Transcript

Ira Glass

A couple years ago, a guy named Lanail Hudson-- Lanail Thaddeus Hudson, actually-- goes to a government office in Jacksonville, Florida to get a new Florida state ID, and they ask him to wait. And then they call out a state trooper, because a man in Miami with the exact same name, Lanail Thaddeus Hudson, had gone to the authorities and flagged the name. Said there had been identity theft. Said, somebody's got a fake driver's license under this name.

So the trooper shows up, and he's got to figure out what's going on. And the guy walks up to him in the lobby and says, well, maybe we can straighten this out now. Great. So the trooper asks the guy for any proof of who he is. Here's the trooper, Richard Blanco.

Ira Glass

There's a government-issued ID that lets him walk around the port in Jacksonville unescorted. There are two naval IDs that allow him onto Navy vessels. There's a birth certificate.

Ira Glass

So he fingerprints the guy and runs it through the system, and sure enough, the fingerprints match the fingerprints on file for Lanail Hudson. Whoever this is standing in front of them has been arrested all the way back in 1989 as Lanail Hudson. He's actually served in prison as Lanail Hudson.

But then Trooper Blanco gets the other Lanail Hudson on the phone-- the guy in Miami. That Lanail Hudson turns out to be a corrections officer down in Dade County, and that Lanail Hudson said that ever since his wallet was stolen back in 1989 with his driver's license and his social security card inside, he'd had problems. He tells them--

Ira Glass

At this point, Trooper Blanco strongly suspected the guy standing in front of him in Jacksonville was probably a fake, living under a stolen name. But vexingly, the guy would not admit this, even after he was arrested. At his job, with his wife and kids-- he had an 8-year-old and a 15-year-old at the time-- everybody knew him as Lanail Hudson. In fact, when this went to trial, the guy from Jacksonville still insisted he was Lanail Hudson.

Ira Glass

Well, today on our radio show, It Says So Right Here. We have stories where what is written on official papers in black and white can determine the rest of your life. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

Those names show up on police paperwork on September 29, 1989, when he was arrested for four charges, including attempted murder and aggravated battery. He's identified as Lanail Hudson in those police reports, but the paperwork also says that he sometimes goes by the name of Leroy Meyers or Leroy Mayers, and his nickname today is Leroy. That's the name his wife calls him. During his trial, he explained that this way.

Ira Glass

I reached the man that I suppose I'm going to call John Doe at the Federal Correctional Institution in Jesup, Georgia. I asked him what his real name was, the one he was born to.

Ira Glass

At his trial, he said he was homeschooled. That's why there were no school records. He said he was raised by a woman who's now deceased named Gertrude Hudson, who told him when he was 12 that she wasn't his real mom. And he said in court, and also on our phone call, that all the other paperwork and photos from his childhood were burned by a girlfriend in 1985 after they had a fight.

Ira Glass

I came out of that conversation still wondering who he was. So here at our radio show, we set out on a search. We called the church where he said he'd been baptized in Miami. Found nothing. Looked for the woman who he said burned his stuff in 1985. Zilch on that one, too.

Then we saw in his police records that the attempted murder and a bunch of other incidents in 1989 all happened at one house. And it named one of the people who lived there, and we found her.

Ira Glass

Two weeks after his sister hit Leroy with a hammer, after she told him not to come around anymore, Leroy was lurking outside the house looking in the windows, and Jonathan went outside to shoo him away, and Leroy shot him. Four or five bullets missed. One hit him in the back. That bullet is still inside him.

That shooting is the attempted murder charge that Leroy racked up. And when the police arrested him for it, this is one of the first times that they booked and processed this guy who everybody called Leroy as Lanail Hudson. This is the moment where it seems like he's making the transition from one name to the other. Jonathan said that if I wanted more information about the guy, I should call the pastor at the church near his house-- the one where Leroy lived.

Ira Glass

When I reached Pastor Selwyn Scott and his wife Thomasina, they didn't want to record a conversation for the radio, but they totally remembered Leroy. They said a member of their church found him living on the street when he was 19 or 20. They put him up in the trailer behind the church for maybe a year.

Pastor Scott talked to Leroy a lot, and say that Leroy told him that he was from Guyana. Conveniently for us, Pastor Scott has lived in Trinidad, Barbados, and Guyana, and said that Leroy's accent was definitely from Guyana. And in fact, though most of his arrest records do not list a country of origin or list the United States as the country of origin, one of them, from September 21, 1989, lists his country of origin as Guyana.

