My man almost pulled off the perfect crime.
He has to blame the internet for getting caught.
Twenty-three years had passed since Linda Iseler had seen or heard from her husband.
For more than a decade, the Indiana woman had assumed Richard Hoagland — who had mysteriously vanished after 11 years of marriage — was dead.
After abandoning his family in 1993, Hoagland moved to Florida, where he constructed an entirely new existence from scratch.
Police say he started by stealing the death certificate and adopting the identity of a man named Terry Jude Symansky — a fisherman who died in 1991.
For more than two decades, Terry Symansky appeared to lead an ordinary life in Pasco County. He had a wife named Mary and a teenage son, owned property and “worked odd jobs,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The truth began to surface when a nephew of the real Terry Symansky — who drowned in 1991 at the age of 33 — started an Ancestry.com family search, according to NBC affiliate WFLA.
Hoagland’s disappearance in 1993 seemed to come without warning, Iseler told “20/20.” She said the family lived in a large home, took exotic vacations and appeared to have a healthy marriage. Their two sons were ages 6 and 9 at the time.
Then, one day, without warning, everything changed.
“He called me at work and told me that he was ill … and that he needed to go to the emergency room,” Iseler told “20/20.” “And I said, ‘Well, why don’t you just wait, and I’ll go with you?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t have time to wait.’ ”
She told investigators that Hoagland told her in the early 1990s that he was wanted by the FBI for embezzling millions of dollars and had no choice but to leave town, according to the Tampa Bay Times. In reality, police told the paper, Hoagland told investigators that he left Indiana to get away from his wife.
And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids…