Blackstone Audio Inc. - The less people know about us: a mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and stolen identity

Copyright 2019 by Axton Betz-Hamilton
Cover design by Elizabeth Connor. Cover photo by John R. Betz. Cover copyright 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The events described in this book reflect the authors recollections of experiences over time. The details reflect hundreds of hours of research including, but not limited to, reviewing what remained of financial records, e-mail and other online accounts, family photographs, childhood diaries, and countless conversations and documents provided by family members and other individuals.

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First ebook edition: October 2019

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Betz-Hamilton, Axton, author.
Title: The less people know about us : a mystery of betrayal, family secrets,
and stolen identity / Axton Betz-Hamilton.
Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011217| ISBN 9781538730287 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781538730270 (ebook) | ISBN 9781549115165 (audio download)
Subjects: LCSH: Deception. | Secrecy. | Betrayal. | Identity theft.
Classification: LCC HV6691 .B473 2019 | DDC 364.16/33092--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011217

ISBNs: 978-1-5387-3028-7 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-3027-0 (ebook)

E3-20190903-DA-NF-ORI

This book is dedicated to all identity theft victims. May you find the strength and courage to pursue your case until its closure, regardless of the time it takes.

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IT HAD BEEN A LONG DAY at school and the roots of a headache had planted themselves near the outer corners of my eyes. There were hours of homework in my immediate future but as I walked through the parking lot of my building, I wistfully considered a nap. The manila envelope I found folded over and jammed in my mailbox was the last thing I wanted to deal with.

With a groan of resignation, I yanked it from the box. It was a lot bigger than I had expected a credit report to be. Must come with a lot of instructions, I thought. Most of me wanted to drop it by the front door and forget about it for a while, but I leaned against the arm of my hand-me-down, green-floral-print couch with my legs crossed and tore it open instead.

There have been a few moments in my life when reality has skipped in front of me like a broken televisionand I remember this one in slow motion. Sliding my finger under the thick flap of that envelope, feeling the adhesive give way and the paper tear in jagged intervalsthose were the last indelible sensations of an existence I understood. And then, as sure as the sharp edges of paper in my hands, another existence took its place. A new life, a different identity.

I did not find any instructions inside the envelope. Instead, I found the report, with the bulk of a term paper, full of fraudulent credit card charges and collection agency entries in my name. Discover, Bank One, First USA. Pages of numbers and dates as foreign as a language I did not speak. The first line of credit had been opened in 1993, when I was eleven. That was the year my parents identities had been stolen.

My credit score was 380. For a merciful second I thought maybe that was good. After all, 100 is perfect. It always had been in school, anyway. Then I saw the corresponding key. My score of 380 placed me in the second percentile of all scorers in the United States. About as low as it gets.

As my body folded over the arm of the couch, my mind struggled to make sense of these bizarre numbers. Surely theyll knowI was just a kid; I couldnt have done this. I felt the sting of tears on my cheeks. Who would do this to me?

ALTHOUGH TODAY I QUESTION the legitimacy of my own claim, for many years I believed that Grandpa Elliott was the first resident of Jay County to own a satellite dish. I remember the colossal shadow it cast across the backyard, where it stood planted behind the limestone exterior of his single-story, ranch-style house. In the summers, heat would hover above its concave face, bending the fields behind it into a green vapor. On many afternoons when I was outside, helping Dad feed the animals, I would hear the growl of its motor, shifting the dish from one side of the Indiana sky to the other. Nesting deep in his brown La-Z-Boy, Grandpa had changed the channel.

I would follow its arc with my eyes as it inched from a White Sox game to the evening news. The cold automation of hard, beige metal moving against the blooming countryside: it almost didnt seem real.

My grandfather bought the satellite dish so that he could watch his games: the Pacers, the Hoosiers, the White Sox. It was a happy accident (for me) that it also delivered cartoons to the rural farmhouse. This new development provided a serious upgrade to the hours my grandfather and I spent together after school, before Mom came home from work. Ostensibly, he was supposed to be watching me, but I was the one who did most of the caretaking. Grandpa suffered from severe arthritisamong lots of other ailmentsso I became a shuttle for the things he needed around the house: his pills, his drink, the remote. His fingers and wrists were so tangled in pain that I was his designated beer-opener. The whisssska of the Old Milwaukee can and the tiny escaping bubbles that tickled my palm filled me with pride every time I popped one open.

I didnt mind doing those things for him. It made me feel important. That a towering man like my grandfather would let me take part in the sacred rituals of his life meant more to me than any 4-H ribbon ever would.

He had been in poor health for decades when he had the heart attack. More than the stomach ulcers or the poor circulation or the arthritis, though, Grandpa seemed to suffer most from an unrelenting awareness of his own mortality. He rarely left the house and when he did it was so that Sassy, his wool-white toy poodle, could enjoy a ride in the passenger seat. The decor strewn along the mantel had been gathering dust for decades. When he was diagnosed with depression, he washed his antidepressants down with a lunchtime shot of Canadian Club whiskey.

This grim outlook was how he convinced my parents to stay on the farm in the first place. They had moved a mobile home onto the land before I was born, relocating from Muncie back to Portland, and intending only to stay while my grandmother, Lelah, battled breast cancer. Like my parents, Grandpa wasnt actually expecting Lelah to die, and when she did, the impact was sharp. For months after, Grandpa remained morose and surly, moaning incessantly about what would become of him, what would become of the farm. His despondency wore on my mothers conscience. She agreed to stay nearby for a while, but reiterated that eventually she and my dad would need to move on to a place with the kind of social opportunities she craved, a place where she could make some real money. Dad felt confident about a job transfer to Bloomington, and Mom often looked forward aloud to their new life in Brown County, a picturesque slice of the state that lured visitors with its rolling hills and startling foliage.