Transcript
American Radical: episode 5
Monsters and Martyrs
Ayman Mohyeldin: Just a warning, this series contains descriptions of violence and some profanities. We don't want you to be caught off guard.
Archival Recording:: Looks like a volleyball tournament.
Sydney Vinson: Yeah, I mean, the gym pretty much looks the same.
Archival Recording:: Right?
Vinson: It doesn't look like it's changed too much.
Mohyeldin: That's Sydney Vincent, she was one of Rosanne's closest friends at her old high school, North Cobb High in Kennesaw. She's held on to Rosanne's soccer jersey from those years.
Archival Recording:: Wow.
Vinson: Look at that.
Archival Recording:: Number four.
Vinson: Yeah, that was her favorite number, and my favorite number too. We were so much smaller, it's such a small shirt. Yeah, it's weird.
Mohyeldin: Sydney is still grappling with losing Rosanne so suddenly at the Capitol last year.
Vinson: I heard that she died before I even knew that she was there, so I was confused, and I just kept asking, like, "Are you sure? Are we sure? Are we sure it was her?"
Mohyeldin: Sydney and Rosanne fell out of touch when Rosanne got heavily into drugs, and then they repaired their friendship when she got sober. But then Rosanne started getting into Qanon, and Sydney backed away.
Vinson: I didn't feel that we could have just our normal conversations because, I mean, the topic would inevitably go somewhere that just would lead to us in an argument.
Mohyeldin: Sydney thought it was best for the two of them not to talk until Rosanne's obsession blew over. So in late December of 2020 when Rosanne called, Sydney didn't pick up.
Vinson: She left me a voicemail on 12/29 telling me she had a weird feeling, and wanted to make sure that I was okay. I didn't return her call because I wasn't ready to start back with our communication. But I did send her a text thanking her for the phone call, and that I was okay. Do you want to hear her voicemail? Have you ever heard her voice?
Mohyeldin: I haven't.
Rosanne Boyland: I just wanted to check on you 'cause I'm weird and I freak out about stuff. So if you could send me a text and let me know you're alive and well that would be great. I hope you had a Merry Christmas. I hope you have a very wonderful New Year, I love you. Give me a call, yeah. I love you, bye.
Vinson: The last thing she texted me was Happy New Year. I didn't respond but now I wish I had.
Mohyeldin: A few days later, Sydney found out that Rosanne had died. She was devastated, and she didn't like the portrait of Rosanne that she was seeing in the news.
Vinson: What was being written about her I think was misunderstood.
Mohyeldin: How so?
Vinson: You know, well specifically she had been carrying a "Don't Tread on Me," flag and how ironic that was that she was trampled to death, and I think it just sort of painted this picture of her that just wasn't the picture that I knew her to be six months before she died. So I think I wanted to explain that a little bit from my point of view, and how suddenly she had made these changes.
Mohyeldin: Sydney opened a few Facebook post and started writing.
Vinson: I know many of you have heard the news about Rosanne Boyland. I'm so angry but mostly I'm just so sad and still in disbelief. What I want people to know is that she wasn't herself, and hadn't been herself since the summer. It is my belief that she was unwell and this lead her down a dark rabbit hole. I don't believe she saw herself as a rioter and a Trump mobster, but I fear that's how she will be remembered by some.
Mohyeldin: Sydney Vinson's fear has come true. No matter what her friends and family have tried to say, Rosanne's identity is irreversibly tied up with the pro-Trump cause. And now her death is at the center of a growing call to arms. From MSNBC, I'm Ayman Mohyeldin, and this is American Radical.
Mohyeldin: Episode 5: Monsters and Martyrs.
Rachel Maddow: But we're gonna start tonight with some breaking news from Washington. Tonight the January 6th investigation has voted to hold Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt. The committee--
Mohyeldin: It's been about a year since the insurrection, and the question of what did and didn't happen that day is starting to heat up all over again. Just a few days before this episode was set to drop, Congress erupted over former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and whether he should be held in contempt for refusing to testify in front of the House Select Committee investigating January 6th.
Maddow: This is the first time a former member of Congress has been held in contempt since the 1800's. So even if tonight had been just that, it would have been a big news story. But beyond that, the vice chair of the committee tonight, Liz Cheney, made news in her remarks.
