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Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (1921- 1982)
The “Great Imposter” Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. was born in Lawrence,
Massachusetts in 1921. He resided with his parents, Ferdinand and Mary, on Jackson St. and
later State St. in Lawrence. As a teenager he attended Central Catholic High School,
although he did not graduate. Instead he entered a monastery. Although he abandoned the
monastic life, he would look back on his time at the monastery as the best in his life.
Demara’s career as an imposter spanned three decades and included a bizarre
variety of pseudo-identities. His most famous exploit was the adoption of the identity of
Dr. Joseph Cyr and his subsequent hitch in the Royal Canadian Navy as a surgeon. As
Cyr,
he managed numerous successful surgeries including the removal of a bullet from a
man’s chest. Gifted with a sharp intellect and a photographic memory, Demara simply
taught himself the techniques necessary for his deception by reading text books.
The Canadian Navy eventually discovered that Demara was using a false name but his
credentials as a surgeon were not questioned. He was dismissed from his service and went
on to create a series of new identities including: zoology Ph.D., law student, cancer
researcher, hospital orderly, deputy sheriff and teacher. The latter masquerade resulted
in his arrest and a six month prison sentence. During his career he was arrested for
fraud, theft, embezzlement and forgery. Personal gain did not seem to be a motivation for
Demara however. He was an imposter for the sake of being one and described his own
motivation as “Rascality, pure rascality”.
Demara was the subject of a book and subsequent film “The Great Imposter”. He
always held that the book’s author, Robert Crichton, told his story inaccurately and
he had ambitions to write his own account of his life. Demara’s book was to have been
a cautionary tale against leading the sort of life he had led. This project never came to
fruition and Demara died of a heart attack on June 8, 1982. According to his friend and
physician, Dr. John Zane, Demara died a lonely and deeply depressed man. Zane described
him as a “broken man who felt his talents were wasted”.
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