Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mumma mea podcast if you love
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Stories. M plus subscribers get early access to new
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Speaker 1: follow the link in the episode description.
Speaker 2: Hey, Extraordinary Stories listeners, I'm Jemma, the host of True
Speaker 2: Crime Conversations. I'm excited to bring you an episode from
Speaker 2: our podcast that I think you'll really enjoy. In this one,
Speaker 2: I interview Chanelle mccauliffe, the former best friend of convicted
Speaker 2: scammer Belle Gibson, who lied about having cancer and claimed
Speaker 2: she cured it with natural remedies. You might be familiar
Speaker 2: with Belle's story or have heard the Extraordinary Stories episodes
Speaker 2: about it. Chanelle is the whistleblower who exposed Belle to
Speaker 2: the media, particularly to the journalists at the age. You
Speaker 2: may have also seen the series Apple Side of Vinegar,
Speaker 2: which is based on the book those journalists wrote. Chanelle
Speaker 2: shares whether she thinks the series accurately depicts what happened
Speaker 2: after convincing herself to watch it, and she takes us
Speaker 2: back to when Belle was at the peak of her
Speaker 2: influence of fame and she started to realize that it
Speaker 2: was all a lie.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy this episode, we have a whole back
Speaker 2: catalog of episodes waiting for you in the True Crime
Speaker 2: Conversations feed. And next week we're dropping an interview with
Speaker 2: the anonymous host of the Case File podcast. You can
Speaker 2: find a link to our feed in the show notes.
Speaker 2: It's early twenty fifteen and single mum and entrepreneur Bell
Speaker 2: Gibson is living a life of luxury and success.
Speaker 3: She has a.
Speaker 2: Widely popular recipe app called The Whole Pantry, which features nourishing,
Speaker 2: plant based recipes, and she's preparing to release a book
Speaker 2: of the same name. Last year, she was named Elle
Speaker 2: Magazine's Most Aspiring Woman You've Met this Year and was
Speaker 2: Cosmo Magazine's Fun Fearless Female Recipient. Her app claimed the
Speaker 2: Apple title of Best Food and Drink App of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and a few short years later, she's already enjoying over
Speaker 2: one million in sales. Her empire is built on an
Speaker 2: inspiring story of triumph, a harrowing and heartwarming story of survival.
Speaker 3: She first started posting about.
Speaker 2: Her malignant brain cancer on Instagram in twenty thirteen. Diagnosed
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine at the age of twenty,
Speaker 2: she was given just four months to live. Instead of
Speaker 2: doing the usual chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Belle opted for
Speaker 2: alternative remedies, and, as she shared with her growing fanbase,
Speaker 2: they worked, they healed her. She spoke of a healthy
Speaker 2: diet free of gluten and sugar, of salt, vitamin and
Speaker 2: oxygen treatments, of the power of colonics, and the benefits
Speaker 2: of aravatic medicine, an ancient Indian holistic healing system. She
Speaker 2: encouraged her hundreds of thousands of followers to empower themselves
Speaker 2: and reclaim their lives through wellness, to heal themselves like
Speaker 2: she did naturally. But it was all a lie, all
Speaker 2: of it, and it was one of her close friends
Speaker 2: who first cottoned on to the truth.
Speaker 3: I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime.
Speaker 2: Conversations a Muma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious
Speaker 2: crimes by speaking to the people who know the most
Speaker 2: about them. A brand new series has just dropped on Netflix.
Speaker 4: I was diagnosed with a stage four brain shiver that
Speaker 4: was four years ago.
Speaker 3: Human beings are capable of anything.
Speaker 5: I was on a quest to heal myself naturally. I've
Speaker 5: flirste and honest.
Speaker 2: Apple Side of Vinegar follows the story of Belle Gibson's success, lies,
Speaker 2: and demise and right now it's the TV show everyone's
Speaker 2: talking about. Her unraveling started because of a suspicious friend.
Speaker 3: For Chanelle McAuliffe.
Speaker 2: There were certain parts of her story that weren't adding up,
Speaker 2: certain incidents and symptoms that raised her eyebrow. Eventually it
Speaker 2: would be Chanell that would first confront the conwoman. She
Speaker 2: was the whistleblower that brought down her web of lies
Speaker 2: and uncovered the damage she was doing to sick, vulnerable people.
Speaker 2: In Apple Side of Vinegar, the character of Chanell looks
Speaker 2: a little bit different to real life. In real life,
Speaker 2: Chanelle had no relationship with Jess Ainsco, another wellness influencer
Speaker 2: who was actually living with cancer whose story is best
Speaker 2: represented by the character of Miller in the show. She
Speaker 2: wasn't working for Bell, just a friend of Belle's, but
Speaker 2: she is the one who confronted her in her house
Speaker 2: and went to the meeting. As Belle's story is once
Speaker 2: again thrust before an international audience, we got the chance
Speaker 2: to speak to Chanelle. Chanelle Bell Gibson's name is once
Speaker 2: again everywhere. It's making headlines because there's a Netflix series
Speaker 2: out about her life and her crimes.
Speaker 3: Have you watched it?
Speaker 6: I have seen the show. I did have to force
Speaker 6: myself to watch it. I'm overall I'm not entirely a
Speaker 6: huge fan of the show for a number of reasons
Speaker 6: that we.
Speaker 5: Can chat about if you like. But yes, it seems
Speaker 5: to be a very big story in the media right now.
Speaker 2: So originally you weren't going to watch it, were you?
Speaker 5: No? I wasn't.
Speaker 6: I'm not entirely comfortable with dramatization and sensationalization of the story.
Speaker 6: The show has distorted the truth a little bit as well,
Speaker 6: and I'm not that comfortable with the capitalization of the
Speaker 6: harm that was caused.
Speaker 5: To people with cancer.
Speaker 6: So yeah, there's obviously Netflix and a film studio and
Speaker 6: people profiting from that harm that was caused. I've sort
Speaker 6: of been thinking a lot about the ethics behind this
Speaker 6: kind of storytelling on that platform.
Speaker 5: I'm not entirely comfortable with the.
Speaker 6: Way that these two characters, bal and Miller, who Miller
Speaker 6: is based on a real life person, Jess Ainsco, who
Speaker 6: actually did have cancer and was trying to heal her
Speaker 6: cancer naturally through wellness and natural remedies.
Speaker 5: They've pitted these two women against.
Speaker 6: Each other in the show, which actually didn't occur in
Speaker 6: real life, and I think it's quite a cliche, unoriginal,
Speaker 6: stereotypical narrative to kind of pit women against each other
Speaker 6: competitively as rivals, bitchy, gossipy, which is kind of what
Speaker 6: was depicted in the show. I just think it was
Speaker 6: really unnecessary, and I hope that the core messages that
Speaker 6: are really important about this story, about the harm that
Speaker 6: was cause to people, about how we can easily be
Speaker 6: misled or consume misinformation online. I just hope that those
Speaker 6: important messages aren't lost through the glamorization of this show.
Speaker 2: What about your character in the show, because they use
Speaker 2: your name, but your character is kind of an amalgamation
Speaker 2: of you and you know other.
Speaker 3: People in Bell's life. How did you feel about the
Speaker 3: way they portrayed you.
Speaker 6: I actually was pleasantly surprised how my character was portrayed.
Speaker 6: I had no idea what they were going to do
Speaker 6: with it. I mean, obviously there's many things about my
Speaker 6: character and in the show that aren't accurate. For example,
Speaker 6: I wasn't Bell's manager or jess ains Co's manager Miller's character.
Speaker 6: I did know jess ains Co, but we weren't close friends. However,
Speaker 6: the scenes where I confront Bell, which has now dubbed
Speaker 6: the intervention, where I am urging her to come forward
Speaker 6: and tell the truth, there was a lot of main
Speaker 6: parts of that scene that were really accurate, and I
Speaker 6: found that scene to be really compelling, and I think
Speaker 6: it's really important for me for the world to see
Speaker 6: that I did urge Bell to come forward and tell
Speaker 6: the truth. I never set out to expose Belle or
Speaker 6: to have Bell canceled. I actually went to her as
Speaker 6: her friend and said, if you come forward and tell
Speaker 6: the truth, I will help you. I'll support you with
Speaker 6: the fallout, and she refused to, and had she done that,
Speaker 6: things could have played out so much differently for her.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to the start of your
Speaker 2: story because it is quite different to the Netflix show.
Speaker 3: Tell us about how you met Belle.
Speaker 6: Sure So, I was actually doing a writing internship for
Speaker 6: a public location in Melbourne at the time, and they
Speaker 6: were more just interested in doing a puff piece on her.
Speaker 6: It was we were kind of interested in what she
Speaker 6: was doing with food and technology and being innovative and
Speaker 6: this kind.
Speaker 5: Of startup space.
Speaker 6: So I reached out to her and she invited me
Speaker 6: to the launch event of the Whole Pantry app, and
Speaker 6: that night it was quite difficult for us to connect
Speaker 6: and chat. She was hosting the event. There's so many
Speaker 6: people there and so she was talking to a lot
Speaker 6: of people.
Speaker 5: We just briefly kind of.
Speaker 6: Introduced ourselves, and then after that event we met up
Speaker 6: for I think coffee, and it was really difficult to
Speaker 6: kind of get any information out of her, and so
Speaker 6: I just thought I'll just build a bit of upper
Speaker 6: hole with her. It turned out we had some mutual friends.
Speaker 6: So then we went for coffee again and then lunch
Speaker 6: and dinner, and we were at similar events together and
Speaker 6: really just a friendship formed from there.
Speaker 2: What did being friends with Belle look like? Was it
Speaker 2: constant messaging? Was it hanging out all the time? Was
Speaker 2: she a good friend?
Speaker 6: Belle was really warm and charismatic. She actually had a
Speaker 6: way of making you feel really special, and looking back,
Speaker 6: I think this was part of kind of it was
Speaker 6: quite calculated on her behalf because she had to deflect
Speaker 6: from herself so much, and if you've seen interviews with her,
Speaker 6: especially this sixty minutes interviewer in the show, it's very
Speaker 6: difficult to get a straight answer from her. So she
Speaker 6: had a way of really making the attention about the
Speaker 6: other person. So you always felt really kind of special
Speaker 6: and important in her presence. Our friendship looked like going
Speaker 6: out for lunch. It sentered a lot around food. And
Speaker 6: what was quite interesting is my partner at the time
Speaker 6: actually had a traumatic brain injury, and Bao really connected
Speaker 6: with him and developed a really close friendship with him
Speaker 6: because she claimed that because of her brain tumor. That
Speaker 6: also meant she had a traumatic brain injury as a
Speaker 6: result of the brain tumor.
Speaker 5: What we've now learnt.
Speaker 6: About Beao is that she gravitated to people, especially you know,
Speaker 6: people with cancer, to leverage them to her own advantage,
Speaker 6: to learn about their symptoms and take them on as
Speaker 6: her own. So she was actually doing that with my
Speaker 6: partner at the time. However, you know, I wasn't aware
Speaker 6: of that, and so yes, they had a close friendship
Speaker 6: and and out friendship circle kind of just grew as
Speaker 6: well from there.
Speaker 2: What did you think of her success, about the whole
Speaker 2: pantry and everything she was doing in that space.
Speaker 6: I was quite impressed by the business she was building.
Speaker 6: She she was quite innovative for that era. It was
Speaker 6: really early days of social media, especially Instagram, building an audience,
Speaker 6: connecting with an audience, getting on the Apple Watch.
