Criminology - Matthew David Keirans

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

In one of the most unbelievable identity theft cases ever uncovered, William Woods lost far more than his credit score — he lost his freedom, his name, and nearly his sanity after authorities mistakenly believed he was the imposter. This week, Mike and Morf examine the shocking decades-long deception carried out by Matthew David Keirans, a man who stole another person's identity in 1988 and successfully lived as "William Woods" for more than 30 years. What began with a stolen wallet at a hot dog stand in Albuquerque eventually spiraled into fraudulent loans, wrongful imprisonment, psychiatric institutionalization, and one of the most disturbing miscarriages of justice imaginable. The real William Woods repeatedly insisted he was telling the truth — only to be dismissed as delusional, jailed during the COVID-19 pandemic, placed in solitary confinement, and forced to take psychiatric medication after courts ruled he was mentally incompetent. The case finally unraveled thanks to an Iowa detective determined to separate fact from fiction using fingerprints, records, and ultimately DNA evidence.   You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok  Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. 

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 410 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy? I'm doing pretty good. How you doing? I'm doing great. I'm just, you know, getting ready for CrimeCon. We're super close. And then I know I've said it before, but I come back for a week and then my daughter's,

her's getting married. So I got a lot of stuff going on for a guy who doesn't normally have a lot of stuff going on outside of the studio. Every once in a while you got to get out of the house and have a little bit of fun. Yeah. I'm about ready to have a bunch of it. So we didn't have any new Patreon support this week, but we want to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon because it really helps us out. And if you're thinking about supporting the show through a Patreon contribution, head over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. All right. We are jumping right into this week's case.

And we have a pretty interesting one. You know, in a lot of episodes, we talk about some really bad people doing really bad stuff. Many times we're talking about cold-blooded murders, abductions. But this time out, the subject matter isn't quite as dark, but we're still dealing with a criminal who stole a man's identity. and in many ways stole his life and got away with it for a long time for well over 30 years, in fact, and there's more than one victim left in the perpetrator's wake who've suffered as a result. We're discussing the shocking identity theft committed by a man named Matthew David Kieran's, a.k.a. William Woods.

This story starts out with a man who found himself thousands of dollars in debt from loans he knew nothing about and had never taken out. In fact, people began to doubt he was really who he said he was, and when he tried to figure out what was happening and put an end to the madness, he was arrested and ultimately told that he was delusional before being locked up and held against his will for more than a year. The victim was forced to take medication and told to never use his real name again. As unbelievable as it may sound, it really happened to a man named William Woods. Ain't No more if we don't talk about identity theft a lot,

we're talking in most episodes, like I said, about much darker things, but identity theft is not a joke at all. It's a very serious crime and it has very serious repercussions. It is one of those things out there that really scares the you know what out of me. Because I feel like there are just a lot of people throughout the world sitting around trying to figure out how to benefit from someone else's misery, right, take advantage of someone else. I don't know, but I think there are just way too many people looking to make money the easy way. I guess, you know, if you want to call it that, but without actually going out and working

for it, they just want to take it from you. And this is one way to do it. I think as technology advances, there's a lot of people using that technology to try and pull the wool over people's eyes and fool them into doing things that they don't mean to do. And, you know, we hear about in the news often people's identities being stolen. And the one we're talking about today is a really extreme case. And, you know, I think law enforcement also is using that new technology to try and foil some these people that attempt these scams. And it's a battle between them of who's going to win the

authorities that are trying to stop it or the scammers that are trying to take advantage of it. So this whole ordeal goes all the way back to 1988. At the time, William Woods was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he had been working at a hot dog stand for four years. Woods was a very reliable employee. And one of the few who worked at the stand, long term. There were a lot of short-term coworkers that came and went over the years. One of those who was hired in 1988 was a man named Matthew Kierens. The two were working the same shift when Woods noticed that his wallet was missing. Immediately he suspected that Kierens had taken it and he was right. Woods told the LA Times, I put my fist in his face and he decided to hand

me back my wallet. When he got his wallet, he got his wallet, the back. He didn't notice anything missing. His birth certificate and his social security card were still inside. But it was already too late because although William Woods didn't know it, Kieran's had gotten the info he needed from the credentials inside the wall. I think this is a good time to warn the listeners. Always keep your birth certificate and your social security card someplace safe. You don't want to be carrying that around because if that falls into the wrong hands, can cause a lot of problems. Well, it did kind of jump out at me.

