Interesting episode. That whole thing about him going to Israel, though....wouldn't they have researched the passport aspect of that? . . .Thoughts?
So much about this story doesn't hang together, and the whole Israel/passport thing is one of them. This guy was supposed to be some kind of brainiac, but his notes are full of misspellings. He is quoted as saying he wanted to be a soldier in Israel to bring peace to the region - wasn't that idiocy a red flag to anyone?
I found it intriguing that his stepfather and brother didn't contribute to the show, although it's impossible to draw any specific conclusions from that. The mother seemed to be extremely scattered in her affect, and from her own admission she had never really imposed any boundaries on Lee (he'd been known to leave for the night before, his suicide attempt was tossed off as more of an interesting story than anything else) and she just seemed "off."
I don't buy her motivation for leaving home to live with her dying mother, either. The step father was known to be unloving and demanding with the children, at the very least, and she just left them with him? It sounds more like she was running away than anything.
My point here is that Lee seemed like a very sensitive young man, and he would have been intensely aware of the family dynamics. Anyone who identified with Holden Caulfield at his age needed psychiatric treatment. He seemed to have regarded himself as some kind of misunderstood intellectual, but what I saw was a spoiled rich kid from a dysfunctional home.
I feel sure he ran away of his own free will, and his willingness to convince his family and friends that he was dead is evidence of a very deep anger toward them. I don't doubt that he later got into some massive trouble because he was clearly out of touch with reality on a deep level. (What's with the "he liked to go to the truck stop and talk with truckers" thing?) Maybe he envisioned himself as Grizzly Adams and one day his remains will be found in the woods somewhere.
I do think that, had he survived, he would have gotten in touch with someone he knew by now.