JT Leroy | The Ghost Writer 43:37

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple Podcasts. A heads up to our listeners. This episode discusses eating disorders, body image issues, gender dysphoria, and abuse. Please listen with care.

Sarah, do you remember that book, Go Ask Alice? It was like this anti-drug memoir that came out in the 70s. Yes, I remember reading it when I was like 12 on a family road trip. I spent like a trip from like Ottawa to Toronto reading most of it.

And I remember being like, okay, yes, I'm never doing drugs. And then I later found out it was fake. Yeah, did it really impact you when you found out it wasn't a real story? I remember being very upset. And then I remember being like, of course it was. Was I stupid? Like, you reread parts of it and it's like, and then I did acid and I wanted to kill myself. And you're like...

I mean, we were children. It's not our fault. Yeah, it's definitely good enough to fool children. Yeah. Well, today I'm going to tell you about a book scam that wasn't just about a fake story or a fake author, but about a fully fabricated life.

One day in May of 2005, Laura Albert's phone rings. She's probably in an office building in Santa Monica. She's a writer on HBO's hit series, Deadwood. And she probably tries to take the call quietly, but 39-year-old Laura is hard to miss. She has dyed red hair and wears elaborate steampunky outfits.

The person on the other end of the phone call introduces himself as Steven Beachy. He's a magazine writer working on a story about a writer named JT LeRoy. JT is a queer, gender-fluid kid in his early 20s who used to do sex work at a truck stop. He's originally from Appalachia, and his books have sold extremely well. One of them was adapted into a movie. JT is also a bit of a literary celebrity. He's a reclusive presence whose rare public appearances only add to his mystery.

Laura panics. She does not want to talk about JT Leroy because JT is Laura. She made him up. For years, she's been publishing acclaimed books under his name. They've been recommended by celebrities like Courtney Love and Lou Reed, but it is a lot of work to keep up this charade. Laura's been doing interviews in character as JT, and she's even found someone to play him at public events.

Her entire literary career is built on this deception. Laura created a character and a world, because that's what writers do. But she took those creations off the page and asked everyone around her to care about them as if they were real.

And not only that, she built her career by tricking people who thought they were supporting a queer, HIV-positive sex worker. Now, all she can do is wait and hope that this reporter doesn't expose her. Because no matter how popular her books are, she can't write her way out of this one. From Wondery, I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And this is Scamfluencers. Come on!

JT Leroy was a hero to many in the queer community. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse who turned his southern gothic past into a career as an internationally acclaimed writer and fashion world darling. But the person who created him wasn't honest about her story. And when her ruse is exposed, she won't just be betraying the friends and collaborators who believed in JT. She'll be betraying an entire community. I'm calling this episode JT Leroy, The Ghostwriter. Legend.

Laura Albert discovers her gift for creating characters as a teenager. She's out and about in her hometown of New York City when she sees the most beautiful boy in the world. It's the early '80s, and this boy is punk perfection, with a shaved head and oxblood Doc Martens. Laura desperately wants to talk to him, but she's scared that he won't be interested in her. Laura has had a terrible relationship with her body.

She's been self-conscious about her weight since she was a kid growing up in Brooklyn. In elementary school, kids teased her about it mercilessly. She struggles with other issues as well, including what she later describes as a history of abuse. When she was younger, Laura spent time in a psychiatric hospital dealing with depression. And now she lives in a group home with other teenage runaways. But when she sees this boy in the Doc Martens, she knows she has to meet him. So she comes up with a plan.

As everyone in the early 80s knows, the coolest punk bands are obviously from England. So she approaches him and starts speaking in a Cockney accent. And shockingly, Sarah, it works. He does like her and they start dating. This poor girl. She's creating a whole world of problems for herself. Yeah, I know. Like she's never even been to England and she doesn't know much about it.

And it's not the first time that she's concocted a new identity for herself. Sometimes she calls suicide hotlines and pretends to be a boy. And she believes that the boy version of her is sympathetic. If she calls us a girl, she's afraid of hearing that she deserved what happened to her. Laura later says in an interview that if she had had the terminology, she would have identified as genderfluid.

