00:00:04
[music playing] NARRATOR: When a two-year-old
boy was rushed to the hospital suffering from brain seizures
and breathing problems,
00:00:11
doctors could not find
the cause of the illness. Blood pressure's
a little bit low.
00:00:16
We're going to make sure we
continue to monitor that. NARRATOR: But the
boy's sister provided
00:00:21
an important clue, the
possibility of a rare syndrome few had ever heard of. [music playing]
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In 1987, Ray and Tanya Reid,
along with their two children, had just moved to
Urbandale, Iowa.
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It was Ray Reid's fourth
job transfer in three years. My husband, every
time we moved,
00:01:07
it was an advancement for him. And I was ready. You know, any time. Anything he wanted to
do, I wanted to go.
00:01:13
NARRATOR: Tanya Reid was a
housewife who stayed at home to care for her children,
six-year-old Carolyn
00:01:19
and two-year-old Michael. Just two days after
moving to town, their youngest child,
Michael, stopped breathing.
00:01:27
Fortunately, Tanya was a nurse
and knew exactly what to do. She performed CPR
and immediately
00:01:33
took him to the
emergency room of Iowa Methodist Medical Center. It was fever of
viral etiology,
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dehydration, and vomiting. That was a pretty standard
diagnosis and situation. NARRATOR: After
he was stabilized,
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Michael was given a complete
physical examination. He had a prior history
of neurologic seizures,
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but doctors could not determine
what was causing them. A few months later, the
Reids moved into a larger
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unit in the same complex. Ray was working extremely long
hours and Tanya was lonely.
00:02:09
I think, in the beginning,
the relationship was OK. It was enough for Tanya
because she was working
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and she had enough outlets
in her life to, you know, keep herself busy and
feel that she was happy.
00:02:21
But when she-- you know, as
the relationship went on, and the years went
by, I think there
00:02:26
was an emptiness and a lack of
true affection between the two of them. NARRATOR: Three months later,
Michael had another episode.
00:02:34
He stopped breathing
and turned blue. His mother called
the paramedics. When they arrived,
Tanya was on the floor
00:02:43
of the living room
giving Michael mouth to mouth resuscitation. We're here to
help you out, ma'am.
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Please move aside. Thank you very much. He's not breathing. NARRATOR: At the
hospital, tests could not
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determine the cause of
Michael's breathing problems. The child's pediatrician
speculated that Michael might
00:03:07
simply be holding his breath. One week later, paramedics were
called to the Reid residence
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once again. Michael had another
breathing episode. She appeared very calm
for such serious natures.
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To be doing mouth
to mouth on a child, I can-- speaking for
myself, if it was my child,
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I'd be a nervous wreck. NARRATOR: Just
three years earlier, Michael's older sister,
Morgan, died unexpectedly
00:03:32
at nine months old. The autopsy said Morgan died
of cardiorespiratory arrest of unknown origin.
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Like Michael,
Morgan had a history of breathing problems and
numerous hospitalizations
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before she died. Morgan's death was a stressful
time for the Reid's marriage.
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We did have stress
when Morgan died. Any couple will go through
stress when there's a death
00:03:59
in the family, a child death. And we did stay together
through all that. NARRATOR: One month later,
paramedics were called
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to the Reid's home once again. Tanya successfully
resuscitated Michael before he
00:04:13
was taken to the hospital. Numerous medical
workups had been done to try to find
a cause of this,
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including a number of
pediatric specialists and pediatric subspecialists,
and nothing had been found.
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NARRATOR: Doctors
were mystified. What was wrong with Michael? I think doctors
don't want to admit
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that they're
infallible, that there's something they can't find. NARRATOR: Soon, doctors looked
deeper into Michael's breathing
00:04:41
problems. Doctors at Iowa
Methodist Medical Center couldn't find the cause of the
seizures and breathing problems
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two-year-old Michael
Reid was experiencing. A few days after they
returned to Iowa,
00:04:58
Michael stopped breathing again. Tony Collins and the other
paramedics were baffled,
00:05:04
and their logbook showed it. Things didn't fit together
that a kid would hold
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his breath long enough
to make him have seizures or quit breathing. NARRATOR: Then, on Sunday,
February 7, while Ray
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Reid was relaxing downstairs. TANYA REID: Come upstairs! Michael's in trouble!
