The Erasure Impostor Story

2007-09-07 - 5:13 a.m.

My name is Brin-Marie McLaughlin. I am a fraud victim, which is what I'm doing here.

Regular readers of Diaryland may know me as Bindyree.

The bulk of this writeup was completed in March of 2003, when these events first came to light, as an attempt to accurately and thoroughly document what has happened to me, but it's taken me this long -- a little over four years -- to come to grips with most of it.

I've been encouraged to write down what happened to me, and post this here, so without further adieu, here is the unexpurgated story of my involvement with The Erasure Impostor.

---

Okay. It’s the first week of March 2003 as of this writing. Where to start.

Wow. I’m still trying to slog through what’s happened. But I’ll give it a shot, because it’s important to me to let people know what has happened, and I think if I write it all down, this will be a most effective way for me to deal with everything. I beg your indulgence. You haven’t seen most of this before now, because I was told to keep it quiet, due to Vince Clarke being worried about the media finding out what had happened to him and to Andy.

I first ran into Andy Bell in a chat room on America Online, in October of 2001. My father had just survived a mild heart attack, and I was visiting with friends, and he seemed nice and concerned. He befriended me, and then revealed a wonderful secret -- he was none other than Andy Bell, the lead singer of Erasure. I had been taken into his confidence, and we became close friends. He also revealed to me that he secretly lived with his music partner, Vince Clarke, and despite any reports to the contrary, Vince and Andy were in fact, a couple.

For some time, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke had been unwell. It’s been the worst run of bad luck I have ever heard of anybody actually surviving. In November of 2001, Andy was lured to a bar in Surrey and something was slipped into his drink. He was then taken, tortured sexually for a number of hours, then dumped in the studio, nude, shot full of drugs, and severely injured. AOL happened to have been hooked up in their studio, though, and for some reason, in the middle of his drug-induced haze, Andy managed to log on and chat. Andy also managed to bar the doors of the studio with the racks and equipment, so Vince wouldn’t come in, because he was determined to commit suicide. I chatted with Andy for seven hours, while Vince was emailing me from outside of AOL, begging me for status reports, and telling me he was planning to break in to the studio. Vince attempted to rescue Andy by climbing on the roof of the studio and shoving an old mixing board through the glass, but he lost his footing and went crashing through, sustaining a head injury and back injury. Both of them eventually did end up in hospital for a couple of days, but were released on condition that they have complete bed rest for several weeks. Andy had a harder time shaking off his drug intake, so for a few days, I would chat with Vince, whenever I saw him online. He begged me to help keep him company, and awake, so he could take care of Andy. This took place over Thanksgiving weekend, and I spent the holiday itself here in front of the computer, instead of at my in-laws.

John went alone.

In a few days, however, Vince disobeyed the doctor’s orders, no matter how hard I tried to convince him otherwise. He tried to track Andy’s actions via looking through his email accounts, and when he went back to the bar to see if he could discover who had done this to Andy, the assailants got him, too -- only worse, because Vince was yelling so much they decided that for extra fun, they would pour a solvent down his throat to stop him from screaming. I asked why they didn’t go to the hospital, and Vince said they were paralytically protective of their privacy, so they simply had people come out to the mansion and give them treatment. For weeks, Vince Clarke only spoke to me on the telephone in a hoarse whisper. The first thing he whispered to me was ‘Thank you for saving my lover’s life’, and he cried. And as his vocal cords recovered, he told me he was sorry, but he was never going to sound the way he had sounded before the assault.

A few days later, when I was on the telephone with Andy -- he secured my telephone number, and called me at his expense, all the way from Surrey -- he was playing snippets of songs for me to see if I recognized anything; I was growing embarrassed at the number of times I had to say, no, I’m sorry, I’ve never heard that. Then he switched to Vince’s previous body of work -- and got a big reaction from me. It turns out that Vince Clarke had written one of my favorite songs, entitled “Only You”. That song was the reason I went out and purchased my first electronic keyboard, and there was at least one instance in my life where I contemplated ending everything, but instead of carrying through with the act, I sat down at the keyboard instead. I believe I would not be here today had it not been for the inspiration of Vince Clarke. So, to be able to directly tell the man himself, “Thank you for saving my life” has been one of the greatest moments in my personal history.

Because of the nature of the injuries sustained during their assaults, they were not allowed to eat solid food for weeks. Chest catheters were installed in them both, and their diet consisted of Gatorade, Ensure nutrition drinks, and the occasional nutritional supplement delivered by IV. Nevertheless, they were trying to keep up with their studio obligations, and even attempting to do the occasional interview or personal appearance. As soon as Andy was up and about, Vince marched him back into the studio to practice. On December 6th, 2001, Andy went into one of the vocal rooms, and was moving some equipment, and his chest catheter caught, and tore his flesh. Andy Bell is a bleeder, and he fainted at the sight of his own blood, and because of the pain.

