The British politician who was caught faking his own death

By: Greg McKevitt / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

When John Stonehouse devised the plan to disappear completely, he was a troubled man. His political career had stalled, his dubious business dealings had left him on the brink of bankruptcy, while he was accused of being a communist spy and having an extramarital affair with his secretary. In a move borrowed from Frederick Forsyth's novel, Day of the Jackal [The Day of the Jackal], Stonehouse stole the identities of two dead men. He traveled on a business trip to Miami, where he disappeared in November 1974, before boarding another plane to Australia. The scam lasted a little over a month. It was British aristocrat Lord Lucan – another notorious fugitive who disappeared around the same time – who eventually led to Stonehouse's capture in Australia.

And how did Stonehouse explain his actions? In January 1975, the British MP insisted to the BBC that he was on a "fact-finding tour, not only geographically, but to explore the inner depths of a political animal".

To the British public in the late 60s, he may have seemed like a man who had it all. Postmaster General of the United Kingdom at the age of 43, he had a beautiful wife and three children, while he was talked about as a future Prime Minister from the Labor Party. He was the man who oversaw the issue of first and second class stamps, but, for his political career, this was perhaps the greatest achievement.

His downfall began when, in 1969, a defector from communist Czechoslovakia claimed that his country had recruited the deputy as an informant. Stonehouse protested his innocence to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who believed him. Such accusations were common during the Cold War, but Stonehouse's political reputation was damaged. When the Labor Party lost the 1970 general election, there was no place for Stonehouse in the opposition ranks. Disillusioned, he decided to devote more time to his business interests in London – mainly the export services he had developed through international connections.

In 1971, Bangladesh's War of Independence from Pakistan inspired Stonehouse to a new drive. He became emotionally involved in the Bengali cause, becoming so popular and respected there that, when the war ended, he was made a citizen of the new state as a mark of respect. But that was just the beginning.

He was asked to help establish the British Bangladesh Trust, a bank that would provide services to the Bengali people in Britain. But the way the bank was operating later drew criticism from a Sunday newspaper and attracted the attention of the Fraud Squad and the Department of Trade and Industry in London. The negative publicity and these official inquiries alienated many of the bank's supporters, leaving Stonehouse deeply depressed and feeling that he was also losing the respect of his fellow MPs.

He devised a plan to escape everything. First, he forged a passport application in the name of Joseph Arthur Markham, a factory worker who had recently died in his constituency of Walsall, in England's West Midlands. He transformed this new identity into a globe-trotting export consultant with bank accounts in London, Switzerland and Melbourne. He then created another identity under the name of Donald Clive Mildoon, who had also recently died in Walsall. To finance this new life, Stonehouse transferred large sums of money from his businesses to a variety of bank accounts.

On November 20, 1974, Stonehouse disappeared while apparently swimming in the sea in Miami, Florida. There was no sign of him except for a pile of clothes he had left behind on the beach. Was it taken from the ocean? Was he killed and stuffed inside a concrete block found near Miami Beach? Or was he kidnapped?

His wife, Barbara, had no doubt that a tragic accident had occurred. She told the BBC: “I've heard some incredible rumors and they are so far out of character for my husband that it's not even worth responding to or thinking about. I am convinced, in my mind, that it was a drowning accident. All the evidence we have shows that he drowned."

In London, the police had their doubts. Sheila Buckley, Stonehouse's 28-year-old secretary and secret lover, insisted to friends that he was dead, but she knew the truth: some of her clothes had been packed in a suitcase and sent to Australia a month earlier; she had received transatlantic phone calls from him and had also sent partially encrypted letters to him through one of his two Australian banks. It was those two bank accounts with different names, Markham and Mildoon, that eventually put Melbourne police on his trail. At the time, they were searching for the famous missing aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who coincidentally disappeared on November 8 after murdering his children's nanny. At first, police thought the dapper Englishman seen signing suspicious checks might be him.

While Lucani's disappearance has remained a police mystery for 50 years, Stonehouse's mystery lasted just over a month. On Christmas Eve, Stonehouse was forced to admit his true identity. Later, at Melbourne Police headquarters, he asked if he could call his wife in the UK. Although he didn't realize it at the time, the phone call where he confessed to her was recorded.

He said, “Hello, dear. So here they discovered the fake identity. You will understand from all this that I have deceived you. I'm sorry about that, but in a way I'm glad it's all over." For several days, Stonehouse was held in a detention center before being reunited with his family in Australia and later with his girlfriend.

A month after his reappearance, Stonehouse gave an interview to the BBC's Australian correspondent, Bob Friend. He criticized his actions stating that he had developed a "dual personality, where the new personality provided a release for the old personality which was under enormous stress and tension". When asked how he could have left his family in such pain, he said: "I was trying - by disappearing - to make their lives easier ... by removing some of the tension I caused with my old personality."

Stonehouse was still an MP but rejected any suggestion that he should give up his parliamentary salary, even though he was 12 miles [over 19 kilometers] away from his constituency. He said: “Many MPs make visits abroad as well as fact-finding trips. I've been on a fact-finding trip not only geographically, but also about the inside of myself as a political animal. Now that trip can be very interesting and, by God, I think it fully justifies the salary of an MP if I manage to write the story of my experience". He added: "I think an MP, like any other person in any other job, is entitled to some consideration during a period when they experience some kind of illness."

For seven months, Stonehouse tried to stay in Australia but was eventually deported and escorted home by Scotland Yard detectives. In August 1976, after a marathon trial lasting 68 days on charges of his failed businesses, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for theft, forgery and other fraud. He was released from prison three years later while recovering from heart surgery - having suffered three heart attacks during his time in prison.

His wife separated from him in 1978 and three years later he married Buckley, his former secretary. He died a second time in 1988 – and this time for real. The 62-year-old collapsed three weeks ago, shortly before appearing on a TV show about missing people.

But how about the espionage allegations that so damaged his political career? In his BBC interview after the re-appearance, he dismissed as "unbelievable" the idea that he had been a spy for Czechoslovakia. To this day, his daughter Julia denies any claims that he passed information to foreign forces, and in 2021 she wrote a book in his defense. Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew is one of the few people to have seen the MI5 file on Stonehouse; in the authorized history of British intelligence, published in 2009, he concluded that Stonehouse had spied for the Czechoslovaks.

Speaking in 2012, Professor Andrew told the BBC: “The decisive proof came in the mid-90s when the Czechoslovak intelligence service, having become allies, released some of the Stonehouse files. They were quite disappointed with the quality of information he had passed on to them as minister, so to the long list of people John Stonehouse deceived, it is possible that the name of Czechoslovak intelligence can be added." /Telegraph/