Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we've used voice actors for Leslie and
Speaker 2: her parents, as well as her mysterious lawyer, Eric t
Speaker 2: Weiss and his staff.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry that now you'll never really know what was
Speaker 3: real or not.
Speaker 4: Leslie wrote that in her divorce letter to my brother Greg.
Speaker 5: It's like she was toying with him.
Speaker 3: You'll never really know what was real or not.
Speaker 4: Leslie does draw blurry lines between fantasy and reality. She
Speaker 4: just probably wouldn't have expected anyone to start reading between
Speaker 4: those lines. But that's what I'm doing now, And I've
Speaker 4: uncovered what I reckon is the strangest part of this
Speaker 4: whole story. I've found something completely bizarre. And all those
Speaker 4: emails in the box of Leslie Docks that my dad kept,
Speaker 4: they reveal Leslie had a book deal with a big
Speaker 4: time publisher.
Speaker 5: To tell the story of her life.
Speaker 3: Well, I am going to start on a book next week.
Speaker 6: He believes you would be Greek at scriptwriting.
Speaker 3: Oh my head is spinning.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Unravel Season four. I'm Ollie Ward's and this
Speaker 4: is Snowball. So Leslie was writing an autobiography, like some
Speaker 4: kind of memoir of her crazy life. There's heaps of
Speaker 4: details about it in her email and who's handling the
Speaker 4: ins and outs of Leslie's book deal? Once again, enter
Speaker 4: Leslie's lawyer, her old mate, Eric t Weiss.
Speaker 6: As your lawyer.
Speaker 4: I am starting to this is the Eric who wrote
Speaker 4: a letter to Kiwibank confirming that Leslie had a big
Speaker 4: trust fund, and he happens to be the namesake of
Speaker 4: the great Harry Houdini. Eric sends emails to Leslie as
Speaker 4: he negotiates her book deal.
Speaker 6: If you are willing to sign a contract that they
Speaker 6: will be your publisher for ten years, this will allot
Speaker 6: you to begin on the other three books we have
Speaker 6: talked about, and you will only be on yours and
Speaker 6: Simon and Schuster's schedule.
Speaker 4: And this is where the extra glitz really starts getting sprinkled.
Speaker 4: Eric t Weiss isn't just a financial kind of dude
Speaker 4: who deals with trust fund admin. He's apparently a big
Speaker 4: shot entertainment lawyer. That's his main job.
Speaker 6: I am an entertainment attorney that has been in the
Speaker 6: business for over twenty years and have worked with many
Speaker 6: production companies, celebrities and musicians.
Speaker 4: I guess that explains why Eric runs into so many
Speaker 4: famous names like in that note, Leslie maid in her
Speaker 4: travel diary that she left a n N ZED.
Speaker 3: May three, New York. Eric met George Clooney, Julia Roberts
Speaker 3: private jet.
Speaker 4: From Dallas, movie stars and private jets. I'd like to
Speaker 4: imagine Eric t Weiss is like a Smami La Shobas
Speaker 4: type guy, kind of arrogant like Ari Gold from Entourage,
Speaker 4: but shonky like Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad. I imagine
Speaker 4: him in a suit with a loud, colorful tie, and
Speaker 4: I reckon he's got a combover.
Speaker 6: I have not been in my office during the days
Speaker 6: due to the fact that I have been defending a
Speaker 6: celebrity case. Right now, it is confidential, so I cannot
Speaker 6: say who.
Speaker 5: So why is the liberty lawyer working with Leslie?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 4: Well, from what I can see in these emails, Eric
Speaker 4: claims to be lining Leslie up to be as rich
Speaker 4: and famous as the rest of his crowd.
Speaker 6: Until you become famous. You are a nobody in this industry,
Speaker 6: but you already know that it will be worth it
Speaker 6: one day, Leslie, So do not get depressed, continue to
Speaker 6: be strong and remember what the end result will bring.
Speaker 6: You will be financially secure for life and you'll be
Speaker 6: able to buy your dad that hummer.
Speaker 5: You keep talking about.
Speaker 4: Eric is really encouraging to Leslie, like he's beyond what
Speaker 4: you would expect the lawyer to be, which is good because,
Speaker 4: as Leslie explains to her parents, writing a book is hard.
Speaker 3: The whole last ten chapters of the book that was
Speaker 3: redone has been denied due to the fact that it
Speaker 3: is too similar to a story that was written by
Speaker 3: an author about ten years ago. On my head is spinning.
Speaker 3: But Eric said that lawyers are constantly finding books that
Speaker 3: are too similar and must have avoid a lawsuit. That
Speaker 3: is why they are hired as in house attorneys. He said,
Speaker 3: it happens all the time, and we must rewrite it
Speaker 3: in a different wording.
Speaker 4: So when I read these emails about Leslie getting a
Speaker 4: memoir published, I thought, well, that takes things up a notch.
Speaker 5: But that's not even the big picture.
Speaker 4: Because that book about the story of Leslie's life was
Speaker 4: supposedly going to be made into a movie.
