National Park After Dark - The Mysterious Death of Mostly Harmless: Big Cypress National Reserve

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

In July of 2018, two hikers in Big Cypress National Preserve stumbled across a deceased camper. The man was emaciated, surrounded with food and cash but no form of identification. The mystery surrounding who this man was stretched nearly two years. Law enforcement, the media, and thousands of online sleuths worked tirelessly to identify the man in the yellow tent, but what they ultimately discovered unsettled them all.   For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Task Rabbit: Get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or on the Taskrabbit app using promo code NPADBlueland: Make the switch today! Get 15% off your first order by visiting our link.IM8: Use code npad for a Free Welcome Kit, five free travel sachets, & 10% off your order.IQBAR: Text PARK to 64000 to get twenty percent off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply.DwarfLab: Chase the night sky! Visit http://dwarflab.com and use promo code NPAD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the fall of 2009, the search and rescue team at Big Cyprus National Preserve got a call. A hunter had gone missing. Big Cyprus sits on the northern edge of the Everglades and protects the same ecosystem, a landscape shaped by water. Freshwater swamps and coastal estuaries, cypress trees, mangroves, sawgrass prairies, and islands of hardwood oaks rise a few feet from sea level. It is paradise for wildlife, but it is a dangerous place to get lost. Alligators are everywhere, and cottonmouth snakes lurk in the grass. The Florida panther, rarely seen, slinks through the trees, while clouds of mosquitoes swarm all who breathe. If you get turned around, there's nothing on the horizon to orient yourself. Florida is the flattest state in the nation, and with one wrong step, you're in waste-deep mud.

Wherever you go, the heat and sun will follow. These were the hazards that worried search teams looking for the missing hunter in 2004. With a team patrolling on foot with bloodhounds and helicopters searching from above, they were unable to find the man for four days and feared the worst, until they heard a hoarse voice calling out for help. The man had fallen into deep water, lost his cell phone, shotgun, and most of his clothing. When they found him, he was covered in mosquito bites and sunburn. He had survived those four days by drinking swamp water and eating a catfish.

He was lucky to get a catfish. out alive. Many do not. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello everyone. Welcome back. I'm Cassie. I'm Danielle. And drinking swamp water just gave me a visceral reaction. It's not the best option, but if it's your only one, what are you going to do? Eating a catfish is equally. Equally, I would rather drink swamp water. I'd rather eat a catfish swamp water. Giardia, you're going to, you're leaving that. I don't know if drinking that swamp water is rehydrating you or if it's depleting you of everything you had left in your whole system. It also gives vibes of your How to Survive QuickSand episode, just being stuck in the mud like that.

Yeah. It sounds like a nightmare. Well, welcome to our nightmare. We're in Big Cyprus National Preserve today, a park that we have not visited yet on the podcast. And I don't think either of us have ever been to in real life. close to the Everglades, but not quite. It is on our list to do, actually right before we hopped on this, I was saying to Danielle, that we need to do a Florida, and we've talked about this in the past together,

that we need to do a little Florida National Park trip. Yeah, it just sounds nice. When we're cold in the winter. Yeah, when you're freezing to death in the winter, for sure. Well, let's talk about Florida in June, because there's no better time to be in Florida. That's what everyone says. Yeah. All right.

So this episode is actually another recommendation from a listener twice in a row now. Thank you, everyone. And it comes from a HBO documentary is where I guess we started research. But the documentary is called, they called him mostly harmless. It came out last year or the year before. It's really good. I definitely recommend everyone watch it if you have HBO. after this. And I'll link the other

resources in the show notes. There's a lot of good articles and also a podcast that we'll get into a little bit too. There was three episodes dedicated to the story. I recently just signed up for HBO so I can watch it. Oh, to watch what? I watched the Dark Wizard with Dean Potter. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, as we're speaking, as we're recording, Tonight's the Night, House of the Dragon returns. Oh. You know, it keeps popping up in my, you should watch this and I've never watched it.

I think you would enjoy. You have some catching up to do. You're going to be very confused if you just get on tonight for the season premiere. But regardless, I think you would love it. Because House of Dragons is related to Game of Thrones, right? Yeah, it's like a prequel type of thing. Okay. And I watched Game of Thrones and I really liked it.

Yay. Get on board so we can talk about it because I love that show so much. I think I might like it better than Game of Thrones. Really? Yeah. That's a tough one. And you like dragon stuff. I do like dragon stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, sorry. I'm just excited. Today's a big day. But anyhow, let's get into the story. On a sweltering summer afternoon on July 23rd, 2018, Nicholas Horton and Logan Bueller, friends from Fort Lauderdale, were hiking a 15-mile loop through Big Cyprus National Preserve. Nicholas was questioning his life choices.

The cowboy boots he had chosen to wear for fear of snakes were causing him blisters and discomfort just a few miles in. And the steady rain that had tempered the heat was becoming uncomfortable to trek in. After a quick debate between them as to whether to keep going or to turn around, they elected to push a bit further, eventually meandering to Nobles Camp, a small campground along the Florida Scenic Trail and part of the loop that they were doing. When they arrived at the site, Nicholas wandered towards a swampy area while Logan headed towards the picnic table. They weren't separated for long when Nicholas heard Logan's voice call out, Hello? Hello? Walking back over to see who his friend was speaking to, Nicholas approached a small clearing that held a picnic table and a yellow two-person tent. At first glance, nothing seemed to raise alarm. The site didn't look disturbed and a pair of hiking boots sat just outside the tent flap.

but within a few moments, the eerie silence shifted the atmosphere, and then came the smell. The friends called out to the tent more, hoping for a voice to answer, but when none came, they approached the tent and peered through the mesh door. What they discovered made them recoil. As they were backing away, Nicholas reached into his pocket and dialed 911. Call your county 911. What is the address of your emergency? I'm at Big Cypress National Preserve. I'm Nick Horton or Nicholas Horton. Thank you so much. And did you need the police fire medical? We just found a dead body. Okay. Are you on the trail?

Yeah, I'm on the trail, and the dead body is at the Noble, Camp Noble site. Yeah, it's in the tent. Like, I just, like, we walked by it, and I don't know, smells strange or something kind of looking it, and it's kind of curled up. It just looks like one body. Okay. And do you remember the color of the tent? Yeah, there's only one tent out there in this whole place because we just walked the whole trail. Okay.

It was like a small red and yellow and yellow. It's all yellow tint. Oh, it's an all yellow tent? Okay. Yeah. And when you did see the body, did you check on it to see if it was breathing or anything? Yeah. I mean, I didn't touch it.

I looked at it. We yelled, hello. But he looked really skinny and really, um, Like, I don't know, it's like a weird color. The friends had discovered the remains of what they assumed to be a male camper. He was extremely emaciated, just skin and bones, positioned in a somewhat upright but curled position, with eyes staring wide. Park Rangers, deputies, and homicide detectives, including a detective from the Coyer County Sheriff's Office named Detective Kevin O'Neill. When they arrived on scene, they walked into a mystery.

