WEBVTT - Patrick Radden Keefe: London Falling 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:05.119 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:16.320 He basically said, you know, you civilians, you normal people. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.279 You just assume you can google someone. But the real 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:22.200 badge of class is if you google someone and they 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:22.760 don't come up. 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.960 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:34.720 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.600 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.600 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.920 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:50.640 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:55.120 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.920 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.880 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:09.000 unpublished details behind their stories. In twenty nineteen, surveillance cameras 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.920 at the headquarters of Britain's spy agency in London recorded 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.920 video of a nineteen year old man. He was pacing 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.399 back and forth on a high balcony of a luxury 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.360 tower along the bank of the river at two in 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.080 the morning. He jumped into the water. Soon his family 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:27.920 discovered that he had a secret life that might have 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.600 led to his death. Best Selling author Patrick Radden Keef 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.400 tells me about his book London Falling, a mysterious death 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:38.720 in a gilded city and a family search for truth. 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.640 So tell me how you found the story to begin with. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.320 You're at the New Yorker right now, right? Did it 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:49.840 come to you through the magazine? 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:51.800 No, it came to me in a weird way. You know, 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.120 when I go looking for stories, I almost never find them. 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.880 I have colleagues and friends who are really amazing at 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.279 kind of going out and they sort of go fishing, 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.280 and they occasionally will hook something great, and that never 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:08.400 happens to me. My line always comes back empty. But 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.880 if I just move around the world, things sometimes find me. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.680 And so in this case, I published a book in 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.960 twenty nineteen called Say Nothing, which is about a murder 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.280 during the troubles in Northern Ireland, and that book was 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.880 optioned by a company in Hollywood before it came out, 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:27.840 and there was a long period of time, kind of 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.280 gestation period, where we were developing what turned out to 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.720 be a limited series. In the summer of twenty twenty three, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.640 I was living in the UK, because we were making 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.160 that book into a TV show which ended up coming 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.600 out on Ooh, so I moved my family over there. 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:46.519 I was a producer on the show, so I was 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.200 pretty involved, and I was on set one day. We 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.160 were in the Inns of Court in London and there 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:54.840 was a sort of an office building that we had 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.200 made to look like Scotland Yard. We had a scene 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.839 at Scotland Yard, which is ironic. If you know what 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.000 my book ended up being about, a lot of it 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.960 is Scotland Yard. So I was there on set in 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.480 this place that's been made up to look like Scotland Yard. 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.040 And there was a guy who was a guest of 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.680 the director that day and we just started chatting. We 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.520 were sort of sitting in the director's chairs, you know, 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:21.440 at the monitors between setups, and he learned that I 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:23.600 was a magazine journalist, and I sort of talked to 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:25.160 him a little bit about the kinds of stories I'm 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.520 interested in, and then he said, you know, I think 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:29.680 I might have a story for you. And I should 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:31.720 say people say that to me all the time, and 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:33.800 almost never do they have a story that I actually 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.640 want to write. I'm always happy to hear their ideas. 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.160 But it's because I spend five, six, seven, eight months 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:42.880 working on a piece. It's just, you know, it's a 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.600 big commitment. He said. I know this family in London. 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.040 They're really good friends of mine. It's just like an 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.000 upper middle class Jewish family. They live in West London 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:54.760 and made a veil which is a nice neighborhood there. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:59.160 And they had a nineteen year old son who died 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.160 in twenty ninety and he died in mysterious circumstances. He 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.200 went off the balcony of a luxury building overlooking the Thames, 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.920 the river that runs through London. And after he died, 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.120 his parents were trying to figure out what had happened 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.480 to him, how this could have happened, and they made 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:17.680 this terrible discovery, which is that he had had a 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:20.960 secret life that they hadn't known about. So this boy's 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.240 name was Zach Brettler, and what his parents were named 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.200 Matthew and Rachelle learned was that Zach had been going 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.240 around London kind of living the identity of an alter ego. 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.760 He had this alter ego, which was zachis mylof a 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:39.080 name they'd never heard, and he was telling people that 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.359 he was Zakis Mylof and he was the son of 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.240 a Russian oligarch. That his father was a Russian billionaire 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.599 living in London. And so, you know, the first shock 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.760 for the parents is this terrible shock of their kid's death. 