Rerun: The Ghost Writer (Anthony Godby Johnson)
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Again, just a heads up, this episode does contain descriptions of physical and sexual child abuse. So maybe skip this one if you are extra sensitive to those topics. You've been mourned. You know, I'm amazed at how many of our young people can mess up their lives in such a short period of time. Hi, I'm Dr. Gordon Blossom, president of New Horizons.

And people often today think that youngsters get into trouble because of environmental factors. And in some instances, that's true. But in far too many cases, youngsters come from nice neighborhoods, good families, and homes like these. Pastor Gordon C. Blossom understood what it was like to be misunderstood.

His hands were permanently deformed from the beatings he had received at a juvenile facility in Michigan where he had been sent as a teenager. His time there had been lonely. It had been painful. But Pastor Blossom acknowledged that the discipline and responsibility he had gained made it all worthwhile. When he got older, Pastor Gordon Blossom wanted to share that knowledge and experience to correct the course of the current youth and decay.

So in 1971, he founded the New Horizons Youth Ministry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was a Christian organization focused on child reform. All that was needed to modify the behavior of troubled youngsters, Blossom guaranteed, was a little discipline, some Jesus in their hearts, and a dose of culture shock. We decided that culture shock, which tends to psychologically disorient them,

Culture shock therapy was at the heart of Pastor Blossom's New Horizons Youth Ministry child reform program.

The theory was that if a child were removed from their home environment and exposed to a punitive living situation in a foreign country where everything was new and worse, their behavior would somehow drastically improve. The teen experiences a feeling of loss and loneliness and becomes extremely dependent on those nearby, Pastor Blossom once said. At the same time, he is more receptive to new ideas.

Early enrollees of New Horizons were shipped overseas to the Karibay Vista Youth Safari Facility in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Upon arrival, students were forced into a boot camp-like atmosphere with strict rules and structure, unlimited chores, and a ranking system. Those at the bottom of the scale were forced to seek permission for almost everything, including using the restroom or opening a door.

The students progressed through the program by being on their best behavior. They gained points and earned higher ranks, which afforded them new freedoms and privileges. Those that failed to comply were punished and sent back to the bottom to start over again. Problems were just really hard on me and stuff, and I chose to deal with them in wrong ways by...

running away and I got into drugs in the wrong crowd and stuff. When I came to the program, I had a lot of problems concerning family, school, substance abuse, and I really disliked authority. Since my dad was a doctor, it was very easy to get prescription drugs and I abused a lot of prescription drugs and just things that were around the house. I didn't want to go to school.

Kids from all over the United States were sent to the New Horizons Haitian facility, some for skipping school, some for smoking, some for being gay. The parents of these "troubled youths" paid New Horizons as much as $6,000 a month in tuition.

It was a small price to pay to mold a more lovable child. When the parents of bright, high-potential youngsters are anguishing over their lifestyles and behavior, it's nice to know that New Horizons stands ready.

According to former students at New Horizons, that helping hand was often balled into a fist and punching them in the gut, or was whipping them with a leather strap, or wielding a paddle against their exposed backsides while bent over a chair.

Parents' visitation rights were denied or delayed until their children's wounds healed, the alumni claim. The staff monitored all mail and phone calls to home. Former students also alleged that the counselors shaved their heads in front of their peers as a form of public humiliation. Others were locked in a solitary confinement room for days where they were forced to use a bucket as a toilet.

Some of the students were starved. Some of them were gagged with tampons. Sometimes that helping hand would unbutton their pants. For correction, they required that I excrete and urinate in a rubber bucket and then have it verified. I was more thinking about kind of just survive, get through this.

In 1979, a children's advocate named Kenneth Wooden published examples of these psychological, physical, and sexual abuses in a congressional report. Wooden had investigated four American-owned, government-sponsored child reform facilities, including New Horizons, and what he found was alarming.

At a hearing on the abuse and neglect at juvenile institutions, Kenneth Wooden told Congress, quote,

Children who are beaten physically and psychologically. Children are sexually assaulted by both staff and older children. Children who finally lost hope and committed suicide with light bulbs, electrical wiring, bed bars, doorknobs, and rat poison. Conditions in some facilities are so deplorable that they defy the imagination and therefore are dismissed by many as sensational journalism or pure theater.

Kenneth Wooden's premonition was correct. The violations of human rights he described would continue year after year because no actions were taken by the Justice Department as a result of that hearing.

