Original subtitles

It seemed like every time we turned around,

they were telling US, "prepare yourself."

He wasn't gonna make it.

To think that somebody would accuse me

of wanting to hurt my son, it just...

My god, it just killed me.

If I was found guilty,

no cuddles at night,

no story time, no life at all.

For what?

For something I didn't even do.

A cleburne woman faces allegations

of medical child abuse,

including lying about her son's symptoms,

leading doctors to perform unnecessary surgeries.

She is also accused of starving her 13-year-old son, Colby,

who she says has been sick since birth.

Police have revealed that a casket

and a headstone for Colby

had been purchased by the family.

The allegations are in an indictment

which lays out everything

the prosecution says she did that's a crime.

The first two counts are saying that she fabricated symptoms

to get doctors to perform surgeries

that didn't need to be performed,

and that, that injured Colby.

The third count,

they say she starved Colby.

When she read that in my office,

she completely fell apart.

And then count four

is attempted murder.

They say that she actually, by doing this,

attempted to murder her son.

Look at all his dark hair.

I wanted to touch him and hold him so bad.

But it was like three, almost four months,

before I could even hold him.

When we brought Colby home,

we came home on a heart machine.

We came home on oxygen.

He was nine inches long.

A child born that tiny,

you know you're gonna have problems as you get older.

It seemed like every time we turned around,

they were telling US, "prepare yourself."

We just... We wouldn't give up.

To this day, we don't give up.

He's got heart issues.

He has very low bone density.

You know, he's got issues with his kidneys.

He's got, gastro reflux disease.

Sit on the toilet. Whenever you need to go, you just say it.

He takes several things to try to go to the bathroom.

Basically, his gi don't work.

It's just... It's just not working properly.

It's never going to work properly.

Unfortunately, he's going to be on medicines

the rest of his life.

Colby, look at mommy.

The doctors told danita "he's had all these problems,

"I mean, nothing seems to be working well for him,

"and we're afraid we've kind of

"reached the end of the road for Colby.

"There are no more surgeries that we can do...

"And we're gonna refer you to hospice."

Hi.

How are you? Good, how are you?

Running a little bit late, sorry. That's okay.

I know that you've never been on trial before for anything,

and you probably have never even been in a courtroom

and seen a real trial happening.

And you're gonna need to be strong.

The most hurtful thing

is gonna be people are gonna say things about you, you know?

And it's gonna go to your core.

And I want to toughen you up to that process.

Here's an affidavit by Connie.

"We determined that this child both desired and could

"tolerate solid foods and fluids

"and had minimal reports of pain.

"His mother refused to have any food or drink brought to Colby,

"stating his eating would only 'prolong the inevitable.'"

that's what she told me.

Connie told me that eating and drinking is prolonging him.

I didn't know what "prolonging the inevitable" was

until she said it to me.

"Prior to moving Colby to our suite,

"mother and father purchased a casket,

"headstone, and made all the funeral arrangements

"for Colby."

We would have never known what to do.

All the stuff that she said I did,

was all direction from her.

She would tell US, "I'm in control.

"We advise the parents what to do, but we have the final say."

She says, "on many well-documented occasions,

"the mother asked

"if there was just something we could give him

"to make him go to sleep and not wake up."

No. I just wanted him not to feel the pain,

where he could just enjoy a day where he would feel good.

They've taken it out of context.

I just said, "hey, you told US you're going to keep him comfortable..."

"And you're not." "...And he's not going to be in pain, but he feels everything.

"And he's not comfortable and he's not feeling good."

She says, "if intervention by authorities is not instituted,

"it is my expert opinion

"that this child will die prematurely."

Do you hear what she's saying? Yeah.

She's going to come in the courtroom,

she's going to get on that witness stand

and say, "his mother was trying to kill him."

Me and that accusation don't go in the same sentence.

I mean, I can't even wrap my head around it.

It destroys me as a mother, it destroys me as a human being.

It feels like somebody took a knife and stabbed it in my heart,

and they keep stabbing me over and over.

This is...

My whole heart, right there.

Colby, Colton and Clint.

It's my whole world right there.

First day of school.

They had to have the mohawk thing going there.

I know what's being said about me.

I'm frightened that the jurors are going to be blindsided

and I'm not gonna get a fair trial.

My view of danita is that she is absolutely innocent

of these charges.

I would far rather defend someone who was guilty.

That sounds weird,

but it doesn't feel weird to defend someone who's guilty.

What feels horrible is defend somebody

that you believe with every bit of your being is innocent.

You can get so into the details of this case

that it just... It just consumes you.

There's so much noise. There's so much junk.

