Speaker 1: One night I came around the corner of Third Avenue
Speaker 1: and it was snowing. There was Billy outside, shoveling snow
Speaker 1: away from his uh, away from his door, and he
Speaker 1: was wearing a pair of boots, like rubber boots because
Speaker 1: it was freezing, and he was completely buck naked and
Speaker 1: in the middle of the street and shoveling away. He
Speaker 1: was very um free. I guess I didn't give a
Speaker 1: funk about anybody else or what they thought. He was confrontational, brash,
Speaker 1: and he also had a big, really big heart. This
Speaker 1: is Robbie Bowman, a musician friend of Billy's and the
Speaker 1: guy who went to the morgue with my mom to
Speaker 1: identify Billy's body. I went with Billy's very close friend,
Speaker 1: Robbie Bowman, to the medical examiner. We took a cab
Speaker 1: up to the city Morgue. I've never been there before,
Speaker 1: and they brought us down stairs and there was a
Speaker 1: window with curtain and they opened the curtains and he
Speaker 1: was there, and he had a covering. From his hairline up,
Speaker 1: there was some sort of covering and there was a
Speaker 1: blanket from his neck down. We were seeing him in profile,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking how hard it is to recognize
Speaker 1: somebody without their hair and without seeing them standing up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your mother recognized him, and so I said what I
Speaker 1: did too, what's your experience of his shooting and then
Speaker 1: eventual death. It was fishing from the start. But I
Speaker 1: was told was that the police broke in, there's one
Speaker 1: guy right and shoots him. Now why did he shoot him,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it seemed more like an execution
Speaker 1: to me. And you know, I don't think anybody bought
Speaker 1: the idea that this was a legitimate arrest. And then
Speaker 1: he was in the hospital and he started to get better,
Speaker 1: which we're all amazed, and uh, you know, the next
Speaker 1: thing we heard was that he had died because they
Speaker 1: had taken him to exercise, to the exercise room. He
Speaker 1: needed exercise. Apparently we knew what that meant, you know,
Speaker 1: that he'd been murdered. Robbie thinks that after Billy survived
Speaker 1: the shooting, someone came to the hospital to finish the job.
Speaker 1: So that scared the ship out of everybody, and scared
Speaker 1: the ship out of me at least, and that to me,
Speaker 1: that's what happened. They murdered him. It was like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: you know, we better like not talk about this out
Speaker 1: loud very much. Yeah, it wasn't like, you know, we
Speaker 1: better started investigation with the newspaper or something. This is
Speaker 1: really scary, you know. If they can do that to
Speaker 1: you when you're in the hospital, it's like a clear
Speaker 1: message to leave it alone. Today on the show, we
Speaker 1: asked was there a conspiracy to murder Billy in order
Speaker 1: to keep him quiet? And we do our best to
Speaker 1: separate fact from fiction. I'm Io till it right, and
Speaker 1: this is the Ballad of Billy Balls. Something has gone wrong.
Speaker 1: I got the impression that he had possibly killed somebody.
Speaker 1: I don't see him going for a don I'm gonna
Speaker 1: see the cops. There was a revenge thing from the cops.
Speaker 1: Why did they want to kill him? That's what I
Speaker 1: don't have any idea. And that's I No, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. Chapter five, those high
Speaker 1: powered lawyers. Hello. Hi is this Mark? Yeah? I was
Speaker 1: just Hey Mark. My name's Io. I'm Rebecca Wright's kid.
Speaker 1: Hey good, how are you actually? I'm a little sick.
Speaker 1: This is Mark Pines, an old friend of my mom's.
