How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found Read online

  "No, not just then. She stomped off saying, 'If you want to talk to me, you can reach me at Mother's.' Can you imagine that, a woman of thirty-nine going off to her mother's house?

  "He just sat there for a while thinking about what she said and how miserable his life was. Something inside of him clicked and he knew he couldn't take it anymore. He got up, went out to the garage and got a sledge hammer, came back and smashed that model train set-up to pieces! That night he got his things together and moved out. He hasn't set foot in that house since."

  "Then what happened?" I asked.

  "Well, he cleaned out their bank account the next day. He figured he'd leave her the house, which was almost paid for, and that ought to be good enough for the damn little satisfaction she had given him over the years. The next thing he knew he was ass-deep in legal talent, both hers and his. She was going to divorce him and it looked like she could force him to continue making the house payments. He could have afforded everything because his job paid so well, but then came the straw that broke the camel's back: she sent him the bill from a photographer she hired to take pictures of the wrecked model trains to prove to the court that he was 'mentally unstable' and had violent tendencies.'

  "Shortly after that he was sitting in a bar thinking about these goings-on and brooding about the whole mess when he saw an article in the paper about this guy who stepped out for a pack of cigarettes one day and vanished into thin air. He started thinking about his life and realized he didn't have anything to hold him down. He didn't have any emotional ties, he didn't give a shit for his job, he had some money put away, and he was in pretty good health."

  "So he took off, just like that guy in the paper," I said.

  "Not immediately. He thought about where he would go. He always liked the San Francisco area and so he took a few trips up there. The more he saw, the better he liked it. And the longer he waited, the more he realized that his ex-wife and those ambulance chasers were going to gnaw on his bank account until it was all gone. He went on this way for four or five weeks until he realized that every time he thought about splitting, he felt better. So he did it."

  "With no references or ID he must have had a tough time making the switch," I said. I was hoping he'd tell me about rigging-up this new identity, but he looked at me sort of funny as if he'd just realized he had maybe said more than he intended to. He looked over my shoulder and saw something that made him climb off his stool.

  "A friend I'm taking out to dinner just arrived," he said. "Thanks for the beer, but I've gotta go. Good luck with your book."

  The friend he was meeting was an attractive, well-dressed lady in her late twenties or early thirties. They greeted each other with obvious affection. They chatted, looking over at me a couple times, then left. I've seen neither of them since.

  While it is fairly common for a man to leave his wife and disappear, especially if he is being taken to the cleaners in a divorce, it is very rare for a woman to leave her husband. Some of the reasons for this are obvious.

  The system of "justice" in the United States is heavily slanted in favor of women in a divorce. Why would a woman want to split on her husband if she could divorce him and make him take care of most of her bills? It wouldn't make any sense.

  Also, a woman does not face the same kind of pressures when married as the husband does. Both of them may work, but the man's income and career are usually seen as the financial foundation of the family. And men have more psychological pressures on them to succeed and build a career than women do. A husband usually will not disappear if his marriage turns sour or he hates his job, but the combination of the two can be devastating.

  Without a doubt the greatest reason for women to disappear is battering. When a spouse or lover is violently abusive, divorce and separation are not very attractive remedies. In either situation, the estranged woman is still vulnerable while living in the same town or using her real name. The police are unable and, in many cases, unwilling to provide her with adequate protection. In these cases, disappearing may be a matter of basic survival.

  Disappearing is further complicated for women who have children. It is hard enough for one person trying to disappear--it is damn near impossible for a whole family to vanish. A woman on her own is not likely to take much abuse before walking out on her man; women with children have been known to put up with an awful lot before seeking help. And the longer the woman puts up with it, the more likely her man is to hunt her down if she tries to leave.

  It is the fear of being harmed that is the cause of most female identity changes. Perhaps this is why I have never talked with a woman disappearee. A man who successfully adopts a new identity is justifiably proud of his achievement and is willing to talk about it with a perfect stranger. But a woman who has disappeared out of fear for her safety is not likely to reveal her secret to anyone she hasn't come to know intimately.

  Occasionally, the deciding factor that makes a husband disappear is a desire for revenge. The abandoned wife is, in almost all respects, in a far worse position than a widow. All her alternatives will be expensive and difficult, including hiring detectives to find him, getting a divorce or having him declared legally dead. And she is not likely to have many resources at her disposal to pay for these things.

  In most cases it will be a year or longer before she can sell any real or personal property that's in his name or in both of their names. Depending on where she lives she may not be able to sell property in her own name immediately. In the meantime, she will have to make all the payments due on the property, yet she will have to have a court action to use any monies due her husband, such as wages, tax returns, etc. Chances are he collected what he had coming before he split.

  If she wants to get married again, she will have to either divorce her spouse or have him declared legally dead. Most women choose the former because it is less time consuming and less expensive. Obtaining a divorce under these circumstances can present severe financial problems, though, especially if the wife was figuring to saddle her ex-husband with the tab. Lawyers understand this situation and are prone to requesting fees up-front.

