Identified! FL - Big Cypress Natl Preserve, Male hiker, "Denim" & "Mostly Harmless", Jul 2018 - Vance Rodriguez

[annemc2]

Holy smokes @Gareth_H! That was a extremely brilliant explanation with an incredibly well-produced video - fascinating and backed up with photos and imaging. With a bird avatar and the accent I give you an A++.

 

[Gareth_H]

Holy smokes @Gareth_H! That was a extremely brilliant explanation with an incredibly well-produced video - fascinating and backed up with photos and imaging. With a bird avatar and the accent I give you an A++.

Thanks so much! If I could have showed the PM photo it would be so much more obvious. Whether it was mechanical i.e. caused by the hike as @MadMcGoo said, or via systemic illness, that was a severe impediment.

On the accent, straight up Welsh boy here! Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[Laughing]

Thanks so much! If I could have showed the PM photo it would be so much more obvious. Whether it was mechanical i.e. caused by the hike as @MadMcGoo said, or via systemic illness, that was a severe impediment.

On the accent, straight up Welsh boy here! Glad you enjoyed it.

Wonderful!

My people left Glamorgan a long time ago, and I loved Hinterland though watched only in English.

 

[JudgeJoe]

Well, at this point I feel like we are mainly just stirring the bottom of the pot. DNA appears to be the biggest hope.

While we wait, here is an interesting story that I cannot recall mentioned in any of the MH/Denim/Ben Bilemy threads (and have been through them MANY times). Forgive me if this has been posted before.

I will do "TL;DR" version first. A businessman embezzles large amounts of money, and basically disappears the day his company confronts him about it. He vanished from his wife and children, hiking the AT as a means of anonymity. He is caught years later after being recognized by a fellow hike, and he was still hiking the trail with the trailname "Bismarck".

Link: Fugitive Spent Years Hiding on the Appalachian Trail — FBI

Full story from site:

In February 2009, James T. Hammes was called to his employer’s headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio to answer questions about a possible fraud scheme inside the company. A long-time, respected controller for a family-owned beverage bottling company, Hammes handled all his business division’s vendor accounts and payments.

During the interview, conducted by the FBI, Hammes repeatedly denied any knowledge of the fraud. But shortly after he left the company’s headquarters that day for his home in Lexington, Kentucky, the 46-year-old husband and father disappeared without a word.


Hammes was later charged with embezzling more than $8.7 million from his employer over an 11-year period. “Agents recovered boxes of documents at his home that detailed the fraudulent transactions,” said Special Agent Jonathan Jones, one of the investigators who worked the case from the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office. “It was also discovered that he was doing research on the Internet about how to disappear.”

As it turns out, for the majority of his six years on the run, Hammes was hiding in plain sight on the Appalachian Trail, the nearly 2,200-mile wilderness path that runs from Georgia to Maine. Hammes, who went by the trail name “Bismarck,” came to be known and liked by fellow hikers on the trail. No one guessed his real identity or that he was wanted by the FBI.

Court documents show that Hammes' embezzlement began around 1998. As a controller, he was responsible for all financial accounting and internal controls for his division, including supervising accounts payable to several hundred outside vendors. He carried out the fraud by establishing a new bank account for an existing vendor at a different bank. He then deposited hefty payments to that vendor—often $100,000 at a time—in the phantom account that he alone controlled. He then could transfer money from the phantom account to his personal accounts.

“He knew how to cover his tracks by manipulating audits and ledger entries,” Jones said. “He got away with it for so long because he knew how to manipulate his subordinates and how not to raise accounting red flags.”

Eventually, bank employees who handled accounts for the victim company and the vendor discovered canceled checks being returned from a bank they were unfamiliar with, and the scheme began to unravel. Hammes was also coming under scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service for failing to file tax returns. He had invested a majority of the stolen funds in the stock market and lost most of that when the market had a severe downturn in 2008.

While he was a fugitive, his wife divorced him. Hammes apparently had little contact with the outside world while he was hiking, so he may not have known that his case had attracted widespread media attention, including segments on popular crime reenactment shows such as American Greed and America’s Most Wanted.


