The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Fake Priest | 2. Coming Home

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Alex tracks down Father Ryan’s son, Jonathan Brady, and discovers Father Ryan was a scammer and manipulator long before he wore a priestly robe. Turns out he had plenty of practice committing fraud before he opened his first church in Wisconsin.  A Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me.

Over fries and yuzu mocktails, Josh Gad and I discussed the roles we auditioned for and didn't get, for better or worse. Did you audition for The Office? I auditioned for Dwight Schrute. So did I! So did I! The reject pile for Dwight Schrute. There's a lot of us.

A lot of us. Check out the full episode by searching Dinners on Me wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a note before we get started, this episode might have some language that is not appropriate for all listeners. The stories I had heard about Father Ryan raised more questions than they answered. How did he get away with conning so many people? And why is he not in jail? I needed to find someone who knew the man, not the priest he'd become.

And I did. Jonathan Brady knows all too well the damage Father Ryan's lies can cause. And he's pretty pissed off. He swears. A lot. You've got some douchebag walking around telling your fucking grandma, taking her confession, giving her communion, making her believe that her path to heaven and salvation is there. Just follow me. Give me some money. Jonathan has talked to a lot of people tricked into thinking Father Ryan was an ordained Catholic priest. This man spreads pain on levels that just fucking astound me. Jonathan never wanted to become an expert on Father Ryan's cons.

He never chose to follow him. He was stuck with him from the start. You see, Father Ryan is his dad. I had to know, I needed to know, why the fuck did you throw me the fuck away? From Neon Hum Media, I'm Alex Schumann, and this is Smokescreen, Fake Priest. More than happy to take a DNA test.

And to hell I'd do it with bells on if it came down to. The first time I talked to Jonathan Brady was over the phone. I'm a firm believer in God, but I've seen too much of the dark side of Catholicism and organized religion in general. I was in New York City, and he was in Alabama. Jonathan doesn't deny the accusations against Father Ryan. He was a con man, a thief. It's the opposite. He wants as many people as possible to know what he's found.

He's been trying to understand his dad's life, and in turn his, for more than three decades, ever since he was 12. A person who's played a big part in helping him track information down is Vida Barr. Me and Vida have been literally trying to piece together my life because of what happened, the way in it that it just happened. Vida found Jonathan after she learned more about who Father Ryan really was. Back in the summer of 2000, after she escaped from the Holy Rosary Abbey in Pocahontas, she

stopped trying to be a religious at a traditionalist church. Instead, she started digging into Father Ryan's con. I found out that he was not a priest and that he had been in trouble in Edgerton, Wisconsin. Eventually, she found Jonathan and introduced him to me. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, much better. Yeah, I've heard a little bit about you.

What can I do for you? Well, I'm working on the part about before he started to pretend to be a priest in the 70s and 80s. And so... Okay, okay. Okay, you said the key words right there. He clearly wanted to tell his story. I'm more than willing to do a sit-down interview. This was my best chance to understand who Father Ryan was before he ran

the Holy Rosary Abbey. Maybe something in his past could explain why he'd pretend to be a priest. You know, I wanted some personal justice in my life. But now with all these people that he's screwed over, it's not about me.

It's about actual justice. Actual justice. Jonathan wanted to make sure Father Ryan's day of reckoning was near. I had to meet this guy. So I hopped on an airplane, flew to Nashville, rented a car, and drove the nearly two hours down to Jonathan's apartment. I pictured somewhere smaller, but the town where he lives has a population of about 40,000. Someone told

me the values here are God, family, and football, but they don't always come in that order. Okay, he says he's here. He lives on the outskirts of town, not far from an industrial park. The driveway is long and lined with tall pine trees. You pull into a parking lot in the middle of five brick buildings. Let's get out. Jonathan's place is up on the second floor. He met me out front and shook my hand. Hey, welcome to it.

