Deep Cover: The Family Man | The Raid

Summary

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Deep Cover: The Family Man | The Raid — Episode Summary

Podcast: Hot Money: Agent of Chaos
Episode: Deep Cover: The Family Man | The Raid
Host: Jake Halpern
Production: Pushkin Industries & Financial Times
Date: June 9, 2026

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Overview

This gripping episode launches a new season of “Deep Cover” exploring the real-life crime saga of Keith Giamanco, an unassuming suburban father whose desperate attempts to keep his family afloat during the Great Recession spiral into a double life of crime and secrecy. Through in-depth interviews with Giamanco’s twin daughters Marissa and Elise, host Jake Halpern reconstructs the night of a dramatic police raid and the devastating family secrets that came to light — setting the stage for a story about how well we truly know those we love, and the lies we tell to protect one another.

The episode’s driving question: “How do ordinary families become entangled in extraordinary secrets, and what does it mean for the children left behind?”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Night of the Raid: A Family Shattered (01:38 – 06:08, 36:03 – 42:32)

• September 18, 2008: The Giamanco twins, Marissa and Elise, recall being jarred awake by pounding on the door, bright lights flashing through the small home, and encountering a police/FBI raid with search warrants.
• Marissa’s Law & Order instincts kick in, asking for a warrant at age 17.
  • “I think it might have just been watching Law and Order…Like, you gotta tell me why you coming into my house, dude?” — Marissa (03:54)
• As federal agents turn the house upside down, their dog Lucky lunges at officers and Marissa slips outside to smoke and quietly worry about her own stash of weed in the closet.
• The girls’ confusion and disbelief is palpable; they speculate wildly about what happened to their otherwise loving, sports-obsessed dad.
• Amid the chaos, the sisters try to reach their father — only to hear from officers that “he’s in a safe place…he’s just in some trouble.” (04:17)
• After the raid, the sisters wait by the phone for his promised call. When it comes, their father remains cryptic:
  • “I’m fine, I’m safe. I’m just in trouble…but there was no actual explanation on that first phone call. It was just, ‘Hey, I’m safe, I love you, everything’s gonna be okay.’” — Marissa (39:26)

2. Childhood in Suburbia: Facades and Cracks (12:00 – 25:37)

• The ‘Perfect’ Family Home: Marissa and Jake return to their old family house, nostalgically recalling the 1950s-like routine — mom Becky’s home-cooked meals, PTA involvement, dad Keith working blue-collar jobs and arriving home tired but present, tender memories of holidays and tradition.
• “My favorite memory of my mom is in the kitchen, seeing her put her energy and that love into the food…” — Marissa (13:55)
• Parental Unraveling: The facade cracks as arguments and instability surface: Becky struggles with addiction, erratic behaviors, and eventually, her departure from the household.
• The Consequences of Secrets: Keith tries to protect the girls by withholding painful truths — defining their mother's absence simply as “she’s sick”— but this leaves them lost and questioning their own perceptions.
  • “So much of parenting is built on lies…we all harbor secrets. It’s just that some secrets are much bigger than others.” — Jake (07:14)

3. Sibling Dynamics and Coping (19:01 – 23:57)

• Twins in Survival Mode: Marissa and Elise’s tight bond, established as infants, becomes their anchor. Elise plays organizer and mouthpiece, trying to keep order as their world destabilizes.
• “I think he [Keith] tried to protect us…I say partially because I think many folks forget that children are smarter than we think they are. And they're so observant.” — Elise (23:32)
• The girls manage by creating checklists and leaning on each other, learning to navigate unpredictable terrain.

4. The Mysterious Double Life (32:23 – 36:03, 34:45)

• Financial Inconsistencies: Keith enrolls the girls in private school and flashes hundred-dollar bills at restaurants — but misses crucial tuition payments.
• Sudden Moves and Absences: The family’s abrupt downsizing and Keith’s frequent, unexplained absences puzzle the twins, spurring dark humor about their dad “building swing sets in his spare time.”
  • “With him, it was pure Scooby Doo mystery. Those are her words.” — Jake (34:45)
• Refusal of Help: Even as the girls offer to contribute financially, Keith keeps telling them to “save your money. We’re fine.” Clearly, they’re not.

