"And there are a lot of them. The scar resembles the scar from MOAS surgery, used to treat appendix cancer. Hed destroyed his relationships. They all knew his trail name, but no one could figure out his real one. I know it cant be easy to process all of this. Interested to know. We see a faint shape and we add the lines and shadows we want. "He said, 'I'm not using a cell phone,'" Fairbanks recalled. And about how long ago? Mostly Harmless was found deceased in his tent by two hikers, Nichalaus Horton and Logan Buehl, at Nobles Camp in Big Cypress National Preserve. The hiker said that he was looking thin, but nowhere near 83 pounds. Except he would always code everything the hardest way possible, kind of like you hired Rembrandt to paint your bathroom. A police sketch of the unidentified hiker. And then, as he traversed the mountains, walking through sugar maple and oak, hickory and poplar, stepping over roots and rocks, he tamed his demons too. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Here's the statement from the the sheriff's office. "As soon as I saw the pictures I knew immediately it's like, 'Oh, that's Vance!'" Then in March 2020, after DNA was extracted and compared to national databases of missing persons, it was determined after several searches that there were no hits, meaning no one had reported Mostly Harmless missing and uploaded his information to these databases. Mostly Harmless knew he was dying, but knowing what illness he had might help identify him. He told people he was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and that he worked in tech in New York. Dr James Craig poisoned his wife Angela to death with cyanide (allegedly), Reagan Hancock (22) has died after her friend Taylor Morton cut her baby from her womb, The unsolved murder of 'Crimewatch' host Jill Dando. Why were his bowels full? Mostly Harmless is the 5th book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. Maybe he was good at code-switching and hiding the person he was behind doors with me or others, she said. A man had died alone in a yellow tent, and his family didnt know. According to the Collier Countys Sheriffs Office, and as reported in Adventure Journal and Wired, Mostly Harmless has been identified as Vance Rodriguez, a tech worker from Brooklyn with roots in Louisiana. WebA police sketch of the unidentified hiker. He was wearing, a beige shirt with green shorts and black Salomon hiking boots. In 2019, Kristine Gills podcast, Sworn Statement, covered the story over three episodes. When she asked him if he was using the Florida Trail (FT) Guide app, he said no because he didnt have a phone since he was wanting to disconnect. You can read the article here: The Mystery of Deceased Hiker Mostly Harmless Is At Long Last Solved https://www.adventure-journal.com/2020/12/the-mystery-of-deceased-hiker-mostly-harmless-is-at-long-last-solved/. > Had a notebook of code in his possession. It brought some new attention to a cutting-edge type of genealogical analysis. He met hundreds of people on the trail, and seemed to charm them all. WebThe name "Mostly Harmless" might be a reference to a character in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Mostly Harmless had told other trail angels that he was coming from Brooklyn. Or Hospital Scapegoat? Everyone knew that he had started walking south on the Appalachian Trail from New York a year and a half before. He would ignore problems and sleep until it was gone.. If you wish to see them in a larger size- https://imgur.com/a/eTphrRF?fbclid=IwAR0Ng8nt6WyOkEZw9iYCDfRmFbQ5YbLxfsnTWNdPtzMgjJM7aeyR0s1iP7Ehttps://imgur.com/a/b5Ny98l?fbclid=IwAR02hs0APr3VDyzhOt7YyjSg2jgZ8AT3VwASZNFvjwMs_PJHbmQtr4i5Ba4. Everyone assumed he would show back up., When I wrote about the mysterious hiker in November, I ended the story with two questions: Why did Mostly Harmless walk into the woods? And his friends in Louisiana just thought he was in a long-ass outage, as Marie puts it. Two women who were hiking the FT met Mostly Harmless. I know that when he had to deal with anything, he would just lay down and sleep, K told me. Sometimes the most alluring stories we tell are the ones with the details left out. Within minutes, fellow thru hikers had sent dozens of photos of Mostly Harmless and reported meeting He had spent his life in Louisiana and welcomed the change. Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and online forums dedicated to solving cold cases popped up all over the internet. He and K went out maybe once a month, she recalls. He was 58 and weighed just 83 pounds. The process of mapping a family tree can take days, weeks or months to produce a possible, distant relative. -. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design. The results showed that Mostly Harmless was probably from Assumption Parish in Louisiana. People sent me theories about who he could have been or what he might have been doing. his notebook has been transcribed and is public. The city was filled with constant motion, but that seemed to render him catatonic. 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Since then, the Collier County Sheriffs Office has made the identity confirmation official with DNA analysis. I feel like that's what happened. Godso said. Most of the women do," she laughed. Its more likely, his friends suggest, that he had one last, major outage. No mention is made of a terminal illness in the autopsy. Oh, no, Daryl, she said as her voice quavered. After all, he did leave everything, abandon everyone, and go off into the woods. A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. Id written about his story and posted it online. If this is the case, why does a photo show only $66.00 in evidence? He must have been smart. Id love to know what kind of person he was, what was his life like. "We just typically don't see people go to that length. A man was harmed and maybe harmful. She knew him as Mostly Harmless, his trail name. It will take about 12 weeks to sequence Mostly Harmless DNA a process much different than that done by the University of North Texas before a genealogist will use the sequence to build out a family tree using a public database. Theyre not public right now, but a journalist has said that he was given copies of the journal and they will be released soon. WebThe investigation into the identity of Mostly Harmless. I think it just hurts that he was capable of being this person with complete strangers, but when it came to us he couldn't even be a decent human being to treat me or my body with any dignity., As he traveled down the Appalachian Trail, Vance Rodriguez was unencumbered by obligations and flush with cash from his time in tech. There was nothing there that gave us a hint at the time. We just dont know where he was from or who he really was. Become a member of StrangeOutdoors.com for exclusive content, See the latest Exclusive members-only articles on StrangeOutdoors.com, https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/51453, http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/3343umfl.html, https://truecrimesociety.com/2019/08/22/unidentified-and-mostly-harmless/, https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/can-police-podcast-help-id-mysterious-appalachian-hiker, https://unidentified.wikia.org/wiki/Ben_Bilemy, https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cyj27g/unidentified_hiker_mostly_harmless/, https://www.colliersheriff.org/news/sworn-statement#ad-image-0, https://www.facebook.com/colliersheriff/posts/3207390245987402, https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/vance-rodriguez-idd-as-mostly-harmless-hiker-found-dead, Tagged: The disturbing death of the hiker Mostly Harmless, denim death cypress national preserve, Ben bilemy death cypress national preserve, mostly harmless identity, mostly harmless death, Vance Rodriguez identified as Mostly Harmless, Mostly harmless hiker identity, Vance Rodriguez is denim and mostly harmless, StrangeOutdoors.com Terms of use/Cookie notice/Privacy Policy, Sign Up for a one-off fee to read many exclusive member-only articles, The puzzling disappearance of Saeed Emadi at Strawberry point, The strange hiking death of Jason Chase in New Zealand's Tamaki Reserve, The disturbing death of the unknown hiker, Mostly Harmless, in Cypress National Preserve, Exclusive members-only articles on StrangeOutdoors.com, The disturbing death of the hiker Mostly Harmless, Ben bilemy death cypress national preserve, Vance Rodriguez identified as Mostly Harmless, Vance Rodriguez is denim and mostly harmless, The mysterious disappearance and death of Nicola Bulley in Lancashire, The strange disappearance of the YouTube Survivalist Finn Creaney in the Scottish Highlands, The shocking disappearance of Theresa Ann Bier, The strange disappearance of Daniel Robinson from Buckeye in Arizona, The bizarre deaths of the Gerrish family in Devils Gulch, The strange death of Lucas Renoud at the Hrisson waterfalls in the Jura Mountains, The disturbing disappearance of Daylenn Pua from Hawaiis Stairway To Heaven walkway, The puzzling disappearance of ex-paratrooper Gilbert Gilman from Olympic National Park, The Dead man who saved Brandon Day and Gina Allen on Mount San Jacinto, The strange disappearance and death of Geoff Hague in the Great Smoky Mountains, The weird disappearance of Garrett Bardsley from Cuberant Lake in Utah, The bizarre death of Cullen Finnerty in the Michigan wilderness, The puzzling disappearance of Barbara Bolick from the Bitterroot Mountains, The strange disappearance of Mike Hearon from the Great Smoky