Warren | Chapter 1

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I'll see you next time. you knew 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.
Two o'clock came, and he didn't come. This might be the saddest thing I've ever heard about myself.
I don't remember it exactly, but my mom does.

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.

But Warren didn't always show up.

And when he did, he was very late. This I remember.
Is this me right after I was born? Is this like in the hospital? Yeah. And that's coming out of the station wagon where they didn't have seatbelts.
So you were on my lap. In the front seat.
In the front seat. Who took this picture? I guess Warren took it.
Warren was the man I had been waiting for. I called him Daddy back then.
My mom, Roberta, married Warren in 1973. I arrived five years later.
And by the time I was a year and a half, they were split, divorced. There's dozens of pictures.
There's no, at least in this batch, there's no pictures of Warren. I don't have anything.
Did you get rid of them? You just threw them out. Sorry.
I don't know. When I was in a fit of anger.
Do you remember? There were very few to begin with. And I was putting these in an album, and he didn't belong there.
This is just his arm. That's his arm brushing your teeth, right.
Yeah. That's it.
That's it. That's the only picture I have of Warren ever.
A big man arm coming from outside the frame. We all live together in an apartment that I have no memory of.
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.
What happened? We just had lots of fights about gambling and about not telling the truth about things. And I said, that's it.
There was no support. I had no love for him.
And I had to get out. He was gambling excessively then? Sneaking, sneaking.
Sneakingly gambling, yeah. I mean, I didn't know until I found that there's no money.
And then when I went back to work, because I had to, 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, talk about being embarrassed at school.

And they were going to garnish.

My salary, because I owed so much money, which I had no idea.

It was, you know, it had joined credit cards.

So, and I didn't see the bills.

I did not know.

I was busy trying to raise a baby, and I did not know about other things that were going on.

I kind of thought of a little bit,

but every time something came up, I believed him,

or tried to believe him, and then I just had it. And that's when I left.
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.
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, 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.
And so I wondered, and I watched that clock, and I waited for the rest of him to come back into the picture. 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, that there was a mystery at

the heart of who my father really was. And now, after years of tracking down clues, I'm so,

so close. I almost have answers.

From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth. I'm Matt Katz.

Episode 1.

Warren.

My name has always been Matt, or Matthew, as my mom called me. But my last name has not always been Katz.
And the reason why is all wrapped up in what happened shortly after Warren and Roberta divorced. It's the early 80s, Queens, and Roberta is a single mom.
It's just me and her. 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. 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. 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. So that's why I did that.
Was that because you didn't have a father and you wanted to? Yeah, I think. And you were concerned that I wouldn't have? So you would go to to these things and then there'd be men for me to like throw a ball with or whatever? Right, right.
Just, yeah, exactly. Right.
But I did go to a couple of dances, which would be for me socially. And she went to these group conversations for single parents called rap discussions.
Not like rap that we talk about today, okay.

You have drinks or coffee in Danish or whatever, and you get to meet other people.

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

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.
I met this meeting in Queens, and the door opens and your mother walks in. And I said, that's a beautiful woman.
And the only seat available was next to me. Well, first, when I walked in, this was an apartment in Queens and Forest Hills.
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. C, I have to get the hell out of here.

D, my mother is babysitting. I have a free babysitter.
And E, 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. So when Richard tapped on the empty chair next to him, she walked over.
She sits down and we start talking. And what I remember of that night is 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.
Whatever the discussion was, because his memory is worse than mine, we do not remember per se, but we were the only ones that were in agreement. And we were sitting there discussing it quietly and laughing like hell.
And we had very, very similar outlooks about life. I was lucky enough.
She gave me her number when I asked, and I made a date. And then this shouldn't be for your ears, but he liked my draw-dash jeans.
I fit into these sexy jeans, and he remembered that. He keeps talking about those jeans that I cannot wear anymore.
But between that and the discussion that we had, that's how it started. So you were also like shopping for a father for me.
Right. You got one.
I got one. I did.
I did. I was in love from the beginning

I had dated other I did. I did.

I was in love from the beginning.

I had dated other women after I was divorced.

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

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?

We were at the house, your apartment in Queens.

And we're having dinner. and I had to go home.

