Original subtitles

[automated voice] At the tone, please record your message.

[beep]

So the detective who's coming over,

she's got all connections in the schools,

'cause they'll go over to the schools,

talk to the school, too, alert them of the situation.

And how does she know I have twins?

Like, my social media is blocked.

I can't go back.

'Cause if I could, I would never have done this show.

Like, ever. Because she said my children.

Like, kill me, fine, but...

[Donald] I don't have an answer for that, because we all know...

-I literally can't even talk about it without crying. -...there's so much information.

I get that.

I mean, I stopped being a prosecutor in part,

like, I left the DA's office because I didn't want [bleep]

like this in my life.

Obviously, they don't want the story out.

-[Eric] No. -Now, who is -- who is "they"?

That's the dilemma here.

[Shannon] Eleven years ago, I came across

this completely insane story.

It was about a man that had amnesia.

And I was obsessed.

I was gonna do anything that I needed to do to find out

who this man was.

It's pretty pathetic if no one's actually looking

for someone that disappeared.

[reporter] No one recognized this man with no name.

[Benjaman] You don't know who I am,

and quite frankly, neither do I.

[Josh] Come on in, man.

He gained my trust.

-Give me a hug. -All right.

I thought, "Let's get this guy on his feet."

[man] AB marker, mark.

[Benjaman] Nothing right now seems familiar to me.

I don't remember anything.

[Josh] Come here, buddy.

-I thought he was dead. -Why did he leave?

[man] He could have got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

In Lafayette, we had criminal organizations.

Statute of limitations would be up

unless there was somebody killed.

[Benjaman] It'd be a nice place to get rid of a body.

It'd be a while before they found it.

[dramatic chord strike]

You and Dad made that in Cub Scouts.

I don't feel like talking.

[woman] Maybe he claimed amnesia because he didn't want

the mafia coming after him.

If he was running from something,

why would you want your picture all over the place?

Who the hell was he for 30 years

when he was living off the grid?

There's no paper trail on this guy.

I'm not an axe murderer

because they can't find my fingerprints

anywhere on any crime scenes.

[raspy laugh]

Maybe you killed somebody. I don't know.

It's almost like a game, like "You can't catch me."

No, shut up!

This is my life you're [bleep] with.

Nothing here makes sense.

He's an anomaly of anomalies.

[Shannon] One weird thing after the next.

What are you hiding?

That is the million-dollar question.

[man] It really is a quest for truth.

Do you have a definition of truth?

[laughs]

[theme music playing]

[Sue] In August of 2004,

the tones went out dispatching us

to a Burger King for a man that was unconscious and lying

behind the dumpsters.

I was one of the first people on scene.

My name is Sue Usry.

I'm the paramedic that responded to the call.

When we got on scene, he was totally nude,

no wallet, no ID.

Who is this guy? How did he get here?

What happened to him?

[siren wailing]

[Benjaman] I don't know how I got there,

and I don't have no memories of who I am.

I was also blind with cataracts.

I was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital

in Savannah.

In the emergency room, I remember hearing the doctors

talking about that they already had a John Doe,

and I was found behind a Burger King,

so they just started calling me BK Doe.

And I remember they were all laughing

about that and making a joke

that if I'd have been found behind a McDonald's,

I'd be McDonald Doe.

Everyone just assumed I was a homeless bum,

and they didn't know what to do with me.

They kept asking me what my name was,

and I told them Benjaman.

For some reason, that stuck in my mind.

I thought that was it, with the odd spelling ending

in M-A-N.

And then everyone kept coming in and asking me

what the hell my last name was.

And I finally, to shut them up, I just told them it was Kyle,

'cause they were calling me BK Doe.

And Kyle was the only thing I could think of at the time

that began with a K.

They fixed my eyes, got the operations

for cataract surgery.

Right after the surgery, after it cleared up,

I was in the bathroom shaving, and I looked I looked

in the mirror and I could not recognize myself.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

My hair is all gone gray.

I looked so old.

It was just shock. It was just shock.

