How to fake your death and (almost get away with it)

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Do you think performing nude is why they called him the terrifying penis? Terrorist penis? Oh, I'm sorry. Did I miss hear that? You misheard it. Yep. Campsite media. All right, Rory, I have a question for you. Go for it, Josh. How would you fake your death if you were to want to fake your death? I, oh, man. So we were okay. So now we're living in a world where I need to fake my death. I don't. This is where I'm not even smart enough to know the best way to do it because I almost started giving you ways in which I would kill myself. That's the opposite of faking your death. Exactly. That's, that's over commitment. That's the, that's the person who's too committed to faking their death. Okay, I would, I would say that I'm going boating, which anyone who knows me would be like, that was a, what a curveball. He never did that. I would say I would, I would leave some sort of evidence that I've gone boating alone as I often do. And I would go out to sea and I would, I honestly, I'd try to just do what Michael Cain and Christian Bale did in the dark night. I would have Michael, I'd probably get Michael Cain to pick me up on a helicopter and I'd go live in Italy. It's an expensive and complicated, but it could work. It's, I feel like I gave you a possible scenario. Well, you're really going to like this week's episode then because you're, you're kind of spot on with the story we're, we're going to talk about. So this week we are discussing the phenomenon of people who try to fake their own death. That's after the break. Just an asterisk. This episode has nothing to do with Michael Cain. For anyone who thought when Josh said I'm pretty close, that part was not close. No, Michael Cain's actually been dead for decades. He faked it. But he came back as actor Michael Cain and he was like, I just went with the same name. Welcome back to crime list. The podcast celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. I'm Josh Dean and I am Rory Scovill. This week we look at the fascinating and often hilarious world of fake deaths. Death, objectively not funny at all, with some exceptions. Fake deaths often pretty hilarious. Really fun to talk about. Like the case we're going to unpack this week. When an otherwise extremely basic father of three from Wisconsin went out one day to do an extremely basic weekend dad activity. He went kayaking, but he never came home. He went to get cigarettes on a kayak. Cops assumed this man was dead. That he drowned, had wandered off into the woods, or maybe was being dumped into a spaceship. I don't know. They basically got hung up on the idea that this was constant dad was a goner, but spoiler alert, he was not. We recorded this episode a while ago while the case was still ongoing. So you'll hear our in the moment wild speculations. And thanks to our updates, you're also going to get the satisfaction of knowing how it all worked out in the end. Closure. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think faking your death is actually a crime? Because technically we're supposed to be talking about crimes here. Yeah. I mean, is the thinking that if you have faked your own death, it's because you are trying to not pay. Like are people like, well, because for tax purposes, you can't fake your own death. So I guess if I were to fake my own death, that's the closest I'll ever get to being a billionaire. We both get to avoid taxes. Or I would think most people who fake their death are, well, obviously I should have said most, I mean, they're all hiding from something, running from something, right? I would assume in most cases it's a crime, but maybe not always. I don't know. Are there any other circumstances under which you might fake your death? I mean, if you've murdered someone or you're a criminal, if you're a criminal, you've got to fake your own death or you could be a victim and you need to fake your own death. Like witness protection, but DIY? Yep. DIY witness protection is 100% a TV show. We're now pitching. It's kind of great, actually. Well, yeah, I mean, so technically I have the answer. It's not technically a crime. You could fake your death tomorrow and that would be fine. No one's going to. Oh, I mean, your wife might be upset, right? Yeah. And your daughter, I think. Yeah. They wouldn't be happy about it. But yeah, most people will fake their own deaths. Don't do it just to disappear. I think in most cases they've committed a crime smaller large, probably large. And the stories we found are often it's financial crimes. In most cases, at least the stories that we looked at, it was people who got themselves into a lot of trouble financially, couldn't pay back whatever they owed or had stolen money and were going to go to jail. So lots of debt. Okay. Yeah. So it feels like there's other ways out of it. This is a very dramatic solution to a problem. But I guess if you owe millions of dollars, it could be the only