Speaker 6: Sony cannot go forward with the movie until the book
Speaker 6: has been released. I have recommended that the film in
Speaker 6: Sun Valley, Idaho, which shows the same picturesque setting, is Toho.
Speaker 4: I just can't believe how deep this world goes. So
Speaker 4: we've got Eric t Weiss Esquire talking through the details
Speaker 4: of a movie about Leslie based on a book by Leslie.
Speaker 4: And that's not all. Leslie told her parents that for
Speaker 4: the big screen version, a big name was lined up
Speaker 4: to play her.
Speaker 3: The movie script has been accepted. In Flying Colors, Alissa
Speaker 3: Milano has signed on.
Speaker 4: Pretty good casting. Remember Alyssa Milano from Charmed or as
Speaker 4: the daughter Nie goes on a rampage FOURG commando. She
Speaker 4: is long dark here like Leslie's good choice.
Speaker 3: Alissa Milano will be an Enza in November. She's going
Speaker 3: to hang out with me for a week or two
Speaker 3: to know my personality. Study it, so I'll have to
Speaker 3: be on vacation from Greg and his family at that time.
Speaker 3: I hope we have a house by then so I
Speaker 3: do not have to sneak around his family. Eric said
Speaker 3: that I will be getting paid starting July.
Speaker 4: Sounds like some real method acting from Melissa Milano taking
Speaker 4: on the role of Leslie. Ever since I read these emails,
Speaker 4: I can't stop wondering what a movie about Leslie would
Speaker 4: be like.
Speaker 5: In a world where one woman's fantasies come to life.
Speaker 3: With cravat Zapp Franzality.
Speaker 1: This Summer and Missa Milano is Leslie Minuchian and the
Speaker 1: Girl with the Dragonfly tattoo.
Speaker 4: So obviously that movie never came out because it's fictional,
Speaker 4: fictional in the sense that it didn't exist. That goes
Speaker 4: for the book too. I got in touch with Simon
Speaker 4: and Schuster, the book publisher. I was curious, even though
Speaker 4: I knew what they would say, and yeah, they've never
Speaker 4: heard of Leslie Minuchian or Eric t weiss Esquire.
Speaker 5: I also hit up Alissa Milano's manager. Ditto.
Speaker 4: Alissa's manager actually told me after I called and explained
Speaker 4: all this to her. Both she and Alyssa gogoled Leslie.
Speaker 4: They found something about a restaurant and Alissa Milano was like,
Speaker 4: I was supposed to play a chef. So it's all
Speaker 4: a fantasy. But the amazing thing about this bizarro world
Speaker 4: is just how detailed it is. There's this whole cast
Speaker 4: of characters. It's not just Eric, there's ghost writers, agents, publishers.
Speaker 4: There's even drama between these people.
Speaker 6: We are having legal problems with James. He is not
Speaker 6: satisfied with any of the book and is threatening to
Speaker 6: sue Simon and Schuster if they do not present better writing.
Speaker 5: Can you believe this jerk?
Speaker 6: He has nothing to do with it besides his name,
Speaker 6: and he is the one making threats as your lawyer,
Speaker 6: I am starting to make threats also.
Speaker 4: Eric has so much going on making things happened for
Speaker 4: Leslie that he has his own team around him.
Speaker 6: Hi, Leslie, hope this email finds you well. At the moment,
Speaker 6: I am back in Bangkok, still dealing with legal issues.
Speaker 6: Charlie rang me last night and things are changing again.
Speaker 6: I realized that you were being tossed around and I
Speaker 6: wish I could make this process easier on you. As
Speaker 6: of now, you are to remain in the UK, and
Speaker 6: Alyssa is going to meet you in London for the
Speaker 6: entire month of June to get to know you personally.
Speaker 4: I think Charlie is one of his assistants, and sometimes
Speaker 4: Eric gets so busy that another assistant, Jackie, takes control
Speaker 4: of his Gmail account.
Speaker 7: Good afternoon, missus Minukian, and mister Minukian. I'm writing on
Speaker 7: behalf of Eric. He has had to fly out for
Speaker 7: an important meeting and had hoped to be back by
Speaker 7: this afternoon, but is delayed until tomorrow morning. Thank you
Speaker 7: for your patience. Jackie EA for Eric Weiss.
Speaker 4: Then Eric even has to come back in and explain
Speaker 4: where Jackie is gone.
Speaker 6: Dear Betty and Andy, I am very sorry for not
Speaker 6: being in touch sooner. Everything here has been very hectic.
Speaker 6: I have been handling legal problems and Jackie is going
Speaker 6: to be out for at least three months. She has
Speaker 6: had to have a hysterectomy.
Speaker 4: So many specific details a hysteric to me. It's like
Speaker 4: a soap opera in Leslie's inbox. This isn't where I
Speaker 4: thought this trail would take me, but I'm kind of
Speaker 4: into learning about these characters. Leslie even has a ghostwriter
Speaker 4: called Scooter.
