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 rarely 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.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 814