Utah Man Uses Obituary to Confess Indiscretions

(SALT LAKE CITY, Utah) – A 59-year-old Utah man who died July 10 is making national headlines. Val Patterson passed away from terminal throat cancer, and chose to write his own obituary. Patterson used the memoriam as a chance to come clean about his past indiscretions, including the fact that he’d never held a doctorate from the University of Utah, and that he’d stolen a safe from a business in 1971. A paperwork mistake led to Patterson receiving a PhD in engineering, though he actually dropped out before finishing his bachelor’s degree.