Dying wish

 An open letter to Alison’s siblings

September, 2024

Dear Morgan,

Dear Mariah,

   As I write this I am at your sister Alison’s bedside in what will likely be the last days, or even hours, of her life.

   You both were informed of her impending death. If either of you had any thoughts of making even a small attempt to express regrets to her for cutting her out of your lives, it’s too late. By the time you read this she will probably be gone; free at last to find peace, her tortured soul forever free from earthly pain.

    In your book Mariah, you called Alison “damaged” and “very broken” then callously dismissed her as your “ex-sister,” accusing her, without presenting any evidence, of serious crimes against you. Your accusations were reported in headlines around the world.  Unable to dispute your baseless allegations - how do you prove something didn’t happen - Alison was reduced to tears by these cruel attacks.

   But it got a lot of attention for your book.

   Then, informed of Alison’s impending demise, you declined to at least speak to her. She died knowing that you knew her life was almost over and that right to the end you didn’t care.

   And you, Morgan, sold stories to newspapers and did TV interviews that depended on Alison’s misfortune. But when Alison sent you a ”How are you” text, your entire response was: ”If this is about $$, I don’t have any.”

   That appears to have been your last contact with Alison.  Six years ago.

   Then there is a movie script you were trying to sell, apparently based in part on a phone conversation with Alison in which you caused her great distress by asking repeated questions about the life-changing horror of her childhood at the hands of her satan-worshipping mother.  Alison learned about this proposed movie not from you, but when it was revealed during pre-trial discovery in your defamation lawsuit against your younger sister over statements about you in her book. 

   The proposed movie’s title? Devil’s Hollow.

   And now, since I started writing this post, Alison has died, leaving both of you to consider your relationship with your sister during her endless struggle to survive in a life that was cruelly destroyed almost before it began.

David Baker

Coxsackie, New York

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   Mariah’s refusal to connect with Alison in the days before she died was not the first time Alison’s younger sister had remained silent while Alison was in a life-threatening condition.

   The first time was in 2015, when Alison was on life support following emergency surgery to stop a brain hemorrhage after she was hit in on the back of her head with a baseball bat and left for dead during a home invasion at her apartment on Long Island.

   Several members of her family - including her brother Morgan who flew from his home in Hawaii - visited Alison in a hospital in Albany, N.Y. 

  Mariah was not one of them. 

   The second time was in June, 2021, after Alison had emergency overnight surgery for a perforated intestinal ulcer. The surgeon gave her a no more that a 50 percent chance of survival, but after six weeks on two powerful antibiotics to beat sepsis she went home.

   Again, Mariah did not visit or call. 

   Now, in 2024, there was a third time, when the chance of survival wasn't 50 percent; it was zero and there was a last oppotunity to grant Alison her years-long wish.

   There won’t be a fourth time.  Ever.

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