Mohyeldin: Representative Cheney shared the contents of some of the text messages Meadows received on January 6th, and that he'd later turned over to the committee.
Liz Cheney: Quote, "Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home."
Mohyeldin: It turned out leading conservatives including Fox News hosts and even the president's own son had been texting Meadows to get President Trump to call the riot off.
Cheney: "This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy," Laura Ingram wrote. "Please get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished," Brian Kilmeade texted. Quote, "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol," Sean Hannity urged. As the violence continued, one of the president's sons texted Mr. Meadows, quote, "He's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol police tweet is not enough." Donald Trump Junior texted again, and again, urging action by the president.
Mohyeldin: These newly revealed texts made it clear that despite what some Republicans and commentators would say later, people on both sides of the political divide understood in the moment just how serious the riot was.
Stephanie Ruhle: (IN PROGRESS)--Fox News hosts, they show that all those attempts after the fact to White Wash the insurrection, to say it was Antifa, to say it was just unruly tourists, no big deal, all of those people knew that that was an absolute lie. They were panicked on--
Mohyeldin: You would think faced with all of this, watching rioters break into the U.S. Capitol, discovering these damning texts, members of Congress would be unified, that they'd all be able to agree on what actually happened. But the last year has made clear that that's anything but the case. Back in May, Senate Republicans actually blocked the formation of an independent January 6th commission modeled after the 9/11 commission.
Mitch Mcconnell: After careful consideration, I've made the decision to oppose the House Democrats sided and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th.
Chuck Schumer: Out of fear or fealty to Donald Trump, the Republican minority just prevented the American from getting the full truth about January 6th.
Mohyeldin: Ultimately House Democrats created a select committee instead. All but two House Republicans voted against it.
Leigh Ann Caldwell: January 6, it really changed the culture, it changed the relationships, it changed how different parties viewed reality.
Mohyeldin: That's NBC News Congressional correspondent Leigh Ann Caldwell. She was at the Capitol on January 6th, tracking Republican objections to the vote counts from the states where they claimed there was fraud.
Caldwell: This is usually a formality, this time it's going to be a fight however futile it is. What's going to happen today is that we are going to see two mahogany boxes enter the House Chamber--
Mohyeldin: A year later, Leigh Ann says you can feel the repercussions everywhere on the hill.
Caldwell: Democrats say that it's really difficult to work and to be in the same room with Republicans who don't acknowledge what actually happened on that day, and also don't acknowledge what the actually election results were, and are, still to this day.
And so when people say that they want Congress to work together, it's nice to say that on a policy level, but when they can't even agree on if the sky is blue, it's really hard for the two parties to come together and to get things done. And the relationships have just deteriorated on a personal level.
Mohyeldin: Democrats with the help of Republicans like Cheney are forging ahead, pursuing their inquiry, hoping to prove that what happened on January 6th was what it looked like. But it seems unlikely that they'll succeed in changing anyone's mind, especially considering that they're not the only ones trying to prove what happened that day. The pro-Trump right in Congress and in the media is busy writing it's own story, and Rosanne Boyland is right in the middle of it.
Steve Bannon: Another blockbuster story coming out of Gateway Pundit, Cara Castronuova, we've had her on before. Rosemary Boylan (SIC) her death on 6 January, explain to us what went on, what you found out, what's up in The Gateway Pundit, Cara.
Mohyeldin: That's the voice of Steve Bannon, the former Trump advisor who left the White House in 2017. He now has a popular podcast called Bannon's War Room, and on November 22nd, he brought on a special guest to discuss the death of Rosanne Boyland, not Rosemary like you just heard him say.
Bannon: What the government has said is that she died of a drug overdose, correct?
Cara Castronuova: Right. Yes.
Bannon: And--
Castronuova: And she didn't.
Bannon: And what you're positing because of this footage and other witnesses, that there may be more there than her dying of a drug overdose, correct?
Castronuova: Correct.
Mohyeldin: The guest's name is Cara Castronuova, an activist and writer with The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website. Castronuova had published a big story days earlier about Rosanne, and in that story, she made an explosive claim, that Rosanne had almost definitely been killed by the cops.
Castronuova: So there's a 90% chance she was killed by police, there's video out there that shows her being beaten with a stick by a police woman named--
Mohyeldin: And Castronuova's story had a main character.