Pastor Gordon C. Blossom dismissed the child advocate's testimony as, quote, whistling Dixie, and he continued on his way, tax-free, government-funded, for-profit, a $2 billion industry with practically zero oversight. We not only have our school in the Caribbean, but we also have a nationally known survival academy up in the wilderness of northern Canada, and of course, a traditional boarding school in Marion, Indiana.

If a youngster completes all three phases of our training program, that youngster is going to be tremendously enriched, and so are all of us. Over the next few years, the New Horizons operation would expand into Canada and relocate its headquarters to Indiana after Michigan refused to grant Reverend Blossom a license.

and by the time that 1979 congressional hearing occurred, New Horizons had already left Haiti for the Dominican Republic. Dr. Blossom told the media that they were forced to leave because the Haitian government demanded an extortion payment that he refused to pay. However, Haitian authorities claimed that, in reality, New Horizons was forced out of the country because they had failed to comply with immigration laws and had been operating the entire time illegally.

Escuela Caribe, as it had been renamed, continued to operate without regulation in the Dominican for another 35 years, and Gordon C. Blossom remained CEO of New Horizons well into the 1990s, even after admitting that he was a pedophile to a family counselor. Of course, that information was never disclosed to the parents of prospective students, and Reverend Blossom continued working with children. My grandmother used to say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Perhaps you'd like to see how some of our youngsters responded to this intensive character training experience that we provide for them. While some former students have reported that the program was beneficial to them personally to some degree, many of the New Horizons alumni are haunted by the experience. Some fell into addiction afterward or relapsed. Some committed suicide. All had a lasting impression.

New Horizons alumni Julia Shears wrote an autobiography about her time at Escuela Caribe called Jesusland. Kate Logan, another former student, produced a documentary about New Horizons called Kidnapped for Christ. Dozens of others have posted testimonials that detail the horrors on the New Horizons Alumni Association website. You can read those at nhym-alumni.org.

Gordon's son, Timothy Blossom, took over the family business when the old man finally retired and died in 1996. And Gordon's daughter, Shirley Jo Peterson, wrote a book about recovering from being molested by her late father. She shared that her siblings suffered abuse from him too.

Under Tim Blossom, the New Horizons Youth Ministry schools operated in their traditional fashion for another decade. Then in 2009, the state of Indiana revoked New Horizons' license to operate as a childcare facility. Escuela Caribe was sold to the Crosswinds Ministry. The facility reopened in 2011 as the Caribbean Mountain Academy. According to Newsweek,

At least five members of the old New Horizons staff remained employed at the rebranded school, while at least four other former staff members settled out of court with parents of the children they had allegedly sexually abused. But no program is any better than its staff. And we have the right staff in the right places at the right time. Ten of them have earned master's degrees, two of them with earned doctorates, and they've been screened carefully for personal qualities. All of them are committed Christians.

They're emotionally stable. They have congenial personalities and a special love for kids. And we think that's terribly important. One of the psychologists that worked with New Horizons had also been arrested and charged with battery in 2006 for allegedly fondling the genitalia of multiple boys that stayed at the group home the doctor operated in Plymouth, Indiana, for which he did not have a license.

Students at New Horizons remember Dr. Mark Zachheim, or Dr. Z, as being, quote, very, very creepy. One of the boys told Nuvo Indianapolis how Zachheim would, quote, always stand behind me and rub my shoulders, and he always asked me about masturbation, how often I did it, when, where, and how.

According to Teresa Rosado at Nouveau Indy, Dr. Mark Zachheim played a, quote, Tim Blossom, who oversaw the Dominican school, even wrote a letter to the judge defending his friend's character, quote,

Tim Blossom also described Zachheim as his, quote, The charges against Dr. Mark Zachheim were dropped. He blamed the allegations on a disgruntled former employee.

"I've been shell-shocked," Zachheim told the media. "It's like a trauma that takes a while to get over." The students Zachheim sent to Escuela Caribe could probably relate. In fact, like those students, Dr. Mark Zachheim sent himself to a tropical island refuge, or tried to at least. After his acquittal in 2007, Zachheim submitted a bid to run a therapeutic group home for children in the U.S. territory of Guam.

To everyone's surprise, despite the red flags, Guam's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse awarded him the contract. However, before the contract was finalized, Dr. Mark Zachheim was arrested and charged with Medicaid fraud in Indiana. For at least three years, Zachheim and his corporation filed false billings and reimbursements to the state's Medicaid program for more than $137,000.

