Nobody Should Believe Me - S02 Ep01: Blunt Force Instrument

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Everyone in Brittany Philips’ life was worried about her daughter, Alyssa. Brittany was always talking about her child’s health issues, and complaining that she couldn’t keep food down—but it didn’t add up with what people were seeing. Still, no one quite knew how to intervene. It didn’t help that Brittany was a bulldozer, bullying anyone who disagreed with her and always causing maximum drama.    Season 2 delves deep into a chilling case that exposes the shocking realities of Munchausen by Proxy and how it can show up. Unlike the charismatic manipulator in Season 1, Hope Ybarra, Brittany didn't need charm; she used force to get what she wanted. She wasn’t fooling anyone, but it still felt like no one could stop her.   *** Follow host Andrea Dunlop on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos: @andreadunlop   Buy Andrea's books here. To support the show, go to https://apple.co/nobodyshouldbelieveme  to listen on Apple Podcasts and just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the show page to listen to exclusive bonus content and access all episodes early and ad-free or go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com  Download the APSAC's practice guidelines here. *** Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! *** Note: This episode contains sensitive content related to child abuse. Listener discretion is advised.  *** Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

True Story Media. or anyone you know is a victim or survivor of medical child abuse, please go to munchausensupport.com to connect with professionals who can help. People believe their eyes. That's something that actually is so central to this whole issue and to people that experience this is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. I'm Andrea Dunlop and this is that we do believe the people that we love when they're telling us something. I'm Andrea Dunlop, and this is Nobody Should Believe Me. I am a novelist. I'm the author of four books, most recently Women Are the Fiercest Creatures, which came out this past March. My third book, We Came Here to Forget, which came out in the summer of 2018, was inspired by my family story and my experience with Munchausen by proxy,

which is what started me off on this whole journey. Oh, Bubba's climbing up on mommy. I am a mom of two beautiful children. I actually had my second baby, my son Colin, between making seasons one and two of this podcast. Oh, I got a little monkey on my back. I got a monkey on my back. Careful, bubs.

If you listened to season one of this show, thank you. We received so many kind reviews that helped people find the show and just have felt so much support. If you haven't already listened to season one, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to it before

diving into season two. You can listen to all eight episodes plus some fantastic bonus content wherever you listen to podcasts. A note about this season, we are going to be offering all of the episodes early and ad-free on both Patreon and Apple Plus, and you can listen to the first three episodes on those platforms right now. So please go to patreon.com slash nobody should believe me or Apple Plus, and we will leave both of those links in the show notes. Well, friends, it's 2025. It's here. This year is going to be, well, one thing it won't be is boring. And that's about the only prediction I'm going to make right now. But one piece of news that I am excited to share is that the wait for my new book, The Mother Next Door, is almost over.

It is coming at you on February 4th from St. Martin's Press. So soon! I co-authored this book with friend and beloved contributor of this show, Detective Mike Weber, about three of the most impactful cases of his career. Even if you are one of the OG-est of OG listeners to this show, I promise you are going to learn so many new and shocking details about the three cases we cover. We just go into so much more depth on these stories, and you're also going to learn a ton about Mike's story. Now, I know y'all love Detective Mike because he gets his very own fan mail here at Nobody Should Believe Me. And if you've ever wondered, how did Mike become the detective when it came to Munchausen by proxy cases,

you are going to learn all about his origin story in this book. And I know we've got many audiobook listeners out there, so I'm very excited to share with you the audio book is read by me, Andrea Dunlop, your humble narrator of this very show. I really loved getting to read this book, and I'm so excited to share this with you. If you are able to pre-order the book, doing so will really help us out. It will signal to our publisher that there is excitement about the book, and it will also give us a shot at that all-important bestseller list. And of course, if that's simply not in the budget right now, we get it. Books are not cheap. Library sales are also extremely important for books, so putting in a request at your local library is another way that you can help. So you can pre-order the book right now in all formats

at the link in our show notes, and if you are in Seattle or Fort Worth, Mike and I are doing live events the week of launch, which you can also find more information about at the link in our show notes. These events will be free to attend, but please do RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. See you out there. Calling all sellers. Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents,

winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Health isn't something you can lie about to anyone. Why should we support abuse? We shouldn't. It's something that we shouldn't support.

I know what it's like to be lied about. My health. Brittany, my biological mother, abused me for three years. I remember being told to act like I was sick or unhealthy. Why shouldn't we save people? Why shouldn't we save kids? What you heard up top was audio from an extraordinary girl called Alyssa, who was testifying in front of the Texas state legislature in support of a bill that is named after her that would protect children from medical child

abuse. Alyssa is bright and resilient, and she is a survivor of horrific abuse that was perpetrated on her by her mother, Brittany Phillips. Their case is going to be the central focus of our season. And it is, in some ways, similar to the cases we talked about last season. We are going to be staying in Tarrant County, so you will hear a very familiar voice from season one, that of Detective Mike Weber.

But there are some really shocking twists, and Brittany is an entirely different kind of offender than Hope Ybarra. It's different in a lot of ways. I think the main area that is different is Hope was a manipulator. Brittany was too, but Brittany was also very forceful and did not have near the charisma that Hope Ybarra had, which is why she was caught earlier.

Brittany didn't have the charming personality that Hope Ybarra had. Brittany was very blunt, very to the point. And when she didn't get what she wanted, she was hard to handle. She would fly off the handle very quickly. It really struck me when I first read about the Brittany Phillips case because I had really developed a preconception about what these offenders were like that I think is common among people that have heard of this at all, which is that in order to pull this off, to pull the wool over the eyes of doctors and your community, et cetera, and to sort of get away with it, you have to be very smart, very sort of cunning, and this kind of master manipulator. To me, Brittany doesn't seem to fit those criteria in the same way.

Did that strike you when you were first getting involved in the case? I mean, it's always easier to see these things in hindsight than it is in foresight. She was not as polished as an offender as Hope Ybarra at all. She was very much a blunt force instrument when it came to medical professionals. But at the same time, people need to realize medical professionals are not trained in this abuse. They know as much about this abuse as a common person on the street. They don't receive training in medical school for this. They're actually taught to trust the mother, to trust the caregiver and the history that they provide. So they're even

coming into it even less prepared than a regular citizen would be. Right. And that's sort of what enables them to be able to do their jobs. That credulity 99 times out of 100 is not misplaced, right? Right. Correct. Yeah, I mean, we're talking, while this is more prevalent than the media reports and than people think, this is not every mother, right? I mean, this is a very, very small percentage of mothers that do this. And doctors rely on that history.

I mean, it's the most important aspect to a medical diagnosis. And I think what Brittany demonstrates is this is not hard to commit. Someone of average intelligence who's just a blunt force to the doctors, yells and screams when she doesn't get her way can do this. And she's a perfect demonstration of that and can be a very advanced defender also. Looking at the Hope Ybarra case, you know, these two cases are striking for really different reasons. You know, Hope's case was shocking because she really had her whole family, her whole community, you know, in her church and in the Cook's Children's Parents Council. And like she had all of these places in the community where she was so beloved and where she really was being looked at as this amazing sort of super mom.

And that was what a lot of people thought about her. And then to find out that, in fact, it's all lies is very shocking. And for Brittany's case, you know, things played out really differently in the lead up to the investigation, right? I mean, it strikes me reading through the files that everyone in Brittany's life seemed to understand that there was a problem. They might not have been able to say exactly what it was or put their finger on that it was medical child abuse, but, you know, Hope really had people fooled. She was presenting one face to the world that was not real. Brittany does not seem to have that same power to sort of convince people that

she was this amazing mother. It really seemed like a lot of the people in her life were worried about her as a parent. Correct. We get back to the education on this. While they were worried, even Laura Weyburn, who was a former CPS worker, while she was worried, no one really has a grasp of what this is. Just a note here that CPS stands for Child Protective Services. In Texas, we don't educate our CPS investigators. They receive no training on this. They have no policies on this. They have no findings. There's not a medical child abuse finding in CPS. There's like not a box you can check literally on the CPS. Literally not. And so it puts them in a very difficult situation. So for someone who is just a blunt force instrument like Brittany, it's still easy to do this. I mean, this is the easiest form of child abuse to commit and get away with, at least in my state.

By the time Alyssa Phillips was three years old, she had been to the emergency room or urgent care more than 30 times. She had been to see different specialists 23 times, and she had had more than a dozen different kinds of radiology exams, including MRIs. These cases are always characterized by a mother who takes her child to the doctor constantly. And you'll recognize that pattern from some of the cases that we talked about in season one, and in particular, the Hope Ybarra case, who took her daughter to the hospital all of the time. But these two offenders are really, really different. You will know if you listen to season one, we spent some time with Hope Ybarra. She was the kind of offender that I thought was always in these cases, meaning that she was very smart.

