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A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can't Crack (wired.com) 93

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The man on the trail went by "Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was. Wired: It's usually easy to to put a name to a corpse. There's an ID or a credit card. There's been a missing persons report in the area. There's a DNA match. But the investigators in Collier County couldn't find a thing. Mostly Harmless' fingerprints didn't show up in any law enforcement database. He hadn't served in the military, and his fingerprints didn't match those of anyone else on file. His DNA didn't match any in the Department of Justice's missing person database or in CODIS, the national DNA database run by the FBI. A picture of his face didn't turn up anything in a facial recognition database. The body had no distinguishing tattoos.

Nor could investigators understand how or why he died. There were no indications of foul play, and he had more than $3,500 cash in the tent. He had food nearby, but he was hollowed out, weighing just 83 pounds on a 5'8" frame. Investigators put his age in the vague range between 35 and 50, and they couldn't point to any abnormalities. The only substances he tested positive for were ibuprofen and an antihistamine. His cause of death, according to the autopsy report, was "undetermined." He had, in some sense, just wasted away. But why hadn't he tried to find help? Almost immediately, people compared Mostly Harmless to Chris McCandless, whose story was the subject of Into the Wild. McCandless, though, had been stranded in the Alaska bush, trapped by a raging river as he ran out of food. He died on a school bus, starving, desperate for help, 22 miles of wilderness separating him from a road. Mostly Harmless was just 5 miles from a major highway. He left no note, and there was no evidence that he had spent his last days calling out for help.

The investigators were stumped. To find out what had happened, they needed to learn who he was. So the Florida Department of Law Enforcement drew up an image of Mostly Harmless, and the Collier County investigators shared it with the public. In the sketch, his mouth is open wide, and his eyes too. He has a gray and black beard, with a bare patch of skin right below the mouth. His teeth, as noted in the autopsy, are perfect, suggesting he had good dental care as a child. He looks startled but also oddly pleased, as if he's just seen a clown jump out from behind a curtain. The image started to circulate online along with other pictures from his campsite, including his tent and his hiking poles.
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A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can't Crack More

A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can't Crack

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  • Uh, what is this exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @03:35PM (#60680748)

    "He looks startled but also oddly pleased, as if he's just seen a clown jump out from behind a curtain."

    I can't be the only one whose first thought was "WTF?" when reading this.

    • You are not.

    • So basically the opposite of the dead guy in "Frog Dreaming"

    • If I saw a deranged juggalo jump out from behind a curtain, I'm sure the experience wouldn't be a pleasing one. Especially if the clown was welding a knife and had no pants on. But we don't know Mostless Harmless - he might have had some weird clown fetish who knows?
    • I think this comes from an interview with Steven Spielberg after CEOT3K. He states that to get the child "actor?" (because it seems like simple manipulation, but I digress) He get the child to smile during the home invasion scene, by doing just this. It produces what I remember to be a wry smile, but knowing and coy, presumably about the aliens. This comes as a changes of expression from fear, created in the same manner with a scary thing.

      OK here's a link to an article that explains in two paragraphs. h [dailymail.co.uk]

  • I know how to do it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by alanshot ( 541117 ) <roy@kd9[ ].com ['uri' in gap]> on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @03:37PM (#60680760)

    Just nominate him for political office. Opposition parties will have dirt on him as far back as 3rd grade by the end of the day. LOL

    • Well how much of it will be true, vs just made up.

      However being dead, he won't be able to refute any statements, because once they refute a lie, then people automatically think they are lying about it.

    • It's obvious from the photos that his name is D.B. Cooper, just with longer hair.

    • Submit his DNA to the genealogy sites like ancestry.com and see if any of his relatives have provided a sample.

  • Maybe Anonymity Was The Point. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @03:38PM (#60680774) Homepage
    Ibuprofen for the pain of intentional starvation until you die peacefully in the middle of nowhere. With no proof of who you were.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Salo2112 ( 628590 )
      I do a lot of hiking (recently completed soloing the Palmetto Trail), and ibuprofen and Tylenol are commonly used for the minor injuries that are common. Not sure how effective they would be against starvation. You may be right, but there's nothing unusual about using them on the trail. What shocks me is the lack of a cell phone and/or GPS. I carry paper, too, but as a backup to my backup. Likely some form of mental illness. Sad case.
      • Could be other things too. I once met a guy who was hiking solo across France as a means of dealing with a close call with cancer. He could have bee another Mostly Harmless, no phone, just what he had in his backpack, which didn't include terribly detailed maps (I directed him a bit further north from his planned route, which would eventually have dead-ended in some swampy lagoons). Seemed a very pleasant guy, just making his way across France by himself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ibuprofen on an empty stomach will produce plenty of pain.

