Episode 6: The Liar

Okay, first let's start with you telling me the story that I told you about my trip to Ottawa as a kid. I was very very in love with Tudor, senior as you know, from day one when you saw him with his sandals I told you how much I love this man correct? This is my mom Ruth Goldhar. She is a force of nature. I'm sitting in my backyard with my mom and my dad Harry and talking to them about one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. So for journalism, for you dear listeners, you're welcome. So you understood and you enjoyed listening to the stories and one day when you were in a private school, your wonderful principal and vice principal decided to take you on a trip to Ottawa which is terrific. You were very excited and you even said to me maybe I'll see Trudeau and we laughed. My mom's talking about Pierre Elliott Trudeau. For those of you don't know his son Justin is Prime Minister of Canada today. Trudeau senior was Prime Minister in the late 60s to the mid 80s and love a Marjardin. He made his mark on Canadian society. The view we take here is that there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. So when Trudeau and his sandals burst on the scene, my mother than a young woman in her 20s was absolutely smitten and growing up in our house he was considered a bit of a rock star. Came home and said to dad and me, "Yes we had this wonderful dinner with Trudeau, Trudeau senior. He sat beside me and I said oh my god, just so lucky. He was wonderful. He talked to me and all it was it was just wonderful and I told my neighbor I told my friend I told my brother I told the whole world guess what Kathleen did guess what she said. I think I said it for years. Let me see. Wasn't 10 years maybe? I think it was longer. My dad Harry isn't saying anything. He's the quiet one in the family. What did you tell your friends? You told friends. I. Yeah what it. Same thing as you did. I don't remember saying anything different. I just want you to repeat dad. I'm trying to get you to tell a story. It's super fun interviewing your parents. I told lots of friends but not as many as mom because she talks more than I do. When you did tell the few friends you told what did you say? I can't remember specifically but you were an auto and Trudeau sat beside you. Do you remember where I told you we had dinner? We go tell them there. Yeah the Chateau. Chateau. Chateau. God there whatever it's called. Chateau, Laurier. Chateau. Laurier that's right you. Chateau, Laurier, Big Table and Judah happened to sit beside you and he was so nice. He's really nice. I was 11 I think when I went on this school trip to Ottawa needless to say my parents loved the story. Problem is I was lying. I never had dinner with Trudeau. I did see him on that trip. He happened to walk at a parliament on a morning that our class was taking a tour. I still have the picture that I snapped of him somewhere upstairs in my house but a private dinner that was total bullshit. But this wasn't even a lie. This was like some kind of crazy fantasy. It was a crazy fantasy and a lie but it wasn't just my parents who loved that story. I loved it too and what I loved even more was hearing my parents tell it. It was usually during one of their rockest dinner parties. My parents and their friends were so much fun and to become the focus of their attention it felt so good but as I grew up and developed a bit more of a moral compass I started to feel a lot less proud and a little sick whenever they brought it up. I was had enough. You didn't like it that we were telling everybody. No. It was making me crazy. I was in my 20s. It took a while but I finally told them the truth. All of a sudden you came very meekly with that tail of yours between your legs. I remember this day so clearly. I was in journalism school and I just couldn't take it anymore. Mom don't tell that story anymore. I said well I it's a great cause it never happens. I wondered is this really what is with this kid? Seriously what is it with this kid? It's kind of crazy that I kept my lie going for as long as I did but come on doesn't everyone lie just a little then there's Mark. Is his inability to tell the truth just an extreme version of 11 year old me or is he in a category all on his own? I'm Kathleen Goldhar and this is Do You Know Mordekai? Chapter 6 The Liar We all lie. All kind of little social lies, white lies, things like that. That's quite normal. Okay so I'm normal. We all lie. I mean not everyone keeps it up for well over a decade but it's not a red flag. This is a doctor saying so. My name is Dr. Scott Carroll. I'm a board certified child psychiatrist. I'm actually do board certified in both adult psychiatry and child psychiatry. So I've got a couple titles. I'm the founder of the I.D. Neuroscience Institute but I've also served as the director of child psychiatric consultation services for the Presbyterian Hospital System. Dr. Carroll wears a few professional