Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Hey, No Filter listeners, it's Miya here,
Speaker 1: and today we're revisiting one of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: No Filter from twenty twenty three, about a woman who
Speaker 1: claimed to be incredibly ill, got to meet the members
Speaker 1: of One Direction, and then the most incredible twist, just
Speaker 1: when everybody thought she was faking it and maybe she was.
Speaker 1: In this episode, journalist Jamie Bartlett joins me to explore
Speaker 1: the mystery. Was Megan actually ill and if not, what
Speaker 1: really happened and how was her mother involved? For Mamma,
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Friedman and you're listening to No Filter charity celebrity,
Speaker 1: a mystery, illness, One Direction and a sudden death.
Speaker 2: Was never meant to end like that. That was a
Speaker 2: part of the story, but that's what happened.
Speaker 1: The extraordinary story you're about to hear almost sounds made up.
Speaker 1: It begins with a British girl called Megan Bari, who
Speaker 1: was just thirteen when she developed a condition called idiopathic
Speaker 1: into cranial hypertension, which involves high pressure around the brain,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of years later, Meghan developed a
Speaker 1: brain tumor, and it was as a direct result of
Speaker 1: her experiences twenty four operations, lots of time in hospitals,
Speaker 1: and countless interactions with other sick kids that Megan decided
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, when she was just seventeen, to set
Speaker 1: up a charity with her mum to help dreams come
Speaker 1: true for other kids who were battling chronic or terminal
Speaker 1: illnesses like her. They called it Believe in Magic. Now,
Speaker 1: you were very ill.
Speaker 3: When you decided to set up the charity, So can
Speaker 3: you tell us about why you wanted to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I've had twenty four operations in the last
Speaker 4: few years. Wow, And I've been in and out of
Speaker 4: hospital and seeing so many other very poorly children, and
Speaker 4: I just sort of realized how much the other children
Speaker 4: are going through and just wanted to do something to
Speaker 4: sort of give them the magical experiences back and to
Speaker 4: be able to be children again.
Speaker 1: And it worked in a sort of a Make a
Speaker 1: Wish way, granting hundreds of sick kids wishes from lavish
Speaker 1: parties to sending families on holiday or letting them meet
Speaker 1: their celebrities. Superhero. Meghan's own dream was to connect with
Speaker 1: One Direction, the boy band sensation of the twenty Tents,
Speaker 1: and through her charity and her own personal story of suffering,
Speaker 1: she did just that to such an extent that One
Speaker 1: Direction began tweeting the support of Believe in Magic, attending
Speaker 1: the charities galas and wearing Believe in Magic wristbands when
Speaker 1: they performed on stage.
Speaker 5: You have the boys.
Speaker 3: They're wearing your wrist bands in forty countries, So now
Speaker 3: your wristbands are main.
Speaker 1: Many companies with kill that opportunity.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's actually ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Prime Minister David Cameron even gave Meghan an award for
Speaker 1: her work.
Speaker 2: Meg has shown such extraordinary courage to put aside her
Speaker 2: own illness and focus on grant the dreams of others.
Speaker 1: But when Meghan and Jean started fundraising online to pay
Speaker 1: for urgent treatment that they said Meghan needed to get
Speaker 1: in the US to save her life, some people started
Speaker 1: to get a bit suspicious. It was giving bell gibbs
Speaker 1: and vibes. Remember the Australian cookbook author who claimed she
Speaker 1: had a brain humor, except that she didn't. You may
Speaker 1: think you can guess what happened next, because there've been
Speaker 1: quite a lot of well known stories about people who
Speaker 1: claim to be sick in order to get attention or
Speaker 1: scam money. And indeed, internet sleuths did find proof that
Speaker 1: Meghan and her mother Jean were being deceptive, But just
Speaker 1: when it looked like a scam was unraveling, Meghan suddenly
Speaker 1: died and that's when things became really complicated. There was
Speaker 1: an inquestion to Meghan's death, and soon after journalist Jamie
Speaker 1: Bartler got involved. He spent months trying to unravel what
Speaker 1: dark things went on with the charity and its founders,
Speaker 1: and what he found out was bizarre. Jamie's been released
Speaker 1: in a gripping seven episode podcast, also called Believe in Magic.
Speaker 1: So was Megan ever really sick? And if she wasn't,
Speaker 1: then how did she die? I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, BBC did a show about inspiring teenagers and
Speaker 1: one of them is seventeen year old Meghan Barrie.
Speaker 3: Now we have another inspirational young lady in the studio
Speaker 3: with us. She has these little bands for her charity,
Speaker 3: and indeed that Alix is now wearing that I've been
Speaker 3: wearing all day I wore one on stage. Hello Meg,
Speaker 3: how are you?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Good?
Speaker 4: Thank you had an amazing day.
Speaker 1: What was she being celebrated for, Meghan Bari.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this inspirational teenager. She had become quite an influential
Speaker 2: person within the cancer community. She had started up a
Speaker 2: charity called Believe in Magic, and the idea was that
Speaker 2: she's very poorly herself, but she'd sort of in spite
Speaker 2: of that, had started a charity to grant wishes to
Speaker 2: desperately ill children. There's other charities that do similar things,
Speaker 2: you know, trips to Disney, meeting celebrities, sort of in
Speaker 2: some cases, sort of dying wishes if you like. As
Speaker 2: she puts it, to bring a little bit of joy
Speaker 2: into people's lives. And because she had suffered herself so much,
Speaker 2: you know, it inspired a lot of people. It moved
Speaker 2: a lot of people. So the BBC had her on
Speaker 2: for their Teen Awards show that they did every year
Speaker 2: back then, and she'd become very popular with One Direction
Speaker 2: as well. One Direction started wearing her charity wristbands on stage.
