Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

We all go through childhood wondering who our parents are when they're not mom or dad.

That's why some of us eavesdrop, sneak into closets and rummage through dresser.

Drawers in secret.

As adults, we have to decide how much to dig and how much to let lie.

That's Francisca Fontana, Award winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, an author of the Family Snitch, a daughter's memoir of truth and lies.

Francesca's is a story of being lied to and gas lip by someone she loves, her own father.

It's also a story about a young woman's resilience and the ways that her upbringing shaped her.

I'm Danny sh and this is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.

Where did you grow up and what are some of your early memories of just being a little kid.

My family's from Chicago, specifically the Southwest side of Chicago.

That's where I grew up until I was ten years old.

My mom was my primary parent, so my early childhood is really.

All warm because of her.

You know, all of the memories of going to Oak Park and seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright houses and you know, going to the Field Museum, all of those memories are very centered around my mother Mia.

My first memory, which I've interrogated a lot to make sure it really is the earliest, you know, I remember, is my mom and I leaving my dad.

They were together until I was five.

They were never married.

They had a complicated relationship.

He was unfaithful, as adults in my life put it.

And I wouldn't say they split up because really what happened was they got into an argument on Christmas Day when I was five.

Years old, and we left while he was at work.

He ran a bodybuilding gym.

He was a bodybuilder, He built motorcycles.

So after the argument, he you know, put on his leather jacket, got on his bike and went to work.

My mom packed up everything she could and we left.

So that's my first memory, and it's prompted the question in my work as a writer, you know, who would I be with a different first memory, or you know, why does my story you know, in my consciousness, like the narrative of my life really starts there.

My really good core memories revolve around my mother.

My dad was less present.

He was more of a special guest if anything.

You know, if this was a sitcom, he would have, you know, a cameo every so often.

Do you think.

That that happening on Christmas Day has anything to do with it being such a core memory?

I mean, a five year old on Christmas is Christmas is a It's a real thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I still very much believed in the magic before when I you know, when I got a little older, six or seven or eight, I started hunting down proof that Santa's not real.

But yeah, I think that my mom really made everything magical, including holidays, and so obviously the morning started off with that kind of magical quality, and my father had started the fight, and so looking back at it, I could see how this was just another instance of his problems or sort of the messes he created bleeding into the world she was trying to create for me, because she was trying to keep me very insulated from all of his for lack of a better word, drama, How did your parents meet?

I didn't know that for a very long time.

I didn't know a lot about my mom's life before she had me when she was twenty four, and she was very happy to keep it private.

But as I went hunting, you know, as I went reporting out my life and where I came from, I found that they had grown up in the same neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago.

My dad was very rough.

He has tattoos all over of you know, daggers and thorns and things like that.

I only ever saw him pay for things with a lot of cash, you know, tied together with a rubber band.

And my mom was.

Very sweet, very self spoken, and clearly came from what I thought.

She must have come from a different world entirely.

And so it was I never understood, like, why would you even know him, let alone, you know, be with him.

And it turned out that my mom's family had been terrorized by this this leader of a gang in their neighborhood, McKinley Park Brighton Park area of southwest side Chicago.

So when she was, you know, thirteen or fourteen, her older sister started dating this guy who was the leader of this neighborhood street gang.

And he was also the son of a Chicago police officer.

And he was extremely abusive and you know, would threaten to kill my mother, to kill her sister, to kill my grandparents, and would send her to the hospital or shoot out the windows of my grandparents' house.

And so my mother really grew up in fear of this man.

And my dad.

Was good friends with the guy.

They would work out together at my dad's gym called Al's Jim, and she met my dad.

She was probably around, you know, eighteen, and she really sought protection.

And I had never really thought that my parents had a.

Love story because I never really even saw them together.

They were always kind of ships crossing in the night.

But certainly I understood that they were not together because they'd had this like great romantic courtship or anything.

But it was only when I was in a old when I discovered that really she had sought him out for protection against this guy that reached tavoc on really her entire adolescence.

And that was something that I finally had a bit of understanding of, you know, oh, that's how you end up with someone like Al, because certainly they had nothing in common aside from like where they grew up, maybe like what high school they went to.

You know, but so that was certainly a revelation.

It's so interesting the way that in time, you know, these pieces of a puzzle can slip into place.

I mean, you're a reporter.

Do you think that growing up this way, like trying to answer for yourself these seemingly unanswerable questions maybe had something to do with.

Your growing up and becoming a reporter?

Absolutely?

I think that.

If I hadn't become a reporter, I certainly would have been one in the office hours.

You know, I was incredibly nosy as a kid, and I was always asking questions, and I could feel when I would be wearing someone down, like an adult, like my mom.

And it didn't just have to do with my dad, but I do think that my father being this big question mark in my life, this person who really I mean quite literally, he appeared larger than life because he was this massive guy, but also because there was so much I didn't know about him that he almost became like this myth and I really wanted to know who he was when he wasn't very seldomly showing up to my soccer games or things like that, and like I remember circling my mom in our front yard begging to know what the F word was, because I had gathered what some of the other curse words were, and I was pleading my case very ardently that I would not use the word.

I just wanted to know what it was so I wouldn't accidentally say it, and giving her every reason why she should tell me.

And then I think after some hours she was still very patient, but eventually I wore her down.

And so I've had that quality since I was a child.

It just so happens that in journalism it's a feature, not a bug, to be curious, and also to not care about wearing people down.

Yeah, in a way, I think permission to be nosy, permission to ask questions it's your.

Job, yeah, and to question.

It's funny.

In journalism school, I always heard this adage, if your mother says she loves you, check it out, sort of meaning even the things that you think beyond a reasonable doubt to be true, you still have to check.

You still have to do the work.

And it just so happened that, like my father, it really the way that I say it now is like if your father says he loves you, check it out, because that's just sort of been my circumstance.

So in two thousand and three, you're nine years old and your mother tells you that your father is leaving Chicago for work.

