When Nurse Katherine Slater met Benjaman Kyle while working at a

homeless shelter in Savannah, Georgia, she noticed his hard work ethic

and wanted to know more about him.

Word around the shelter was that he had amnesia and didn't know who he was.

So she struck up a friendship with the smart, good-natured man who was now

the resident manager at the shelter where he had lived for two years,

and quickly the two became close.

After learning that Benjaman had no known family, no verifiable identity or

Social Security number, and therefore no means to legally work and earn money,

Katherine invited him to live in her home.

For four years, she supported him with a place to stay, food to eat,

and funding all his other needs while helping uncover his true identity

so that he could get his life back.

After all, someone had to be missing him.

She worked with an FBI agent to scour missing persons databases.

She helped Benjaman meet with a hypnotist, and she arranged

numerous media appearances from local news to Dr. Phil The problem?

The harder Katherine worked to solve the mystery, the less interested

Benjaman seemed in finding the answer.

The more she searched, the more Benjaman withdrew, and that's

when things started to deteriorate

He spent hours on Katherine's computer, virtually taking it over.

He began a bedroom floor renovation project that left her sleeping

on the couch for 18 months.

And when Katherine came upon him burning piles of old mail in her backyard, and

Benjaman refused to leave her home, she knew something was very, very wrong.

Welcome to Nothing Felt Wrong, where we share stories about scams, deception,

and manipulation, and how ordinary people get pulled into situations that feel

believable until suddenly they don't.

I'm Anne Genduso, and if you're fascinated by deception and human

behavior, take a seat next to me here at The Side Eye Society.

And if you're new here, consider subscribing.

It helps more side-eyers like us find the show, and you

won't miss any future episodes.

Because every year, millions of people get trapped in scenarios they didn't

see coming, and by the time they realize something's wrong, it's already too late.

Today's story is about the man America adopted, a man that an

entire nation rooted for in the quest to uncover who he really was,

and a man whom many now believe may have known who he was all along.

So let's go back to where this mystery all started.

On a hot, humid morning in late August 2004, Son Yo Auer stepped

outside of the Burger King where she worked in Richmond Hill, Georgia.

It was early in her shift, and she was taking out the trash.

As she approached the dumpster out back, she saw a naked man lying on the pavement.

He was unconscious, sunburnt, and covered in a rash, perhaps from the

fire ants that swarmed his body.

So she ran to get her manager, Thomas, who immediately called for help.

The man next to the dumpster, who appeared to be in his mid-50s,

was quickly taken into the care of paramedics, and police responding to

the scene believed he was homeless.

He was admitted to a local hospital under the name BK Doe, BK because

he was found at a Burger King, and they already had a John Doe admitted.

The staff hoped to learn his true identity later, but after he

regained consciousness, the man said he couldn't remember who he was.

So instead, he gave a name that sounded somewhat familiar to him, Benjaman.

He later said that the name was stuck in his head with the unusual spelling

with two As, so B-E-N-J-A-M-A-N.

And when staff pressed him for a last name, he selected Kyle, keeping with

the previously assigned BK theme.

despite gaining a name to call himself, Benjaman said he had lost much of his

memory and could not remember his life.

He didn't know how he got to Georgia or why he was there.

He couldn't remember his childhood, and he didn't know how he ended up naked and

alone in the Burger King parking lot.

However, there was one thing he claimed he was certain about, his

birth date, August twenty-ninth, nineteen forty-eight, exactly ten

years before Michael Jackson's.

Aside from the ant bites, Benjaman had significant cataracts in both eyes

when he woke up, which some believe may have come from prolonged sun exposure.

He was virtually blind with his vision limited to only a few feet.

But otherwise, doctors found surprisingly little wrong with him.

No drugs or alcohol in his system, no major injuries, and no significant medical

abnormalities reported in his tests.

Benjaman managed to get his cataracts treated by surgery nine

months after he was found, thanks to donations from a local charity.

And from there, with little info to rebuild his life, Benjaman spent the

next three years shuffled between a series of hospitals, long-term care

facilities, and homeless shelters.

No identity meant no formal way to get government assistance or legal work.

So he focused on being useful where he could, volunteering for tasks like

getting food, stripping beds, mopping floors at the shelter where he stayed.

And after being struck by his hard work ethic, the shelter created

an unofficial role for him.

Benjaman began working at JC Lewis Health Center there unofficially as a residence

manager in return for free shelter, food, and medical assistance, and that's

where he met Nurse Katherine Slater.

