The Impostor's Early Years

Born in 1956 on the south side of Chicago as Wayne Hudson, Pecard says that he created his first false identity at the age of 7 after being turned down for a paper route. He went back the next day to a different paper route office, gave a different name and a different age, and was given a route.

His father, Tony Hudson, was a drinker who could get violent when he was drunk. Pecard was so unhappy that he even tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists, he says. (Although Pecard has faint scars on his wrists, two of his ex-wives say they are positive these marks did not exist when they were married.)

"That little boy in that house went through hell," says his sister Adrian Hudson, who until recently thought her brother was dead. "My brother, in turn, held everything in, tucked it away and hid it and became someone else."

When he was 14, David Pecard, then known as Wayne Hudson, took a step that, in large part, determined his future: He became 18-year-old Robert Simms and joined the Army.

He was sent to Vietnam, where, he says, he was happy: "Even though I was going off to war, that didn't matter. Because I was someone. I was going to be like John Wayne."

But one night, sitting around the fire with some Army buddies, he made a mistake, he says; he told them he was 14 and was sent back.

Within months, he created a whole new identity, conning his way once again into the Army. This time he was sent to Korea. Over the next 20 years Pecard enlisted at least seven times, each time under a different name. Ironically, his jobs were rooting out other people's fraud and deception.

"At one particular time I was responsible for the security of a tactical weapons site," he says, "which means verifying security clearances, verifying identifications."

According to Army Capt. Chip Dillard, who was assigned to defend Pecard against desertion charges, his defendant was always a model soldier.

But whenever there was a threat of being discovered, he vanished: "When I reach a point where I can no longer safely be that person, then now I have one focus: I must survive and I must create a new person," he says.

When Pecard left, he often left a wife behind. In 1974, during his first tour in Korea as 17-year-old Private Wayne Simms, he married Susan Kwon. He took her to America and then disappeared when their second child was 6 days old. "He killed my heart," she says now.

This behavior is not as bad as it looks, Pecard says: "There was no intent to deceive someone. I was surviving. It's what I learned how to do. Its what I've done all my life."

In the summer of 1976, Pecard, then 19, was in between wives and stints in the Army. He moved to Houston and started working for a private investigator. He helped police arrest a man who wanted him to kill a Houston police officer.

Inspired by this experience, Pecard felt there were no limits to what he could accomplish. He studied to perfect new identities. He learned Chinese and Korean languages, and earned a black belt in karate. He took courses in medicine and the law. He earned some credentials and simply forged others, such as a degree from Columbia University.

"We're trying to build that model person," says Pecard, referring to himself plurally. "It's like raising a new child. What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, this one wants to be a lawyer so he goes to law school."

In 1984, Pecard moved to Oregon. He had learned enough law to work as a paralegal and to pose as a lawyer. He took on the case of inmate Michael Endricks and convinced a judge to release him years before he had served his full sentence.

Over the next seven years, Pecard moved through 12 states and several foreign countries. He ended up in Phoenix, where he became David Pecard. "David is my strongest person I've ever become," Pecard says. "I've worked very hard to make David an accomplished person."

Pecard started working as an emergency room assistant at a Phoenix hospital. His supervisor at the time, nurse Dawn Horvack, says he seemed to be good at his job.

In 1994 when he rejoined the Army again, this time as a military policemen, his specialty was tracking down con men. In this capacity, he was introduced to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona.

Does Pecard end up in jail? The answer may surprise you! Read "Turning Over A New Leaf?"

Produced by David Kohn;