Stephanie Tisone began pursuing new answers to her health concerns in 2013. She was 33 and had already molded her life around nutrition for years, traveling from her home in Newtown, Pennsylvania, to Hawaii and Southeast Asia to meet other raw vegans. Her family has a history of cancer, and after testing positive for two gene mutations correlating to an increased risk for breast cancer, she thought reconfiguring her diet could help.

On the advice of the mother of a family for whom she had nannied, Tisone booked a consultation with Anthony William, known on social media and in his books as the Medical Medium. A 53-year-old former health food store owner from Connecticut, William claims that, at four years old, a spirit visited him and gave him the ability to scan bodies for disease by sight. During Tisone’s hour-long $400 phone call with William, he said that heavy metals from vaccines caused her migraines and that the Epstein-Barr virus was hiding out in her liver. He recommended that she start a regimen of wild blueberries, spirulina, cilantro, zinc, and vitamin B12, and later said that high estrogen levels fueled her headaches.

William has said that negative energy can be a source of disease and that he can teach you to clear it; that he can give followers emotional support to rewire their brains and souls after post-traumatic stress disorder from long-term illness; that he can speak to the entity he calls the “Spirit of Compassion” on their behalf. He has said that his information is decades ahead of science, that he knows if objects are hidden in the walls of old homes, and that he fell into a long coma after running past a chemical spill from an overturned truck. His former associates say that much of his follower base is made up of women dealing with chronic illness and pain.

“It actually tells you what’s wrong and how to fix it,” Tisone would later tell a friend. “That’s why Anthony’s approach is so empowering.” The diagnostic call buoyed her, and she started learning William’s vernacular. “The true cause of breast cancer is the Epstein-Barr virus,” he wrote in his 2017 book Thyroid Healing. In the coming years, Tisone and William developed a friendship, and he eventually dropped his consultation fees. She began to work for William as an occasional assistant, accompanying him on trips to visit clients and speak at events. She held out hope, she often told friends and family, that she could one day work for him full-time. (Through his counsel, William declined repeated requests to comment on the record for this story.)

William is a frantic presence on his YouTube channel and social media accounts—he has 4 million Instagram followers. An article about his work published by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop in 2015 became the site’s most read story that year. With his hair tied in its regular short ponytail, William showed up in a YouTube video with Novak Djokovic’s wife, Jelena; on a 2019 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, waving his hands over Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; in a podcast interview with Kate Hudson. He traveled to Los Angeles to make nighttime house calls for patrons. In 2019, publications including this magazine traced surging demand for celery juice among the wealthy and health-conscious to one of his signature recommendations.

To some degree, William has drawn from folk tradition in his work. He has compared himself to Edgar Cayce, who claimed to be clairvoyant and became known as a founding father of New Age. William’s ascent has also coincided with the boom the wellness industry has undergone in the last decade as an ever-growing swath of consumers explores ideas like raw diets and detoxes. It’s been a boon to a now common brand of social media entrepreneur. For many followers, William has functioned as an amusement or a supplemental health source. To a certain percentage of true believers, though, the Medical Medium serves as community and identity.

As William gained more exposure, experts began to warn against his pseudoscience. “Promoting the Medical Medium is no different than promoting anti-vaccine views or cleanses or coffee enemas,” Jennifer Gunter, a San Francisco ob-gyn and leading Goop critic, told the online magazine Inverse in 2018. “The minimum is that people waste money, but there is great potential for harm with many of the therapies that are recommended and delays in diagnosis.” William often folds his defense against such critiques into his pitch. “I noticed that there’s this desperate, desperate need to take down the Medical Medium out there,” he recently said in an online chat group.

Like other alternative health practitioners, William’s site includes standard disclaimer language: “Anthony William…is not a licensed medical doctor, chiropractor, osteopathic physician, naturopathic doctor, nutritionist, pharmacist, psychologist, psychotherapist, or other formally licensed healthcare professional, practitioner or provider of any kind. Anthony William, Medical Medium does not render medical, psychological, or other professional advice or treatment, nor does it provide or prescribe any medical diagnosis, treatment, medication, or remedy.”

Tisone’s belief in William never wavered. She was, according to her friends and family, a 30-something woman with a high emotional quotient, a lifelong student with a tendency to commit herself totally to various diet protocols or gurus. Where other of William’s millions of followers might treat his dictates as larks or view them as part of the vast online orbit of self-billed health experts, Tisone found herself transfixed. “Stephanie related to Anthony as he said he was,” says a friend. “Just under God.” Through her association with William, Tisone spent time at the homes of Robert De Niro and Demi Moore, where he would advise them to buy thousands of dollars in supplements. (Representatives for both actors declined to comment.)

Between 2014 and 2017, according to a record of Tisone’s text and voice messages obtained from her brother, Tisone and William kept in regular communication that was as steady as it was wide-ranging. They analyzed her health and his career progress; she asked him about the circumstances of actor Brittany Murphy’s death, and how to handle debt. Tisone also frequently texted with William’s wife, Rachel Schutzman, and several Medical Medium associates about various ailments and her understanding of William’s advice.

Before William started his current business, he and Schutzman ran a health food store in the roughly 2,000-person town of Machias, Maine. According to a 2001 report in local newspaper The Lubec Light, the shop marked the couple’s first retail venture since William began his career in natural healing in 1985. William eventually moved to Florida, where a Naples yoga studio advertised $12 medical intuitive readings with him. He began phone consultations as the Medical Medium in the early 2010s and saw his profile begin to rise. He performed a reading for Moore in 2014 and got a major break when the leading New Age publisher Hay House released Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness the following year.

Prefame Medical Medium clients remember William spending extra time on the phone with them consulting and gossiping about raw food gurus. “He talks in this sweet voice,” says one. As a published author, that availability shifted. “Books give credibility,” Janis Donnaud, a New York literary agent for health and cooking authors, says. “Something different than selling people supplements.” In 2016, William established an informal franchise system of health practitioners. These affiliates didn’t pay William but were steeped in his thinking and spread the word.

By then, William’s and Tisone’s social circles overlapped. She had become close with Phil McCluskey, a public speaker and author known in the raw food world for his 200-pound weight loss. At the beginning of 2015, McCluskey and his wife, Casey, an Australian former raw food coach and especially dedicated Medical Medium student, began helping William. The McCluskeys own a supplement company in Florida named Vimergy that William often recommends. (Phil and Casey have described themselves as the Medical Medium’s director of operations and director of content and education, but both say they have never worked for William.) As William prepared his book debut, Tisone asked Phil McCluskey for help getting more work with William. He told Tisone they couldn’t because the team had increased its Facebook ad spend to push William’s book. (McCluskey says he had checked with William’s team and was relaying this news on its behalf.)

The Medical Medium became a polished brand with textbook-style offerings. Even by the volatile standards of the health personality business, William’s full-fledged emergence looked sudden. “It just seemed to be there one day,” Donnaud says. “He has been working on this for a really long time,” the early client says, “and he has been trying to find fame and fortune.”

William began holding live events. One of his followers flew to attend the first one at the Sheraton Sand Key Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, in February 2016. She had been blowing through her savings trying to alleviate years of illness and had her first phone call with William the following week. “Thousands of people were waiting to talk to him,” she remembers, “and here I was.” She thought she’d never speak with him again, but he texted her a few days later. “I couldn’t believe he was reaching out to me on a personal level,” she says. “This was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” William eventually named the client as a practitioner on his referral page. That November, with De Niro and his family in the audience and Tisone volunteering at the event, she gave a testimonial to William onstage at Loews Hollywood Hotel.

William became Hay House’s most successful author. He bought two new homes. Other self-styled medical intuitives flocked to him. Without William’s recognition, the follower turned practitioner says, “You’re just anyone else.” (William prefaced his online referral list with another disclaimer: “The names and associated links are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended to state or imply that Anthony William or Anthony William, Inc. recommends, endorses, supports, sponsors, or is in any way affiliated or associated with any person or entity listed below, or any linked website or content.”)

A vocal base of Medical Medium enthusiasts coalesced on Facebook and Reddit. They’d dissect William’s diet recommendations and share their own experiences. “We’re all a family at Medical Medium, and it’s the safest place,” he has said. “The family that’s been through hell and back. It’s the forgotten souls, I call ’em. It’s the people who have been swept under the carpet, who’ve been sick, and they’ve been through so much, and there’s no answers out there.” On camera, he wraps his eccentricities in a smiling benevolence. “I know everything about coconuts,” he once said. “I know it’s a bold statement, but it’s the truth.”

