Fraud Week: Fiancé Doctor Pulls Off Personal and Medical Fraud, with Journalist Benita Alexander | Ep. 814

This episode uncovers the story of a journalist and an NBC News producer who fell for a seemingly charming surgeon involved in groundbreaking medical procedures, only to discover layers of personal and medical fraud.

1. The deceptive allure of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, once a medical darling, hid grave unethical practices and personal fraud.
2. Alexander's journey highlights the devastating impact of betrayal, especially from someone trusted professionally and personally.
3. The episode stresses the importance of verification and skepticism, particularly in medical advancements and personal relationships.
4. It brings to light the broader implications of medical ethics and the responsibility of professionals towards patients and the public.
5. The emotional and psychological aftermath of fraud, as experienced by victims like Alexander, underlines the need for support and justice in such cases.

1: Introduction

Megyn Kelly introduces the theme of fraud week and guest Benita Alexander. Megyn Kelly: "Welcome to a week of disturbing, true crime stories featuring fraud."

2: The Romance Begins

Details of how Alexander, covering Macchiarini for an NBC special, fell in love with him. Benita Alexander: "He was a George Clooney look-alike, a miracle worker... I was swept off my feet."

3: The Truth Unfolds

Alexander discusses discovering the multiple layers of Macchiarini's deceit. Benita Alexander: "It started with little lies, then became something monstrously deceptive."

4: Consequences and Reflections

The discussion covers the aftermath of the exposure, including the impact on Alexander and her career. Benita Alexander: "It shattered my trust, but I needed to expose him for what he was."

1. Always verify credentials and claims, especially in relationships and professional settings.
2. Maintain a healthy skepticism; if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
3. Seek second opinions in medical situations, particularly with experimental treatments.
4. Recognize and address the emotional toll of betrayal; consider counseling or support groups.
5. Advocate for transparency and ethical behavior in all professional realms.

It's Fraud Week on the Megyn Kelly Show, and we begin with the story of former NBC producer and journalist Benita Alexander, and her ex-fiancé Dr. Paolo Macchiarini. Alexander talks about how she met Macchiarini for a report she was working on about regenerative medicine, his personality and confidence, what drew her to him personally, the way he seemed with patients, how it started to fall apart, the tactics her fiancé used to keep up the fraud like "love bombing" and other signs of narcissism and arrogance, the thrill some people get from lying and conning people, the secret client list he said he had involving The Clintons and the pope, her fiancé's lies about the pope marrying them, his actual relationship with the Vatican, why he chose to amplify the lies he was telling, whether he was a pathological liar and sociopath, how she came to find out her fiancé had been living a double life and lying to her, the revelations about multiple families, what happened after she confronted him, how the con of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was beyond just personal but professional and medical, the reality of the supposedly innovative plastic windpipe surgery he spearheaded, advice for other women on how to spot the red flags, and more.

People

Paolo Macchiarini, Benita Alexander

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Benita Alexander

Content Warnings:

Discussions of medical malpractice and personal betrayal

Megyn Kelly
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Bonita Alexander
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Megyn Kelly
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Bonita Alexander
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Megyn Kelly
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show Live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at.

Bonita Alexander
Noon east.

Megyn Kelly
Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show. It's fraud week on the show this week and we are bringing you incredible and disturbing true crime stories, all featuring some element of fraud. That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to give any of the stories away. Lots of them take different and unexpected twists and turns. We begin the week with the story of an NBC news producer who fell in love with a super surgeon, a pioneer, a miracle worker. That surgeon was doctor Paolo Macchiarini. The handsome George Clooney lookalike doctor was once the darling of the medical world. He promised incredible developments in regenerative medicine. He was the first person to transplant synthetic windpipes into patients. While covering Paolo for an NBC special, producer Bonita Alexander fell for the doctor. But romantic getaways soon turned into a bed of lies. Bonita Alexander is here to tell her story.

Paolo Macchiarini
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Megyn Kelly
Bonita, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much for being here.

Bonita Alexander
Thanks for having me. Megan. It's great to be here.

Megyn Kelly
Okay. I've been watching all of it. I did. I watched the doctor death thing that originally did this, and then the Netflix special. Of course you did a special on investigative. I mean, like, I'm obsessed with your story. It's just not so. There's so much about it that I find incredibly telling and complex, and it raises so many issues.

Not to mention the fact that you were a Star news producer. And I love Star news producers. You remind me in so many ways of my own star news producers who I love on my team. And it's one of those things where, like, if this could happen to you, it could happen to anybody.

Not only are you smart and savvy, but you are literally in the business of detecting bullshit.

And yet. Right, so that's.

Yeah, that make it so compelling. So let's start at the beginning for people who are not aware of the story, and even people who are aware are going to be interested to hear you tell it, as I have been so many times.

You're an NBC News producer, and you get asked by Meredith producer or Meredith Vieira, who is an NBC, to work on a special based on a doctor that she had read about, I guess, in a magazine, because this guy, Paolo Macchiarini, was getting some press at the time for this very innovative thing he was doing in medicine. So take us there.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, we were actually looking at doing a documentary about regenerative medicine, which is this very promising, exciting field where to boil it down to its most simple terms, we're looking at a future where you make new body parts and organs in the lab.

This has so much potential to eradicate the need for donor organs and all the problems that come with it and just basically go to lab and order a new body part. And so there's a lot of excitement attached to this field.

And when we started looking into it, Doctor Paolo Macchiarini's name kept coming up. He was considered the pioneer in this field, at the forefront of this groundbreaking, revolutionary field. And his nickname was a super surgeon. And he worked at the place in Sweden that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine. And so there were tons of accolades, tons of press. I mean, he kind of had this reputation, like he walked on water and people were clamoring to work with him. And there was just a lot of excitement surrounding this man.

Megyn Kelly
So you decide to do a profile on him. He's going to get the long form NBC treatment, and this is in advance of him performing one of these surgeries on a little two year old girl. Right. And where was she located?

Bonita Alexander
So he was about to do one of his transplants on this korean toddler, beautiful little girl named Hannah, who had tragically been born with no windpipe at all. So she had spent her entire little life in the hospital. She had never left the hospital. And she was going to be the first toddler that had received one of these transplants and also the youngest person in the world and the first one ever operated on in the US. And so that made that case appealing to us. And then I talked to her family, who were just the most beautiful people, her parents. And they had been through so much, you know, trying to save this little girl's life. And they were besides themselves, and they thought that doctor Paolo Macchierini was the answer to their prayers. Basically the savior. He was gonna step in and save the day when nobody else could. And that was the reputation that this man had. And so we decided to focus our story around Hannah and her family and follow her surgery.

Megyn Kelly
So you and he have to spend a lot of time together. As much as the anchor spends some time with the star guest on a piece like that, the producers spend way more time with him. The producers all do. But especially the lead, which you were. And what happened? Like, he was. Is a good looking man. He does look a little like George Clooney.

He's.

I can't remember. He's Italian. Yes.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, he's Italian.

Megyn Kelly
He's got that going for him, too.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. He's very charming. He's one of those people that has that quality that when he walks into a room, you know, he turns head. People pay attention to him. He's got that commanding presence. You know, he's very arrogant, very confident, very self assured. He speaks five or six different languages. You know, he's Italian.

He dressed very well.

He's kind of flirtatious with everybody, men and women. And he's got that confident air. And also on top of that, here he is doing something that literally nobody else in the world was doing.

He's rumored to be in contention for a Nobel Prize himself. And he seemed to be very devoted to giving hope to patients who had no other hope. So there was something very intriguing about him and something very admirable. And so just start with all that, you know? And we had a joke in the office that, oh, you know, he's a storage Clooney look alike. He definitely had that appeal.

But then when I met him, he seemed to be incredibly caring. We were friends first. We just started talking a lot over a coffee after a shoot, a dinner, after a shoot, on long plane rides, we flew Hannah all the way from Korea to Illinois.

I, at the time, was at a very vulnerable place in my life. I would not realize how vulnerable until much later and how susceptible that made me. But my ex husband of our then nine year old daughter was tragically dying of brain cancer, and I was sort of holding it together at work. But inside, I think I was crumbling. I was facing the enormity of what this meant for the rest of her life, for our lives. How was I going to cope with this? How was she going to cope with this, you know, all of it. And I started pouring my heart out to him, and he just seemed like such an attentive, caring listener. And that's what kind of blew me away. It was none of the other stuff. It was the fact that this man seemed to genuinely care about this little girl, my daughter, that he'd never met. And that's what got me.

He.

Megyn Kelly
In some of these documentaries, they show clips of him with Hannah, the two year old girl, and with other patients. And his bedside manner seems impeccable. It's beautiful.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. Exactly. And that.

Megyn Kelly
So see how you were fooled?

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, well, that's. I look at those videos now, and I think, you know, damn it, that's exactly the way he was with me. I mean, he appears to be exactly the opposite of what he actually is and what he actually turned out to be. But he.

He just seems so caring, so genuinely caring and attentive and really a really good listener, you know? Now, of course, I realized he was gathering information to use against me, but at the time, I just thought he was an incredible human being.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, that's very interesting. I want to return to that. I haven't heard you cover that in your earlier pieces, but there's a lot I want to ask you that I, you know, just watching all of this, I have a lot of questions for you outside of the story that I'm like, I got to know this, and I got to. Okay, gathering information. We got to come back to that.

So it moves quickly, and we spend a minute on the ethical piece. You're not really supposed to date the subject of your piece. You knew that. Sometimes it happens. It's not great, but you deal with it when it happened.

In this case, it is interesting that it happened, because in retrospect, do you believe he made it happen so that you would be so distracted by him and your blossoming love affair that you would not be paying attention to the medical problems surrounding his supposedly, you know, groundbreaking work.

Bonita Alexander
I now believe that I was targeted from day one. You know, he had a plan from day one, and it was not what I thought it was. You know, I thought we were genuinely falling in love and this man was sweeping me off my feet. I now believe when I met him in 2013, the world still thought he was the super surgeon. He was a superstar. He was doing this groundbreaking, pioneering procedure, getting all sorts of press, all sorts of accolades behind the scenes. The whistleblowers were starting to figure out that something was wrong. Patients were dying. However, at the time, he was still sticking by what he said and has continued to say all along that whenever you do an experimental procedure, patients do die, which is actually true. You look at heart transplants, lung transplants, anything new, radical and experimental patients do die. At the beginning, however, what he wasn't telling the world, and what nobody knew yet was that he had not done one single one of the preliminary steps that you're supposed to do before doing an experimental procedure on humans. He had literally skipped everything.

