Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: How are you doing? Pretty well? I had a good
Speaker 2: day to day he did. How about you? It was fun, exciting,
Speaker 2: I read some cool stuff.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: Anytime I can like air out my head in new facts,
Speaker 2: I'm always started.
Speaker 3: Plus I love that for you.
Speaker 2: How about you?
Speaker 3: It was good day. It was nice and productive, and
Speaker 3: then they came here.
Speaker 2: Sorry about that.
Speaker 3: Now, this is the highlight of my day, my week,
Speaker 3: my life. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I do. We recentally lost Matthew Perry, the actor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and before he passed, he wrote this memoir of his life.
Speaker 2: And there's one story in the memoir that I find
Speaker 2: ridiculous and in a very loving way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you ever wanted to steal a rock star's wife?
Speaker 2: Not personally Matthew Perry did. Oh god, yes he was,
Speaker 2: he was. I guess. He had the short lived sitcom
Speaker 2: with Valerie Burton Nelly. Oh right. The show was called Sydney.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in nineteen ninety. It was a sick
Speaker 2: didn't last very long.
Speaker 3: I wasn't born yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, he fell in love with her while they
Speaker 2: were filming that show, apparently, and she was married to
Speaker 2: Eddie van Halen of Van Halen fame, And in his
Speaker 2: memoir The Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, he
Speaker 2: has this story where he says, and I quote, I
Speaker 2: was obsessed with her and harbored elaborate fantasies about her
Speaker 2: leaving Eddie van Halen living out the rest of her
Speaker 2: days with me. I didn't stand a chance, of course.
Speaker 2: That said, there was one night I was over at
Speaker 2: Valerie and Eddie's house, just hanging out and gazing at Valerie,
Speaker 2: trying to make her laugh. As the night progressed, it
Speaker 2: was clear that Eddie had enjoyed the fruits of the
Speaker 2: vine a little too hard one more time, and eventually
Speaker 2: he just passed out, not ten feet from us. But still,
Speaker 2: this was my chance. Oh God, if you think I
Speaker 2: didn't actually have a chance in hell, you'd be wrong,
Speaker 2: dear reader. Valerie and I had a long, elaborate makeout session.
Speaker 2: Oh it was happening. Maybe she felt the same way
Speaker 2: I did. I told her I had thought about doing
Speaker 2: that for a long time, and she'd said it right
Speaker 2: back to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, she never mentioned the incident ever again to anybody.
Speaker 3: Well, and I'm sorry, but the kiss and tell aspect
Speaker 3: of that come on.
Speaker 2: But then when the memoir was released, she did acknowledge
Speaker 2: on TikTok that yes she did have because I think
Speaker 2: at that point Eddy van Halen had passed. So it
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I want her to like hoss of him, right,
Speaker 2: I know, but like trying to become a rock star's wife,
Speaker 2: it's just wild to me. He's like ten feet away.
Speaker 2: It's like a high school thing. It's just alwady. He's
Speaker 2: like and then you know fruit of the Vine, a
Speaker 2: little Oh god, there you go.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous, Yes, Rpeter, two thirds of them. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 5: I'm here for it, faking it until you're making it. Oh,
Speaker 5: this is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 5: Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 5: and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know you heard that.
Speaker 3: I totally heard it.
Speaker 5: We've talked about a few dudes before. It never seems
Speaker 5: to be ladies who either faked their deaths or created
Speaker 5: new identities and started over as someone else.
Speaker 2: Doesn't tend to be a thing that the ladies do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they do, but.
Speaker 2: They get away with It's why we're not talking about
Speaker 2: it yet this show.
Speaker 5: And for some this whole thing is really tempting, you know,
Speaker 5: and for a smaller sum that temptation.
Speaker 3: Is too strong to ignore. They do totally.
Speaker 5: I'm fascinated by the psychology behind this. It's like, not
Speaker 5: when they're running away from debt.
Speaker 3: Or justice, sure, that's just cowardice.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about when they just want to be someone
Speaker 5: they aren't. Ah, you know, when they're so unhappy with
Speaker 5: their reality that they ditch it and create this like
Speaker 5: false reality in which to live the fake real.
Speaker 3: So I have a Florida fred de Mara.
Speaker 2: The guy who pretend to be a doctor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean that amount of time that he spent,
Speaker 5: he probably could have just like become a doctor medical.
Speaker 5: So I got this Florida man.
Speaker 2: Okay, already starts killing.
Speaker 3: He didn't want to be a Florida man's wild.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was a Florida man who wanted to be
Speaker 5: a Cambridge man, a landed man, a fancy lad of course.
Speaker 5: Zaren close Eyes I'm just kidding, no, Zaren, I want
Speaker 5: you to meet Charles Albert Stopford the third.
Speaker 2: Is that his real name? Yeah, Charles, that's a Florida man.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a proper English.
Speaker 2: See why I was born in the wrong family.
Speaker 3: Oh nay, old chuck. He was born in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: two in Orlando, Florida. Wow with that.
Speaker 5: Name his Yeah, His dad, Charles Albert Stopford Junior, was
Speaker 5: a Methodist minister. And there was a big old group
Speaker 5: of Stopfords, seven boys and two girls. They had a litter,
Speaker 5: Charles the third, he's the eldest.
Speaker 2: So I know what their nighttime activities were.
Speaker 5: So then there's this big family living in a house
Speaker 5: provided by the Methodist church in Orlando in the sixties.
Speaker 3: Okay, what a time to be alive.
Speaker 2: Seriously, Charles meant to be like church funded.
Speaker 5: Sure, Charles feisty kid, super fisty. He was funny and
Speaker 5: like if a little off color sometimes, and he loved
Speaker 5: practical jokes. So you know that he went to like
Speaker 5: a joke shop aimed at tourists, and his awakening was
Speaker 5: getting one of those buzzers for your hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the handshake to like shock people when you shake
Speaker 3: their hand. Problem had one of those, I know, I
Speaker 3: knew you did, I could, I could have guessed.
Speaker 5: The problem with those is that they're primarily used by kids,
Speaker 5: uh huh, and like they have very few opportunities to
Speaker 5: shake hands with people, so they like they can't just
Speaker 5: sit and wait for it to happen, so they go
Speaker 5: around asking to shake everyone's hands, and then they got
Speaker 5: like this big disc in their palm.
Speaker 3: It's super obvious ring around. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Anyway, Charles the jokester so when he was in his
Speaker 5: teens also.
Speaker 2: Get Slipping a Whooper kitschien under somebody is difficult because
Speaker 2: either the seat isn't the right height because you've put
Speaker 2: it there already, or he tried to just throw it
Speaker 2: in right at the last minute.
Speaker 3: And then if they if they block the outlet, you.
Speaker 2: Don't hear anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, but I'll tell you when it's when it's
Speaker 3: done right, beauty Chef's kiss, so good, Charles. He is
Speaker 3: a teen.
Speaker 5: He stuck to my grandma's motto of act like you know,
Speaker 5: and he snuck onto a US military base.
Speaker 2: Wow yeah because a teen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he breezed his way into the officers club.
Speaker 2: In fact, but people thought he was like an officer's son.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I don't know.
Speaker 5: He just he was so confidently behaved, and he was like,
Speaker 5: you know what, I'm supposed to be here?
Speaker 3: How you doing a yes, sir.
Speaker 5: Another time he dressed up as a fake DEA agent
Speaker 5: in seventies Orlando. Wow, he got a fake gun and everything,
Speaker 5: and then he went and shook down a local drug
Speaker 5: dealer and confiscated his cash.
Speaker 3: For real, son of a preacher man.
Speaker 2: Dude, that's the move. That's my kind of criminal, right there. See,
Speaker 2: no one cares if you're robbing drug dealers exactly.
Speaker 3: So while all this tomfoolery is going on, Charles.
Speaker 5: Was growing more and more enamored of the United Kingdom,
Speaker 5: oh well England to be precise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I figured.
Speaker 3: So he had the.
Speaker 5: Union jack flag aka the Butcher's apron on his bedroom wall, Like,
Speaker 5: was it the who the sex pistols who radicalized him?
Speaker 2: Seriously?
Speaker 3: Turns out it was the Beatles, Beatlemania strikes again, the
Speaker 3: Gateway Band and Monty Python.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, he's of course, but the joking, Yes, I
Speaker 2: could see that.
Speaker 5: So he'd hang out in his room and like listen
Speaker 5: to Beatles' albums, watch Monty Python sketches, just like soak
Speaker 5: up the Britannia of an all Britannia, and so much
Speaker 5: so that he practiced his English accent and honed it
Speaker 5: into something impressive.
Speaker 2: Did you ever do that when you're a kid, No,
Speaker 2: you didn't. Do you ever practice any accents as a kid?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Oh, My sister and I practiced all sorts of accents.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately though it was like, yeah, picking the wrong like
Speaker 2: model samulate, so like using like I don't know, the
Speaker 2: Dick van Dyke Mary Poppins British accent's.
Speaker 5: Going to get you nowhere exact well, like his dad.
Speaker 5: His dad got a kick out of his accent. Oh
Speaker 5: r bad, and he joined in and they would like
Speaker 5: practice the accent together.
Speaker 2: He plays on audience every Sunday, exactly. He's a performer exactly.
Speaker 3: He showfolk.
Speaker 5: So he got so Charles got so good at it
Speaker 5: that he would convince substitute teachers that he was English really,
Speaker 5: and he said, the reason he was at this Orlando
Speaker 5: school is because his dad was like this well regarded
Speaker 5: scientist on temporary loan to NASA.
Speaker 2: It's a good story to tell.
Speaker 5: I'd have worked the Disney angle, but that's just me,
Speaker 5: although I would guess then that people would be asking
Speaker 5: for like tickets, more questions. Yeah, exactly, So I take
Speaker 5: it back, I would not work the Orlando Disney.
Speaker 2: A NASA sounds impressive without going can I get in right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: So that was Charles until he was sixteen, and then
Speaker 5: things changed for him. It was nineteen seventy eight and
Speaker 5: his preacher dad stepped out on his mom Ooh yeah,
Speaker 5: he actually ran off with a lady from the church.
Speaker 2: Of course, where else do you think he's going to
Speaker 2: find people?
Speaker 5: So he left his wife and kids high and dry,
Speaker 5: took off, left them in the parsonage, and took.
Speaker 3: Off with the new guys.
Speaker 2: Are you for real?
Speaker 3: I'm totally for real. So since none of the remaining
Speaker 3: family members.
Speaker 2: Your family, forgive me, I'm out.
Speaker 5: None of the remaining family members were Methodist preachers, okay,
Speaker 5: so they got evicted from said parsonage. Of course, the
Speaker 5: church congregation took pity on them. They tried to like
Speaker 5: help get them on their feet, but like somebody God, Yeah,
Speaker 5: like how here's meet the deacon. The pain and the humiliation.
Speaker 5: So Charles he got a job for a little while.
Speaker 3: At Disney World, this is the late seventies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, late seventies, and he had that amazing English accent. Course,
Speaker 5: so he scored a gig in Epcot Center's United Kingdom pavilion.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, good for him.
Speaker 3: Then when he graduated, way to make it.
Speaker 2: Work, get paid for that act.
Speaker 5: That works exactly, exactly. Don't hide your light under a bushel.
Speaker 5: He graduates in nineteen eighty and joins the navy. Okay,
Speaker 5: so remember how he loved pranks and such.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I didn't for I forget that.
Speaker 3: Please don't ever forget that. Well, he escalated.
Speaker 2: Good for him.
Speaker 5: He thought he'd make a funny and he put an
Speaker 5: explosive what I'm guessing is like an M eight firecrack probably,
Speaker 5: and did the tailpipe of a car. Oh and choice
Speaker 5: a car belonging to a member of the Deep State.
Speaker 5: It belonged to the manager of a Burger King.
Speaker 2: It's not the deep State, It's not No oh no Kings, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: No Burger Kings.
Speaker 3: I thought the Burger King like controlled everything.
Speaker 2: No, no, you're thinking across Junior.
Speaker 5: Well have it your way, Okay, Well it totaled the
Speaker 5: car really, yeah, blew it right up?
Speaker 3: Oops, This is.
Speaker 2: Like I was gonna say, that's the danger, that's the
Speaker 2: danger of it. You put it in a combustion across.
Speaker 3: A burger king manager.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and like track you down.
Speaker 3: Oh, black helicopters over your house and they.
Speaker 2: You're still going with the deep state.
Speaker 3: I'm wedded.
Speaker 2: It's more fun.
Speaker 3: Like you'll hear a click on the phone line. What
Speaker 3: was that when you're talking?
Speaker 2: You heard me, mister Hoover. You're gonna go through with it?
Speaker 3: Your friend on the other one, what are you talking about? Now?
Speaker 2: Heard? Do you heard that? Right?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: So it's behind us in the car.
Speaker 5: It's just before the Beverly Hills cop banana and the
Speaker 5: tailpipe thing of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's pretty trailblazing Maverick.
Speaker 2: And also he didn't do the thing where you back
Speaker 2: up the exhaust which then caused the car to bog
Speaker 2: and do that. No, he blew up the gas.
Speaker 3: The interior of it. Yeah. So the stunt got him attention,
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
Speaker 2: I bet it did.
Speaker 5: He got arrested kind of attention. He got charged with arson,
Speaker 5: criminal mischief and explosives possession. And the explosive charge is
Speaker 5: what they went with, and that earned him sixty days
Speaker 5: behind bars and then probation.
Speaker 2: Something he did a British accent, not an Irish accent.
Speaker 2: They'd be going.
Speaker 3: A little iron cable, honey. Yeah. Needless to say, he
Speaker 3: got kicked out of the Navy. I bet they didn't
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: They wanted to have you do their ordinances, not your
Speaker 2: own exactly.
Speaker 5: But in July of nineteen eighty two, he violated his probation.
Speaker 5: I don't know how, Like maybe he didn't check in
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 2: Maybe voted, could be.
Speaker 3: Either way. They he went into a Burger King. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the Burger King spies like someone lowered their newspaper,
Speaker 3: like spoken to an earpiece.
Speaker 2: We got him. I love your commitment to the pit
Speaker 2: condors on the move.
Speaker 5: All right, So they revised the agreement. Now he had
Speaker 5: to meet weekly with his probation officer. Plus he had
Speaker 5: to go to college.
Speaker 2: That was the punishment. Yeah, I guess we're going to
Speaker 2: make a good man out of you.
Speaker 5: So but January the next year, Charles is totally not
Speaker 5: having it. He went out and he got a passport expedited.
Speaker 5: He threw some clothes in a suitcase, grabbed his other
Speaker 5: ID stuff like his driver's license, bur certificet all that
Speaker 5: sort of the real ones, the real ones. And he
Speaker 5: bought a one way ticket out of the United States. Okay,
Speaker 5: it's like probation is one thing, but forcing him to
Speaker 5: go to community college to better himself was a.
Speaker 3: Bridge too far.
Speaker 2: I ain't cracking no books.
Speaker 3: He didn't tell his family that he was on the run. No,
Speaker 3: he told him he got a job.
Speaker 2: Oh he did tell them something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, I got a tech job. Guys. So
Speaker 3: I mean it's eighty two and it's like the beginning
Speaker 3: of like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, howay for so we were not aware of like
Speaker 2: you know, Apple, And.
Speaker 5: He's like, so it's a tech job, but it's it's
Speaker 5: overseas by and so they bought it because they'd hear
Speaker 5: from him. They'd get postcards from him from like these
Speaker 5: far flung places across the globe, like, oh, my job's great,
Speaker 5: I'm loving life. He reached out to them from Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt,
Speaker 5: South Africa, Japan, and of course his favorite place, the
Speaker 5: United Kingdom. Wait, did he really legitimately went to these places?
Speaker 5: He just traveled the world. Sometimes he sent pictures to
Speaker 5: his mom, like she's trying to process the whole thing,
Speaker 5: like her family was sort of disintegrating in her hands
Speaker 5: at this point.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet you still got younger kids.
Speaker 5: Got younger kids, Yeah, because he's the old of the kids.
Speaker 5: She later told ABC News, quote, I know he was
Speaker 5: upset about the divorce between his father and I. That
Speaker 5: upset him quite a bit, and I think he wanted
Speaker 5: to get away from it. From Israel, Germany, some of
Speaker 5: the English countryside. We always wait for him to send
Speaker 5: the pictures and we would always.
Speaker 3: Look at them. Sweet, she's so sweet.
Speaker 2: Do you think he was like, you know, on like ships,
Speaker 2: like working his way.