William’s closest acolytes maintained his mystique. “You’re not allowed to talk about your own level of connection with him,” the practitioner says, “so it’s hard to know about someone else’s.” In a 2015 text, he told Tisone, “No one cares about the truth!! Do you think that vaccines are the only screwup???” Shortly after publishing his first book, he told her to “write a review dude and retaliate the evil review someone just put up” on Amazon. “Maybe throw a comment telling person how wrong and they obviously didn’t read it.”

Tisone was 20 years old when she absorbed her first health book—by Suzanne Somers, the sitcom actor. It was 2000. The social media–enabled wellness boom was still years off, but long-thriving subcultures tied to New Age thought and alternative diets were spreading online. Tisone actively pursued her passions. She studied the raw food authors Douglas Graham and Don Bennett and the naturopath Robert Morse. She spent a season living in a commune with David Wolfe, a superfood enthusiast and conspiracy theorist.

By her 30s, Tisone liked to joke about how she’d never been kissed. She had the word Love tattooed on her arm and a gentle communion with kids, which friends attribute to her enduring state of wonder. Above all, they describe her as solicitous and devoted, a connector in the raw food community. She met Sarma Melngailis at Pure Food & Wine, the aughts-era raw vegan hot spot in Manhattan that Melngailis opened before serving jail time for grand larceny and tax fraud.

Tisone met William in person for the first time in 2014, the year after her initial phone consultation, eventually landing some work with him as an ad hoc travel assistant. During their trips, she drove him around, ironed his shirts, and went on Whole Foods runs. They once got into a car accident on the way back from Moore’s home in Los Angeles.

As Tisone grew closer to William, she added further restrictions to her raw diet, cutting out nuts, seeds, and avocado. For dinner, she sometimes ate two heads of romaine lettuce with cayenne and lemon. She would tell friends and family that she couldn’t say too much about her work with William, but because they regularly texted, she could bring him their concerns. One family for whom Tisone nannied thought that vaccines had harmed their daughter’s health and tried introducing bone broth to her diet.

“Bone broth fad is by far the most retarded of all time,” William texted Tisone. “For some stupid demented reason people believe it does something for their body like the Druids did when they were sacrificing humans and making soup out of them in the dark ages of satanism.”

“Thank you for confirming my gut feeling,” she wrote back.

Tisone continued pursuing work with William, and she tried to broker a Medical Medium consultation for Timothy Schmit, the longtime bassist for the Eagles, whose wife she had met through a raw food friend. Some William associates thought of Tisone as too wide-eyed, according to one, but her responsibilities afforded her an air of uncommon proximity. “There’s very few that I trust in life,” William texted her. “And your the most.”

When William and Schutzman moved in April 2017, they gave Tisone a job preparing the house for their arrival. Despite her excitement, Tisone kept the gig quiet as best she could, telling her brother and parents not to let anyone else know. “This is super duper PRIVATE and so its really important you don’t share this with anyone,” Schutzman texted her.

The month prior, in March 2017, Tisone had texted Schutzman with a health development. “I’m assuming this isn’t anything to be worried about and prob just detox related,” she wrote. “I noticed a pretty large lump in my left breast today.” Schutzman responded, “Breast lumps can be lymph or node related if you’re detoxing, during your cycle, or under the weather, but you should always have it looked at by your physician, thermography scans are ok to get too if needed.”

“You can give it a week or two and see if it decreases in size or swelling too,” Schutzman added.

“Yes feels like detox I will do that and observe it over next week or 2,” Tisone replied. “I’ve done thermography in past so I am familiar with that So I’ll just keep an eye on it.” (A thermography scan is a painless test that measures skin temperature and doesn’t require radiation; the FDA and American Cancer Society have published warnings about using one as a diagnostic tool for breast cancer.)

A few days later, Tisone followed up with Schutzman. A New Jersey–based woman named Muneeza Ahmed has established herself as a leading voice in the Medical Medium community—she describes herself as the first practitioner in the world to be endorsed by William. Tisone had sought her input, and Ahmed told her that she thought it was an Epstein-Barr virus “activity packing in toxins into the cyst.” (“I did the best I could to keep up with the texts Steph sent and while I cared for her and always wanted to support her as a friend,” Ahmed says, “I would at times feel very overwhelmed by the sheer volume of texts and the large variety of topics she asked me about.” Ahmed also says that she told Tisone to see a doctor to address her lump—but that she understood her to have “EBV from mono as a kid.”)

