Vincent | Chapter 6

This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Hey, Mr. Bill.
What's up, buddy? Hey, Mo. I'm doing good, man.
Good. Just about every month for the past 20 years, I've been going to the same barber in Philly.
He's a fixture in the neighborhood. How are you? I brought my microphone.
I hope you're in a chatty mood.

His name is Daryl, and he is not shy about his opinions.

As he cuts my hair, we talk about everything.

The conversations are raw, honest, sometimes profane.

So what were you doing with your hair?

You know, same, same, same, long on the top, short-ish on the sides. Mm-hmm.
Not shaved. The thing about Daryl is he tells me what he really thinks.
As I've updated him through the years on my search for my biological father, he has not, unlike most people in my life,

agreed with what I'm doing. So today, I tell Daryl I want his full take.
No holds barred.

You represent a contrarian voice. I don't like that term.
No, I'm not a contrarian.

What are you? I'm a reality voice. I remind him of how it all started, but I don't get far.
And then I do the other DNA site, 23andMe, and that's when I found a half-sister. And she's the one who told me, you're just a pain in the ass.
I'm a dick. Jesus Christ.
It's combative already. Yes, it is combative already because this is like a hodgepodge of a big fucking mess, of a train wreck mess.
You're searching for something that did not want to be found. This person who has donated their sperm, however many years ago, they had no interest at the time and probably were told that they would not be found out.

And they were basically doing a service.

So other people may, you know, have children or basically for the monetary value of it, receiving, you, receiving money for part of their body fluids. Yeah.
They got 20 bucks. At the time, you say 20 bucks.
Yeah. So therefore, this person is not looking for a relationship for what he's doing.
I can understand wanting to know your background. Fine.
So you found that out already. But to go and dig up this person and make them relive a situation or ask them to relive a situation that they had possibly no feelings about.
And then 40 years later, this person is right here in front of you. What do you do with that? But just look at it and says, oh, my God.
What am I supposed to do with this? I have no relationship with you. I don't have any love for you.
And now you're in front of me saying, hi, I'm so-and-so. I'm your son.
I'm'm your child Where does it go from there? I guess we see where it goes Maybe he donated a bunch of times in the 70s And this man, if he's still alive Has wondered through the years If he has children out there Maybe his life would be enriched by knowing who his children are. You're dishonoring someone's request and making yourself a presence in their life that they did not want.
Well, I had no choice in this matter either. I just came to exist.
The person that you're searching out for is not the person that wants to be part of your life.

And you're, in a matter, forcing them to deal with you. It's like digging up the dead.
You have resurrected this and put it in front of their face. Right.
But I would not, if I were to call this person, i figure out who it is if we're knock on the person's door i wouldn't force them to like have a relationship with me i wouldn't call them daddy and say what are you getting me for hanukkah or i guess christmas no no so i mean it's just they're like i don't i don't see you as my child i don't want to have a relationship that would be it it won't be it just your mere presence changes that whole story changes that whole context they don't know have no idea that you exist and that's the way they wanted it to be so you are forcing them to deal with your reality i know he's out there or was there, or I don't know if he's alive or dead. Does that matter? Does that matter? It doesn't matter in my day-to-day, but I feel like it matters from an existential perspective.
How did I come to exist? Who is this person? Does he have other children? I'm curious about his life, what he did for a living. There was like a lie built into this whole process from the start.
Yes. And I just want to resolve it and know the truth.
It's nothing to resolve. You have the truth right there.
It's just your curiosity in wanting to do this for your sake, not for their sake. You got to think of this.
This is a selfish thing, I feel. It's a hardship you're creating for yourself as well as the other person.
Let it go. it's not all about cloak and dagger and being you know inspector clousseau and finding this

some things are not meant to find. And some things want to be private.
And some things want to be buried. And by digging them up, you open yourself up to a lot of hurt, a lot of harm.
You know, when this is all said and done, say you find John McDougal, who's your original biological donor, sperm donor. Are we going to have a relationship now or where does it go from here? I guess that would be up to him and his family that he might have.
What would you want? Unless he was like a clearly negative I would want some sort of relationship. Maybe that means a phone call every once in a while and maybe a visit once a year.
Maybe I'd like him to meet my kids. So yeah, I guess I'm open to it all.
And the outcome is what if he doesn't want to do any of that? Yeah. I don't know.
From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth.

I'm Matt Katz.

Episode 6, Vincent.

I first started searching for my biological father back when I was eight. It's like a riddle that I'm spending my life struggling to solve.
But I'm still stuck. A lot of people have helped my siblings and me in our so far failed search for our father.
Search angels on Facebook, those self-taught DNA experts who do hours of research for free. A couple of years ago, a forensic scientist who uses DNA to identify the remains of crime victims, cold cases going back generations, she was kind enough to look into my family tree.
Put in months of work, even she couldn't figure out who my father is or was. I'm too close to stop now, and that's why I decided to get some more help.
I called Christina Bryan, a genetic and family investigator. She helps people solve their DNA mysteries.
They call her the DNA sleuth. And she has a very different perspective than my Barbara Daryl.
You have an innate need. And people who find out either their parent is not their parent or they were adopted and they're looking.
Yeah. They have that feeling.
Maybe they're afraid to find out what they're going to find out or maybe it's intimidating don't maybe want to do it, but there's something deep down. Yeah.
I mean, I know who my parents are, and I still have an interest and a need to know who their parents are and their parents. I'm like, what's the story? Christina says, keep looking.
She helps people find family members and learn truths about their pasts. She's worked with hundreds across the country, analyzing their DNA test results and combing through public records from high school yearbooks to old phone directories to help donor-conceived people or adoptees or others with unanswered questions.
And she warns her clients to ask themselves certain questions before they go all in on their search. How would you feel questions like, how would you feel if you find out your parents put you up for adoption, but kept and raised your twin? I have had some great, shocking, crazy stories.
And I learned that with regard to family trees, everybody has some amazing things in their family trees. And every person has some messed up stuff in their family trees.
I believe it. Messed up.
Yes. I mean, there's some branches that we all have that we just want to like sever.
But they're in there. You know, if you're looking for a good story, you can find one.
You can definitely find one. But then finding the truth, and if it's not what you want it to be, it's just part of the story.
It's, you know, it's how you deal with it. After Christina's little pep talk, I started to fill her in on my backstory, the clues I've gathered so far so she can help with my search.
So I am not coming to this with no experience. I actually already found a parent once before when I was 16 years old.
A little backstory here. I tell her about how that father I found at 16 turned out to be the wrong guy, about how I took a DNA test and found half-siblings, and about how one of them, Helena, first told me we were donor-conceived.
And that was approximately five years ago, and I have been, we, have been searching for my father ever since. Now, Ooh.
Now. That's juicy.
It's wild to think about how widespread these discoveries are and how these revelations are playing out in households just like mine all over the world every moment of the day. Every socioeconomic class, every race, every religion, every education level, this is happening in every family.
It's been, you know, thought that the number is as much as 10% of people have unknown paternity or they believe somebody is the father that's not. And 10% is a big number, is a big, big number.
And that's why we're hearing so many of these stories. Paternity matters.
It has determined who's responsible for supporting a child and who might inherit a fortune. It's determined religious identity, surnames, citizenship.
It's led to the coronations of kings and queens. But by its very nature, paternity has always been unclear.
Until now. With DNA and the internet, untold thousands are right now in front of their laptops, finding out that their fathers are really their uncles, or they were the products of infidelity,

or their dads also fathered some of their classmates, or they have hundreds, hundreds

of donor-conceived siblings all over the world. For the first time in human history,

we can definitively determine fatherhood. And that means those of us who had our stories,

our life narratives yanked from us before we were even born, we can finally take them back. I feel like I'm close to identifying this unknown person, and I'm excited about it, nervous about it, anxious about it.
But I'm also deeply frustrated in that a lot of work has been done already. And it just it's been every time I think we're close, it seems further away.
My case is uniquely difficult. My siblings and I haven't made any DNA connections with any first cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents.
We haven't found any other kids our father might have had the traditional way. So we've had to build a family tree from the names of our second and third cousins, using whatever little details they've shared with us, plus names in obituaries and maiden names from census records.
Eventually, that allowed us to identify with certainty one branch of the family that I followed all the way to Ireland, where we visited the very place where they lived. So you say that all cases are solvable.
Yes. So you think you're going to be able to find the identity of my father? I think together we are going to find it.

