SOUTH FLORIDA MAGAZINE
When mother and son are reunited, they cry. And so does the audience: Cameras hone in on grown men weeping and women dabbing mascara-stained cheeks. Even Povich looks a bit teary.
The only straight face in the house: Miami's own Joseph Culligan, the crack private investigator responsible for this afternoon's moving reunion. Culligan managed to locate David's mother via driver's license records in just days. But as the emotional moment continues, he just sits there. Expressionless.
"People ask, 'Why don't you smile on these shows?"' says Culligan, who has arranged talk-show reunions for the likes of Leeza Gibbons, Sally Jessy Raphael, Montel Williams and others. "But if you had a 3-year-old missing daughter, would you want some smiling clown up there? Or would you want someone who takes the job seriously?"
Still, Culligan ? who looks more like a gangster than a doer of sweet, life-changing deeds - admits he often is "brought to tears" by a case.
After three years of orchestrating talk-show reunions but refusing to appear on camera, the low-key Culligan finally did so in 1991 on Povich's show. He reunited five families that day.
"I wanted to do this stuff for the right reasons," says Culligan, who systematically uses public records as though they were his personal filing cabinet. "Then the shows I was on received thousands of letters inquiring about this 'mystery person,' and asking how they could find him. At the advice of a lot of people, I eventually wrote a book."
After the Lorena Bobbit case, Culligan delivered the names of the jurors to the Maury Povich Show. The following Monday, nine of them appeared on the show in what turned out to be a ratings hit.
"I'm the one people turn to for a running start on a story - to get the stuff first," says Culligan, who has a photographic memory (he can memorize serial numbers on dollar bills with just a glance). "People know I have vast files and I am always prepared ... It's as though I have a radar, and I just wait for trouble to strike.
"It's the same thing as when the newspapers write obituaries in advance. That's how my clients get stuff first."
Now a seasoned P.I. with an impressive resume and a solid reputation, most of Culligan's cases are brought to him. Sometimes he farms them out, often assigning duties to different people so that no one can leak the whole story. Other times, he flat-out refuses.
"I don't want to be like a print paparazzi," says Culligan, who currently is working on the JonBenet Ramsey case for one of the three networks. "I decide on a case-by-case basis."
Still, Culligan says reunions remain the most rewarding part of his job. His favorite show to work for these days is The Montel Williams Show, on which he appears regularly.
"Since day one of working with my show, Joe Culligan has utilized his services to bring joy to people's lives with no monetary benefits to himself," says the talk show host.
"We're not there to sell my book, or to sell his show," Culligan says. "We're both sincere, and we want to help people."
"He's my guardian angel," says Christine, a Broward talent agent who was adopted and found her real mother with the help of Culligan's book. Christine had tracked down Culligan, a former client (he has appeared on Miami Vice and in other projects) to see if he was the same person she'd been seeing on the talk shows. Then she asked for his help: Born with a deformed left hand and left foot, Christine wanted to know if her condition was hereditary before having children. After speaking with Culligan, and using his book, she was able to use county records to her advantage.
Today, Christine is close with both her mother and stepfather. "I praise God," she says, "for what Joe has been able to bring into my life."
Culligan, who receives hundreds of "thank-you's" and other letters a week - some times thousands right after a broadcast - also has a large following among prisoners. Often, they send him things.
"One guy sent the most beautiful cup that he made; another guy sent me a prison made of toothpicks," he says. "It's the most intricate thing, it must have taken him 100 hours."|
He adds: "Prisoners watch me, and they like me because I'm not a wiseguy."
From time to time, Culligan's missions also have included celebrities. He helped Roseanne Barr find her daughter, though he says he "credited it to another P.I. because I didn't want to end up in the gossip columns."
Cher once phoned The Montel Williams Show to ask if Culligan would help her daughter Chastity's mate find her mother. But he wouldn't do it.
Between traveling to and from talk shows, news magazine tapings and the lecture circuit (he's spoken to everyone from Harvard students to the Auto Repossessors of America), he spends his days jet skiing, biking on South Beach, dining in Cuban restaurants or relaxing with a Cohiba cigar down in the Keys.
He also spends free time trying to correct things he considers to be misleading to the public. For example, he's gone so far as to write to the folks at the Entenmann's baked goods company and demand that they remove the "homemade" label on their donuts, because they weren't really homemade." They did.
Still, the man so passionate about his convictions remains undercover at home.
"I don't want to be famous in my own town," says Culligan, who moved from New York to Miami in 1977 and worked for the City of Miami Beach parks and recreation and fire departments before becoming a private investigator. It was at the parks department where he earned the nickname "Honest Joe" after turning in his bosses for misappropriation of funds.
"I only go on television as the nice man who does reunions," says Culligan, who comes from a long line of cops dating back to the late 1800s. "I don't talk about the corruption, blood and gore or the murder of 17-year-olds."
Ironically, though, the hard-news cases are where Culligan's bread and butter mostly is derived. He frequently works them for the networks and for magazine programs such as Hard Copy, digging up the quirky stuff that no one else has.