“Updating you on Muneeza’s opinion about my breast lump,” Tisone texted Schutzman, telling her she’d been advised to up her intake of chaga mushroom tea and that Ahmed was sending breast health massage oil from the beauty brand Living Libations. Ahmed offered Tisone a 10 percent discount on the $30 product.

Schutzman didn’t text back about Ahmed’s assessment, but about two weeks later, she told Tisone, “I wanted to give you a heads up that Ant & I won’t be able to answer any health related questions for the next month or so, all our energy will need to be on this move.”

While Tisone was readying the house, she told a friend in a voice message, “Anthony told me that my body is transforming since I’ve been here, like my health and everything has gotten a lot better.” When the couple got there in April, Tisone spent time with them before heading back to Pennsylvania.

Members of William’s inner circle at the time understood his attention as a commodity, and Tisone’s messages have a deferential tone. While Schutzman and William work closely together, in August, Tisone conveyed her awareness of a lump in her breast directly to William. “I have a quite large lump in my left breast since March, feels like I need to tell you,” she wrote, adding, “No worries if you can’t respond to this.”

William’s brushes with fame were becoming more common. He described Mark Burnett, the producer of Survivor and The Apprentice, as one of his good friends to one early client, and told her that he only texted her, Moore, and other celebrities. In October 2017, along with Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson, he appeared in Heal, a documentary about mind-body medicine directed by Kelly Noonan, who is married to private-equity billionaire Alec Gores. The following year, the couple and Town & Country editor in chief Stellene Volandes cohosted a book party in Los Angeles for the actor Roma Downey, who is married to Burnett. A guest recalls William sticking close by Sylvester Stallone’s side as the night wore on.

The testimonials on William’s site snowballed to include Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Diane von Furstenberg, Naomi Campbell, Alexis Bledel, James Van Der Beek, Calvin Harris, Rashida Jones, Kelly Rutherford, Lisa Rinna, Carla Gugino, Pharrell Williams, Hilary Swank, and Adam Sandler. His co-signs could range from spirited (Swank’s and Sandler’s representatives vouch for theirs) to something more like a framed headshot at the dry cleaners (Van Der Beek’s rep says he wrote his eight years ago) to aspirational (William listed Sophia Bush in the acknowledgments of four of his books; a rep says the actor was never a client but they once met when she accompanied a friend to the friend’s consultation).

William soon hit the peak of his own celebrity. “So your name came up from my cousin sending me screenshots of your Instagram, and then other people just sending me your name,” Kim Kardashian told him on the 2019 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. He proceeded to tell the reality star that copper in her liver was causing outbreaks of her chronic psoriasis.

Steven Novella, a neurologist and the founding editor of the site Science-Based Medicine, sees William as part of a lineage of health-oriented operators including Cayce and Franz Mesmer, the late 18th-century physician who practiced hypnotism and befriended Mozart and Marie Antoinette. “People who are either wealthy or celebrities aren’t necessarily scientists, or even very smart, and so they become targets,” Novella says. “These kinds of people will prey upon them because they know that their endorsement is worth a lot.”

William’s nonfamous clientele also span a spectrum of belief. While there are die-hard converts such as Tisone, there are those who approach his practice with something of a wink. There are happy customers and vocal proponents as well as those who have gone all in on the Medical Medium but walked away unsatisfied. Dee Sclafani, a piano teacher in Richmond, Virginia, discovered William in 2013, the same year as Tisone, when she suddenly couldn’t make it through one of her regular runs. She soon found William online.

Sclafani initially viewed William in messianic terms and proposed to him that she make a documentary about his life. She referred friends to him, and one decided that she would book a session as long as Sclafani would join her on the call to calm her nerves. But Sclafani drifted as the cumulative consultation fees ballooned and he became scarce: “I tried these supplements and spent a ton of fucking money.”

“You’re coming from a desperation energy,” she says, “and that’s not a good energy to come from.”