How much was he in your life between ages five and nine, you know, once they split up, did you see him, you know, sort of semi regularly or what was that like?

Yeah, I saw him.

The informal schedule was that I would see him pretty much every other weekend, and on Wednesdays we would go and get pizza in my neighborhood.

My mom moved us to a suburb of Chicago after we left him, and.

It was really up to him.

You know, I was always ready, you know, sitting at the window waiting for him to come pick me up.

And it was really a coin toss as to whether he would show up that day or whether he would you know, call later and say that he got held up at work or this or that.

And so I did spend time with him.

I kind of felt like I was on a field trip when I would be with him.

You know, we would go to the gym and I would watch him manage all the machines and the counter where people were buying you know, gatorade and stuff and I would go with him to his family's house, you know, for these big family.

Dinners and parties and things.

They have a very tight knit, you know, Mexican Italian Catholic family, So any big party scene you think of like the Godfather, it's kind of the vibe.

And so I would be in his world.

But I never really felt like I got to know him, and I knew that he knew things about me too, Like I would tell him if we were, you know, at toys r Us, I would be chattering and chattering about, you know, what action figure I was going to get.

I never really called him dad when I was a kid.

It always felt a little forced.

To call him dad.

But I wasn't about to go say, you know, hey, Albert coming out of a you know, a seven year old's mouth, that that's a little jarring.

So I kind of would just.

Tap him on the shoulder or wait for his attention.

I knew he was my dad.

I knew he loved me because he said he did.

But I really kind of felt like when I was in his world, I was just you know, it was like being at a museum or something when.

Your mom tells you that he's leaving Chicago when you're nine.

Do you remember that moment?

Yes, yeah, it was cold out.

I remember because my dad and I had spent the afternoon together that day.

It was one of the days, probably on one of his weekends, you know that we went to the Toy Story, we went to Portillo's and got fries.

We'd spent the day together.

He'd bought me a PlayStation two and like a SIMS game, And so I came home, had the best day with my dad.

And then a little later on in the evening, I was in my room and my mom came in and said that she had something to tell me, and that my dad had called and he was leaving.

Chicago soon for a work trip.

And she didn't know anything beyond that, she didn't know how long he'd be gone, or necessarily where he was going, or when he'd be back.

And I remember thinking three things.

I thought, that's too bad.

I had a really nice time with him today, and I don't always get to see him as it is, so now you know, who knows how long it'll be until I see him again.

And then I thought we were just together all day?

Did he just find out?

Did something happen between him?

Dropping me off, and when he called my mom, like he must have known earlier today, why didn't he tell me himself?

And then I thought a work trip him, you know, like my like my dad.

I had never seen him where, you know, any other than like cut off jeans and like a T shirt.

And I had seen on TV dads that went on work trips seemed to wear suit jackets and Carrie a briefcase.

I kind of knew in my head this is a guy who builds motorcycles and works out with friends, and I just wasn't buying it.

In my head, it made no sense.

I believe it was probably as soon as the next day my mom told me he's going to prison.

Were you relentlessly asking her questions or did she sort of reach a point of just realizing that she needed to tell you what was actually happening.

That's so funny that you asked that, because I think this was one time in my childhood.

Where I kind of let it lie.

You know, I was having all of those thoughts, and I could tell, you know, by my mom's face, that this was serious and she wanted to make sure I was okay, and so I told, oh, okay, thanks for telling me, and then I kind of went back to setting up my computer game, and I kind of was turning it over in my head, and I think that, you know, the next morning, when she told me, you know, I have more to tell you.

He's not going for work, He's going to prison, I think.

She beat me to the punch.

Really, when you're.

A kid, you generally trust what adults tell you, right, And one enduring truth of my life at that time, and you know it endures to this day, is that I knew my mom would never deceive me.

You know, she would never try to pull a trick on me or lie to me.

And so that's where it gave me serious pause to think, like, I don't believe her, and I always believe her, and so I think that, you know, by the next day, she had sort of come to terms with the little information she was given and figuring out the age appropriate way to tell me, you know, what was going to happen.

So at that time, did you ask your mom questions about why he was going to prison?

And also it sort of really begs the question.

He had just spent the day with you, and he certainly knew that he was about to be going to prison.

Yes, And he left it to your mom to tell you, not to tell you himself.

Right, And that was part of the course when it came to my dad in difficult truths.

I think, for instance, when I was around six years old, I found out that my dad, in one of those times that he'd been unfaithful to my mom.

As people put it, he'd had a kid with another woman when I was two years old, and I found out because we'd been invited to the same Halloween party that was being thrown at my grandparents house.

And I knew I have a lot of cousins, you know, my dad has had nine siblings in all, but I knew all of them.

And then this other child shows up and I don't know him, everyone else does, and I'm like, who's this kid?

And then my dad took me into another room and explained it.

Always felt like he would do everything in his power to not, you know, be in the room when something hard had to be discussed, and that was certainly the case when he left it to my mom to break the news to me.

I remember asking, why why is he going to prison?

And she said she didn't know, and that was true.

She didn't he didn't tell her, and she didn't know how long it would be.

She didn't know whether it would be here in Chicago or what would be happening, because he'd given her a very small amount of information.

But I remember she said, you know, this is personal about your dad.

These are personal family matters, and so that means that these are private, you know, because this is your dad's life.

So this isn't something you know, we necessarily want to talk about it at school to your friends or on the playground.

And I totally understood in that moment.

I remember thinking like, oh, it's a secret, got it, I can keep a secret.

Looking back, I understand that she was getting ahead of it so that kids or other parents at the school wouldn't hear this about my dad and assume something about me.

But I do remember thinking that day going into school, thinking, Okay, I have a secret now, kind of like a grown up secret.

And Francesca like, what would you like as a kid in those years, like at school, as a student with your friends, I mean, how would you describe yourself during those years?

Well, this was before the like humiliation of adolescence had made me shy, you know, I was very gregarious.

I was a tomboy, so you know, I was where ring basketball shorts and like excel t shirts.

And I had a lot of friends.

