“That was Tom’s great secret—the scheme to return home with his brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a chaos of invalided benches.”
–The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The majority of us have had a dark desire to disappear off the face of the earth; to escape the pressures of life and start again in our own vision of paradise, to live out our days with little care and no one to find us.
Then we awaken and assume our daily lives with our families and return to our jobs with its burdens.
Some have taken it further, turning a daydream into deed.
Elizabeth Greenwood, beset with $100,000 worth of education loans (before interest), was desperate for a solution. Friends, some in jest, and some in sincerity, suggested fabricating her own death and living forever in a sun drenched country with a government with officials who may be induced to participate.
Greenwood chronicled her own efforts in a recent book, PLAYING DEAD: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud (Simon & Shuster 2016).
She queried whether she could just “annihilate the self that owed the money? Or would I have to annihilate my entire being?” The answer, of course, is your death is the total cessation of your existence.
Greenwood discovered the ideal country to disappear and get false documents is from the Philippines. She discovered a black market with morgues where unidentified decedents are sold cheaply by those who enable false deaths. They are usually cremated, where the body scrutiny ends. For roughly five thousand dollars she obtained a death certificate, an accompanying Authentication Certificate and a police report.
Frank Ahearn, the author of several books, such as The Art of Disappearing and How to Disappear, is described as the world’s top expert on people removing themselves from the world without a trace. He was a guide to Greenwood in her quest for complete evaporation.
Bennie Wint became a customer of his own drug sales and was in deep with the drug dealers of South Carolina. Wint decided the only way out was to die, or to feign his own demise. On vacation in Daytona Beach, he swam out past the breakers and disappeared. His fiancée was a witness; he left her and a young daughter from a previous marriage. He assumed a new life as Bill Sweet and sold NASCAR memorabilia. His new wife and new son had no knowledge of his previous life. It all was exposed when he pulled over for the failure of $1.50 taillight.
Olivia Newton John’s ex-husband Patrick McDermott tried the disappearing trick. On the South Californian fishing boat Freedom, with 22 other passengers, he fell overboard, though nobody saw it.
Investigators were immediately suspicious and were inclined to believe the death was staged due to McDermott’s money problems. He had recently received a passport with his birth name of Patrick Kim on it and withdrew large amounts of savings before the cruise. He left his wallet and car keys on the boat.
It is believed that McDermott is living off the coast of Mexico and South America.
Finances seem to play the biggest role in reasons people wish to disappear, but sometimes it is a clever turnabout to relieve domestic unhappiness.
In 1935, a Yonkers policeman, in a momentary decision to end his domestic unhappiness, had a quarrel with his wife and she threatened to leave him. He smeared ketchup on his face and fired his revolver into the floor. His wife heard the shot, saw her bloodied prostrate husband and in a moment of overwhelming guilt shot herself to death.
Frank Ahearn helped 50 people escape and disappear in eleven years. His fee was $30,000 per case.
A staged cremation is becoming more popular since the advent of DNA testing as it is very difficult, at best, to determine identity through cremated remains.
The tragedy of 9/11 brought many feigned deaths as money was available to survivors. New York Police Department Special Frauds Squad investigated 6,000 deaths when actual figures were 2,800. There were 3,000 misidentified deaths, 44 were claims for people still alive or those who never existed.
Cyril Kendall had trouble producing evidence about his youngest son Wilfred, 29, whom he claimed was at an interview at the offices of Cantor-Fitzgerald in the North Tower. He was asked to produce a photograph of his son and a birth certificate. Kendall brought in a picture of himself in the 1960s and the birth certificate was a forgery. He had already collected $120,000 from the Red Cross and $40,000 from other charities. He was convicted of fraud, served several years and was deported to Guyana. The money was never recovered.
Greenwood lays out her conclusions if you really want to fabricate your own death. Can you leave all of your present life behind? Are you capable of never seeing your spouse, your children, your family, your friends, and your community ever again? This is where most people fail.
These are not victimless crimes. The newly deceased is running from some horrendous crime or debt. They abandon those that count on them; many times it is a young child. The children are deceived and when the deception is discovered, they lose all faith in those around them.
Some tips are: do not ever consider going back or making contact. Do not Google yourself as that will lead investigators to you. Use your own first name to avoid slipups. When you buy life insurance in anticipation, buy reasonable amounts. Do not get fancy and try to get a substitute corpse, use your money on authentic documents. Do not die at sea, go on a hike and get lost.
Greenwood obtained a death certificate and an authentic certificate of proof for her own death. She never used it, but she was able to live the hidden fantasy many have.
She learned that it takes much more fortitude to fake your own death then it does to keep living.
“The impulse and the instinct to begin again is as deeply imprinted on our psyches as it is to begin in the first place.”
–Elizabeth Greenwood