UK student jailed for lying to her lecturer about having terminal cancer

“CRUEL” Elisa faked terminal cancer and in the process destroyed her teacher’s life, ruining her career and her marriage.

A SCHEMING student who faked terminal cancer has been jailed for ruining her female lecturer’s life — costing the victim her marriage, home and job.

Elisa Bianco, 22, from the UK, spun a web of lies to manipulate Sally Rettallack “like a cuckoo in the nest”, a judge said.

She tricked mum-of-four Sally, 49, with a fake story after meeting her on a health and social care college course when she was 16.

Bianco convinced the lecturer to let her move into her home by pretending she had been abused by her parents and had three months to live with a malignant tumour.

The cancer story prompted Sally to give up work so she could help Bianco fulfil her “bucket list” when she claimed she had her cancerous kidneys removed and had only months to live.

Bianco would be dropped off at hospital every day — but then sit in a cafe in her pyjamas and dress herself in fake bandages.

She also used mind games to drive a wedge between Sally and her husband Ralph — which eventually saw them split, the Truro Crown Court heard.

Bianco, who started calling Sally “Mum”, even posed as a man to become her victim’s internet love interest.

She set her up with “recently widowed” consultant physician John, who was actually Bianco, using a husky voice and fake email address.

They shared intimate emails as they fell in love online over the course of a year — but Bianco invented a lung cancer diagnosis for the fictional internet lover and killed him off before they could meet.

Sally’s world has been left in tatters and she has since moved to France to try and piece her life back together, the court heard.

She sobbed in court as she bravely read out a victim impact statement about how Bianco had torn her family apart.

Sally Rettallack.

She said: “My entire family had empathy for Elisa’s personal situation and welcomed her into our home.

“Now I have no career, no job, no husband, little self confidence and have recently started to try and rebuild my life by moving to France.

“Very gradually throughout the period that Elisa was in my life, she manipulated her way daily more deeply into my life.

“I trusted her and over time put her above my family and friends as I knew she would only be here for a short period of time.

“I truly believed she had no one else. I have to live with this guilt and the consequences for ever.”

She said the “darkest deception” was the fake romance Bianco created. She said: “This relationship developed gradually into a very deep mutual love and true relationship in every sense.

“To discover this entire person and relationship to be fraud, just a young girl playing, was devastating and embarrassing to a level that I find so hard to put into words.”

Bianco, of Fowey, Cornwall, pleaded guilty to stalking causing serious alarm or distress and was jailed for two years and eight months.

Judge Christopher Harvey Clark QC said: “It is a strange but very disturbing case.

“I can truthfully say it is the most extraordinary case I have had to deal with in a long time.

“You were like an uninvited cuckoo fledgling in the nest of a willow warbler — an unexpected offspring demanding to receive constant attention.

“Most chilling was the callous and cruel deception to create a fictitious hospital consultant.

“You heartlessly manipulated Mrs Retallack’s deepest emotions. No sentence will compensate her.”

Bianco met Sally when she enrolled on a college course in 2009 and Sally became her personal tutor a year later.

The teenager falsely claimed her mother and stepfather were alcoholics and faked panic attacks at college — sometimes several times a day — and always called Sally to help.

She also said she had been diagnosed with various complex illnesses which she backed up with faked consultant letters.

Ten days after she left college with a triple distinction diploma in April 2012, Bianco arrived at Sally’s home saying she needed to stay for two days.

Mr Lee said: “She arrived with packed bags and Mrs Retallack took her in, initially for the weekend.”

She then invented emails from her parents which she sent to Mrs Retallack and ended up staying for months — while her former teacher helped her with university applications.

The well-meaning mum even forked out £750 ($AU1550) in rent and equipment for her place at uni, and the court heard the family were “relieved” she had left in autumn 2012.

But after three weeks she came back after she phoned Sally and said she had blood in her urine and collapsed arteries — when in truth she was simply not enjoying her course.

Mrs Retallack felt compelled to let her return to the family home, where she stayed, before pretending to undergo a fake kidney removal in February 2013.

Mrs Retallack’s 83-year-old mother even helped look after the perfectly healthy fibber

But when Sally — who the defendant started calling ‘mum’ — asked about her getting a job in March 2013, she said she then had a benign tumour on the other kidney.

Her deep-seated betrayal was backed up with faked hospital letters and she referred to medical staff by name — eventually announcing she had just months to live.

Pretending she was in constant pain, Bianco started sleeping in Sally’s bed so Sally could care for her 24 hours a day.

But the family grew suspicious and Mr Retallack confronted her but her lies were “so plausible and convincing” he “felt embarrassed” having questioned her.

During the course of his digging Mr Retallack tracked down Bianco’s father who “told him something” of the truth.

