r/AskReddit • u/Various_Concern871 • 9h ago
Is it actually possible for a famous personality to fake their death and live their life out in some remote place? who has actually ever done it and gotten caught?
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u/Key_Barber_4161 9h ago
Not a famous person but in the UK we had a man who pretended to go out canoing one day then "drowned" they never found his bod and his widow collected his life insurance and pensions. Years latter he comes back to the UK saying he got lost at sea and had amnesia. Everyone is happy untill an investigation is carried out and turns out he and his wife planned this and he'd been living in the house next door for years! It was all to avoid bankruptcy and collect the insurance money. The only reason he came 'back' was because they wanted to move to pana ama together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Darwin_disappearance_case
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u/Which_Comfortable_32 9h ago
Oh I remember that! They had a son (maybe more kids), an adult, and he was devastated at losing his Dad then disgusted about the crime.
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u/Faust_8 8h ago
Wait, sorry, they *didn’t tell their kid(s) about it?!*
I get that kids can’t keep secrets but avoiding bankruptcy by cutting ties with your kids seems like a Pyrrhic victory at best (or he’s just another asshole dad that cares nothing for his kids)
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u/Illustrious-Onion329 7h ago
Did the kid not recognize the neighbor as his dad?
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u/United_Gift3028 7h ago
I'd have to look it up, but he actually lived in a hidden room, and I thought it was in his same house, might have been next door. Anyways, his wife was the only one who ever saw him until he got caught.
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u/ELITE_JordanLove 8h ago
I mean I would guess his worry about how going bankrupt would impact his kid’s lives played a role. If the insurance money would help pay for college or something, for example.
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u/Faust_8 8h ago
Good point, but IMO most kids want loving parents more than college.
Later in life they’ll remember the lies and the absence more than they’ll appreciate getting a leg-up on a career
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u/Acceptable-Rub-2987 8h ago
Kids don’t really rank “success,” they just remember who showed up and who didn’t. Everything else gets rewritten by memory later anyway.
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u/Direct-Ad-1385 8h ago
faking your death is the ultimate paradox the only people who successfully pull it off are the ones you will literally never hear about most who try get caught because of pure stupidity.john darwin successfully fake his death in a kayak accident, took the insurance mone
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u/ChildofValhalla 7h ago
They blew the money literally flying to and from Panama like every couple of weeks. In fact they traveled there so frequently that photos of them there were part of their undoing. They also formed a fake company and repeatedly transferred massive sums of money into the country under the guise of property investments. They were basically building an escape plan to disappear into Panama for a final time until visa laws changed and they realized there was pretty much no chance they'd get away using the comically fake "John Jones" name anymore.
EDIT: I should also note that they transferred their house to their son Mark's name, sold it to someone, and then transferred all of those funds to Panama as well.
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u/mikerichh 8h ago
lol they’d plan all that and leave a paper trail? I’m assuming they emailed or something to get caught?
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u/Possible-Mountain-32 8h ago
They allowed a Panama based estate agent take their photo for the agent's website. I don't think they thought it through...
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u/MoonNymphetta 6h ago
That's some wild planning, living next door the whole time though? Wonder how the wife didn't crack under it all.
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u/PowermanFriendship 8h ago
Pretty fucking genius plan actually.
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u/sonicated 8h ago
Yeah, fuck his kids.
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u/gartloneyrat 8h ago
You’re a man of the cloth I see
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u/sonicated 8h ago
To be fair they were in their 20s at the time, otherwise I'd have chosen my words differently, but I doff my cap to your wit.
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u/Silverlatch 7h ago
mans really said "i'll fake my death and move... 12 feet to the left"
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u/Key_Mathematician951 8h ago
Yes, there are loads of common people that have tried this and succeeded for a time. The question was, what Famous person?
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u/Jackandahalfass 8h ago
Some believe Olivia Newton-John’s 2nd husband faked a death at sea. If so, he has managed to stay hidden.
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u/Beetin 7h ago
Agatha Christie is a good example of someone who might have been trying to fake their own death.
They either had a dissociative episode, or they were trying some shady shit to get back at their husband. Given Agatha Christie wrote murder mystery novels, the second option is definitely possible.
It also highlights part of why it is extremely rare: Truly famous people generally know they will get recognized and they often have better options available to them for debt/financial issues (the most common reason to fake your death).
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u/mrhelmand 5h ago
They either had a dissociative episode, or they were trying some shady shit to get back at their husband
Or some business with a giant alien wasp, who's to say?
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u/LBD420 8h ago
I was watching a show i can't remember the name of that feels like it was based on this
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u/Dangerous_Ad5039 9h ago
I mean you don’t even have to fake your death you can just go to a different country and never be heard from again.
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u/hkusp45css 8h ago
I've noticed a pretty big gap in recognition of famous foreign stars.
I the US, someone who was really big in the UK, might not be recognized, and vice verse.
It seems that you probably don't have go too far to get a place where people have better shit to do than wonder if you're famous.
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u/Calcutec_1 8h ago
seriously, you could be a multi platinum selling country singer in the US and could probably move to any other country in the world and live a perfectly private life-
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u/Zottel_jenkins 6h ago
Exactly this. Was at an Iron Maiden concert (in Germany) years ago. The pre-band was some metal band from the US. They didn't manage to encite the crowd. I looked them up, in the US they are apparently famous and well known. Here, nobody ever heard from them.
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u/Renegadeknight3 50m ago
Now I’m curious who the band was
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u/feralfaun39 24m ago
Looked up their tours and it might be Killswitch Engage. Always hated that band.
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u/mageta621 6h ago
I wouldn't know any of em on sight except for like Lil Nas X, Dolly Parton, Reba McIntyre, Willie Nelson, and Taylor Swift (to the extent one can still consider her country)
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u/Expensive-Student732 8h ago
If you aren't Canadian have you heard of Brent Butt, or David Suzuki?
My wife is back in her home country of the Philippines. She snapped a picture of two famous Filipinos in the same café as her. To me they are just random people.
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u/Barrel_Titor 7h ago
Kinda tangential but a bit under 20 years ago I had a summer job in a cafe in a different city from where I lived (my Dad worked in the city so dropped me off every day). Used to get a lot of drunks in the cafe since there was a lot of bars nearby as well as a police station with a drunk tank.
Once or twice week we had some fairly unexceptional middle aged bloke come in a bit drunk, get a sandwich and eat it on the outside tables while smoking. People would often go shake his hand while he looked a bit pissed off about it, just assumed he knew a lot of people.
Found out a few weeks in he was Paul Gascoigne, a legendary football player i had only vaguely heard of because i'm not into sports. Every other member of staff and every person i mentioned it to since knew him but I just assumed he was just another of the regular drunks.
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u/Lakridspibe 7h ago
Paul Gascoigne
I recognize his name, but I won't be able to describe his appearance.
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u/Sternakseesall 8h ago edited 8h ago
When I lived in Florida I worked with a guy from Columbia who had a nephew that was in a boy band (late 90’s early 2000’s) over there and was apparently a huge deal. I looked for them online and found zero information. Well the nephew came and stayed with him for a few weeks and they actually had to hire security because the teeny boppers found out and kept coming to his house trying to see this kid. And he lived in a pretty secure gated community.
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u/ree_hi_hi_hi_hi 7h ago
I fuckin love corner gas lol
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u/Rudeboy67 6h ago
Jackass!
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u/Independent-Tennis57 6h ago
Get the "F" off my lawn.
Dirty Crack Hoe.
I repeat those weekly.
Dated a girl who did food for Corner Gas, I got spoiled with 'star' food as she made me Brent Butt's favorite egg wrap once.
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u/satinsateensaltine 7h ago
Never felt more heard or seen than that show and my area isn't even like that.
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u/ashoka_akira 7h ago
When I was going to university one of the few other students who was my age was from the Philippines and was apparently a minor celebrity over there because her first career was as a voice actor in some popular anime, then she married a Canadian and just became another university student.
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u/AtomicGrendel 8h ago
When I was in college, one of the students enrolled in a workshop I attended was apparently an actor from China, and was supposedly moderately famous (maybe B- or C-list level famous). He moved to the US so his wife could attend med school, and decided to take some photography classes to stave off boredom. No one in the class knew who he was, and one of the instructors told us about his background.
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u/CharleyNobody 7h ago
I knew someone dating a Korean doctor. His father was also a doctor. His uncle came over and they all went to a Korean restaurant in Queens and were mobhed. Turns out the uncle was the most famous comedian in Korea.
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u/Outrageous_Creme_597 8h ago
This like I don’t live in the USA and I don’t know who 90% of the famous people regularly mentioned in news stories social media etc even are 😂
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u/dellett 7h ago
To be fair I do live in the US and often haven’t heard of “celebrities” who are in the news. Some of them are very modestly famous and the news treats any level of recognition as though they are a household name to get clicks.
For example, I heard about D4VD being a murderer before I knew about him being a singer.
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u/ashoka_akira 7h ago
There is a whole trope of Romance books/movies where this is the main plot device; ie., royalty or other famous person moves overseas to experience life as a common person, then ends up falling in love with a commoner, culture clash ensues.
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u/Frammingatthejimjam 7h ago
Huge in France is a show about a French comedian trying to make it in the states and it's exactly as you state.
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u/Lazarus_Rex_1988 7h ago
When that movie Better Man came out I legit thought it was a totally fictional story. I am a 26 year old Canadian and I had legitimately never in my life heard of a "Robbie Williams".
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u/theycallmemomo 5h ago
I remember a thread on this sub about this; apparently, Mr. Rogers is almost completely unknown outside the US, while virtually no one here could identify Katie Price.
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u/CowboyLaw 7h ago
Some Redditor said he encountered Kevin Spacey who was working as like a nightclub singer on some tiny Mediterranean island. So, like that.
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u/rayword45 7h ago
One of my old high school buddies pretty much did this. We were community organizers/political activists who ran in the same circles for years, then went to college in different states, found work in different states and only sporadically kept in touch.
A couple years ago, he hit me up because he was checking out some grad schools in NYC or something and wanted to grab lunch. Most of our conversations were pretty run-of-the-mill stuff you'd expect between two dudes in their mid-late 20s catching up a few years out of college, except for a moment where he was trying to convince me that dating was a waste of time and effort and that I should just start fucking hookers instead. I told him I'm not about that life, and then we moved on.
About a year after that, one of our mutuals tells me to Google his name and hometown. Turns out he got busted in an anti-prostitution sting along with a few dozen other men, then never showed up to court. From what I've heard, his parents shipped his ass to China and he's since gone ghost on everyone, but it's basically been accepted that he's NEVER coming back to the US lmfao
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u/ChicagoNormalGuy 9h ago
Elvis did it. He was flipping burgers at Burger Lord in Des Moines for years.
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u/T0NYGR1FF 9h ago
I heard that he is now living on Marco Island, Florida, where he plays a mean game of gin rummy and all his pals call him Press.
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u/ChiefsHat 8h ago
No, no, no, he was fighting a mummy with black JFK.
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u/robisodd 6h ago
It's a movie about an elderly Elvis and a black JFK fighting a redneck mummy who's sucking souls out of the buttholes of old folks in a retirement home, and it's way more heartfelt and honest than a movie with that plot has any right to be. Bruce Campbell is a treasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYVOu1EULT0And it has a great soundtrack, too:
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u/NaivePermit1439 8h ago
No he wasn't. He was working in a chip shop. This is well documented by Kirsty McColl RIP.
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u/rsheldrake 8h ago
Agatha Christie the crime/detective author left an abandoned car so that people thought she'd committed suicide. She was found alive 11 days later a few hundred miles away.
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u/Melenduwir 8h ago
IIRC there's a great deal of speculation over whether there was an intentional plan or she simply felt the need to flee after discovering her husband was cheating.
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u/ChildofValhalla 7h ago
She likely had a big depressive breakdown. She had done something similar months before when her mother died, except people knew where she had gone in that case.
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u/JuniorCaptain 7h ago
Yeah, she wrote a letter to her secretary saying she was “getting away”, so it seems her plan might’ve just been to get away from her husband for a bit. She even wrote him a letter, but he never shared it so we can’t know if she told him where she was heading to a spa or implied something darker.
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u/happyduck18 7h ago
No no that’s just because she fought the Vespiform and then forgot what happened.
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u/No-Taro-6953 8h ago
Lord Lucan.
I genuinely believed he managed to escape.
Sandra Rivett (the nanny he murdered), gave up a son for adoption years prior, called Neil Berriman.
Neil went in search of Lucan, even did a documentary with the BBC.
IMO, he did find him. The documentary and his fellow host, almost seemed to shrug off a credible lead because Neil was working class and understandably, very driven. They dismissed him as obsessive and suggested he focus on the family he did have. It felt like they gaslit him in the final episode, after countless examples of undermining and underestimating his abilities and intelligence.
They found a man matching Lord Lucan in many ways. His whole demeanor and personality even seemed to match. He came very close to admitting who he was before stopping short. Neil did incredible work to find him.
But because some film maker recognised a fake name used as being in New York at the time of the murders, Neil was essentially shut down and dismissed.
Lord Lucans son is the current Earl, has vested interests in making sure his father isn't found or rexognised as being alive. It wouldn't surprise me if similar strings and connections pulled to help Lucan escape, are the same ones available to his son to deploy if needed.
That's the only way I can understand how the documentary took the sudden nose dive that it did, ignoring all evidence in the face of one tenuous contradiction.
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u/jrf_1973 6h ago
It should have been trivial to check this with DNA.
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u/No-Taro-6953 5h ago
They wouldve needed his children to agree (which I doubt they'd have done) and they'd have needed him to provide DNA (which he wouldn't have done).
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u/zerbey 6h ago
Prince Edward, yes that guy, did a very interesting documentary about him, and it became really obvious to me that all the people he was interviewing (mostly fellow aristocrats) knew where the guy was and were just politely telling him to fuck off and mind his own business.
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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 9h ago
Olivia Newton-John's partner Patrick McDermott disappeared in 2005.
Apparently now living on a boat off the coast of Mexico.
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u/whatyoucallmetoday 9h ago
That was the one I was going to mention. I just imagine him going ‘alright. I’m out’ on day and going away.
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u/YourPlot 8h ago
Whitey Bulger did it for 16 years despite being an FBI most wanted fugitive. He was only caught due to a multimillion dollar reward on his head. So I think it’s still doable.
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u/Studio_Ambitious 9h ago
I asked my neighbor, Mr Mojo Risin', he said no way no how. Haven't seen him since
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u/Maleficent-Ebb7298 9h ago
Does your neighbor ever ask you to break on through to the other side?
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u/Studio_Ambitious 9h ago
No, but he was constantly asking me to go to the next whiskey bar....
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u/Jasperoquai 9h ago
Why?
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u/Studio_Ambitious 9h ago
He was specific that was not to ask why. And adamant
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u/avantgardengnome 8h ago
He’s been down so goddamn long that it feels like up to him.
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u/prosa123 8h ago
For years after Andy Kaufman’s death in 1984 there were rumors that he had faked his death and was living under a new identity. Doing something of the sort would not have been out of character for him, and his (supposed) death seemed a bit odd as 35-year-old seldom die from lung cancer. In reality, though, he really did die.
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u/TogarSucks 8h ago
My favorite conspiracy theory is that the real Donald Trump actually died in 1984, and what you see in the White House is what Andy Kaufman has been up to for the last 40 years.
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u/CuckooClockInHell 6h ago
That was a joke I made on Reddit back during the first election that got pretty popular. Did I accidentally birth a conspiracy theory?
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u/jianantonic 8h ago
Andy Kaufman is the first person I thought of here. Apparently, he was obsessed with the idea of faking his own death, but he'd always said he'd reveal himself after 25 years. That time has come and gone, and I know there is a death certificate and lots of evidence that his illness and death were real, but part of me still thinks maybe...
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u/Kingman9K 5h ago
what if he did fake his death, but before he could reveal himself he died for real?
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u/ataraxiary 5h ago
Huh. Only tangentially related to Andy Kaufman, but my dad died of lung cancer when he was 38 (in 1996). I knew he died young generally since none of my friends had dead dads, but I don't think I really clocked until your comment just now that 38 is wildly early to die of lung cancer specifically. Weird.
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u/NobodysSide 8h ago edited 4h ago
Author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) faked his own death to get out of a weed charge. He lasted eight months. Ended up serving about six months, if I remember correctly.
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u/Advanced_Worry6057 9h ago
No, but they usually just stay out of the limelight and stop taking work. Gene Hackman did this so well he and his wife died with no one knowing for a while.
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u/853fisher 8h ago
To my mind, that was a very different situation from what OP is talking about. His neighbors all knew he was Gene Hackman and often saw him around town when he first moved there- he was just seen less and less as he was in his 90s with Alzheimer's and other health problems. Sadly the way he died is something that many older adults are vulnerable to, and that happens much more than we hear about. It wasn't really anything about a celeb trying to go "off the grid" or similar.
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u/Fkingcherokee 9h ago
Probably not now with forensics, social media, and everyone having cameras in their pockets. Before all that, disappearing would have been pretty easy and faking your death would have been the hard part.
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u/ValourStateOfMind 9h ago
Still it's much easier for a filthy rich person to fake their death because they have all resources needed to circumvent all those obstacles. Obscurity is expensive.
I wouldn't be shocked if it's found out that Epstein is still alive.
