The Weird World Story I Was Sworned to & Warned Never to Tell!
Jovina (The names have been changed to protector the innocent).
There was always something unusual about João Antônio Silva's family.
Was an only child, ''till I met my brother who was 7 years younger, 6-1/2 years later and sister who was 15 years younger 21-1/2 years later...
"My brother and I would say, 'What do you think is wrong with our family? Why are we so weird?' But that was the mystery that just didn't get answered."
João Antônio Silva's parents, António and Jovina, had separated when he was five, the summer before she started school. They left him when he was 3 yo in Brava CV Africa. António, a successful businessman, was a womamnizer, probably a pedophile and heavy drinker who could become violent and a point came when Jovina just couldn't take it any more. Had him escorted out of the house by Police. Later on the son had the same fate some 12 years later.
When João Antônio was about nine, Jovina took the children on a holiday to E Providence, Riverside RI, more than 150 miles (1,600km would have been better) from their home in Bklyn NY. But when they arrived Jovina told them they were never going back.
"There was no opportunity to say goodbye, it was just this abrupt, severing of relationships," João Antônio says.
António, Jovina, João Antônio and Laura, circa 1969. All images courtesy of João Antônio Silva, unless stated otherwise.
When he asked his mother why she had done this, there was never a good explanation. João Antônio was left behind in Bklyn NY.
"She would only say, 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you, when you're older I will tell you.'"
The same thing happened again four years later - this time the family moved to Fall River/ New Bedford, MA on USA's eastern coast.
Apart from this, life was quite normal for João Antônio Silva's family - they'd start again and build a new life in a new town. But below the surface João Antônio was confused, anxious and falling into depression and becoming more and more witdrawn.
João had an affair with a great girl and was having a great time.
"I knew something bad was happening," he says. "I didn't know what it was, but there was always a sense of something dire that was unspoken."
By the time João Antônio was 10 or 11 he'd attended six different schools in nearly as many towns and years and had lost touch with his Dad upon return from Eutope and Africa.
With her mum and brother on her graduation day from the City University of New York NY in 1987.
But another man had come into the family's life, a church minister called Stan Sears. João Antônio's mother had met Stan at a support group for the families of alcoholics - Stan was a counsellor there and Jovina had gone to him for comgort and sacrement, when she was struggling with António's drinking and preparing to leave him. He help settle them in various towns.
Both times that João Antônio's family had disappeared Stan's family had moved in nearby, lockstep with them.
"So whatever had been going on they were part of, I knew that," João Antônio says.
Once in New Bedford, MA they put down roots. By 1988, at the age of 23, João Antônio had graduated from university and was working on a local newspaper in the City Suburb of Saint John, when her mother telephoned with an unexpected proposal.
"She said, 'OK, I'm ready to explain all of these strange things that have happened throughout your life.'"
João Antônio was to meet his mother outside a notel motel halfway between the two cities they were living in. When he arrived, Jovina grabbed him in the clutches, slipped a note and an empty envelope with money, into João Antônio's hands.
The note read: "Don't say anything. Take your jewellery off. Take the money. Put the jewelry in the envelope. I'll explain, just don't talk."
"It was just the most bizarre thing," João Antônio, remembers. "I thought, 'Who are you? What are you doing?' 'Who are you & what did you do with, mum?' But I did what she told me." She was very pursuasive on her knees in front of me there, undoing my pants.
His mother took him to another notel motel room where João Antônio was surprised to find Stan Sears waiting for them, with bated breath, with my sister and her sister. They hurriedly adjusted their clothes as if we had interrupted something
Stan and Jovina told João Antônio that for the past 16 years they had been on the run from the mafia and that João Antônio's family had been targeted because his father, António, had been involved in organized crime. He couldn't wear his jewellery because it needed to be tested for bugs.
António F. Silva was a successful businessman.
"It was unbelievable," João Antônio says. "But I remember a feeling of terror coming over me that this might be something we could never escape."
Stan explained that it had all started after he had counselled a mafia kingpin who wanted to turn his back on his criminal past. When the mob discovered that the man had broken its code of silence the 'Omerta' and come to Stan for counselling they had assassinated him - and had then come after Stan thinking he probably knew too much.