Speaker 3: Around It could be, it could be. We will never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: But then one day his.
Speaker 5: Mom gets his little package, not photos, not a postcard,
Speaker 5: just as Lost magazine put it, Charles's quote passport, birth certificate,
Speaker 5: social security card, driver's license, Disney World ID, and every
Speaker 5: other known piece of documentation proving the existence of Charles
Speaker 5: Albert Stopford II. And after that the postcard stopped coming.
Speaker 2: Did he have any letter explaining what he was doing?
Speaker 2: Otherwise that's like, did he join the French Foreign Legion?
Speaker 2: Was he abducted? What happened?
Speaker 4: Was it?
Speaker 2: The King of Burger was it the king.
Speaker 5: So nothing by post after that, like, no tales of
Speaker 5: cool adventures. But then in nineteen eighty six he did
Speaker 5: something more than right.
Speaker 2: He called good for him.
Speaker 3: You wanted to put you and.
Speaker 5: You wanted to let his family know I'm okay, I'm
Speaker 5: actually married. He told them he and his wife are
Speaker 5: expecting a child, a daughter. Good for and think Also
Speaker 5: he'd changed his name, so his brother, Wesley Stopford later said,
Speaker 5: we didn't think anything of it at the time.
Speaker 3: People do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people changed their names. Vice brother changed any like
Speaker 2: three four times.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: So you know who's to say his name now? Was
Speaker 5: Christopher Buckingham.
Speaker 2: Wow, bro, you can't name yourself after the palace he.
Speaker 3: Called.
Speaker 2: It's like a Disney name. That's like a name for
Speaker 2: a cartoon character.
Speaker 3: He called his family in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 5: But it was actually three years earlier that he'd done
Speaker 5: the whole name change thing. It was right after he
Speaker 5: got to England. He was done trot the globe. He
Speaker 5: wanted to settle down in what he thought of as
Speaker 5: his like spiritual home.
Speaker 2: Sure I feel that, yeah, So.
Speaker 5: He went to the government archive and started searching and
Speaker 5: I'm sure you know where this is going. It's a
Speaker 5: classic identity theft move. He scanned through birth and death
Speaker 5: records and he was looking specifically for a boy child
Speaker 5: who died, as he would later put it at zero,
Speaker 5: died at zero.
Speaker 2: I'm just supposed to do it before they get a
Speaker 2: Social Security card, are the equivalent, and he needed to.
Speaker 5: Get the birth certificate of a boy who died in
Speaker 5: infancy so he could assume that identity. He found a
Speaker 5: bunch of kids in the right age range with the
Speaker 5: name Christopher Buckingham.
Speaker 2: It totally works. I know people have done that, and
Speaker 2: he liked.
Speaker 5: The name, so he picked one of the Christopher Buckingham,
Speaker 5: specifically Christopher Edward Buckingham.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, so that.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't laugh. But my mother once dated a guy
Speaker 2: named Buckingham. She used to tease me my parents got divorced.
Speaker 2: You're lucky you almost were Zaron Buckingham. I'm like, you
Speaker 2: would not have named he after the other guy.
Speaker 3: And then Jimmy Buckingham Christopher Buckingh so weird right now.
Speaker 5: The real Christopher Edward Buckingham was born on December twenty.
Speaker 3: Fourth, nineteen sixty two, and like Christmas baby, Yeah, he.
Speaker 5: Died about six months later, while on vacation with his parents.
Speaker 2: You know, Christopher means a gift of Christ, like they
Speaker 2: really win.
Speaker 5: Well, that's probably why they went with it, Edward and Audrey,
Speaker 5: his parents, which is, it's so tragic to lose this
Speaker 5: infant on vacation like beyond and the woo woo in
Speaker 5: me thinks that the worst mojo of all is to
Speaker 5: play around with something like that, to take that name.
Speaker 5: But whatever, that's just me. Anyway, he put.
Speaker 2: In, is there any child passing away that you would
Speaker 2: think you could take their name? It wouldn't pass on
Speaker 2: some bad woo woo? No, okay, don't do that, So
Speaker 2: no name changes for you?
Speaker 3: Then none.
Speaker 5: No, I'm dying with the one I got. So he
Speaker 5: put in a request for the birth certificate. A week
Speaker 5: later it's his and now he just had to get
Speaker 5: the rest of the pieces in place. He applied for
Speaker 5: a national insurance number SMART and a driver's license and
Speaker 5: then a passport at all. It took him like eight months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want.
Speaker 5: To yeah, and he later told Lost magazine quote, I
Speaker 5: relied on the inconsistencies in the system.
Speaker 3: I just filled in the forms and sent them through
Speaker 3: the post, so just you know, plain as day.
Speaker 5: And so it was that on June twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty three, Charles Stopford the Third ceased to exist and
Speaker 5: was reborn as Christopher Buckingham. Let's take a break for
Speaker 5: some ads, and when we return, we're going to find
Speaker 5: out what life has in store for.
Speaker 3: Chris Zarin, Elizabeth, welcome, welcome back.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I was just enjoying some burger king.
Speaker 3: You stopped.
Speaker 2: You're making me where to get the burgers. You play
Speaker 2: a deep state.
Speaker 3: Put the wrapper outs in the garbage before I say
Speaker 3: anything for there. So it's all it's got. It's wired,
Speaker 3: and nano robots in the milkshakes. It's crazy. Sure, I'm
Speaker 3: sure they do. It's anyway.
Speaker 5: So Charles Stopford he became Christopher Buckingham. So long Orlando. Hello,
Speaker 5: Southern Bavaria. Yeah, Buckingham. He didn't use his new English
Speaker 5: identity to stay in England.
Speaker 3: Smart, he got a job in Germany.
Speaker 2: That's really smart, actually.
Speaker 5: And when I first read Southern Bavaria, I thought it
Speaker 5: said Southern Belgravia, and I like, hadn't heard such a
Speaker 5: parsing of the posh London neighborhood before.
Speaker 3: But what do I know?
Speaker 5: And it turns out very little. But it also turns
Speaker 5: out that he was in southern Bavaria, Germany.
Speaker 2: That's a really smart move because they're going to have
Speaker 2: even harder levels of trying to check. I mean, that's wowed.
Speaker 3: He got a job at a dish on this show.
Speaker 5: Well, he got a job as a dishwasher in a
Speaker 5: cafe at like a tourist resort, and that's where.
Speaker 3: He met a lovely young Canadian who was also working there.
Speaker 3: Jody Doe. That's her real name.
Speaker 5: It's not like you know, sometimes they run out of
Speaker 5: Jane Doe's and they just, you know, unidentified bodies.
Speaker 3: No, that's her name.
Speaker 5: So he told all sorts of tall tales about his life,
Speaker 5: inventing a backstory as he went. He said that he
Speaker 5: was originally from England. I mean, that's the accent of
Speaker 5: his dad was a diplomat, he said. Tragically, both of
Speaker 5: his parents had died in the plane crash in Egypt.
Speaker 2: When he was a boy.
Speaker 5: You can't meet them, Kenja in jaw So he can't.
Speaker 5: You can't ask him anything, you can't meet them. And
Speaker 5: you know what, he's.
Speaker 3: A citizen of the world.
Speaker 5: It's like, I've traveled all over which he had. He
Speaker 5: told her, A loner, a rebel. He told her that
Speaker 5: before this Bavarian dishwashing adventure, that he had lived on
Speaker 5: a kibbutz in Israel for a few months. So you know,
Speaker 5: she's sold. Soon enough, they're married, She's like, I love this.
Speaker 5: They stuck around Bavaria working at these various alpine hotels
Speaker 5: and resorts. You know, they kind of became townies.
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 5: In July of nineteen eighty six, their daughter Lindsay was
Speaker 5: born Lindsay Buckingham. I love that for her.
Speaker 3: She'll be someone's silver spring one day. So that was
Speaker 3: about the time that he last I.
Speaker 2: Mean they had to know, they had to know and
Speaker 2: kicking it in like eighty six, Lindsay Buckingham, why would
Speaker 2: you do that.
Speaker 3: To your daughter? So that was about the time that
Speaker 3: he last reached hilarious that.
Speaker 2: They didn't know and then they found out, Like when
Speaker 2: she's four or five and she's memorized her name, they're like.
Speaker 3: Who who Lee would what they it could be?
Speaker 2: I don't listen to that that commusic.
