When Her Life Unraveled, She Couldn't Stop Lying

Jo Franklin's story, told by the 'Wall Street Journal,' illustrates one aspect of the mental illness crisis
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2024 12:35 PM CST
Updated Jan 21, 2024 4:10 PM CST
Her Life Unraveled, and She Couldn't Stop Lying
Jo Franklin, in a screen shot from her 1989 documentary 'Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians.'   (YouTube)

As a young woman, Jo Franklin had it all together. The Chicago native graduated from the University of Florida in 1968 and went on to work as a producer of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS as well as to make documentaries for the network on the Middle East. (Including this one.) She married a surgeon, had two children, and even wrote a self-published novel. And then, in the 1990s, came a sad unraveling that Jon Kamp details in the Wall Street Journal. It would culminate in Franklin getting divorced, becoming estranged from her entire family, and living as a homeless person in various locales. Along the way, she turned into a "troubled and gifted fabulist," writes Kamp. She told tall tales about her life, never acknowledging she was homeless and usually lying about some major project she was working on. Did she believe her own lies? That part is unclear.

In one of the most egregious examples, Franklin sent a $2 million check to her Florida alma mater as a donation, fooling everybody involved—until the check bounced. All the while she was sleeping in parking garages. Kamp uses Franklin's story to frame a bigger issue: "Lost in a surge of mental illness cases and a record-high homeless population are a growing number of Americans who can't fully care for themselves but aren't easily diverted into treatment, either on their own or involuntarily," he writes. Franklin's family tried multiple times to get her into treatment, but she refused. The story details an incredible ruse pulled off by acquaintances who came to know Franklin at a Starbucks and kindly didn't let on they knew the truth about her. One reached out to her brother, who secretly paid for an apartment she used in the last part of her life—she died of heart failure at 76—though Franklin thought she was house-sitting for a Starbucks friend. Read the full story. (Or check out other longforms.)

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