How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found Read online

  Passports

  And now for the granddaddy of all forms of personal identification: the U.S. passport. Impressive as this document may sound, it is relatively easy to get as long as you have the proper back-up ID, and as long as you know a bit about the procedure involved before you start out. Passports are issued primarily by the U.S. Passport Office division of the State Department. There are U.S. Passport Offices in most major cities. If there is no passport office in your area, they may be issued by the Clerk of the Federal Court. In some instances they are even handled by local U.S. Post Offices.

  For the identity switcher, far and away the best place to go is the Passport Office. The Clerk of the Court and especially the Post Office people are not likely to have much experience with passports and they will want all the "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed, twice. At the Passport Office your application will be handled by a bunch of bored civil servants who are so used to the routine that they won't remember you seven seconds after you walk out the door.

  The Passport Clerk will ask you for your birth certificate and some form of supporting photo ID, like your drivers license. They will then give you a form to fill out and return with a couple of passport photos and the fee, currently $35. Passport photos are fairly special, and must be taken according to specific regulations which change from time to time. It's best to use one of the passport photo places that are often located right near the passport office. They know the requirements and they generally can have your pictures ready while you wait. It's best to get several sets of extra copies if you plan to travel outside the U.S. much. Many countries require the same kind of photos for travel documents they issue to foreigners, and you don't want to have to find some advanced country where you can get your pictures taken properly before resuming your travels.

  The best time of year to get your passport is during the winter months, if you want to have it mailed to you in a reasonable period of time. Thousands of tourists trot down to the local Passport Office about two weeks before their 21-country summer cruise is due to depart. Even if they planned well in advance to take their trip, they forget about the passport until the last minute. It can take several months for your passport to arrive if you apply at the peak travel times.

  A passport is now good for ten years. When you turn in your application, photos and fee, you should ask for the larger, 48-page booklet. The standard 24-page passport gets filled up quickly if you travel extensively outside the United States. When your passport expires, renewing it is easy. You simply go to the Passport Office with your old passport, a new set of pictures and the fee, and you're on your way again.

  There is one odd facet to the passport application process. For some reason, the clerks always ask you for the exact countries you intend to visit. This makes absolutely no sense at all, since once the passport is issued you are free to go anywhere you like, and this regardless of the crap printed in the front of the document about not being able to go to Cuba, North Korea, etc. It really doesn't matter what you tell them, just so long as you don't say you're on a business trip to Libya or some other place currently on the federal government's shit-list.

  Fake ID

  For those disappearees attempting to create a new identity totally from scratch, fake ID will provide an important part of their documentation needs. There are many companies that will sell you an official looking birth certificate in any name you need. These mail order certificates are authentic looking enough to use in getting a legitimate drivers license (but not a passport!). In fact, if you are having trouble obtaining the data you need to get a copy of a real birth certificate, you might consider getting a fake one, using it to obtain other legitimate ID, and then destroying the birth certificate to keep your trail clean. You can also get fake drivers licenses and identity cards, but the better route is to use a fake birth certificate to get legitimate photo ID. Why settle for second best?

  While fake ID is not a good substitute for legitimate documentation like drivers licenses and passports, it is extremely helpful to the identity changer in providing supporting ID and fleshing out the new identity. There is a good publication on this subject listed in the reference chapter. It describes how to get and use fake ID, lists the companies that sell it, shows pictures of the items for sale, and gives prices where available.

  You can buy all sorts of ID to fill out the identity you've chosen. If you are looking to a professional work life you can buy all kinds of diplomas, certificates showing membership in professional organizations, certificates of merit and commendation, even college transcripts. At the other end of the scale, you can buy fake union membership cards, journeymen's cards and certificates that indicate completion of a variety of technical training courses. If you'd like a family, you can buy marriage certificates, school records for your fictitious children, even divorce papers. While this ID will not withstand the simplest of investigations, it is the kind of stuff that will rarely be looked at closely and where detection of your fraud probably won't get you into a lot of trouble. And it certainly adds meat to a well-thought-out identity.

  Forged ID

  For those having difficulty getting legitimate pieces of fake ID and considering purchasing forged ID on the street, my advice is DON'T. When you buy ID off the street, you don't know what you're getting into. First, forged documents are often exorbitantly expensive. The people you are buying them from have good reason to believe you are in desperate need of them, or else why go to such lengths to get them? They will charge you accordingly. If you are trying to get a forged passport so you can leave the country in a hurry, you should realize that it will often take as long to find a good forgery as it will to get the real thing issued under an assumed identity. Second, when you buy forged documents off the street, you leave yourself at the mercy of the parties who sold them to you. The degree of cooperation between the police and small-time crooks in this country is amazing. They work on a quid-pro-quo basis whereby the police won't disrupt the illegal operation as long as they get either a cut or a little information now and then. And in no case does this system work better than with purveyors of forged documents. While their trade is illegal, the information they can provide is worth far more to the police than it is to crack down on them. The document forger earns twice off the naive purchaser: first by the outrageous price he charges you for the goods, and second by giving your name to the cops to "pay his rent."

