Facing Their Father

In January 2006, Jared, Garrett and Clay Ginglen came to The Oprah Winfrey Show to talk about the difficult decision they made to turn in their father into the authorities.

Bill Ginglen, by all accounts, was an upstanding citizen—a former Marine, a loving husband, a devoted father and grandfather.

Then on August 19, 2004, Jared, a Peoria, Illinois, police officer, read a story in the paper about a series of bank robberies in another part of the state. "The description just oddly matched my father to a tee," Jared says. "The description of the vehicle—the getaway car—was the same vehicle my father drove. And he spends time over in that area."

As Jared continued reading, he noticed that the newspaper story referenced a website set up by local police authorities that contained surveillance photos of one of the robberies. "Just to clear up my own mind [I thought] I'd go look and make sure that it wasn't him," Jared says. "But it was." Jared immediately called his brothers.

Together, Jared, Garrett and Clay agreed to confront their father. They went to his home, but he wasn't there. It was then the brothers made the most gut-wrenching decision of their lives—to immediately contact local police and turn their father in.

Bill is now serving a 40-year sentence for seven counts of armed robbery.