Fantastic.

I really do.

I think this is going to happen.

I mean, I'm not saying he's alive.

I'm not saying I'm going to meet him.

But I think just getting that name definitively, I feel like it's going to happen.

I think so, too.

I think you're going to get there.

Part of it's about motivation and part of it's, you know, about interest.

I mean, motivation. Look at all this.
Look at all this shit I've done. All these family trees.
I'm motivated. I show Christina the several family trees I've drawn out and tacked to the little sound booth on my desk where I do my recordings.
Drawn out here are distant cousins and long-ago ancestors, and lots of blank spaces that have yet to be filled in. I've been doing research on and off nights and weekends for years.
My sister Helena has been doing even more research. But there have been so many dead ends in our search for our Irish doctor dad.
I've searched online for NYU Medical Center newsletters and publications from that era. I haven't found anything.
I've done open-ended Google searches for OBGYNs with Irish-sounding names. You know, anytime I find a new last name in my tree on the DNA sites, I look to see if those names are now OBGYNs somewhere in America.
I just Google the name with doctor in front of it. Days before I first speak to Christina, I finally unlock a new part of the puzzle.
I've connected on the DNA sites with enough cousins that I can now name all four of our Irish great-grandparents. Several of these descendants from multiple branches

emigrated from County Cork, Ireland, and settled in San Francisco.

It's a city I'd always dreamed of living in

after I went there on a family vacation when I was little.

When I graduated college, the first newspapers I applied to

for a job were in San Francisco.

It wasn't meant to be.

I spelled San Francisco wrong in the job applications,

which is sort of a red flag if you're hiring a journalist.

We've identified who we're pretty confident,

based on all of the distant cousin DNA connections we've made,

that our great-great-grandparents were Michael Lynch

and Mary Ellen Murphy, born in the 1830s.

They're at the top of my trees here. So we've got them, but they had 10 kids.

And those 10 kids had 10 kids, and then you've got to go wading through all these people.

Exactly. And we've done it.
We've gone down a lot of these lines. And you know,

then you have the issue with the women, and they change their names, right? So it gets even

Thank you. we've done it.
We've gone down a lot of these lines. And you know, then you have the issue with the women and they change their names, right? So like it gets even harder and harder.
I tell Christina everything about our research into the Lynch family and who of their descendants might have ended up in medical training in New York in the 70s. One Lynch son, Jeremiah, immigrated to the U.S.
He had nine kids, according to his obituary, with his wife, Hannah Carey. They settled in San Francisco.
One of their kids became a cop. But one of Jeremiah's descendants became a doctor.
So that doctor had become a contender to be our father. For like a year, we thought he could be our father.
But once more DNA connections came in, it was clear not all of his close relatives were our close relatives. It didn't check out.
So now we had a new theory. Months earlier, my half-siblings and I had spent a weekend together in Southern California.
It was fun as hell. And I did that little interview with my sisters in the lobby of the hotel.
That's when Helena had told us about her latest lead. I have it narrowed down to two people, but I feel like there's something weird.
I feel like there's some, I want to have more information before we reach out to these. like the other guy was like yeah write a letter whatever these people you know i feel weird i feel something's off and which people the people that are narrowed it down to this family of these two brothers and the other thing is neither of them are doctors and i can't figure out how it's possible because from what i can tell neither are doctors and neither have ever lived in New York City.
The one guy has lived around New York City, like a lot. But he's not a fucking doctor.
But we don't think he only used doctors. I know, but then what is the story? Like why this random bloke? The random bloke she's talking about? His name, Vincent McNally.
He would have been 41 at the time I was conceived, which is much older than sperm donors are generally supposed to be. He was also not in medical training in the 70s, as far as we can tell.
Because if he had become a doctor, we would have been able to find him online. And we also had nothing to indicate he lived in New York at the time he would have donated.
So the other possibility, Vincent's brother, Joseph. But he was even older and married with kids at the time, which is not the typical profile of a sperm donor.
My sister Helena had zeroed in on this family because we had a lot of DNA connections. Vincent and Joseph's grandmother, Ellie, had actually lived in that home I dragged my family to in Ireland.
The town historian, Mr. Lahan, had remembered Ellie from when he was a little boy.
Ellie Lynch was back here, about a mile back there. That was a family, Lynch is there.
He had told me that most of Ellie's kids left Ireland for America or England. And one daughter, Maggie, moved to San Francisco, married, and became the mother of Vincent and Joseph.
But neither of those men appeared to have become doctors. It didn't make sense.
I asked Christina about the whole not a doctor thing. You know, I know there was a lot of literature historically about people using med students and interns and that kind of stuff.