She was charming. You could see how she persuaded people to believe her. You could see how she got people on her side. She was my baby girl, and I have so much regret for hurting her. I love my family, especially my children, more than anything on this planet, regardless of what I've done and the choices that I've made. Even I, when I was actually sitting with her, knowing everything that she had done, still found her to be in the moment sympathetic. And it took me a few minutes after I left that cafe to really regain my

bearings. By all accounts, Brittany Phillips, Alyssa's mother, was nothing like this. Mike refers to her as a blunt force instrument, which I think is really apt because by all accounts of everyone who knew her, she was just a bully. She did not have the charm. She did not have the cunning. She did not seemingly did not have the intelligence to create some really intricate con the way that Hope Ybarra did. But it just shows that it's actually not that hard to pull this off. One of the things that was really striking about Hope's story is that her entire family was very convinced

about everything she was saying about her health and her daughter. This was not the case with those who were around Brittany, and we spoke to two of her distant relatives, Bill and Laura Wayburn, who are going to play a big part in this story. I wanted to talk to them about their connection with Brittany. So Brittany Phillips is in fact

an extended family member. Is that right? That is correct. Can you remind me what the connection is? My brother, who's the oldest of my family, married into the Phillips family. And his wife's brother is the father of Brittany Phillips. Okay. That makes it clear.

I asked Laura Weyburn the same question. It's a family tree with lots of branches. So Bill, my husband, he's got a brother whose wife is Alyssa's biological great aunt. That's Patricia Weyburn? Yes. Okay. But we had known Alyssa. We had met with her. We had seen her. We had been to my brother-in-law's house for family gatherings and had been around her several times before that. I've spent a lot of time in Fort Worth now, and this seems very indicative of the place, that they were this big, extended family who had lots of get-togethers. A lot of these people in this family had a lot of kids. And what this meant was that there were a lot of eyes on Brittany and Alyssa. And people started to notice that things didn't seem quite right. Well, I noticed, and I

want to preface that with some lay terms. I wasn't looking for the things that maybe Laura was looking at, or even Faith Ann, as I know you're going to talk to,'s looking at as moms, good mamas, is that I did see that when Brittany was at family gatherings, she would be absolutely talking about different illnesses and doctor experiences with the baby and what was going on. And that would be the majority of it because it would always be something, you know, trying to describe this as a fragile child. And I remember specifically her wearing braces, leg braces at one gathering and her running. And I'm thinking, that's interesting that she can run and those kind of things. I remember just previous to even the final straw that broke the camel's back where they removed her just weeks prior to that. We were at a family gathering and she was still in diapers at a little over three and that she was in a pool.

And Brittany was keeping her from eating because she says she couldn't eat regular food because of digestive issues and those kind of things. But those are the kind of things that I remember. I remember her just trying to absolutely bring attention to herself. Absolutely. This is the most critical thing in the room. And if she was there, that would be the domination of the conversation. Bill's wife, Laura, noticed the same pattern. Every time we had seen her at my brother-in-law's, Alyssa would be playing and eating and having fun. And Brittany always, always talked about how she couldn't eat. You know, and then you sit there and you see her eating. She can't hardly walk. She's walking. She always, always commented about how small she was, always talked about her medical conditions all the time. It was absolutely nonstop. There wouldn't be a single person who wouldn't have noticed how outrageously strange it was how she was with

Alyssa. Can you elaborate a little bit on that like was it just the like Brittany in conversation was extremely fixated on Alyssa's medical yes in conversation she would try to drag anybody who would listen in and if you know somebody wasn't paying attention she'd go to somebody else and try to drag them into a conversation about something that's wrong with Alyssa or all of her medical appointments or the doctors say this or the doctors say that. And she did it with me up until this happened. And then she stopped because she figured out I was on to her. There was a time where she had brought these leg braces for Alyssa and she talked about how she has to have them. She's supposed to have them on all the time. And I asked her, then why doesn't she have them on now? And she

gave me some kind of story about, well, she was asleep, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, you know, you need to put them on if she's supposed to have them on. And so she did. And then she was talking more so about a CPS case that she had. She was talking about a CPS investigation into her. Yes, about a CPS investigation into her, where she was actually complaining to me about how the CPS case worker was not helping her get housing. She was really mad that they weren't calling her back and helping her with her financial situation. But at this time, it wasn't anything regarding medical child abuse that she was being investigated for? She did mention that they were looking at how small she was. And I said, this is the point where she,

she stopped talking to me is I said, have they ever mentioned failure to thrive? And she said, oh yeah, yeah, but it's not the kind that I did. It's not the kind that I did. It's not the kind that I did. Meaning, meaning what? Well, she's, she's basically saying she knows that I know that there's organic failure to thrive and inorganic failure to thrive. And she's saying, oh, no, I didn't starve her. That's what it meant. So she's sort of like responding to an accusation that you did not make. Yes.