In a memorandum, United States Attorney David Kapp described the doctor's actions, quote, "While in a position of trust, Dr. Zachheim used his patients, all of whom were minors, for financial gain.

Dr. Zachheim fabricated various diagnoses and attached these false diagnoses to the medical records of his juvenile patients. Dr. Zachheim's fraudulent designs placed these young individuals in danger of several future harmful consequences due to inaccurate patient medical records. In 2009, Mark Zachheim pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud. In October of that year, he was sentenced to 13 months behind bars, of which he would never serve a second.

three days after his sentence, a few weeks before he was to report to prison. Mark Zachheim suffered a heart attack while driving to the library in Lake Bluff, Illinois. He threw his hands up while driving, slumped over, a witness said. The van swerved and hit a tree on the side of the road. Dr. Mark Zachheim died at the scene. He was 59 years old. Zachheim was survived by his four adopted sons who were in the vehicle with him.

as well as his wife, Vicki Zachheim, and his stepson, Anthony Godbey Johnson. Mark Zachheim had claimed he had helped raise Anthony Johnson, a critically ill child, which had prepared him to work with troubled teens. Zachheim claimed this even though Anthony would have been 20 years old and living outside the home by the time Zachheim married Anthony's adoptive mother. A news agency in Guam asked Zachheim about Anthony after the doctor submitted a bid for the group home.

Zachheim raved about his stepson. Anthony certainly has been a wonderful guide to what can be done if the right things happen. He's an amazing kid, but he's not a kid, Zachheim said, seemingly catching his mistake mid-sentence. He's 27 years old, he added. In another interview with the same news agency just weeks later, Dr. Zachheim referred to his stepson, Anthony Godbey Johnson, as 30 years old.

Weird, but as Pastor Gordon C. Blossom probably used to say, age is just a number. And despite the confusion, one thing that everyone could agree on is that Anthony Godbey Johnson was a great kid. He'd been through hell and back at an early age and wrote a best-selling book about his experience. Anthony's wit and charm and positive outlook on life, despite his circumstances, endeared him to everyone that heard his story.

You will be no different, but giant questions will remain. An abused child's heart-rending story captures the hearts and minds of a global audience, only to leave them questioning whether the harsh reality depicted was reality at all on this episode of Swindled.

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Childhood has got to be one of the most misunderstood eras in any person's life. It's so idealized with beauty and awe and wonder. The problem is, for many children, that doesn't happen. Anthony remembers the first time he was molested. Bits and pieces from that day still intrude his thoughts all these years later.

The year was 1984. Tony was seven or eight years old. It was his mother's idea. Tony remembers his mom being in an unusually good mood that afternoon, which typically wasn't the case. He remembers her coming into his bedroom and asking about the song she had heard him humming. It was Rainbow Connection from the Muppet movie. Tony loved that song. He asked his mother if she would buy him the soundtrack to the movie on cassette. To Tony's surprise, his mother agreed, but with one condition.

She wanted him to spend a little time with her friend Jake. So Tony agreed. Before Tony realized exactly what that meant, it was too late. Tony's mother's friend Jake was forcing himself into Tony's body. Tony said he doesn't really remember the pain. It was the worthlessness that lingered. And the humiliation. Tony remembers hearing his father, a police officer who was in the room when it happened, double over with laughter when Tony's legs were too wobbly afterward to stand up.

He remembers his dad calling him a f*ck and threatening to make him wear a dress because he was crying. The day after, when Tony asked his mother for the soundtrack, she slapped him. She denied ever making such a promise and then beat him to a bloody pulp. At that moment, Tony says he swore that he would never ask for anything again. Emotionally, kids feel as deeply as adults do. I know what it's like to feel joy.

It was during that time that I used to wonder if there was a God, Tony wrote. If in fact there was, I wanted to be able to look into his eyes. All I ever heard about him were bits and pieces that kids talked about.

You couldn't see or feel him, but he was supposedly always there, watching us or punishing us or getting into our business. I couldn't talk about him at home because he was considered an absolute nemesis. In school, people claimed that it was against my constitutional rights even to have a moment of silence with him. And that only made me wonder what made him so powerful that my constitutional rights had a role in it. My curiosity was fierce. Perhaps his eyes would give me a clue at least and tell me if he was real.

They might reveal if the pain of the world was in them. I wanted to see, because if there was such a person, I'd know that he, the omnipotent being we learn to live in awe of, would reach out and touch the undried tears of an abused child and know his pain. He'd know the truth and the silence that the child was forced to maintain for the sake of his survival.

