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Fiction-inspired bogus aristocrat uncovered

Sandra Laville

"A clear and direct copy ofTheDay of the Jackal"

London: For 22 years he deceived his wife, his children, his employers and the U.K. authorities. Posing as Christopher Edward, Earl of Buckingham, he married, had a son and a daughter, obtained a British passport, national insurance number and driving licence, worked as an IT consultant and boasted of owning four hereditary titles.

`Intriguing conundrum'

But in what a judge on Tuesday called an "intriguing conundrum," the mystery man who called himself Lord Buckingham had stolen his identity from an eight-month-old baby who died in 1963, in a direct copy of the plotline from Frederick Forsyth's thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

Given a last chance to reveal his true identity at Canterbury crown court in south-east England on Tuesday, the bogus peer refused. He smiled and raised a single eyebrow as Judge Adele Williams jailed him for 21 months for admitting making a false application for a passport. Despite his guilty plea, she said he had shown no remorse for what was "full-scale identity fraud."

As he was led to the cells, the police said their attempts to uncover his identity were continuing in Israel, South Africa, Germany and Switzerland, where he has lived most recently. But Detective Constable Dave Sprigg said: "I think he has got some dark secret and I don't think he will ever reveal who he is."

The court heard that "the most astonishing, complex and massive lie" began to unravel at 1.30 p.m. on January 15, when the bogus peer was stopped at Calais for a routine passport check while driving a hired car from Switzerland to the U.K. The check revealed that his passport had been revoked in 2003, during a trawl, which showed that it exactly matched the details of a dead child in the register of births, marriages and deaths.

Under the name Christopher Edward Buckingham, the fraudster had met his wife to be, Jody, while backpacking in Bavaria in the 1980s. They married in 1984 and had a son and a daughter, aged 16 and 19, who took his name. He later purloined a title, the Earl of Buckingham, albeit one that had been extinct since 1687.

`My father'

When the Kent police searched his car, documents backing up his false identity were discovered; a driving licence in the name of Christopher Edward Buckingham, a car registration document for an MGB, a chequebook and a credit card statement.

Also found was a large quantity of notepaper headed with the heraldic crest of the Duke of Buckingham and the address of his "manor house" at Little Billing, Northamptonshire — which turned out to be a three-bedroom house.

"I see that you are a lord?" one police officer asked.

"Yes, that's right," he replied.

"Where did you get your title?" the officer asked.

"My father, when he died," he replied.

Police later established that the real Christopher Edward Buckingham was born on December 24, 1962 and died aged after eight months on August 28, 1963 while on a caravan holiday in Bognor Regis with his mother, Audrey Wing.

The mystery man applied for the passport in the child's identity in 1983, the same year he obtained a U.K. national insurance number.

"It is a clear and direct copy of a device used in the Day of the Jackal," said Trevor Wright, prosecuting.

Although he claimed he held four manorial titles, he could not remember all their names, but Mr. Sprigg said the alarm bells really started ringing when he could not tell him the schools he attended. ``I have never met anyone who can't remember what school they went to,'' he said.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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