A STOLEN LIFE

STRANGE WORLD Last year a man calling himself CLAY WORLEY opened a bank account at Comerica. He obtained a Texas driver’s license, was approved for several credit cards, filled out the forms for a passport, signed up for a post office box, even applied for a membership at Sam’s Wholesale Club. The actions in themselves were hardly newsworthy. The only problem was that Clay Worley had died 24 years ago at age 17.

In June. Dallas bond trader BRUCE BROOKS FRY turned himself in to authorities after an investigation by the U.S. State Department revealed that Fry had methodically built a false identity in the name of one of his classmates at Highland Park High School many years before. As D Magazine went to press he was scheduled to be sentenced in a Dallas federal court.

Apparently. Fry remembered Worley (the 1967 HPHS annual was dedicated to his memory) and obtained his birth certificate-all that was needed to begin compiling documents for his new identity. The scheme unraveled when officials noticed that the driver’s license Fry was using to apply for a passport was less than six months old-unusual for a man supposedly 41 years old.

Fry could not be reached for comment on this story. But his attorney told the federal judge that Fry was simply trying to avoid a paternity suit. Needless to say, the Worley family endured anxious months while the State Department was cracking the scam. “For almost a year. I wondered what nefarious deeds he was doing in my son’s name,” says Worley’s mother, who asked that her name not be used. “That just shocked me so.”