    • Re:Maybe Anonymity Was The Point. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @05:52PM (#60681340) Homepage Journal

      Hunger is weird and complex, and largely unfamiliar territory for most middle-class Americans. You'd think it'd just get worse and worse, but it doesn't work that way.

      I've done some short fasts (1-2 days) for body/brain hacking purposes, and it turns out hunger pangs are like an intermittent alarm bell. Every so often it rings for a bit to remind you that to look for something to eat, then shuts off. As you go longer, it rings louder and more frequently, but people who've tried longer fasts (7 days or more) say that some time around day 3 or 4 hunger just shuts off for good. It should go without saying that nobody should try a fast that long without medical supervision.

      Through hikers I know report experiencing epic hunger, but they're in a different situation; they eat as often as they can, but they can't just carry enough on some stretches to satisfy their hunger.

      It seems more likely to me that this guy's death might was a case of *accidental* starvation as opposed to suicide by fasting. The main reason is that he had a destination -- the Keys -- and had even gone through the trouble of asking for directions along the way.

      Here's a possible scenario: he's on his way through a segment of trail where resupply isn't convenient, and decides he'll just power through it, fasting to stretch his supplies. He sets up camp for a rest, but doesn't touch the food in his pack yet because he's inadvertently fasted past the point where hunger shuts down. He's used up much of his body's energy reserves by hiking, and quickly becomes so weak he can't get to his food even if he realizes he needs it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lazarus ( 2879 )

        I don't know if you accidentally become 83 lbs if you have thousands of dollars with you and are not far from civilization. He starved himself on purpose.

        And I can tell you first hand that after 3+ days of no food the headache you get is unbelievable as your brain is screaming for nutrients. And no amount of pain killers helps. This guy killed himself and it was not a pleasant way to go.

        You are 100% correct on hunger "pains". After a day I only get hungry if I think about eating.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          The wild card here is that he was through hiking, which puts extreme demands on the body. Generally it's not a good idea to mix extreme forms of physical stress.

          Clearly he starved himself, although whether starvation by itself killed him is impossible to say unless you're the medical examiner. But here's why I think he didn't starve himself intentionally. Apart from his evident plans to reach the Keys, the reports say he had food "nearby", by which I assume they mean he'd hung it up away from the bears as

        • Not necessarily. A percentage of the population don't feel hunger (in nontechnical terms the empty/full signal is attenuated or even disconnected) and so can go for some time without eating if they don't feel like it. Eventually you start feeling woozy as your body runs out of energy, but you can actually starve yourself without really trying or even noticing until you start feeling weak.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          After 3 days I start to suffer mental decline but no headaches. I guess it's different for everyone.

        • Drinking coffee alleviates most of those "screaming brain pains." And if you've been fasting long enough, the only time you'll feel hungry/starving most times is the next day after eating something.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )

        ... and quickly becomes so weak he can't get to his food even if he realizes he needs it.

        That's not how physiology works. It takes weeks to starve to death, and there is plenty of time to realize and feel oneself becoming weaker when walking a few miles to the next food opportunity is still very well possible.

        I would say voluntary starvation is still a possibility. Or something like a stroke that damaged higher brain functions too much for him to be conscious and mobile, while not killing him before dying of thirst or starvation.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          That sounds the most likely. Strokes can take anyone out at any time and dependent where in the brain, they could be left quite content to simply fade away. The notes about that game Screeps, checking the game, live online and servers, simply look for a player no longer playing about the time the individual first went walkabout, there wont be that many. The game itself further defines people as coders who like JavaScript. He wrote notes about the code for screeps look for that code on the servers.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @06:22PM (#60681462)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Toting a backpack in the mountains

          The mountains in Florida? IIRC the highest point in the state is Mount Trashmore, the Miami city dump.

          You're completely correct about everything else, of course.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            The highest point in Florida is Disney's Space Mountain. That doesn't mean Florida doesn't present its own unique challenges. The Big Cypress reserve is immense, swampy and tropical. Temperatures that time of year are brutally hot. If you're not eating enough, you could well end up with water intoxication due to electrolyte losses.

      • It takes something on the order of a month for a healthy person to starve to death. If he had bulimia or some other eating disorder, maybe.

    • I think the autopsy would of mentioned if he had taken enough Ibuprofen for that. Normal doses just take the edge off very minor irritants. They gave me some injectable Ibuprofen when I had fallen 5 feet onto a metal post, and it did wonders, so I know enough of the stuff can make quite a difference, but other than a headache going away within half an hour I cannot tell that the over the counter dose of Ibuprofen does anything at all. It does not seem to numb the pain in my experience.

  • I am willing to bet your missing, well groomed Tech Hiker is Kyle Eppler The time-frames fit. http://charleyproject.org/case... [charleyproject.org]

  • Easy (Score:4, Funny)

    by olsmeister ( 1488789 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @04:04PM (#60680876)
    Put out the word that there is a large inheritance involved, and the authorities are looking for heirs. Bonus points if you also ask for people's account #'s to transfer money into because of some problem you have being in a foreign country.

  • ... if he wasted away to nothing, he was still drinking water. But not eating food. He would have died much faster if he were not drinking water. So that rules out, say, something that left him paralyzed.

    That said, it's not unusual for people to starve to death, still having food on them, as they try to ration it. Nor is it unusual for people to get lost right near a populated place without realizing how close they were to a potential rescue.

    I wonder exactly how much food he had left?

    • I expect he was overly rationing his food. Say buring 5000 kcals a day while only eating 500 kcals a day. As he gotten use to eating less food, he probably wasn't feeling so hungry, so he just let himself slowly starve to death.

      • The act of hiking was probably also producing high levels of endorphins which would mask other sensations that should've been warning signs to him. I've seen a few endurance runners who are so addicted to the physical exertion that they burn their bodies down to skin and bone and enough muscle to run. And, they can't stop.

        • I've seen friends training so hard that they were not only skin and bone, their blood vessels became so fragile that they could pop at any time. And you know what they say. Once you pop, you can't stop.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      That is all true if you have actually lose the trail. His tent was at a known camp along the trail though. Where people get in trouble like you describe is when they leave the trail for some reason and can't locate it again. Without a compass or reference points high enough to sight with it, its very difficult to avoid walking in circles in dense woods because simply staying on a course is impossible due to the terrain.

      I have done lots of hiking on the US east coast and provided you are on a trail

  • The term, "Mostly Harmless" is - among other things - a "rank" or level achieved for combat proficiency in the various incarnations of the computer based space-game, and its various sequels, among which the most recent, [wikipedia.org] Elite Dangerous" [wikipedia.org], was released in 2014.

    There may well be other associations with other books, stories, games or similar.

    Mentioning this because adopting the name "Mostly Harmless" without the context of that actually harmless reference could sound borderline sinister (which leads me t
  • This is how the genetic genealogy folks find cold case perps. Or cheat and add him through the front door at Ancestry.com and gain access to a much bigger universe of DNA matches.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      That's pretty much the only viable approach. Asking people to identify him is going to produce too much noise, because he looks too much like too many other people. In one of the photos, he could have been the identical twin of one of my former coworkers from twenty years ago, but we're connected on social media, and he has been active as recently as June, so short of him paying somebody to pose as him on social media... ooh, this gives me an idea for a bizarre sci-fi short story.

      • ... he could have been the identical twin of one of my former coworkers from twenty years ago, but we're connected on social media, and he has been active as recently as June, so short of him paying somebody to pose as him on social media... ooh, this gives me an idea for a bizarre sci-fi short story.

        The TV show "Major Crimes" already did that as a murder mystery / fictional police procedural.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          ... he could have been the identical twin of one of my former coworkers from twenty years ago, but we're connected on social media, and he has been active as recently as June, so short of him paying somebody to pose as him on social media... ooh, this gives me an idea for a bizarre sci-fi short story.

          The TV show "Major Crimes" already did that as a murder mystery / fictional police procedural.

          Good to know, but I was thinking of it more along the lines of questioning what it means to be alive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Was coming here to suggest something like this. Have the police search Ancestry or 23andMe or something similar.

  • "Ben Bilemy" as an alias just seems odd. Could be a clue.

    A concatenation of nicknames?

    Ben = Benjamin
    Bil = Bill or William
    Emy = Emily

    Friends? Siblings? Family?

  • ... made it out.
  • or Amelia Earhart. Take your pick

  • Appalachian Trail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @05:27PM (#60681234) Journal

    The AT passes within miles of where I live, pretty close to the midpoint of the 2,000+ mile trail. Last year, in our county, an AT hiker attacked another pair of hikers he did not know, and murdered one of them with a knife. The other hiker played dead and eventually found help and survived.

    A non-trivial number (a minority to be sure) of AT hikers are not just out on that trail for the sake of nature and hiking. They often have mental issues of some kind. You have to have a very strong anti-social chord to decide to isolate yourself in that way for almost a year. This particularly applies to a segment of the "thru-hikers", who are the ones hiking the whole thing at one go, and not the section hikers who, over time, collectively hike the whole trail in pieces.

    Several years back I met a thru-hiker that was staying the night in the shelter. I asked him if he was hiking alone, and he said no. He started with a friend but hadn't seen him in months. His friend was a day ahead of him at that point, and he saw their entries in the log books along the way. To hike that far, for that long, while being that isolated, can cause you to withdraw even more into yourself. You stop appreciating trees, views of the Appalachian ridges, the terrain, and the peace and quiet, and eventually it's just about putting one foot in front of the other (no matter how you feel or how lousy the weather is) and trying to cover those miles.

    So the fact that someone was found languishing on the trail like Mostly Harmless is not a surprise. The trail draws individuals that want to escape society and isolate. I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often.

    Now to clarify, that is not the AT experience for all thru-hikers. However I did want to point out that it does tend to draw individuals with anti-social type leanings.

    • My thought is that this is a fellow with nothing to go back to, or only negative things to go back to. The lack of phone and cards likely means he cashed out what he could, taking cash advances on all his cards for example and cut what few ties he had, perhaps leaving behind debts, a lawsuit, a divorce, or some other onerous comeuppance. Facing the end of his trip might have been bringing the reality back, and returning to society after such a long escape from it might have been to harsh mentally to deal

    • asocial, not antisocial
      that are two very different things

    • He wasn't found on the AT. He was found in Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. So that location would indicated he completed the AT by a good bit.

  • Did anyone ask 4chan? (Score:3)

    by portwojc ( 201398 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @05:55PM (#60681352) Homepage

    Seriously ask that group. Weaponized autism is amazing to watch.

  • He's not in any databases because he's a time traveler from the future. Obviously they have better dental care there, which is why he has perfect teeth.

  • Next question?

  • If he ever owned a car, he will be contacted eventually about his extended warranty. Mystery solved.

  • Asking 'the Internets' for help is mostly useless. You will get a lot of wannabe online detective stating stupid questions like 'can we use Molecular spectroscopy to see when did he by the ibuprofen?' or 'if his alias was mostly harmless was his shoe size 42?'. The only ways this can help is by keeping people interested in the case until a match comes up in some DNA database.

  • Terminal illness? (Score:3)

    by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @07:01PM (#60681588)

    I suppose one possibility is that the hiker was terminally ill, and this is how he wanted to spend his last days. It would explain why he wasted away to #83 despite having access to food.

    Of course, the terminal illness would have to be something that did not show up on an autopsy.

  • He ended up starving himself to death. The hike may have been his intentional farewell journey

  • He attained perfect yoga and decided to abandon the shell instead of continuing physical existence. It's understandable this would come across as an unsolvable mystery in the backwards land of America. Had it happened in India he would have been praised and worshipped as an accomplished yogi master.
  • The original photo was saved by photoshop all the metadata has been stripped, why would someone do this? Original photo... https://www.facebook.com/Mount... [facebook.com]

  • That sounds like the name you would give to a crazy irrational homeless man prone to random bouts of violence.

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