Pretending to be a different person over the phone is easy for Laura, but in person, it's much more complicated. Sometimes she forgets to keep track of the story she tells this boy she's dating. It takes about four months into their relationship before he catches on that she's actually American. Predictably, Laura and this boy break up, but he teaches her something important.

Most people don't question things. They'll brush off inconsistencies or strange details in order to keep things simple for themselves. It's almost like they like being lied to. Everyone wants to be seen and appreciated. But Laura is willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. And soon, she'll lie her way to fame, success, and the biggest prize of all, dubious literary stardom.

About a decade later, in the early 90s, Laura is 28 years old and living in a pre-tech San Francisco. She has dark curly hair and a round face, and she mostly wears long floral dresses instead of the cool punk outfits she's always loved. She's terrified of bringing attention to her body, and she's come a long way from being a teenage runaway, but she's still not interested in a full-time job. Instead, she's cobbling together a living with freelance writing and phone sex.

Being a phone sex operator is an especially good fit for her, since it involves the same kind of character work she's been doing her whole life. It also helps that she splits the rent with her new boyfriend, Jeff Knoop. Jeff is handsome with dark, wavy hair. He talks like a laid-back surfer. He's also a musician, and the two of them sometimes perform together as a band called Daddy Don't Go. Here's a song they contributed to an album called Cyborgasm II, The Edge of the Bed. ♪

One night, Laura is in the bathroom of her apartment, holed up with the phone. But she's not talking to a client. She's calling suicide hotlines, the same way she did when she was a kid. On these calls, she usually says whatever comes to her head. And tonight, what she comes up with is a boy who goes by the nickname Terminator.

She tells the suicide hotline operator that Terminator, who, remember, is just Laura making up a character, was born to a teenager in West Virginia who worked as a sex worker in truck stop parking lots. He's a runaway. He's been abused by his Bible-thumping grandparents, his mother's boyfriends, and his clients. He also has HIV, which in the early 90s is still considered a death sentence. Oh, and he's only 13 years old.

Wow, this is a lot. She clearly needs help, and I think she just doesn't seem to know how to reach out for it. Well, the person on the other end of the line is a psychiatrist named Terrence Owens, and he listens to Laura as Terminator with gentle concern, and he encourages Terminator to call him back.

Soon, Terminator has an ongoing relationship with Dr. Owens. Laura later says that he's the one who encourages Terminator to start writing down what happened to him as a way of processing his young, traumatic life. We reached out to Dr. Owens for comment, by the way, and he told us, quote, I don't speak in any public forum regarding people I may or may not have worked with.

When Laura starts writing as Terminator, it unlocks something in her. All of a sudden, she's turning out stories almost as fast as she can get them down. They're dark, but they feel very true to her. It doesn't take very long before Laura is filling out Terminator's world with supporting characters, like Speedy, a British social worker who's supporting Terminator.

Laura even meets up with Dr. Owens in person, in character as Speedy, doing another British accent. And she then gets her boyfriend Jeff to play a guy named Aster during a phone call with Dr. Owens. Aster is a guy that Terminator has supposedly been sleeping with.

Eventually, though, Aster and Terminator break up. And Aster starts dating Terminator's social worker, Speedy. And then Terminator ends up moving in with Aster and Speedy, which is just Jeff and Laura. And they just become one big, extremely strange family. This is a lot to keep track of. And it's about to get even more complicated. Because Laura wants to share Terminator's work with the world.

It's 1994, about a year later, and the author Dennis Cooper is at home in Los Angeles. Dennis is in his early 40s with short graying hair and piercing blue eyes. His phone rings, and on the other line is some kid named Terminator.

Terminator apparently called Dennis' agent, asking if he could interview Dennis for a music magazine. And Dennis' agent supposedly gave him Dennis' phone number. Terminator doesn't actually ask Dennis a lot of questions. Instead, he talks about his own background and his own writing. Dennis is used to hearing from fans who connect to his raw stories of life in the queer underground. But Terminator seems like he's lived in one of Dennis' books.

I mean, here's the thing. Laura is kind of ahead of her time because this is just what people do on the internet every day. Or at least we're doing on like chat rooms and message boards and stuff. This is just so crazy. It's like it's such an unnecessary grift. I know. It's so wild. And Dennis is wary of Terminator's intensity, but he's also interested in his tragic eventful life.

