With the 2019 Emmy Awards approaching (scheduled for September 22nd), this year’s nominees indicate—perhaps above all else—that the popularity of true crime continues to grow. This is especially reflected in the limited series category, where not one but two multi-award nominees deal with criminal child abuse cases that involve the same rare mental illness: Munchausen by proxy. Over the past year, captivated audiences watched this real-life disorder—marked by parents (usually mothers) making their children sick for attention, sympathy, and financial gain—drive the story in both Sharp Objects, based on the novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, and The Act, based on the true story of Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Patricia Arquette is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role as Dee Dee and Joey King for Outstanding Lead Actress for her role as Gypsy Rose, while Sharp Objects is nominated in eight categories, including Outstanding Limited Series.
But while these scripted projects may have dramatized Munchausen by proxy for the screen, the realities of these cases can often be even darker than portrayed in fictionalized accounts. And while audiences may be drawn to salacious stories of manipulation and motherhood-gone-wrong, their popularity is undercut both by a tendency to judge mothers more harshly than fathers as well as a lack of understanding of the mental illness behind this unfathomable form of child abuse.
“Munchausen syndrome” was first introduced in 1951 by British doctor Richard Asher, after observing patients who invented or exaggerated medical illnesses and symptoms, going as far as to have doctors perform unnecessary procedures and engage in self-harm to garner attention and sympathy. Yet it wasn’t until more than twenty years later that “Munchausen by proxy”—the version of this disorder that involves the afflicted individual making someone else, usually a child, sick—was discussed, in a 1976 paper by John Money and June Faith Werlwas. Their initial research was expanded upon by British pediatrician Roy Meadow, who in 1977 described one case of a mother who poisoned her toddler with salt, and another who added her own blood to her baby’s urine sample.
Today, more than 2,000 cases of Munchausen by proxy, now listed in the DSM under the name “factitious disorder imposed on another,” have been studied. And while the story that inspired The Act—that of a mother murdered by the daughter she’d made sick—may be the most famous, the scope of this disorder goes far beyond Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Here are other Munchausen by proxy cases that deserve just as much notoriety:
Kathy Bush
Long before Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard would become frequent beneficiaries of fundraisers, campaigns, and media appearances, there was another, similar mother-daughter duo revealed to have been the center of a Munchausen by proxy case. In the mid-1990s, Kathy Bush and her daughter Jennifer became public figures after the South Florida mother wrote to the Clintons to ask for help with crippling medical bills for her daughter, Jennifer. Soon, Jennifer—who suffered from a variety of evolving conditions—became the poster child for health care reform; the mother and daughter were soon being photographed with everyone from the Florida Marlin to First Lady Hillary Clinton. Thousands were donated to help pay for Jennifer’s medical expenses, as Kathy’s original letter had read, “Do you know what it’s like having to choose between purchasing groceries… or medications?”
But after an anonymous tip, Kathy’s ruse began to unravel—in fact, child-welfare workers had been suspicious of her since 1991, and were horrified to find that many of the doctors and nurses who’d worked with Jennifer suspected her mother had been infecting her lines, poisoning her, and even forging the letters to politicians she said were written by her daughter. By the time nine-year-old Jennifer was removed from her mother’s care on April 15, 1995, she had been hospitalized more than 200 times and undergone at least 40 operations; her gallbladder, appendix, and part of her intestine had been removed, and tubes had been placed in her chest, stomach, and intestines. Soon after being placed in foster care, Jennifer’s condition dramatically improved and she was only hospitalized once over the next nine months. In their investigation against Kathy, police found that the money donated to Jennifer had helped fund resort vacations, a new Mustang, and a motorcycle. In 1999, Kathy was found guilty of aggravated child abuse and fraud and spent three years in state prison.
Though Jennifer’s medical issues disappeared after being removed from her home, she now claims that her mother never abused her; Jennifer’s father and brother have always maintained Kathy’s innocence. Jennifer had made her career as a social worker, a path she pursued because of the 10 years she spent in foster care.
Lacey Spears
The lies from Lacey Spears began even before the birth of her son Garnett on December 3, 2008. A single mother, Lacey claimed that Garnett’s father was a mystery man named Blake, a police officer who’d been killed shortly before her son’s birth — despite family and friends having no prior knowledge of the man, or the relationship. Though Garnett was born healthy, his medical issues started soon after his birth; at just two-and-a-half months old, Garnett was life-flighted to the hospital, where he was found to be suffering from severe dehydration and shock resulting from elevated sodium levels. According to Lacey’s blog, Garnett was hospitalized 23 times in his first year. Despite doctors not knowing the source of his medical issues, they placed a feeding tube at nine months old to ensure he could receive essential nutrients.
