Susan Markowitz - My Stolen Son: The Nick Markowitz Story

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Table of Contents

To my son,
I am so sorry.
Mom

CHAPTER 1

CAUGHT

Well, it wasnt a Mercedes, but it would have to do. He was driving a 1976 Volkswagen Beetle and moving from apartment to apartment near Rio de Janeiro. Gone were the days at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the model girlfriend whod tattooed his name on her lower back. Hed met an older woman named Marcia Reis and latched onto her because he saw her as his ticket to freedom.

Hed told Marcia that he was in some kind of trouble in the United States and thats why he had moved to Brazil, but he probably hadnt mentioned that the trouble was that he orchestrated the execution of an innocent fifteen-year-old boy. His documentation said his name was Michael Costa Giroux, and he claimed to have been born in Rio de Janeiro, to Canadian and Brazilian parents. People around him thought that seemed a bit odd, because Giroux certainly didnt look like a native, and his Portuguese was barely passable.

The truth was that Giroux was an American who had been on the run since August of 2000, when he was twenty years old. After a stint in Canada, where he decided it was just too cold, he chose Brazil because he liked the movie Blame It on Rio. By now, in 2005, he was living with Marcia in a modest apartment in Saquarema, a little fishing village known for attracting surfers.

Neighbors there didnt like him much. He drank a lot, and when he drank, he picked fights. Aside from that, Giroux didnt speak much to anyonea quick Good day at the bar, maybe. The neighbors did notice that the couple would sometimes host barbeques with out-of-town guests, and that Giroux would often jog along the beach with his two pit bulls. He sometimes taught private English classes or picked up side money as a dog walker, and he worked out with weights that he kept on the front patio.

His domestic squabbles with Marcia were loud enough for people to hear, too. But Giroux wasnt in this for love. He had hooked up with the thirty-five-year-old woman because he had heard about the tale of Ronnie Biggs, a British man who participated in the Great Train Robbery of 1963. After he was convicted, Biggs broke out of prison and hid out in Brazil, where he was able to avoid being extradited back to his country because he fathered a Brazilian child with his girlfriend. Brazil does not extradite criminals who have Brazilian children.

Giroux thought this was the perfect plan, so he set out to find a woman whod carry his childand thus, his insurance policy that would keep him from serving any jail time if he were ever found. The child would help him get away with murder.

He found what he wanted at a singles bar.

He said he was studying; he had come to Brazil to study, Marcia Reis would later say. When I met him, I thought he was very young. I thought he was a little lost. He had had a lot to drink.

But, she says, he was good to herkissing her hands and feet, getting her everything she wantedand that was enough to make her overlook whatever dark secret he had.

Meanwhile, Girouxs father stayed back in California, helping to keep detectives off his sons trail. Having money helped, and his father had plenty of it, thanks to a flourishing drug-dealing business. He was a major marijuana supplier, and possibly dealt in other illegal substances as well. Through the years, he had gained many friends willing to do just about anything for him and his familyand in places where he didnt already have friends, he could always buy some.

It had been a long time since father and son had seen each other, but Girouxs father still helped to take care of him, reportedly managing to get him twelve hundred dollars each month for living expenses even though the boy was on the FBIs Most Wanted list and surely they both knew that the family was being closely watched.

Maybe they had just let their guard down a little after almost five years. A long-lost American cousin was flying to Brazil and was going to meet Giroux and his girlfriend at an outdoor mall. Marcia was pregnant now and happily showing off her belly. The two of them had just taken seats at a table on the beach, waiting for their guest to arrive.

As his cousin approached, Giroux walked over to her with his arms outstretched to give her a hug... and instead, he found himself fitted with handcuffs.

It wasnt his cousin. Apparently he didnt know her well enough to recognize her, and he simply assumed that the woman walking toward him must be his cousin. Instead, it was plainclothes federal police agent Kelly Bernardo, who had just been given the signal to move in.

Bernardos team was close behind her. It looked like Giroux might have tried to run, except that he was in flip-flops and was clearly outnumbered. As the agents grabbed him and led him away toward their waiting car, Girouxs girlfriend screamed out, Kidnapping! Kidnapping!

Her screams summoned the military police from their kiosk across the street, and they drew their guns at the Interpol agents. The screaming and the violent standoff was enough to send people running, but the Interpol agents managed to stuff Giroux into their car and drive away.

Minutes later, his girlfriend calmly walked down the strip and bought herself a cookie and a soda. She didnt seem concerned; she had almost certainly already been briefed by her boyfriend on what to do when he got caught. A few phone calls and this problem would all go away.

At the police station, it was soon confirmed that Girouxs real name was not Michael Costa Giroux. His documentation was fake, though he spent two hours sticking to his story and insisting loudly that there mustve been some kind of mistake.

But it was no mistake. Fingerprints confirmed that Michael Costa Giroux was actually Jesse James Hollywood, the youngest person ever on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. And yes, Jesse James Hollywood was really the name his parents gave him, named after an uncle but with a sense of homage to the outlaw. While hed been on the run, hed occasionally also used the pseudonym Sean Michaels, a black porn star of more than six hundred movies who sells male performance enhancers, creams, sex tips, and a replica of his own genitals online. He was not going to get away with any other false identities here, though. Hollywood was unquestionably caught, putting an end to the five-year international manhunt.

In the Brazilian police precinct, he screamed in Portuguese at the officers about how they were violating his rights and how angry his father would be. Then he demanded a drink of water. They threw it at him, soaking his shirt and hitting him in the nose. No one was amused by this mini-thugs arrogance.

Back in the United States, on the same day of Hollywoods arrest, his fifty-year-old father, Jack Hollywood, was also being arrested, on charges of manufacturing the date-rape drug GHB. It was no random coincidence that the two were arrested on the same day; detectives had carefully timed it to ensure that Jack Hollywood would be unavailable to bribe anyone when he found out his son was arrested in Brazil.

Despite Marcia Reis calling out, No! This cant be! I have a son with him! as agents drove Hollywood away from the outdoor mall, the tactic didnt work in his favor the way it had for the train robber, for one simple reason: the train robber had had a valid passport, while Jesse James Hollywood was in the country illegally. Brazilian authorities didnt worry about whether or not to extradite him; all they had to do was deport him as an illegal immigrant. He had no right to be in the country in the first place.

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