WHEN Beverly McGowan took in a high-flying tech employee with a British accent, she thought she’d found the perfect roommate.
But the 34-year-old American bank clerk’s dismembered body was to end up in a Florida canal infested with alligators, with only a yellow rose tattoo on her right ankle offering up a clue to her identity in 1990.
For over 12 years the authorities hunted for the prime suspect in her murder, a serial con artist called Elaine Parent.
Glamorous Elaine neither worked for a computer firm, nor was she British.
This was one of countless identities taken on by the “woman with a thousand names” who was dubbed the Chameleon Killer.
After a series of close escapes from the law, with detectives on her tail on four continents, the police finally tracked her down in 2002.
Rather than go to prison, the fugitive once dubbed the “world’s most wanted woman” shot herself through the heart as cops waited outside her bedroom door.
But her death has not led to the case being closed.
British journalist Tim Tate, who has followed the story from the start, believes she did not act alone and that there could be other victims.
And a new three-part documentary series titled The Hunt For The Chameleon Killer on the TRUE CRIME channel might help to shed fresh light on the mystery.
In February Tim, who lives near Bath, received tens of thousands of police files about Parent’s case under Freedom of Information rules, which include references to a former partner referred to as ‘Miss X’.
He tells The Sun: “It remains a live case even though Elaine Parent is dead. Detectives think that other people were involved with her cons.
“The files spell out who Elaine Parent’s partners in crime were both in the States and the UK, particularly Miss X.”
Parent’s crimes stretch back well before she crossed paths with Beverly.
Once a genuine estate agent, the New Yorker found that identity fraud was a far more lucrative line of work in Florida in the 1980s.
There she started a relationship with Miss X, who admitted to the police that she knew of Parent’s cons.
Tim says: “The UK was her bolthole, she fled here in 1985 at the time when she was just feeling the heat for a large-scale jewel robbery, she fled here with her lover Miss X.”
In Britain, Parent stole at least a dozen identities and relieved countless unsuspecting people of their money.
One of her ways of getting important information out of victims was to offer to predict their future using numerology.
She would tell their fortunes using their date of birth, driver’s licence, bank account details or other key personal numbers.
After a row with Miss X, Parent flew back to Florida where she pulled off the numerology trick on Beverly in 1990 using the name Alice.
She was a woman who stole identities vampirically
Tim Tate
With those details, she was able to steal Beverly’s identity, take money from her bank account, book a British Airways flight to London and hire a car.
The British police put out surveillance on the rented car but when they found it abandoned in Barnes in south west London there were no fingerprints.
Parent was a step above your regular con artist.
She had also cut off Beverly’s hands, feet and head before dumping her in the canal in St Lucie County.
Why she made the mistake of leaving the tattoo is unclear. So too, is her motive for murder.
The suspicion is that Beverly got wise to her con and told Parent to leave.
Tim says it was “rage essentially, she couldn’t handle rejection.”
Parent renewed her relationship with Miss X in Britain for three months, but her former lover grew increasingly scared of the woman she was sharing her life with.
The killer had told her one night: “You’ll never believe how much blood there is in one person.”
Back in Florida, the con woman resumed her old trick of taking identities and weedling her way into the lives of kindly people.
Her crime spree is also believed to have taken place in France, Australia and South Africa.
Tim comments: “She was a woman who stole identities vampirically.”
In 1998 the case of the Chameleon Killer was featured on ITV‘s The World’s Most Wanted.
The British public were warned that Parent stalked single women and could be looking for her next victim.
One hitman called Ronald Farebrother told the newspapers at this time that he’d married her under the name Sylvia Barnes at Watford registry office in 1988, but the relationship ended when she shot him through the leg.
Tim was just about to put the finishing touches to his own documentary for Channel 5 in 2002 when he received a call from the police in the US telling him that Parent was dead.
She had taken her own life, using a point 357 magnum gun in Panama City, Florida.
Ex-Panama City police officer Michael McLeod, who had been sent to speak to a suspicious character with potentially criminal motives, didn’t know she was an international fugitive wanted for murder.
Fatally, the cops waited outside her door while she got her things together.
Michael tells the documentary: “They didn’t tell us she was known as ‘The Chameleon.’”
“If the police had known how dangerous she was, they wouldn’t have allowed her to get changed alone.”
They realised their mistake when they heard shots fired.
Michael recalls: “I went in first. I remember seeing gun smoke in the room.”
You’ll never believe how much blood there is in one person
Elaine Parent
Tim has continued to follow the case since Parent’s death.
He thinks the British police and other forces should have taken equal interest.
Tim explains: “The cops in St Lucie County remain deeply concerned that she killed more than one, but they can’t prove that.
“The reason is that this is an investigation spanning many continents which is being run out of a tiny sheriff’s office in a tiny city on the northern coast of Florida.
“They don’t have the resources at hand to track down every lead.”
He thinks a number of people helped Parent, some “wittingly” and others “unwittingly.”
One of them could have been involved in Beverly’s murder.
Tim adds: “One of her main accomplices shot himself a short time before Parent shot herself.
“The Sheriff’s office told me they are closer than ever before to arresting her accomplice in the murder of Beverly McGowan.”
The Hunt for The Chameleon Killer premieres on TRUE CRIME at 10pm on 3 September.
