May 30, 2019 • 36 mins
Rebecca's grief in the years following Billy’s death leads her to an unlikely source of comfort, and a big surprise.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Wow. I never thought there would be an actual eyewitness
report of what happened, and we have absolutely no way
of knowing whether that's true at all. I'm showing my
dad Seth the police report from Billy's shooting. Is he
saying that Billy came into the bathroom with a pistol drawn?
(00:26):
That makes no sense. The subject came into the bathroom
and observed the PO writing on the paper. At that point,
the subject drew a caliber automatic and stated to the PO,
give me the fucking paper. Give me the paper, and
then the PO took out money to make the deal
(00:46):
while the purpose was holding the gun on him and
to unloaded. While you're holding that gun on you, Let's
do this deal. That's what happened. He's saying, Okay, you see,
no those facts? Is that the truth? Am I looking
at the truth? Is that? What this is? When people
put this like money, like decoration around it and stamp
(01:08):
it from the city, this is truth from the perspective
of the perpetrators of a homicide. I mean, you know,
the police do have a reputation. New York was a
very dangerous city. It was a very poor city, and
in terms of the way the city ran. It was broken.
(01:30):
You know. The cops were dirty, and they were violent
and they were corrupt. When you're doing a documentary like
this in which there are culprits and victims, and the
tendency to think that there is an absolute truth is
perhaps false, you know, because there are two people in
(01:52):
a room to kill somebody. Both of them have a
perspective on what happened, and one of their perspectives was
shut off. And we'll never going to hear that perspective.
We're never gonna get Billy's idea of what happened. Ever.
For Rebecca, I think this will be just a thousand
years of nightmares. So protect her from this. My dad's
(02:20):
worried about how my mom might react to seeing the
police report. I feel defensive of her. I feel protective
of her. If somebody you love dies of cancer, or
somebody you love falls off of peer and drowns, that's
one thing. But if somebody who you thought was your
life partner, your protector, you're gladiator, You're like soul mate
(02:44):
is viciously murdered and then their body thrown into an
unmarked grave, and you're denied even the right to mourn
through the ritual of burial. If you're ripped away from
that person in the way that Rebecca was torn away
(03:04):
from her life with Billy, your grief is of a
different nature. It's not distinguishable from anger. It's raging grief.
It's like slaughter. Everybody grief today on the show, My
Mother's grief in the years following Billy's death leads her
(03:28):
to an unlikely source of comfort and a big surprise
me from crime Town. I'm io till it right, and
this is the ballad of Billy balls By was you know,
(03:57):
into the socks, which, like all pure speed, really good
pure speed, goild. Rebecca always seemed very vibrant and happy,
and he seemed happy. They were great together. They were
great together. I remember Rebecca called me, you know, she
(04:17):
called me right after it happened, had Billy been shot.
I remember just the raw feeling of the the fucking
pain of grief, and I would like to not remember
(04:38):
that feeling. Quiz the weakening this stopped It was you
being worn. Chapter nine, Ophelia, do you remember the first
time you ever saw my mother? Yes, I do do,
(05:01):
tell um. I went up town to a party. It
was my dad was in his late twenties and working
as an experimental theater director. One summer night, he headed
to a party uptown. It was one of those nice
(05:21):
Upper West Side apartments that are owned by a shrink
or something. And she was lying on the floor and
naked in a triangle of sunlight in a party where
people were standing around with beers and drinks, and there
she was, you know, this like leggy blonde. It was
(05:41):
so it was so outrageous what she was doing because
she wasn't really talking to anybody at the party. She
was just sunbathing on the floor with no clothes on
in the party. And I definitely made a mental note
to get to know uh that person perhaps at another opportunity.
(06:09):
That opportunity came a few weeks later when my dad
was out at a nightclub. I had a flask in
my jacket and I took a drink and I got
this huge hand black on my color and it was
the bouncer, and he said get out of the club,
and he, you know, dragged me by my neck. And
on the other arm, he was dragging this girl and
(06:29):
it was Rebecca. He was throwing her out and throwing
me out at the same time. And so it was
like it was like a it was like a romantic comedy,
you know, slammed the door shut and we were both
landed on the sidewalk, and it was like, oh, what
did you do? You know? I was like I was
(06:51):
just trying to drink out of my flask and what
did you do? Some ship? You know and whatever, and
then we just went walking together, and um, we kind of.
I was very attracted to her, you know, her combination
of extraordinary femininity like a show girl. She was like
a show girl, but it was more like a show
(07:14):
girl that could throw a spear, you know, and bring
down a horse at a hundred meters type of show girl.
And she liked me, and we had a kind of
a date after that, but it was by then it
was already five in the morning or something, so what date.
My dad quickly realized that my mom wasn't an easy
person to get to know Rebecca, Like from the very beginning,
(07:37):
it was extraordinarily KG about any kind of details like
exact address or exact phone number or exact anything. My
mom is still KG about personal details. Where is this,
I don't know. Actually, she didn't want to discuss my
dad at all for this project or something. I don't
know you were. Every time he came up, she changed
(08:01):
the subject. I was stick to the subject. For Christ's sake.
You are the subject, so you won't be hearing her
perspective on their relationship. Rebecca was like somebody walking around
with a big bundle of secrets, or who had learned
the hard way that you don't share personal information with
(08:23):
anyone because it will be come back and bite you
in the s as she would say, you know. The
third time I met her was on the street on
the Bowery, walking down south, and she was carrying a
whole bunch of plastic bags and looked extremely distraught. She
(08:48):
was her fingers were all screwed up and wrapped around
the plastic bags, and she looked absolutely desperate. Then I
said to her, what's what's the matter with you? And
she's like, I can't go home. I can't go home.