Speaker 3: They just listened to classical music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they don't know all about the about that bok.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he she gets she's born, and that's around
Speaker 5: the time that he calls his mom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was guessing.
Speaker 5: And so when the babies a year old, they moved
Speaker 5: to London and actually to like a grubby studio flat
Speaker 5: just outside London. London's crazy expensive and it was then too,
Speaker 5: Yeah it is big. Buckingham was doing his best to
Speaker 5: work his way up, so he got a job an
Speaker 5: it gig at Reuter's.
Speaker 2: He really isn't tech, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Guess he does like computers, and it was this solid job. Sure,
Speaker 5: and his wife gave birth to their son.
Speaker 2: Edward mcfleetwood.
Speaker 3: Edward mcfleetwood Buckingham.
Speaker 2: Edwards named it after farmer King's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but isn't that like yeah, he just sounds British.
Speaker 3: But I think that was also his fake middle name.
Speaker 2: Oh right, Yeah. Then they called him Teddy.
Speaker 3: Teddy Buckingham, Teddy Bucks.
Speaker 5: So he worked bucking He worked his way up through
Speaker 5: through Reuter's little by little, and he went from general
Speaker 5: it to like computer security. He just rose to ranks
Speaker 5: and he was finally able to buy a house for
Speaker 5: his family in Northampton, between London and Birmingham. Pretty much,
Speaker 5: and there they lived happily until nineteen ninety six. Things
Speaker 5: weren't were between Christopher and Jody, so they separated. Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: Jody had been growing.
Speaker 2: Packed out the trauma of his own child.
Speaker 5: Jody was suspicious of her husband, like he disappear for
Speaker 5: days at a time, and he was so secretive about
Speaker 5: his life before they met. He didn't have any keepsakes
Speaker 5: or mementos, nothing, nothing, and he didn't like to talk
Speaker 5: about his past or offer specific so she started digging.
Speaker 5: So first she put an ad in the Times of London,
Speaker 5: which is like, you're hoping he doesn't see it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: She detailed her husband's basic biographical details and asked for
Speaker 5: any further information anyone might have. That's bold, but maybe
Speaker 5: she's like, I know he doesn't read, he.
Speaker 2: Doesn't awsapuy, I do respect like you. She wants answers.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do exactly.
Speaker 5: So then she reached out to the UK Home Office
Speaker 5: because she's like, I want to know information about his
Speaker 5: dad's diplomatic career. And then she contacts the Egyptian embassy.
Speaker 2: Oh no, she went to consulates, yes, and.
Speaker 5: She's like, I'll want all the information available about this
Speaker 5: plane crash that claimed this these people's lives. She contacted
Speaker 5: the schools he said he went to. He said he
Speaker 5: went to Harrow and Cambridge and like, can I get
Speaker 5: the student records? And they're like, I don't have anything.
Speaker 2: So then would you have gone this far?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah? If I'm starting against this is the beginning.
Speaker 2: It's the she.
Speaker 3: Has to listen to the animal brain telling her. She
Speaker 3: goes to the local cop and it's like, can you
Speaker 3: run a background check on my husband? Uh? And they're
Speaker 3: like they run it.
Speaker 5: No secret crimes, no hidden side family, no creeping dead,
Speaker 5: there's nothing.
Speaker 3: It's the problem.
Speaker 5: He didn't exist on paper prior to nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 5: so there's no records of anything. Jody's just said a loss.
Speaker 5: So it's not like there are records that disprove anything.
Speaker 3: There's just nothing nothing.
Speaker 2: Do you think that part of her thought that maybe
Speaker 2: he was like from some fabulously wealthy family and he
Speaker 2: just didn't want anyone to find out.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you think she was just suspicious in the negative?
Speaker 5: I probably just suspicious in the negative. I feel like
Speaker 5: he didn't feed her enough breadcrumbs to make her suspicious
Speaker 5: in the positive in that sense.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean having a father is an ambassador in England,
Speaker 2: that's just like, oh you come from landed stuff always
Speaker 2: that may be connected to the true Well, so you.
Speaker 3: Know, she it could have been, it could have been.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure she's think about getting divorced.
Speaker 2: Maybe she's like, before I divorce, before I do that.
Speaker 5: So the divorce gets finalized and then she just honestly
Speaker 5: gave up. She's like she stopped looking for more information.
Speaker 5: What's the point, you know, like good riddance to bad rubbish.
Speaker 5: So after the divorce, Buckingham moved to Switzerland and he
Speaker 5: was an executive now, so no ski cafe dishwashing gigs
Speaker 5: for him. No, he started a bunch of LLC's because
Speaker 5: that's what business guys did.
Speaker 3: Sure business thing.
Speaker 5: I've heard that they weren't passed through LLC's that were
Speaker 5: just for him. They were these like big companies at
Speaker 5: least on paper, and they were rife with corporate officers,
Speaker 5: so like men such as Richard James Thomas, David Allen, Thomas,
Speaker 5: David Robert Allen, first name, pul David Keene German Haunts,
Speaker 5: Peter Schmidt and a fellow named Alexei Romanoff.
Speaker 3: No relation.
Speaker 2: The guys were these guys, these fictitious sounding names.
Speaker 3: Great question, Dave. This will come as a major shock
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 5: They were all fake. Yeah, they didn't exist. They only
Speaker 5: existed in Buckingham's imagination. Well, okay, one was real. Paul
Speaker 5: David Keene.
Speaker 3: He was actually a friend of He was a fellow
Speaker 3: computer nerd. It'd been roommates at one time.
Speaker 5: And the other interesting thing about Paul David Keene was
Speaker 5: that he'd been dead for years at this point. So
Speaker 5: he's his dead friend's name. He loves that.
Speaker 3: In no way does he have the wo He's very like,
Speaker 3: you know, Mesopotamian of like this is our lives are over.
Speaker 5: That's it nothing, there's no Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a mess of it. I love that.
Speaker 5: So we got Buckingham divorce, living in Switzerland, starting all
Speaker 5: manner of fake companies.
Speaker 3: Why not go for broken, not like gild Lily. Why
Speaker 3: not take it to the next level?
Speaker 2: What is the next level?
Speaker 5: I love that question because I was going to ask
Speaker 5: the same thing. Bestowing upon himself the title of lord.
Speaker 5: He started calling himself Lord Buckingham.
Speaker 2: Of obe status.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 5: According to Lost magazine, he said quote he had acquired
Speaker 5: it through purchase of what he described as several small
Speaker 5: manorial properties scattered across England. At first it was a
Speaker 5: bit of a joke, he explained. I thought it would
Speaker 5: be a whot to start calling myself Lord Buckingham.
Speaker 3: But what I noticed was using the title you respect
Speaker 3: and the consideration that should be due.
Speaker 2: Lord Buckingham also sounds like some like dirty landed property
Speaker 2: owner who like party. But Ben Franklin in the Hell
Speaker 2: Fire Club.
Speaker 3: You know right, it's spot on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, here's the thing, and it's tied to the culture
Speaker 5: he loves so much. There was then, perhaps maybe not
Speaker 5: so much now, but still to a degree, a certain
Speaker 5: deference given to those with titles in England.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, there's this detective book series, the Inspector Linley novels,
Speaker 5: and they made him into a TV series that has
Speaker 5: since been rebooted. I haven't watched any of the Shower,
Speaker 5: but I started getting into the books a little while
Speaker 5: back because I ran out of Michael Connolly.
Speaker 3: Books to read.
Speaker 5: Anyway, the first few were good, but I had to
Speaker 5: stop because I felt like the female characters are basically
Speaker 5: like tortured in one way or another throughout their plot lives.
Speaker 5: It just was it felt like a little anti woman.
Speaker 5: It was a woman writer, but you know whatever, it
Speaker 5: was not a pleasant and it became a little too
Speaker 5: bleak for me, which is hard to imagine.
Speaker 3: But yeah, anyway, I wasn't feeling it.
Speaker 5: I've read Val mcdermodd is like, that's bleak Scottish mystery,
Speaker 5: right anyway, so your mileage mayverery and I may be
Speaker 5: off base anyway. Tomato tomato to each their own, come
Speaker 5: se comsa, how do you do? The Inspector Linley in
Speaker 5: the story is the eighth Earl of Asherton. He doesn't
Speaker 5: need to work.
Speaker 3: He just loves justice.
