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