The man in the yellow tent had a long mountain man type. of beard and appeared to be in maybe his 30s or early 40s, but he had no identification on him, no wallet, no driver's license, and no cell phone. Among his belongings were his hiking equipment, food, a plastic bag with over $3,000 in cash, and two notebooks filled with what appeared to be some sort of mathematical equations or code of some kind. During an autopsy, medical examiners found that this man had wasted away. Despite being 5'8, he weighed just 83 pounds. Whoa.

But confusingly, of all the usual theories to explain his condition, they didn't seem to fit. How would he have starved to death if food was discovered inside of his tent within arm's reach? So maybe they thought he was on drugs. But the toxicology report came in and it came back completely clean. There was Tylenol in the system, but nothing else. They found no signs of trauma or evidence of foul play or any apparent illness

that he may have suffered from. So it's not the swamp water. It's not the swamp water or the cat, the cat, I'm like, Giardia, that's Giardia. So no, they're like, that's not eating. He's stick thin. Case soft. Should I just stop? We're six minutes in. I did it. I think. Yeah. Thank you. back in him. Do you have anything else to say? No. Enjoy the view, but watch you're back. Goodbye. House of Dragon's on tonight.

Okay. And going back to what else they're finding as they're examining the body, his teeth, of course, a lot of people rely on dental records for identification purposes, but his teeth are in fantastic shape. It doesn't look like he had any sort of dental work done at any point in time. But they did notice a faint scar on his abdomen. objecting maybe he had a surgery of some kind at some point in his life. But nothing they found could explain how he died or, as it turned out, who he was because there's nothing that indicates

his identity on his person or within his belongings. And just a note here, I mean, I know I described he was emaciated and a lot of people are morbidly curious. And I understand that. I will not be posting the photos, but they are readily online as far as not there are autopsie photos, but there are a lot of photos that were taken on site that show him in the tent and his remains in the tent. So I won't be posting them. Oh, and those are public? But they're public online.

Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. I don't understand how some things get online, but okay. But sure. Yeah. I just don't want to contribute to recirculating them. Sure.

For those of you who are curious, they're available. Furthermore, he had no tattoos or medical implants that would make identifying him any easier. He had no credit cards, again, no ID, no names in his notebooks that had all that kind of mathematical equation stuff going on. One investigator said that the notebooks looked either like the workings of a genius or a madman, but they couldn't make heads or tails of them either way. And we're not talking manifesto type of thing, like ramblings or internal monologue type of journalistic writings. These are truly, it looks like code to something. Oh, interesting. They're very confused as to what that means.

And that comes in later on, but just so you know, it's not like a journal. Yeah, a journal. It seemed like whoever this man was, he had made an intentional effort to remain anonymous. but police hoped that someone somewhere might recognize him. They took a picture of his face and did everything they could to clean it up to not be gruesome. So they ended up photoshopping his head onto just like a regular body. And then for some reason, that body was wearing like a professional suit.

So it's like this dead body's head that is clearly emaciated. and looks disturbing and they like kind of Photoshop it onto like a body to make it seem like he's alive and they're like, hey, have you seen me or like do you recognize me? And he, they put it on a flyer. What year is this? What? What year is this? This is in the 2000s. This is in 2018. What? I feel like 2018, you know how missing people like missing children, they'll do a photo that's like this is what they would look like now. kind of thing. I feel like they could easily have had a photo of him like, Dunna, this is what he would have looked like a live photo, not emaciated and been like, does anyone recognize him versus

photoshopping his, him onto a business person. I agree. That's crazy. I have a better picture that I'll post of this flyer, but I just don't have it on my phone. But I do want to send you this at least, so you have a little bit of an idea. It's not like super. It's nothing like startling because, again, the sheriff's office did this, but it does look strange. But that's all they had to work with. Why is his mouth open? Because he's dead. He's deceased.

And his face looks dead and his body looks alive. Right. Well, so their hope is that someone is going to recognize him or his essence in some way. They put it on this flyer. They distribute it to the local. community asking for the public's help in his identification. And as weird as this is and how like kind of you can clearly see that and be like, this person is not alive. But if you think about it, they're really lucky that he was found by those two friends when they did because you're talking

July in Florida in the swamp. A body's going to decomp so fast. Like, he probably died within hours or a day of being discovered because his body, even though it was emaciated, decomposition-wise, decompose, decompose, didn't start in earnest yet. Okay. Yeah. And then also just all the wildlife that's there, the fact that he was still. Right. Right. And this photo is kind of like, we'll get into it, but it's the one thing that tipped over, like, oh, actually, I,

do recognize him and this is what I know about him. Without that photo, they wouldn't have had anything. Okay. So it worked. It did work. It was just, yeah. So anyway. A little unhinged, how they went about it. The flyers caught the attention of many, but two in particular became central to this case. Christy Harris worked long days as a delivery driver for a local dry cleaning company, but by night she spent the evenings behind the glow of her computer screen. As a kid, she always dreamt of working for the FBI and felt a calling to fight for people who might otherwise be forgotten about. So she spent her time off working to identify the unidentifiable.

And another person, Natasha Teesley, was the manager of a kayaking company and as a passionate member of the outdoors community, she saw this missing person's case as a worthwhile cause, because, again, they also did say where this person was found. It seems like they were a hiker or a camper. They were in a tent, et cetera. So she was drawn to this case for that reason. And both women leaned into this case during COVID when, you know, our real life kind of

slowed down to a halt and a lot of people's lives were different than normal. And while these women didn't know each other personally, their profound interest in the case led them to become moderators of a Facebook page that would grow to be thousands strong, dedicated to identifying the man in the yellow tent. The police were aware of the reputation that armchair detective communities had amongst law enforcement, chaotic, filled with conspiracies, and often producing unhelpful or counterproductive theories. But without any leads to speak of, investigators leaned into getting the word out in whatever way was going to work. You know, they accepted the risks of what online sleuthing can

bring, but also recognize the benefit and decided to move forward with that. The sheriff's office started a podcast about their missing person's cases called sworn statement, like I mentioned up top, and the first three episodes of this entire podcast is focused on this case in particular. The episodes summarized the case as they understood it at the time. Basically, we do not know why this man died, but we do know that he had taken deliberate steps to hide his identity. This is the information we have. Do you know anything else? So the podcast was kind of being produced in real time. So there's not like in a nice, neat bow of here's the story in its entirety and here's the ending. It's just kind of like a plea for help.

This effort, among others, helped gather momentum. A growing number of sleuths like Christine and Natasha began sharing the man's image across the internet, posting in every South Florida hiking group they could find and reaching out to the through hiking community in the state and beyond. As the police's unhinged headshot circulated online, members of the through hiking community were the first to recognize who this person was. Kelly Fairbanks, a trail angel, recognized the man's eyes and remembered meeting him in 2018 in Florida. That's a crazy statement because his eyes look wild in that photo. But yeah, she's like a... I know them.

