Identified! FL - Big Cypress Natl Preserve, Male Hiker, Denim & “Mostly Harmless” July 2018 - Vance Rodriguez #3

[Bit of hope]

Othram --> Othram - Justice Through Genomics

Thanks for answering, good to have you "on board" and welcome.

 

[moonriverfarm]

There is some interesting investigation being done with recently released photos of his belongings on social media.

 

[RichardRyder]

There is some interesting investigation being done with recently released photos of his belongings on social media.

Can you share a link or any more information?

 

[UnlicensedPI]

Some thoughts on his chosen pseudonym:

Some southern accents feature the "pin-pen merger." What this means is some words with -in sounds are pronounced with -en sounds and vice versa.
Ace Linguist: The PIN-PEN Merger

I'm wondering if his last name really was "Bellamy" and when he moved up north he still had an accent. Someone could have asked his name and he pronounced it "Bilemy." Maybe that person misspelled it by his pronunciation and he got a kick out of it so he kept it in his back pocket to use later when he needed a good alias. I know others have had similar musings. I just remembered my coworker (originally from Georgia) talking about pin/pen specifically and I wondered about Bil/Bel.

 

[Coffee56]

Photos of some belongings here

Unidentified male hiker Ben Bilemy 2018

 

[branmuffin]

I've tried to keep up but you guys are too quick (I should have known that this would have already come up).

I did a lot of travelling in my younger days and I can still remember how to say "I don't know" in many foreign languages. It could have been that he'd picked it up travelling.

I just got this from a translating site but according to them, this translation is in Turkmen, the language of Turkmenistan, not Turkish. Any language experts here?

I always found "where is the toilet?" the most important phrase in any language.

 

[branmuffin]

I wonder why the hikers that found him would have described it that way? It’s such a specific detail (to me) to get wrong. IMO

Maybe not something one wants to admit to but perhaps the men who discovered his remains touched him and the body fell backwards and they were too freaked out to do anything.

I do remember reading the two men who found him said he was sitting forward.

 

[nannymo]

How does one become verified? Sorry, we are new to this forum

Thank you for the wonderful work you are doing. May I ask a ball-park figure on your costs to take on such a task as this? I am interested and donated, but haven't a clue how much it is going to cost to accomplish the results? TYIA

 

[nannymo]

Thanks! I thought I had read most of this thread and wondered where I missed it! Appreciate the heads up...

 

[annemc2]

The scar looks like that of an exploratory laparotomy. Could have been any abdominal thing that wasn't found on exam or scans. It's interesting to me that, even though it appears that he starved to death, he has a normal body hair distribution. It's like whatever happened, happened rather quickly. I'm still leaning towards possible undiagnosed adult onset diabetes. If he went into DKA he'd go downhill fast and apparently he had stool present on autopsy, so he was probably eating something.

Does anybody know if he was wearing shoes or if his feet were exposed to water? They have that "washerwoman's" effect that no other part of his body seems to have.

And yeah, I'm imagining the bedroom of a hardcore gamer/coder (totally stereotyping here) combined with lack of cleaning supplies and no garbage service in that tent. It's a disaster. It looks like he didn't mind a mess but kept the things that were important to him (e.g. money, notebook) in very good condition. He never looked particularly disheveled even on the trail (to me, anyway).

 

[latenighter]

I don’t generally post. Just read.. I have never been this invested in an unidentified case.. this one just blows my mind. He had means to live.. I can’t understand why he starved. Sorry I’m rambling. Anyway I’m wondering if anyone knows if cancer would be picked up on an autopsy. I would imagine it would

 

[branmuffin]

Okay, I looked at the photos at the site of his discovery. I haven't seen any autopsy photos. I'm going to try to record what I saw. Don't read if you think it may upset you.

First of all, I wasn't all that shocked over his appearance considering he weighed 83 pounds. He was extremely emaciated. There was the beginnings of decomp in the eyes and mouth. He had a LOT of bites on his neck and and arms, not so much on his legs. Speaking of his legs, in death he appeared to have more hair on his legs than he did in life. He had a laceration on his right leg just above the knee that was about 2 inches long. It didn't appear to be infected.

Close-up pics of Denim's left ear showed a discolouration on his scalp that appeared to be a contusion, quite red without being bloody. His hair was about two inches long which leads me to believe he wasn't there a long time. It was not anywhere near as gray as his beard. His chest was lightly dusted with hair and maybe about 20 percent of it was gray. His beard was a little bit longer than what we have seen in some of his photos on the trail but not by much. I haven't ever done a time line to find out how many days or weeks elapsed between some of the pics we see of him with a beard and then clean shaven. It might give us some idea of how long he was there in the tent.

There is one image where LE or coroner pulled down his shorts and there is a brief view of his genital area to record blood that has seeped through his shorts. I think that refers to an explanation in the autopsy report of evidence of scratching which must have been very intense to cause broken skin. There are lots of health issues that can cause intense itching without it being related to insect bites. Perhaps some of those broken areas of skin on his neck and arms are related to itching without insect bites.

Yes, the tent was a mess but I think it had more to do with him thrashing around trying either to get out of the tent or access food. It kind of reminded of my elderly dad who fell in his home and couldn't get up. He had been pushing himself along the floor on his back and using his cane to try and knock down the phone or get something to eat until help came. The police had thought initially there had been some home invasion and his place was trashed until he explained what he had been doing. I don't think there was any madness there, just desperation, which makes me sadder.

