Faking your owndeathis not in and of itself illegal . If you want to walk by from your life and go afresh , there areno federal statutesto keep you from doing so — but it ’s seldom the effective resolution to your problems . Sometimes citizenry whocommit pseudocide , likeOne Flew Over the Cuckoo ’s NestauthorKen Kesey , are trying to duck seizure for a crime . Others disappear purely for financial reasons , like businessmanJose LantiguaandIgor Vorotinov , the latter of whom did it as part of an indemnity scheme .
Some stories of shit decease are even more complex , from the humankind who faked his death to estimate his popularity to the man who take the stand at the trial of his alleged murderers . Here are some of the more strange cases of pseudocide over the past 500 years .
1. Jacquotte Delahaye // Circa 1656
According to fable , Jacquotte Delahaye ’s mother died in childbirth and her begetter was murdered during her early days , soshe reverse to piracyto provide for herself and her younger , mentally disabled brother .
At one point during her reign as pirate queen , Delahaye wascapturedand forced to fake her death to break loose . She lived in hiding as a man for a number of year , after which she reunited with her gang and returned to plagiarism . She and her crew even went on to exact a whole Caribbean island as their own . Not only was Delahaye a successful pirate , but she had one of the best sea - faring monikers around , thanks to her spy expiry and auburn hair : “ Back from the Dead Red . ”
2. Timothy Dexter // 1800
Timothy Dexter is regarded as one of America ’s firstfamous geek , and with good reason . A pitiable leather artificer who dropped out of schooling at the old age of 8 , Dexter come about into his circumstances when he made some lucky financial determination regarding meditation on the Continental dollar and instantly became one of the richest men in Boston .
Unfortunately , gamey bon ton common people never choose to Dexter , regarding him as an uneducated man who hook up with into his money . His married woman , Elizabeth Frothingham , was independently wealthy and did not manage for the lavish stable andgaudy statuesthat littered their property — including a statue of Dexter himself . Dexter went so far as to bestow upon himself the title of Lord , exact his servant address him as such .
When the disapproval of his countrymen prove too much , Dexter decided to fake his own death so he could ascertain how the publicreally feltabout him . He entrusted a few homo to machinate a grand funeral and let his family line in on the ruse . While his children put on an appropriate display of brokenheartedness , Dexter , who watched from a lucullan grave built in the basement of his home , determined his wife was smiling too much and not properly crying . He quickly marched to the kitchen , chew up her , caned her , and then walk amongst the mourners as if nothing odd were happen . unluckily for Dexter , he never really received the esteem he feel he deserved , and he died ( for real , this time ) six years later .
3. Alexander I of Russia // 1825
The death of Tsar Alexander I — who was raised by his grandmother , Catherine the Great , and succeed the throne just a few years after her death — has long beencontestedand recently underwent a young round of questioning .
Svetlana Semyonova , the president of the Russian Graphological Society , conduct script analysesin 2015 that strongly evoke similarities between Alexander ’s chirography and that of a monk known as Feodor Kuzmich ( or Feodor Tomsky ) . Even before Semyonova ’s latest examination , the rumor mill had long been claiming that Alexander stag his 1825 death from typhus .
Eleven years later , Kuzmich first appear in the Russian city of Krasnoufimsk , where he was arrested and sent to the Siberian urban center of Tomsk . One proponent of the possibility that Tsar Alexander and Kuzmich were one and the same wasLeo Tolstoy , who observe that both common man and appendage of the elite speak about the astounding similarities between the two men , including their selfsame height , weight , age , and particularly round shoulders . The monk was also cognise to utter multiple languages and carry himself with an air of nobility , even though he claim he was homeless and did not remember his family .
The Tomsk branch of the Orthodox church building does not oppose the idea of test Kuzmich ’s DNA , so perhaps one daytime we will know once and for all whether thetsarand the monk were the same military personnel . Interestingly enough , Alexander ’s married woman , who snuff it the year after he allegedly did , is also rumored to havefaked her destruction . Similarities between her hand and that of a conical buoy support the possibility that she too took on a holy purchase order and became a nun known as Silent Vera .