And here's the proof. She produced a picture that she had taken with him, boasting a wide smile and in it. He looked healthy, handsome, and had kind eyes. And Kelly knew him by his trail name, mostly harmless. As more through hikers who had met the man emerged, the story went that he had arrived after dark to a campsite in Georgia, where a group was already gathered around a campfire.

And when they invited him in to join, they joked that he was welcome as long as he didn't bite. And allegedly, he replied that he was mostly harmless. So that's kind of the lore of where that trail name came to be. That's a lot more innocent and fun than I imagined. I'm like, mostly harmless is a little scary. Well, we'll revisit this. It's important.

Okay. Finally, investigators had an image of the man alive and a name, well, at least a trail name, that they could go off of. invigorated this information sent the sleuthing community into overdrive, searching for more and more hikers who might know his real name and his true identity. Other hikers knew the man by the trail name denim, because at least early on, he had hiked in jeans. So now that they have a real picture of him, there's this other half of the hiking community being like,

yeah, I know him, but not by mostly harmless. I knew him back in the, you know. Denim. By denim. So already we have... Hiking and jeans is also... I can't... A choice.

Sketchy. And we get into this. Again, it comes back again as far as. There's these little things that at first you're like, huh, interesting. But they all come together in the end. Okay. Investigators chased down leads as they came. The owner of an outdoor gear store in Georgia reached out to say that he remembered selling the yellow two-person tent that the police had also shared photos of.

in their report and on that early flyer. And while Denham had purchased the tent with cash leaving no record, he had almost certainly stayed at the hostel next door, which did require guests to leave their full name, not just their trail name in the register. Investigators rushed to the hostel, combing through the logbook for his name, flipping to the date of the tent purchase in November of 2017.

And there they found a name, Ben Billamy. The police quickly checked the name Ben Billamy against national databases, and it turned out that no one with that name existed in the U.S. Not just in the U.S. missing persons cases, none at all. It was clearly an alias and just more evidence that he had taken concerted efforts to cover his tracks. And it should go without saying, but it is really, really hard in this digital age, even back in 2017. to leave no trace online. To hide yourself so effectively that neither professional investigators

or thousands of internet sleuths on Facebook, Reddit, and other online forums could not find out who you were. As a result, many started to believe that Denham had the skill to erase his online footprint, something like some sort of tech genius or tech worker. And that kind of goes back to the notebooks.

And that theory coincides with, okay, this makes sense because his notebooks are filled with some type of coding language. I once could code. Myspace. Yeah. Forever. Yeah. I could make things like bold and italic and do songs.

I could do that. Songs. I could change the colors. I basically was a web designer. A lot of us had promising careers as in the tech world back then. Asked me to do it now. But we lost it all too young. We did.

A dream has come and gone. Yep. Well, AI is taking all that shit anyway, so we would have been screwed. RAP to the jobs we could have maybe had. So going back to this notebook, it was about 40 pages filled with this dense, neat, incifrable handwriting that, again, mimicked coding. Just like they did with his image, the investigators did their best to try internally to try and figure out what this was saying.

But they came to the conclusion that, all right, we only know so much. Clearly, we have no idea what this is. Maybe the public can help us. So they released images of the notebook out as well to circulate to the community, hoping that someone out there recognized it or could at least decipher it to some degree. And the online community, once again, helped identify it as code. And at first, they didn't realize what it was for. Some believed that it might have been related to Bitcoin, which don't even get me started. Ask me to define Bitcoin. I'm, I don't know. A million dollars. If you gave me a million dollars right now, I don't know what that is. It's some kind of money. Fake online money. But where? Where, like, if someone's like, can I pay you in Bitcoin?

I'm like, what does that even mean? Do I also have to have Bitcoin to be paid in Bitcoin to give you Bitcoin back? I think it's just fake money that someone decided is worth something. And you, exchange it online and hopefully the people who use it will continue to agree that it's worth something. That's my understanding. It's also, God. But I also know nothing about it. The name is escaping me right now, but I remember it was pretty big a couple years ago. There's a word for it where it's like it's a piece of art, like digital art that's unique

and one of a kind and it's worth like millions of dollars. But it just looks like AI generated art. What the hell is it called? Sorry, people are going to tear me apart. Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about. NFTs. Oh, I vaguely remember that, yeah. Online digital paintings or one of ones, NFTs.

These pieces are verified for authenticity and digital ownership, meaning only one person can own the original file. And their work worth so much money. But it's just a piece of digital. It's like, I own this digital thing. It's mine. Oh. Interesting.

Okay, do you want to guess how much the most expensive NFT went for? $10 million. Okay. The most expensive NFT ever sold is the merge by PAC, which achieved a record-breaking 91.8 million in December of 2021. And it's just online art. Like, you can't even print it yourself. I don't know if it's meant to be printed.

I think you just... So you just look at it on your phone or something? Yeah. I guess. What? Okay. And you're going to... This is what it is.

It's a circle. What? I don't understand. It's a spear. I don't either. Whoever bought that should just give me their money because that was ridiculous. In Bitcoin, I want $91 million dollars in Bitcoin, please. I would prefer real money.

Anywho, we don't know what Bitcoin is, but eventually someone really smart figured out what the journal was saying. And it was code like people had thought, but this coder in particular said, I know exactly what that's for. And it's for a game called Screeps. Essentially, this is a game for programmers where you build like little fortresses that operates based on the code that you generate, and create for it. And it just kind of like runs in perpetuity even when you're not actively playing it. So even if you're online, it's just going because you created code for it to just keep building and doing its thing. So this revelation didn't reveal Denham's true name, but it was another piece of the puzzle because clearly he was a techie of some sort.

And this information was corroborated by through hikers who had stepped forward to share their personal experiences with him when they ran into him on the trail. They remembered him talking about working in the tech industry. And it was through hikers who helped paint a picture of Denham's personality. One hiker, trail named Magpie, decided to hike half of the Appalachian Trail when she was 68 years old. Her friends had laughed at her when she had the idea to do this, but she wanted to see if she could still do it. And she set out to reach her goal. And I just want to do a little quick plug for Cassie's episode on Grandma Gatewood because we get so many emails to this day

asking us to cover Grandma Gatewood's story and we have. We have and it's such a good one. And if you haven't read the book, read the book because the book is also really good. And it was written by one of her relatives, which is also cool. She's a badass older through hiker.

