Jailed 'earl' a Secret Agent?
Sean O'Neill
Times Online
__________
Canterbury (UK):
The imprisoned impostor who calls himself the Earl of Buckingham could be a former Eastern bloc spy who never came in from the cold. The mystery about the man, who was jailed for passport offences this week and who refuses to reveal the truth about himself, has stumped the authorities.
He lived for the past 22 years as a British citizen, having stolen the identity of Christopher Edward Buckingham, who died aged 8 months in 1963. In the 1990s he began to use the long-extinct Buckingham title and coat of arms. Police sources confirmed yesterday that in their search to discover who he is they contacted the intelligence services and asked for inquiries to be made with former communist countries.
The suspect has also been interviewed by officers from Special Branch. Buckingham, the theory goes, could have been one of hundreds of East German agents planted in the West. His first known use of the name Buckingham was in 1983 when he met his former wife in Bavaria while posing as a British backpacker. He is a fluent German speaker and some people say they detect a hint of a German accent in his otherwise faultless English.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and East Germany collapsed, Buckingham, if he was an agent, would have been left with his false identity. Whatever the reason, he persisted with it until his arrest in January. International inquiries to find out who Buckingham really is are centred on Germany, where he first began using the false name, and Switzerland, where he has been a resident since 2001.
The focus in Switzerland is on Anita Keller. Buckingham has said that she is his fiancée and has power of attorney over his affairs in Zurich. British police have spoken to Miss Keller, who is Swiss, and believe that she has access to a deposit box held in Buckingham’s name in a Swiss bank. He has previously claimed that documents in a Zurich safe prove that he is Christopher Buckingham.
Just as the theft of his identity from a dead child owes much to the pages of Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The Day of the Jackal, Buckingham’s claim about the secrets of the safety deposit box has echoes of the film The Bourne Identity. Other parts of his story about his life in Switzerland also turned out to be fiction or half-truth. Converium, the reinsurance firm where he claimed to be an IT sec urity consultant, said that he had worked for two months as a freelance. An address in Eidmattstrasse, Zurich, that he gave police does not exist, and the address on his Swiss residency permit is a bedsit with a high turnover of residents.
Nov 11, 2005
Sean O'Neill
Times Online
__________
Canterbury (UK):
The imprisoned impostor who calls himself the Earl of Buckingham could be a former Eastern bloc spy who never came in from the cold. The mystery about the man, who was jailed for passport offences this week and who refuses to reveal the truth about himself, has stumped the authorities.
He lived for the past 22 years as a British citizen, having stolen the identity of Christopher Edward Buckingham, who died aged 8 months in 1963. In the 1990s he began to use the long-extinct Buckingham title and coat of arms. Police sources confirmed yesterday that in their search to discover who he is they contacted the intelligence services and asked for inquiries to be made with former communist countries.
The suspect has also been interviewed by officers from Special Branch. Buckingham, the theory goes, could have been one of hundreds of East German agents planted in the West. His first known use of the name Buckingham was in 1983 when he met his former wife in Bavaria while posing as a British backpacker. He is a fluent German speaker and some people say they detect a hint of a German accent in his otherwise faultless English.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and East Germany collapsed, Buckingham, if he was an agent, would have been left with his false identity. Whatever the reason, he persisted with it until his arrest in January. International inquiries to find out who Buckingham really is are centred on Germany, where he first began using the false name, and Switzerland, where he has been a resident since 2001.
The focus in Switzerland is on Anita Keller. Buckingham has said that she is his fiancée and has power of attorney over his affairs in Zurich. British police have spoken to Miss Keller, who is Swiss, and believe that she has access to a deposit box held in Buckingham’s name in a Swiss bank. He has previously claimed that documents in a Zurich safe prove that he is Christopher Buckingham.
Just as the theft of his identity from a dead child owes much to the pages of Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The Day of the Jackal, Buckingham’s claim about the secrets of the safety deposit box has echoes of the film The Bourne Identity. Other parts of his story about his life in Switzerland also turned out to be fiction or half-truth. Converium, the reinsurance firm where he claimed to be an IT sec urity consultant, said that he had worked for two months as a freelance. An address in Eidmattstrasse, Zurich, that he gave police does not exist, and the address on his Swiss residency permit is a bedsit with a high turnover of residents.
Nov 11, 2005
