Was Brandon Newport Framed by Dr. Yvonne Pierpont? Part 2

Part 1 laid out the case: Dr. Yvonne Pierpont’s accusation that her husband, Delta pilot Brandon Newport, drugged and sexually assaulted her; his denial; a “confession” he says she coached, after telling him to confess or she would divorce him; lab results that settle nothing; and a police investigation that tested his story but not hers.

Since May 19, 2026, Newport has been in the Pinellas County Jail, awaiting trial.

More charges followed. One for violating an injunction. Six for possessing child pornography. He denies them all.

Part 3 will examine those charges.

In jail, Newport says, a scan showed that the cancer he had spent two years fighting had returned. He has chondrosarcoma, a bone cancer in the pelvis. Newport says his Mayo Clinic oncologist warned that without surgery, he could die within a year.

He cannot get to the surgeons at Mayo from a jail cell.

A PILOT, A VETERAN, A PRISONER

Newport is 41. He says he joined the Army in 2005 and served in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He came home a veteran, rated 100 percent disabled from his service.

He went to Texas A&M, taught flying at the Florida Institute of Technology, and became a Delta pilot.

He was also a Federal Flight Deck Officer, trained and deputized by Homeland Security to carry a gun in the cockpit.

Then cancer grounded him. He fought it for two years. Newport says his doctors did not expect him to fly again. On April 22, 2026, he flew for Delta again.

He had been back at work for four weeks. Then, a few houses from home, St. Petersburg police stopped his pickup truck and arrested him for sexual battery.

Much of the following account comes from his wife's statements to St. Petersburg police detective Dagni Closser in March 2026.

2023: SHE TELLS HIM TO MOVE OUT

Pierpont told Closser that during a Thanksgiving 2023 camping trip, she awoke to Newport "sodomizing" her. She said she ordered him to leave their home. He moved into a rental house that November.

Two months later, in January 2024, doctors found aggressive cancer in his pelvis.

Pierpont was a Mayo Clinic surgeon. She told police she found him "help with the right doctors." He spent two years relearning to walk.

THE LOCKED FOLDER

In February 2025, acting on what she called a “gut feeling,” Pierpont examined Newport’s iPad without asking him.

The folder was locked. She knew his passcode. She opened it.

Pierpont told police the folder contained videos showing her and another woman, both apparently unconscious, being sexually abused. She also described photographs of fully clothed young girls in public places.

She told police she sent the videos and photos to herself.

She texted him photos of clothed girls in public places, which is not a crime. He denied wrongdoing. She did not send him the video she says showed him abusing her while she was unconscious, which would be one. By her account, she never confronted him about that video at all.

Shame or shock might explain it. But it means the most serious thing she says she found is the one thing no one else has ever seen.

Pierpont said he caught her looking through the iPad. They argued.

The police report says that Newport then took her laptop and “presumably deletes everything she had saved in the cloud.”

“Presumably.” No one says they saw him delete anything.

The photos survived because she had texted them to him. She says the videos were lost.

Yet she says she had sent the videos to herself. Files sent that way usually leave copies: on the phone that receives them, on the servers in between, and in a deleted-items folder for 30 days.

Police seized 11 of Newport’s devices in May. The available file identifies no recovered video depicting Pierpont or the other woman.

The file shows no forensic examination of the iPad for the folder Pierpont described. It shows no request for her Apple records. Either could show whether the folder existed, and whether anything was deleted.

Newport says there was no folder. "She just completely made it up," he said.

No one but Pierpont says they saw the videos of her or the other woman.

HER BROTHER'S PLAN

Pierpont did not initially go to the police. She went to her brother, Brandon Pierpont, who warned her that divorce would likely give Newport partial custody of the boys.

The advice, as Closser later documented it, was explicit: "It was recommended that she will allow Brandon to think they are getting back together and therefore she can control Brandon's interactions with the children."

She told Newport she needed a year to "reflect." There were rules. He could not live in the house. He had to leave by 9:30 p.m. No electronics at home or at the boys' games.

THE COACH WHO RECORDED HIM

Around then, Newport began working with Sarah Eva Michielson, a life coach who describes herself as an "attachment theory coach."

But Pierpont met Michielson first, in a therapy group. Michielson told police she offered to help Newport.

In one Zoom session, according to the detective, Newport asked whether HIPAA protected what he said. Michielson told him, "Sure." She was secretly recording him.

What he told Michielson, she told his wife.

She called herself his coach. In reality, she was his wife's spy.

At her first meeting with Detective Closser on March 3, Pierpont repeated what Michielson had told her: Newport had been "kicked out of the dark web." Eight days later, Closser interviewed Michielson.

Michielson told the detective that Newport admitted to masturbating to a video of a 12-year-old girl, fully clothed, ice skating.

Closser listened to Michielson's recording. She wrote: "I heard him specifically say he had not masturbated to her."

Closser's word for Michielson's statements was "inconsistent."

Police did not ask why the coach told them something her own tape contradicted. They kept building the case.

Newport says he paid Michielson for the sessions, and that she presented herself as a therapist. She told police she is not a licensed therapist. On her own recording, when Newport asked whether their talks were protected under HIPAA, she told him, “Sure.”

In Florida, where Newport was, practicing therapy without a license is a felony. Whether coaching him over Zoom from Wisconsin crosses that line is a question no one has yet asked.

PIERPONT SAID SHE FEARED NEWPORT

Pierpont told police she felt unsafe and believed he should not be alone with their sons.

By her account, she had watched a video of her husband abusing her. She did not seek a divorce. She did not go to the police.

The family's routine continued. Newport came to the house each night to put the boys to bed. He says that while Pierpont worked in Wisconsin, he cared for them alone for two weeks of every month.

Newport says the arrangement continued for more than three years, both before and after she says she found the folder. Several friends have confirmed it.

She also told Closser that in May 2025 she woke with her shirt pulled up and Newport "looming over" her.

She still did not go to the police.

Newport said he was looking for his cancer medication, which she kept at the house. He said he had told her he was coming over. "It is a complete falsehood," he said.

A private hair test later found Ambien from about that time. Newport says Ambien prescribed in his name was meant for her, and that she took it. Police found a prescription bottle in the house filled on May 7, 2025, the same month. 

DECEMBER 23

Newport cooked dinner on December 23, 2025.

By her own account, she already believed he had drugged her and abused her in her sleep. She ate the dinner he cooked anyway.

At bedtime, Pierpont felt "overwhelmingly tired." She said she believed he had drugged her food.

Her son was asleep beside her. Pierpont did not call 911 or leave the room. She did not wake anyone or move the child. She turned on her phone's recorder, placed it face down on the nightstand, and went to sleep.

She says the recording captured sounds of masturbation. Newport says it is her snoring.

Pierpont told police Newport admitted the following day that he had raised her shirt, masturbated beside her, and "finished on" their son's comforter.

That evening, some 22 hours after the dinner, on December 24, Pierpont underwent a sexual assault examination at the Suncoast Center in St. Petersburg. Pierpont did not make a police report. Her examination kit went to a state laboratory in Tallahassee and sat untested.

TEN WEEKS

For the next 10 weeks, Pierpont gathered evidence instead of going to police. She did three things. First, she secretly recorded him at a restaurant.

She told police that on the recording, Newport admitted giving her melatonin, not Ambien. Melatonin is an over-the-counter sleep aid. She told police he denied having sex with her, but said he would have if she had been in a better position.

The police file does not show that the detective ever heard that recording.

Second, she had her hair tested. Pierpont's brother arranged a private hair analysis. It reported no Ambien corresponding to December, the month of the alleged assault.

Third, she weighed a deal. A civil lawyer suggested a possible agreement over the children. Closser wrote that they "could offer to leave out all of the criminal activity he has been doing if he agrees to all of her parameters with the kids."

The file does not show whether that proposal became an offer. Newport said she never made such an offer.

Pierpont gave police two explanations for delaying reporting him.

She told them she was afraid that reporting would lead to "Brandon getting access to their children," and her brother had told her the laboratory would not test her examination kit without a police report.