After several hours, Vince emailed me and asked me if I had seen Andy online at all. I said no. Vince then said he telephoned his friend Eric Radcliffe, to please drive over to Surrey and see about Andy, because he could not get out of bed. Eric was instructed to go into the studio and go to the computer, and find the IMs from me, and follow my instructions. About thirty minutes after Vince called Eric, a new IM popped up on my screen, asking me what to do. I told Eric to break down every door in the place to find Andy, and take him to Vince. I told Eric to get Vince on the intercom and have him phone the hospital to bring a crash cart out to the mansion. Eric finally IMed me and said he’d found Andy, but he wasn’t getting a pulse. I said to stop the bleeding, and if he could get Andy up the stairs to Vince, that would be best. Once again, Vince thanked me for saving Andy, and I said Eric was the one who did that. And Vince said, “If you ever need anything, or if you’re worried about either of us? -- tell Eric Radcliffe your troubles. I want the two of you to stay in touch,” and gave me Eric’s email address.

During their convalescence, Andy and Vince and I began talking on the telephone about twice a week. I was careful to refrain from talking ‘shop’, and they both assured me that it was one of the things they loved about me -- the fact that I knew virtually nothing about Erasure.

At the end of December in 2001, I was going to go up and see my father and his wife between Christmas and New Years’ -- I had mentioned this to Andy and Vince several times, because I was looking forward to seeing my father for the first time since his birthday the previous April—but the weather in the state where Andy and Vince have their US property turned bitterly cold, and as a result, the electronic doors of their recording studio quit working, while Andy was trapped in the studio, and Vince was recuperating from the back injuries he had sustained in November. Vince still went ahead and tried to go out to the studio, but his back gave out in the cold, and he collapsed in the snow and nearly died of frostbite. I was instructed by Vince to remain on AOL and keep Andy calm and placated until he could be rescued—and no matter what, DO NOT HANG UP, or else Andy would probably panic, and do something stupid. Please help.

So I didn’t show up at my Dad’s, and because my telephone line was tied up, I couldn’t call Dad and let him know I wouldn’t be there.

That would have been the last time I saw him before he died of a heart attack at the end of January, 2002.

In February of 2002, during their recovery from their attacks, and Vince from his frostbite, Vince became suicidal. I wrote a long letter to Eric Radcliffe, asking him for help with Vince, and to try and arrange an intervention of some kind. Eric wrote back immediately and told me to try and keep track of Andy and Vince, and said he was going to place a call to Mute and see about getting additional help. Meanwhile, Vince did indeed attempt suicide. He slashed his arms. The problem was, he did it the wrong way and disabled his wrist movement, but did not open his blood vessels properly enough to drain.

Then in the third week of February, Vince and Andy disappeared. Immediately prior to this, Andy called me to yell at me for saying anything to Eric about Vince’s condition. I shouted back that I had no choice, that I was trying to save the man’s life. Then I hung up.

I lost track of them both, except for the occasional email from Eric Radcliffe, telling me what he knew, and asking if I knew anything. According to one email exchange I saw, they had been in Montana, hiding in the home of one of their other online friends, so that Eric wouldn’t travel to the states and try and separate them and hospitalize them.

They quit speaking to me until the end of April, when I wished Andy a happy birthday and received a reply. Andy and I resumed speaking to one another on the telephone on May 13th, 2002, when there had been an earthquake in the Bay Area, and Andy had finally given in to the urge to call to see if I was all right.

In May of 2002, Vince sustained a head injury that resulted in corrective surgery to drain a hematoma that had been lurking since November, but which resulted in breathing problems due to a partial paralysis of the autonomous area of his brain, which meant breathing treatments, and being on oxygen at night when he slept.

In the last week of May, I was enlisted by Andy to set my alarm clock for every hour and telephone and wake him up so he could give Vince breathing treatments.

So I moved out from the bedroom onto the futon and did exactly that. I had planned to go to BayCon, but decided against it due to being needed by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke.

---

At this time, Andy also revealed to me for the first time that Vince had a secret crush on me but was afraid to say anything. I was flattered and happy beyond belief. The man who wrote the song that saved my life was secretly in love with me. In June, after he had recovered, Vince asked me to my 20th high school reunion, and told me himself about the crush he had on me. And Andy told me for the first time about a member of his family who had been hearing about me but hadn’t met me yet: His younger brother, who was also named Andy.

In July, Andy and Vince attempted to commence the kind of intimate relations that they once used to engage in prior to their injuries in November, but they zigged when they should have zagged, and Andy was re-injured in a very sensitive place, and had to have corrective surgery. In July, Vince cancelled his trip to California, but kept telling me he loved me and that if he weren’t already committed to Andy that he would want to marry me.

In August, at his insistance, Vince Clarke and I began a romance on the telephone. “Please don’t tell anybody. I can’t resist you. I have tried, but failed. I love Andy, but you’re just so wonderful. You’ve been so good to us both. Of all of the women in the world I’ve ever met or worked with, I only want you. I love you, Brin-Marie, I love you.” The man who wrote the song I credited with saving my life told me he loved me, and desired me.