I was thinking I was still, like, 40 years old.

But I'm not 40 years old. I'm 60 years old.

It just -- just did not look right.

I didn't know who I was.

The FBI did one run of fingerprints.

They did it both electronically and with the ink.

I never heard a thing from them.

-I finally walked over to the office... -[doorbell rings]

...and rang their doorbell.

You can't just get into the FBI, I mean,

but anyway, they came down and said,

"Oh, yeah, yeah, you weren't in our files.

"You weren't on the most wanted list."

So, no, I'm not the type of person to be an axe murderer.

[John] I read about Benjaman's story online,

and it was an unsolved mystery.

[clapboard clicks]

My name is John Wikstrom, and in 2011,

I was a student at the FSU Film School.

I had to do a documentary.

I thought, "This is a good subject."

I said, "Sure, why not?" And we made a documentary,

which has gotten pretty famous.

Hello, my name is Benjaman Kyle.

You don't know who I am, and quite frankly,

neither do I.

If this were a game of Clue and I had to give my best guess

on what I think went down, I think Benjaman was homeless.

I don't think he'd got in any crimes

and wouldn't have any fingerprints anywhere,

but I think there had to have been some kind of accident.

[woman] I think he passed out.

People were saying that I was beaten to a bloody pulp.

[reporter] Bleeding and possibly dead man.

[reporter #2] Head trauma from a brutal beating.

[reporter #3] Left him with a form of amnesia.

Without memories, without identity,

there's not a lot he can hold on to.

In a field behind the police department.

'cause none of the homeless shelters will take me in

'cause I don't have any ID.

Without a social security number,

you can't get a job,

you cannot get a bank account,

you cannot get a lease, you can't do anything.

The documentary is an SOS message.

It was a cry for help.

Nobody has recognized me, but I still have a past.

It's been almost five years that I've been working

with Benjaman.

We've spent so much time together.

I like walking in the streets of the big city.

Harry Potter's got his footprints

out here somewhere.

He is a friend to me.

He was a guest of honor at my wedding.

I know him in the way that you know a friend

or a family member.

[bicycle bell rings]

It's amazing, the outpouring of generosity

people have given to Benjaman.

Friends hooked him up with a place to stay

and with some cash.

I guess I'm emotionally attached to Benjaman.

[sniffles]

You know, in some ways, I love the guy like a father

or sometimes like a brother.

Benjaman is quick to be friendly with people all around.

[Benjaman] Hey, man. How you doing?

-[Josh] He's charming. -It was good seeing you.

[Josh] You know, he can crack jokes.

You're not going to find an apple fritter like that

at Dunkin' Donuts.

[Josh] He's smart as a fox.

[Benjaman] This computer someone gave me, Windows XP.

[Josh] He liked going to the hardware store.

He loves tools.

I'd really like to have one of these. [laughs]

You know, he could fix anything.

This is a radial arm saw.

Very knowledgeable about history and movies.

[Benjaman] "Kill Bill," that was really funny -- I liked that.

And really knows a lot about restaurants.

One time I went to a restaurant,

and I went in and ordered french fries,

'cause I love french fries.

[music playing]

They came out with this huge plate of french fries,

and then I started eating the french fries,

and I noticed what the plate was,

it had a dome in the middle.

When they bring the plate out, it looks like you're getting

this huge amount of fries, and you're not.

[laughs]

["I Can't Forget You" by Lionel Wendling playing]

♪ Dream ♪

♪ Dream ♪

♪ Just a little of you ♪

[Dr. Gorgens] There's so much about memory,

the way the brain works, that we still don't know.

♪ I can't forget you ♪

My name's Dr. Kim Gorgens.

I've been studying head trauma and amnesia for almost

30 years.

And I love a case that gets your head scratched,

that is a mystery.

It's a little like detective work.

Movies about amnesia kind of crack me up.

The Hollywood portrayal of amnesia

couldn't be further from the truth.

It's almost never the case

that someone wakes up and is, like,

completely wiped clean.

I can't remember.

That blank slate phenomena, we would call that

a generalized amnesia.

