Name: 10 Mysterious Times People Faked Their Own Deaths
Uploaded: 2025-07-22T17:12:41.000Z
Duration: 10 min 4 s
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Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at people who fake their deaths under particularly bizarre as well as unknown circumstances and motivations.

What's become the story is not the threat to journalists.

It has become the whole fake threat to journalists.

Clay said he planned to start a new life with Molly and the children after the $100,000 life insurance payment arrived.

You can count on the support of small-town neighbors in the wake of tragedy.

After the former's car was found burned with an unrecognizable body inside, the widow received $110,000 in life insurance.

She got additional assistance from friends in Burnett County, Texas.

Well, it wasn't long before Molly took an eerily familiar-looking boyfriend named Jake.

It was actually Clayton, who was in financial and legal troubles after violating the terms of his probation for sexual assault.

He and Molly eventually confessed to faking his death with the exhumed body of Charlotte

The Danielses were sentenced to decades behind bars for their unsettling, never-mind-poorly-planned scheme.

Molly insisted she knew nothing about Clay faking his own death until he came home one day about a month after the fire and told her what he had done.

She just tried to portray it like she didn't know that he was alive until he just called her out of the blue about a month later and said, hey, baby, I'm alive.

From what we've seen going through the house, I suspected that the statement made by Lady

There are many questions surrounding John Biggum, 7th Earl of Lucan, including whether he is still alive.

Death certainly befell his estate on the 7th of November, 1974.

The family nanny, Sandra Rivett, was murdered, with Lady Lucan claiming that her husband admitted to the act before attacking her.

The suspect left behind letters disputing the scenario as he disappeared the following morning.

The police believe Lucan left the Claremont Club and drove straight to Lower Belgrave

Street, a journey they acknowledge takes between 7 and 12 minutes to commit the murder.

His car was later found abandoned, with a note suggesting Lucan's intent to take his own life.

However, the investigation found no evidence of his death.

Lucan was later convicted of homicide and absentee, and legally declared dead in 1999.

Whatever really became of the already disgraced British aristocrat, his legacy is tied to at least one terrible tragedy.

TikTok stunts often get a bit carried away.

At least nobody was harmed in the most infamous prank by Belgian influencer David Bairton, aka Ragnar LeFou.

In 2023, Bairton's wife and kids shared heartbreaking tributes to his life and arranged a funeral.

The solemn event was ultimately disrupted by Bairton himself and a camera crew showing up in a helicopter.

The stunt became such a sensation that a helicopter became a signature of Bairton's brand.

It was initially just meant to put his friends' and loved ones' feelings for him into perspective.

Despite the iconic imagery of Bairton embracing relieved mourners, this disturbing deception probably didn't elevate most people's opinion of him.

David Bairton, 45, said he wanted to see who really cared about him and who would show up at his funeral.

He said he was a little disappointed that only about half of his family bothered to show up.

A great businessman always considers his public image an ultimate legacy, though not usually like Lord Timothy Dexter did.

What the 18th century American entrepreneur lacked in education was made up for with eccentric enterprises.

This included arranging his own wake in 1793 just to see how many people would show up.

We are reminded of his kindness, his generosity, his buoyancy of spirit.

Some 3,000 mourners were shocked when the supposed deceased crashed the event.

Even more shocking was when he attacked his wife for not crying over his death.

We can assume that fewer people attended Dexter's legitimate funeral 13 years after the scandal, but as infamous as he was in life, his luck in business isn't what he's best known for in two deaths.

His explanation was that he didn't have a choice.

Russian military vet and war correspondent Arkady Bobchenko became notorious for criticizing his nation's government in the 2010s.

A year after moving to Kiev to work for ATR, he was reportedly shot dead outside his home.

Russian intelligence quickly denied accusations of involvement when Bobchenko appeared at a press conference the next day.

It turns out that he and the Security Service of Ukraine staged his death to weed out an alleged conspiracy to actually assassinate the journalist.

They're describing this incident as propaganda, as an anti-Russian provocation.

And Michael, you can bet they're going to use this.

This bizarre sting operation and even its results are still shrouded in mystery, to say nothing of controversy.

In 2019, Bobchenko relocated to Israel, where he continues to openly condemn the actions of the Kremlin.

I sat wrapped in a sheet, he said, and then watched the news about what an amazing guy

It was a plot that could only work in a soap opera.

In 2002, British couple John and Anne Darwin were in serious debt when the former supposedly drowned in a canoeing accident.

The insurance company paid out a life-changing £250,000.

Five years later, John entered a London police station, claiming to have been missing with amnesia.

The scheme promptly fell apart when a photograph revealed that the Darwin's were looking to buy property in Panama.

They were sentenced to six years in prison in order to compensate the insurance company.

They also got divorced and were disowned by their children, who were not in on the scam.

There were consequences to being greedy, particularly when elaborating a wild scheme.

I accept that you, John, were the driving force behind the whole scheme, but that you and Darwin were central to the fraud's success.

Baptist preacher and banker Aubrey Lee Price spent years cultivating trust in the community of Lyons, Georgia.

After a failed Ponzi scheme cost his bank more than $70 million, he distributed letters admitting to swindling clients and a plan to take his own life.

But the real strange story came to light when Lee was found alive 18 months later.

His next known public sighting was Tuesday when he was arrested for a traffic violation.

He told local deputies, sit down, I'm going to make you famous.

While hiding out in Florida, he sold drugs, made fake IDs, and guarded sex workers.

The pastor of many collars returned to Georgia in 2014 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

He was also ordered to pay $51 million to his victims.

Beth A. says Price told him there was relief when the law finally caught up with him.

And then I looked up and there were blue lights behind me.

Her identity unpublished by the order of the German court, Shahraban Kay was desperate to escape her troubled family and marriage.

But there was no justification for the Iraqi-German beauty blogger's plan to fake her death.

She and a male associate tracked down and murdered Khadija O, just because she resembled Shahraban.

It was not long before authorities identified the victim and arrested her killers.

Shahraban was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for homicide, as well as for attempting to hire a hitman to kill her brother-in-law.

She may not have gotten far with her terrible death fraud scheme, but the very real doppelganger murder was a huge media event.

But at least my name was scrawled across the tabloids.

There seems to be no end to creepy stories with libertine occultist Alistair Crawley, even surrounding his posthumous influence.