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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
- [00:18]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
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- [00:30]
Mike Ferguson
Criminology is a true crime PO that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
- [01:04]
Mint Mobile Advertiser
Foreign
- [01:08]
Mike Morford
and welcome to episode 410 of the Criminology podcast.
- [01:12]
Mike Ferguson
I'm Mike Ferguson and this is Mike Morford.
- [01:14]
Mike Morford
Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy?
- [01:17]
Mike Ferguson
I'm doing pretty good. How you doing?
- [01:19]
Mike Morford
I'm doing great. I'm just, you know, getting ready for crime con. We're, we're super close. And then I know I've said it before, but I come back for a week and then my daughter's getting married. So I got a lot of stuff going on. For a guy who doesn't normally have a lot of stuff going on outside of the studio.
- [01:38]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, every once in a while you got to get out of the house and have a little bit of fun.
- [01:42]
Mike Morford
Yeah, well, I'm about ready to have a bunch of it. So we didn't have any new Patreon support this week, but we want to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon because it really helps us out.
- [01:55]
Mike Ferguson
And if you're thinking about supporting the show through a Patreon contribution, head over to patreon.com criminology to get started.
- [02:02]
Mike Morford
All right, we are jumping right into this week's case and we have a pretty interesting one. You know, in a lot of episodes, we talk about some really bad people doing really bad stuff. Many times we're talking about cold blooded murders, abductions. But this time out, the subject matter isn't quite as dark. But we're still dealing with a criminal who stole a man's identity and in many ways stole his life and got away with it for a long time. For well over 30 years, in fact. And there's more than one victim left in the perpetrator's wake who have suffered as a result. We're discussing the shocking identity theft committed by a man named Matthew David Kierans, AKA William Woods.
- [02:49]
Mike Ferguson
This story starts out with A man who found himself thousands of dollars in debt from loans he knew nothing about and had never taken out. In fact, people began to doubt he was really who he said he was. And when he tried to figure out what was happening and put an end to the madness, he was arrested and ultimately told that he was delusional. Before being locked up and held against his will for more than a year. The victim was forced to take medication and told to never use his real name again. As unbelievable as it may sound, it really happened to a man named William Woods.
- [03:21]
Mike Morford
Ain't no more. If we don't talk about identity theft a lot, we're talking in most episodes, like I said, about much darker things. But identity theft is not a joke at all. It's a very serious crime and it has very serious repercussions. It is one of those things out there that really scares the you know what out of me, because I feel like there are just a lot of people throughout the world sitting around trying to figure out how to benefit from someone else's misery. Right. Take advantage of someone else. I don't know, but I think there are just way too many people looking to make money the easy way, I guess, you know, if you want to call it that, but without actually going out and working for it. They just want to take it from you. And this is one way to do it.
- [04:24]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I think as technology advances, there's a lot of people using that technology to try and pull the wool over people's eyes and fool them into doing things that they don't mean to do. And, you know, we hear about in the news often people's identities being stolen. And the one we're talking about today is a really extreme case. And, you know, I think law enforcement also is using that new technology to try and foil some of these people that attempt these scams. And it's a battle between them of who's going to win, the authorities are trying to stop it, or the scammers that are trying to take advantage of it.
- [05:07]
Mike Morford
So this whole ordeal goes all the way back to 1988. At the time, William woods was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he had been working at a hot dog stand for four years. Woods was a very reliable employee and one of the few who worked at the stand long term. There were a lot of short term co workers that came and went over the years. One of those who was hired in 1988 was a man named Matthew Kierans. The two were working the same shift when woods noticed that his wallet was Missing immediately, he suspected that Kierans had taken it. And he was right. Woods told the LA Times, I put my fist in his face and he decided to hand me back my wallet. When he got his wallet back, he didn't notice anything missing. His birth certificate and his Social Security card were still inside. But it was already too late because although William woods didn't know it, Kierans had gotten the info he needed from the credentials inside the wallet.
- [06:12]
Mike Ferguson
I think this is a good time to warn the listeners. Always keep your birth certificate and your Social Security card someplace safe. You don't want to be carrying that around because if that falls into the wrong hands can cause a lot of problems.
- [06:26]
Mike Morford
Well, it did kind of jump out at me. You know, I. I get it. I know there are people who carry a copy of their Social Security card in their wallet. I never have, but I. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone or knew of anyone who carried their birth certificate with them in their wallet. I get it. This is 1988. But still, even in 1988, I know for a fact I wasn't carrying it around.
- [06:57]
Mike Ferguson
William woods kept working at the hot dog stand and Cairns made his way to Colorado. It seems like he never used his real name again. Matthew David Cairns dropped off the face of the Earth after 1988. In December 1990, Cairns was able to get a Colorado identification card using William woods name and information. In Colorado, Matthew Kearns became and lived as William woods. And the real William woods had no idea anything was wrong with that Colorado ID card. The new imposter William woods was able to start his new life. He got a job working fast food which gave him a steady paycheck. And he was able to open a bank account even though he was using someone else's identity. In September 2001, the fake William woods wrote a check for $600 for the purchase of a used car. He had the car, but the check ended up bouncing. Now there was a warrant out for William woods arrest, but that didn't stop the imposter. The fake woods kept living his life. He made his way to Oregon in 1994. He got married. His wife had no idea he wasn't who he claimed to be. The two ended up having a son together. And even his last name is Woods. The fake William woods even paid taxes and fully embraced his fake identity. And it was now all in on using the new identity.
- [08:13]
Mike Morford
In 2012, the fake woods used information from Ancestry.com to obtain a birth certificate for the real William woods from the state of Kentucky, where he was born. This is pretty much the holy grail in terms of proving your identity. And now with this in his possession, the imposter had all the credentials he needed to carry out his scheme. Eventually, the fake woods ended up living in Wisconsin. He was able to get an IT job at the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics. He worked remotely as a systems architect. The fake woods had to provide substantial documentation of his identity to get that job. But by then he had been living as the real William woods for decades. And compiling piece after piece of documentation, he passed a background check. Starting in 2016, the fake woods started to take out some pretty hefty loans. Over the next four years, he racked up more than $200,000 worth of debt. In the middle of this years long spending spree, the real William woods noticed that someone was using his name to borrow a lot of money. He had no idea about any of the loans at this point. He still didn't know that there was someone out there pretending to be him and using his identity. And more. If we talked about how scary identity theft is, I mean this is a, this is not a short term thing. I mean, this is as we are in the story. It's gone on for, you know, well over a decade, coming up on two decades. And it just seems strange to me that, you know, Kierans would adopt this fake name or real name, but, you know, fake to him and go through all of the things that we all do. I mean, he was getting jobs. In the case of this IT job sounds like a pretty good job. He was paying taxes. Now he was taking out a bunch of debt or loans. Right. He was racking up a bunch of debt. And maybe that's the reason, as we get into it, for using the alternate identity. But it's not like he was posing as this guy to get out of working. He was still working and paying taxes. So I mean, it's kind of a strange thing if you think about it that way.
- [10:54]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. And he had a physical address where anyone that was coming to collect these debts or had questions about them could turn to and find him. Whether he was the real guy or not, he'd still have to answer for it. So that part of the story is a little bit hazy. So he wasn't hiding, he was there living his life. You know, he had a home, he had a wife, he had a child. So if anyone went looking there for him, even though he wasn't the real person he claimed to be, they could still physically find him. So that part of the story, we don't really know what he was thinking. On August 20, 2019, the real William woods tried to put a stop to what he thought was a clear cut case of identity theft. He went to a bank in Los Angeles to try to close the account that he knew didn't belong to him, but had been open in his name. The information the real woods gave, including his Social Security card and his ID card from California, matched the records at the bank. This would obviously be an odd situation. Someone came into the bank saying they needed the account numbers so they could close the account, but they were seemingly the only person who could open the accounts in the first place. The staff at the bank would have already been a little curious. But then the real woods couldn't answer any of the security questions tied to the bogus accounts. And he couldn't confirm where or even when the accounts were opened, which set off some alarm bells for the bank. The accounts weren't just empty either. They had a pretty substantial amount of money in them. So the bank employees probably thought that this identity theft was just a scammer's excuse to try to get cash.
- [12:30]
Mike Morford
And I got to be honest with you, more, if this is, you know, it's giving me some vibes here, and vibes isn't even the right word. Like I'm, I'm. I'm starting to really feel some anxiety for this individual, and I guess maybe anxiety if I were in this situation. My wife, and this has been a long time ago, went to the mall one time to buy some earrings, and she got the earrings, she got home, and a few weeks later, we started noticing a bunch of crazy charges on our credit card. And it turned out that, you know, one of the workers at the store got our credit card number and started ordering a bunch of stuff. And that pales in comparison, right, to what we're talking about in this story. But I remember what a hassle just that was all the phone calls going back and forth with the bank and the store and all of that. And it's just nothing compared to what we're talking about and what we're getting ready to talk about. But it was a real pain in the. You know what?
