BEND, Ore. -- Federal investigators now believe that a former regional manager for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission in Bend accused of stealing the identity of a boy killed 28 years ago in Ohio is actually a Bulgarian immigrant brought to the United States by a former Reagan Administration official.
The man known to many in Bend, Ore. is actually Doitchen Krasevm who was brought to the United States by Michael Horowitz and his wife in the early 1990s.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacie Beckerman filed a motion in federal court late Thursday identifying Krasev. Beckerman said she could not release any other details.
The man claimed to be Jason Robert Evers, who was kidnapped and killed in Cincinnati in 1982 at the age of 3.
"It gives me a little peace to know there's a name behind him and he can't go by the name Jason Robert Evers anymore," said Amy Evers, Jason's sister.
Krasev was arrested in Idaho in April and charged with making a false statement on a passport application. While using the name Evers, the man had worked as an Oregon Liquor Control Commission agent since 2002. He resigned after his arrest.
U.S. marshals initially arrested Evers in Idaho.
An Ohio man told The Bulletin that he believes, based on a phone call from a federal investigator, the man claiming to be Jason Evers assumed the identity of the Ohio man's murdered son.
"He's an impostor," said Bob Evers, of Cincinnati, in a phone interview. Evers' son, Jason, was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 3, and his family is now fighting to keep the child's killer behind bars.
Bob Evers said he got the call from a federal agent about an investigation of a 31-year-old Oregon state employee using the name Jason Evers. The investigator said the individual claimed to have the same date of birth as Bob Evers' son, Jan. 6, 1979.
"We thought it was some kind of a hoax," Bob Evers said. The case was investigated by the Diplomatic Security Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of State that uses criminal investigators to pursue visa fraud and passport violations.
Noel Clay, a Department of State spokesman in Washington, D.C., told The Bulletin that neither he nor investigators could comment on the case, calling it "an ongoing investigation."
Bob Evers said he was informed that the alleged impostor had obtained a copy of his dead son's birth certificate.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out here, is how he got a hold of my son's information," Bob Evers said.
Another unanswered question is how the man was hired by the OLCC, which routinely conducts background checks on liquor license applicants, club owners, bartenders and other servers of alcohol.
The man claiming to be Jason Evers was hired in 2002, agency officials said. Tom Erwin, an OLCC spokesman, said Evers would have gone through the standard background check new OLCC employees receive, including fingerprinting.
Meanwhile, investigators piece together what they can about Krasev.
They've determined that Horowitz and his wife brought him back to the US and helped him get into Georgetown Day, a prominent prep school where he graduated with honors, earning a scholarship to Davidson College where he stayed for two years before dropping out and disappeared.
Investigators say that Horowitz and his wife hired investigators to find try and find him but to no avail.
They believe that he adopted different identities, in part, to avoid being found
His next court appearance was scheduled for June 14, in front of a federal magistrate for his arraignment.
