Book Review: Vanishing Act

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

Death wasn’t the end. It was his next identity.

There are true crime books that entertain. Then there are ones that unearth stories so convoluted, outrageous, and chilling that you can’t believe you haven’t heard of them before. Vanishing Act by Jerry Jamison falls squarely into the latter category. It covers what is, without exaggeration, one of the most sensational crimes I’ve ever read. And somehow, it’s barely a footnote in the annals of American criminal history.

Jamison takes readers from a 1959 National Airlines crash over the Gulf of Mexico into a spiraling narrative of insurance fraud, stolen identities, fugitive lifestyles, and an illegal abortion empire. At its center is Dr. Robert Vernon Spears—a man whose charisma, cunning, and complete disregard for human life defy logic.

Spears weaves a web of deceit that stretches across decades and aliases, impersonating professionals in city after city while evading justice with almost sociopathic precision. From his Oklahoma roots to his time in Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa, and beyond, Spears doesn’t just disappear—he reinvents, recasts, and restages his life like he’s starring in his own grifter biopic. “‘Truth is what you can get people to believe,’” he once said. In his case it wasn’t a lie, it was a career philosophy.

Jamison builds the story with a journalist’s rigor and a screenwriter’s eye. The pacing is propulsive, the characters vividly drawn, and the setting richly rendered, from the dusty streets of Weatherford, Oklahoma to the society circles of Dallas and the sun-bleached motel strips of Arizona. Real names, real dates, real places: this is a history lesson with a pulse. He spares no detail as he names names, follows every trail, and reconstructs this labyrinthine case. Readers are introduced to a cast of real-life characters including Eddie Barker, the Dallas reporter who cracked the Spears resurrection story wide open, and Dr. William Turska, the seedy accomplice in Spears’s abortion ring. And then there are the two women forever linked to the case: Frances Spears and Alice Taylor. The “widows” whose fates play out like a psychological study in female agency and cultural bias.

Frances, in particular, is a striking example of how mid-century North American society lionized passive femininity. The media gave her a long and favorable ride, painting her as the innocent young mother despite mounting evidence that she knew far more than she let on. Her charm, youth, and widow’s veil bought her grace that a man, or even a less camera-ready woman, never would have received.

In contrast, Alice Taylor who is older, sharper, and harder to spin, was cast as shrill, obsessed, and unstable. And yet it was Alice who pursued the truth. It was Alice who refused to let her ex-husband’s death be erased and replaced by a con artist’s fantasy. In many ways, this book is a tribute to her resolve.

At its core, Vanishing Act struck me most with its exploration of the corrosive power of spectacle. The American public, so eager to be entertained, helped blur the line between criminal and celebrity. Spears knew that. He used it. And in the end, the victims became a footnote to his legend.

This isn’t a story about closure. It’s about how spectacle and manipulation can hijack a narrative and how easily the American public (both then and now ) consumes crime as entertainment. Jamison doesn’t let us look away from that. He reminds us that behind every newspaper headline and salacious detail are real victims: people who never came home, families who never got answers, and a culture far too quick to mythologize the perpetrators at the center of it all.

Fans of Catch Me If You Can and anyone fascinated by America’s darker corners will devour this book. Just be warned: the truth is stranger, sadder, and more shamefully forgotten than you’re prepared for.

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