Speaker 1: Hello, Mary Cloude.
Speaker 2: But Jackie's not answering the phone, so you're college.
Speaker 1: That's why I was phoning. I know this sounds totally paranoid,
Speaker 1: but do you think has Jackie been avoiding my calls?
Speaker 2: She's avoiding your calls?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: She has life and children and maybe she wants to
Speaker 2: spend a few minutes.
Speaker 3: Well, she gives her children.
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You don't think this is like some kind of cry
Speaker 1: for help that she's kind of like isolating and everything. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I just had a couple questions that I was going
Speaker 1: to ask Jackie, but maybe since you guys are such
Speaker 1: good friends, maybe you can answer them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's literally four o three I need to leave,
Speaker 3: So this is okay.
Speaker 1: I was just going through my bar mitzvah rs vps
Speaker 1: and I noticed that Jackie did not attend.
Speaker 2: Do you know why did you read your barmst phone
Speaker 2: the same Saturday as a very popular kid and everyone
Speaker 2: went to his yes steadiers Eric Leidenheim.
Speaker 3: Where she was?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess at least she was at Temple from
Speaker 1: Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode.
Speaker 1: Justine right after the break, This is me, this is
Speaker 1: your daddy.
Speaker 2: Okay, I love you more than anything.
Speaker 4: Okay, You're the.
Speaker 2: Greatest thing, says Slice Bread. You're the greatest thing since
Speaker 2: can beer.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, Gary recorded himself onto a
Speaker 1: series of dictaphone cassettes, which he gave to his daughter Justine.
Speaker 1: Ever since Justine was a kid, he's worked as a
Speaker 1: mattress salesman. But he'd always tell Justine's stories about the
Speaker 1: wildlife he once led.
Speaker 3: And I kept saying to him, like, you need to
Speaker 3: write a memoir, Like you can't just end your life
Speaker 3: as a mattress salesman.
Speaker 1: Gary said there was no way he could write a memoir.
Speaker 1: He'd get too caught up in every little detail, and
Speaker 1: titles can be such a hassle. What would he even
Speaker 1: name it?
Speaker 3: And he goes, but I'll compromise. What if I'd just
Speaker 3: tell my life story into these tapes and you can
Speaker 3: have them.
Speaker 1: Gary's life, as he tells it, is one full of heroism, debauchery,
Speaker 1: and brushes with fame.
Speaker 3: He got into Georgetown from high school.
Speaker 2: My room was the same room that President Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: had when he was a freshman.
Speaker 3: But then he got there and realized it was all bullshit,
Speaker 3: dropped out.
Speaker 2: Of Georktown after getting straight a's the first semester there, was.
Speaker 3: Bored, so he transferred to Antioch.
Speaker 1: At Antioch in nineteen sixty nine, Gary fell in with
Speaker 1: a revolutionary crowd and began protesting Vietnam in a revolutionary way.
Speaker 3: Robbing banks and giving the money to anti war causes,
Speaker 3: and got in legal trouble because of that stuff. I
Speaker 3: mean seven years in the federal penitentiary. He says.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you the actual story of just
Speaker 2: say it with flowers, banded bank rapper. The only reason
Speaker 2: why I called that because the newspapers called.
Speaker 1: Gary says, sure he was a bank robber, but he
Speaker 1: never used a gun. Instead, he'd walk into the bank
Speaker 1: with just a bouquet of flowers and use hypnosis on
Speaker 1: the teller to get what he wanted, like.
Speaker 3: Using his powers of persuasion, which supposedly he learned on
Speaker 3: an ashram.
Speaker 1: Gary says he broke out of prison, auditioned for the
Speaker 1: game show Jeopardy, got on, won the game, and then
Speaker 1: got arrested. On the flight back home.
Speaker 2: I went seventeen thousand dollars, so I kicked ass and
Speaker 2: I want to fucking at the La fucking airport and
Speaker 2: they fucking drive me off the plane.
Speaker 1: Once he was back in prison, Gary says he won
Speaker 1: a prison bridge tournament with his partner H. R. Haldeman.
Speaker 2: Was HR. Haldeman, who was the chief of staff of
Speaker 2: the Nixon Weisshause, the second most powerful man of his country.
