Heavyweight - #38 Justine

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Growing up, Justine’s father always told her unbelievable stories about his life: that he was a big winner on Jeopardy; an outlaw who robbed banks armed only with flowers. But now, as an adult, Justine has started to question—are her father’s stories so unbelievable because none of them are true? In the process of fact-checking her dad’s life, something surprising emerges that neither Justine nor Jonathan ever saw coming. Credits Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was produced by senior producer Kalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane and Mohini Madgavkar. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Sharon Mashihi, Connie Walker, and Marie-Claude. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Ben Alleman, Bauble, Chris Zabriskie, Shanghai Restoration Project, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello? Mary Claude? What, Jackie's not answering the phone, so you're calling me? That's why I was phoning. I know this sounds totally paranoid. Mm-hmm. But do you think, has Jackie been avoiding my calls? She's avoiding your calls, Jonathan. Why?

She has life and children, and maybe she wants to spend a few minutes with her children as opposed to talking to you. You don't think this is like some kind of cry for help that she's kind of like isolating and everything? Yeah. Well, I just had a couple questions that I was going to ask Jackie, but maybe since you guys are such good friends, maybe you can answer them. Yeah, but it's literally 4.03. I need to leave, so this is the last time. Okay, I was just going through my bar mitzvah RSVPs, and I noticed that Jackie did not attend. Do you know why? Didn't you read your bar mitzvah on the same Saturday

as a very popular kid and everyone went to his bar mitzvah? Yes. Instead of yours? Eric Leidenheim. That's obviously where she was. Well, I guess at least she was at Temple. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Justine.

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for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. This is me. This is your daddy, okay? I love you more than anything, okay? You're the greatest thing since sliced bread. You're the greatest thing since sliced bread. You're the greatest thing since canned beer. In 2007, Gary recorded himself onto a series of dictaphone cassettes, which he gave to his daughter, Justine.

Ever since Justine was a kid, Gary's worked as a mattress salesman. But he'd always tell Justine stories about the wildlife he once led. And I kept saying to him, like, you need to write a memoir. Like, you can't just end your life as a mattress salesman. Gary said there was no way he could write a memoir. He'd get too caught up in every little detail. And titles can be such a hassle. What would he even name it?

And he goes, but I'll compromise. What if I just tell my life story into these tapes, and you can have them? Gary's life, as he tells it, is one full of heroism, debauchery, and brushes with fame. He got into Georgetown from high school. My room was the same room that President Bill Clinton had when he was a freshman. But then he got there and realized it was all bullshit. Dropped out of Georgetown after getting straight A's in the first semester there. I was so bored.

So he transferred to Antioch. At Antioch in 1969, Gary fell in with a revolutionary crowd and began protesting Vietnam in a revolutionary way. Robbing banks and giving the money to anti-war causes and got in legal trouble because of that stuff. I mean, seven years in the federal penitentiary, he says. I'm going to give you the actual story of the Say It With Flowers band of bankrupted. The only reason why I called that is because the newspapers called it that. Gary says, sure, he was a bank robber, but he never used a gun. Instead, he'd walk into the bank with just a bouquet of flowers and use hypnosis on the teller to get what he wanted.

Like using his powers of persuasion, which supposedly he learned on an ashram. Gary says he broke out of prison, auditioned for the game show Jeopardy, got on, won the game, and then got arrested on the flight back home. I won $17,000. I kicked ass. And I'm on a fucking plane at the L.A. fucking airport,

and they fucking dragged me off the plane. Once he was back in prison, Gary says he won a prison bridge tournament with his partner, H.R. Haldeman. H.R. Haldeman, who was the chief of staff of the Nixon White House, the second most powerful man in this country, Labor Day Bridge Tournament in September of 1976 at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. The tapes are filled with hour after hour of stories like this. Later on, I lived in a cave, went to spy school,