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.640 The second shock is discovering that he'd been living with 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:56.120 them and had been carrying on this secret life they 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.320 hadn't known about. And so this guy, he basically told 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:01.000 me as much as I just told you, and I 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.120 knew if there's any way I can persuade this family 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.000 to tell their story, which they hadn't gone public with 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.120 at that point, this is how I'll spend the next 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.039 year of my life figuring this out. 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.480 Let's start where it makes sense for you, is that 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.360 with Zach in his background and how he grew up 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:21.960 or what's the best way to start. 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:24.640 Yeah, maybe with Zach, I mean, you know, or with 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.080 Matthew and Rochelle. Really so, his parents, who are really 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.839 the main characters in the book, were a London couple. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:33.880 They're now in their early sixties. Matthew works in finance 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.800 and Rochelle as a freelance journalist. And when they met, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:39.839 you know, it's interesting they had something in common which 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.000 is that they both had fathers who were Holocaust survivors, 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.919 and both fathers had survived the Holocaust at quite an 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.920 early age. I g as teenagers and then they ended 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.480 up in the UK basically alone in the world. Their 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.600 whole families have been killed, and so these two young guys, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:02.520 Matthew's father and Rashell's father, as teenagers had to kind 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.320 of reinvent themselves and like, you know, find a whole 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.880 new life in England. And when they were in their thirties, 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.279 Matthew Michelle met and they ended up having two sons. 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.920 There's an older brother named Joe and then a little 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:17.880 brother named Zach, and Zach was born in the year 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:20.640 two thousand, so he's a real kind of child of 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:22.880 the millennium. And they grew up, you know, it was 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.520 a kind of happy, happy life growing up. They were 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.520 financially comfortable, They lived in a nice apartment in a 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:34.080 nice neighborhood, They traveled and they had kind of quite 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.719 a close knit extended family. And Joe ended up going 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:42.120 off to this sort of elite private school in London 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.200 called UCS University College School. He did well there and 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.880 it was all going well, and the parents just sort 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.920 of assumed that Zach would go there too, And when 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:55.400 it came time to take the test, he took the 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.080 test and he didn't do particularly well, and he had 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.440 an interview and he kind of flubbed the interview and 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.120 he didn't get in. And this school had a policy 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:07.080 they wouldn't give favoritism to siblings. The reason I tell 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:08.840 you this it all seems a little in the weeds, 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:10.320 but I think, you know, you look at the life 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.200 of any family and sometimes weird things happen in adolescents 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:14.640 and you kind of go back and you're trying to 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.160 find the place where it all went wrong, and for 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.800 the parents, this is actually sort of where it starts 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:21.920 to go wrong. And Zach was really devastated that he 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:23.680 couldn't get into the school that his brother was going to. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.360 He reapplied and didn't get in again, and then he 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:29.720 ended up going to this other school in London called 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:34.360 mill Hill, which was also a sort of fancy private school, 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.560 expensive but not as hard to get into. And when 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.440 he got there, a lot of his classmates were the 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.600 children of oligarchs. They were the children of very wealthy 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.720 people from the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union, who 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:54.200 had relocated to London, had a ton of money, and 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:58.200 there were these kids who had the money and kind 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:02.280 of swagger, and they were these sort of blingy kids. 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:10.120 And Zach became really transfixed by these classmates who were 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.120 living what to him at age, you know, fifteen sixteen 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.360 years old, seemed like kind of a fantasy existence. 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.200 I have to imagine that some of the oligarchs, the 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.920 parents here were not on the up and up. Or 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.280 is that the wrong assumption? They just had made so 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.360 much money, you know, in this in the former Soviney Union, 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:30.680 that they were able to afford a London private school. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.480 Well, I mean you need to It's a great question, 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.000 and to answer it you sort of need to back 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.160 up a little bit because you know, you hear people 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.160 talk about the Russian oligarchs, what does it really mean? 