So, they strike up a friendship. And soon, Terminator is asking if Dennis will read one of his stories. For the last decade, Dennis has been watching his friends and loved ones die from AIDS. And now he has this opportunity to help someone in his community who is younger than him and has a really bright future ahead of them. And then, to his surprise, Terminator's writing is actually pretty good.

Sarah, can you read a little bit of it for me? This is from Terminator's first short story, which was originally published in a Connecticut newspaper and then in a story collection titled The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. It's called Balloons, which is a reference to how Terminator says heroin is distributed. He goes, Crayon used to joke that I bought the heroin just for the damn balloon because I never cut the balloon, only if I'm on a run and getting sick.

But even then, I feel like this guy in some movie I saw where he slices open his loyal dog and puts his hands in it just to keep warm.

I mean, sure, that's good writing. I don't know, it's very evocative. It's definitely setting an image of someone who's seen shit. It speaks to the literary vibes at the time, I think, you know? Yeah, very 90s. Well, Dennis encourages Terminator to keep writing, and he even starts putting him in contact with other writers and industry professionals. Terminator's mentors quickly learn that they can expect a lot of emotionally demanding calls.

But they're so eager to help him that it's easy to overlook the stranger details of their friend's life. Like when Terminator explains that he's able to send faxes of his work because one of his Johns gave him a fax machine that he keeps chained to his leg so no one will steal it.

He goes into a public bathroom that apparently has a phone jack in there to hook it up and send his pages. I feel like I need to say for our younger listeners who don't know how big a fax machine is, it's very big. It's massive. How are you going to chain that to your leg?

Well, Terminator often says he's suicidal, and he tells stories about going out to seek violent sex with strangers and using dangerous amounts of drugs on purpose. The writers and critics who have grown fond of JT don't know anything about Laura. They just want to help this kid who's using literature to escape from a bad situation and try to make something of himself.

So they give everything they can to support this traumatized child. And now there's a national network of people all trying to save a boy who doesn't even exist.

It's the spring of 2000, and it's been about three years since that first phone call with Dennis. And Terminator has become a bit of a literary wunderkind. He's also started going by a more official name, J.T. Leroy. The J stands for Jeremiah, the T is for Terminator, and Leroy is drawn from one of Laura's former phone sex clients. J.T. has published stories in magazines like Spin and an anthology called Close to the Bone.

Tonight, a San Francisco bookstore is hosting the release party for JT's first novel, Sarah. Now, JT isn't here, of course, and no one expects him to be, because JT doesn't meet people in person. JT tells people he has a disfiguring disease called Kaposi's sarcoma, which he says is a complication of his HIV diagnosis. And just like his creator, Laura, he says he hates how he looks and he does not want to be seen.

Laura had a kid with Jeff about three years ago. She later says that after giving birth, she's more self-conscious about her body than ever. When she shows up to JT's book release party, no one knows who she is or what she even looks like.

Okay, so at this point, she's still with Jeff. Yes. She's a mom. And she's still pretending to be this teenager who's troubled and has AIDS. Yeah, it's been years. She's still doing this. Not only is she still doing it, but it's so successful. Yeah, it's really working. And it's also kind of weird for her to hear people around her talking about whether GT is real or not.

They think he was created by a celebrity, that he's the pen name of a more famous author like Dennis Cooper or Mary Gatesgill. On one level, it's flattering. But Laura did so much work, and she does want a little bit of the credit. And it's not just that Laura can't get credit for her work. She also has to jump through hoops to get paid for it. She makes sure that JT's books are published and marketed as fiction rather than autobiography or memoirs.

But she still signs the contracts as JT, someone who is both a minor and also not real. She has JT's payments sent to a cousin who is actually Laura's sister.

I mean, the crazy part is also real people are in on this that aren't Laura. It's not like it's, you know, obviously her husband knows about this and her sister also does. Yeah, she pulled a lot of people into the scam. And the situation is already messy, but Laura can't stop thinking about adding just one more complication.

