In a tell-all book, Larry Sinclair, a convicted criminal and schizophrenic, claimed to have partied with then-State Senator Barack Obama during an alleged drug-fueled night in 1999.

“Obama and I had a few drinks and talked for about an hour or so at the bar,” Sinclair wrote in his book Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies and Murder, which was published on Jan. 1, 2010.

Who is Larry Sinclair?

Lawrence Wayne Sinclair was born on Sept 26, 1961 in Camden, South Carolina to Lawrence Hubert and Mary Sinclair

Sinclair’s father, Lawrence Hubert, worked in the textile industry in Camden, a city in the “Midlands” region that is one of the state’s oldest. He was also a member of the South Carolina National Guard, and a member of Malvern Hill Baptist Church.

According to an obituary published in The State newspaper, Sinclair’s father died of cancer on New Year’s Eve Day in 1996, at age 59. Sinclair was living in Pueblo, Colorado at the time, as was his brother, Raymond H. Sinclair and his sister, Robin Lynn Sinclair.

Sinclair has lived across the country, including in Camden, South Carolina; Denver; New York; Duluth; Ft. Lauderdale; and Pueblo, Colorado.

Mother: this kid needs an exorcism

Sinclair was born and raised a Southern Baptist. But he said that his mother, Mary, was so disturbed by his petulance that she pleaded for help to Baptist ministers, who suggested she find a Roman Catholic priest to perform an exorcism of Sinclair.

“As a child, I was determined to be me, regardless of what it meant to anyone else,” he wrote in his book.

Unable to handle his behavior, his parents sought out a psychiatrist who put him on Ritalin, and later on Mellaril, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia.

Not “sissy gay”

“I was not the ‘sissy’ gay that most people think of. I enjoyed boxing as well as baseball, football and other physical activities,” he wrote in his book, Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies and Murder.

A string of special schools (and juvie)

Sinclair attended the John De La Howe School in McCormick, South Carolina, which has a mission of “serving children who struggled in a conventional school, offering a haven for them to grow and succeed.” It is an agency of the State of South Carolina. John De La Howe is the oldest educational institution in South Carolina below the college level, founded in 1797 with funding from Dr. John De La Howe. Howe was a doctor who moved to Charleston from France in 1764 to provide education for poor and orphaned local children.

Sinclair also attended South Carolina School for Boys in Florence, a juvenile correctional institution for troubled youth and at the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, Colorado. And, briefly, Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona.

Trafficking kilos across the border

In 1999, Sinclair said he started making drug deliveries across the southern U.S. for a dealer he called Mary Lu Dominquez. He wrote that he delivered two kilos of cocaine and collected $48,000 in payment for her.

“Before this time, I had not trafficked nor sold drugs,” he wrote. “My entire life, I had never been a drug user except for a couple of times experimenting with smoking a joint that made me goofy and silly, a single hit of acid that made me cry all night, a period of smoking rock over a month’s time in 1986 and doing a few lines of coke,” he wrote. “I have never been addicted to any drug or alcohol at any point in my life.”

Sinclair’s book, Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies and Murder, was self-published on Amazon on Jan. 1, 2010.