Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on deep Cover.
Speaker 2: Was an all out onslaught of police cars, helicopters, cars
Speaker 2: in front of me, cars behind me, blocked in, weapons drawn,
Speaker 2: and I knew that it was over.
Speaker 3: This is Detective John Bradley Guess in three point eight,
Speaker 3: one of the Saint Louis County Police Department Bureau Crimes
Speaker 3: against Persons. The person being interviewed is Donald Keith Giamanco,
Speaker 3: and I know what was wrong. I'm very sorry for it,
Speaker 3: and I'm really sorry for anybody that I scared or
Speaker 3: thought I might too harmed too.
Speaker 1: In the day days after Keith Giamanco's arrest, news of
Speaker 1: the Booney Hat bandits spread. The story got picked up
Speaker 1: by the local media, and soon it became national news.
Speaker 1: Keith's daughters, Elise and Marissa, they had no idea how
Speaker 1: to handle all of this. They had no lawyer, no publicist.
Speaker 1: Their grandma Margie was still around, but she was only
Speaker 1: able to help so much. They were essentially just two
Speaker 1: seventeen year old kids on their own. Reporters began arriving
Speaker 1: at the Giamanco's small ranch house in Florescent, Missouri, and
Speaker 1: a small crowd of them gathered out front Marissa says
Speaker 1: this was the last thing that she needed.
Speaker 4: It was a mess. I was just like, why do
Speaker 4: they want to talk to me? Talking isn't going to
Speaker 4: help the situation that I'm in right now. This lasted
Speaker 4: for days, to the point where one of my friends
Speaker 4: came out and was like, you guys need to leave.
Speaker 1: In a phone call with their dad, they talked about this.
Speaker 1: Keith told them that he'd been approached by Good Morning America.
Speaker 1: He suggested that they do one high profile interview to
Speaker 1: appease the press and maybe engender some sympathy, put a
Speaker 1: human face on the whole thing. But he told the
Speaker 1: girls in the end it was up to them. Here's
Speaker 1: how Elice remembers all this.
Speaker 4: We agreed to do the interview, and they set up
Speaker 4: two cameras in the house and they told us to cry.
Speaker 4: I remember that. I remember that more vividly than anything
Speaker 4: is before the tape started rolling. Both times they were like,
Speaker 4: if you can.
Speaker 1: Cry or give.
Speaker 4: Any sort of, you know, sympathetic emotion, it would help,
Speaker 4: you know, the audience be more sympathetic with you, And
Speaker 4: tears really sell.
Speaker 1: I've thought about this moment a lot. I myself am
Speaker 1: a father with a seventeen year old son, and I've
Speaker 1: tried to imagine a situation where my wife and I
Speaker 1: are out of the picture, and my son is alone
Speaker 1: in our house in a rather desperate situation, with no
Speaker 1: one to advocate for him, and some TV producer is
Speaker 1: telling him that the best thing he can do for
Speaker 1: our family to engender sympathy is to cry for the cameras.
Speaker 1: And I got to tell you, the thought of this
Speaker 1: leaves me deeply unsettled. I've watched the Good Morning America interview.
Speaker 1: In it, you can see Marissa and Elise sitting side
Speaker 1: by side in their living room. Marissa is in this dark,
Speaker 1: long sleeved shirt. She looks uncomfortable, like she doesn't really
Speaker 1: want to be there. Elise is dressed up for the occasion,
Speaker 1: doing her best to look all grown up, in a
Speaker 1: gray turtleneck in a blue jumper style dress. The reporter
Speaker 1: asked the twins to talk about Keith. Here's part of
Speaker 1: what Elise said, what.
Speaker 4: The loves of his life. He took the role of
Speaker 4: mom and dad. You know, he was working, but he
Speaker 4: was also doing our laundry.
Speaker 1: She's then asked how she feels about what her father did.
Speaker 4: He's my Robin Hood. Yeah, you know, take from the rich,
Speaker 4: these banks a greedy and give to to better the
Speaker 4: betterment of their daughter, his daughter's lives. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, you know it's wrong.