  If the wife wants to collect on her husband's life insurance policy, she will have to get him declared legally dead. The procedures for getting such a declaration vary greatly from state to state and the whole process can be blocked by a particularly malicious husband. I know of one case where a husband penned a note on the datelined front page of a newspaper, then mailed the note to his life insurance company. Needless to say, the insurance company refused to pay off on the substantial policy.

  Dual Identities & Lovers

  I once met a cheerful bigamist at the Operating Engineers hiring hall in San Mateo, California. This enterprising fellow had two wives, two families and two identities and divided his time evenly between them. He worked on construction jobs during the summer and repaired ski lifts during the winter. When the snow was thick on the ground he was drawing tax-free unemployment based on his previous summer's work, and during the hot months he drew benefits based on his winter job. Both his wives had jobs paying above-the-norm salaries, so the dual-family set-up was not a drain on him financially. This information was elicited in the course of a casual conversation, but when I began asking specific and probing questions such as, "How did you work yourself into this situation in the first place?" and "Do your wives know each other?" I overstepped the boundaries of his privacy and he clammed up, turned on his heels and left. I've wondered for years whether he will carry these arrangements into retirement and reap Social Security benefits from both identities...

  Contrary to widely-held opinion, the "other woman" is seldom a serious factor in most decisions to effect a deliberate disappearance, and it is rare for a man to disappear and take his "sidelines lover" with him. This is probably due to the practical reason that engineering the disappearance of two people is vastly more complicated than one. One of the basic attributes of a person willing and able to disappear and create a new identity i
s rock-ribbed practicality.

  Boredom & Frustration

  There is something about the middle years of life, the forties to fifties, that makes a man take a long, hard look at himself, his works, and his future. For then it is that he comes face-to-face with the ashes of his dreams and realizes that he is most definitely not going to write the Great American Novel. Or become President of The Company. Or even A MultiMillionaire. The great majority of men pass through this stage by simply gritting their teeth and continuing right on schlepping. A very, very few become so depressed they commit suicide. A larger number, also profoundly discouraged, commit the "revocable suicide" and disappear with the thought that they will leave their troubles behind. Sometimes it works.

  The "social scientists" call this the "Gauguin Syndrome" after the French stockbroker who chucked it all to paint and contract syphilis in the South Sea Islands. In the interests of accuracy, Gauguin did not change his identity--only his lifestyle and goals. He was really a run-of-the-mill dropout, not a disappearee.

  One slow evening in the bar at the Old Shasta Royal Lodge above Dunsmuir, California, I was idling away the time in casual conversation with a traveler who had taken a room for the night. My companion, a well-turned-out man of about fifty, became avidly interested when I mentioned I was researching a book about the techniques of disappearances. When the conversation came around to the reasons for disappearing, he said musingly, "You know, the situation that a very near friend of mine found himself in may be of interest to you."

  Naturally I made all the appropriate noises and he continued with his story.

  "My friend was married to a small-town New England girl. Together they had raised three fine children. He worked as a teacher for a small school system on the Cape, which was fine enough when he started. After seven years he established tenure, but the pay was barely enough to make ends meet. He noticed that more and more he had a feeling of being trapped; he was bored and dissatisfied with his job, but with four mouths to feed he didn't dare give up his tenured position for a job at some other school, and other high-paying jobs are hard to come by in resort areas like the Cape.

  "He and his wife began to squabble about their finances. As the kids got older the debts started to pile up. In order to pay the bills and keep peace in the family, he took a summer job as a pump jockey at a nearby gas station. Can you imagine the humiliation of a forty-year-old man pumping gas, or the anger that grew inside him every time a neighbor or colleague pulled in for a fill-up? It became unbearable."

  He paused, realizing that his emotion recounting these events was giving away the true identity of his "friend." I could see he was debating whether to continue so I prompted him to get to the heart of the story.

  "It doesn't sound to me like your friend could last very long in a situation like that," I said, reestablishing the pretense of the "friend."

  "You're right about that. A man will sacrifice a lot for his family, but when he gives up his pride and dignity he becomes something less than a man. Even with the extra cash, matters got worse at home, the fights became more frequent, his marriage became miserable and intolerable. Every time he looked at his wife he was reminded of the dreams he had set aside for her sake. Eventually the price he was paying didn't seem worth the relationship and they decided to divorce.

  "His wife got the house, the car and custody of the kids. Suddenly my friend realized he had absolutely nothing to show for his years of hard work. He got stuck paying alimony and child support, which meant he had to keep both jobs and continue working through his summers. That summer vacation was about the only thing he enjoyed about his teaching job and now that was gone like everything else.

  "The final blow was a bill from the orthodontist for fifteen hundred dollars. His wife was obviously out to get as much as she could out of him before the kids became legal adults and the child-support ended. That bill would have wiped out the meager savings he had been able to put aside. He called his lawyer who advised him to pay the bill. He could fight it out in court but he would end up paying both the bill and his attorney's fees and court costs. My friend got so depressed he seriously contemplated suicide.

