Donald MacKenzie (1908–1993) lived under a succession of names—John Rogers, Donald Prior, John Fletcher, Donald Rogers, Jack Clifford, and others—all used in the pursuit of stolen money or ill-gotten goods. One might say that “Donald MacKenzie” itself was an alias. It wasn’t his birth name but one he adopted in 1939, after serving more than three years of hard labor for theft under false pretenses.
With his new name, the thirty-one-year-old hoped to leave behind a criminal record that had begun when he was sixteen. It didn’t work. Two years later, in 1941, he was again arrested—this time using the name Donald MacKenzie for the first time in connection with a crime.
In 1944, he married Margaret Jenkins, a former Tiller Girl—the U.K.’s version of the Rockettes—under the name John Rogers. He used it again in 1946 on the birth certificate of their daughter, Caroline, and once more in January 1947 when charged with drunk driving.
In connection with the traffic violation, he was found to have stolen tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of government-issued clothing ration coupons. Jumping bail, he vanished into Europe and North Africa, embarking on a two-year spree of thefts, confidence tricks, and flim-flam schemes before being captured in New York City in late 1948. Deported in 1952, he served his final prison term at Winchester Prison in England, earning his release in November 1954 at the age of forty-four—closing the long chapter of his criminal life.
But honesty was never MacKenzie’s strong suit. There is no evidence that his literary agents, editors, wives, children, or friends ever learned the truth about his birth name or early years, nor about most of his criminal activity.
He married at least twice more, fathered a second daughter in 1968, and built a popular reputation on both sides of the Atlantic with two autobiographical books and thirty-six novels. On September 20, 1993, at the age of eighty-five, Donald MacKenzie died alone in a top-floor walk-up flat at 38 Onslow Gardens, West London.
PHOTO CREDITS:
MacKenzie eyes: 1958 promotional photo courtesy of Caroline Rolf.
MacKenzie with bowtie: Gentleman at Crime frontispiece, published by Elek Books, 1956.