Laziness and desperation lead to a dangerous fake death

Have you ever made such a mess of your life that you just wanted to start completely over? I’m sure many of us have felt that way at some point and maybe, in the throes of regret over tragedies we have brought upon ourselves, we’ve even considered doing some crazy things to try and erase those mistakes and start fresh.

Perhaps some of us who are creative thinkers have even considered doing something completely off the wall, like, for instance, faking our own death. But 99.99% of us would never in a million years really do such a thing. We would realize that these things are usually unsuccessful and are extremely embarrassing when they don’t go off smoothly.

Ah, but then there is that other 0.01% of the population that does not allow rationality to get in the way of their “brilliant” schemes. And every so often a member of that exclusive group goes and does something spectacular, and spectacularly stupid, and the rest of us can only watch the situation unfold and marvel. We were treated to just such a scenario this week.

By now you have probably heard about Marcus Schrenker’s ill-fated attempt to escape his numerous personal and legal difficulties by faking a death-by-plane crash. The plane did indeed crash, but it didn’t take long for people to notice that when it did so he was not inside. And when a strange man showed up at someone’s door at 2:30 AM along the flight path of said plane claiming to have been in a “canoe accident”, the inevitable sad ending to this saga was irrevocably set in motion.

It is hard to imagine how this guy’s plan ever seemed like a sound one. My guess is that a great deal of beer may have been involved.

First of all, any fan of bad movies could have told Schrenker that if you are going to fake a death-by-plane crash you have to steal a body that is roughly height and weight proportionate to your own and have it sitting in the pilot’s seat when you jump out. Duh!

Also, leaving the plane to fly over a populated area where it might crash into someone’s house when it ran out of fuel – not the best idea. How about pointing the thing out to sea, Marcus? You might even get lucky and it might sink and get lost, never to be recovered.

In fact I think a plane crash is one of the worst ways to fake your death. It draws way too much attention to the situation, and the odds that your true intentions are likely to be discovered are much higher that way. It seems it would be a lot smarter to be low key.

What’s wrong with telling everyone you are going hiking to some remote location and just never coming back? People will assume you got lost and if you are not specific about your plans they won’t even know where to look for your remains.

Or here’s one I like a lot - how about going to visit an active volcano, on your own, dropping a shoe next to the mouth, and slipping away never to be heard from again? “Must have fallen in,” people will speculate. It’s not like they’re going to even try to recover that body.

And that was just off the top of my head. This isn’t rocket science. Instead we have unmanned planes dropping out of the sky and endangering everyone’s safety because some guy couldn’t be troubled to think his fake death plan through properly.

If you are in a desperate situation and considering doing something drastic like this, I strongly encourage you to reconsider. Facing up to your problems is very likely to be a higher percentage solution. But if you are dead-set on a pretend death, put some thought into it and keep the safety of innocent people in mind. After all, you want people to remember you fondly.