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:41.520 So when I was growing up, you know, I was 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.520 born in nineteen seventy six, and there was the Soviet Union, right, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:49.240 it was this thing that existed and eventually it collapses 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:54.880 in pretty dramatic fashion. And under the communist Soviet regime, 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:59.600 there were these big state owned enterprises, so you'd have 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.200 you know, whatever it was, like a big oil and 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:04.640 gas company or a big utility or what have you, 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.760 and those were state owned because it was a communist government. 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:11.679 And then what happened was, in a pretty short period 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.080 of time all that stuff got privatized and there was 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:17.200 a huge amount of corruption at the time, and so 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.880 you had this brief window where a lot of what 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:25.079 had been the kind of industrial base of the Soviet 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.400 Union suddenly ends up going into private hands. And it 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.679 happens in kind of a quick and messy fashion, and 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:33.960 so you get, you know, you get kind of rigged 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:38.520 bids and cronyism, and people who suddenly go from you know, 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.320 they knew the right person and then suddenly it's like 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.200 they own fifty percent of a massive oil company or 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.280 whatever it is. And so the first generation of oligarchs 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:51.040 were people like that, people who got massively wealthy overnight 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.520 by essentially taking over in these sweetheart deals these formerly 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.959 stayed on enterprises. You know, is it the same thing 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.400 as like walking into a bank the gun and robbing it? No? 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.840 Is it what we would think of as totally kosher. 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:13.360 Probably not. And they accumulated these huge fortunes and then 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.840 the thing is that Russia was actually not a great 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:17.760 place if you it was a great place to make money. 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.160 It wasn't a great place to hold on to your 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.920 fortune because there's a lot of political instability, there's a 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:25.760 lot of corruption. You didn't know who was going to 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.600 come for you. And so this generation of oligarchs, basically 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:30.199 in the you know, starting in the kind of late 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.360 nineteen nineties early two thousands, starts thinking, okay, well, where 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.040 can I take my money where it's going to be safe, 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.880 And the answer was London, and they moved in really 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.920 large numbers to London. The city of London kind of 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:46.080 incentivized them, you know, it said like, if you come 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.000 in and you invest a certain mind in the economy, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.599 we'll give you a visa. We'll make it easy for you. 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:52.839 We have great private schools, or you can send your kids. 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:56.160 We've got awesome real estate that's you know, palatial and 0:10:56.200 --> 0:11:00.160 a great investment. And so you had this influx of 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:04.080 people from Russia and Kazakhstan and various other former Soviet republics. 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:06.800 And yeah, listen, I'm not here to tell you that 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.520 all these people were crooks, but were there's some crooks 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.240 among them. Absolutely were places like these private schools where 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.080 they screening there's actually a quote in my book, there's 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.040 a guy who's a consultant to these private schools because 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:22.240 they suddenly had all these ex Soviet students, and he said, 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:24.440 you know, we don't screen out the mafia, Like, how 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.120 would you do that? We don't know where the money 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.080 came from. And so that's this environment that Zach Butler 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:32.560 grows up in, this environment where there's there's a lot 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.319 of new money and there are these kids who just 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:38.600 are living this kind of over the top lifestyle. It's 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.840 like they would wear really fancy suits to class, and 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:46.520 they would party in hotels on weekends and they you know, 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.240 there's a story I tell in the book about how 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:50.760 they would live in the dorms. They had dorms there 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:53.520 and it was like an eight minute walk from your 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:57.160 dorm to class in the morning, and on cold mornings, 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:02.080 these kids would get ubers. But so that's the sort 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.079 of environment he grew up surrounded by, and he or 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.240 he was, you know, in school, surrounded by and his 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:09.840 parents start to notice because he's he gets really into 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.240 fancy cars and he's always wondering like mom and dad, 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:14.520 why don't we have a nicer car, Why don't we 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:16.920 have a bigger house. You know, they drove a Mazda, 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:18.600 and he was thinking, you know, why don't we drive 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.840 a range Rover. Why can't we do anything better. There 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.960 was one day when he the school actually called their 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:27.439 home and said, hey, you know, Zach was just picked 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.000 up and he's coming home. But he was picked up 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.240 in a Chaufford limousine and the parents didn't know what 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:35.160 this is about. And when he got home they asked him, like, 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:36.760 you know, how did this happen. He said, he paid 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:38.280 for it himself, and he told them I wanted to 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.520 see what it would feel like to be picked up 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:42.080 in a limousine. So he was a kid who kind 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.760 of starting to lose his bearings, I think because he 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.320 was obsessed with conspicuous consumption and wealth. 