5. Aftermath and National Attention (40:38 – 42:32)

• Following Keith’s arrest, Marissa and Elise watch news coverage featuring surveillance footage of their dad’s car (“the Dad mobile”) and realize with shock how public their family’s crisis has become.
• “This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever. I immediately started feeling like I was in survival mode…everything that had existed prior in my reality is now, I’m finding out, untrue.” — Elise (42:06)
• TV cameras descend on their home, and the girls are left alone — no parents, no answers, catapulted into young adulthood by trauma.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “So much of parenting is built on lies, starting with the stories we tell about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And then there are the lies of omission. We all harbor secrets. It’s just that some secrets are much bigger than others.”
  — Jake Halpern (07:14)
• Marissa’s instinctive request for a warrant:
  “If I’m being deadass, like, you gotta tell me, why you coming into my house, dude?” (03:54)
• Elise on losing trust:
  “It made me angry. I didn’t trust anyone after that. What is actually reality, is everyone lying to me about who they…” (44:34)
• Jake on the aftermath:
  “...the girls had no parents in the picture, no one to pay the bills, no one to answer to but themselves. And this. This was just the beginning.” (42:32)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:38] — Recounting the night of the raid through Marissa’s eyes
• [04:17] — Realization the FBI and police are involved, and the cryptic reassurance that “your dad is in a safe place”
• [13:11] — Return to the childhood house and reflection on happier times
• [22:16] — Parents’ separation and the first major family upheaval
• [25:37] — Becky’s secretive visits and the growing sense of familial secrets
• [36:03] — The night of the raid retold from Elise’s perspective
• [39:26] — The cryptic and emotional phone call from Keith post-raid
• [40:38] – [42:32] — Watching the news, realizing the scale of their dad’s criminal entanglements, and the family’s new reality

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Tone & Style

The episode is intimate and reflective, blending narrative tension with raw, unfiltered interviews. Halpern guides the listener with empathy and curiosity, allowing the sisters’ voices and memories to anchor the story. There’s humor and nostalgia, but also unvarnished pain and bewilderment as the Giamanco family’s secrets steadily unravel.

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Conclusion

“The Raid” sets the stage for a season delving into the mystery of Keith Giamanco’s crimes, the ripple effects on his daughters, and the broader themes of truth, deception, and resilience within American families. The episode poses hard questions about how easy it is for darkness to hide behind familiar faces—and how children must piece together their identities in the ruins of family secrets.

Coming Up:

The season promises further revelations about the nature of Keith’s crimes, encounters with detectives, trial drama, and the girls’ painful journey toward understanding.

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Transcript

[Marissa Giamanco]

Foreign.

[Jake Halpern]

Hey listeners, Jay Halpern here. I'm dropping into your feed today to bring you a preview of the newest season of my podcast, Deep Cover the Family Man. I think you'll really enjoy it. Here's the gist of the story. In 2007, Keith Giamanco was an ordinary father in the suburbs of St. Louis. But as the Great Recession loomed, he found himself, like so many others at the time, sinking into debt. Bills piled up, his daughter's high school tuition went unpaid, and he struggled to find a way to make ends meet. So he made a desperate choice and started living a double life. Within a year, Giamanco had transformed himself from a struggling dad into a criminal. And what began as an attempt to stay afloat soon spiraled into a series of consequences that would reshape his and his daughter's lives forever. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do find Deep Cover the Family man wherever you listen to your podcasts, Pushkin plus subscribers can hear each episode ad free sign up and save on the Deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM plus use the code DC25 for 25% off annual subscriptions.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I remember it was late at night. It was like after we had gone to bed.

[Jake Halpern]

For Marissa Giamanco, September 18, 2008 was the moment that everything changed. The last day of one life and the first day of another.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I was sleeping in a big sweater, like one of my dad's sweaters actually, and I remember being like, I need to put some pants on before I answer the door.

[Jake Halpern]

She had heard voices outside and then pounding on the front door. The Giamacco family lived in a cozy one story shoebox of a house. There were only two bedrooms. Their dad, Keith, slept on a couch in the living room so that each of his daughters could have their own bedroom. Marissa and her twin sister were both 17 years old seniors in high school, and on this particular night, they were worried about their dad. He hadn't come home or called or left any kind of message. The girls tried texting him, but got no answer. It was weird. The family's dog, Lucky, peered out the window. And then late in the night came that pounding on the front door.

[Marissa Giamanco]

So I'm all like scrambling to find some pajama pants to put on. They're all like knocking really loud, like, open the door, you know? And I'm like, hold on, I need to find some pants. And my sister's like, who is that? And I'm like, I don't know. Do you know who it is because all we could see were flashlights. Like, it was a very bright light. Like, that's what I remember. You could even see the flashlight light coming underneath the wooden door before I even opened it. And you could just feel the pressure. Like, dude, they're gonna open this door if we don't open this door.

[Jake Halpern]

So Marisa opens the door and sees a whole lot of guys with badges and flashlights. They ask to come in, and Marissa asks for a warrant, which I find kind of bold. Like, how did she even think to do that at 17 years old?

[Marissa Giamanco]

I think it might have just been watching Law and Order. Like, honestly, if I'm being deadass, like, you gotta tell me, why you coming into my house, dude? So they handed us the warrant, which was a lot of language that I didn't understand at that time.

[Jake Halpern]

And then a whole parade of law enforcement officials starts coming into their house.

[Marissa Giamanco]

And it wasn't just the Florissant police. It was the FBI. It was the county police. And I remember one of them saying, your dad is in a safe place. You don't have to worry about that. He's just in some trouble. Like, that's literally what they said to me. Like, nothing more than that.

[Jake Halpern]

Some trouble. Marisa's like, wtf? Like, what could dad have possibly done to warrant all of this? Meanwhile, Lucky, the family dog, he's on the offensive, lunging at all of these intruders. One of the cops asks Marissa to control her dog, so she takes Lucky to the backyard. It was a hot, sticky night. The last bits of summer lingered. Marissa prided herself as a moody, rebellious, aspiring writer and so very much on brand. Marissa lights a cigarette, and then she just stands there processing the chaos she just witnessed in her house.

[Marissa Giamanco]

They are flipping over the couch cushions and looking in the vents and opening the closets. And I'm standing there smoking a cigarette, and I'm just thinking. I'm like, damn, I hope they don't find my weed in my room, because I had weed in the closet. So I. You know, I was like, damn, I don't want to get in trouble too. And Dad's gonna be mad at me if he finds. You know what I mean?

[Jake Halpern]

Cause at this point, Marisa is still assuming that her dad is coming home, that he's still gonna be the one she has to answer to about school and walking the dog and the weed in her closet. But as this raid on her house continues, Marissa starts to scratch her head a bit.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I racked my brain for anything, and I was like, I really don't know what dad would be doing. I'm like, was he like involved in an accident? Or like, did he see something he wasn't supposed to or.

[Jake Halpern]

Marissa and her sister thought they knew who their father was. A mild mannered, kind of goofy, kind hearted Midwestern guy. A single dad who loved hockey and sports trivia. A guy who showed up at their basketball games and orchestra concerts. A guy who drove them to school in his dad mobile, a light blue Mercury Grand Marquis. And Keith Giamanco was this guy, but he was also someone else. This is a story about a crime, actually a series of crimes carried out by a mysterious figure who managed to evade the authorities. And it's about justice, about what punishment these crimes deserve. But at its core, for me, it's a story about the secrets that can exist within a family. It's about the disguises that parents put on for their kids and for the world. So much of parenting is built on lies, starting with the stories we tell our kids about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And then there are the lies of omission. We all withhold things in order to protect our children. We all harbor secrets. It's just that some secrets are much bigger than others. I'm jake halpern and this is deep cover the family man, episode one, the raid.

