Irish Goodbye | 14

of my favorite roles that I've ever played was Carl Schowalter in the film Fargo.

You know, making that movie, I kind of felt I had seen it all when it came to kidnapping.

Well, I had not.

This story features a kidnapping, all right, but trust me when I say that the lines get blurred between victim and perpetrator.

And that's not all.

We've got delightful accents and the reporting of National Magazine Award winner Sean Flynn.

So settle in and get ready for The Irish Goodbye, which tells the story of Kevin McGeever, a man with one hell of a memorable tattoo, a last name befitting a Cohen Brothers character, and the whopper of a tale to go with it.

I'm Steve Bussemi, and you're listening to Big Time, an Apple original podcast from Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media, in association with Olive Productions.

Hello, my name is Catherine Vallely.

Ten years ago or so, I became famous for about 15 seconds.

I didn't even get the 15 minutes.

I only got 15 seconds.

So, how did you become famous?

By the silliest thing possible.

In 2013, when this thing happened, Catherine belonged to a writer's group, a workshop that met once a week over the border in Northern Ireland.

Catherine writes fiction, mostly short stories, novels.

She was on her way home.

Oh, it was a typical Irish night.

It was drizzling, misting, that type of rain that you don't see it, but you're in it and you get wet.

I was with Pat.

Pat was my partner.

This story is not about Pat.

He died in 2021.

But here's the deal.

You can't talk to Catherine about anything without hearing about Pat.

My God, was I lucky to meet him.

I mean, he was so fantastic.

He was so gorgeous looking.

He had these piercing blue eyes that were like cornflower.

And the rest of him was kind of continental, Mediterranean, you know, a lovely, handsome, elegant Irish man.

Oh, gorgeous.

It's very sweet.

So we're coming back and he was driving and we're talking, chatting away, speeding along.

And all of a sudden, I said to Pat, I said, Pat, stop.

There's a traffic cone in the middle of the road.

We're going to crash.

And he stopped because he was a very good driver.

He was good at everything, but he was a great driver.

And it turned out what I saw like a light.

It was a man wearing red trousers.

He was standing in the middle of a road that's nowhere near anything in particular.

He had enormous eyes, as if they were too big for his head, and he had a ripped van Winkle beard, this bushy tangle of white whiskers.

His fingernails were at least an inch long.

He looked like an overgrown leprechaun and underfed because his cheeks were really hollowed out.

He could have been a model if he was a woman with these gorgeous cheeks.

This meeting is pure chance.

If Catherine and Pat had come along 10 minutes later, if she'd lingered at her writer's group or stopped for gas, someone else would have come upon this man standing in the road, and then everything would have turned out differently.

Probably.

But it wasn't someone else.

It was Catherine and Pat.

And without even trying, just by being Catherine and Pat, they will set in motion a series of events that will change this strange man's story.

A story I've been trying to nail down for 10 years.

Catherine and Pat have pulled over to talk to this strange man they found standing in the road.

Naturally, I told him, come on in here, y'all eggs, you want to get killed.

And he got in the back of the car.

And when he was there, he started to whine, whinge like a child.

I have no shoes on.

And I said, why are you going around with no shoes?

And he said, they threw me out of the van and they didn't let me get my shoes.

He's confused.

Doesn't know where he is or what time it is or even the day.

The Irish word came to my head.

I thought he was

Shafoj.

No one uses it now, but when I was small, it was what the word they used for old people who were Senai.

So I just thought, oh, he's Shafoj.

The man says his name is Kevin.

And even though he can't tell her where he came from, he has enough of his wits about him to ask Catherine to find a phone number.

So I dialed inquiries and I was asking.

And the lady on the other side was saying I wasn't giving her enough information.

Hash was getting a bit fed up of it.

He said, hang up, you're wasting your credit.

And then he sort of half turned to Kevin and he said, didn't I see you with the mobile in your hand?

Use your own.

You know, as much as say, who in the hell do you think you are?

We're giving you a lift and on top of that, you're using our phone, you know.

So Kevin said, yeah, they gave me the phone.

He was doing the victim or not the victim, the kind of hingey.

They gave me the phone, but they told me it only has enough for one call.

And Pat said, well, use it.

And I mean, Pat, Pat can command.

He knew how to command.

Kevin reaches a friend.

This friend wants Kevin brought to a town more than an hour down the road and then left somewhere convenient.