You know, I get it. I know there are people who carry a copy of their social security card in their wallet. I never have. But I don't know that I've ever seen anyone or knew of anyone who carried their birth certificate with them in their wallet. I get it. This is 1988, but still, even in 1988, I know for a fact I wasn't carrying it around. William Woods kept working at the hot dog stand,

and Cairns made his way to Colorado. It seems like he never used his real name again. Matthew David Cairns dropped off the face of the earth after 1988. In December 1990, Cairns was able to get a Colorado identification card using William Woods' name and information. In Colorado, Matthew Cairns became and lived as William Woods, and the real William Woods had no idea anything was wrong. With that Colorado ID card, the new imposter William Woods was able to start his new life.

He got a job working fast food, which gave him a steady paycheck, and he was able to open a bank account, even though he was using someone else's identity. In September 2001, the fake William Woods wrote a check for $600 for the purchase of a used car. He had the car, but the check ended up bouncing. Now there was a warrant out for William Woods' arrest. But that didn't stop the car. imposter. The fake Woods kept living his life. He made his way to Oregon. In 1994, he got married. His wife had no idea he wasn't who he claimed to be. The two ended up having a son together,

and even his last name is Woods. The fake William Woods even paid taxes and fully embraced his fake identity. It was now all in on using the new identity. In 2012, the fake Woods used information from Ancestry.com to obtain a birth certificate for the real William Woods from the state of Kentucky, where he was born. This is pretty much the Holy Grail in terms of proving your identity. And now with this in his possession, the imposter had all the credentials he needed to carry out his scheme. Eventually, the fake woods ended up living in Wisconsin. He was able to get an IT job at the University of Iowa hospitals and clinics, he worked remotely as a systems architect. The fake woods had to provide substantial documentation of his identity to get that job,

but by then he had been living as the real William Woods for decades and compiling piece after piece of documentation. He passed a background check. Starting in 2016, the fake woods started to take out some pretty hefty loans. Over the next four years, he racked up more than $200,000 worth of debt. In the middle of this year's long spending spree, the real William Woods noticed that someone was using his name to borrow a lot of money. He had no idea about any of the loans. At this point, he still didn't know that there was someone out there pretending to be him and using his identity. And more if we talked about how scary identity theft is,

I mean, this is a, this is not a short term thing. I mean, this is, as we are in the story, it's gone on for, you know, well over a decade coming up on two decades. And it just seems strange to me that, you know, Kieran's would adopt this fake, name or real name, but, you know, fake to him and go through all of the things that we all do.

I mean, he was getting jobs. In the case of this IT job, sounds like a pretty good job. He was paying taxes. Now, he was taking out a bunch of debt or loans, right? He was racking up a bunch of debt. And maybe that's the reason, as we get into it, for using, you. the alternate identity, but it's not like he was posing as this guy to get out of working. He was still working and paying taxes.

So, I mean, it's kind of a strange thing if you think about it that way. Yeah, and he had a physical address where anyone that was coming to collect these debts or had questions about them could turn to and find him, whether he was the real guy or not, he'd still have to answer for it. So that part of the story is a little bit hazy. So he wasn't hiding. He was there living his life. You know, he had a home. He had a wife. He had a child.

So if anyone went looking there for him, even though he wasn't the real person he claimed to be, they could still physically find him. So that part of the story, we don't really know what he was thinking. On August 20th, 2019, the real William Woods tried to put a stop to what he thought was.

a clear-cut case of identity theft. He went to a bank in Los Angeles to try to close the account that he knew didn't belong to him, but had been open in his name. The information the real Woods gave, including his Social Security card and his ID card from California, matched the records at the bank. This would obviously be an odd situation. Someone came into the bank saying they needed the account numbers so they can close the account. But they were seemingly the only person who had opened the accounts in the first place. The staff at the bank, would have already been a little curious. But then the real Woods couldn't answer any of the security questions tied to the

bogus accounts. And he couldn't confirm where or even when the accounts were opened, which set off some alarm bells for the bank. The accounts weren't just empty either. They had a pretty substantial amount of money in them. So the bank employees probably thought that this identity theft was just a scammer's excuse to try to get cash. And I got to be honest with you more, if this is, you know, it's giving me some vibes here.

