Warren | Chapter 1

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Speaker 14 You knew

Speaker 15 how to read an analog clock before anybody else of your age because he was always late and you would always look at the clock. You would know he's supposed to come at two o'clock.

Speaker 15 Two o'clock came and he didn't come.

Speaker 12 This might be the saddest thing I've ever heard about myself.

Speaker 12 I don't remember it exactly, but my mom does.

Speaker 12 We'd be at home in Queens and I'd be perched in front of this old grandfather clock, watching the pendulum click back and forth, waiting for a man named Warren to arrive. 1, 1.30, 2, 2.30.

Speaker 12 But Warren didn't always show up. And when he did, he was very late.

Speaker 12 This, I remember.

Speaker 12 Is this me right after I was born? Is this like in the hospital? Yeah.

Speaker 15 And that's coming out of the station wagon where they didn't have seat belts. So you were on my lap.

Speaker 12 In the front seat. seat in the front seat

Speaker 12 uh

Speaker 15 who took this picture i guess warren took it

Speaker 12 warren was the man i had been waiting for i called him daddy back then my mom roberta married warren in 1973

Speaker 12 i arrived five years later and by the time i was a year and a half they were split divorced

Speaker 12 There's dozens of pictures. There's no, at least in this batch, there's no pictures of Warren.
I don't have anything. Get rid of them?

Speaker 12 You just threw them out.

Speaker 12 Sorry.

Speaker 15 I don't know. When I was in a fit of anger.

Speaker 12 Do you remember?

Speaker 15 There were very few to begin with, and I was putting these in an album, and he didn't belong there.

Speaker 12 This is just this.

Speaker 15 Oh, I'm brushing your teeth, right?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I didn't.

Speaker 12 That's it.

Speaker 15 That's it.

Speaker 12 That's the only picture I have of Warren ever. A big man-arm coming from outside the frame.
We all lived together in an apartment that I have no memory of.

Speaker 12 Then, one day, without telling Warren, my mom just left. She moved us out, first to my grandmother's studio apartment where my crib filled the room, and then to an apartment for just me and her.

Speaker 12 What happened?

Speaker 15 We just

Speaker 15 had lots of fights about gambling and about

Speaker 15 not telling the truth about things. And

Speaker 15 I said, that's it. There's no support.
I had no love for him. And I had to get out.

Speaker 12 He was gambling excessively then? Like the

Speaker 15 sneaking. Sneakingly gambling, yeah.
I mean, I didn't know until I find that there's no money. And then when I went back to work, because I had to,

Speaker 15 I'm sure you I think you know this I get a call the first day at work from a collection agency I've never had that in my life and it was

Speaker 15 talk about being embarrassed at school and

Speaker 15 they were going to garnish my

Speaker 15 salary because I owed so much money which I had no idea it was you know, had joined credit cards. So, and I didn't see

Speaker 15 the bills. I did not know.

Speaker 15 I was busy trying to raise a baby and I did not know about other things that were going on. I kind of under

Speaker 15 kind of thought of a little bit, but I

Speaker 15 every time something came up, I believed him or tried to believe him, and then I just had it.

Speaker 12 And that's when I left.

Speaker 12 She was flat broke when she left. Warren had racked up so much debt on their joint credit card and stiffed her on child support.

Speaker 12 We're talking tens of thousands of dollars that he owed her, 1980s dollars. But a piece of Warren was still a little bit in the picture.

Speaker 12 Coming to see me once in a while, even if he was late, enough of a presence to loom in my mind as my father, but not enough for me to really know who my father was.

Speaker 12 And so I wondered and I watched that clock and I waited for the rest of him to come back into the picture.

Speaker 12 What I didn't know then was that I would spend my life waiting for my father. I'd look for decades, and only after those decades would I understand why something never felt right.

Speaker 12 That there was a mystery at the heart of who my father really was.

Speaker 12 And now, after years of tracking down clues, I'm so, so close. I almost have answers

Speaker 12 from Waveland and Rococo Punch. This is Inconceivable Truth.
I'm Mad Katz,

Speaker 12 episode one:

Speaker 12 Warren.

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Speaker 12 My name has always been Matt, or Matthew, as my mom called me. But my last name has not always been Katz.

Speaker 12 And the reason why is all wrapped up in what happened shortly after Warren and Roberta divorced. It's the early 80s, Queens, and and Roberta is a single mom.
It's just me and her.

