Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
I was worrying, Eugene. I
0:03
don't remember the time. I think it was morning, but I
0:05
don't remember j N.
0:08
And do you wonder about what the day was
0:11
like that you came into this world? I do.
0:13
I mean, I wonder. I've heard
0:15
she was induced, but I'm not really
0:17
sure. So I wonder what it was like. Was
0:20
she in her jail cell
0:22
and her water broke and she
0:24
was rushed to the hospital, or you
0:26
know, was it planned for that day? And
0:29
then, you know, I wonder what it was like
0:31
after I was born, as she was showing
0:33
me off and you know that sort of stuff. It's
0:35
a little strange to me. But I'm
0:38
wondering being taken away from
0:40
her, how did that go? Because I remember
0:42
when when I gave my son to
0:44
the nurse. It broke me. You
0:46
know that that was that was a moment
0:48
of just pain, sheer pain. But
0:51
I knew he was going somewhere where
0:53
he would be, you know, well, taken care of and
0:55
loved. And I chose that family. So it's
0:58
a little bit different than Diane, where she didn't get
1:00
to choose the family, and you know, she didn't
1:02
have a say in any of it. In no way am I saying
1:04
she's a victim. I'm just saying that it
1:07
might have been hard on her, but with
1:09
her mental state, it may
1:11
not have been anything to her.
1:13
I guess that's kind of what I'm curious is how
1:16
did she handle it but she just like, okay,
1:18
take my kid, or was it
1:20
hard for her? Okay? I just
1:23
have one more question, is that Okay, when
1:25
you reached out to Diane and
1:27
asked her about what
1:29
was that like bringing me into the world,
1:31
what was her answer? She was actually
1:34
like it was the best thing in the world, you know, and
1:36
and how she was so happy and she got
1:38
to hold me and how much she loved me.
1:40
And she didn't say anything about
1:43
having to hand me over or me being
1:45
taken away or anything like that. Um,
1:49
it was just that she got to hold me for a very long
1:51
time. And I don't know. It's still
1:53
kind of really keeps me out a little bit. I
1:55
don't know. It's just really strange to
1:57
be born from a person that
2:00
you cannot relate to, you know, it's
2:02
it's that's my biological mother. But I don't understand
2:04
her at all. I don't ever want to be here. I
2:20
was about eight years old when my adopted
2:22
mom started telling me about my biological
2:25
mom, about how she had done bad things, and I
2:27
continued to ask and pester her
2:29
throughout, you know, the next three
2:31
years, and she finally
2:34
got to the point where she just decided, you know, you're not
2:36
old enough to know this is something that's awful.
2:38
I don't ever want to tell you. In a sense
2:40
as a little kid, it was more curiosity
2:42
than anything. I was frustrated
2:45
with her her and I was at a little angry
2:47
that she wouldn't tell me um, and
2:49
so I really just wanted to know. And
2:52
then once I got that in my head that I
2:54
wanted to know that they were, you know,
2:56
who she was, because my mom
2:58
had given me a little tidbits, you know, that
3:00
she was bad, that she was in jail,
3:02
that all this stuff, and I wanted to know why.
