brian.grimace
04-07-2011, 12:42 AM
This takes the cake as the most mysterious missing persons case UM ever covered. All you know is a young white man disappeared in a mostly white small town in Middle America, but he wasn't into drugs, crime or casual sex. He never made a pass at another man's girl as far as we know. His skeleton was found ... and he could have died from a heart attack. Maybe no one committed a crime at all. If this has been discussed since 2003, someone please help. The name of the "victim" has slipped my mind.
As I said this takes the cake for uniqueness. For openers, someone watching UM on NBC immediately came forward to provide information about the missing person's dead body ... but it was skeletonized to the point that the cause of death is unknowable. The person could have sustained an accidental fall or been murdered. I don't recall any names or precise locations, and for that reason I cannot do a keyword search here or at the Charley Project. Here's all I know, and some of it comes from a Florida newspaper report that I wish I had saved.
A man aged about 19, 20 or 21 lived with his mother in the family's house in a small Florida town near Jacksonville. I've forgotten the town, but it was near Jacksonville. One morning he told his mother he was going out, and it seemed to her to be his routine exit from the house. He didn't seem upset. He was alone. He drove his own car, not his mother's, although he might have had a rental she didn't know about. That vague possibility turned up later.
From the mother's viewpoint, her son dropped off the face of the earth. She could think of nobody who would want to hurt her son. He didn't do drugs, didn't interact with undesirables ... no nothing. Police in the town were stumped. The Florida newspaper piece I read quoted the mother as saying she was so stumped by the mystery she even considered the possibility he entered a witness protection program, and for that reason, everyone with knowledge of the case had to keep quiet, as did her son himself.
After weeks of digging, police in the small Florida town got a tip from Atlanta police proving that the missing man had rented a car there, which was found abandoned without anything suspicious in it -- no blood fragments, clothing, flat tire, signs of a struggle -- nothing. The case closed at that point until the NBC broadcast of Unsolved Mysteries in the late 1980s provided the baffling dead end of the case.
A viewer recognized some clothing identified onscreen as the missing man's. He recalled seeing these articles of clothing very close to the bizarre discovery of a skeleton in Wisconsin. Some years before the NBC telecast of UM, a skeleton encased in a block of ice had been discovered in a public park. It was a quiet, natural setting but hardly a dumping ground where murderers dump bodies. The skeleton had long since been buried with other unclaimed bodies in Wisconsin. The UM viewer seemed so convincing that the skeleton was disinterred from its unmarked grave. A DNA sample was collected from the missing man's mother and transported from Florida to Wisconsin. When you have a DNA sample from a missing person's mother then you can make a 100 percent match. Turned out it was just that.
Clothing was found near the skeleton, but it was not encased with it in the block of ice.
The Wisconsin medical examiner had ruled (years before UM got involved) that the cause of death was literally unknowable. The skeleton had no signs of trauma, no bones missing, no bones broken -- no nothing. Police in Wisconsin, Georgia (where the rental car was found), the small Florida town and the man's mother tried to fathom an explanation for how and why the man had traveled from Florida to Georgia to Wisconsin ... but could not.
I hope all of you will tolerate my not remembering any names that could show us previous threads on this case. I am positive this was an UM story from the late 1980s. I am positive I read a Florida newspaper story that referenced the Wisconsin NBC television viewer who matched clothing displayed or described on UM with his recollections (from a few years back) of clothing he had seen next to that skeleton.
Dennis Farina has not narrated this story. But Robert Stack covered it. I want proof that I read this online Florida piece and that I saw the Lifetime network rerun in the 1990s. I might be going crazy. :eek: Help ! Help !:eek:
As I said this takes the cake for uniqueness. For openers, someone watching UM on NBC immediately came forward to provide information about the missing person's dead body ... but it was skeletonized to the point that the cause of death is unknowable. The person could have sustained an accidental fall or been murdered. I don't recall any names or precise locations, and for that reason I cannot do a keyword search here or at the Charley Project. Here's all I know, and some of it comes from a Florida newspaper report that I wish I had saved.
A man aged about 19, 20 or 21 lived with his mother in the family's house in a small Florida town near Jacksonville. I've forgotten the town, but it was near Jacksonville. One morning he told his mother he was going out, and it seemed to her to be his routine exit from the house. He didn't seem upset. He was alone. He drove his own car, not his mother's, although he might have had a rental she didn't know about. That vague possibility turned up later.
From the mother's viewpoint, her son dropped off the face of the earth. She could think of nobody who would want to hurt her son. He didn't do drugs, didn't interact with undesirables ... no nothing. Police in the town were stumped. The Florida newspaper piece I read quoted the mother as saying she was so stumped by the mystery she even considered the possibility he entered a witness protection program, and for that reason, everyone with knowledge of the case had to keep quiet, as did her son himself.
After weeks of digging, police in the small Florida town got a tip from Atlanta police proving that the missing man had rented a car there, which was found abandoned without anything suspicious in it -- no blood fragments, clothing, flat tire, signs of a struggle -- nothing. The case closed at that point until the NBC broadcast of Unsolved Mysteries in the late 1980s provided the baffling dead end of the case.
A viewer recognized some clothing identified onscreen as the missing man's. He recalled seeing these articles of clothing very close to the bizarre discovery of a skeleton in Wisconsin. Some years before the NBC telecast of UM, a skeleton encased in a block of ice had been discovered in a public park. It was a quiet, natural setting but hardly a dumping ground where murderers dump bodies. The skeleton had long since been buried with other unclaimed bodies in Wisconsin. The UM viewer seemed so convincing that the skeleton was disinterred from its unmarked grave. A DNA sample was collected from the missing man's mother and transported from Florida to Wisconsin. When you have a DNA sample from a missing person's mother then you can make a 100 percent match. Turned out it was just that.
Clothing was found near the skeleton, but it was not encased with it in the block of ice.
The Wisconsin medical examiner had ruled (years before UM got involved) that the cause of death was literally unknowable. The skeleton had no signs of trauma, no bones missing, no bones broken -- no nothing. Police in Wisconsin, Georgia (where the rental car was found), the small Florida town and the man's mother tried to fathom an explanation for how and why the man had traveled from Florida to Georgia to Wisconsin ... but could not.
I hope all of you will tolerate my not remembering any names that could show us previous threads on this case. I am positive this was an UM story from the late 1980s. I am positive I read a Florida newspaper story that referenced the Wisconsin NBC television viewer who matched clothing displayed or described on UM with his recollections (from a few years back) of clothing he had seen next to that skeleton.
Dennis Farina has not narrated this story. But Robert Stack covered it. I want proof that I read this online Florida piece and that I saw the Lifetime network rerun in the 1990s. I might be going crazy. :eek: Help ! Help !:eek: