Nobody Should Believe Me - Collateral Damage

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

John Cox’s plea deal brings the criminal case to an end, but the story is far from over. As Cox and his wife turn their attention to a lawsuit against Children’s Wisconsin, the damage from the case, and the media narrative surrounding it, balloons.  Featuring Expert: Matthew Torbenson, Deputy District Attorney with the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office Mark Hudson, Child Abuse Pediatrician *** To support the show, go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe or subscribe on Apple Podcasts where you can get all episodes early and ad-free and access exclusive ethical true crime bonus content. Try out Andrea’s Podcaster Coaching App: https://studio.com/apps/andrea/podcaster Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/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 bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@NobodyShouldBelieveMePod Follow Andrea on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit: https://www.munchausensupport.com/ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media. In July of 2021, Deputy District Attorney Matthew Torbenson filed a motion to amend the witness list in the case against John Cox to include the nurse who'd taken the phone call from him at 9.25 a.m. on the morning of May 9th, 2019, because it was this phone call that caught John in a big lie. So I think it's really important to talk about medical history and the importance of medical history in the context of him being a physician and knowing that a medical history is used to come to a diagnosis, right? He knows that, he relies on that every day through the course of this professional career. And here we have a person who knows the importance of a medical history and relies on a medical history every day and reaching diagnoses for patients in the emergency room, giving a false medical history for this particular child, right? Physical abuse in infancy is common. When suspicious injuries are identified, documentation of a thorough history and complete physical examination is a critical first step. Specifically, injuries such as a bruise or intra-oral injury are uncommon before an infant is mobile and should raise a concern for abuse. That's a direct quote from John Cox's own research project on the early detection of child abuse injuries in an ER setting, which he actually won an award for during his fellowship.

John Cox knew how crucial caregiver history is in detecting abuse. No one would have needed to explain to him why this phone call upended his entire defense. So we provide that information. We filed the notice to amend the witness list and to include this information and have to have. this witness test if I had trial. And during the course of this case, he was represented not just by an attorney in Milwaukee, but a very high-powered law firm from the Chicago area, who I think is, they represent themselves to be the fifth largest law firm in the world, I think, if I recall correctly. And so he had two attorneys from that firm as well that were appearing on this case.

And as soon as I filed that information and provided those reports, they soon got off the case or dropped off being as involved in the case. And Dr. Cox, through his main attorney here in Milwaukee, started talking about how can they resolve the case. So, and then do you think this influenced the fact that he eventually took a plea deal? 100%. Every single one of those doctors that would have been called to the stand, every single one that Dr. Hicks or excuse me, Mike Hicksonborg relied on for his article,

he lied to every single one of them with regards to the medical history. and I would have been able to cross-examine every single one of them and talk about the importance of a medical history and then point out that he lied or gave an incomplete or a completely different medical history. And then I'd also be able to point out the child abuse literature that shows that a changing medical history is highly concerning for child maltreatment.

And in this context, these weren't just minor details being changed. This is a C-shift in what he claimed happened that evening. There were already issues with John's story. He and his wife Sadie, a pediatric oncologist, had offered a number of possible explanations for the bruises observed on the baby. John told their pediatrician Dr. Albert Pomerantz that maybe the bruises happened because of how he'd been laying on the baby, changing that implausible story to the explanation that he picked her up in a panic when he awoke to her crying. His wife Sadie speculated in an email to CPS that the marks might not even be. bruises at all, and that if they were, they could have been from a bobby pin left in the bathtub.

One of the central claims in this case was the alleged failure of the child abuse team to obtain a proper history from John Cox. Hicksenbaugh wrote that the doctors inaccurately described Cox's account of what happened, adding that this was not surprising, according to Sadie, because they hadn't spoken to John in person. Since the day of the incident, John had been consistent in describing the hours leading up to the morning of May 9th, 2019. He'd said that the baby had awoken at her usual times throughout the night and then again at around 5 a.m. like normal. The picture he had painted was one that any parent could plug themselves into, a sleepy morning with a newborn, nodding off in bed with her during a cuddle.

It was hard to imagine abuse in this context. What would have led this person with no known history of violence to suddenly snap? But the reality that the hotline call revealed, a sleep-deprived parent alone with an inconsolable newborn, who'd been up all night is a very different set of circumstances than what John had told everyone else. This was a picture of someone at their wits' end, and while John and his lawyers and the media became hyper-focused on whether or not doctors could determine John's intent to harm the baby, the baby's injuries simply didn't match the rollover scenario.

But as child abuse pediatrician Nancy Harper wrote in her report on the case, quote, forceful squeezing slash compression of the torso laterally can cause both fractures of the clavicle as well as patterned cutaneous trauma, meaning bruising. This constellation of injuries, including cutaneous trauma and a clavicle fracture, is clinically diagnostic of child physical abuse or inflicted injury. John had been able to stack up an impressive number of expert witnesses, but those opinions turned to dust in light of the lie revealed by the nurse phone call.

And in November of 2021, John's defense threw in the towel. A plea deal today in the case of a Milwaukee area doctor accused of intentionally hurting his daughter. Dr. John Cox pleaded no contest today to child neglect, a lesser charge that were resulted in no jail time. Cox admitted in court to accidentally injuring his daughter after bringing her into bed with him, something the doctor never disputed. Another hearing is set for next May. Even in his plea, John was still evading accountability. And while this legal battle was coming to an end, Another one was just beginning.

I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is part three of our Nobody Should Believe Me special report on John Cox. If you're a subscriber on Apple Podcasts or Patreon, you can listen to all four parts of this series right now, ad-free. You'll also get access to the show's complete archive and our twice-monthly subscriber-exclusive feed, Nobody Should Believe Me After Hours. If monetary support is not an option, you can leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or tell a friend about the show. These are also great ways to help us, as is just being here listening each week. We'll be right back. This family is on the brink of Civil War. Mobland, the hit original series is now streaming on Paramount Plus.

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You want to want! Mobland, new season is now streaming on Paramount Plus. And so we came to a resolution in the case where he entered a plea to a felony child neglect charge, and then we had a deferred prosecution agreement for a year where he had to meet a number of conditions. For that deferred prosecution agreement, if he met all of those conditions, then we would vacate the plea that he entered and dismissed the charges against him. By the time John Cox accepted a plea deal, thousands of people throughout the country knew this story, or thought they did, thanks in large part to Mike Kixenbaugh's reporting for NBC.

I wish there had been a follow-up story. I wish it had been a doctor who talked to 15 doctors lied to 15 doctors or something of that nature, right? Something that really talked about someone who knows about the importance of medical history and provided a false medical history. Why would he do that other than he was obviously trying to cover up what really happened? happened. And what was the reason that you dropped that charge down to neglect? There were a couple different reasons. The reason that I was given by his defense team for pleading to a child neglect charge was that it would be more palatable for him to be able to still practice medicine eventually. And that he still wanted to provide his theory to the court that this was a situation where he rolled over causing the fracture. So even at sentencing, he was still arguing that fact or trying to contend that that was the factual basis for what happened, even though it was abundantly clear in court that we disagreed with that and believed it couldn't happen. But my aim and my goal was not to prevent Dr. Cox from ever practicing medicine again.

By all indications, he was very well respected and did a good job when he was at the hospital. So that was not the goal of my prosecution. My goal of my prosecution was protecting this kiddo, making sure this kid never got abused again. And what was the outcome with the for the child? The child did not go back to the Cox home. So the child was not, was originally in a pre-adoptive placement with the Cox and that did not happen as a result of this criminal case. And a large part of my factor in that is if he's not going to take responsibility for causing these injuries and we spend a great deal of time litigating this case and fighting motions, that child's life can't be on pause during that time frame. And to me, it's a very different case. Like I said, if he would

have come forward and been remorseful and apologetic and said that he inflicted these injuries and he wanted to explore ways to make sure it never happened again, then this case is very different and has a very different potential outcome. Because John and Sadie were in the process of adopting LG when the investigation happened, they were in a very different legal situation than a custodial parent. We've talked about many cases with much more severe abuse on this show

where parents took plea deals and retained their rights. But John and Sadie didn't have those rights to lose in the first place. A common threat about these stories of supposed false allegations of abuse is that these various systems are destroying families with little regard for the parent. But the reality is usually quite the opposite. Parents are given a lot of chances. The vast majority of the cases that my child abuse team handles are, it's bodily harm caused by a parent or a caretaker of those children. And we know that that family unit's probably going to stay intact after this incident takes place and after the

criminal case concludes. And so we're always examining what's the best way that we can keep that family unit intact without there being violence taking place within the home in the future, right? Like I'm very adverse childhood experience focused. My goal is in Milwaukee County, we've studied our trauma rates for our children when they grow up into adulthood. And we have exceedingly high adverse childhood experience rates for our children as they grow up. And if there's one legacy, I could leave for this community. When I'm far gone, it's greatly reducing the rates of adverse childhood experiences for the kiddos in this community. him just to grow up and be in a loving, happy home without any violence, without any neglect.

I want him to be safe. Whether or not John could have been a safe parent for this child had she remained in his care, whether or not he was capable of being a safe parent to his other children in light of the injuries he inflicted on algae. Those are nuanced questions, and I honestly don't have a strong opinion either way. There were so many people who weighed in on John's behalf, both in interviews with the media and in letters to the hospital. They talked about what a strong character he had, what a good person he was.

And I'm sure that many of the good things these people had to say about him are perfectly valid. But those good things didn't mean that he didn't hurt a baby. And while I will always maintain that no one deserves to be judged solely on the worst moment of their life, the impact of John's choices throughout the investigation went far beyond his own family. I don't expect Dr. Cox or anyone who's involved in any of these stories. come forward and magically admit that they lied and that they actually committed child abuse. I don't think that will ever happen. But when I think about this case, I think about the extraordinary harm that came from that lie,

which we now know was a lie. Because the lie wasn't included in the original media reports, we have an entire portion of the hospital that chose not to refer cases to the child abuse team, essentially disowning that team and claiming that that team was filled with bias, resulting in immeasurable harm to children in our community who were the victims of child abuse and child neglect, and for what end goal at the end of the day. And if there's any message I could convey, it's that. It's that that lie, that perpetuated lie that we know is a lie that Dr. Cox told caused irreparable harm to the children in Milwaukee County. The schism this created at the hospital is a focus of my

Hicks and Bo's reporting on the case, which is primarily based on conversations with Sadie and John and anonymous colleagues from Children's of Wisconsin. John Cox himself, who'd just been charged with child abuse when Hicks and Bob's story ran, said that while he'd been trained on abusive injuries, just like the ones in his case, he'd grown uneasy with what he described as an aggressive approach by his colleagues. His wife, Sadie cites ego, arrogance, and power as the reasons for the charges against her husband. Several unnamed doctors echoed the sentiment, and in Hicks and Bo's follow-up story on the case, which came out about a week after his first story, these anonymous doctors report that absent swift policy changes, they would hesitate

to bring their own children to the hospital for fear of being falsely accused of abuse. John's colleagues report wearing a cartoon image of his face on their name tags and tell Hicks and Ba that they hope the uproar of the case leads to meaningful change. The criticisms of the hospital are the ones we examined in detail in the last episode. The claims about the bruise the allegation of misreading the blood test results that might be indicative of a bleeding disorder and the allegation that a proper history wasn't taken. But this follow-up piece ran in February of 2020, more than a year before it was revealed that this history, shaky as it was to begin with, was a lie.

And no one really offers any specific critiques of the hospital beyond that. But even if the claims of the hospital's misdeeds were erroneous, The animosity and mistrust that had developed between the ER staff and the child abuse team, captured and inflamed by Hicks and Boz reporting, were very real. Over here in Seattle, so I have been reorganizing my closet, putting my summer stuff away and getting my sweaters and coats out of the back. And in the process of doing this refresh, I was confronted with some clothes that I have not worn in years, and in some cases, gasp have not worn at all.

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uncertainty strikes. I was surrounded. The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles. There were too many choices. What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if... I just used Thumbtack. I can hire a top-rated pro that knows everything about interior paint. Easily compare prices and read reviews. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. John accepted a plea deal in October of 2021, and as soon as his deferred prosecution time was up, he and his wife, Sadie, did what we've seen innumerable other parents do. And then the next thing he does is file a lawsuit against Children's of Wisconsin.

I believe it's filed a day or two after the deferred prosecution agreement was complied with and the charges were dismissed. The lawsuit would eventually be settled out of court. The terms of that settlement are confidential, and without knowing anything more, there's nothing much to glean from the fact that this didn't go to court. This is a common outcome, and there are many considerations beyond guilt or innocent that go into the decision to settle. What's interesting about this lawsuit, what's audacious about this lawsuit, is that John Cox had already been caught in a lie, though it was a lie that virtually no one knew about. On the subject of the medical history, the lawsuit reads, quote, during this visit with Dr. Pomerant's and in every subsequent interaction regarding LG's injury,

Dr. Cox was candid and truthful about the circumstances leading up to the injury. The original complaint includes 17 counts and alleges that the defendants from the hospital and CPS knowingly conspired to falsely accuse John of abuse, remove his child and destroy his reputation, all to cover up for the errors that they allegedly made in the initial days of the investigation, and out of their own hubris and disregard for the bond between pre-adoptive parents and the baby in their care. While there are many claims made in the 70-plus page amended complaint, it doesn't add much to the facts of the case. It mostly rehashes John's criminal defense that the records from the outside experts work sculpatory and were unjustly ignored by CPS and the child abuse team.

There are many details about things that were allegedly said to or about John Cox that are impossible to verify. The lawsuit also levels a broader systemic critique of the child abuse team, saying, quote, the child advocacy program built and maintained by the entity defendants was a system designed to confirm abuse rather than to fairly and accurately evaluate what happened when there is a possibility of abuse. This claim, like most of the claims in the lawsuit, includes no specific citations. And this rehashes much of what the anonymous sources said in the press, such as the child advocacy team was altering records.

But again, it offers no specific evidence of this. So my understanding of how the internal system works at Children's Hospital, and this would be consistent with many hospitals across the United States, is that anytime a medical note is amended, there's actually a note indicated in the medical record system as to why that note was amended or who was amended by or the underlying reason for it. So if there's any changes being made to medical records, there should be documented changes noted within those files. you'd be able to go back and see it. And one of the main requests we get from defense attorneys of late is asking for that, asking for any changes in the records or any changes in the notes that were entered between the case when it was seen at the emergency room versus when a CAPS physician became involved.

And I have yet to see a case where there's been a documented change based on a conversation between a CAPS doctor and someone in the ER. So this idea that the Capps doctors at Children's of Wisconsin were essentially pressuring the ER doctors into confirming cases of abuse. Like you have not seen any evidence of that. No. And in fact, I don't know why they would even say that would exist because the ER doctor's role is to respond to that emergency situation, hopefully stabilize the child, hopefully save the child's life. But then the case gets passed on to the additional experts. So they're giving an initial diagnosis based on what they're seeing at that point in time. But as more lab results are

coming in, as more x-rays and imaging studies are being received, then additional diagnoses are being made in that case. And that's no longer necessarily being done by the emergency room physician. It's been passed on to an attending physician or maybe a hospitalist or the Capps doctor. There are specific complaints about Rita Ventura, who performed the initial abuse evaluation, that the hospital breached its duty of care by referring to a nurse practitioner rather than to a child abuse pediatrician. And again, claiming that she didn't take a direct history from John and that she should have considered the outside expert opinions. People were making assessments very early on in this case. And again, based on the character of the individuals

as they were interacting with those individuals, so with Dr. Cox and Dr. Cox's wife, as they were getting a history. But they were making assessments with only a quarter of of the picture and without any expertise involved in really providing that assessment or the underlying concerns that would exist as a result of that assessment. So initially, when the child was taken and evaluated, there was linear bruising noted on the arms and linear bruising on the back. There was nothing known about the clavicle fracture. And as more information was gathered and all of the picture was put together, that child was abused and that could not have happened by accident. means, but I think that it's one of these situations where people go into it with a reverse

lens of bias based on the individuals that they're dealing with and they're making judgments on it without the information and saying this can't be abuse. There's no way this can be abuse because of the people that are involved. The lawsuit makes no mention of the blind review that confirmed this abuse, and it paints CPS's hiring of an outside expert, Cap Nancy Harper, saying that two of the defendants from CPS, quote, sent the medical reports provided by Dr. Cox to an outside consultant in an attempt to further discredit the now 15 physicians supporting Dr. Cox's position that he had an accident with LG and had done nothing to abuse her. The lawsuit claims that the police and CPS didn't initially think the baby had been abused,

but then decided to conspire with the other defendants to make it seem as though she had. And yes, that logic is hard to follow. It plays on a familiar trope that CPS and law enforcement relying on doctors' opinions, because they're not doctors, is evidence of collusion. And the reality is, when it came to bias, Cox and DeBrosi had everything going for them. You know, I've handled 80-something abusive head trauma prosecutions directly. And there were two cases that I've handled involving white defendants that stick out vividly in my mind. The first one is David Allen.

We talked about that case and the number of experts that were brought in on that case. And the second case that I think of is actually an abusive head trauma. a case I lost, where they again brought in a number of experts. The jury came back not guilty on that. It was a white woman named Carrie Heller, who was a babysitter. And my question, and I admit it, I was a little bit upset after the verdict on the Heller case, but my question to the defense bar was, why is it on the cases involving Caucasian defendants where all the X, they get all the experts, they get the experts hired, the money is spent on those cases. And I think part of it is there's a clear bias. They know that going to that case, that juries are going to

associate with a white defendant in the situation a little bit more than they may a minority defendant. And you mean the state was paying for some of those experts in that case? The state was paying for all the experts in both trials. Wow. Yeah. The lawsuit also rests on the notion that not only did the child abuse doctors, all three of them, misinterpret the blood test result that might have shown the child to have a possible bleeding disorder, but that they ignored other evidence as well. This was a claim that made it into Hicks and Boz's reporting as well, that the child abuse doctors were misinterpreting skin legions

and discounting possible explanations. But this is the same red herring that made it into the media accounts. However you come at it, there were three bruises on the four-week-old baby that the parents couldn't provide a plausible explanation for. Those bruises were the reason Dr. Pomerian, called the case in to begin with. And the baby didn't sustain any additional bruises through normal care and handling

after being removed from John and Sadie's care. There was also some back and forth about an additional bruise in a photo that John's wife Sadie showed to the doctor's evaluating algae. This bruise was meant to show that the baby bruised easily, but to Matthew's thinking, this bruise could be evidence of something else. There was a picture that was provided

that showed a previous injury. And all the research regarding sentinel injuries, bruising on non-mobile children, demonstrates that that in and of itself is a concern for child abuse unless there is a documented cause for that bruise, right? So in this particular situation, she's providing a photograph of a bruise on a child's face with no documented history for how that bruise was caused and trying to assert that this is demonstration that this child bruises easily because we have a photograph of a single bruise. The bruising easily can be ruled out a number of ways. It can be looked at through bleeding studies. A lot of bleeding studies were done in this particular case. They can also be ruled out by how that child was cared for before and after. And one of the things that was noted and investigated was after the child was removed from the Cox family,

was whether or not there was any documented bruising on this child after being removed. And there was none. And that was something that was monitored extraordinarily. closely by child protective services. So if a child bruises easily, that condition's not going to go away in a day or two days. It's not something that just manifests in a single moment of time and then disappears. And it didn't exist. And again, according to Dr. Mark Hudson, the misreading the lab test result allegation is just a red herring. So I didn't see any hematologist that said, this child has this disease based upon this lab result. That is not it.

there. Absolutely not. If we go put this child with somewhere else where they're getting normal care and handling and they don't get bruises, then they don't get bruises from normal care and handling. The lawsuit, much like John's criminal defense, hangs its hat on the outside experts, saying that their reports should have been enough to upend the other doctor's evaluations. There is the persistent idea that if a doctor comes to the conclusion of abuse, it means they just didn't do enough to investigate every other possibility for each of the injuries. The idea of that, counter to the scientific consensus, there is no such thing as an affirmative diagnosis of abuse, that child abuse medicine isn't legitimate. I think part of that problem is that there's a lot of misunderstanding about why tests are done.

And again, this is going to go back to basic medicine, right? And if we think about, you know, testing, be that lab testing, be it radiographic testing, right? In my mind, that kind of falls into a couple of big categories. One category is we'd sometimes do testing for screening. But basic medicine are based upon a history and physical. And then oftentimes what you're doing is you're ordering lab tests to confirm what you think clinically. And so lab tests are actually better at confirming disease when the clinical scenario is correct. They're not good at ruling out disease.

So, you know, we typically don't do testing to rule out things. You know, everybody's familiar with, like, strep throat testing, right? Well, you don't get one every time you go to the doctor just because we want to rule out that you have it. We're only going to use it when you come in and say, geez, you know, I've got this sore throat and look in there in the exam and it looks all red and inflaming. We're saying, we're going to test for strep throat. But we don't, you know, we don't historically just sort of throw tests at things to then kind of rule out things. And you don't start with, you're diseased until I rule it out. You start with your normal until we discover there's evidence of disease and then we're going to test for it.

And we're sort of doing everything backwards here. You've got a child who only bruises in this one scenario. They don't go on to continue to bruise. There's no clinical reason to think that they have a bleeding disorder. But we're going to say, well, no, you can't say that until you've, quote, ruled it out with testing. Well, the reality is there's always one more test you could do. Yeah. Right? And that's not how medicine works.

And John Cox knew all of this, and he knew he'd lied. And he'd lied, presumably, because the truth was damning. And as a doctor with specialized training in child abuse, he knew that. This wasn't just a small little change in a detail that, boy, I got wrong or something like. This was an entirely different story. And certainly, probably anybody who thinks about that is going to realize This is entirely different. Now I'm picturing, you know, in scenario one,

we're picturing this early morning event, perfect night. John Cox is well rested because he slept great all night long, and then this event happens. Well, that's distinctly different than a kid who's been crying for 12 hours and fussy and inconsolable, and whether that means, you know, that this child was hurt 12 hours earlier and has been fussing and inconsolable since the time of the injury, maybe,

or whether that means this is a fussy and consolable kid and someone gets to their ropes end, maybe, but it's certainly entirely different than the story that we're hearing before. And this is just not a thing that happens in accidental injury. Is that, you know, people come in and they tell exactly what happened, right? Because what they want is what's best for their kid, right? I mean, and look at even sort of their sort of acknowledgement

within the court system of this medical hearsay exceptions. It's sort of recognized that people are going to tell the doctor the truth because they have a vested interest in that. And now we have something that's just entirely, entirely different. And that certainly changes everything. Both the lawsuit and Hicks and Boz reporting engage in some good old-fashioned fear-mongering about child abuse pediatricians, claiming that they are too quick to call injuries abuse and that they have too much power.

there's always this allegation that or it's common allegation that well the the cac team works too closely with law enforcement and cps yeah i'm not sure the the basis of that and i think along with that goes this this implication that not only do you work too closely you're actually running like i am telling law enforcement what to do right um which you know it turns out i just don't have that power it turns out i don't also get to call up the prosecutor and tell them how lay out their prosecution and all of those things. You know, I think that there is just a fair about a sort of mythology that goes along with that, but is it based upon do child abuse pediatricians tend to work relatively closely with child reduction and law enforcement and attorneys and things

like that? I think the answer is yes. But at the end of the day, that's not me doing their job, but that is me making sure that I am passing along the best medical information we have and making sure that they understand that in the context of what's going on. And I would hope we'd all kind of want that, right? Like, I don't know a lot of cops that went to med school or, you know, or they're rotating through the unit that does child abuse. Is it reasonable that they might need some education about sort of what's happening here and what the significance is it of, you know, these findings is medically?

Yeah, that seems to make sense to me, right? And we don't talk about it, sometimes it goes the other way, right? So, you know, you get the call from an investigator who's all hot on the case of a tibia fracture and a toddler, and you go, cool your jets, it's a toddler fracture. It's probably accidental. Right. So, I mean, like, we'd like people to have the best information possible to do their jobs. The idea of intent hangs heavy over this whole thing.

What is abuse and what is an accident and who gets to the side? None of us will ever know what was in John Cox's heart or mind on the morning of May 9th. The evidence shows that he hurt a baby after a long night of no sleep, alone with an inconsolable newborn. It's a horrible tragedy. For the baby who suffered bruising and a broken clavicle, for the two boys who would lose their new sibling, and for Sadie, whose world was about to be turned upside down. And it was also a tragedy for John himself, for whom this incident was surely one of the lowest moments of his life as a parent, as a doctor, and as a person.

And these actions don't negate everything else that he was to the people who loved him. It's just that none of that disproves abuse. And I don't doubt that he was a loving parent. I don't think, you know, again, I've met a lot of people who have hurt kids. And I don't think any of them didn't love their kid, right? They lost it. I'm not saying they're not in response. I'm not saying they didn't know what they did could hurt their kid.

And that plays right into sort of, you know, this idea that people who hurt their kid don't seek medical care. You know, I think this idea that someone hurts their kid doesn't also want their kid to get the care that they need. You know, that's not necessarily true, right? Further, I think that's a really complicated, that's a really complicated thing. Because we do know that sometimes when kids get hurt by adults, those adults do delights he can care, right? So if you look at, you know, John Cox's case, his wife is due to land that day. I don't think there was a part of John that thought, you know, she's not going to want this kid to get care if the kid's not moving their arm. That's not going to fly, right?

