Sacrificing Rebecca
For 14 years, Laurie Recht struggled with her daughter’s illness. At least, that’s what she wanted people to believe.
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 A Life In 14 Years: Rebecca Recht over the years. |
[December 19th, 2007]
At 7 pm on Thursday, Oct. 11, Sarah Starr asked her husband to make a detour on their way to Borders—it was their sixth wedding anniversary, and she wanted books—so they could drive by the Vancouver, Wash., home of Laurie Recht and her 14-year-old daughter, Rebecca.
Starr was concerned about Rebecca and she had not heard from Laurie since Monday, highly unusual for a woman in the habit of calling five times a day.
Pulling in front of the small rental home in Fishers Landing, Starr could not tell whether Laurie’s Ford Taurus was in the garage. The lights were out inside the house; the shades were drawn. Starr rang the bell, knocked, called out. No answer. She asked a neighbor if he’d seen Laurie. Not since Monday, he said, trash day. Since she’d quit paying her garbage bill, he’d allowed Laurie to stow her trash with his for pick-up. But he had a key to Laurie’s house, and he let in Starr and her husband.
Inside, Starr could hear a television. Before she walked the steps to Laurie’s bedroom, before she felt the cold air from the room’s air conditioner, she sensed what she’d find. Laurie was on the bed, blood on her lips; beside her was Rebecca, so slight she barely made a dent beneath the covers, dried vomit around her mouth. Starr and the neighbor called 9-1-1. An EMT told Starr the condition of the bodies indicated the pair had been dead several days. Clark County Sheriff’s Department Detective Rick Buckner put the probable date of the deaths as Wednesday, Oct. 10. Starr says she knew, in her “heart, it happened Monday.”
Monday, Oct. 8, was supposed to be a banner day for Laurie and Rebecca. As in previous years, they were guests of honor at a concert by Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul&Mary. Yarrow had come from New York to sing for Rebecca at Park Academy, the private school for the dyslexic she attended in Lake Oswego. Through a series of benefits, Yarrow raised part of Rebecca’s $14,000 annual tuition. As she had in the past, Rebecca joined Yarrow onstage, where they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” as classmates cheered and The Lake Oswego Review took photos. Following the concert, Laurie drove Rebecca home and, at some point, gave her daughter a fatal overdose of prescription drugs and swallowed the same herself.
The deaths blindsided many in the Portland area. Former and current teachers, parents and therapists struggled to make sense of how a mother so outwardly devoted to her disabled daughter could take her life and then her own. The Oregonian story about the murder-suicide was headlined “Vancouver mom spent her life trying to get best for daughter” and included a photo of Rebecca singing with Yarrow, noting that the girl “had cerebral palsy and dyslexia.” The story mentioned how Laurie, a single mother, “couldn’t hold a job given the time needed to care for Rebecca” and due to her own pain from fibromyalgia.
In the coming weeks, there would be memorials. At Clark County Chabad, Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg spoke of Rebecca’s piety, her enthusiasm. After services, attendees shook their heads. Laurie had fought tenaciously, they said, for the child born prematurely and burdened with a nearly unfathomable number of illnesses and disabilities. This little girl and her mother had survived so much, and for this to happen, none of it made any sense.
What no one knew was that Rebecca’s mom had made much of it up.
Munchausen syndrome is one of the more devastating and difficult-to-treat psychiatric disorders. Typically, the afflicted feign illness or trauma in order to gain attention and sympathy. Closely related is Munchausen by proxy, or MBP, in which a parent (almost always the mother) fabricates or induces illnesses in the child, again for the purposes of gaining sympathy. As detailed by an MBP website, “Cases have been reported in which children developed destructive skeletal changes, limps, mental retardation, brain damage and blindness from symptoms caused by the parent.” Based on the evidence accumulated since her death, Laurie almost certainly suffered from both Munchausen syndrome and MBP.
“[MBP] is so counterintuitive; it clashes with every concept we have of motherhood,” says Dr. Marc D. Feldman, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama and the author of several books on MBP. “If the parent is not apprehended or the child does not tell, he or she either dies or, in many cases, grows up to be a perpetrator.”
Precise numbers of how many suffer from MBP, says Feldman, are impossible to know: “All we have is a fuzzy estimate of 1,200 new MBP cases in the U.S. each year—and I think a majority of cases are never being recognized.” One reason is, the disorder takes years to identify. “Mothers go doctor-shopping, hospital-shopping; they leave situations,” says Feldman. “They move on.”
