wrong. But as Gypsy got older and became curious of life outside the house, she says Mom Didi began exerting more control.

And there were consequences. What happens when she got upset with you? It would go into an argument that would last a couple days, or it could be something where she wouldn't feed me for two days or so. Was she ever physical with you? It started to be physical in 2011. She would hit me with a coat hanger sometimes. Did you ever fight back?

No, because I was too afraid to. That is Gypsy Blanchard on ABC's 2020. I want to pause and thank our partner making today's SiriusXM 132 program possible. And here's my question. What's your story in 2018? The holiday rush is over. You have no excuse. Sorry to be so blunt. LegalZoom can help you make this a great year before all distractions take hold. Make this the year you get serious about launching, running your own business or rest

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LegalZoom, where life meets legal. LegalZoom, thank you, not only for being our partner today on SiriusXM 132, but for what you do for Americans all across the country every day. Thank you, LegalZoom.com. All I can hope is that from wherever she is, that she still loves me in some small way. And I want her to know that I am sorry. I'm so sorry. A young girl ends up behind bars. Her mother dead. After we learned she has been tortured by her mother ever since she was just a few months old.

To John Limley, investigative reporter from Crime Stories. John Limley, let me ask you, what is going to happen to Gypsy now and to the boyfriend? Gypsy pleaded guilty, Nancy, to second-degree murder in July of 2016. She is serving a 10-year sentence at a correctional center in Missouri. Godejohn continues to sit in Greene County J center in Missouri. Godejohn continues to sit in Green County Jail in Missouri. He pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He's awaiting trial scheduled for November of 2018. He faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

The daughter insists, I do not deserve this. I do not deserve, in other words, the 10 years that she got behind bars. I agree with her, Dr. Chloe Carmichael. Yes, actually, Nancy, I very much agree as well. It seems pretty clear from the answer that she gave that you quoted where she said, I'm not glad that my mom is dead, but I'm glad to be out of looks at you as, you know, queen of the universe, my son thinks I can make it rain. And so this mother had her daughter on a certain level, believing that her mother pulled all the strings in life that her mother controlled everything. Moreover, her mother had demonstrated to her that the way you get control is by physical mutilation, by bodily control. On a very primal level, her mother had warped her daughter to

believe that this was the only way out. And I believe what happened here is a form of what we call in psychology acting out. This was a form of acting out of essentially doing to her mother what her mother had done to her because that was the only way out of the situation she could see. So Nancy, I agree with you 100%. This little girl, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, was raised solely by her mother. When Gypsy was just three months old, three months, that's when it started, the mom tells doctors she wasn't breathing properly. She was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given breathing apparatus. Then the mom says something else was wrong.

By the time she was seven, the mom had met with the family and told them the bad news that little Gypsy had a chromosomal disorder. And she would be limited to using a wheelchair. That was shortly after. The health troubles go on and on with no end. A feeding tube is put in when her weight was too low. When she is diagnosed with epilepsy, which is not true, doctors prescribed the little girl a drug called Tegretol that made her teeth crumble inside of

her mouth. She had no teeth because of her mother putting her on this medication. Nobody thought she would ever make it to adulthood. Then Dee Dee would fight. The mother would fight with the family about the little girl's health care. Everybody found out the mom opens up credit cards in the dad's name. So she leaves the family home in the middle of the night, not telling anybody where she went. They moved from Louisiana to Missouri, then claimed Hurricane Katrina ruined all of the medical documents. They popped back up in Springfield, and friends never questioned the little girl's illness. They would see the mom and daughter holding hands and smiling.

The mom would claim, quote, Jesus is on our side. I do not know how Joe Scott Morgan defendants always managed to drag Jesus into everything. Yeah, they seem to do. They kind of pulled Jesus out like some kind of sword to use to defend themselves with at every, or to seek, they use religion to seek, you know, sympathy for what they're going through. Well, they pull him out like he's a pair of fuzzy

dice, like, you know, you rub it, and then something magical is going to happen. The mom even appears on local TV, talking about how grateful she is to the hospital. It was all a lie. Gypsy being crowned queen for a day during the Mardi Gras parade because everybody assumed she was about to die. Free trips to Disney World. It just goes on and on and on, claiming her daughter was developmentally challenged. Backstage passes to Miranda Lambert concerts, where the mom orchestrates a photo

between the star and the little girl, and Lambert ends up sending, this is Miranda Lambert, the country singing star, sending the DD, the mom, checks totaling $6,000 to help her with medical expenses. It was a long, hard, painful life. The little girl would escape by watching one Disney film after the next, Beauty and the Beast, Tangled, just losing herself in the world of Disney. You know, when everything is bad for us, I always watch Aristocats with the Children or 101 Dalmatians and Mary Poppins. I can't imagine what this girl went through. You're actually a prisoner now. How do the two compare? In some ways they're the same, but now I'm so much more freer. The prison that I was living

in before with my mom, it's like I couldn't walk, I couldn't eat, I couldn't have friends. Over here, I feel like I'm freer in prison than with my living with my mom because now I'm allowed to just live like a normal woman. Prison isn't normal. No, not for most, but for me it is. That's from ABC's 2020. And the rest of the story unfolds in a court of law. We are watching the case. We are watching the case of the boyfriend now charged with murder as this girl who endured so much sits behind bars.

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It has worked for me. I now believe in superfoods because of Super Beats. Super Beats, thanks. Now, we're switching back and heading across the country. Her roommate called the police when she realized that I hadn't met my roommate in a while. Courtney's friends and family finally letting out a sigh of relief after receiving good news. In her state of confusion, I think she kind of lost track of time and her awareness. And I don't think that she was aware that she was being looked at as a missing person. So that makes it very hard for us to find somebody when they don't actually know that they're actually missing.

She's young. She's beautiful. She is accomplished. She has a great career in front of her. I'm talking about a 29-year-old Courtney Rowland, a sports journalist who goes missing. Joining me right now, Alexis Tereschuk, investigative reporter with RadarOnline.com. Let's start at the beginning because we all know

this woman was found under a bridge claiming that after thousands and thousands of dollars have been spent trying to find her, she was, quote, confused. All right, Alexis Tereska, let's start at the beginning. Tell me about how Courtney Rowland goes missing so Courtney was on Saturday was had been at a work event she's a reporter she's a sports reporter had been at a practice doing her job goes home and then the friends you know chat with her overnight you know just texting back and forth with her friends. She goes out to a Walgreens at about midnight and is texting her friends saying, I think I'm being followed. She says, there's a person in a blue truck.

They're following me. And then she says that she drives around her block when she gets home. She drives, pulls into her driveway and the truck pulls up next to her. She gets out and they go away, but she was really scared. And so this really frightens her friends. And then that happens about 1230 Sunday morning, late Saturday night. Nobody hears from her again. And everybody gets panicked because they said that they were worried this person, the blue truck, had done something to her. And she was supposed to meet her friend the next day and never shows up. So everybody started panicking. So she tells people that a guy is following her. Let me understand this. When did

that happen? Saturday night to Sunday morning, like around midnight Saturday night, early Sunday morning. So this is what we know. She is reported missing on a Saturday after covering a Texas team elite football camp in West Houston. Then she, what, calls and texts out that a strange man is following her after that, Alexis? Yes, she does. She says that there's a truck, a man in a blue truck that is following her. And that seemed very suspicious and that he was following her car. She drove, she looped around the block at her house because she didn't want to pull right in. And then she pulled in and this is all that she's, she's telling her friend this over text. So she's texting. And then what happens to the mystery man that she says is chasing her? We don't know, and we don't hear from her again.

That's it. That's the last communication that we have with her. So that's really scary. What, if anything, did police do? They spoke to her parents and her friends, and she was reported as missing. So they started actually searching for her. And it was immediate. She's 29 years old, and they didn't wait 24 hours or 48 hours to see who she called. They immediately started searching for her and searching for her car and her cell phone and trying to figure out where she was.

Well, what we know right now is, according to police, quote, there's no evidence to indicate this sports reporter was assaulted. A more thorough investigation may reveal something different, according to Officer Mark Lentini. But at this time, we don't think anything criminal occurred to her. When you say police were out searching for her, along with family and friends, what do you mean by that? I mean, apparently they wasted no time and started looking for her along with family and friends. What do you mean by that? I mean, apparently they wasted no time and started looking for her. They did. They went to her house immediately. They kind of traced her tracks. They went to the Walgreens. And everybody was, with the internet today, everybody was searching for her.

Even the governor of Texas tweeted out, please try to help find Courtney if anybody knows where she is. So people started looking for her her explain to me how she was ultimately found so on Monday morning she had been spotted at a Chick-fil-a about eight o'clock in the morning and somebody what what was she doing in a Chick-fil-a was she wandering aimlessly in the parking lot or was she inside getting some minis she was inside the chick-fil-a so somebody spotted her they called the police if i find out she's in there having a chick-fil-a breakfast my head is going to blow off because if she's so dazed and disoriented that she has no idea while police are out all hours of the day or night searching for her while other real crimes are being committed. And she's kicked back having some nuggets.

Uh-uh. Go ahead. Well, then, within the next 30 minutes, another person reports her. They see her under an overpass of the highway. And so they call police, too. Police had been kind of in that area. It was near the area where her car had been found a few hours earlier and they found her under an overpass. She did not have her phone with her, her purse, anything. Nothing at all. Why would she

be under an overpass? Her dad has said that she was confused and that perhaps her medication was off. Medication? What kind of medication? All he said is that there may have been a problem with her medication. And her parents, her mom actually got a text message from her, well, from her phone on Sunday. And it said something like, to the mom of Courtney, I am buying an iPad. And it seems so suspicious that it would say to the mom of Courtney from Courtney's phone that they were very worried that somebody had her. Does anybody remember the name Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called real life runaway bride? This is a, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And Alexis, you and I covered it together.

Jennifer Wilbanks is a pretty young woman, long brunette hair, big brown eyes, who goes missing. Right before her wedding, I mean, I think it was the weekend of the wedding, and there were some crazy wedding plans, like, this think it was the weekend of the wedding and there was some crazy wedding plans. Like this is off the top of my head. I may have the number wrong, like 15 bridesmaids and 15 groomsmen and hundreds and hundreds of people invited and blah, blah. I mean, the whole

kit and caboodle. I mean, Alexis, you know that when I got married, and I'm not saying this is perfect, we decided on a Tuesday, and we got married on Saturday. Bam! Okay, just like that. And it was done. But the whole drama of the big wedding, and then that weekend, she goes, quote, jogging, and she's never seen again. Well, fast forward, she shows up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, claiming that she has been kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

None of that happened. She took a greyhound and escaped her wedding. She cost the government thousands and thousands of dollars through her wild story. It's basically a case of cold feet. Now, in this case, what do we know? What was said when she was taken to, was she taken to the hospital, Alexis? She was. The police said she appeared, quote, unharmed, but they still transported her to the hospital. What is this business about her being, quote, confused? That is what her dad has said, that perhaps, you know, her medicine may have made her confused.

And I think the police have said that when they found her, she didn't even realize or she told them that she didn't know that people thought she was missing. But, you know, she is a 29-year-old professional who's had, you know, worked and had a job and responsibilities, and yet on a Monday morning she's standing under an overpass in the middle of Houston. Okay, well, that seems totally out of character, and that would go to her seriously having some type of a mental break or some confusion brought on by medication. Of course, she could have said the same thing about Jennifer Wilbanks. Do you remember when that happened?

But she also had been texting her friend saying, there's a guy following me, and then that's it, nothing else. So it really scared everybody. Sounds like a dramatic scenario written by like a fifth grade girl writing a novel. Joseph Scott Morgan, do you remember when Jennifer Wilbanks went missing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have vivid memories of it. It was wall-to-wall coverage. You know, everybody was just terrified that some harm had befallen this person. And you're right. At the end of the day, you know, I think I was still actively working with a lot of law enforcement people then.

And I thought about the cost that was put forward in that particular case and the man hours and the time away from actually, as we've talked about before, Nancy, working cases that are out there where people are actually being victimized and traumatized and everything else, and you get pulled away for some kind of nonsense like that. This girl, Courtney Rowland, was found near a Galleria shopping mall where she had last been seen on Sunday. Her Jeep was found along with her purse. What I'm trying to figure out is why it all happened. To Dr. Chloe Carmichael, psychologist joining us from New York, founder of anxietytools.com. Help me out.

I mean, I would chalk it all up to just as she's saying some kind of medication foul up. But then you've got the drama of an uncorroborated mystery man following her that's kicked off the whole disappearance. Well, Nancy, to be fair, I do think it's actually plausible that if you were having a poor reaction to a medication or even maybe going off of a medication that you're supposed to be on, it would not be unusual to sometimes have some paranoid thinking so that you can have a delusion or you can have a paranoia. Even with me, when I haven't been on medication once in a while, I've mistakenly thought somebody was following me. So I don't think it's entirely implausible that she might have actually genuinely believed she was being followed. And that was part of the early sign of her, you know, whatever type of break she may have had. Well, if it's plausible to you, you're the health care professional, then I accept that. Also, police did say that she acted extremely confused when they found her. But then you've got the other

evidence of the mystery man that kicked off the disappearance, hiding the car, the Jeep under an overpass. I mean, I would think if I were disoriented, I would just leave the car where it was. I mean, the effort of driving it. No, no, she was, the car was at the mall. Okay, so the car was at the mall. Then where does the overpass come in? She was wandering around. She wandered away from the mall, wandered over the Chick-fil-A, and then was found under the overpass. That seems more believable to me. That seems much more believable to me because if she leaves her car, her Jeep at the mall and starts wandering around, who in their right mind would go under an overpass to the interstate? To me, that does sound like she was confused and disoriented. I mean, let's think that through, Alexis, a woman alone, a 29 year old, kind of a local celebrity, wandering around in the same clothes for all that time. And they find

her under an overpass. That does sound like she was way out of it. And people had said, I just under, you know, somebody said they spotted her at the Chick-fil-A. I feel like if I knew somebody was missing, I would maybe go up to them and say, hey, are you OK? After, you know, so many kidnap victims say that they were just put out in public and they were too scared to talk. J.C. Dugar and things like that. I would maybe go up to somebody. But the people responsibly called the police. I guess she was maybe wandering around so strangely that they were afraid to approach her, but they did find her aimlessly wandering around. And she had been spotted at that mall at about 540 on Sunday. They didn't find her till about nine o'clock on Monday. That's a long time for nobody to have seen her. We are on it and trying to find out the truth of what happened. Either this young reporter with really the world at her feet,

she's beautiful, she's educated, she's healthy, to end up disoriented under an overpass? Was it part of some drama that she created for some unknown reason? Or is it for real? Like her dad is saying, there are really arguments to both sides. Let's see where it goes. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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