I think the jury needs to understand, logically,

how we got from point a to point z.

I mean, this is not a child abuse case

where a kid has a broken bone.

He's been in a hospital setting,

under nursing and doctor care.

So what are they gonna accuse her of?

I mean... Well, they got it figured it out.

If it's malnutrition, well, it's on your watch.

Yeah. He's in the hospital.

Right.

Are you starving him?

How are you accusing the momma of malnutrition?

He's in your facility.

And if you remember counts one and two,

she made doctors perform unnecessary surgeries

by giving false and fictitious information.

Really? What?

What could the momma say

that could cause a doctor to cut on a child?

And god forbid if you question a doctor,

or things don't go exactly as predicted...

They're gonna turn the table on you.

This is a recipe of how an innocent, great momma

finds herself a criminal defendant.

Hey. Hi, mom. Hi, dad.

Hey, kid. -Just in time for lunch.

Is this from that pizza place down the road?

Yum! I suppose you're gonna eat mine.

I'm just probably gonna have one.

Maybe two.

Ellen's going to the doctor today, your aunt.

Do you know why? 'Cause her hair's falling out.

She told me last night, she said, "my hair's falling out

"because I'm so stressed about this." Yeah.

So she's going to the doctor, you know?

I don't think that y'all, in your age, should have to be put through this.

And I don't think that any of our family should be put through this.

But... We're all in the same boat.

Yeah.

There's my tree. Yeah.

That's it. It'll always be my hideaway tree.

Yeah.

But it's dying now.

It's all dying.

The only thing that danita's ever done

is to take care of her boys.

I can't fathom this.

I can't fathom... I'm an investigator.

I did 30 years with the fort worth police department.

If you're gonna look at a situation, investigate it,

from top to bottom.

How can you be guilty of

taking care of your children?

And that's what this is.

Danita is charged with deceiving doctors

into performing unnecessary surgeries,

which were, in fact, harmful to her child.

So, I wanna know,

were these obviously unnecessary surgeries?

'Cause if they weren't even unnecessary surgeries,

then the accusation, you know,

falls on the first prong. I mean, it's not even close.

I'm worried about the fact that

doctors, who people hold in high esteem,

are the accusers.

They have automatic credibility.

It's kind of like police officers.

Jurors start out believing police officers,

and they're going to start out believing

these medical professionals.

Hello. -Good morning.

Good morning, doctor. Come on in. Nice to see y'all.

How are you? Doing great.

How you doing? Nice to meet you all. You first.

You're too nice to me. Finally. Come on in.

We're primarily concerned

about the surgical procedures

that are named in the indictment.

Is there a case

for the ileostomy to be,

unnecessary?

I don't think you'd have a case at all for this.

Ileostomies, it's a fairly simple procedure.

It's like, okay, they'd gone through

all the normal, non-surgical interventions

for chronic and recurrent constipation,

let's try just to bypass the colon altogether.

So, let's give his colon a break,

you know, and make it not to have to do anything, basically, for a while.

Um, and if it works we can reattach it, you know?

Ileostomy takedowns are a normal procedure

for a pediatric gi doctor.

To me, that was the logical progression. Right.

It's not risky, it's not dangerous, it's certainly messy.

You have to deal with the whole bags and poop and all that fun stuff.

But it's, um...

I thought it was a reasonable thing to do at the time.

So it was totally reasonable? -Yeah.

And... You're not going to make a surgeon do anything, anyways.

You know, I mean, we have to justify what we do

to our peers, we have to justify to insurance companies.

If things go bad,

if this child dies in surgery or there's some complication,

and it goes to court, how do I justify this?

Right. And his ileostomy is easily justifiable.

I mean, I don't understand

why this is a criminal case at all, to be honest with you.

I mean, it's certainly not every child's story.

Most kids never go to the hospital at all,

but in a former preemie, genetic child,

I mean, this is pretty typical.

Wow.

He is so smart, and so level-headed,

and has such common sense.

I just wish the other doctors

and other people involved in this

had as much common sense and was level-headed as him,

and we wouldn't be here now.

Yeah, he's like, "I just can't believe this is a criminal case." But...

You're right. -Yeah, but here we are.

Here we are.

Say hi, Colby.

He's a little sleepy.

Colby, say hi. Hi!

Hi, Colby.

Wow!

Colby's primary problem was being able to eliminate waste.

But the worst part of Colby's life

was this six-month period of time

that started around August and September of 2015.

This is at the point when they tell danita

that Colby is terminal.

That he needed to go to hospice, and they're stunned.

Colby has always survived every...

Every problem he's ever had.

