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