My Oldest, Dearest Friend

Summary

Deep Cover: The Family Man

Episode: "My Oldest, Dearest Friend"

Released: June 22, 2026
Host: Jake Halpern

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Episode Overview

In this special installment of Deep Cover: The Family Man, host Jake Halpern shares a recorded conversation that didn’t make it into the regular season: an interview with Mike Walton, described by Keith Giamanco (the “Boonie Hat Bandit”) as his oldest, dearest friend. Through Mike’s memories and reflections, the episode explores the nature of secrets and friendship, and what it means when those closest to us are living double lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction and Context (03:11-04:53)

• Jake Halpern introduces the episode as a bonus conversation with Mike Walton, an old friend of Keith Giamanco, whose double life as a bank robber shocked his family and friends.
• Mike and Keith grew up in Florissant, Missouri, and remained close over the years—even living near each other as adults.
• Jake frames the conversation as offering “a lot of insight into Keith Giamanco, both as a man and as the boy he once was.”

2. Subtle Clues Before the Arrest (04:53-06:31)

• Mike recounts how Keith called twice, asking to borrow $100, always quickly paying him back.
  • “Sure, Keith, come on up. Came up, gave him $100. And he says, I call you when I got your money. About a week later, he called me and paid me my money back.” (04:56 – Mike Walton)
• When Mike visited Keith’s house, he noticed a stack of $100 bills.
  • Keith claimed it was from “day trading,” and Mike believed him.
  • “Apparently he wasn’t doing good on day trading. He was doing good on bank rob[bing].” (05:57 – Mike Walton)
• Hindsight made these mundane moments seem like warnings.

3. The Nature of Male Friendship and Silence (06:31-08:48)

• Jake discusses how male friendships can be characterized by things left unsaid, with loyalty and pride often overriding intimacy.
  • “Friendship is a curious thing, especially male friendship, where often much goes unsaid. … Why do we sometimes not see the things that are right in front of us?” (06:31 – Jake Halpern)
• Mike reminisces about childhood shenanigans, clarifying the only “life of crime” he saw from Keith as a kid was stealing biscuit dough.
  • “We weren’t in there stealing money or nothing. … Well, I guess we did steal some biscuit dough.” (08:58 – Mike Walton)

4. Keith’s Struggles Remained Hidden (09:48-11:29)

• Mike was aware that Keith’s wife had left and he was raising his daughters alone, but says he “had no inclination that they weren’t making it.”
• Mike expresses bewilderment that Keith never confided about his troubles:
  • “I don’t know if he thought I wouldn’t help him out…Maybe he was too proud to ask. … If he needed a little help, I could have helped him.” (10:52-10:57 – Mike Walton)

5. On Being “Blindsided” by a Friend (12:25-13:17)

• Mike, an accomplished car salesman, prides himself on reading people quickly, but reflects he never suspected Keith’s secret.
  • “One thing, in car sales, you got 30 seconds to read somebody... and I couldn’t read Keith. … I couldn’t read him to, to be robbing the bank, you know, so he was good at not expressing.” (12:31 – Mike Walton)
• Jake explores how even those closest to us can be hidden in plain sight.

6. Learning the Truth (19:40-21:14)

• Mike learned about Keith’s arrest from his sister, who saw their family on the news.
  • “I got a call from my sister and she’s like, turn on the news. They’re interviewing dad right now. Keith got arrested for robbing banks. He’s the Boonie Hat Bandit.” (19:50 – Mike Walton)
• He and his wife scrutinized news footage in disbelief.
  • “I had to look at these pictures they were putting on TV...I can see the resemblance.” (20:50 – Mike Walton)
• The shock of discovering his friend’s double life led Mike to reevaluate all their past interactions.

