Ferdinand Waldo Demara

Who was Ferdinand Waldo Demara?

Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr., known as "the Great Impostor", masqueraded as many people from monks to surgeons to prison wardens. He was the subject of a movie, The Great Impostor, in which he was played by Tony Curtis.

During Demara's "careers", he was, among other things, a ship's doctor, a civil engineer, a sheriff's deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. One teaching job led to six months in prison. He never seemed to get much monetary gain in what he was doing – just temporary respectability.

Many of Demara's unsuspecting employers, under other circumstances, would have been satisfied with Demara as an employee. Demara was said to possess a true photographic memory and was widely reputed to have an extraordinary IQ. He was apparently able to memorize necessary techniques from textbooks and worked on two cardinal rules: The burden of proof is on the accuser and When in danger, attack. He described his own motivation as "Rascality, pure rascality".