Ontario Plumber Fakes Death in 1977 Barn Fire, Then Things Get Weird

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

Get ready for a madlibs opening lede if there ever was one: In September 1977, Ronald Stan was a 32-year-old Ontario plumber who was cheating on his wife. The solution to all his problems, he decided, was to fake his death by burning down a century-old barn full of pigs, walk off into the forest, sell his car for $3,000, and cross over into the United States under a new name borrowed from a character from a schlocky CBS prime time TV show. Canadian courts declared him legally dead in 1986. He was, however, alive in Louisiana, then later in Oklahoma. Then, in the late 1990s, he joined a dating site.

In 1998, Deb Proctor, a 41-year-old divorced nurse, met a charming Ohio State graduate and former football player named Jeff Walton, who shared her love of golf. However, Walton was not an Ohio State graduate, had not played football, and could not actually play golf. He was instead a legally dead Ontario plumber who had been operating under his current name for 12 years. Nonetheless, they married in Eureka Springs in 2000.

A year into the marriage, broke and unemployed, Walton disclosed for the first time that he had served in Vietnam as an 18-year-old Special Forces operator and had been captured, tortured, and finally escaped captivity by following a stream. The VA could not help him, he explained, because his actions had been illegal and unethical, and his discharge dishonorable, meaning no records of him existed in any system anywhere. Deb, a former VA nurse, knew this was not how any of that works. She considered hiring a private investigator. She did not.

Walton then had a heart attack, then a stroke, then dementia, in roughly that order. Deb worked full-time as a nurse, paid the mounting medical bills, served as primary caretaker, and began drinking, also roughly in that order. She eventually placed him in a funded outpatient facility. Then her phone rang.

In 2014, the Ontario Provincial Police conducted a routine audit of cold cases. The audit reopened Ronald Stan’s file. Modern investigative technology located him on social media, and the Cherokee Nation Marshals Service in Tahlequah confirmed every detail: Jeff Walton was Ronald Stan, a plumber from Ontario, legally dead, very much alive. He admitted it. Deb filed for divorce, citing “incompatibility,” which seems to understate the situation somewhat.

Stan responded by leaving Deb a voicemail saying, “If you want to play hardball, then come on,” texting her repeatedly and emailing her friends and colleagues like a completely normal person. She noticed cigarette butts and a worn footpath in the woods near her home, and realized the possible danger posed by a man whose only documented problem-solving technique was arson. 

The Canadian arson statute of limitations had expired. Too much time had passed for U.S. identity fraud charges. Ronald Stan faced no consequences for any of it and died in 2019 in his nursing home, having never apologized. Which, in retrospect, would make a great tombstone epitaph. 

Deb today supports domestic violence survivors in her community and has remarried a longtime friend named Richard. Richard, by all available indicators, can actually play golf. Which is a low bar, but at least he cleared it.