Jocelyn and Ed

Continuing coverage on amazingly insane relationships, we have a rolling stone article about the story of Jocelyn and Ed . Jocelyn Kirsch is a compulsive liar. One of those girls who re invents herself every few months. Shifting friends, always interested in something different. She had 3 guys who all thought they were the only ones dating her. Shallow and self conscious, she couldn't stand to be alone. She claimed to speak 11 languages, and wore fake contacts to change her eye color. She claimed to be a pole vaulter for Penn State. She was a kleptomaniac who stole from her closest friends. Ed was a Penn State graduate working as an annalist. With a new life and a comfortable salary Ed only lacked someone to share his success with. He would literally find his partner in crime in Jocelyn.

One might say that Jocelyn and Ed were like peas and carrots. Jocelyn needed someone to spend lots of money on her, and give her attention. Ed needed some kind of security blanket. Someone to make him feel important again. Within months of meeting, the two were traversing the globe, taking expensive vacations, and spending exorbitant amounts of money on overpriced designer crap. Sounds like any other typical yuppie relationship at first. Except for one thing. Jocelyn wasn't the trust fund baby she claimed to be, and Ed was fired from his job after lying about his use of sick days.

It was all a big, gleeful sham. Ed had actually been canned from his job four months before, and twenty-two-year-old Jocelyn was a senior at nearby Drexel University, a big step down from Penn. When Philadelphia police busted into the couple's apartment a few days later, they found an extensive identity-theft operation, complete with a professional ID maker, computer spyware, lock-picking tools and a crisp North Carolina driver's license soaking in a bowl of bleach. Though the investigation is still unfolding, this much is apparent: The lovebirds stand accused of using other people's names and Social Security numbers to scam at least $100,000, sometimes buying merchandise and selling it online to raise more cash.

What's striking about the two grifters is how determined they were to flaunt their ill-gotten gains. They acted not like furtive thieves but like two kids on a joy ride, utterly delighted by their own cleverness — as in the invitation Jocelyn e-mailed to friends not long before their arrests, announcing a surprise twenty-fifth-birthday party for Ed at an upscale tapas bar. "My treat, of course!" she'd written. Steeped in narcissism and privilege, fueled by entitlement and set in an age of consumer culture run amok, theirs is truly an outlaw romance for the twenty-first century. The Philadelphia Daily News immediately dubbed the photogenic couple "Bonnie and Clyde." It's a name some people take exception to. "Bonnie and Clyde, that's only because they're young and good-looking," scoffs Detective Terry Sweeney of the Philadelphia police. "These two were complete idiots. If this was two fat fucks from South Philly, it would have been Turner and Hooch."

...read the rest of the article here