hats but he knows about the psyches of both kids and adults and he knows a lot about lying. For basic ways you could categorize sort of the reasons why people pathologically lie or compulsively lie. So the first example would be someone who has just blatant disregard for the rights and more of others doesn't follow rules. So essentially these are people who lie for money or power and they don't care how it affects other people. The second example is the narcissist. The narcissist lies really from the basis of very low self-esteem and they're basically lying to make themselves feel better about themselves and to look more powerful or important to other people. It's like a compulsion. They really have a hard time stopping it but most people who kind of lie narcissistically do it more episodically and so it kind of comes and goes which often goes with their stress level how they're feeling. Another category is a depressed liar. The person who feels very bad about themselves they just don't feel comfortable being seen or known if you will. And the last type of liar is someone with borderline personality disorder. This is what Mark told me he thinks he has. Borderlines will actually go back and forth between sort of being very anxious and then at times under stress they'll become very delusional. So they're not really lying in the sense that they're aware of it. Now they're kind of interesting. Now if you do catch them in the lie and confront them with overwhelming evidence they will sometimes admit to the lie but then have extreme shame reactions and will be very dysphoric sort of the opposite of you for it. So in a sense they kind of punish you for confronting them. And you can have narcissism with borderline personality. Right so you often see traits of the other disorders in somebody. And so if you think about it when we say your borderline we're just saying you have more borderline traits than the others. Are you born with borderline personality narcissistic disorder or you made? It's more made it seems to be there are some genetic components but then clearly certain things need to happen in your life to develop that. But even then there is an element of personal choice. So well Dr. Carroll says it's not always a genetic trait. It still often goes back to the relationship you had with your mother. Or primary caregiver. It doesn't have to be the mother but whoever the primary caregiver is. If you have a parent that is neglectful or withholding of that kind of emotional and younger children need, cannot lead them to somebody let's say like Mark because that's what he says. His mother was distant. Oh yeah certainly. Tell me a little bit about your older brother growing up and as were you guys friends? I'm on the phone with Dawn Ramston Lewis, Marx younger sister by 18 months. Close in age but not close. Oh no we've always thought we my mom said that we thought since we were very little we we never got along very well. She was always very sneaky and I was always in trouble because I was the moment was in everyone's face. So she would antagonize me to no end and then I would have taken them and of course I got in trouble. - I was a little taken aback when Don agreed to talk to me, but she said yes right away. None of the stories that her brother told my friend Aria or any of the other women came as a surprise to her. - Yeah, yeah, I've been going on like his entire adult life. There's been years of people asking me, is this true, is this true? I mean, he told someone he was driving in his car and he was going on a 200 kilometer, he got pulled over by the fleet, that boy doesn't have a license. He never had a license, he never got one. Or that he fought in this Spanish army. He did not fight in the army. - You guys ever talk about it as a family? Like what's the, what did I say about all of it? - They don't really say anything. They're just kind of like, again, you know, every time there's that disgruntled person, we're like again. You know, and like we said, they're always really bright and intelligent, accomplished women. And they're like, how could they be so foolish? - Mark profiled women like my friend Aria, open, honest, caring, and more often than not, they were single moms with strange relationships with their exes. And they were lonely, which left them vulnerable. I know that because I felt that way too. That loneliness can lead you to act in ways that aren't in your best interest, like sticking it out too long with people who aren't right for you, or downright bad for you. Being a single parent, or a woman approaching her 40s without a partner, or both, it's really hard. And Mark would tap into that anxiety. And then he would morph into the partner you wanted. It was his superpower. I think that's why so many women fell for him, and why so many of them ignored the red flags. But I also believe that the reason why many of Mark's lies went unchallenged, why the women he conned didn't catch