Wanta thugs and ship heads and creepy bastards, you know,
like I at the doors busted, the windows busted, the
(09:10):
heats busted, the I don't feel safe there. I'm like, well,
come and stay in my place. You could stay in
my kitchen and there's a room you know, if you
want to come by, And she did come by and
she didn't leave. After that, my mom moved into my
(09:35):
dad's railroad apartment, a narrow old place with a bathtub
in the kitchen, and that's like a perfect setup for
an exhibitionist and for a wild ass like Rebecca. It's
just like perfect. You know, she could be cooking and
having a bath. And I took the little middle bed
and a half room. Rebecca never slept, so there wasn't
(09:55):
necessity for a bedroom for Rebecca, which is a very
strange thing when you think about it. I never saw
her sleep in months, the first few months that I
knew her, I had never seen her sleep. My dad
was a director and my mom was a performer, so
(10:16):
they got closer by making things together. I was shooting
a video, kind of very low rent video of Hamlet,
and it occurred to me that Rebecca, with this wild
blonde hair and this extraordinary kind of power in her
eyes and in her face and in her hands. You know,
she radiates like physical energy and strength, could play Ophelia
(10:38):
in a much stronger way than the like shrinking violet
with flowers in her hair that's traditionally in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Ophelia is Hamlet's love interest who eventually goes mad with grief.
And I thought that that had cinematically, that that could
be something very beautiful if I could capture that on camera.
(10:59):
By just by st charity a lack five for Shane.
Young men will do if they come to by Cock,
they aunt, blame. And then Rebecca would grab the book
and go up on the roof and start reading these
intense scenes. So what are you done? By his son?
But and thou hast not come to my bed? It
(11:22):
was this an incredibly dramatized, forceful way that she had
of doing it. It wasn't acting. It was like like
a volcanic impersonation. And I don't know, for me, it
was coming together into a very interesting version of Hamlet.
Come my coach, Good nights, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
(11:43):
good night, good night. And that's when she told me
about Billy. That's when she started to trust me enough
to share the story. Right, My mom finally told him
(12:04):
what had happened. She recounted Billy's death in painful detail.
She knew who had come to visit Billy that night,
that she knew that it was a police officer and
off duty police officer and a cowboy hat. He had
so many slugs in him that that's the act of
(12:24):
somebody that wants to finish you off, you know, doesn't
want you speaking, doesn't want you living. I didn't realize
that that I was a very opportunistic and rather sick
of me to want her to play Ophelia because she
was made crazy by an event that took place in
her life that literally made her mad, you know, and
(12:46):
I mean mad in the old sense of the word insane,
with grief and anger. So it's not something you want
to hold the cameras on, you know. It's very intimate,
(13:09):
that grief and anger. It started to show up in
their apartment. So when I would come home sometimes and
hear the music on super allowed, like in my apartment
wherever Becca was, and I would open the door. Becca
(13:33):
would be with a bottle of whiskey in one hand,
yelling into the speakers, singing at the top of her
loans the songs that she and Billy really loved together,
you know, and I would go, we're stop, and she
nothing would stop her. My dad says, the grief over
(14:06):
Billy's murder sparked a fear in my mom that followed
them everywhere they went. So I'm like on St. Mark's Place,
somewhere around there, walking with Rebecca and there's two cops
sitting in a cup car on the corner, and Rebecca
gets all pale and kind of freaky h and I'm like,
(14:29):
what's the matter, what's the matter? And she's like turned around,
turned around, turning around, no face that way. I'm like, why,
what what? What? And I turned around, of course, you know,
and I see these two cops sitting in the car
and I'm like, what is this? Is those two cops
in the car, And she's like, I can't look at
that guy. I can't look at that guy. We gotta
get away from you. We're gonna walk away from you.
(14:49):
And then so we're walking away, I'm going in said
the guy? Is that the guy? What are you talking about?
Is that the cowboy? And she wouldn't reply, and she
wouldn't tell me, and she wouldn't go any further with
any any detail whatsoever, but that she wanted us to
get the funk out of there, and that that got
that cop that was near the window side where we
(15:12):
were walking by freaked her out entirely, and that she
recognized him and that and I said to her, I
was walking up the street like nervously going to something
to do with Billy's is the Billy thing? What's going
to come on? Come out? Rebecca, tell me nothing. You know.
My mom never explained to my dad what she saw. Instead,
(15:36):
she added it to her big bundle of secrets and
tried to keep life moving by going to auditions and
pursuing her career. She had already worked with some big names.
How many startedst memories us freeing, No, No, No, we
are com broke down. I didn't have a leading role.
It was just hired as an extra and I got
(15:58):
bumped up. He gave me lives in US. Have liked me.
You know, you should make a film about flying sauces.
I also did a movie with Lisa man Alle and
the original Arthur Dudley Moore. You're not gonna want to
be a waitress for the rest of your life. I
did a walk for Luther V Andrew's first music video.
(16:21):
You know this song, that's me walking in the video.
I had a million dollar walk o Caul. My mom
was disciplined in her career and living in my dad's kitchen.
Was working out fine somehow, and then in the spring
(16:44):
of something caught my dad's eye. I had noticed that
she had a little bit of a bump, you know,
and for Rebecca to be a pound over, she just
was working out extra hard in the last month, trying
to get rid of this slight expansion of her waist.
And she would talk about it like I can't fucking
(17:05):
get rid of this, you know. I'm like, what am
I doing? I can't be getting weight, It's not possible.
I was like, ah, you know, she'd be like doing
ninety thousand sit ups. And then one night I was
just sitting in bed and watching her at four in
the morning, thinking, how God's name am I going to
go to sleep. She's stirring a pot on the stove
(17:25):
and she had her hand on her belly and it
was the classic person protecting their belly from the stove,
the fire, a splatter or something. She was holding herself
and I just said to her, Rebecca, you are with child,
and she was like, get the funk out of here.
