Cage Fighter Who Faked Own Death Blows It When He Calls Cops

Charles Rowan may have been hit in the head one too many times, or may have been choked out a little too long a few too many times. Of the many things you don’t do after you have faked your own death to avoid a debt to a drug dealer, on the top of the list is calling the police who investigating you.  You are supposed to be dead.  Dead people don’t make phone calls.

The New York Times reports that Rowan, 26, of rural Michigan, pleaded guilty to robbing Guns and Stuff, an aptly named gun store in Gladwin County. Rowan had faked his death a month earlier.  According to the Times, at the time of the robbery, Rowan’s family, girlfriend and frinds in the MMA community thought he died in a car accident. 

They believed his girlfriend, Rosa Martinez, when she told them that Rowan was dead — so much so that they organized benefit fights in his memory.

But the death announcement was a hoax, part of a clumsy attempt to start a new life and escape a drug-related debt that Rowan said was as much as $80,000.

On March 18, Rowan and Martinez robbed Guns and Stuff with the help of a friend, Michael Bowman. Rowan struck Richard Robinette, the 75-year-old owner of the store, with a hammer and stole eight handguns.

After the robbery, Rowan and Martinez went on the run. They were hiding out from the police, federal agents, the drug dealers to whom they owed money — and the cage fighters who realized they had been duped.

The Times has a long, great article on the whole backstory, here.  

One point it made is that Rowan was done in after the cage fight held in his honor, after he robbed the store, when a mugshot of him hit the press and those who knew him saw the supposedly dead guy who was the suspect. He was also stir-crazy, and others were questioning his death, noting no death certificate or body. (in a car crash, there’s a body.  Faking your death by falling in the ocean is one thing. In a car crash is another. It involves a body.  This wasn’t well thought out.) That’s when he called the phone his girlfriend had left at the post-death robbery scene, talked to the police and apparently started his recovery. 

That’s a good thing for him.  Maybe he was more scared of the drug dealers he had ripped off or the MMA fighters he had duped and were pissed about fighting in a fake benefit fight. Either way, he’s doing 70 years and better hope the dealers don’t have guys on the inside. Drug dealers have long memories.