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Jacques Mesrine

Jacques Mesrine (28 December 1936 – 2 November 1979) was a French criminal responsible for numerous murders, bank robberies, burglaries, and kidnappings in France, the US, and Canada. Mesrine repeatedly escaped from prison and made international headlines during a final period as a fugitive when his exploits included trying to kidnap the judge who had previously sentenced him. An aptitude for disguise earned him the moniker "The Man of a Thousand Faces" and enabled him to remain at large while receiving massive publicity as a wanted man. Mesrine was widely seen as an anti-establishment Robin Hood figure. In keeping with his charismatic image, he was rarely without a glamorous female companion. A two-part film, Mesrine, which came out in 2008, was based on Mesrine's life.

Early life and criminal career up to 1965
Jacques René Mesrine was born in Clichy, near Paris on 28 December 1936 to a couple of blue-collar origin who had moved up in social class. As a child, he witnessed a massacre of villagers by German soldiers. His parents had great aspirations for their son and sent him to the prestigious Catholic Collège de Juilly where his friends included the likes of musician and composer Jean-Jacques Debout. Mesrine was an extremely unruly pupil and he was expelled from Juilly for attacking the principal. He went on to be expelled from other schools and fell into the lifestyle of a juvenile delinquent, much to the dismay of his family. In 1955, at age 19, he married Lydia De Souza in Clichy; the couple divorced a year later. Drafted into the French Army, he volunteered for special duty in the Algerian War as a parachutist/commando. While participating in counter-insurgency operations, Mesrine's duties are said to have included the killing of prisoners. Although he disliked military discipline, Mesrine enjoyed action and was decorated with the Cross for Military Valour by General Charles de Gaulle before leaving the army in 1959. His father was later to claim that the time in Algeria had brought about a noticeable deterioration in Mesrine's behaviour.

In 1961, Mesrine became involved with the Organisation armée secrète. He married Maria de la Soledad; they had three children but later separated in 1965. In 1962, Mesrine was sentenced to 18 months in prison for robbery (his first prison sentence, although he had been a professional criminal for a number of years). After being released, Mesrine made an effort to reform: he worked at an architectural design company where he constructed models, showing considerable ability. However, a downsizing in 1964 resulted in him being laid off. His family bought him the tenancy of a country restaurant, a role in which he was quite successful, but this arrangement ended after the owner paid a visit one evening to find Mesrine carousing with acquaintances from his past. The lure of easy money and women proved impossible for him to resist and he returned to crime. Overcoming some suspicion about his relatively middle-class background, Mesrine began to establish a reputation in the underworld as a man who was crossed at one's peril.

In December 1965, Mesrine was arrested in the villa of the military governor in Palma de Mallorca. He was sentenced to six months in jail and later claimed that Spanish authorities believed he was working for French intelligence.

Canary Islands, Canada, Venezuela, 1966–1972
In 1966, Mesrine opened a restaurant in the Canary Islands. In December of the same year, he robbed a jewellery store in Geneva and a hotel in Chamonix. The following year, Mesrine robbed a fashion store in Paris.

In February 1968, he fled to Quebec with his then mistress, Jeanne Schneider, and worked as a housekeeper/cook and a chauffeur for grocery and textile millionaire, Georges Deslauriers for a few months. An argument Schneider had with Deslauriers' long-time respected gardener led to both being dismissed. They then attempted to kidnap Deslauriers, but this scheme failed when a supposedly strong sedative had no effect on Deslauriers.

On 26 June 1969, Mesrine and Schneider fled to the US. On 30 June, Evelyne Le Bouthillier, an elderly lady who may have given them refuge, was found strangled. A couple of weeks later, on 16 July, Mesrine and Schneider were arrested in Texarkana, Arkansas on information supplied by an accomplice and extradited to Quebec.

Mesrine was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the bungled kidnapping; he escaped a few weeks later, but was rearrested the next day. Mesrine and Schneider were acquitted of the murder of Le Bouthillier in 1971. With Jean-Paul Mercier, Mesrine cut through the wire to escape again on 21 August 1972 with five others from the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul prison. Mercier, a wanted murderer, and Mesrine then robbed a series of banks in Montreal, sometimes two in the same day. By this time it was apparent that Mesrine did not have a typical criminal attitude towards minimizing the danger of being caught. Deeply resenting the way he had been treated in the prison, Mesrine and Mercier made an extremely risky attempt to precipitate a mass break out from the maximum security block of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul on 3 September 1972. However, their own break-out had caused perimeter security to be greatly increased and they found the area swarming with armed guards. There was a shoot-out in which two guards were seriously injured and Mercier was wounded before they managed to get away. The boldness of escaped convicts returning to attack a prison infuriated Canadian law enforcement; the escapade predictably led to a hugely increased effort to arrest the duo.

Murder of Médéric Cote and Ernest Saint-Pierre
A week after their foiled attempt to free the prisoners, Mesrine and Mercier went for a target practice session, taking Mercier's girlfriend along. But the location, though three miles down a dirt track through the forest, was far from being truly remote and the noise of them blasting away at targets all afternoon could be heard in the town of Plessisville where there was a Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife station. When Mesrine and company drove back along the track, two forest rangers, Médéric Cote, aged 62, and Ernest Saint-Pierre, aged 50, were waiting. The rangers were armed but their jobs had mainly involved enforcing hunting and firearms regulations, and in any case, there was no reason for them to expect that the men who had been making themselves conspicuous by such a disturbance would actually be wanted escapees. Realising they were not policemen, Mesrine submitted to a search of the car, but on finding loaded guns in the rear, the rangers informed them that they would have to follow their car back to Plessisville. While Mesrine was trying to talk them out of this, Cote, possibly alerted by the sight of the arsenal of weapons, suddenly recognised the pair, whereupon Mesrine and Mercier shot both officers dead.

Mesrine continued robbing banks in Montreal, and even covertly gained access into the US again for a brief stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, before moving to Caracas, Venezuela.

Return to France: 1972–1977
By the end of 1972, Mesrine had returned to France, where he resumed robbing banks. On 5 March 1973, during an argument with a cashier in a coffee bar, Mesrine brandished a revolver and seriously injured a police officer who tried to intervene. He was arrested 3 days later. In May, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment – which, considering his record, was lenient for the time and place – to be served at La Santé maximum security prison where escape was thought to be impossible. In a plan likely formulated even before his arrest, Mesrine took a judge, who sentenced him on another matter in the past, hostage with a revolver (recovered from the courthouse lavatory where it had been hidden by an accomplice) and escaped. After being at large for four months, he was arrested in his new Paris apartment on 28 September 1973, on information supplied by an associate who wanted a reduced sentence. Mesrine was returned to La Santé where he covertly wrote and smuggled out an autobiography, titled L'Instinct de Mort ("Death Instinct"), in which he claimed to have committed upwards of forty murders, a number thought by some to be a considerable exaggeration. The appearance of Mesrine's book resulted in France passing a "Son of Sam law", designed to stop criminals profiting from the publication of their crimes.

Escape from La Santé
La Santé was seen as escape proof. In his escapes from his Canadian prisons, Mesrine had required little more than wire cutters and a very high degree of audacity. During this incarceration, however, he faced security far better than any he had defeated before. A report noted that Mesrine had been seen doing exercises in his cell and was behaving like a man who had received good news. On 8 May 1978, he produced a gun, stole keys and, with François Besse (a highly accomplished escaper in his own right), and another man, Mesrine got out of a cellblock and into a fenced-off yard walkway. They had a grappling iron with them and Mesrine forced some workmen with an extending ladder to bring the ladder along. The trio unlocked a yard gate in an inner wall; an armed guard was taken by surprise at his post. The men then reached an isolated part of the 14 metre (46 ft) high exterior wall (which would have presented a considerable challenge without the ladder). They hooked the grappling iron onto the top of the ladder and slid down the rope. The third man over the wall was shot dead by police in the street outside. Mesrine and Besse hijacked a car and evaded the police cordon; they had become the first men to escape from La Santé.

Mesrine as fugitive
Mesrine and Besse robbed a Paris gunsmith four days after their escape from La Santé. On 26 May 1978, the duo robbed the Deauville Casino of 130,000 francs, but the police arrived as they exited. Around 50 shots were exchanged and Mesrine was wounded, but the duo made a getaway. Mesrine and Besse eluded the subsequent massive sweep of the area by taking a farmer and his family hostage and forcing him to drive them to safety. Subsequently, the kidnapping of a banker netted them 450,000 francs in ransom. Despite his position as "French public enemy number one" (l'ennemi public numéro un), Mesrine was featured on the cover of the 4 August 1978 Paris Match. In an interview inside, he threatened the Minister of Justice. By remaining at large in the Paris area, despite his notoriety, Mesrine appeared to be making a fool of the law and the state; the Paris Match interview was the last straw. The police agencies hunting Mesrine were pressured for results from the highest echelons of government.

This proved to be difficult, not the least because of rivalry between the various agencies. The usual informants were of little use as Mesrine generally avoided contact with the criminal underworld. Moreover, he was adept at disguising his appearance and allaying suspicion from members of the public: he reportedly went for a drink with his neighbours and laughed when one said he "looked like Mesrine". Mesrine travelled to Sicily, Algeria, London, and Brussels, and back to Paris in November 1978, where he again robbed a bank. Objecting to Mesrine's proposed kidnapping of a senior judge, and not sharing his desire for revenge against the system, François Besse disassociated with Mesrine and later disappeared. Besse was finally captured in 1994; he was paroled in 2006.

