True Crime with Kendall Rae - Family of Nine Locked in NYC Apartment Most of Their Lives – The Wolfpack Brothers

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

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So today's video is going to be different than most of the videos that I do. And it might be a nice change of pace for this channel. I didn't know if you guys would be interested in hearing this story because it's not a typical true crime story at all, but lately I've been kind of broadening my horizons with the content. And you guys seem to be enjoying it. So we'll see how this goes. So today we're going to be talking about the Wolf Pack. And I heard this story years ago. I'm sure today we're going to be talking about the wolf pack. And I heard

this story years ago, I'm sure a lot of you may have heard about it years ago when this story first broke. But I feel like a lot of people haven't heard of the wolf pack brothers or have only heard bits and pieces of their story. Before I start telling you more about the brothers, I need to tell you about their mom, Suzanne Rice and Vickler. Suzanne grew up in the Midwest. She's been a lot of her time playing on the sand dunes, climbing mountains. She was a very outdoorsy kid. When she got older, she got really into hiking and she wanted to go to Peru to do this one hike. She was taking the Inca Trail led by a group of hikers who knew this area well and often gave tours to, you know, American tourists or tourists from other parts of the world. And one of the hikers was named Oscar and Gulu.

When they met they said it was love at first sight and their relationship moved very quickly. And their life was pretty crazy once they got married. They didn't have a place to call home so they were kind of just sleeping wherever they could. For a while they lived with a hair-cRISHNA community and they kind of met some good friends in there, stay there for a little while, but eventually they wanted to be on their own again, so they left the stability of the group and they got in their van and hit the road. And they lived that way for years. They stayed in their van, they moved around, traveled and had fun.

And then in 1991, they started having babies, which as most of you know, changes everything. So, they had to kind of put their old life aside and figure out a more stable housing situation for their children. So they ended up in the Seward Park Extension Housing Project in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. An Oscar really wanted to go to Scandinavia eventually. He said that he just liked the people there, the culture, but this never happened. They ended up staying in New York. In the housing project, they lived in a four bedroom, thousand square foot apartment.

And when they moved into this apartment, everything changed. Oscar became like a different person. He always had fears about the world, but when they moved to New York City, those fears became had fears about the world, but when they moved to New York City, those fears became heightened. He was so paranoid and afraid of people, afraid of the world that he was dangerous, who was corrupt, that the kids were going to end up on drugs, that they could be murdered. Every possible scenario constantly was going through his head, and he wanted to shield his kids away from it as much as he could. But he went way too far, because he took control of their entire lives. He decided that he was going to hide his kids and his wife away from the world, lock them

inside this apartment and not allow them to leave. He made a bunch of rules for the family to follow. He was the only one that had a key to the front door. He didn't allow anyone to even come over to their apartment. They had no contact with outside world at all. Oscar was so worried that one of the kids would try to leave the apartment, that he put a ladder on the door outside

so that if they opened the door, he would hear it and he would be able to catch them in the act. And when you lift the ladder, it'd make a lot like, whew, so he would know if anyone was attempting to go out. And anytime any of them questioned him about it, he would say that this is a bad world with bad people in it. And I'm keeping you safe from them. I'm keeping you shielded.

Oscar was one of those guys who acted like he was enlightened. That he knows everything that he's something special and that he has a mission here on Earth. he's something special and that he has a mission here on earth. So by 1999, Oscar and Suzanne had seven children and we're not even sure of their birth years because they weren't keeping track of any of that. And Oscar decided he wanted to give all of his kids Sanskrit names because it was the first language and this meant a lot to him. Their oldest is named Vee Snume and she is their only daughter.

She was also born with a rare genetic disorder and has developmental disabilities. Then they had a boy named Bhagavan and also fraternal twin boys, Nariana and Govinda. And then their youngest three boys are Macunda, Krishna and Jagadish. So all these kids grew up inside this tiny apartment. Most of them don't even have memory of what it was like to be outside of the apartment

at all. Imagine if as soon as you were born, all you knew was one space. Think of one of the houses that you grew up in. Imagine that being your entire world. Never socializing with anybody. Never getting to see trees. never getting to meet new people, never getting to go to a restaurant, never getting to go to the beach or the park, never even touching grass. And these kids grew up in constant fear of not only their own father in their home, but also

of the outside world. They really believed it was a terrible, terrible place. And Oscar was also very abusive to their mother. And they constantly had to see that happening. Him pushing her, smacking her, arguing loudly, and they're all in this small, thousand square foot apartment. And they lived in this big apartment building. There were 800 people living in the building actually, and no one ever knew that there were seven children in that unit. This is the smell of a warm, three-day-old egg-solid sandwich in a wimpy trash bag.