That truth would speak for itself. He would see the shame in his eyes. The shame that he desperately fenced with more often than he cared to. The shame that opened the door to who the real boy was then and is now. If I saw God, I'd ask him about freedom and tell him that Thoreau was correct when he said that birds don't sing in caves. People who are hurting don't sing either because singing is a joy that comes from the freedom within the self that allows a person to fly. I'd ask him for wings.

Anthony was treated like this for years, passed around a circle of New York City pedophiles for their own sick personal hourly use, while also receiving regularly scheduled beatings from his family at home.

There were no limits to the abuse he endured. Tony's outwardly normal parents made him sleep on the floor of a closet-sized bedroom with no mattress or pillows. He was only allowed to eat on certain days of the week. The only toothbrush Tony owned was given to him by the school. By age 11, Tony wanted out. There were times when I wished that they would kill me and just get it over with. But there was only one time

when I became extremely suicidal and was determined to kill myself. This despair came over me like nothing was going to be right for me ever again. I went down into the train station, I jumped the turnstile, I rode the train for an hour, and without realizing it, I had begun to cry. And all that kept coming up for me is, "Nobody. Nobody would know. Nobody would care."

Anthony called that number. Someone with a deep voice and a southern accent picked up on the other end.

It was a man, a black man, Tony points out, named Ernest Johnson, a retired Air Force sergeant from Stamps, Arkansas. Ernest listened intently to every word of Tony's description of his traumatic existence. It was the first time Tony had ever told anyone about what was happening to him, but he trusted this stranger on the phone for some reason, and he believed him. Tony says that Ernest's voice was like a warm hug that he so desperately needed at the time.

Ernest Johnson pulled up a list of social services in New York City and gave Tony a number. The soft-spoken woman who answered the line was kind and caring. She was a good listener. Tony immediately liked her too. But she, the social worker named Vicky Fragonese, wanted to meet with Tony face-to-face. She suggested they meet for coffee to continue their conversation. Vicky reasoned with Tony that if he were planning to kill himself anyway, what difference would a half hour make? Tony had no rebuttal.

He met her at a diner at 54th and Broadway. Vicki Fragonals was just as pleasant as Tony imagined she would be. Her smile was genuine. The concern was real. Vicki told Tony that she was worried about his health. In her opinion, she told Tony, he would not be able to resolve anything about the disarray in his life until he felt better physically. And she asked me to go to the hospital with her. They found out that I had syphilis and I was malnourished and underweight.

When they'd done x-rays, they'd found out that I'd had at different times the total of 54 broken bones that had healed by themselves. Finally, they found out that I had AIDS. Devastating news for an 11-year-old, or anybody for that matter. Tony had syphilis, 54 broken bones that had not healed properly, and AIDS.

Actually, it was HIV. Tony wouldn't develop full-blown AIDS until two years later, in 1991, which was after his stroke and the shingles outbreak. But before his leg amputation, lost testicle, constant pneumonia, recurring comas, and tuberculosis, Tony was dying, to put it mildly. No one could blame him for being angry. I feel robbed of a lifetime that I think could have been a good one. I would never get married.

I never have a family. I'm angry that it happened to me. I'm angrier still that as we speak, some child is being hurt. I'm angry that people shake their heads and sigh a little bit and then just go on to next instead of being outraged at it. Why aren't people screaming their heads off about that? Why do kids keep getting sent back to homes where they're being abused again and again and again until they're killed?

Yeah, Tony was angry. Yet, he retained his charming sense of humor. His brain was as sharp as ever. There was no self-pity to be found. Tony deserved a lot of the credit for keeping himself in the right frame of mind. But he also received an outpouring of support from his new family. Ernest Johnson flew to New York to visit Tony while he recovered in the hospital. Ernest and Vicki Fraggenall spent many a night in waiting room chairs so Tony wouldn't be alone.

Ernest and Vicki shared tears, and dinners, and laughter, until the two recent divorcees fell madly in love and got married. And when Tony was finally discharged, the happy new couple adopted him as their own. They settled in Vicki's home that sat above a drug store in Union City, New Jersey, along with her two daughters from a previous marriage.

Tony changed his name to Anthony Robert Johnson and he renamed Ernest and Vicki Johnson to Pops and Mom, respectively. It was the first time in Tony Johnson's life that he had lived in such a loving home. Around that same time, his biological parents were arrested and sent to prison for 25 years to life. Not long after, Tony's father was reportedly murdered by fellow inmates for being a cop and a child rapist. Nary, a tear was shed.

Back in New Jersey, Tony was making new friends. Jerry D. Nicola, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, became Tony's round-the-clock doctor. The Johnsons called Jerry D. "body mechanic." Tony's body required constant maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, Tony's fragile health made it impossible for him to leave the house, much less attend public school. But the little bookworm studied in bed between operations. He earned a high school diploma at 13 years old.

Though things were looking up, additional challenges were never too far behind. Ernest Johnson had been called back to duty during the Gulf War. While Pops was away, Vicki Johnson was involved in a car accident that caused her to miscarry Ernie's baby. Tony so badly wanted to be an older brother. Luckily, Tony was able to find comfort and consolation from other people. He had befriended a man named Jack Godby, an HIV counselor that Vicki had enlisted to help.

The two kindred spirits talked on the phone every day for hours. Tony embraced Jack Godby as an additional father figure. He even changed his middle name to reflect that adoration. Anthony Godby Johnson also wrote a letter to Paul Manette, an author he admired. Manette's 1988 memoir, Borrowed Time, chronicles the final 19 months of his romantic partner's battle and eventual death from AIDS.

The love, rage, frustration, and devastating loneliness contained in those pages humanized the tragedy of the disease and served as a testament to the torment experienced by gay men in 1980s America. Borrowed Time has been called one of the most powerful demonstrations of love and partnership to be found in print. Tony Godbey Johnson read it in the hospital after his own diagnosis.

Tony also included a photograph of himself in the envelope. It was the same photo he sent to all of his new friends, the one where he's holding a pencil.

Paul Manette eventually wrote back. And before long, Tony Johnson and the award-winning author were speaking on the phone on a regular basis. Manette, who was also dying of AIDS, said he found Tony Godbey Johnson's voice to be, quote, Paul Manette persuaded Tony to start writing an autobiography and referred the boy to his literary agent and editor. Tony immediately put pen to paper.

In 1993, A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story by 15-year-old Anthony Godbey Johnson was published. The Washington Post described it as "horrowing." The Associated Press called it "heart-rending." Unfortunately, it was all true. In response, every newspaper in America came calling for Tony. So did cable TV. The book was flying off the shelves. It was reprinted five additional times.

And throughout all the excitement, the central character could not leave his bed. It was a bittersweet feeling for sure. But Anthony Godbey Johnson was happy just being able to tell his story. It was an important one. And the masses were responding with love and kindness. Tony's book helped shine a light on the horrors of child abuse and the country's battle with and discrimination against those inflicted with AIDS. A Rock in a Hard Place inspired so many people to examine their own lives. They'd ask themselves,

If this poor, abused boy could wade through life with a smile, why can't I? The positive mentality. Yeah, that's the secret. Look how well it works for the 15-year-old chronically abused amputee dying of AIDS. Why can't I be more like him? There's no reason to be cynical anymore and succumb to this all-encompassing darkness. Look at him. Anthony Godbey Johnson isn't cynical. Anthony Godbey Johnson is a hero. He's love. He's beauty.

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Had a train not been late, I never would have had the time to read the newspaper article about the book. But there it was, a piece about an astounding memoir of a teenage boy dying of AIDS, the victim of horrific child abuse, his spirit and optimism still intact after a brief lifetime living in a world of nothing but shattered glass.

I read the book Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Tony Godbey Johnson in one sitting, and within weeks I was Tony's phone pal, baseball buddy, advocate, consoler and counselor, and adopted brother. It was all heartbreaking. MSNBC's Keith Oberman was just one of Anthony Godbey Johnson's new famous friends. The success of A Rock and a Hard Place opened the door to a whole new world. Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood wrote the afterword to a newer edition of the book.

Paul Manette wrote the foreword. Tony talked to Mickey Mantle on the phone and received a fax from Jermaine Jackson. He would also later collaborate with Maya Angelou to publish another novel. Anthony Godbey Johnson had made quite the name for himself in the literary world. Armistead Maupin, the San Francisco-based writer best known for his Tales of the City series, had also become a fan of Tony's. He had read an advance copy of A Rock in a Hard Place and offered a blurb for the cover.

Moppet reached out to the book's publisher to be put in touch with the young author. I was especially compelled by the notion of this teenager who was straight identified, a straight kid who was very gay friendly. I'm a gay man and it was amazing to see that he had no homophobia. And there was something really charming about him on the telephone. He was a real spirit, as you know, someone you could talk to for hours. And he was never depressing and always self-effacing and funny and...