Speaker 2: Labor Day bridge tournament in September of nineteen seventy six
Speaker 2: at Lompoke Federal Penitentiary.
Speaker 1: The tapes are filled with hour after hour of stories
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Later on, I lived in the cave, I went to
Speaker 2: spy school, and I bought a horse.
Speaker 1: Gary stories were out there, but he had this magical
Speaker 1: quality that made anything seem possible. He could get justine
Speaker 1: tickets for sold out concerts, appointments with doctors who were
Speaker 1: booked solid.
Speaker 3: She idolized her dad, and all my friends knew how
Speaker 3: cool he was. I was always talking about my dad.
Speaker 3: It's so silly. I have this one memory of when
Speaker 3: I was in high school. So I was dreaming, like
Speaker 3: from my dad's point of view, that he was driving
Speaker 3: over a bridge, like on accident. And I was awakened
Speaker 3: from that dream by my dad calling me on my
Speaker 3: cell phone at like two in the morning and I
Speaker 3: picked it up and he had a dream that I
Speaker 3: was dying, and I couldn't wait to tell my friends
Speaker 3: because it was just like, we have this cosmic connection,
Speaker 3: me and my dad.
Speaker 1: But there are other things about Gary that, looking back
Speaker 1: on as an adult, Justine has a hard time reconciling
Speaker 1: with the dad she's so adored. For one, they're cosmic connection.
Speaker 1: Gary would often tell Justine that the two of them
Speaker 1: were different than everyone else, different than her mom, who
Speaker 1: divorced Gary when Justine was only three, and different from
Speaker 1: her brother Stephen. She and Gary were a gang of two.
Speaker 3: We are smarter, we get it. We were different from them.
Speaker 3: And then when I became a mother, I just felt like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of inexcusable. I was just able
Speaker 3: to zoom out a little bit and see some of
Speaker 3: the inappropriateness of things. He is an addict, and sometimes
Speaker 3: he would be completely wasted driving us, which was like
Speaker 3: scary for me. I remember crying a lot in the backseat.
Speaker 3: We would go to restaurants and there were times when
Speaker 3: the patrons of the restaurants would call the police because
Speaker 3: they were concerned about our welfare and I would be
Speaker 3: like making jokes to the waitress to try to like
Speaker 3: diffuse the situte. Like he would be really embarrassing and
Speaker 3: obviously drunk, and I would say, hey, can we get
Speaker 3: the guy some milk? You know, like just a nine
Speaker 3: year old trying the smooth things over.
Speaker 1: If the kids needed a babysitter, Gary would find the
Speaker 1: neighborhood teenager and pay them in marijuana. Other times he'd
Speaker 1: leave the kids to their own devices. Justine and her
Speaker 1: brother Stephen would wander over to the Lowe's hardware store
Speaker 1: beside their apartment complex and occupy themselves for hours playing
Speaker 1: hide and seek among the appliances. Justine says Gary would
Speaker 1: often drop her off at elementary school with her hair
Speaker 1: unbrushed and a half eaten Big Mac wrapped in tinfoil
Speaker 1: for lunch, and when middle school rolled around.
Speaker 3: He would like show up drunk in the cafeteria during
Speaker 3: lunchtime to come talk to me in.
Speaker 1: Did you at this point did your friends still think
Speaker 1: that he was cool?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 1: What was it that made them feel that way?
Speaker 3: He would bring me money, which was you know cool?
Speaker 3: When you're in seventh grade, he would crack a lot
Speaker 3: of like inappropriate jokes like he he would talk about
Speaker 3: sex like there are absolutely no boundaries in terms of
Speaker 3: what he felt was appropriate for kids. He just treated
Speaker 3: us like adults.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I'm a good parent. I'm sorry for
Speaker 2: everything I've done wrong. I'm sorry for well living the
Speaker 2: incredible lifestyle I live.
Speaker 1: At this point in her life, Justine knows her dad
Speaker 1: can be manipulative. She knows he's an addict, but she
Speaker 1: still wants to believe that's not all he is. A
Speaker 1: Part of her holds to that childhood belief that her
Speaker 1: father's life truly was the stuff of memoirs. Those stories
Speaker 1: feel like her inheritance. Yet at thirty one, she's forced
Speaker 1: to ask herself, are those unbelievable stories about robbing banks
Speaker 1: and winning Jeopardy so unbelievable because they're simply not to
Speaker 1: be believed.
