Last night I got a call from my childhood friend telling me he'll drop by tomorrow on his way to visit his brother in Ohio. The call turned into an hour and a half long chat partly about how he had managed to vanish back in the early 70s.
What is amazing was how simple it was. He simply changed his name a bit and moved to Oklahoma. Thomas Louis Martin, or Thomas L. Martin simply became T. Lewis Martin and went by Lou.
He simply filled out forms with T. Lewis Martin and it was unquestioned.
He said it really was pretty much that easy. His wife reported him as a missing person a few days later and his name was added to the list of missing persons. Thousands of people every year turn up missing and unless foul play is suspected the LE community doesn't do a lot about. They have better things to do than spend resources looking for someone that skipped town to avoid non criminal things.
He also told me he had an attorney on a small retainer that he quietly called annually to see what his legal status was.
Five years later his wife had him declared legally dead in Massachusetts and remarried. When he told me that he laughed like hell.
He said that when that happened the last person that wanted to meet him was his now ex because that would make her a bigamist.
While I suppose that could eventually get cleared up it certainly would have opened a real can of worms legally.
Anyway, he reunited with his family but never went back to MA while she was alive. She has passed a couple of years ago so everything is pretty much moot.
Shortly after she remarried he moved in with a woman and lived common -law and they raised a couple of kids.
This whole thing sounds pretty whacked out but that's what he told me.
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