For years, the 38-year-old Indiana investment advisor shrewdly wooed potential clients, persuading them to place their life savings into his hands.

But what they didn’t know was that Schrenker was a philanderer and a scam artist who planned to use his clients’ money to boost his personal bank account, according to authorities and his estranged wife.

Wednesday afternoon, he was in a Tallahassee hospital after a bizarre 48 hours during which he faked his own death, hid from the law and his wife, and then tried to kill himself as police and the U.S. Marshals Service closed in.

The drama began Sunday, authorities say, when Schrenker staged a plane crash to make it appear that he had been killed.

Schrenker issued a fake distress call while flying over Alabama, claiming the plane’s windshield had imploded in severe turbulence. Authorities said he parachuted out of his $1.5 million aircraft, which eventually crashed in a swampy area near a residential area in the Florida Panhandle. It had come within 75 yards of striking a home.

Waiting for him on the ground was his getaway vehicle — a red motorcycle — he had hidden a day earlier in an Alabama storage unit, authorities said. Also stashed were saddlebags packed with his belongings.

Schrenker eluded authorities for two days, prompting a massive manhunt that stretched across the Panhandle and into Alabama.

On Monday, he stopped at the Chattahoochee KOA campground near Tallahassee. Schrenker did not give his name, paid in cash and told the owner he was on a road trip with some buddies and needed a place to crash for the night, campground owner Caroline Hastings said.

He had his own tent and laptop computer. All he asked for was firewood, a six-pack of beer, bottled water and a wireless code to access the Internet.

Investigators arrived at the campsite Tuesday evening, telling Hastings that they tracked Schrenker through an Internet signal after he had sent an e-mail to a neighbor in Indiana.