Speaker 1: Mark was the first person she called after she found
Speaker 1: out Billy had been shot, so I'm hoping he might
Speaker 1: have some answers. I am trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: the hell happened to Billy. And you are name that
Speaker 1: keeps coming up. Oh yeah, are you around New York
Speaker 1: right now? I am. Yeah. It'd be so great to
Speaker 1: see you and hang out. Definitely, can you you can
Speaker 1: come over. I'll get us some food sent up and
Speaker 1: animal sit and we'll talk. And so my producer, Austin
Speaker 1: and I go to see Mark at his apartment in
Speaker 1: the village because I've got like forty years worth of
Speaker 1: archives in storage rooms around the city of everything I
Speaker 1: ever shot. In the seventies and eighties, Mark worked as
Speaker 1: a video artist. He produced some of the first music
Speaker 1: videos for bands like Hall and Oates and Jefferson Starship,
Speaker 1: and a lot of commercials. My mom modeled for him
Speaker 1: while she was pregnant with me. We used the forward
Speaker 1: face of the eighties models, and I used Rebecca and
Speaker 1: Rebecca was in I think it was about her seventh
Speaker 1: faith and length at the time. Rebecca and I seemed
Speaker 1: I think we had an unspoken bond on a level
Speaker 1: that we've never tried to explain to each other. But
Speaker 1: we've just enjoyed. And of course talking about my mom
Speaker 1: leads to talk of Billy and what happened to him
Speaker 1: that I want to hear your theories before I tell you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was from what I could piece together from I mean,
Speaker 1: Rebecca called me, you know, she called me right after
Speaker 1: it happened. Remember what she said. Primes Show just called
Speaker 1: me Pines Pines and Billy had been shot. What she
Speaker 1: told me that it was sometime a mistaken identity. They
Speaker 1: thought he was a much bigger drug person than he was,
Speaker 1: and he went down. I think they got him into kidneys,
Speaker 1: and he was in the hospital and he was hurt,
Speaker 1: but he was not critically hurt. He was going to
Speaker 1: make it. He was going to make it, and they
Speaker 1: began to realize that they had the wrong guy, and
Speaker 1: somewhere in the hospital one of the attendants turned him
Speaker 1: over when he wasn't supposed to, opened up the wounds
Speaker 1: and caused a massive hemorrhage and he died. He died
Speaker 1: from the secondary situation as I remember, And again this
Speaker 1: is filtered through many years after Billy was shot, and
Speaker 1: while he was in the hospital, Mark says he did
Speaker 1: everything he could to help my Mom, I try to
Speaker 1: be there for she was going through all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I got them, you know, I pointed them in the
Speaker 1: direction of a lawyer. I got Mark Pines on the phone,
Speaker 1: and he told me two of the heaviest lawyers in
Speaker 1: New York City right off the bath because it was
Speaker 1: clear a big civil suit, you know, and some horrible
Speaker 1: crime against Billy Balls. The way my mom tells it,
Speaker 1: the two heavy lawyers started building a case. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: lawyers visited Billy in the hospital, they got a testimony
Speaker 1: from him. It was a case was being brewed up.
Speaker 1: The lawyers had all the ship on paper, and the
Speaker 1: paper was evidence. We need that. We need that real
Speaker 1: bad right, And I need to know the names of
Speaker 1: the lawyers, right, the fucking lawyers. It's another thing that
Speaker 1: I just can't fucking remember because my mind has just
Speaker 1: put this out, you know. But I am sure that
Speaker 1: I can figure it out if I if I talked
Speaker 1: to Mark Cohn's, do you remember the lawyers that you
Speaker 1: got involved from my mom? Because I have been thinking
Speaker 1: about that and be lawyer for people in the village
Speaker 1: was a guy named high Shore Hi shure h y
Speaker 1: s h o or e. Mark believes that one of
Speaker 1: the high powered lawyers my mom was working with was
Speaker 1: a guy named high Shore. Thank you, Mark, and thank
Speaker 1: you for all of your time and researching and helping me.
Speaker 1: And this name thing. I hope that. Oh that opens
Speaker 1: up something, you know, Hi, sure lawyer. Back in the studio,
Speaker 1: Austin and I searched for any information about high Shore.
Speaker 1: Huh high Shore lawyer, state of New York. What the fuck?
Speaker 1: There's nothing. I can't find anything about a famous lawyer
Speaker 1: named high Shore. I found the name high Shore in
Speaker 1: court records as a defendant, as like, you know, not
Speaker 1: as a lawyer, as somebody who's being sued. That's the
Speaker 1: only time I found his name. So then that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Eventually, Austin manages
Speaker 1: to track down someone who worked briefly with high Shore.
Speaker 1: Hi is this Robert Steinberg. The conversation doesn't reveal much
Speaker 1: except one curious detail. We just have to share a
Speaker 1: good person. I had a hook on one arm. He
Speaker 1: had a hook? Yeah, you didn't have one arm? Oh wow,
Speaker 1: he had a device. Um, I do you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts about other people who might have worked with him
Speaker 1: or known him? No? Allright, we need a little legal assistance,
Speaker 1: and luckily we know who to call. He just accused
Speaker 1: me of lauger that document. They are the ones that
Speaker 1: do that. Ud not off. He's one of the best
Speaker 1: known criminal defense and civil rights attorneys in the country.
