Incomplete or Fraudulent Cases

May 4, 2008; Li Ching-Yuen (or spelled Li Ching-Yun) died on May 6, 1933. He claimed to be born in Szechuan Provence, CHINA in the year 1736, while other records suggest the year 1677. Obviously, both alleged lifespans, either 197 or 256 years, exceeds any reasonable estimate. During his life Li was a herbalist, martial artist, and tactical advisor to Chinese generals. He made the following recommendations to achieve extreme old age: (1) Keep a quiet heart; (2) Sit like a tortoise; (3) Walk sprightly like a pigeon; and (4) Sleep like a dog. He recommended a number of herbals, including Gotu Kola, Ginseng, and Polygonum multiflorum.

August 16, 2007, Moscow, RUSSIA - This just in from Pravda,

Medportal says, "Varvara Semennikova deserves the title of World's Oldest Living Person"

A Russian Citizen Seeks To Dispute 'Oldest Known Person' Title with a US Woman

The title of Oldest Living Person in the World, which has recently been given to 114-year-old American Mrs. Edna Parker, should be awarded to a woman from Russia. A resident of the Yakutia Republic, Varvara Semennikova, turned 117 in May of 2007. Her birth date has been confirmed with archival documents, The Interfax News Agency reported.

[Note: The GRG did receive a Baptismal Certificate in February 2007 in Russian, which was translated by one of colleagues in St. Petersburg, RUSSIA. However, despite repeated E-mails, no other requested documents have been forthcoming.]

An employee of the National Archive of the Republic of Yakutia, Natalia Baisheva, managed to find the document to prove Varvara Semennikova's age (her maiden name was Diakonova). The register of births of the Bulunskaya Church contains a record dated May 10, 1890 about the birth of a girl named Varvara. The Father's name is mentioned as Konstantin Stefanov-Diakonov.

Varvara Semennikova was born to a nomadic family. When a young girl, she was dealing with deer farming and hunting. She brought up four children which she adopted. Varvara does not complain of health problems at her age of 117. The woman has a remarkable memory, although she cannot see or hear very well now. She can tell hundreds of stories about her life, express her own point of view on a variety of issues. This amazing woman still works as a housewife, she makes gowns, high fur boots, and does sewing.

"Native people of Yakutia are remarkable for their longevity. Many facts can be found in historical documents of the first half of the 19th century to prove it. Yakutia ranked third in the USSR on the number of long-living individuals according to the population census conducted in 1959," a spokesperson for the National Archive of Yakutia said.

Translated from Russian into English by Dmitry Sudakov.

"World's Oldest Living Person Dies at 116 in the Ukraine"

December 16, 2007; Lvov, UKRAINE (RIA Novosti) - - The planet's oldest living person, Grigoriy Nestor, died at the age of 116 in the Lvov Region in Western Ukraine on Sunday. According to church documents and his passport, Nestor was born on March 15, 1891. Nestor, who worked as a shepherd in the village, used to say that he had lived to an old age because he had never been married and, therefore had not had his longevity "undermined" by matrimony.

Nestor loved Ukrainian, Russian, German, and Polish songs, as he learned them after living through the first and second world wars in his West Ukrainian village. He never fell ill, never took any medicines, and never consumed alcohol in large amounts. According to Guinness World Records, today's World's Oldest Living Person is 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico, who assumed this title after Elizabeth Bolden, an African American woman, died at the age of 116 years and 118 days in 2006. [This information was incorrect and quite dated. A more accurate story is provided by the BBC News. - - LSC, Editor]

September 20, 2007; Mr. Hryhoriy (Grigory) Nestor of the Western Ukraine claims to have been born on March 15, 1891, which would make him 116 yo and the oldest living person in the world, as explained in a special Wikipedia entry. However, even though we have a picture of his passport (photo ID) with this birth date, it is of recent vintage, and there are no original documents that date back to the time of his birth. Mr. Nestor was born in Monastyr Village, Yaroslavskaya Oblast (a territory of Poland until 1939). As explained to the GRG in a recent E-mail by Mr. Vladimir Nikolin, Commercial Director of the Ukranian Nation's Health Institute in Kiev, "During the process of transferring territorial boundaries from Poland to the USSR, the only written entry in the local church's Vestry Book was lost when the church was plundered and completely destroyed. According to our information, an active search for documents concerning Mr. Nestor was made by The Guinness Book of World Records, but no official records could be located. One could always attempt to communicate personally with the relatives of Mr. Nestor who live with him in Staryy Yarychiv Village, Lvovskaya Oblast by telephone (+380 32 54 651 37). His Grand-Niece, Ms. Oksana Savchuk, serves as his next-of-kin. But, of course, one must either speak Russian or Ukrainian, and so this case shall remain incomplete.

