If everything had gone according to plan, Marcus Schrenker would have been dead by 8 p.m., he says.

But it didn't.

Instead he lay there, bleeding, on the side of a river in God-knows-where.

Despite hurling his body last winter from his million-dollar plane into the black of night, smashing through trees into an Alabama river, he had lived.

He couldn't even do this right, he thought.

He would wake to the sting of hemorrhaging wounds and national criticism. The mockery and mystery of a nation, he would embarrass his loved ones who -- along with Schrenker himself -- were left to wonder:

How did all this happen?

'I knew it was kamikaze'

He saw his face on CNN.

"That's when I felt, 'S---, it's over,' " Marcus Schrenker said.

People on TV were saying his name. They were wondering aloud if he were alive. They were saying he tried to fake his death.

He was smarter than that, though. He knew he could be traced. Didn't they all know his fingerprints were on file as a registered securities broker?

If he had wanted to flee the country, he would have done it.

"I knew it was kamikaze," Schrenker said.

But, he said, he didn't expect to live.

'Guarantee ... he's faking his death'

At 7:18 p.m. this past Jan. 12, Tom Britt's heart began racing. Could this really be from Marcus Schrenker? The man whose face was plastered on network news?

"At first I thought it was a scam," Britt said.

His acquaintance, Schrenker, had vanished, after a mysterious plane wreck in Florida's panhandle. Britt, who edits a newsletter about Geist -- the tiny Indianapolis suburb where Schrenker owned a multimillion-dollar mansion -- had been fielding calls all day.

What did he know? Had he heard if he was dead?

"Then this e-mail pops up from Marcus Schrenker," Britt said.

Schrenker had seen his face on national news. He was desperate and reaching out.

"I have embarrassed my family for the last time, and by the time you read this I will be gone," his note read. "I never meant to hurt anyone. When life becomes too much people do stupid things."

Britt was startled to get the e-mail but not surprised Schrenker was alive.

"I guarantee you he's not in that plane," Britt said when he heard Schrenker went missing. "He's faking his death. His ego is too big to go down in flames or handcuffs."

A world crumbling

"The scary thing about Jan. 11 is I told a lot of people I was going to kill myself, and nobody believed me," Schrenker said.

Schrenker had been secretly seeing a mental health doctor for more than four years by the time he parachuted from the sky, he said.

He paid cash so his wife wouldn't know. No one knew, he said.

But he said a growing drug addiction and cracking mental frailty began to overtake his once-rational actions.

The money manager's behavior was becoming more erratic, and more attention was being paid to his investors' missing money.

Schrenker said he was introduced to narcotics in 2002 after undergoing back surgery. Over the next three years, the need to suppress the pain grew, he said, and by 2007 he was "completely addicted" to opiates.

He took a variety of prescriptions from multiple doctors in cities from Chicago to New York.

"With a (credit) card and a tie and suit, no one questions you," he said of easily racking up a pile of prescriptions. "I was using opiates to treat my depression."

In late 2007, he began a "defenseless extramarital affair," he said. "I was living two lives." His wife, Michelle, discovered the tryst through cell phone records, he said.

Michelle Schrenker filed for divorce on Dec. 30, 2008.

"It just devastated me," Marcus Schrenker said of the split.

Michelle Schrenker declined to speak to The Times through a request made to her Indianapolis-based lawyer.

On the final day of 2008, as part of a securities-fraud investigation, authorities raided Schrenker's home and office, seizing computers, business records and more than $6,000 in cash.

On Jan. 4, Schrenker's stepfather, Michael Galoozis, a Merrillville resident, died.

Five days later, the day of his stepfather's funeral, a Maryland court handed down a more than $533,500 judgment against Schrenker.

"What was happening with Marcus was several life changes," said Skip Beyer, a Fishers-based counselor who said he has been treating Schrenker for nearly two years. "The affair was going south, his stepfather just died.

"I think he had a psychotic break," Beyer said.

"I felt like the lowest piece of you-know-what, just worthless," Schrenker said.

On Jan. 7, back in his native Northwest Indiana to put his stepfather to rest, Schrenker unloaded his grief onto his mother.

"I went into the bedroom and just collapsed," Schrenker said. "Here, she just lost her husband." Now she would have to hear her son tell her he planned to kill himself.

"She was worried," Schrenker said. "She said, 'Stay here.' "

He didn't.

On Jan. 9, after his stepfather's funeral, he left Northwest Indiana again, driving back to his Indianapolis suburb.

"I saw myself as broke. I could never be fixed," he said. "I screwed up bad. So I made plans to end my life."

Before the fall

"He always had this devilish look," former Merrillville High School teacher Jerry Kasarda said of Schrenker. "You never knew what to expect from him."

As a student, Schrenker was involved in Kasarda's Quest Club, a drug-prevention group aimed at teaching students social skills.

"I found him very intelligent, one of the sharpest kids I've had," Kasarda said of Schrenker.

Even as a teen, Schrenker showed a kind of duality he says followed him into the dark period of his life. The football player who did the spring play. The jock who shot photos for the Merrillvue yearbook.

"He was really soft-spoken and easy to get along with," said Mark Owens, who directed Schrenker in Merrillville plays. "On stage, he was pretty good. He seemed to enjoy it."

