I'm amazed someone can be declared dead and then spend 25 years with a new identity without anyone smelling a rat. But that's what a Chicago man managed to do.Forty year old Arthur Jones vanished in May 1979 after being sacked as a commodities broker and struggling to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in gambling and other debts.
In 1986 he was pronounced dead, and his wife and children collected about $47,000 in benefits. They claim to have never heard from him since.
But Mr Jones, now 72, was tracked down last week in a Las Vegas bookmakers, where it seems he worked for a decade. He had been living with his girlfriend for 22 years. He was arrested and charged with crimes including fraud, burglary and identity theft.
He reportedly bought a fake identity for $800 under the name Joseph Richard Sandelli and has used it ever since. He was only found out after someone got suspicious about his Social Security number.
Apart from the sheer ruthlessness of abandoning his wife and children without a word and leaving them in a colossal financial mess (or so it's claimed), I wonder how on earth he avoided detection for so long. You'd have thought there would be something fishy about his new ID or his account of his life that would have raised a few doubts pretty quickly.
I guess it shows how easily we trust other people. We believe what they tell us - their name, their personal details, their life history. Why should we disbelieve them unless there's some obvious sign they're lying?
But it must have taken an astonishing acting ability. He must have adopted his new alias so completely, so seamlessly, that he never betrayed himself, never gave any clue he had a second identity. His wife and children, his previous job, his huge debts, all securely buried in a corner of his mind and never ever revealed. What perfect self-discipline!
When you think how hard it is to keep a secret, and how easily we blurt something out when we're not totally vigilant, or we're drunk, or we're under pressure, his impregnable silence is impressive.
PS: A further thought. Did he not love his wife and children? So how could he bear to leave them and never see them again? Wouldn't he have felt a terrible sense of loss and emptiness?