I had friends from Girl Scouts, and I had friends from soccer, and I had friends from the like Gifted Reading group from band, and I got along well with all of my friends.

And it wasn't necessarily something that came up a lot that being my dad.

My dad didn't really come up because no one really knew my dad.

If I had a birthday party and I invited all of the kids from my class, it would be my mom and my stepdad at the time who were at the house.

You know, no one ever really asked what my dad did, because really he wasn't in the picture.

So it wasn't that hard of a secret to keep necessarily from my friends.

But I did struggle as time went on, and I started to really understand how lonely it would start to feel, because I would go to my friend's houses, and a lot of them they had both parents in the house, and they had this more traditional household and family dynamic, and I wasn't envious, but I was curious, I think, because I knew that I had something different.

We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

Francesca's father serves a forty four month prison sentence in Yankton, South Dakota.

It's a long time for a young girl not to see her father.

One of the things that my dad did tell my mom was that, you know, I would be able to write him letters.

He would write me letters.

We did phone calls, but he said that the prison didn't allow kids to visit.

And I was okay with that because I liked writing letters, and I had a lot of stuff going on, you know, in my little suburban Chicago life as a kid, So I never really questioned that I wouldn't get to go visit him.

I think I knew even then I wouldn't want to see him in that context, and I'm sure that he wouldn't want me to see him in that context.

But you know, I can't remember how long it was into his sentence, but I was still living in Chicago.

The family, being my dad's family, kind of picked up the slack and filled the vacuum that was left when he went to prison.

So on those weekends when I would have gone with him, one of my aunts would pick me up take me to go see my grandparents and see my cousins, and.

So I was still very much involved in that family life.

And there was one weekend where, you know, I show up at my grandparents' house.

All my cousins are there, and they're showing me pictures that were taken at the prison.

You know, my dad is in this sort of khaki looking uniform against a portrait backdrop that reminded me of school picture day, posing with you know, one of my uncles and with some of my cousins, and they said that they had just done a road trip, a bunch of them, you know, some of my aunts and uncles had gone to see him in South Dakota and visited him at the prison.

And I was confused because I think I probably told them, but you know, kids aren't allowed at the prison.

That's what he told my mom.

That's why I didn't go visit him.

And then they just sort of looked like, oh, no, she doesn't know, you know.

So that was just another moment where I kind of had in the back of my mind thinking, I don't think I can trust what my dad tells me.

And I never really had that much trust in him to begin with.

But I think that while he was gone, that's where some of the resentments started to grow.

And also we would write letters back and forth, and he would tell me about, you know, that the prison looks like a college campus, and that he does all the same things he does at home.

He works out and eats and they get to play softball.

And he would always say by Christmas, I'll be home.

I'll be home this Christmas, and then this Christmas would come and go, and then he would be saying this summer, when you're out for school, then I'll be home, and then the summer would come and go.

And I can't speak to why he chose to do that, but I can say that, you know, my own as a child, I used my own kind of logic, and I decided that he was telling me these things even though you know, they would end up not coming true, and I would feel disappointed and I would feel a little stupid, like I'd been takeing and for a ride.

I decided that.

He was telling me these things even though they didn't end up being true, because he didn't know when he was coming home, and that he wanted to give me some comfort.

So that was the story.

I told myself, and it wasn't the truth, but it gave me, you know, at nine ten years old, more of a feeling of I guess control and sort of making up my own understanding.

And it would also sort of act as a balm for the next time he said I'll be here, you know, I'll be back home at Thanksgiving, and then Thanksgiving would come and go.

I wouldn't feel as stupid.

And what was your understanding at that time of why he was in prison.

I didn't know why he was in prison at that time.

I don't believe he told my mom, and he and I never talked about it, but I would hear things through my cousins who were a tiny bit older me.

And so someone said.

They thought it had something I do with stolen motorcycles, and another said they heard something about him dressing up as a cop, which I thought was silly and bizarre and totally.

Not what actually happened.

Because I was a kid, I was like, well, why would you pretend to be a cop?

That doesn't make any sense.

And it wasn't until he came back, until he was done with his time in prison, that he did sort of hurriedly explain you know that he'd impersonated a cop and gotten involved with the wrong people.

But at that time, as a kid, I did not know even though what actually ended up being the truth, it was floating around.

And during those years did you keep this secret?

Was there anyone you ever shared it with?

I mean, where did the secret sort of live inside of you?

And how much pressure did it create?

Well?

I was allowed to talk about it, and I hesitate to say aloud because I think my mom really felt for me, and it wasn't like she was checking in every so often saying like, Okay, you haven't told anyone, right, But my cousins knew, and so I was able to talk about it with them.

I had a family friend that my mom was really close to her mom, and so that was sort.

Of a safe space where I could talk about my dad.

But I never told anyone at school because just as I was a very persistent kid who always wanting to know everything, I.

Was also a big rule follower.

I loved rules, I loved order.

But I remember once trying to get around what I saw as the rules, which is that you can't say what happened to your dad.

There was one summer that my friend and I were playing in her big inflatable pool in their backyard and we were playing charades, and I think I had said, like, Okay, I'm going to act out like where my dad is, and she was like okay, And I tried my best to like mime, you know, being in prison, like I guess maybe I did, like the bars of a jail cell, like I was trying to act it out, and she couldn't get it, and I could feel that the bit wasn't playing either, and I wanted to keep having fun, and so I just kind of said, okay, well, there's my chance.

She didn't guess it, and I just kept it going.

And I thought that that would technically if I didn't say it and she guessed it, I'd still technically not be GUILTI or I wouldn't have broken the rule.

But that didn't end up happening.

Well.

Francesca's father is serving his sentence.

When she's at the end of the fourth grade, her mom tells her they're moving to Oregon, where her stepfather has a new job.

She also has a new brother.

Francesca's mom and stepfather have just had a baby.

She's excited to go, excited to see the ocean and the mountains, but she's also worried that when her dad finally comes home, he'll feel bad that she's gone.