Speaker 1: That's the TV reporter there telling the girls that they
Speaker 1: must know that what their father did was wrong.
Speaker 4: Elise responds, hmmm, he wanted to do this for anybody else,
Speaker 4: but hus, yeah, I can't believe I mean that much
Speaker 4: to anybody.
Speaker 1: I kind of winced when I heard Elisa's comments about
Speaker 1: Keith being like Robin Hood, But then I reminded myself
Speaker 1: these girls, they were just seventeen years old, under extreme
Speaker 1: pressure to answer for their dad's choices. In this same segment,
Speaker 1: the reporter also interviewed Keith in jail, with a glass
Speaker 1: partition between them.
Speaker 5: Life was pretty normal, suburban life.
Speaker 3: We went to baseball games, family vacations.
Speaker 1: Keith comes off as much more composed than in his confession,
Speaker 1: but his explanation is pretty much the same. He was
Speaker 1: in financial trouble and he did this for his girls.
Speaker 2: Why did you feel the need to go thus far
Speaker 2: to support them? Basically to afford them the lifestyle that
Speaker 2: they've always had to send them to the school that
Speaker 2: I was sending them to.
Speaker 3: So they could wear the clothes that they always wore.
Speaker 1: The public reaction to all of this was swift and brutal.
Speaker 1: Online viewers of Good Morning America made posts just fuming.
Speaker 1: One wrote, I hope the silver spoon he's been feeding
Speaker 1: these spoiled brats with chokes him and his daughters. Keith
Speaker 1: and his daughters were effectively vilified. Keith claimed that he
Speaker 1: had robbed these banks for his daughters for their benefit,
Speaker 1: but his actions had precisely the opposite effect, upending their lives,
Speaker 1: and in some ways his explanation only made it worse,
Speaker 1: because in the moment, it robbed them of what they
Speaker 1: needed most, the sympathy of others. Back when Elisa and
Speaker 1: Marissa were kids, they had what seemed like a storybook childhood.
Speaker 1: As the girls grew older and their parents started to fight,
Speaker 1: they realized maybe things weren't perfect, but at least at
Speaker 1: that point they still had parents, parents who paid the
Speaker 1: bills and set curfews and came to school events. But
Speaker 1: now that was history. The two sisters were suddenly on
Speaker 1: their own, and soon they'd face some very tough choices,
Speaker 1: choices that would drive them apart, leaving one of them
Speaker 1: in the darkened shell of their house all alone. I'm
Speaker 1: Jay Calpern and this is deep Cover The Family Man,
Speaker 1: Episode four, The Downfall. In the days and weeks after
Speaker 1: his arrest, Keith was held without bail at the local
Speaker 1: Saint Louis County jail. He began looking for a lawyer
Speaker 1: to represent him because his story had garnered so much attention,
Speaker 1: some lawyers actually reached out directly to him, eager to
Speaker 1: grab a chance to make a name for themselves, because
Speaker 1: whatever the outcome, Keith's case was bound to make headlines.
Speaker 1: For Marissa, the more rebellious sister. Keith's arrest was traumatic,
Speaker 1: of course, but in a strange way, it was also liberating.
Speaker 1: Before the arrest, Marissa had experimented with drugs, but suddenly
Speaker 1: there was no one left to reign in her impulses.
Speaker 4: As soon as Dad was out of the picture, like
Speaker 4: I kind of went buck wild because there was nobody
Speaker 4: that I had to report to. Basically, you know, Dad
Speaker 4: was the person that was like, Nah, you're not going
Speaker 4: to go out with those people. Well, no, you're not
Speaker 4: gonna do that. Like so without having somebody to put
Speaker 4: me in my place. I went pretty crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: Her sister Elise, remembers this as the time that their
Speaker 1: relationship really started to pull apart.