Public Enemy No. 1
Mesrine's next exploit occurred in November 1978. It was a daring attempt to kidnap a judge (who had sentenced him) as part of a campaign to get maximum security prisons closed. His accomplice was captured but Mesrine escaped by running downstairs past several policemen telling them "Quick! Mesrine's up there!" A young policeman posted outside was found handcuffed to a drainpipe weeping. On 21 June 1979, Mesrine kidnapped millionaire real estate mogul Henri Lelièvre and received a ransom of six million francs.

Mesrine made good copy for the press, clowning for the camera and asserting that his criminal activity was politically motivated.

Jacques Tillier (a former Directorate of Territorial Security policeman) had written disparagingly about Mesrine in the French far-right newspaper Minute but on 10 September 1979, he went, rather incautiously, to a clandestine meeting with Mesrine on the promise of an interview. The incensed Mesrine had other plans: he shot Tillier in the face, leg and arm. Tillier survived the ordeal, although he lost the use of one arm. During his contact with Mesrine, Tillier discovered the identity of Mesrine's accomplice.

Death
The special gendarme unit tasked with finding and capturing Mesrine found it impossible to track him down directly. Eventually, by using information supplied by Tillier, they ascertained the licence number of the car that a woman named Sylvia Jeanjacquot, believed to be Mesrine's mistress, had used and checked parking tickets which it had received months previously. These tickets indicated that she had been frequenting a certain district without any obvious cause. Undercover patrols combed the area and a man fitting Mesrine's description was spotted walking with a woman believed to be Jeanjacquot on 31 October 1979. One officer who had seen Mesrine at court confirmed the identification by noting Mesrine's distinctive build. The couple were followed home and their building watched around the clock.

Two days later, on 2 November 1979, the couple left the apartment for a weekend in the country, taking Jeanjacquot's pet poodle with them. Mesrine and Jeanjacquot had reached Porte de Clignancourt on the outskirts of Paris, when the gold BMW 520 they were driving was boxed in at the entrance to a junction. Police marksmen in the rear of a lorry immediately in front of their car threw open a tarpaulin. Reportedly, in the instant before the gendarmerie opened fire, Mesrine's eyes were described as being so shocked they seemed to be bursting from his head, as he realised he was trapped. Twenty rounds were fired at point-blank range and Mesrine was shot 15 times. A coup de grâce was then administered with a pistol. Sylvia Jeanjacquot lost one eye and suffered lasting damage to her arm. Her pet dog was killed.

Aftermath
French police announced that their operation was a success and received congratulations from then President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. There were suggestions in some media publications that Mesrine may have been shot without warning in a way which amounted to extrajudicial killing, but the police pointed out that he had sworn that he would never surrender and that, as well as having a gun on him, Mesrine had been armed with two grenades which were taped together and adapted so they could be brought into action instantly.

Sylvia Jeanjacquot underwent multiple operations and served more than two years in prison before being ultimately acquitted of any crime. Mesrine's former defence lawyer, Maître Malinbaum, continued for 30 years to fight for a judicial investigation into the events surrounding Mesrine's death at Porte de Clignancourt and to have the French state held accountable for what she saw as the assassination of her client.

Murder of Gérard Lebovici
By law, Mesrine could not profit from L'instinct de Mort, but the publishers had received a threatening letter from him in 1979 demanding payment nonetheless. L'instinct de Mort was republished in 1984 by Champ Libre Editions, The founder of Champ Libre, Gérard Lebovici, was a gifted entrepreneur, influential in the French film industry, and known for his fascination with criminals. Lebovici adopted Mesrine's daughter after her father's death.

On 7 March 1984, the body of Gérard Lebovici was found in the Avenue Foch underground car park. It was determined that he had been shot dead two days earlier, with the bullet wounds forming a square: a traditional underworld sign for a contract that has not been fulfilled. One theory is that Lebovici may have been killed by a close associate of Mesrine's with whom Lebovici may have had an appointment on the day of his death.

Pop culture references
A film about Mesrine; Mesrine, was released in 1984. It featured Nicolas Silberg in the title role and was written and directed by André Génovès.

Hard rock ensemble Trust dedicated two tracks ("Le Mitard" and "Instinct de Mort") to Mesrine on their 1980 album Repression.

Punk group The Blood recorded a track titled "Mesrine" on their 1983 False Gestures For A Devious Public LP. There is also a Quebec-based grindcore band named Mesrine.

In the French novel, Les Rivières Pourpres, the protagonist, Niémans, is implicated in Mesrine's assassination.

A two-part film, L'instinct de mort (English title: Mesrine: Killer Instinct) and L'ennemi public No. 1 (English title: Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1), recounting Mesrine's career and starring Vincent Cassel in the lead role, was released in France in 2008 and in the UK in August 2009.

Popular French-Algerian rap duo PNL released a track titled "Porte de Mesrine" in 2015.

title: Jacques Mesrine


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List of impostors

An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise.

Their objective is usually to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering or through means of identity theft, but also often for purposes of espionage or law enforcement.

False nationality claims

 * Princess Caraboo (1791–1864), Englishwoman who pretended to be a princess from a fictional island
 * Korla Pandit (1921–1998), African-American pianist/organist who pretended to be from India
 * George Psalmanazar (1679–1763), who claimed to be from Taiwan
 * Micheál Mac Liammóir (1899–1978), notable actor in Ireland, born in England as Alfred Willmore but falsified an Irish birth and identity

False minority national identity claims

 * Joseph Boyden (born 1966), Canadian writer who falsely claimed First Nations ancestry
 * H. G. Carrillo (1960–2020), American writer and assistant professor of English at George Washington University who claimed to be a Cuban immigrant despite having been born in Detroit to American parents
 * Asa Earl Carter (1925–1979), who under the alias of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter authored several books, including The Education of Little Tree
 * Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (1890–1932), an African American who claimed to be the son of a Blackfoot chief
 * Iron Eyes Cody (1904–1999), Italian American actor (the "crying Indian chief" in the "Keep America Beautiful" public service announcements in the early 1970s), who claimed to be of Cherokee-Cree ancestry
 * Helen Darville (born 1972), Australian writer who falsely claimed Ukrainian ancestry as part of the basis of her novel The Hand that Signed the Paper about a Ukrainian family who collaborated with Nazis in the Holocaust
 * Misha Defonseca (born Monique de Wael, 1937) wrote a fraudulent autobiography where she claimed to be a Jewish holocaust survivor, when in fact she has no Jewish descent and was born to Catholic parents. Her book, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, received international fame. A documentary, Misha and the Wolves, detailing the investigation into the fraud was released in 2021.
 * Rachel Dolezal (born 1977), former president of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington, who claimed African-American heritage despite being born to white parents
 * Grey Owl (1888–1938), born Archibald Belaney, an Englishman who took on the identity of an Ojibwe
 * Jamake Highwater (1931–2001), writer and journalist, born Jackie Marks into an Ashkenazi family who later claimed he was a Cherokee American Indian
 * Daniel Lewis James (1911–1988), novelist who wrote under the name Danny Santiago
 * Jessica A. Krug (aka Jess La Bombalera, born 1982), former associate professor at George Washington University who falsely claimed African, African-American, and Caribbean-American heritage throughout her career, despite being born to Jewish parents
 * Sacheen Littlefeather (Marie Louise Cruz, 1946-2022), model and activist who rejected Marlon Brando's Academy Award at the 1973 Oscars out of protest. Her Apache Indian impersonation was not made public until her funeral, when her sisters asserted their Mexican descent.
 * BethAnn McLaughlin, neuroscientist who impersonated a bisexual Native American using the Twitter handle "@Sciencing_bi"
 * Red Thunder Cloud (1919–1996), an African American who claimed to be the last speaker of the Catawba language
 * Andrea Smith, an American academic, feminist, and activist against violence who claimed Cherokee identity without proof or acceptance by the Cherokee nation
 * Two Moon Meridas (c. 1888–1933), seller of herbal medicine who claimed that he was of Sioux birth

