Lord Buckingham, I Presume: Charles Stopford

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.

How are you doing? Pretty well? I had a good day to day he did. How about you? It was fun, exciting, I read some cool stuff.

I like that.

Anytime I can like air out my head in new facts, I'm always started.

Plus I love that for you.

How about you?

It was good day. It was nice and productive, and then they came here.

Sorry about that.

Now, this is the highlight of my day, my week, my life. Do you know what's ridiculous?

I do. We recentally lost Matthew Perry, the actor. Yeah, and before he passed, he wrote this memoir of his life. And there's one story in the memoir that I find ridiculous and in a very loving way.

Yeah.

So you ever wanted to steal a rock star's wife? Not personally Matthew Perry did. Oh god, yes he was, he was. I guess. He had the short lived sitcom with Valerie Burton Nelly. Oh right. The show was called Sydney.

Okay, I don't remember that.

Yeah, I was in nineteen ninety. It was a sick didn't last very long.

I wasn't born yet.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, he fell in love with her while they were filming that show, apparently, and she was married to Eddie van Halen of Van Halen fame, And in his memoir The Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, he has this story where he says, and I quote, I was obsessed with her and harbored elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie van Halen living out the rest of her days with me. I didn't stand a chance, of course.

Yeah.

Now, she never mentioned the incident ever again to anybody.

Well, and I'm sorry, but the kiss and tell aspect of that come on.

But then when the memoir was released, she did acknowledge on TikTok that yes she did have because I think at that point Eddy van Halen had passed. So it was like, Okay, I want her to like hoss of him, right, I know, but like trying to become a rock star's wife, it's just wild to me. He's like ten feet away. It's like a high school thing. It's just alwady. He's like and then you know fruit of the Vine, a little Oh god, there you go.

Ridiculous, Yes, Rpeter, two thirds of them. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?

Please?

I'm here for it, faking it until you're making it. Oh, this is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Oh, I know you heard that.

I totally heard it.

We've talked about a few dudes before. It never seems to be ladies who either faked their deaths or created new identities and started over as someone else.

Doesn't tend to be a thing that the ladies do.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they do, but.

They get away with It's why we're not talking about it yet this show.

And for some this whole thing is really tempting, you know, and for a smaller sum that temptation.

Is too strong to ignore. They do totally.

I'm fascinated by the psychology behind this. It's like, not when they're running away from debt.

Or justice, sure, that's just cowardice.

I'm talking about when they just want to be someone they aren't. Ah, you know, when they're so unhappy with their reality that they ditch it and create this like false reality in which to live the fake real.

So I have a Florida fred de Mara.

The guy who pretend to be a doctor.

Yeah, yeah, I mean that amount of time that he spent, he probably could have just like become a doctor medical. So I got this Florida man.

Okay, already starts killing.

He didn't want to be a Florida man's wild.

Yeah, he was a Florida man who wanted to be a Cambridge man, a landed man, a fancy lad of course. Zaren close Eyes I'm just kidding, no, Zaren, I want you to meet Charles Albert Stopford the third.

Is that his real name? Yeah, Charles, that's a Florida man.

Sounds like a proper English.

See why I was born in the wrong family.

Oh nay, old chuck. He was born in nineteen sixty two in Orlando, Florida. Wow with that.

Name his Yeah, His dad, Charles Albert Stopford Junior, was a Methodist minister. And there was a big old group of Stopfords, seven boys and two girls. They had a litter, Charles the third, he's the eldest.

So I know what their nighttime activities were.

So then there's this big family living in a house provided by the Methodist church in Orlando in the sixties.

Okay, what a time to be alive.

Seriously, Charles meant to be like church funded.

Sure, Charles feisty kid, super fisty. He was funny and like if a little off color sometimes, and he loved practical jokes. So you know that he went to like a joke shop aimed at tourists, and his awakening was getting one of those buzzers for your hand.

Yeah, the handshake to like shock people when you shake their hand. Problem had one of those, I know, I knew you did, I could, I could have guessed.

The problem with those is that they're primarily used by kids, uh huh, and like they have very few opportunities to shake hands with people, so they like they can't just sit and wait for it to happen, so they go around asking to shake everyone's hands, and then they got like this big disc in their palm.

It's super obvious ring around. Yeah.

Anyway, Charles the jokester so when he was in his teens also.

Get Slipping a Whooper kitschien under somebody is difficult because either the seat isn't the right height because you've put it there already, or he tried to just throw it in right at the last minute.

And then if they if they block the outlet, you.

Don't hear anything.

Yeah, exactly, but I'll tell you when it's when it's done right, beauty Chef's kiss, so good, Charles. He is a teen.

He stuck to my grandma's motto of act like you know, and he snuck onto a US military base.

Wow yeah because a teen.

Yeah, and he breezed his way into the officers club.

In fact, but people thought he was like an officer's son.

Well, no, I don't know.

He just he was so confidently behaved, and he was like, you know what, I'm supposed to be here?

How you doing a yes, sir.

Another time he dressed up as a fake DEA agent in seventies Orlando. Wow, he got a fake gun and everything, and then he went and shook down a local drug dealer and confiscated his cash.

For real, son of a preacher man.

Dude, that's the move. That's my kind of criminal, right there. See, no one cares if you're robbing drug dealers exactly.

So while all this tomfoolery is going on, Charles.

Was growing more and more enamored of the United Kingdom, oh well England to be precise.

Yeah, I figured.

So he had the.