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.120 Yeah. I interviewed an author I think it was last 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:56.560 year who wrote about the murder of a high up 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:00.440 but local official in China, and part of it was 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.880 that many members of the Communist Party in China sent 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.880 their kids to London to get educated. Totally, so I 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.760 see that. I mean, you know, just from that book, 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:11.520 the kind of the opulence, which I don't think is 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:13.600 as much as it would be from folks from the 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:16.440 Soviet Union. But still before we talk a little bit 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.319 more about Zach, I'm curious about what you think the 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:25.000 expectations were for the folks from the Soviet Union who 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:28.400 were wealthier of their kids in London. Would it be 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.800 they go into finance. Would it be that they return 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:34.480 home and you know, join with whatever business this is 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.360 that their parents have gotten so wealthy from so quickly. 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:40.640 I mean, I think it would probably vary. But my 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.720 hunch is that the kinds of oligarchs that I'm talking about, 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:46.840 these are people with billions and billions of dollars, so 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.240 their kids don't need to work at all. And maybe 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.520 depending on who the parent is, there's a sense of, oh, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.640 I hope my son or daughter, you know, makes their 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:02.280 own way and distinguishes themselves somehow in life. But generally speaking, 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.200 it's like, if they stay out of jail and maintain 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.480 a relationship with you, it probably feels like a win. 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.440 I just think that the whole I mean this in 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:13.000 a kind of weird way. My book is a book 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.520 about parenting, and when you get to that level of wealth, 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.480 it's just all the laws of physics are a little 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:21.400 different than they are for the rest of us. And 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.160 so I think in Zach's case, you know, his parents 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.360 wanted him to sort of live a decent life, you know, 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.040 and to be happy and be close with his family, 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.400 and sure like do well in school and have conventional accomplishments. 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.160 But they were thinking in a fairly sort of straightforward register. 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:41.600 And then Zach's looking at these kids, thinking, you know, 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:44.560 I want to take over the world, right like I 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.120 want to be a master of the universe. 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:52.040 Did Matthew and Rochelle ever have any reservations about keeping 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.440 him there? It must have been a pretty quick transition. 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:57.720 Did they say, there are a lot of other schools 0:14:57.720 --> 0:14:59.920 in London, let's pull him out where there's not this 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:00.840 kind of influence. 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.680 I think that they did, and he actually did leave 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.800 eventually for his last year. They did. But I think 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.160 that in some ways this is a story in which 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.680 they never realized how bad things really were until their 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.840 son was dead, and then they looked back and they 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.320 had to kind of retrace their steps and think, God, 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:25.040 where did it all go so wrong? And part of 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.880 what's so intriguing about Zach is that he, you know, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.480 in a way that they really didn't know. They knew 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:33.960 that he could sometimes be dishonest, and he sometimes sort 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.800 of told stories. They didn't know that he was a 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:40.040 compulsive liar who was really pretending to all kinds of 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.240 different people that he was somebody who he wasn't. They 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.520 didn't know that until after he died, and so I 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:50.600 don't think they had a real appreciation for how dangerous 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.640 his situation was until it was too late to do 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:57.680 anything about it. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.480 Is there something that happens at this school, in this 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.320 high school that changes things other than he's starting to 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.320 lie and maybe, you know, give me some examples of 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:09.280 what lies he was telling while he was there. 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:14.160 You know, it's interesting when Matthew and Rochelle started finding 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:18.320 out about Zach's secret life, they were really looking at 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.240 He dies at nineteen, so they're looking at the years 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.760 kind of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen nineteen. I when I started 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.480 working on this project, tracked down a number of his 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.800 friends from school, and I interviewed people who told me 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.400 about lies he told when he was thirteen. So when 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.880 he arrived at mill Hill that school, there were some 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.760 kids who he told that his mother was dead. It's 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:46.040 a really unsettling thing to learn, I think, particularly for Rochelle. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.800 His mother. You know, like, what a strange thing for 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.560 your child to tell people. But I do think that 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.840 in that case, it was partially that he was a 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.440 new kid at a new school. He wanted to make friends. 