QUINCY, Fla. — Authorities in northern Florida say they have found an Indiana businessman believed to have tried to fake his death in a plane crash.
Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Jim Corder said 38-year-old Marcus Schrenker was in custody in Gadsden County on Tuesday night.
Authorities believe Schrenker let his plane crash in the Florida panhandle and apparently parachuted to safety.
Before the crash, Schrenker’s life was spiraling downward: His wife filed for divorce, and his financial management companies were under investigation.
In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old businessman and amateur daredevil pilot apparently tried to fake his death in the crash, secretly parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens of central Alabama.
Schrenker was running not only from the law but from divorce, a state investigation of his businesses and angry investors who accuse him of stealing potentially millions in savings they entrusted to him.
“We’ve learned over time that he’s a pathological liar — you don’t believe a single word that comes out of his mouth,” said Charles Kinney, a 49-year-old airline pilot from Atlanta who alleges Schrenker pocketed at least $135,000 of his parents’ retirement fund.
The events of the past few days appear to be a last, desperate gambit by a man who had fallen from great heights and was about to hit bottom.
On Sunday — two days after burying his beloved stepfather and suffering a half-million-dollar loss in federal court the same day — Schrenker was flying his single-engine Piper Malibu to Florida from his Indiana home when he radioed from 2,000 feet that he was in trouble. He told the tower the windshield had imploded, and that his face was plastered with blood.
Then his radio went silent.
Military jets tried to intercept the plane and found the door open, the cockpit dark. The pilots followed until it crashed in a Florida Panhandle bayou surrounded by homes. There was no sign of Schrenker’s body. They now know they should never have expected to find one.
More than 220 miles to the north, at a convenience store in Childersburg, Ala., police picked up a man using Schrenker’s driver’s license and carrying a pair of what appeared to be pilot’s goggles. The man, who was wet from the knees down, told the officers he’d been in a canoe accident.
After officers gave him a lift to a nearby motel, Schrenker made his way to a storage unit he’d rented just the day before his flight. He climbed aboard a red racing motorcycle with full saddlebags and sped off into the countryside.
The search was turned over to the U.S. marshals.
“He’s already shown a mentality that’s interesting to police,” Harpersville Police Chief David Latimer said Tuesday. “He jumped out an airplane and left it to crash who knows where. He’s shown a total disregard for human life. I think he’d do anything to get away.”
Authorities in Indiana have been investigating Schrenker’s businesses on allegations that he sold clients annuities and charged them exorbitant fees they weren’t aware they would face.
State Insurance Commissioner Jim Atterholt said Schrenker would close the investors out of one annuity and move them to another while charging them especially high “surrender charges” — in one case costing a retired couple $135,000 of their original $900,000 investment.
On Dec. 31, officers searched Schrenker’s home. Just a day before, Michelle Schrenker filed for divorce.