(17:46):
You know. I'm like, Rebecca, you're pregnant. You're pregnant, and
she said that is insane. Don't tell me. I'm a woman,
I know my own body. You don't tell me what's
going on inside my body. And I'm like, you know what,
you don't know. Shit. Then we went and she saw
a doctor and was examined. She was five and a
(18:09):
half months pregnant. She wasn't you know, a little pregnant,
and she was was It was very, very far down
the line. And that's when Rebecca admitted to me, you
know there's some uh or I've been I do a
little USh. I commune with Billy and I'm like, what's like, well,
(18:35):
I take his drug and I'm like, oh yeah, what
drug is that? You know? And so that's when she
said to Soxon. And that's when I looked up to
Sox and to Soxon Billy's drug of choice a prescription methemphetamine.
(18:57):
And I called up the company that made it and
they said, yeah, oh yeah, it's definitely taratogenic. And I'm like,
can you be more specific than like paratogenic foot coming
out of head, you know, arm from but you know,
anything can happen. And I just kind of, you know,
like went to pieces what how did she like what happened? Then?
(19:25):
Did she stop. Oh yes, immediately immediately, she absolutely uh
did everything to be healthy and to be strong. My
mom got clean and kept performing. This is her in
a movie called Sleepwalk by Sarah Driver. Man, what are
(19:49):
you doing? I want to have anything to do it
Sarah's movie Sleepwalk. Um playing the fence. Uh, very pregnant,
just like a mom before I was born. My mom
is seriously pregnant. In the clip, in a wife beater
on a nasty downtown street, a guy pulls up and
stolen hoop tie and nothing is wrong with a car.
(20:13):
I don't deal with kids. You don't have. He's bringing
a stolen car and he doesn't know if it. There's
a little kid to sleep in the back seat. What
a waiting on? Stupid? Get this fucking car out of him.
It's a really good scene. I'll get rid of the
kid to bring back the car. No, man, don't bring
the car back. Don't you come back. Don't come back
(20:33):
with the car. We had Get in the car and split,
Get in the car and split. Don't you split? Just yet?
Coming up after the break a special delivery me. You know,
(20:56):
we wanted to have you on the kitchen floor, and
we had prepared everything thing to have a birth at home,
but we immediately discovered that you were backwards. You were
facing out spine to spine, which you can be very
painful birth. And before I even took a breath, I
was causing problems. So my parents took a cab to St.
Vincent's Hospital where I was born on September two, and
(21:20):
she delivered you and put you right in my arms,
and I checked if there was a hand coming out
of your forehead, and you opened your eyes in my arms.
You point point looked right at me, And that was
how you were born. What did my mom do with
(21:43):
me when you first got home from the hospital. She
went from I don't want the babies bothering me. You're
gonna build a wall right here in the kitchen, and
the babies on that side and I'm on nest side,
and you know, it's the whole thing two like a
dragon with a eagan egg. And she just became the
most protective, wildly defensive, utterly devoted mother you will ever
(22:08):
see in your life. She just like put you under
her arm and wouldn't let anyone even near you. You know,
my mom and dad try to make it work for
a while. We thought we would try to be together
to create a kind of stable couple for you. But
we never thought you're right for me and I'm right
for you, and we're gonna make a life together. That
(22:29):
just wasn't It was obviously. Actually the contrary was obvious.
You know that we were utterly incompatible. Very quickly, Rebecca's
choices about what was the right way to raise a
child became just absolutely intrangigan. I decided to move out.
(22:52):
My dad moved to a nearby loft when I was
around one. They had some fundamental differences that they just
couldn't work through. In terms of health and nutrition. Her
ideas were so extreme and so violently enforced. You couldn't
eat this, you couldn't eat that, and I was completely
(23:12):
against that form of upbringing. Her extreme was was really
to the point of just like steamed vegetables in her
fingers being handed to you at your mouth. You and
I would go out together and you'd eat a Drake's cake,
and I'd come home and bring you home, and Rebecca
would go Drake's cake. That would be like so freaky.
(23:37):
But it wasn't just the strict diet. There was something
else that really bothered my dad. Rebecca decided that you
were going to be in show biz, and I suddenly
realized that my worst fear of what Rebecca could become
in relation to you was actually coming true, that she
was becoming a stage mum. Yeah, still planned not the
(24:00):
guitar a little saying, this is my first role when
I was too in a movie called Kiss Daddy, Goodnight.
You gave me twenty. I gave you a fifty, Rebecca,
what did you do with the rest of the money.
Steve BISHEMI played my dad, Go get your own beer,
and my mom played my mom. The movie was Uma
Thurman's debut two Listen, but Hollywood was only a piece
(24:33):
of my mom's master plan for me. You were going
to be a Broadway dancer, tap dancer, singer, or a
star or whatever. You were going to go to audition
after audition after audition. It was a horror to me.
But she was so insisting that you do this. So
(24:54):
that battle um turned into a series of fights that
were just so off old that I thought for you
it was unhealthy. I thought it was psychically unhealthy for you.
That she was like pulling you out of my arms
and like yelling in the street, and he feared that
she might have been slipping back into an old habit.
(25:18):
But I was detecting that Rebecca might have been returning
to dis oxen occasionally. Um, she would have episodes, and
these episodes, I think now that I know more, we're
a combination of alcohol into oxen, where she literally behaved
in a psychotic manner. You know, she yelled and shouted
and screamed and hung onto lamp posts and was completely
(25:42):
incoherent what she was saying, and her eyes were kind
of like lacquered over with something, and she wasn't looking
at you directly, and I didn't know what was going on,
and it was a horrifying circumstance. My dad's new loft
was only a couple of blocks away, and I'd go
(26:03):
stay with him on weekends. What was our relationship like perfect?
We were absolutely like fascinated in love. Um, you know,
we had lots of theatrics in the house. We played
all kinds of role games of gangster Warrior. We built
little chateaus and palaces. We went to the park a lot.
(26:26):
We played a lot of ball together, like you were
like a master ball player of any kind of ball.