And he's standing at press conferences and interviews saying that his patients are doing beautifully well, when in fact, they were suffering and they were dying slow, horrible deaths. He's lying about the success in papers. So all this is happening. The world does not know this yet, unfortunately. I wish we had.

But he had to know, right? That it was going to implode. It was a matter of time. It was just a ticking time bomb. So I think he met me and he thought, okay, here's this successful, smart journalist.

I'm going to make her fall in love with me. And when the shit hits the fan, I'm going to have her in my back pocket. So she's going to protect me. I think that's exactly what he was doing. I think he was using me.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, because you're a top producer, all sorts of awards, Edward R. Murrow and so on, and you're working for one of the top anchors at NBC as well on this piece, Meredith Vieira. And you're super smart. So if he can get you to vouch for him in this piece on an ongoing basis, it's huge. That's gold. So I can see. Yeah, that was my suspicion in watching it, because that's one of my big questions all along, is why? Why? Why did you do that to her? And especially because you were so vulnerable and you were going through this personal family tragedy and your poor daughter. So, okay, so that's our suspicion right now, is that it was an intentional latching on. You're supposed to be investigating him. I mean, a producer investigates, but it's not like you're treated like a private detective where you really expect to unearth any crime attached to the guy. You have to do a reasonable level of research on him. When you were doing that and also falling in love, were there red flags? You know, did you see that patients had been dying on this? You know, he had this fake trachea that he would put this into this synthetic trachea that he would coat in the patient's own stem cells and put it in their necks as a new trachea to replace one stricken by cancer. Or in the case of the little girl, Hannah, that was never there, that she'd been born without one. So had you seen any of those red flags or deaths?

Bonita Alexander
You know, there was an investigation in Italy which had nothing to do with the plastic tracheas, and he was put on house arrest and accused of extortion. And that raised some red flags. For a minute, we actually considered putting the story on hold.

And, in fact, there was a hold in bringing Hannah to Illinois during that time while the FDA investigated. But then the lawyers in Illinois came back, the FDA came back, and everybody said, no, it's fine. He's cleared. The charges were dropped. It's all a misunderstanding. And so that seemed fine. And if the FDA is endorsing him and a hospital is still bringing him all the way to Illinois to do this very radical transplant, that seemed okay. With the patients dying. He was still, at the time, able to stick by this argument that these patients are pioneers. And whenever you do something experimental, you're learning and people do die. And all of that is valid if you've done everything you're supposed to do. But again, what nobody knew is that he hadn't done everything he was supposed to do. And he was literally using people as human guinea pigs. I mean, it's atrocious. It's beyond awful.

But at the time, the patients, even the patients of that died, their families were still supporting him. The hospital in Illinois still supported him. After Hannah died, the FDA was backing him. Karolinska, for goodness sakes, the place that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine, they're still employing him, they're still endorsing him, they're still backing him. So there was no reason, really, to doubt him. And anytime you're doing something radically new and you're a pioneer, you're going to have critics, of course, and he did have critics, but most of the criticism was about the fact that he was running all over the world. And he didn't stick around long after doing the transplants to take care of the patients. And he seemed more like an arrogant surgeon than anything else. Yeah, there just wasn't. There wasn't enough there yet. You know, unfortunately, in hindsight. God, I wish we had known. But nobody did. Sure.

Megyn Kelly
If you had approached, and it was like, nine out of nine patients have died, obviously, he would have done a very different. A hard turn away from this guy.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly.

Megyn Kelly
Full. But I understand medicine and these new procedures do go through, you know, highs and lows when they're first being unleashed. And he was pretty open about that. He was talking about that in a way that sounded credible, like, hey, you know, these are experimental procedures. I'm not trying to hide that. And I only am really kind of doing it on people who have no hope, who are willing to take this huge risk.

And yet what he knew, what they didn't know is, you know, they haven't. This hasn't been tested. He didn't do the animal trials. He's done nothing. You are a human guinea pig. You're the first line of experimentation, and there's been no success with it so far. Here he is. This is from bad surgeon on Netflix, and it's footage from an old interview of Paolo talking about this very issue.

Paolo Macchiarini
The more complex surgery is, the more higher the chances of risk you take.

The first liver transplant, the first kidney transplant, the first heart transplant. Did they go all well? No.

We don't have the magic crystal to show in, to look in the future.

I think that this is the future.

Megyn Kelly
Okay. And we'll get to the specifics unfolding after this. So you're working with him in early 2013 on this NBC News piece, and things are starting to unfold. You're spending lots of time together over in Europe. It's romantic, and, you know, it's not exactly professional, but it's hard. And I'm sure you're feeling sad over your ex husband dying and all the things. And then it was, what, June of 2013? You flew to Venice, had an incredibly romantic weekend, by the way. He was very generous. This was not a financial con. He paid for everything.

Bonita Alexander
Everything. I mean, that's one of the things that distinguishes him and is also so perplexing, because most con artists, you look at somebody like the Tinder Swindler or all these other ones that we've heard of, their motive is money, right? They're trying to get money. Money was a non issue. He was exceedingly generous.

Over the top generous. Not just with me and my daughter, my friends, my family, lavish vacations, everything over the top. He would take 20 people out to dinner and pay for everything, buy the most expensive champagne. I mean, he was just extraordinarily extravagant and generous, even things like, I had a friend that was going through breast cancer, and he insisted that we send her some money for her treatment because she was struggling at the time. He. Yeah, money was a non issue.

Megyn Kelly
Mm hmm. So Christmas 2013, he proposed.

Things moved very quickly. Had the piece aired yet?

Bonita Alexander
No, but it was. We were done shooting it. We had been done shooting it for a while, and it's. It sat for a long time, as you know, stories sometimes do before they actually hit the air. And this one sat for a long time.

I think June of 2014, when it finally aired, it might have been April, May, but it was. It sat for a long time, which was frustrating. I mean, we were in a difficult position. I mean, as you said, I had crossed this invisible but very important ethical line that you're not supposed to cross in journalism for a very good reason. Right. You don't get involved with the source of your story, because then your objectivity could go out the window. And it wasn't like I didn't struggle with that. I did. And I had actually pushed him away for a few months and said, we have to wait. We have to wait until the story errors. We can't be together. But it was just so difficult, especially in the wake of my ex husband actually passing away. And then I had my own health scare on top of it the same year. And even all my friends and family were just like, are you crazy? This man's nuts about you. You know, he's madly in love with you. What are you waiting for?

But this proposal was a surprise. And that's another, in hindsight, another red flag. It is. Things moved very, very quickly, you know? And in the normal trajectory of a relationship, you know, things take time. Right? It takes time to fall in love. But as that's one similarity he does have to other con artists. Everything was on the fast track. Everything was moving at rapid fire speed. You know, he said, I love you very quickly. He was talking about marrying me very quickly, moving in very quickly because he was in a rush. I didn't realize that. Right. I just thought it was all very romantic, but so, yeah. And the beauty of the proposal, because this man was so over the top with everything, you know, I'd walk into a hotel room, and there'd be, every time, rose petals all over the floor, you know, bouquets everywhere, champagne everywhere.

And the proposal was just simple. It was just me and my daughter and Paolo at home at Christmas, and he just handed me a little box without saying anything. And I had no idea it was coming.

Megyn Kelly
But, yeah, we actually have a bit of you talking about this in the special bad surgeon again. That's the Netflix version of Bonita's story. Here it is.

Bonita Alexander
Fast forward, Christmas 2013. Paulo came to stay in New York with me.

It was very casual. He cooked a big, elaborate meal. He handed me this little box.

Paolo Macchiarini
Nobody.

Bonita Alexander
Then I open the box, and it's this beautiful diamond ring.

Oh, my God.

I just.

I kind of froze.

Paolo Macchiarini
You got it.

Bonita Alexander
And then I said to him, is this what I think it is? And he just smiled and he nodded.

I said, wow. You know, I was completely floored.

Megyn Kelly
So he was love bombing you?

Yeah.

Bonita Alexander
I mean, it was a long, slow form of love bombing because we were together almost two years, and it never stopped. In the two years, it wasn't this sort of only love bombing you at the beginning, but the love bombing is very calculated also. Everything about this, I think, was calculated. The love bombing is designed.

You know, you feel like you're in the clouds, you're floating sort of on a cloud of bliss. And it's very intentional, because then you don't look at anything else. You don't question anything. It's designed to sort of put you in a haze and distract you from what's really going on.

Megyn Kelly
I wonder, as I watch that, I think maybe it's just personal preference. I'm not sure. I feel like if somebody did that to me, like, constantly, because I saw every voicemail was like, my love, my love. I think I'd be like, it's a no. But would you have said that, too, prior to meeting him?

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, 100%. That's not my style at all. And actually, we did have.

You know, it's interesting because not only was it always these consistent, lavish, over the top gestures, but also he was videotaping everything all the time. Like, the video camera was never not on. And so we had arguments about that. I said, you know, number one, I don't need all this. You don't need to do something every time we go on vacation. It's too much. You know, it's kind of embarrassing. You know, everything was a show. And also, why do you have to videotape everything? We don't have to document every moment, which now is bizarre. It was sort of like he was documenting his own demise because he left me with so much video.

Yeah, but it's crazy.

Megyn Kelly
Can I ask you why? Why do you think he was doing that? Because you think somebody who's. And we'll get into the details of what exactly, you know, we know now about him while he was doing all this, but you'd think anybody who's doing something somewhat nefarious would not want it.

Bonita Alexander
All on tape, which is interesting, because now, when I talk to women who've been conned by men, a lot of them talk about the fact that the man would never pose for a photograph with her, right? But this was exactly the opposite. I think it just goes hand in hand with the narcissistic arrogance. I think this man thought he would never get caught. And I think he got a sick thriller out of lying to people and conning people. And I just think it was part of the game.

Megyn Kelly
Gosh, it's disturbing, but I think you're right. That's how it feels. So he, there comes a day in which he reveals to you that he's got, in addition to this amazing ability to create these regenerative tracheas that he implants and the people who are suffering, he's got this secret client. Listen. And he's got this secret life as vip surgeon to the most well known people on earth.