And my very, very romantic proposal was, darn it, I can't go home. I want to be with you.
I don't

want to leave. Would you marry me? Very, very romantic.
And she said, I have to think about it. Thankfully, she said yes.
And the rest is history. Then, of course, I proposed to you.
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. And I think that's where you did it.
The way you were being brought up by Mom and your personality and just, you know, the two of you just, I wanted you part of my life and I wanted to make sure you wanted me as part of your life. How do you say, I'm moving in, I'm going to be with you as you grow up? How do I ask you? Because I know a lot of children resent the spouse of the parent they're living with.
And I didn't want that. And I was, at that point, I was already showing you a lot of love.
So I asked you, and I think the look on your face is, what is he talking about? But you remembered. I remembered.
it's like one of my earliest memories

i think you you basically asked me permission is it okay if can i marry your mom and become

part of your family and uh it's such a menschy thing to do mention not i mean it's like how do

you i i don't see any other way. You had to be part of it.
I was definitely part of it. I was the ring bearer at their tiny wedding at a haul off Central Park in January, 1983, when I was four and a half.
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. 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. 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.

When he did come by and take me out for the day, we'd do things that even I knew.

I'm like five.

We're not normal.

We'd sometimes go to the off-track betting parlor so we could wager

on the horses. I'm standing in a pile of betting slips up to my ankles, a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering over me.
One time he took me to a zoo in Queens, a little place, more of a petting zoo than anything else. 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.
He then went to the front, paid admission for himself, and met me inside. He saved a couple of bucks, I guess? 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. I had a blonde mop top, hazel eyes, skinny and smiley.
And I was probably the shyest little boy in Queens. 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.

In other ways, at the age of four, 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. 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.
I really wanted to read the Week in Review when I was four. Oh, sure.
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.

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? But those questions about who my father was, turns out I wasn't asking the right thing at all.
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. Joining us now is Matt Katz.
Matt Katz, and thank you again for being here. Public safety reporter, Matt Katz.
Hey, Matt. Hey, good morning, Michael.
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. During the U.S.
war in Afghanistan, I embedded with the military to ask questions about what in the world was happening over there.

But now, I'm working on the hardest story I've ever worked on.

And it's about my father, or fathers.

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

My question, first and foremost, what's the truth about my father? My second question sounds ridiculous, but if you stick with me, I promise it will make sense. How did I come to exist? 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.

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

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 potbelly and a dark goatee.
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, 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. He seemed to have access to a world very different from my own that seemed darker, more intriguing.
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. Meanwhile, though, I didn't even have his phone number.
After a visit, I never knew when I'd see him again. Right.
And that wasn't our doing. That was his doing.
He would make arrangements and then cancel them. Like arrangements to pick me up? Yeah.
And since we never knew where he lived, we weren't too happy with that. Like you never had his address? No, he wouldn't give it to us.
And 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, I have to know where you are. I have to be able to contact you.
He didn't like that. 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. 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. Richard remembers that Warren was supposed to come by and give me a remote-controlled car.
I loved those things. And then called up and canceled because he didn't have the money to buy it because he gambled it away.
Oh, wow. I think.
And so that's what I was really pissed about? That's what you were, that he lied to you. You know, you finally figured out the man is a liar and you have a huge sense of truthfulness.

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.
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.
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.
It was frustrating. I started to be like, fuck this.
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.
I wanted to be a Katz. December 15th, 1985, I changed my last name.
Do you remember how that came about? yes You asked me because you would go to school and your parents' name was Katz and yours wasn't. 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. Yeah.
I didn't have anybody else who was very present in my world with that last name. So it felt 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.
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. I remember he came over and went out to the car with you, had you out in the car, and was sort of screaming because he was sure that we had instigated you to want the name change.

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.

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

because I would see him so irregularly. Something else was happening.
I think I started to internalize this tension between my parents and awareness that my father, Warren, was also hurting my mother. 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.
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.
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? I told him, and I remember this so well, that I was going to sick the FBI on him.
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 could understand

why he was the way he was.

Warren hung up on me.

He didn't call again. Gatorade Zero has all the electrolytes of Gatorade with zero sugar designed to rehydrate and replenish for a day with zero excuses and zero reasons not to.

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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. Warren would have custody.
He'd be responsible for me. He'd be my only parent.
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.
There was a solution, though, she told me. If Richard adopts you, he would take care of you.
He'd be with you, always. I wanted you as my kid, legally.
and legally that he couldn't come back and ask for something else.