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Of course, all the kids were homeschooled by Suzanne, and Oscar didn't work. They lived off welfare money. And they really never had to leave. Occasionally, Oscar would go out to get food or whatever else They needed he would allow himself to leave but the kids and his wife were never allowed to leave the apartment for Years their family continued to follow a lot of the practices that the hair Krishna Movement kind of taught them while they were staying in that community But they really put a twist on it made it their own and the boys describe it as their own personal tribe in this apartment.

Oscar wanted to have as many kids as possible for his tribe, and they did have fun moments too. There's a lot of home footage actually. They had cameras and stuff in there, of them dancing around, having family time, like normal things that a family would do. So they would have those moments of joy and the kids were happy, a lot of the time growing up. But the older they got, the more they realized what they were missing out on.

They spent a lot of time just looking out their windows, looking at the city, imagining what it would be like to be out there. We would sit and the window and I could c view on a mountain top. Th might be other mountains. fun. So at this point, th

living in the apartment an picked out names for three Suzanne couldn't have any more children, so he eventually gave that up. And as the years went on and the kids got older, Oscar only became more, more controlling, added more rules, locked down on them even tighter. And their kids, they have energy. They've got to get their energy out somehow, so they played as hard as they could in the apartment. Their parents would let them go in the hallway of the apartment if they were supervised and they would roll or blade back and forth down that and that was a big to-do for them. But imagine how antsy you would get just being stuck inside and I'm sure some of us can relate

to this in some way just by what we went through with quarantining in the last year. Imagine that but for years and no personal contact with anyone outside, not even over text, over social media, none of that. They were locked down. It was just the nine of them in this small world. And what's crazy is even though they only lived in though they only li for all of them, Oscar marking off rooms and b kids were no longer allow these rooms were the ones walls with other apartm

obviously because he didn here that he had kids in anyone to hear what we w we were laughing or he basically didn't want anyone to know we were here. And it's crazy to me that this went on for years and no one ever knew that there were kids in there, no one ever heard a sound.

Here's a floor plan just to give you an idea of how cramped this space was. The two rooms that Oscar had blocked off were the living room and one of the bedrooms. Imagine not being able to use your living room. So they're hanging out in bedrooms most of the time. Sometimes they were told to stay in one of the bedrooms. He would put all of them in there and lock the door, not let them make any sound.

They weren't allowed to come out until he said so. And all the kids say that their mother got the worst of it, that he treated her like garbage and gave her way more rules than he put on any of the others. And if she ever did something wrong or broke one of Oscar's rules, he would actually put her on trial and interrogate her and dull out of punishment. She had the worst of it from all of us.

She had more rules than we did. Any little thing that she did wrong was she was like put on trial. She would not treat her like a happy husband with a happy wife. Suzanne didn't have control of her life at this point at all. Didn't have control of the way that she parented what she did every day, Oscar made all of her decisions for her. It was hard because I thought I wanted them to be out in the fresh air because that's what I did as a child. And the worst

thing that he did to her in my opinion is he made her cutoff contact with all of her family and she wasn't even able to tell them why. They were causing problems for him. And he just wanted them to be out of their lives without explanation. So she cut off contact with her sister and her mother. So for years, they didn't even know what happened to her. It was like she disappeared. At one point, they even hired a private investigator

to try to track her down. But they had no luck. That's how hidden Oscar kept her. We just felt there was no way of knowing how do we find out? We had to hire a detective. No one had seen her.

There is a very small documentary about this that is largely produced by the brothers themselves. And in their documentary, Suzanne talks a lot about how bad she feels that she got to live this life, climbing mountains, playing in the sand dunes, being outside as a kid.