And I have to say, I defend you on this piece of the story. I believe coming into it, with this amount of press and this amount of, like, medical professionals touting this guy, this would be believable. This is who Barack Obama might quite see on the side. Right? So give us a feel for the number of, you know, celebs he said he was secretly catering to.

Bonita Alexander
So it first came up, actually, right after he proposed, because it was Christmas and he said he couldn't stick around for New Year's. And I was not happy about it. And I kept peppering him with questions, well, you know, where do you have to go? And he kept saying, it's an important surgery. It's an important surgery. I'm like, come on. And finally, that's when he said, look, I have to tell you something. And of course, it was all built up with, I've never told this to anyone before. Even my ex wife doesn't know about this, and blah, blah.

And he said, I'm part of a very clandestine secret network of doctors from around the world of all different specialties. And we cater to the world's most important people, famous people, dignitaries, because these people don't want their private medical life, you know, known in public. And he told me that new year said he was going to take care of Hillary Clinton and that he'd been taking care of the Clintons for some time and that he was friends with Bill Clinton.

I thought it was ridiculous. And I said, I've never heard of anything like this. This is absurd.

However, I called a friend in La who's very connected to a lot of celebrities, and I just said, look, is this feasible? And she said, bonita, come on. She said, you don't think these people have private, personal doctors? Of course they do. They all do. They all have doctors that fly to them privately and their private jets, they don't want everything made public. So on the one hand it seemed. Yeah. So on the one hand it seemed absurd, and on the other, it didn't. And I understand why people who have never sort of been in these circles or don't understand this type of lifestyle would go, come on, that's not true. But I don't think it's so far from the truth, you know, and not.

Megyn Kelly
Far from the truth. I don't have such a doctor in my life, though I would love. But I know doctors as friends who get, they get offered $250,000 to fly to Saudi Arabia and help somebody. If you have money, this is how you live and this is how you expect to be taken care of.

Bonita Alexander
Right, right.

So he, the name sort of dribbled out over time because it was all, you know, so secretive and he wasn't supposed to be telling me, but it ended up being, I mean, all kinds of people. The emperor of Japan, of all people, was in there, people in Russia, because he had a very, very lucrative multi million, if not billion dollar grant in Russia to do clinical trials in Russia. So he said that was real.

Megyn Kelly
He did have that.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, that was real. Yeah, that was real. And then all kinds of celebrities, you know, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Sarkozy's from France. I'm trying to even remember who they all were. It was a long list.

And people at the Vatican, which will become very instrumental.

Paolo Macchiarini
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Megyn Kelly
So you're gonna get married, but he can't spend new years with you because he's got to go take care of some very important clients, and these are his secret patients. And then I do not understand this piece of the story. I don't understand.

Bonita Alexander
I'll help you.

Megyn Kelly
Why, why did he say, let's get married by the pope?

So, at the pope's summer residence, the apostolic palace of Castle Gandolfo. Why? Yeah, why take this there?

Bonita Alexander
Well, yeah, this, this gets, unfortunately, very simplified. And I understand from an outsider's perspective why people say, oh, give me a break. You know, she really thought the sorry fucking pope was going to marry her. Like, who believes that? I get that, but it did not happen like that. It was a very, very slow, meticulous weaving of this very clever lie. It started with, he wanted a big catholic wedding in Italy. And I said, well, how's that going to work? You know, we're both divorced, or so I thought, and I'm not even catholic, you know, and I don't know much about the catholic religion, but I don't think Italy lets divorces get married in the Catholic Church. And he said, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it all.

I was very, very busy at the time.

I had a new job at NBC, Meredith had a new talk show, and I was working crazy hours. And he said, look, you're too busy. Let me take over the planning of the wedding. Let me go and find us a priest in Italy that will marry us. And so he spent months actually supposedly going to one church after another in Italy, trying to find a priest that would marry us.

And he would send me pictures of these churches. He would send me long texts, all kinds of stuff. And this went on for months and months and months. And finally he just said, I can't find a priest that's willing to marry two divorces. And I said, what are we going to do? And he said, you know, I said, maybe we should think of something else. Maybe we should go and get married on a beach. And he said, look, I'm going to go to Rome and call in a favor. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, I'm going to go to the Vatican. Now, as ridiculous as that sounds, he had told me that he had done consulting work at the Vatican, which again, as absurd as it sounds, on the one hand, also made sense. This is one of the world's leading cardiothoracic surgeons. This is a man who's rumored to be in contention for the Nobel prize, who is doing something that nobody else in the world is doing. He's italian.

Why wouldn't he be called in to consult at the Vatican? And he had told me and many other people that he had helped consult on the previous pope's health care, who actually had his trachea taken out, had a tracheotomy. He did not say that he took care of him directly. He just said that he was called to the Vatican to help. And I had heard other doctors talking about this. I had seen paperwork talking about the work that Paulo.

Paulo had done at the Vatican. So this was not so ridiculous.

And that's when he told me, look, the pope is one of my clients. He's one of my secret celebrity clients and that I'm not allowed to tell anybody.

So then he says he's going to the Vatican to ask him for help, ostensibly finding us a priest to marry us. And that's when everything went crazy town, because he calls me after this meeting, this was now October of 2014. And he says, look, I have great news.

They've agreed to help us. They'll find a priest that will. That will marry us. And I said, great. And he said, and there's something else, you know, and it's all so dramatic. He said, sit down, and all this nonsense. And he said, pope Francis actually agreed to marry us himself. And I said, oh, bullshit. You know, I said, the pope doesn't even marry people. You know, I thought he was playing some kind of game with me, to be honest. And I was so pissed. And I actually hung the phone up on him, and I went straight to my desk. I was at work, and I literally googled, does the pope marry people? But what popped up was one month earlier, September of 2014, the pope had married 20 couples in the Vatican. And these were all couples that were, quote unquote, living in sin, you know, that were not, had children out of wedlock or whatever. So the pope actually can marry people if he wants to. That's the first thing. People think he can't. He can if he wants to. So it took some convincing, you know, it took about three, four days, maybe a week, actually, of Paolo convincing me. And this was also very clever.

His argument to me was that because he was a pope's personal, private doctor, and because this is this very forward thinking, progressive pope, that the pope had been looking for a couple of divorces, that he could use a sort of poster, a poster couple to marry publicly, to make a statement that he was willing to open the doors of the Catholic Church to divorces. And the pope wanted to do Paolo a favor to thank him for being his private, personal doctor. And we now needed to do the pope a favor and do this. And so it almost became not about us anymore. It wasn't even about our wedding. Paolo made it sound like this was an obligation that by virtue of. He wanted to do this for the pope and by virtue of being his fiance, I had to go along for the ride, and I needed to do this because this was gonna. I might not care because I'm not catholic, but this would help open the doors of the catholic church to, you know, divorces.

Megyn Kelly
Put in that context, it makes sense, because this is not just like Joe Schmoe.

Bonita Alexander
Who.

Megyn Kelly
The Olive garden saying that the pope wants to perform the wedding.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. Well, that's what I always say. It's not like I woke up one day and he went, hey, the pope's going to marry us. And I went, oh, great. You know, it just. It just didn't happen like that, you know?

Megyn Kelly
No, he had credentials that could potentially make that an actual thing, or at least some of them were real and some of them were fake. But he had been laying the foundation for you to believe all of this, this level of lie for months. Right. So it's not as outlandish as it seems it sounds. I don't understand what I. So I understood all that. Like, I saw how he. How he got you. What I don't understand is now, with retrospect, can you say, why would he do that? Like, I get why he would woo you and try to reel you in, but why take it to that far catastrophic level? It was unnecessary. Why?

Bonita Alexander
Why do you think he completely. All of it was unnecessary. And it just kept growing and growing.

I don't know.

I can't get inside the man's head. You know, I'm not. I'm not an expert. I can't diagnose him. I believe he's, at a minimum, a pathological liar. I think he's probably also a sociopath and he's an extreme narcissist. And I think people like that don't really have a plan. I think they get a sick rush out of the lie. You know, they get a high out of it, out of getting away with it. And they. They're. They keep. They usually do get away with it. Right. And so. And the more they get away with, the more they want to up the ante, and the bigger the high. It's like a drug. And so they don't have a plan. They're just kind of putting 1ft in front of the other. And it's like a game, you know? And I think they just think somehow they're going to wiggle their way out of this, because usually they do.

Megyn Kelly
Yes, because he did not need to propose to you in the first place. You know, you could have rolled along. As you said, it kind of happened soon. He could have just been rolled rolling along in a relationship if he just wanted you to be close and in his corner. And he certainly didn't need to come up with this. We're going to get none of it, you know, at the pope's private residence by the pope himself. Like, all of it was so extraordinary. And I completely agree with every word you said about the high they get. And I do think, yes, it's no accident he chose you as an NBC News producer and somebody with access to, you know, power and could messaging that could be beneficial to him. But I also think your smarts were part of the calculation. He enjoyed that. He loved it.

Bonita Alexander
Well, it was bad. Exactly. That's part of the rush. I think they often target smart, intelligent women because that is part of the rush. You know, if I can. If I can pull it over on her, you know, it just. And that also, going back to an earlier thing with all the extravagant, elaborate surprises he was doing, I always thought that was for me. Right. You know, the roses, the, the lavish trips, everything. And I now realize it wasn't for me at all. None of it. It was all about feeding his ego. You know, when we went to a hotel and the staff was gushing because, you know, they had helped prepare the room with all the roses and the champagne and women at desks were pulling me aside and saying, you know, does he have a brother? How do I meet somebody like him? And I. It was all for show. It's all for his ego. It's all about narcissism. None of it had to do with me, me swooning over him and me being in awe of, you know, the adulation and just adoring him was just feeding his narcissistic ego.

Megyn Kelly
Mm hmm. It's, in part, it's a conquest. He said Andrea Bocelli was going to sing during the wedding service. I mean, right in line with all these extraordinary attendees. He said.

He said that among those who would be attending the wedding would include Mister misses Obama, Mister misses Clinton, Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin. I mean, he really, but again, he's got actual connections to all. He is performing these, you know, swing for the fences surgeries in Russia. So it's not, it it sounds crazy now. We know. It is crazy, but, yeah, you know, she's built it up appropriately. But then here's another big moment.

