Tyrrell Man Faked Death

James Dillon, a well known citizen of Tyrrell County, North Carolina, insured his life in the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company for $3,000 some months ago, and then afterwards upset a boat a half mile from shore and pretended to be drowned. The company, however, suspected something wrong and refused payment. Suit was brought and shortly after a body was found near the place of the supposed drowning and identified by ten persons as that of Dillon. Subsequently, however, Dillon himself returned safe and sound. He said he swam ashore and hid in the great swamps month after month. Five months later he found a drowned man floating in the Alligator River. He removed the hair from the head so as to make it bald and also the whiskers, and taking his own hair and whiskers, put them in the decomposing flesh of the corpse. He then dressed it in the clothes he had worn the day of his disappearance.

[Taken from The Indicator. A National Journal of Insurance,  Volume IX. January, 1890 to December, 1890. This  is a Google book.]