specifically the angel food ministries, a nonprofit organization that provides food for those who are struggling financially. and the next morning, when associate pastor randy depriest showed up for work, he noticed something was missing. i thought somebody was playing a joke on me. i walked in my office and i asked the secretary, i said, okay, what s going on? she says, i don t know, what do you mean? i said, the safe is gone. about six weeks prior to the burglary, becky jo came to me and said that birdie jo was planning to steal the safe here at the church. a lot of times she would indicate things of that nature and usually it was her trying to build up confidence from us in her. then when the safe was stolen, i knew pretty much exactly where we needed to go look. the twins seemed to have crossed the line and it turns out they left a trail of evidence. they were even questioned on the night of the burglary for suspicious behavior. after they opened the safe,
now, a kindly pastor would have to decide how to deal with being played for a fool. but why? 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
derailed because in 2007 the prosecutor became involved in a scandal involving allegations of wire fraud extortion and a strip club. with the cherokee county attorney s office in turmoil it seemed that birdie and becky s cases were no longer on their radar. this is a story that really felt like fiction the whole way. reporter jason george attended the hearing in kansas, got to know birdie and wrote a story for the chicago tribune. i read the stories about some of the things that birdie jo had done in the past. once i met birdie jo, i saw how incredibly personable she could be. she smiled, talked, joked with the judge, joked with the attorneys. she was completely comfortable with any conversation and situation and incredibly quick on her feet. he believes the twins are rather calculating and know exactly what they re doing. one thing that gave me insight to them, when i was in the courtroom in galen before the attorneys arrived and the judge arrived, the sisters were
safe and hoped the church might forgive them a second time. they did apologize to me personally. it was apologies under the auspice of if we apologize to you, will you not press charges? it was like they never stepped aside from the con artist approach to life to see that they could do things right. for all the things they didn t do right, they were never short on people trying to help them. i can say she doesn t like being in trouble. i ll put it that way. eddie battitori represented birdie jo during her first case in galena. i found her very endearing, very charming and very likable. there was also what i thought a little bit of a sadness to her. i couldn t put my finger on it. he decided to take the second case for free. she really needed help. she seemed pretty alarmed about the situation and the accusation, so i just told her i d help her out. michael goodrich, the same county attorney who had
people were calling from all over the united states and offering to take this child home for christmas and make christmas for him. and what this did was this slammed the door on all that charity and all that kindness. birdie jo spent 30 days in jail in salt lake for forgery and making false statements and then was released to this homeless shelter. she was ordered by the court to complete a life skills course. life skills? birdie jo could write a thesis on the kind you need around here. but as we said, the kind people of galena, kansas, didn t know anything about this when, eight years later, a boy named chris showed up in their church and school, clearly in need of help. galena was about to learn that things and sometimes people aren t always as they appear. would the boy turn out to be a girl? was the lonely kid really all alone? what would become of galena s faith? coming up pastor jones meets birdie jo s