Speaker 1: The message that comes out of this is the government
Speaker 1: is saying that it's all right for white people to
Speaker 1: go out and pick up guns and shoot black people.
Speaker 1: He's famous for defending victims of police brutality, members of
Speaker 1: the Hell's Angels, and the so called Gambino crime family.
Speaker 1: He even got a shout out in the movie The
Speaker 1: Big Lebowski. You don't know shit, Lebowski. What a fucking
Speaker 1: lawyer man? I want wrong Kuby Hello, Hey, Io run Kubi, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you good? So? Where is Billy Balls buried? Now?
Speaker 1: After the break? Ron Kuby? So how can I help
Speaker 1: the project? Well, I where do I even start? Um?
Speaker 1: I'm on the phone with civil rights attorney Ron Kuby
Speaker 1: telling him the story of Billy Balls and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: William Heightsman shot five times, Get the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: So she then went and called a friend and he
Speaker 1: gave her the number of a high powered lawyer but
Speaker 1: we haven't been able to locate this lawyer. Um. I
Speaker 1: hate it when those high powered lawyers just evaporate. Is
Speaker 1: that a thing that happens? Like, No, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not a thing that happens. Yeah, it really isn't. Do
Speaker 1: you know his name? Well, the one name we had
Speaker 1: was high Shore. Does that ring a bell for you?
Speaker 1: High Shore? I mean I knew a lot of the
Speaker 1: high powered lawyers in that day. It doesn't ring a bell.
Speaker 1: Have you been able to find any reference to him online? Nothing?
Speaker 1: With that? Ron gets off the phone, works some magic
Speaker 1: and calls me back, hioh Ron, how are you no good?
Speaker 1: High Shore is dead? Long live high Shore? High Shore
Speaker 1: present a. I had a feeling that has transitioned high
Speaker 1: Shore across the Rainbow Bridge. High Shore celebrating his blank
Speaker 1: ear in heaven. Oh good one, thank you. One lawyer
Speaker 1: who might hold the key to everything is dead. So
Speaker 1: I keep digging with Ron, who is very much alive.
Speaker 1: So why did Gilly Balls get We're assuming he was
Speaker 1: killed by the police, right, I mean that's what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. Well, yes, there are a number there are
Speaker 1: a number of plausible theories. Um, really, what I'd like
Speaker 1: to do is interview you in person. But I think
Speaker 1: before we even get that. That's fine, great, yes, um,
Speaker 1: but we have dogs here. You're good with that. I
Speaker 1: am great with that, very excited about that, really really good.
Speaker 1: Hi everybody, Um, this is literally she's an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old Vijan Frise. We show up to Ron's office and
Speaker 1: are greeted by three dogs, one of which is in
Speaker 1: a corner staring at the wall. No, she just can't
Speaker 1: see anything. She's just blind. So way to make fun
Speaker 1: of her disability. Hey, why don't you make fun of
Speaker 1: fucking Jack? He only has three legs. My office is
Speaker 1: in the corner there. Ron's tall, with a gray goatee
Speaker 1: and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. His office
Speaker 1: walls are covered with framed photos, one of which catches
Speaker 1: our eyes. This photo is a group of Hell's Angels
Speaker 1: looking very mean and intimidating. They don't look mean. They
Speaker 1: look as one guy said to me when he was
Speaker 1: charged in a federal crime and extortion thing, and his
Speaker 1: role was to look scary and breathe heavily. He said,
Speaker 1: who do I say, I look scary, I breathe heavily.
Speaker 1: I mean, when did that become a chrome. Then we
Speaker 1: sit down and start talking about Billy. Thank you for
Speaker 1: making time for us and meeting with us. We're now
Speaker 1: unpacking the history of who this person is and who
Speaker 1: he was and why this would have happened. And there've
Speaker 1: been a lot of different theories and the conclusions are multitudinous,
Speaker 1: if that's a word. But both of you are nodding.
Speaker 1: So I go into the multitudinous theories, starting with how
Speaker 1: Billy may have been involved in some illegal activities. Everybody's
Speaker 1: doing drugs, everybody's up to like whatever degree of elicit,
Speaker 1: And how Billy knew some ship was about to go
Speaker 1: down because of Billy saying I want to get in
Speaker 1: the wind, like it's time to move something. It's getting hot.
