Matthew David Keirans
Criminology
Emash Digital
4.7 • 7.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In one of the most unbelievable identity theft cases ever uncovered, William Woods lost far more than his credit score — he lost his freedom, his name, and nearly his sanity after authorities mistakenly believed he was the imposter.
This week, Mike and Morf examine the shocking decades-long deception carried out by Matthew David Keirans, a man who stole another person's identity in 1988 and successfully lived as "William Woods" for more than 30 years. What began with a stolen wallet at a hot dog stand in Albuquerque eventually spiraled into fraudulent loans, wrongful imprisonment, psychiatric institutionalization, and one of the most disturbing miscarriages of justice imaginable.
The real William Woods repeatedly insisted he was telling the truth — only to be dismissed as delusional, jailed during the COVID-19 pandemic, placed in solitary confinement, and forced to take psychiatric medication after courts ruled he was mentally incompetent.
The case finally unraveled thanks to an Iowa detective determined to separate fact from fiction using fingerprints, records, and ultimately DNA evidence.
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Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. |
| 0:05.9 | Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 410 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. |
| 0:42.6 | And this is Mike Morford. |
| 0:44.3 | Mr. Morford. How you doing this week, buddy? |
| 0:46.5 | I'm doing pretty good. How you don't? |
| 0:48.2 | I'm doing great. I'm just, you know, getting ready for CrimeCon. We're super close. |
| 0:54.4 | And then I know I've said it before, but I come back for a week and then my daughter's |
| 0:59.3 | getting married. |
| 0:59.9 | So I got a lot of stuff going on for a guy who doesn't normally have a lot of stuff going |
| 1:05.7 | on outside of the studio. |
| 1:08.0 | Every once in a while you got to get out of the house and have a little bit of fun. |
| 1:11.9 | Yeah. I'm about ready to have a bunch of it. So we didn't have any new Patreon support this week, |
| 1:18.1 | but we want to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon because it really helps us out. |
| 1:25.0 | And if you're thinking about supporting the show through a Patreon contribution, |
| 1:28.5 | head over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. |
| 1:31.7 | All right. |
| 1:32.4 | We are jumping right into this week's case. |
| 1:34.9 | And we have a pretty interesting one. |
| 1:37.5 | You know, in a lot of episodes, we talk about some really bad people doing really bad stuff. |
| 1:43.4 | Many times we're talking about cold-blooded murders, |
| 1:47.3 | abductions. But this time out, the subject matter isn't quite as dark, but we're still dealing |
| 1:53.7 | with a criminal who stole a man's identity and in many ways stole his life and got away with it for a long time for well over 30 years |
... |
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