Cooper Mall

She never wrote them down, but her rules were etched into how she moved through the world.

When we last left, Margo, she jumped on a train in Baltimore, narrowly missing the FBI, who'd just caught up with Faye Copeland, the woman she escaped with.

The train took her as far north as it could go, a notch in the Rust Belt, Akron, Ohio.

She arrived with nothing but a couple of bags and the hope that the next stranger might be safe to trust.

That woman she barely knew from selling encyclopedias, the one Tanya shared her plan to get back to Ohio with, made good on her offer.

She'd arranged for her parents to meet Margo at the station,

Warm food, a full stomach.

It was the closest she had come to comfort in months.

Almost as soon as she got to Akron, she moved west to Ashland, where there were more opportunities to earn a living.

But starting over required more than just money.

Margo needed a past no one could trace, a future built clean.

I'm a really ambitious chick, but this sounds like an impossible to-do list to me.

That's the first rule she made for herself.

A clean life starts with a clean page.

Complete with a new name, of course.

And so I had picked the name Tanya Lynn Myers.

She chose a name plain enough to blend in, but still feel like hers.

In 1970, this was shockingly easy to do.

That application was all she needed to get a Social Security number.

And with the new identity came a new birthday.