Couple exposed after decades-long ruse using stolen IDs of dead babies
A Honolulu jury has found a couple guilty of decades of identity theft and fraud after only two hours of deliberation. The pair, whose real names are Walter Glenn Primrose and Gwynn Darle Morrison, were convicted of stealing the identities from two babies that died in infancy more than 50 years ago.
Despite acknowledging their fraud, which the pair argued "did not harm anyone," they still chose to go by assumed name Bobby Fort and Julie Montague in court.
According to court documents, the defendants met at a Texas college in the 1970s and married in 1980 before settling into a new home a year later. The prosecution, headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Muehleck, said interviewed family and friends recollected the couple leaving Texas abruptly in the early '80s, claiming they were entering witness a protection program before abandoning their home and belongings.
They told other relatives at the time that Primrose was working secretively for a government agency and yet other loved ones that they were changing their names because of "legal and financial" reasons and would need to be contacted via their new names moving forward.
In 1987, the pair decided to assume new identities, with then 32-year-old Primrose taking on the name of Bobby Fort and Morrison of Julie Montague.
How AI can help protect you:Fake emails. Text scams. These are the AI tools that can help protect you.
Healthcare fraudster used fake patients:Florida health clinic owner sentenced in $36 million fraud scheme that recruited fake patients
Decades of deception
The real Bobby Fort was born in 1967 and died after only three months of life due to asphyxia caused by an illness, while the real Julie Montague was born in 1968 and died three weeks later as a result of birth defects. Both babies were buried in Texas, though not in the same cemetery.
Both Primrose and Morrison obtained Texas birth certificate records for the deceased infants and used them to secure Social Security cards, U.S. passports, drivers licenses and Department of Defense (DOD) documents, then married once more under the new names. Within a six-month period, said investigators, the couple had fully and successfully assumed the identities and begun new lives.
The ruse continued for decades, with Primrose even enlisting in the Coast Guard in 1994 as Bobby Fort, who had a birth date 12 years later than his own. He then served in the guard as Fort for more than 20 years from 1994 to 2016 before retiring and moving on to work as a contractor for the DOD, meaning he also received security clearance and worked with classified information under the false identity.
Early documents filed in the case speculated the crimes may have gone beyond fraud and theft, citing the couple's alleged history of anti-government attitudes, improperly recorded travel to then-communist countries and notes written with invisible ink. The initial complaint also referenced Polaroid photos of the pair wearing what appear to be authentic KGB uniforms, implying they may have been involved with nefarious foreign entities. However, this line of hypothesizing was abandoned by the prosecution.
Witnesses included the sister of the real Julie Montague, who confirmed her death as a newborn, and Primrose's own mother who confirmed his true identity. The prosecution also said a high school classmate who once let the pair stay with him reported that the pair has discussed changing their identities in order to escape substantial debt.
The couple are set to be sentenced in March and could face maximum 10-year prison sentences for making false statements in the application and use of a passport and up to five years for aggravated identity theft.
