Then, just before New Year's Eve, he left the U.S., telling Alexander that he had a "really important surgery" to perform. I don't know what I was. [00:23:14] Bo Lindquist: And then we traveled to different places. It was kind of romance on steroids. She hence became the executive producer of a documentary film entitled He Lied About Everything, which chronicled her emotional journey as well as his scientific lies. She graduated magna cum laude from WSU with a degree in journalism in 1987. Some even believed he'd win a Nobel Prize one day, according to author Stuart Ritchie. Benita Alexander has everything going for her. Why don't you, can you just for once sit back and let somebody else take over, just let him, let him take it over." Benita Alexander is an American television producer, director, writer, and reporter. ET. And one of those really, really tight embraces. to search for ways to make a difference in your community at "He was a top doctor, he spoke six or seven languages. Benita Alexander-Jeune started her career as a journalist for a few minor television stations. And he was not doing well, and I was really struggling with the fact that I was about to become a single mother. Documentary producer Benita Alexander thought it was love when her job introduced her to internationally renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. And then in radio, producing a radio talk show, and then in local television. He, he was supposed to be their last hope. And so I did, you know, I sat back, and even when I was tempted to ask questions, I didn't. And when we went to Boston to interview Dr. Macchiarini, when he came in, it was um, I was with a colleague, and he, he came into this bar where we had arranged to have a coffee with him just to say hello the night before the interview, and you know there's, he's a very charming, good-looking man. And basically giving up everything. Among several lies, Macchiarini told Alexander, one of those was Pope Francis officiating their wedding. He says to me, "I want to take over the wedding planning and I want to surprise you with everything. [00:25:56] Bob: How did he take to being questioned? TV & Film Producer, Director, Writer, Correspondent, Narrator. You know the, the invitations talked about needing a password, a secret password to get into the wedding, and you couldn't get in unless you had the invitation with you. By the time Alexander discovered these things about Macchiarini, she said she'd spent over $50,000 on wedding preparations and quit her job. In her personal life, she's also looking for a medical miracle, a miracle that, well it wasn't going to come. Of the eight patients given artificial tracheas by Macchiarini, only one is still alive today. He's also never spoken publicly about his relationship with Alexander. And right about then, across the Atlantic Ocean, Bo is about to find out the real truth about Paolo too. "I was angry as hell. In the meantime, please feel free Once you confirm that subscription, you will regularly In June 2013, they flew to Venice for what Alexander called an incredibly romantic weekend.. [00:33:49] Matthew Christopher: I mean yeah, I'm like oh, look. Free online workshop! [00:04:33] Bob: But it also sounds like you get pretty, your stories are very emotional, and you get pretty involved in your subjects, right. But then I, and this was October of 2014, and I went and googled, the first thing I did was I went to my desk and googled, literally googled, Does the Pope marry people? And what popped up was an article from a month earlier where the Pope had just married 20 couples in the Vatican. In need of a lung transplant, doctors arranged to transfer her to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Along the way he promises her a fairy tale wedding to be officiated by the Pope. [00:30:37] Bob: So now that she's been told the Pope is involved, Benita has another secret to keep. [00:19:03] Benita: (laugh) Yeah, yep, yeah. This is totally different. [00:09:18] Benita: Yeah, so we, we started focusing our story around Hannah and her family, and Hannah was actually, she was going to be the youngest person in the world to ever get one of his experimental transplants; the first toddler, and also the first patient to be operated on in the United States. She was devasted to learn all the lies told by Macchiarini. And so that meant me quitting my job at NBC and leaving New York and pulling my daughter out of her very difficult to get into private school in New York. Javascript must be enabled to use this site. I couldn't fall apart because if he's lying to me like this, there's no way he's not lying in his medical and professional life.". He is Italian. Anyone that knows anything about private schools in New York knows how hard that is. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music| Spotify | Stitcher|TuneIn. "The outcry was such that the Karolinska Institute had to do something," said Ritchie. Her film "He Lied About Everything," about her own personal story with a con man, aired on Investigation Discovery in 2018 and continues to air around the world. I love some pressure, let's go for it. But before the wedding can happen, Benita makes a discovery that may prove the doctor is not all he claims to be. She'd been in the intensive care unit in Turkey for three years, and her health was still deteriorating. Macchiarini proposed to Benita Alexander on Christmas Day 2013, Alexander said. Her new podcast "Benita and the Berracas," will feature Benita talking to other women who open up to her about their own love conned stories, along with advice on how to avoid becoming a victim. What started as dream relationship developed into a nightmare filled with lies and deceit. He proposed to Alexander on Christmas in 2013 and she said yes. And it's, I was proud to work there. Um, maybe I felt like that at some point when I was really young and I had a, had a crush in school, I don't know, but I don't, I don't ever remember feeling like that. [00:18:02] Benita: Oh, there was so many. An astonishing true story of love, betrayal and unimaginable deception. Capping off a whirlwind romance filled with gondola rides in Venice and quiet dinners in the Greek islands, she was promised a wedding in the Italian countryside officiated by the Pope himself. And I said, "Well what are we going to do?" Reality struck Alexander's fantasy romance eight weeks before she was supposed to marry Macchiarini in 2015, when she received an email from a colleague with the subject line saying, "The Pope.". [00:04:22] Bob: And you had a happy ending. After sweeping Alexander off her feet by taking her to jet-setting and romantic locales all over the world for months, Macchiarini proposed. "None of these people were coming," Benita said she tragically discovered. Benita Alexander is a strong, independent, intelligent, warm, and loving woman who thought she found her love connection with a man that swept her off her feet, much like prince charming! And so it was kind of the perfect case for us to focus our story around. When Benita Alexander eventually realized her whole relationship with Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was nothing short of a scam, she decided she wanted the world to know the truth about him. These were made in a lab out of the very same plastic that a soda bottle is made out of, and then he would bathe this in the patient's own stem cells in something called a bioreactor, and then transplant that, this plastic windpipe into people. It started with Andrea Bocelli was going to be singing in the church, because Paolo told me that his mother and Bocellis mother were friends. "That wasn't true. Just like, oh, the dance dress was crazy. Star-Studded Wedding Becomes Brides Worst Nightmare, Part 1, Journalist exposes her celebrity fianc, part 2, Computer hacker drains couple's life savings. In July 2015 their "cat and mouse game" came to an end when she revealed to him everything she found through the private investigation. It was killing me, and but I was also so in love with him. Short Press Reel. He never did that with me, but I, I've, I have seen him really being quite, quite unpleasant with um, PhDs and people who were sort of subordinate. But our guest list was insane because now that the Pope was marrying us, he kept inviting all these dignitaries, you know, so world leaders were coming to our wedding. Who lost her dad. Benita met and married a fellow reporter, John Noel, and moved with him to New York, where they welcomed their daughter in 2003. It's, it's a very um, it has a lot of stature, that building and a lot of meaning. [00:34:59] Bob: When you went to her house, was Paolo there? And this is something very clandestine and secretive and he cant talk about, but hes been doing this for many years, and he is a celebrity surgeon to a number of famous people and celebrities, but that he cant talk about this because hes tied to people who want a private doctor who will attend to them but, you know, they have these private doctors, because they don't want anyone to know, you know, whats going on in their private life. Come on. I thought he was playing some kind of silly game with me. [00:15:28] Bob: As Hannah's story becomes more intense, the news on Benita's ex-husband, John, gets worse. "It was the weirdest thing," Alexander said. But despite his seemingly busy schedule, Alexander said Macchiarini offered to plan their wedding. www.aarp.org/volunteer. This was holy cow. They live in the same area outside Florence. When she continued to press Macchiarini about the pope, she said he blamed Vatican politics, alleging that the more conservative former Pope Benedict went behind Pope Francis' back to stop him from officiating the wedding. How to, what do we do now? Creating artificial body parts. Alexander felt compelled to cancel the wedding, yet while she tried to figure out the extent to which Macchiarini had lied, she said she let him think they would still marry one day. They set their wedding for 11 July 2015 in Rome. In 2015, she served as a co-executive producer on Breaking the Silence, which featured DWTS pro Cheryl Burke, and Counting On alums Jessa Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard. And that frees up Benita to go public about their relationship. Macchiarini denied the accusations coming from his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute to Alexander, and she doubled down on supporting Macchiarini. And whatever that is, let's, let's push that away, you know. The procedure uses the framework of a plastic tube lined with the patient's stem cells and is intended to help them replicate into a healthy version of the . In 2019, she produced the Oxygen doc Seduced By Evil, which chronicles another con-man, Derek Alldred. He was put on trial after his patients reportedly suffered bodily harm during his experimental surgeries but he always denied any criminal wrongdoing. I didn't even, I, I, I stopped in hesitation. He wrote love notes in lipstick on her mirror and left roses on the bed in the shape of hearts. [00:11:57] Benita: Ooh, you're going to make