NC NC - Broadway, WhtMale 30-50, UP4881, notepad w/ 'ROZAR MARVIN HARRELL', Winston 100's cigs, Sep'81

zinc

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NamUs UP #4881
https://identifyus.org/cases/4881

The Doe Network: 1934UMNC
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1934umnc.html

Unidentified White Male

The victim was discovered on September 13, 1981 in Broadway, Lee County, North Carolina
Estimated Date of Death: 6 Months
State of Remains: Mummified

Vital Statistics
Estimated age: 30-50 years old
Approximate Height and Weight: 5'11".
Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark brown hair, 2" long, with some lighter, possibly gray hairs; curly, dark brown body hair.
Clothing: Faded blue denim jeans size 32" x 32"; dark brown leather belt, with double rows of metal eyelets and double tongue buckle; dark blue socks; white briefs, "Fruit of the Loom", size 30-32 Small; light blue short-sleeved collared shirt, with breast pockets; dark brown suede-like ankle-high crepe-sole shoes.
Personal Effects: Pack of Winston 100's; black "Cricket" lighter; memo pad, small, paper cover with top metal spiral, with "ROZAR MARVIN HARRELL" printed on the top page, with various numbers inside.
Fingerprints: Not Available - could not be obtained
Dentals: Available; restoration on #30: part of a bridge
DNA: Sample available - not yet submitted

Case History
The victim was located off Old Cox Mill Road in Broadway, North Carolina on September 13, 1981.

Investigators
If you have any information about this case please contact:
Clyde Gibbs
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
1-800-672-7024


You may remain anonymous when submitting information.

Agency Case Number: 81-654

NCIC Number: N/A
Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.
 
This one is kind of interesting.

The interesting part from the above is the notepad with the name "Rozar Marvin Harrell" printed in it. That's a pretty unusual name. Maybe he was Rozar Marvin Harrell, or an associate of Mr. Harrell's.

You can easily find some information about RMH via genealogy databases and public records. I won't link to absolutely everything I found since a lot of it is redundant, but here is Mr. Harrell's descendant register:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=mceachern&id=I1505

The personal information of his living relatives has been redacted. I will not print it here, but you can find it in a GEDCOM database built from sources like public records. Clicking on a name in the above descendant register gives you a reference number for that name. The entries in the linked GEDCOM file contain the same REFN numbers. (N.B., it's not completely error-free.)

To verify, via Texas Department of State Health Services records and an online Social Security Death Index (search SSDI for "R M HARRELL"), RMH is recorded as having been born 25 Jan 1931 in Dodge County, Georgia and as having died 15 July 1998 in Dallas County, Texas, with last address of record Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, zip code 76161.

Ordinarily I would say this rules out RMH as being the UID. However, I think the marriage listed in the descendant register may not have been his last. If you search Texas public records, you find a man of the same name, approximate age, and location going through a series of brief marriages (1969, 1977-1978, 1980-1980) that stop a few months before the UID would have died.

After that, I find no more evidence of RMH in the available records until his death is recorded in 1998. It makes me wonder if his date of death records his actual death, or his legal death in absentia.

If the UID in Lee County, North Carolina was in fact RMH, there are legitimate reasons for him to have been there. The Harrell part of his name and family apparently comes from a Harrell family that is quite numerous in North Carolina and that had/has a branch near where he was born in Georgia.

Anyway, the UID is of the right age to have been RMH, and all the other members of his descendant register (except his parents) are still alive. Some of them sort of have an Internet presence. I realize that if the UID were RMH, he probably would have been identified a long time ago, but if he's not RMH maybe he's a NC relative or a friend.

Edited to add: If it is RMH, the brevity of all of his marriages indicates to me that it might not be all that surprising if no one ever filed a missing persons report or even noticed that he was gone, even his children.

Edited to add #2: Just as an interesting aside, the woman to whom RMH was married in 1969 seems to have been interviewed by the FBI during investigations of the John F. Kennedy assassination — apparently Jack Ruby was a regular at the club where she was a cocktail waitress!

Thoughts?
 
you would think the one and only Rozar Marvin Harrell would be candidate #1 and that they would have ruled him in or out.

then again, I don't think I'd carry around a notebook with my own name in it. very odd item to be found with the deceased.
 
The information in the second post is very intriguing. I guess no one has called in this as a tip? I think I'll do that and see what comes of it.
 
Rozar was from FT Worth,TX and Warner Robins,GA (buried there in 1998) according to public records. Married at least 4 times in TX. I'm curious what he did for a living. cant find anything.

Searching for missing people that are a possible I came across one that particularly intrigued me. Being that he disappeared in Tallahassee at the airport. Wondering if he had some sort of meeting or business dealings with Rozar at the time and could have flown out to Warner Robins,Atlanta, or even Charlotte.

Anyways,this missing person just gave me vibes for some reason. Brown hair wavy, same height, fisherman/hunter so I could see the clothes being something he would wear.

