The continuing saga of a rogue podcaster doesn't go well for either his broadcasts, journalistic or personal integrity

For more than two years, Today in Fort Smith has raised questions about the reporting practices of PRETEND podcast host Javier Leiva. Those questions did not disappear when Leiva moved on to another subject. If anything, his newest multipart investigation into Gypsy Rose Blanchard has provided an entirely new collection of examples demonstrating why Leiva’s work deserves considerably more scrutiny than his devoted listeners appear willing to give it.

Now another podcast is doing exactly that. No Way, José, released through David McClam’s For the Record, has begun taking Leiva’s reporting apart claim by claim, playing the original audio and comparing what listeners were told with documents, timelines, court testimony and Leiva’s own subsequent statements. The series launched September 20 and has already devoted episodes to previous PRETEND reporting before turning its attention to Leiva’s new Gypsy Rose series.

The September 23 episode, “Fact-Checking PRETEND’s Gypsy Rose Blanchard Series,” directly examines errors and questionable assertions in Leiva’s latest work.

For Fort Smith readers, there is another reason this matters. Patti Rush, a River Valley figure previously associated with this publication and the organization REVAMP, chose to hitch her wagon to Leiva when she appeared prominently in PRETEND’s Who’s Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey? series. PRETEND’s own episode notes describe Rush as one of Leiva’s central sources and say that she provided allegations concerning Humphrey, the Melissa Witt investigation and supposed harassment.

That association deserves another look now, because the credibility problems surrounding PRETEND are no longer confined to disagreements over Humphrey. Leiva’s latest series gives listeners an opportunity to evaluate his reporting completely independently of that dispute, and some of what we found is astonishingly sloppy for a man who has built a brand anround exposing other people’s inconsistencies.

Consider one of Leiva’s opening declarations in The Gypsy Rose Obsession. He tells listeners that Gypsy Rose Blanchard “spent 23 years in a wheelchair.” That is not an insignificant characterization when Leiva is supposedly reconstructing her medical history.

The problem is that 23 was Gypsy’s age, not the length of time she had used a wheelchair. Leiva’s own Part 2 description tells listeners about a video in which Gypsy says she had been hiding the fact that she could walk “since she was seven.” Those propositions cannot simultaneously support a claim that she “spent 23 years in a wheelchair.” PRETEND’s own published episode description supplies the contradiction.

Apparently, when someone Javier investigates gets a fact wrong, it can become evidence of dishonesty. When Javier gets one wrong, listeners are expected to keep moving.

The chronology gets no better when Gypsy incorrectly says she was 24 when Dee Dee Blanchard was murdered. Gypsy was born July 27, 1991. Dee Dee was killed in June 2015, before Gypsy’s twenty-fourth birthday. She was 23. Yet instead of correcting the error while producing an entire series devoted to scrutinizing Gypsy’s changing statements, Leiva treats the age as meaningful during their discussion.

This is not complicated forensic science. It is a calendar.

Leiva’s promotional framing of Gypsy’s medical history is even more troublesome. The series has repeatedly played with the sweeping proposition that the medical story surrounding Gypsy was essentially fabricated, even though Leiva’s later episodes themselves acknowledge genuine medical findings.

That is an important difference. Establishing that Dee Dee fabricated or exaggerated some conditions would not establish that Gypsy had no legitimate medical problems. Establishing that Gypsy has a genuine condition would not establish that every procedure was medically necessary.

Showing that a procedure actually occurred would not establish that Dee Dee accurately represented the reason for it. These are separate factual questions that competent medical reporting must keep separate.

Leiva eventually does some of that work. His fifth episode examines Gypsy’s 1q21.1 microdeletion and brings in a genetics professional to discuss what that finding can and cannot explain. That was one of the better reporting decisions in the series. It also exposes the weakness of the sweeping rhetoric used earlier: once your own expert discussion establishes that the medical history contains genuine findings, describing the entire thing as unreal becomes indefensible as a literal summary.

The same problem appears when Leiva dramatically describes Gypsy’s health problems as essentially disappearing after Dee Dee’s death. What disappeared were many of the supposed limitations and conditions attributed to her. That is highly significant. But a chromosomal finding does not disappear because a caregiver dies, nor does every genuine medical condition suddenly cease to exist.

Precision is not optional merely because dramatic narration sounds better through headphones.

Then we arrive at what may be the largest methodological problem in the entire series: the medical records.

PRETEND’s Part 4 description proudly announces that approximately 300 pages of Gypsy’s private medical records ended up online and that Leiva obtained them so he could determine whether the documents validated claims being made about her medical history.

