[2][3] She said her upbringing was stressful and strict, with constant demands on her by both the predominantly white preparatory schools she attended and by her father, whom she described as domineering; as a result, she claimed that habitual lying became a "survival mechanism" for her as a child.
[7] She wrote of the "needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms", and claimed to have witnessed episodes of heroin injection, describing them in graphic detail.
The mayor and other city officials organized an all-out police search for the boy, which was unsuccessful and resulted in speculation that the story was fraudulent.
[10] An Associated Press (AP) article about the Pulitzer winners featured biographical profiles, including Cooke's fabricated educational background.
[2] In addition, she also added a claim that she attended the University of Paris and won seven awards for her journalism in Ohio, as opposed to the one she had listed previously.
The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing was instead given to Teresa Carpenter, for her article in The Village Voice about the murder of Dorothy Stratten.
[3][5] In 1996, she gave an interview about the "Jimmy's World" episode to GQ reporter Mike Sager, a former Washington Post colleague whom she had dated briefly during her time there.
[12] Cooke and Sager sold the movie rights to the story to Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million, but the project never advanced past the script stage.
[3][13] In 2016, Sager wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review that Cooke "is living within the borders of the continental United States, within a family setting, and pursuing a career that does not primarily involve writing".