Without any prompting, Mrs. Scott brought up the name Lanail Hudson. Actually, she wasn't sure if it was Lionel or Leonard or Lanail, but she said that Leroy found a wallet with the ID in it-- a name like Lanail Hudson-- and she said they told him to mail it back. And after Leroy left the neighborhood, she said that she heard that the young man whose ID it was was dead, and that Leroy had assumed the young man's identity. I let her know that the young man is still very much alive-- no longer perhaps so young-- and I talked to him.

Ira Glass

On top of all that, he had an attempted murder charge on his name, which was kind of a problem whenever he got pulled over by a cop or applied for a job. Here's what I think we can accurately say about Leroy/John Doe. It seems clear he had some kind of rough childhood, lived on the streets. Went to prison for shooting his girlfriend's brother, and when he got out in the early '90s, he used Lanail Hudson's good name to start a new life.

Moved to Jacksonville, found a church, met his wife Rosemary there, and told her that he wanted to start over. She says she could see that he'd been broken and thrown away by other people, and fell in love with him. She said he was sweet, quiet, a good dad. They had a house.

Trooper Blanco saw his pay stubs. Said he made good money. As best as we can tell from police records, his violent criminal behavior mostly stops by 1993.

That said, it does seem that if he thought he could get away with not paying a bill, he would try. That seems to have continued as he built his new life. Talking to him, I think the way that he sees it is he didn't steal. He didn't run up bills on someone else's credit card. I don't think he ever considered how he might be hurting the Lanail Hudson who lived down in Miami.

I do believe that he wants to get back to his family and kids when he gets out of prison. And so he's stuck as John Doe, because admitting that he's Leroy or somebody else probably does get him deported.

Ira Glass

Act Two. What are you doing for the test of your life? The woman in this next story is waiting on a piece of paper that-- I think it's not an exaggeration to put it this way-- is going to determine how she will spend the rest of her life. The paper that she's waiting on is a test result-- a genetic test-- for Huntington's disease.

Huntington's disease is a progressive brain disorder. There's a wide range of symptoms, but in the worst cases, people who have it can end up losing physical control of their bodies, sort of like Parkinson's disease. They can also have mental symptoms that are like Alzheimer's or schizophrenia. If you have a parent with Huntington's disease, you have a 50/50 chance of getting it yourself.

That's the situation in this story. A woman named Kelly-- her mom has Huntington's. Kelly is the youngest of six sisters, and she decided to get tested. She kept an audio diary about what happened.

Ira Glass

Kelly's audio diary was produced by Paige Cowett of WNYC. Coming up, how your life can change because of something that happens with your parents in the parking lot of a Kohl's department store. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme. Today's theme, It Says So Right Here. Stories where what is written on paper in black and white has enormous power over somebody's life. We've arrived at Act Three of our show. Act Three-- There's A Signed Line Between Love and Hate. Ben Calhoun has this story of politics and one very particular piece of paperwork.

Ben Calhoun

If you took a wholesome storybook version of the state of Wisconsin and you turned it into a person, you might get a college student named Josh Inglett. Josh grew up in Portage, this small city near the middle of the state. His dad, a Lutheran minister. His mom, a substitute kindergarten teacher.

Josh got good grades in high school, where he played quarterback for his school's mostly losing football team. For college, he only looked at Wisconsin state schools. And listen to how he's paying for it.

Ben Calhoun

OK, I just want to note how he's so politely trying not to slag his friends for partying instead of studying, and that he's being so earnest and trying to live by principles. This is what it's like to talk to Josh.

Ben Calhoun

Our story with Josh actually starts right here, once Josh is at college. He ended up going to the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, and his sophomore year, to pay his tuition bills, he became an RA. And because of that, he ended up going to the statewide convention for RAs throughout the whole UW system. And this is key, because this RA conference kind of blew Josh's mind a little.

When he was there, he started hearing about students at other UW schools who were helping to make their schools better. They were getting money and starting programs. And Josh was just like, I want to do that for my school. Almost on cue, he hears about a student position with the Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin system.

Now, the Board of Regents might sound like some obscure, meaningless hunk of bureaucracy, but it's actually the governing board for Wisconsin's entire $5 billion a year university system. It's got two seats for students. So Josh applies.

