How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found Read online

  Renting a car is probably not an option for most vanishers. First, it's expensive. Most people who disappear are short enough on money without blowing half of it on a car rental. But more importantly, you'd be hard pressed to rent a car anywhere in America without a credit card. It doesn't matter how much money you wave in their faces; rental car companies won't even look at you if you can't come across with a VISA or American Express. And if there's one thing a recent disappearee lacks, it's credit.

  The First Days

  Unless you've prepared your disappearance well in advance or have a lot of money, you may have trouble finding a place to sleep until you get on your feet. A surprising number of disappearees stay with friends or relatives the first couple of nights. This is usually a mistake. These are the first places someone will come looking for you. Also, you leave a trail that could be easy to trace. A great deal of pressure may come to bear on your friends or relatives once you're gone if the people looking for you have good reason to suspect they gave you safe harbor. One interesting exception to this rule was a disappearee I talked to who moved in with a former girlfriend. He claims he picked his destination city more or less at random. Once there he discovered that his old flame lived in that town. After a couple days of putting up in boxcars for the night he decided to give her a call. She invited him for dinner, which turned out to be one of those sentimental red-wine-and-candles affairs. Love was kindled anew, the upshot being he moved in for an extended stay.

  "What story did you tell her to account for your new identity?" I asked him.

  "Oh, I told her that I went through bankruptcy and my attorney told me I would never be able to get credit or do business under my own name again, so I adopted a new one. It was pretty thin, but people believe what they want to believe, and she wanted to believe that every word I told her was the truth."

  "So what happened after you left her place?" I asked.

  He chortled loud, clear and joyous. "Hell, I never did leave! We've got two kids in school and now both of us have damn good jobs. No sense in splitting on a problem-free situation, is there?"

  Taking up with a member of the opposite sex is actually a pretty good idea for the newly disappeared. Of course, shacking up with an old girlfriend is not a good idea for most people, because they will know about both of your identities and if things don't work out as well as they did for the fellow above, your spurned love may go running to the people you are trying to get away from.

  A stranger in a bar who doesn't know anything about your past--only your present--is another thing altogether. They may provide you with food, shelter and a mailing address while you're getting your new identity established. And if things turn sour and you haven't told all about your former life, you won't have to fear any anonymous letters to your ex-wife, or whoever.

  Shacking up with someone sure beats sleeping on a park bench. As I noted in an earlier chapter, living off the street is not a very good idea for the newly disappeared. You are likely to be surrounded by an assortment of petty crooks and drifters. This crowd is carefully watched by the police, lest they start to infect the decent folk of the town who pay the taxes that pay their salaries.

  If you're really down on your money, a mission is a much better place to stay than on the streets. Contrary to popular opinion, they aren't just for drunks and bums. Many a vanisher has spent his first few nights as the guest of the Salvation Army. They've assisted many, many people who are looking to make a new start in life, and they aren't inclined to make embarrassing inquiries.

  When all is said and done, there is no substitute for money when undertaking an identity change. I know of one disappearee who went so far as to take out a second mortgage on his home to finance his leave. There are many places one can go with money, and cash seems to answer all those prying questions with more authority than half-a-dozen credit cards or other pieces of ID. Many people have enough money to travel when they disappear. In fact, the desire to travel is one of the main motivations to disappear (when combined with family and other problems). And travel is an excellent choice, for it allows the disappearee the time and peace of mind to consider his possibilities and chart a new course.

  Finding a Place to Live

  Some disappearees are able to live like turtles, carrying their lives with them in their campers like the fly-fishing gentleman we met earlier. But if you aren't planning to live on the move like a nomad, going into the back country can be a dangerous proposition. Small-town U.S.A. is bad news for a recent disappearee. The locals in small communities have an overwhelming interest in "outsiders" and derive their principal entertainment from speculating endlessly about everyone in sight. A stranger is something to notice in such towns. Anything foreign about you will immediately be held up to public scrutiny. This is hardly a desireable environment for a person with a young identity to age.

  A fresh disappearee should probably look for a more permissive town. By that, I mean a city where the authorities are not preoccupied with enforcing a host of ridiculous nuisance laws. San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area seem to be very attractive to identity changers for precisely this reason. Not only are people less inclined to pry into your private life in such places, but it can be very enjoyable to live in a city where "anything goes."

  A large city is better than a small one for a number of other reasons. A stranger won't stand out much in a city of millions. Public transportation is usually well established in large cities, which is helpful to those who have disappeared without a lot of money. There are more job opportunities of a greater variety in a large city. And there are also more resources of the type an identity changer is likely to need: mail drops, secretarial services, community colleges, etc.

