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Speaker 2: I remember it was late at night, like after we
Speaker 2: had gone to bed.
Speaker 1: For Marissa Giamanco, September eighteenth, two thousand and eight was
Speaker 1: the moment that everything changed, the last day of one
Speaker 1: life and the first day of another.
Speaker 2: I was sleeping in a big sweater, like one of
Speaker 2: my dad's sweaters actually, and I remember being like, I
Speaker 2: need to put some pants on. Before I entered the door.
Speaker 1: She had heard voices outside and then pounding on the
Speaker 1: front door. The Giamanco family lived in a cozy, one
Speaker 1: story shoe box of a house. There were only two bedrooms.
Speaker 1: Their dad, Keith, slept on a couch in the living
Speaker 1: room so that each of his daughters could have their
Speaker 1: own bedroom. Marissa and her twin sister were both seventeen
Speaker 1: years old seniors in high school, and on this particular night,
Speaker 1: they were worried about their dad. He hadn't come home
Speaker 1: or called or left any kind of message. The girls
Speaker 1: tried texting him but got no answer.
Speaker 2: It was weird.
Speaker 1: The family's dog, Lucky, peered out the window, and then
Speaker 1: late in the night came that pounding on the front door.
Speaker 2: So I'm all like scrambling to find some pajama pants
Speaker 2: to put on. They're all like knocking really loud, like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: the door. You know. I'm like, hold on, I need
Speaker 2: to find some pants. And my sister's like, who is that?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I don't know. Do you know who
Speaker 2: it is? Because all we could see were flash lights,
Speaker 2: Like it was a very bright light, like that's that's
Speaker 2: what I remember. You could even see like the flashlight
Speaker 2: light coming underneath the wooden door before I even opened it,
Speaker 2: and you could just feel the pressure like dude, they're
Speaker 2: gonna open this door if we don't open this door.
Speaker 1: So Marissa opens the door and sees a whole lot
Speaker 1: of eyes with badges and flashlights. They asked to come in,
Speaker 1: and Marissa asks for a warrant, which I find kind
Speaker 1: of bold, Like how did you even think to do
Speaker 1: that at seventeen years old?
Speaker 2: I think it might have just been watching Law and Order, Like, honestly,
Speaker 2: if I'm being dead ass, like, you got to tell
Speaker 2: me why you come into my house, dude. So they
Speaker 2: handed us the warrant, which was a lot of language
Speaker 2: that I didn't understand at that time.
Speaker 1: And then a whole parade of law enforcement officials starts
Speaker 1: coming into their house.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't just the Floorsent police, it was the FBI,
Speaker 2: it was the county police. And I remember one of
Speaker 2: them saying, your dad is in a safe place. You
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about that. He's just in some trouble.
Speaker 2: Like that's literally what they said to me, Like nothing
Speaker 2: more than that some.
Speaker 1: Trouble's like WTF, Like what could Dad have possibly done
Speaker 1: to warrant all of this? Meanwhile, Lucky, the family dog,
Speaker 1: he's on the offensive, lunging in all of these intruders.
Speaker 1: One of the cops asked Marissa to control her dog,
Speaker 1: so she takes Lucky to the backyard. It was a hot,
Speaker 1: sticky night, the last bits of summer lingered. Marissa prided
Speaker 1: herself as a moody, rebellious, aspiring writer and so very
Speaker 1: much on brand. Marissa lights a cigarette and then she
Speaker 1: just stands there processing the chaos she just witnessed in
Speaker 1: her house.
Speaker 2: They are flipping over the couch cushions and looking in
Speaker 2: the vents and opening the closets, and I'm standing there
Speaker 2: smoking a cigarette and I'm just thinking, I'm like, damn,
Speaker 2: I hope they don't find my weed in my room.
Speaker 2: I had weed in the closet, so I you know,
Speaker 2: I was like, Damn, I don't want to get in
Speaker 2: trouble too. And Dad's going to be mad at me
Speaker 2: if he finds, you know what.
Speaker 1: I mean, Because at this point, Marissa is still assuming
Speaker 1: that her dad is coming home, that he's still going
Speaker 1: to be the one she has to answer to about
Speaker 1: school and walking the dog and the weed in her closet.