‘Bro I’m [not] doing good at all,” Tisone texted William in July 2017. “Back in excruciating pain. It’s been weeks but way worse now. Sorry to bug you.” Hours later, she wrote, “Thank you for your support. And yea think the stress you mentioned is financial stress. Praying for that to come to completion. I love you and I appreciate all you do for me.” Tisone sent photos of bumps on her skin a few days later and asked if she had shingles. William said she had “baby shingles”—“which is what the back prob was originally”—and advised her to take vitamin C and lysine.

Tisone sought out a number of other alternative health practitioners to address various subsets of her symptoms. She spoke remotely to Teshna Beaulieu, a chiropractor and a self-described specialist in quantum neurology and neuro-emotional technique; Tienko Ting, the author of Natural Chi Movement: Accessing the World of the Miraculous; and several Medical Medium devotees. Tisone conveyed many of the assessments she received to William.

In August, Tisone couldn’t get up. She had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor at her parents’ house and her back pain had become unmanageable. She kept the lump from her family, later texting William that she was not up front with her father because his sister had breast cancer. Tisone discussed the growth and all other manner of health issues with others, but at this moment of crisis, she went directly to William. They exchanged 156 voice messages between August 30 and September 3. They discussed several opinions Tisone had by then received and whether she would get an MRI. She did not at that time.

As her concern grew, Tisone often back-channeled to try to understand the thicket of health ideas contained in William’s messages and phone calls. “Sweetheart in your audio you said Ant didn’t know why you have nausea,” Casey McCluskey texted her. “But he does know. Maybe you didn’t hear him correctly love. Do you want me to text you the reason?” (McCluskey says that all of Tisone’s friends knew that her nausea was from migraines.)

“Did you ever have a lump in your breast?” Tisone texted McCluskey in July. “I think I told you I have one right? Since March.”

“Yeah you told me,” McCluskey responded. “It will go, just takes time especially while you’re having a viral flare.”

“Stephanie had told me during that time that she had seen a doctor multiple times,” McCluskey says. “She also told me she had a viral issue.” By this point, Schutzman had already told Tisone breast lumps can be “lymph or node related” but that she should have it looked at, and Ahmed had spoken about it with her. A couple of weeks later, Tisone reminded William of the lump. She became unable to work. Her father, a manager for government construction projects, covered most of her health costs, and a friend sent her money throughout 2017 to buy supplements. That August, she stunned her health community friends by missing the annual Woodstock Fruit Festival, and one of them came to visit her. She shared with the friend that she had a breast lump but assured her that she was talking to William.

‘Sorry to bug you again but these things I am legitimately worried about,” Tisone texted William toward the beginning of October. She was vomiting and her throat was starting to feel swollen.

“Think we will find a dr to come to house,” he wrote. “Let’s look tomorrow.”

“If you get so bad and can’t breathe, you can always call emergency,” he said a few minutes later. “But I think it’s just acids burning throat.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about having a doctor come here to draw blood,” Tisone texted. She didn’t have health insurance and didn’t “want to get trapped and fall down the rabbit hole.”

“I understand,” he responded. “How is it.”

Tisone had spent nearly two decades in the alternative health ecosystem, and by her own account, it’s difficult to get a full picture of the advice she followed. “Just want to make sure you know I don’t have a doc that’s overseeing all this,” she later texted William. “Just a mish mash of random people.” Her reliance on this community was broader than William, but time and again she returned to him. “Haven’t heard from anthony,” Tisone texted a friend and former William assistant, “but Tienko says there is a virus in my intestines.” She asked William if a chiropractor correctly identified her slipped disc and he said she did. She told him that Beaulieu had used her neuro-emotional technique over FaceTime. “Yayyyyyy!!!!!,” he responded, adding, “That can help a sensitive nervy girl like you.”

Tisone followed up a few days later about whether she should get blood work, and William said she should because her sodium level could have dropped from vomiting. She said she was vomiting less and asked if she still needed to.

William responded in a series of voice messages. “You’re dealing with the shingles virus, tried and true, like 100%,” he said in one. “I mean, that’s the virus that flared up your disc, everything else.”