And I'm like a sports spastic. But for you, I
did everything that I could. I don't know. We just
had fun. We went everywhere. We went to museums, we
went to we walked a lot, you know, and we
(26:46):
just did ship. I mean, I just recall always having
the best time with you. And this made things even
worse because then when you would have to go back
to Rebecca, you wouldn't want to go. And it was
every single time this violent ripping away, like literally you
screaming and saying, Dad, I don't want to go, I
don't want to go, I don't and go, and Rebecca
(27:08):
like feeling infuriated that you didn't want to go with her.
And then when I was six, my dad took a
job with a traveling dance company and left the country.
He wouldn't move back to New York for over a decade.
(27:29):
For a long time, I couldn't reconcile how or why
he would have left me behind like that. But there
was a key piece of information that I didn't have.
There was something that you were hiding from me. I
didn't tell you that I was a harmonetic and I
(27:51):
was very ill, you know, one day without a hundred
and fifty bucks worth of her when and I'm practically
a dead body. So it's not like I'm kind of
a valiant night able to rescue you. I mean myself
(28:12):
deeply impaired, you know, so you know, in the end,
not in the end, but in the middle, it became
a question of what what do you rescue? First? My
dad explains that he left New York because he was
convinced he'd never be able to get clean there, and
it was very hard for you to see that. And
(28:33):
I think it's still it's hard for you to imagine
that I would take certain decisions in order not to um,
you know, in order to survive that. It's just hard
to imagine if you're not in that position yourself, if
you're not really in that perspective of being a dope fiend,
the um kind of strangely super dad, you know, when
(28:56):
Dad's high, Dad's like, oh so much fun. That's aly
an awful thing for a child. It gives no parameter
or balance to a child. We are not even ourselves,
you know, the finality of someone saying, well, it wasn't
myself that day, Well, I wasn't myself that decade. Not
only was I not myself, but I am not a
(29:17):
really reliable reporter on my own behavior. I should not
be narrating my own existence at that time, because you
will not be getting the facts. I was not a
possession of the facts. This is a really hard thing
to describe to people. You know, I'm sorry. I'm just
(29:39):
having a moment because I've never heard you own it
so completely. So I'm just kind of well, I'm learning.
It's a life process. But I do not expect or
want forgiveness or absolution of any kind. The only thing
I could ever hope for is understanding in the same way,
(30:08):
in the same vein as me asking you what our
relationship was like? What did you experience my relationship with
my mom as when I was that little. I'm a
little worried that we're going into family. Should I not
worry about this because it's your show? But I mean,
(30:29):
this is a very difficult, very complex stuff, and I
don't know if if this is the forum. I'm not
I'm not, I'm a little bit. I'm just wondering. Let's
take a five minute break, Let's let's get some air
and come back, and then we'll do it. Are you
sure this is where you want to go. I get
the feeling that you're like tating it back that length,
So like, let's talk about it, but let's go out
the outward. It's not so hot. Wondering, we step outside
(30:54):
the studio to talk. My dad says he's nervous about
painting my mom is some kind of villain. He says
he doesn't want to hurt her, and that he's worried
about what I'm doing with this project. After a half
hour in debate, he agrees to talk about his concerns
on Mike. It's not that I'm not prepared to talk
about it, but it's just under the under the circumstances
(31:15):
of us recording our conversation about your life in some
vague connection to Billy Balls. I don't know if it's
the best place to um. Well, it's not so vaguely
connected to Billy Balls. I explained to my dad that
(31:39):
Billy's story is incomplete without the story of the lives
his death affected. His killing caused a rupture in my
mom's psyche, a trauma that rippled into my own life.
I grew up in a house of grief, helping her
carry the weight of her loss, and sometimes that grief
(31:59):
was explosive that I became collateral damage. As an adult,
I refused to let her go, to shut her out,
to give up on her. But to do that, to
keep her close to me, I have to find some
understanding of the pain that made her lash out so
viciously during my childhood, you know, learning to forgive like
(32:23):
that's such a like a It's like on a Hallmark
card somewhere. But at a certain point we have to
acknowledge and accept that there were things that happened that
caused trauma. The only success I have ever had in
finding any peace around my relationship with my mother specifically,
(32:47):
has been from understanding that is why I am doing
this project. Could in the next chapter of The Ballad
(33:14):
of Billy Balls this is it is Yeah, this is
the building. I'll never forget these columns. Ever, So the
New York County Family Court, really bad ship happened here
(33:38):
Crimetown is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smarling. The Ballad
of Billy Balls is hosted by me Io Tillip Right
and made in partnership with Caden's thirteen. You can find
me on the Internet. Um Io loves You on everything,
and if you're interested in my story, I wrote a
book about all of this stuff. It's called Darling Days.
(33:58):
We also want to hear from you. We have a
voicemail that we set up for you to call us.
Here's Yucca. I know that you've been concerned about whether
this podcast is the right thing to do for your mom,
but um, I think it's wise to not leave yourself
out of that equation. His death is probably this inextricable
part of your identity. I don't know, Maybe it doesn't
matter if this is the best thing to do or
(34:19):
the right thing to do for your mom, because it
seems like maybe something that you need to do, and
I really admire you for doing it. I think it's
super gusty and inspiring. Thank you, Yuka. If there's something
on your mind, thoughts, feelings, complaints, a joke, whatever, call
us and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh
three nine to nine zero. I love hearing from you guys.
(34:44):
You can also get into our discussion forum on our website,
The Ballad of Billie Balls dot com. The show is
produced by me, Kevin Sheppard, and Ryan Swygert. Our senior
producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zack Stewart Pontier and
(35:05):
Mark Smirlin fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was
mixed by Sam Bear, Sound design and music by Kenny
q C Jack. Additional music by Shebo Pampolonia. Thank you,
Shebo Dope name. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Special thanks this
(35:32):
week to my dad Seth for being so open and
honest and always growing with me. Thanks to Daniella Ariah,
Rachel Lee Right, Emily Wiederman, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro,
Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum, and the team at
Caden's thirteen. Special thanks to Steve Halterman for letting me
(35:54):
into the station to record this one, and of course,
my mom, without whom none of this would be possible,
Wow. I never thought there would be an actual eyewitness
report of what happened, and we have absolutely no way
of knowing whether that's true at all. I'm showing my
dad Seth the police report from Billy's shooting. Is he
saying that Billy came into the bathroom with a pistol drawn?
(00:26):
That makes no sense. The subject came into the bathroom
and observed the PO writing on the paper. At that point,
the subject drew a caliber automatic and stated to the PO,
give me the fucking paper. Give me the paper, and
then the PO took out money to make the deal
(00:46):
while the purpose was holding the gun on him and
to unloaded. While you're holding that gun on you, Let's
do this deal. That's what happened. He's saying, Okay, you see,
no those facts? Is that the truth? Am I looking
at the truth? Is that? What this is? When people
put this like money, like decoration around it and stamp
(01:08):
it from the city, this is truth from the perspective
of the perpetrators of a homicide. I mean, you know,
the police do have a reputation. New York was a
very dangerous city. It was a very poor city, and
in terms of the way the city ran. It was broken.
(01:30):
You know. The cops were dirty, and they were violent
and they were corrupt. When you're doing a documentary like
this in which there are culprits and victims, and the
tendency to think that there is an absolute truth is
perhaps false, you know, because there are two people in
(01:52):
a room to kill somebody. Both of them have a
perspective on what happened, and one of their perspectives was
shut off. And we'll never going to hear that perspective.
We're never gonna get Billy's idea of what happened. Ever.
For Rebecca, I think this will be just a thousand
years of nightmares. So protect her from this. My dad's
(02:20):
worried about how my mom might react to seeing the
police report. I feel defensive of her. I feel protective
of her. If somebody you love dies of cancer, or
somebody you love falls off of peer and drowns, that's
one thing. But if somebody who you thought was your
life partner, your protector, you're gladiator, You're like soul mate
(02:44):
is viciously murdered and then their body thrown into an
unmarked grave, and you're denied even the right to mourn
through the ritual of burial. If you're ripped away from
that person in the way that Rebecca was torn away
(03:04):
from her life with Billy, your grief is of a
different nature. It's not distinguishable from anger. It's raging grief.
It's like slaughter. Everybody grief today on the show, My
Mother's grief in the years following Billy's death leads her
(03:28):
to an unlikely source of comfort and a big surprise
me from crime Town. I'm io till it right, and
this is the ballad of Billy balls By was you know,
(03:57):
into the socks, which, like all pure speed, really good
pure speed, goild. Rebecca always seemed very vibrant and happy,
and he seemed happy. They were great together. They were
great together. I remember Rebecca called me, you know, she
(04:17):
called me right after it happened, had Billy been shot.
I remember just the raw feeling of the the fucking
pain of grief, and I would like to not remember
(04:38):
that feeling. Quiz the weakening this stopped It was you
being worn. Chapter nine, Ophelia, do you remember the first
time you ever saw my mother? Yes, I do do,
(05:01):
tell um. I went up town to a party. It
was my dad was in his late twenties and working
as an experimental theater director. One summer night, he headed
to a party uptown. It was one of those nice
(05:21):
Upper West Side apartments that are owned by a shrink
or something. And she was lying on the floor and
naked in a triangle of sunlight in a party where
people were standing around with beers and drinks, and there
she was, you know, this like leggy blonde. It was
(05:41):
so it was so outrageous what she was doing because
she wasn't really talking to anybody at the party. She
was just sunbathing on the floor with no clothes on
in the party. And I definitely made a mental note
to get to know uh that person perhaps at another opportunity.
(06:09):
That opportunity came a few weeks later when my dad
was out at a nightclub. I had a flask in
my jacket and I took a drink and I got
this huge hand black on my color and it was
the bouncer, and he said get out of the club,
and he, you know, dragged me by my neck. And
on the other arm, he was dragging this girl and
(06:29):
it was Rebecca. He was throwing her out and throwing
me out at the same time. And so it was
like it was like a it was like a romantic comedy,
you know, slammed the door shut and we were both
landed on the sidewalk, and it was like, oh, what
did you do? You know? I was like I was
(06:51):
just trying to drink out of my flask and what
did you do? Some ship? You know and whatever, and
then we just went walking together, and um, we kind of.
I was very attracted to her, you know, her combination
of extraordinary femininity like a show girl. She was like
a show girl, but it was more like a show
(07:14):
girl that could throw a spear, you know, and bring
down a horse at a hundred meters type of show girl.
And she liked me, and we had a kind of
a date after that, but it was by then it
was already five in the morning or something, so what date.
My dad quickly realized that my mom wasn't an easy
person to get to know Rebecca, Like from the very beginning,
(07:37):
it was extraordinarily KG about any kind of details like
exact address or exact phone number or exact anything. My
mom is still KG about personal details. Where is this,
I don't know. Actually, she didn't want to discuss my
dad at all for this project or something. I don't
know you were. Every time he came up, she changed
(08:01):
the subject. I was stick to the subject. For Christ's sake.
You are the subject, so you won't be hearing her
perspective on their relationship. Rebecca was like somebody walking around
with a big bundle of secrets, or who had learned
the hard way that you don't share personal information with
(08:23):
anyone because it will be come back and bite you
in the s as she would say, you know. The
third time I met her was on the street on
the Bowery, walking down south, and she was carrying a
whole bunch of plastic bags and looked extremely distraught. She
(08:48):
was her fingers were all screwed up and wrapped around
the plastic bags, and she looked absolutely desperate. Then I
said to her, what's what's the matter with you? And
she's like, I can't go home. I can't go home.