Speaker 5: So that that was compelling to me at the time.
Speaker 6: This, you know, regardless if she was sick or not,
Speaker 6: this young woman, this young single mother, pioneering you know, this,
Speaker 6: this technology and this business.
Speaker 5: So that that was that side of it was compelling
Speaker 5: at the time.
Speaker 2: When did you start getting a weird feeling? What were
Speaker 2: the first things that kind of struck you as odd?
Speaker 6: So behind the scenes, there would be things like we
Speaker 6: would go out drinking and one night, you know, she
Speaker 6: ordered shots and we were doing shots, and I said, oh,
Speaker 6: should you really be drinking? Like, you know, she was
Speaker 6: obviously doing this very strict wellness now natural protocol to
Speaker 6: heal herself from cancer, so drinking alcohol excessively was kind
Speaker 6: of really in conflict of that. So I said, you know,
Speaker 6: should you be drinking? And she said, well, I'm going
Speaker 6: to die anyway, so why not have some fun? And
Speaker 6: then there was a time where she also went to
Speaker 6: the solarium, which I thought was a bit odd given
Speaker 6: the risk of skin cancer with using selarium. And then
Speaker 6: the biggest thing for me, well, apart from that, she
Speaker 6: never appeared sick ever, never saw her sick.
Speaker 5: She was the epitome of wellness right, this.
Speaker 6: Beautiful, long, lush hair, She was glowing, she was active, happy,
Speaker 6: and then at her son's fourth birthday party, she all
Speaker 6: of a sudden collapsed to the floor and was having
Speaker 6: what appeared to be quite a violent seizure. She was
Speaker 6: convulsed on the ground, saliva was coming out of her mouth,
Speaker 6: and this went on for a really long time, about
Speaker 6: forty minutes, and about halfway through, I said, I'm calling
Speaker 6: an ambulance, and all of a sudden she kind of
Speaker 6: comes out of the seizure and says, no, I don't
Speaker 6: want Western medicine involved, and so I said, okay, and
Speaker 6: then she kind of went back into the seizure and
Speaker 6: then it kind of tape it off. And there was
Speaker 6: just something about it that just seems really performative to me.
Speaker 5: And yeah, it was.
Speaker 6: That day I left that party that I just knew
Speaker 6: in my gut that something was really wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, if I'm not mistaken, it was soon after that
Speaker 2: birthday that she announced that her cancer was spreading. But
Speaker 2: how did you find out about that?
Speaker 6: Yes, so she announced on Instagram that she now had
Speaker 6: stage four cancer. It had spread from her brain to spleen,
Speaker 6: her uterus, in her blood. It was basically a death sentence,
Speaker 6: and myself and most of her close friends we all
Speaker 6: found out by seeing it on her Instagram, which you
Speaker 6: know it was. We thought was quite odd that that's
Speaker 6: such serious diagnosis, and you know, we were all so
Speaker 6: you know, caring for her and concerned about her. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was really strange that it wasn't something that she
Speaker 6: shared with anyone really directly. It was just it was
Speaker 6: just kind of a press announcement.
Speaker 2: Once you had this hunch, it's a big leap to
Speaker 2: go from like having a feeling that something's not quite
Speaker 2: right to actually like talking to someone about it. Did
Speaker 2: you kind of mention it to friends and family, try
Speaker 2: and get some other people involved in how you're feeling.
Speaker 6: Yes, I did go to one of our mutual friends
Speaker 6: and I shared my concerns with him, what I thought,
Speaker 6: regret flags and why things didn't add up for me
Speaker 6: and he started to see that, yeah, okay.
Speaker 5: Some of this doesn't make sense. So I asked him
Speaker 5: if he would come with me to basically.
Speaker 6: Hold an intervention and kind of confront Bell and try
Speaker 6: and get some answers from her. So he agreed to
Speaker 6: do that, and we went over to Bell's house unannounced,
Speaker 6: and we sat her down and I just straight.
Speaker 5: Out asked her if she had cancer.
Speaker 3: And what did she say.
Speaker 6: She was acting kind of very defensive. She was saying
Speaker 6: that I was interrogating her. She started to slump down
Speaker 6: in her chair and say that she felt sick and
Speaker 6: was acting kind of faint. That point I kind of
Speaker 6: knew was based on having to see this, seeing the seizure.
Speaker 6: I kind of knew that maybe this was another tactic
Speaker 6: of hers to all of a sudden, you know, act.
Speaker 5: Sick or as a way to deflect. She said that
Speaker 5: of course she was sick.
Speaker 6: I basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
Speaker 6: to prove that she had cancer, any scanned, any hospital
Speaker 6: doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
Speaker 6: those documents because it's negative energy in her house. And
Speaker 6: so I asked her about this stage four diagnosis that
Speaker 6: she had just announced, and I said, what hospital did
Speaker 6: you go to to get that diagnosis? You know, I'm
Speaker 6: sure that it was a major hospital in Melbourne. And
Speaker 6: she said, she didn't go to a hospital. She went
Speaker 6: to some random doctor's house in the suburbs. He picked
Speaker 6: her up and drove her there and gave her the diagnosis.
Speaker 6: And I asked her who was that? What's his name?
Speaker 6: And she said doctor Phil. And at that point I
Speaker 6: actually thought it was so comical that the story was
Speaker 6: her story was that ridiculous and that so unplausible. So yeah,
Speaker 6: doctor Phil just had me stumped. And so I said,
Speaker 6: if you if you've not had a proper diagnosis at
Speaker 6: a hospital in some random house by this doctor, you know,
Speaker 6: does that mean you're your diagnosis is questionable? And she said, well, possibly,
Speaker 6: because doctor Phil's gone missing. He's gone to ground, and
Speaker 6: none of his colleagues know where he is. And so
Speaker 6: obviously that all just sounded even more suspicious and unbelievable.
