Life in General

There have been a few incidents in my life in the past that don’t even come close to seeming plausible. Anytime that I find myself telling bits and pieces of the story again… I’m certain that it really couldn’t have happened. I didn’t think I’d be revisiting this again – at least not this soon. Here’s a tiny bit of background.

I announced a few months ago that I was divorced – well, obviously at some time prior – I had been married. I don’t think I went into much, if any, details of the marriage. I had been married to someone who turned out to be a criminal. He put me and our four kids through hell. There wasn’t any physical abuse – in fact, he was a gentle soul; but, he was manipulative, evil and a self-proclaimed sociopath. The last time we saw him was February 2003 when he was over at my house to visit our kids. The court imposed supervised visitation for him – because I was so scared about him taking off with the kids and I’d never see them again. It wasn’t that he wanted the kids – he had been gone for three years preceding this without even a phone call for months at a time – it was that no one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t do with his kids.

Anyway, the last time we saw him corresponded to a bench warrant being filed for failure to pay child support. At 9 o’clock in the evening I asked him to leave my house. He said no and after about 30 minutes of him not leaving – I called the police. They removed him from my house. At that time – I knew we’d never see him again. This was very calculated. It made me look like “the bad guy” to the kids – and that’s what he wanted in the kids minds for the last time they were going to see him.

At that time our kids were 7, 11, 13 and 14. I anticipated that he would return someday – most likely when our youngest was 18 or older. I also knew he’d probably remain in the greater Philadelphia area and he assume a new identity – otherwise he’d be found and have to pay the $1600 per month that the court ordered. Stealing identities wasn’t anything new to him. When we were first separated and my lawyer said to find out anything I could about his financial life – I found a number of social security cards, passports and other information in his possession with his photos.

Over the years that he’d been gone – I’d kept up a brief email relationship with his mother. In fact, it was his mother that made it possible for me to actually get divorced. It took a lot longer and cost a lot more money for me to get divorced – because he basically didn’t exist. And due to the fact that I didn’t ever get any child support – money was tight. But, I did get divorced.

This past Wednesday night at 10PM – I got a call from his mother and she said that Spencer’s dead. I knew he’d come back – but I never suspected that it would be in this capacity. When she told me – I think I was just in shock. I had no idea what to say, think or do. My biggest concern was the kids. They barely knew there father – especially the youngest. He wasn’t around for them to see how bizarre and evil he was – they’d built him up to be something he definitely never deserved.

The two following days were filled with a lot of calls from people I hadn’t heard from in years; a wide range of emotions from sadness to anger to euphoria; and the strange and depraved behavior of this man continues even after he does. I find myself on my way to the Philadelphia morgue to identify the body. Normally I would not have chosen to do this – but before he left me, he told me that he was going to fake his own death; funnel insurance money through his evil brother; and I’d never find the body. For this reason, it was really important to me to see his dead body.

When I was sitting at the morgue, talking to the medical examiner – there had been some confusion as to who this body belonged to. At that point I was told that Spencer had been married for three years. His name was that of a dead person he assumed (he told me exactly how he did this over the years) and he was married to some woman who was also an unknowing victim. Strange because I thought that I was still married to the man as of February 2007.

This man, who I put through Lehigh University as a mechanical engineer, was working as a carpenter and living in the basement of a building he was working on and using and I was told by the police and medical examiner that he was most likely dealing heroin – which is what ultimately killed him. They also told me that the wife wasn’t aware that she wasn’t married to a person that didn’t exist until he died. His evil brother was aware of the situation and continued to keep up his charade so he wouldn’t have to pay child support to our kids.

This was an exhausting experience, but I came out of it feeling free and I hope that because the kids had very little to do with their father – especially for the past 9 years – they’re doing ok too.

That was the very condensed version of the past few days. Needless to say – my diet’s gone to hell.