Jacob Blair Scott—a 40-year-old man who impregnated a 14-year-old girl and was sentenced to 85 years' imprisonment for child sexual exploitation—pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to another crime committed along the way: trying to fake his own death.
After being charged, Scott abandoned a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving behind a gun and a suicide note after making a distress call. The Coast Guard launched a search off the Pensacola coast and found the dinghy but no body. Scott, however, had told family members "not to change their phone numbers for a year" and withdrawn $45,000 from his retirement account before his apparent death. U.S. Marshals Service ultimately tracked him down to a trailer park in Antlers, Oklahoma, where he was living under a false name.
Scott pleaded guilty to sending a false distress call that led to a Coast Guard search, to illegally shipping weapons across state lines, and to giving false information, according to court records cited by CBS News. He'll be sentenced in November.
Articles from the time detail a disappearance that no-one was fooled by.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Katrina Crouse told KMGH-TV investigators described the situation as odd from the beginning. Only a small amount of blood was found on the boat. "Normally in situations where somebody is shot, committed suicide, you're going to have other forensic evidence. For example, brain matter, hair, skin, bone," she said. "None of that was found." Another strange thing to investigators was the gun tied to the boat. "Almost like they wanted to make sure that the gun was discovered," Crouse explained.
Look what this dumb bastard did: