Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - YouTube mom tortures adopted kids for not performing on viral videos, says cops

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

A woman who made viral YouTube videos for children is accused of abusing her adopted children, forcing them to perform for the camera. Another mother has admitted she injected her own blood into her disabled son while he was in a hospital. Nancy Grace explores this two cases with a panel including forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, Atlanta juvenile judge and lawyer Ashley Willcott, psychologist Caryn Stark, Atlanta prosecutor Kenya Johnson, crime scene investigator Sheryl McCollum, Los Angeles psycho analyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, and Crime Stories reporter John Lemley. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Were these young YouTube stars tortured and abused to get them to perform for the camera? Those are the shocking claims being made against their adoptive mom. A woman who adopted seven children and used them to make social media videos is now under arrest. The seven kids are the stars of a popular YouTube channel called Fantastic Adventures. The channel has over 250 million views.

Now let's go get some cookies. In this episode, one boy does a Mission Impossible-style stunt to grab cookies off the kitchen counter. But police say behind the scenes, the youngsters were being subjected to a nightmare of abuse. Michelle Hackney, who adopted all seven kids, allegedly sprayed them with pepper spray, beat them with a belt or clothes hanger, and locked them in a closet for days at a time. She also allegedly withheld food and water if they didn't recall their lines or perform as directed for the YouTube channel. In the police paperwork, it says they were malnourished. It looks like they weren't sleeping. You are hearing our friend

at Inside Edition, did mommy starve, beat, lock up, pepper spray her seven adopted children forcing them to perform in youtube videos that got millions of views and millions of dollars i'm nancy grace this is crime stories thank you for being with us if this is true she can rot in hell i'll just start with that let's take a listen to these children a clip from youtube hi guys i'm'm Elijah and I'm summer and we're from fantastic Adventures and we've been searching and searching for a stream toys TVs out and we finally found it Ethan and Cole always think they're good at sneak attack, but we're better and we're gonna film it to prove it. Let's do it! Are you ready to do this? I'm going to get you. Let's try to go to the front door. You are hearing the sound of these seven adopted children being forced to perform in YouTube videos to get millions of views and millions of dollars right in mommy's pocket. Right now, a woman accused of abusing seven

adopted children. Why? To force them to perform in highly lucrative YouTube videos. Straight out to Daryl Cohen, Atlanta criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor. What is her possible defense? Her defense can be, in my view, insanity and insanity and insanity because it's one of the meanest things I have ever heard a parent doing to her or his child or children. This is outrageous. It's unbelievable. And you can't make this stuff up. And frankly, there is no defense. Well, okay, Daryl Cohen, that's what you do for a living.

You take the money and hold your nose and you come up with some crazy story to tell a jury and hope it works. With me, Ashley Wilcott, judge and lawyer, anchor as well. You can find her at AshleyWilcott.com. Ashley, you see abuse on children all the time. What do you make of it? A, I don't think it's an insanity defense. I think she's plain mean and it's horrific abuse. A couple of things.

Number one, I think somebody knew of it or suspected it before it actually got reported. So a reminder to anybody who believes that a child's being abused, please report it. B, I see it all the time and I see it by both biological parents, adoptive parents. It's really horrific. And I wish in retrospect, there'd been a better job of looking at her as a potential adoptive parent. You know, I don't know how that process works. Seemingly, they just farm children out to anybody that will take them. And not only that, it seems that there are thousands of thousands of children that need adoptive parents. They can't get them. Police say behind the camera, life for these seven children was torture. It was basically sing or be tortured.

They were starved. They were locked in a closet for days, beaten. The children told cops they had not gone to school in years. In order to perform on Hackney's YouTube channel instead. Okay, back to you, Ashley Wilcott. You're a juvenile judge. How do you just not go to school? And you know what?

