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Photos by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Jaclyn Meridth

Jaclyn Meridth (right) leaves court in Danville recently after being convicted of forgery and uttering. She is accompanied by Mary Louise Deel (left) and the Rev. Susie Brack, pastor at Fieldale United Methodist Church.

Jaclyn Meridth (left) is asked to say grace in the home of David and Mary Louise Deel. The couple took Meridth into their Henry County home after posting bond for being jailed on charges linked to fraudulently obtaining government documents.

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• Talk about the story of Jaclyn Meridth's life as she seeks a lost identity

BASSETT -- To friends and fellow church members, Jaclyn Vivian Meridth is a 38-year-old former furniture-factory worker who paints her nails red and chaperones youth events for her church.

Jackie, as they call her, was a street kid in Houston who ate out of Dumpsters and carries only one keepsake from her youth: a Cherokee Indian doll made by her grandfather before he died and left her an orphan.

But to local, state and federal law enforcement officers, Jackie is actually Roberto Rebollera Neria -- aka Jaclyn Meridth, aka Ilma Martinez -- a document forger and suspected illegal immigrant, possibly from Mexico.

She's really a he -- and they have proof, they say, based on "intense scrutiny" performed by deputies at the Martinsville City Jail as they booked him on dozens of felony charges earlier this year.

"We're aware of the sympathy story going around," said Department of Motor Vehicles Special Agent David Stultz, leader of the multi-jurisdictional investigation. This is really a story about the lengths a man has gone to hide his true identity, Stultz said, including supplying false information to the DMV.

Members of Fieldale United Methodist Church couldn't disagree more vehemently -- about Jackie's name, about her ethnicity, even about her gender.

"I can understand them doubting her because of illegal immigrants telling crazy stories," said the Rev. Susie Brack. "But I don't think anybody would make up a story as crazy as this; it's too bizarre.

"Who could make this up?"

Unflinching support

As Meridth's friends tell the story, it began on Jan. 16, when police officers handcuffed her during her shift at Stanley Furniture and took her to jail. Dozens of felony charges followed, most stemming from fraudulently obtained driver's licenses, car tags and registration, and an attempt to get a U.S. passport using fake documents.

When deputies strip-searched her, they saw that she had a small penis and one testicle. Because they couldn't decide where to place her -- with the male prisoners or the female prisoners -- they put her in solitary confinement, where she remained for five weeks.

Before Meridth was jailed, most in the church were unaware of what Jackie calls her "biological situation": She was born a girl but developed male organs during puberty, she said, and never went to the doctor because she was orphaned, penniless and ashamed.

Experts use the word "intersex" to describe such sexual-development disorders. One out of 1,000 to 2,500 people are born with mixtures of male and female organs, genes, gonads and/or hormones, according to Roanoke College psychology professor Galdino Pranzarone. "Most people need to be educated about the fact that not everybody is 100 percent male or female," he said. Intersex people often have gender-identity confusion.

Members of the Fieldale church knew Meridth as the tall, elegantly coifed woman who took Communion to shut-ins, taught Sunday school and chaperoned youths.

"Jackie is the kindest, most gentle person I have met," Brack said. "She's totally committed to being the best Christian she knows how to be and living her faith, and that's all that matters to me."

While Meridth was in jail, she lost her job at Stanley Furniture and her trailer in Bassett. Though she'd long called retired schoolteachers David and Mary Louise Deel "Daddy" and "Mama," she had no idea how unflinchingly supportive the Deels would prove to be.

Mary Louise Deel knew Meridth had been trying to fix her identification problems for three years, because Deel was the one who helped her contact U.S. Congressman Rick Boucher's office about correcting it. (Boucher caseworker Connie Marshall confirmed that she spoke repeatedly with Deel and Meridth but didn't remember what resulted from the calls. Later, she said she couldn't discuss the case, citing privacy concerns.)

"She's done some wrong things, but in my prideful way I thought I could help her get it fixed," Deel said. "But nobody official has been able to tell us how to fix it. To the government, she simply doesn't exist." Except as an alias.

Deel posted bond for Meridth on Feb. 23 and took her into her Sanville-area home. Meridth was released with a surveillance monitor that she wore around her leg for three months.

For years, she had routinely run 20- to 25-mile stretches every day, once running all the way to Eden, N.C., and back. But because she wasn't allowed to venture farther than 75 feet from home, Meridth jogged laps around the exterior of the Deels' solar-powered house.

She was permitted to attend church once, on Easter Sunday. "I watched her cry through the whole service," Brack recalled. "She was just so glad to be here among friends."

Saga of Little Feather

When Meridth began attending the church six years ago, she struck congregation members as lonely. They knew her mostly as the odd-looking woman who jogged all over the place, and they'd heard rumors that she was really a man.

"She has an Adam's apple for one thing," Deel said. "I assumed maybe she'd had a sex-change operation at some point."

Gradually, Meridth told her friends at church about "Little Feather," the name she said she was given when she was born to American Indians outside a reservation in Texhoma, Texas, near the Oklahoma border. After her parents were murdered, she went to live with her grandfather in Houston, she said.

Right before he died, her grandfather handed her a plastic bag full of clothes, a doll he'd made for her and a few documents. She doesn't remember ever knowing his full name, only "Big Cherokee."

That scenario is unlikely but possible, according to Darlene Hummingbird, a registrar with the Eastern Oklahoma Region of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah. "I know in my heart that there are a lot of Cherokees out there who were born at home and whose families never officially enrolled them," Hummingbird said. "Not as often in the '60s as it had in the past, but it did sometimes happen."

Between the ages of 8 and 16, Meridth was a Houston street kid who never attended school, living predominantly in downtown parks and occasionally with Hispanic families who took her in, she said.

To get work, she bought her first fake Social Security card from a lawyer for $300, she said -- a common practice among undocumented immigrants. She chose the name Jaclyn in homage to Jaclyn Smith, whose "Charlie's Angels" character she admired. She chose Meridth in honor of the woman who taught her to read, misspelling the name Meredith.

In 1986, she moved to Martinsville with the Nerias, a Mexican family who migrated to Henry County to work in the tobacco fields. When the family left the area a few years later, Meridth said she took Roberto Neria's identity so she could keep the apartment and utilities, which were in his name.

That's another strategy employed often among the undocumented -- using a legal friend's name for bills and the like.

Had she been an illegal Hispanic immigrant, Meridth could have applied for residency via federal programs offered between 1986 and 2000.

"I never applied because I knew I was American," Meridth explained in a recent interview. "I just didn't have papers to prove it."

During her first stint at Stanley Furniture, Meridth was employed as Roberto "Bobbie" Neria. She presented herself as a male but wore a bra and sometimes lipstick and was viewed by co-workers as a transsexual or gay man.

"The way I felt myself was tomboy, but I still myself feel feminine, too," she said in slightly broken English. "To me, I know I am not gay. I am 100 percent a woman inside."

Meridth lost her first job at Stanley in 1996 after the IRS rejected her Social Security number as fake. But according to court documents, Stanley knowingly hired her back two more times -- as Ilma Martinez and, again, as Jaclyn Meridth.

By then, she had come out as a woman, she said. She wore her hair long and took hormones to enhance her female qualities.

The factory also routinely asked Meridth to translate for other Hispanics on staff, said a Stanley worker who asked that her name not be used, fearing retaliation from the company.

"When I first started at Stanley, everybody was saying, 'That's a man!' " recalled the co-worker. "The older ladies wouldn't let her use the women's bathroom ... and tried to get a petition going to keep her out.

"I have never seen her drink or smoke or break the law or be anything but kind to people -- even the people at work who smirked and laughed at her," the co-worker said.

Before and between factory stints, Meridth worked odd jobs. She translated regularly for area Hispanics in doctor's offices, at job interviews and in court. For a time, she helped a Baptist church in Collinsville conduct Spanish-language services.

The saga of Little Feather is astonishing, friends and church members concede. But they believe every word of it because Meridth's story has never wavered. As Brack put it: "Nobody who knows her could ever imagine she could do anything hurtful or dishonest."

Besides, if she's truly an illegal immigrant, why wouldn't she have gone through the legalization process available to her earlier? Why bother spinning such an elaborate tale? And why would she get documents in a woman's name if she's more visibly male, unless she's really telling the truth?

"It's always an awkward situation when one of the flock gets arrested," Brack added. "The tendency of most people is to assume they're guilty, to say they deserve it and then cut them off. But that's not been the case here."

'What has he/she done?'

Officers in Martinsville and Danville circuit courts haven't been as quick to believe. Nor has the DMV's Stultz, who began investigating the case in April 2006, when he said "complaints came in ... by citizens and by the U.S. Department of State," the latter spurred by Meridth's passport application.

Meridth has used five aliases in her lifetime, Stultz said in a recent interview, though he would only divulge three, explaining that additional state and possibly federal charges may be forthcoming. One of the aliases belongs to a Mexican immigrant, a legal resident whose tax records and Social Security holdings have been damaged by Meridth's actions, Stultz said.

According to court papers, 11 federal and state officers from four law enforcement agencies investigated Meridth. Those include the DMV, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Meridth "admitted to being a man but said he felt like he should be a woman," Stultz recalled.

Federal charges may be forthcoming, he added -- a possibility the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke would not confirm or deny. The ongoing charges in Henry County only concern "false statements that were made on a DMV application" and have nothing to do with sex, race or ethnicity, Stultz said. "Our interest all along has been that the information we've been provided is false."

While Stultz maintains sexuality has no bearing on the case, he said several community members mentioned "concerns, specifically when you get into bathroom issues -- what bathroom was being used in public," he said.