3:05
So it was more frustrating, and
3:07
I was a little bit angry when she wouldn't tell me, And
3:10
then my brain went to work of how can I find
3:12
out on my own, and of
3:14
course by tricking her babysitter, Becky
3:16
did finally find out who her mother was. Later,
3:19
after watching Small Sacrifices,
3:21
Eric Mason was one of the first people
3:23
to help Becky bring her story to the press,
3:26
and has a unique insight into Becky's
3:28
reasons for wanting her story out into
3:30
the world. Yeah. Well, I
3:32
think all of us have family
3:35
secrets. We all have
3:38
that crazy uncle, we all
3:40
have something that we don't want
3:42
to share with the rest of the world. And so
3:45
as a story that one
3:47
day Becky living in
3:49
ben is watching Faara Fawcet
3:52
in the movie Small Sacrifices
3:55
on television and thinking to
3:57
herself, Oh, my god, that is
3:59
my mother. That in
4:01
that sense, we all have to come to
4:04
terms with what came
4:06
before us and who came before
4:08
us, and their
4:11
crimes or their contributions,
4:14
and to make peace with all of it is
4:16
to understand ourselves
4:18
a whole lot more. And so
4:21
you know, the journey that
4:23
we are all on is to understand
4:25
why. And with Rebecca
4:28
Wow, she has a lot of it that she can
4:30
read about what watch
4:33
and that she has kind of a front row
4:35
seat to this very
4:38
infamous person and in
4:40
so doing being able to talk
4:42
about it in the magazine and
4:45
on and on
4:47
Oprah, being able to talk about it, and everyone
4:49
think to themselves, you know what, I
4:52
think I can deal with my past a little bit
4:54
better too. You know, it's been surprising
4:56
to me, Eric, is that when I've been working
4:58
on this case of people
5:01
attached to the case that worked with the children,
5:04
anybody who's worked with Christie or Danny
5:07
or came in contact with the deceased,
5:09
Gerald told me, why
5:12
is this? Why does anybody care about becky
5:14
story? She didn't get shocked, like that's
5:16
kind of surprising to me, Like what is she
5:19
really suffering from? She was raised
5:21
by a fabulous family. Why
5:25
why do this big quest? Is she just seeking
5:27
fame? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean
5:30
when the woman came to
5:33
me who was in the film festival
5:36
from Bend and said, do you want to meet Diana Hounced
5:38
daughter, I was like, oh my god, could this even
5:40
be true? And I don't
5:42
think she really was per
5:45
se looking for that. I think
5:47
she was searching for
5:49
the understanding of her own life. And
5:52
I think she saw journalism and getting
5:54
the story out there as a way to maybe
5:57
find the other missing pieces
5:59
of the puzzle. And so sort of
6:01
crying out to the universe is not such
6:03
a bad thing. I mean, I
6:05
think in some ways it's therapeutic,
6:08
and for her, I
6:10
think the point of the story is this
6:12
is the the amazing control part
6:14
of the experiment is she was raised
6:16
in the absolute best surroundings
6:20
environment, place to live,
6:22
resources from parents, and
6:25
yet she felt this toe
6:28
from the water of that genetics,
6:31
and it still was pulling on her and
6:33
still and controlling her, even
6:36
from in some ways
6:39
from a prison in California. There
6:41
was this element there that was just
6:44
really strong, this current.
6:46
And to be able to fight that
6:48
current, you really have to understand and
6:51
do your work to figure out how to
6:53
overcome it. When we contacted
6:56
Diane Downs about this podcast,
6:58
she responded with a short and somewhat
7:00
strange letter claiming that Becky
7:03
was not her biological daughter. And
7:05
even more odd was the fact that she
7:07
included several Q tips and closed
7:09
in a small plastic bag inside
7:12
an envelope with the words try it glued
7:14
to the front, presumably saturated
7:16
with her saliva, so that we could have her
7:18
DNA and Becky's quest
7:20
to find out more about her family lineage
7:23
DNA is all she really has to start
7:25
with. We enlisted the help of a DNA
7:27
detective to help with the process, but
7:30
first we spoke to Dr Greg hamikin a
7:32
DNA expert to learn a bit about
7:35
the process and what to expect. You
7:38
know what, my mother told me not to
7:40
talk about myself. I
7:44
violated that. Tell
7:47
your mom you have permission to brag.
7:50
I started about twenty something years
7:52
ago doing forensic work,
7:54
got into forensics really teaching.
7:58
I started using a murder scenario
8:00
with the d n A. But then I met
8:03
Calvin Johnson, who was a guy
8:05
who got out through DNA through
8:07
d Innocence Project in New York. He was
8:09
released near where I was teaching in Georgia.
8:12
He done seventeen years in prison, and
8:14
he's on the radio talking and he they
8:17
asked him, how do you feel about the criminal justice
8:19
system now? And he said, you gotta
8:22
have laws. He's not better.
8:24
He's just a really great guy and
8:27
he believes in the system still after
8:29
what he's been through. So we divided
8:31
into school and as he was speaking to my students,
8:34
I wrote chapter one of Exits
8:36
to Freedom, which became his autobiography.