And vibes isn't even the right word. Like I'm, I'm starting to really feel some anxiety for this individual. And I guess maybe anxiety if I were in this situation. My wife, and this has been a long time ago, went to the mall one time to buy some earrings. And she got the earrings. She got home. And a few weeks later, we started noticing a bunch of crazy charges on our credit card. And it turned out that, you know, one of the workers at the store got our credit card number and

started ordering a bunch of stuff. And that pales in comparison, right, to what we're talking about in this story. But I remember what a hassle just that was. All the phone calls, going back and forth with the bank and the store and all of that. And it's just nothing compared to what we're talking about and what we're getting ready to talk about. But it was a real pain in the you know what. Oh, yeah. I've had a couple times where the bank called me at home and wanted to go over a couple charges, you know, as a fail safe to make sure that no one was trying to get into my account

or use it for any kind of shady purposes. And I think one time I happened to be traveling. So that set off an alarm, which is, I guess, good that they have these things in place to, to warn you. But not in this case because this guy was able to open up. accounts and everything in the rural William Woods name. And he did everything right. He went to the bank.

He said, hey, someone opened this account. I want to close it. This isn't really me. And he had his credentials. But then the problem was he couldn't, he didn't know the passwords and the security questions to get into the accounts. Because he didn't set them up. I'm sure it must have been really frustrating for him.

All of this prompted a phone call to the account owner, the fake William Woods, Matthew Kierens, who had opened the accounts, he answered the call right away. And of course, he knew all the right answers to the security questions, knew where he had opened the accounts and when. So when he told the banker that he had no idea, who was trying to get his account numbers, and he certainly hadn't authorized it, police were called to the bank. The fake woods was able to provide the Los Angeles Police Department via facts with all the proof they needed to, in their minds, prove he was the real William Woods. He gave them a birth certificate from Kentucky, a social security card, and an ID card from Wisconsin. After this,

police turned their attention to the real William Woods and arrested him, thinking he was the imposter. He was held without bail on one charge of the unauthorized use of personal information. So things are just really going from bad to worse, right? right for William Woods. What struck me here, though, is that he's charged and held without bail. I mean, more if we see murderers all the time who get bail. This guy gets no bail on a charge of unauthorized use of personal information. That kind of struck me as odd.

That's a pretty scary situation. He went there that day to try and clarify what was going on with this. identity theft, and at the end of the day, he's in jail and can't get out. That's unimaginable. Somehow, incredibly, the fake William Woods, Matthew Cairns, was able to convince police that the William Woods they arrested was really Matthew Cairns, and police charge the real William Woods under that name with a slight spelling deviation in the last name on police charging docks. Still, the real William Woods was undoubtedly panicking to find himself in a bizarrely. situation where police thought he wasn't who he actually was. The fake Woods told investigators that

he did want the prosecutor's office to charge Matthew Cairns, who they had just arrested with false impersonation and identity theft. So he was going to press charges. Essentially, imposter Matthew Cairns had assumed the real William Woods identity, then gotten the police to believe that he was actually the real William Woods and was trying to get police to send the real William Woods, the police believe was actually Matthew Cairns, to jail. So if this sounds confusing, just imagine how confused, shocked, and probably frightened, the real William Woods was at this point. While he was in jail, the real William Woods was subjected to weeks of solitary confinement.

He was also in jail during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Woods would later tell the telegraph that he was kept in a dungeon room that's way down towards the basement. He said it had mold. I could see these little gnats in the room. They have cockroaches on the floor. It's not bug sprayed. They never bug spray the place. He had prisoners dying left and right from COVID-19.

It would have been a very scary experience. And he went through all of this just for going to the bank one day to try and figure out what was going on regarding loans. An imposter had taken out in his name. at a hearing on October 31st, 2019. The Real Woods tried to tell the judge that there had been a mistake. According to the LA Times in court, he said, I'm not Matthew Cairns at all. He was adamant that he was really William Woods.

