How a St. Louis-area man lived decades — and served a prison term — with a stolen identity (2024)

MADISON COUNTY — About a year after his release from prison, Dorynell Thompson found himself on Michigan Public Radio discussing his time behind bars and his newfound life as a free man.

The Kalamazoo resident had served about 17 years for a 1996 federal drug distribution charge, but he had recently become an ordained minister and was working in the community to help kids avoid the criminal justice system.

“That was my first time ever getting in trouble,” Thompson told Cynthia Canty, an anchor and morning show host during the 2015 interview. “I grew up on the rough side of the area where I was living. And I had always kind of been on the streets. I was never the type of guy that would go out and get in trouble.”

But that was far from the truth. Thompson wasn’t who he said he was.

He’s actually Robert Mason III, Madison County prosecutors say, and he has a violent criminal history in southern Illinois dating back to the 1990s.

Authorities say he fled Illinois at age 23, while facing an attempted murder charge, and stole the identity of his then-girlfriend’s brother, Dorynell Thompson.

“Robert has kids with my sister — that’s how I knew Robert,” the real Dorynell Thompson told the Post-Dispatch in an interview. “We never had problems or anything. And when that (1994 shooting) happened, I just knew he had fled, but then I didn’t know anything else about it. He was gone, as far as I was concerned.”

Mason lived under Thompson’s name for 30 years in Michigan, where authorities say he promptly embarked on a new life of crime. More than half of his time in Michigan was spent in federal prison on the drug charge.

Still, his fake identity remained undiscovered — even though he did not have Thompson’s government-issued IDs such as a Social Security card or birth certificate.

Mason’s secret was discovered when the real Thompson said he finally convinced Alton detectives to investigate his claims of stolen identity. He had been turned away for years by state and federal authorities, he said — all while struggling with the financial ramifications of the identity theft. Thompson said he was told at one point that he must be wrong, “because this would never happen.”

When Alton police launched an investigation, Thompson, 55, said he gave police a thick folder of evidence, including Mason’s federal prison mugshot listed under Thompson’s name.

Mason was arrested May 28 on his 1994 charges of home invasion and attempted murder. About a week later, he was charged with identity theft.

“This is very unusual,” said John Davis, a federal prosecutor in Missouri for 23 years who now works as a criminal defense attorney. “In fact, this is the first time I’ve heard of such a thing. For that long of a stretch, in the federal system especially, unheard of.”

How, exactly, Mason managed to live three decades and serve a prison sentence under another person’s identity remains largely a mystery. Federal authorities — the Western District of Michigan and the Federal Bureau of Prisons — would not discuss the case with the Post-Dispatch, including whether Mason’s federal records would be updated to reflect his real name.

As of this week, Dorynell Thompson’s name still appeared in federal court and prison records under the 1996 drug case.

Mason, now 53, sits in Madison County Jail with no bond as his two cases work through the system. He declined to speak with a reporter when reached by jailhouse video call, and his wife, Trina Henry, could not be reached.

A Federal Bureau of Prison spokesperson would say only that when an inmate goes through the intake process at the prison, court information is entered and they are fingerprinted. Citing security concerns, he declined to answer if those fingerprints would have been run against a national database in the late ’90s.

“Justice, for me, would be clearing this whole thing up and getting my life back,” Thompson said. “I’m not wishing bad on him. It’s not in my hands. But I’m so glad it’s over. I’ve been dealing with it for so many years.”

Mason’s early years

Contrary to his account during the Michigan Public Radio interview, Mason was no stranger to trouble when he landed in federal prison in 1996. In fact, he had spent most of his early adult years in and out of the courtroom.

“He was no one to play with,” Thompson said of Mason’s reputation in Alton in the 1990s. “He was a pretty tough guy.”

In 1989 and 1990, two misdemeanor battery charges against Mason were filed but eventually dropped, according to court records. He was also fined in 1989 for a misdemeanor property damage charge.

Things then escalated on Valentine’s Day the next year, at age 20, when he was indicted on two felonies.

In the first, Mason and four other men were accused of shooting at a couple. He was charged with two counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm and one count of aggravated assault. Prosecutors also filed aggravated assault, mob action and armed violence charges against Mason and others in a separate shooting, though the latter two charges were eventually dismissed.

He was sentenced in April of that year to four years in prison. It’s unclear exactly how much time he spent there, but by September 1993 he was free and living in Alton with his sister, two brothers and a niece, according to court documents. Mason was a lifelong Madison County resident at that point, save for his time in prison, and he had three children — two of whom were with Thompson’s sister.

Mason faced legal trouble, though, when he was charged with robbing and shooting at a man. He pleaded guilty a few months later, and a judge sentenced him to “intensive supervision probation.”

But his probation was revoked the next year after the shooting that prompted his flight from the St. Louis area.

Prosecutors said in two separate incidents on May 15, 1994, Mason shot a man four times and broke into an Alton woman’s home and threatened her with a weapon. He was charged with home invasion and attempted murder.

But police couldn’t find him to arrest him. Mason had seemingly disappeared, and the case lay dormant for 30 years.

Life in Michigan

By December 1994, seven months after the shooting, Mason was living in the Kalamazoo area and living under the name Dorynell Thompson. His uncle has ties to the area, public records show.

Less than two years after starting his new life, Mason found himself in court again. This time, it was federal.

