Identified! FL - Big Cypress Natl Preserve, Male Hiker, Denim & “Mostly Harmless” July 2018 - Vance Rodriguez

[marylandmissing]

No one may notice him missing for quite a while…A lot of people who hike the AT starting in March and don’t finish till September…Lots don’t keep in touch with their family so if he told them he was hiking it again they won’t look for him for a while…Also, there’s actually a lifestyle called Nomads that a lot of thru hikers fall into…Many, after doing a thru hike, just don’t go back to normal life…They move on to other thru hikes and often disappear down to South America and other continents to thru hike there…

I’m very familiar with the hiking community and have seen numerous people start as casual walkers and become hikers like this…I highly suspect he falls into one or two categories that I’ve seen several times over…One is recovering addicts/alcoholics…Lot of thru hikers are in this category…They get clean and often times become gym rats and start doing marathons and get into hiking…Doing a lot of long distance hikes in 1-2 year recovery isn’t uncommon…Many feel the need to get away, clear their head, that hiking provides peace of mind, and so on…With him being 83 pounds, I’ve been wondering if this guy may have been recovering from a stimulant addiction and fell back into it…Meth addicts are known to be this skinny…Addicts often die from other means than overdosing such as getting skinny to the point of no body fat and freezing or having heat strokes faster than anyone else…The fact that the Sheriff’s department hasn’t really said any causes of death makes me suspect they’ll find something like this…

Second thing I’ve seen that causes males to hit the trails like this is divorce…People’s identities are tied up in being spouses and parents when married, and often in divorces there’s a need to “find” oneself again…I’ve seen at least 9 guys now that went through a divorce become thru hikers…They pretty much said look my whole life was tied up being a dad and a husband…I was a good husband/Dad…I worked, came home and mowed the lawn and took the kids to soccer…That was my whole life…I wasn’t the one who cheated, I didn’t ask for this…It was too painful to stay…I was a 24 hour a day dad and now I see my kids 4 days a month…I give my ex-wife equivalent to a mortgage every month when she’s married and got someone else playing daddy to my kids…I didn’t get a penny for the house and she’s got him living there and I’m living in a rented room…And now the only person looking for them is the child support bureau…

 

[LookingForClues]

Location of Mostly Harmless in 2009 was Norway.


MostlyHarmless

Old Hand

Registered: 06/03/09
Posts: 982
Loc: Norway

It has occurred to me that Norway could be the country, or it could be a town. There is a Norway, NY, near the Adirondacks, and there is a Norway, Maine, near Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Maybe he had a vacation house in one of those towns so he was near great hiking? Just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

[Bit of hope]

This case is so intruiging and yet so sad. To actually have people recognize him and even have pictures of him from before his death and yet he remains unidentified.. It kind of reminds me of the Grateful Doe case.

There’s no doubt in my mind that there are people out there who know his real name. It’s just a matter of his picture reaching the right people.

Maybe I missed it in this thread, but is it known when people first met him in this area? It could give us an idea of how long he has been wandering around.

To me his story sounds like he had many misfortunes in the “normal” world and decided to break with it all and live a simpler life. Back to nature, with no possessions except the bare minimal to survive, working for food instead of for money. I think he could very well have been married once. I don’t think anyone is actively looking for him because they might not know he’s missing and (like in many of these cases) his family may have just accepted that he wanted a different life without them in it.

His eyes are so kind. I can’t imagine him not having had friends or loved ones in the outside world.

Welcome and thank you for your very well use of words (not sarcastic) and kind post.

 

[Bit of hope]

I didn’t know anyone’s name except onein 6 months on the AT, and the same person knew mine. No one used real names. Mine sounded very strange to me when I got off!

Yes, I saw a lot of hikers on forums and Facebook using there own name and underneath (nickname/hiking name) so it's quite common to use a nickname. Actually I can understand that being a kind of hikers culture; all-together-on-a-trail-and-let-go-of-all your-background. (hahaha, sorry, it's hard to put it in the right way, hope you understand) But I wondered mostly about the use of an alias to0...not his real name it seems. In my mind there is a reason for not revealing your own name when you check into a hostel, for instance.

 

[Medical_man]

Bodies are always showing up in SW FL. They found 5 right of 75 in the Estero area several years ago. They were in a patch of woods with trails. Scary.