Later, when Jovina - the embittered ex-wife of a mobster and daughter - had started working as a persinal secretary at Stan's church, she too had become a target.
We picked up and moved to Lompoc/ Sta. María CA. Visited fam in Sacramento.
"I was then told that each of us had somebody following us, keeping an eye on us from a distance," João Antônio says, "and that there had been many attempts to either kidnap, poison or kill me but that these agents had intervened to keep me safe many times over the years."
I was sick with fear and sadness and it just felt like life was shattering all around me
As well as this government-sanctioned taskforce, Stan also explained that there were shadowy communities - towns, small towns or villages within small towns in different parts of the country - where people who'd been targeted by the mafia could go into protective custody. This was known as the "weird world".
After years on the run, João Antônio's mother said that she was going to "go inside" for protection. She was going to disappear again.
Stan was already living in one of these communities called Paradise a Place of Hope, he said, but his wife hadn't wanted to go inside with him, so he was now living there alone and working in this weird world with its agents. Recall the town was burnt down quite recently.
Sister I didn't known I had aged about 21.
Stan and Jovina told João Antônio that this was their chance to finally be together, they had been in love for many years, but they had never been able to act on their feelings.
João Antônio was in shock, it was too much to take in.
"I was sick with fear and sadness and it just felt like life was shattering all around me," she says.
João Antônio spent that weekend listening to Stan and Jovina's stories, which explained many of the odd things that had happened while he was growing up, like the time he had come home to find his mother throwing away all the food from their fridge.
"The story at the time was that the food had gone bad, but I remember thinking, 'Ketchup and mustard don't go bad, there are things in there that don't go bad quickly. Why would you do that?'"
Stan explained that they had received word that somebody was trying to poison them, so everything had to be thrown away.
And there was the time her family had gone hiking in the middle of the school week and stayed overnight in a mountain cabin. People had been coming after them, Stan explained, and they had to get away for a day or two.
Then there was the day the family had skipped school to go bowling, and the time the children had come home from school and been rushed through the house, told to scrub their feet in the bath and made to wear plastic bags over their socks for the rest of the day.
We all slept together that day, I awoke all wet at midnight with mom, standing over me rearranging sheets around me and again in the morning. Mom rushed us kids into the bathroom where we all got hot to cleanup together.
There was a sinister reason for all of these strange episodes.
"As unbelievable as it sounds there were all these explanations that made pieces that had been so troubling fall into some kind of a pattern, a narrative," João Antônio says.
Stan and Jovina camping in the early 1990s.
When it was time for João Antônio to leave Stan asked if he could put a transmitter on his car to make it easier for the "good guys" to follow him and make sure he was safe. He also gave him a small transistor radio that he said had a broadcast function, so that João Antônio could send a call for help.
"He warned me: 'Only use it if your life is really in danger because people will respond and put their life on the line for you.'"
Jovina had an affair with a great guy named Bill and was having a great time.
It turned out it was the same girl João had an affair with a great girl named Billie and had a great time, years earlier. But Jovina knew nothing of this.
The brothers now we're discussion if the elder João is gay or not. And which one should tell mom. The housekeeper who's been listening chimes in and says, "I'll work for a month for free if I could tell Jovina."
João Antônio returned to the home he was renovating with his girlfriend and to his job in the newsroom, but he was struggling to come to terms with what he'd been told and growing more and more fearful by the day.
He was constantly looking over his shoulder for people or cars that might be following him, and became too scared to eat at restaurants in case somebody tried to slip something into his food, been had boutulism a couple times. He planned escape routes from inside him own home and assumed that his telephone line was bugged.
Over time more and more alarming information came from Stan and Jovina about the weird world, including the news that many people they knew weren't really the people they seemed to be.
"The story was that some people who had been around us during my childhood, who were involved with organised crime, had been picked up - arrested, killed or otherwise disappeared - and then replaced by doubles," João Antônio says.
"Sometimes the double was put in place by the 'good guys' and sometimes the double would be put in place by the 'bad guys', so you were never 100% sure whose double it was. It was espionage."