I should have resisted this man. But I could not.

The day after Vince and I commenced our telephone thing, I was on duty in the Erasure chat room, and an employee of Maverick Records showed up. She was a bright, chatty person, who was glad to tell us all about Erasure. We tried to tell her that Andy Bell was right here in the chat room, but she vehemently denied such a thing could possibly be true, and said that we were all being foolish if we believed that. Behinds the scenes, in IMs, Vince scoffed at her and said it would probably be best if we just left that crazy person alone. But after she left the chat room, I wrote her a nice letter, asking her to please come back, and stating that I had heard Andy Bell sing to me over the telephone, so how could it NOT be Erasure?

When Vince found out I sent that letter, he exploded. “Don’t you ever fucking disobey me again, do you hear me?” he said later that night, on the telephone. “If you want to be associated with us, you trust my word, you do exactly as I tell you, you never doubt what I say, and you do not contact people that I tell you to leave alone, do you understand? That bitch is with Maverick, and we’re in the middle of a contract dispute with them! You may have jeopardized that! I hope you’re fucking satisfied! I’m not going to have some bird who knows jack shit about the music industry go behind my fucking back, do you hear me?”

I said yes. And I apologized, again and again.

After many of my tears, Vince grudgingly accepted my apology. And for six months thereafter, I did not make a move online, having to do with Erasure, without checking with him first.

At the end of August, I was going to go to the Worldcon. I told Andy and Vince all about it, and how much I was looking forward to the event. I had extra money that year, thanks to a modest inheritance left to me by my father, and so I purchased two Worldcon memberships, and John arranged for a Saturday night and Sunday night stay at one of the main convention hotels.

On August 31st, Vince attempted to kill himself by obtaining some euthanasia drugs used to put pets to sleep, but the drug dealers that sold it to him decided to beat him up and leave him for dead out in a marshy area by a lake. He was discovered and brought back to their mansion, where he stopped breathing. Andy did not know CPR, so I stayed on the telephone on the Friday of Con Jose, instead of attending the first day of the event.

Andy and several doctors watched him round the clock. I tried to go to Con Jose for the duration of the weekend, but was so worried about Vince, and certain that he was going to die any moment that I asked my friend Brian Clayton to drive me back to San Francisco, so I could telephone Andy and stay with him in case he needed to talk, or in case something happened to Vince.

I came home Saturday night, and left John down there in the room we had paid for. I was certain Vince Clarke was going to die. And on that Saturday night, I telephoned Andy, and we stayed connected all night, and when I had to hang up the next morning and return to San Jose to my husband, Andy cried and cried.

But I told John I would be back, and so I was.

Andy told me that Vince’s breathing stopped again on Sunday, but that he and his younger brother performed CPR on Vince until the doctor could arrive. My trip to Con Jose was bifurcated -- I returned to the convention on Sunday and stayed all day Sunday and half of Monday -- but I still managed to see many friends despite being so worried about Andy and Vince. I had been allowed to print and distribute business cards with my Erasure affiliation listed on them, and Vince insisted on me updating my resumé to reflect my online work for them.

In October, Andy was suffering from migraines, and when he decided to drop ecstasy to cure the pain, he took entirely too much, and was comatose for several days. Before passing out, he sexually assaulted Vince, causing an internal injury that nearly made him bleed to death. Several days passed, and Andy woke up, and felt terrible about what he’d done, and held Vince while the doctor arrived to perform repair work.

In November, Andy allowed me to speak to his younger brother -- also named Andy -- for the first time, with the admonition that younger Andy was a very sensitive young man who had simply heard so much about me that he wanted to talk to me. I was told that Andy is transgendered, female-to-male. The old joke about a gay man trapped in a woman’s body is not actually a joke to him. Andy and his younger brother sounded so similar on the telephone that it was impossible for me to tell them apart.

The reason younger Andy is also named Andy is because when he officially announced his intent to become male, so that his outsides would match his insides, he asked his older brother if he could please start calling himself after the two people he adored most in the world. Younger Andy’s full name is Andrew Ivan Clarke Bell.

In December, I sent presents to Andy, Vince, and younger Andy. The forthcoming concert tour for Erasure was announced. The American dates included a stop in San Francisco on the 21st of March.

My telephone romance with Vince Clarke continued, and I was treated to enthusiastic and vivid fantasies, and was asked many questions which almost exclusively specifically involved how I thought his penis would feel inside of me. Vince pushed every dark button in my soul. I was utterly convinced that I was completely and obsessively in love with him.

