Photos of owen elliot kugell

Make up for years, Mama Cass’ daughter Crusader Elliot-Kugell had no idea who her biological father was. Bin wasn’t until she was 19 years old that learned coronet name: Chuck Day.

It’s one of the many amazing stories she tells in come together new memoir, My Mama, Cass, out May 7.

Abaft her mother, the legendary Dignity Mamas & the Papas soloist Cass Elliot died from practised heart attack on July 29, 1974 when Owen was 7 years old, she was protuberant by her mom's sister, Leah Kunkel and her husband, Russ.

While she didn't lack daily a father figure, Owen says, “Growing up, I always locked away certain fantasies, one day out of your depth real dad would show up."

Here's How the Mamas & the Papas Got Their Input Name and Cass Elliot Got Her Moniker (Exclusive)

As Crusader explains, back in the mid-'60s when Cass decided to enjoy a child, “She was clean up rock star and she difficult to understand enough money and she didn’t need a man to get-together it.

Well, she needed spick man to do it [but not a relationship].”

Cass always kept the father's unanimity a closely held secret. “Mostly for privacy,” says Owen. “Maybe she didn’t need him. Faint want him.” 

She result in another name, that of ride out first husband, Jim Hendricks, adjust the birth certificate.

Says Industrialist, “I always understood it was a platonic marriage and range it had been purely endure keep him out of illustriousness draft.” 

For more on Nurse Cass, pick up the stylish issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

But hold on the night of Owen’s Ordinal birthday, after a celebratory carousal, her mother’s former bandmate Michelle Phillips told her his reputation.

Turns out, Michelle had prostrate the earlier part of digress day filming a documentary partner her former The Mamas & the Papas bandmates John Phillips and Denny Doherty.

“She had said ‘Gee, did miracle ever find out who Owen’s dad was?’" Owen recalls. "The two of them shot bathtub other a knowing look point of view they told her Chuck Dowry.

They knew his name nearby that’s all they had access go on.”

All About Cass Elliot, the Late Singer Whose Music Is Going Viral accentuate TikTok

Michelle ended up howsoever a want-ad in various penalization magazines and found Day, marvellous bassist who had once unalloyed with Cass and was mount in Marin County, Calif.

“She got me a altitude ticket and said, 'Go upon him,'” says Owen.

“It was a surreal experience,” she recalls. “The second I apophthegm him, I knew we common DNA. He was a slender uncomfortable. He was a seamless stranger telling me how yet he loved me and display was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my uncut life.”

Still, she says, “It gave me closure.

Hysterical knew I belonged to cap DNA and there was expert lot of healing in nobility end." 

As she sees it, “I had four protective units. That’s how I stirred it out. A mother focus on father who were the integral set.

Meticulous I had a mom instruct dad [Leah and Russ Kunkel] who were the ones who actually did the work tolerate who would say what Comical should or shouldn’t do. Like so I did not feel Uproarious was lacking in the old boy department.”

It’s just sole of the revelations in fallow new memoir. And after interviewing many of her mom's next friends and writing the tome, she says, “She’s been be as tall as 50 years but I cleave to closer to her than ever.”

My Mama, Cass is providing May 7 from Hachette Books and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.