Gone | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

We really left overnight. You know, I had a job. I was working for a semiconductor firm just outside Santa
Cruz, and I just one day didn't go to work. This is Karen Palmer. That's not the
name she was born with. She changed it in 1989 after she and her new husband and two daughters went on the run.
Her children, Amy and Erin, were 3 and 7. What did you tell your daughters about
what was happening? I you know, the little one, she was so little she didn't understand
anything. Erin was enough older that she knew what was happening around her on some level.
And we told her we're going to go live somewhere where we're safe. Erin never told a soul.
I think, you know, somewhere inside her she knew she knew that it was important, and
she wanted to to help. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. For almost a year, Karen's ex-husband,
Gil, had been threatening and stalking them. It started when Karen left him. They'd been married for 8 years.
Karen met Gil when she was 17. He owned the office supply company where she worked as a secretary.
Gil was talkative. You know, it's like he he could gab a million miles an hour, and
he had tons of friends, and he had this successful business. He was very charismatic,
and he would tell these incredible stories about having grown up in New York and having been in the army
and starting the business and he uh was a good storyteller and that interested me.
So, we would just sit there and at a certain point he asked me, "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
And I was taken aback. And he said, "You don't have to answer me right now. Why don't you think about
it? And we can talk about it another time." And there was something about this approach that was so gentle that I I
felt, "Well, why not? Why not? I like him. Maybe I could be his girlfriend." When I think back on it now, I think
often, you know, what did he think he was doing with somebody my age? How old was he?
He was 36 to my 17. Karen and Gil dated for 7 years. They broke up a few times. Once Karen caught Gil cheating on her,
but then they would always get back together. They got married in 1980. They had two
children. Gil was often out late with people who Karen didn't know. He'd come home drunk
a lot. Once he came home with a bruised chest because he'd crashed their car. Another time, the police showed up at
their house looking for Gil. Karen didn't know why. He was doing things that I wasn't aware
of. Uh he he was, you know, selling stolen merchandise and I didn't know that he
had multiple forms of identification. He had several driver's licenses in different names.
And I was just kind of flabbergasted at it, but he would pull that out at parties like a like a party trick that
he had been able to do this. And I thought it was just a party trick. One skill locked himself in the
bathroom. Karen thought he was doing drugs. When he opened the door, he showed her a
gun. He held it up to his head and then pointed it at her stomach. She was pregnant at the time with their
second daughter. He said it wasn't loaded, but when she hit the gun out of his hand, it went off
in the sink. She thought about leaving, but she says at the time she still loved Gil.
They'd been together for about a decade and she couldn't imagine a life without him.
You know, you have the frog being put into water and then the water boils. That's the standard metaphor that people
use. I think of the the things that went on between us as I wasn't uh physically abused in the way where I
was, you know, beaten. The abuse was more, I guess what they call now, coercive control.
Though there were physical elements to it, you know, he could be bullying and looming and shoving and you know, doing
that kind of stuff. And I didn't know anyone who was a victim of domestic violence
and so it never occurred to me and I didn't think of myself that way. In 1988, Karen and Gil were living just
north of San Francisco. They went down to Los Angeles for business a lot. Sometimes they took the
kids. They stayed at their friend Vinnie's house. Vinnie had worked for Gil at the office
supply company. Karen and Vinnie stayed up late talking with each other. At some point, it became clear to both
of us that we were unhappy in our marriages. And we just kind of looked at each other
and thought, "Oh, you." You know, we had very strong feelings for each other and
um it was just kind of it was it was a surprise and it was certainly not a convenient surprise. It was it was very
dangerous and awful to have realized this. Karen and Vinnie both filed for divorces.
When Karen told Gil, she didn't tell him about Vinnie. But then, Vinnie's wife found out about
Karen. And so, she called up Gil and told him. And that was that was kind of the
beginning of the end. That's when the threats started. Gil moved out of their apartment.
But one day, Karen came home and realized he had gone through her things. He had cut up photos from their wedding
and he had burned some of Karen's old family photographs. She said she found a bullet on top of
the stove. Karen decided she had to move out of their apartment. I rented a place for me and the girls in
Santa Cruz, which was 90 mi south of where we were living in Marin. Uh because my attorney told me that I
could go 90 mi without having to petition the court. And I thought, "Well, I'll go far enough
that he can see the girls, but he has to call me to set up a time. Like I have to know what he's doing. He
can't just show up on my doorstep. And that turned out to be he could definitely show up on my
doorstep. The distance didn't make any difference to him. Gil asked to meet her for lunch. Karen
agreed. She thought he wanted to talk about their daughters. But when she got there, he threatened to
take away the kids if Karen stayed with Vinnie. Later, Karen found rotten meat in her
front yard. Another time, she found her tire slashed. She suspected Gil. I mean, he got he got very, very scary
very fast. Um he told me at some point that he was going to cut my head off and put
it in the refrigerator for our daughters to find. Did you report him to the police?
