The sad case of Lacey and Garnet spears

Hello everybody and welcome to Unthinkable, a true crime podcast. My name is Lisa and thank you all for joining me. I hope everyone is well. Now, today's case features the mental health condition Munchausen by Proxy, also known as fictitious disorder imposed on another. So, what is Munchausen by proxy? So, this is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver, normally a parent, creates the appearance of sickness and extreme health conditions in another person, typically their child, in order to gain sympathy and attention from others.

And the caregiver will go to extremes, like altering test samples, lying about symptoms, injuring their victims, even shaving their heads, starving them, and they seem to have a way of manipulating doctors into believing what they say. And there are famous cases like the one of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Now, her mother, Dee Dee, she actually managed to convince doctors, well, that Gypsy suffered from severe multiple illnesses such as muscular dystrophy. So she used a wheelchair, and they said she had leukemia, epilepsy, severe sleep apnea, vision and hearing impairments, and that she needed to use a feeding tube.

But none of this was true. Gypsy was absolutely fine. She was perfectly healthy, but she was still subjected to unnecessary operations as Dee Dee had managed to convince doctors that she was so ill when there was nothing wrong with her at all. Now, eventually, Gypsy conspires with her boyfriend who she met online, so they come up with a plan together to actually kill Dee Dee so she could be free, and they do. They go on to kill her. Now, in a lot of Munchausen by proxy cases, quite often it does end with the child dying.

Between 6 to 10% of victims actually die, and it's considered one of the most lethal forms of child abuse. So the case I'm going to cover today is the case of Lacey Spears, known as the mummy blogger killer. Okay, so now this is a big case, so it's actually going to be my first two-parter. Right, so let's get started. So Lacey Spears, she is born on the 16th of October 1987 in California. Her parents are Terry and Tina Spears, and Lacey has two older siblings, a sister called Rebecca and a brother called Daniel.

When Lacey was six weeks old, the family moved to Alabama, where Lacey and her siblings would grow up. Now, Lacey's uncle, Uncle Bo, he later stated that Tina and Terry were not really a close couple, and he said that Lacey was always bickering with her father, and that Tina was quite cold and unaffectionate towards her children. Now, from a very young age, Lacey showed a love for dolls. She would dress them, she would look after them, and she would talk about her dream of becoming a mother one day.

And when Lacey was a teen, she started babysitting and she showed a real love and affection towards children. So around 1998, late one night, Lacey turns up at her friend's house, Jessica Kyle's, and she's in a bit of a state. And she tells Jessica and Jessica's mother Lisa that she has been sexually abused by a relative. And over the next few weeks, Lacey pretty much moves in with the family. She even starts calling Lisa Mum. Lacey starts to complain to other neighbours that she's being abused, but as far as we can tell, these claims of abuse aren't true.

Lacey's sister Rebecca says they had a happy childhood and she doesn't know why people would say or think that that happened to Lacey. Now Lacey starts to show quite concern in behaviour, so calling Lisa mum, potentially lying about sexual abuse. And in early 2002, Lacey joins a softball team where she befriends Paula Sanlin, who is 47. Now, Paula would drive Lacey to and from the softball games, and Lacey actually starts calling Paula mum as well. Strange, isn't it? So now around this time, Lacey's starting to say and do some things that, you know, so she gets some attention.

She once wore an ankle brace to church, but she had no injury. And she started to claim that she was anorexic and that she hadn't eaten for three days. And then someone said to her, Well, we saw you eating a hot dog. And she was like, Oh, well, I haven't eaten anything apart from that one. And these claims got bigger and bigger, and then she claimed that she was pregnant. And then two days later, she said she had an abortion at the Caraway Methodist Medical Centre, a place where they don't do abortions.

So we see there's behavior for attention. Now, Munchhausen's on its own is faking or lying about yourself. So, like you're creating an illness or something that's wrong with you to get attention. Munchhausen by proxy is when you're lying about another person. So you're saying another person is sick, but then the attention, you still get the attention because if it's your child, then people feel sorry for you because you're looking after a sick child, for example. So, you know, Lacey is showing Munchhausen here, isn't she?

