Sergeant Testifies He Faked His Death to Spare Sons Abuse

Air Force Sgt. James (Doug) Pou testified Monday that he feared he would become like his alcoholic and abusive father and beat his two sons and so decided instead to fake his death and desert in 1987.

Pou pleaded guilty Monday to desertion and bigamy, telling a military judge he was ready to end his double life as it crumbled around him.

He said that, while living in New Mexico, he experienced bouts of rage and beat his young sons. Pou said he would be overcome with guilt the next day.

“After I would beat the boys, I would make them go through the same things my father made me go through. . . . I would make them stand still (while I beat them),” Pou said.

On May 12, 1987, he decided to “save” his sons by faking his death on a bridge that spans the Rio Grande near Albuquerque. Air Force officials were convinced that Pou was hit by a car while riding a bicycle, and his body thrown in the river.

Although a body was never recovered, the Air Force declared Pou dead 10 days later. So convincing was Pou in staging the accident that the Air Force awarded him a meritorious achievement medal posthumously.

Pou left a wife and two sons behind and headed by bus to San Diego, where four months later he married Monica Marie Joyce of Chula Vista. They have two boys, ages 2 and 1.

Pou, who used the alias Christopher Keith Riggs, was arrested in San Diego on June 10, 1992, five years after his disappearance in New Mexico.

He was reported to Air Force officials by Joyce, whom he had also abandoned. She found out about Pou’s secret life in 1988.

Testifying at a court-martial here, Pou and his three sisters told terrifying tales of an abusive father who often beat them for no apparent reason during their childhood in Ohio.

Pou, 32, also said he was raped by his father when he was a young boy.

“I did not feel safe in my own bed. I have memory of being pulled from the top bunk by my father,” Pou testified. “I’m clutching the top rail . . . he pulls me out and slams me to the ground.”

Amy Weeder, Pou’s sister who lives in New Jersey, testified that she and her sister often hid in nearby woods to escape their father’s wrath.

Pou’s mother, Mary Ann, said she divorcved her husband when Doug was 12, and the last contact she had with him was 20 years ago.

Pou’s attorney, Paul Nestor, attempted to persuade an Air Force judge that an emotionally troubled Pou deserted both wives and his four sons because he feared he would become an abusive parent like his father. A defense psychiatrist testified that Pou felt he was “saving” his sons by leaving them behind.

After his testimony, Pou read a statement to the court in which he compared his boyhood to Huck Finn’s. Both he and Huck were victimized by alcoholic fathers, Pou said.

Huck and he faked their deaths by making it appear that they drowned in a river, he added.

Huck lived a life of fabrication, “so pervasive he found it strange to tell the truth,” Pou said.

Pou said he knew in his last days of freedom in June that he was under surveillance and close to being arrested. By then, his second wife had discovered his real identity and that he had impregnated a neighbor.

“I was ready for this to happen,” Pou said in the court-martial proceeding. “I was scared, but I was ready. It was difficult living the way I did.”

In a plea bargain, Pou admitted bigamy and desertion, and the government agreed to drop a count of larceny that was based on his first wife’s collection of $500,000 in insurance money after he was pronounced dead.

The agreement called for Pou to be sentenced to three years in prison and to be given a dishonorable Air Force discharge. He could have been sentenced to five years.

Judge Willard Pope ordered further evidence and testimony to be presented before deciding whether he would accept the plea bargain.

Before the proceedings, Pou came out on the front steps of the courthouse and posed for pictures clad in his sergeant’s uniform and wearing the red beret of the elite parachute rescue team that he served with before leaving his first wife and their two young sons.

Representatives from seven television production companies seeking to buy the rights to Pou’s story attended Monday’s court-martial. Pou has hired an agent and an entertainment lawyer to negotiate.

Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws barring people from profiting from crimes through book and movie deals were unconstitutional limits on free speech.

Pou’s mother, Mary Ann, and three sisters watched as he recounted for the judge the morning of May 12, 1987, when he set out for his daily bicycle ride at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., where he was stationed.

“When I crossed the bridge (over the Rio Grande River) I jumped off my bicycle and crashed and fell on the ground,” he said. “I took off my shoes, jumped from the bridge and worked my way in the water upstream until I reached a sparse wooded area where I got out.”

He said he made his way to a bus station, used $60 to take a bus to San Diego and learned from newspapers later about a massive search for him.

“What was your intent?” Judge Willard Pope asked.

“I really hadn’t given it any thought at that time. But I did have an intent later to go away,” Pou responded. “I can only describe it as an instinct. I relied a lot on instinct and kept a very low profile.”

In San Diego, Pou said, he took a new name, Christopher Riggs, and married a woman who bore him two children.

Pou’s second wife, who gave her name as Monica Riggs, testified Monday that the sergeant showed up at her home after he disappeared, carrying no luggage and looking disheveled, with only 87 cents in his pocket. She had met him months before when he visited San Diego, and they dated and corresponded occasionally.

Describing Pou as “fun” and a “great guy,” she said he claimed he had just concluded a dangerous, secret mission and was now out of the military. She said he was soon doing odd jobs to support himself, and that they married in September, 1987.

Riggs broke down in tears as she tried to describe Pou’s effect on her life. She said he told her in October, 1988, about his true identity and that she “was absolutely shocked.”

Master Sgt. William Burton, who served with Pou on the rescue squad, described Pou as a hard-working overachiever who was “by-the-book perfect in his work ethic and his moral ethics.”

He said as many as 100 of his colleagues searched the river for his body for days after his disappearance. Burton said some friends continued to search until the day they heard he had been discovered alive.

Asked how he felt about Pou’s discovery, Burton said: “I was completely devastated.”

Pou’s first wife, Suzanne, was not present. She divorced Pou after she discovered he was alive and had remarried.

Pou’s San Diego neighbor has given birth to his child, a girl.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.