- [13:39]
Mike Ferguson
Oh, yeah, I've had a couple times where the bank called me at home and wanted to go over a couple charges, you know, as a fail safe to make sure that no one was trying to get into my account or use it for any kind of shady purposes. And I think one time I happened to be traveling, so that Set off an alarm, which is, I guess, good that they have these things in place to warn you, but not. Not in this case, because this guy was able to open up accounts and everything in the real William woods name, and he did everything right. He went to the bank, he said, hey, someone opened this account. I want to close it. This isn't really me. And he had his credentials. But then the problem was he couldn't. He didn't know the passwords and the security questions to get into the accounts
- [14:25]
Mike Morford
because he didn't set them up right. I'm sure it must have been really frustrating for him. All of this prompted a phone call to the account owner, the fake William Woods, Matthew Kierans, who had opened the accounts. He answered the call right away, and of course, he knew all the right answers to the security questions, knew where he had opened the accounts and when. So when he told the banker that he had no idea who was trying to get his account numbers, and he certainly hadn't authorized it, police were called to the bank. The fake woods was able to provide the Los Angeles Police Department via fax with all the proof they needed to, in their minds, prove he was the real William Woods. He gave them a birth certificate from Kentucky, a Social Security card, and an ID card from Wisconsin. After this, police turned their attention to the real William woods and arrested him, thinking he was the imposter. He was held without bail on one charge of the unauthorized use of personal information. So things are just really going from bad to worse, right, for William Woods. What struck me here, though, is that he's charged and held without bail. I mean, morph, we see murderers all the time who get bail. This guy gets no bail on a charge of unauthorized use of personal information. That kind of struck me as odd.
- [15:59]
Mike Ferguson
That's a pretty scary situation. He went there that day to try and clarify what was going on with this identity theft. And at the end of the day, he's in jail and can't get out. That's unimaginable somehow. Incredibly, the fake William Woods, Matthew Karens, was able to convince police that the William woods they arrested was really Matthew Karens. And police charged the real William woods under that name with a slight spelling deviation in the last name on police charging docks. Still, the real William woods was undoubtedly panicking to find himself in a bizarre situation where police thought he wasn't who he actually was. The fake woods told investigators that he did want the prosecutor's office to charge Matthew Kierans, who they had just arrested, with false impersonation. And identity theft. So he was going to press charges. Essentially, imposter Matthew Kearns had assumed the real William woods identity, then gotten the police to believe that he was actually the real William woods, and was trying to get police to send the real William woods, who police believe was actually Matthew Karens, to jail. So if this sounds confusing, just imagine how confused, shocked, and probably frightened the real William woods was at this point.
- [17:13]
Mike Morford
While he was in jail, the real William woods was subjected to weeks of solitary confinement. He was also in jail during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic. Woods would later tell the Telegraph that he was kept in a dungeon room that's way down towards the basement. He said it had mold. I could see these little gnats in the room. They have cockroaches on the floor. It's not bug sprayed. They never bug spray the place. He had prisoners dying left and right from COVID 19. It would have been a very scary experience. And he went through all of this just for going to the bank one day to try and figure out what was going on regarding loans an imposter had taken out in his name. At a hearing on October 31, 2019, the real woods tried to tell the judge that there had been a mistake. According to the LA Times. In court, he said, I'm not Matthew Kierans at all. He was adamant that he was really William Woods. Two months after that initial story, he faced the judge once again and said, no, I'm not Kierans at all. This frustrated the judge and made his attorney deputy alternate. Public defender Susanna Juarez changed strategies. The judge said, I'm sorry. Stop. You've got to stop. The public defender said to the judge, your honor, based on my conversations with my client and at this time, I do not believe that he is competent and I'm declaring a doubt. So now both the judge and even his own defense attorney didn't believe that William woods was really William Woods. They believed he was Matthew Kierans.