In Benjaman's case,

the experience of being wiped clean is so rare,

the odds of finding a patient like Benjaman,

it's mind-blowing.

Benjaman is in the less than 1%.

There's only been just over 100 cases

in recorded medical history.

In my experience, people with amnesia

have a lot of suffering.

And if you can imagine, in Benjaman's case,

to wake up with no memory of who you are,

where you've been, it would be devastating.

And, I would imagine, terrifying.

You know, I never talked to people about it

because I never thought that, you know,

I had the right to impose my problems on them.

Sorry.

I think for Benjaman, it's been heartbreaking

to live in this world

without any means of helping yourself.

If I had to define the last 10 years,

I would say it, you know, it's like being in hell.

That's what I'd say it was.

Without a Social Security, you're pretty much a ghost

walking through society. You can't do anything.

You don't exist.

[John] The reality is, is there is so little

he can do in his situation.

I think it would be too painful to have hope.

[Benjaman] Everyone we talked to out there

swore up and down that they were going to solve the case.

They didn't.

[John] Do you think there's anyone looking for you?

Maybe a family member?

You know, actually, it's -- when you think about it,

it's pretty pathetic if no one's actually looking

for someone that disappeared.

I mean, you know, isn't there anyone important enough

in your past life that they'd want to look for you?

Sometimes I just wish I hadn't woke up.

[melancholic music playing]

I don't -- I don't like living now like this.

I think, uh...

[ominous music playing]

I don't see that there's anything I can do.

[John] There's a lot of people that are helping him out.

But when I put a bigger magnifying glass on it,

what I thought the story was is absolutely nothing like

what it actually is.

[dramatic chord strike]

[Benjaman] This is the skeleton of what's left of the Burger King,

where I was found in 2004.

The only thing that's left is the -- the floor.

That's the dumpster I was found behind.

This is where Benjaman Kyle was born.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I suppose I could have been sleeping in the woods back here.

There's all kinds of remains of homeless camps.

I don't know.

I mean, you know, hell, it's possible that aliens

dropped me off.

This is a big mystery. I don't know who I am,

why I haven't been found, what caused it.

I do have some memories of Indianapolis and Colorado,

but my memories seem to end in the middle of '86, 1986.

And then after that, you know, everything is pretty hazy.

[Katherine] I believe that Benjaman probably did suffer

some kind of amnesia,

but I think you can use the things

that happened in your life to become stronger and better.

My name is Katherine Slater,

and I worked at J.C. Lewis Health Center.

And that's where I met Benjaman.

Life was so rough for him.

He didn't have an identity.

And I just thought the story was just overwhelmingly sad,

will bring you to tears if you're human.

When he got out, he didn't have a place to go,

and so Benjaman lived with me for about four years.

I wanted to help him, like a puzzle that just has

to be solved. I got involved.

I wanted to be the one to solve it.

And I thought, the only way to really solve this,

is national exposure.

And then eventually, Dr. Phil got in touch.

[traffic noise]

[coffee gently splashing]

That's a damn fine cup of coffee.

My name is Harold Copus.

I worked for the FBI as a special agent

for almost nine years, and then did work

for the Dr. Phil show for almost 10 years.

The Benjaman Kyle case was just one of several hundred

or more cases I worked.

But this one baffled me.

Here's a guy that couldn't tell you

where he bought his underwear.

When I first got the telephone call from the show,

they said this guy suffered from amnesia.

And what they wanted me to do

was see if I could find out the guy's real name.

Helping to reunite a family somewhere that's missing either

a father or a husband.

So, we're gonna do something good.

We'll throw Harold into that barrel

and see what he can do.

When I first met Benjaman, he would say,

"I have a memory of Indianapolis."

One point he mentioned Colorado.

I traveled around the United States trying

to find his identity.

I'm knocking on doors, looked through yearbooks,

could not find a photograph of this guy.

And I've done about everything you can do.

I've run your fingerprints. I got your DNA.

I've gone to Indianapolis. I didn't go to Colorado.

