The Release | Episode 6

Summary

Deep Cover: The Family Man — "The Release" (Episode 6)

Host: Jake Halpern
Release Date: June 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

This season finale of Deep Cover: The Family Man traces the aftermath and emotional reckoning following Keith Giamanco’s 17-year prison sentence for a string of bank robberies that shattered his family. Journalist Jake Halpern guides listeners through Giamanco’s release, the wounds left on his daughters—Elise and Marissa—and the complex journey from trauma and secrecy to forgiveness and a new beginning. The episode centers on not just societal justice, but personal reconciliation: What does it mean for a family to rebuild after devastation? Who determines how much a person should pay for their mistakes?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Family Marked by Secrets and Consequences (03:17–06:25)

• Keith’s Sentencing and Appeals:
  Keith is sentenced to 20 years and initially pins his hopes on the appellate system, filing his own appeals from prison—all of which fail.

  “On that particular day, when that sentence was handed down, I was relieved that that portion of it was over. And I still had this air of confidence…” — Keith Giamanco (04:25)

• Impact on Daughters:
  Elise excels academically but Marissa spirals into addiction and periods of homelessness, feeling abandoned and disappointed by her father’s choices.

  “It's a feeling of disappointment in my father for not taking the higher road.” — Marissa (06:25) “Our relationship…ended up being strained because of my drug use and partying.” — Marissa (03:42)

2. The Darkness of Addiction and Maternal Betrayal (09:55–16:48)

• Marissa’s Life in the ‘Trap House’:
  Marissa describes living with her mother, Becky, in an abandoned, dangerous neighborhood, their mutual descent into drug use, and Becky urging her to prostitute herself to afford drugs.

  “If you want to fix your money problem, I have a solution...sleep with these guys…easiest way to make money.” — Marissa recalling her mother’s advice (12:01) “The drug use became my personality because…this is what we do. This is who we are on this block, you know?” — Marissa (11:22)

• Breaking the Cycle & Attempts at Redemption:
  Marissa gets clean at 24 and tries to save her mother, culminating in a poignant moment of mutual apology and forgiveness.

  “I held her face in my hands in that trap house...and I said, ‘If I can do it, you can do it, too. I love you, Mom.’” — Marissa (14:15)

• Becky’s Decline and Death:
  Elise visits her gravely ill mother in the hospital, sings her favorite song, and says goodbye—discovering later that Becky held deep, unexpressed love for Keith.

  “I always sang her Sunday Morning by Maroon 5…I sang that to her for the last time, and I said goodbye.” — Elise (17:06) “I used to find…love letters to my dad in her purse years later…there’s no silver lining. It is just straight tragedy.” — Elise (18:19)

3. Surviving Prison, Finding Love (22:54–28:08)

• Prison Reality and Transformation:
  After two years in county jail and transfer to a maximum security prison, Keith learns to adapt, reflect, and change.

  “Prison is something to be endured.” — Narrator (Jay Halpern) (23:24)

• Relationship with Caroline:
  Keith meets Caroline, a teacher, inside prison. Their relationship becomes a rare source of hope. They eventually marry in prison, attended only by his daughters and a pastor.

  “She certainly didn’t want me for what I had, because I had nothing…” — Keith (25:30) “We got in there, it was like nothing else mattered.” — Caroline (27:37)

4. Release and Reunion: The Bittersweet Road Back (29:33–34:53)

• Preparation for Freedom:
  Elise undertakes a cross-country drive, filled with anticipation to be present at her father’s release.

  “I’ve been preparing 17 years for this…just ready, you know. I’ve been ready since the day he went in.” — Elise (29:33)

• First Moments of Freedom:
  Their first reunion is emotional, joyful, and tinged with disbelief.

  “I couldn’t wait to get out. I jumped out while the car was still kind of moving…am I dreaming?” — Elise (31:11) “Elise just boiled out of the car and went running to him and gave him a great big hug...so sweet to see them reunited.” — Caroline (31:27)

• Symbolic Swimming Hole:
  Keith’s first wish is to swim in his favorite spot, representing a new start—and a literal immersion back into life and family.