Speaker 1: But as this raid on her house continues, Marissa starts
Speaker 1: to scratch her head a bit.
Speaker 2: I racked my brain for anything, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I really don't know what dad would be doing. I'm like,
Speaker 2: was he like involved in an accident, or like, did
Speaker 2: he see something he wasn't supposed to.
Speaker 1: Marissa and her sister thought they knew who their father was.
Speaker 1: A mild mannered, kind of goofy, kind hearted midwestern guy,
Speaker 1: a single dad who loved hockey in sports trivia, a
Speaker 1: guy who showed up at their basketball games and orchestra concerts,
Speaker 1: a guy who drove them to school and his dad mobile,
Speaker 1: a light blue Mercury Grand Marquis and Keith Giamanco was
Speaker 1: this guy, but he was also someone else. This is
Speaker 1: a story about a crime, actually a series of crimes
Speaker 1: carried out by a mysterious figure who managed to evade
Speaker 1: the authorities, And it's about justice, about what punishment these
Speaker 1: crimes deserve. But at its core, for me, it's a
Speaker 1: story about the secrets that can exist within a family.
Speaker 1: It's about the disguises that parents put on for their
Speaker 1: kids and for the world. So much of parenting is
Speaker 1: built on lies, starting with the stories we tell our
Speaker 1: kids about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, and then
Speaker 1: there are the lies of omission. We all withhold things
Speaker 1: in order to protect our children. We all Harbor secrets.
Speaker 1: It's just that some secrets are much bigger than others.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Halbern and this is deep Cover The Family Man,
Speaker 1: Episode one, The Raid. Marissa Giamanca is now thirty five
Speaker 1: years old, and I met her for the first time
Speaker 1: on the side of a lonely, windswept road in east
Speaker 1: central Missouri. Marissa had suggested this spot, close to where
Speaker 1: she lives, as our rendezvous point. She had this idea
Speaker 1: that we take a road trip together. There were places
Speaker 1: that she wanted to take me, places that she thought
Speaker 1: I should see with my own eyes, places that still
Speaker 1: simmered with questions. Peering through my snow encrusted windshield, I
Speaker 1: saw a woman in a winter parka and a puffy
Speaker 1: penguin hat. I slowed down the car and she hopped in.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Jake.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Marissa.
Speaker 1: In all my years of doing this, I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever just done an interview where I got into
Speaker 1: a car with someone and went on.
Speaker 2: A road trip with them. Yeah. Oh that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: So where should we go first?
Speaker 2: I would say that let's start in floorcent because that's
Speaker 2: kind of where the story started.
Speaker 1: And just like that. We were off, driving through the snow,
Speaker 1: heading for the suburbs of Saint Louis. An hour and
Speaker 1: a half later we turned onto Abischon Street, a quaint
Speaker 1: suburban road with rows of handsome rick houses. Which houses
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: This one over here on the corner. Wow, the porch
Speaker 2: is still red.
Speaker 1: This is the house where Marissa and her sister grew
Speaker 1: up until the age of sixteen. So not the place
Speaker 1: where the police raided that night. This is where they
Speaker 1: lived before that. It's a spacious ranch house on a
Speaker 1: corner lot, a porch out front, a large front yard,
Speaker 1: tall trees. It's pretty in a quiet, unassuming way. For
Speaker 1: a while, Marissa just stared at her old home as
Speaker 1: if captured by its spell, ensnared by the invisible tendrils
Speaker 1: of memory.
Speaker 2: It almost feels surreal. Honestly, it feels surreal. Mom's flowers
Speaker 2: are gone, though, and there was a bird bath. She
Speaker 2: had a bird bath right there. But yeah, beautiful house.
Speaker 1: Back when Marissa was a young girl living in this house,
Speaker 1: her mother, Becky was still very much in the picture.
Speaker 1: Becky was also the one the girls went to when
Speaker 1: something felt hard. She'd sit with you, talk it through
Speaker 1: Becky was involved at the PTA at the girls' school
Speaker 1: and was a leader at their church, and she was
Speaker 1: an amazing cook.