By the time he got out, we were pretty firmly established there, but my mom's family still lived in Chicago, as did all of my dad's family.

And then when my dad got out of prison, he went back to Chicago.

So we would go and visit once or twice a year, probably during the summer most years, and I would get to see both sides of my family, and i'd get to see my dad.

And the enduring like emotion that you know that keeps coming up with the memories is I remember just feeling bad for him because I saw it from his perspective, Like he left and I was eight or nine, and then now I'm twelve and I'm about to get braces, and I wondered if him seeing me having grown while he was away, if that made him sad.

I remember, you know, being pretty aware of that.

But he looked pretty much this name as always, and we kind of stuck to our old routine.

When I would visit Chicago, he'd take me out to eat, or we'd go to a movie with my cousins, or we would go see my grandparents, and that was pretty much it.

So now you're a teenager, and so I mean, you've picked up these bits and pieces of the story of why your dad went to prison, but you certainly don't have the whole story, and you try to talk to him a couple of times about it.

What's the feeling at that time, Is it like this chapter's over and we're going to put it behind us, or was there, as I suspect, more of a feeling of like just continuing to really want to dig and to want to know.

Yeah, well, when he got out of prison, I was surprised that everyone was.

Acting like he never left.

You know.

It really almost felt like everyone's memories had been wiped, and I was the only one who remembered all the time that he wasn't there, because everyone just picked right back up where they'd left off.

And I remember I started to feel resentment.

I think that started to grow more as I got a little older and I understood that something big had happened, and most dads I knew, dads of my friends didn't just disappear for years.

I felt angry when I saw how quickly the family was ready to just pretend it never happened, because it had, and I was struggling to realize how it affected me.

And I think I began to feel resentful because, you know, I would see him once a year during these visits, and unlike the time when he was in prison, he would write me pretty often and we would talk on the phone.

I noticed that once he was out of prison and back in his normal life, we didn't talk very much and he didn't really write me letters.

And I started to feel hurt by that.

And one of the first times I went back to Chicago and saw him, he brought it up first why he'd gone away, and it was it was in the car he was dropping me back off at my mom's parents' house after you know, spending the day together, and I got the sense he didn't really want to talk about it, but he was saying, you know, that he was sorry he was gone so long, and that he regrets it because you know, he missed out on so many years of my life, and he was just happy to be back, and that he had been in prison because he'd impersonated a cop and got wrapped up with the wrong people, and you know, he'd never do anything like that again, and that he was sorry and.

That he was back now.

And I never really quite knew how to respond.

It kind of felt not like a speech, but it was certainly he was speaking in a way that he was saying it to get it out of the way.

He didn't really want.

To have a conversation about it, and so he wasn't really waiting for my response or my questions, and so I just sort of listened and I told him, like, it's okay.

You know, you're still a good dad, you know, because he would say things like I'm a horrible father, blah blah blah, and so I took that information and I'd replay it to myself and think, like, I still don't get it.

I still don't understand.

He would always say like I went for a ride with these guys, and I didn't know what that meant.

And so between the way he was dealing with this weird half disclosure with me and the way that the entire family himself included, was ready to just say it's over, it's done, let's move on, I think I started to feel bitter, resigned to the fact that I thought I would never find out and that it would always just be this weird.

Thing haunting me.

And I think it really tainted the way I saw him because I was hoping that he would come back and some change would have taken place, and he came back and he's exactly the same.

Yeah, the way you're describing it, it's almost like for him and for his extended family, it just sort of closed up around the whole episode, like with a zipper and just it's not even like it never happened, just more like there are no consequences for this having happened.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And I think a big part of it, too, was if it ever did come up, there was the feeling that you were doing something impolite, borderline aggressive.

And I think that the response.

Would be, you know, he did his time, he went away, made up for the mistake.

What else is there to be done?

And I think that that's certainly informed by the deep Catholic faith that kind of held the family together, of like he's repented, he's atoned, and he's earned the right to go back to his life.

When Francesca leaves for college, she's not just packing boxes and filling out financial aid forms.

She's carrying a story, or maybe half of one, a story threaded with resentment, silence, and the kind of unanswered questions that hung quietly beneath everything.

She goes to the University of Oregon, close enough to home but far enough to start imagining a life that might be her own.

She's the first in her family to go to college.

Her mother and stepfather are splitting up, and she's working, paying her own way for school.

In the midst of all this flux, she picks up the phone and calls her father.

She tells him what she really thinks, that he's been a disappointment, that he hasn't been a good dad, and maybe worse, that he doesn't even seem interested in becoming one.

It had this phone conversation where I really kind of unloaded onto him all of this resentment, and then we really didn't talk very much for the first two years of me being in college.

So I was going into college pretty overwhelmed just by trying to like pay my own way and learn the ropes and feeling like I didn't necessarily belong because no one in my family had gone to college, and I felt like I was having to play catch up.

Over and over again.

But in the back of my mind it.

Was always there.

I was always writing, and I didn't always think I would become a writer, but you know, I would try to write plays or I would try to write short stories, and this story would always come out in a lesser form.

And really a lot of the writing I did when I was nineteen twenty it's not very good because it was me just trying to like tell this story, but like tell it using different characters in a different setting.

And it was like, whenever I tried to be creative and write something, it always ended up coming out and so I sort of stopped trying after a while.

That makes so much sense.

It's sort of it's reminded me of the of the Game of Charades.

Yeah.

Wow, yeah, I never thought about that.

Yeah, totally.

I'm also curious when it all kind of came tumbling out with, you know, with your father, because it strikes me the way that you describe yourself as someone who followed the rules and who picked up on his cues, and he clearly didn't want to talk about it, or he was not inviting questions, so you didn't ask them.

Was there anything that triggered just, you know, finally just kind of an explosion of just telling him really what you thought of him.

Or was it just in the course of growing up.

Certainly it had all started to accumulate over the years, the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

It wasn't a big thing, but we'd made plans with a cousin of mine to go see a movie while I was in Chicago.