Union jack flag aka the Butcher's apron on his bedroom wall, Like, was it the who the sex pistols who radicalized him?

Seriously?

Turns out it was the Beatles, Beatlemania strikes again, the Gateway Band and Monty Python.

Oh wow, he's of course, but the joking, Yes, I could see that.

So he'd hang out in his room and like listen to Beatles' albums, watch Monty Python sketches, just like soak up the Britannia of an all Britannia, and so much so that he practiced his English accent and honed it into something impressive.

Did you ever do that when you're a kid, No, you didn't. Do you ever practice any accents as a kid?

No?

Oh, My sister and I practiced all sorts of accents. Unfortunately though it was like, yeah, picking the wrong like model samulate, so like using like I don't know, the Dick van Dyke Mary Poppins British accent's.

Going to get you nowhere exact well, like his dad. His dad got a kick out of his accent. Oh r bad, and he joined in and they would like practice the accent together.

He plays on audience every Sunday, exactly. He's a performer exactly.

He showfolk.

So he got so Charles got so good at it that he would convince substitute teachers that he was English really, and he said, the reason he was at this Orlando school is because his dad was like this well regarded scientist on temporary loan to NASA.

It's a good story to tell.

I'd have worked the Disney angle, but that's just me, although I would guess then that people would be asking for like tickets, more questions. Yeah, exactly, So I take it back, I would not work the Orlando Disney.

A NASA sounds impressive without going can I get in right?

Right?

So that was Charles until he was sixteen, and then things changed for him. It was nineteen seventy eight and his preacher dad stepped out on his mom Ooh yeah, he actually ran off with a lady from the church.

Of course, where else do you think he's going to find people?

So he left his wife and kids high and dry, took off, left them in the parsonage, and took.

Off with the new guys.

Are you for real?

I'm totally for real. So since none of the remaining family members.

Your family, forgive me, I'm out.

None of the remaining family members were Methodist preachers, okay, so they got evicted from said parsonage. Of course, the church congregation took pity on them. They tried to like help get them on their feet, but like somebody God, Yeah, like how here's meet the deacon. The pain and the humiliation. So Charles he got a job for a little while.

At Disney World, this is the late seventies.

Yeah, late seventies, and he had that amazing English accent. Course, so he scored a gig in Epcot Center's United Kingdom pavilion.

Oh wow, good for him.

Then when he graduated, way to make it.

Work, get paid for that act.

That works exactly, exactly. Don't hide your light under a bushel. He graduates in nineteen eighty and joins the navy. Okay, so remember how he loved pranks and such.

Oh yeah, I didn't for I forget that.

Please don't ever forget that. Well, he escalated.

Good for him.

He thought he'd make a funny and he put an explosive what I'm guessing is like an M eight firecrack probably, and did the tailpipe of a car. Oh and choice a car belonging to a member of the Deep State. It belonged to the manager of a Burger King.

It's not the deep State, It's not No oh no Kings, Elizabeth, No Burger Kings.

I thought the Burger King like controlled everything.

No, no, you're thinking across Junior.

Well have it your way, Okay, Well it totaled the car really, yeah, blew it right up?

Oops, This is.

Like I was gonna say, that's the danger, that's the danger of it. You put it in a combustion across.

A burger king manager.

Oh yeah, and like track you down.

Oh, black helicopters over your house and they.

You're still going with the deep state.

I'm wedded.

It's more fun.

Like you'll hear a click on the phone line. What was that when you're talking?

You heard me, mister Hoover. You're gonna go through with it?

Your friend on the other one, what are you talking about? Now?

Heard? Do you heard that? Right?

All right?

So it's behind us in the car.

It's just before the Beverly Hills cop banana and the tailpipe thing of course.

Yeah, he's pretty trailblazing Maverick.

And also he didn't do the thing where you back up the exhaust which then caused the car to bog and do that. No, he blew up the gas.

The interior of it. Yeah. So the stunt got him attention, that's for sure.

I bet it did.

He got arrested kind of attention. He got charged with arson, criminal mischief and explosives possession. And the explosive charge is what they went with, and that earned him sixty days behind bars and then probation.

Something he did a British accent, not an Irish accent. They'd be going.

A little iron cable, honey. Yeah. Needless to say, he got kicked out of the Navy. I bet they didn't like that.

They wanted to have you do their ordinances, not your own exactly.

But in July of nineteen eighty two, he violated his probation. I don't know how, Like maybe he didn't check in or something.

Maybe voted, could be.

Either way. They he went into a Burger King. Yeah, and the Burger King spies like someone lowered their newspaper, like spoken to an earpiece.

We got him. I love your commitment to the pit condors on the move.

All right, So they revised the agreement. Now he had to meet weekly with his probation officer. Plus he had to go to college.

That was the punishment. Yeah, I guess we're going to make a good man out of you.

So but January the next year, Charles is totally not having it. He went out and he got a passport expedited. He threw some clothes in a suitcase, grabbed his other ID stuff like his driver's license, bur certificet all that sort of the real ones, the real ones. And he bought a one way ticket out of the United States. Okay, it's like probation is one thing, but forcing him to go to community college to better himself was a.

Bridge too far.

I ain't cracking no books.

He didn't tell his family that he was on the run. No, he told him he got a job.

Oh he did tell them something.

Yeah, He's like, I got a tech job. Guys. So I mean it's eighty two and it's like the beginning of like.

Yeah, howay for so we were not aware of like you know, Apple, And.