Just like Magpie. And one day on the trail, Magpie says that she ran into a young man who introduced himself as a guy. denim. And when she shared her trail name, he asked why it was why she went by magpie. And she responded by saying, it's a big, noisy bird that doesn't like shiny objects. And denim playfully reached into his pack and pulled out a shiny gum wrapper and handed it to her, joking back. That sounds like something a magpie would say. And in her experience, most younger men on the

trail were in too much of a hurry to talk to an older woman. She shared her experiences of kind of being overlooked or ignored while on the trail, but Denham stopped to speak with her for quite a while. And when they ran into each other again at a trailside restaurant, Denham was sitting with a group of younger people, but right away, as soon as he saw her, he invited her over to sit with them. He stood out to Magpie, simply for how kind he was to her. She felt like they were kindered spirits. And Magpie was not alone in that feeling. Another hiker named Brandon Dowell, remember meeting Denham at Springer Mountain in Georgia. He'd arrived at the shelter early and was glad for the company when Denham arrived and introduced himself. That night around the campfire, they talked about

sci-fi and girls, and eventually their conversation evolved into a rather deep discussion about their early childhood, learning that they had each gone through some difficult stuff as kids. Brandon talked about his stepfather's reign of terror in his house, and Denham shared a painful memory of his father taking him out into the yard and asked him to fight him, before Denham chose to walk away. The following morning, the men parted ways and never saw each other again, but the experience resonated deeply with Brandon, who remembered the connection many years later. Denham felt like a rare person who could understand Brandon's pain with compassion. As more details emerged about denim slash mostly harmless, the online sleuthing community continued to

grow in both size and fervor. These added details about Denham's kindness just added fuel to the fire, giving Christy and Natasha more of a reason to care about discovering his true identity. And it might not surprise you that many of the theories that emerged from these Facebook and Reddit groups were unhinged, to say the least. Some believed that Denham was an international spy who was covering his tracks for whatever reason. And some people thought maybe he was an ex-military, military operative. And then some of the more off the walls theory ventured into the cult member alien time traveler reincarnated ghosts territory.

Oh. So there's that. Good old. The good old reincarnated ghost, which I've never heard of before. I was just going to say a reincarnated ghost. Are you reincarnated as a ghost? No. Just a ghost after you die.

Die. Die after you were reincarnated into life and then you pass away. Yeah. That's my thought. I'm just saying it for what the theories truly were. One Facebook user even concluded that Denham was legally blind. And the reason that they said he was blind is because they saw one photo of him that emerged. Because now that people are recognizing him and sharing their experiences, all these through hikers are sharing photos that they snapped with him or their interaction.

So there's actually a lot of photos coming in of him. and there's one that he's standing pretty close to a trail sign or map, just kind of like getting a good look at it, kind of maybe like you're examining your route you're about to take. But from that position in that one still photo, this Facebook user was like, he's legally blind, he can't see, and he starved to death because he couldn't find the food in his tent. I love internet people. Oh, my God. Internet people know everything and I'm here for it.

It's like whatever you say. It's like you. You were mailed. You raised wolves by yourself and then they mauled and ate you. Or, or I was raised by them and then came back into society and then went back to see them and they accepted me back into the pack because they remembered me. I do like that. I like that you were raised by wolves. Yeah, that's nice.

For those who don't know. And that's what I've always said. For those who don't know, there's a video of me online that recirculates, I don't know, it was taken in 2015, and it recirculates every like year or two on all of the, all over online. I'm a gif. I'm in a ton of different YouTube video. It's crazy. But essentially when I worked at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, my friend Michelle just took a video of me like we do every day going in with the wolf. and, you know, cleaning their enclosures and doing socialization and stuff like that.

And just for whatever reason, this one clip, there's a million of them like it with me and with a ton of other people. But for whatever reason, this one clip went viral of Kikoa, who has since passed away, RIP, he was a real one, of him kissing me and playing with me. And the comments that people have, like, I've received death threats of like, I should die because I'm like with a wild animal and I deserve to like get mauled and I'm stupid for being with moles and again. Internet people are just out here doing the Lord's work.

They are. Yeah. Spreading kindness throughout the land. Yes. So and then just to wrap that up, others, you know, there's a ton of different theories. I won't get into all of them. But some even pointed to the reason that he had no identification on him is because, or credit cards, is because he was Amish. And we all know that the Amish don't do credit cards.

Yeah, I'm here for it. Internet theories I'm here for. Give me the deets. I believe them all. I will consider everything. As the sole moderator of one of these early Facebook groups, Christy Harris saw it as her job. to kind of wrangle all of this misinformation and trying to streamline things because it's getting crazy quick.

So she would delete unhelpful or outlandish discussions to try and keep the focus, but she also had really strict rules for the group. She demanded that all the group members went through her before reaching out to other through hikers, contacting law enforcement, or organizing information on the page. And in the documentary, she said that she needed to be the hammer. if they wanted to get anything done, even if that meant not being nice to everyone. So she's starting to rise to the top of being like, I'm in charge here. This is my group.

And I want the help. And I think that everyone has a place here to help with information, but only in the way that I am seeing fit. Gotcha. And Natasha Teasley was a member of Christy's group. and she was one of those members that she kind of brought the hammer down on. After Natasha attempted to contact a witness independently, Christy sent her a private message, calling her an idiot and telling her basically to just fuck off. Here we go.

The internet. I love it. Others threatened her in private messages as well. And this behavior was not limited to just, you know, just. going to Natasha. She was like this with quite a number of people. But what makes Natasha different is that she eventually left the group because of these types of reasons and became the moderator of a competing group to help solve this case. And then other members of that original group went over and joined her because they were really upset with how Christy was

running the group. So it kind of like started as this wholesome. Let's really, we want to find out who this man is and let's all work together and we can make a difference. And now people are at each other's throats and there's mutiny and things are happening. There's internet wars. There's wars are happening. Throughout all of this toxic online drama, the sleuthing community and professional investigators were starting to exhaust their leads in the hiking community. One of the last leads came in the form of a man named Mike Gromley, trail name Waterboy, likely the last person to ever see Denham alive. Mike attempted the Appalachian Trail in 2015 when he learned about Trail Angels.

In retirement, he became one himself, and that's how he eventually crossed paths with denim in April of 2018. Driving near Big Cyprus in his truck, he saw Denham walking on the side of the road and pulled over to chat with him. He described what many other hikers had mentioned. Denham's backpack was absolutely huge. huge and I'll post a photo of it because it does not look like a pack a through hiker would carry. You know, they're meticulous down to weighing ounces of their toothbrush, like chopping their

toothbrush in half if it means saving an ounce. Yeah, going all in on the ultra light gear and really, really making sure that things are light and he's total opposite. Total opposite. It's like the size of him. He's the back, the pack is absurdly large. and it's kind of like one of the first things that people noticed and kind of made him stick out because it just that and early on the jeans of course. Yeah.

And so that was one of the first things they talked about. He's like, hey, what's in your pack? And it turned out that denim was still carrying all of his winter gear with him. And reminder, it is July in the south of Florida. So Mike, you know, being the trail angel that he was, offered to. mail his belongings back, at least his winter stuff and things that he wasn't utilizing at the time. He offered to mail it back to wherever his home was since they were, you know, in the summer of, well, I guess this is spring.

This is April. But still, since they were approaching the summer months and denim declined doing that. To Mike, denim was polite, quiet. And in the photo that they took together, he seemed to be quite healthy. Mike even joked that he had pudgy cheeks when he smiled. Denham asked if there were any campsites in the area, and Mike recommended Camp Nobles, the place that Denham's body would eventually be found a couple months later. And then they parted ways, and they never saw each other again.