7. The Aftermath: Questions, Guilt, and Unanswered Mysteries (21:31-31:35)

• Mike retrospectively pieces together whether there were clues (“the stack of hundreds,” “borrowing money”), and admits, “I kind of wish I would have [pried], but I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if I did because he had already started robbing the banks.” (22:18 – Mike Walton)
• On Keith’s demeanor: “He was calm, cool and collective...There was no, there. He was calm, cool and collective.” (24:00 & 24:29 – Mike Walton)
• Mike describes the media harassing him for a statement, but refusing to speak badly about his friend:
  • “They kept calling me, wanting me to do an interview...I said, I’m not going to sit and talk bad about a friend of mine that had an issue. … I don’t care what he did. I wasn’t gonna say bad stuff about him.” (26:02 – Mike Walton)
• Mike reflects repeatedly on not really knowing, even now, what drove Keith.
  • “I can’t figure out what made him go that way...I can’t justify what he did in any means, But I know this. … He did his time…You do the crime, you pay your time.” (27:02 – Mike Walton)
• He is torn—acknowledging the trauma Keith caused, but also believing the punishment may have been excessive.

8. Forgiveness, Understanding, and Letting Go (28:12-31:35)

• Mike articulates both sympathy and frustration at Keith’s choices, especially that it cost him the chance to watch his daughters grow up.
  • “It made me think, you know, why would you go to…do something that you’re going to try to help your daughters with, knowing if you get caught, you’re not going to have your daughters, you ain’t going to get to raise them no more.” (29:47 – Mike Walton)
• Mike admits he has not and will not press Keith for an explanation:
  • “I’m not one to pry. … I don’t live in the past. That’s one thing I won’t do. … Living in the past is not good. I’ll visit there, but that’s about it.” (30:11-30:28 – Mike Walton)
• When asked for closing thoughts, Mike simply insists, “He’s a good person, man. … I would love the opportunity for him to sit and tell me, you know, what made him do what he did...But...I don’t live in the past.” (30:41 – Mike Walton)

9. Final Reflections on Friendship (31:35-33:54)

• Jake reflects on Mike’s loyalty, noting that not pressing for confessions may be “surprising, but maybe also wise,” and points to a “fundamental truth about friendship,” especially among men:
  • “Sometimes friendship’s not always about knowing. It’s about showing up and being there to loan your buddy 100 bucks when he asks for it, no questions asked.” (31:35 – Jake Halpern)
• Jake also invokes Thoreau’s line, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” to encapsulate the emotional undercurrent of the story (15:40).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Apparently he wasn’t doing good on day trading. He was doing good on bank rob[bing].”
  (Mike Walton, 05:57)
• “Friendship is a curious thing, especially male friendship, where often much goes unsaid. ... Why do we sometimes not see the things that are right in front of us?”
  (Jake Halpern, 06:31)
• “I worked at a local Chevy dealer... ended up being their top truck salesman... and I couldn’t read Keith.”
  (Mike Walton, 12:31)
• “I don’t care what he did. I wasn’t gonna say bad stuff about him.”
  (Mike Walton, 26:42)
• “He’s a good person, man. ... I don’t live in the past. That’s one thing I won’t do. ... Living in the past is not good. I’ll visit there, but that’s about it.”
  (Mike Walton, 30:41-30:28)
• “Sometimes friendship’s not always about knowing. It’s about showing up and being there to loan your buddy 100 bucks when he asks for it, no questions asked.”
  (Jake Halpern, 31:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:11 — Jake introduces Mike Walton and sets up the episode's theme
• 04:53 — Mike recounts lending Keith money, “day trading,” and unrecognized clues
• 06:31 — Discussion of male friendship, loyalty vs. intimacy
• 09:48 — Childhood stories and how little Mike knew about Keith’s struggles
• 11:29 — Mike’s thoughts on why Keith never reached out for real help
• 12:25 — Mike on being blindsided despite being good at “reading people”
• 19:40 — Mike learns the truth from his sister and reacts to the media coverage
• 21:31 — Mike’s retrospective analysis of clues he missed
• 24:29 — On Keith’s calmness and Mike’s realization he didn’t really know him
• 26:02 — Mike on avoiding the media and protecting his friend’s reputation
• 27:02 — Mike’s struggle to understand Keith and views on punishment
• 28:12 — Emotional cost for Keith’s family and questions on his motivations
• 30:11 — Mike on not pressing Keith for answers and not living in the past
• 31:35 — Jake’s concluding reflection on friendship and letting go

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Episode Tone and Style

• The conversation is reflective, honest, and unsentimental, with straightforward, sometimes stoic Midwestern language.
• There is an undercurrent of bewilderment and regret, especially from Mike, but also a quiet loyalty and refusal to judge.
• Jake Halpern’s narration is empathetic, thoughtful, and philosophical, especially in tying individual experience to broader insights about masculinity and friendship.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a nuanced, poignant look at friendship, pride, and secrets through the lens of a man blindsided by his oldest friend’s criminal double life. Through Mike Walton’s memories and Jake Halpern’s deft framing, “My Oldest, Dearest Friend” asks powerful questions about how well we can ever truly know—even love—the people closest to us, and what it really means to be there for a friend.