In January 1988, Laurie April Recht was 34 years old, a legal secretary preparing to graduate summa cum laude with a degree in sociology from the State University of New York at Purchase. Living in a low-income apartment in Yonkers, she attended a hearing where officials were urged to build more such housing in predominantly white neighborhoods. Laurie, The New York Times reported, was the only white person who spoke in favor of it. Though roundly booed (“Send her to Harlem!” shouted one audience member), her courage was such that the Times did a follow-up profile of the 4-foot-10-inch Recht. It noted Laurie had received death threats on the phone. Several months later, she reported people were painting swastikas on her apartment door. Because of her courage in standing up to these hate crimes and speaking out, she was asked to give the commencement speech at the College of New Rochelle, which awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. That fall, she began law school.
Laurie’s time at law school turned out to be extremely brief: In April 1989, she was charged in U.S. District Court with falsifying threats against herself. Suspicious, the FBI had tapped her phone, which showed no activity during the time Laurie reported threats. The feds also concealed a camera, which captured Laurie herself defacing a wall. Though she could have gone to prison for up to five years and been fined $250,000, she was sentenced to five years’ probation and granted early release in September 1992.
 Rebecca’s mom, Laurie Recht, in 1977 |
Soon after, Laurie headed to Salem, Ore., to live with her sister, Alana. (Both Alana and her brother Barry declined numerous requests to be interviewed.) At some point, Laurie was artificially inseminated. Or, that’s what she told people.
Rebecca Alexis Hope Recht was born prematurely in Salem Hospital on May 17, 1993. While birth certificates are not public records, Laurie detailed her version of her daughter’s life in “The Story of Rebecca,” written for the girl’s bat mitzvah in 2006: “Rebecca weighed 2 lbs and was 13 inches long…. [She was] immediately transported to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. Rebecca developed a Grade III bleed on her brain…the result was Cerebral Palsy…on Day 4, she had to have open-heart surgery to repair a hole…. Her 9th day of life…they didn’t expect her to make it through the day.” But Rebecca did make it and, at six months, “started her world of therapy,” wrote Laurie, with psychologists, neuropsychologists, “doctors, therapists, nurses, technicians, phlebotomists and so on.”
Because of federal regulations governing private health information, hospitals and doctors can neither confirm nor deny hospitalizations or visitations. Photos of Rebecca as a naked infant, however, show no scars on her chest. “There would be a scar down the center of the chest if there had been any open-heart surgery,” says Dr. Bassam Hadeed, a pediatrician with Providence. Shown photos of Rebecca crawling, sitting and playing with blocks, Hadeed says, “This baby is about 7 to 10 months old; she is sitting on her own; she is using her right and left hands equally.” He then looks at a photo of Rebecca at age 5, using a walker. “But this is not the same child,” he says and, when told it is, asks, “What happened to her? Using a walker indicates a spinal situation, not a cerebral one.” When shown a photo of Rebecca at about the same age grimacing and sucking a baby bottle, he shakes his head. “Until the child is 5, you are only relying on the parents to tell you what is going on. It’s only over time you realize they might not be telling the truth.”
Those in a position to clarify or confirm Rebecca’s afflictions won’t. Asked to set the record straight on the purported open-heart surgery, representatives for Doernbecher said the law forbade them to either confirm or deny it ever took place. Andy McMillin, a speech pathologist at the Hearing&Speech Institute in Southwest Portland, said he would “dearly love” to talk about Rebecca, but his superiors would not allow it. Angie Lindquist, the Division of Developmental Disabilities caseworker assigned to Rebecca, could not discuss the case because “the state of Washington prohibits it.”
While there is little doubt that Rebecca had some physical and emotional challenges, it is equally clear that the laundry list of disabilities Laurie claimed for her had little basis in fact. Victoria Thomas, whose son went to school with Rebecca for four years, said, “Rebecca had issues, but she could read, she could write; she was smart.” Others spoke of how at various times Rebecca would wear leg braces and other times she wouldn’t. Sometimes she wore a hearing aid, other times she didn’t. Earlier this year, Laurie pulled her daughter out of school twice, once for “eye surgery” and another time for “bone-straightening surgery,” but Sarah Starr says she found it odd there was “not even a bandage” for the former and only a flimsy over-the-counter splint for the latter.
What is abundantly true is that the child was very medicated. According to a number of friends, Rebecca was at various times on Concerta, a central-nervous-system stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Risperdal, a powerful anti-psychotic used to treat schizophrenia in adults and the irritability associated with autism.
Starr, who says she and her five children “loved Rebecca right away,” was struck by the excessive amount of medication she took. “Sometimes [Laurie] would just give [Rebecca] her own [Laurie’s] medication, or too much medication,” she says. “She would be calling when Rebecca slept over [at our house], saying, ‘Give her medication, give her two.’” Starr says she “really agonized over it” and chose not to give Rebecca any. “And she was fine.”