And if memory serves, I think it was also when I was touring campuses and I was pretty stressed out trying to figure out, like, if I'm paying for school myself.

Can I afford to go to a school in Chicago.

When I was going on.

These campus tours by myself and then trying to make plans with my dad, and I was waiting to be picked up, and he called my mom and said something came up.

The movie's not happening.

And it was very familiar to me, you know, given that that's how it went when I was a kid too, and I was, you know, a teenager, and so I did feel like it was immature for me to be so angry, but I was also a teenager, so I didn't really care if it made me immature.

You know, he hadn't told me this.

He told my mom.

He'd called my mom and said movies off.

And so I called him back and said, what's wrong with you?

Like?

Do I matter so little to you?

We spent a lot of money on airfare to come visit, You've never come to Orion, You never call me.

It makes me feel like you don't care about me.

So I really unloaded.

It was just a movie, but also it wasn't just you know, a movie.

It felt kind of good.

I think when I started college to think like I don't have to keep up with my dad because I had finally said the quiet part out loud, you know that I feel like my dad doesn't love me or care about me.

That had kind of given me a little permission to just focus on myself and stop wondering like, oh is he gonna Do you think he's gonna call me on my birthday?

Like do you think he'll send me a card for my birthday?

Probably not?

And I could just sort of focus on something else, but it was still in my subconscious.

It was just turning it over and over and over again.

Will be back in a moment with more family secrets While in college, Francesca starts researching she now has access to journalistic tools, ones that might just be able to unlock the mystery of her father's incarceration.

I remember that day vividly.

I was starting my junior year of college.

I had chosen journalism as my major, so I was well into the reporting coursework, and a new professor had joined the faculty at the journalism school, Brent Wolfe.

This I believe was one of the first classes he was teaching at the school, and all of my friends at the college newspaper had sang his praises, saying they had been his intern he'd worked at the Oregonian, and then he'd worked at willam At Week, an old weekly in Portland, and they all just said he was the best and that you had if you could like take his class, and so I did.

I remember that day in his class he introduced the lesson, and it was on public records, because we were going to be profiling an Oregon politician and backgrounding them using public records, and so that day we were going over specifically court records and federal court records, and so he showed us how to use the database.

He pulled up PACER, which is the federal court records database on the Big Projector, and we looked up around that time.

Actually it was the Jared Fogel, the subway guy, his federal case, and we really went through the docket.

I immediately thought, I know someone who went to federal prison.

I wonder if I can somehow, you know, get access, and so I went to Brent's office hours and I was very awkward, and I was saying, like, could I borrow your login for PACER?

He was like, well, I'm not going to give you my login, but I can look up whatever case you want right now.

Like, just what's the name?

I said, you know, my dad's name, Albert Fontana, And then I had to do some explaining, you know, because obviously we have the same last name, and he probably raised an eyebrow.

And then I explained the whole story to him, and it was the first time I'd really told it from start to finish to anyone who wasn't really I guess really to anyone now that I think about it.

And we typed in my dad's name and the case from two thousand and three showed up, and I was also surprised to see that another case showed up, and I didn't know that my dad had been to prison or had any kind of federal court case before he'd gone to prison.

In two thousand and three, and it was from nineteen ninety two.

And basically Brent said like, well, if you're working for a project, and I had been thinking about all of these questions that had been unanswered and making it into sort of this like journalistic family history project, and then Brent quickly became a mentor and advisor on that.

And yeah, so that was the first time I was able to see that these questions didn't have to stay unanswered.

It didn't just have to be this big, unresolved story without an ending, Like I could go back and I could actually hunt the answers down that I assumed I would I would never find out.

So is that then what you began to do?

And that's where you learned more about the incident that landed him in prison for forty four months?

Yes, Brent sent me all of the criminal complaint affidavits, you know, all these court records, and I printed them all out the library and I brought them home and I just spent probably the whole night reading them and I was finally able to understand why did my dad dress up as a cop, What did it mean to go on a ride with some bad guys?

And it turned out that he'd had his friend group, people who frequented his gym, people who bought motorcycles that he built.

There were these overlapping circles of corrupt cops and gang leaders, and that he was always my dad was always the guy who knew a guy.

He was not a corrupt cop and he was not in a gang, but he had all these connections and this was sort of the community that he was in.

And one of his friends had been a part of this crew that was headed by two Chicago police sergeants who for the better part of a decade would in person on due to police officers, and they would go to drug dealers' houses.

They would pull over drug dealers and they would perform fake raids.

They would have a fake warrant, they would bust in in tactical gear looking like, you know, they worked for the DA or something, and they would, you know, do a raid.

They wouldn't arrest anybody, but they would take the money, take the drugs, and who are the guys gonna call the cops saying, hey, a bunch of you guys just stole my drugs.

And so two of the members had been Chicago police officers, one of them was a civilian employee.

And then the fourth guy Larry, Larry Knitter, he was a mechanic in the you know, for the motor pool and he was a very good friend of my dad.

So what had happened was one of the two police sergeants.

In two thousand he retired from the force, and then he also retired from this side hustle.

So he you know, moved out west and they promised to send him, you know, a percentage of future proceeds, but they decided they needed a fourth guy.

And really the marching orders for Larry was to go find someone who's big and knows how to keep his mouth shut.

And Larry said, I know just the guy, and it was my dad.

And you know, my dad said no the first time he was asked to go on a ride with them, and the second time he said yes.

And so that was what he had done in order to land himself in prison.

And you know, in two thousand and three, he had gone on one of these fake drug raids he'd impersonated a cop, he'd warn you know, a police belt, had a loaded gun on him.

And the one time he went on one of these rides, it ended up being a sting.

So he was really in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And so you were able to piece that story together through your research.

And so there you are, You're in college.

You have this miraculous mentor I mean, like, what a great opportunity.

You know, Yeah, he's incredible, Brent is a phenomenal reporter.

Could not have asked for a better mentor.

So what then do you do with this?

Do you go back to your father with it?

