Depersonalization is a dissociative disorder characterized by a sense of observing one’s self from outside one’s body. Those with the condition often report an experience akin to watching yourself in a movie. My 86-year-old stepfather, Chuckie O’Brien, does not suffer from depersonalization. But for more than half his life, 44 years, he has watched himself portrayed in news articles, books and motion pictures — most recently, in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” — as someone he is not. The effect on his life has been devastating.

Chuckie was the most intimate associate of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters union leader who famously disappeared from a suburban Detroit parking lot on July 30, 1975. Within two weeks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced its belief, based on circumstantial evidence, that Chuckie had abducted Mr. Hoffa from the parking lot through “force and violence.” Ever since, Chuckie’s involvement in the crime has been widely repeated and broadly accepted. The charge ruined his life. The government pursued him aggressively and often leaked falsehoods to the press to pressure him into cooperating. He was ostracized in the Teamsters union and lost many friends. And worst of all, at least to Chuckie, the allegation deeply stained his honor.

This is all tragic because the conventional wisdom about Chuckie is false. For decades, the F.B.I. has not suspected him of involvement in the disappearance. The circumstantial case against Chuckie fell apart long ago, and his known whereabouts on the fateful day make it practically impossible that he picked up Mr. Hoffa. Unfortunately, the government never made this information public. And so Chuckie’s innocence in one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century remains mostly hidden, his guilt remains publicly presumed, his honor remains soiled.

It has been a bizarre experience, and a grim one, for Chuckie to read so many made-up things about himself over so many decades and not be able to do anything about it. “Everybody that’s written these books, they all surmise what happened,” he once explained to me. “They have no facts on them, they have no truth on them. The book gets printed and it goes out and they sell them, and that’s it.”