Nobody Should Believe Me - S02 Ep03: Where There’s Smoke

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Detective Mike Weber dives into the digital rabbit hole of Brittany’s online activity and makes a discovery so shocking it turns his investigation on its head and reveals the depths of depravity offenders are capable of. Meanwhile, the fight to protect Alyssa ramps up and we meet Sheriff Bill Waybourn—a towering Texan lawman with a huge heart and an iconic mustache. He and his wife Laura will become a beacon of hope in Alyssa’s life as she changes the course of their family forever.  *** 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. If you'd like to support the show, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or join me on Patreon to listen to exclusive bonus content and get all episodes early and ad-free. What would you say to people that are having a really hard time processing this idea that a mother would be capable of doing this to her child? The first thing that I would ask that person is one, do you believe that evil can walk boldly among us? And then the second thing is, is please have an open heart and an open mind and look at the evidence. Let the evidence lead you to a conclusion. Because in Alyssa's case, we can take you down an evidentiary trail that is overwhelming. In most of these cases,

where we see a child that can't walk or can't feed themselves, and all of a sudden you take that child away from that parent and separate them, and all of a sudden you take that child away from that parent and separate them, and all of a sudden they can walk. They can eat by mouth. They didn't need the feeding tube. They didn't need all the medications. They're not allergic to all the food. In Texas, in investigations, often we say this.

Where there's a little smoke, there might be some fire. 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 Nobody Should Believe Me. 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 audiobook 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. RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. See you out there. 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. At the top of the episode,

you heard from Sheriff Bill Webern. The sheriff is an incredible guy and he really looks like whatever it is that might come to mind when you picture a Texas sheriff. He's about six foot four. He wears a 10-gallon hat and a big belt buckle. And he has a very spectacular mustache. He and his wife, Laura, who we've also heard from in a previous episode, are a really big part of this story.

And as you'll remember, they are actually relatives of Brittany Phillips. So now we're going to go back to Detective Mike Weber, who's going to catch us up on where the investigation into Brittany Phillips stands at this moment. This was a nine-month investigation from the time it was reported to the time of Brittany's arrest. So you're looking at an extensive time period, right? Even though Alyssa was three, her medical records were extensive. The sheriff, I think he said there was half a bookcase full of medical records. And I mean, I have a three-year-old. And other than her child well visits, which are just the scheduled pediatrician, you bring them in.

You bring them in a lot when they're really little. And then you bring them in every six months and every year. Other than those, I count on one hand the number of times I've taken my daughter to the doctor. Right. Other than just normal stuff, right? So you continued to interview Brittany's friends. The group from What to Expect later transitioned into a Facebook group. They all moved over to Facebook. And, you know, this is when social media was just starting to take off.

And I also interviewed Scarlett Weathers. Scarlett Weathers was moderator of that group, and she had issues with Brittany. And she said the same thing that the others said, that there would be these times where her child was worse off than anyone else's. When everyone would post something, she was always right after them posting her child's sicker. And she had actually unfriended Brittany from Facebook. Then after refriending her, she saw a post from the hospital suddenly started popping up again. Again, I interviewed these people.

This all just leads into more evidence for the Facebook war. Keep in mind that this case is taking place in 2009. And although social media existed back then and people were online quite a bit, much, much less than they are today. So this was really one of the first cases that Detective Mike Weber worked on where a person's online life really came into play. But now these are really considered a very central

part of these investigations. And there are people who perpetrate Munchausen by proxy and Munchausen behaviors only online. So that is a term that Dr. Mark Feldman, who we spoke to last season, coined Munchausen by internet. So some of these things are only happening online, but a lot of perpetrators who commit these crimes in real life with their real children will use these social media tools, online forums, support groups. They'll infiltrate groups that are dedicated to parents with a child with a specific condition or just sick children in general. And this has really become a method for them to gain attention. And I think this is something that

we all understand that social media and especially, you know, during the pandemic, social media was really the only way that we had to connect with each other. And so that is something that is a really powerful tool, unfortunately, in the hands of a perpetrator. I sat down with Susan Ryle, who again was the CPS supervisor on this case, to talk about how important it is for CPS and law enforcement to work together in these investigations. Now, law enforcement, i.e. Detective Weber, would always work with us because law enforcement can get things that CPS can't get and CPS can get things that law enforcement can't get. Yes. So can you talk a little bit about why that team approach is so important? Well, CPS, number one, doesn't have to Mirandize anyone when they're questioning them. For context, Mirandizing someone means reading them their Miranda rights.

