An American man faked his own death to avoid marrying his girlfriend of two years.
According to the Daily Mail, 23-year-old Tucker Blandford met British girlfriend Alex Lancaster while she was studying at the University of Connecticut and the pair quickly fell in love.
"Tucker was such a gentleman and was always buying me dinner and beautiful vintage jewellery. I’d never been in love like that before. Every Sunday he would take me out for pancakes, it was so sweet," Lancaster explained.
"And to celebrate the day we got together, on the 10th of each month we would go out for a posh dinner. The worst thing was the idea that one day I would have to leave him and go back to England. The thought of that was breaking my heart."
After a year together, Alex was due to return to the UK and Tucker decided to cement their relationship by proposing. She accepted and the couple stayed in daily contact, planning to marry on the campus where they first met.
Lancaster then paid for flights so that Blandford could visit the UK and help with the final wedding arrangements but a week before he was supposed to arrive, she received a phone call with some bad news.
"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," she said.
"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."
Lancaster later called Blandford's mother but was surprised to hear that Tucker was alive and well, and had told his parents that the couple had broken up when she left for the UK.
Tucker later admitted that he had posed as his father to make the hoax call to Lancaster after getting cold feet about their upcoming wedding.
"I’m a terrible, awful person. I know I shouldn’t have told her I was dead, but I didn’t know what else to do. 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. At the time, I just felt like I couldn’t tell the truth and thought if I could just postpone everything it would be better."
Alex (23) has since said that the incident has "shattered my trust and I’m not sure I’ll ever be in a relationship again".
"All I ever did was love him. I’m so sick of being messed around and I’m glad to be rid of him. Looking back, maybe I was naive. But I really loved him and never thought he would go to such extreme measures to dump me. I’ve cried until I felt numb but now I’m just really angry. I’ll be spending our would-be wedding day making new memories without him. He’s a liar and a coward. He had put on a different voice on the phone and pretended to be his grieving father. What sort of sick person does that to his fiancé of two years? It’s sickening."
Photo via Daily Mail