- [19:04]
Mike Ferguson
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- [22:16]
Mike Ferguson
the real William woods, feeling hopeless and frustrated, demanded to speak with the FBI. He also claimed that videos on YouTube would prove his identity. He was referring to videos made by Yusuf Saleh Erakat for his channel Fauci Tube, made in 2015 documenting woods life on the streets of Los Angeles. The views from that video series actually generated enough money for the streamer to pay woods, buy him some food and put him in a motel room. It was the money from these videos that brought Karen's scam to woods attention. Woods used some of the money to pay for a service that monitors credit. There were a lot of surprises on the report, but it led woods to that Los Angeles bank where he ended up being arrested. But the authorities wouldn't watch his YouTube videos. They wouldn't call his relatives or the owner of the hot dog stand. Interestingly, the owner of the stand actually still to this day has a copy of the real woods driver's license on file. He actually may have been able to help, but investigators never bothered to talk to him.
- [23:16]
Mike Morford
And man morf you just feel worse and worse for William Woods. I mean bad enough to be arrested. It's at the height of COVID and then you know, he's telling all these people, hey, you know, there are things that can prove who I really am, but they just don't believe him and they won't check into it. Now I don't really blame the authorities in the beginning, right, because this guy didn't know the answers to the questions, security questions, codes, all that stuff. And you had someone who said they were William woods with all the right information. So I could see how they would think that this guy's trying to do something shady, the real William Woods. But how hard would it be to check into some of these claims that he made? And I think you got to put some blame on, on people for that not doing it.
- [24:20]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, they definitely could have made phone calls, watch those videos, interviewed some of the people that knew him to get the real story, and then maybe they would have sorted this out. Instead they just sort of doubted everything he said and just pressed forward with this crusade against him as if he was the imposter.
- [24:40]
Mike Morford
A psychiatric evaluation was ordered because he continued to tell the truth that he was William woods and not Matthew Kieran's. It appeared that he was just remaining steadfast in his delusion. In February of 2020, the real woods was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was also committed to a psychiatric hospital, Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, California, and ordered to take medication, including lithium. And as bad as this was, he preferred the hospital to the jail because it was cleaner. The real William woods later told the LA Times of his predicament. People didn't listen. They were painting it like I was crazy. In a court document, a judge said that William woods was only adamant that he was William woods because he was crazy. Those were the exact words in the court document.
- [25:38]
Mike Ferguson
In March 2021, when he was found competent to stand trial, the real William woods entered a plea of no contest to the charges solely just to get it over with. He felt it was his only way out of the situation. William woods told the LA Times. At first I kept saying I'm not guilty, but they wouldn't believe that. He was sentenced to two years in jail, which thanks to time served, both in jail, 428 days and the hospital 147 days became more like six months. It was dropped. In exchange for the no contest plea. He would be released from custody just for agreeing not to fight the charge. He was given a fine of $400. And most importantly, he was barred by the court from using his real name in the future. The judge literally ordered him to stop trying to use the name William Woods. Instead, he was instructed to go by his true name, William Matthew Kieran's.
- [26:32]
Mike Morford
So this comes up a lot more. Why would someone confess to doing something that they really didn't do? I mean, we have seen a number of false confessions over the years come to light and to me, most of them center around one thing and that is the pressure or the Situation is such that the person just wants to get out of it, whether it's being, you know, interrogated for long periods of time, and they just can't stand it, and they'll say anything to get out of that room. Or in the case of William woods, he just wants to get it over with. Like, he's better off in this situation saying he's guilty than he is fighting it. Man, that is a scary, scary thought.
- [27:28]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. Between the mental hospital and jail, he was incarcerated for almost 600 days. So I'd like to think that I would never cop to something I didn't do, but if I was in his shoes, maybe I would just try and end it and get out of it.
- [27:46]
Mike Morford
And I think that's the scary part, right. That someone would admit to something they didn't do just to get whatever situation they're in over. It shouldn't be like that, but we have seen it happen. And to me, this is the ultimate nightmare situation. And it would be hard to blame William woods if he just gave up and assumed the name Matthew Kierans as the judge instructed him to. But that's not what happened. The real William woods was determined to set things straight and get his name back. After he was released from jail, he called the police department in Hartland, the town in Wisconsin where the fake William woods lived. He wanted to file a police report regarding the theft of his identity by a local there. He also started filing disputes with credit bureaus, trying to repair his credit score and and helped secure his identity. He filed at least 30 disputes. Once again, the fake woods tried to turn it around on the real Woods. According to the Washington Post, the imposter started telling the police he was concerned that the fact that the delusional man who was trying to steal his identity from across the country now knew where he lived. He also tried to report the credit disputes as harassment. According to CBS News. He even emailed prosecutors in Los Angeles, writing, I need some advice on what steps to take at this point. And, you know, more of what stands out to me about this is how confident Matthew Kierans was. I mean, he's not shying away, right? He's not shrinking and, you know, hiding and trying not to interact with people so he doesn't get caught. He's very brazen. I mean, he's basically saying, no, I'm William woods, and this guy is trying to steal my identity, and he's going out of his way to contact people of authority. That's just how confident he was.