Speaker 5: He toodles around in like a classic sports car, and
Speaker 5: he wears bespoke suits, and his partner is like a
Speaker 5: tough talking east Ender lady and whatever and Yin and
Speaker 5: yang house to.
Speaker 2: The National Trust.
Speaker 5: He's like people, they don't have to they're not they're
Speaker 5: not suffering like that they have the palatial Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So in the books, when.
Speaker 5: People dismiss Linley thinking he's just some cop and can't
Speaker 5: tell him what to do, like sometimes he has to
Speaker 5: bust out who he really is, meaning his title and
Speaker 5: then they like peel over themselves and cowtown do whatever
Speaker 5: he wants. And I have issue with that mainly because
Speaker 5: I feel like his accent would give that away immediately.
Speaker 2: You would think he's putting on a fake as.
Speaker 3: I also felt like he didn't do it enough.
Speaker 5: He didn't smack him down, like some of these fools
Speaker 5: need to be taken down a notch, like do.
Speaker 3: You know who I am?
Speaker 2: Archy?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the reason I mentioned is that there's deference
Speaker 5: paid to the landed gentry, so titles.
Speaker 3: Get respect and like a lot of latitude, the.
Speaker 2: Whole thing about there are better there are.
Speaker 3: You can have weird behaviors, English eccentric.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you can lick a dog's face.
Speaker 5: You know they could, They would and they should. So
Speaker 5: it may have been like a hoot for Buckingham to
Speaker 5: call himself lord. But if you want to get away
Speaker 5: with like crimes or bad behavior, title game is a
Speaker 5: way to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah for real, you know. Now I'm thinking about it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, how do I get a time?
Speaker 5: But also it got me wondering about Buckingham's accent. So
Speaker 5: it was an Orlando homebrew accent exactly like cobbled together
Speaker 5: from Monty Python and Paul McCartney and like god knows.
Speaker 2: Who else he's probably doing Graham Chapman.
Speaker 5: I think he was the richest and oh yeah, so
Speaker 5: like in the US and basically anywhere else in the world,
Speaker 5: accents or regional, but they're also you know, class.
Speaker 2: In England by a huge factory.
Speaker 5: Well and in the South too, So I was very
Speaker 5: inspired by England. True, So I'm curious to know what
Speaker 5: accent he had and like how convincing it was. But
Speaker 5: he must have like honed it to a good degree
Speaker 5: as far as he did.
Speaker 2: Anyway, maybe it's watching a lot of PBS.
Speaker 3: Probably Mystery.
Speaker 2: House.
Speaker 3: So he started living.
Speaker 5: Like Lord Buckingham and acting like he knew so he
Speaker 5: got fine stationary with the Buckingham coat of arms. He
Speaker 5: rented an apartment in Germany and he explained to the
Speaker 5: owner that it wasn't for him. He was a lord,
Speaker 5: he had lots of money and property and things. He
Speaker 5: was renting the apartment as a place to store some
Speaker 5: of the furniture from his castle in England because like
Speaker 5: I guess the furniture was studying abroad I don't know,
Speaker 5: and needed an extent. Why would you put your furniture
Speaker 5: in a German apartment.
Speaker 2: Whatever, How would he say, it's for my guest, but
Speaker 2: you know that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's too simple either way.
Speaker 5: He was living his life as this English lord, bouncing
Speaker 5: between Switzerland and Germany. And in twenty and one he
Speaker 5: got a job not as a Scotland yard detective, but
Speaker 5: as an IT security consultant at an insurance company in Switzerland.
Speaker 5: And then the next year tragedy struck. He was on
Speaker 5: a road trip back from Northampton. I guess he went
Speaker 5: to see the kids. He was in France and he
Speaker 5: got rear ended and the collision shoved his car forward
Speaker 5: and he slammed into the brick wall of a toll booth.
Speaker 2: Horrible.
Speaker 5: So he got his skull crushed in the accident, and
Speaker 5: he went into a coma. For months, he's in his
Speaker 5: hospital in France, and then he was when he was
Speaker 5: awake and stable and able to be moved, they took
Speaker 5: him to a Swiss hospital and it was there that
Speaker 5: he started dating his nurse, the Swiss woman, Anita Keller.
Speaker 2: Like a lord.
Speaker 3: Now oh yeah. He also he.
Speaker 5: Pocketed like a good settlement as a result of the accident.
Speaker 5: So he recovered and continued his life as Lord Buckingham,
Speaker 5: now with a Swiss nurse on his arm, life going
Speaker 5: along swimmingly. He got some like mild after effects from
Speaker 5: the accident, but nothing that interfered with his day to
Speaker 5: day life. He was Lord Buckingham and while the accident
Speaker 5: was traumatic, it didn't stop him from driving back and
Speaker 5: forth to England occasionally, you know, easy enough.
Speaker 3: So he goes to What if.
Speaker 2: He was like one of those guys, you know, people
Speaker 2: have head wounds and then they get like the accent
Speaker 2: from somewhere else. What if he got an American accent
Speaker 2: back and he couldn't stop.
Speaker 3: Telling me incredible. So he's in Calais, Yeah, so he
Speaker 3: would like go to cala and France.
Speaker 5: He puts his car on the ferry, pops over to Dover,
Speaker 5: done that around the Motherland. Oh yeah, you've done it.
Speaker 2: I did on the what do you called the hovercraft? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's fun Hollercraft ferry.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. Well, and it was fun for him too,
Speaker 5: tootling around. But that changed for him on the afternoon
Speaker 5: of January fifteenth, two thousand and five. Zaren, let's take
Speaker 5: a break, Okay, I want ads and I want him
Speaker 5: now and when we come back, we'll talk about January fifteenth,
Speaker 5: two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: January fifteenth, two thousand Let's go there. Okay, let's close
Speaker 3: your eyes.
Speaker 2: Oh you did say that.
Speaker 3: I want you get up. Picture it.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon, January fifteenth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: You are Detective Constable David Sprigg, a police officer at
Speaker 5: the Port of Dover in England. You are the eyes
Speaker 5: and ears at this busy port. You're sitting at your
Speaker 5: desk listening to the latest hits on BBC one Radio,
Speaker 5: Girls Aloud, Robbie Williams, Destiny's Child, Green Day, Gwen Stefani
Speaker 5: and one tune you particularly like these days. You can
Speaker 5: do it by ice Cube featuring Mac ten and his toy.
Speaker 5: You often find yourself singing to yourself.
Speaker 3: You can do it.
Speaker 5: Put your back into it. That's your twenty first century.
Speaker 5: Keep calm and carry on, don't stop getting get it.
Speaker 3: It's so inspiring. Suddenly there's a knock at your door
Speaker 3: and reach over.
Speaker 5: And you switch off the radio and then you call out,
Speaker 5: come in. Two members of the UK Special Branch enter
Speaker 5: your office. Good blokes, they work here with you at
Speaker 5: the border station. Elite forces them. The tall one tells
Speaker 5: you that a passenger with a British passport checked in
Speaker 5: earlier that day at the port of Calais in France. Okay,
Speaker 5: he was boarding the car ferry headed this way. His
Speaker 5: information was plugged into the system and raised an alert.
Speaker 5: Seems the information on the passport matched an entry in
Speaker 5: the UK Register of Debts. Got a dead man coming
Speaker 5: through the Man Christopher Buckingham apparently died in infancy in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty three, four months shy of his first birthday.
Speaker 5: His passport had been flagged a couple of years back
Speaker 5: in a routine run of active passports against the records
Speaker 5: of births and deaths.
Speaker 3: It should have been revoked.
Speaker 5: Then, curious, you tell them you all know what this means,
Speaker 5: fake identity. The special branch fellows tell you that he
Speaker 5: boarded the ferry and would be arriving in Dover momentarily.
Speaker 3: Care to join us? They ask you.
Speaker 5: Grab your jacket and head out to the inspection point
Speaker 5: with the special branchers.
Speaker 3: You pull two port policemen aside and put him run
Speaker 3: down the car.
Speaker 5: The man the story they know to pull him aside
Speaker 5: as soon as he rolls off the boat, and that's
Speaker 5: what happens. You all see an aggressively nondescript white guy
Speaker 5: with brown hair cheerfully pull his car over to the
Speaker 5: inspection area. You watch as an officer speaks with the man.
