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A stranger with a sob story had charmed his way into Jaime Jaramillo's family. His wife had been bewitched by him -- especially after he'd starting attending her church. Now, Jaime had just been told the man was not only a liar, but an accused killer.
Jaime Jaramillo: I was in shock. I tell you -- I had tears about this because I feel pain for my grandchildren, for my wife and I care about him.
Sara James: Even though he was pushing you out of your own home.
Jaime Jaramillo: Yes, that's who I am.
As Jaime and his son, Jon, sat absorbing the news, there was a knock on the door.
Jon Jaramillo: All of a sudden, who shows up but my friend who saw him on America’s Most Wanted. Walks in the door. He sees the picture on the table, he goes, "Oh my God, that's the guy I saw on America’s most wanted."
Sara James: Confirmation.
Jon Jaramillo: I was like, "Oh my God, we've got to call."
Just two days after what was supposed to have been a sweet Mother's Day celebration, everything had changed. The man at the center of the family crisis, the stranger who had lived in the Jaramillo home for four years, had been unmasked.
Sara James: What was it like for you to realize that this man, who your family had trusted, was wanted in another state on charges of murdering his wife?
Jon Jaramillo: I was totally distraught. I felt horrible. I sobbed for hours and hours.
Jon had made contact with an FBI agent. The following morning, he called his mother to make sure she was at work.
Jon Jaramillo: And I knew the kids were at school, so I called the agent and I said, 'Go get him.' And they came here and they pretended to be church workers coming to talk to him.
Sara James: And arrested him
Jon Jaramillo: And they arrested him without incident.
For the four years David Carson lived at the ranch, he'd been pretending to be someone he was not -- even perfecting his deceit right under their noses. In his room at the Jaramillo home, authorities found these 20 books on how to get a new identity and disappear.
Sara James: Did you think, "Certainly now my mom will be so relieved that I’ve helped her?"
Jon Jaramillo: I thought she would be relieved, she would be happy and that the whole family could rally around this incident. But yet she said that he was innocent, that all of it was just false accusations, lies.
But the lies were actually those of David Carson, aka Gordon Weaver. So how had Weaver turned into Carson? Well, he'd had some help from his parents.
Remember: They are affluent, respected and accomplished - his father is a retired college dean with a building named after him. Those calls from "Aunt Rita"? They were really from his mother. And his father had obtained a credit card for him in the name of David Carson. They also met up with him a couple times in other cities over those years.
And from letters he sent to his parents, it's clear they were in on the plot from the beginning. In one he wrote:
"…like mom said,'Try out your options, you can always kill yourself later.'"
One of those options was to try to take on the identity of a real person. He suggested someone "with AIDS, cancer or some form of terminal disease." That was particularly disturbing to Jaime, who, as Gordon Weaver knew, had had cancer, and his son, who is HIV-positive.
Jon Jaramillo: It sent chills through me when I read it.
Jon says Gordon Weaver apparently chose well -- picking his family - with more than its share of dysfunction and problems - though they'd always found common ground before -- then slowly, inexorably, widening gaps, preying on weaknesses, until the family broke apart.
Jon Jaramillo: He made himself so indispensable and so loved that he divided our family to the point where we are completely all torn apart.
The break-up of the Jaramillo family, though, was collateral damage as Gordon Weaver ran from a real crime. After all, during the four years he lived with the family in Oregon, Jean's family back in Minnesota had been waiting for justice -- waiting for Gordon Weaver to go on trial for murder.
Kathy Rysgaard: Prolonging our suffering. It's all about him. Never about anybody else.
Gordon Weaver was accused of causing a serious head injury and then setting his wife on fire. It certainly seemed like an open and shut first-degree murder case. And after running from his crime, he would finally go to prison for the rest of his life. Or would he?
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