Faked death


A faked death, also called a staged death, is the act of an individual purposely deceiving other people into believing that the individual is dead, when the person is, in fact, still alive. The faking of one's own death by suicide is sometimes referred to as pseuicide or pseudocide. People who commit pseudocide can do so by leaving evidence, clues, or through other methods. Death hoaxes can also be created and spread solely by third-parties for various purposes.
Committing pseudocide may be done for a variety of reasons, such as to fraudulently collect insurance money, to evade pursuit, to escape from captivity, to arouse false sympathy, or as a practical joke.
While faking one's own death is not inherently illegal, it may be part of a fraudulent or illicit activity such as tax evasion, insurance fraud, or to avoid criminal prosecution.

History

Deaths have been faked since ancient times, but the rate increased significantly in the middle of the 19th century, when life insurance, and therefore insurance fraud, became more common. Life insurance payouts are often a goal for people faking their deaths, but most types of insurance fraud involve other subjects, such as thefts or fires, rather than faked deaths.
In the late 20th century, advancements in technology began to make it increasingly more difficult to simply disappear after faking a death. Such things as credit card purchases, social media, and mobile phone systems, among others, have made it harder to make a clean break with a past identity. Widespread use of facial recognition tools can connect new identities to old social media accounts. Other factors include a narcissistic desire of fakers to observe the reactions of others to their deaths, which may prompt them to check websites for information about their disappearances, which in turn could lead to their discovery through Internet geolocation.

Motivation

While some people fake their deaths as a prank, self-promotion effort, or to get a clean start, the most common motivations are money or a need to escape an abusive relationship. Men are more likely to fake their deaths than women.
People who fake their deaths often feel like they are trapped in a desperate situation. Because of this, an investigation may be triggered if the person disappears, no body is found, and the person is in significant financial difficulties. Often, the desperate person has assessed the situation incorrectly. For example, John Darwin, known as "Canoe Man" in the UK, incorrectly believed that his financial difficulties could not be resolved through bankruptcy or by seeking legal assistance.
Many people who fake their deaths intend for the change to be temporary, until a problem is resolved. For example, John Darwin hoped that his wife could collect money from life insurance, pay some debts off, and then he could reappear later to pay the money back, perhaps with a fine and some jail time. He framed it as a sort of unconventional loan from the life insurance companies.
Daydreaming or fantasizing about disappearing can be a form of avoiding problems that people do not want to address, such as their dissatisfaction with their current situations. Faking a death in this situation goes beyond this common impulse to think about a different lifestyle and may be associated with manipulativeness, anti-social behaviour, or sociopathic tendencies.

Methods

People who fake their own deaths usually do so in a way that there isn't a body to identify. Often done by going missing or pretending drowning. However, drowned bodies usually appear within a few days of a death, and when no body appears, a faked death is suspected.

Outcome

Although firm figures are impossible to identify, investigators can resolve nearly all of the cases they receive, and researchers believe that most people are caught. Most people are caught quickly, within hours or days. For example, Marcus Schrenker faked a plane crash to avoid prosecution and was captured two days later, after he sent an e-mail message to a friend about his plans.
Faking a death is not a victimless act. The people who grieved what they believed was a real death are usually angry and sometimes see the offense as being unforgivable. Accomplices, such as romantic partners and children, may be asked to commit crimes, such as filing false insurance claims or making false reports to the police, which can result in criminal charges. Those who are unaware that the death is fake may feel emotionally abused or manipulated. Rather than being happy or relieved to discover that the faker is alive, they may be angry and refuse to have any further contact.

On social media

False claims of death, including false claims of suicide, are not uncommon in social media accounts. The people who do this are likely trying to get an advantage for themselves, such as more attention, likes, or sympathy, and lie about their deaths often "without thinking about the fact that there are people who would be upset, hurt or psychologically affected by the news of their death". It may be an intentional effort to manipulate other people's emotions or to see how people would react if they had died. Online, people have claimed to be dead as a response to real or perceived mistreatment on social media, and posting news of their death, especially their suicide, is a way to punish the other users.
Examples of faked deaths on social media include BethAnn McLaughlin, a white woman who claimed to be Native American under another name on Twitter, and whose deception was uncovered after she faked her death during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaycee Nicole in 2001 represented not just a fake death on social media, but also a fake person; she was the fictional creation of a middle-aged woman, and one of the first internet hoaxes to pretend that a character was dying.

Notable faked deaths

1st century

  • Yohanan ben Zakkai faked his death to escape from the Roman army.

    14th century

  • Joan of Leeds was a nun who faked her death to escape from a convent.

    18th century

  • Timothy Dexter was an eccentric 18th-century New England businessman probably best known for his punctuationless book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. However, he is also known for having faked his own death to see how people would react. He paid his wife and members of his family with instructions to act. After the funeral he caned his wife for her poor acting by not looking sufficiently saddened at his passing.

