00:00:02
We really left overnight. You know, I had a job. I was working for a semiconductor firm just outside Santa
00:00:08
Cruz, and I just one day didn't go to work. This is Karen Palmer. That's not the
00:00:15
name she was born with. She changed it in 1989 after she and her new husband and two daughters went on the run.
00:00:23
Her children, Amy and Erin, were 3 and 7. What did you tell your daughters about
00:00:29
what was happening? I you know, the little one, she was so little she didn't understand
00:00:37
anything. Erin was enough older that she knew what was happening around her on some level.
00:00:45
And we told her we're going to go live somewhere where we're safe. Erin never told a soul.
00:00:53
I think, you know, somewhere inside her she knew she knew that it was important, and
00:01:01
she wanted to to help. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. For almost a year, Karen's ex-husband,
00:01:21
Gil, had been threatening and stalking them. It started when Karen left him. They'd been married for 8 years.
00:01:30
Karen met Gil when she was 17. He owned the office supply company where she worked as a secretary.
00:01:37
Gil was talkative. You know, it's like he he could gab a million miles an hour, and
00:01:44
he had tons of friends, and he had this successful business. He was very charismatic,
00:01:52
and he would tell these incredible stories about having grown up in New York and having been in the army
00:02:02
and starting the business and he uh was a good storyteller and that interested me.
00:02:12
So, we would just sit there and at a certain point he asked me, "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
00:02:21
And I was taken aback. And he said, "You don't have to answer me right now. Why don't you think about
00:02:31
it? And we can talk about it another time." And there was something about this approach that was so gentle that I I
00:02:42
felt, "Well, why not? Why not? I like him. Maybe I could be his girlfriend." When I think back on it now, I think
00:02:52
often, you know, what did he think he was doing with somebody my age? How old was he?
00:02:59
He was 36 to my 17. Karen and Gil dated for 7 years. They broke up a few times. Once Karen caught Gil cheating on her,
00:03:10
but then they would always get back together. They got married in 1980. They had two
00:03:17
children. Gil was often out late with people who Karen didn't know. He'd come home drunk
00:03:23
a lot. Once he came home with a bruised chest because he'd crashed their car. Another time, the police showed up at
00:03:31
their house looking for Gil. Karen didn't know why. He was doing things that I wasn't aware
00:03:38
of. Uh he he was, you know, selling stolen merchandise and I didn't know that he
00:03:45
had multiple forms of identification. He had several driver's licenses in different names.
00:03:52
And I was just kind of flabbergasted at it, but he would pull that out at parties like a like a party trick that
00:04:00
he had been able to do this. And I thought it was just a party trick. One skill locked himself in the
00:04:08
bathroom. Karen thought he was doing drugs. When he opened the door, he showed her a
00:04:13
gun. He held it up to his head and then pointed it at her stomach. She was pregnant at the time with their
00:04:20
second daughter. He said it wasn't loaded, but when she hit the gun out of his hand, it went off
00:04:27
in the sink. She thought about leaving, but she says at the time she still loved Gil.
00:04:34
They'd been together for about a decade and she couldn't imagine a life without him.
00:04:40
You know, you have the frog being put into water and then the water boils. That's the standard metaphor that people
00:04:47
use. I think of the the things that went on between us as I wasn't uh physically abused in the way where I
00:04:57
was, you know, beaten. The abuse was more, I guess what they call now, coercive control.
00:05:05
Though there were physical elements to it, you know, he could be bullying and looming and shoving and you know, doing
00:05:13
that kind of stuff. And I didn't know anyone who was a victim of domestic violence
00:05:20
and so it never occurred to me and I didn't think of myself that way. In 1988, Karen and Gil were living just
00:05:31
north of San Francisco. They went down to Los Angeles for business a lot. Sometimes they took the
00:05:38
kids. They stayed at their friend Vinnie's house. Vinnie had worked for Gil at the office
00:05:44
supply company. Karen and Vinnie stayed up late talking with each other. At some point, it became clear to both
00:05:53
of us that we were unhappy in our marriages. And we just kind of looked at each other
00:06:02
and thought, "Oh, you." You know, we had very strong feelings for each other and
00:06:14
um it was just kind of it was it was a surprise and it was certainly not a convenient surprise. It was it was very
00:06:23
dangerous and awful to have realized this. Karen and Vinnie both filed for divorces.
