WA - Unidentified Male: "Lyle Stevik", Grays Harbor, 17 Sept 2001 - #4

[outofthedark]

I don't think he had actually read the book often or at all, because he would have spelled it correctly. Another reason that I don't think that the name was related to the book is because even though that's the primary association, there are many guys named "Lyle Stevick", some of whom were likely born long before the book was written.

Another thought is that he liked "Stevick", but didn't know how to spell it and wrote it out phonetically instead. It seems that he wasn't too consistent with remembering the address, because it appears that he forgot to state the city and the desk person had to fill it in for him. He defintely got the address from somewhere - maybe a business card that he found, or a phonebook (remember when you had look up a business no. in there?).

 

[SeriouslySearching]

The address Lyle gave was 1019 Progress Ave, Meridian, Iowa.

Wonder if that is a common number and avenue name, there is one in Toronto, fwiw..

1019 Progress Ave, Scarborough,Ontario.

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/10...0x89d4d0e5fa2ebee1:0x6c02bcf478deb5e8Meridian

1019 Progress Ave, Meridian, ID (Idaho). There aren't many listings of Progress Avenues across the US and Canada. He would have been extremely lucky to have guessed the address correctly for Meridian, ID. Could there have been something at that location before the Best Western Rama was built?

 

[outofthedark]

I have stayed in many motels and hotels, but I never committed their addresses to memory for any reason.

Me as well. I couldn't tell you the address of the hotel that I stayed at in Seattle last year, but I can tell you that it's near Ralph's Grocery and Deli.

 

[SeriouslySearching]

Me as well. I couldn't tell you the address of the hotel that I stayed at in Seattle last year, but I can tell you that it's near Ralph's Grocery and Deli.

I recently stayed in a hotel for 3 days. I have no idea of the address other than it was downtown and I know the major cross streets near there. I wouldn't have anything delivered to a hotel or motel either, but they would probably already know the address if someone ordered a pizza from a local place.

 

[Gainsbarre]

Just a few additional observations from the new set of 60 pictures (hopefully these haven't been mentioned too many times already).

- As others have pointed out, you can really see how skinny Lyle was (especially in his arms). He's clearly well over 6 feet tall, as suggested by the photos where he is lying on the ground (particularly the one where he is on the ground with his feet in the foreground).
- The empty soda cup in the wastebasket has a "Pepsi" logo on it, which is consistent with the logo used from the late 90's/early 2000's.
- I'm curious as it appears the the toothbrush is kept in the packaging that you would purchase it in. Had it been used? Others have commented on my fastidious habits (which includes brushing my teeth at least 4 or 5 times a day), yet I always discard the toothbrush packaging after the first use (then stand the toothbrush up in a drinking glass so that the bristles don't come in contact with something). You can see that the toothpaste has has a bit squeezed out of the tube.
- The pen in his pocket almost certainly appears to be that of a uni-ball stick micro point roller ball pen (link here...unfortunately there is no image of the top of the pen cap: http://www.amazon.com/uni-ball-Stic...sim_229_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0XTX0A5G74P7GAATR2NH ). I'm extremely familiar with that type of pen as it's the one my father would often bring home from his workplace when I was a child in the 80's/90's. While it's not a top-of-the-line pen, it's certainly more expensive that the typical type of pen provided by motels, so I'd be surprised if the pen in Lyle's pocket was a pen provided by the motel. Out of the hundreds of motel/hotels I've stayed at over the years I've never noticed one providing uni-ball stick micro point roller ball pens.
- There was a discussion a few pages back about Lyle being circumcised. I apologise if this is tmi, but I've heard of instances (myself being one of them) where you have no "coverage", so that it appears that you are circumcised, when in fact you are not. Nobody in my family has been circumcised (myself included), yet it appears that I am, and have been that way since puberty when I "outgrew" it, and there is no cultural or ethnic precedent that would suggest circumcision in my family background. Long story short, the mention of Lyle being circumcised in the police report could be a bit of a red herring?
- The batch of 60 photos appears to show two different rooms at the motel? Most are the one where Lyle took his own life, but some of the photos (e.g. the 8th and 13th from the top of the page) still have the bedspread in its usual place on the bed, and some furniture in the room in different places. I assume these are picutres of the other room that Lyle originally checked into?