on sooner, is because most of us would never lie so completely. Why would anyone suspect that everything they knew about their boyfriend was total bullshit? - He said he's getting mental health now. Do you believe him? - No, because he's heard this like before. - The way he says things is like, he's admitting what he's doing, but his words are very careful. I have these behaviors that I don't know why I do them. I'm deceitful, I'm not sure why. But he doesn't tell you like he was dating five women at the same time. And I believe that he doesn't mean to hurt people. And I think he moves in a panic way. He says he's sorry and he's gonna change. - I believe he wants to, but no, I don't think he will. I don't think he can. I think that who he is or I don't think he can. - It's very sad to see him so broken. It's very sad, but he's like, he's not a good person. Good people are good people like he does. - Yeah. - Well, he's very bright. - Yeah. - He's very articulate. Well, you spoke to him. - Yeah. - Yeah, I know. - He doesn't seem like he got his rocker. And then you hear about the things he, like I think he's got some kind of borderline personality disorder or something. I don't know what he has. I mean, there's something there, right? He's really, really bright. He reads a lot, he knows a lot. He could sit and talk to you about any strength. It's really the same, eh? The potential was there for so much. - It's too bad that he didn't use this creativity for good. Yeah, right, like a movie or a blocker, a TV series or something like that because he would be so good at it. But the stuff he's done, like, you can't make the stuff up. - Yeah. - And it's so unbelievable. - But then Don tells me something shocking about what she thinks accounts for Mark's behavior. And it's nothing to do with his mother or what he might have been born with. - So I believe that my brother suffers from a brain injury because he didn't have multiple questions as a teenager. - It's the first time anyone has mentioned this to me about Mark, including Mark himself. - He played rugby and there were quite a few serious hellendries there. And then he fell off his bike and was in the hospital for, I think my mom told me a week, I was pretty young, but it was a really serious hellendry. So I think that his teenage years is when he sort of started to change and became deceitful and deceptive and all of his great qualities. - Do you want me to use my radio voice? - Yes. - This is my old high school buddy, Chris Menett. And his things go this being a small world and all. After Chris heard the start of this podcast, he realized that he knew Mark. They played rugby together and was there when Mark got hurt. - I didn't really know him all that well. He was on a guy that I socialized with in a big way, but because it was rugby, there's a team element. So I remember a small guy, small-ish guy. And it was surprising because he was playing rugby. And the position he played, which was hooker, was not exactly a position for little guys. The hooker is the guy that kind of takes the face off in a rugby game. So whenever you're playing rugby and you get into what is called a rocker, a mall, or a scrum, these are highly physical, kind of dangerous places for a little person to be because there's so many big people around. And yet he went into this position like headfirst quite literally and figuratively. - And you said he had a nickname? - Ram head because in rugby, you generally don't tackle with your head. You don't go in headfirst. That's a football maneuver. And that's why we see so many issues about concussions of football. In rugby, you're always supposed to go in shoulder first, but he would go in headfirst every time. If he had the ball and somebody was coming at him, he would put his head down and basically uses head as a blocking device. And so we started calling him Ram head. So the last time I think I ever played rugby with Mark was a game and he went into a rocker, a mall, and injured himself. We thought he broke his neck because he complained about neck pain. He was on the ground. He wasn't moving. He wasn't screaming. He wasn't arriving in any pain or anything, but it was clear that he was injured. Ambulance came and then it became apparent later on that it was probably a big concussion that he had had. - After talking to Mark's sister and my friend Chris, I go back to Dr. Carroll. Could a bad concussion have been enough to alter Mark's personality? - So head injuries, there are parts of the frontal lobe that have been shown to sort of house sort of your sense of morality. And so damage in those areas can dramatically change how people engage or feel about lying and cheating and stealing and so forth. Now the question is, the problem is with like a head injury, could he have injured those areas, yes, that's certainly possible? But the thing is that would have produced more of an anti-social picture. So it's a little bit different. Now