American news figure, arrested 4/16/1998 on a kidnapping charge of abducting his two daughters 18 years before.
Fagan met Barbara Kurth in the late ’60s at the Kenmore Club in Boston where he was working as a bouncer and she as a coat check girl. Married at the time, he told her that his wife was in an insane asylum. When they married in 1973, Barbara dropped out of school to take odd jobs while he continued school, getting his law degree. They had two daughters, Rachel in 1974 and Wendy in 1977. Fagan worked at a legal-aid clinic run by the Harvard Law School.
By 1977, their marriage was failing. The following year they had a bitter, ugly divorce with exchanged accusations of unfitness, however, Barbara gained custody of the girls.
On 10/25/1979, Fagan picked up the two little girls, aged five and two, for a weekend visit, and disappeared. Reinventing himself, he took the name of William S. Martin and moved to Key West, Florida, taking the social security number of a child who had died in Massachusetts. He also changed Wendy’s name to Lisa.
He and the girls lived comfortably, first in Key West, then in the wealthy county of Palm Beach. In 1986 he married Linda Vine, a wealthy Palm Beach widow. They divorced in the mid-1990s and he married Harriet Golding, 47, a Florida real-estate developer with whom he bought a $1.6 million waterfront Mediterranean-style mansion on the chic South Ocean Boulevard.
Fagan, as Martin, led the life of the idle rich on the fringes of Palm Beach society. He drove luxury cards, sat on the board of the Opera and became a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, which boasts an initiation fee of $75,000.
When mention of his background came up, Fagan spun grand tales, such as a “CIA connection,” founder of a think-tank and presidential advisor. He was warm, conversant and likable – and a devoted parent to his two girls. He drove them to swimming lessons daily and never missed a school function. Rachel graduated from Columbia University and began working for a philanthropy organization on Long Island, and Lisa is a senior at the University of Southern California. Both girls talk to their dad by phone every day.
Fagan’s life of deceit began to unravel in September 1997 when a source tipped a lawyer who reported to authorities that he had another identity. When he was arrested in April 1998, he faced kidnapping charges as well as an investigation on the source of his affluence. He pled guilty to kidnapping charges on 5/28/1999, Cambridge, MA. Facing up to ten years in prison for each of two counts, he will avoid incarceration under a plea agreement. The deal included 2,000 hours of community service and a $100,000 find to go to a children’s charity.