All language subtitles for The UnXplained S02E06 Leading Double Lives 1080p HULU WEB-DL AAC2 0 H 264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

with no medical training.

A Hollywood producer
whose most outrageous story

turned out to be
the one about himself.

And a jazz musician
whose greatest performance

was the one
that was given offstage.

What makes a person want
to become someone else?

Is it to escape their life?

Or is it to fool someone?

Or is there an even
more profound reason?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

SHATNER:
As the Korean War
rages around it,

the Royal Canadian destroyer
HMCS Cayuga brings aboard

19 badly wounded
South Korean soldiers

requiring immediate surgery.

Dr. Joseph Cyr, the ship's
newly arrived physician,

is called upon to perform
a series of procedures

to save the men's lives.

There's quite a few wounded men.

They're taken on board, and
the ship captain tells Dr. Cyr,

"You have to operate.
You have to save these guys."

So, according to all accounts,

Dr. Cyr takes this
relatively calmly

and goes to it.

SHATNER:
While the patients
are prepped for surgery,

Dr. Cyr reviews
a medical textbook

in his private quarters
to prepare himself

for what would be
the defining moment

of not only his career,
but his entire life.

NATE HENDLEY:
He performs a number
of operations

on these wounded
South Korean soldiers,

removing bullets,
doing chest surgery.

And by all accounts,
he was successful.

SHATNER:
The story of Dr. Cyr's
valiant performance

hit Canadian newspapers
and spread like wildfire.

Across the country, people read
about the naval doctor's

heroic efforts
to save the lives

of the Korean soldiers.

But there was at least
one woman who was stunned

by the news that Dr. Joseph Cyr
had become a national hero.

And as it turned out,
she had a very good reason

to be surprised.

HENDLEY:
The mother of Dr. Joseph Cyr
was reading the newspaper,

and reads this account
of her son.

So she phones her son up,
and her son is sort of like,

"Uh, no, I'm still posted
in New Brunswick.

I'm not on a ship.
What are you talking about?"

And it becomes obvious
very quickly

that the guy on board
the destroyer is an imposter.

The mother of the real doctor
contacts the RCMP,

Canada's equivalent of the FBI,

and the shipboard captain
on the destroyer is told,

"Uh, well, your surgeon
is an imposter.

Uh, we've, uh, got to take him
into custody."

He's taken back to Canada,
he's put before a court

that would reveal
that he's Ferdinand Demara,

of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

SHATNER:
An American from Massachusetts

masquerading
as a Canadian naval doctor

in the Sea of Japan?

But how?

And why?

HARVEY ROSENSTOCK:
Ferdinand Demara

is a very fascinating man.

First of all, he came
from a middle‐class family.

Very comfortable.

But then they suffered
the Great Depression,

They had to move.

They had to downgrade,
as it were.

They get to a poor neighborhood,

less of the affluent
or semi‐affluent amenities.

So he went from a lot to less,

but it seemed to bother him
more than his parents,

the best that we can tell.

And therefore, he had
to fill in the difference.

HENDLEY:
By all accounts,
he's a very smart kid.

You know, does well at school.

But he drops out of high school,

and he starts
this weird sort of moving around

and trying on new personas.

ROSENSTOCK:
It turns out that
he has the ability

to memorize very quickly.

He even claimed that
he had a photographic memory.

So that he
could look at something,

say, "That really belongs
to me,"

and with a very good intellect,
he could carry this off.

And he found

he could "borrow"
any kind of credential

and become that person
represented by that credential.

HENDLEY:
He starts that from
a very early age,

and he joins the military,
goes AWOL,

joins other branches
of the military.

In one of his
very early impersonations,

he pretends
to be a Trappist monk

and joins a monastery.

At the time he was pretending
to be a Christian monk,

he made friends with a Canadian
doctor named Joseph Cyr,

and he then goes to enlist
in the Canadian Navy

and announces
that he's Dr. Joseph Cyr

and uses the same credentials
that the real doctor had.