Speaker 3: How do you persuade these people to get involved?
Speaker 4: I think we've been so lucky, I said the charity
Speaker 4: last year and it's run my me and my mum.
Speaker 4: But I think people really like that. Because I'm seventeen
Speaker 4: and because I've been poorly myself, it means they kind
Speaker 4: of get it more than if it's just I don't
Speaker 4: really know. I think they get the story behind it.
Speaker 2: A very very inspiring young teenager.
Speaker 1: How did she look back then? Because she claimed to
Speaker 1: have had twenty four operations in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: She said she'd had a brain t tumor, and she
Speaker 1: talked about how her insight into what it was like
Speaker 1: to be in hospital and so ill made her want
Speaker 1: to help other kids. Did she look unwell?
Speaker 2: Based on what other people have told me who knew
Speaker 2: her well at the time, she didn't look well. She
Speaker 2: was slightly overweightd she definitely took lots of medication. A
Speaker 2: lot of people saw her taking a lot of medication.
Speaker 2: And the thing is about a lot of complex conditions.
Speaker 2: You can't always tell just by looking at someone how
Speaker 2: ill or how unwell they really are. So yes, if
Speaker 2: you've got a broken leg, it's kind of obvious, but
Speaker 2: when you're talking often about brain conditions, it's less obvious.
Speaker 2: It's not always a visible condition. So that's a tricky one,
Speaker 2: and that's sort of part of the story. I suppose
Speaker 2: in a way, how far you ever really know how
Speaker 2: unwell someone really is just by looking at them? You don't.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 1: The One Direction point that you made was really interesting.
Speaker 1: She was a big fan and they became really involved,
Speaker 1: like Harry Starles's mum climbed Mount Kilimanjaro raise money for
Speaker 1: Believe in Magic. How did that connection come about?
Speaker 2: I didn't really know that much about One Direction before
Speaker 2: I started this. I just you know, pop band. To me,
Speaker 2: they were just sort of X Factor contestants that did
Speaker 2: really well, a good bunch of lads, and they did
Speaker 2: a lot of work for charity, you know, and a
Speaker 2: lot of popular bands they do a lot of work
Speaker 2: for charity. They will do after gigs, they will often
Speaker 2: meet poorly children One Direction And again I didn't really
Speaker 2: know because I wasn't a directioner. But back in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, that sort of time, I mean, amongst teenage
Speaker 2: girls in the UK and around world, they were absolutely huge.
Speaker 2: I mean there was this sort of obsession about them.
Speaker 2: They were like the Beatles, Yeah, but it was like
Speaker 2: Beatlemania really was. Actually when we were making the program.
Speaker 2: We talked about it being kind of similar to Beatlemania,
Speaker 2: sort of screaming teens, you know, absolutely obsessed and genuinely
Speaker 2: feeling like they were in love with the band and
Speaker 2: that they were going to marry members of the band.
Speaker 2: And they turned up as well at this interesting point
Speaker 2: where social media was making them far more approachable. They
Speaker 2: seemed a lot more normal. They would share much of
Speaker 2: their life online, so he got behind the scenes in
Speaker 2: a way that he didn't with the Beatles. So Megan
Speaker 2: was one of thousands and thousands of young teens who
Speaker 2: just were obsessed with one direction, and she'd managed to
Speaker 2: meet the band backstage after one of their gigs in London.
Speaker 1: Was that because she was sick.
Speaker 2: Some of the details aren't exactly clear, but yeah, we
Speaker 2: think it was through one of the charities that would
Speaker 2: put these events on for poorly children. And at the
Speaker 2: time she had been diagnosed with idiopathic intracranial hypertension, which
Speaker 2: is a sort of without going into the medical details
Speaker 2: of it, a sort of build up of fluid on
Speaker 2: the brain which can be really painful. Doctor Steele don't
Speaker 2: fully understand it. So we think she got to meet
Speaker 2: the band after one of their gigs because she had
Speaker 2: been selected because of her idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and she
Speaker 2: was brilliant with celebrities. She was really really good at
Speaker 2: sort of charming celebrities and talking to them, and she
Speaker 2: managed to somehow get their attention and get them to
Speaker 2: support her charity too, which she decided to set up.
Speaker 7: Hi It's Lourie from one direction. We've been working with
Speaker 7: Believe in Magic Now for a few years and we
Speaker 7: think Meg and the team are absolutely incredible. So to
Speaker 7: want a chance to see us in London on the
Speaker 7: twenty sixth September, donate below Thank you.
Speaker 1: Who did she run the charity with Because she was
Speaker 1: a teenager and she'd been unwell, running a charity is
Speaker 1: a big deal. Who was helping her?
Speaker 2: That was her mother, Jane, So Jean and Meghan had
Speaker 2: an incredibly tight close relationship. Megan had been taken out
Speaker 2: of school when she was I think it was thirteen,
Speaker 2: so she was homeschooled for quite a long period of time.