Speaker 5: The man speaks and then nods, granting approval for the
Speaker 5: officer on the passenger side of the car to open
Speaker 5: the door and remove things from the front seat. He
Speaker 5: does so and walks the materials over to you. There's
Speaker 5: a Swiss driver's license, a ferry ticket in the name
Speaker 5: of Air Buckingham, a photocopy of his British passport, and
Speaker 5: a sheaf of blank letterhead emblazoned with a coat of
Speaker 5: arms above the phrase.
Speaker 3: From the office of Lord Buckingham. The officer tells you
Speaker 3: that the man says he's a member of the House
Speaker 3: of Lords. Seemed a little surprised to be stopped, but
Speaker 3: happy to help. The man said he hadn't attended a
Speaker 3: session of the House of Lords since moving to Switzer
Speaker 3: some years ago. You walk over to the computer positioned
Speaker 3: at a tall table beside you. You type away, searching
Speaker 3: for Lord Buckingham in the list of members of the
Speaker 3: House of Lords. Nothing.
Speaker 5: You open Google and tap tapped up. The tall guy
Speaker 5: from Special Branch asks you anything. You've got one hit
Speaker 5: on your search. You tell him that, well, what does
Speaker 5: it say, he asked you, It's a pedigreed cat. Bring
Speaker 5: him to my office, you tell the officers and head
Speaker 5: back to the building. Don't stop, get it, get it,
Speaker 5: You think to yourself, you can do it. Okay there
Speaker 5: when you or rather, Detective Constable Sprigg questioned Buckingham.
Speaker 3: He swore his passport wasn't a fake.
Speaker 5: Sprigg asked him all sorts of questions about his life
Speaker 5: is past, and Buckingham's answers.
Speaker 3: Were a mess. He couldn't nail down where he went
Speaker 3: to school, like you.
Speaker 5: Forgot right, No, but then he threw out some names,
Speaker 5: and but then you know, he couldn't remember like was
Speaker 5: he born at home or in a hospital.
Speaker 2: He was young.
Speaker 5: He said he got his title because he owned or
Speaker 5: inherited four manorial manorial titles. Yeah, but he couldn't name
Speaker 5: them all his title and he was just vague about everything.
Speaker 5: He had a German passport, which he said was because
Speaker 5: of his mom's ancestry. And then he said that the
Speaker 5: Swiss wanted to give him citizenship because of his quote
Speaker 5: special skills in computer security. He told Sprigg that he
Speaker 5: had just hadn't gotten around applying for it yet, you know,
Speaker 5: just like these little fun facts. And then he told
Speaker 5: the story that he had given lots of people His
Speaker 5: dad was a diplomat in Egypt. Parents died in a
Speaker 5: plane crash in Egypt when he was a teen, like, sure, Jan.
Speaker 3: Spriggs, like, you are full of it.
Speaker 5: And upon investigation the story totally fell apart. So he
Speaker 5: got charged with using false information to obtain a passport
Speaker 5: and they he got out on bail on one condition.
Speaker 5: He had to come back the next week for further questioning,
Speaker 5: sure said, and then he left ye during that week
Speaker 5: the investigation continued, So the Special Branch sent that Lord
Speaker 5: Buckingham letterhead over to the Royal College of Arms, which
Speaker 5: is the official record keeper of all the British childry.
Speaker 5: So they took a look at it, and they determined
Speaker 5: that the title Lord Buckingham belonged to an extinct lineage,
Speaker 5: and in fact it died out with the second Duke
Speaker 5: of Buckingham in sixteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: Long lost son.
Speaker 5: So sprigu he went about trying to track down all
Speaker 5: of the school records at least and come to find
Speaker 5: out that the school that he said he went to
Speaker 5: didn't exist. And then he reached out to the Home Office.
Speaker 5: Was Buckingham's dad a diplomat? Did he die in a
Speaker 5: plane crash? And they're like, well, the dad didn't exist
Speaker 5: and neither did the plane crash. So everything's bogus. And
Speaker 5: now this guy is cut loose and he's out there
Speaker 5: doing you know, who knows what's Lord Buckingham knows what,
Speaker 5: but it was he wasn't Lord Buckingham.
Speaker 3: There is no Lord Buckingham. So who is this character?
Speaker 5: And would he come back like he promised to or
Speaker 5: he figured out a way to weasel out of the
Speaker 5: country and onto the continent. Surprise, Buckingham actually came back
Speaker 5: the next week.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, did he think he was gonna be able
Speaker 2: to smooz infinatly?
Speaker 5: I think he felt like, you know, I can keep
Speaker 5: up this ruse. Sprigg laid everything out, all the lies,
Speaker 5: all the missing information. Buckingham's only response, no comment, and
Speaker 5: with that he's arrested again. But then he's out on bail.
Speaker 3: The next day.
Speaker 5: Once again, he went to court in October of two
Speaker 5: thousand and five, and they charged him with that lying
Speaker 5: to obtain a passport. He asked the judge if he
Speaker 5: could be allowed to go to Switzerland because that's where
Speaker 5: he had a safety deposit box, and in the box
Speaker 5: was all the proof anyone would ever need to understand
Speaker 5: and believe that he was one hundred percent Christopher Edward Buckingham.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna trust the internet or your lying eye?
Speaker 5: Well, the court just couldn't send someone to retrieve it, because,
Speaker 5: you know, Buckingham like high tech guy.
Speaker 3: Right, high tech high high tech.
Speaker 5: Scooter computer got to get into the box, you scan
Speaker 5: your thumb print.
Speaker 3: No, right had to be him. And the judge was like, hm,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. No, you cannot go.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that.
Speaker 5: And so Buckingham's like, all right, fine, I'm guilty. Like
Speaker 5: the judge called his bluff, Buckingham pleads guilty, which cracks
Speaker 5: me up.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 5: Fine, you know, I give up. He's supposed to be
Speaker 5: sentenced in the next month. He's facing two years in
Speaker 5: the clink, but after that he'd be free and could
Speaker 5: still call himself Christopher Buckingham. They the idea, yeah, which
Speaker 5: seems absolutely.
Speaker 3: Nuts to me.
Speaker 2: That does seem nuts to me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Whatever, So Sprig, he's about to retire. And instead of
Speaker 5: saying like I'm too old for this.
Speaker 2: Ish that's like keeping the proceeds of your criminal or
Speaker 2: your crime, you know what I mean, Like you don't
Speaker 2: get to keep the proceeds crime. He's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got to keep my life.
Speaker 3: He to be this little boy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Sprig's about to retire.
Speaker 3: You know what he does, He puts his back into it.
Speaker 5: Oh, he wanted one last score in the anti crime way.
Speaker 5: And he knew in his bones that Buckingham was hiding
Speaker 5: something big and he had a limited amount of time
Speaker 5: to uncover it. So we got to work. So the
Speaker 5: cops released Buckingham's mugshot to the press and social media,
Speaker 5: and they asked the public for help in identifying this man.
Speaker 5: Tons of people called in, they wrote, and they were
Speaker 5: all dead ends or just garbage, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's you know Jason Bourne.
Speaker 2: Like I was having an affair with him from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight to nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3: He is the head of the Burger King cartel.
Speaker 5: I've said too much, Like, so I'm telling you too,
Speaker 5: Buckingham is so nondescript, like he's like a sample identic
Speaker 5: kit drawing, like he's you. Yeah, so it looks like
Speaker 5: anybody The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Mail Sunday edition
Speaker 5: sent reporters to Buckingham's neighborhood, and one of them convinced
Speaker 5: a neighbor who had an emergency key for Buckingham's place
Speaker 5: to hand it over so they could poke around. Remember
Speaker 5: this is the era of like hacking voicemails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, care like Pierce Morgan's going to.
Speaker 3: Hack you, right, right?
Speaker 5: So anyway, they found a quote, a brass bed, a television,
Speaker 5: and a wooden table. There was a box of unused
Speaker 5: fireworks in the kitchen, along with two chemical containers contents unknown.
Speaker 5: Resting on the television was a pistol, a non firing
Speaker 5: replica of the Walter P ninety nine made famous by
Speaker 5: James Bond.
Speaker 3: H The Burger King planted the fireworks.
Speaker 2: So I guess once you're like hacking royalty, Like what
Speaker 2: do they care about going into a lord's house?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, no, exactly, good call. And it was a
Speaker 5: mess up in there. And I don't mean just like untidy.
Speaker 5: I mean he owned the place, but it was in foreclosure.
