Some killers didn't stop at taking a life—they attempted to erase it by assuming their victims' identities. In this video, we explore five chilling true crime cases where murder was followed by identity theft, deception, and years of living under another person's name. Discover how these criminals carried out their schemes, how investigators uncovered the truth, and what ultimately led to their capture.
If you enjoy true crime documentaries, criminal psychology, unsolved mysteries, and real-life investigations, don't forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more weekly content.
#TrueCrime #CrimeDocumentary #SerialKillers #MurderCases #IdentityTheft #TrueCrimeStories #CriminalPsychology #Mystery #DarkHistory #CrimeInvestigation #ColdCases #RealCrime #ForensicScience #UnsolvedMysteries #Detectives #CriminalCases #HistoryOfCrime #DisturbingCases #Documentary #YouTubeTrueCrime
If you enjoy true crime documentaries, criminal psychology, unsolved mysteries, and real-life investigations, don't forget to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more weekly content.
#TrueCrime #CrimeDocumentary #SerialKillers #MurderCases #IdentityTheft #TrueCrimeStories #CriminalPsychology #Mystery #DarkHistory #CrimeInvestigation #ColdCases #RealCrime #ForensicScience #UnsolvedMysteries #Detectives #CriminalCases #HistoryOfCrime #DisturbingCases #Documentary #YouTubeTrueCrime
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TravelTranscript
00:00On the night of July 1st, 1997, a severe fire broke out at a small white bungalow on 50th Avenue
00:06in East Oakland, California.
00:08It looked like a deliberate attack meant to end a life, but within days, that fire would become a national
00:13story that fooled not only the police and the media, but even the White House.
00:17By the time firefighters arrived, the house was fully engulfed in flames.
00:21Moments after, a badly burned woman came out of the house and made her way to a neighbor's door.
00:25That neighbor, Monica Joy Boyd, knew the two sisters who lived there, Stevie Allman and Sarah Mitchell.
00:31They looked alike enough that people sometimes mistook them for twins.
00:35But the burns on the woman in front of Monica were so severe that she couldn't tell which sister she
00:39was looking at.
00:40The woman told responders someone had thrown something flammable through her window.
00:44She identified herself to paramedics as 52-year-old Stevie Allman.
00:48According to her, drug dealers had surrounded the house and thrown Molotov cocktails through the window in retaliation for years
00:55of her reporting drug activity and giving police video of deals outside the home.
00:59Stevie was known as a responsible and dependable person.
01:02She'd lived in that house for years, and according to family, she'd been the one stable presence in her younger
01:07sister Sarah's life, letting her stay for free, covering for her when things fell apart.
01:12By that summer, Stevie had reached her limit and told Sarah it was time to move out.
01:16As the ambulance pulled away, neighbors gathered outside the burning house and started asking about her sister Sarah.
01:22She told them Sarah had moved out of state weeks earlier, but before she could answer any more questions, she
01:27was rushed to the Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.
01:30Within days, reporters came to the hospital to interview her and ask her about the attack.
01:34Stevie issued a public statement from her hospital bed, urging neighbors to keep up the fight against drugs.
01:39About a week later, she wrote a three-page handwritten letter that was released to the press.
01:43It is difficult to imagine people could be this cruel.
01:46I have no doubt they intended to murder me and burn my house down on top of me.
01:50The story of a 52-year-old woman standing up to drug dealers spread quickly and became much bigger than
01:56a neighborhood fire.
01:57Well-wishers across the country sent her cards and letters, as well as donations totaling more than $4,700.
02:03Local contractors offered to rebuild the home, and California Governor Pete Wilson announced a $50,000 reward to help police
02:10find whoever was behind the attack.
02:12Even the White House called the hospital to pay their regards.
02:15By that point, Stevie had become a symbol of ordinary people standing up to violence in their own neighborhoods.
02:19But this narrative fell apart within just two weeks, when the truth broke out from Stevie's own family.
02:26Another sister to Stevie and Sarah had seen the news coverage from the hospital.
02:30Even through the burns, something about the woman's behavior on screen didn't sit right.
