Muristek
HONOLULU (AP) — Bobby Edward Fort was 27 when he enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1994 and retired 22 years later with a secret security clearance that allowed him to land a job in Honolulu as a defense contractor.
But in reality, Bobby Fort was long dead. He was just short of 3 months old when he choked and died in a Texas hospital in 1967.
The Bobby Fort who enlisted in the Coast Guard had stolen the dead baby’s identity 35 years ago. A false birth certificate helped him get five passports, drivers’ licenses and Department of Defense credentials.
The fraud was uncovered last week. On Thursday, the man authorities said had posed as Fort was before a judge, who asked him to state his name: “Walter Glenn Primrose,” the 66-year-old said.
Primrose was ordered held without bail by a U.S. District Court judge after a prosecutor provided new details about how he and his wife had been fraudulently living for decades under the stolen identities of two dead Texas infants.
While the hearing further deepened the mystery of why the couple shed their past, it provided little clarity about whether the case against them goes beyond stolen identity, though a prosecutor suggested it could have ties overseas.
“We think the defendant is obviously quite adept at impersonating other people, obtaining government ID documents, fraud, avoiding detection,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne Myers said. “He may — we’re not saying for sure — but he may have some troubling foreign connections. And if he does, he might be able to use those to enlist help.”
A search of the couple’s Hawaii home turned up faded Polaroids of the two wearing jackets that appear to be authentic Russian KGB uniforms, Myers said. An expert determined the snapshots were taken in the 1980s.
The search also yielded an invisible...