and I bought a horse. Gary's stories were out there, but he had this magical quality that made anything seem possible. He could get Justine tickets for sold-out concerts, appointments with doctors who were booked solid. She idolized her dad. And all my friends knew how cool he was. I was always talking about my dad. It's so silly. I have this one memory of when I was in high school. So I was dreaming from my dad's point of view that he was driving over a bridge like on accident

and I was awakened from that dream by my dad calling me on my cell phone at like 2 in the morning and I picked it up and he had a dream that I was dying and I couldn't wait to tell my friends because it was just like we have this cosmic connection

me and my dad. But there are other things about Gary that looking back on as an adult, Justine has a hard time reconciling with the dad she so adored. For one, their cosmic connection. Gary would often tell Justine that the two of them were different than everyone else.

Different than her mom, who divorced Gary when Justine was only three. And different from her brother, Stephen. She and Gary were a gang of two. We are smarter. We get it. We were different from them. And then when I became a mother, I just felt like, you know, it's kind of inexcusable. I was just able to zoom out a little bit and see some of the inappropriateness of things. He is an addict, and sometimes he would be completely wasted driving us, which was scary for me. I remember crying a lot in the back seat.

We would go to restaurants and there were times when the patrons of the restaurants would call the police because they were concerned about our welfare. And I would be like making jokes to the waitress to try to like diffuse the situation. Like he would be really embarrassing and obviously drunk. And I would say, hey, can we get the guy some milk? You know, like, just a nine-year-old trying to smooth things over. If the kids needed a babysitter, Gary would find a neighborhood teenager and pay them in marijuana. Other times, he'd leave the kids to their own devices. Justine and her brother Stephen would wander over to the Lowe's hardware store beside their apartment complex and occupy themselves for hours, playing hide-and-seek among the appliances. Justine says Gary would often drop her off at elementary school with her hair unbrushed and a half-eaten Big Mac wrapped in tinfoil for lunch.

And when middle school rolled around... He would, like, show up drunk in the cafeteria during lunchtime to come talk to me and... Did you, at this point, did your friend still think that he was cool? Yep. What was it that made them feel that way? He would bring me money, which was cool when you're in seventh grade. He would crack a lot of inappropriate jokes. He would talk about sex there were absolutely no boundaries

in terms of what he felt was appropriate for kids he just treated us like adults I'm not sure I'm a good parent I'm sorry for everything I've done wrong I'm sorry for living the incredible lifestyle I live at this point in her life Justine knows her dad can be manipulative I'm sorry for living the incredible lifestyle I live. At this point in her life, Justine knows her dad can be manipulative. She knows he's an addict.

But she still wants to believe that's not all he is. A part of her holds to that childhood belief that her father's life truly was the stuff of memoirs. Those stories feel like her inheritance. Yet at 31, she's forced to ask herself, are those unbelievable stories about robbing banks and winning Jeopardy so unbelievable because they're simply not to be believed? As I get older and my childhood begins to feel more and more alarming to me, like, I realize that I have to know what was true.

Like, I have to know. This is my dad we're talking about. And if none of it's true, then that's completely insane. And I need to re-evaluate everything. You know, if he's telling these same lies in great detail over and over, like he's a fraud and a pathological liar, I just want to, I need to know that. I started to discover little things that he said that weren't so true. There have been so many times when he's told me that he's dying, I thought that he would never even see me graduate high school. I always have thought he was dying. After a lifetime of drug use and alcoholism, Gary is in consistently poor health.

It's just not clear exactly how poor. Since he's been saying that he's dying for over a decade, the prognosis is murky. Like, Justine's fairly certain he does have hepatitis. Oh, diabetes too. He got diabetes. And that you know? Yes, they had to remove a toe. And you've seen this missing toe? He got diabetes. And that you know? Yes. They had to, like, remove a toe, you know? And you've seen this missing toe?

Yes. I was there in the hospital. I'm sorry to have to ask that. I mean, I haven't seen the toe, but I've seen, like, the lack of a toe. You've seen the lack of a toe. Okay. Yes. Gary stuck to the same stories, often verbatim, for decades. So at this point, Justine doesn't feel like sitting down with him

to re-examine and re-question will yield new results. She needs a neutral outsider to train an objective eye onto Gary's stories and finally offer some clarity. And what do you want me, you want me to bring my powers of fact-checking and research to bear? Yes. You know, listen to the tapes, maybe try and pull out a couple of claims

that you think could be verifiable one way or the other. Yeah. Start simple. Did he go to Georgetown? Like, start there. Yeah. And then just see what we can verify and what we can't. After the break, the facts.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. I'm sorry these tapes sometimes are incoherent and I'm sober, I'm half drunk, I'm totally drunk, but it's the real daddy, it's the real me. I must confess, as I begin looking into Gary's stories, I expect to quickly discover that all of his stories are lies. I've met plenty of Garys in bars, on greyhound buses, and even at a few public radio conventions, charming liars who lie to self-aggrandize or, for no discernible reason at all. But as I start the process of fact-checking, disproving Gary unequivocally

turns out to be more difficult than expected. I keep phoning and emailing Georgetown, but no one gets back to me. I look through an old Jeopardy! archive, but it only goes back to 1985, years after Gary would have been on the show. And while I do discover that H.R. Haldeman was an inmate at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary on the dates Gary said,

I can find no record of a Labor Day prison bridge tournament. Finally, though, I alight upon one small claim I can weigh in on with confidence. So I phone Justine with the news. I'm scared. Does it feel like stuff is getting real? Yeah. Is that okay is getting real? Yeah. Is that okay? It does.

Yeah. It's about time something got real. Now, the most underrated band in the history of the world, just so you know, a band called Buffalo Springfield. It has Neil Young in it, also Richie Fury, by the way, who was a friend of mine in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Had Gary been friends with a member of Buffalo Springfield? I'd gone to Richie Fury's website

and filled out a contact form that said it was for all inquiries. My inquiry, I explained, was that I was trying to figure out whether someone's dad was a pathological liar. And so, might Mr. Fury be able to tell me if he remembered hanging out with a man named Gary. And so, might Mr. Fure be able to tell me if he remembered hanging out with a man named Gary in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in the early 1970s? The next day, I got an email back

from Richie Fure's manager, David. He said that Richie left Yellow Springs in 1964 and does not recognize the name. So that came back negative. Okay. I'm really happy right now. Really? Why? Yeah. I guess it's the clarity.

Wow, that's one. I feel a little bit lighter for some reason. I'm like, okay. Learning your father is a liar is never good news. But for Justine, it's better than the years of not knowing. To misquote the most underrated band in history, something's happening here. And what it is, is becoming increasingly clear.

The clouds are opening up a little. Your dad did not know one of the members of Buffalo Springfield. And so the clouds part. And now I feel lighter. It's great. Buffalo Springfield is still bringing joy and meaning to people. Justine mentions another musician story I should look into. There's a local celebrity blues guitarist named Gene Deere,

who Gary always claimed to have discovered. They were great friends, Gary said, until a big falling out. Believe me, Justine, I've heard from so many people that I'm an asshole for ever putting any money into Gene Deere. I sponsored him. I found him. I paid for dental bills, paid for home bills.

I did so much for him. He just thinks he's God because he can play guitar. Well, he may be a good person to contact. I'm sure he's got information and stories. I would say as far as

discovering me, I'd have to give him a thumbs up on that. This is Gene Deere, and Gene Deere says Gary is telling the truth. Back when Gene was 23 years old, he and his band were playing a small Indianapolis bar one night when Gary just walked up to him. I'm on the stage. He's got a pool stick under his arm, a drink in that hand, and then the other hand, he's handing me money.

He goes, take this, take this. I mean, it's the first time I ever saw him. He said, take this. I want to record you guys. I want to make you famous. Gary financed and produced Gene's first album. And 40 years on, Gene is still making a living from his music alone. All thanks to Gary. And Gene says, if there was any drama in their friendship, it played out on Gary's side alone. I hold him in very high regard. I hadn't expected Gary's story

about Gene to be true. And as I continue in my research, more of my expectations are upended. Hello? Hey, Justine. Hi. So, a couple orders of business on the docket. I'd finally gotten an email back from the communications office at Georgetown.

