Real Crime Profile

Monster Mom / Perp Writer

·26 min·2 clips
A mother tells doctors her three-year-old son has cerebral palsy and needs a feeding tube, but he can actually walk and eat normally.
The episode opens with host introductions and a brief personal update from Kathy Canning Mello about her shingles. The first case focuses on Caitlin Laura, a 31-year-old mother who falsely claimed her three-year-old son had cerebral palsy and needed a feeding tube. Hosts explain this as factitious disorder imposed on another, formerly Munchausen syndrome by proxy. They describe how she subjected the child to unnecessary surgeries, medication, and a wheelchair, with scars as evidence. The child was found to be eating normally and walking, with school officials and Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth reporting suspicions. The hosts note the child was starved to 1000 calories daily and had dog food in his feces, indicating further abuse. Sheriff Bill Weyburn, who has personal experience with medical child abuse, advocated for the child. Laura also opened three GoFundMe accounts for fraud. The second case involves Craig Silvey, a bestselling Australian children's author arrested for trading child sexual abuse material. Hosts analyze his books featuring boys as potential fantasy material and discuss how youth-serving organizations attract pedophiles. They reference studies from Butner Federal Correction Facility showing high crossover between child pornography offenders and hands-on assaults. The episode concludes with calls for thorough investigations into Silvey's access to children and vaccination reminders.

As heard by us

A profiler-led look at unnecessary treatment, inadequate feeding, and the unresolved questions around the child's father.

A child's medical abuse is framed through the bleak machinery of treatment he did not need: a feeding tube, a wheelchair, medication, surgeries, and severe underfeeding.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want feeding tubes, unnecessary surgeries, and questions around a father's knowledge to make the room feel colder by the minute.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
Listen to the show on