[Elise Giamanco]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein from Business History. 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.

[Jake Halpern]

Take a listen.

[Jacob Goldstein]

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 nepobating.

[Jake Halpern]

Well, exactly right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And these days, if you are a

[Jake Halpern]

billionaire, you had better have a Benjamin Franklin story about starting in a garage,

[Jacob Goldstein]

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.

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[Jake Halpern]

visit PayPalOpen.com purchase and seller protections on eligible transactions. Only terms apply. See paypal.com risk management for details. Marisa Giamanco is now 35 years old and I met her for the first time on the side of a lonely windswept road in east central Missouri. Marissa had suggested this spot close to where she lives as our rendezvous point. She had this idea that we take a road trip together. There were places that she wanted to take me. Place. Places that she thought I should see with my own eyes. Places that still simmered with questions. Peering through my snow encrusted windshield, I saw a woman in a winter parka and a puffy penguin hat. I slowed down the car and she hopped in. Hi.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Hi.

[Jake Halpern]

I'm Jake.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Hi, I'm Marissa.

[Jake Halpern]

In all my years of doing this, I don't think I've ever just done an interview where I got inspired car with someone and went on a road trip with them.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I love that.

[Jake Halpern]

So where should we go first?

[Marissa Giamanco]

I would say that let's start in Florescent because that's kind of where the story started.

[Jake Halpern]

And just like that, we were off driving through the snow, heading for the suburbs of St. Louis. An hour and a half later, we turned onto Aubusson Street, a quaint suburban road with rows of handsome brick houses. Which house is it?

[Marissa Giamanco]

It's this one over here on the corner. Wow, the porch is still red.

[Jake Halpern]

This is the house where Marissa and her sister grew up until the age of 16. So not the place where the police raided that night this is where they lived before that. It's a spacious ranch house on a corner lot, A porch out front, a large front yard, tall trees. It's pretty in a quiet, unassuming way. For a while, Marisa just stared at her old home as if captured by its spell, ensnared by the invisible tendrils of memory.

[Marissa Giamanco]

It almost feels surreal. Honestly, it feels surreal. Mom's flowers are gone, though. And there was a bird bath, too. She had a bird bath right there. But yeah, beautiful house.

[Jake Halpern]

Back when Marissa was a young girl living in this house, her mother, Becky, was still very much in the picture. Becky was also the one the girls went to. When something felt hard, she'd sit with you, talk it through. Becky was involved at the PTA at the girls school and was a leader at their church. And she was an amazing cook.

[Marissa Giamanco]

My favorite memory of my mom is in the kitchen, seeing her put her energy and that love into the food and then tasting the food. Like I still, to this day have very rarely found a meal that feels as loving as Miss Becky Gmongo's.

[Jake Halpern]

When Marissa talks about her parents, it feels like a very 1950s arrangement. Each day, Becky would pack Keith lunch with a few sandwiches and his Stanley Thermos. Then Keith would go off to the printing press where he worked. He'd come home tired, hands covered in ink. Marissa remembers sitting with her dad at night on the couch. She'd lie down with her head on his belly, feeling the rise and fall of his breaths until she fell asleep. Then he'd carry her off to bed. During the holidays, her parents decorated the whole house, hung a wreath on the front door, wrote the word Noel in cursive, lights on the roof, put a giant bow on the garage like the house itself was was a beautifully wrapped gift. And it kind of was. Right up into the moment it began to unravel.

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[Jake Halpern]

Marissa has a twin sister named Elise. And like so many twins, they had a very close bond from the start.

[Elise Giamanco]

My earliest memory is us in our crib together and conspiring with each other through facial expressions on how we were going to get out of that crib. And she climbed up on my back and got out of the crib, and my mom had to run down the hallway, and she was like, what are you doing? That is my earliest memory.