 

[Bit of hope]

Another post about people who encountered Mostly Harmless. This post is from February 22 2018, doing the Florida Trail.

"We walked two more miles down 98 until we entered Aucilla WMA again. Not far in we found flooded trail and ended up having to splash through. It was in this section that we encountered a southbound hiker named Mostly Harmless. He was doing the trail without the GPS app or detailed maps. I don't know how he has gotten as far as he has. Both Sugar Rush and I have had issues with the route, even with our GPS position in hand. We exchanged trail information for various sections, going into greater detail than usual to help Mostly Harmless out as best we could"

FT2018 Day 44: Campsite near the Aucilla River (mile 734.2) to Ring Dike Campsite (mile 760.8)

 

[LibbyinTexas]

It has occurred to me that Norway could be the country, or it could be a town. There is a Norway, NY, near the Adirondacks, and there is a Norway, Maine, near Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Maybe he had a vacation house in one of those towns so he was near great hiking? Just thought I'd throw that out there.

I thought I had seen that there was
also another hiker who used the trail name of Mostly Harmless - this one might not be him ?

 

[Muffin0326]

So here is what I know from other hikers who encountered him on the trail. He used to work in the Tech Industry (possibly in New York). He mentioned he was originally from the south. He was divorced. He was having some unidentified health issues (and said he wanted to do the trip while he still could). He had a sister that lived in Florida. He was Kind. He was Clever. And he was funny.

There are places where you can see multiple pics of him by other hikers and you can see him slowly deteriorating...weight loss, Very dark circles under his eyes. The longer his beard was the more sick he looked. Makes me think he had a terminal disease and this is something he always wanted to accomplish and did right before he died. In the first pic of him he barely has a beard at all and looks very healthy.

There has also been mention of a piece of paper in his pocket with some programming code written on it but the code doesn't appear to have been released by the PD.

 

[RickshawFan]

Comment section in Collier County Sheriffs FB page. Oct 2017

I figured I could zoom in and do a better job of evaluating this fellow's equipment. On on zoomed-in look, that pack is NOT a knock-off. It's a Gregory (there's a company of knock offs with a logo like Gregory's). Gregorys are VERY high quality pack, and that one looks like a Baltoro, a veritable cadillac. He could have got "last year's model" at a discount or used; otherwise, we're talking $350. It also has a very high volume for a thru hiker, so he must have been taking a lot of possessions, especially if he only had a meager food bag. You can learn a lot from people's gear!

I will say he's not very experienced, 'cos his flip flops are hanging off the pack. Picture every time you step, those things will go swinging. Then you've wobbled up the trail for 2000+ miles. Slows you down, and it's unnecessarily hard on the body. An experienced hiker would keep them tucked in or tied down. Firmly.

 

[RickshawFan]

I'll bet he didn't treat his water...... I suppose autopsy will find that out, though, but maybe only if the ME is looking for it. Maybe we'll hear.

 

[LeenC]

I was looking around a bit on NamUs and came across David Chapman. He went missing in Connecticut on December 11th 2015 at the age of 31. He’s 5’8” like our John Doe and the picture on his NamUs page looks a lot like him imo. There’s not a lot of information about the circumstances of his disappearance (I don’t have a lot of time to dig deep right now) and Chapman is supposed to have a tattoo of the letter D on his forearm while there’s no mention of tattoos in our Doe’s description. But I can’t get around the resemblance. And imo the Doe’s description isn’t very elaborate anyway so maybe they just didn’t mention it, which I must admit would be weird... But who knows.

Missing Person Case

 

[waterfalllady]

I was looking around a bit on NamUs and came across David Chapman. He went missing in Connecticut on December 11th 2015 at the age of 31. He’s 5’8” like our John Doe and the picture on his NamUs page looks a lot like him imo. There’s not a lot of information about the circumstances of his disappearance (I don’t have a lot of time to dig deep right now) and Chapman is supposed to have a tattoo of the letter D on his forearm while there’s no mention of tattoos in our Doe’s description. But I can’t get around the resemblance. And imo the Doe’s description isn’t very elaborate anyway so maybe they just didn’t mention it, which I must admit would be weird... But who knows.

Missing Person Case

Good eye. The Collier County Sheriff Facebook page made it very clear the man had no scars, tattoos, or other identifying marks. They specifically said this, so it wasn't an omission.

 

[LibbyinTexas]

I was looking around a bit on NamUs and came across David Chapman. He went missing in Connecticut on December 11th 2015 at the age of 31. He’s 5’8” like our John Doe and the picture on his NamUs page looks a lot like him imo. There’s not a lot of information about the circumstances of his disappearance (I don’t have a lot of time to dig deep right now) and Chapman is supposed to have a tattoo of the letter D on his forearm while there’s no mention of tattoos in our Doe’s description. But I can’t get around the resemblance. And imo the Doe’s description isn’t very elaborate anyway so maybe they just didn’t mention it, which I must admit would be weird... But who knows.

Missing Person Case

Wow ! Remarkable !

 

[Coffee56]

FT thruhike FB page.

 

[Coffee56]

COllier County Sheriffs FB

 

[Gardener1850]

Could this be Max Schweitzer? CA - CA - Maximillian 'Max' Schweitzer, 41, Yosemite National Park, 4 Jan 2018

 

[LeenC]

FT thruhike FB page.

Wow those are some good pictures! Do you know when the last one was taken? It could just be the lack of beard but he looks skinnier than in the other pictures I’ve seen from him so far.

I'll bet he didn't treat his water...... I suppose autopsy will find that out, though, but maybe only if the ME is looking for it. Maybe we'll hear.

Surely the autopsy must have been done by now. There’s no way they would wait this long to do an autopsy, valuable information could be lost by doing so. I think they just chose not to make anything public yet. Maybe they hope he will be identified without having to make the circumstances surrounding his death public.

His weight really puzzles me. My first thought would be that he starved to death but it’s not like he was camping in the middle of nowhere. Several people came by his tent before his body was found. So you’d think that if he was that low on food, he would have had the opportunity to ask other hikers for help. Then the second theory comes to mind, that he may have been terminally ill. If that’s the case then surely he must have known his diagnosis otherwise you’d think he would have come to a point where he started worrying about his own health enough to look for a doctor. What baffles me in this scenario is that if he was terminal and he indeed started his hike a year and a half ago, then that’s a hell of a long time to survive (not even just surviving but hiking and working) for being terminally ill. It’s possible of course. I know people who beat the odds like that by just keeping themselves going and doing the things they loved most for way longer than the doctors had given them. But if the disease was that brutal that it could made him lose this much weight, I feel like he would have died before his bodyweight could drop to this point (if that makes sense).

Also, on a different note, I finally realized whom he reminds me of. He looks A LOT like a young Steven Avery.

 

[LibbyinTexas]

I figured I could zoom in and do a better job of evaluating this fellow's equipment. On on zoomed-in look, that pack is NOT a knock-off. It's a Gregory (there's a company of knock offs with a logo like Gregory's). Gregorys are VERY high quality pack, and that one looks like a Baltoro, a veritable cadillac. He could have got "last year's model" at a discount or used; otherwise, we're talking $350. It also has a very high volume for a thru hiker, so he must have been taking a lot of possessions, especially if he only had a meager food bag. You can learn a lot from people's gear!

I will say he's not very experienced, 'cos his flip flops are hanging off the pack. Picture every time you step, those things will go swinging. Then you've wobbled up the trail for 2000+ miles. Slows you down, and it's unnecessarily hard on the body. An experienced hiker would keep them tucked in or tied down. Firmly.

Excellent observations!

 

[LibbyinTexas]

Wow those are some good pictures! Do you know when the last one was taken? It could just be the lack of beard but he looks skinnier than in the other pictures I’ve seen from him so far.



Surely the autopsy must have been done by now. There’s no way they would wait this long to do an autopsy, valuable information could be lost by doing so. I think they just chose not to make anything public yet. Maybe they hope he will be identified without having to make the circumstances surrounding his death public.

His weight really puzzles me. My first thought would be that he starved to death but it’s not like he was camping in the middle of nowhere. Several people came by his tent before his body was found. So you’d think that if he was that low on food, he would have had the opportunity to ask other hikers for help. Then the second theory comes to mind, that he may have been terminally ill. If that’s the case then surely he must have known his diagnosis otherwise you’d think he would have come to a point where he started worrying about his own health enough to look for a doctor. What baffles me in this scenario is that if he was terminal and he indeed started his hike a year and a half ago, then that’s a hell of a long time to survive (not even just surviving but hiking and working) for being terminally ill. It’s possible of course. I know people who beat the odds like that by just keeping themselves going and doing the things they loved most for way longer than the doctors had given them. But if the disease was that brutal that it could made him lose this much weight, I feel like he would have died before his bodyweight could drop to this point (if that makes sense).

