When Olivia Gant was six years old she was told she didn’t have long to live, so her mum Kelly helped her make a bucket list.
She wanted to “be a fireman”, “feed the sharks” and “catch a bad guy with police”.
Olivia had a rare, incurable disease that had seen her have years of invasive procedures and countless hospital visits.
Olivia’s mother Kelly has been charged with murder. Post continues after video.
Kelly and her two daughters had moved to Colorado in 2013, leaving their dad behind in Texas so they could access better medical treatment. But by 2015 Kelly claimed Olivia’s recovery was near hopeless.
In a GoFundMe campaign, she wrote that in addition to “a tumor, developmental delays, seizures, autism, sensory processing disorder, focal cortical dysplasia, digestive issues and hydrocephalus,” Olivia also now had neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy.
Her mum described it as a “degenerative mitochondrial disorder that causes the entire body to shut down a system at a time”.
It would eventually lead to her daughter’s death, she said.
In April 2017 Olivia’s story was all over the TV and in every local newspaper, as she lived out her bucket list.
She got to ride in a police car, she hosed down a fire from a ladder and she saved a Disney princess while dressed as “Bat Princess” as part of a Make-A-Wish Foundation surprise.
By July 2017, Olivia was using a feeding tube and doctors at the Children's Hospital Colorado noted that her nutrition was deficient.
Kelly told the doctors she wanted to withdraw all medical care and artificial feeding because her "quality of life was so bad". She had insisted on a "do not resuscitate order" for the seven-year-old.
In August that year, Olivia died.
Her mother claimed it was intestinal failure, and it wouldn't be until 2018 that authorities started to question that claim. Kelly had brought her older daughter in to see a doctor about "bone pain" insisting that the girl had survived cancer and had undergone chemotherapy. A quick phone call by the doctor back to Texas confirmed that to be untrue.
The Jefferson County Human Services Department began investigating.
A total of 11 doctors confirmed that they doubted that Olivia had a terminal illness and called into question many of the little girl's symptoms.
One doctor said they'd found no evidence she'd had seizures, and had told Kelly on three separate occasions to stop giving her anti-seizure medication, reported the Denver Post.
Another doctor told investigators he was shocked to hear Olivia had died, and had never diagnosed her with any of the diseases listed in the GoFundMe page for her, the publication wrote.
In November 2018, Olivia's remains were exhumed and the coroner's office found no evidence that she died from intestinal failure, reported the Washington Post. Instead her cause of death was "undetermined".
On Monday, 41-year-old Kelly Renee Turner was charged with first degree murder, child abuse, fraud and theft after allegedly inventing her daughter's illness for years before finally leaving her to die.
Kelly is also accused of benefiting from news coverage, charity funding, Medicaid and donations (a total which exceeded $570,000) while also inventing ailments for her older daughter including that she had osteomyelitis (a bone infection.)
In total, she's facing 13 charges and is being held without bond.
The Denver Post reported that it was Kelly that brought up Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP) after her arrest telling a detective, "That has never been my case, like at all, whatsoever. You can ask anybody that stood by my side through [redacted] and all of this.”
MSP is a psychological disorder in which a caregiver makes up or exaggerates a person in their care's medical symptoms in order to get attention.
Kelly has denied all wrongdoing except for admitting that she invented her eldest child's cancer.