A woman, who was thrust into the Witness Protection Program at just seven years old, has revealed the terrifying ordeal she endured. According to her, government officials removed her from her home in the dead of night, placed her in a dilapidated motel, and warned her that disclosing her true identity could cost her life.

Jackee Taylor, 51, explained to the Daily Mail that her father, Clarence Crouch, was a member of the Cleveland chapter of the infamous Hells Angels, a motorcycle club with a history of involvement in organized crime.

Her father, Clarence, severed ties with the Hells Angels in 1981 and agreed to divulge everything he knew about the notorious group to the authorities.

In return for his cooperation, assurances were made to safeguard Clarence and his family, which led to Clarence, Jackee, her mother, and two younger siblings being inducted into the Witness Protection Program when Jackee was just a young child.

The family was abruptly uprooted from their home under the cover of darkness, compelled to leave nearly all their possessions behind, and begin anew in a different state under assumed identities.

The experience was profoundly ‘traumatic’ for Jackee. She recounted being cautioned that revealing her true identity to anyone would result in her death.

In addition, she said they had very little help from the government and were forced to reside in a ‘fleabag motel’ as her mom struggled to make ends meet.

Jackee said the ordeal led to her turning to drugs and alcohol as a teen, before she was ultimately committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Even now, decades on, Jackee is still grappling with the effects of being put into the program, both mentally and logistically – as she has struggled to get a marriage license and even health insurance without a birth certificate.

Now, she has detailed her grueling journey exclusively with the Daily Mail. 

Jackee claimed that her father had been ‘very abusive’ to her mom during the early years of her childhood.

Right before he decided to turn on the Hells Angels, she said her mom had finally found the strength to leave him and had taken Jackee and her siblings to Florida. 

‘My mom had absolutely no contact with my father, she was hiding from him. She had finally left him and was starting over again,’ recalled Jackee.

‘But my dad wanted his family back, so he said to the government, “‘I have a wealth of information for you but I want my wife and kids back.”

‘My father said, “The only way I’d cooperate and turn on the Hells Angels is if you convince my wife to come back to me and enter witness protection with me.”

‘So my mom started getting phone calls at work [from the government]. They went to visit her at work and said, “You’re life’s in danger.”‘ 

Jackee said her mom agreed to join the program because she wanted to protect her kids, and the family was taken into the government’s custody in the middle of the night. 

Jackee remembered officers barging into their house in the wee hours of the morning; they were only allowed to bring small bags, which meant most of their belongings were left behind. At just seven years old, she was terrified. 

‘They came at 3 o’clock in the morning, they scared the s**t out of us,’ she explained. 

‘It was all dark, no lights were turned on. They were like, “Get up let’s go,” we were so scared. My mother’s calming presence and voice kept us from having a complete meltdown. 

‘They ushered us into vans, then we went to a hotel. My father met us at the hotel. Then they took us to a safe house in Tampa.’

At the safe house, Jackee said they all received new identities and spent hours going over the story they would have to tell people.

‘In 1981, there was no internet, so they gave us dead people’s social security numbers not thinking it would later [cause problems],’ she explained. 

‘We had to practice our stories, practice writing our new names. I had to fill a notebook up over and over with [my new name].

‘At seven years old, I am told by the marshals and my mother and father that if I do not lie to every person I know about who I am and where I came from, we will all be killed.

‘It was [traumatizing]. I remember sitting in class and being nervous that somebody was going to ask me a question and I was going to get it wrong. Like, what if I say my name wrong?’ 

To make matters worse, Jackee said she didn’t really understand why because they told her very little about what was going on.

‘We just knew we were hiding from the Hell’s Angels and they wanted to kill us. If we saw a motorcycle we had to hide, that’s what they were telling us,’ she said.

‘I never had a problem with peeing my pants as a kid before that, but when I heard a motorcycle sometimes I couldn’t hold it out of fear.’ 

After leaving the safe house they were put into a ‘fleabag motel’ in Montana.

‘It was the nastiest possible [place]. I drive by that place today and I can smell the meth coming out of it, it’s just disgusting,’ she said.