Yes. Just saying like, yes, I've heard of failure to thrive, but I'm not starving her. Yes. And so then I probed just a teeny bit further and she stopped because, you know, there was nowhere she could go at that point because she was kind of out of the story. These kind of interactions were really alarming to the Weyburns. And Laura, who was actually a former CPS worker herself, was particularly alarmed by these comments about failure to thrive.

So failure to thrive is a catch-all term that they use for babies and small children who are not gaining weight the way they should. Now, Alyssa, like many children in these cases, was born premature, but by this time she's a toddler and most preemiesies eating issues have cleared up by this point. So this Side Ripper is back. If you're not killing these people, then who is?

That's what I want to know. Starring Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina. The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants. Killer messaged you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I got to get out of this. Based on a true story. New season premieres tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific.

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mention Bill's niece, Faith, who is Brittany's cousin. And she was one of the first people to really raise the red flag that something wasn't right. So like one time at, I believe it was Easter, we were having an Easter dinner. She was there, and Alyssa was walking around to the tables because we had several tables set up with everybody eating, and she just wanted food. You could tell she was really tiny, and she was hungry,

and she just was trying to get everybody to feed her. So I just finally picked her up in my lap and started feeding her because it was obvious to feed her. So I just finally picked her up in my lap and started feeding her because it was obvious to me that she was starving and like her mom was not trying to give her any food. And Brittany would say things like, she has trouble swallowing, but then she would give Alyssa food, but only small amounts.

And then she would say, you can't have any more because it's gonna make your stomach hurt and take it away. And Alyssa would still be crying, wanting more food. That's really heartbreaking to picture. So it sounds like before the investigation started, you had some concerns about the two of them together. Yes. I actually told Laura after seeing Brittany and Alyssa once, I said, she has Munchausen. I told Laura that. I said, absolutely, she has it, and I don't know what to do. I was like, I know that she's making this child sick. I know that she's hurting her.

She's making her sick, and she's causing all of these issues. I mean, I had five children, so like I could tell there wasn't really the things wrong that she was saying. Like, Alyssa was a healthy child other than what she was inflicting on her. Like, she just wasn't this sickly child like Brittany was making her out to be. She would run and play and, you know, all the things with all the kids. But then, yeah, she has all these medical issues. Like, I just knew. I just felt and sensed. And I told my parents and I told Laura I said she has

Munchausen like what do we do like something is terribly wrong she is hurting this child and I don't know what to do and I knew that she had already been like investigated by CPS and I guess nothing had come of that really and so it was just like what do you do how do you go to anybody and say to them like oh this this girl's got munchausen. I know she does. Like, I mean, who's going to believe you really? This sense that you're not going to be believed if you bring these suspicions forward is something that I deeply relate with. Because you have to get past your own resistance to the idea that a mother could do this to their child and

then you know you're going to face that and resistance in other people even though it is absolutely the right thing to do to report to both cps and the police if you have suspicions that a child is being abused it's really hard to do and And I understand that. No one wants to make that kind of call on a family member. Even Laura Weyburn, who is a very tough cookie and a former CPS worker herself, had trouble with the idea of reporting. I had been concerned about her all this time, but, you know, I hadn't ever seen anything that was actually reportable just you can't call and report this person's weird because you know you have to have some kind of specific allegation and I think at that time there were several times that Faith and I discussed it but I think at that

time she had read a book or seen a movie or whatever and heard of Munchausen syndrome by proxy and I was like well yeah I mean definitely and, you know, we were talking about, well, hopefully they'll, you know, obviously she's, you know, being seen by somebody and just hoping that, you know, the system would help her. So within the family, what was the take on Brittany and Alyssa? Like, it sounds like you and Faith had some pretty explicit conversations about the possibility of it being an abusive relationship. Yes. Within the family, anybody who had really been around her knew that people that didn't understand child abuse even just knew something was up. They knew something weird was going on. They,