Because without a flesh and blood JT, she'll always have to hear whispers that he's just a hoax, and she'll always be missing out on more opportunities. There's only one way to keep Laura's fledgling literary career going. She needs to find someone to play JT LeRoy. ♪

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Just use the code SCAMPOD. That's happymammoth.com, M-A-M-M-O-T-H, with the code SCAMPOD to get 15% off your entire first order. Savannah Knoop stands in front of their closet trying to figure out what GT LeRoy would wear to dinner. They're 19 years old with short, sandy blonde hair cropped at the ear, and they look pretty androgynous.

Savannah is the younger sibling of Laura's partner Jeff, so they've known Laura for a few years now. Savannah later writes in their memoir that they bonded over their disordered eating and their creative aspirations. Like Laura, Savannah also has a complicated relationship with her gender and later identifies as gender fluid. Savannah has known since the beginning that Laura created JT, and they think it's pretty cool.

Savannah's own life is boring by comparison. They recently graduated from high school and they're working at a Thai place while trying to start a fashion line. So of course, when Laura asked them to play JT for a photoshoot a few weeks ago, they said yes. It seemed exciting, a portal to the world of celebrity and glamour. Laura said it would be a one-time thing, but Savannah is about to play JT again. And this time it's going to be a lot more complicated.

JT is supposed to have dinner with the actor Michael Pitt and the filmmaker Gus Van Sant. Gus wants to option one of JT's books and turn it into a movie. This would be a really big deal. Laura, masquerading as JT, has sold two books at this point for about $24,000 each. The advances by themselves are not enough money for their family to live on, even by early 2000 standards. So Laura has other JT-related side hustles, like

Like on the author's website, she sells the literary world's hottest merch, raccoon penis bones autographed by JT. Of all the side hustles in the world, this is the one you think is going to make you more money? Well, there's actually a reason for the raccoon penis bones. In his novel, JT writes about how these bones are worn as protective amulets by truck stop sex workers like his mother. JT calls them lot lizards.

But here's the thing. Even with all the raccoon penis money coming in, Jeff, Laura, and their young son are still living in the same crammed San Francisco apartment. Hollywood money would be life-changing for them. And now it's all riding on Savannah. Savannah picks out a pair of baby blue corduroys and a plaid pajama shirt. They put on the wig and sunglasses that Laura insists that they wear. And they head out to meet Jeff and Laura at their apartment.

Jeff and Laura, by the way, are also going in character as Aster and Speedy. The three of them meet up with Gus and Michael at a fancy restaurant called Charles Knob Hill. Savannah is anxious about saying the wrong thing and really anxious that they don't look the part. Laura, on the other hand, seems to be having the time of her life, cozying up to Gus and Michael. Savannah later writes in their memoir that Laura keeps encouraging Savannah to do things like ask if they can raid Gus's minibar later.

According to Savannah's memoir, Laura is also a very controlling collaborator. She insists on ordering dinner for JT, the dinner that Savannah then has to eat. And in Savannah's telling, Laura keeps talking about JT's sex life. At one point during the meal, she praises JT for not sleeping with the photographer at the photo shoot during Savannah's first time playing JT. Laura ends up saying he used to have sex with anything that paid him a compliment to the whole table.

Oh, and I should mention, Laura is not a fan of this memoir. After it comes out, she tells Page Six, quote, Okay, Laura. I mean, the other wild thing about this quote is Laura is using the wrong pronouns for someone who's gender fluid, and this is after she pretended to be a trans kid to get people to buy her books. It's amazing.

We did reach out to Laura for comment on this episode, and she took issue with our use of the words hoax and deceived. She wrote in an email, quote, language like that suggests a profound misunderstanding of what I was doing with JT Leroy and implies an adversarial situation in which I have no interest in participating.

Laura's issues with Savannah's memoir seem to stem from her insistence on full authorial control over JT. But JT's path to fame and success means giving up some of that same control. Because hoax or not, everything depends on Savannah's willingness to keep playing that role.