In late 2014, a hiker who had spent time with “Bismarck” on the trail was back at home when he happened to watch a rerun of American Greed that featured the Hammes case. He recognized his trail companion and called the FBI. Hammes was arrested in Virginia in May 2015 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with the embezzlement that October.

Jones credits the media and the public for assisting in the fugitive’s capture. “Without the publicity,” he said, “we may never have caught him.” Last month, a federal judge sentenced Hammes to eight years in prison and ordered him to pay nearly $8 million in restitution.

Jones pointed out that Hammes did not appear to have a gambling problem or a drug addiction, which often explains why people embezzle money. “I think he was just greedy,” he said. I think he just wanted a lifestyle that his current position couldn’t afford him. He was an outgoing guy. People liked him,” Jones added. “But it’s obvious by his actions he didn’t care about anyone but himself.”

What an interesting story! Perhaps MH was in some kind of debt (possibly from student loans, or loans from family/friends) that he couldn’t pay off, so he decided to go off the grid. Or, he could have been in some kind of legal trouble that he needed to get away from.

He doesn’t seem like the type to commit any serious crimes, though. All the things that people who have met him have said about him have been positive. But then again, you can’t really trust anyone these days, he could have just been putting on a front. (still, pretty unlikely IMO)

That is a fascinating story! And now I’m thinking Mostly Harmless is DB Cooper! I think it’s possibly the only thing we haven’t considered yet.

 

[MadMcGoo]

Hey man thank you. Sorry for the delay in responding. Right here is a summation, which would be obvious to anyone with a background in foot and ankle disorders or rheumatology, as opposed to convincing themselves they can accurately gauge PM photos via watching netflix docs or whatever.

PS - anyone in a clique Captain Contrarian'ing or resoorting to Ad Hominems cos they've been knocked off their perch is getting put on ignore within seconds.

>Hurr durr the PM photos don't show it.

His right foot is literally worse than the example I've posted below.

Ok, so here is a pic of MH tentatively checking out his right foot.

View attachment 264059

Now, we can't see the foot here unloaded, i.e. similar to the PM photos where he is on his back and not weightbearing. But even here (if we discount the fact that he clearly looks like he's inspecting it) the "big toe" and the bone (metatarsal) look relatively fine.

In contrast, if you haven't seen them, his post mortem photo of his right foot, the same as above (and I am more than willing to send the one in question if allowed and by request) looks almost identical to this...

If you notice, the "big toe" here, is noticeably riding on a lower "level" than the rest of the toes.

View attachment 264063

For context, this is the pic I clipped this from. It's from the radiological report of a rheumatoid arthritis patient.

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S187705681630189X-gr9.jpg

This is his right hand obviously, when in Georgia just after he'd bought his new camping gear. Note middle finger. Not normal by an stretch of any imagination when under load i.e. he's holding something.

View attachment 264060

And here's his left...

View attachment 264062

Note the deviation of the far joint of the index finger.

Here's a comparison pic from the NHS website here in the UK for Psoriatic arthritis joint destruction. Rheumatoid left unchecked is similar however.

Psoriatic arthritis

Now if we compare the timeline from the very first pic, where he's looking at his right foot, to the PM photo, that shows a marked increase in the amount his 1st MTPj has dropped. Within just over a year basically. The degree to which his foot had deformed (actually worse than the photo I posted above) would have made even putting his foot to the floor excruciating, let alone walking and let alone walking with weight.

My take on his ability to endure the hike was that MH was probably fairly recently diagnosed or had just begun to experience the symptoms of whatever auto-immune arthritis he was suffering from. I believe, as evidenced by his blood results, that he was basically living on ibuprofen and whatever other analgesics.

It's my firm belief (having studied his notes extensively over the last few weeks) that MH simply found the diagnosis/advance of the condition too much to deal with, given he was clearly someone who very much liked to be in control to quite an extreme degree. Also, psoriatic or rheumatoid arthritis would very much have started to impede on his ability to use a computer mouse.

In regards to whether the hike caused it, this is an excellent question. This would take us away from the realms of auto-immune arthritis and into mechanical damage. Repeated heavy trauma can cause the foot deformity he had.

