Hometown recollections and the documented life experiences of James Frey, author of the nation’s top-selling non-fiction book, “A Million Little Pieces,” don’t seem to add up to the claims in his memoir, police say.
Police reports posted online and another obtained by the Chicago Tribune show he had little contact with the law in Michigan, in contrast to the assertions of violence, addiction and recovery he makes in his book.
Instead of the book’s claims about being arrested in St. Joseph three times at 15, three times more at 16, and another three times at 17–when Frey also claims he set a Berrien County blood alcohol record at 0.36–county records show he had a single 1988 citation for reckless driving.
“That’s the only ticket,” said Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey, adding that police there don’t remember him at all.
Frey’s phenomenon of a book was pushed into the stratosphere by Oprah Winfrey, who selected the 2003 memoir for her book club last fall, propelling it to more than 3.5 million copies in sales and 14 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.
It topped the Times list this week in non-fiction, even as the Web site The Smoking Gun (www.thesmokinggun.com) called several of the book’s main assertions into question.
The Web site’s investigation, which began in November, sparked an Internet showdown with Frey, who broke the news Saturday night by posting an e-mail on his bigjimindustries.com Web site.
“This is the latest investigation into my past, and the latest attempt to discredit me,” Frey wrote. “In an effort to be consistent with my policy of openness and transparency, I thought I should share it with the people who come to this website and support me and my work. So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won’t dignify this with any sort of further response.”
On Tuesday, Frey was not commenting on questions about the book’s accuracy, his publicist said. The publishers of “A Million Little Pieces,” Anchor Books and Doubleday, blamed possible inaccuracies on the memoir genre of the book.
“By definition, it is highly personal. In the case of Mr. Frey, we decided `A Million Little Pieces’ was his story, told in his own way, and he represented to us that his version of events was true to his recollections,” the publishers said in a statement Tuesday. “Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.”
The Smoking Gun’s researchers paired police records from Michigan and Ohio with claims in Frey’s book. They matched in only the most cursory ways, its researchers said.
In one of the Web site’s central claims, Frey did not appear at all in a police report about a 1986 collision between a train and a car, in which two popular St. Joseph High School girls died.
In his book, Frey expresses remorse for having been involved in the chain of events that led to their deaths. He said he was interviewed by police, and that one of the victim’s parents blamed him for her death.
But he mentions only one of the girls in the book, not both. And he didn’t figure at all in the accident investigation at the time, said one of the former St. Joseph officers who prepared the report–Bailey, who is now the county sheriff.
Melissa Sanders and Jane Hall, both 17, were killed in the accident. They were riding in the front seat of a 1976 Oldsmobile driven by Dean Sperlik.
Racing from a party to get the girls home before curfews, Sperlik tried to beat a train at an intersection. The train slammed into the right side of the car, killing Sanders and Hall.
Bailey was the first officer on the scene. Sperlik was critically injured, but he survived and was charged with manslaughter.
Frey wrote in his book that he had pretended to go on a date with Sanders in order to enable her to be out that night. He said he was questioned by police and was blamed for the tragedy by Sanders’ parents and friends.
There was no record of his being interviewed in the police file, and no memory of his involvement among investigators. Sanders’ mother, Marianne Sanders, told The Smoking Gun that she never connected him to her daughter’s death.
“Everything that I believe he wrote, even about my daughter … was not an actual, the way the accident happened or anything,” she told the Web site.
Legions of dedicated readers who spent lunch breaks and late nights devouring the now-disputed memoir spent Tuesday either angry at–or supportive of–Frey.
“I’m so upset that this guy might have made up some of this stuff,” said Laura Kepes, 36, of Glencoe. She said she was “obsessed” with the memoir and couldn’t wait to read Frey’s sequel, “My Friend Leonard.”
Allegations that much of “Pieces” was embellished has prompted Kepes to reconsider. “You’re going to go back and question almost everything about the book,” Kepes said. “Did he really vomit? Did he really have a root canal without novocaine?”
In quaint St. Joseph, across Lake Michigan from Chicago, the book has flown off the front table at Forever Books on State Street, said shop worker Diana Koehler.
The prime buyers? Local teens, who she said seem to relate both to the agitated youth Frey writes about and to the setting in which he describes it.
“Kids like to read about other people’s problems,” Koehler said. “And people figured out he was from here.”
Some teachers said they can’t bear to read the book, because they hadn’t recognized how deeply troubled Frey’s life may have been. Some said he had details of the party before the train accident wrong.
Others can’t put the book down, said Donna Dumke, an English teacher at St. Joseph High School whose son graduated in 1989, a year behind Frey. She said she read the book and passed it on to her husband and son.
“I guess it doesn’t matter to me personally how much is true or not,” she said. “The general feeling is it’s a memoir–his memory. That’s how he remembers it.”
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Some of the details
The Smoking Gun said it uncovered inaccuracies during its investigation of James Frey. Among them:
Frey: According to his books, Frey spent three months in an Ohio jail for various offenses.
TSG: “The closest Frey has ever come to a jail cell was the few unshackled hours he once spent in a small Ohio police headquarters waiting for a buddy to post $733 cash bond.” The Smoking Gun says that in an interview, Frey told the Web site: “I was in for a significantly shorter period of time than three months.”
Frey: Calls himself the “worst kid” in St. Joseph, Mich., and that within a month or two of moving there, “I had a reputation. Teachers talked about me, parents talked about me, the local cops talked about me.”
TSG: According to classmate Paul Santarlas: “I don’t think [Frey] was ever in any more trouble than anyone else.” Also says that Frey was “reasonably popular” and that he “wasn’t an outcast.”
Frey: Provides significant details in the book about an arrest in Ohio in 1992. Says he struck a cop with his car, got into a fight with police officers with billy clubs and later was charged with, among other things, felony DUI and possession of a narcotic (crack cocaine) with intent to distribute.
TSG: According to a local prosecutor, felony DUI did not exist in Ohio until 1996. No patrolman was struck with a car. There was no billy club beating. There was no crack.
Frey: In the incident where his car hit a cop, he said a college professor was a passenger in his car.
TSG: According to the police report, there was no passenger in his car.
Frey: He writes that during his three-month incarceration in an Ohio county jail, he wore a blue and yellow jumpsuit, that the walls, floor and bed in his cell were concrete, and that the jail was surrounded by a razor wire fence 15 feet high.
TSG: According to the county sheriff, the jumpsuits are orange, the beds are made of steel, and there is no fence around the jail.
— RedEye
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jjanega@tribune.com