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NARRATOR: He heard Tanya
scream from the master bedroom. What's wrong. - He's not breathing.
- What happened?
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I don't know. Call an ambulance. I'll be right back. NARRATOR: It had happened again.
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Michael was having
another breathing episode and was rushed to the hospital. The nurse on duty noticed
something unusual.
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On Michael's cheek were some
red parallel scratch marks, scratches that looked
like they had been
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made by the boy's fingernails. To the nurse, it
looked as if Michael had tried to remove
someone's hands
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from around his neck and mouth. Oh, nurse, I seem to
have cut my fingers. NARRATOR: Just a
few moments later,
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an interesting coincidence. Tanya Reid asked the nurse
to look at her finger. It was bleeding.
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I don't think I probably would
have noticed if this had been my child that I had a
scratch on my finger,
00:06:21
and I certainly wouldn't
have mentioned it to anybody. NARRATOR: Michael was
only two years old and too
00:06:27
young to talk, so it was
impossible for doctors and social workers
to interview him.
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But the scratch marks
on Michael's face and Tanya's bleeding
finger led doctors
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to suspect a rare form
of child abuse called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It first appeared in the
medical literature in 1977
00:06:49
and was named after Baron von
Munchausen, an 18th century soldier famous for
fabricating fabulous tales
00:06:57
of his battlefield exploits. Munchausen syndrome by
proxy describes adults who either fabricate
or actually cause
00:07:06
illness in their own children. They do this because they
crave the attention and concern
00:07:11
of the medical staff,
emergency personnel, and even family members and friends. When a social worker interviewed
the Reids at the hospital
00:07:20
about the possibility of child
abuse, Tanya was furious. Angry and hurt that
it would even be--
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surprized, shock. You know, what-- every
term probably went through, every form of emotion there is.
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NARRATOR: Tanya was given
a lie detector test. When she was asked if
she ever intentionally
00:07:44
caused harm to her children,
she said no, and passed. In addition to the
scratches on Michael's face,
00:07:53
there was a pattern
to the episodes, a pattern that was
cleared to paramedics from their time-dated logbook.
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These calls were
happening on the same days, and roughly the
same time of day, and that struck me odd as well.
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NARRATOR: Almost exclusively,
the calls to the paramedics were on Tuesdays
and Fridays, always
00:08:13
at about the same
time of the day, in the late afternoon
or early evening. For the most part, they
coincided with the days
00:08:21
and times Ray Reid was at work. The Reids were convinced that
Michael had a similar condition
00:08:28
to the one that killed their
daughter, Morgan, while they were living in Texas. To find out, medical
detectives in Iowa
00:08:37
decided to conduct
their own investigation into Morgan Reid's death. Morgan Reid was just nine months
old when she died in 1984.
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Morgan's medical records
revealed repeated visits to the hospital
emergency rooms in Texas
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for breathing problems and
seizures before she died. The cause of death listed
on Morgan's autopsy report
00:09:05
said cardiorespiratory
arrest of unknown origin. But three other words,
in the report leaked out,
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acute subdural hematoma,
a swelling in the brain which contains blood. At the bottom of the page,
the pathologist had written,
00:09:25
no evidence of child abuse. Iowa's medical
examiner was alarmed. The autopsy mentioned
having to fairly
00:09:35
fresh subdural hematomas,
blood clots around the brain putting pressure on the brain.
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Two distinct ones. He called them
recent clotted blood, but there was no evidence
of healing in this case.
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So he found a finding
that is abnormal. NARRATOR: Dr. Bennett did a
little investigating of his own
00:09:56
and discovered that
before Morgan died, her doctors noticed retinal
hemorrhages, bleeding
00:10:03
in the back of her eyes. This told Dr. Bennett that
Morgan's airway might have been
00:10:09
obstructed purposely
when someone was trying to cause unconsciousness. Dr. Bennett did not
believe that Morgan's
00:10:17
death was of unknown origin. He was convinced it was murder. The retinal hemorrhages
and subdural hematomas
00:10:27
came from trauma, specifically,
the violent shaking of shaken baby syndrome. Once those words
of shaken baby
00:10:34
are spoken as the
cause of death, there's no doubt
it's a homicide. NARRATOR: Because of Morgan's
death, prosecutors in Iowa
00:10:42
now fear that Michael's
life was in danger. Michael had been
hospitalized 18 times
00:10:47
in three different states. His sister Morgan
was hospitalized 20 times before she died.