Speaker 3: As I get older and my childhood begins to feel
Speaker 3: more and more alarming to me, like I realize that
Speaker 3: I have to know what was true, Like I have
Speaker 3: to know this is my dad we're talking about, and
Speaker 3: if none of it's true, then that's completely insane and
Speaker 3: I need to reevaluate everything. You know, if he's telling
Speaker 3: these same lies in great detail, over and over, like
Speaker 3: he's a fraud and a pathological liar. I just want
Speaker 3: to I need to know that I started to discover
Speaker 3: little things that he said that weren't so true, Like
Speaker 3: there have been so many times when he's told me
Speaker 3: that he's dying. I thought that he would never even
Speaker 3: see me graduate high school, like I always have thought he.
Speaker 1: Was dying after a lifetime of drug use and alcoholism.
Speaker 1: Gary is in consistently poor health. It's just not clear
Speaker 1: exactly how poor. Since he's been saying that he's dying
Speaker 1: for over a decade, the prognosis is murky, like Justine's
Speaker 1: fairly certain he does have hepatitis.
Speaker 3: Oh, diabetes too, he got diabetes and that you like, Yes,
Speaker 3: they had to like remove a toe, you know.
Speaker 1: And you've seen you've seen this, uh this missing toe.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was there in the hospital.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to have to ask that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I haven't seen the toe, but I've seen
Speaker 3: like the lack of a toe.
Speaker 1: I've seen the lack of a toe. Okay, Yes, Gary
Speaker 1: stuck to the same stories, often verbatim, for decades. So
Speaker 1: at this point Justine doesn't feel like sitting down with
Speaker 1: him to re examine, and requestion will yield new results.
Speaker 1: She needs a neutral outsider to train an objective eye
Speaker 1: onto Gary's stories and finally offer some clarity. And what
Speaker 1: and what do you? What do you want me? You
Speaker 1: want me to bring my powers of fact checking and
Speaker 1: research to bear.
Speaker 3: Or yes, you know, listen to the tapes. Maybe try
Speaker 3: and pull out a couple of claims that you think
Speaker 3: could be verifiable one way or the other. Yeah, start simple.
Speaker 3: Did he go to Georgetown?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Start there? Yeah, and then just see what we can
Speaker 3: verify and what we.
Speaker 1: Can't after the break the facts.
Speaker 2: Listen, I'm not making this shit up. I don't have to.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: These tapes sometimes are incoherent, and I'm sober, I'm half drunk,
Speaker 2: I'm totally drunk. But it's the real daddy.
Speaker 1: It's the real meat, I must confess. As I begin
Speaker 1: looking into Gary stories, I expect to quickly discover that
Speaker 1: all of his stories are lies. I've met plenty of
Speaker 1: Gary's in bars, on greyhound buses, and even at a
Speaker 1: few public radio conventions, charming liars who lie to self
Speaker 1: aggrandize or for no discernible reason at all. But as
Speaker 1: I start the process of fact checking disproving Gary unequivocally
Speaker 1: turns out to be more difficult than expected. I keep
Speaker 1: phoning and emailing Georgetown, but no one gets back to me.
Speaker 1: I look through an old Jeopardy archive, but it only
Speaker 1: goes back to nineteen eighty five, years after Gary would
Speaker 1: have been on the show. And while I do discover
Speaker 1: that H. R. Haldeman was an inmate at Lompoke Federal
Speaker 1: Penitentiary on the dates Gary said, I can find no
Speaker 1: record of a Labor Day prison bridge tournament. Finally, though,
Speaker 1: I alight upon one small claim I can weigh in
Speaker 1: on with confidence. So I phoned Justine with the news scared.
Speaker 1: Does it feel like stuff is getting real?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It's about time something got real.
Speaker 2: Now the most underrated man on the history of the world.
Speaker 2: Just so you know, a band called Buffalo Springfield has
Speaker 2: Neil Young in it. Also Richie Fury, by the way,
Speaker 2: who was a friend of mine in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Had Gary been friends with a member of Buffalo Springfield.