False royal heritage claims
See also: False pretenders
 * Maddess Aiort claimed to have been Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia
 * Granny Alina claimed to have been Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia
 * Michelle Anches claimed to have been Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia
 * Anna Anderson (1896–1984), who may have really believed she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
 * Bardiya (d. 522 BC), ancient ruler of Persia, widely regarded as genuine but was claimed to be an imposter by his successor
 * Mary Baynton (fl. c.1533), pretended to be Henry VIII's daughter, Mary at a time many considered that her father should be deposed in her favour
 * Bhawal case, concerning a "resurrected" Indian prince who may have genuinely believed he was who he claimed to be
 * Natalya Bilikhodze (1900–2000), appeared in the year 1995 and went to Russia in the year 2000 where she tried to claim the "Romanov fortune" as Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
 * Marga Boodts, claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia
 * Helga de la Brache (1817–1885), claimed to have been the secret legitimate daughter of Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and Frederica of Baden
 * Alexis Brimeyer (1946–1995), Belgian who claimed connection to various European royal houses
 * Mary Carleton (1642–1673), who was, amongst other things, a false princess and bigamist
 * Count Dante (1939–1975) is the assumed name of John Keehan, who claimed to be descended from Spanish nobility. In his campaign to promote his system of martial arts, he also claimed victories in various secret deathmatches in Asia, and mercenary activity in Cuba, none of which was proven.
 * Suzanna Catharina de Graaff (1905–1968), was a Dutch woman who claimed to be the fifth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, born in 1903 when Alexandra was reported to have had a "hysterical pregnancy". There are no official or private records of Alexandra giving birth to any child at this time.
 * Pseudo-Constantine Diogenes, pretended to be a son of Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes
 * False Dmitriy I (c. 1581 – 1606), False Dmitriy II (died 1610), and False Dmitriy III (died 1612), who all impersonated the son of Ivan the Terrible
 * Harry Domela (1905 – after 1978), who pretended to be an heir to the German throne
 * Anna Ekelöf (fl. 1765), claimed to have been Crown Prince Gustav of Sweden
 * Anthony Gignac (1970), falsely took on the identity of Saudi prince Khalid bin Al Saud to entrap victims in investment scams and other schemes, currently serving an 18 year jail sentence
 * Michael Goleniewski (1922–1993), was a CIA agent who in the year 1959 claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei of Russia
 * Anna Gyllander (fl. 1659), claimed to have been queen Christina of Sweden
 * Anatoly Ionov claims to be the son of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
 * Tile Kolup (d. 1285), also known as Dietrich Holzschuh, an impostor who in 1284 began to pretend to be the Emperor Frederick II
 * Eugenio Lascorz (1886–1962), who claimed connection to the royal house of the Byzantine Empire
 * Terence Francis MacCarthy (born 1957), styled himself MacCarthy Mór and "Prince of Desmond"
 * Šćepan Mali (d. 1773), who claimed to be Peter III of Russia, and managed to rule Montenegro
 * False Margaret (c. 1260–1301), who impersonated the Maid of Norway
 * Pierre Plantard (1920–2000), the mastermind behind the Priory of Sion hoax who claimed to be Merovingian, a pretender to the throne of France
 * Princess Tarakanova, claimed to be the daughter of Alexei Razumovsky and Empress Elizabeth of Russia
 * Yemelyan Pugachev (c. 1742–1775), who claimed to be Peter III of Russia
 * Raiktor (fl. 1081), an Eastern Orthodox monk who assumed the identity of Byzantine Emperor Michael VII
 * Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913), better known as Baron Corvo
 * Lambert Simnel (c. 1477 – c. 1525), pretender to the throne of England
 * Eugenia Smith (1899–1997), another woman who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia
 * Charles Stopford, claimed to be the Earl of Buckingham
 * Heino Tammet, claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. He died in 1977 in Vancouver, Canada.
 * Larissa Tudor, appeared strikingly similar to Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia but never actually claimed to be the former grand duchess. Many people who knew Larissa strongly suspected that she was the former grand duchess of Russia.
 * Nadezhda Vasilyeva, appeared in the 1920s in Russia and claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. She died in a psychiatric ward in 1971 in Kazan, Russia.
 * Perkin Warbeck (c. 1474 – 1499), pretender to the throne of England

Fraudsters

 * Frank Abagnale (born 1948), who passed bad checks as a fake pilot, doctor, and lawyer
 * Joseph Ady (1770–1852), notorious English impostor and postal fraudster
 * Gerald Barnbaum (1933–2018), former pharmacist who posed as a doctor for over twenty years, assuming the identities of various licensed physicians
 * Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795), Italian adventurer and self-styled magician
 * Cassie Chadwick (1857–1907), who pretended to be Andrew Carnegie's daughter
 * Ravi Desai, (active 1996-2002), a journalist who posed as Robert Klinger, fictitious chief executive officer of BMW's North American division, in a series of articles for Slate magazine
 * Belle Gibson (born 1991), an Australian alternative wellness advocate who falsely claimed to have survived multiple cancers without using conventional cancer treatments
 * David Hampton (1964–2003), who pretended to be the son of Sidney Poitier
 * Joseph "Harry" Jelinek (1905–1986), who is alleged to have fraudulently sold the Karlstejn Castle to American industrialists
 * Brian Kim (born 1975/1976), lived in Christodora House in Manhattan, falsified documents identifying himself as the president-secretary of its condo association, and transferred $435,000 from the association's bank account to his own bank account
 * Sante Kimes (1934-2014), impersonated various public figures and was convicted of murdering her own landlady, wealthy socialite Irene Silverman, in an apparent plot to assume Silverman's identity
 * Mandla Lamba, "fake billionaire" from South Africa who received media attention by claiming to be a successful mining tycoon.
 * Victor Lustig (1890–1947), "The man who sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice."
 * Richard Allen Minsky (born 1944), who lured women into vulnerable situations by pretending to be people they knew, then lawyers representing them, and then raped them
 * Arthur Orton (1834–1898), also known as the Tichborne Claimant, who claimed to be the missing heir Sir Roger Tichborne
 * Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1320/40 – after 1394), Orthodox monk, claimed to be a member of the Palaiologos dynasty, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, later succeeded in being named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople
 * Frederick Emerson Peters (1885–1959), U.S. celebrity impersonator and writer of bad checks
 * Gert Postel (born 1958), a mail carrier who posed as a medical doctor
 * Lobsang Rampa (1910–1981), formerly plumber Cyril Hoskins, who claimed to be possessed by the spirit of a deceased Tibetan lama and wrote a number of books based on that premise
 * James Reavis (1843–1914), master forger who used his real name but created a complex, fictitious history that pointed to him as the rightful owner of much of Arizona
 * Anna Sorokin (born 1991), posed as a fictitious wealthy heiress to fraudulently obtain loans, luxury goods, travel, and stays at exclusive hotels
 * Leander Tomarkin (1895–1967), fake doctor who became the personal physician of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and convinced Albert Einstein to assume the honorary presidency of one of his medical conferences

Wartime impostors and spies
Many women in history have presented themselves as men in order to advance in typically male-dominated fields. There are many documented cases of this in the military during the American Civil War. However, their purpose was rarely for fraudulent gain. They are listed in the List of wartime cross-dressers.

Spies have often pretended to be people other than they were. One famous case was that of Chevalier d'Eon (1728–1810), a French diplomat who successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman.

Military impostors
Historically, when military record-keeping was less accurate than today, some persons—primarily men—falsely claimed to be war veterans to obtain military pensions. Most did not make extravagant claims, because they were seeking money, not public attention that might expose their fraud. In the modern world, reasons for posing as a member of the military or exaggerating one's service record vary, but the intent is almost always to gain the respect and admiration of others.
 * Joseph A. Cafasso (born 1956), former Fox News military analyst who claimed to have been a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces soldier and Vietnam War veteran, but actually served in the army for only 44 days in 1976
 * Brian Dennehy (1938–2020), American actor who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1958, served in Okinawa, and never saw combat, but later falsely claimed to have been wounded in action in the Vietnam War
 * George Dupre (1903–1982), who claimed that he worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the French Resistance during World War II (WWII); Dupre served in World War II, but he was never in France, nor with the SOE
 * Frank Dux (born 1956), Canadian-American martial artist who served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in non-combat roles, but claimed in his memoir The Secret Man that he had fought in covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) special operations in Southeast Asia, Nicaragua, the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War; his claims drew a rare public denial from the CIA describing them as "preposterous".
 * Joseph Ellis (born 1943), American professor and historian who claimed a tour of duty in the Vietnam War, but who actually obtained an academic deferral of service and then taught history at West Point
 * Jack Livesey (born 1954), British historian, military advisor on film productions, and author who claimed to have a distinguished twenty-year career in the Parachute Regiment, but actually served as a cook in the Army Catering Corps for three years
 * Jesse Macbeth (born 1984), anti-war activist who claimed to be a United States Army Ranger and veteran of the Iraq War, but was actually discharged from the army before completing basic training
 * Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), U.S. senator who served in the Marine Corps during World War II as a Douglas SBD Dauntless tail gunner; broadly embellished his military accomplishments, notably by exaggerating his number of combat missions flown, falsifying official records to reflect these claims, obtaining combat decorations based on the falsified documents, and claiming that he broke his leg in action when the injury was sustained in a non-combat stairwell fall
 * Alan Mcilwraith (born 1978), a call centre worker from Glasgow who, among other things, claimed that he was a decorated captain in the British Army; he never served in the military
 * Eric von Stroheim, film director (The Merry Widow, 1925) and actor (Sunset Boulevard, 1950), who claimed to have been an Austrian imperial military officer, but never served in the military. He did portray German officers on-screen.
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt (1849–1922), German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian officer in 1906 and became famous as "The Captain of Köpenick"
 * Micah Wright (born 1974), anti-war activist who claimed to have been an Army Ranger involved in the United States invasion of Panama and several special operations; he was a Reserve Officers' Training Corps student in college, but never served in the military

Multiple impostors

 * Frédéric Bourdin (born 1974), "the French Chameleon"
 * Barry Bremen (1947–2011), known in the sports world as "The Great Imposter", after pretending to be an MLB umpire, an NBA All-Star, and a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, among other things
 * Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921–1982), "The Great Impostor", who masqueraded as many people, from monks to surgeons to prison wardens
 * Christian Gerhartsreiter (born 1961), a serial impostor and convicted murderer who infamously posed as a member of the Rockefeller family and became the subject of several books
 * Marvin Hewitt (born 1922), who impersonated several academics and became a university physics professor
 * Stanley Clifford Weyman (1890–1960), American multiple impostor who impersonated public officials, including the U.S. Secretary of State and various military officers
 * Laurel Rose Willson (1941–2002), who claimed to be "Lauren Stratford", a victim of satanic ritual abuse, and later as Holocaust survivor "Laura Grabowski"
 * Mamoru Samuragochi (born 1963), who claimed to be a "deaf composer", though it was later revealed that his hearing ability has already improved and most of his works were written by Takashi Niigaki, conductor of "Onimusha Soundtrack", produced by Samuragouchi.

