Nobody Should Believe Me - Case Files 25: Olivia Gant Part 2

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

In this episode, Andrea continues delving into the Olivia Gant case with Detective Melissa Kalish, who uncovered the vast fraud and abuse behind Kelly Turner’s lies. Kelly continued to exploit compassion: fabricating diagnoses, staging her daughter’s suffering, and committing large-scale Medicaid fraud. Within days of Olivia’s death, she entered new relationships, inventing pregnancies, fabricating ex-wives, and posing as a nurse. Andrea closes the episode by reminding listeners that Olivia’s story is a warning about the systems and people who looked away when she most needed protection. Get in touch with Serial and the NTY: [e-mail] Justice for Collin: ⁠https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tEg2mpbrwNJnuVMNdbHANCofEFYvH9_bO5MULHUxqLs/edit⁠ Order Andrea’s book⁠ The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy⁠.  Click⁠ here⁠ to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on⁠ YouTube⁠ where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content.  Follow Andrea on Instagram:⁠ @andreadunlop⁠ Buy Andrea's books⁠ here⁠.  For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit⁠ MunchausenSupport.com⁠ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded⁠ here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media Hey, it's Andrea, and it's been a big news week over here. So before we get into the second half of our conversation with Melissa Williamson, lead detective on the Olivia Gant case, I wanted to give you a few updates. First, the good news. And it's really good news. On Wednesday, October 29th, I woke up to the news that, the $213 million verdict in Kowalski v. Johns Hopkins All Children's had been reversed. I will record a full episode on this soon, breaking it all down, but the gist is that the

appeals court ruled that the majority of what went to trial two years ago should never have ended up there, and only did so because of a series of errors by Judge Carroll. There are four counts that the appeals court ruled could be retried, those related to Maya Kowalski only. None of the counts on behalf of Jack or Biata's estate can move forward. This is a big win for those of us who care about children and believe that they deserve to be safe in their homes, and who believe that those who step in to protect them shouldn't face spurious lawsuits. But of course, the battle to protect kids and uphold mandatory reporting continues. And this week, serial productions published their series reported by Diane Neary called The Preventionist, which forwards the cause of

one of the numerous copycat lawsuits that's gained steam in the wake of Kowalski. To say that I'm concerned about this coverage is an understatement. Frankly, I think the entire team at Serial should be ashamed of platforming this. So, for the next several weeks, I'll be with you, breaking down each of the three episodes in detail with some expert help. You may notice, if you're listening to the preventionist, that there are many names and details left out of Neri's reporting. And as I fill in the gaps for you, I think you'll see why.

I've received one initial response from the serial team and have sent them several emails with additional information, including the Kowalski opinion. I will be sharing much of this in coming episodes, but I'm also going to post my emails to them in full on the free tier of Patreon if you want to check those out. In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to keep reaching out to them, especially if you're someone who is directly affected by this kind of media coverage, an abuse survivor or family member, a mandated reporter, the parent of a sick child, or any parent. of any child. You can leave them reviews on Apple and Spotify or email them at Serial Shows at NYTimes.com. You can also find that in our show notes. And if you'd like to leave us a review, while you're at it, those really help us out. And likewise, if you have thoughts to share with us, you can do so at hello at nobody should believe me.com. We love hearing from you. You can also listen to some exclusive episodes about all of this by subscribing on Apple

podcasts and Patreon. And that's in addition to our coverage this month of Unknown Number and the Kendra Lakari case. I have to say that it feels rather poignant to be talking about Olivia Gant this week, a child who died because the doctors caring for her failed to speak up. Let us never forget the stakes. Let us never forget who we're fighting for. These are harrowing times in America, especially for our friends and neighbors in immigrant communities. So if you're looking for resources or ways to help, we wanted to let you know about a wonderful organization that we're partnering with this month. The National Immigrant Justice Center has worked for more than 40 years to defend the rights of immigrants.