Speaker 2: Jean had had children from a previous marriage that had
Speaker 2: all grown up and moved away, and they were more
Speaker 2: like best friends really than mother and daughter, and Gene
Speaker 2: as the adult, was the one that really set the
Speaker 2: admin and was one of the official directors of the
Speaker 2: charity until Megan was old enough to be that. But
Speaker 2: it was the two of them and they were called
Speaker 2: the fairy Godmothers and they would put on these events
Speaker 2: together and everyone who went would say, these two are
Speaker 2: just a whirlwind, a ball of energy. They do everything themselves.
Speaker 2: They run this entire charity. They put on events and
Speaker 2: trips to Disney and Hamley's toy store in London where
Speaker 2: they get children all morning to be able to enter
Speaker 2: the store before it opens and play with the toys,
Speaker 2: and all this stuffy It was just them too. They
Speaker 2: did all the admin, They did everything, all the fundraising.
Speaker 2: It was the genat Meg show.
Speaker 6: I Believe In Magic was started by model to Meg
Speaker 6: and when she was just sixteen. Actually she'd been very
Speaker 6: poorly herself for that four years then and was in
Speaker 6: and out of many hospitals in London, mostly Great Ormond Street,
Speaker 6: and Meg wanted to do something to make a difference
Speaker 6: to their lives so shen't believe in magic, which.
Speaker 2: Became They would work eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a
Speaker 2: day just to put on these events four poorly children,
Speaker 2: and they really did, and they helped a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And I spoke to a lot of people who attended
Speaker 2: believe in Magic events who said, I'll never repay them
Speaker 2: what they did, They what they did for my child,
Speaker 2: the events they put on, how much they helped us,
Speaker 2: it was amazing.
Speaker 1: So the charity was real. I mean One Direction raffled
Speaker 1: off backstage passes and raised four hundred thousand pounds. Harry
Speaker 1: Style's mum climbed met Kilum and Jarrow. A lot of
Speaker 1: people donated. They did actually do things, because all the
Speaker 1: things you described cost a lot of money to execute.
Speaker 2: They really did. Yeah, there were all sorts of events
Speaker 2: they railed up on. They put on this huge fundraiser
Speaker 2: at the Natural History Museum in central London. This princes
Speaker 2: and princesses born all were a couple of the One
Speaker 2: Direction members turned up as well. They would have trips
Speaker 2: to Disney, trips to Kensington Palace, trips to Buckingham Palace.
Speaker 2: They would often send gifts to poorly children that were
Speaker 2: in hospital. They'd suddenly receive a package. And one person
Speaker 2: told me how her daughter was a big fan of
Speaker 2: the children's TV personality called mister Bumble, and Meghan had
Speaker 2: managed to persuade mister Bumble to write this sort of
Speaker 2: personalized note to her daughter to get well soon and
Speaker 2: keep fighting. And they weren't putting on events, they really
Speaker 2: were and they did a lot of events. Remember, Meghan
Speaker 2: won an award which Prime Minister David Cameron said of
Speaker 2: Meghan like fighting through her adversity to put these events
Speaker 2: on to help poorly children. She won the special Award.
Speaker 2: So they were a sort of highly respected part of
Speaker 2: the cancer community, with the child cancer community in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds like there were almost celebrities in that area,
Speaker 1: in that sector.
Speaker 2: To some extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they did huge amounts of really good work.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, Jane announced on Facebook I think, where
Speaker 1: she usually communicated with the followers and the supporters of
Speaker 1: the charity, that Meghan's condition had deteriorated and that she'd
Speaker 1: needs specialist treatment in the US to survive. And she
Speaker 1: said that they needed to raise one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: pounds in two weeks, which is around a quarter of
Speaker 1: million dollars Australian, and she asked their fans to donate.
Speaker 1: Was that a change from what had been happening in
Speaker 1: the years before that in terms of asking people for
Speaker 1: money for the charity. Now they were asking it for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, and Meghan had done a small fundraiser
Speaker 2: for her own treatment a couple of years previous to that,
Speaker 2: but it was nowhere near that size, not that amount
Speaker 2: of money, And I think that was the big difference here,
Speaker 2: moved from we're raising money for the charity to put
Speaker 2: on these events to we are raising money for Meghan's treatment.
Speaker 2: Meghan has put on so much and helped so many
Speaker 2: other people. Now she needs your help in a return.
Speaker 2: She now has her condition has seriously deteriorated. We need
Speaker 2: urgent proton beam radiotherapy over in the US. Can't get
Speaker 2: it in the UK at the moment. Because of how
Speaker 2: much money they'd raised for the charity and how much
Speaker 2: work they've done, that target was reached within forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: They had raised all of that money, so Meghan was
Speaker 2: able to go to the US to go to Florida
Speaker 2: for treatment, and that was a bit of a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But I think in the cancer community it's I suppose
Speaker 2: maybe not so uncommon that people suddenly do need urgent treatment,
Speaker 2: and if you're part of that world, it maybe wouldn't
Speaker 2: have seemed as strange that it had gone from the
Speaker 2: charity to Meghan, because those sorts of things do happen.
Speaker 1: This is when Joe Ashcroft comes into the story. You
Speaker 1: spoke to Joe why was she so interested in Megan
Speaker 1: and believe in Magic?
Speaker 2: At this point, Joe's son had gone through something very similar.
Speaker 2: Joe's son had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma a few years earlier,
Speaker 2: and she'd actually been to a Believe in Magic event.
Speaker 2: She had been forced to raise two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand pounds for her son's treatment in America, a similar
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So she really took a natural interest
Speaker 2: in anyone raising money for treatment in America because she'd
Speaker 2: been through it and she knew what it took and
Speaker 2: how hard it was.
Speaker 1: And as you say, that's quite common within this world
Speaker 1: where people can't afford to travel to get the treatment
Speaker 1: that they need.
Speaker 2: Well, that's it. And the other thing as well, is
Speaker 2: that you're faced with this horrible decision where they'll say
Speaker 2: we don't offer the treatment. There's some experimental stuff going
Speaker 2: on in America, but you're going to have to raise
Speaker 2: a quarter of a million pounds half a million dollars
Speaker 2: in a few weeks somehow, just to increase that chance
Speaker 2: that they would survive by five percent. But your whole
Speaker 2: life is put on hold, and you do everything. And
Speaker 2: she talks a lot about all she wants to do
Speaker 2: is stay at home and cry and sort of be
Speaker 2: with her son. But instead she's got to go out
Speaker 2: there and do marathons and raffles and drag her poor
Speaker 2: son around from event to event, trying to tug on
Speaker 2: people's heart strings. And she said it was awful because
Speaker 2: she wants privacy, and she said she'll do anything to
Speaker 2: raise the money. So she's dragging her son around from
Speaker 2: event to event. She said, straight off the chemotherapy, just
Speaker 2: to try to get more money.
Speaker 1: And she did it.
Speaker 2: She did it, and she raised the money and the
Speaker 2: treatment worked. So it's incredible. I mean, just so much
Speaker 2: admiration for her. And I've got two small children myself,
Speaker 2: and well, you know, just even thinking of it's a
Speaker 2: really difficult thing to work on, this whole project, to
Speaker 2: be honest, because of that, you're dealing with childhood, the illness.
Speaker 2: It's awful.
Speaker 1: Given that she raised twice as much money as Meghan
Speaker 1: and Jane had to travel to the US. What raised
Speaker 1: her suspicions about what they were doing.
Speaker 2: She says, the lack of detail. It was very vague.
Speaker 2: The fundraisers were vague, They were a bit unclear. They
Speaker 2: didn't give specifics. The hospitals weren't mentioned, the doctors weren't mentioned.
Speaker 5: To me, it just all sounded very very strange. And
Speaker 5: as I'm reading, I'm trying to see where she's been treated,
Speaker 5: who are doctor raised, where the hospital is, and there
Speaker 5: was no information.
Speaker 2: And so she started, I'd just like to know a
Speaker 2: bit more about this. So she'd start emailing saying, what
Speaker 2: hospital are you actually going to? What doctor is it?
Speaker 2: Could I get in touch with I'd like to know
Speaker 2: more of you got any scans? So can I see
Speaker 2: a bit more on the specifics of what exactly this
Speaker 2: money's being spent on, because she says she was asked
Speaker 2: that often and she could reel off every specific treatment
Speaker 2: at what hotel and what doctor and here's the letter.
Speaker 2: Because she said, these people are giving me money, I
Speaker 2: will answer any question they have. I'll give them everything
Speaker 2: they want, and she felt like she wasn't getting those answers,
Speaker 2: and so she thought, something just seems a bit off
Speaker 2: about this. It just seems a bit slightly suspicious. And
Speaker 2: the more she dug, the more she asked, the less
Speaker 2: she seemed to understand about it.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'd love to send Meghan something, just like she
Speaker 5: sends all the poorly children. Which hospitals do I send
Speaker 5: it to? To which I got reply, thanks so much.
Speaker 5: But Meghan's at three different hospitals at the moment, so
Speaker 5: it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 2: And then she found that Meghan and Gene had done
Speaker 2: another fundraiser for Meghan a couple of years prior, and
Speaker 2: that was also a bit odd. It mentioned going to
Speaker 2: Disney World. It said, we're going to go to America
Speaker 2: to help Megan get better, and while we're there, we're
Speaker 2: also going to go to Disney. Can you help donate?
Speaker 2: And she thought, given what I've been through, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: spend a penny on Disney. Everything is going to much
Speaker 2: of treatment. Why are you raising money if you've got
Speaker 2: enough to go to Disney as well? And so she
Speaker 2: just thought. Her big concern was she'd heard stories about
Speaker 2: people within the cancer community sort of faking illnesses and
Speaker 2: pretending to have things they didn't to raise money, and
Speaker 2: she just thought, I'm going to get to the bottom
Speaker 2: of this. I think something's up. I don't want anyone
Speaker 2: in this community being ripped off.
Speaker 1: At that time, Jeane was in the US and she
Speaker 1: was posting increasingly alarming and really detailed updates. What Joe
Speaker 1: had said that there was not much detail around the
Speaker 1: hospital when you described the updates she was posting. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of very specific medical language and medical
Speaker 1: terms and about this procedure and all these different symptoms
Speaker 1: and escalating complications that Meg had. Where were they actually
Speaker 1: while all of this was happening, And how did the
Speaker 1: sleuths find out? The Sluths being the group of cancer
Speaker 1: parents that Joe enlisted to help her find out what
Speaker 1: was going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this story is just so on so many levels.
Speaker 2: It's just surprised me at every turn what actually happens
Speaker 2: here with this. The basics of it is that Joe
Speaker 2: and a couple of other people who had also been
Speaker 2: through the same thing, she had children with neuroblastoma, raising
Speaker 2: money for treatment in America. So they were really tight
Speaker 2: in this community getting more and more suspicious. The language
Speaker 2: when Gene was posting from America about Megan's health deteriorating,
Speaker 2: and it just seemed often far too exaggerated, you know,
Speaker 2: like where people would have two or three infections, Meghan
Speaker 2: has twenty. Stuff that just seemed a little bit suspicious,
Speaker 2: a little bit not quite believable, a little bit exaggerated,
Speaker 2: if I can say that. So she starts thinking, well,
Speaker 2: how are we going to get to the bottom of this, Like,
Speaker 2: how are we going to figure out what's really going on?
