The return of the fugitive

Life on the lam
Heather Tallchief had been living on the lam for twelve years now, under the radar, completely undetected.

Keith Morrison: Would you recommend the lifestyle to anybody?

Heather Tallchief: Only to a fool. No. I’m not proud of this. This is not a great thing to do, to become a fugitive, to run away, to lose your family, to lose contact with every single person you’ve ever known and loved.

Where had she been? What did she do all those years?  As far as anybody knew, she and Roberto Solis had pulled off the perfect Vegas vanishing act.

But of course nobody alive actually vanishes; everybody has to be somewhere and indeed they were. After fleeing from Vegas, after running from Denver, from Florida, from the Caribbean, Roberto Solis and Heather Tallchief wound up here, in a city famous for its toleration of unusual people and sometimes strange behaviors. In Amsterdam.

But life with all that stolen money, says Heather, was not what you might have imagined. Once Solis had his hands on the cash, she says, he became a monster—miserly, controlling, mean.

It took about a year, she says, until one day it all came crashing in on her..

Heather discovered she was pregnant with Roberto’s child—and never felt so trapped in her life.

Heather Tallchief: I almost felt like I don’t feel like I wanna live anymore. I gotta get away, ‘cause I wanted to have the opportunity to at least have this child.

And by the time her son was born, says Heather, Solis had moved other women into their home.

And then one day, finally unable to put up anymore, she says, with the abuse, with the polygamy, she simply picked up her baby, what little cash she could lay her hands on and she left. On the run now not just from the long reach of American law, but from Roberto Solis himself.

Heather Tallchief: As soon as I could I took my opportunity and I walked away.

Morrison: Were you afraid he’d try to find you?

Heather Tallchief: Yeah.

Morrison: Did he?

Heather Tallchief: No.

Morrison: Did he look?

Heather Tallchief: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since then.

She says she only took pocket money and some jewelry with her. Two years after the so-called perfect crime, she had a baby, no job, no money, no name.

And so she compromised herself.

Heather Tallchief: You’re going to do instinctually what you have as a mother and that is to go out there and do what you need to do.

Then, she says, she managed to get a job as a hotel chambermaid and told her boss she was Donna Marie Eaton.

Ellen Dworkin is the assistant manager, worked with Heather for years.

Ellen Dworkin: She put on this crazy English accent that could have been English or British accent. That was - I kept on thinking, ‘Why is she speaking this weird British accent?’

With a bad accent as cover, she counted on the same attitude her new friend, and transplanted American, Meredith Kirkwood had noticed about Amsterdam. Here, people don’t seem to ask a lot of personal questions.

Meredith Kirkwood: There was always just a little sense of distance.

Morrison: People need to be private.

Kirkwood: People need to be private. And I thought well, maybe she had a bad relationship. Just being a little low-key.

A time to stop running
But after 12 years of lying to those she loved, 12 years without contact with her family, heather had enough.  She decided it was time. She was going to stop running… she was going to turn herself in.

Morrison: Couldn’t you have just continued your life on the lam for the rest of your life? Rather successfully?

Heather Tallchief: Oh yes.

Morrison: Well, why not?

Heather Tallchief: Because you get very tired of running. This is not a life, because I have been assuming something else that’s not my life.  If you’re living in a prison mentally, then what is a box, a room,  restricted privileges? It’s nothing compared to what I’ve already been through. I’m truly feel like I’m setting myself free.

But returning meant leaving her then 10-year-old son Dylan behind, with the man Heather says has become her real partner in life and the only father figure her son has ever known.

Heather Tallchief:  I’m doing this for him. I feel that by turning myself in and surrendering, I can give him a better life, one that he deserves.

Morrison: He doesn’t have a real name right now?

Heather Tallchief: No, he doesn’t.

Morrison: Doesn’t have a country.

Heather Tallchief: He doesn’t exist basically.

But first, Heather had to break the difficult news to Dylan who had no idea his mother was a fugitive or that she was about to leave.

Morrison: I’d be very interested to know what that conversation was like and what she said.

Dylan Tallchief: Well, she told me one day she would have to go away and repair what she’s done.

Morrison: It’s gotta be tough for a guy to hear—

Dylan Tallchief: um-hm.

Morrison: How did you feel when you heard that?

Dylan Tallchief: A little bit nervous. I didn’t want her to go away.

Heather told friends in Europe that she had to go to the United States, that she’d be away for a while... said she couldn’t explain why just yet. In fact, it was important for her case that she surrender and not be captured. Friends like Meredith Kirkwood didn’t understand.

Kirkwood: Why did she do this now? What was wrong with her - her life? We were all friends. Everything was going just fine, you know. Why couldn’t she have waited?

And so, two days after our secret meeting, on a morning not unlike the one that began all this, with no idea when she’d ever see her son again, she walked into the U.S. Marshalls’ office in Las Vegas.

Authorities had been given a few minutes’ notice. The system swallowed her up, and she was gone. And now everyone was about to hear the real story.

Isaac Brekken / AP Heather Catherine Tallchief, flanked by attorneys, turns herself in to authorities in Las Vegas on Thursday, 12 years after she allegedly drove off in an armored car containing $3.1 million.

Scott Stewart, the armored car courier who was working with Heather that day, got a call from a reporter.

Scott Stewart, worked with Heather on the day of the heist: He calls me up at work and says, “You’re not gonna believe this. Heather turned herself in.” And it was kind of like, wow. She’s alive.

Former police sergeant Larry Duis: I use the term “shark bait.” I thought that the may have just gotten rid of her, now there’s no witness. He has all the money himself. So I was extremely surprised when she showed up.

And Heather’s family? Fred was at work when a friend told him the news.

Fred Tallchief, Heather's father: He says, “Heather just turned herself in.” And it was just like that same feeling like when she did it, that shaking inside. My nerves were just shaking.

And what about Skyler, the little brother, now 13 years old, who has never met Heather?

Morrison: What would you say to her if you could go see her right now?

Skyler Tallchief, Heather's younger brother: Oh, I’d say, “I love you.”

Eight months after her surrender, we met with Heather again. What had the courts decided to do with her? Did it turn out that turning herself in was a terrible mistake?

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