#38 Justine

Hello, Mary Cloude.

But Jackie's not answering the phone, so you're college.

That's why I was phoning. I know this sounds totally paranoid, but do you think has Jackie been avoiding my calls?

She's avoiding your calls?

Why?

She has life and children and maybe she wants to spend a few minutes.

Well, she gives her children.

I'm supposed to talk 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, it's literally four o three I need to leave, So this is okay.

I was just going through my bar mitzvah rs vps and I noticed that Jackie did not attend.

Do you know why did you read your barmst phone the same Saturday as a very popular kid and everyone went to his yes steadiers Eric Leidenheim.

Where she was?

Well, I guess at least she was at Temple from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode. Justine right after the break, This is me, this is your daddy.

Okay, I love you more than anything.

Okay, You're the.

Greatest thing, says Slice Bread. You're the greatest thing since can beer.

In two thousand and seven, Gary recorded himself onto a series of dictaphone cassettes, which he gave to his daughter Justine. Ever since Justine was a kid, he's worked as a mattress salesman. But he'd always tell Justine's 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'd 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 Georktown after getting straight a's the first semester there, was.

Bored, so he transferred to Antioch.

At Antioch in nineteen sixty nine, 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 just say it with flowers, banded bank rapper. The only reason why I called that because the newspapers called.

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 went seventeen thousand dollars, so I kicked ass and I want to fucking at the La fucking airport and they fucking drive me off the plane.

Once he was back in prison, Gary says he won a prison bridge tournament with his partner H. R. Haldeman.

Was HR. Haldeman, who was the chief of staff of the Nixon Weisshause, the second most powerful man of his country. Labor Day bridge tournament in September of nineteen seventy six at Lompoke Federal Penitentiary.

The tapes are filled with hour after hour of stories like this.

Later on, I lived in the cave, I went to spy school, and I bought a horse.

Gary 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, like from my dad's point of view, that he was driving

But there are other things about Gary that, looking back on as an adult, Justine has a hard time reconciling with the dad she's so adored. For one, they're 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 like scary for me. I remember crying a lot in the backseat.

If the kids needed a babysitter, Gary would find the 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

He would like show up drunk in the cafeteria during lunchtime to come talk to me in.

Did you at this point did your friends still think that he was cool?

Yep?

What was it that made them feel that way?

He would bring me money, which was you know cool? When you're in seventh grade, he would crack a lot of like inappropriate jokes like he he would talk about sex like there are 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 well 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 thirty one, 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 reevaluate everything. You know, if he's telling these same lies in great detail, over and over, like

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 like, Yes, they had to like remove a toe, you know.

And you've seen you've seen this, uh 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.

I'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 requestion 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 and what do you? What do you want me? You want me to bring my powers of fact checking and research to bear.

Or 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.

Listen, I'm not making this shit up. I don't have to.

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 meat, I must confess. As I begin looking into Gary stories, I expect to quickly discover that all of his stories are lies. I've met plenty of Gary's 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

Yeah?

Is that okay?

Yeah? It's about time something got real.

Now the most underrated man on the history of the world. Just so you know, a band called Buffalo Springfield 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 Fire's website and filled out a contact for him 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 mister Fiura be able to tell me if he remembered hanging out with a man named Gary in Yellow Springs, Ohio in the early nineteen seventies. The next day, I

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, and like, Okay, learning your father is a liar is never good news, but for just 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 cloud's 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 Jean Deear, who Gary always claimed to have discovered. They were great friends. Gary said, until a big falling out.

Believe me, Christine, I've heard from so many people that I'm an asshole for ever putting any money into Jean Dear. I've sponsored him. I found him, pay for dental bills, pay for home bills, fight it 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. 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 Jean Dear, and gen Deere says Gary is telling the truth. Back when Jeane was twenty three 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 got a fool stick under his arm, a drink in that hand, and then the other hand he's handed me for money. He goes, take this, take this. I'm his first time I re saw him, said take this. I want to record you guys. I want to make you famous.

Gary financed and produced Jene's first album, and forty years on, Gene is still making a living from his music alone, all thanks to Gary, and Jane says. If there was any drama in their friendship, it played out on Gary's side alone.

I hold it and 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, justin 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 nineteen sixty eight, And yet another surprise. Spend some time looking into this say It with Flowers bandit. This is

Always?

What color would you describe as beard?

As being pictures I've seen from like the eighties 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 has never caught and took credit for him. Maybe at the time. The reason I sound skeptical is because I am. The job I've 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 well.

Originally this wasn't something Justine wanted to make public. She since reconsidered, so I'm sharing it with her. Permisis. 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.

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 a. 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 doubts surrounding the veracity of the things that your dad has told you. Have you ever questioned whether that was 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 yar you two together against the world and everyone. I mean, that seems to fit in with that.

Yeah, that's 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. Well Gary is dark complexion with dark hair. Plus garyot 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 continue to obsess over the

All of these couple decades, it's been like, number one, do not do that.

What's work?

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 ask Justine if she's ever considered talking to her mom about it, to see if the story is true. It's a new

It's really not my place.

But in March she was leaning towards maybe talking to her mom.

You know, I'm an adult now, so it's not like I could get in trouble for bringing it up to her.

In April, though, she was back to not wanting to talk to her mom.

I don't want to devastate her 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 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 am really honestly just now remembering that this happened. I think we were looking through old photo albums that she had brought over, Like I think maybe there was a picture of him in this photo album. She was like, and this is,

Huh.

I can ask her about it if you want. Hello, Hey, hey, it's just doing.

Justine told Rihanna she wanted to ask her something concerning their family history.

Has to do with Stephen. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm bosing what you're talking about. You and told me, am, 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. I was told to keep my mouth shut, so was I Yeah?

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 or you guys? You probably you guys weren't around them, were you?

Rianna and Justine are first cousins, but while Rihanna grew up with a family called the Kirby's, 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, she told her he didn't want anything to do with her. WHOA, and does he know that Stephen exists?

Yes?

Well, I've always just felt like it's not my place to say anything to anyone if 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 fifteen 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 tormentor. Just like when they

I think, get them to you now. Okay, you're on Wi Fi, right, mm hmm okay, hang 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 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. Justinekay, how are you doing?

I'm okay. It's a little painful to look right at the situation, just like talking about this secret. I feel a little bit guilty, so do I.

Justine in 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. Mm hmm, 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. 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 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?

And 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 com what are you talking about?

But then he asked my mom's parents. She's like going around asking the whole family and I adopted, and then he comes back to me and he said, just seeing I think I want to do like a twenty three year or something. Everyone's being weird when I asked 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, And I said, I've known the big secret since I was six, And then we just started talking about it.

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 thirteen. While Lynn had a curfew in rules set by her parents, Brian was a free spirit who could stay out all night. Their dates were basically impromptu makeout sessions and Lynn's backyard treehouse where she was out of view from her parents,

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 Khalila Holt, along with Stevie Lane, Mohemy mcgawker, and me Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Sharon Mashihi, Connie Walker, and Mary Cloude. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Ben Aliman, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com