Others

 * Bampfylde Moore Carew (1693–1759), a Devonshire man whose popular Life and Adventures included picaresque episodes of vagabond life, including his claim to have been elected King of the Beggars
 * Alan Conway (1934–1998), who impersonated Stanley Kubrick during the early 1990s
 * Misha Defonseca (born 1937) Belgian Catholic woman who took the identity of a Jewish Holocaust survivor
 * Alicia Esteve Head (born 1973), Spanish woman who claimed to be a survivor of the September 11 attacks, under the name Tania Head
 * James Frey (born 1969) American writer who presented himself as a reformed convict and drug addict, who in actuality had no criminal record
 * Martin Gray (1921–2016), Polish Jew who falsely claimed to have been imprisoned in Treblinka extermination camp
 * Kaspar Hauser (1812–1833), German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell
 * Robert Hendy-Freegard (born 1971), English barman, car salesman and conman who masqueraded as a MI5 agent
 * James Hogue (born 1959), who entered Princeton University by posing as a self-taught orphan
 * Paul Jordan-Smith (1885–1971), father of the hoax art movement called Disumbrationism
 * Rahul Ligma, who pretended to be a fired Twitter employee, pranking major media outlets in 2022
 * Enric Marco (1921–2022), Spaniard who claimed to have been a prisoner in the Nazi German concentration camps Mauthausen and Flossenburg in World War II
 * Brian MacKinnon (born c. 1963), who at the age of thirty attended Bearsden Academy by posing as a teenager
 * Rosemarie Pence (born 1938), American woman who falsely claimed to have been a German Jew imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp, and told her stories in an authorized biography Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond
 * Stephen Rannazzisi (born 1978), American actor and comedian who claimed to be a survivor of the September 11 attacks
 * Steven Jay Russell (born 1957), who has impersonated judges and a doctor, among others, and is known for escaping from prison multiple times
 * George Santos (born 1988), Brazilian-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 claiming to be a college-educated financier, philanthropist and real estate investor as well as Jewish and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who later admitted that he fabricated most of his résumé
 * Arnaud du Tilh (1524–1560), who took the place of Martin Guerre in the mid-16th century and lived with Guerre's wife and son for three years before being discovered when Guerre returned
 * Donald J. Watt (1918–2000), Australian soldier who claimed to have been a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz concentration camp
 * Binjamin Wilkomirski (born 1941), who adopted a constructed identity as a Holocaust survivor and published author
 * Gabriel Wortman (1968–2020), Canadian denturist who masqueraded as a police officer and drove a bogus Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser while perpetrating the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: List of impostors


text:
Ferdinand Waldo Demara

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (December 1921 – June 7, 1982) was an American impostor. He was the subject of both a book and a movie, loosely based on his exploits: The Great Impostor, in which he was played by Tony Curtis.

Demara's impersonations included a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, a naval surgeon, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. One teaching job led to six months in prison.

There are not many facts that have been proven about Demara, in spite of the articles, book, and big screen movie made about him during his lifetime. He was said to possess a true photographic memory and was widely reputed to have an extraordinary IQ. He was apparently able to memorize necessary techniques from textbooks and worked on two cardinal rules: The burden of proof is on the accuser and When in danger, attack. He described his own motivation as "Rascality, pure rascality".

Early life and adulthood
Demara, known locally as 'Fred', was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1921. His father, Ferdinand Waldo Demara Sr., was born in Rhode Island and worked in Lawrence's old Theatre District as a motion picture operator. Demara Sr. had been financially well-off, and the family lived in an upper-class neighborhood on Jackson St. in Lawrence. Demara Sr.'s brother, Napoleon, owned many of the theatres in Lawrence, in which Demara Sr. was an active union member. Early in the Great Depression, Fred's father became financially insolvent, forcing the family to move from the Tower Hill neighborhood to the poorer section in the city, at 40 Texas Avenue in the lower southwest Tower Hill neighborhood.

During this financially troubled time, Demara Jr. ran away from home at age 16 to join the Trappist monks in Rhode Island. After two years, he was told he wasn't suited to being a Trappist and was sent instead to a Brothers of Charity home near Montreal, Canada. He was then transferred to a Brothers of Charity boys home in West Newbury, Massachusetts, where he taught fourth grade. After running away from the Brothers of Charity after an argument with his superior, he joined the United States Army in 1941.

Impersonations
The following year, Demara began his new lives by borrowing the name of Anthony Ignolia, an army buddy, and going AWOL. He joined the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky under his assumed identity. However, he met an acquaintance from his first Trappist monastery, and so he left before his true identity could be revealed. He then moved to the New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa, before finally returning home. His father encouraged his son to turn himself in to the military police for his desertion but he did not.

He then joined the United States Navy where he trained as a hospital corpsman. He did not reach the position he wanted, faked his suicide and borrowed another name, Robert Linton French, and became a religion-oriented psychologist. "Dr French" then presented himself at the New Subiaco Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Arkansas, as a would-be Catholic convert. However, after a few weeks "he was summoned to the abbot's office, where he was accused of having forged his documents". He denied the accusations but left the monastery. He travelled to Chicago where he joined the Clerics of Saint Viator, before moving on to the Order of St. Camillus in Milwaukee. After once more arguing with his superiors, this time over his lack of cooking skills, he left and moved to New Jersey where he joined the Paulist novitiate in Oak Ridge.

As "Dr French" he applied for various jobs at Catholic colleges and was eventually employed to teach psychology at Gannon College (now a university) in Erie, Pennsylvania. Being made dean of the School of Philosophy, he taught general psychology, industrial psychology and abnormal psychology, and published a "well-received booklet" titled How to Bring Up Your Child. He left after "an unfortunate incident involving forged checks". He was briefly a member of the Benedictine Saint Bede's Abbey, Peru, Illinois, before joining the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God.

Afterwards, Demara served as an orderly in a Los Angeles sanitarium, and served as an instructor in St. Martin's College (now a university) in the state of Washington. The FBI captured him, and he served 18 months at the Naval Disciplinary Barracks, San Pedro, California, for desertion. After his release he assumed a fake identity and studied law at night at Northeastern University, then joined the Brothers of Christian Instruction in Maine, a Roman Catholic order.

While there he became acquainted with a young Canadian surgeon named Joseph C. Cyr. That led to his most famous exploit, in which he masqueraded as Cyr, working as a ship's doctor aboard HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War. He managed to improvise successful major surgeries and fend off infection with generous amounts of penicillin. His most notable surgical practices were performed on some sixteen Korean combat injuries who were loaded onto the Cayuga. All eyes turned to Demara, as several men needed urgent surgery. After ordering personnel to transport them to the ship's operating room and prep them for treatment, Demara disappeared to his room with a textbook on general surgery and speed-read the steps for the procedures that lay ahead, including major chest surgery.

All the men survived. Accounts of his heroic efforts ended up in Canadian newspapers, reaching the mother of the real Joseph Cyr, who was quietly practicing medicine in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. When news of the impersonation reached the Cayuga, still on station off Korea, Captain James Plomer at first refused to believe them. Demara, however, confessed and returned to Canada to face a court-martial. Faced with the embarrassment of having allowed an impostor into the Royal Canadian Navy's ranks, a board of enquiry instead chose to quietly dismiss him and force his deportation to the United States.

The MASH episode "Dear Dad... Again" included a one-time character Captain Adam Casey, likely inspired by Demara's exploits, who performs several surgeries, but turns out not to be a real surgeon.

Guiding philosophy
Demara told his biographer he was successful in his roles because he was able to fit into positions which no one else had previously occupied. Demara explained it in the following excerpt from his biography:"'(Demara) had come to two beliefs. One was that in any organization there is always a lot of loose, unused power lying about which can be picked up without alienating anyone. The second rule is, if you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else's domain; open up new ones...'"

Demara referred to it as 'expanding into the power vacuum,' and described as such; 'if you come into a new situation (there's a nice word for it) don't join some other professor's committee and try to make your mark by moving up in that committee. You'll, one, have a long haul and two, make an enemy.' Demara's technique was to find his own committee. 'That way there's no competition, no past standards to measure you by. How can anyone tell you aren't running a top outfit? And then there's no past laws or rules or precedents to hold you down or limit you. Make your own rules and interpretations. Nothing like it. Remember it, expand into the power vacuum!' In his later years he joined the Los Angeles Adventurers Club, and was noted as the only person to lie their way into the club.

Founded a college
During Demara's impersonation as "Brother John Payne" of the Christian Brothers of Instruction (also known as Brothers of Christian Instruction), Demara decided to make the religious teaching order more prominent by founding a college in Alfred, Maine. Demara proceeded on his own, and got the college chartered by the state. He then promptly left the religious order in 1951, when the Christian Brothers of Instruction offended him by not naming him as rector or chancellor of the new college and chose what Demara considered a terrible name for the college. The college Demara founded, LaMennais College in Alfred, Maine eventually became, in 1960, Walsh College (now Walsh University).

Minor fame
After this episode, he sold his tale to Life and worked in short-term jobs, since he had become widely known. Only after he returned to his old tricks and possessed fake credentials could he get another job at a prison in Huntsville, Texas. According to his biographer, Demara's past became known and his position untenable when an inmate found a 1952 copy of Life with an article about the impostor. Time Magazine ran a full page article on Demara in February 1957.

On November 5, 1959, Demara appeared on the surrealistic game show hosted by Ernie Kovacs, Take a Good Look. The object was for one of the three celebrity panelists to guess his identity. One week later on November 12, 1959, he appeared on an episode of the TV quiz show You Bet Your Life, with Groucho Marx. Demara recounted his exploits, and said the $1,000 he earned on the program was going to be donated to the 'Feed and Clothe Fred Demara Fund'.