All of Anthony Godbey Johnson's famous friends had one thing in common: none of them had actually met the boy in person. They'd all talked to Tony on the phone for hours and they'd been given the photo to put a face to the name and the voice. But whenever someone offered to visit, Vicki Johnson would claim her son was far too sick. Tony needed to stay secluded, she told them. One wrong germ and it was all over.

Maybe someday they could shake Tony's hand in person if his condition miraculously improved. But for now, they just couldn't afford to take that risk. The Johnson family was also reportedly paranoid about certain people finding Tony. Word on the street was that the cop and criminal buddies of Anthony's blood father, as he called him, were out for vengeance. Vicki and Pops thought it was best to lay low. So Tony's relationships with Armistead Maupin and others continued through telephone lines.

One day, five months after the calls began, Maupin's business and romantic partner at the time shared the receiver. Terri Anderson spoke with Tony, then Vicki, each for a few minutes, and then hung up the phone. Immediately, Terri turned to Armistead and proclaimed, "It's the same voice." Vicki's pitch was higher, but the New York accent was the same. So was her cadence and the rhythm. Terri Anderson was confident.

Anthony Godby Johnson and his adoptive mother, Vicki Fraginaws Johnson, shared the exact same voice. Armistead Maupin could see Terry's point. It stuck in the back of the author's mind as his marathon phone calls with the boy continued.

He would call just out of the blue and start talking to me, mop, and said, It struck me as wonderful. He was saying I love you in the way that a kid says it to a parent or an adult that's really close to them. It's a level of intimacy that was quite extraordinary. Maybe even stronger because it was on the phone. Just a voice in the night talking to you who seems to understand you, to respect you, to need you.

Armistead Maupin helped Tony through some of the darkest nights of his life, as if death was only waiting for their phone call to end. Armistead said Tony Godbey Johnson was one of the most inspirational people he had ever met. Irreverent, hilarious, wise beyond his years. But Armistead Maupin couldn't shake that thought. It's the same voice, but he never said anything to Tony or Vicky about it. Nobody wants to be the guy disputing the story of an abused child.

Armistead also remembered that Tony was self-conscious about his high-pitched voice. AIDS had forestalled Tony's puberty, the latest in a long line of injustices, but a potential explanation. Armistead Maupin did not want to doubt Tony, but he needed to satisfy his own wondrous imagination, so he paid a visit to the boy's editor.

Yeah, well, I spoke to the editor at Crown Books, to David Groff, and said, please don't let this go any further because I don't want to be doubting a child who's reporting child abuse, but do you know anybody who's actually ever met Anthony Godfrey Johnson? And he got up and closed the door and sat back down and said, you're going through the same thing I went through six months ago, but I can assure you he exists and he's a little bit like God. You just kind of have to believe in him.

But not everyone did, including a reporter at Newsweek named Michelle Ingrassia. I started reading Tony's book, and the whole thing set off every bullshit meter I had, she told the New York Post. His cultural references were too old. He happened to be the same age as my daughter. She would never have talked about Coke bottle glasses. That's a term out of the 50s. And being a Mickey Mantle fan? No boy is a Mickey Mantle fan in the 90s.

Michelle Ingrassia also found it weird that the book jacket did not feature a photo of the author, and that most of the characters in the book had died or moved away, never to be seen again. It was impossible to fact-check, she claimed. Ingrassia also wondered what kind of social worker invites a suicidal 11-year-old out for coffee.

"I started getting a really weird feeling about it," she said. "I started calling everyone on the acknowledgements page. It turned out that of every person who had a relationship with him, not one had ever met him. That included his editor, his publisher, his publicist, his pen pals, the Make-A-Wish worker. Nobody had seen Anthony Godbey Johnson. Michelle Ingrassi had traveled to Union City to try and find him for herself but had no such luck.

This is a kid who's dying of AIDS, she said, and the pharmacy downstairs had never heard of him. Ingrassia finally tried to pull the records of the New York City policeman and his wife who were convicted in the late 80s or early 90s for sexually abusing their son, but again she found nothing. No such records seemed to exist. Newsweek published Michelle Ingrassia's investigation, the author nobody's met, in May 1993.

At the end of the article she hypothesized whose words and voice were behind the Anthony Godbey Johnson persona and Gracia suggested that it could be Paul Manette. But it wasn't Paul Manette. Paul Manette was having his own doubts about Tony's existence at this time. He even tried to organize a press conference in New Jersey with Tony and Vicki to settle the matter once and for all.