  Many disappearees make a checklist of the things they regard as necessary when picking a town in which to begin a new life, and this strikes me as a good idea. It would obviously be stupid for a literate man, a man who enjoys intelligent conversation and is used to elaborate library facilities, to attempt to exist in Mott, North Dakota or Mount Shasta City, California. Similarly, an individual really hooked on huntin' and fishin' and the outdoor life would be a fool to head for Washington, D.C.

  Here's an interesting note about the residences that some disappearees choose. Several of my contacts specifically mentioned that they always wanted a second exit in any place they lived. One such person kept a climbing rope in his bedroom with one end tied to the bedstead. He explained this arrangement to his nosy apartment manager by telling her that he was pathologically afraid of fire because his home had burned down when he was a small child.

  FINDING WORK

  With five notable exceptions, nearly everyone in our society works at a job of some kind and is automatically suspected of all kinds of dark and nefarious deeds if he doesn't work. The exempt classifications: The very rich, who obviously don't need to bother working, the very poor, who also don't need to work because the Welfare State takes care of them. Then housewives, students and retirees. Everyone else in the U.S. and Canada is expected to work or at least have the appearance of working. I say "the appearance of working" because even if a lamster doesn't need to work for wages he should cultivate regular workman-like habits. He should leave his lodgings at the same time every day, whether he spends his time at the library or at the beach, and return home at the same time each evening. The disappearee should attempt to structure his life so as to call as little attention to himself as possible. There are just too many people who make it their business to know other people's business, especially the female who is shut up in her house all day in a residential neighborhood with too much time on her hands and too little to occupy her mind.

  Most disappearees will not have the option of staying unemployed, at least not for long. When their savings run out, which could be as soon as fifteen minutes after they walk into their new life, they'll need to get a job. Trying to collect welfare on a freshly manufactured identity is a big mistake because of all the government paperwork involved and t
he scrutiny of public servants that results. For the typical disappearee, the question is not whether to work, but what work to do and how to get it.

  There are many good reasons for working besides the need for income. One is the need to establish credit. The ability to use credit is almost a requirement for membership in our society, and people who grant credit are more impressed with a job than anything else--a steady job, that is. Any job. For oddly enough, people who grant credit are much more favorably inclined toward a laborer who makes $10,000 a year than to a writer, artist or door-to-door salesman who makes four or five times that. The writer, artist, etc. doesn't fit their pattern, and doesn't march to the sound of a time clock.

  Another reason for working is that it is about the best place to make personal contacts. Loneliness is a severe problem for many identity changers, and not a small number of them have crawled back to their old lives for precisely this reason. But most jobs bring with them all sorts of social activities, and a lamster who takes part in these will have no more problems with loneliness.

  Choosing an Occupation

  Choosing an occupation can be a difficult process for some disappearees. If you do not have your new identity well-established in advance, you may have difficulty finding exactly the kind of work you like to do. Employers will be reluctant to hire you for a high paying job if you can't provide them with any previous work references or show training or schooling. Your first few jobs may be low-paying, part-time work where few questions are asked. After a time you can build up an employment history and a number of references that will lead you to greener pastures. The problems of the well-to-do disappearee are often much more severe than those of the common laborer who leaves his wife. The higher a person's socio-economic status, theoretically the harder it will be to regain an equivalent position in the new identity. And the problems in finding new work are compounded by the fact that the people these disappearees leave behind often have more resources and more incentive to track them down. Further, it takes more in the way of paper qualifications to land a high-paying, high-status job than it does to pick apples.

  But the well-to-do disappearee can work himself up into a nice position if he has some valuable skills to sell. Like the less-well-off laborer, he can freelance his services, say preparing taxes during tax season or doing freelance computer work, until he builds up enough references to land a decent full-time job. He should avoid jobs that are very similar to his previous employment, though. For while the United States is large geographically, it is small insofar as specialized occupations and interests are concerned. A top banker from New York City who wanders into a bank in Seattle has a good chance of meeting someone he saw at a convention.

  Most people who switch identities automatically change occupations, too. In many cases the dissatisfaction with the daily grind is what causes people to disappear in the first place. Most white collar workers who disappear actually seek out blue collar work as the preferred way to earn their living. But blue collar workers seldom seek out white collar work. Rather, they change to a different but similar trade than they previously practiced.

  There are a great many jobs that pay rather well for only part-time or irregular work. The construction industry is a good example, where employment tends to run along boom and bust lines. At times when the local construction unions cannot fill all the orders for manpower, there is an excellent chance of getting work even for those without developed skills. And for those who have a background as carpenters or electricians, there is always piecemeal work available, even if it's just filling in for people who are sick or on vacation.