Speaker 12 So she joins this group for single people with kids, parents without partners. The group was for parents to meet partners, but she says she didn't really go for herself.

Speaker 12 She thought it'd be good for me to at least be around men, dads. She lost her own father when she was six, has no memory of him.

Speaker 15 I really went for you because there would be parks, there would be baseball, there would be activities, and there would be men. And I thought it would be good for you.

Speaker 12 So that's why I did that.

Speaker 12 Was that because you didn't have a father and you wanted to?

Speaker 12 And you were concerned that I wouldn't have. So, like, you would go to these things, and then there'd be men for me to like throw a ball with or whatever.

Speaker 15 Right, or just, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 15 But I did go to a couple of dances, which would be for me socially.

Speaker 12 And she went to these group conversations for single parents called rap discussions.

Speaker 15 Not like rap that we talk about today, okay.

Speaker 15 You have drinks or coffee and danish or whatever, and you get to meet other people.

Speaker 15 Sometimes you meet women for yourself, you know, friends, and you meet potential dating partners.

Speaker 12 There was a potential dating partner in the room one night, medium build, medium height, pretty much all of his hair, plus the warmest smile in the world. His name, Richard.

Speaker 14 I met this meeting in Queens,

Speaker 14 and the door opens, and your mother walks in.

Speaker 14 And I said,

Speaker 14 that's a beautiful woman.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 the only seat available was next to me.

Speaker 15 Well, first when I walked in, this was an apartment in Queens in Forest Hills.

Speaker 15 And the first thing I did is I walked in and I see these people sitting around and I'm looking around and I'm saying, A, they're too old or B, I've dated them.

Speaker 15 C, I have to get the hell out of here.

Speaker 12 D,

Speaker 15 my mother is babysitting. I have a free babysitter.

Speaker 15 And E,

Speaker 15 it doesn't look right. I mean, everybody's sitting.
A new person comes in and then she turns on her heels and walks away. It just didn't look right.

Speaker 12 So when Richard tapped on the empty chair next to him, she walked over.

Speaker 14 She sits down and we start talking.

Speaker 14 And what I remember of that night

Speaker 12 is

Speaker 14 some of the other people were expressing attitudes towards their children and their ex-spouses and towards life, which just didn't resonate with me.

Speaker 15 Whatever the discussion was, because his memory is worse than mine, we do not remember per se, but we were the only ones ones that were in agreement.

Speaker 14 And we were sitting there discussing it quietly and laughing like hell. And we had very, very similar outlooks about life.

Speaker 14 I was lucky enough. She gave me her number when I asked, and I made a date.

Speaker 15 And then this shouldn't be for your ears, but he liked my Jordash jeans. I fit into these.
sexy jeans and he remembered that. It keeps talking about those jeans that I cannot wear anymore.

Speaker 15 But between that and the discussion that we had, that's how it started.

Speaker 12 So, you were also like shopping for a father for me. Right.
Well, you got one. You got one.

Speaker 15 I did. I did.

Speaker 14 I was in love from the beginning.

Speaker 14 I had dated other women after I was divorced.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 there was no one that I would want to spend my life with.

Speaker 14 And we both, we had a sort of an agreement that at our age, two years of dating, two years is enough time to date. And I made sure before two years came that I said, would you marry me?

Speaker 14 We were at the house at your apartment in Queens

Speaker 14 and we're having dinner

Speaker 14 and I had to go home.

Speaker 14 And my very, very

Speaker 14 romantic

Speaker 12 proposal was, darn it, I can't go home.

Speaker 14 I want to be with you. I don't want to leave.
Would you marry me? Very, very romantic.

Speaker 12 And she said, I have to think about it.

Speaker 14 Thankfully, she said yes.

Speaker 14 And the rest is history.

Speaker 14 Then, of course, I proposed to you.

Speaker 12 I remember we were by the river in Brooklyn. I don't know what we were doing in Brooklyn.
And then, like, mom walked away to buy me an ice cream or something.

Speaker 12 And I think that's where you did it.

Speaker 14 The way you were being brought up by mom and your personality and just, you know, the two of you just...

Speaker 14 I wanted you part of my life and I wanted to make sure you wanted me as part of your life.

Speaker 14 How do you say,

Speaker 14 I'm moving in, I'm going to be with you as you grow up?

