Speaker 1: Wow. I never thought there would be an actual eyewitness
Speaker 1: report of what happened, and we have absolutely no way
Speaker 1: of knowing whether that's true at all. I'm showing my
Speaker 1: dad Seth the police report from Billy's shooting. Is he
Speaker 1: saying that Billy came into the bathroom with a pistol drawn?
Speaker 1: That makes no sense. The subject came into the bathroom
Speaker 1: and observed the PO writing on the paper. At that point,
Speaker 1: the subject drew a caliber automatic and stated to the PO,
Speaker 1: give me the fucking paper. Give me the paper, and
Speaker 1: then the PO took out money to make the deal
Speaker 1: while the purpose was holding the gun on him and
Speaker 1: to unloaded. While you're holding that gun on you, Let's
Speaker 1: do this deal. That's what happened. He's saying, Okay, you see,
Speaker 1: no those facts? Is that the truth? Am I looking
Speaker 1: at the truth? Is that? What this is? When people
Speaker 1: put this like money, like decoration around it and stamp
Speaker 1: it from the city, this is truth from the perspective
Speaker 1: of the perpetrators of a homicide. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the police do have a reputation. New York was a
Speaker 1: very dangerous city. It was a very poor city, and
Speaker 1: in terms of the way the city ran. It was broken.
Speaker 1: You know. The cops were dirty, and they were violent
Speaker 1: and they were corrupt. When you're doing a documentary like
Speaker 1: this in which there are culprits and victims, and the
Speaker 1: tendency to think that there is an absolute truth is
Speaker 1: perhaps false, you know, because there are two people in
Speaker 1: a room to kill somebody. Both of them have a
Speaker 1: perspective on what happened, and one of their perspectives was
Speaker 1: shut off. And we'll never going to hear that perspective.
Speaker 1: We're never gonna get Billy's idea of what happened. Ever.
Speaker 1: For Rebecca, I think this will be just a thousand
Speaker 1: years of nightmares. So protect her from this. My dad's
Speaker 1: worried about how my mom might react to seeing the
Speaker 1: police report. I feel defensive of her. I feel protective
Speaker 1: of her. If somebody you love dies of cancer, or
Speaker 1: somebody you love falls off of peer and drowns, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But if somebody who you thought was your
Speaker 1: life partner, your protector, you're gladiator, You're like soul mate
Speaker 1: is viciously murdered and then their body thrown into an
Speaker 1: unmarked grave, and you're denied even the right to mourn
Speaker 1: through the ritual of burial. If you're ripped away from
Speaker 1: that person in the way that Rebecca was torn away
Speaker 1: from her life with Billy, your grief is of a
Speaker 1: different nature. It's not distinguishable from anger. It's raging grief.
Speaker 1: It's like slaughter. Everybody grief today on the show, My
Speaker 1: Mother's grief in the years following Billy's death leads her
Speaker 1: to an unlikely source of comfort and a big surprise
Speaker 1: me from crime Town. I'm io till it right, and
Speaker 1: this is the ballad of Billy balls By was you know,
Speaker 1: into the socks, which, like all pure speed, really good
Speaker 1: pure speed, goild. Rebecca always seemed very vibrant and happy,
Speaker 1: and he seemed happy. They were great together. They were
Speaker 1: great together. I remember Rebecca called me, you know, she
Speaker 1: called me right after it happened, had Billy been shot.
Speaker 1: I remember just the raw feeling of the the fucking
Speaker 1: pain of grief, and I would like to not remember
Speaker 1: that feeling. Quiz the weakening this stopped It was you
Speaker 1: being worn. Chapter nine, Ophelia, do you remember the first
Speaker 1: time you ever saw my mother? Yes, I do do,
Speaker 1: tell um. I went up town to a party. It
Speaker 1: was my dad was in his late twenties and working
Speaker 1: as an experimental theater director. One summer night, he headed
Speaker 1: to a party uptown. It was one of those nice
Speaker 1: Upper West Side apartments that are owned by a shrink
Speaker 1: or something. And she was lying on the floor and
Speaker 1: naked in a triangle of sunlight in a party where
Speaker 1: people were standing around with beers and drinks, and there
Speaker 1: she was, you know, this like leggy blonde. It was
Speaker 1: so it was so outrageous what she was doing because
Speaker 1: she wasn't really talking to anybody at the party. She
Speaker 1: was just sunbathing on the floor with no clothes on
Speaker 1: in the party. And I definitely made a mental note
Speaker 1: to get to know uh that person perhaps at another opportunity.
Speaker 1: That opportunity came a few weeks later when my dad
Speaker 1: was out at a nightclub. I had a flask in
Speaker 1: my jacket and I took a drink and I got
Speaker 1: this huge hand black on my color and it was
Speaker 1: the bouncer, and he said get out of the club,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, dragged me by my neck. And
Speaker 1: on the other arm, he was dragging this girl and
Speaker 1: it was Rebecca. He was throwing her out and throwing
Speaker 1: me out at the same time. And so it was
Speaker 1: like it was like a it was like a romantic comedy,
Speaker 1: you know, slammed the door shut and we were both
Speaker 1: landed on the sidewalk, and it was like, oh, what
Speaker 1: did you do? You know? I was like I was
Speaker 1: just trying to drink out of my flask and what
Speaker 1: did you do? Some ship? You know and whatever, and
Speaker 1: then we just went walking together, and um, we kind of.
Speaker 1: I was very attracted to her, you know, her combination
Speaker 1: of extraordinary femininity like a show girl. She was like
Speaker 1: a show girl, but it was more like a show
Speaker 1: girl that could throw a spear, you know, and bring
Speaker 1: down a horse at a hundred meters type of show girl.
Speaker 1: And she liked me, and we had a kind of
Speaker 1: a date after that, but it was by then it
Speaker 1: was already five in the morning or something, so what date.
Speaker 1: My dad quickly realized that my mom wasn't an easy
Speaker 1: person to get to know Rebecca, Like from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: it was extraordinarily KG about any kind of details like
Speaker 1: exact address or exact phone number or exact anything. My
Speaker 1: mom is still KG about personal details. Where is this,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Actually, she didn't want to discuss my
Speaker 1: dad at all for this project or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know you were. Every time he came up, she changed
Speaker 1: the subject. I was stick to the subject. For Christ's sake.
Speaker 1: You are the subject, so you won't be hearing her
Speaker 1: perspective on their relationship. Rebecca was like somebody walking around
Speaker 1: with a big bundle of secrets, or who had learned
Speaker 1: the hard way that you don't share personal information with
Speaker 1: anyone because it will be come back and bite you
Speaker 1: in the s as she would say, you know. The
Speaker 1: third time I met her was on the street on
Speaker 1: the Bowery, walking down south, and she was carrying a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of plastic bags and looked extremely distraught. She
Speaker 1: was her fingers were all screwed up and wrapped around
Speaker 1: the plastic bags, and she looked absolutely desperate. Then I
Speaker 1: said to her, what's what's the matter with you? And
Speaker 1: she's like, I can't go home. I can't go home.
Speaker 1: Wanta thugs and ship heads and creepy bastards, you know,
Speaker 1: like I at the doors busted, the windows busted, the
Speaker 1: heats busted, the I don't feel safe there. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: come and stay in my place. You could stay in
Speaker 1: my kitchen and there's a room you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to come by, And she did come by and
Speaker 1: she didn't leave. After that, my mom moved into my
Speaker 1: dad's railroad apartment, a narrow old place with a bathtub
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, and that's like a perfect setup for
Speaker 1: an exhibitionist and for a wild ass like Rebecca. It's
Speaker 1: just like perfect. You know, she could be cooking and
Speaker 1: having a bath. And I took the little middle bed
Speaker 1: and a half room. Rebecca never slept, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: necessity for a bedroom for Rebecca, which is a very
Speaker 1: strange thing when you think about it. I never saw
Speaker 1: her sleep in months, the first few months that I
Speaker 1: knew her, I had never seen her sleep. My dad
Speaker 1: was a director and my mom was a performer, so
Speaker 1: they got closer by making things together. I was shooting
Speaker 1: a video, kind of very low rent video of Hamlet,
Speaker 1: and it occurred to me that Rebecca, with this wild
Speaker 1: blonde hair and this extraordinary kind of power in her
Speaker 1: eyes and in her face and in her hands. You know,
Speaker 1: she radiates like physical energy and strength, could play Ophelia
Speaker 1: in a much stronger way than the like shrinking violet
Speaker 1: with flowers in her hair that's traditionally in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Speaker 1: Ophelia is Hamlet's love interest who eventually goes mad with grief.