Mountains, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) report June 2021, The bizarre disappearance and death of Adrienne Quintal in Michigan, The strange disappearance of Fern Baird from the Prairie Peak Trail in Idaho, The strange deaths of David Horesay and Frederick Hardisty in the Northwest Territories, The disappearance of Steven Kubacki in the Lake Michigan Triangle, The lucky survival story of Chris Staff in the White Mountains - hallucinations, bugs and hunger, Mysterious UFO phenomena begins to be acknowledged officially by the US Military, The mysterious disappearance of Michael Bryson from the Hobo Campground in Oregon. They also talked about Sci-Fi, specifically Doctor Who. Trail Correspondents 2023: Apply to Join the Team! The following timeline was established based on feedback from the public: Mostly Harmless told people along the way that he started hiking in New York in April 2017, Initially, Denim was his trail name because for his first two weeks of hiking he wore denim jeans. Who was Ben Bilemy/Mostly Harmless/Denim? "Yeah. It was only 4 months before he would be discovered deceased. Tyler Lewis can you send me facebook link to this page for MH ? Its not an appy scar for sure. He appeared to suffer from some mental health issues, but, according to Marie, he refused conventional medicine. ", The Sheriff's Office put out a sketch. First published on February 21, 2021 / 9:51 AM. That was my thought he new he was ill but just wanted to go off the grid and explore nature. It's a postscript to the strange story of Mostly Harmless: an effort to give names to the nameless. Autopsy says bowels were unremarkable. The family then agreed to provide a DNA sample for comparison.. My husband is a software engineer and says the notes are legit code but dated. KEV said his pack was 53 1/2 pounds in Damascus, VA -- she took a photo of it on the scales because it was so heavy she almost toppled over trying it on. Featured image via Collier County Sheriffs Office. Love your pod casts. I had just spent three days hiking on and off the Appalachian Trail with my 12-year-old son, and I was pulled in. I published an article about Mostly Harmless the day before the presidential election. Horton said that His body was kind of twisted. He would not talk about his parents except to say fuck them, Marie recalls. "When he was in a good mood, he was very easy to talk to. You know it is going to be lit, but over the top., He wasnt particularly collaborative, but he would sit down, put on his headphoneslistening to Temple of the Dog and Rage Against the Machineand solve problems. Denim said that his dad was abusive and he didnt speak to his parents but talked about a sister, and he mentioned that he had an ex-girlfriend. One day he cut it all off and gave it to Locks of Love. They became off-and-on roommates for the next five years. David Hurm, a detective with the Collier County Sheriff's Office in Naples, Florida, said. I know the author has no ill will intent thats not my concern. He came back the next day and stayed from the 24th until the 26th. Testing there would cost $5,000, money not in the Collier County Sheriff's Office budget. The tips kept coming in. On the trail, Mostly Harmless had carried a notebook full of ideas for Screeps, an online strategy game for programmers. But then I thought back to my phone call to the friend of Daryl McKenzie. Maybe he worked for them. Those I asked said his Screeps knowledge was okay but the notes indicated he was a highly skilled Programmer, Yes, his notes are posted above. She still moved out that winter. On the way, he met several people who took pictures of him. Rodriguez was born in 1976 and was an IT worker in New York with roots in Snapper and Sugar Rush were walking down 98 and entered into Aucilla Wildlife Management Area. But not entirely surprised. We know his name. But then again, maybe these are all just stories Im telling myself about Vance Rodriguez because I still dont actually know what happened. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Pamela Clark Is On Track To Become the Oldest Female AT Thru-Hiker Ever, Backpacker Radio #190 | Brian "Buck-30" Tanzman on 45,000 Miles of Hiking, the Hot Springs Trail, Desert Winter Thru-Hike, Tracks in Australia, and More, Backpacker Radio #189 | Christine Reed on POTS, Hiking with Grief, and Her Book: Alone in Wonderland, Top Stoves, Filters, and Power Banks on the Appalachian Trail: 2022 Thru-Hiker Survey, Top Backpacks on the Appalachian Trail: 2022 Thru-Hiker Survey, 12 Helpful Tips for Dealing With Rain While Hiking the Appalachian Trail, The Top Sleeping Bags, Quilts, and Pads on the Appalachian Trail: 2022 Thru-Hiker Survey, 15 Surprising Sections of the Appalachian Trail No One Tells You About.

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