There's a war going on
at the time in Korea,

so they don't ask
too many questions.

They're just delighted
to get a surgeon.

SHATNER:
In addition to posing

as a military surgeon
and a monk,

Demara tried his hand
at impersonating

a number of other professions,
including

civil engineer, zoologist,

psychologist,
philosophy professor

and lawyer, among many others.

Demara became so adept
at impersonation

that he eventually became known
by his most famous alias of all:

The Great Imposter.

Ironically, Demara's life
went full circle.

After pretending to be
all these different identities

his whole life, in the end
he became famous for who he was.

Oh, I've been
a surgeon lieutenant

in the Royal Canadian Navy.

‐You operated on people?
‐Mm‐hmm.

(audience gasping, chuckling)

Isn't that rather dangerous?

‐You might say that.
‐Uh‐huh.

Where did you steal
your new credentials?

‐I acquire these things.
‐Oh.

I know.
You keep telling me that.

I hate to bring the word "steal"
into this conversation.

HENDLEY:
He appeared on You Bet Your Life
with Groucho Marx,

and he makes it clear

that he, "acquired credentials,"

and that he's going to use
his prize money

to buy more credentials.

Were you in jail in...
in, uh, Canada?

‐No, no.
‐In the United States,
have you ever been in jail?

Yes, I have been in jail.
I spent a year

in the Texas State Penitentiary.

‐Well, it's about time, I...
‐(laughter)

that somebody nails you.

What were you in there for?

Uh, I was in there
as deputy warden.

(laughter)

ROSENSTOCK:
As a result of that,

everybody wants to meet him,

wants to talk about him,
wants to hear about him.

‐Are you Martin Goddard?
‐Yes, I am.

And your real name is
Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr.?

ROSENSTOCK:
And then when Tony Curtis acted

in The Great Imposter,
he became famous

because he could fool the world.

ALEXANDER STEIN:
In many respects,

to be an imposter is...

fairly normal,
although we think of them as...

somehow pathological.

In fact, there are many people
who do it for work.

Actors are a form of imposters.

There are people who put on
a costume or a uniform

to transform themselves
in some way that gives them

some measure of authority
in their work.

SHATNER:
Let's face it:
at one time or another,

most of us have fantasized
about trying on a new identity.

Like when we engage
in role‐playing games

or wear costumes on Halloween.

For most of us, of course,

the fantasy remains
simply that: a fantasy.

But in the case
of Ferdinand Demara,

The Great Imposter,

by pretending to be a surgeon,

is it possible that‐‐
in his mind, at least‐‐

he actually became one?

Ferdinand Demara
impersonated a surgeon.

He wasn't a surgeon,
but during the Korean War

while he was on a ship,
he saved lives.

His ability to adapt
from impersonation

might have given him
the ability to adapt

under a stressful situation.

"Con man," of course,
"con" is a kind of a nickname.

The origin of that word
is "confidence."

In the case of someone
like Ferdinand Demara,

because of his success

in being able to truly believe
every one of his fantasies

as one new piece of reality,

he can act it out
in such a real way

for a limited period of time.

SHATNER:
By the time of his death,

from a heart attack
on June 7, 1982,

Ferdinand Demara had spent the
last several years of his life

as a Baptist minister

and later a counselor
at Good Samaritan Hospital

in Anaheim, California.

In his obituary, Demara's lawyer
and good friend, Melvin Belli,

is quoted as saying...

And why should there be?

After all, most of us can
only live one life at a time.

Ferdinand Demara was able
to live several.

PETER LANPHOTOGRAPHER:
Chris! Chris, Chris!

SHATNER: French movie producer
Christopher Reyes

is the talk of Tinseltown.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Where's the girls tonight?

SHATNER:
Between a movie deal

with action star
Jean‐Claude Van Damme,

co‐ownership of two chic
Beverly Hills boutiques,

a perfume line endorsed
by singer Michael Jackson

and a Playboy Playmate wife,

it appears
Reyes's burgeoning reputation

as a Hollywood player is secure.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Thanks, Chris.