So if you've ever watched any cop drama, you will have seen this. This is when someone gets arrested and the officer says to them, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say can and will be used against you, etc. So cops have to do this when they are detaining or arresting someone. And CPS does not. So CPS, therefore, can seem a lot less threatening and potentially get parents to be more open and cooperative in their conversations. And we're social workers, which investigators, very few investigators are

social workers. We can schmooze. We're not scary, especially in the medical abuse cases. There's no way in heck they're going to say they did anything wrong. They've got to talk to all their friends. They're such good mothers and they take such, bless their hearts. So they're not scared of us. But law enforcement, they can subpoena medical records. A lot of these medical abuse mothers, they're not going to sign a waiver to release their medical information to us, but law enforcement can get a subpoena. And that is what Mike Weber was doing.

Mike was in the process of digging through these voluminous medical records, along with Dr. Jamie Kaufman, who is the child abuse pediatrician at Cook Children's, where this is all happening. You may remember her from last season. And just to remind you, in this medical record review, they're not just looking for a pattern of illness or mysterious medical happenings. They're looking for evidence of deception.

They found plenty. And when you say Brittany was fabricating symptoms, you mean? She was fabricating medical history to doctors in order to get the feeding to play. So she was making essentially false reports to the doctor when she was seeing the doctor. She was claiming that Alyssa had symptoms at home that she was not actually having. Correct. And that's one thing.

But then what you discovered was that she was actually inducing symptoms so that there were things to observe. In fact, it was just that she was the cause of them. Correct. And the induction case gives us a better legal path, right? Because now we have her actually doing something to Alyssa, whereas she's tricking doctors into doing it. And there isn't that nuance there of, oh, this is maybe a sort of hypochondriac moment, or this is a nervous mom, or this is a mom who's confused about what's happening. It's really a lot more straightforward than that, I would imagine. It becomes very clearly abused to almost anyone that views it at that point.

At this point in time, Alyssa was still at Cook's, where she'd been originally admitted for dehydration and then, while there, had developed a mysterious and very rare blood infection. And this, along with Brittany's bizarre behavior while they were at the hospital together, really raised alarms for doctors. We spoke to Don Ferguson, one of the prosecutors on the case. Brittany Phillips was unique because what she did to Alyssa, she kind of covered all of the, what I would call the standard red flags of Munchausen. It started when she was young. She said she wasn't eating. They got the feeding tube. She went to the feeding specialist. And we learn from the evidence we had that when she gets to cook, she gets on the wireless.

And, you know, when you log on to the hospital Wi-Fi, you have to click I accept. And then anything you search while you're at that hospital is saved. And so we were able to actually get the records of what she was searching for when she was doing internet searches. And we actually had Google search terms that said she was searching for poop in feeding tube, feces in feeding tube, what happens if you put poop in a feeding tube, things like that. Detective Mike at this time was still very focused on getting evidence about the feeding tube surgery, but he was able to get a search warrant for Brittany's computer and he was shocked by what he found. I'm looking for one thing and then all of a sudden this leads me in a totally different direction. And it was a good lesson for me to expect the unexpected. I had no clue she was

doing this to her child. I had no clue she was putting feces in her child's feeding tube and IV line until this happened. And if you, again, I think it's a good lesson to detectives. If you don't look, you don't know. And if you have probable cause to look on these cases, especially, you need to look. I've researched a lot of Munchausen by proxy cases at this point, and these cases are always horrifying. But this particular detail about this particular case is just so stunning. I can say in my 37, almost 38 years as a police officer, I've never come across this at that point in time, right? I've never come across a mother putting feces into her child's IV line. I doubt that very many police officers ever have, very many detectives ever have, regardless of their experience level. It has happened in other

cases in other states, but it's extremely out of the norm. Even for these kind of cases. Even for a seasoned child abuse detective. Right. Obviously, now we're headed down another path. Now we have her computer that shows that she's possibly putting something into her child, and we have to explore that path. All forms of this abuse are serious and should be taken seriously, but you do have this sort of spectrum of behaviors that can go from exaggerating existing symptoms to fabricating symptoms to actually inducing something that could potentially be deadly. So this is very far along the...

Right. But I think this case also demonstrates that you don't know where they're at on that spectrum until you look at all the evidence, right? I mean, because I thought she was fabricating, but yet here we find evidence that she was actually inducing. It can be anywhere on that spectrum at any time and can skip to any area of that spectrum at any time. Yeah. So it area of that spectrum at any time. Yeah, so it's not like it's this path where you just like can figure out, okay, there are three out of ten or what have you.

Right. It can be any or all. Everyone in Brittany's life had observed that she appeared to be starving Alyssa, which was the reason that Mike got so focused on the feeding tube. But as he said, these behaviors can be all going on at the same time. And that was the case with Brittany. In addition to the really disturbing Google searches that they found on her computer, they found something else, which was that Brittany had, right before making those Google searches, she had visited a true crime forum and read about a mother in Texas who was caught on video surveillance putting feces in her child's feeding tube. Once Mike made these discoveries, he realized that this was really going to be at the heart of the case, and he took it back to the attorney working on it.

I told him we needed to meet with Dr. Mark Mazade, who was the infectious disease doctor. That had pretty much ignored at the beginning of the of the investigation, other than to get affidavits saying that he thought this was was medical child abuse. Had he seen a medical child abuse case before? He had maybe seen one. I don't know that he had been the prosecutor on one. But, you know, it's still it's a lot to wrap your head around. But I mean, he went to the meeting with an open mind, which is so important in these cases. We met with Dr. Mazade, and, you know, I asked him what I tell detectives.

You never ask a doctor, is it possible? Because anything's possible to a doctor, all right? Medicine's very different than police work. We're very black and white. Medicine's very gray. I asked Dr. Mazade, in your 14 years as an infectious disease pediatrician, how many times have you seen these three elements in a child's blood? Strep varidans, staph aureus, and E. coli. And Dr. Mazade said, never. Not one time in my 14 years.

That's what I wanted in the affidavit. Then I asked him, you know, put on a black hat for a minute. If someone was going to induce this, how would they get those three pathogens into a child? He's like, well, strep and staph are skin-borne. E. coli is poop-borne. So what makes the most sense is Alyssa went poop in her diaper and mom removed poop that had rubbed against her skin and placed it in the IV line or the feeding tube. It could have been either. It's really grim. I've heard and read about this case so many times. And yet when I actually stop to picture it and when you sort of describe the likely series of events, I mean, it's really disturbing is not even the word.

Depraved, I think, is the word. And again, just like with Hope Ybarra, you never know where these cases are going to lead you. You just don't know. And you have to have the open mind to pursue it. If you try to put it in a box,

you're not going to get the full picture of abuse. There's so many things I want to do and see. Like redoing the basement without having to do it all myself. Or doing absolutely nothing. With a spectacular waterfall view, of course. So, I'm starting here. Investing with RBC.

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I want to tell you about a show I love, Truer Crime from Cilicia Stanton. My favorite true crime shows are the ones where I feel like the creator has a real stake in what they're talking about. And this is definitely the case with Cilicia, who got interested in covering crime because, like many of us in this genre, she experienced it. In each episode of the show, Cilicia brings a personal, deeply insightful lens to the crime that she covers, whether it's a famous case like the Manson murders or Jonestown, or a lesser-known case that needs to be heard, like the story of a modern lynching. She covers these stories with a fresh and thoughtful lens, helping listeners understand not just the case itself, but why it matters to our understanding of the world. Her long-awaited second season is airing now,

and the first season is ready to binge. So go check out Truer Crime with Cilicia Stanton wherever you get your podcasts. The series of events during Alyssa's stay at the hospital in August of 2011, the mysterious blood infection she developed, the strange behavior from her mother, and the previous reports on Brittany led up to CPS taking affidavits from the doctors and getting an emergency removal. So CPS is only able to do this when they feel that there's an imminent threat to the child. And in this case, they did. I spoke to Susan Ryle to explain how this process works. We got the removal within a short period of time because we got enough affidavits from the doctors. We still had more to gather and we did get more.

And affidavits from the doctors saying, we think there's abuse going on. Yes, signed and notarized official legal binding statements that here's what I've got. And it has to say, if the child is in a parent's care, they're at risk of significant harm or maybe death, however they want to word that, however it's appropriate. So there's serious affidavits of fact. We were able to get the removal approved by our assistant district attorneys prior to going to court. That's an emergency removal. Of course, Brittany was not happy. She screamed and cried and said, no, you're not, no, you're not.

I wouldn't sign any paperwork, but the upside of doing a removal at Cook Children's is they have security, so they can walk, you know, the parents out and had that done many, many times. And that's what's so hard is separating the child from the parent, because that's the only way you can show and demonstrate to the court, whether civil, criminal, whatever, that what the parent's been doing is abusive and, you know, fictive. Because of the seriousness of the situation, Alyssa had been removed from Brittany's care during the course of the August 2011 hospital stay where she developed the blood infection. And Alyssa's behavior after the removal was telling. Within a day, like the next day, she was happy, talking, eating chicken nuggets and

french fries, having no problem eating. She had problems when they wanted, when they, the nurse came in or they needed to do any medical procedure, like a shot or do anything. Now she knew, they mentioned, medical people mentioned that she knew a lot about medical care, more than a three-year-old would normally know. Yeah, more than a three-year-old would normally know. Yeah, I have a three-year-old, and she, other than Daniel Tiger goes to the doctor, she doesn't have any medical knowledge. No, she knew blood pressure, blood tests, all of that, and medication, but she didn't like it. She would scream and have a fit whenever they were going to do anything. She was eating, running around with no braces or anything.

Very happy when the worker first went to visit her. Now, one thing when we remove the parent from the scene and the child's still hospitalized, we try and we typically would make sure that someone was with them all the time. We had kind of a rotating list of workers, friends of the hospital, different people that would to make sure someone's with them all the time. And she did very well. You know, I have a three-year-old and if she was separated from me under those circumstances, she would be beside herself. No, no. This was not the case. As a matter of fact, Alyssa was one of the least bothered of a lot of the kids I worked with when her mother was taken away.

I just can't help but feel that she was really cognizant that it wasn't right. Detective Mike Weber noticed the same thing. I mean, with Alyssa, it was pretty much the minute of separation. This child had a will. I don't know where she got it from. But man, I think this child scavenged for food at night. I think that's what she had to do to survive. At a very young age, she got a survival instinct that I don't know where it came from. Thank God she had it. But I really don't know where it came from. She was looking to upgrade at the parent position from the moment she was removed. Yeah, it just seems like this kid was like, get me out of here. Like, I'm, this is not my family. I'm going to go with this family. Like,

this is not. I want something better in life. And she knew it at three. Alyssa's health started to improve immediately after being separated from Brittany, but still the doctors wanted to be cautious. And so they found a temporary placement for her with a foster mother who had experience as a nurse practitioner. And just to remind you, the point of these investigations is not to prove whether or not a child has any ailments at all, but to determine if the parent has been lying to the doctors and has harmed their child in the process. Alyssa's initial foster parent also noted how she did not really seem to be very attached to Brittany at all. And she would say things like, I don't need my mommy anymore and I'm not sick anymore when her foster

mother would show her pictures of Brittany. In the meantime, CPS was looking for a more long-term placement. Immediately the waverings came to us because another thing Brittany did was she was telling everybody what had happened. What had happened with the CPS removal? Yes, that we'd removed. She was texting everyone she ever knew. It was on Facebook. She was texting relatives, wherever they lived, whatever state they lived in. Because so much attention.

She just craved that attention however she could get it. So it was sort of a drama for me. I'm the victim. Yes, and that's so typical. It's really, I would be hunkered down thinking, what the heck can I do to get my child back? I'm ashamed. I'm humiliated. I'm not going to tell anybody.

