. . . or a time traveler?

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

A beautiful, brilliant, but very mysterious woman, who called herself Susan Karlson, wove in and an out of my life for 15 years . . . 1991 to 2006. I now know that even though we had two children together, I never even knew her real name or where she was from. The early days of our strange relationship are described in the online mini-book, The Shenandoah Chronicles. That true story, however, is mainly about human relationships in a time of rapid technological changes and a plot by some extremely wealthy, evil people to overthrow our constitutional democracy.

The Shenandoah Chronicles does not really get into many of the details of the very dangerous work that Susan and I were doing together. She was a newly minted law school graduate and FBI special agent, who looked too young to hold a typical entry level position in a local FBI field office. I was a very busy architect and goat cheese maker, who the bad guys assumed was too naive to be a threat . . . at least back then. Some biographical details of some of the other key characters were fictionalized, in order to protect their identity.

Susan’s classified report to her bosses, combined with my 550 page deposition before the U.S. Department of Justice’s Task Force on Local and State Government Corruption, influenced the Commonwealth of Virginia to literally abolish the Virginia Bureau of Investigation. In addition, the FBI arrested 6 out of 7 of the Shenandoah County, VA Board of Supervisors, all but one of its department heads, the land fill director and all the top officials at the Shenandoah County Sheriff’s Department. These “law enforcement” officers were charged with crimes ranging from murder to large-scale drug racketeering. The honest deputies, who I had worked with for 2 1/2 years, became the new leaders of the agency.

Susan received a huge promotion and was moved to Atlanta. However, during the time that I was still in Virginia, I didn’t know where she was or who she was now working for. After I became trapped at my parents’ house in South Metro Atlanta, Susan eventually made her presence known, while I was bicycling in Peachtree City. Nevertheless, for the remainder of the decade and two children born, I never knew where she lived or saw our children.

Susan encouraged me to start attending Roswell United Methodist Church in North Metro Atlanta. Its massive Single Adults programs had over 1200 members and almost nightly social events. We we could see each other, without any of my family knowing that she existed. When Susan wanted “to be with me in privacy,” we went to federal government “safe houses” . . . either at a hunting lodge in Carroll County or in a gated townhouse community on the Chattahoochee River near Roswell. After I moved to Rome, GA, she would show up on rural roads and invite to join her at some posh hotel in Chattanooga. She refused to come to the rental house in Rome.

I was eventually able to discern what Susan was doing at least part of the time. Soviet agents had been imbedded in the Roswell and East Cobb County area after World War II to spy on the Lockheed Aircraft Plant and Dobbins Air Force Base. They were fully Americanized and all expressed ultra-rightwing political views, just the opposite of Communism. Some of them were members of Roswell United Methodist Church.

Some of their children were in that Singles Sunday School class, but despite having fake Anglo-Saxon names, all were also agents of the KGB or various cults. It was then that I realized that Susan was fluent in Russian and Finnish, in addition to Swedish and English. However, she spoke an archaic Swedish dialect, typical of northern regions of the country and isolated Swedish provinces in Finland.

There was something that I always found curious about Susan. She was brilliant, but had absolutely no knowledge of American popular culture, other than what one could read in a book. I had to teach her how to dance. She didn’t know the names of any rock bands other than ABBA or the words to any songs that would have been popular, while she was a teenager. All that she knew about day-to-day life in the United States had been learned in the previous year.

Susan knew intimate details about the geography of eastern Europe, but was clueless about the geography of the United States, except in northern Virginia and the Minneapolis, Minnesota area . . . where she said that she had grown up. In December 1991, Susan convinced her bosses to pay me to tutor her on the geography, history and culture of the Southeastern United States. It was the only income that I ever received from the federal government, because of my sacrifices in Virginia. She thought that we would never see each other again, so also it was an excuse for us to be together for much longer than a couple of hours.

When she became pregnant, she didn’t tell me, but rather pointed out a Sumatran lady in our Sunday School class, who I should start dating . . . since Susan might be leaving forever. Yet, she and her white Volvo would intermittently appear out of nowhere. When Julie locked her keys and cell phone in her car, while we were eating at a barbecue restaurant in Dawsonville, GA, Susan suddenly appeared wearing a pony tail and sunglasses to call a lock smith with her own cell phone.

When the Sumatran lady dumped me 2 1/2 years later, Susan came on the scene again instantly, but with a woman’s physique. In 1998, she encouraged me to get internet and AOL service, so we could stay in touch regularly, when she was overseas. In 2000, she encouraged me to join some of the new dating websites, so she could come visit me more often at my new house in Jasper, GA . . . disguised as one of the ladies I met on the dating sites. Susan had at least a dozen alternative fake profiles on the internet personals. She also wanted me to date other women casually, so no one would pay much attention to her, when she spent the night at my house – often with her hair dyed or in an different style.