Speaker 1: And I thought that that had cinematically, that that could
Speaker 1: be something very beautiful if I could capture that on camera.
Speaker 1: By just by st charity a lack five for Shane.
Speaker 1: Young men will do if they come to by Cock,
Speaker 1: they aunt, blame. And then Rebecca would grab the book
Speaker 1: and go up on the roof and start reading these
Speaker 1: intense scenes. So what are you done? By his son?
Speaker 1: But and thou hast not come to my bed? It
Speaker 1: was this an incredibly dramatized, forceful way that she had
Speaker 1: of doing it. It wasn't acting. It was like like
Speaker 1: a volcanic impersonation. And I don't know, for me, it
Speaker 1: was coming together into a very interesting version of Hamlet.
Speaker 1: Come my coach, Good nights, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
Speaker 1: good night, good night. And that's when she told me
Speaker 1: about Billy. That's when she started to trust me enough
Speaker 1: to share the story. Right, My mom finally told him
Speaker 1: what had happened. She recounted Billy's death in painful detail.
Speaker 1: She knew who had come to visit Billy that night,
Speaker 1: that she knew that it was a police officer and
Speaker 1: off duty police officer and a cowboy hat. He had
Speaker 1: so many slugs in him that that's the act of
Speaker 1: somebody that wants to finish you off, you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: want you speaking, doesn't want you living. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that that I was a very opportunistic and rather sick
Speaker 1: of me to want her to play Ophelia because she
Speaker 1: was made crazy by an event that took place in
Speaker 1: her life that literally made her mad, you know, and
Speaker 1: I mean mad in the old sense of the word insane,
Speaker 1: with grief and anger. So it's not something you want
Speaker 1: to hold the cameras on, you know. It's very intimate,
Speaker 1: that grief and anger. It started to show up in
Speaker 1: their apartment. So when I would come home sometimes and
Speaker 1: hear the music on super allowed, like in my apartment
Speaker 1: wherever Becca was, and I would open the door. Becca
Speaker 1: would be with a bottle of whiskey in one hand,
Speaker 1: yelling into the speakers, singing at the top of her
Speaker 1: loans the songs that she and Billy really loved together,
Speaker 1: you know, and I would go, we're stop, and she
Speaker 1: nothing would stop her. My dad says, the grief over
Speaker 1: Billy's murder sparked a fear in my mom that followed
Speaker 1: them everywhere they went. So I'm like on St. Mark's Place,
Speaker 1: somewhere around there, walking with Rebecca and there's two cops
Speaker 1: sitting in a cup car on the corner, and Rebecca
Speaker 1: gets all pale and kind of freaky h and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's the matter, what's the matter? And she's like turned around,
Speaker 1: turned around, turning around, no face that way. I'm like, why,
Speaker 1: what what? What? And I turned around, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: and I see these two cops sitting in the car
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what is this? Is those two cops
Speaker 1: in the car, And she's like, I can't look at
Speaker 1: that guy. I can't look at that guy. We gotta
Speaker 1: get away from you. We're gonna walk away from you.
Speaker 1: And then so we're walking away, I'm going in said
Speaker 1: the guy? Is that the guy? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Is that the cowboy? And she wouldn't reply, and she
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell me, and she wouldn't go any further with
Speaker 1: any any detail whatsoever, but that she wanted us to
Speaker 1: get the funk out of there, and that that got
Speaker 1: that cop that was near the window side where we
Speaker 1: were walking by freaked her out entirely, and that she
Speaker 1: recognized him and that and I said to her, I
Speaker 1: was walking up the street like nervously going to something
Speaker 1: to do with Billy's is the Billy thing? What's going
Speaker 1: to come on? Come out? Rebecca, tell me nothing. You know.
Speaker 1: My mom never explained to my dad what she saw. Instead,
Speaker 1: she added it to her big bundle of secrets and
Speaker 1: tried to keep life moving by going to auditions and
Speaker 1: pursuing her career. She had already worked with some big names.