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For listeners interested in the psychology of secrecy, the complexity of male friendship, and the collateral damage of living double lives, this episode offers both gripping narrative and genuine insight.

Transcript

[Interviewer]

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[Jake Halpern]

Pushkin. Hey, everybody, it's Jake. When we're making these shows, we talk to a lot of people, but we can't always include everyone's voices or everything they said. So what you're about to hear is a conversation that did not make our regular season, but which really gave me a lot of insight into Keith Giamanco, both as a man and. And as the boy he once was. Because this is a conversation with one of Keith's childhood buddies. In fact, Keith introduced him to me as my oldest, dearest friend, a man named Mike Walton. Mike and Keith grew up together in Florissant, Missouri. They ran around with the other neighborhood kids, getting into various shenanigans. Later on, as adults, they ended up living very close to one another. Mike lived just a stone's throw away from the house that the police raided the night that Keith was arrested. Keith's arrest floored Mike in some ways. He's still scratching his head with questions. But when he looks back on that time when Keith was on his crime spree, there are a few moments that stick out. Small moments, the kind that didn't seem important then, but now, looking back, feel like clues or perhaps even omens of what was to come. When I spoke with Mike, he told me about one such moment. It occurred during the year leading up to Keith's arrest. At the time, Mike was working as a salesman at an auto dealership. One day, he got a call from

[Mike Walton]

Keith, and he's like, hey, Mike. He goes, I was in Philadelphia or somewhere with his girlfriend over the weekend. He goes, I left my wallet. He goes, you think I can borrow 100 bucks? And I worked at the dealership. I was making really good money. I said, sure, Keith, come on up. Came up, gave him $100. And he says, I call you when I got your money. You know, about a week later, he called me and paid me my money back. Then he asked me again to borrow some money a couple weeks later.

[Jake Halpern]

So again, Mike loans Keith a hundred bucks, and again Keith gets the money to pay him back. At that time, Keith was living in the little shoebox house, the one he moved into after the foreclosure. Keith was sleeping on the couch so his daughters could each have their own room. Mike didn't know much about Keith's financial troubles. Keith tended to keep Problems tucked away out of sight, even from old friends. Anyway, Mike swings by Keith's house to pick up the money he's owed. And Mike still remembers the scene when

[Mike Walton]

I went over there and there was a table sitting there, a coffee table, a couch and stuff, and he had a stack of hundreds on the mantle there. And he's like, here, you know, grab your hundred. And he handed me one. I was like, cool, man. I said, no problem. I asked him, you know, what are you doing? I'm day trading. And I thought he was doing good on day trade, you know, and apparently he wasn't doing good on day trading. He was doing good on bank rob.

[Jake Halpern]

Mike never suspected what was really going on at the time. Like so many people around St. Louis, he and his wife were following the story of the boonie hat bandit. But it never occurred to him, not even for a second, that the man behind those robberies was his friend Keith. Why hadn't Keith opened up to Mike about the trouble he was in before he robbed those banks? I mean, you figure if Keith needed help, wouldn't he turn to his oldest, dearest friend? Friendship is a curious thing, especially male friendship, where often much goes unsaid. Being a guy myself, I have some sense of this. So what does it say about us as men that sometimes we prize loyalty and pride over intimacy? And why do we sometimes not see the things that are right in front of us? I'm Jay Kalpern, and this is Deep Cover the Family Man. Today's episode. My oldest, dearest friend. Mike and Keith grew up together. They knew each other's families. In fact, listening to Mike's memories of their childhood, it almost sounded like they were family.

[Mike Walton]

Keith really liked my dad because my dad, you know, did what he could for him because he knew he didn't have one here. And I ain't saying he doesn't have a daddy. He had a dad, but we never heard from him. We never seen him. I never met him.

