Saul Goodman - Get Off the Grid! - Saul Goodman's Guide to Staying Off the Radar

On the other hand, he hinted he was fine with ending it all, too. He may or may not fit the bill of a guy who sought a new life free of all the bullshit Eisenhower’s America was throwing into the fan. Either way, Kees achieved mythical status prior to departure.

You’d think such a missing presence would send droves of cops, fans, and ex-girlfriends on his trail. Calling back to those opaque windows, Weldon Kees threw some shade into the sitch. In his apartment they found his cat (very much alive), a pair of red socks (in the sink of all places), but no wallet, watch, or bank account passbook. Damned if his sleeping bag wasn’t missing, too.

However, he had a sizable stack of 1955-ish greenbacks in the bank that he never touched again.

While Weldon left us all floundering and flummoxed, he left an important lesson for you free-spirited, pre-disappeared: leave ’em guessing themselves into a tizzy over what the hell happened to you.

Leave socks in the sink, dishes in the closet! It’s all about the art of misdirection, Ricky Jay. Make sure they’re always looking in the wrong place. Take all your camping equipment, build a site in your local park, then drive away. What matters is that no one figures you out.

Now let’s skip back to a post-World War II mystery: a dude with a dancer’s build and poison within. A poster boy for identity eradication: the Somerton Man .

A snazzily dressed, well-built, nice-looking guy lay on the beach, his head propped against the seawall as if he was merely taking a snooze under the Australian summer sun in December of 1948. Except the guy was a goner. And no one knew who the hell he was even nearly seventy years later. This man did a bang-up job of leaving his proverbial footprints close enough to the tide that they were washed clean away.

Herein lies the tale of the Tamam Shud Case—aka the Somerton Man.

Okay, so the guy may have been a spy. That doesn’t invalidate his story here, no way—because the truth is, compañero, we are moving into territory where spies are the men and women who led the way.

The Somerton Man was in his forties and no stranger to the gym. His fashionable getup contained nothing to give the perplexed Aussie cops any idea as to who he was. Just his essentials: gum, cigarettes, and an American-made comb.

Big whoop at first peek, right? Keep those eyeballs sharp and excited; I’m not done with this guy.

Our unidentified friend is hauled from the beach to the coroner and it’s discovered he was at the pinnacle of health. At the time, science available in the land of the koala, the kangaroo, and the really big knife couldn’t determine the exact kind of poison, but the coroner uttered something of a puzzled, “sure looks like poison to me, mate.”

Attempts to track the guy’s fingerprints flopped (and for you spring chickens reading this, DNA wasn’t a thing back then), but police eventually managed to match him up with a locker at a train station in Adelaide. In the locker, they found a suitcase full of clothes and an odd set of tools that the investigators linked to merchant marine use. So maybe he was a handyman sailing under the Jolly Roger, a pirate who’d made a few enemies before winding up Down Under?

Our buddy Somerton Man had torn the tags from nearly everything, but those eagle-eyed officers managed to find the name “T. Keane” scribbled in a couple of places. To further twist the pickle, it became obvious after deeper digging that this guy wasn’t the Keane in question. Dead ends are all anyone ever got with Somerton Man.

What about that weird phrase, “Tamam shud?” Sewn into the lining of one of his pants pockets, police found a sheet of paper inscribed with the words “Tamam shud.” The phrase means “completed” or “finished” and comes from a book of ancient Persian poems, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. And if you’re not yet hooked by the mystery of this lone dude’s name, the enigma continues.

People love an unsolved story, especially one with a creepy code attached. Hence the Zodiac Killer’s inclusion on the Billboard Top 100 of favorite serial killer mysteries. While Zodiac’s code was cracked, Somerton Man left one that has yet to be deciphered. That phrase “Tamam Shud” wasn’t just a reference to a book, it was torn from the pages of a specific copy. Investigators found that copy, and written into the inside cover was a string of capital letters that look like nonsense. There are theories galore, but in the end, no one really knows.

Perhaps the Somerton Man was a displaced spy or had been one in the past. Sounds like something someone of that type might be motivated to do, right? Completely clean up the record and leave only a fine-looking corpse? Lesson here is: make sure your mystery eclipses your identity.

On the sentimental side, he might’ve been an average military guy who came to Adelaide for an old love and ended up rejected by her—some deep cut from all the sad fallout of World War II. Whoever this guy was, the way he obscured his trail to that beach was ingenious. He performed a total erasure by leaving unanswerable questions in his wake.

As you factor him into our conversation, remember this: neither Somerton Man nor Weldon Kees had to contend with the World Wide Web. They were escaping from a way less connected life than the one we’re in now. Sure, there were ways to track people, but back then you didn’t even have to be a particularly clever liar to evade anyone who might be hunting you; it was usually as simple as a few carefully placed, simple lies and a dose of solitude. You’re going to have to escape from the Usain Bolt–equivalent of a black widow, while these guys were battling a garden spider with the Web-equivalent of erectile dysfunction.

We’re stuck with a universe of connected databases and metadata and algorithms and other sophisticated cyber-jargon. Let’s give a respectful nod to the ghosts of Mr. Kees and Mr. Somerton Man and admit that if either man’s story occurred today, we’d probably end up with more answers to our questions. There would be traces on social media, little snippets of info in online profiles. Even photographs forgotten on a Myspace account might be enough for a clever researcher to put two and two together and find a real name.

So let’s move on up to a much more recent case, a guy who’s still alive and kicking. A man whom friends called Clark and figured for a rich New England weirdo. His buried story, though, was a lot more fun, until it took a turn.

The completely banana-pants story of Clark Rockefeller is a lesson for anyone who has ever dreamed of simply becoming a new person in a new place. And Clarkasaurus Rex, who is the modern king of this thing we’re talking about, did it in style.

Unfortunately, Clark Rockefeller’s story is not the hero’s journey I’d like it to be. Clark had a real gift for not only getting off the grid, but for ensuring the grid forgot him completely—and living a seemingly normal life the entire time. That part is pivotal to our purposes here.

Admittedly, in the end, he wasn’t exactly a “good guy.” You’re about to hear a combination case study of a nearly perfect disappearance and a sinister cautionary tale.

Clark’s name first hit the news as a suspect in a kidnapping case. Even then, he was the sort of accused gent I might have readily defended during my time at the bar. Poor guy only got supervised visitation with his young daughter a few times a year—a daughter who otherwise lived overseas. Clark loved that kid, and while on one of those visits, he grabbed his daughter and fled in a waiting SUV. Dad of the Year, right? The love of a parent knows no bounds!