Demara continued to use new aliases but, as a result of his self-generated publicity, it became much harder to accomplish impersonations than before. In 1960, as a publicity stunt, Demara was given a small acting role in the horror film The Hypnotic Eye. He appears briefly in the film portraying a legitimate hospital surgeon. By this point, Demara's girth was so notable that he could not avoid attracting attention. Demara had already been considerably overweight during his impersonation of Joseph C. Cyr.

Later life
Demara had various friendships with a wide variety of notable people during his life, including a close relationship with actor Steve McQueen, to whom Demara delivered last rites in November 1980. Tony Curtis, on the Tom Snyder television show, claimed that his favorite role was not the "Boston Strangler", nor his role in the renowned comedy Some Like it Hot, but his role in the movie The Great Impostor, portraying Demara.

When Demara's past exploits and infamy were discovered in the late 1970s, he was almost dismissed from the Good Samaritan Hospital of Orange County in Anaheim, California, where he worked as a visiting chaplain. Chief of Staff Philip S. Cifarelli, who had developed a close personal friendship with Demara, personally vouched for him and Demara was allowed to remain as chaplain. Demara was a very active and appreciated minister, serving a variety of patients in the hospital. Few of those with whom he interacted at the hospital knew of his colorful past. Due to limited financial resources and his friendships with Cifarelli and Jerry Nilsson, one of the major owners of the hospital, Demara was allowed to live in the hospital until his death, even after illness forced him to stop working for them in 1980.

Demara died on June 7, 1982, at the age of 60 due to heart failure and complications from his diabetic condition, which had required both of his legs to be amputated. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he had been living in Orange County, California, for eight years. He died at West Anaheim Community Hospital.

In media
Demara's story was recounted in the 1960 book, The Great Impostor, written by Robert Crichton and published by Random House. The book was a New York Times bestseller and adapted into a 1961 film by the same name starring Tony Curtis as Demara. A second book by Crichton, The Rascal and the Road, recounted Demara and Crichton's experiences together as Crichton conducted research for The Great Impostor.

Music

 * The Band recorded a song, "Ferdinand the Imposter", released on a 2005 reissue of The Basement Tapes.
 * The Fleetwoods recorded a song, "(He's) The Great Imposter", which was inspired by Demara's story.

Films/TV

 * The Great Impostor (1960) is a feature film of a fictionalised version of Demara's life, starring Tony Curtis as Demara.
 * In "Dear Dad... Again", a 1973 episode of the TV series M*A*S*H, Hawkeye exposes a fraudulent surgeon; the plot was inspired by Demara.
 * The protagonist of the TV series The Pretender, Jarod, is inspired by (but not based on) Demara.
 * In the manga series One Piece, a character named Demaro Black impersonated the main character, referring to Demara's impersonations.

title: Ferdinand Waldo Demara


text:
Talk:List of impostors

Emperor Norton?
Not sure if he belongs in this article or not. He made up a title that didn't exist, "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" and people just kind of went along with it for fun and profit, to the point that some business accepted money printed in his name. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:41, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would say he belongs here, as this (old) publication, although with some reservations, calls Emperor Norton an imposter on p. 244. And the preview of this book even says: "the most unusual and perhaps the most famous imposter the world has ever known— " Emperor ” Norton". Daranios (talk) 08:18, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

More
From Susan Gubar's review (African American Review 36:1) of Laura Browder's Slippery Characters (U of North Carolina P, 2000): " . . Lillian Smith, a "voluntary Indian" renamed "Wenona," who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in the 1880s; the "imaginary Jew" Elizabeth Stern, whose I Am a Woman-And a Jew (1926) was penned by the illegitimate child of a Welsh Baptist mother and a German Lutheran father; Sylvester Lance, the son of former slaves who "transformed himself into the internationally famous Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance" and composed the memoir Lance Long (1928); Ben Reitman, a Jewish lecturer and Chicago fund-raiser whose Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha (1937)...''"--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 12:25, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

"in fiction" section
Is basically a trivia section. There are literally thousands of possible examples that could be added, practically every sitcom ever has had an impostor scenario, along with hundreds of movies, books, and of course soap operas and telenovelas, and every episode of Deep Space Nine where Odo or one of the other Founders shape-shifted. It could get super ridiculous if left unchecked. I would suggest that this section simply be removed, or split into a separate article with some sort of clearly defined criteria for inclusion. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅, content is now at List of fictional impostors. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:47, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have created such a section again after the deletion of the split-out list, but only with two examples I find notable both as characters and in them being impostors as their defining characteristic, as attested in secondary sources. Therefore not a trivia section. Daranios (talk) 11:47, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello ! Recently you have removed the "in fiction" section based on the argument that there are too many possible candidates to include, while the earlier split out article was deleted partially based on the argument that it was original research. I have a solution alternative to deletion for both problems: We require a secondary source verifying that the character in question is an imposter, and we restrict entries to notable ones. The latter critereon is also applied to the list as a whole without this being spelled out, where otherwise we would have exactly the same problem you have raised for fictious ones: There have been innumerable imposters in the history of humanity, we are not trying to list them all here, but try to provide a navigational help and some basic information to the notable ones. The number of entries in Category:Fictional impostors is also not so large as to unreasonably bloat or unbalance this list if we used it in accordance with WP:CLT (and someone has to write the entries first, too). The section could still be split out again if it exceeds, say, a third of the length of the overall list. Daranios (talk) 19:27, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't really agree, I believe Articles for deletion/List of fictional impostors established a consensus earlier this year that we shouldn't have such a list and that a category is sufficient. Also, your solution would require routine maintenance to keep bloating at bay, while having it as a category does not Beeblebrox (talk) 02:36, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I believe my solution solves all the reasons why the result was originally deletion (except maybe those which just as well could be used to delete this list here without the fiction part), wouldn't it? I suggest we try this out for a year, I would do the routine maintenance. (I think there were no undue entries even without spelling out a critereon the last three months). Daranios (talk) 07:41, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As I said, I don't believe there is consensus to host this content. Until there is some evidence that that has changed I don't think it is appropriate to re-create the section. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello Any opinions on allowing a much restricted and modified section with the same topic as the deleted List of fictional impostors here, as described above, for navigational purposes? Daranios (talk) 18:55, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Daranios I am fine with a section on fictional ones, if it is limited to notable, referenced (to non-primary sources) entries. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm opposed. Having a list of fictional characters to whom a specific epithet has been applied—even if we have high-quality sources that do so—is generally a bad idea. Experience has shown that the risk of such lists ending up not being particularly meaningful as a result of sources using varying definitions to the point of borderline equivocation is unacceptably high. The idea that this would serve some kind of navigational purpose is wholly unpersuasive to me; it does not seem terribly plausible that somebody looking for e.g. the article Tom Ripley would go looking here, and even then the link to Category:Fictional impostors in the article is clearly sufficient. As I said in the AfD, I would instead suggest writing a prose article on the topic Impostors in fiction if there are sufficient sources to do so. TompaDompa (talk) 21:35, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I feel like the criticism of grouping "characters to whom a specific epithet has been applied" would refer just as well to the real persons listed here than to fictional characters. And ' argument seems mostly procedural rather than content-based to me. Be that as it may, as there is currently an equal number of pro and con opinions on the discussed section, having the link to the category seems like a good compromise, as long as there is no majority otherwise. Daranios (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Without getting into the details and specifics too much, considerations for lists of real people and lists of fictional characters differ. TompaDompa (talk) 20:13, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Exclusion of those "passing" for majority race
Why is it that only those making "False minority national identity claims" are considered "imposters" for the purposes of this list? Those blacks who "passed" as white to benefit from Jim Crow laws were motivated by the same desire—personal gain or acceptance—as those whites who now "pass" as minorities to gain the benefits of affirmative action. We rightly view Jim Crow as a hateful system—but we may well come to see race-based affirmative action in the same light. I've written about this at the Talk page for the article on racial "passing" here. Thanks for any and all input! ElleTheBelle 20:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Elizabeth Warren is not eligible for inclusion on this list
An IP has been adding Elizabeth Warren to this article, which should not be accepted. This article is for imposters, which are described as "a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise." That is clearly not the case with Warren, who believed she has distant Native American ancestry through family lore. She even took a DNA test to help determine the authenticity of the claims. That is completely different than someone intentionally assuming another race, like Rachel Dolezal, which should be common sense. --Kbabej (talk) 23:24, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I agree. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 23:30, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Why isn’t Hilaria Baldwin included?
Why isn’t Hilaria Baldwin included? She intentionally lied about her identity, misrepresenting herself as Latina, changing her birthplace from Boston to Mallorca. 47.149.65.191 (talk) 03:47, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

 * I think I'm uniquely qualified to answer your question.
 * I actually made an edit to this page on January 14th, 2021 which added her to the "False minority national identity claim" subsection. That edit got reverted by an admin (Cyphoidbomb) a couple of days later with this as justification: ("Thank you for your contribution, but it's not been adequately demonstrated that she personally claimed to be Spanish. So "impostor" is not yet established. Please feel free to open a discussion on the talk page to seek WP:CONSENSUS for inclusion.")
 * Of course, I didn't open a discussion on the talk page as I wasn't watching this page and didn't notice the change until today... but as long as I'm here, I suppose some sort of talk page discussion on the subject ought to be opened.
 * Kodiak Blackjack (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Difference between an imposter and an exaggerator?
I'm not sure the loathsome Joe McCarthy fits here. He indeed was a tail gunner, but exaggerated his record. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 19:10, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