[Interviewer]

What was his mom like?

[Mike Walton]

She was a cook at Snooks, the grocery store. And she was great. Marge was her name. And shoot, I. I loved her, just like my mom. She was a very, very pleasant lady to be around, let's say, you know, but she was a single mom, you know, so didn't really get to see her much. I was always over there with Keith, and we'd stay out of her hair.

[Jake Halpern]

Mike and Keith's friendship has that easy quality that says you were there for it all, the good, the bad, and the mischievous.

[Mike Walton]

You know, Come on, We were growing up in this neighborhood, and we broke into one house down at the end of the street. We were all little kids, you know, they were on vacation, and we knew they were on vacation. And we got some biscuits out of the ice box. We weren't in there stealing money or nothing. We were just in there being kids and taking the little kids across the street with us. You know, there was like four or five of us went in this house and just tore it up. That we didn't steal nothing, though. Well, I guess we did steal some biscuit dough. That was about it.

[Interviewer]

That was about as much of a life of crime as you'd seen Keith participating.

[Mike Walton]

Absolutely. That was the only prime. I participate. I seen him participate with me. And, you know, if he did stuff with other people after that, I never knew about it.

[Jake Halpern]

So they got into a little trouble as kids, stealing biscuit dough from the neighbor's house. Good, clean, Midwestern fun. Think the Little Rascals. As they grew up, they remained friends. Keith's wife Becky, even watched Mike's children for a period of time. But they weren't as close as they once were. And Mike never knew about Keith's financial problems.

[Mike Walton]

I knew him and Becky had split up, that she wasn't living with them no more. And it was just him and the daughters. But I had no inclination that they weren't making it, you know, there. He had a nice house, and I go over there and wasn't like. There wasn't food and stuff.

[Interviewer]

So you had no idea really, that he was in financial trouble?

[Mike Walton]

No, he didn't put that out at all to me. You know, he told me he was a day trader and what I thought he was doing good.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think, Mike? I mean, like, you obviously are someone that he. That he trusts and that he knows you. You have a long old friendship. What's your. What's your best bet for?

[Jake Halpern]

Why?

[Interviewer]

Why? I mean, you of all people. It seems there would be someone that he could tell that he was having a hard time.

[Mike Walton]

I mean, I don't know if he thought I wouldn't help him out, you know, I was in a position at that time, you know, if he needed a little help, I could have helped him. Maybe he was too proud to ask. I don't know. I just don't think he would ever came and said, hey, Mike, you know, I need a thousand dollars. Hey, Mike, I need a hundred is one thing, but, you know, I need a thousandth another thing. Then I would have started prying, you know, hey, what's going on. What are you doing?

[Jake Halpern]

That makes perfect sense to me. Keith probably understood that a hundred dollar ask could fly under the radar, but a thousand dollar ask, not so much. Mike says that he was well positioned to help his friend financially because he was making good money as a car salesman.

[Mike Walton]

I worked at a local Chevy dealer, started as a porter for five years and worked my way into sales and I ended up being their top truck salesman for a bunch of years. That's why I said, you know, I was making great money. I, I could have helped if he, you know, if he really came to me and said, hey, Mike, you know, this is the deal. I haven't gave him the money. Here, pay me back when you can. I would have kept them from robbing a bank if I could have helped him.

[Interviewer]

So you were good at your job. You were the top, top truck salesman?

[Mike Walton]

Oh, yeah, for a few, few years

[Interviewer]

doing that line of work. I think you would probably have to be pretty good at reading people.

[Jake Halpern]

Am I, am I right about that?

[Mike Walton]

Oh, yeah, I'm a great guess. One thing, in car sales, you got 30 seconds to read somebody. I could tell you in 30 seconds if I was going to sell a car or not. And I couldn't read Keith. It's still, to this day, it makes me think, you know, how good was that? Because, yeah, I mean, I. 30 seconds, I knew if I was selling a car or not. How many years did I know Keith before I, you know, I couldn't read him to, to be robbing the bank, you know, so he was good at not expressing.