00:10:55
Every single episode
noted Tanya's claim that she performed mouth
to mouth resuscitation
00:11:01
before emergency
personnel arrived. No one but Tanya
had ever witnessed the onset of a seizure
or breathing problem
00:11:09
in either child. We literally papered the
office wall with flow charts and timelines so we could
look for this pattern
00:11:19
that eventually resulted. NARRATOR: Prosecutors searched
the medical literature and discovered some
common elements
00:11:29
among those suspected of
Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Most are women. They demand more and more
tests and second opinions,
00:11:39
even after nothing
has been found. The child's illness does
not occur when in day care
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or with a babysitter. There is a family
history of other siblings with the same problem or an
unexplained sibling death.
00:11:54
Suspects have an
emotionally distant relationship with their spouse. 1/3 are in the medical
field, mostly nurses.
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The profile was a remarkable
portrait of Tanya Reid, including the fact
she was a nurse.
00:12:11
And that's not
really a surprise, because if you were going
to go to a physician
00:12:15
and make up something
about your child, if you knew nothing about
medicine whatsoever,
00:12:20
it's going to be harder to make
any kind of a convincing story. Whereas if you have some sort
of nursing background or health
00:12:26
background of some sort
and you go to a physician, you might be able to lie about
something more convincingly.
00:12:33
NARRATOR: And investigators were
suspicious because no one other than Tanya had ever witnessed
either of her children
00:12:41
having a seizure. I was the one that
was always there. In the circumstances, yeah, I
think any woman whose husband
00:12:50
works and she is a
home-- stays home and takes care of the kids,
it's gonna happen that way.
00:12:55
NARRATOR: The Polk
County Juvenile Court determined that Michael was
at risk living with his mother
00:13:01
and he was turned
over to foster care. For the next two months,
Michael had no seizures at all.
00:13:11
But prosecutors weren't
sure they could prove felony child endangerment against Tanya
Thaxton Reid in a court of law.
00:13:24
On August 10, 1988,
Tanya Thaxton Reid was arrested and
charged with felony child endangerment in the
case of her son, Michael.
00:13:35
The trial began a
little more than a year after the hospital
nurse saw the scratches
00:13:41
on little Michael Reid's face. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is
extremely difficult to prove.
00:13:49
There usually aren't
any witnesses, and juries have difficulty
understanding a parent's need
00:13:56
for this type of attention. If we have a problem with a
broken bone and understanding
00:14:01
how that's physical
abuse, imagine we come in with something called
Munchhausen syndrome by proxy,
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which is hard to spell,
and we're not quite even sure how to pronounce it. NARRATOR: When the trial
began, prosecutor Melodee Hanes
00:14:14
presented what
she believed to be a pattern of abuse
which began with Morgan and continued with Michael.
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Hanes argued that Tanya Reid
intentionally suffocated Michael on 18 separate
occasions before reviving him
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and taking him to the hospital. She also pointed out
that Michael did not have any breathing problems
or seizures during the time
00:14:41
he had been in foster care. The defense presented
a report from the court appointed psychologist
which said that Tanya
00:14:49
was completely normal. They also argued what
Tanya had claimed all along, that there
was a genetic cause
00:14:57
of Michael's seizures. The Texas neurologist
testified that both Michael and Morgan had
abnormal brains, which
00:15:06
possibly caused the seizures. Then, on the morning of
March 2, Tanya Thaxton Reid
00:15:14
took the witness stand
in her own defense. We were so nervous
about what was going on,
00:15:21
and sure enough, she. Took the witness stand
and you can never be sure until they do that.
00:15:26
And she got up there
on the witness stand and she looked very
prim and very proper,
00:15:32
and she sounded like the
very best PTA suburban mom that you could find. NARRATOR: Tanya Reid denied
killing her daughter, Morgan.
00:15:42
ATTORNEY: Did you kill him? No, sir, I definitely did not. ATTORNEY: Did you
shake her to death?
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No, sir. ATTORNEY: Did you bring
about these seizures? No, I did not. NARRATOR: Then, Melodee Hanes
began her cross-examination.
