Of course Cecil cannot tell you about any successful death fakings, if they were successful, noone knows about them, would they, that is what makes them successful! Think son, next time.
Link to column, added by Dex: Has any famous person ever succeeded at faking their own death?"
[Edited by C K Dexter Haven on 09-24-2001 at 08:02 AM]
Darn. Beaten to the punch…
This really is not the right forum for namecalling. It’s ok to disagree…but leave the name calling to the pit.
It could depend on how you define “successful”. As in: (1) revealed after the person’s death; (2) revealed after a time by the celebrity, rather than quickly uncovered by the media. Neither of these seem to me stupid definitions, nor does the original question to Cecil seem to me stupid.
Plus, remember that this IS Cecil … patron saint of lost answers.
Ritalinboy, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, we’re glad to have you here.
First, please, when you start a topic, it is helpful to others if you provide a link to the column you are discussing. Helps everyone reading your comments to understand what you’re commenting on. I have edited your first post accordingly.
Now, on your obvious comment, you should be aware that Cecil doesn’t usually state the obvious. He expects his readers to have enough brains to know that. So he didn’t say Yea or Nay, he simply gave examples and said “Fat chance” (ie, highly unlikely.)
Your snide comment might be appropriate if the question were “Has ANYBODY successfully faked their own death?” But this question was about famous folk, celebrities. Most of the time, celebrities have open-casket funerals, and it is a reasonable supposition that such a death would be pretty hard to fake.
The only fakable deaths would be if the body were lost (as in “lost at sea”) or damaged beyond recognition (as in, “burnt to a cinder from smoking in bed”). Even the latter case would be impossible to fake nowadays with DNA testing, and would have been hard to fake any time (since you’d need a body, at least.) So the most fertile ground for possibilities are celebrity disappearances, like Jimmy Hoffa.
I presume that’s why Cecil focused on celebrity disappearances. And there haven’t been all that many, although there have been a few (more than Cecil could cover in a column.) He wasn’t trying to be exhaustive, just to cite some examples. Cecil knows all, but he’s not paid for digging up evidence that Rudolf Valentino is still alive and hiding in Miami Beach, he’s paid for writing an interesting column.