Jared is here today with his two brothers, Garrett and Clay.
What happened, Jared?
Well, the way I discovered that our father was basically
a serial bank robber--
he confessed to seven bank robberies--
was just a coincidence.
I was reading the paper one day, and I
read a news story about some robberies
in another part of the state.
And the description just oddly matched my father to a tee.
The description of the vehicle, the getaway car,
was the same vehicle my father drove.
And he spends time over in that area.
And it was just, I thought, too much of a coincidence.
And since they offered a website with pictures,
just to clear my own mind, I'd go look and make
sure that it wasn't him.
But it was.
As soon as I saw the pictures.
Would you have ever suspected that your father
would be robbing banks?
I mean, even if I read a description, I would think,
well, that's sort of like my father.
But it wouldn't occur to--
No.
Never.
He'd never been--
So what did the description say?
What did it say?
Well, it gave a description about 5' 8"
to 5' 10", 200 pounds, chunky build, 50 or 60-year-old.
My father and I are about the same size.
It almost describes me, only younger.
It just struck me as too many coincidences in a row
that he used to work in that area in Eastern Illinois.
And it-- you know, just coincidences.
So what did you do?
You went to the website.
You see not only that's the shirt.
I know the shirt, I know his glasses, I know--
JARED GINGLEN: Actually, the outfit
he wore in this particular surveillance video
was the last outfit I saw him.
He was at a birthday party and was wearing the same outfit.
OPRAH WINFREY: Wow.
So you call your brothers immediately?
I called Garrett first because--
I didn't want to tell him what because I wanted him to think
also and get his opinion.
I said look at this website and tell me what you think.
And he immediately hung up on me because he had
to deal with it in his own way.
Yeah.
What did the police find, Garrett, when
they searched your dad's home?
Well, besides the clothes that appeared
in the surveillance photos, they also found a detailed journal.
It detailed out another--
actually, another life with another
residence that we had no idea about.
And apparently, also some details about
addictions that he was dealing with that we
also had no idea about at all.
So a very shocking detailed journal that listed everything
that he'd been doing for years.
Including drugs?
I understand that there was the mention of drugs in that.
What kind of drugs?
Do you know?
In his journals, he talked about crack cocaine and things
like that.
And so did you see your father regularly?
This must be devastating to find out about your own father.
But did you see him regularly?
You're in communication?
You still had a good relationship?
He was one of us, basically.
JARED GINGLEN: We thought.
We were close to him.
I didn't see him as much as Clay or Garrett
because they lived in the same town he did.
I live in Peoria which is about 50 miles away, so I'd
see him once or twice a month. But we were close.
When did you last seen him before this discovery, Garrett?
The last time I saw him was two weeks prior to that.
He had called me over to talk to me.
And it's devastating in so many ways.
JARED GINGLEN: Absolutely.
Not only is your father a criminal, a bank robber,
but this other, apparently, secret life.
Secret life as a bank robber, secret life with other affairs,
secret life with drugs.
When do you think this started to happen?
I mean, as you look back now and say, well, you know,
I suspect that--
That's a really tough question answer.
You ask that, but since he was our dad
and since we had a lot of respect for him,
we believed him when he lied to us.
And he did a good job lying to us.
And so how can you say, well, I wish
I didn't trust him back then. I could've maybe stopped this.
You can't say that.
Tell me this.
Did you all have, then, a group brothers
meeting to decide whether to--
When we discovered that this was going on,
we went to Lewistown where my father
has a house with our mother.
We met with Clay, who is a school teacher in Lewistown.
OPRAH WINFREY: Your mother and father were still together?
Yes.
We decided to go to my father's house and confront him.
We were gonna say, look.
We know what you're doing.
We want it to stop and you've got to turn yourself in.
He wasn't home.
So we did the next best thing that we could
think of to put a stop to this action,
and we called the police.
You called the police.
Did you agree together that--
- Oh, yes. - Yes.
Absolutely.
OPRAH WINFREY: And was there any dissenting member vote?
We're talking about a violent crime with a weapon.
OPRAH WINFREY: With a weapon.
There's just no way that--
we all agreed instantly that that had to stop.
How many robberies were there?
He pled guilty to seven.
We don't know if there were more than that,
but that's what he pled to.
And he was recently sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Do you see him?
I saw him at his sentencing hearing.
I haven't spoke to him for over a year, though.
Me neither.
I've spoken to him on the phone a few times, briefly.
I kind of consider this a dual personality thing
and I kind of have hopes that my dad that raised me
is a totally different person than the person
that we discovered.
A dual personality in like a complete,
psychological, clinical dual personality
or just emotionally so?
Well, you can't diagnose from what we've seen, but--
How would he explain it otherwise?
Right.
OK, so then I guess this is the next question.
Have you said, dad, why?
I haven't talked to him since he was arrested,
and this was in August of '04.
And I haven't spoken to him since.
I would have too many questions that I know I
wouldn't get a truthful answer.
He would probably have to lie to me, and I don't want that.
I want the truth.
And Garrett, I can see that, obviously, all of you
are upset about it.
And you are still very much emotionally impacted by it.
Does it make you feel like it's a betrayal in a--
it's an enormous betrayal.
It's a betrayal on many levels.
- Hard to imagine. - Many levels.
It makes you have to go back to the life
that you thought you knew rethink everything
about that because you don't know what was true
and what was false.