00:00:00
Elizabeth Greenwood: So my death certificate
says, "NSO certified. True copy of death
00:00:06
certificate issued to Elizabeth Greenwood."
And then I have an accompanying police report
00:00:12
that details the accident. It says, "Both
vehicles suffered severe damages. The driver
00:00:19
of the Innova," which is the car that slammed
into me, "Was rushed to the nearby San Juan
00:00:24
de Dios Hospital as well as Miss Greenwood,
which later proclaimed dead on arrival."
00:00:28
[Music comes in.]
Phoebe Judge: How did it feel to hold your own death certificate?
Elizabeth Greenwood: Oh my gosh. Holding my own
00:00:37
death certificate felt incredibly eerie. I don't
think I had really fully processed or comprehended
00:00:46
what that experience would be like. So once
I actually held this very clinical government
00:00:54
document that stated my birthday and my death
day, and the time of my death, and next of kin,
00:01:03
all of these little boxes that my life had become,
and just seeing it all reduced in that kind of way
00:01:12
in something that would just be
filed in a bureaucrat's desk, it was very unnerving and unsettling, and I felt
very sure that I did not want to die that day.
00:01:27
Phoebe Judge: This is Elizabeth Greenwood.
She's 33 years old, lives in Brooklyn,
00:01:32
and died in 2013 — on paper anyway.
Elizabeth Greenwood: As an experiment, I wanted to see how far I could
get if I were to fake my own death.
00:01:43
Is it possible to kill off this part of myself
that, say, has a lot of debt? Or in the cases of
00:01:51
other people who are facing jail time, or who
have had marital indiscretions? These are all
00:01:57
big motivations for faking your death.
Phoebe Judge: Why a person would want to
00:02:01
disappear and try to start over, that's
probably better answered by another show.
00:02:06
We wondered about the practical aspects: how
to prepare, where to hide, and what not to do.
00:02:13
And once you start thinking about
these logistics, it's hard to stop. How much does it cost to fake your own death?
Elizabeth Greenwood: The price I heard quoted to
00:02:23
me if you wanted to fake your death somewhere like
the Philippines, including getting your cadaver,
00:02:31
getting your documents, soup-to-nuts,
the whole thing, about $5,000. Phoebe Judge: Huh.
Elizabeth Greenwood:
00:02:39
Which doesn't seem like a tremendous amount of
money Phoebe Judge: It doesn't sound like, yeah.
00:02:42
Elizabeth Greenwood: ... if you think about it.
Phoebe Judge: Elizabeth Greenwood wanted to find
00:02:46
out herself. Is it really that easy? So she
bought a plane ticket to the Philippines and
00:02:52
started asking around.
[Music fades out.] Elizabeth Greenwood: Not to single out
the Philippines, but it's one that I
00:02:55
heard mentioned again and again. And I'd read
newspaper articles dating back even to the '80s,
00:03:02
mentioning these black market morgues in Manila
where people would go in and purchase a body,
00:03:10
an unclaimed body, to then cremate, try to
pass off as yourself, and collect insurance.
00:03:16
Phoebe Judge: She tapped into a world that
most of us have never even thought about:
00:03:20
how to fake your own death. And it turns out that
the practicalities — buying a fake police report,
00:03:26
a death certificate, and even finding
a body — that's the easy part. That just takes money.
[Music fades in.]
00:03:33
The real challenge is life after death.
It's awfully hard to leave yourself behind,
00:03:39
no matter how badly you might want to.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. There are lots of how-to guides on how to fake
your own death. How to Disappear Completely and
00:04:06
Never Be Found, from 1985, basically romanticizes
the idea of ditching your wife and running off
00:04:13
with your mistress to live in the Caribbean.
There's an even stranger book, Vanishing Point:
00:04:19
How to Disappear in America Without a Trace,
which has a whole section on gold mining,
00:04:25
as a "way to make an honest living
while remaining invisible to society." Those books have cult followings, but they're
outdated. It's a lot harder to fake your own death
00:04:37
when your phone, your computer, and even your
TV seem to know exactly what you want before you
00:04:42
even ask. And all we know about faking your own
death, we've learned from people who failed at it.
00:04:50
Because if you're successful,
everyone thinks you're dead. [Music ends.]
Elizabeth Greenwood: You
00:04:55
can't practice faking your own death. There's
no kind of dry run you can do, which is part of
00:05:01
the difficulty. So the how-to's are all kind of
gleaned from people's missteps and misfortunes
00:05:09
and people who have gotten caught.