For all this information, the investigators seemed no closer to learning Denham's real name or what led to his death in Big Cyprus. For all the flurry of activity, the online community kicked up about this case, the flyers that were circulated, and the attention that law enforcement gave to this one particular case, no friends or family stepped forward. And as new details about the case slowed, the now enormous community of internet detectives became a bit of a story in its own right. In 2020, Nicholas Thompson, who is the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, became fascinated by this story. a man who had managed to vanish in the digital age and the self-appointed sleuths searching for his identity. His wired story, which he titled A Nameless Hiker and the case the internet can't crack, went absolutely viral. And it reached well over a million readers.

Yet even still, something with that reach didn't crack the case. Because at first it's like, yeah, there's the internet community. and local law enforcement is doing that stuff, but it's kind of like localized to South Florida area. But this, especially, you know, with Wired Magazine, it's nationwide. And still nothing comes in. However, that article added several thousand new internet sleuths to Christy and Natasha's Facebook groups and others like them

because there's a ton of subreddits and things like that happening as well. And at this point, folks in all of these groups, were getting a little desperate trying to discover new leads. Eventually, Christy and her Facebook group submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the police department to obtain copies of the police report, complete with the autopsy photos. In their initial public release, along with the weird headshot that was distributed, the police described that faint scar on the abdomen.

Remember, they were like, oh yeah, maybe he had some sort of injury or surgery at some point in the past. Yeah. And when Chrissy was reviewing the autopsy photos for herself at this point, she was shocked because they made it seem like it was a faint scar. But, and I looked at it too. But it's about four inches long and it runs from like right under his belly button area all the way down to like his groin.

It's clearly defined. It looks like a prominent surgical scar, not just. like a little faint mark. And this discovery led the online community to kind of go crazy because they're like, okay, he must have undergone a massive surgery. What for? You know, what do people go under surgery for? And then long story short, they basically came up with a story that he had terminal

cancer. Based on a scar? Yes. And I'll tell you what the story behind that is. And what cancer? Because it leads down another weird. My first thought when you said the scar there was like his bladder, like belly button to groin. Like that's his bladder area.

So that was my first thought. Well, for them, their line of thinking is, okay, well, it's not uncommon for people with terminal diagnoses to want to go out on their own terms. And people who develop various cancers lost their appetites. It's confusing. they also thought there was reincarnated reincarnated ghosts happening. So I'm not connecting all the dots. I mean, I know that sometimes for heart stuff, they go into your groin and they do. Yes, absolutely.

Stuff that way, but that's not a score that large also. Yeah. For that type of surgery. But anyhow. I'm confused. But they're basically. I believe the internet. Believe the internet.

Yeah. If it's on the internet, it's true. So they're essentially saying he had some sort of terminal cancer and, you know, That caused him to lose his appetite. And that's why he was discovered, essentially starved to death. And that's why he was out there in the first place because he wanted to, like, go out on his own terms in the wild. That was the story that they're like now thinking all from this one photo of this one scar.

So through that lens, people began combing the internet for new leads, searching the internet for Appalachian Trail and cancer. and soon they found a blog. In it, the author wrote about discovering he had cancer after a serious car accident and trying to take control of his life by hiking the Appalachian Trail. Then, after several posts of this blog, the blog abruptly ends. So they're like, oh my God, this is our guy. Like, we know the end because he was found deceased in this tent.

This is him. And another thing that they're pointing to is the author, name on this blog was Ben Reynolds, which many sleuths pointed out was not far from the Ben Billamy name that was in the register at the hostel. Okay. So two Ben's. Two Ben's. Kind of close. Right. So they're like, well, we knew he was using an alias in the trail register or in the hostel register. So, but this Ben Reynolds is to his true name. So, of course, investigators are going to follow this lead and see if it checks out, but it turns out Ben Reynolds was also a pseudonym, this time belonging to a man named Bill Powell,

who was very much alive. Bill had chosen this alias to protect his privacy. He didn't want people to know his house was being left unattended during his Appalachian Trail hike, which is a smart move. but he was very much alive at the time that the sleuths found his blog. In real life, not in this made-up scenario. After his hike ended, he stopped writing in the blog to pursue treatment for his cancer, which was ultimately successful. He beat cancer and came out the other side, started a family, had a daughter, and moved on with his life.

And then the messages started pouring in. Armchair detectives traced the blog back to Bill and believed that they had, quote, unquote, found their man. The only image of Bill in this blog was taken from behind, like he's walking down a path on a trail. And the sleuth theorized endlessly about, you know, picked apart his body language, the way he was holding his body and trying to connect it to denim. Hundreds of people began messaging Bill and anyone associated with him online.

His father, his sister, his friends, and anyone who had even liked Bill's posts on his Facebook or on his blog or anything. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think that there are some, there are definitely stories and maybe this will be one too where internet sleuths really do crack open the case and they put in way more dedication than sometimes even the police departments and they like reopen and there are instances where that happens. But that is just like it feels like there's like a boundary that's being crossed right now

to this man. and his family. Well, they're just trying to fit the narrative, right? It's like, I appreciate you checking out this lead for what it is, but you got your answer, let's back off and pivot, and they didn't do that. You know, it's just a step too far. But going back to what you said about, you know, internet sleuths, like solving cases or helping to solve cases. Yeah. This story initially, when I was first researching it, and especially the documentary, just the way it's filmed and stuff, it reminds me so much of the documentary Don't Fuck With Cats. Oh yeah. Do you remember that story? I do. It's the same thing. You know, people online working

together to solve a case. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it truly, it's cool to see what the internet can do. You know, the internet's a really cool place because it can be absolutely horrible and horrific and horrendous. And really great things come out of it as well. And I think this story, a mixture of both. Okay. It's a good showcase of every side. So when Bill politely responded to these messages that, hey, it's me. Hi. I'm not your guy. Hi. It's me. I'm alive. You know, the armchair detectives demanded proof that he truly was who he said he was and accused him of even being part of this conspiracy to throw them off the scent of like, you know, they're like, yeah. Just accept your wrong.

Yeah, yeah, and move on. Yeah. But at this point, Bill was worried that this harassment would spill over and that they would begin targeting his daughter's school and like really infiltrating his life in, you know, more serious ways. So he joined Facebook groups and subredits to personally debunk the theories and ask the groups to please stop with the harassment. However, people in the groups told him that, well, sorry, but we just can't rule you out.

and one person specifically demanded him to prove that he was Ben Reynolds. When he reached out and posted in Natasha's Facebook group, she helped to shut that theory down, you know, basically putting our foot down and reminding people that, hey, outside of this Facebook community, these are real people on the other end of these investigations. Let's please have some respect and boundaries. And as all of this was going on, news of the case and the rabid online community reached the desk of Othrum, a Texas-based genetic startup that markets itself as a forensic human identification service. With a sample of DNA, they're not necessarily able to identify the person's

name, but of course your DNA is a product of your heritage. Your family tree is a product of where you are born and where your family is from. And by using these patterns, author and prides itself on their ability to trace a person back to a region of the country to help narrow down the search. So in Denham's case, that would have been extremely helpful because there were so many competing stories from different memories of through hikers that were coming forward with their experiences with Denham on the trail because some remembered him saying he was from Brooklyn or maybe the Bronx.