The abdominal scar runs from just under Denim's breastbone down slightly past his navel. As Narkj said it wasn't pale and hardly visible, it was quite pronounced and obvious, mainly because it had dirt in it. It also didn't really look like a childhood scar to me. My dad had an exploratory operation that rendered him with a scar that ran just slightly north of his groin to his clavicle. That was a terrible looking scar, bumpy and about half an inch wide. Denim's wasn't anywhere near as bad as that. It was a clean heal and didn't appear to have any stitches.

I've seen a lot of crime scene photos and autopsy photos and can remain detached when viewing them. It's a little different when it's someone you almost feel like you know. I felt real grief viewing those images of Denim.

 

[AllElseFailed]

The biting around the edges of the pizza is strange. Eating disorder? Food intolerance to cheese? Why not just remove the cheese or order something else? IMO

An eating disorder could make sense. I had been thinking of this avenue myself. Previously in this thread others had mentioned that he would realize how thin he was, but an eating disorder could make that either not the case, or the desired outcome... JMO.

 

[dotr]

An eating disorder could make sense. I had been thinking of this avenue myself. Previously in this thread others had mentioned that he would realize how thin he was, but an eating disorder could make that either not the case, or the desired outcome... JMO.

Men’s Eating Disorders Often Not Recognized

• The National Eating Disorders Association says 10 million males will be affected in their lifetimes.
• Men make up 15% of cases including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder, recent research shows.
• A recent study says 22% of young men turn to dangerous means to bulk up muscle with disordered eating behaviors.
• Men with anorexia nervosa may face “harsher stigmatization from their peers or go undiagnosed” because of the stereotype that anorexia nervosa is a “female” disorder, a recent study found.
• A study this year highlights the stigma, shame, and isolation men often have that may impede and delay treatment.''

 

[lonewanderer]

Okay, I looked at the photos at the site of his discovery. I haven't seen any autopsy photos. I'm going to try to record what I saw. Don't read if you think it may upset you.

First of all, I wasn't all that shocked over his appearance considering he weighed 83 pounds. He was extremely emaciated. There was the beginnings of decomp in the eyes and mouth. He had a LOT of bites on his neck and and arms, not so much on his legs. Speaking of his legs, in death he appeared to have more hair on his legs than he did in life. He had a laceration on his right leg just above the knee that was about 2 inches long. It didn't appear to be infected.

Close-up pics of Denim's left ear showed a discolouration on his scalp that appeared to be a contusion, quite red without being bloody. His hair was about two inches long which leads me to believe he wasn't there a long time. It was not anywhere near as gray as his beard. His chest was lightly dusted with hair and maybe about 20 percent of it was gray. His beard was a little bit longer than what we have seen in some of his photos on the trail but not by much. I haven't ever done a time line to find out how many days or weeks elapsed between some of the pics we see of him with a beard and then clean shaven. It might give us some idea of how long he was there in the tent.

There is one image where LE or coroner pulled down his shorts and there is a brief view of his genital area to record blood that has seeped through his shorts. I think that refers to an explanation in the autopsy report of evidence of scratching which must have been very intense to cause broken skin. There are lots of health issues that can cause intense itching without it being related to insect bites. Perhaps some of those broken areas of skin on his neck and arms are related to itching without insect bites.

Yes, the tent was a mess but I think it had more to do with him thrashing around trying either to get out of the tent or access food. It kind of reminded of my elderly dad who fell in his home and couldn't get up. He had been pushing himself along the floor on his back and using his cane to try and knock down the phone or get something to eat until help came. The police had thought initially there had been some home invasion and his place was trashed until he explained what he had been doing. I don't think there was any madness there, just desperation, which makes me sadder.

The abdominal scar runs from just under Denim's breastbone down slightly past his navel.

Could it possibly be gastric bypass?

 

[AllElseFailed]

Sorry if I missed it, but was a tox screen done? And if so, what were the results?

Drug abuse can cause weight loss and withdrawal from some drugs can cause intense scratching and possibly delusions (with regards to struggling in the tent). MOO

 

[AllElseFailed]

A scar like that could also point to a ventral hernia?
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/16531-ventral-hernia

EBM to avoid screwing up a quote.

 

[branmuffin]

I wondered about that. There are several methods, two which would be really obvious to a coroner at autopsy. One less so. It could tie in with his comment about losing a significant amount of weight. I knew one woman who had that operation and she had lots of stretch marks on her skin that were kind of purple when obese but kind of silvery looking after she lost weight. I saw no evidence of stretch marks on areas of Denim's body.

 

[branmuffin]

Sorry if I missed it, but was a tox screen done? And if so, what were the results?

Drug abuse can cause weight loss and withdrawal from some drugs can cause intense scratching and possibly delusions (with regards to struggling in the tent). MOO

There was an initial tox screen. It didn't show any evidence of drugs other than some OTC meds. If there was a different one later, I don't think it's been viewed by any here at WS.

 

[AllElseFailed]

There was an initial tox screen. It didn't show any evidence of drugs other than some OTC meds. If there was a different one later, I don't think it's been viewed by any here at WS.

Thank you!