More On: Walter Primrose
A couple in Hawaii with possible ties to the KGB is accused of stealing the IDs of dead babies
Federal authorities have charged a couple from Hawaii with stealing the identities of dead babies decades ago. Court documents show that the couple may have had ties to Russia's former spy agency in the past.
US defense contractor Walter Primrose and his wife Gwynn Morrison are accused of living under the names of babies who were less than a year old when they died, according to a court filing that was unsealed Friday and posted online by the Daily Beast. Baby names Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague were used as fake names.
Primrose, who was also in the US Coast Guard for decades, used the fake identity to get documents like driver's licenses, passports, and Defense Department credentials. This helped him get secret security clearance with the military and then work as a defense contractor.
The couple, who are both in their late 60s, was picked up on a Hawaiian island on Friday. So far, they have been charged with aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit a crime against the US, and making a false statement on a passport application.
Assistant US Attorney Thomas Muehleck said that old Polaroid photos of the couple show that they were both wearing KGB uniforms. Federal prosecutors want the couple to be held without bail.
Muehleck also said that a "close friend" of Morrison told him that she lived in Romania when it was a country in the Soviet bloc.
Prosecutors said that there is a high chance that the husband and wife would run away if they weren't kept in jail until their trial. They pointed out that Primrose is very good at communicating in secret, so if they were let out, they would probably run away. The feds said that the couple may have also used other names.
Court records show that Primrose and Morrison were both born in 1955 and went to high school and college in Texas together before getting married in 1980.
Court records don't say why the couple took on the identities of dead children in 1987, but a State Department special agent said in an affidavit that the couple lost their Texas home to foreclosure that year.
Primrose joined the Coast Guard when he was 39, but because he did it under the name Bobby Fort, he was only listed as being 27 at the time.
He worked as an avionics electrical technician for a defense contractor at a Coast Guard Air station in Honolulu until he retired in 2016.
The couple's lawyers didn't want to say anything.
Julie Lyn Montague's father was shocked that his daughter's name was used in the crime scheme. Julie Lyn died when she was only six weeks old in 1968.
“I still can’t believe it happened,” John Montague, 91, told The Associated Press. “The odds are like one-in-a-trillion that they found her and used her name. People stoop to do anything nowadays. Let kids rest in peace.”
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