Inside his apartment, it's your usual bachelor pad. Except the mess in the corner isn't a stack of beer cans or empty pizza boxes. It's a bunch of acrylic paint. Jonathan's counter is covered with small tubes of paint, every color you can think of. Two big paintings he's working on are hanging on his living room wall. I never know what I'm going to do when I start. I just start and see where it goes, and things just pop. The biggest is of an owl, backlit by a massive moon. Jonathan has this constant drive to create.

I have to get the emotion out one way or another. Either I do it through words, writing, clay, steel, fuck, yarn. I mean, anything. If I don't get it out, then I just go batshit crazy for a while. And I don't like that.

So I'd rather just sit there, crank tunes, and just start painting and see where it goes. Jonathan doesn't talk about the things he's going to be talking to me about often. To help him get through it, he decides we need to distract ourselves. He'll talk, sure, but on one condition.

Whenever I ask him an extra hard question, I have to take a shot of vodka before he'll answer. So what kind of vodka is this? The cheapest fucking shit you can get in this state. Aristocrat. It's nasty. He wasn't kidding. We were drinking some straight, nasty vodka.

He had the full bottle with the cap off on the coffee table between us. I sat in a chair and he was on the couch. Jonathan seemed nervous, but not in the way most people are when you come into their house with microphones. He wasn't nervous because he wasn't sure what to say. He was nervous because he knew exactly how dark and deep his story gets. Jonathan's life hasn't been easy. I have gaps in memory that span years, and the shit I do remember, I wish to fucking God I didn't. He was born in 1972 with the name John Stocks.

You might remember that at that time, Father Ryan was going by a different name too, the name John Stocks. You might remember that at that time, Father Ryan was going by a different name too, Randall Dean Stocks. When Jonathan was three, his dad and mom divorced. According to the divorce papers, Father Ryan got custody. Then Jonathan tells me he got shuffled around. I was bounced from home to home to home, and it wasn't in the foster care system.

It was with people he met. Strangers. That's one of the things that made it hard for him to figure out his past. He doesn't think his dad used the proper channels for foster care. And eventually, he gave up Jonathan for adoption. It's not clear if that was on the up and up either. But by now, it's clear to me why Jonathan has to take shots when he talks about his childhood. His parents got divorced, but that's not what made him feel so messed up. It's that his dad got custody and then neglected him and then started leaving him with strangers, some of whom heard him. I understand every definition of the word physical abuse,

mental abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. I know it. I still carry the fucking scars. At age nine, Jonathan gets adopted by a single woman. Her mom and dad, Jonathan's now adoptive grandparents, played a big part in his life. Fred Brady was the one man who took a wild fucking kid, damn near feral kid, and gave him books, and gave him room to fucking run.

I mean, this guy handed me a fucking bow and arrow and 30 acres of land in upstate Arizona and said, go run. This stability would only last a few years. When he was 12, his grandparents passed away. That's when, out of nowhere, Father Ryan showed back up in Jonathan's life and tried to get custody of him. He failed and disappeared without explanation.

Can you imagine how that would make you feel as a kid? Then something unexpected happened. His adopted mom moved them from Arizona to Seattle. And during the move, somehow there was a safe that my adopted mother, I don't know if the lock slipped or what, but I found a copy of divorce papers and it had my dad's name and then it had another name, my biological

mother's name. How old were you in that habit? I was 11. And it just- You didn't remember her at all? No, no, I never... No, I had no idea who the fuck my mother was. I had no recollection, nothing.

No clue whatsoever. Jonathan now had at least some information to work from. And I read through the papers, and then I just started hunting. I wanted to know what the fuck happened. He goes about five years searching. And then all of a sudden, fucking Apple River, Illinois pops in my head. That's where Father Ryan grew up, Apple River, Illinois. It's a small town of less than 400, the town where his adoptive family lived.