‐Good to see you.
‐All right.

He would mix with some of
the movers and shakers in L. A.

Uh, so he'd throw kind of
glamorous dinner parties.

He'd invite all of his friends
that he'd met,

and he'd make sure that they saw
that he was being generous

during these parties.

He said he was
a venture capitalist.

He was in L. A. and he was
mixing with the kind of people

who are also
millionaires.

He would talk of how
he was Sophia Loren's son,

he was Oscar de la Renta's
nephew, and there was no reason

for people
to disbelieve him.

He would maybe say,
"Do you want to invest?

He'd give them an opportunity,
and they would think

that they were gonna
get something from him.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Chris! Let's go.

SHATNER:
To everyone he meets,
it seems Christopher Reyes

has perfected the recipe
for Hollywood success.

Except there's one
key ingredient missing.

Because, as it turns out,
the man claiming

to be Christopher Reyes
is a bigger fiction

than any conceived
by a Hollywood screenwriter.

He is actually a notorious
French con artist

named Christophe Rocancourt.

Well, Rocancourt was the world's
coolest con man, in essence.

Um, you know, he was smooth,
he was charismatic.

He was ambitious.

So, he had all the traits
of a classic con man.

HENDLEY:
By all accounts,

Christophe's approach
was very simple, but direct.

He would tell people,
you know "If you invest

in my various enterprises,"

you know, "I can
vastly increase your money."

So his methods
were not terribly,

you know, sophisticated,
but they worked,

and he pulled in a lot of money
from people.

IANTORNO:
In Paris, he'd set up
this alias for himself,

a wealthy Russian nobleman.

From just sheer confidence
and imagination,

he was able to pull off
a few scams. Uh, most notably,

when he managed to forge
the deeds to a building in Paris

and sell it for over
a million dollars.

SHATNER:
As he scammed his way
across Europe,

Christophe Rocancourt
defrauded dozens of victims

under numerous aliases.

But while authorities
had a mountain of lies

and fake identities
to sort through,

they were missing
one elusive truth:

who actually was

Christophe Rocancourt?

IANTORNO:
Rocancourt grew up,
um, in a small town

on the Normandy coast,

uh, just where the‐the River
Seine meets the English Channel.

Uh, it's a lovely place, um,

but he didn't have
the best childhood.

His father was an alcoholic

and his mother had
to resort to prostitution.

HARVEY ROSENSTOCK:
Here is a young person who is in

a desperate survival mode
from the earliest stages.

This kind of person really has
no reason to trust the world.

And so he found out

that he can acquire wealth
by deceptive means.

There's no reason for him
to feel sorry

about the next person,
'cause in his mind,

presumably, no one
felt sorry for him.

JONATHAN YOUNG:
I think the game
had its own reward.

This is a very hostile game,

and this is a wounded,
aggressive person.

He wanted to hurt people.
He wanted to take their money.

It was a coldhearted
transaction.

SHATNER:
For most people,
the notion of scamming

and conniving their way
to wealth and happiness

is unthinkable.

So, what drives
serial impostors

like Christophe Rocancourt
to use impersonation

to not merely pretend
to be someone else,

but to actually inflict harm?

And not just once or twice,
but over and over again?

ROBBINS: For a lot
of impostors that grow up

in a damaged childhood
where they're facing abuse

or traumatic events,
they have to develop

these sort of
coping mechanisms.

One, they start to see
themselves on the outside

of the normal reality
that everyone else does.

The society as a norm is here,

and they're on
the outskirts of that.

So, then they start
to categorize people as others.

The second
is that they have to be able

to anticipate
the actions of their abuser.

So, this starts to form
an unusual kind

of predictive empathy
in order for them to survive.

SHATNER:
No matter the reason
for their duplicity,

once discovered,
most impostors' lives

are shattered beyond repair.