Their reputations were at stake, he pleaded. But Vicki denied the invitation, and Paul Manette died of AIDS two years later, without ever meeting Anthony Godbey Johnson, who was reportedly devastated upon hearing the news. Notably, after Michelle Ingrassia's article was published, not a single person involved with Anthony Godbey Johnson's recovery or legal battles or publishing deals came forward to confirm they had actually met him in person, except for one.

Leslie Dreyfuss, a journalist at the Associated Press, claimed she met Tony Johnson face-to-face in the flesh at his house when she was writing a profile on him. Dreyfuss said the boy's face was swollen and he was wearing glasses and his voice was identical to what she had heard on the phone for weeks. Despite this confirmation, other people who had made friends with Tony were beginning to get suspicious too.

This is Keith Olbermann, as dramatic as usual. Until I noticed one day that when Tony's mother or doctor came on the phone with him, none of their voices ever overlapped. One spoke, then the other, then the first again.

Think about it, that's not the way real-life conversations work. And then there was the Saturday night when, as the background of the frail voice of the boy supposedly down to his last T-cell, I heard laughter and car noises echoing up from the street. "Oh, I have the window open," said a person so sick he had been permitted no visitors in a year. That's when I hired the private detective.

Keith Oberman and Anthony Godbey-Johnson were collaborating on a book about baseball when the former sportscaster's doubts surfaced. The private investigator Oberman hired found no evidence of Tony's existence, but staff at the Associated Press defended their journalist. I mean, there was an Associated Press reporter who swore she had met Tony.

Years later, that AP reporter, Leslie Dreyfuss, would write to Armistead Maupin about her creeping doubts of having met Anthony Godbey Johnson.

She said the ground rules Vicki set for their meeting had been very strange, and even though she saw what looked like a teenage boy in the doorway, she could no longer be sure. As time went on, Anthony Godbey Johnson continued to defy all medical preconceptions by staying alive. Researchers would have loved to have learned Tony's secrets to survival, but he was nowhere to be found. Tony Johnson receded from the public eye after all the controversy, but reemerged in 1995.

A TV producer had approached the Wonder Boy with the opportunity of a lifetime. It was another chance to tell his story, another opportunity to prove that he was a real boy. This is a celebration of the very dignity of children.

It's not about the harsh realities of modern day childhood, although we are all very well aware of those. Instead, this is an intimate portrayal of what it's like to be a child, the very experience of childhood itself, something that too many of us have probably forgotten. So this program is about you. It's about me. It's about all of us because what we live through is who we become.

In March 1997, ABC aired a TV documentary called The Dignity of Children, hosted by Oprah Winfrey. Millions of people watched the series of vignettes about people who experienced challenging childhoods. Anthony Godbey Johnson's story stole the show. My name is Tony, and I was 13 years old when I was diagnosed with AIDS.

Leslie Carston, one of the film's producers, handpicked Tony's story after reading his book. Tony asked Armistead Maupin and Terry Anderson to consult on the project. They accepted and flew to New York in 1995 to meet the crew. Tony had stood them up, but Vicki Fragonals-Johnson was in attendance. Armistead Maupin said he was surprised by Vicki's appearance because Tony had always described his mom as a babe.

Armstead said the Vicky that hugged him that day was rather, quote, "rotund." Later, Tony would tell Maupin unprompted that his mom gained all the weight while caring for him, not that it was any of his business. At that meeting in New York, it was agreed that Tony's vignette in The Dignity of Children would feature an actor playing the part, while Tony's own voice told his story. Vicky took the script back to Tony for him to record at their house over the phone.

The final product was a stirring depiction of the horrors through which Anthony Godbey Johnson had lived. There's an innocence involved in being a child. There's a lot of trust that goes into being a child. You need to trust the people around you. You need to believe that somebody, something, the universal person out there is going to protect you at any cost. And I never believed it.

After the documentary special aired, Armistead Maupin continued to try and meet Tony Johnson in person to no avail. The mystery had fascinated the author for six years now.

And in 1997, Armistead called Tony to tell him a secret of his own. He was writing a book. It was called The Night Listener. The story centered around a phone relationship between a gay radio host and a teenager dying of AIDS that culminates in the realization that the latter does not exist. Predictably, Tony Godbey Johnson responded maturely. "I'm a big boy," he told Armistead. "I know the difference between fact and fiction."