00:06:31
When Karen told Gil, she didn't tell him about Vinnie. But then, Vinnie's wife found out about
00:06:37
Karen. And so, she called up Gil and told him. And that was that was kind of the
00:06:46
beginning of the end. That's when the threats started. Gil moved out of their apartment.
00:06:53
But one day, Karen came home and realized he had gone through her things. He had cut up photos from their wedding
00:07:00
and he had burned some of Karen's old family photographs. She said she found a bullet on top of
00:07:06
the stove. Karen decided she had to move out of their apartment. I rented a place for me and the girls in
00:07:14
Santa Cruz, which was 90 mi south of where we were living in Marin. Uh because my attorney told me that I
00:07:23
could go 90 mi without having to petition the court. And I thought, "Well, I'll go far enough
00:07:31
that he can see the girls, but he has to call me to set up a time. Like I have to know what he's doing. He
00:07:40
can't just show up on my doorstep. And that turned out to be he could definitely show up on my
00:07:48
doorstep. The distance didn't make any difference to him. Gil asked to meet her for lunch. Karen
00:07:54
agreed. She thought he wanted to talk about their daughters. But when she got there, he threatened to
00:08:00
take away the kids if Karen stayed with Vinnie. Later, Karen found rotten meat in her
00:08:07
front yard. Another time, she found her tire slashed. She suspected Gil. I mean, he got he got very, very scary
00:08:16
very fast. Um he told me at some point that he was going to cut my head off and put
00:08:30
it in the refrigerator for our daughters to find. Did you report him to the police?
00:08:37
You know, I I was for a long time I was really afraid to report him to the police because
00:08:46
he was the kind of person that it would make everything for me and the girls worse if I reported him. You know,
00:08:56
he would be like, "Oh, you think you're going to get, you know, some kind of protective order? I don't believe in
00:09:01
protective orders." There were no anti-stalking laws in California at the time. The state
00:09:08
wouldn't have any until 1990, the first in the country. Once, Gil showed up at Karen's job.
00:09:17
He said he wanted to tell her co-workers that she was a cheat and a liar. When Karen walked him outside, he
00:09:24
headbutted her. Karen told her lawyer about it, but her lawyer said it didn't sound like her
00:09:30
injuries were that bad. Karen found out that Gil had at with her lawyer. And he said, "Gil seemed like a nice
00:09:39
guy." Once, Vinnie found dynamite on his truck. He called the sheriff's department.
00:09:46
Gil had been calling and leaving death threats on his answering machine. Vinnie had even filed reports with the
00:09:52
police. But the officers said they couldn't do anything. They didn't have proof it was Gil.
00:10:02
For a long time, Karen hadn't wanted to tell her mother what was happening. But she finally did.
00:10:08
I didn't want my mom to know how bad the marriage was. And I didn't like it that she didn't
00:10:16
like him. So, I was always glossing things over and trying to present him in the best possible light.
00:10:26
So, when all this stuff finally broke and I told her she was initially like she she didn't
00:10:36
know what to make of it. But she was supportive. And at one point Gil called her up and
00:10:45
he was trying to convince her what a terrible person I was. And she just wasn't having it.
00:10:52
And I thought at the time, "Well, what do you think? You really think my mother is going to take your side over mine?"
00:10:59
At the end of the school year, Karen's older daughter Erin went to visit her mother in Carlsbad. About 90 miles out
00:11:06
of Los Angeles. They went shopping, they went to the beach. You know, she made her milkshakes
00:11:12
every night. Uh my daughter was really happy to be with her grandmother. When it came time for her to come home
00:11:18
again, my mother was supposed to take her to the airport and put her on a plane.
00:11:24
And just before they were due to leave, Gil showed up. Gil told Karen's mother that he was in
00:11:32
town visiting family. He was going to be flying back to San Francisco that day. He said he could fly home with Erin.
00:11:39
Karen's mother called her. And I was flabbergasted that he even knew she was there.
00:11:50
And that he was able to just show up on mom's doorstep. So, my mother you know, I was on the phone with her
00:11:59
and she was running this past me and I was extremely unhappy. But my mother said, "I'll I'll see her onto
00:12:09
the plane. You know, what can happen? She'll be on the plane with him. They'll get off the plane. There she is.
