Psycho Mom

One morning in February 2002, she awoke early feeling "like somebody was pushing on my head," she says. "And then, like my joints started hurting again, and I felt like I was going to pass out." She drove herself to a hospital where she was treated for dehydration.

A few days later, feeling she was having a heart attack, Lisa made another ER visit, calling paramedics when Angel refused to take her. She describes the attending physician as "really, really rude." After suggesting she might have a ruptured cyst, the doctor did a "really rough and hard" vaginal exam.

"[He] started doing all kinds of things down there, like, I could feel him, like, rubbing...he never even told me whether I had a ruptured cyst or not; he never even mentioned it." The doctor's diagnosis was "Oh, you're just having a panic attack." He prescribed an anti-anxiety medication.

Lisa was indignant. "I told him, 'I was asleep when all this happened...I'm not having a panic attack.' And he didn't want to hear anything I had to say to him." Lisa became convinced that the ER doctor had left something inside her. "It just seemed like for some reason he wanted to, like, somehow hurt me," Lisa says.

Doctors prescribed medications for Lisa; worried about side effects, she rarely took them. She tells Dr. Crowder that one antibiotic "made me really thirsty, and it made me...feel like my body was swelling up and like I couldn't go to the bathroom and like my tongue was...getting fat and my face looked fat...And it made me really paranoid and scared.

"If I'd go somewhere, people were staring at me and stuff," she continued. "And I had even told my husband...when I go to pick up my daughter from school, there's this lady...she always keeps turning around like that and she keeps looking at me, and I don't know why she keeps doing that."

She denies hearing voices of God or Satan or demons but admits that during an MRI scan of her spine, she heard the machine talking.

"What did it seem like it was saying?" Dr. Crowder asks.

"Open up," Lisa says.

Scouring the Internet for information about her symptoms, Lisa became convinced at various times that she had lupus, mad cow disease, internal worms, seizures, multiple sclerosis, thyroid dysfunction, tuberculosis and diabetes. She brushed off any suggestion that her symptoms were psychological, not physical. Lisa turned to alternative medicine, including acupuncture, Chinese herbs and homeopathic remedies.

Between January 2002 and September 2003, Lisa made 90 visits to doctors or alternative therapists for treatment. Her obsessive fear of germs grew worse. She washed her hands 10 times an hour. Convinced she suffered from ringworm contracted from her mother, Lisa noticed rashes on her daughters as well.

To cure the ringworm, Lisa began laundering the family's linens daily and spraying Lysol on everything they touched: doorknobs, light switches, faucets, mattresses, even pillowcases. Some things were so contaminated, she thought--such as pillows and hairbrushes--that she threw them away. For the rashes, Lisa rubbed mustard seed and papaya on the girls' skin and made them drink Chinese herb potions.

Lisa's feelings coincided with other pressures in her life. She defended Misty's problems in school and her adoption of Goth-style clothing against Angel's criticism. Lisa felt Angel couldn't see that his son bullied Briana and Kamryn. Most of all, Lisa felt angry that Angel wasn't taking her physical symptoms seriously. Angel would later testify that he "blew off" his wife's constant complaints.

Nothing Lisa did soothed her fears. Seeing similar symptoms in her children, Lisa believed she'd passed on her illnesses to them. Though not a churchgoer, Lisa felt there was a spiritual dimension to their sufferings. She turned to the Internet to learn about Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism.

There she found concrete remedies. Lisa fashioned bracelets from red string and slipped them on the children's wrists, as recommended in Kabbalah to ward off the "evil eye"--negative energies transferred from the unkind stares of others. Lisa saw those kinds of looks from her neighbors, at school, when shopping.

To banish the evil spirits in her house, Kabbalah recommended sage. Lisa purchased the herb at a health food store and burned it throughout her home while reciting a mystical blessing. She washed her bad dreams off her hands each morning in the manner prescribed by Kabbalah.

On September 2, 2003, a frustrated Angel accompanied Lisa on yet another visit to Dr. Eduardo Wilkinson, a Richardson internist she'd seen several times before, beginning a year earlier. He would later testify that Lisa looked different during this visit: more anxious, very upset.

"She was deteriorating," Wilkinson said. "She was definitely worried about something." It could have been Angel's new job, which required travel. Lisa felt vulnerable to danger when her husband was gone.

After spending 40 minutes with her, Wilkinson suggested her problems were psychosomatic and referred her to Dallas psychiatrist Doyle Carson. Lisa agreed to follow up, but she never did. Her pain was physical, Lisa insisted to her husband, not in her head. Fed up, Angel refused to listen.