4. William Goodwin Geddes // 1877
William Goodwin Geddes is notable if only because he was probable thefirst person in Australiato fake his death for fiscal cause . Geddes , a surveyor , had a report for being an excellent natator and all - around jock . But on November 29 , 1877 , Geddes enigmatically drowned in King John ’s Creek in Queensland .
His pal , who had been with him at the time , said he heard Geddes call for help and attempted to preserve him , but his dives were futile . Geddes ’s organic structure was never discover , and although his supporter were n’t whole convinced of his dying , his two life insurance policy policy were pay out four calendar month later .
In 1889 , a military man who expect virtually very to Geddes and went by the name Louis Sydney Brennan was admitted to the Adelaide Asylum for the Insane , having been committed after his wife of several years shout out the law on him . While Geddes ’s parent say Brennan was not their Word , Geddes and a policeman did tell apart each other . The insurance company file a suit against Geddes ’s father for being complicit in the scam . Some have suggested that Geddes had a genuine type of amnesia after a knight - ride accident , but that would n’t explicate his parents ’s call that they failed to know him .
5. Belle Gunness // 1908
Belle Gunness , or “ Lady Bluebeard ” as she came to be know , is believe to havemurderedat least 14 people . She managed to evade prosecution , however , by rat her death . Gunness emigrate to America from Norway in the tardy eighties , and by 1900 , she had already been widow after the death of her first hubby . It is distrust , though , that her married man pop off of poisoning at her paw .
Two year later , hersecond husbanddied from a crushed skull , which Gunness claimed was get when a meat grinder unintentionally fell from a eminent shelf . Gunness ’s two small children , her second married man ’s youngest daughter , and a foster girl also all died under mysterious circumstances while under her care . And even through her grief , Gunness was always sure to collect on animation insurance policies for her class members soon after their end .
With rapacity as her ostensible motivation , Gunness hold on kill . She take outpersonal adsin the report boast textbook like :
“ Comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in La Porte County , Indiana , desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well put up , with view of join fortune . No replies by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal sojourn . Triflers need not apply . ”
Her no - nonsense position garnered the aid she was looking for , and suitors come along with money in hired hand only to be unceremoniously killed upon their arriver . Gunness was operating without suspicion until Andrew Helgelien answered her advertizement and go away in brief after . His pal , Asle , develop worried , but Gunness answered his concerned letter by saying his brother had croak to Norway .
Before Asle could get in touch with local law , in the early morning of April 28 , 1908 , Gunness ’s Indiana farmhouse erupted in flaming . Under a burn pianissimo were the bodies of three child and a headless charwoman everyone assumed to be Gunness . Police believed the fervor to be lay out byRay Lamphere , a hired hired man and Gunness ’s suspect lover . He was arrested and shoot with arson when Asle Helgelien show up with his theory that Gunness had remove his brother and set the house on fire to blot out her law-breaking . The authorities investigated and soon encounter remain all over the farm , include those of Andrew Helgelien . Amid the remains encounter in the hog playpen , law also discovered the bones of the foster child Gunness claimed had give out away to California .
Twelve hours before the fire , Gunness had been to a attorney to draft a will , as she said she revere Lamphere would kill her and burn her house down . Lamphere , who was by and by convicted of incendiarism , admitted on his deathbed in 1910 that he had set the fire and that Gunness had drug and killed her children , but he insist Gunness escaped unharmed . He claim the brainless consistence was that of a woman who had come to the farm to be a housekeeper and that Gunness had steal billion from her murder victims . Because the corpse in the house did n’t quite touch Gunness ’s 280 - pound sign frame and her bank account was suspiciouslyemptiedthe day before the fire .
While there is no unequivocal evidence that she faked her own death , many contemporaries conceive that she did . Up until 1931 , people claimed to see Gunness in and around the United States , once even during aninvestigationfor the poisoning death of an old man . In 2008 , a team of forensic analysts attempt to determine once and for all whether Gunness had fled the fire , butDNA testson the remains were inconclusive .
6. Marion Franklin Rogers // 1929
It ’s not every day you get to bear witness at the trial for your own murder . In 1926 , Marion Franklin Rogers escaped from the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Arkansas after being admit three months prior . He was conjoin with three children , but after his escapism he abandoned them and start a new life as a drifter . He claim to be a 22 - class - old namedConnie Franklin , and he found work cut woodland and doing manual labor on a farm . As Franklin , he set about romance 16 - year - quondam Tillar ( or Tiller , depending on the newspaper ) Ruminer . In March 1929 , he disappeared . Later that spring , Ruminer told authorities that her fiancé had been murdered in March of that yr , but she had stayed still because his murderers threaten to kill her if she told anyone .
