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October 23, 2024 36 mins

A fugitive who hid in Arizona for 28 years shares his story.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Missing in Arizona contains graphic depictions of violence and may
not be suitable for all listeners. From iHeartRadio and Neon
thirty three, I'm John Walzac and this is Missing in Arizona,
the story of a man who disappeared after allegedly killing
his wife and kids, blowing up their suburban home, and

(00:21):
escaping into the wilderness. Twenty three years later, I'm hunting
Robert Fisher and I need your help. April fourth, two
thousand and two, the Arizona Republic headline Israel intensifies West
Bank assault, Hesbela missiles prompt fears of new front and

(00:42):
right above that Robert Fisher likely alive with new identity.
On the eve of the first anniversary of the murders,
the paper says two hundred thousand Americans, including presumably Fisher,
are living under false names to avoid capture for crimes
both large and small. It cites book called Hide Your
Assets and Disappear, a step by step guide to vanishing

(01:04):
without a trace by Edmund Pankow, which answers questions like
how do I create a new identity, how do I
stay lost? And how do people fake their own deaths?
From Amazon quote this invaluable guide outlines exactly what you
should know before you go, including the ever increasing difficulties
you'll face as the world becomes more tightly linked through
electronic networks. The book comes out in nineteen ninety nine.

(01:27):
It's an instant bestseller New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon,
one of the top books in the nation. A paperback
version is released in April two thousand. Is Robert Fisher
aware of it? I don't know, but much of America is.
It isn't some obscure book. Many people doubt that Fisher
could vanish and assume a new name. Impossible, they say,

(01:48):
And maybe they're right today, But he disappears in a
different world. Before nine to eleven, hijacks our futures, iPhones
our retinas, and TikTok our brains, before big genealogy slurps
up our DNA and caramels pump our face into the cloud.
Is easier to evaporate, change your name, start anew, and
many people do.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Including Crazy Eddie Antar, the.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Owner of an electronics retail chain, best known for his
crazy commercials.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Ladies Gentlemen in Reindeer.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
It's a crazy Any Christmas blow.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Out Flix, You'll save more money than.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Ever before, have anything and everything in a home entertainment.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
You're crazy and his prices are insane.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Eddie himself didn't appear in the ads. Nonetheless, he became
such a celebrity that by nineteen eighty six in New
York he had ninety nine percent name recognition. His commercials
were parodied on SNL, and there was even a brand
of heroin named after him. His downfall involved a stabbing
a wife named Debbie, angry at a mistress named Debbie,
rampant fraud, insurance scams, sales, tax stuff, a sister slapping

(02:51):
fight called the New Year's Eve Massacre, and bankruptcy. Color
me shocked if we don't see a Netflix mini series
on this within a year. In nightteen nine, according to
The New York Post, he fled the country with six
passports in five different names, forty three million in cash,
and his mistress. He spent the next three years on
the run in Israel, Switzerland, Brazil, and the Cayman Islands

(03:13):
before he was arrested and extradited back to the US.
While at large, he used the aliases Alexander Stewart, Stuart Alexander,
Joseph Levy, Joseph Levy, Ben Ezrashlomo and Kelso. Upon capture,
a US attorney called him the Darth Vader of Capitalism.
Crazieti died in twenty sixteen. My main source here was

(03:34):
the book Retail Gangster, The insane real life Story of
Crazyetti by Gary weiss Elmer.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Edward Sally.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Sally was imprisoned in nineteen seventy in New Jersey for
killing his girlfriend's two year old son. Four years later,
he escaped. He moved to Florida and assumed the identity
of Vinnie Taylor, a famous guitarist for the band Shah
Nan Nah. Taylor died of a heroin overdose in nineteen
seventy four. Sally told people that he really was Taylor.

