Sociopath Author Patric Gagne Says She Swiped Ringo Starr’s Glasses. Could This 1977 Photo Be Proof?

This story has been updated.

Among the many eyebrow-raising anecdotes in her provocative memoir Sociopath, author Patric Gagne claims to have stolen the glasses right off of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr’s face as a small child — and, she writes, PEOPLE has the photo to prove it.

Gagne freely admits in Sociopath to being a liar and has acknowledged in interviews that she is “a flawed messenger.”

“I know my stories are true,” she told the Los Angeles Times in April, “but I also know not everyone is going to believe them.”

Well, PEOPLE can confirm that at least part of Gagne’s Ringo story is true: a profile of the musician that ran in the magazine’s Jan. 17, 1977, issue did indeed include an adorable photo of a tiny tot snatching the Beatle’s glasses.

In her book, Gagne writes that from an early age she didn’t experience “common social emotions like shame and empathy” the way other children did. “For the most part, I felt nothing. And I didn’t like the way that ‘nothing’ felt. So I did things to replace the nothingness with… something.”

According to Gagne, that “something” occasionally took the form of stealing.

“I started stealing before I could talk,” she writes. “At least, I think I did. I don’t remember the first time I took something, just that by the time I was six or seven I had an entire box full of things I’d stolen in my closet.”

Among those pilfered items, she writes, were Ringo’s specs — which she claims to still have today.

“Somewhere in the archives of People magazine there is a photo of Ringo Starr holding me as a toddler,” she explains. “We’re standing in his backyard — not far from my birthplace in Los Angeles, where my father was an executive in the music business — and I am literally stealing the glasses off his face.”

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“Certainly, I was not the first child to ever play with a grown-up’s glasses,” Gagne continues. “But based on the spectacles currently perched on my bookshelf, I’m pretty sure I was the only one to swipe a pair from a Beatle.”

The 1977 profile mentions neither Gagne nor her music biz executive dad by name. And the caption for the photo — taken by the late Ken Regan, who died in 2012 — only identifies the child in Starr’s arms as “a friend’s baby.” PEOPLE reached out to Regan’s daughter, Suzanne, who confirmed that her father’s records indicate that the photo was taken in November 1976 outside Starr’s California home, but did not include the child or their parents’ names.

PEOPLE also reached out to Gagne on July 3, 2024, after her husband, David Gagne, reached out to say that the author’s mother had a second photo of Starr and Patric taken on the same day as the one that ran in the magazine (below).

Gagne sent PEOPLE the photo, which she says her mother may have snapped herself and has been sitting around in the family’s home for over 40 years.