The Curious Tale of a Desperate Individual

[PeterRS]

With November on the horizon, there will no doubt be a thread started on the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Few are aware that there was another death just two days earlier, one that attracted few headlines in most countries. So as not to overload the Board with the two events at the same time, let me recount the first here. It's a curious and fascinating story.

The Fontainebleau is an iconic 1950s luxury hotel on Miami Beach. Over the years many famous guests have stayed in its suites and rooms. No doubt also the hotel has seen many strange goings on in those suites and public spaces. None, though, is likely to have been as odd as that of one guest who at the time would only have been known to a few Americans. He had checked into the hotel once before. A week or so later he returned and was soon to be at the centre of one of the most famous political scandals for many a year.

John Stonehouse was a young, dashing, handsome, ambitious member of the British parliament. He had caught the eye of the Leader of the Labour Party and was earmarked for a future cabinet post. In 1964 after a Labour victory he had been appointed Minister for Aviation, being promoted three years later Minister of State for Technology. After two more years he was promoted again to Postmaster General, a title soon changed to Minister for Posts and Telecommunications.

Concerned for years about bringing up his family of three children on a meager parliamentarian’s salary as well as entertaining his short-term mistresses – and his secretary who had become his lover, he ventured into several business sidelines, one a charity. His future seemed bright.

On November 19 that fateful year, he checked in to the Fountainebleau Hotel. It was 1974. There he met up with an old friend who was to accompany him the following day at meetings for his private business ventures. Beforehand, he suggested they go for a swim. He changed in his room and met his friend shortly after 10:30 am. on November 20 by the beach cabana on the hotel’s private beach. There he gave his casual shirt, shorts and slippers to the lady on duty, making a point of asking her if she would kindly look after them for him. A strong swimmer, he was in the water for about 30 minutes before returning to his room after collecting his clothes, changing and preparing for the meeting. 

Late that afternoon following the business lunch with executives from the First National Bank, he wanted again to swim but suggested his friend might prefer to rest. They would meet up for drinks in the bar at 7:30pm. He repeated his actions of earlier in the day, making sure the lady in the cabana remembered him from the morning. He then strode confidently into the calm water and started to swim well out to sea.

By 7:45, Stonehouse’s friend became concerned that he had not shown up in the bar. Thinking he might be having a snooze, he knocked on his door. When there was no answer, he asked the hotel management if they could check his room. The room key was at the front desk. Inside, everything seemed normal, even to his watch, wallet, passport, some travellers cheques and return air ticket to London being on the desk. Now worried, his friend went to the beach. Although the cabana was no longer manned, he was able to see inside where he noticed Stonehouse’s beach clothing. Fearing his friend might have got into difficulties or perhaps even been killed by a shark, the police were summoned. All during the next days, nothing was found of John Stonehouse. Indeed, nothing was ever found of him in or near Miami. Very soon he was presumed dead and obituaries published in the British press.

After just two days, the Miami police became suspicious. In the case of drowning or a shark attack, it was unusual for there to be no body or body parts washed up somewhere on the beach. Nothing ever appeared. But they had nothing else to go on. Everything pointed to a tragic death in the water.

While John Stonehouse had died that afternoon in Miami, another man, Joseph Markham, was on a plane, first to San Francisco where he changed to another bound for Honolulu where he spent the next 5 nights at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel. Joseph Markham wanted a few days rest before yet another long flight all the way to his final destination, Melbourne. He arrived Australia on November 27 and checked in to a hotel. But he was very tired, homesick and desperately missed his lover who would not be able to join him in Australia until some months later. Although just having arrived in Australia, the next day he hopped on a flight to Perth, Singapore, Tashkent and finally Copenhagen’s Grand Hotel where he would finally rendezvous with her. After a few days of passion, he was back in Melbourne by December 10. 

Having placed a deposit on a rented flat but by now short of cash, the following day he went to withdraw a substantial sum of money from one of the accounts he held in Melbourne banks. From that point on any interest in Joseph Markham should have ended, had it not been for an extremely observant bank teller. This Bank of New South Wales teller had paid out A$22,000 in cash to Mr. Markham just before lunch – a huge cash sum in those days. Returning from his snack lunch, by complete chance he happened to notice the same Mr. Markham walk out of the Bank of New Zealand a few doors down. Something made him concerned that there might be some money laundering going on. So he made discrete enquiries with a friend who worked at the other bank and learned that a very large deposit had indeed been made, only this time by a Mr. Donald Mildoon. After speaking to his manager, the bank called the local police. After tracking down the man who seemed to have two names, they eventually put a tail on him. On Christmas Eve, the Melbourne police swooped and arrested him on a charge of money laundering.