  "What probably saved him was an article he remembered reading about a man in Providence who was in similar straits and simply walked out one evening and never returned. He took a hard look at his life and recognized that everything he had worked for was gone along with his enthusiasm for the future. He loved his kids, but they would soon be adults building lives of their own. He wouldn't have even considered disappearing if his children were still at that youthful stage where they need to have a father around. So he rounded up all the cash he could get his hands on and hopped on a bus for Boston late one summer night, and he's never looked back."

  "Have you seen your friend since he disappeared?" I asked. "I wonder if he had any regrets."

  "Yes, I'm still in touch with my friend," he said, with a smile exchanged between those who hold a secret, "and he has had regrets, of course. He misses his kids terribly. But he figures his wife got enough out of the divorce to take care of the kids until they're old enough to start their own careers. And as for his wife, hell, it might do her some good to have to work for a living. Maybe she'll understand the kind of pressures that finally got to her husband.

  As for my friend's new life, it couldn't be better. He's not a teacher anymore, nor a gas station attendant. Let's say he found a job far more interesting than he ever imagined he could get. And he's with a wonderful woman now who earns her own keep, to boot. Yes, even though he has some regrets, they are far outweighed by the fantastic improvement in the quality of his life."

  Social Security

  A surprisingly large number of "retired" people establish a second identity so they can work and still draw their maximum Social Security benefits. They feel they have paid into their account all their lives and they are entitled to a pension just as they would be entitled to an annuity that has been bought and paid for. They cannot see the logic in the law's reducing their benefits if they continue to work. So they devise another identity, obtain a second Social Security number, and re-enter the ranks of the employed on a sub-rosa basis. Although the instances of using a second identity to defeat the inequitable Social Security system are many--in fact, a helluva lot more than the S.S.A. would care to think about--ordinarily a disappearance is not involved. I mention these cases here only because they usually involve a well-thought-out identity invention together with painstaking documentation.

  On the Lam & In the Slammer

  A great number of disappearees are suspected or convicted criminals engaged in unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Criminals, like the battered women discussed earlier, are very reluctant to discuss their stories with strangers. Indeed, I did not hear any true criminal disappearance stories during my research for this book. This is not surprising, considering that it is the criminal identity-changer's insistence on absolute privacy that keeps him out of the clutches of the law. A jilted spouse will usually give up a difficult hunt, but the feds never stop. With the exception of paperhangers, embezzlers, con men and similar white-collar-type criminals, most lawbreakers do not plan their disappearances well enough to evade a determined police effort to apprehend them. Every day one reads about some wanted man being picked up in his girl friend's apartment or even at his mother's house--the very last places in the world he has any business being!

  A perfect example of this ineptness was the convict in a Michigan slammer whose friends sprung him with an elaborate helicopter caper, a la the movie Breakout. Instead of putting considerable distance between himself and the high stone walls the moment he was sprung, he proceeded to enjoy the finer things of life in the local watering holes. The cops wound up arresting him in a gin mill about fifteen miles from the main gate. He was free a total of one week.

  One unique attribute of criminal disappearees is that they tend to get better with practice. Middle-class husbands who duck out on their wives' attorneys are rarel
y ever located but criminals on the run are often brought back time and again. After their first or second rearrest they begin to understand what it takes to stay free and they plan very carefully for their next foray into the free world. The seasoned identity changer is probably the most difficult disappearee to locate.

  A very few of the people who disappear and change their identities are serving time and don't want their friends or relations to know about it. In this light it is interesting to note that a man can do his stretch under any name he chooses provided the authorities can't make a positive identification. Although the identity change is genuine, the disappearance would have to come under the heading "involuntary" and hence is beyond the scope of this book.

  Amnesia

  Genuine amnesia is extremely rare, not nearly as common as one would be led to believe by TV and newspapers, and even rarer as a factor in a prolonged disappearance and identity change. The true amnesiac is often badly confused and either seeks help or is picked up by the police because he is unable to care for himself. It is not so rare, however, for a disappearee to plead amnesia upon returning to the family fold. And the family readily accepts this flimsy explanation because it is a convenient way out of a situation embarrassing to all concerned.

  Rebellion & Adventure

  Although I talked to no disappearee who vanished as a gesture of rebellion against "the system" per se, many of the respondents had nothing but contempt for the maze of forms and petty regulations used by business and government to control the masses. I found it amusing that their contempt stemmed from the fact that they found the vaunted controls so easy to subvert. One man I spoke with was perfectly confident that he could disappear successfully because back in WW II he had found it an absolute cinch to con the United States Army into giving him an honorable discharge during his first six months in the service. He resolved to do the deed after a pot-bellied superior gave a speech to the effect that bilking the Army was a physical impossibility and anyone attempting to do so would spend the rest of the war in the stockade. His only regret is that he didn't put enough effort into the charade to wind up with a lifelong, tax-free pension.