Chicago Woman Claims To Celebrate Her 118th Birthday

Note: The GRG has made contact with relatives of Mrs. Roberta Weston, but we have neither received documents to corroborate nor deny her claim; therefore, we cannot validate her story below. She was born in Mississippi at a time when Birth Certificates were not issued, and the entry in her family bible was destroyed in a home fire. [For some odd reason, we hear this sort of excuse frequently.]

August 9, 2005; Chicago, IL -- A local woman on Tuesday celebrated a day most people will never see -- her 118th birthday! Mrs. Roberta Weston was recognized by Mayor Richard Daley as the oldest living person in the United States, and "she may be the world record holder as well," NBC5-TV reported. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the oldest age ever reached by anyone as 122 years.

[ Editor's Note: Curiously, the family has denied receiving any acknowledgement from the Mayor's office. We will attempt to resolve this matter and post an update as soon as we can.]

December 21, 2005; The Roberta Weston case has NOT moved forward, and so far her family has not produced any documents; so, not much has happened.

June 30, 2006; Here is a definitive update, as promised...

One of our Senior Investigators, Sr. Felipe Prista Lucas of Portugal, has made a convincing argument that Roberta Weston, who was presumed to be 118 years old, died instead at age 109! This allows us to conclude that she was not even the oldest person in the state of Illinois, let alone the nation or the world at the time of her death.

No one previously found this match because:

(a) It was faded and almost illegible;

(b) Roberta was listed under her Step-Father's name, James Tate, instead of her natural Father's name;

Here, Sr. Lucas links the 1900 Census match strongly with the 1910 Census listing, showing that the hard-to-read name is in fact ' Jim Tate.' Also, of note was Roberta's future husband living just a few doors down (a close neighbor?), and he was listed on the very same census page!

Thank you Sr. Lucas for your scholarship, investigatory-skills, and tenacious perseverance in helping us to resolve this ambiguity that the media, with all its resources, had no interest in refuting secondary to its intense fascination with the human-interest aspects of the story (that sells newspapers) and compels a promiscuous lack of objectivity (or even the slightest pretense at skepticism) when confronted by their own inherent conflict-of-interest.
-- Editor

March 5, 2005; Due to the enormous interest by GRG members in the recent claim of

Maria Olivia da Silva of São Paulo, BRAZIL, as the oldest person who ever lived, we are showing two pictures of her, even though we do not have sufficient evidence at this time to place her on our list of Living Supercentenarians... Here is her story, so far, from The Associated Press...

"Brazilian Said to Be 125 May Be the Oldest Woman: Guinness World Records Is Currently Researching Maria Olivia da Silva's Longevity Claim"

___________________________

Our own GRG Senior Claims Investigator, Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, Georgia, wishes to go on record, saying ...

Let us consider for just a moment that this woman was alleged to have been born on February 28, 1880...
Firstly, if that were true, she would have been the "world's oldest person" since 1997. Why didn't she apply for recognition then? How old were you in 1997? Think about it.
Secondly, this woman is said to have a 58-year-old "adopted" son. Even if adopted at birth, that would have made her 67 years old at the time -- Compare that to fully-validated Supercentenarians:

Bettie Wilson, who died at 115, had a 95-year-old son;
Florence Van Stockum, age 110, has an 88-year-old son;
Grace Thaxton, age 113, has an 89-year-old son.

Note that this woman has been living "in a shack." Furthermore, the documents exhibited, so far, were NOT issued in the year 1880. But, if the family can produce some real proof -- as opposed to merely saying "We have proof." -- we would be very interested in seeing this "proof"!

Fewer than 1,000 persons have reached 110 (98 percent are dead by 115, while 99 percent are dead by 116). Consider the chance that anyone could live from age 115 to age 125. This would on the order of 1 in 1,000, i.e., the same probability as getting ten consecutive "Heads" when flipping a fair coin. The GRG has recorded only 17 documented individuals as having reached age 115 (and five of these are doubtful). Therefore, this Brazilian case has to be treated as extremely dubious. The older the claimed age, the more rigorous the standard to which it must be held, or as the late Dr. Carl Sagan used to say, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

As of today (March 11, 2005), the approximate cumulative numbers of historical validated Supercentenarians are as follows:

Finally, Mr. Louis Epstein, our International Committee Chairman of New York, says, "We have requested Mr. Lehman, the staff writer from The Associated Press who wrote the story above, to provide us with additional supporting evidence, but so far (as of March 11, 2005) he has not responded to our E-mails." We will keep you posted.