Elisa Bianco.

Then in August 2013, after Sally had spent £2,000 ($AU4140) on her bucket list wishes and thrown her a final farewell birthday party, she made a surprise visit to Royal Cornwall Hospital.

Staff at the renal ward where she claimed to be undergoing treatment said they had never heard of her.

On leaving the hospital she saw Bianco sitting in the cafe in her pyjamas and when she asked if she had made it all up she simply answered “yes”.

Distraught Sally realised she had never looked under the bandages and had thought ‘John’ had a high-pitched voice.

She found receipts for dressings at her home, and a device which “made the noise that she claimed was the sound of her ribs cracking”, the court heard.

Sally last night said: “Every single thing she told me for was a pack of lies.

“I stupidly gave her £50 ($AU100) and my address when she finished college and said ‘If anything really serious happens, come to me’.

“Four days later she arrived saying her mum was an alcoholic and had beaten her — it was completely untrue.

“I took her to Plymouth University on the first day of term — and felt glad she had reached that point and was out of my family to be honest.

“But the police told me she spent all of her grant partying and didn’t go to lectures.

“Instead, she arrived back at my door and upped the lies about health issues until it got to the point where she needed 24-hour care.

“I was showering Elisa and her hair was falling out in clumps as you’d expect with someone having chemotherapy.

“I only found out later she was cutting her hair at the roots so it would fall out as I combed it.

“She told me she was spending eight hours a day at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro — I would deliver her to the door in front of the renal unit in her pyjamas.

“She had her own locker at the hospital and staff gave her free food at three restaurants.

“Every day for five months, she would get changed into jeans and go on a jolly for the day.

“I was unaware she was getting money from her family to buy medical supplies so she could be covered in dressings and bandages when I arrived to bring her home at the end of the day.

“I would push her through the hospital in a wheelchair in her pyjamas and the cafe staff would say what a lovely girl she was — she duped everybody.

“She was incredibly clever and had no normal sense of conscience — it’s very scary.

“Me and my husband became estranged because of the pressure.

“He found solace in another woman and left and then five months later he wanted to come back.

“But the second we talked, Elisa would have a medical emergency. She managed to get between me and my four children and isolate me.

“She forged NHS medical records using the correct logos and signatures.

“She used two laptops and five mobile phones to pretend to be different people including a renal consultant.”

Elisa Bianco.

Sally told how Bianco created ‘John’, in an attempt to create an online romance.

“She did try to push me towards a relationship of that nature with John — but he didn’t exist. It got to the point where she wanted me to send John intimate photos but I refused. S

“She had a voice-changing device on her phone and used it to pretend to be John. John told me the reason his voice was quite high pitched was because he’d had throat cancer. But when I took a fancy to him and wanted to meet — she killed him off.

“We only found out everything was a charade because she made one fatal mistake.

“One day Elisa went to hospital and left a mobile phone at home. My husband Ralph phoned her dad who had no idea she was ill. Ralph said: ‘I’m sorry to tell you she is dying’ and her dad jumped in his car and drove to the hospital.

“Elisa phoned me screaming down the phone that her dad had abused her and we must not let him near her. I rushed to the hospital cardiology unit where she said she was having treatment — but when I went into the ward they knew nothing about her.

“I then went to the renal unit and they knew nothing — even though she was supposedly dying. She put on an amazing, terrifying act.

“Elisa had lost two stone (12kg) in weight — presumably because of the pressure of juggling so many balls in the air. Nobody doubted the tumour on her kidney was killing her.

Sally says her life has been ruined by Elisa.

“She even used a little plastic bottle hidden under her clothes to make a noise like cracked ribs. She would use the trick in front of you and writhe in agony. Elisa even made a bloody bucket list.

“She was very interested in penguins. We went to London Zoo where we had a private viewing of the penguins — she had fluffy penguins everywhere. Then we went to visit her sister who was six months pregnant — and devastated when Elisa told her she was dying.

“I organised a 21st birthday party for her where all her friends were in tears because they thought it was her last. She wore some repulsive fairy wings and a tiara and said she was going to heaven. About 25 people turned up for the party and because Bianca said she couldn’t walk she sat on a sofa in the garden because she wanted to be a princess like Elsa from Frozen.

“It’s just sick, sick, sick.

“I got compassionate leave from work to look after her but I didn’t go back afterwards because I was not capable of it. When I looked at that girl in the dock I still couldn’t comprehend it was all a pack of lies. But all the tests on her mental condition came back negative.

“I’m now just a completely different person. I’m divorced from my husband and this has totally finished my life as I know it.

“I was a well-paid lecturer for ten years but now I’ve lost my career. I spent thousands on Bianca and treated her like a daughter. My children are far more angry and hurt than I am.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun.