Episode 4: Doctors

·27 min·2 clips

The coroner allows Jamie to hear Megan's inquest recording, uncovering she didn't have a brain tumor.

Megan's death is no longer distant. Jean's Facebook post gives it a time, a date and a terrible certainty: Megan's heart stopped on 28 March 2018 at 11.53. Then the investigation moves into the inquest. The host and producer Ruth arrive hoping the recording might answer questions about the brain tumour claim at the centre of the story. Even getting access feels strange. The woman playing the tape says that in ten years she has never known anyone allowed to hear an inquest recording after the fact. They cannot record the audio, so Claire, a stenographer, joins them with a steno machine that can capture speech with near tape-recorder accuracy. The room feels oddly formal and shabby at once, with red leather seats and wood panelling somewhere between a court and an old pub. For over two hours, they listen. The details pull them into consultation rooms with Megan, Jean and the doctors, closer than anyone seems ready for. The host says the experience feels intrusive. The account of Megan's death is somber and grim, with anesthetists and surgeons eventually giving up from exhaustion after two and a half hours. The case stops being a puzzle about claims, conditions and contradictions. Megan's physical suffering is right there, impossible to file away as theory. Then another part of the story opens. After a year of silence, Megan's sisters agree to speak publicly and describe a person they see as dangerous, manipulative and entitled. The episode sits with the inquest evidence, family testimony and the uneasy feeling that one tape can reveal a lot without closing the case.

As heard by us

A sombre inquest hour that makes the medical detail feel painfully close.

This inquest chapter moves away from broad mystery and settles into the cold procedural weight of Megan's death, with the facts laid out in a way that leaves little room for speculation.

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Why you'd press play

If you want an inquest-recording episode with hard medical detail and a very sombre tone.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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