 * Joe McCarthy certainly fits here as a military impostor (he actually has a more detailed section on that article).
 * If someone embellishes their military career, especially to the degree that McCarthy did, it's still stolen valor, and they're still pretending to be someone they're not. It's just that in these cases, the person they're impersonating never really existed. Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 00:29, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 13 February 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of impostors → List of imposters – "Imposter" is the most common spelling. I never seen anyone use the word with the 'or' spelling. 2600:1700:1960:F100:F968:F898:A743:BA75 (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: see also Talk:Impostor (disambiguation).  P.I. Ellsworth  , ed.  put'er there 04:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose. From en.wiktionary: "Impostor is the traditional spelling; imposter was relatively rare, but has become almost as common as impostor since 2000." I'm inclined to stick with the traditional spelling and not this new-fangled stuff. And get off my lawn. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 00:00, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Both spellings are common (ngrams) so I would say there's no good reason to change from one to the other. Adumbrativus (talk) 05:09, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose and speedy close per WP:RETAIN. 'Impostor' is the British English spelling. YorkshireExpat (talk) 08:48, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of impostors


text:
James Barry (surgeon)

James Barry (born Margaret Anne Bulkley, or Bulkeley; c. 1789 – 25 July 1865) was a military surgeon in the British Army. Originally from the city of Cork in Ireland, Barry obtained a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, then served first in Cape Town, South Africa, and subsequently in many parts of the British Empire. Before retirement, Barry had risen to the rank of Inspector General (equivalent to Brigadier) in charge of military hospitals, the second-highest medical office in the British Army. Barry not only improved conditions for wounded soldiers, but also the conditions of the native inhabitants, and performed the first recorded caesarean section by a European in Africa in which both the mother and child survived the operation.

Although Barry's entire adult life was lived as a man, Barry was named Margaret Anne at birth and was known as female in childhood. Barry lived as a man in both public and private life, at least in part in order to be accepted as a university student, and to pursue a career as a surgeon. Barry's anatomy became known to the public and to military colleagues only after a post-mortem examination.

Early life
Other than some personal correspondence, there are few sources of information about the non-military parts of Barry's life. The scant available evidence provides a skeleton onto which a great deal of myth and speculation has been added by various commentators. In his detailed research into Barry's early life, Michael du Preez states that Barry was born in Cork in 1789, a birth date based on Mrs Bulkley's description of her child being fifteen years old in a letter dated 14 January 1805. Various other sources give birth dates of 1792, 1795, and 1799, but these dates are almost certainly the result of Barry later lying on official documents to aid passing as a man.

Barry was the second child born to Jeremiah and Mary Anne Bulkley, and was given the name Margaret Anne. Mary Anne Bulkley was the sister of James Barry, a celebrated Irish artist and professor of painting at London's Royal Academy. Jeremiah Bulkley ran the weigh house in Merchant's Quay, Cork. However, anti-Catholic sentiment led to his dismissal from this post. This and subsequent financial mismanagement left Mary Anne and Barry without the support of either Jeremiah Bulkley (whose debts led to him spending time in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Dublin) or later the Bulkleys' married son John.

A third child appeared in the Bulkley family and was named Juliana. Although presented as being Barry's sister, it has been speculated that Juliana Bulkley was Barry's daughter as a result of childhood sexual assault, as after Barry's death the charwoman who discovered Barry's sex when laying out the body reported that pregnancy stretch marks were present. However, there is no tangible historical evidence to support this theory of childhood sexual assault, and a number of circumstances – such as Barry's father ejecting his wife and child from their home around the period in question, and a later letter informing his wife that he had "made up [his] mind to forgive" – make this appear unlikely. Given these circumstances, it has been suggested that, if anything, Juliana may have been the result of an affair on the part of Barry's mother.

Mother and child left Ireland for London in 1804, when Barry would have been about fifteen years old, to apply to Mary Anne Bulkley's brother, James Barry RA, for help. Professor Barry rejected them, having been estranged from his sister for more than thirty years. However, his death in 1806 and the resulting inheritance, as well as assistance from some of the artist's former friends, allowed Mrs Bulkley and her teenager a degree of comfort.

The teenage Barry was educated with the prospect of becoming a tutor, but given a lack of evidence of any work history, the Bulkleys appear to have struggled to find Barry any suitable tutoring positions. A plan appears to have developed between Barry, Mary Anne Bulkley, and her late brother's influential, liberal-minded friends (General Francisco de Miranda, Edward Fryer, who had become young Barry's personal tutor, and Daniel Reardon, the family's solicitor) to enable Barry to enter medical school. The University of Edinburgh was chosen and Mary Anne and Barry boarded a Leith smack on 30 November 1809.

Margaret Anne Bulkley then became James Barry, nephew of the late James Barry RA, and remained known as such for the next 56 years. In a letter to Daniel Reardon, sent on 14 December, Barry asked for any letters addressed to Margaret Bulkley to be forwarded to Mary Anne Bulkley (whom Barry now refers to as "my aunt"), and mentions that "it was very usefull [sic] for Mrs Bulkley (my aunt) to have a Gentleman to take care of her on Board Ship and to have one in a strange country." Although the letter was signed "James Barry", the solicitor indiscreetly wrote on the back of the envelope "Miss Bulkley, 14 December"; this crucial piece of evidence was the one which enabled researchers to finally confirm that Margaret Bulkley and James Barry were one and the same.

Arriving in Edinburgh in November 1809, Barry began studies at the Medical School as a 'literary and medical student'. Barry's short stature, unbroken voice, delicate features and smooth skin led many to suspect that Barry was a young boy not past puberty, and the University Senate initially attempted to block Barry's application for the final examinations due to this apparent youth. However, the Earl of Buchan, a friend of Fryer and Barry's late namesake, persuaded the Senate to relent and Barry qualified Medicinae Doctor (MD) in 1812. Barry then moved to London, signing up for the Autumn Course 1812/1813 as a pupil of the United Hospitals of Guy's and St Thomas', whose teachers included Henry Cline and celebrated surgeon Astley Cooper. On 2 July 1813, Barry successfully passed the examination of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Career
Upon joining the army, Barry was commissioned as a Hospital Assistant in the British Army on 6 July 1813, taking up posts in Chelsea and then the Royal Military Hospital in Plymouth, achieving a promotion to Assistant Surgeon to the Forces, equivalent to lieutenant, on 7 December 1815.

Following this military training, Barry was posted to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1816. Through Lord Buchan, Barry had a letter of introduction to the Governor, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Somerset. Following the successful, even spectacular, treatment of Lord Charles's sick daughter, Barry was welcomed into the family, maintained a close friendship with the Governor, and became his personal physician. In 1822 Somerset appointed Barry as Colonial Medical Inspector, an extraordinary jump in expectations from Barry's low military rank, which brought with it great responsibility. Over ten years of work in the Cape, Barry effected significant changes, among them improvements to sanitation and water systems, improved conditions for enslaved people, prisoners and the mentally ill, and provision of a sanctuary for the leper population. Barry also performed one of the first known successful Caesarean sections in which both mother and child survived; the child was christened James Barry Munnik in Barry's honour, and the name was passed down through the family, leading to Barry's name being borne by a later Prime Minister of South Africa, J. B. M. Hertzog. Barry also gained enemies by criticising local officials and their handling of medical matters, but the advantage of a close relationship with the Governor meant that the repercussions of these outspoken views were usually smoothed over.

Barry was promoted to Surgeon to the Forces on 22 November 1827. Barry's subsequent posting was to Mauritius in 1828. In 1829, Barry risked a great deal of trouble by going absent without leave to return to England and treat Lord Charles Somerset, who had fallen ill, and remained there until Lord Charles' death in 1831. Barry's subsequent posting was to Jamaica, and then the island of Saint Helena in 1836. At St Helena, one clash with a fellow army surgeon resulted in Barry being arrested and court-martialled on a charge of "conduct unbecoming of the character of an Officer and a Gentleman". Barry was found not guilty, and honourably acquitted.

In 1840 Barry was posted to the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands of the West Indies, there focusing on medicine, management and improving the conditions of the troops, and receiving a promotion to Principal Medical Officer. In 1845, Barry contracted yellow fever and left for England for sick leave in October. After being cleared for duty, Barry was posted to Malta in 1846. Here Barry was severely reprimanded for inexplicably taking a seat in the local church that was reserved for the clergy, and had to deal with the threat – and eventual actuality – of a cholera epidemic, which broke out in 1850.

The following posting was to Corfu in 1851, which brought with it a promotion to the rank of Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals on 16 May, equivalent to lieutenant colonel. In 1857 Barry was posted to Canada, and granted the local rank of Inspector General of Hospitals (equivalent to Brigadier General) on 25 September. In that position, Barry fought for better food, sanitation and proper medical care for prisoners and lepers, as well as soldiers and their families. This local rank was confirmed as substantive on 7 December 1858. Wherever Barry served across the British Empire, improvements were made to sanitary conditions and the conditions and diet of both the common soldier and other under-represented groups. Barry was outraged by unnecessary suffering, and took a heavy-handed and sometimes tactless approach to demanding improvements for the poor and underprivileged which often incited anger from officials and military officers; on several occasions Barry was both arrested and demoted for the extremity of this behaviour. Barry held strict views about nutrition, being completely vegetarian and teetotal, and, while keeping most personal relationships distant, was very fond of pets, particularly a beloved poodle named Psyche. The name of the black servant Barry first employed in South Africa and who remained with Barry until the doctor's death is not precisely known, though Charles Dickens, in a fictionalized account of Barry's life, calls him "Black John". Playwright Jean Binnie's radio play Doctor Barry (BBC, 1982) identified him as John Joseph Danson.