Speaker 3: Scooter came in to see me last night. It was
Speaker 3: like old times seeing it at the bar. He really
Speaker 3: has a great personality once you get to know him.
Speaker 3: After a couple of glass support, he was talking to
Speaker 3: all the other people around him.
Speaker 4: Scooter was helping to write Leslie's book and movie screen.
Speaker 4: He was apparently even in New Zealand with Leslie, but
Speaker 4: of course Grig never met him. That's a shame because
Speaker 4: Scooter sounded like he was having a good time.
Speaker 3: I spoke to Scooter. He is loving and sad. He said,
Speaker 3: it is starting to get cold, winter is approaching, but
Speaker 3: everyone is so friendly and helpful. He's already made a
Speaker 3: couple of friends, and he is shocked that no one
Speaker 3: is pretentious or snobby. All classes of people hang out
Speaker 3: with each other. He said, there is no elite crowd.
Speaker 3: He also said that he has never slept so peaceful,
Speaker 3: and it is very quiet around his home. He has
Speaker 3: never been so at ease with himself. He sounded so
Speaker 3: calm and clear hated. He asked about you and Dad
Speaker 3: and says hello.
Speaker 4: I keep asking myself are these characters too detailed to
Speaker 4: be fake? And I guess that's the purpose of all
Speaker 4: these subplots and characters. There's just so much banal detail.
Speaker 4: It's hard to imagine someone making it up. If Leslie
Speaker 4: was creating all these characters, then in a weird way,
Speaker 4: it's almost like she was writing a book. But it's
Speaker 4: just a fictional world created in emails.
Speaker 5: We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: So the big question about all of this book and
Speaker 4: movie stuff is why as detailed and complex as this
Speaker 4: fake world is. I reckon Leslie probably invented it to
Speaker 4: serve a few purposes. Firstly, most of these emails, in
Speaker 4: some way or another are about money, like here, Eric
Speaker 4: is hustling royalty payments for Leslie.
Speaker 6: I have notified Sony that you are to receive income
Speaker 6: starting June fifteenth at the amount of thirty five hundred
Speaker 6: dollars per month. And I have sent a written threat
Speaker 6: to Simon and Schuster that you are to receive two
Speaker 6: thousand dollars a month until the book is finished.
Speaker 4: It looks like Eric's emails are a useful way for
Speaker 4: Leslie to show people that she's either going to have
Speaker 4: some big cash money payments coming in any day now,
Speaker 4: or to explain why some money hasn't arrived. And then
Speaker 4: these emails afforded on to whoever Leslie owes money to,
Speaker 4: and sort of sadly, the main target of a lot
Speaker 4: of the smoke and mirrors seems to be Leslie's own parents.
Speaker 4: Eric even writes directly to them.
Speaker 5: Hi, Andrew and Bettie.
Speaker 6: It has been over two months since our last emails
Speaker 6: to one another. I hope that everything is all right.
Speaker 6: It has been a long journey for me in Bangkok,
Speaker 6: an experience I hope to forget. My stomach is still
Speaker 6: groaning from the food, and I have actually lost quite
Speaker 6: a bit of wheat.
Speaker 4: That's the big shot lawyer telling his client's parents about
Speaker 4: his travel stomach. Aside from the small talk, one of
Speaker 4: the main things Eric emails Betty and Andrew about is
Speaker 4: royalty money. Royalty money they're expecting from these book and
Speaker 4: movie deals. And that's convenient because we know that around
Speaker 4: this time they said that they were in deep shit
Speaker 4: debt and Leslie owed them money. But when these royalties
Speaker 4: don't come in, Eric has to explain.
Speaker 6: Leslie has been on my tail about the pre royalty
Speaker 6: payments from Simon and Schuster and Sony. I have your
Speaker 6: scan of bank details and I am working on this
Speaker 6: as fast as possible.
Speaker 4: Eric is like a buffer between Leslie and her parents.
Speaker 4: If money owed to Leslie's parents is delayed, Eric has
Speaker 4: a good reason or he steps in when she's not
Speaker 4: covering a bill. Like while Leslie was in New Zealand,
Speaker 4: she had a speedboat in storage. Back in America, fees
Speaker 4: were racking up and her parents started getting calls about
Speaker 4: all the bills.
Speaker 5: So Eric comes to the rescue.
Speaker 6: Thank you for following up with the boat. In Leslie's defense,
Speaker 6: I know that they were not and kept up to
Speaker 6: date on the situation. We are just not sure who
Speaker 6: it was that fetes the info on the storage fees.
Speaker 6: But who I beat a dead horse. Let's just get
Speaker 6: to the root of the problem and move on.
Speaker 4: As well as explaining money stuff to Biddy and Andrew,
Speaker 4: Eric serves a purpose of weirdly vouching for Leslie.
Speaker 6: Have a nice night, and I look forward to settling
Speaker 6: this matter for you and Andrew. And let's leave Leslie
Speaker 6: in New Zealand where no one can hurt her or
Speaker 6: her character. She is a great girl who is just
Speaker 6: too nice and too trusting. But these are the qualities
Speaker 6: that people love most about her.
Speaker 4: I guess if you have a character covering for you
Speaker 4: for not paying bills and stuff, why not have them
Speaker 4: pump up your rebox and talk you up as a
Speaker 4: person too. Wherever in the world there is trouble with Leslie,
Speaker 4: Eric swings in with an explanation.
Speaker 6: Lake Tahoe, next to Hawaii is one of the the
Speaker 6: most corrupt communities I have done research on.
Speaker 4: Maybe that takes the heat off Leslie when her parents
Speaker 4: hear bits and pieces contradicting her stories and throughout it
Speaker 4: all it does look like at least Betty thinks Eric
Speaker 4: and his assistants and all the book chat and even
Speaker 4: Eric's Bangkok travel gut are real. Here's what Betty wrote
Speaker 4: back to Jackie.
Speaker 8: So glad that Eric is okay. If you can say
Speaker 8: what he is experiencing is okay, maybe he's the one
Speaker 8: who should write a book. Well, hope he gets back soon,
Speaker 8: safe and sound. Again. Thanks for all your help and
Speaker 8: keeping us up to date.
Speaker 5: Betty.
Speaker 4: I feel like every time I read through these emails,
Speaker 4: Dad cut and paste it into word docs, I figure
Speaker 4: out another piece of the puzzle. The other day, as
Speaker 4: I read them again, I started to realize something. A
Speaker 4: lot of these emails are directly between Eric and Leslie's
Speaker 4: pair parents for ages. I just figured that they had
Speaker 4: ended up in this box because Betty must have forwarded
Speaker 4: them to Leslie or she was c seed. Dad usually
Speaker 4: didn't take screenshots. He just copypasted the text, so there's
Speaker 4: often only from and two names and a date. But
Speaker 4: now I'm thinking, hang on, it's weird. How many of
Speaker 4: these direct emails between Eric and Betty and Andrew we have.
Speaker 4: How did my dad see these ones in Leslie's account?
Speaker 4: Were they really all forwarded on to Leslie. Sometimes they're
Speaker 4: even talking about Leslie and these emails, like here Eric
Speaker 4: tells Betty and Andrew he's not going to make it
Speaker 4: to the event in New Zealand.
Speaker 5: I am not.
Speaker 6: Sure I will make it for Leslie's wedding. I have
Speaker 6: not told her yet since I do not want to
Speaker 6: disappoint her.
Speaker 5: Am I missing something?
Speaker 4: So I asked Dad, there's emails that are directly from
Speaker 4: Eric to Leslie's parents, and it's like he's not on CC.
Speaker 5: So I don't understand how you have those emails.
Speaker 9: I was also getting emails. I was spying, if you like,
Speaker 9: on Eric's emails as well as Leslie's. How did that happen?
Speaker 9: Because it's at one stage this is when I started
Speaker 9: thinking that Leslie seemed to be using Eric as her
Speaker 9: kind of alter ego or something. And I started to
Speaker 9: think about that, and then I was thinking, well, if
Speaker 9: she is Eric, then maybe I can look at Eric's
Speaker 9: emails with her password.
Speaker 5: And I did and it worked. Why didn't you tell
Speaker 5: me this when we were talking about the hair? Sure
Speaker 5: I told you this.
Speaker 4: He definitely didn't. I think I would remember that when
Speaker 4: I went back to New Zealand to start this investigation.
Speaker 4: I asked Dad to step me through everything chronologically. We
Speaker 4: mustn't have got to that bit. I'm sure, Tod, like
Speaker 4: I've been through this whole thing trying to find the
Speaker 4: real Eric t Weiss and the dude in Michigan and
Speaker 4: all that stuff. How long after you you contacted him
Speaker 4: and how long after you started accessing.
Speaker 5: Before I twigged.
Speaker 9: I can remember where I was in their basement there
Speaker 9: and it was a bit of a breakthrough moment, as
Speaker 9: you can imagine. And I still find it odd that
Speaker 9: she went to the great lengths as she did if
Speaker 9: in fact Eric is her that his emails to her.
Speaker 9: He emailed her as well, of course, giving her advice,
Speaker 9: and she emailed him telling him how terrible things were
Speaker 9: and blah blah blah. And I thought Eric did exist,
Speaker 9: and it wasn't. And I still wouldn't write that off.
Speaker 9: Even though the password seems to hang about us being
Speaker 9: the same.
Speaker 4: So you're saying that the password that you were using
Speaker 4: for Leslie's emails is exactly the same password that logs
Speaker 4: into the account for Eric t Weiss, which is a
Speaker 4: Gmail account. So it's the same password, two different accounts.
Speaker 5: Yes, And the fact is, oh my god, I.
Speaker 4: Just I can't believe that I've been I've that I
Speaker 4: haven't nailed this yet. You know, I've been working on
Speaker 4: this thing for eight months and it turns out that
Speaker 4: you had access to Eric t Weiss's in box as
Speaker 4: well as Leslie's.
