Resolved NV - Las Vegas, WhtMale 25-40, UP417, letter written in German, scar, birthmark, Sep'06 - namus removed

Tom Friendly

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This one is a mystery. I've spent the last month going through Australia, North America and German missing persons/fugitive sites and I have a few possibles but I'd love to see what you all think first. Here are the details:


Case History
The decedent was found inside of a local motel room with an apparent self-inflected gunshot wound to his head. The decedent had natural teeth in fair repair. His fingerprints were checked and no match. He was using the name of a live person who had his identity stolen in CA.


His property contained a letter written in German to his sister Brigit no last name, no address, no city/country - the decedent makes reference to an ex-wife named Karen that lives in Perth, Australia and a possible daughter named Amy.




  • Discovered in: Las Vegas
  • Date Found: 09/11/06
  • Cause of death was: Suicide
Vital Statistics:

Estimated age :
45 - 55 years-of-age
Approximate Height: 72"
Weight: 197
Hair: Brown
Eyes: BlueDentals: Natural teeth in fair repair.
Clothing: Distinguishing
Characteristics:
Other: Jewelry


Picture:
06-7139_post_ID.gif



So many clues! Post up your possible ids.
 
No, unfortunatly there is no letter available. I tried to contact Clark County about it but they didn't respond to my email. After I couldn't find any information on any other websites about the case I emailed again to ask if it was still a valid case. This time they responded with a confirmation that it is still valid.

Early this morning I really thought I had a break on it when I found this gentleman's website:
http://www.angelfire.com/hi/all1/index.html

It mentions a man named Keith Nightingale who suffers from depression and has twice tried to comit suicide, has a daughter named Amy AND he lives very close to Perth, Australia.

I managed to find more about him and even a picture which does resemble our UID: http://www.blogger.com/profile/18436742941795252761

The only problem is that "Keith" was actively blogging (I think) up until 2007 and the UID was found in 2006.

I will try to email Clark County again for more information.
 
In some areas of Switzerland and Belgium German is used, and of course, in Austria.

It would be interesting to see the letter.
 
Darn no letter? If not German he may very well be Swiss/German, Austrian, or even Belgian. I am off to do some sleuthing as I love to work the German angle and put my muttersprache to use. I also wonder if "Brigit" is not "Birgit" a more German name (incidently the name of an aunt of mine).
 
Below is a Swiss website of the missing, if you scroll down there is one man a Dennis Charles Richard Furrer who coincidently went missing in FL in 1995. Though age is off and the resemblence is only slight it might be a possibility as there is a 10 year gap.

Edited: The website below lists the state as CA rather than FL.

http://www.swisspolice.ch/d/2_missed/aktuell_vp1.htm
 
We were thinking the same way at the same time. :)


Darn no letter? If not German he may very well be Swiss/German, Austrian, or even Belgian. I am off to do some sleuthing as I love to work the German angle and put my muttersprache to use. I also wonder if "Brigit" is not "Birgit" a more German name (incidently the name of an aunt of mine).
 
I would be curious to know who and where the man whose identity was stolen lived. Perhaps they were neighbors or knew each other casually.
 
I would be curious to know who and where the man whose identity was stolen lived. Perhaps they were neighbors or knew each other casually.

This morning I made contact with a detective working the case and I have some new details regarding it. I'm just waiting on clearance to post those details.

In the meantime, I've throrougly searched through Doe Network, NAMPN, Interpol and The Australia Federal Police: http://www.missingpersons.gov.au/missing-persons/profiles.aspx and nobody there fits the details.

The closest picks (and I'm confident none are him) that we can rule out are:
Dennis Furrer - Swiss man with similar face. Height is wrong
http://www.mispers.com/furrer.html

William James Henry - hair is all wrong
http://www.mispers.com/henry.html

Michael Allen Jarvi - Has cleft chin, no match
http://www.mispers.com/jarvi.html


Since this man was using a stolen ID we know that he is at least some sort of small time criminal. The Coroner ran his finger prints and no matches came up so we are safe to assume that he has no criminal record in the USA.
 
Or maybe he didn't know him, I guess you can buy a identity if you know the right... or should I say... the wrong people?!

I would be curious to know who and where the man whose identity was stolen lived. Perhaps they were neighbors or knew each other casually.


It would be helpfull to know a little more about the letter - like how correct was the gramma? Did it seems to be his native language?
 
Or maybe he didn't know him, I guess you can buy a identity if you know the right... or should I say... the wrong people?!




It would be helpfull to know a little more about the letter - like how correct was the gramma? Did it seems to be his native language?

I agree that letter very likely holds clues as to where this German speaker is from. Though he likely wrote in Hochdeutsch, variations in spelling and sentence structure might even indicate what dialect he would have spoken and provide better insight into what country or region he is from. How I would love to see that letter in its original form.
 
