Hand on the Run

The bizarre true story of the world’s first hand transplant, the surgeons who made it happen, and the compulsive thief who got a new set of fingerprints—and took them on the lam.

When surgeons completed the world’s first hand transplant in 1998, it was supposed to be a moment of triumph. Never before had a dead man’s limb been grafted onto the living, and the possibilities for amputees, accident victims, and those born with congenital defects were nothing short of extraordinary.

But the patient they chose—Clint Hallam, a businessman from New Zealand who longed to hold both of his children’s hands, embrace his wife, and play the piano again—wasn’t who he claimed to be. What they didn’t know, and what the media soon discovered, was that Clint was a convicted thief on the run from police and ready to steal again—with a new set of fingerprints.

This is the astonishing true story of a team of doctors who performed the impossible, the patient who conned them, and the media manhunt that captivated the world.