Speaker 5: Like, don't you think that's crucial? Like, I'm sure, I
Speaker 5: told you, I'm sure.
Speaker 9: I am just absolutely like obviously you didn't get it.
Speaker 4: Leslie is Eric. I am just like, I don't even
Speaker 4: know what to make of this whole thing.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: It's crazier than I thought it was, so there it is.
Speaker 4: Eric and Leslie had the same email password and.
Speaker 5: The Great Houdini.
Speaker 4: After reading all these emails over and over, wondering about
Speaker 4: whether the people in them are real or not, I
Speaker 4: kind of feel like I know the gang, Eric Jackie
Speaker 4: Scooter Dad says. The emails from Eric's account slowed down.
Speaker 4: After a while, Eric and the Gang's story started to
Speaker 4: come to an end.
Speaker 6: I am working a long hours trying to get these
Speaker 6: contracts back in place. Not to mention, I am getting
Speaker 6: tired of the music scene. It is grueling hours. Most
Speaker 6: of the bands that I represent are immature punks whose
Speaker 6: heads are up their weirs. I found out today that
Speaker 6: Jackie has been put on permanent disability and will definitely
Speaker 6: not be coming back to work, So Scooter is going
Speaker 6: to help me out three days a week.
Speaker 4: Jackie the EA's hysterectomy mustn't have gone well. Okay, So
Speaker 4: now we know pretty much for certain that this whole
Speaker 4: world really is in Leslie's imagination. So if Leslie created
Speaker 4: and played the role of Eric and Jackie and Scooter
Speaker 4: and probably more I don't even know about, it just
Speaker 4: seems so weird the lengths she went to to deceive
Speaker 4: her own parents. At the very least, Betty seems totally
Speaker 4: convinced that Eric is real and to be. Other people
Speaker 4: were convinced by Leslie's world along the way, even Kiwi back.
Speaker 4: It feels like Leslie herself might be so far into
Speaker 4: this fantasy that she sort of believes in it, or
Speaker 4: at least she uses the characters to create an ideal
Speaker 4: version of herself and a world that she had liked
Speaker 4: to live in.
Speaker 6: Scooter feels that you have what it takes to be
Speaker 6: a wonderful writer. He believes you would be great. That's scriptwriting.
Speaker 4: It makes me think, am I trying to understand something
Speaker 4: more complicated with Leslie than where I first started. Leslie
Speaker 4: doesn't just use fake documents. It looks like Leslie is
Speaker 4: prepared to use fake personas. So tracking her down and
Speaker 4: working out what's real and what's not could be more
Speaker 4: difficult than I thought. But I have to give it
Speaker 4: a go. I need to get onto Leslie's home turf.
Speaker 4: I need to go to the US. I can only
Speaker 4: find out more about what's real by playing an away game.
Speaker 4: This is a trip my family has always wondered about.
Speaker 10: Every time there was an earfair to Los Angeles that
Speaker 10: was a good price, we'd think, let's get on that
Speaker 10: and go and find her.
Speaker 4: Before I get on a plane. I want to understand
Speaker 4: what they would want as closure. Years ago, I remember
Speaker 4: Mum saying she was tempted to want some sort of revenge.
Speaker 4: I asked her about that.
Speaker 10: Oh no, I wouldn't say revenge was the word. What
Speaker 10: really In the early days, I just thought, you, poor
Speaker 10: silly woman, what have you done. No, it was never revenge.
Speaker 10: It was to get greer keeled. To be in something
Speaker 10: like this, you feel like you've got to have the
Speaker 10: last word maybe to see that they haven't destroyed you,
Speaker 10: but to let them have a moment of discomfort.
Speaker 4: And while my dad spent years investigating this himself, he
Speaker 4: wasn't after revenge either.
Speaker 9: Just answers. I wasn't revengeful or really wanting compensation. If
Speaker 9: there was some available, I wouldn't turn it down, of course,
Speaker 9: but the prime goal was to figure out what the
Speaker 9: heck was going on here.
Speaker 4: Dad found out a surprising amount of stuff from my
Speaker 4: Auntie's basement in Auckland, but eventually he had to put
Speaker 4: it all aside and get a job.
Speaker 9: I had to pull finger and do something. You know,
Speaker 9: you had retired, Yeah, I had retired really, so I
Speaker 9: had to sort of rejig my life a bit there.
Speaker 9: What I would really like is for her to acknowledge
Speaker 9: that she's caused a lot of strife, to basically understand
Speaker 9: what she's done, and to try and not do things
Speaker 9: like this in the future.
Speaker 4: And my brother Greg would like to hear Leslie say sorry.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't mind getting an apology, well, not for.
Speaker 5: Me, but for mom and Dad. Yeah, an apology. It'd
Speaker 5: be nice.