If he didn't have the finger joints as per Georgia photo, I would be tempted to err with that, and still don't discount it. The point still remains however, the destruction Mostly Harmless had in his foot joint would have been disabling.

Again, I am more than happy to send the PM photo of his foot, for people to compare.

Hope this helps folks!

A million times, THANK YOU! You provided an excellent explanation! I saw the PM photos with a very untrained eye, so if you’ve seen them I trust your observations. There has been discussion about both his finger joints in the Georgia photo and the one where he appears to be holding or rubbing his right foot. So, this explains both in my opinion.

I don’t want to go too far off topic, but this reminds me of something that happened to me. So much of Denim actually reminds me of myself, and I’ve often thought about how easily I could have been in his shoes (no pun intended )

Anyway, I’m probably not much younger than Denim was and in relatively good shape and health. When I was about 30 years old I became the most physically active I had been all my life; physically demanding career, large landscaping chores at a new home, and lots of time in the gym. I’ll equate it to the year Denim spent on the trail.

Much to my surprise I was actually causing great damage to my body. It wasn’t something I felt a great deal and certainly not something that could be seen on the outside. I was born with bilateral cervical ribs and the type of activities I was doing was causing thoracic outlet syndrome. It basically began to feel like a pinched nerve in my shoulder/arm, if you can imagine that. Not really a pain but more of an uncomfortableness.

Long story short, it took awhile for doctors to properly diagnose me and by that time I required major surgery. That surgery turned into another and within a year I was physically disabled. I had lived 30 years almost completely symptom free and once I aggravated the condition, it rapidly progressed into something very serious. Had I not undergone the course of treatment I did, the symptoms would have remained fairly tolerable and eventually become life threatening. Had I stopped treatment midway, I most likely wouldn’t be here today.

I guess the point of me sharing this is to put into perspective what might have happened to Denim. Maybe he was diagnosed or just starting feeling unlike his normal self and decided to go on this adventure. He may not have known the damage he was doing to his body and if he did, he may not have wanted to accept it. He also may have written the symptoms off as just a result of the hike, not something he needed to seek treatment for.

Being as young as he was, and an otherwise healthy man, it’s easy to imagine him brushing the aches and pains off. Lord knows I tried to.

The pain he would have felt in his foot, as you describe it, seems immense, especially for a thru hiker. I do wonder if it became unbearable in the end and he tried “waiting it out”, possibly thinking taking a load off for awhile would alleviate the pain. Maybe that’s why he stopped there in Florida. I remember times when pushing through my “pain” was more tolerable than coming to a stand still. I felt it more then. Maybe that’s what happened to him in the end.

I know this will not bring us closer to knowing his identity, but I think we’re all just a little bit curious about how such a thing happened.

 

[MadMcGoo]

That is a fascinating story! And now I’m thinking Mostly Harmless is DB Cooper! I think it’s possibly the only thing we haven’t considered yet.

DB Cooper. You wanna call it in?

 

[JudgeJoe]

DB Cooper. You wanna call it in?

HAHAHA- thanks! I needed that. Lol

 

[Gareth_H]

A million times, THANK YOU! You provided an excellent explanation! I saw the PM photos with a very untrained eye, so if you’ve seen them I trust your observations. There has been discussion about both his finger joints in the Georgia photo and the one where he appears to be holding or rubbing his right foot. So, this explains both in my opinion.

I don’t want to go too far off topic, but this reminds me of something that happened to me. So much of Denim actually reminds me of myself, and I’ve often thought about how easily I could have been in his shoes (no pun intended )

Anyway, I’m probably not much younger than Denim was and in relatively good shape and health. When I was about 30 years old I became the most physically active I had been all my life; physically demanding career, large landscaping chores at a new home, and lots of time in the gym. I’ll equate it to the year Denim spent on the trail.

Much to my surprise I was actually causing great damage to my body. It wasn’t something I felt a great deal and certainly not something that could be seen on the outside. I was born with bilateral cervical ribs and the type of activities I was doing was causing thoracic outlet syndrome. It basically began to feel like a pinched nerve in my shoulder/arm, if you can imagine that. Not really a pain but more of an uncomfortableness.