Speaker 6: So at this point she called Julie Gibbs, their editor
Speaker 6: publisher at Penguin Books, and she's set asking Julie or
Speaker 6: accusing Julie of speaking to her friends. And this one
Speaker 6: of her friends is jealous and accusing her of not
Speaker 6: being sick, and did Julie put me.
Speaker 5: Up to this?
Speaker 6: Basically? And from what I could tell, Julia must have.
Speaker 6: I think Julie seemed really confused on the end the
Speaker 6: other end of the phone. Well, then called someone else.
Speaker 6: She phoned her acupuncturist and asked him to come over,
Speaker 6: and when he arrived, she said to him, tell them
Speaker 6: that I have cancer. And this was kind of her
Speaker 6: way to basically prove to us that she had cancer.
Speaker 6: And he said, well, of course you have cancer. And
Speaker 6: I said, well, how do you know that she has cancer?
Speaker 6: And he said, because she told me so.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like it was a short conversation. It
Speaker 2: was over a few hours or so if you had
Speaker 2: all these different phone calls and visitors.
Speaker 6: And yes, it was quite a few hours. I mean
Speaker 6: it seemed seemed forever at the time. I also went
Speaker 6: upstairs at her house to try and find Clive, her partner,
Speaker 6: who was somewhat involved in her business and the whole pantry.
Speaker 6: And Clive was someone who was kind of really difficult
Speaker 6: to figure out. He was kind of always in the background.
Speaker 6: He was quite withdrawn, very quiet. So I went upstairs
Speaker 6: and I found Clive and I said, Clive, you need
Speaker 6: to tell me the truth. And he said she would
Speaker 6: destroy anyone that tries to expose her and that he.
Speaker 5: Needs to protect her little boy.
Speaker 6: So it was kind of a very cryptic, confronting answer
Speaker 6: I got from him. He then came downstairs with me
Speaker 6: and he sat down with us and we were trying
Speaker 6: to make sense of it all, and it kind of
Speaker 6: the penny didn't drop for me until a little bit
Speaker 6: later on.
Speaker 5: But he made a comment that night.
Speaker 6: Because I did did say to Bell which you can
Speaker 6: see in the show. I said to her, this is
Speaker 6: your inner circle knocking at your door.
Speaker 5: This is where it starts.
Speaker 6: And this is where it can end, and urging her
Speaker 6: to come forward on her own terms and tell the truth.
Speaker 6: And at that point when I was saying that, Clive
Speaker 6: said to beow Belle, you need to get the books
Speaker 6: in order. And I think what that sort of meant
Speaker 6: later on was in regards to the charity fraud that
Speaker 6: Belle was conducting. So the books for her business, you know,
Speaker 6: weren't in order. She needed to kind of start covering
Speaker 6: her tracks or start paying the charities. So he was
Speaker 6: kind of hinting to Bowl and basically just just putting
Speaker 6: it out there that she needed to.
Speaker 5: Tie up loose ends.
Speaker 6: So I left that night just being absolutely gob smacked
Speaker 6: that it just had confirmed everything for me that it
Speaker 6: was all a lie. There was at times for me
Speaker 6: where there was one percent of me that felt, what
Speaker 6: if I've got this all wrong? What if I'm accusing
Speaker 6: this poor young woman of not having cancel when she
Speaker 6: really does. But that night it just solidified everything for me.
Speaker 6: And so I left there urging Bell again to come
Speaker 6: forward and tell the truth.
Speaker 5: And then a.
Speaker 6: Few days later I called her and I asked her
Speaker 6: if she was ready to come forward, and again I
Speaker 6: was met with defensiveness, some aggression.
Speaker 5: And then it was maybe a week or a.
Speaker 6: Couple of weeks after that it was her book launch,
Speaker 6: and we actually weren't really obviously kind of friends anymore
Speaker 6: at this point on talking terms. There was a lot
Speaker 6: of ten she knew.
Speaker 5: That I knew.
Speaker 6: But I still rocked up to her book launch and
Speaker 6: i'd just seen the show. I stood there in the
Speaker 6: crowd and and and just really stared at her and
Speaker 6: just made a point of you know that there's someone
Speaker 6: here that knows and is going to hold you accountable
Speaker 6: and the book launch. Yeah, she just acted like nothing
Speaker 6: was going on.
Speaker 3: Were you angry through all of this?
Speaker 2: Once you'd had that kind of confrontation as they call it,
Speaker 2: and you were kind.
Speaker 3: Of waiting for her to admit what were the emotions?
Speaker 3: Was it anger?
Speaker 6: I was very angry. My mother has has battled cancer twice.
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean we all, we all have a
Speaker 6: connection to someone who's had cancer, or we know of
Speaker 6: someone that have someone close to them who's who's been
Speaker 6: touched by cancer.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it made.
Speaker 6: Me very angry at What was so alarming is that
Speaker 6: the message she was putting out was so dangerous because
Speaker 6: really vulnerable people, people with cancer, were making really serious
Speaker 6: decisions about their life and about their health.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it made my blood.
Speaker 6: Boil, especially because now I knew that I made her
Speaker 6: aware of.
Speaker 5: How serious the situation was.
Speaker 6: There's been speculation and kind of this narrative about it
Speaker 6: was just this young woman who was very naive, this
Speaker 6: lie got away with her and it snowballed. However, that's
Speaker 6: not what I experienced when I went to her and
Speaker 6: you know, made her really aware of how serious this
Speaker 6: wasn't and urged her to come forward.
Speaker 5: She just doubled down.