most of them probably didn't have any idea what medical child abuse is or how it works or how absolutely heinous it is. And just like the rest of the world, they just don't know. They just, it was, there's not anybody who had been around Brittany who wouldn't have sensed that she was different. So something felt off, but people kind of couldn't put their finger on it? Brittany who wouldn't have sensed that she was different. So something felt off, but people kind of couldn't put their finger on it? Yeah. I mean, I would say that probably a lot of people just thought she was nuts or that, you know, she just talks a lot or she's irritating or she's, you know, just kind of overwhelmingly over the top everything. It wasn't just Brittany's family who was concerned about her behavior.

One of the striking things about this case is it was every single person who met her seemed to share these same concerns. And Brittany's online life plays a big part in this case. She was active on Facebook groups and, you know, in these groups for new moms. And, you know, we talked to Dr. Kaufman in the first season about how social media and online life has really made these cases explode. And this plays a big

part in this story. So we spoke to one of those online friends of Brittany's. My name is Heather Harris. I'm a registered nurse. How did you and Brittany originally meet? We had kids that were born around the same month because the whattoexpect.com website had it set up where your due date for that month and everybody that was due that month would get together and talk. And I have a child that was born in 2008. So that's how we met.

She had a child that was due the same time. So we met on the website. What do you remember about sort of your first interactions with her? They were okay. It was just like everybody else on the website. What do you remember about sort of your first interactions with her? They were okay. It was just like everybody else on the website. And we had children that were all going to be about the same age. So we talked, you know, about kid things and diapers and pregnancy and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Yeah.

So just mom chat. It was a nice place to be able to go and meet people and that we're going to have kids your same age. And some people had older kids or multiples of older kids. So you could get advice from them. So it was very nice. Yeah. Kind of like your mom village. Yes.

If you will. Yeah. Which is really important. And then we discovered that a lot of us lived in the same area. So we could get and meet for meet and greets and got to know each other a little bit better through that. When did you first meet? Like, how did you take that relationship into the real world? When did you first meet her in person? I found multiple other mothers in the group that lived kind of in the same area. So we decided to have a big meet and greet. And we had,

I think there was like four or five other mothers there at that point. And I had invited Brittany out to come out to the house and meet everybody. And we had a whole day of just play and all the kids got to play. They were a little over a year, I think, between a year and two years. Okay. So you guys had really kind of kept in touch on that, on that forum. Yes. Okay. And what do you remember about first meeting Brittany? I think I had met her a couple times before that, but she just, she was nice, but she seemed really young and as her only child, and she really needed a lot of help. She'd talked about her past and her background and how she, she lived with her mother, but her mother wasn't like the parental type and didn't really teach her a lot of stuff. So she did ask for a lot of advice, which I did that with my first child.

So I didn't think anything of it. It's just she needed a little bit more help than normal. Her child had multiple health issues. And after she found out that I was a nurse, then it became medical questions and more of what to do in this medical situation, which there's not a lot that I could answer because I'm like, I'm not her doctor. I can't give medical advice, but I can maybe help you find the right people or point you in the right direction and stuff like that. So that was a lot of the interaction I had with her was parenting advice and the medical issues that she was having with her daughter. It sounds like she, yeah, she just seemed like she was really sort of overwhelmed and was having some challenges and was seeking some support and advice as a new parent. Do you remember sort of

how her, how did her relationship with her daughter, Alyssa, how did that seem? At first, it seemed like a new mother without the coping skills to deal with a child, especially one that had multiple health issues because she was, and she was born premature and she was sick from the get-go. And most of her posts online were about her daughter and being sick and in and out of hospitals. And I just imagine being overwhelmed and she seemed attentive and caring and loving and wanting the best for her child it was different whenever I got to be around her seeing her interact with her daughter okay so online it seemed like this is a mom that's like overwhelmed but is really trying to do the best

for her daughter yes and did you see like a contrast when you were in person with her yes she was really rough with her that's where I think a lot of why it took me so long with Brittany is just the amount of grace that I had because I mean I had been there and done that and there there are days now that I'm my kids great at me and grind on me and but I know I can just go to my bedroom and shut the door and eat some chocolate I don't have those coping skills I don't have to yell at them and you know yeah it's different and that's I felt that if she had some better idea of what to do because she had made it sound like she didn't have any of that from her mother didn't have that kind of upbringing that she knew how to deal with stuff so I figured

that if I would help her with some things that it would work but there were there were the things that I would notice about Alyssa she was always hungry but Brittany wouldn't let her eat if she got a hold of food then she would yell at her and smack it out of her hand, not let her eat it. And why did she say that she was? Because she would choke. She had trouble sweating. She had a feeding tube at this point. And she had, I think, a J-tube that they were feeding her with.

