One guy I'd look at, who doesn't seem to be in NamUs, is
Sargent Micek. He was last heard from by his mother in 1989, but unaccountably police waited till 2004 to run his license and discovered a couple of DUIs from 1993. Height and hair color are in range (down to the feathered hairstyle in the reconstruction), age near the high side, but in range, drug and alcohol problems, previous suicide attempt, last known by mom to have been wearing black t-shirt, probable abandonment issues. Once you get outside of the upper midwest, you'd think that maybe the woman who heard him speak might have noticed what a Wisconsinite might regard as an accent.
I don't know whether Jack's got him on his rule-out list.
Pictures in videos don't show him with headbanger regalia, either, but who knows? Anyway, I'm surprised that he doesn't seem to be in NamUs. Hoping Jack will post his rule-outs here.
At any rate, assuming it was Sargent himself that got busted for DUI in 1993, that argues that 4 years after he's severed contact with his mom he's got access to a car, which he apparently did not on that early morning when he called her in 1989, asking for a ride home from a bar in South Bend. If he'd have had a regular job, you'd expect they'd have run his SSN and gotten a hit for that, so it seems likely that he was driving someone else's car at that point. It may be that his friends were hiding him. In the video link, police say that they didn't appear completely forthcoming, but that they'd polygraphed one of them, who passed. If he got two DUIs, it would make sense that he'd have been a passenger after that. Apparently, John "Clinton" Doe's ride, whoever she was, got tired of having him as a passenger, perhaps because he was wasted, and ditched him. Notre Dame's in South Bend, but on October 14, 1994, the day before this guy was seen struggling up the creek, Purdue played at Camp Randall against the U of Wisconsin Badgers. I-90 would take you past Chicago and in a northwesterly direction towards Rockford, where it would head pretty much straight north to Madison, taking you right past this area, and, obviously, past it again on return. In a previous effort, I looked at bands that might have been in the area, but a football game might have attracted a couple of Hoosiers to be in the area.
If the license was valid, he'd have had to have obtained it after 1989 or renewed it, one would think. It would be good to know that, as well as where and when exactly he was busted, the make/model/year of the car(s) and to whom it/they were registered, particularly as there was a car pulled over near the bridge over the creek a couple hours before "Clinton" Doe was sighted struggling up the creek. As I recall, a cop helped a woman with car trouble there. The Doe link is the only one I've found that mentions the DUI busts, though. It would be nice to know how they got that info, too, and why Sargent's mom hasn't had him listed in NamUs. But if cops were questioning friends after October of 1994, who knew that he'd been ditched in Wisconsin, they might not have wanted to come forward, particularly if they were selling drugs and their buddy had been supporting himself that way. Lots of supposes, I know, but at this point there's not much else to go on.
As far as the crime from which Clinton Doe claimed to be a fugitive, it's certainly likely, as mentioned upstream, that that was a way of trying to scare people off, or he may just have been delusional. CarlK mentioned Borchardt, but that spouse-murder commission would have been on Easter, and already working itself through the legal system. There was the matter of
Joe Clark, though, in Baraboo, if you're looking for a heinous crime that people would not yet have heard about. One of the oddities of Clark's kidnapping, torturing, and killing of young boys was that he continued to party with friends at his residence, even while holding his captives. Baraboo's only 40 miles north and a little west of Madison, and not far from 90/94 as it makes its way towards Minneapolis. Joe Clark told his last victim, the one who managed to survive and get him caught in summer 1995, that he had
two previous victims, one whose body was discovered in the Wisconsin River on July 10, 1994, after he'd been abducted from his home on July 4, and another whose name Clark can't recall and whose remains, if Clark is telling the truth, haven't been discovered. I can't find any timeline info on when Clark's supposed to have snatched that one, and there's no indication that anyone else was involved, but imagining our Doe knew about it, didn't report it, and wanted to get away, that would be another angle to consider.