Her second explanation does not match Florida law. A victim can request testing of her kit without a police report. Pierpont did not ask.

Neither does her first, if Newport is telling the truth: He says she kept leaving the boys alone with him in Florida two weeks a month, right up to his arrest, while she worked at the Mayo Clinic in Wisconsin.

He says he also made meals three times a day until the day of his arrest.

MARCH 2026: SHE GOES TO POLICE

On March 2, 2026, Pierpont went to the police. She said she had recordings and other evidence that Newport had been drugging her.

Pierpont told Closser she planned a “disclosure” session with Newport. Police had been told it was one “in which he is supposed to talk about his deviances and what he had been doing, criminally, to her.”

She proposed having the life coach, Michielson, listen.

Closser advised against involving a third party. Instead, she proposed a controlled call in which Pierpont would speak with Newport while the detective secretly recorded the conversation.

Pierpont did not want the controlled call, which would have given police their own recording.

Closser decided Pierpont could record Newport herself. That left Pierpont in control of the recording and what the police received. The detective was not there. Pierpont secretly recorded a five-hour session with Newport.

She gave a recording to police. Newport says it was an edited copy, not the original.

Pierpont never gave the detectives the original recording. A third party edited the recording and made changes to the recording, highlighting the "relevant parts of the recording," and then uploaded it to evidence.com.

WHAT HE THOUGHT IT WAS

Newport thought the “disclosure” session would help save his marriage.

The word comes from marriage counseling after infidelity: one spouse tells the other everything he has done, often with a therapist present, so the couple can start over on the truth. Newport says that is what he was told this was. He says a therapist was supposed to be there. She was not.

He says Pierpont set the terms. He was to admit every wrong he had done in the marriage. If he refused, she would file for divorce at once. He says he believed that if he got through it, they would have a chance to begin again.

He did not know she had gone to the police. He did not know a detective had told her she could record him. He did not know he was being recorded. 

He says she told him beforehand what she needed to hear. “I need you to say that you put stuff in my chicken,” he says she told him.

THE CONFESSION AND THE LAB

The State's case rests heavily on that recording. In her summary, Closser reported that Newport admitted putting 5 mg of Ambien in Pierpont's chicken, touching her and ejaculating "on her stomach and her vagina."

Five milligrams is the standard starting dose of Ambien prescribed for women. It is meant to help someone fall asleep, not to keep them unconscious.

The Pinellas County crime laboratory also contradicts the story:

No semen was detected on the tested swabs, including those collected from Pierpont's navel and genitals, or on the underwear she submitted.

The lab detected male DNA on her cervical and vaginal swabs, but too little to identify whose. A trace like that cannot show how or when it got there. It does not prove penetration, and it does not rule it out.

Newport's DNA was detected on Pierpont's breast, pubic area, buttocks, and the waistband of her underwear. The couple was married, and Newport says they had intimate contact when she was awake that night but did not have intercourse.

The sample from Pierpont's buttocks contained DNA from three contributors: Pierpont, Newport, and an unidentified person.

DNA from an unidentified male was detected on Pierpont's navel. The laboratory excluded Newport as its source. According to the detective, Newport's "confession" said he ejaculated on her stomach. The male DNA found there was not his.

Her blood and urine were tested. The lab detected zolpidem, the active ingredient in Ambien. But the report did not say whether it came from blood or urine, or how much was present.

Newport says she took Ambien on her own, from prescriptions in his name.

TWO STORIES, NO SEMEN

Pierpont gave police two versions of the same act.

First, she told Closser that on December 24, the day after, Newport told her he "finished on" their son's comforter.

Then came the March recording. According to the detective's summary, Newport said he ejaculated "on her stomach and her vagina."

The comforter, or her body. The record does not say which.

Either way, there should have been semen somewhere. The lab found none on her: not on her stomach, not on her genitals, not on her underwear. The comforter, the one place she first said it went, was never tested.

Newport says neither happened and that she coached the confession on tape and he said it to save their marriage.

