Unraveling O.C. Man’s 2 Lives Brings No Joy

Even then, after a long, fruitless year of investigating Gary Elliott’s mysterious 1979 disappearance, St. Louis Police Detective Ron Young had a gnawing feeling that this was not a routine case of foul play.

Young couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but he suspected that maybe--just maybe --Elliott had deserted his wife and seven children, and was not the victim of a kidnaping or killing, as everyone in this small farm town near the Missouri border assumed.

“In the beginning,” the 50-year-old detective said in an interview Sunday, “we investigated the case like we do with every missing person case. We combed the area, and we talked to everyone, but nothing--not one single clue--came up.”

“Later, about a year later--and I don’t know why because I had no proof--I began to second-guess myself and thought, ‘What if (Elliott) left his family because he wanted to and not because he was forced to?’ ”

But with no new information on the missing person report, and no proof of the staged-disappearance theory, St. Louis police closed the case. It reopened last week, when detectives from Orange County and St. Louis teamed up to uncover the details of how Elliott, a power-plant worker who lived his whole life in three small towns only 10 miles apart, has been living in Southern California since 1981 under the name of a toddler who died four decades ago.

Young, the original detective on the case, finds no joy that his instincts were accurate.

“I’m sad that we weren’t able to find his trail back then, to save his wife and children sadness and pain,” he said Sunday. “It was tough enough to think that he might be dead. Children might blame themselves, and it’s not their fault, and they need to know that.”

For Elliott’s friends, co-workers and family in Illinois, the truth is as shocking as was his initial disappearance.

“Everything we thought we knew, we don’t; and we don’t know how to deal with that now,” said Debbie Cranfill, one of Elliott’s seven children, as she stood in the front door of her mother’s house in this hamlet where Gary Elliott grew up.

“My mom is taking all of this very hard right now,” Cranfill said. “We’re just trying to find a way to deal with this.”

Since Friday, when they learned that Gary Elliott, 49, had been masquerading for more than a decade as Clifford Wraymond (Jerry) Leighton, the family has been searching for answers about that night 14 years ago when the man they loved vanished.

“We just want to know why, and until we do, there’s not much we can say,” said Gary Elliott’s older sister, Paula, 59, shivering in the winter chill of her parents’ garage. “We are all shocked right now, and I can’t describe what that feels like.”

After struggling for years to accept the mysterious disappearance of their husband, father, brother and son, Gary Elliott’s family now is trying to adjust to the revelation that the man they thought they had lost forever is alive and well--and has been living with a different woman, under a different name, in far-away California.

“There are seven of them kids and they all have questions. And until they find out the answers, they’re all going to hurt,” Wayne Elliott, 48, said of his brother’s children, whose ages ranged from five to 16 when their father left them in Coffeen, Ill., the tiny town where the family lived.

While family members are hurt and bewildered, they’re also relieved.

“I’m not really angry angry. I’m just upset,” Paula Elliott said. “I love him . . . no matter what, I love him. We’re happy he’s alive.”

Gary Elliott’s disappearance in St. Louis 14 years ago sparked an intensive manhunt in that city and an outpouring of support for his wife, Maxine Elliott, in the three-town community in Illinois where he had lived. Elliott grew up in Panama, went to high school in nearby Hillsboro, and settled after his marriage in Coffeen.

About 60 miles northeast of St. Louis, the three towns have a combined population of less than 7,000.

Little is secret here, where everyone lives next door in clusters of trailers or neat wood-frame homes.

In churches and taverns, news of Elliott’s reappearance produced expressions of astonishment and speculation about what made him abandon his children, adopt a fake identity and launch a new life 2,000 miles away.

In Panama, friends and neighbors gathered over the weekend to share notes on what they knew. Patrons at the town’s three bars talked of nothing else and turned off the jukeboxes when news of Elliott came across the television.

“If you stop to think about it, he’s our native son,” said Jimmy Slagel, 49, owner of Slagel’s bar.