Speaker 14 I had to ask you.

Speaker 14 Because I know a lot of children resent

Speaker 14 the spouse of the parent they're living with.

Speaker 14 And I didn't want that. And I was, at that point, I was already showing you a lot of love.

Speaker 14 So I asked you, and I think the look on your face is what is he talking about but but you remembered i remembered it's like one of my earliest memories

Speaker 12 i think you you you basically asked me permission is it okay

Speaker 14 can i marry your mom and become part of your family

Speaker 12 and uh it's such a menshi thing to do

Speaker 14 mensh or not i mean it's like how do you i i don't see any other way you had to be part of it

Speaker 12 I was definitely part of it. I was the ring bearer at their tiny wedding at a hall off Central Park in January 1983 when I was four and a half.

Speaker 12 And in short order, a move out of the apartment and into a house in Queens with a yard on both sides. And I had a happy childhood there.
My mom and Richard both had solid government jobs.

Speaker 12 He worked at the Food and Drug Administration. She was a New York City public school teacher, teaching kids how to read for more than 30 years.

Speaker 12 So I had a stepfather now. Richard threw a baseball with me, taught me how to ride a bike, told me he loved me.
But I also had Warren, my birth father, still fading out and then into that picture.

Speaker 12 When he did come by and take me out for the day, we'd do things that even I knew. I'm like five, were not normal.
We'd sometimes go to the off-track betting parlor so we could wager on the horses.

Speaker 12 I'm standing in a pile of bedding slips up to my ankles, a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering over me.

Speaker 12 One time he took me to a zoo in Queens, a little place, more of a petting zoo than anything else.

Speaker 12 Instead of going to the entrance, he led me off to the side, he lifted the bottom of the fence, he told me to crawl under, and so I did.

Speaker 12 He then went to the front, paid admission for himself, and met me inside.

Speaker 12 He saved a couple of bucks, I guess.

Speaker 12 Outside of those experiences, which felt pretty off, my childhood seemed normal. I loved the Mets, matchbox cars, swings that didn't move all that fast.

Speaker 12 I had a blonde mop top, hazel eyes, skinny and smiley, and I was probably the shyest little boy in Queens.

Speaker 15 You stood behind me because you were so shy, with the Kermit the Frog puppet. And you were behind me and you just wiggled the Kermit the Frog puppet.
Yeah, so you were very shy in some ways.

Speaker 15 In other ways, at the age of four,

Speaker 15 I would ask you to go to the candy store to get the Times, Sunday Times, because it wasn't delivered that day or whatever.

Speaker 15 And you had to wait until somebody was strong enough to open up the door because you couldn't open the door, but you got the paper.

Speaker 12 I really wanted to read The Weekend Review. Oh, sure.

Speaker 12 Oh, sure.

Speaker 12 That shy kid who bravely waddled into the candy store to grab my mom's newspaper was also holding on to an inner thought of sorts.

Speaker 12 I didn't talk about this with anyone, but I remember sort of obsessing over Warren. Like, what was his deal? Why was he such a dick?

Speaker 12 But those questions about who my father was, turns out I wasn't asking the right thing at all.

Speaker 12 I mean, 20 years I've now worked as a reporter in newspapers, radio, out there, pen and pad, recorder, the whole thing, asking people questions.

Speaker 15 Joining us now is Matt Katz.

Speaker 12 Matt Katz, and thank you again for being here. Public safety reporter, Matt Katz.
Hey, Matt. Hey, good morning, Michael.

Speaker 12 I've asked questions to politicians and police chiefs. I once asked questions to nudists at a nudist colony in New Jersey.
Turned into a front-page story.

Speaker 12 During the U.S. war in Afghanistan, I embedded with the military to ask questions about what in the world was happening over there.

Speaker 12 But now, I'm working on the hardest story I've ever worked on, and it's about my father or fathers.

Speaker 12 And it's a story I got started on almost 40 years ago when I was a little kid.

Speaker 12 My question, first and foremost,

Speaker 12 what's the truth about my father?

Speaker 12 My second question sounds ridiculous, but if you stick with me, I promise it will make sense.

Speaker 12 How did I come to exist?

Speaker 12 When I was born, we all lived in the Bronx. Warren had a variety of jobs, from toll collector to cab driver.
His most steady work seemed to be as a funeral director teacher.

Speaker 12 He taught a class for people who were trying to get their funeral director licenses.

Speaker 12 I saw him even at a young age as interesting, maybe because his lack of consistent presence made him mysterious. He was tall or he seemed tall to me, bald with a pot belly and a dark goatee.

Speaker 12 He talked to me about sports, took me to the good chocolate chip cookie shop in Manhattan. The one and only time I went to his apartment, there were dirty dishes in the sink.

Speaker 12 Something that didn't happen in the house I grew up in. Dishes in my father's sink seemed reckless, but maybe kind of cool.

Speaker 12 He seemed to have access to a world very different from my own, that seemed darker, more intriguing.

Speaker 12 He had this diner that he'd go to. They'd open up early for him and the other regulars so they could all sit there and chain smoke and read the New York Post.
He was there every morning.

Speaker 12 Meanwhile, though, I didn't even have his phone number. After a visit, I never knew when I'd see him again.

Speaker 14 Right, And that wasn't our doing.

Speaker 14 That was his doing.

Speaker 14 He would make arrangements and then cancel them.

Speaker 12 Like arrangements to pick me up. Yeah.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 since we never knew where he lived,

Speaker 14 we weren't too happy with that.

Speaker 12 Like you never had his address.

Speaker 14 No, he wouldn't give it to us.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 15 he didn't like me asking him where he was taking you. And I had a right to know where you were, you know.
And then I said to him,

Speaker 15 I have to know

Speaker 15 where you are. I have to know, I have to be able to contact you.
He didn't like that.

Speaker 15 A couple of times, we followed him because I was worried about that he was going to abduct you. I was really very scared about that because I didn't know where he was living.

Speaker 12 So my mom is scared he's going to abduct me. But the final straw for me, as Richard remembers it, was how he didn't send me promised birthday gifts.

Speaker 12 Richard remembers that Warren was supposed to come by and give me a remote-controlled car. I love those things.

Speaker 14 And then called up and canceled because he didn't have the money to buy it because he gambled it away.

Speaker 12 Oh, wow. I think.
And so that's what I was really pissed about.

Speaker 14 That's what you

Speaker 14 that he lied to you. You know, you finally figured out the man is a liar and you have a huge sense

Speaker 14 of

Speaker 14 truthfulness.

Speaker 12 This was all starting to feel not right to me. This relationship with a father who wouldn't give me birthday presents or tell me where he lived.

Speaker 12 And as loving and full as my home life was, Warren's inconsistent presence in my life, the fact that I was watching that damn clock,

Speaker 12 I was sad about it and I kept it in. I'd open a phone book sometimes, secretly look up his name, see if I could find him.

Speaker 12 It was frustrating. I started to be like, fuck this.

Speaker 12 I asked my mom if I could change my last name from Warren's last name to Katz, which was Richard and my mom's new last name. I had no siblings with Warren's last name, no close relatives.

Speaker 12 I wanted to be a Katz.

Speaker 12 December 15th,

Speaker 12 1985, I changed my last name. Do you remember how that came about?

Speaker 14 Yes, you asked me because you would go to school and your parents' name was Katz and yours wasn't.

Speaker 14 And you felt, can I have your name? I suppose you were thinking, you're part of my family. I should have the same name.

Speaker 12 Yeah, like I didn't have anybody else who was very present in my world with that last name. So it felt

Speaker 12 lonely and awkward, yeah. But when Warren called, I still called him daddy.
Maybe I thought changing my last name would scare him straight, force him to play that father role. But it didn't.

Speaker 12 It did the opposite. He was pissed about the name change, and he told me so.
He drove over one day in his red station wagon.

Speaker 14 I remember he came over and went out to the car with you, had you out in the car,

Speaker 14 and was sort of screaming because he he was sure that we had instigated you to want the name change.

Speaker 14 He didn't realize he had instigated you to want the name change because he lied to you and you didn't want to even know him.

Speaker 12 I mean, I did want to know him, but I didn't really know him because

Speaker 12 I would see him so irregularly.

Speaker 12 Something else was happening. I think I started to internalize this tension between my parents, an awareness that my father, Warren, was also hurting my mother.

Speaker 12 I remember the look on her face, the way she'd literally bite her tongue when she talked to him, whenever she tried to schedule a visit or get money he owed her.

Speaker 12 And so, one night he called when my mom and Richard were out. My grandmother, Gam, lived with us and was hanging out downstairs watching her stories.
I answered the phone. It was him.