Confirmed by our records, said the email, Gary attended Georgetown in fall 1968. And yet, another surprise. Spent some time looking into this Say It With Flowers bandit. This is what I was able to find. There was a robber. I discovered several articles in a small Washington paper called the Bellingham Herald, which covered the search for a say-it-with-flowers bank robber. The robber had come into a local bank wearing sunglasses, a peacoat, and a stocking cap

covering his hair. He stole $848 and was never caught. There doesn't seem to have been any hypnosis, though, and the robber was armed, which is a significant departure from Gary's telling. But all the other details line up. The year is right, 1974, and the robber was Gary's age and Gary's height. And he'd been carrying a bundle of white carnations, just like Gary always said.

Oh, my gosh. Here's another telling detail. Have you ever known your father to wear a beard? Always. What color would you describe his beard as being? Pictures I've seen from, like, the 80s, where he had a very full, long, disgusting beard. It was kind of like a reddish-brown. But, like, growing up, you know,

he would keep it closer to the face. So then it was like darker. Well, according to this article, bank personnel said he had, quote, British type reddish colored whiskers with about a five day growth. Like for me, this corroborates like I feel like it was true. I mean, look, like, is it not possible that he read about this bandit who was never caught and took credit for him? The reason I sound skeptical is because I am. The job I'd been handed was to fact-check, to allow the facts to speak for themselves.

But over the course of my research, something kept eating at me. I'm going to play something for you from my first conversation with Justine that, initially, I wasn't going to include. So, this part, if it could please just remain off the record. Sure. It's, like, really important. Okay.

But that might, like, might give you some insight into... While originally this wasn't something Justine wanted to make public, she's since reconsidered. So I'm sharing it with her permission. When she was very young, around seven years old, Justine says her father told her a secret. He was like drunk and crying to me when I was younger, and he told me this.

And he said to me that if I ever tell anyone, that he would wring my neck in public. When he met my mom, she was pregnant with my brother. And my brother doesn't know that. He, like, my brother doesn't know that he doesn't know who his dad is. That is, Stephen doesn't know that Gary is not his biological father. That is, Stephen doesn't know that Gary is not his biological father. Like, according to the public knowledge, would be that my brother and I are siblings from my mom and dad, that we are their two children, but the truth is, only I am. After his drunken confession, Gary never brought up Stephen's paternity again.

And until Justine mentioned it to me, neither did she. She was terrified by her dad's threat. So all the way into adulthood, she never told anyone. Not even her mom. And so my mom doesn't know that I know. Nobody knows that I know.

And it's like kind of a painful thing because I feel like my brother should know. But I just keep, you know, I try not to think about it. And so the secret made a silent home inside her head, becoming a wedge between her and Stephen. But when Justine first laid all this out for me, I was incredulous. You know, given the fact that, like, there's a lot of doubt surrounding the veracity of the things that your dad has told you,

have you ever questioned whether that was the truth? Whoa, no, I never have. I was thrown by Justine's reaction. If everything her father had ever told her was suspect, why wasn't this story about Stephen's paternity suspect too? Especially since it seemed to belie an agenda. I mean, you're saying that he had all these techniques for, like, you know, grouping you two together

against the world and everyone. I mean, that seems to fit in with that. Yeah, this is true. So there are a couple of reasons why I think I never questioned it. For one, Stephen is pale with bright red hair, while Gary is dark-com complexioned with dark hair. Plus, Gary had also revealed a secret about a cousin's paternity, which did turn out to be true. So, from Justine's perspective, in the secret paternity department, Gary was batting a thousand.

