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If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further.
into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen in the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.
From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. There is another way. You've found Chameleon, Season 8. And this is Dr. Miracle. A production of Campside Media. The Bench.
So Don Cowley was suing Robert Young for negligence and fraud. And now the jury had finally reached a verdict. They filed into the courtroom.
And one of the jurors looks at me and winks. Time slowed down for Dawn in that moment, the way it slows down when you know you're experiencing something life-altering. And it slowed down for Dawn's lawyer, B.B. Fell, too. And so when the judge came out and read the verdict, and everybody on the jury turned and looked at Dawn and watched her just melt down into tears.
when the judge read that they thought she had zero percent fault. The jury said none of this was Dawn's fault, and Robert Young was 100 percent liable. It was a stunning symbolic victory. We get into the courtroom, and I just start hearing numbers.
91 million, da-da-da-da-da, you know, 5 million, and I'm just going, and all my lawyers are just stone-faced cold. I just, you know, I needed the reassurance of what I thought I was hearing was what I was hearing. And so, yeah, they awarded me $105 million verdict. $105 million. A staggering sum.
It would make the rest of Dawn's life easier and would make her kids rich for the rest of their lives. It would also send a clear message about the consequences of duping sick people into giving up on conventional medical treatments in favor of a fake miracle.
And afterwards, all the jurors could talk to you. And the jury came and talked to me and they said, we just wanted to send a real big message. They sent a message, that's for sure. But would Dawn ever see the money?
From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Dorothy Street Pictures, I'm Larysson Campbell, and this is Dr. Miracle, Episode 6. The file in unabused is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida.
In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant.
one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes. From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
The wheels of justice turn slowly, as they say. It can take months or years for a trial to happen. And then when it does, there are new motions and appeals, more slow-turning wheels. This means Don won't get any money until Young has exhausted all his options in the court system. That takes time, something Don doesn't have. So Don's victory isn't the end of the story. It's just the middle.
And she was about to see that victory get whittled down. She started with a $105 million award. And after all those motions and appeals... The judge reduced it, and this is just normal, they'll reduce it to $28 million, which is still substantial. Over $20 million. Still a huge amount of money. But then, could Young shell out that much money?
One of the things that we had a hard time with is, okay, let's say we get this big judgment. Does he have the money to pay it? And June was the one who was telling us, yes, he does. He has a ton of money. And it wasn't reflected in his books. She said that a lot of people would pay in cash. And he just had these stacks of cash that he was keeping in a safe in the house itself.
Let's set aside the fact that keeping tons of cash and a safe in your house is sort of insane. Luckily, Beebe didn't just have June's word to go on alone. That's thanks to Shelly Young for divorcing Robert when she did. Now there were records of Robert's holdings, bank accounts, real estate, and other property. We were able to get at his divorce proceedings because after the verdict came down,
He and his ex-wife finalized their divorce where he gave her some things for very cheap, like gave her a property. I think it was the Alpine property. Still, Young was good at hiding his money. After the verdict, Beebe believed he transferred assets to his kids so Dawn wouldn't be able to get it. But since the divorce happened around the same time as the trial, Beebe was able to negotiate with Shelley to get some of the money from her.
See, there was always a question of just how responsible Shelley was, too. After all, she owned the ranch with her husband and co-authored his bestsellers. So Bebe told Shelley that they'd leave her alone if she gave up some of the things she'd gotten in the divorce. She was getting royalties from his books, and so we were able to unwind some of that, cut a deal with...
his ex-wife in order to get some money in Don's pocket. In my lawsuit, in order for us not to have come after her, she had to agree to take off her million dollar lien on the ranch.
And she had to let go of her royalties. So... So you, do you get her royalties now? I've just started receiving some royalties. The irony is that the only money Don can get out of Young comes from his books, from other people reading about and buying into his lies. It still doesn't come close to making her whole. And it doesn't come close to satisfying the full amount of the verdict.
But it's something. Between raising her son Jonathan, who's now 13 years old, and dealing with cancer treatments, money is tight. It's difficult for Dawn to work. She's in constant pain. In fact, she had to pause our interview several times to take her pain medication. I want to stay ahead of my pain. Yes. I might need to take some meds. Yeah, sure. Let's do it. Take a little break. That's great. The cancer and the treatments have made her bones weak and prone to fractures.
Dawn is only 50 years old, but she's already had a hip replacement, which failed. And it's so difficult for her to move around, she has to coast between pieces of furniture just to get across her apartment. Here's Caroline and Dawn. She's not in a good place financially. No, I'm not. In fact, I am, you know, I have to go work on my, and it's 10-hour, 12-hour days, and
And I'm in tons of pain, and I have to do that, you know, at least once or twice a month to make ends meet. Dawn has an Etsy shop, Dawn Discovered, where she sells patterned caftans and robes and beaded jewelry. The products are beautiful. It's one of the only jobs she can do with her cancer. But what about Robert Young? After his criminal trial and Dawn's civil suit, not to mention all the sickness and death,
Did he learn his lesson? My producer Lily and I went to find out. We heard that Young was speaking at an event called the Conscious Life Expo held at the Hilton LAX. So we bought tickets. It was a bright February day in LA when we arrived at the building.
A big glass structure with tall palm trees in the front and architectural flourishes that look like a deconstructed geodesic dome. It's the type of place where you'd expect to find a conference of dentists, not something like the Conscious Life Expo, which is New Age meets Wellness meets QAnon. Some of the sessions on the Expo calendar sounded kind of cool, like a kundalini yoga class. Others were more, shall we say, out there.
Like one called "Working with Divine Light Beings." It's exactly what it sounds like: a lecture on how to talk to aliens.
Actually, there were a few of those. The expo was on two floors. We walked around upstairs before heading downstairs to the rabbit hole room, where Young would be speaking. It's the room where the more fringy talks were held, which is saying a lot at a conference where lectures on intergalactic communication are not considered fringe. Downstairs, where Young is speaking, has a different vibe.
Lower ceilings, smaller booths, dimmer light. The rabbit hole room is big. There's seating for about 150 in there, but only about 30 show up. We get there and sit near the back. Young is already on stage. He's wearing dark jeans and a navy blazer, a light blue shirt and a blue tie. His jeans are belted and his stomach hangs over it. His hair is more white than blonde.
The blazer isn't cut for him. Men's warehouse style, with wide shoulders and a boxy fit. His son Alex is there too, wearing a beanie and a Henley shirt, playing a sound bowl as people file in. Thank you, Alex, for being here and sharing those beautiful sounds that help to open up our chakras. Yes, they're real. The biofield has a body. The body is...
does not have a biofield. We are energy. We are light energy. We run on electrons. And that's why I talk about pH. So when we're listening to this... So he's still talking about pH, still peddling his nonsense cure. But that's not really what he's here to talk about today. His lecture is called Liberty vs. Tyranny. We're going to talk about truth versus deception.
And you can see the title there, Liberty versus Tyranny, COVID-19.
I'm the only scientist using scanning, transmission, microscopy and spectroscopy to identify the non-disclosed ingredients in the vaccines. To inoculate 8 billion people with a foundational material that's magnetic. Once they turn the switch on this, people will be dropping over dead.
Yeah, that was exactly one person in the audience clapping for him. I had so many questions for Young, not about his COVID vaccine conspiracy theories, but about the alkaline diet and Miracle Ranch and what happened to the people under his care.
So I walked up to him to talk, even though it was noisy. I started with a softball. If there's one thing you could convince, like, the great republic of, what would it be?
One thing that they should measure their pH and maintain it at 8.4. Because if you don't, you're going to be a victim. You're going to get injured. And you can simply do it by taking five grams of baking soda in water two to three times a day. Is that easy? It's that easy. Hold on. Now he's telling me that all the green juice, the damn avocados, the IVs and colonics and beratement when you chewed, they
They didn't matter? The answer was just baking soda? Dissolved in a glass of water? Then, completely unbidden, he launches into a defense about how he's not to blame if his baking soda cure doesn't work.