Yep, just like Jonathan, Father Ryan had been adopted too. And it was his adoptive grandmother in Apple River who introduces Ryan to the Catholic Church. It's strange to think that if he'd never been adopted, he might not have become Father Ryan. Jonathan doesn't remember what made him think of Apple River. Memories can be tricky like that. One day, it just came back to him. So I start calling information. I get every stock's name in Apple River, Illinois, and start calling them, going, this is going to sound really fucked

up, but my name is Jonathan. And on the 23rd call, I got a hold of my aunt, Tara. And she said, who the fuck are you? I said, my name's Jonathan. You might have known me as John. I am looking for my biological father, Ryan Scott. Do you know him? In fact, she did. Jonathan had finally found the right family.

Two hours later, I got a phone call, and it was him. Wow. What did he say? What's going on? Hi. It wasn't a hostile meeting. It was just more of a shock. Here was the guy who'd vanished from his life twice. And they were just having a nice conversation. For Jonathan, it felt surreal.

And that's where this shit really starts to get fun. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. starts to get fun. For Dwight Schrute. So did I. So did I. Yep. The reject pile for Dwight Schrute. There's a lot of us. A lot of us. Check out the full episode by searching Dinners on Me wherever you listen to podcasts. Jonathan went to see his dad for the first time since he'd been adopted. It was 1991. Where Jonathan was headed, Black River Falls, is in southeast Wisconsin. It's home to the Ho-Chunk Nation.

They're also called the Winnebago tribe. At that time, Father Ryan wasn't Father Ryan yet. Instead, he was Ryan Scott. And he was a finance director for the tribe. That's right. Before he ever opened a church as a priest, Ryan handled money for a Native American tribe that operates multiple casinos.

When he was getting off that Greyhound bus, Donovan thought of his dad as a successful guy. He was actually very nice. I mean, I got a tour of the offices at the Winnebago. He introduced me as his son. I mean, on an emotional level, I felt I might have found home. Jonathan moves in. How old are you? I think I was 17, 18-ish. Ryan gives him a little loft space in the A-frame house he has on the river. And I mean, he seems like the coolest fucking dude on the planet when you meet him.

I mean, just flat out. Okay, dude's got a fucking house on the river. There's a dock. You want to go swimming? It's hot. You go jump in the river. Cool. Dude makes money.

God damn, his office workers are hot. Okay, I'm getting back into high school. Shit might be looking up. He's got a car and he's letting me fucking drive. The fuck did I just land in? Okay. And then I start asking questions. Jonathan wanted to know, why did his parents get divorced? How did he end up living with strangers instead of them?

Something was off. He didn't tell me the truth. He didn't. The things that he told me, what happened between him and my mother, never added up because I asked questions. I had to. Father Ryan would perfect this kind of stonewalling over the years. But by then, he already seemed good at putting the truth in a box.

He could bury it deep. So when his son Jonathan turned up, he didn't miss a beat. He didn't act like anything was wrong. But once Jonathan started pressing him with all these questions, he gave him vague, nonsensical answers, hoping it would shut the teenager up. But Jonathan decided to not just rely on his dad's word. I'm not just going to ask him questions.

I'm going to ask everybody around him questions. That's how I found my mother. He gets a hold of his biological grandparents on his mother's side. The Clausewitz. I got their name. So as he tells it, about a year after Jonathan finds his dad, now he's found his mom. He doesn't call her. He wants to meet her in person first. He decides to pick literally the most dramatic way possible to do it. I ended up going to Syracuse, New York, literally on Christmas Eve with the fucking Ozzy Osbourne song, Mama, I'm Coming Home, playing on a fucking Amtrak, okay?

Mama, I'm coming home. He shows up at Christmas. His mom answers the door. So I knock on the door Christmas Eve. Hi, my name's Jonathan. I'm your biological child. Drops her shit, goes running upstairs to the attic, yelling bullshit the whole fucking way. No, I mean literally just the word bullshit over and over and over again. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Over and over again. Went running up to her fucking attic, comes tearing down the fucking steps and shows me my death certificate. That was his Christmas present.