NIHC blends direct legal services, impact litigation, and policy advocacy to fight for due process for all and to hold the U.S. government accountable to uphold human rights. NIGC's experienced legal staff collaborate with a broad network of volunteer lawyers to provide legal counsel to more than 11,000 people each year, including people seeking asylum, people in ICE detention, LGBTQ immigrants, victims of human trafficking, accompanied immigrant children and community members who are applying for citizenship and permanent residence. NIGC continues to fight and win federal court cases that hold the U.S. government accountable to follow U.S. law and the Constitution. In recent months, NIJC's litigation has

challenged ICE's unlawful practice of arresting people without warrants and has successfully blocked President Trump's proclamation to shut down access to asylum at the border. As ICE continues to abduct people from our communities and the U.S. government deports thousands of people without a chance to have a judge consider their cases, it is more important than ever that we come together to defend due process. All people in the United States have rights, regardless of immigration status. You can donate and learn more about NIHC's work by visiting immigrantjustice.org. That's immigrantjustice.org. You can find that link and more information at our website. This ad was provided pro bono. Hey, it's Andrea. It's come to my attention that some

of you have been served programmatic ads for ICE on my show. Now, podcasters don't get a lot of control over which individual ads play and for whom on our shows, but please know that we are trying everything we can to get rid of these by tightening our filters. And if you do continue to hear them, please do let us know. In the meantime, I want it to be known that I do not support ICE. I am the daughter of an immigrant. I stand with immigrants. Immigrants make this country great. Just as a note, we have bleeped out the names of some of the children in this story to protect their privacy. In the last episode, Melissa Williamson, the lead detective on the Olivia Gant case, told us about her shocking and harrowing investigation into the child's death. The patterns of abuse in these cases are always so similar, from unnecessary wheelchairs and leg braces to unexplained feeding issues and increasingly drastic interventions.

two, in the most extreme cases, the death of a child from an illness that either wasn't terminal or never existed. But while the medical abuse patterns are almost always predictable in these cases, the chaos of these offenders and their myriad deceptions aren't confined to the medical realm. As the detectives in the Gant case investigated the faulty narrative Kelly Turner had been telling about her daughter's health, they uncovered a pervasive web of lies that touched every corner of Turner's life and left a wide swath of victims in her wake, starting with the financial fraud. We first came across that when her blogs, when she first started writing in the blogs,

and then it turned to a GoFundMe account for Olivia. So the blogs, we noticed that people were donating money, and those were written pretty much primarily when she was in Texas. And so I know the community, especially the church community, because we went down there and talked to them, they did bake sales or, you know, they raised money in their church for Kelly first and then Olivia because they were both having issues, according to Kelly's information that, you know, had non-Hodgkins lymphoma and that Olivia was having some other issues going on as well. So I remember talking to them and they had bake sales for

them. They helped raise them money, I believe, for Olivia to get a service dog. for her, for her seizures, and then, you know, just donated money when they could as, you know, good people that they were down there, that they were just trying to help this family who had sick children. There was also an element of Medicaid fraud in this case, wasn't there? Correct. And then I'll continue. So when she moved up to Colorado, she moved into GoFundMe.

So there were these long posts and money donated to her for Olivia's care or final, you know, expenses for her burial for all that stuff, which was never, we found was never used on anything for Olivia or her metal expenses. So for the Medicaid fraud, we also learned that, so when we talk to Jeff, her husband and the kid's father, he had great insurance. And so he just worked. He, when I talked to him, he's like, I can work, I can make money, and I have really good insurance. So that's how I can take care of my kids. My wife takes care of them. I go to work and that's what I can provide. So he had them covered up through Colorado when she moved up here because was cured, but Olivia started having these skin issues. So they came up here

to Colorado for the Children's Hospital because Olivia started having skin issues and didn't know what was going on. So then Kelly found out that she can get Medicaid coverage for the kids and everything's taken care of. So she told Jeff, hey, the kids can call the children's hospital, we'll cover them. You just have to drop the kids. So I have insurance. The hospital will cover them, but you don't need to cover them anymore on your plan. So Kelly, he's like, okay, if that's better, you don't have to pay any medical bills, that's fine. So he didn't enroll them or he had them dropped. So then Kelly had them enrolled in Medicaid. And Kelly first, she did two applications and one was that she was a single mother and not married and another one was she was

divorced and a single mother. So basically her, so kind of walk me through how that works. So her her husband's insurance was still paying for the kids and she was just collecting and keeping the Medicaid money? No, she fraudulently applied for Medicaid front told Jeff, hey children, hospital is going to cover them. That's according to him when we talk to him, hey, Children's Hospital has insurance. It's great. We don't have to pay anything. They're going to cover the kids for all their needs. Don't cover, but they can't be covered under your insurance. So drop them so they're not covered under yours and I'll get them under this hospital insurance. That's what Kelly explained to him. Do you think that she did that in part to sort of hide what

she was doing from Jeff? I think so, yes. Like many previous offenders we've covered on the show, including Lisa McDaniel, Sophie Hartman, and Biotto Kowalski, Kelly Turner was an avid chronicler of her woes and her daughter's illnesses on a blog she maintained. And, much like the others, some of the people Kelly roped into her chaos were parents of legitimately sick children. This element of her blog that you discovered, and how did that piece? Because she wrote about both girls on the blog. And it looked like there was... It looked like there was a friend that was sometimes writing posts on her behalf. So Kelly bonded with her because they both had sick children.

And so when we talked to her, you know, again, it broke my heart because to all this truth that they had learned about Kelly to find out that these girls weren't sick and that they didn't, you know, Livy didn't need to die and never had cancer and all of this, that she was, you know, she felt betrayed and hurt because she's like, she's like, you know, she didn't need to die and she never had cancer and hurt because she's like, I had a sick child, and unfortunately my daughter passed, and I would do anything I could to give, to have my kid back. This friend named Michelle bonded with Kelly at the hospital over their shared life experience, only to later learn during the police investigation that Kelly's story had not only been a lie, she'd been exploiting stories like Michelle's for her

own game. I think Olivia and I were born around the same time, or Michelle's daughter was like maybe a year older, but they were still going through these, you know, traumatizing things at the hospital and treatments and everything. So I think they kind of bonded like that. Yeah. And that's a really heartbreaking piece of these cases, which we saw, we see in a lot of them, right, is that they will sort of infiltrate these communities of people who have legitimately sick children. And then they are exploiting their experience to get their, you know, to their own ends. Yeah. I believe the blog was called pray for the Pagant Girls. So, um, she started, it was, you know, journey through her non-Hodgkin's

lymphoma and then Olivia came and then, you know, some things with Olivia weren't right. So then it just became, you know, was cured and then things moved into Olivia, you know, having all these issues and seizure issues and all of this growing up. And that's how she got her service dog, you know, that she needed a seizure. service dog. And again, that's another element that we see in season six case. And I've seen a few service dogs. Yeah. And I think it's just really, um, it just really plays into that idea of like having a prop, right, that people notice. So you're out and about with a service dog and you kind of can make a big deal about can the service dog come in here. And, you know, there was like some

stories in the blog about the service dog and people noticing the service dog. And, um, and yeah, it just really sort of fits into that like, oh, the more sort of props you can have to show externally that your kid's sick, the more sort of attention you're going to get for being out and about. And it was just interesting because I remember talking to, because I think the dog's name was hero, you know, because he was a hero for Olivia. So, and I did some research and we talked to people and like service dogs take a while, especially seizure service dogs. It's a lot of training. And then they do a lot of one-on-one training with the person who they're going to be assigned to with the seizure disability.

So it takes years of training, and all of a sudden, you know, Hero went away for training for, I think, six weeks, and all of a sudden he's come back and he's this great service dog to Livy and does all these things. However long he was sent away for training, that wasn't enough to be a service dog,

but they still played him off as a service dog. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. Oof. Melissa has a haunting memory from the investigation of this dog, dying from a mysterious intestinal injury, just like Olivia. We weren't able to independently confirm this piece. However, animal abuse is a known factor in these cases.

It's officially fall, and the world has officially gone completely bananas, so I am looking for comfort and coziness wherever I can find it. In Seattle this time of year, getting dressed is all about cozy, layers. The weather in October is like, it's warm, it's cold, it's going to rain. Is it going to rain? It's raining. So I've been stocking up on comfy layers from my favorite brand, Quince. Now, Quince is known for their sweaters, especially their Mongolian cashmere, but they have all hits, no misses when it comes to layers, from their super soft cotton teas to their fashionable and functional outerwear. I just ordered the responsible down puffer jacket, which comes in

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash believe to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quits.com slash believe. And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. My daughter Fiona just turned seven this month. It is true what they say. It just goes by in a blink. But she is getting to be a grown-up girl. I am so proud of her.

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Plus, with Acorn Early spending limits and real-time spend notifications, parents always stay in control. So if you want a fun way to teach your kids about money and keeping small lizards alive, you should give it a try. Ready to teach your kids the smart way to earn, save, and spend? Get your first month on us when you head to AcornsEarly.com backslash nobody. Or download the Acorns Early app. That's one month free when you sign up at AcornsEan,

Early.com backslash nobody. And remember that shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. Acorns Early Card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to license by MasterCard International. Free trial for new subscribers only subscription fees starting from $5 per month unless canceled. Terms apply at www.acorns.com backslash early terms. Just like Lisa McDaniel and Sophie Hartman and many others, Kelly was vocal about her faith, especially when talking about the death of her child. But Kelly wasn't exactly a true believer.