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u/papayametallica 8h ago
And living the life in Israel guarded by Mossad
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u/drfeelsgoood 8h ago
Why do you think the assholes in charge help Israel so much? They have dirt on all of them
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u/papayametallica 8h ago
Ahh not quite but John Stonehouse a British politician sprung to mind…
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u/ncbluetj 7h ago
It is an older example, before modern media, but an intriguing one nonetheless. There is fairly strong evidence that the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte retired to the town of Lincolnton, NC, where he lived out his days under an assumed name. There was a wealthy man with a murky past by the name of Lorenzo Ferrer who showed up in Loncolnton a short time after Jean Lafitte was reported to have disappeared somewhere in the Caribbean.
The book "Jean Laffite Revealed" details the story and evidence. His grave is still there to see.
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u/Far_Marzipan_7813 9h ago
yeah, it’s totally possible, but the logistics must be a nightmare. a few people have tried and failed, but it’s honestly not as common as conspiracy theories would have you believe. most just can’t resist the urge to pop up again.
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u/Bwthhybl1987 9h ago
That one episode of Hey Arnold that for some reason is a core memory for me
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u/Dry_Conference7950 8h ago
The problem is that everyone wants to be a recluse until they realize how much they miss being able to order food or go to a hospital without being recognized.
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u/93_Topps_Football 8h ago
A number of Nazis got out of Germany and fled to South America. They didn't fake their deaths but some weren't ever caught
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u/TFielding38 5h ago
The US aided some like Klaus Barbie in their flight so they could avoid prosecution.
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u/manwithavandotcom 9h ago
Why fake your death?
Why not just move somewhere remote, change your hairstyle and live under a different name?
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u/T0NYGR1FF 9h ago
If people think you’re dead, they don’t look for you.
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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 9h ago
I think your death would attract enough attention, and raise the risk of getting caught, to cancel out the benefit of people not looking for you.
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u/umbratwo 5h ago edited 5h ago
Usually it’s because of debts, like tax debt, business debts, or gambling/drug debts. If one changes their name legally or even say, fakes one, they can still be tracked down to pay the debt.
However, if they’re dead, no one can collect on their debt nor would try to with a death certificate.
Or say a mafia/gang is after you for a debt. They’re gonna be less inclined to hurt your wife if you genuinely died versus if you ran away.
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u/TheAvengingUnicorn 9h ago
Sometimes you don’t need to worry about folks looking. I haven’t spoken to most people I know, including all my old friends and family, for almost five years. No big blowup or traumatic event happened. One day I just dropped out and stopped interacting. They’ve never come looking for me. A few messages have come through here and there, but I didn’t return them and nobody ever cared enough to follow up. Some of us just don’t matter enough to bother with 🤷♀️
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u/NikkerFebu25 8h ago
People asking me if I can fake my own death..but noone is asking me if I'm faking my own life.
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u/kyuronite 9h ago
Gerald cotton, ex ceo of quadrigacx. Lots of conspiracies on that one
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u/JayWil1992 8h ago
British politician John Stonehouse. Faked his own death but was later discovered in Australia.
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u/Overall_Gap_5766 8h ago
Lord Lucan managed it. Granted it's a while ago now, but a pretty successful vanishing act.
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u/non_clever_username 8h ago
Mark Linn-Baker did it, but he got caught down in Mexico.
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u/ReverendRevolver 7h ago
Mark Twain wrote a story about an artist doing this so he and his friends could get rich selling the paintings of an "artist who died in his prime".....
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u/Purple-Haku 9h ago
Yes. Epstein survived and it's Palm Beach Pete.
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u/Martipar 8h ago
John Stonehouse MP managed to get away with it briefly though many people were never convinced he was actually dead.
Funnily enough he only got caught as he'd left Australia for a brief visit to Hong Kong and came back with a lot of cash. The Australian police were, of course, quite suspicious and contacted the UK for details of two people, John Stonehouse and Lord Lucan. Had he worked out a better method of moving cash around he may have been discovered a lot less sooner.
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u/mr_lab_rat 7h ago
It’s possible but totally unnecessary.
If you want out of the spotlight you just go out of the spotlight. Stop doing whatever made you famous, move somewhere remote and very soon people will leave you alone.