8:39
After that book in I
8:42
started getting casework because pupil
8:45
fought, well, if I can, you know, write
8:47
about it, maybe I could help outwards
8:49
in cases. I started doing casework for
8:51
free, helping out and then I testified,
8:54
came back to Georgia and I get started
8:56
Georgia Innocence Project and
8:59
found that they were already some students doing
9:01
that at the law school. So I got on their
9:03
board as their DNA expert and
9:06
we started working down there, and I
9:09
think gosh, and they worked on six cases
9:11
with people are wasonoring with them.
9:13
When I was in London working on
9:15
a private case, I was doing research
9:18
on how they do things in Europe, and so I got
9:20
in touch with Amanda nazis Um
9:22
team. She was at trial at that point. I
9:24
joined the team, got a
9:26
bunch of American experts to
9:29
look at the case along with Libby
9:31
Johnson. She was doing the same thing we could. We
9:34
wrote a report at the court the point could
9:36
be accept it. She's convicted,
9:38
and then I just kept working on a case of the family
9:41
for about four years. That case
9:44
really got so much press attention
9:46
and so many fans
9:49
and people who hated her. It was kind
9:51
of like you know, o J case. It was
9:53
such a consurovership case.
9:56
So that really kind of thrust our
9:58
little project much more in the limelight
10:00
for a while. And negative
10:03
ways. I called you a couple of weeks
10:05
ago because I wanted to ask
10:08
you where to start with
10:10
DNA because Becky
10:13
and I are on an interesting journey together
10:15
and I have no knowledge
10:18
of DNA, and it's
10:20
critical to the journey
10:22
that Pecky and I are going on. I
10:25
am the biological daughter of Diane
10:27
Downs, and I am
10:30
just curious about everything
10:32
with DNA. So Diane actually denies
10:34
that I'm her biological daughter. My original
10:37
birth certificate actually says that
10:39
she is my birth mother. Dan has sent
10:41
her DNA to the studio so
10:44
that we can, you know, try and match that. But
10:46
I'm actually really interested to going
10:49
to search for my biological father. Would
10:51
that be something that we could do with
10:53
running my DNA through some system.
10:56
We found out that, due to Becky's ethnic
10:58
background, is actually highly likely
11:00
that she'll be able to find a lot of information
11:02
through a commercial DNA service. There's
11:05
good news in that because
11:08
the American genealogical
11:10
databases are populated disproportionately
11:13
with Caucasions, whereas the criminal
11:15
databases are not. It's just just the
11:18
opposite and the criminal databases, you
11:20
know, the good news for Caucasions who
11:22
were looking for their families is you're likely
11:24
to get a lot of information from any
11:26
of the commercial genealogy companies.
11:29
According to Dr Greg interestingly
11:32
enough, men often have a much easier
11:34
time tracing the lineage because
11:36
that men you know usually gives
11:38
their last name. But no, you should be able
11:41
to find out pretty easily with the genetic
11:43
test that you could send off to any of the
11:45
commercial stubs and they link to all
11:47
these great paper trails. There are lots
11:49
of things people are doing that would be through
11:52
these ancestry records. I don't
11:54
think you're going to have a terrible problem finding
11:57
at least the lineage of both your parents.
12:00
Dr Gray continued to explain some
12:03
of the technical aspects of examining
12:05
DNA, as well as the process itself
12:07
and some of the science behind it, but
12:10
ultimately his suggestion was that we contact
12:12
a genealogist, someone whose job
12:14
it is to do a deep dive into the results
12:17
provided by a commercial DNA service
12:19
and really trace the backgrounds and family
12:21
lines by using the results as a foundation
12:24
and researching beyond them.
12:36
So we reached out to Michelle Leonard, a self
12:39
proclaimed DNA detective. I'm
12:41
Michelle and I am
12:43
a professional genealogist, a DNA
12:45
detective and author, a historian
12:48
and My main specialism is
12:50
working with DNA testing
12:53
in order to identify
12:56
unknown ancestors, so all
12:58
sorts of unknown ancestor MR reads
13:00
mainly unknown parentage, so
13:02
unknown parents, unknown grandparents. But
13:04
people will come to me with more distant unknown
13:07
ancestor mysteries as well, like unknown great
13:09
and second great grandparents. What
13:11
I do is I marry up all
13:14
my years of genealogical
13:16
expertise in creating
13:18
and building family trees and
13:20
in living person tracing, and
13:24
with my DNA know how
13:26
to try and identify
13:28
these mystery ancestors.
13:31
In general, people will come to me because
13:34
they've heard or maybe they've seen something
13:36
on TV, or they've read an article,
13:39
or they they've just found out that DNA
13:41
testing can help with their mystery. Some
13:43
people come to me right
13:46
at the beginning, like I think Becky is, where
13:48
they've not yet done any testing. They
13:51
don't know where they should test, they don't
13:53
know how to go about it. They've just found
13:55
out. They've got this idea that doing
13:57
DNA testing might solve their mystery, might
13:59
help them find out who their father was or who their grandfather
14:02
was, that kind of thing. Others
14:04
will come to me after they've tested
14:07
and they don't know what to do with it, and so
14:09
they maybe google for a
14:11
DNA expert, a DNA detective, or a
14:13
genetic genealogist, and they might
14:16
hit upon me and contact me. At
14:18
that point, they might already
14:20
have been building perhaps a maternal tree
14:22
or trees for the lines that they know of,
14:25
and they want to do it themselves,
14:27
but then they just hit a roadblock and
14:29
they can't get any further, and they're frustrated
14:32
with it, and they think, I need somebody with a bit
14:34
more expertise on this than I have, and
14:37
then they'll come to me at that point. One
14:39
of the advantages of knowing your family
14:41
line is having an understanding of their medical
14:44
history. Becky has experienced some health
14:46
problems in recent years, and she believes
14:48
that knowing who her father is will help
14:50
provide some insight not only where she
14:52
comes from, but also help establish
14:54
a background on some of the medical problems
14:56
she may be genetically predisposed. To
14:59
me only, I just would like to find
15:01
out who my biological father is, not
15:04
because my family life is
15:06
disrupted or unhealthy. Because
15:08
my parents are amazing. I love them
15:10
dearly, but I'm just getting
15:12
older. I have quite a bit of health
15:15
problems that are going on as I'm aging,
15:18
and I'm realizing that I
15:20
never met my biological father,
15:22
and it was something that I kind of wanted
15:24
to do. Medical history is
15:26
something important, then, yes, definitely.
15:29
It's It's like when you go to the doctor and they
15:31
say, you know, do you have family history of
15:33
X Y Z? I always have to put I
15:35
adopted. I don't know. And
15:38
you can see there's a big part of Becky that needs
15:40
to know that some part of her comes from
15:42
something decent. Many many people
15:44
have said that to me, and they
15:46
want to know what their medical history is, and
15:49
you know, I think everyone has a right to know that as
15:51
well. Yeah, And I mean, I
15:53
really just want to know where I come from. I want
15:55
to know just my background. I
15:57
know my life now, and I know my family
15:59
and parents and and this is all just
16:02
beautiful and amazing, but I'd like to know
16:04
the other half of me, you know. I
16:06
I know Diane Downs is my biological mother,
16:08
and that is the half
16:10
of me that I am not proud of, and I would
16:13
love to find the other half. So
16:16
when I was eighteen, I was able to order
16:18
my original birth certificate, and
16:21
that was the real answer that
16:23
was, Oh my gosh, it's actually true.
16:25
There's no denying it at that point because Diane
16:27
Downs, well Elizabeth Diane
16:30
Downs was listed as my biological mother,
16:32
but there was no mention
16:34
of a father. And that's very common
16:36
that there's just a big blank for
16:39
the father. Very common, you know,
16:41
an all time periods and in
16:43
all places, really, And I
16:46
agree with what you're saying about the aspect
16:48
of taking back control in a sense
16:51
um in terms of what you can get
16:53
from documents, that
16:55
varies from state to state, from country to
16:57
country, that varies a lot.
17:00
What doesn't vary is the fact that whatever
17:02
you might get from adoption papers
17:04
or from hearsay, from what somebody
17:07
may be able to tell you is simply
17:09
something that is very difficult to corroborate,
17:12
in fact, impossible to corroborate without
17:14
that DNA evidence. Michelle's
17:16
believe is that documents can sometimes
17:19
have false information, but DNA
17:21
evidence is more or less irrefutable.