Castronuova: I'm posting an interview with her sister tomorrow, and more follow up as well with other people--
Mohyeldin: Rosanne's sister, Lonna Cave. (PH)
Castronuova: Lonna, thank you so much for talking with me tonight. Why don't you start off with telling us a little bit about who Rosanne was, and what you're looking for.
Lana Cave: So thanks for having me. My name's Lonna.
Mohyeldin: That's a clip from a video interview between Castronuova and Lonna which Castronuova published on The Gateway Pundit on December 1st, the latest in a series of pieces about Rosanne. Here's Castronuova again.
Castronuova: She was very clearly beaten, very brutally-- I saw the video.
Mohyeldin: This is the crux of The Gateway Pundit's investigation into Rosanne's death, that there's a video of a police officer beating Rosanne, and that that video along with witness statements makes it highly likely that the police killed her.
Castronuova: I'm one of the first people who found the video, by a police officer--
Mohyeldin: The Gateway Pundit is asking similar questions to what we've been asking: how did Rosanne actually die? Are the videos from the scene of her death consistent with the medical examiner's autopsy report? But the difference is in the conclusions they're drawing.
Ben Collins: Grainy footage is a great thing for The Gateway Pundit. If they have clear footage of something, I'm not sure they're that interested in it. Grainy footage helps them build a narrative with what they can kinda see.
Mohyeldin: That's Ben Collins, you might remember him from our episode about Rosanne's digital rabbit hole. He's an expert on disinformation and the dark web atNBC News.
So what is the agenda of a series of articles like this? I mean, give us the big picture from somebody who has tracked Gateway Pundit for some time, you know, what is the agenda of The Gateway Pundit's investigation into Rosanne's death?
Collins: Right. So in the days after January 6th, you have to remember that the pro-Trump narrative was all over the place, because they couldn't figure out if they liked what happened. They couldn't figure out if these were true patriots storming the Capitol, or if it was just Antifa the whole time.
In fact, during the riot and the hours after the riot, initially these websites kept spinning this tale that this was Antifa, you know, dressed as Trump supporters going in. Some of these people were Trump supporters, but it's mostly Antifa agitating, fighting all these people.
But then, you know, the F.B.I. started releasing the names of these people, and where they were from, and these people were unrepentant Trump supporters, they were very pro-Trump. Some of these people we had already known from rallies, like the Qanon shaman for example.
He was at Qanon rallies and pro-Trump rallies for the last year. So they realized pretty quickly, "We can't do this Antifa thing, it's not gonna work." So then they started work-shopping narratives. So like, what can we do that makes it look like Trump supporters are the heroes here?
Mohyeldin: The narrative they landed on? These rioters were just defending themselves, and a victim of police violence, Rosanne Boyland.
Castronuova: We want an investigation, the body camera footage released, and the reason it's so important, besides obviously getting answers for this family who deserve answers, is because a lot of the January 6th guys being held right now with no bail, and a lot of them in solitary confinement, are being accused of swinging flagpoles and hockey sticks at this very police officer, who was seen beating this woman possibly to death. This is what they said, this is what they said they saw.
Bannon: But let's, yes. Wait--
Mohyeldin: In a way The Gateway Pundit's investigation into Rosanne Boyland wasn't really about Rosanne at all. It was about exonerating these rioters on trial, and people with influence were listening.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: Somebody needs to demand that the video for Rosanne Boyland be released.
Greene: Good afternoon everyone, thank you for joining us this afternoon as we release the report about the DC jail, and--
Mohyeldin: On December 7th, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene held a press conference along with representatives Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, and Paul Gosar, four of the most vocally pro-Trump members of Congress. The topic they wanted to discuss? A new report that Greene had produced after a jail visit to meet with accused Capitol rioters.
Greene: Unusually cruel, that's the title that we gave this report because this is the treatment that we found of the pretrial January 6th defendants being held right here in Washington, D.C. in the jail.
Mohyeldin: Part of what the members wanted to convey in start press conference was that only some of the video record had been released to the public, implying that the missing clips could exonerate some or all of the defendants. Greene wanted to talk about one case in particular.