Speaker 4: At the time of my dad's arrest, Marissa and I
Speaker 4: were hanging out with different friend groups, and we had
Speaker 4: been arguing quite a bit. Which were twins, were siblings,
Speaker 4: that's normal, you know. I was starting to sense that
Speaker 4: she didn't really like me as a person, Like we
Speaker 4: were just incompatible as friends.
Speaker 1: And part of it was this Their friendship was under
Speaker 1: real strain. They were worrying about their dad, their future,
Speaker 1: and the sudden pile up of financial problems they'd inherited.
Speaker 1: Another tension was that the two sisters they split any
Speaker 1: of the money that they got from donations, and their
Speaker 1: priorities on how to spend this money were quite different.
Speaker 4: Marissa was starting to get into drinking, and she's smoking
Speaker 4: cigarettes and you know, experimenting, and I was off put
Speaker 4: by that. I was so nerdy, Like I literally told
Speaker 4: people I was waiting to smoke marijuana so that my
Speaker 4: frontal lobe could develop, like until I was like twenty
Speaker 4: five or whenever.
Speaker 1: All of this came to a head when Marissa made
Speaker 1: a purchase that her sister most definitely would not have endorsed.
Speaker 4: I had bought a pound of weed, and I was
Speaker 4: pissed off because it wasn't really good, Like it was
Speaker 4: way less quality than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 4: And so I was like, you know what, screw it,
Speaker 4: Let's just have a party and smoke a pound in
Speaker 4: one night. So I invited everybody I knew and had
Speaker 4: a rolling contest and was like, who can roll the
Speaker 4: fattest blunt?
Speaker 1: Needless to say, a pound of weed, even substandard weed,
Speaker 1: will really do a number on your frontal lobe. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of the goal. The party got off
Speaker 1: to a rollicking start. It had the PlayStation set up
Speaker 1: in the living room, everything plugged in around the big
Speaker 1: screen TV record player going music blasting, someone singing into
Speaker 1: the microphone. A slip and slide in the kitchen is
Speaker 1: a slip and slide. Everyone's smoking weed. Like imagine if
Speaker 1: Costco sold oversized blunts and someone had bought a thirty
Speaker 1: six pack.
Speaker 4: You could see the smoke rolling out from underneath the door.
Speaker 4: If that's One of my friends came up and was like, hey,
Speaker 4: you can literally see smoke coming out of this house.
Speaker 4: Just to let you know, And I was one of
Speaker 4: those people that's like, bring the police. What else do
Speaker 4: I have to lose right now? Type of thing. But
Speaker 4: the police didn't show up until later. But because somebody
Speaker 4: crashed a car, this guy that you know, everybody's you know, irresponse.
Speaker 4: One person has to ruin it for everyone.
Speaker 1: You can still hear this seventeen year old in her
Speaker 1: blaming the whole bus stop on the one irresponsible guy
Speaker 1: who just took it a step too far.
Speaker 4: So this guy decided to steal my friend's car while
Speaker 4: she was sleeping and then wrap it around a pole
Speaker 4: down the street. So at five in the morning, the
Speaker 4: cops are on my door and they're like, hey, do
Speaker 4: you know anything about this? And I was like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, that's Tatum's car.
Speaker 1: Tatum is not happy about this, but you know who
Speaker 1: else is not thrilled. Take a guess, uh huh a lease.
Speaker 4: I believe that she stopped by at some point in
Speaker 4: that night and was fairly disappointed. She was not happy.
Speaker 1: She most certainly wasn't. Here's a lead.
Speaker 4: I remember going over there to get some of my
Speaker 4: stuff while the party was going on, and we got
Speaker 4: into a fight.
Speaker 1: Like a physical fight.
Speaker 4: Yes, like a physical fight, and because I just felt
Speaker 4: so disrespected. I felt like, you aren't keeping up of
Speaker 4: the house. You're you're feeding the walls, you're burning the walls,
Speaker 4: You're doing a slip and slide on the kitchen floor. Fine,
Speaker 4: cool party, but every day, the reason the house isn't
Speaker 4: being taken care of is because you are not doing it.