And she wasn't able to give that to her own children. When the boys were growing up, all she could do was tell them stories about her experiences and what she used to be able to do as a kid. Now, once in a while, they would leave the apartment altogether on supervised outings and these were very, very rare but sometimes Oscar would decide to take them all out. They would go to places like City Park or East River Park but they

would have to stay really close together and they weren't allowed to interact with strangers in any way, not even look at them. These rare outings took place normally, like once a year in the summer, never in the winter. We would go out in the summers, mostly, because it was nice out, and then the winter came and we never went out in the winter. But the kids were called that there was one year where they didn't go outside at all, not one time. And even many of us who were quarantining, we still didn't go outside at all, not one time. And even many of us who

are quarantining, we still got to go outside. We could go get a breath of fresh air in our backyards, on our patios, whatever. They couldn't even get that. They couldn't even breathe fresh air. They had no friends, no connection to the outside world whatsoever, so they never got to really develop their social skills. But luckily one thing that was very helpful for them growing up was their dad allowed them to watch movies. And it may sound like a little thing to some people, but to them movies and movie history and filmmaking is everything to them. They actually explained it as it's kind of a religion to them. And I can totally understand that.

Being stuck in an apartment and your only connection to the outside world is a TV screen and characters and storylines and it kind of gives you a better idea of what the world is like. I mean movies take you to all types of places. You know, they got to see things. They got to see what it's like in the Wild West and learn about history. The kids talk a lot about how movies and the characters in the movies really shaped them

into who they are. They was been in entire days watching movies that they had, you know, whatever their dad would bring them. It's not like they had streaming services. So they had a collection of movies. It was a pretty broad collection, but they would watch a lot of them over and over again, because there was nothing else to do. How many hours a day would you watch these movies? All day. A whole day? Every day. How many movies have you seen? Let's just say over 10,000 movies.

At least, if I didn't have movies, life would be pretty boring. It makes me feel like I'm living, sort of, because it's kind of magical. The movies taught us like sort of how to speak to one another. Talking to me. How you interact with another person then have an opinion. Marvin, what do you make all this? The dark night. Prior to the Caribbean. Late rumour. Taxi driver, apocalypse now, citizen cane. No country for old men Halloween. Gone with the wind. Sunset Boulevard. The thing. And some of them they started memorizing, because they would watch their favorites over and over and over again.

And then they got into re-enacting it. And it was something really fun that sometimes a whole family would get in on. And obviously this was a way for them to live vicariously through these characters who are out free living their lives. It's honestly such a blessing that they were able to watch movies because I feel like their social skills developed a lot by just watching other people.

Because most of us get that experience and learn our social skills by being around other people, going to school, being around relatives. The boys had nothing of that. So the characters in the movies became kind of like their friends. Watching how they interact and how their personalities are formed and their interests made them develop their own personalities and interests even more. And learn how to be more social because these guys for how they lived, they are very impressive.

It also taught them a lot about complex emotion, you know? Movies a lot of them are very emotional and watching other people experience an emotion is crucial for the human development. This is the smell of a warm three-day old egg-solid sandwich in a wimpy trash bag. Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy! Ffff!

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there and they started making their own movies at home and they got into this. They would actually write out their scripts and had multiple scripts all handwritten. They would cast roles, design the costumes, design the sets and they really nailed these scenes. They would pay attention to all the little details, all the mannerisms, the gestures that the characters were doing, and they even would learn choreography of fight scenes and act them out perfectly, just like the movie did.

When we do it, I have to get in the mind of the character to play Batman, because it's a responsibility, sort of, that sounds pathetic to some people, because, but to us to some people because, but to us and to our world, it is very personal. Mekunda was really into it, and he would work for days on the props and the costumes. They would turn whatever they had in the house, random objects into swords or oxygen tanks. And of course, they had a lot of free time to practice

and they were rewatching a lot of classic movies with some of the best actors trying to imitate it and work on their own acting skills. It's so great that they were so creative and inspired. So the kids have a lot of fun memories together. And when the kids were younger, it was easier for Oscar to really keep control of them, to keep them happy.

I mean, they didn't really know anything different. But as the kids got older and bigger, the apartment felt smaller and smaller. They started to get restless. They were asking more questions about the outside world, looking out the windows a lot, and Oscar just got the feeling that they wanted more. He realized that as they got older, he was slowly losing control of the boys, and he didn't know how much longer he would be able to enforce these rules on them. Was he going to keep them in this apartment away from the dangers of the world forever?