And in order to be referred to hospice,

there has to be a, prognosis by the doctor

that the kid's got six months or less to live.

And this was very, very devastating

to danita and Clint and her entire family.

Today, we're just going to talk about what you know,

and then prepare you for trial and what we're actually gonna ask.

So it's back in the hospital,

they came in and said, "well, there's nothing else we can do for him.

"We're going to have to bring in palliative."

That was a shock to everybody. Because...

They had a plan, they told US,

"well, you know, okay, we could do the ileostomy, but..."

If that doesn't work, they could take his colon out. Yeah.

Yeah, they never said, "well, if this doesn't work..."

"We're done." They never said that. It was all rosy.

"This is going to improve his life.

"This is gonna fix the problem."

And then they go, "nothing else we can do."-

"we're just gonna have to bring in palliative care."

I was like, "wait, wait, wait.

"That's for... that's for people that are on hospice.

"That's for, um, older people.

"That's for, um, cancer people."

"That's, you know, what... This is... this is a 13-year-old child

"that you said..."

Yeah. You know, "this is the fix."

Right. And how do you go from there to, "he's dying"?

I don't think Colby was terminal at all.

I think that Colby was sick.

He was definitely sick.

And the injustice that was done to danita tutt

was done to her by the doctors

at cook's children's hospital in fort worth, Texas.

That's when they said, "there's nothing else we can do.

"There's not another surgery we can do.

"There's not another fix we can do, but he's terminal."

And really, that's what brought about

this whole nightmare for danita.

Ronald McDonald house is a place that is located near the hospital,

so that people who travel, who have sick loved ones,

don't have to stay in a hotel.

You okay, danita? Yes.

Ronald McDonald house let Connie

have a room where she can take her... her sick ones to pass away.

Connie said to danita,

"we'll move him to Ronald McDonald

"and he can pass away there."

To be accused of hurting my own son,

I literally want to throw up.

It breaks my heart and shatters it into a million pieces.

It's okay, danita. I'm so sorry.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to bring you here.

No, I'll be fine. I've just gotta get a minute.

How are you, buddy? Good.

This is a very close family.

And they're all witnesses to

some key conversations and exchanges of information

that the state's witnesses may now try to deny.

We were down there every day.

Every day that he was at hospice? Right.

So you're there every day.

Did she starve him in your presence?

No. Never. -Did you ever see him eat?

There was always food there for him to eat.-

but when you look at your daughter,

do you see any truth to those allegations?

I had a 40-year career in this field,

and if it was something that I suspected,

I would have been the first to jump on it.

Daughter or no daughter? Daughter, no daughter.

Connie... she's the one that cut everything off,

no food or drinks.

But I continued to bring him food and drink.

Then on may 4th,

Connie wants to have a family meeting.

She said, "two weeks ago, I was positive

"Colby was dying of sepsis..." Blood disorder.

"The blood infection has miraculously disappeared."

Boom. These are her exact words.

"She stated that she did not know how this happened

"because Colby had not had a full course of antibiotics."

Here we're sitting here,

we've got a son that we think is dying...

And all of a sudden,

he's miraculously cured.

This is when she stated

she wanted all of US to leave while they observed

Colby alone for three days and nights.

We left him there that day.

Clint and danita called me,

and says,

"we can't do this.

"We wanna go get Colby."

Now, this is not a hospital.

This is not signing anybody in and out or anything like that.

This is a come-and-go place.

And I told them,

"do what you need to do."

You gotta look at this.

Connie has led these people down the path

of, "your kid is dying, you need to make the funeral arrangements."

She has led them down the path of death...

And Colby's starting to look a little better.

Danita's furious.

'Cause she still thinks he's dying,

although she's asking, "why is he eating?"

I think Connie got a little worried about Connie.

Danita called. She says,

"somebody's here again. There's two ladies at my door."

She says, "I think it's cps."

I thought it was no big deal,

because there hadn't been any type of abuse at all, ever.

And so, I just assumed we would explain what went on, and they would

make their report and get back to US.

And then, all of a sudden, he's gone.

A 13-year-old with complex medical issues

since birth, and a mother devoted to his care.

But child services have now taken that boy

away from his home, and the mother has been arrested.

Colby and his younger brother have both been

taken into cps custody.

We cried every night...

Because we had no idea where they took him.

Can you imagine not knowing where your child is?

That should tell you all you need to know.

If cps is dismissing their case, there is no case.

But yet, the district attorney

continues with the prosecution.

What I'm looking at now are Facebook posts

that they have gathered as part of their investigation.

And, this one here, for example...

"What an amazing night for wings of hope.

