That connection required the public machinery of a federal criminal investigation, fingerprint databases accessible to law enforcement, immigration records held by federal agencies, and the kind of sustained institutional effort that a private investigator working a divorce case was not resourced to pursue.
She filed her divorce affidavit noting that she could not verify his identity. She sought and obtained full custody on that basis. She took her daughter and moved to London.
She did not know, in December 2007, that she had been married for twelve years to a man who was the primary suspect in a 1985 California murder — a murder whose victim’s bones had been found buried in a backyard in 1994, a murder that had never been charged because the suspected killer had not been identified.
She found out when everyone else did, in August 2008.
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## Planning the Abduction: What the Evidence Showed
One of the central arguments at the 2009 Boston trial was whether the July 27, 2008, kidnapping was an impulsive act — the desperate action of a man who, delusional about his own identity and rights, grabbed his daughter in a moment of emotional collapse — or the product of deliberate, sustained planning by a person who understood exactly what he was doing and the consequences he would face.
The prosecution’s case for deliberate planning rested on evidence that went beyond the kidnapping day itself.
He had purchased the Baltimore townhouse where he was ultimately found with Reigh — in advance, under the Chip Smith name, before the kidnapping occurred. He had established an identity in Baltimore. He had acquired property. He had, in the prosecution’s argument, set up a refuge before he needed one.