The federal investigation into a married couple accused of stealing the identity of dead Texas infants and conspiring against the United States is open and ongoing as agents sift through the mysterious lives and travels of a U.S. defense contractor and his wife who were arrested in July in Kapolei.
Neither Walter Glenn Primrose, aka “Bobby Edward Fort,” nor his wife, Gwynn Darle Morrison, aka “Julie Lyn Montague,” have been charged with espionage or other national security violations. However, federal prosecutors have documented evidence gathered through search warrants that suggests the couple were working as longtime, undercover Russian intelligence assets.
On Thursday a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Primrose and Morrison with conspiring to commit an offense against the U.S., making false statements on passport applications, making false statements in application and use of passport, and aggravated identity theft.
The conspiracy charge is related to the couple’s Aug. 28, 2018, attempt at the Hawaii Army National Guard office in Kapolei to obtain a Military Dependent Identification Card from the U.S. Department of Defense for Morrison in Montague’s name.
Primrose’s attorney, Federal Public Defender Maximilian J. Mizono, declined comment. Morrison’s attorney, Megan Kau, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “She wants everybody to know she is not a Russian spy.”
Primrose, allegedly using the name Fort, served for more than 20 years as an avionics electrical technician with the U.S. Coast Guard, starting in 1994. He was able to obtain a secret-level security clearance, and upon retiring in 2016, he allegedly used his secret clearance for a job he got with a private defense contractor working in Hawaii.
A motion to detain Primrose and Morrison without bail, filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Muehleck and dated July 25, said while Primrose held secret clearance with the U.S. Coast Guard, he was required to report any foreign travel. Further, “Investigation has revealed that defendant Primrose did not report several trips to Canada while he did report other foreign travel.”
Muehleck also alleges in the motion that a “close associate” of Morrison told federal agents that she lived in Romania while it was a Soviet bloc country. Federal agents have seized photographs from the defendants’ residence that depict the couple, apparently some years ago, wearing what have been identified as KGB uniforms.
”The Department of State has found no record that defendant Morrison has ever been issued a passport under her true identity that would permit her to travel internationally,” wrote Muehleck.
A search of the couple’s Kapolei home also turned up an invisible-ink kit, documents with coded language and maps of military bases, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne A. Myers has also said when the couple were in a room together, they were recorded having conversation about “things consistent with espionage.”
The Embassy of the Russian Federation in the U.S. in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a Star-Advertiser request for comment.
On Tuesday, Primrose and Morrison were ordered held without bail by U.S. Magistrate Judge Rom A. Trader until their trial Sept. 26 before U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi. Both appeared for their arraignment and plea via telephone from the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. They face up to 17 years in prison if convicted on each count. Primrose and Morrison were arrested July 22 at their home.
Primrose has acknowledged that is his name, not Fort, the identity he allegedly used to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1994. But on Tuesday when Morrison’s case was called, she replied, “That’s what they’re calling me,” according to The Associated Press. She claimed she’s actually Julie Lyn Montague, who prosecutors said died in 1968 when she was 3 weeks old and later had her identity stolen.
Fort was about 10 weeks old when he died in late 1967 at the same Burnet, Texas, hospital where Montague died a few months later, prosecutors said.
Speaking in court Tuesday, Muehleck said, “We have a situation here where this defendant and her co-defendant, of course, have used false identities to deceive Social Security, the Department of Defense, Hawaii Department of Transportation, the State Department national passport center for 30 years.” He added, “There’s no verification of who she says she is.”
Trader said he was holding her without bail because he couldn’t trust her to comply with terms and conditions of release if he wasn’t sure of her identity.
“At the core of this case is some serious, albeit unusual, circumstances where the defendant claims to be an individual other than the person named in the indictment,” said Trader. “I can’t even really say that I have confidence in who Miss Morrison or Miss Montague really, truly is.”
According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, records obtained by federal agents show that Primrose and Morrison “agreed to assume the identities of deceased American-born infants and have been fully living in these fraudulently assumed identities since 1987.”
In an affidavit filed in July, Special Agent Dennis Thomas of the Diplomatic Security Service’s Honolulu Resident Office said that “imposters often search cemeteries for infants with dates of death close to their own birth dates to more easily assume their identities.” Additionally, he said Primrose and Morrison both obtained birth certificates and were issued Social Security account numbers in 1987 for their “respective assumed identities, and have been perpetrating criminal fraud acts ever since.”
The couple had active passports in the name of Fort and Montague when they were taken into federal custody.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