So Oscar came up with a new rule to solve this problem. He decided to put blankets on all the windows in the apartment so they can no longer look outside. They got no natural sunlight. It was dark in their apartment all of the time. And that to me is just torture. To be stuck in this small apartment with all these people not able to go into certain rooms and now you're not even able to look outside. When that was happening, we couldn't even get sunlight looking out the window. I started getting a little like, all right, enough is enough. And of course, without sunlight, without vitamin D, a deep depression fell over their

family. The boys grew more and more anxious. Closher phobic. They were becoming restless. They were losing their minds. They all started to bigger more. There wasn't many happy moments and the tension just continued to build. So finally one of the brothers, Makunda, decided that he could not live like this anymore. He knew how they were being raised was unfair. He was getting old enough to realize that it was way different than how most of the world lived,

especially after watching so many movies. What's interesting is Macoon does name actually translates to giver of freedom. And that's what he did for his family. It was January 2010, at this time he was only 15 years old, but he decided he was finally going to go out into the world. His dad was going to be getting groceries. They would do these big food halls every once in a while so that they wouldn't have to leave

very often. They'd go get a bunch of food at once, bring it back, live off of it until it was pretty much gone. And then he would go make one of these food runs. And he was normally gone about three hours. So, Makunda knew he had time. It was a Saturday morning and I just thought, you know what, I've got to do it today. It's now or never. But he was really worried about being recognized out there, which of course, who's going to recognize him, no one's ever seen him, but he was actually most concerned that his father would see him out there and recognize him.

I wouldn't dare do it when he was around. So he decided to go to his prop closet and grab a mask to wear outside. And it wasn't just any mask. It was actually the mask worn by Michael Myers in the Halloween movies. He chose this one because it covered his entire face and he didn't think Oscar would be able to recognize him. He put on the mask, went to the door, removed the ladder and stepped into the hallway. Before he left, he turned back and looked at one of his brothers, Jagadish, and told him to wish him luck.

After that, he went further than he ever had gone before. He walked the 16 flights down to the bottom of the apartment. He said during all this, his heart was just beating out of his chest. There were so many things to see, there were so many noises, so many people walking by. Imagine walking into New York City if you had never left your apartment at all for the first time. And he's just walking around in this Michael Myers-Mass, which of course it's New York City. It's not that weird there. So people that saw him didn't think much of it,

but he didn't really have a plan. He didn't know where to go. So he started just going into random places. The hard pounded so hard. I was like, oh. He had no idea where he was going. He didn't even know his own address. So he made sure he could always see his building

so he wouldn't get lost. So he walks around in his mask, he goes into a grocery store, he goes into a pharmacy, and then he goes into a bank, which obviously this wasn't a good idea because if you see a masked person in a bank, you're going to be concerned. So, of course, someone called 911. When officers arrived, they tried to talk to Makunda, but he was so freaked out, he didn't speak. He was handcuffed and then they walked him back to his apartment building but as they walked with him the officers realized he needed help. So they called in ambulance to take him to the psych ward of Bellevue Hospital and what's so

funny is Macoon da said this whole experience was actually fun for him. It was exciting because it was like being in a movie he had never been in an ambulance before and he thought everything was so cool and then he was asked in an interview what he thought of the psych ward and he also described that as fun. I was in an ambulance for the first time. I was never in an ambulance. I was like whoa look at this. This is just like a movie set or something. I'm like they got the siren on. This is pretty wild. He was having the time of his life. He was just so happy to be out of the apartment, have a change of scene, get to sleep in his own bed, and he really liked all the other people in the

psych ward, and he made friends with a bunch of them, and it was his first time socializing ever. So it was a great time for him. So he spent a whole week in the hospital and then he was released. When he first got home, his mom made him lasagna, one of his favorite meals. She was so happy to have him back. But he knew his father was mad at him for leaving and he was afraid to talk to him.

But he knew at this point he just needed to stand up for himself. He needed to take his own life back. So he told his father that he was no longer going to take orders from him and that they were no longer father and son. And this really freaked out Oscar. He never thought his sons would start going against him. He completely lost control. He locked himself in his bedroom for days and started drinking a lot.

But they had finally sent the message to him that they were not gonna take it anymore. He was not gonna control them anymore or their mother or they would leave. And surprisingly, Oscar just kind of gave in to this. So, they had in the children were able to start leaving the apartment again. And I know this is really surprising, but there were no ramifications for Oscar. Even though this was a huge story, they interviewed tons of people in the apartment complex and none of them ever knew the kids were in there. No one knew these kids existed. But there was no accountability for Oscar.

