David Carson had arrived by train in Oregon in the spring of 2000, running from what he said were horrible memories of a fiery crash in Maine that killed his family.

Now he'd insinuated himself into an unsuspecting family, who, along with their friends, had embraced the helpful stranger. He'd made a good impression on nearly everyone, although, as they got to know him over the years, some things about him were more than just odd.

Jaime Jaramillo: He says he won't ever drive a car. He is traumatized by driving.

Sara James: Did he ever get on a plane?

Jaime Jaramillo: No, he took a train.

Sara James: Did he have a bank account?

Jaime Jaramillo: No bank account. He had cash. He had a lot of cash.

Cash, David told them, from a computer consulting business he was able to run from his room in Florence. And there was one more thing.

Donna Dobson: He never had any pictures of his wife and daughters. There just was something that just didn't ring true to me. But I didn't talk about it to anybody because I didn't have anything to go on other that what he said.

After all, David had contact with relatives -- especially an Aunt Rita, who called him often. He also spoke lovingly about a nephew. Meantime, David increasingly was inserting himself into the midst of the Jaramillo clan.

As the months passed, the father spent more and more days in Eugene, tending to rental properties, while David remained at the ranch with the wife, Lueene, and the couple's grandchildren.

Donna Dobson: It was a very gradual thing that things began to change because he became more in control and Jaime was kind of just being less --

Sara James: Pushed out?

Donna Dobson: It was a gradual thing.

Sara James: Is that how you saw--?

Donna Dobson: And my husband and I, we were both aware of it because we talked about it between us. We didn't talk to Jaime and Lueene or anybody else, but we talked about it - that something happening that we felt very sad to see happening.

Looking back, Jaime says he should have seen what was happening. He was losing his wife.

Jaime Jaramillo: That's why I call him master of manipulation.

Jon Jaramillo: He is a master of manipulation. He is like a chess player, someone like a Bobby Fischer, who's always thinking 10 moves ahead.

But back then, all they knew was that they felt increasingly unwelcome at the ranch -- it seemed the stranger was becoming the man of the house. Jaime felt anxious and sad - but wasn't sure how to handle the situation. While his son wondered - and worried - what this man, who was already causing a rift in the family, was really up to.

Could he hurt the family even more in some way? There was one more reason to worry -- he had a fascination with fire.

Jon Jaramillo: He just seemed to be so enthralled with fire. That he'll pour gasoline into the anthills and light up the anthills to kill the ants and pour gasoline down into the mole holes.

Then one night in late 2002, two and half years after David arrived in Oregon, a friend of Jon’s called to say he'd caught the tail end of "America’s Most Wanted" and had seen a picture of a man who looked eerily like David. Jon immediately called his mom.

Sara James: What was your mother's response?

Jon Jaramillo: "Oh, ridiculous - that's just absurd." And she said, "Honey, we already did a background check on him and he came out clean." I said, "Mom, this is really serious. I can just call them. They can verify. He doesn't even have to know."

Sara James: And was she game to do this?

Jon Jaramillo: She's like, "No, no." She says, "You're just going to create a lot of heartache for someone who's already been through enough losing his family. And it's not him. It can't be him."

Jon tried to put the matter out of his mind, but was still deeply troubled that David Carson seemed to be splitting the family apart. He spent less and less time at the ranch.

Then on Mother's Day, 2004, he decided to make a special effort to see his mom. He was shocked by how the situation had deteriorated. Their close family friend was there as well.

Donna Dobson: Lueene said, "David will not come and eat at the table with Jaime." That's how the disrespect had grown to that magnitude.

Jon said his dad seemed utterly defeated. But rather than tell David Carson to leave his home, he decided he should be the one to go.

Jon Jaramillo: So then two days later, my father calls me on the phone and he says, "I know I’ve come to a decision. I am not going to go back to the ranch anymore. I'm not going to live there. I'm not wanted there. I'm not happy there - I get a terrible knot in my stomach every time I drive up the road.”

Indeed, his dad even seemed a little afraid of the stranger. And there was more.

Jon Jaramillo: "So I’ve decided I’m going to just give them the house. I'm going to sign it over to them."

Sara James: What did you think?

Jon Jaramillo: I was like, "What?? I don't understand this."

Jaime explained that he wanted his 65-year-old wife to be happy. Since she seemed infatuated with David, 18 years her junior, and together they were doing a good job raising the grandsons, Jaime felt his best option was to step aside -- on one condition.

Jon Jaramillo: He says, "I’ve made the decision, but before I do that I want you to help me find out who this David Carson really is." I said, "Well what do you mean? Why? I thought you guys already did a background check." He goes, "Well, yes, but that was -- we didn't get satisfactory results." He had ran the social security number, it came back as invalid.

His father had ignored that problem with the social security number because no crimes were found in David’s past.

Jon suddenly had a very bad feeling.

Jon Jaramillo: My partner said, "Your face is like completely white. You look like you've seen a ghost." And I said, "no, I think – I think that my friend was right. I think that that guy was on America’s Most Wanted."

Jon immediately logged onto the show's Web site and started scanning the mug shots of men who'd appeared on the program since the fall of 1999, shortly before David arrived in Oregon. And that's when he saw it -- a photo of a man who looked a lot like David Carson in a show that had aired in late 2000. He downloaded the picture and blew it up to an 8 x 10 for a closer inspection.

Jon Jaramillo: He had changed his hair color - he didn't have the grey. He wasn't wearing the glasses and he had a goatee and he had put on weight. But I thought, "This really looks a lot like him."

Trembling, hardly able to believe the evidence, Jon rushed over to his dad's home in Eugene, showing the photo to his father and a visiting friend.

Jon Jaramillo: And I put the picture down on the table and I said, "Does this look like anybody you know?" and they both said, "It's David!" And I go, "Well, it's not David. His name is Gordon Weaver and he murdered his wife in Minnesota."

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