‘New Start’ Was Fugitive’s Aim, Police Reports Show : Deception: In his first court appearance since his second life was found out, Gary Elliott denies two misdemeanor charges but concedes his dual identity.

An Orange County man who abandoned his wife and seven children in Illinois and took on a new identify after moving to the West told police he faked his own death 14 years ago because he wanted a “new start,” according to police reports released Tuesday.

In his first court appearance since it was discovered that he has lived a double life for more than a decade, Gary Elliott pleaded not guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor charges of giving false information to police and forging a birth certificate.

Elliott, who is being held in lieu of $10,000 bail because he is a flight risk, appeared calm, wearing an orange, jail-issued jumpsuit. He answered “that’s correct” when Judge Gregory H. Lewis asked him in Municipal Court in Santa Ana whether he is also the man known as Clifford Wraymond Leighton.

After Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators confronted Elliott with the evidence against him, he admitted that he faked his disappearance in 1979, the police report said.

“Elliott . . . explained he did all this because he wanted to make it look as if he had been ‘attacked.’ Therefore, he hoped people would think he was dead instead of thinking he had just walked away from his family,” according to the police report.

“He added that he assumed people would stop looking for him after a year. When asked why he went to California, Elliott replied that he knew the weather was nice and he wanted to get another ‘start’ somewhere else,” the report says.

Elliott told authorities he assumed his parents and his wife’s family would care for his seven children. He took the name Leighton in 1981 by using the birth certificate and Social Security number of a child who died at a young age.

Elliott also faces federal charges of using false documents to obtain a passport. According to the 63-page police report, federal authorities discovered a driver’s license issued to Leighton in Las Vegas and another issued to Leighton in New Mexico. Both have expired.

The case has been an unusual one.

Elliott was reported missing earlier this year by Jennifer Bradford of Lake Forest, who is engaged to marry him. He was found unconscious in a ditch with ants crawling over him, and claimed he had amnesia and could not remember what had happened.

Authorities said Elliott staged his 1979 disappearance from St. Louis, where he had gone to play in a chess tournament. His family, left behind in the small town of Coffeen, Ill., assumed the worst, and after seven years Elliott was declared dead.

Deputies unraveled the mystery after discovering that Elliott had used two different Social Security numbers.

Local authorities called an Illinois firm that Elliott had listed as an employment reference as a possible lead and discovered that workers there had never heard of a Clifford Leighton, but knew of another employee, Gary Elliott, who had disappeared under bizarre circumstances.

Police sent a company supervisor a picture of Leighton, and the supervisor confirmed that, “no doubt about it,” the man in the photo looked exactly like Elliott, only older.

Police reports reveal that Elliott also abruptly dropped out of another woman’s life. Judy Fox of Anaheim told police that she had dated Elliott for nearly six years, but that after they attended a Halloween party in 1988 he kissed her and she never heard from him again.

When she tracked him down in January, 1989, he apologized and said he was living with a woman he met at a bowling alley. “He said he would have called . . . to explain, but could never get up the nerve to do it,” Fox told police.