Meanwhile, on the home front, John was pacing the floor and yelling at me. I was ignoring my household chores. I never went out and did anything with my husband anymore. Our sex life dwindled to almost nothing. Worst of all, I was listening as Andy and Vince were telling me how terrible John was, and that I should leave him. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just jealous of us. He never wants you to have any friends of your own. He’s just an insecure asshole, and he doesn’t love you like we do. We hear him yelling at you. He treats you terribly. Does he ever send you flowers? Does he ever send you cards? No? Well then, there’s your proof.”

In the first week of January of 2003, Vince and I were doing our thing on the telephone, when suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. I was in the middle of an orgasm, when he whispered help. stop. i can’t breathe. i’m dying. you’re killing me. I felt terrible. I told him to hang up and call the doctor. He did, and the doctors had to come to the house and perform emergency surgery in which Vince’s lungs had to be drained. I stayed on the telephone with Andy for two solid days and nights, taking brief breaks to sleep. Vince pulled through. Meanwhile, I was ashamed, and traumatized, and growing more afraid of my own sexuality as time passed.

For you see, my desires had nearly killed Vince Clarke, the man who once saved my life. And I knew that if I ever told anybody the truth about what I had been doing with Vince when he suffered his attack, my world would collapse. I would lose my husband, and I would lose my friends. As Vince recovered, he warned me to keep the secret, and reminded me of everything I had to lose.

In late January, Andy asked me the most important favor in the world. “My younger brother wants to come to San Francisco to see Erasure in concert, and can you please let him stay with you? He doesn’t have much money, and he’s too proud to take any from me or from Vince, and he’s very sensitive about this, so can he come visit? There is nobody else we trust the way we trust you.”

Naturally I enthusiastically and lovingly said yes, of course he can come visit us.

Then The Other Tour began. I remember having looked forward at being able to hand off my Erasure-sitting duties to their Tour people -- but oddly, that did not happen. After the end of every show on the UK tour, they called me and asked me to read to one or the other of them until they fell asleep. Andy had migraine headaches, and would jump if there were any extraneous noises on my end of the telephone. No radio, no television, and by the way could I please tell my husband to be quiet? The tone of his voice is frightening, and he’s very loud anyway. So, basically, there I was, trying to assist my friends, with no other sensory input to speak of.

Back in August of 2002, I went to alt.music.erasure, and there, I met Jamie Lord. Jamie is the penultimate Erasure fan, and he met his boyfriend Nelson there in the newsgroup. Andy wanted me to arrange a conference concert via telephone for him, so at Andy’s request, but at my expense, I called Jamie, and Andy sang to him and answered questions.

Jamie and I remained in touch, and became friends. Through the fall and winter of 2002, and into 2003, Andy kept saying he wanted to arrange another conference concert, but the moment never arrived.

In the middle of February, at the height of “The Other Tour”, which is the name of the UK leg of Erasure’s promotional appearances, Andy developed a serious problem with his kidneys. They stopped working, and the problem was diagnosed as pseudomonas. This is a very serious vascular disorder, and it takes about a month of high doses of Prednisone to stop the symptoms. Surgery to install a dialysis shunt into Andy’s arm and another into Andy’s leg was performed -- and during the arm surgery, Andy flailed so hard that he received an unexpected and deep slice on his upper arm that required microscopic needlework to fix. Andy’s temperature soared to 106°F, and he was forced to lie naked and uncovered, and swaddled in cold cloths to try and regulate his temperature. He was not allowed to have anything to drink, except one small glass of water per day.

In sympathy, I stopped drinking water, too.

Then there began to be problems with what Vince was telling me about Erasure, and The Other Tour.

Big problems.

I stayed on the telephone with Andy through a night on which a concert was supposed to take place -- a concert which Vince claims they were forced to cancel. Of course, this means I should have seen notices somewhere about the myriad of cancelled concerts, right?

I looked online in the Erasure newsgroups, Erasure ‘blogs, Erasure websites. There was absolutely no evidence of any cancelled shows in the UK, prior to the Derby show on the 18th, which was cancelled due to Andy having bronchitis.

Now, I could almost understand if Erasure as an entity had complete control over the official websites and news areas online and had exercised their right to privacy by controlling the content. A Grand Conspiracy Theory is not out of the question in the circles in which Vince Clarke is considered the benevolent dictator of all things Erasure. But for no private citizen to have posted publicly about their displeasure over a cancelled concert?

Sorry. I’ve got a problem with that.

While I’d been doing this -- speaking to him and phone-sitting, etc. -- there had been reviews posted in British newspapers for concerts that, if I listen to what Vince Clarke is telling me, should not be taking place. And on the newsgroups as well.

When I asked why reviews were being posted to newspapers and newsgroups, Vince said that the bogus concert reviews were planted by their parent company, Mute, to prevent too many people from asking invasive questions about the cancellations.

