Man Fakes His Own Death to Avoid Marrying Girlfriend
Alex Lanchester met Tucker Blandford studying abroad at the University of Connecticut in 2012. She cleaned the campus theater, he was a set painter. They fell in love. After dating for a year, the two decided to get married in Lanchester's native Britain. But their big day was called off months before after the bride-to-be learned her betrothed attempted to fake his own death to avoid marrying her.
"I picked up my phone and there was a man saying he was Tucker's dad. He told me Tucker had been deeply depressed and wanted to die, so had thrown himself in front of a car," Lanchester, 23, told the Daily Mail. "The man explained that they had been trying to send Tucker off to a psychiatric unit for help. But it was too late. I couldn't breathe. It was absolutely devastating."
After hearing the unsettling news, Lanchester phoned Blandford's mother, and his lie immediately unraveled.
"His parents didn't even know we were getting married. They thought we had broken up when I left America," she told the Daily Mirror. "Then it hit me, that voice on the other end of the phone had sounded eerily familiar. I realised it was Tucker pretending to be his dad. My whole world crumbled."
Blandford, also 23, admits to the Daily Mail that he is "a terrible, awful person" and shouldn't have faked his own death to get out of marrying Lanchester. He just "didn't know what else to do." (You could have told her...that you didn't want to get married?)
"Alex is an amazing girl but I got scared and wanted to get out of the relationship. It was moving extremely fast and with us being in different countries, it was really hard," he told the Daily Mail.
Their wedding was originally set for Aug. 15 of this year, but Lanchester is getting the last laugh, telling the Daily Mail, "I'll be spending our would-be wedding day making new memories without him. He's a liar and a coward."