02:34She filed a missing persons report for Stevie Allman, which was a strange thing to do for someone who was
02:39supposedly the one lying on the hospital bed.
02:41So, when police asked this sister about her suspicions, she said Stevie was a quiet and private person.
02:47Stevie would never have filmed drug dealers.
02:49She wouldn't have even acknowledged them.
02:51She would have looked the other way.
02:53She wouldn't do anything.
02:54Now, this might sound like a strange reason to question someone's identity.
02:58But, she wasn't identifying her sister from a scar or a facial feature.
03:02She was identifying her from her personality, something only a sibling who grew up with her would know.
03:07Investigators who were already chasing suspects behind the firebombing
03:10now had to consider whether the woman recovering in the hospital was actually who she claimed to be.
03:15When police brought her in, Stevie denied everything.
03:17However, after going through her belongings, investigators found two IDs inside her wallet.
03:22One for Sarah Mitchell, and one for Stevie Allman.
03:25So, they took her fingerprints, and the results came back to a match to a previous arrest made 26 years
03:30earlier in 1971.
03:32The woman in the hospital was Sarah Mitchell, which raised a disturbing question.
03:37If Sarah was pretending to be her sister, where was the real Stevie?
03:41On July 15th, investigators went back to the house on 50th Avenue with this new information.
03:46Almost immediately, they started seeing the contradictions in Sarah's story.
03:49Broken glass from the windows was found outside the home, not inside.
03:53Which is the opposite of what investigators would expect if someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window.
03:58When investigators looked again at the burns on Sarah, the pattern didn't match someone fleeing a firebombing.
04:03It matched splash burns, which a person normally gets when they start a fire and catch the initial flare.
04:09Now, there were multiple other pieces of evidence, but the most disturbing one was found in a four-foot-long
04:15deep freezer near where the blaze had started.
04:17The outside had been charred by the fire, but the insulation meant to keep the food frozen had also protected
04:22what was inside.
04:23When investigators opened the freezer, they found the dismembered remains of Stevie Allman, sealed in with duct tape.
04:30Her skull had been crushed by a blunt object, and her body had been cut at the arms, legs, and
04:35waist.
04:36The bathroom where Sarah had dismembered her sister had blood on all four walls and the ceiling.
04:41Stevie had been in the kitchen the entire time, while her killer, her sister, accepted the whole nation's sympathy and
04:47donations using her name.
04:49The case did not go to trial until November 2000.
04:52On November 21, the jury convicted Sarah Mitchell of first-degree murder.
04:56She was sentenced to life without parole.
05:02On April 4, 2024, a passerby walking through Curseldale in the UK found parts of a human body wrapped in
05:09clingfilm inside an abandoned concrete bunker.
05:12Curseldale is a local nature reserve along the River Irwell.
05:15It's a stretch of beach, woodland, and wetland paths used mostly by dog walkers, runners, and bird watchers.
05:22The wider Cursel area is no stranger to crime.
05:25Police have run multiple operations here over the years, targeting drug networks and gang activity.
05:30But even with that history, this was something else entirely.
05:34Detectives later described it as one of the most unprecedented investigations Greater Manchester Police have ever conducted.
05:40After finding the remains, police immediately opened a murder investigation, but no one matching the victim had been reported missing.
05:47At the time, investigators didn't know the remains belonged to a 67-year-old Stuart Everett, a retired civil servant
05:54who lived at 195 Worsley Road in the UK.
05:57Stuart had lived there since 2013.
05:59It was a modest terraced house where he was the leaseholder, and over the years he sublet the other bedrooms
06:04to Polish migrants.
06:06Stuart had no kids of his own and had never married.
06:09The people closest to him were his brothers and sister in Derby, who called him Benny.
06:13Sadly, Stuart had suffered a stroke a few years back which slowed his speech and left him walking with a
06:18stick.
06:19But it didn't stop him from helping out his community.
06:21Being the son of Polish immigrants himself, he ran English classes for the newly arrived immigrants in Manchester's Polish community.
06:28That was how he originally met a man named Marcin Majorkowicz.
06:32By 2017, Marcin had moved in with Stuart, and by 2024, they'd been living together for seven years.
