Brian Patrick Regan: How Dyslexia Led To His Spying Fail

True crime comes with many intriguing twists and turns, and back in 2003, Brian Patrick Regan ended up incarcerated for life without parole because, in part, he struggled with dyslexia. You might recall that in 2019, CNN produced a documentary called Declassified: Untold Stories of American Spies. Brian’s story featured in an episode titled, Buried Secrets, Unbreakable Codes.

The Story Deemed A Huge Success By The FBI

If you ever visit the website of the FBI website, you’ll find their most successful investigations, and Brian Patrick Regan sits about a third of the way down the landing page of their famous cases. If you don’t know, Brian worked in intelligence with the Air Force. Red flags were raised by a tip-off that contained a badly spelled letter.

He hailed from Bowie, Maryland, and had four children. Plus, he happened to rack up some impressive “credit card debt.” In fact, it amounted to over $100K. Back then, that was a lot of cash. In fact, if you had that kind of money you could have bought a dream vacation home, taken a world tour, or started a business.

Stealing Classified Documents 

Anyway, Brian decided to sell secrets to get the cash and get out of financial trouble. So, he stole classified documents. The objective? To sell them off to “China, Iraq, and Libya for $13 million.” Well, that was a massive amount.

So, he hid the “stash of stolen materials in various places deep underground.” The burial places ended up written on a note, and that was located “under the I-95 exit sign near Fredericksburg, Virginia.”

However, the true crime attempt failed largely because of his dyslexia. In fact, the documentary highlighted Brian’s fail as a double agent because his dyslexia seemed severe. Unfortunately, he simply couldn’t spell, and that became his signature that led to his arrest just as he tried boarding a plane to Switzerland.

Bad Spelling Helped Investigators 

He consistently spelled the word “president” as “presedent.” Then, there was “espionage” which he wrote as “espyonage.” Naturally, his encrypted message, riddled with errors, alerted the FBI. After all, it narrowed down who could be selling out the USA to their enemies.

Eventually, the media dubbed Brian Patrick Regan “the spy who couldn’t spell.” With photographic evidence of his theft of sensitive material, the terrible spelling, and his attempt to fly out of the country, a jury found him guilty.

Life With No Parole

Brian was sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole. So, he remains behind bars and is thought to remain in the Federal Correctional Institution, in Cumberland, Maryland. At the time of his 2001 arrest, he was 38 years old. In October this year, he’ll celebrate his 64th birthday in prison.

Perhaps the FBI would have found their spy without the dyslexia, but it goes to show that simple difficulty with spelling could lead to the downfall of a master crime plan.

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