Jailed, the ‘Lord’ who lived a lie for 22 years
in January a routine passport check at Calais revealed his astonishing secret.
He had stolen his name in 1983 from the birth certificate of a baby who died at the aged of eight months during a family caravanning holiday 20 years before.
In a fraud taken straight from the Frederick Forsyth novel The Day of the Jackal, he had used the certificate to obtain a National Insurance number and passport.
When he was arrested, he initially told police he was Lord Buckingham and a letterhead bearing a coat of arms was found in his MG car.
He boasted to detectives that he had inherited four peerages – although could only remember the names of three of them. He was also unable to recall where he had been to secondary school.
Officers checked with the Royal College of Arms which said the crest did indeed represent the Buckingham family – but it had been extinct since the 17th century.
All that is known for certain is that he married Jody, a Canatragically FOR 22 years he called himself Christopher Edward Buckingham – and used the title Lord Buckingham – to cover his tracks.
Having stolen a dead baby’s identity, he married under the false name, passed it to his two children and promised his teenage son that he would inherit the peerage.
Yesterday, even as he was jailed for deception, the bogus aristocrat still refused to reveal his true identity, prompting speculation that he mightbe a killer determined to hide his sinister secret.
An international investigation is under way to try to solve the mystery, with Buckingham’s DNA samples sent to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Detective Constable Dave Sprigg of Kent Police fears the truth may never be known. He said: ‘I think it’s unlikely he will ever say and we will ever find out. He must have some dark secret.
‘I think he has gone to such lengths to hide his identity, and even now with the threat of prison still refuses to reveal it, that he must have something terrible to hide. I want to know what that secret is – what is he hiding?’
Police said his fingerprints and DNA profile have been checked against criminal databases in the UK and he is not linked to any outstanding crimes in this country.
But it is believed he may have offended abroad – he met his wife while they were both travelling in Germany during the early 1980s and had moved from Britain to work in Switzerland four years before his arrest.
Judge Adele Williams said the case was an ‘ intriguing conundrum’. She added: ‘ Inevitably someone doesn’t assume a false identity unless there is a very good reason or some very deepseated cause.’
Canterbury Crown Court heard that Buckingham was a reliable husband and father who for years supported his family by repairing computers. Then dian, in 1984, that they had two children – a 19 year- old girl who has just started university, and a 17-year- old son – and that the couple divorced in 1997.
After the split Buckingham kept his four-bedroom detached house in Northampton but worked in Zurich as an IT security consultant.
He had always been secretive about his past to his ex-wife, but had told her he was the son of British diplomats who had died in an air crash in Egypt in 1982 and that he had been educated at Harrow and Cambridge.
Jody, 40, who has remarried and lives in Northamptonshire, said yesterday she had written to Buckingham in prison begging him who to say he is and why he did what he did, but has received no response.
His two children also plan to visit him in jail to ‘ have it out with him’, she said.
The court heard the deception had left their children in ‘limbo’, not knowing what to call themselves or what nationality they are. As their mother is Canadian and their father’s nationality is unknown they may have their British passports revoked.
Audrey Wing, the dead baby’s mother, has also had to relive the short life of her son. The 66-year- old, who is remarried and lives in Edinburgh, first knew about her son’s identity being stolen was in April when police knocked at her door.
She said: ‘ It brought the tragedy crashing back down on me. It is eating into my life. I still dream about Christopher and wake up crying. Now I feel like I have to bury Christopher again.’
Sentencing Buckingham for 21 months for making an untrue statement to obtain a passport, Judge Williams told him his refusal to reveal his true identity demonstrated a ‘total lack of remorse’.
Do you know who the mystery man is? Contact the Mail at aristocrat@dailymail.co.uk