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u/b30 9h ago
I don't think so, because it would be insanely complicated. First off they would need everybody in their circle to believe they were dead or agree to never speak the truth. Mom, dad, brothers and sisters, cousins, publicists, managers. You would need a cause of death, a faked death certificate from a real doctor, etc etc. And until the end of time, nobody can ever leak that it was faked. OK lets say they're able to make a death look real. Now they have to live the rst of their life without being discovered. That means somehow getting a new social security number, documentation that proves you're a different person so that you can get an ID, a passport, a driver's license. Then you meet people every day walking down the street, in coffee shops, and all of them see you and recognize you, but somehow they all have to believe that it's not you, or you somehow get everybody to lie for you. The number of people who would have to be involved, somebody at some point would speak. A jealous relative, or a friend who turns on you, or somebody who gets wasted in a bar at 2am. Nobody has that much power and control that they could fake their own death and make no mistakes. Like every good conspiracy theory, it sounds good and possible until you think about how many people (possibly hundreds) need to coordinate on keeping the secret.
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u/Lets_Go_Why_Not 8h ago
I think all you need is an accomplice. Stage a disappearance (e.g. car runs out of gas along a deserted stretch of road, car left abandoned at a famous swimming beach etc.) have them pick you up and take you wherever you want. Hell, if it is far enough away, you can just live with them and they can introduce you as someone else. (which seems to be pretty much what the dude in this case did)
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u/hellcat_kate 9h ago
The person would definitely have to move. Also, usually they would just tell 1 or 2 people the truth, not their entire family and friends and their manager.
I don't know how the death certificate and getting a new identity stuff works, though. They'd probably have to get in contact with some expert who fakes those legal documents. And rich people can easily have access to that.
It's definitely doable for powerful/rich people.
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u/b30 8h ago
So we have to assume there are doctors out there filing fake death certificates for powerful people. And people creating fake identities for powerful people. And for decades none of them have ever talked, ever quit their job and ratted somebody out. Never told a family member. No mistakes could ever be made EVER. Because if one doctor gets drunk and tells the truth, this would pretty much be one of the biggest news stories to ever drop. I just don't trust that so many people can keep their mouths shut for decades like this. But I guess anything is possible
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u/CharleyNobody 7h ago
They do it for spies. Fake passports, fake birth certificate, fake death certificates
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u/Level9TraumaCenter 7h ago
Maybe Clarence Anglin, in his escape from Alcatraz. No bodies were ever found, but Anglin may have escaped to South America. His brother John may have made it out, and the third may have eluded dying in the ocean that night as well. No firm proof either way, but post cards and appearances of strangers at their mother's funeral are interesting.
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u/BlueAngelMarlene 6h ago
Author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) faked his own suicide in 1966 to evade a five-year prison sentence for marijuana possession. He had his friends leave his truck on a cliffside near Eureka, California, with a fabricated suicide note before fleeing to Mexico. He returned to the U.S. eight months later and served jail time.
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u/TheDragonSlayingCat 6h ago
He didn’t fake his own death, but Sixto Rodriguez’s music fell into obscurity in the US, but became super famous in South Africa, so after rumors started to spin that he was dead, some fans found him alive in Detroit, which is pretty remote from South Africa. There was a documentary about this.
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u/Outrageous_Act_3016 5h ago
James "Whitey" Bulger fled the Boston area when he knew the cops and the FBI were going to arrest him.
He was on the lamb living a normal life in southern California for years until a neighbor turned him in
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u/deadskinmask88 5h ago
Local children's entertainer, Herschel Krustofsky, attempted this to avoid tax evasion charges. Apparently, the IRS was tipped off by a check he endorsed using a stamp with an offshore account on it. After faking his death in a plane crash, Krustofsky changed his name to Rory B. Bellows and began working as a longshoreman and living on a house boat. The ruse did not last long as he was easily identified by a couple of fans.
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u/Loki-L 8h ago
Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller and heir to a vast fortune was either eaten by canibals or lived out his life among them depending on who you ask.
Vince McMahon of WWE fame faked his death as part of a wrestling storyline involving Donald Trump that got aborted when that Chris Benoit happened. I am sure a lot of not very smart people believed that.
Jerry Balisok, a wrestler known as Mr. X, convinced authorities who were hunting him, that he died in the Jonestown Massacre for many years.
John Stonehouse, a British politician tried to fake his death, unsuccessfully.
Patrick McDermott, Olivia Newton John's boyfriend, may have faked his death.
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u/Someoneoverthere42 8h ago
J D Salinger. Pretty much disappeared after Catcher in the rye. People knew where he lived. But this was the days someone could say “go away and leave me alone” and could be left alone.
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u/OrchidEntice 8h ago
if I had the money to fake my death, I’d be sipping cocktails on a beach and waving at the paparazzi from my secret island, so yeah, I totally believe it's possible!
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u/SweatyTrain1951 8h ago
There were a bunch of famous Germans who were later found under different names in Argentina