Joint custody, for instance.

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

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.
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. 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. They were 8 and 12 years older than me.
Already off to college. We didn't live together.
But I still saw them as my sisters. You are my child as Sarah and Sally were my children, and you get equal share of that love.
I appreciate that. I feel all of that.
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 Great Neck, one of the most affluent towns in the country, a quintessential Long Island suburb.
I still pronounce it with two syllables, Long Island. Do you remember when we started hanging out? I think we were forced to.
We lived across the street. In Great Neck, everyone's parents seemed to still be married, and no one's mom seemed to work.
I was petrified to start school there. It was middle school, 6th through 8th, and I was coming in 7th grade.
Everyone was going to have more expensive sneakers, and I knew no one. But there was a boy who lived across the street from my new house.
His name was Ilan. I remember being very excited because you were smaller than me.
Briefly.

I remember being excited because you had a catcher's mitt, which is very strange for a Jewish boy to play a catcher. Because usually catchers are kind of big, big guys.
You know, you were not. I was not.
You were friendly. You were approachable.
You were into music. I mean, this is 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 you took from like a CD store. 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.
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? 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 which also was cool like how did you do that my mom was like what are you talking about we're not bringing that junk to our house like 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 uh and um 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 uh we used to talk on walkie talkies do you remember that we used to flash our lights yes our rooms faced each other on the street so if I wanted to talk to you I'd flash my lights but I would have to have been looking out the window 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 and then we'd turn on the walkie talkie which was a little ridiculous because we also had phones we did a phone we also had phones in our room i don't know why we thought walkie-talkie was maybe it was safer do you remember me talking about my then birth father so okay i've been thinking about this uh i find it very interesting that you still to this day say he's your birth father. There's no word in the English language to describe this person.
But that's how you always refer to him as your birth father. And you know a lot more now than you did.
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.
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.
It was something I had to broach with my mom and Richard. I think they supported it, but maybe didn't understand why I needed to go and find this deadbeat.
I think they understood why you wanted to do it as 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? 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 helped raise you, but who's your, who are you? 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 gray neck. I'm going to be a doctor.
I was a doctor. Okay.
That's who I am. You, I am.
You're like a chameleon. You're always changing.
Who's my father? 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 him for some reason.
I made friends quickly in Great Neck. This was pre-internet, so when I wasn't on the walkie-talkie with Ilan, I was on the phone talking with friends.
Friends like Kelly. We would, like, listen to Billy Joel, and you'd fall asleep.
Like, in the wee hours, we'd be on the phone. You'd go to sleep on the phone with me.
We'd be like listening to Billy Joel. Oh my God.
Yeah. Yeah, I remember being on the phone silent.
Yeah, we would just be on the phone, quiet, sleeping, whatever. Yeah, it was like having a sleepover.
Junior year in high school, Kelly would end up playing this key role in what would become really a lifelong search for my father. Kelly and I talked about music and sex and girls and boys and teachers and parents.
We talked like in a deep, you know, high school, but still in a deep way. Oh yeah, for hours.
For hours. Yeah, hours and hours.
Yeah. i remember you divulging like serious shit to me yeah um you can say stuff i'm i'm curious what i divulged yeah are you curious yeah um i mean i don't it's fine but like like uh eating oh yeah and i you know that was like Yeah, I struggled so much with that.
I mean, so many girls. Like I remember talking to you in the throes of those experiences.
Yeah, wow. I remember being like heavy.
Yeah. Because I didn't know what the fuck to say.
You're the trusted guy for girls to talk to.

Yeah. And there were like friendships that I had with these girls in high school that were, you know, deep.
Yeah. And like meaningful.
Yeah. And probably, I guess, I don't know, life-changing.
I mean, life-forming. Like they help, you know, make me as a person.
Yeah, it gives you an understanding of what women go through and, yeah. But like, you were just like fun-loving and light, which is interesting because you had a lot of stuff, you know, family and that kind of thing.
But I just remember you like smiling a lot and just being happy. 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.
Junior year, I was playing Cats in the Cradle on the piano. You know the song? You gonna sing it? But it's about fathers and sons, obviously.
So my mom was sitting there on the couch, and she was listening and reading the paper or something, and I asked her, do you ever wonder where Warren is, my birth father? She's like, I do. She's like, I have his brother's phone number in California if you wanted to, you know, try to reach him through his brother.
So 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. And then I called 411, like the operator, old school, you know.
Yeah. And they gave me the phone number, and a woman answered.
Turned out she was my new aunt. They had intervening years married and she 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.
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. Later that night, after midnight on the East Coast, my Uncle Mitch called me.

