CENTERTON : Summons accuses ex-mayor of forgery
Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008
BENTONVILLE — The former Centerton mayor who for years lived and worked using a dead man’s identity was charged Thursday with seconddegree forgery. Benton County prosecutors issued a summons that accuses Ken Williams of forging the name to tax returns, election documents and other records from 2000 to 2008. Williams, who was born Don LaRose, was Centerton mayor from 2001 until he resigned in November 2007. He quit after being confronted by reporters who discovered his Web site, www. donlarose. com. The site told a bizarre saga of LaRose being abducted by Satanists and taking on the identity of Bruce Kent Williams, a 19-year-old man who was killed in a 1958 car wreck in Norwich, N. Y. In May, he was granted a name change in circuit court from LaRose to B. Ken Williams.
Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Van Stone said Williams would be served with the summons and ordered to appear for arraignment Sept. 22.
Bail was waived because Williams isn’t considered a flight risk, Stone said.
The charge carries a sentence of three to 10 years in prison and up to a $ 10, 000 fine, but Stone said the typical punishment for a first-time offender such as Williams is probation.
Williams, 70, couldn’t be reached by telephone Thursday. He works as a weekday-morning radio anchor for KURM 790 AM Rogers and 100. 3 FM in Gravette.
Williams claimed on his Web site that he was abducted in 1975 while working as a pastor in Maine, N. Y.
He said his abductors brainwashed him into believing that he was Williams and provided him with Williams’ Social Security number. He claims he was found, got his memory back and was working as a pastor in Hammond, Ind., as LaRose, when in 1980 he spotted people he believed were connected to his abduction.
So he fled Hammond, taking on the Williams identity and leaving his wife and children. He moved to Northwest Arkansas in the early 1980 s.
The Web site said that after his abductors forced him to assume the identity of Bruce Williams, he had all the information he needed to “get all the necessary documents reissued. He said he wrote to Albany, N. Y., for a birth certificate, then used it to get a driver’s license in Minnesota.
Hammond Police Chief Brian Miller said Thursday that his agency investigated Williams ’ disappearance in 1980 but had doubts. “ Since he’d already claimed he’d been kidnapped once, we felt like there was a good possibility he was faking a disappearance,” Miller said. Hammond police considered re-opening an investigation into Williams’ actions after he was discovered in Arkansas last year, but decided that the statute of limitations probably had expired, Miller said. Stone said it took longer than usual to bring the charge against Williams because of the large amount of documentation needed.
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