[Jake Halpern]

I love this story from Elise because even in toddlerhood, they're already conspiring, already working together, already figuring things out. And in a strange way, they're rehearsing the very skill they'll need most later in life. Escaping. Elise is the older twin by one minute. And even though they're twins, in many ways, Elise played the part of the older sibling. She was taller, bigger, more talkative, and very organized. Elise, she always loved checklists.

[Elise Giamanco]

I would be the one to ask questions to my parents for us, or like, even when we were kids, I would order for her at a restaurant. I was kind of her mouthpiece a lot of the time.

[Jake Halpern]

Around the time the twins were 10 years old, they remember their parents started to argue a lot. The girls floated through this turbulence, kind of the way kids do, listening and not listening, picking up bits and pieces, like their parents bickering about food stamps, among other things. On one occasion, things got so heated that their mom shoved an ice cream cone into their dad's face. There was a lot of shouting. The girls remembered the police showing up. It got to the point that Elise told me she actually wanted her parents to separate.

[Elise Giamanco]

I saw how things were going with them. I'm like, yes, please get away from each other. That really was what I was thinking. I was like, please take time away.

[Jake Halpern]

Sometimes, Elise says, their mom got so fed up, she'd go out to local bowling alley and come home drunk. So drunk that one time she missed her bed and landed on the floor instead. Elise says that her mother changed from the perfect stay at home mom who'd volunteered with the pta morphing into someone else. Like one time, Elise was playing in a middle school basketball game. She got called for a foul. And then a moment later, a fire alarm went off.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I'm on the court and I'm like, what the fuck?

[Elise Giamanco]

And somebody ran over and she was like, your mom pulled the fire alarm? And I was like, what? She pulled the fire alarm because she disagreed with the call and emptied out the entire gym.

[Jake Halpern]

And it wasn't just erratic behavior. Elise says that her mother would vacillate from being an angel to a devil. No warning, no explanation. When the twins were 12, it all came to a head. Here's how Marissa remembers it.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I remember being in the kitchen in this house, and I remember my dad sitting at the kitchen table. I was, like, kind of directly, like, standing behind him, about, like, two feet away. And he had his hands up on the table, like, together, like, clasped, like up against his head. And I remember him saying, your mom's not coming back here. And just. I. I wanted. I just wanted to scream. I might have even screamed out loud. I don't know.

[Jake Halpern]

This, apparently was their dad's decision. He asked her to leave like he just finally had enough. Once Becky was gone, the girls were alone in the house with their father and the silent presence of unanswered questions. With their mother gone, Elise says that their dad did his best to make their life as normal as possible. Keith embraced the role of a single dad, making meals, driving them to school, and his light blue Mercury Marquis, the dad mobile, taking them to practice, putting them in therapy with a family counselor, and just encouraging them.

[Elise Giamanco]

I think he tried to protect us. I think he was partially successful,

[Marissa Giamanco]

and

[Elise Giamanco]

I say partially because I think many folks forget that children are smarter than we think they are. And they're so observant. And that was no exception for Marisa and I.

[Jake Halpern]

It was clear to the girls that Keith, despite everything that he was doing, was struggling, grieving the loss of his wife. Once, when Marissa came home from school, she found him on the stairs down to the basement with his wedding album in hand. Looking through the pages and weeping was one of the only times she ever saw her dad cry. She knew he was grieving, but from a kid's perspective, none of it fully made sense. Her mother's behavior, her parents separation, her father's explanation. And despite her best efforts, Marissa just couldn't get through to him.

[Marissa Giamanco]

I remember having to say his name. I would be like, dad, dad, dad, Keith. Like, literally. You'd have to go through, like, the list of names to get him to pay attention. I remember the first time I did that, standing in the kitchen. He was staring out that window right there. And I was literally like, there is something wrong right now. Like, and Obviously I was 12 years old. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was. It was anxiety, it was defeat, it was. It was fear.

[Jake Halpern]

She says she called him by his first name because she needed to get his attention. But it went deeper than this. Cause in that moment anyway, her father had seemed less like a dad and more like just a guy named Keith. Well meaning, kind, but removed in some way. Unknowable. Meanwhile, their mother did come back, repeatedly, but in the strangest of ways.