I bought a ticket to the San Francisco appearance of Erasure that is scheduled for March 21, 2003. They’ve been extremely vociferous about fans not being able to have access them the way they once could prior to September 11th, 2001. When I told Andy that I would probably be able to obtain a press pass and get access to them that way instead, Andy panicked -- no, I take that back, Andy fucking freaked -- demanded I not do that. Andy said he didn’t want to mix business and personal. He said Vince would blow a gasket, and said that meeting me during the tour was completely out of the question, as Vince would probably burst into tears and he wasn’t about to risk doing that in public, so please kindly stay away, and if we want to come visit you at your home, with Andy there, we will.

Then I thought of Matthew Sweet.

My friend Toren Smith is friends with Matthew Sweet. Toren knew that Matthew Sweet loved Japanese comic books, and being a publisher of same, he brought him a bundle of them at a concert. Toren was immediately ushered backstage, and the two of them have been friends ever since.

There was no security problem there.

Andy and Vince don’t want me to visit them in the USA -- although I do have their street address and have been very tempted to ask family who live in that area to approach the property with a camera, knock, and take a picture of whoever answers the door. They won’t give me their UK home address under any circumstances. Vince claims that fans constantly raid his mailbox and that my mail is safer going to the USA address.

Or their UK telephone number because they said the USA number kicks over and they want me to save my money and call the USA number instead. Vince finally relented and gave me what he called their ‘Surrey Number’ -- this turned out to be a dead end number that used to lead to nothing more than the fax machine for Mutebank, the merchandising branch of Mute Records.

They kept being vague about when they want to meet me. They claimed they loved me to pieces, and that they wanted to meet me, but never seemed to actually nail down any details. I was willing to travel to wherever they are and stay at a hotel at no expense to them, and have them be surrounded by as much security as they feel comfortable having around them, but still, no dice.

They claimed they use a vocoder during interviews which is why they sound different on the phone. I heard an interview given by Andy Bell to a website about four months ago , and his inflection, his grammar, his sentence structure, and of course his voice, were completely different.

Now, it’s possible that a person’s voice will sound drastically different on the telephone as opposed to the way it sounds on the radio, but in my limited experience, that’s not something I’ve ever heard. John Rothmann, a local talk show host here in San Francisco, telephoned me a year or so ago to thank me for sending him a packet of ‘RE-ELECT AL GORE’ buttons, and the dear man sounds exactly the same through my ratty old phone speaker as he does through my fancy table radio.

There were three things that finally woke me up from my believe anything they say stupor.

The first thing was when I was in the Erasure chat room, and a user came in and showed pictures around of the York concert, which took place on the 17th of February. According to Vince, that concert had actually been cancelled. And I believed him because I was on the telephone with Andy all of that night. The photographs showed Andy looking spectacular, and Vince did too -- very healthy, in fact. Not the sickly, patched-together, barely out of bed creatures I had been lead to believe they had become. Meanwhile, in the background, outside of the chat room, Vince was communicating with me saying how furious he was that a fan was coming into their chat room and hoaxing us all about when the event took place.

Vince said Andy had taken one look at what that fan had written and claimed, and he turned away from the laptop and vomited. I was horrified that anybody would put poor, dear, sick Andy through any more trauma, but I kept a happy face in the chat room, and I kept asking when the show had taken place. And the user kept assuring me that the show had taken place just that last Monday night in York, the 17th, and this was now late in the evening of February 20th. The next day, I remembered that I had downloaded a scan of the handbill for the UK leg of The Other Tour. It was in my scrapbook, and upon it were listed the telephone numbers for the venues.

I gave the number of the venue of the York show, the Barbican, to John so he could call them from work. He did so, and found, not surprisingly, that the show did indeed take place on the 17th of February, as scheduled, with no problem and no postponement.

The second thing was that I had been, for the duration of their time in Surrey, been listening to the radio in the background when I was speaking to them. I kept hearing the local ID for the station they listened to when they were in Illinois. I asked Vince about this, and he said they were connected via the Internet. Since I wanted to share this experience as well, I went over to the radio station’s website... and found that there was no webcast available. I wrote to the radio station’s manager, and he confirmed this.

The third thing was in the form of a person. Jamie Lord along with his boyfriend Nelson Parker, and Andy and I finally had another conference call on the 21st of February. The next day, I got online with Jamie. We began talking. Jamie very gently clued me in and said that he was fairly certain that the person we had been talking with was NOT the Andy Bell who sings for Erasure. He said there were moments when Andy sounded pretty good, but mostly, not that accurate. Jamie’s boyfriend Nelson wrote to the Erasure Information Service, which is the official website of Erasure, and asked if anybody could confirm the email addresses or the mailing address of the person calling himself Andy Bell.

I had never thought to do this, because Vince had told me that if anybody ever wrote and asked, they would be told no, because their privacy was to be protected at any cost -- and his word was law.

But now, I finally decided to find out for myself, so when Nelson wrote, I went ahead and wrote to Mute and the EIS as well.

The EIS wrote back first.

