Terrible Cases of Mistaken Identity

By Editorial Staff in Amazing On 7th June 2016

In a sense, our identity is all we have. When it fails to form properly, we struggle psychologically. When it's stolen, we face fraudulent bills, ruined credit and a years-long nightmare of red tape. And when it's mistaken, well, far worse outcomes might await. That's why when you lose your information, it can be a living nightmare!

#1 Mistaken Identity

The movies are littered with tales of people being chased down because they have been mistaken for somebody else. They get chased, followed, jailed, and sometimes even killed because they looked or appeared similar to another person. However, real life is typically not like the movies, and while films usually feature happy endings, unfortunately, that's seldom the case with instances of mistaken identity. Here are just a few sad cases of mistaken identity, most of which ended horrifically.

#2 Peter Sellers And Woody Allen

Comedian Peter Sellers was a talented mimic. So when Leo Jaffe, chair of Columbia Pictures, mistook him for his "Casino Royale" costar Woody Allen, he decided to roll with it. Unfortunately, Jaffe wanted to complain to "Allen" about Sellers, saying he wished they'd never signed him to the movie. This didn't sit very well with Sellers, who packed up and left the movie set, and the country, and flew back to Britain. This led the studio, Columbia, to piece together a hodgepodge ending, which was known as the biggest fiasco in movie history.

#3 Cross-Dressing Prostitute

Brittany Ossenfort and her boss received a phone call asking for $1,050 to bail someone out of the Orange County Jail. The jailbird? Someone named Brittany Ossenfort. In a case of very bad judgement, her 21-year-old best friend, a man, stole her identity and was caught by an undercover police officer in a prostitution sting. He was charged with soliciting and gave his identity as that of Brittany. Brittany knew that her friend, Richard Lester Phillips, was a cross dresser, but this came as a total shock to her. She was unaware that he had been using her identity. He was so convincing as a female that he was housed with female inmates at the jail. Unfortunately for Brittany, the law forbids altering names entered in the database, so her arrest is forever in the system. She also must now carry paperwork with her verifying that she has never been accused of prostitution.

#4 Too Many Casey's

Robert Patrick Casey was Pennsylvania's Auditor General from 1968 until 1976. When he declined an opportunity to run for the office of Pennsylvania Treasurer, an unknown Cambria County official named Robert E. Casey just happened to run for the position that year. Because many voters mistakenly believed they were voting for Robert P. Casey, Robert E. Casey won the Democratic primary and the election. In an odd turn, another Robert Casey also won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor. This Robert P. Casey taught biology and sold ice cream for a living.

#5 International Mishap

Nicole McCabe, who was six months pregnant, turned on the world news one evening and discovered that she was a wanted woman. And not just wanted by anyone. She was wanted by the government in Dubai for the assassination of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. They've even published images of her passport ... except it wasn't quite right. That's not her picture, or her signature, or her date of birth, but the rest is spot-on. Nevermind the fact that she had never left Australia. It turns out that intelligence officials had crossed referenced her passport in Isreal, and decided she was the wanted murderer. They have yet to correct the problem and she is afraid to leave the country in fear of being captured or killed for a crime she never committed.

#6 Will The Real Will West Please Stand Up

At the turn of the century criminals arrested in certain jurisdictions were put through a kind of anthropometry, a series of facial, skull and bodily measurements intended to serve as identification. Fingerprinting hadn't yet caught on, and the version of this procedure pioneered by French police officer Alphonse Bertillon was considered state-of-the-art. In New York, two different men named Will West were confused at Leavenworth prison. When a clerk finished processing all the new prisoners there remained one card, that being for Mr. Will West. However, the Will West they went looking for was not the one they were seeking, though the pictures were very close in appearance. After a long court battle, it was discovered that the William West they were seeking was already in Leavenworth, serving a life sentence for murder. The discrepancy was soon resolved via fingerprints, and textbooks and speeches still cite the case as a classic example of the technique's usefulness.

#7 Circumcision With Witnesses

Adolph Beck was a Norwegian living in England in 1895, who had the bad luck of looking exactly like a prolific jewelry thief. He found this out one day during a chance encounter with a woman who cornered Beck and accused him of stealing her jewels. When the police came by, they arrested him apparently on the evidence that he totally looked like the man who did it, and he would spend much of his life getting repeatedly nailed for this other guy's crimes, purely because they could almost be twin brothers. He was thrown in jail for five years but as his sentence was about to end it was discovered that the original thief, John Smith, was circumcised, and Beck was not. They let him go early. A few years later another woman fingered him for thievery, and he was again sent to prison believed to be John Smith. In his favor, while locked up, the crook struck several more times and was finally captured, and Beck was released with compensation. The case has since become a mainstay of British legal lore and a demonstration of the unreliability of eyewitness identification at least 16 people positively identified Beck.

#8 Medical Records Thief

Anndorie Sachs, a mother of four in Salt Lake City, Utah, who ended up on the wrong side of the law when a hospital reported that a newborn child under her name tested positive for illegal drugs. The only problem was, it wasn't her baby. It was later discovered that a pregnant drug user had broken into Sachs's car, stolen her ID and had the baby under her name, leaving her with a $10,000 medical bill and a lot of explaining to do. Even when the truth was discovered, child welfare continued to harass the mother of four and interrogate her on her parenting skills. Sachs has a blood clotting disorder and could die if given the wrong blood type. And it turns out that the thief has given her identity and medical information to several hospitals and doctors for various treatments over the years.

#9 One In 113 Billion

The chances of a false match among unrelated people using DNA samples is 1 in 113 billion. But don't tell that to British bartender Peter Hamkin, who was wanted on suspicion of murdering a woman in Italy. His DNA sample matched that of the actual murderer. After a more thorough DNA comparison, he was exonerated and released, having spent 20 days in jail. It turns out that samples collected in Europe are done differently than in the USA, causing the error in the match.

#10 Bone Marrow Transplant

DNA can be read incorrectly, but this is beyond belief. Police investigating a sexual assault thought they had their case sewn up, with a semen sample 95% matching their suspect, an Alaskan man already in the system. There was just one hitch: The man in question had been in jail when the crime was committed. The problem? Just a year before the jailed man had received bone marrow from the actual assailant, his brother. He registered as a full match for the criminal in question because he received a full marrow transplant, which is unusual. By the way, mixed DNA can also show up in cheek swabs if you've been smooching. DNA can linger in your mouth for up to an hour, a fact that could potentially help catch sexual predators.

#11 The Trouble With Twins

A twin (or two) pulled an Ocean's 11-style heist at the German department store Kaufhaus des Westens, aka KaDeWe. Three thieves in masks and gloves stole $6.8 million in jewelry from the KaDeWe left behind a latex glove. The police did a DNA test and found it to match one or both twins, 27-year-old identical brothers Hassan and Abbas O. (German law prevents their full names being used). Unfortunately for the officers, the thief did not leave behind a fingerprint which have sealed the case because identical twins have distinctive fingerprints, but they share 99 percent of the same DNA. Unable to pin down which brother was involved, if not both, committed the heist, they had to let them both go.

#12 She's Alive

In 2006, a deputy coroner and a chaplain drove to a Michigan home to deliver some strange news to a local woman. They were going to tell the mother and father of Whitney Cerak that their daughter was alive. It was bound to be a bit of a shock, considering that they thought they had buried her weeks earlier. A truck driver had crossed the median and struck an automobile that carried nine people. A first responder had loaded Cerak into the evac chopper along with the ID of the deceased Laura Van Ryn who closely resembled Cerak in hair color, bone structure, and build, while the real Van Ryan was in the hospital in a coma. When she woke from her trauma, she could not speak but acted erratic. After a nurse asked her to write her name down, she printed out 'Whitney'.

#13 All Wrapped Up

In 1984, two teenage girls14-year-old Shawn Lake and 16-year-old Patricia Noonan were traveling in a car with their fathers when the vehicle hit a school bus. Both men died instantly, and each girl suffered severe facial injuries. Paramedics declared Patricia dead at the scene. While she laid comatose in the hospital the family her family had a closed casket funeral for her. Just a few weeks later she came out of her coma and explained that she was indeed Patricia and not Shawn. She had been bandaged because of her injuries and nobody had seen the dead girl after the accident because of the amount of disfigurement and the closed casket burial. She went on to make a full recovery with the help of several surgeries.

#14 Rental Car Murderess

Joyce Ann Brown only learned she was a murder suspect when she read about it in the paper. Two days before two women had robbed a fur coat store and killed the owner, Rubin Danziger, before fleeing in their rental car. Danziger's wife survived the robbery, and when the suspects' abandoned vehicle was found, the rental contract revealed the name "Joyce Ann Brown." Police showed the survivor a photo a Brown, who had a previous record for prostitution, and she identified the woman. Learning of this, and thinking it would be excused as a case of mistaken identity, Brown turned herself into police. However, she was charged and sentenced to prison where she remained for nine years until 1989, when the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals finally set aside her conviction after the real murderer, Renee Michelle Taylor, was implicated in the crime.

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