Wanta thugs and ship heads and creepy bastards, you know,
like I at the doors busted, the windows busted, the
(09:10):
heats busted, the I don't feel safe there. I'm like, well,
come and stay in my place. You could stay in
my kitchen and there's a room you know, if you
want to come by, And she did come by and
she didn't leave. After that, my mom moved into my
(09:35):
dad's railroad apartment, a narrow old place with a bathtub
in the kitchen, and that's like a perfect setup for
an exhibitionist and for a wild ass like Rebecca. It's
just like perfect. You know, she could be cooking and
having a bath. And I took the little middle bed
and a half room. Rebecca never slept, so there wasn't
(09:55):
necessity for a bedroom for Rebecca, which is a very
strange thing when you think about it. I never saw
her sleep in months, the first few months that I
knew her, I had never seen her sleep. My dad
was a director and my mom was a performer, so
(10:16):
they got closer by making things together. I was shooting
a video, kind of very low rent video of Hamlet,
and it occurred to me that Rebecca, with this wild
blonde hair and this extraordinary kind of power in her
eyes and in her face and in her hands. You know,
she radiates like physical energy and strength, could play Ophelia
(10:38):
in a much stronger way than the like shrinking violet
with flowers in her hair that's traditionally in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Ophelia is Hamlet's love interest who eventually goes mad with grief.
And I thought that that had cinematically, that that could
be something very beautiful if I could capture that on camera.
(10:59):
By just by st charity a lack five for Shane.
Young men will do if they come to by Cock,
they aunt, blame. And then Rebecca would grab the book
and go up on the roof and start reading these
intense scenes. So what are you done? By his son?
But and thou hast not come to my bed? It
(11:22):
was this an incredibly dramatized, forceful way that she had
of doing it. It wasn't acting. It was like like
a volcanic impersonation. And I don't know, for me, it
was coming together into a very interesting version of Hamlet.
Come my coach, Good nights, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
(11:43):
good night, good night. And that's when she told me
about Billy. That's when she started to trust me enough
to share the story. Right, My mom finally told him
(12:04):
what had happened. She recounted Billy's death in painful detail.
She knew who had come to visit Billy that night,
that she knew that it was a police officer and
off duty police officer and a cowboy hat. He had
so many slugs in him that that's the act of
(12:24):
somebody that wants to finish you off, you know, doesn't
want you speaking, doesn't want you living. I didn't realize
that that I was a very opportunistic and rather sick
of me to want her to play Ophelia because she
was made crazy by an event that took place in
her life that literally made her mad, you know, and
(12:46):
I mean mad in the old sense of the word insane,
with grief and anger. So it's not something you want
to hold the cameras on, you know. It's very intimate,
(13:09):
that grief and anger. It started to show up in
their apartment. So when I would come home sometimes and
hear the music on super allowed, like in my apartment
wherever Becca was, and I would open the door. Becca
(13:33):
would be with a bottle of whiskey in one hand,
yelling into the speakers, singing at the top of her
loans the songs that she and Billy really loved together,
you know, and I would go, we're stop, and she
nothing would stop her. My dad says, the grief over
(14:06):
Billy's murder sparked a fear in my mom that followed
them everywhere they went. So I'm like on St. Mark's Place,
somewhere around there, walking with Rebecca and there's two cops
sitting in a cup car on the corner, and Rebecca
gets all pale and kind of freaky h and I'm like,
(14:29):
what's the matter, what's the matter? And she's like turned around,
turned around, turning around, no face that way. I'm like, why,
what what? What? And I turned around, of course, you know,
and I see these two cops sitting in the car
and I'm like, what is this? Is those two cops
in the car, And she's like, I can't look at
that guy. I can't look at that guy. We gotta
get away from you. We're gonna walk away from you.
(14:49):
And then so we're walking away, I'm going in said
the guy? Is that the guy? What are you talking about?
Is that the cowboy? And she wouldn't reply, and she
wouldn't tell me, and she wouldn't go any further with
any any detail whatsoever, but that she wanted us to
get the funk out of there, and that that got
that cop that was near the window side where we
(15:12):
were walking by freaked her out entirely, and that she
recognized him and that and I said to her, I
was walking up the street like nervously going to something
to do with Billy's is the Billy thing? What's going
to come on? Come out? Rebecca, tell me nothing. You know.
My mom never explained to my dad what she saw. Instead,
(15:36):
she added it to her big bundle of secrets and
tried to keep life moving by going to auditions and
pursuing her career. She had already worked with some big names.
How many startedst memories us freeing, No, No, No, we
are com broke down. I didn't have a leading role.
It was just hired as an extra and I got
(15:58):
bumped up. He gave me lives in US. Have liked me.
You know, you should make a film about flying sauces.
I also did a movie with Lisa man Alle and
the original Arthur Dudley Moore. You're not gonna want to
be a waitress for the rest of your life. I
did a walk for Luther V Andrew's first music video.
(16:21):
You know this song, that's me walking in the video.
I had a million dollar walk o Caul. My mom
was disciplined in her career and living in my dad's kitchen.
Was working out fine somehow, and then in the spring
(16:44):
of something caught my dad's eye. I had noticed that
she had a little bit of a bump, you know,
and for Rebecca to be a pound over, she just
was working out extra hard in the last month, trying
to get rid of this slight expansion of her waist.
And she would talk about it like I can't fucking
(17:05):
get rid of this, you know. I'm like, what am
I doing? I can't be getting weight, It's not possible.
I was like, ah, you know, she'd be like doing
ninety thousand sit ups. And then one night I was
just sitting in bed and watching her at four in
the morning, thinking, how God's name am I going to
go to sleep. She's stirring a pot on the stove
(17:25):
and she had her hand on her belly and it
was the classic person protecting their belly from the stove,
the fire, a splatter or something. She was holding herself
and I just said to her, Rebecca, you are with child,
and she was like, get the funk out of here.
