Speaker 1: I grew up in the East Village in Manhattan in nine.
Speaker 1: I was born in nine and I came of age
Speaker 1: really in the early nineties in an era of crack
Speaker 1: and the city was dead broke. I grew up with
Speaker 1: a mom who was a single, very outside the system human,
Speaker 1: so we never had any money, and my whole block
Speaker 1: was low income housing. I was born opposite a seven
Speaker 1: person men's shelter. On the corner was a group home
Speaker 1: for boys, which was like a stepping stone to their
Speaker 1: future life. Across the street on the next block was
Speaker 1: the Hell's Angels headquarters. So you have this confluence of
Speaker 1: wildness and poverty and crime, and the police called our
Speaker 1: block the asshole of the universe because it was just
Speaker 1: the meeting point, that conjunction of every shitty, crazy, insane
Speaker 1: thing that could happen. But the East Village, you know,
Speaker 1: we were two blocks from CBGBs, which is the birthplace
Speaker 1: of punk music. Jean Michel Basquez Studio was on the
Speaker 1: next block, and Nan Golden, who's my godmother, was around
Speaker 1: the block. So they all came there to make weird
Speaker 1: avant garde movies and make No Way of music and
Speaker 1: make punk and make strange paintings and do cocaine and
Speaker 1: sell whatever weird ship they wanted to sell and reinvent
Speaker 1: their identities. And I was just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to have a play date. They chose to be there,
Speaker 1: and I was born there. When I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: it was just me and my mom. We were a team,
Speaker 1: and I could find her, I could reach for her,
Speaker 1: I could say something, she would hear me. We lived
Speaker 1: in a house full of hand me downs, all my
Speaker 1: closer hand me downs. We would we got a mattress
Speaker 1: from her friend. Everything was self invented and created. But
Speaker 1: we would play together. We'd go up on the roof
Speaker 1: together and and make up imaginary stories and games. And
Speaker 1: if I had an idea for something, I wanted to
Speaker 1: start a newspaper. She'd started with me, you know, like
Speaker 1: she was chief of a tribe of two. And I
Speaker 1: loved her for it, and I respected her for it,
Speaker 1: and I trusted her judgment. And then something happened where
Speaker 1: she changed, And I remember the first night I saw
Speaker 1: her change from alcohol, and she put her fist through
Speaker 1: a window and started screaming, and there was just a
Speaker 1: blackness that came into her eyes, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: her anymore, and she was my only connectivity to the
Speaker 1: outside world. So I lived a life with a person
Speaker 1: who never sat down. Her thing is I don't sit
Speaker 1: down to this day, only rides a bike everywhere, does
Speaker 1: not will not sit down. So we walked, and we'd
Speaker 1: walk from Third Street straight and I'm seven, eight nine
Speaker 1: years old, walking, you know, from fifty seven street to
Speaker 1: street to rehearsal at eight pm, and then rehearsing some
Speaker 1: terrible off Broadway garbage production of Oliver Twist or Charlotte's Web,
Speaker 1: and then walking home at midnight, and like not knowing
Speaker 1: whether or not the lights are going to be on
Speaker 1: when we get there because funk the man. She doesn't
Speaker 1: pay electric bills. And we have a cable running out
Speaker 1: the window to the neighbor to keep like one lamp on,
Speaker 1: but forget the fridge. I didn't learn how to use
Speaker 1: silver ware till I was thirteen years old. Like I
Speaker 1: was raised a wolf child, and I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: close any doors. I wouldn't allowed to have keys to
Speaker 1: my own house. I was seventeen, things got pretty dark.
Speaker 1: Sometimes would just lay in the bathtub and whale crying
Speaker 1: out for Billy, the love she lost three years before
Speaker 1: I was born. Other times she'd black out and threatened
Speaker 1: to hurt herself. I had to call the cops a
Speaker 1: few times to make sure she didn't. I found out
Speaker 1: much later that she had been taking a prescription drug,
Speaker 1: an upper. And what I didn't know until I was
Speaker 1: nineteen was that the particular drug that she took, when
Speaker 1: mixed with alcohol, produces textbook psychotic behavior. And man, when
Speaker 1: it says as a side effect, this produces psychotic behavior,
Speaker 1: you know it's bad. So that was my childhood, was
Speaker 1: psychotic behavior. And I never knew which version of her
Speaker 1: was going to come home or pick me up from
Speaker 1: school or drop me off at a play. So I
Speaker 1: grew up in a environment where I was entirely at
Speaker 1: the mercy of somebody else's moods. Who was simultaneously my
Speaker 1: greatest protector and my greatest antagonist. How did you learn
Speaker 1: about Billy? I don't remember a time in my life
Speaker 1: when I didn't know about Billy. Billy was the person
Speaker 1: who my mom sang to at night. Billy was the
Speaker 1: person who my mom talked to when she was cooking,
Speaker 1: and she would talk about him in this mythological way
Speaker 1: where he was just the best thing that ever happened
Speaker 1: to her, and she didn't entertain any bullshit notions of
Speaker 1: him being a prince. She's really into the fact that
Speaker 1: he was raw. And my mom never told me anything
Speaker 1: about her childhood, never told me anything about my grandparents,
Speaker 1: never told me anything about my dad, never told me
Speaker 1: anything about anything historical. So I grew up knowing that
Speaker 1: she was a forward facing person. She looked towards the
Speaker 1: future only, and later I realized her survival depended on it.