Speaker 5: So he started just trashing it, like breaking things really,
Speaker 5: which is such a weird thing that people do, Like
Speaker 5: I've never got Yeah, yeah, I found a friend of
Speaker 5: mine bought a house in foreclosure and they like ripped
Speaker 5: out the toilets, like pulled sinks from the wall.
Speaker 2: You know, when I used to I used to be
Speaker 2: a house panter for a very long time. We usipate
Speaker 2: industrial stuff. So I once painted in La this church
Speaker 2: that was in the valley right, but it was like
Speaker 2: the kind of church that they also have like an
Speaker 2: attached like school area and a multipurpose room and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other stuff that isn't the church. And as
Speaker 2: we were painting, they're paying us to paint it, they're
Speaker 2: over there taking the light fixtures out, the door handles
Speaker 2: off the doors, anything that they could harvest from this
Speaker 2: place that they were renting, they took. They took everything.
Speaker 2: We couldn't believe. We're just standing there like we actually
Speaker 2: ended up calling the landlord because we're like this, this
Speaker 2: is not right. We're witnesses to a crime. They're gonna
Speaker 2: they're gonna say something like, why didn't you call anyone.
Speaker 2: We're like, we didn't think of it. I mean they
Speaker 2: were out there. They were taking the baseboard off the walls.
Speaker 3: You're kidding, just.
Speaker 2: Popping it off, like we can put this somewhere else.
Speaker 2: It was nuts to see. Yeah, and it was the
Speaker 2: bass player from corn Wait. It was his church, not
Speaker 2: like he didn't own it, but he was a member.
Speaker 2: So there's all these pictures of him like all around
Speaker 2: like big, like you know, cardboard cutouts. Yeah. So he
Speaker 2: was there and the church exactly like you could like
Speaker 2: pose next to him in the church. Yeah. They had
Speaker 2: like they had like movies on YouTube. They were like
Speaker 2: cartoons for kids and stuf. They were like a hustle.
Speaker 3: It was a big thing. Okay, wow, I'm still trying
Speaker 3: to process this.
Speaker 2: The part for me was the popping the baseboard off,
Speaker 2: I mean the light bulbs and that was one thing,
Speaker 2: and the fixtures was another thing. The door handles was wild,
Speaker 2: but the baseboard is okay, you did not put that
Speaker 2: out exactly.
Speaker 5: So Buckingham, this world, Buckingham sentencing is approaching and there's
Speaker 5: no leads. And on November eighth, two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: he got sentenced to twenty one months in prison. And
Speaker 5: he was also at this point still refusing to divulge
Speaker 5: his true identity, and a few months later he won
Speaker 5: an appeal and his prison sentence was brought.
Speaker 3: Down to time served.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: I don't know out he went, but where he was stateless,
Speaker 5: no real identity, and so he was remanded into the
Speaker 5: custody of UK immigration authorities. They thought better of this whole. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you can still be Christopher.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you're allow that. No, So I
Speaker 2: mean I'm rooting for the guy.
Speaker 5: But still a few months later, though, there was a break.
Speaker 5: Lindsey bucking was at the center of this. And I'm
Speaker 5: not talking about the Fleetwood macuitarist.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about his daughter.
Speaker 5: She got an email from a guy named Kevin Stopford.
Speaker 5: According to Lost magazine quote, the subject line read your
Speaker 5: father I know him. Attached was a full color family
Speaker 5: photograph showing a younger version of her father, blonde and tan,
Speaker 5: surrounded by brothers and sisters. Kevin Stopford also emailed officers
Speaker 5: at the Frontier Crime Unit, insisting that he knew Buckingham's
Speaker 5: real name. The person who claims to be Christopher Edward
Speaker 5: Buckingham is known to me as Charles Albert Stopford. His
Speaker 5: current alias has been known to my mother for many
Speaker 5: years and more recently to my brothers and sisters. So
Speaker 5: she didn't tell anyone about the phone call. The mom
Speaker 5: yeah it's her baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, according to NBC News quote, over the years, family
Speaker 5: members in Florida had searched for their brother using his name,
Speaker 5: but recently one did an Internet search using the name
Speaker 5: Buckingham and spotted a story in the London Times about
Speaker 5: a jailed man in England calling himself Lord Buckingham. They
Speaker 5: got in touch with British authorities, so you can imagine
Speaker 5: they're just like, what has ever happened to him?
Speaker 2: Like let me.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: The moms like, well, okay, a little something funny, like
Speaker 5: I don't know, twenty something years ago, got a call.
Speaker 2: I should have told you guys this, but yeah.
Speaker 5: So Lindsay told Cosmo that she was shocked that to
Speaker 5: hear that her dad was American, because he was always
Speaker 5: just like ripping on Americans and calling him quote stupid, brash,
Speaker 5: loud idiots.
Speaker 3: That's why he left, I guess.
Speaker 5: His philandering father told the Guardian newspaper quote, Charles always
Speaker 5: had an obsession with the English, maybe because he knew
Speaker 5: that my ancestry is English.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all about you, dude. Sure, the Brits they
Speaker 3: sent Buckingham's fingerprints to the US, and of course there
Speaker 3: was a hit.
Speaker 5: He's confirmed as Charles Stopford. And now they just had
Speaker 5: to deport him, and so he's Florida's problem. Again, this
Speaker 5: wasn't an immediate process. And so while waiting for that deportation,
Speaker 5: a bunch of his brothers and sisters headed over.
Speaker 3: The Pond to visit him in jail.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so I mean, imagine you don't know where
Speaker 5: your brother's been all these years, and you just have
Speaker 5: these like vague stories from the mom but then everything
Speaker 5: cuts off, you know, in eighty six.
Speaker 2: And I guess they probably still loved him in that
Speaker 2: way that they wanted to sure, And also it's just
Speaker 2: fun to go to.
Speaker 3: England and why not. So Jody, the ex wife, she
Speaker 3: got wind of this and called Buckingham to give him
Speaker 3: a heads up and he freaked.
Speaker 2: Out that thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: He told her that he had amnesia since the car
Speaker 5: accident in France and had no memories of his life
Speaker 5: before becoming Buckingham. And not just that, he also said
Speaker 5: he only kind of remembered being married to her and
Speaker 5: he had no idea who his kids were. So Jody
Speaker 5: pointed out, like, you know what, We've spoken to each
Speaker 5: other and seen each other kids included since the accident.
Speaker 3: And there was no amnesia then.
Speaker 5: And I don't know why she bothers like this guy lies,
Speaker 5: like he totally two one thousand and six, they put
Speaker 5: him on a flight to Orlando, him and a bunch
Speaker 5: of Disney heads, and according to the Orlando Sentral newspaper quote,
Speaker 5: upon his return, he hid an Orlando International Airports terminal,
Speaker 5: telling long estranged family members through a cell phone that
Speaker 5: he wouldn't greet them until members of the media left.
Speaker 5: Stopford's family left the airport without a reunion. So back
Speaker 5: on American soil. He did not want to be Charles Stopford.
Speaker 5: He wanted to be Christopher Buckings. He made people call
Speaker 5: him Christopher. He's like, that's my name, and he still
Speaker 5: used the English accent, which, to be fair, he did
Speaker 5: live there for decades, and so we probably couldn't shake
Speaker 5: it even if he wanted to.
Speaker 2: And he's been faking it for so long. He's been
Speaker 2: made it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so a reporter asked him why he did it, Like,
Speaker 5: why did you invent this new identity, and he's like,
Speaker 5: you know what, I have amnesia from an accident and
Speaker 5: I can't remember. He's loving that. It was just like
Speaker 5: just a lob to him. You can use this forever.
Speaker 5: So he got banned from travel to both the UK
Speaker 5: and Switzerland. WHOA, and once in the States, he acted
Speaker 5: like his UK family didn't exist, cut all contact. He
Speaker 5: did keep in touch with that Swiss nurse, Anita Keller
Speaker 5: Dad and then when asked about how Anita was handling
Speaker 5: all this, Buckingham told Lost Magazine quote, she really didn't
Speaker 5: pass any judgment. She was confused and a little upset,
Speaker 5: but in the end she said she didn't care. She
Speaker 5: always knew me as Christopher anyway, so there was no
Speaker 5: change for her.
Speaker 3: She just thinks it's.
