Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003133582
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Medium
The case began in October, when police in Topeka, Kan., found the man wandering without identification. He said he didn't remember who he was or how he came to be there.
He was known only as John Doe until Feb. 10, when relatives who saw him on television identified him as 53-year-old Melvin Wolf, a small-appliance repairman who disappeared in August from his sister's home in Angleton, Texas.
He was known only as John Doe until Feb. 10, when relatives who saw him on television identified him as 53-year-old Melvin Wolf, a small-appliance repairman who disappeared in August from his sister's home in Angleton, Texas.
Wolf's family has taken the man in and, short of fingerprinting, there seems little doubt that Doe was Wolf - at least for much of his life.
On Feb. 28, a Topeka TV station reported that Wolf maintained the separate identity of Jim J. King, a successful insurance salesman from Burbank, Calif., who hasn't been seen since 1978.
On March 6, a third identity surfaced - that of Robert J. Hart, a Denny's restaurant employee in Washington, D.C.
"I was just now accepting that I'm Melvin Wolf. Now I don't know who I am again," the man said recently.
Police haven't had time to run down the Hart story, but authorities believe Wolf and King are the same person, Burbank police spokesman Sgt. Don Goldberg said.
Goldberg said investigators were still seeking dental records or other proof.
King's wife, Ann, reported him missing March 31, 1978, under "suspicious circumstances." An investigation turned up nothing but King's car, found abandoned two months later in a Burbank parking lot, Goldberg said.
Authorities investigated King's insurance dealings for any misconduct, Goldberg said, but did not find enough evidence to charge the man. The investigation is still open.
Burbank police have been searching for Ann King since reports that King might be Wolf surfaced recently. So far, they haven't found her.
The man who could be King is about 6 feet tall with white hair, a weathered face and a rural accent. Wolf - or King - left Topeka on Feb. 28 to stay with Wolf's relatives in Angleton.
Wolf's sister, Donna Caskey, said the family had lost track of him for many years before he turned up in Angleton in 1986. During much of that lost time, they heard stories that Wolf was living in California, Caskey said last month.
The mysterious man and his Angleton relatives have refused to give interviews since the reports of his multiple identities.
Rick Selig, a therapist at the Topeka Psychiatric Clinic, said the man suffered from psychogenic amnesia - a total memory loss normally brought on by an extremely stressful event.
The question, Selig said, is what caused the amnesia. Selig is trying to find out through hypnotherapy.
The Pentagon says Wolf joined the Army in 1953 and was stationed in West Germany from 1957 to 1960. He left the service in 1961.
Employees of a Prudential Life Insurance Co. office in Los Angeles said they recognize the man as King, their lost colleague. They said they had assumed that King was abducted and killed in 1978.
Prudential employee Eugene Bullington said watching a TV report "was like seeing someone come back from the dead."
Herb Pierce, who hired King in the Prudential office in 1969, said King and his wife had two children. Burbank police have no record of the children, Goldberg said.
WIBW-TV in Topeka, whose reports led to the man's unfolding identities, reported that employees at a Denny's in the Washington area called claiming they had worked with someone who resembled Wolf and went by the initials R.J.
Denny's personnel files showed that a Robert J. Hart began working at the restaurant on April 7, 1978 - a week after King disappeared from Burbank. Hart moved in September 1979 to Phoenix, where he worked at another Denny's until May 1980, WIBW reported.
Although Wolf, King and Hart had different Social Security numbers, they listed the same birthplace, West Allis, Wis., and the same high school in Johnson Creek, Wis., WIBW has reported.
The school says its records show that none of the three men studied there.
Wolf's birthday is Sept. 27, 1936; King and Hart each listed their birthdays as Sept. 26. But the years were different: King said he was born in 1940 and Hart in 1943.
Selig said his patient had been making slow progress in remembering technical information Wolf would have known, such as appliance electronics. But he said Wolf had no "big bang" of revelations about his life.
"It's kind of preposterous to him how he could have done all this stuff," Selig said. "It's frightening to him. It's confusing."
by CNB