'A Friend of the Family': Who Is Gail Berchtold and What Happened to Her?

Between 1972 and 1976, Jan Broberg and her family were manipulated by Robert "B" Berchtold, and their story is retold in Peacock's drama A Friend of the Family.

Broberg was groomed and sexually abused by Berchtold, who kidnapped her twice at the age of 12 and 14, and went so far as to enter sexual relationships with both her parents, Mary Ann and Bob, in order to get closer to her.

Berchtold, played by Jake Lacy, had a family of his own, and his wife Gail (Lio Tipton) is depicted in the drama as well.

'A Friend of the Family': Who Is Gail Berchtold and What Happened to Her?

Gail was married to Berchtold at the time that he met Broberg and her family, and the couple shared three sons together who were around the same age as Broberg and her sisters, Karen and Susan.

In the Netflix documentary Abduction in Plain Sight, Broberg's mother Mary Ann explained that when Berchtold first kidnapped her daughter, his wife Gail suggested that they may have been in a car accident and urged her and Bob not to call the police.

Berchtold, in reality, had taken Broberg and manipulated her into believing aliens wanted her to have a child with him before she turned 16, and he took her to Mexico where he married her; they were there for five weeks.

When Broberg was found and returned home, Mary Ann explained in the documentary that Gail blackmailed her and her husband into signing an affidavit stating that they would not press charges against her husband over the kidnapping.

Gail, Mary Ann said, told her and her husband that she'd reveal Bob's sexual relationship with Berchtold publicly, this prompted them to agree to the affidavit.

Berchtold's wife did not appear in Abduction in Plain Sight, and in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2019, Broberg explained that Gail divorced her husband before she was abducted a second time in 1976.

Broberg said: "By the second kidnapping she had filed for a divorce. She divorced him and took her kids and moved."

"[Her story is] one of the most interesting perspectives that didn't get to happen in the documentary," she said.

Broberg went on to explain that she hadn't been in contact with Gail or her sons in "many, many years," and she said: "Can you imagine how awful it would be to discover that this was your dad? I mean, it's pretty tough, I feel bad for all of them."

Tipton, who uses they/them pronouns, spoke to Newsweek about portraying Gail in the drama, and explained that they approached the character by trying to understand her need to protect her family.

They said: "Gail, the real person, didn't much participate, understandably, in the documentary and this [show], and so I didn't have to over analyze exactly what I might be trying to manipulate and focus every intention on family, on protecting what I have, protecting my sons, protecting my husband.

"So, everything that was hard to swallow as a person looking at a character went through this filter, and that was, for me, the easiest way to do it because it broke up this idea of when to have to be manipulative, it was just do what you have to do to protect."

A Friend of the Family airs Thursdays on Peacock.