Soon, he gets a call from the governor's office. That's what a big deal the Board of Regents is. The governor actually appoints the student regents.

So Josh goes to the state capital, Madison, to interview with Governor Scott Walker's staff. He's a little nervous at first, but he hits it off with the guy who's running the selection process. Josh is telling him about playing quarterback in Portage, and as it turns out, the guy running the interview actually grew up in a nearby town called Waunakee.

Ben Calhoun

Josh goes through weeks of interviewing and vetting, and then it happens. Governor Walker's office puts out a press release announcing Josh's nomination. This is what Governor Walker says about Josh in it. "I am pleased to appoint Joshua, and I know he will serve the UW system and his fellow students well."

A couple days later, Walker's staff calls Josh back to Madison for this big day of official stuff. They coach him and introduce him to lawmakers, who have to approve his nomination. There's meeting and greeting. There's a big long day of that. And then Josh goes home.

Ben Calhoun

The recall petition. Maybe you remember this whole political bloodbath Wisconsin went through a little while ago. Maybe you don't. But quick synopsis.

Scott Walker, conservative Republican, gets elected in 2010. And almost immediately, he announces a ton of really controversial things-- dramatic budget cuts or, more inflammatory, eliminating collective bargaining rights for most public sector employees-- nurses, teachers, et cetera, et cetera. The state goes bananas.

A year later, people organize an attempt to recall Walker and kick him out of office. And they collect about a million signatures for that. More than a quarter of all the registered voters in the state signed to have Walker recalled.

And so they do it. They have a vote, and the organizers fail. Walker wins. Stays in office.

OK, all of that happened before all this. The recall petition happened when Josh Inglett was barely out of high school. And yet, that's what this person from the governor's office was asking Josh about on the phone. Had he signed a petition to have Walker recalled?

Ben Calhoun

Had it been something that Josh marked on his calendar, the date on the entry would have been December 26, 2011. Josh was home from college for the holidays, and he was out with his family after Christmas sale shopping. Josh says he remembers they were in the parking lot of a Kohl's department store, and there was this guy collecting signatures.

And Josh says while he was at home, he'd been hearing what Walker's collective bargaining legislation and budget cutting-- what this was going to do in his hometown of Portage. His parents were talking about it, and so were his old teachers.

Ben Calhoun

All of this was bad news for Josh's mom. Again, she was a substitute teacher. Mostly taught kindergarten.

And around this time, with Josh off at college, she was looking for a full-time teaching job. She hadn't been able to find one, though, and with Walker's budget cuts and union legislation, Josh knew her chances would only get worse. So he's there in the parking lot, standing there with his mom, and there's the guy with the clipboard who's like, sign here, kid.

Ben Calhoun

OK, so back to this phone call from the governor's office. Walker's staff had spent a couple months interviewing and vetting Josh. It had just been hours since they were parading him through the capital. Now they were asking him if he'd ever signed the recall.

And again, at first, he couldn't even remember. Josh actually had to get off the phone with the staffer and call his dad to ask him if he had, in fact, signed the petition.

Ben Calhoun

Josh was stressed out by all this. And so that night, he wakes up. Middle of the night. 4:30 in the morning.

He has a voice mail from Walker's chief of staff, saying, whenever you get this, call me right away. It's possible the chief of staff did not mean, even if it's 4:30 in the morning, go ahead and give me a ring. But Josh gives the man what he's asking for.

Ben Calhoun

Rescinded. They were withdrawing Josh's nomination.

Ben Calhoun

Josh says the governor's staff didn't ask about his reasoning-- why he'd signed. He didn't get to explain that despite his signature, Josh was, politically speaking, actually on their side. He's a Republican.

Josh had grown up listening to debates between his Republican grandparents and his Democratic parents. But when he signed the petition, he says, he wasn't political at all. Remember, Josh was only 18. He didn't even care enough to vote in the recall election. Then, after he signed, Josh did what a lot of people do in college.

Ben Calhoun

And Josh doesn't just support Republican policies. Specifically, he supports Governor Walker.

Ben Calhoun

And yet, Walker's staff thought Josh was the enemy because his signature was sitting there on that petition, and there would be no convincing them otherwise.