His own death certificate. So does she say anything when she hands you the death certificate? Or is she still screaming bullshit? No, just screaming bullshit. I mean, just, again, you have to be able to look at the world through other people's eyes. She just handed her dead son his death certificate. Suddenly, things start to make more sense. That's why.

That's why they didn't fight. They didn't know. They had all thought I was dead. Jonathan realizes that his mom's side didn't abandon him. They had a death certificate from the Pima County Health Department in Arizona. Every part of Jonathan's story is so unreal that there are moments when I don't know what to say to him. Who would want to fake his death? How is it even possible?

Jonathan has a theory. So what are you suggesting? I was adopted at the age of nine or ten. It gets kind of vague at that point. But after everything was said and done, he ended up starting three businesses in LA. I'm not suggesting shit. I'm telling you point blank. He was paid money to sign the adoption papers. And I am not faulting the Bradys in any way, shape, or form. Jonathan thinks this family, the Bradys, paid Father Ryan $150,000 for him.

Jonathan's basis for that number is that Ryan suddenly had money to open new businesses in California. He also said someone told him they witnessed the transaction. Jonathan admits it's circumstantial evidence, but it's what he believes, even if there's no definitive trail. It's also possible the adoptive family thought Ryan was unfit to be a dad, and this was the best way to keep him away from his son.

Before Father Ryan left for California, Jonathan believes Father Ryan faked a death certificate from the Pima County Health Department and mailed it to his biological mom. Now, you might ask, as I did, why would you want to pretend your son died? Well, Father Ryan thought he couldn't have an illegitimate child and become an ordained priest. Or, as Jonathan put it on the phone,

The simple fact that I exist nullifies any claims to priesthood in any way, shape, or form according to the Catholic Church itself. So Father Ryan killed off his son to chase his dream. If you wanted to go along with this theory, Father Ryan could have faked a certificate. Jonathan's adopted grandfather was a high-level administrator for the Pima County Health Department. But he retired to high praise and doesn't sound like the kind of person who'd do that. Beyond that connection, there's no other evidence. In some of his writings a former follower sent me, Father Ryan tells a totally different story

to explain the existence of Jonathan. Ryan claims the Catholic Church directed him to marry Jonathan's mom because she'd gotten pregnant out of wedlock. This would prevent an abortion and allow Jonathan to be adopted instead. There's no evidence any of this ever happened. Untangling Father Ryan's background is tough. He crisscrosses the country using multiple names.

Randall Dean Stocks. Ryan St. Ann Scott, Ryan Scott Gevlinger, and the 21 other name variations are all him based on so-called legal records. He does a good job of hiding the truth when he wants to. But what Father Ryan can't hide is his resemblance to Jonathan. They look so alike. To me, there's no doubt they're related. You can see it in their eyes, the way their forehead wrinkles,

and their bright gray hair. Even in their personality, they're both smart, charming. Jonathan knows how similar they are, which for him is a problem. I have fought tooth and nail to find what I was, what I came from.

What I found was fucking ugly. He does what he can to avoid being anything like his dad. Something twisted in me the opposite direction of him. There's a fundamental difference between him and me. So by 18, Jonathan knew his parents had divorced, his dad got custody, There's a fundamental difference between him and me.

So by 18, Jonathan knew his parents had divorced, his dad got custody, neglected him, and then he suspects sold him to another family. And his mom got a fake death certificate with his name on it, so she never came looking for him. His dad wasn't Father Ryan yet, but he was already used to playing with people's lives. The Winnebago tribe got screwed over too. You ask the Winnebago Indian tribe what happened with Ryan Scott after everything said and done, there was several million dollars missing.

And their financial department, the office building that it was located at, was burnt to the motherfucking ground. I did ask the tribe. I asked if he worked for them, if money was missing, and if the financial building really did burn down. Their response came from a generic public relations email.

