Did Missing Pilot Stage His Death?

A missing Indiana pilot whose marriage was crumbling as he faced a state investigation of his businesses apparently faked an emergency before parachuting out of his small plane and leaving it on autopilot to crash in Florida, authorities said.

Authorities were searching the Alabama woods Monday in hope of finding Marcus Schrenker, 38, and determining whether he was trying to stage his own death.

The investigation began Sunday night, when Schrenker's single-engine Piper Malibu crashed in a swampy area of north Florida.

The plane was en route from Anderson, Ind., to the Florida Panhandle city of Destin when Schrenker reported turbulence as he flew over Alabama. He said the windshield had imploded and he was bleeding profusely, according to the sheriff's office in Santa Rosa County, where the plane crashed.

But when investigators found the plane, its door was ajar and the wreckage showed no signs of blood or the blown windshield Schrenker had reported.

Schrenker, who lived in a suburb of Indianapolis, "appears to have intentionally abandoned the plane after putting it on auto pilot over the Birmingham, Ala., area and parachuting to the ground," the sheriff's department said in a release.

The case grew stranger Monday morning, when a man using Schrenker's Indiana driver's license told police in Childersburg, Ala. - southeast of Birmingham and about 225 miles from where the plane crashed - that he'd been in a canoe accident. He was wet only from the knees down and had what appeared to be flying goggles.

The officers, unaware of the Florida plane crash, took him to a hotel. He was gone by the time they returned. They learned he had paid for his room in cash before putting on a black cap and running into the woods next to the hotel, officials said.

Court records in Indiana show his personal and professional life had been in a downward spiral in recent weeks.

His wife, Michelle, had filed for divorce Dec. 30. And three companies registered in Indiana by Schrenker - Heritage Wealth Management Inc., Heritage Insurance Services Inc. and Icon Wealth Management - are being investigated by the Indiana Secretary of State's office, said office spokesman Jim Gavin.

Indiana State Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said state police have been helping with the investigation of Icon Wealth Management.

On Friday, two days before the crash, a federal judge in Maryland issued a $533,500 judgment against Heritage Wealth Management Inc., and in favor of OM Financial Life Insurance Co., after neither Schrenker nor his attorney appeared for a hearing.