8 Individuals Who Fabricated—or Potentially Fabricated—Their Own Demises

Fabricating your own death isn't inherently unlawful. If you wished to abandon your current life and begin afresh, no federal laws would stop you—though it’s seldom the ideal resolution to your issues. Some individuals who stage their deaths, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest writer Ken Kesey, aim to escape justice for criminal acts. Others vanish solely for monetary gain, like entrepreneur Jose Lantigua and Igor Vorotinov, the latter orchestrating an insurance scam.

Certain tales of feigned deaths are even more intricate, ranging from a man who staged his demise to measure his fame to another who testified against his supposed killers. Below are some of the most extraordinary instances of pseudocide over the last five centuries.

1. Jacquotte Delahaye // Around 1656

Legend has it that Jacquotte Delahaye’s mother passed away during childbirth, and her father was killed when she was young, leading her to embrace piracy to support herself and her younger brother, who had a mental disability.

During her time as a pirate queen, Delahaye was once captured and compelled to stage her own death to break free. She disguised herself as a man and lived in secrecy for several years before rejoining her crew and resuming her piratical exploits. She and her crew even managed to seize an entire Caribbean island. Delahaye wasn’t just a prosperous pirate; she also earned one of the most memorable maritime nicknames, “Back from the Dead Red,” owing to her faked death and striking auburn hair.

2. Timothy Dexter // 1800

Timothy Dexter is celebrated as one of America’s earliest notable eccentrics, and for good reason. A humble leatherworker who left school at 8, Dexter stumbled into wealth by making fortunate investments in the Continental dollar, swiftly becoming one of Boston’s wealthiest individuals.

Sadly, the elite never accepted Dexter, viewing him as an unrefined man who gained wealth through marriage. His wife, Elizabeth Frothingham, was already affluent and disapproved of the extravagant stables and ostentatious statues that adorned their estate—including a statue of Dexter himself. Dexter even took the audacious step of declaring himself a Lord, insisting his servants address him as such.

Overwhelmed by the disdain of his fellow citizens, Dexter chose to stage his own death to gauge the public’s true sentiments about him. He enlisted a few confidants to arrange an elaborate funeral, sharing the deception only with his family. While his children convincingly mourned, Dexter observed from an opulent tomb constructed in his home’s basement. Noticing his wife’s insufficient tears and excessive smiles, he stormed into the kitchen, scolded her, struck her with a cane, and then mingled with the mourners as if nothing unusual had occurred. Despite his efforts, Dexter never gained the respect he craved and passed away (genuinely this time) six years later.

3. Alexander I of Russia // 1825

The demise of Tsar Alexander I—raised by his grandmother, Catherine the Great, and ascending to the throne shortly after her death—has long been debated and recently faced renewed scrutiny.

In 2015, Svetlana Semyonova, head of the Russian Graphological Society, performed handwriting analyses that revealed striking parallels between Alexander’s writing and that of a monk named Feodor Kuzmich (or Feodor Tomsky). Even prior to Semyonova’s recent findings, rumors had persisted for years that Alexander faked his 1825 death from typhus.

Kuzmich first emerged in the Russian town of Krasnoufimsk eleven years later, where he was detained and transported to the Siberian city of Tomsk. Among those who believed Tsar Alexander and Kuzmich were the same person was Leo Tolstoy, who observed that both ordinary citizens and aristocrats remarked on the uncanny resemblances between the two, including their matching height, weight, age, and notably rounded shoulders. The monk was also fluent in several languages and exuded a noble demeanor, despite claiming to be homeless and having no memory of his family.

The Orthodox church in Tomsk has no objections to testing Kuzmich’s DNA, raising the possibility that we may someday confirm whether the tsar and the monk were indeed the same individual. Intriguingly, Alexander’s wife, who died a year after his supposed death, is also rumored to have staged her demise. Comparisons between her handwriting and that of a nun lend credence to the theory that she too adopted a religious life, becoming a nun known as Silent Vera.

4. William Goodwin Geddes // 1877

William Goodwin Geddes is notable primarily for being the first individual in Australia to fake his death for financial gain. A skilled surveyor, Geddes was renowned for his swimming prowess and athletic abilities. However, on November 29, 1877, he allegedly drowned under mysterious circumstances in King John’s Creek, Queensland.

Geddes’s brother, who was present during the incident, claimed he heard Geddes cry for help and tried to rescue him, but his efforts were in vain. Geddes’s body was never recovered, and though his friends doubted his death, his two life insurance policies were settled four months later.

In 1889, a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Geddes, identifying himself as Louis Sydney Brennan, was admitted to the Adelaide Asylum for the Insane after his wife reported him to the police. While Geddes’s parents denied Brennan was their son, Geddes and a policeman seemed to recognize each other. The insurance company sued Geddes’s father, accusing him of involvement in the fraud. Some speculate Geddes suffered amnesia after a horse-riding accident, though this doesn’t account for his parents’ refusal to acknowledge him.

5. Belle Gunness // 1908

Belle Gunness, often referred to as “Lady Bluebeard,” is suspected of killing at least 14 individuals. She escaped justice by faking her own death. Gunness moved to America from Norway in the late 1880s and was widowed by 1900 after her first husband’s death, which some believe was due to poisoning orchestrated by her.

Two years later, her second husband died from a skull fracture, which Gunness attributed to a falling meat grinder. Her two young children, her second husband’s youngest daughter, and a foster daughter also died under suspicious circumstances while in her care. Despite her grief, Gunness consistently collected life insurance payouts for her deceased family members shortly after their deaths.

Driven by apparent greed, Gunness continued her killing spree. She placed personal ads in newspapers with messages such as:

“A charming widow, owner of a vast farm in one of La Porte County, Indiana’s most desirable areas, seeks to meet a gentleman of similar means with the intention of merging fortunes. Letters will be ignored unless the sender plans to visit in person. Time-wasters need not apply.”

Her straightforward approach attracted the attention she sought, and suitors arrived with money, only to meet untimely deaths upon arrival. Gunness operated undetected until Andrew Helgelien responded to her ad and vanished soon after. His brother, Asle, grew suspicious, but Gunness reassured him in letters, claiming Andrew had traveled to Norway.

Before Asle could alert local authorities, Gunness’s Indiana farmhouse caught fire in the early hours of April 28, 1908. Beneath a charred piano lay the remains of three children and a decapitated woman presumed to be Gunness. Police suspected Ray Lamphere, a farmhand and Gunness’s alleged lover, of setting the blaze. He was arrested for arson after Asle Helgelien accused Gunness of murdering his brother and burning the house to conceal her crimes. Investigators uncovered numerous remains on the farm, including Andrew Helgelien’s, as well as bones of the foster child Gunness claimed had moved to California.

Twelve hours before the fire, Gunness had visited a lawyer to draft a will, expressing fears that Lamphere might kill her and destroy her home. Lamphere, convicted of arson, confessed on his deathbed in 1910 that he had started the fire and that Gunness had drugged and killed her children. However, he insisted Gunness escaped unharmed, claiming the headless body belonged to a housekeeper and that Gunness had stolen millions from her victims. The corpse’s size didn’t match Gunness’s 280-pound frame, and her bank account had been suspiciously emptied the day before the fire.

Despite the lack of concrete proof that she staged her own death, numerous individuals of her time were convinced she had. Reports of sightings of Gunness across the United States persisted until 1931, including one instance during a probe into the fatal poisoning of an elderly gentleman. In 2008, forensic experts endeavored to conclusively ascertain if Gunness had survived the fire, yet the DNA analysis of the remains yielded no definitive answers.