  The third reason to stay away from forged documents is that, rather than being forged, the documents are more than likely stolen. If you go running around with someone else's drivers license or passport, you are just begging for trouble. Chances are the original theft was reported to the authorities. They will be looking for someone using that name and trying to cash checks or make purchases using the stolen ID. And if you try to leave the country with a stolen passport that was probably reported missing before you even bought it, good luck. Stolen and forged ID is responsible for bringing down a lot of fugitives from the law who didn't have the time, foresight or resources to document a legitimate alternative identity. In short, if you don't need forged ID, don't get it. And if for some reason it's the only way to go, then get rid of it as fast as you can and pick up a legitimate identity.

  * * *

  COPING

  * * *

  "In a money society you can be independent with money, or independent without money. Anywhere in between you're under the thumb."

  --Collins in The Brass Rainbow.

  You have seen that documenting a new identity is not all that difficult. In fact, the hardest aspect of disappearing and switching identities is coping with the change in lifestyle as you establish yourself as a new person. The story of the prison escapee who has led a happy and sedate life as an auto mechanic for years only to be tripped-up by some trivial happenstance is a staple item in the newspapers. Even clever and well-planned disappearances like that of Larry Lavin's as told previously can be unravelled through a couple of seemingly insignificant oversights. The successful d
isappearee, especially one who is earnestly sought, must be able to land on his feet like the proverbial cat and move quickly and carefully thereafter.

  The problems of the disappearee become critical the minute he walks out on his original identity and into a new one, regardless of whether the new identity has been groomed well in advance. He is immediately confronted with the questions of where to go, how to get work, and whether or not he should disguise himself. All the aspects of every day life we all take for granted are enormous problems for the newly-disappeared that must be solved promptly and correctly. One mistake along the way could take months of work to correct, perhaps forcing a second switch in identity, or perhaps leading to his discovery.

  WHERE TO GO

  The most immediate and pressing issue the disappearee must handle is where to go. The first few days of a disappearance are a sensitive time, for this is when the loudest cry will be raised over your vanishing act and when the pursuit will be most intense. It is also likely that you will still be in the near vicinity for awhile, making detection from a wide variety of sources possible. The vanisher must find a safe haven where he can think through his next moves and marshall his resources for the long road ahead. One of the more elaborate transitions from old life to new I heard was related to me in a bar in Oakland, California. I was involved in a general discussion of disappearances and identity changing with a slim, tanned, well-spoken individual of about fifty years of age. When I mentioned that the first part of an identity change is the hardest, but that thorough planning could smooth out most of the rough spots, he smiled widely and nodded his agreement.

  "A few years back I had a friend who vanished," he began. "He was living--existing really--in, well, one of those jerkwater towns in the flat country where you can see the great distances without seeing anything at all. He was a fishing nut and was terribly disappointed that the environs he lived in had no outlet for his favorite pursuit. Sure, there were muddy little creeks near his home filled with bullhead and carp and catfish, but he was a dry-fly purist, and you know how a died-in-the-wool, tie-your-own-flies fisherman feels about such trash."

  I nodded my sympathy.

  He continued, "The trouble was, his wife didn't like the amount of time and money he spent going to places where the fish live. He was a respectable financial executive, and she was a sucker for lost causes. Ever since their kids had gone through college and moved away, she got more and more involved in volunteer work. That would have been fine with him, except that she was using his position to advance her causes, and she expected--no, demanded--that he attend all kinds of fundraising events and be photographed with disabled kids and the like. It was more than he could stomach.

  "I don't know exactly when or how he hit upon the idea of chucking it all and starting a new life under a different name. The idea just seemed to grow. Once he accepted it, he began to make his plans. One of the first things he did was buy a pick-up truck with an insulated, all-weather camper already installed. He purchased it in a distant city that he visited regularly on business. And he paid for it with an unexpected company bonus he received."

  "Didn't his wife know anything about their finances?" I asked. "Seems she would have known about the bonus because of the income tax angle."

  "No, she didn't know anything about it. It was one of those end-of-the-year deals, and he received the money in February. That gave him about fourteen months before it would show up on the IRS forms, which was plenty of time for him to execute his plan."

  "Anyway, he bought the camper under his new name. The dealer was very helpful arranging the insurance and licensing. He stored the camper with the dealer, picking it up occasionally for short trips when he could sneak the time."

  "Where did he get the new identity?" I asked. "Just make it up out of whole cloth?"