06:38In that time, the two had grown close.
06:40Close enough that Stuart had started telling friends and family Marcin was his partner.
06:43In one email from 2021, he wrote to a friend about Marcin's tattoos, his shyness, and how the two shared
06:50just about everything, including Stuart's email account.
06:53At the time, it probably read like a harmless thing between two people who shared a home.
06:57But years later, that access would become one of the most unsettling parts of the case.
07:02Marcin was 41 years old and had been living in the UK for nearly 20 years.
07:06But by November 2023, his life started to fall apart financially.
07:10He was unemployed and had taken out roughly £60,000 in loans.
07:14He also owed another £13,000 on credit cards, which he hadn't made a payment on in months and couldn't
07:19cover his rent.
07:20By early 2024, the question was what he was willing to do about it.
07:24On the evening of March 27th, Stuart was sitting on a sofa bed in Marcin's bedroom.
07:29They were watching a football match like they did most evenings.
07:32But at some point that night, Marcin struck Stuart on the top and back of his head at least four
07:37times with a heavy blunt instrument,
07:39most likely a hammer.
07:41The force was severe enough to cave in Stuart's skull.
07:44Pathological evidence later showed that Stuart survived just long enough to inhale blood into his lungs before he died.
07:49But the murder itself was the first step in a disturbing plan Marcin had been building for weeks.
07:55At 8.11am the following morning, before moving Stuart's body,
07:58Marcin sent a message to the third housemate telling him Stuart had gone to his brother's house for Easter.
08:03In reality, he had spent the previous night dismembering Stuart's body on the bedroom floor
08:08using a knife and a hacksaw he recently bought specifically for this purpose.
08:12He separated the body into at least 27 pieces,
08:15wrapped them in cling film and bin bags,
08:17and packed them into shopping bags small enough to carry on public transport.
08:21Before 10am that same morning, he left the house carrying the first of those bags.
08:25Over the following weeks, Marcin made at least 11 separate journeys by foot and by bus,
08:30taking Stuart's remains and spreading them across the nearby area,
08:33including parks, woodlands, and nearby waterways.
08:36One of those journeys led him to Cursaldale Nature Reserve,
08:40the place where the passerby had originally found Stuart's lower torso and legs.
08:44So, by this point, the police had part of the victim's body,
08:47but no missing person in Derby matched the description.
08:50Unfortunately, this wasn't by accident.
08:53Disposing Stuart's body was the second part of his depraved plan.
08:56The third and final part was to steal his identity.
09:00Marcin used Stuart's phone and sent a message to his family in Derby,
09:03telling them he'd fallen ill and couldn't speak on the phone anymore.
09:06So, as far as his family knew, Stuart was still alive and well,
09:09and had been messaging them all week.
09:11Keeping the lie alive meant he could control Stuart's money without raising suspicion.
09:15He hired a mover to clear out Stuart's belongings,
09:17and rented a dumpster to dispose of anything that was left.
09:20When the family started noticing things disappearing,
09:22he told them Stuart was moving out.
09:24At one point, he even filmed inside another property and sent them the footage,
09:28as if Stuart were showing them his new place.
09:30With nobody questioning why Stuart had suddenly gone silent,
09:33Marcin started stealing everything Stuart owned.
09:36Using Stuart's login details, he changed the passwords to his bank accounts,
09:40accessed his government gateway and pension details,
09:42and even started applying for a loan in his name.
09:45But, as much as he wanted to avoid a direct confrontation speaking as Stuart,
09:49he couldn't avoid it forever.
09:50When Stuart's phone company needed to deal directly with the account holder,
09:53Marcin picked up the phone and answered in a slow and slurred voice,
09:57mimicking the stroke Stuart had suffered years earlier.
10:00Even on his brother's birthday, Marcin sent a handwritten birthday card.
10:04By then, Stuart had been dead for two weeks.
10:07The Greater Manchester Police's specialized CCTV unit had started reviewing
10:10thousands of hours of footage from the surrounding area.
10:13Eventually, they identified a figure they started calling the Heavy Bag Man,
10:17who stood out because of the way he moved.
