I guess all some people want is to smuggle huge amounts of drugs, get caught, fake their own death and live out their lives under a false name halfway across the world – is that too much to ask?

A 41-year mystery has finally been solved after 78-year-old man died in a car crash in Queensland, Australia. Mashable reports:

In 1974, 37-year-old Raymond Grady Stansel Jr. was indicted in Florida for smuggling more than 12 tonnes (sic) of marijuana from Central America. He was arrested with a stash of $25,000 in cash, receipts for two Rolex watches, blank visas for Nicaragua and a passport that showed he had visited 12 countries in the last month…

Described as a “soldier of fortune” and a “pirate” of the times by officials, Stansel fronted up his bail with a $500,000 cashier’s cheque and walked out.

Raymond then cooked up an elaborate scheme to fake his own death, supposedly dying in a scuba diving accident in Honduras months before his trial. It was only when police in Australia looked into the death of Dennis “Lee” Lafferty that they discovered this respected member of the community wasn’t exactly who he said he was. Lafferty and his then girlfriend Janet Wood went to extreme measures to escape their past:

The runaway lovers disembarked from their boat in Venezuela, flew to Peru, Tahiti and New Hebrides before travelling on to Far North Queensland, Australia, Wood told the newspaper. Due to the times and the push for English-speaking immigrants, it was easy to enter Australia.

The pair married and had two children while in Queensland. They stayed generally quiet about their past life — with only a few locals knowing of the bizarre history — and kept under the radar, until Wood, since divorced from Stansel, came forward after his death.

Fair dinkum mate, I mean what’s 12 tons of pot between friends anyway? Raymond / Dennis leaves behind four children, two of whom are in prison on drug importation charges.

That apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree then.

[source:mashable]