I know this is a completely different story. But I was reading about the cheating scandal going on right now. And the Full House and Fuller House star, Lori Loughlin's daughter, is on YouTube saying, I never go to school. I don't even know if they know that I'm even in the class. I don't even know if they miss me. How does that happen? These children,

the Hackney children, were out of school performing for mommy on YouTube and nobody seemed to notice. Well, so here's the problem I have, and that is in the state of Georgia, every state's different. I don't know specifically for that state, but parents obviously can elect to homeschool their children. At least in Georgia, all that requires, Nancy, keep this in mind, is a parent going to the school and signing a piece of paper that says, I'm going to homeschool my child. There's no follow-up. There's no agency that's responsible for ensuring that's actually happened. So in states, it can be very easy to say, I'm homeschooling my children, where you really are not.

Forced baths in ice. Stress positions. Some of mom's favorite methods to force the children to do as she wished. To Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert, author of Blood Beneath My Feet, forcing them to eat hot foods with pepper sauce in it, spraying them with pepper spray. Exactly what does being sprayed in the face with pepper spray do to you? Well, pepper spray is made from an extract called capsaicin, Nancy, and it comes from pepper plants itself, from chilies, if you'll think about that. Anybody that's ever eaten something

that's really, really hot, intensely hot, and on the exterior of the body, it's a skin irritant. I mean, we use this to quell riots with, right? People carry it on their key chains in order to prevent being mugged. It is an agent to do harm with. And what's one of the really striking things about this that I picked up on this case along the way,

she would go to hypersensitive areas of the body, allegedly, and spray these children in their genital areas, which in particular causes a tremendous irritation. And they weren't receiving any kind of relief from this, Nancy. As a matter of fact, she would put them in ice baths. And this is a horrible set of circumstances, not to mention peripheral beating that was going on, starvation, and all these other things. It sounds like a complete house of horror.

Let's take another listen to these children being forced to perform on YouTube. Whoa, slow down. That candy's for the gingerbread house, not your face. What? It's a holiday. I can have some fun. Do you remember what happened last time when you had too much sugar? Yeah, that was a fun day. The kids told police they were thirsty and hungry, according to documents filed by prosecutors. They gave one of the little boys a bottle of water, and in a matter of 20 minutes, he drank three bottles of water, looking like he hasn't had water in days. When a police officer gave one child a bag of chips, she was afraid to eat it because she did not want her mother to smell chips on her breath, the documents say.

Police in Maricopa, Arizona showed up at the house after being contacted by the mother's 19-year-old biological daughter, Megan, who is apparently upset at seeing her siblings mistreated. Megan, who is now being hailed a hero, is seen here in the Mission Impossible skit. Are you trying to steal my cookies? The 19-year-old daughter went to police and said, listen, this is what's happening inside of this house. Michelle Hackney has been charged with child abuse and unlawful imprisonment. Her adult sons were also arrested, charged with failing to report the abuse of a minor. Michelle Hackney has denied using extreme disciplinary actions against the children. She says the only form of punishment she used was making the kids stand in the corner along with spanking and grounding them.

You are hearing our friend at Inside Edition that you just heard. Why is it that food so often is used as a weapon? We are talking about a shocking story that has just hit the headlines. A mother, if you can imagine her getting that honor, accused of starving, beating, locking up, pepper spraying her seven adopted children, forcing them to perform in YouTube videos that got millions of views

and millions of dollars in mommy's pocket. Tashi Wilcott at TashiWilcott.com. How did the YouTube performances translate into money? How it happens is YouTube, you know, has the ads when anybody watches YouTube and money is made from those ads from advertisements. So 2.5 was the total amount made because of her channel on YouTube. She received or kept 1.2 million of that. YouTube got 1.3 million of that. Wow. And guess what?

The YouTube videos are still active. Daryl Cohen, why don't they take that down? It's beyond belief that they don't take it down. I did notice where they're no longer monetizing them. At least YouTube did 20% of what they should do. They should take those videos down immediately and just blank out what that channel was. It's outrageous. And YouTube, in my view, should be prosecuted. If they can't be prosecuted criminally under Nevada laws, then they ought to be sued under Nevada laws by the attorney general, whoever he or she may be in Nevada.

