in one he wrote, like mom said, try out your options. you can always kill yourself later. one of those options was to try to take on the identity of a real person. he suggested someone with aids, cancer or some form of terminal disease. that was particularly disturbing to jaime, who, as gordon weaver knew, had had cancer and his son, who is hiv positive. it sent chills through me when i read it. jon says gordon weaver apparently chose well, picking his family with more of its share of dysfunction and problems though they always found common ground before, then slowly inexorably widening the gap, preying on weaknesses until the family broke apart. he made himself so indispensable, so loved and so cared for by part of our family, that he divided our family to
since she seemed infatuated with david 18 years her junior and together they were doing a good job raising the grandsons, jaime felt his best option was to step aside on one condition. he says i ve made the decision but before i do that, i want you to help me find out who this david carson really is. i said, what do you mean? i thought you guys already did a background check. well, yes, but we didn t get satisfactory results. he had ran the social security number and it came back as invalid. his father had ignored that problem with the social security number because no crimes were found in david s past. jon suddenly had a very bad feeling. i just had this horrible like knot and feeling in my stomach. my partner said your face is completely white. you look like you ve seen a ghost. i said, no, i think that my friend was right. i think that guy was on america s most wanted. jon immediately logged on to the show s website and started scanning the mugshots of men who had appeared
in oregon, a friend of jon s called to say he caught the tale end of america s most wanted and had seen a picture of a man who looked eerily like david. jon immediately called his mom. what was your mother s response? ridiculous. that s just absurd. she said, honey, we already did a background check on him and he came out clean. i said, mom, this is really serious. i can just call them. they can verify. he doesn t even have to know. was she game? she s like, no, no, you re just going to create a lot of heartache for someone who has already been through enough, losing his family and it s not him. it can t be him. jon tried to put the matter out of his mind but was still deeply troubled that david carson seemed to be splitting the family apart. he spent less and less time at the ranch.
since the fall of 1999 shortly before david arrived in oregon. that s when he saw it, a photo of a man who looked a lot like david carson in a show that aired in late 2000. he downloaded the picture and blew to it up to an 8x10 for a closer inspection. when you looked at it, what did you think? he changed the hair color, he didn t have the gray, he had a goatee and put on weight. but i thought this really looks a lot like him. trembling, hardly able to believe the evidence, jon rushed over to his dad s home in eugene, showing the photo to his father and a visiting friend. i pick the picture down and said does this look like anybody you know? and they both said, it s david. and i go, well, it s not david. his name is gordon weaver. and he murdered his wife in minnesota. now, how would they get rid of the impostor before something awful happened to the family?
then on mother s day, 2004, he decided to make a special effort to see his mom. he was shocked by how the situation had deteriorated. their close family friend was there as well. david will not come and eat at the table with jaime. that s how the disrespect had grown to that magnitude. jon said his dad seemed utterly defeated, but rather than tell david carson to leave his home, he decided he should be the one to go. so then two days later my father calls me on the phone. he says, i ve come to a decision. i m not going to go back to the ranch anymore. i m not going to live there. i m not wanted there, i m not happy there. i get a terrible knot in my stomach every time i drive up the road. and then he showed me some boxes. they even packed my things and sent me with this stuff. they said they don t want it there in the house. so i m not wanted there. indeed, his dad even seemed a little afraid of the stranger. and there was more. so i decide i m going to give them the house, i