The reporters have a little fun with a Glendale detective who sent a spy to determine if Robin and Cathy had secret missives from John Hawkins.

At this point, Hanson and Dr. Boggs are in jail, but Hawkins is still on the run. It’s an upset lover in the Netherlands and an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show that puts authorities on the trail of John Hawkins. And, it’s an unusual birthmark that seals his fate.

Now, everyone is interested in the Just Sweats case. Authorities from California
and Ohio converge on Fort Worth in hopes of getting custody of Gene Hanson.
On Feb. 2, 1989, John Hawkins, Gene Hanson and Dr. Richard Boggs are charged
with murder for financial gain with death penalty specifications.

The fly in the ointment is that the death of Ellis Henry Greene had been ruled
“natural causes.” An expert witness, renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael
Baden, is brought in to see if he can pinpoint a cause of death that will prove that
Greene was murdered. His conclusion was, that Greene was killed in the manner
used by 19th Century grave robbers.

It’s January of 1989 and Columbus Dispatch reporters Robin Yocum and Cathy Candisky have a pretty clear picture of how the multi-million-dollar scam was supposed to work.

What they don’t know is the whereabouts of co-conspirators
John Hawkins and Gene Hanson.

Until . . .

At 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 29, 1989, American Airlines Flight 150 from Acapulco lands at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport. As the passengers are filing off, customs officials see a man coming off a flight who looks nervous and is in a big hurry.

Customs officials think he’s a drug dealer. He’s not, but the running is about to be over for Gene Hanson.

Even though the insurance companies know that Dr. Boggs misidentified a corpse, the police in Glendale, California, are sitting on their thumbs. They arrogantly tell Robin’s colleague, Cathy Candisky, “This may be a big deal in Columbus, Ohio, but this is L.A.”

In this episode, Katherine Lawley, Gene Hanson’s mother, shows up in the newsroom of the Columbus Dispatch in a search for answers about her missing son.

Meanwhile, authorities in California finally identify the “dead” Hanson as a former Ohio resident, Ellis Henry Greene, and Robin must notify his mother.

Where’s Gene Hanson?

If the Just Sweats co-founder isn’t dead, then where did he go?
This episode follows Hanson to Florida and tracks his bizarre and often hilarious miscues as he tries to stay one step ahead of the authorities.

He has plastic surgery and tries to pass himself off as a German National. Ultimately, Hanson wears out his welcome in Florida and runs to Mexico to hide.

John Hawkins has collected $1 million from the Farmers New World Life Insurance Company upon the reported death of his business partner, Gene Hanson.

But there’s a problem. When he attempts to collect on other policies, he’s told that authorities are now questioning the identity of the corpse originally identified by Dr. Boggs.

The thumb-print taken by the funeral home that cremated the “dead” Hanson does not match the thumb-print on the real Hanson’s California driver’s license.

Oops.

In a panic, it’s time for John Hawkins to disappear.

Ellis Henry Greene was a lost soul. He was gay and had moved to Los Angeles in search of some kind of identity. He was an alcoholic, had held a variety of jobs, had no home and no clear path in his life. Ellis was the kind of guy who could disappear and not be missed.

This made him the perfect victim to be the “dead” Hanson.
At 7 a.m. on April 16, 1988, a 9-1-1 operator in Glendale, California, received a call from Dr. Richard Boggs. One of his long-time patients, Melvin Eugene Hanson, had collapsed on the floor of his office.

The plan was in overdrive.

John Hawkins is in a panic. By this point in their scheme, Dr. Boggs was to have killed a man to be the “dead” Hanson, and Hawkins could begin collecting on the $7 million in life insurance that Hanson carried and to which Hawkins was the beneficiary.

With his business partner technically dead, Hawkins would have no way to collect the $2 million Hanson had taken from the company, but Boggs had not come through with a corpse, so Hawkins must pretend to locate Hanson and return to Columbus with most of the money his partner had taken. This of course is necessary to keep the authorities away from the company and their scam.

He comes back to Columbus with a fantastical story of finding Hanson and the money. The scam is still moving forward as Hanson and Boggs identify the victim to be the “dead” Hanson.