Later, however, the series confronts the fact that this collection may represent only a fraction of the available records, with one participant claiming possession of thousands of pages. That changes what responsible reporting can conclude from the smaller collection.

Three hundred pages can prove what those 300 pages contain. They can document a particular test, visit, physician’s observation or procedure. What an incomplete collection cannot ordinarily establish merely through silence is that something never happened anywhere else.

That difference is Journalism 101. Absence of evidence in an admittedly incomplete collection is not automatically evidence of absence.

The irony is difficult to miss. Leiva is examining whether other people manipulate incomplete information while constructing portions of his own narrative from a record collection he acknowledges is incomplete.

Part 3 contains what may be the most troubling reporting problem we have identified because it involves disability, clinical terminology and a man's documented cognitive limitations.

PRETEND discusses Nicholas Godejohn’s autism, IQ testing and cognitive functioning. The episode itself includes material explaining that Godejohn received disability benefits because his limitations affected his ability to work. Then Leiva announces that “borderline intellectual functioning” is essentially a clinical way of saying Godejohn is “not legally disabled.”

That is not what the underlying evidence establishes.

Actual testimony from Godejohn’s murder trial is publicly available. Clinical psychologist Dr. Kent Franks testified that he reviewed Godejohn’s school and Social Security records. Franks testified that Godejohn had applied for Social Security and been granted benefits at approximately age 21. He further testified that Godejohn had autism spectrum disorder and performed in the impaired range on measures including processing speed and working memory.

Another psychologist, Dr. Robert Denney, reached a different conclusion about whether Godejohn met the diagnostic criteria for intellectual disability. Denney testified that the IQ results did not support that particular diagnosis. But Denney nevertheless testified that Godejohn had a longstanding autism-spectrum diagnosis, that school and Social Security records supported that history, and that Godejohn had autism spectrum disorder level one, requiring support.

Those distinctions are enormously important.

Intellectual disability is not synonymous with disability. Borderline intellectual functioning is not synonymous with “not legally disabled.” Autism is not synonymous with intellectual disability. Social Security disability is not the same question as criminal competency. Criminal responsibility is yet another legal inquiry.

Leiva collapsed those separate clinical and legal concepts into a glib sentence.

Even worse, the underlying trial testimony was available. Nobody needed to speculate about what psychologists had found. Nobody needed a Reddit expert or true-crime personality to interpret Godejohn’s history. The psychologists themselves testified.

One expert said Godejohn did not meet the criteria for intellectual disability. That finding absolutely belongs in responsible reporting. The same evidence also shows autism, documented cognitive limitations and a history of Social Security disability benefits. Those facts belong there too.

Instead, listeners received a neat little declaration about someone being “not legally disabled.”

That isn't nuance. It isn't clinical terminology. And it isn't an adequate explanation of the evidence.

Whatever anyone thinks of Nicholas Godejohn’s crime—and nothing about disability erases responsibility for murder—disabled people do not become props that a podcaster can define however conveniently fits a narrative. Disability deserves the same factual rigor as every other subject PRETEND claims to investigate.

Longtime Today in Fort Smith readers will recognize the pattern because we have been here before.

When PRETEND turned its attention toward Northwest Arkansas author and advocate LaDonna Humphrey, Leiva aired allegations concerning a fire at former pastor Jon Allen’s residence and financial problems at Lake Hills Church. Today in Fort Smith subsequently examined records and reported that Humphrey was not identified as a suspect in the fire investigation.

We also reported that the payroll-tax timeline extended beyond Humphrey’s May 2003 departure from the church, undermining attempts to casually attach later financial problems to her.

That reporting was not based on whether we liked Humphrey or disliked Leiva. It was based on dates and records. Employment ending in 2003 and a fire occurring in 2015 are not matters of opinion.

David McClam later continued examining PRETEND’s reporting, including a particularly remarkable contradiction involving Leiva discussing a supposed lawsuit. As Today in Fort Smith previously reported, McClam juxtaposed Leiva’s own statement about having filed a lawsuit with audio from Leiva’s attorney saying that no lawsuit had actually been filed at that point.

Again, those are not insults. They are receipts.

And this is precisely what No Way, José is now doing on a broader scale.

The new podcast has already released episodes examining Alecia Lockhart’s statements, PRETEND’s handling of documentary evidence and methodology, and now the Gypsy Rose reporting. Its September 23 installment is explicitly devoted to fact-checking The Gypsy Rose Obsession. Additional episodes have examined other people and claims connected to PRETEND.