But while
you might think someone

as internationally notorious
as Christophe Rocancourt

would stop his antics

after being
so thoroughly exposed, well,

you'd be wrong.

Eventually things came
tumbling down when people

started suspecting
that he was a fraud.

So when he moved
from L. A. to New York,

Rocancourt was running
the same scams

as he always had done.

He was having
lavish dinner parties,

he was inviting
exclusive guests.

He was getting them to invest
large sums of money,

$50,000 or a $100,000
at a time.

I think people started
suspecting Rocancourt

when a few things
just stopped adding up.

He was driving a Mazda
rather than the kind of car

that you'd expect
a millionaire to be driving.

He tasted some wine
that was cheap wine,

and he thought it
was expensive wine.

Maybe he was
just getting sloppy.

And it was an unpaid hotel bill
in the end

that was the thing
that got him caught.

SHATNER:
In 2003, Christophe Rocancourt
plead guilty

to charges of bribery,
theft and fraud.

He was ordered to pay
$1.2 million to his victims

and sentenced to 46 months
in federal prison.

After his release
in October 2005,

Rocancourt returned to Europe

where his notoriety
as a smooth‐talking con man

continued to make headlines.

But Rocancourt's deceptions
appear almost benign

when compared to those
of another famous impostor,

one who became so desperate
to hide his true identity

that it not only cost people
their fortunes,

it also cost them their lives.

SHATNER:
Sandra Boss, a recent Harvard
Business School graduate,

marries Clark Rockefeller,
a man who is known to her

as a member
of one of the wealthiest

and most powerful families
in America.

After the couple's
fairy‐tale wedding,

Sandra went to work

for a prestigious
consulting firm in Boston

while Clark resumed working
on international poverty relief.

But the fairy tale
didn't last long.

MARK SEAL:
He claimed he was working
on so many high‐level things,

but he wasn't contributing
to the marriage financially.

And he said, "Well, to charge
these struggling countries

a fee would be, you know,
unconscionable."

He didn't seem to want to go
out and get a regular job.

And so she was beginning
to get tired of this.

SHATNER:
After more than
ten years of marriage,

Sandra Boss finally had enough
and filed for divorce.

It was a decision that would
not only unravel her marriage,

but also unravel the strange
truth about her husband.

SEAL:
Clark Rockefeller had

no passport, no credit cards,
no birth certificate

that she could find.

HENDLEY:
She can't come up
with any documentation.

So she really has the whip hand
during the divorce,

and she ends up winning custody
of their daughter, Snooks.

He's absolutely gobsmacked
by this, and he's miserable,

because he is actually
devoted to his daughter.

So he comes up
with this harebrained plan

and he kidnaps his daughter.

SHATNER:
The FBI immediately launched

a nationwide manhunt,

but Clark Rockefeller
had vanished into thin air.

And the reason the authorities
had such a hard time

tracking down Clark Rockefeller

was because

there was no Clark Rockefeller.

So, I'm at home.
My brother calls me.

He goes,
"Turn on CNN right now."

I turn on the TV,
and I look, and I go,

"That's
Christian Gerhartsreiter."

And it says right across
the top, "Clark Rockefeller."

So we called the FBI and said,

"This is
Christian Gerhartsreiter."

He was a German exchange
student that came to our house.

I was 15 at the time,

and he was 17.

But the FBI, like,
they didn't even know his name.

SEAL:
It was covered in
all the media, on television,

and when the AMBER Alert
was issued, he was apprehended.

He was returned
to Boston to face charges.

And that's when
his incredible life

of all these different
personas unspooled.

SHATNER:
At trial, Sandra watched
as her husband, the man

she had believed to be a member
of the Rockefeller family,

was sentenced to
four to five years in prison

for custodial kidnapping.

But what was it
that compelled Christian

to lie to his friends, family

and associates for so long?

ROBBINS:
The phenomenon of an impostor
is an interesting dichotomy

that somebody
has to live with.