Speaker 1: But the one exception to that rule was always Billy,
Speaker 1: and it felt like that was because he still lived
Speaker 1: with her, like he hadn't died, his body had moved on.
Speaker 1: But I remember as a little kid thinking, has she
Speaker 1: transferred her love for him to me? Does she think
Speaker 1: that I am him reincarnated? And when I started to
Speaker 1: process the timing of it that there was solid, like
Speaker 1: two and a half year window between his death and
Speaker 1: my birth, I was like, oh my God, Like what
Speaker 1: if she thinks that I'm Billy reincarnate? The timing is eerie.
Speaker 1: The timing is very eerie because there's some spirit floating around.
Speaker 1: It just needs a little human body to crawl into.
Speaker 1: Did I do? And I know who that spirit is?
Speaker 1: That would be fucking crazy. So who was this person
Speaker 1: who might be a part of me from Crimetown? I'm
Speaker 1: io till it right? And this is the ballad of
Speaker 1: Billy Balls? He said, can you come down to identify
Speaker 1: the body? A William Heisman? And I just of course
Speaker 1: went into this white and I would like to not
Speaker 1: remember that feeling cuisine evening this stopped. It was you
Speaker 1: being worn all right? Chapter three, Billy the Kid, Hi, Hi, Hi,
Speaker 1: give me a hug, bloody Hi. To nail down some
Speaker 1: basic facts about Billy, we went back to the only
Speaker 1: source we had, my mom. What year was Billy born?
Speaker 1: In nineteen He was born in Red Bank, Sandy Hook,
Speaker 1: m What are the Sandy Hook? Rib Bank, New Jersey?
Speaker 1: And his father was a Prohibition like rum runner with
Speaker 1: a boat across from Jersey to New York. And he
Speaker 1: lifted an engine off of some guy and he just
Speaker 1: picked it up with his bare hands, an engine and
Speaker 1: because such hernia that he died from hernia. His sweet mother,
Speaker 1: this little tiny woman, she lived in Maine with his
Speaker 1: half brother. And that's all I know. Not a lot
Speaker 1: to go on. But I started digging through public records.
Speaker 1: From what we know about his family, his parents are dead,
Speaker 1: his dad died, his mom died in no ninet. If
Speaker 1: he had an older brother, which we heard from both
Speaker 1: my mom and the records, that he probably did have
Speaker 1: an older brother, that older brother would have been that
Speaker 1: kid was born in the twenties at least, so he
Speaker 1: would have been at least twenty years older than Billy,
Speaker 1: who would have been seventy four now. So that guy
Speaker 1: would be nearing hundreds. So the likelihood of the brother
Speaker 1: being alive is very slim. This thing on? Is this
Speaker 1: about to be emotional Christmas? A few days later, Austin
Speaker 1: pulled me into the studio history a little bit? Did
Speaker 1: you find more about him? This is all? Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So I'm holding right now like a stack of papers.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Alright. So the earliest thing that I
Speaker 1: found that I think is Billy is this in the
Speaker 1: Red Bank Register, which was the local newspaper. My mom
Speaker 1: was fucking right, Red Bank, New Jersey, Red Bank, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Oh dude. Mr and Mrs John Heightsman of Wall Street
Speaker 1: are parents of a son born Sunday at Monmouth Memorial
Speaker 1: Hospital Billy was born on January to Norah Bell and
Speaker 1: John Heightsman of Red Bank, New Jersey. But just two
Speaker 1: years later, John Heightsman, forty Riverdale, av Monmouth Beach died
Speaker 1: early this morning at the Monmouth Memorial Hospital. Surviving are
Speaker 1: his parents and one son, William Heightsman Jr. Of Red Bank.