Also, on a different note, I finally realized whom he reminds me of. He looks A LOT like a young Steven Avery.

I was wondering if people do not run across each other again on the trails because there are multiple pictures of him being photographed with others and in a cafe or together for a selfie ... he always looked happy and in many of the pictures he looked tan and healthy ... so it seems if someone saw him again and he looked like a skeleton then they would be totally alarmed ... 83 lbs is extreme ! The face would have zero fat and even a big coat couldn't hide that type of fat and muscle tone loss --- and he would of been very weak and very low energy ... had he just been staying inside his tent ? Had he stopped hiking ? Did he absolutely have no money for food and just didn't ask anyone for some food -- I know next to nothing about hiking trails but surely if your starving you could find food on the trails ... is that ridiculous to think??? Because he was found close to a Picnic area right ???? He could of found food ... So if he wasn't starving to death and was terminal ... could he of lasted that long ... I think so ... he could of been told 6 months to two years ... it's possible ...
but which was it ???? and another thing I keep thinking is just that when the sheriff is posting pictures of him they just don't look like the earlier pictures of him --- if he worked at IBM and a coworker sees the death composition of him or even the other two the sheriff posts --- they might not recognize him at all.

 

[LeenC]

I was wondering if people do not run across each other again on the trails because there are multiple pictures of him being photographed with others and in a cafe or together for a selfie ... he always looked happy and in many of the pictures he looked tan and healthy ... so it seems if someone saw him again and he looked like a skeleton then they would be totally alarmed ... 83 lbs is extreme ! The face would have zero fat and even a big coat couldn't hide that type of fat and muscle tone loss --- and he would of been very weak and very low energy ... had he just been staying inside his tent ? Had he stopped hiking ? Did he absolutely have no money for food and just didn't ask anyone for some food -- I know next to nothing about hiking trails but surely if your starving you could find food on the trails ... is that ridiculous to think??? Because he was found close to a Picnic area right ???? He could of found food ... So if he wasn't starving to death and was terminal ... could he of lasted that long ... I think so ... he could of been told 6 months to two years ... it's possible ...
but which was it ???? and another thing I keep thinking is just that when the sheriff is posting pictures of him they just don't look like the earlier pictures of him --- if he worked at IBM and a coworker sees the death composition of him or even the other two the sheriff posts --- they might not recognize him at all.

I’ve been wondering that as well! If you look at the sketch you can see how skinny he was. He didn’t have any fat left in his face. Even if you hadn’t seen him before and met him while he looked like that, you’d realize he wasn’t okay and needed serious help... I think he must have stayed in his tent the past few weeks. There is no way he would have had the strength to continue hiking. 83 lbs is just scary. To get to that point you must have been short on or completely without food for weeks. It’s not something that just happens in a matter of days. I’ve been wondering if he put his tent next to the picnick area on purpose. Because he was too weak to go on and hoped that other hikers might stop there to eat. Maybe he lived on their leftovers if he was to proud/embarrassed to ask (though, if you’re starving I don’t know how much pride you have left).
Does anyone know how the weather has been in that area? If the weather’s been bad it’s possible that he just had terrible luck. Maybe he’d gotten into trouble and ran out of food, but kept hiking (way longer than he should have) hoping to find other hikers or some sort of meeting place where he could get help. He came by the picnic area, ate whatever he found in the garbage and realized he was becoming too weak to go on. He may have decided that this was the best place to stop and wait for help. If there’s a picnic area it must mean that it’s a well travelled road, he probably figured so as well. It could be the weather changed and became too bad for people to hike, resulting in him becoming weaker still until he was not strong enough anymore to get up. By the time people did come by his tent, he could have been unconcious or dead.

I’ve also wondered if maybe something caused him to pass out and go in some sort of coma, until his body ran out of nutrients.

I’m purely guessing of course. I hope I haven’t offended anyone by doing so.

It really frustrates me that they more than likely know what caused his death and yet they don’t make it public. I feel like his cause of death would tell a lot about why he was there in the first place... I guess we’ll just have to be patient.