WHAT NO ONE TESTED

Pierpont told police she wore a sports bra, shirt, sweatshirt, sweatpants, and underwear. Her examination kit held a gray bra, a Christmas sweater, and blue leggings. The lab tested her underwear. The file shows no testing of the bra, the sweater, or the leggings.

Two blankets from her exam went into evidence, and police collected a third blanket on March 4. The file shows no lab test of any of them.

Pierpont told police Newport had said he "finished on" their son's comforter, which meant he had ejaculated on it.

Blankets from her exam went into evidence. The file shows no lab test of any of them.

Semen can remain detectable on fabric for weeks. Testing the comforter could have supported her account, or undercut it. The file does not say whether investigators collected that comforter.

She saved her dinner. The county lab told Closser it “would not meet criteria to be analyzed.” The food had been in Pierpont’s hands for three months. She had her hair tested at a private lab. She never had the food tested. And when the county lab said no, nothing in the file shows police tried anywhere else.

Add it up. They never tested the clothes she described. The blankets were never tested. Her dinner was never tested. Her iPad folder was never examined. Her cloud records were never requested. Her phone was never searched.

Every one of those tests could have confirmed her story or undercut it. Police ran none of them. They tested his bank accounts, his crypto accounts, and his phone.

That is not an investigation of what happened that night. It is an investigation of him.

SHE KEPT EATING HIS COOKING

Newport says he cooked and cleaned and kept the house. He says Pierpont and the boys ate his meals and drank his milkshakes from December 23 until the night before his arrest. His father and friends saw it, he says, and can confirm it.

If he is telling the truth, she believed her husband drugged her food, and she kept eating it for five months. She also let her sons eat it.

On May 18, he says she ate the dinner he cooked. Police arrested him the next morning.

WHAT SHE STOOD TO GAIN

I do not know whether Pierpont is telling the truth. I do know she had reasons to want Newport out of her life and her sons' lives.

The first reason is custody. A divorce could give Newport partial custody. Florida law also starts from an equal split of marital property. A typical divorce would likely give him about half.

A man in jail does not get partial custody. Newport says that in their divorce, she is asking for full custody of their two sons and 100 percent of their property.

There was also the matter of life insurance. Pierpont was the beneficiary of coverage worth several million dollars.

THE TIMING

The brother's plan came in February 2025, while Newport was sick. Pierpont went to the police in March 2026 as he recovered.

On April 22, 2026, he returned to Delta. Newport says that within a day of his return to Delta, Pierpont accessed his employee benefits account and increased his life-insurance coverage to the maximum available amount.

Newport recalls Pierpont telling him: "You never know if cancer comes back." He describes two additional transactions: an April 30 property listing on which she signed his name without authorization, and a transfer of 51 percent of a rental property to her mother about two weeks before his arrest.

Four weeks after he went back to work, he was in jail.

Now, Newport says, the cancer is back. He cannot get to the surgeons who saved him the first time. His doctor, he says, warned that without surgery he could die within a year.

If he dies in jail, there will be no trial. Pierpont keeps the boys. She keeps the property. And, if Newport is right about the insurance, she collects the maximum.

No one has to intend that outcome for it to happen. But no one at the St. Petersburg Police Department asked who stood to gain.

QUESTIONS

Why did police never examine the iPad for the folder Pierpont described?

Why did they never ask Apple for her cloud records?

Why were the clothes she described, and the blankets, never tested?

Why did the detective accept her refusal of a controlled call?

Why did police not question a coach whose statement contradicted her own recording?

What changed between April, when the lead detective found no probable cause for child pornography, and August, when the State filed six counts?

Why did police not run the DNA of the other man found on Pierpont's naval to determine who else may have been with her that night?

None of this establishes that Pierpont fabricated her allegations.

Delayed reporting, continued contact, and private evidence gathering can all occur in genuine abuse cases.

The unanswered question is whether police subjected the competing accounts, and the motives of the people offering them, to equal scrutiny.

Part 3 will examine what police found in Newport's home. And what they did not.

Disclosure: People who support Brandon Newport hired me. I agreed to publish what I find, regardless of which side it favors. The disclosure is in Part 1.