The president of Heritage Wealth Management, 38 year old Marcus Schrenker, faked a distress call from his six-seater Piper PA-36 and then parachuted to safety before the plane crashed at 9:15 p.m. into a swampy area of the Florida Panhandle near East Milton on Sunday evening, January 11, 2009.
Schrenker, bound for Destin, Florida, told air traffic controllers that the window of his plane had imploded and he was bleeding profusely. That call came in when the aircraft was about 35 miles southwest of Birmingham. The pilot was instructed to divert to Pell City, Alabama but he did not respond.
The plane was put on autopilot at approximately 2,000 feet. The military dispatched aircraft to intercept the plane, and personnel who caught up to the aircraft noted that the plane door was open. They followed it until it crashed.
Authorities have since determined that the missing Indiana pilot appears to have intentionally abandoned the plane by parachute with the intention of faking his own death. He approached a Childersburg policeman at 2:26 a.m. Monday morning and said that he had been in a canoeing accident. The officer drove Schrenker to a nearby hotel, noting it odd that the man had flying goggles around his neck.
Later, after hearing about the missing pilot, the officer went back to the hotel and discovered that Schrenker had fled. According to the Harpersville hotel manager, the man had used an alias and had paid cash and a short while later was seen running into the woods next to the hotel.
Schrenker apparently retrieved a red 2008 Yamaha street bike with saddlebags that he had stashed in a rental storage unit near his planned parachute drop zone. According to the owner of the storage facility, someone in a brown truck dropped off the bike over the weekend, indicating that it would be picked up on Monday. The transaction was with cash and under a false name.
According to neighbor and friend, Tom Britt, the father of three children was served with divorce papers a few days ago by his wife Michelle Schrenker. He also recently suffered the loss of his father. Britt believes that things were closing in around the financial planner.
According to the Milwaukee Examiner, a judgment was issued on Friday against Marcus Schrenker’s Heritage Wealth Management Inc. A federal court judge ordered Schrenker to pay $533,564 to OM Financial Life Insurance Company. The default judgment was from a lawsuit against Schrenker and his company for failing to pay back unearned commissions they received for OM Financial products.
Check out a photos from the crash site as well as a video that Schrenker, an accomplished pilot, put on YouTube in December 2008 showing a plane stunt in the Bahamas.
UPDATE: Marcus Schrenker apprehended.
Crash photo: Miami Herald
Crash photo two: CBS