As for how Josh's signature even came up in the first place, the story had been broken by a couple conservative websites the same day Josh was at the capital for all the official stuff. Those websites found out because when Wisconsin politics had gone all nuts and the recall happened, a few conservative and Tea Party groups decided to put the recall signatures online. Several of them went through the petitions, activists and volunteers painstakingly data entering nearly a million signatures.

So a couple conservative blogs found Josh's signature and posted stories and called the governor for comment. Publicly, the governor's office didn't say why it was taking Josh's nomination back, only said they were withdrawing his name and choosing someone else. But once the news came out and people read about the signature, they connected the dots with a very straight line of common sense. And just like that, the governor's office turned a non-story-- a story of an appointment that nobody would usually hear about to a government board that a lot of people don't know exists-- they turned that into a juicy news story, one of political revenge and partisan warfare.

Ben Calhoun

This is Wisconsin State Senator Dale Schultz. And to be clear, like Governor Walker, Dale Schultz is a Republican. He's not some Democrat looking to embarrass Walker. He's been serving as a Republican in the Wisconsin state legislature since Governor Walker was a freshman in high school.

When the governor's office had broken the bad news to Josh, they told him they had to do this, because with the recall signature, Josh would never make it through the Republican-controlled state Senate. Senator Schultz is on the committee that was in charge of Josh's appointment.

Ben Calhoun

Schultz says he likes the governor. Voted for him. Supports him. But the Josh Inglett thing-- he says he didn't like it.

Ben Calhoun

Hearing the news, Senator Schultz fired off a letter to the governor that very same day, actually, which I have a copy of it here. "Dear Governor Walker, I write to respectfully ask that you reconsider rescinding the nomination of UW Platteville student Joshua Inglett to the UW Board of Regents. I'm not sure about you, but as for me, I know in my youth, and particularly during college, that I experimented and made decisions that, upon further thought and growth, I wouldn't make again. I'm thankful others gave me opportunities to learn and grow as a person and professionally."

In the following paragraphs here, Schultz points out that after Scott Walker won the recall election, he said he regretted all the ugliness, and he called for bipartisanship and healing and peace. And then Schultz's letter continues.

"I agree with you that for our state to heal, we must look past those issues which divided us and focus on those passions we share and move our great state forward. I can think of no greater way to put these feelings into action than by reconsidering Mr. Inglett's appointment."

I've called Governor Walker's office repeatedly. After weeks of calls, I have yet to hear anything. They haven't even declined to comment. The only statements from the governor about Josh Inglett that I've been able to find are in newspapers and in a few TV stories, and they all seem to have come from this one question and answer session Walker did right when all this happened.

Ben Calhoun

Another reporter asks if Walker checks all candidates against the recall petition. Walker avoids saying what people in his office do. He just speaks specifically about himself.

Ben Calhoun

The governor mostly repeats a vague line about how they don't want to, quote, "drag him through the details of that."

Ben Calhoun

Josh Inglett is not the only case of this. There are other instances where the recall petitions are being used as a political enemies list-- a blacklist.

Ben Calhoun

During the spring of 2013, the same time Josh was interviewing with the governor's office, another situation was playing out in a judicial election. Wisconsin is one of the states that elects its judges. And at some point, a newspaper had run the names of judges through the recall database. It found 29 signed the recall petition.

Among the names, Thomas Wolfgram, a judge from Ozaukee County, one of the most conservative counties in the state. That spring, Wolfgram was up for reelection.

Ben Calhoun

What you're hearing is a talk show host in Milwaukee, Charlie Sykes. He was one of the conservatives who turned Wolfgram's signature into an issue. Sykes highlighted the story on air, explaining to listeners that Thomas Wolfgram had been exposed-- how he was this closeted Democrat living among the conservatives of Ozaukee County. And he explained how the judge with the signature had outed himself.

On the air, the judge is referred to as a, quote, "flaming liberal" and a "unionista," among many other things. One of these segments also showcased the judge's challenger, a Tea Party backed lawyer named Joe Voiland, who had decided to run against Wolfgram after finding out about the recall signature. In this audio you're about to hear, the host of the show, Charlie Sykes, speaks first.

Ben Calhoun

In reality, Thomas Wolfgram, the guy being called lawless-- he made a career as a criminal prosecutor, first as an assistant DA, then as a deputy district attorney.

Ben Calhoun

A few things to know about the guy being lampooned as a lawless, pro-union flaming liberal, other than the fact that he's a former prosecutor and a Republican. Wolfgram was originally appointed to the bench by a Republican governor. And once he was on the bench, people liked him. In 2008, Wolfgram was named Judge of the Year by the Wisconsin State Bar Association.