But from my perspective, none of that is definitive. So as I updated Justine on Buffalo Springfield and Georgetown and the Say It With Flowers bandit, I continued to obsess over the story of her brother Stephen's paternity. Do you have any further thoughts about the business with your brother? Gary had saddled six-year-old Justine with an albatross of shame and secrecy that adult Justine still couldn't lay to rest. All of these couple decades,

it's been like, number one, do not discuss. What's worse, the secret she'd been entrusted with maybe wasn't even true. So to me, proving it false would relieve a huge burden. Plus, unlike some of Gary's other stories, there wasn't space for ambiguity. He either was Stephen's dad or he wasn't. So proving the truth about Stephen's paternity would inevitably shed light onto everything else.

Stephen's paternity was the master key. I asked Justine if she's ever considered talking to her mom about it, to see if the story is true. It's a new idea for Justine, one that takes time to process. Until now, she's always assumed she'd keep the secret her whole life. But I keep nudging her. Have you continued to think about, like, talking with your mother? In February, Justine absolutely did not want to talk to her mom.

It's really not my place. In February, Justine absolutely did not want to talk to her mom. But in March, she was leaning towards maybe talking to her mom. In April, though, she was back to not wanting to talk to her mom. But then, three months after our first conversation, unveiling a secret that she's been trying to keep from me her whole life, from everyone. But then, three months after our first conversation, Justine realizes there might be a workaround, a way to fact-check her father's story about Stephen's paternity without confronting her mother. In reevaluating her past,

a dormant memory is rattled loose, a years-ago conversation that took place at her mom's house with her cousin, Rihanna. She had said something to me about Stephen's real dad. I think I did block that out. I'm really honestly just now remembering that this happened. I think we were looking through old photo albums that she had brought over. I think maybe there was a picture of him in this photo album.

She was like, and this is, you know, Stephen's real dad. I really don't remember many details about that conversation other than that. And I was kind of uncomfortable, and I was like, yeah, yeah. You know, like, oh, okay, cool, next picture. Huh. I can ask her about it if you want. Hello? Hey.

Hey, it's Justine. Justine told Rihanna she wanted to ask her something concerning their family history. It has to do with Stephen. Mm-hmm. Do you know what I'm talking about? How close are you to what you're talking about if you haven't told me? I might. Okay,

so when I was a lot younger, like seven or eight, my dad told me that he's not actually Stephen's dad? Correct. Okay, so when you say correct, what does that mean?

I mean that he's not. She's not. I was told to keep my mouth shut. So was I. Yeah. So who told you? My parents. Okay.

It seems like it's not just Rihanna who knows the truth. Justine's entire extended family does too. Do you remember the Kirbys? You guys weren't around them, were you? Rihanna and Justine are first cousins. But while Rihanna grew up with a family called the Kirbys, Justine has no recollection of any Kirbys. Rihanna explains why, and in keeping with the way she's been explaining everything so far, she's blunt. To my knowledge, what happened is your mom was with one of them, and he didn't want to further a relationship with your mom.

So when she got pregnant, he told her he didn't want anything to do with her. Whoa. And does he know that Steven exists? Yes. Well, I've always just felt like it's not my place to say anything to anyone. Because it's not, you know? Yeah. I think it would devastate Stephen.

I do too. Stephen is known as the sensitive one in the family. Although he's 15 months older than Justine, he's always felt more like a younger brother to her. As a kid, he was given to outbursts and tears, which made him an easy target for bullies. Justine remembers leaping to his defense and shouting down his tormentors. Just like when they were kids, she still wants to protect her brother.

As the cousins sit in silence, trying to decide what to do next, Rihanna offers to send some pictures of the Kirbys. I can get them to you now. Okay. You're on Wi-Fi, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, hang on. I just got the... Oh my God.

Yeah. And there he is, Stephen's biological father. He has red hair, a red goatee, and is the spitting image of Justine's brother. That looks like Stephen. Looks exactly like him. And even in the one with, like, that red shirt or whatever, the orange shirt, that's like a face that he makes. Yes.

Sorry, I'm just like staring. Wow. Well, thank you for the pictures and the info. I mean, I would definitely call that confirmation. Once Justine hangs up with Rihanna, she and I talk. Justine? Hey, how are you doing? I'm okay.

