With his world crumbling around him, investment advisor Marcus Schrenker opted for a bailout. However, his plan to escape personal turmoil was short-lived.

In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old businessman and amateur daredevil pilot apparently tried to fake his death in a plane crash, secretly parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens of central Alabama.

But the three-day saga came to an end when authorities caught up to Schrenker at a Florida campground.

“He had cut one of his wrists, but he is still alive,” said Alabama-based U.S. Marshals spokesman Michael Richards.


Schrenker was on the run not only from the law but from a divorce, a state investigation of his businesses and angry investors who accuse him of stealing potentially millions in savings they entrusted to him.

On Sunday -- two days after burying his beloved stepfather and incurring a half-million-dollar loss in federal court -- Schrenker was flying his single-engine Piper Malibu to Florida from his Indiana home when he radioed from 2,000 feet that he was in trouble. He said that the windshield had imploded and that his face was covered with blood. Then his radio went silent.

Military jets intercepted the plane and found the door open and the cockpit dark. The pilots followed until the aircraft crashed into a bayou. No body was found.