- [29:59]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, you call it Confident. I call it having some konas because it takes some cojones to, to really own that fake identity and try and sic the police on the real person that you've victimized. It's, you know, this guy might be some kind of world class narcissist.
- [30:20]
Mike Morford
Yeah. I just wonder how the number of years he had been doing it played into it. Right. He had been able to successfully do this for, you know, approaching two decades. So I wonder how much of that kind of played into his confidence in, you know, being able to reach out to different authorities and stuff like that.
- [30:45]
Mike Ferguson
There was little to no movement in this case for years. In 2022, the real woods filed another police report. And again, the fake woods pretended he was being targeted by a dangerous man. But the real woods didn't give up. In January 2023, he reported the situation to the University of Iowa Police Department. Detective Ian Mallory was assigned the case. Initially, even Detective Mallory thought he was being played by an imposter. He told UIowa edu I thought the guy in California was probably a professional con man. But Detective Mallory was interested in sorting out fact from fiction and getting to the bottom of what was going on. Cairns actively attempted to influence the investigation. He tried to get updates on what was going on behind the scenes. And he tried to convince authorities that the real woods was dangerous and delusional.
- [31:35]
Mike Morford
Looking through records, Detective Mallory noticed that there were two different William Woods. The first proof was from back in 1995, less than a decade after Matthew Kearns had stolen but returned the real William woods wallet. In 1995, the real William woods was arrested for forgery in North Carolina. He was fingerprinted and photographed. And those prints in the photo match the man Detective Mallory called California Bill, AKA the real William woods, who was in California. Detective Mallory told UIowa Eduardo, this became the first data point where we could differentiate life events between the two men. And I said it earlier, morph, but you know, how hard really would some of this been to figure out if the police early on would have dug deeply into it? They really didn't dig at all. I mean, to me, Detective Mallory was kind of the first person to want to really do a deep dive and to get into the facts.
- [32:50]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, that had to be a welcome relief for the real William woods, knowing that somebody was finally at least looking into his story to see if it was true. Interestingly, Matthew Curran switched up his middle name over the years. He used the real woods real middle name, Donald, as well as his own real middle name, David, somewhat interchangeably after 2012 though, he pretty much used David exclusively. Somehow he was able to get a Wisconsin driver's license with William David woods on it, even though the birth certificate he was using had Donald on it. Detective Mallory said July 16, 2012 was the creation of William David Woods. Finally, Detective Mallory decided to settle once and for all. He turned to DNA, which couldn't lie in this case. Luckily, William woods father was still alive and was more than happy to cooperate with Detective Mallory's investigation. His DNA matched the William woods in California, the real one.
- [33:49]
Mike Morford
Detective Mallory finally was going down the right path. Matthew Kierans was brought in for questioning. But once again, he said that the real William woods, who he claimed was Matthew Kierans, was crazy in that he needed help and should be locked up. The detective asked Matthew Kierans what his father's name was. He did not give the name that was on the birth certificate, the name of the man whose DNA matched the real William Woods. The detective also asked Kierans how it was possible that he had spoken to his father since he claimed his father was dead. Kieran's tried to play dumb and said that he thought his father was dead. So with this not adding up and the DNA match, Detective Mallory felt sure that he had finally gotten to the bottom of it all. Matthew Kierans, the fake William woods, was arrested on July 17, 2023. He was treated as a John Doe,
- [34:56]
Mike Ferguson
according to UIowa Edu. Realizing that he was caught, Matthew Kearns said to Detective Mallory, my life is over, isn't it? Eventually he confessed, saying, my name is Matthew Kearns. According to the detective, Cairns felt relieved that it was finally over. The real William woods was relieved too. When the detective reached out to him to give him the good news, he responded by saying, cool, I told you so. He was relieved and felt finally vindicated. The day after Matthew Karen's arrest, the University of Iowa Health Care terminated his employment. An internal review was also launched to make sure he wasn't misusing any of the patients or employees information in any kind of unauthorized manner.