Speaker 1: Doesn't say how he died, but that was seven, so
Speaker 1: John Billy was very young. Billy's dad died when Billy
Speaker 1: was only two years old. He never knew his father.
Speaker 1: So and then I just found a bunch of very
Speaker 1: cute things about Billy. So from Oakland Street School children
Speaker 1: performed for p t A No. He was seven, singing
Speaker 1: Boy's little Oh Billy Heightsman, Oh my God? What else?
Speaker 1: See how I'm gonna barf? June nine fifty four, Ms.
Speaker 1: Lillian Tahune presented her piano pupils Piano Pupils in a
Speaker 1: concert Thursday night at the Women's Club There. It is
Speaker 1: Billy Heightsman. Billy had taken piano lessons and one honors
Speaker 1: in a state competition, and he was an artist in
Speaker 1: other ways. To bicycle safety poster contest, Billy Heightsman first prize.
Speaker 1: He won first prize in a bicycle safety poster contest.
Speaker 1: So I've started to look up people all of these names.
Speaker 1: Just let me see that again, people who might have
Speaker 1: known him. Hello, this is rich Drimus in Red Bank. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for calling me back. Are you
Speaker 1: the right person? Yes, I guess I am. What's up.
Speaker 1: Do you recognize the name William Heightsman, Yeah, you do.
Speaker 1: Billy Heisman, Yes, she lived a better block away. Good.
Speaker 1: Rich Drimas was friends with Billy in elementary school. Pretty smart? Um, friendly? Uh,
Speaker 1: you're digging back in my computer here, pretty far. He
Speaker 1: lived with his mother. I'm not sure whether his father
Speaker 1: died during the war. He had a much older brother, Wow,
Speaker 1: his brother. His older brother used to take a bunch
Speaker 1: of us guys out into the woods and have us
Speaker 1: Bill lean too. What was Red Bank like? My street
Speaker 1: was pretty quiet, and the one I'm on right now
Speaker 1: I still live in the same house. Um. You could
Speaker 1: play ball in the streets in the evening, hide and
Speaker 1: go seek, and it's pretty quiet. There was a place
Speaker 1: called the y m c A where on fighting Saturday
Speaker 1: nights they play recorded music you know from the fifties
Speaker 1: rock and roll, and have dances. There were about three
Speaker 1: or four of us that were friends that lived within
Speaker 1: three or four blocks of each other. Um, do you
Speaker 1: remember any other of the names of those friends? I'm
Speaker 1: sure Owen Jones Clancy Poynton, Hello, Hello, I'm looking for
Speaker 1: the Clancy Poynton who went to uh Oakland Street School
Speaker 1: in Red Jersey. I'm the guy you're talking to. Do
Speaker 1: you remember somebody named William Heightsman. You know you won't
Speaker 1: believe this, but I just was about three days ago
Speaker 1: reliving a memory of Billy Heightsmans. We just calling Billy.
Speaker 1: It wasn't William Moise calling Billy, but this this year
Speaker 1: he was an incredibly, uh unbelievable person. Clancy says that
Speaker 1: even back in elementary school, Billy's behavior was extreme. Once
Speaker 1: he came to Oakland Street School wrapped in a Nazi
Speaker 1: flag that his brother had secured during the war. By
Speaker 1: the way, Billy was Jewish, and it was a big one.
Speaker 1: It was like a twelve foot Nazi flag and they
Speaker 1: didn't quite know what to do with it was and
Speaker 1: it was politically incorrect at that point. This is back
Speaker 1: in the fifties, you know. And the teacher said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, and then somehow it just
Speaker 1: kind of went away. And when Billy went to high school,
Speaker 1: his penchant from making trouble got a little louder. I
Speaker 1: remember in Red Back there was this place called Marine
Speaker 1: Park where all these uh boats were, and I mean
Speaker 1: there are people with a lot of money there, you know,
Speaker 1: the nicest part of town. One day, me, my friend
Speaker 1: Mike or are walking down there to Marine Park and
Speaker 1: here comes Billy in a might have been a convertible
Speaker 1: Jaguar like at two jag And you could tell that
Speaker 1: it had been in the fire or something, okay, because
Speaker 1: the entire thing was like burnout and and they had
Speaker 1: the mufflers were taken off this thing because it was
Speaker 1: so loud. You could hear Billy at the top of
Speaker 1: the hill. So we're down at the bottom marine party,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you hear Billy Heightsman coming mo.