6. Marion Franklin Rogers // 1929

Testifying at your own murder trial is an extraordinary event. Marion Franklin Rogers, who fled the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Arkansas in 1926, had been institutionalized for three months. Leaving behind a wife and three children, he adopted a nomadic lifestyle, assuming the identity of a 22-year-old named Connie Franklin. He took up jobs in timber cutting and farm labor, and romanced Tillar Ruminer, a teenager. His sudden disappearance in March 1929 led Ruminer to accuse four men of his murder, claiming she was silenced by threats.

Ruminer recounted a harrowing tale of the night she and Franklin were to wed, describing an ambush by assailants who brutally attacked Franklin, mutilated him, and set him ablaze before disposing of his remains in a stream. She also alleged sexual assault by two of the attackers, who then intimidated her into silence. The trial in December 1929 took a dramatic turn when Rogers surfaced, asserting he was the supposedly murdered Franklin, complicating the case further as the legal representatives were siblings.

Rogers claimed that on the fateful night, he had been drinking with the accused, suffered minor injuries from a mule fall, and chose to disappear to delay the wedding. His identity was hotly contested, with some affirming his story and others doubting it. Handwriting analysis supported his claim, but the examination of burnt bones found in the woods was inconclusive. Ruminer failed to recognize him, despite his knowledge of her father and his musical tributes to her. The accused were acquitted, and Rogers met his end from exposure in December 1932. The truth behind Franklin's fate remains unresolved.

7. Alfred Rouse // 1930

Alfred Rouse's tale could easily be a gripping episode of Law & Order. In a failed attempt to evade child support for his numerous out-of-wedlock children, Rouse devised a plan to stage his own death by igniting his car with another person's body inside.

Rouse offered a ride to a hitchhiker, only to assault him with a mallet, place him in the driver's seat, and set the car on fire. Believing his act would go unnoticed in the early morning, Rouse was seen by two individuals. Upon his capture, Rouse argued that the car caught fire when he left the hitchhiker with a lit cigar and instructed him to refuel using gas canisters. His story was dismissed by authorities, leading to his execution in 1931.

To this day, forensic experts are working to uncover the identity of Rouse's victim, aided by a well-preserved DNA sample. However, progress has been limited to ruling out a few possibilities.

8. John Stonehouse // 1974

Among the more infamous figures on this list, John Stonehouse rose to prominence as a Labour Party member in the British Parliament before his vanishing act. Born to a Southampton mayor, Stonehouse was a distinguished individual: a graduate of the prestigious London School of Economics, he held the position of postmaster general and served as secretary to the minister of aviation.

Stonehouse harbored ambitions of becoming prime minister, but his personal and political struggles hindered his progress. Unhappy in his marriage, he sought companionship with his secretary and lover, Sheila Buckley. Inspired by Frederick Forsythe’s novel The Day of the Jackal, Stonehouse resolved to forge a new identity under the name Joseph Markham. He secured a passport under this alias, established offshore bank accounts to conceal funds, and ultimately orchestrated his disappearance during a trip to Florida in November 1974.

On a Miami beach, Stonehouse removed his clothes, left them in a heap, and vanished. It seemed as though he had met a tragic end in the Atlantic, and his wife Barbara, along with his political colleagues, initially accepted his presumed death. However, authorities in both the U.S. and the U.K. were skeptical, suspecting potential espionage involvement. Stonehouse might have succeeded in disappearing forever, but an unfortunate twist of fate intervened.

On November 7—around the same time Stonehouse disappeared—Richard John Bingham, the affluent Earl of Lucan, also vanished after being implicated in an assault that left his wife injured and their nanny dead. When Stonehouse visited an Australian bank, a teller grew wary due to a large deposit he made. Mistaking him for Lord Lucan, authorities placed him under observation, only to uncover his true identity as the missing John Stonehouse. He was sent back to Britain, where he received a seven-year prison sentence for theft and fraud. Lord Lucan, however, was never found.

This article was first published in 2015 and has been revised for 2023.