Now we know as a child Lacey loved dolls, she was obsessed with them, and as she grew up, she showed a real fondness for children and spent her early years dreaming of being a mother. She babysat as a teen. She also began volunteering at the Parkview Baptist Church nursery looking after the infants. Now, soon after graduating, Lacey moved into a two-bedroom apartment with her sister Rebecca in an apartment a few blocks away from their parents. And Lacey began working at kids' club daycare. And Lacey thrived.

She loved her job. She was bubbly and enthusiastic, and she really loved looking after the children. In October, Lacey enrolled in a nursing course, telling people she'd like to be a nurse. And during this time, Lacey meets Blake Robinson. Blake is a police officer for the Morgan County Sheriff's Office. Now, Lacey and Blake only dated for a short time. They actually only ever had three dates. But Blake Robinson's name comes up again later. So remember his name. Now, whilst Lacey is on her nursing course, she meets Christy Vernum, a young single mother with a 10-month-old called Cameron.

Christy and Lacey became close, and Lacey would offer to look after Cameron for free. And she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. It was almost like she became obsessed. And she was even started pretending that Cameron was her baby. Now, there's an incident in 2007 where Lacey has picked up Cameron on a Saturday morning and they went off for the day. However, Lacey didn't bring Cameron home at the time that they'd arranged. So Christy, she can't get hold of her, she's ringing, she doesn't know where she is, and she's sort of questioning herself, thinking, D did I ask Lacey to take him for longer?

And she can't remember. But eventually she managed to track her down on the Monday morning and she ordered Lacey to bring her son home. I mean, you know, can you imagine? So obviously, Christy told Lacey she was never going to see her son again. And Lacey broke down crying and begging, but Christy wasn't having any of it, like you wouldn't, would you? Um but Lacey she seemed to move on quite quickly. And in August, she becomes obsessed with another little boy, a six-month-old, called Jonathan. Now, Jonathan's mother, Autumn, she worked and she was also studying.

So when Lacey said she could offer family discount at her daycare, and she also said she'd look after Jonathan in her apartment after the daycare closed. And Autumn couldn't believe it. She accepted and she was extremely grateful for Lacey's help. So Jonathan or John John, as Lacey called him, would often spend the evenings with Lacey until his mum finished work at seven. And Lacey would offer to look after Jonathan whenever Autumn needed her to, sometimes for the whole weekend. But what Autumn didn't know was that Lacey, well, she had been posting pictures of herself and John John on her social media.

But she was claiming that Jonathan was her own baby. Now, what's strange with Jonathan and Cameron is when Lacey starts looking after them, they both start suffering with chronic ear infections. And as soon as Lacey's not looking after Cameron anymore, the ear infections clear up. Very strange. So here we meet Chris Hill. Now Chris Hill lived on the ground floor of Lacey and Rebecca's apartment block. Lacey and Chris had seen each other in the hallway and outside the apartment, but they'd never really spoken until one day Lacey knocked on Chris's door and asked help for putting up a baby cot for John John.

And Chris agreed, and he went up to Lacey's apartment. But things took a bit of a turn and the pair actually ended up sleeping together. Now they do develop a relationship, but it's not like a proper relationship. So they do things like she'll go around to his apartment and watch a movie and then they'll sleep together and then she'll go home. So they don't sort of go out and about together. But what's really odd about this is so we know that Lacey is showing an absolute love for children, like bordering on obsession, but oddly, she completely ignores Chris Hill's five-year-old son.

She acts like he doesn't exist at all. So this is so strange. She shows an absolute love for all children she comes in contact with. So why does she ignore Chris's son? Like it doesn't make sense. Okay, so let's jump to March 2008. And Lacey discovers that she herself is expecting her first baby, and she is over the moon. She texted Autumn, Jonathan's mother, that she had taken 23 pregnancy tests just to be sure. And she said that Chris Hill was the father. Now Chris and Lacey actually get engaged, but then out of the blue, Lacey texts him saying that the child isn't his.

She doesn't want to be in a relationship with him and she wants nothing to do with him. And she says that the baby's father is Blake Robinson. I know. It's like, what's happening? So on December the 3rd, Lacey gives birth to a healthy baby boy, Garnet Paul Thompson Spears. And he's perfect. Lacey took hundreds of pictures of him and posted them all over social media with captions like, He's all mine, I love him so much, and my blessing is here. Garnet was discharged two days later, but then two days after that, he's back in the hospital and Lacey's panicking, saying he's got a really high fever, she's really worried about him.