Speaker 2: Because we're not convinced that Meghan is as ill as
Speaker 2: she claims to be, and we're not convinced she's getting
Speaker 2: this treatment in America. So what they decide to do
Speaker 2: send an email to Gene the little tracker code in
Speaker 2: it which gives you the location of where the email's
Speaker 2: being opened from, and they discover when Gene replies that
Speaker 2: actually it was opened in a Disney resort, not in
Speaker 2: a hospital, not next to a hospital, but in the
Speaker 2: Kadani Disney resort. We were able to access some receipts
Speaker 2: that showed that Megan and Jean had spent tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars in a luxury Disney suite over several months.
Speaker 2: While publicly online they were claiming that Meghan was in
Speaker 2: the hospital barely making it through the night.
Speaker 5: Busted, she's there, and she was saying that she was
Speaker 5: spending the night holding Meghan's hand, willing her through the night.
Speaker 5: There's no way that anybody with a child who is
Speaker 5: that sick would be in a Disney resort. So rang
Speaker 5: the kadane there and then without really thinking it through,
Speaker 5: and they put me through to the room and Gene answered.
Speaker 5: So I said, Meghan, plain and she said sorry. I said,
Speaker 5: it is Meghan there. Please, She said, who's calling? She's
Speaker 5: asleep at the moment, ring thank you, and I put
Speaker 5: the phone down. So then I go back to the
Speaker 5: group and I said Megan, Megan's in that room.
Speaker 2: Then they did something else which we need photographic proof.
Speaker 2: No one's going to believe us because Meghan and Gene
Speaker 2: are believe in magic. These are household names. People love
Speaker 2: these guys and understandably, so they've helped a lot of people.
Speaker 2: No one's going to believe us. Who are we with
Speaker 2: which a handful of random parents that look bitter and upset.
Speaker 2: So they also worked out that Megan and Gene were
Speaker 2: coming back to the UK from America. Jean had been
Speaker 2: posting a lot on Facebook, Meghan's getting a bit better.
Speaker 2: We're going to try and make it home, but because
Speaker 2: of her brain condition, we can't fly. So they thought, oh,
Speaker 2: they always travel on the Queen Mary Second luxury ocean liner.
Speaker 2: They looked at the times and they worked out that
Speaker 2: there was one leaving New York around that time. So
Speaker 2: they thought, I bet they're on that, and it's coming
Speaker 2: to Southampton in a week's time. So they hired a
Speaker 2: private detective. This is where the story gets so crazy.
Speaker 2: So this group of very very respectable parents with children
Speaker 2: who'd had cancer hired a private detective to go down
Speaker 2: to Southampton when the ship docked to see firstly if
Speaker 2: the pair were on the boat, and to watch them
Speaker 2: as they came off to take photographs. Because from all
Speaker 2: the things that Gene had been posting, Megan was you know,
Speaker 2: she had an oxygen tank, she'd probably be in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2: They had bags of medical equipment. They were expecting an
Speaker 2: extremely unwell child to be sort of pushed off on
Speaker 2: a wheelchair from the Queen Mary the Second. But yes,
Speaker 2: they were on the ship, but she certainly didn't seem
Speaker 2: particularly unwell. Meghan and Gene disembarked the Queen Mary Second,
Speaker 2: snapped by the private detective looking like a couple of
Speaker 2: happy tourists wandering off, both of them pushing these huge bags,
Speaker 2: and Joe Ashcroft thought, that's it. We've got them. We
Speaker 2: can show they've been lying. They've been saying that they're
Speaker 2: barely making it through the night, and here they are
Speaker 2: looking like a pair of happy tourists coming off the
Speaker 2: Queen Mary, the second luxury ocean liner. So that is
Speaker 2: where the story you think is over because you think,
Speaker 2: right there we go exposed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you would also think that it's like the
Speaker 1: gotcha moment, right they've got the evidence. It's a ClearCase
Speaker 1: or it seems to be a case of financial fraud.
Speaker 1: They're claiming on Facebook that she's so unwell. The pictures
Speaker 1: contradict it. We've got the evidence. They were in Disney
Speaker 1: World at the time that they said they were in hospital,
Speaker 1: but it didn't turn out that way. Like they tried
Speaker 1: to go public, didn't they, And what was the reaction.
Speaker 2: It's called malingering. There's a very specific term for that
Speaker 2: in sort of the literature about essentially faking or exaggerating
Speaker 2: illness for financial gain, material gain. I wouldn't say it's common,
Speaker 2: but it happens more often than people think. And I
Speaker 2: know a lot of people now that have had experience
Speaker 2: of going on to Facebook or going on to go
Speaker 2: fund me or just giving and finding people claiming to
Speaker 2: have various elements and raising money for it. You've got
Speaker 2: no proof of that. And there was a really famous
Speaker 2: example of this in Australia, wasn't that. I'm sure you're
Speaker 2: going to come onto that at some point.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I am. I was going to say to you,
Speaker 1: were you familiar with the case of Bell Gibson, because
Speaker 1: you were saying that you were surprised at how successful
Speaker 1: your podcast has been in Australia.