You know, I I was for a long time I was really afraid to report him to the police because
he was the kind of person that it would make everything for me and the girls worse if I reported him. You know,
he would be like, "Oh, you think you're going to get, you know, some kind of protective order? I don't believe in
protective orders." There were no anti-stalking laws in California at the time. The state
wouldn't have any until 1990, the first in the country. Once, Gil showed up at Karen's job.
He said he wanted to tell her co-workers that she was a cheat and a liar. When Karen walked him outside, he
headbutted her. Karen told her lawyer about it, but her lawyer said it didn't sound like her
injuries were that bad. Karen found out that Gil had at with her lawyer. And he said, "Gil seemed like a nice
guy." Once, Vinnie found dynamite on his truck. He called the sheriff's department.
Gil had been calling and leaving death threats on his answering machine. Vinnie had even filed reports with the
police. But the officers said they couldn't do anything. They didn't have proof it was Gil.
For a long time, Karen hadn't wanted to tell her mother what was happening. But she finally did.
I didn't want my mom to know how bad the marriage was. And I didn't like it that she didn't
like him. So, I was always glossing things over and trying to present him in the best possible light.
So, when all this stuff finally broke and I told her she was initially like she she didn't
know what to make of it. But she was supportive. And at one point Gil called her up and
he was trying to convince her what a terrible person I was. And she just wasn't having it.
And I thought at the time, "Well, what do you think? You really think my mother is going to take your side over mine?"
At the end of the school year, Karen's older daughter Erin went to visit her mother in Carlsbad. About 90 miles out
of Los Angeles. They went shopping, they went to the beach. You know, she made her milkshakes
every night. Uh my daughter was really happy to be with her grandmother. When it came time for her to come home
again, my mother was supposed to take her to the airport and put her on a plane.
And just before they were due to leave, Gil showed up. Gil told Karen's mother that he was in
town visiting family. He was going to be flying back to San Francisco that day. He said he could fly home with Erin.
Karen's mother called her. And I was flabbergasted that he even knew she was there.
And that he was able to just show up on mom's doorstep. So, my mother you know, I was on the phone with her
and she was running this past me and I was extremely unhappy. But my mother said, "I'll I'll see her onto
the plane. You know, what can happen? She'll be on the plane with him. They'll get off the plane. There she is.
Everything will be fine. You know, you'll be in San Francisco International Airport."
So, I agreed to that. But they got to the airport late. So, Karen's mother let Erin and Gil go
inside without her. And they went inside. And this was in the days before there were security
lines and you could just go up to the gate and purchase a ticket. So, Gil took Erin instead of going to
the gate that was the flight up to San Francisco, he took her to a gate that was going to New York.
And she made kind of a stink. You know, she's like, "Well, I don't know. We're not going to New York. We're going home
to mommy." And so, he wound up buying a ticket for her flight. Uh her original flight up to San
Francisco. So, he got on the plane with her. And she told me later that he was mad at her
and wouldn't talk to her on the plane. When the plane landed in San Francisco, it was after midnight.
Karen was waiting with her 3-year-old daughter, Amy. She saw Gil and Aaron coming out of the
gate. I had Amy in my arms and she wants to get down and she's complaining. And he stuck his arms out.
And just as a reflex, I gave Amy to him to hold. So, we start walking towards baggage claim
and I see him he's ahead of me by, you know, a fair amount of distance, but I can see him and he's got Amy up on his
shoulder and her little face is just kind of bouncing over over his shoulder looking
back at me. And I thought, well, okay, he can get ahead of me and then we'll go to baggage
claim and, you know, it'll be okay. So, meanwhile, I'm walking along with Aaron and I look at her and she looks
completely stricken. And so, I knew something was wrong with her, but I didn't know what it was and I
knelt on the ground to hug her and, you know, hold her and reassure her. And then when I stood back up,
Gil and Amy were gone. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal
Plus. When Karen Palmer couldn't find her ex-husband Gil and her daughter Amy, she
called the airport police. Their response was what is your custody arrangement? And the custody had not been settled
yet. And so, they said, "Well, he has as much right to her as you do and we can't
really do anything. Karen and Aaron stayed at the airport for hours until morning.