They have two stories
constantly colliding.

And often, if you're going to
perpetuate that consistently,

you have to almost
have a form of delusion,

to be able to compartmentalize
one of those realities

so that you can live your life

without having this other one
on the back burner.

SHATNER:
Are impostors who carry out
elaborate deceptions

acting out
a kind of wish fantasy?

And if so,
how does this fantasy

first take hold in their mind?

For the answer, perhaps it's
best to look all the way back

into Christian's past.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter

grew up in West Germany.

By all accounts, he was
kind of a bit of an oddball,

prone to fantasy,
a little on the nerdy side,

and really wanted to get out
of West Germany.

So in 1978,
he travels to the United States

and shows up on the doorstep
of this family in Connecticut

called the Savios,

and just sort of went
into high school,

said he was an exchange student,
and things got

progressively stranger
from there.

SAVIO:
He told me that
his father created parts

for Mercedes‐Benz.

And, of course,
you know, they had money.

You know, servants.

We all knew it was ridiculous.

We laughed at it at the time.

SHATNER:
By 1985, Christian
had taken up residence

on the West Coast.

He had also taken a new name.

He moved to San Marino,
which is a rich community

in Southern California,

and assumed the name
Christopher Chichester,

and announced that he was part
of the British royal family.

He would go get free lunches
at social clubs

and private members clubs.

He'd start schmoozing up
all the rich ladies in town,

attends a very fancy church.

Ends up living
in the guesthouse

of a local woman
named Ruth Sohus.

He lives there rent‐free,

and all is well
for a while, but then

Ruth's son, John,
shows up with his wife Linda.

And John, apparently,

was a bit suspicious of this

strange guy living
in Mom's guesthouse.

And then, all of a sudden,
Linda and her husband disappear.

SHATNER:
Soon after Linda
and John Sohus disappeared,

so did Christopher Chichester.

And Christian the imposter
moved back to the East Coast,

where he would eventually live
under his most infamous alias:

Clark Rockefeller.

The rest, as they say,
is history.

But not before
this bizarre story

took yet another
unexpected twist.

In March of 2011,

after Christian was convicted
of kidnapping his daughter,

authorities in California
gathered enough evidence

to charge him
with a more serious crime

than any he
had been charged with before:

the 1985 murder

of John Sohus.

MARK SEAL:
Ruth Sohus had passed away,

and another couple
had bought her home

and were installing
a swimming pool.

HENDLEY:
Where Christian lived
in San Marino,

they dug up the backyard
and discovered human remains.

And the body was cut up
into pieces,

but it was wearing
the same kind of clothes

that John Sohus typically wore:

jeans and a flannel shirt.

And apparently,
parts were in bags from schools

that Christian Gerhartsreiter
had attended.

So then he was put on trial
for murdering John Sohus.

He was found guilty,
and he is now an inmate

in San Quentin Prison
in California.

The police detective
that I interviewed

said that the motive was money.

He was to inherit
a sizable amount of money

from Ruth Sohus,
and that's what they believed.

And Linda Sohus had disappeared

off the face of the earth.

What happened to Linda?

That's still an enduring mystery
of this case.

SHATNER:
Imposters like Christian,

who are willing to lie‐‐

or even kill‐‐ for the sake
of protecting an illusion,

would certainly seem
to be troubled,

misguided individuals.

But if that's true,
then why do so many of us

fall for their deceptions?

YOUNG:
Part of the magic story

is using a name
like Rockefeller.

It has a mana, a glitter to it.

It draws people.

And there is an element
of collusion.

So the inability
to catch the warning signs

has to do with the intentional
blindness of the victim.

They want something, and they
want this story to be true,

so they're participating.

ROBBINS:
That's really
the secret to a con.

It's not about manufacturing
a whole fake reality.

Instead, it's finding the story

that people
are telling themselves

and just elaborating on it.

They're able to compartmentalize
this reality,

because they're not
worried about somebody else.

These, together,
present opportunity

for somebody to be very evil.

SHATNER:
Today, instead of going
by the name Clark Rockefeller,

Christian is known
as inmate number AR3108

at San Quentin State Prison.

Hopefully, his days
of adopting false identities

have been ended forever.

Unlike another imposter,

whose assumption of
a new identity was so credible

and so enduring

that many remain convinced
that her deception was true,

even decades after her death.

HENDLEY:
In the case of impostors
who have a damaged past,

does the assumption
of a new identity help them

to recover the details
of a forgotten life?

Perhaps the answer can be found
by examining the case of a woman

who many called an imposter,

but who, until the day she died,

insisted she was really

a long‐lost Russian princess:

the Grand Duchess, Anastasia.

In the aftermath
of the Bolshevik Revolution,

the exiled emperor,
Tsar Nicholas II,

his wife Alexandra,
and their five children

are awakened in the night
by their captors.

Frightened and confused,

they are herded along with four
of their loyal servants

into the basement
of the Ipatiev House.

There, while waiting
for further instructions,

a group of Soviet secret police

enter and raise their pistols.

The last thing
the confused family hears.

is the sound of gunfire.

(gunshots echoing)

After the execution,
the bodies of the Romanov family

were burned
and then buried in a mass grave.

But in the wake of the killing,
rumors emerged

that the youngest daughter,
Anastasia,

had survived the slaughter.

I think the idea that
An‐Anastasia might have escaped,

it seems to be because of
the chaos and the time it took

for the true events that night
to come out.

It was said that
the gunmen were drunk,

and the cellar
was full of smoke.

The story, such as it is,

is that she somehow
survived the shooting

and that one
of the Bolshevik guards

noticed she was alive

and had this residual sympathy
for the royal family,

and sneaked her out
of the death house

and put her on a horse cart

and rode her to Romania.

SHATNER:
The limp body of a young woman

is pulled from a canal

after a failed suicide attempt.

Suffering from traumatic amnesia
and severe depression,

she is admitted
into a mental hospital.

The doctors, unable
to verify the woman's identity,

refer to her
as Fraulein Unbekannt:

Miss Unknown.

WELCH:
She became known
as Miss Unknown,

which lasted for months.

And she was ripe
for having an identity

sort of thrust on her.

ROSENSTOCK: Most likely,
she has a primary diagnosis

of post‐traumatic
stress disorder.

Therefore, we have some deficits

in cognition,

we have some
bizarre emotionality,

and we have someone
who's in a state

of confusion, which comes and
goes in different gradations.

Over the course
of about a year or so,

another patient sort of notices
she looks a bit like

one of the Romanov daughters,
and so these rumors emerge

that she's connected
to the royal family.

WELCH:
Once they've latched on
to some evidence

that she might be Anastasia,

it's all sort of a case
of confirmation bias.

Everybody looks for the things.

And I think, in a general way,

people wanted hope
out of a terrible tragedy.

It's a human instinct.

And the survival of Anastasia
represented hope.

SHATNER:
In 1922,

the mysterious woman,

who had also
gone by the name Anna Anderson,

was released from the hospital

and soon began
calling herself Anastasia.

And it wasn't long
before her haunting story

made worldwide headlines,

prompting many to ask,

"Was the woman in Berlin
an imposter

or the Russian grand duchess?"

STEIN: She went viral,
in a sense, at that time,

because the world was hungry
for that kind of scandal.

Because she wasn't out there

energetically trying
to perpetrate frauds

under the guise
of being this person.

In a sense,
she was just put into a role.

ROBBINS:
She was somebody
who was desperately

searching for a reality,

and she danced
through multiple realities.

The question of whether she
was intentionally impersonating

someone else
or whether that was the truth

is still left up to history.

There were quite a few
Anastasia imposters,

but she benefitted from having
this sort of definite transition

where she was pulled
from the canal.

And the reason for her success
was because she was supported

by members
of the Romanov family.