solution. It might be the only solution. Yeah. And the reason I was thinking about this was because I saw a story on the BBC about a guy named Ryan Borgwart who went missing in the summer of 2024 on a kayaking trip in Wisconsin. So smart. So Ryan went with your answer. He decided I need to disappear. All of his friends, Ryan, you never kayak. What do you mean you're going kayaking this weekend? And why are you telling so many of us? Posting on his socials, just going kayaking guys. You guys know me. Kayak. Kayak time. So he was 45, married father of three. So this is, I mean, I guess we're laughing. That's the sad part. I mean, I'm sure his wife and kids were not thrilled when this, well, first of all, not thrilled when he went kayaking and didn't come home. But he texted his wife saying he was on the kayak. He was about to call it a day. He was about to come back to shore and he would see her soon. And then he never came home. Oh, man. So I don't want to jump too far ahead in questions, but what time frame are we looking at from him deciding to fake his own death to getting caught? And I'm only asking because I want to know what sort of emotional roller coaster timeframe the family had to go through. I'm going to unspool this for you as it happened. So Ryan calls his wife coming back great day out on the on the yak. As Ryan likes to call it, as Ryan would say. Come on my way back to shore, honey. I'll see you soon. Ryan doesn't come home. So then she obviously calls the authorities as one did. I mean, do you think your wife, how long would it take your wife to call the cops if you didn't come home? I am so good at responding to texts and phone calls because I'm a bit of a lunatic that she would probably do it pretty quickly. After enough calls and texts of me not responding. Definitely when I said I was going to be home and now something like four or five hours has gone by with zero response, she is for sure reached out to all her friends to ask, should I call the authorities? And they have all been like, yes. Because you would never just like my wife knowing who I am. She's probably, what if he's doing a bit? I'm so, I got to say the faking your own death in this instance. It's like, all I can think about is where did he leave his car? Are you just, are you ready to say goodbye? If you pull it off, are you ready to say goodbye to everything? Not just people, but possessions. Your car. I got to say, it feels like Ryan is on a little bit of a retreat. You know, those retreats where you're not allowed to talk for like two weeks? What a foot of that's what Ryan's doing. Where were you? I told you, I was going to that retreat where we're not, we have to pretend that we're dead. You don't remember that? Oh, we're so bad at Google Cal. We did. I didn't put that in. I forgot. I forget to put it in the cow. I'm sorry, babe. Well, so authorities go to the lake and they find his kayak capsized and his life jacket is floating in the water. So I'm not sure why Ryan wasn't wearing life jacket, how he, how it came off of him, but they search the lake. They find his car trailer, fishing rod and wallet are all in the parking lot. So he's left everything behind as you would when you go kayaking, you know, he doesn't and nothing suspicious at the scene. They then spent 58 days searching for his body using drones, sonar, cadaver dogs. They found no evidence of the body in the lake on the land. He's just gone. No evidence of foul play either. Nope. And I assume if I'm, you know, putting myself in Ryan's shoes, like his like slipper Lake shoes, if I'm putting myself in his little aqua socks, I think he's assuming, of course they're going to think I drown, right? Like they, my life, I wasn't wearing my life jacket and I fell out of the kayak for some reason and therefore I drown. But where I think the first flaw in this plan is that Ryan, like, I don't know how big the lake is that he drowned in, but like there's a finite amount of floor on a lake. I feel like at some point they're going to realize Ryan's not in the lake. It's very, yeah, it's, they could skim the bottom of the lake pretty efficiently, I would assume. So ocean feels like if you're going to do this next time, you should do the ocean. Right? Yeah. Ryan tries this again. He gets caught and tries again. Like Ryan, just move, just divorce your family and move somewhere. Quit doing this to people. I was telling these guys yesterday, every time I see one of those stories where it's like guy hires hit man to kill his wife because he's got a new girlfriend. I'm like, there's also divorce. Yeah. There's also a much easier way to do this. Yeah. All right. So Ryan's missing no sign of his body, but then they learned something. Ryan apparently at the Canadian border, he used his own name and crossed the border the day after he went missing. Yep. So I'm not, I don't want to cast any judgment on this police department because I don't want, these are probably hardworking officers. Yeah. But I feel like 54 days searching the lake when he had crossed the border the day after he disappeared. Yeah, I don't, I have a lot of questions there. Like, I know you're not giving it away, but I'm like, is it right at the border? Is it, how, they found his car. He had some version of an escape plan to get to the border, to cross the border. I, yeah, I don't know. I, I wanted to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt and say maybe alien abduction. And he's up there in space somewhere and who knows what they're doing to him. Also, like the Canadian border police, they're like, sir, you're on foot and you're all wet. Yeah. Anyways, come on in. Welcome to Canada. Do you like stirrup? I don't know why the police did not like check the border. I mean, this is in, we're talking about Wisconsin, right? Have I already forgotten what state we're in? Oh yeah. Okay. So there you go. They're probably right, right there. I know. But nope, those hardworking Wisconsin, I mean, you know, God bless them. They were searching that lake until there was no inch to be searched and nobody checks the border. I can imagine like that the staff meeting at the police station the next day, they're like, did anybody check the border? Tam, you're not going to believe this. I just found out the day after he crossed the border. We didn't have to do that lake search. That blew the budget in this town. They actually don't have the money to look for any more bodies the rest of the year. Good place to fake your death. So it turns out that he had reported his passport missing and requested a new one prior to his disappearance. His wife said his original passport was easily found, meaning he was traveling on the new one, but he didn't change his name. Okay. So what happens next? I think this also happens in those killing your spouse stories every time, which is that they get the laptop, they look at the search history and it's like, how to kill your wife and get away with it. I got to say, every time that comes up in a case and I'm not a murderer, I'm not criminal in any capacity. Maybe the worst thing I've done is parking tickets. You still wouldn't be able to go to my search history and see how do we evade parking tickets? You wouldn't even, I would have deleted that. I know. I can't, but the amount of people that look up suspicious stuff and then just leave it, leave it there. Under the assumption, no one's going to ever look into this. So to the extent that this podcast is a public service to criminals, which obviously that was the main reason we started this. We're trying to help. I would like to pause here and say, people, change the password on your laptop because like, if you make it really hard, the cops aren't going to get it. I mean, if you would feel compelled to search. Yes. How to disappear or fake your death and get away with it. Erase it first of all, yes. Second of all, put a nice good password on there. Really hard. Lots of exclamation points and numbers. And also, also if you need to Google how to disappear and stay gone, maybe it's not for you. I feel like that just needs to be some sort of internal natural instinct that you understand probably how to get away with it. But if you got to Google it, it might not be for you. Also, he had taken out a large life insurance policy in the recent past. He had transferred funds to a foreign bank account and had gotten a new email address. On top of that, he replaced his hard drive. Oh, and he did clear his search history. So, so, okay, we were, we were a little overly critical. However, he did not cover his tracks enough to disguise the fact that he signed up for a large life insurance policy and transferred funds into a foreign bank account shortly before going kayaking. Yeah. God, I wonder what life Ryan is living right now. You know, to tell you, in fact, where I think we because it's a great digital evidence shows that Ryan was planning to travel to Europe and not well, far Eastern Europe, because he apparently was on his way to meet up with a woman in Uzbekistan. Okay. Now, first, do you know where Uzbekistan? That is, it's going to be, it's not in Wisconsin. I know that much. I know. Okay. Are you going right? I know it's, I also know it's not just right over the Canadian border. So, what is the thing? Flight wise, this guy's going to get a flight with his passport and name and that he thinks he's not going to get discovered. Evidence suggests tonight, we don't know. I'm sure the investigation is ongoing. Yeah. Suggest that Ryan left his wife and three children faked his death in a kayak, crossed the border into Canada to fly to Uzbekistan for a woman. I cannot even get toothpaste past TSA. This guy, look, you can't bring over five ounces, but you can pretend to be someone else. Does this start with one of those text messages you get, which is like, how are you doing my sweetheart? Like, how does Ryan end up falling for a woman in Uzbekistan? This is the most extreme version of 90 day fiance I've ever heard of. I've never seen them play at this level before. As we are recording this, the mystery is still a mystery. We don't know exactly where Ryan is and why we expect TSA in Uzbekistan with a woman. A video was spotted on TikTok, I think just this week, right, Lane? Yeah. The news of it just broke. It was filmed back in June. I have it pulled up if you want me to share it. Yeah, let's see it. So this video in this video on TikTok. So June was two months before he disappears. All right, let's watch it. We're going to watch the video. Do I go to Uzbekistan or stay here? Do you have family there? No. Why do you want to go? To meet a woman. To meet a woman. You don't like American women? No, no. No, they're familiar. So you've given up on meeting someone here? No, I'm married. Oh, yeah. But you want to find someone else? Empty nest. I'm not sure. So I'm asking you. Wait, empty nest? What do you mean? Empty nest. My kids are out of the house. Can we pause it, Lane? Who here is more annoying? Her questions or his answers? I can't. Oh my gosh. Like she can't even grasp the fact that someone stopped to ask for free advice. I don't know that anyone's ever stopped to ask her. OK, hold on. Where are you going? OK, wait, what? Whoa. So OK, Dianne Ryan purchased a large life insurance policy before faking his undeath. He apparently somehow ran into someone who asked him what he wanted to do. And he said he wanted to move to Uzbekistan to be with a woman. He announced his plan. I feel like he is saying everything just short of I recently faked my own death. Like it just seems like he's about to just blurt that out. Well, this is two months before this is when he's clearly he's riding his bike thinking about am I going to do it or not? I think that's when this came out. Oh my God. I thought he was so dumb that he's doing this after. Oh, no, no, this is. He faked his own death. So we can't confirm that this is actually him. They haven't confirmed that yet, but like that looks pretty convincing to me. It's him. It's him. That is him. That is so him. I got to say, I didn't know the kids were out of the house. That does make me feel a little bit better. Yeah, I agree that they are at least adults who have just they're doing their own thing. I mean, still an asshole, no matter what. Still. But here's the other thing. It's like just divorce your wife. I know. Tell your kids, hey, guys, you're all adults. You know how these things go. Now they're all like our dad. They have to live with that. Wow, what a crazy choice. He could have just told the truth. He faked his death and made us all sad in order to be with a woman in Uzbekistan, because, well, I there's so many questions that we don't know the answer to. We may have to revisit this. I'm like, was this one of those catfishing schemes? It was it even a woman? Did he get to Uzbekistan and he was like drafted into slavery? He now works in like a call center. Like, could you imagine he got to Uzbekistan and he was catfished and he's like, you have no idea what I want to get here. And the first thing he says was it was a 20 hour flight. That's his first complaint. In coach. I was in coach. You know what they charge for first class? 20 hours. No meals. We definitely have to revisit this because I need. Yeah, like, was there a woman like he showed up and it was like he was thrown in the back of a van and, you know, he's now an indentured servant. I mean, yeah. No, you're right. We are going to need closure of this. We're going to have to know Ryan's fate. I have some updates. OK. Where we last left off, we speculated that maybe Ryan was catfished by someone who kidnapped or killed him. But since we recorded Ryan was found returned to Wisconsin and sentenced to serve 89 days in prison, which was the same length of time authorities spent searching for him, including the 58 days they searched the lake. I mean, I guess that's fair. He's charged with obstruction and ordered by the Green Lake County Circuit Court judge to pay $30,000 in restitution for costs spent by search and rescue crews. I feel like that's a good deal. 58 days of search and rescue seems to would cost more than 30 grand. Yeah. But Wisconsin, I don't know. Maybe it's cheaper there. Yeah. There is an excellent in depth Atlantic magazine piece on the saga to find Ryan. I highly recommend it for your next airplane trip. But here's the gist of what happened. Ryan and his wife had been together for 20 plus years. And for the most part, the relationship was OK. Or at least that's what Emily, his wife thought. Turns out Ryan was unhappy and also tens of thousand dollars in debt, something his wife did not know. Yeah. But instead of coming clean and asking for a divorce, he took the easy way out by elaborately faking his own death. Yeah, I mean, we're describing it as the easy way out. I don't know. I don't know if that's exact. I feel like this is a lesson to you and our listeners, Rory. You can always get divorced. Yeah, you can just get divorced. Here's what happened. He met a woman named Katya on a