Speaker 1: And how after he got shot, he was recovering by
Speaker 1: all accounts, was on the mend and was like and
Speaker 1: the city was afraid of the civil suits that she
Speaker 1: was connected with, where some big time lawyers really thought
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a civil suit. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's some justification for the fact that, like he was killed,
Speaker 1: what can I are you done? I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: story is an odd story. So there's there's sort of
Speaker 1: two periods of time. Here, there is the period of
Speaker 1: time prior to the shooting and the shooting itself. Then
Speaker 1: there's the aftermath of the shooting and his death. So
Speaker 1: let's take the second part first, because it seems like
Speaker 1: that part is fueling a notion that he was murdered
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and so let me just try to
Speaker 1: address that. The basis of all of this appears to
Speaker 1: be the lawyer telling your mom what a great case
Speaker 1: this is. So every lawyer in the world who wants
Speaker 1: a civil case and wants to get retained says it's
Speaker 1: a great case. No lawyer who wants a case ever
Speaker 1: says this cases a doc going nowhere, don't waste my time.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, it's a great case. It's fantastic. We'll
Speaker 1: make you know, millions or hundreds of thousands. This is outrageous.
Speaker 1: They all say that when they want the case. But
Speaker 1: maybe high Shore was different. Yeah, I mean I did
Speaker 1: a search history on on Mr Shore, and let's just
Speaker 1: say that that that high Shore is not going to
Speaker 1: topple Mr Justice Cardozo from his lofty perch as an
Speaker 1: Anglo American, famous New York jurist. And what kind of
Speaker 1: things did you find about high shore. That makes you
Speaker 1: think that mostly, uh, he was being sued for not
Speaker 1: paying his bills and fighting over legal fees and the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that tends to afflict not terribly good
Speaker 1: lawyers when they're on their way down. That's that This
Speaker 1: is a revelation to me because the way that my
Speaker 1: mom paying and it was that the lawyers that she
Speaker 1: was connected with were some big time lawyers who really
Speaker 1: thought that there was going to be a civil suit,
Speaker 1: and that's why what happened happened. Bron does say that
Speaker 1: it isn't always the lawyer talking up the case to
Speaker 1: try to get it. Sometimes at first glance, a case
Speaker 1: does seem great, Wow, the cops shot this guy to
Speaker 1: death for actually no reason, uh, And then you start
Speaker 1: to do some investigation and it turns out there was
Speaker 1: a reason. I'm not saying this is what happened here.
Speaker 1: I'm saying this is what does happen in many cases.
Speaker 1: The reason was this guy had a gun, and this
Speaker 1: guy pulled a gun on a cop and they opened
Speaker 1: up on it. Um, My mom insists that Billy had
Speaker 1: gotten all of the guns out of the house, so
Speaker 1: there were guns in the house. But your mother insisted
Speaker 1: that Billy had already cleaned them all out as preparatory
Speaker 1: to him disappearing because of the heat. Exactly, maybe he
Speaker 1: got all him out of the house except the one
Speaker 1: he kind of kept with him to deal with the
Speaker 1: problems that he thought he was facing. I mean, if
Speaker 1: if somebody thinks they're being hunted and and about to
Speaker 1: be attacked for their activities, legal or illegal, it does
Speaker 1: strike me as an odd move that they divest themselves
Speaker 1: of all of their firearms. Ron is just getting started.
Speaker 1: The fact that he was shot multiple times doesn't set
Speaker 1: off alarm bells. The cops are trained to shoot at
Speaker 1: the center mass to stop the attacker. The fact that
Speaker 1: he was shot in the abdomen um and seemed to
Speaker 1: be on the men and then died doesn't strike me
Speaker 1: as all that odd. Gut shots are very very difficult
Speaker 1: to manage even today. The notion that the police murdered
Speaker 1: him in the hospital, just I mean, that strikes me
Speaker 1: as far fetched and and really really unlikely. But why
Speaker 1: because it's not what the cops did they you know,
Speaker 1: it's what people doing fucking movies. I mean, the cops
Speaker 1: aren't like doing hits in hospitals. To prevent people from talking.
Speaker 1: What was he gonna say? Okay, So Billy wakes up
Speaker 1: and he says, I was in my own apartment, minding
Speaker 1: my own business and the cops came in. Or I
Speaker 1: walked in my apartment and there was some undercover and
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat looking around. I con front of him.