“Thinking Laurie did this to Rebecca—it’s hard to comprehend,” says Lisa Morasch, who met Laurie 10 years ago. Of the woman she reservedly considered a friend, Morasch says, “She was a talented seamstress—and she loved my chopped liver!” Aside from these qualities, however, Laurie was constantly in crisis, constantly asking for money. “She always required your extra-special sunniness,” says Morasch. “It was exhausting.”
Laurie’s pleas for attention were accompanied by a phantasmagoric list of her own maladies, which friends collectively recall included back pain, colitis, Crohn’s disease, arthritis, fibromyalgia, hemorrhoids, yeast infections, yeast-infected hemorrhoids, depression, and post-traumatic stress stemming from several alleged incidents in New York, including being raped by a doctor who later pumped bullets into her front door, and the death of her fireman fiancé in a fire. (Asked whether she thought Laurie seemed the type of person to have been engaged to a fireman, Starr says, “I kind of wondered about that.”)
Shortly after Rebecca’s birth, Laurie moved them into the house in Fishers Landing, a state-subsidized dwelling for which, at the time of her death, she paid $184 a month in rent. The woman who’d dreamt of becoming a lawyer, whom the Times lauded as “the lone voice,” was not exactly living the dream. Collecting disability, permanently estranged from her family, and in her 40s grown gray and portly, she created a tax-exempt organization in 1998 called the Friends of Children’s Society (a name unusually close to Friends of the Children, a national, Portland-based mentoring program for at-risk kids). She did not, however, lawfully register her charity, according to the Washington state secretary of state’s office. That office received a call from someone who was solicited by Laurie; the secretary of state sent Laurie a letter in 2004 and again in 2005, asking her to register but never heard back.
Story continues below
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 Rebecca Recht at 3 months old, with no sign of a scar from the open-heart surgery her mother claimed she’d had. |
The Friends of Children’s Society’s stated aim was “the procurement of tickets from Portland-area providers of children’s cultural events to families in need.” Via the nonprofit, Laurie appealed to a number of companies and individuals for donations, including Martha Stewart, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and, according to her friends, received cruises and vacations to Disney World; sewing machines and fabric; concert tickets; and videotapes. “Rebecca certainly went on more trips than my kids ever did,” says Morasch. Clark County Detective Rick Buckner recalls the Recht home as “so cluttered with stuff you couldn’t get in the front door.”
“That’s how everybody got to know [Laurie] in kindergarten, sending home letters to all the parents saying, ‘I’ve got tickets to the circus. Who wants to go?’” says Victoria Thomas.
Laurie’s talent for procuring donations, says Thomas, was matched by her tendency to keep them: In 2000, when Thomas’ son and Rebecca were in first grade at Harmony Elementary and Laurie was vice president of the PTA and in charge of fundraising, $800 was discovered missing. After an audit and police investigation, in Thomas’ words, “fizzled, plus the [school] wanted to drop it,” Thomas, newly elected as PTA president, forbade Laurie to handle school funds. Laurie never forgot this indignity. By January 2004, the relationship between the two had grown so strained that school officials at Illahee Elementary (which the kids now attended) advised Thomas to have an escort when on school property. Thomas says Laurie also began to leave threatening messages on Thomas’ answering machine, and to tape notes to the outside of her home in the middle of the night.
“She wrote, ‘LEAVE ME ALONE,’ all in capital letters, like she was the victim,” says Thomas, who petitioned for —and was granted—a two-year restraining order against Laurie by Clark County District Court. Laurie immediately flouted it. When ordered by police to get off school grounds, Laurie pulled Rebecca out of school and accused one of Rebecca’s teachers of sexual misconduct. Asked whether she thinks Laurie encouraged her daughter to lie, Sarah Starr says no. “Laurie would not tell [Rebecca] to lie; she would convince her that things were true.”
Victoria Thomas says Rebecca’s disabilities were “kind of like [Laurie’s] meal ticket.” And, of course, it appealed to people’s better instincts to help. What they could not know, at first, was that helping only enabled and emboldened Laurie to ask for more. Bryan Trenary, whose company, Rainbow Play Systems, provided a massive play structure for Rebecca, says Laurie’s phone calls “were relentless. It was nonstop pandering. It was just easier to give her what she wanted.” Often it was a relief when Laurie moved on. Why people did not listen to their own instincts about her belligerence, about her mothering skills or lack thereof, speaks to people not wanting to pass judgment on a woman who had an inexhaustible list of reasons her life was harder than theirs. Should they risk incurring Laurie’s wrath? Would taking Rebecca from Laurie put the child in a better or worse situation? Starr says Rebecca, too, loved her mother fiercely. Things might look bad from the outside, yes, but how bad, and how, really, to proceed?
It is striking, in the midst of this turmoil, that Rebecca is remembered by parents and teachers as a happy girl.
“She was a very vibrant young woman, resilient beyond the definition of resiliency,” recalls Park Academy director Paula Kinney, who says Rebecca returned to school this year with the announcement, “Here I am, the new Rebecca!”