the interesting thing is, did the medical care around his injuries actually sort of sensitize him to the caring or kind of start the light the fuse for seeking medical care or seeking sympathy and empathy through illness? - So what if Mark's head injury's growing up or not traumatic enough to change his personality but was it the attention he got while recovering that planted a seed? - 'Cause a lot of people, sometimes they'll get started after you kind of have to learn what it's like. So if you get put in the hospital for a legitimate reason, and then you come to crave it. - Especially with somebody who might have craved more love and attention. Dr. Carroll says this can develop into something he describes as a fictitious disorder. - So that's a disorder where people have compulsions to seek medical care. And so they often will lie or present themselves as ill and get inappropriate hospitalizations, surgeries, things like that. And really if you can ever get better and they can talk about it, they can tell you that they just crave the attention, often of the nurses. Someone who cares for them, it listens to them and is attentive to them. - Mark told so many women that he was sick. And he got a lot of sympathy from his girlfriends when they thought that he was gravely ill. Some of them even got back together with him because of it. - And it's often symptoms that cannot be verified, right? That you can't objectively verify. - How do you treat somebody like this? - So a lot of times you have to work on the, you gotta work on the foundation, which is that underlying sense of self work on repairing attacks. and also work on the anxiety and depression underneath it. It's pretty challenging. You really have to rewire the brain about how they work with everything, identify everything, connect with everything. Usually therapy takes several years, five to ten somewhere in that range. If they'll engage, that's the hard part, is getting people to even begin to engage. [music] Hearing all these possible reasons for Mark's behavior, it's hard to know what to make of it. There may have been factors that were out of Mark's control, a concussion, mental illness, but when did he start lying to women? So I met him when I was in graduate school. I was doing a master's in comparative literature at the U of T, and I was studying Chinese as part of that. When do you knew him before Mordekai emerged? They met in the fall of 1993 at a cafe when Mark was about 20. There was this clear history, and it was verifiable, and I hung out with his family. The Jewish thing wasn't on the radar, actually. With hindsight, Wendy can see that Mark's deception was developing way back then. But at the time, she saw it more as a tendency to exaggerate, that Mark enjoyed telling stories and entertaining people. He definitely enjoyed the attention. And Wendy knew Mark only a few years after the head injury, but it seemed he wasn't yet the compulsive liar that Ariamette. It must have been a long process that evolved over many years. So he was this very young, wide-eyed, vulnerable, troubled person. He's very smart, very creative, extremely funny, amazing sense of humor, and good at sort of riffing on jokes, remembering lines for movies and acting them out. Their relationship was intense, mainly in good ways, but his time went on a side of Mark emerged that made being with him sometimes difficult. I was going to school, I was getting my masters, and he was struggling to get into university. He had a lot of issues with his family, and trying to please them, and trying to be good enough for them, and feeling that he was failing all the time. And he was getting more and more depressed, and also he had a lot of anger issues, so he could have very angry outbursts that were actually kind of frightening. Although he was never violent against me, there'd just be this outburst of uncontrolled rage that was somewhat unpredictable. Wendy eventually broke things off, and they didn't speak for nearly 20 years, until 2010 when Mark reached out to her on Facebook. By that time Wendy's marriage was in trouble, and their relationship was rekindled. For nearly 10 years, Mark did what Mark always does. He lied, and he cheated. It's so sickening to realize you've been betrayed, and betrayed and betrayed, and betrayed to this, and the betrayal just keeps going. It's like a tree with immense underground network of roots going off in all directions, and there's no end to it. It's like a bottomless pit. What's up y'all? It's yo huns. If you're a fan of you didn't see nothing, our guess is you like getting to the bottom of stuff. Which is why we recommend checking out the brand new podcast Spotlight, Snitch City, from the Boston Globes award-winning Spotlight team. Snitch City brings you inside the secret world of police informants through one small city at the forefront of America's drug war. New Bedford Massachusetts. Who knew right? Over the last two decades, the