17:24
I always say that with this,
17:27
while I want to know everything that it's possible
17:29
to know about the adoption
17:31
papers and the hearsay evidence, I
17:34
always follow the DNA. Always
17:36
put the DNA first, and I
17:39
don't let that other evidence,
17:41
the documentary evidence, or the hearsay evidence,
17:43
cloud my judgment and lead to confirmation
17:46
bias because that information
17:48
can always be wrong or falsely given.
17:50
The DNA, however, if followed correctly,
17:53
will lead to the truth. And you'll
17:55
hear people say a lot things like DNA
17:58
doesn't lie, human beings do. And
18:00
while that is very generally true, it's
18:02
also quite an overused and oversimplified
18:05
saying because a DNA
18:07
results on their own can be misinterpreted
18:10
at times, in that if you don't know what you're
18:12
doing with them, and you're trying to find
18:14
an unknown father, you could misinterpret
18:16
the DNA matches and end up identifying
18:19
the wrong man or several wrong men. I've
18:21
seen that happen before tester is looking for
18:23
answers, they hit upon someone
18:25
with a similar name to one given in an adoption
18:28
document, or they perhaps message
18:30
a match who says, oh, I think it could
18:32
be my dad's cousin, and people
18:34
get taken along in the wave of that, and
18:37
when somebody who understands
18:39
the DNA looks at it properly realizes
18:42
that the DNA doesn't support that conclusion
18:44
of it being that man. So it's
18:46
a bit more complicated than simply saying
18:48
DNA will give you the truth. DNA doesn't
18:51
lie. That is true, but at the same
18:53
time, it has to be worked with correctly in
18:55
order to get to the correct answer. DNA
18:58
is a very scientific way of going
19:00
about a very emotional process. There's
19:02
no denying that your clients and Becky
19:05
here are absolutely going to
19:07
be subjected to strong emotions about
19:09
this. And then also there's questions
19:12
about when you
19:14
find Becky's father, what
19:17
do we do with that information? Because
19:19
I've read different reports
19:22
from Diane downs herself where she has
19:24
said the father knows he's
19:26
the father, he's a dear friend of
19:28
mine, and so there's that
19:30
and the reports, and then Becky's heard
19:32
other things. Oh, there's so many
19:34
stories circling around my biological father.
19:37
Um. I've heard that he doesn't know
19:39
that he's the father. I've heard that
19:41
he has fought for me when I
19:44
was born to keep custody.
19:46
I heard that he was a reporter during the case.
19:49
I also heard that he was worked
19:51
at the mail office with Diane.
19:53
And then I also heard it was just some guy
19:56
that was a husband of her
19:58
selmate. So mean, there's just so
20:01
many stories. I would really love to
20:03
just find that one answer. And
20:06
there's also the possibility that he's
20:08
aware of who he is and simply doesn't
20:10
have any desire to be involved. That's
20:13
something that I am worried about too, because I
20:15
have been so out
20:18
there, you know, I've been open about who
20:20
I am, and if he had wanted
20:22
to contact me, I've been in the media for ten
20:24
years now, you know, So why
20:27
hasn't he My fear is that maybe
20:29
he has passed away, or he
20:31
doesn't want to be found, or he just
20:33
doesn't know. It's a very tough
20:36
thing to do, and you have to
20:38
go into an understanding that it's going
20:40
to bring up an awful lot of emotion.
20:43
You have to have a good support network on
20:45
hand, and you might want to even
20:47
consider professional support,
20:50
counseling and that kind of thing to help
20:52
through the process in terms
20:54
of when you get to that point, if you get to that
20:56
point, because not all cases are solvable,
20:59
or at least not all cases are immediately
21:02
solvable. Some take weeks, some take
21:04
months, some take years, and depending
21:06
on the ethnicity of the man in question,
21:09
sometimes there are some cases that will
21:11
take years. Yet because if
21:14
he's of an ethnicity say
21:16
that there isn't a society that tends
21:18
to d N a test, Then that makes
21:20
life a lot more difficult, because if you don't have the
21:22
matches to work with, you can't identify
21:25
the man on the end of it. But having said all
21:27
that, if you get to that point you
21:29
identify a person, first
21:32
off, you might have a number of candidates.