Speaker 1: You shot me a bunch of times, okay. Or what
Speaker 1: if I've been dealing to this cop or buying from
Speaker 1: this cop and he's a dealer. Okay, Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: dealing with this comp I've been selling drugs. He's corrupt.
Speaker 1: He came in to rob my stash. I caught him
Speaker 1: and he shot me. Okay. Wakes up and says that
Speaker 1: cops is you're looking crazy. Didn't happen? You know, I
Speaker 1: have no prior relationship with this guy, except I knew
Speaker 1: he was a drug dealer. He came in, he pulled
Speaker 1: a gun, and we shot him. And if we were
Speaker 1: trying to kill him, we would have killed him, and
Speaker 1: we didn't. We shot him. We recovered the gun to
Speaker 1: guns in evidence. Just making up a story, but I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a much easier way of dealing with the problem
Speaker 1: of Billy than organizing a murderer in a hospital. You
Speaker 1: just deny it, You deny everything. And nobody was going
Speaker 1: to believe Billy Balls over the n y p D
Speaker 1: under those circumstances, especially when they claimed they had a gun.
Speaker 1: No cops got prosecuted in the eighties or nineties for
Speaker 1: that matter, for bad shootings. I I there there was
Speaker 1: nothing to fear. Then murder was on the mind of
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Along one Harlem Street this afternoon,
Speaker 1: there was a shooting, end of death. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: though even in the NYPD did not go around killing
Speaker 1: people for no reason on the cops part. And I
Speaker 1: just want to clarify this. There were lots of people
Speaker 1: who were killed by the police in New York City.
Speaker 1: A Brooklyn man dead shot twenty four times by five
Speaker 1: police officers. But it was always so called line of duty.
Speaker 1: They say self defense, others say no. And it didn't
Speaker 1: take a lot to get killed by the cops in
Speaker 1: the line of duty. Still, doesn't you know he made
Speaker 1: a motion towards his waist. I thought he had a gun.
Speaker 1: He pulled out a shiny object that just moved back
Speaker 1: and opened fired on. What you saw a lot of
Speaker 1: was cops just not giving much of a ship who
Speaker 1: they kill and under what circumstances, how many times, but
Speaker 1: not sort of a premeditated murder or a murder in
Speaker 1: the course of the cop committing some other crime. Theoretically, theoretically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could always posit an outlier. You can always posit
Speaker 1: crazy cop, rogue, drunk, drug addicted cop who's totally corrupt,
Speaker 1: who you know, is riffling through Billy's apartment to steal drugs.
Speaker 1: Billy comes in, confronts him, The cops shoots him multiple times.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, the cop can't finish off the final shot.
Speaker 1: He gets taken to the hospital. The cop is so
Speaker 1: uber paranoid he's gonna tell the story and people are
Speaker 1: going to believe him because the cop, after all, it's
Speaker 1: crazy and since crazy people do crazy things, we doesn't
Speaker 1: have to make any logical sense. And then the cop
Speaker 1: engineers things to murder Billy in the hospital when he
Speaker 1: seems like I'm men, sure, sure, And our proof of
Speaker 1: any of that is, as I understand things, you have
Speaker 1: not a single sheet of paper referencing any of this.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Okay? I mean, if we're making ship
Speaker 1: up based on no evidence, we can make up any
Speaker 1: ship we want, and it's all consistent with the no
Speaker 1: evidence that we have, and there are answers that are attainable.
Speaker 1: At least if your claim is this was an unjustified
Speaker 1: police shooting, then one thing you would look to are
Speaker 1: the autopsy reports, that is, was he shot in the
Speaker 1: front or the back? Just kind of basic things. After
Speaker 1: meeting with Ron, it's clear that we have a lot
Speaker 1: of work to do, and it's also clear that there
Speaker 1: may not have been a crime committed against Billy. So
Speaker 1: before we leave, I asked Ron a bigger question I've
Speaker 1: been wrestling with knowing that the truth is very complicated.
