A man who had been declared missing for 25 years and later declared
dead in Indiana has been discovered living with a new family in Pasco
County, Florida.
Terry Jude Symansky appeared to lead an ordinary life in Florida.
He had a wife and a teenage son, owned property, and “worked odd jobs,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The only problem, police say, was that Terry Jude
Symansky was not really Terry Jude Symansky. He was actually Richard
Hoagland who vanished 25 years ago.
Before he began the process of assuming a new identity, Hoagland left
his old life, which included a wife and four children, behind in
Indiana.
The scam was discovered when a nephew of the real Terry Symansky — who
drowned in 1991 at age 33 — started an Ancestry.com family search.
Knowing that his uncle was dead, the nephew was surprised to find
someone with the same name living in central Florida.
“He looks up his real uncle Terry Symansky and realizes that he died in
1991, which the family knew,” Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said.
“He then starts scrolling down the page and sees more details that Terry
Symanksy was remarried in 1995. He owns property in Pasco County,
Florida.”
Fearing that their fake relative might try to harm them, family members
waited three years before eventually contacting authorities in April,
police told the Tampa Bay Times.
Hoagland, now 63, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with fraudulent use of personal identification.
How exactly Hoagland came to assume the identity of Terry Symansky still remains a complicated mystery.
As Terry Symansky, he married Mary Hossler Hickman in 1995 and they had a
son a couple of years later. The couple lived in Zephyrhills. He also
fashioned a medical card to obtain a private pilot’s license as Terry
Symansky from the Federal Aviation Administration. His former wife in
Indiana told police that Hoagland had three businesses related to
insurance.
Source: Tampa Bay Times