Speaker 1: How many startedst memories us freeing, No, No, No, we
Speaker 1: are com broke down. I didn't have a leading role.
Speaker 1: It was just hired as an extra and I got
Speaker 1: bumped up. He gave me lives in US. Have liked me.
Speaker 1: You know, you should make a film about flying sauces.
Speaker 1: I also did a movie with Lisa man Alle and
Speaker 1: the original Arthur Dudley Moore. You're not gonna want to
Speaker 1: be a waitress for the rest of your life. I
Speaker 1: did a walk for Luther V Andrew's first music video.
Speaker 1: You know this song, that's me walking in the video.
Speaker 1: I had a million dollar walk o Caul. My mom
Speaker 1: was disciplined in her career and living in my dad's kitchen.
Speaker 1: Was working out fine somehow, and then in the spring
Speaker 1: of something caught my dad's eye. I had noticed that
Speaker 1: she had a little bit of a bump, you know,
Speaker 1: and for Rebecca to be a pound over, she just
Speaker 1: was working out extra hard in the last month, trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of this slight expansion of her waist.
Speaker 1: And she would talk about it like I can't fucking
Speaker 1: get rid of this, you know. I'm like, what am
Speaker 1: I doing? I can't be getting weight, It's not possible.
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, you know, she'd be like doing
Speaker 1: ninety thousand sit ups. And then one night I was
Speaker 1: just sitting in bed and watching her at four in
Speaker 1: the morning, thinking, how God's name am I going to
Speaker 1: go to sleep. She's stirring a pot on the stove
Speaker 1: and she had her hand on her belly and it
Speaker 1: was the classic person protecting their belly from the stove,
Speaker 1: the fire, a splatter or something. She was holding herself
Speaker 1: and I just said to her, Rebecca, you are with child,
Speaker 1: and she was like, get the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm like, Rebecca, you're pregnant. You're pregnant, and
Speaker 1: she said that is insane. Don't tell me. I'm a woman,
Speaker 1: I know my own body. You don't tell me what's
Speaker 1: going on inside my body. And I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you don't know. Shit. Then we went and she saw
Speaker 1: a doctor and was examined. She was five and a
Speaker 1: half months pregnant. She wasn't you know, a little pregnant,
Speaker 1: and she was was It was very, very far down
Speaker 1: the line. And that's when Rebecca admitted to me, you
Speaker 1: know there's some uh or I've been I do a
Speaker 1: little USh. I commune with Billy and I'm like, what's like, well,
Speaker 1: I take his drug and I'm like, oh yeah, what
Speaker 1: drug is that? You know? And so that's when she
Speaker 1: said to Soxon. And that's when I looked up to
Speaker 1: Sox and to Soxon Billy's drug of choice a prescription methemphetamine.
Speaker 1: And I called up the company that made it and
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, oh yeah, it's definitely taratogenic. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: can you be more specific than like paratogenic foot coming
Speaker 1: out of head, you know, arm from but you know,
Speaker 1: anything can happen. And I just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: like went to pieces what how did she like what happened? Then?
Speaker 1: Did she stop. Oh yes, immediately immediately, she absolutely uh
Speaker 1: did everything to be healthy and to be strong. My
Speaker 1: mom got clean and kept performing. This is her in
Speaker 1: a movie called Sleepwalk by Sarah Driver. Man, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? I want to have anything to do it
Speaker 1: Sarah's movie Sleepwalk. Um playing the fence. Uh, very pregnant,
Speaker 1: just like a mom before I was born. My mom
Speaker 1: is seriously pregnant. In the clip, in a wife beater
Speaker 1: on a nasty downtown street, a guy pulls up and
Speaker 1: stolen hoop tie and nothing is wrong with a car.
Speaker 1: I don't deal with kids. You don't have. He's bringing
Speaker 1: a stolen car and he doesn't know if it. There's
Speaker 1: a little kid to sleep in the back seat. What
Speaker 1: a waiting on? Stupid? Get this fucking car out of him.
Speaker 1: It's a really good scene. I'll get rid of the
Speaker 1: kid to bring back the car. No, man, don't bring
Speaker 1: the car back. Don't you come back. Don't come back
Speaker 1: with the car. We had Get in the car and split,
Speaker 1: Get in the car and split. Don't you split? Just yet?