Where does it go?

So, you know, I read through all the documents and I put together a proposal to make this project part of my thesis, in part because I wanted to justify to myself all the time I knew I was going to be spending on it, and because I thought to me it was a very compelling overlap between journalism and memoir, two things I was obviously very interested in at that time.

And I didn't realize until I started to try to make this my thesis that I could get funding.

So I was able to get a couple grants that gave me the funds to be able to fly back to Chicago, which I would not have been able to afford otherwise.

So it was also with the institutional support as well as Brent's mentorship, that I reconnected with my dad over the phone.

I told him I was working on this school project, and he said he's an open book.

He told me anything I want to know, he'll tell me.

And so then I flew back to Chicago on a thesis research trip, and I reconnected with my dad for the first time really as an adult.

And that's when I started doing a lot of the reporting.

Because the records could only take me so far.

I wanted to not only interview and talk to my dad, I also wanted to talk to family members.

I wanted to talk to some of the Chicago Tribune staff who'd covered the case.

I wanted to interview some of the attorneys involved in the case.

And there was also this big question mark because one of the four original crew members of this group of people doing these fake raids, one of the four, one of the police officers, had become a fugitive.

So, you know, my dad.

And three other men went to prison, you know, as part of this case, but the ring leader names Eddie Hicks.

He disappeared on the eve of his trial, and he had been a fugitive.

So when I started this project, it was also you know, I needed to talk to people because a lot of the for instance, the exhibits, a lot of the case was still sealed because technically it was still open because Hicks was a fugitive and hopefully he would be brought to trial.

But in the meantime there were limits to how much I could get just in public record.

So then what happens in the intervening years.

You write this thesis, You graduate from college, where do you go from there?

So I defended my thesis the spring of my senior year.

I graduated, I think on a Tuesday, and then that Friday, I flew to New York for an internship at the Wall Street Journal, and I think my first day was that next Monday.

So it was really kind of a whirlwind, and I was very excited to at least for the summer, be gainfully employed and sinking my teeth into stories that had nothing to do with me and reporting that wasn't so you know, emotionally fraught, and then you know, as the summer was wrapping up.

My internship was actually extended, so I was still wor working as an intern in September and my dad texted me that Eddie Hicks had been found and he sent a link to a Chicago Tribune article.

And this was, you know, mid afternoon.

I was wrapping up, you know, all of my projects before my internship ended, and then I kind of had this like cold sweat because all of a sudden, I was right back in it, this big project, and it felt very surreal because I had I assumed he was never going to be found, and I had accepted that that sort of question mark would remain, that I wouldn't get all the answers, and so I couldn't believe it.

But they had found him in Detroit, which is funny because you know, the FBI wanted posters said that he armed and dangerous and was possibly in Brazil, and he was just in Detroit, living under a fake name.

And the Tribune actually a few years before they had done an investigation and found that he'd definitely been coming and going from Chicago.

He was you know, signing property into his son's names.

His wife was still getting his pension checks.

He couldn't have been that far.

But so they found him, and I couldn't believe it.

And I don't think anyone expected that he would be allowed to get a plea deal.

Obviously, if he was found, they were going to try him.

So in seeing this link come up on my phone that he had been found, I knew that then there was going to be a trial and I wanted to go.

And so that day, also in the journal, I kind of found a quiet hallway and I called Brent.

I knew that I was about to ay be swept up in all of this again, but also I would be entering sort of uncharted territory.

I think, really what it was at that time, I only really understand it looking back, But I think I was afraid to finish what I'd started, because, you know, in all of these years, my father had stayed the same.

I tried to return to Chicago when I was working on my thesis.

I tried to return not as a daughter, but as a reporter.

And I thought, you know, any kind of sentiment or you know, emotion would cloud my view, and so I tried to really be as impersonal.

How did that work out?

Yeah, it didn't partially because you know, my dad was my dad, so he wasn't just a source.

I mean I would I would say to this day, my dad is the most difficult source I've ever had, because inherently our interactions are going to be colored by the fact that he is my father and I am his daughter.

And for the first time in my life.

In the past, I'd seen how he manipulated other people in his life to get what he wanted.

But I had never really been the mark before.

But when I was in Chicago trying to interview him, he would say, yeah, we can sit in your hotel room and do an interview.

I'd set up the tape recorder, I'd set up my notes, and then he would tell me to come down, presumably he was trying to find parking.

He'd get me in his truck.

And then he would take me to go eat, and he would never come up to do the interview, or he went behind my back and told his former attorney not to talk to me about the two thousand and three case.

But you told me that he had waived attorney client privilege and that I could talk to his attorney about anything I wanted.

And then it wasn't.

Until I got there and was doing the interview that I found out that he'd gone behind my back and tried to stop it from happening.

All the while telling you that he was an open book, yes.

And that he would tell me anything I wanted to know.

And so that's why when I knew the trial was going to be happening, I was relieved because had been such a difficult source.

But also I was nervous because in all of this I didn't want to admit to myself.

I hoped that what would come out of the project would not just be truth and knowledge and understanding.

I had hoped that once I stripped al of all of his masks.

And I kind of got down.

To who he really was, that there would be a man who I could respect and who could be my father.

And that hadn't happened yet, and so I was still hoping that, you know, at the end of this process, I would see the real Hymn, and the real Hymn would be someone.

That could be in my life.

And so I was nervous for the trial because I knew that we're getting close to the end of the road, and so far I'm not seeing it.

The two things that my father clung to in all of our conversations about the case and about his involvement.

The charge that you know, he put guilty to was a gun charge, and so he insisted to me that despite what all of the court records showed and what he pleaded guilty to, he never had a gun when he was you know, when he was dressed up as a tactical police officer, he wasn't carrying a gun.

And he insisted to me that he only pleaded guilty to that because he just wanted the process to be over.

He wanted to go to prison so he could come back before I got too old, I think was the way he put it.

But so he insisted that despite all of the evidence that was accruing, he never had a gun.

Maybe the other guys did, he didn't.