If a doctor could come and draw blood, he said, it might make her family feel better. “I think your family really needs you to see you get at least a little support,” he said, adding, “They could lose perspective over time, even though it’s a slipped disc keeping you from getting up.” Later that week, Tisone’s nipple began to bleed. She sent William a photo of stains on her shirt and asked if she had a hiatal hernia. “You didn’t have one months ago when I looked,” he responded, “but now that you vomit this much it’s possible.”

When she asked what he thought of her bleeding “from my left nipple on same breast as cyst,” he responded, “I’m not liking that at all”; “but don’t want you worried right now”; “just get your back better”; “as your back gets better then the vomiting should stop”; “it should come together.” 

“Does it have to do with the cyst?” she texted. “Prob not,” he told her.

It had been about seven months since Tisone texted Schutzman about a lump in her breast. William and Tisone had exchanged hundreds of text and voice messages about her health. According to the phone records reviewed for this story, William never told her not to see a doctor. On at least several occasions, he suggested she seek other medical help. Over the same period, he told her he could do a bacterial scan on her, and she asked him to ask the Spirit of Compassion if there was “anything pressing on the nerves that we can’t see with an MRI?”

Tisone wasn’t getting any better. She had blood drawn the week after her nipple began bleeding and told William that her breast was throbbing where the cyst was. “When did the breast get this bad,” he asked. After Tisone sent the results of her blood test, William wrote to her, “Can’t fuck around with that,” and said to get a thermography scan and ultrasound. Schutzman arranged to have a new mattress, bed frame, bedding, and pillows sent to her.

Tisone sought more clarity the following week. She told William in a voice message she didn’t want to go to the hospital unless “you honestly agree that that is necessary” and that “you made it clear what I need to do for my breasts.”

“Steph it is important to have the breast looked at and cared for for sure,” William responded in a text. “It’s always wonderful too that your family knows your reaching out for care, they must be very very worried about you so don’t be afraid of getting attention from a doc on the breast.”

About a week and a half later, in mid-November, Tisone texted him the results of her thermography scan, which showed an array of elevated temperatures. She sent him more blood work, and they started discussing mammograms and biopsies. She asked him to join her on a call with a doctor she was now speaking with, and he said he couldn’t. “When we talk next about my breast can it be on the phone and can we ask spirit to help us see what’s happening??” Tisone asked. “Thank you I love you.” He didn’t respond. She wrote again the next day after a family doctor called her with X-ray and blood results.

“What is a compression fracture?”; “I’m kind of freaking out”; “I need a plan”; “My goal and vision is that spirit and yourself will rd and scan me and will put me on a perfect protocol and my breast will heal itself with nothing invasive.”

The next day, Schutzman texted her, “It’s been super hectic the past few weeks but I will make sure Ant gets back to you ASAP.”

William never texted her again, but Casey McCluskey relayed a thought in December: “I think all the vomiting and all the immobility has just given you a ton of pain. That’s what Anthony said it would be a few days ago.” (McCluskey says that she didn’t speak to William about Tisone specifically and that it was a general conversation.)

Ahmed and McCluskey say they believed Tisone’s family didn’t want William involved, and McCluskey says she understood that the family took Tisone’s phone away. Tisone texted with Schutzman a few times the following year. Tisone and McCluskey corresponded throughout the course of that year. Tisone’s brother says her family never took her phone away or sought to limit her contact with William.

In December, Tisone’s family, now aware of the lump, took her for a biopsy. Before the results came back, she had a seizure that sent her to the hospital. Doctors induced a coma for three days, and she learned that she would never walk much again. She had stage IV metastatic breast cancer, which had eroded her spine.

“They’re assuming it’s tumors which is not smart as the radiation can cause problems,” McCluskey texted her. (McCluskey says she was echoing another Tisone friend’s fear.)

Most of the friends who took care of Tisone after her cancer diagnosis had some tie to the Medical Medium world. In August 2018, one of them made a trip to the beach with her. “She always was hopeful,” the friend says. William’s disappearance hurt and confused Tisone, but she kept faith that he had the answers. Her doctor told friends and family that they needed to be honest. He had been forthright about how much time she had left, and Tisone responded by asking if someone could contact William to check. “I’m alwaysss behind you,” she once texted him. “It’s my purpose.”

In November 2018, Tisone died of breast cancer. She was 38 years old.