Others were like, no, I heard him say he was from back. Ruge. Some people said it was Milwaukee or even New York or even Saratoga in New York. So there's a lot of different narratives coming through and people are remembering different things. So this would have been a great start at least maybe to narrow down their focus. But there was a problem because running the DNA sample was pricey. It was about five grand. And it was a sum of money that at the time this little sheriff's department in South Florida just didn't have the extra funds to dedicate to. So, Authrum,

looking for some good publicity because the story is now huge. And it was, of course, they wanted to help, but I think it was like a good look for them and good marketing. They're like, hey, well,

if you, you know, if we get the money and you fundraise for it, maybe you can fundraise for it, we would be happy to help. So that's what the, the Facebook groups did. Natasha's Facebook group in particular launched a crowdfunding effort, raising all of the money for this DNA testing in just over a week. In Toronto, every arrival is a

statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Investigators sent a small fragment of Denham's bone to the lab to begin the slow process of mapping his genetic history. The process in total would take around eight weeks to complete. And while the world waited for Othrum to sequence the DNA, the atmosphere within the online groups grew

increasingly toxic. Christy, who was the I'm the Hammer woman, like her kind of Iron Fist ruling policy that had driven Natasha to create her own group. She felt kind of boxed out because Natasha's group is the one

that raised all this money for the genetic testing. And by her own admittance in the documentary, she did say she started to feel desperate to solve the case before science did. So she's now in overdrive trying to fit these pieces together because there's like that about two months before the testing was going to come back.

And according to Natasha, Christy began spreading rumors in Natasha's Facebook group saying that Natasha was being misleading and that the DNA tests were actually a hoax. And in truth, Natasha was just scamming people in this group out of their money and just taking it for herself. So now she's spreading rumors in this other group. It's not even about finding out who this person is anymore. It's just like a bunch of egos fighting with each other. Yes. And while the DNA was being processed, the sheriff's office got a call from Christy and she said, oh, I've solved it. I know who denim is.

Look no further. Here he is. and she sent them this photo of this young man has proof, which is her only, like, true evidence, I guess you could say. Like, she had her reasons here and there, but this was like the piece de la resistance of like, here he is, look at him. And it was this yearbook photo, black and white. And it was a young man named Ronald Newman.

And of course, he looked many years younger than denim did at the time because it was from decades prior high school graduation photo. And he was clean, shaven. But she had taken a ballpoint pen and drew, hand drew a beard on him to make him look more like denim. What? And gave it to the sheriff's office and said, and was serious. Dead ass. Serious.

And she's like, hey, look, this is, they have such a resemblance. This is him. They have the same beard. Right. So police are like, okay, we'll follow up on this. And they, to their credit, they did. They're like, okay, we have this guy's name. We'll look into him. And yeah, so they basically called him. And they're like, hey, hey, what's up? Hello? Are you alive? And he's like, yeah, I'm very confused and also alive. So the same online community that had once turned on Natasha now aimed its anger at Christy. Because yeah, they're like, what the hell are, what is this? It's like, we actually want to solve this case. So what are you doing?

And now she was the target of a lot of name calling, a lot of hostility. And she even got some death threats too. So it's just, it's all around. The internet switches real quick. Switch asides. They have no allegiance to anyone. Maybe it's the simple fact that these groups formed on the internet, which so often brings out the worst in people, but this story in many ways is a cautionary tale. From the moderators right on

down, what began for so many people as a well-intentioned effort to help people erupted into whirlwinds of harassment, death threats, accusations, and hostility that spread far beyond the groups themselves. By all means, it can be rewarding to speculate on unsolved mysteries. It's like solving a puzzle. But in this case, for many people, it grew to be more than a mystery. And again, you can watch the documentary and read through the still active subreddits, if you dare. I personally do not go near any sort of Reddit thread. They scare me. But it's clear that nearly everyone involved could have done with a little bit more humility.

And it's worth noting that a lot of this was happening during 2020, with people cooped up at home and looking for something, you know, anything to find meaning in and to provide distractions in the world. That is an exciting COVID project. Solve a mysterious death case. Yeah, but also people are really pissed off and angry. But some people are making sourdough bread and some people are solving mysterious cases. Yeah. Pick which one were you? Which were you? I didn't do either. What was I doing? I was working with you. No, you weren't. I didn't work during COVID. Oh yeah, you didn't. I was working. I was not.

I was hiking in the White Mountains pretty much all of 2020. Didn't you get your yoga certification too then? Yeah, they did that too. Yep. It's a big year. Had a kidney transplant. Got a yoga certification. Went hiking.

Did not work. Healed. A year of healing. Yeah, healed. Yeah. A year of healing truly for me. I quit. That was the year I quit.

Well, I didn't quit. But you moved. 2022 was the year I officially quit. I just moved. moved. I quit that one clinic and moved. 2020 was a good year for me and I, again, I'm afraid of the internet. They're going to turn on me. I hate saying that because I know it was awful for a lot of people, but I really thought. It was hard for a lot of people, but it was a interesting year.

I remember I told our job that I was, I would be back and I knew. You were lying. A lot twist. I knew I was never coming back. And that's your Gemini speaking. Two sides to the coin at the same time. You're like, you'll never see this face again. Like, yeah, I'll see you in eight weeks after I recover from my surgery. A little did you know, I'm like, oh, no, you will see me again.

And you'll work with me forever. I was like, sorry, we won't be working together anymore. And you're like, bitch you thought. It's okay. I like this job way better. Good. Me too. Okay, so going back to 2020, it's December 2020, and the DNA results come in.

During a Facebook live broadcast in Natasha's sleuth group, Authrum announced that the DNA results provided a concrete lead. The hiker had significant Cajun and Creole roots, placing him in South Louisiana. Immediately, people used this information and sprang into action. The Sheriff's Department sent official bulletins to Louisiana law enforcement. The author of The Wired article began running targeted online ads about his article in the state of Louisiana. And Facebook and Reddit groups posted to every single South Louisiana group they could find, hoping and praying that someone would eventually recognize mostly harmless.

Because they're like, okay, we've been in a different part of the nation trying to get the word out. Let's pivot and let's just like flood Louisiana with this information. And for a week, crickets. Nothing. People started to get a little bit deflated. But then on the same exact day, two people reached out who recognized the man. There was a former roommate and a woman whose husband had worked with denim at a store called Shopper's Choice. Both gave the same exact name, Vance John Rodriguez.