At a certain stage, you just have to say,

"Hey, we spent a lot of money,

and I'm not sure where this is going."

But I'm getting a lot of pressure from the show.

"Harold, what are you going to do?"

And so I said, "We need to do an age regression

"to what this guy may look like when he's 20 years old,

when he's 30 years old."

You know, everyone asks me that question,

and I get the impression that people want me to,

you know, stand around pounding my fist against the wall,

screaming, "Why can't I remember this?

Why can't I remember this?"

Not until Dr. Phil.

Ben, thank you for being here.

[Benjaman] When I went to the Dr. Phil show, they said,

"We're gonna solve this case.

"We are so popular across the country.

This case is gonna be solved."

We enlisted the help of 200-plus stations

around the country.

[Harold] The Dr. Phil show reached millions of viewers.

I was convinced 100% that somebody's gonna call in,

he will be identified.

When that didn't happen,

my reaction was, "That's impossible."

I was flabbergasted.

[John] That was a big loss to Benjaman.

Once you're on national TV, if nobody recognizes you,

then that points to a much bigger problem.

[Benjaman] I don't know what's gonna happen to me.

-[Shannon] Hey. -[Ken] Hey, Shannon.

So, Eric is here with me and Alexander Block.

Can you just walk us through what happened?

It was 2014 when I first learned about Benjaman Kyle.

I had been watching an old movie on amnesia.

How can I make any promises

when I don't even know who I am?

And I Googled "amnesiac" and Benjaman Kyle came up.

Eleven years has passed, but Benjaman's progress

on figuring out who he was hasn't changed since he was

found in 2004.

My husband and I own Hot Snakes Media,

and we make documentaries.

But before I became a television producer,

I was a deputy district attorney.

Then I went to the Manhattan DA's office,

where I was an assistant district attorney.

After that, I went into private practice.

I did civil litigation, and then I became

a television producer.

Thanks, guys.

♪ Ain't nobody better than a legend in they prime ♪

[Shannon] We have this amazing team. It includes Ken Maxwell.

He's the former head

of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York.

♪ Aye-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, all work, no play ♪

[Shannon] And I just felt between Ken, Eric, and I,

with our background in news and law enforcement,

we're gonna be able to uncover Benjaman's forgotten past

and hopefully reunite him with his family.

The coolest thing is I learned that Benjaman has exactly

23 memories of his past.

Colorado holds the majority of Benjaman's forgotten memories.

When I found that out,

I knew I'd be able to solve this.

[man] AB marker, mark.

Yeah, it's like there's a huge gap.

I don't have any memories from, uh,

like -- like, the mid-'80s...

to, [stammers], 2004.

But I've got a lot of memories from Colorado.

I remember the Top of the Rockies restaurant up there.

They had an outside elevator.

Red Rocks.

Blood, Sweat & Tears concert, '78.

I remember the Big Thompson Canyon flood on '76.

The Oh-My-God Road.

When you're driving on it, you're saying, "Oh my God."

I've got really vivid memories of the two theaters that are

across the street from one another.

[Shannon] So many people have tried to help Benjaman

over the past decade,

but no one has ever taken him back there.

Benjaman hasn't been back to Colorado in 30 years.

Um...

excited, eager, scared,

you know...um,

nervous.

[airplane engine rumbles]

[indistinct PA announcements]

[Alexander] This could be an amazing thing.

You could unlock a past and connect them to a family

and loving people.

But there's also that chance that this man is a recluse...

[children laughing]

...and just comes home to nothing

and microwaves his TV dinner

and eats his turkey and peas.

We don't know what we're getting ourselves into.

But with that one memory, if we find it,

we can figure out who this guy is

right here, right now.

[Benjaman] I have scattered memories of Colorado.

I'm not sure how much I'm gonna recognize.

♪♪

-[beeping] -I used to ride the buses a lot.

Public transportation in Colorado.

[bus honks]

I think basically I'm the same person that I was

then, I mean, I've always said I was never an axe murderer,

and we've certainly proven that,

at least the ways the FBI can't prove that now.

[dramatic music playing]

[indistinct chatter]

[Benjaman] We're at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

I never attended school here.

I just visited the library to read the books.

I'm sure I was here.

I recognized the campus.

You know, I was in that library on an upper floor by a window

that overlooked the atrium.

And we know that was in '76

because that atrium opened in '76.

♪♪

This does not feel like I remembered it.

I thought I would recognize it.

I know there was a three-story atrium, [sighs].

But it's not here now.

It just feels completely foreign.

Yes, I know it's this library.

I think they probably switched everything around.

I came here excited, hoping that we figure out

who Benjaman Kyle is.

Finding that one memory that could just unleash

Pandora's box and Benjaman remembers everything.

But it seems like this isn't gonna be easy.

This is one of the places

that I was most excited about visiting.

But it's frustrating

'cause I don't remember anything.

I'm just disappointed.

Damn it. [bleep]

[Benjaman] We are headed towards Red Rock.

And I'm thinking that's it up there on the right.

[crowd cheers faintly]

[Benjaman] I was here in 1978 to see a Blood, Sweat & Tears concert

with the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

[electric guitar playing]

They did "And When I Die."

And this was one of the places that we know 100% sure

that I was here.

Because that was the only time that Red Rocks had

a joint concert with the Denver Symphony Orchestra

and Blood, Sweat & Tears.

I must have come with people

because there's no public transportation

to these concerts.

So I must have been here with someone.

But I don't know who.

It's starting to come together,

but it's not in

a significant-eureka-moment way where he suddenly remembers why

he was here and who he was here with.

♪♪

[Benjaman] Right now, we're on Pearl Street.

When I came here in '76, they began the construction

of a pedestrian mall.

I think that's tobacco.

No, it says THC.

[laughs] Want to get high?

All the kids had flat tops when I was a kid.

Be the guy in the center.

Yeah, all the kids had flat tops when I was a kid.

It's the Fox Theater.

I just had a memory come back to me in which the manager

let us, [stammers], I was with someone,

let us in to watch the movies for free.

We were talking to him, and he let us in,

and we watched the movie.

I don't know.

I don't know.

All of these memories he has are shockingly non-personal.

He can't tell us who he went to the movie theater with.

He can't tell us who he went to the concert with.

The personal details are completely missing.

I think McNichols Arena used to be right here.

There should be a Denny's up here, too,

on Federal.

OK, this is Colfax.

That'll be a left at the stoplight.

Oh, oh, um...

That's a taco place, that Casa Bonita.

Oh, there's a shopping center up here on the right.

Right there.

You're gonna angle to the left and go straight.

[Benjaman] I'm familiar with this area.

I'm almost positive there's a Jewish cemetery over there.

Can we go across the street?

Are we going? I'm going.

I'm going.

[traffic noise]

-[horn honking] -[man] Get out of the street!

Cemetery.

Kind of pictured the cemetery as being sort of abandoned.

[Benjaman] I don't know. Kids hang around graveyards.

It's a playground.

Smoking pot, having sex on tombstones,

and -- [laughs] -- doing, uh,

satanic rituals or something.

Wouldn't it be fun to dig up a skeleton or something

when you were a kid?

Did you ever want to dig up a skeleton when you were a kid?

I know I've been over here because they had

equipment sales.

I remember the equipment being in the parking lot,

and they were selling it.

I know that I worked in restaurants.

I don't know. No.

All right.

What? No.

You're wrong.

You lied to me when you said, "We're just driving around."

Why the [bleep] didn't you tell me?

Don't surprise me on this shit.

No, I'm just feeling like I'm being ambushed

or trapped or something.

Kind of pissed me off because what the [bleep] is that shit?

[Shannon] Initially, we really wanted to help Benjaman Kyle,

but the more that we learned about him,

the more that he started to get angry.

He wants to control the flow of information.

[Benjaman laughing]

Because I think these mountain roads take skill,

and when flatlanders come up here and drive them

they don't really have the skill.

This road is very narrow.