He got into "obnoxious trouble" as a kid, Schrenker said. There was the time he painted his truck in camouflage green and built a wooden bed on back, from which he could spray water at other kids.

"My father was mortified," Schrenker said, shaking his head.

Between the plane wreck and criminal charges, "I know I've embarrassed him," he said of his father, the former longtime superintendent of Merrillville schools. "I'm remorseful that I've represented Merrillville in this light," he said.

Robert Schrenker did not respond to multiple calls made by The Times to his home in Miramar Beach, Fla.

"I've always had trouble with social occasions," Schrenker said. "I think people thought I was rude. But I was just shy."

The Times contacted more than a dozen students who graduated with Schrenker in 1989 from Merrillville High School. A few former classmates would comment only if they were not identified in the story. The Times chose not to quote them.

Several of the former classmates did not respond to The Times' inquiry.

"I don't think anyone really knew me," Schrenker said. "I don't think anyone knew how I was hurting inside."

Schrenker referred to a "traumatic" event in his childhood that spurred mental health problems as a young man. He declined to discuss the alleged event further.

"It's in the book," he said, referring to his current plan to pen his story.

Schrenker praised his parents as good people, saying, "My mom has been here for me. She says she's not going to rest until her son's safe."

Schrenker's mother, Marcia Galoozis, who lives in the Lakes of the Four Seasons area, did not respond to several Times requests to speak about her son.

His relationship with his brother and half brother has strained under the weight of scandal and criminal charges, he said.

"The whole thing really did some damage," Schrenker said.

Schrenker's brother and half brother did not respond to Times requests for comment.

Though thoughts of his estranged brothers sadden him, Schrenker smiled when remembering the times in his life before the fancy cars and waterfront mansion. Before the money. Before the allegations.

Joy crossed his face when recalling his first tiny apartment and "crappy little" car.

"Those were the best days of our lives," he said.

After graduating from Merrillville in 1989, while attending Purdue University, Schrenker met Michelle.

Weeks after first spotting her at a bar, too shy to introduce himself, he said he drove to her parents' LaPorte County home. He walked up the driveway, introduced himself to Michelle's mother, and said he wanted to take out her daughter.

The introvert taking a chance. Dr. Jekyll meets Mr. Hyde.

It was while a student, too, that he embraced his other love: flying. The business and aeronautical engineering major earned his pilot's license, and applied to the Air Force. One day, he would work for NASA, he vowed.

In 1991, he received a bruising letter from the Air Force, he said. He had failed a psychiatric exam and was found unfit for the program.

He was crushed, suffering what he described as a "psychotic break. It's like you're outside looking into your body," he said. "The gears of logic don't work."

His brain broke in the same way in January, when he said he finally decided to hurl himself out of a plane.

Going down

On Jan. 10, Schrenker sped around open Alabama fields looking for two spots: one where the plane would land. Another for his body.

He drove around the open area, making sure he spotted no houses. His online map showed just farmland and fields.

He calculated he would hit the ground at 400 miles an hour.

"I wasn't so worried about where my body would land," he said. "It would look like I tried to land.

"If you commit suicide, there's no payout."

He wanted his family taken care of with insurance money, he said.

He had to make it something that was complex. He said he tied his parachute pull with string. He wouldn't be able to back out, even if he tried.

He found two choice spots and plugged coordinates into a GPS unit he bought days before at a store in Merrillville.

On Jan. 11, he drove to the Anderson airport and prepared to leave around 5:30 p.m. He did doughnuts on the tarmac. With his million-dollar plane.

He hadn't slept in seven days. He plugged his destination into the plane's panel. He didn't turn on any lights.

He didn't care to de-ice the plane's wings.

He took off. The plane was heavy and throttling.

The ice could have killed him long before he got anywhere near Alabama, he said.

At 3,000 feet, he called the Indianapolis radio tower, and was cleared for Destin, Fla.

He sipped his favorite drink, a caramel coffee blend. He chowed down an MRE -- a military-style meal ready to eat.

When you're that low, food doesn't matter much.

"This is it," he thought. "I'm not coming back."

As the plane climbed, to 24,000 feet, he grew eager.

"I just remember feeling this euphoric feeling," he said. "This is almost over. It would look good. My children would be proud."

He made the distress call. He had written notes on the back of a camping book of what he might say.

"Windshield is spider-cracking." "Window is in neck and chest." "Bleeding very bad."

He began hallucinating that someone else was with him, in a pilot's seat. The two argued.

The plane coasted down to 3,500 feet. It cruised near the Coosa River bend in Childersburg, Ala.

He started to waver. Could he do it? The daredevil turned squeamish.

"I couldn't push the switch."

He put the plane on temporary autopilot. He hovered near the switch.

"And then I did it."

BOOM!

"The thing I remember was the cold."

EDITORS NOTE: Please read Monday's Times to learn what happened next -- and about the fallout from Schrenker's headline-grabbing actions that landed him in jail.

The Times was the first media outlet to conduct a full, in-person interview with Marcus Schrenker about crashing his plane into the Florida panhandle nine months ago. The Times was not allowed to photograph or record the interview, held at the Hamilton County Jail in Noblesville, Ind. Descriptions of some events, including the plane crash, were compiled from court records and Schrenker's remarks.