  “It might be hard…not being immersed in water for 17 years…The first thing I wanted to do was go swimming.” — Keith (32:58) “It just felt like a full circle moment...so relieving to continue the story of us together.” — Elise (33:38)

5. Rebuilding: Forgiveness and Moving Forward (37:08–41:10)

• Marissa’s Recovery & Ongoing Struggle:
  Marissa, now clean for 11 years and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, is candid about her therapy and growth.

  “Finding that out and getting a diagnosis...is the first step in forgiving yourself…maybe I’m not in a world that was built for me, but we’re not alone.” — Marissa (38:08)
  "I hope I can do for him what he didn’t do for me. I hope I can take care of him." — Marissa (38:42)

• Elise’s Perspective on Forgiveness:
  Elise decides to let go of her anger, focusing on the present.

  “The older I get, the why just doesn’t matter as much…that’s my dad’s burden to carry...I think I'm sometimes looking for...sense where things were senseless.” — Elise (40:44)

6. Keith’s Reflections and Acceptance (42:50–45:03)

• On Self-Forgiveness:
  Keith reflects on the importance of forgiving himself, recognizing the damaging impact of his lies, and the real desires of his family.

  “I have had people forgive me, but first I had to forgive myself...if you can't put that behind you, you're never going to be able to live a free life.” — Keith (42:50) “At one point, I was in good financial position, but I wanted to keep that appearance. And that is a lie…we would have rather had you.” — Keith (44:05)

• Narrator’s Closing Reflections:
  Jake Halpern draws parallels between Keith’s story and the universal experience of parenthood—the desire to protect and perform for your children, even when honesty might be the more loving path.

  “Being a parent is kind of a performance...that instinct to pretend, it just grew and grew and grew until it swallowed everything...We pretend because we want them to love us and believe in us even when they really shouldn't.” — Jay Halpern (45:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I didn’t expect to make it to where I am now…so I'm just grateful to be able to experience the rest of my life the way that it's supposed to be. So there's a reason why I'm still here. I just might not have found it yet.” — Marissa (39:18)
• “The why is moot. It happened. Things happen.” — Elise (40:44)
• “If you can’t put that behind you, you’re never going to be able to live a free life.” — Keith (42:50)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:17 — Keith on legal impasse during trial
• 04:25 — Keith’s reaction to sentencing
• 06:25 — Marissa on disappointment with her father
• 09:55 — Marissa leads the host through St. Louis “trap house”
• 12:01 — Mother’s urging to prostitute herself
• 14:15 — Moment of forgiveness between Marissa and her mother
• 16:56 — Elise’s final hospital visit with her mother
• 18:19 — Discovery of unsent love letters from Becky to Keith
• 23:04 — Keith describes jail and learning to survive
• 24:55 — Caroline on falling for Keith
• 27:37 — Prison wedding reflections
• 29:33 — Elise preparing for Keith’s release
• 31:11 — Elise and Keith reunite
• 32:58 — Swimming hole scene post-release
• 38:08 — Marissa’s therapy and diagnosis
• 40:44 — Elise reflects on letting go of the "why"
• 42:50 — Keith on forgiveness
• 45:03 — Narrator’s closing musings on parenthood, performance, and honesty

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Final Thoughts

This deeply personal episode delivers a raw and empathetic exploration of regret, healing, and the limits of understanding. Through candid, sometimes painful conversations, listeners witness the ways trauma, love, and forgiveness intersect within families touched by crime and loss. The reunion isn’t a fairytale ending but a bittersweet step toward new beginnings—grounded in acceptance and hard-earned perspective.

To learn more: Keith and Caroline’s memoir, “Banknotes: The Updated True Story of the Boonie Hat Bandit,” is mentioned during the episode for those interested in the full story.