Speaker 2: My favorite memory of my mom is in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: seeing her put her energy and that love into the
Speaker 2: food and then tasting the food like I still to
Speaker 2: this day have very rarely found a meal that feels
Speaker 2: as loving as Miss Becky Jumanco's.
Speaker 1: When Marissa talks about her parents, it feels like a
Speaker 1: very nineteen fifties arrangement. Each day, Becky would pack Keith
Speaker 1: lunch with a few sandwiches and Stanley Thermis. Then Keith
Speaker 1: would go off to the printing press where he worked.
Speaker 1: He'd come home tired, hands covered in ink. Marissa remembers
Speaker 1: sitting with her dad at night on the couch. She'd
Speaker 1: lie down with her head on his belly, feeling the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of his breaths until she fell asleep.
Speaker 1: Then he'd carry her off to bed. During the holidays,
Speaker 1: her parents decorated the whole house. Hung a wreath on
Speaker 1: the front door, wrote the word Noel in cursive lights
Speaker 1: on the roof, put a giant bow on the garage.
Speaker 1: Like the house itself was a beautifully wrapped gift. And
Speaker 1: it kind of was right up into the moment it
Speaker 1: began to unravel. Marissa has a twin sister named Elise,
Speaker 1: and like so many twins, they had a very close
Speaker 1: bond from the start.
Speaker 2: My earliest memory is us in our crib together and
Speaker 2: conspiring with each other through facial expressions on how we
Speaker 2: were going to get out of that crib. And she
Speaker 2: climbed up on my back and got out of the crib,
Speaker 2: and my mom had to run down the hallway and
Speaker 2: she was like, what are you doing? That is my
Speaker 2: earliest memory.
Speaker 1: I love this story from Elise because even in toddlerhood,
Speaker 1: they're already conspiring, already working together, already figuring things out,
Speaker 1: and in a strange way, they're rehearsing the very skill
Speaker 1: they'll need most later in life, escaping. Elise is the
Speaker 1: older twin by one minute, and even though they're twins
Speaker 1: in many ways, Alise played the part of the older sibling.
Speaker 1: She was taller, bigger, more talkative, and very organized. Alise
Speaker 1: she always loved checklists.
Speaker 3: I would be the.
Speaker 2: One to ask questions to my parents for us, or
Speaker 2: like even when we were kids, I would order for
Speaker 2: her at a restaurant. I was kind of her mouthpiece
Speaker 2: a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Around the time the twins were ten years old, they
Speaker 1: remember their parents started to argue a lot. The girls
Speaker 1: floated through this turbulence, kind of the way kids do,
Speaker 1: listening and not listening, picking up bits and pieces like
Speaker 1: their parents bickering about food stamps, among other things. On
Speaker 1: one occasion, things got so heated that their mom shoved
Speaker 1: an ice cream cone into their dad's face. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of shouting. The girls remember the police showing up.
Speaker 1: It got to the point that Alice told me she
Speaker 1: actually wanted her parents to separate rate.
Speaker 2: I saw how things were going with them. I'm like, yes,
Speaker 2: please get away from each other. That really was what
Speaker 2: I was thinking. I was like, please take time away.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, Alise says, their mom got so fed up she'd
Speaker 1: go out to a local bowling alley and come home drunk,
Speaker 1: so drunk that one time she missed her bed and
Speaker 1: landed on the floor instead. Alise says that her mother
Speaker 1: changed from the perfect stay at home mom who volunteered
Speaker 1: with the PTA, morphing into someone else. Like one time
Speaker 1: Alise was playing in a middle school basketball game. She
Speaker 1: got called for a foul and then a moment later,
Speaker 1: a fire alarm went off.
Speaker 2: I'm on the court and I'm like, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: And some may ran over and she was like, your
Speaker 2: mom pulled the fire alarm, And I was like, what
Speaker 2: she pulled the fire alarm because she disagreed with the
Speaker 2: call and emptied out the entire gym.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just erratic behavior. Elise says that her
Speaker 1: mother would vacillate from being an angel to a devil,
Speaker 1: no warning, no explanation. When the twins were twelve, it
Speaker 1: all came to a head. Here's how Marissa remembers it.