Maybe in a hotel lobby or the all-night supermarket.

I could see Pat was getting a little bit, you know, he wasn't impatient, but you could see he was thinking, God, isn't it good enough giving you a lift, but now we have to bring you home to your mommy or your daddy or whatever.

So we were passing.

And as I said, Pat had gorgeous blue eyes, absolutely wonderful.

But he could see everything.

So miles before we got into Balnamore, he said, the Garda, the Garda is a police station, is opened.

We're going to leave you there.

And Kevin again started whining.

Now, delivering a lost, wet old man to the proper authorities is a perfectly reasonable decision.

But Kevin doesn't want to go to this little village police station.

He doesn't say why.

And Pat's not interested in a reason.

He just pulls up to the curb in front of the station.

And all of a sudden, there was a ban garda, which means a woman, policewoman.

She comes over to the car and Catherine and Pat tell her they've found this man.

They don't know who he is or where he's from.

She was leaning in to Kevin in the back and she was saying, would you like a cup of tea?

And of course, any Irish person will go to the end of the world for a cup of tea.

So Kevin was delighted and she was so graceful and so like she was the hostess and she was going to lead him into her house.

So he followed her over.

They all head inside.

And then the policewoman came with a cup of tea and with a saucer and there were two or three biscuits.

And Kevin was very dainty.

He was eating very nicely.

He had very good manners.

When he had finished the biscuits, he said to her, Are there any more?

And I think she gave him another one.

And then when he got that, he chanced his luck and he said, you wouldn't have a sandwich now, would you?

And she said, aren't you good to yourself?

Catherine realizes Kevin must be hungry.

He certainly looks hungry.

She asks if he'd like some chips.

There's always a chip shop open somewhere.

He kind of looked at me and he was saying, chips?

And I said, yeah, chips.

And it took him a little while and he said, oh, you mean French fries?

And I said, yeah, yeah, that's what the Poshka people call them.

But chips, I said, potato chips, you know, a spud that's caught and fried.

Kevin said he didn't like chips, but then he brightened.

He remembered that the week before he'd had chips with curry sauce.

And he said, they really are good because they leave this lovely warm feeling in your stomach.

Oh, it's great and you feel so full up.

And he said, will you get me curry chips?

And I was nearly going to say to Mernje, good to yourself like the policewoman.

But she didn't.

Instead, Catherine and Pat walked up the street, found a chip shop, and bought Kevin some curry chips.

And when they returned, the Garda were buzzing.

They told Catherine and Pat that the man they'd brought in had been missing for eight months.

His name was Kevin McGeever, and he was a wealthy real estate developer.

And then the next day, every newspaper, every radio program in Ireland was talking about the kidnapped millionaire.

He was a millionaire.

Businessman and developer Kevin McGeever was reported missing in May of last year.

He told Gardee he'd been kidnapped at gunpoint from his home in Crockwell in County Galway.

He's been driven in a van for a number of hours before being put into a shipping container where he claims he was held for eight months.

He also claims that he suffered regular beatings and broke a number of bones.

Kevin said he'd been held underground in a dark steel container for eight months, two-thirds of a year, almost three whole seasons, long enough that those whiskers and those nails make a little more sense.

Kevin said he never saw his captors' faces.

He says they threatened to kill him, and that on the wall of the container he was held in, there were pictures of other men they'd already killed, and they practically starved him.

He was fed only once a day, and the same thing.

Two slices of bread with limp lettuce in between, and maybe a dab of mustard.

He'd lost more than 70 pounds.

He didn't know why he'd suddenly been released, but that Kevin, or anyone, could survive such an ordeal, could walk away from it shoeless, but mostly unharmed, is incredible.

And it's the kind of ordeal that reporters, for better or worse, can't get enough of.

And Catherine was a witness.

Pat said to me, he said, look, if there's any interviews, you do it all.

I'm not interested in talking to anyone.

So I was the one, the dizzy blonde.

That time, I had long blonde hair and I used to wear a red coat.

So in the papers, I come out with this red coat and the blonde hair.

I was the one who was doing the interviews and get my photo in the paper, and on television, and all of that.

And it was fantastic.

I loved it.

I loved having people like you coming from America to interview me.

It was great.

It was wonderful.

Not for poor old Kevin, who had been eight months in a container, but for me, it was great.

Kevin's disappearance and sudden reappearance are utterly baffling.

There are no suspects and there is no immediately apparent motive.