And the other.

One was that the other thing he insisted was that, you know, on this particular night, these four guys pull up to what should be a drug dealer's stash house, and they go in and they search.

My dad insists that while they.

Were searching for the money and the drugs that he saw in the television set in the living room, a glowing a blinking red light that was one of the hidden cameras, and he insisted that through the TV screen he saw this light and he knew it was a setup.

He knew there was a camera.

He knew before anyone.

Was arrested, before the raid was even done, that it was over.

He knew it was the FBI long before anyone else did.

And that's what he told me.

And I didn't believe him.

And I also couldn't understand why he would lie about two things that, on their face they seemed so inconsequential, because you know, he still went to prison, he still pleaded guilty, He still went on the ride.

Why does it matter whether or not you had a gun?

Why does it matter that you think you outsmarted the FBI?

And I understand now that this story that he was telling me, and that he was telling himself, allowed him to still kind of come out the good guy.

You know, I knew that going into the trial, it would probably just show me that those things were false, as I already assumed.

But because I didn't have the proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know, the door was left open a crack for my dad to be telling me the truth I was very nervous about when I went back to Chicago and was going to cover the trial for the Wall Street Journal, I was waiting for those two things to come up.

So then what happens at the trial.

Well, it was incredibly bizarre to sit there and see Eddie Hicks because I'd been looking at his picture, you know, his mug shot or whatever was on the FBI wanted poster to see him.

You know, he wasn't just like a character in a story in my head.

He was a real man sitting in an oversized suit.

You know.

That was bizarre.

Did anyone at the trial and know your sort of double role being there of Wall Street Journal reporter and daughter of one of the perpetrators.

Yes, When I introduced myself before the opening statements, everyone sort of milling about outside the courtroom, and I introduced myself to the prosecutor, Sonny Pesqual, you know, and I told him who I was, And anyone I talked to they always said, oh, I remember your dad, big guy, right, yeah, like you worked out and so I was like, yeah, that's my dad.

And so I always introduced myself with both of those titles, you know, as a journal reporter and my dad was involved in the case, and my Dad didn't have to testify, but his friend, Larry Knitter, the one who had recruited him into this crew, he was going to be testifying, and his testimony lasted several days, and I didn't know if Larry would recognize me, if I resembled my dad enough that I would be recognizable.

I knew I wanted to try to talk to him, and he wasn't allowed to really talk to me much at all, but I did catch him going to the elevator after the first day, and when I started to introduce myself, he cut me off.

He's like, I know who you are.

Yeah, no, I know, I texted with your dad this morning.

You know, I can't talk, and then he just sort of said that he was sorry that my dad got mixed up in all of this.

So then you know, Eventually, in Larry Knitter's testimony, he reaches the night of the raid that ended up being a sting, and so the prosecutor is referring to various exhibits.

One of the exhibits that they show is a photo of the gun that Larry Knitter gave my dad to carry in his gun belt, so Bruger nine millimeter it's the one that you know, my dad said never existed.

And you write that you were shocked but not surprised.

I know what you mean by that.

To see it, it reminded me of Schrodinger's cat until you open the box.

The cat is both alive and dead, and you have to open the box in order to see for certain which it is.

And so I think it was sort of that feeling of opening the box.

I assumed that my dad was lying because he was my dad and I had known him my whole life.

But you know, like so many things that parents lie about, usually there isn't an exhibit that could be shown in court to definitively prove their lying.

And so that was one of the first times I think that I was able to witness a concrete piece of, you know, unimpeachable evidence that al had lied to me, and to see it in such a setting, you know, in a courtroom, was really it sort of took me out of my body.

But at the same time, I wasn't surprised.

I saw the dead cat, you know, I saw what I expected, But to have that sort of certainty and finality shook me in a way I didn't anticipate.

And then at the trial, mister Pascual, the prosecutor, plays the video and your father had said to you, you know, if you see that video, you'll see me noticing the red light.

You'll see the moment where I know that it's a sting.

Yeah, and I didn't.

They play the video, and I'm sort of holding my breath, and I write about this and the piece, and it's still true whenever I think about it.

You know, seeing his young face come in the door in the videotape really sent me back.

It really felt like I was nine again, even though you know, I'm sitting there in my like outlet store suit, trying to appear to be a grown up up reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Immediately I'm nine again, looking at my dad.

And they don't play the entire video.

But later I get my hands on the entire video and we watch a pretty long clip in the courtroom, and I watch my dad go around and I watch them all searching everywhere for the drugs that aren't there.

And he gets close to the TV.

He's obviously searching under the TV stand, maybe in like some drawers, or something, and so I see every expression on his face, and I knew that he wasn't going to suddenly in that video look at the camera kind of like look at me, you know, and I would see him like see me being like the red light.

But I imagined it over and over again as I'm watching the video, I'm like, what if he just like we kind of like make eye contact and then oh my gosh, he was telling the truth, And what does that say about me that in my head I've branded him a lot?

But that moment never came, because of course it didn't, and he searches, and then you know, eventually they realize that the drugs aren't there, their luck had turned, and then they file out of the house.

There was still more testimony that day, but when we broke for lunch, I walked out to the street.

I just kept walking.

I never came back that day because I just it really was a shock to have seen the certain end.

During those weeks in Chicago, Francesca is in touch with her dad every day, either they have a phone call or dinner.

By then, he's living with his girlfriend and has another child, a six year old daughter.

He also has a new motorcycle shop.

It seems to Francesca that he's back to his old ways, living the same life, just new players and a new spot.

We debriefed about that day and the days of testimony, and then you know, eventually a.

Verdict that followed.

He really held court, and I kind of was so exhausted by the entire thing that I just let him talk.

And I didn't tell him.

During that week, like during the while the trial was going on, I didn't tell.

Him what I'd seen.

I knew that I was going to have to not just as a person or as a daughter, but as a journalist.

You know, if I was going to write this story, we go back to everyone for comment.

You know, we give everyone.

