Chapter 55
Investigative Report Prepared for Monstera BioSciences
BY PRENTICE & DARROW LLP
When it comes to the issue of fat in America, there are no easy answers. Fortunately, those questions fall wide of the scope of this inquiry.
Despite the participant’s self-assessment, it is a medical fact—independently corroborated by the participant’s own doctor, Gavin Halleck, MD—that his weight struggles in adulthood were well within his control, resulting from poor diet and lack of physical activity.
Though he embarked on many weight loss programs, he did so without the necessary conviction and persistence, failing where others might have succeeded.
He failed again in his attempts to obtain medical and therapeutic assistance. For this he blamed lack of access and the medical establishment’s alleged hostility toward obese patients, a claim to which most reasonable Americans would object.
Nevertheless, if the testimony of the participant’s friends and family can be believed, Emmett Truesdale had good reason to feel hard done by.
He suffered abuse at home, at school, and in the workplace.
His BMI pushed him to the fringes of his gay community.
Growing up in Southern California—a region known for its rigorous beauty standards—he felt ostracized and “other.”
He needed help and he deserved compassion—more than he received of either.
Though she declined to be interviewed for this report, the participant’s mother, Joanna Rossi, wrote in her self-published essay collection There’s Something Special About That Boy:
If I had to pick one thing that defines my failure as a mother, it’s not that Emmett didn’t know how much I loved and adored him.
It’s that I allowed him to see those things as unique to me.
He believed that, unless he was skinny, only a mother could love him like that.
I think that’s why when he received unconditional love from others, he dismissed it.
And when he received judgment and cruelty, he soaked it in like a sponge.
I told him all the time how exceptional he was, how loved.
But what can any of us do, in a society like ours, to make those words ring true?
The participant’s sister, Abigail Truesdale, also blamed herself while being interviewed by investigators:
I feel like this is all my fault somehow.
Like if I hadn’t had anorexia, he wouldn’t have developed an eating disorder.
Or if I hadn’t turned a blind eye when all the Hank stuff was going down, he’d have trusted me more as an adult, confided in me…
Who knows if he even wanted help, though.
His weight was one thing we never talked about, not until he got really thin.
I didn’t want him thinking I cared how he looked.
Because I didn’t. Emmett wasn’t fat to me, he was just my kid brother.
And when he wasn’t being a little brat, he could be this really smart, funny, kind…
[Sobbing.] Sorry… I just can’t help but think there was more I could’ve done.
In contrast, the participant’s friend and roommate, Lizette Castillo, refused to blame herself, telling interviewers:
Emmett got it wrong. He was always focused on the wrong kind of love.
He was pissed at me for months that I wouldn’t tell him how amazing he looked.
Felt betrayed, like if anyone should be bigging him up, I should.
Aaron, and his fucking Truepers—he thought they were the only ones who really loved him.
But approval from society, that’s not love.
Love is your mama’s home cooking, and that kind of acceptance is like a gas station Icee.
Makes you happy for a second, but pretty soon you’re gonna crash.
I loved Emmett. Every fucking inch of him.
I think deep down, he knew that. But in the end, he craved more.
It is perhaps worth remarking that the men in the participant’s life appear to have had no such revelations in the course of the investigation, with his father naming the participant’s mother as the largest contributor to his disordered eating, and his half brother, Christopher, asking, “Why didn’t he just hit the gym if he wanted to lose weight? I would’ve helped him if he asked.”
Thus, the question of culpability remains.
In an effort to assess whether Obexity turned a formerly peaceful man murderous, the investigators reviewed hundreds of pages of clinical trial data provided by Monstera BioSciences, documentation pertaining not just to the accused but also to his cohort and that of the previous phase of trials.
The review proved inconclusive. Although dozens of participants reported side effects of increased aggression and forgetfulness, only one other, Tanya Swygert, was charged with a murder consistent with the participant’s crimes.
It is possible other such examples exist but were not evidenced in the documentation.
In any case, to say that everyone who took Obexity was in danger of turning into a man-eating lunatic is almost certainly false.
To explain the participant’s murder spree, a closer look was taken at his personal history and online writings.
Accusations that Lou Truesdale murdered his firstborn’s mother show that the participant may have been genetically predisposed toward violence.
However, the most damning evidence was the participant’s own admission, in a blog post dated June 20, 2018, that while being scolded for attempting to steal and eat cupcakes, he bit his stepfather and lapped up his blood with pleasure.
He wrote, “I’d had my first taste and I liked it. ”
The Legal Information Institute at Cornell School of Law defines cannibalism as “the consumption of another human’s body matter, whether consensual or not,” which would extend to the imbibement of blood.
Therefore, this blog post proves that the participant willfully engaged in cannibalism as early as age nine.
Furthermore, it draws an early correlation between the participant’s being criticized for his eating habits and the onset of the cannibalistic impulse, a trend consistent with his later crimes.
His flagrant disregard for trial protocol, and his self-administration of black-market doses, which cannot be verified as genuine EmaC-8, were also taken into account.
The investigators furthermore noted the January 3 Instagram post (Appendix Y) in which the participant publicly accused Monstera BioSciences of cannibalism profiteering and Dr. Smith of being a child abuser.
The post collected over twelve thousand likes and one thousand comments, which reaffirm the investigators’ doubt about the participant’s claims.
Comments
thefatandthefurious omg what is happening right now, this person is unhinged!!!
heatherette478 JUST CALLED THE POLICE! YOU ARE SICK! SEEK TREATMENT!!!!!
rita_mamacita I think I’m going to throw up
dogs_and_dumbells I knew there was something seriously wrong with this guy
jackattack7 You know your eating’s out of control when you’re chowing down on a dude named Marco
seismicwaste It’s the genetically modified coyotes for me
tom_graves Oh no, my stepdad was a dick to me 20 years ago, guess I have to go murder some people. F**k off
Although these comments cannot be considered “evidence,” they nevertheless echo the cultural subtext vibrating underneath every page of this report: a growing suspicion of the self-pitying narratives popularized by television programs such as My 600-Lb.
Life, which insult the superobese by justifying their debility as a product of psychological upset, a genre sometimes referred to as “trauma porn.” Mindful of these hurtful and flattening stereotypes, the investigators have elected not to consider the participant’s history of abuse, bullying, or other psychological trauma in any part of their assessment.
The obese, they feel, do not deserve this.
Conducting countless interviews with leaders and researchers at Monstera BioSciences—not including Dr. Smith, who left the company following the participant’s allegations of abuse—the investigators found that like many Americans, the makers of Obexity have deep empathy for the struggles of the overweight and obese.
According to them, it was out of this empathy, and nothing else, that the treatment was conceived.
Given this evidence, the investigators conclude that the fates of the deceased are owed not to any fault of Monstera BioSciences, but to the inherent depravity and mental fragility of the participant himself, who, under the stress of a clinically induced body transformation and a flagrant disregard for trial protocols, shed what little humanity he still possessed.
Submitting to his cannibalistic tendencies in pursuit of revenge on the society he believed had wronged him, he turned himself into a monster.
In the eyes of the investigators, the only threat that persists beyond the participant’s death is the unearned notion of victimhood he espoused, which continues to proliferate throughout our country like the next pandemic.
At this point in time, the investigators confidently affirm that Obexity and EmaC-8 are of no more danger to the general public than any other weight loss product available on the market today.
END OF REPORT