10:19On CCTV, he could be seen leaving the house with heavy bags
10:22and visibly struggling with the weight, and later returning empty-handed.
10:26Investigators traced his bus journeys and slowly narrowed his home area down to Winton.
10:30They started spending time in the area looking for more CCTV footage.
10:34On April 25, two of them were driving an unmarked car
10:38when one of the investigators glanced at a man in a dark beanie and recognized him.
10:42They followed him to the bus stop and called for backup.
10:45Before the bus drove away,
10:46a uniformed officer stepped in and pulled Marcin out in handcuffs.
11:15I know, I appreciate that.
11:17All we've had is information passed to us from Marcin investigating a serious matter
11:22as to where he may be involved.
11:23Yeah, but something happened on Hedges.
11:24Just on there.
11:25Like I told you.
11:25Not right now.
11:26Not today, but it has happened recently.
11:29Okay.
11:30In his possession at that moment were Stuart Everett's phone and bank cards.
11:34Investigators later found out that Marcin was planning to permanently leave the country that day
11:38and had been searching for properties in Spain weeks earlier.
11:41Marcin was charged with murder.
11:42His trial began at Manchester Crown Court nearly a year later in March 2025.
11:47Marcin never testified at trial.
11:49When the verdict was read, he showed no emotion and never apologized to Stuart's family.
11:54Only a third of Stuart's body was ever recovered
11:56and Marcin refused to assist investigators in locating the rest.
12:00He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 34 years.
12:04Marcin Mirkovic, for the murder of Stuart Everett, I sentenced you to imprisonment for life.
12:12Taking account of all the relevant circumstances
12:15and the aggravating and mitigating factors that I have set out,
12:20the appropriate minimum term will be 34 years.
12:24The judge confirmed the murder was premeditated and motivated entirely by financial gain.
12:29Five days before the killings, he looked up how much it would cost to borrow 50,000 pounds.
12:33With 60,000 pounds in unpaid loans, credit card debts, and unpaid rent,
12:38Marcin's answer to his money problems turned out to be Stuart's life.
12:41A life which was brutally ended, and for weeks after, his identity was stolen by his killer.
12:51On August 29, 2010, a group of trail bike riders cutting through the fire trails of Belangelo State Forest
12:57between Sydney and Canberra, Australia found human bones scattered across the forest floor.
13:03Among the remains was a skull.
13:04There was also a small silver earring, a single child-sized sock,
13:08and a decomposed women's t-shirt with one word printed across the front,
13:13Angelic.
13:13For the next five years, that word was almost all the evidence investigators had about the victim.
13:18They ran her DNA against every state and federal database,
13:22and cross-checked her against every open missing person's report in the country.
13:26By it, no one matching her description had ever been reported missing.
13:29This could have meant one of two things.
13:31Either no one was looking for her,
13:33or someone had made it look like there was no reason to.
13:36Because of how little evidence the case produced,
13:38investigators named her the Angel of Belangelo.
13:41By late 2011, the case had been opened for over a year without any progress.
13:46With no leads left, police reconstructed the woman's face from her skull and recovered hair,
13:51hoping someone in the public might recognize her.
13:53The result was a haunting image.
13:55When the sketch was released,
13:5635 tips came in from people who thought they recognized her.
14:00Sadly, every single one of them fell apart on follow-ups.
14:03By 2015, five years had passed,
14:06and the Angel of Belangelo was still unidentified.
14:08The only people trying to figure out her identity were the police,
14:11which raised a disturbing question.
14:13Why hadn't the family of the victim reported her missing?
14:16Or did they think she was still alive?
14:19Her real name was found out to be Carly Pierce Stevenson,
14:22a 22-year-old mother from Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory.
14:26She had given birth to a baby girl, Candelise, in 2006 when she was only 17.
14:31By late 2008, Carly had been seeing a 34-year-old man named Daniel Holdum
14:36for around two months and wanted a fresh start.
14:39So, in early November, she'd packed her car and left Alice Springs with him and Candelise.
14:44To Carly's family, the decision came out of nowhere.