 

[Kentuckiana]

Hi everyone! I'm new here, so this is my first post. I did want to quickly weigh in on my experience with the eye color thing. I was a nurse for 25 years and 5 of those years were with hospice patients. My experience mirrors that of the hospice nurse on allexperts. I've never noticed an eye color change with death and do not recall a single family member ever remarking that their loved one's eye color had changed near or at death. When I went into hospice nursing, I went through a very intensive orientation focused on palliative care and on counseling families regarding the changes they would likely see in their loved ones as death drew near and what those changes meant. After 20 years in nursing, little of that was new to me. Any discussing of change of eye color would have caught my attention because I, personally, had never encountered that before and I am a firm believer that the day you stop learning anything new is the day you stop breathing. I haven't had time to go through all the threads on this case, so I would be very interested if any other folks who have worked in a field where they may deal with the deceased have had a different experience. I have had patients who have done things or shown changes that were completely unexpected and inexplicable, more times than I'd care to count. I always explained to my families that the problem with "text book cases" are that human organs and anatomical systems tend to not read the text books and like to go off script just to remind us we don't know it all. :dunno:

 

[brett1968]

I can't quite figure out the how the car relates at all to the Lyle Stevik suicide investigation, other than it's mentioned in the report. Maybe it's been included by mistake?

 

[Kentuckiana]

I could be off base on this, but could the Best Western have been the motel he actually intended to commit suicide in originally but couldn't easily get there because of the state of air travel in the wake of 9/11? Perhaps that is why he had the address committed to memory? Maybe Grays Harbor was his plan B when the WTC attack thwarted his original intentions?

In that same vein of inquiry, have they released any further information regarding his ancestry since they have had time to complete DNA studies now? I noticed in his profile photo that the slope of his forehead down through his nose bore a striking similarity to Mohammad Atta's profile from his forehead into his nose. I recall watching an impromptu interview with an American student who was Muslim in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She told the reporter that her first thought was to pray "Please don't let it be Muslims who did this." She expressed her feelings of fear and dread when she learned that it probably was. If Lyle was of Middle Eastern descent, could a similar fear and dread have played into his decision to commit suicide? Just brainstorming here.

A couple of other things struck me as odd. On the Grays Harbor coroner's website, in their description of Lyle, they comment about the appendectomy scar and say "He had a surgical scar and his appendix may have been removed." May? They did an autopsy on him, so they should know if the appendix was there or not. On DoeNetwork, it is mentioned that he may have been dying but nothing showed up on his autopsy that indicated that he was.

I am very curious about this weight loss. That is a very low weight for his stature. I wonder if they looked into ruling out medical explanations for this weight loss during autopsy? The weight loss could be a huge piece of the puzzle to explain why he chose to end his own life. Depression can lead to weight loss, of course. It's a bit like the old chicken and egg riddle. Did the depression cause the weight loss or did the cause of the weight loss also cause the depression? Some other possibilities to consider would be some kind of GI condition that was causing poor food tolerance, drug abuse (methamphetamine comes to mind), and insulin-dependent diabetes, which can lead significant loss of weight if the sufferer is not being supplemented with enough insulin to convert an adequate amount of the glucose that is circulating in the blood into a usable form of fuel for the body. Uncontrolled diabetes is often accompanied by impaired peripheral circulation and diabetic neuropathy that can lead to impotence, which can also be very difficult for a young man to deal with psychologically.

I'm sorry if some of these questions were addressed already - this is a really big thread on this case and I have not made it through the whole thing yet.

 

[Damarna]

I can't quite figure out the how the car relates at all to the Lyle Stevik suicide investigation, other than it's mentioned in the report. Maybe it's been included by mistake?

Wondering if the stolen car was at one time considered to be one Lyle arrived in? Not pursued in regards to this case ince it was determined to not be related?

 

[Gainsbarre]

Another (perhaps empty) observation about the batch of 60 photographs, but I noticed that Lyle had his boots on when he took his own life. Does this lessen the likelihood that he was Canadian? I know as a Canadian myself, I instinctively remove my footwear whenever I am indoors. I'm not sure if this also lessens the likelihood of his being of middle eastern descent. Of course, not all people of middle eastern descent are Muslim, but I have several friends who are. Besides the act of suicide (which is a grave sin in Islam, if not all religions), Lyle wearing his boots seems odd, because they are considered unclean. In fact, I've had many Muslim friends over to my house who would actually leave their shoes/boots outside before coming in.