Speaker 4: Before Dad packed up the big box of Leslie docks,
Speaker 4: he had one last ditch idea about how to tie
Speaker 4: up some loose ends. Dad pitched the story to America's
Speaker 4: TV drama magnet and mustache enthusiast Doctor Phil. The letter
Speaker 4: he wrote is five pages long and there's a bunch
Speaker 4: of attachments. I thought my bro Simon might be interested
Speaker 4: in seeing it. Simon, you know how Dad was pretty
Speaker 4: obsessed with investigating this whole thing. Did you know he
Speaker 4: actually actually wrote a letter to Doctor Phil pitching our story?
Speaker 5: Serious? Have you got any have you got?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 5: Is it here? It's in comic sans font.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it is and I really like the
Speaker 4: top line of it.
Speaker 5: It's is a.
Speaker 4: Tale of deception, fraud, narcissism and devastation.
Speaker 5: That's my impression of Dad.
Speaker 2: It's straight off the bit, like intense.
Speaker 5: It's brilliant. What do you think of my impression of Dad?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I know what you're getting. It like
Speaker 2: slightly exaggerated, but pretty spot up.
Speaker 4: Even though I'm now investigating this story for Australia's national broadcaster,
Speaker 4: every time I call Dad, he still brings up getting
Speaker 4: our story and Leslie on Doctor Phil.
Speaker 5: You know, Mum was.
Speaker 9: Looking at Doctor Phil the other day and Mum and
Speaker 9: I were saying, she needs to get on doctor Phil.
Speaker 5: I don't know why you're obsessed with Doctor Phil. Well, he.
Speaker 9: Gets to the bottom of things.
Speaker 5: I'm getting to the bottom of things.
Speaker 1: I know you are.
Speaker 4: I may not be Doctor Phil, but I'm going to
Speaker 4: back that up and get answers for my family. It's
Speaker 4: time to get on a plane to the United States.
Speaker 9: Forget a kind of forces, for like a job.
Speaker 2: He said to himself.
Speaker 4: Sure, Greg isn't coming with me to the US, And
Speaker 4: I get that he wants answers and an apology for
Speaker 4: what Leslie did to him, but he doesn't want to
Speaker 4: wade that far back into this part.
Speaker 5: Of his life. All right, touchdown USA. Here. I am
Speaker 5: in LA.
Speaker 4: Every time I come here, I kind of think about
Speaker 4: doing the mission that I'm about to set off on,
Speaker 4: going to find Leslie and hear her side of the story.
Speaker 4: It's just unreal to actually be doing it this time.
Speaker 4: The lead up to the strip has been kind of
Speaker 4: nerve wracking. I felt like I needed some support. So
Speaker 4: my other brother, Simon is coming for backup. I meet
Speaker 4: up with him at the airport.
Speaker 5: Oh, there he is. There's my boy.
Speaker 4: Here's my bro Simon arriving after what a fifteen hour flight.
Speaker 4: It looks pretty fresh. Easy to look fresh when you've
Speaker 4: got no hair, though, how are you a man?
Speaker 10: That's horrible?
Speaker 2: Layover in Fiji for els is pretty tight.
Speaker 5: Good to see you know you too, bro.
Speaker 4: The plan is to jump in a car and work
Speaker 4: our way through the places I think Leslie might have lived.
Speaker 4: When I show Simon the car that I've hired, he's
Speaker 4: not best pleased that I went for the economy hatchback,
Speaker 4: so he insists on an upgrade.
Speaker 2: We've got a muscle car. We've got a twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: Dodge Challenger.
Speaker 5: Here it looks like a sting ray on wheels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of feel like pack of cocks as well.
Speaker 5: Is it part of that part of that going on?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: It's definitely.
Speaker 4: People will look at it and kind of go, you're
Speaker 4: trying to enhance something here.
Speaker 5: Hey, Yeah, it's not the most inconspicuous car to be
Speaker 5: driving around. And as we try to sniff out.
Speaker 4: Information, the first rule of trying to be a detective
Speaker 4: is incognito looks stylish. Our first stop is to cruise
Speaker 4: by the house Leslie grew up in. I just want
Speaker 4: to understand where she really comes from. We're just going
Speaker 4: to like kind of park, maybe even just here, which
Speaker 4: is right on the corner.
Speaker 5: We need to kind of figure out which house it is.
Speaker 5: So it's just still a drive by. So how would
Speaker 5: you describe this area, man, Well, it's.
Speaker 2: A big fear like.
Speaker 5: It's not exactly what you It doesn't scream trust fund.
Speaker 4: This place is exactly how my brother Greg first described it.
Speaker 4: It's classic Middle America houses close together, grassy front yards
Speaker 4: without fences.
Speaker 5: We pull up across the road, there's a blue and
Speaker 5: a red car parked in the driveway.
Speaker 2: So it's the house beside there. Old, it's the one
Speaker 2: up there. Okay, My first rule of a stalkout sus
Speaker 2: out which house did it?
Speaker 5: So it's the one beside that.