- [35:41]
Mike Morford
All right, so they finally caught him and I, I can only imagine how relieved William woods must have been. His response though, kind of surprised me. Cool, I told you so. I mean, I guess he had been telling people so for, for many years. It just seemed like a kind of a, a subdued statement. But the other thing I was thinking was obviously William woods life was changed dramatically for the negative, right throughout this whole thing. But there's also a lot of other people and institutions that were affected as well. I mean, Matthew Kieran's. We mentioned it more if he got married, he had a child, he's working for the University of Iowa in a healthcare, you know, kind of capacity. I get it. He's on the IT side, but being on the IT side, he had access to a lot of confidential information. So, I mean, there's just a lot of people here who were really kind of put in a. In a bad situation.
- [36:55]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I think it's like the equivalent of the fox guarding the hen house. Somebody like that being in charge of a system that probably has a lot of personal information. Addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers. He could have done a lot of serious damage with all that stuff.
- [37:13]
Mike Morford
Well, it doesn't make them look great either. Right. Once it comes out that they had hired this imposter. Now I get it, he probably had really good documentation, but it's still a stain right on their name when it comes out that they had hired this guy. He'd been working there for however many years.
- [37:36]
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Mike Morford
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- [37:44]
Mike Morford
It's all on TikTok.
- [37:46]
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- [37:52]
Mike Morford
On April 1st, 2023, 57 year old Matthew Kierans formally pleaded guilty to the unlawful use of a birth certificate. He was then federally charged with one count of making a false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft. He entered a guilty plea on April 1, 2024. He faced up to 32 years behind bars, but received a pretty lenient sentence, all things considered. He Kierans was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and ordered to pay back $10,000 of attorney fees. Additionally, after his release, he'll be on supervised release for five years. When you look at how much of his life the real William woods lost, his name, his freedom, it does kind of really seem like a light sentence for Matthew Kearns.
- [38:58]
Mike Ferguson
We'll probably never know for sure, but Detective Mallory felt that Kearns had only planned to be William woods for a little while. He wasn't going to be a permanent identity. Detective Mallory told UIowa EDU. He met a woman, fell in love and had a baby. And then he was stuck with this identity. Speaking of the woman he fell in love with, Karen's wife, Nancy Zimmer was shocked after finding out her husband wasn't who he said he was. She sent a letter to the judge that read in part, had I known we could and would have righted his wrongs decades earlier. She now refers to her husband as Matt and seems to agree with Detective Mallor's reasoning. She told CBS News, I believe Matt's motivation was simple to create the family and home he didn't have in his youth.
- [39:45]
Mike Morford
It turns out that Matthew Kierans may have originally stolen William woods identity to try to get out of some trouble from when he was younger. When he was 16 years old, he dropped out of high school, ran away from home and started committing crimes in San Francisco. He stole a car and got caught in Oregon. But the real trouble came when he skipped a court date for that charge. He was already a fugitive when the chance to become someone else presented itself. A troubling question remains in this case. Why did it take so long to right this wrong? Many people believe that based on outward appearances, it was easier for people to believe the imposter Kierans. Could it be because he was this married family man with a good job and the real William woods was homeless? William woods thought that this was the case, telling the Telegraph, they just think I'm a homeless bum. That's what I think, and that's how they treated me.
- [40:49]
Mike Ferguson
And he may have a point because all along he had his original birth certificate and Social Security card, while the imposter Kierans had an ID with a name that didn't even match the birth certificate. Yet somehow the authorities accepted it and moved right on. It makes you wonder, could this kind of thing happen today to any one of us? Mark Bullock, the University of Iowa's assistant vice president of campus safety, doesn't think so. He told UIowa edu, I don't think you could replicate this today. We have all these different systems that monitor people's financials. I don't even know how he would start. In fact, it seems like this was a very unique situation that just happened to be perfect for identity theft. Bullock said, I think one of the only reasons this worked for so long was because the real William woods was off the radar and not functioning in society like other people who had bank accounts and credit cards that they regularly use and check.
