Mystery of FL man who awoke speaking Swedish, claims no memory of documented past

New Posts

wfgodot

wfgodot

Former Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
30,166
Reaction score
722
Florida man awakens in hospital with no memory of his past. (wtsp.com/USA Today
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- When Michael Boatwright woke up in the emergency room, the nurses began asking him questions for which it became clear he had no answers.

The gray-haired, soft-spoken man looked at his identity card and didn't recognize his own face. He answered only to Johan Ek.

Though his driver's license said he was born in Florida, he spoke in Swedish and said he remembered nothing about his life before.

"The guy Michael - it wasn't me. I'm still Johan," he said through a translator in a recent interview at Desert Regional Medical Center.

The man was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room at noon on Feb. 28 and taken to the hospital, said Lisa Hunt-Vasquez, the social worker assigned to track down relatives and help piece his story together. He had with him a duffel bag of casual athletic clothes, a backpack, five tennis rackets, two cellphones, some cash, a set of old photos and four forms of identification naming him as Michael Thomas Boatwright: a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card.
---
Click to expand...
much more, with a picture, at the link
 
What a strange story. I hope they find out who he is soon. It's a lot easier with the internet. At least his face can be seen around the world in minutes, instead of weeks the way it use to be. I'll try and post this story on our website, we have listeners from around the world. I'm an advocate for the missing, so I feel obligated. Hope to have him reunited with his family soon.
 
It might be interesting to find out if there is such a person as Johan Ek from Sweden and what can be found about him. (Quick Google search, looking on LinkedIn it looks like Johan Ek is a very common name.)

Also the background of Michael Thomas Boatwright, say back to when he was a child. Was he born in Sweden, or did he travel with his parents a lot?
 
At least according to the articles posted, they do know who he is; he was carrying a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card, all in the name Michael Boatwright. His picture appears on one or more of the documents.

He doesn't know who he is. Or so he claims, and the diagnosis is transient global amnesia, fugue state.

He speaks Swedish without a strong regional accent, indicating he was very probably not brought up there.
 
What an interesting story.........


Wait. Where am I?

Who are you people? What the heck does wfgodot mean?
 
wfgodot said:
At least according to the articles posted, they do know who he is; he was carrying a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card, all in the name Michael Boatwright. His picture appears on one or more of the documents.

He doesn't know who he is. Or so he claims, and the diagnosis is transient global amnesia, fugue state.

He speaks Swedish without a strong regional accent, indicating he was very probably not brought up there.
Click to expand...

But could he have been born over there, then brought here at a young age? Maybe was adopted at a young age?
 
Very sad if it's all true. Can you imagine living as a man with no name?

My eldest brother was hurt in an industrial accident back about '72, he can remember things from his childhood like it was yesterday, but he can't tell you what he had for dinner 30 mins ago. He does remember some of his later life but much of it is hazey to him.
 
wfgodot said:
At least according to the articles posted, they do know who he is; he was carrying a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card, all in the name Michael Boatwright. His picture appears on one or more of the documents.

He doesn't know who he is. Or so he claims, and the diagnosis is transient global amnesia, fugue state.

He speaks Swedish without a strong regional accent, indicating he was very probably not brought up there.
Click to expand...

That can't be right ??? The point of transient global amnesia is that it's transient and the worst of it should be over in 24 hours or so although milder deficits may persist for longer.
If he's been like this from February it's not TGA but amnesia caused by some other kind of a neurological diagnosis or a dissociative state unless he's faking it. JMO

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/174700...chT2010+[Transient+Global+Amnesia+Review].pdf

Worth noting also that there should be no clouding of consciousness or personal identity in TGA and no other cognitive impairment ( losing the ability to speak English or do graphic design would count as cognitive impairment). Also according to the diagnostic criteria of TGA there should be no recent history of head trauma, epilepsy, seizures and the article does not explain why he was unconscious in the hotel room to begin with. And it's not too clear if they could document he has had the required anterograde amnesia meaning that he had difficulty registering new memories or if he has just forgotten the past events prior to waking up at the hospital (retrograde amnesia)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/transient-global-amnesia/DS01022/DSECTION=symptoms
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/129/7/1640.full.pdf
 
mysteriew said:
But could he have been born over there, then brought here at a young age? Maybe was adopted at a young age?
Click to expand...

I think him being adopted is highly unlikely (although, I suppose, not impossible). I don't think that international adoptions of Swedish children is very common, and I've never heard of it happening. Taken from a website on adoption:

Sweden is not considered a source country for parents seeking orphaned children to adopt. Unmarried mothers and their children are socially accepted in Sweden and can live well. As a result, combined with family planning and a generally high standard of living, very few Swedish children are available for adoption. Most international adoptions that are handled in Sweden involve parents who reside in Sweden, and who have located children available for adoption in a third country. Therefore, there weren't many IR-3's or IR-4's issued within the last five years.
Click to expand...

Things might've been different in the 50's and 60's (or whenever he was born) though.




I wish there was a clearer video of him speaking. I only found one with an interpreter overlapping him, are there any other videos available? From what I could hear it seems like he does have a hint of an accent, possibly from not speaking the language for a longer period of time. Of course it could just be a dialect, but it sounds like he's not 100% fluent in it, if that makes sense (which could be explained if he hasn't spoken it regurarly).

Anyway, this made it to the biggest newspapers in Sweden, so if he does have family or people who recognize him here, then the 'mystery' will soon be solved.
 
Can the Navy release any info about him?
If he has living friends or family they may recognize him IF they have the Internet.
 
wfgodot said:
He speaks Swedish without a strong regional accent, indicating he was very probably not brought up there.
Click to expand...

The Swedish-American woman quoted in the WTSP article said it was also possible that he simply hadn't used his Swedish for a long time.

What an odd story. Calling Oliver Sacks!
 
Information from a Swedish forum where he's being discussed (I'm not taking credit for any of it):

http://korstemplar.cgarena.com/: He has given an adress and claimed to have studied at the University of Stockholm

There's a company registered under his name from 1987, in Nyköping.

One user claims that, according to sources, this man has been involved in medival time events (you know, roleplays and stuff like that, I don't really know what the word is for it), and apparently his alias during these events was, in fact, Johan Ek.
 
https://www.facebook.com/michael.boatwright.520

from 2010
Michael Boatwright, 57, a Swede who has taught at TPR for a year and a half, won the Top Staff Award along with other eight Chinese colleagues who received tourist coupons to the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.

Born in Sweden, Michael moved to America when he was in high school. He worked as an archaeologist at Stockholm University between 1989 and 2000. He moved to Japan in 2000 and taught there for nine years before coming to Zhuhai in June 2008.
Click to expand...

http://www.deltabridges.com/news/zhuhai-news/cultures-mix-awards-fete-betty-lin

Archaeologist? that's new? It should be easy enough to verify whether the Stockholm University has records of him having worked there. Can anyone find any scholarly articles having to do w/ archeology in his name? I haven't found anything specifically by Michael Boatwright. There are some by MT Boatwright that I can't tell the first names from the citation but there is an archaeology professor called Mary T Boatwright so likely many are by her.

If the University knows nothing about him, he may be the type who has a different life story to tell everyone. It's just a little strange that he had all that documentation with him if it was a hoax, unless it was a spur of the moment thing.

Looks like he may have been arrested in Florida in 1974.
http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Flo...L/Michael-Thomas-Boatwright.30719266/details/
 
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article17136054.ab
An acquaintance in Sweden has come up and says he learned to know MB as "Strongbow" in torneringspelar. I don't know how to translate that, some kind of medieval knight games, swords and armors sort of thing.
THey've also asked from the Swedish census bureau and he was not born in Sweden although he seems to have claimed so even before this strange episode. He was born in Florida in 1952, came to Sweden in the early eighties, 1981 and lived there part of the time until he finally moved out of Sweden in 2003.
Everybody Aftonbladet has talked to in the middle ages hobbyist circles say he's an American and they haven't heard of the name Johan Ek. Some thought he was an Australian and none of his friends interviewed by the Aftonblade seem to have know how he made his living (acknowledging that you might not talk about such mundane things in the heat of the battle). In the nineties he worked as a personal assistant in Skåne (in the south of Sweden). His company in Sweden has been inactive for long. The people who knew him in Sweden all seem to say they lost contact with him years ago. He is described as a restless soul.

54-116_Michael_Boatwright.jpg

MB in a live action role play game some time in the eighties.

Nothing here about an university job or archaeology training although it might go with the medieval interest.
 
mysteriew said:
But could he have been born over there, then brought here at a young age? Maybe was adopted at a young age?
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter where a person is born, as youngin's we learn to speak like our parents, language and dialect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 125 more.
Total: 1,442 (members: 126, guests: 1,316)

Online statistics

Members online
126
Guests online
1,316
Total visitors
1,442
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
591,797
Messages
17,959,016
Members
228,607
Latest member
wdavewong
Back
Top