The plot thickens...

[valis2]

Ex-wife has contacted my sister's friend again. I won't C&P the email, I'll just say that it was supposedly sent to all family & friends. At the bottom was a very weird PS which basically said "All of his [online] accounts will be closed", which I thought was truly a strange thing to put on a notice such as that.

Now the "ex-wife" is telling her that Frank's obit will be in a Dutch newspaper, the Dutch Telegraaf. If the timeline is correct, his date of death would have been yesterday.

I was pretty suspicious before, but I'm even more suspicious now.

Comments

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Strange!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Isn't it, though? :)

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Yup!

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

When I needed to cease contact on IM, my 'character' was in a car accident.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I can just see him being too embarrassed to admit that he's not really working for a megacorporation and coming to the States for a conference. Easy way out? Instant Death. Just add water. Or mountains, as the case may be.

[subrosax.livejournal.com]

That's absurd! The Telegraaf is, I believe, the biggest newspaper in the Netherlands, why the hell would they print some Austrian dude's obituary? I'm no expert on that particular publication, but I have seen it and it struck me as somewhat tabloid-ish, not the place where you'd want to announce the death of a family member. I think the whole thing is a poorly executed hoax, but then again, I thought that from the begiinning.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Apparently he had told her before that he was Dutch, and that his parents still lived there. *shrugs* I don't know what's going on. Crazy!

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Well, fwiw, all sorts of obits are put in the paper in the town where I grew up.

Dead people who live there. Dead people who lived there once upon a time. Dead people who have relatives who live there. Dead people who live in the general area but not the town directly.

Seriously. *g*

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Strange. It'd be important to track down the obit, and then to check on the validity of the publication.

Do you know if your sister's friend is keeping all of the e-mail exchanges? If this thing proves to be some fraud thing, saved e-mails might come in handy.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I think she's saved the emails. I wonder about the chat logs, though.

I'm going to try looking for an obit, or at the very least an article. I mean, mountain-climbing accidents aren't that common, right?

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about it. But the obit location isn't what makes me suspicious; it's the PS on the email. Huh.

Hopefully someone will be able to clear this up eventually.

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the PS is strange, I agree.

Where's Scooby Doo when you need him? *g*

[luvboromir24601.livejournal.com]

That whole things sounds like a lie to me. >:( I'll do some Internet searching on it though...

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Cool!

I've tried, a little, but I don't really want to spend too much time on it. I have some other things going on...eBay craziness, yay! The good kind of craziness, that is.

[jen-deben.livejournal.com]

The PS sounds suspicious to me too, and you know, if a family member had died, I can't see me or any of my other relatives caring about things like checking the dead person's email. You'd be a bit busy grieving, organising viewings, funerals, wakes, etc.

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

Well, I had no problem googleing that guy:
http://la-via.net/
The homepage is in German, but he gives all the details you find so strange: Born in the Netherlands (the name is dutch, too), wife and two kids live in Viktring, Austria, parents and siblings still live in Utrecht.
It looks like an awful lot of trouble to fake your own death if changing your IM ID would have been enough.
He's a project manager of 41 years. Maybe he flirted a bit on IM, but hellfire, such people normaly have a standing and dare to say, hey sorry, I'm quitting. If they didn't, they wouldn't be PMs much longer. PMs do nothing but mitigate problems all day long. Andnot by bailing out.

There is an address given on the page. If your sister's friend has the absolute need to poke her finger in it, she could contact the family. My guess would be that this is real, though, and she should really be careful not to hurt anyone over there.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Yes, and she just received another email today from the "ex-wife", who sent her a long message and then asked for her not to contact her anymore.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that too. I didn't find it strange that he was Dutch and living in Austria, he admitted to that. What is strange is that he claims to have only one child, and that he was divorced, and he worked for a different business, when that homepage contradicts that. I think he partially made up a new persona so that he could wander around the webs and have some fun, but when she got very serious (and stubborn) about meeting him, he panicked a little because he didn't want to be called on his lies. I think he is actually married, and that could have been problematic. It all seems like he just got in too deep.

What was strange to me, originally, is how she found out about it, and how quickly. It was strange that his neighbor somehow had the password to his IM programs, and that his ex-wife would respond so quickly. The PS seems strange to me, as well, because it seems very strange to add that to an announcement for "family". Anyway, the details on the webpage weren't strange to me; it was the whole way this unfolded, and the fact that his obit isn't showing up yet (though it could take a day or two), and that his obit will supposedly show up in the Dutch Telegraaf, which doesn't seem to contain obits.

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

I "downloaded" two of my ex-boyfriends. One was a year of fun, really, the other was four years of stress and tears (why did I ever stay with that jerk for four years?!? whatever...). He was married, too. He didn't fake his persona completely, but he kept as much of his information hidden from anyone - for good reason.
It is strange for sure, and maybe you are right, but it is also still possible that this is true and has happened. I guess we'll never know...