(04:03):
He said he faked his death. Then he started booking
gigs under the alias Daniel Danny C. Catalano. Later, he
used a real photo to promote himself online. He claimed
to be a bad boy ex member of Sean Nah
Nah and Florida's number one greaser. The band considered suing
him but chose not to. He was captured on May tenth,

(04:23):
two thousand and one, exactly one month after the Fisher
House exploded. He died in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
Theodore John Conrad.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
On July eleventh, nineteen sixty nine, the day after he
turned twenty, Ted Conrad, a bank teller, stole two hundred
and fifteen thousand dollars equivalent to one point eight million
dollars today from a vault in Cleveland. Because the theft
came late on a Friday, no one noticed it until Monday,
July fourteenth, Six days later, Man landed on the moon,
so Conrad benefited not only from a headstart on the cops,

(04:55):
but also from a busy news cycle. Who cares about
a bank robbery when all eyes are focused on the sky.
Conrad fled to d c then California, then Massachusetts, where
he took the name Thomas Randell, started a family and
got jobs at golf clubs and car dealerships. No one
found him for fifty two years, not until November twenty
twenty one, and by that point it was too late.

(05:17):
He died in May twenty twenty one. His daughter Ashley
released a podcast last year called Smokescreen My Fugitive Dad.
Jose lazarro Cruise. Cruise allegedly murdered his wife in Virginia
in nineteen ninety one, he tried to flee to Canada
before paying a smuggler to help him cross into Mexico.
He then made his way to El Salvador, where he

(05:38):
started a new family and got a job as a
truck driver. He was captured in twenty twenty two and
extradited to the US. As of this recording, he's a
waiting trial. My source here was CNN Robert Hogland. July
twenty seventh, twenty thirteen. After filling up his wife's car
with gas and buying a road map, Hogland, a fifty

(05:59):
year old Connecticut real estate appraiser, returned home to pay bills,
play scrablawnline, and mow the lawn. His wife was on vacation.
His son left the house later that morning. Sometime in
the next twenty four hours, Hoagland disappeared, leaving behind his wallet, phone, keys, passport,
and medications. His family suspected foul play. In twenty sixteen,

(06:21):
the case was featured on the popular TV show Disappeared
Still Nothing. After vanishing, Hoagland started a new life in
rock Hill, New York, only ninety miles away. He used
the name Richard King, got a job paying cash, and
paid cash to rent a room from a guy he
met on Craigslist. He evaded authorities and his family until

(06:42):
he died in December twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Gloria Schultz.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
In July nineteen ninety four, while driving drunk, Schultz crashed
into and killed a twenty one year old woman in Scottsdale,
only eight miles from the Fisher House. Out on bail,
she absconded in May two thousand and one, a month
after the Fisher murders. She was tried and convicted in absentia. Then, finally,
on April seventeenth, twenty twenty four, as I scripted this show,

(07:10):
police found out that Schultz had been living in Yellowknife, Canada,
under the name Kate Dooley. She died of cancer in
twenty nineteen. My source here was a report by True
Crime Arizona host Brianna Whitney. I could go on and on,
but you get the idea. It is possible to escape
and assume a new identity, even today, but especially in

(07:31):
the past. So for now, one final example. On April thirtieth,
two thousand, a year before the Fisher murders, the New
York Times magazine ran an article titled Doesn't Anybody Know
how to be a Fugitive Anymore, which profiled a man
who lived under an assumed identity for twenty eight years,
much of it at the Abode Apartment hotel in Scottsdale,

(07:52):
only a mile and a half from the Fisher House,
just twenty four hundred feet west of the hospital where
Robert Fisher worked in the eighties and nine nineties while
he worked there.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Okay, So the first question that I always ask people,
and I think it's especially important in these cases.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
What is your name, Howard Mechanic?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
What was your name for the twenty eight years?

Speaker 4 (08:11):
And what she lived under and assumed the identity was
Gary Treadwaite.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
May fourth, nineteen seventy Kent State National Guardsmen shoot and
kill four students protesting the Vietnam War. A photo of
a girl crying out in anguish as she crouches down
over a body spreads rapidly around the nation. Anger explodes,
college campuses burn, A riot breaks out in New York
as construction workers beat protesters in the streets and thousands

(08:38):
of people lay siege to city hall. Guardsmen in New
Mexico stab eleven people with bayonets police kill two students
in Mississippi. At the White House, President Richard Nixon takes
questions from reporters.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
President, some Americans believe this country is heading for revolution,
and others belave the crime and dissent and violent demonstration
are leading us to an era of repression. I wonder
if you would give us your view of the state
of the American society and where it's heading.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
That would require rather extended answer.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
Briefly, this country is not headed for revolution, in part
because we do have the safety valves of the right.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
To dissent in times of turmoil, He says, leaders should
abide by a simple rule.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
When the action is hot, keep the rhetoric cool.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Reporters, twitch gears. How do you view the situation in
the Middle East.

Speaker 5 (09:29):
Moments if a situation has become ominous.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Nixon also mentions our fight against inflation before circling back
to campus unrest.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
When you do have a situation of a crowd throwing
rocks and the National Guard has caused it, called in
that there is always the chance that it will escalate
into the kind of a tragedy that happened at Kent
State the.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Day after Kent State. Howard Mechanic attends a protest at
Washington University in Saint Louis. Two to three thousand furious
students surround the campus ROTC building. Someone lights it on fire.
Burn Baby Burn, They can't. According to The New York
Times Kent State, Kent State, this is not the first
time Mechanic twenty two, has found himself in the middle

(10:11):
of a violent bedlam. He was in Chicago in nineteen
sixty eight as police assaulted protesters outside the Democratic National Convention.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
The guy next to me got his head beat and
I just sort of tried to pretend I was invisible,
so had a good hit, but I was God's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Well, there have been moments in my life, you know,
I'm young, where it feels like everything is crumbling, especially
in the last few years, and I think that that's
a feeling shared by people on both sides of the
political aisle, whatever your beliefs, that we're at this crossoads moment.
I'm really just curious to hear your view on that.
As someone who lived through a very volatile time in

(10:46):
the sixties and were president at some of these very
interesting moments, what does today feel like compared to nineteen
sixty eight.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
Well, if you asked me back in sixty eight what
things would look like in twenty twenty three, I would
have expected there'd be a lot more difference.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
He also wouldn't have expected to spend twenty eight years
as a fugitive starting a new life using a fake name,
dodging law enforcement. That saga begins at the protest the
night of May fifth, nineteen seventy, as the ROTC Building burns,
angry students block fire trucks and throw rocks at cops
and firefighters. Someone also tosses a large firecracker called a cherrybomb.

(11:23):
A witness says it was mechanic who threw it. He's arrested, and,
in a stroke of bad luck, he's the first person
in the nation charged under an oppressive new law, the
nineteen sixty eight Anti Riot Act. He gets a five
year prison sentence for throwing a firecracker, which he denies doing,
based on testimony from a single witness, a student named

(11:44):
Donald Bird, whose story changes repeatedly.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
Saying part of the time that the cherry bomb could
have come from any of several people in my vicinity.
Then he said it was propelled from my body. Then
he said I shot it with a slang shot, and
he also said I threw a cherry.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Bird dies in nineteen eighty three. Someone else later confesses
to throwing the cherry bomb, but in nineteen seventy, Mechanic
feels a sense of panic. First, he has to serve
four months in a local jail for violating a restraining
order intended to keep him off his college campus. After that,
he faces five years in federal prison for a crime
he didn't commit. While in jail, hippie hating guards, many

(12:22):
of them ex military, repeatedly threaten him. Once says that.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
If he had a chance, he's going to put a
bullet in my head.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Guards tell other prisoners they aren't allowed to speak to Mechanic.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Because most of them are African Americans and they thought
I was going to radicalize them.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Mechanic worries someone's going to kill him, probably a guard.
He plans to appeal his federal conviction. He hopes it works,
but sitting in jail, he decides that no matter what.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
I wasn't going to serve five years.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
So you decided if the appeal failed that you would
see right.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
The appeal fails, Mechanic gets ready to run. He needs
cash quickly. Off his record in stamp collections. That helps
a bit, but he really only has one thing of value,
a set of commemorative envelopes issued by NASA during the
Space Race, autographed by astronauts and even famed engineer Verner
von Braun. He sells it, and now it's time to go.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
When I left Saint Louis, I was Howard Mechanic and
when I got on the bus, that was Gary Treadway.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
How did you choose where to go? And how did
you get to Arizona.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Bought a ticket to go to Albuquerque on a bus
and it was early September. And when I got to
Albuquerque and got out of the bus, it was really cold.
I asked somebody, it's usually is cold around this time
of year, and they say, yeah, yeah, it is. And
I want to go to the Southwest because I grew
up in Cleveland. It was pretty cold, a lot of snow.
It was really thinking about the West. It was like