Speaker 1: These guys are playing shove aboard and they just like
Speaker 1: I mean, they dive, they dive with the courts. It's
Speaker 1: a explosion or bombs were coming in. Bill. He swings
Speaker 1: around and he's got one of those scars that are
Speaker 1: like a you know, the old airplane, you know, guys
Speaker 1: back in the h World War One used to wear
Speaker 1: you have the white scarfield flight out. He just two
Speaker 1: circles around Marne Park and he just drove it home
Speaker 1: a little a little slamboyant. What I remember of him,
Speaker 1: it was very independent. Very Uh. They wouldn't say there's
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that never fit in, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say they kind of guy preferred to
Speaker 1: be alone. When did you lose touch with Billy? Can?
Speaker 1: I ask? Oh? It must have been early in high school.
Speaker 1: I don't even know whether he graduated, And say, I
Speaker 1: graduated in sixty two from Red Bank. Hi, I did
Speaker 1: he graduate? I saw some hot yearbook photos in there.
Speaker 1: Did you fucking find Billy's yearbook? Yeah? See if you
Speaker 1: can find him Bill Heitzman, Oh yeah, fucking of course. Wow.
Speaker 1: Doesn't he look like he has an attitude? Yeah? It
Speaker 1: looks like a little greaser. He's got like full fifties
Speaker 1: teddy boy hair. So this is from his sophomore year
Speaker 1: in high school. This is the yearbook from six. I
Speaker 1: looked in the yearbook for Xe. Not in it. Two,
Speaker 1: not in it. But I think I might know why.
Speaker 1: The first thing that I actually found when I started
Speaker 1: looking for his ship. It was an article FBI nabs
Speaker 1: youth in Florida hold up. A fifteen year old Red
Speaker 1: Bank youth was arrested on Cedar av You last night
Speaker 1: by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in connection with a
Speaker 1: hold up of a shoe store. William Height spin from
Speaker 1: Maple av and Hans Uto Weinert, address unknown are charged
Speaker 1: with the hold up, which netted sevent hundred dollars. Oh
Speaker 1: my fucking god. Listen, when I was sixteen, I sold
Speaker 1: aspirin as ecstasy. Like getting picked up by the FBI
Speaker 1: when you're fifteen, that is very impressive. Also, who's Hans
Speaker 1: Uto Weinert. I'm pretty sure he's dead, but I am
Speaker 1: also pretty sure that I found his children. That's after
Speaker 1: the break. Hello, yes, sir, I gotta call him here.
Speaker 1: A little while ago. This is Rogers Want. Roderick's father,
Speaker 1: Hans was listed as Billy's accomplice in that shoe store robbery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is my father. Did your father ever
Speaker 1: talk about an incident where he robbed a shoe store
Speaker 1: in Florida? Sure? Ed mm hmmm. He basically, I mean
Speaker 1: I was a kid when he told me about it.
Speaker 1: He said that, uh, I think the owner of the
Speaker 1: shoe store and had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1: He was gonna tie him up and rob him and
Speaker 1: make it look like a robbery. I'm a little confused.
Speaker 1: So the owner of the shoe store was he had
Speaker 1: my father tied him up to make it look like
Speaker 1: a robbery. That's exactly what happened. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that we're gonna split the money or what, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. So then the FBI got involved and
Speaker 1: they put pressure on the guy, and they told the
Speaker 1: owner of the shoe store, and he told him would
Speaker 1: really happened before my father got a restaurant. He didn't,
Speaker 1: He didn't go to prison or anything. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that the FBI dropped the charges against both Billy and Hans.
Speaker 1: I find that he pretty much got off on it.
Speaker 1: He went onto the Tama chemist and everything. I got
Speaker 1: a masters degree in chemistry. But Billy, he became a
Speaker 1: master pissing off the cops. William Heights been seven Maple.
Speaker 1: Alf Red Bank was charged with careless driving and having
Speaker 1: noisy mufflers happen after an accident at Oceanic Bridge yesterday,
Speaker 1: so he would have been about eighteen, he's driving around
Speaker 1: around mufflers. So this one is from a month later.
Speaker 1: Where my fucking christ, he got fined again. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: got another ten dollar fine two or three weeks after that.