If there is a young man coming to my home, professing to be the younger brother of Andy Bell of Erasure, I am entitled to double check. But the reason I had not done so before was that whenever I even jokingly suggested that I needed to see proof of who they were, Andy would burst into tears and accuse me of not trusting him. And Vince would grow dark and sullen and extremely upset, and say that if we didn’t have any trust established by now -- after what we had been doing -- then there was no point in continuing the relationship. I was utterly horrified at the thought of having hurt Andy Bell, and of having insulted Vince Clarke -- and terrified of losing their friendship again, so I did not question their identities.

Until Jamie and Nelson.

And John’s call to the York Barbican.

And the EIS.

And Mute.

---

The Erasure Information Service wrote back:

Just for my own records, will you please respond to me and confirm my suspicions, and tell me whether or not andybell38@aol.com is a legitimate email address for the real Andy Bell?

- - -

To the best of my knowledge, Vince and Andy only have one email address each, and Andy's address is most certainly not andybell38@aol.com. Neither Vince nor Andy are on AOL.

I'm very sorry to hear that someone has been taking advantage of people's goodwill towards the band, and I consider their behaviour to be utterly reprehensible and ill-spirited.

And Mute...

From: info@mutehq.co.uk

Dear John & Brin-Marie:

Thanks for your mail. I can confirm that we have never had any of these email addresses as contact details for either Vince or Andy and I do not know of Andy having a US postal address.

So the fix was in. Whoever these people were, they were very good—but they’d finally fucked up, and I caught them red-handed.

I thought about all of the friends I had made in the Erasure chat room, and who needed to be told and who did not. The main person I was worried about was the user we had come to refer to as Salt Lake Paul, aka Paul Schultz. Paul was mentioned by both Andy and Vince as being a ‘dear mate’, and I was so fearful of hurting Paul with this bad news. I worked up my nerve and said something to him on the 24th of February, and his response astounded me.

He had known for months that this was not Andy Bell.

But he thought I was in on the joke.

And then he told me something I’ll never forget.

He told me it wasn’t two guys...

It was one guy.

He said he’d been on the phone with Andy when he’d gone away and come back and forgotten and resumed the conversation as Vince. He also said he had never heard them both speak simultaneously. And Paul also said he’d never heard Andy and his brother speak at the same time.

My husband John had been telling me for months that he had never been able to tell Andy and Vince apart from one another.

I argued with Paul. I kept asking if he was absolutely certain. And Paul kept saying yes.

Then I stopped and thought of all of the times I asked each of them about the other, and said what their Christmas presents were going to be -- gads.

And then my heart completely stopped.

Vince Clarke had no idea I was alive, and I was essentially convinced that I was going to leave my husband for him.

I had been having an affair over the telephone with -- absolutely nobody at all. Just a borrowed existence and an affected voice.

All of the drama—all of the blood, the surgeries, the rape, the trauma, the darkness, the injuries, the fright, the catheters, the beatings, the assaults, the overdoses, the conflicts -- Every last word of it had been a complete lie.

So had “Vince’s” words of love to me.

Everything had been concocted from the fertile mind of one person.

---

I decided to post a page to my website with my findings. John had taken a personal day off, so we could go and contact the police and see if there were any way in particular for us to go about protecting ourselves. I had this dawning feeling of how “Vince” was going to react to this -- doubtless making a threat to me to tell John what we had been doing.

So I risked everything, and, terrified, I told John what had happened between me and 'Vince'.

To my astounding surprise and relief, John has been nothing less than sympathetic, and says that he supposes that if he were in the same position I was in, he would very likely have responded the same way. I don’t know how he’s managed to forgive me, but he did.

I asked him if he wanted me to never tell what had happened to me; I didn’t want anyone to harass either of us for my stupidity. John’s answer to me was twofold. 1) “Shit decomposes when it’s exposed to sunlight, and this is a lot of shit, so share as much of this as you can,” and 2) “If our so-called friends are going to harass either of us for what happened? Get in their faces, remind them that you’re the victim, and say ‘If that’s all you can think of to talk about, then I’d rather be me than you.’ ”

---

Postgame Analysis

As for how I feel now? [March 2003]

Anger has given way to sadness, for I had no idea how truly beset with problems this young man was. My hair is falling out, my sleep is still Swiss cheese, during the first week of March, I had a cold sore the size of a dime on the end of my nose which made it look like a kitten had been chewing on it, and the booze, as well as the knives in the kitchen are a little too fascinating to me. I have been spending a lot of time online, doing web research into subjects like mind control, sleep deprivation, and deprogramming. Almost every time I think about “Vince”, I want to retch. I feel revolted by my own sexuality, and I am full of self recrimination and doubts. I jump at every noise, because Andy still has that money for his flight, and I worry that he might actually try and come out to San Francisco and make me be quiet.

One thing puzzled me—or rather, one thing puzzled me more than all of the rest of this. Back in February 2002, I was cycled out of what I have come to call the ‘storyline’ for about eleven weeks; Andy created an argument with fictitious characters, and made me the enemy to see what I would do.