The police had put out an alert for Gil, but they didn't find anything. The next day, Karen and Vinnie started
calling around airports and bus stations looking for Gil and Amy. They called Gil's old jobs and his
friends and family, including his first wife, Rita. She and I, there was not a lot of
no love lost between us. Um and yet, she called me every single day that Amy was
gone. She told me, "Make sure that Aaron sleeps with you because he'll come in the window and take her, too."
Karen's lawyer had asked for an emergency custody hearing, but it had been scheduled for a week
later. Until then, they couldn't file kidnapping charges. But, her lawyer had learned that there
was a warrant out for Gil's arrest for not appearing in court for drunk driving.
The police in San Francisco said if they found Gil, they could arrest him for that.
At the custody hearing, a judge issued an order for Karen to have sole custody of both Aaron and Amy,
but they still had no idea where Gil and Amy were. The police in Santa Cruz had also come
to Karen's apartment and put a tap on her phone. So, if Gil called, they could ask the
phone company to try and trace his location. And they told me, "If and when he calls,
keep him on as long as you can because Santa Cruz, where I was living, is uh an old town and the kind of switching
stations that they had was it it's not like on TV where they turn on a computer and 2 seconds later they locate where
the caller is. This is it had to go from switching station to switching station to
switching station all the way to his final location. 10 days after Gil disappeared from the
airport, he called Karen. They spoke for 45 minutes. It was the worst phone call of my life. It was a
harrowing. It was just awful. But I kept him on and at the end of it, they still couldn't get him. They didn't
know where he was. Gil said he would bring Amy back if Karen stopped seeing Vinnie.
She agreed. Gil gave her an address in San Francisco and told her to meet him there the next
evening at 8:30. He told her not to tell the police. And at this point I was torn between
having police there to grab him or terrified that if he sensed police presence that he would do something to Amy
or he would vanish, that he he wouldn't show up. You know, he kept telling me that if you don't do what I want, I'll
I'll take her again and I'll take Erin, too or I'll just kill everybody. So, I made the decision not to have the
police there when I went to get her and I went by myself. Gil told Karen to meet him on the corner
of Eddie and Hyde Street in downtown San Francisco. When she got there, she saw Gil holding
Amy. Karen saw that he had cut Amy's hair and dyed it brown. The whole conversation was
"Did you mean what you said? Do you promise? You know what will happen if you don't keep your promise."
And you know, this went on and on for several minutes until finally he did give her to me and I went rushing over
to the car to open the back door and put her in her car seat and I heard him call
my name. So, I looked over at him and he had lifted up his shirt and what he wanted to show me was the
the gun that he had tucked into the waistband of his pants. Karen got in the car with Amy and drove
to a diner where Vinnie was waiting. Karen says she was worried Gil had followed her.
All three of them sat on one side of the booth so she and Vinnie could face the door.
They had talked a few times about leaving California but they knew it would be hard
and Karen didn't know what Gil would do if they left town. It wasn't until getting Amy back and
seeing the gun and realizing that it would never be over. It was never going to be over.
That we decided, okay, that's it. We have to do it. Karen and Vinnie decided they would move
somewhere far away and they would change their names so Gil couldn't track them down.
They agreed to leave as soon as possible. Vinnie had known of this uh this bookstore out in the valley that
was a survivalist bookstore and they sold things in there like, you know, how to how to live off the grid
but they also had stuff on how to change your identity. So, we had this guidebook
on how to assume a new identity. They started getting ready. Karen and Vinnie got married quickly.
They cashed out their bank accounts and sold their cars and most of their things.
They bought a used Subaru and packed it with clothes, bedding, Aaron and Amy's toys, and a single pot and pan.
And then they put Amy and Aaron in the car and drove out of California. They didn't know where they were going
yet. Karen had always said she needed to live by the ocean. And she thought Gil would look for them
first on the coast. So they headed east. They ended up in Boulder, Colorado. We weren't even sure we were going to
stay there. But we kind of liked it. We were in a motel and we were wandering around the town
and it was within driving distance of Denver. So when it came time to look for jobs, if we couldn't find anything in
Boulder, there was a big city nearby. So maybe we could we could find some employment there.
Karen found a job posting in the classifieds for a proofreader at a book publisher called Paladin Press.