Speaker 2: Is that why? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: That suddenly it's all adding up. So they go public
Speaker 2: and they say, look, Megan might be unwell. Often in
Speaker 2: these cases, people are unwell, but they will exaggerate greatly
Speaker 2: their condition. So she might be unwell, but she doesn't
Speaker 2: need this treatment. In America, she doesn't have a brain
Speaker 2: tumor likes being claimed, she doesn't need this specialized treatment.
Speaker 2: They've been in Disney World this whole time, ripping you off,
Speaker 2: and look, we've photographs of them coming off the Queen
Speaker 2: Mary second looking perfectly healthy, and they put this all
Speaker 2: in a Facebook group. They called it the Truth about
Speaker 2: Gene and Meg, saying this is who we are. We
Speaker 2: are concerned parents, and this is what we've discovered. And
Speaker 2: they contacted authorities trying to alert them, saying someone's got
Speaker 2: to stop this, and yeah, the reaction was not what
Speaker 2: they expected. It was how dare you say this? How
Speaker 2: could you? I know, Meghan's not well, believe in Magic's
Speaker 2: helped my life and my kids and my family, and
Speaker 2: you're jealous and bitter and angry and your trolls and
Speaker 2: you should be thrown off the internet and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And the authorities, as far as Joe Ashcroft was concerned,
Speaker 2: weren't really doing much either. She couldn't get answers out
Speaker 2: of them. They didn't seem to be shutting the charity down.
Speaker 2: Nothing seemed to be happening. So I just think they
Speaker 2: were on the verge of giving up, thinking, well, what
Speaker 2: we're supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Did Meghan and Jane respond? They released a statement, didn't they?
Speaker 2: Ways they would respond and they would post about these
Speaker 2: trolls that are targeting them, and often without naming them specifically.
Speaker 2: They would say it's hard enough going through this, it's
Speaker 2: hard enough looking after Megan, it's hard enough having to
Speaker 2: deal with Meghan's conditions, and now we've got these nasty trolls,
Speaker 2: these bitter, angry people who are attacking us online. And
Speaker 2: I think at one point Gene may have even said
Speaker 2: it's because Joanne Ashcroft wasn't invited to believe in magic events.
Speaker 2: She's jealous, She's just bitter and she's angry. Megan also
Speaker 2: posted a video. This wasn't public, but it went to
Speaker 2: Joe saying.
Speaker 8: Joanna Acecraft, it's meg It it's a good time to
Speaker 8: say hello. As you can see, we obviously have far
Speaker 8: more important things to be dealing with, disgusting exultations that
Speaker 8: you're throwing at one of.
Speaker 2: The worst ones of whole lives.
Speaker 8: I cannot, for the life of me understand how you've
Speaker 8: done what you've done through and very good. I have
Speaker 8: every hope in the world that you will see how
Speaker 8: wrong you've been and apologize, and I'm very sorry to
Speaker 8: see that.
Speaker 2: If you don't, you'll.
Speaker 8: Be hearing from us very sory too. You have completely
Speaker 8: devastated death and roke.
Speaker 2: Good on look, I'm ill stop targeting us, so both
Speaker 2: publicly and privately. Yeah, they were basically shut down, if
Speaker 2: you like.
Speaker 1: Which is not what they were expecting at all.
Speaker 2: No, but then I suppose they didn't really know what
Speaker 2: to expect. This is one of the things about many
Speaker 2: stories now you see on exposing different types of social problems,
Speaker 2: is it's often amateurs doing this stuff. It's not the journalists,
Speaker 2: it's the amateur solut it's the online investigators digging around
Speaker 2: becoming obsessed with a story because these guys were spending.
Speaker 2: Like Joe says, it was you know, she became consumed
Speaker 2: by this. You know, she would just constantly all day
Speaker 2: on her phone, like what's the latest, what we've who
Speaker 2: do we know? What can we discover? Let's go through
Speaker 2: some old posts. Is there any clues there? So they
Speaker 2: didn't know what they were doing. They don't know how
Speaker 2: to expose these things. They didn't know what the reaction
Speaker 2: would be. So I think they imagined they'd all be
Speaker 2: praised and thank you so much for your hard work.
Speaker 2: But that isn't how the world works. You know. Meghan
Speaker 2: and Gene had a lot of loyal supporters.
Speaker 1: And then unbelievably in twenty eighteen, something just completely shocking happened.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it was shocking, and it was actually whenever
Speaker 2: I tell the story to anyone, this is the point
Speaker 2: which they're like, what Joe and Ashcross is sitting around
Speaker 2: one day and she gets her phone call or a
Speaker 2: text message and it basically says, Meghan's dead, Meghan's died.
Speaker 2: And she just thought, what the Megan wasn't ill, Meghan
Speaker 2: wasn't seriously unwell, that how could that be possible? And
Speaker 2: Meghan had indeed passed away hospital in London at the
Speaker 2: National Institute for Neurology and Neuroscience, but a brain specialist
Speaker 2: hospital essentially, and.
Speaker 1: She was twenty three years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jean had posted it on Facebook because what had
Speaker 2: happened was the charity had actually been there was an
Speaker 2: investigation was opened by the Commission into Believe in Magic,
Speaker 2: so that was ongoing. That had started, and actually Joe
Speaker 2: and Ashcroft, even though she thought no one was doing anything,
Speaker 2: the charity Commission had started looking into like, how's the
Speaker 2: money being spent? All this money you're getting for the charity,
Speaker 2: is it all going for charitable purposes? They started looking
Speaker 2: into it, sort of accounting were they filing the proper accounts.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't really about Megan's illness. It was how
Speaker 2: was the charity being run, So that was going on.
