A man suspected of child sexual abuse feigned his death by jumping off a Seattle-area bridge nearly two decades earlier – then spent the final years of his life under an alias and working as a Los Angeles apartment building maintenance man, according to authorities.

The stunning truth about Christian R Basham surfaced after the Los Angeles county medical examiner’s office investigated his 26 February death.

Basham’s body arrived at the LA county medical examiner’s office under the identity of 56-year-old Mark Clemens, who was reputed to be the longtime handyman of a downtown apartment building. But investigators determined Basham’s true identity and on Wednesday notified police in Bremerton, Washington, about 65 miles (105 km) outside Seattle, because he had unresolved criminal charges there.

A statement from Bremerton police on Thursday explained that the agency had arrested Basham on charges of second-degree child rape in 2008. He posted bail in the amount of $350,000 to be released from custody pending the outcome of the case, but he never waited to find out what that would be, police said.

Instead, on 29 March 2009, a witness reported to Bremerton police that Basham had jumped off a local bridge over the Puget Sound. Police later found Basham’s car as well as a suicide note. Authorities used a plane and boats to search for Basham, but they never found his body.

They said they presumed him to be dead, though he remained on a most wanted list and an outstanding warrant to arrest him was kept on file.

None of that apparently prevented Basham from assuming the Clemens name, moving to LA and developing a respected reputation at the downtown apartment building where he lived and worked as the handyman for more than a decade.

“This was our maintenance guy,” building resident Tommy Cuellar reportedly told the LA news station KABC. “This was the guy who had keys to our apartments.”

While Cuellar described having generally positive interactions with him, he said the truth about the man known to him as Clemens was “very shocking” and “troubling to say the least”.

Cuellar said Clemens was already established as their building’s handyman when Cuellar moved in about 10 years earlier.

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He told KABC that he wondered whether the Clemens name was a clue about the dark secret in Basham’s past. The author Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Clemens, and two of his most famous characters – Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn – faked their deaths.

Bremerton police said they had since closed the child sexual abuse case against Basham. But they also said that they planned to investigate Basham’s “movements and actions” after faking his death in 2009.

The police’s statement didn’t address how it would proceed if it determined that anyone helped Basham.

Details about Basham’s death weren’t immediately available. Information online from the LA county medical examiner’s office listed his cause of death as “deferred”, or requiring additional investigation, according to the Associated Press.