In anticipation of your move to Europe to be his wife, you, on May 13, left your job at NBC and notified your daughter's school that she would not be coming back.

I know this maybe seems small ball in the grand, but, like, he let you quit your job. He let you pull your daughter out of school.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. Exactly. And it was a very difficult decision for me to make. I mean, I loved my job. You know, I had a very, very successful career. I never. If you had told me before I met paulo that I would give up everything to write off into the sunset with mister Charming, I would have laughed at you. You know, I mean, I'm not that kind of person. I've never been. You know, the kind of.

Megyn Kelly
You're a news producer.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
It's a bunch of cynical mofos in this business. And that's the only way you can be a good news producer.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. You know, the Cinderella shit is not for me. So I just. And it was a difficult decision, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I was very cognizant of what my daughter was going through after having lost her dad. And I thought, Paolo, he was never going to replace her dad. But he seemed to be a good man and somebody that would be good for both of us. He promised to take care of both of us for the rest of our lives. And I thought this would be a good new start for us. And so I made this difficult decision to leave my job and even uprooting my daughter.

What children need after something traumatic and tragic like that is consistency and normalcy. And I was pulling her away from everything that she knew. And he allowed me to do that. He sat in front of my daughter. This still burns me to this day, talking about the school he had enrolled her in in Barcelona and the life she was going to live in Barcelona, and on and on and on about this in Barcelona and then in Barcelona. How the hell you do that to a child who just lost her dad to brain cancer is beyond me. But, yeah, he took it to such extreme lengths, you know, and the whole time.

Megyn Kelly
But of course, you know, what we. What we know is that at the same time he was doing this, he was killing people. So just when you get to this point of the story where you're like, how could he. How could he let you give up your amazing career and pull your daughter, who was already having a tough time in the loss of her dad, but from a school she knew and a life she knew and a friendship network she had.

He was killing people. He was recklessly killing person after person, lying about successes that had never been there.

And I'm going to get to that next. But before we leave this lane. So that was May 13, 2014, that, you know, 2015. 2015. Sorry, 2015. And the next day, May 14, was the day it all started to come down, because you got an email from a friend. Tell us.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah. And before I tell that, just to back up very quickly, I think we had been arguing for a good four months at that point. And one of the things we had been arguing about was, I had never been to the house in Barcelona. He had flown me and my daughter all over the world, all these beautiful trips, but. But every single time we were supposed to go to Barcelona, the trip got canceled at the last minute because he had an emergency surgery. This happened three, four times. I think one time I was actually at the airport when the trip got canceled, and it was a huge source of contention. I said, you know, I'm not marrying you without seeing the house where I'm supposed to be living after the wedding, without my daughter seeing the house where she's supposed to be living. I mean, who would do that? Who would marry a man without seeing the place where they're going to live? So we had been arguing a lot about that, and there were other little things that were starting to nag at me, but not huge red flags. You know, it wasn't like somebody was waving a giant flag on a football field saying, alert, alert, con man. But I think there were, at that point, little things that were nagging at my gut that I was pushing down, because I think I didn't want to face the fact that I was starting to realize that something was wrong.

And then the day after I left NBC, I had a group of girlfriends that took me to a spa because they knew what a difficult decision it was for me to leave NBC. And I come out of the spa, we'd been in there laughing for hours. We had put our phones away, and I pull out my phone, I'm at the desk paying, and it's an email from a colleague, and the subject line just says, the pope. And it's a link to an article that says, the pope is going to be in South America on the date of our wedding, which was July 11, 2015, and that the trip had been planned for a very long time.

The second. I mean, the second I read that article, you know, all those little red flags that had been sort of bubbling up that I guess I had been ignoring all exploded. And I just felt sick. And I. In that second, I knew. I just thought, you know, this fucker is lying to me about everything. This man is lying to me about everything. Everything's a lie. I knew it. I didn't have all the evidence. I didn't know by any stretch yet the extent of it, but, yeah, it was just a moment of. I mean, I almost fell over in the spa. I just felt ill. Wow.

Megyn Kelly
Wow. Were you. Were your girlfriends there? Do they remember the moment? Where did you share it immediately, or were you embarrassed?

Bonita Alexander
They.

Immediately, they just said, you know, bonita, what? What happened? What's the matter? You know, and I could barely talk, and a couple of them came back to my apartment with me. It was still early in the morning, and I was just pacing back and forth and trying to figure it out. And they were so sweet, because they kept trying to say, well, maybe it's not as bad as you think it is, and maybe there's an explanation, and maybe there'll still be a wedding. And you never really wanted the pope to marry you in the first place, which is true.

But I kind of knew. And I called him, of course, immediately. I called him, texted him, and of course, he denied everything. You know, he immediately said, I don't know. You know, I just found this out myself, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. It's a misunderstanding, you know, blah, blah. But I knew from that moment, I knew that he was lying to me.

Megyn Kelly
You did that was it, the before and after moment.

Bonita Alexander
It's almost like, again, I think it was those little red flags that sort of been bubbling under the surface. And I had been uncomfortable for a while, but couldn't quite figure out what it was. I mostly attributed it to leaving NBC and to my daughter, but I think it was much deeper than that. I think at some level, I knew, you know, long before I actually knew.

Megyn Kelly
And at this point, you've already sent out the invitations for the wedding, and you've said, it's gonna be hopes, like, we're gonna like you.

Bonita Alexander
No, we are eight weeks out. We are eight weeks out from the wedding to the day, almost, because it was. Yeah. May 14 to July 15, people had bought plane tickets. We had almost 300 people coming from all over the world. My family's from Australia. We had people coming from Australia, from Europe, all over the place. They had spent thousands of dollars on fancy red carpet attire and booked hotels and everything, you know, this thing was. He had taken it that far. You know, this. This.

It's ridiculous.

Megyn Kelly
I'm sure you wonder.

So it just happened that a friend, you know, who's paying attention to news events like the pope schedule, saw this and realized it was B's. But what do you think? He.

Bonita Alexander
What if he hadn't?

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, what would he have done? Would he have seen it through and just come up with an excuse at the last minute for why it's not the pope and we're not at the pope's private residence and done, like, a fake marriage?

Bonita Alexander
You know, the only thing I can think of is because I've asked myself this question so many times. It's one of the big money questions. You know, what. What was his end game? You know, this had to implode. He was literally lying about everything. He created an entire fake fantasy wedding. It turned out he had told me he was divorced. He wasn't even divorced. So he couldn't have legally married me in the first place. So this never could have happened if he had allowed everybody, you know, I mean, 300 people descend in Italy thinking they're going to this, you know, lavish wedding.

The only thing I can think of is that he would have said there's some kind of security threat. Right? You know, there's been a death threat on the pope's life or one of the dignitaries or celebrities that were supposed to be coming. We can't. It's too dangerous. It's too controversial. Have this wedding. But even if he had done that, what was he going to do with me? What was he going to do with my daughter? You know, I'm there with my bags packed, in my wedding dress, and I think, I'm moving to Barcelona. I have no idea how the hell he thought he was getting out of this.

Megyn Kelly
It's like part of me wishes it had played out like that, just so we could see, just so we could know.

Yeah, because it's true.

Bonita Alexander
It's true.

Megyn Kelly
You know, there was never a wedding scheduled. The pope had nothing to do with it. And he couldn't marry you because he was already married. Which, again, in retrospect, now, the proposal, sending out invitations, the recklessness of it. Bonita.

Bonita Alexander
Right? Yeah, I know.

Megyn Kelly
Recklessness.

Bonita Alexander
Well. And, of course, it would get much worse. I mean, I. And ultimately, I'd find out he was juggling four families at the same time.

Megyn Kelly
Wait, what? I didn't see that. I did not see that in the earlier pieces. I know about the one wife. Because eventually, you and your girlfriends and I love your girlfriends, they're.

Bonita Alexander
I know I have the best friends.

Megyn Kelly
That's a wonderful story. But they take you like the best girlfriends would to Barcelona on what would have been your wedding day. And you've got a fake wig on, and the girls go up to his front door, ring the doorbell, and he comes down, and it turns out, oh, we have this, actually, we have this clip. Let's. Let's play it so we can watch a little bit of it.

Bonita Alexander
Okay.

Nancy and Lee just knocked on his door, and I saw him come down.

Megyn Kelly
The steps with his dog.

Bonita Alexander
Asshole.

Megyn Kelly
He's there.

Bonita Alexander
Not in fucking Russia, ssla.

Megyn Kelly
I'm not sure what's going on, but two little kids coming down the stairs.

Bonita Alexander
You lying fucking sack of shit. Yeah, I see. You motherfucking fucker.

Megyn Kelly
Fuck you.

Yeah. So that was the day you learned not only does he have a wife already, but two young kids, which is what stopped you, I think, from going to the door yourself.

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Bonita Alexander
When I met him, he told me that he had been separated from his italian wife for a very long time. So I knew from the beginning, there's a lot of misunderstanding about this, that he had a wife. He had two children who at the time were, I think, 19 and 20, who were actually supposed to be coming to the wedding. And he said that they had been living separate lives for many years, which was well documented. He lived in Barcelona, had been for years. She lived in Italy.

And, I mean, I met the man's mother. I spoke to his sister. His sister's.

His niece was supposed to be one of our flower girls. So this was no secret. He just told me that they had never gotten divorced because it's Italy and they're catholic and it's complicated. But he told me when he met me that now he finally wanted to get divorced. And that was why he proposed, because he said he had filed for divorce and that the divorce was going through. So I knew there was that wife. I knew about her. I'd seen pictures of her, everything. The woman in Barcelona. When I went to the house in Barcelona, I went there because once I figured out he was lying. I went into hyper investigative mode. It's kind of like I woke up out of my love haze and woke up and put my journalist hat back on, and I just went nuts. I was investigating. I hired two private investigators, one here in the US, one in Italy. And, I mean, my bedroom looked like something out of a law and order episode. There were binders everywhere. I was trying to figure everything out. And for me, the last piece of the puzzle was Barcelona. I mean, clearly there was a good reason he had never let me go to that house. And so that's why we decided to go there. And it was part sort of a fuck you, girl, you know, fun girls trip. And. Which is why I got this hideous blonde wig, which I didn't really know if I would need. But I wasn't sure what I was going to find in that house. So I ordered this cheap blonde wig on Amazon, and we went to the house and. And one funny thing about that is, when I put in the address for the house, he had given me an address for the house in Barcelona so people could send wedding gifts.