  Where construction work pays the best, which is usually in the big cities that disappearees like because it's easier to stay lost in them, unions dominate the work and effectively exclude outsiders. There are ways to work into the unions, though. One is to get a union job in areas of the country where they are less well developed, then take your membership with you to the big city once you're established. Or you can hang out at the union halls long enough to get a fill-in job, which can easily qualify you for union membership if you work it long enough.

  One of the nicer aspects of landing union membership in the construction trade is that you can work out of hiring halls. These are usually operated jointly by employers and the unions. In essence, they are extremely efficient, low-fee employment agencies. Through the halls you can get short term work all over the country. And if you are in a mind to stay put for a while, you can earn excellent money. I know of people who earn upwards of $40,000 per year working out of hiring halls--plus some fantastic taxfree benefits.

  There are a lot of other jobs where references and an employment track record are not required. During the good weather months nearly anyone of able body can find some sort of home improvement work to do. There is also a great deal of work available through temporary employment agencies, particularly office work. Temporary agencies usually ask a lot less questions about your background than full-blown employment agencies which disappearees should definitely avoid. The other nice facet of temporary work is that it very often leads to a fulltime position with whatever company you start out with.

  There is one kind of work that the vanisher should by all means avoid, and that is positions that put him in the public eye. Fields like television, radio, bartending, lecturing, bellhopping, etc., should be consistently avoided. I once knew of an accountant from Ketchikan, Alaska who had trouble keeping his clients' money separate from his own. He skipped bail and moved to Portland where he got a job hopping bells in a hotel. About a half-hour after the first Alaskan checked in, he was on an escorted, expense-paid trip back to the Land of the Midnight Sun. As obvious as this point may seem, publicity of this sort (that is, of the kind that could easily have been avoided) has been the downfall of a considerable number of lamsters and fugitives.

  Landing the Job

  If you're not big on part-time manual labor and desire more permanent work that you can't land with a big smile and a "how do you do," you'll need some references. If paper is what it takes to get that job, then by all means, give them the paper they want. A couple of mail drops will come in handy at this stage of identity building. You can use them as addresses of fictitious companies that you've worked for. The names of the companies should be vague-sounding so you can claim a variety of different types of responsibilities depending on the job you're applying for. Then you get letterheads printed for these companies and write your own letters of reference or respond to your potential employers' requests for information.

  You shouldn't need more than two job references to land another job. This shows your stability as an employee, and more than two is difficult to manage in that you'll need a mail drop for each reference. Besides, the signatures at the bottom of those glowing recommendations may start to look a bit similar to your prospective employer. If someone asks you for phone references, you can simply tell them that your immediate manager retired or went to work for a competitor. You may be able to swing one phone reference through a friend posing as a former employer or through a secretarial service that always tells callers the person they want is in a meeting.

  The single most important thing to remember when doing battle with personnel departments is to never give a background too far different from the one required for the job you're applying for. If you're looking for a job on an assembly line somewhere it does absolutely no good to brag about your Ph.D. in English Literature. Personnel people try to never hire a skilled or highly skilled person for an unskilled job. They are fully aware that when a better job opens down the line, the over-skilled employee will be off like a shot out of a cannon.

  Resist the temptation to assume any special honors that happen to come with your new identity. The reason for this is simple. A lot of these honors are bestowed on only a very few members of the profession or trade recognizing the honor. The honors are usually well-publicized and, if it's an honor worth using, it's probably sought after by many people in the field.
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  For example, if you assume the identity of an amateur photographer who was a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, it would be foolish to use the designation FPSA in connection with any photographic endeavor. The minute a picture appears in a publication credited to "Lawrence Miller, FPSA" it will immediately receive close examination from all the other FPSA's and the guardians of the Society's good name. As soon as they figure out that Lawrence Miller did not take that picture (perhaps Lawrence was a sports photographer and your picture appears in National Geographic) the cry of fraud will be raised. This is the last thing the lamster needs!

  Although when one assumes another person's identity he will almost automatically assume his education, it is not wise to attempt to "use" his degrees. Higher degrees bring with them a whole package of "fellowship." This includes alumni of the colleges he attended. If you happen to cross paths with a "fellow alumnus," he will want to chat at great length about all the little pleasures of life at a school you never attended. And if you are a great distance from your alma-mater, even people who are only familiar with the school but never attended it will want to discuss geography with you.

  The more prestigious and rare your degree, the greater the risk you run in using it. MD's are documented up one side and down the other and are monitored by professional associations and state agencies. Your "fellow MD's" won't take long to see through your scheme, if for no other reason than to limit their competition. And if you claim a Harvard education, you are going to attract a lot more interest than if you completed your schooling at a community college in Toledo.