In her final weeks, the pain of William’s absence lingered. “I don’t want to die Can you PLEASE talk to anthony for me,” she texted McCluskey five days before her death. “Maybe he will have a solution or something.” McCluskey responded that she was sorry; she says she wasn’t sure if the text was from Tisone.

News of Tisone’s death began to circulate. William offered another medical personality an unsolicited clarification that he wasn’t responsible. A bit over a year after Tisone died, a friend wrote about her on Instagram. Sarah (a pseudonym) still mostly stuck to William’s methods. She previously did work for Medical Medium, and was close enough to William that in 2018, they discussed her business proposal for a health retreat that never materialized. Her father had died shortly after Tisone, and in her post, Sarah reflected on their contrasting circumstances. Her father had undergone traditional cancer treatment, while Tisone “did all the healing protocols you can think of” and “was guided personally” by William.

Ahmed and Kimberly Spair, another health coach touting William’s name, responded to Sarah’s post by sending letters to their respective followings. Their notes covered similar ground and used much of the same language. Spair said that Tisone was not under William’s care or a client of his and advised her followers to look past Sarah’s post. “Vulnerability is real during healing, and the last thing we need is a story to be twisted and throw us into fear, doubt, and adrenal spiral,” she wrote.

After seeing the letters, Sarah aired her distress in a blog post.

“The only people who knew Steph that are still connected with Anthony are the ones who are making money,” she wrote. (Both Ahmed and Spair say they’ve never received money from William.) Still, she remained conflicted: “It was Steph’s decision not to see a doctor. She’s responsible for that,” she wrote, but maintained that William “built a relationship with her based on this mutual belief that he had perfect information about her health.” She told the story of Tisone’s illness and death at greater length and elaborated on Tisone’s closeness with William—even if she had stopped paying for sessions. “Yes, it’s a fact that Steph wasn’t a client of Anthony’s,” she wrote. “But now do you see how she was so much more than that?”

The back-and-forth among William affiliates set off debates across the network of Facebook groups formed around interpreting his work. The month after Ahmed’s and Spair’s letters, he did a live stream on the platform. “I’ve always known about the paid trolls out there,” William said. He claimed that two women reached out to him and told him that a “corporation or this entity or group or some kind of association or something” contacted multiple people and offered “not a little bit of money, like a large amount of money” to “make up slanderous stories, tall tales, crazy claims to weaken Medical Medium credibility.”

A few months after Sarah’s blog post, in June 2020, Ken Turkel, a lawyer retained by William who has represented Hulk Hogan and Sarah Palin in their battles against Gawker Media and The New York Times, sent cease-and-desist letters to her and others who posted about Tisone’s death. “As you supposedly know,” Turkel wrote, “Mr. William considered Stephanie to be a friend, and for you to imply that he played some role in her death devastated him.” Sarah had already removed the posts after the blowback. Turkel said that the record of text and voice messages would show that William had told Tisone to seek traditional care from a doctor, but did not include them out of privacy concerns. The matter began to die down.

Over the last few years, as both William’s celebrity glow and the online discussion of Tisone dissipated, he has settled into a life of professional proximity to fame. He struck up a public friendship with Tony Robbins. Miranda Kerr told New York magazine that his book Cleanse to Heal “transformed the way I think about food.” In August 2020, he wore dark sunglasses as he appeared on an episode of the short-lived podcast In My Feels. Cohosted by Noah Cyrus, the show had previously featured interviews with the life coach Jay Shetty and the business influencer Gary Vaynerchuk. William advised Cyrus to take up spirulina, cilantro, and wild blueberries. He talked about aliens on his podcast and posted a juice shot recipe for chemtrail exposure. “You can come and go as you please,” William recently said in an online chat group, “which you can’t do in a cult.”

Friends who knew both Tisone and William continue to reckon with the role he played in her life, as well as the extent to which they went along with it. One recalls a maxim that William texted Tisone: “It’s loving others and having compassion for others that’s more important. So don’t go too crazy loving yourself.”

“He never said this shit to me,” the friend says.

One practitioner I spoke to told me she abandoned her association with the Medical Medium after coming to terms with Tisone’s death. She still keeps tabs on William on social media. “There’s a new group after us,” she says. “A new inner circle.”

Nonetheless, she says, “I still feel best when I do what he recommends.”

This story has been updated.