And she wasn't allowed to drink anything because she would aspirate and choke on it. It had to be thickened liquids only. She would not bring the thickener with her whenever we would meet. And then she would just deny her drinks. But I also saw her eat. When we had the really big play date with all of the families,

she was going around and picking up food off the floor. The other kids were dropping. Other kids would offer her drinks and she'd sit there and down a whole Capri Sun and no problems whatsoever. And that's when I got a little bit worried. Everyone in Brittany's life was worried about her and Alyssa, but no one quite knew what to do. Then in August of 2011, Brittany brought Alyssa in to the emergency room at Cook Children's because of dehydration.

And while she was there, things really unraveled. And finally, the hospital called Detective Mike Weber. You were the first time law enforcement got involved. Is that right? That's correct. It had been reported to CPS in another county on three separate occasions. Medical child abuse had been reported on three separate occasions in another Texas county. It came to me after Dr. Lazarus at Cook's Children's reported this abuse to CPS. What was the incident that led to? The reason Dr. Lazarus reported Brittany bringing the victim to the ER and with reports of dehydration. And during that hospitalization, the victim had two polymicrobial blood infections,

which is multiple organisms in the blood, which Dr. Lazarus stated was very suspicious for intentional poisoning. Is that just because that's extremely rare to see that? Extremely rare. Yeah, extremely rare to see multiple organisms in the blood. And how serious is something like a polymicrobial blood infection? Absent medical intervention, it can kill you. It can cause sepsis. It can cause death. Their hallmark, what Dr. Lazarus put in his affidavit, a hallmark of child abuse.

They went through and they tested her. You could have a gastro leak or something. There would be something wrong for you to have a polymicrobial blood infection. And they did all those tests. There was nothing wrong with her. Again, more testing she has to undergo, right? So then they put her in a video room, nothing happened. And then they report it. So they put Brittany in a room with video surveillance. Correct. And when I say nothing happened, suddenly the victim stopped having these polymicrobial blood infections. Okay.

And this becomes important later on. This particular hospital visit was incredibly dramatic, but of course concern about Brittany had been mounting for a long time. And people in her life were getting really fed up with her. Heather Harris was done talking to her. That is until circumstance brought her back into her life were getting really fed up with her. Heather Harris was done talking to her. That is until circumstance brought her back into her life. I think she stopped calling me because she stopped posting online. I was friends with her on Facebook

and she stopped posting on Facebook. What happened after that? What was your next sort of interaction with all of this? It was when Mike Weber called. And what did Mike Weber call you about? He had stated that CPS had been involved and that Alyssa had been hospitalized again, and they had caught her doing something to her in the hospital. And that didn't take me by surprise whatsoever. Last season, we talked about the case of Hope Ybarra. And in that case, one of the things that was so notable was the depth of

Hope's deceptions and the way that she was able to fool even the people who were closest to her. Brittany was the exact opposite. She was not a master manipulator. Everyone in her life knew something was going on. She was reported multiple times by multiple people. And so the people in her life knew something was going on. She was reported multiple times by multiple people. And so the people in her life were relieved when they found out the authorities had gotten involved. But the story was far from over. This season on Nobody Should Believe Me. Do you believe that evil can walk boldly among us? I mean, people just, they just don't believe that a mother could do that.

In my 37, almost 38 years as a police officer, I've never come across this. I doubt that very many police officers ever have. Nobody was protecting this child that we were all fighting so hard to protect. And they let her down. Let the evidence lead you to a conclusion. Because in Alyssa's case, we can take you down an evidentiary trail that is overwhelming. A lot has happened since my sister has been out of my life. Things that only pushed my fear one way, and that's to make it worse.

In Texas, in investigations, often we say this, where there's a little smoke, there might be some fire. Nobody Should Believe Me is produced by Large Media. Our music is by Johnny Nicholson and Joel Shupak. Special thanks to our lead producer, Tina Noll, and our editor, Travis Clark.