Phoebe Judge: Like John Darwin. Elizabeth Greenwood: He was just kind
of your average Joe. He called he and
00:05:16
his wife 'Mr. and Mrs. Boring.'
Phoebe Judge: John Darwin was a corrections officer who dabbled in real estate
on the side. But he wasn't that good at real
00:05:24
estate and found himself in horrendous debt.
Elizabeth Greenwood: So he decided that he was
00:05:30
worth more dead than alive, in his own words.
Phoebe Judge: So John Darwin came up with
00:05:35
a plan. On March 21st, 2002, he took a
canoe down to the beach in front of his house. Neighbors saw him paddle off and didn't
notice anything out of the ordinary. But then,
00:05:46
when he didn't show up for work, his wife Anne
called the police. After 16 hours of searching,
00:05:53
rescuers and helicopters and Coast Guard boats
had only found a paddle. The next day, pieces of
00:06:00
John's canoe were found on the beach. The search
slowed, and John Darwin was presumed dead.
00:06:06
Here's what really happened. John
jumped out of his canoe and swam to shore where his wife was waiting to drive
him to the train station, one town over.
00:06:16
From there, he took a long train ride north.
Elizabeth Greenwood: In the meantime, his wife,
00:06:21
Anne, was working on claiming pension policies in
his name, life insurance policies, selling off the
00:06:29
homes, releasing the equity that they'd had.
Phoebe Judge: John camped out on the beach for a
00:06:34
few weeks. And then he actually went back to his
hometown. He gave himself the name Carl Fenech
00:06:40
and moved into the apartment right next door
to his wife. He pretended to be her tenant.
00:06:45
Elizabeth Greenwood: He did have this
very elaborate disguise. He walked with a stoop and a limp and a walking stick and dark
glasses. He told me that he would actually pass
00:06:58
old colleagues on the street when he was supposed
to be dead. He once passed his own father when he
00:07:04
was out in his full regalia. But police officers
and other people were still poking around the
00:07:11
house for over a year since his disappearance.
So he would spend most of the day out walking,
00:07:17
out of the house.
[Music fades in.] And he and his wife, Anne, worked
out this code that if he came back,
00:07:22
and if he saw the curtains from the living room
window hanging down, that meant that there were
00:07:28
police officers around. If they were tied back, it
meant the coast was clear and he could come in.
00:07:33
Phoebe Judge: John would use a secret
passageway to sneak into his wife's bedroom.
00:07:38
After they'd settled into a convincing routine,
and the case was no longer front page news,
00:07:43
John and Anne began to enjoy themselves, just
like any other retired couple. They traveled,
00:07:49
he got a fake passport, and they visited
more than a dozen countries. Eventually,
00:07:54
they found some land in Panama and wanted to buy
it and open an eco-canoeing resort. It's already
00:08:02
a headache to buy any piece of real estate,
all the more so when you're not a real person.
00:08:07
But he thought he had a way to get around it.
Almost six years after John died, he walked into a
00:08:13
UK police station and said, "I think I'm a missing
person." Police believed he'd suffered from
00:08:20
amnesia. His wife told reporters it was a miracle.
But then, a photograph surfaced of John and Anne
00:08:28
and a real estate agent smiling, on a website
called Move to Panama. The date is printed right
00:08:34
on the photo, three years after John's death.
That amnesia excuse crumbled pretty quickly.
00:08:42
It was a tabloid sensation. And the
town where John had hid so long, Seaton Carew, became known as 'Seaton Canoe.'
Elizabeth Greenwood: I caught up with John just
00:08:53
after he had gotten out, back in Seaton Carew
where he was still living. And he's widely known
00:09:00
and somewhat admired as the 'canoe man' there.
That's what they call him. He's kind of a folk
00:09:04
hero, in some ways, who tried to get one over to
the banks, who, in a lot of people's opinions,
00:09:10
were always screwing the little guy.
[Music fades out.] Phoebe Judge: John and Anne were each sentenced
to almost six years in prison for insurance
00:09:15
fraud. They were also ordered to repay the more
than £500,000 that Anne had received in life
00:09:21
insurance and pension payouts. This is arguably
the greatest motivator for faking your own death:
00:09:27
the money that comes along with it. There are
lots of ways you can get in trouble if you
00:09:33
get caught — purchasing counterfeit documents,
wasting the coast guard's time — but there is
00:09:39
no law against pretending you're dead. You get in
trouble when you start making people pay for it.
00:09:45
[Music comes in.]
In 2005, Patrick McDermott, most famous for having been Olivia Newton-John's
on-and-off boyfriend, had just filed for
00:09:56
bankruptcy and was in trouble with the courts
for not paying child support. He chartered a
00:10:01
fishing boat in Los Angeles called The Freedom and
made it look like he had drowned. But his debts
00:10:07
made his disappearance look pretty suspicious.
Elizabeth Greenwood: So a group of investigators
00:10:11
hired by the TV show Dateline NBC set up a
website to the effect of findpatrickmcdermott.com,
00:10:19
where people could contribute tips and sightings
and information about Mr. McDermott's whereabouts.
00:10:27
So they were monitoring the web traffic
very closely, and they noticed a cluster
00:10:34
of centralized IP addresses all hailing
from the same town outside Puerto Vallarta,
00:10:40
Mexico. So they just followed this
trail of breadcrumbs, and lo and behold, there was Patrick McDermott.
Phoebe Judge: Vanity, huh?
00:10:47
[Music fades out.]
Elizabeth Greenwood: You want to know what people are saying about you.
Phoebe Judge: Yeah, I mean, I think I would.
00:10:51
Elizabeth Greenwood: Oh, I would, for sure.
Phoebe Judge: I don't think I could stop myself.
00:10:52
Elizabeth Greenwood: If it's that question
between would you rather be invisible or fly,
00:10:57
I'd always want to be invisible.
[Laughs.] I just want to know. Phoebe Judge: But he did it the way that so many
people — it's so interesting. Most people who fake
00:11:06
their own deaths do this by drowning, right?
Elizabeth Greenwood: A lot of the people who
00:11:13
get caught faking their deaths do stage a water
accident. So when you fake your death, one of the
00:11:20
problems that you would encounter is that you have
to make it appear that you are dead, but you still
00:11:27
have to take your own body with you. So
you have this problem of what to do about
00:11:32
the body. So when we think about this, what kind
of accidents would happen where you wouldn't need
00:11:41
to necessarily produce a body, we all think, "Oh,
stage a drowning," and we all think we're Jason
00:11:46
Bourne. Well, that is one of the quickest ways
to get caught faking your death. Law enforcement
00:11:53
usually just doesn't believe it, because bodies
typically materialize usually within a few days.
00:12:01
And especially if you've found yourself in some
trouble recently, there's going to be a question:
00:12:05
why didn't this body wash up? So drownings, while
it seems like it would be an ideal, is actually...
00:12:14
will inevitably raise some red flags.
Phoebe Judge: What's the best way to do it?
00:12:19
Elizabeth Greenwood: So what I heard time and
again people suggest is going for a hike and never
00:12:26
coming back, because lots of people unfortunately
do disappear in this country, hiking, annually. So
00:12:34
it is something that happens. And again, it's
open ended, no one knows quite what happened.
00:12:38
Did you get kidnapped? Did you tumble down this
ravine? Were you eaten by a mountain lion? So
00:12:46
sadly, it does seem more believable that
way, or it plays into these tropes of women being captured against their will. So
again, it's a more open-ended scenario.
00:13:00
Phoebe Judge: But women really
don't fake their deaths too much. Or if they do, they don't get caught.
Elizabeth Greenwood: So it's a question that
00:13:08
has perplexed me for years now. Either women
do not fake their deaths as much, which would
00:13:16
be understandable because I think that a mother
leaving her children to think that she had died,
00:13:22
it maybe doesn't seem as in line with how women
are conditioned to behave and how we expect women
00:13:30
to behave. The alternate theory that I believe, or
at least want to believe, is that women fake their
00:13:38
deaths just as much as men, perhaps even more, but
they're just better at it. They don't talk about
00:13:42
it as much. They're better at keeping a lower
profile and not necessarily needing to regale
00:13:49
people with the tale of their criminal genius.
Steven Rambam: Women are better at everything.
00:13:56
Phoebe Judge: This is Steve Rambam. If you're
trying to disappear, it's his job to make
00:14:02
it very, very difficult for you to succeed.
Steven Rambam: If you want to be a successful
00:14:08
missing person, if you want to disappear
successfully, fake your death successfully,
00:14:14
you've got to be on the job every minute
of every day for the rest of your life.
00:14:21
It's a real job. It's a real job.
Phoebe Judge: You're never safe. Steven Rambam: Right. I can make
1,000 mistakes if I'm hunting for you
00:14:33
and still find you. If you make
one mistake, you're finished. I'll spot it. I'll catch you.
Phoebe Judge: Steve Rambam is hired
00:14:41
by families and also by insurance companies.