dating app a few months before the kayak trip. They started exchanging messages. I'm going to read a couple of those to you. Good luck. I kiss you very hard. Another one said, I just want to be with you so you can see how he was wooed. Yeah, nothing more romantic than I kiss you very hard. I mean, that's that gets me every time. And then Ryan wrote back Katya, I promise you I will love you for the rest of my life. I want no one else. I want to share a life with only you, a woman I met on the internet. And this is my edition. I don't even know Israel. So Ryan wants to start a new life with Katya. Oh, man, the details. So much that he reversed his vasectomy and Emily not realizing her husband with a total scumbag drove him to the appointment. Yep. Oh, boy. Man, I respect that. That's a hard reversal to get. He wasn't clearly in love with this maybe person who had never actually seen in the flesh. So he orders an electric bike and two bike batteries for a thousand bucks on Amazon, then deletes the account. The morning of his disappearance, he stashes the bike in two go bags and some grass among the trees. After church, he kisses his wife and kids and heads to the lake with his kayak. Once safely out on the water, he throws his phone overboard, inflated a second raft, one of those child sized inflatables you buy at Walmart, you know, sort of like Dinky. He flips his kayak over, uses the kitty raft to paddle ashore. Around one or two a.m., he finally makes it to a stashed electric bike. He pedals 70 miles to Madison, Wisconsin and catches a greyhound to Toronto. At the Canadian border, agents are suspicious because he has no driver's license and his phone isn't working, but they let him through anyway. Canadians simply too nice to stop the bad guys. You let him go. Sorry. Sorry we even suspected anything. I mean, I would think how they let you cross the border without a driver's license. I this is crazy. What did Ryan think was like, I feel like that was one place where he probably almost certainly should have been caught and what did he think? The 100 percent should have been caught. So with a prepaid debit card and fifty five hundred in cash, he catches a flight to Paris. According to the Atlantic article, the Air France meal was one of the best meals of his life. All right, there you go. He takes another flight. This guy's he's a simple guy. He doesn't need his women to be real and airline food is the best food he's ever had. He takes a flight from Paris to Georgia, the country, and that's where he finally meets Katya. Yep. Katya is how they eventually track him down. However, the cops send an email to her with a subject line call us attached with a photo of Ryan Katya and his two children as well as a photo of the officers badges saying this is the police in Wisconsin, USA. Yeah. She's a little sus about these emails, but eventually she convinces Ryan to send a proof of life video back to Wisconsin. The cops then begin an email exchange with him and persuade him to come home and face the music. And in part, he does this because obstruction of justice, the charge is only a misdemeanor and they can't arrest him on the spot when he lands in Chicago for that reason. They are able to get him in an interview room where he brags about how he fooled everyone. He confesses to all of it. Then he's arrested and put in handcuffs. Spends a night in jail and post bail. The same week he's arrested, Emily files for legal separation, calling the marriage irretrievably broken, which feels kind of like an understatement. Yeah. I don't even think she needed a reason. It's like, it's a we get it, man. It's OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No explanation needed. She also asked for soul custody of the kids, which considering he faked his death and left them anyway, also they were adults, right? I think I remember they were. Yeah, they were. They weren't they were teens. It's better than them being like three and four. Yeah. No, they were teens. But I think also a reasonable ask. I feel like the judge is not going to say like, I'm sorry, he's a good dad. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, you mean the guy you tried to never see them again on his own? OK. And not just that, but like, convinced them that their father had died in a tragic kayaking accident. Yes. After church. Yeah. Trauma. Oh, so that's the mystery, which we didn't know when we first recorded, is now solved. Closing thoughts. I mean, it all feels very on brand. It all feels super on brand for old. Right. Right. Right. I think in closing people just get divorced. Just get divorced. I know it's hard. It's painful. J.G. J.G.D. It's one of our t-shirts we sell on crimeless.com. J.G.D. Just get divorced. Just get divorced. After the break, one more story of a man who faked his death and almost got away with it. OK. Slightly more successful fake death on water is the story of the canoe man. Have you heard this one? It's kind of famous. No, no, no. OK. So this one's back in the early 