But I do have to say that I believe, based on other cases and things that I've worked on, that not all donors were medical students.

And not all of them were interns.

Some of them were just available. So you keep sort of like, oh, is any of them in med school, blah, blah, blah.
Like you got to open it wide open because you have no idea. But I do believe that there is nothing more important for you to be doing right now than what you're doing.
I think it's really cool. I think it takes a lot for people to invest in something like this.
And to have that curiosity tells me a lot about you. I just am meeting you.
In any way that I can help you get to that finish line, I absolutely will. I think that, again, the battles and the ups and downs that you're going to have, you're going to have them.
But it's really cool. I just really wanted to tell you that.
Thank you, Christina. I really appreciate that.
You have obviously the right background and experience to make sense of this. I'm a journalist.
I'm an investigative reporter. I, like, know how to do some things.
I track people down. It always, another set of eyes or another set of questions is always helpful.
Christina said she would analyze my DNA connections and look for people to contact. Relatives who might act as advocates for me.
Cousins who would ask some questions in their family. An inside source to solve this puzzle.

To try to figure out which male member of the family might have been in New York donating sperm in the 70s.

You want the family gossip?

That's sort of where I come in because I will use social media or Facebook and I'll start like poking around, look at people's friends lists and try to find things. It might be difficult, you know, it might take time, but it also could be literally staring us right in the face because what they say about DNA, it's like real estate, location, location, location.
Who was there and when? I think when people have the answers, it tells them a lot about themselves and it answers a lot of questions. Like, I think when you find who your father is, you're going to go, ah, ah, okay.

Now it makes sense.

Like you're going to see parts of yourself, not necessarily personal.

You'll see, it'll be something.

You're going to be like, whoa, you'll get there.

I feel good.

I feel, I feel good.

My story's in your hands, Christina.

Awesome.

Good.

All right. Well, we'll do the best we can.
Five days after my first conversation with DNA Sleuth Christina, she sent me a message. She said we should get on the phone.
Hi, how are you? I am great. I was excited to hear that you wanted to chat.
So I looked at all of your DNA matches, and I understand where you got stopped, because your DNA took me to two brothers who were born in the 30s.

That seemed too old for them to be sperm donors, in your opinion.

Right.

But, you know, looking at a photo of Vincent McNally, and of course he's related to you.

In what way, we don't know.

But the resemblance to you is striking to me.

Really?

Yes. I'm just going to text is striking to me.
Really? Yes.

I'm just going to text it to you.

I could do that.

Okay.

Christina's photo popped up on my phone.

It was a black and white headshot, a yearbook photo.

The boy had blonde hair, combed up, shirt button to the top, no tie.

I mean, he looks like a blonder, slightly more handsome version of me in high school. He really does.
He definitely looks Irish. He looks a lot like you to me.
Yeah, he really does. I mean, he has the same...
His eyes? The eyes. They like the narrow eyes there.

Yeah.

So I have another picture too I want you to see.

It's the same person.

It's still Vincent.

Here comes this one.

It's the same.

It's a couple years different. The same high school.

Yeah.

A couple years later.

Wow.