He's like, so it's a tech job, but it's it's overseas by and so they bought it because they'd hear from him. They'd get postcards from him from like these far flung places across the globe, like, oh, my job's great, I'm loving life. He reached out to them from Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, and of course his favorite place, the United Kingdom. Wait, did he really legitimately went to these places?

Oh, I bet you still got younger kids.

Got younger kids, Yeah, because he's the old of the kids. She later told ABC News, quote, I know he was upset about the divorce between his father and I. That upset him quite a bit, and I think he wanted to get away from it. From Israel, Germany, some of the English countryside. We always wait for him to send the pictures and we would always.

Look at them. Sweet, she's so sweet.

Do you think he was like, you know, on like ships, like working his way.

Around It could be, it could be. We will never know.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

But then one day his.

Mom gets his little package, not photos, not a postcard, just as Lost magazine put it, Charles's quote passport, birth certificate, social security card, driver's license, Disney World ID, and every other known piece of documentation proving the existence of Charles Albert Stopford II. And after that the postcard stopped coming.

Did he have any letter explaining what he was doing? Otherwise that's like, did he join the French Foreign Legion? Was he abducted? What happened?

Was it?

The King of Burger was it the king.

So nothing by post after that, like, no tales of cool adventures. But then in nineteen eighty six he did something more than right.

He called good for him.

You wanted to put you and.

You wanted to let his family know I'm okay, I'm actually married. He told them he and his wife are expecting a child, a daughter. Good for and think Also he'd changed his name, so his brother, Wesley Stopford later said, we didn't think anything of it at the time.

People do that.

Yeah, people changed their names. Vice brother changed any like three four times.

That's right.

So you know who's to say his name now? Was Christopher Buckingham.

Wow, bro, you can't name yourself after the palace he.

Called.

It's like a Disney name. That's like a name for a cartoon character.

He called his family in nineteen eighty six.

But it was actually three years earlier that he'd done the whole name change thing. It was right after he got to England. He was done trot the globe. He wanted to settle down in what he thought of as his like spiritual home.

Sure I feel that, yeah, So.

He went to the government archive and started searching and I'm sure you know where this is going. It's a classic identity theft move. He scanned through birth and death records and he was looking specifically for a boy child who died, as he would later put it at zero, died at zero.

I'm just supposed to do it before they get a Social Security card, are the equivalent, and he needed to.

Get the birth certificate of a boy who died in infancy so he could assume that identity. He found a bunch of kids in the right age range with the name Christopher Buckingham.

It totally works. I know people have done that, and he liked.

The name, so he picked one of the Christopher Buckingham, specifically Christopher Edward Buckingham.

Wow, yeah, so that.

I shouldn't laugh. But my mother once dated a guy named Buckingham. She used to tease me my parents got divorced. You're lucky you almost were Zaron Buckingham. I'm like, you would not have named he after the other guy.

And then Jimmy Buckingham Christopher Buckingh so weird right now.

The real Christopher Edward Buckingham was born on December twenty.

Fourth, nineteen sixty two, and like Christmas baby, Yeah, he.

Died about six months later, while on vacation with his parents.

You know, Christopher means a gift of Christ, like they really win.

Well, that's probably why they went with it, Edward and Audrey, his parents, which is, it's so tragic to lose this infant on vacation like beyond and the woo woo in me thinks that the worst mojo of all is to play around with something like that, to take that name. But whatever, that's just me. Anyway, he put.

In, is there any child passing away that you would think you could take their name? It wouldn't pass on some bad woo woo? No, okay, don't do that, So no name changes for you?

Then none.

No, I'm dying with the one I got. So he put in a request for the birth certificate. A week later it's his and now he just had to get the rest of the pieces in place. He applied for a national insurance number SMART and a driver's license and then a passport at all. It took him like eight months.

Yeah, I don't want.

To yeah, and he later told Lost magazine quote, I relied on the inconsistencies in the system.

I just filled in the forms and sent them through the post, so just you know, plain as day.

And so it was that on June twenty third, nineteen eighty three, Charles Stopford the Third ceased to exist and was reborn as Christopher Buckingham. Let's take a break for some ads, and when we return, we're going to find out what life has in store for.

Chris Zarin, Elizabeth, welcome, welcome back.

Thank you. I was just enjoying some burger king.

You stopped.

You're making me where to get the burgers. You play a deep state.

Put the wrapper outs in the garbage before I say anything for there. So it's all it's got. It's wired, and nano robots in the milkshakes. It's crazy. Sure, I'm sure they do. It's anyway.

So Charles Stopford he became Christopher Buckingham. So long Orlando. Hello, Southern Bavaria. Yeah, Buckingham. He didn't use his new English identity to stay in England.

Smart, he got a job in Germany.

That's really smart, actually.

And when I first read Southern Bavaria, I thought it said Southern Belgravia, and I like, hadn't heard such a parsing of the posh London neighborhood before.

But what do I know?

And it turns out very little. But it also turns out that he was in southern Bavaria, Germany.

That's a really smart move because they're going to have even harder levels of trying to check. I mean, that's wowed.

He got a job at a dish on this show.

Well, he got a job as a dishwasher in a cafe at like a tourist resort, and that's where.

He met a lovely young Canadian who was also working there. Jody Doe. That's her real name.

It's not like you know, sometimes they run out of Jane Doe's and they just, you know, unidentified bodies.

No, that's her name.

So he told all sorts of tall tales about his life, inventing a backstory as he went. He said that he was originally from England. I mean, that's the accent of his dad was a diplomat, he said. Tragically, both of his parents had died in the plane crash in Egypt.

