So he takes new clothing from the donation box - but carries his prison clothes with him until he gets where he can dispose of them.
Yes - The logic would be to steal fresh clothes from the donation box, and bury the uniform in a garbage can or dumpster. If necessary, trample them in the mud or something to disguise the color and nature of the clothes.
Yes, for the first day or three, you want to travel as far and fast and inconspicuously as you can… run at night, hide during the day?
I know when I travelled abroad, foreign countries where the US dollar is an unofficial second currency did not want bills printed before 2003 or so. Never heard any issues inside the USA.
I recall reading that after 9/11 and the concern about fake US ID’s that there was an effort to preclude the use of dead infants’ details for creating false identities. This technique is a classic one - I believe it was also used for Day of the Jackal, set around 1960. Among other things, it used to be easy to get a birth certificate, the stepping stone to further foolproof ID’s. Not sure how this was prevented, but there appears to have been some sort of tracking of dead infants.
I don’t think that anybody has asked if the cash is identifiable or what denominations it’s in. For example, $5M in new $100 bills is a challenge to pass, and could be identified if the serial numbers have been recorded. New $20 bills are easier to pass, but make a big and heavy load. Used $20s would be much easier to pass, but would still fill several bags and be hard to cart around.
Way more likely to bite you in the ass. If they know you were at that donation box, they can start to look for nearby surveillance cameras that might have caught you, which can give more information. They might find out what clothes you are now wearing, or were wearing in the past. They might talk to someone in the area who remembers seeing you walk down the street. There’s all sorts of breadcrumbs that you leave behind that you don’t want them following.
You want your possible past and future locations to be as unknowable as possible. Being 1000 miles away and not having them focus on where you are or were is even better than being 1000 miles away and hoping you didn’t leave a critical clue behind.
Ideally, you vanish so completely that people aren’t even sure that you didn’t get disappeared by a cartel or fall overboard and get eaten by a shark. New clues are exciting! They give detectives new puzzles to pore over and 24-hour news channels new salacious stories to report. You want to be the most boring and inconsequential escapee ever, not a clever mastermind throwing the police off course.
Another way to dispose of prison garments: a storm drain. Be sure to cut off any ID numbers on it first. Dispose of those separately. Fire is good. But burning a whole uniform might attract attention. Also makes DNA matching to see if this was yours much harder.
I think the real concern is trusting people. If you have a lot of money and are using it to gain favors, people might want to get all your money, perhaps rather brutally.
That’s the problem with keeping low. The other people keeping low around you might not be upright folk.
Whitey Bulger kept out of sight for 16 years. Things that tripped him up: going on the run with his long term girlfriend, which lead to them staying in an area she had ties to. And living near a former Miss Iceland. So, avoid beauty queens. But he was also #2 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for most of that time. Try not to make that list.
Well, there probably aren’t that many escaped prisoners at any given time. So if you go missing one day, and a prison jumpsuit is found two weeks later within a hundred-mile radius, it’ll probably be deduced as being yours, even if the ID numbers are cut out.
He’d better call Saul Goodman. He knows a guy who can set you up with a new identity, for a price.
There are a lot of foreigners (usually men) who overstay their tourist visas in third world countries and shack up with a local woman (usually). You used to see this more in Thailand but lately they say it’s more common in Cambodia. Depending on the country, they don’t get hassled very much. Leaving America would be damn hard without a passport, but it could be possible to do the same thing in the States.
There are plenty of lonely people in the world, and someone who dresses reasonably well, is presentable, isn’t poor, alcoholic, or an addict and is sufficiently motivated could find someone to have a relationship. If you aren’t looking for real love, but simply someone who isn’t nuts I’d image that it’s much easier than looking for The One. Not everyone can do this, of course, but for many people, it’s not really difficult.
You move in with them so there isn’t a worry about getting a place, a phone or utilities. The partner’s ID can be used for purchasing a car and whatever else is needed. Look for someone who likes staying at home and quiet hobbies.
For driving, I wonder if you can pull it off simply by knowing the name, date of birth and address of someone out of state. The police can pull up the information and see that “you” have a valid driver’s license in wherever. They give you the ticket and you mail in payment with a money order. I don’t know if the police systems now link the picture as well, if so then you either find someone you look like or punt and get fake ID.
A couple of things to be careful about:
First, it can be hard to have a wealthy lifestyle just using cash.
Years ago, the New Yorker had an article about a pair of successful bank robbers who retired. One of them had transitioned very well to living a quiet, comfortable life with his wife or partner. They paid cash for everything.
The wife got into a dispute with a contractor, who turned them in for paying in cash. That lead to an investigation about their money and finally he was connected to the bank robbers and convicted.
As Little Nemo said, you have to go away and never look back. Back in the 80s, there was an independent (not mob or gangster) cocaine distributor whose network eventually got caught. He and his wife took their young kids and fled, eventually to Hawaii. They were able to get new identities from birth certificates of dead people (being the 80s and all) and all was doing well except he liked calling his old friends. One of them turned him in to get out of trouble. He had bragged to his friends that he knew a retired FBI agent, so the police followed up on that.
Step 1: Start on Halloween.
2: Put your junk in that box.
It’s an unnecessary risk. A donation box is one of the few places where you know the clothing you put it will later be inspected by somebody. Nobody is inspecting the contents of a garbage dumpster when they unload it. And dumpsters probably outnumber donation boxes by a twenty to one ratio. So why go out of your way to use a worse option?
I don’t think this helps. Escape from prison is a crime in and of itself. No matter what your original crime, you can’t dodge the fact that you just committed a prison escape, and the authorities can nail you for that if nothing else.
With cash it’d be easy. I work in social services and we don’t ID people in immediate need. I can call a contact at the Salvation Army or Catholic Charities and tell him to expect a “so and so,” and they’ll give him some clothes free. Same with food.
You can rent with cash easy or pay a crackhead to get you a flat under his/her name.
It would also depend on your crime. If you kill someone they will be looking for you now and in 25 years, they will still be looking for you. The lessor the charge the less likely anyone will be looking for you years later.
I am reminded of the AmEx commercial decades back where a castaway in rags on a raft washes up on a beach with high rises in the background. He is carrying an AmEx card (just where is not clear) and stops for a new suit first, then a good meal, then a couple other things I don’t remember, and finishes up leaving town on a chartered business jet.
It doesn’t show him looking at the bill when it comes in.
Just to add, move to a place where you won’t need to drive at all. Preferably a state that has no stop and identify law. For example, when I last got curious about the issue, there was no law in Maine requiring an individual to provide identifying information to police when being detained on a Terry stop, unless you are driving a motor vehicle.
It’s been almost two decades since I went to Mexico. Can you still visit border cities without going through Mexican immigration? That might be a worthwhile venture. A million in cash will likely go a lot further there than it will in any American city.
I‘ve read that because people tend to escape to Mexico then US authorities are on the lookout there.
Is seems to me a good place to head to would be someplace with a lot of distrust in the government - like a survivalist camp in Idaho. I’m sure that would make it easier to stay off the radar and to be among people not in a hurry to turn you in.
Worked for Richard Kimball and he didn’t have any hidden cash. 