She was once an acclaimed television journalist known for her PBS reports and documentaries on the Middle East.
But Josephine Franklin's illustrious career and pampered life gave way to a Walter Mitty-style fantasy existence in which she lied to her alma mater—the University of Florida—that she would donate $2 million in exchange for establishing an archive in her name.
University officials were so impressed by Franklin's credentials that they planned a lavish gala in her honor at the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC.
The night before the 2014 event, the check arrived. Franklin claimed she was unable to compete due to a broken foot.
She was actually sleeping under the stairs of a parking garage in Palm Beach Gardens.
And from there, an astonishing tale of fraud and decline began to unfold, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Filmmaker Jo Franklin managed to deceive family and friends by portraying herself as a multimillionaire, when in reality she was living homeless in a parking lot
Franklin, who was born to wealthy parents, had a successful career as a television journalist and married a surgeon, eventually became homeless in South Florida and stole cases of wine from CVS.
She claimed to have a direct line to Prince Harry while promoting a script she was supposedly writing.
When her daughter Ashley Trout was hospitalized after falling while climbing in Japan in 2004, Franklin even said she would take over her boyfriend Colin Powell's private jet to save her.
Powell was US Secretary of State at the time.
And while these claims were lies, Franklin had plenty of other things to honestly boast about, having spent decades as a hugely successful journalist who did indeed live a golden life.
Franklin found work as a producer and host at PBS, making documentaries about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East for the network. She is pictured hosting a controversial 1989 PBS documentary about Palestine
Franklin is pictured in 2022 at Starbucks in Palm Beach Gardens, where she charmed locals who soon realized something was wrong
But the friends she made knew that all was not as it seemed, as she often wore the same clothes and had holes in her shoes
Franklin. Known as Jo, was born in Chicago in 1946 into an upper middle class family.
She graduated from the University of Florida in 1968. During her stay, she spent a semester in Lebanon and developed a fascination for the Middle East. Franklin then found work as a producer at PBS, making documentaries about Saudi Arabia and the Middle East for the network.
Franklin's personal life was also going well. She married surgeon Hugh Trout and had two children – a daughter named Ashley, born in 1981, and a son, Hugh Jr., born in 1985.
But when Franklin's career took a turn in the mid-1990s and she divorced Hugh, things seemed to take a dramatic turn for the worse.
In 1989, she presented a PBS documentary, Days of Rage: The Young Palestinian. After broadcast, it was criticized by those who believed the program was pro-Palestinian. Franklin responded that she wanted to present a rarely seen perspective.
In the early 1990s, she spent some time writing a self-published novel about a love story set during the Gulf War.
Franklin had hoped that the book might even be made into a film, but sales collapsed and the New York Times criticized her prose, concluding, “What she can't do is write.”
She owed the book's marketer $25,000. The debt was never paid.
After the documentary aired, it was met with criticism who believed the show was pro-Palestinian. Franklin responded that she wanted to present a rarely seen perspective
In 1996 she got divorced and moved to the West Coast.
A divorce judge found that she had only a small amount of taxable income, a Jaguar
Custody of her two children went to Franklin's ex-husband, who lived in Washington DC
Her family says that after the divorce she was lost in a whirlwind of fantasies of her own creation. It was this steady stream of lies that caused her own children to cut off contact with their own mother.
Daughter Ashley, now 42, spent her summers with her mother in California and noticed that she often lived beyond her means and seemed more obsessed with her image than finding work.
The couple argued often and there was a confrontation between the two over their spending habits and increasing lies.
The Colin Powell incident in 2004 brought things to a head.
“I'll call my mom and tell her, listen, here's the deal, there's no jet.” “You don't have access to Colin Powell's jet,” Ashley said.
However, much of the old charm remained – and she was able to make a living for more than a decade without any apparent source of income.
Film director Jo Franklin, pictured in 2005, speaks with Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, at the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC
Franklin shared how she donated 120 hours of Middle Eastern footage to the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. She said it was valued by experts at $45 million
Franklin ended up in South Florida after the foreclosure of her home and so stunned University of Florida officials that they agreed to establish the Josephine A. Franklin Chair in Islam and Politics in her honor in 2013.
The cost: a $2 million donation, which Franklin said wasn't a problem. A free party was supposed to be held in her honor at the Four Seasons, but the deal fell through at the last minute. College officials had to call to inform guests that the party was canceled with just a few hours to go.
Afterwards, Franklin stayed in Palm Beach Gardens, where she made friends with regulars at a Starbucks where she spent her days.
Claiming to work for the government and to be on a Saudi watch list, Franklin impressed her friends with her extensive knowledge of the Middle East and current affairs.
She told her coffee fans that she had a personal driver, lived on nearby Jupiter Island and stayed in a hotel to stay close to the story she was working on.
“She was on the right track when it came to the political world, what was going on in the world,” said Stephen Sussman, one of her friends at the cafe.
But regulars weren't fooled, noting that Franklin had holes in his shoes and often wore the same clothes day after day.
She only got glasses of hot water from Starbucks – and made her drinks with her own tea bags or instant coffee. Franklin stayed at the cafe to use the free Wi-Fi on her damaged iPad, her friends suspected.
Jo Franklin's daughter, Ashley Trout, 42. She and her brother Hugh emailed their mother, trying to reconnect after being estranged for 13 years
But they remained compassionate — feeding her and giving her a used iPad to try to keep her going.