You are the cure you want to be. You are the health you want to be. You are the fitness you want. I can't do that for you, but I get blamed for it if it doesn't work for you because you weren't brave enough or intelligent enough to actually say, "Hey, I'm going to take possession of my body." You weren't brave enough. You weren't intelligent enough. All these years later, it's still never his fault.
But it's not just that people are blaming Young for their problems. He says they're actively trying to take him down. — I was gaining momentum. People were listening to me. I was re-educating the world.
They can't have that. You can't have re-education like us. That changes their whole plan. The plan is to dumb people down. The bottom line is this is so frigging corrupt, you have no idea. And that's why they want me silenced and they want me dead. What about the people, because some of your former supporters are now silenced.
saying like kind of like or really kind of coming out against you why is that is that part of name one well don yeah no i agree i'm sorry don's an actor don's an actor yeah it's not a real name from the beginning from the beginning ever supported you that's not about support this whole thing was a setup a governmental setup an fbi cia state to take me down
This was definitely the strangest thing Young said to me. If Dawn is a government plant and this is all about taking down Young, she sure fooled me. It seems that Young has gone so far down the conspiracy theory path, he's paranoid about everything. It's no wonder the Conscious Life Expo put him in the rabbit hole room.
In a weird way, it's not a big surprise that Young has entered today's popular "conspiratuality sphere," where wellness, new age ideas, and conspiracy theories meld into something that somehow transcends right and left politics. Here, Young is seen as anti-establishment, a maverick healer on a mission to save people from greedy pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and government agents.
It's a perverse space where the fact that Young went to prison for medical quackery is not a strike against him. It's a credit to his commitment to the cause.
It also helps that today, Young has a slick website and social media presence. He sells his supplements, he sells products. He doesn't post videos to YouTube anymore, but he's very active on Rumble, which is basically YouTube for conspiracy theorists. And when I testified at the International Tribunal of Natural Justice in Bali, Indonesia,
and testified the fact that the reason I was persecuted is because I was too successful, too successful in helping people and empowering people and educating people and reversing serious illness, serious, and I say this with a hyphen, dis-ease.
That's Robert Young talking on Veritas, a podcast that covers things like UFO sightings and the Flat Earth Awakening. It's yet another platform where conspirituality, you know, conspiracy plus spirituality, is taken seriously. Hearing from students at Morehouse College, the largest black university,
and medical school in the United States. They took one of my books, Sick and Tired, I highly recommend it, Reclaim Your Inner Terrain. And that book was used as a text for one year, one year only. The course was canceled because the university did not want to lose its funding, you see, who really controls the education of medical doctors.
which really controls the dissemination and narrative of information. Even though Young is occupying this conspirituality space, he also has followers who seem like regular mainstream types: a Danish grandmother with cancer, a young woman with lupus. And they're giving testimonies on his website, just like Kim Tinkham and Don Kali did.
That made me wonder, why is it so easy for so many people to believe Robert Young and other alternative medicine gurus like him? They're good at co-opting things that aren't, that shouldn't be considered alternatives. Dr. David Gorski is an oncologist who specializes in breast cancer. And for the last 18 years, he's also written a blog debunking medical myths and quackery.
Lately, like Robert Young, he's spent a lot of time writing about COVID vaccines. Dr. Gorski says that one way quacks get people to believe them is by mixing some truth in with their lies. For instance, you know, there's nothing alternative about certain lifestyle recommendations like, you know, exercise, resistance training, cardio. But then somehow they try to lump that in with alternative medicine.
I mean, no, you know, get out and exercise. It's good for you. You know, eat a diet that's less fat, more vegetables, etc. You know, they'll like sell that as being some sort of alternative recommendation. There are some good things about the alkaline diet, like its emphasis on eating more vegetables and less processed foods. And that is based on science. But Young offered so much more than just a recommendation for more avocados and kale.