Speaker 12 I was eight, I think, and I was upset. Why hadn't he called? Why didn't I have his phone number? Where was he? Who was he?

Speaker 12 I told him, and I remember this so well, that I was going to sick the FBI on him.

Speaker 12 I don't know, it was the 80s, me and my friends used to play a spy game called KGB versus FBI, and I wanted him investigated. Not for a crime, but so I can understand why he was the way he was.

Speaker 12 Warren hung up on me.

Speaker 12 He didn't call again.

Speaker 2 there are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one.

Speaker 3 Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 7 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice.

Speaker 4 Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player.

Speaker 1 With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids.

Speaker 9 Just slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin.

Speaker 11 Check out YotoPlay.com.

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Speaker 12 When I was nine years old, with months and months of no contact whatsoever from Warren, I remember my mom saying to me, if something happened to her, if she died, then I'd end up moving in with Warren, my biological father, instead of Richard, my stepdad.

Speaker 12 Warren would have custody. He'd be responsible for me.
He'd be my only parent.

Speaker 12 She told me, this guy, you don't even know where he lives, what his phone number is. He'd be responsible for taking care of you.

Speaker 12 There was a solution, though, she told me. If Richard adopts you, he would take care of you.
He'd be with you always.

Speaker 14 I wanted you as my kid, legally,

Speaker 14 and legally that he couldn't come back and ask for something else. Joint custody, for instance.

Speaker 14 He didn't earn having you as his son. I did.
I worked at earning that because you were worth it. And I wanted that.

Speaker 12 And so I agreed. We took things to the next level, symbolically and officially.
I took the day off from school, got on a tie, and went before a judge in a conference room.

Speaker 12 Legal paperwork notifying Warren about the pending adoption had been sent to my grandparents' house in California, the only address we had to reach him, but Warren made no formal objection.

Speaker 12 His mother later told me they threw the envelope in the trash without opening it.

Speaker 12 And so the judge signed off on the adoption. A new birth certificate was issued.
Gone was Warren. Richard Katz was Matthew Katz's father.

Speaker 12 And so I gained a father, but also grandparents, Richard's parents, Nathaniel and Ethel Katz, and an aunt and uncle, and my first first cousins.

Speaker 12 And the best part, I got siblings, which, as an only child, I'd always wanted. Richard had two daughters from his first marriage, Sarah and Sally.

Speaker 12 They were eight and twelve years older than me, already off to college. We didn't live together, but I still saw them as my sisters.

Speaker 14 You are my child, as

Speaker 14 Sarah and Sally were my children, and you get an equal share of that love.

Speaker 12 I appreciate that.

Speaker 12 I feel all of that.

Speaker 12 A couple of years later, in 1990, we left Queens and moved a mile and a half, but a world away, from Queens, a borough of New York City, to Greatneck, one of the most affluent towns in the country, a quintessential Long Island suburb.

Speaker 12 I still pronounce it with two syllables, Long Island. Do you remember when we started hanging out?

Speaker 12 I think we were forced to. We lived across the street.
In Greatneck, everyone's parents seemed to still be married, and no one's mom seemed to work. I was petrified to start school there.

Speaker 12 It was middle school, sixth through eighth, and I was coming in seventh grade. Everyone was going to have more expensive sneakers and I knew no one.

Speaker 12 But there was a boy who lived across the street from my new house. His name was Elon.
I remember being very excited because you were smaller than me, briefly.

Speaker 12 I remember being excited because you had a catcher snit, which was very strange for a Jewish boy to play catcher. Because usually catchers are kind of big, big guys.

Speaker 12 You were not. I was not.
You were friendly. You were approachable.
You were into music.

Speaker 12 I mean, this is an appropriate time to talk about Billy Joel. You could see Billy Joel from your window.
So basically, you had a cardboard cutout of Billy Joel. I think it took from like a CD store.

Speaker 12 It was a life-size, and it was meant to, I think, hold albums on it. Like, you know, they had whatever, the latest Billy Joel album, you would stack it on there.

Speaker 12 That's what it was used for in the store. Somehow you got it to your house, which also was cool.
Like, how did you do that? My mom would be like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 12 We're not bringing that junk to our house. There's no way that would have been in my mother's car and then onto my room.
But somehow you got that to your house. Yeah.