Speaker 4: Now we're looking at the right house. It doesn't look
Speaker 4: like anyone's home. Leslie had used this address a lot
Speaker 4: over the years, Like it's the home with that phone
Speaker 4: number given to Kiwi Bank that was supposedly for Eric
Speaker 4: t Weiss. Someone in this house apparently took the bank's
Speaker 4: call to vouch for Leslie's trust fund. Betty and Andrew
Speaker 4: might still live here, but we figure it's too early
Speaker 4: to try and talk to them. I need to find
Speaker 4: Leslie first. If she had warning I'm out here looking
Speaker 4: for her, she could go to ground and I might
Speaker 4: never find her. At different times, Leslie's lived all over
Speaker 4: the state of California, and what I think was Leslie's
Speaker 4: first bar before New Zealand, before Hawaii. Her first business ever,
Speaker 4: as far as I can tell, was up the top
Speaker 4: of the state, in a place called Taho. That's where
Speaker 4: we're going to start knocking on doors. So we head
Speaker 4: off on the long drive north. I have to say,
Speaker 4: you've made a pretty unusual choice of snacks, bro, I mean, like,
Speaker 4: who gets banana chips and beef jerky?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, I I wanted to stay away from sugar,
Speaker 2: but so I've just gone to I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you'd call it.
Speaker 5: To tell you then, just beef jerky. It's just it's
Speaker 5: like eating avelmet.
Speaker 1: Have you tried that?
Speaker 5: It's gross, It's actually edible. It's leather. Give me some,
Speaker 5: Give me some chips, don't even Yeah, we have to
Speaker 5: stop again.
Speaker 4: Sometimes after some bad snacks and a long drive, the
Speaker 4: palm trees give way to pine trees as we climb
Speaker 4: in altitude and high up in the mountains, we finally
Speaker 4: spot like Tahoe. Wow, this is a beautiful spot. I'm
Speaker 4: sitting on a bowl at a mountain pass. There's snow
Speaker 4: on the ground all around me. Pine trees in the distance,
Speaker 4: rolling hills have snow all over them, and out to
Speaker 4: my left I can see the shimmering blue of Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 4: And we've come here because this is where Leslie owned
Speaker 4: her first bar, the Breakwater, which is what the one
Speaker 4: in Hawaii was named after.
Speaker 5: And Simon's taking a picture of the lake next to me. Simon,
Speaker 5: we're company busting at a selfie. But okay, well, it.
Speaker 4: Was twenty years ago that Leslie was here. It's quite
Speaker 4: a transient town. There's a lot of sort of tourist operators.
Speaker 4: It's seasonal. So in my inquiries so far, I've actually
Speaker 4: found it quite hard to speak to anybody that was
Speaker 4: here in the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: Is there anybody.
Speaker 4: I've been told that the guy who sort of runs
Speaker 4: the place that Leslie had her business remembers things, and
Speaker 4: I was told that, and so he's still yeah, And
Speaker 4: he said through somebody else that he didn't want to
Speaker 4: talk because he thought Leslie runs with a pretty dodgy crowd,
Speaker 4: and he was a bit scared.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, what's he going to be like once we
Speaker 2: turn into his doorstare?
Speaker 4: Oh, I have to be nice before we start talking
Speaker 4: to the locals. Though, I've got some documents I want
Speaker 4: to look at walking into the elder Otto court taking
Speaker 4: a short cut over some snow. I've searched the court
Speaker 4: records online. It seems like there might have been some
Speaker 4: drama here as well. And Simon's just pulled up to
Speaker 4: pick me up. I've got a couple of papers to
Speaker 4: talk them through that I managed.
Speaker 5: To get from in there. Hey man, so what's the boss?
Speaker 4: So there was about eight cases versus the minuchiins that
Speaker 4: come up on the online search. But it's important to
Speaker 4: note that these didn't end up in a judgment, so
Speaker 4: there was some sort of settlement before they went too far.
Speaker 4: But these files were put through to the court and
Speaker 4: they basically look like Leslie and Andrew because he was
Speaker 4: the licensee of the breakwater and Tahoe weren't paying their rent.
Speaker 2: But Andrew, I mean her dad, Dad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's been at least a couple of times where
Speaker 4: they got served a notice and I'll just read it
Speaker 4: out to you. Please take notice that you were in
Speaker 4: default of payment and rent in the estimated amount of
Speaker 4: five hundred and nineteen dollars. This is the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that happened in New Zealand and Hawaii, so the
Speaker 4: pattern goes back twenty years. The interesting thing is this
Speaker 4: time her parents might have been involved in the business.
Speaker 4: Their names are on the paperwork as managers and licensees
Speaker 4: of the bar. To me, this just says that there
Speaker 4: was perhaps not the slickest of management of the breakwater
Speaker 4: in Tahoe. And it's reminiscent of The Dragonfly for sure,
Speaker 4: sort of having bills not being paid and people chasing them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was exactly the same. People were serving notices
Speaker 2: all over the show.
Speaker 4: But these documents can only tell me bits and pieces.
Speaker 4: I want to talk to the landlords who were chasing
Speaker 4: that rent from Leslie. Her bar was in a marina,
Speaker 4: a group of shops and restaurants right on Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 4: So we head over to the marina to see who
Speaker 4: we can find.