So even if he didn't want to bring it in, he didn't have a choice. Yeah, his wife's a pediatric oncologist. Yeah, she's not going to come home and go, gee, that's weird. The baby's arm was moving when I left and it's not moving. Now, right? I mean, you know, that kid's going to show up for care at some point. Thumbtack presents. Uncertainty strikes. I was surrounded. The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes and natural bristles. There were too many choices. What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use? What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire a top.

operated pro that knows everything about interior paint. Easily compare prices and read reviews. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. If you like your true crime, like you like your coffee, Red Handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense, and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah. I'm Surruti. And every week on Red Handed, we break down a different, fascinating case. From the most recent US trials everyone is obsessing over, like Brendan Banfield, Karen Reid, and Ellen Greenberg, to the most unbelievable stories from around the world. Like Erin Patterson, the Australian woman who poisoned her in-laws with mushrooms. Or the controversial case of Lucy Letby, the UK's now most prolific child killer.

Or is she? We have our doubts. There's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover, getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Red Handed has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now. Plus, be sure to check out our weekly sister show, Shorthand, where we unpack everything, from the Black Death to Area. 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out red-handed wherever you get your podcasts. The evidence shows that John Cox was the perpetrator in this case.

But once he connected with Hicksenbaugh, who had been actively soliciting stories about false allegations, he became the victim of the story. And in this reversal, the blast zone of the damage multiplied. It became very much a divided hospital. And the ER definitely drew a line in the sand and chose their colleague over children. For his part, Mike Hicksenbaugh leaned into the drama his story had unleashed, posting on his Twitter that Children's of Wisconsin had been, quote, bombarded with angry letters. He reposted some of these angry letters to the hospital on his Twitter page. When the American Academy of Pediatrics included an article in their trade publication

entitled, Media Coverage of Child Abuse Pediatricians, threatens children's safety in January of 2020, right before Hicksenbaugh publishes the John Conflict. talk story, he screenshots the headline on Twitter with a sideways eyeball emoji. In this same thread, Hicksenbaugh claims to refute the AAP's claim that doctors can't speak to the press out of privacy concerns by saying that the parents signed HIPAA releases and that the doctors just chose not to speak to him. And we already addressed why this is insufficient, especially during an active child abuse investigation. Hicks and Baugh, however, seems to have no

qualms about the children's privacy. While LG is referred to Old by a pseudonym, likely because John and Sadie couldn't give him permission to identify her, his other stories in the Do No Harm series use the full name and photographs of the children who are subjects of active child abuse investigations. And in this series of tweets, Hicks and Boz's tone is downright glib, mocking the AAP's assertion that children's safety is at stake because of reporting like his. But if there was any question about whether or not that was true, it was answered by what happened next at Children's of Wisconsin?

I had known firsthand through cases that had come into my child abuse unit that kids with abusive head trauma who died as a result of that abusive head trauma, kids who suffered immersion burns inflicted by a caretaker, those cases were not being directed by the ER as highly concerning for child abuse and were in some cases being missed by the ER and information was not being relayed to law enforcement in a way that was helpful to the investigations. And it was a disservice to children in this community. And I thought that there was an opportunity to mend bridges. And whether it was me involved or not, what I really wanted everyone at the hospital to know,

especially on the ER staff, was to know the truth about what happened in this case. And so I wrote a letter to the CEO of Children's Hospital and I offered her to come in and meet with the staff at Children's Hospital, Wisconsin, provide all the information we had about the case with the investigation uncovered, but also to answer questions that anyone had relative to the investigation, how things unfolded, and I never even got a response to the letter.

John Cox's lies and Mike Hicksenbaugh's amplification of those lies had broken the trust between the ER and the child abuse team at Children's, and cases were slipping through the cracks. Hicksenbaugh had built his case on anonymous sources reporting vague, unsubstantiated concerns about the child abuse team. But during the investigation, Matthew Torbenson heard from a source who had quite a different set of concerns. I got an anonymous letter from the hospital from a particular physician in the emergency department who was telling me exactly what was happening within the department regarding children who were being seen and probably were being abused or neglected. That's next time. on the final episode of our Nobody Should Believe Me special report on John Cox.

Nobody Should Believe Me is executive produced written and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop. Our co-executive producer is Mariah Gossett. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, Research and Fact-Checking by Aaron Ajai. Additional research by Jessa V. Randall. Our production manager is Nola Karmouche. Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Sound Snap, and Slipstream.