Unfortunately, she was also
not supported by a lot of them.

She had supporters
and detractors.

But I think once you have
a grand duke

or a prince on your side,

then people will flock around.

HENDLEY:
There's these rumors
that the Romanovs banked

outside of Russia,
that they had millions of rubles

in a British bank and all this.

So the real Anastasia

could be in for a fortune.

So for a period of time
was really living it up.

She, at one point, was staying
with European royals.

WELCH:
Two of her big supporters

in Germany were aristocrats,

who supported Anastasia,
believed in her cause,

even though she was
very difficult to handle.

But these people were so sure

that she was Anastasia,
they put up with a lot.

SHATNER:
Given that she possessed

what was thought
to be a Russian accent,

had scarring
across much of her body,

which seemed consistent
with bayonet wounds,

and cornflower‐blue eyes,

which matched those
of the missing Grand Duchess,

there was enough
compelling evidence to suggest

that the young woman
pulled from the German canal

might really be Anastasia.

But given the nature
of the tsar's family's

bloody execution,

how could anyone survive?

ROSHATNER::
The young woman claiming to be
the Grand Duchess, Anastasia

has taken up residence
at Castle Seeon

as a guest of Duke George
of Leuchtenberg,

a distant relative
of Tsar Nicholas II.

But the aristocrats
and European royalty,

who had been hosting
the strangely eccentric woman

are beginning to suspect
that there is no way

she could actually be
the long‐lost Russian princess.

Especially after it is
reported that Anna Anderson

actually had yet another name.

HENDLEY:
What happened was in 1927,

a detective looked
into her background,

and the detective says,
"This is not Anastasia."

This is a Polish peasant girl
named Franziska.

And Franziska moved
from Poland to Berlin

during the first World War and
suffered a severe head injury

while working
in a munitions plant.

There was an explosion,
so she had brain damage,

went into mental homes
after that,

and then all of a sudden
jumps into a canal in 1920.

And this triggers
this decades‐long argument.

You know,
is this really Franziska

or is this Anastasia?

SHATNER:
In 1938, as the controversy

regarding Anna Anderson's
identity reached a fever pitch,

the woman who had by now
firmly convinced herself

that she was
the real Anastasia

petitioned a German court
to try her case

and restore her birthright.

It marked the beginning
of the longest‐running lawsuit

in German history.

For decades,
evidence was presented

both for and against
Anna's claim,

including comparisons
of handwriting samples

and photographic comparisons
of Anna and Anastasia's ears.

Officially, Anna's court case
ended in 1970,

with neither side able
to conclusively establish

the would‐be monarch's identity.

But that was by no means
the end of the story.

In 1991, seven years
after Anna's death,

the mangled remains
of the Romanov family were found

buried in a mass grave
just a short distance

from where they were executed.

And the investigators
were shocked to find

that the remains
of the tsar's son Alexei

and one of the Romanov's
four daughters

were missing.

WELCH:
In 1978,

one of the killers
of the Romanov family

made a confession,
and as a result of that,

bodies were found
under some railway sidings.

HENDLEY:
The guy who found the remains

kept this a secret, though,
for two decades

because the communists
were still in power

and he kind of sensed this might
be a bad idea to tell everybody.

WELCH:
This was in the '90s
and Anastasia,

Anna Anderson, had already died,
unfortunately.

But it was discovered that
two of the bodies were missing.

SHATNER:
Two of the bodies missing?

Could it be that Anna Anderson
was not an impostor

after all,
but the real Anastasia?

WELCH:
When the news came through

that two bodies were missing,
everybody was rather excited

and thought, "Well, this proves
that Ana‐Anastasia lived."

However, the bodies
were then tested for DNA.

HENDLEY:
They compared samples of Anna

and find that she doesn't
match the Romanovs at all.

But there is a match between

Anna and her relatives
of Franziska.

Later on, a second
plot of bodies was found,

and the body of Anastasia is

actually found and DNA‐tested.

For a second time,
DNA testing is brought in

and said, "No, no, no,
Anastasia was buried

along with the rest
of her family."

And Franziska
was totally deluded.

But even today, there's people
who insist that the DNA tests

were all fake and that
this really was Anastasia,

and someone really did survive

this brutal slaughter
of the royal family.

YOUNG:
Strangely, Anna Anderson did

become something
larger than life.

She became a legend.

There have been many books.

There have been movies,
a musical.

We still love the story,

and when it is retold
in the fictionalized versions,

she is always
really the princess.

STEIN:
She was just a puppet of forces

that were beyond her.

And she was clearly
quite malleable

and was willing to become

the persona that had
been assigned to her.

Her capacity to be

delusional clearly played
a part in the formation

of this false identity,

which she seemed to live
as if it were actual.

SHATNER:
Whether Anna Anderson
truly believed

or simply wanted to believe
that she was Anastasia Romanov,

she never wavered from her claim

even until the day she died.

But what drives someone

to stick to their story,
no matter what?

For some, as it turns out,
it is not merely

a choice, a con or a delusion.

Some people are simply
born to be someone else.

jazz musician and band leaderpr

during the 1940s and 50s, dies
at the age of 74 in his home.

But when the paramedics arrive,
they make a shocking discovery.

Billy Tipton was, in fact...

a woman.

Here's someone who was gifted,
a great pianist,

a great saxophone player,
someone who had dramatic talent.

But every time
Dorothy Lucille Tipton

went for a musical audition,

she was turned down
regardless of obvious talent.

YOUNG:
One day here she is,
Dorothy Lucille Tipton

changes her name
to Billy Tipton,

cuts her hair short, puts on
a suit, goes in, gets the job.

She's got the chops,
she's got the talent,

and now she has the work.

And she has a successful career,

decades as
a successful jazz pianist.

The Billy Tipton Trio
were quite popular.

They played all over the place.

And by all accounts,

they were
a well‐regarded jazz trio

back in this era,
in the '50s, '60s.

STEIN: Billy Tipton was
looking to do something

that was critically important
to her life‐‐ to make music

and to be accepted
into a society

that would not have her
as herself.

She wasn't gonna let
something like gender

or prejudice get in her way.

SHATNER:
Eventually, Billy became
so committed to living as a man

that even his wives,
of which he had five

over the course of his life,

claimed to never know
the truth about Billy.

The 30s, 40s, 50s were
much primmer than today.

Husbands and wives typically
didn't parade around naked

in front of each other.

ROSENSTOCK:
This individual said,

"I have a certain
kind of problem

"where I can't have sex.

"It comes from
a childhood injury,

"too difficult to explain.

"But I can be
a wonderful husband.

I can be a wonderful father."

And, therefore,
he was able to carry out

this facade as Billy Tipton.

STEIN:
There are people
in certain societies

all over the world who,

by virtue of the prejudice
of the society

or the community
in which they live,

cannot allow themselves
to be themselves,

which seems
like a real perversity

that the only way they could
be real is to be fake.

Because you are
living the secret,

not just living with a secret.

We have many characters
within ourselves.

We're not consistent.

We have a business self,
we have a social self,

we have a parental self,
we have a good‐citizen self.

And this brings up
some issues about reality.

An old thief once told me that
you have to die with a lie.

If somebody finds out
that you're a fraud,

they'll think you're a fraud
from that point forward.

Billy Tipton died with that lie,
but for him, that wasn't a lie.

That was his truth.

SHATNER:
For Billy Tipton, living as
a man was more than a role.

It was his life.

But when a person
commits themselves

to an impersonation
so thoroughly,

which part of them is more real?

Who they were?

Or who they've chosen to become?

Perhaps they exist
to remind us that who we are

and who we think we are
are not always the same.

And that our own
carefully constructed facades

could shatter at any moment,

exposing the parts of ourselves
we would prefer to keep hidden

and, um... unexplained.

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