According to Ruminer , on the night she and Franklin were to be marry , they were scupper by a group of attackers who flap him until he was ineffectual to move . They then mutilated him and burn him while he was still alive , throwing his cadaver into a current . Two of the Isle of Man then sexually set on Ruminer before endanger her to insure her quiet . Four workforce were charged with Franklin ’s agony and execution , but the December 1929 trial run come unraveled when Rogers appeared , claiming to be the mangle man . ( The tryout was already strange to watchman , as the prosecutor and defense attorney were brothers . )
Will Rogers bear witness that on the Nox in question , he get drunk with the defendants , was slimly injured after a fall from his mule , andvanished voluntarilybecause Ruminer wanted to table the wedding ceremonial occasion . His identity proved unmanageable to confirm , as some swore him to be their booster and neighbor , while others turn down to trust he in truth was Franklin . While handwriting comparisons seemed to support Rogers ’s claim , tests of a pile of blacken bone from the woods were inconclusive , and Ruminer did not acknowledge him as her former fellow even though he recognized her father by name andserenaded herwith her favorite songs both a cappella and on the mouth harp . Ultimately the man on test buy the farm free , and Rogers conk of exposure in December 1932 . Whether the real Franklin was murdered or Rogers merely faked his disappearance has yet to be positively established .
7. Alfred Rouse // 1930
The story of Alfred Rouse reads like an episode ofLaw & Order . In abotched effortto escape child support payments for several illegitimate children , Rouse dress out to fake his death by set his car ablaze with someone else ’s torso inside .
Hepicked upa hitchhiker and promptly beat him with a mallet , set him in the number one wood ’s seat , and light a match . Rouse assumed his offense wounding remain unobserved in the early minute of the morning , but he wasspotted bytwo witness . After his arrest , Rouse claim the machine had burst into flames when he entrust the hitchhiker alone with a lit cigar and asked him to fill the tank with some gas canister . The police did n’t buy it , and Rouse was hanged in 1931 .
Forensic scientist arestill tryingto identify Rouse ’s dupe thanks to a particularly self-coloured deoxyribonucleic acid specimen , but so far they have only been capable to eliminate a few nominee .
8. John Stonehouse // 1974
One of the more well - have it away fakers on our leaning , John Stonehousegained celebrity before his disappearance as a Labour Party member in the British Parliament . Stonehouse was the Word of a Southampton mayor and was accomplished in his own rightfield : A graduate of the honored London School of Economics , he was a former postmaster ecumenical and served as secretary to the pastor of aviation .
He had aspirations to be premier pastor , but problems in his personal and political life were getting in the way . He was trapped in an distressed marriage and wished to be with his secretary and lover , Sheila Buckley . Taking inspiration from Frederick Forsythe ’s novelThe Day of the Jackal , Stonehouse decided tocreate an alternate identitywith the name Joseph Markham . He get a pass under his fictive name , opened extraneous bank describe to channelize secret stock , and finally give away his disappearance while on a trip to Florida in November 1974 .
On a beach in Miami , Stonehouse took off his dress , placed them in a pile , and walked away . It appear he had drowned tragically in the Atlantic , and Stonehouse ’s wife Barbara , as well as his political allies , ab initio believed he was truly go . But American and British police were n’t so quick to agree , think he may have been ask in some sort of espionage . Stonehouse could have disappeared permanently except for unlucky timing .
On November 7 — the right way around the time when Stonehouse vanished — the wealthyRichard John Bingham , Earl of Lucan , vanish after being suspected in an attack in which his married woman was pound and the she-goat murdered . When Stonehouse jaw a bank in Australia , a teller became suspicious when he made a sizable deposit . believe the man could be Lord Lucan , police put him under surveillance , only to discover he was the missing John Stonehouse . He wasdeported back to Britain , where he was sentenced to seven years in prison for theft and fraudulence . Lord Lucan , however , was never seen again .
A variant of this article was originally published in 2015 and has been updated for 2023 .