Speaker 1: I'd gone to Fire's website and filled out a contact
Speaker 1: for him that said it was for all inquiries. My inquiry,
Speaker 1: I explained, was that I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: whether someone's dad was a pathological liar, and so might
Speaker 1: mister Fiura be able to tell me if he remembered
Speaker 1: hanging out with a man named Gary in Yellow Springs,
Speaker 1: Ohio in the early nineteen seventies. The next day, I
Speaker 1: got an email back from Richie Fire's manager David. He
Speaker 1: said that Richie left Yellow Springs in nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: and does not recognize the name, so that that came
Speaker 1: back negative.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm really happy right now.
Speaker 3: Really? Why?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess it's the clarity. Wow, that's one. I
Speaker 4: feel a little bit lighter for some.
Speaker 1: Reason, and like, Okay, learning your father is a liar
Speaker 1: is never good news, but for just it's better than
Speaker 1: the years of not knowing. To misquote the most underrated
Speaker 1: band in history. Something's happening here and what it is
Speaker 1: is becoming increasingly clear.
Speaker 4: The clouds are opening up a little.
Speaker 1: Your dad did not know one of the members of
Speaker 1: Buffalo Springfield.
Speaker 4: And so the cloud's part And now I feel lighter.
Speaker 1: It's great Buffalo Springfield is still bringing joy and meaning
Speaker 1: to people. Justine mentions another musician story I should look into.
Speaker 1: There's a local celebrity blues guitarist named Jean Deear, who
Speaker 1: Gary always claimed to have discovered. They were great friends.
Speaker 1: Gary said, until a big falling out.
Speaker 2: Believe me, Christine, I've heard from so many people that
Speaker 2: I'm an asshole for ever putting any money into Jean Dear.
Speaker 2: I've sponsored him. I found him, pay for dental bills,
Speaker 2: pay for home bills, fight it so much for him.
Speaker 2: He just thinks he's God because he can play guitar.
Speaker 4: Well, he may be a good person to contact. I'm sure.
Speaker 4: I'm sure he's got information and stories.
Speaker 5: I would say as far as discovering me, I'd have
Speaker 5: to give him a thumbs up on that.
Speaker 1: This is Jean Dear, and gen Deere says Gary is
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Back when Jeane was twenty three years old,
Speaker 1: he and his band were playing a small Indianapolis bar
Speaker 1: one night when Gary just walked up to him.
Speaker 5: I'm on the stage. He got a fool stick under
Speaker 5: his arm, a drink in that hand, and then the
Speaker 5: other hand he's handed me for money. He goes, take this,
Speaker 5: take this. I'm his first time I re saw him,
Speaker 5: said take this. I want to record you guys. I
Speaker 5: want to make you famous.
Speaker 1: Gary financed and produced Jene's first album, and forty years on,
Speaker 1: Gene is still making a living from his music alone,
Speaker 1: all thanks to Gary, and Jane says. If there was
Speaker 1: any drama in their friendship, it played out on Gary's
Speaker 1: side alone.
Speaker 5: I hold it and in very high regard.
Speaker 1: I hadn't expected Gary's story about Gene to be true,
Speaker 1: and as I continue in my research, more of my
Speaker 1: expectations are upended. Hello, Hey, justin Hi, So a couple
Speaker 1: orders of business on the docket. I'd finally gotten an
Speaker 1: email back from the communications office at Georgetown, confirmed by
Speaker 1: our records. Said the email, Gary attended Georgetown in fall
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, And yet another surprise. Spend some time
Speaker 1: looking into this say It with Flowers bandit. This is
Speaker 1: what I was able to find. There was a robber.
Speaker 1: I discovered several articles in a small Washington paper called
Speaker 1: the Bellingham Herald, which covered the search for a say
Speaker 1: It with Flowers bank robber. The robber had come into
Speaker 1: a local bank wearing sunglasses, a pea coat, and a
Speaker 1: stocking cab covering his hair. He stole eight hundred and
Speaker 1: forty eight dollars and was never caught. There doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have been any hypnosis though, and the robber was armed,
Speaker 1: which is a significant departure from Gary's telling, But all
Speaker 1: the other details line up. The year is right, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, and the robber was Gary's age and Gary's height,
Speaker 1: and he'd been carrying a bundle of white carnations, just
Speaker 1: like Gary always said. Here's another telling detail. Have you
Speaker 1: ever known your father to wear a beard?
