Melissa Diegel's daughter makes impassioned plea at her sentencing

A criminal case which lasted over three years finally came to an end.

Melissa Diegel’s criminal case finally came to an end earlier this month.

I first covered her criminal case in 2019, when she was first charged.

Not only were Diegel’s children removed for purportedly unnecessary medical treatment for these conditions, but now she is being charged in an eight count indictment.

Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which originated the indictment, did not respond to an email for comment.

Diegel, in an interview from prison, said each of the eight counts allege that she forced unnecessary medical treatment on her daughters.

Each of the eight counts are referred to as, “Class 2 felony, dangerous crime against children, domestic violence.”

The dates range from January 1, 2011, until August 20, 2014, and Diegel said each count corresponds to an operation or other medical procedure she had performed on her daughters.

The warrant also has other inaccurate information.

Diegel was living in Florida at the time and so needed to be extradited.

Diegel lost two of her children- two daughters- in 2014 after Child Protective Services (CPS) accused her of having Munchausen by proxy: a very rare phenomenon in which a caregiver makes up ailments in those they are taking care of: usually for attention.

The charges were ludicrous and Diegel’s case became one of the most notorious cases of medical kidnapping in Arizona history.

The most notorious case of alleged medical kidnapping nationally involved Justina Pelletier, who had a rare mitochondrial disease. When doctors at one hospital determined it was psychosomatic, her parents tried to send her to a different hospital. The first hospital called in Massachusetts Department of Child Welfare case workers, and a judge’s order kept Pelletier away from her parents for 16 months.

The most notorious case of medical kidnapping in Arizona was Melissa Diegel.

Diegel was accused of something very similar to Munchhausen by proxy, a condition in which a caregiver makes up, or causes “an illness or injury in a person under his or her care, such as a child, an elderly adult, or a person who has a disability,” according to the University of Michigan School of Medicine.

Melissa believed that her daughters faced all sorts of ailments- genetic she once told me- while CPS claimed there was nothing wrong with them and she was somehow forcing doctors at Phoenix Children's Hospital to perform unnecessary surgeries.

Merely taking her daughters away wasn’t enough, and Diegel was charged in 2019 for purportedly forcing unnecessary medical procedures on her daughters.

The case came to a conclusion earlier this month in the courtroom of Judge Michael Blair of Maricopa County, Arizona.

Judge Michael Blair