Missing Fla. Girl’s Custodian Used Aliases, Records Say

Doubts are mounting about the woman who says a child-welfare worker took 5-year-old Rilya Wilson from her home last year and never returned her.

An Associated Press review of court records from past criminal and civil cases involving Geralyn Graham shows that she has used at least 33 aliases and that lawyers in the past have questioned whether she was a con artist or severely mentally impaired. A judge in one case thought both might apply.

“She has certainly presented herself in a way that defies knowing her and understanding her,” clinical psychologist James Butcher concluded in December 2000 after reviewing a mental assessment test taken by Graham in a lawsuit she had brought against a rental car company.

Rilya was sent to live with Graham, who claims to be her paternal grandmother, and Graham’s sister Pamela in April 2000. She stayed with the sisters until January 2001 when, Geralyn Graham says, a state child-welfare worker took Rilya away for evaluation.

The girl was supposed to receive monthly state visits, but state workers didn’t report the child missing until April 25--15 months after Graham says the child was taken from her.

Kathleen Kearney, head of the Florida Department of Children & Families, has said the girl isn’t anywhere in the state system.

When DNA samples Friday ruled out that a body found in Missouri was Rilya, Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez disclosed that the Graham sisters had each failed a polygraph test. He wouldn’t say what questions were asked or where the sisters showed deception.

“Everybody involved in this case is being investigated. Nobody is immune,” Alvarez said, answering questions of whether charges were forthcoming.

Attorney Ed Shohat, who is representing the sisters for free, criticized the disclosure and said police “had to find a way to turn attention on someone else” to deflect concern they are no closer to finding Rilya.

Court records involving Geralyn Graham show others have questioned her credibility, including her own sister.

In a landlord-tenant dispute after Rilya’s disappearance, Pamela Graham sent a letter to the court saying she was Geralyn Graham’s guardian because her sister “now suffers from dementia” because of a 1996 van accident, the court records show.

Geralyn Graham’s memory was vague to nonexistent in a deposition with Alamo Rent-A-Car in a personal-injury lawsuit stemming from that 1996 accident, in which Pamela Graham backed over her sister. Geralyn Graham refused hospital treatment but later claimed debilitating head injuries.

In a January 2000 deposition in the case, Geralyn Graham said she couldn’t remember her street address but had it written down. She didn’t know her Social Security number because “somebody stole my purse.”

A birth certificate found by Alamo indicates Geralyn Graham was born Geraldine Thomas in Greenville, Miss., on Jan. 14, 1946. Alamo also turned up an assortment of Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, along with 15 aliases.

“Clearly scammers and criminals can be injured and are entitled to damages from the party causing their injury,” Geralyn Graham’s attorney Bambi Blum wrote in the Alamo suit in January 2001, the month Rilya disappeared.

Albert Zbik, Geralyn Graham’s psychologist, said she was “far too uneducated and unsophisticated” to fake symptoms she didn’t have.

“You can’t prove she’s malingering,” the judge in the case said, citing “a 25-year documented history of a major mental health problem” and no Alamo experts to discount her doctors.

Judge Norman Gerstein has refused to dismiss the lawsuit, and it has been on hold since Alamo filed for bankruptcy protection in November.

Shohat, the Grahams’ attorney, said he doesn’t believe Geralyn Graham has dementia but that she suffers from severe arthritis pain.