Maybe family, maybe close family. She told everyone she knew. And so we, and gave us a whole huge list of names for collateral contacts to call about her and relatives. Of course, she was looking for a relative placement, but a relative got in touch with Ms. Weyburn, who they're related by marriage, kind of distantly, but thank God. So instantly, you know, they were on our radar. We instigated a home study because once we take custody of a child, CPS takes custody of a child, we can't just stick them anywhere. You know, we're legally, ethically responsible for the care and safety of that child.

Faith, who is Brittany's cousin and also the niece of Sheriff and Laura Weyburn, was in the closest communication with Brittany during this time. When she finally took her to Cook's when she was really sick and the whole incident with the, you know, feces in the feeding tube or whatever, Brittany had actually called my mom and said, they're taking her away from me. CPS is taking her away from me. Would you take her? And my mom said, well, Brittany, you know, I'm older. I don't really think that I'm able to care for a child, especially a child that has medical issues like this. And then she was like, well, do you think Faith would take her? So my mom called me and asked me,

and I was like, well, you can tell her to call me. So I immediately called Laura and I was like, this is what's going on. Like, you know, they finally, I think they've caught her. Here's Laura and Bill Weyburn. Our niece, Faith, had been contacted by Brittany whenever Alyssa had been removed from her. And Faith reached out to me, basically looking for whether Bill and I would be willing to take Alyssa. She knew that I would be so relieved, and I was. I just remember thinking, finally, finally, she has been rescued. She and I had talked about that there were some things not right in that relationship between Brittany and Alyssa, and that there were some things going on. So we weren't surprised. We were actually thankful that this had happened, something had happened where Alyssa was safe, and she was being taken care of, and that Brittany was being separated from her. So from that standpoint, we were excited

for Alyssa, I think would be what I was, is that, okay, now we're going to get somewhere maybe. Because we knew how difficult this was going to be, both from a CPS perspective and a criminal perspective. Then as I was talking to Laura more about it, Laura's like, well, if you don't want to take her, because I know you already have five kids, and if you don't want to, we'll definitely take her. If you can get Brittany to agree to that, we'll take her. I was like, yeah, sure. You know, because I knew she'd be going to a great place if she went with Bill and Laura. So I talked to Brittany and Brittany was kind of hesitant at first. She was like, I don't know. I don't really know them and all of that. And I'm like, you know, just talking to her and what great people they are

and how she'll be safe and she'll get all the medical care she needs and she'll be well taken care of. And so she finally agreed. So during this process, Laura and I would talk. It brought me such comfort to know that she was under doctor's care because I just thought, well, you know, surely one of these doctors will catch it and be able to do something about it. Little did I know, you know, how many doctors had tried or how many, you know, how many cases there had been. I was astounded whenever I, you know, saw the whole record. Over the course of Alyssa's life,

Brittany had been reported to CPS numerous times, including by several doctors with concerns about medical child abuse. After Alyssa was placed with the Wayburns, Faith kept lines of communication with her cousin Brittany open. I told Brittany, I was like, you know, I need to know what her medical issues are. And so can you text me like what doctors she's seeing? Can you text me what her allergies are? Can you, you know, I need a list of all of these things that are wrong with her. So she was just texting like she goes to this doctor and she has a feeding tube and she's allergic to chocolate and she's allergic to dairy

and she's allergic to this and this and this and this. I mean, just these lists of things. And then so I would tell Laura all of these things and we would talk. And then that's when I got a phone call from Mike Weber. He said that they were going to prosecute her. And so I took my phone down to Mike and he pulled all the text messages off of my phone so that he would have those as evidence of what that she was saying to me. All I can say about that is Mike is a hero and I don't care what he says. He's a hero. I can't say what would have happened, but I know without him, this case would have not ended the way that it was. Well, Mike Weber's quite the champion of many, many families. And of course, in my opinion, he has saved several children.

Like the Weyburns, I know Mike really well. And it's true that he objects to being called a hero. He always insists that he's just doing his job. This is my podcast, and I'm inclined to agree with the Weyburns. And in fact, Hero is on Mike's resume. He was awarded in 2016 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Texas Hero for Children Award. So there. But Mike's not the only hero in the story. The phrase that she had was, Mom and Brittany didn't take care of me

like a little girl is supposed to be taken care of. Knowing that and then replacing it with, this is how you're supposed to be taken care of. That's next time on Nobody Should Believe Me. 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.