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.240 I think he realized that, you know, I think most 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.320 people are are pretty compassionate, and so I think that 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:06.199 if you're a thirteen year old kid and you'd tell 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.280 somebody that you've lost your mother, their heart opens up 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.600 to you a little bit more quickly then it might 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.359 otherwise if you're just a new kid in school. But 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.160 there were lies like that, and then he would tell 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:19.600 all these lies to his friends, where you know, he 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.159 would say that he had all these deals going and 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.520 he was getting into oil and gas deals, and he 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.000 would say that his father, he told some of them 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:32.200 his father was an arms dealer. And some of the friends, 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.600 the friends who were sort of better friends, started to 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.920 figure it out, so he Zach was. There were certain 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:39.240 movies that Zach was really obsessed with. There's a movie 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.440 a lot of people have seen, The Wolf of Wall Street, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:43.800 which was one of his favorite movies. He watched it 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:48.000 again and again. And there's another movie called war Dogs, 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:53.280 which is a movie that Jonah Hill was in Ironicy 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.919 Jonah Hill is actually in both movies, and War Dogs 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.600 is based on true story about these two these two 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.760 young Florida kids, these buddies, who when they were in 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.119 their early twenties went into business's arms dealers. This is 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:07.480 sort of back in the days of the Iraq War, 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:11.359 and they became these kind of illegal arms dealers. Basically, 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.840 so he liked stories about young men, true stories about 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:17.960 young men who were kind of on the make, were 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:22.280 hustlers looking to make a lot of money quickly, willing 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.439 to cut some corners and maybe lie in order to 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:30.160 do so. And he would take little bits of inspiration 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:34.359 actually from those movies. Specifically, so Zach, when he was 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.560 eighteen years old, started his own business. He incorporated a business. 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:40.040 I don't know that it ever actually did anything, really, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.479 but he formally incorporated this business and he called it 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.720 Omega Stratton. And I think that Omega is a reference 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:49.760 to the watch, just the watch that James Bond wears. 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:54.480 But Stratton is clearly a reference to Stratton Oakmont, which 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:56.639 is the name of the business in the Wolf of 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.320 Wall Street, the guy when he starts his crooked brokerage firm, 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.240 it's called Stratton Oakmont, which it's just such an insane 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:04.119 thing to contemplate, right that you would you'd like to 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:08.320 start a business and name it after the famously illegal 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.280 business in a Martin Scorsese movie that sent the guy 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.480 who ran it to prison. So he started telling these stories, 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:16.280 and he would tell his friends that his dad was 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.400 an arm stealer. And there's kind of a funny story 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.359 where one of his friends, this guy Andre, played tennis 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.640 with him. They were they would play doubles and there 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:28.320 was a tournament at some point Matthew Zach's dad was 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:29.480 going to drive them. 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.640 To the tennis tournament in his Mazda. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.840 Well that's the thing. So in advance, Zach takes Andrea 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.760 aside and he says, so listen, my dad, you know, 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:41.719 has he's got two range Rovers. But the thing is 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:44.959 both of them are in the shop, like you know, 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.080 what are the chances and he's got this crappy loaner 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.560 car and he's really unhappy about it. So whatever you do, 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:55.440 don't mention the range Rovers. And so Andre expects this 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:57.919 guy to be this like grizzled armsteeler who drives two 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:00.280 range Rovers. And Matthew shows up in ma he was 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:04.560 this kind of gentle, sweet guy who doesn't seem like 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.720 an arms dealer at all and drives a Mazda, and 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.399 eventually his friends started to see through some of the last. 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.160 Did his parents reflect on that with you at all, 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:17.879 just sort of you know, taking a left instead of 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:20.520 a right in life and what would have happened if 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:21.880 he hadn't had those influences? 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.520 Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think in a strange way, 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.480 you know, the torture for them their son died now 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.880 almost seven years ago, is that they're kind of trapped 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.959 in a situation where they're constantly thinking about what if 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:37.440 we'd taken that left, what if we'd taken that right? 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:40.879 And I do think that part of what was so 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.920 fascinating about Zach. So like, there's an obvious question when 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.920 you look at Zach's life, which is was this kid 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:51.159 actually clinically delusional? Like did he believe some of the 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:53.840 stuff that he was saying? And I'm pretty convinced that 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.280 he wasn't, in part because he was very selective in 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.880 what lies he told to different people, and so there 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:02.320 was all kinds of stuff that he was out there 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.000 telling people about himself, you know, not just that he 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:07.359