Speaker 2: I think the part of it that gets to me
Speaker 2: as well is, and I'd love your insight on this
Speaker 2: is how she would gravitate to towards people that were
Speaker 2: sick and then kind of be a bit of a
Speaker 2: chameleon and emulate the things that she was seeing. That's
Speaker 2: a very calculated thing to do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's what's also very tragic about this
Speaker 6: story is there were very sick, vulnerable people that she
Speaker 6: got very close to. One was a little boy who
Speaker 6: had who did have brain cancer, and she was fund
Speaker 6: raising on behalf of him and his family to pay
Speaker 6: for him to potentially have life saving surgery, and that
Speaker 6: money was never handed over, and unfortunately that little boys
Speaker 6: passed away.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying he passed away.
Speaker 6: Because of his association with bal but also he was
Speaker 6: at the birthday party that day that she faked the seizure,
Speaker 6: so that little boy Bell's son, they had to witness
Speaker 6: this lie sort of first hand and as well, so
Speaker 6: the impact it had on you know, really vulnerable people
Speaker 6: is actually it is so shocking.
Speaker 2: After the break, she Nolle tells us about how she
Speaker 2: approached the journalists who would help her expose Belle Gibson's
Speaker 2: lies to the world.
Speaker 3: What did you do next?
Speaker 2: Obviously you could see it that book launch. She wasn't
Speaker 2: admitting anything. Do you go to the police, do you
Speaker 2: go straight to the journalists? What are your next steps?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the first step I took was going to
Speaker 6: the police, and the police said that I didn't have
Speaker 6: any evidence, which I didn't, and it's obviously very difficult
Speaker 6: to get access to someone's medical records. So yeah, the
Speaker 6: police basically turned me away. I went to a very
Speaker 6: high profile lawyer and and he accused me of basically
Speaker 6: defamation and slander. He happened to have a very close
Speaker 6: friend who had cancer, and he was telling me that
Speaker 6: he can't even fathom the thought of someone going around accusing,
Speaker 6: you know, someone of cancer, of lying and faking. So yeah,
Speaker 6: for some reason that the lawyer, he kind of took
Speaker 6: it quite personally, and yeah, it made me feel very
Speaker 6: uncomfortable and didn't help me. I then went to Australia's
Speaker 6: top investigative journalist at the time hadn't heard of Bell before.
Speaker 6: He said he might look into it, he might not,
Speaker 6: and I never heard back from him again. This ended
Speaker 6: up being over a period of sort of kind of
Speaker 6: weeks two months, and yeah, I was.
Speaker 5: I was talking to people I knew was I was.
Speaker 6: Trying to leverage my network to see even one could
Speaker 6: put me in touch with someone credible who would believe me,
Speaker 6: who could vouch for me that I was telling the truth.
Speaker 6: And yeah, so it took quite a long time to
Speaker 6: get to that point. And during that period I started
Speaker 6: to feel very powerless and realized how challenging and difficult
Speaker 6: it is to essentially kind of be a whistleblower and
Speaker 6: come forward with the truth and have people look into
Speaker 6: it and fact check it and stop people from causing harm.
Speaker 6: So that was really disheartening. So then eventually my former
Speaker 6: boss spoke to the editor or someone high up at
Speaker 6: the AGE and they got one of their journalists to
Speaker 6: get in touch with me, and that journalist was Bo Donnelly,
Speaker 6: who with Nick Tuscano, they have published the book The
Speaker 6: Woman Who Fooled the World, which the Netflix show has
Speaker 6: been adapted from.
Speaker 5: So, as Bo.
Speaker 6: Tells the story, he just thought that this was just
Speaker 6: some random tip off that he had to check off
Speaker 6: his list, that maybe it was a jealous friend with
Speaker 6: an ax to grind or you know, they get tip
Speaker 6: offs come into the newsroom all the time, and most
Speaker 6: of them don't really go anywhere. So he actually just
Speaker 6: called me on his lunch break.
Speaker 5: He was at a cafe. He was very noisy. I
Speaker 5: just started to.
Speaker 6: Tell him what I knew, what I experienced, and what
Speaker 6: my motivation was for coming forward, which was just Forblle
Speaker 6: to stop causing harm to vulnerable people and spreading this misinformation.
Speaker 5: Sorry.
Speaker 6: Bo very quickly from that call felt that I was
Speaker 6: very credible and started to look into the case straight away.
Speaker 2: In the Netflix show, the first article that they relate
Speaker 2: is that money fraud angle, you know, the charities that
Speaker 2: weren't getting the donations that Belle promised.
Speaker 3: Is that what happened in real life?
Speaker 2: Is that the only angle they could put out to
Speaker 2: start with.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right. The Age also couldn't run.
Speaker 6: A story that they were just suspecting that this woman
Speaker 6: didn't have cancer. The lawyers that the Age shut it
Speaker 6: down very quickly because again the AGE couldn't get access
Speaker 6: to her medical records. There was no way to verify
Speaker 6: the status of her health, and so the journalists Boe
Speaker 6: and Nick, they thought, well, if she's lying about something
Speaker 6: as big as this, as big as having cancer and
Speaker 6: broadcasting that to the world.
Speaker 5: Then what else is she lying about?
Speaker 6: And I shared with them that comment that Clive had
Speaker 6: made the night that I had confronted Belle about the.
Speaker 5: State of the business book books.
Speaker 6: And so they started looking into whether she had actually
Speaker 6: made any donations to the charities that she had been
Speaker 6: fundraising on behalf of and they all said they never
Speaker 6: received a cent from her.
Speaker 2: So once that angle is out there, that's obviously a
Speaker 2: huge hit to Bell and that's the start. That's how
Speaker 2: it starts to kind of unravel more publicly. Were they
Speaker 2: then able to verify the cancer claims? How did they
Speaker 2: manage to get that part of the investigation out sure?