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break a special delivery me. You know,
Speaker 1: we wanted to have you on the kitchen floor, and
Speaker 1: we had prepared everything thing to have a birth at home,
Speaker 1: but we immediately discovered that you were backwards. You were
Speaker 1: facing out spine to spine, which you can be very
Speaker 1: painful birth. And before I even took a breath, I
Speaker 1: was causing problems. So my parents took a cab to St.
Speaker 1: Vincent's Hospital where I was born on September two, and
Speaker 1: she delivered you and put you right in my arms,
Speaker 1: and I checked if there was a hand coming out
Speaker 1: of your forehead, and you opened your eyes in my arms.
Speaker 1: You point point looked right at me, And that was
Speaker 1: how you were born. What did my mom do with
Speaker 1: me when you first got home from the hospital. She
Speaker 1: went from I don't want the babies bothering me. You're
Speaker 1: gonna build a wall right here in the kitchen, and
Speaker 1: the babies on that side and I'm on nest side,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's the whole thing two like a
Speaker 1: dragon with a eagan egg. And she just became the
Speaker 1: most protective, wildly defensive, utterly devoted mother you will ever
Speaker 1: see in your life. She just like put you under
Speaker 1: her arm and wouldn't let anyone even near you. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom and dad try to make it work for
Speaker 1: a while. We thought we would try to be together
Speaker 1: to create a kind of stable couple for you. But
Speaker 1: we never thought you're right for me and I'm right
Speaker 1: for you, and we're gonna make a life together. That
Speaker 1: just wasn't It was obviously. Actually the contrary was obvious.
Speaker 1: You know that we were utterly incompatible. Very quickly, Rebecca's
Speaker 1: choices about what was the right way to raise a
Speaker 1: child became just absolutely intrangigan. I decided to move out.
Speaker 1: My dad moved to a nearby loft when I was
Speaker 1: around one. They had some fundamental differences that they just
Speaker 1: couldn't work through. In terms of health and nutrition. Her
Speaker 1: ideas were so extreme and so violently enforced. You couldn't
Speaker 1: eat this, you couldn't eat that, and I was completely
Speaker 1: against that form of upbringing. Her extreme was was really
Speaker 1: to the point of just like steamed vegetables in her
Speaker 1: fingers being handed to you at your mouth. You and
Speaker 1: I would go out together and you'd eat a Drake's cake,
Speaker 1: and I'd come home and bring you home, and Rebecca
Speaker 1: would go Drake's cake. That would be like so freaky.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the strict diet. There was something
Speaker 1: else that really bothered my dad. Rebecca decided that you
Speaker 1: were going to be in show biz, and I suddenly
Speaker 1: realized that my worst fear of what Rebecca could become
Speaker 1: in relation to you was actually coming true, that she
Speaker 1: was becoming a stage mum. Yeah, still planned not the
Speaker 1: guitar a little saying, this is my first role when
Speaker 1: I was too in a movie called Kiss Daddy, Goodnight.
Speaker 1: You gave me twenty. I gave you a fifty, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: what did you do with the rest of the money.
Speaker 1: Steve BISHEMI played my dad, Go get your own beer,
Speaker 1: and my mom played my mom. The movie was Uma
Speaker 1: Thurman's debut two Listen, but Hollywood was only a piece
Speaker 1: of my mom's master plan for me. You were going
Speaker 1: to be a Broadway dancer, tap dancer, singer, or a
Speaker 1: star or whatever. You were going to go to audition
Speaker 1: after audition after audition. It was a horror to me.
Speaker 1: But she was so insisting that you do this. So
Speaker 1: that battle um turned into a series of fights that
Speaker 1: were just so off old that I thought for you
Speaker 1: it was unhealthy. I thought it was psychically unhealthy for you.
Speaker 1: That she was like pulling you out of my arms
Speaker 1: and like yelling in the street, and he feared that
Speaker 1: she might have been slipping back into an old habit.