What do you think?

Yeah, he has like better hair, but it looks like... Yeah, it looks like me.
It does, for sure. No, that was weird.
I just, I sort of, like... I know.
Smiled a little bit, like an open-mouthed smile, and then looked away, and then looked back at the photo, I swear to God, for a split second, I thought in looking at his mouth,

that it was my mouth, like almost as if I was looking in the mirror.

So, of course you're going to look like him because he's either your biological father

or like your uncle, right?

Right.

Or he could be your grandfather if he has a son.

Got it.

And his son was a donor.

I can't find any, I can't find marriage for him.

I can't find anything for him.

So I think that was his senior class photo.

That's why I asked you to send me a photo of you with your glasses off.

Because I wanted to see if your eye shape was similar, which it really is to me. You look a lot like him.
You look a lot like him because

you're related to him. We know you are.
So there's no question. You look Irish.
You've got strong

McNally jeans. You really do.
Wow. I mean, I also look like my mother, oddly enough, but I clearly look Irish.
The shape of your eyes is really like his a lot, but so are your sisters. Their eyes sort of do that on the outside.
They go down a little bit. He looks mischievous.
Mischievous? Mischievous. Mischievous.
He's like out of a, he looks like he's friends with Biff and back to the future. Vincent McNally went to Catholic high school in San Francisco.
I wanted to believe I was staring back at my father, but I wasn't so sure. So this is the point where I tell people that they need to start sort of poking around, right? So it is...
Christina, I've been poking around for five years. No, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean, we're going in deeper, right? So when I say poking around, we have to find the perfect person, the perfect person in this sort of menagerie of people that you can tiptoe into. We have to tiptoe, because while I'm full steam ahead and can't wait to know the truth to get these answers, maybe his family doesn't get that or feel the same way.
It could be just one wrong turn, one rejection, one ignored email to make this whole thing stall out. Christina says we'll have to word our outreach very carefully.
We don't want to scare anyone off.

I shouldn't go in like, hey, I've been researching my paternal history for my entire life, and I finally figured out who my father is, and I'm making a podcast about it, and I need you to tell me immediately if he's my dad. Should I not do that? No, you should not.
See, the beauty of this whole process is you got to get a fish on the line.

You got to get a fish on the line where they get even remotely invested enough where they're like, oh, I want to figure this out.

Days later. We got a fish on the line.
We've got a potential cousin or niece who's living in Las Vegas. So she has not done DNA, which is, I have not seen a connection to her by DNA.
I found a family tree that she made of the family on Ancestry. And so I was able to message her and she responded.
And she responded quickly multiple times. I already love her.
Because some people really shut down when you start asking questions. But I love that people understand that it just doesn't matter if you have to share information that's maybe not the greatest information.
It does seem like there is some estranged within the family, and I don't know the reason for that. This potential cousin or niece in Las Vegas did more than share a few stories, sad and otherwise, about the family history and explain who was who.
She also graciously agreed to take a DNA test. I shipped her a kit from Ancestry.com and waited for the results.
Her grandfather was Joseph McDowell, Vincent's older brother. Joseph passed away years ago, and she didn't know Vincent, didn't know where he was, didn't have his contact info.
So in the meantime, we had to keep fishing. After a few more leads went nowhere, Pristina zeroed in on the family of Vincent's nephew.
I bought a LinkedIn premium account, the fancy kind, where you can contact anyone, to send some guy named Ryan McNally, Vincent's nephew's possible son, a direct message to ask if he was my cousin. But no reply.
It just says you haven't received a response yet. Okay.
You might as well have just said you have no father. You're an orphan.
Thanks a lot, LinkedIn. It wasn't LinkedIn's fault.
Christina soon figured out that the person we were looking for was not a nephew, but a niece, a woman, a female Ryan. I'd contacted the wrong one.
Christina told me to send this Ryan a note on Facebook. Well, I want to know it's been sent because I want to make sure you don't get scared and get nervous.
You got to do this, man. Not scared to send the email.
Scared to make the phone call. Yeah, that's kind of scary.
Yes. Yeah, it's a little intimidating.
Fortunately, Ryan replied to my message. And not only that, she seemed excited to help.
She said it certainly seemed like we were related and she promised to talk to her father and grandmother to figure out how.

And holy crap, that's exactly what she did. Ryan McNally sent me a message on Facebook that it

took me a week to even see. It got lost in my inbox somehow.
But when I finally read it,

it rocked me. I called my wife immediately.
She was down the hall in the guest room recuperating.

Hello?

Hi, babe.

Hi.

I know you have COVID.

I have to tell you something.

So the cousin that I've been trying to talk to,

I went back to my Facebook to just check on what she had already told me.

And I missed a message from her from a week ago. Oh, really? I mean, I would do this in person, but you have COVID.
She wrote, Matt, I spoke in depth about your story to my father. He contacted my grandmother, who is now 90, late wife of Joseph Michael McNally.
She confirmed that Vincent McNally is the sperm donor. Is a sperm donor? Is the sperm donor.
He donated sperm in the 70s. He was a hippie who spent most of his days traveling around the states, but mostly resided in California.

Wow, but he probably was in New York City during that time?

I just wanted to confirm.

I believe this is your answer.

It's important to know where one comes from.

I have three children, so my thoughts are with you.

Where is Vincent now?

I don't know.

I will find out, I guess, as best as i can oh my god oh my god looks like you he looks like i mean it's weird he doesn't look like you at the age of you and him from his yearbook photo but he looks like you older like you know what i mean like right yeah like his. I'm kind of shaking.
I can't believe we, I, he was like a vagabond who traveled the country and popped into New York and made a bunch of kids and then ended up back in California. He was probably looking for money.
Holy shit. It was a quick way to make some money.
Wow. Babe, we did it.
We found him. We found him.
There's so little about him out there. It's wild.
My father's name is Vincent McNally. I can now basically say that.
Wow.

This is exciting.

Holy fuck!

Wow.

I can't believe I could have known this a week ago. And I missed

the message.

Fucking Facebook. Fucking Helena knew this

a year ago. She just couldn't find

any more information about him.

Oh my God.

Holy shit.

I know.

I just hope you guys can catch him.

He's an older man. I know.

Oh, my God.

How old is he now?

He's like 80s.

Late 80s.

How do you find this man?

I mean, he must have had an interesting life. I know.
All right, babe. All right.
I'll talk to you later. I'm in shock.
I'm also like... I'm so happy I feel just satisfied knowing this information I'm looking at a family tree in my office right now I have five family trees posted and in the center of one family tree which has dozens dozens of names, is Vincent McNally, born 1936.
And it was him. You know, his grandmother, Ellie Lynch, I was at her house in Ireland.
I mean, I was sniffing around the right place. We were sniffing around the right place.
Helena thought a year ago that he was a possibility.

To have been searching for this long and to finally have an answer is just exhilarating. it's kind of like a piece of your puzzle that is very important.
This is Ryan, my new first cousin once removed. The one who gave me the last piece of the puzzle.
Vincent, at some point, like in the 70s, he started like moving around a lot. like traveling, coming to New York, doing things because he was like a Rolling Stone.
He didn't have a family or, you know, anything to keep him somewhere. He definitely did donate.
Ryan didn't know where Vincent was living and wasn't sure if he was still alive. There were no obituaries for him online, which was a good sign.

Still, she could help me with what I think

most people who don't know a parent

want to know. What did they look like?

We have his high school photo

and he really,

I mean, he looks like us.

He really does.

I'm sure.

You know, the McNally's have

a very distinct face. You know, kind McNally's have a very distinct face.
Um, you know, kind of like the

long face, I say. Yeah.
Yeah. The long face.
Yes. I have the long face.
Yeah. We have like,

in a good way, like kind of bigger mouths and longer faces. And yeah, like it's real.

Wow. It's so fascinating.
So three of us were born within two and a half weeks of each other in July of 1978. Wow.
So we don't know if it was the same, you know, batch. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it.
We joke that we're triplets, half triplets.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Isn't it crazy? It's so crazy.