00:12:16
Everything will be fine. You know, you'll be in San Francisco International Airport."
00:12:21
So, I agreed to that. But they got to the airport late. So, Karen's mother let Erin and Gil go
00:12:29
inside without her. And they went inside. And this was in the days before there were security
00:12:36
lines and you could just go up to the gate and purchase a ticket. So, Gil took Erin instead of going to
00:12:44
the gate that was the flight up to San Francisco, he took her to a gate that was going to New York.
00:12:52
And she made kind of a stink. You know, she's like, "Well, I don't know. We're not going to New York. We're going home
00:12:58
to mommy." And so, he wound up buying a ticket for her flight. Uh her original flight up to San
00:13:07
Francisco. So, he got on the plane with her. And she told me later that he was mad at her
00:13:17
and wouldn't talk to her on the plane. When the plane landed in San Francisco, it was after midnight.
00:13:24
Karen was waiting with her 3-year-old daughter, Amy. She saw Gil and Aaron coming out of the
00:13:30
gate. I had Amy in my arms and she wants to get down and she's complaining. And he stuck his arms out.
00:13:39
And just as a reflex, I gave Amy to him to hold. So, we start walking towards baggage claim
00:13:53
and I see him he's ahead of me by, you know, a fair amount of distance, but I can see him and he's got Amy up on his
00:14:00
shoulder and her little face is just kind of bouncing over over his shoulder looking
00:14:05
back at me. And I thought, well, okay, he can get ahead of me and then we'll go to baggage
00:14:12
claim and, you know, it'll be okay. So, meanwhile, I'm walking along with Aaron and I look at her and she looks
00:14:21
completely stricken. And so, I knew something was wrong with her, but I didn't know what it was and I
00:14:29
knelt on the ground to hug her and, you know, hold her and reassure her. And then when I stood back up,
00:14:37
Gil and Amy were gone. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal
00:14:50
Plus. When Karen Palmer couldn't find her ex-husband Gil and her daughter Amy, she
00:15:02
called the airport police. Their response was what is your custody arrangement? And the custody had not been settled
00:15:13
yet. And so, they said, "Well, he has as much right to her as you do and we can't
00:15:21
really do anything. Karen and Aaron stayed at the airport for hours until morning.
00:15:27
The police had put out an alert for Gil, but they didn't find anything. The next day, Karen and Vinnie started
00:15:35
calling around airports and bus stations looking for Gil and Amy. They called Gil's old jobs and his
00:15:42
friends and family, including his first wife, Rita. She and I, there was not a lot of
00:15:48
no love lost between us. Um and yet, she called me every single day that Amy was
00:15:58
gone. She told me, "Make sure that Aaron sleeps with you because he'll come in the window and take her, too."
00:16:08
Karen's lawyer had asked for an emergency custody hearing, but it had been scheduled for a week
00:16:13
later. Until then, they couldn't file kidnapping charges. But, her lawyer had learned that there
00:16:21
was a warrant out for Gil's arrest for not appearing in court for drunk driving.
00:16:26
The police in San Francisco said if they found Gil, they could arrest him for that.
00:16:33
At the custody hearing, a judge issued an order for Karen to have sole custody of both Aaron and Amy,
00:16:40
but they still had no idea where Gil and Amy were. The police in Santa Cruz had also come
00:16:48
to Karen's apartment and put a tap on her phone. So, if Gil called, they could ask the
00:16:53
phone company to try and trace his location. And they told me, "If and when he calls,
00:17:00
keep him on as long as you can because Santa Cruz, where I was living, is uh an old town and the kind of switching
00:17:11
stations that they had was it it's not like on TV where they turn on a computer and 2 seconds later they locate where
00:17:19
the caller is. This is it had to go from switching station to switching station to
00:17:25
switching station all the way to his final location. 10 days after Gil disappeared from the
00:17:32
airport, he called Karen. They spoke for 45 minutes. It was the worst phone call of my life. It was a
00:17:41
harrowing. It was just awful. But I kept him on and at the end of it, they still couldn't get him. They didn't
00:17:50
know where he was. Gil said he would bring Amy back if Karen stopped seeing Vinnie.
