Dad Reappears in My Life Again
Family Reels After Married Dad Vanishes for 16 Years, Reappears Gay
Eric Myers said he fled in 1991 due to stress over his sexuality.
July xix, 2013— -- Take you ever thought about leaving everything behind? What if yous could start over, just hit the reset button and escape your life?
"I've never encountered somebody who has managed to disappear from their own life," said Robert Anglen, an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic.
But, in June of 1991, while attending a real estate seminar in San Diego, Eric Myers, 34, pulled off the dandy escape, disappearing from his life and vanishing without a trace.
Lookout man the total story on "20/20: I Escaped My Life" TONIGHT at x ET.
For nearly two decades no one knew where Eric Myers was. Law in two states and a private investigator only turned upward dead ends.
"Most people grow up thinking that magic is an illusion, and that people can't disappear," said Kirsten Myers Ruggiano, Myers' youngest daughter. "I grew upwardly in a reality where people practise disappear."
After beingness missing for sixteen years and beingness alleged legally dead by his family, Eric Myers decided to come dorsum into his family'southward lives.
"He pulled off the keen escape. Merely he came back. He got away clean, only he came back, and destroyed everybody'southward life in the procedure," said Anglen.
Why would a wealthy, successful existent estate amanuensis living the American dream just throw everything abroad?
"I but wanted it all to end. I wanted everything to end," said Myers in an interview with ABC News.
Privileged Beginnings
Eric Myers was the third of five kids born to Don and Joan Myers in a suburb just outside of Phoenix.
"He had every advantage: the best schools, the best neighborhoods, the all-time toys," said Anglen.
The conservative, wealthy Myers family lived among luxury homes, picturesque golf courses and influential neighbors.
In high school, Myers was a popular class president who was too considered a grade clown. While in college Myers couldn't milkshake his memories of a sweet girl he knew named Anne.
"When I'm in Washington state, away at school, I realized that the only thing I miss dorsum in Arizona is Anne," said Myers. He proposed to her over the telephone.
What appeared to be a storybook marriage was completed by two daughters, Erin and Kirsten.
"I remember him being fun," said Kirsten Myers Ruggiano. "I recollect riding on his shoulders."
The family was securely religious and before long grew to include three adopted boys from Vietnam. While Eric'south career, every bit a holding manager in his father'south booming real estate business, was taking off, he confided to his friend David Vandervoort that he was in over his head.
"Eric talked virtually existence in debt. Big time. And he was borrowing coin from his dad's visitor to pay information technology back," said Vandervoort.
And despite picture-perfect appearances, Eric's marriage was on the rocks.
"Anne tells the story of, she wanted to become to higher, she wanted to stop the caste, and that ... didn't fit Eric's mold of a Christian housewife," said Anglen.
"Eric searched loftier and depression through the Bible and could not find a way out. And so he felt trapped. Simply yet he was doing the Christian thing by staying married," said Vandervoort.
There was talk of divorce, and on June 25, 1991, as Eric headed to a real estate seminar in San Diego, little did his family know he wouldn't exist coming back.
Eric Myers' 'Reset'
"By all accounts information technology was a reset, it was a, you know, take a deep breath, let'south assess what's going on, get away from the state of affairs and possibly come back and see what happens. But of course that's not what happened," said Anglen.
At that place were some hints of foul play as regime searched for Myers, but they all became dead ends. Eric Myers had completely vanished.
"A healthy, successful American human with a wife and five kids just brutal off the face of the earth," said Anglen. "They detect out that he checked out of his hotel on the outset mean solar day of the briefing, but continued going. Simply nobody knows where he is, nobody knows where he went."
Myers' family was left reeling. His youngest daughter was devastated. She said she cried herself to sleep every night for weeks.
"I remember screaming that I wanted him back," said Kirsten Myers Ruggiano.
Ruggiano and her sister were viii and x at the time of their father's disappearance. "I think probably considering of my age -- and because I was the youngest -- I think it's safe to say I took information technology the hardest," said Ruggiano.
Merely where did Eric Myers go, and how could he exit his married woman and children behind?
Eric says he was robbed on the last 24-hour interval of his San Diego business trip, then spent the night in a seedy motel with just a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He says the next morning he woke up and in a swirling moment of emotional despair headed south, to Mexico.
