He abandoned his family 25 years ago. Now Richard Hoagland owes them $2 million.

Douglas Hoagland was in court looking at the father who walked out 25 years ago.

Douglas was 6 years old when he saw his father last. The family was living in a five-bedroom home on several acres in Fishers with a speed boat docked in Geist Reservoir. Douglas and his brother had full bellies and everything they could want.

Without warning, though, Richard Hoagland shed that life like a snake sheds skin. He abandoned his Fishers family, and over the next two decades while they struggled, he remarried, bought property and fathered another son using a name he stole from a dead man.

Fate caught up to the now 65-year-old earlier this month in a Hamilton County courtroom. A judge on May 14 ordered Hoagland to pay nearly $2 million in back child support.

For Douglas; his brother, Matthew; and mother, Linda Iseler, the judgment brought some long-awaited justice. But whether Iseler and her sons will ever see a dime, well, they have their doubts.

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Richard Hoagland made national headlines in July 2016 when police in Florida arrested him on identity theft charges.

Douglas, now 31, said he saw his father's booking mugshot on TV. Douglas was in an Indiana prison.

He was serving an eight-year sentence for being a habitual drug offender.

"I started messing around with drugs in early high school," Douglas said. "I broke my hand, was prescribed narcotics. It was off to the races after that."

Douglas doesn't blame his father for his addiction and bad decisions. His mother and brother, however, believe Richard's disappearance left deep emotional scars in Douglas that never really healed.

Iseler said Douglas was in day care on Feb. 10, 1993, when Richard called her at work about 4:45 p.m. and said he would be gone by the time she got home.

She picked up Douglas and raced to the Fishers house. Matthew, a third-grader at the time, got home from school and was alone in the house.

Richard called again at 5:40 p.m. to say goodbye, Iseler wrote in a journal she kept.

"I can't live this way anymore," he told her. "I feel you would be better off without me."

Richard called again that night.

"I don't want to go to jail," he told her in that phone call. "I'm never coming back."

Police found his van at the airport a few days later. Police told Iseler that Richard's name was not listed on any departing flights.

Richard telephoned several more times that February, Iseler said. He always called collect. The phone bill showed his calls originated in Aruba and Venezuela.

Richard returned to the U.S. within a year. In West Palm Beach, Fla., he rented a room from the father of a commercial fisherman who drowned in 1991, police in Florida said.

He found the man's death certificate and used the information to first get a birth certificate and later an Alabama driver's license. In 1994, police said, Richard was granted a Florida license under his new name, Terry Jude Symansky.

He moved to Zephyrhills, Fla., and lived as Symansky until one summer day in 2016 when he returned home to find a detective in his driveway.

"He told me his name was Terry Symansky. He showed me his driver's license and gave me the Social Security number for Terry Symansky," Pasco County Sheriff's Office Detective Anthony Cardillo told IndyStar in 2016.

"Then I showed him the death certificate."

Symansky died a second time on July 20, 2016, when Richard calmly told Cardillo he had been living a lie.

As Symansky, Richard had married and fathered another son, who was 19 when his father was arrested.

Under the fake name, he and his Florida wife obtained mortgages and bought property. He had a private pilot's license and owned an airplane.

The resurrected Richard Hoagland pleaded guilty to identity theft and served nearly two years in federal prison. He moved back to Indiana in April.

A month later came the awkward reunion with the wife and sons he had left decades earlier.

They hadn't laid eyes on each other in 25 years. Words between them were sparse.

Iseler was trying to collect two decades of unpaid child support. Douglas was 6 and Matthew was 9 when their father ran out.

On May 10, the day of the hearing, Matthew Hoagland turned 35. Richard approached and wished him a happy birthday.

"I told him this was not the time or the place," Matthew told IndyStar.

Richard's disappearance, Iseler said, left her and her boys confused, abandoned and financially ruined.

The bank foreclosed on the upscale Fishers home with the boat on Geist. Lenders repossessed the family's van, too.

Iseler said she sold valuables, including designer suits that Richard had left behind, to pay the bills.

The boys wore hand-me-down sneakers and only got new winter coats, she said, thanks to giveaways for needy school kids.

In court, Richard's own clothes stood out. He wore sneakers and pants and a polo shirt that looked like they came from a thrift store, Matthew said.

Matthew believed the shabby attire was part of an act to portray himself as broke.

The judge, Magistrate William P. Greenaway, wasn't buying it either.

"It was clear that Richard was not living in poverty," Greenaway wrote in an 11-page ruling issued.

"(He) had obtained a comfortable lifestyle, had remarried and had children, obtained a pilot’s license and owned at least one airplane that was acquired for personal use."

Greenaway ordered Richard to pay Iseler $1.86 million in back child support. The judge arrived at the amount by using the maximum allowable interest accrued at 18 percent a year.

"I was glad that we finally had made it to that point where he would be held accountable for his behavior," Iseler told IndyStar. "There's some closure with that."

Richard Hoagland, contacted through his attorney and other family members, declined an interview request.

He is due back in court on July 19, when Iseler's lawyer, Tom Markle, will ask the judge to tack on an additional $40,000 in attorney fees.

If Iseler ever sees a penny from her ex-husband is an open question. Richard Hoagland's assets. Markle said, are now the subject of divorce proceedings involving the woman he married in Florida.

Douglas, who has spent much of his adult life in prison, said he has no interest in reconnecting with his father.

"I'm doing pretty good right now," he said. "I don't think I need to stir up old demons."

In the courtroom, Douglas said, he hoped to see something on his father's face, a pained look or smile at the moment when the fleeing father saw his sons again.

"If you think you had two kids and you wanted to see them so bad, you think you'd be a little bit emotional," Douglas said. "But this guy, nothing.

"There was nothing there."

Call IndyStar reporter Vic Ryckaert at (317) 444-2701. Follow him on Twitter: @VicRyc.