"Amy Griffin's Story Didn't Add Up" Bryan Jennings Was At The Dance!

A former classmate of Amy Griffin and Jolene Altum is speaking out — and he says he remembers the night at the center of the growing controversy surrounding the bestselling memoir *The Tell*.

Brian Jennings attended the eighth-grade dance with Jolene Altum more than three decades ago. In a declaration filed on Jolene’s behalf, Jennings says he saw Jolene leave the dance with a male teacher, watched her return later with her hair and clothing disheveled, and spoke with her afterward about what had happened.

Now, in an exclusive interview with Billy Bush, Jennings explains what he remembers from that night — and why reading Amy Griffin’s *The Tell* decades later immediately felt familiar.

Jennings says he contacted Jolene after reading the memoir and asked whether she had seen it because elements of Griffin’s story reminded him of what Jolene had told him years earlier.

Even more significantly, Jennings says the teacher he remembers leaving the dance with Jolene was NOT the teacher portrayed under the pseudonym “Mr. Mason” in Griffin’s memoir.

Jennings takes Billy inside their childhood in Amarillo, Texas, describes Amy and Jolene as he remembers them, and discusses the environment at Austin Middle School. He also recalls Amy Griffin personally — including an act of kindness from eighth grade that stayed with him for decades.

That makes what happened when he finally read *The Tell* even more complicated.

Jennings says he initially approached the book with admiration for his former classmate. But as he reached the allegations of childhood sexual abuse, he began experiencing an unsettling sense of déjà vu. By the time he finished the memoir, he says he was thinking about Jolene and the story she had told him decades earlier.

Jennings has now signed a declaration supporting portions of Jolene Altum’s account as the legal battle surrounding *The Tell* continues.

The competing allegations remain disputed. Griffin maintains that the experiences described in her memoir happened to her, while Altum alleges that elements of her own childhood trauma were incorporated into Griffin’s story. Jennings does not claim to know everything that happened to either woman; his testimony concerns what he personally remembers seeing and hearing surrounding Jolene and the eighth-grade dance.

Billy takes Brian back through that night, what he remembers more than 35 years later, and the question now hanging over one of publishing’s most controversial memoirs:

Whose story is *The Tell* actually telling?

Subscribe to Hot Mics with Billy Bush for continuing coverage of Amy Griffin, *The Tell*, Jolene Altum and the legal battle surrounding the memoir.

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