Some of the reveals' have been mordant, with one publication debunking the Mittyesque CV of IT leader Jeff Papows (who seems to have flourished nonetheless) with the statement
So he's not an orphan, his parents are alive and well. He wasn't a Marine Corps captain, he was a lieutenant. He didn't save a buddy by throwing a live grenade out of a trench. He didn't burst an eardrum when ejecting from a Phantom F4, which didn't crash, not killing his co-pilot. He's not a tae kwon do black belt, and he doesn't have a PhD from Pepperdine University.The Guardian today notes an expose regarding French author and serial killer expert Stéphane Bourgoin, "widely viewed as a leading expert on murderers". Bourgoin's books about serial killers have reportedly sold millions of copies, a figure that perhaps something more telling about our taste for the contemporary gothic than it does for the depth of his analysis.
Other sources indicate Bourgoin was a lecturer at France's National Training Center for Judicial Police at the school of the French National Gendarmerie for around 10 years and at the National School of Magistrates in 2015 and 2018.
Bourgoin claimed to have interviewed more than 70 serial killers and to have trained at the FBI’s base in Quantico. He also claimed that his wife was murdered in 1976 by a man who confessed to a dozen murders on arrest two years later. Oops, no.
Bourgoin has now admitted to the French media that the wife never existed, that he never trained with the FBI, never interviewed Charles Manson, met far fewer killers than he has previously claimed, never worked as a professional footballer, and completely invented one serial killer. He's accused of plagiarising at least one book.
Presumably we will now get a best-selling autobiography and documentary.
Bourgoin reportedly attributes the fakery to having always felt he was not really loved.
Early last year the New Yorker reported thriller writer Dan Mallory (aka A.J. Finn) claimed in his application to Oxford’s New College that his mother died of cancer and that his brother had died in his care. his mother and brother died.
Both are apparently alive and well. Mallory claimed that he had surgery for a brain tumour, missed work for supposed high-risk surgery. Apparently no tumour, no surgery. He reportedly impersonated his brother, sending email to colleagues updating them on Dan’s “surgeries” and “recovery”. Subsequently he told an acquaintance that his brother had committed suicide.
Why stop there? Mallory reportedly He claimed to have written a doctoral dissertation on Patricia Highsmith while at Oxford and signed email as 'Dr. Daniel Mallory'. He was hired by a UK publisher after having claimed to have worked as an editor at US publisher Ballantine and modestly claimed to have been awarded doctorates from both Oxford and American University. Not so: an incomplete Masters and no PhDs.