We also know that Hackney's adult sons are also charged in this, which brings me to another issue. To Karen Stark, psychologist at KarenStark.com. Joining us from Manhattan today, Karen, it always amazes me when you've got one evildoer, that would be the mother, Michelle Hackney, but then other people go along with it. They go along with pepper spraying children in their genitals, locking them for hours and hours in a dark closet, starving them, beating them, keeping them out of school. She has adult children, sons, Ryan Hackney and Logan Hackney, and they went along with it. According to police, they were all in on it. I want to tell you something, Nancy, as much as we dislike hearing it, there's everyone

seems to know, and you might consider this, that when you have abuse in a family, it leads to more abuse. And what I'm thinking here is that these boys themselves were subjected to abuse. And so once that happens, you begin to get a charge yourself out of continuing that abuse. And I think that's what happened in this case. Although they knew it was wrong. They are adults. They're adults. I don't care what happened to them.

You may not like it, but it becomes part of you. That may be true. Maybe they were. But that does not excuse what is happening right now. We are learning that Michelle Hackney runs a YouTube channel with about a million plus subscribers called Fantastic Adventures. Her seven adopted children have adventures and play games. She was arrested, allegedly locking them in a closet for days on end without food, water, or bathroom, physically beating them. Her two adult biological sons also arrested.

Her biological adult daughter is the one that finally reported this. YouTube terminated the channel's monetization, which means they took away the ads. But they're still there. It's the irony to Ashley Wilcott is the YouTube page is called Fantastic Adventures. I mean, this just makes me throw up for these kids. They have been so physically, mentally abused by this woman who simply was using them for her financial gain and adventures. Think about the adventures of what she's done to them. Here's what makes me sad about children who are abused. They are groomed in and physically abused to the extent that they are not capable mentally of telling or disclosing. Think about if they had been able to mentally.

They could have said on a YouTube video, this is what mom's done to me really quickly. And if she left it up, people could have seen it. But unfortunately, child abuse affects brain development these children are so beaten down they don't disclose which is typical what we're learning is this millions of people watch these little children on youtube off screen mommy was beating and starving them, say police. On camera, they cast spells. They have Nerf wars. They go on a, quote, cookie capture mission, like we were saying earlier, like Mission Impossible,

suspending themselves over a granite kitchen countertop in a beautiful suburban home to swipe cookies made by their sisters. They appear in comedy series after comedy series called Fantastic Adventures on YouTube. Hundreds of millions of views. But when the camera wasn't rolling, those seven children, all adopted, were starved, locked in a closet on a bare tile floor, pepper sprayed, beaten with belts, brushes, hangers, forced actually bled when mommy pinched his penis with her fingernails. I can't even imagine her doing that. This is Michelle Hackney.

She goes by her middle name, her maiden name, sometimes Hobson, who runs it. It's gotten over 250 million views and it started all the way back in 2012 with 10-minute videos of the children doing make-believe scenarios from pretending they're zombies to spiders to making s'mores and all new videos appear each month and at the end children face the camera and ask viewers to like the videos and subscribe what's so amazing to me is the adult sons logan and ryan went along with it the bio sister is the one who called police alan do you you know all about the internet. How did it get so many views? Well, one way I know is because I've got grandkids ages four and five, and for Christmas, we got them the Amazon tablets, and it has YouTube on it. The algorithm that YouTube uses, when a kid is watching one video,

the next one can automatically feed up that is a similar video. And if it has a lot of subscribers, that algorithm is going to serve these up. So parents may not even know that their kids are watching these videos from these kids. It just comes up. So you might want to check and you might want to find out what your kids are watching. Our friends at ABC 13 listen. Michelle Hackney is a mother to seven adopted children and three biological kids. Her new home is the Pinal County Jail, and neighbors have a different title for her. She's a monster.

A mother's role is to nurture and love and care, and so she's not a mother. Instead of nurturing, police say Hackney physically, mentally, and sexually abused her kids, all of it coming to light after a tip from Hackney's older biological daughter. Officers found kids who they say had not had food or water in days. The kids told police their adopted mother would lock them in closets for days, no bathroom, nothing to eat, and that she would pepper spray them from head to toe, make them take ice baths, beat them with objects, physically abuse their genitals, and the list goes on.

I just don't know what is wrong with people, why you would do that to a child. Kids told detectives much of the abuse was punishment related to Hackney's YouTube channel. The kids say they were pulled from school to act in the successful videos. Hackney's older biological sons were in them too. They're now with their mother behind bars for failing to report the abuse and I saw in her videos that they're

the cause that under the stairs has key locks on both sides, so they were clearly probably locked under the stairs. Neighbors had no idea what was happening. We never seen him outside, on both sides. So they we locked under the stairs. what was happening. We ne which is odd because thei them outside. A source cl

says DCS had been called five times. DCS told abc comment due to confidentiality laws. They now have custody of Hackney's seven adopted kids. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is hidden camera video of the moment that got this mom arrested for child abuse. Elizabeth Malone injecting her disabled son with her own blood as he lay gravely ill at a Nova Fairfax hospital. These are some of the syringes she used to put blood in the five-year-old's trach tube and central IV line, triggering a medical emergency as doctors and nurses soon come rushing in.

Later in this police interview, Malone starts by denying she did anything to her boy, only finally admitting it tearfully when detectives tell her they have video. I don't want to intentionally cause him harm. I know I did. I know I did. Put me in a place where let me see my children again. Wow. She changed her tune. Mommy admitting to poisoning her disabled son, just five years old. This is Mommy Elizabeth Malone. Oh, my stars.

I want to go straight out to Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. What's your understanding regarding what happened, this mom admitting to poisoning her disabled five-year-old son? Well, Nancy, she first, of course, said she didn't do anything. She wasn't involved with anything. And then, of course, she breaks down and admits she did inject her own blood into him, and if he's having all these attacks and he's having all these, you know, issues where he's coding, basically, he's getting attention from doctors. So it's this weird, twisted, sick, munchausen situation where she's just trying to get attention. So to you, joining me, Dr. Bethany Marshall, renowned California psychoanalyst. Dr. Bethany, the mom first said she did not want to harm her son.

But what can you tell us about what her mindset must have been? I think the mindset must have been excitement, an obsessional preoccupation with her child. At some level, thinking about the rewards she's going to get from the hospital system, either a doctor patting her on the back or hours spent in the hospital where it feels like a safe enclave towards her, maybe some financial rewards, some sympathy from the community. I could tell you that most victims of Munchausen by proxy are small children because this is a very vulnerable population. Most perpetrators are their mothers or their caregivers. And often these mothers know a lot about the healthcare

system. They know how to read and alter test results. They know how to get a hold of doctors. They know how to do all of this. And so they use that to exploit the child to get the attention of the hospital. But I can tell you back to your question, when she was injecting this five-year-old with her blood, she was obsessed and excited. You know what? You never fail to freak me out, Bethany. No offense. I hope you take that in a loving and caring way. But I just want to address something Dr. Bethany just said. A mental disorder is called Munchausen syndrome. Munchausen disease is named after Baron von Munchausen. And what it is, is when you

pretend that you have ailments, serious ailments in order to get sympathy and attention, you're desperate for attention. Now, Munchausen by proxy is when you arrange, you stage for someone else, as Bethany pointed out, typically a child, to have all these horrible ailments. You're the puppet master pulling the strings, and then you get vicarious gratification because your child is so desperately ill. And I guess, Bethany, you're saying the payoff is the attention you get from doctors and family. Oh, you're such a good mom. How do you do it? I'm praying for you. Well, you're the one causing the ailment to start with. That's right. You get the attention of the doctors and the hospitals.

But I think often there's some kind of financial reward. I don't know what it would be in this case. Maybe the reward is even having a free place to stay or being able to eat in the cafeteria. So Nancy, we also sometimes on your show talk about malingering. Malingering is when somebody makes up an illness in order to avoid some dreaded, something that they have to pay. They either want to get out of military service, or they want to get a paycheck, or they make up their own symptoms. That's Munchausen or malingering. And in this case, they're making up the child's symptoms. In order to do that,

you must really see your child as a pawn, somebody about whom you have no intrinsic love or care, somebody that you really don't even care if they're going to die. That's how desperate you are for attention, that you will completely sacrifice your child's life for your own benefit. To Kenya Johnson joining me right now, renowned Atlanta felony prosecutor. Kenya, thank you for being with us. Question to you, Munchausen or Munchausen by proxy, true. It is a sort of, let me just say, mental issue, but it does not rise to insanity. In other words, in our jurisprudence system, which we brought over from Great Britain, our common law, insanity typically is under the old McNaughton rule,

which is, did you know right from wrong at the time of the incident? And by the fact that she denied it immediately, she knew it was wrong. We know she knew it was wrong we know she knew it was wrong she did it in secret she denied it because she knew it was wrong she's not insane under our legal standard is she Kenya no she's not insane and it is not a legal defense for the criminal charges that could result from this illness and from the behavior we're automatically automatically, in this case, talking about child abuse, reckless engagement, cruelty to children, reckless conduct, and even battery as an offensive touching. So very serious criminal charges can result from this, and the mother or the caregiver who is doing this offensive behavior cannot claim insanity, cannot claim that they were not aware of what they were doing or the possible outcomes of what they were doing. And so this person will be prosecuted just like any other

person that is a violent offender. So joining me right now, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter John Lemley. What do we know about this mother, Elizabeth Malone? Well, she is the mother of three children in total. And, of course, as we've been discussing, it was in seventh time that they had come in just in a two-month span. Seventh time. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, joining me. That makes me sick. Sick. That means seven times this child has been most likely brought to the brink of illness and then brought to the doctors and very well orchestrated by the mother. That's nearly every week. I mean, good Lord, how many flags do you think are going to, you know, be waving at that hospital when you come back in there?

Plus, these doctors and nurses are so used to seeing parents that are panicked, that won't answer, that want their child well. I bet you she goes in there happy to see him again, socializing. You know, her attitude was probably very off and wrong. And so she's given herself away, Nancy, probably with everything

that she did. You know what, Cheryl? As much as I appreciate your very deep analysis, and I do, because you know I like to know every single detail, she's busted. See, I think of it nuts and bolts. Who did it? Can I prove it? Do I have the right jurisdiction?

How fast can I strike a jury? Okay, that's just me. Mommy Elizabeth Malone admitting to poisoning her disabled son, just five years old. So let's talk about the evidence. We know she's busted on video. We know that. Injecting her own blood up her son's nose and mouth. All right, to make the doctors rush in there and give her attention.

Now, how can I prove it? A, I've got the video if it gets into evidence. Because the video, it gives me reason to think the defense will be a mental defect. Now, how can I prove? See, that's how you win a case. You create your case and then you figure out what are they going to say and then you get prepared to shoot it down so they're going to say first I didn't do it oops that won't work because we got a video now they're going to say mental defect insane. Isn't it true, John Limley, that she brought her own blood into the hospital, into the doctors

in a plastic bag? That's what you call premeditation. Yeah, she kept it in a little overnight bag that she always brought with her. Okay, Cheryl, what about that? Well, not only that, Nancy, she's got these syringes. Where did she get them? Did she steal them from the hospital? Did she bring them with herself or something else? They're going to have her fingerprints on them. They're going to have her, you know, blood on them. They've got her left or right.