Speaker 1: Alice says that even though the night ended badly and
Speaker 1: she was upset, sure beyond that, she really worried about
Speaker 1: her sister and was doing her best to keep things
Speaker 1: under control.
Speaker 4: For me, my main priority with Marissa was to keep
Speaker 4: her safe, even though maybe she didn't see it that way,
Speaker 4: because I can be a little bossy, maybe a little
Speaker 4: maybe she sees us controlling, But for me, my main
Speaker 4: priority was to keep us housed and to keep us safe.
Speaker 1: Marissa says she gets why her sister was frustrated.
Speaker 4: I feel like she had my back, but I don't
Speaker 4: think she felt like I had hers, and I think
Speaker 4: that's a very valid feeling that she had. I feel
Speaker 4: like I was very lost where she had more of
Speaker 4: a head on her shoulders at that point, she honestly
Speaker 4: probably felt like a mother figure to me.
Speaker 1: But the truth was they already had a mother. She'd
Speaker 1: been absent from their lives for years. She'd moved out
Speaker 1: when the girls were twelve, and they'd rarely seen her since,
Speaker 1: except for strange moments like the night she showed up
Speaker 1: and asked them to pass the vacuum cleaner out the window.
Speaker 1: But then, in the middle of this tumultuous senior year
Speaker 1: of high school, as the girls were struggling to hold
Speaker 1: everything together, their mom returned. Becky Giamanco, that was Elisa
Speaker 1: Marie's mother. When the girls were little, Becky had been
Speaker 1: active in the PTA, a leader at their church. She
Speaker 1: kept an immaculate house, made gourmet meals, was always there
Speaker 1: for the girls. Then, around the time the girls were ten,
Speaker 1: all of this started to change. Becky and Keith began
Speaker 1: to argue seemed like all the time, and Becky started
Speaker 1: going out at night to the local bowling alley and
Speaker 1: to other places as well, though the girls didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly where. Eventually, the girls came to understand that their
Speaker 1: mother was struggling with drugged She moved out of the
Speaker 1: house when the girls were twelve. There were visits for
Speaker 1: a while, special times set up for them to see
Speaker 1: mom Becky got an apartment where they visited her, but
Speaker 1: then she lost that apartment. There was no place for
Speaker 1: the girls to have these visits, and their mother kind
Speaker 1: of slipped away. They didn't see much of her again
Speaker 1: until late two thousand and eight after their dad's arrest.
Speaker 4: So she calls like she needs to come and comfort
Speaker 4: us and be with us, and then we see her
Speaker 4: in person, and then she ends up eventually moving in
Speaker 4: for a little while.
Speaker 1: That's right, their mother moves back in with them.
Speaker 4: I was excited, also naive. I thought, here's a little
Speaker 4: family reunion. Mom can come back in. We have a provider,
Speaker 4: or at least some comfort, even if I still have
Speaker 4: to be like the provider, caretaker or whatever, at least
Speaker 4: we have Mom here.
Speaker 1: Elise was holding on to a fragile hope, but she
Speaker 1: was also clear eyed about her mother's condition.
Speaker 4: Mom was in the throes of her addiction. She was
Speaker 4: on heroin during this time. She was definitely unwell, and
Speaker 4: I knew that. But I also know that no one
Speaker 4: heals in isolation. And so I'm here like, maybe this
Speaker 4: is what she needs to get her shit together? Is
Speaker 4: her daughters need her during this time? Right now? This
Speaker 4: is her moment to step up and shine, and.
Speaker 1: It started off promisingly enough. They had Thanksgiving together. Their
Speaker 1: mom invited a friend, a guy dealing with homelessness who
Speaker 1: she knew from the streets. He took a shower, cleaned up,
Speaker 1: and then the familiar choreography of the day made things
Speaker 1: feel almost normal. They set the table, turned on the oven,
Speaker 1: the scent of roasting turkey filled the air. Their dog
Speaker 1: Lucky poked about, and for a moment, the small magic
Speaker 1: of the holiday smoothed over all the cracks. But that
Speaker 1: didn't last. According to Elise, their mom was soon using
Speaker 1: heroin in their bathroom regularly. Meanwhile, Elise is playing the
Speaker 1: role of the provider, working at Banana Republic, paying the bills.