It was a bogus address.

I had to find the right address.

He didn't even give me the right address for the house. So he had no idea I was coming. And I wanted it to be a surprise attack, so to speak. You know, that he. And he claimed he was in Russia, which is why you hear me saying that in the video.

And at the time, I'm still talking to him. Right. So when I first discovered that he was lying, I made an almost immediate decision that, okay, this man is never going to tell me the truth about everything. I realize now that he's a pathological liar. And I wanted hard, indisputable, irrefutable evidence before I confronted him. Because one of the things that goes along with this, of course, is gaslighting. These con artists, including Paolo, are very good if you question them about muddying the waters and making you think that you're the one who's crazy for asking them questions, they're so good at it. It's rapid fire. They have an answer for everything. And so I decided I'm not confronting him until I have all my ducks in a row. And I know every single lie. I've uncovered everything. And so I had to play kind of a game with him.

I called off the wedding. And luckily for me, he was being investigated at the time for scientific misconduct.

It was sort of the beginning of the revelations about his medical lies. And it was very convenient timing because he was having a very difficult time in Sweden. And I just said, look, you know, there's too much going on right now. Let's just call off the wedding and postpone it. And he must have breathed such a sigh of relief when I did that. I got him off the hook. But it was also the perfect excuse to cancel the wedding. And that's all I told all our wedding guests as well. And so I'm still talking to him. You know, he's. I'm still talking to him, still saying, I love you, which killed me. And playing along as if we were going to reconvene the wedding at some point. So he had no idea I was coming to that house. And a. He wasn't in Russia. So that was the first thing that pissed me off. He had just texted me, wait, just.

Megyn Kelly
To clarify, so when we see that video of you and your friends in Barcelona, he was still under the delusion that you were fooled and you guys were still together, correct?

Bonita Alexander
Correct.

Megyn Kelly
Okay.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
All right. Okay. Keep going.

Bonita Alexander
I mean, he had some idea. I had been grilling him. I had been telling him for a long time that I thought he was lying, but I still. I think he still thought he had me under his thumb and he was going to bring me back around and then that the wedding was just being postponed. He had no idea that I was on to him or that I knew that he was not really divorced, any of that. Or that I knew everything about the wedding was fake.

And I kind of expected to find another woman in that house.

I wasn't sure if it would be the italian wife or somebody else. I was prepared for that. And my girlfriends and I, we had been through several different scenarios. What if he's there? What if someone else is there? Blah, blah. And the reason I sent them to the door without me was I wanted them to sort of do the initial reconnaissance and see what was going on before I came down. And if he was there, I had planned. I fully intended to confront him.

But what happens is he comes to the door. So first of all, he's there.

And then I see, even from. I'm sitting in the car at the top of the hill, he can't see me. And I see a woman and two young children come out on the veranda of the house. And even from where I am, I can hear them calling him dad. And this is a young woman. This is not his italian wife. I know exactly what his italian wife looks like. So this is when I completely lose it and fall apart, because this is another family. This is a third family. You know, it's the italian wife he never divorced. It's me and my daughter in New York and now here in Barcelona. The real reason he never let us come to Barcelona is because he's hiding another family here. And it was the children that sent me over the edge. I mean, another woman, okay, at that point, I was prepared for that. But the kids and little kids, they were about five and seven years old. I was wholly unprepared for that, and that's when I lost it. I mean, you see in the video, I just.

I think I had been investigating for a couple of months at that point, and I had not dealt with any of the heartache, the devastation. And I just fall apart. I just. I'm screaming, I'm kicking, I'm wailing. I'm calling him every name under the son. It was just devastating. It was just, you know, he just took it so far. It just was sort of incomprehensible to me that you had been sitting here, that you let me think, I'm moving here with my daughter, and you planned this whole fake wedding. You let me quit my job. So much was at stake. You let me pull my daughter out of her school. You let me give up my entire life, and the whole time you're hiding another family here, and the whole time, you know, none of this is ever gonna happen.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, my gosh. It's just so devastating.

Bonita Alexander
It's crazy. It's crazy.

Megyn Kelly
I spoke with a friend once whose husband had betrayed her, and she did what almost every woman does, which is start to obsess over his phone records and anything she could get her hands on. Right. Just to know. She knew. She knew.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
You know, it was. She knew, but she needed the details, she needed the specifics, and she needed to know, you know, when and how long and how many times. And I said to her, you know, it's. It's almost like in the catholic faith, when somebody dies, they have the wake, and you go to the wake. And even though many Catholics, and non Catholics especially, find it kind of very jarring. What a jarring tradition to go and see the dead body. If it's an open casket, it. You know, what kind of a tradition is this? What is. Why would you do this to yourself? And I get that reaction very much. But there is something.

I don't know if the words Cathartic. There's something necessary for many people in seeing the dead body.

It's like the beginning of coming to terms with what's really happened and how your life has changed from what you thought it was a day earlier, a couple days earlier. And I almost see the behavior you're describing on your part as part of that process for you. Like, you've got to make it real for yourself so acceptance can come 100%.

Bonita Alexander
And I think that's why the house in Barcelona was the last piece of the puzzle for me. I mean, at that point, I already knew that he wasn't divorced. I already knew that, you know, he had created this whole fake fantasy wedding. I mean, everything about it. You know, every place he said was booked, the caterer, the this, the. That none of them had ever heard of us.

I knew that he didn't know a damn one of these dignitaries or celebrities he claimed was coming to the wedding, or he claimed he was the personal doctor to. He sure as hell was not the pope's personal, private doctor. I mean, the Vatican practically laughed at me.

But for me, the last piece of the puzzle was Barcelona, and that was the thing that just sort of. And that's when I could finally confronted him.

Megyn Kelly
Before we get to conversation, who is the fourth family?

Bonita Alexander
You see her actually in the Netflix special. So after the older one, after she's younger, Anna Paula, she comes in the third episode. So after I went public, which I do, shortly after this, she contacted me, and it turns out that she and her story is just horrific because her son died.

He was a patient of Paolo's. He did not have a plastic trachea, but he did operate on him. Her son dies in Italy. There's an investigation into manslaughter. So Paulo's facing manslaughter charges in Italy. So what does he do? He seduces her, and basically so that she will drop the charges, which she does. And then he gets her pregnant, and she has a child that's born with him, basically right around the time that he's proposing to me. So that's four families that I know about. You know, it's. It's the italian wife he never divorced. It's me and my daughter in New York. It's the woman and the two kids in the house in Barcelona and then this other poor woman in Italy that he has a child with.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, my God. It's like, in a way, you got away.

Bonita Alexander
Oh, yeah. You know, which is interesting, because he really wanted to have a child. He was desperate to have a child, and that would be such a nightmare. I'm just so glad that never happened.

Megyn Kelly
I know. So can we talk about the confrontation? Because I know that after. Hold on. I pulled the email because I know that after you canceled the wedding, you emailed him. And it reads as follows. I believed you were exactly who you presented yourself to be to me, to my friends and family, to the world. Congratulations. You charm me and all of us into la la land. I will never, ever understand how you could have done this to me or to your daughter.

Who the hell are you? And what the hell is wrong with you?

But this is not the confrontation to which you refer.

Bonita Alexander
No, it is. So that was the first part of the confrontation. This was by text, actually. When we left the house in Barcelona, we went to a place that had wi fi. Keep in mind, he had no idea that I was there. He knew my friends were there. He couldn't get rid of them fast enough, and they told him, hey, look, you know, we. The wedding got canceled so close to the wedding day. We, as a lot of people did, we decided to come to Italy anyway on vacation. And we just dropped by to bring you a wedding gift. That was their excuse for knocking at the doorbell, which the whole thing was so suspicious, right? Because ostensibly, he and I are still getting married and we're still talking, and he didn't invite them in. He could not get rid of them fast enough. He just wanted them to leave. But anyway, we get to this restaurant, and I write him a text that's literally about this long. I mean, what you read is just one part of it. And called him every name under the sun, named everything that I knew he was lying about, and, you know, just called him a despicable, disgusting human being, told him I hated him and et cetera, et cetera. And I think it took him about 1015 minutes to reply. And he wrote back one word.

Wow.

That's all he said?

Megyn Kelly
Unsatisfactory?

Bonita Alexander
Well, I think he was caught, right? What was. What was there to say? Game over. There's nothing to say. He's caught.

Megyn Kelly
I want more. I want more, like, see his face and see him, I don't know, beg for forgiveness or. I want to see him ashamed.

Bonita Alexander
I know the man has no shame or empathy or remorse or any of the other things, but, yeah, yeah, we're.

Megyn Kelly
Never going to see that. Was there ever any more contact?

Bonita Alexander
Yes, in 20. So what happens right after this is. I'm devastated, of course, but almost immediately, I had whatever you want to call it, an epiphany or whatever you want to call it. But I thought, oh, my God, if he's lying to me like this and creating fake relationships with the pope and with you know, celebrities and dignitaries and presidents and creating a whole fake fantasy wedding and allowing people to book tickets and spend money and allowing me to.

Megyn Kelly
Quit my job, put their job in their schools.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, all of it. If he's doing all of that, and we'll go that far, there's no way. There's no way in hell he's not also lying in his medical and professional life. It can't be. And that thought was so horrifying to me because I, you know, he has people's lives in his hands. You know, he's doing something revolutionary and groundbreaking, and people think the man walks on water. And I thought, shit, you know, I have to tell my story. I have to go public. I have to expose him. I almost felt an obligation to do it. I thought, you know, maybe this happened to me because I know how to do this. You know, if I need to go public, if I need to tell my story, it's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be fun. But I know what to do, and I need to do this. The world needs to know who doctor Paolo Macchirini is. And it wasn't vindictive. It wasn't about revenge. It was simply about sounding the warning alarm that, you know, this man is a fraud. This man is a con. He's not who you think he is. And so I very, very quickly connected through a friend with a reporter at Vanity Fair, who told me that he could do it quickly, which is what I wanted.

