Kill, Sleep, Repeat: Real-life story #3

Howdy from Texas,

Happy New Year! I hope that the year ahead will be a great one.

To warm you up for my upcoming novel, Kill, Sleep, Repeat, over the next several weeks I’ll be sharing a new email series featuring stories of real-life secret identities. Below is the third.

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Bernard Welch

The public persona:

To his common-law wife, Norm Hamilton was a rare coins and collectibles dealer who provided them with a cozy, extravagant lifestyle. To his wealthy neighbors in their upscale Washington, D.C. suburb, he was a sociable professional who kept his Mercedes suitably shiny, his bank account sufficiently bulging, and his proficiency in the stock market amply windfall-producing. Hell, Norm Hamilton was so normal that his name was Norm. Except it wasn’t, and his fortune had come not from diddling the stock market, but from being one of the most prolific criminals who ever lived.

The secret identity:

Before he stepped into the (undoubtedly stolen) shoes of Norm Hamilton, Norm was Bernard C. Welch, aka the Standard Time Burglar, aka the Ghost Burglar, which, if we’re being honest, is a pretty kick-ass burglar name. One of the most prolific burglars in modern history, Welch burglarized upward of 5,000 homes in the Washington metro area during the 1970s, pilfering millions in valuables from anyone who had anything worth stealing. His victims ranged from single women, to wealthy men, to famed astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn, to allegedly Welch’s own next-door neighbor.

After being caught early on in his plundering career, Welch escaped from a New York prison and made his way to Northern Virginia, where he romanced Linda Hamilton (not the famous one), pairing her last name with the most normal first name he could think of.

Bernard Welch ID photo from the Adirondack Correctional
Treatment and Evaluation Center in New York.

With the exception of summers, which he often took off, each night, Welch would don a black ski mask and head out to pillage the world. Also, just in case you’re starting to find his rouge-ish behavior appealing in a loveable swindler sort of way, it’s probably worth a mention that he would pistol-whip and rape the occasional lone woman he encountered.

Then he’d return home with his magical lair, and pile all the loot in his basement man cave, which in this instance was less “a sad, rundown pool table beneath a neon sign” and more along the lines of “Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin.”

In December of 1980, Welch, now a fugitive for eight years, broke into the home of noted cardiologist Michael Halberstam. When Halberstam and his wife returned home unexpectedly to let their dog out the job turned sour: Dr. Halberstam confronted the would-be burglar, and Welch responded by shooting him twice with a gun he’d previously stolen from an FBI agent. Welch fled, and as Halberstam drove himself (and his wife) to the nearest hospital a few miles away, he spotted Welch, pursued him by car, and ran him down on the sidewalk.

Sadly, even this level of badassery was not enough to save Halberstam from his wounds, but police were able to scoop a bloodied Welch up off of the sidewalk and throw the book at him.

Although, his story didn’t end there.

While serving a 143-year sentence at Marion for the shooting of Dr. Michael Halberstam, Welch became a government informer on other prisoners, a role that took him to Chicago, where he escaped from custody once again by bending aside a prison bar, weakened with a smuggled hacksaw blade, and lowering himself 75 feet to the sidewalk on a chain of knotted, heavy-duty electrical extension cords.

Welch who was using the name Pete Wilson was eventually recaptured near Pittsburgh by policemen investigating a car for a parking violation. After they discovered the car had been reported stolen, Welch who was identified through fingerprints, admitted his identity and soon after was flown under heavy guard to the Federal penitentiary at Marion, Ill., the Bureau of Prisons’ most secure facility.

In January 1981, Life magazine ran an article titled “The Ghost Burglar and the Good Doctor.” Life paid Welch $9,000 for photographs it used with the piece, some of which showed the murderer looking hip and handsome. The piece allowed the criminal to cast himself as the real victim of the Halberstam murder story.

“They say I destroyed [Halberstam’s] life,” Welch said, “but he destroyed mine.”

Bernard Welch allegedly died in prison in 1997.

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Several times a week, Charlotte Jones leaves suburbia behind and boards a chartered flight to parts unknown, where she wraps her hands around the necks of marks for just as long as she has to.

Then she goes back to domestic life with a paycheck, defense wounds, and the sense that she can handle anything.

Which is good, because being a wife, mother, and sociopath, with an insatiable taste for murder, gives the term work-life balance new meaning. When one life unexpectedly bleeds into the other, leading to a secret admirer and borderline insta-fame, Charlotte is forced to ask herself if she really can have it all.

Slick and unsettling, Kill, Sleep, Repeat is a cunning tale of deception and desire that begs the question: Do we ever really know people the way we think we do?

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