When he was a boy.

You can't meet them, Kenja in jaw So he can't. You can't ask him anything, you can't meet them. And you know what, he's.

A citizen of the world.

It's like, I've traveled all over which he had. He told her, A loner, a rebel. He told her that before this Bavarian dishwashing adventure, that he had lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a few months. So you know, she's sold. Soon enough, they're married, She's like, I love this. They stuck around Bavaria working at these various alpine hotels and resorts. You know, they kind of became townies.

I suppose.

In July of nineteen eighty six, their daughter Lindsay was born Lindsay Buckingham. I love that for her.

She'll be someone's silver spring one day. So that was about the time that he last I.

Mean they had to know, they had to know and kicking it in like eighty six, Lindsay Buckingham, why would you do that.

To your daughter? So that was about the time that he last reached hilarious that.

They didn't know and then they found out, Like when she's four or five and she's memorized her name, they're like.

Who who Lee would what they it could be?

I don't listen to that that commusic.

They just listened to classical music.

Yeah, they they don't know all about the about that bok.

Yeah, so he she gets she's born, and that's around the time that he calls his mom.

Yeah, I was guessing.

And so when the babies a year old, they moved to London and actually to like a grubby studio flat just outside London. London's crazy expensive and it was then too, Yeah it is big. Buckingham was doing his best to work his way up, so he got a job an it gig at Reuter's.

He really isn't tech, yeah, I.

Guess he does like computers, and it was this solid job. Sure, and his wife gave birth to their son.

Edward mcfleetwood.

Edward mcfleetwood Buckingham.

Edwards named it after farmer King's.

Yeah, but isn't that like yeah, he just sounds British.

But I think that was also his fake middle name.

Oh right, Yeah. Then they called him Teddy.

Teddy Buckingham, Teddy Bucks.

So he worked bucking He worked his way up through through Reuter's little by little, and he went from general it to like computer security. He just rose to ranks and he was finally able to buy a house for his family in Northampton, between London and Birmingham. Pretty much, and there they lived happily until nineteen ninety six. Things weren't were between Christopher and Jody, so they separated. Oh yeah, Jody had been growing.

Packed out the trauma of his own child.

Jody was suspicious of her husband, like he disappear for days at a time, and he was so secretive about his life before they met. He didn't have any keepsakes or mementos, nothing, nothing, and he didn't like to talk about his past or offer specific so she started digging. So first she put an ad in the Times of London, which is like, you're hoping he doesn't see it.

I don't know.

She detailed her husband's basic biographical details and asked for any further information anyone might have. That's bold, but maybe she's like, I know he doesn't read, he.

Doesn't awsapuy, I do respect like you. She wants answers. I'm going to do exactly.

So then she reached out to the UK Home Office because she's like, I want to know information about his dad's diplomatic career. And then she contacts the Egyptian embassy.

Oh no, she went to consulates, yes, and.

She's like, I'll want all the information available about this plane crash that claimed this these people's lives. She contacted the schools he said he went to. He said he went to Harrow and Cambridge and like, can I get the student records? And they're like, I don't have anything.

So then would you have gone this far?

Oh?

Yeah? If I'm starting against this is the beginning.

It's the she.

Has to listen to the animal brain telling her. She goes to the local cop and it's like, can you run a background check on my husband? Uh? And they're like they run it.

No secret crimes, no hidden side family, no creeping dead, there's nothing.

It's the problem.

He didn't exist on paper prior to nineteen eighty three, so there's no records of anything. Jody's just said a loss. So it's not like there are records that disprove anything.

There's just nothing nothing.

Do you think that part of her thought that maybe he was like from some fabulously wealthy family and he just didn't want anyone to find out.

I don't know.

Do you think she was just suspicious in the negative?

I probably just suspicious in the negative. I feel like he didn't feed her enough breadcrumbs to make her suspicious in the positive in that sense.

Well, I mean having a father is an ambassador in England, that's just like, oh you come from landed stuff always that may be connected to the true Well, so you.

Know, she it could have been, it could have been.

You know, I'm not sure she's think about getting divorced. Maybe she's like, before I divorce, before I do that.

So the divorce gets finalized and then she just honestly gave up. She's like she stopped looking for more information. What's the point, you know, like good riddance to bad rubbish. So after the divorce, Buckingham moved to Switzerland and he was an executive now, so no ski cafe dishwashing gigs for him. No, he started a bunch of LLC's because that's what business guys did.

Sure business thing.

I've heard that they weren't passed through LLC's that were just for him. They were these like big companies at least on paper, and they were rife with corporate officers, so like men such as Richard James Thomas, David Allen, Thomas, David Robert Allen, first name, pul David Keene German Haunts, Peter Schmidt and a fellow named Alexei Romanoff.

No relation.

The guys were these guys, these fictitious sounding names.

Great question, Dave. This will come as a major shock to you.

They were all fake. Yeah, they didn't exist. They only existed in Buckingham's imagination. Well, okay, one was real. Paul David Keene.

He was actually a friend of He was a fellow computer nerd. It'd been roommates at one time.

And the other interesting thing about Paul David Keene was that he'd been dead for years at this point. So he's his dead friend's name. He loves that.

In no way does he have the wo He's very like, you know, Mesopotamian of like this is our lives are over.

That's it nothing, there's no Yeah.

It's a mess of it. I love that.

So we got Buckingham divorce, living in Switzerland, starting all manner of fake companies.

Why not go for broken, not like gild Lily. Why not take it to the next level?