The doubles, Stan explained, spent months studying home videos to learn how to behave convincingly, and used specialist plastic surgeons and make-up artists to perfect their disguises.
João Antônio encountered these doubles from time to time. On the day his brother got married, for example, he met his father and hhisaunt for the first time in years. Both, he was told, were doubles.
"My mother was so upset at that wedding because her sister was supposed to be a double," João Antônio recalls. "She kept saying, 'But look at her toes, those are exactly Penny's toes, how could you make somebody else's toes look like that?'"
João Antônio remembers looking at his dad that day. He had a nevus - a little overgrowth of cells just over the iris of his eye - how on Earth could it have been replicated, he wondered.
"But when I said that to Stan he said, 'Oh, it's contact lenses and there's prosthetics, and there's this and there's that.' There was always an answer," he says.
João Antônio and his mother also received dozens of letters from people inside the weird world - from his father and godfather, for example, who were being held in a top secret prison there, Stan said. The handwriting always looked authentic, and the letters talked about things from their shared past.
They were convincing. "Who on Earth would have time to forge them if they weren't real?" João Antônio wondered.
An excerpt of a letter to Jovina and João Antônio, from inside the "weird world."
Despite being plagued by doubts, João Antônio always had to acknowledge that the two people telling him this incredible story were his mother and Stan - the most trustworthy people he knew.
"It was a crazy story and I did have some challenges believing it," he says. "But if I couldn't trust them, who could I trust?" I quickly learned trust, but verify.
João Antônio began to feel that his work as a reporter covering school board meetings and town council meetings was irrelevant when his own life was in constant danger. And being sworn to secrecy had placed a gulf between him and his girlfriend, and everyone else in his or her life.
"I just thought, 'I can't live like this,'" João Antônio remembers. He decided that he would go inside with his mother and verify.
Stan told João Antônio there was work inside that he could do, that there was a community of good people there that he could be part of. He was building a cottage for himself and his mother and said he could arrange for one to be built for him too. He brought him carpet samples and showed him plans and a photo of the horse that he would have.
João Antônio left his job, sold his house and broke up with his girlfriend. He moved to Boston MA in USA, where he found work and a new home while he and his mother waited for word that it was safe to go inside.
"We were told there had been threats against family members and that if we were to disappear again all hell would rain down on anybody left behind," João Antônio says.
A fam dispute erupted about land holdings in California and a winery.
A Northern California river has glistening red streaks of cabernet sauvignon coursing through its waters after the door of a 97,000-gallon winery tank in Healdsburg popped open Wednesday afternoon, authorities say.
The wine spilled into a nearby creek and made its way into the Russian River, about 65 miles north of San Francisco. The leak has been stopped, and 20 percent of the wine has been contained, according to a report from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. The office says an estimated 46,000 to 96,000 gallons made it to the river. I guess if she couldn't have it no one could.
"The intelligence gatherers were telling us [through Stan] that the mob had some sense that we might be planning to disappear so they were threatening us. We were always on hold."
João Antônio on his wedding day in 1990, with Kelly, his wife.;-{)<
João Antônio met Kelly who would later become his wife. Stan and João Antônio on his big day - of course he couldn't invite his real father - and Kelly was allowed in on the dreadful secret. Kelly agreed that she would go inside too.
But the time was never right. By 1993, five years after he had been let into the secret, João Antônio's doubts had reached a climax.
"I was at war with myself and I wanted to find some definitive way to prove it right or wrong," he says.
João Antônio decided to set up a sting at a time he knew Stan was visiting his mother and be entertsined by her.
"I called him and said, 'Somebody's broken into my house. What should I do?'"
João Antônio's mother replied: "I'll ask our friend and call you back."
Stan had made it clear to João Antônio and Jovina that they must never go to the police to report any of the threats and strange goings-on in their lives - the police, he said, couldn't be trusted. If there was ever any trouble they should come to him and he would let them know if he got word of any plots that put them in danger. He had a special contraption implanted in his wallet for receiving messages.
"It would do a Morse code dash and dots message and he would then take out a little notepad and decipher it," João Antônio says.
