Imagine the following scenario: You discover that in 48 hours, the police are going to come to your house to arrest you for a murder you didn’t commit. You learn that the evidence against you is going to be overwhelming, and despite your innocence, you’re convinced that if the police find you, you’ll end up spending the rest of your life in prison– or worse. What do you do?
Though I’m never seldom one to advocate breaking the law, I can tell you what I’d do: I’d get the heck outta Dodge. Here’s my five-part plan for falling off the map.
1. Get money. Withdraw as much cash as you can from your bank. Though it might not be over $10,000– which means you’d have to declare it– you still might consider taping it to your body while going through the airport so as not to arouse suspicion. Also, I bet you’d feel pretty cool doing that.
2. Book a plane ticket. Just because you’ll soon be wanted for murder and fleeing the country, that’s no reason to get cheated on airfare. Why not book using Kayak or, better yet, LastMinuteTravel.com? Also, it might be wise to fly into a major hub and travel to your eventual destination overland– less of a paper trail.
3. Leave the country. Sure, that’s a no-brainer. But where to go? The clever escapee will take note of the countries with whom the US (or your home country) does not have an extradition treaty. Countries like Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Vietnam, Mongolia, and China. Since the US has no extradition agreement with them, these countries are not obligated to send fugitive US citizens back to America. There are many non-extraditing countries (full list here), but they may not be first on your list of places to live: Sudan, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and Chad, to name a few.
For me, even though Russia has always interested me, I think my money will go further in Vietnam. Plus, I hear the food is excellent. Vietnam it is, though I might fly into Bangkok to throw the authorities off my scent.
4. Obtain employment. I’ve got a virtually unused TEFL certificate stored in a closet somewhere, so finding a decent English-teaching job probably wouldn’t be too difficult. The Job Listings over at Dave’s ESL Cafe show there’s plenty of work available in Vietnam, though the pay isn’t exactly through the roof. Still, the average day teaching ESL, even for little pay, has got to beat the average day in the clink– though some of you teachers might disagree.
5. Cut off contact with home. Yes, it’s sad, but if you’re trying to fall off the grid, daily e-mails home won’t do you any favors. If you must, write e-mails or postcards only from big cities that you’re just passing through. To be elusive you’ve got to be disciplined, dammit.
Finally, if you don’t fancy this (admittedly somewhat cowardly) globe-trotting plan, I guess you’ve got 48 hours to follow OJ’s lead: work to find the real killer. How’s that going for him by the way?
How ’bout you? What’s your plan?