2000s, a guy named John Darwin. He's a 51 year old British guy married to a lady named Anne. He's a former prison officer and teacher. She's a receptionist. The two of them owned some properties where they would run out rooms for like side hustle. Thing is they got a lot of debt because they didn't have a lot of renters. So they bought too many properties they couldn't rent. Got a lot of debt and decided to fake John's death. Yeah. So this is a tag team plot. So Anne's in on it in this case. I love that. I love a good team effort. Also, side note, I went as canoe man two Halloweens ago. So in March of 2002, he gets in his canoe and he goes out into the North Sea. So all right, you're already we're in the ocean. I like that. I like that the third story you tell is going to be actually a boat. You're going to be like, look, we have kayak. But we're just backing it up. We're just getting bigger in the body of water, too. So in the North Sea now, I don't know the difference between a sea and an ocean, but I'm it's big. The spelling for sure. The spelling. So he goes out in a canoe and he doesn't come home. And he's reported missing by Anne, who claims that he was caught in a strong tide and must have disappeared. His canoe is found capsized and there's no sign of John. But the day he went missing, the North Sea was unusually calm. And I don't know if you ever tried to capsize a canoe by yourself. I don't think he picked the right boat. In this case, he should have been in a kayak. Yeah, I also. Does it need to be capsized to believe that something like has happened? Isn't the other possibilities that you just fell out? If there's an empty canoe and the person you thought was using it is no longer using it, there's no part of me that's going to go. Well, wait, hold on, it's not capsized. They're probably fine. So for five years, so basically police search for him. They don't find him. He's they declare him dead. And for five years, John is dead in the eyes of the British government. But here's the twist. John is not dead. Not only is John not dead. Well, actually, let me pause for a minute. He's in Uzbekistan. Anything could be your answer. But do you have a theory on what John did? Well, here's here's what I'm here's what's leading me to say my answer with the path I took to get to this. Because Anne is in on it, they're not trying to separate. So they're still trying to stay together. My theory is that John has not gone anywhere. Man, you're good at this. John is still he's within proximity of Anne. And their misstep was that they should have been like, all right, hey, just remember for five years, we got to not talk. Well, you're very good at this. So not only did you pick the proper way of thinking you're death right at the top, you nailed it. So John doesn't go anywhere. John moves back to his town and not just to his town into one of those rental units that they can't rent. So for five years, he moves into one of the rental properties under a new name calling himself Carl Fenwick, who is a lodger who just decided to stick around and become a handyman. It's like the start of a porn. So it's that or it's like, hey, let's pretend we're in Newhart. Very timely reference. That is that's insane. He let people in the town are like, no, I mean, you're you're John. What do you mean? What are you saying? Carl, you're John. No, no, no, I promise I'm Carl just here to get a coffee. Who's John? Why do you keep calling me John? And he's living it up in town. They're all like, you're not. Well, here's what he did. He felt he has a lot of free time now. He doesn't have a job anymore. He's dead. He's living in a rental unit. He spends his days playing the video game EverQuest. OK. I don't know what Ever. Do you know what it is? I've never heard of that. But man, that does sound like the most generic video game title possible. Also kind of the worst way to spend your life. I mean, if you faked your death, you fooled the entire nation of England. Yeah. And you play video games and a rental property that you won't. You know, no one told John he could just do that alive. That. This makes Ryan's plan look so much smarter. Ryan distanced himself. He went to another country via another country. John's just like, I just can't pay the bills. So he spends his days playing EverQuest and walking around town. And what you said, like, what are people saying to him? In fact, there's at least one example of someone he ran into one of his tenants who was like, aren't you supposed to be dead? To which he replies, don't tell anyone. Smart. Ten apparently doesn't tell anyone. I kind of want to meet this guy. Like, what a weird thing to experience. Then be like, OK, sure, I won't tell anybody. Your secret's safe with me. Got it. Carl, wink, wink. Carl with a K, by the way. Anyway, so back to there is a bit more of a plan here. So so do you get a new passport under his new name? OK. You had another no, a different new name, though, his passport. His name was passport is John Jones. Yeah. OK. So