You Are An Escaped Convict: How Best to Stay "At Large"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Suppose you escape from prison, and you have some money (a few thousand $). Is it better for you to:

  1. head for a large city? You can blend in easier, and find a part time job, where people won’t ask too many questions. You also have a chance of meeting a compliant female, who might be persuaded to share lodging with you.
  2. head for a remote area-some place like Antler, ND. People probably don’t keep up with the news and you might escape detection for a long time. But surely somebody will notice a stranger…and start asking questions
    Eventually, you might want to change identities-how hard is this to do? The old days of getting a name off a gravestone, and getting a birth certificate, then a driver’s license, etc. might work…but you could be caught this way too.
    Or are you better off leavig the country?
2

A compliant female? Oh, so romantic!

I’d think that if you got any kind of legitimate job, you’d get caught through your I.D. How easy it is these days to get fake paperwork and I.D.s? Sounds like a huge hassle, and ultimately would fail. Out of the country- I’d think it would be pretty much the same as far as documentation, but I’m not sure. The best thing would be to lay low in an isolated area and live off of your cash. Once that ran out, living with an elderly or disabled person as their caretaker and being paid with room, board, and cash would be your next move. If that job were to end down the road, find another similar situation.

3

Not to be political about this, but if millions of Mexicans can seem to manage to work in the states without valid paperwork, surely anyone can.

4

I think it’s getting vastly harder, though. I know that whenever I start a new job, I am continually harassed for my paperwork as if a building is on fire until I get it in to them. You’d have to know a guy who knew a guy.

5

As I understand it, there’s a brisk trade in counterfeit documents and/or real documents based on misappropriated data (SSNs, etc). Many illegal immigrants rely on these in order to work here. The OP might (entirely hypothetically, of course) wish to go a similar route.

6

Or look in construction businesses, or landscaping.

Or any very small business - tell the owner that you’ve got some stuff out there (maybe imply it’s old child-support or alimony, and put up a sob story about how the bitch wants to bleed you dry) and you want to be paid off-the-books.

7

Can we construe anything meaningful from the absense of “need answer fast” in your thread title? :wink:

I would want to be not only out of the country but out of any country that might extradite me. Which those would be would probably depend on what I was in for, although I’m not sure of that?

8

One place NOT to go is here in Las Vegas.
This city seems to be a magnet for criminals of all sorts who think they can just disappear here in the masses of tourists.
Wrong.
I don’t have the cite, but about a year ago they did a local news story on how the local authorities annually catch hundreds of criminals here, from all around the world. First of all, you need to show a driver’s license/passport to get a room (even in the sleazy hotels), plus there are all kinds of facial recognition software used in the casinos, They also track many kinds of behavior that is traditionally used by people on the run. They didn’t go into specifics, but hinted they have other methods to track people coming into the city - especially if they have even a hint that somebody specific might be heading in this direction.

I think the best approach would be to go to some other large metropolitan area, get a room in the low-rent district where they might not ask a lot of questions and then search out someone who can get you a new ID.
Just don’t do it in Vegas.

9

Living life as a fugitive sucks.

So you need to get a workable identity. The older you are, the better, because an excellent target for this, as hinted above, is children that died young. If you’re, say, 20, then your target child may well have already gotten things like a social security number, complicating your mission. If you’re in your fifties, then your target child was born and died in the late nineteen fifties. You can visit libraries to get some free computer time, and visit graveyards to get some names that are candidates. Then roll the dice: apply to get a copy of “your” birth certificate. Typically you must provide photocopies of acceptable ID; in some states, this can be two documents like a health insurance card or a utility bill.

From there, get the Holy Grail: a US Passport.

And for there: leave the country. Too much chance of getting tripped up with your new identity in the US. Take your money, hie yourself to the life of an expat in Thailand or Laos.

10

Step 1: Do not post secret escape plan on a public message board.

Step 2: To be determined.

11

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit!

12

  1. Think of the most logical places you could go to–places you’re familiar with, places you’ve got family or friends, places you’ve expressed interest in the past.

  2. Go to none of them.

13

I think it would be easy if you could manage to stop committing crimes. Lay low for a few months, grow a beard, pretend to be homeless and stand at the freeway offramp with a sign saying “need food”. If you can’t grow a beard, you are screwed. When the cops come by, wave and be friendly, just don’t do anything that gets you fingerprinted. People like that Olson woman from the SLA have been on the lam for decades. Some people are never caught.