Greene: I was shown video of Rosanne Boyland dying, and I talked to the man who is a January 6th defendant, and he's the one that gave her CPR. And I saw the video of that. And then I also saw the video of her being drug down the hallway, her lifeless body, and her shirt coming up and exposing her breast. That's on the video. The story of what happened to Rosanne Boyland, and her family deserves to know, that's all on that video. That video should be released.
Mohyeldin: We should note, this description does not match up with the video that Cara Castronuova was referring to in her story which we've seen. This video that Greene is talking about, we haven't seen, or heard about, anything like it, even though we've collected and watched dozens of hours of footage from January 6th.
We did contact Representative Greene's office, but haven't heard back. Greene isn't even the first member of Congress to invoke Rosanne's name in this context. Back in October, Representative Gohmert, who was with her at that press conference confronted Attorney General Merrick Garland about Rosanne's case.
Louie Gohmert: Was it a determination ever made as to who repeatedly struck Rosanne Boyland in the head with a rod before she died?
Merrick Garland: Again, I think this was a matter that was investigated by the U.S. Attorney's office, and--
Louie Gohmert: Well, there's a witness on video saying that it was a D.C. metro policeman, I didn't know if you'd been able to confirm or deny that. Well, on June--
Mohyeldin: Why do you think representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert are invoking Rosanne in these political spaces they now occupy?
Caldwell: It's a way to sow distrust in the government.
Mohyeldin: That's congressional correspondent Leigh Ann Caldwell again.
Caldwell: It's a way to sow distrust in the deep state according to them. You know, they've always, especially Louie Gohmert, he was on the fringe. And he was one of the few members of Congress on that fringe until the last couple election cycles during the Trump era when more, and more of these people have been elected. Like-minded members who are espousing and running on these campaign platforms of Qanon conspiracies.
Mohyeldin: And so to that end, is there also a Qanon caucus?
Caldwell: When you talk about the January 6th deniers, they're one in the same.
Mohyeldin: Yeah.
Caldwell: 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election, I wouldn't lump them all into the Qanon caucus--
Mohyeldin: Right.
Caldwell: Many of them know the reality, but they fear political retribution and sometimes physical retribution as well. So there's different levels of where Republicans stand. You have the most extreme, like the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Paul Gosar, the representative Boeberts, Matt Gaetz.
Mohyeldin: What Leigh Ann is saying is that something remarkable is happening in the Capitol. Extreme conspiracy theories are becoming normalized within the republican ranks.
Caldwell: I don't know what anyone's, like, true thoughts are, but it is a political winner for them despite the destruction of the institution, which is really what's happening here.
Mohyeldin: Ben Collins says he sees this too. In fact Ron Watkins, the guys who Qanon watchers like Ben believe was the mastermind of the conspiracy theory in the first place, is now running for Congress in Arizona. Watkins by the way denies being involved in Qanon.
Collins: A lot of people are talking about how Qanon went away. Well, reality is they built lifelong communications networks that influence votes, they influence their own media, they created their own media. A big Qanon saying is, "We are the news now."
And for a lot of people in this country that remains the case. They might not be branded "Q" anymore, but they are bigger than ever, and they are part of our democracy. They are running for office, and they are your neighbors, your friends, and they are going to be here probably for the rest of our lives.
Mohyeldin: For months after Rosanne died, her family felt like their best shot at getting answers was finding Rosanne's friend, Justin Winchell. So did we. And while we still haven't been able to get in touch with him directly, we did manage to learn more about him.
Archival Recording:: Swinging Richard's.
Mohyeldin: Yeah, hi, can I speak to Justin, please?
Archival Recording:: To who?
Mohyeldin: Justin.
Archival Recording:: Justin's not here.
Mohyeldin: We realized there was one lead we hadn't chased down in our search, the place where we thought he worked. A gay strip club in Atlanta called Swinging Richard's. Any chance you know when he'll be back?
Archival Recording:: Which Justin are you talkin' about?
Mohyeldin: Winchell.
Archival Recording:: Yeah, he's not here.
Mohyeldin: Okay, do you know when he'll be back?
Archival Recording:: Well, I don't know.
Mohyeldin: All right. I appreciate it, buddy.
Archival Recording:: Bye, thanks.