Katherine told The Guardian, quote, "I guess everyone was suspicious,

but he was so sweet and clever that I couldn't find it in me to doubt him.

After that, I got angry because no one was helping him find

out who he is." End quote.

So determined to change that, Katherine made it her mission to help Benjaman,

both by giving him a place to stay and helping him uncover his identity.

She connected him with a senator who got the FBI involved.

The hope was that Benjaman would be listed in a missing persons

database or maybe even a criminal one, but nothing was found.

Police, the government, and missing persons experts tried

to identify Benjaman, but they all came up empty-handed.

So Katherine accompanied Benjaman to national media appearances like Dr.

Phil because she believed surely someone out there would see him and recognize him.

On the show, Benjaman told Dr. Phil's viewers that he was found beaten behind

the Burger King dumpster, and he had no idea who he was or where he came from.

He went on to explain that he was startled when he first looked into the

mirror after getting cataract surgery.

He had expected to see a reflection of a young man, but instead, he

was met with the face of an older man in his 50s staring back.

He exclaimed, quote, "I didn't think I should be that old." End quote.

The Jeff Probst Show also shared Benjaman's story, including a 911

call in which a woman reported that a naked man had been found

covered in blood and might be dead.

The story was heart-wrenching, and it captured the attention and

the support of the entire nation.

After all, who wouldn't want to help this man find out where

he was from, where he belonged?

Everyone felt compelled to help give Benjaman back his life and

reunite him with his family.

Strangers donated money for an apartment and gave Benjaman odd jobs.

Experts donated their services and time, and countless people around the country

became invested in solving the mystery.

But despite it all, nobody could identify him.

Benjaman remained in a virtual no man's land for more than 10

years with no formal identity, and that's when everything changed

All right, so let's fast-forward.

In May 2026, Investigation Discovery aired a four-part docuseries called The

Many Lives of Benjaman Kyle by executive producers Shannon and Eric Evangelista.

You can stream it now on HBO Max, like I did.

The producers filmed their quest to search for Benjaman Kyle's true

identity, and their documentation lasted longer than anyone expected.

More than a decade, in fact.

Ultimately, they were successful in their quest, but they also uncovered far more

than they bargained for in the process

Just one year after they began filming in 2014, The Evangelistas

documented the biggest breakthrough in Benjaman's mystery since it began.

His true identity was finally revealed, and his DNA had held the secret all along.

You see, Benjaman's DNA had been tested and, like with his fingerprints,

no direct matches were found.

But genetic genealogists knew there could be another way to find him.

So a team of researchers led by CeCe Moore started digging.

They took Benjaman's known DNA profile and compared it to other public

profiles and commercial ancestry databases, like 23andMe, in the

hopes of building his family tree.

It was painstaking work, and in 2015, it paid off.

The team was finally able to identify distant relatives of Benjaman's DNA

sample, and eventually they found his biological brother in Indiana.

And with that, his real identity was finally known.

Benjaman Kyle was actually William Burgess Powell of Lafayette,

Indiana, born August 29th, 1948.

So he was right on that.

For years, Katherine had fought to answer one question.

Who is Benjaman Kyle?

Now she finally had the answer, William Burgess Powell.

And his brother helped fill in some missing details.

According to William's brother, his family reported him missing after he

disappeared from his home in 1976.

His car had been found abandoned in a remote area in Indiana

with the plates removed, and William was nowhere to be found.

With no breakthrough in finding him in all those years, his

family believed he had died.

William's brother said that the loss had tormented his mother, who was particularly

close with him, and she was still grieving for him the day she passed away.

Imagine waiting almost 40 years to learn whether your brother was alive.

Imagine believing your son was dead, only to discover he had been alive all along.

It was a heartbreaking story all around.

But at least there was finally an answer, or so everyone thought.

With William's identity revealed and his remaining family located,

the mystery should end there, right?

Except it doesn't After finally uncovering his identity, Sharon and

Eric Evangelista pressed on to figure out what everyone still wanted to know.

What happened to William Burgess Powell between the time he left Indiana

in 1976 to when he was found behind the Burger King dumpster in 2004?

And did he really have amnesia?

What they discovered could bring everything we thought we knew into

question So before we move on, I'm now going to make all references to Benjaman

as William to try and avoid confusion, because this story is complicated enough.

You see, Nurse Katherine Slater wasn't the only one who noticed that William wasn't

interested in learning who he really was.

As the producers had gotten closer to the truth of his identity, William's

detached, almost angry behavior had raised suspicions for Shannon in particular.

