The Real Story:

Cotter had staged the entire thing to win Hansen back. Yes, knives in the back and everything. We'd like to think he did the whole thing for love, but since he was also heavily in debt at the time, we're guessing a potential gold medalist girlfriend (and the chance to sell their sensational story to the media) probably seemed like a nice little bonus.

via BBC
"And once I fake my death in a plane crash, she'll definitely agree to marry me."

Here's how it went down: Helped by two accomplices, Cotter first inflicted the injuries on himself -- a project he took so seriously that he wound up losing well over two pints of blood. While he was in the hospital, his buddies mailed the racist letters to Hansen and the others in an attempt to give more credibility to Cotter's white supremacist story. However, the goons' Nazi letter writing skills proved inadequate and, after finding various inconsistencies in Cotter's story, the police eventually arrested the whole trio.

Even if it had worked, Cotter's little stab (sorry) at sociopathy ignored the fact that real people have feelings. Hansen was thoroughly devastated by the whole ordeal, and her performance suffered accordingly: She wound up finishing 11th at the Olympics, at least partly because of the ball of extreme stress her life had suddenly become.

But that wasn't the thing that pissed Mpagi off. What really got under his skin was that he thought he'd seen George Wandyaka standing in the courtroom during his trial.

The Real Story:

No, the supposedly murdered man wasn't haunting Mpagi to avenge his death. George Wandyaka was in fact perfectly alive and didn't give a damn who knew it.

Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Mpagi couldn't mention this during the trial. Wandyaka wasn't on the witness list.

Over the next few years, there would be numerous sightings of the "dead" man throughout Uganda. Evidence started piling up, Mpagi's case was reopened, and by 1989, investigators confirmed that Wandyaka was totally alive. Still, authorities were reluctant to admit their colossal fuckup: Despite overwhelming evidence of Wandyaka's continuing corporeal existence, Mpagi was not released from death row for another 11 goddamned years. When a presidential pardon finally set him free, he had been locked up for two full decades and lost his cousin -- who, of course, was also innocent -- to malaria.

The whole fake murder thing had been an elaborate scheme by Wandyaka's parents, who held a massive grudge against Mpagi's parents. For some reason, they decided that the best way to get revenge was to fake their own son's death and frame Mpagi and his cousin for the crime. They bribed a pathologist to give a false statement of Wandyaka's postmortem. This was all it took to get Mpagi and his cousin convicted.

Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
In Swahili, "habeas corpus" translates to "no need to find the body."

Today, Mpagi spends most of his time as a hardcore activist against the death penalty, traveling the world and soiling his opponents' pants with his patented 20-years-on-the-row glare. As for Wandyaka, he died in 2002, presumably for real this time. As far as we know, his family didn't frame anyone.

The year was 1908. Reverend James Smith was the veteran preacher at a church in Virginia when a younger priest called Ernest Lyons was brought in to help him. Smith immediately became suspicious that Lyons was going to replace him, and the two men grew a hearty dislike for one another. One day, witnesses even overheard a heated argument where Lyons threatened to kill Smith.

Martin San/Digital Vision/Getty Images
A demon had evidently possessed Smith, and witnesses decided to let Lyons handle it.

After this, Smith mysteriously disappeared, and then an unidentified, badly decomposed body was found in a river near the church, killed by a blow to the head. Since the corpse's clothes resembled Smith's attire, it was pretty clear he was the victim. Lyons was promptly arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison for second-degree murder.

Shortly after his conviction, Lyons revealed that there was more to the case than a simple rage-murder: He not only confessed to the crime, but named three other people as his accomplices, insinuating that Smith was murdered as part of a larger church conspiracy.

Franco Origlia/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Ah, so Smith had found out the truth about the church. Of course he had to die.

The Real Story:

Reverend Smith was alive and well all along, hanging out in North Carolina with the church funds he had stolen. Yeah -- remember that argument where Lyons threatened Smith's life? That fight was about many things, including the fate of $45 of the congregation's money. After Lyons left, Smith decided to steal the money (a king's ransom of $1,153, adjusted for inflation) and run, accidentally faking his death in the process when, by pure coincidence, a completely random body floated ashore and was mistaken for his corpse.

Smith's absence was a complete mystery to Lyons, especially as murder accusations suddenly started flying his way. That whole thing about a church conspiracy stemmed from this bewilderment: The three people Lyons specifically named as a part of his conspiracy clique had coincidentally just testified against him in court. They were arrested just because he said they were guilty and released the second it became apparent that Lyons was lying his ass off and basically just framing people out of bitterness. See, that's what most movies get wrong -- the fact that you're wrongfully convicted doesn't automatically mean you're not a total dick.

jcamilobernal/Photos.com
They still haven't identified the body. Whatever. It's Virginia.