But there's a clue, a big one, and it was hidden underneath Kevin's hat.

On his forehead, he had thief written.

In the Irish language, th is not pronounced.

So it was written thief, T-I-E-F,

like, you know, instead of T-H-I-E-F.

And he had that carved into his forehead.

Most of you will be familiar with the bizarre story of Kevin McGever, the developer who was found in Ballinamore after being missing for eight months.

This is John Murray.

He's the host of a morning radio show on RTE, Ireland's public broadcast network.

It's been six days since Kevin was found, and he's still convalescing in a hospital.

But Murray has Kevin's brother on the phone, Brendan McGeever.

Well, I wasn't worried initially.

No,

the police from Galway were ringing me, and they were thinking that he had been reported missing by his partner.

And what did I think?

And the policeman was saying, Well, you don't sound too worried.

But I said, No, he's traveling all the time.

He goes overseas.

He wouldn't have been texting you or ringing you in a regular day.

No, no, no.

That was the one thing he often would do when he got back into London or Dublin Airport.

He'd give me a call, and I'd say, Where are you now?

So

I'm at London Airport, or I'm at Dublin Airport, and I'm going to spend a few days here, and I'm off.

And that was the thing.

But he mustn't be ringing me all the time.

Kevin was 68 years old when he was found.

He was born and raised in the west of Ireland, but he'd lived an adventurous life all over the globe.

Australia in the 80s, the States in the 90s, married and divorced twice, two daughters.

He seemed to make most of his money in real estate, buying and selling property, sometimes developing it, and in finance, handling other people's investments.

And by the looks of it, he did quite well for himself.

Before he disappeared, he was back in Ireland, renovating an enormous mansion and adding to an ever-growing car collection, complete with a Hummer, a Porsche, and a Lamborghini.

He was apparently selling aircraft under the name KMM Aviation.

KMM are his initials for Kevin Michael McGeever, and they were stenciled on the helicopter that he posed in front of the company website.

And he was still making money in real estate.

A lot of it, because he'd found a market with endless potential.

Hi there,

from Dubai Marina.

And what a fabulous place this is.

That's Kevin in a promotional video he made.

It's very lo-fi.

Mostly, it's Kevin in a loose white shirt and wraparound shades, looking casual.

He's on a concrete promenade that curves around a marina.

The camera slowly tightens on Kevin as he points across the water to the boats and their slips and three tall and apparently new buildings.

It's about 40 degrees here today, but it doesn't feel that hot.

That's 104 Fahrenheit.

Wicked hot.

Kevin appears to be panting.

But money, especially easy money, can make a lot of things tolerable.

The promise of easy money is what first drew Jim Byrne to Kevin.

A friend introduced him in 2006.

I'll tell you what happened.

I had some money to invest,

and

I wasn't sure what I was going to do.

We spoke by phone, so the audio is a little rough.

And then I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said he has his other friends he's dealing with, and he said he's buying property in Dubai.

He said Dubai is a good spot.

Do you think he'd be interested in that?

So that's how I got interested in it.

Jim's a mechanic and a carpenter who eventually became a contractor.

He worked in the U.S.

in the 90s and the 2000s and made some good money.

His friend had made a killing in Dubai real estate.

He bought apartments through Kevin, who would collect fees for brokering the sales, basically the same way a real estate agent collects a commission.

Jim's friend made his purchase price back in rent, then sold the places for almost twice what he'd paid for them.

When they first met, it seemed to Jim almost like Kevin was playing a role.

It was like a put-on accident, you know.

He always had his hair dyed.

It was really jet black, and he had some plastic surgery done and stuff like that, you know.

He always dressed really well.

He kind of saw it the dream, and he kind of saw it that you could be missing out.

You know, it was that kind of a way that he had about him.

And then he had this flash as if he had all this money, you know.

And it worked.

Jim wanted that dream.

So in 2006, Jim bought four apartments in Dubai through Kevin.

A year later, he bought a fifth.

All told, he invested about $900,000.

Those apartments were what's called off-plan purchases.

That means they didn't actually exist yet.

There were no bricks and mortar, no balconies or bathrooms, just a promise on legally binding paper that they would be built and usually on a detailed schedule.

The first of Jim's apartments were supposed to be done in 2006.

Buying off-plan in Dubai in the middle of the aughts was not unusual.

In fact, an off-plan apartment or villa might be sold two, three, six times before anyone could take a tour.