In fact, Rebecca had made great strides since starting Park Academy four years earlier: She was reading at grade level and, out of the student body of 24, was first in Spanish.
The highlight of the school year had undoubtedly been the Yarrow concert, which he’d committed to perform after Laurie approached him and asked for money when he played a Portland show in 2004. Yarrow said no, but agreed to put on an annual benefit. Yarrow became devoted to the girl he called by her Hebrew name, “Rivka,” a girl with whom he shared near-daily emails and who referred to him as “my very, very, very best friend in the whole world.”
Although Yarrow had been putting on benefits for Rebecca for three years, the event this year soured. For months, Laurie had been asked by the school administration to contribute something toward Rebecca’s tuition and stop demanding that Rebecca be given more homework. She’d responded by standing regularly outside Park Academy, a doublewide trailer located on the edge of the Marylhurst College campus in Lake Oswego, in order to badmouth the school to parents. In an email she sent to one teacher last spring, she wrote that she, Laurie, was so depressed, “I come home each day, take my meds and get into bed,” that she’d stopped making meals, that none of this was good for Rebecca, and that if the school would not pledge never to make Laurie pay tuition, she might have to put Rebecca up for adoption.
“The mother would share this with the child. The child would come in shaken, and the mother would say, ‘See? This is what they’re doing to you,’” says Kinney, who took over as director only in September but knew in “my gut that this child was being manipulated…. But our hearts went out to Rebecca, and so we put up with the mother.”
 Peter yarrow with Rebecca in 2006. Yarrow wonders now whether he should have anticipated the tragedy. |
By the time of the concert, Laurie had distressed the staff at Park Academy to the point she was not invited to a thank-you luncheon the board was giving Yarrow. Kinney recalls that Laurie exploded, saying, “This is horrible; I should have never invited him here!” and then, to Rebecca, “He’s not your friend anymore!”
After the concert, Yarrow tried to calm Laurie, to tell her the day was not about her, but her daughter. Laurie rebuffed him, ordered a trembling Rebecca to the car and, according to Kinney, shouted, “I’m just going to go home and take some Valium!”
“My last view of Rebecca was in the back seat, and I’m saying, ‘Laurie, you’re talking about going home and taking Valiums; I need to report that,’” says Kinney. “She said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to kill myself,’ and I said to Rebecca, ‘Are you OK?’ and she said, ‘I’m just scared for my mom.’”
Laurie drove home, called several people to tell them she’d been betrayed—by Yarrow, by Kinney—left phone messages at school saying she and Rebecca were “going on a long vacation” and then, it appears, overdosed herself and her daughter. (The Clark County medical examiner has yet to release the cause and manner of death.)
“Laurie was jealous of Rebecca, because she—not Laurie—had so many people deeply committed to her,” says one of the girl’s teachers, who last year got an unlisted phone number to put an end to harassing calls from Laurie. “This event created such a strong need to reflect, to ask, what the hell could we have done? Could we have known more? I don’t think so. I think Laurie would have gone underground, and the fear was, we would lose our point of contact with Rebecca.”
Which, of course, happened anyway.
In the weeks before her death, friends say Laurie grew extremely agitated. She beat a constant drum for funds and called at least three people, pleading car troubles and troubles with the state withholding money for Rebecca, and always enumerating Rebecca’s health problems. The girl’s most recent “ailment,” according to Laurie’s friend Elizabeth Harris, was a dangerous case of constipation. When several doctors recommended nothing more than laxatives and suppositories, Laurie insisted that, in Harris’ words, “Rebecca’s paralysis on one side” meant she could not feel the amount of pain she was in. Harris says Laurie told her X-rays showed the stool had “backed up all the way into the appendix, where it was crystallized,” and that Rebecca might require an appendectomy. There is no medical basis for stool crystallizing in the appendix.
Perhaps Laurie felt the walls closing in. Park Academy was questioning her fitness as a parent; Rebecca was having a fantastic year and would inevitably, as teenagers do, begin to pull away from her mother. Perhaps Laurie was preparing for this not to be so: A week before the deaths, Harris says, she overheard Rebecca say to Laurie, “When I go to heaven, I’ll get to meet Anne Frank.”
It’s midnight in New York, three weeks after the deaths, and Peter Yarrow is walking his dog in Central Park. “I assure you, she was a warrior for peace,” he says of Rebecca. And while he knew Laurie as “highly narcissistic” and “really, really manipulative,” he helped her anyway, out of love for her daughter.
“She had a right to take her own life, but that she took her daughter with her, the part of her that’s not insane, I am so angry, I cannot tell you,” he says. “And I keep thinking: Could I have prevented this occurrence? But I just didn’t anticipate it at all.”