He says the details of his trip are hazy but he remembers crossing the edge in Tijuana and ownership a motorcoach ticket to Cabo San Lucas. Cabo, with its warm sandy beaches, provided a full escape from a life which he says held a secret that would milk shake his religious roots to their cadre.
"At 6 years old, I knew I was attracted, fatigued very heavily toward other people my same sex," said Myers.
Eric Myers: A New Life
Myers said that because he was gay, he felt forced to create a fake persona from a young historic period. He said that he believed having a girlfriend would help brand him experience how he was "supposed" to feel.
He turned to religion and at the age of 13 became fervently evangelical, he said.
"That was when I started thinking, This isn't correct. I want to be with men," said Myers
When religion didn't work, he idea marrying Anne and starting a family would help. But it didn't, and ultimately the prevarication defenseless upwardly with him on that business trip to San Diego, he said. He remembers thinking that at showtime Cabo would but be a temporary getaway.
"I'm sitting in that location, proverb, You tin do this and still get back. You tin can still do this and notwithstanding be OK. Maybe a week. Perhaps ii weeks," said Myers.
Simply Myers didn't go back. 2 weeks turned into four months, so, without one telephone call home, he headed to Palm Springs, Calif.
Myers said that while searching for a new job, he met Sean Lung, a tourist from Canada, and they immediately connected.
Myers and Lung soon moved in together and frequently traveled together. Myers causeless dissimilar identities and took odd jobs that didn't require an ID.
All the while, Eric'due south family unit was forced to get through life without their father and dad, and in 1996, Myers was declared legally dead. His family cashed in a life insurance policy worth $800,000, and the money was placed in trusts for his two daughters.
Myers said that during that time he tried to avoid thinking virtually the life he had left behind.
"I cannot say anything to deny that information technology is the well-nigh selfish thing in the world. And I will never be painted as a saint. But no i is all skilful, and no ane is all bad," said Myers.
Myers' daughter Kirsten, now 30, had a hard fourth dimension not thinking almost her missing male parent. She sought out means to ease her pain.
"I recollect I was eleven when I first started stealing wine and realized that it fabricated me experience less sorry," said Ruggiano.
She said she spent years struggling with addiction and got sober largely to lessen the burden on her mother.
"My female parent is one of the well-nigh selfless people I've ever met," said Ruggiano. "If either my sister or I called her and said, I need you here now, she would absolutely drop everything to be by our side as shortly as she needed to."
Anne Myers helped her family cope with their loss throughout the years. Together they historic birthdays, proms and graduations -- all without their dad and married man.
In 2007, xvi years after Myers disappeared, cryptic email letters started to evidence up in the inboxes of Myers' friends and family. "Would you be curious in knowing what happened to Eric Myers?" read i.
Sixteen years subsequently disappearing, Myers reappeared.
"There was never whatever plan to come back, just similar there was never any plan to leave, and it just happened," said Myers.
Through a friend, Myers bundled to reconnect with his mother, Joan Myers. He said she welcomed him back with open artillery.
"My mother and I were past information technology with 1 hug," said Myers.
Today Myers has reconnected with most of his siblings. Myers and Lung moved in with Myers' parents and helped treat his begetter in the last few years of his life.
The return dealt a severe blow to Myers' now ex-wife and his children, especially his youngest daughter, a female parent of two who had finally found happiness and peace in her life.
Eric Myers: Return Brings Lawsuit, Fresh Pain
"I know how much I dearest my children," said Ruggiano. "And if he loved me even half as much as I loved them, in that location would be no state of affairs where he would ever call up that it was okay to leave me."
Ruggiano has just glimpsed her father once since he returned. She has not spoken to him.
When Liberty Life Insurance, the company that had paid the death benefit, learned that Eric Myers was alive, they successfully sued the Myers family for the $800,000 plus involvement, and the family is now appealing -- another reason why Myers' render has thrown the family into emotional turmoil.
"It nearly hurt more to accept him come dorsum than it did for him to go in the first place," said Ruggiano.
Despite the painful consequences, Myers insisted he made the right determination to return.
"To alive in a disguise is a horrible prison," said Myers.
To Ruggiano, her father saying that he left because he was gay does not make upwardly for all of the years lost.
"I know a lot of people who would never practice this … absolutely never blame it on their homosexuality. I don't believe that he is capable of love," said Ruggiano.
Watch the total story on "20/20: I Escaped My Life" This night at ten ET.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/family-reels-married-dad-vanishes-16-years-reappears/story?id=19712227
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