home. the stranger might well have lived on indefinitely as courmayeur s very own international man of mystery, had he not walked into that grocery store one night and struck up a conversation with a woman behind the register. that is where our story takes another fateful turn because it was in that moment that the rich american proceeded to make a mistake that has proved the undoing of men ever since adam accepted that apple from eve. the man who called himself mark stern was about to fall in love. for more than two years, mark weinberger walked the streets of europe safe in the anonymity of crowds. according to vanity fair writer buzz bissinger, he cut away people from the past, anyone who knew his name with the cool detachment of a surgeon.
it was peeling the scars from my heart. once the story grew cold, michelle resigned herself to the probability mark weinberger was gone forever. i had hoped that he would be caught, but i thought there was a really good chance that he would die on the run in europe and nobody would know where he was. then in december 2008, four years after mark weinberger left her with just a passport and 1,000 euros, michelle kramer got a call from the fbi and asked her to do an interview with america s most wanted. the fbi hoped i would help them. i had stopped doing a lot of media at that point. i was focusing on my career and trying to move forward. but i thought, okay, i ll help with the investigation. i felt like i really needed an answer from him. it was a long shot, michelle thought, another pointless appeal broadcast into the ether.
he s probably living the high life again somewhere in the mediterranean. this time was different. this time the mark weinberger story found extended shelf life on the internet where more than a year later on december 9, 2009, the right pair of eyes finally found it. so i receive a strange call to my phone, was a friend. he told me, monica, mark is not what he claim to be. what do you mean? trust me. the next day, that friend met with monica and showed her a picture of the man she knew as mark stern. it was a printout taken from the america s most wanted web site. my entire world fall. my knees crack. what s up? it s not true. and my you didn t believe it.
and so, with prosecutorial zeal, this personal injury attorney hired private investigators to chase down rumored sightings of mark weinberger. in china. israel. and france. it was almost like sightings of elvis because we would get tips or leads that we d follow up on to a blind alley. but it was in this remote corner of italy, not far from the swiss border, that our story takes its most intriguing turn. two years after mark weinberger slipped off that yacht in the greek islands, a mysterious american rolled into the alpine village of courmayeur, making a lasting impression with his money. courmayeur crouches in the shadow of europe s highest peak on italy s side of the border with switzerland.
i think it s i m rejecting everything i had in the past. maybe you don t like your wife or maybe you do. he leaves in september of 2004. never, ever contacts her again. he s got a brother neil who he s very close to. never, ever contacts him again. so that s what we re dealing with. it must have been exhilarating at first, using fake names and covering your tracks like a character in some spy novel. but in all fiction stories there comes a time and place where a woman enters the story and carefully wrought plans begin to crumble. for the man calling himself mark stern, the place was courmayeur, and the woman in question had a past as intriguing as his own. i saw him in my market. a customer. yeah. he came to bring milk, bananas, some cheese. he was buying milk, banana, cheese from you. yeah.