Speaker 4: Always?
Speaker 1: What color would you describe as beard?
Speaker 4: As being pictures I've seen from like the eighties where
Speaker 4: he had a very full, long, disgusting beard. It was
Speaker 4: kind of like a reddish brown, but like growing up,
Speaker 4: you know, he would keep it closer to the face
Speaker 4: so then it.
Speaker 3: Was like darker.
Speaker 1: Well, according to this article, bank personnel said he had
Speaker 1: quote British type reddish colored whiskers with about a five
Speaker 1: day growth.
Speaker 4: Like for me, this corroborates, like I feel like it
Speaker 4: was true.
Speaker 1: I mean, look like, is it not possible that he
Speaker 1: read about this bandit who has never caught and took
Speaker 1: credit for him. Maybe at the time. The reason I
Speaker 1: sound skeptical is because I am. The job I've been
Speaker 1: handed was to fact check, to allow the facts to
Speaker 1: speak for themselves, But over the course of my research
Speaker 1: something kept eating at me. I'm going to play something
Speaker 1: for you from my first conversation with Justine that initially
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to include.
Speaker 3: So this part, if it could please just remain off
Speaker 3: the record.
Speaker 1: Sure it's like really important, okay.
Speaker 3: But that might like might give you some insight into well.
Speaker 1: Originally this wasn't something Justine wanted to make public. She
Speaker 1: since reconsidered, so I'm sharing it with her. Permisis. When
Speaker 1: she was very young, around seven years old, Justine says
Speaker 1: her father told her a secret.
Speaker 3: He was like drunk and crying to me when I
Speaker 3: was younger, and he told me this, And he said
Speaker 3: to me that if I ever tell anyone that he
Speaker 3: would wring my neck in public. When he met my mom,
Speaker 3: she was pregnant with my brother, and my brother doesn't
Speaker 3: know that he like my brother doesn't know that he
Speaker 3: doesn't know who his dad.
Speaker 1: Is, that is, Stephen doesn't know that Gary is not
Speaker 1: his biological father.
Speaker 3: Like according to the public knowledge would be that my
Speaker 3: brother and I are siblings from my mom and dad,
Speaker 3: that we are their two children. But the truth is only.
Speaker 1: I am after his drunken confession. Gary never brought up
Speaker 1: Stephen's paternity again, and until Justine mentioned it to me,
Speaker 1: neither a. She she was terrified by her dad's threat,
Speaker 1: so all the way into adulthood, she never told anyone,
Speaker 1: not even her mom.
Speaker 3: And so my mom doesn't know that I know. Nobody
Speaker 3: knows that I know. And it's like kind of a
Speaker 3: painful thing because I feel like my brother should know.
Speaker 3: But I just keep, you know, I try not to
Speaker 3: think about it.
Speaker 1: And so the secret made a silent home inside her head,
Speaker 1: becoming a wedge between her and Stephen. But when Justine
Speaker 1: first laid all this out for me, I was incredulous,
Speaker 1: you know, given the fact that, like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of doubts surrounding the veracity of the things that your
Speaker 1: dad has told you. Have you ever questioned whether that
Speaker 1: was that was the truth?
Speaker 3: WHOA, No, I never have.
Speaker 1: I was thrown by Justine's reaction. If everything her father
Speaker 1: had ever told her was suspect, why wasn't this story
Speaker 1: about Stephen's paternity suspect too, especially since it seemed to
Speaker 1: belie an agenda. I mean, you're saying that he had
Speaker 1: all these techniques for like, you know, grouping yar you
Speaker 1: two together against the world and everyone. I mean, that
Speaker 1: seems to fit in with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's this is true. So there are a couple
Speaker 3: of reasons why I think I never questioned it.