21:34
You know, the DNA might be pointing to a particular
21:37
family, say, but there might be three brothers,
21:40
or you might only be able to say, well, it's
21:42
one of these brothers, or it's one of their
21:44
first cousins, it's one of these five men,
21:47
for instance. And the only way to get to the bottom
21:49
of which one of the five is
21:51
is target testing. On those lines,
21:53
anyone who DNA tests, they can
21:55
find shocks and surprises. They can find
21:59
some close ancestors aren't who
22:01
they believe them to be, So for instance,
22:03
finding out your father is not your father, or your
22:05
grandfather wasn't your grandfather. These
22:08
things can happen. Also, they
22:10
might find that they have close relatives
22:12
they didn't know existed, like say Becky
22:14
testing and showing up on somebody's list.
22:16
She could be a close relative, half
22:19
sibling of first cousin they never
22:21
knew existed. So in terms of contacting
22:23
people, in most cases you're going to have
22:25
several candidates and you might
22:28
have to narrow things down to the right one.
22:30
But if you do know exactly who it
22:32
is, then there are a number of prevailing
22:35
ideas on who should make the contact
22:37
and how that contact should be made. It's
22:45
clear that for Becky this whole process
22:48
is going to be extremely emotional. It's
22:50
not only her own discoveries that she's
22:52
concerned about, but also the effect
22:55
it might have on the people who raised her and
22:57
took care of her. Also, at this point,
22:59
Becky's dad could be whatever she imagines
23:01
him to be, but once she knows, whatever
23:04
fantasy or vision she has might
23:06
be crushed. There's so many
23:08
aspects to it that, you know, I don't
23:10
want to hurt my adoptive parents because I do
23:12
love them. And then there's the fact that
23:15
I am on this journey that
23:18
I never thought I was going to go on. I found
23:20
Diane and I didn't want to know anymore. And
23:22
now there's this search for finding in
23:24
the other half. And I've always
23:26
been able just to pretend that my biological
23:28
dad's an amazing person that he loves
23:30
me and that I don't know, some great
23:33
person that hasn't done anything wrong
23:35
and as a positive person in society.
23:38
But the reality is I don't know, and
23:41
he may not be a positive person.
23:43
He may not be the person that I thought
23:45
he was my whole life. Absolutely.
23:48
Yeah, as I say that, this is not
23:50
a comfortable thing to do, and it's not an
23:52
easy thing to do, and it can
23:54
be emotionally training, and there can be
23:56
times where client has
23:59
to step back and you know, this is taking
24:01
over my life, and um, I
24:03
need to break from it for a while. And
24:05
I think anyone if they get to that
24:07
point, then they need to take that break
24:10
from it if they're getting scared about getting
24:12
close for the truth and things like that. And
24:14
that's a really really important point when
24:17
you're doing something like this. It's not just
24:19
about identifying someone. It's
24:22
a whole range of emotions and
24:25
how that person is feeling at any given point
24:27
in the process is extremely important and
24:29
has to be taken on board. And I
24:31
completely understand what Becky
24:34
is saying about having this fantasy about
24:36
this great person in society
24:39
that while she doesn't know that
24:41
can remain intact, but at
24:43
the same time, there's that knowing away
24:46
because of not knowing. Clients
24:49
who have found out things about their birth
24:51
parents that they didn't
24:54
expect and that they found very tough to deal
24:56
with that because they had built
24:58
up an image of the person
25:01
that didn't exist in essence, that wasn't
25:03
the reality. And others, of course,
25:05
have have been pleasantly surprised
25:07
by what they found. It's every
25:09
single case is so individual,
25:13
and there's just no way to generalize
25:15
about any of this at all. Michelle
25:18
explained to Becky in me in depth about how
25:20
the process will work. Once Becky sends
25:22
in her sample and receives her profile, Michelle
25:25
will wait through all of the potential DNA relatives
25:27
and form a complex family tree, gradually
25:30
forming the branches that directly connect Becky
25:32
to anyone else in the database who may
25:34
hold clues to her father's identity.