Police quickly reached out to the Rodriguez family, but they had not heard from their son in months and didn't even know he was missing. They believed that he had moved to New York and chosen to stay silent. But after taking a DNA sample from the family, it was confirmed that mostly harmless was indeed Vance Rodriguez,

born in February of 1976 near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had a twin sister and an older brother. This discovery finally allowed, the mystery to be put to rest and reward almost two years of dedicated work for both professional and amateur investigators. After years of speculation, many in these communities had grown really fond of this man at the center of the story. It had taken over their lives for the last two years. A lot of people had invested, you know, a lot of their own lives into figuring out this case. They had heard stories of his gentle kindness to the 68-year-old tiger magpie and his compassion with Brandon Dowell bonding over their difficult childhoods, and it didn't hurt that he was kind of handsome, leading many in the documentary to mention his blue, sparkling eyes and silver-threaded beard.

But now that they knew his name, who was he really? Some of the details that emerged lined up with the prevailing image of the man as a tech genius, he was indeed a talented, professional who friends described as most comfortable behind a keyboard. But for the most part, investigators and the public that had grown to feel so bonded to him did not like what they learned. After his name went public, multiple ex-girlfriends came forward to describe patterns of emotional and physical abuse that they had suffered at his hands. One ex remembered Vance locking her out of their apartment during a winter in Brooklyn and said he'd threatened to release her credit card and social security numbers online if she ever left him.

And there's more to that too, like this woman, she survived some sort of, I forget which one, but she survived a terrorist attack and had some pretty pretty bad PTSD. And she clearly needed support from her friends and family and her partner. And he would like keep tabs on how many times he had to help her and would like hold it against her. And, oh, I hate that. Yeah. And another ex-girlfriend who dated Vance for five years called him a monster. The scar on his abdomen that once led to theories of terminal cancer turned out to be signs of a lifelong struggle with mental health. At age 15, Vance left home with a gun, walked into a field and shot himself in the stomach. But after he pulled the trigger, he changed his mind about ending his life, crawling back to help and getting surgery that ultimately saved his life. According to some acquaintances, he He was quite open about the scar later in life, donating blood regularly as a form of penance because he had needed so much of it to survive his self-inflicted wound.

His parents, fearing for his safety, committed him to an institution afterwards, something for which he never forgave them. Records emerged that when he was 17 years old, Vance was legally emancipated from his parents' care and he severed contact with them completely. These issues followed Vance for the rest of his life. A friend and former roommate described Vance as a bright but deeply troubled man. Occasionally, he would sink into deep depressive episodes that the roommate called outages, basically periods of time that Vance would not care for himself or others.

He wouldn't, you know, do daily tasks for himself, work, or even really come out of his room. And he would stay pretty solitary and not speak to anyone. and they could last for days up to months. So he would just kind of go in and out of these cycles. And overall, coworkers and former roommates noted that, you know, despite his struggles with his mental health, he was pretty introverted, solitary, but pleasant and kind. He grew up one time he grew out his hair so long and almost touched his waist. And then he cut it all off just to donate to locks of love.

He donated blood all the time. And then, we have these reports from his ex-girlfriends about how he treated them. So I think it's pretty, it mirrors a lot of what people experienced with him on the trail of like having one version of him that is different than other people's experiences. And, you know, his family and friends and everyone had a different version of him, I think. Yeah. Well, I think it's also, it's super complicated because I think that.

people are very different inside relationships outside of who they are in other capacities. Like it's just a very different role. So to hear that he is like this great loving person to everyone but the people he's in a relationship with, I feel like that's pretty common. You know, a lot of, uh, when you hear a lot of domestic abuse situations, people are like, I could never believe that. He's so amazing. Like he's so nice to everyone. He's, he goes to church, he he donates to charity, he does all these things,

but privately, it's a different story. They're a totally different story. And I think that's why a lot of people are like so shocked when they hear that they're abusers because they're so great in other aspects of life. Well, I love that you say that because in the documentary, both Magpie and Brendan,

the guy who shared that campsite with him and that deep conversation at the campsite. both of them were admitted that they were absolutely shocked to hear these details emerge about him because their experience was just such a polar opposite. And even Magpie, Brandon cried because he had such a profound experience with him and he was so upset. And he does go on record. He's like, there's no excuse for that behavior. And I condone that.

And even Magpie too was like, I, you know, it's upsetting to hear that. But both of them did say, like, we had profoundly. different experiences and also memorable ones. I mean, they are on this documentary however many years later saying how deeply impactful their experience was with him. And it was for like a brief moment in time, a day. You know, so anyway, I just wanted to say that there's just a lot of dimension here going on. And his family, for their part, you know, of course they were contacted and

they were asked to participate in, you know, press releases and documentaries and things like that, and they had no comment at all. So clearly they are estranged from him since he was emancipated. And then another thing that surprised people, at least that knew him friends and coworkers and roommates and stuff, of how he was discovered, deceased and a tent in Florida. For them, they were shocked that he was even outdoors. they, one of his former roommates was quoted as saying, you know, the wild or outside for Vance, the Vance that he knew was the space between the car and his apartment. Oh, wow.

So I had no relationship with the outdoors at all. No. And it kind of, like I said, ties back to the jeans, hiking in jeans at first, the huge backpack. And even the tent, it was the guy who sold it commented of like, yeah, that tent was actually really hard to sell because we're on this through hiking route that people are doing ultra light, small, compact tents. And this is kind of a big, bulkier two-person tent. And so that's kind of why he remembered selling it to him. Interesting. So yeah, it seems like he just, it seems like he just decided to leave. Yeah. You know, he wasn't an avid outdoorsman to begin with. So anyway,

long story short, this all dramatically changed and clashed with this romantic image of Vance that had flourished online over the years, that this gentle, kind, quiet man existed, you know, and needed to be identified. And now all this information is just adding complexity to the situation. Many were unwilling to accept this information of his violent and troubled past, calling it fake news. But while it wasn't easy, many of the people closest to him, him, the through hikers accepted it. The documentary sits with people, like I said, like Magpie and Brandon, as they tried to bridge the distance between the kindness that they witnessed and the cruelty that others reported. Yeah. I just want to, that kind of upsets me a little bit because this is why,

and I think people need to be cognizant of this online, especially when you do not have a personal relationship with these stories and you're just speculating from afar. It's like this is why women have a hard time reporting stuff like this and domestic abuse because of things like this where these people seem so kind and friendly and have all these great wonderful qualities but are a totally different person at home so then when you're like well no that that's impossible they're great outside of here those women know that you know that's why they don't spend five years plus years with this person day in and day out and now people who had a I'm not calling out Brandon and Magpie particularly because there are other people that contributed.

You know, they're just highlighted in the documentary. But they are like, no, he was great. It was wonderful and kind and pleasant and it was the best and he seemed so nice. And those limited interactions versus these women who see all of these sides who know the side you're talking about but have experienced the private side in their home. And yeah, that's just just a food for thought if you are looking at something from an ounce perspective and have no inside connection to this to completely denounce a woman saying that she was abused is not right.