me do math. She is honestly proud of how far she has come (as she should be), and its evident shell never let anything or anyone take this journey/narrative away from her. In February, 2021 it was featured as a two-hour special on ABCs 20/20. Her story is now featured as the third season of Wondery's hit podcast, "Dr. We just made sure we took care of Benita. If I had a checklist, he, he was everything I would want in a partner, everything you would want in a man. A successful TV journalist, the single mother-of-one was interviewing him for a report on cutting-edge medicine. She finds that story in South Korea. [00:39:32] Bob: And as the day approaches, Benita gets to try on that custom-made wedding dress. She said she'd never fantasized about a "Prince Charming." Lindquist said the documentary sparked outrage in Sweden, and weeks later, new investigations into Macchiarini began. The two-part special He Lied About Everything premieres on ID on Wednesday, Feb. 14 from 8 to 10 p.m. [00:02:26] Bob: I remember walking into 30 Rock thinking it was the equivalent of walking into Yankee Stadium or something. A new two-hour "20/20" reports on Benita Alexander, a television producer who fell head over heels in love with world-renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini while producing a report on his revolutionary new surgery technique. She is currently the voice of the true crime series "Still A Mystery" on Investigation Discovery, and she has narrated four seasons of this ongoing, multi part show. "He [the Pope] wanted to use us as the poster couple for the Catholic church, to prove people who are divorced can get married in the Catholic church.". I have to tell you, and I'm like, you know, I'm a very boisterous, fun guy, that's, you know, and very um, slap-happy fun, and I literally stopped in my tracks, and was like, "Huh?" Um, and so he had, we were coming back into the room after dinner one night, and I was kind of teasing him. Wake up to the real world! 'People Magazine Investigates' : Tracking Down the Man Who Allegedly Killed Mom of Two Joy Hibbs in 1991, Arrest Made in Beloved Mother's Cold Case Murder and Prosecutor Credits 'People Magazine Investigates', 'Hiding in Plain Sight': All About Jimmy Savile, Disgraced Royal Confidante Featured in Netflix Doc, 'People Magazine Investigates' : Inside Decades-Old Disappearances of 5 People Along the Snake River. Gerdin also said Macchiarini had failed to obtain ethical permits to perform the transplants, which he said amounted to experimentation on human subjects. I don't know if I was nervous. Excellent place. "That's when he told me that there was this kind of clandestine network [of doctors] who are on call, basically, for these people.'". And then every month there was a new surprise. As a journalist, Alexander knew she couldn't get involved with the subject of her story. Macchiarini has not yet entered a plea, but has denied all of the charges. So I just found him very, I don't want to say intimidating, because intimidating's not the word. I mean it was crazy. [00:14:35] Benita: The thing about Paolo is he's a very good listener, and we, after a shoot sometimes, would go out to dinner, or we would be in a group of people talking. She said she later sent a lengthy text message to him, and received a single-word response: "Wow! The university even cited some of the whistleblowers, reprimanding them for their participation in some of Macchiarini's papers. They make it for you in the lab, right. Elton John was going to be performing. [00:34:17] Bob: Well, at some point you transition from wow to okay, I've got to get to work on this, right? And I think I was even blushing. ABC News reported that Macchiarini has never spoken publicly about his relationship with Benita. Alexander had already sent invitations to her closed ones. It was going to be this four-day event in Rome, you know, with a red carpet event the night before the wedding, and a big brunch the day after the wedding, and people bought plane tickets, they bought fancy, you know, red carpet attire for this wedding. View our online Press Pack. [00:11:55] Bob: And how old were you then? And you know, dozens of roses and champagne and always the best champagne. At the time, Macchiarini was employed by the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Learn how vehicle tech like blind spot warnings and drowsy driving alerts can help make driving safer. And as they ride the motorcycle away from the river, the magic carpet ride takes off. Paolo says to me, "I want to take over the wedding planning and I want to surprise you with everything. [00:23:44] Bo Lindquist: Paolo was very well-dressed and very careful with his looks. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. The Love Con: Directed by Star Price. I see a woman and two kids," she said, adding that she knew about Paolo's wife in Italy. [00:34:26] Matthew Christopher: You put your, I am going to make the most gorgeous dress you've ever seen. Macchiarini remains married to Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. What started as dream relationship developed into a nightmare filled with lies and deceit. Megan Hilty on the Tony's, like she got best dress, or Debra Messing, or you know, Carli Lloyd, like the whole soccer team coming in, I'm dressing Carli Lloyd for all these, for the ESPYs, and, you know, all these amazing people that I've dressed over the years, even the Oscars and I'm, I mean it's going wow, I made it to where I love what I do. 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