"Everything was good and gravy," David Vigil says. Vigil had never met a girl like Candice Cooper Boley in Miami Beach before: a tiny Alabama belle whose quick smile and Southern drawl were as out of place as a snowflake. When they started dating in February, Boley said she wasn't interested in marriage or kids. But after a few months together, she bought the pair promise rings.
On July 7, when Vigil returned home from his job as a Mid-Beach hotel security guard, all he found was a note: "I'm so sorry about everything that I've done," it mysteriously began. "I'm just a terrible person... I left so I couldn't do any more damage to your life."
Vigil frantically dialed Boley's number, but there was no answer. He left desperate messages, to no avail. Then he Googled her name.
"My heart literally dropped out of my fucking ass," he says. Up popped a dozen news stories with titles like "Talladega mother declared missing." Instead of the single woman she had claimed to be, Boley had left three young children back in Alabama when she disappeared New Year's Eve. Vigil was devastated. Everything he knew about Boley had been a lie.
It didn't take long for him to discover the "damage" she had mentioned in her farewell letter. Vigil claims the vixen withdrew $600 from his mother's bank account and forged his name on a check in an attempt to steal $3,000 more. Miami Beach Police confirm Boley is the subject of an open fraud case, and a surveillance photo shows her entering a nearby convenience store that morning to use his mother's ATM card.
"She was sending me texts like normal, but the whole day she was stealing my money," Vigil says while chain-smoking in his small North Beach apartment. He doesn't know why Boley left, but his neighbor across the hall has an idea. Mike Moss says Boley scammed him out of $320.
Vigil is heartbroken but angry. He wants Boley caught, if only to prevent her from suckering someone else and to force her to return home to her kids. And although the bank returned his mother's money, Vigil says his bogus bride-to-be scarred him for life.
"I'm going to be suspicious of anyone that comes close to me for the rest of my life," he says. "Google is all I have."