I believe Kelly was not religious, but she was using the words to, like you said, it's the ethos, they're built on, she's part of our community, she's a struggling mom, you know, she's writing these blog posts. We're good people. out and help them. Knowing that people think like that and these churches think like that and they help, I think Kelly was just using that to, you know, predatory to pray on these

churches for money and support and get what she needed out of it and out of from the, you know, the good-hearted people that helped donate to the calls. Yeah. And I think also because, yeah, even Kelly mentions like in the blog that, you know, oh, I haven't, I had sort of strayed from Jesus for a long time and now I've come back to Jesus because my kids are sick. And I also think, you know, something that struck me in reading these blogs and these writings by perpetrators around the religious stuff is that it sort of gives you an out for not trying to get your child well, if that makes sense.

Because like you have them this setup where it's out of your hands, it's God's will. This child is, I'm sacrificing my child just like God sacrificed his only son. And it's okay that she's dying because she'll be well in heaven. Where if you take that out of a religious context for a parent who's agnostic or an atheist, they're like, no, my child's going to die and that's just the, there's nothing to sort of cushion that blow, I guess. And so it really seems like this narrative around, you know, oh, it's okay because they are going to go be with Jesus. And there's a lot of talk about, like, there's often a lot of talk about the child wanting to go and be with Jesus and wanting to end their pain. And so it seems opportunistic just in the framing, in addition to sort of being a mechanism to fundraise.

Yeah. And I remember Kelly used to say that Olivia said, I don't want any more owies, no more owies. and that she used to say, yes, I want to go be with Jesus. I want to go live with Jesus. Not really understanding what that means, but she's just, or what no more I always means, but, you know, Kelly took it as, okay, this is what we're going to do. Blaming the victim is a well-known tactic in any form of abuse, even if those victims are small children.

Abusers will justify their behavior by saying that a child deserved the abuse, that it was what was best for them, or even that they were asking for it. And that's what Kelly, when we interviewed her, she said that. She goes, my daughter wanted it. So I wanted to give her what she wanted. She goes, I know a lot of people gave me criticism because I'm like at the same time, your daughter was six years old, you know, and she didn't have all these things you said. But she's like, well, I just wanted to give her what she wanted.

And I'm like, I just thought it's weird. Yeah, no, it's just, it's so far away from like what a normal parental experience would be. It's normal. Yeah, and that's not to, you know, that's not to take anything away from parents who are, you know, have a legitimately sick child or a child that dies and find comfort in their faith and find comfort in the idea that their children are no longer, no longer suffering. I mean, I think that that's very real. And I don't want to sort of, you know, frame that as, as problematic in itself. But it's like, it's another

thing that they, it's like another narrative that they exploit. And with these cases, types of cases. Yeah, absolutely. Because I guarantee those parents who have legitimately sick children and have lost a child, if they would give everything to have that child back, you know, to have that child not be sick anymore, they would give everything they could or what they could do to do it to make it so that their child was still with them. Munchausen by proxy abuse is overwhelmingly committed by mothers, and we see a wide spectrum of behavior from the fathers in these cases, from fathers like Ryan Crawford and George Honeycutt from season one, who would spend their last time and their last breath fighting for their children,

to perpetrators like Lisa McDaniel's husband, Carrie, who are so complicit, they become literal partners in crime. And then there are fathers like Olivia's, who've been so completely cut out of their children's daily lives that they have no idea what's happening. When we talk to dad, I completely destroyed his world and what he knew was the truth. Because to hear that his daughter didn't have these diseases

and she didn't need to die, you know, I could see, like, defeat and almost, failure in his part, like, I should have done more. My daughter didn't have to die. You know, I, it just, a lot of people were shocked when we told them that, hey, Olivia didn't have these diseases. We're doing this investigation. They were like, oh my gosh, some of them, there were a couple that were like, you know, there was something off about it. Don't know what it is. And it's usually the ones that were in the medical community. They were like, I'm not believing that this child has all of these ailments. I'm looking at this child jumping up