(14:10):
a vacation from a vacation to me. That's why I
wanted to get a place that was warmer. And somebody said,
this is about what it's like in Albuquerque, and I
asked them, well, where's the best place to go that's warmer,
and they said, well, Phoenix. So I had to buy
another ticket and I just got right back on the
bus and went to Tempee because I knew that was
a college town and I figured that's where I could

(14:30):
fit in a little better, which is exactly what happened,
because I was just a couple of years out of college,
and in a college town, people come and go all
the time. I mean, if I went to a small
town somewhere, I'd be sticking out like a sore thumb.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
So you chose this area in Tempee specifically because of
the weather and your ability to go on that.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Right mechanic craft of fake biography for cover.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
My story was that I didn't have a family because
my parents both died in an auto accident and I
had no siblings, so that's why they never saw me
with any family.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
He tells people his father was a diplomat in Africa.
He gets a job at a health food store, but
his manager is immediately suspicious. This new employee, who allegedly
didn't go to college, is too educated and worldly. What's
he doing in retail earning minimum wage, Mechanic begins to
purposely seem less intelligent. He also cuts himself off entirely

(15:24):
from his old life.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
When you left Saint Louis and came to Arizona, how
many people did you remain in contact with?

Speaker 4 (15:31):
None.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Within a few years, Mechanics starts his own company, distributing
health food. At the time, it's hard to find something
as simple as brown rice. He does well for himself.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
I was a successful businessman. A lot of people when
they think of a fugitive, they think of Richard Jensen,
who is the star of the Fugitive TV program. And
he stayed in a town and had a job for
a couple of weeks and then had to move on.
Something happened, And every episode he was in a new town.
When I was a fugitive for twenty eight years, I
was never more than five miles from where I got

(16:03):
off the bus.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
In fact, Mechanic does so well. He buys an eco friendly,
earth sheltered subterranean house and Tempe truly the American dream.
Sell your stamp collection, hop on a bus, change your name,
get a retail job, start a business, buy a subterranean home.
All it takes is some elbow grease and a time machine.
In nineteen seventy five, Mechanic attends a health food trade

(16:27):
show in Las Vegas. It's here that he runs into
a problem, or more accurately, it runs into him. Also
in attendance in Vegas is one of Mechanic's former classmates.
Ben's aerkor.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
He recognized me. I recognized him, and we were like
twenty feet away and saw us trying to walk in
into direction, and he'd followed me a sidis turned around
and said, I Ben, let's go over to your talk.
And he was the only person whoever spotted me.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Ben doesn't turn him in. In fact, the two men
remain lifelong friends. Each summer, Howard visits Ben, founder of
the company Good Earth Tea, and his wife in Santa Cruz, California.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
We actually went to China in seventy six, which is
another story, having a fusire of having to get a passport,
and then the passport gets lost and we have a
trip to go into China in a couple of weeks
and I had no passport.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
You got a legitimate passport.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah, all my documents are legitimate. It's a legitimate driver's license.
It's a fake name. It's not a legitimate passport. It's
under Gary Treadway. I'm not Gary Treadway. So I was
committing passport violation.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
With his trip to China looming and his passport missing.

Speaker 4 (17:28):
Mechanic contacted Passport and I said, my passport's gone, Gary Treadway.
I was born in the state, and I need to
get a dufficate passport. And they said, well, you can't
do that. We need to get your driver's license done first,
and then you could come back and do it. And
I said, I need this in two weeks. They said,
the only way you can do that is if you
get somebody to walk in the office with you and
verify that you are Gary Treadway. And the person I

(17:50):
brought in wasn't Ben. There was somebody who didn't know
who I was, who worked at the same company. He
didn't know me, He didn't know that anything about Howard mccank.
He just went in and he just signed a paper
stand I'm verified this person is Gary Treadway. And that's
how I got to dolicod passport.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Meanwhile, as Mechanic travels to China, investigators are still trying
to find him. Lucky for them, he has a critical weakness.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
One thing I'm going to recommend is if you have
an identical twin brother, don't be a fugitive.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
That's right, missing fugitive. Howard Mechanic has a twin Harvey Mechanic.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
Pricey posters of Robert Fisher and they have him aged
this was what he might look like. Because it's been
so many years, they try to artificially age in the computer.
And back then they didn't have computers. They had artists.
But they didn't need that for me because they had
pictures of Harvey. They would take pictures of Harvey and say,
this is what he looks like.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
How close did that match up? Later on when you
were looking at photos that you guys age time.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Well, actually, I was a heavy one when we were
a kid. They used to call me load, but now
he's a heavy one. For decades, they hassled him all
the time because whenever he was stopped and he showed
his identification, they thought he could be me, and so
they brought him into the police station to get him fingerprinted,
and they have to run a finger prince to Washington
and they'd hold him for a while until that was cleared,