Speaker 2: Things sort of quietened down. Actually, when Joe and the
Speaker 2: others had put this Facebook group together and posted what
Speaker 2: they knew, the events slowed down as well. There wasn't
Speaker 2: as much activity anymore. So it just felt like maybe
Speaker 2: they had achieved something. Maybe Megan and Jean had stopped
Speaker 2: what they were doing quietly sort of gone back into
Speaker 2: the background. And then this happens. Twenty three years old.
Speaker 2: She dies at the Neuroscience Hospital in London, and Joe's
Speaker 2: left thinking have I got everything wrong? Did she really
Speaker 2: have a brain tumor all this time? Have we just
Speaker 2: completely mistaken? And a lot of the supporters of Believe
Speaker 2: in Magic started posting online saying she was trolled to death.
Speaker 2: These trolls targeting are abusing a like, trying to expose
Speaker 2: her the stress and the strain while she really wasn't unwell.
Speaker 2: What were they doing And it's just not what anyone
Speaker 2: expected to happen, because I think Joe and the others
Speaker 2: just thought this was a simple case of someone pretending
Speaker 2: to have a brain tumor, that didn't raising money to
Speaker 2: go on holiday, not that she'd ever die. Was never
Speaker 2: meant to end like that. That wasn't part of the story.
Speaker 2: But that's what happened.
Speaker 1: After the break. Jamie tells us what happened after Megan's death,
Speaker 1: because just when you think you know how this story
Speaker 1: is going to end, it twists. What was the reaction publicly?
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume everybody came after the sleuths as
Speaker 1: you say, and said that she was trolled to death.
Speaker 1: There was a post mortem and a second post mortem.
Speaker 1: Her funeral was canceled at the last minute and then rescheduled.
Speaker 1: But you didn't become interested in this case until twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. What sparked your interest.
Speaker 2: I'd done a podcast called The Missing Crypto Queen with
Speaker 2: the BBC about a big Ponzi scheme essentially, And what
Speaker 2: happens when you do those sorts of big stories is
Speaker 2: other people then approach you and say would you like
Speaker 2: to look at this story because you seem to you know,
Speaker 2: you sort of know a little bit about how to
Speaker 2: investigate these things. And a BBC journalist basically got in touch,
Speaker 2: called Ruth Mayer, she's the producer. You hear throughout. She'd
Speaker 2: seen an article in the Times of London and it
Speaker 2: just basically was about the Charity Commission investigating Believe in
Speaker 2: Magic and about the sort of possibility that Megan wasn't
Speaker 2: as ill as she claimed to be. Underneath it just
Speaker 2: had this really cryptic line that the truth is a
Speaker 2: lot darker, the story is a lot stranger than this,
Speaker 2: This isn't the whole story at all, and that obviously,
Speaker 2: for a journalist, you think, oh right, I mean this already,
Speaker 2: this story seems very very unusual and worthy of really
Speaker 2: digging into properly, and there's more to it already there's
Speaker 2: someone saying that something else is going on here. And
Speaker 2: then she gets in touch with me and says, do
Speaker 2: you want to take a look? Do you want to
Speaker 2: think if we can get to the bottom of what's
Speaker 2: really happened here? Because at that point in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: no one still really knew what had happened.
Speaker 1: But Jamie didn't that look very straightforward. I mean, the
Speaker 1: charity Commission had looked into the funding and the spending
Speaker 1: of the money, but a girl claimed she had a
Speaker 1: brain tumor for a long period of time and then
Speaker 1: died in a neurological hospital of a brain tumor, according
Speaker 1: to her mother, and had a funeral. So unless all
Speaker 1: of that was made up outside the cancer community, did
Speaker 1: you feel apprehensive about digging around? I mean, what were
Speaker 1: you trying to do besmirch the reputation of a dead
Speaker 1: girl that maybe she smuggled some money. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you thought it was just that story, what was it
Speaker 1: that made you think there was something else there?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't want to bespirch the reputation of anyone, obviously,
Speaker 2: and that was the thing that was really weighing on
Speaker 2: my mind when I was looking at it, thinking do
Speaker 2: I even really want to get into this because the
Speaker 2: young girls died, they'll be a grieving parent. I'm going
Speaker 2: to annoy someone, upset someone. Don't really like doing that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But no, it wasn't straightforward. It still
Speaker 2: wasn't clear what had happened. And when we spoke to
Speaker 2: Joe before we even started on this properly, she was
Speaker 2: absolutely adamant that Megan did not have a brain tumor.
Speaker 2: She did not have a brain tum she did not
Speaker 2: die of a brain tumor. There was no brain tumor.
Speaker 2: Not only had that money had been misappropriated and misspent,
Speaker 2: but that's one thing, But there was still the mystery
Speaker 2: of how really did she die?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Is there something about this story that we don't really understand?
Speaker 2: And it's something about it didn't add up. There was
Speaker 2: still something that hadn't been uncovered. How did Meghan die?
Speaker 2: How did it get to that? And if we still
Speaker 2: don't really know and no one really knows, shouldn't we
Speaker 2: try and understand this? Shouldn't we try and figure this out?