He was really nice, but there was this disconnect.

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.

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.
I'm like, I don't even have Warren's phone number. And that's why I'm calling.
Can I have his number? Sorry, Mitch said, I can't do that, but I can ask him to call you. 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? But I didn't have a choice. If I wanted to get in touch with Warren, I had to do it his way.
So gave him my phone number, and I had my own line, my own answering machine.

So I feel like there might have been a couple of hang-ups on the answering machine over the next couple of days when I wasn't home. And I was like, is that him? And then I picked up one day and this man on the other side of the line says,

it's Warren.

What do you want? And I had a very terrible first conversation with him. Like I remember immediately after it, not even remembering everything that happened.
I know he talks shit about my grandmother, my mom's mom, who I was close with before she died. And I know he was obnoxious and skeptical about what I wanted.
And he owed my mom so much money and child support that I'm sure that was wrapped up in his reaction. But it was terrible.
and I must have then talked to you about it because he kept calling. And eventually we started talking about lighter things, specifically like baseball.
And we could have a normal conversation. And then we made a plan to meet.
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. It was the spring of 1994.
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? I must have because we didn't have cell phones. It's amazing.
You would have waited in the car.

It's like amazing you did that.

Well.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

It's so sweet.

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.

I mean, I remember walking up and he was there.

He was smoking a Marlboro Light 100 and he was wearing a members only jacket. And I know we didn't hug.
I think it's possible we shook hands, but I actually think I remember being strange because we kind of said hello, and then he turned and started walking to the door,

and then we walked into the restaurant.

I don't know if there was any 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, in order to not see your child for eight years,

you've got to be pretty well disconnected from everything. Right.
But then we had a pretty good meal. Yeah.
Like, it was not, I don't remember being any, like, drama or tension, really. And then I think he gave me a little money.
And then I felt some degree of closure and completion afterwards, which is probably why... I think that's what I saw from you was that.
Yeah. Yeah.
That was probably what was on my face when I was walking back to the car. Yeah.
Like a million pounds of weight release, just relief. And you looked happy.
So for the next several years, we had an 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.
Wow. And had a pretty good trip, as I remember it.
And then I would see him occasionally. I had his phone number.
He would call me. We had a regular phone interaction.
He visited me in college once. I was living in a fraternity house.
It was like the morning after a you a you know 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 the bar was so low in terms of how he was as a father that i never in a way it was a lot a lot less pressure. Yeah.
Hanging out with him than my parents, who I wanted to live up to the standard they held for me. Yeah.
Because they were actual, like, parents. Yes.
And we went to brunch, and I bumped a cigarette from him. And then on the way back, he bought me a pack.
And then he says to me, do you ever wonder why all of your negative qualities you seem to get from me? 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.
He had a way with strangers. He'd be the guy sitting next to him on a bus stop who could chat you up.
And he'd be charmed. But also, he was somebody who...
He was like a bad boy. He was like, yeah, he was like a bad boy.

And so obviously at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, I like related, you know, I connected with that.

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.

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.

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? My whole life, my head swirled with questions.
And once I started investigating, I learned, turns out, there is something there. There is a reason things don't add up.
There is something about my past that I never knew. The answers would turn out to be way

weirder, more interesting, and more personally intense than anything I've ever investigated before.

Coming up on this season of Inconceivable Truth.

I knew there was something someone wasn't telling me.

And she said to me, there's a secret. That was the hand-married Ellie Lynch.
Most of them did go to America, actually. If they have the right family, ah, that's it.
Finding the truth, it's not what you want it to be. If you can deal with that kind of stuff, then jump in.
The DNA is the truth. Everything else is just a story.

Never in a million years would I have thought that this is how this occurred. 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 this series, please leave us a review and don't forget to tell a friend or relative. I'm Matt Katz.
Thanks for listening. How do you feel? Okay.
I feel drained.

Sorry.

I shouldn't have had pizzas laying on my stomach.

All right, let's take naps.

Oh, God.