She didn't want to give references to her past jobs, but when she got an interview, they
didn't ask. When she came in, she saw some of the titles they sold. 21 Techniques of Silent Killing,
Deadly Brew, Advanced Improvised Explosives, and Hit Man, a technical manual for
independent contractors. We did an episode about this book. It's called The Manual.
Karen got nervous about the work. She decided to look for another job. She started doing graphic design work
around town. Vinnie found a job finishing furniture. They picked new names. Karen chose hers because it sounded like
her real name, Carrie, and Palmer because it sounded like her actual maiden name.
She thought if she slipped up while she signed something, it would look close enough that no one would notice.
Vinnie picked a new last name and started going by John Vincent. His real name had been Vincent John.
He told everyone just to call him Vinnie. Karen made them new birth certificates.
She decided it would be easiest to make them both from New York where Vinnie was
actually born. His New York State certificate was basically just a photostat where the top
half of it was you know, white typewriter type on a black background and the bottom was, you
know, the signatures and that sort of thing. So, it was not impossible to duplicate it.
She copied pieces of the birth certificate at different copy shops around town so no one would realize what
she was doing. She took all the pieces home, cut them out, and glued them together onto a new
sheet of paper. She painted over the edges of each piece of cut paper with black ink.
When she made copies, it all looked like one piece. Vinnie's book about changing your
identity had information about how to get an embossing stamp for any state. They got one with the New York State
seal and stamped their fake birth certificates. Karen kept Amy and Aaron's first names
but changed their last names to Palmer. I would be so worried about what new names and how am I going to get the kids
enrolled in school? I mean, were you nervous about how this was going to work? Oh god, yes.
It was terrible. It was terrible. Um but the reason it worked out is because um it It a different world then. You
know, states were very cut off from each other in terms of their documents and their their records.
So, it was not all computerized. You couldn't connect somebody just by their social security number and track them
all around the country. When they first got to Boulder, they'd made a deal with the real estate agent
to live in a condo for free if they repainted it. For the first week, they didn't go
outside much. It rained for days and they were too nervous to be seen. Karen got a TV from Goodwill for Aaron
and Amy to watch while she and Vinnie painted. They stayed in the condo for a few
months, but that fall the real estate agent called and said that the condo had sold.
They would need to move out. But, he said there was a house for sale that they might like.
He took them to see it. Vinnie loved it. Karen was worried about how they would buy it.
They still didn't even have bank accounts, so they couldn't get a loan and they didn't want to use their real
names for a credit check. They decided they had to tell the real estate agent that they were in hiding.
He offered to talk with the owner and then they had a phone call with her. She wanted to know why they could only
pay in cash. She asked if they were drug dealers. They told her about Gil. The owner agreed to skip the credit
report and take their down payment in cash. Karen enrolled her daughters at a private school.
She thought they would ask fewer questions. She said she didn't have any of their
past school records because they'd been homeschooled until now. Karen says she worried all the time
about Gil showing up in Boulder. I never knew. I mean, maybe he was driving all over the place and talking
to people and hiring private detectives. You know, I don't know. Once Karen woke up in the middle of the
night and saw Vinnie looking out their bedroom window. She thought Gil was outside.
Vinnie said he could see a police officer standing just outside their fence. A mountain lion had gotten into their
backyard and the police were waiting for animal control. Another time Karen and Vinnie had put
the girls to bed and Karen went upstairs to watch TV. Suddenly, she heard someone who wasn't
Vinnie calling up the stairs. It turned out to be a police officer checking because someone had reported
gunshots in the neighborhood. For a while Karen couldn't figure out how to get new social security numbers
or driver's licenses. We had this kind of catch-22 thing where in Colorado we couldn't get social security numbers
because you had to show a photo ID if you were an adult. You know, if you were not getting a number as a baby or a
child. And we couldn't get a photo ID without a social security number. You needed that
to get a driver's license. So, we were kind of stuck. But, I knew that back in California
you could get a driver's license without having to have other photo ID. So, we made this trip to my mother's uh
my mother's place that was specifically to get California driver's licenses. They left in the middle of the week in
the middle of the night. A friend of her mother's who lived next door let them use a utility bill with
her address on it. It was the first time her mother had seen them in a year. We used our our forged documents and we
went to two different DMVs so they wouldn't connect us together. And, you know, we made up some baloney about
being New Yorkers who'd never had to drive. They went back to Colorado. After a few weeks, her mother's neighbor
sent them their new licenses. Then they went to the Social Security office. Vinnie said he needed a new card for
work. Karen said she'd just gotten out of a rough relationship with an older man who
had paid for everything. She'd never worked, so had a Social Security number. Before 1987, Social Security numbers
weren't issued at birth. Do you remember the first time you used these fake documents?