[Marissa Giamanco]

She would knock on my bedroom window. So the back window of this house in the middle of the night, and asked me, can you grab the vacuum cleaner and hand it to me out the window? Can you hand me this piece of jewelry and hand it to me out the window? And don't tell your dad that I was here. That's when I was like, there is something going on. Is when she started visiting my window in the middle of the night.

[Jake Halpern]

Naturally, Marissa asked her dad about this. Like, what was going on with mom?

[Marissa Giamanco]

Yep. Dad was like, your mom's sick. That's how he kind of tried to explain it at the time, was, she's sick. She has a disease. There was no, like, further explanation. It was, she's sick in the head.

[Jake Halpern]

I mean, how do you make sense of that as. As a kid?

[Marissa Giamanco]

You don't. It sits with you, and you're like, well, guess my mom's sick in the head. Am I sick in the head? I love my mom. My mom is always taking care of me. Is she really that sick in the head? Are you sick in the head? Like, just, there's a lot going on when somebody says that to you.

[Jake Halpern]

The girls were left to think back on their mother and all the strange things that she had done as they tried to make sense of it all. Were there other things besides the handing stuff out the window where you started to see something was off with your mom?

[Marissa Giamanco]

Well, the erratic behaviors, the slurring of words, the. The nodding out, the not being able to stay conscious. And then there's the opposite. Extremely energetic, talkative, not able to sit still. Like, I remember her howling like a dog at some point in the bathroom, like, saying, can I get more?

[Jake Halpern]

At some point, it became clear to Marissa that can I get more? Meant, can I get more drugs?

[Marissa Giamanco]

So it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, you know, what's going on?

[Jake Halpern]

Keith may have had the best of intentions. He may have wanted what so many parents want. To protect their kids from pain. But his solution was a lie of omission. Ultimately, his daughters would make two realizations. The first was that their mother was struggling mightily with addiction. And the second was that Keith was an unreliable narrator of sorts, Someone who could not be counted on to tell them about the harder truths, even the ones that were essential to their understanding of the world. And this is kind of how life went for the twins. Their lives were like a novel where all the transitions and explanations had been stripped out, leaving just a string of disorienting moments that would make any reader feel bewildered.

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[Jake Halpern]

Keith had always told his daughters they needed to dream big and think about a life beyond Florissant, Missouri. When they turned 14, he enrolled them in a fancy all girls private school called Narinks Hall. The girls weren't exactly enthusiastic about this, but Keith insisted on it and claimed they could afford it. By then, he had stopped working at the printing press and told the girls that he was day trading, using his own money to buy and sell stocks. But money was always kind of weird with Keith, Elise recalled. One time they went to an Outback steakhouse, and when it came time to pay, Keith peeled off a crisp $100 bill, half of which was a tip. Super flashy. But then she remembers this other time midway through high school, when she wasn't allowed to take her final exams because dad hadn't paid their tuition. So the family's finances, they felt shaky. And then one day when the girls were 16, Marissa recalls her father telling them they had to move immediately.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Like it was quick. Like I'm saying, my dad went in the garage and said, you can keep two bikes because I love bikes. I probably had like 12 bikes. So he was like, you have to set all of them out for free. We'll try to sell some of them. It was like, do you want to keep this? You can't keep that. Like we have to get out of here. That was like super freaky. Like when you're a kid.

[Jake Halpern]

This is when they moved to that Chewbacc size house. The one where the police raid eventually occurred. Here, you might remember, the girls each had a small bedroom, and Keith slept on the couch. During this time, Keith was out of the house a lot. And Marissa and her sister Elise used to guess about where their dad went and what he did.

[Marissa Giamanco]

We came up with different scenarios in our head. This was my joke. My joke was, dad. Dad builds swing sets in his spare time. I was like, he must be going to build swing sets. That's what I used to say as a joke. Cause I was like, I can't. I literally can't. Can't figure it out, so I'm just gonna fucking fill it in with some joke.