Speaker 1: Oh my fucking comment. Around this time, William Heightsman disappeared
Speaker 1: from the records. Years later, he re emerged in New
Speaker 1: York City at the Pepmde Lounge in Midtown. Billy was
Speaker 1: there and he was looking for a band to play
Speaker 1: with him. This is Gregor Laroc, a musician who met
Speaker 1: Billy when he first arrived in New York. What year
Speaker 1: was that? Do you think I would say? What was
Speaker 1: Billy like back then? Um? First of all, his image,
Speaker 1: the way that he dressed with a tuxedo, well tux pants,
Speaker 1: and then these gigantic boots that looked like Mickey Mouse,
Speaker 1: kind of like bulbous in the front. And then he
Speaker 1: sprayed into them pink and he called himself Romeo Love.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't it wasn't Billy Boss, hey man,
Speaker 1: Romeo Love. And then he do this weird thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you go shake his hand and he do that thing
Speaker 1: with the middle finger in your palm and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: and he give you that look like, hey, man, like
Speaker 1: what you know? It's like that? And he had a
Speaker 1: hearse that was a black at the believe it was
Speaker 1: black with his huge red hearts on it. It's like
Speaker 1: a cartoon. He could be funny and entertaining and all that,
Speaker 1: but you're not gonna go and mess with a guy.
Speaker 1: You know. He just knew just by looking at him
Speaker 1: and talking and you know what I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna mess with him. Our relationship was just it was
Speaker 1: really really into playing music. We hooked up and we
Speaker 1: started doing gigs. At one time Jerry, this was at
Speaker 1: a loft where we rehearsed. Gregor was rehearsing with Billy
Speaker 1: and Jerry Nolan, who would go on to be a
Speaker 1: drummer for the New York Dolls. Yes, Jerry Knowlan to
Speaker 1: go and get something for him in his suitcase. Jerry
Speaker 1: six is hand and he goes, men, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: believe it. Stuck my hand there? What I see going?
Speaker 1: He was, I pulled down. That's a gun. It's still
Speaker 1: he's gun. Yeah. Why do you think Billy would have
Speaker 1: a gun? Gregor? Because of all the different things that
Speaker 1: he would get in who I guess do you remember
Speaker 1: anything around when you found out that Billy was killed. Um,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was like a big shock, you know,
Speaker 1: that that he died. What was the impression of what
Speaker 1: had happened? That it was a truck deal gone bad,
Speaker 1: and that he pulled out a gun and he got shot.
Speaker 1: That's what I heard. Was there any impression of who
Speaker 1: had shot him? Uh, you mean the person's name, No, sure,
Speaker 1: the person's name, or a sense of like if that
Speaker 1: person was a dealer or undercover cop. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: This matched up with what my mom told us in
Speaker 1: chapter two, So I went back to her to dig
Speaker 1: a bit deeper. How did really make money? How do
Speaker 1: really make money? Well? In many different ways, like like
Speaker 1: shows fronting and offering merchandise at various kinds. What kind
Speaker 1: of merchandise, cars, musical instruments, amplifiers, etcetera, toll and ship,
Speaker 1: do you find it, you sell it? You people bring
Speaker 1: you shit, you sell it, etcetera. You know, did you
Speaker 1: ever sell anything else? Like what like drugs? Are we
Speaker 1: turning the microphone off? I was asked to get dope
Speaker 1: for a very wealthy politician, and that's how I got
Speaker 1: Billy to score for me. That's next time. On the
Speaker 1: Ballad of Billy Balls, Crime Town is Zack Stewart Antier
Speaker 1: and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of Billy Balls is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Io till It Right and made in partnership
Speaker 1: with Caden's Thirteen. You can find me on the internet.
Speaker 1: I'm Io loves you on everything, and if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about my story, you can pick up
Speaker 1: my memoir Darling Days. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We have a voicemail set up for you to call us.
Speaker 1: Here's a lovely message from last week. You just said
Speaker 1: that she was your mom, and I'm in my car
Speaker 1: and I just said what I just stopped? This is crazy.
Speaker 1: I hope you find it. Pone you're looking for your
Speaker 1: mom is amazing. I wish I could meet her. My
Speaker 1: name is Michel, I'm in Ohio and I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: care of I'm sure a lot of you have mysteries
Speaker 1: in your own families or things this podcasts make you
Speaker 1: think about. We want to know what they are. Call
Speaker 1: us and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh three,
Speaker 1: nine to six oh. We'll play another next week. A
Speaker 1: lot of you have been asking for photos of Billy
Speaker 1: and Rebecca. You can find them on our website, The
Speaker 1: Ballad of Billy Balls dot Com, and you'll find a
Speaker 1: discussion board too. The show is produced by Me, Kevin
Speaker 1: Sheppard and Ryan Swigert. Our senior producers Austin Mitchell, editing
Speaker 1: by Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smerling, fact checking by
Speaker 1: Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed and sound designed by
Speaker 1: Sam Bear. Music by Kenny qc Yak. Our title track
Speaker 1: is Dark Allies by Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright, Emily Wiedemann, Green
Speaker 1: Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, Orne Rosenbaum,
Speaker 1: and the team at Cadence thirteen, and of course, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: without whom none of this would be possible. Ms SM