and down on her bed, excited singing, you know, frozen songs, you know, along with the movie, they're like, I'm not seeing this in what is being portrayed on paper to what I'm actually seen in the child. So it was more shock and awe and like, oh my gosh, I wish, I wish I would have seen it or I failed more on that end than I had a feeling, but I didn't want to say anything. However you feel about the fact that Kelly's husband so thoroughly abdicated, his responsibilities as an active parent, especially considering Kelly's past having done jail time as a child sex offender,

he wasn't there to see the escalating signs of abuse. But as Melissa talks about here, the doctors were. So why didn't they do something? Well, it was interesting because half of the medical team it was torn. So half of them were like, we need to intervene, something's going on, this isn't right. Let's make a report, at least to the HS,

you know, and start that like separation thing. to see if this is actually legitimate or if Olivia has these, or if we separate from mom and Olivia starts to get better. And then half of them were like, well, we have to treat. Mom's saying she's in pain. Mom's saying she's this. So we're treating the pain. We're treating the symptoms that mom is saying. So we err on the side of caution that every parent has, you know, they want the good and, you know, the benefit of the doubt that parents are trying to get the good for their kids. And so that's what they were airing on. And then some of the good. of them, you know, like the nurses for sure were like, we want to make a report. We need to report

something. And they're, you know, the hospital and the legal team was like, nope, we're not doing that. You're not doing that. And so half of them were like, well, we're just going to let mom do what she wants, remove her from the TPN and the feeding tube. And, you know, she's going to be terminal because we're going to can't do much. And mom won't let us start over. And she said, no, we've done this. We've done this. And so they're like, we're just going to let mom do what she needs to and take, you know, let her child pass away if that's what's going to happen. People don't realize how much parents get a say in even that piece, right? Like, I think that's something where you just think, well, like, a doctor would have had

to direct that decision and that's just not the case because for that exact reason that most parents would never, but this is, I think this is what happens when people don't recognize that people like Kelly Turner exist. Yeah. And Kelly signed a DNR, you know, insisted that a DNR be put on Olivia and all this. And, you know, what she had eventually would have been terminal because the TPN can only go so far, you know, and I learned talking to the doctors that it's not so great on your veins and arteries, you know, it'll start to erode them away. So they have to, you run out of where the TPN can go to feed the heart, to feed the body. And then, you know, if they're not getting nutrition, your own body can only go so long without nutrition, proper nutrition.

And so they're like, yeah, it would have been terminal because also the TPN and the two wear on your liver and your kidneys. But talking to doctors, Olivia wasn't there. She wasn't even close to having liver problems or being on the, you know, transplant list or, you know, starting to go down that route of how it would be terminal. So they just mom wanted these things and said, this is what I'm doing. I think medical providers, there's a really fine balance, right? Because obviously separating a child from their parent is a big deal and it causes trauma and it is, you know, can cause all kinds of problems with the hospital. And like there are risks to that, right?

It's not a risk-free option. Yes. However, you know, in the cases that I've spoken to colleagues about that, people are always asking me, well, what about a fake, you know, what about a false outlet? allegation of Munchausen. Are you ever going to cover one of those? And I always tell people, I'm like, I'll cover one as soon as I can find one. But the thing is, there's not much of a story when it's a, not a false allegation, but when it's a wrongfully suspected parent. Like when doctors become concerned about a parent who's not actually causing the problems, because what

happens is there's a separation and it becomes clear immediately, you know, in a very short period of time, if that child's issues all persist the same way without the parent, it becomes very immediately obvious that that parent is not causing the problems. And so it's a really, in terms of interventions, I think it's a pretty low risk intervention because then like if you have a child, you know, who, like there was a case that my, you know, one of my mentors B. Yorker talks about that was like one of her first cases of suspected Munchausen where the child was bleeding from his ears and they thought mom was causing it and he had a sibling that had passed away which can be a red flag right and from like a mysterious thing

and they separated the mom and the symptoms persisted and so you know really quickly they knew that it was not that and they did a bunch of testing and they figured out what was wrong with the kid and it was this rare genetic condition that his sibling had died from and so then they were able to like properly treat the kid too right so it's like it's it's medically helpful also to have that that separation and so I do wish that doctors and everyone involved was sort of look at that for what it is right because it's like if you have that suspicion that's going to cause a lot of trouble with you in the medical team and it's going to inhibit the medical team from being able to treat your kid so if you're an innocent parent and you're like well yeah oh my god like yeah

I'll be willing to not see my kid for like a week or whatever to, you know, to clear this up, right? So I feel like I wish people would reframe that. I agree. And we did that with, you know, we took mom away from, she wasn't allowed to be in the home and she had to go somewhere else. And then all of a sudden symptoms and everything stopped. She wasn't having any issues. And through the whole time, you know, I talked to grandpa and Lonnie. And he's like, no, she's great.