14:47Her aunt Sharon would later tell 60 Minutes Australia that the announcement was,
14:50quote,
14:51a bit of a shock.
14:52Their plan was to head south down the Stewart Highway and find work in Adelaide.
14:56By mid-November 2008, Carly's life started falling apart.
14:59She called Tanya Weber, her mother's best friend,
15:03and the closest thing she had to a second mother.
15:05She was crying and saying she'd made a mistake leaving with Daniel and wanted to come home.
15:10For a week and a half after she left, she rang me up.
15:15She was crying.
15:17She just said to me that she thought she'd fucked up.
15:21She wanted to come home, by the sounds of things.
15:23And I said, well, I can book a flight.
15:25I can pay for a flight.
15:26Do you have money?
15:27No, no, no.
15:27You know, it's okay.
15:28And by the end of the conversation, she was sort of back to her ugly laughing self.
15:34So I didn't think too much more of it.
15:37Sadly, this was the last time anyone who ever loved Carly would hear her voice.
15:42A few weeks later, in the early hours of December 15,
15:45Daniel drove Carly into Belangelo State Forest.
15:48What happened there was reconstructed later from physical evidence,
15:51photographs recovered from an SD card Daniel kept for years,
15:54and witness testimonies.
15:56Carly was violated before Daniel dropped his full body weight onto her chest and throat,
16:01crushing her hyoid bone with enough force to break her neck.
16:04After ending her life, he photographed her body in multiple positions,
16:08some of which closely matched the arrangement of her remains as investigators found them years later.
16:13He left her on the forest floor, partially hidden behind a fallen log,
16:16still wearing the angelic t-shirt.
16:18Over the next few days, he started erasing what was left of her.
16:21He scrubbed out her car and traded it in for an older model,
16:24all the while Candelis was still living with him.
16:27On December 19, he took her to a nearby motel and checked in under a fake name.
16:32According to his ex-girlfriend, this is where Daniel would allegedly shove dishcloth into her mouth,
16:37suffocating her.
16:38Afterward, he wrapped her body in a motel towel, placed her inside a suitcase,
16:43and drove west into South Australia where he abandoned it along the highway.
16:47The suitcase would remain there, undiscovered, for nearly seven years.
16:51Over the next two and a half years, Daniel used Carly's phone to send text messages to her family
16:56and friends, pretending to be her.
16:58The messages said she was living in a different city, that she was fine, and didn't want to be
17:02contacted.
17:03When Carly's mother, Colleen, grew worried and reached out, the response text she got asked for money.
17:09Colleen wired funds multiple times, believing she was helping her daughter.
17:12Daniel and his then-girlfriend kept withdrawing money from Carly's bank account across multiple
17:17Australian cities, which amounted to almost $100,000 in total.
17:21By September 2009, Colleen hadn't seen Carly or Candelis in almost a year, and her calls were
17:27going unanswered.
17:28Conversation through text had also become inconsistent.
17:31So, on September 4, Colleen went to the police and filed a missing person report.
17:36But when police checked Carly's bank account and phone records, both showed recent activity.
17:41As far as the system was concerned, Carly Pierce Stevenson was alive, and the report was closed
17:45by September 10th.
17:47Eventually, Colleen withdrew the report a month later in October.
17:50Now, some could argue that the police were insincere and lazy with their investigation.
17:55But the truth is, they were looking at the exact same things anyone else would have trusted.
17:59Her phone, her bank account, and recent activity under her name.
18:03The problem was that none of it actually belonged to Carly anymore.
18:06So, neither her or Candelis were officially missing in online records.
18:11On July 14, 2015, a passing motorist on the highway stopped to see an abandoned suitcase on
18:17the roadside.
18:18Inside were the skeletal remains of a young child wrapped in a bloodstained towel with
18:23dishcloths stuffed in her mouth and duct tape around her skull.
18:26Police immediately distributed the images of the child's clothing across the country
18:30and publicly appealed for anyone with a lead to come forward.
18:33After more than 1,200 Crime Stoppers calls, Tanya Weber contacted police.
18:38The same Tanya who had offered Carly plane tickets years earlier, she recognized some
18:43of the clothing, which looked similar to what Carly used to dress Candelis with.