By now it will be obvious that Markham and Mildoon were aliases for none other then John Stonehouse. Far from the outward success he seemed to all, Stonehouse’s life was a total mess. His business ventures were all failing badly, he owed investors a great deal of money and his attempts to improve balance sheets were illegal. He had lost his government post when the opposing Conservative Party had won the 1970 election. When Labour was returned to power, he was not given any government position. Perhaps this was a result of an earlier discovery kept highly confidential that soon after becoming a member of parliament he had been spying for the Czechoslovak Secret Police. It is believed he had been caught in a honey trap while on a visit to Prague, although no proof has ever been found. The information he handed over was basically peanuts and he was paid accordingly. He was an amateur and nowhere near the infamy of the famous “Cambridge Five” group of spies who had done untold damage to UK and US interests when spying for the Soviet Union – Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross. But his exposure would have been extremely damaging for the government.

With his life in the UK collapsing about him, Stonehouse had for several months decided to disappear, and the ideal way to do this was to fake his own death. But how to do it? Over time he came up with a plan. He would disappear while on a visit to the USA well away from the prying British press, fake death by drowning and flee to Australia. Australia then was far enough away from Britain so that he would not be recognised 

Perhaps ironically it was the spy fiction writer Frederick Forsyth who had given him the clue about how to obtain his second and third passports. In the hit novel The Day of the Jackal, the Jackal obtains a second passport by looking at gravestones and applying after first selecting the name of a dead person of about his age. Stonehouse phoned the local hospital seeking similar information, making up a story about how as an MP he was investigating under payment of benefits to young widows. Armed with the Markham/Mildoon names, he falsely obtained birth certificates, applied and was provided with his two fake passports. He then transferred money stolen from his companies to his Australian account under the name Markham.

He had actually planned to disappear a week earlier. On that occasion he did the same ‘trick’ at the Fountainbleau. Having placed a change of clothes and a suitcase in a disused building a little further up the beach, he had entered the water, swum out quite far and then turned parallel to the beach before getting out of the water. In the fading early evening light he knew no-one on the beach would notice. That time he flew to Houston where he was to pick up a long multi-stop fight to Australia. But the flight from Miami arrived late and he missed the connection south by 10 minutes. With just one Australia flight a week from Houston, he headed back to Miami and returned to London. 

Once apprehended, the Melbourne police at first thought he was another fugitive who had fled from Britain earlier that same month. The aristocratic seventh Earl of Lucan was suspected of bludgeoning to death his children’s nanny on 7 November. A professional gambler with very expensive tastes, Lucan’s finances were also in a mess, his marriage was on the rocks and a bitter custody battle for his children was in progress. Hours after the murder, which he had admitted to his wife whom he also attacked, he quite literally disappeared and has never been found. In the absence of any further information he was declared legally dead in 1999.

Soon the Melbourne police realised it was the missing MP John Stonehouse they had in their jail. The problem was that they could do nothing with him. Although he had entered the country on an illegal passport, that was not technically an offence as in those days British MPs were permitted free entry into the country. Stonehouse could only be deported if the British parliament stripped him of his parliamentary status – an extremely complex and lengthy procedure. It took six months of legal wrangling for the UK to succeed in having him extradited.

While still officially a Member of Parliament, he and his lover were tried for fraud in connection with his business ventures. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. His lover of course was his former secretary Sheila who was given a two year suspended sentence. Stonehouse suffered three heart attacks while in prison and was released on medical and good behaviour grounds after only three years. He divorced his wife and married Sheila. He went on to write three books, appeared on television chat shows and eeked out a living. Following another massive heart attack he died in 1988. 

As was often written following his death, during his 62 years he had lived a life that seemed much more the subject of fiction, a surreal episode in a turbulent decade. But surely any half decent fiction writer would have avoided the simple mistakes that had quickly led to the discovery of the fake death of John Stonehouse and his notoriety at the Fountainbleau Hotel.