Speaker 1: For one, Stephen is pale with bright red hair. Well
Speaker 1: Gary is dark complexion with dark hair. Plus garyot also
Speaker 1: revealed a secret about a cousin's paternity, which did turn
Speaker 1: out to be true. So from Justine's perspective, in the
Speaker 1: secret paternity department, Gary was batting a thousand. But from
Speaker 1: my perspective, none of that is definitive. So as I
Speaker 1: updated Justine on Buffalo, Springfield and Georgetown and the say
Speaker 1: It with Flowers bandit, I continue to obsess over the
Speaker 1: story of her brother, Stephen's paternity. You have any further
Speaker 1: thoughts about the business with your brother? Gary had saddled
Speaker 1: six year old Justine with an albatross of shame and
Speaker 1: secrecy that adult Justine still couldn't laid to rest.
Speaker 4: All of these couple decades, it's been like, number one,
Speaker 4: do not do that.
Speaker 3: What's work?
Speaker 1: The secret she'd been entrusted with maybe wasn't even true,
Speaker 1: So to me, proving it false would relieve a huge burden. Plus,
Speaker 1: unlike some of Gary's other stories, there wasn't space for ambiguity.
Speaker 1: He either was Stephen's dad or he wasn't, so proving
Speaker 1: the truth about Stephen's paternity would inevitably shed light onto
Speaker 1: everything else. Stephen's paternity was the master key. I ask
Speaker 1: Justine if she's ever considered talking to her mom about it,
Speaker 1: to see if the story is true. It's a new
Speaker 1: idea for Justine, one that takes time to process. Until now.
Speaker 1: She's always assumed she'd keep the secret her whole life,
Speaker 1: But I keep nudging her. Have you continued to think about,
Speaker 1: like talking with your mother? In February, Justine absolutely did
Speaker 1: not want to talk to her mom.
Speaker 4: It's really not my place.
Speaker 1: But in March she was leaning towards maybe talking to
Speaker 1: her mom.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm an adult now, so it's not like
Speaker 4: I could get in trouble for bringing it up to her.
Speaker 1: In April, though, she was back to not wanting to
Speaker 1: talk to her mom.
Speaker 4: I don't want to devastate her unveiling a secret that
Speaker 4: she's been trying to keep from me, her whole life,
Speaker 4: from everyone.
Speaker 1: But then three months after our first conversation, Justine realizes
Speaker 1: there might be a workaround a way to fact check
Speaker 1: her father's story about Stephen's paternity without confronting her mother.
Speaker 1: In reevaluating her past, A dormant memory is rattled loose
Speaker 1: years ago conversation that took place at her mom's house
Speaker 1: with her cousin Rihanna.
Speaker 4: She had said something to me about Stephen's real dad.
Speaker 4: I think I did block that out. I am really
Speaker 4: honestly just now remembering that this happened. I think we
Speaker 4: were looking through old photo albums that she had brought over,
Speaker 4: Like I think maybe there was a picture of him
Speaker 4: in this photo album. She was like, and this is,
Speaker 4: you know, Stephen's real dad. Really don't remember many details
Speaker 4: about that conversation other than that and I and I
Speaker 4: was kind of uncomfortable, and I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, like, oh, okay, cool, next picture.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: I can ask her about it if you want. Hello, Hey, hey,
Speaker 4: it's just doing.
Speaker 1: Justine told Rihanna she wanted to ask her something concerning
Speaker 1: their family history.
Speaker 4: Has to do with Stephen. Do you know what I'm
Speaker 4: talking about? I'm bosing what you're talking about. You and
Speaker 4: told me, am, okay. So when I was a lot younger,
Speaker 4: like seven or eight. My dad told me that he's
Speaker 4: not actually Stephen's dad. Correct. Okay, So when you say correct,
Speaker 4: what does that mean? I mean that he's not. I
Speaker 4: was told to keep my mouth shut, so was I Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So who told you my parents? Okay?
Speaker 1: It seems like it's not just Rihanna who knows the truth.
Speaker 1: Justine's entire extended family does too.
Speaker 4: Do you remember the Kirbys or you guys? You probably
Speaker 4: you guys weren't around them, were you?