Speaker 12 And it was in your window and it was constantly staring at me, which was creepy because I didn't know if you were looking at me or it was Billy Joel. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 We used to talk on walkie-talkies. Do you remember that? We used to flash our lights.
Yes. And I would single.
Our rooms faced each other on the street.

Speaker 12 So I would, if I wanted to talk to you, I'd flash my lights. But I would have to have been

Speaker 12 looking out the window. Yeah.
But I always thought you were looking at me because there was Billy Jones. I'm like, oh, there is Matt.
Let's flash the lights. He's not answering, you know?

Speaker 12 And then we'd turn on the walkie-talkie, which was a little ridiculous because we also had phones. We did have phones.
We also had phones. We had phones in a room.

Speaker 12 I don't know why we thought walkie-talkie was

Speaker 12 safer.

Speaker 12 Do you remember me talking about my then birth father? So, okay, I've been thinking about this. I find it very interesting that you still to this day say he's your birth father.

Speaker 12 There's no word in the English language to describe this person. But that's how you always referred to him as your birth father, and you know a lot more now than you did.

Speaker 12 But yeah, or I would call him bio-dad. Yeah, well, I remember you at some point when you were about 16, 17, you're like, I want to find my birth father.

Speaker 12 I hadn't heard from Warren since that time. He hung up on me when I was eight.
But I never stopped thinking about him, wondering about him, and wanting to find him again.

Speaker 12 It was something I had to broach with my mom and Richard.

Speaker 12 I think they supported it, but maybe didn't understand why I needed to go and find this deadbeat. I think they have understood why you wanted to do it.

Speaker 12 It's part of your whole life, actually, not your whole life, but a large part of your life starting from middle school onwards has been about what's my identity? Who am I?

Speaker 12 And a large part of your identity is who's my birth father? Who's my father? I mean, clearly Richard's your father. I mean, he basically, you know, helped raise you, but who's your, who are you?

Speaker 12 And that's for a lot of people, they knew who they are when they're from their kids. You know, like I knew who I was.
My dad was my dad. My mom was my mom.
I grew up in Great Neck.

Speaker 12 I'm going to be a doctor. I was a doctor.
Okay. That's who I am.
You're constantly, you're like a chameleon. You're always changing.

Speaker 12 Who's my father? That, that, who's my father for you changed basically every decade for you. You never really knew who your father was.
Right. And I was drawn to the search for

Speaker 12 him for some reason.

Speaker 12 I made friends quickly in Great Neck. This was pre-internet.
So when I wasn't on the walkie-talkie with Elon, I was on the phone talking with friends. Friends? Like Kelly.

Speaker 18 We would like listen to Billy Joel and you'd fall asleep. Like in the wee hours, we'd be on the phone.

Speaker 18 You'd go to sleep sleep on the phone with me. We'd be like, listening to Billy Joel.

Speaker 12 Oh my God. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I remember

Speaker 12 being on the phone silent.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Like we would just be on the phone, quiet, sleeping, whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 18 It was like having a sleepover.

Speaker 12 Junior year in high school, Kelly would end up playing this key role in what would become really a lifelong search for my father.

Speaker 12 Kelly and I talked about music and sex and girls and boys and teachers and parents. We

Speaker 12 talked like

Speaker 12 in a deep, you know, high school, but still in a deep way and about like hours for hours.

Speaker 18 Yeah, hours and hours.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I remember you divulging like

Speaker 12 serious shit to me. Yeah.

Speaker 18 You can say stuff. I'm curious what I divulged to.

Speaker 12 Are you curious? Yeah.

Speaker 12 I mean, I know. It's fine.

Speaker 12 But like, like

Speaker 12 eating owes. Yeah.
And I,

Speaker 12 you know, that was like

Speaker 18 so much with that.

Speaker 12 I mean, so many. Like, I remember talking to you before, like,

Speaker 12 in the throes of those experiences. Yeah, wow.
I remember feeling being like heavy. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Because I didn't know what the fuck to say.

Speaker 18 You're the trusted guy for girls to talk to.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 And there were like friendships that I had with these girls in high school that were, you know,

Speaker 12 deep and like meaningful. Yeah.

Speaker 12 And probably, I guess, I don't know, life-changing, I mean, life-forming. Like they,

Speaker 12 you know,

Speaker 12 make me as a person.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it gives you an understanding of

Speaker 2 what

Speaker 18 women go through. And

Speaker 12 yeah.