Given his reputation and his record, when the signature thing hit, a lot of people rallied to the judge's defense. He was endorsed by every police chief in his county, the county sheriff, the Deputy Sheriffs Association, a number of district attorneys, prominent private attorneys, other state judges, state Supreme Court justices. On talk radio, these people were simply referred to as Wolfgram's, quote, "courthouse cronies."

So this campaign went on for months. And remarkably, during that time, the challenger, Voiland-- he actually never criticized any part of Wolfgram's nearly two decades on the bench.

Ben Calhoun

Joe Voiland, the lawyer who ran against him-- he told me, yeah, that's true. He actually never had any problems with how Wolfgram did his job. But he said Wolfgram's signature permanently compromised his ability to be seen as fair and impartial.

Wolfgram, for his part-- he told me he'd signed the petition not as a political statement about Walker's policies, but because he thought the public wasn't given enough time to digest the policies. That's what made it traumatic for the state. This is actually something Walker later said himself.

But so for months, Joe Voiland sounded the alarm in speeches, on the internet, on the radio, in mail to voters. Wolfgram's signature had tainted him. Wolfgram went on to lose by a landslide-- by more than 25%.

After Wolfgram lost, the head of the Republican Party in his county wrote an editorial for the local paper. The title was, "Calling a Spade a Spade." Quote, "A big thank you is in order to all the Democrats and liberals who signed the Recall Walker petition. As was clearly shown in our election for judge, the signed petitions will be utilized as an effective tool to determine the most viable candidates for future elections."

He says Wolfgram's huge defeat is a warning, not just to people who signed the petition, but to people who support anyone like that. It's a not so veiled threat to people who stood up for Wolfgram-- people like the Republican county sheriff and the Republican district attorney. Essentially, he says, look out. We're coming for you next.

I talked to one of the bloggers who first outed Josh Inglett for having signed the recall. He's a young conservative named Brian Sikma. He told me, while Governor Walker's office doesn't say whether it checks who signed the recall, he said, frankly, he finds the idea that they don't check-- he called it far-fetched. And if somehow they didn't know before Josh Inglett that bloggers and activists would look at each and every appointment they make and call people out, Brian Sikma says he hopes they learned a lesson-- that outing people like this is now just standard procedure.

Ben Calhoun

In terms of the environment this has created within Wisconsin politics, I had a pretty telling conversation with a Republican staffer. The staffer told me Josh Inglett's story in particular made him worried, because, he said, he saw himself in it. He'd also signed the recall petition. Actually, he signed it the day after Josh did.

The staffer's mother was a teacher, just like Josh's mom, and the staffer had signed the recall as a Christmas present to her. This person, who we'll keep anonymous for obvious reasons, says he was really afraid that someone would find out about his signature. And he worried it wouldn't just be embarrassing for him, but it could hurt his boss and his boss's standing within the Republican Party-- make it harder for both of them to do their jobs. Describing what this time was like, he said he was seeing people, quote, "exposed and publicly shamed nearly every week." He said, quote, "I lived in fear."

Ben Calhoun

For his part, Josh Inglett's reaction to all this-- to his name being withdrawn-- wasn't to get mad at all. When reporters came calling, Josh says he was honest, and his honest reaction was to accept what was happening, not to retaliate or point fingers.

Ben Calhoun

Josh says maybe it was advice from his dad, the Lutheran minister, or from his mother, who had always encouraged him to send personal thank you notes. Which that was actually something Josh did in this case, including one to the governor's office, who he told if they ever had any positions in the future, and he could be helpful, he'd still love to serve.

Ben Calhoun

So for the Walker administration, if you're looking for somebody who agrees with your politics, who's a fan of yours, and who's still excited to serve, but who won't sell out his mom, for your consideration, Joshua Inglett. He says you've got his cell number.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show.

[MUSIC - "PERMANENT RECORD" BY THE GOLDEN DOGS]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Jonathan Menjivar with Alex Blumberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from Dana Chivvis.

Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon's our production manager. Elise Bergerson's our administrative assistant. Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website.

Music help today from Damien Graef and Rob Geddis. Research help by Michelle Harris and Julie Beer.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Torey Malatia, who explains how he got the nickname Lollipop.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI. Public Radio International.