Having to act like a literary celebrity is really stressful for Savannah. But there are perks, so they reluctantly continue playing JT. Beyond the trips, the gifts, the parties, being JT allows Savannah to play with gender the way they've always wanted to. Here's how they later describe it in an interview with CBS's The Sit Down. Like, you'd go into JT land and get to be an artist.

you didn't even have to do the work. And then also having living in a queer body, which of course was not something new, but it is sort of, you can be invested in it because it's not your life. In 2002, two years after they started playing JT, Savannah goes on a six-week international book tour with Laura. It's exhilarating, but it's also exhausting.

especially because under the pressure of staying thin enough to play JT, Savannah has fallen back into their eating disorder. And during that trip, they also meet the director, Azia Argento, and develop a pretty intense flirtation with her. Azia is film royalty. Her dad is the Italian horror director, Dario Argento. She's mesmerizingly beautiful with an intense, dark-eyed stare. And she's one of the big reasons that Savannah can't give up JT quite yet.

Asya starts filming an adaptation of one of JT's books, "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things." And when she invites JT to spend a few days on set, Savannah says yes. It's Savannah's first time playing JT without Laura, and they're worried about what might happen if they get closer to Asya. Asya later tells Vanity Fair that she and the person she thought was JT kissed and slept in the same bed together. But Asya doesn't know that Savannah is just playing the part of JT.

And for Savannah, there's something about that that just feels gross. Even though it's freeing in some ways, being JT means always hiding a part of themself and deceiving the people around them. Savannah thinks, I have to stop doing this.

Laura has been more and more comfortable in the spotlight ever since she had gastric bypass surgery a few years ago and lost a ton of weight. She and Jeff have been performing in a band called Thistle, and she shot a cameo for The Heart is Deceitful, where she plays a diner waitress. But that is not the same thing as being JT, who seems to get whatever and whoever he wants. When Savannah calls and says they are done playing JT, it's a gut punch. Without

Without Savannah, Laura's life is going to change a lot. But it's possible that amidst the disappointment, Laura sees an upside to this. Because if there's no one playing JT, she can stop being speedy.

Everyone loves Laura when she's playing JT on the phone, but in person, when she's Speedy, they think she's a pain. Celebrities like Carrie Fisher will hang out with Speedy and JT, and then call JT after to say that Speedy is taking advantage of him and that he should cut her out of his life. ♪

Oh my God, this is so complicated. I mean, I would just be happy if Carrie Fisher called me. Yeah. And then imagine being like, okay, I got to talk to Carrie Fisher, but she's telling me that my character is being taken advantage by me. It's just like, it's a wreck. It's a wreck. None of these people are real. And I think they see famous people and actors and this world as like

real as well. Like it's this isn't like Carrie Fisher person. This is Carrie Fisher character to them, you know? Yeah, it's all cosplay. Yeah, that's how I see it. It's like no one is a real person to these people. And then Savannah catches feelings for an actual person and it makes everything so complicated. And yeah, it's a lot. Meanwhile, JT's actual literary career is faltering. His agent recently called urging him to get back to work on his next book.

Some of his early supporters have dropped him completely. They think he's too obsessed with being famous. For almost a year, Laura lays low, writing for magazines like Paper and Spin to pay the bills. But she still needs to be acknowledged by the celebrities whose attention she craves. So slowly, she starts telling people her secret. She confesses to Billy Corgan backstage at a Zwan concert, and she reveals to television writer David Milch that she's the woman behind JT.

He doesn't judge her. In fact, David asks her if she wants to write for his show, Deadwood. He can credit her as JT, he says, or as Laura Albert. Laura might finally get the chance to put JT behind her and write something under her own name. But the past few years of lies are going to catch up with her. Billy Corgan and David Milch might not care if JT LeRoy is real or not, but a lot of other people do.

Stephen Beachy is a magazine writer in his late 30s with a graying goatee and wire-framed glasses. He's been investigating J.T. Leroy for the better part of a year, and he's turned up some pretty troubling evidence that J.T. is not who he says he is. In an interview with NPR, Stephen later says that he couldn't find any record of anyone named Jeremiah Leroy in J.T.'s supposed home state of West Virginia.

But Stephen didn't stop there. I spoke to hustlers on Polk Street in San Francisco and other long-term denizens of the neighborhood, and nobody had any memory of him. I checked birth records and started talking to people who had known JT from the beginning and couldn't find anybody who had met him before 2002 and couldn't find any evidence that he actually existed.

Yeah. Also, at this point, JT has claimed he's had AIDS, right? Since he was 13. And this was, you know, a very long time ago when things were very different. And it was a death sentence. Right. So that's also kind of a red flag. It's like, this person is very sickly. Shouldn't they be like, you know, hospitalized or like what's going on with their treatment? You know what I mean? It's like, I feel like there's just so many...

holes in this story that it's so tragic no one really wants to question it. Yeah, you're right. But Steven has a pretty good idea of who's behind JT, a woman named Laura Albert. He's managed to connect JT's band Thistle with its earlier iteration, Daddy Don't Go. And once he realizes that Speedy is actually Laura, the dominoes start to fall.

But it's been surprisingly hard to get his reporting published. The publication Stephen originally wrote his piece for ended up scrapping it. Probably because JT has a reputation for making long, guilt-inducing phone calls to anyone who says he's not real. And no one wants to further traumatize a guy who's already been through it so much. But Stephen is convinced that he's right. And eventually, he gets New York Magazine to accept the piece.

A few months before it's published, he dials J.T. LeRoy's number. And when he does, someone picks up. It's Laura, answering from the Deadwood Writers' Room in Santa Monica. So this is actually where we found ourselves at the beginning of this episode, right? Laura getting a call from the journalist while at work. Yes. Laura tries to convince Stephen that he should let it go. And Stephen even considers it for a moment.

Laura actually recorded her end of the conversation, and here's a sample of what she says from the documentary Author, the J.T. LeRoy story. If I need to be whoever the fuck I need to be so I can have that anonymity, maybe I'm David Milk. Maybe I'm faster and speedy. Maybe I'm an amalgam of the universal unconscious of whoever the fuck. You know, maybe I'm you.

I have a feeling that Laura's whole tactic is just talking until the other person's so confused and exhausted they can't even really parse what's happening. You know what I mean? Like, it's like she's really, really good at this type of manipulation. She's so good at it. And even though he knows better, Stephen finds her arguments kind of seductive.

But the second time he calls, possibly in another attempt to get JT to fess up, the person on the phone is nasty and vindictive. They claim Stephen's only doing this because he's jealous. He had a book come out the same year as JT LeRoy's novel, Sarah, and it didn't do well.

This jives with the other stories of ugly manipulation that Stephen has heard about JT. How demanding and careerist he can be, and how many people from the literary world felt cast aside after he found fame. That behavior is even less forgivable if it's coming from a grown woman instead of a young, HIV-positive runaway. Stephen's piece is published in New York Magazine in October 2005. It raises a lot of questions, but there's no smoking gun.

Stephen can't prove that Laura is JT, and he can't ID the person in the blonde wig with the dark sunglasses who shows up at events claiming to be the author. Laura is not ready to give up on JT. But soon enough, she won't have a choice.

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You might think Laura's boyfriend Jeff would panic when Steven's piece runs in New York Magazine. But no, he breathes a sigh of relief. He's been ready for this drama to be over. At first, J.T. LeRoy was just Laura's artistic expression, or a way she dealt with her difficult past. But then the character got bigger and bigger and consumed Laura, along with Jeff and his sibling Savannah.

I mean, look, there have been perks, of course. Money, travel, clothes, even some free exposure for Jeff and Laura's band, Thistle. But now, Jeff and Laura's son is six years old, and Jeff isn't sure it's good for the kid to be caught up in this whirlwind and to be around so much lying.

Jeff sees that Laura is not backing down. She's been working the phones like always, telling journalists who call her that they have no story, reassuring JT's friends that he's not a hoax. And some of them, like Stephen Jenkins from Third Eye Blind, yeah, he's also in this story, stick up for JT immediately and publicly. Jeff is worried about one of JT's friends in particular, Gus Van Sant. ♪

Jeff is a big fan of Gus's work, and he has always wanted to be his peer, his collaborator, and maybe even his friend? Jeff hates the thought of Gus making a fool out of himself on JT's behalf. So he calls Gus to tell him the truth. I should mention, Jeff did not respond to our requests for comment. At first, his confession is private. But then, the New York Times publishes an article naming Savannah as the person playing JT.