Just one investor flipping it to the next and everyone making money.

Because that was Dubai.

Dubai at the time was a place where it seemed like anything you could imagine could be made real.

The Palm Islands, three artificial archipelagos in the shape of massive trees, were rising up out of the sea.

The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, was rising out of the sand.

Giorgio Romani was building a new hotel downtown.

Can you imagine it's snowing in Dubai?

That's Kevin in another promotional video shot next to what appears to be a giant snow globe.

The skis, the kids, the lifts, lifts, and they're skiing down the mountain.

This is the most unbelievable place on earth.

It seemed like anyone with money was putting some of it in Dubai, including, of course, Kevin's investors.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but best estimates by the Irish press are that about 100 people, mostly Irish nationals, invested approximately $70 million in Dubai through Kevin.

2006 came and went, and then 2007.

The apartments Jim bought through Kevin had yet to materialize.

It's not ideal, but delays happen.

And then, at the end of 2007, Jim heard about a Christmas party that Kevin threw for some of his investors.

Jim was back in the States at the time, but was told later that it went something like this.

Two men walked up to the bar.

It sounds like the setup to a bad joke, because it is.

One man says he bought a fabulous piece of property in Dubai.

The other man asks where that property is.

Then the first man tells him, and the second man's eyes get wide, and he says,

I bought that exact same property.

That party was where it all founded to go along from.

In addition to hearing that Kevin has allegedly been selling the same apartment to more than one person, Jim also catches wind of a rumor that Kevin is selling apartments he doesn't even own.

Again, allegedly.

Now, whether Kevin Kevin was doing this or not is beside the point.

All that matters is that Jim is getting worried.

He wants to go to Dubai, have a look around.

But that fall, 2008, Kevin keeps putting him off.

I kept phoning him, knowing nothing has happened, and he's the excuses for everything, you know.

Anyway, I decided to jump on a plane.

That's in February 2009.

He goes to Kevin's office, but he's not there.

The woman behind the desk tells him that Kevin's in Jordan.

So I left and went out to get the elevator, and when the door opens, Kevin comes straight out of the elevator.

And he didn't recognize me for a second.

I said, well, Kevin,

I thought you were in Jordan.

I just got back just now.

He said, I was coming to the office.

They went for coffee.

Jim says Kevin bragged about all the money he'd been making in Jordan and some other places.

Jim listened patiently, then got to the point.

Then I said, Kevin, I want my money back.

Kevin said no.

Sure, he might seem flushed, but this was 2009.

The global economy had just crashed a few months earlier.

Even the banks were strapped.

So Jim says Kevin instead offered him five other apartments.

And Jim was pretty sure Kevin didn't actually own those either.

I knew I was in trouble at that stage.

And

I just said, why did I trust him?

He was just

married and, you know.

It all begins to unravel.

The Dubai real estate market is in a free fall.

Kevin is not exempt from this.

He's running out of money.

He's alleged to have stopped paying his bills and stopped paying his staff.

And whether that was due to the overall investing environment or his own actions, it's hard to say.

But at any rate, for Jim, the why is not a relevant concern.

He just wants his money back.

So Jim starts gathering documents, putting together complaints for himself and the other investors.

In January 2011, some of Kevin's creditors filed complaints against him, and he's reportedly detained in Dubai until he pays a few, but not nearly all, of his debts.

He's released and returns to Ireland.

And then Jim Byrne takes all of his documents on Kevin to Interpol, the International Policing Organization, which issues a red notice.

That's basically a request for police and border authorities to hold him if they come across him.

For almost a year, Kevin seems to lie low.

And then the next spring, he's gone, disappeared.

His partner, a woman named Siobhan, says he's been kidnapped.

But she waits almost a month to tell the Garda, the police, and she doesn't want a big splashy investigation.

There's no telling what the kidnappers might do to Kevin at this point.

So fast forward to last week, then, and you're delivered of the news that he has reappeared.

This is John Murray again, the RTE radio host talking to Kevin's brother Brendan six days after Kevin was found.

Kevin is still in the hospital.

Well, I was neutral until I actually seen him.

I didn't know what to think.

And if I walked into that room for he was in the hospital, and when I seen this guy lying in the bed, for a guy that I knew that looked impeccable all the time, good-looking man, in prime condition, I would say.

No overweight, no, never smoked in his life, ever.

