He Went to Jail for Stealing Someone’s Identity. But It Was His All Along.

In a beige-walled courtroom in eastern Iowa, a man who has been William Woods for his entire life faced a man who had been known as William Woods for much of his.

That hearing on Friday brought an end to what prosecutors called “a Kafkaesque plot that resulted in the false imprisonment, involuntary hospitalization and forced medication” of the real Mr. Woods. And it was the final step in the legal downfall of the impostor, whose true name is Matthew Keirans, and who spent decades building a middle-class life in Mr. Woods’s name before the truth began to unspool.

Seated at a table some 15 feet from Mr. Keirans, Mr. Woods told a federal judge of his yearslong ordeal, including the time that he was “sent to jail for nothing, for being myself.” A few minutes later, the judge, C.J. Williams, sentenced Mr. Keirans to 12 years in prison, saying that he had stolen Mr. Woods’s identity and “manipulated the criminal justice system to prosecute an innocent man.”

“What the victim was deprived of here was priceless,” Judge Williams said. “It’s freedom.”

It was a case that raised basic, painful questions about justice: What happens when your name is no longer your own? And whom does the system believe?

‘That’s Me’

More than five years ago, William Woods stood in another courtroom. He was the defendant, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not believe he was who he said he was. Prosecutors believed he was Mr. Keirans.

“There is an issue I need to raise with the court,” a California prosecutor said in 2019, according to a transcript. “As the court knows, this is an identity theft case. We filed it under Matthew Keirans because the named victim in this case is William Woods.”

“That’s me,” Mr. Woods called out.

“And I understand he’s insisting he’s William Woods,” the prosecutor continued.

“I can prove it,” Mr. Woods told the judge.

Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr. Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods’s name. At every step, Mr. Woods insisted that he was telling the truth about his identity. At every step, the system doubted him.

Mr. Woods, 56, had spent much of his adult life striving but struggling. Friendly and soft-spoken, he had often been homeless, bouncing between New Mexico and California and working as a hot dog vendor or making jewelry to get by.

He was consistent and clear when he talked about his identity in California courtrooms as he tried to fight the charges on the grounds that he really was the man whose name he was accused of stealing. But Mr. Woods made other remarks that seemed to amplify the doubts. In court appearances, transcripts show, he would sometimes interrupt the judge, talk about historical figures or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.

When his court-appointed lawyer told a judge that “I do not believe that he is competent,” it set off a series of events that led Mr. Woods to spend nearly five months in a California psychiatric hospital, in addition to the 428 days he spent in the county jail. The Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender’s Office, which represented Mr. Woods, declined to comment.

Mr. Woods pleaded no contest in the bank account case when given the chance to be sentenced to the time he had already served. The doubts lingered. Prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the judge to order Mr. Woods not to use his name. When a judicial assistant noted that Mr. Woods insisted that he was in fact Mr. Woods, the judge overseeing that case pushed back.

“That’s because he was crazy,” the California judge said, according to the transcript of the proceeding in 2021.

Asked about that hearing, a spokesman for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County said the judge was prohibited from commenting, and that “judges rely on the parties before them to provide accurate information.”

‘Had I Known’

Halfway across the country, Matthew Keirans had established a quiet, successful life. He had married and raised a son whose surname is Woods. He lived in a middle-class neighborhood in suburban Milwaukee. He worked remotely for the University of Iowa’s hospital, where he was a high-level information technology administrator. He was, to everyone who knew him, William Woods.

“Had I known, we could and would have righted his wrongs decades earlier,” his wife wrote recently in a letter to the judge asking for leniency. “In all other aspects, Matt has been faithful.”

The details of how Mr. Keirans came to be known as Mr. Woods are fuzzy at best. Reached in jail, Mr. Keirans, now 58, declined to be interviewed, and his court-appointed lawyer did not respond to interview requests.

But court documents show that the two men’s lives intersected briefly in the late 1980s in Albuquerque when, prosecutors said, both men were homeless and working at hot dog carts. Mr. Woods believes his co-worker stole his wallet, learned his personal details and started using his identity. Federal prosecutors say they found no evidence of Mr. Keirans using his real name after 1988.

On Friday, Judge Williams said that Mr. Keirans’s motive was clear: He had adopted the false identity, the judge said, to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young. Mr. Keirans had run away from home as a teenager, stolen a car and skipped court after an arrest, his plea agreement says.

In 1990, Mr. Keirans used Mr. Woods’s name to obtain a Colorado identification document while working as a newspaper carrier, he has admitted. In the years that followed, he used the Woods name for taxes, insurance, driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, titles, deeds and bank accounts, the plea agreement says.

Mr. Keirans used Ancestry.com to find information about Mr. Woods’s family, which helped him obtain Mr. Woods’s real birth certificate from the state of Kentucky. When Mr. Keirans provided that document to investigators in Los Angeles, it helped convince them that he was the real Mr. Woods.

All of the records that Mr. Keirans accumulated establishing himself as William Woods left the real Mr. Woods unable to convince the authorities that he was who he said he was, though he, too, had identification cards with his real name.

Over the years, as Mr. Woods called police departments and banks and credit monitoring agencies trying to restore his name, he got nowhere. The authorities in California thought he was lying. When Mr. Woods contacted the police in Wisconsin, where Mr. Keirans lived, they appeared to accept Mr. Keirans’s version of events, records show, even relaying their findings to officials in Los Angeles at Mr. Keirans’s request.

It was not until Mr. Woods contacted the University of Iowa, where Mr. Keirans was employed in Mr. Woods’s name, that he found an investigator who took him seriously enough to find the truth.

“One of these two men was a victim of a crime,” Detective Ian Mallory of the university police said after court on Friday. “I did not know which one.”

After Mr. Woods set off the investigation in Iowa, Mr. Keirans worked to convince investigators that he was the real Mr. Woods, just as he had done with the authorities in California and Wisconsin when they pursued the case. Mr. Keirans kept following up with Detective Mallory, claiming that he was the true victim and that he needed the detective’s help.

But unlike the other investigators, Detective Mallory arranged for DNA tests of Mr. Woods’s father in Kentucky — whose identity was certain — and of Mr. Woods, who was then spending time at a shelter in Santa Monica, Calif. A comparison of the results showed that the California man was telling the truth.

Armed with the DNA evidence, Detective Mallory interviewed Mr. Keirans. He tripped up when asked the name of his father, and then confessed, according to court documents.

‘The Truth’

Mr. Woods’s life changed last year when Mr. Keirans pleaded guilty.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office requested that Mr. Woods’s conviction be vacated. He was profiled in The Los Angeles Times. His inbox filled with emails from lawyers and journalists and filmmakers.

But life remained difficult, and money was hard to come by. Mr. Woods passed many days at a downtown Albuquerque barbershop, just blocks from where he worked as a hot dog vendor all those decades ago. He kept his food in the barbershop’s fridge, used the bathroom to shave and helped sweep up customers’ hair.

Mr. Woods slept some nights outside a truck stop beside the interstate, and got around town by bus. Still, he had his name back. He had hope.

As the months passed, Mr. Woods found an apartment and began a landscaping job that he enjoys. He hired a law firm to seek compensation for his wrongful conviction in California. And last week, he traveled to Iowa, walked inside a courthouse and watched as the man who took his name learned his prison sentence.

“The truth is known,” Mr. Woods said afterward. “The truth is let out. And the truth is important.”

In that courtroom, everyone knew which man was William Woods.

Lauren Herstik and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.