Two months after that initial story, he faced the judge once again and said, no, I'm not Cairns at all. This frustrated the judge and made his attorney deputy alternate public defender Susanna Juarez changed strategies. The judge said, I'm sorry, stop. You've got to stop. The public defender said to the judge,

Your Honor, based on my conversations with my client, and at this time, I do not believe that he is competent, and I'm declaring a doubt. So now both the judge and even his own defense attorney didn't believe that William Woods was really William Woods. They believed he was Matthew Kieran. Hey, everyone, it's Morph here. And our next sponsor's founder has a story that really resonated with me, which is rare,

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actually generated enough money for the streamer to pay Woods, buy him some food, and put him in a motel room. It was the money from these videos that brought Kieran's scam to Wood's attention. Wood used some of the money to pay for a service that monitors credit. There were a lot of surprises on the report, but it led Woods to that Los Angeles bank where he ended up being arrested. But the authorities wouldn't watch his YouTube videos. They wouldn't call his relatives or the owner of the hot dog stand. Interestingly, the owner of the stand actually still to this day has a copy of the Real Woods driver's license on file. He actually may have been able to help, but investigators never bothered to talk to him. And man, more if you just feel worse and worse for

William Woods. I mean, bad enough to be arrested. It's at the height of COVID. And then, you know, he's telling all these people, hey, you know, there are things that can prove who I really am, but they just don't believe him. And they won't check into it. Now, I don't really blame the authorities in the beginning, right? Because this guy didn't know the answers. to the questions, security questions, codes, all that stuff. And you had someone who said they were William Woods with all the right information. So I could see how they would think that this guy's trying to do something shady, the real William Woods.

But how hard would it be to check into some of these claims that he made? And I think you got to put some blame on people for that. not doing it. Yeah, they definitely could have made phone calls, watched those videos, interviewed some of the people that knew him to get the real story, and then maybe they would have sorted this out. Instead, they just sort of doubted everything he said and just pressed forward with this crusade against him as if he was the imposter. A psychiatric evaluation was ordered because he continued to tell the truth that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kieran's. It appears that he was just remaining steadfast in his delusion.

In February of 2020, the Real Woods was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was also committed to a psychiatric hospital, Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, California, in order to take medication, including lithium. As bad as this was, he preferred the hospital to the jail because it was cleaner. The Real William Woods later told the L.A. Times, of his predicament, people didn't listen. They were painting it like I was crazy. In a court document, a judge said that William Woods was only adamant,

that he was William Woods because he was crazy. Those were the exact words in the court document. In March, 2021, when he was found competent to stand trial, the real William Woods entered a plea of no contest to the charges, solely just to get it over with. He felt it was his only way out of this situation. William Woods told the L.A. Times. At first, I kept saying, I'm not guilty, but they wouldn't believe that.

He was sentenced to two years in jail, which thanks to time served, both in jail, 428 days, and the hospital, 147 days, became more like six months. It was dropped in exchange for the no-contest plea. He would be released from custody just for agreeing not to fight the charge. He was given a fine of $400, and most importantly, he was borrowed by the court from using his real name in the future. The judge literally ordered him to stop trying to use the name William Woods. Instead, he was instructed to go by his true name, Matthew Cairns. So this comes up a lot more.

You know, why would someone confess to doing something that they really didn't do? I mean, we have seen a number of false confession. over the years come to light. And to me, most of them center around one thing. And that is the pressure or the situation is such that the person just wants to get out of it. Whether it's being, you know, interrogated for long periods of time and they just can't stand it. And they'll say anything to get out of that room. or in the case of William Woods, he just wants to get it over with.

Like he's better off in this situation saying he's guilty than he is fighting it. Man, that is a scary, scary thought. Yeah, in between the mental hospital and jail, he was incarcerated for almost 600 days. So I'd like to think that I would never cop to something I didn't do. but if I was in his shoes, maybe I would just try and end it and get out of it. And I think that's the scary part, right? That someone would admit to something they didn't do just to get whatever situation they're in over. I mean, it shouldn't be like that, but we have seen it happen.

And to me, this is the ultimate nightmare situation. And it would be hard to blame William Woods if he just gave us. up and assumed the name Matthew Cairns, as the judge instructed him to, but that's not what happened. The real William Woods was determined to set things straight and get his name back after he was released from jail. He called the police department in Hartland, the town in Wisconsin, where the fake William Woods lived. He wanted to file a police report regarding the theft of his identity by a local there. he also started filing disputes with credit bureaus, trying to repair his credit score and help secure his identity.