[Jake Halpern]

We've talked in this series about how parents hide things from their kids to protect them from hard truths about the world and sometimes to protect the parents from hard truths about themselves. But it's telling that Keith was doing that with Mike, too. I mean, this is the man who Keith described as his oldest, dearest friend, whose dad was like a stand in for Keith's dad. Their history, it went deep. I think that if there was anyone Keith could level with and reach out to, it'd be Mike. But I also get their silence. I grew up in Buffalo and I knew guys like Mike and Keith. I knew teachers, coaches, and other dads who sounded a lot like them when they hung out. They had this ease with one another. You could feel the history between them. Sure, sometimes they were awkward, the way guys can be, but you could also sense among them a kind of stoic, gruff kindness, a brotherhood that came with shoveling each other's walkways and showing up at funerals and driving each other's kids to school. Growing up, I admired a lot of men like this, but I didn't often see them set down their bottle of Labatte's Blue after a Bills game and just talk about their deepest fears or their shortcomings. I mention all of this not because I think there was any kind of failure here in Mike and Keith's friendship. I bring it up because the context of their friendship feels both familiar and illuminating to me. It helps me understand Keith's mindset leading up to the crime spree. It helps me put myself in his shoes, even if just for a little bit. I imagine feeling squeezed and scared and so alone that even with my closest friend, I had to put on a show of being happy and trouble free. And I'm reminded of that Henry David Thoreau quote the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. We'll be right back.

[Mike Walton]

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[Jake Halpern]

One day back in September 2008, Mike learned the truth. That his longtime friend Keith had been living a double life.

[Mike Walton]

I was at work at this local dealership and I got a call from my sister and she's like, turn on the news. They're interviewing dad right now. Keith got arrested for robbing banks. He's the Boone Hat Bandit. So I was selling a car and I told these people, I said, here, give me a minute. I went downstairs where I was working and turned the TV on and they're interviewing my sister and my dad and stuff, you know, And I was like, wow, how do you wrap your head around that?

[Jake Halpern]

When she says that

[Mike Walton]

it was tough, you know, I, I couldn't Believe it at first. That's what I said. Me and my wife had to go back and really look at these pictures they were putting on TV. And you know, back in 08, the cameras, I guess, wasn't that great, but they had their blurry pictures of them and stuff. And me and my wife, we were looking at the TV after he got caught. And it's like, man, I can see the resemblance.

[Interviewer]

Would you have any. If someone at the time asked you, like, who do you think the Boony Hat Bandit is? I mean, who would you have thought

[Mike Walton]

it would have been? I would have had to look at the pictures better, you know, because I wouldn't. One thing I did never think that it was a friend of mine. Not one time did I think the Boonie Hat Bandit was somebody I would have known. It was a shock to me, to say the least.

[Jake Halpern]

Suddenly, Mike is looking at all of his memories of Keith through an entirely different lens. The borrowed money, the stack of hundreds, this weird set of facts that kind of added up, but not really.

[Mike Walton]

I mean, when I walked in that house, there was no. Nothing that would make me think, oh, man, this guy must have just robbed a bank. Look at all these hundreds. That wasn't what I thought. I mean, the way he talked about day trading, he didn't tell me he wasn't doing good in it. Obviously he wasn't going to tell me that or else then I would have probably questioned, hey, where'd you get these hundreds? But the two. Two times he borrowed that money from me, I got two Chris hundred dollar bills back. So it was like right after he. He borrowed it from me and then had to rob a bank to pay me back?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, like, how did he explain the fact that like one week he's asking you to borrow 100 bucks and then when you go to repay him, he's got a stack of hundreds.

[Mike Walton]

Well, like I said, the first time his girlfriend. He said his girlfriend was in Philadelphia or something, he came back and he forgot his wallet. That was the first time. And the second time, I just gave him the money. You know, I didn't pry, let's say. And I kind of wish I would have, but I guess it wouldn't have mattered if I did because he had already started robbing the banks.

[Narrator/Host]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Did he seem nervous at all?

[Mike Walton]

No, not at all. Not whatsoever. You know, and if I'd have known he was Robin Banks, I sure as hell wouldn't have went to his house thinking, man, I'm gonna get over there. And then they're gonna raid him, you know, I would have never went over there.

[Interviewer]

So he was just like, calm as could be when he went over there.

[Mike Walton]

Yeah, he was on his computer doing his thing.

[Interviewer]

Do you think that, like, he had some, like, off switch in his brain where he could, like, compartmentalize it or something? Because, like, honestly, Mike, if I had just robbed the bank and I had, I think I'd be a hot mess. I'd be nervous about getting caught and everything.

[Mike Walton]

I'd be up walking the windows and all that stuff. No, he was just Keith sitting at the computer, you know, here, here's your money, you know. What are you doing now, Keith? I'm day trading. And I don't know a whole lot about that day trading stuff, so I just thought he was, you know, doing his job. And when I. I went over there, I mean, he's on the computer doing something. I didn't look to see, you know, maybe he had another map up of the next bank he was going to get or something. I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Do you think that his brain works differently than yours, that he would be able to be that calm like that?

[Mike Walton]

It must have, you know, I mean, he wasn't never took off nervous to me, Even when he was borrowing a hundred dollars from me, I didn't think nothing about it. Nothing. It was Keith, you know, Keith I've known since I was three years old. There you go, buddy. Pay me back when you get it. And then there was no there. He was calm, cool and collective.

[Interviewer]

Did it make you feel like you might not really know this guy as

[Mike Walton]

well as you thought you did at that time? You know, it's obviously at that time, you know, I knew Keith, but I didn't know him that good to where I would have thought he would rob a man.

[Jake Halpern]

There's this old Icelandic saying. Roughly translated, it goes, keen is the eye of the guest. The idea being that sometimes being a stranger means you see things more clearly. Because being overly familiar with a person or place, well, it can kind of put you to sleep so that you miss things so often. We believe that intimacy means knowing someone well. But in some ways, the opposite is true. Intimacy means not knowing someone or seeing important aspects of who they are or who they have become. Because after a while, we just stop looking. Just like we stop looking at the artwork that hangs in our living room or the crack on our bedroom wall. Basically, we stop paying attention to the details in our lives, especially if those details and their implications might invite unpleasant questions. But after Keith's arrest, Mike was being forced to see. And just like Marissa and Elise, the media was now hounding him to speak.

[Mike Walton]

They kept calling me, wanting me to do an interview with them on. On the news and stuff. And I told them, I said, no, I'm not going to do it. You know, I said, I'm not going to sit and talk bad about a friend of mine that had an issue. You know, everybody has issues. And I knew it would come out, you know, what was going on and why. And obviously I didn't get to speak with Keith after he got arrested. But no, I wasn't gonna. I don't care what he did. I wasn't gonna say bad stuff about him, you know, and that's all they wanted. They didn't want to hear none of the good stuff. They blew my phone up. I mean, blew it up. I had to block so many numbers. It was a joke.

[Jake Halpern]

I think Mike did feel protective of his friend, but I also wonder if part of the reason he didn't speak to the media was that he himself was struggling to make sense of Keith's actions. What could he say? Even now, all these years later, he says he still can't fully understand it.

[Mike Walton]

I can't figure out what made him go that way, because I got three kids and I. I couldn't have fathom doing what he did. But I wasn't in the position he was in at the time. You know, I. I can't justify what he did in any means, But I know this. You know, you do the crime, you pay your time, and as far as I'm concerned, you know, he did his time. He did over his time, probably. Yeah. I think they. They might have run him into the ground a little bit on the sensing, because there's people out here killing people, getting out of jail quicker than he did, which I think isn't right. You know, he didn't kill anybody, but I know he terrorized a lot of people. When you rob 11 banks to get caught on the 12th one, it's, you know, at least 12 people that you traumatized that I know of. And I mean, I don't know where to go from that, you know.

[Interviewer]

Did you feel when you found out that he had been kind of living this double life, did it unsettle you at all?