Then I finally thought about this, and realized what he may have been up to: He was testing me, along with some other people in the gaggle of minions, to see how we would react to Don’t Tell Anybody Or Else, Even If One Of Us Might Die.

I’m proud to say I failed that test. I am proud to have gone to Eric Radcliffe, or rather, proud to have mailed to the address Andy said was Eric’s.

I’m also proud of asking John to call London and leave voicemail for Daniel Miller (President, Mute Records) which must certainly have confused the man. A threat of suicide is never a secret to be kept.

Upon failing the test, Andy probably decided I was too much of a flight risk, and not as easily controllable as the other woman he was victimizing, so he let me go, and apparently he concentrated on her instead.

When I finally got in touch with her, I did sort of get the impression that she is indeed several months more deeply involved in this than I ever got: She and “Vince” had also been doing The Phone Thing, she and “Andy” had been doing it too, and “Vince” had also had an ‘attack’ at a crucial moment for her. He also convinced her to lie to me and claim that they had been in Montana.

She’s been to see younger Andy twice, at his home in the midwest -- and each time he pretended to receive telephone calls from his famous older brother and Vince -- every time she stepped outside for a cigarette.

Her hair is considerably grayer than it was, and at one point, due to worry over “Vince” and “Andy”, combined with sympathetic denial of food, she was down to 94 lbs. She has also endured Andy’s sleep deprivation tactics, and his isolationist demands.

Until I interacted with her, she had also never written to Mute or EIS to try and establish their identities, for “Vince” convinced her that Mute and the EIS were so protective of their privacy that they were willing to lie, and say that there were no such email addresses in existence for Vince Clarke or Andy Bell.

That’s why I was compelled to expose him through other means—means which could not be explained away by anything Andy could say.

The saddest thing about all of this in my opinion, is that she is still willing to be friends with Andy. She cannot grasp that he did all of those horrible things to her.

I have a feeling I will never hear from him again. I set the bar too high. I thought about remaining friends with him, and then I decided against it for a number of reasons. I am asking him to accept reality and 1) apologize for what he did and 2) verify -in writing- that he’s -not- Erasure’s Andy Bell. Until he does those things, I will not be friends with him.

I’m willing to wait it out and not accept anything less than what I have asked him for. My friendship is worth having, my trust is worth winning, and my forgiveness is worth asking for. I decided that if I stayed friends with him without getting those things from him first, I would be setting my standards too low, and my dignity aside -- not to mention, I wouldn't be thinking enough of Andy to expect reasonable standards of behavior from him. He can't be rewarded with my friendship in exchange for the hell he put me through.

In my opinion, staying friends with somebody who treats people the way Andy does (lying to them and abusing them psychologically, and additionally in my case, sexually) is the equivalent of thinking a kitten that bites and scratches is 'cute', not applying negative reinforcement, and ending up with a grownup cat that bites and scratches because it hasn't been taught that biting and scratching is wrong. Everybody I know who has remained friends with him despite his behavior has made no difference, as he's turned around and done this again to others.

Due to the fact that the deprogramming is still underway, [March 2003] I am still having moments during which I long to talk to Andy. Much worse -- I still catch myself longing to speak to “Vince”. There are too many unanswered questions. I wish I could hate Andy for doing this to me. I wish he were easy to give up. I’m ashamed to admit that this is harder than any other habit I have ever overcome.

Although it’s becoming easier with each passing moment -- especially when I remember that he took away the last day I would have spent with my father.

I’ve been astonished at the amount of support and friendship that has been unleashed and sent in my direction. And all of the people I have contacted and broken the news to have been more than understanding about what has happened to me. The biggest and most important piece of therapy has been for me to write a letter to the REAL Vince Clarke, which I'll include at the end of this writeup.

The first seven words of the first paragraph of that letter was the most difficult thing I have written in a very long time.

Stunningly enough, in the middle of March, Paul Schultz asked me to go to Chicago to a CD signing so I could meet the real Erasure -- but John wanted me to stay close to home for a while, which is understandable -- especially since that signing is taking place in the same state where the impersonator lives.

I wrote to Mute Records with an enclosed image of the non-Erasure Andy Bell attached, along with his vital statistics and an admonition that this young man might show up at the signing and have his picture taken with the band, and use it as leverage to peddle his story that he’s the Erasure Andy Bell’s younger brother. It also is annoying to me that the fake Andy Bell has an opportunity to gather up that armload of gifts I sent to “Vince” and “Andy”, and pass them along to his idols as gifts from himself.

But that’s just stuff. And the United States Postal Service says that since I sent it as gifts, it’s his stuff now to do with as he pleases.

However. Speaking of the USPS -- he -did- pretend to be Vince Clarke when he requested an item from me, a boxed set consisting of two CDs that he produced -- and my sister-in-law Shelley received an autographed Depeche Mode CD from “Vince” for her birthday.

I looked on the web -- and found the forms with which to file mail fraud. John took them to work and made fifteen sets.