So this is July of 2014, and the article came out in January of 2016.

My story. And I did not know this when I went public and when I decided to do the story. But within a week of me, my story coming out in Vanity Fair, a scathing documentary came out in Sweden called the experiments, which exposed all his medical lies. And it was actually worse than I feared. I mean, watching that documentary was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do because it was so obvious that he blatantly used people as human guinea pigs that he knew. I believe from the beginning that this thing he was transplanting into them would never work. It was a plastic tube that might as well have been a straw. He knew damn well it wasn't going to work, and he did it anyway. And it just.

It's just so obvious how reckless this man is and how dangerous he is. And it was the combination of the two things that sort of blew everything up, because now you have these insane, you know, over the top, egregious lies in his personal life, coupled with this evidence that he's been lying in the medical arena. And the two things were what finally blew everything up.

Megyn Kelly
That lane of the story, well covered in all the pieces I mentioned.

As disturbing as your piece is the most disturbing.

Bonita Alexander
Oh, it's horrific. It's way worse than what happened to me. I mean, there's just what happened to me.

Megyn Kelly
It's a similar pattern. It's a similar pattern. If you look at it right, in well meaning, earnest, kind people in some turmoil. Trusting him.

Trusting him.

Yeah, trusting him to do right by them, to take care of them, to see them through, you know, the most difficult times of their life. Wooed by his bedside manner, which we discussed, and his credentials, and all of these institutions around him, vouching for him.

Only in their cases, it was a deadly mistake. And amazingly, there are still some families still believing in him, even after their loved ones died in his care. And I can only think. I think they have to do that just as a self protection mechanism. Like, they just have to say, we didn't put our loved one in the hands of a madman. You know, we did something smart, and we took a calculated risk. And I just. When I. As I see the people in, like, the Netflix documentary wrestling with. No, it's okay. You know, we're still grateful to him. All I can think is that's. That's something other than acceptance.

Bonita Alexander
That's. I believe that, too. I think Paula was very good at convincing the families, when patients died, that the patients were pioneers, and they would sort of live in history as pioneers who helped him help pave the way for a better medical future. And that's a much nicer thing to think than you put your loved one in the hands of a madman who is reckless and dangerous and a murderer, quite frankly, probably a serial killer. And I think for some of these patients families, you know, who had been so desperate, and especially Hannah's family, you know, they thought Paulo was the answer to their prayers. They thought he was their last hope. They believed in him. They put so much into that, and they sought him out. And I think that's the other thing. A lot of these people found doctor Makarini on the Internet. They did a Google search, and that's how they found him. So, you know, to deal with the death of your loved one, especially a child, and then on top of that, you sought out the person, you know, that probably killed her. I don't. I think that's just too much to wrap your head around.

Megyn Kelly
Yep. It would be for me. There's me, too. Chris Lyles, whose story is heartbreaking. A 30 year old man, electrical engineer from Maryland, and he was diagnosed with cancer, but heard of Paolo Macchiarini. And he did the procedure on Chris.

And Chris, like all the others who kept that fake trachea in, died. Here's a bit on him from the piece sot three.

Bonita Alexander
We didn't see Paolo that much.

He was flying this place. He was flying that place.

He had one of his assistants look after Chris. Is it okay, Chris?

Megyn Kelly
Yeah.

Bonita Alexander
Don't you try to hold it.

Paolo Macchiarini
Very soon after surgery, Chris Lias gained an infection in the airway. So he started to cough enormously hard. This, you know, really, really deep cough. He got mucus clots in the airways.

What also happened was he got an infection in this wound. So he had a quite dramatic early post operative period. But it was a little bit unusual that you get infection so early on after surgery.

Megyn Kelly
And he had a young daughter.

Horrible.

Used to stand by Palo?

Bonita Alexander
No, actually, no, not anymore. They did initially.

Yeah, they did. They finally came around and realized, you know, initially, they still stood by him, but now, no, now they know.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, they were in the Netflix. Be sounding like, well, you know, Chris, he was terminal. And so it was a risk we decided to take. But that's interesting. Was it after they saw the compilation of stories, you know, that they realized how Chris fit into the story or what? What do you think? Think did it for them?

Bonita Alexander
You know, I think it just takes time. And I think it's the same for any of the people that Doctor Macchiarini fooled. I mean, we're talking some of the world's most prestigious esteemed institutions, doctors, scientists. I mean, he pulled the wool over so many people's eyes. It's not just me and the other women in his life. It's not just the patients and their families. I mean, so many people. And I think it's a. A very, very difficult thing. A, to admit that you got fooled, but b, to wrap your head around the fact that this man, who you thought was either the answer to your patient, you know, your loved one dying, or was, you know, in the case of Carolinsk, at sweeting, bringing you all kinds of accolades and money and esteem. It's just very difficult to wrap your head around the fact that doctor Paolo Macchiarini is not who you thought he was and that he's exactly the opposite of who you thought he was. And I think it just takes time.

Megyn Kelly
And that you may have entrusted your loved one to a madman, to somebody with empathy.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly.

Megyn Kelly
Sociopath.

The case out of Russia, also disturbing. We've mentioned his contacts there. This young ballerina. Ballerina whose name was Yulia.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
He performed her surgery in 2012.

And there's a bit of Paolo talking about her in the piece. Young, beautiful.

She was not terminal.

Bonita Alexander
No, she did not need this surgery. And she begged him, actually, they actually had a lottery in Russia because he was looking for, quote unquote, healthy patients to try this procedure on. She had been in a car accident. So she had a hole in her throat. She had a tracheotomy, but she could have lived the rest of her life like that. And she begged. She made a video begging Paolo to pick her, and he picked her.

Megyn Kelly
Tragically, here's a bit of Paolo talking about her from the Netflix show badge surgeon.

Paolo Macchiarini
This is Yuria.

When I met Julia, she was not able to play with her child.

It was a very emotional moment for me. And they immediately said, this is the right patient. And I still do not believe that. A few days ago, she couldn't breathe and talk normally. So she's a little bit afraid of you.

So please be very sweet.

Bonita Alexander
You know, her case, when I read.

Megyn Kelly
It out and around, like, she was one of his success stories. And as they point out in the piece, it was a lie. And indeed, she died.

Yeah.

Bonita Alexander
Not only died, but they died horrible deaths. I mean, this plastic tube that was coated in the patient's own stem cells was literally rotting inside their throats. So Yulia's mother talks about the fact that she smelled horrifically because this thing was rotting. She smelled like rotting fish because this thing was rotting inside her throat. And then they suffocated to death because this thing disintegrated and rotted in their throats. It's not only did they die, but it's like a torturous death. It's awful.

Megyn Kelly
And he kept doing it. He kept doing it.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly.

Megyn Kelly
Can you speak about the insurance?

Bonita Alexander
Go ahead.

Megyn Kelly
Is it Karolina? What's it called in Sweden?

Bonita Alexander
Karolinska.

Megyn Kelly
Karolinska. Okay. That was principally backing him for a while. He also had the russian institute as well. But it seems like those doctors, there were like, there are a couple of them who are featured, who turned out to be good guys, who recognized what he was doing was very wrong and started to blow the whistle on him.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, I think.

And what they did was very brave. And as is typical with many whistleblowers, unfortunately, they went through hell. You know, it took them a long time to pull together all the evidence against him and they put their own careers on the line. They were questioned. I mean, some of them were called into the police station. Some of them were threatened with losing their jobs. Some of them have left Karolinska now. And they went through hell. But they started realizing slowly that this thing was not working, that the patients were suffering and dying and that Paula was lying in medical papers and very prestigious ones, the New England Journal of Medicine among them, about the results of the transplant. So he's standing at press conferences talking about how the patients are doing so beautifully well, when in fact behind the scenes they're suffering and they're dying. Exactly the opposite of what he was saying. And also he's publishing in these prestigious medical journals saying that, you know, this thing is working beautifully and he's leaving data out, he's faking data, he's lying about stuff. So they start piecing it all together and they spent some insane number of hours piecing all the parts of the puzzle together. And at first, when they first went to Karolinska, they were shunned. They were shooed away. Karolinska didn't want to hear it. And I think it just speaks to what happens with somebody who's so cunning and so charming and so manipulative, like doctor Paolo Macchiarini.

He was bringing in so much money to Karolinska and there was so much promise and hope attached to this man. They were talking about building a whole institution around him. He's getting grants, he's getting published in these prestigious journals. He's operating all around the world. He's bringing them notoriety. So when somebody first comes to them and says, you know what? This guy's not who you think he is, it was a very, very inconvenient truth. Nobody wanted to hear it.

Megyn Kelly
And it's a massive crisis. You go from having a golden boy who's going to make you a fortune and bring you nothing but accolades to having a potential criminal serial killer working for you, who's only going to bring you shame and condemnation.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. Which is why I think initially people tried to sweep it under the rubber because it just, nobody wanted to deal with it.

Megyn Kelly
But there were a couple of doctors there who just didn't allow that.

Bonita Alexander
Oh, they were tenacious. Yeah, they were tenacious. Those whistleblowers refused to give up. And I've now met them and they're lovely guys and we.

I really admire what they did and what they went through, but they just refused to give up. And they still do like me. They still keep talking about him. And. And none of us will stop until there's full justice, which we still don't have.

Megyn Kelly
Well, that's the question, because I think most people hearing the story at this point are asking, please tell me he's in jail. Is he in jail?

There have been some criminal charges, but they haven't gone. Nothing nearly to the level of what we would want or what we think he deserves. Can you talk about what's happened to him in the criminal lane?

Bonita Alexander
Yes, he finally was in Sweden. They had tried going after him a few years ago, and it is a difficult case to prove because they're experimental procedures. So to prove that he knew that the patients were going to die, to prove that he did this intentionally is not so easy. So the first time they tried to do it, they gave up. They sort of dropped the charges. Sweden was furious. This whole thing is a giant scandal in Sweden and it's so embarrassing.

People got fired. People on the Nobel Prize committee stepped down in shame. And so luckily, another prosecutor came back and said, no, I'm going to try again. And so he was on trial in 2022 and he got convicted of one count of bodily harm. They could only go after him in Sweden for the three patients that were operated on in Sweden, including Christopher Lyles, the US patient.