Speaker 6: So coincidentally, around this time that I had gone to
Speaker 6: the journalists at that age and they had reported on
Speaker 6: her charity fraud, there was actually a journalist at The Australian,
Speaker 6: Richard Gilliot, who had started to look into Bell and
Speaker 6: he'd think he'd written some stories about Jessain's co who
Speaker 6: in the Netflix show is the character Miller. His wife
Speaker 6: actually had cancer, and I think she had looked into
Speaker 6: natural remedies and she'd kind of come across jess and
Speaker 6: then as a result of that, Richard. It was actually
Speaker 6: from Richard's own personal experience with his wife that he
Speaker 6: started then sort of looking into these people and then
Speaker 6: he actually at the same time was starting to unravel
Speaker 6: at all.
Speaker 5: And then it was.
Speaker 6: Very shortly after the Age had broken the charity fraud story.
Speaker 6: I think it was within a few days that Richard
Speaker 6: Gilliot the Australian broke the story that Belle didn't have cancer.
Speaker 6: He met with her and she said the same thing
Speaker 6: to him, that her diagnosis was questionable and she herself
Speaker 6: actually didn't know for certain if she had cancer or not.
Speaker 2: Once these stories and investigations started to get published, did
Speaker 2: any of it shock you? Was there any kind of
Speaker 2: revelations that came out that you didn't realize?
Speaker 6: Nothing was really shocking to me at that point anymore.
Speaker 6: When it came to beall, I feel like I kind
Speaker 6: of seen the worst of it, especially with that seizure.
Speaker 6: It's just it's something I'll never i don't know, be
Speaker 6: able to get out of my mind. And the way
Speaker 6: the children reacted that day. So yeah, nothing nothing really
Speaker 6: surprised me or shocked me about bell anymore. There were
Speaker 6: things that came out people from her past, her childhood,
Speaker 6: things like she had gone to acting school and things
Speaker 6: like that, which I mean kind of made sense to me.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean it was it. Yeah, I mean, it didn't surprise
Speaker 6: me that it came out that she had she had
Speaker 6: been doing this for a long time. She had been
Speaker 6: in this skating forum, in this skating community where she
Speaker 6: was telling all these people that she'd had heart surgeries
Speaker 6: and she died on the operating table and had been
Speaker 6: brought back to life and had all these life threatening diseases,
Speaker 6: and as a result of that, people in that community
Speaker 6: were sending her flowers and giving her lots of attention. So,
Speaker 6: I mean, it was interesting to see kind of some
Speaker 6: of the origin of where this all began for her
Speaker 6: and why, and that this was obviously a pattern.
Speaker 3: Did you have any contact with her during that time
Speaker 3: as it was all unraveling.
Speaker 6: The day the first story broke, I did send her
Speaker 6: a text message that that's the final communication I've had
Speaker 6: with her, and I haven't heard from her since then.
Speaker 3: What did you say in the text message?
Speaker 6: I said that so Belle always had this saying that
Speaker 6: she would say and for example, she posted it on
Speaker 6: this stage four cancer diagnosis on her Instagram when she
Speaker 6: announced that, and she should always say, you know, I've
Speaker 6: now got stage four cancer, but don't worry. I've got this,
Speaker 6: or I'm fundraising all this money to help this boy,
Speaker 6: you know, get life saving surgery.
Speaker 5: I've got this, and.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I sent her a text message that day
Speaker 6: as soon as the first article broke and I said,
Speaker 6: you should check the news, but you've got this right.
Speaker 5: It was a bit of a job.
Speaker 3: A fair enough job.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I've done a lot of soul searching in
Speaker 6: the last ten years and have tried to forgive Bao,
Speaker 6: which I can't and I'm not sure I ever can.
Speaker 6: But at that point, you know, I was really relieved
Speaker 6: that she couldn't keep spreading the lies that she was
Speaker 6: and I was doing it. And I was so frustrated
Speaker 6: and really angry that it took so long for the
Speaker 6: truth to come out, and that she was, you know,
Speaker 6: so combative to come out and tell the truth herself.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that's why I sent the text message. I
Speaker 6: was kind of kind of just at my wits end
Speaker 6: with it all.
Speaker 2: Well at all, obviously really unraveled quickly once you know
Speaker 2: the charity stuff had been exposed, the cancer was fake.
Speaker 2: There's this sixty minutes interview that's really famous. She's in
Speaker 2: a pink turtle neck and she's kind of been forced to,
Speaker 2: I guess, kind of admit, but she doesn't really. She
Speaker 2: kind of does this evasive kind of around the questions,
Speaker 2: even though all the truth is already out there by then.
Speaker 4: You had three heart operations, you suffered two cardiac arrests,
Speaker 4: you died twice on the operating table, you had a stroke,
Speaker 4: and you were diagnosed with inoprople branch himmer and given
Speaker 4: four months.
Speaker 3: To live correct and I just haven't.
Speaker 4: I still have the heart condition and I was supposed
Speaker 4: to have surgery for that. You were supposed to have
Speaker 4: surgery and I didn't.
Speaker 3: How did you feel watching that interview?
Speaker 6: That interview was really difficult to watch, but it was
Speaker 6: validating in a way for the world to finally see
Speaker 6: what I was up against in terms of trying to
Speaker 6: get the truth from Baal, trying to get a straight
Speaker 6: answer from her, which obviously in that interview, Tara Brown
Speaker 6: could not get one straight answer from her. And yeah,
Speaker 6: it was kind of validating in a way, But at
Speaker 6: the same time, it was really sad to see that
Speaker 6: her community and the people she took advantage of were
Speaker 6: getting no accountability, no apology, no real genuine apology, and
Speaker 6: no closure. So that was the hardest part about watching it.
Speaker 2: Do you have any idea where this kind of compulsive
Speaker 2: lying and scamming comes from in bell Do you.
Speaker 3: Think it's malice trauma? Like, do you have a theory?