Mason was charged — as Dorynell Thompson — with participating in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana. He was one of about a dozen co-defendants in the case, including his uncle, Sammy Dyer. The group was dubbed “The Ross drug organization” after the main conspirator, authorities said, and drugs were brought in from Gary, Indiana, Mexico and other locations.

Mason, who went by the nickname “Base,” was charged with acting as a courier, transporting the drugs to the small town of Benton Harbor, Michigan, about 50 miles west of Kalamazoo.

Still, his real identity remained hidden. He was sentenced to 25 years.

His lawyer in that case, Richard Zambon, said in an interview he learned of his client’s ruse only after he was charged with identity theft this month in Madison County.

“If he had told me about this subterfuge, I would have said, ‘Let’s deal with it and get it over and done with, and then you don’t have to worry about always looking over your shoulder,’” he said, noting that state and federal authorities may have agreed to give him concurrent sentences for all of his cases if he had come clean.

Zambon said both he and federal prosecutors were suspicious at the time of the influence Dyer seemed to have over his nephew. He now wonders if it was related to Mason’s uncle knowing about his stolen identity.

Dyer was sentenced to 30 years in prison and was released in June 2018, according to online records. He could not be reached for comment.

Mason was released in 2013 after federal authorities gave the power to judges to reduce penalties for crack cocaine offenses that had received harsh sentences.

Mason remained under court supervision after being released, but his lawyer said that ended early because Mason showed perfect compliance — a trait he also showed in prison.

“I hate to say — he was a good guy,” Zambon said. “But that’s what he was. I mean, he was cooperative. He was nice, he was never rude or inconsiderate to me. I got along real well with him.”

Soon after his release, Mason was ordained as a minister, he said in an interview with Michigan Public Radio. He had begun working toward ordainment while in prison and had taken classes with the Jericho Christian Training College, according to court documents.

‘His face popped up under my name’

Thompson first noticed his identity was being used around 2017, when the Alton resident received a letter from the IRS that said he owed money on wages he reported in another state.

“I didn’t really didn’t know what to do,” Thompson said. “The IRS sent me a letter saying that I’m working in a different state. They did not state that I was working in Michigan. So I had no clue. I just knew that someone was reporting income using my Social Security number.”

Another IRS letter came in 2018, and he worked with the office to flag his Social Security number.

Around the same time, Thompson’s family started investigating who was using his name. His dad in 2019 suggested he run Thompson’s name through online prison records.

“His face popped up under my name,” Thompson said. “And I knew him, and that was what was surprising to me.”

Meanwhile, Thompson’s credit trouble continued. He was turned down for a home loan, and he was told he couldn’t get a car loan because he had just taken one out even though he hadn’t.

“When I checked my credit report, I was kind of floored.” Thompson said. “I mean, I had stuff on there coming out of Michigan. Someone put a car in my name and credit cards and stuff like that. My credit score was really low.”

Thompson said he went to Alton police and they told him they would get back to him. After a year of waiting, he said he went back and officers there didn’t have information about his initial report. That pattern continued for a few years.

Meanwhile, Thompson, a longtime cement mason, suffered an injury. But he was denied Supplemental Security Income payments, he said, because the government said he was still working in Michigan.

Thompson said it wasn’t until he talked to Alton Mayor David Goins about his situation last year that the case finally gained traction. Goins also knew Robert in the ’90s and recognized his mugshot in the prison record.

The mayor called the police chief about the case last fall, Thompson said.

“I don’t know what conversation they had, but everything started rolling,” he said. “By knowing who (Mason) is, it was easy for David to say, ‘Hey, this guy is really stealing this guy’s identity.’ I was fortunate that David happened to be the mayor.”

‘It was just not worth it’

While Thompson struggled to track down who was destroying his credit and using his identity, Mason’s life outside of prison seemed to be flourishing.

He told Canty, the public radio host, he married his wife, Trina Henry, in September 2015.

“My life is truly a blessing,” he said in the November 2015 interview. “I am just grateful to have another chance and another opportunity to get my life back.”

Mason can be seen smiling in a photo posted to Facebook in April 2014 on Life Changing Ministries, a church in the Kalamazoo area. The post identified him as Thompson and featured other church members hanging out after a Sunday service.

But Mason’s post-prison life wasn’t without its bumps. In August 2016 he was charged with two misdemeanor counts of driving while intoxicated. One of those charges was dropped, and he paid fines for the other, according to court documents.

A year later in October 2017 he was again charged with a misdemeanor count of driving while intoxicated, and again he paid fines for the charge.

A few months before that second charge, Henry’s son, 31-year-old Brian Robinson, was killed in a hit-and-run crash. Mason, still living as Thompson at the time, can be seen in the background of a TV news story about his stepson’s death a year later.

“I just want the person that was responsible to actually take responsibility for their actions,” Henry says during the newscast, as Mason helps other family members decorate a memorial behind her.

Last month, Henry posted Mason’s $15,000 cash bail, the amount set in 1994 when his warrant for attempted murder was issued. But he was taken back into custody on the new 2024 identity theft warrant and is being held without pretrial release after Madison County prosecutors argued earlier this month that he “has a high likelihood of willful flight to avoid prosecution.”

Without the reduced sentence that freed him from prison early, he said, “life wouldn’t be as great as it is now.”

And he reflected on the choices that landed him in prison, too.

“I tell you what,” he said, “it was just not worth it.”