The living lie

If it hadn’t been for the serial number on the back of a Rolex Oyster watch, Albert Walker would have got away with murder. His is a story you simply could not have made up. The events of his astonishing life have been turned into a film, The Many Lives of Albert Walker. But reality in this case far outstrips fiction.

Here are the bare bones of a complex, yet engrossing tale. In 1996, a man’s corpse was discovered after it became entangled in the nets of a Brixham trawler. The body had no distinguishing features - apart from a Rolex Oyster watch. The serial number identified the dead man as Ronald Platt, and eventually led the police to Walker, a Canadian friend of his. Their suspicions were aroused when they knocked on the door of Walker’s neighbours’ house and heard them refer to him as "Mr Platt".

It soon emerged that Walker, a man with a string of aliases, stood at number four on Interpol’s most wanted list. In 1990, he had fled Canada after posing as a financial consultant, and defrauding fellow parishioners, at the church where he was an elder, of several million Canadian dollars. He transferred 1.67 million of other people’s money into European banks, but Canadian police suspect much more may be stashed in secret accounts.

Landing in Britain with his 15-year-old daughter, Sheena, Walker befriended Platt, a lonely and inadequate TV repairman from Harrogate. He persuaded him to start a new life in Canada - and was even kind enough to give him and his then girlfriend, Elaine Boyes, one-way tickets to Calgary.

On his departure, Platt entrusted his new friend with all his personal documents - driving licence, birth certificate, bank details - and Walker proceeded to "steal" Platt’s identity to conceal himself from Interpol.

When the real Platt returned to Britain, disillusioned and alone after two unprofitable years in Canada, Walker realised his cover was about to be blown. So he took Platt for a trip on his yacht off the Devon coast. Four miles out to sea from Totnes, Walker hit him over the head with the anchor and tipped his body into the English Channel. Only his failure to remove Platt’s watch gave him away.

A global positioning system later pinpointed Walker’s yacht to the area and the time when the 51-year-old Platt died. One of Platt’s fingerprints was also found on a plastic bag on the boat.

At his trial at Exeter Crown Court in 1998, the jury took just two hours to convict Walker of Platt’s murder. Sending him down for life, Mr Justice Butterfield said Walker, who was 52 at the time, had committed "a callous, premeditated killing".

Afterwards, Boyes, who had also been deceived by the arch-dissembler, reflected: "Ron was extremely honest, kind and gentle. But he was conned - we were both conned. Right up until the last moments of his life, he was being conned."

Local news reports of Walker’s case caught the eye of director Harry Hook (Lord of the Flies, Pure Wickedness), who was then living in the English West Country. He spent ten days watching the trial and realised it was ideal material for a film.

He cast Alan Scarfe, a star in his native Canada, in the title role, while the Scottish actor John Gordon-Sinclair was recruited to play George Meyrick, the dogged policeman who finally catches Walker.

Hook explains why the case was begging to be made into a film. "It’s a story of a man who runs rings round British society. He breaks every rule in the book - from theft to murder - and yet everybody he met believed him. He was utterly plausible because he seemed so ordinary.

"Walker is enthralling because he gets away with it for so long. It’s amazing to be able to have a double, and sometimes triple, identity and keep all the backstories in your head. I think we’re all fascinated by the sheer cleverness of con artists. It’s like watching a mongoose being mesmerised by a cobra."

It is certainly remarkable to see how easily people were taken in by the charismatic Walker. After the verdict, Laura Knight, from the town of Paris, Ontario, where he fleeced residents of millions of dollars, recalled how deceptive appearances could be. "He seemed a happy-go-lucky guy, pleasant, easy-going, a well-liked man of the church. He appeared to be on the straight and narrow."

