After the 7 July 2005 London bombings, she claimed to have tended to the attack victims as a doctor, though she did not have any medical qualifications.
While she did not become a physician, she trained as a radiation therapist for a year in 1991, working on a study on prevention of blood coagulation.
She moved to London in 2001, and prior to her last employment with British Medical Association (BMA) as an editor of Clinical Evidence (an online journal of the British Medical Journal), she was with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in the role of clinical effectiveness coordinator.
Subsequently, The New Zealand Herald, among others, researched her background and found that she was not a doctor, but an editor of a BMA publication, a job that did not require medical qualifications.
The media's suspicion was triggered by an account by Oates-Whitehead of how she heard a controlled explosion of another bomb by the police while she was busy tending to the victims.
Scotland Yard's denial of such an explosion and the absence of her name on either of the UK or the New Zealand Medical Council registers of doctors strengthened the suspicions.
Oates-Whitehead contested the newspaper's contention and threatened to sue it for defamation, but resigned from her post on health grounds when BMA announced an inquiry into her antecedents.
As they ran closer, they saw "people's body parts and lumps of flesh", PC Walker remembers.
One man's legs were trapped under a bench, while another mangled victim hanged with his head over the edge of the bombed top deck.
Q. I think, to use the phrase that you did in your recent statement in which you went over your actions on the day itself, you noted that the box that you considered may have contained a secondary device—which would be the microwave oven, as it transpired to be — was neutralised by the explosives officer.
[2] Following apprehensions from her family members, the police entered her flat in West London on 17 August and found her dead body.
Initially it was believed that she might have committed suicide due to the possible media witch hunt and loss of her job.
Her claims also included having cancer, being stalked, having a mini heart attack, references to a retired professor as partner and giving birth to premature twins who died within a day.