Investigator Mike Weber recently shared exclusive details on how he uncovered the dark web of lies spun by Hope, a woman who deceived those around her for years. Her twisted story shocked the nation, revealing how a mother used Munchausen syndrome by proxy to harm her young daughter for attention.
Hope’s life seemed heart-wrenching at first. In early 2009, after battling bone cancer for eight years, she was told that there was no more they could do. She had been through the ringer: she’d fought Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer, lost twin daughters during pregnancy, and even lost her hearing due to cancer spreading to her brain and lungs. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she also had a five-year-old daughter suffering from cystic fibrosis. Hope’s world was filled with tragedy, and the sympathy she garnered seemed justified.
However, it wasn’t long before her story began to unravel. The chilling truth was that none of it was real. Hope had faked her cancer and her daughter’s illness. She had even gone so far as to poison her daughter to make her appear sick. In fact, she had no cancer, wasn’t pregnant with twins, and never lost her hearing. The “treatment” she’d been undergoing was all a lie.
Hope’s young daughter, who had undergone countless medical procedures, never had cystic fibrosis. In a shocking revelation, it was discovered that Hope had faked a PhD in chemistry to land a job in a lab, where she stole pathogens and used them to make her daughter sick. She even altered sweat tests with salt to fake a cystic fibrosis diagnosis and drained her daughter’s blood to create an illusion of anemia.
Mike Weber, the investigator assigned to the case, recalls his first meeting with Hope, saying, “She was extremely manipulative.” By the time Weber interviewed her, he had already uncovered much of her deceit. When confronted with the evidence, Hope initially lied but eventually admitted to some of her actions, though she never told the full truth.
Hope’s lies were exposed after her mother, Susan, began to question the medical claims Hope had made. Susan’s investigation led her to uncover the shocking truth. When Susan couldn’t find any medical records of Hope’s cancer, she grew suspicious. Her suspicions were confirmed when she found that Hope’s supposedly deceased twins had no remains in the urn Hope had presented. The family also discovered that the tests for cystic fibrosis came back negative.
Hope’s daughter had been poisoned with pathogens that Hope had access to at work. When Weber investigated further, he found that the five-year-old had tested positive for harmful bacteria multiple times, and he learned that Hope had intentionally caused her daughter’s anemia. In one instance, the girl even went into anaphylactic shock after a treatment meant to help her anemia.
Despite the immense pain Hope caused her daughter, she remained unremorseful. When Hope was arrested in October 2009, she pled guilty to charges of serious bodily injury to a child in exchange for a 10-year sentence. The young girl, thankfully, fully recovered.
Following Hope’s release from prison in 2019, author Andrea Dunlop interviewed her for her podcast. In the interview, Hope claimed she was remorseful, but Dunlop, who had seen through her lies before, wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think she genuinely acknowledged what she had done,” Dunlop remarked. “I think a lot of Hope’s pain was about how this has affected her life, not her remorse.”
Weber, reflecting on the case, stressed the importance of verifying everything a suspect says. He learned the hard way that, in cases like Hope’s, offenders will stop at nothing to manipulate and deceive those around them. Now, he’s pushing for a new state law to address child medical abuse like this, one that doesn’t fit neatly into existing legal categories.
Hope’s story is a terrifying example of how far someone will go to deceive others, even at the expense of their own children’s well-being.