Identified! FL - Big Cypress Natl Preserve, Male Hiker, Denim & “Mostly Harmless” July 2018 - Vance Rodriguez #2

[EllieGato]

I've scanned 1,000+ pages of yearbooks on Classmates, and have a list of 70+ firm (alive and well) exclusions from the Baton Rouge area. A handful of maybes, but only one I'm thinking of passing on to LE. I've started a list of Brooklyn companies with a tech focus to send the flyer to. Other than that.. I'm really stumped!

I've been pondering the use of the alias Ben Bilemy, and I have a lot of questions.

• Why choose a last name that is uncommon? In fact, a handy website Forebears.com lists only one instance of the last name recorded, in 2014.. in Cameroon. This website also has a neat feature that shows you phonetically similar last names and their prevalence. I'll paste that below.
• Is it a code? I know this has been mentioned and delved into before, so I'm not passing it off as my original idea, but it's a great theory. Given that bilemy doesn't appear to be a word, acronym, or even a real/common last name.
• SSN? Again, this was looked into and found to be a legitimate SSN.
• What if it is a code, but the numbers are by the number of the letter in the alphabet? Then we have:
  • 2 5 14 2 9 12 5 13 25 or
  • 2 5 1 4 2 9 1 2 5 1 3 2 5
• IP address?

I feel like the apparent randomness of the last name precludes it from being a situation where he got to the hostel, realized he had to give a first and last name, glanced around the room and saw an object that brought him to Bilemy. Like a product with a brand name, or an item that could be used. Such as Ben (oh! aspirin..) Bayer. Or Ben (oh! a picture..) Frame.

Something tells me there is more information to be gleaned from the use of this alias.

Bilemy last name info from Forebears.
Similarity: % to which it's similar to Bilemy
Incidence: # people who bear the surname worldwide (assuming not comprehensive BUT representative of trends)
Prevalency: Nation with highest incidence/Nation with the most dense occurrence
View attachment 178074

I really think so too. I think it would require some real effort to come up with a surname that doesn't exist in the US. I don't think it was random at all. Finding Bilemy as a name outside the US could very well be a clue.

I still think about where people disappear to and feel there may be some religious or spiritual background or connection with Mostly Harmless... so of course missionary work comes to mind. A person can go almost anywhere in the world doing missionary work. It seems that it would require proper IDs, passports and vetting these days.

Is there anyone here that grew up with a family that traveled doing missionary work? There are many organizations online that assist people wishing to get started. It appears you don't have to do this directly through a church.

 

[carbuff]

This is one I have looked into a little bit. I think parents would not assume that these financial responsibilities would ultimately be left to them. A spouse may be more concerned about the debt their partner has accrued or the costs associated with death. In New York, if that is where you were married and resided with your spouse, you can get a divorce by publication after a year of legal separation when the spouse is in hiding or attempts to locate them have failed. It appears divorce by publication is one of the lower cost types of divorce you can obtain in New York.

It makes me wonder if there could be a spouse in New York waiting the full year since last contact to obtain a divorce by publication, which they feel would relieve them of the financial responsibilities associated with death or debt accrued prior to separation. If so, it could have been as late as Thanksgiving or Christmas time (2017) that they last spoke. It could have even been as late as July 2018... which would put the publication notices at August or Sept 2019, another 90 days for the divorce and then maybe they would claim or simply identify the deceased after that... which would ultimately mean 2020.

One MOO of many.

That's a very interesting thought, and seems entirely plausible. I wonder if other states have anything similar?

 

[Narkj]

Man, reading all this theories and guessing about the surname, I can't help but think it's something so much simpler and not some anagram or play on words. Trying to stick with Occam's razor here. So frustrating.

 

[Narkj]

Kind of crazy, but there really is almost no record of Bilemy surname anywhere in the U.S. The simple answer would be Bellamy but if this guy is using an alias, that's too simple. Argghh.

 

[amytothekate]

Kind of crazy, but there really is almost no record of Bilemy surname anywhere in the U.S. The simple answer would be Bellamy but if this guy is using an alias, that's too simple. Argghh.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but this is where I get caught up, too. I know some folks say it is meaningless, but I have a hard time accepting that given the obsurity of the name. If it were "Ben Smith" or "Ben Jones", I'd be much more inclined to agree!

 

[carbuff]

This is probably a red herring, but there's an actor named Ben Bellamy. One of his roles was in the movie Prep School in 2015.

The summary: When the star player of an elite prep school rugby team suffers an emotional collapse, his friends and teammates respond in their own ways, ranging from heroic to horrifying.

Ben Bellamy - IMDb

 

[UnlicensedPI]

I think if we get caught up in the name, we're going to end up with another Lyle Stevik situation. The name is probably a red herring and not a way to identify him.

 

[Gardener1850]

This is probably a red herring, but there's an actor named Ben Bellamy. One of his roles was in the movie Prep School in 2015.

The summary: When the star player of an elite prep school rugby team suffers an emotional collapse, his friends and teammates respond in their own ways, ranging from heroic to horrifying.

