You’ve likely heard some brief mention of Marcus Schrenker, a penny-ante Bernie Madoff, who tried for the spectacular getaway as his life of scheming and defrauding began to crumble around him.
With defrauded investors coming from one side and state investigators closing in on the other, Schrenker hatched the idea of faking his own death in a plane crash.
Flying from Indiana to Florida, he radioed in a distress call from his single engine plane, telling air traffic controllers a cockpit window had imploded leaving him bleeding profusely. He then donned his parachuted and jumped out of the plane at roughly 2500 ft. (Just jumping out of ten story building and being done with it is so passe.) Waiting for him not far from his landing zone was a motorcycle he’d prepositioned in the Alabama pine barrens.
The plan hit a fatal flaw when the military jets scrambled to intercept Schrenker’s plane noticed that there was no one flying it and that the door to the cockpit was open.
After a few days on the run, officers from the Gadsden County Sheriff’s office caught Schrenker tonight.
