Robert Gomez was a 19-year-old working as a security guard in Los Angeles, and rooming with his co-worker and friend, James R. Nichols. It was Gomez who first alleged to Nichols that he was the adopted son of John Bowers, a wealthy food company executive living in Texas. Later, Gomez would tell Nichols that this Bowers had died. He asked Nichols to serve as the executor of the Bowers estate. Nichols would also later claim to have on an earlier occasion, actually met Bowers at a country club in Long Beach. A year after they met, Gomez and Nichols decided that to save money, they would both move into the Carson home of Nichols' parents.