(Photo on left – Susan at Christmas 2005) Time flies! Susan was to turn 40 on July 6, 2006. She suddenly got all mushy with me in Christmas 2005, mentioned the word, love, for the first time and basically proposed to me! Her proposal was that she would take early retirement from her hazardous duty job at age 40. We then would travel around the United States with the two kids, who I had never seen and my dog. If we all got along, Susan had a huge nest egg, with which we could buy a historic farm near Winchester, VA or Frederick, MD. She would do consulting and contract work with the Federal government.

I had been the architect for the construction or restoration of 78 buildings in Northern Virginia, Washington, DC and Delaware. Vivi had sold the winery that I designed for her to a wealthy French family. It was now the top winery in the Eastern United States. I would have no problem, getting my architecture practice going again in the Washington, DC area.

Then in late June 2006, Susan stopped responding to my emails to her dating websites. We did not communicate via regual emails, because of the security risk.

I never heard from her again. There were still some people in the FBI’s Washington headquarters and American University Law School, who remembered us. They told me that Susan had left the FBI in December 1991, apparently to work for another federal agency . . . but she may have been assigned to FBI Counter-Intelligence. Covert Counter-Intelligence agents do not have profiles in the main FBI computer system.

I eventually assumed that she had been killed-in-action overseas. In 2005, she had given me a photo of her with some Kurdish women in northern Iraq.

Susan Karlson never existed

Susan and I never had an argument after our first few meetings that were supposed to be professional in nature. Those arguments were not on professional disagreements. If you recall the Shenandoah Chronicles, she did a thorough legal research of both the Old and New Testaments and determined that in the eyes of God, I was a single man, and so us being together would be blessed. The Hebrew words that she pronounced, while anointing both our heads with “holy” olive oil in my pasture . . . were a ancient Hebrew wedding ceremony.

On the other hand, she pretended through the coming years that we were just “special friends with benefits.” The photo at Etowah Mounds above, commemorates us holding hands for the first time. I later asked a tourist to photograph us. We had known each other biblically for seven years, before she would hold my hand in public or show any other PDA.

Susan encouraged me to date other women, during the long periods when we were apart. She claimed it was a “cover” so no one would notice her. On many an occasion, she claimed that I was the only man that she have ever been with . . . “because you are the only man that I don’t have lie to.” Turns out that statement was not quite true.

After renewing contacts with Vivi the French Courtesan, I also tried to find out what happened to Susan. The internet was just in its infancy in 2006. I hoped to at least find her obituary in a Minnesota newspaper. On the wall of her townhouse in Winchester was a diploma from the University of Minnesota law school. I still remembered the name of the county in Minnesota, where she said that she grew up – Chisago County. Hundreds of Susan Karlsons had been born there!

• No one attended University of Minnesota law school with Susan’s name during the late 1980s or early 1990s. The school emailed me a photo of her graduating class. No woman looked at all like her.

• I accessed online a list of all FBI agents, who served in the period when I first met Susan. Her name, in fact, no name similar to her name, can be found on the list.

• There were several Susan Karlsons, who died in 2006. None of their obituaries could possibly be of the person, who I knew for 15 years.

Because her long practiced trait of seeming to appear out of nowhere, always in her 1990 white Volvo, I eventually assumed that Susan was either an extraterrestrial, time traveler or angel. After all, in late June 1991, she did anoint me with olive oil from Israel and speak ancient Hebrew words, while we were standing in the middle of my front pasture in Virginia. LOL

Susan’s Volvo, parked at the Peachtree City, GA Path System – 1993

The destruction of the Berlin Wall

This past week I watched a documentary series on the destruction of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The program mentioned that after the Berlin Wall came down, thousands of persons, whose families had been the eyes and ears of NATO for decades, took advantage of the chaos in the Soviet Union to escape through the wall.

The timing is perfect. Susan knew very little about day-to-day life in the United States before 1990. Many Swedish families had been trapped in Karelia, when it was captured by the Soviets in 1940 . . . but then they were deported to other parts of the Soviet Union by Stalin. Susan even told me that her parents were born in Karelia. I now think that she was born somewhere in Russia.

I now think that Susan is alive. A Scandinavian woman, about Susan’s age, drove slowly past my house last fall, staring intently as if looking for me. For the next couple of weeks, the same woman intentionally passed me and waved as I was going about errands. That is exactly what Susan would do repeatedly between 1995 and 2005.

I still don’t know why she disappeared from my life or who she really is.

Life is full of mysteries