what we're learning is that it is not hard to get a passport. I thought it was so hard. You had to go to CVS. You had to get a picture taken. OK, Mr. John Jones. I I'm John John. They're like, I'm sorry, did you say John Jones? Yes. Yes, I did. Oh, but he uses his home address on the passport with John Jones. So he and his wife start traveling. They go to Cyprus to look at properties. Then they go to Panama to look at properties and start actually buying properties in Panama. Oh, wow. And on one of those trips, the real estate agent takes a picture of this happy buyers and posted on the Internet. Yeah. This is this is the check off's gun moment. You know, that might come back to haunt him. Oh, but this is so this is at a time when to be fair. In their argument, you know, in their defense, we don't live in today's world where you would immediately go, no, that'll go on the Internet. Someone will see it. This is to that. This is the early 2000s where that culture is not. Hey, if you just took a picture, you're probably going to post that and everyone will see it. You're still not thinking like that, correct? I would think not. Yeah. OK. More innocent times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in their defense, not that it's smart, not that they've made any good decisions here, but just to be clear, they took that photo thinking, who's ever going to see this? Well, and not only that, apparently during the time that they're gone, Panama, Titans, whatever visa laws that had at the time, which enabled him to get in and he realizes if he's ever going to go back to England, they're going to catch on. OK. Yeah. But anyway, so he's basically screwed. He returns to the UK, walks straight into a police station and claims that he's been suffering from amnesia. OK. I think I'm a missing person, he says. OK. Not a terrible plan, right? I mean, it I mean, I don't know what your options are. So this could be a good one. Well, his wife supports the story. She puts on a great performance. She's so thrilled that her husband he's been missing for five years. Oh, my God, he's back. But the cops don't buy it. I guess she didn't do a great job acting. And already suspected that he may not be dead because they looked at Anne's behavior over the time when she was supposed to be grieving. She was taking vacations. She moved a bunch of money around internationally. So another bank account, another another person who suspicious financial behavior, yeah, and was planning to sell the home. They'd been working on a case for three months by that point. And a tip from one of Anne's colleagues was what sparked the investigation. Said that Anne had a habit of talking to her dead husband on the phone at work. So Anne gave it away by talking to her dead husband every day. I got to say, I feel like I could pull off faking my own death. I feel inspired by these two stories. I feel inspired by these two stories like maybe I could pull this off and start living a new life. But then I screw up. I'm still doing this podcast. They're like, you're clearly alive. Your new episodes are coming out. My name is Carl. No, no, I'm Colby. With a K. So both Anne and John are charged and convicted of fraud. He does, I think six years and three months. I don't know how much time and does. And oh, she also got six years. Wait, she got six years and six months. Oh, and the sad kicker to this. I mean, can you predict like there's there's one sad final beat in this story? I am going to guess one of them passed away in prison. Not quite that sad. OK, they got divorced. Oh, they got divorced. Could you imagine all that? Just having to cover your tracks every time you go to the grocery store. Oh, no, I actually, I need to say, which is John. I mean, Carl, I mean, I'm a widow. So two cases of unsuccessful, although, you know, John got away with it for five years, so. We should be giving John a little credit. I got to say, I give John credit. I also feel like if you can fake your own death and still live in the same town and all you do is change your name, you are either an incredible actor or you live in the dumbest town. And that's why the cops believe the amnesia thing. They're like, everyone in town must have. This is amnesia. That's the name of the town. I could swear I saw John at the store. No, that's Carl. Yeah, clearly Carl. That's obviously Carl. Next up, Rory and I capsize a canoe or we play a game or something. This is crime. What? This is crimeless. Lane, what's on the agenda for our last segment? Lane's Game. All right, so the true masters of faking their deaths are possums. So that's what the today's quiz is about. Did you know the opossum is the largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere? I did not know that. 126 species, but we only have the Virginia possum, opossum here in the US slash Canada. Wait, is it possum or opossum? It's opossum. It's opossum. It's opossum, which is insane. It is insane. I'll be saying possum just for the record. So today's game I'm