Episode 5: Sisters

·27 min·1 clip

Rachel says she begged Jean on her knees for 'one bit of evidence' that Megan was sick — 'every single time, nothing.'

1. Believe in Magic Episode 5 focuses on testimony from two of Megan Bari's older sisters, Kate and Rachel, who grew up with Jean and witnessed patterns of illness and manipulation across the family. 2. Kate is in her late 30s and broke off contact with Jean about eight years before the episode was recorded; Rachel is in her early 40s and agreed to speak after years of seeking answers about her own medical history. 3. The episode's core question is whether Megan's illness narrative was an isolated event or part of a lifelong pattern of Jean inducing or fabricating illness in her children. 4. Kate describes a childhood ritual at the family's oak farmhouse table, where tins would regularly fall from above the cupboards at dinnertime — a detail she only later interpreted as Jean wanting to engineer an accident for the attention it would bring. 5. Kate recalls Megan staging a dramatic faint during a hospital visit while Jean watched Kate's face to see if she would react — 'Kate mimics Jean, looking very deliberately at Megan and back to Kate to see if she was going to react.' 6. The sisters documented a pattern: when a family member developed a condition, Megan soon reported the same — Kate's brother was on crutches, then Megan was on crutches; Rachel's baby was born on oxygen, then Jean announced on Facebook that Megan was 'on constant oxygen.' 7. Megan was pulled from school at age 13 when her private school closed and never returned — Kate describes this as another element of deliberate isolation, calling it 'the Peter Pan effect.' 8. Rachel remembers repeatedly asking Jean for 'one bit of evidence' that Megan was seriously ill and says she would have 'got down on my hands and knees' — Jean never provided any. 9. A letter Kate accidentally found from Boston Children's Hospital stated that Megan did not have evidence of a pituitary gland abnormality — the diagnosis Jean and Megan had been citing to supporters as the basis for the brain tumour claim. 10. Rachel recalls being the only one of four siblings given repeated cups of Bovril as a child while suffering kidney problems — Bovril is a high-salt drink that doctors advise avoiding for kidney conditions. 11. Rachel has already had two kidney transplants by her early 40s and suspects her daughter's premature birth may be connected; she says the transplants will have 'shortened my life eventually.' 12. Her medical records from childhood have since disappeared from the hospital and were never found. 13. Kate witnessed Jean giving Megan litre bottles of full-fat Coca-Cola before heart monitor tests at their GP surgery, explicitly to raise Megan's heart rate artificially during the monitoring. 14. Kate also recalls Jean and Megan planning, in another room, how to obtain morphine by pretending to be visiting London and showing up at an unfamiliar A&E — a plan Kate overheard in their kitchen. 15. Dr. Mark Feldman, a psychiatrist at the University of Alabama with 30 years' experience in medical deception, reviewed a briefing paper on the case and said it 'screams to me of medical child abuse or Munchausen by proxy' and was 'almost a no-brainer.' 16. Feldman says he is aware of 8 to 10 cases in which the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted wishes to children who were never ill, and notes he has seen many cases similar to this one. 17. Both sisters and Dr. Feldman discuss who was 'driving' the illness narrative — initially Rachel blamed both Megan and Jean equally, but after 'considering the grooming aspect' she changed her view: 'no actually, it's Jean.' 18. The episode handles a genuinely difficult subject with care — Jamie Bartlett's narration is reflective and measured, the sisters' testimony is presented as one perspective, and no conclusions are stated as fact. 19. Best for true-crime listeners drawn to psychological complexity and long-arc investigations with multiple first-person witnesses. 20. Less suited for listeners who want a fast-paced narrative — the episode is methodical and builds through accumulated detail rather than a single dramatic reveal.

As heard by us

A careful family portrait episode where proof matters as much as the claim.

The episode stays close to the family strain at its center, using the sisters' memories of ordinary dinners and the rolling tin to show how normal life sat next to a growing sense that something was badly wrong.

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Why you'd press play

If you want an unsettling documentary episode about family testimony, evidence, and doubt, start here.

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