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My niece Heather thinks that there are monsters under her bed and that they might try to get in through the windows. When I called Shelley to tell her the Bad News about her CD, Shelley was amazing and understanding, and eager to help. She’s getting a set of mail fraud forms from me.

Heather reached for the telephone, and told me about the monsters. Shelley came back on, and said she’d been talking to Heather about making a mojo bag and filling it with Monster Protection Dust.

I had just the thing—I had purchased some metallic confetti that looks like moons and stars and suns, and I also had some metallic confetti in the shape of angels. I put some of each into a square of wrapping paper, along with instructions to sprinkle the Monster Protection Dust near the windows, in the closet, and under the beds—and mailed it to Shelley. I hope Heather likes it.

Monster Protection Dust.

I’ve kept some for myself, too.

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Vince Clarke
Mute Liberation Technologies
[address deleted]

1 March 2003

Dear Mr. Clarke,

You have no idea who I am, but I am writing to you today to tell you thank you, and to offer you an apology for something I have done.

First — thank you. In 1984, I first heard the song ‘Only You’. I thought it was one of the loveliest things I had ever heard, and it was the reason I went out and purchased my first electronic keyboard. There was a very bad period of time in my life, and at one point I very nearly committed suicide. But instead of actually going through with that, I found my way to my keyboard, and sat there and played and sang until the feeling passed.

Perhaps you’ve heard this too many times for it to matter again, but I am compelled to say it, so please forgive me if it sounds like a cliché, but — your music saved my life. Thank you.

Now, for the apology. For sixteen months, there was an impersonator on America Online, who was pretending to be you. He was so thorough in his deception that after we became friends, the person I thought was you gave me permission to list you as a reference on my resumé. And I actually used your name, along with that of Andy Bell, on my business cards, because I thought I was an online personal assistant of yours.

For sixteen months, the man who was pretending to be you told me many things. He told me he was suicidal, but not to tell anyone. This is of course, not a secret to be kept, so it was the reason there were a spate of odd telephone messages and emails and snailmails that may have periodically made their way to Mute. I thought I was trying to save your life.

The Vince Clarke impersonator also kept telling me he loved me.

He kept saying that he wanted to come to California when his schedule would permit. He said he fancied me. The man who wrote the song who saved my life was telling me he loved me. I very nearly left my husband because I thought I had fallen in love with him.

I was deeply ashamed and hurt and embarrassed when I found out it was not you. It turned out to be somebody in Illinois, who — how does one put this delicately — needs to be sent to the puzzle farm for awhile.

There are still many things that need to be sorted out on this end. I was misled for a long time, and I acted foolishly. But from the moment I found out I had been deceived, I have been trying to put things right. My letter to you is part of this process. Mr. Clarke, if any of the weirdness that occurred on AOL ever made its way to Mute, and thus to you, and caused you any confusion or embarrassment, I would like to apologize.

Good luck with the American leg of The Other Tour. I have a feeling you might not see this letter for awhile due to being on my side of the pond, but rest assured, my sentiments will be exactly the same no matter when this letter reaches you.

I plan to be at the San Francisco show on March 21st. I hope you have a good time in our fair city.

Sincerely yours,

Brin-Marie McLaughlin.

PS — I still have that first keyboard. It is only grotty and semi-functional, not unlike me. But I don’t think I would be able to throw it out. We’ve been through too much together.

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UPDATE:

It is now the Summer of 2007. Many things have happened to me between March of 2003 and now. Most or all of these things are documented in my diary.

The Erasure Impostor is still online, and still in that place I have come to call 'Andyland'. He is still pretending to be Andy Bell's younger brother, and as of this writing, he is still victimizing people.

His photograph is on the Cast of Characters page on my Diaryland site.

Vince Clarke is now married with a family, and living in Maine in the United States.

I am still close friends with Jamie Lord. I call him the Best Friend I've Never Met.

Utah Paul, aka Paul Schulz, is a treacherous piece of work because he decided to remain friends with one of the people who assisted Andy with his hoax. If you're the friend of my enemy -- etc..

I'm mostly done with the recovery process now.

The impostor has changed the rest of my life, because due to his activities, I now am motivated to try and prevent people like him from causing lasting damage to others -- and I now want to become a counselor of some sort, probably specializing in the area of cult deprogramming.

And lastly -- as of this writing, in the summer of 2007 -- the impostor is still at large. He is still on AOL, and his known aliases include:

andybell38@aol.com
erasurefanclub@aol.com.

Please be careful.

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RECOMMENDED READING:

Another Erasure Impostor Story

Other People's Identities: Erasure Impersonator On AOL

Celebrity Impostor Tactics: Tips And Tricks To Avoid Online Fraud

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Brin-Marie McLaughlin Brin-Marie Landerman Dust Bunny Chico
Brin Landerman Yuba City High School 1982
Steal my stuff and I'll squash you like a bug.

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