Speaker 5: This is the spot where the breakwater was. There's the
Speaker 5: Artemis Cafe here, which is.
Speaker 4: Where the breakwater was. I'm looking at it now. It's
Speaker 4: kind of got a log cabin feel to it. The
Speaker 4: rest of the marina has a boat higher and a
Speaker 4: grill that's right out on the water looking out at
Speaker 4: the Lake of Tahoe, which is super nice. And it's
Speaker 4: a great spot that Leslie had chosen for the first
Speaker 4: hospitality business she had, the breakwater. And I'm basically going
Speaker 4: to go in there now and just skulk around and
Speaker 4: see if I can find anybody who was here twenty
Speaker 4: years ago that might be able to tell me anything.
Speaker 6: I remember Nay, they used to have some ragi or
Speaker 6: parties out in the front of the plaza there doors,
Speaker 6: and he used to be pretty back.
Speaker 3: She did good business from what I understand.
Speaker 5: Right, And by she you mean Leslie, the lady who
Speaker 5: owned the Breakwaders.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think she had a partner, but I can't
Speaker 3: remember who it was.
Speaker 4: All these memories and finding are pretty vague. But I
Speaker 4: know there's a guy around here who's been running the
Speaker 4: marina the whole time. I heard this guy remembers Leslie,
Speaker 4: but that he keeps to himself. Also, apparently he's nervous
Speaker 4: about stirring anything dodgy out. I reckon I can explain
Speaker 4: things if I can just find him.
Speaker 5: I can't even find any pictures online, so I don't
Speaker 5: know who I'm looking for.
Speaker 4: There are offices above the shops I'm wandering through. I
Speaker 4: see an open door, so I got upstairs.
Speaker 5: Hello, We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: Just as I give up and go to leave, I
Speaker 4: walk right into him in the car park. He didn't
Speaker 4: want to be recorded or named, but the conversation I
Speaker 4: had with him was pretty interesting. When I found Simon again,
Speaker 4: I turned my requorterback on. Alrighty bro, Yeah, So that
Speaker 4: guy was happy to confirm for me that he reckoned.
Speaker 4: Her parents owned the breakwater that was here, and she
Speaker 4: was running it for them, and his words were she
Speaker 4: ran it into the ground, she didn't pay rent, and
Speaker 4: we had to a victor. So I guess that lines
Speaker 4: up with what we found from the court today.
Speaker 2: And lines up pretty hard with a dragonfly too. She's
Speaker 2: definitely good at bearing restaurants.
Speaker 4: So Leslie's business in Tahoe ended in a bin fire
Speaker 4: like the ones after it in Hawaii and in zed
Speaker 4: But could there be a difference to the pattern in Tahoe.
Speaker 4: Maybe Leslie's parents were involved here. Leslie's dad, Andrew must
Speaker 4: have had a sense about what happened in Tahoe. He
Speaker 4: was named on a bunch of those court filings I
Speaker 4: found where the marina owner was chasing rent. Both Betty
Speaker 4: and Andrew are on the Tahoe breakwater Bars business paperwork
Speaker 4: as managers, as well as the liquor license. We've heard
Speaker 4: about how people in Hawaii and my family in Enzed
Speaker 4: tried to talk to Leslie's parents about what was going on.
Speaker 4: So are Lesley's parents just hapless victims and all this
Speaker 4: or are they turning a blind eye to what Leslie does?
Speaker 4: When Andrew wrote to my parents after the collapse of
Speaker 4: The Dragonfly, could he have been alluding to his own experience.
Speaker 5: As far as our empathy for you, it is more
Speaker 5: than you realize.
Speaker 4: My next lead is the most recent of found so far.
Speaker 4: It's a clue about where Leslie went after she left
Speaker 4: New Zealand. It's an online review of yet another restaurant. Somehow,
Speaker 4: only four years after The Dragonfly and My Family went bust,
Speaker 4: it reads like Leslie was back on her feet.
Speaker 5: Leslie's next restaurant was called Phenomenal.
Speaker 6: The whole Phenomenal concept was extreme, well thought out and executed.
Speaker 3: By owner Leslie Minukian her prior experience of owning and
Speaker 3: operating at Burger Bore in Lake tahoo.
Speaker 5: A, California. Yeah, it's called Phenomenal with an f in
Speaker 5: a town called Paesser Robels.
Speaker 2: Well do she tricked into that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Successful?
Speaker 5: I mean made a lot of people unsuccessful, to be fair.
Speaker 4: So we're going to go to Passa Robls and we're
Speaker 4: gonna ask Graham and find out what happened with Phenomenal.
Speaker 5: How are this is just insane? She told me, never
Speaker 5: fall in love with a Kiwi. They're the worst men.
Speaker 3: I have the worst news ever.
Speaker 5: Oh shit, she's done it again.
Speaker 3: A private investigator showed up at my door.
Speaker 4: You did that on purpose?
Speaker 5: She loved you? No, not at all. That's next time
Speaker 5: on Snowball.
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