Elaine Parent

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Elaine Antoinette Parent (August 4, 1942-April 6, 2002) was an American criminal known as "the world's most wanted woman" in the late nineties and early '00s. Parent was beautiful, cunning and highly dangerous.

Parent also earned the nickname of "Chameleon" for her ability to elude authorities with a variety of disguises, sometimes even posing as a man: her known aliases include Charlotte Rae Cowan, Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson, Ann Tremont, Elaine Haviland, Alex Hart, Alexis Marshal Hart, Antonio Hamilton Russell, Victoria Dark, and Bret Tremont. She has traveled the world of stolen identities on two continents and number of countries that include the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, France, South Africa and Australia.

The Beginning of Elaine Parent's Criminal Career of Stolen Indentities:

Parent's extraordinary criminal career officially began in Miami Florida on July 16th 1990. A bank employee named Beverly Ann McGowan had placed an ad looking for a roommate to share her Pompano Beach, Florida condo. A woman named 'Alice' answered the ad and befriended Beverly. Through their brief involvement, Alice got Beverly interested in numerology and was able to obtain Beverly's birth certificate, social security numbers, passport and other vital information, and Alice had the means to take over Beverly's life. Shortly afterwards, Beverly had written goodbye letters to her family and friends saying she was leaving for a while. Beverly's brother Steve, knew something was wrong and he cancelled her credit cards thinking that Beverly could not travel without them, and he then traveled to search in Beverly's condo and it seemed as though Beverly had just simply disappeared.

Stolen Identities Lead to Murder:

On July 19th 1990, two days after Beverly wrote the letters and disappeared, the mutilated remains of a woman were found in the St. Lucie County, Florida canal. Police investigators said the woman's head had been brutally decapitated, only a part of the woman's lower jaw and five teeth remained; the victim's hands had been hacked off above the wrists; her throat had been slashed open and a part of her abdomen had been cut away, apparently to remove a tattoo. The killer worked hard to make indentification impossible for police, but the killer had overlooked another tattoo that was found on the dead woman's ankle. The tattoo of a yellow rose, along with the victim's few teeth through dental records positively identified the woman as Beverly Ann McGowan.

The Appearances of The Chameleon:

Police were shocked by the brutality of such a vicious murder, and a day after the body was discovered, police found that Beverly's mysterious roommate 'Alice' had used Beverly's credit cards in shops around the area. Later, the same credit cards were used by what appeared to be a man dressed as a woman at a travel agency in Miami to book an airline flight to London England. The man had stated that he had a reservation to fly to England on a British Airways flight on July 21st. Police believed that the man was really 'Alice' disguising herself to elude authorities. While police investigated the airline manifests they were unable to trace any names of 'Alice' or 'Beverly McGowan', but nonetheless the following day in London, 'Alice' picked up a car at the London Heathrow Airport.

Years of Searching for the many identities of 'Alice':

While police investigators spent the next five years desperatly trying to find a lead to the identity of 'Alice'. Finally in 1996, police returned to the passenger manifest on the British Airlines that Alice took to London in 1990 after Beverly McGowan's death. One name was familiar to police investigators, the name of Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson was known to the State Department by a string of aliases and she was also a British citizen. However the 'real' Sylvia Hodgkinson was deceased, but three identities that the fake 'Sylvia Hodgkinson used were known: 'Charlotte Rae Cowan', 'Ann Tremont' and 'Elaine Antoinette Parent'. It was later discovered that 'Ann Tremont' had befriended a woman named 'Charlotte Rae Cowan' in a bar in Orlando in 1989. Ann Tremont also used numerology to get her vital information. Ann Tremont eventually got a hold of the identity of Charlotte Rae Cowan. In 1991, the fake Charlotte Rae Cowan was arrested in Miami for auto thief. She was placed in jail overnight, but released on bail and was never seen again. Not until 1996 was it when police investigators discovered all of these different faces of 'Alice'. The police had one identity to investigate- Elaine Parent. As the investigators discovered the mysterious woman named 'Alice' who calls herself by 'Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson', 'Ann Tremont', 'Charlotte Rae Cowan' was indeed Elaine Parent, who happened to be a known criminal. Parent had actually been arrested during a jewelry thief sceme in the 1980's, but Parent always seemed to be one step ahead of investigators. Another intriguing story about Elaine Parent is that she was believed to be bisexual and in 1986, Parent had a relationship with a British female executive. After Parent's relationship with her failed in 1990, Parent is believed to have sent threatening letters to her former lover, on the same papers that Beverly McGowan wrote her letters on shortly before her disappearance and grisly murder. It is believed that after Parent murdered Beverly McGowan, she sent the threatening letters to her British lover and then went to London shortly afterwards to confront her. The relationship once again failed, and Parent threatened to kill her, and then she was never seen again.

The Chameleon Commits Suicide:

For another six years, Parent had seemed to disappear from sight, until April of 2002 when she was finally tracked down at her residence in Panama City, Florida were she was living under a new identity of 'Darlene Higgins'. As police came to her house to arrest her, Parent had managed to stay a cruical step ahead of her pursuers, by committing suicide from a self inflicted gunshot wound. By doing so, much of Elaine Parent's bizarre lifestyle and criminal career and her secrets died with her.