    20th century

  • Grace Oakeshott, British women's rights activist, faked her death in 1907 to get out of her marriage. She lived the remainder of her life in New Zealand and died in 1929.
  • Violet Charlesworth, a British fraudster, faked her death in 1909 to escape payment of debts. She was sentenced to three years in prison and released in 1912.
  • C. J. De Garis, an Australian aviator and entrepreneur, faked his death in 1925 and became the subject on an eight-day nationwide search, before being spotted on a ship in New Zealand. He committed suicide in 1926.
  • Aleister Crowley, English occultist and author, faked his death in 1930 in Portugal aided by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and then appeared three weeks later publicly in Berlin. Crowley actually died in 1947.
  • Alfred Rouse, an English murderer, set his own car on fire in 1930 with a different man inside, in an attempt to convince the police that Rouse had died in the vehicle. He was arrested and convicted, and executed in 1931. The identity of the victim remains unknown.
  • Aleksandr Uspensky, Russian government official, faked his own suicide in 1938 in an attempt to avoid capture by Soviet authority during the Great Purge. He was captured in 1939 and executed in 1940.
  • Ferdinand Waldo Demara, American fraudster, faked his death in 1942. He actually died in 1982.
  • Horst Kopkow, German SS major and war criminal, was declared dead by his MI6 handlers in January 1948. In reality he had been relocated to West Germany, where he died in 1996.
  • Juan Pujol García, Spanish spy, faked his death from malaria in Angola in 1949, with help from the British spy agency MI5. He lived the remainder of his life in Venezuela and died in 1988.
  • Lawrence Joseph Bader, an American salesperson, disappeared in 1957 and was presumed dead. He was found alive five years later assuming the identity of "John 'Fritz' Johnson", working as a local TV personality in Omaha, Nebraska. He either had amnesia of his life or was a hoaxer. He actually died in 1966, aged 39.
  • Ken Kesey, American novelist, faked his suicide in 1966. He died in 2001.
  • John Allen, a British criminal and murderer, faked his own death in 1966 to avoid prosecution for crimes he had committed. Allen actually died in 2015.
  • John Stonehouse, a British politician who in November 1974 faked his own suicide by drowning to escape financial difficulties and live with his mistress. One month later, he was discovered in Australia. Police there initially thought he might be Lord Lucan and jailed him. Sent back to Britain, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.
  • Jerry Balisok, an American professional wrestler, successfully convinced the FBI that he had died in 1978 in the Jonestown Massacre to avoid fraud charges, assuming the identity "Ricky Allen Wetta". A decade later, Wetta was arrested and convicted for attempted murder, at which point he was determined to be Balisok. Balisok actually died in 2013 while in prison for an unrelated crime.
  • Audrey Marie Hilley, an American murderer, jumped bail in 1979 and lived under the assumed identity of Robbi Hannon. In 1982, under a different alias, she announced the death of Hannon. She was captured and imprisoned, and died in 1987.
  • Robert Lenkiewicz, a British artist, had his death falsely announced to the newspapers in 1981. In reality he was in hiding with his friend Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans. Lenkiewicz later stated that he engineered the stunt because it was the closest he could get to knowing what it was like to be dead.
  • Sukumara Kurup, an Indian who faked his own death by placing the corpse of his murder victim in his car and setting it on fire in 1984. The face of victim was charred beforehand to prevent identification. He did it to collect the money insured on his name. The police identified the victim and his accomplices were put on trial. He evaded arrest and is in a fugitive list of Interpol and Kerala Police.
  • David Friedland, a former New Jersey senator, faked his own death via scuba-diving accident in 1985 while awaiting trial on racketeering charges. In December 1987, he was arrested by officials in Maldives, where he had been working as a scuba dive master and had posed in scuba gear for a picture post card. He eventually was returned to the United States and served nine years in prison. Friedland died in 2022.
  • Charles Peter Mule, a Louisiana policeman, was charged with 29 counts related to the rape and molestation of several young girls in 1988. After being released on bail, Mule left his truck alongside a bridge and sent a note to his police department. His claimed suicide was ruled inconclusive after police failed to find a corpse in the river, and a hiker reported to police that a man had opened fire on him without warning and whose description matched Mule's. After the case was profiled on the television show Unsolved Mysteries, Mule was captured.
  • Philip Sessarego, British author, faked his death by car bomb in Croatia in 1991 for unknown reasons, and lived under an assumed name for the next 17 years, with his own family only learning he was alive when he appeared in a 2001 TV interview. He died of an accidental poisoning in 2008.
  • Russell Causley, a British man, faked his death by jumping off a ferry off the coast of Guernsey in 1993 as part of an insurance scam. His scheme was soon uncovered and he was jailed for fraud; this led to the police re-opening an investigation into the disappearance of his partner Carole Packman, who Causley would be convicted of murdering in 1996.
  • Francisco Paesa, an agent of Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, the Spanish secret service, faked a fatal cardiac arrest in 1998 in Thailand, after having tricked Luis Roldán, known for being the general of the Spanish Civil Guard when a big scandal of corruption arose in 1993, into stealing all the money that Roldán had previously stolen in that case. He appeared in 2004. During these years, he opened an offshore company, which was exposed thanks to the leaking of the Panama Papers.
  • Friedrich Gulda, Austrian pianist, falsely announced his death in 1999 to create publicity for a following "resurrection concert". He died in 2000.