What is the next level?

I love that question because I was going to ask the same thing. Bestowing upon himself the title of lord. He started calling himself Lord Buckingham.

Of obe status.

Huh.

According to Lost magazine, he said quote he had acquired it through purchase of what he described as several small manorial properties scattered across England. At first it was a bit of a joke, he explained. I thought it would be a whot to start calling myself Lord Buckingham.

But what I noticed was using the title you respect and the consideration that should be due.

Lord Buckingham also sounds like some like dirty landed property owner who like party. But Ben Franklin in the Hell Fire Club.

You know right, it's spot on.

Yeah, here's the thing, and it's tied to the culture he loves so much. There was then, perhaps maybe not so much now, but still to a degree, a certain deference given to those with titles in England.

Yeah.

Well, there's this detective book series, the Inspector Linley novels, and they made him into a TV series that has since been rebooted. I haven't watched any of the Shower, but I started getting into the books a little while back because I ran out of Michael Connolly.

Books to read.

Anyway, the first few were good, but I had to stop because I felt like the female characters are basically like tortured in one way or another throughout their plot lives. It just was it felt like a little anti woman. It was a woman writer, but you know whatever, it was not a pleasant and it became a little too bleak for me, which is hard to imagine.

But yeah, anyway, I wasn't feeling it.

I've read Val mcdermodd is like, that's bleak Scottish mystery, right anyway, so your mileage mayverery and I may be off base anyway. Tomato tomato to each their own, come se comsa, how do you do? The Inspector Linley in the story is the eighth Earl of Asherton. He doesn't need to work.

He just loves justice.

He toodles around in like a classic sports car, and he wears bespoke suits, and his partner is like a tough talking east Ender lady and whatever and Yin and yang house to.

The National Trust.

He's like people, they don't have to they're not they're not suffering like that they have the palatial Oh wow.

So in the books, when.

People dismiss Linley thinking he's just some cop and can't tell him what to do, like sometimes he has to bust out who he really is, meaning his title and then they like peel over themselves and cowtown do whatever he wants. And I have issue with that mainly because I feel like his accent would give that away immediately.

You would think he's putting on a fake as.

I also felt like he didn't do it enough.

He didn't smack him down, like some of these fools need to be taken down a notch, like do.

You know who I am?

Archy?

Yeah, And the reason I mentioned is that there's deference paid to the landed gentry, so titles.

Get respect and like a lot of latitude, the.

Whole thing about there are better there are.

You can have weird behaviors, English eccentric.

Oh yeah, you can lick a dog's face.

You know they could, They would and they should. So it may have been like a hoot for Buckingham to call himself lord. But if you want to get away with like crimes or bad behavior, title game is a way to go.

Yeah for real, you know. Now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, how do I get a time?

But also it got me wondering about Buckingham's accent. So it was an Orlando homebrew accent exactly like cobbled together from Monty Python and Paul McCartney and like god knows.

Who else he's probably doing Graham Chapman.

I think he was the richest and oh yeah, so like in the US and basically anywhere else in the world, accents or regional, but they're also you know, class.

In England by a huge factory.

Well and in the South too, So I was very inspired by England. True, So I'm curious to know what accent he had and like how convincing it was. But he must have like honed it to a good degree as far as he did.

Anyway, maybe it's watching a lot of PBS.

Probably Mystery.

House.

So he started living.

Like Lord Buckingham and acting like he knew so he got fine stationary with the Buckingham coat of arms. He rented an apartment in Germany and he explained to the owner that it wasn't for him. He was a lord, he had lots of money and property and things. He was renting the apartment as a place to store some of the furniture from his castle in England because like I guess the furniture was studying abroad I don't know, and needed an extent. Why would you put your furniture in a German apartment.

Whatever, How would he say, it's for my guest, but you know that's.

Yeah, it's too simple either way.

He was living his life as this English lord, bouncing between Switzerland and Germany. And in twenty and one he got a job not as a Scotland yard detective, but as an IT security consultant at an insurance company in Switzerland. And then the next year tragedy struck. He was on a road trip back from Northampton. I guess he went to see the kids. He was in France and he got rear ended and the collision shoved his car forward and he slammed into the brick wall of a toll booth.

Horrible.

So he got his skull crushed in the accident, and he went into a coma. For months, he's in his hospital in France, and then he was when he was awake and stable and able to be moved, they took him to a Swiss hospital and it was there that he started dating his nurse, the Swiss woman, Anita Keller.

Like a lord.

Now oh yeah. He also he.

Pocketed like a good settlement as a result of the accident. So he recovered and continued his life as Lord Buckingham, now with a Swiss nurse on his arm, life going along swimmingly. He got some like mild after effects from the accident, but nothing that interfered with his day to day life. He was Lord Buckingham and while the accident was traumatic, it didn't stop him from driving back and forth to England occasionally, you know, easy enough.

So he goes to What if.

He was like one of those guys, you know, people have head wounds and then they get like the accent from somewhere else. What if he got an American accent back and he couldn't stop.

Telling me incredible. So he's in Calais, Yeah, so he would like go to cala and France.

He puts his car on the ferry, pops over to Dover, done that around the Motherland. Oh yeah, you've done it.

I did on the what do you called the hovercraft? Okay, yeah, it's fun Hollercraft ferry.

Yeah yeah. Well, and it was fun for him too, tootling around. But that changed for him on the afternoon of January fifteenth, two thousand and five. Zaren, let's take a break, Okay, I want ads and I want him now and when we come back, we'll talk about January fifteenth, two thousand and five.