Someone who was concerned, he says, was Paula Kinney. “She took me aside and said, ‘This is ghastly; we’re worried about the abuse this child is receiving. Should we report it?’ And I said, ‘Laurie loves Rebecca; I can’t see putting her in services, and she’s blossoming so.’ Plus, Rivka knew her mother’s craziness; I had faith she could handle it.”
He pauses. “Ultimately, Laurie was both someone who loved her daughter fiercely, and who mercilessly used her. It’s all of a piece.”
The house on Northeast 164th Avenue where Laurie and Rebecca lived is not a cheery place. It’s cheaply built and devoid of color, save for thick, dirty brown shag carpeting. There’s a hall barely wider than one’s shoulders leading to Rebecca’s room, where a poor-quality hospital-type bed partly obscures a Pokémon poster, and to Laurie’s bedroom, where the bodies were found. The mother’s bedroom is empty now, save for a piece of embroidery Laurie made, with the phrase, “Death is the final reward, for death brings peace of mind.”
If one is feeling generous, one might say Laurie loved Rebecca too much and the world too little. That she did not trust the world to deliver anything but pain. That it had been bad for her, and would be worse for her daughter. Rebecca, too, loved her mother fiercely, “more than I’ve ever seen a child love a mother before,” says Starr. More, there is one of the emails Laurie sent Park Academy last spring, saying, “Rebecca is mine, and no one can take her from me. Or even make the threat.”
When the bodies were found, detectives saw no sign of resistance. While what Rebecca knew or did not know can only be speculated, Starr says Rebecca trusted her mother, that it would only have been a matter of Laurie saying, “Take a pill; take another pill.” And then Rebecca did what she undoubtedly had done countless times before; she crawled in bed with her mom to watch TV. And while Laurie was found on her back, Rebecca was on her side, curled toward her mother.
Papers found posthumously at Laurie’s home include a letter she wrote to an adoption agency before she left New York, stating that as a child she felt “unloved” and her mother had been “horrible,” but that she, Laurie, would foster ambitions in any child of her own. There is no evidence she was given a child.
Sarah Starr says she met Laurie and Rebecca in 2006, when Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg asked her to do a mitzvah. “In Judaism, a mitzvah is a good deed,” she says. “I need you to befriend this woman,” the Rabbi told her. “You’re going to have to look past the anger she has; she needs a friend.’”
Greenberg, who counseled and cared for Laurie, knew she’d been arrested and charged by the FBI with making threats against herself, including painting swastikas on her own door. “In the Torah, you can find places that say, if a person does not help himself, then, you don’t need to help him,” he says. “But if you read deeper, you will find these are the people you need to help the most.”
You would think that someone would have noticed that something was wrong and called the appropriate agency, instead of just going along with it. How sad for the little girl - however her mother is no loss !
As an extremely insignificant person in their lives(waiting tables at an occasional gathering spot), we all marveled at the obvious demeaning attitude Laurie had for Rebecca, and despised Laurie's blatant implications that her daughter was "just weird." Laurie was kicked out more than once for anything from a bunk check to a hostile attitude for no reason(always "our fault"). Somehow Rebecca always kept a smile. Sickening to think that maybe she was used to this treatment.
This was a fascinating, well-written profile. And it managed to handle a sensitive, controversial subject (child abuse, mental illness) without being sensationalistic. Kudos to the writer for top notch journalism.
Amazing article. Really first class journalism, Nancy. Thanks for pursuing this so vociferously. I couldn't believe the death quote on the wall in the bedroom. Just incredible. I can imagine seeing that and being like, "HOLY SHIT."
Her own words!
And this is an all too common dilemma: "speaks to people not wanting to pass judgment on a woman who had an inexhaustible list of reasons her life was harder than theirs."
Thing is: I don't think we should pass judgment on people whose lives are harder than ours. And tempted as I am to judge the mother for what she did, it's clear she was mentally ill. I'm angry about it, sure. But can we really blame her for her sickness?
I don't want to take this story as justification for judging those around me with weaknesses, or as proof that those in need really are better off helping themselves.
Chris: Can we really blame those close to the situation for doing nothing about it? Is it possible this is just a very sad tale without a resolution in anger or judgment?
I'm sorry to sound so preachy, here. I didn't swallow a bible last night, I promise.
For me, the most appropriate response is to mourn the loss of a young woman who was clearly an example to all of us:
"It is striking, in the midst of this turmoil, that Rebecca is remembered by parents and teachers as a happy girl. She was a very vibrant young woman, resilient beyond the definition of resiliency.�
Poor poor girl.