He filed at least 30 disputes. Once again, the fake woods tried to turn it around on the real woods. According to the Washington Post, the imposter started telling the police he was concerned that the fact that the delusional man who was trying to steal his identity from across the country now knew where he lived. He also tried to report the credit disputes as harassment.

According to CBS News, he even emailed prosecutors in Los Angeles, writing, I need some advice on what steps to take at this point. And, you know, more of what stands out to me about this is how confident Matthew Curen's was. I mean, he's not shying away, right? he's not shrinking and, you know, hiding and trying not to interact with people so he doesn't get caught. He's very brazen. I mean, he's basically saying, no, I'm William Woods and this guy is trying to steal my identity. And he's going out of his way to contact people of authority. That's just how confident he was. Yeah, you call it confident. I call it having some coonas because it takes some

Kajonas to really own that fake identity and try and sick the police on the real person that you've victimized. It's, you know, this guy might be some kind of world-class narcissist. Yeah, I just wonder how the number of years he had been doing it, played into it, right? He had been able to successfully do this for, you know, approaching two decades. So I wonder how much of that kind of played into his confidence in, you know, being able to reach out to different authorities and stuff like that. There was a little to no movement in this case for years. In 2022, the Real Woods filed another police report.

And again, the fake Woods pretended he was being targeted by a dangerous man. But the Real Woods didn't give up. In January, 2003, he reported this situation to the University of Iowa, police department. Detective Ian Mallory was assigned the case. Initially, even Detective Mallory thought he was being played by an imposter. He told you, Iowa.edu, I thought the guy in California was probably a professional con man. But Detective Mallory was interested in sorting out fact from fiction and getting to the bottom of what was going on. Karen's actively attempted to influence the investigation. He tried to get updates on what was going on behind the scenes, and he tried to convince authorities that the

real Woods was dangerous and delusional. Looking through records, Detective Mallory noticed that there were two different William Woods. The first proof was from back in 1995. Less than a decade after Matthew Kieran's had stolen but returned the real William Woods' wallet. In 1995, the real William Woods was arrested for forgery in North Carolina. He was fingerprinted and photographed.

and those prints in the photo matched the man Detective Mallory called California Bill, aka the real William Woods, who was in California, Detective Mallory told you, Iowa.edu. This became the first data point where we could differentiate life events between the two men. And I said it earlier, Morp, but, you know, how hard really would some of this been to figure out? If the police early on would have dug deeply into it, they really didn't dig at all. I mean, to me, Detective Mallory was kind of the first person to want to really do a deep dive and to get into the facts. Yeah, there had to be a welcome relief for the real William Woods knowing that somebody was finally at least looking into his story to see if it was true.

Interestingly, Matthew Curen switched up his middle name over the years. He used the Real Woods real middle name, Donald, as well as his own real middle name, David, somewhat interchangeably. After 2012, though, he pretty much used David exclusively. Somehow he was able to get a Wisconsin driver's license with William David Woods on it, even though the birth certificate he was using had Donald on it. Detective Mallory said, July 16, 2012 was the creation. of William David Woods. Finally, Detective Mallory decided to settle once and for a while.

He turned a DNA, which couldn't lie in this case. Luckily, William Woods' father was still alive and was more than happy to cooperate with Detective Mallory's investigation. His DNA matched to William Woods in California, the real one. Detective Mallory finally was going down the right path. Matthew Cairns was brought in for questioning, but once again, he sees, said that the real William Woods, who he claimed was Matthew Cairns, was crazy and that he needed

help and should be locked up. The detective asked Matthew Cairns, what his father's name was. He did not give the name that was on the birth certificate. The name of the man whose DNA matched the real William Woods. The detective also asked Cairns how it was possible that he had spoken to his father since he claimed his father was dead. Kieran's tried to play dumb and said that he thought his father was dead. So with this not adding up and the DNA match, Detective Mallory felt sure that he had finally gotten to the bottom of it all. Matthew Kierens, the fake William Woods,

was arrested on July 17, 20203. He was treated as a John Doe. according to u iowa.edu realizing that he was caught matthew curns said to detective mallory my life is over isn't it eventually he confessed saying my name is matthew cairns according to the detective cairns felt relieved that it was finally over the real william woods was relieved too when the detective reached out to him to give him the good news he responded by saying cool i told you so he was relieved and felt finally vindicated. The day after Matthew Cairn's arrest,

the University of Iowa health care terminated his employment. An internal review was also launched to make sure he wasn't misusing any of the patients or employees' information in any kind of unauthorized manner. All right. So they finally caught him.

And I can only imagine how relieved William Woods must have been. His response, though, kind of surprised me. Cool. I told you so. I mean, I guess he had been telling people so for for many years. It just seemed like a kind of a subdued statement. But the other thing I was thinking was obviously William Woods's life was changed dramatically for the negative, right, throughout this whole thing. But there's also a lot of other people and institutions that were affected as well. I mean, I mean, Matthew Kieran's, we mentioned it more if he got married, he had a child. He's working for the University of Iowa in a health care, you know, kind of capacity. I get it. He's on the IT side.

But being on the IT side, he had access to a lot of confidential information. So, I mean, there's just a lot of people here who were really kind of put in. a in a bad situation. Yeah, I think it's like the equivalent of the fox guarding the hen house, somebody like that being in charge of a system that probably has a lot of personal information addresses, birthday, social security numbers. He could have done a lot of serious damage with all that stuff. Well, it doesn't make them look great either, right?

Once it comes out that they had hired this imposter. Now, I get it. He probably had really good documentation, but it's still a stain, right? On their name, when it comes out that they had hired this guy, he'd been working there for however many years. On April 1st, 2003, 57-year-old Matthew Kieran's formerly pleaded guilty to the unlawful use of a birth certificate. He was then federally charged with one count of making a false statement. to a national credit union administration, insured institution,

and one count of aggravated identity theft. He entered a guilty plea on April 1st, 2024. He faced up to 32 years behind bars, but received a pretty lenient sentence. All things considered, Kieran's was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, and ordered to pay back $10,000,

of attorney fees. Additionally, after his release, he'll be on supervised release for five years. When you look at how much of his life, the real William Woods lost, his name, his freedom, it does kind of really seem like a light sentence for Matthew Kierens. We'll probably never know for sure, but Detective Mallory felt that Kiernes had only planned to be William Woods for a little while. He wasn't going to be a permanent identity. Detective Mallory told U.Iowa.edu. He met a woman, fell in love, and had a baby, and then he was stuck with this identity. Speaking of the woman he fell in love with, Karen's wife, Nancy Zimmer, was shocked.

After finding out her husband wasn't who he said he was, she sent a letter to the judge that read in part, had I known, we could and would have righted his wrongs decades earlier. She now refers to her husband as Matt and seems to agree with Detective Mallory's reasoning. She told CBS News. I believe Matt's motivation was simple to create the family and home he didn't have in his youth. It turns out that Matthew Cairns may have originally stolen William Woods' identity to try to get out of some trouble from when he was younger. When he was 16 years old, he dropped out of high school, ran away from home, and started committing crimes. In San Francisco, he stole a car and got caught in Oregon.

but the real trouble came when he skipped a court date for that charge. He was already a fugitive when the chance to become someone else presented itself. A troubling question remains in this case. Why did it take so long to write this wrong? Many people believe that based on outward appearances, it was easier for people to believe the imposter, Kieran's. Could it be because, you know, he was this married family man with a good job, and the real William Woods was homeless.

William Woods thought that this was the case telling the telegraph, they just think I'm a homeless bum. That's what I think, and that's how they treated me. And he may have a point because all along, he had his original birth certificate and Social Security card, while the imposter Curence had an ID with a name that didn't even match the birth certificate. Yet somehow, the authorities accepted it and moved right on. It makes you wonder, could this kind of thing happen today to any one of us?

Mark Bullock, the University of Iowa's Assistant Vice President of Campus Safety, doesn't think so. He told you, Iowa.edu, I don't think you could replicate this today. We have all these different systems that monitor people's financials. I don't even know how you would start. In fact, it seems like this was a very unique situation that just happened to be perfect for identity theft. Bullock said, I think one of the only reasons this worked for so long

was because the real William Woods was off the radar and not functioning in society like other people who had bank accounts and credit cards that they regularly use and check. Eric Kilmer, who employed both Kieran's and Woods at that hot dog stand in the 1980s, where it all began, called William Woods in an LA Times interview,

the most innocent type of fellow you'll ever want to meet. According to the LA Times, Judge William C. Ryan vacated William Woods' conviction, saying he was more than happy to write that wrong. The judge called this case astounding and said the word that comes to mind is Kafkaesque. Out of the novels of Franz Kafka, Detective Mallory summed it up best telling you, Iowa.edu, no matter what, you still have your name. William Woods didn't even have that because Matthew Cairns took it. It was one of the most egregious things one person can do to another. In May of 2025, the California Victim Compensation Board awarded William Woods almost $81,000. As for where he went from here, Williams told the L.A. Times,