 

[emeraldine]

I can't quite figure out the how the car relates at all to the Lyle Stevik suicide investigation, other than it's mentioned in the report. Maybe it's been included by mistake?

It could be like "Nike Man" in the disappearance of Suzanne Lyall...that car just happened to appear around the same time Lyle did, so it may have been noted because the person driving it could have(in theory) seen how he arrived or known his identity.

Or, it could have been a "let's go back to this once were done here" sort of note.

 

[Kentuckiana]

Another thought is that he liked "Stevick", but didn't know how to spell it and wrote it out phonetically instead.

There is another famous "Stevick": Michael Stivic (aka "Meathead") on All in The Family. Since that was a series, few people have actually seen the name in print to know how it is correctly spelled. If that was the inspiration for using the name Stevick, using Michael as his first name would have made it rather obvious that he was using an alias and that may have raised concern for the motel staff. We can't rule out the possibility that his first, middle or last name could actually have been Lyle.

For the youngsters on the forums who never watched All in The Family, Meathead, as a character, persistently locked horns with a bloviating, racist, misogynist, and verbally abusive father-in-law. He was subjected to continual ridicule for being liberal, an intellectual, an atheist, having Polish ancestry, for his appetite, and for being a student rather than being employed. As the series ended, Meathead had become a professor in California, left Gloria for one of his students out there and moved to a commune.

 

[emeraldine]

There is another famous "Stevick": Michael Stivic (aka "Meathead") on All in The Family. Since that was a series, few people have actually seen the name in print to know how it is correctly spelled. If that was the inspiration for using the name Stevick, using Michael as his first name would have made it rather obvious that he was using an alias and that may have raised concern for the motel staff. We can't rule out the possibility that his first, middle or last name could actually have been Lyle.

For the youngsters on the forums who never watched All in The Family, Meathead, as a character, persistently locked horns with a bloviating, racist, misogynist, and verbally abusive father-in-law. He was subjected to continual ridicule for being liberal, an intellectual, an atheist, having Polish ancestry, for his appetite, and for being a student rather than being employed. As the series ended, Meathead had become a professor in California, left Gloria for one of his students out there and moved to a commune.

While it's hard to imagine Lyle was capable of growing a mustache of that caliber, I could see how he could possibly have identified with "Meathead" because he was easy to feel sorry for, having to live with said father-in-law like he did and put up with him day after day after day...

Maybe Lyle could have been in a similar situation, and felt there was no other escape?

I've seen that surname spelled several ways, including with a "b" in place of the "v"...I think they're all the same surname, at least.

 

[Estelle1]

Can someone tell me the total amount of change Lyle left in the drawer please? Not the dollar bills found in his pocket but the coins. I'm from the UK so can't tell whether the silver coins are five or ten cents. I think the photo was posted on page 52 or 53 in this thread so you don't have to click on the horrific photos again.

It's probably nothing, but wouldn't you accumulate that much change (the one cent coins) from buying quite a few items? For example, say, the newspaper was $0.90, the cashier would give you two five cents or a ten cent back from a dollar, not ten one cent coins. To have all those one cent coins could indicate he had purchased quite a few items (food? drink? bus ticket?) either during that weekend or beforehand. That amount of change builds up over time, perhaps he was traveling for a while before he got to the motel.

 

[MagnoliaMountain]

I have been quietly following this thread for a while. I'd been debating with myself for the past 15 minutes or so if I should look at the series of the PM photos or not...In the end I did. There were not as disturbing as I had expected them to be though I have to admit I didn't have such a close look at all of them. The angle of his head was a bit shocking though.

Anyway, I agree with the other posters, to me he looks Native American and like in his 20s. His face, his body, the way he's dressed, all looks like a guy in his 20s to me. Definitely younger than 30. What a poor soul...He looks kind of peaceful to me though.

 

[emeraldine]

I have been quietly following this thread for a while. I'd been debating with myself for the past 15 minutes or so if I should look at the series of the PM photos or not...In the end I did. There were not as disturbing as I had expected them to be though I have to admit I didn't have such a close look at all of them. The angle of his head was a bit shocking though.

Anyway, I agree with the other posters, to me he looks Native American and like in his 20s. His face, his body, the way he's dressed, all looks like a guy in his 20s to me. Definitely younger than 30. What a poor soul...He looks kind of peaceful to me though.

