I know nothing about Kaufman, but just reading that article has me interested. What an accomplishment that would be? Only... I can't really imagine it being a 'prank' (almost 30 years is little too long for it to have much relevance). The article mentions that his father had recently died, was there some conflict between them that would have motivated him to stay hidden all this time?

On another note, and speaking as someone who has two brothers, I'm struggling to imagine how I would feel not really knowing for certain whether one of them was alive or dead, and having someone come up to me claiming that my brother is actually alive, after almost 30 years, is either in really poor taste or potentially a source of becoming actually quite hurt - but then, maybe the relationship between the brothers here was always a weird one.