And since he just kind of gave up and let the boys start doing whatever they wanted, they kind of just let it all go. They started dressing in clothes that made them feel safe and secure. They would wear these matching suits and sunglasses from the movie Reservoir Dogs wherever they went. I just absolutely love these guys. They would walk around in New York in these outfits together as a pack. They would go in and out of restaurants, explore new parks together, literally just going to the beach for the first time was a huge deal for them, getting to see certain types of trees that they had never seen before. And what's interesting is even though they were told for years that the world is dangerous,

that it's scary, that it's filled with dangerous people, they weren't scared. They felt confident, especially walking in a group, getting to live this newfound freedom made them feel powerful and in charge of their lives for the first time ever. And in their first week out of their apartment, they were actually spotted by this woman who had recognized them from the Wolfpack story. Her name is Crystal Mozel. She was a graduate of New York School of Visual Arts and they both happened to be on Fifth Avenue at the same time so she walked up and introduced herself, told them that she was a filmmaker and they were very intrigued.

At this time the brothers were between the ages of 11 and 18 and they had never had any friends other than each other so Crystal actually became their first friend. They started meeting in the park talking about movies and filmmaking, and she started teaching them things about filmmaking as well. And after they spent a little time with her, they actually invited her back to their apartment. That's how much things actually changed. They were allowed to bring a friend back to their apartment, which was unheard of. She was actually the first person to ever go into their apartment. You She actually our first guest to be invited over. Really?

Yeah. Ever? Yeah. Never invited anybody over before. Yeah. Because we didn't have friends. And when she first went over there, she didn't even know their full story. She had no idea that they had spent all of their lives living in this apartment.

The more time she spent with them, she started to learn more about their lives, and everything they had been through, all the rules that they had to follow, how certain rooms were blocked off. So she started to document them. Filming, crystal filming us felt more like a hangout, more than work, or it was like playtime because it was the whole circle of the filmmaking It was all like a hangout, really. It didn't felt like work or time to do this or time to do it. It was just hanging out most of the time and being filmed while hanging out.

And their mother, Suzanne, was a great actor. And she was a great actor. She was a great actor. She was a great actor. She was a great actor. She was a great actor. It was just hanging out most of the time and being filmed while hanging out. And their mother Suzanne was fine with this. She allowed Crystal to come into their apartment to bring her camera to document their everyday lives and their father was very apprehensive about it. He isn't on film much, but he does talk in the documentary. And so Crystal filmed the guys talking about their emotions,

talking about what different instances in their childhood was like, how things changed over time. And she got to capture a lot of the brothers' first experiences doing things, like ordering a meal at a restaurant, riding a bike. But they were most excited about getting to see a movie on the big screen for the first time in theaters. They went and saw the movie The Fighter starring Mark Walberg and Christian Bale, which is one of my favorite movies. That's awesome. That's exciting. I play that guy in the dark night. They also got experience going on the train for the first time. They'd always group

terrified of trains. So around this time, they're obviously very happy. They'd always group terrified of trains. So around this time, they're obviously very happy. They're experiencing all these new things, really catching up on all the years of life that they missed. But one day, the brothers got to experience something that was not so good. It was really, really scary for them. They were all at home and the SWAT team,

burst into their apartment, a bunch of them ran inside and they arrested all of them. Of course they were in helmets, tactical gear, shields, they had big guns. The brothers had never seen anything like that outside of the movies. They actually came in with a search warrant for possession of weapons, but all they found inside the house were a bunch of props. So the officers said sorry, they complimented them on their props and left. inside the house were a bunch of props. So the officers said sorry, they complimented them on their props and left.

But the kids were all pretty shaken up after this. The SWAT team had put their mother in handcuffs and thrown her up against the wall, and that really upset them. The kids just loved their mother and they hated seeing anything bad happen to her. So they felt really angry at the police after this whole encounter. So this was a bit of a setback for them but eventually they got their courage back and started getting

back out into normal life again and they really wanted to work on their social skills. They didn't know really how to carry a conversation with a stranger so they learned some kind of buzz questions that Crystal had taught them. And one of the questions that they like to go to was, what's your favorite movie? Because they've seen them all. So they could talk to anyone about their favorite movie. One day, Crystal introduced the brothers to one of her friends who said that they looked like a pack of wolves. And the guys loved that. And from that day forward, they started calling themselves the wolf pack. The more time that Crystal spent with them the more she realized that they had such an amazing story to tell. They had been through so much.