_________________

* The document pictured here appears to have been prepared in the year 2000 or 2001. I have now read nearly all of the stories about her on Brazilian websites. When she lived in Centenario do Sul in the 1960's, her house burned down and she lost everything, including her documentation according to her Stepson. Later, she had trouble getting her pension which her Stepson was able to resolve. I suspect that he obtained new documentation for her so that she could receive her pension, and this may have been the origin of her current documents that have been represented as her original Birth Certificate. Therefore, it appears that the oldest documentation of her age may have been created in the 1970's. -- Stan Primmer, a long-time member of the GRG and a Co-Founder of the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF) now being formed.

August 9, 2007; Mr. Ronnie Fairbanks has a Photo ID from the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles showing him to be born on May 29, 1897 making him over 110 years old. But he has no Birth Certificate and has outlived all his relatives, so there is no next-of-kin, and, as far as we can tell, no one to serve as Legal Guardian, Custodian, or Executor of his estate. He lives independently in a tall senior-housing apartment building in Hollywood near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. He is well oriented as to person, place, and time. He could name many US Presidents starting with William McKinley [1896], Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He has superb vision and hearing and no frailty or dementia whatsoever, although he presently lacks dentures. He was born on a cattle ranch near Butte, MT, but there are no Census records of his having lived there under that name, and so for the time being, our Senior Claims Investigator, Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, GA, has declared him to an "International Man of Mystery."

Maria do Carmo Geronimo of BRAZIL
Ms. Maria Jeronimo, passed away on Wednesday, June 14, 2000 at the ostensible age of 129! Church baptismal records say that she was born on March 5, 1871 in the Southeastern town of Carmo de Minas, BRAZIL. However, she has never been authenticated by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest woman, since there was never a non- disputable proof-of-age or an official Birth Certificate for her (she was born a slave). Other facts: After her emancipation she worked as a nanny for 60 years for one family. She never married. She never went to a hospital for medical care until she was 120! She apparently died from a series of strokes.

Mrs. Elizabeth Israel (AKA "Ma Pampo") of the Caribbean island-nation of Dominica, WEST INDIES was presumed born on January 27, 1875 (making her now 126 years old ). [She has no Birth Certificate, but the local Roman Catholic Archdiocese issued an official Baptismal Certificate based on church records.] If her age were accurate, it would make her older than record-holder, Frenchwoman Madam Jeanne Calment who died at 122 years of age on August 4, 1997 (see much more below). But there are reasons to be skeptical as Mr. Young insists below the photos that follow. (Mrs. Israel was known to be alive on February 1, 2001, but she reportedly died in See mid-October 2003.)


February 5, 2001; This just in from Mr. Robert Young of Atlanta, Georgia:
"As you may know, for years Madam Jeanne Calment's status as the world's oldest person was challenged (unsuccessfully) by Maria do Carmo Geronimo of BRAZIL (See photo above), who may well have been the last legal slave in the Western Hemisphere (Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, and in June 1871 the Brazilian legislature passed a law that all children born to slaves would henceforth be free). Her birth claim of March 5, 1871 was backed up by a Roman Catholic Baptismal Certificate, as well as physical evidence. She died June 14, 2000, following two years of living in a nearly vegetative state.
Today, we have a new asterisk: Mrs. Elizabeth Israel of Dominica, West Indies, who is said by some interested parties to be 126 (presumably born January 27, 1875). But what merit does this claim have? Has anyone investigated seriously? In searching the Internet, I came across the definitive websites on Ms. Israel. They are www.cakafete.com/pampo/story.htm and the associated link, www.geocities.com/amazinglydominica_ceninarians/.
The amazing thing is that, on a small Caribbean island of 72,000, there are four claimed Supercentenarians: one born 1875, one born in 1883, and two born in 1889. This is, of course, extremely unlikely, and is reminiscent of the longevity myths of Vilcabamba, the Hunza Valley, and the Caucasus back in the 1970's. Aside from the fact that Mrs. Israel looks very ancient (and believably 126 years old), the stories themselves don't add up. She is referred to as the "World's Oldest Documented Centenarian." This document, a Roman Catholic Baptismal Certificate, may be a copy of original documents destroyed in the 1979 Hurricane David. Note that the website(s) admit that they don't even know what year Ms. Israel was married, or what year her son was born. Yet the most incredulous claim is that her grandmother was born in the 1740's -- a gap of 135 years in two generations of women. Obviously, the story falters under closer scrutiny."

The Guinness Book of Records has been contacted on her behalf for an official consideration of her claim.