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[End of summary]

Transcript

[Elise]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Pushkin. Previously on Deep Cover. I don't think there's any question but that had he not been caught on this one, he would have robbed another bank and another one after that and another one after that until he did get caught. But he never thought he would get caught.

[Keith Giamanco]

We had a disagreement on strategy, and when you come at impasse on a disagreement agreement in strategy, you should be afforded the opportunity to change counsel. And my life is on the line, not theirs.

[Elise]

I was pretty distraught, realizing that this could be a couple decades, and I started thinking about everything that was going to happen in my life, that he

[Marissa]

was going to miss me and my sister. Our relationship ended up being strained because of my drug use and partying, and she ended up going to live with her boyfriend, and I ended up being in this house with no electric and no water.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Not long after his state trial, Keith Giamanco was back in the courthouse to learn exactly how much time he would serve. The judge set the total at 20 years.

[Keith Giamanco]

On that particular day, when that sentence was handed down, I was relieved that that portion of it was over. And I still had this air of confidence in the appellate system that I would get some relief.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

This is Keith the optimist talking, still believing that there had to be a way out, that maybe his sentence or even his state conviction could be overturned. He had his arguments. He turned himself into a jailhouse lawyer, drafting appeal after appeal on his own. It was a long process, but in the end, none of it really went anywhere. From his prison cell, the days began to blur, and life on the outside continued without him. He got updates from his daughters. They were now in their early 20s. Elise was thriving, double majoring in psychology and Russian, studying abroad in Moscow. Even Marisa was having a much harder time struggling with addiction and, at times, homelessness. And Keith was stuck on the other end of it, writing letters and passing time between calls.

[Keith Giamanco]

There was some anger and discontent expressed about the way that their life was going in certain periods and certain issues that all people have in their lives, and they need their parents to be there. And the issue, of course, is me not being there for these things. And are we going to talk through this, or are we just going to separate?

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Once upon a time, Marissa and Elise thought they knew their father. Then they learned that he'd been living a double life. And in some ways, ever since then, they'd been trying to make sense of what he did and why he did it.

[Marissa]

I would say, dad, making those decisions to rob the banks, you know, and knowing that mom was not in a good place mentally with her addiction, it is a feeling of disappointment in my father for not taking the higher road.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Marissa says the hardest part is thinking about how many times he repeated the same bad decision making process. Ignoring the risks.

[Marissa]

Just like, as you're doing it, it's like, how can you not. As you're robbing the bank, as you're handing the note over to the teller. And, you know, it wasn't just one bank. So at one point, are you, like, you know, really thinking about those dire consequences? And what disappoints me is that I believe he saw those dire consequences and chose to act again.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

He claims he was engaged in some sort of thinking where I think, in his words, were manifesting success. Like some sort of magical thinking or something.

[Marissa]

Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. I honestly, I. I don't know where his head was like, and where, like if he was even in any type of reality or if it was all just like. Like a game. Like, I don't. I really don't know what was going through his head at the time. And I. I still wonder to this day, you know, like, why would you keep going?

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Both Marisa and Elise have had a lot of time to think. So too has Keith. And they all knew that someday Keith would be released and walk back into their lives. And then what would Keith have arrived at? Some deeper understanding of himself and his actions. And as for his daughters, what would it mean to have Keith back in their lives? How do you understand, forgive and love a parent whose strategy for protecting you was once the very thing that nearly destroyed you? I'm jay kalpern, and this is deep cover the family man. Our season finale, the release. Keith was facing almost two decades in prison, and he worried about what would happen in his absence, especially with Marissa. He told me that he wished he could have been there to save her from hitting rock bottom. But the truth was that Keith didn't exactly know what the bottom looked like for Marissa. And neither did I until she showed me. What part of St. Louis is this called?

