Norma Toliopoulos left Chicago over Labor Day weekend in 1999, with law-enforcement officials on her trail.
The next time her roommate saw her, she was on television, sporting a different last name, plugging a popular book–and perpetuating a hoax that has shocked many in the publishing world, but not those who know her.
Writing under the name Norma Khouri, she penned what she said was a true-life account of love, murder and religious intolerance, published in the United States as “Honor Lost.”
She spoke on National Public Radio, was interviewed by The New York Times, even appeared on the “Today” show, retelling the disturbing story of how a Muslim woman she had grown up with in Jordan–her best friend–was murdered by a relative for dating a Christian man.
She became a celebrity in Australia, where she had taken up residence. There her book sold almost 200,000 copies under the title “Forbidden Love.”
But the past caught up to Norma Toliopoulos last week, when an Australian newspaper showed her story to be false.
Public records and interviews show that although she was born in Jordan, she grew up on Chicago’s Southwest Side. As an adult she bounced among insurance sales jobs before suddenly leaving the country, just before detectives came calling.
“It didn’t surprise me,” said Brandy Murphy, a former roommate of Toliopoulos’ in Chicago who has watched as scandal enveloped her longtime friend. “She scammed everyone.”
Publishers in the U.S. and Australia have pulled the book from the shelves. A spokesman for Simon and Schuster in New York said it had printed 50,000 copies in the United States since 2003 but has stopped selling the book until the author presents evidence her story is true.
Toliopoulos, 34, told the Sydney Morning Herald, which broke the story, that she intends to do just that.
“I stand by what I wrote,” she said. “I refute the allegations you are making, and had I been given more ample time, I would have supplied proof. I intend to do so in the future.”
An attorney for the author in Brisbane, Australia, said she is “gathering material” and will hold a news conference soon.
In Chicago she is remembered as a troubled woman who talked big but could not be trusted.
“The book is not surprising to me at all, but it’s probably all false,” said Rich Cawley, a former boss at the Orland Park insurance office where she once worked. “Norma would lie, so you didn’t know what was truth from fantasy with her.”
Records and interviews show Norma Bagain, the daughter of Majed and Asma Bagain, moved to Chicago from Jordan with her family when she was 3.
Majed Bagain, a machinist, settled his family in a community around Midway Airport, where Norma grew up with two brothers and two sisters.
At 18 she married John Toliopoulos before a judge at the Cook County Administration Building in 1989, records show. The couple had two children together, a boy and girl. But her friend, Murphy, said the marriage later degenerated into arguments and fights.
On April 7, 1998, Norma was arrested and charged with domestic battery for allegedly hitting and scratching her mother-in-law. A police report about the incident said she threatened to kill her mother-in-law, while officers were present.
The charges were later thrown out when the mother-in-law did not show up in court.
Roommates shared troubles
Murphy, 30, said she met Toliopoulos in the early 1990s and the two moved in together in 1999 because each was having relationship problems. But Toliopoulos’ husband moved in with them shortly afterward.
At the time, Murphy said, Toliopoulos seemed to have money but no job. She told Murphy she was an author.
“I thought she got money from this book deal, but no one could ever find the book,” Murphy said. “Then she told me it was unauthorized.”
For at least part of that time, Toliopoulos was working, selling insurance for State Farm. Cawley said he hired her in 1998 at his Orland Park office after she had worked at other State Farm offices in the area.
Toliopoulos told Cawley, too, that she was working on a book, and she sometimes stayed in the office late writing, he said.
“She was a good salesman. She could get people to buy insurance with us,” Cawley said. “She was probably the craftiest saleswoman I’ve ever hired.”
But she also was unreliable, he said. Cawley fired her in early 1999, after six months of work, because she perpetually arrived to the office late, he said.
Not long after, Cawley got a call from a Chicago police detective asking about her, he said.
“It was some kind of fraud,” Cawley said.
Back at home, Murphy said her roommate packed up and left on Labor Day weekend of 1999. Later, she found a manuscript Toliopoulos had left behind. It was not the book she would later be accused of fabricating, but Murphy said it was equally phony.
“She was in such a fantasy world,” Murphy said of the manuscript. “She said she was in a rich family. She was always talking about money. [Norma and her husband] would always say money is the power–you have no money, you have no power.”
Murphy also said detectives contacted her after Toliopoulos left.
At least part of her problem appears to have stemmed from a lawsuit filed against her by A.J. Smith Federal Savings Bank, which accused her of failing to pay her $905-a-month mortgage starting in May 1999. In an affidavit, an attorney for the bank, Kimberly Padjen, said Toliopoulos had simply vanished.
Padjen wrote that an FBI agent had contacted her in October 1999 and said Toliopoulos was under investigation for fraud. The agent said Toliopoulos had fled the country to avoid prosecution, Padjen wrote.
An FBI spokeswoman in Chicago declined to comment.
Murphy, who continued to keep in touch with Toliopoulos, said she first flew to Greece, then spent some time in Jordan.
The next time Murphy saw her friend was in 2002, when she turned on the TV and saw Toliopoulos on C-SPAN telling her story. “I thought, how in the heck did she get back into the States?” Murphy said. “Then I saw her name was Khouri.”
By then, Toliopoulos was living in Australia as Khouri. Her publisher, Random House Australia, provided information in support of her visa application in the category of “distinguished talent,” managing director Margaret Seale said in a statement.
A tale of love and death
The story Toliopoulos wrote did sound amazing. In her book, she wrote that she had grown up a Christian in Jordan and befriended a Muslim girl named Dalia. She wrote that the two, best friends since age 3, opened a hair salon in Amman after they became adults.
Through the salon, she wrote, Dalia met a Catholic man named Michael, and the two started dating. When Dalia’s father found out, he stabbed Dalia to death, an “honor killing” to defend an ancient Muslim code.
Almost immediately after it was published in 2002, some in Jordan said they thought the book was a fabrication. Although experts say honor killings do occur, tracing the story told in the book proved difficult.
Random House Australia bought the rights to the book from its parent publisher, Transworld UK, which had bought the rights from a “reputable New York literary agent,” Seale said.
Seale said the book was edited in New York by its American publisher, Atria, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster.
“Random House was the final link in a chain of established and trusted publishing organizations which agreed to publish `Forbidden Love,'” Seale said.
The literary agent did not return calls seeking comment.
Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon and Schuster, would not comment on whether his company vetted the book’s story, but said: “We rely on authors to present us with true and accurate accounts of their lives.”
Reginald Gibbons, an English professor at Northwestern University and former editor of a literary journal, said book contracts usually require authors to sign a form saying nothing they are writing is stolen or false.
Neither Simon and Schuster nor Random House Australia would say whether Norma Khouri signed such a contract, or whether they plan to sue her.
Only some publishers fact-check manuscripts, Gibbons said. “They don’t want to pay the money to check them all,” he said. “Everything’s about money. … Big publishers are just trying to turn out product as fast as they can.”
Norma Khouri’s second book, a sequel to “Forbidden Love,” is due out in November from Random House Australia. It is unclear if that book will be published, a spokeswoman said.
Murphy said she no longer knows what to believe about Toliopoulos.
“You know the thing that hurts me the most is our friendship was a fake,” she said. “I thought I had this great friend.”