Speaking of total dicks, James Smith always knew that an innocent man was serving time in prison for his "murder." He had read the papers and knew Lyons was charged with the crime, but never bothered to do anything because he was worried about the consequences of revealing that he was alive. Smith would probably have let Lyons rot in jail for the entirety of his sentence if a circuit court clerk had not discovered he was still very much around. Three years after Lyons' conviction, the man he had supposedly murdered finally returned to Virginia to prove that he was not dead and the body in the river (which was never identified) belonged to someone else. Reverend Lyons was immediately pardoned and released from prison, presumably after agreeing to give Smith a 30-minute head start.

Papaleo eventually claimed victory by bloodying Drogan's face. At that point, both men realized they had just made the stupidest move of their lives. Actually, the second stupidest -- the most stupid move came a couple of minutes later, when they decided to explain Drogan's injuries by blaming it all on a nonexistent black dude and getting their co-workers to verify that story. You know, because fabricating a report about a fictitious assault and making sure every single eyewitness keeps their story straight until the end of time is much easier than, say, saying you fell on the stairs and just filling out the paperwork on that damn burning car.

In the end, one of the witnessing cops had enough of Drogan and Papaleo's shit and revealed their shenanigans to their superiors. The two fighters and the officers they had gotten to sign official reports of the "attack" were promptly caught and punished. Papaleo received a 60-day suspension, and Drogan was fired from the force.

In 1987, a German play called Garbage, the City, and Death was scheduled to open in Rotterdam. The controversial piece featured prostitutes, pimps, and a powerful character named "the Rich Jew," which caused Croiset's activist instincts to flare right the hell up. He single-handedly managed to build up such a strong backlash against the production that it had to be cancelled. However, that wasn't the end of the story.

A little later, Croiset was visiting Belgium when he was kidnapped by three young neo-fascists in retaliation for getting the play cancelled. The theater-loving trio of teen Nazis dragged the actor into a sewer, where they ripped his Star of David pendant from his neck and smeared a swastika on his chest (he didn't specify what they smeared him with, and frankly we're fine with this). Croiset was held captive and abused for hours before he managed to escape.

Chalabala/iStock/Getty Images
"I found a pair of nunchucks next to a pile of old pizza boxes and fought my way to freedom."

This happened during a time when the Netherlands was going through an oddly heavy bout of fascist activity. Apart from the incident with the play, several prominent Jewish citizens had gotten threatening letters. There was even a bomb threat against one predominantly Jewish event. Croiset's kidnapping was the last straw -- his ordeal made headlines. Demonstrations were staged, political speeches were given, everyone was angry. But not as angry as they would soon be ... at Croiset.

The Real Story:

That wave of neo-Nazi activity that had been plaguing the country? It had a name, and that name was Jules Croiset.

Things started unraveling when it turned out Croiset's kidnapping story was complete horseshit. He made up the whole incident and gave such a convincing performance describing it that everyone -- from cops to media to politicians to the adoring public -- believed him.

Bert Verhoeff
You'd almost think he was like an actor or something.

One month after the alleged kidnapping, the police started noticing inconsistencies in the story, so they decided to question Croiset more thoroughly. That's when the actor finally broke down and confessed that the entire incident was a hoax. Once his facade cracked, it soon became apparent that a lot of his activism had been tainted with the same "anything goes" attitude. Remember that Nazi bomb threat we mentioned earlier? In an attempt to prove that a certain play called Garbage, the City, and Death was in no way anti-Semitic despite what some people say, its producers had arranged a private performance for the Jewish community. Said performance was abruptly cancelled due to an anonymous bomb threat call. Guess which famous actor was behind that shit?

Croiset also confessed to writing a bunch of threatening letters using a fake group called the Dutch Fascist Youth Front as an alias and sending them to prominent members of the Jewish community, including himself. One of the letters went to his wife and threatened the lives of their two children. Smooth, Jules, real smooth.

De Volkskrant
"Dear Mrs. Croiset: Your entire family will die. MWAHAHAHAHA! Love, Jules ... wait, shit."

In the end, Jules Croiset managed to get away with little more than a slap on the wrist (he is still acting today), since his entire message was "Nazis are bad," and apparently that excuses any behavior, no matter how batshit (including, again, threatening the lives of his own wife and children). We're betting he still sleeps on the couch, though.

Robin Warder is the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and was recently involved in the making of a sci-fi short film called Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow.

Related Reading: We've got more daring crimes that never happened, including a woman who stalked herself. On the opposite end of things, there are totally laws you break regularly without realizing it. Connecting to the wrong open WiFi network can even be a crime. Ready for the secret criminal uses of stuff they sell in gas stations? Click here.

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