People Who Faked Their Own Deaths (And Got Caught)

Would you fake your death? There have been people who have faked their own deaths, and some have gotten caught, causing embarrassment later on.

Most of us love to be alive, but some people want to start over with a new identity, and that can be hard to do. Unless you need to go into witness protection, it’s pretty hard to get an entirely new identity or to live without others trying to find you.

Here are some people who faked their own deaths and eventually got caught.

Aleister Crowley

There have been some evil people in the history of the world, but how despicable do you have to be to fake death to simply get away from a person you’ve been traveling with? In September 1930, Aleister Crowley faked jumping off a cliff near Lisbon, Portugal, but he showed up alive and well in Berlin three weeks later. Crowley was a self-proclaimed prophet and founder of the religion Thelema. This elaborate hoax was planned with poet Fernando Pessoa, and the reasons for such a horrible joke were unclear.

Juan Pujol Garcia

One example of government-assisted faked death occurred shortly after World War II. Juan Pujol Garcia, with the help of his MI5 handlers, faked his own death from malaria. He did this to keep an eye on Germany from within. He was outed four decades later, and his wife said she never believed he actually died. Investigative reporter Nigel West outed Garcia, but he lasted four decades undercover, which earned him the nickname “Agent Garbo” because of his incredible acting skills. Garcia is one of Europe’s most celebrated spies.

Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan, Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, reportedly died in November 1974 in what appeared to be an overdose of prescription pills. This event occurred after the murder of his children’s nanny and the assault of his wife, who identified Lucan as her attacker. It’s been widely rumored that the death was a fand many wealthy and connected friends helped him disappear. Bingham was a relative by marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales. The abandoned car was the only evidence on the scene, with no body to be found.

John Stonehouse

One of the most common reasons a person might fake their own death is because they are up to their eyeballs in debt. This was the case for British politician and member of Parliament John Stonehouse. He was reported to have drowned in 1974 but showed up two months later in Australia, where he was living under an assumed name. At first, he was suspected to be Lord Lucan because Lucan had disappeared earlier in the year. Stonehouse was convicted of fraud and related offenses an served three years in prison.

Takashi Mori

1995 Takashi Mori faked death with the help of his 21-year-old son. This was done to collect on the life insurance policy worth five million dollars. The Japanese man, his son, and his wife left the Philippines after the faked death to live in Japan. They were found out nine months later, and Mori was arrested along with his son and wife, who were deported from Japan. They were charged with insurance fraud and only had a short-lived time with the money they collected.

John Darwin

One man who faked his own death ended up losing everything. John Darwin was reported to have drowned while canoeing in the North Sea in 2002. The Darwins were looking for a life insurance payout and collected on the policy. Darwin appeared to show up at a London police station in 2007 with amnesia, but photos of him and his wife shopping for property in Panama proved there was no amnesia. Eventually, Darwin’s wife Anne divorced him, and she authored a book about the experiences, and the couple were sentenced to six years in prison.

Samuel Israel

Samuel Israel is a former hedge fund manager who had been convicted of running a Ponzi scheme. He was supposed to report to prison on June 9, 2008, but instead abandoned his car along the Bear Mountain Bridge in upstate New York in what appeared to be a suicide. He turned himself in a month later and went to prison after hiding out with his girlfriend in an RV that was parked off a nearby interstate close to where he faked his death.

Some people think the only way out of a situation is to fake death, and in some cases, they have gotten away with it for many years. Would you ever fake your own death?