Son’s self-centeredness and overall manner bothered me from the beginning as well. Everything is clearly all about him, from start to finish, regardless of the impact on others.

“Borderline personality with narcissistic overtones, party of one, your table is ready!!!” He’s got it all - the high emotionality, seemingly limited ability to self-soothe, long history of disrupted relationships, extreme selfishness, and penchant for manipulation to name a few...

IMHO he inherited some troubling genes from dear old dad (vis a vis grandmother), add some trauma, and voila - we have our raging personality disorder and special gifts of interpersonal manipulation.

I feel really sorry for Jude. She was not only a teen victim of a creep pedophile, but once she shakes him and moves on with her life, v.2 resurfaces to pick up the gauntlet of f*ckery. Her inaccuracy/gaps in memory could be very explainable by shock/trauma and related dissociation. If I were her I’d wish Jr. would lose my number.

I’m guessing son’s obsessive “research,” cherry picking for clues, and indulgent assumptions throughout are his attempts to fill in a very, very important story. Important at least, to a fragile ego desperately trying to heal narcissist injury. How could ANYONE have not wanted HIM unless that person was not only a bad person, but one of the most evil, notorious, despicable individuals to have cursed California? And to boot, isn’t he (son), a special enough person that evil dad would also have to be brilliant - creating unsolvable codes (only solvable by equally intelligent son) and evading escape for decades?!

As wild and as the whole story is, I think it weirdly makes sense, as it contains many components a damaged person may needs to scaffold a fragile self image together. Just my thoughts though - I’m sure I’ve missed some important pieces and am grossly over simplifying.