Death Unlocks 20-Year Secret of Mate’s Mysterious Past

GREENVILLE, S.C. —  Eva Breedlove always thought it was strange that her husband of 20 years wouldn’t talk much about his past.

Only after Charles Miles Breedlove died did she find out he was really Massie Linwood Young, a convicted forger who escaped from a Virginia prison in 1963, authorities said.

Eva Breedlove has hired a private investigator to find out more about her husband, who died April 6, Greenville County Coroner Parks Evans said.

She doesn’t want to talk about it.

“It wouldn’t be good for my kids,” she told The (Greenville) News, which reported the story last month.

“I always wondered about that man,” said Jimmy Campbell, who grew up next door to the Breedloves. “He wouldn’t have anything to do with us and we lived beside him for 10 years.”

Breedlove, who told his family he was 62 but now is believed to have been 67, was jobless but avoided any trouble with the law during the almost 15 years he lived in Greenville, law enforcement officials said.

The coroner’s office became involved shortly after Charles Breedlove died of natural causes, Evans said. Eva Breedlove sought the help when a problem arose with her husband’s Social Security number, the coroner said.

“He had given her a little information . . . but he was very vague when she or her daughters asked him questions about his past,” Evans said.

Breedlove’s fingerprints had no match in state files, but at the FBI they matched prints taken more than 30 years ago from Young, who escaped from a state prison in Fredericksburg, Va., Evans said.

Young had served three years of an 11-year sentence for forgery, the coroner said.

Investigators believe Young took the name Breedlove from a fellow inmate or from someone he met soon after escaping, the newspaper said.

As Breedlove, he was careful never to leave a trail of records, shunning even a driver’s license. “We can find nothing that he did that he ever had to use his identification,” Evans said.

Campbell remembers Charles Breedlove as a neighbor who often could be heard shouting at night.

“Mostly it was about politics, the system,” Campbell said.