This is not to deny that many a disappearee from this country has wound up drinking Dos Equis and enjoying the balmy weather back in the Mexican highlands. But most gringos seem to lack the facility to adapt themselves to local customs and mores. The differences between Mexico and the English-speaking world run much deeper than language or etiquette. Living in Mexico is the answer for only a very, very small minority of Yankee disappearees.
WHO'S LOOKING FOR YOU
When preparing a disappearance and identity change, it is best to consider who might be looking for you and the means they are likely to employ trying to find you. One of the best ways to learn this information is to read a book like
How to Find Missing Persons
(see reference chapter) "backwards;" that is, if you know how people will look for you, you'll know what to do and what to avoid doing. I'll give a brief summary here of some of the more likely pursuers.
Missing Persons Bureaus
The person who makes a planned, deliberate disappearance has little to fear in the way of apprehension by the local police department's Missing Persons Bureau (MPB). For starters, the MPB in most police departments is sort of an afterthought, mostly designed to keep anxious relatives out of the desk sergeant's hair and to track down runaway juveniles. The cops aren't likely to put their crack detectives on this beat, to say the least. And because disappearing in and of itself is not a crime, the local police are unlikely to mount an expensive and usually fruitless search.
The MPB will do the routine paperwork, however, and it's surprising just how many people are uncovered through the simplest of investigations. Most of the people the MPB find did not change their names, much less their identities, and did not leave the local vicinity. Many more are picked up through their automobiles, either from being pulled over for a traffic violation and run through the computer or by having their license and registration traced. Still others are apprehended in flop houses and shelters, the first place the MPB looks--if it looks at all--or are caught for minor crimes like shoplifting or breaking and entering.
The MPB's will almost never find a serious disappearee or identity changer, unless by accident. The U.S. does not have a national police department per se, although it does have the FBI, which will be discussed below. The MPB's will not pursue a disappearee across state lines even if they do share information with other MPB's. You have a good chance of staying undetected as long as you follow the simplest of identity-changing procedures, or unless there is money or crime involved in your disappearance, in which case it won't be the MPB's you have to worry about.
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