If we eventually find out that he was born as early as 1970, I'll be extremely surprised.

His dentals are showing that he was probably 20 at the youngest, but he still looks to me like he might have been even younger than that.

It's entirely possible that Lyle was a kid just out of high school, on his own for the first time(therefore still seeming to have been well-cared-for), who ran away to commit suicide because he was overwhelmed.

His family could think, "Oh, well, hopefully he has a good life, now." They could be estranged. He could have walked out due to cultural clashes or a rigid system of rules, etc., and told his family never to contact him again(so they won't be looking, but would probably like to know this is what happened).

You're brave to look at the pictures. I'm still having that debate with myself.

To me, the right side of his face(his right) looks Native American, and the left side looks Eastern European. His coloring(including his green/hazel eyes) suggests to me that he's Middle Eastern. He could belong to all sorts of ethnic groups.

 

[outofthedark]

I have been quietly following this thread for a while. I'd been debating with myself for the past 15 minutes or so if I should look at the series of the PM photos or not...In the end I did. There were not as disturbing as I had expected them to be though I have to admit I didn't have such a close look at all of them. The angle of his head was a bit shocking though.

Anyway, I agree with the other posters, to me he looks Native American and like in his 20s. His face, his body, the way he's dressed, all looks like a guy in his 20s to me. Definitely younger than 30. What a poor soul...He looks kind of peaceful to me though.

I had the same idea as well, because of what we were given a few years ago. But I was really gutted after looking at these ones, and nearly started crying. I've been discussing this case on here for 9 years, and yet they still broke my heart.

I was really surprised by the suspension photos, because I have never seen it done in that fashion.

What I want to know the most is why he chose the hanging method, as opposed to all other methods that don't include firearms.

 

[dotr]

Another (perhaps empty) observation about the batch of 60 photographs, but I noticed that Lyle had his boots on when he took his own life. Does this lessen the likelihood that he was Canadian? I know as a Canadian myself, I instinctively remove my footwear whenever I am indoors. I'm not sure if this also lessens the likelihood of his being of middle eastern descent. Of course, not all people of middle eastern descent are Muslim, but I have several friends who are. Besides the act of suicide (which is a grave sin in Islam, if not all religions), Lyle wearing his boots seems odd, because they are considered unclean. In fact, I've had many Muslim friends over to my house who would actually leave their shoes/boots outside before coming in.

Interesting observation about Lyle wearing his boots.
It might suggest that he was not a practicing Muslim, yet it seems uncomfortable and unnatural imo, to wear boots, in a small space, to commit an unpleasant act.
Wouldn't Lyle want to be as comfortable as possible, ie. the way he put a facecloth under the belt ..
Did the boots have sentimental value, did he want them to be ' taken away " with him, did he simply want to " die with his boots on", or was he showing the courtesy of modesty, to whomever finds him?

 

[Kentuckiana]

While I'm thankful someone got them; I dislike that they're so public. I wish they would have posted the "scene photos" in an album where you had to click something that said WARNING GRAPHIC! DISTURBING! ETC! What if we find Lyle's family? They are forever online now. My heart breaks for them

Not only that, but in the case files posted on scribd, a lot of innocent, unsuspecting people now have their names, DOB, driver's license numbers, addresses and phone numbers posted online. The one lady in Meridian, ID also has the record that she was placed on 24 hour mental hold posted for the world to see, just because someone she knew happened to have the last name of "Stevick."

 

[Gainsbarre]

Can someone tell me the total amount of change Lyle left in the drawer please? Not the dollar bills found in his pocket but the coins. I'm from the UK so can't tell whether the silver coins are five or ten cents. I think the photo was posted on page 52 or 53 in this thread so you don't have to click on the horrific photos again.

It's probably nothing, but wouldn't you accumulate that much change (the one cent coins) from buying quite a few items? For example, say, the newspaper was $0.90, the cashier would give you two five cents or a ten cent back from a dollar, not ten one cent coins. To have all those one cent coins could indicate he had purchased quite a few items (food? drink? bus ticket?) either during that weekend or beforehand. That amount of change builds up over time, perhaps he was traveling for a while before he got to the motel.

I can count 15 pennies, 8 or 9 nickles, one dime, and 3 or 4 quarters, which would total either $1.45 or $1.65. The coin I'm not sure about is on the far left of the image beneath two quarters -- I'm not sure if the coin at the bottom is a nickle or dime.