Federal investigators are asking that two people living in Hawaii under the assumed names of dead Texas children be held without bail.
According to government documents, Walter Glenn Primrose and Gwynn Darle Morrison were arrested Friday morning.
Government records allege the couple used the identities of babies from Texas who died in the late 1960s to obtain Social Security cards, passports, and driver’s licenses.
Bobby Edward Fort, the baby investigators allege was used by Primrose, was born in Dallas, government records indicate. He was born in 1967 and died during that same year. Julie Lyn Montague, the child investigators allege was used by Morrison, was born in 1968 in Burnet, Texas, outside of Austin. She also died shortly thereafter and is buried in Marble Falls.
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Citing government records, federal investigators allege that in the late 1980s Primrose and Morrison were issued driver's licenses and identification cards with the identities of Fort and Montague.
Government documents also allege that Primrose fraudulently enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1994 under Fort's name and remained there until his retirement in 2016. After retirement, investigators said he used that experience to gain employment with a Department of Defense contractor.
In a Motion to Detain Defendants Without Bail, federal investigators said Primrose and Morrison are a flight risk. They added that Primrose held a secret clearance and was a highly skilled avionics electrical technician who "would be able to communicate surreptitiously with others if released from pretrial confinement." Investigators also said it is believed that the couple had additional aliases, that Primrose did not report all of his international travel and that a close friend of Morrison's told federal agents that she lived in Romania while it was within the Communist Bloc.
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Pictures in court records entered as evidence to support the Motion to Detain showed Primrose and Morrison in uniforms that allegedly belonged to the KGB, the former Soviet Union spy agency.
Hawaii News Now, the NBC affiliate in Honolulu, cited an unnamed state department official claiming the couple was actually Russian spies, though those allegations are not listed among the current charges filed by the U.S. Attorney.
Both Primrose and Morrison have been charged with aggravated identity theft, lying on passport applications, and conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States, the latter dealing with conspiring with each other to make false or fictitious statements and representations within the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense.
A hearing on the Motion to Detain is expected to be held Thursday.