New Bedford Police Department has been a poster child for informing Miss Conduct, lies, deception, cover-ups of cover-ups. In the last few years alone, officers at fabricated tips carried on sexual relationships with informants and even coaxed them to lie in court. Featuring never before told cases, Snitch City investigates how officers have exploited the secrecy of the informant system with impunity. Follow Spotlight, Snitch City, on Apple Pieicass, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. When the first episode of this podcast dropped, the reaction was immediate. First, there was an email. It read, "My friend/coworker has been his girlfriend for over a year. We're about to head over to her house and break the news to her. She's gonna be crushed." Mark told this woman all the same things that he told the others. But now he was adding COVID to his list of lies. It was his excuse for not being able to leave California and come back to see her in Toronto. This woman called me later. She was crushed, and I felt terrible for her. Mark had been stringing her along for a year and a half. It seems to have started right after Ariadumpt him for the second time. So clearly, when Mark said across from me during our interview and told me that he was done lying with women, I wasn't the only woman he was lying to. If I looked at your phone, would you still be on OKCupid? Oh, I'm definitely not on those things. Sure. Yeah. I'm not doing that. Not dating anyone? No. I am. no. No, I'm not on any dating apps or anything like that. So I am. I've known him for three years. The next message came through Twitter, and then I followed up with a call. When I was looking to the podcast last night, there were a lot of things that were being said, that were like, "Oh yeah, uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh, I know it all makes sense." Laurel got a message from a friend who said, "You better listen to this podcast. This guy sounds an awful lot like Mordeky." I just be texting me through WhatsApp, and then he'll call me. This won't come as a surprise, but Laurel, which is also not her real name, met Mark/Mordeky through a dating app. I even thought he was like a unicorn, because he's got this ranch, he's got this family. I mean, he told me the same exact things that everybody else heard that he was brought to Toronto by a wealthy benefactor, that he was. He was gonna set up an art school, he lost his wife to cancer, all sorts of things. Like I'm listening to this last night, I'm going holy shit. It was surreal, because you never think that you're gonna be that person. Laurel and Mark were just friends. There were a few sparks of romance over the years, but nothing really took hold. He was in bed all the freaking time, and I wasn't quite sure where he was. He told me that he was staying with his benefactor. I mean, he was always staying somewhere. He called himself the wandering Jew. Laurel reminds me of all the others. She's smart, kind, funny, and empathetic. But it's what she does for a living that stood out. I work in the homelessness sector, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And did you ever have a sense that he was homeless? There were times when he was able to meet me near work. But now it makes sense, because he was probably staying within the area, which has several shelters. He had also told me about going to visit shelters, making friends. He even went to one of the. They're called Spring Sites, the ones the Big Ten that they had. And he said he'd seen what one of them looked like. But Laurel never caught on. I was like, "Well, he's kind of a quirky individual. This is what he does." And I guess that's part of the draw. Like, here's someone who presents himself as so out of this world. I can't imagine how shocking it would be to find out about a friend or a boyfriend this way. But Laurel wasn't the only person that I heard from. I also got a message about a guy who claims he lost a lot of money to mark a few years back. So far, there have been six new people, that male friend Laurel and four other women, including this one. I went to bed early, and I always go to sleep listening to podcasts, and I was like, "I just went to sleep." So yeah, I just happened across the podcast, and the second I saw the title, my antenna went up, and then I saw the name, and it was like, "Oh, my God." "Uh, I do know more than I." I'm sure I haven't found all the people that Mark has conned, or that he stopped. Active dating profiles, but seem to belong to Mark, were recently discovered. Clearly, it's impossible to stay ahead of him. I also know that Mark isn't one of a kind. A number of women have reached out to tell me about their similar stories. Some have had children by these men, and it's not only men that are behaving badly. One woman told me that Mark reminded her of a former girlfriend. And then I heard from Mark. He wanted to let me know that in general, we'd done a good