I guess I have to regain all my stuff back and just rebuild what I was. He was last known to be living in either El Paso or Albuquerque, working as a landscaper or in a barbershop. As for the imposter, Matthew Cairns, just a week ago, the federal appeals court upheld his conviction. He tried to argue that the 12-year sentence was unreasonably long. But the court and a document said that sentence and guidelines did not take into account the unique, unusual, and egregious behavior, the multiple instances of lying to authorities, or the fact that he was manipulating the criminal justice system to prosecute an innocent man, when he intentionally sought the prosecution and incarceration of the real William Woods. The court also noted that Cairns had not apologized

to Woods or even really seemed to understand the weight of what he had done for so long. He actually argued in his appeal that the punishment was too serious for the crime, but the court noted that the real Woods would not have been in a position where he would have been subject to being institutionalized for Cairns' insistence that Woods be prosecuted. He isn't just being punished for using someone's name or ruining the credit. He put a man in solitary confinement and had him medicated against his will. You don't go to jail or a forensic psychiatric hospital and come back without having seen or experience some rough times.

Matthew Cairns is directly responsible for taking away William Wood's freedom and putting him through unimaginable traumas. William Wood said it best when he told UIowa.edu, I was sent to jail for nothing, for being myself. And I get it, right? People are going to appeal their conviction.

They're going to say, hey, this sentence is too long. I mean, sentencing guidelines when you think about identity theft, I think the judge said it well. Right? This isn't just a case of identity theft for the sake of, you know, ruining someone's credit.

And that's bad enough. This went way beyond that. First of all, the duration of it is astounding. It spanned two decades. And the fact that, as you said earlier more, William Woods lost his freedom for, you know, almost two years. It was over 600 days, I think. Yeah, this was a lot more than, you know, someone opening up a couple accounts or stealing your credit card numbers and buying a couple things.

This was tormenting this man William Woods for decades. And every time he tried to prove his innocence, this guy would turn it around on him and make him look like he was the bad guy. And I can't even imagine what William Woods was going through in this situation. it had to be a true nightmare situation. Well, and you have to ask the question, right? How did it change the trajectory of William Woods' life? Because you know it did, and it wasn't for the better. So to me, you know, that's a part of that sentencing, not just identity theft,

but everything you put this guy through. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, even with Matthew Kieran's behind bars, and William Woods isn't his only victim. Kieran's son has the last name Woods. What's he supposed to do? Does he keep it, knowing that it's not his father's real last name? Does he change it to the last name of a now convicted felon who lied for his entire life? And what about the marriage license to his wife?

A marriage that was built on a lot. The information he used to get married is incorrect. correct, does that cancel out the license? I mean, if you think about how many headaches were caused through all of this when it comes to paperwork, technicalities, what about the taxes and social security? Remember, Matthew Cairns was all in on living his woods, even paying taxes. Meanwhile, the real William Woods was living rough and wasn't paying taxes because he didn't make enough money to pay taxes. He was making about $3,000 a year at his richest, sometimes working construction, sometimes making jewelry, while Kieran's was using his credit to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loans and was making more than $100,000 a year. Now that Kieran's has been convicted and the mess has been straightened out,

William Wood's social security number once again belongs to him alone. So do they remove the work credits from paying into the system? Does he technically get Kieran's social security payments one day? Can they transfer it from Wood's name to Kieran's? Should they? If they can, I mean, he technically is the one who paid tax. is under someone else's name. I mean, this is a cluster, you know what,

when you think about it. And, you know, some of these things are trivial compared to the damage that was done to William Woods, but it's still a part of the case. I mean, to me, it's not trivial about his son and his wife. They're victims and all of this as well. the social security is an interesting situation. I feel like William Woods should get that money. Yeah, I'm right there with you.