You know, she's at the time. she's like she's active in jujitsu and soccer and I mean she just is very active so she's getting bumps and bruises from that but nothing like kelly was reporting prior to when we got the case and so with her with her other daughter you know she was really her first victim right she was saying that she had non-hodgkin's lymphoma she was saying all of this when she was in texas and then after they moved to colorado the focus really turned to olivia which is again like a common pattern that we see where the younger child, because they have less capacity to be vocal, less capacity to sort of fight back in any way, that they will fixate on the younger sibling

and kind of have this pattern. But after Olivia died, she really started up again with the older daughter, right? Yes. Yeah, the middle child. So she is three. It's one of Britain's most of Britain's most. most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong. I know there's going to be a twist, won't they, a massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed. Kelly claimed she needed to move to Colorado to seek specialized care for both of her daughters but after she headed north the scenery wasn't the only thing that changed dramatically Kelly was legally married to her husband

throughout this whole time right? Correct. Yes, yep. But she... Until he filed for divorce after she was arrested. Got it, okay. So they're still legally married but her husband's living out of state

and very shortly after Olivia dies. Kelly starts up a new romantic relationship. Kelly met her new paramour Kathy on an online dating site about 10 days after Olivia's death. Kathy said, yeah, she told me that she recently had a child pass away. I think she took me to the grave once. But, you know, saying, oh, we're getting this headstone.

It's in the works. And that was it. But then she said, I have two other kids. So I think eventually, like, the relationship moved on and they, you know, she said we had talked about having kids and all of a sudden she said, Kelly showed up one day and said, hey, I went and got inseminated and I'm pregnant and, you know, was showing pictures and then it turned into twins, you know, and so then things weren't adding up. And I believe Kelly and her kids had moved in with Kathy at this point. And so Kathy's friends were like, something's not right. And Kathy's like, well, I was excited, but it just happened so fast. You know, we hadn't really talked and all of a sudden Kelly shows up and she's been inseminated. And a couple months later, she's got twins and, you know, is going through this stuff.

And so some of Kathy's friends were like, some that's not adding up. And so then Kathy actually ended up doing a background check on one of those online ones you pay for and came up with all of Kelly's background and her felony charge and all of this stuff. And she's like, she thought listening to how Kelly would talk about Olivia when she would. It wasn't very often. She thought something was kind of weird there. She goes, but I didn't want to question it because, you know, a mom, a parent just lost her child. And so she's like, I just, she had a weird feeling something wasn't right about how Olivia passed or what was going on with Olivia.

We're no stranger to a fake twin pregnancy on this show. Another common thing, fake nursing credentials. And Kathy also mentioned, like, Kelly said she was an ER or a, you know, a nurse. You know, that's been her whole thing. She's been a nurse at Children's Hospital. And, but, you know, Kelly was taking some time off because Olivia had passed and, you know, the pregnancy and everything. So, but Kathy did say that Kelly was spending, she'd spend lots of money. So there was one time that I think.

her daughter had a birthday party and she got a limo and they went downtown and went to this big restaurant and you know paid all this money for her birthday party and that she spent got Kathy new tires for her Toyota four runner you know the big rugged thick tires you know spent money on that as a gift for her car and she just said she just always seemed to be spending on these elaborate things and and I think that came from the go fund me donations yeah because as far as we know Kelly, at no point during all this had a job, right? Correct. No jobs. In another callback to both seasons five and six, there was a lot of spending with no apparent job having. Although, I guess you could argue that this level of scamming is a job in and of itself. But flashing

ill-gotten cash wasn't Kelly's only side of hand when it came to her life with Kathy. And I was also very intrigued by, you know, during this time when they're dating, Kathy starts getting text messages from a bunch of people. And these are in part related to Kelly's, or it's hard with the Kelly and Kathy, Kelly's ex-wife, allegedly, alleged ex-wife, who she was in an alleged custody battle with. And so Kelly starts getting, sorry, Kathy starts getting these messages. from a husband and wife legal team. She starts getting messages from two sisters of Kellys. And everyone's saying, you know, what a great person Kelly is.

