How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Doug Richmond [a court of thorns and roses ebook free txt] 📗

It turned out that Taylor was a disappearee who in his original identity had been a prosperous businessman from New York who had simply walked out of his life some years before. Since that time he served with distinction as an officer in the Canadian Army, had been in Alaska, and finally wound up as a movie director in Hollywood. His new identity was so well established that not much more was ever discovered. And his killer has not been identified to this day.

In the natural course of their investigation the police questioned his valet, a man who called himself "Sands." Sands was never a suspect himself. And as they had no particular reason to detain him, the police let him go, explaining that if they thought of more questions they would look him up.

They did think of some more questions, but they're probably still looking. For when Sands walked out of the police station he walked into oblivion and was never seen again. Many of the people involved in the case believe that Sands was Taylor's brother who had also disappeared some years before. An intensive search was mounted, but to no avail.

It was only through the incredible bad luck of Taylor's murder that any attention at all was ever paid to Sands.

Miscellaneous

A disappearee should never go about with more than one set of identification papers on his person. Any official questioning is likely to entail examination of the contents of the suspect's pockets. Nothing is going to be more immediately suspicious to an experienced officer than discovering that a suspect's ID is in two or three different names. Many petty criminals are tripped up on this point.

Obviously a disappearee should not carry contraband of any size, shape or description on his person, either inside the United States or outside. What is regarded as contraband varies greatly from country to country. In some parts of the world, being discovered with a Bible in your luggage would be grounds for detention.

By the same token, a disappearee should not attempt to pass various customs officers with a six-shooter on his person or in his luggage. This is especially important because handguns are flat verboten almost everywhere in the world including some states in the U.S. This most emphatically includes New York with the infamous Sullivan Act.

Detach With Your Past

It should go without saying that one of the prime requirements of a successful disappearance-cum-identity change is the complete divorcing of the new existence from the original. This is easier said than done, and some people just can't handle it at all.

Private detective agencies, police departments and skip-tracing firms have a myriad of ploys for locating vanishers, and almost without exception their tricks are based on the assumption that the missing person will eventually be foolish enough to communicate in some way, directly or indirectly, with one phase or another of his original existence. And in all too many instances they do just exactly that.

Take the sad example of the lamster who carried out a completely successful disappearance. Up to a point. In this case the man was an avid model boatbuilder, and he had no sooner established himself in his new life than he subscribed to the modelmaker's publications he'd read before he vanished. The private detective agency employed to find him assumed--correctly, as it turned out--that the subject might change everything else, but he wouldn't abandon his lifelong hobby. So the detectives simply bought the mailing lists of the modelmaker's magazines and checked them for new subscribers. They could tell which were new and which were old by the coding on the mailing labels. As in any specialized field, subscribers tend to stay with their favorite publications year in and year out, and there aren't actually all that many new subscribers in any given month. The detectives checked the new subscribers against city and telephone directories, eliminating the ones who had been residents at the same address for any length of time. Of the very few who remained, one was their boy!

All moneys should be transferred from one identity to another in cash, using bills that are not too large. Even in today's overheated economy $100 bills are not all that common. Fifties, though, are rapidly on the increase, largely because some State Unemployment Compensation Offices pay their clients off with as many fifties as possible.

Travelers checks, cashier's checks, bank drafts and the like leave a trail between identities like a seven-dog team crossing a field of new-fallen snow. And they are sometimes hard for a man to cash before his new identity has had an opportunity to mature and "set."

And most emphatically, no gloating telephone calls to the abandoned spouse. It is better by far that he/she should feel sad or so-what than angry and/or resentful. The old saw about never stirring a hornet's nest with a stick goes triple here. Long distance phone calls are logged for billing purposes by the telephone companies as a matter of routine, although local calls aren't as a general rule. But even these leave a paper trail between the two telephones.

If for some reason it becomes necessary to mail something back to someone he knew in his original existence, then the vanisher should by all means use a remail service.

Remail services make a specialty of remailing letters and postcards for a fee, and almost invariably give prompt and satisfactory service. To locate a remail service, look in the classified ads of publications like Popular Mechanics, writers magazines, men's magazines, and any publication carrying low-cost classified ads. The charge for remailing is surprisingly nominal, and remailers are located pretty much all over the world. Some will even send their customers packets of local postcards to be filled out and returned to the remailer who then drops them in the mail at regular intervals, or as directed. See the Directory of Mail Drops in the reference chapter.

But remail service or no, the vanisher would be best advised not to do any