Zaren Elizabeth Elizabeth.

January fifteenth, two thousand Let's go there. Okay, let's close your eyes.

Oh you did say that.

I want you get up. Picture it.

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon, January fifteenth, two thousand and five. You are Detective Constable David Sprigg, a police officer at the Port of Dover in England. You are the eyes and ears at this busy port. You're sitting at your desk listening to the latest hits on BBC one Radio, Girls Aloud, Robbie Williams, Destiny's Child, Green Day, Gwen Stefani and one tune you particularly like these days. You can do it by ice Cube featuring Mac ten and his toy.

You can do it.

Put your back into it. That's your twenty first century. Keep calm and carry on, don't stop getting get it.

It's so inspiring. Suddenly there's a knock at your door and reach over.

And you switch off the radio and then you call out, come in. Two members of the UK Special Branch enter your office. Good blokes, they work here with you at the border station. Elite forces them. The tall one tells you that a passenger with a British passport checked in earlier that day at the port of Calais in France. Okay, he was boarding the car ferry headed this way. His information was plugged into the system and raised an alert. Seems the information on the passport matched an entry in

It should have been revoked.

Then, curious, you tell them you all know what this means, fake identity. The special branch fellows tell you that he boarded the ferry and would be arriving in Dover momentarily.

Care to join us? They ask you.

Grab your jacket and head out to the inspection point with the special branchers.

You pull two port policemen aside and put him run down the car.

The man the story they know to pull him aside as soon as he rolls off the boat, and that's what happens. You all see an aggressively nondescript white guy with brown hair cheerfully pull his car over to the inspection area. You watch as an officer speaks with the man. The man speaks and then nods, granting approval for the officer on the passenger side of the car to open the door and remove things from the front seat. He

From the office of Lord Buckingham. The officer tells you that the man says he's a member of the House of Lords. Seemed a little surprised to be stopped, but happy to help. The man said he hadn't attended a session of the House of Lords since moving to Switzer some years ago. You walk over to the computer positioned at a tall table beside you. You type away, searching for Lord Buckingham in the list of members of the House of Lords. Nothing.

You open Google and tap tapped up. The tall guy from Special Branch asks you anything. You've got one hit on your search. You tell him that, well, what does it say, he asked you, It's a pedigreed cat. Bring him to my office, you tell the officers and head back to the building. Don't stop, get it, get it, You think to yourself, you can do it. Okay there when you or rather, Detective Constable Sprigg questioned Buckingham.

He swore his passport wasn't a fake.

Sprigg asked him all sorts of questions about his life is past, and Buckingham's answers.

Were a mess. He couldn't nail down where he went to school, like you.

Forgot right, No, but then he threw out some names, and but then you know, he couldn't remember like was he born at home or in a hospital.

He was young.

He said he got his title because he owned or inherited four manorial manorial titles. Yeah, but he couldn't name them all his title and he was just vague about everything. He had a German passport, which he said was because of his mom's ancestry. And then he said that the Swiss wanted to give him citizenship because of his quote special skills in computer security. He told Sprigg that he had just hadn't gotten around applying for it yet, you know,

Spriggs, like, you are full of it.

And upon investigation the story totally fell apart. So he got charged with using false information to obtain a passport and they he got out on bail on one condition. He had to come back the next week for further questioning, sure said, and then he left ye during that week the investigation continued, So the Special Branch sent that Lord Buckingham letterhead over to the Royal College of Arms, which is the official record keeper of all the British childry.

Long lost son.

So sprigu he went about trying to track down all of the school records at least and come to find out that the school that he said he went to didn't exist. And then he reached out to the Home Office. Was Buckingham's dad a diplomat? Did he die in a plane crash? And they're like, well, the dad didn't exist

There is no Lord Buckingham. So who is this character?

And would he come back like he promised to or he figured out a way to weasel out of the country and onto the continent. Surprise, Buckingham actually came back the next week.

Really yeah, did he think he was gonna be able to smooz infinatly?

I think he felt like, you know, I can keep up this ruse. Sprigg laid everything out, all the lies, all the missing information. Buckingham's only response, no comment, and with that he's arrested again. But then he's out on bail.

The next day.

Once again, he went to court in October of two thousand and five, and they charged him with that lying to obtain a passport. He asked the judge if he could be allowed to go to Switzerland because that's where he had a safety deposit box, and in the box was all the proof anyone would ever need to understand and believe that he was one hundred percent Christopher Edward Buckingham.

Are you gonna trust the internet or your lying eye?

Well, the court just couldn't send someone to retrieve it, because, you know, Buckingham like high tech guy.

Right, high tech high high tech.

Scooter computer got to get into the box, you scan your thumb print.

No, right had to be him. And the judge was like, hm, that's interesting. No, you cannot go.

I didn't see that.

And so Buckingham's like, all right, fine, I'm guilty. Like the judge called his bluff, Buckingham pleads guilty, which cracks me up.

Like.

Fine, you know, I give up. He's supposed to be sentenced in the next month. He's facing two years in the clink, but after that he'd be free and could still call himself Christopher Buckingham. They the idea, yeah, which seems absolutely.

Nuts to me.

That does seem nuts to me too.

Yeah.

Whatever, So Sprig, he's about to retire. And instead of saying like I'm too old for this.

Ish that's like keeping the proceeds of your criminal or your crime, you know what I mean, Like you don't get to keep the proceeds crime. He's like, oh, yeah, I got to keep my life.

