You probably haven’t heard the name Eddie Maher before, but if you work in British law enforcement then chances are someone has told you about his case.

In January 1993 Maher, a cash-in-transit van driver, sped off with a cool £1.2 million (R20 million) in cash. He promptly disappeared off the radar, and despite police offering a massive reward all of their leads came to nothing.

The BBC to pick this one up:

The fireman-turned-security-van-driver flew business class from Heathrow to Dallas, a few weeks after the heist, carrying a suitcase with banknotes wrapped in towels and a fake passport in the name of Stephen King.

Maher estimates he had around £125,000 ($160,000), the cut he was given by a shadowy gang that he says pressurised him into committing the crime. (Police have always rejected the claim that he was acting under duress.)

He had sent his partner, Debbie Brett, on holiday to Boston a few weeks earlier with their toddler, Lee. He only explained to her they were on the run when they met at a pre-arranged spot in Dallas airport, he says.

“She wasn’t over the moon when I told her but we’re a couple. She’s my best friend,” he says.

“Plus I convinced her she could contact her family after a while.”

In fact, Maher knew they couldn’t risk contacting loved-ones in the UK. He only made one phone call home during his 19 years away – a call to his sick mother, one year after he vanished.

Eventually the couple settled with their son in Woodland Park, a small town in Colorado, nice and far from the beaten track and in an area that was welcoming to new faces.

They bought that house above for cash, and Lee was enrolled in school without much fuss:

They introduced themselves as Stephen and Sarah King. According to their cover story, Stephen was a photocopier salesman from Essex who had sold his business and was deciding what to do next.

They had a well-rehearsed line when people asked about family and friends in the UK.

“We’d say, ‘They’ve already been over and are welcome to visit any time,'” Maher says…

The couple went on hunting and fishing trips with the neighbours, Brett volunteered at the nursery and Maher joined the mountain search and rescue team. He also made friends with people on the local airfield and was given flying lessons in exchange for driving the fuel truck. He later bought his own plane, a Piper Warrior, which he rented back to the flying school…

In 1994 Maher and Brett got married under their fake names in Las Vegas, acquiring a wedding certificate in the process – another useful document that would help to confirm their fake identities…

In addition, he had forged a California birth certificate for Lee, and applied for a social security card for him so that he could work when he was older. However, he couldn’t get Lee a passport. For that he needed a genuine birth certificate, one that could be traced to a birth record in a state ledger.

Another document Maher couldn’t forge was a green card, and without one neither he nor Brett could work.

“I tried to find jobs where you didn’t need ID, like illegal immigrants do. But there isn’t much unless you want to go orange-picking in California,” Maher says.

As their funds dwindled, Maher made some money playing blackjack in Las Vegas. The family also moved to a smaller home and sold their plane – and it was when the buyer only paid a quarter of what he had promised that Maher realised it was time to leave.

“When I asked for the money he said, ‘I think there’s something shady about you. Maybe I’ll call the cops,'” Maher says.

They then moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where Eddie decided to assume a new identity. His brother Michael had married an American woman years earlier, so Eddie posed as Michael and tried to swindle a Green Card from the authorities:

…no-one raised the alarm and before long he was sent a replacement in the post. Maher then applied for a commercial driver’s licence in his brother’s name and started work as a lorry driver…

Maher started coaching Little League baseball and in 1997 the couple had another son, Mark. They became friendly with a couple who had a weekend home on a nearby lake, and would often visit.

Next stop was Florida, with some Concord neighbours becoming too nosy after 9/11, where they rented a home by the beach and visited Disney World when it wasn’t flooded with British tourists.

In the end the wheels began to come off in 2010, and it had to do with his son Lee:

As a teenager, Lee had begun asking questions about his English relatives and Maher says he began to rebel when he didn’t get a straight answer – embarking on a series of short-term relationships, fathering a number of children and regularly getting into trouble…

Lee Maher met and married Jessica Butler but they soon started quarrelling. According to Eddie, a drunken Lee once told Jessica he thought his father was a fugitive. He believes she then searched for his surname online and found old news reports of the Securicor heist, along with the promise of a reward.

On 6 February 2012 she walked into Ozark police station and said she knew the whereabouts of the British fugitive, “Fast Eddie” Maher.

Eddie didn’t take the news well at first, threatening to kill whoever had tipped the police off, but he soon realised his goose was cooked:

…he came clean to his sons. “My real name is Eddie,” he said. “And your mum isn’t Sarah. She’s Debbie.”

In July 2012 he was extradited to the UK. Eight months later he was sentenced to five years for theft, but was released in January 2015.

“I don’t grumble, I don’t say I didn’t do the crime. I did my time for it,” Maher says.

My favourite bit is this very British ending:

He doesn’t want to stay in the UK though, and fancies a place in the sun – Spain perhaps, or Cyprus.

“We’ll keep our heads down,” he says, “and enjoy a bit of a retirement.”

Yes, a spot of tea and a life without worrying about being arrested at any given moment.

[source:bbc]