Speaker 2: I remember being in the kitchen in this house, and
Speaker 2: I remember my dad sitting at the kitchen table. I
Speaker 2: was like kind of directly like standing behind him, about
Speaker 2: like two feet away, and he had his hands up
Speaker 2: on the table like together, like clasped like up against
Speaker 2: his head, and I remember him saying, your mom's not
Speaker 2: coming back here, and just want to I just wanted
Speaker 2: to scream. I might have even screamed out loud. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: This Apparently was their dad's decision. He asked her to leave,
Speaker 1: like he just finally had enough. Once Becky was gone,
Speaker 1: the girls were alone in the house with their father
Speaker 1: and the silent presence of unanswered questions with their mother gone.
Speaker 1: Ali says that their dad did his best to make
Speaker 1: their life as normal as possible. Keith embraced the role
Speaker 1: of a single dad, making meals, driving them to school,
Speaker 1: and his light blue Mercury Marquis the Dadmobile, taking them
Speaker 1: to practice, putting them in therapy with a family counselor,
Speaker 1: and just encouraging them.
Speaker 2: I think he tried to protect us. I think he
Speaker 2: was partially successful. And I say partially because I think
Speaker 2: many folks forget that children are smarter than we think
Speaker 2: they are, and they're so observant, and that was no
Speaker 2: exception for Merissa and I.
Speaker 1: It was clear to the girls that Keith, despite everything
Speaker 1: that he was doing, was struggling grieving the loss of
Speaker 1: his wife. Once, when Marissa came home from school, she
Speaker 1: found him on the stairs down to the basement with
Speaker 1: his wedding album in hand, looking through the pages and weeping.
Speaker 1: It was one of the only times she ever saw
Speaker 1: her dad cry. She knew he was grieving, but from
Speaker 1: a kid's perspective, none of it fully made sense. Her
Speaker 1: mother's behavior, her parents' separation, her father's explanation, and despite
Speaker 1: her best efforts, Marissa just couldn't get through to him.
Speaker 2: I remember having to say his name. I would be like, Dad, Dad, Dad, Keith.
Speaker 2: You literally you'd have to go through like the list
Speaker 2: of names to get him to pay attention. I remember
Speaker 2: the first time I did that, standing in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: He was staring out that window right there, and I
Speaker 2: was literally like, there is something than wrong right now,
Speaker 2: like and obviously I was twelve years old. I couldn't
Speaker 2: put my finger on it. But it was it was anxiety,
Speaker 2: it was defeat, it was it was fear. She says.
Speaker 1: She called him by his first name because she needed
Speaker 1: to get his attention, but it went deeper than this,
Speaker 1: because in that moment, anyway, her father had seemed less
Speaker 1: like a dad and more like just a guy named Keith,
Speaker 1: well meaning kind, but removed in some way unknowable. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: their mother did come back repeatedly, but in the strangest
Speaker 1: of ways.
Speaker 2: She would knock on my bedroom window, so the back
Speaker 2: window of this house, in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: and asked me, can you grab the vacuum cleaner and
Speaker 2: hand it to me out the window? Can you hand
Speaker 2: me this piece of jewelry and hand it to me
Speaker 2: out the window and don't tell your dad that I
Speaker 2: was here. That's when I was like, there is something
Speaker 2: going on. Is when she started visiting my window in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: Naturally, Marissa asked her dad about this, like what was
Speaker 1: going on with mom?
Speaker 2: Yep? Dad was like, your mom's sick. That's how he
Speaker 2: kind of tried to explain it at the time. Was
Speaker 2: she's sick, she has a disease. There was no further explanation.
Speaker 2: It was she's sick in the head.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you make sense of that? As
Speaker 1: a kid?
Speaker 2: You don't. It sits with you and you're like, well,
Speaker 2: guess my mom's sick in the head? Am I sick
Speaker 2: in the head? I love my mom? My mom was
Speaker 2: always taken care of me. Is she really that sick?
Speaker 2: And then are you sick in then? Like there's a
Speaker 2: lot going on when somebody says that to you.
Speaker 1: The girls were left to think back on their mother
Speaker 1: all the strange things that she had done as they
Speaker 1: tried to make sense of it all. Were there other
Speaker 1: things besides the handing stuff out the window where you
Speaker 1: started to see something was off with your.