All the locals call it the Oh-My-God Road

because when you're driving on it,

you're saying, "Oh, my God."

The car is almost scraping the cliff wall

on the driver's side,

and on the passenger's side, there's no guardrails.

You're looking straight down a 200-, 300-foot drop.

[Benjaman laughs]

[eerie music playing]

[train whistle blowing]

[Benjaman] There's no cell phone service. We're pretty high up.

Yeah, if anyone wants to get rid of a body,

this would be a good place to shove one off.

It'd be years before they found it.

You don't like my body comment?

That's all right.

I was trained in criminal investigations,

because I had a background as a prosecutor.

And when someone's lying or they're guilty of something,

I'm pretty good at figuring it out.

I mean, just think about this for a second.

You're a person who's trying to figure out

who you used to be.

The one thing that's gonna really help you do that is

linking yourself to a person that remembers you.

But he doesn't want to be asked about who.

So what this is starting to seem like

is that he doesn't want us to know.

And then that makes me wonder, "What are you hiding?"

We cannot trust Benjaman's version of events.

We need to talk to the people that were there

at the very beginning.

No.

I was one of the first people on scene,

and Benjaman Kyle was

not beaten, and he was not bloody.

No, sir, I didn't.

If anybody did hit him, I don't know.

But there was no bleeding anywhere.

Just nothing made sense that morning.

It's just odd.

I'm Thomas Auer.

I was the general manager for the Burger King

that Benjaman was found at.

And this is my wife, Son Yo.

Mm-hmm. And Son's the one that actually

found him in the dumpster area.

-No blood. -[Son Yo] No blood.

-No blood whatsoever. -[Son Yo] No.

[Thomas] I made a phone call

to the Richmond Hill Police Department dispatcher

and asked them to dispatch the police

down to take care of the situation.

No.

No, it wasn't 911.

It was straight to the dispatcher's office.

So you can just press play.

Who's this lady that claims she found him?

Who say to find kill him?

I don't know who that lady was.

-She did not find him. -She said "find him?"

He wasn't beaten,

that we can see. -No.

-There was no blood of any kind, anywhere. -No.

Yeah.

My name's Tracey Davis.

I was a student at FSU College of Social Work.

I've always wanted to be an actress, always wanted to be

on TV, wanted to be in front of the camera,

anytime, all the time.

I heard about an audition through FSU Film School,

this role being a frantic caller that calls 911.

And they had about maybe 40 different people that was

reading for that role.

When I did the casting call, I did it with John Wikstrom

and Benjaman Kyle.

There was some stiff competition,

but after I read for the line several times,

they picked me because I'm the best.

Yes, that was me.

John gave me the most direction, and for the most part,

we tried maybe about 10 different ways,

and then they came up with a way

to not sound so dramatic,

but just actually just being

more shocked, but less dramatic.

Benjaman and John both were really excited

about the project, and when I was done,

they gave me hugs,

and they were like, "Thank you so much.

"This is exactly what we needed.

It's gonna really turn out really well."

[phone line ringing]

Um...

[John] I know.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

[Shannon] If the 911 call is fake,

then what else is fake?

[Benjaman] I was found behind a dumpster at Burger King.

I don't know how I got there, and I don't have memories

of who I am.

[Shannon] If he wasn't beaten and bloody

and there's no blunt-force trauma,

then how did he lose his memory?

I think McNichols Arena used to be right here.

There should be a Denny's up here too.

Now I was here to see a Blood, Sweat & Tears concert.

I was definitely here with someone.

[Shannon] The 23 memories that we chased all over Colorado.

I don't, I mean,

it just feels like I'm being ambushed

or trapped or something.

[Shannon] Were any of those even real?

[Benjaman] People want me to pound my fist against the wall,

screaming, "Why can't I remember this?

Why can't I remember this?"

Oh, oh, that's a taco place.

[Shannon] Is the story of Benjaman Kyle's amnesia

just total bullshit?

I don't know.

[Shannon] Is there something he's hiding from his past?

What kind of person would do this?

[ominous music playing]

[laughing]