job, although he denies one thing. Remember the story Justine in LA told me that she thought Mark had told someone to go the wrong way because he liked screwing with people? Well, he wrote to me, and he said, "I'm not sure why she would say that when all the things. things that I've actually done, I think is enough to paint a damning portrait of a fucked up dude. Mark also wanted to let me know that he's writing about his deceptions. He's starting a blog where he says he'll try and answer questions about why he lies so much. And he is a Twitter account. So far, he is just one follower. His sister Don. I was listening to episode three and I realized if he were to show up in front of me, I'd be willing to break all my fingers just to punch his face and say, you bastard, like how could you be so flippant about people's lives? I introduced you to Rachel last episode. Her husband had died and six months later her son got sick, but he survived. It's just the most disgusting, lowly, human behavior I've ever seen. Rachel called me once the podcast started because she had changed her mind. She didn't want to remain anonymous anymore. I think it's a lot to do with the fact that the shame and the guilt that I've been feeling for four years. At a certain point, I decided to start setting it down. Just saying, is this really mine to carry? If he's the one to blame in the story, how come we're all carrying this guilt and this shame? We're doing nothing wrong except being open-hearted, invulnerable, and loving and good and caring. I don't think that's something that we need to be ashamed for. So this is Andrea. I do understand that some people will listen to this podcast and say, wow, these women are really stupid. But also, I feel it's really important to stop carrying what he did as kind of a scarlet letter on my forehead and just saying, this is his wrong and all I did was be too caring and maybe too empathetic and maybe not listening to my inner voice enough. I want women to know that if they've been goofed in any way by a man on a dating app or anywhere else, it's not on them to carry that shame. This is his behavior. He's a monster here and I'm tired of being ashamed for that or feeling ashamed for that. I mean, you ever really find peace with the really traumatizing things in your life? I don't know. But at least not to let it be triggering and retriggering every time, unfortunately, another victim comes up and or trying to say, well, I could have stopped him or I could have stopped it. So I think it's about giving the story back to him as he authorizes that story and the choices that he made, the terrible choices that he made to hurt people over and over again. Those are not our new and I'm kind of tired of cheering them for him. [Music] [Music] I'm back where we began at my friend Aureus' house. Dad guided the boat carefully around the point and we zoomed into the straight. My son and I are here for dinner. He and his half-sister are sitting on the couch with Aurea. She's reading to them, while I finish up in the kitchen. See the island? Dad said? That's the island's chances. That's where I lost the big one last week. I think Aurea is done with second chances. He slowed to a trolling speed and began to rig the fishing lines. But I hope all of this hasn't changed her too much. That part of her that's forgiving and wants to see the best in someone, that's so much of who Aurea is. And I hope that when she finds the right person, that she'll be able to fall in love again. [Music] [Music] This podcast was written and produced by me, Kathleen Goldtar, and Michelle Shepard, the best podcast writing partner you could ask for. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Our associate producer is Alexis Green with assistance from Abbey Rahesha and Danya Ali. Sound design and mixing by Mitchell Stewart. So if you like how it sounds, it's all him. Our theme song is created by Quietype. I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all the women who talked to me for this podcast. It's obvious, but it needs to be said. This wouldn't have happened without you. Thank you for sharing your story and for trusting me to tell it. I hope one day you'll all feel that you can use your real name. A big thank you to my auntika family, Sydney Bradshaw, Nina Beverage, Katrina Onstead, Lisa Gabriel, Cam McIver, and Kieran Lynch. I also want to thank everybody at Boomboxound. And a special thank you for Taylor Owen, my incredible voice coach, Athena Corkanis, and our lawyer Ian McKinnon. Shout out to Carolyn Rachel and Michaela, and also to Kelvian Nathan, who put up with listening to a podcast about their mom and their stepmom's sex life. And lastly to Neil, the man who I met online who made my world better. This is a UCP audio podcast in collaboration with Antika Productions. Our UCP team includes Jessica Grimshaw, Jennifer Sears, Josh Block, and Amy Bell. For more information, go to our website, UCPaudio.com. [MUSIC]