Chapter 2

There are two requirements to successfully disappear. The first requirement is to never tell anyone your plans. That includes your family and friends. Furthermore, after you leave, never contact them. Nick’s parents are good people and may want what is best for Nick. However, they will be questioned up one side and down the other. If they had any knowledge, they would make a mistake.

Furthermore, they are law-abiding citizens and believe in following the law, and the law has ruled the children belonging to Nora. Therefore, if they have any knowledge, they will assist the law to make that happen. By never telling his parents his plans, nor contacting them afterward, they were of no benefit to the law. Even more, the law will waste a lot of time, resources, and effort, in questioning, and investigating, Nick’s parents.

The second requirement is to leave many false trails. False trails must be investigated. Time and money investigating false trails leave less time and money finding, and investing, in the actual trail.

When a person disappears, he may be living off the grid. Property can be purchased without recording the deed, or it may be leased. Either way, without records, the person will be hard to find. Three months before leaving, Nick contacted realtors by telephone and emails, in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Oregan, Idaho, Wyoming, and New Hampshire, and discussed with them places to buy or lease suitable for living off the grid. Nick also contacted numerous for sale and/or lease by owners. Nick also flew to Idaho for two days and he may have driven to other states.

To find Nick and the children, the false trails would be investigated. However, the negatives don’t prove Nick is not living off the grid, because the law may not find all the trails. For example, Nick went to Idaho for two days and rented a car. There is no record of all the people he talked to, nor of every place he drove. Moreover, he may have driven to other states and could be living off the grid in any of those states.

Nick called several moving companies and received estimates for moving to Dallas, Texas, Bear Lake, Idaho, and Morgan County, Tennessee. Those are locations that would be investigated. However, the investigator assigned to the case does not have unlimited time and resources, unless it is the President or a senator.

A month before Nick left, he scheduled a week’s leave to take the children on a vacation. Everyone in the office knew about his vacation with the children, because several times he would show them brochures and ask their opinions on which of the following places would be best to vacation with his children, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Colorado Springs, Washington State’s Olympic National Park, Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park, Utah, Yellowstone National Park Glacier National Park, and Grand Canyon National Park.

After twelve months, Nick believed the more than twenty-five thousand dollars in his Namibia bank account was sufficient to live with the children for at least two years.

Less than one month before leaving, Nick acquired a fourth credit card with a two-thousand-dollar limit. Before leaving, there would be no transactions on the credit card. Therefore, it would not show up on any database. Two days before leaving, Nick opened a bank account by depositing two-hundred-dollars. Then he went online to set up an autopay with the minimum payment on the credit card.

Law enforcement would find his primary bank account and the credit cards but without any transactions, the fourth credit card would be overlooked. Also, the two-hundred-dollar bank account would be overlooked, because it takes time to get into the system, and with no transaction for a month, it would not show up on any database until four or five months later, when the minimum payment for the fourth credit card, with a two-thousand-dollar limit was declined due to insufficient funds.

Thursday, the day before leaving, Nick rented a truck for moving furniture and a towbar for his car. He hired a couple of men to help move some of his furniture to the truck but he left his desktop computer. Friday evening, like he had done every two weeks for months, Nick picked up his two children, supposedly for the weekend. Attaching his car to the towbar, Nick drove the truck to Dallas. Dallas is one of the cities, he got an estimate from a moving company to move his furniture too.

Nick parked the truck on a street with unlimited parking, two blocks from some large apartment complexes. Nick left the furniture in the truck, drove his car to Nogales, Arizona, and parked his car at Ed’s Parking and Storage, located right at the border of Mexico. Using his new credit card, Nick paid two-hundred-forty-dollars to park for sixty days, where he permanently abandoned his car. Therefore, it would be at least two months before the car would be reported to the police.

Using the same method, he used to obtain passports, Nick created the following notarized statement, “I acknowledge that my son and daughter are traveling outside the country with the children’s father with my permission.” However, the notarized statement wasn’t necessary. With hundreds of people every day traveling back and forth across the border, the Mexican authorities just looked at the passports and waved Nick and the children through. Nick and his children took a taxi to Nogales International Airport (Mexico) and paid fifteen-hundred-dollars for the twenty-four-hour flight that had several stops to São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport in Brazil, using the Brazilian airline, ‘LATAM Airlines Brasil’ and paid for the flight using his new credit card.

Since Brazil is not very friendly with the USA the flight with their names would not show up in a US database. Regardless, they took the two-hour bus ride to Viracopos International Airport. Then using their Namibia passports Nick and the children flew to South Africa and paid for the flight with cash. No Visas are required for travel between Brazil and South Africa, nor is a Visa required for travel between Brazil and Namibia. Also, no Visa is required for travel between South Africa and Namibia.

From South Africa, Nick and his children took a bus to Namibia, where Nick rented a two-bedroom apartment. Nick spent the next two days teaching the children to point up toward the sky and say, “In heaven” whenever anyone asked where their mother was. Every time the children got it right, Nick would give them a treat and a hug.

Should law enforcement or investigators ever discover Nick’s, and the children’s, trip to Brazil, they could search all over Brazil but it should be another dead end. Probably, no one would look for the fourth, and very new, credit card. Therefore, the payment may not be discovered until later.