No rule outs on namus.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/251dmfl.html

John Wesley Davis
Missing since February 5, 1981 from Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida.
Classification: Missing

Vital Statistics


  • [*]Date Of Birth: March 9, 1948
    [*]Age at Time of Disappearance: 32 years old
    [*]Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'11; 165 pounds
    [*]Distinguishing Characteristics: White male. Brown hair; blue eyes.
Circumstances of Disappearance
Davis' truck was located in the parking lot of Tallahassee Regional Airport on February 5, 1981. A parking ticket stub was found inside the vehicle and was dated the same day, with a time stamp of "1:18 PM." Davis has never been seen nor heard from again.

Davis was married at the time of his disappearance. He ran a successful contracting business in Tallahassee and is a graduate of Florida State University. Davis did not mention any travel plans to his loved ones before he vanished, nor was he depressed. He does not have a history of mental health problems. There is no indication of foul play.
Davis enjoys writing, hunting and fishing. He spent time in Montana and Idaho in the 1970's. Davis' family also owned property in Maine at one point in time.
Davis has no prior military service and no criminal history. No fingerprint information has been located for him.
Investigators
If you have any information concerning Davis' whereabouts, please contact:
Leon County Sheriff's Office
850-922-3300

You may remain anonymous when submitting information to any agency.

Agency Case Number: 812626
 
I don't think this UID is Rozar Marvin Harrell; if he was, this case would have been solved long ago. More likely someone who knew him or did some kind of business with him.

I think we've all seen cases where estimated age or height or even race turn out to be not terribly accurate once a UID is positively ID'd, so keeping that in mind, I went looking for anyone missing near Warner Robins, Houston County, GA -- where Rozar is buried -- and found this fellow:

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/14431/0/

Robert Earl Crook was only 19 when he went missing from Fort Valley, GA, which is just 17 miles west of Warner Robins, so it's conceivable that he had some sort of acquaintance with Rozar. And he disappeared on April 20, 1981, which is about five months before this UID was found (with an estimated time of death as six months prior). And Mr. Crook was reported to be 73" tall with dark brown hair. So, really, the only thing that doesn't fit is his age.

He took off in his late father's car; perhaps he had something else belonging to his father with him that led investigators to conclude he was older than he really was? Remember, we're talking about a very rural area in 1981, where there was most likely an elected official acting as coroner and not a big-city medical examiner's office with the most up-to-date training and technology. To my mind, that leaves some room for doubt.

Did the car ever turn up abandoned somewhere? The MP report doesn't say, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was never found. Maybe it's worth a call to the Houston County sheriff's office to find out?
 
Intriguing case indeed. The UID sounds as though he was dressed "business casual" with the jeans, collared shirt and belt, and those little memo books would have been the early 1980s equivalent of a personal digital assistant, so it's not hard to imagine our UID jotting down notes in one for reference later.

Why, with a name as unusual as RMH's, would the UID include the middle name? Chances are he'd be the only RH in a phone book or working at a company, if the UID intended to use him as a job reference, thus he wouldn't need the middle name to differentiate him from another RH. Or did RMH go by his middle name, Marvin, and that's why the UID wrote down the full name?

It makes you wish the report included more information, like what the "numbers" were -- phone numbers that were already checked out or some other type of notations? And without violating the late RMH's privacy, what did he do for a living, as Sleuthster asked above? Was he someone who might have provided a job lead to the UID, or did the UID sell insurance or something else and taken his name as a potential customer?

If the memo book still exists, I hope RMH's family has been asked to look at it and see if the name resembles their family member's printing. If so, maybe RMH lost the book, the UID found it and for some reason hadn't torn out the page with the former owner's name. (I somewhat doubt this but it's at least a slim possibility.)
 
I was researching this case and ended finding that Rozar Marvin Harrell who died in 1998 too. One of his marriage lasted 8 months and another one month (07/26/81 to 09/03/81). It made me wonder about his personality, I don't think he is the dead man but I wouldn't exclude that he had nothing to do with all this. I wonder if the police ever interviewed him or his ex-wife who seems to be still alive and living in NC about this case.
 
Rozar certainly sounds like he could be a bit of a player. Maybe the OP was on his way to Rozar to confront him about something to do with a woman?
 
Yes I wondered too... There aren't that many people with this name in USA. I guess only the ex-wife could say. There are strange things about uids found with phone numbers (assuming the numbers in the note pad were phone numbers) why does it seem that it just never occurs to some law enforcement to just call these numbers???!!! I was just looking at another case the "Lorraine Stahl" alias uid and they said somewhere she could have relatives living in TN but I'd say no, the two numbers she called there were talents managers from what I found, I doubt they were family of hers... Just why don't they simply call the phone numbers and ask if they know someone fitting the uid's profile? That is so strange.
 
Was surfing old cases looking for something else but this intrigues me. One wonders whether this would be a prime case for DNA testing...what reason could the UID have for have such an unusual name in a notebook?
 
Just want to point out the description does not say phone numbers. These numbers could be anything from a business ledger to a case of psychosis. I wouldn't automatically assume phone numbers unless it is explicitly stated somewhere.
 
@Caring1 Hey could you post the current list of NamUs exclusions for this John Doe? I would greatly appreciate it.
 

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