[Marissa]

This is North City, St. Louis, north side. This is a part of St. Louis that is mostly abandoned warehouses. A lot of it is burned out or tornado damage or, like, just places you can tell that nobody's been for a long time.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

It's definitely got a kind of zombie feel. This is where their mom lived for many years after she moved out.

[Marissa]

So the house is this gray one.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

This one here?

[Elise]

Yeah.

[Marissa]

You can pull up

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

starting when she was 19 years old, Marisa would end up staying here off and on for years. She referred to this place as the trap house.

[Marissa]

When I got here, actually, the first thing she asked me was, do I have any money for drugs?

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

And

[Marissa]

then I just went into the living room and sat by myself. It's like, if you didn't have something that she wanted, then she didn't really want anything to do with me. Like, I almost felt like I was a burden just sitting there unless I had money or drugs to give her.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Marissa says it wasn't long before she just fell into the rhythm of the house, doing heroin with her mother regularly.

[Marissa]

The drug use became my personality because it was like, this is what we do. This is who we are on this block, you know? And once you get into that mindset, it's just hard to break from it. I might have to smoke a cigarette outside.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Sitting outside the trap house, Marissa recalled all kinds of memories, Some of them pretty dark. She told me that it wasn't cheap to support her drug habit back then, and she was broke. So one day her mother tells her,

[Marissa]

if you want to fix your money problem, I have a solution for you. If you want to make easy money, then you have to sleep with these guys. She's like, it's the easiest way to make money quickly.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

This was apparently how her mother was getting.

[Marissa]

By now, I realize, like, I could have walked away, you know, But I didn't know that at the time. As a. As a teenager and being sick on those drugs, it changes what you will and will not do. And I went down a very dark path because of it.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Seeing this house and hearing Marissa talk about the life that she fell into here, it made me think again about Keith and his choices. And it raised the question that I've been grappling with since the very beginning. Why. Why would Keith do what he did, take such a risk, jeopardize the welfare of his kids? Especially when he knew that their safety net wasn't really a safety net at all, but was more like a trap. Marissa remembers just how bad it got with her mom.

[Marissa]

She just. She retreated into a hole so deep and just became like this creature that I know that I didn't want to become because it was so dark and so far away from any feeling that was light, you know? So I was determined to not become like my mother.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

And that determination, it paid off. In 2014, when Marissa was 24 years old, she went clean, stopped using drugs entirely. She tried to convince her mother to do the same.

[Marissa]

I Held her face in my hands in that trap house. And I said, honey, if I can do it, you can do it, too. I love you, mom.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

And what did she say to that?

[Marissa]

She said, I know. And then she got up and walked away.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

But after having that conversation, they talked again. And Marissa says that even to this day, she can picture this moment like it's still playing out right in front of her.

[Marissa]

It was in a darker room. There was a lamp on. And she was sitting on the bed with that lamp shining on her face. And I was standing above her, and she looked up at me, and she said, marissa, I'm sorry. She said, everything that I've put you through, she said, I didn't mean to do this to my own daughter. She's like, I should have never used with you. I should have never given you a needle. And I looked in her eyes, and for one of the only times in my life, I said, this woman feels guilty. I could feel the guilt. And I said, I love you, mom. It's gonna be okay. I forgive you. I forgive you, mom.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

During this time, Elise was away at college and studying abroad. Still, she did her best to stay in touch with her mother. Periodically, she came back to the trap house to visit to check in on her mother. She and her mom still had a few things in common, like they both loved the band Maroon 5. And there were a few moments when it looked like Becky might turn her life around. But really, these were just flickers of hope, Brief pauses in what was a steady, slow decline.

[Elise]

January 10, 2016. I went and visited my mom for the last time.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Becky was in the hospital and. And gravely ill after having a stroke. Elise went to see her,

[Elise]

and they had her hooked up to oxygen, and she couldn't breathe on her own or, you know, eat on her own. She was hooked up to all sorts of machines. The doctors told us that she didn't have any brain activity. It's very quiet in the hospital. And I. I sat with her and held her hand, which still had nail polish on them. I don't know who she got to do that for her. And I always sang her. Sunday morning by Maroon 5. Sunday morning, rain is falling. I sang that to her for the last time, and I said goodbye to her.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Elise told me one other thing that I really wasn't expecting to hear. She said that even after all these years, her mother still had feelings for Keith.