Speaker 1: Rianna and Justine are first cousins, but while Rihanna grew
Speaker 1: up with a family called the Kirby's, Justine has no
Speaker 1: recollection of any Kirbys. Rihanna explains why, and, in keeping
Speaker 1: with the way she's been explaining everything so far, she's.
Speaker 4: Blunt to my knowledge. What happened is your mom was
Speaker 4: with one of them, and he didn't want to further
Speaker 4: a relationship with your mom, so when she got pregnant,
Speaker 4: she told her he didn't want anything to do with her. WHOA,
Speaker 4: and does he know that Stephen exists?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Well, I've always just felt like it's not my place
Speaker 4: to say anything to anyone if it's not you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it would devastate Stephen. I do too.
Speaker 1: Stephen is known as the sensitive one in the family.
Speaker 1: Although he's fifteen months older than Justine, he's always felt
Speaker 1: more like a younger brother to her. As a kid,
Speaker 1: he was given to outbursts and tears, which made him
Speaker 1: an easy target for bullies. Justine remembers leaping to his
Speaker 1: defense and shouting down his tormentor. Just like when they
Speaker 1: were kids, she still wants to protect her brother. As
Speaker 1: the cousins sit in silence, trying to decide what to
Speaker 1: do next, Rihanna offers to send some pictures of the Kirbies.
Speaker 4: I think, get them to you now. Okay, you're on
Speaker 4: Wi Fi, right, mm hmm okay, hang I just got
Speaker 4: the Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there he is Stephen's biological father. He has
Speaker 1: red hair, a red goatee, and is the spitting image
Speaker 1: of Justine's.
Speaker 4: Brother that looks like exactly like him. And even in
Speaker 4: the one with like that red shirt or whatever, the
Speaker 4: orange shirt, that's like a face that he makes. Yes, sorry,
Speaker 4: I'm just like staring. Wow. Well, thank you for the
Speaker 4: pictures and the info. I mean, I would definitely.
Speaker 3: Call that confirmation.
Speaker 1: Once Justine hangs up with Rihanna. She and I talk. Justinekay,
Speaker 1: how are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm okay. It's a little painful to look right at
Speaker 4: the situation, just like talking about this secret. I feel
Speaker 4: a little bit guilty, so do I.
Speaker 1: Justine in fact checked Gary's paternity claims, not because she
Speaker 1: doubted them, but because I had I'm the one who
Speaker 1: pushed this thing forward, but Gary wasn't lying.
Speaker 4: It actually does kind of relieve me to maybe come
Speaker 4: to the conclusion that a lot of the stories were
Speaker 4: based in truth. Mm hmm, Like it makes me feel like, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's my dad.
Speaker 1: He's an alcoholic, Justine says, and a manipulator, but he's
Speaker 1: not a liar, or at least not a total liar.
Speaker 1: So having arrived at this conclusion, Justine and I decide
Speaker 1: to shelve the mission. She feels like the next step
Speaker 1: would be to talk to her mom, and she's not
Speaker 1: ready to do that yet. About a month later, I
Speaker 1: reach out to Justine to see what's new, and it
Speaker 1: turns out a lot is new.
Speaker 4: So gosh, this has been so crazy.
Speaker 6: So my brother came over the week before Stephen had
Speaker 6: come over to put up some outside lights, and while
Speaker 6: he was there, he asked, Hey, so what's going on
Speaker 6: with that whole endeavor to fact check dad?
Speaker 1: And Justine panicked, I was not prepared for this question.
Speaker 4: I hadn't thought up, like what was I going to
Speaker 4: tell him about why we were shelving it? So he
Speaker 4: kind of caught me off guard.
Speaker 1: She knew she couldn't say, well, one of the things
Speaker 1: we fact checked was your paternity, and since I didn't
Speaker 1: want you to know that dad isn't your dad, that
Speaker 1: kind of ended things. But instead of just making some excuse,
Speaker 1: she was cryptic and vague, almost like she wanted Stephen
Speaker 1: to keep digging. There's this one thing she told him
Speaker 1: that I realized I wasn't ready to talk about publicly.
Speaker 4: And he said, well, you have to tell me, and
Speaker 4: I said, look at me, you need to drop it.
Speaker 4: You need to just accept the fact right now that
Speaker 4: I'm never ever going to tell you, and he goes, am,
Speaker 4: I adopted.