18:47Later, DNA testing confirmed the child in the suitcase was Candelis.
18:51A familial DNA comparison then connected her to the unidentified remains in Belangelo.
18:55The infamous Angel of Belangelo was her mother.
18:58By the time police came for Daniel Holdum, he was already in prison, serving time for the
19:03assault of another underage victim.
19:05He was eventually convicted of both murders and sentenced to two life terms without parole.
19:14In mid-July 1990, 34-year-old Beverly McGowan placed a small ad in the paper looking for
19:20a roommate to help cover the mortgage on her condo in Pompano Beach, Florida.
19:24After a few days, a woman with a polished British accent showed up at her door.
19:28But what Beverly didn't know was that the woman wasn't actually looking for a place to
19:32live.
19:32Beverly was a lone processor at Glendale Federal Bank.
19:35She was a simple woman who didn't put much of herself on display.
19:39She did have a small rose tattoo on the back of her right ankle, but most of the time it
19:43stayed hidden under the hem of her jeans.
19:45A few years earlier, Beverly had lost two boyfriends in separate car accidents.
19:49She'd been mostly on her own ever since.
19:51So, when the woman knocked at her door, Beverly was alone.
19:54The woman introduced herself as Alice.
19:56Alice explained she was a junior executive at IBM and needed a temporary place to live
20:01while her work was relocating her.
20:02She was friendly, attentive, and easy to talk to, and within weeks she had moved in.
20:07That night, Alice mentioned she was studying numerology, an ancient belief that a person's
20:12birth date and name can reveal their personality and life path, and she offered to do a free
20:16reading.
20:17By it, Alice asked for everything, from her social security number, passport information,
20:22driver's license information, and bank details.
20:25Now, none of this is information most people would hand to a stranger, but after spending
20:30a week with her, Alice didn't feel like a stranger.
20:32So, Beverly wrote it all down and didn't think much of it.
20:35The next morning, July 18th, a woman called Beverly's work claiming to be her.
20:40She didn't ask for Beverly's supervisor, who would have recognized her voice instantly.
20:44Instead, she asked for the head of security and said she was sick and hung up.
20:48On July 18th, an individual, calling herself Beverly McGowan, calls in sick to work, and
20:54unfortunately, nobody ever sees Beverly McGowan again.
20:58Eighteen minutes later, two long-distance calls went out from Beverly's phone, booking a
21:03hotel near Heathrow Airport and a rental car in her name.
21:06Over the next two days, Beverly's credit card moved across Miami, building a paper
21:10trail of someone preparing to leave the country.
21:12The transactions included clothing stores, an ATM withdrawal, and a pair of shoes.
21:17Then, on July 20th, it appeared at a travel agency, where someone booked a one-way flight
21:21to London for July 22.
21:23Around that same period, multiple handwritten letters were dropped in a Miami postbox addressed
21:28to Beverly's brother Steve, her sister Jane, and a close friend.
21:32Each one said that she had decided to sell her condo and leave town to start a new chapter
21:36of her life.
21:37Beverly's brother Steve had actually opened his letter a day earlier on July 19th and
21:41immediately felt that something was wrong.
21:43Beverly had just bought that condo and started rebuilding her life.
21:47When I saw the letter, I was very disturbed by it.
21:49For her to leave didn't make any sense, because she was giving up everything that she'd worked
21:54so hard for.
21:56And then once I was reading the letter, and I get down to the bottom, and I see that
21:59goodbye, I said she was trying to tell me something at that point.
22:04I can show you a hundred letters from her to different people that did not want them to
22:08say any more than Bev.
22:11I think that there was somebody there with her when she was writing my letter.
22:15Trying to force Beverly to call home, Steve canceled her credit cards.
22:19That turned out to be a fatal mistake.
22:22The moment that card stopped working, investigators lost the ability to track down whoever had
22:26been using it.
22:27That same evening, nearly a hundred miles north in St. Lucie County, a fisherman found a female
22:32body in an unspeakably gruesome state.
22:34The head had been removed, and both hands had been cut off.