Speaker 18 But like, you were just like fun-loving and and light, which is interesting because you had a lot of stuff, you know,

Speaker 18 family and that kind of thing. But

Speaker 12 I just remember you like smiling a lot and just being happy.

Speaker 12 One of the things I would talk about with Kelly was Warren. I was getting to the point where I just couldn't hold it in anymore.
I didn't know why he had cut me out of his life like this.

Speaker 12 Junior year, I was playing Cats in the Cradle on the piano. You know the song? You sing it.

Speaker 12 But it's about you know fathers and sons obviously. So my mom was sitting there on the couch and she was listening and reading the paper or something.

Speaker 12 And I asked her, do you ever wonder where Warren is, my birth father? She's like, I do.

Speaker 12 She's like, I have

Speaker 12 his brother's phone number in California if you wanted to, you know, try to reach him through his brother.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 as I remember, it was a few weeks after that. I went to junior prom, came home from the junior prom, and I called the number because it was like three hours earlier, yeah, and it was disconnected.

Speaker 12 And then I called 411, like the operator, old school, you know, yeah, and they gave me the phone number, and a woman answered.

Speaker 12 Turned out she was my new aunt, they had the intervening years

Speaker 12 married, and

Speaker 12 she

Speaker 12 seemed confused that I had no contact with my birth father because he had been telling his family that he was in contact with me and that my mom wouldn't let me see the rest of the family.

Speaker 12 But, you know, I was into math, which was bullshit. I wanted to go to the University of Michigan, like, he made up all this nonsense.

Speaker 12 Later that night, after midnight midnight on the East Coast, my uncle Mitch called me. He was really nice, but there was this disconnect.

Speaker 12 He didn't seem to understand what I was saying, that I had not seen Warren since I was eight years old. Warren had been telling his family all of these fabricated stories about me and my life.

Speaker 12 I tried to tell Mitch, Warren doesn't know anything about me, because I haven't spoken to him since I was a little boy. Mitch said, well, we haven't seen you because your mom hasn't let us.

Speaker 12 I'm like, I don't even have Warren's phone number, and that's why I'm calling. Can I have his number?

Speaker 12 Sorry, Mitch said, I can't do that, but I can ask him to call you.

Speaker 12 Won't give me his phone number? Why all the secrecy? Why all the hiding? I'm his son. Can I have my father's phone number?

Speaker 12 But I didn't have a choice. If I wanted to get in touch with Warren, I had to do it his way.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 I gave him my phone number

Speaker 12 and I had my own mind, my own answering machine.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 I feel like there might have been a couple of like hang-ups on the answering machine over the next couple of days when I wasn't home. And I was like, is that him?

Speaker 12 And then I picked up one day and this man on the other side of the line says,

Speaker 12 It's Warren. What do you want?

Speaker 12 And I had a very terrible first conversation with him. Like,

Speaker 12 I remember immediately after it, not even remembering everything that happened. I know he talked shit about my grandmother, my mom's mom, who I was close with before she died.

Speaker 12 And I know he was like obnoxious and skeptical about what I wanted. And he owed my mom so much money and child support that he's sure he that was wrapped up in his reaction.

Speaker 12 But it it was terrible. And I must have then talked to you about it

Speaker 12 because he

Speaker 12 kept calling.

Speaker 12 And eventually we started talking about lighter things, like specifically like baseball. And

Speaker 12 we could have like a normal conversation.

Speaker 12 And then

Speaker 12 we made a plan to meet.

Speaker 12 Turned out Warren lived in Queens, not even a 15-minute drive away from my house. We decided to meet at a Bennigan's restaurant.
He told me what he'd be wearing so I could recognize him.

Speaker 12 It was the spring of 1994.

Speaker 12 I didn't have my driver's license yet, but Kelly did. And I most definitely didn't want my mom to drive me to see him.
I mean, too awkward. So, Kelly drove me over.
Did you wait in the car?

Speaker 18 You must have. You must have, because we didn't have cell phones.

Speaker 12 You, you, it's amazing, you would have waited in the car. It's like amazing you did that.
Well,

Speaker 12 thank you. You're welcome.

Speaker 12 It's so sweet.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but you were like, my, we were really close, yeah, you know, and this was a big deal. This wasn't like some little thing.