So she started documenting their life's going forward for the next five years and they had pretty amazing development over those five years. Over time they realized that life was a lot different than the movies. That people aren't as charming and everything doesn't work out as perfectly and real life is messy and complicated. Real life moves a lot slower than the movies do and people are unpredictable. So they had to realize that with time and get more acclimated to society. In movies, everybody understands what the other is saying, and they have like a reply to it.

But in real life, it's like, could you repeat the question? Could you repeat it like, I'm sorry, I didn't get that. And not everything's a plan in other words of life. After Mekunda first went to the hospital, he started seeing a therapist. And I don't know how he feels about it now, but in the Wolfpack documentary, he talks a lot about how he felt like the therapist couldn't really help them that they couldn't possibly understand what they've been through, but he's appreciated some of her help, like getting an email therapist honestly doesn't even know him and who he really is. The other brothers start going to therapy too and I'm not sure if they still aren't therapy or what that experience was like for them.

They also decided to cut their hair. This was a symbol of them getting their freedom back. Okay, we're starting a new life. This is how I'm moving forward. But one thing they refused to do and the people they were working with really wanted them to, but they did not want to go to regular school. Suzanne had a teaching license and she got paid to teach them. So they felt like she would have no form of income.

Plus, I think it was just too overwhelming to think about going to school with a bunch of other kids and having to explain their situation all the time, I get it. So obviously the brothers went through a huge transformation from barely leaving their house to socializing and getting to walk around freely. But their mom Suzanne had probably the biggest transformation. Suzanne started going outside every day and in the process she said she found the person that she used to be. She had been through so much not being able to talk to her family and she was finally able to reach out and talk to her mother.

And they have this phone call in the documentary as well. It's pretty moving to hear her talk to her mother who is in her 80s now. For the first time in years and just explained to her that she always had loved her that she missed her, that she was sad, that everything turned out this way. And I'm sure it was such good closure for her mom to just know that her daughter's okay. Well, I just... Well, I just want to say that I love you so much, mom.

You know, I just love you so much, Mom. You know, I just love you so much. I just am so glad to have her and my family and my life again. So Christina got financial support from the Tribeca Film Institute to make the documentary. And it was completed in 2015, and Magnolia Pictures bought the rights to it. The Wolfpack premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival

and was very well received, even taking home the prestigious grand jury prize for US documentary. But there was a lot of criticism around the documentary. A lot of people felt like Crystal should not have filmed the boys because they're minors and they can't consent to being on film. But the brothers themselves are incredibly thankful

for Crystal telling their story. They thought she did an amazing job of capturing everything and Suzanne loved it as well. And the whole documentary was an amazing experience for the kids. They got to travel all over the world to attend premieres of the documentary in different cities, which as you can imagine, traveling was a really cool experience for them. They also got to go on a red carpet and pose with movie stars. I mean this was their dream come true and people were just shocked by them. They were so articulate and charming and it's hard to believe that they grew up the way that they did. After the documentary was released and there was a lot of media coverage around this whole story,

the boys would get recognized on the street sometimes, but it doesn't really happen much these days, which they're happy about because all that attention was a bit overwhelming for them, challenging for them, as you can imagine. But this documentary really spoke to other people who had grown up in abusive homes or with over-controlling strict parents, so it was really a success. And their family has adjusted surprisingly well to their new lives. They really had fun during the whole experience of the documentary that was probably the highlight of their lives. They got so many different opportunities, got to meet so many different people. They actually got to meet Robert De Niro. And this is truly like their dream come true.

Just days before they got to meet him, they had actually reenacted a bunch of his scenes and did kind of a tribute to Robert De Niro. They loved him and they got to meet him in person, talk to him about movies. This is about what they mean by Robert. We just talked about that. What are some of your favorite moments? I like, you know, Lawrence, Arabia, Honour Waterfront, what's the one

when Montgomery Clifton, Elizabeth Taylor. Okay, so this is the son. The son. You've seen more movies than I have, I'm sure. You guys know that the films I've done better than I do probably. And everyone is just astounded when they meet them that they're so positive. They're such genuine, nice kids.

