Declared Dead Three Times, Man Faces Charges For Using Dead Boy’s Identity

Joseph Sterner III got lost 10 years ago and was declared legally dead. Then he was found again, living with the identity of a boy who died at the age of 3.

Sterner, whose age has been listed as 72 or 73, appeared in court Wednesday and was given until Oct. 9 to prepare his defense against a charge of criminal impersonation.

His son and daughter-in-law found him last week living in Henrietta, near Nashville, after discovering that Sterner had tried to obtain medical benefits for himself under his old name.

“He’s been through some extreme hell,” his son, Joseph W. Sterner, told The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa. “He said he’s been pronounced dead three times, so he said he got six more lives.”

The son, 40, of Leonia, N.J., said his father was twice declared dead as a prisoner of war in the Pacific during World War II. As a POW, the elder Sterner survived the brutal Bataan Death March in which thousands died.

After the war, Sterner returned home to New Jersey, married and raised five children. But the stress of the war took its toll and Sterner left in 1979 to live alone in Pennsylvania, his son said.

Then one day in July 1986, Sterner disappeared. His truck was found parked in Pittsburgh and he was believed murdered.

But while police searched old strip mines in the area for his body, Sterner boarded a bus to Nashville, his son said.

Soon after that, he began looking up death records to find a new identity, his son said. He settled on Claude Bentley Jr., a boy who died of an accidental shotgun blast just before his third birthday.

The misdemeanor charge of impersonation refers to his applying for the dead child’s Social Security number.