As a former prosecutor, Shannon's intuition was telling her that he

was hiding something, and that his story couldn't be taken at face value.

Because to her, some of the details weren't adding up.

There were inconsistencies that needed investigating further,

and she wondered what might he be afraid of them finding out?

The Evangelistas went back to the start.

They needed to speak to the people who were actually at the scene

behind the Burger King in Georgia.

And what they found confirmed their suspicions that something was off.

Remember, William had told the media that he was found beaten and bloody.

There was even the 911 call corroborating that story that the press had shared.

But it seems a 911 call never happened.

As part of their investigation, the Evangelistas spoke with a woman

who revealed she was cast in a role for a student film project by

John Wikstrom, a graduate student at Florida State University's

College of Motion Picture Arts.

As part of the role, she pretended to make a 911 call reporting that

she found a man naked, beaten, and bloody behind a Burger King.

That call was included in John Wikstrom's 2011 student film called Finding

Benjaman, and it was later adopted by media played for hundreds of thousands

of viewers on the Jeff Probst Show.

But the call wasn't authentic because a call was never made

to 911 in the first place.

Thomas Auer, who was the general manager at the Richmond Hill Burger King in 2004,

said he made the call for help directly to the Richmond Hill Police Department

dispatch office, and he doesn't recall finding the man beaten or bloodied.

Son Yo Auer, the employee who had found William, appeared shocked to hear the

fake 911 call, and agreed with Thomas that there was no blood found anywhere.

The producers also interviewed Sue Usry, an EMT first responder at the scene.

She said William was not beaten or bloody, and she hadn't

seen any evidence of trauma.

However, there were some conflicting reports that indicated

trauma could have been present.

The unidentified living person report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,

which is still online as of this recording, reads, quote, "Paramedics

indicated he may have received blows to his head from a blunt object."

End quote.

So what's actually true?

And if the 911 call in William's story had been embellished or fabricated, what other

details in his story are questionable?

Could William have known who he was all along?

Well, the producers seem to think so.

In the docuseries, Shannon asserts that William's old computer had

been forensically wiped by someone who was highly sophisticated, with

a great deal of computer knowledge, but all the data on it wasn't lost.

The Evangelistas enlisted a team of digital forensic investigators

to look through the computer, and what they found raises disturbing

questions, to say the least.

They allege he searched for things related to his actual identity, and remember,

he was using this computer while he said he had amnesia, before the genealogist

uncovered his identity as William.

One search included Lafayette Square, his hometown, and look

picking, which investigators assumed was a typo for lock picking.

Shannon says there was evidence that William had created emails in

Katherine's name so he could send himself information on cold cases of all things.

And one of those cases was a murder that happened when William was known

to be in the Denver, Colorado area.

Perhaps most shocking, the producers claim that the computer's recovered data

showed William had Googled his real name to try and reconnect to Social Security

benefits and receive a legitimate ID.

What they presented certainly raises eyebrows about William's

character, but it's not conclusive proof that he faked his amnesia.

So we're brought back to the original question.

What happened to William during those decades of missing years?

And that's where the docuseries took an even wilder turn

In their efforts to uncover what happened during the undocumented years

of William's life, producers took him across the country to reunite with family

members, old friends, and acquaintances.

Interviews with William's brother revealed that they had a very traumatic childhood

and that their father drank often and was abusive, particularly toward William.

It was more than he could take as a boy, so William left home at the age

of 16, working as a janitor at a strip club in his path to claim independence.

It's later alleged that it was there he became involved

with some shady acquaintances

When he was reunited with his brother on camera, William

maintained his claims of amnesia.

He doesn't seem to remember much about him or their life together

But there are moments in the documentary that raise questions of how much he may

have really remembered about his past.

As they traveled throughout Indiana and later Denver, William seemed to remember

very specific locations and places.

He even recalled memories of attending a Blood, Sweat, and Tears

concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

But he couldn't seem to remember people.

So what happened when William disappeared from Lafayette?

As they continued to research William, producers found that he voluntarily

disappeared from Indiana in 1976, moving to Colorado with a friend without notice

while cutting off contact with his family.

Though we still don't know why he abandoned his car in the process.

There are records that he held jobs, because it contributed to

Social Security funds, until 1983.

However, that's where definitive records end and only rumors

and witness accounts begin.

If the producers were right that William may have known his identity

all along, one question remained.

Why?

Why disappear for decades only to reappear in one of the most public ways imaginable?

And that's when their investigation took another unexpected turn.