(19:03):
and that happened to him on a couple occasions, and
so he had enough, and he got false identification and
he was living under his normal name. But if he
was ever stopped, he pulled out his false identification and
was never pulled into the police station again.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Harvey the twin later joins the Harry Krishna movement, shaved
head devotees in orange robes hand out flowers at airports,
highly highly visible. Howard is now afraid that Harry Krishna
will recognize him and then figure out, no, wait, that's
not Harvey, it's Howard the Fugitive. One time in Tempe,
Howard is in a grocery store and.

Speaker 4 (19:38):
A guy Christiana guy which she can spot, a Christian
guy for a mile away sort walked by me and
turned around and he said, Megendra, what are you doing
here or something like that. Magendra's Harry Christna name Harvey Head.
So I said, you got the wrong person, and I
just sort of left real quick.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
In nineteen seventy two, when he flees Saint Louis, Howard
leaves his family a note that's the last they hear
from him. Six months. Then he calls his aunt from
a payphone, tells her to have his parents come over
the following Sunday at a set time. This is how
he speaks to them for years without detection. He knows
the investigators are surveilling their phone bills, but he guesses

(20:14):
correctly that no one's monitoring his aunt.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
How often were you able to communicate with your family
and evade detectionment.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
Well, I evaded detection the whole time for twenty eight years,
and my parents stayed with me. By the time two
thousand came around, they were living in the apartment next
door to me at my apartment hotel. They would winter
in Arizona. They would come out every winter and stay
in the apartment next door to me.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
In nineteen eighty, Mechanic marries a woman named Ingrid Gold,
but before the wedding there's a problem. In the early seventies,
he visited a forger to obtain fake birth certificates.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Told them to print a couple for me. Well, he
printed like fifty of them, and I said, glad to
give me fifty, He says, Once trinders are running, it's
only like a minute, So here's fifty.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Mechanic hides them in the back of his closet. Then,
while away, one day, his roommate and wife to be
start rifling around and.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
They found fifty birth certificates. They contact me and say,
what's going on here? So that's how she found out.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
So she knew when you got married, she knew.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, Mechanic tells Ingrid his real identity.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Well, I imagine on Ingrid's part when she found fifty
copies of your birth certificate, she knew something was up,
and then she finds out you're not who you say
you are. That the best way that could turn out
is maybe your Howard Mechanic and not Ted Bundy.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
Right, they don't have problems like that.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
She probably just breathe a cyber lisk that you weren't,
like a serial killer, a run or something.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
In nineteen eighty one, Ingrid gives birth to a baby boy, Ari.
Three years later, she and Howard divorce, but they remain
friends and dedicated parents.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
How old was your son when you told him?

Speaker 4 (21:46):
I think he was about nine.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
How did you tell him and what was his reaction?

Speaker 4 (21:49):
I had him come over and we watched a documentary
called Berkeley in the Sixties, which is an excellent program.
After the movie, I said I wanted to talk to
you about something, and I told him, you know, I
was involved in activities like that against the war, and
I was charged with something I didn't do. I had
spent some time in jail, and then they charged me again,
and I didn't serve my time. I lived under assume name.

(22:10):
That's what I told him.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
How did he process that as a nine year old?

