Death Hoax Pilot Captured After Apparent Suicide Try

Accused swindler found in Florida campground with wrist slit
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 13, 2009 11:27 PM CST
Death Hoax Pilot Captured After Apparent Suicide Try
A storage unit where authorities believe missing Marcus Schrenker stored a red motorcycle he used to flee after parachuting out of an airplane is seen Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009, in Harpersville, Ala..    (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)

A businessman believed to have faked his own death by jumping out of a plane has been captured in Florida, the Northwest Florida Daily News reports. Law enforcement sources say Marcus Schrenker was found at a campground, alive but with his wrists slit. The fugitive had emailed a friend Monday night saying, "By the time you read this, I'll be gone."

Investigators believe that Schrenker abandoned his small plane mid-flight after making a phony distress call, parachuted into Alabama, and fled south on a motorbike he had stashed in a storage unit. Schrenker—accused of scamming investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in his native Indiana—has been hospitalized as authorities in Alabama and Florida work out what charges he will face.
(More fugitive stories.)

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