Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






The Feds

Disappearing on your wife is one thing, but fleeing prosecution or taking "French leave" with your employer's money are a different matter altogether. These are cases for the "hard" divisions of the police, including the FBI. These detectives are fairly competent at this kind of work. Some of them are experts. And while the FBI doesn't always get their man, they never give up trying. You will have to be very quick and very careful if you disappear to keep out of the clutches of the law.

Larry Lavin knows how persistent and thorough the FBI can be. Reared in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Lavin put himself through the University of Pennsylvania dental school with proceeds from his growing drug distribution business. By the time he graduated he was a millionaire. The police first made contact with Lavin in February of 1983 when a related investigation revealed the size of his unreported income and the FBI suspected it had come from drugs.

Lawrence W. Lavin was indicted in September of 1984, charged with masterminding a cocaine syndicate the FBI agents described as the largest in Philadelphia's history. Before discovering Lavin in 1982, federal authorities suspected that organized crime moved 26 pounds of cocaine into the Philadelphia area every month. Through a taped telephone conversation in 1983, the FBI learned that Lavin's organization was handling 44 pounds of cocaine a week. What the feds didn't know was the lengths Lavin would go to avoid prison, or that he began preparing his flight after his initial contact with the FBI in 1983, a full year-and-a-half prior to his indictment. When the FBI moved in on Lavin two days before Halloween in 1984, suspecting that he would jump bail, they found his mansion empty. It would be 18 months before the FBI would get another crack at Lavin.

Once the FBI tipped him off in 1983, Larry Lavin began to prepare for the inevitable. He started working out with weights because he felt a small man like himself would be victimized in prison. He bought a couple books on fake ID and began collecting birth certificates, Social Security cards, drivers licenses and other identification to support himself and his wife, Marcia. As soon as he was indicted in September of 1984, Larry fleshed-out the final elements of his plan to disappear.

Lavin prepared his new identity in keeping with his Irish Catholic background. He became James O'Neil, his wife Susan O'Neil, and his two-year-old son Christopher O'Neil. He inquired at embassies about extradition treaties with various foreign countries knowing that this information would get back to the FBI and they would suspect he intended to flee the country. On the day he and his family packed up a rented car and drove off, a number of his friends flew out of Philadelphia to various locations throughout the country with tickets bought in the Lavins' names. But Lavin had no intention of giving up the comfortable lifestyle he had grown accustomed to.

The Lavins drove the car they had rented under an assumed name to Virginia Beach, an affluent resort community outside of Norfolk that is popular with retired, high-ranking federal employees. Within a few months the "O'Neils" purchased an expensive house in a new waterfront development. His wife gave birth to a baby daughter named Tara O'Neil. Lavin bought a yacht and took up fishing and scuba diving. Popular with the neighbors, he told them he had made a fortune selling a computer company he had founded. He invested the money he brought with him through a variety of channels using several identities he had been able to document. By April of 1985, Lavin was so confident of his successful disappearance that he felt safe making limited contact with his former life.



Larry Lavin agreed to let his wife Marcia write a letter to her mother. He instructed her, however, to describe their new-born daughter as a boy, just in case the letter got into the wrong hands. The letter was mailed through a series of mail drops to disguise their real location. Lavin knew the FBI wanted him badly. He was right.

The FBI prosecutes a thousand drug dealers for every one ringleader they catch. Lavin had put the Philadelphia cocaine organization together himself, and the authorities wanted to put him away very badly. FBI agents seized Marcia's letter after getting a warrant to search her mother's house. But Lavin was clever. There was nothing in the letter to give him away. Except...

Marcia had described in the letter Christopher's third birthday party, held at one of those family pizza parlors where "the bear brought out his birthday cake & sang him a song." Both the agents on the case were family men who had been to such places, but never saw a bear. They contacted Chuck E. Cheese, the national chain of pizza/entertainment parlors. While Chuck E. Cheese never used a bear, they knew of a chain called Showbiz Pizza operated primarily in the South that employed a cuddly mascot named Billy-Bob the Bear.

The FBI agents also learned that Lavin was going to make a prearranged phone call to his close friend, Ken Weidler. Weidler himself was prosecuted for his part in the cocaine ring and had agreed to cooperate with the feds for a lighter sentence. He didn't like helping them, but he knew Larry had studied wiretapping and surveillance techniques and was not likely to stay on the phone long enough to give the police time to trace it. He was wrong.

While they couldn't trace the exact number, the FBI was able to nail down the 804 area code. Within that area code there were only two Showbiz Pizza outlets--one in Lynchburg and one in Virginia Beach. The FBI knew that hundreds of retired agents lived in the Virginia Beach area, so they mailed out letters to all of them, enclosing color photos of Larry and his wife. The letters paid off. One of the retired agents was a neighbor of Lavin's who had been out fishing on Lavin's boat, only he knew him as Brian James O'Neil.

On May 15, 1985, Larry Lavin, alias James O'Neil, was arrested on a Virginia Beach dock as he climbed off a friend's boat after a day of fishing. Lavin was surprised but unemotional. He agreed to cooperate with the police in exchange for freedom for his wife and kids. Larry Lavin has not been sentenced at this writing. Authorities predict it will be at least 20 years before he is a free man again.


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1346


<== previous page | next page ==>
Missing Persons Bureaus | Private Eyes & Skip Tracers
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.006 sec.)