Speaker 2: Mom well, the erratic behaviors, the slurring of words, the
Speaker 2: nodding out, the not being able to stay conscious. And
Speaker 2: then there's the opposite, extremely energetic, talkative, not able to
Speaker 2: sit still, like I remember her howling like a dog
Speaker 2: at some point in the bathroom, like saying can I
Speaker 2: get more?
Speaker 1: At some point it became clear to Marissa that can
Speaker 1: I get more meant can I get more drugs?
Speaker 2: So it's one of those things where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Keith may have had the best of intentions. He may
Speaker 1: have wanted what so many parents want, to protect their
Speaker 1: kids from pain, but his solution was a lie of omission. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: his daughters would make two realizations. The first was that
Speaker 1: their mother was struggling mightily with addiction, and the second
Speaker 1: was that Keith was an unreliable narrator of sorts, someone
Speaker 1: who could not be counted on to tell them about
Speaker 1: the harder truths, even the ones that were essential to
Speaker 1: their understanding of the world. And this is kind of
Speaker 1: how life went for the twins. Their lives were like
Speaker 1: a novel where all the transitions and explanations had been
Speaker 1: stripped out, leaving just a string of disorienting moments that
Speaker 1: would make any reader feel bewildered. Keith had always told
Speaker 1: his daughters that they needed to dream big and think
Speaker 1: about life beyond Fluorescent Missouri. When they turned fourteen, he
Speaker 1: enrolled them in a fancy all girls private school called
Speaker 1: Narynx Hall. The girls weren't exactly enthusiastic about this, but
Speaker 1: Keith insisted on it and claimed they could afford it.
Speaker 1: By then, he had stopped working at the printing press
Speaker 1: and told the girls that he was day trading, using
Speaker 1: his own money to buy and sell stocks. But money
Speaker 1: was always kind of weird with Keith. At least. Recalled
Speaker 1: one time they went to an outback steakhouse and when
Speaker 1: it came time to pay, Keith peeled off a crisp
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars bill, half of which was a tip.
Speaker 1: Super flashy, But then she remembers his other time midway
Speaker 1: through high school when she wasn't allowed to take her
Speaker 1: final exams because dad hadn't paid their tuition, so the
Speaker 1: family's finances they felt shaky. And then one day, when
Speaker 1: the girls were sixteen, Marissa recalls her father telling them
Speaker 1: they had to move immediately.
Speaker 2: Like it was quick, like I'm saying my dad went
Speaker 2: in the garage and said, you can keep two bikes.
Speaker 2: Because I love bikes. I probably had like twelve bikes,
Speaker 2: so he was like, you have to set all of
Speaker 2: them out for free. We'll try to sell some of them.
Speaker 2: It was like, do you want to keep this? You
Speaker 2: can't keep that, Like we have to get out of here.
Speaker 2: That was like super freaky, like when you're a kid.
Speaker 1: This is when they moved to that shoebox size house,
Speaker 1: the one where the police raid eventually occurred. Here, you
Speaker 1: might remember, the girls each had a small bedroom and
Speaker 1: Keith slept on the couch. During this time, Keith was
Speaker 1: out of the house a lot, and Marissa and her
Speaker 1: sister Elise used to guess about where their dad went
Speaker 1: and what he did.
Speaker 2: We came up with different scenarios in our head. This
Speaker 2: was my joke. My joke was Dad bills build swing
Speaker 2: sets in his spared time. I was like, he must
Speaker 2: be going to build swing sets. That's what I used
Speaker 2: to say as a joke because I was like I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't literally can't can't figure it out. So I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna fucking fill it in with some joke.
Speaker 1: At last remembers asking him where he was off to,
Speaker 1: and he would sometimes tell her, I don't have to
Speaker 1: tell you where I'm going, She says, with him, it
Speaker 1: was pure Scooby Doo mystery. Those are her words. When
Speaker 1: it became undeniable that things were wrong, like when they
Speaker 1: had to vacate their house, a lease offered to help.
Speaker 2: I also had a job at the time at the
Speaker 2: Danna Republic, working at the mall, and I even was like,
Speaker 2: do you want help with the bills or whatever? And
Speaker 2: my dess said, you know, no, save your money. We're fine.