I mean, I'm fascinated, to be honest.

I just couldn't believe it because this to me is like something I've seen on TV.

Ryan is a mom of three and two of her kids, her twins, don't have contact or a relationship with their father.

She said that's part of why she wanted to help me. You know, we all come from somewhere, and I'm sure I take a lot of emotion to, like, knowing my parents because I've always been really into that.
So I thought it was very important for you to know.

And one day my twins will want to know, right?

I empathize with them already.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So that's why I want to always find out anything I can for you.

Thank you so much.

I mean, your understanding and empathy through this is so appreciative.

You can imagine how it's awkward to contact strangers and say, hey, we're cousins. Can you help me find my father? I believe in this stuff, you know, and I think it's real and I think it's so deep.
Your roots are your roots, you know? I don't care who raised you. You come from somewhere way down in the sperm bar.
That makes you who you are, really. Yeah, I feel like I just need to keep pursuing this and get as many answers as I can get.
And maybe if he's around and willing, meet the guy at some point. Oh, yeah, I think that would be cool.
I'm curious to know what he did for a living because that would kind of solve a lot of the questions. I don't even know how we would be able to connect with anyone else he knows.
I sympathize with all of it and there's not, you should never feel awkward or anything because it is just your story. This is just the first of our convos.
We'll be in touch all the time. I love that.
And I'm so happy that you're solving the pieces. So I'm happy to have help.
That Sunday afternoon, 3 p.m. Eastern Time, I got the siblings together on a Zoom.
Look at you, man. Still handsome as ever.
Hey, buddy. You're looking good.
That's Helena, my sister, the professor, who's done the bulk of the ancestry research so far. We're talking to my brother, whose voice we're not using in the show.
And, of course, also here is Tara, the medium and mystic in California. All right.
You know, without further ado, I'll get right to it. I am very confident that we've found our father.
I'm just going to do a brief recap. I took some notes so we can do a brief recap.
Helena had a hunch about this back in like August of last year. So this is where we are since then.
I gave the full recap. And after that, I read them Ryan's message.
Word for word. She confirmed that Vincent McNally is the sperm donor.
Oh! I called it! You did. Wow.
He donated sperm in the 70s Let me read the rest He was a quote unquote She put in quotes He was a hippie who spent most of his days Traveling the states But mostly resided in California Tara What do you mean? Holy shit. That's what I am.
I know. But I, it's so, I had a dream two nights ago about the reason that I moved to California was because it felt safe to me.
Wow. It was showing me in the dream that California was like a coming home to safety, which is so crazy.
I mean, just the fact that he was a hippie, Tara, in California is just so crazy. Right? And that's the whole nurture nature thing.
It's like, oh yeah, it was like in me before I even had experiences. It just took you a minute to discover it.
We didn't. At the same time, Tara, before you ever became like a hippie, you were a type A.
Totally. High working executive type.
And all of us are type A.

Where did that come from?

Yeah.

That's what we have to discover with him.

Because I bet he's got a more complicated story than just a hippie who travels the country.

Right.

Maybe he's like, maybe he writes books and he's, but he has a pen name and who knows, right?

Like, he definitely is a creative in some way that's like yeah or like when we do something we really dig into it we're like all in with art we're all very tenacious and opinionated and handsome yeah there we go there's just like there's just like a general quality that all the four of us have that's just like really funny. You don't see that all the time with siblings.
There's got to be something about his personality, his disposition that I feel is sort of like also the link as to why we all seem to have sort of a similar kind of disposition. Maybe learning more a little bit about him will give us that insight as to, again, where do similarities come into play with all four of us.
On our call, I held up that picture of Vincent in high school. It's a photo that Helena had actually first come across a while back without being sure how exactly he fit into our family tree.
Wait, that's Matt? Wait, hold up, Matt. Let me look at your face.
No, that's... Look at him! This is the guy! This is Vincent! He looks like Matt! I mean, Helena, how do you feel? I'm most curious about you at the moment.
well I'll be really excited when this is done because I could use those hours that I spend