(17:46):
You know. I'm like, Rebecca, you're pregnant. You're pregnant, and
she said that is insane. Don't tell me. I'm a woman,
I know my own body. You don't tell me what's
going on inside my body. And I'm like, you know what,
you don't know. Shit. Then we went and she saw
a doctor and was examined. She was five and a
(18:09):
half months pregnant. She wasn't you know, a little pregnant,
and she was was It was very, very far down
the line. And that's when Rebecca admitted to me, you
know there's some uh or I've been I do a
little USh. I commune with Billy and I'm like, what's like, well,
(18:35):
I take his drug and I'm like, oh yeah, what
drug is that? You know? And so that's when she
said to Soxon. And that's when I looked up to
Sox and to Soxon Billy's drug of choice a prescription methemphetamine.
(18:57):
And I called up the company that made it and
they said, yeah, oh yeah, it's definitely taratogenic. And I'm like,
can you be more specific than like paratogenic foot coming
out of head, you know, arm from but you know,
anything can happen. And I just kind of, you know,
like went to pieces what how did she like what happened? Then?
(19:25):
Did she stop. Oh yes, immediately immediately, she absolutely uh
did everything to be healthy and to be strong. My
mom got clean and kept performing. This is her in
a movie called Sleepwalk by Sarah Driver. Man, what are
(19:49):
you doing? I want to have anything to do it
Sarah's movie Sleepwalk. Um playing the fence. Uh, very pregnant,
just like a mom before I was born. My mom
is seriously pregnant. In the clip, in a wife beater
on a nasty downtown street, a guy pulls up and
stolen hoop tie and nothing is wrong with a car.
(20:13):
I don't deal with kids. You don't have. He's bringing
a stolen car and he doesn't know if it. There's
a little kid to sleep in the back seat. What
a waiting on? Stupid? Get this fucking car out of him.
It's a really good scene. I'll get rid of the
kid to bring back the car. No, man, don't bring
the car back. Don't you come back. Don't come back
(20:33):
with the car. We had Get in the car and split,
Get in the car and split. Don't you split? Just yet?
Coming up after the break a special delivery me. You know,
(20:56):
we wanted to have you on the kitchen floor, and
we had prepared everything thing to have a birth at home,
but we immediately discovered that you were backwards. You were
facing out spine to spine, which you can be very
painful birth. And before I even took a breath, I
was causing problems. So my parents took a cab to St.
Vincent's Hospital where I was born on September two, and
(21:20):
she delivered you and put you right in my arms,
and I checked if there was a hand coming out
of your forehead, and you opened your eyes in my arms.
You point point looked right at me, And that was
how you were born. What did my mom do with
(21:43):
me when you first got home from the hospital. She
went from I don't want the babies bothering me. You're
gonna build a wall right here in the kitchen, and
the babies on that side and I'm on nest side,
and you know, it's the whole thing two like a
dragon with a eagan egg. And she just became the
most protective, wildly defensive, utterly devoted mother you will ever
(22:08):
see in your life. She just like put you under
her arm and wouldn't let anyone even near you. You know,
my mom and dad try to make it work for
a while. We thought we would try to be together
to create a kind of stable couple for you. But
we never thought you're right for me and I'm right
for you, and we're gonna make a life together. That
(22:29):
just wasn't It was obviously. Actually the contrary was obvious.
You know that we were utterly incompatible. Very quickly, Rebecca's
choices about what was the right way to raise a
child became just absolutely intrangigan. I decided to move out.
(22:52):
My dad moved to a nearby loft when I was
around one. They had some fundamental differences that they just
couldn't work through. In terms of health and nutrition. Her
ideas were so extreme and so violently enforced. You couldn't
eat this, you couldn't eat that, and I was completely
(23:12):
against that form of upbringing. Her extreme was was really
to the point of just like steamed vegetables in her
fingers being handed to you at your mouth. You and
I would go out together and you'd eat a Drake's cake,
and I'd come home and bring you home, and Rebecca
would go Drake's cake. That would be like so freaky.
(23:37):
But it wasn't just the strict diet. There was something
else that really bothered my dad. Rebecca decided that you
were going to be in show biz, and I suddenly
realized that my worst fear of what Rebecca could become
in relation to you was actually coming true, that she
was becoming a stage mum. Yeah, still planned not the
(24:00):
guitar a little saying, this is my first role when
I was too in a movie called Kiss Daddy, Goodnight.
You gave me twenty. I gave you a fifty, Rebecca,
what did you do with the rest of the money.
Steve BISHEMI played my dad, Go get your own beer,
and my mom played my mom. The movie was Uma
Thurman's debut two Listen, but Hollywood was only a piece
(24:33):
of my mom's master plan for me. You were going
to be a Broadway dancer, tap dancer, singer, or a
star or whatever. You were going to go to audition
after audition after audition. It was a horror to me.
But she was so insisting that you do this. So
(24:54):
that battle um turned into a series of fights that
were just so off old that I thought for you
it was unhealthy. I thought it was psychically unhealthy for you.
That she was like pulling you out of my arms
and like yelling in the street, and he feared that
she might have been slipping back into an old habit.
(25:18):
But I was detecting that Rebecca might have been returning
to dis oxen occasionally. Um, she would have episodes, and
these episodes, I think now that I know more, we're
a combination of alcohol into oxen, where she literally behaved
in a psychotic manner. You know, she yelled and shouted
and screamed and hung onto lamp posts and was completely
(25:42):
incoherent what she was saying, and her eyes were kind
of like lacquered over with something, and she wasn't looking
at you directly, and I didn't know what was going on,
and it was a horrifying circumstance. My dad's new loft
was only a couple of blocks away, and I'd go
(26:03):
stay with him on weekends. What was our relationship like perfect?
We were absolutely like fascinated in love. Um, you know,
we had lots of theatrics in the house. We played
all kinds of role games of gangster Warrior. We built
little chateaus and palaces. We went to the park a lot.
(26:26):
We played a lot of ball together, like you were
like a master ball player of any kind of ball.