Speaker 4 (22:14):
He didn't think it changed anything. I was still as dad.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
In the early eighties, with his natural food business slowing down,
Mechanic decides to invest in real estate. He buys a
twelve unit apartment complex, The Abode, in Scottsdale. He initially
outsources management to friends, but soon it's too much.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
They tell him that I'm going to need to live
there to run the place, and so I had to
move out and move to Scottsdale.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Though he doesn't know it at the time, this is
the beginning of his demise. If you like this show,
please download our first two seasons, Missing in Alaska and
Missing on nine to eleven. For updates, visit meon thirty

(22:56):
three dot com or follow me on Twitter at John
wallzac Walczak. Thanks for listening. Howard Mechanic Lives perpetually under

(23:21):
the sword of Damocles. He's always one mistake away from disaster,
from being found out going to federal prison.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
One day, he gets a letter from Social Security Administration
saying that we have a problem.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
In nineteen seventy two, Mechanic assumed the identity of a
man named Gary Raymond Tredway. The only problem, Gary's not
actually dead, and now the real Gary and the fake
Gary are both using the same Social Security number, which
raises red flags. Mechanic responds quickly saying, Oops, there's been
a mistake. My name is actually Gary Robert Treadway. The

(23:55):
Feds ask for a proof, Howard, excuse me. Gary pulls
out one of his fifty Ford's birth certificates. He plans
to change his middle name from Raymond to Robert, but
first he needs to find a typewriter that matches the
exact print.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
And I actually had to go to four or five
thrift stores to try to find the same typewriter because
I got a birth certificate from nineteen forty eight.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Finally, miraculously he finds the right typewriter. He submits the
double fake birth certificate. He's free and clear for now,
But what a close call. He knows he needs a
backup plan, an escape hatch just in case. He needs
a third identity so if someone catches him he can
flee again. He heads to a cemetery.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
I found a gravestone and saw the birth date. Anybody
born forty eight. I was looking for somebody maybe who
died before. They would have a social Security number if
they died when they were a kid. And I found
somebody like that, then you just check to see where
they were born. This person was born in Phoenix, so
you're right and say I need a duplicate. Here's my name,
here's my address. Send me a duplicate, and they send
the duplicate. So you didn't go to someone who forced papers.

(24:59):
You just found a name in a cemetery and asked
for papers. In golf, I got the birstitot. Once you
have a birst you get your driver's license. Once you
have that, you can get a passport. That's the way
it used to be, and you can't do it anymore.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
You had a passport under a different name. If Gary
Strudway was exposed, were you planning to flee the country?

Speaker 4 (25:16):
That was early on, but by the time I got
into the nineties and the head of sun and had
businesses and stuff. Now that wasn't anything I was going
to consider anymore.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
If you had fled the country early on, where would
you have gone.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
I didn't want to go to Canada. A lot of
the people who are subject to the draft they went
to Canada. A lot of my buddies, not a.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Lot of the weather that you didn't want to go.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
I could have been, could have been. Also, I felt
I was an American, even though the United States government
was treating me so badly. I just filled I was
an American and I wanted to stay in the United States.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
As Howard settles into Scottsdale, he's kind of lonely.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
What was dating like under an assumed identity?

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Well, I had to hide my background, And maybe that's
why the way I am right now, Because when I
was a fugitive, I couldn't get close to people, but
I still wanted to be with women. But conversations would
come up about something and I would change the subject,
and I wouldn't want to have friends because friends would
want to know a lot. So I became more of

(26:13):
a loner, and I still enjoy that life. As a
loaner right now. You know, I live by myself. I
don't have a relationship with a woman right now.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
So did you have friends during that period?

Speaker 4 (26:24):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Sometime in the late nineties, Mechanic places a personal ad
in a newspaper seeking a quote left thinking non smoking
vegetarian social activists. A woman named Janet Grossman contacts him.
They start dating. At the time, his parents are living
in one of the apartments he owns in the same
building as him. His twin brother, Harvey, also visits. Howard

(26:45):
tells Janet that his parents are his aunt and uncle
and his brother is his cousin. She doesn't buy it.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
When she saw my twin brother, she knows something was phony,
and she wasn't supposed to be around because she wasn't
living there at the time she was visiting. She had
her own place, and she was over, And I didn't
really want her to be over when Harvey was there,
because that would make sense for somebody named Harvey Mechanic
to be my twin brother, and I'm Gary Treadwaite, so
I had to tell her.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
As the new millennium approaches, Mechanic feels increasingly confident. It's
been nearly thirty years. Surely no one's looking for him anymore. Right,
He lets down his guard starts to get involved in
state and local politics. He becomes an activist. Actually, he says.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
When you say I became an activist, it wasn't I
became an activist. I was holding down my activism for
the first three years. I was already an activist starting
in sixty seven.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
This is important. As time passes, Gary Treadway melts away,
Howard Mechanic emerges from the permafrost. Now more than ever.
He feels like he can be himself. As he leans
into activism, he becomes increasingly brazen. On April ninth, nineteen
ninety nine, exactly two years before the Fisher's final day,
he's quoted on the front page of the Arizona Republic