You are a very insightful person with an amazingly huge and unjudging spirit. Blessed are those who have the honor of being your friend. I was blessed to have loved and cared for Rebecca and Laurie. It is truly a tragedy that this child is no longer on this earth. It is a loss for us. She was remarkable, smart, loving, beautiful and above all she loved God with all her heart. My family mourns deeply over her leaving this earth, but she and her mother are in a better place without the struggles they both faced. Mental Illness is a health condition not a choice. It's like diabetes. I don't believe that Laurie was a horrible person at all. She was damaged and pained for many reasons we will really never know. I do know that she loved Rebecca.
Truly, truly excellent writing. Thank you Nancy for moving the bar up a notch yet again.
On Matt's bible swallowing, I have to say I agree. Hindsight blah blah blah - I would not rush to judgment on the folks near the tragedy. No one had the complete picture. And sad to say, in today's climate if you make a call to state agencies and _you are wrong_, you have just plunged a family into a whirlwind of emotional struggle that can last years. Its never an easy call to make, and certainly not with someone so good at fooling everyone.
Thanks again.
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Excellent article. A truly sad story, but I hope it inspires thought and discussion surrounding the point when we as members of society need to intervene on a child's behalf.
Horrific and chilling, but a very well-done, compassionate piece of journalism, Nancy. Thank you for shedding this light. I'm astounded that anyone has the hubris to presume, after the fact, what other people ought to have done, or whether it would have changed the outcome. But I think we all feel grief over the loss of this child's life.
Chris,
Reread the comment. The point is not whether to judge; the point is that basing quick and easy condemnation of others on the dramatic condensing and retelling of a story is generally a pretty ill-informed position.
Examples from this version of the story: Do you know if those cited in the story ever did anything at all to try to help? Nope, sure don't, simply because it didn't fit into the dramatic recasting of events in this version. Do you know if anyone in the history of this case at all called the state or tried to help, at any time? Again, no, because the state won't say, and you simply don't have all the facts. Do you know if anyone examined this woman for mental illness at any time, and for what? Nope, don't truly know that either since medical professionals protect our rights to privacy, even for the mentally ill. How was she able to fool doctors, do you know? Nope, we don't know, because again, you lack all the information. Do you know first hand whether this person had the obvious earmarks of a killer? Why didn't the parent who refused to medicate just keep the child because she "felt weird" about it? Is that an easy call to make?
Well lets see: The next time you are personally in a situation where you meet a parent, who by all appearances is going to superhuman lengths to help their child even if appearing strained doing so, enough so that benefits are given in the child's behalf, see how easily you make the call that they are obviously unfit and a potential, soon-to-be murderer of that child. "Boy, that parent needs an awful lot of attention. Must be a child killer." Perhaps call the state each time that happens, explain your hunch, and see what they say.
School authorities make this judgment every day, and they are more often right than wrong (the "rights" don't make the news, unfortunately). Do they make mistakes? Sure. Should I deem them unfit because they missed one, even with such colossally tragic consequences? I don't think I'm in a position to condemn, not with the limited facts I have. Do these authorities, in this story, have a track record or missing child killers? I don't know; the article didn't say.
Next time, try making that call against a parent who seems a little odd, but seems to be trying to do their best - maybe you'll be preventing a disaster.
Or maybe creating a huge one. Your call.
Well put Metroknow.
What really strikes me about this article is that Nancy did a terrific job in portraying those involved with humanity and dignity. It would have been easy, and a lesser journalist would have taken a lazy route of just looking at the surface of things. Why is Nancy the only journalist in town to figure this out, or was she and WWeek the only ones to care?
Sadly, most media outlets in town did that focusing on the "tragedy" and "tragic life" and not the how the hell and why the hell could this have happened.
Finally, it is a complex issue and story, so I will withhold judgement of those involved, with one exception: the medical community. The system may be set up to protect privacy but lack of integrated care and communications between service providers is a glaring issue here and shows that they weren't communicating with each other. Or, if they were how the hell could they not see such giant red flags? Furthermore, if we are not allowed to ask questions of medical institutions on what they did and did not know it makes it very easy for them to sweep systematic failures under the rug. If we aren't able to at least question their role and receive answers how are we able to prevent something like this from happening again.
Good job reporting Nancy - you knew in your gut that the initial reporting on this was fishy and incomplete and you did a fine job, where no one else had the insight to do.
For an interesting read about Munchhausen by Proxy, check out "Sickened" by Julie Gregory. Her memoir of surviving her crazy mother.
I have to say, first time in long time I enjoyed a WW article. Well done.
Chris who says somebody should have done more: I am sorry, but you cannot know how clueless you are regarding these two. Or maybe you knew Rebecca, and grieve as all of us do. I encountered Rebecca and Laurie in an unreported part of the story, but it is the same.
Very capable, very well meaning people wore themselves raw trying to help, trying to give, trying to love. Professional, non-professional, religious, educators, friends; so many collided with Laurie Recht, and all had tears at their deaths. What is be becoming clear now was far less clear as those who encountered Laurie tried to avoid her storms and assist Rrebecca. Rebecca's death is obviously tragic. Laurie was obviously sick,(aren't we all enlightened in hindsight) and the fact that she was far from likeable just complicated the effort to help.