Quote, that was some time ago. We have no comment at this time. Father Ryan was never charged with any crime. You want to talk about white fucking privilege? Jonathan can't believe his dad just walked away. That's why when he heard where he went next, he wanted to warn people.

After the Winnebago's came Edgerton. Father Ryan managed to get himself hired as the finance director for a small town in Wisconsin called Edgerton. Ryan doesn't to get himself hired as the finance director for a small town in Wisconsin called Edgerton. Ryan doesn't last too long in this job. Jonathan called the mayor and told him he better look into Ryan's credentials. Because I tracked him. Something was off.

He didn't tell me the truth. Jonathan's warning paid off. Father Ryan gets convicted of adding an extra zero to a $30 check to himself from the city in 1993. He ends up getting three years probation. But around this time, Jonathan taps out. He's spent. He can't keep trying to nail his dad.

He's got to live his own life. I stopped because I was trying to get away from him. After Edgerton, Jonathan loses track of his dad, so he has no idea that Ryan would resurface in Wisconsin. It's one thing to put on a green visor and pretend to be an accountant. It's another to wear a white collar and mess with people's spirituality. Their souls. Did the fact he was now using people's spirituality for his cons

change the way Jonathan felt about his dad? Before he answered, he got up off his couch and walked to his kitchen area. He grabbed an oversized can of Red Bull and set it on the coffee table. Jonathan slid over the Red Bull and a bottle of aristocrat vodka. If we're going to go this direction, we all going to take a shot. Father Ryan was just getting started. It's 1996, three years since Jonathan stopped keeping tabs on his dad. It's also the year Father Ryan starts his first church. He's still on parole after getting

convicted of stealing money from Edgerton's city government. For the site of his first church, he picks Viroqua, Wisconsin, a town of a little less than 4,500. Father Ryan almost always seemed to pick small towns. These are places with small police forces, less aggressive, if any, media outlets, and places where people are just friendlier, more trusting too, and a bit slower to change. All of those things, whether intentional or not, meant there would be fewer people to

call them out. These towns can be welcoming places, especially to someone everyone assumes is a priest, a person they were taught to revere, see as almost godlike since they were born. But the hierarchy in the local diocese was much more skeptical of this new Father Ryan. You know, when did you first learn about Ryan Scott? Well, that would be in 1996. Monsignor Michael Gorman was the chancellor at the Diocese of La Crosse in Wisconsin. He has a tongue-in-cheek way of talking about Father Ryan. La Crosse is a beautiful town right along the Mississippi River. It's the largest community in that area with more than 50,000

people. The La Crosse Diocese oversees all the Catholic churches in the part of Wisconsin where Father Ryan opened his first abbey. At that time, he's going by Father Ryan St. Ann Scott, or Ryan Scott for short. The problem then, of course, is that Ryan Scott was presenting himself as a priest. He was offering mass and things and without any authorization or knowledge of the bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse. This next part is amazing to me and raises so many questions.

After he opens the First Holy Rosary Abbey, Father Ryan reaches out to the local diocese to see if they'd support him. That's like pretending to be a doctor and opening a clinic, then going to the nearest hospital to ask for referrals. The bishop and Monsignor Gorman agree to meet with Ryan. They end up meeting with him several times.

Can you talk about those at all, what they were like? Well, Ryan Scott was trying to convince us that he had been ordained a Catholic priest by Archbishop James Joseph Byrne, who was the retired Archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa. He said the meetings always stayed cordial. At one point, Ryan gave them a piece of paper with this Archbishop's signature on it.

Remember, Ryan was convicted in 1993 and opened this abbey only three years later. Seminary takes at least four years, and it often takes eight. There's no way he could have finished seminary in that time. I never, from the very beginning, recognized any of his claims to any kind of legitimacy, least of all his so-called ordination by Archbishop Byrne in Dubuque, who, as he described it, simply put his hand on his head. He said when they called down to check into Father Ryan's claim, Gorman spoke to the priest in charge of Archbishop Burns' affairs. It turns out that priest had gotten worried Ryan was taking advantage of the archbishop,

and he stopped Ryan from visiting the nursing home again. Whether he got any money from him or not, I don't know. But as far as the archbishop's ability to ordain him, Bishop Burke and I both knew that that could not have happened. How desperate do you have to be to find an aging Archbishop in a nursing home, gain their trust, and then have them fake ordain you? Ryan told the Bishop and Monsignor he'd actually been ordained another time, too. Yes, really. Ryan claimed a group in California called the American Catholic Church had ordained

him. They're part of that subculture of traditional Catholics who want the church to be what it was before all the reforms. They reached out to Monsignor Gorman. Apparently hearing that he was in the Diocese of La Crosse, this so-called Archbishop, Archbishop Erwin Klaus, wrote us a letter telling us that Ryan Scott had no connection with them, that he had been excommunicated by them. Even traditional Catholics, the group he claimed to serve, wanted to distance themselves from him.

If he had been part of that American Catholic church, would that have made a difference? Does the Vatican recognize that traditional movement? No, it would not. Monsignor Gorman was unmoved. He and the bishop eventually decided meeting with Ryan was going nowhere. We didn't want to be antagonistic

because we were hoping to bring this to some peaceful resolution. The ultimate resolution would have been for him to finally accept the fact that he was not a priest and if he wanted to be reconciled with the Catholic Church to be so as a layman. But Ryan didn't want to be a layman. He didn't want to be in the pews. He wanted to be at the altar. So the Diocese in La Crosse published a warning in multiple newspapers and called the sheriff's office. They even got the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to send out a letter to every bishop in the country warning them about Ryan. What's incredible is that that wasn't enough to

stop Father Ryan in his tracks, right there at the First Holy Rosary Abbey. Strangely enough, stopping a fake priest is harder than you'd think. And Father Ryan is an especially difficult case. Because even if you throw a fact at him, he fires back with his own. That's exactly what he did when the actual Catholic Church put out all those warnings he wasn't real. He filed a lawsuit saying they were lying. Gorman said the attorney for the diocese actually get him to answer that stuff under oath. Absolutely, because that would have exposed the whole fraud. But the La Crosse diocese would never get that chance. As Father Ryan felt the pressure on him growing, he realized he needed to do something different. Here's Vida. It became contentious to the point where Ryan spent 23 days in jail on a probation violation.

This was the probation he was still finishing for stealing money from Edgerton's government. And that's when Father Ryan hears about a guy who's operating religious refuges for traditional Catholics all over the country, filled with adoring, devoted followers. And he thinks, here is someone I can learn from. Jonathan knows a lot about this part of the story. The bad part is it's not just him. He learned from somebody. That somebody, unlike Father Ryan, had been able to stay completely under the radar.

For years, he'd been successfully selling people on the idea he was a prophet who'd received a message from God. Maybe Father Ryan thought he saw his future, his way to success, if he could just learn from this man. To this day, despite investigations by the FBI and a local sheriff, this alleged prophet is barely known to the public. Next time on Smokescreen Fake Priest, we go to a refuge in the Arizona desert. You wouldn't know you were on it when you got there if you didn't know exactly what you were looking for.

Father Ryan joins up with a group of other convicted criminals. I mean, he clearly was a con man. And what he learns there, he'll use down the line. And you've barely scratched the fucking surface. Next time on Fake Priest. He's got old-time religion. There is his cash in a coffee can. And he makes his decisions down on his knees.

He's a full-grown man and he... Fake Priest is a production of Neon Hum Media. It is reported and hosted by me, Alex Schumann, See, he's a full-grown man and he... to Blue Dot Sessions for tracks you hear on this episode. Sound design and additional composition by Jesse Perlstein. And the song you hear now is Old Time Religion by Parker Millsap. Our engineer is Scott Somerville. Special thanks

to Peter Manseau, Odelia Rubin, Haley Fager, Shira Morris, and Vikram Patel.