They received $1,261 a month from the government, but were left to manage everything else on their own.

Jackee’s mom, who had worked as a nurse before entering the Witness Protection Program, had to find a new home for them as well as all new clothes and furniture.

All the while, she struggled to get a job because having a new identity meant all her past experience was erased, and she sometimes wondered if she’d have enough money to buy food to feed Jackee and her siblings.

‘They’re giving her $1,261 a month. I’ve had people say, “That was a lot for 1981,” but if you’re coming from Florida to Montana and you have no clothes for your three children in Montana in the winter…’ Jackee said.

‘She had to pay for the motel, she had to get us new clothes, buy a car, get an apartment and try to feed a family of five on $1,261 a month. She was responsible for everything.

‘My mom had worked for 19 years but she was having a really hard time gaining employment because they were having a hard time with her documentation, [she couldn’t even prove] she graduated from nursing school.

‘There were weeks where she had $5 at the end of the week and no food, just crackers. She didn’t know how she was going to feed us.’

But the worst part, according to Jackee, was that her mom was forced back into a home with her abusive husband.

Clarence spent about a year living with them in Montana while he testified in various trials before he eventually went to prison for murder; he had confessed to shooting and killing an 18-year-old years prior.

‘He confessed to murder and the marshals threw us all in a motel together in Montana. They left us with a man who just confessed to murdering,’ Jackee alleged. 

But things didn’t get better after her dad went to prison.

‘We should have had counseling or support. My mom had no one to talk to, she wasn’t allowed to talk to her family or friends, she had to leave everything behind,’ shared Jackee. ‘All that trauma, it led to a very tumultuous [few years].’ 

As Jackee entered her teenage years, she said she started to become fiercely ‘angry’ about what had happened, and she began ‘experimenting’ with drugs and alcohol.

She ultimately spent 30 days in rehab and was committed to a psychiatric hospital after threatening suicide.

During her treatment, she began to open up about what happened to her as a child for the first time after years of secrecy and immense fear, but she said her doctor didn’t believe her. 

‘Then the misdiagnoses started coming in. They said I had paranoid delusions of grandeur, and wondered if I was schizophrenic,’ Jackee revealed.

‘It hit me that this is a weird story and no one will ever believe me. That’s when I realized, I’m the only one who is ever going to be able to help myself.’ 

Thankfully, Jackee was able to get clean but when it came time for college, she faced another major roadblock: she didn’t have a birth certificate which was needed to enroll.

‘Lucky for me, the head of admissions for Montana State University lived next to our home growing up,’ she explained.

‘I had to go before the entire admissions board and plead my case without a birth certificate. 

‘I was able to get in thankfully, I don’t know if she pulled strings but I’m sure she did. If I didn’t know her I probably wouldn’t have gotten in college.’ 

Jackee ultimately pursued a degree in psychology in the hopes of helping others who may be going through something similar. 

‘I had been through everything you could possibly think of and I knew I could [use my experience to] make a difference in someone’s life,’ she said.

When she applied to get a marriage license years later, she was denied because she didn’t have a birth certificate.

And in 2009, her children’s health insurance was canceled due to the same problem.

She said she tried calling and writing to the US marshals for help, but got no response. So she decided to go to the media. 

And one day after a news article covering her story came out, she said she received a call from a US marshal.

She was ultimately given a passport, but she claimed that she hasn’t heard from them since then.

The Daily Mail has reached out to the US marshals for comment. 

Even now, over a decade on, Jackee said she still has problems due to her identity, or lack thereof.

‘I had issues with my daughter getting a driver’s license [recently] because I had lost her birth certificate, and to get a new one they needed documentation about who I was,’ she shared.

Jackee, who shared that she still works to ‘keep her mental health in check every day,’ is now extremely outspoken about what she went through in the hopes of helping others.

She even started a podcast about it, called Relative Unknown, in 2020 and is set to release a book soon about her experience.

‘My story is one of thousands. [This program] is not working. There are so many more people like this,’ Jackee concluded. ‘This program needs to be dismantled.’