So doctors they check him over and they reassure Lacey that all looks well, Garnet is healthy. So she went home. And you know, they understand she's a new mother, so she's panicky, like it's fine. So Lacey is still looking after baby John John at this time, and she takes pictures of Jonathan and Garnet together to post them on Facebook, and she writes captions such as Big Bro, Little Bro, Brothers and Best Friends, they love each other so much. And she posts dozens of pictures of the two boys claiming that they are brothers, and they are both her children, and she's posting this all over social media.

And if anybody questions her, she blocks them. Now, Lacey is very committed to social media, she posts daily, and her posts show a wonderful caring mother who adores her children, and her apartment is filled with toys, and she's sharing this with everyone how much she loves being a mum. Now, the day after Christmas, Lacey posts a picture of Garnet in the hospital, and he's got an IV drip in his arm, and the caption reads, Poor baby boy, see his IV? And Lacey tells doctors that he keeps being sick, like he can't keep any food down.

Garnet is dehydrated, so they hook him up to an IV to help safely distribute fluids, but otherwise, Garnet's in good health. Lacey posts of Garnet in the hospital, they get quite a lot of attention online, and she continues to post with health updates. Lacey, quite soon after this hospital visit, well, she starts bringing baby Garnet to the hospital almost every day, and she insists that he's not eating and that when he does eat, he's sick. And she also says that Garnet's having trouble with his ears.

Now, pediatrician Mia Lissa Young King, she treated Garnet on a number of visits, and she reports that she never saw him vomit or struggle with food, and she can't figure out the cause of his ear infections. And she actually makes a note that she thinks Lacey is suffering from Munchausen by proxy. So it is flagged, and there are other suspicions by other doctors who treat Garnet, but it doesn't appear that anything gets done. There's no further action, apparently. And I did read that doctors and healthcare professionals often fail to take action if they suspect Munchausen by proxy due to the fear of legal repercussions and that they fear they could be accusing the wrong person, like they don't want to accuse an innocent parent and break that trust.

But I you know, I I get it's it's difficult, but uh if you suspect suspect abuse, then you know you should be able to speak up about it, shouldn't you? It needs to get investigated, surely. But it yeah, it doesn't seem to go any further. So before Garnet had even reached a year old, he'd been admitted to hospital 23 times. He had endless ear infections, high fevers, difficulty eating and keeping down his food, and he was dehydrated, and tests showed he had high levels of sodium in his system. Now, Garner had some unnecessary operations, serious ones, and when he was just nine weeks old, he was wrongly diagnosed with having failure to thrive and severe acid reflux, which was like thought to be what was causing the vomiting and difficulty eating.

Now, Dr. James Gilbert performed an operation on garnet and it basically makes it impossible for him to vomit. So they do something in the stomach and tie things together, and it just stops you from being sick. And this is extreme at nine weeks old. Like as humans, we need to be able to vomit, don't we? To get like things out of our body, like things that are bad for us. But at nine weeks old, he's stopped from doing this. He's later inserted with a feeding tube into his stomach. This is at nine months, and that there's nothing wrong with him, he didn't need it.

Oh, so Garner, he gets airlifted to hospital twice with severe dehydration and again high sodium levels. And at one time they're extremely high. This is when he's two and a half. Um, the report says his sodium levels are at 166 when a normal level is between 135 and 145. And we know from previous cases force feeding salt to a child causes sodium levels to rise. Now, doctors managed to safely get the levels down, but they never understood how they had gotten so high in the first place. Now, Lacey is documenting all of Garnet's hospital visits online, photos of him before surgery, after surgery, sleeping in the hospital bed, his feeding tube, everything.

And of course, she gets lots of sympathy from her online community, so there's lots of attention. Now, nurse Ginger Dabs Anderson, she becomes so suspicious of Lacey that she actually decides to befriend her. So rather than report it, she actually makes friends with Lacey, and this is so she can keep an eye on Garner, and the pair appear to become quite close. Now, Ginger actually ends up babysitting for Garner on her days off, and she says that he's fine. She said he would sit at the table and eat dinner with them, and he would eat whatever they were eating.