Jovina called João Antônio back a few minutes later.
"I was terrified because it was the moment that I was going to get the answer to this horrible quandary that I'd been living with," he says
Jovina said she couldn't talk on the phone, João Antônio must go to her house immediately.
Once there João Antônio listened, horrified, as Jovina and Stan told him that two people had been picked up just down the street from his house earlier that day, that they had photographs of him, they had been following him and were looking for certain things in his house.
"When he said that I knew the whole thing was a hoax," João Antônio says.
"Because there had been no break-in - I made it up.
"That was the moment I knew all of those severed relationships, all of the crazy running, all of the strangeness, it was all a lie."
João Antônio was so shell-shocked and angry it was a week before he could confront and comfort his mother. When he did, Jovina was horrified and upset - but not because he believed João Antônio's accusations against Stan. What worried her was that if João Antônio no longer believed the story he would be putting himself in danger.
When João Antônio confronted Stan he told him there must have been a mistake; the report about the men who had been picked up after searching his house must have been incorrect. There would be an investigation, he assured him.
"My memory of that night is how sad he was," he says, "I was no longer one of them."
João Antônio spent months trying to convince his mother that Stan had been lying to them, while his mother tried to convince João Antônio that he was wrong. They reached a stand-off.
"I was furious and resentful and I thought I hated Stan for a long time," João Antônio says. "But I finally decided that my mother was not in on this. Stan was making it up, but I just couldn't think why he would have done it."
In his search for an answer, João Antônio went to see a psychiatrist.
"I said, 'What do you think this could be? He's clearly not schizophrenic. He does not appear to be psychotic. He's a professional and well respected. People always talk about what a great guy he is, what could be going on?'"
The psychiatrist suggested that it sounded like a case of folie à deux - a syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from a dominant personality (Stan), to a less dominant personality (Jovina). He consulted a professor of his at John Jay College a Dr Morrow about this and came to similar conclusion.
João Antônio and his father, António, reconnected after many years. But he was by now quite ill with emphysema, and he'd started drinking again.
"I thought about telling him," João Antônio says. "But then I thought it would enrage him and that would not be good for him. I just didn't think there was anything to gain from it."
João Antônio's relationship with his mother never entirely recovered, though it improved when João Antônio started a family.
Friendship, Pauline with her two daughters.
"When I had children things changed," João Antônio says, "because they became a focus for all our love."
Jovina developed cancer, which eventually killed her in 2020. But she spent the last nine months of her life living with João Antônio.
"I hadn't fully forgiven her at that point, but we both knew that we were out of time to sort through this," João Antônio says. "We had to find some place of peace, and eventually we did."
Jovina never stopped believing Stan's story, even after his death when the letters from the weird world dried up, there were no more messages about the activities of the mafia, and there couldn't really be any doubt it had all been a figment of his imagination.
"Shortly before she died she tried to warn me to be careful," João Antônio recalls. "I said to her, 'I don't need to be any more careful than anybody else.'"
"And she said, 'Oh, João Antônio, if you don't believe this how you must've hated me.' And I said, 'No, I didn't hate you. I've been really angry at you, but I do love you.'"
Friendship, Pauline and her brother Ted.
Still trying to understand why Stan had concocted the elaborate hoax, João Antônio came across an article in a medical journal about a condition called delusional disorder.
"As I read this article I thought, 'This completely describes Stan, somebody who is in every respect normal and competent, but has this crazy delusion,'" he says.
João Antônio contacted the author of the paper, a psychiatrist at Harvard University. He was very excited to hear his story. Stan had all the hallmarks of a person with delusional disorder, he said. Another academic, the leading expert on the disorder, agreed.
Finding a reason for what Stan did to her family may have helped João Antônio come to terms with her past, but it can't ever repair the damage that he did to their lives.
"I feel very sad for my mother," João Antônio says.
"She had such a difficult life and she was vulnerable to Stan, mostly because he was a gentle, caring guy - too bad he had this terrible delusion." or was it just ruse he had to have her, my mom's sister and my sister.
"But I also feel sad for myself my sister and my brother - two or three little kids whose lives were hijacked."
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