Walker’s great skill lay in identifying people’s weak spots and exploiting them. At the time of his conviction, the Rev Nora Feuten from St Paul’s United Church in Paris, where Walker taught at Sunday school and ripped off many church-goers with a bogus investment company, admitted to a feeling of betrayal. "We pride ourselves on our openness and our willingness to welcome everybody, but maybe we’re sometimes not as cautious as we might be. We look for the best in everyone - but this is not a perfect world." But it is Walker’s very talent as a conman that makes his story so absorbing. You know you shouldn’t find him fascinating, but you can’t help yourself. That was clearly what drew Gordon-Sinclair to the film. Relaxing between takes in the catering bus at a derelict car park in west London, the actor is wearing Meyrick’s shabby tweed suit and grubby green V-neck.

He says: "Any tale where so many people are fooled for so long is bound to be compelling. At first, you can’t believe so many would be taken in by Walker but we did an experiment to show how easy it is to manipulate people by being nice to them. We went up to someone on the production team and told her: ‘I just want you to know you’re one of the most special and talented people I’ve ever met’.

"She believed it - her reaction was ‘great, that’s made me feel much better’. Suddenly she felt incredibly generous and welldisposed towards people. If you’re able to do that with callous intent, then it’s so easy to mould people to your own ends. Walker used his charm with malice aforethought. It was a terrible abuse of power."

Researching the character of Walker, GordonSinclair found himself almost in awe of his capacity for deceiving people. "He could talk to anyone about any subject. He picked up what made people tick very quickly. For instance, in the film, Walker soon realises that my character loves dogs and starts saying how much he loves them, too."

Sophie Gardiner, the producer of The Many Lives of Albert Walker, takes up the theme. "Walker was incredibly clever. Once, he met a brigadier who within three weeks had given him all his life savings. Walker could see immediately that Elaine Boyes was someone in need of self-belief and he filled her with it. And he instantly knew that Ronald Platt was a person who desperately wanted to believe his life could change dramatically.’’

Walker was also canny enough to realise that Platt was one of life’s loners who would not be much missed if he vanished. "When Platt disappeared, no-one noticed for six weeks," Gardiner says. "The idea that someone can die and leave no footprints in the sand is very sad."

All the same, she thinks we still have a sneaking regard for conmen. "We always admire wheeler-dealers and people who nearly get away with things because that’s what we all want to do. Only when we realise the consequences of their cons do we pull back. We may admire people living on the edge, but Walker was ten leagues above - or below - that."

Walker’s ability to dupe people even extends to himself. "He’s probably sitting in jail thinking he hasn’t done anything wrong," Gordon-Sinclair muses. "He has the mindset that he’s not guilty. At one point, he started posing as a psychiatrist, and I’m sure he convinced himself that he was doing good. He could pretend anything at any time."

Even during the trial, the compulsive fantasist refused to accept that he had committed any misdemeanours. "Seeing Walker in the witness-box, what was fascinating was how he thought he could still talk his way out of it," Hook remembers. "His arrogance meant that he had to take the stand but the jury saw through him. So many facts conspired against him.

"But even though he couldn’t give the court any answers, still he spun and tried to wriggle out of it. God knows who he’s pretending to be now. He’s a man who can’t stop believing his own lies."

The film makes for gripping viewing, but there must be questions about how edifying Walker’s victims will find it. According to Gardiner, however, Boyes supports the project.

"She feels it’s a story that needs telling. She is still in shock that this could have happened but she also has a desire to make others realise that it could happen again. It’s the most enormous thing in her life, and people just don’t believe it. She still feels huge guilt about it.

"People might almost have respect for a person who has pulled off this sort of scam, but we should never forget that someone died here. Our story starts with the discovery of Platt’s body. "

So what lessons can be drawn from the tale of Albert Walker? "We learn nothing that we couldn’t learn from the Ten Commandments," reflects Scarfe, perhaps in a sombre mood after being immersed in Walker’s fantasy world for several weeks. "Lay off the greed, be happy with what you’ve got and do not covet thy neighbour’s goods.

"It’s good to have a healthy mistrust of one’s fellow man - would you buy a used car from me? After all, over the last few millennia we haven’t proved ourselves too trustworthy, have we? We’re basically a pretty appalling species."

The Many Lives of Albert Walker is on BBC1 at 8:30pm tonight