Slagel, who went to Hillsboro High School with Gary Elliott, remembers a “smart student” who “didn’t do much with anybody.” Like all those interviewed who knew Elliott, Slagel said the man was quiet and reserved.

At Central Illinois Power Co., on the edge of Coffeen, where Elliott worked as a welder from 1972 to 1979, co-workers described him as a friendly, hard-working man who almost always kept to himself.

“He was so quiet, you didn’t really form any kind of opinions about him, and that’s why all of us at the plant are just kind of astonished that he could do anything like this,” said Robert Veres, 44, then a supervisor at the power plant.

“At the time (of Elliott’s disappearance), most people at work were shocked that anyone from here could just disappear,” Veres said. “But we just figured that when you go to a big city, you’d never know what happened.”

According to Young, Elliott was last seen in 1979 leaving a chess tournament at St. Louis University, where he had won first prize and claimed a purse of $32.50.

Maxine Elliott reported her husband missing when he didn’t come home that night.

Police found his truck abandoned in a crime-ridden area of the city. The driver’s window had been smashed, leaving shards on the seat. Drops of blood were spattered on the inside of the driver’s door. Elliott’s chess set, prescription eyeglasses and the contents of his wallet were found strewn about the truck. The key was in the ignition.

Questioned last week, Elliott told police that after the 1979 chess tournament, he vandalized his own truck and took a bus to Kansas City, Mo. He traveled about, doing odd jobs, and finally landed in Southern California in 1981.

He used the alias of Clifford Wraymond Leighton, a Simi Valley toddler who died in 1953 of hemophilia.

In Orange County, Elliott dated an Anaheim woman for several years before moving to Lake Forest with Jennifer Bradford three years ago. They have been engaged ever since.

On Jan. 22, Elliott once again disappeared, and Bradford--like Maxine Elliott 14 years before her--filed a missing persons report and launched a search for her fiancee throughout the Southland.

Orange County sheriff’s detectives traced Bradford’s fiancee to the Illinois power plant, which was listed as a previous employer on a job application.

At the plant, a supervisor recognized the missing person’s physical description, but not the name Leighton. When sheriff’s detectives sent a photograph of the missing man, the supervisor identified him as Elliott.

By the time Elliott was found unconscious in Riverside Feb. 14, St. Louis and Orange County detectives believed they had enough information to show that Leighton and Elliott were the same man. For final confirmation, Wayne Elliott flew to Orange County on Friday, and during a painful reunion, positively identified the brother he had long believed to be dead.

“I don’t want to discuss what we said,” Wayne Elliott, now back home in Panama, said Sunday. “Nothing is clear in my mind. And anyway, it’s Maxine’s story and it’s up to her to tell it.”

Arrested Friday on perjury charges for allegedly using a false name in applying for documents such as a driver’s license, Elliott is being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bond.

Friends and authorities said Maxine Elliott, who never remarried, has been in shock since Wayne Elliott called her from California on Friday with the news. She declined to comment Sunday.

According to neighbors, Maxine Elliott raised her seven children by herself, working at the power plant. Seven years after her husband’s disappearance, his life insurance company declared him legally dead, and his wife collected $84,000 in insurance benefits.

Maxine Elliott used most of the money to build the log house next door to Elliott’s parents, friends said. A close friend of the family’s said the insurance company has already assured Maxine Elliott she does not have to return the money.

“She’s a very strong woman, and a caring mother, and she’s going to come out of this a stronger person,” said Mike McClanahan, 33, pastor of the Coffeen church where Maxine Elliott and her children were members until she moved away three years ago.

McClanahan, who has spoken to Maxine Elliott daily since her husband’s discovery and remains close with several of the couple’s children, said Maxine Elliott is more concerned about her children’s reaction than her own well-being.

“Her sons are especially angry,” McClanahan said. “One minute (Gary Elliott) was teaching them chess, and playing baseball with them, and the next he disappeared. Right now they feel betrayed.”