00:17:57
She agreed. Gil gave her an address in San Francisco and told her to meet him there the next
00:18:03
evening at 8:30. He told her not to tell the police. And at this point I was torn between
00:18:12
having police there to grab him or terrified that if he sensed police presence that he would do something to Amy
00:18:25
or he would vanish, that he he wouldn't show up. You know, he kept telling me that if you don't do what I want, I'll
00:18:32
I'll take her again and I'll take Erin, too or I'll just kill everybody. So, I made the decision not to have the
00:18:43
police there when I went to get her and I went by myself. Gil told Karen to meet him on the corner
00:18:51
of Eddie and Hyde Street in downtown San Francisco. When she got there, she saw Gil holding
00:18:58
Amy. Karen saw that he had cut Amy's hair and dyed it brown. The whole conversation was
00:19:05
"Did you mean what you said? Do you promise? You know what will happen if you don't keep your promise."
00:19:12
And you know, this went on and on for several minutes until finally he did give her to me and I went rushing over
00:19:23
to the car to open the back door and put her in her car seat and I heard him call
00:19:28
my name. So, I looked over at him and he had lifted up his shirt and what he wanted to show me was the
00:19:38
the gun that he had tucked into the waistband of his pants. Karen got in the car with Amy and drove
00:19:45
to a diner where Vinnie was waiting. Karen says she was worried Gil had followed her.
00:19:52
All three of them sat on one side of the booth so she and Vinnie could face the door.
00:19:59
They had talked a few times about leaving California but they knew it would be hard
00:20:05
and Karen didn't know what Gil would do if they left town. It wasn't until getting Amy back and
00:20:13
seeing the gun and realizing that it would never be over. It was never going to be over.
00:20:21
That we decided, okay, that's it. We have to do it. Karen and Vinnie decided they would move
00:20:30
somewhere far away and they would change their names so Gil couldn't track them down.
00:20:36
They agreed to leave as soon as possible. Vinnie had known of this uh this bookstore out in the valley that
00:20:45
was a survivalist bookstore and they sold things in there like, you know, how to how to live off the grid
00:20:54
but they also had stuff on how to change your identity. So, we had this guidebook
00:21:00
on how to assume a new identity. They started getting ready. Karen and Vinnie got married quickly.
00:21:09
They cashed out their bank accounts and sold their cars and most of their things.
00:21:14
They bought a used Subaru and packed it with clothes, bedding, Aaron and Amy's toys, and a single pot and pan.
00:21:23
And then they put Amy and Aaron in the car and drove out of California. They didn't know where they were going
00:21:29
yet. Karen had always said she needed to live by the ocean. And she thought Gil would look for them
00:21:36
first on the coast. So they headed east. They ended up in Boulder, Colorado. We weren't even sure we were going to
00:21:45
stay there. But we kind of liked it. We were in a motel and we were wandering around the town
00:21:52
and it was within driving distance of Denver. So when it came time to look for jobs, if we couldn't find anything in
00:21:59
Boulder, there was a big city nearby. So maybe we could we could find some employment there.
00:22:05
Karen found a job posting in the classifieds for a proofreader at a book publisher called Paladin Press.
00:22:13
She didn't want to give references to her past jobs, but when she got an interview, they
00:22:18
didn't ask. When she came in, she saw some of the titles they sold. 21 Techniques of Silent Killing,
00:22:27
Deadly Brew, Advanced Improvised Explosives, and Hit Man, a technical manual for
00:22:35
independent contractors. We did an episode about this book. It's called The Manual.
00:22:43
Karen got nervous about the work. She decided to look for another job. She started doing graphic design work
00:22:50
around town. Vinnie found a job finishing furniture. They picked new names. Karen chose hers because it sounded like
00:22:59
her real name, Carrie, and Palmer because it sounded like her actual maiden name.
00:23:06
She thought if she slipped up while she signed something, it would look close enough that no one would notice.
00:23:13
Vinnie picked a new last name and started going by John Vincent. His real name had been Vincent John.
00:23:20
He told everyone just to call him Vinnie. Karen made them new birth certificates.
00:23:27
She decided it would be easiest to make them both from New York where Vinnie was
00:23:31
actually born. His New York State certificate was basically just a photostat where the top
00:23:39
half of it was you know, white typewriter type on a black background and the bottom was, you
00:23:46
know, the signatures and that sort of thing. So, it was not impossible to duplicate it.