When you see a guy lying in the bed, he looks like,

I would say, a weather-beaten 90-year-old man that's just released from a concentration camp.

That's what I was, that's what I see him.

You must have got an awful shock.

Yes, I couldn't believe it.

And he shook hands to me.

He knew me, and he's able to speak.

His voice is good.

And I took his hand, and his hand was like taking the hand of a child.

News reports are saying Kevin might have gotten crosswise with the Russian mob.

Maybe the IRA.

And the hospital says, this nonsense.

He says, where are they getting this Russian mafia stuff?

Where is he getting that?

That's what he said to me.

He says, this nonsense, because there's quite a lot of things in the paper that

are not accurate, and he's saying that as well.

Well, it was said on the papers that he was a swindler, that he was a fraud, that he had cheated people out of money.

Catherine Vallally is seeing those news reports too.

It seems some man even took his own life because he had lost all his money.

Kevin, I believe, came on a newspaper and said it wasn't true.

But I read that.

If it was true, it's very, very sad.

That is what the man's son claimed.

It seems that he sold apartments.

They were all on paper, on plans, and he sold them.

And then little by little, things were said that even in America, he had frauded people, he had swindled people out of money.

So much started to come out.

So, so much.

Like a story about a fake bank that Kevin and some associates allegedly cooked up back in the 90s when Kevin was living in America.

They were eventually sued by investors and indicted by the feds, but Kevin left the U.S.

before his criminal case ever made it to court.

Now, Kevin in the past has said that's not him, but it must be some other Kevin Michael McGever tied up in that particular scam.

And in any case, it's apparently never been worth anyone's time to go round him up.

But the headlines don't call him a millionaire or a tycoon anymore.

And the word kidnap is in quotes, like it might not be real.

This was just unbelievable.

It seems he had this big mansion somewhere in County Galway,

and people were saying that the house was empty.

There was no furniture in there.

and that he had this helicopter with his name on it and that it was only rented.

When people would see this enormous enormous mansion, the helicopter, of course, they thought he was the millionaire he was saying he was, and they were willing to part with their money to buy this wonderful apartment.

And it seems that he wasn't really as well off as he pretended to be.

So that's what we heard.

And when she hears those things, she thinks back to that very first night and how some of those things now seem odd.

He didn't smell.

That's one thing I did notice.

He didn't smell.

I had given old men lifts plenty of times, and my God, I'd have the windows roll down, and every now and then I'd stick my head out to get a bit of fresh air because the smell of them may kill you.

But this fellow wasn't.

He was just,

he was clean.

I'd take him out of the shower.

You know,

he was really clean.

No smell at all.

And remember those curry chips?

Kevin has told everyone that he survived barely on one lettuce sandwich a day.

And yet he told Catherine in the police station that he'd enjoyed curry chips just the week before she found him.

Doctors meanwhile have noticed that Kevin's eyesight hasn't deteriorated, which it would have and badly if he'd been kept in the dark for eight months.

And really, more to the point, why would anyone bother keeping him alive for eight months just to turn him loose?

Already, just a week after his remarkable reappearance, there are doubts.

You can hear it in John Murray's tone.

You do believe that your brother was held captive for a certain time.

When you look at somebody lying in a bed in the condition that he's in now, anybody, anybody that would have any doubts about anything would be totally convinced.

If you've seen somebody after coming out of a concentration camp,

you wouldn't question what they were doing for the last

the 12 months prior to that.

That's a very good point.

Kevin was dangerously thin when Catherine found him, and his head was permanently marked with thief.

Who would do that to himself?

Pat was thinking, how could anybody starve themselves?

I mean, you should have seen how thin he was.

And how could anybody let their nails grow so long and let their beard, you know,

it wasn't a nice beard.

It was grown all over the place.

He was hunched up.

He didn't look like a man who could do that to himself.

So it was hard to do that, you know.

I mean, people might make sacrifices during Lent and give up sweets or not smoke, but for God's sake, not to eat.

And weird as this is going to sound, Kevin had someone who would vouch for him, who would say, yeah, this kidnapping really happened.

A local businessman, a pub owner, who'd invested about a million dollars with Kevin.

We'll call him Colin for the sake of this story.

Colin told police that one night the previous autumn, two men blindfolded him, him, bundled him into a car, drove for an hour or so, and then led him down some steps.

When the blindfold was removed, he was in a steel container, dimly lit and apparently underground.