He to be this little boy.

Yeah, Sprig's about to retire.

You know what he does, He puts his back into it.

Oh, he wanted one last score in the anti crime way. And he knew in his bones that Buckingham was hiding something big and he had a limited amount of time to uncover it. So we got to work. So the cops released Buckingham's mugshot to the press and social media, and they asked the public for help in identifying this man. Tons of people called in, they wrote, and they were all dead ends or just garbage, and they're like, yeah, it's you know Jason Bourne.

Like I was having an affair with him from nineteen forty eight to nineteen fifty two.

He is the head of the Burger King cartel.

I've said too much, Like, so I'm telling you too, Buckingham is so nondescript, like he's like a sample identic kit drawing, like he's you. Yeah, so it looks like anybody The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Mail Sunday edition sent reporters to Buckingham's neighborhood, and one of them convinced a neighbor who had an emergency key for Buckingham's place to hand it over so they could poke around. Remember this is the era of like hacking voicemails.

Yeah, care like Pierce Morgan's going to.

Hack you, right, right?

So anyway, they found a quote, a brass bed, a television, and a wooden table. There was a box of unused fireworks in the kitchen, along with two chemical containers contents unknown. Resting on the television was a pistol, a non firing replica of the Walter P ninety nine made famous by James Bond.

H The Burger King planted the fireworks.

So I guess once you're like hacking royalty, Like what do they care about going into a lord's house?

Oh yeah, no, exactly, good call. And it was a mess up in there. And I don't mean just like untidy. I mean he owned the place, but it was in foreclosure. So he started just trashing it, like breaking things really, which is such a weird thing that people do, Like I've never got Yeah, yeah, I found a friend of mine bought a house in foreclosure and they like ripped out the toilets, like pulled sinks from the wall.

You know, when I used to I used to be a house panter for a very long time. We usipate industrial stuff. So I once painted in La this church that was in the valley right, but it was like the kind of church that they also have like an attached like school area and a multipurpose room and a

You're kidding, just.

Popping it off, like we can put this somewhere else. It was nuts to see. Yeah, and it was the bass player from corn Wait. It was his church, not like he didn't own it, but he was a member. So there's all these pictures of him like all around like big, like you know, cardboard cutouts. Yeah. So he was there and the church exactly like you could like pose next to him in the church. Yeah. They had like they had like movies on YouTube. They were like

It was a big thing. Okay, wow, I'm still trying to process this.

The part for me was the popping the baseboard off, I mean the light bulbs and that was one thing, and the fixtures was another thing. The door handles was wild, but the baseboard is okay, you did not put that out exactly.

So Buckingham, this world, Buckingham sentencing is approaching and there's no leads. And on November eighth, two thousand and five, he got sentenced to twenty one months in prison. And he was also at this point still refusing to divulge his true identity, and a few months later he won an appeal and his prison sentence was brought.

Down to time served.

Wow.

I don't know out he went, but where he was stateless, no real identity, and so he was remanded into the custody of UK immigration authorities. They thought better of this whole. Yeah, you can still be Christopher.

I don't know how you're allow that. No, So I mean I'm rooting for the guy.

But still a few months later, though, there was a break. Lindsey bucking was at the center of this. And I'm not talking about the Fleetwood macuitarist.

I'm talking about his daughter.

She got an email from a guy named Kevin Stopford. According to Lost magazine quote, the subject line read your father I know him. Attached was a full color family photograph showing a younger version of her father, blonde and tan, surrounded by brothers and sisters. Kevin Stopford also emailed officers at the Frontier Crime Unit, insisting that he knew Buckingham's real name. The person who claims to be Christopher Edward

Yeah.

So, according to NBC News quote, over the years, family members in Florida had searched for their brother using his name, but recently one did an Internet search using the name Buckingham and spotted a story in the London Times about a jailed man in England calling himself Lord Buckingham. They got in touch with British authorities, so you can imagine they're just like, what has ever happened to him?

Like let me.

Well.

The moms like, well, okay, a little something funny, like I don't know, twenty something years ago, got a call.

I should have told you guys this, but yeah.

So Lindsay told Cosmo that she was shocked that to hear that her dad was American, because he was always just like ripping on Americans and calling him quote stupid, brash, loud idiots.

That's why he left, I guess.

His philandering father told the Guardian newspaper quote, Charles always had an obsession with the English, maybe because he knew that my ancestry is English.

Yeah, it's all about you, dude. Sure, the Brits they sent Buckingham's fingerprints to the US, and of course there was a hit.

He's confirmed as Charles Stopford. And now they just had to deport him, and so he's Florida's problem. Again, this wasn't an immediate process. And so while waiting for that deportation, a bunch of his brothers and sisters headed over.

The Pond to visit him in jail.

Wow.

Yeah, And so I mean, imagine you don't know where your brother's been all these years, and you just have these like vague stories from the mom but then everything cuts off, you know, in eighty six.

And I guess they probably still loved him in that way that they wanted to sure, And also it's just fun to go to.

England and why not. So Jody, the ex wife, she got wind of this and called Buckingham to give him a heads up and he freaked.

Out that thought.

Yeah.

He told her that he had amnesia since the car accident in France and had no memories of his life before becoming Buckingham. And not just that, he also said he only kind of remembered being married to her and he had no idea who his kids were. So Jody pointed out, like, you know what, We've spoken to each other and seen each other kids included since the accident.

And there was no amnesia then.