Speaker 1: But clearly things were not fine. There were problems by
Speaker 1: that needed to be checked and weren't. And you can
Speaker 1: start to see why Elise loved checklists. In the small
Speaker 1: part of the world that she could control, she wanted order.
Speaker 1: Elise didn't really get much more clarity until the start
Speaker 1: of her senior year. They'd been living in the shoe
Speaker 1: box house for about nine months. It seemed like Keith
Speaker 1: was out a lot selling swing sets or whatever he did.
Speaker 1: And then came that muggy night in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: the night of the raid.
Speaker 2: We're waiting for our dad to finally go home or
Speaker 2: come home and that never happened, and I'm thinking about
Speaker 2: calling hospitals. I'm thinking about calling the police because it's
Speaker 2: just not like my dad to not show up like that.
Speaker 1: But it had been a long day. Elise had school
Speaker 1: and then a shift at work.
Speaker 2: She was beat. I have to lay it down. At
Speaker 2: this point, changed into my nightgown. I get into bed,
Speaker 2: and I see a flashlight coming through my window, and
Speaker 2: then I hear dogs sniffing around and I get up
Speaker 2: out of my bed. I turn on the lights because
Speaker 2: I'm freaked out.
Speaker 1: It's the police. She and her sister opened the door
Speaker 1: and a whole team of law enforcement officers enters the house.
Speaker 2: My dad was in trouble with the with the law
Speaker 2: in a serious way, because there wouldn't I recognize seriousness,
Speaker 2: because they wouldn't have sent an entire crime scene unit
Speaker 2: out to my house if it wasn't serious. They didn't
Speaker 2: send one or two dudes. They sent, you know, a
Speaker 2: whole van of people plus dogs. I realize this amount
Speaker 2: of labor is because my dad did something serious.
Speaker 1: The police moved quickly through the bedrooms, the closets, up
Speaker 1: into the attic. They took the family computer boxes of clothing,
Speaker 1: other odds and ends. The family dog Lucky grew so
Speaker 1: agitated that Marissa had to take him outside. Alice stayed
Speaker 1: behind answering the police's questions.
Speaker 2: I remember stepping in my room with a couple of
Speaker 2: the officers and then interviewing me. They asked how much
Speaker 2: money I'd ever seen my dad have on him. They
Speaker 2: asked me if I knew what he was doing earlier
Speaker 2: that day.
Speaker 1: Her mind raced to make sense of what was happening,
Speaker 1: but none of it made sense.
Speaker 2: I was in shock. I was in shock. Honestly, I
Speaker 2: felt like I was having an out of body experience,
Speaker 2: like I was disassociating as I was speaking to the cops.
Speaker 1: The police told Elise that their dad wanted to call
Speaker 1: them himself and explain what he'd done. That was all
Speaker 1: they'd say. Then the police gathered the boxes of evidence
Speaker 1: and left. Maris remembers they stayed up as long as
Speaker 1: they could, waiting for their dad to call.
Speaker 2: Me and my sister actually lay down in the bed
Speaker 2: together and we had the old corded phone with the
Speaker 2: green lights on it, and we had the phone next
Speaker 2: to our heads because we were like, we don't want
Speaker 2: to miss it. If he calls, but we were so
Speaker 2: tired because it was like three four in the morning
Speaker 2: that we were like, we have to lay down because
Speaker 2: we were still planning on going to school.
Speaker 1: Finally, at some point the phone rings. The girls startled
Speaker 1: suddenly fully awake. They pick up and it's their dad.
Speaker 2: He calls and he's like, I'm fine, I'm safe, I'm
Speaker 2: just in trouble. But there was no actual explanation on
Speaker 2: that first phone call. It was just hey, I'm safe,
Speaker 2: I love you, Everything's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: And that was it. That's all he says. Even in
Speaker 1: the moment of reckoning, this moment of truth, Keith is
Speaker 1: kind of deliberately vague, and so the whole situation remains
Speaker 1: shrouded in mystery. Elise also remembers this call vividly, including
Speaker 1: the way her dad's voice sounded on the phone.