00:23:53
She copied pieces of the birth certificate at different copy shops around town so no one would realize what
00:23:59
she was doing. She took all the pieces home, cut them out, and glued them together onto a new
00:24:05
sheet of paper. She painted over the edges of each piece of cut paper with black ink.
00:24:11
When she made copies, it all looked like one piece. Vinnie's book about changing your
00:24:18
identity had information about how to get an embossing stamp for any state. They got one with the New York State
00:24:25
seal and stamped their fake birth certificates. Karen kept Amy and Aaron's first names
00:24:32
but changed their last names to Palmer. I would be so worried about what new names and how am I going to get the kids
00:24:39
enrolled in school? I mean, were you nervous about how this was going to work? Oh god, yes.
00:24:46
It was terrible. It was terrible. Um but the reason it worked out is because um it It a different world then. You
00:24:56
know, states were very cut off from each other in terms of their documents and their their records.
00:25:05
So, it was not all computerized. You couldn't connect somebody just by their social security number and track them
00:25:10
all around the country. When they first got to Boulder, they'd made a deal with the real estate agent
00:25:17
to live in a condo for free if they repainted it. For the first week, they didn't go
00:25:22
outside much. It rained for days and they were too nervous to be seen. Karen got a TV from Goodwill for Aaron
00:25:30
and Amy to watch while she and Vinnie painted. They stayed in the condo for a few
00:25:36
months, but that fall the real estate agent called and said that the condo had sold.
00:25:42
They would need to move out. But, he said there was a house for sale that they might like.
00:25:48
He took them to see it. Vinnie loved it. Karen was worried about how they would buy it.
00:25:55
They still didn't even have bank accounts, so they couldn't get a loan and they didn't want to use their real
00:26:00
names for a credit check. They decided they had to tell the real estate agent that they were in hiding.
00:26:08
He offered to talk with the owner and then they had a phone call with her. She wanted to know why they could only
00:26:14
pay in cash. She asked if they were drug dealers. They told her about Gil. The owner agreed to skip the credit
00:26:22
report and take their down payment in cash. Karen enrolled her daughters at a private school.
00:26:30
She thought they would ask fewer questions. She said she didn't have any of their
00:26:34
past school records because they'd been homeschooled until now. Karen says she worried all the time
00:26:42
about Gil showing up in Boulder. I never knew. I mean, maybe he was driving all over the place and talking
00:26:50
to people and hiring private detectives. You know, I don't know. Once Karen woke up in the middle of the
00:26:58
night and saw Vinnie looking out their bedroom window. She thought Gil was outside.
00:27:04
Vinnie said he could see a police officer standing just outside their fence. A mountain lion had gotten into their
00:27:11
backyard and the police were waiting for animal control. Another time Karen and Vinnie had put
00:27:18
the girls to bed and Karen went upstairs to watch TV. Suddenly, she heard someone who wasn't
00:27:25
Vinnie calling up the stairs. It turned out to be a police officer checking because someone had reported
00:27:31
gunshots in the neighborhood. For a while Karen couldn't figure out how to get new social security numbers
00:27:40
or driver's licenses. We had this kind of catch-22 thing where in Colorado we couldn't get social security numbers
00:27:49
because you had to show a photo ID if you were an adult. You know, if you were not getting a number as a baby or a
00:27:54
child. And we couldn't get a photo ID without a social security number. You needed that
00:28:04
to get a driver's license. So, we were kind of stuck. But, I knew that back in California
00:28:10
you could get a driver's license without having to have other photo ID. So, we made this trip to my mother's uh
00:28:21
my mother's place that was specifically to get California driver's licenses. They left in the middle of the week in
00:28:30
the middle of the night. A friend of her mother's who lived next door let them use a utility bill with
00:28:36
her address on it. It was the first time her mother had seen them in a year. We used our our forged documents and we
00:28:44
went to two different DMVs so they wouldn't connect us together. And, you know, we made up some baloney about
00:28:51
being New Yorkers who'd never had to drive. They went back to Colorado. After a few weeks, her mother's neighbor
00:28:59
sent them their new licenses. Then they went to the Social Security office. Vinnie said he needed a new card for
00:29:07
work. Karen said she'd just gotten out of a rough relationship with an older man who
00:29:13
had paid for everything. She'd never worked, so had a Social Security number. Before 1987, Social Security numbers
00:29:23
weren't issued at birth. Do you remember the first time you used these fake documents?