[Jake Halpern]

Elise remembers asking him where he was off to, and he would sometimes tell her, I don't have to tell you where I'm going, she says. With him, it was pure Scooby Doo mystery. Those are her words. When it became undeniable that things were wrong, like when they had to vacate their house, Elise offered to help.

[Elise Giamanco]

I also had a job at the time at Banana Republic, working at the mall. And Ivan was like, do you want

[Marissa Giamanco]

help with the bills or whatever?

[Elise Giamanco]

And my dad said, you know, no, save your money. We're fine.

[Jake Halpern]

But clearly, things were not fine. There were problems, Boxes that needed to be checked and weren't. And you can start to see why. Elise loved checklists. In the small part of the world that she could control, she wanted order. Elise didn't really get much more clarity until the start of her senior year. They'd been living in the shoebox house for about nine months. It seemed like Keith was out a lot, selling swing sets or whatever he did. And then came that muggy night in 2008, the night of the raid.

[Elise Giamanco]

We're waiting for our dad to finally go home or come home, and that never happened. And I'm thinking about calling hospitals. I'm thinking about calling the police,

[Marissa Giamanco]

because

[Elise Giamanco]

it's just not like my dad to

[Marissa Giamanco]

not show up like that.

[Jake Halpern]

But it had been a long day. Elise had had school and then a shift at work. She was beat.

[Elise Giamanco]

I have to lay down at this point. I change into my nightgown, I get into bed, and I see a flashlight coming through my window. And then I hear dogs sniffing around. And I get up out of my bed, I turn on the lights because I'm freaked out.

[Jake Halpern]

It's the police. She and her sister open the door, and a whole team of law enforcement officers enters the house.

[Elise Giamanco]

My dad was in trouble with the.

[Marissa Giamanco]

With the law in a serious way

[Elise Giamanco]

because there wouldn't I recognize seriousness because they wouldn't have sent an entire crime scene unit out to my house if it wasn't serious. They didn't send one or two dudes. They sent, you know, a whole van of people plus dogs. I realized this amount of labor

[Marissa Giamanco]

is

[Elise Giamanco]

because my dad did something serious.

[Jake Halpern]

The police moved quickly through the bedrooms, the closets, up into the attic. They took the family computer, boxes of clothing, other odds and ends. The family dog, Lucky, grew so agitated that Marissa had to take him outside. Elise stayed behind, answering the police's questions.

[Elise Giamanco]

I remember stepping in my room with a couple of the officers and them interviewing me. They asked how much money I'd ever seen my dad have on him. They asked me if I knew, you know, what he was doing.

[Jake Halpern]

Earlier that day, her mind raced to make sense of what was happening. But none of it made sense.

[Elise Giamanco]

I was in shock. I was in shock, honestly. I felt like I was having an out of body experience, like I was disassociating as I was speaking to the cops.

[Jake Halpern]

The police told Elise that their dad wanted to call them himself and explain what he'd done. That was all they'd say. Then the police gathered the boxes of evidence and, and left. Marissa remembers they stayed up as long as they could, waiting for their dad to call.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Me and my sister actually laid down in the bed together and we had the old corded phone with the green lights on it. And we had the phone next to our heads because we were like, we don't want to miss it if he calls. But we were so tired because it was like three, four in the morning that we were like, we have to lay down because we were still planning on going to school.

[Jake Halpern]

Finally, at some point, the phone rings. The girls startle suddenly fully awake. They pick up and it's their dad.

[Marissa Giamanco]

He calls and he's like, I'm fine, I'm safe. I'm just in trouble. But there was no actual explanation on that first phone call. It was just, hey, I'm safe, I love you, everything's gonna be okay.

[Jake Halpern]

And that was it. That's all he says. Even in the moment of reckoning, this moment of truth, Keith is kind of deliberately vague. And so the whole situation remains shrouded in mystery. Elise also remembers this call vividly, including the way her dad's voice sounded on the phone.

