A Life Wasted

Travel Tracking

One thing I failed to mention is that early on I had dumped the stolen Ford F-150 and stolen a car from a car dealership. I repeatedly traded in one stolen vehicle for another, always stealing the car from a car dealership and always hiding the previously stolen car in some way so as not to make an obvious connection between the two. I rarely mention this in the story because I swapped out cars so many times that I couldn't possibly keep it straight.

The next date they have me surfacing is May 7th in Tunica, Mississippi then ten days later, on May 17th, they think I robbed a bank in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And then it says they think I robbed another bank on June 4th in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I'm not sure about a lot of these events and don't know about any of the dates, but the one date in this time frame I am sure about is where I was on June 18th. I am sure I was near St. Louis, Missouri on June 18, 2001 because that is the date I posted an open letter on the internet and I am sure I was outside of St. Louis when I did that. Yet in the 23 day stretch between June 4th, where they think I was in Harrisburg, PA robbing a bank, through June 27th when they think I was in a Kinko's in Wilmington, North Carolina, they have me in in Coastal North Carolina, Myrtle Beach South Carolina, Cincinnati Ohio, South Dakota, and Northern California. Now I traveled a great deal, but that's a lot of driving for a hunted fugitive in a stolen car.

I'm not sure about a lot of those places, but I can't believe I was in all of them in that short time frame. I was in Cincinnati, at a specialty equipment distributor where I paid more than $3,000 for a Fargo Electronics Card Printer. This gem I remember well because I used it to produce hundreds of authentic fake driver's licenses.

The next place they have me is in Florida in July, only I didn't go to Florida. The article says they lost track of me until September, but this also is not accurate. In late July, I drove to Washington State, specifically to Bellingham, Washington. Near there I mailed a letter to my wife knowing she would never receive it. I had been calling home regularly so in the letter I told her that because of where I was going I couldn't call again for a while, but not to worry because I was going to be in a safe place. I mailed this letter thirty miles from Bellingham the day before the Alaska State Ferry was setting sail from there to Alaska.

The authorities had a great deal of pressure on me at this point so I wanted to distract them. They knew that I had lived in Alaska ten years earlier, so they were able to put together the fact that the Alaska State Ferry ported in the lower 48 states near where I had mailed that letter. It was my hope that this would send the search to Alaska. Though the feds have never acknowledged that my ploy worked, after my arrest numerous United States Marshals thanked me for their Alaska trip.