Mohyeldin: The guy on the phone wouldn't say when Winchell might be in, but it seemed like he knew his name. And so as we were in production on these final episodes, we sent one of our producers, Eva Ruth Moravec, to Georgia.
Eva Ruth Moravec: Okay. It is December 10th, Friday evening, local time in Atlanta is 9:30 p.m., and I am parked outside a club called Swinging Richard's. Here we go.
Mohyeldin: Eva Ruth didn't get far past the door that Friday, after she talked to the manager for a few minutes, he got suspicious. And asked her if she was the person who had called the night before.
Moravec: He asked me, "So is this about the Capitol?" And I said, "Yes. I wanted to talk to him about that."
Mohyeldin: But she stuck around to try again the next night.
Moravec: I'm with NBC News, and I just wanted to try one more time to see if Justin Winchell was here.
Cb Jones Ii: He's not workin' tonight. He only works, like, three nights a month.
Moravec: Okay.
Mohyeldin: It turned out the man at the door on Saturday was CB Jones II, the owner of Swinging Richard's. He said Justin Winchell does work there, just not often.
Moravec: Okay. And do you know him?
Cb Jones Ii: A little.
Moravec: Okay. Is there anything you could tell me about him? I'm doing this story, I'm with NBC, we're doing this story on the friend that he went with to the Capitol.
Cb Jones Ii: Oh, the girl that died?
Moravec: Yes, sir. And we've been tryin' to find him just to find out how--
Cb Jones Ii: You guys--
Moravec: --he is.
Cb Jones Ii: He's kind of reclusive.
Archival Recording: He is reclusive.
Moravec: Is he?
Cb Jones Ii: I mean, not in a bad way. I mean, he's not, like a mountain guy or somethin'. He's just like a bartender and he ownssome kind of artistic, creative business.
Moravec: Oh really? Do you know how that all affected him? Is he doing okay? Is he--
Cb Jones Ii: You know, he never spoke to me about it.
Moravec: Really?
Cb Jones Ii: Not even once. Well, he did say something, he said it was horrible.
Mohyeldin: At first, Jones hadn't known that Winchell had gone up to the Capitol, or that his friend Rosanne had died.
Cb Jones Ii: Somebody told me about three or four months after the incident, and I said, well, he was kind of a political novice.
Moravec: Right.
Cb Jones Ii: Not an activist, but more like observer. He'd been in some foreign countries when they had revolutions, and stuff--
Moravec: Oh, really?
Cb Jones Ii: Yeah. He was, like, he's real creative, like a writer, and I think he just went up there to observe.
Mohyeldin: He listed off some of the countries he said Winchell had visited including Vietnam and India.
Cb Jones Ii: And he was, like, one of these people that wanted to see where the action was, wherever there was, like, somethin' goin' on he would travel. And I think he writes. He's secretive, he won't tell you as much, but I think he writes on the side. So I don't know if it was for a book or what.
Mohyeldin: Jones says Winchell told him once that he was working on a political thriller, and as far as Jones knew, Winchell had been a Democrat.
Cb Jones Ii: I was personally kind of shocked that he would be in at a Republican rally for Trump, because he's just really liberal. He's not really liberal, I'm--
Mohyeldin: It was genuinely surprising to hear Justin Winchell described as a dedicated liberal, a global traveler, it just isn't how we'd be thinking of him. And it drove home two things: first, our frame for what happened might be totally wrong.
It now seems just as possible that Rosanne radicalized Justin Winchell as the other way around. The other point is this: no one person gets full control of another person's narrative. And that's the thing that's been so hard for Lonna and Justin Cave.
Mohyeldin: So we're on our way to Justin and Lonna's house for what will probably be our last interview with them. And we've kind of noticed that there's been a slight shift in tone as this story and this reporting winds down a little bit.
Lonna Cave: There's a lot of people that can't look past the Trump portion of it to see that she was a real person, that she was a sister, she was a daughter, she was an aunt, she was a good person, she wasn't a bad person. And so I think--
Mohyeldin: We're back in Lonna and Justin's office. Things are a little tense. Lonna's been upset about some of our questions about whether the family could have intervened to prevent Rosanne's radicalization. She's also not thrilled about some of our efforts to speak to Rosanne's friends. Her parents Cheryl and Brett were supposed to come over to talk with us again, but they canceled at the last minute. Do you regret reaching out to me to help tell this story?