on ancestry and How do you feel? I'm most curious about you at the moment. Well, I'll be really excited when this is done because I could use those hours that I spend on Ancestry and 23 and then back.
Like I'd like to have like a healthier hobby. To get a new hobby.
Yeah, if you add it all up, I've been doing this for how many years now? Exactly. Are you excited, Tara? I am excited.
I like these details. Just it feels like connecting dots and the details just help me to understand myself better.
Dots were definitely connecting. I now realized when I had visited my great-great-grandfather's home in Ireland, turned out that my grandmother was raised in the same home before she emigrated to San Francisco and gave birth to our father.
There were a million branches we could have, like,

gone to Ireland looking at, and we were on the right one.

Wow.

The four of us were finding meaning in everything,

analyzing the little we knew so far about Vincent McNally.

I think they referred to him as Vinny,

so he might have gone by Vinny.

That was the name of my car in high school. Really? No, Tara, you're freaky.
We wondered, why did Vincent, Vinny, come to donate in the first place? It was probably a thing he did to get money. And maybe he felt that he wanted to do it for some spiritual reason.
Who knows why he was doing it? Mystery can also be like, I mean, we want some mystery, right? It can be exciting, though, the mystery, right? Who knows what's next with this? We still knew so little about Vincent McNally. I was searching all Vincent McNally's in the country.
I found a retired FBI agent with the same name. Turned out to be the wrong guy.
I also found two addresses, both associated with mobile home parks in California. There's no record of him ever being married or having kids the normal way.
Oh my God, Matt. What is he going to think of all this? Like if he never I he never had kids...
You're in your late 80s.

And you find out you have children?

It's going to be a shocker.

You got to get to the bottom of this.

The mystery continues.

So now what? I finally know the name of the man who donated sperm. And that's amazing.
I'm reveling in this news. But the reality is I still know almost nothing about him.
I have a name, a picture, maybe a state. But where does that get me? Who is this person, really? While I talk to my still sick with COVID wife about it all, she points something out.
I guess he's still alive. I mean, I guess unless he has no contact with his family, if he passes, no one would know.
He wouldn't have an obituary. He wouldn't have maybe a formal, you know what I mean? I got to go out there.
Man, you guys got to go to California and hunt him down. Next time on Inconceivable Truth.
I do have a phone number for him. I'd be scared shitless to make that call, though.
It's like... I hate cold calls all the time.
Yeah. And this is like a similar kind of call, except it's potentially my father on the other line.
Inconceivable Truth is a production of Waveland and Rococo Punch. I'm writer and host, Matt Katz.
The story editor is Erica Lance, mixing by James Trout. Emily Foreman is our producer.
Natalie White is our intern. Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Vercoco Punch.

For photos and more details in the series, follow at Waveland Media on Instagram, X or Facebook.

And you can reach out via email at podcasts at Waveland.media.

That's Waveland, W-A-V-L-A-N-D.

If you like the series, please leave us a review. And as always, don't forget to tell a friend or relative.
I'm Matt Katz. Thanks for listening.
Guys, so he's your grandfather. We have found him.
My father, your grandfather. Where does he live? Northern California, I think.
California? You're just in California. I know.
God. Can we go back? I mean, do you want to meet him? Yes.
Can you believe it? Are you excited? Yes. Is he alive? I think he's alive.
He was born in 1936. So he would be 42 when he donated sperm to the cute.
Dad, you mean to. That's really old.
Ruben, you're jumping up and down. It's Vincent McNally.
Isn't that guy like super old? Wow, that's really cool, Dad. That's cool, right? I'm so excited.
Who else knows? Does Mommy know? I told Mommy. Guys, I've been looking for this guy for so long.
I just think that I'm really happy for you, Dad. Thank you, sweetie.
When you hear that a small Blizzard treat is just 85 cents in the DQ app, you might just feel like you're dreaming. 85-cent Blizzard treats.
Trust us when we say you're not. But get to DQ quickly because this dream is only a reality for so long.

Hurry and get your small blizzard treat for just 85 cents with a $1 purchase when you sign up for DQ Rewards.

For a limited time at participating locations.

Terms apply.