Tom, could you ask the detective if he could possibly share the letter with us? Or give you more information about it?

I believe it is very possible it holds a clue to identifying this person.
 
This might be a stupid question but I have looked through this thread and cannot see a link to the unidentified page for this person - I can't even find it on the clark county site. Is someone able to post it for me?

I too would love to see what is in the letter. Very interesting case
 
This might be a stupid question but I have looked through this thread and cannot see a link to the unidentified page for this person - I can't even find it on the clark county site. Is someone able to post it for me?

I too would love to see what is in the letter. Very interesting case

Yes strange that its not searchable right? I have confirmed that it is active. Here is the direct page: http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/coroner/unidentified/Pages/unid_indv_06-7139.aspx



Ok here are the new details:
-The ID was stolen in 2004 or 2005 and was used for several jobs. The owner of the ID is still alive
-One of his former employers has said he had a strong german accent
-The decendent had a computer with him which contained a letter to a sister "Birgit" with no last names or addresses. Interesting to note that the name mentioned at the above link says "BRIGIT" and not "Birgit" which is what the detective says it is.
-He also mentioned a childhood friend named "Dirk Matthlas" and detectives were able to find a Dirk Matthlas in the states who did not recognize the man.
 
Yes strange that its not searchable right? I have confirmed that it is active. Here is the direct page: http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/coroner/unidentified/Pages/unid_indv_06-7139.aspx



Ok here are the new details:
-The ID was stolen in 2004 or 2005 and was used for several jobs. The owner of the ID is still alive
-One of his former employers has said he had a strong german accent
-The decendent had a computer with him which contained a letter to a sister "Birgit" with no last names or addresses. Interesting to note that the name mentioned at the above link says "BRIGIT" and not "Birgit" which is what the detective says it is.
-He also mentioned a childhood friend named "Dirk Matthlas" and detectives were able to find a Dirk Matthlas in the states who did not recognize the man.

Is it at all possible that the last name is Matthias? I have been unsuccessful to find any surname 'Matthlas'. Although I suppose that would be another can of worms as Dirk Matthias would be a very common name.

ETA: 'Brigit' is an unusual form of the name to my German ears so I thought I would simply enter it into dastelephonbuch.de to see what results I would get. From what I can tell there are 7 listings under this particular spelling in Germany. As opposed to more than 2,000 each for both Birgit & Brigitte. Looking futher I went to the Swiss white pages (http://tel.local.ch/de/) where there are significantly more 'Brigits' listed, over 300 in fact. A search of Austrian listings (http://tel.local.ch/de/) has found 23 entries. I am not sure if this is in any way helpful, but I thought it might be useful to give a better idea of where he is more likely to have orignated from.
 
I am guessing the photo of the UID comes from the ID he stole? As in he used his own image for id with someone elses name, rather then using someone's id who just looked like him?

If so, perhaps we can get some more info about his whereabouts prior to death? Ie where the ID was issued and when etc.
 
I am guessing the photo of the UID comes from the ID he stole? As in he used his own image for id with someone elses name, rather then using someone's id who just looked like him?

If so, perhaps we can get some more info about his whereabouts prior to death? Ie where the ID was issued and when etc.

Because there are still people alive attached to the case they can't reveal the letter in it's entirety. There were no last names and no addresses. I had asked for more details and this is what they could reveal. Personally I'd like to know what else he had with him, what car he drove, some of the places that he worked, etc.

But that being said I think we have more than enough to put something together here. Especially with the Matthlas name.
 
I live in New South Wales, Australia and after doing some research I am wondering if the spelling should be Dirk Matthias also? I am not a member of face book, but I noticed that there is a guy by this name on face book, you might want to take a look? I also looked on Australia's phone directory website and found that there are only two K Nightingales withing 1500kms of Perth.
There is only one Amy Nightingale (don't know if it is the correct one) but, her married name is Amy Nightingale-Olsen.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Dirk_Matthias/692523739http://www.facebook.com/people/Dirk_Matthias/692523739
 
I too have seen the Matthias facebook and judging by his picture I doubt that he is the childhood friend of a man who is in his 50s.

I think we can rule out Nightingale too because his picture does not match the UED.

Matthlas is the name, I know google only comes up with Matthias but you can't just count on google.

My real name is not searchable on google despite having a drivers license and everything else a normal person has that's searchable online. Keep in mind that Google is an english company so a lot of foreign websites and content tend not to link to it. In fact Iit's safe to say that 've exhausted any google names and combo words that you could imagine. I've been looking at this one on a daily basis for months now.

I would look deeper, at phone listings, real estate, etc. We need people that live in these countries or people that can write in German who can post on various bulleten boards that we the general public might not know about.
 

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