25:37
I want to have that maternal side
25:39
as reference, so you want the maternal
25:41
tree, but just as good, in fact, even
25:43
better than having the maternal tree
25:45
as well is having a close
25:48
maternal relative test at the closest
25:50
that you can test, and when you're trying to solve
25:52
a mystery, I want to just be working
25:54
on the pertinent matches, the paternal
25:57
matches, and if a maternal relatives
25:59
can test even better because everyone that
26:01
matches them as well, I can
26:03
just eliminate them. I can put them in a group maternal
26:06
and I can just put them to one side. And
26:09
the people that don't match your uncle are
26:11
the people I really want to look at because they're
26:13
going to be on the paternal side. So actually
26:15
your uncle testing is something I would hugely
26:18
recommend in this situation.
26:21
Awesome, amazing, Thank
26:23
you Michelle for taking the time to
26:25
speak with Becky and I. Michelle, thank
26:27
you so much. Thankfully
26:30
James didn't in fact sumit his DNA, so
26:32
hopefully Michelle will in fact be able to
26:34
find a complete picture of Becky's maternal
26:37
line which will not only help begin the search
26:39
for her paternal lineage, but also
26:41
provide Becky the conclusive confirmation
26:43
that she is in fact Diane's daughter,
26:45
despite Diane's recent claims to the contrary.
26:48
All that remains now is to wait for the
26:50
results. It is
26:52
that big web where there's so many more
26:55
things, and which is the reason that I have never
26:57
done DNA testing. I have
27:00
been a little bit worried about how
27:02
deep it goes. You know, it's who
27:05
we need to know. You know my heritage
27:07
and you know what health problems run
27:09
in the family. But I've never been ready to find
27:12
my biological father until now. Well
27:14
I can see how emotional
27:16
that I've I've been thinking about
27:19
your process and how we've
27:22
were parallel and different in these ways.
27:24
Like I told Michelle, just the fact that I
27:26
know who my mom is and I've never had a fantasize
27:29
about who she she has, but she said
27:31
it so well, like, yeah, what do
27:33
you do with that fantasy if it's not
27:35
real? If the father that
27:37
you painted in your mind? I mean,
27:39
this is a big part of your structure
27:41
and your history. This is ingrained in
27:44
and how you've been able to formulate
27:46
who you are as a person. Yeah,
27:48
luckily I had my adoptive parents. And
27:51
I've always said, you know that blood
27:53
doesn't my blood in my veins, maybe
27:56
somebody else's. But we'll let
27:58
me think about that. Which endics
28:00
that I have don't make
28:02
me who I am. You know, there's at
28:05
that nature versus nurture concept.
28:08
And I was raised right. I was raised
28:10
with good family ethics and
28:13
values and morals, and you
28:15
know, I think my genetics have played a part in
28:18
a lot of the things that I've done. But
28:21
even if my biological father is
28:24
somebody that doesn't live up
28:26
to that fantasy, I think that I'll
28:28
be okay because I have that strong
28:31
family structure. It's taken
28:33
Becky a long time to reach the point where
28:35
she's prepared to accept the idea that her
28:37
biological father is out there. It could
28:40
potentially be located thanks to DNA,
28:42
and what that will ultimately mean for her
28:44
sense of identity remains to be seen,
28:47
along with the uncertainty that he's even willing
28:49
to cooperate or come forward. On
28:54
the next episode of Happy Face Presents,
28:56
to Face Diane Down's trial,
28:59
we explore aspects of Diane's trial, as
29:01
some of her bizarre behavior leading up
29:03
to and during the trial, as well as a strange
29:06
letter she wrote to our attorney after it was all
29:08
over. Ben
29:11
Boland is our executive producer, Melissa
29:14
Moore is our co executive producer, Maya
29:17
Cole is our primary producer, Paul
29:19
Decant is our supervising producer, Sam
29:21
T. Garning is our researcher, and Matt
29:24
Riddle is our story editor. Featured
29:26
music by Dream Tent. Happy Face
29:28
Presents to Phase is a production of I Heart
29:30
Radio
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More