List of Premature Obituaries - M

M

• Lonnie Mack, the rock guitarist best known as the founder of the blues-rock guitar genre, was lamented as recently deceased in the Foreword to the 1997 book, Rock Music in American Popular Culture. Although rarely seen in recent years, the notoriously reclusive Mack was still very much alive, and performed as a headliner at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as recently as November 15, 2008.
• Iven Mackay, an Australian general, received an obituary in The Times, entitled "Athlete, Soldier and Headmaster", as a result of a case of mistaken identity following the death of Major General James Alexander Kenneth Mackay in 1935.
• Madonna was proclaimed dead by a BBC News video uploaded on YouTube on 28 September 2010. The video has been considered by many a leak from BBC News archive of obituaries, although the news network never commented on this.
• Robyn Malcolm (New Zealand actress) was proclaimed dead in May 2011 through Facebook. It was stated that she had fallen 60 feet at Kauri Cliffs while filming onset.
• Nelson Mandela (South African leader) in the CNN.com incident.
• Vanni Marcoux, French baritone, was incorrectly reported as having died in World War One in 1914. He actually died in 1962.
• Gabriel García Márquez (writer), reported dead by Peruvian daily La República in 2000.
• Johnny Sterling Martin: to avoid paying child support, in 1979 this American persuaded a relative to call a family court and claim that Martin had died in a bar fight. In January 2006, following a tip-off by an ex-wife, he was located 150 miles away where he had been living under his real name. He was arrested and jailed. During the intervening decades his child support bill had risen to $30,000.
• Alison Matera: in 2006 this Florida woman told fellow church choir members that she had cancer, and over the course of 11 months gave them reports of her treatment, culminating in the claim that she was near death and would be going into a hospice. She subsequently made further phone calls masquerading as a hospice nurse, then as Matera's sister, claiming that Matera had died. The church arranged a memorial service – to which Matera showed up, again claiming to be her sister. Suspicions had already been aroused from the phone calls, in which the nurse and sister both sounded exactly like Matera. Police did not arrest her as no crime had been committed; she blamed her behaviour on childhood trauma.
• Mary Mather, a paediatrician who was reported dead in December 2004 by the General Medical Council after confusion with another person of the same name.
• Jerry Mathers: rumours that the Leave it to Beaver actor had been killed in Vietnam spread to newspapers by December 1969. (Claims that Associated Press and United Press International put out the story, and that it arose from confusion with the death of another soldier called Mathers, appear to be false.)
• Paul McCartney was proclaimed dead in 1966 by a caller to radio DJ Russ Gibb's show on WKNR-FM Detroit. A few days later New York DJ Roby Yonge was fired for discussing McCartney's possible death on a late-night show. These and other incidents led to interminable rumours that McCartney's supposed death (hinted at by a trail of supposed clues in various Beatles songs) had been covered up and he had been replaced by a look-alike.
• Sipho William Mdletshe, a South African man who was thought to have died in a 1993 traffic accident. After spending two days in a metal box in a mortuary, he was freed when his cries alerted workers. However, his fiancee refused to see him thereafter, believing he had turned into a zombie.
• Thomas Menino: as an April Fool's Day prank in 1998, shock jocks Opie and Anthony claimed on WAAF-FM radio that the Boston mayor had died in a car accident. Several local media outlets picked up on the story and reported it as true, causing a media firestorm that eventually led to the pair being fired. However, fan support resulted in Opie & Anthony getting a job in New York.
• Bertrand Meyer was proclaimed dead by the Heise News Ticker in 2005. See Bertrand Meyer Wikipedia Hoax
• Prasad and Mahaprasad Mishra (Indian brothers) were officially declared dead in 1979 by four nephews in order to steal their land in Uttar Pradesh. Though the nephews were forced to admit fraud, the case was mired in legal delays for many years. The Mishra brothers' 'deaths' were finally annulled in 1999 (by when Prasad had reached the age of 75) after intervention by the Association of the Dead, an organisation that protests such cases. (See also Lal Bihari.)
• Kel Mitchell was falsely declared dead in widely circulated internet messages in July 2006 due to unknown causes.
• George Monbiot (environmentalist and writer) was once declared clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya after contracting cerebral malaria. He recovered.
• Sonny Moore (Skrillex) had been said to have overdosed using cocaine on 2 January 2012.
• Peter Moran (British journalist) was reported dead in the December 2007 issue of aviation magazine FlyPast; he had previously contributed to the magazine for several years. This was apparently due to confusion with another aviation writer of the same name, and was corrected in the January 2008 issue.
• Harry Mulisch: On August 6, 2009, the Dutch writer was falsely declared dead by a Dutch Teletext service, after which some news websites took over the news
• Levy Mwanawasa: On 3 July 2008, the Johannesburg-based 702 Talk Radio claimed that the President of Zambia had died in a Paris hospital while recovering from a stroke suffered 4 days before in Egypt. The government stated that the story was false. Mwanawasa died 47 days later from complications of the stroke.