In the corner, on a bed, was Kevin.

Colin said Kevin told him he was being held by men from Northern Ireland who were working for Russian mobsters.

And then the blindfold went back on, and Colin was hustled out and returned to where he started.

He did not report that at the time that it happened.

You're probably wondering why kidnappers would take someone to see their captive and then send him on his way.

That does not appear to serve their interests at all.

On the other hand, during their short visit, Kevin did tell Colin that he couldn't possibly pay the money he owed him.

He was, after all, being held prisoner in an underground steel container, as Colin could plainly see for himself.

I've just seen an older man with white hair pull up outside the pub and he's gone in the front door.

So I'm going to see if I can go and talk to him.

Hi, I was just looking for.

He's not here in a moment.

Do you know will he be around later?

Just for a podcast.

That wasn't Colin.

He ignored all of our requests to talk.

It took six weeks from the time Catherine and Pat found Kevin McGeever for his incredible story to completely fall apart.

In March 2013, he was arrested for wasting police time, which is basically a catch-all for we're not sure what else to charge you with.

Three years later, in April 2016, it seemed Kevin had finally given up on his own story.

During interviews with Garthy, he admitted he'd fabricated the entire story.

Today, he pleaded guilty to a charge of wasting Garth time.

The police had been suspicious from the beginning.

To them, it looked like Kevin owed a lot of people a lot of money.

And nothing gets you off the hook like a brutal kidnapping.

That seemed to have been the plan, anyway.

A judge gave him two years, but suspended the sentence.

We didn't see him.

I'd say it was two years.

Whenever he's a long time, a long time.

His court case was in Galway.

So we saw him in Galway.

It was three years, and Catherine and Pat were there to testify, having been Kevin's first contact and all.

But actually, it was more than that.

They were the reason Kevin was here.

If they had just driven him to his friends an hour down the road instead of dropping him at a police station, Kevin never would have had to tell the police about his alleged kidnapping.

There would have been no headlines, no unwanted attention.

Word of his kidnapping, so-called, would have gotten around to his investors.

Colin Felt is a respected businessman and he could back him up.

And those investors probably would have felt sorry for him, gotten off his back, at least for a little while.

But no, Catherine and Pat had to take him someplace sensible.

And now here they all are in court.

He didn't look a bit like the man I had picked up.

I mean, he looked completely different.

He even had a kind of a tan, an orangey tan.

Not Pat had a tan, a real tan, because he was outdoors all the time, but this man had an orangey tan.

So yeah, he looked completely different.

He had a suit, a tie, and his hair.

He even had a gingery, I don't know if it was a gingery color hair, but you know,

he looked completely different, completely.

The thief branding wasn't noticeable.

Kevin had already had several procedures to remove it, and he'd gotten good with concealer.

We were sitting in the back waiting to be called as witnesses.

And then Kevin confessed, I don't know if you call the word confessed, that it was all made up, that he hadn't been kidnapped, that he had done this himself.

And the judge said, I can send you to jail, but I'm not going to waste any more taxpayers' money by keeping you in jail and feeding you.

So that was it.

So when we went outside, there there were some people taking photos of Kevin and we weren't important anymore.

And then we were going back to Pat's car and Kevin came out of it.

I don't know where he came out of, but he just like a puff and he was there.

And he said, I never had a chance to thank you, but come and we'll have a cup of tea and we'll talk.

They went to a pub and sat at a table in the corner.

Kevin had something important to tell them.

He wanted them to know that he wasn't really guilty, that he really had been kidnapped.

He just wanted to put it all behind him, and pleading guilty seemed the quickest way to do that.

Kevin told them he was a very honest person.

Kevin said that the only lie I ever told in my life is the lie about my age.

He said, I'm not 70.

I'm much younger.

And I said, of course you are.

So you only have to look at you to know you're much younger than 70.

You know, I was again, another word, plumosing him.

I was just going along with him, humoring him.

And that was the last time we saw him.

Very good here.

If you're on a landline, it's better.

Just letting you know.

But

anyway, we're talking.

Okay, how are you doing?

I'm well.

I'm well.

How are you, sir?

I'm okay.

I'm fine.

Good, good form.

Feeling good.

and all that.

This is Kevin.

I finally reached him in March 2023 on Facebook of all places.

I reminded him who I was, the guy who wanted to write a magazine story all those years ago.

But that now I was making a podcast about him.

Times change, you know?