- [41:45]
Mike Morford
Eric Kilmer, who employed both Kierans and Woods at that hot dog stand in the 1980s where it all began, called William woods in an LA Times interview, the most innocent type of fellow you'll ever want to meet. According to the LA Times, Judge William C. Ryan vacated the William woods conviction, saying he was more than happy to right that wrong. The judge called this case astounding and said the word that comes to mind is Kafkaesque. Out of the novels of Franz Kafka. Detective Mallory summed it up best, telling UIowa edu no matter what, you still have your name. William woods didn't even have that because Matthew Kierans took it. It was one of the most egregious things one person can do to another. In May of 2025, the California Victim Compensation Board awarded William woods almost $81,000. As for where he went from here, Williams told the LA Times, I guess I have to regain all my stuff back and just rebuild what I was. He was last known to be living in either El Paso or Albuquerque, working as a landscaper or in a barbershop.
- [43:04]
Mike Ferguson
As for the imposter, Matthew Kearns, just a week ago, the federal appeals court upheld his conviction. He tried to argue that the 12 year sentence was unreasonably long. But the court in the document said that sentencing guidelines did not take into account the unique, unusual and egregious behavior, the multiple instances of lying to authorities, or the fact that he was manipulating the criminal justice system to prosecute an innocent man when he intentionally sought the prosecution and incarceration of the real William Woods. The court also noted that Kearns had not apologized to woods or even really seemed to understand the weight of what he had done for so long. He actually argued in his appeal that the punishment was too serious for the crime. But the court noted that the real woods would not have been in a position where he would have been subject to being institutionalized for Kieran's insistence that woods be prosecuted. He isn't just being punished for using someone's name or ruining their credit. He put a man in solitary confinement and had him medicated against his will. You don't go to jail or forensic psychiatric hospital and come back without having seen or experienced some rough times. Matthew Kearns is directly responsible for taking away William Wood's freedom and putting him through unimaginable traumas. William woods said it best when he told UIOWA Edu, I was sent to jail for nothing, for being myself.
- [44:28]
Mike Morford
And I get it right. People are going to appeal their conviction. They're going to say, hey, this sentence is too long. I mean, sentencing guidelines. When you think about identity theft, I think the judge said it well, right. This isn't just a case of identity theft for the sake of, you know, ruining someone's credit. And that's bad enough. This went way beyond that. First of all, the duration of it is astounding. It spanned two decades and the fact that as you said earlier, Morv, William woods lost his freedom for, you know, almost two years. It was over 600 days, I think.
- [45:17]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, this was a lot more than someone opening up a couple accounts or stealing your credit card numbers and buying a couple things. This was tormenting this man, William woods, for decades. And every time he tried to prove his innocence, this guy would turn it around on him and make him look like he was the bad guy. And I can't even imagine what William woods was going through in this situation. It had to be a true nightmare situation.
- [45:49]
Mike Morford
Well, and you have to ask the question, right? How did it change the trajectory of William woods life? Because you know, it did. And it wasn't for the better. So to me, you know, that's a part of that sentencing. Not just identity theft, but everything you put this guy through. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, even with Matthew Kieran's behind bars and William woods isn't his only victim. Kieran's son has the last name Woods. What's he supposed to do? Does he keep it knowing that it's not his father's real last name? Does he change it to the last name of a now convicted felon who lied for his entire life? And what about the marriage license to his wife? A marriage that was built on a lie. The information he used to get married is incorrect. Does that cancel out the license? I mean, if you think about how many headaches were caused through all of this, when it comes to paperwork, technicalities, what about the taxes and Social Security? Remember, Matthew Kierans was all in on living his woods, even paying taxes. Meanwhile, the real William woods was living rough and wasn't paying taxes because he didn't make enough money to pay taxes. He was making about $3,000 a year at his richest, sometimes working construction, sometimes making jewelry, while Kierans was using his credit to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loans and was making more than $100,000 a year. Now that Kierans has been convicted and the mess has been straightened out, William Wood's Social Security number once again belongs to him alone. So do they remove the work credits from paying into the system? Does he technically get Kieran's Social Security payments one day? Can they transfer it from Wood's name to Kieran's? Should they? If they can. I mean, he technically is the one who paid taxes under someone else's name. I mean, this is a cluster. You know what more when you think about it, and you know, some of these things are Trivial compared to the damage that was done to William woods, but it's still a part of the case. I mean, to me, it's not trivial about his son and his wife. They. They're victims. And in all this as well, the Social Security is an interesting situation. I feel like William Wood should get that money.
