
For almost 2 years, the detectives, both amateurs and professionals, put a lot of effort into revealing the true identity of an Appalachian Trail hiker found dead in a tent in Florida. Other trekkers said that he used to introduce himself as ‘Mostly Harmless’ (the reasons for the nickname are not known for sure). Some even called him Denim because of the jeans he used to wear on the hikes of the Appalachian Trail.
The Max documentary They Called Him Mostly Harmless will be available on February 8, and it features women and men from Facebook who volunteered to help find the original name of the allegedly missing person. The film puts together all available materials on this person and video interviews with various people involved in the investigation and others that he met along the Appalachian Times on how the name Vance John Rodriguez came to be known.
The hiker started off his new exploration somewhere in April of 2017, when he set off to move south from New York and traveled through the Appalachian Trail. The hiker did not have any mode of transportation as he did not own a phone or a credit card, only the documents that could validate him. However, he was able to gain recognition due to his reputation and distinguishing clothing such as his incomprehensibly large backpack and a notebook which had a game code of the online game Screeps into it. The hiker decided not to reveal his true identity to anyone.
Two other hikers discovered his partly decayed body on July 23, 2018, Along with the case of the rest of the corpse, the forensic examiner that had studied the case willing to clarify the cause of death, the circumstances around his death are only left as a mystery. The tattooed features that the Collier County Sheriff’s office had and was trying to locate were also not found. Later, social networking sites came in hand and while posting his picture on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and others they went on to go viral. Other people hiked with him and while on the trail they captured his photos and shared them with other people who had not seen the hiker before.
In 2020, several users of Facebook who were not pleased by the surrounding feeling which could be described as not being an intense effort to profile a hiker decided to put in some extra hours in trying to figure out the hiker’s identity. The case saw active involvement from Facebook users helping to breathe life into the case even when local law enforcement had little leads. For example, in July 2020, the case made significant progress when Facebook groups worked to get a genetic detective agency called Othram on board for the case, ‘Mostly Harmless.’ Othram needed $5,000 for a DNA test on the hiker’s bone and in one week Facebook users raised the money through crowdfunding.
He had Southern Louisiana ancestry, according to what the bone DNA tests said, and so subjects such as these were posted out by the internet detectives onto any local Facebook pages that had the potential to help them identify The Loc 5. Thanks to their collaboration, people in Baton Rouge were able to identify one of the photographs and were able to give the Collier County Sheriff’s office his name. So, DNA was collected from people who the authorities thought might be his relatives and they subsequently found out that the hiker was related to them.
Nicholas Thompson, the journalist whose research proved invaluable to the series, as well, has gone on a quest to trace Vance John Rodriguez’s history and find a story to write in 2021, where he was able to locate many who closely knew Rodriguez able to consider him as a sick twisted man. Women who dated him branded him as abusive and one of his roommates even reported that he suffers from a psychological amalgamation of problems. One of the many heartbreaking things, Soto noted in his pieces, was the fact that Rodriguez has a scar on his body because he attempted to commit suicide but was unsuccessful. It’s tragic when one does it, what’s worse is the fact that the tale doesn’t end here and frankly continues to get worse.
However, the question this case appears to have an answer to, is that the absence of other cases of missing people or, in a heap more active ones, is unacceptable, especially as other cases are available. Lie 600,000 people are reported missing every year In the United States, and when it comes to missing corpses the NamUs database suggests that there are around B-4400. Patricia Gillespie the director of They Called Him Mostly Harmless, holds the opinion that after watching the movie sufficient information was shown about the neglect towards missing people but that it should not be ever treated as final.
In her description, she said, “In fact, I want this film to capture the attention of audiences who seek the stories of Jane and John Does, and grab hold of a missing persons flier or a composited image of them that circulates online.”
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