Speaker 1: And then one morning Alise swings by her bank to
Speaker 1: make a withdrawal.
Speaker 4: And lo and behold, my bank account is overdrawn and
Speaker 4: I did not get out any money.
Speaker 1: She goes into the bank, meets with the bank manager
Speaker 1: and he confirms that someone made withdrawals from her account
Speaker 1: and offers to pull up the videos so they can
Speaker 1: see who it was.
Speaker 4: And he showed me the surveillance tape and he's like,
Speaker 4: do you recognize this? Person, and I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 4: my mother.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take long for a Lease to figure out
Speaker 1: what had happened.
Speaker 4: She took my bank card out of my purse, knew
Speaker 4: my pin number, and took all of my money out
Speaker 4: of my bank account, overdrew me, and then went back
Speaker 4: to my house and acted like nothing had occurred.
Speaker 1: At this point, Alise knew what she had to do.
Speaker 4: I went back to my house and I told my
Speaker 4: mother to come outside, and I told her that she
Speaker 4: had to leave, and that she was never welcomed back
Speaker 4: there ever again until she figures her stuff out.
Speaker 1: Alise says that right there on the front lawn, her
Speaker 1: mother begged for another chance, but Elise was resolute. As
Speaker 1: she watched her mom go, the wild, outlandish tragedy of
Speaker 1: the situation started to dawn on Alise. Her parents were
Speaker 1: both thieves. Her father had robbed a dozen banks, her
Speaker 1: mother had stolen from her when she was already stretched thin,
Speaker 1: and now in the wake of these staffs, Elise had
Speaker 1: lost both of them. When the twins were growing up,
Speaker 1: the person they counted on and went to when their
Speaker 1: parents were fighting was Keith's mother, Grandma Margie. She lived
Speaker 1: close by Elise told me she was like their guardian angel.
Speaker 1: But during this same tumultuous fall, as all of this
Speaker 1: crazy shit was going on, Grandma Margie died.
Speaker 4: She was really the only ally in our corner, in
Speaker 4: our family, and to have that also go away in
Speaker 4: such a finite period of time was so almost unbearable.
Speaker 4: And my therapist died. What do Yeah, our family therapist
Speaker 4: had a heart attack after my dad got arrested. So yes,
Speaker 4: I definitely felt like I had bad luck. I felt
Speaker 4: like everything that I touched was cursed, and that's an
Speaker 4: icky feeling. I was trying to do everything white and
Speaker 4: nothing was going right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to make light of it, but if I
Speaker 1: saw you get on my plane, I think I would exit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, no, that's so I would tell you too.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Marissa and Elise went their separate ways, not for
Speaker 1: lack of love, it just couldn't keep living under the
Speaker 1: same roof. Alice started spending most nights with her boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and she began firming up plans to attend a small
Speaker 1: liberal arts college in Wisconsin. Marissa stayed behind alone in
Speaker 1: the family's little shoe box house, with no one keeping
Speaker 1: track of what needed to get done, the bills went unpaid,
Speaker 1: and soon the house lost water and then.
Speaker 4: Power, so it all got shut off. You know, I,
Speaker 4: me and my sister, our relationship ended up being strained
Speaker 4: because of my drug use and partying, and she ended
Speaker 4: up going to live with her boyfriend, and I ended
Speaker 4: up being in this house with no electric and no water.
Speaker 1: How long were you in this house with no electric
Speaker 1: and no water?
Speaker 4: It felt like a long time. It was probably like
Speaker 4: three or four months, But.