By the early 2010s, Lacey Spears was often posting on social media, including on her blog called Garnett’s Journey, about her young son’s complex medical issues as well as the death of “Daddy Blake,” who she called her “soulmate.” She shared as they moved from Decatur, AL to Clearwater, FL, and eventually to Chestnut Ridge, NY, where Lacey and Garnett moved into a community for elderly and disabled persons called The Fellowship. Meanwhile, both friends and doctors were starting to become suspicious of Lacey, later describing Garnett as a happy, active boy who appeared healthy and able to eat on his own. At the same time, Lacey told people both online and in-person that Garnett suffered from Crohn’s Disease, Celiac’s Disease, seizures, ear abnormalities, and fevers, among other issues.
On January 23, 2014, Garnett was just five years old when he died. His cause of death was found to be swelling of the brain, caused by high levels of sodium. Doctors believed that Lacey poisoned her son by putting table salt into his feeding tube—something that, in hindsight, she’d likely been doing since Garnett’s infancy. Lacey was subsequently charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter and, on March 2, 2015, was found guilty. The judge sentenced Lacey to 20 years, instead of the maximum 25 to life, because he found her to be suffering from Munchausen by proxy.
Rachel Kinsella
In 2014, Rachel Kinsella’s nine-year-old son Patrick from Meadville, MO, northeast of Kansas City, suffered a seizure at school before being flown to St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The boy, who’d been born prematurely in 2005 and was subsequently diagnosed with epilepsy, hydrocephalus and, later, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, went on to spend six of the next 10 months in the hospital. During this time, Patrick suffered seizures and hallucinations as well as problems walking and breathing. Despite more than a dozen treatments, tests, and procedures, doctors were unable to diagnose his medical issues.
But after a hospital visit in early 2015, police removed Patrick from his mother’s custody and subsequently charged Rachel with first-degree assault and child endangerment. They’d discovered Rachel been stockpiling medications and poisoning her son. Rachel had been simultaneously seeking treatment at hospitals in St. Louis and Kansas City, and filled prescriptions at multiple pharmacies in both areas. She’d failed to inform doctors in either city that Patrick was receiving additional care.
Rachel was convicted in May 2017, and sentenced to 25 years in prison, despite insisting she believed the doctors were communicating and that she had only occasionally—and accidentally—mixed up her son’s medications. Since Patrick was removed from his mother’s care in 2015, he lives with his paternal grandparents and is healthy.
Hope Ybarra
Unlike Munchausen by proxy moms like Dee Dee Blanchard, Kathy Bush, or Lacey Spears, this Forth Worth, TX mother’s falsified afflictions weren’t just restricted to her children. In fact, Hope Ybarra claimed she was on her third relapse of cancer—that the end was imminent and she’d already picked out a casket and burial plot for herself — on the blog where she discussed her own illness and wrote letters to her three children, the youngest of which she said was also suffering from a terminal disease.
When Hope had her second child in 1999, she’d told many family and friends—including her own husband—that the child had cerebral palsy, and put the girl in braces. However, this condition seemed to fade away and disappeared completely around the time her third child was born in 2004. Born prematurely, the birth of this daughter is believed to have served as a catalyst for the more extensive abuse to come. Hope’s daughter’s life was wrought with medical issues from her birth, and the girl was eventually diagnosed with terminal cystic fibrosis; she was even featured on a poster for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Despite being middle-class, Hope claimed her family was struggling to pay the young girl’s medical bills and held a number of fundraisers, the last of which raised almost $100,000.
This daughter suffered four years of surgeries, procedures, tests, and therapies for cystic fibrosis—all which proved to be based on a lie after Hope was arrested in October 2009 on the charge of serious bodily injury to a child. Hope eventually admitted to a number of abuses against her daughter, including altering sweat tests to ensure the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, stealing pathogens from her workplace to make her daughter sick, and even draining blood from her daughter, which doctors believe triggered a chain reaction of events that caused the girl to go into anaphylactic shock. It was also discovered that Hope had faked her own cancer, lied about having a PHD, and even pretended to be pregnant with twins at one point, faking a miscarriage and holding a “mini-funeral” for the babies. Two coworkers also believe they were infected with the pathogens Hope had stolen from the lab.
Hope pled guilty on October 18, 2010 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for her actions. Though she admits to being sick and hurting her daughter, Hope has downplayed some of the abuses and claimed that she was just trying to get the girl the help she thought she needed. Yet Hope’s illness continues to rear its head even from prison; these days, she claims to suffer from memory loss from diabetic comas as well as hearing impairment, caused by the failure of a cochlear implant surgically inserted in 2002 after Hope told doctors she experienced hearing loss after radiation for her brain cancer.