Producers interviewed a number of old acquaintances and friends

of William's to find out.

Several former acquaintances painted a picture of a very different

William than the public knew.

Some alleged he had ties to an organized crime family, even claiming

he had worked as a hired hitman.

Others pointed investigators towards several unsolved Colorado

cold case murders from the years that William was living there.

Now, none of those allegations have resulted in criminal charges or public

evidence tying William to those crimes.

But together, they led the producers to develop a theory that could maybe explain

everything, that William's amnesia was a ruse so that he could leave the organized

crime family without repercussions.

If the family believed he couldn't remember anything about his life, that

would include any unsavory details about their criminal activities, so

they could let him walk away unharmed.

And as for coming forward in media appearances, well, the producers

assert that it was an attempt to secure additional safety by going public.

After all, underground criminals wouldn't dare attack a public figure.

They don't like their murders to be well known exactly.

But that's just a theory.

William has never been charged with any crime related to those allegations.

In fact, William seems to be off the grid again.

According to a Fox News article, producer Shannon Evangelista said they last

interacted with him in December 2016, so 10 years ago, and they can't connect

with him now despite their efforts.

But that won't stop them from trying.

In this story, the truth is we don't know the full truth.

We don't know with any degree of certainty if William faked his amnesia or took

advantage of those around him, like Nurse Katherine Slater or later Josh Schrute,

who was a restaurant owner who gave him a job and a place to live in Florida

before his identity was fully established.

Both Katherine and Josh now question the veracity of William's claims, and

it's undeniable that there are plenty of questions swirling around this story.

So let's explore the psychology around what may have happened

to get us to this point.

If the allegations are true and William Burgess Powell purposefully deceived those

around him, how did he do it successfully for so long, and why were we all so

ready to jump in and support his cause?

Let's look at three possible reasons in the manipulation playbook.

Reason number one, compassion exploitation.

According to the producers, William took advantage of everyone around

him who simply wanted to help him.

So if his intent was deceived, he relied on compassion

exploitation to make that happen.

And this is the absolute worst type of manipulation, if you ask me,

because it takes people's kindness, their innate desire to help others in

need, and it turns it into a weapon.

It turns helping someone into the very thing that makes you

vulnerable, and it can make you a victim without realizing it.

This is such a difficult manipulation tactic to recognize when you

think about it, because it tugs at feelings of obligation and

guilt if any questions come up.

So picture it.

You find a man naked, unconscious, and in need of medical attention.

Would you just leave him there?

No.

And would you deny him help later when you realize that he can't access government

assistance or legal work because he literally doesn't have an identity?

If you're like me, you definitely wanna help in some way because the

system failed him, so you won't.

And that's exactly what Katherine Slater felt.

It's why she took him in and took his case on.

And when any possible doubts creep in, well, saying no feels cruel.

Questioning the truth feels cruel.

And protecting yourself, even if something feels off, feels cruel.

This is one of the strongest forms of manipulations out there, and it's

why so many scammers rely on it.

If the producer's theory is correct, William's story appeals to our sense

of compassion, and that's exactly what makes it so powerful, which

brings us to a second possible tactic.

Two, using identity as a shield

Identities can be powerful manipulation tools even if your name is unknown,

because identities come down to the way you present yourself,

how you're known or how you wanna be known by those around you.

And we naturally craft our own narratives to match that identity.

If someone truly occupies the role of victim, a survivor,

someone who needs help, well, that identity becomes a shield.

The role itself becomes protective from accusations, because no one wants

to oppose an established narrative.

No one wants to be the bad guy who's questioning someone

who identifies as vulnerable.

And this goes hand in hand with compassion exploitation.

Matt Wolfe expressed this sentiment well in an article

he wrote for The New Republic.

He said of William, quote, "His personality seemed almost engineered to

elicit sympathy. His blankness, his sense of being lost and unwanted, his eagerness

to please. To people of a certain disposition, Kyle came across as a wounded

puppy just waiting to be given a name."

End quote.

Again, we don't really know if William was putting on a show or if

he was presenting an identity that he wholeheartedly believed, but the shield

it provided was the same either way.

Three, the halo effect.

So let's look at the third manipulation tactic that could fool

even the most intelligent people.

It's leveraging something called the halo effect.

This is a form of cognitive bias where people see one positive trait, like

charm, intelligent, kindness, and they subconsciously assume that other

positive traits must be present too.

So if someone is kind, they must also be trustworthy.

If someone's hardworking, they must also be honest.

And we all do this even without meaning to.

It's just human nature.

