In late September 1998, Samantha had phoned their accountant, Michael Hodges, and told him that she wanted $50,000 for her share of Jordan Lee Enterprises. But Kastler sensed her desperation, and they settled on $10,000. When she went to Hodges' office and picked up the check, Kastler went to Pasadena and picked up Zach.
Two weeks later, however, while Kastler's housekeeper was driving Zach to McDonald's, Samantha ran her off the road, says Kastler, and Fish forcibly removed Zach from the car. Kidnapping charges were filed that same day, but Samantha disappeared.
Len Baxley got back into the act, working his police contacts in California, Texas, and Nevada. Gloria Lynn Grimes had married Martin Fish on October 5, 1998, in Las Vegas without bothering to divorce Kastler first. A Las Vegas fugitive detective found them in an apartment in Henderson, Nevada, and on October 29, he arrested Samantha on her Dallas County probation warrants.
Baxley had her just where he wanted: held without bond for a probation violation out of Dallas and facing child concealment and kidnapping charges in California, along with vandalism charges for destroying property at Kastler's house. There was also the threat of bigamy charges in Nevada. If he ever won a new trial and it came down to a swearing match between them, her credibility would be shot. Yet Baxley seemed motivated as much by vengeance as by justice. "I am going to turn the heat up so high, she's going to know that when she puts a gun to her head, it was me that caused her to pull the trigger," he says.
There was one thing that Baxley hadn't figured on. Judge Ed "Bubba" King decided Samantha's arrest looked too much like a grudge match. When she was extradited to Dallas after spending a month in a Las Vegas jail, King released Samantha on her own recognizance. Taking a wait-and-see attitude with her probation here, he allowed her to return to California and face charges there. King also told Baxley to stop jacking with his probationers; if he didn't, the judge was going to revoke his appeal bond and put him behind bars.
In January, the day before she renewed her vows with Martin Fish at his parents' church in upstate New York, Samantha granted the Dallas Observer an interview, saying it was time to tell her side of the story. (She claims her marriage to Kastler was annulled, even though their divorce in California is still pending.) She confessed that her true name was Gloria Lynn Grimes and that she grew up in a suburb outside St. Louis. Her mother was a nurse who died of cancer when she was 15. Her father was still alive, a retiree from Shell Oil.
After she graduated from high school, she grew depressed and took an overdose of something--she can't remember what. "I can't say I wanted to kill myself; I just couldn't get a grip," she says. Her brother David's wife suggested she join the Navy. In August 1984, she began her basic training in Orlando, Florida, and was later transferred to Meridian, Mississippi. "It was just too structured for me, and I grew tired of the whole situation." In the spring of 1985, after she received her orders to report to St. Louis, she packed up her things and hitchhiked to Texas. A trucker brought her to Grand Prairie, and she took care of his kids for a while. She was only 18 and got a job in a bar by lying about her age and identity. She said she was Phyllis DeeAnn Gardner, age 25, her roommate in Mississippi. "I wasn't sure if the Navy was looking for me, and I didn't like who I was anyway. I just made things up as I went along."
When she met Michael Garofalo, she fed him "a bunch of fish stories" about her past. "Once you tell a lie, it grows. I was really into it," she says. Garofalo treated her well, but she never loved him. "I only loved his kids. It felt good to be needed." She grew afraid that if Garofalo found out the truth, she would lose the children and the life she had created for herself, so she never confided in anyone, aside from calling her dad to let him know she was alive.
In 1988, the year before Patrick was born, she grew restless and went to work as a waitress at the Clarion Hotel. That's where she met the "great love of her life," Martin Fish, who was working at the time as a stripper at the La Bare Club. Their affair ended when he left town. Years later, she became involved with him again, this time in California when he was a production assistant on the set of one of her movies. She claims Martin Fish is Zach's real father.
When applying for a job with the Dallas police, she says, she secretly wanted to get caught, hoping to put an end to her charade. But when she didn't produce a high school transcript, the police said they would overlook it. When they fingerprinted her just like the Navy had, she thought there would be a match and she would be unmasked as a deserter. That never happened. Adding three children and 10 years to her marriage just helped cover her tracks; so did passing a police polygraph. She had lived a lie for so long that at times she believed she was Samantha Garofalo.
