To make matters worse, Le Roux was about to be confronted with a life-altering secret from his own past. Needing to obtain a new Zimbabwean passport in 2003, he went in search of his birth cer- tificate, contacting a lawyer in Bulawayo to track down his rec- ords. The law had changed since his childhood, though, and when the attorney returned with the paperwork it included not just the short form certificate that had been issued to Paul Sr. and Judy but his full birth certificate as well.

The relative recalled receiving a confused phone call from Le Roux, who had made it into adulthood without realizing he was adopted, and was now baffled by what he’d found. “Why is some other person named as my mother?” he asked.

“Things here are always done incorrectly,” the relative said, hoping to convince him it was only a clerical error. “You shouldn’t be surprised.”

Le Roux was incredulous. Finally the relative relented and con- firmed the truth. That moment, arriving at age thirty, “shattered his whole world,” his cousin Mathew said. It wasn’t just the idea that he’d been adopted that traumatized him. He’d had good par- ents, after all. But something about his name being listed as “un- known” on the certificate seemed to haunt him. “She could have put down any name,” he told the relative. “But she put ‘un- known.’” Years later, the relative would remember the discovery as the moment when something changed. “I have always felt that was a main driving point in his life. He needed to be someone, be known.”

Le Roux, awakened to his alternate past, set out to track down his biological parents. His birth mother, Jill, had followed Le Roux’s upbringing in Zimbabwe at a quiet distance, but lost track of him when his adoptive family moved to South Africa. After he contacted her, he then traveled to Zimbabwe to meet her and two of his half-siblings. “He spent the entire day in virtual silence, he was very, very quiet,” said his half-sister Sandi, who was struck by the physical similarities between Le Roux and their mother. “My mom just couldn’t stop staring at him.” But Le Roux seemed af-