And he says you should never believe someone
00:14:46
is dead until you've seen their body.
You're the guy someone calls and says, "I need to find-"
Steven Rambam: Yes. Yes. I get
00:14:54
a lot of cases from other investigators,
occasionally from law enforcement, and also I work in the other direction, too. I
teach undercover agents how not to be found out,
00:15:08
how to live within their new persona.
Phoebe Judge: He says it's not about being
00:15:14
tough or sneaky, it's about being incredibly
careful and good at seeing yourself through the
00:15:20
eyes of everyone around you.
[Music comes in.] Steven Rambam: What books you read, what
movies you watch, do you like dogs or cats?
00:15:27
Are you a left winger or a right winger? Are
you straight, gay? Do you have some unique
00:15:37
habit or hobby? All of that is in what I call
your permanent record. It's in marketing files,
00:15:43
and it's in the internet. And when I'm hunting
for somebody who I believe has faked their death,
00:15:50
or who has, in my opinion, inappropriately
disappeared, and I want to look for you,
00:15:57
I'm going to get all of that
information and I'm going to use it to focus in on anybody that looks like you.
Phoebe Judge: I wonder if you ever think,
00:16:07
when you hear the backstory from the son
or the wife, if you ever think, "Well,
00:16:12
maybe this guy should just be left alone.
Just let him disappear. [Both laugh.] I feel
00:16:17
bad for the guy, just let him live in peace."
Steven Rambam: I will tell you that I've done
00:16:25
cases where I've met the family
members and I thought, "I would-" Phoebe Judge: I'd run too. [Both laugh.]
Steven Rambam: Oh, yeah. I'd
00:16:33
run too. Absolutely.
Phoebe Judge: Let's pretend I need to get away, I need to disappear. How
should I do it so that you don't find me?
00:16:41
Steven Rambam: Okay. How old are you?
Phoebe Judge: 33. Steven Rambam: Okay, so you have parents?
Phoebe Judge: Yes.
00:16:48
Steven Rambam: Okay. Could you survive
never seeing your parents again? Because I can assure you they're going to
be watched and they're going to be watched
00:16:57
in ways you can't even imagine.
Phoebe Judge: Yes. Let's say yes. Steven Rambam: Okay. Do you have any things that
you just love to do? Do you have any habits or
00:17:07
hobbies that you're obsessed about?
Phoebe Judge: I like to take walks. Steven Rambam: Okay, well, taking
walks, a lot of people take walks.
00:17:16
Phoebe Judge: [Laughs.] Okay.
Steven Rambam: What about degrees? Do you care about ever being able to use your degrees?
Phoebe Judge: No, they haven't done
00:17:22
me any good so far. [Both laugh.]
Steven Rambam: You and everybody else. So the first thing you have to
do is you have to pick up and go.
00:17:34
And you have to already have your new identity
in hand, and it has to be an identity that's
00:17:41
been alive for a while. You can't just
suddenly become Lauren Bacall tomorrow. By the way, what do you want to call yourself?
Phoebe Judge: Oh, that's a good question. I mean,
00:17:53
is the right thing to do to choose
a name that's just common? I would think you wouldn't want a wild name.
Steven Rambam: I will say that a common
00:18:02
name is a really good defense against a lot of
investigative tools. If you are Jose Rodriguez,
00:18:10
you're a nightmare for investigators.
Phoebe Judge: Okay, so how about my name is Jane Smith.
Steven Rambam: All right. We
00:18:17
could do better than that.
Phoebe Judge: Okay. Steven Rambam: Just for the purposes
of this scenario, let's call you
00:18:23
Roxanne. Phoebe Judge: Okay, great.
Steven Rambam: So as Roxanne, where are you going to live?
Phoebe Judge: I would think I would
00:18:31
need to go somewhere where I could get by
with the language. So I would think I'd try
00:18:36
to get out of the country. Maybe Canada?
Steven Rambam: Okay. Canada is a very good
00:18:40
choice. Canada is a very good choice. So you go
to Canada, and how do you cross the border?
00:18:47
Phoebe Judge: Well, I love to think about this
when I can't sleep at night. I actually think
00:18:51
about it all the time. I think I'd maybe take a
canoe. [Both laugh.] I really do think about it.
00:18:58
Steven Rambam: Okay. Okay, so you take a
canoe. And when you get to the other shore,
00:19:06
what do you do?
Phoebe Judge: Well, I Steven Rambam: Do you take a bus? Do you have a
car waiting? Have you pre-positioned the car? Do
00:19:13
you have a bicycle there? If you have a car, in
whose name is it registered? What driver license
00:19:19
are you using to drive the car?
