As she listened to the outlandish story pour out, slightly slurred, from her new husband’s mouth, Jessica King dismissed the tale of his family’s two-decade run from the law as the product of an overactive imagination and too many drinks.

The couple had been married two months, and now Lee King was telling her that his father, a balding local cable technician, was actually an international fugitive who had staged one of England’s most infamous bank heists.

A few weeks later, on Dec. 28, all doubts vanished. That night, she said her father-in-law appeared at the newlyweds’ home, grabbed her arm and, leaning in to fix his eyes on hers, warned her to keep quiet.

“I know you know,” she said he told her in his native British accent. “I will kill you. I will bloody kill you.”

A day earlier, Ms. King, who recounted these conversations in an interview, had been shocked to discover that her husband’s claims might in fact be true.

Sitting at a computer with two friends — who confirmed her account — she discovered an article about a famous 1993 robbery in England with a picture of the suspect, an armored car driver who made off with the equivalent of $1.5 million and disappeared with his wife and infant son, Lee, into the United States.

The man in the photo, identified as Edward Maher, was younger and thinner, with a full head of dark hair, but he was unmistakably her father-in-law, whom she knew as Michael. Read the rest of this entry »