Speaker 6: I mean, obviously Belle is a very deeply troubled person,
Speaker 6: and there seems to be, you know, maybe a number
Speaker 6: of reasons for that. She looked she did have I
Speaker 6: think a difficult childhood, But you know a lot of
Speaker 6: people experience difficult childhoods trauma in their childhoods, and they
Speaker 6: don't go on to, you know, become a con artist
Speaker 6: and take advantage of society's most vulnerable people. So I
Speaker 6: do sometimes think that that's kind of maybe an easy
Speaker 6: way to explain.
Speaker 5: Maybe why she did what she did.
Speaker 6: I think it's important to look at and she had
Speaker 6: been doing this for quite a long time as well.
Speaker 5: She had her other people, other people had.
Speaker 6: Kind of caught her out on other lies, and so
Speaker 6: she had already experienced the impact that that causes on
Speaker 6: people and obviously has not really experienced much remorse. Maybe
Speaker 6: from that, I'm not going to comment on her state
Speaker 6: of mind or her mental health, but from what I
Speaker 6: witnessed and experienced with Ball, what I saw was that
Speaker 6: she was using it basically as a business strategy to
Speaker 6: make money and to be in the limelight, to be adored,
Speaker 6: to you know, to build a business, and to change
Speaker 6: her life. She was, you know, just I guess, quite
Speaker 6: an ordinary person, and when she started bringing in this money,
Speaker 6: her lifestyle changed a lot. She transitioned to more of
Speaker 6: kind of a lavish lifestyle. She started renting a multimillion
Speaker 6: dollar beach house, renting a BMW, flying first class on
Speaker 6: holidays overseas, buying designer things. So, in my opinion, that's
Speaker 6: what I witnessed and experienced, is that she saw that
Speaker 6: her lie.
Speaker 5: Was benefiting her financially, and she ran with that.
Speaker 2: You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bath.
Speaker 3: I'm speaking with.
Speaker 2: The woman who exposed Belle Gibson's lies, Chanelle mccauliffe. Up next,
Speaker 2: we hear more about the court proceedings and where Bell
Speaker 2: Gibson is now nearly ten years on how do you
Speaker 2: feel about the court proceedings that happened after everything came
Speaker 2: out because she went to court, she was fined four
Speaker 2: hundred and ten thousand dollars. There's no jail time or
Speaker 2: anything like that. Do you think that was a fitting punishment.
Speaker 6: It was good to see that there was some justice brought,
Speaker 6: but it has come out recently that it's maybe not
Speaker 6: possible for the court to enforce that penalty, and she
Speaker 6: hasn't paid any of that penalty, and actually one hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty thousand dollars of that penalty was to go
Speaker 6: to the family of the little boy that had brain
Speaker 6: cancer that she took advantage of as compensation for their suffering.
Speaker 6: So it's really it's really upsetting that potentially that family
Speaker 6: won't see that money. And you know, it's been quite
Speaker 6: a long time. There's been many years since she was
Speaker 6: fined and Belle. I know that Belle has earned some
Speaker 6: type of income over the last few years, and Belle
Speaker 6: could take it upon herself to start contributing to that fine,
Speaker 6: to start making amends, to take accountability and make things right.
Speaker 6: So that's disappointing that she's not coming to the table
Speaker 6: and doing that.
Speaker 5: Overall, the.
Speaker 6: Justice system I guess is quite broken in that sense
Speaker 6: that there hasn't really been real justice.
Speaker 2: She has managed to lay pretty low since everything happened.
Speaker 2: We do know there was a story about five years
Speaker 2: ago that came out that she was trying to integrate
Speaker 2: herself into the Ethiopian community in Melbourne and trying to
Speaker 2: raise funds for them, almost kind of going down the
Speaker 2: same kind of route of fundraising, and they found out
Speaker 2: cut her out. It all kind of ended. But what
Speaker 2: did you make of that? Of her kind of trying
Speaker 2: to reinvent herself in that way.
Speaker 5: I knew she would.
Speaker 6: Again, nothing that Beale does anymore is shocking or surprising
Speaker 6: to me. This has been a pattern she's been repeating
Speaker 6: basically her whole life, and I'm yeah, it was really
Speaker 6: sad to see, especially for that community that she was infiltrating.
Speaker 6: And I think there's also been this narrative that Bell
Speaker 6: really wants to kind of be accepted by a community,
Speaker 6: she wants to fit in. But like she could go
Speaker 6: join a book club, you know, like there are spaces,
Speaker 6: you know, she could go join a sporting team. There
Speaker 6: are spaces that you can go to to be a
Speaker 6: part of a community and feel accepted and feel like
Speaker 6: you're part of something without having to take advantage of people.
Speaker 3: Do you know much about what she's doing nowadays?
Speaker 5: I don't know what she's up to.
Speaker 6: Sometimes I hear little rumors, but I don't really pay
Speaker 6: much intention to it. But I'm sure she's looking at
Speaker 6: what her next hustle is.
Speaker 2: You were the original whistleblower in this story, and the
Speaker 2: reality is if you have tried to do what you
Speaker 2: did in any other kind of environment, corporate, government, political,
Speaker 2: you could have been prosecuted.
Speaker 3: Is that something that you thought about at the time.
Speaker 6: There wasn't any kind of scenario where I wasn't going
Speaker 6: to follow through with what I did if and this
Speaker 6: actually hasn't been the first time I've been a whistleblower.
Speaker 6: If I see something that's wrong, I can't turn a
Speaker 6: blind eye to it. It's very discouraging for a lot
Speaker 6: of I know a lot of people have struggled to
Speaker 6: come forward and tell the truth on different things because
Speaker 6: people have been reprimanded and prosecuted for speaking up and
Speaker 6: telling the truth. It is a very challenging thing to do,
Speaker 6: and it can be a scary thing to do, especially
Speaker 6: you know, when there's other interests at play, if companies
Speaker 6: are profiting, so yeah, whistle blowers can easily be silenced
Speaker 6: and be scared away from trying to come forward and
Speaker 6: tell the truth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it just wasn't in my nature to.
Speaker 6: Not do that, to not align with my values, to
Speaker 6: just stand by and let something bad happen.
Speaker 2: Are there any protections in place for whistle blowers in Australia.
Speaker 2: I know it's an area that you feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there have been legislation come into effect in the
Speaker 6: last few years to protect whistle blows, especially in the workplace,
Speaker 6: from retaliation. But it's only legislation and regulation and law
Speaker 6: only can go so far when people are or the
Speaker 6: law or governments or what places are willing to enforce
Speaker 6: it and make sure there's people really are protected.
Speaker 2: For me, it feels like whistle blowing should be something
Speaker 2: that we support because if there's wrongdoing going on in
Speaker 2: certain institutions, surely we should know about it. The fact
Speaker 2: that it's something that people might be scared about doing
Speaker 2: because they could potentially face criminal.
Speaker 3: Charges is insane.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 6: I think I think a lot more work can be
Speaker 6: done in this space to protect people coming forward and
Speaker 6: telling the truth, and it is a very Yeah, it
Speaker 6: is a very scary thing to take on. Like I
Speaker 6: said earlier, there was one percent of me that was
Speaker 6: still questioning myself, God, what if she doesn't have cancer?
Speaker 5: And I've got this all wrong? And that's part of it.
Speaker 6: Right that you see in the media and you see
Speaker 6: in cases that people haven't been protected, and then so
Speaker 6: that makes you question yourself in many ways. It makes
Speaker 6: you question do I really know the truth? Or am
Speaker 6: I going to be safe to come forward?
Speaker 3: What are you doing with your life now?
Speaker 2: Has been involved in this, in whistle blowing, in uncovering
Speaker 2: kind of the scam that was Bell Gibson, Has that
Speaker 2: changed your life and your kind of goals in life
Speaker 2: in terms of what you want to give back?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it definitely led me down a path that I
Speaker 6: may not have gone down if I hadn't gone through
Speaker 6: what I did with Belle. I ended up moving and
Speaker 6: working in the outback with remote indigenous communities, working on
Speaker 6: policy and as a financial counselor preventing economic abuse against
Speaker 6: Indigenous people in the outback, because unfortunately those communities are
Speaker 6: actually targeted a lot by scams, So while I was
Speaker 6: out there doing that work, I was doing financial literacy education,
Speaker 6: working with regulators to tighten regulation and laws around predatory
Speaker 6: payday lenders that we're targeting indigenous people. Since then, I've
Speaker 6: gone on to work for basically one of own Australia's
Speaker 6: only social impact finance fund that provides capital to Indigenous
Speaker 6: people wanting to start a business or grow their business
Speaker 6: because they have a lot of challenges accessing capital, especially
Speaker 6: from mainstream banks. They can be yes discouraged from accessing
Speaker 6: capital from those avenues. So yeah, it's something that's very
Speaker 6: important to me to do work that's that's very meaningful
Speaker 6: and impactful and that can help people. And I especially, Yeah,
Speaker 6: I especially love to do work where I can give
Speaker 6: people a voice that aren't able to necessarily use their
Speaker 6: own voice, and especially prevent or stop people being taken
Speaker 6: advantage of, because that's just it's something I really I
Speaker 6: really can't stand.
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of buzz right now, everyone's
Speaker 2: talking about Bell, but it was nearly a decade ago
Speaker 2: that all this happened.
Speaker 3: Do you think about it often anymore?
Speaker 6: No, I haven't. Over the years, I don't really think
Speaker 6: about it too much. I've already given so much energy
Speaker 6: and mental capacity to all of this. I did film
Speaker 6: for a documentary that's coming out in Netflix in a
Speaker 6: few weeks, so I was involved with that. I mean,
Speaker 6: I mean I have reflected on it at times, I
Speaker 6: especially right now with how big the story has gotten again, well,
Speaker 6: it's actually gotten even bigger than ever before. And as
Speaker 6: much as I can't forgive Belle, I can't help but
Speaker 6: think that this would maybe be quite difficult for her.
Speaker 6: And given you know she is a troubled person, I
Speaker 6: do wonder about her mental health at this time and
Speaker 6: the whole time, actually, and.
Speaker 5: I do hope that she is okay at the end
Speaker 5: of the day.
Speaker 2: So you do still have empathy for her in amongst
Speaker 2: all of the younger I.
Speaker 6: Mean, yeah, like Belle is still human at the end
Speaker 6: of the day, a very complex, complicated, troubled human. And
Speaker 6: I actually just hope that she can eventually learn from
Speaker 6: all this and evolve from it and make amends. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, that is what I hope for.
Speaker 2: Do you think she can, though, do you think she
Speaker 2: can actually redeem herself?
Speaker 6: I think it will be difficult in the public eye.
Speaker 6: I think the public will probably have a difficult time
Speaker 6: for giving her, and that's understandable. But I hope she
Speaker 6: can redeem herself, just for herself, even in her personal life.
Speaker 6: I hope she can evolve and learn from this and
Speaker 6: not do something like this again in any capacity. So yeah,
Speaker 6: it's very wishful thinking to think that there could be
Speaker 6: some redemption.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Chanelle for telling us her story.
Speaker 2: True Crime Conversations is a Muma Meer podcast hosted produced
Speaker 2: by me Jimmy Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design
Speaker 2: by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
Speaker 3: with a very.
Speaker 2: Interesting true crime conversation with the anonymous host of case File.
Speaker 1: The next episode of Extraordinary Stories will be released next week.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to wait, you can listen right
Speaker 1: now by following the link in the episode description or
Speaker 1: by heading to mammamea dot com dot au forward slash m.
Speaker 2: Plus Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land.
Speaker 2: We have recorded this podcast on the Gadigul people of
Speaker 2: the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their elders
Speaker 2: past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal
Speaker 2: and Torres Rait Islander cultures,