The mother of all cons...

[Bemorebeth]

Apologies if there is another thread on this. Couldn't see one.

Thoughts?

Also agree it was odd there was no mention whatsoever about the dad apart from the super weird story about Jean and the 19 year old neighbour.

What confused me (unless I missed something)was how she was in hospital so often. She clearly was so what was going on there? What was she in for and how?

Watched this after listening to the excellent podcast by the same guys about it a couple of years ago (is a bit more in depth if anyone's interested) its called Believe in Magic

Especially with that plug thing in her head! Did she believe she was ill like her mum said? Could the morphine cause symptoms like a brain tumour? Did Megan ever hear a Doctor tell her she had a tumour? It is all so bizarre. Then the silly Cinderella cartoons throughout the whole thing just made it all even more bizarre!

I think some diagnosis can only come from symptoms reported so if they kept going back and reporting serious symptoms they would have to investigate.
I also think if you went looking hard enough you’d probably find all sorts of minor defects in your body and so this along with the reported symptoms might lead to a working diagnosis.

Say for Meg they found some fluid and maybe lots of people live with that and are asymptomatic but because they found it of the back of symptoms they say oh that’s probably causing it.
How the hell they got morphine legitimately prescribed is anyone’s guess.

You do really seriously have to look at the strong motive Jean had to hasten or cause Meg’s death, she couldn’t keep her hidden away forever pretending she was so close to death (by brain tumour and sepsis) for so long.

Ooh thank you - will look up that podcast.

The podcast is also very good. I think this case has all the hallmarks of factitious disorder imposed on another ( previously munchausens by proxy). Very tragic case indeed.

also thought that they may have wanted to fly on the private jet as it would make it easier to smuggle in all of that medication including opiates which would have been heavily questioned if going via standard means. So they had to fabricate that story about cabin pressure to justify the private jet ruse?

That’s true, just another insane detail to add to the list.

Due to a previous job I know of many flights that have taken place that low because of the condition of the patient.

The passengers on private jet flights still go through customs and immigration.

Aside from the bizarreness, unanswered questions and excellent sleuthing, which all made for a gripping story, I was left rather concerned for Will. He still seemed in denial about it all, and rather damaged. Either he is embarrassed at being duped, or traumatised by it all, or both. I hope he has had help.

Yes Will didn’t feel as though he could admit to being duped did he? How awful.

This is such a lovely post. I am so sorry for your loss but how right you are.

I thought he was terrified possibly because he did know more than he’s letting on and is scared of being implicated.
It appeared he was closest to her other than Jean in her final years.
He was in too deep.

That was insane! I had heard the Jamie Bartlett podcast a few years ago (Believe in Magic) but I think I had missed the complete fucked up nature of Jean. How awful for Meg and all the families who were duped - all of whom had heartbreaking stories of children so ill and dying 😕

I still couldn’t work out how Jean was getting hold of so much morphine. The hoops I have to go through to get my HRT on repeat prescription and yet she was able to ring up Harrods claiming to be a medical secretary? Surely as a pharmacist you can’t just dispense Class A controlled drugs on the verbal request of a “secretary”?? I can imagine this happening in the USA but things are so locked down in the UK due to our health care system….

I googled it too, in fact I only needed to type “does ha…” and google completed the question! So many people must have googled that.

Of course! That really makes sense. He was being very careful, calculated and economic with his replies. I do think he was manipulated by Jean though. Poor chap.

I’ve come across 2 cases of factitious illness imposed on children by mothers in my professional career and the deception involved can be amazing
I was gripped by this documentary but agree so many more questions and why has Mum been allowed to walk free

I definitely just got vibes of him being cautious that he'd assisted by being a friend. He seemed genuine to me.

I listened to the podcast last night. Very good and more info that wasn’t included in the documentary.

I thought Will came across as quite horrible, saying that if it hadnt been for johanna exposing the lie that meg would still be alive. He said she had blood on her hands.

Jean needs to be locked up.

I’m confused by the flight and Megan being so seriously ill on the plane and then suddenly ‘perking up a lot’ as they landed - and then not even going to hospital to be checked… The mum wasn’t on the flight.

I’ve listened to the podcast (thank you again to the pp who recommended it) there was a lot more detail and also slightly reassuring that drs had been picking up on the fact that something wasn’t right and tried to establish exactly what was going on with various mash meetings. Also, Megan had a breast reduction at 17 which is very unusual!

I think I guessed pretty early on - tbh even before I started watching it I had it in mind - that this was maybe some kind of what used to be called MBP. The whole thing just had the ring of Gypsy Rose to me, all the way through. Obviously with just a different tragic ending. What I was left wondering was the medications she’d been on for years, and at levels she was taking them, were they what ultimately caused her death? I - unfortunately - also need a lot of very strong medication for health issues, including opiates like morphine, and sometimes I have to take a lot, at other times not so much, and I worry about how much I have to take sometimes, likely knock anyone else out due to my tolerance levels, but that’s just from one gp who knows me and my history well and is obviously regulated in how much/often I can have. But to have the quantity that she did - and it was obviously the mother who was obtaining the meds for her daughter, even once she was an adult - just reminded me so much of the kind of doctor shopping that can happen in the US (and in the uk if you have the money it seems!). She basically got her daughter to the point that she was heavily addicted to massive amounts of opiates that there’s no way she’d have managed to just stop, even if she could, and I don’t believe the mother would ever admit that she was even taking that amount to anyone so that she could get “clean” safely, as it would be admitting that it wasn’t true and the she didn’t need it. All of that is abuse, and I can’t believe that those drugs didn’t cause the ultimate health issues that killed her. I don’t understand how the mother hasn’t been looked at after what happened? Plus whatever doctors she was getting this stuff from. I think if she had even realised by that point that what her mother was doing to her, she just would not have been ab,e to get off that stuff herself. Not safely, and at those levels it would likely kill her or cause awful stuff like seizures etc if she were to just stop. I dont think by that point that she was even aware of what was going on around her. It’s incredibly sad, even if she was aware at some point that some of this stuff wasn’t true, she was probably hooked on those meds before she even became an adult, and so completely reliant on her mother - her enabler. How she’s not been charged with something (unless I missed that?) is astonishing and absolutely devastating.