  He gave me a sly look. "No, he'd started reading up on the subject and then he remembered that he had an older brother who died when he was less than a year old. My parents never mention him, and I had no reason to ever tell my wife about my brother. Christ, I wasn't even born when he died!"

  He abruptly stopped at this point, realizing he'd slipped out of the third person. He considered whether to continue or not. At last he went on.

  "There was a lot of local interest in my friend's disappearance, but as far as I know, no one ever made the connection between him and his brother. It was a perfect identity to slip into because he didn't have to memorize a lot of strange data about place of birth, mother's maiden name, and so on."

  "Where did he go when he walked out?" I asked.

  "Well the first thing he did was make a fishing trip to end all fishing trips. He lashed flies across every trout stream of note between Kuskokwim in Western Alaska and the little streams on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidentales in Mexico."

  "What did he do for money?" I wondered.

  "He had a small amount of savings with him when he left. You'd be surprised how little it costs for a man to live in a camper by himself. But without any credit available to him, it wasn't long before he had to seek out work. Even though he was a paper-shuffler in his former life, he had a lot of practical carpentry skills he'd learned fixing up the houses he'd lived in. So he earned money as he went along doing odd jobs and the like, though he was in no condition for heavy physical labor.

  "After a while he assembled a decent set of tools and a few good contacts along his favorite routes. He was then able to work a few days a week and spend the rest of his time traveling and fishing. He's since joined a carpenters union and works out of the hall whenever the mood or the need strikes him."

  "Sounds kinda romantic to me," I said. "Traveling the country carefree without a responsibility in the world. I imagine it gets a bit lonely, though."

  "I suppose it could," he said, "but it doesn't have to be. There are a lot of people out there doing exactly the same thing. You quickly develop a comradery with these other nomads, and nobody ever asks you much about your past or your personal life. My friend eventually latched onto a woman who is a full professor at a university. She's not interested in marriage and she sure can handle a fly rod. They spend a lot of time together in the summers, though he doesn't hang around when school's in session."

  Perhaps he felt he talked a little too much and with a bit more enthusiasm than he'd intended, for he abruptly changed the subject. We chatted away about nothing in particular until he finished his beer, whereupon he headed for the door. After he was gone I asked the barkeep if he knew the fellow I was talking with.

  "No," he said. "He's not a regular--just comes in once a month or so for lunch and a beer. He's not much of a talker. In fact, I think him talking to you was his first real conversation in this place. He really loves to fish, though. A friend of mine told me he was working on a building job here a while back, earning pretty good money as a carpenter, when he pulled the pin to go off trout fishing before the job was done. Can you beat that?"

  Transportation

  The unique aspect of the above disappearance is the transportation used. The disappearee prepared his transportation in advance. Most disappearees will not have the money to buy a car before they go. And as I have said previously, it is very unwise to take your old car with you into your new life. If you do use a car to effect your disappearance, there are a number of ways to get rid of it. If you simply refuse to part with it then you should make plans in advance to store it for a while until whoever may be looking for you gets tired of the chase. The best bet for storage is to rent a lock-up garage in a residential neighborhood. This way the car will remain out of sight and you aren't likely to face a lot of prying questions as long as the rent is paid. When things cool down a little you may be able to find a buyer for the car who won't be too concerned about the legal formalities of the deal. You shouldn't even consider taking the car out of storage and using it again, unless you don't value your new identity very much.

  Another way to get rid of your car once you have found your destination
is to have it stolen. Simply drive your car into one of the poorer looking neighborhoods of a big city, park it on a residential street and leave the keys in the car and the doors unlocked. Before morning your car will probably have changed hands several times. Within a few days it should have a new paint job and a fresh set of plates.

  One disappearee I talked with escaped by driving his car to the airport where he parked it, hopped an airport bus to the Greyhound station and there boarded another bus to his destination. All he took with him was a suitcase. Judging from the efforts made to find him, I imagine his "luggage" consisted of a considerable amount of someone else's money. The police discovered his car at the airport and spent several days circulating pictures of him to ticket agents, hostesses, etc. I found this to be a very clever way to throw people off the trail.

  If you expect to be the object of a vigorous search, then bus transportation is an excellent way to go. Bus lines do not keep passenger lists. Nor do they require that you show ID to get a ticket. And fellow passengers on buses seem to be less concerned about who they're traveling with than your typical airline passenger.

  But don't let the passenger lists scare you off from using a commercial airline. Ticket agents don't care what a passenger calls himself, as long as he pays the fare up front. In fact, every time a large, commercial flight crashes there are unidentified passengers. The people holding the names on the passenger list are often alive and well and may never have set foot on a plane in their life. You will have to wait until your new identity is documented before you board an international flight--passengers headed overseas are required to show their passport prior to boarding.