What he was really selling, especially to his sickest patients, his terminal patients, was hope. Is there some argument to be made that he does have something valuable to offer, like by giving those people hope? I would phrase that question differently. Is it of any benefit to give someone false hope? And if someone's pursuing false hope,
They're usually also foregoing potentially effective palliative care that could make whatever time they have left less unpleasant. At Miracle Ranch, Robert Young told patients to stop taking their pain medications. I want to talk for a minute about one of the victims, Tracy Bodily-Cole, who had stage four cancer when she went to stay at the ranch. Here's her sister-in-law, Jane Bodily, talking about her experience. We didn't do any pain meds because he said that the
The medication slows down the healing process of the body. So how you get out of pain is by alkalizing it. Tracy spent so much of the time and money she had left trying to alkalize herself at the ranch. She was in terrible pain the whole time. Time is your most valuable commodity. Like, what the hell? She took her time and energy, which is what she needed to be with her family.
When you have limited time and you take it from someone, you've taken the most valuable thing they have, especially when they should be spending it with the people they love and their children. I mean, you think of just the time her children lost with her, the time they needed to be with her. They weren't. He took her time and energy.
away from the people who needed her most. And for that, I'm really angry. And all these people just paid all of their entire life savings to this man who preyed on people who were very sick and who were very vulnerable and who were desperate. And he took everything he could from them, finances, time, money, their health. That time, time that could have been spent in palliative care with family...
was instead spent in pain on the ranch. He played with every aspect of their life, and he preyed upon people who were weak and vulnerable and desperate. And he's still doing it. She's right. It does seem that even after everything — the criminal trials, the prison time, the multimillion-dollar award for Dawn —
Robert Young is still peddling his miracle cure, selling his lies, books, and supplements. And Dawn's lawyer, Bibi Fell, says she didn't see Young express any remorse for the suffering he caused. I think Robert Young is guilty of knowing that his treatments were fake.
I think he's guilty of knowing that he would hurt people and not help them when he gave them to him. And I think it was absolutely a foreseeable consequence that people who subjected themselves to him and his theories and his treatment would die. So I absolutely think he's guilty. So for those who feel they want to stop Robert Young, how can it be done? Investigator Jim Clark thinks there may be only one way to do it. I mean, the only thing we can do is just keep prosecuting him and hope that
But Robert Young doesn't run the Miracle Ranch anymore. As far as we know, he isn't administering IVs. Although it seems he is still advising people to drink baking soda for their cancer instead of getting conventional medical treatments. So whether that punishment will ever come is doubtful.
In his Miracle Ranch days, Robert Young didn't act alone. He had his employees, of course, and many of them regret their involvement. A few remained his loyal followers and narrowly avoided prosecution. And then there's Young's family. His son Alex, who had worked on the ranch as a massage therapist, is still working with his dad.
He was the one playing the sound bowls and schlepping Young's books and supplies at the Conscious Life Expo. And Robert Young has said on a podcast that his relationship with some of his family is good, and even implies that they told him to try to move past his problems. If I could rewind the clock and do anything different, the answer is absolutely not. Does it pain my heart to know that what happened to me
also affected those who care about me and love me. So in taking consideration of that, Dad, your work is important, but we need you. We love you.
So what about Shelly Young? We reached out to her multiple times, and she didn't get back to us. But it seems like she was both complicit in her husband's actions and his victim. He humiliated her. He was mean to her. He cheated on her, blatantly and often. After everything that happened, she moved back to Utah permanently.
Unlike Robert, she left the wellness sphere completely. Now it seems she teaches at an art studio in Alpine, Utah.
Others who were at the ranch didn't stop believing in alternative medicine, even those who grew to hate Robert Young, like Dessa the cleaner. I believe in alternative medicine. I'm not one that follows medicine. I cured myself with cancer with essential oils and vibrational work. Dessa draws a line between what she sees as legitimate alternative medicine and Robert Young's criminal actions.