Long story short, it took awhile for doctors to properly diagnose me and by that time I required major surgery. That surgery turned into another and within a year I was physically disabled. I had lived 30 years almost completely symptom free and once I aggravated the condition, it rapidly progressed into something very serious. Had I not undergone the course of treatment I did, the symptoms would have remained fairly tolerable and eventually become life threatening. Had I stopped treatment midway, I most likely wouldn’t be here today.

I guess the point of me sharing this is to put into perspective what might have happened to Denim. Maybe he was diagnosed or just starting feeling unlike his normal self and decided to go on this adventure. He may not have known the damage he was doing to his body and if he did, he may not have wanted to accept it. He also may have written the symptoms off as just a result of the hike, not something he needed to seek treatment for.

Being as young as he was, and an otherwise healthy man, it’s easy to imagine him brushing the aches and pains off. Lord knows I tried to.

The pain he would have felt in his foot, as you describe it, seems immense, especially for a thru hiker. I do wonder if it became unbearable in the end and he tried “waiting it out”, possibly thinking taking a load off for awhile would alleviate the pain. Maybe that’s why he stopped there in Florida. I remember times when pushing through my “pain” was more tolerable than coming to a stand still. I felt it more then. Maybe that’s what happened to him in the end.

I know this will not bring us closer to knowing his identity, but I think we’re all just a little bit curious about how such a thing happened.

No problem at all, I hope it helped some!

If you pull up the PM photos, just compare his right to his left underside feet. The difference is stark. Basically his entire right foot first metatarsal has dropped including the joint that connects the bone to the big toe. This means it was hitting the ground before everything else and also massively impeding the ability of the rest of the foot to absorb forces coming up.

That amount of damage is not normal. In fact, we can see from the residual swelling and joint damage apparent that it's abnormal, when we compare it to the left.

I think you made a really great point re it being caused by wear and tear actually, I think this is very possible and indeed like you said something that just started to kick in and he pushed through as best he could. One thing that struck me was the double knee braces he wore, which having looked at many pics of AT hikers not that many at all wear as a double and if they they sure as hell reduce the load of the pack.

I'm still head-scratching on that last point.

Having been through his notes in-depth recently, he was soooo fixated on minute amounts of reductions both in weight of the trail bars and in macro nutrient amounts, its inconceivable he didn't factor in the effect the extra weight he was carrying was causing in terms of damage and energy expenditure.

 

[Gareth_H]

@MadMcGoo Hey I hope your rehab continues successfully too of course! That is a new one on me, I am going to look it up!

 

[Gareth_H]

One thing that's always struck me, is that he was being observed as "new to hiking" or perceived as needing or vulnerable by certain people he met help as late as Feb 2018. I find this interesting.

You learn to survive for want of a better word very fast when in the Great Outdoors. I wonder what was invoking this reaction in people after more than 8 months on the trail?

Anyways, musing aside, this Denim name thing just keeps coming back. He's already known by it in Unionville, his first reported sighting. He later told another hiker it was due to wearing jeans for the first two weeks hiking. Well having pulled up a map, Harriman is 20 miles away (ish) and he hiked at circa 10 miles per day. So even assuming he did start in Harriman, he had twenty miles to gain two weeks worth of hiking in jeans to gain the name...

Interestingly, I've seen a comment from a lady saying she recognised him from Albany, as homeless, in the Spring of 2017, where he told her that he had recently had a divorce and she gave him a bottle of water.

 

[Gareth_H]

Going back to the notes briefly, and to the trail bars specifically. When he outlines his "base level" macronutrients, they are pretty much nailed on as an average for an "average" person at sedentary or just above levels.

What's interesting though is, despite listing carbs, protein, fiber, sodium he doesn't mention calories.



When he outlines his macros for the standard bar, cals are given a mention, and then in exquisite detail with the other variations:



I just find it strange how someone as detail-obsessed as Mostly Harmless left it out of the original Macro outline.

It was reported by Jason Nark as per Obsidian that he was "obsessed with counting calories". I've also seen a reputable source for someone who hiked with him for weeks where his continual weight loss was a topic frequently brought up.

it's almost like he couldn't bear to write down what he considered to be the expected intake of a "normal" person because he knew he didn't get anywhere near that amount for whatever reason. Or this was sensitive to him for whatever reason.

 

[lonewanderer]

One thing that's always struck me, is that he was being observed as "new to hiking" or perceived as needing or vulnerable by certain people he met help as late as Feb 2018. I find this interesting.

You learn to survive for want of a better word very fast when in the Great Outdoors. I wonder what was invoking this reaction in people after more than 8 months on the trail?

Anyways, musing aside, this Denim name thing just keeps coming back. He's already known by it in Unionville, his first reported sighting. He later told another hiker it was due to wearing jeans for the first two weeks hiking. Well having pulled up a map, Harriman is 20 miles away (ish) and he hiked at circa 10 miles per day. So even assuming he did start in Harriman, he had twenty miles to gain two weeks worth of hiking in jeans to gain the name...

Interestingly, I've seen a comment from a lady saying she recognised him from Albany, as homeless, in the Spring of 2017, where he told her that he had recently had a divorce and she gave him a bottle of water.

Do you have a source for this? Its new information to me.

 

[Gareth_H]

Do you have a source for this? Its new information to me.

Desperately trying to find it again lonewanderer. At the time I just put it down as an unsubstantiated which in fairness of course, it still is. It was on a social media missing appeal, I could have sworn it was Upstate NY or it may have been CCPD's original's appeal.

As soon as I find it I will post, unless someone gets it first of course.

 

[Gareth_H]

Post messed up/ignore

 

[lonewanderer]

Desperately trying to find it again lonewanderer. At the time I just put it down as an unsubstantiated which in fairness of course, it still is. It was on a social media missing appeal, I could have sworn it was Upstate NY or it may have been CCPD's original's appeal.

As soon as I find it I will post, unless someone gets it first of course.

I have been in situations where I remember seeing something, and then for the life of me COULD NOT find it, so I have felt that pain too.

I see you are kinda new (I am new too), but just to recap on some of the earlier things that have happened (before I noticed you began posting) with this case; MH/Denim/Ben Bilemy has had multiple FaceBook group claims that wound up being nothing but smoke. We all want to solve this case, and using FB (I don't know what source you used, but this specifically) has become a major liability lately.

I suggest if you use FB as a reference, only use posts about MH/Denim/Ben Bilemy that are timestamped before his death.

I am not criticizing you in any way, just offering advice to avoid pits that some of us have been tripped up on in the past.

 

[UnlicensedPI]

I think the aforementioned comment was on a Facebook post of an article about his possible connection to Lake George. I think it was a New York paper

 

[Gareth_H]

I have been in situations where I remember seeing something, and then for the life of me COULD NOT find it, so I have felt that pain too.

I see you are kinda new (I am new too), but just to recap on some of the earlier things that have happened (before I noticed you began posting) with this case; MH/Denim/Ben Bilemy has had multiple FaceBook group claims that wound up being nothing but smoke. We all want to solve this case, and using FB (I don't know what source you used, but this specifically) has become a major liability lately.

I suggest if you use FB as a reference, only use posts about MH/Denim/Ben Bilemy that are timestamped before his death.

I am not criticizing you in any way, just offering advice to avoid pits that some of us have been tripped up on in the past.

No I completely get you there and you are spot on. It's very easy to go down SM rabbit holes.

The old MH coming southbound through NY state is a pet theory of mine so I'm very prone to commitment bias on it None taken!

 

[UnlicensedPI]

Found it! Hope this link works, I'm on my phone.
Glens Falls Police Department

 

[Gareth_H]

Found it! Hope this link works, I'm on my phone.
Glens Falls Police Department

Dammmn! That was insane fast, kudos! Yes it works great, thank you!

 

[Gareth_H]

Are we allowed to post the comment? It's a few scrolls down anyhows guys. Very unsubstantiated of course. I spent ages looking through tons of albums of hikers on the trail journals site. I realised that sooo many hikers looked like MH so I appreciate it very much a pinch of salt.