She said she never had to use his feeding tube, so this is furthering her suspicions. So Ginger began socializing with Lacey. She'd come over, they'd watch movies, they'd go shopping together, and Ginger maintains that she did all this so that she could keep an eye on Garner and maybe help Lacey. Now there was one occasion when Ginger witnessed Lacey lose her temper with Garnet, and this is while he was in the sink having a bath, and she said Lacey suddenly started screaming at him and then had held his head under the water.

And Ginger steps in here and you know she pushed Lacey away from Garnet and she scooped him up and she actually took him out of the house for a while. But Lacey, she put this on Facebook, and she was saying what a terrible mother she was. She said how she lost her temper with her son and how she'd bathed him in freezing cold water because she told him not to use the hose. Now, this post was met with sympathy. People telling her what a wonderful mother she is. Don't be too hard on yourself. Motherhood is hard, you're going through a lot, you know, everything she wanted to hear.

In July 2010, Lacey and Garnet actually make the move to Clearwater in Florida, and they go to live with her grandmother Penny. So Lacey's uncle Bo, he lived with Penny, but he had sadly died of cancer, and Penny needed some help around the house. So they thought it was a lovely idea for Lacey and Garnet to go and stay with her for a while. And Garnet, he loved it there. He was often seen in the yard riding around on a toy tractor, or he was pulling a toy wagon. Very sweet. Um, so when Uncle Bo died, he'd left some money for Lacey in his will, and she started to make some improvements on the house, and she made one of the rooms into a playroom for Garnet, and it was filled with toys, hundreds of them.

Garnet had like everything he could have possibly imagined, and Garnet was thriving. But Lacey was still posting on Facebook that he was struggling, claiming that she couldn't get him to eat. She says she can't get him to have more than one mouthful, and she's using his feed-in tube, and she comments that at this rate she'll still be using his feed-in tube when he's 40. Now, Lacey joins a lot of parenting groups in Clearwater, and she becomes close to a lady called Rebecca Thompson, who describes herself as a holistic family consultant specializing in holistic treatment.

And through Rebecca, Lacey meets Holly Joe Hankin, a doctor of oriental medicine, and she has a master's degree in Chinese herbology. Now, Lacey wrote on Facebook, taking Garnet to see Doc Holly was one of the best decisions I could have made. I am blessed to have found someone who's really going to try and help him. Now she also meets Mika Tolby, and she's a holistic health and fitness consultant, and they become friends. And Mika, she drew up a vegan plant-based meal plan for Garnet, and Lacey feeds him this through his feeding tube.

And with that, Lacey announces on Facebook that she is done with Western medicine and would be taking the holistic approach to Garnet's care from now on. Now, after Lacey makes this announcement, there are some concerns. If Garnet is as sick as Lacey says he is, he needs to be seeing a doctor and he needs to get treated in the correct way. And Lacey's grandmother also had issues with Lacey's approach to Garnet's health. She was concerned about the effects of this now vegan holistic lifestyle would affect Garner.

And she told Lacey. She told her how she felt.

21. So Lacey, she kills off Garnet's father, or who she is claiming is Garnet's father. Blake Richardson. Remember him? So Lacey posts on Facebook that Blake, the dashing young police officer, had died in a car crash in the line of duty. So she is now claiming that she is a widow. So she joins a group for grieving widows and she told them that she had met Blake when they were both young children and that they had been inseparable ever since. And she even started posting pictures of a man she said was Blake on her Facebook.

And she wrote posts like, My best friend and Garnet's Daddy. Now Lacey had blocked her family from this Facebook page. So she had a few different Facebook pages and she had certain people blocked from like certain Facebook pages. But someone from her hometown, April Chambers, she saw the picture that was Blake, and she was suspicious. She had known Blake, and this photo wasn't him. So after doing a quick Google search, it was discovered that the photo was actually a stock photo on an agency's website.

And Lacey kept posting the same photo, but she'd cropped it and edited it so it like into all different pictures. Now, so what I'm telling you is just a drop in the ocean of Garnet's story. It's a huge story. There's so, so much to it, and it's just lies, and there's it's just huge, but it's it's too much for me to fit everything into a podcast. Um, I'd be here recording for days. Um but you get the kind of gist of the person Lacey is. Um, there is a book written by John Glatt, and it's called My Sweet Angel, and this book is is like a detailed account of Lacey's early life and Garnet's story, and they talk in depth about the trial.

