Vanish | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

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

People have faked death to escape criminal convictions, debts, and their spouses. In 2007, a man named Amir Vehabovic faked his death just to see who showed up at the funeral (answer: only his mom). John Darwin faked his own death in a canoeing accident in the UK. And the ex-boyfriend of Olivia Newton John, Patrick Mcdermott, is rumored of faking his death.

It’s an appealing soap-opera fantasy, but actually disappearing requires an incredible amount of planning. How do you obtain a death certificate, a believable new identity, or enough money to start a new life? Today — the answers to those questions, stories of fake death gone wrong, and a man who spends his life bringing back the dead.

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud, by Elizabeth Greenwood: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Playing-Dead/Elizabeth-Greenwood/9781476739342

Steven Rambam’s (https://www.stevenrambam.com/) Investigative Agency, Pallorium (Inc: http://www.pallorium.com/).

Music in the episode: “Galaxy Shard” by Blue Dot Sessions “Betrayal, Lies and Disaster” by Josh Spacek “Going Forward Looking Back” by Podington Bear “Nasty” by David Szesztay “Mercurial Vision” by Blue Dot Sessions “Our Quiet Company” by Blue Dot Sessions “Speed Reader (Original music for Criminal)” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

Say hello on Twitter (@CriminalShow), Instagram (@criminal_podcast), and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsCriminal/.

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 61 originally published 2/17/17 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-61-vanish-2-17-2017

Brief Summary

Elizabeth Greenwood discusses the logistics and motivations behind faking one's death, featuring notable cases and insights from investigator Steve Rambam.

Key points

Elizabeth Greenwood's Eerie Experience. Elizabeth Greenwood describes the unsettling feeling of holding her own death certificate.
The Cost of Faking Death. Elizabeth Greenwood reveals the estimated cost of faking your own death in the Philippines.
John Darwin's Canoe Scheme. John Darwin faked his own death by canoeing, only to be caught years later.
The Reality of Face Recognition. Face recognition systems aren't designed to accept rejection, leading to a unique paranoia.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Holding my own death certificate felt incredibly eerie.

Elizabeth Greenwood reflects on the experience of holding her death certificate.

0:28WatchDec 6, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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