She thinks Young was legitimate at the beginning. He might have started out wanting to help people, but I think sometimes we get consumed with our own consumption. And, you know, maybe it just steamrolled him. And so now he just had to play the part and make money, money, money, money.
Caroline Robitaille doesn't think it was all about the money, though. He's looking for fame, I think, more than money. He wants to feel needed and wanted and loved, and he thinks he can do it through this and be the smartest boy in the room and the one that's going to heal you. And that's why I think he really believes this stuff. And I think he's lied to himself for so long that he's bought into it.
But Dawn thinks it's simpler than that. He's a narcissist. We know this. And he's a pathological liar. And so it's like, how do you sit there and...
tell someone like me, a stage one cancer patient, that and now I'm stage four and living a torture, you know, for the most part existence. It wasn't for my extreme positive nature, but I suffer, suffer greatly and my whole family has to deal with it. And how do you look at a young woman and steer her away from what could save her? And how do you sit there and say, do my protocol,
Pregnant or not, and knowing that you haven't cured one person. You haven't cured one single person. Whether or not Robert Young believes in what he's selling, the results are the same. People suffered. People died. Dawn is one of the few cancer patients who survived Young's protocol. So-and-so, dead. So-and-so, dead. Everyone, dead. I'm the only, like, one still alive.
What keeps Dawn going, her will to survive, is her children. And she wants to stick around as long as possible for her youngest son, Jonathan, the one she was pregnant with on the ranch, that adorable blonde toddler drinking green juice in a testimonial for Young's website. He's 13. He's going through puberty. He's going through a really rough... Just 13. Having to, for him to have to see his mom, he says it.
Don doesn't know how much time she has left. She got a prognosis of three to four years, about six years ago. That's thanks to new treatments that didn't even exist back when her oncologist gave her a stage four diagnosis.
He said, "Your type of cancer, which I was told was the worst, is also, is now, because of modern day advancements, the best to have. Mine is now the best." "The types of chemotherapy that exist." "Right, like I'm on one right now that wasn't, didn't even exist when I first got diagnosed metastatic." But the treatments only work for so long, as anyone who's lost a loved one to cancer knows.
As we were finishing this podcast, truly in the final weeks, Dawn was admitted to the hospital with an infection. Days passed without any news. Then Caroline called. She told me that Dawn's cancer was back and the doctors at the hospital didn't have any treatments left to give her. Realistically, Caroline said, she only had a few weeks to live. So Dawn went home on hospice. And not long after that, she passed away.
I wish I had a better ending for you. I wish I could tell you that with new treatments for breast cancer being developed, Dawn had a reason to hope. But I don't. All I can say is, I hope this story makes it clear that it's one thing to believe in miracles. It's another to tell people to risk their lives for them. Dr. Miracle is a production of Campside Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Dorothy Street Pictures.
The show was hosted by me, Larison Campbell. I reported it with Lily Houston-Smith, our producer and also our field recordist. Shoshi Smolovitz is our managing producer and editor. Our executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriatis and me, Larison Campbell. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producer is Catherine St. Louis. Our sound designer and mix engineer is Michelle Macklem. Studio recording by Ewan Lai-Tremuin.
Story editing by Amy Padula. Fact-checking by Julia Case Levine. Additional help from Rachel Yang and Rajiv Gola. Campside Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriatis, Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. Thanks to Emma Siminoff and the Campside's operations team, Doug Slawin, David Eichler, Destiny Dingle, Ashley Warren, and Sabina Mara.
Thank you also to Mo Felix and Dr. Robert Gaines, whose interviews did not make it into the show, but whose stories and insights were invaluable. And thanks to the team at Dorothy Street Pictures, Julia Nottingham, Becky Reed, Jess Watts, Debbie Lowe, and Lily Kaplan. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. It really does help spread the word. One final note. Don Calley passed away on May 30th, 2024.
We're grateful to her for sharing her story.