[Elise]

I used to find, like, love letters, half written love letters to my dad in her purse years later that she just never sent to my dad. In prison that would just be like, I love you, I loved our life and there's no silver lining. It is just straight tragedy.

[Marissa]

With that,

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

After their mom passed, Marissa and Elise went to a Maroon 5 concert. They sat way up in the nosebleeds and when the band played Sunday morning, they shouted out the words together in a raw, full throated goodbye to Becky Giamanco. As kids, we hold our parents up on a pedestal because they seem larger than life, like characters in a fable. And then as we grow up, we begin the process of reimagining them not simply as parents, but as human beings, ordinary flawed mortals who are doing their best, or trying to anyhow, in a lot of messy and difficult situations. For Elise and Marisa, this process was complicated. By the time their mom passed, they'd come to see her and accept her for who she was. But with their dad, it was hard for that relationship to evolve because he was in prison. He was there, but not there. And so a very important part of their life remained suspended, hanging in the air, unresolved.

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[Marissa]

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[Caroline]

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[Marissa]

Really?

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[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Keith started his incarceration with two years at the St. Louis County Jail. This is where he got his first taste of life as an inmate.

[Keith Giamanco]

It was a dose of reality to be in a place where there was a lot of fear. You could cut the tension in the air. It's a good place to learn to keep to yourself.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Keith learned how to get by, how to keep his head down, not invite trouble. As he put it, prison is something to be endured. And then in 2012, after he'd been incarcerated about four years, Keith met someone. Someone who helped him figure out some things that he'd been struggling with pretty much his entire life. At the time, Keith was in a maximum security state prison a few hours from St. Louis, and he started working as a teaching assistant in a classroom with a woman named Caroline. Caroline was a former high school English teacher who'd lost her job in the Great Recession. Now she worked in the prison. As the weeks and months went by, Keith started to open up to Caroline. He talked about how he'd spent so long pretending to be someone he wasn't, pretending that he had more than he actually did. But here in prison, he couldn't hide the realities of his situation or what he'd done. Nor did he want to. And the crazy part for Keith at least, was was that Caroline still seemed to accept him exactly as he was. They became close friends, and eventually Keith realized that he had feelings for her. Romantic feelings. When he confessed them to Caroline, she says, it came as a surprise.

[Caroline]

My head was spinning. This was absolutely nothing that I had ever envisioned in life. I didn't want to be involved with anybody, let alone say, oh yeah, hey, a maximum security inmate. You sound like my guy. But I knew he Was. And because he was more than an inmate.

[Elise]

He's Keith.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Caroline told him that she shared his feelings, and for Keith, this was a revelation.

[Keith Giamanco]

She certainly didn't want me for what I had, because I had nothing except for me, which is probably the greatest compliment anybody could ever have.

[Caroline]

I think that's one of the lessons that. That Keith really needed to learn as a human being, because he had gone for so long thinking that he needed to have things to seem valuable to other people. And he lost everything going to prison and found out that, hey, people still love him, even though he can't provide something for them.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

From that point on, Keith and Caroline saw themselves as a couple, Though they're both quick to say there was never any physical intimacy while Keith was incarcerated, Just an understanding that they had found each other and that she would wait for him, even though his release date was still more than a decade away. Elise remembers when, on one of her visits to prison, her father first told her about Caroline.

[Elise]

He explained that he was in love with her and told me a little about that story, and I actually thought it was so sweet. I'm pretty sure I cried. And I was just so happy for him. And I also was relieved, too, because I felt like I had been such an emotional and mental and economical support for my dad that now I had this other place in the game that could take some of that burden off of me, because this is somebody who's choosing to be with my father out of love, not out of obligation.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

In 2017, about five years after they first met, Keith and Caroline decided to get married. They arranged to have a ceremony in the prison visiting room.