[Elise Giamanco]

He was very upset and crying and he said, everything's going to be okay. I'll be home soon. And him saying that I had hoped that he was telling the truth and that that would happen. But in my gut, I had a gut feeling that I just knew that this was just going to be a long, long road.

[Jake Halpern]

At some point later that morning, they turn on the TV, and there's a big story on the local news. They're replaying footage from the previous day. Marissa remembers seeing an aerial shot taken from a helicopter. She recalls the newscaster saying, they've been

[Marissa Giamanco]

looking for this guy. And then there was a picture of the car that he was driving, the light blue Grand Marquis.

[Jake Halpern]

A light blue Grand Marquis, which was the same type of car that their dad drove.

[Marissa Giamanco]

You could see the car, and you could see into the car from this helicopter shot. And there was a cup. It was an emo's cup.

[Jake Halpern]

Emo's pizza was a family favorite. Keith had one of their branded cups. Marisa recalls. It was his dad mug, the one he kept in his car.

[Marissa Giamanco]

It's like, you're like, that's dad's imo's cup. It was just too much of a coincidence to not be my dad's car. We're sitting here literally at this house on the couch in the living room, watching the cable television, and we're just like, they have got to have the wrong person.

[Jake Halpern]

In this moment, the girls were overwhelmed with shock and confusion. But there was one thing that Elise knew for certain.

[Elise Giamanco]

This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever. And I immediately started feeling like I was in survival mode and that I needed to figure out what was going to happen next. Because everything that had existed prior in my reality is now I'm finding out. Untrue.

[Jake Halpern]

Before long, the TV camera crews started to arrive outside the little shoebox house where Elise and Marissa lived. Because this story about a suburban dad who'd secretly resorted to a life of crime, this would soon be national news. Reporters from around the country would be looking for answers, and so, too, would Elise and Marissa. They wanted to know, what exactly had their dad done? Was he guilty? And if so, how had they not seen this coming? What did that mean about them as a family? Because as of now, the girls had no parents in the picture, no one to pay the bills, no one to answer to but themselves. And this. This was just the beginning. Soon, there would be a very public reckoning, including a trial and a lot of lingering questions about their father, a man they thought they knew. Coming up this season on Deep Cover, the family man.

[Detective John Bradley]

There was literally a feeling of relief when I knew that they didn't have a make on the vehicle, nor did they have a good picture of me that somebody that I knew would recognize me for the $5,000 reward or whatever it was at that particular time.

[Elise Giamanco]

And he showed me the surveillance tape and he's like, do you recognize this person?

[Jake Halpern]

This is Detective John Bradley, DSN 3181 of the St. Louis County Police Department, Bureau of Crimes against Persons.

[Marissa Giamanco]

That is not the look of an innocent man.

[Jake Halpern]

Can't put that many people in that much fear and not expect to pay a heavy price for.

[Detective John Bradley]

Was an all out onslaught of police cars, helicopters, cars in front of me, cars behind me.

[Marissa Giamanco]

It was a mess.

[Elise Giamanco]

It made me angry. I didn't trust anyone after that. What is actually reality is everyone lying to me about who they.

[Jake Halpern]

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, Sonia Gerwitt, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey, Jake Flanagan, Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan and Greta Cohn. I'm Jake Halpern.

[Marissa Giamanco]

It. Sam. What is that?

[Carvana Representative]

Oh, yeah, it's a World cup holder.

[Marissa Giamanco]

Like the soccer tournament.

[Carvana Representative]

World cup holder for the world. Fits every car, holds every cup.

[Marissa Giamanco]

It has a Carvana logo.

[Carvana Representative]

Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder.

[Jake Halpern]

So.

[Carvana Representative]

Got any good cups lately?

[Marissa Giamanco]

Used to. Just couldn't figure out where in the world to put them.

[Carvana Representative]

The World cup holder brought to you by Carvana. Proud sponsors of the World cup hold holder.

[Jake Halpern]

Sign up today to win yours atcup-holder2026.com. Not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product. For parody and fair use purposes only.

[Elise Giamanco]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.