Speaker 1: Medical records, of course, are private even after someone dies,
Speaker 1: and if Jane didn't want to release those medical records
Speaker 1: as Meghan's mother, you couldn't really get them. Why was
Speaker 1: there a coronial in quest? Actually?
Speaker 2: So the medical records and doctors won't talk to journalists
Speaker 2: about patients even after they've passed away. Really, but if
Speaker 2: there's a coroner's inquest, doctors, yeah, they have to. They're
Speaker 2: basically compelled to. And while you don't necessarily get given
Speaker 2: medical records, they will talk in detail about the case.
Speaker 2: And coroner's inquests are held when someone dies in usually
Speaker 2: in sort of mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 1: Rijitnanov itself suggests that it wasn't just a brain t
Speaker 1: tumor complication exactly.
Speaker 2: Just the fact there was a coroner's inquest held into
Speaker 2: her death. It's sort of suspicious or unusual or unexplained circumstances.
Speaker 2: And there are lots of coroner's inquests held every year,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them people don't really ever hear about.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd never been to a coroner's inquest. But
Speaker 2: the thing is coroner's inquest was held six months or
Speaker 2: so after she passed away. Coroner's inquests are public courts.
Speaker 2: You can go as a journalist and sit in on
Speaker 2: a coroner's inquest. It's considered to be an open court.
Speaker 2: But once an inquest has taken place, you can't usually
Speaker 2: then access the records afterwards, the transcripts or whatever. So
Speaker 2: we applied to the coroner's court and said, can you
Speaker 2: give us a recording of the you know, of the
Speaker 2: event itself, because this is where we thought we're going
Speaker 2: to get the answers, because doctors would be testifying about
Speaker 2: what they knew, what they saw. Meghan had spent so
Speaker 2: much time in and out of hospitals. She'd been to
Speaker 2: Great Ormond Street she was a patient at Great Ormond Street.
Speaker 2: She'd been seeing by countless specialists, and her GP would
Speaker 2: be there. The pathologists who'd done the post mortems would
Speaker 2: also be testifying. So we thought we will finally get
Speaker 2: an answer whether Megan really had a brain tumor or not,
Speaker 2: and what she really died of and what really happened.
Speaker 2: But we didn't know whether we'd get granted access because
Speaker 2: it's pretty unusual, frankly for a journalist to be given
Speaker 2: transcripts or recordings. I mean, they can't actually give you
Speaker 2: a recording of the coroner's inquest after it's happened, and
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to take recordings in court either. But
Speaker 2: the coroner said, because of this is such an unusual case,
Speaker 2: we're going to let you come into the courtroom and
Speaker 2: I am going to play you a live recording or
Speaker 2: play it for you live once through. So it says
Speaker 2: if you're sitting in the room, you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: record it, but you can take notes, so you will
Speaker 2: be able to hear what happened at that inquest. So
Speaker 2: we got to attend the kind of weirdly four years afterwards,
Speaker 2: got to attend the coroner's inquest into Megan's.
Speaker 1: Death, Jamie, what was that like.
Speaker 2: I'd never been to anything like that before, and I
Speaker 2: didn't understand at the time why there were all these
Speaker 2: restrictions on it. I remember saying to Ruth, why can't
Speaker 2: they just send us the transcript? What's the problem? Why
Speaker 2: can't we I mean, what's the big deal? Which is
Speaker 2: probably a bit insensitive of me, but I was just
Speaker 2: sewing to the story that I wasn't really steeing the
Speaker 2: wood for the trees, because then I sat through it
Speaker 2: and it was grim. It felt intrusive, it was horrible.
Speaker 2: Hated it. It was so detailed, it was so medical.
Speaker 2: It was you know, the pathologists and the anetheist who
Speaker 2: tried to keep Megan alive for hours and hours now
Speaker 2: trying to keep her heart beating and stuff. You're listening
Speaker 2: in minute by minute detail to the last hours of
Speaker 2: a person's life. It's awful. It's awful. I can't it's haunting.
Speaker 2: It's terrible, and I hated it. I hate and I
Speaker 2: came out of it thinking, I understand now why they
Speaker 2: don't just give these things out to journalists. It's private.
Speaker 2: It felt so private to Megan and to Jane, to
Speaker 2: her family that I really felt like I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been there really at all.
Speaker 1: When you were listening to all of those medical details,
Speaker 1: did you get a sense from what you heard of
Speaker 1: how she died and what she died from?
Speaker 2: You do? So you've got to sort of try to
Speaker 2: shut out the emotion and listen. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of technical medical language in there, but basically
Speaker 2: there was no mention at all anywhere of a brain tumor.
Speaker 2: The post mortems found that her brain was morphologically normal,
Speaker 2: that she died of cardiac arrhythmia, which is an irregular
Speaker 2: beating of the heart, most likely caused by fatty liver disease,
Speaker 2: likely the result of her obesity, which for a twenty
Speaker 2: three year old to die of cardiac arrhythmia caused by
Speaker 2: fatty liver disease. We spoke to other specialists about this,
Speaker 2: I mean, it is one in a million. It's so unusual,
Speaker 2: it's so unusual. And then we heard all these other
Speaker 2: very worrying details as well. Megan and Gene had been
Speaker 2: doctor hopping, had forged a prescription to get morphine. Some
Speaker 2: of the doctors got together, fearing that there was something
Speaker 2: strange going on here, so they tried to get a
Speaker 2: session with lots of different doctors so they could start
Speaker 2: managing the case. Megan and Ging just wouldn't turn up.