I mean, he worked to defraud him and paid that money in William Wood's name. I think William Wood should be entitled to it one day. After all, he endured. But those are legitimate questions. And I don't know if there's answers to them. If you went to the IRS and said, hey, what's going on with all this money that got paid on the taxes? if he approached Social Security and said, what happens, you know, I don't know if they have the answers to give him. With how much Matthew Cairns traveled around the country and how easily

lying came to him, investigators do wonder if he might be linked to other crimes. His DNA is on file and is now in the system, so time will tell. However, after stealing Wood's identity, he seems to have lived a pretty normal life and stayed out of any kind of legal trouble other than traffic tickets. His friends and family were all shocked by the revelation that he had been lying to them for decades. There was zero indication that he was hiding anything from him. They all thought of him as honest and an upstanding man. Matthew Cairns will be 70 years old when he's released. What he does after he's released is anyone's guess, but you can bet that the real William Woods hopes are past never cross again. So morph, as we wrap this one up, I mean, it is such a

shocking story. And shocking, in a much different way than most of our episodes are. And we talk a lot about murder. Unfortunately, you have to when you're in the true crime genre. But there's no doubt that this was a very serious crime that Matthew Kieran's perpetrated. It wasn't murder, but it affected so many people negatively. And the thing I can't stop thinking about is, you know, like you just mentioned, what a normal life this guy. kind of led. Now, he was impersonating or using the name of someone else, but he had a good job.

He had a nice family. It just seems to me as though he could have done that as Matthew Kier. Yeah, I go back to what the detectives thought that maybe he initially didn't plan to keep this identity, but once he met his wife, it started that relationship, he was sort of, stuck using that name and, you know, instead of coming clean and saying, hey, I have to be honest with you, this isn't who I really am, I stole this man's identity. He just doubled down, tripled down, and just went all in on impersonating him for decades. So, you know, it's really a upsetting situation. And again, his wife and his son are victims too. And a lot of people like to say in white color crimes, financial crimes, there's no real victim. But I think

here we see there's multiple victims. We've got William Woods himself. We've got Kieran's family members. You know, their lives are not going to be the same after this. Yeah, I get it. You know, it's kind of that thing where once you start down the path of line, it's kind of hard to course correct. right don't you have to kind of stay with the lie i think a lot of people do especially as the years went on i could see how it would become increasingly harder and harder for him to not be william woods right all of his work history at a certain point is is wrapped up with that name and then undoubtedly after he you know gets married and has a a son, what's he going to do? Just all of a sudden one day come clean to his wife.

Hey, honey, I just want to tell you, I'm not really William Woods. I'm Matthew Cairns. That's going to be a tough conversation. And he was getting away with it. So that probably factored into it as well. Why rock the boat? I'm doing just fine. Yeah, it's a very crazy story all around, I think. It would probably make a really good movie. And, you know, I'm looking at it as all of us are potential victims of fraud, someone stealing our credit, and maybe in certain situations we have to make close to our bank, we have to stop payment on things, we have to write letters, maybe we have to contact an attorney.

But I think in overwhelming majority of cases of identity theft, there's never anything that rises to this level where someone is locked up and put forcefully against her will into a mental hospital and given medication. I mean, this is just the ultimate nightmare situation that I think none of us ever want to find ourselves in. Yeah, absolutely. And my heart kind of really went out to William Woods for what you can only imagine what his suffering was. I mean, he talked about it. but even, you know, what he told papers and things like that probably don't really convey the true suffering of what this guy went through. But the, you know, the identity theft thing is scary in a different way than other crimes are.

Right. It's scary to be physically attacked, to be mugged or robbed or, you know, something like that. That would be horrible. but you know that happened. Identity theft in a lot of ways is different because people don't know that it's happening while it's happening. Obviously they're going to find out at a certain point and then a lot of things are screwed up by the time they find out.

But it's a wild case, man. It really is for how long that it went on, the people it affected and ultimately what William Woods went through. But that's it for our episode on Matthew David Kierens. As always, if you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends, word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out. If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for criminology podcast on your favorites.

And for news, old episodes, and more, head over to our website, criminology podcast.com. And if you want to join a discussion group about the podcast and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for the criminology podcast discussion and fans group. So that's it for another episode of criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.