Not long later, he would meet and marry Joanna Rossi, fathering a daughter, Abigail, and later the participant. The marriage wastumultuous, with police regularly called to the couple’s Old Town home to break up domestic disturbances. On two separate occasions, Truesdale spent the night in jail for battery. He and Rossi split in 1997, with Truesdale maintaining full custody of Christopher, and Rossi taking Abigail and the participant.
Despite his checkered past, Lou Truesdale went on to find success. Following his divorce, he built, ran, and eventually sold a successful building maintenance company; trained as a certified special inspector for government and private developers; and managed a small portfolio of rental properties on the side.
Described by his former wife as a “high-functioning drunk” and “rageaholic” and by his son Christopher as “a pretty messed-up dude,” Truesdale is a complicated character whose impact on the participant’s disordered eating—and perhaps the murderous tendencies he demonstrated while under the influence of EmaC-8—cannot be overlooked.
Appendix K—Interview Transcript
FD:It’s 10:32 a.m. on Thursday, December 18, 2024. This is Frank Darrow belowdecks of theJamaica Me Crazyat the Marina del Rey in Cabo San Lucas. [Clattering of kitchen drawers and cabinets in background.] Mr. Truesdale, you all set?
LT:I’m coming. [Refrigerator door opening.] You want a beer? Sparkling water or something?
FD:No, thank you.
LT:[Refrigerator closing. Squeaking of banquette. Can snapping open.] Aright, let’s get this over with.
FD:Would you mind stating your name, age, and occupation?
LT:Lou Truesdale. Sixty-four. Retired.
FD:And your relationship to the participant?
LT:His pops.
FD:Thank you. We’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened, so I appreciate your time.
LT:Aright. [Sniff.] I don’t got all day. Wha’d’ya wanna know?
FD:I’ll dive right in. I spoke with your daughter Abigail last month, and she seemed to think that when she and Emmett were in the care of your ex-wife and her then husband, Hank Stauder, something untoward was happening to Emmett behind closed doors. When he came to visit, did you get any sense that something was up?
LT:Well, yeah. He told me his stepdad was an asshole. Used to give him a hard time about what he ate, call him names, fat pig.
FD:How’d you feel about that as his father?
LT:What do you think, I was fucking pissed. I told his mom, “You tell that motherfucker that if he calls my kid a fat pig again, I’m gonna drive up there and kick his fucking ass. No one talks to my kid that way.”
FD:Did you ever address it with Hank directly?
LT:[Scoff.] Fuck that son of a bitch. He thought he was better than me because he had a PhD. But I got street smarts. You could fill a library with everything I got up here, and it’d be worth three times his limp-dick science degree.
FD:So that’s a no? [Pause.] For the record, Mr. Truesdale is shaking his head. I wonder, how did you feel about your son’s weight?
LT:I mean, I was a chubby little fucker too when I was his age. Figured once he got to high school and no girls would touch him, he’d start hitting the gym like I did.
FD:Girls? I thought—
LT:Or whoever. [Pause.] Next question.
FD:Did you ever mention it to him, suggest he should lose weight?
LT:Nah. It was the shit his mom was feeding him, all that pasta and starch. When he came to my house, he ate good. Chicken, salad.
FD:Snacks?
LT:If he wanted ’em. I only had him and Ab every other weekend. I wasn’t gonna get all strict. They got enough of that at home.
FD:Understandable.
LT:But I won’t lie, the kid liked to eat. He’d put away a family-size bag of Doritos in a sitting. Couldn’t make a box of Pop-Tarts last a day. Shit like that.