Uh yes, we used them to open a bank account. It took them two tries. The first time Karen went on her own.
After she filled out the paperwork, the bank officer noticed Karen had a new Social Security number.
She could tell by the way the numbers were sequenced. The bank officer said she had to check
with her manager about opening the account. While she was away, Karen took her documents and left.
Later, Karen and Vinnie went together to a bank branch in a supermarket. This time, no one said anything about
their paperwork. Karen kept in touch with her mother, but never told her where she was. I had a
regular sort of phone date with her where I would call her from a phone booth at the supermarket.
About a year after they moved to Boulder, Karen's mother said she had to tell her something.
My mother's mobile home was broken into. The whole place had been turned over, and nothing was taken except her address
book. We'll be right back. Karen kept expecting to hear something from Gil, like a summons to appear in court to
negotiate custody for Aaron and Amy. At the time that we left, they had given me sole custody
uh because of the kidnapping. But with the caveat that he can petition the court and try to get his parental
rights restored and you know, normal visitation and all the things that divorce families deal with.
And as far as I know, he never did any of it. After 4 years, she and Vinnie decided it
was safe to tell their families where they were. They went to visit Vinnie's parents in
Florida. They'd both been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Karen and Vinnie hadn't been able to be
around for their surgeries while they were in hiding. Did you ever say to Vinnie, "I'm so
sorry I got you into this"? Or do you think he knew what he was signing up for? He knew Gil.
I think he he he knew what he was in for and we were so bonded to each other. It's
like we had a version of a wartime romance, you know, where like the bombs were going off all around us.
And so we felt so connected to each other and so connected to the girls and so devoted to the idea of making a safe
place for all of us that he has never for for even 1 second expressed any any resentment, any anger,
any regret. Um he has felt that we we did what we had to do. In 1994, Karen's mother had news for
her. She'd heard from Gil's stepdaughter that Gil was in prison somewhere in New York.
Karen later learned Gil had been convicted of criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to two to six years in
prison, but he'd gotten parole. She didn't know where he went after that. In 2005, Karen had been away from
California and living under her fake name for over 15 years. She'd started writing and she'd
published two novels. Her daughters were grown up. One had graduated college and the other had
enlisted in the Navy. She and Vinnie started talking about moving back to Los Angeles.
They both missed it. They thought maybe if they went back under their new names, it would be safe.
It had been a very long time and the city was huge. Sometimes Karen would Google Gil's name.
She usually didn't get a lot of search results. Usually just Gil's appeal to the New
York Supreme Court to have his conviction for weapons possessions overturned. By this point it had been 20 years and
there is not a day in which I did not think about him. And filled with apprehension that maybe
he will find us after all. But I was trying to trying to get myself out of the habit of checking because it
had been so long and I thought, you know, I can't live like this. In 2006, Karen hired a private
investigator. He'd been recommended by a friend. She learned that Gil was back in
California in a town called Santa Maria, just 150 miles from Los Angeles. The investigator couldn't find a phone
number or address or any utilities connected to him. He said if she wanted more information,
she could hire a local investigator. She decided not to. A couple of years later, in 2008,
Karen's daughters were home for Christmas. They gave Vinnie a present. It was a book about how to adopt in
California. And when he opened the present, you know, he's kind of looking at it and he
and I were initially kind of baffled in our, you know, dense parental unit ways.
And the girls were laughing. And what it was was they wanted Vinnie to formally adopt them.
We had never done that because we didn't want our names all associated with each other
in case he was looking for us. So, you know, it was very emotional Christmas, lots of, you know, crying and
and I don't know, it was lovely. Um after dinner, the three of them went out for a walk and I was sitting in the
living room and looking at this guidebook and all of a sudden I thought, "Oh, but what about Gil? Like what does
it mean for the birth father? Is are they going to have to contact him? You know, what
what does all this mean?" And, you know, I looking through the index and I found, well, they're adults,
so they don't have to get in contact with him and I was reassured by that, but he was
absolutely on my mind. Later that night, Karen couldn't sleep. So, I got up and I went into my office
and booted up the computer and ran a Google search on him. And initially all that came up was the same
stuff that always comes up, which is very little. And then I thought I would add a search term,
Santa Maria. And what came up was a little article that had appeared in the the Santa Maria paper
about a man, a homeless man, who'd been found dead in a local park. And it turned out that that that person
was Gil. Karen went to Santa Maria. She told the coroner she was Gil's ex-wife. Karen later got to see Gil's case files
at the courthouse. He'd been arrested 18 times in 4 years for burglary, driving under the
influence, and assault. He died from a heart attack. What was your daughter's reaction?