Stultz doesn't believe the story of Little Feather for a minute. Nor does Sherman County, Texas, circuit court clerk Gina Jones, whose court issued Meridth a delayed certificate of birth in 2002 based on character-witness letters and a notarized deathbed letter written by an alleged witness to Meridth's birth.

In a recent phone interview, Jones recalled talking to Meridth numerous times in the mid-'90s about her documentation predicament. Federal investigators had her birth certificate voided earlier this year, Jones said.

"They said it had to be fraudulent because she's really a man," she added. "If she's trying to go to those lengths to get an identity, then they wonder, 'What has she done? What has he done?' "

Jones said she, too, was skeptical of Meridth's story.

"She was born here in Texas but she has no living family members to back anything up? In my opinion, that much bad can't happen to one person."

Besides, Jones said, there isn't a nearby Indian reservation in 3,000-population Sherman County; it's actually closer to the city of Sherman, Texas, a seven-hour drive away. No one Jones spoke with in Texhoma, population 335, had ever heard of the double murder of Meridth's parents or of Little Feather. And the birth witness was "a missionary from Mexico, and who's ever heard of a missionary from Mexico?" Jones asked.

Jones suspects Meridth may be an illegal immigrant who's working, paying taxes and trying to do good in the world. "But she's lied so much now that it's all caving in on her, and now she's lied to the wrong people," she said, referring to state and federal agents.

Courtroom snickers

Nobody brought up Meridth's gender in Martinsville Circuit Court on May 18, when prosecutors dropped 10 forging and uttering charges against her and she pleaded no contest to 10 others.

But spectators in the courtroom seemed clearly aware of the bizarre nature of the case.

As Meridth swore to tell the truth, some probation officers and assistant prosecutors whispered to each other and grinned. A bailiff put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.

At the other end of the courtroom, a former co-worker and five church members prayed and wiped tears from their eyes. Most of them were gray-haired retirees, including an 81-year-old who used a cane.

One reason why Meridth accepted the plea agreement, according to her public defender Sandra Haley, was she feared she'd have to submit to having her genitals photographed as evidence -- supposed proof that she was not who she claimed to be. (Pranzarone, the gender expert, says that only a full medical exam, including genetic and blood-hormone tests, can determine whether Meridth is truly intersexed.)

For the 10 charges she pleaded to, the judge sentenced Meridth to 49 years and 11 months, suspending all but 30 days. Because she'd already served five weeks in jail and several more on house confinement, deputies removed her electronic surveillance monitor and let her go -- after a brief debate with Meridth's friends over pronouns.

"They kept saying 'him' and we kept saying 'her,' " church member Abbie Martin recounted. "At the end, the deputy finally said, 'Well, you can pick her up,' and I said, 'Thank you.' "

Irony and confusion

With dozens of charges pending in other jurisdictions and federal charges possibly in the works, Haley says efforts to criminalize Meridth are a classic case of government overkill in a post-9/11 age.

"The way they're going after her, you'd think she's al-Qaida or something," Haley said. "I mean, we're talking about somebody who used to work here as a courtroom interpreter!"

On May 25 in Danville Circuit Court, prosecutor Robert Adams outlined the DMV-related charges in his jurisdiction. Two DMV clerks testified, as did lead investigator Stultz and DMV agent Robert Supinger, who recounted interviewing Meridth after she waived her Miranda rights in jail.

After pleading not guilty, Meridth offered the story of Little Feather as her defense.

There was no snickering, although one woman waiting for the next trial blurted out "Oh my God!" as Meridth described her early life.

She admitted buying fake Social Security numbers and using them to obtain the DMV documents, although her Danville public defender, Jason Eisner, argued she had no intent to defraud. She just didn't know any better.

"She hasn't been dealt the best of hands," Eisner said. "You could say she was out there with nothing to her name, but she didn't even have a name."

At the end of the 90-minute trial, Judge Joseph Milam sided with the prosecutor, and pronounced Meridth guilty of the charges.

"This is a tough case for the court because Miss Meridth is a nice person and works hard," Milam said, ordering a pre-sentencing report and a June 29 sentencing hearing.

As the trial ended but before the next one began, Meridth was asked to sign some court documents.

It was an exchange fraught with irony and confusion, as it had been since the first moment church members stepped in to help Meridth set her legal identity straight.

In her sailor dress, Mary Louise Deel stood up in the front row of the courtroom and wondered aloud exactly what Meridth should write on the court documents.

If she signs the name Jaclyn Meridth, Deel asked indignantly, "Are you going to say she's committing forgery again?"

"Oh ... uh," the judge stammered. "Just tell her to sign what she thinks her name is."

Then she printed the words she had long ago strung together: Jaclyn Vivian Meridth.

With her friends at her side, she strode out of the courthouse and into the bright May sun -- for the time being, a free and dignified woman.

News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.