Hope Ybarra - Jailhouse Interview of Notorious Munchausen by Proxy Mother

Hope Ybarra’s story is probably one of the most horrifying known cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy in history. Over the course of four years, she subjected her second daughter, who was born prematurely, to medical procedures and surgeries from which the child almost died. This awful cycle of abuse culminated when her daughter went into anaphylactic shock after receiving an infusion and almost died. The exact details of Ybarra’s abusive relationship with her child are difficult to discern, mostly because Ybarra’s behavior throughout the investigation showed a long history of pathological lying. Her story is unclear, hard to believe, and incredibly disturbing. However, looking at the case of Hope Ybarra gives us insight into the nature of Munchausen syndrome by proxy and the underlying psychological issues that cause it.

Upon the birth of her first daughter, Ybarra claimed that her daughter had been born with cerebral palsy and had placed ankle braces on her for the first year of her life. However, when her second daughter was born prematurely, she saw a better opportunity to gain sympathy and shifted her focus to that daughter. Her first daughter was “miraculously” cured of cerebral palsy, an incurable disease. In 1998, right after she married her husband, she told him that she was going to school for her Ph.D. For one full year, she would leave her home on Tuesday and Thursday nights, claiming that she was attending classes. After the year was over, she proclaimed to her husband that she had finished her Ph.D. program and began printing “Ph.D.” all over her business cards and in her email signature. Her husband thought it strange that she could finish her Ph.D. program in one year part-time, but said that he was proud of her nonetheless. When the investigation began that led up to her conviction in 2009, it was discovered that Ybarra had never obtained a Ph.D.

In 2001, Ybarra claimed that she had been diagnosed with bone cancer. For the next eight years, her cancer hoax grew more and more complex. She claimed that the cancer had spread to her brain and lungs. She shaved her head and claimed that it was the result of ongoing chemotherapy. She learned sign language and got a cochlear implant, which she claimed was necessary as a result of the cancer’s destructive effects on her hearing. She even moved to Alabama for eight months to get treatment she claimed she couldn’t get anywhere else. While she was reportedly still receiving chemotherapy, she told her family that she had become pregnant with twins. She wore maternity clothes, named the twins, and arranged for a baby shower.

Five months into her pregnancy, she informed her family that she had a miscarriage as a result of the chemotherapy treatments. Ybarra took a large sum of money out of their bank account and held a funeral. She claimed that she had the twins cremated, got a commemorative tattoo for them on her back, bought a commemorative angel statue that they kept in the backyard, and put two sealed urns on their mantle, which were purported to be full of their ashes. These urns were later discovered to be completely empty. Hope Ybarra’s abusive relationship with her second daughter appeared to begin when she brought her daughter to the hospital and claimed that her daughter had a swallowing dysfunction, which prompted the doctors to surgically install a gastronomy feeding tube. Using this feeding tube, she was able to trick doctors into thinking that her daughter was suffering from terminal cystic fibrosis by feeding her daughter dangerous amounts of salt. As the test for cystic fibrosis involves testing the sweat for unusually high sodium contents, Ybarra routinely force-fed her daughter salt in hopes of achieving a false-positive result.

Since cystic fibrosis patients need to take many medications, Ybarra’s daughter had an intravenous central line, an access point straight to her heart, surgically inserted. It is believed that Ybarra was using this access point to continually remove blood from her daughter’s body, hoping that it would make her daughter look anemic. Doctors claimed that Hope’s daughter would arrive at the hospital very anemic and then be fine by the time she left, which was one of the first tips that there was foul play involved. Hope’s daughter nearly died when she received an iron dextran infusion for the anemia she didn’t have. Seemingly qualified for the job with her forged Ph.D., Hope Ybarra worked as a lab director at a pharmaceutical company, which granted her access to some very dangerous pathogens. During the investigation into Hope Ybarra, her employers claimed that she had been suspected of poisoning two of her coworkers.

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