Uh they were mainly relieved. You know, where they were like finally it's over. It's finally
over. Um I think, you know, I was the one who was a little more overt about being kind of grief-stricken
by this. It was, you know, of course I felt relief, but the larger emotion was grief.
Karen also learned that Gil had been evaluated by court psychologists twice while in jail.
Their notes were in his file. I kind of came to the conclusion after reading this
that I I'm not sure I was on his mind at all. Do you ever doubt the decision to go into hiding?
I did for many years. Uh I felt very guilty and I wondered if it was necessary to
disappear. And the thing I landed on was that all I could go on was how he was, what he did.
And so I I I don't regret it. I feel sad, but I don't regret it. In 2009, Karen and Vinnie started trying
to merge their real identities with the fake ones they'd made 20 years earlier. How hard a process is that? It seems
very complicated. Oh my god, it was not fun. It It took years to straighten it out.
Um we knew that the big issue was social security and the IRS. And we initially tried to hire a lawyer
to straighten this stuff out for us. People wouldn't wouldn't pursue it for us. So Vinnie and I finally decided that
we were just going to have to take care of this ourselves, and we would have to come clean and throw ourselves on their
mercy, basically. They went to the IRS first. An agent listened to Karen explain what
had happened with Gil. The agent told them the first thing they need to do was get their social security
numbers corrected. At social security, we got this other woman, and I had laid out our documents, our original birth
certificates and the phony ones, and she kind of swept everything up and said, "I can refer you for criminal
prosecution for fraud, and I might do that." For a while, they didn't hear anything.
And then they got news from the social security office. And it it it was okay in the end, but it was
it was nerve-racking. And I think she decided not to try to seek criminal charges because
we didn't do anything to defraud anybody. You know, that that's that's sort of the criteria. Like, did you do
it to get out of paying taxes? Did you do it to to swindle somebody in in some kind of a business deal? Did you do it
to skip out on your your credit card debt? Um we had always gone way in the other direction. Like, when
we filed our taxes, we didn't take the deductions we were entitled to because we were afraid of drawing attention to
ourselves. So, it wasn't like we we owed money anywhere. And I think they finally
looked at us and said, "Okay, we're going to let this go." Karen says it took a few years to get
everything completely straightened out. Karen, Vinnie, and her daughters' fake names are now their real names.
They've all changed them legally. She says that after so long, she's gotten used to being Karen.
Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.
Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena
Sillison, and Megan Canney. Our engineer is Veronica Symmetti. Julian Alexander makes original
illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this is criminal.com.
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One night in 1989, Karen Palmer got in her car with her husband and two daughters and drove away from their home in California. They didn’t tell anyone where they were going.

Karen Palmer’s memoir is She’s Under Here (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/karen-palmer/shes-under-here/9781643757544/).

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 348 originally published January 16, 2026. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-348-gone-1-16-2026/

Music in this episode: “The Telling” by Blue Dot Sessions “Lull” by Blue Dot Sessions “Kovd” by Blue Dot Sessions “Triana” by Blue Dot Sessions “Tralaga” by Blue Dot Sessions “Median Point” by Blue Dot Sessions “Gaddy” by Blue Dot Sessions “Astrisx” by Blue Dot Sessions “Tessalit” by Blue Dot Sessions “Kalsted” by Blue Dot Sessions “First Results” by Blue Dot Sessions “Morning Glare” by Blue Dot Sessions “When the Guests Have Left” by Blue Dot Sessions “Come As You Are” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Karen Palmer shares her harrowing story of escaping an abusive marriage and living in hiding with her children to avoid her stalker ex-husband.

Key points

The Threats Escalate. Gil's behavior becomes increasingly threatening, leading Karen to fear for her safety.
Karen's Escape Plan. After a harrowing experience, Karen and Vinnie decide to change their identities and flee.
The Real Estate Dilemma. Karen and Vinnie face challenges buying a house while in hiding.
A Christmas Surprise. Karen's daughters gift Vinnie a book about adoption, leading to an emotional moment.
The Search for Gil. Karen discovers Gil's fate after years of uncertainty.
Facing the Past. Karen learns about Gil's troubled life after his death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think, you know, somewhere inside her she knew it was important.

Karen reflects on her daughter's understanding of their situation.

0:56WatchJun 19, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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