[Caroline]

Even we had thought, is it going to be icky getting married in prison? Because that's not exactly your choice venue. And, you know, when we got in there, it was like nothing else mattered.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

The guests included just Marissa and Elise and the pastor from Caroline's church.

[Keith Giamanco]

It was like nobody else was there except for the pastor, her, I, and the girls.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Caroline told me that Marissa and Elise got into the spirit of things and even spontaneously started singing going to the chapel. There was no wedding cake, but still these two people had found one another and made this commitment, Even though Keith would still be locked away for years. I have to imagine this scene. It must have been bittersweet for Keith's daughters to see their father so happy, to see him so settled into himself at last. But the unspoken question was, why did the cost of this moment need to be so high? Why did there need to be such heartbreak and destruction before Keith Giamanco could at last find this kind of happiness. Keith's release date was set for September of 2025. He ended up serving 17 years of his 20 year sentence and was released on parole. He was 61 years old. Marissa couldn't be there for the actual day of Keith's release. She planned to visit him a short while later. But Elise was determined to be there for the big day.

[Elise]

People were like, how are you preparing? I was, I've been preparing 17 years for this. Probably over prepared in some way. Just ready, you know, I've been ready since the day he went in.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Elise lives in California now, where she's the director of a boys and girls club. And she decided to take some time off of work, hop in her car and drive all the way to Missouri for his release. She cruised across the west through Wyoming and Nebraska, blasting Bob Dylan and Taylor Swift.

[Elise]

I was ecstatic, running on adrenaline the entire time I was driving, music blasting, top of my ears, ready to go. I booked really nice places for myself because I knew that my life was about to change again. And I was celebrating. I was already celebrating on the road. I was joyous, overwhelmed with joy and screaming like, we're almost there, almost there. Like, I did this, we did it.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Elise planned to meet Caroline the night before so they could spend a little time together.

[Elise]

Caroline and I spent that evening chit chatting about our future plans. And I was like, aren't you so excited to be with your husband and just to hang out with your husband? And she was jazzing me up too, like, yay, your father's getting out. Like, look at this moment for our family. Like, this is the moment we've been waiting for.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

The next morning, they went to the prison together. Caroline drove, Elise was in the passenger seat.

[Elise]

I couldn't wait to get out. I jumped out while the car was still kind of moving. When I saw him standing outside the prison, I was like, am I dreaming? You know, am I dreaming seeing him standing here?

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Caroline remembers this moment too.

[Caroline]

When we pulled up to the front door, the car hadn't even stopped rolling yet. And Elise just boiled out of the car and went running to him and gave him a great big hug. And they were crying and I had tears. And it was just so sweet to see them reunited.

[Elise]

And I just said, we did it, dad, we did it. And we broke down in each other's arms. And then Caroline came and hugged my dad. And then we all hugged each other and we got in the car and got out of there as quick as we could off of the prison property.

[Keith Giamanco]

Well, getting out was, of course, it was a wonderful, for lack of a better term, experience to get out. And with Caroline and Elise meeting me, it was just, you know, it was a jubilation and elation. The feeling was.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

That same day, Keith, Caroline, and Elise drove to a cemetery in Eminence, Missouri, because that's where some of Keith's family members were buried. And he wanted to pay his respects. And then they all went swimming at Keith's favorite swimming hole.

[Keith Giamanco]

It might be hard for people to imagine, especially people who like to swim, not being immersed in water for 17 years. I mean, there's nothing. There's no bathtubs in prison. There's no swimming pools. So that was an interesting experience. And it was something that I had said for years, was the first thing I wanted to do was go swimming.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

This swimming hole, it's where Keith taught his daughters how to swim. The area is lined with these cliffs that you can jump from. So Keith and Elise climb the cliffs together.

