Collin Gosselin Says a Fellow Patient Smuggled His Crayon Letter to Jon Gosselin Out of the Treatment Facility in His Underwear
by Sari Moon · Thought CatalogBy Sari Moon
Updated 35 minutes ago, October 15, 2026
Collin Gosselin says a fellow patient smuggled his crayon plea to Jon Gosselin out of a treatment facility in his underwear.
Collin says the plan hinged on a boy named Zach, a patient a couple of years older than him who was being discharged the next day. Collin, locked in long-term treatment at Fairmount Behavioral Health System, wrote a letter in crayon, folded it as small as he could over a couple of pages, and told Zach who his family was and about the TV show.
He asked Zach to find his father’s social media, reach out, and say where he was. Collin says Zach tucked the note into his underwear because staff search belongings on the way out, walked through the exit with it, and got it to Jon Gosselin.
Collin had copied Fairmount’s address off a brochure he found lying around the facility and written it on the note. “I need you to come get me, please,” he says he wrote. He says Zach told him, “You’re my hero.”
Collin, now 22, is one of the sextuplets from TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8.” He was admitted to Fairmount on May 6, 2016, days before his 12th birthday, and alleges his mother, Kate Gosselin, institutionalized him to keep him quiet about what was happening at home.
He details it in his memoir “In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood,” out Oct. 13, 2026, and laid out the Zach story on the Oct. 12 episode of Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose.”
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Jon has described receiving a crayon letter from Fairmount before: in 2019 he gave DailyMailTV a note dated June 2017 that he said a roommate smuggled out, ending “Daddy, I love you. Save me! Please come FAST.” Collin didn’t go home at once.
Jon won sole custody in December 2018, and Collin left inpatient care late that month. Kate has not addressed the note; in 2023 she said Collin has a “distorted perception of reality.”
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