Speaker 1: But I was detecting that Rebecca might have been returning
Speaker 1: to dis oxen occasionally. Um, she would have episodes, and
Speaker 1: these episodes, I think now that I know more, we're
Speaker 1: a combination of alcohol into oxen, where she literally behaved
Speaker 1: in a psychotic manner. You know, she yelled and shouted
Speaker 1: and screamed and hung onto lamp posts and was completely
Speaker 1: incoherent what she was saying, and her eyes were kind
Speaker 1: of like lacquered over with something, and she wasn't looking
Speaker 1: at you directly, and I didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 1: and it was a horrifying circumstance. My dad's new loft
Speaker 1: was only a couple of blocks away, and I'd go
Speaker 1: stay with him on weekends. What was our relationship like perfect?
Speaker 1: We were absolutely like fascinated in love. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we had lots of theatrics in the house. We played
Speaker 1: all kinds of role games of gangster Warrior. We built
Speaker 1: little chateaus and palaces. We went to the park a lot.
Speaker 1: We played a lot of ball together, like you were
Speaker 1: like a master ball player of any kind of ball.
Speaker 1: And I'm like a sports spastic. But for you, I
Speaker 1: did everything that I could. I don't know. We just
Speaker 1: had fun. We went everywhere. We went to museums, we
Speaker 1: went to we walked a lot, you know, and we
Speaker 1: just did ship. I mean, I just recall always having
Speaker 1: the best time with you. And this made things even
Speaker 1: worse because then when you would have to go back
Speaker 1: to Rebecca, you wouldn't want to go. And it was
Speaker 1: every single time this violent ripping away, like literally you
Speaker 1: screaming and saying, Dad, I don't want to go, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go, I don't and go, and Rebecca
Speaker 1: like feeling infuriated that you didn't want to go with her.
Speaker 1: And then when I was six, my dad took a
Speaker 1: job with a traveling dance company and left the country.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't move back to New York for over a decade.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I couldn't reconcile how or why
Speaker 1: he would have left me behind like that. But there
Speaker 1: was a key piece of information that I didn't have.
Speaker 1: There was something that you were hiding from me. I
Speaker 1: didn't tell you that I was a harmonetic and I
Speaker 1: was very ill, you know, one day without a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks worth of her when and I'm practically
Speaker 1: a dead body. So it's not like I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a valiant night able to rescue you. I mean myself
Speaker 1: deeply impaired, you know, so you know, in the end,
Speaker 1: not in the end, but in the middle, it became
Speaker 1: a question of what what do you rescue? First? My
Speaker 1: dad explains that he left New York because he was
Speaker 1: convinced he'd never be able to get clean there, and
Speaker 1: it was very hard for you to see that. And
Speaker 1: I think it's still it's hard for you to imagine
Speaker 1: that I would take certain decisions in order not to um,
Speaker 1: you know, in order to survive that. It's just hard
Speaker 1: to imagine if you're not in that position yourself, if
Speaker 1: you're not really in that perspective of being a dope fiend,
Speaker 1: the um kind of strangely super dad, you know, when
Speaker 1: Dad's high, Dad's like, oh so much fun. That's aly
Speaker 1: an awful thing for a child. It gives no parameter
Speaker 1: or balance to a child. We are not even ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, the finality of someone saying, well, it wasn't
Speaker 1: myself that day, Well, I wasn't myself that decade. Not
Speaker 1: only was I not myself, but I am not a
Speaker 1: really reliable reporter on my own behavior. I should not
Speaker 1: be narrating my own existence at that time, because you
Speaker 1: will not be getting the facts. I was not a
Speaker 1: possession of the facts. This is a really hard thing
Speaker 1: to describe to people. You know, I'm sorry. I'm just
Speaker 1: having a moment because I've never heard you own it
Speaker 1: so completely. So I'm just kind of well, I'm learning.