14

If you are an escaped criminal from prison, you are going to get caught. When those three guys escaped from Arizona, their faces were on the internet, on television, everywhere. I live in Asia and saw their picture.

I don’t think the criminal thinks ahead to what they are going to do after they escape. You are out, now what? Where do I go, what do I do? How do I evade literally every cop in two nations? (USA and Canada) How do I change my appearance so I don’t look like my mug shot. What do I do for money. Criminals on the run get very desperate and stressed out under these conditions and people get killed (like those people on vacation in New Mexico by the Arizona gang)

It is very hard to “stay off the grid” these days. One needs an ID for almost everything. I hate it, but its the way of 21st Century life. Getting these ID’s in the best of circumstances require other documentation. A criminal on the run doesn’t have time for all that bullshit.

Big cities have a lot of cops. It is difficult, even for a law abiding citizen to not have a run in with them. Getting pulled over, checkpoints etc. Big cities are very expensive and most criminals on the run have no money. Even if the criminal gets an new identity and gets a job, he will have to submit to picture identification which will float around various official computers including the po-po.

Several years ago police arrested a woman named Margo Freshwater, who was an escaped prisoner in Tennessee. She was convicted of killing a man in Memphis in the late 1960’s. She escaped prison in Tennessee and moved back to her hometown in Ohio.She got a respectable job and married a long haul truck driver and even visited Tennessee again many years after she escaped. After 20 years of so, one would think they were off the hook.

She was eventually caught because of her driver’s license. She kept her birthdate the same. Also, she moved back to her hometown. So after 32 years she was arrested and sent back to prison.

My advice to someone running from the cops is to not get any type of picture identification, but on the other hand, it is difficult to near impossible not to have it. Catch-22.

Small towns are not good to hide out in because you would be a stranger. Going to some hamlet in North Dakota would not work because everyone knows everyone and the local constable has nothing better to do.

I have researched changing my identity because of a misdeamnor criminal record. Forging a Birth Certificate, and getting a social security card (with them asking why, at 43 years old, I have never had a social security card, and their acceptability of that lie). If I was caught doing this, it would undoubtably be a felony. Even if I could get my fake identity in order, there are many jobs now which requires fingerprints and background checks. Obviously, since I am a fiction, I do not have a past. Then there still would be jobs that require fingerprints that would reveal my true self.

I think that now because jobs are so scarce, that people in my position of having a minor crime record and now is a law abiding citizen who wants to work and be a good person who has to resort to trying to change their name and identity, and if caught, will face and be convicted of more serious charges.

15

Don’t come to the notice of Tommy Lee jones.

16

Blow up the WTC and move to Afganistan. It’s been a decade and they have a new documentary airing next week called…

“Why is Bin Laden Still Alive”??? Lol. I’m not kidding. What channel is it on? The History Channel. This should give us all many tips on how to commit horrific crimes against humanity and remain at large.

17

One answer to that question is “money”. It is not like bin Laden is some broke-ass Jihadi, he is the heir to a huge fortune. Supposedly the family cut him off, but I’m sure he squirreled away many millions before he decided to take on the United States and commit mass murder.

(The other answer to that question is “George W. Bush let him get away because he had a hard-on to attack Iraq”.)

18

I’m thinking of Olivia Newton-John’ beau who “disappeared” only to be found several years later working a seaside resort in Mexico.

Seems like your best bet is a different country entirely.

My Ex had such delusions and was setting himself up as a hidden ExPat in Panama. Since no one has heard from him in some time, I am willing to bet he is partly successful with an assumed identity in Central America…

19

Day labor jobs, selling plasma, food banks(the one run by churches are less likely to ask for i.d.). Keep one set of clean clothes set aside for finding housing. Pick up all the alternate newspapers and magazines and look for shared-housing ads, because they are less likely to have the capability to do a background check. All you need is a small room and kitchen privileges, and it might help if you offer to do some handiwork. If your hair is short grow it long, and vice-versa. Cut off the facial hair, or grow it. If you’ve got a hobby, drop it completely and get a new one that is totally different. Stay as sober as possible, because convicts give themselves away far more often then their friends do. That reminds me-stay the hell away from your old friends. You don’t need i.d. to get a bus pass, and offering cash to help pay the bills will handle other potential problems.

20

And if you do, stay away from outhouses and doghouses.