[Mike Walton]

It bothered me that he was capable of doing something so stupid, you know, that's the way I look at it. I mean, I got three kids, and there I couldn't have done nothing like that, knowing that if I got caught, I was going to prison. There's no way I would have done anything like that. You know, I ain't saying I was the. The best person in town. I mean, I had my doubles and dabbles too, you know, don't get me wrong. But when it came down to my kids, you know, I. They were my kids. I would. Had to do anything I could for him, and that's the way I felt Keith must have felt when he was robbing these banks, that. That was his best resort. But it wasn't. I know he didn't think it was the right thing to do, but I can't believe he thought that was the way he needed to. To handle things. It didn't make me think less of them. It just. It made me think, you know, why would you go to. To do something that you're going to try to help your daughters with, knowing if you get caught, you're not going to have your daughters, you ain't going to get to raise them no more. That's the only thing that really gets me is, you know, how did you not think that? Why would you not think you weren't thinking about your daughters, trying to keep them in school? That's the way I feel about it. You. You were thinking about something different because what he was doing was going to take him away from his daughters. And, you know, he didn't get to see him graduate. He didn't get to go to his mom's funeral. He didn't get to do a lot of things because of his decision.

[Interviewer]

What do you think he was thinking

[Mike Walton]

about, if not his daughters? I wish I knew. I really don't. I don't know. He wasn't thinking as far as I'm concerned, you know. How can you say you were thinking?

[Interviewer]

Have you talked to Keith since he got out about

[Mike Walton]

why he did what

[Interviewer]

he did or what his thinking was?

[Mike Walton]

No. No, we haven't really sat down now. I'm not one to pry. You know, it. I don't live in the past. That's one thing I won't do. You know, living in the past is not good. I'll visit there, but that's about it.

[Interviewer]

Anything else that you think that is that I didn't ask about, that you think that's worth that? Stings out in your memory, Stands out in your memory about Keith when you think about all this.

[Mike Walton]

He's a good person, man. I just, you know, something had to click in his head that I. I can't figure out what it was to make him do what he did. And like I said I would love to the opportunity for him to sit and tell me, you know, what made him do what he did. But, you know, he's only been out of prison since September, and I know he's lived with that for 18 years, you know, in prison, thinking about all that stuff. And he'd even call me on the phone, and when he called me on the phone, we'd get to talk, you know, whatever length the phone would last in the prison. 10 minutes or whatever, 20 minutes. And, yeah, I wasn't asking them then neither. You know, like, here, I just want to talk about good stuff. Yeah, I'm not going to. Like I said, I don't live in the past.

[Jake Halpern]

In one of my conversations with Elise, she told me that at a certain point, she just had to stop trying to make sense of what her father had done. She'd spent years turning it over in her mind, searching for an explanation that would make it all add up. But the harder she looked, the more trapped she felt by the question. Eventually, she realized that if she wanted to move forward and if she wanted to have any chance of rebuilding a relationship with her dad, well, then she had to let it go. I sense something similar here with Mike. Mike was and is a loyal friend. He stood by Keith through all those years in prison. And even though he was curious and maybe even unsettled about Keith's explanation, Mike says he never pressed the matter, which to me seems a bit surprising, but maybe also wise, because sometimes I still think those old days, dads and teachers and coaches that I knew back in my Buffalo days understood some fundamental truth about friendship. That sometimes friendship's not always about knowing. It's about showing up and being there to loan your buddy 100 bucks when he asks for it, no questions asked. This episode of Deep Cover the Family man was produced by Isaac Carter and Amy Gaines McQuaid. It was edited by Daphne Chen. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorski. Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Guerra. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Fact checking by Annika Robbins. Special thanks to Karen Shakurji, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Jake Flanagan, Corrine Gilliard Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, and Greta Cohn. I'm Jake Halpern.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Narrator/Host]

In our new series American Genius, we tell the stories of three great writers who changed the way business works in America. Our first episode is about Benjamin Franklin, who among many other things was a best selling business writer. Take a listen. He's writing this much later in his life, consciously creating this image of himself. And I do want to emphasize how unusual this model is at the time, this self made man myth. Because you don't want to be self made. It's low class to be self made. You know this idea that we have today is the opposite, right? And it comes from Franklin. Today there is the derisive term nepo baiting.

[Jake Halpern]

Well, exactly right.

[Narrator/Host]

And these days if you are a billionaire, you had better have a Benjamin

[Mike Walton]

Franklin story about starting in a garage,

[Narrator/Host]

coming up with the idea from nothing. And here is Benjamin Franklin inventing it right before our eyes. This has been brought to you by Odoo. To listen to more of our American Genius series, listen to Business History. New episodes release every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike Walton]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.