He still calls him Jay, as do most people in Marsing, even after they’ve seen his mug shot on the FBI’s aging wanted poster and they’ve read about all the things he allegedly did, as Enrico Ponzo, long ago. It is a consensus opinion among them that Jay is in prison because he was genuinely, desperately worried about his kids. They do not believe that a fugitive mobster got cocky and sloppy in a custody dispute, because they do not believe that Jay Shaw is the same person he was when his name was Enrico Ponzo. They believe, in fact, that Jay Shaw and Enrico Ponzo may as well be entirely separate people, real and distinct individuals, one of whom exists only as a memory in newspaper clippings and criminal indictments.

That could be a testament to Ponzo’s criminal cunning, his ability to shape-shift and bluff and con.

Or it could be true.

"You know what they seized from my house, right?" he asks me one day. He means the money, mainly $118,000 in cash plus $65,000 in gold coins, a bar of silver, a diamond ring, thirty-three guns, and tens of thousands of bullets (though he says the guns and the bullets aren’t his). He also means the fake IDs in seven names other than Jeffrey John Shaw and all the books on how to vanish and re-create himself anew. He means that he did not have to end up in jail. "If I didn’t care about my kids," he says, "I would’ve run. But whose life is more important, my life or my son’s? I was trying to save my son’s life."

He says that with no trace of self-pity, and he means it literally. "They called the police on him!" he says. "He’s 8 years old!" A pause. "I didn’t want to see my son in the future," Ponzo says from a corridor in a maximum-security prison, "sitting right here."

He knew the risks, and he knew the odds of those risks. He knew that as soon as he filed his complaint, the courts could figure out who he used to be, or that Cara could turn him in. He does not, for the record, accuse her of doing so, but he does not believe the timing of his arrest is coincidental. Nor does he dispute what two people, Kelly and Angie, say he told them, which was that Cara had threatened to call the feds. "Go ahead," he answered. "I’d rather know my kids behind bars than not at all."

He hasn’t seen them in almost a year now, and he speaks to them only infrequently, when he calls and Cara puts them on the phone. He says it’s a fight every time. He usually loses. "She’s a hateful person," he says. "The problem is, she hates me now." At least he can laugh when he says that. He’s surprisingly cheerful for a man who could remain locked away for the rest of his life, all because he exposed himself, deliberately, with benevolence aforethought.

"Yeah, I’d do it again," he says. "It’s my kids’ life versus my life. His life is more important to me than my life."

Enrico Ponzo is in prison, but it was Jay Shaw who traded his life. One of the first people he called after he was arrested was Bodie Clapier. Ponzo said he was sorry he’d never told him the truth, and he asked Bodie to tell his wife he was sorry, too. "This is a bunch of bullshit," Jay Shaw said, "but I’m going to be here a long time. Will you feed my cows?"

"That’s the guy I am," Ponzo says. "I love that life. Really great people, a great place to raise my kids. And someday I’ll be back. Someday. That’s my hope. Someday, you know?"

_Sean Flynn is a _GQ correspondent.