OR OR - Gordon Lopez, 21, Portland, 3 Jan 1986

MagnoliaMountain

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I'm usually posting in the 1990s and 2000s Missing forums but I came across this young man and wanted to open up a thread for him. To me, it sadly sounds like a suicide. Cleaning and emptying his apartment, farewell letter...Hope he is still out there, alive and well.

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http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/4187dmor.html

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/l/lopez_gordon.html

http://www.nampn.org/cases/lopez_gordon.html

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/2038/35/

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Missing Since: January 03, 1986 from Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon
Classification: Missing
Date Of Birth: July 8, 1964
Age: 21
Height: 6'0-6'3"
Weight: 180-200 lbs.
Hair Color: Dark Brown to Red.
Eye Color: Hazel
Race: White
Gender: Male
Distinguishing Characteristics: Usually wore a beard. Ears may have some slight deformity.
Clothing: Always wore casual clothing; jeans and flannel.
AKA: Gordy, GB
Case Number: 86-5776

Details of Disappearance:
Gordon Lopez wrote a farewell letter to mother, no suicide mentioned, but he was never heard from again. He cleaned and emptied his apartment before leaving. He was attending Reed College at the time. His family hired a private detective with no luck.

Lopez had previously worked in Alaska and Texas for summer jobs. He grew up in Southern California, Rancho Palos Verdes.

Investigating Agency:
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Portland Police Department
503-823-0446
 
There was a man who either jumped or fell from a flag pole in Alaska that I have always been convinced was Gordon.

Here we go:
AK AK - Anchorage - WhtMale 439UMAK, 25-40, Naked - Fell From Flagpole, Aug'89 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

To me it really does look like it could be Gordon if he had lost a couple pounds in the facial area. I mean, almost everything fits, Gordon even worked in the Alaska area for a summer job, maybe he left to make a new name for himself in a place where he loved, but then something happened that left him so depressed he decided to end it all.

It says in Namus that Samples were submitted, but not completed for DNA. So we'll just have to see if he's not already a John Doe from somewhere or maybe he left on his own and is living under an assumed identity? I don't know if Flag-pole Doe has his DNA in CODIS, but he does have dentals available, which is a little ironic seeing as how Gordon has DNA but no dentals.
 
This story was done in July. Connecting Gordon with the John Doe from Alaska.

http://www.anchoragepress.com/news/unearthing-truth

Among other duties, Bradley worked on missing person cases, which is why the call that came in a few years back was directed to her. That’s when The Flagpole Jumper case became a lot more personal.

The call was from a California woman who is certain the man lying in that grave is her brother. So certain, she’s having his body exhumed for DNA testing this month in hopes of giving him back his name, and his dignity, and finally bringing him home.
If Terry Mihok is right, the man who died that day in Mountain View is Gordon Bethel Lopez, a Reed College student who vanished from Portland, Oregon in 1986. On purpose.

It’s not easy for her to talk about what became of her brother. She loved him and never stopped looking for him, searching crowds for his face, the streets for his red Volvo sedan. And she never gave up hope that he would come home someday.

It took her several days of going through case after case until she came across one from Alaska that stopped her cold.

“When I read it, I knew it was him.”

She’d long suspected that Gordon may have been hiding out in Alaska. He’d worked up here the summer before he disappeared, as a logger on Heceta Island in the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast, and she’d spent a lot of time pouring over maps of the area and the state.

The private investigator her mother had hired to look for Gordon actually did discover one thing Terry hadn’t known about, that her brother had gotten himself in trouble at college when, high on LSD, he took off all his clothes and started preaching to people.

The date the man killed himself eliminated any doubt.

August 23.

When Terry was 15, she made a suicide attempt of her own, swallowing a bottle’s worth of aspirin. She was depressed, she said, but her mother didn’t believe in depression. So she felt she was left to find her own way out.

August 23. Nothing random about it.

“When I tried to kill myself, (Gordon) told me that if he ever did it, he would do it in a public place to make a statement. And if this really is Gordon, he killed himself on my mother’s birthday.”
 
It was reported that the John Doe from Alaska is not Gordon.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?93478-AK-Anchorage-WhtMale-439UMAK-25-40-naked-fell-from-flagpole-Aug-89&p=12742507#post12742507

http://www.anchoragepress.com/cover-news/doe-arrival

After the exhumation, the brother’s dental records were compared to those taken during the 1989 autopsy. They didn’t match. James Trull, the APD detective in charge of the flagpole case, broke the news to Mihok.

“It's so unlikely that all those circumstances are mere coincidences,” she wrote via email at the time. “I can imagine along the chain of custody his records may have been compromised. Also, the dentist we got those from, our family hadn't even seen in years, as far as I know. I hadn't seen him since I was a child, about 10 years old.

“I would rather it not be him, but I really feel like it is. But time will tell.”

Because DNA has the final say, the Medical Examiner’s Office shipped teeth and a femur via Fed Ex to the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas in Fort Worth. As a suicide rather than a more pressing homicide case, the results would take six months to a year.

They’ve finally come back. Confirmed. It’s not him.
 
Bumping for Gordon. Missing for 33 years now.

His case came to my mind and as I could not remember his last name I just searched for "Gordon" and found this thread again.

If he is still alive he will turn 55 years on July 8th.
 
Hello everyone! I'm new to Websleuths and am still learning how this forum works.
I am curious if anyone knows if the unidentified remains (Namus #UP10891) was ever checked in relation to the Gordon Bethel Lopez case? The remains where found in September of 1986 and remains unidentified. The features are similar, if I remember right, and the TOD could work as well.
Thanks for any information you might have!
Warmly,
callmebetty
 
Last edited:
Hello everyone! I'm new to Websleuths and am still learning how this forum works.
I am curious if anyone knows if the unidentified remains (Namus #UP10891) was ever checked in relation to the Gordon Bethel Lopez case? The remains where found in September of 1986 and remains unidentified. The features are similar, if I remember right, and the TOD could work as well.
Thanks for any information you might have!
Warmly,
callmebetty
Welcome to Ws callmebetty!
 
Hello everyone! I'm new to Websleuths and am still learning how this forum works.
I am curious if anyone knows if the unidentified remains (Namus #UP10891) was ever checked in relation to the Gordon Bethel Lopez case? The remains where found in September of 1986 and remains unidentified. The features are similar, if I remember right, and the TOD could work as well.
Thanks for any information you might have!
Warmly,
callmebetty

The rightPMI timing and sounds like a very similar description. I cannot see ruleouts on Namus but perhaps someone else here can.
 
Hello everyone! I'm new to Websleuths and am still learning how this forum works.
I am curious if anyone knows if the unidentified remains (Namus #UP10891) was ever checked in relation to the Gordon Bethel Lopez case? The remains where found in September of 1986 and remains unidentified. The features are similar, if I remember right, and the TOD could work as well.
Thanks for any information you might have!
Warmly,
callmebetty

Here is the link to this UID. Unidentified Person / NamUs #UP10891 Only age is somewhat off. Gordon approx. 21, UID 30 - 45
 

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