And I'm like a sports spastic. But for you, I
did everything that I could. I don't know. We just
had fun. We went everywhere. We went to museums, we
went to we walked a lot, you know, and we
(26:46):
just did ship. I mean, I just recall always having
the best time with you. And this made things even
worse because then when you would have to go back
to Rebecca, you wouldn't want to go. And it was
every single time this violent ripping away, like literally you
screaming and saying, Dad, I don't want to go, I
don't want to go, I don't and go, and Rebecca
(27:08):
like feeling infuriated that you didn't want to go with her.
And then when I was six, my dad took a
job with a traveling dance company and left the country.
He wouldn't move back to New York for over a decade.
(27:29):
For a long time, I couldn't reconcile how or why
he would have left me behind like that. But there
was a key piece of information that I didn't have.
There was something that you were hiding from me. I
didn't tell you that I was a harmonetic and I
(27:51):
was very ill, you know, one day without a hundred
and fifty bucks worth of her when and I'm practically
a dead body. So it's not like I'm kind of
a valiant night able to rescue you. I mean myself
(28:12):
deeply impaired, you know, so you know, in the end,
not in the end, but in the middle, it became
a question of what what do you rescue? First? My
dad explains that he left New York because he was
convinced he'd never be able to get clean there, and
it was very hard for you to see that. And
(28:33):
I think it's still it's hard for you to imagine
that I would take certain decisions in order not to um,
you know, in order to survive that. It's just hard
to imagine if you're not in that position yourself, if
you're not really in that perspective of being a dope fiend,
the um kind of strangely super dad, you know, when
(28:56):
Dad's high, Dad's like, oh so much fun. That's aly
an awful thing for a child. It gives no parameter
or balance to a child. We are not even ourselves,
you know, the finality of someone saying, well, it wasn't
myself that day, Well, I wasn't myself that decade. Not
only was I not myself, but I am not a
(29:17):
really reliable reporter on my own behavior. I should not
be narrating my own existence at that time, because you
will not be getting the facts. I was not a
possession of the facts. This is a really hard thing
to describe to people. You know, I'm sorry. I'm just
(29:39):
having a moment because I've never heard you own it
so completely. So I'm just kind of well, I'm learning.
It's a life process. But I do not expect or
want forgiveness or absolution of any kind. The only thing
I could ever hope for is understanding in the same way,
(30:08):
in the same vein as me asking you what our
relationship was like? What did you experience my relationship with
my mom as when I was that little. I'm a
little worried that we're going into family. Should I not
worry about this because it's your show? But I mean,
(30:29):
this is a very difficult, very complex stuff, and I
don't know if if this is the forum. I'm not
I'm not, I'm a little bit. I'm just wondering. Let's
take a five minute break, Let's let's get some air
and come back, and then we'll do it. Are you
sure this is where you want to go. I get
the feeling that you're like tating it back that length,
So like, let's talk about it, but let's go out
the outward. It's not so hot. Wondering, we step outside
(30:54):
the studio to talk. My dad says he's nervous about
painting my mom is some kind of villain. He says
he doesn't want to hurt her, and that he's worried
about what I'm doing with this project. After a half
hour in debate, he agrees to talk about his concerns
on Mike. It's not that I'm not prepared to talk
about it, but it's just under the under the circumstances
(31:15):
of us recording our conversation about your life in some
vague connection to Billy Balls. I don't know if it's
the best place to um. Well, it's not so vaguely
connected to Billy Balls. I explained to my dad that
(31:39):
Billy's story is incomplete without the story of the lives
his death affected. His killing caused a rupture in my
mom's psyche, a trauma that rippled into my own life.
I grew up in a house of grief, helping her
carry the weight of her loss, and sometimes that grief
(31:59):
was explosive that I became collateral damage. As an adult,
I refused to let her go, to shut her out,
to give up on her. But to do that, to
keep her close to me, I have to find some
understanding of the pain that made her lash out so
viciously during my childhood, you know, learning to forgive like
(32:23):
that's such a like a It's like on a Hallmark
card somewhere. But at a certain point we have to
acknowledge and accept that there were things that happened that
caused trauma. The only success I have ever had in
finding any peace around my relationship with my mother specifically,
(32:47):
has been from understanding that is why I am doing
this project. Could in the next chapter of The Ballad
(33:14):
of Billy Balls this is it is Yeah, this is
the building. I'll never forget these columns. Ever, So the
New York County Family Court, really bad ship happened here
(33:38):
Crimetown is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smarling. The Ballad
of Billy Balls is hosted by me Io Tillip Right
and made in partnership with Caden's thirteen. You can find
me on the Internet. Um Io loves You on everything,
and if you're interested in my story, I wrote a
book about all of this stuff. It's called Darling Days.
(33:58):
We also want to hear from you. We have a
voicemail that we set up for you to call us.
Here's Yucca. I know that you've been concerned about whether
this podcast is the right thing to do for your mom,
but um, I think it's wise to not leave yourself
out of that equation. His death is probably this inextricable
part of your identity. I don't know, Maybe it doesn't
matter if this is the best thing to do or
(34:19):
the right thing to do for your mom, because it
seems like maybe something that you need to do, and
I really admire you for doing it. I think it's
super gusty and inspiring. Thank you, Yuka. If there's something
on your mind, thoughts, feelings, complaints, a joke, whatever, call
us and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh
three nine to nine zero. I love hearing from you guys.
(34:44):
You can also get into our discussion forum on our website,
The Ballad of Billie Balls dot com. The show is
produced by me, Kevin Sheppard, and Ryan Swygert. Our senior
producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zack Stewart Pontier and
(35:05):
Mark Smirlin fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was
mixed by Sam Bear, Sound design and music by Kenny
q C Jack. Additional music by Shebo Pampolonia. Thank you,
Shebo Dope name. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Special thanks this
(35:32):
week to my dad Seth for being so open and
honest and always growing with me. Thanks to Daniella Ariah,
Rachel Lee Right, Emily Wiederman, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro,
Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum, and the team at
Caden's thirteen. Special thanks to Steve Halterman for letting me
(35:54):
into the station to record this one, and of course,
my mom, without whom none of this would be possible,
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