There's no question about that. Well, hold on. Jackie Howard here in the studio cannot contain herself she just blurted out she did manage to mute herself just in time she stole the syringes from a hospital cart and that can be proved as well so not only do you have her bringing in her blood in a plastic baggie, you have her stealing syringes in order to affect this ailment. So Kenya Johnson, my only question left now is what will she expect at sentencing? At sentencing, she will certainly want some sort of sympathy, but the studies have shown that this particular disease can actually be be cured but it requires long-term

counseling and uh and and and this can come back uh so she'll have to continue doing this and she may not ever get custody of her child even once she gets out of jail but initially this is considered as a very violent offense uh and so i guess. Have you ever had somebody inject blood up your nose? I guess it is violent. Absolutely. And the jury will see the lengths that she went through to try to hide this, bringing in blood. You're making my head hurt and my chest hurt, Kenya, because of you.

Right now, let me look at my Fitbit my twins make me wear. Well, my pulse is still at 62, so apparently I'm not that upset. Keep going. Well, they will look at all the links that she went through, the hiatus, what her motivation was, how she acted. They even had to put surveillance cameras in the room because they believed that something was happening. Ooh, let's talk about that.

John Lindley, didn't they install surveillance in his secret surveillance in the boy's room for a reason? Tell me. Absolutely. That was part of the plan hatched by the hospital staff and police together after a nurse had spotted a syringe hidden in Malone's sleeve. And also she found a bloody napkin in the bathroom. So the Child Protective Services was notified. They came in, secretly installed this set of cameras in the boy's room to observe what was happening when doctors and nurses were not with him. Just within a couple of days they were much closer to answering what was going on with this bizarre bleeding. The camera captured Malone

as she removed a syringe from a medical cart, emptied whatever was in it out, and then refilled it with, at the time, an unknown substance from her purse. We now know that was the bag of blood. And the child immediately suffered a medical emergency. When officers rushed to the room, they saw a red fluid on multiple surfaces, including on Malone herself. Let me ask you something. According to doctors, she injected her hospitalized 5-year-old son with a substance that nearly made him bleed to death from his mouth. But was the blood coming from his mouth his blood or his mom's blood?

That was actually his mom's blood that she had inserted there and in his trach tube. His trach tube. Correct. Okay, you know what? Kenya Johnson, I asked you what she was going to get at sentencing, and you started talking about treatment. I want her to have treatment. I want her to have treatment for the next 20 years behind bars.

That's where I want her to go to a little counseling group behind bars. Okay? I do not want her out walking around. This child has been in the hospital seven times, seven times in the last few months. Okay? What will she do if she gets out? If you get a jury of moms,

they will be just as outraged as you are at the heinousness of this crime and you will likely get significant jail time. So, Cheryl McCollum, Agassal, what are you looking at? About 20 years, do you think? I think she's looking at 20 years,

but I'll tell you something else, Nancy. I guarantee on her computer, she researched what to give that child. Most people have no idea that a little bit of their blood injected into somebody is going to make that person code. Most people have no understanding of any type of— Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're throwing around words not everybody knows. Code makes person code. John Limley, let's put that in regular people talk. Code means nearly die. Didn't the blood she injected into his body always trigger an infection and a very, very high fever? I mean, she wasn't just staging a scene. She was making her son deathly ill. Yes, hospital staff said that in each case, the child was in danger of dying every time. I keep asking about

a sentence. I think it's going to be 20 to life on an ag assault. What did she plead guilty to, Lemley? Felony child abuse? One count of child abuse. According to Virginia's sentencing guidelines, she faces two to ten in prison, a fine of up to $100,000. Ten years, that's it? Because in our system, Cheryl McCollum, in ten years, she might walk in three years on that. She might. I mean, this child is five, and he's handicapped. I agree with you Nancy she doesn't need to be out. Listen the mother of three pleading guilty to one count of child abuse. Her defense attorney telling the judge quote she denies any intention to harm her child. She loves her child like any mother. Malone's lawyer further telling the judge she didn't like how her son was being cared for so she injected him to get a better

response. Prosecutors say the injections left the child with infections and high fevers. He spent much of February and March of 2018 in pediatric ICU. Doctors baffled by spontaneous bleeding from his nose and mouth. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.