We’ve heard rumors of Jim Morrison and Elvis doing so, but has it ever been successfully done? Yes, I realize if it were truly successful, we wouldn’t know about it. But maybe there’s been a time or two where somebody managed to fake their death then got caught later or confessed to it. Has there?
The Master speaks (on famous people).
Of course if they did it successfully, how would you know? Unless perhaps posthumously?
Damn you x-ray! 
Here’s a current one: Natasha Ryan. The trial of an alleged serial killer was halted by news of her continued existence. Natasha tells - How I hid for 1682 days. How Fraser ‘killed’ Natasha Ryan.
Jesus?
I did.
No wait – damn! Blew my cover.
From time to time people have faked their own deaths so that a coconspirator could collect insurance money. While it would probably be too much to say this is a common practice, insurance companies are relexively on guard for this kind of deception when a claim is made on an insurance policy and their is no body, or the body has been damaged beyond recognition.
There was a celebrated case in the 60s or 70s involving a prominent doctor in Texas who appears to have murdered his first wife and to have planned the murder of his second. He disappeared and a badly charred body was found which may or may not have been his. It was widely rumored that the doctor had, in fact, killed a transient, burned his body, and then taken off to Mexico. There was at least one book about the case, and a better-than-average made for TV movie, which starred Sam Elliott as the doctor, Farrah Fawcett as the first wife, and Andy Griffith as her father.
60 Minutes did a report years ago about a waealthy man, overwhelmed by debts, who was reported to have died after falling out of a rowboat in relatively calm waters. Investigators for his insurance company didn’t buy the story, and he was eventually tracked down.
More recently a network news magazine did a report about the burgeoning insurance fraud industry in Haiti. I believe this was back in the early or mid 90s. In any case, it was said to be no trick to getting a fake death certificate, and even a substitute body, in the country at that time.
yes but then I would have to die again and that is so much work.
One pretty successful instance that came to light in Germany eight years ago:
In 1946 one Annemarie Schneider had her husband, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer (captain) Dr. Hans Ernst Schneider (born 1909) declared dead. Schneider had worked in a department researching German and related culture and folklore with the aim of developing an academically respectable body of theory underpinning Nazi racial ideology.
Later Mrs. Schneider married one Dr. Hans Schwerte (born 1910).
Dr. (later Prof.) Hans Schwerte went on to become a distinguished academic in the field of Germanistik (the study of German language, culture and literature). He was credited with a major influence in freeing the field from the nationalist ideology that informed it in the 19th/early 20th century. Known as liberal-minded, he got along much better with students in the rebellious late 1960s/early 1970 than the more conservative/reactionary professors. He retired in 1978 and was honored with Belgian and German orders and an honorary doctorate.
In 1995 Mrs. Schwerte’s second husband was discovered to be the same person as her first one. Mr. Schneider had married his widow.
According to the only mention of his death that I found he died in 1999, destitute, so he missed pulling it off by only four years.
This wouldn’t really be counted as “successful” in that he was only “dead” for 5 weeks, but the case was famous at least in the UK because it was a member of Parliament faking his own death.
I saw this report. The reporter walked into a government records office, handed the clerk the equivalent of $20 American, and walked out with his own death certificate.
They also said that Haiti had a big problem with grave robbing, to provide bodies for the insurance companies to look at :eek:
I wonder more how many have faked not being dead.
Such as Howard Hughes, and perhaps now Sadat.
Oh, for the love of Cecil. This one’s asked and answered.
Sadat?