Elaine Parent

Elaine Antoinette Parent (August 4, 1942 – April 6, 2002), popularly known as the Chameleon Killer and also known by aliases including Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson, Beverly Ann McGowan, Charlotte Rae Cowan and Ann Tremont, is the name of a deceased con woman, identity thief and murderer who was one of the United States' most sought female fugitives in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Early life Many investigators have questioned if "Elaine Parent" was her real given name, or if her nationality was actually American, since no U.S. birth certificate under that identity has ever been found.

Parent reportedly told acquaintances that she had been born in New York City in 1942 and raised in Illinois during her teenage years. A passport application filed under a slightly different name, Elaine Victoria Parent, claimed Minneapolis as her city of origin and 1946 as her birth year. No verifiable information about Parent's movements during the 1960s are known, and the sole documentation of her criminal activity during the 1970s stemmed from an arrest in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for shoplifting in 1972. McGowan had placed an ad in the paper looking for a roommate. A woman named "Alice" answered the ad. The woman was actually Parent. Soon after, McGowan disappeared; on July 19, 1990, her remains were found in a rural canal in St. Lucie County, Florida. She had been mutilated – a tattoo cut out of her stomach, she had been decapitated and her hands severed to hinder identification. and was found to have used McGowan's credit cards after she killed her. In 2024, the documentary series, The Hunt for the Chameleon Killer, began airing on True Crime in the United Kingdom and Sundance TV in the United States.