• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I wonder if they still put that book out every year… and sell a copy to anyone who shows up with cash in hand.

A friend of my mother’s, an entrepreneur named Don David Wilson, was running several companies under an umbrella firm called Franmark. He hired me to help with computer-related tasks—programming, data entry, etc. The work was boring, so for fun, excitement, and intellectual challenge—this won’t surprise you—I turned back to hacking and phreaking, often with my old phone-phreaker buddy Steve Rhoades, who would come over in the evenings to use the computers at Franmark.

One day on the way to lunch with a young lady from work, I spotted a bunch of guys in suits who looked like cops, then recognized one as my Parole Officer and another as one of the guys who had searched my car years earlier for the “logic bomb.” I knew they weren’t there for a social visit. Shit! My adrenaline started pumping, fear pulsing through me. I couldn’t start running or walking fast without attracting attention. So I moved to put my back to the suits and pulled the gal into a big hug, whispering in her ear that I spotted an old friend and didn’t want him to see me. We got into her car, still within sight of the group.

I ducked down and asked her to please drive out in a hurry because I needed to make an important call. From a pay phone, I dialed the LAPD’s West Valley Division and asked to be transferred to records. “This is Detective Schaffer,” I said. “I need to check a subject for any hits, local and in NCIC” (the FBI’s National Crime Information Center). “Mitnick, that’s M-I-T-N-I-C-K, Kevin David. The subject’s DOB is 8-6-1963.”

I pretty damn well knew what the answer was going to be.

“Yes, I have a hit on him. It looks like a violation warrant issued by the CYA.”

Fuuck! But at least they didn’t get to arrest me.

I called my mom and said, “Hey, I’m at 7-Eleven, we should talk.”

It was a code I had established with her. She knew which 7-Eleven, and that I needed to talk because I was in trouble. When she showed up, I told her the story and that I needed a place to stay until I decided what I was going to do.

Gram worked out with her friend Donna Russell, the lady who had hired me at Fox, that I could sleep on her living room couch for a few days.

Mom drove me over there, stopping en route so I could buy a toothbrush, razor, and some changes of undershorts and socks. As soon as I was settled, I looked in the Yellow Pages for the nearest law school, and spent the next few days and evenings there poring over the Welfare and Institutions Code, but without much hope.

Still, hey, “Where there’s a will…” I found a provision that said that for a nonviolent crime, the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court expired either when the defendant turned twenty-one or two years after the commitment date, whichever occurred later. For me, that would mean two years from February 1983, when I had been sentenced to the three years and eight months.

Scratch, scratch. A little arithmetic told me that this would occur in about four months. I thought, What if I just disappear until their jurisdiction ends?

I called my attorney to try out the idea on him. His response sounded testy: “You’re absolutely wrong. It’s a fundamental principle of law that if a defendant disappears when there’s a warrant out for him, the time limit is tolled until he’s found, even if it’s years later.”

And he added, “You have to stop playing lawyer. I’m the lawyer. Let me do my job.”

I pleaded with him to look into it, which annoyed him, but he finally agreed. When I called back two days later, he had talked to my Parole Officer, Melvin Boyer, the compassionate guy who had gotten me transferred out of the dangerous jungle at LA County Jail. Boyer had told him, “Kevin is right. If he disappears until February 1985, there’ll be nothing we can do. At that point the warrant will expire, and he’ll be off the hook.”

Some people are angels. Donna Russell contacted her parents, who had a place in Oroville, California, about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco.