Megan Fredrickson: Lying With Immunity

Just like her boss – the alleged new age manslaughterer and star of The Secret, James Ray – Megan Fredrickson seems to think she can run rings around those conducting the criminal investigation.

Investigators granted her immunity, probably expecting her to admit to destroying evidence, as well as clear up some of the conflicting witness accounts.

Incredibly, when interviewed she continued to play dumb, even when they sprung it on her that they had a copy of a voice mail she left, ordering employees to destroy files “before the investigators find them”.

Either she’s blown her immunity by lying, or she is suffering from a severe psychological disorder which erases huge swathes of memory. She doesn’t recall what her boss said or did despite being next to him most of the time. The horrific scenes after the death lodge, which others will be haunted by for the rest of their days, were for Megan dim foggy memories. Even her own actions are outside the scope of her awareness.

In the one hour interview she uses the phrases:

“I don’t know”                63 times
“I don’t remember”     36 times
“I don’t recall”              13 times

That’s not including the countless times she replied to a “Do you recall…” question with “No”.

It is clear from her despicable collusion in covering up the death of Colleen Conaway at a seminar barely three months earlier that Ms Fredrickson is one of the less ethical members of our species.

Photo: Megan Fredrickson partying after covering up the death of participant Colleen Conaway. See Salty Droid’s damning exposé.

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Fredrickson, like Ray, seems to have thought there was a chance of covering up these deaths too. The email they concocted that night apparently with Ray that night was the bizarre and offensive one they sent out to their mailing list – deeming the death lodge a great success, despite some participants having “taken ill”.

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Plenty of bizarre details come out through the investigators’ questions, but Fredrickson’s answers share that Ray-like dream quality, where actually everything was in order apart from the odd minor hiccup. (Transcript here)

Despite being Director of Operations, she claims she remembers virtually no details of the events that happened; despite sitting next to Ray in the sweat lodge doesn’t recall him saying anything at all that the others heard, didn’t notice anyone passing out as she didn’t have her glasses on. Maybe she took her hearing aid out too?

Strange that what for others was a vivid and unforgetable night, seems for her to have faded into a blur among the background of all the other events. She just doesn’t recall anything.

She doesn’t recall what her boss said or did throughout the event – except for a sudden highly detailed burst about how Ray was helping people. She manages at one point to suggest that the resort owner was just standing around, and, incredibly, that even the paramedics were to blame for not realising the scale of the emergency:

Megan: ….There was no one on their staff performing any sort of triage who was monitoring vitals of anyone
Det. Poling: What do you mean on their staff? Who are you talking about?
Megan: Like the paramedics
Det. Poling: Okay the paramedics (Inaudible) doing triage?
Megan: It didn’t appear that they were and so it became apparent like you said it’s kinda like, it felt like they worked from back here, this direction without going around and monitoring the situation first.

Then, after pointing the finger at the paramedics for not being sharp enough, it’s back to not recalling.

She doesn’t recall why she was not interviewed by police. No, she, Josh Fredrickson and Greg Hartle were certainly NOT hiding in the gift shop from police. But she was there til 2 am but has no idea why police would not have known she was director, and doesn’t recall exactly what she was doing there.

As Director of Operations, it was her responsibility to know which participants were in hospital and in what condition they were in. Instead, she was saving her own butt, hiding in a gift shop from police. Thanks to her, for the second time in three months, a victim was booked into hospital as “Jane Doe”, and her family not contacted until it was too late.

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But the most interesting part comes near the end, where she is confronted with the existence of a recorded message she left, immediately after the group, instructing other staff members to find and destroy all records concerning Spiritual Warrior 2009 before the investigators come.

So after 69 pages of I don’t knows, we get to the part for which she was probably granted immunity – where the fuck are all the records for that group? She herself ordered their destruction – there’s a recording of her saying that. Is she going to continue to play dumb?

Yup.

Here’s the relevant part. [Update: like Cassandra Yorgey, I think it’s worth quoting at length] (Slightly edited for clairity)

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Det. Diskin: Just one last issue and I appreciate you for talking to us again for all this stuff that we’re going through but did you, do you remember leaving a voice mail for Melinda Martin in the weeks after the sweat lodge incident?
Megan: Uh huh
Det. Diskin: Do you remember what that message said?
Megan: I left her several voice mail messages so I’m not sure
Det. Diskin: I’m talking about the one where, and she saved this, where you call Melinda Martin and say that Josh and Greg are going through the office looking for anything that has to do with Spiritual Warrior so that you could get rid of it before the Detectives get there and find it.
Megan: Really?
Det. Diskin: Do you remember leaving that message?
Megan: Not with that language but
Det. Poling: What was the language?
Megan: Uhm, I, God, getting rid of stuff? Really?
Det. Diskin: Because the Detectives are gonna come there and get it. Or there was concern that the Detectives would come there and get it. Which we went there and didn’t find hardly anything (Inaudible) from the Spiritual Warrior which we thought was odd cause we found all kinds of stuff for all the other events but for some reason Spiritual Warrior was, hardly anything was there.
Megan: Huh. No
Det. Poling: What was that message to her? What did you write in that message?
Mr. Proctor: Supposedly that was a voice mail on her cell phone
Megan: Are saying it was a voice mail?
Det. Poling: Her voice mail. The message you left, what was that? What was said to her?
Megan: I don’t remember
Det. Diskin: One of the things you said was not to talk to the Detectives.
Megan: You know, like, I mean what I, like I said before I feel, I mean everything that we did in terms of, of our, our actions was all at the advice of legal counsel so if
Det. Diskin: And this we can talk about
Megan: I mean, yeah no, no that’s totally fine but if, I mean to not talk to Detectives? That was at the advice of legal counsel so if I was passing stuff along to her. In terms of finding stuff from Spiritual Warrior I don’t know, I don’t even know what that would mean
Det. Diskin: You said that Greg and Josh were going through the, going through the office looking for everything and you were asking her, where did you have anything in relation to Spiritual Warrior because we’re trying to find all that so we can get rid of it. That’s kind of what the message was. Of course you didn’t know that she was cooperative with us at that time but
Megan: Get rid of it? No like really I don’t know what, what, I mean why would we get rid of anything?
Det. Diskin: I don’t know but somebody did cause it wasn’t there and you were the Director of Operations and we have this voice mail of you talking to Melinda…..
Det. Diskin: Where, where, I mean there was hardly anything in there that had anything to do with Spiritual Warrior at James Ray International but we found
Megan: Did you find, did you have her binder? The thing is that Melinda never returned to work afterwards so…..

Megan: No I mean really I’d love to hear it because I don’t have a recollection of what that, and I don’t, I mean a time when Greg and Josh would be going through the office just doesn’t make sense to me. Like I can’t recall when they would do that for any reason. So I mean I would love to hear it and provide any light I can. I mean I want to be helpful but my understanding in terms of there not being stuff in the office is because previous years, Spiritual Warrior would all be on our shared drive which I believe you guys have access to. Cause all those documents were scanned in so you should have access to anything previous years but 2009 Melinda would have had with her because she never returned to work so as the Event Coordinator she had a binder or whatever of information or a note pad or whatever it is that she was using and my understanding is that she would have brought that home with her….
Det. Diskin: Just for the record, if James Ray’s attorneys told you to contact people and to get all the Spiritual Warrior material you could find and destroy it, that’s not attorney client privilege.

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