Speaker 5: Good that I'm seeing my family finally and wants me
Speaker 5: to get back to Switzerland as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: Sir, I'd like to hear her side of the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: By fall of two thousand and seven, he managed to
Speaker 5: do just that. Like, despite the ban, he made his
Speaker 5: way to Zurich. Who knows, Lost Magazine laid it all
Speaker 5: out quote he had legally obtained a US passport in
Speaker 5: his adopted identity, but lied about his birthday on the application,
Speaker 5: writing in that of the real Christopher Buckingham rather than
Speaker 5: than his own. From there, he had simply boarded a
Speaker 5: plane and flown to Zurich. The Swiss raised no fuss
Speaker 5: at his return. He told them he'd been traveling abroad.
Speaker 5: They took him at his word, and just like that,
Speaker 5: he was back Swiss. Yeah, so for real. He moved
Speaker 5: in with Anita in the same place they'd lived before,
Speaker 5: got his old job back as the computer security consultant,
Speaker 5: went back to calling himself Lord Buckingham.
Speaker 3: Absolutely nothing had changed, and.
Speaker 5: I'll leave you with these bits from the Lost Magazine
Speaker 5: interview quote. Over the years, he had successfully passed himself
Speaker 5: off as a British aristocrat, Russian royalty and a German businessman,
Speaker 5: a retired Cold War spy, and even a dead man. However,
Speaker 5: when asked why he didn't use any of these after
Speaker 5: his arrest, he said, in the end, I'm not criminally
Speaker 5: minded for the intent of criminality, and I mean you
Speaker 5: have to face the music someday if the hunters ever
Speaker 5: got too close. Buckingham assured me he was prepared to
Speaker 5: disappear again. He was certain he would leave no traces.
Speaker 5: I have vanished many times. He told me, no one's
Speaker 5: sure where he is today or what he's up to,
Speaker 5: but I'm sure it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I'm met, Saron. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: This is one of the rare ones where the guy
Speaker 2: does a lot. He basically doesn't fake his death, but
Speaker 2: he just you know, assumes a new identity. And I
Speaker 2: kept thinking when you got to the LLC part that
Speaker 2: he was going to go for broken criminality and like
Speaker 2: a massive fortune of millions ill gotten gained, maybe rip
Speaker 2: off a charity or two, and it's like, nope, I
Speaker 2: just want to be a lord. Yeah. I mean, he's
Speaker 2: just like playing dress up, but at the criminal level
Speaker 2: of dress up. This is make believe to the level
Speaker 2: of you can go to prison for make belief.
Speaker 3: Sir, right, right, it's wild.
Speaker 2: So what's yours of Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Again?
Speaker 5: I don't that The whole psychology of this is just
Speaker 5: boggles my mind. You know, you can change your name
Speaker 5: legally and then you can just go around calling yourself
Speaker 5: this thing, and you know, but on your official records
Speaker 5: do I don't know. There are other ways to do
Speaker 5: this where you're not lying and.
Speaker 2: Realized I almost changed my name because my father and
Speaker 2: I have the same nameh were both writers that to
Speaker 2: make things easy on the internet. I was going to
Speaker 2: change my name and I told him that. He's like no,
Speaker 2: I was like, really, okay, then I guess I'm not going.
Speaker 3: To change my namesake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, I named you that for a reason,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, I did your work out
Speaker 2: of respect, I kept the name.
Speaker 3: You know what I think would top this off? Well,
Speaker 3: talk back?
Speaker 2: Oh those are always fun. Oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3: I went get.
Speaker 4: Hey, Saron and Elizabeth, I love, love, love your show.
Speaker 4: But one thing I just have to say, because it's
Speaker 4: frustrating me, is I don't know how you put up
Speaker 4: with it, Elizabeth. Every time you try to say anything,
Speaker 4: Saron's talking over you, and it gets frustrating for the listener.
Speaker 4: So no offense. Still love you, Take.
Speaker 2: Care I spoke too soon. They're not always that's good
Speaker 2: construct but honestly it did.
Speaker 5: Like, so this is a conversation, Like it's a conversation
Speaker 5: like when I'm telling a story, I have bullet point
Speaker 5: notes that I hit and maybe like the quotes are
Speaker 5: written out, but the rest of it is just us talking.
Speaker 2: We know each other really well, so it's yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Mean I can understand, like if it's difficult to listen to,
Speaker 5: it's not difficult for me.
Speaker 3: But you know, well, I'm.
Speaker 2: Glad you say that, and I do. By the way,
Speaker 2: I apologize for that tendency. I come from a family
Speaker 2: where people talk over each other and Elizabeth does not,
Speaker 2: and so she's gotten used to me doing it and
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily take offense to it because it's not meant
Speaker 2: other than just excitement, Like I can expect her to
Speaker 2: keep talking even though I'm talking. I'm sure as a
Speaker 2: listener that can be frustrating. So I apologize to listeners
Speaker 2: who that frustrates, and I am working on it. I
Speaker 2: constantly tell myself not to do it, but I get
Speaker 2: very excited talking to Elizabeth's why we have so much
Speaker 2: fun doing the show, and part of my excitement is
Speaker 2: to start talking or to finish the thought she's having
Speaker 2: with like the word of like I think I did
Speaker 2: it today with Heraldry, like oh yeah, Harold, because I
Speaker 2: was so excited. I'm like a kid, I'm like a puppy,
Speaker 2: and I can't help myself, so I.
Speaker 5: Do is appealing in that and that's why I think
Speaker 5: it doesn't bother me. But also you made a good point,
Speaker 5: is that there are families that talk over each other
Speaker 5: and families that don't. Yes, and your family is definitely
Speaker 5: a cross talk and like loud back and forth family.
Speaker 5: And I come from very mellow.
Speaker 2: You guys can speaking like I'm used to listening. If
Speaker 2: I don't have at least three people talking at once
Speaker 2: in a family function, it's like something is somewhat upset,
Speaker 2: like they and I'm really good at tracking three different
Speaker 2: conversations at the same time, which makes a lot of
Speaker 2: people really nervous, but it actually makes me feel calm.
Speaker 5: I have sometimes think it's like Also like your family
Speaker 5: is from.
Speaker 3: The East Coast, Yes, it's very much an easy in
Speaker 3: the coast.
Speaker 5: West Coast is where these like long time yeah, Blifornia
Speaker 5: open spaces.
Speaker 2: You don't need to shout. Also, you you come in
Speaker 2: sometimes the office before we do the show, and I
Speaker 2: will be listening to a radio show on my phone,
Speaker 2: i will be watching something about fantasy football on my computer,
Speaker 2: and I'll be talking like to somebody. I can have
Speaker 2: lots of conversations, so to me, they're just layers as
Speaker 2: opposed to like, there's one.
Speaker 3: Thing happening and I got to do the one thing.
Speaker 2: I can't I respect that.
Speaker 5: Or it's like when I'm driving and it gets crazy,
Speaker 5: I got to turn the radio off.
Speaker 2: You're like, I'm going to park turn the radio off.
Speaker 2: I know I've seen it, but again, I'm sorry, listeners.
Speaker 2: I am working on it though.
Speaker 5: But I do like the fact that we've got like
Speaker 5: good constructive criticism, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I feel like that.
Speaker 3: Not ripping in on us, but at the same time
Speaker 3: pointing out what what they like or don't like. I mean,
Speaker 3: let's not start that as a trend of everyone telling
Speaker 3: us what's because then we're all going to get the
Speaker 3: talk backs of Elizabeth doesn't know how to say words.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I'm better because I know I'm already messing.
Speaker 3: I'm a delicate flower. That's it for today.
Speaker 5: You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
Speaker 5: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on blue Sky and Instagram,
Speaker 5: and we're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can
Speaker 5: email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and
Speaker 5: as always, leave a talkback on the free iHeart app.
Speaker 5: Reach Out Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 5: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Lord Dave Cousten. The
Speaker 5: ninth Earl of Ice Cubington, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith.
Speaker 5: Research is by Dame Marisa Brown and Count Jabari Davis.
Speaker 5: The theme song is by Orlando Area Methodist Minister Thomas
Speaker 5: Lee and Orlando Area Burger King Day manager Travis Dutton.
Speaker 5: Host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guests Hare
Speaker 5: and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are
Speaker 5: Swiss LLC Freelance Executive Officer Ben Bollen and bavarian Ski
Speaker 5: instructor Noel Browns.
Speaker 3: Quime Say It One More Times.
Speaker 1: QUI Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.