When New York Magazine published its story, they couldn't identify the person behind the wig and the sunglasses. But now, the Times reporter has found a picture of Savannah online and showed it to several of JT's associates, who confirmed that the person in the photo was in fact the person they thought was JT.

Now, even GT's staunchest offenders start to question themselves. And there's public backlash too. Youth at a local LGBTQ center put out a statement condemning Laura's lies. They say they're appalled by the exploitation of their struggles for the purpose of fame and personal profit.

Sarah, will you read the rest of it for me? Yeah, it continues.

Yeah, I mean, there are real people who have JT's claimed experience. And it is just so insane because it's like you can't just claim an identity as a project. Yeah. And I mean, there is really something to be said about who gets to profit off of a community's trauma, right? And at this point, Jeff has had enough. He wants to get it all off his chest. He's hoping that he can salvage his pride and his reputation as an artist.

and maybe sell a movie based on his life? So Jeff calls the New York Times reporter who outed Savannah and says he's willing to confirm once and for all that Laura is the person who actually wrote JT's books. JT LeRoy never existed. Jeff's betrayal is the final nail in JT's coffin. It also marks the end of his romantic relationship with Laura. But for her, the final insult is still to come in the form of a lawsuit that threatens to permanently brand her as a fraud.

Almost two years later, Laura sits on the stand in a New York courtroom. She's shed her usual gothic excess for a more somber outfit: a white button-down, a gray blazer, and pearls. She's being sued for fraud by the production company that optioned her book, Sarah. They say they optioned it in large part because of JT's persona and reputation. And now both things have been dismantled. They also say that the contract for the option should be void, since, of course, it was signed by someone who doesn't exist.

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Laura has to try to make the world understand that she never meant for any of this to happen. JT was a part of her, she testifies. He felt real to her. She wasn't using JT's sob story for gifts or sympathy, even though she got plenty of both. She just couldn't help how people reacted to him. And weren't they really reacting to her pain, which was what forced her to inhabit this voice in the first place? Again, Laura declined to talk to us for this episode.

In her email to us, she wrote, With the reveal that JT LeRoy was an avatar and that I had written the books, the support of media coverage turned hostile, with the press imposing its own narrative of hoax and telling people that they'd been punked.

It's important to remember that a hoax is a lie. People think they're buying gold, but it's actually pyrite. But JT LeRoy's fiction was a real thing. The writing is there and has true literary merit. That merit is the reason why such a fuss was made over JT in the first place, because his prose made such a powerful impact on people.

This is so frustrating to hear. Just because you are good at writing doesn't mean you can just lie and get away with it. Yeah, that's not a good legal argument. And in court, Laura and her lawyers argue that JT's book, Sarah, was sold as a work of fiction. It never had to be true. But remember when Laura signed her first book contract in JT's name? Well,

Well, she's been doing that ever since. And that calls into question who even owns the rights to Sarah in the first place. Since again, JT LeRoy is not a real person. When the trial ends, it only takes the jury a few hours to come back with a verdict. They rule against Laura and order her to pay back her entire option fee, more than $100,000. A judge also says she has to pay the company's legal fees, which more than triples her total bill. Laura appeals the ruling and eventually settles out of court.

Laura has lost everything, her reputation, her career, her partner, and a lot of money. But she still insists that she never did anything wrong. And now she's preparing one final betrayal for everyone who ever trusted her.

It's 2016, just over 20 years since Dennis Cooper first heard JT Leroy's voice on the phone. Dennis was JT's introduction to publishing, but they haven't been close in a really long time. Dennis didn't like who he saw JT becoming, cozying up to celebrities instead of working on another book.

And Laura has been pretty outrageous lately. A documentary called Author, The JT LeRoy Story has just been released, and it draws heavily on Laura's perspective. Dennis actually agreed to be interviewed for it. He has no problem talking about what happened. He has nothing to hide. But apparently, Laura does.