And then he appealed that. And so last year there was an appeals trial and I think he was thinking he was going to get off. Well, instead, the appeals court came back hard and convicted him of three counts of aggravated assault on for all of the patients that were operated on Sweden and sentenced him to 30 months behind bars. Of course, he appeals again all the way to the Swedish Supreme Court. But in October, the Supreme Court came back and said, no, we're not taking the case. The conviction stands. That was October. Here we are six months later, the man's still not behind bars. It's crazy. He managed this, just came out last week to negotiate with swedish authorities that he wants to spend his time behind bars in Spain, where he lives, not in Sweden, on house arrest. So he basically wants to sit at his damn house by the pool sipping cocktails and that that's how he thinks he's going to serve his 30 months, which is just.

I don't even know what word to use. It's so horrific and so unfair to those patients. You know, it's just. That is not justice.

Megyn Kelly
So what are the likely, what are the odds that that's going to happen?

Bonita Alexander
Pretty high, I think. I think now the spanish authorities have to. Sweden has basically washed their hands of him and said, no, serve your time in Spain. Spain has to agree to it. So that's a more delay without him being behind bars. And if they agree to it, I, you know, I think he will. I think he'll have an ankle bracelet and be sitting by his. By his pool.

Megyn Kelly
The most important thing is that he's not allowed to do this to anybody else. Has he lost his medical license? And even if he hasn't, don't you, don't you think that the Netflix show that your documentary, all the work you've been doing, along with these doctors from Carol Insca, have made his. Was reemergence as a physician impossible?

Bonita Alexander
Yes.

I get asked this all the time. It's a tricky question because there isn't one medical license to Yank. It's not like the US in Europe.

It's country by country. So if a country still allows him to operate in Europe, he could, in theory, but as you said, his reputation is clearly severely tarnished and tanked. And he's had a. A drastic, you know, crash from. From fame and notoriety. So I doubt anybody would want him operating on them, but technically, he still can.

Megyn Kelly
He's making a documentary with his side.

I can't wait. I'm actually really looking forward to that. I hope you'll come back on after that hits. What on earth do you think that is going to look like?

Bonita Alexander
He. Because he's not behind bars. He has been doing interviews in Italy in the past months, and he did one, I think it was right before Christmas, and I was on the show, and he was not on, but his attorney was not on. And he's desperate. And the only thing that he can do at the moment is try to muddy the waters and try to distract attention from his patients. And so he's going after me and Aunt Apollo, the woman who also went public in a Netflix documentary. And he's just trying to victim, shame us. Slut shame us, whatever he can. You know, he's just trying to throw dirt, you know, and make up lies about us and muddy the waters and distract attention from the real issue, which is that he killed people, and none of the things he's saying are true. But even if they were, it wouldn't matter. You know, it doesn't matter. You know, what matters is you used people as human guinea pigs. You broke all kinds of legal and ethical laws and recklessly destroyed people's lives, and you killed people and patients lives without caring, so nothing else matters. So he's.

Megyn Kelly
Have there been massive civil suits against him? Somebody should own his bar, his Barcelona home.

Bonita Alexander
Other than Paul, I know the turkish family.

That turkish girl that you see on the Netflix documentary, the one that had something like 200 surgeries. I mean, her case is so horrific. They've sued him. I don't know the outcome of that yet.

Megyn Kelly
We need an american family to sue. We're very good at suing. As you know. That's our forte here in America.

One of the american families needs to sue for wrongful death, and then they will own the home in Barcelona and whatever else he has. That's. That's the true way of punishing somebody like him.

Bonita Alexander
That's true. I know.

Megyn Kelly
He said to La Nazione, an italian publication that wrote, wrote up his plan to do a new documentary. He said, the deaths are glorified, meaning those he caused, but there is no mention of the lives saved. I was crucified in an inhumane way. The history of transplants must be read. The initial phases are always associated with high mortality, but despite this, they continued until they. Until they become almost routine operations.

As for you, he said, she's the one who always lied.

Okay, so we'll. We'll look forward to him filling that out in his, quote, documentary.

I do want to talk to you about a couple of things. The. The thing you lost, your. Your train of thought on that, that we were getting to was contact you've had with him since. Wow. Since that text. So was it after all these pieces hit that you and he.

Bonita Alexander
So, in 2018, I made a film for discovery called he lied about everything.

After the Vanity Fair article, which was just.

I was in such a state of post traumatic stress when that article came out, and I felt like it didn't fully encompass the whole story or my story. And I wanted to tell it in my own words, which is why I did the documentary.

And during the course of making that documentary, I tried to find him. I traveled, actually, to Russia, to Italy, to several places. I met with some of the families, including Yulia's husband, which was heartbreaking, and I couldn't find him. So finally, I got him on the phone. And it was such an interesting phone call because I called from a phone that wasn't mine, so he didn't know it was me. And I had to tell him that I was recording him, obviously for legal reasons. But as soon as I said. I said. I said, hi, Apollo, it's Benita. And immediately, his voice. You know, that soft voice. Oh, hi. How are you? And I thought, this asshole, he thinks either he thinks I'm calling to reconcile or he thinks he can get me again. He thinks he can pull me in again. It was just so disgusting. And then I started, I started firing questions at him. Why did you lie to me? Why did you lie about this? And there was silence. And you could, it was maybe a minute and you could almost hear the cogs in his brain turning, thinking, okay, I'm being recorded. I think I'm supposed to say I'm sorry. And so after I shut up, he just says, I'm sorry. It was the lamest, most insincere apology you've ever heard in your life. He sounded like a robot. He didn't mean it. And then I asked him some other question, and then he hung up on me.

Megyn Kelly
No. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's the moment.

It's over. You got me.

And I have no need to sing or dance anymore.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah. But of course, now that he's, I think even then, I think all of this time, he still thought he was going to get away with it. You know, he still thought somehow he was going to crawl his way out of this and restore his reputation. And so I think this prison sentence and the Supreme Court refusing to take his case was a, was a hard awakening. And that's why he's desperate. And that's why he's doing all this stuff now and calling me a liar, calling Anna a liar. What else can he do? You know? There's nothing else he can do.

Megyn Kelly
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So let's talk about what we can figure out in his psychology and really warning signs for other women. Because you said at the top, which I wanted to follow up with you on, the thing about, I believe he was gathering information to use against me from the start. So interesting. What do you mean, so?

Bonita Alexander
One of the things, and I think this is true of most of these guys, most of these con artists.

I thought Paula was a very good listener at the beginning. Right? Who doesn't love a good listener? Especially when you're in a vulnerable place?

But what they're doing, if you go back and look at it very carefully, they give you very little information about themselves. And what they're doing is literally gathering information and stockpiling it to use against you. They study you.

They try to figure out everything they can about you so that they can use it against you. You. And they target you when you're vulnerable. And so this is one of the things I tell women all the time now, if you are vulnerable for any reason whatever, there's been a death in your family, you lost a job, you just went through a divorce, a breakup, anything. Anything that makes you more vulnerable than usual, you have to be hyper vigilant about protecting yourself, because this is when these people target you, because it's. And it's so basic. But when you're vulnerable, when you're going through something difficult, what do you want? You want somebody to tell you everything's going to be okay. You want somebody to wrap their arms around you and give you a big hug and reassure you. And that's what Paulo was doing.

I'm pouring my heart out about my ex husband is going to die, and I don't know how to do this, and I don't know how to tell my daughter. And he's listening to me, he's reassuring me, and at the same time, he's figuring out what my weaknesses are or what my vulnerabilities are. And they. They turn it around on you. They use it against you.

Megyn Kelly
This is a weird reference, but it's almost like a dog in heat. How, you know, the humans walking around the dog have no idea, but every male dog in the neighborhood is at your door. Like, sociopaths have that sense when a woman is in trouble, when she's.

Bonita Alexander
They have a radar.

Megyn Kelly
They know how they develop it. They do. It's a very strong, effective radar. They can find them in a crowded field. They can. They know. And, like, death in the family, it doesn't have to be like your basket case. It can be like, I just had something really sad happen to me, and I'm feeling kind of low. They have, like, a homing beacon.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly. I call it the vulnerability radar.

Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
And so that applies, by the way.

Bonita Alexander
That applies by the way to anybody, I would. I notice. And I thought about this in hindsight. At a party, for instance, you know. Know, there were certain people Paolo wouldn't spend a lot of time talking to. And later, and it was subtle, people didn't know. But later, I'd find out that those people didn't like him or that there was something about him that didn't necessarily make them suspicious, but they were turned off by him, and he kind of knows it. You know, he knew who he could play with and who he couldn't. So, yeah, they're highly skilled manipulators and highly skilled at knowing who they can target. I mean, it's. Yeah. Not unlike any other criminal, they target their prey.

Megyn Kelly
And for mere mortals to respond to appropriately, to see through, to identify. You know, I've said this to my audience many times, but my husband and I are very different in this lane because he would be somebody Paulo would spend no time with, because Doug is very good at, like, sociopath dar. You know, he just knows immediately when he's met a bad person. And I'm, ironically, as the new news person, and you think it'd be the opposite, but I'm like, no, you're being too hard on him. He's a nice guy, and Doug's always right. At 16 years of marriage, I finally got to the point where I'm like, if Doug says he's bad, he's bad, he's bad.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
I should not trust my own instincts on this. But for mere mortals out there dealing with these skilled sociopaths, it's a very uneven playing field. So you, as a mere mortal, if you don't have Doug's sociopath dar, you have to follow the clues that Benita's giving you. Like, you are most vulnerable when something has happened to you, whether you're strong normally or not.

You. You're putting out the scent that, you know, victim here. You also. I know you talked about it a little bit. You didn't use the term, but I know you've talked about the fog that these guys can create around you, and I think that'll be familiar to a lot of people. You feel it. You don't know what it is. You feel the fog. So talk about how they create that and what that is.

Bonita Alexander
Well, it's a form of gaslighting, right? So they're master manipulators, and they come into the relationship or the friendship, whatever it is, could be even be a business arrangement, quite frankly, with some sort of nefarious intention. They want something from you, whether it's money, whether it's whatever it is. And so they're plotting the whole time, and so they are very prepared. So if you start becoming suspicious, they're very prepared for that. And they come back at you, rapid fire. You know, they have an answer for everything, and they shoot you down so fast, and they get angry and they question you. Why would you ask me that? And why? You know, and they have evidence. You know, they have all the evidence. And so it's gaslighting. So you start thinking, oh, okay, maybe it's me, you know, maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. And it feels like a fog. You just feel. You can't, you can't quite figure it out, but you know that you. Something doesn't feel right, but they're so convincing and so rapid fire and. And so determined to shoot you down that you just start thinking, okay, it must be me. And that's why I call it the fog. And it's very intentional. It's very manipulative, because, again, it's designed to distract you and sort of muddy the waters and, you know, get you off the scent of something's wrong or whatever it is that you've clued, clued into.

And they're very, very good at it. It's cunning.

Megyn Kelly
It's the way you feel when you have low blood sugar.

Bonita Alexander
Oh, that's so interesting. It's so true. Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like. Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
Your brain's just a little muddled. You're not 100% yourself. You're slightly confused. You're not processing things as quickly as you normally do.

Bonita Alexander
Exactly.

Megyn Kelly
Like there's some separation between the real you and the current you. And they're so good at creating it. They can create it. Just a million facts that they throw at you. And they're smart.

The people who get away with this are very, very smart. So it's not, it's not illogical, their responses and their manipulations. And that brings me to another thing you said about how you said, oh, he probably would have canceled the wedding, claiming, oh, there's some massive security threat. Or you talked about how he said some trip was canceled because of an emergency.

The big excuse for the cancellation or the letdown is also a characteristic of these people.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, I call it the walking catastrophe. So if you're dating somebody, or again, it could be a business relationship, it could be a friendship. And there's one dramatic excuse after the other. It's always dramatic, right? It's somebody's in the hospital or I'm in the hospital or somebody's dead or. Or something so dramatic that if you question them, let's say you're supposed to go on a date with somebody and they're, oh, you know, my kid got hit by a car. If you then question them and, well, I thought we were going away for the weekend. I thought we were going on a date. You look like the idiot and the asshole because you're. Who wouldn't be empathetic and sympathetic in that situation? And it's very calculated. It's designed, again, to make, you know, to take the focus of what they're not doing or why they're not showing up and make you feel bad.

But it's a huge red flag. I mean, if it happens once, okay, that's life. You know, things happen. But if it happens over and over again, these dramatic, wild excuses and catastrophes, that's a giant red flag.

Megyn Kelly
So looking back on your relationship with Paolo before popegate, was there a moment, now, in retrospect, was there a moment or two that you can point to where you're like, like, I want to talk to that girl and say, sweetheart, this is a big deal. Here's your red flag. Like, run.

Bonita Alexander
It's so hard because it's such a slow weaving of the web of lies. You know, it's so meticulous. And again, that fog. So it's happening very gradually. And by the time you realize that you're ensnared in this web, this spider's web, you know, it's too late. It's been going on. I mean, keep in mind, we were dating for almost two years, so it's hard for me to pinpoint a moment like that.

Clearly, not having been to the house in Barcelona was a huge red flag. But we were arguing about that. It wasn't as if I didn't question him about that. And there were things about the wedding that I questioned him about. So again, there wasn't one big, giant thing that said, you know, wake up, because he had the credentials. Everything as nuts as it sound, also seemed equally plausible. You know, he's very adept at explaining things into sense, into them making sense.

Megyn Kelly
So with you, we speculated maybe this was about getting a friend in the media, getting a beautiful NBC piece and perhaps more or, you know, who knows? Because he did include encourage you ultimately to quit NBC. So at that point. But you're still a journalist, you still have connections, and at this point, he may just be seeing it through. But in general, do you think it's just the high that we talked about, like, of lying, of fooling someone smart, like a. You know, like a guy who gambles and goes for the high of winning. Is it. Is it like that normally? Because I think this happens to people who don't have. Have the kind of power and job that you had.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah, I think it goes back to the narcissism.

I've asked experts about this, and, I mean, one of the things is people like him don't go into therapy, obviously, so they don't know a lot about these type of people. But one person explained it to me that all the. Okay, let's say you were standing on the edge of a cliff, and somebody's about to push you off. Think of all the things you'd be feeling. You know, the fear, the anxiety, the trepidation.

This person said that it's almost like a part of their brain is missing. Right. So all those things that we feel, you know, fear, anxiety, remorse, guilt, you know, all the normal things people feel when they're dealing with other human beings or they make a mistake, it's like that part of their brain is blank.

They feel nothing. They have no empathy. They have no remorse. They have no guilt. And so therefore, they're always seeking a high, something that sort of jolts their brain into feeling something because it's almost blank. And so the rush and the high of getting away with lying is just fueling them. It's just fueling their ego. It's almost like they need it, like they can't exist without it.

Megyn Kelly
So now what is, every time I've heard your story, I think, how is she ever going to trust somebody again? How is she going to fall in love again? You're still a young woman. You're beautiful. You're smart.

Bonita Alexander
Thank you.

Megyn Kelly
You have to have love in your life at some point.

How's that been? And are you up against some major trust issues at this point?

Bonita Alexander
So I.

First of all, I don't think you can go through something like this and not have trust issues. I mean, it would be impossible. I mean, something would be wrong with me if I didn't. And it's taken a while. I mean, this has been, you know, it was 2015. We were supposed to get married. So we're nine years this summer. And I think I didn't realize it at first, but. What, when I first started dating people that were more than casual, I was choosing people that I knew I wouldn't fall in love with. And I think that was a way of protecting myself, because if I wasn't really in love with somebody, then somebody couldn't hurt me. Right.

So it has taken me a long time, but I am now, in a. In fact, I'm sitting in his house right now. I'm in a very serious, very happy, lovely relationship. We've been together for a little over a year now, so that's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Megyn Kelly
I imagine he's got his challenges. I mean, I feel like if I were dating you and I was your boyfriend, I'd be like, I'm going to work and you can call me there and you can speak to my boss and you can come by any time. And here is my everything number. Right.

Like, I would feel the need to bend over backward to prove to you everything I'm telling you is true.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah. And, yeah, I'm lucky because he's very patient and very, very understanding and really, really gets what I've been through. And I have my moments, believe me. I put him through the wringer, but he's really good and he's very good at immediately sort of quelling any anxiety I have. And, yeah, he's just a good guy, finally.

Megyn Kelly
Because, you know, Bonita, I hadn't thought about this word, but I think it's apt.

You've been abused. This was an abusive relationship.

Bonita Alexander
Yep.

Yeah. And there's PTSD that goes along with that. It's trauma. It's, you know, and trauma doesn't go away overnight, so. And it's something you have to be very cognizant of.

And there are times when that's really frustrating. You know, sometimes I've even said that to him. I'm behaving. I behave a certain way. Like, this sucks. I hate that I'm doing this. I hate that I'm acting this way. I hate that I feel this way. I don't want to give Paolo that power.

And I try very hard not to.

Megyn Kelly
What happens to women who have been sexually abused, where you take something that's supposed to be absolutely lovely and enjoyable and a source of connection and turn it into something that's really fraught and complicated for a woman? It's the ongoing victimization of a woman in this position and that. That's how I see what's happening to you, too, as a result of him.

I'm delighted that you have a partner.

What do you do with your daughter? Like, she must be 21 now.

Bonita Alexander
She's 20. Yeah, she'll be 21 in the fall. Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
So how do you talk to her about. I mean, she clearly, she's seen it all. But, like, what are the takeaways? Like, what kind of lessons do you impart to your daughter over something like this?

Bonita Alexander
So please not repeat mom's mistakes, for one thing, and to learn from my mistakes. And I'm very transparent. I've been very, very transparent with her about everything. And we've always had a very close relationship, maybe closer than we might have just because her dad died and it's just been the two of us. And she's a strong cookie. She's a smart cookie. That kid is super wise and no nonsense. I'm not worried about her at all.

I think, thankfully, she, I think she's proud of me and she sees what I've done with this and she's proud of me for speaking up against him and fighting back, but she won't make my mistakes.

Megyn Kelly
She has definitely write about this in her college application essay. I certainly hope she used it for some way for good.

Bonita Alexander
I know she prefers not to deal with it, and I appreciate that.

She deserves to have her own life and her privacy and very adamant about shielding her from this now because, you know, she shouldn't be hanging over her for the rest of her life either.

Megyn Kelly
She's been 53 years old. I have to tell you, I'm a big fan of compartmentalization now. I really believe in it. I don't believe what we're told. We have to talk about everything. The more you can shove it down and ignore it like a good Presbyterian, the better.

That's my husband. I'm Catholic. But anyway, the last thing, how about professionally? Because, like, you didn't go back to NBC, right? What are you doing now?

Bonita Alexander
I freelance, but I'm very busy. I'm a showrunner. I'm show running two different true crime shows at the moment.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, good.

Bonita Alexander
And so, yeah, no, I'm busy. Back to work. I also narrate stuff, so, and I, yeah, I actually, like, I didn't think I would, but I like the freelance life and not being, you know, tied to one job always, all the time. So that's good. Everything's good.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah. And I'm sure, well, if you're investigating murders over an investigative discovery, you're not, you're not falling in love with your subject matter, so that's good. I know that door's been closed.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah.

Megyn Kelly
Oh, all the best to you. Thank you for telling me. Hope that the whole process has been cathartic to you and, you know, at some point, I know you'll probably feel the need to respond to his documentary, but I do hope that you can close this door and move on from it. You've got so much to do, so much to live.

Bonita Alexander
Yeah. Yeah, it's. It's nice knowing that I'm able to help other women by sharing my story, and that always keeps me going. But it does. Does, you know, it's reaching the point where, okay, enough. It's time to stop talking about this, you know, and move on with my life. I just want to. I just want to be happy and move on with my life.

Megyn Kelly
I know I and so many others are grateful that you did that. You did tell a story, and you found the guts, even though it, parts of it, I'm sure, felt humiliating and you didn't want to do it. But good on you. You're the only reason those doctors. He's been held accountable and hopefully more to come. All the best to you.

Bonita Alexander
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Megyn Kelly
Yeah, thank you, too.

Wow. So happy to have Bonita telling her story and helping others. We are back tomorrow with a former prosecutor. You would know if you are a true crime fan like yours truly from DatElIne in 2020 with an incredible case he helped solve.

Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No bs, no agenda, and no fear.