And so she starts hearing from sort of all of these people. But she never actually talks to any of these people on the phone and never actually meets any of them. So can you kind of walk us through this collection of other characters that spring onto the scene in this part of the story? I forgot about thank you for that was just crazy so yeah so she started um Kathy said that Kelly's sisters were reaching out saying oh my gosh you're so good you know all this stuff and then this wife and husband attorney team show up and that they're representing their

good friends with Kelly and they're representing her you know for like the birth and all this stuff if I recall correctly and then Kelly was explaining that she had been married before to an abusive. It was abusive relationship. I believe it was a Danielle. So, but Kelly said that she was married to Danielle. They had been married for 16 years. It was a very, you know, traumatizing, abusive relationship. What I recall is that part of the stuff that broke up with them, why their marriage ended, and it was violent, is that, you know, Danielle, they were into a fight. Danielle stabbed her and she was in the hospital for several days. And then, you know, Kathy was like, but, and she, the way she described it, it would have, like, a big, ugly star in her scar on her abdomen.

And Kathy said, I didn't see any scar on her abdomen that she would when she told this story. But that's how they're, according to Kelly, that's how the marriage broke up was when she decided to leave Danielle after that incident. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, again, another, like, strong parallel is that we see people claiming to have been victims of abuse that they were not, you know, in this case, just not even. a real relationship and, you know, victims of crimes that were not, did not actually happen. Yes. Yeah. So did you say you talk to another of Kelly's exes? Yes. So when we arrested Kelly, you know, we got the true bill from the grand jury. We got a warrant for her arrest. We get Kelly arrested and she's like, oh, this is my wife. I need to talk to her. Even though Kelly was still legally married to her husband back in Texas, Melissa recalls that Kelly met a second woman online,

and once again, she told her new wife that, surprise, she'd gone to get herself inseminated. And this time, as Melissa remembers it, Kelly up the ante. Twins apparently weren't dramatic enough. It was quadruplets. Wait, so the same story she told the other ex, but now we're up in the ante to quadruplets. Yes. Quadruplets. And so I was just sitting there and I was like, okay, so she, I said, okay, walk me through how all this went down and she said, oh yeah, Kelly was pregnant, you know? And so she said, I would even look at her belly and it would like move. She said it was the weirdest thing when she was still pregnant with these quads and that she was a flight for life nurse, you know, at children's hospital

and that they were going to let her have the babies at children's hospital. Well, Kelly went into labor early and of course the wife wasn't allowed to be there so she went into labor early all of the and the children's hospital let her deliver there because you know of Olivia and she works there and everything like that which I'm like okay so she hang on it gets better so then the wife throughout this whole thing is starting to get so Kelly has the babies no one can see the baby she can't go to the the hospital. Kelly said we can't go to the hospital because they're super sick. Kelly told wife number two that the babies, allegedly born around halfway through the pregnancy, had some

of the same issues that Olivia had had. And what's more, they were even being treated by the same doctors. So the wife would receive texts from the doctors saying, hey, this is, and they named them all. I can't even remember the names, but they named these babies. Hey, this is, you know, I'm just going to say name like Billy's doctor he's doing great today you know we're going to do an operation on this and this and this but it was all of like Olivia's like original doctors were reaching out but no one could see him she hasn't seen the babies and then three of them passed away and so there was one still in the NICU and they're getting updates and Kelly's like oh yeah I'm getting updates from you know my nurse friends here's this and so the wife was getting all of these

text messages from doctors, nurses, Kelly's families. If you're thinking right now that casually texting the partner of a patient this way doesn't sound very HIPAA compliant, well, you'd be right. Come to find out, it's Kelly sending all of these text messages to the wife through a different app, we think it was Google app because I downloaded her phone, pretending to be all of these people. And again, these pictures of these babies were, you know, we found them on the internet. I did a Google search and I found all of these sick NICU babies on the internet.

So when I asked the wife, I said, didn't you think it was kind of odd that you couldn't see these children? She goes, well, I was just told they couldn't because they were really sick. And it was the NICU. And I said, okay, well, three of them had passed and one was on the way to, it wasn't going to make it, but it hadn't passed yet. And I said, what are they, tell me, what are they doing with the babies? What were you told?