Speaker 7: So then he goes home and he says to my mom, am,
Speaker 7: I adopted, and she's like, where is this com what
Speaker 7: are you talking about?
Speaker 4: But then he asked my mom's parents. She's like going
Speaker 4: around asking the whole family and I adopted, and then
Speaker 4: he comes back to me and he said, just seeing
Speaker 4: I think I want to do like a twenty three
Speaker 4: year or something. Everyone's being weird when I asked this question.
Speaker 1: Then, early one morning, while feeding her son oatmeal, Justine
Speaker 1: received a call from her mother, who wanted to know
Speaker 1: why Stephen was asking all these questions.
Speaker 4: So I just said to her, like, do you want
Speaker 4: to talk about this now? And she paused for a
Speaker 4: long time, and she goes, I guess so, And I said,
Speaker 4: I've known the big secret since I was six, And
Speaker 4: then we just started talking about it.
Speaker 1: They decided to meet for lunch, where they continued to
Speaker 1: talk about it for two hours.
Speaker 4: Even the simplest of interactions with her before this, there
Speaker 4: was a level of like falsehood. I guess. I just
Speaker 4: really felt like I was able to be myself for
Speaker 4: the first time.
Speaker 1: Together, Justine and her mom, Lynn went through the whole story.
Speaker 1: Lynn explained how as a teenager, she hooked up with
Speaker 1: a childhood crush, a boy named Brian Kirby that she'd
Speaker 1: been in love with since she was thirteen. While Lynn
Speaker 1: had a curfew in rules set by her parents, Brian
Speaker 1: was a free spirit who could stay out all night.
Speaker 1: Their dates were basically impromptu makeout sessions and Lynn's backyard
Speaker 1: treehouse where she was out of view from her parents,
Speaker 1: And then at seventeen, she got pregnant. Brian ignored her calls.
Speaker 1: Then Gary appeared. Lynn was working at her parents' gas station,
Speaker 1: visibly pregnant when one day Gary drove up. The two
Speaker 1: of them started flirting, and a few months later Gary proposed.
Speaker 1: He promised Lynn that he would raise the baby as
Speaker 1: his own. Lynn thinks he wanted to be a father
Speaker 1: even more than he wanted her, so when they eventually
Speaker 1: got divorced, Gary panicked that he might lose the kids.
Speaker 1: He threatened Lynn, telling her he'd ever killed if she
Speaker 1: ever revealed the truth about Stephen. Lynn says Gary knew
Speaker 1: enough shady people to make it happen. For Lynn, that
Speaker 1: threat was enough to keep her from ever telling a soul.
Speaker 1: She was just as afraid of Gary as Justine was.
Speaker 1: Lynn is always believed that one day she would talk
Speaker 1: to Stephen about it. She just needed to wait until
Speaker 1: Gary was dead so she'd be safe. But with Stephen
Speaker 1: asking so many questions, Justine doesn't think they can afford
Speaker 1: to wait. So what began as a need for Justine
Speaker 1: to know the truth of who her father really is
Speaker 1: has become a need for her brother to know the
Speaker 1: truth of who his father really isn't. Justine convinces her
Speaker 1: mother that, despite their fear, they owe it to Stephen,
Speaker 1: and together they devise a plan and set a date.
Speaker 1: And while they know telling Stephen the truth will have consequences,
Speaker 1: what they don't know yet is just how big those
Speaker 1: consequences will be.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's end this and go on to the next side.
Speaker 1: On next week's Heavyweight Side B. This episode of Heavyweight
Speaker 1: was produced by Senior producer Khalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane,
Speaker 1: Mohemy mcgawker, and me Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Emily Condon,
Speaker 1: Alex Bloomberg, Sharon Mashihi, Connie Walker, and Mary Cloude. Bobby
Speaker 1: Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 1: John K. Sampson, Ben Aliman, and Bobby Lord. Additional music
Speaker 1: credits can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com
Speaker 1: slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by The weaker Thans
Speaker 1: courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight
Speaker 1: or email us at heavyweight at give fletmedia dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with Part two and a
Speaker 1: special message from my friend Jackie. Jackie, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: please pick up the phone next week