And I don't know why she bothers like this guy lies, like he totally two one thousand and six, they put him on a flight to Orlando, him and a bunch of Disney heads, and according to the Orlando Sentral newspaper quote, upon his return, he hid an Orlando International Airports terminal, telling long estranged family members through a cell phone that he wouldn't greet them until members of the media left. Stopford's family left the airport without a reunion. So back

And he's been faking it for so long. He's been made it.

Yeah, And so a reporter asked him why he did it, Like, why did you invent this new identity, and he's like, you know what, I have amnesia from an accident and I can't remember. He's loving that. It was just like just a lob to him. You can use this forever. So he got banned from travel to both the UK and Switzerland. WHOA, and once in the States, he acted

She just thinks it's.

Good that I'm seeing my family finally and wants me to get back to Switzerland as soon as possible.

Sir, I'd like to hear her side of the story.

Yeah.

By fall of two thousand and seven, he managed to do just that. Like, despite the ban, he made his way to Zurich. Who knows, Lost Magazine laid it all out quote he had legally obtained a US passport in his adopted identity, but lied about his birthday on the application, writing in that of the real Christopher Buckingham rather than than his own. From there, he had simply boarded a plane and flown to Zurich. The Swiss raised no fuss at his return. He told them he'd been traveling abroad.

Absolutely nothing had changed, and.

I'll leave you with these bits from the Lost Magazine interview quote. Over the years, he had successfully passed himself off as a British aristocrat, Russian royalty and a German businessman, a retired Cold War spy, and even a dead man. However, when asked why he didn't use any of these after his arrest, he said, in the end, I'm not criminally minded for the intent of criminality, and I mean you have to face the music someday if the hunters ever

I'm met, Saron. What's your ridiculous takeaway?

This is one of the rare ones where the guy does a lot. He basically doesn't fake his death, but he just you know, assumes a new identity. And I kept thinking when you got to the LLC part that he was going to go for broken criminality and like a massive fortune of millions ill gotten gained, maybe rip off a charity or two, and it's like, nope, I just want to be a lord. Yeah. I mean, he's just like playing dress up, but at the criminal level

Sir, right, right, it's wild.

So what's yours of Elizabeth?

Again?

I don't that The whole psychology of this is just boggles my mind. You know, you can change your name legally and then you can just go around calling yourself this thing, and you know, but on your official records do I don't know. There are other ways to do this where you're not lying and.

Realized I almost changed my name because my father and I have the same nameh were both writers that to make things easy on the internet. I was going to change my name and I told him that. He's like no, I was like, really, okay, then I guess I'm not going.

To change my namesake.

Yeah, He's like, I named you that for a reason, and I was like, oh, I did your work out of respect, I kept the name.

You know what I think would top this off? Well, talk back?

Oh those are always fun. Oh, oh my god.

I went get.

Hey, Saron and Elizabeth, I love, love, love your show. But one thing I just have to say, because it's frustrating me, is I don't know how you put up with it, Elizabeth. Every time you try to say anything, Saron's talking over you, and it gets frustrating for the listener. So no offense. Still love you, Take.

Care I spoke too soon. They're not always that's good construct but honestly it did.

Like, so this is a conversation, Like it's a conversation like when I'm telling a story, I have bullet point notes that I hit and maybe like the quotes are written out, but the rest of it is just us talking.

We know each other really well, so it's yeah, I.

Mean I can understand, like if it's difficult to listen to, it's not difficult for me.

But you know, well, I'm.

Glad you say that, and I do. By the way, I apologize for that tendency. I come from a family where people talk over each other and Elizabeth does not, and so she's gotten used to me doing it and doesn't necessarily take offense to it because it's not meant other than just excitement, Like I can expect her to keep talking even though I'm talking. I'm sure as a listener that can be frustrating. So I apologize to listeners

Do is appealing in that and that's why I think it doesn't bother me. But also you made a good point, is that there are families that talk over each other and families that don't. Yes, and your family is definitely a cross talk and like loud back and forth family. And I come from very mellow.

You guys can speaking like I'm used to listening. If I don't have at least three people talking at once in a family function, it's like something is somewhat upset, like they and I'm really good at tracking three different conversations at the same time, which makes a lot of people really nervous, but it actually makes me feel calm.

I have sometimes think it's like Also like your family is from.

The East Coast, Yes, it's very much an easy in the coast.

West Coast is where these like long time yeah, Blifornia open spaces.

You don't need to shout. Also, you you come in sometimes the office before we do the show, and I will be listening to a radio show on my phone, i will be watching something about fantasy football on my computer, and I'll be talking like to somebody. I can have lots of conversations, so to me, they're just layers as opposed to like, there's one.

Thing happening and I got to do the one thing.

I can't I respect that.

Or it's like when I'm driving and it gets crazy, I got to turn the radio off.

You're like, I'm going to park turn the radio off. I know I've seen it, but again, I'm sorry, listeners. I am working on it though.

But I do like the fact that we've got like good constructive criticism, you.

Know, I feel like that.

Not ripping in on us, but at the same time pointing out what what they like or don't like. I mean, let's not start that as a trend of everyone telling us what's because then we're all going to get the talk backs of Elizabeth doesn't know how to say words. Thank you.

Yeah. I think I'm better because I know I'm already messing.

I'm a delicate flower. That's it for today.

You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on blue Sky and Instagram, and we're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and as always, leave a talkback on the free iHeart app. Reach Out Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Lord Dave Cousten. The ninth Earl of Ice Cubington, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith.

Quime Say It One More Times.

QUI Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.