- [48:50]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I mean, he worked to defraud him and paid that money in William Wood's name. I think William woods should be entitled to it one day after all he endured. But those are legitimate questions, and I don't know if there's answers to them. If you went to the IRS and said, hey, what's going on with all this money that got paid on the taxes? If he approached Social Security and said, what happens? I don't know if they have the answers to give them. With how much Matthew Curran's traveled around the country and how easily lying came to him, investigators do wonder if he might be linked to other crimes. His DNA is on file and is now in the system, so time will tell. However, after stealing Wood's identity, he seems to have lived a pretty normal life and stayed out of any kind of legal trouble other than traffic tickets. His friends and family were all shocked by the revelation that he had been lying to them for decades. There was zero indication that he was hiding anything from them. They all thought of him as honest and an upstanding man. Matthew Kearns will be 70 years old when he's released. What he does after he's released is anyone's guess, but you can bet that the real William woods hopes their past never cross again.
- [50:00]
Mike Morford
So, morph, as we wrap this one up. I mean, it is such a shocking story, and shocking in a much different way than most of our episodes are. We talk a lot about murder. Unfortunately, you have to when you're in the true crime genre. But there's no doubt that this was a very serious crime that Matthew Kierans perpetrated. It wasn't murder, but it affected so many people negatively. And the thing I can't stop thinking about is, you know, like, you just mentioned what a normal life this guy kind of led. Now, he was impersonating or using the name of someone else, but he had a good job, he had a nice family. It just seems to me as though he could have done that as Matthew Kieran.
- [51:00]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I go back to what the detectives thought, that maybe he initially didn't plan to keep this identity, but once he met his wife and started that relationship, he was sort of stuck Using that name and, you know, instead of coming clean and saying, hey, I have to be honest with you, this isn't who I really am. I stole this man's identity. He just doubled down, tripled down, and just went all in on impersonating him for decades. So, you know, it's. It's really a upsetting situation. And again, his wife and his son are victims, too. And a lot of people like to say in white collar crimes, financial crimes, there's no real victim. But I think here we see there's multiple victims. We've got William woods himself, we've got Kieran's family members. You know, their lives are not going to be the same after this.
- [51:53]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I get it. You know, it's kind of that. That thing where once you start down the path of lying, it's kind of hard to course correct. Right. Don't you have to kind of stay with the lie? I think a lot of people do. Especially as the years went on, I could see how it would become increasingly harder and harder for him to not be William Woods. Right. All of his work history at a certain point is. Is wrapped up with that name. And then undoubtedly after he, you know, gets married and has a son, what's he going to do just all of a sudden one day come clean to his wife? Hey, honey, I just want to tell you, I'm not really William Woods. I'm Matthew Kieran. That's going to be a tough conversation. And he was getting away with it, so that probably factored in into it as well. Why rock the boat? I'm doing just fine.
- [52:58]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, it's a very crazy story all around. I think it probably make a really good movie. And, you know, I'm looking at it as all of us are potential victims of fraud. Someone stealing our credit. And maybe in certain situations, we have to make calls to our bank, we have to stop payment on things, we have to write letters, maybe we have to contact an attorney. But I think in overwhelming majority of cases of identity theft, there's never anything that rises to this level where someone is locked up and put forcefully against their will into a mental hospital and given medication. I mean, this is just the ultimate nightmare situation that I think none of us ever want to find ourselves in.
- [53:45]
Mike Morford
Yeah, absolutely. And my heart kind of really went out to William woods for what you can only imagine what his suffering was. I mean, he talked about it, but even, you know, what he told papers and things like that probably don't really convey the true suffering of what this guy went through. But the, you know, the identity theft thing is scary in a different way than other crimes are. Right? It's scary to be physically attacked, to be mugged or robbed or, you know, something like that. That would be horrible. But, you know, that happened. Identity theft in a lot of ways is different because people don't know that it's happening while it's happening. Obviously they're going to find out at a certain point and then a lot of things are screwed up by the time they find out. But it's a wild case, man. It really is for how long that it went on, the people it affected, and ultimately what William woods went through. But that's it for our episode on Matthew David Kierans. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review. A rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the Criminology Podcast really helps us out.
- [55:16]
Mike Ferguson
If you want to find us on social media or on every major platform, just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news, old episodes and more, head over to our website, criminology podcast.com and if you want to join a discussion group about the podcast and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for the Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans group.
- [55:38]
Mike Morford
So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph, we'll talk to you next week.
- [55:50]
Mike Ferguson
Take care everyone.
- [56:22]
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