Um, it's a long listen. So if you listen to it on audio, I think it's like 11 hours long, but there's a lot more detail, like it sort of details the whole of the history um right up into the trial. Um, so it is it is interesting. I would recommend it if you wanted to know more. Um, so now I am gonna jump to October 2013, and this is when Garnet starts school. So he joins at the Green Meadow Waldorf School, and Garnet he absolutely loves it. So the plan was to ease him in gradually, so like one day one week and then two days the next week.

Um, but Garnet wanted to go every day, and his teachers said he was great, he was sharp, he was enthusiastic, and he'd greet his classmates at the gates, and he would greet his teachers too, and everybody loved him. Now, Lacey makes friends with a lady called Nellie Grossenbucker, and she had twin boys at the school, and the pair became quite uh close quite quickly, and Garnet got on very well with Nellie's twin boys. So Lacey shared with Nellie about the death of Garnet's father and about Garnet's health issues, but Nellie she starts to get suspicious.

So when she visits Lacey at home, so Lacey and Garnet are now living in Tulip House, which is an alternative lifestyle community called the Fellowship, and this is in New York. So when Nellie goes round to Tulip House, she notices that there aren't any pictures of Blake. So and this is like a grieving family, so why aren't there any family photos anywhere? And Nellie asks Lacey, and Lacey just flippantly says, Oh, it's just too hard, and she walks away. Now there's another time when Lacey is telling Nellie about Garnet's ear problems and that he has a cochlear implant in his ear.

But Nellie knows that these devices are visible and she can't see anything in Garnet's ear, so she asks again. And Lacey tells her that they've implanted, they've implanted it with a new technology, which actually the device gets placed into the ear, so you can't see it. Now, Lacey had explained that Garnet was very sick and he'd been through a lot and he practically grew up in hospitals. But again, Lacey saw a healthy boy. He had boundless energy and he was so happy and cheerful and outgoing. And Nellie also observed that whenever Garnet was around her house, he would eat anything that was put in front of him without issue.

He had a massive appetite. So again, Nellie asked the question: Why does Garnet have a feeding tube when he has no trouble eating? And Lacey, she could just like conjure up a lie without hesitation. She says that this was for sub supplemental feeding, and sometimes he wouldn't eat, so she would feed him supplements at night. And Nellie doesn't question this further. But of course, the teachers are seeing this too. So Lacey sends Garnet to school with prepared meals that she does at home because he's he's gluten-free, so she makes his meals and sends him in with the like a pat lunch box.

And Lacey tells the teachers sometimes he refuses to eat and that he's a poorly child. But the teachers they see the opposite. He has a great appetite. He loved playing games, he loved joining in with activities. And the schools see a little boy who really is thriving. But his mother on Facebook tells a different story. So she posts on Facebook that she is going to remove grains from Garnet's diet, and she says she's noticed that since he's been eating them, his behaviour and anger has been out of control.

She says poor guy is really struggling. But this is just not true. Oh this woman, I mean, come on. She's been lying her entire life. It's crazy. So we know Garnet, he loved school and he appeared to absolutely thrive. He had many friends and he loved playing with them all. He enjoyed everything. But tragically, Garnet would only be at the school for a few months. On January the 19th, 2014, five-year-old Garnet was taken to Nyack Hospital in New York. And he was so ill he was actually airlifted to Maria Ferreri Children's Hospital to the intensive care unit.

And doctors, they actually stopped Lacey from entering Garnet's room. His sodium levels were so high. The doctors state it's metabolically impossible for the body of a five-year-old to produce such high sodium levels. And they are suspicious. They say something's going on here. This isn't right. Well, that's where we're going to leave the episode today. Um, let me know what you think of the story so far. It's a shocker, isn't it? And it's just so sad. We have this perfectly healthy boy, and he's described by everybody as outgoing and bubbly and a joy, and he was just happy to be around and lovely.

And then you have this woman in his life that is destroying him, and it's it's in front of everybody, it's just so so sad. Um, I have already started writing the script for part two, so I will record the next episode within the next few days. Um, but do let me know what you think of the case so far, and I will be back next time with a conclusion. So, thank you everyone for listening. And I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care.

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