Phoebe Judge: Yep, I Steven Rambam: Do you already have
an apartment? Are you going to check
00:19:25
into a hotel? If you check into a hotel,
they want a credit card and a form of ID,
00:19:31
unless it's a really, really bad hotel.
Phoebe Judge: So this is when things get complicated?
[Music comes in.]
00:19:37
Steven Rambam: Immediately. Immediately.
Phoebe Judge: You also have to worry about
00:19:42
the mundane things, like how to
get your prescription medications, what happens to your cat? But Steve says the
absolute number one thing people can't prepare
00:19:52
for is walking away from the people they love.
Steven Rambam: That's big mistake number one.
00:19:59
They don't change their life, they keep in touch
with their old friends. They don't move out of
00:20:04
town or they move to a town that we can figure
out that they're in. And it's not necessarily
00:20:12
a mistake, it's being human. You love your
parents, you love your kids, you can't conceive
00:20:23
of not going to a Cubs game. Well all right,
maybe a Yankees game, maybe not a Cubs game. But
00:20:31
you can't conceive of giving up your entire life
and everything and everybody you care about. And
00:20:38
that's what you have to do to successfully
disappear. You've got to give up everything
00:20:44
that makes you you.
Elizabeth Greenwood: A lot of people go into this thinking that,
"I'll be able to leave, I'll be able to keep
00:20:54
a low profile, but I'll still be able to call my
mom every year on her birthday." Well, if you
00:21:00
are leaving behind some significant debts or
crimes, there are going to be people watching
00:21:08
your mom every day, every year on her birthday,
to see if you're going to make that call and to
00:21:14
find out where you are. So, again, it's really
taking into account all of these considerations.
00:21:20
Phoebe Judge: And also just,
like, your poor mother. [Music fades out.]
Elizabeth Greenwood: Oh my gosh,
00:21:23
of course. I mean, I always joke that I didn't
fake my death because if I did, my mom would
00:21:29
have killed me. Like, I'd actually be dead now.
Phoebe Judge: How long do you think you could last
00:21:35
before reaching out to someone?
Elizabeth Greenwood: Oh, gosh, not even a week. And that's something
I really realized. When it comes
00:21:43
down to it, it's a pretty lonely life.
Phoebe Judge: Where is your death certificate?
00:21:49
I would be so scared of that thing that I think I
would shred it or something. [Elizabeth laughs.] I
00:21:53
wouldn't want to be anywhere near it.
[Music comes in.] Elizabeth Greenwood: Yeah, like a kind of bad luck
totem. Everyone always says if you die anytime
00:22:01
soon, no one's going to believe it.
Phoebe Judge: Oh, that's good. Elizabeth Greenwood: So we'll see.
Phoebe Judge: You can see Elizabeth's
00:22:17
death certificate in her book, Playing Dead:
A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud.
00:22:23
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer,
Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers.
00:22:29
Alice Wilder is our intern. Special thanks
to Russ Henry and Mary Helen Montgomery.
00:22:34
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal. You can see them
00:22:40
at thisiscriminal.com, where we've also
got links to Elizabeth Greenwood's book
00:22:44
and Steve Rambam's investigative agency.
Original music by Blue Dot Sessions. If you're interested in sponsoring Criminal,
send an email to [email protected].
00:22:57
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud
00:23:02
member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of
the best podcasts around. Shows like Benjamen
00:23:09
Walker's Theory of Everything. For the past
few months, Theory of Everything has been
00:23:14
running a series on surveillance, fake
news, and Russian conspiracy theories. [Music fades out.]
[Montage.]
00:23:20
Speaker 1: It's become more about the
collecting of data and selling the data, and, for an advertiser, buying placements
based on that data, then it's been
00:23:32
marketing. Speaker 2: That's what really leads
to this change in self-perceptions. That's what
00:23:38
is resulting in behavioral change, beyond
just interest in an ad. But it's actually
00:23:43
really changing how you see yourself.
Speaker 3: Face recognition systems are not designed to give no for an answer. Speaker
4: There is some paranoia involved, but it's a
00:23:53
healthy, realistic kind of paranoia.
[Montage ends.] Phoebe Judge: You can find a link to the show
at radiotopia.fm. Go listen. [Music fades in.]
00:24:01
Radiotopia is supported by the Knight Foundation
and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos,
00:24:08
and teamwork. And thanks to Adzerk for providing
their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia.
00:24:14
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music fades out.]
Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.