Speaker 1: I think about my mom and the story that I've
Speaker 1: heard my whole life, and I wonder what your opinion
Speaker 1: is on the best way to protect someone like my
Speaker 1: mother in this situation, if you think that the truth
Speaker 1: is actually a weapon against someone who has lived thirty
Speaker 1: seven years in grief, in the best way is not
Speaker 1: to do this project. Let sleeping dogs lie, let the
Speaker 1: dead be dead, Let people continue to live out their
Speaker 1: grief in the narrative that they're attached to. UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's sometimes the truth is incredibly important, UM, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's always important, or people always need the truth,
Speaker 1: or people want the truth. And it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: your mother particularly wants the truth. Um, and so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done this, but now we are. I don't
Speaker 1: have a better answer. Can we come back to see
Speaker 1: you once we have some more pieces of papor? Sure,
Speaker 1: trying some paper and then we'll see what we what
Speaker 1: we can make of the pieces of paper without pieces
Speaker 1: of It's very all right, thank you, Ron. Okay, what
Speaker 1: are you thinking? Um? I'm thinking that it would be
Speaker 1: very easy to be deflated by that, But I feel
Speaker 1: like now I feel all the more determined to get
Speaker 1: the actual evidence whatever we can get our hands on,
Speaker 1: because as unlikely as it may be, as outlier as
Speaker 1: it may be, the fact is that, like sometimes crazy
Speaker 1: ship did happen. So I guess I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: like I want to think about it like a lawyer,
Speaker 1: where I just want to see the evidence. Now, Hi, there,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find out about so I called the
Speaker 1: Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York. The more
Speaker 1: I'm trying to have some of his records released, and
Speaker 1: I wonder what kind of documentation we would need to
Speaker 1: do that. Do you have to the certificate. No, you
Speaker 1: don't have nothing. We're trying to find Okay, what is
Speaker 1: your your relationship? He was my mother's long term boyfriend,
Speaker 1: so it's not related to do you not by blood
Speaker 1: to me? No? But she was his partner. No, we're not.
Speaker 1: You cannot sorry. On the families. On the close family
Speaker 1: they can request okay, thank you, you welcompany. Only Billy's
Speaker 1: blood relatives can request his records, and as we understand it,
Speaker 1: his mother, his father, and his older brother are all dead.
Speaker 1: But there's someone else, someone that could change everything. I
Speaker 1: do remember vaguely a kid at one point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she was a sweet old girl. Whatever happened to her mom?
Speaker 1: Was there a daughter around then? She was the daughter
Speaker 1: of Linton and Billy's the legal father. The daughter was
Speaker 1: two and a half when she was sent to Linta's
Speaker 1: mother in Washington State. Did they tell you her name
Speaker 1: when they first told you about it? Amanda? In the
Speaker 1: next chapter of the Ballad of Billie Balls, Amanda Crimetown
Speaker 1: is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of
Speaker 1: Billie Balls is hosted by me Io till It Right
Speaker 1: and made in partnership with Cadence thirteen. You can find
Speaker 1: me on the Internet and Io loves you on Everything
Speaker 1: and if you want to know more about my story,
Speaker 1: pick up my memoir Darling Days. We also want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We have a voicemail set up for
Speaker 1: you to call us Old School. Here's Mia, who had
Speaker 1: something really nice to say. I just wanted to say
Speaker 1: that it's the most enthrawling, incredible story I've ever heard,
Speaker 1: and it makes me think about my own mom and
Speaker 1: how she lost the love of her life, my father,
Speaker 1: not because he backed away, but for a mental illness.
Speaker 1: And I would do the same thing for my mom.
Speaker 1: I would want to help her heal and I would
Speaker 1: want to understand what happened in her life before I
Speaker 1: came along. If there's somebody Billy reminds you of, or
Speaker 1: you have a theory on what could have happened, or
Speaker 1: you just want to tell us your feelings, call us
Speaker 1: and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh three
Speaker 1: nine to h You can also get into our discussion
Speaker 1: forum on our website, The Ballad of Billy Balls dot com.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by me, Kevin Shepard, and Ryan Swigert,
Speaker 1: our senior producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zach Stewart
Speaker 1: Pontier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This
Speaker 1: episode was mixed and sound designed by Sam Bear. Music
Speaker 1: by Kenny qcack. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Speaker 1: Light Asylum. Thank You, Shannon. Archival research by Brennan Reese.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright, Emily Wiedemann, Green
Speaker 1: Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, or In
Speaker 1: Rosenbaum and the team at Caden's thirteen, and Slim Slam
Speaker 1: for keeping me on my toes, and of course, my mom,
Speaker 1: without whom none of this would be possible, ye, she
Speaker 1: La