That matters because Leiva and his supporters have previously treated sustained criticism of his work as though examining his journalism is somehow improper.

It isn't.

If you publish accusations about real people, interview adversarial sources, analyze private records, question people's honesty and ask an audience to reconsider someone's reputation, your work is subject to scrutiny.

Other journalists can examine it. Podcasters can replay it. Readers can request the records. Subjects can respond. Listeners can compare what you said in Episode 1 with what you admitted in Episode 6.

That is not a special rule invented for Javier Leiva.

That is accountability.

Which brings us back home to the River Valley.

Patti Rush voluntarily became a prominent source in PRETEND’s reporting about Humphrey. Leiva's own published show notes identify Rush as a crime-victim advocate and recount her allegations concerning Humphrey, REVAMP, the Melissa Witt investigation, and alleged harassment.

Rush therefore did not merely find herself accidentally standing near this controversy. She chose to lend her name and credibility to Leiva’s reporting.

That choice looks considerably different now.

When someone decides to hitch her wagon to a journalist who presents himself as an investigator of deception, it is reasonable to examine whether that journalist applies the same evidentiary standards to himself that he applies to his targets.

The growing record suggests listeners have good reason to check his work rather than simply trust the confidence with which it is delivered.

We certainly are.

Here is the remarkable thing about this story: Leiva’s critics increasingly do not need anonymous sources, whispered accusations or personal attacks to challenge him.

They need a play button.

PRETEND says Gypsy spent 23 years in a wheelchair. PRETEND later describes her saying she had concealed her ability to walk since childhood. PRETEND builds a series around inconsistencies while allowing an easily checked age error to pass through production.

PRETEND uses sweeping rhetoric about Gypsy’s medical history and then later presents evidence requiring considerably more nuance. PRETEND analyzes hundreds of pages of medical records while acknowledging that the collection is incomplete.

PRETEND discusses Godejohn’s disability history and then reduces complicated clinical and legal concepts to the breathtakingly simplistic assertion that borderline intellectual functioning means he is “not legally disabled.”

Meanwhile, the actual Godejohn trial testimony sits there waiting for anyone willing to listen to it. One psychologist testified about Godejohn’s Social Security disability history, autism and impaired cognitive processing. Another disputed an intellectual-disability diagnosis while independently confirming autism requiring support.

That isn't internet gossip.

That is the evidentiary record.

And perhaps that is what makes No Way, José potentially troublesome for PRETEND. A personality-driven feud can be dismissed as a feud. A personal insult can be dismissed as an insult. But an audio clip followed by a document, court record or another audio clip saying something materially different is considerably harder to explain away.

For years, Javier Leiva has made a living turning the microphone toward other people and asking audiences to examine their inconsistencies.

Now the microphone has turned around.

If Leiva's reporting is as meticulous as he wants his listeners to believe, he should welcome the examination. He can produce his sources, explain the discrepancies and correct anything that needs correcting. That is what journalists ask other people to do every day.

But one thing should be clear, particularly after the disability reporting in The Gypsy Rose Obsession: confidence behind a microphone is not a substitute for accuracy. A dramatic sentence is not a clinical finding. A partial record is not a complete record. An intellectual-disability diagnosis is not synonymous with every form of disability. And repeating the word “investigation” does not magically turn sloppy conclusions into journalism.

Patti Rush chose to hitch her credibility to Javier Leiva and PRETEND.

The rest of us are under no obligation to climb aboard. We can check the receipts instead.

Readers who want to examine the underlying material for themselves can follow the ongoing discussion and collection of receipts on Reddit at r/TrueCrimeAndEthics, where posts are examining specific PRETEND claims and the evidence offered to support or contradict them. As always, readers should evaluate the original records and source material themselves rather than treating any Reddit post--including one critical of Leiva--as authoritative simply because it appears online.

Readers can also listen to David McClam's No Way, José installments on For the Record, where PRETEND's reporting is being examined using audio clips, documents and other source material. Agree with McClam or don't. Agree with Leiva or don't. The important part is that listeners now have an opportunity to hear the disputed statements, examine the receipts and reach their own conclusions rather than being told what they are supposed to believe.

And Today in Fort Smith isn't finished either. Part Two is coming. We will continue examining PRETEND's reporting, including additional claims, sources and contradictions that could not reasonably fit into one article. If Javier Leiva expects everyone else's words to survive a trip through the microscope, it seems only fair that his do too.

Stay tuned. The receipts aren't finished talking.