00:29:29
Uh yes, we used them to open a bank account. It took them two tries. The first time Karen went on her own.
00:29:38
After she filled out the paperwork, the bank officer noticed Karen had a new Social Security number.
00:29:44
She could tell by the way the numbers were sequenced. The bank officer said she had to check
00:29:50
with her manager about opening the account. While she was away, Karen took her documents and left.
00:29:58
Later, Karen and Vinnie went together to a bank branch in a supermarket. This time, no one said anything about
00:30:05
their paperwork. Karen kept in touch with her mother, but never told her where she was. I had a
00:30:12
regular sort of phone date with her where I would call her from a phone booth at the supermarket.
00:30:18
About a year after they moved to Boulder, Karen's mother said she had to tell her something.
00:30:23
My mother's mobile home was broken into. The whole place had been turned over, and nothing was taken except her address
00:30:31
book. We'll be right back. Karen kept expecting to hear something from Gil, like a summons to appear in court to
00:30:49
negotiate custody for Aaron and Amy. At the time that we left, they had given me sole custody
00:30:56
uh because of the kidnapping. But with the caveat that he can petition the court and try to get his parental
00:31:04
rights restored and you know, normal visitation and all the things that divorce families deal with.
00:31:12
And as far as I know, he never did any of it. After 4 years, she and Vinnie decided it
00:31:19
was safe to tell their families where they were. They went to visit Vinnie's parents in
00:31:25
Florida. They'd both been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Karen and Vinnie hadn't been able to be
00:31:32
around for their surgeries while they were in hiding. Did you ever say to Vinnie, "I'm so
00:31:38
sorry I got you into this"? Or do you think he knew what he was signing up for? He knew Gil.
00:31:44
I think he he he knew what he was in for and we were so bonded to each other. It's
00:31:52
like we had a version of a wartime romance, you know, where like the bombs were going off all around us.
00:32:00
And so we felt so connected to each other and so connected to the girls and so devoted to the idea of making a safe
00:32:09
place for all of us that he has never for for even 1 second expressed any any resentment, any anger,
00:32:20
any regret. Um he has felt that we we did what we had to do. In 1994, Karen's mother had news for
00:32:32
her. She'd heard from Gil's stepdaughter that Gil was in prison somewhere in New York.
00:32:38
Karen later learned Gil had been convicted of criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to two to six years in
00:32:45
prison, but he'd gotten parole. She didn't know where he went after that. In 2005, Karen had been away from
00:32:55
California and living under her fake name for over 15 years. She'd started writing and she'd
00:33:03
published two novels. Her daughters were grown up. One had graduated college and the other had
00:33:09
enlisted in the Navy. She and Vinnie started talking about moving back to Los Angeles.
00:33:16
They both missed it. They thought maybe if they went back under their new names, it would be safe.
00:33:24
It had been a very long time and the city was huge. Sometimes Karen would Google Gil's name.
00:33:32
She usually didn't get a lot of search results. Usually just Gil's appeal to the New
00:33:38
York Supreme Court to have his conviction for weapons possessions overturned. By this point it had been 20 years and
00:33:45
there is not a day in which I did not think about him. And filled with apprehension that maybe
00:33:53
he will find us after all. But I was trying to trying to get myself out of the habit of checking because it
00:34:00
had been so long and I thought, you know, I can't live like this. In 2006, Karen hired a private
00:34:06
investigator. He'd been recommended by a friend. She learned that Gil was back in
00:34:11
California in a town called Santa Maria, just 150 miles from Los Angeles. The investigator couldn't find a phone
00:34:21
number or address or any utilities connected to him. He said if she wanted more information,
00:34:28
she could hire a local investigator. She decided not to. A couple of years later, in 2008,
00:34:37
Karen's daughters were home for Christmas. They gave Vinnie a present. It was a book about how to adopt in
00:34:44
California. And when he opened the present, you know, he's kind of looking at it and he
00:34:50
and I were initially kind of baffled in our, you know, dense parental unit ways.
00:34:57
And the girls were laughing. And what it was was they wanted Vinnie to formally adopt them.