Death
Despite protesting against the decision, Barry was forcefully retired by the army on 19 July 1859 because of ill health and old age, and was succeeded as inspector general of hospitals by David Dumbreck. After a quiet retirement in London, Barry finally died from dysentery on 25 July 1865. The identity of the woman who discovered the truth of Barry's physical sex is disputed, but she was probably a charwoman who also laid out the dead. The charwoman, after failing to elicit payment for her services, sought redress in another way; she visited Barry's physician, Major D. R. McKinnon, who had issued the death certificate upon which Barry was identified as male. The woman claimed that Barry's body had been biologically female and had marks suggesting Barry had at one point borne a child. However, no professional examination was carried out which could have confirmed these points beyond doubt. When McKinnon refused to pay her, she took the story to the press, and the situation became public. It was discussed in an exchange of letters between George Graham of the General Register Office, and McKinnon.

"Sir,

It has been stated to me that Inspector General Dr James Barry, who died at 14 Margaret St on 25th July 1865, was after his death found to be a Female.

As you furnished the Certificate as to the cause of his death, I take the liberty of asking you whether what I have heard is true, and whether you yourself ascertained that he was a woman and apparently had been a Mother?

Perhaps you may decline answering these questions; but I ask them not for publication but for my own information.

I have the honor to be

Sir

Your faithful Servant

George Graham

Registrar General"

McKinnon's response was as follows:

"Sir

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 23rd August respecting the death of Inspector General Dr James Barry.

I had been intimately acquainted with that gentleman for a good many years, both in the West Indies, & in England, and I never had any suspicion that Dr Barry was a female.

I attended him during his last illness, and for some months previously for bronchitis; the affection causing his death was diarrhoea produced apparently by errors in diet.

On one occasion after Dr Barry's death, I was sent for to the office of Sir Charles McGregor, & there the woman who performed the last offices for Dr Barry was waiting to speak to me.

She wished to obtain some perquisites of her employment which the Lady who kept the lodging house in which Dr Barry died had refused to give her.

Amongst other things she said Dr Barry was a female & that I was a pretty doctor not to know this & that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female – that I thought it as likely he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.

She then said that she had examined the body & that it was a perfect female & farther that there were marks of her having had a child when very young. I then enquired how have you formed this conclusion? The Woman pointing to the lower part of her stomach, said from marks here. I am a married woman, & the mother of nine children & I ought to know.

The woman seemed to me to think that she had become acquainted with a great secret & wished to be paid for keeping it, I informed her that all Dr Barry's relatives were dead, & that it was no secret of mine, & that my own impression was that Dr Barry was a Hermaphrodite.

But whether Dr Barry was male, female, or hermaphrodite I do not know, nor had I any purpose in making the discovery as I could positively swear to the identity of the body as being that of a person whom I had been acquainted with as Inspector General of Hospitals for a period of eight or nine years.

I have the honour to be

Sir

Yours faithfully

Signed,

D R McKinnon"

After the matter was made public, some people claimed to have known of it all along, although many who had known Barry expressed surprise  or even disbelief. The British Army, seeking to suppress the story, sealed Barry's service records for the next 100 years. The historian Isobel Rae gained access to the army records in the 1950s, and concluded that the painter James Barry was indeed Barry's uncle. Barry was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, with a Portland stone headstone inscribed Dr James Barry Inspector General of Hospitals. It was claimed by several sources that "John", the manservant who always attended Barry, returned to Jamaica, but his actual fate is unknown.

Gender and personal life
In a letter chiding John Bulkley, Barry's older brother, for abandoning legal studies for the military, 19-year-old Barry wrote: "Was I not a girl I would be a Soldier!"

Rachel Holmes notes in her biography of Barry that Mary Anne Bulkley, in all her complaints to her brother about her child's precarious future, never once raises the question of marriage – even though a good match was then quite vital for a woman's financial security. Holmes suggests this could mean Mrs Bulkley was aware of "some defect in her daughter that made marriage an impossibility".

Barry's interest in medicine was probably encouraged by the liberal-minded friends of the late James Barry RA, and just before travelling to Edinburgh to enroll as a medical student in 1809, Barry assumed a male identity. Barry's short stature, slight build, unbroken voice, delicate features and smooth skin led others to suspect that Barry was not a man but a pre-pubescent boy. This identity was maintained through surgical training and recruitment into the British Army which, at officer rank level, did not then require a medical examination.

During Barry's first posting abroad to Cape Town in South Africa, Barry became a close friend of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and his family. It has been suggested that Lord Charles discovered Barry's secret and that the relationship was more than friendship. Their closeness led to rumours and ultimately an accusation briefly appearing on a bridge post in Cape Town on 1 June 1824 saying that the writer had "detected Lord Charles buggering Dr Barry", which led to a court trial and investigation, as homosexuality was at that time illegal. Despite these allegations, if Somerset was aware of Barry's sex, he did not reveal it.

Despite efforts to appear masculine, witness reports comment on Barry's effeminacy and on a somewhat contradictory reputation – Barry had a reputation for being tactless, impatient, argumentative and opinionated, but was also considered to have had a good bedside manner and famous professional skill. Barry's temper and bravado led to a famous pistol duel with Captain Josias Cloete of the 21st Light Dragoons. Barry's aim was better, the bullet striking Cloete's shako military cap and removing its peak, which dissipated its force.

During the Crimean War (1854–1856), Barry got into an argument with Florence Nightingale. After Barry's death, Nightingale wrote that: "I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – from this Barry sitting on (her) horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square, with only my cap on, in the sun. (He) kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, commissariat servants, camp followers etc etc, every one of whom behaved like a gentleman, during the scolding I received, while (she) behaved like a brute. After (she) was dead, I was told (he) was a woman. ... I should say (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met." Barry would never allow anyone into the room while undressing, and repeated a standing instruction that "in the event of his death, strict precautions should be adopted to prevent any examination of his person" and that the body should be "buried in [the] bed sheets without further inspection".

Intersex controversy
Kubba and Young picked up on Major McKinnon's statement that he did not know whether Barry was "male, female, or hermaphrodite" and suggested that it might be more appropriate to say that Barry was "hermaphrodite" [or intersex] rather than "female", and "may have had ambiguous genitalia". These suppositions are based on the premise that "Concealment of one's sex for ... 40 years in the British Army, is simply unbelievable". However, du Preez and Dronfield show how Barry might have been able to conceal this secret from all but a few people, and those who did know did not reveal it while Barry was alive. N. Turner has commented on Kubba and Young's conclusion that the belief in an intersex condition was based on "vanishingly slim evidence".

Holmes also raises the possibility of Barry being intersex, but acknowledges the impossibility of knowing, expressing surprise that this is a problem for so many people. The suggestion that Barry may have been intersex has been criticised for both biological and social reasons. In a review of Holmes's biography, Loudon firmly rejects the implication that Barry might have been intersex.

Some theorists have voiced the opinion that the intersex theory is an attempt to undermine that someone born female could have achieved as much as Barry did, with one biographer writing, "Dr. Barry couldn't have been a woman, for women and medicine were contradictory terms ... it was still too much to imagine that any female could perform as brilliantly as Dr. Barry had done."

In popular culture
In 1919, a play entitled Dr. James Barry by Olga Racster and Jessica Grove performed at the St. James's Theatre to a mixed review in The Observer.

The story of James Barry is briefly told in Zoya Voskresenskaya's novel Devochka v Burnom More (Girl in the Stormy Sea, 1969), whose action takes place during WWII.

The 1982 BBC Radio 4 production – the 45-minute play, Dr Barry by Jean Binnie – has seen some longevity and was re-broadcast as recently as 2018.

In 1994, Anna Massey played Barry in an episode of the BBC drama-documentary The Experiment. Barry was compared with Hannah Cullwick, who "was experimented on by Arhur Munby, who believed that women in servile labour could earn a nobility of the soul".

Barry's life is the subject of the historical novel James Miranda Barry (published in the United States as The Doctor) by Patricia Duncker.

A 2004 play, Whistling Psyche by Sebastian Barry, imagines a meeting between James Barry and Florence Nightingale.

In 2012, the UK folk duo Gilmore and Roberts included a song about Barry called Doctor James on their album The Innocent Left.

In 2016, the TV series Herstory: Ireland's EPIC Women featured Barry as the subject of episode 3 as a part of the Herstory 20/20 Project.

In April 2018, Rachel Weisz said that she is developing a biopic of Barry, and intends to produce and star in it.

In February 2019, E. J. Levy's novel based on Barry, The Cape Doctor, was acquired by Little, Brown and Company. The announcement was met with controversy because Levy refers to Barry as "she" and a "heroine," though Levy has stated that the novel also refers to Barry as "he" and "I". The novel was published in June 2021, and it tells the story of a fictional woman named Margaret Brackley, who becomes Dr. Jonathan Perry, who is based on Barry.

title: James Barry (surgeon)


text:
Billy Tipton

Billy Lee Tipton (December 29, 1914 – January 21, 1989) was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and talent broker. Tipton lived and identified as a man for most of his adult life; after his death, friends and family were surprised to learn that he was transgender.

Tipton's music career began in the mid-1930s when he led a band for radio broadcasts. He played in various dance bands in the 1940s and recorded two trio albums for a small record label in the mid-1950s. Thereafter, he worked as a talent broker. Tipton stopped performing in the late 1970s due to arthritis.

Early life
Assigned female at birth, Billy was originally named Dorothy Lucille Tipton. He was born in Oklahoma City on December 29, 1914. Tipton grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was raised by an aunt after his parents divorced when he was four. As a high school student, Tipton went by the nickname "Tippy" and became interested in music (especially jazz), playing piano and saxophone. Tipton was not allowed to join the all-male school band at Southwest High School. He returned to Oklahoma for his final year of high school and joined the school band at Connors State College High School.