Speaker 1: Three or four months with no water and electricity, yeah,
Speaker 1: she says. A neighbor let her use their shower, charge
Speaker 1: her phone, and fill buckets with water so she could
Speaker 1: go back to her home and manually flush her own toilet.
Speaker 4: I tried to have multiple buckets so I didn't have
Speaker 4: to walk over there during different times of the day,
Speaker 4: so I didn't have to like disturb everybody.
Speaker 1: She laughs now, But at the time it got pretty grim,
Speaker 1: especially because at this point Marissa was using drugs pretty heavily,
Speaker 1: including heroin. Living in this shell of a house became untenable.
Speaker 1: Marissa needed a place to live, and eventually she reached
Speaker 1: out to one of the few people who might truly
Speaker 1: understand her predicament, Her mother. During this time, Keith Giamanco
Speaker 1: was still in the county jail awaiting trial. He stayed
Speaker 1: in touch with his daughters, usually by phone, and he
Speaker 1: tried to be there for them it's best he could.
Speaker 1: One day, he was on the phone with Marissa and
Speaker 1: she just leveled with him about what was going on
Speaker 1: in her life.
Speaker 2: She basically spilled the whole thing to me is She
Speaker 2: told me, I'm addicted to heroin.
Speaker 5: She was.
Speaker 2: In trouble, addicted.
Speaker 1: I can't kick.
Speaker 2: This, And that particular moment, of course, I was just
Speaker 2: absolutely helpless.
Speaker 1: I have to imagine as a dad, that's a devastating moment.
Speaker 2: Totally devastating. It was devastating to know that you can't
Speaker 2: be there to help. And I heard all of the well,
Speaker 2: she would have did it. Whether you were in here
Speaker 2: or out of here, that doesn't matter when you're a dad,
Speaker 2: because you think that being there there would at least
Speaker 2: be a shot at you helping, no matter what the
Speaker 2: issue is that they're having. Maybe I couldn't have stopped
Speaker 2: her from doing drugs, but if she was falling down
Speaker 2: a hole, I could have reached out and grabbed her
Speaker 2: hand and saved her from falling to the bottom.
Speaker 1: Keith told me that he was also worried about Elie
Speaker 1: and how she was managing without him.
Speaker 2: It was devastating to see the other child working her
Speaker 2: tail off to do the best thing she possibly can
Speaker 2: for herself and proving herself that she can survive anything.
Speaker 1: Keith says that this would come up sometimes when he
Speaker 1: was on the phone with Elise.
Speaker 2: There were times when Elise flat out told me, what
Speaker 2: about me? What about what I'm going through? What about
Speaker 2: all the things that I'm working so hard at and
Speaker 2: succeeding at, and nobody seems to notice.
Speaker 1: For Keith, all of this reinforced his sense of urgency
Speaker 1: that he needed to map out a plan, a legal strategy,
Speaker 1: a way to serve his time and walk away with
Speaker 1: the lightest sentence the system would allow so he could
Speaker 1: get released and be there for his daughters. As prosecutors
Speaker 1: began to prepare their case against Keith, it became clear
Speaker 1: that there was a out and of evidence against him,
Speaker 1: and Keith he would soon face a pivotal choice about
Speaker 1: his freedom and his future, and in the end, he
Speaker 1: would make one last gamble, coming up on deep cover.
Speaker 2: At that point, I'm thinking, okay, I'd tell the truth
Speaker 2: and this may not turn out too bad.
Speaker 4: I remember waiting outside the courtroom, full of anticipation, in
Speaker 4: tension and anxiety that comes with being in a sort
Speaker 4: of purgatory.
Speaker 5: Can't put that many people in that much fear and
Speaker 5: not expect to pay a heavy price for him.
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 Jr.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Daphne chen Sonya Gerwit, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: Jake Flanagan, Corinn Gilliard Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, and
Speaker 1: Greta Cone. I'm Jake Halpern. Here episodes of Deep Cover
Speaker 1: the Family Man early and AD free by subscribing to
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Pushkin Plus
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