And it's surprising after everything that they've been through. They also got to fly out to Michigan and meet Suzanne's family. They're relatives that they had never met. This is actually a picture of the family all getting to see them for the first time. They had a big family picnic, and they even made Wolfpack family t-shirts to show their support. And they're all just so proud of Micunda for breaking them all out of that situation

by getting up the courage to leave the apartment that day. Shoot. Look at that, there's everybody. Ah, look at that. Wait, I can't see. Oh my gosh. Oh, dear. Oh my gosh. That's a lot of people

Hi everybody Our hugs okay Orion Jeff they're from Chicago So that's my dad. This is my daughter Cheyenne I love you so much. I am a cun-de-h. He truly saved their lives. He finally stood up against his dad. He was like, I love you. I love you. I love you so much.

I love you too. I love you too. I love you so much. I love you too. I love you too. I love you too. I love you so much. I am James. Oh, yeah. I'm a good guy. He truly saved their lives. He finally stood up against his dad

and got them all out of this situation. It's very frustrating to me though, that there weren't any ramifications for Oscar, that there was nothing that he could have been charged with, but none of them really want to focus on that. They want to focus on living the rest of their lives, fully. Suzanne even got to take her kids to the sand dunes where she would always play as a child.

They got a climb to the top together, and for them they said this was a big symbol of their new beginning. And now one of their family's favorite activities, Suzanne and the kids, is traveling. They actually got to go to Europe. They went to over 10 different cities over there and they're just trying to soak it all in

and experience as much as they can. And I just have to say, I absolutely love these guys. And I think if you watch the Wolfpack documentary, you will really love them too, because they are just so friendly, so positive, so sweet. They have just such amazing attitudes about life. And they're so so friendly, so positive, so sweet. They have just such amazing attitudes about life, and they're so creative and positive that it really does make you forget

how the beginning of their life was. All the brothers have taken different career paths. Bhagavan, the oldest brother, is a yoga instructor and corpse dancer and instructor at the hip-hop dance conservatory, which works to preserve hip hop as an art form in the United States and around the world. Narayana, one of the twins who now goes by Joseph,

is an environmental activist. His twin brother, Gavinda, works in film production as a camera operator and freelance cinematographer. And he was actually the first to venture out in his own, moving into his own apartment in Brooklyn with three roommates when he was 22. And I'm not sure how their relationship stands as of now, but he is the only one to still have someone of a relationship with his father. All of the other brothers are

estranged from their dad. They want nothing to do with him. And I would probably feel the same way. Maccunda started out as a freelance production assistant and has now worked in almost three areas of production, including cinematography, costume design, set design, camera work, and acting. He's also written and directed to original short films. Krishna and Jogadish, the two youngest who now go by Glenn and Eddie, are both trying to get into the music industry. Eddie is obsessed with Eddie's music and started his own rock band called Ono Rec. And at the Wolfpack premiere party, he actually got to do a performance with Marquis Ramone, the drummer for the Ramones. And that just blew everyone away.

Now surprisingly, Suzanne is still married to Oscar, who is still really stuck in his ways and hasn't changed that much about his own personal life. But as part of gaining her independence back, she did change her last name back to her maiden name, Risenbickler. But she says their life is completely different now. He no longer controls her or makes any rules for her. And she's really glad that her and her sons really were able to get over their fear of the world, that their dad had placed on them. Because now they travel, they meet new people, they experience it all, and they don't live in fear. And now Susanna even works as a domestic violence coach. She's spoken up a lot about her own experience with domestic abuse, and she has

helped many other women that are in similar situations to find help and to break free. She closely works with women for success, which is a support network for domestic violence survivors and she was a guest panelist for you are not alone to end domestic and gender-based violence. All the brothers are still obsessed with the movies that got them through their childhood through this day. And with Crystal's help, they started their own production company, which is called Wolfpack Pictures. And this year, their production company released their third short film. It's called Cowing Out. They are very happy in their lives. They're still very close with Suzanne and credits her for making them the guys that they are to this day and helping them make this transition.

So this story ends on a happy note, which is nice because so many of my videos don't. And I do like to hear stories like this every once in a while that leave me feeling inspired and lifted up. I really can't picture living life the way that they did for so long. I think it would have broken me. And it just amazes me that they had such a positive outlook coming out of all of this,

that they don't hold so much resentment that they have gone on and are living the best lives that they can now. I think it's so cool. And I just love these guys. They're so funny, so entertaining, so full of life. I absolutely loved watching them recreate movie scenes. I know this one was different. I think it's nice to have a break

every once in a while and hear a more uplifting positive story. That is gonna be it for me today guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts It really does help me out if you want to watch the video version of this show You can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked or you can just search Kendall Ray

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