10 Times Famous People Faked Their Deaths (And Got Caught)

Top 10 Times Famous People Faked Their Deaths and Got Caught

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Times Famous People Faked Their Deaths and Got Caught.

For this list, we’ll be looking at the most intriguing cases of people in the public eye who were discovered to have staged their own deaths.

Which of these pseudocides do you think was the sloppiest? Let us know in the comments.

#10: Patrick McDermott

Born Kim Chong-nam in Seoul, South Korea, Patrick McDermott moved to the United States after he was adopted by an American family at the age of two. McDermott met Australian music star Olivia Newton-John in the 1990s and the two struck a nine-year on and off relationship. On June 30th 2005, McDermott boarded a fishing charter boat in California and was never seen again. After his disappearance garnered significant press attention, many speculated that it was all staged by McDermott to evade paying his debts. Another reason was to secure a $150,000 life insurance payout for his son. McDermott was allegedly found to be living in Mexico by private investigators from NBC’s “Dateline,” although his ex-wife has publicly refuted those findings.

#9: Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was an affluent American businessman who was born into a poor household in the mid 18th century. His fortune changed when he married Elizabeth Frothingham, an older, richer widow and was able to invest in several eccentric business ventures. Dexter shipped bed warmers to the tropics and exported cats to the Caribbean islands during a rat infestation. Although he had amassed a lot of wealth, Dexter was still rejected by New England high society. He faked his funeral to see how many mourners would show up and surprisingly, over 3,000 people did. It was found to be all a ruse after Dexter miraculously rose from the dead to flog his wife for not mourning his loss enough.

#8: Chandra Mohan Sharma

Unhappy with his marriage, Indian social activist Chandra Mohan Sharma decided to run away and start a new life with another woman. To stage his death convincingly, Sharma befriended a homeless man in his area and set his own car on fire, with the man inside it. He moved to another city with his new girlfriend, whose family soon reported her missing. A few months later, with the financial burden now weighing him down, Sharma called his girlfriend’s family from a public call center and gave them her location. The call was traced by the police, leading to Sharma’s arrest. He was returned home, much to his family’s surprise, and sentenced to life imprisonment for the death of the homeless man.

#7: Marcus Schrenker

In the face of impending financial and legal doom, investment tycoon Marcus Schrenker attempted to fake his death. An accomplished pilot, Schrenker flew his private plane himself from an airstrip in Indiana, headed for Florida. At some point during the flight, Schrenker made a pretend distress call and parachuted out of the plane. After the dispatched military jets found the plane still flying empty, they knew something was up. This triggered a three-day manhunt for Schrenker across multiple states. The fleeing financial fellow was eventually captured on a KOA campground in Florida, after officials traced an email he had sent to a friend the previous night.

#6: Jerry Balisok

Jerry Balisok was a professional wrestler whose career came to a screeching halt after he was involved in a ghastly bike accident. He began managing a motorcycle store, where he wrote fraudulent checks and was indicted by the FBI on multiple counts of forgery. Balisok went on the run just before his trial began and adopted a new name. He lived for years undetected and prosecutors dropped the charges against him after they were convinced he had died in the 1978 Jonestown Massacre. Balisok could’ve gone on living freely under his new identity, but his criminal tendencies never went away. In 1989, he was arrested for attempted murder and his true identity was discovered the minute he was fingerprinted.

#5: David Friedland

In an era rife with political corruption, former New Jersey State Senator David Friedland still managed to stand out. In 1979, the crooked lawmaker was charged with accepting bribes in exchange for arranging fraudulent loans from the Teamsters union pension fund. Friedland accepted a deal to avoid jail time in exchange for becoming a government informant. But when it looked like he might still be going to prison, he faked his death in a scuba diving accident in the Bahamas. Friedland then traveled the world and ended up in the Maldives, where he kept a high profile as the owner of a chain of scuba diving shops. This ultimately led to his arrest and extradition back to the U.S.

#4: Arkady Babchenko

On May 29th 2018, Ukrainian officials announced that Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko had been shot and killed in his home in Kyiv. Babchenko had fled Russia a year before and settled in Kyiv with his family out of fear for his life. It was reported that his death was possibly ordered by the Russian government, but this was denied by the country’s officials. Babchenko’s death was actually staged, with makeup and pig’s blood, in an attempt to foil a real assassination plot against him, and expose a number of secret agents in Ukraine. He then made a dramatic appearance at a press conference the day after his supposed death, to the absolute shock of everyone watching.

#3: Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey was an American writer, most notable for his debut 1962 novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The book was adapted into the 1975 film, which won all five major Academy Awards. Kesey formed Merry Pranksters, a collective that went on long road trips in a colorful bus and threw psychedelic parties known as Acid Tests. After getting arrested for drug possession, Kesey faked his own demise by planting a farewell note in his truck and parking it by a cliff. He ran off to Mexico, where he lived for eight months without being detected. On his return to the U.S., Kesey was arrested by the police and sentenced to six months in a California jail.

#2: Philip Sessarego

In 1991, a Royal Artillery soldier named Philip Sessarego faked his death by a supposed car bomb in Croatia and began living a new life in Belgium. It is believed he did this to avoid making mandatory payments to his estranged wife. Under the pen name Tom Carew, Sessarego wrote a book titled “Jihad! – The Secret War in Afghanistan”, which became a bestseller after the September 11 attacks. The book detailed an account of his experience training Afghan insurgents to fight Soviet troops, which was later proven to be entirely fabricated. Sessarego, as Tom Carew, granted multiple TV interviews after 9/11. It was during one of such interviews that he was recognized by his family and his true identity was revealed.

#1: John Stonehouse

British MP John Stonehouse was a rising star under Harold Wilson’s Labour Party-led government. Facing financial trouble and suspicions that he was a Czechoslovakian spy, Stonehouse decided to run away and start a new life. He disappeared in November 1974, leaving a pile of clothes behind on a Miami beach to create the impression that he had met his end in the water. While his obituaries were being published, Stonehouse had already fled to Australia with his mistress. He was caught just about a month later when he opened a new bank account and the teller observed some highly suspicious activity. Stonehouse was deported back to the U.K. where, surprisingly, he continued to serve as an MP.