There were other indications that all was not well. Franklin did not appear to have a cell phone with him. She claimed this was to prevent her from being persecuted by the Saudis.
“She is very sick and we need to get her to a medical treatment facility before she harms other people and herself,” her brother George Franklin wrote to the family in 2014, just days after learning of the failed gala, The This reported Wall Street Journal.
George said his sister “would never admit she had a problem.”
“It is difficult for me to ask whether you yourself believe what you are saying or whether you are knowingly telling an untruth,” her son wrote and urged her to get professional help.
Her family said they tried several times to get her into treatment, but she refused.
Instead, she would find herself in trouble with the law – including an arrest for stealing two cases of wine, worth a total of $11.98.
Franklin was evicted from her rental home in Santa Ynez, California, in 2013 and moved across the country to live in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Franklin's daughter Ashley Trout is seen in a photo from her Instagram account
This caused her to issue an ultimatum and announce that they would never speak to each other again unless she was able to drop the fantasists' claims. Yet Franklin continued to insist that it was true.
“I don't think she could stop lying,” she told WSJ.com. “She only gave a monologue for 30 minutes. Just a stream, a fire hose.'
“If anyone started manipulating themselves in this fantasy land, things got very, very dark,” added Franklin’s son Hugh.
“I hope there was a way to be forced to sit down with a psychologist and figure out, 'What is there to do here?'” he asked, even if she didn't want to.
A year later, in 2005, Franklin donated her films to the UCLA archives, but refused to pay for them to be digitized, and they were promptly returned to her.
Later that year, a press release from the Saudi Embassy in Washington made a bizarre claim that Ambassador Prince Turki al-Faisal had estimated the value of her personal archive at $45 million.
It is unclear how this estimate was arrived at – and it is not believed that the archive was sold.
The children last saw Jo at their father's funeral in 2009. She inherited about $400,000 after her father's death – and was lucky enough to do so. He had believed her lies about his wealth and wanted to disinherit her because he believed she didn't need his money.
Eventually, Franklin was evicted from her rental home in Santa Ynez, California in 2013 and moved across the country to live in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
After moving to Florida, Franklin began showing up at this South Florida Starbucks, making friends and impressing people with her knowledge of global affairs
Shortly after the university fundraising fiasco, Franklin began showing up at Starbucks in South Florida to make friends and impress people with her knowledge of global affairs.
She used an iPad to stay in touch with people, watch movies and keep up with the news.
But all was not as it seemed.
Franklin often displayed eccentricities. She was seen picking up cigarette butts from the trash.
At Starbucks she only ever ordered hot water so she could use her own tea bags or instant coffee.
“She was a remarkable woman,” said a friend, Jeff Miller. “It probably took you months or even a year to finally put everything together.”
Franklin was later arrested several times for store theft and marijuana possession.
Her first arrest came in 2017 after she was found sleeping next to a bank dumpster. In 2018 she was found under a staircase in a hotel parking lot.
She told police she had epilepsy problems and was taken to the hospital.
In March 2020, Franklin told friends how she was working on a military adventure script that insisted she could end up in the hands of Prince Harry.
The story came from retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Dick Brauer, who told the Journal, “I mailed her the chapters and she looked at them and made excellent suggestions.”
She told her that her film company, SeaCastle Films, would eventually make a film of his story.
In 2022, Franklin was arrested again – this time for shoplifting at a CVS Pharmacy.
A police report describes how a witness saw her put two “Black Box Cabernet Sauvignons” in her bag.
When police finally tracked her down to a nearby hotel, she denied the theft.
Officers asked if she was homeless. She claimed she still lived in California.
The lies never stopped: “We are working on a project that will take me back and forth to California,” she said.
Occasionally, Franklin would book a room at a Doubletree hotel for up to two weeks, paying for her stays with a mix of credit cards, cash and hotel rewards points.
When she wasn't staying in a room, she still hung out at the hotel, where she was caught several times stealing candy from the snack shop.
A staff member said all she had to do was ask for help – but Franklin never did and was eventually banned from the property.
In 2022, Franklin's siblings devised a trick of their own that would involve their friends at Starbucks, who never let on that they knew the real truth.
Her brother George came to Florida to see his sister's situation.
In 1989, Franklin presented the documentary “Days of Rage: The Young Palestinian.”
He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses and was careful to stay out of sight, knowing she didn't want to talk to him.
George rented an apartment for $2,100 a month and enlisted the help of the Starbucks friends to pretend they needed a house sitter – and eventually convinced Franklin to move in.
Friends even donated furniture, clothing and kitchen utensils. The fridge was fully stocked before Franklin moved in.
It would finally give her a roof over her head without having to admit to any problems.
After a nearly 13-year separation, Franklin's children emailed their mother.
“Ashley and I would like to ask if you would be willing to meet with a therapist to rebuild our relationship with you,” the email began.
“Our difficult past has caused us to keep our distance over the years, but perhaps a professional can help us get to a better place.” “If you're not willing to work with an opposing therapist, we'll keep the status quo but wanted to expand the offering.”
There was no response to Hugh's email, so his sister Ashley was upset about it, adding: “I wonder what you think.” However, the message went unanswered.
A little over a year later, at age 76, she died of heart failure, still living at the home, believing she was a house sitter.
“She hurt so many people,” son Hugh said. “No one has been a greater victim of this disease than herself.”
Weeks after her death, Ashley visited Starbucks friends in Florida.
“It was liberating for me to thank them,” she said.