calling opossum o alien because I'm going to give you a species of creature and you should tell me if it's a possum or an alien species. All right. Do you guys feel confident about this? I don't know. No, not at all. No, not at all. Okay, it's kind of a rapid fire one. All right, how about a gray slender? Possum, opossum. Opossum, opossum, opossum, tall white. My favorite coffee. Alien. How do we go alien? It's alien. How about a grabby? No, God. Opossum. Opossum. Alien. By the way, alien, what do we talk about? What is the source of the alien types? Research that I've done. Actually, great question. I went along with it as though we've discovered numerous types of alien. It's a couple of Wikipedia articles, some Reddit posts, but a grabby is a class of aliens that expand rapidly and inhibit other civilizations development. Okay, thank God. I was afraid you weren't applying science to this research, but as soon as you said Reddit and Wikipedia. I would just like to point out we would have gotten all the way through the game without Rory wondering like, what? Honestly, probably not until like later this afternoon. I've been like, wait, how did we even know? What are those aliens? What was the reference point for any of that? Okay, sorry. Sorry to interrupt. I felt like I clarified. Gray fluoride. It's got to be an alien. They can't be an opossum. It's got to be an alien. It's opossum. I can't be. What? Is it an opossum? No opossums wear glasses. They have little spots up here that look like eyes. Oh, okay. That's why I call them for eyes. I just like that they're bullied the same way we are. That's true. Nerd. How about a yapok? Alien. Alien. Opossum. Sorry. Water opossum. How about a big loutrine? Opossum. Alien. It's a opossum. Oh, man. How about a new Naki? Alien. That's from Avatar. That's an alien. That's alien. It's not from Avatar, but it's from research. It's from research. It's from a Navi. How about a flying rod? Hey, now. Opossum. I feel like it's a trick one. It's like the nickname for one specific opossum. It's an alien. Flying rod. It's an alien. It isn't alien. It wasn't a trick at all. It's a trick that's more of life often captured on film, but not seen through the naked eye. And then finally, a wood sprite grass eel. That's going to be an opossum. That's got to be opossum. It's a opossum. Yes. It sounds like a very cute one. Is it cute? Yeah, he's very cute. A lot of these are really cute. Wood sprite. That's just the name Sprite gets in there. It makes you thirsty and it makes you want to cuddle. In a future episode, we need to explore why it's opossum, but we all say opossum. Why do we just ignore the O? I don't know. That's not in my research. They should drop it. They really should drop it. That becomes our platform. Yeah. They're always felt that way. Just get divorced and drop the O. JGD, drop the O. Down under it's just opossum. So you just call me an O. See, they get it. Yeah, you guys got, you're so much. They get it. They've got other things to do. They can't be adding letters that don't even pronounced. I don't know why the first, the first like Google scrape does not explain why there's an O in there. Love that. Google scrape. This is a mystery for a future episode of CrimeLess. All right. We don't just randomly put O in front of a random O. Google scrape is the other T-shirt. Oh boy. It's the end of the opossum game. Oh boy. Alien, opossum, oh alien. See you all next week unless I fake my death and fly off to Georgia. Well, that's what we're going to do. That's our immediate first assumption. Even with a body, we assume it's not you. Bye. Bye-bye. CrimeLess is a production of smartless media, campsite media, and big money players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. It's hosted by Rory Scoble and me, Josh Dean. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. Emma Stiminoff is our associate producer. This episode was written by Lane Rose and me, Josh Dean. We're sound designed and engineered by Blake Rook with support from Ewan Leitrimuen. Mark McAdam composed our theme song. The executive producers at campsite media are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Cher, and me, Josh Dean. The executive producers for iHeart Podcasts and big money players are Jack O'Brien, Lindsay Hoffman, and Matt Apadaca. For smartless media, the executive producers are Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Richard Corson. Bernie Kaminski is head of production. The associate producer is Maddie McCann. A special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you have a question, comment, or confession for the crime list team, email us at crimelessatcampsitemedia.com. And if you enjoyed crime lists, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. It helps people find the show and also makes us feel validated, unless you're me. In which case, keep it to yourself. We'll see you next week, Crime List Nation. This is an iHeart Podcast. 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