[Elise]

It was my first experience post release of him being physically there to encourage me and to help me physically get up this cliff, because he went before me and he reached back and helped me up with his hand. And it felt like I had had my father back and that I had this level of support back. And it was such a freeing thing for me. And it just felt like a full circle moment. Here we are back at the swimming hole, back where I learned to swim. Back where we had so many memories, and it just felt so relieving to continue the story of us together.

[Marissa]

Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?

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[Marissa]

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[Caroline]

I think kid is walking up the slide.

[Marissa]

Really?

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[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

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[Elise]

Yep.

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Do you even know what a cold snack is?

[Keith Giamanco]

I do.

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[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

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[Marissa]

It's snackable, shareable, and perfect for all occasions.

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[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

As you might remember, when I first met Marissa, we jumped right in a car and set off on a road trip through the geography of her family's past. It ended in a quiet place. We pulled over at the edge of a lake in rural Missouri. It was December, cold, but clear, with the kind of winter light that sharpens everything. The water, the trees, even the air. We stayed in the car, engine off, just sitting there, looking out at the lake. Marissa has now been clean for 11 years, and she's slowly been building a new life for herself. It's been a long road. She met a nice guy who treats her well. She went to therapy, got a diagnosis that she has borderline personality disorder, started taking medications. She wanted to make sure that I mentioned this. It's part of who she is and what she's overcome.

[Marissa]

I still go to therapy to this day and just finding that out and getting a diagnosis and knowing that your brain is different is the first step in forgiving yourself and realizing like, hey, maybe I'm not in a world that was built for me, but we're not alone. And that's what it comes down to.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Marisa says that despite everything her father did and the impact that it had on her life and all of their lives, she still wants to be there for him.

[Marissa]

Oh yeah, I love him. I'm like, if anything was wrong, I'd drop what I was doing and be right there. You know, that's my dad. I hope that I can do for him what he didn't do for me. I hope I can take care of him.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

As we continued to sit there and stare out at the lake, marveling at the beauty of this perfect winter day, I asked Marissa if she ever thought she'd get to this point in her life with the trauma of the past behind her.

[Marissa]

No, I didn't expect to make it to where I am now. Like, I honestly thought I was gonna die in addiction when. When I was at my worst points. So I'm just grateful to be able to experience the rest of my life the way that it's supposed to be. So there's a reason why I'm still here. I just might not have found it yet.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

As for Elise, she told me that she's fully forgiven her father for what he did, that she'd let it go, not because it didn't matter, but because she prefers to focus on what's in front of her now and what's still possible between them. She said that holding on to anger, even for a few minutes, feels like a waste of the time that she has left with him. Elise told me that years ago, in the wake of her dad's arrest, she kept thinking about the reasons behind his actions, why he'd done it. She says at the time, she got stuck in an endless loop of wondering. I asked whether that loop was still running in her head or if it had finally stopped.

[Elise]

The older I get, the why just doesn't matter as much. Partially because I think that that's my dad's burden to carry. And that's my dad's question to actually ask. Because really, the. The why is moot. It happened. Things happen. And I think I'm sometimes looking for, again, reasons where things were unreasonable, sense where things were senseless.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

I very much appreciated what Elise was saying, that in order to find some contentment in the present and in order to love her father, she had to stop trying to make sense of it all. This, she concluded, and perhaps rightly so, was Keith's burden. And this made me wonder. In all the time that Keith's had to think about what he's done, everything he'd set in motion when he walked into that first bank back in 2007, had he finally figured out why he allowed himself to make the choices he'd made? Right after Keith was released from prison, he moved in with Caroline to the cabin where she lives in the Ozarks, to that remote spot Where I first met him, Keith and Caroline had been married for eight years, but they'd never spent a single night together. Now they finally had a chance to begin their life as a couple. The transition hasn't been entirely easy. Where they live is very remote. Caroline works as a high school English teacher more than an hour away. She leaves in the morning and comes back late in the afternoon. So most days it's just Keith. He does his best to keep the house up, feed the goats, look after the dogs, do the laundry, and have dinner waiting for Caroline when she returns. There's a lot of time for Keith to reflect on the past.