So here's an example.

Picture your favorite celebrity.

You probably have an entire story in your head about them, how they would act

in different circumstances, if you'd be their friend, if you could trust them,

if you'd even go on a date with them.

But in reality, none of us really know these celebrities.

We don't know them in real life.

We only see what we've been allowed to see by their publicists or even

just with the characters they're associated with in their performances.

And the same is true with social media, and we may even do it ourselves.

We don't present every little aspect of our lives online.

And whether it's intentional or not, we curate what we want others to see.

We create our own narratives.

Okay, so how is this related to manipulation?

Well, manipulators use the halo effect in a number of ways.

They can leverage their appearance or perceived status to seem harmless or

truthful, to draw their victims in.

And they can even borrow some of that halo shine to borrow credibility

from other trusted sources.

Once we decide someone's a victim and we have other trustworthy sources

telling us the same thing, like the Dr. Phil Show, we find it even

easier to believe and trust them.

And by the way, I say the Dr. Phil Show while rolling my eyes because I don't

think they're the most trustworthy.

And that means that any contradictory information we might see, we

interpret through a rose-colored lens.

So red flags become misunderstandings.

They're easy to explain away and ignore because we want to see

what we believe about that person.

So in this case with William, how did years go by with unwavering public

support until the Evangelistas came along?

We need to ask ourselves, were any inconsistencies in his story

overlooked because everyone just wanted a happy ending?

Did we only see what we wanted to see and ignore everything else?

Which brings us to our last possible manipulation tactic

Four, sunk cost fallacy.

This one is another cognitive bias that we may not recognize, In this bias, we

figure that the more we've invested in something emotionally, financially, or

socially, or even the time we've invested, the harder it becomes to reconsider

or walk away, even when evidence is pointing in the opposite direction.

And there's a lot of reasons this can happen.

We may equate quitting with failure, and we may view failure as the ultimate

thing to avoid instead of looking at it as a lesson to learn from.

Sometimes it's about ego.

Admitting that we were wrong can be excruciating for some people.

Sometimes it's about avoiding pain.

It may feel more painful to lose something by stopping or changing

direction, so people continue down a path they know isn't right for them.

And I know, I've done this before myself, and it doesn't always

have to do with manipulation.

I've stayed at a toxic job for longer than I should have simply because I felt

like I'd already invested so much time and energy into it, and I didn't want

to admit that it wasn't working out.

And manipulators know this cognitive bias and can harness it as part of their con.

So for someone like Katherine Slater, who had backed William publicly for years,

appearing on national television by his side, it must have been extraordinarily

difficult to consider he might have been fooling her all along, even though we

really don't know if that's what happened

Maybe Benjaman Kyle was a man who forgot and lost everything.

Or maybe William Burgess Powell remembers his entire past and crafted a believable

new persona to make a fresh start.

In the end, we may never know if the story was tragic, deceptive, or both.

But when the unidentified man was found behind the Burger King,

the people around him had to make decisions without having all the facts.

They had to choose whether to trust him, whether to help him, whether to

doubt him, and whether to ignore him.

And that's exactly what makes this story unsettling at best

and life-altering at worst.

Because if this whole affair was based on willful deception, if William

Burgess Powell knew exactly what he was doing the whole time he shared

his story, then it was purposefully engineered to exploit our values.

It means we could start questioning the very thing that makes societies thrive,

compassion, a caring, collaborative mindset, the desire to help others in

need for the greater good of the whole.

And when that happens, trust is no longer given freely.

It means we could stop trusting people altogether and retreat to focus

on our personal needs and desires, but that isn't healthy either.

So then the question we're left with is this: How do we protect ourselves without

becoming someone who never helps anyone?

I wish there was a clear-cut answer, but that's something each of us are

going to have to decide for ourselves.

All right, Side-Eyers, this was a complicated one, and I hope

you enjoyed today's episode.

If you did, make sure to like and subscribe so you never miss a thing.

And if you're listening on a podcast app, leaving a rating or review

helps more Side-Eyers find the show.

So let's leave you with this week's Side Eye question.

Whether or not this was a case of deception or truth, what would have

made you go along with Benjaman Kyle/William Burgess Powell's story?

What would have made you support him or help him in the search for his identity?

Drop your response in the comments because I really wanna know what part

of his story resonated with you most.

And bonus question, do you think William genuinely had amnesia, or do you think

he's been hiding his identity all along?

Let me know.

And remember, even the smartest people can get caught up in a web of deception

because nothing felt wrong until it did