That's right. And that's my, that's all I have to say on that. Thank you for saying it. Fires me up. I know. I know. I love when you have and another thing moment because I feel like they're usually me. The truth of Vance's real name also helped to uncover the meaning behind mostly harmless,

a name whose dark irony only grew the more people learned about him. Investigators discovered Vance's profile for Scripps, that programming game, under the username Vahor, for Vance John Rodriguez. He posted, quote, I'm mostly harmless for now, in the Scripps Slack Channel back in January of 2017, before he had abandoned his Brooklyn apartment and set out on the trail. And the trail name itself seemed to be a reference to the last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which was titled, Mostly Harmless.

In a series otherwise known for being funny, this final book has a darker tone. The protagonist, Arthur Dent, is adrift in life. He has no fixed home. He's cut off from the people he knew and settles into a low-tech life before the book ends with him and the earth dying. Given Vance's love of sci-fi, it's not hard to connect this book to his own story and his mysterious death. People began examining the book as if he had chosen it was his suicide note. The documentary quotes several passages like this, This is not your home, you don't have one, none of us have one. Hardly anybody has one anymore. They don't even have any memory of who they are or what they're for. And another passage right

before the main character in the book dies says, a tremendous feeling of peace came over him. he knew that at last, for once and forever, it was now all finally over. Magpie, Brandon, and other hikers who met him suggested Vance was grappling with his violent past. Maybe he was running from it. The name mostly harmless was perhaps a way of recognizing in a tongue-in-cheek way, a chapter of his life he sought to distance himself from. But for whatever the reason he went into the woods, folks began to believe that he chose to never return, that he died by suicide, choosing to starve himself, however horrible way to go out that sounds to be.

And in the end, a core piece of what made this story popular proved to be wrong. People believed that Vance was an unknown for so long because he had so expertly covered his tracks online, that he was so skilled in erasing evidence that people who knew him and loved him couldn't find him. But the truth, it seems, was that no one he knew was that no one he knew was. was looking for him in the first place. Oof. Which is just so sad. Sad.

It's just so deeply sad. And of course, he did shitty things. But that is, it hits. For all of the hurt that Vance caused in his life, the hikers who'd met him on the trail still wished that he found peace, either in life, death, or the afterlife. Maggie accepted the truth of Vance's violent past and hoped that, after the kindness he had shown her that he sought redemption by setting out on the trail.

Brandon was so moved by the compassion Vance had shown him, trading tales of troubled childhoods that he even wrote a song about it, which is played at the end of the documentary. Christy and Natasha, the Facebook moderators, took their own lessons from the experience. Christy nearly quit sleuthing after the backlash of her ballpoint pen incident, Penn Gate. Yeah, a good time to retire for sure. Well, she stuck with it and counted the solved case as an affirmation.

She has since pursued other missing persons cases and joined different Facebook groups to help identify the unidentified. Natasha, moved by the success of finding an answer and crowdfunding the successful DNA test, opted to swear off sleuthing. She wanted to focus on the real world instead and actually started her own kayaking and canoe company. Oh, fine. And occasionally she dips back into sleuthing if a case calls to her in the right way. But the experience overall was like, let me reground in nature and get back to what I love here. According to NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Person System, the National centralized repository and Resource Center for the Missing Unidentified and Unclaimed Person Cases across the United States, at any given time, 90,000 people may be reported missing. and it is not unheard of for there to be well over 10,000 sets of unidentified human remains

held in corner offices throughout the country. Without identities, it is impossible to know who they were, and I don't just mean their name, but in all senses of the word, if they were kind or ruthless, had lovers, friends, or enemies, if they did harm or good in this life. So hopefully this story encourages people to think twice about looking at that missing person's flyer they pass on the road, or sharing that, have you seen me post online? Because while it is true that not everyone deserves to be respected, identification is a dignity everyone deserves in the end. And that is the story of mostly harmless, Vance John Rodriguez. Wow, that was super interesting. And I think a topic that we've never really touched on,

which is internet sleuthing, which I think we're seeing more and more of. And we kind of talked about it already in the episode, but it's just such an interesting place to be because you have this one side that can be like a little bit crazy and do things that are a little outlandish. But then you have other things where cases are truly being solved and these missing people who maybe their cases just kind of fell to the waist hide because there's only a certain number of dedicated people to work on it and they have other cases and things pile up and new things happen, having all of these other people who are kind of in the back end still interested and solving these things that maybe otherwise would have never been solved.

It's just, it's an interesting concept and obviously very complicated. Yeah. The good and bad. This is a story that I've never heard. Me neither. Me neither. And like I said, it gives such don't fuck with cats vibes. So if you're, of course, if you want to know more about this case, I feel like,

I feel like this was a pretty in-depth episode. But if you want, you know, more, definitely. There's the three-part podcast that I talked about. But that was kind of truly in the moment. There was none of this follow-up information. Sure. But, of course, they call them mostly harmless on HBO. But yeah, don't fuck with cats is also, if you're in the internet sleuthing, you know, vibe and you kind of just want more of that, that's another.

I don't think there was much. I'm trying to think back. I don't think it was as much of a divide amongst the internet community. Like, I feel like it was a little more wholesome. And they're not like battling each other. But yeah, the internet really came together to help apprehend a really horrific, I mean, a murderer. Yeah.

So he was much more violent. And the reason that the alarm was raised on that guy, I forget his name, it's escaping me. But the reason the alarm, you know, on the internet, people were. like what who is this guy um he was killing cats online yeah which is kittens yeah who does that a murderer a murderer yeah yeah but yeah i would be so curious if anyone listening is in this kind of community a sleuther and if you've like helped solve any crimes or you've or you've watched it unfold online i'd just be so curious because i've never i've never personally dived into that world but I do think it's it's interesting and certainly a way to help pass time if you have that time

available you know and if you have that like innate you know like christie she was like I always wanted to be yeah she works for a drag cleaning service but her passion and her dream was always to work for the FBI and that was just her way of you know contributing and you know if you have that bug and you may that may not be, you know, your life or attainable to you of like, you know, you're like, I have a job and a family and a life and kids and I can't just like quit everything and go to school for this. Like a side gig. It's a side hustle. Yeah. Yeah. And that truly could change someone's lives if you are really closing these cases. Yeah. And investigators reach out to the public in situations like this for a reason, you know, they need the crowdsourcing and the help because

the more minds on to something, the more eyes, ears, experiences, the better or worse, depending, I guess. And truly, with this one, I feel like if all of these internet sleuths hadn't gotten so interested in it, it probably would have been a case where it was just like, we don't know who it is. We'll keep it on the website as a missing person, but we have other things to do. To focus on. To focus on.

And we can't dedicate years and months and whatever to this. So I feel like because of these groups, it kept the case alive. And that's why we probably eventually found answers. Well, obviously because they crowdsource the DNA test. But yeah, I think that when you have eyes on something, it's more likely to be solved. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for that.

Great. Well, thank you for telling that story. Thank you for bringing us to a park that we have never talked about on the podcast. before. Thank you everyone for hanging out with us. We will see you next time. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more MPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one,

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