The MRF Ghosts of Coast to Coast

On today's show: A Correction: cat hair was found in diabetes drugs, not vaccines. Novo Nordisk’s $16.5 billion acquisition Catalent — FDA contamination at the Indiana facility.
Your host Crystal is a former clinical trials manager who read a Form 990 recreationally, and it ruined her life. Today we’re doing a forensic accounting of nothing.
THE MORGELLONS RESEARCH FOUNDATION IRS FILINGS
The Morgellons Research Foundation (MRF), "founded" by Mary Leitao, filed IRS Form 990 returns showing zero program service expenses. Not low. Zero.
2004 Form 990: $318 in contributions. $0 expenses.
2005 Form 990: $0 program expenses.
2006 Form 990: Missing. This is the peak year — national TV, maximum donations, phones ringing. That return has never been located. Revenue reported retroactively: ~$29,000.
MRF’s sole named grant recipient was Thornton/Thorstensen Labs. Operator Michael Carlson was later indicted on 51 counts of falsifying test results. The lab was already decertified by the time the grant was granted. The MRF patient registry — real people, real names — has never been accounted for. No response to date from 2.23.26 open records request to OHSU.
THE DOMAIN
morgellons.org was registered March 14, 2002 by dkornsin@hotmail.com — not Mary Leitao, not any board member. That registrant possibly links to 2345.com, Chinese software infrastructure. Earliest site capture (June 5, 2002) lists a California fax number, contact morgellons@aol.com, and web designer Amy DiFerrari.
DOUGLAS EWING BUCKNER SR —Fake DOCTOR
Douglas Buckner is listed as Vice President of the MRF board and identified as “Dr. Douglas Buckner PhD” on federal tax documents, in the Washington Post Magazine, and on Coast to Coast AM (February 2005). He is not a doctor. No MD. No PhD. No dissertation, residency, license, or verifiable work history. Born July 1946, Tennessee. Lived in Waycross, Georgia 35 years. Now on his father’s land in Montgomery County, Tennessee. Bankruptcy filing, tax lien on record. His wife Janelle Fossen is the MRF board secretary. Two board seats, one household.
On the 2005 Coast to Coast broadcast, host George Noory calls him a physician and Doctor repeatedly. Buckner never corrects him. He describes Morgellons symptoms accurately but frames the fibers as visually bizarre. They’re not — they look like common textile fibers. The actual anomaly is fibers embedded under intact skin and emerging from wounds. The paranormal framing is intentionally discrediting perhaps, guilty as charged.
KENNETH COWLES — DIED IN HIS SLEEP AT 53
Kenneth Cowles served as MRF Director of PR and Media, unpaid. Day job: production assistant on Guiding Light. He says he found Morgellons by sending a mass email looking for a story and hearing back from a woman in Tacoma, Washington. Didn’t believe her at first. Eventually did. That led him to Mary Leitao.
From a soap opera set, Cowles placed Morgellons on KTVU Fox San Francisco, stations in Reno and Houston, and in 2006 on ABC News prime time and NBC. Correction: the rumored $10,000 plane ticket to Tulsa and $2,000 phone bill were Kenneth Cowles, not Dale Cowler.
Kenneth Cowles died October 2007, age 53. “Peacefully in his sleep,” per Mary Leitao. Forty-eight days after Charles E. Holman, former MRF chairman, died at 54. Holman had asked Mary for access to the financial statements and was refused. Mary’s husband Edward Leitao died at 54 of cardiac arrest months before she incorporated the MRF. Three men connected to this foundation. All dead in their 50s. Nobody wrote about it.
MRF BOARD: William T. Harvey (chairman, NASA), Mary Leitao (founder), Douglas Buckner (VP, not a doctor), Dale Cowler (CPA/treasurer), Janelle Fossen (secretary, Buckner’s wife), Kenneth Cowles (PR, deceased), Charles E. Holman (former chair, deceased).
OSU open records request 26-100 filed February 23, 2026 — no response. Death certificates not known for Edward Leitao, Charles Holman, Kenneth Cowles.
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