22:38The skin over the upper left abdomen had been carved away, erasing what used to be a tattoo.
22:43It was clear whoever had done this didn't want to leave behind anything investigators could
22:48use to identify the victim.
22:49But they missed one small detail.
22:51The small yellow rose on her right ankle was still there.
22:54The police used it to identify the victim.
22:57It was Beverly McGowan, which meant the person who had booked British Airways Flight 292 was
23:03almost certainly her killer.
23:04When investigators pulled the passenger list, they expected to see Beverly's name on it,
23:08or possibly Alice's, the mysterious roommate who had vanished alongside her.
23:12But neither name was on there.
23:14The list just had a row of unfamiliar passenger names on a flight to London.
23:18One of them was a British woman named Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson.
23:22Less than a year later, in May 1991, a patrol officer in Miami Beach noticed a woman asleep
23:27at the wheel of a parked rental car.
23:29The car was overdue, and the plate had been switched.
23:32When officers searched her, they found three separate IDs, the first of which should be
23:36in a British passport for Sylvia Hodgkinson.
23:39Then there was also a Florida driver's license belonging to a real woman in Orlando named Charlotte
23:44Rae Cohen, and a third license under the name Elaine Parent.
23:47For the purpose of clarity, I'll call her Elaine for the rest of this video.
23:51Elaine was caught in possession of multiple stolen IDs, so the police took her fingerprints
23:56and held her overnight in jail, but she was released without charges.
23:59Meanwhile, five more years passed without a single break in the Beverly case.
24:03By it, all of that changed in December 1996.
24:06An investigator who had been following the case from the beginning was going through old
24:10evidence for anything the team might have missed.
24:12Looking again at the British Airways Flight 292 passenger list, she ran each of the 248
24:18names against the U.S. Department of State's database.
24:20One name triggered an alert.
24:22That being the name Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson.
24:25When they opened the Hodgkinson file, they found that it was part of a string of aliases
24:29belonging to a single identity theft.
24:31The State Department's records also showed something else.
24:34The Hodgkinson alias was linked to two other names, Charlotte Rae Cohen and Elaine Parent.
24:39The same names that were on the two other IDs recovered from the killer's wallet at the
24:43Miami Beach arrest.
24:44One of them, Charlotte Rae Cohen, belonged to a real woman in Orlando.
24:48When investigators reached her, Charlotte told them she'd never been to Miami in her life.
24:52What she did remember was a night in Orlando in the late 1980s at a bar, where she'd met
24:57a charismatic British woman who had asked her for her personal numbers for a numerology
25:02reading.
25:02It was now confirmed that the woman with the three IDs was Beverly's murderer.
25:06Elaine had approached all of her victims in the same way, just with shifting accents and
25:11different names.
25:12And by 1998, she knew the police were looking for her.
25:15Later that year, a postcard arrived at the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Department, mailed
25:19from London.
25:20On the front was a photograph of an oil painting, a woman climbing out of a swimming pool, signed
25:25Piper.
25:25On the back, a typed message read,
25:28Your Chameleon.
25:29Best wishes.
25:30She would stay ahead of the police for four more years, until April 6, 2002, when a rerun
25:35of America's Most Wanted aired in Panama City, Florida.
25:38After the episode aired, tips came in from Panama City residents, who said a woman resembling
25:43the chameleon killer was living nearby.
25:45When officers got to the address, a woman in nightclothes opened the door.
25:49She spoke in a flat American accent and hinted over her military-dependent ID.
25:53By it, when the officers examined it closely, they noticed the rank on the ID used British
25:58military terminology that doesn't exist in the U.S. service.
26:01It was immediately clear she was using a fake ID.
26:04Before they could take her to the station for questioning, Elaine asked to change out
26:07of her nightclothes.
26:09She closed the door, walked back to her bedroom, and shot herself through the heart with a
26:13revolver.
26:14Afterwards, when officers searched the room, they found men's clothing, a gray wig, a
26:19stage makeup kit, and a fake passport.
26:21By it, nothing that confirmed her real identity.
26:24Whatever name she had been born with, she took it to the grave with her.
26:31The End
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