Armistead Maupin even let Tony name the boy character in the novel. But the next time Maupin called, the line was disconnected. By the time The Night Listener was published, Anthony Godbey Johnson had all but disappeared. He stopped updating his website. He stopped returning calls. Reportedly, Tony had a new caretaker and had moved out of the house in Union City. He was living in Manhattan with the TV producer Leslie Karsten, who Tony now referred to as "Mom".

Jerry DeNicola, Tony's body mechanic, was living there too, apparently. In fact, Jerry DeNicola and Leslie Karsten had gotten married. For the second time in his life, Tony had a brand new family, but this time he stopped communicating with everyone. Tony's mom, Vicki Fragonals-Johnson, had a brand new family too. She divorced Pops, who no one had heard from in years, and married a child psychologist named Mark Zachheim.

Dr. Zachheim claimed he met Vicki Fragonals through correspondence with Tony. Together, the Zachheims adopted four boys, moved to Illinois, and left Anthony Godbey Johnson behind. In 2000, Tad Friend, a journalist at The New Yorker, began investigating the story again. He tried contacting Leslie Karsten and Jerry DeNicola. He asked around the neighborhoods in Manhattan and New Jersey. There were no traces of any of these people.

However, Tad Friend did track down Vicki Fragonall's 18-year-old niece. She said that Vicki had told her about Tony one time, but she had never seen him. The niece had also never met Ernest Johnson, the man her aunt claimed to have been married to for almost a decade. Eventually, Tad Friend landed on the doorstep of the Zachheims in Lake Bluff, Illinois. Dr. Mark Zachheim, the family's new aggressive mouthpiece, answered the door and told the journalist to wait.

Minutes later, the cops pulled up behind Tad and told him to leave. Anthony Godbey Johnson eventually emailed Tad Friend, "I have heard that you are trying to find information about me. Why don't you ask me?" After explaining to Tony in a follow-up email that he was trying to discover what had happened to him, Tad received a lengthy, angry reply. Tony suggested that he was no longer worth writing about. He was a symbol of nothing.

Tad Friend also received a 76-page dossier from Leslie Karsten that supposedly proved Tony's existence. It contained testimonials from people like Sharon Kagan, Tony's godmother, who claimed she had been in a room with Tony and Vicky at the same time.

Unsurprisingly, no other substantial documentation was included that could help disprove the hoax claim. Cat Friend's virtual love appeared in the November 2001 issue of The New Yorker. Most agreed that the journalist's extensive year-long investigation into Tony's non-existence was enough to put the story to bed.

But when Armistead Maupin's The Night Listener was adapted into a major motion picture starring Robin Williams in 2006, interest in Anthony Godbey Johnson renewed. Later that year, ABC's 2020 aired a segment on the hoax and uncovered new information. An expert voice analyst confirmed that Vicki Fragonard's and Anthony Godbey Johnson's voices were identical.

ABC also discovered that the boy in the photo Tony had sent to all of his friends was actually a kid named Steve Terabakia. The now traffic engineer said the photo was taken when he was a student at the Sacred Heart Grade School in North Bergen, New Jersey. Vicky Fraginawes had been his teacher. After the story aired, Vicky's lawyer sent ABC a 140-page response. It included signed affidavits by people swearing to have met Tony in person.

The letter also claimed that any attempts to disprove Tony's existence were nothing more than stunts by Armistead Maupin to promote his new movie. Vicki also claimed that Anthony Godbey Johnson was still alive and unwell and still defying the odds. In 2007, Tony would have been 31 years old, but he was never heard from again.

A few years after refuting the ABC segment, Dr. Mark Zachheim died in the car wreck, and Vicki Fragonals died of unknown causes in 2010, allegedly. No official records have surfaced to confirm her death. Some suggest it's possible that Vicki simply changed her name. Perhaps she's making fools of all of us once again.

Well, lastly, I've always been reluctant to talk about this. I just thought, okay, I found out the truth. I don't need to disabuse others of what they believe. But I finally decided when I have to be a fool, I'd rather be our kind of fool than Vicki's kind of fool. Absolutely. I have no regrets whatsoever. I was acting out of human kindness, and I don't think anybody has a reason to be ashamed for doing that.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. The Night Listener. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, at Swindled Podcast. Or you can send us a postcard at P.O. Box 6044, Austin, Texas, 78762. But please, no packages. We do not trust you.

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My name is Taylor Johnson from Austin, Texas. My name is Brian from Canada's capital. My name is Simona from Bonn, Germany. And I'm a concerned citizen and valued listener. Auf Wiederhören.

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