And she said, oh, Kelly said their kids. keeping them in the morgue at the hospital so that when the fourth one finally passes, then we'll all have one big funeral. Now this is our first case of quadruplets, I believe, but we've had a number of stories like this one on the show. Dramatic pregnancies and pregnancy losses that turn out to be entirely fictional. But for Kelly's wife, this was all new. And as someone who remembers her own first rodeo with a pregnancy scam,

This is massively disorienting. As I was asking questions, she was like, oh my gosh, how did I not see this? This sounds crazy. You think I'm crazy. And like, no, I said, Kelly's just really good at manipulation, that she made you believe all this stuff and that all these doctors were reaching out and all this stuff to you, but it was Kelly reaching out to you for it. So I felt really bad for her too because she had spent like a year with this woman.

And all of this stuff is happening. And Kelly... And they were legally married? No, they weren't legally married. Okay, because she was already married to her husband, so... But she didn't know that. I had to tell the wife that she's legally married to a man. You're saying she's the wife.

So it was like, did they just have like a civil ceremony? Do they do like something sort of a commitment ceremony or something? I think so. That's what they had was a commitment ceremony to each other. Because I think sell like Kelly said, well, I think she talked about her previous marriage with Danielle and it was so abusive that she didn't want to get, you know, married just yet. But we'll have this civil ceremony will be, you know, you're my wife, I'm your wife type thing. But she was still legally married to Jeff. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, hearing this story,

and I think a lot of times people sort of hear these stories from the outside and you're like, that sounds so wild. How could you not know that that was a lie? But I think, you know, like, when you're in it, you're just, you're in shock. Right? Because it's like, it's so much happening at once and it's all so overwhelming. In case it's not clear, Kelly's first twin pregnancy, her second quad pregnancy, along with the entire relationship that ended in a stabbing by a woman named Danielle, all lies. Pathological liars may vary in their tactics, but being completely unburdened by the truth lets them stay out ahead a lot of the time, because it takes time to sort facts from fiction,

especially when someone is wrong footing you at every turn. Kelly had an answer for everything, you know, or like, well, if you have any questions, well, let's text so-and-so. So Kelly would text herself and then get a response from, however that happened, you know, from the nurse or from the doctors, you know, make it seem like, oh, no, they're good, you know, but, you know, they're having seizures today and he's not going to make it because of seizures.

And, you know, one of them had intestines. It's just all of this stuff. but, you know, I said, yes, for me to sit here and hear this story, because I know what's going on, but I said, you were in it. And Kelly is very good at lying. She's very good at manipulation, and she's been doing it since, you know, she's been a teenager, at least as far back as I could know that she did it. Kelly's evidently shifting sexuality might be evidence of her having repressed something about herself.

Or, as I've long suspected, her choices and partners might have less to do with their gender or anything else about who they are and more about how they might be useful. I honestly think Kelly might be gay because she's only been with Jeff. That's the only man she said she's been with, but all these women. So I think it's opportunist, whatever works for them

and whatever, you know, and I know that they, it's more predatory as well on these poor people who, you know, like, because I believe Kathy had just gotten done with another serious relationship before meeting Kelly. You know, so they're not, self-esteem might not be great, or they're going through a bad patch. And they just need, they just don't want to be alone, but, you know, they just are trying to find some, someone's company to be in, you know, because they're going through these hard times. Or, you know, they just find these people to pray on and just take it from there and go, you know, one with them.

Yeah, so sort of like, whoever will make a good victim is who they're going to be in a relationship with. Yes. Yes. I'm so grateful to Melissa. not only for taking the time to talk to us, but for her work on this case. Law enforcement in the Olivia Gant case did the right thing in the face of a complex investigation that could have easily been brushed aside in the hands of less capable and motivated detectives. Olivia Gant deserved better from the doctors who cared for her,

as did Colin McDaniel. And we hope that there might emerge a detective in Alabama as courageous and committed to justice as those who solved Olivia's case. Only time will tell. I feel deeply honored to have been trusted to tell Colin McDaniel's story, along with his sister Michelle and his aunt Sabrina. But I shouldn't have had to tell you the story of his death, because it never should have happened. Talking here on this show can feel woefully inadequate in the face of the systems that let Colin and Olivia down, and in the face of those who stayed silent about their suffering.

And that's to say nothing of the many people who currently stay silent when they witness abuse, or worse, actively cover for the people doing it, including, unfortunately, some of my colleagues in the media. But I'll never be one of them, and I know you won't either. Thank you, as always, for listening. Nobody should believe Meek is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Research and fact-checking by Aaron Ajayi, administrative support from Nola Karmouche.