Dennis tells the New York Times that while he was on set, no one bothered to mention that Laura had tapes of their 90s phone calls that she'd made without telling him. And she certainly didn't mention that these tapes would be included in the film. But Dennis isn't the only one whose voice appears in the documentary in recorded phone conversations. Billy Corgan, Tom Waits, and Asia Argento are all included as well. Laura even taped JT's psychiatrist, Dr. Owens, without his knowledge. Now,

Now, normally here is where I would play you a clip, but that just doesn't feel right. And also in some states, it is illegal to record people without their consent. This is insane. I don't understand how Laura cannot stop herself. She cannot stop. And Dennis hates her movie. As he tells the New York Times, author is, quote, a superficial whitewash of a situation that was and remains far uglier and more damaging than this film lets on.

And Dennis probably can't help but notice that there's another thing that hasn't changed in all these years. After the first two books, Laura basically stopped writing fiction. In her email to us, she maintained that her career as JT LeRoy has not been based on a lie. She wrote, quote, "To employ an avatar or a pseudonym is not the same thing as perpetrating a hoax. It is an attempt to expand the real world to accommodate spiritual and emotional realities alongside physical realities.

Spiritual and emotional realities are every bit as real as physical realities are. They just aren't physical. That's all. To endow them with a physical form is not fakery or any kind of hoax. It is an attempt to be honest and open. You know when you're like arguing with a particularly crazy person in your life and they just end up talking in circles that you're so exhausted you kind of relent? Yeah. This is what this is to me where I'm just like, okay, fine. I'm not going to do this.

While Laura is right about one thing, there are plenty of spiritual and emotional truths at the heart of it. Like the sense of betrayal and manipulation felt by people like Dennis, who trusted JT. Or the alienation and discomfort Savannah articulates in their memoir. While JT's books remain in print to this day, Laura Albert has never published a book under her own name.

Well, Sarah, I feel like this episode really upset you and I did not see that coming. Yeah, I feel like it was a very frustrating story to hear because all these scams are so unnecessary. But to me, this just felt like so much more effort than it was worth, especially because this is someone who is clearly talented. Yeah, I feel like another part of it is that Laura intentionally created this like trauma porn catalog.

where JT's having the worst things happen to him and he's had such a bad life and he's had all of this strife. I guess she wanted empathy and sympathy and she didn't feel like she could get it unless she created this really bombastic story of woe. But it also preys on people who have had terrible things happen to them, like the things that Laura was writing about. And they come to this book thinking that they're reading something from someone who understands their experience and

And it's just someone who's using it because they want to go to a book party. Well, yeah, because so much of the deception had nothing to do with the books. It was hours of conversations with people to manipulate them so they would trust JT and feel bad for JT so that Laura could publish these books as JT.

and have a community and audience and all that, you know what I mean? She got to rub shoulders with famous people that she probably wouldn't have if she was Laura and just writing books, you know what I mean? It was the JT LeRoy persona and the look that really got her to where she was. And I think that was, like, she was just so hungry for that fame and access and knowing these people and hanging out with, like, some of the coolest people who existed in the '90s in America. - Yeah. - I feel like the takeaway

is that if you want to be famous and you want all of these things, you have to also tell me your name. That's part of it, is accepting the risk. Yeah. You can't just be famous enough that people feel bad for you and send you money. You have to let me hate you if I want that for no reason at all. Yeah, grow up and let me be mean to you. That's the price.

This is J.T. LeRoy, the Ghostwriter. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were Who is the Real J.T. LeRoy by Stephen Beachy in New York Magazine, J.T. LeRoy Unmasked, The Extraordinary Story of a Modern Literary Hoax by Steve Rosen, The Guardian, and The Unmasking of J.T. LeRoy in Public, He's a She by Warren St. John in The New York Times.

In this episode, we discussed body image, mental health, and suicide. If you know someone who is struggling with mental health, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. The Trevor Project, which aims to end suicide among LGBTQ youth, offers counseling at the number 1-866-488-7386.

Additional resources are available in our show notes. Zan Romanoff wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Saatchi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Our senior producer is Jen Swan. Our producer is John Reed. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Peary. Our story editor and producer is Sarah Enney. Eric Thurm is our story editor. Sound design is by James Morgan. Fact-checking by Will Tavlin.

Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frees on Sing. Our coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock. Our managing producer is Matt Banth, and our senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Kate Young and Olivia Richard are our series producers. Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Our senior producer is Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Jens, Jenny Lauer Beckman, and Marsha Louis for Wondery. Wondery.

If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.