Ben Bellamy - IMDb

I have often wondered if he meant to write Ben Bellamy after that actor but didn't know how to spell the surname correctly. I have also wondered if Denim's real name might be Caleb Zechman (the name of the fictional character played by Ben Bellamy) or some variate of that name-- first name Caleb? Last name Zechman? or Zackman? But no one by those names is missing. And no Caleb matching his description has been listed as missing. So I go back to thinking it was probably meaningless (first name he thought of at that moment?) or perhaps he knew Turkish and thought writing the equivalent of "I don't know" was amusing.

MOO.

 

[Narkj]

What would you guess his ethnicity to be? Do you think he appears to be Turkish in descent? I can't really tell at all.

 

[Gardener1850]

What would you guess his ethnicity to be? Do you think he appears to be Turkish in descent? I can't really tell at all.

No. We discussed several ways he could know those words in thread #1. Many NY schools with computer programs have done exchange programs with Turkey in the past. Or he could have known someone who is Turkish who taught it to him. Or he could have been in the military and stationed there. JMO.

Previous discussion starts here: FL - FL - Big Cypress National Preserve, Male hiker, "Denim" and "Mostly Harmless", 23 July 2018

 

[carbuff]

Plus anybody who's vacationed in Turkey might have picked up the phrase. When we visited Ephesus a few years back, it was one of the phrases the tour guide shared with us. Just a cute bit of trivia.

 

[reasonableguess]

Somewhat aside, but in regards to possible COD...

I have friends NB through-hiking the AT right now. They just told me about a huge case of Norovirus that went through some of the shelters en route, with up to 100 ppl catching it. They bypassed their intended shelter and hiked 13 miles out of their way to avoid the larger groups and hopefully avoid Noro.

Anyway, just pointing out a common way hikers can get gravely ill, very quickly.

 

[turanna25]

Somewhat aside, but in regards to possible COD...

I have friends NB through-hiking the AT right now. They just told me about a huge case of Norovirus that went through some of the shelters en route, with up to 100 ppl catching it. They bypassed their intended shelter and hiked 13 miles out of their way to avoid the larger groups and hopefully avoid Noro.

Anyway, just pointing out a common way hikers can get gravely ill, very quickly.

That would definitely cause malnutrition and weight loss..

 

[SugarQueen]

Good morning peeps! For some recon I have been getting notifications for this thread. I thought it had gone cold. Glad to eve that’s not the case.
Unionville town hall says they haven’t found anything yet. I’m not completely convinced they are looking but not much I can do about that. They did reiterate that they never heard a thing from LE . Guess that’s a dead end. Ugh
Getting his poster on various town/ community fb pages hasn’t been working either. They are all closed groups.

 

[amytothekate]

I'll try to explain why I think there is value in identifying how or why he used the alias Ben Bilemy, and why I do not believe it is random.

For a truly random result, we need some unpredictable input, and the human brain is not a good source for such an input since the mapping of our neural network and thus, the path traversed to generate a thought is established based on our genetics and our experiences. So, even if "Bilemy" were a brand on a label in the room where he first came up with the alias, it's not truly random, as it is shaped by that experience. In this specific example, it would be true that it doesn't provide additional useful information to assist in his identification, but it would support the removal of some theories, like he's Turkish or spent time in Turkey, etc.

 

[Gardener1850]

Perhaps he created his Ben Bilemy alias with some type of word game similar to Pig Latin. It doesn't fit the pattern of Pig Latin but double B's and ending in y makes me think of a word game or a code.
Some other language games: Language game - Wikipedia

 

[Eevee Pie]

Did he sign the name Ben Bilemy or was it recorded by someone at a hostel? If he wrote it himself, is there a picture of it?

 

[amytothekate]

Did he sign the name Ben Bilemy or was it recorded by someone at a hostel? If he wrote it himself, is there a picture of it?

My understanding is he wrote it himself in block-style lettering, although I haven't seen a photo.

 

[ClaireNC]

Great post, amytothekate. I agree deciphering why he used that name could be key. I have an online identity that I use for sleuthing and playing games online. The last name is just something I made up and it’s a play on the words ‘done working’. I originally created it to hide the fact that I was playing online when I was supposed to be working. Like Bilemy, it looks like a regular last name, but if you search for it, you’ll find that it isn’t really an established surname.

With this in mind, I keep going back to what does Ben Bilemy sound like? Could Ben mean ‘been’? Could Bi refer to two? What does Lemy sound like? Is it a place? Been To Lemy? Or Been By Lemy?

Or, Don’t know if this has been brought up before, but Bilemy kind of sounds like Baloney. As in the name is just nonsense. Oh hi, my name is Ben Baloney = it’s really none of your business what my name is.

 

[ClaireNC]

Another thought. His trail seems to start in New York near Bear Mountain in the spring of 2017. That’s only about 30 miles from Sing Sing prison in Ossining, NY. Has it been mentioned before that he could have been someone recently released from prison?