Blame? Guilt? I feel neither and both. The system and individuals tried. Laurie was apparently sicker than we knew, and smart enough to keep going.
I cried at the funeral(by the way attended by many) and I cry now. Goodness does not alway prevail. For those readers who think they can blame, I would suggest they probably would have failed Rebecca just as the rest of the world did.
For those of you who want to assign blame, get to work. There are a lot of other folks in this world who can use a loving hand and a helping heart.
Great article. By not casting judgements on those involved, I think the piece really captured and conveyed the challenges/dilemmas good people face when dealing with the illogical and surreal aspects of people as troubled as Recht. Kudos also for the investigative work and getting Yarrow to open up.
PS - If a book were written on this case I'd buy it. I bet others would too ;0)
Excellent reporting on a subject that must have been difficult to research. It was the first time in a while that I've inhaled a WW cover story in one sitting. I could not tear my eyes from it.
Several years ago, WW pulled away from hard-hitting, muck-raking journalism over what was happening to Oregon's environment, civil liberties, economy, political landscape, and livability and into "human interest" stories centering around one or two messed up people. While the stories are competently written and may have some general value for individuals interested in self-improvement or abnormal psychology, they have little value with regard to the major issues that Oregon and the Portland area in particular are facing.
The reason for this drastic editorial shift has to do not with WW's change of interest but in cashing in as much as possible. The same can be said regarding their decision to carry large advertisements for tobacco products.
and nigel jaquiss's coverage of the pge debacle? beth slovic's coverage of school and workers issues? the recent cover story on global warming since the kyoto conference? all just personal profiles, i guess.
Even though the author did not know Laurie or Rebecca, she portrayed them very well. I knew them both, and I was struck the first time I met them, when I was about 9, that Rebecca was an amazingly open person. She greeted you with an amazing smile that really made you feel good, and regardless of her afflictions, still managed to maintain her poise and self confidence. She loved her mother immensely, just as Nancy said, regardless of who she was or appeared to be. I was very sad to see the two of them go.
Powerful story, even if all the facts could not be told. I am aware of how difficult it is to understand and take any action in cases like this, but I also know that many professionals including principals, teachers, and medical staff are required by law to report concerns of possible abuse and are not allowed to make personal judgments that such reporting is not necessary or could "make matters worse". I assume these people complied with the legal requirements associated with their professions. Maybe the ending would be the same either way, but reporting was the only choice that had the power to bring immediate intervention.
I wish Peter Yarrow and others could find a way to tell the story of Rebecca's life to honor her spirit and increase awareness and help for other children who are suffering in this way.
Any illness that causes a parent to abuse and eventually kill a child is very hard to comprehend, but a child's unfailing love for that same parent is even more so. Rebecca's life was both remarkable and heroic.
"What no one knew was that Rebecca’s mom had made much of it [i.e. Rebecca's illnesses/disabilities] up." This seems to predicate the rest of the article. However, no evidence whatsoever is presented in the article to substantiate the claim the Laurie "made most of it up". In fact, the author did not have access to any of the real medical records that could have provided this evidence. She is using the lack of evidence confirming disabilities as conclusive evidence of the lack of disability. She then uses this non-evidence to make a psychological diagnosis that ties this story up into a neat, tidy bundle.
Innuendos abound: "Laurie was artificially inseminated. Or, that’s what she told people." Nothing is made of this insinuation - does the author have any reason to believe that this story is incorrect? Does the mechanism of conception matter to the story? And by the way, could somebody let me know how to recognize "the type of person [likely] to have been engaged to a fireman", especially if I meet that person 15 after the supposed engagement?
The details in this piece are not facts, and if the person who they were being written about were alive to defend themselves, I believe they would be prosecutable as libel. The fact is that we do not have access to the facts, and we simply don't know. These guesses about what may or may not have happened are just that - guesses. And the people who know the facts are unable to rebut such guesses - those people are either dead or closed to this discourse by the barriers of healthcare privacy. I only wish that this article had been covered by a similar barrier, because excessive simplifications based on innuendo and unconfirmed suspicions do nothing to clarify a terrible situation.
I think you make some valid points, but just because the reporter can’t provide documentation and attribution for every conclusion she’s making doesn’t mean she shouldn’t write a story raising these questions. The mother’s false claim years ago that she was receiving death threats is pretty clear evidence of a twisted need to be a victim-hero and a willingness to be dishonest to achieve that recognition. The reporter provided a lot of circumstantial evidence to support the premise of Munchausen.
