The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League
How a high school dropout created the ultimate fake ID, scammed her way into Harvard and Columbia, and became the target of a nationwide manhunt
SABRINA RUBIN ERDELY
Posted Jan 12, 2010 2:31 PM
Brooke Henson knew she was in trouble when she logged in to her e-mail account at Columbia University and found a message from the campus-security office. She stared at the computer screen, feeling that familiar anxiety rising. You'll be fine, she reassured herself. Think positive thoughts, just like her therapist had taught her. Surely she would get out of this scrape the same way she'd gotten out of all the other ones: with smooth talk and little lies. OK, big lies.
She dialed campus security. “Hi,” she said, her voice controlled. “This is Brooke Henson.”
The officer told her that he had gotten a curious call from police detectives in South Carolina who were trying to crack a missing-person case. “There's something I need to ask you,” the officer continued. “Are you Brooke Henson?” The young woman who had disappeared from the rural South Carolina town of Travelers Rest seven years earlier? The girl whose grieving family had been searching for her ever since? The Brooke Henson who was presumed murdered?
“Yes,” Brooke said into the phone. “That's me.”
Her mind raced through her options. On the one hand, she had a purse full of proof that she was Brooke: her student ID, a Vermont driver's license, a U.S. passport, an Ohio identification card, a South Carolina birth certificate. She had a part-time job, a rented apartment not far from campus on New York's Upper West Side and a full course load at Columbia, all registered under the name Brooke Henson.
On the other hand, she wasn't Brooke Henson.
via The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League : Rolling Stone.
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