(27:56):
as Gary Treadway slamming public subsidies for developers. The attention snowballs.
He fights to limit corporate financing of political campaigns. His
photo runs in a small newspaper, then a local TV
station interviews him. He's good at this.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
People were asking me to run for office, and I
didn't say no. Most fugitives are not asked please run
for office. People wanted me to run for office, and
I should have said no, but I didn't. By that time,
I thought I'd get away with it, but I was wrong.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
In late nineteen ninety nine, Gary Truadway launches a campaign
for Scottsdale City Council. If elected, Robert Fisher will be
one of his constituents. Now his photo runs not just
in any newspaper, but in the Arizona Republic, which has
a half million subscribers. In February two thousand, Penny Overton,
a reporter for the Scottsdale Tribune, contacts Treadway. She wants

(28:47):
to write a basic profile of him, boring standard stuff,
not as exciting as the big story of the time,
a woman who tossed her husband's headless torso in a
dumpster behind a local grocery store. Instead of the torsost,
Penny gets stuck profiling Gary Treadway, boring old Gary Treadway.
She tells him she's going to run a background check.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
How did you react in that moment?

Speaker 4 (29:09):
Well, I was pretty freaked out.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Gary starts to sweat, He's visibly shaken. Penny doesn't get it.
She leaves confused. What's up with this guy? Gary asks
to meet again. Sitting pollside, he tells her the truth.
He begs her not to reveal it. She leaves once more,
not sure what to do that weekend. According to The
New York Times, she goes hiking. In the meantime, Gary

(29:32):
announces he's dropping out of the race. He says he
has leukemia. I need to concentrate my energies on fighting
the disease, he says, rather than running for office. This
is the breaking point. Gary lied about his identity while
running for public office, then lied again about having cancer.
The Tribune runs Penny's story, Gary Treadway is Howard Mechanic.

(29:55):
Everything falls apart us Marshall's arrest Mechanic On February tenth,
two thousand, fourteen months to the day before the Fisher
House explodes. He sent to prison to serve the five
year sentence he fled in nineteen seventy two. He later
pleads guilty to additional charges of failing to report to
prison and using false information to obtain a passport. Fellow

(30:15):
inmates are confused by his last name. They ask him,
why do.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
They call you a mechanic? Do you take contracts? Did
you know that's what mechanics used for a hit man.
Check out Charles Browns the movies called The Mechanic.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
On January twentieth, two thousand and one, in the final
hours of his presidency, Bill Clinton grants Mechanic a pardon.
He's free In the end, what lessons can we learn
from Mechanic? What can his experience teach us about Robert Fisher?
I still have so many questions.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Did you ever consider faking your own duff?

Speaker 4 (30:47):
No, because it wouldn't helped anything. Really, if I was
under a man hunt and I was on the top
ten most wanted, that might be a good strategy to
get people from stop looking.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Did you do anything to change your physical appearance when
you flipped?

Speaker 4 (30:58):
No, I thought about changing my fingerprints. But if somebody
had a doctor, that would make sense. But I wouldn't
walk into a doctor and say please do this. The
doctor would turn me in.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Maybe, meaning if you knew someone like you had a
friend who was willing to help you.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
If there was a doctor I knew could trust that
would never say that, that would be something I considered,
and it probably came into mind on a few occasions
because I thought that would be what would get me
was my fingerprints. As it turned out, that would not
help any.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
When you say you considered changing your fingerprints, do you
mean burning your fingertips to obscure your fingerprints.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
Actually, that's probably what it would be. And maybe I
wasn't thinking clearly about the options, but I did think
about it.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
What was your mental process like during those years? Were
you able to push this out of your head for
a while or was it always there? You always had
the anxiety of dealing with this.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
Over the years, it gets diminished. But what never diminished
were the nightmares until two thousand when I was discovered
and turned myself in. As soon as I turned myself in,
the nightmares ended, but I had a continuing nightmare I
was being chased, I was being caught. I'd have a
cold sweat and I'd jump out of bed. So that
never ended, but it ended immediately after I became Howard

(32:08):
Mechanic again.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Our interview now turns to Robert Fisher. Mechanic lived only
a mile and a half north of his house, less
than a half mile west of the hospital where he
worked in the eighties and nineties.

Speaker 4 (32:19):
I used to walk by the hospital all the time.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
It's an astounding coincidence that one of America's greatest examples
of a fugitive hiding under an assumed identity for decades
lived so close to a man who later became one
of the greatest examples of an American fugitive whose fate
remains unknown today.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Your knowledge, did you ever meet Barbert Fisher?

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Not?

Speaker 4 (32:39):
To my knowledge.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Did you ever go to a store called Popular Outdoor Outfitters?

Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (32:43):
He did.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Do you have any recommendations about how to trip up
Robert Fisher? If somebody wanted to trip you up? How
would you go someone into making that mistake?

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Bough.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
I still hat that the Marshalls made a mistake and
not take my picture around to yoga groups because they
knew I back to cioga in prison every day, and
if they had taken my picture around the yoga group
in Phoenix, they would have identified me.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
This is a great point, not only that it is
possible to find fugitives via their new social circles, but
also that even under a fake name, at their core,
there's still the same person. A reporter who interviewed Howard
twenty years ago.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Had an angle that I was living a lie. He
interviewed people and what about his lives he was living
a lie. I wasn't living a lie. Everything I did
was authentic except a document or two.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Today, Mechanic lives in the same small city as Robert
Fisher's mom. He and Janet Grossman are no longer together.
He's still an activist. He's suing the state of Arizona,
fighting a fifteen million dollar subsidy for a private rodeo.
Perhaps the most important part of my interview with Mechanic
is not what he tells me, but what he doesn't
tell me. He's open about almost everything except the people

(33:53):
who helped him escape and remain hidden. Fifty two years later,
he still vehemently protects their privacy. Without their help, he
likely wouldn't have been able to flee and start a
new life. In nineteen seventy two, a friend gave him
fake identity papers for Gary Treadway. Someone else mailed his
parents a letter on his behalf. Another friend gave him

(34:13):
a ride out of Saint Louis so he could hop
on a bus. Numerous people helped him in other ways,
for example, forging fifty birth certificates. Between nineteen seventy two
and two thousand, a dozen people figured out his true identity,
either because he confessed to them or they caught him.
None contacted law enforcement. This teaches us some critical lessons

(34:33):
about Robert Fisher. First, it would have been nearly impossible
for him to disappear without help. Second, it's likely that
in the past twenty three years he slipped up at
some point with someone in some way big or small,
about his true identity. The key to finding Fisher then
might not be Fisher. It might be the people around him.

(34:53):
In two thousand and one or twenty twenty four, Finally,
despite long odds, Howard Mechanic did run in to people
who recognized him twice, one in Vegas and one in
a grocery store, Which makes me wonder, what if one
of the many alleged sightings of Fisher, none of which
have been confirmed, was actually him. Wouldn't that be wild?

(35:16):
Next time I'm missing in Arizona.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
You should just go down it. Let's let's go down.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Let's go down a little bit, and then turn around.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Go what are they gonna do? Arrest us?

Speaker 1 (35:26):
You can reach us by phone at one eight three
three new Tips. That's one eight three three six three
nine eight four seven seven by email at tips at
iHeartMedia dot com, tip s at iHeartMedia dot com, online
at meon thirty three dot com, or on Twitter at
John waalzac j O, n w A l Czak. Paul

(35:49):
Ducan is our executive producer, Chris Brown is our supervising producer.
Hannah Rose Snyder is our producer. Paul Gemperline is our researcher,
Ben Bollen is a consulting producer, and I'm your host
and executive producer John Walzack. This episode produced by Taylor
Chicogne and Evan Tyer. Cover art by Pam Peacock. Neon
thirty three. Logo designed by Derek Rudy. Our intro song

(36:11):
is Utopia by Ruby Cube. Please download the first two
seasons of our show, Missing in Alaska and Missing on
nine to eleven, and if you're so inclined, give us
a five star rating. Missing in Arizona is a co
production of iHeartRadio and Neon thirty three
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Host

Jon Walczak

Jon Walczak

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