My state has a Child Fatality Review law requiring the death of every child to be reviewed by a committee of people representing multiple state agencies. The law came about out of the belief that child abuse deaths were under reported because initial investigators accepted parent claims that they were accidents. The purpose of the review is to find ways for those agencies to prevent child deaths, whether they are from abuse, faulty products, or accidents.
Surely this case screams for that kind of a review. Sure, medical records are private from a reporter and the general public, but surely police should be able to access them when it comes to the criminal investigation of the murder of a child. If a review team isn’t already looking at the angle the reporter raised, I hope they will now.
Having crossed paths with the mother and daughter and with my background in medicine, I think another diagnosis that is likely is borderline personality disorder. I have great empathy for those care providers and teachers who had a sneaky suspicion that this mother was unfit because this woman was so convincing in her victimhood.
Wow!! Hey Seymour.....actually these facts do something to "clarify a situation",, that's a nice way to put, it was a systematic, tortuous and over-all terrible miscarriage of medical, social work and people "crossing paths with this woman" I hope she rots in hell, which is just were she belongs since we cant send her fat, disgusting ass to jail.
"mzwong writes on Dec 21st, 2007 10:02amComment 22
and nigel jaquiss's coverage of the pge debacle? beth slovic's coverage of school and workers issues? the recent cover story on global warming since the kyoto conference? all just personal profiles, i guess."
Yes, but go count the number of these stories compared to the consistent parade of sensationalistic stories, and there is little comparison. Too bad the publishers of Eugene Weekly don't enter the Portland market. There's a paper that consistently covers what's happening in Oregon.
So - I read the cover story on Sunday Night, 12/23 - I was in complete SHOCK upon seeing the cover picture , as I knew Laurie and her daughter - through Girl Scouts , when Rebecca was about 6 or 7 years old.I helped to place Rebecca in a Brownie troop at her school
I did not know about their deaths , and this article was how I found out.so sad
I did not sleep well last night...
While I can applaud the excellent writing and reporting skills by the write- I would like to comment about the TIMING of this piece.
IT IS THE HOLIDAY SEASON , AFTER ALL
This is for the most part a time for family , friends and possibly JOY.
Reading this artice has pretty much sucked any joy I would have felt on Christmas....
It is an important piece- BUT - I think it would have been more sensitive - to have published this - AFTER the Holidays
This is just my opinion.
To the people who knew Laurie and her daughter Rebecca in the more recent years- my heart goes out to you -
Laurie , I believe was a very troubled person - and apparently this was the ONLY way she knew how to "cope" with her situation. I will be sad for a very long time - after reading this article.
from a Mom in Vancouver, WA
Your comment that the timing of the article ruined your holiday is probably the most selfish comment i've read in a long time. It makes me sad that people actually think like this.
To Vancouver Mom:
Killing yourself and/or anyone else is not a "coping" mechanism. It's what people do when they CAN'T cope anymore. Unfortunately for a lot people that happens right before Christmas. Is there a "good time" to tell this kind of story? Sorry about you holiday but I'm sure Rebecca's wasn't so hot either.
Thank you Nancy for taking the time to get the real story out. For years Laurie's acts and behaviors were just hushed. I wish more people would have tried to step in sooner. I am sad at the loss of Rebecca but know she is now living in a better place. Your article brought peace to our family to know that we were not alone in seeing the other side of Laurie. Thanks again!
The world is full of all kinds. It is a shame that Rebecca is gone and in such a manner. She was a precious girl. Nancy put things in perspective for many of us who encountered repeated fearful aspects of Laurie Recht. I have watched some healing to family members and hope to see more in the future. . . . Thanks to this conclusion. We knew and voiced such, but no one wanted to cross Laurie!!! Where are those that hushed the truth??! And, just for the record, the Public schools that Rebecca attended went above and beyond for her. As for the claim that she ran, played, read, etc only through the private school. . . . Unless you saw her in prior settings, do not judge the other schools. Rebecca was loved and helped by many fine educators and peers. Laurie put down many great teachers and leaders for trying to help Rebecca. Bless them for their undying efforts.
When I read the headline,"Sacrificing Rebecca . Laurie Recht loved her daughter to death.Literally".It gave me images of an overindulgent mom who spoiled her daughter.
Not so the case .Munchausen syndrome and munchausen by proxy have nothing to do with love .It is the epitamy of selfishness .This lady had no love for her daughter herself or anyone else .She seems to have been filled with such self-loathing and disgust, that shecommitted the ultimate act of selfishness,suicide.
I pray for Rebecca,and hope that there is a Hell that this terrible woman burns in for eternity.
Such a sad story for the innocent child and all who loved her. Unchecked and ignored for convienence mental illness can have hideaous consequences. Delusions fed and nurtured grow and evolve.
Apparently Galileo was wrong and the Earth actually revolves around Vancouver Mom.
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