Cave: I mean, if I'm being completely honest which I think as everyone knows that's me, this morning I really was regretting. Like, what have we done, are we doing the right thing, are they just trying to make Rosanne out to be some bad person? You know, I just felt vulnerable and exposed.
Mohyeldin: Lonna said she had been feeling conflicted a lot in the last few weeks. She had been investigating her sister's death, but hadn't seemed to be making all that much progress. She was talking to us a lot, but couldn't be sure what story we were telling about Rosanne. She said she was torn about talking to The Gateway Pundit because on the one hand the article had helped the family raise more than $30,000 for legal fees.
Castronuova: What people could do is really reach out to her family, and even donate. I would suggest that you donate, even if its $5, $10 towards their legal expenses. They shouldn't have to pay--
Mohyeldin: But on the other hand, she said she doesn't actually agree with The Gateway Pundit's thesis.
Cave: I don't think that the police killed her. I think that whatever happened happened. I don't know, you know, if it was some kind of chemical irritant, both sides were spraying it, so who knows.
Mohyeldin: She told us she did the interview simply because she wants the maximum possible exposure for Rosanne's case, but now she's feeling squeamish about the association.
Cave: I don't want her to go down as some crazed Trump fanatic, terrorist, person. Because that's not the person that she was. And when my daughters grow up and learn about this in history class, I don't want them to automatically tie Rosanne with this terrorism event.
Justin Cave: You know, for me in regards to January 6 and all of the people that died, and injured up there, both Trump supporters and the Metro and Capitol police, we owe it to them, and to ourselves to find out who really is behind this, and how it happened.
Because this was, you know, an act of terrorism. And like I said, we don't think that Rosanne was a terrorist. But January 6th was definitely an act of terrorism, and I think that the damage that's been done from it has the potential to be generational.
Mohyeldin: I've been covering terrorism and terrorists my whole career, and this is a common theme. In my experience, there's a gap between how a family sees their loved one, and how the world sees them. They can acknowledge something bad has happened, even that the person they care about did something wrong, but the labels can be hard to accept.
J. Cave: Rosanne wasn't into white supremacy, or terrorism, she was into Harry Potter. You know, she liked Harry Potter.
Mohyeldin: This is often the difficult part. Because Rosanne is both a victim and an agent. She did get taken in my dangerous conspiracy theories designed to entrap vulnerable people like her. But she was also an adult, a 34 year old woman who of her own volition packed her bags, got into a car, and drove up to D.C. She decided to walk to the Capitol, to move with the crowd towards the tunnel, and so whose fault is it really that Rosanne is dead? That's something both of Rosanne's sisters, Lonna and Blaire, keep asking themselves.
Cave: I've read those texts a thousand times, but I guess just knowing what I know now, and reading 'em again, it's, like, what the fuck man. If I would have known obviously, like, things would have been different. I mean, I guess I do have some, like, survivor's guilt even though I wasn't there. Like, I should have done more. I don't know what you could even do though, honestly. I asked her not to go, I told her I think it's a bad idea. But short of, like, holding her hostage, you know, there's not really too much you can do.
Blaire Boyland: Obviously if I would have known it would have gotten to this point I would have confronted her directly. But at the time I was just afraid to. And then, yeah, it just ended up being too late to talk to her about it.
Mohyeldin: Do you have any regrets about it?
Boyland: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Sorry, I feel like I'm going to cry if I start talking more about that. But. Sorry.
Mohyeldin: No, that's okay.
Boyland: Of course, of course I do. If I would have known, I would have done everything I could have. I just didn't know it was going to get to that point.
Mohyeldin: American Radical was reported and produced by Preeti Varathan with Eva Ruth Moravec, Ursula Sommer, and Abe Selby. Additional production help from Olivia Richard and Bob Mallory. Original music by Brian Robertson and MJ Hancock. Sound design by Rick Kwan.
Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Reid Cherlin is our executive producer. Madeleine Haeringer is our head of editorial. Special thanks to Jesse McGinty, (PH) Robin Gradison, Alex Ziccardi, Nick Offenberg, Soraya Gage, the Boyland Family, and all of Rosanne's friends and acquaintances who helped inform our reporting.