Speaker 2: He was very upset and crying and he said everything's
Speaker 2: going to be okay, I'll be home soon, and him
Speaker 2: saying that I had hope that he was telling the
Speaker 2: truth and that that would happen. But in my gud
Speaker 2: I had a gut feeling that I just knew that
Speaker 2: this was just it's going to be a long, long road.
Speaker 1: At some point later that morning, they turn on the
Speaker 1: TV and there's a big story on the local news.
Speaker 1: They're replaying footage from the previous day. Marissa remembers seeing
Speaker 1: an aerial shot taken from a helicopter. She recalls the
Speaker 1: newscaster saying, they've.
Speaker 2: Been looking for this guy. And then there was a
Speaker 2: picture of the car that he was driving, the light
Speaker 2: blue Grand Marquee.
Speaker 1: A light blue Grand Marquee, which was the same type
Speaker 1: of car that their dad drove.
Speaker 2: You could see the car and you could see into
Speaker 2: the car from this helicopter shot, and there was a cup.
Speaker 2: It was an Emo's cup.
Speaker 1: Emo's Pizza was a family favorite. Keith had one of
Speaker 1: their branded cups. Marisa recalls his dad mug, the one
Speaker 1: he kept in his car.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, you're like, that's Dad's Emo's code.
Speaker 2: It was just too much of a coincidence to not
Speaker 2: be my dad's car. We're sitting here literally at this house,
Speaker 2: on the couch in the living room, watching the cable television,
Speaker 2: and we're just like, they have got to have the
Speaker 2: wrong person.
Speaker 1: In this moment, the girls were overwhelmed with shock and confusion,
Speaker 1: but there was one thing that at last knew for certain.
Speaker 2: This is going to change my life and my family
Speaker 2: dynamic forever. And I immediately started feeling like I was
Speaker 2: in survival mode and that I needed to figure out
Speaker 2: what was going to happen next, because everything that had
Speaker 2: existed prior in my reality is now I'm finding out untrue.
Speaker 1: Before long, the TV camera crews started to arrive outside
Speaker 1: the little shoe box house where Elise and Marissa lived.
Speaker 1: Because this story about a suburban dad who secretly resorted
Speaker 1: to a life of crime, this would soon be national news.
Speaker 1: Reporters from around the country would be looking for answers,
Speaker 1: and so too would Elise and Marissa. They wanted to
Speaker 1: know what exactly had their dad done, was he guilty,
Speaker 1: and if so, how had they not seen this coming?
Speaker 1: What did that mean about them as a family, because
Speaker 1: as of now, the girls had no parents in the picture,
Speaker 1: no one to pay the bills, no one to answer
Speaker 1: to but themselves. And this was just the beginning. Soon
Speaker 1: there would be a very public reckoning, including a trial
Speaker 1: and a lot of lingering questions about their father, a
Speaker 1: man they thought they knew. Coming up this season on
Speaker 1: Deep Cover, the Family Man.
Speaker 3: There was literally a feeling of relief when I knew
Speaker 3: that they didn't have a make on the vehicle, nor
Speaker 3: did they have a good picture of me that somebody
Speaker 3: that I knew would recognize me for the five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars reward or whatever it was at that particular time.
Speaker 2: And he showed me the surveillance tape and he's like,
Speaker 2: do you recognize this person?
Speaker 1: Is detalk to.
Speaker 2: John Bradley DSM three point eight, one of the same
Speaker 2: Lost Counting Police Department bureau crimes against persons. That is
Speaker 2: not the look of an innocent man.
Speaker 1: You can't put that many people in that much fear
Speaker 1: and not expect to pay a heavy price for it.
Speaker 3: It was an all out onslaught of police cars, helicopters,
Speaker 3: cars in front of me, cars behind me.
Speaker 2: It was a mess. It made me angry. I didn't
Speaker 2: trust anyone after that. What is actually reality is everyone
Speaker 2: lying to me about who they are.
Speaker 1: Deep Cover. The Family Man is produced by Isaac Carter
Speaker 1: and Amy Gains McQuaid. Our show is edited by Karen Chakerjee.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Sound design by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 1: Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 1: Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Anica Robbins. Our story consultant was James Foreman Junior.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Daphne chen Sonya Gerwit, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: Jake Flanagan, Corin Gilliard Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan and
Speaker 1: Greta Cone. I'm Jay Calburn