Anyway, he told me to call him.

And I have so many questions, starting with, why would someone hold him captive for eight months and then just let him go?

That's a lot of work just to send a message.

I didn't buy it.

Nobody did.

And yet,

Kevin lost more than 70 pounds, 40% of his body weight, give or take.

Then there was the beard and the fingernails and the forehead.

Who does that to himself?

Back in 2013, I'd wanted to ask him about it so I could write a story about either his horrific kidnapping or, much more likely and even better, his intense commitment to a long con.

We exchanged emails for months, but nothing came of it.

So I thought I'd try again 10 years on.

He's 78 years old now and lives in Dublin.

Oh, I rebuilt my life again, no problem at all.

I

got back in business and

they made it far more successful than the first time, you know.

It's all worked out fine so what kind of business did you go into this time oh that doesn't matter i

i'm not going to go into that now i'm not going to go into that i i come from a building background you know and uh it's sort of related to that but uh it's been very successful for me again for the record kevin denies ever doing anything illegal or unethical anywhere at any time

When I asked him about the allegations that he was double-selling properties, he said it was, quote, a crock of shit.

And he's told other reporters that he only ever double-sold properties if payments weren't made and the original buyers were in default.

And he still swears he was kidnapped, that he was held in darkness for more than eight months, beaten, starved.

He says he only pleaded guilty in April 2016 because Siobhan, his partner, was dying.

I told her, I said, I pleaded guilty just to be with you.

And the minute the thing was over, I went straight back to the hospice to her.

But that can't possibly be true.

By the time Kevin pleaded guilty, Siobhan had been dead for more than two years.

She died on November 25th, 2013.

I know this because Kevin sent me an email that night.

In fact, just two hours after she died.

It said, just to let you know, I will not be contacting you this week.

My lovely fiancé died this evening at 9.35 p.m.

I sent my condolences.

But he never told me his story, never told anyone, at least not on the record.

But now I had him on the phone.

So

what do you think about us getting some studio time?

Okay, so I mean, what's in it for me?

You know, I had a feeling we were going to go down this road again.

You were a phrase, I'd ask again.

For money.

The last time around, he wanted, quote, serious monetary consideration to tell me the same story he told the police.

How much that would have been, I don't know, because the number was irrelevant.

Any amount was a non-starter.

I mean, what the public think about me is immaterial to me.

I don't care a shit what they think.

As I said, I'm in a great situation now.

And some might think this, and some might think that, and they wonder, what the hell is he talking now for?

Why didn't he say something before?

So, I mean, but I'm quite happy to do it, but I'm not doing it for nothing.

And that's it.

I'm not going to waste time.

We hung up soon after that.

I had hoped Kevin, a decade older, now deep into his autumn years, years, might finally want to tell the real story, the true story.

Yes, it's possible he's been telling the truth all along, that he really was kidnapped.

And it's possible he was taken by leprechauns and fairies.

It's just very, very unlikely.

So why not come clean?

Why not just tell the story of starving himself, of staying off the grid, out of circulation?

Even self-inflicted, those must have been eight miserable months.

His dedication, his commitment, would make him a legend.

And there's the catch.

He'd have to give up the con.

It doesn't matter how much anyone might pay him, he's never going to tell a different story.

He'll screw up the details, get confused now and again, but he'll never waver from the basic story that no one believes.

He's like a magician that way.

Everyone knows the woman isn't really sawn in half.

but you still can't give up the secret.

Where's the fun in that?

But he's a low-rent magician.

A few minutes after he hung up, he sent me a text.

He said again that everything written about him is a lie.

He said that he personally lost $50 million in the Dubai crash.

But he said there's also a happy ending.

He said, quoting here, that with God's help and my unrelenting work ethic, I've regained my wealth and status again.

And he would tell me about that for the low, low price

of $10,000.

This has been Big Time, an Apple original podcast produced by Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.

It's hosted by me, Steve Bussemi.

This episode was reported by Sean Flynn.

Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.

Lane Rose is our showrunner and managing producer.

Our production team includes Amy Fedullah, Rajiv Gola, Morgan Jaffe, and associate producer Dania Abdelhami.

Fact-checking by Mary Mathis.

Sound design and mixing by Shawnee Aviron.

Our theme was written by Nicholas Principe and Peter Silberman of Spatial Relations.

Production help from Dan Brennan at Soundtrack Studios.

Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcast.

Thanks for listening.