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MELODEE HANES: Don't you think
it would be an awfully big coincidence to know another
child, unrelated to you,
00:16:04
in your care that
had the same problem? TANYA REID: It-- it would. I don't know if it's
a coincidence or not.
00:16:12
MELODEE HANES: Has
that happened to you? TANYA REID: Not that I know of. MELODEE HANES: You
have never been
00:16:17
in charge of another child
that has had a similar problem to what your children have had?
00:16:23
TANYA REID: Not that I can
remember right off, no. When she said no,
I could have kissed
00:16:29
her because it was such a lie. It was such an egregious lie. NARRATOR: Hane's staff
had done their homework.
00:16:39
In 1974, when Tanya
was 15 years old, she was babysitting a child
who had stopped breathing.
00:16:46
Tanya immediately
called paramedics, saving the child's life. Tanya became a
local hero and won
00:16:55
the town's Good Neighbor Award. MELODEE HANES: Mrs.
Reid, would you tell the court what you
received a good neighbor
00:17:03
award for in 1974? And I'm handing you
state's exhibits 14 and 15. TANYA REID: I was
babysitting Scott Simmons,
00:17:15
and the child quit
breathing on me at the time. Mark Pennington is an
outstanding trial attorney,
00:17:23
but I have never seen a defense
lawyer turn whiter than a sheet like he did at that very moment.
00:17:30
And I was never
really sure if he actually did know about that. NARRATOR: The prosecution
was able to prove
00:17:36
that there had been a lifelong
pattern of abusive behavior. On April 28, 1989,
Tanya Thaxton Reid
00:17:46
was found guilty of felony
child endangerment in the case of her son, Michael. She was sentenced to
10 years in prison.
00:17:57
Not long afterwards,
Tanya Reid was indicted in Texas for the
murder of her daughter, Morgan.
00:18:04
PAUL HOUSTON:
Somehow, Tanya Reid had become overly
aggressive with Morgan and we felt that possibly
what had happened
00:18:14
here was that in an effort to-- to block Morgan's air,
she may have gone too far,
00:18:22
and she could not get the
child to start breathing, in desperation, frustration,
picked Morgan up and shook her
00:18:30
violently to start
her breathing again, and that, in turn, caused
the subdural hematoma.
00:18:38
NARRATOR: On December 13, 1993,
the Texas jury found Tanya Thaxton Reid guilty of murder.
00:18:47
She was sentenced to
62 years in prison. The verdict was
upheld on appeal. Despite the convictions,
Tanya Reid continues
00:18:57
to maintain her innocence. Yes. Always will. I'll maintain it forever. I'm having to do my
time, and I accept that.
00:19:07
I don't have to like it,
but I have to accept it, which I have. Most of them
deny, and they deny
00:19:14
even in the face of evidence. I mean, you could
show videotape, if you had the
type of Munchausen
00:19:20
by proxy where
there was some act that you could capture on film. If you showed it
to them, typically,
00:19:27
they'll continue to deny
that that's going on. NARRATOR: The Iowa trial
and trials in Texas
00:19:32
broke new ground in child abuse
cases across the United States. MELODEE HANES: Justice was done.
00:19:39
I felt a sense of
retribution for Morgan. But there is a poignant
sadness to all of it.
00:19:45
It-- it had destroyed
their entire family and so many lives. NARRATOR: Ray and Tanya
Reid are now divorced.
00:19:54
Ray remarried. Michael and his older
sister, Carolyn, both lived with their
father and his new wife.
00:20:02
Tanya Reid is eligible
for parole in 2009. It disturbs me
that she is probably going to go through life
denying what she did,
00:20:12
even though the court in Iowa
has convicted her of child abuse, two juries here in--
00:20:21
in Texas have convicted
her murder, and, you know, her son was taken from her
and never had another episode.
00:20:31
It's a strange syndrome
where someone just will never admit what they've done.
00:20:39
She was offered a deal where
she could have served maybe eight or 10 years
if she just admitted
00:20:44
that she had done this, and
she chose not to do that. And this is the price
that she's paying.
00:20:49
I mean, she will sit there
every day for 50 or 60 years, or whatever good behavior she
gets, and she will remember it,
00:20:56
and you know that
she knows she did. She killed her baby. [music playing]