It's a little painful to like look right at the situation, just like talking about this secret. I feel a little bit guilty so do I Justine had fact-checked Gary's paternity claims not because she doubted them but because I had I'm the one who pushed this thing forward but Gary wasn't lying it actually does kind of relieve me to maybe come to the conclusion that a lot of the stories were based in truth. Like, it makes me feel like, okay, that's my dad. He's an alcoholic, Justine says, and a manipulator. But he's not a liar, or at least not a total liar.

So having arrived at this conclusion, Justine and I decide to shelve the mission. or at least not a total liar. So having arrived at this conclusion, Justine and I decide to shelve the mission. She feels like the next step would be to talk to her mom and she's not ready to do that yet. About a month later, I reach out to Justine to see what's new. And it turns out, a lot is new. So, um, gosh, this has been so crazy.

So, my brother came over. The week before, Stephen had come over to put up some outside lights. And while he was there, he asked, Hey, so what's going on with that whole endeavor to fact-check dad? Justine panicked. I was not prepared for this question. I hadn't thought up, like, what was I going to tell him about why we were shelving it. So he kind of caught me off guard.

She knew she couldn't say, well, one of the things we fact-checked was your paternity, and since I didn't want you to know that dad isn't your dad, that kind of ended things. But instead of just making some excuse, she was cryptic and vague, almost like she wanted Stephen to keep digging. There's this one thing, she told him, that I realized I wasn't ready to talk about publicly. And he said, well, you have to tell me.

And I said, look at me. You need to drop it. You need to just accept the fact right now that I'm never, ever going to tell you. And he goes, am I adopted? So then he goes home, and he says to my mom, am I adopted? And she's like, where is this coming from?

What are you talking about? But then he asked my mom's parents. He's like going around asking the whole family, am I adopted? And then he comes back to me and he said, Justine, I think I want to do like a 23andMe or something. Everyone's being weird when I ask this question. Then, early one morning while feeding her son oatmeal, Justine received a call from her mother,

who wanted to know why Stephen was asking all these questions. So I just said to her, like, do you want to talk about this now? And she paused for a long time and she goes, I guess so. They decided to meet for lunch, where they continued to talk about it for two hours. Even the simplest of interactions with her before this, there was a level of, like, falsehood, I guess. I just really felt like I was able to be myself for the first time. Together, Justine and her mom, Lynn, went through the whole story.

Lynn explained how as a teenager, she hooked up with a childhood crush, a boy named Brian Kirby that she'd been in love with since she was 13. While Lynn had a curfew and rules set by her parents, Brian was a free spirit who could stay out all night. Their dates were basically impromptu make-out sessions in Lynn's backyard treehouse, where she was out of view from her parents. And then, at 17, she got pregnant. Brian ignored her calls.

Then Gary appeared. Lynn was working at her parents' gas station, visibly pregnant, when one day Gary drove up. The two of them started flirting, and a few months later, Gary proposed. He promised Lynn that he would raise the baby as his own. Lynn thinks he wanted to be a father even more than he wanted her. So when they eventually got divorced, Gary panicked that he might lose the kids. He threatened Lynn, telling her he'd have her killed if she ever revealed the truth about

Stephen. Lynn says Gary knew enough shady people to make it happen. For Lynn, that threat was enough to keep her from ever telling a soul. She was just as afraid of Gary as Justine was. Lynn has always believed that one day, she would talk to Stephen about it. She just needed to wait until Gary was dead, so she'd be safe. But with Stephen asking so many questions, Justine doesn't think they can afford to wait. So what began as a need for Justine to know the truth of who her father really is, has become a need for her brother to know the truth of who his father really isn't. Justine convinces her mother that despite their fear, they owe it to Stephen. And together,

they devise a plan and set a date. And while they know telling Stephen the truth will have consequences, what they don't know yet is just how big those consequences will be. Okay, let's end this and go on to the next side. On next week's Heavyweight, Side B. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by senior producer Kalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane, Mohini McGowker, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Sharon Mishihi, Connie Walker, Thank you.