in 2005, birdie jo was reprimanded by joplin police for calling the station and making a false report. incredibly, she was at it again, pretending to be a teenage boy who d just been molested by his father and who just couldn t take it anymore. she was advised by police to stop or she d face criminal charges. they have a real issue with deception. it s something that they ve dealt with all of their lives and until they make some real changes, are going to continue to. jobs were never in short supply. becky and birdie had several, but they never stayed for very long. i couldn t even begin to recount how many jobs those two girls had during the period of time that we were associated with them. whatever shot they had at redeeming themselves with the church came to an abrupt end on november 6th, 2006. the pastor performed his usual sunday service. that evening, a special offering was taken for mission work,
another arrest. this one was even covered on television. can you tell us why you did this? i told you in court. can you tell us again? just to get a place to stay and food to eat. for the same reason. how d you get away with it? well, i look young, and a lot of people tend to believe that i am young. what about all those hard-bitten reporters who with tears in their eyes breathlessly told the story in salt lake. everybody got suckered, up and down the line. reporter: chip got a front-page byline for breaking the story in the deseret news. looking back on it we probably all said to ourselves, we should have known. it was too good to be true. all those letters, all those lies. birdie jo had done more than bruised some egos. birdie jo had done real damage. judge oddone, angry now, got ready for an already cynical public to turn its back on needy, itinerant children. people were calling from all
now, a kindly pastor would have to decide how to deal with being played for a fool. t why did she do it to so many people in so many places who only wanted to help? once upon a time, we thought we knew the answer ourselves. one night back in 1996, while she was still in salt lake city, birdie jo agreed to meet us in an abandoned railway station. and she told us a story in there and asked us to believe. i m just trying not to wind up dead somewhere. when all this began, birdie told us, she was 18 in new york and homeless. actually, at first when i was living on the streets, everyone knew i was a girl. i dressed like a girl and acted like a girl. which in manhattan street culture, she believed, was an invitation to a nightmare. so i might as well be a boy straight off and maybe they won t hassle me as much. and it worked? it worked.
now the sisters were going to be held accountable for their actions. birdie jo spent that night in the cherokee county jail. police decided to let becky go home to care for birdie s young son. methodist children s home. over at the church, pastor rich graves has a notebook, a guide of sorts. this was given to me by becky jo. it is a book that lists several different nonprofit organizations, church groups. this book was where she was doing a lot of her research in relationship to potential other entities that they may want to try and manipulate. the church faced an awkward decision. should they press charges against the two women they tried so hard to help? i was actually probably more brokenhearted that this had happened because i knew this was probably the end of the end for the opportunity for us to try and be a positive influence in their life, and that they had stepped over the line and this was the final straw.
moved forward with new charges of burglary and theft and criminal damage to property. birdie jo and becky each pleaded not guilty, denying any involvement in the crime. battitori was able to buy them some time. i filed a motion to suppress certain evidence, a motion to suppress her statement taken at the scene of the arrest. the judge denied the motion, but in the midst of it all, in a twist of fate as unpredictable as the twins themselves, michael goodrich, the county attorney, was indicted by a federal grand jury on four separate felony counts unrelated to the hoaks cases. among the charges, wire fraud, extortion, allegations that he had received money and favors from the owner and employees of sensation, a gentleman s club in galena, kansas. goodrich resigned from office and pleaded guilty to one count of extortion. prosecutors agreed to dismiss the remaining felony counts. once again, it seemed to be