You know, we have no surprises policy at the Journal, and so no one should ever be surprised to see their name in one of our stories or to be unaware of what we're going to.

Be saying about them.

And so I knew that that policy, of course would apply here.

So I knew that when I was putting together the piece back in New York and calling attorneys who declined to com or you know, circling back to Larry Knitter and all of those things.

I knew that I would have to go back and do not only a thorough fact checking sort of like a fact checking interview with my dad, but also I was going to have to tell him, here's what I saw, here's what you told me.

I don't believe you.

I think that you have lied, and this is why.

And I ended up going back to Chicago in October of twenty nineteen, so it was a few weeks before the story would run because we had to be photographed together, which is funny to think back, because I can't really remember any time my dad and I ever posed together for a photograph.

So we had a shoot with a photographer for art for the story, and then while I was in town, I took my dad to a sports bar and I told him I'm going to go through the story from start to finish.

I don't read it to him, but I gave him, beat by beat, this is what I say you told me, this is what you say you saw, this is everything that came out in the trial, And this is the conclusion I come to.

And I was a little shaken by how easily he just talked right over me whenever I brought up what he had said, he immediately launched right back into that narrative, you know, telling the story.

Even though he understood what this conversation was supposed to be.

It was, you know, definitely like I talk and then you talk.

But any time I would I would bring up another point, if it was something he had told me, he would just launch right back into that story and try to talk over me and just tell it again with just this greater emphasis.

And then anytime I.

Brought up something that conflicted with his account, he would either kind of just act like he didn't hear it, or he would just go right back into his story.

The first time I really tried to say I saw the gun, it's almost like I was even there.

He just went right back into like, yeah, I never had a gun.

I don't know if they had a gun, but you know I didn't have no gun.

And eventually I had to like stop him because he was just on this roll, and I stopped him to tell him, I need you to respond to what I'm telling you, which is that I don't believe you.

What do you make of this?

And he just said, you believe one thing, I believe something else.

And that was the closest he could ever come to.

I mean, he didn't even really face the truth, but that was just the closest he could get to it, and he just couldn't go any further than that.

Of course, Francesca had to look into Schrodinger's box.

She had to see the videotape.

After years of being told she might be wrong and thinking, well, maybe I am wrong, she needed proof, something undeniable.

Francesca was twenty five when her Wall Street Journal piece came out, The stories that blew everything open.

Now she's thirty one, with a book the same subject about to be released.

She's turned what could have been a lifetime of question marks into something of her own making.

And as she stands on the edge of this new chapter, the question remains, where does it all sit now?

The story, her father, the truth she fought to claim.

It's confusing to me how many years have passed so quickly.

When the story came out.

I had to deal with the aftermath from al and he had a bit of a meltdown, saying I never said those things, And he said and I'm quoting him like, I hope my dad doesn't read this, because he's gonna think I'm an asshole.

Pardon my language.

The cracks really started to deepen in our already fragile, renewed relationship.

So, you know, after the story ran, he began to call me frequently for over the course of roughly a year, in various states of distress, you know, threatening suicide, asking me to take care of his young daughter if anything happened to him.

He had told me that, you know, he was proud of me for writing this story, and he was so glad that I was working on it when I was working on it, but when it came out and he had to sort of face the truth, he just couldn't bear it, really, it seemed.

So you know, after a year of just having these escalating breakdowns and not just about the story, but about money, about other things, it got to a point where I had to set a boundary and say, I'm not in Chicago.

If you call me and it seems like there's a life or death emergency, I feel helpless.

I can't come help you, like I can't be the only one you're telling these things too.

And once I set that boundary, he stopped reaching out, so he would only really reach out in crisis.

And then in the aftermath of the story, my life was progressing independent of him.

I was trying to learn who I was now that I wasn't a daughter searching, and I found that every time I got pulled back into his cycles, I was getting pulled out of this life I was trying to build for myself.

And so eventually it got to.

A point where I.

I guess it was a bit of an Irish goodbye, and we've been a stranger for several years.

Really what was startling, I was talking about this to someone the other day, is that, you know, really all that needed.

To happen was I just stopped responding.

And it sort of goes back to when I was a teenager and I was sort of telling him what I made of him, and that it felt like I come after you, you never come after me.

It feels like I'm the one driving this relationship, but I'm your kid, you know.

After the story and all and everything that came after, I found that, you know, for my own reasons, I had to estrange myself from him, and I was startled at how easy he was kind of like practically, I think it came down to Al as a sort of a static person.

He goes through his cycles, you know, building up his gym again, building bikes, trying to like reclaim that past glory, but never was able to really reckon with what he's done in a meaningful way.

And I found that I had my own reckoning to do, not only with what's in the story for the journal, dealing with the trial and the truth of you know, who my father was and what he's done, but also with myself.

I had to reckon with my own motivations and really keep the score in terms of the potential and actual collateral damage of my choosing to report and write about my family and about the lives of relatively private people, and to tell my story and the story of my father, I had to accept and bear the burden of what happens when you tell the truth.

When my relationship with Al.

Had deteriorated to the point where I knew it had to end for good, there was a lot of grief.

I've spoken to other people who have dealt with parental estrangement, and I think that in that process, I realized how much grieving I had done in advance, and that really I'd been preparing for this moment, for this loss for a very long time.

I always was just trying to rip all of the masks off of him to see who he really was, and eventually I had to come to terms with the fact that he's not wearing a mask.

He has shown me clearly.

Who he is and what he is willing to live with.

And that was emotionally difficult because I didn't find the father that I had hoped I could love and who would love me, and I didn't find the man that i'd hoped I could respect and introduce to my future children, and that our story was going to have to end there.

When it came time for me to make that decision, I saw clearly that it was not to sound dramatic, but it was like it was him or me.

I can immerse myself in his life, or I can have my own independence and my own future.

But I couldn't have both, and so I chose to what our story end there.

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

Molly Zacour is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode.

Our number is one eight eight eight Secret zero.

That's the number zero.

You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder, and if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.