[Keith Giamanco]

I have had people forgive me, but first I had to forgive myself for what I've done. I'm sorry for what I did to many people along that path. But the fact of the matter is, if you can't put that behind you, you're never going to be able to live a free life.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

When you look back on your decision to rob the banks now, does it seem delusional to you?

[Keith Giamanco]

I get why I made the decisions, but yet I think the result that I expected might have been somewhat delusional. I get why I did it, but I'm not going to sit here and say that I would do it. It's the same way again, because I wouldn't. Yeah, obviously there would be a huge issue there if I said that I would. I'd do it all over again. No, I wouldn't.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Keith says there are so many things that he'd do differently now, including simply asking for help. He says he didn't do this before out of the misguided notion that he needed to be this provider for his daughters.

[Keith Giamanco]

At one point, I was in good financial position, but I wanted to keep that appearance. And that is a lie. It's a lie to the people around me. So that's the part of me that at that time was really ugly. Many people have expressed to me, including my own children, that, look, none of those things were as important as having you at home, and we missed you at home. And we appreciate the fact that you wanted all those things for us and yourself, but we would have rather had you. And that really hits home.

[Narrator (Jay Halpern)]

Early on, I thought of Keith as this sphinx, as if beneath his composed exterior, he was guarding the secrets of his own intentions. He was a man who often spoke in these midwestern niceties, these Keith isms, designed to keep people at an arm's length. And I kept on having this feeling like there was some distance, some mysterious, invisible space between Keith and the world. And I felt that if somehow I could just enter that space, I'd finally understand who Keith really was. But now I see him differently. I see Keith as a man who perhaps is a mystery to himself. Because sometimes we prefer not to walk down the creaky steps into the dank basement of our subconscious for fear of what we will or won't find. And so we just lock the basement door and hope for the best. In reporting this story, I kept coming back to the fact that I myself am a dad of two boys who are now almost exactly the same age as Keith's kids were back when he robbed those banks. And in some very small way, I get what Keith did. Because being a parent is kind of a performance. When they're young, you act like you have the answers. When they get older and start to see the dangers in the world, you tell them it's gonna be okay, even when you're not so sure. And then when they move out, you fight back the tears and just pretend you're fine. When I think about Keith, it feels like that instinct to pretend, it just grew and grew and grew until it swallowed everything. As parents, we pretend for all kinds of reasons, noble and ignoble alike. We pretend out of pride. We pretend because we love our kids. And though it's hard to admit, we pretend because we want them to love us and believe in us even when they really shouldn't. For those of you who'd like to read more about Keith's story, he and his wife Caroline have written a memoir called Banknotes the Updated True Story of the Boonie Hat Bandit. You can find a link in our show description. Deep cover the family man is produced by isaac carter and amy gaines mcquaid. Our show is edited by karen shakurji. Our executive producer is jacob smith. Sound design 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. Our story consultant was james foreman, jr. Special thanks to daphne chen, sonja gerwitt, morgan ratner, kira posey, jake flanagan, corinne, gilliard fisher, eric sandler, christina sullivan and greta cohn. Additional thanks to lucy sullivan, jordan mcmillan, alexandra garrettone, kalalea, jason mcquaid, alyssa chen, alex meyer tompkins, matt brown, hillary zeitz, michael, charlotte sims, travis dunlap, kasia sebastian, lucien, milo and gus. I'm jake halpern. Hear episodes of Deep Cover the Family man early and ad free by subscribing to Pushkin. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM plus Pushkin subscribers can access ad free episodes or full audiobooks and exclusive binges of other true crime podcasts throughout the year.

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[Caroline]

Take a listen.

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[Elise]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.