00:35:04
We had never done that because we didn't want our names all associated with each other
00:35:13
in case he was looking for us. So, you know, it was very emotional Christmas, lots of, you know, crying and
00:35:21
and I don't know, it was lovely. Um after dinner, the three of them went out for a walk and I was sitting in the
00:35:28
living room and looking at this guidebook and all of a sudden I thought, "Oh, but what about Gil? Like what does
00:35:36
it mean for the birth father? Is are they going to have to contact him? You know, what
00:35:42
what does all this mean?" And, you know, I looking through the index and I found, well, they're adults,
00:35:48
so they don't have to get in contact with him and I was reassured by that, but he was
00:35:56
absolutely on my mind. Later that night, Karen couldn't sleep. So, I got up and I went into my office
00:36:05
and booted up the computer and ran a Google search on him. And initially all that came up was the same
00:36:14
stuff that always comes up, which is very little. And then I thought I would add a search term,
00:36:21
Santa Maria. And what came up was a little article that had appeared in the the Santa Maria paper
00:36:31
about a man, a homeless man, who'd been found dead in a local park. And it turned out that that that person
00:36:40
was Gil. Karen went to Santa Maria. She told the coroner she was Gil's ex-wife. Karen later got to see Gil's case files
00:36:50
at the courthouse. He'd been arrested 18 times in 4 years for burglary, driving under the
00:36:58
influence, and assault. He died from a heart attack. What was your daughter's reaction?
00:37:08
Uh they were mainly relieved. You know, where they were like finally it's over. It's finally
00:37:21
over. Um I think, you know, I was the one who was a little more overt about being kind of grief-stricken
00:37:31
by this. It was, you know, of course I felt relief, but the larger emotion was grief.
00:37:42
Karen also learned that Gil had been evaluated by court psychologists twice while in jail.
00:37:49
Their notes were in his file. I kind of came to the conclusion after reading this
00:37:54
that I I'm not sure I was on his mind at all. Do you ever doubt the decision to go into hiding?
00:38:05
I did for many years. Uh I felt very guilty and I wondered if it was necessary to
00:38:17
disappear. And the thing I landed on was that all I could go on was how he was, what he did.
00:38:33
And so I I I don't regret it. I feel sad, but I don't regret it. In 2009, Karen and Vinnie started trying
00:38:49
to merge their real identities with the fake ones they'd made 20 years earlier. How hard a process is that? It seems
00:38:57
very complicated. Oh my god, it was not fun. It It took years to straighten it out.
00:39:04
Um we knew that the big issue was social security and the IRS. And we initially tried to hire a lawyer
00:39:16
to straighten this stuff out for us. People wouldn't wouldn't pursue it for us. So Vinnie and I finally decided that
00:39:24
we were just going to have to take care of this ourselves, and we would have to come clean and throw ourselves on their
00:39:32
mercy, basically. They went to the IRS first. An agent listened to Karen explain what
00:39:39
had happened with Gil. The agent told them the first thing they need to do was get their social security
00:39:46
numbers corrected. At social security, we got this other woman, and I had laid out our documents, our original birth
00:39:55
certificates and the phony ones, and she kind of swept everything up and said, "I can refer you for criminal
00:40:04
prosecution for fraud, and I might do that." For a while, they didn't hear anything.
00:40:12
And then they got news from the social security office. And it it it was okay in the end, but it was
00:40:21
it was nerve-racking. And I think she decided not to try to seek criminal charges because
00:40:29
we didn't do anything to defraud anybody. You know, that that's that's sort of the criteria. Like, did you do
00:40:35
it to get out of paying taxes? Did you do it to to swindle somebody in in some kind of a business deal? Did you do it
00:40:43
to skip out on your your credit card debt? Um we had always gone way in the other direction. Like, when
00:40:51
we filed our taxes, we didn't take the deductions we were entitled to because we were afraid of drawing attention to
00:40:58
ourselves. So, it wasn't like we we owed money anywhere. And I think they finally
00:41:04
looked at us and said, "Okay, we're going to let this go." Karen says it took a few years to get
00:41:12
everything completely straightened out. Karen, Vinnie, and her daughters' fake names are now their real names.
00:41:20
They've all changed them legally. She says that after so long, she's gotten used to being Karen.
00:41:38
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