Speaker 1: It's a life process. But I do not expect or
Speaker 1: want forgiveness or absolution of any kind. The only thing
Speaker 1: I could ever hope for is understanding in the same way,
Speaker 1: in the same vein as me asking you what our
Speaker 1: relationship was like? What did you experience my relationship with
Speaker 1: my mom as when I was that little. I'm a
Speaker 1: little worried that we're going into family. Should I not
Speaker 1: worry about this because it's your show? But I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a very difficult, very complex stuff, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if if this is the forum. I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm a little bit. I'm just wondering. Let's
Speaker 1: take a five minute break, Let's let's get some air
Speaker 1: and come back, and then we'll do it. Are you
Speaker 1: sure this is where you want to go. I get
Speaker 1: the feeling that you're like tating it back that length,
Speaker 1: So like, let's talk about it, but let's go out
Speaker 1: the outward. It's not so hot. Wondering, we step outside
Speaker 1: the studio to talk. My dad says he's nervous about
Speaker 1: painting my mom is some kind of villain. He says
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to hurt her, and that he's worried
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing with this project. After a half
Speaker 1: hour in debate, he agrees to talk about his concerns
Speaker 1: on Mike. It's not that I'm not prepared to talk
Speaker 1: about it, but it's just under the under the circumstances
Speaker 1: of us recording our conversation about your life in some
Speaker 1: vague connection to Billy Balls. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: the best place to um. Well, it's not so vaguely
Speaker 1: connected to Billy Balls. I explained to my dad that
Speaker 1: Billy's story is incomplete without the story of the lives
Speaker 1: his death affected. His killing caused a rupture in my
Speaker 1: mom's psyche, a trauma that rippled into my own life.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a house of grief, helping her
Speaker 1: carry the weight of her loss, and sometimes that grief
Speaker 1: was explosive that I became collateral damage. As an adult,
Speaker 1: I refused to let her go, to shut her out,
Speaker 1: to give up on her. But to do that, to
Speaker 1: keep her close to me, I have to find some
Speaker 1: understanding of the pain that made her lash out so
Speaker 1: viciously during my childhood, you know, learning to forgive like
Speaker 1: that's such a like a It's like on a Hallmark
Speaker 1: card somewhere. But at a certain point we have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge and accept that there were things that happened that
Speaker 1: caused trauma. The only success I have ever had in
Speaker 1: finding any peace around my relationship with my mother specifically,
Speaker 1: has been from understanding that is why I am doing
Speaker 1: this project. Could in the next chapter of The Ballad
Speaker 1: of Billy Balls this is it is Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the building. I'll never forget these columns. Ever, So the
Speaker 1: New York County Family Court, really bad ship happened here
Speaker 1: Crimetown is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smarling. The Ballad
Speaker 1: of Billy Balls is hosted by me Io Tillip Right
Speaker 1: and made in partnership with Caden's thirteen. You can find
Speaker 1: me on the Internet. Um Io loves You on everything,
Speaker 1: and if you're interested in my story, I wrote a
Speaker 1: book about all of this stuff. It's called Darling Days.
Speaker 1: We also want to hear from you. We have a
Speaker 1: voicemail that we set up for you to call us.
Speaker 1: Here's Yucca. I know that you've been concerned about whether
Speaker 1: this podcast is the right thing to do for your mom,
Speaker 1: but um, I think it's wise to not leave yourself
Speaker 1: out of that equation. His death is probably this inextricable
Speaker 1: part of your identity. I don't know, Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if this is the best thing to do or
Speaker 1: the right thing to do for your mom, because it
Speaker 1: seems like maybe something that you need to do, and
Speaker 1: I really admire you for doing it. I think it's
Speaker 1: super gusty and inspiring. Thank you, Yuka. If there's something
Speaker 1: on your mind, thoughts, feelings, complaints, a joke, whatever, call
Speaker 1: us and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh
Speaker 1: three nine to nine zero. I love hearing from you guys.
Speaker 1: You can also get into our discussion forum on our website,
Speaker 1: The Ballad of Billie Balls dot com. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by me, Kevin Sheppard, and Ryan Swygert. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zack Stewart Pontier and
Speaker 1: Mark Smirlin fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was
Speaker 1: mixed by Sam Bear, Sound design and music by Kenny
Speaker 1: q C Jack. Additional music by Shebo Pampolonia. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Shebo Dope name. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Speaker 1: Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Special thanks this
Speaker 1: week to my dad Seth for being so open and
Speaker 1: honest and always growing with me. Thanks to Daniella Ariah,
Speaker 1: Rachel Lee Right, Emily Wiederman, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro,
Speaker 1: Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum, and the team at
Speaker 1: Caden's thirteen. Special thanks to Steve Halterman for letting me
Speaker 1: into the station to record this one, and of course,
Speaker 1: my mom, without whom none of this would be possible,