Speaker 12 I mean, I remember walking up, and he was there. He was smoking on Marlboro Light 100, and he was wearing a members-only jacket.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I know we didn't hug.

Speaker 12 I think

Speaker 12 it's possible we shook hands, but I actually think I remember it being strange because we kind of said hello. And then he turned and started walking to the door.

Speaker 12 And then we walked into the restaurant. Like, I don't know if there was any

Speaker 12 physical contact when we first saw each other. Maybe a handshake, but no hug.
Isn't that weird? Can you imagine not seeing your child for eight years and not hugging them? I mean,

Speaker 18 in order to not see your child for eight years, you got to be pretty well disconnected from everything.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 12 But then we had a pretty good meal. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Like, it was not, I don't, I don't remember any being any like

Speaker 12 drama or

Speaker 12 tension, really.

Speaker 12 And then I think he gave me a little money.

Speaker 12 And then I felt some degree of like closure and completion afterwards, which is probably why.

Speaker 18 That's that's what I saw from you was

Speaker 6 that.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 That was probably what was on my face when I was walking back to the car. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Like a million pounds of,

Speaker 9 you know, of weight release, just relief, you know, and like it, you

Speaker 12 looked happy.

Speaker 12 So for the next several several years, we had a okay relationship. He flew me out to California to meet or reunite with my grandparents and my uncle and new aunt and two first cousins

Speaker 12 and had a pretty good trip, as I remember it. And then

Speaker 12 I would see him occasionally. I had his phone number.
He would call me. We had a regular phone interaction.

Speaker 12 He visited me in

Speaker 12 college once. I was living in a fraternity house.
It was like the morning after a

Speaker 12 party. And I remember not having to worry about the crushed natty light cans all over the place because it was like a judgment-free situation with him because the bar was so

Speaker 12 low in terms of how he was as a father that I never,

Speaker 12 in a way it was a lot less pressure yeah hanging out with him than my parents who I wanted to

Speaker 12 live up to the standard they held for me yeah because they were actual like parents yes um and we went to brunch and I bummed a cigarette from

Speaker 12 him

Speaker 12 and then on the way back he bought me a pack

Speaker 12 and And then he says to me, do you ever wonder why all of your negative qualities you seem to get from me?

Speaker 12 And I'm like, I do wonder that actually, because he was unlike my mother and Richard, he had an edge about him. He lived off the grid.
He was shady.

Speaker 12 He

Speaker 12 had a way with like strangers.

Speaker 12 Like he'd be the guy like you sitting next to on a bus stop who could like chat you up and you'd be like charmed but also like he you know see somebody who he was like a bad boy.

Speaker 12 He was like, yeah, he's like a bad boy. And so obviously at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, I like related, you know, I connected with that.

Speaker 12 There was still plenty of shady shit. If I met him at a restaurant, I might give him a ride home afterward, but he'd have me drop him off at the end of his block so I wouldn't know his address.

Speaker 12 Things would eventually sour again, badly. He would once again fade out of the picture, and I'd be left wondering about him, wondering about his family and who they were and who he was.

Speaker 12 I felt like I still didn't really know anything about my father. What was the truth about Warren? What are the secrets I can't access?

Speaker 12 My whole life, my head swirled with questions, and once I started investigating, I learned, turns out, there is something there.

Speaker 12 There is a reason things don't add up. There is something about my past that I never knew.

Speaker 12 The answers would turn out to be way weirder, more interesting, and more personally intense than anything I've ever investigated before.

Speaker 12 Coming up on this season of inconceivable truth. I knew there was something that someone wasn't telling me.
And she said to me, their secret.

Speaker 12 That was the hand married Ellie Lynch. Most of them did go to Mericaxia.
If they have the right family, ah, that's it.

Speaker 19 Finding the truth. It's not what you want it to be.
If you can deal with that kind of stuff, then jump in.

Speaker 19 The DNA is the truth. Everything else is just a story.

Speaker 15 Never in a million years would I have thought that this is how this occurred.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Natalie White is our intern. Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch.

Speaker 12 For photos and more details on 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.

Speaker 12 If you like this series, please leave us a review and don't forget to tell a friend or relative. I'm Matt Katz.
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 12 How do you feel?

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 15 I feel drained. Sorry.
I shouldn't have had pizzas laying on my stomach.

Speaker 12 All right, let's take naps.

Speaker 12 Oh, God.

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