"Colby was recognized and did a speech

"that came straight from his heart. So proud and amazed

"at the journey our son has been on and overcome.

"Thank you to everyone who came."

They're trying to paint a picture here

of someone who, 24/7 is talking about

her son's medically fragile condition.

Even if she were talking about it 24/7,

so what? Why is that a crime?

They're saying she fits this profile,

this thing that they're calling

Munchausen by proxy syndrome.

In essence, she is the kind of person

who enjoys the attention,

that comes with having a child

who is medically fragile

and therefore, exaggerates symptoms or fabricates symptoms

in order to induce doctors to perform these medical procedures

that in turn, get her this attention

that people who suffer from this syndrome supposedly crave.

If they can put that label on her,

basically, in their mind,

that's going to prove that she's guilty.

We're now joined by Dr. Jamye coffman,

who is a child abuse pediatrician

at cook's children's medical center in fort worth.

What are you doing that others aren't doing?

Well, what we have at our institution,

we have a case management system,

and if they have concern, they'll send the cases to me.

And I review them, and I have five to 10 of those

a month on my desk that I'm reviewing.

Five to 10 a month? Yes.

Yes, that we're reviewing.

And then out of those, about one a month

rise to the level to be reported.

Interestingly enough, we have this little flood

of Munchausen by proxy cases

coming from cook's children's hospital

to the tarrant county da's office.

When I got this case and I was kind of researching it,

I found that there have only been like two convictions

throughout the whole United States.

And you have to ask yourself, "well, if this is very rare,

"why such an overflow in tarrant county?"

And, of course, I've looked deeper into that

and I know the answer, that we've got this doctor

over at cook's children's hospital.

A Munchausen expert, and she comes to court for everything

the district attorney's office needs, and they have now

convicted somewhere in the neighborhood of five women

of these crimes, and saying that they're crazy

by having Munchausen by proxy.

How about I blow, you tie?

I'll tie.

It is Colby's 16th birthday,

and he's been telling everyone that he's getting a car

for his birthday and he's going to

come pick everybody up and drive them around.

You know, we wanna try and have some kind of normalcy.

We wanna have a little, you know, some kind of fun.

We need to be able to

live like we're not dying inside all the time.

Have I thought about if I was found guilty?

Yeah. I mean,

you're talking about

never getting to see our boys,

never getting to attend another birthday party.

No christmases.

No Thanksgiving.

No cuddles at night.

No life at all.

Colby, how old are you today?

How old are you? Sixteen.

Sixteen.

Make a wish.

I did everything right,

and here I am in this mess.

My heart is racing,

my legs are shaking.

It's emotionally hard.

Why... how wouldn't it be emotionally hard?

I'm the... I'm a mother,

but, you know, for the first time,

we get to tell our story.

What's at stake is

two little boys not having their mom,

the disruption of the whole family.

This is life-changing,

this can ruin her marriage,

her freedom, her ability to

see her kids,

to raise them... yeah,

everything's at stake here.

You're critiqued on the way your hair is,

you're critiqued on the way you move,

if you flinch or if you blink...

I mean, I'm being critiqued on almost everything.

Most times I feel like I wanna vomit,

and the other times I feel I just wanna cry my eyes out.

Well, it's been kind of a crazy week.

We tore up the doctors.

Not a single doctor got on the stand

and said,

"she said he was in pain, and that's a lie."

They... they didn't call you a liar.

Um, and not a single doctor said

they so relied

upon any statement made by you

that that caused them to perform an unnecessary surgery.

So that's... That's great in our favor.

We've had a good week.

That doesn't mean next week is gonna be,

you know... we're gonna take blows, okay?

Okay. I'll see you Monday.

I feel like we had a good week.

I feel like the lies are starting to be exposed.

I feel like the truth is starting to come out,

and I feel like everybody that's in that courtroom is

getting to see a whole different side of the story.

Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts.

Am I taking hard blows? Yeah, I'm taking hard blows.

Do I just wanna, you know,

crawl out of my skin and run away? Yeah...

But I have to sit there and I have to take it,

and I have to be as strong as I can be.

Because I've stood on the truth from day one,

and I'm still standing to this day.

Okay.

It was so good yesterday.

You know, we got Connie!

And then,

we get up today, and we

get more of Connie,

and I felt like it was okay.

So they had one witness left,

and Dr. Jamye coffman is their clean-up lady.

I know when I'm getting hit,

and we haven't really taken a punch.

No.

But jamye coffman is there to throw that punch.

Right. -She sure is.

She claims she's gone through 11,000, 12,000

medical records,

and then she's gone back

and looked at your Facebook posts...-

...and she's found a discrepancy,

and therefore you're a liar.

And if you're a liar in your Facebook posts,

you're a liar to the doctor.

And if you lied to the doctor,

then you must be guilty.

But everything that somebody told me,

is what I put on Facebook. -Right.

And they may or may not be

reflected in the records. Correct.

So, looks like 29,

instances that she says

are gonna be lies,

to get attention because of Colby's problem.

So, let's see what the Facebook post says,

and then let's look for a medical record

that we could argue

supports your Facebook post.

Mechanical malfunction of the button device.

Just 'cause I didn't post on the day we did it,

I post a few days after.

That's fine. If the Facebook post says it,

this medical record says it too.

At least 20 blood transfusions. Twenty.

Twenty-one, 22, 23... She's pulling things out of her butt now.

Tellin' you, she's writing whatever she wants

for the district attorney.

Can I see that? Yes.

Let's keep everything together.

This, this is not from this book.

Okay, now wait a minute,

let's get something straight.

You don't pull from that book and hand Mike ware anything...

Well, no, he asked for... We'll never find it.

Okay. This is going to have to be organized.

Okay. Okay?

This is not panic time.

Okay, this is hold your together.

Yeah. Okay?

Amen.

She came in for one thing and one thing only,

to, you know, accuse me of Munchausen.

She's not a psychologist.

She's not a psychiatrist.

And I think Terri did a very good job of

making that known to the jury

that, "you're not qualified."

I think the last few days,

we've done our best to tell danita's story.

We have taken such an aggressive

plan, to call witnesses

and defeat this.

I don't see

the evidence to convict her. I do not.

Okay, so,

let's just kind of reassess where we are, guys.

It's Friday afternoon, it's the end of three weeks

of jury trial.

Jury's sitting there wondering,

"how much more of this am I gonna hear?"

And, you know, we have a lot of witnesses

that we can still call.

Let's think about the big picture.

Um,

they're gonna put on some kind of rebuttal.

So, any further witnesses we put on

has to be with that in mind.

That's right.

And any,

weaknesses they have

or exposure they have on cross-examination

has to be

kept in mind when we make that decision too.

Danita, I assume it's still very much your choice not to testify.

But I know the story better than anybody.

I know what was said to me,

I know what he was eating and drinking.

Danita, don't.

They would hang you out to dry.

It would be all about your Facebook.

Is it a crime to vent to people?

Is it a crime to talk to support groups? It is now.

You also know what they would do with it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Even though I could tell the story better than anybody,

I'm not going to let them

sink their claws into me

for days, trying to rip me apart,

more than what they've tried to rip me apart already.

I think it's wise. I think you don't put yourself through that.

You've gone through enough.

We're gonna win.

I can tell you.

They have not brought forth

any credible evidence

to convict danita.

She should be found not guilty so fast,

and that's what haunts me.

This is the worst part of the whole thing.

It's a waiting game, and it's miserable.

My gut twisted all night long.

I don't know if the jury is

sophisticated enough to figure it out.

We have to face,

the "what if."

What if you are found guilty?

I've been honestly hoping that they've put themselves in my shoes.

You know, the only thing I'm guilty of

is going and picking up my son,

you know, and I had every right to do that.

And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Unbelievable.

A mother from cleburne has been found guilty,

of starvation and attempted murder.

Danita was found guilty

of counts three and four of the indictment.

She was found not guilty

of counts one and two.

The guilty

was starvation.

And the guilty was attempted murder.

When he read count three and said "guilty,"

I instantly got sick and...

Started to cry, and...

My heart

hurt for danita having to sit there and...

Do that and hear that.

We're all feeling,

"did we do everything right for danita?"

It's so heartbreaking.

They will have her in solitary, basically,

and really,

that's for her own protection.

This is, you know, an alleged offense

involving a child. You know, it's...

It's a brutal world inside

the jail.

Are you there, hon?

Yeah.

Love you.

Go ahead, honey.

We will do that. -We will.

And...

Okay, I'll do it.

Stay strong, honey.

All right. All right, wear the full armor.

You remember what... What,

Paul said,

"wear the full armor."

All right, honey. Bye-bye.

God, I'm so angry.

Mom, don't wanna get up...

It's time to...

Happy birthday!

I really,

sincerely,

with every fiber of my being,

believe that there's been

a terrible mistake by the jury here.

They absolutely got it wrong, and...

Those two precious little boys of hers,

her husband,

her mom, her dad,

Clint's parents that live next door,

they're such a tight-knit family,

so close.

And this is going

to harm them all,

not just punishing danita.

Do you see my baby?

Isn't he precious?