Around 1933, Tipton started binding his breasts and presenting stereotypically masculine traits. As Tipton began a more serious music career, he "decided to permanently take on the role of a male musician", adopting the name Billy Lee Tipton. By 1940, Tipton was living as a man in private life as well.

Early work
In 1936, Tipton was the leader of a band playing on KFXR radio. In 1938, Tipton joined Louvenie's Western Swingbillies, a band that played on radio station KTOK and had a steady gig at Brown's Tavern. In 1940 he was touring the Midwest playing at dances with Scott Cameron's band. In 1941 he began a two-and-a-half-year run performing at the Joplin, Missouri, Cotton Club with George Meyer's band before touring with the Ross Carlyle Band for a while. He then played music in Texas for two years.

In 1949, Tipton began touring the Pacific Northwest with Meyer. While this tour was far from glamorous, the band's appearances at Roseburg, Oregon's Shalimar Room were recorded by a local radio station, and so recordings exist of his work during this time, including "If I Knew Then" and "Sophisticated Swing". The trio's signature song was "Flying Home", performed in a close imitation of pianist Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman's band.

As George Meyer's band became more successful, they began getting more work, performing at the Boulevard Club in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, sharing the bill with others such as The Ink Spots, the Delta Rhythm Boys, and Billy Eckstine.

Bandleader
Tipton began playing piano alone at the Elks Club in Longview, Washington, in 1951. In Longview, he started the Billy Tipton Trio, which included Dick O'Neil on drums, and Kenny Richards (and later Ron Kilde) on bass. The trio gained local popularity.

In 1956, while on tour performing at King's Supper Club in Santa Barbara, California, a talent scout from Tops Records heard them play and got them a contract. The Billy Tipton Trio recorded two albums of jazz standards for Tops: Sweet Georgia Brown and Billy Tipton Plays Hi-Fi on Piano, both released early in 1957. Among the pieces performed were "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "Willow Weep for Me", "What'll I Do", and "Don't Blame Me". In 1957, the albums sold 17,678 copies, a "respectable" sum for a small independent record label.

In 1958, after the success of both albums, the Billy Tipton Trio was offered a position as house band at the Holiday Hotel casino in Reno, Nevada, as well as opening for fellow musician Liberace. Tops Records also invited the trio to record four more albums. Tipton declined both offers, choosing instead to move to Spokane, Washington, where he worked as a talent broker and the trio performed weekly.

In the late 1970s, worsening arthritis forced Tipton to retire from music.

Personal life
Tipton was never legally married, but five women called themselves Mrs. Tipton during his life. In 1934, Tipton began living with a woman named Non Earl Harrell. The relationship ended in 1942. Tipton's sex was reportedly concealed from the four women who would later call themselves "Mrs. Tipton". Tipton kept the secret of his extrinsic sexual characteristics from them by telling them he had been in a serious car accident that resulted in damaged genitals and broken ribs.

Tipton's next relationship, with a singer known only as "June", lasted for several years. For seven years, Tipton lived with Betty Cox, who was 18 years old when they became involved. Cox remembered Tipton as "the most fantastic love of my life". In 1954, Tipton's relationship with Cox ended, and he then entered a relationship with a woman named Maryann. The pair moved to Spokane, Washington, in 1958. Maryann later stated that in 1960, she discovered that Tipton had become involved with nightclub dancer Kathleen "Kitty" Kelly.

Tipton and Kelly settled down together in 1961. They adopted three sons, John, Scott, and William; the adoptions were not legally recognised. After they separated around 1977, Tipton resumed a relationship with Maryann. Maryann reportedly discovered Tipton's birth certificate and asked Tipton about it once, but was given no reply other than a "terrible look".

Death, post-mortem outing, and aftermath
In 1989, Tipton had symptoms which he attributed to the emphysema he had contracted from heavy smoking and refused to call a doctor. He was actually suffering from a hemorrhaging peptic ulcer which, left untreated, was fatal. On January 21, 1989, his son William called emergency services. While paramedics were trying to save Tipton's life, they, alongside Tipton's son William, discovered he was born female. This information "came as a shock to nearly everyone, including the women who had considered themselves his wives, as well as his sons and the musicians who had traveled with him". Later, following financial offers from the media, Kelly and one of their sons went public with the story. The first newspaper article was published the day after Tipton's funeral and it was quickly picked up by wire services. Stories about him appeared in a variety of papers, including tabloids such as National Enquirer and Star as well as People, The New York Times and The Seattle Times. Members of Tipton's family made talk show appearances as well.

Tipton left wills: one handwritten and not notarized that left everything to William Jr.; and the second, notarized, leaving everything to John Clark, the first child the Tiptons adopted. A court upheld the first will, and William inherited almost everything, with John and Scott receiving one dollar each. According to a 2009 episode of the documentary program The Will: Family Secrets Revealed, which featured interviews with all three sons, it was revealed that a final court judgment awarded all three sons an equal share of his wife Kitty Tipton's estate (not Billy Tipton's), which, after lawyers' fees, amounted to $35,000 for each son. Two of his adopted sons changed their names not long after learning of Tipton's assigned gender, as they felt Tipton behaved deceptively.

Works inspired by Tipton

 * Stevie Wants to Play the Blues was a play based on Tipton's life written by Eduardo Machado and performed in Los Angeles, directed by Simon Callow and starring Amy Madigan and Paula Kelly.
 * "The Legend of Billy Tipton", by the punk band The Video Dead, is about the story of Billy Tipton.
 * Soita minulle Billy (Call me Billy), a Finnish play with Joanna Haartti playing Tipton, presented at Theatre Jurka in 2011 and again at the 2012 Helsinki Festival.
 * The Slow Drag (1996), by Carson Kreitzer, a "jazz cabaret" with a live band onstage featuring the character, Johnny Christmas, based on Tipton.
 * Trumpet, a 1998 novel by Jackie Kay, tells the story of fictional Scottish jazz musician Joss Moody, inspired by Tipton.
 * The Tiptons Sax Quartet, previously known as The Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet, is a jazz saxophone quartet from Seattle, Washington. The name of the quartet was inspired by Tipton.
 * A cabaret musical called A Girl Named Bill, starring Nellie McKay, tells the story of Tipton.
 * No Ordinary Man, a documentary film about Tipton by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.

title: Billy Tipton


text:
Talk:Jacques Mesrine

Pronounciation
The 's' is his name is not silent. If you watch the Youtube documentary on him, you will hear that most people, including those who knew him personally pronounce the 's'. I remember clearly when I was a kid hearing it pronounced with the 's', including when the police came looking for him around our house in the countryside not long before he was killed. Only the narrator speaking in his fancy radio announcer french doesn't pronounce it. He's what we like to call "wrong". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.68.70.231 (talk) 02:54, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Grammar
Regardless of the content, this page needs some serious editing to remove the incorrect use of commas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gingerbbm (talk • contribs) 23:50, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Untitled
"... he almost killed French journalist Jacques Tillier because he did not like his articles about him. "

Jacques Tillier was working for "Minute" an extreme right wing paper, I'm I wrong ? Skysmith
 * Found no reference, except that Tillier may have been an ex-policeman.

there's nothing about the two movies about him from 2008, L'Instinct de mort (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259014/) and L'Ennemi public n°1 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411272/). Could someone write about it? thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.197.161.78 (talk) 20:38, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Gerard Lebovici
This article currently says, 'and on 5 March 1984 the founder of Champ Libre, Gerard Lebovici, was shot in the head at the wheel of his car parked in an underground garage in Paris' - what is the relevancy of this? It implies that his murder was connected with Mesrine. Could somebody enlighten us? Captain Fearnought (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Movie version
This article seems to be very similar to the superb Mesrine (2008) movie which I've just seen. Even as biopics go, the similarities are very strong. Could it be that people are using the movie as a source for this article? I think to give the reader move confidence that the article is not based on the movie, there should be many more footnotes. Captain Fearnought (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. We need to review this. I've put a few oddments below, but the French version of the article goes a lot further. 178.38.162.243 (talk) 07:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Whether Sylvia Jeanjacquot was charged with a crime?
See report in 20 minutes entitled : Sylvia Jeanjacquot : « C'était un homme charmant dans l'intimité », http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/792068-20110922-sylvia-jeanjacquot-c-homme-charmant-intimite

She replies to a question by referring to time in prison:

---"Comment avez-vous pu refaire votre vie avec un tel passé ?"

---"Après ma sortie de prison, j'ai vécu pendant trois ans avec un journaliste."

This strongly suggests she was convicted of some crime. Is there a source that says she wasn't, or explains the above statement some other way?

Another, more recent interview with her, which also refers to a prison sentence: http://www.lesoir.be/429255/article/soirmag/actu-soirmag/2014-02-14/sylvia-jeanjacquot-j-ai-ete-seduite-par-jacques-et-j-ai-suivi-mesrine

And her books (there are 2, I guess, judging from titles, dates, covers):

 * L'instinct de vie: Dix-huit mois de cavale avec Mesrine (French Edition) (French) Paperback – 1988
 * Ma Vie Avec Mesrine, Sylvia Jeanjacquot - édition Plon 2011

178.38.162.243 (talk) 07:15, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. She was not convicted of a crime but was charged along with other various Mesrine associates. She served two years in prison until being acquitted. —Мандичка YO 😜 08:25, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

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First Person to Escape La Santé Prison
This claim seems dubious as the main wiki article for La Santé Prison indicates that Léon Daudet had escaped in 1926. Perhaps this should be clarified.

title: Talk:Jacques Mesrine