I do not believe his disappearance is in any way connected physically to his family, even extended ones. He did not have contact with any family, at all, for a few years leading up to his disappearance. He did not have any close relationships with any cousins, Aunts/Uncles either. The only one he was close to was his Grandfather who passed away last summer.
As for divorce, I did not file until a month ago. Now, this is where it gets a little complicated because James told a lot of people at his work that I was divorcing him and was going to leave him. We would actually fight about THAT because I didnt understand why he kept telling people I was leaving him when I wasnt giving him that indication. I dont know if he was having some mental delusions going on or if he wanted to leave the marriage but wanted to place the burden on me in the eyes of the community. He sent me about 5 songs in facebook messenger on Sunday afternoon of July 31st. The song meanings give the idea that he was suffering from guilt from a possible affair... Now I know that he had a relationship with someone in the past but it wasnt a current ongoing one. So either he had a new one i wasnt aware of or he was still consumed with guilt from the prior. He didnt know I knew about the last one so it was never discussed. Because of his family estrangement he did have a lot of anxiety over whether or not I would abandon him too. Now we did have some marriage issues prior to his leaving and he did mention divorce a little. But my attitude was always "we will figure this out... " One night in early June I remember him coming to the edge of the sidewalk to talk to me. He told me he was done. that our marriage was done. He felt I was done with him. I said i was not done with him. He told me I was... and I said we couldnt afford two house holds and I didnt want to have to go through custody/visitation etc... that I wanted to work through our issues because it would just be easier. I didnt see any issue so great as to have to end 16 years. We were having communication problems. But he said he would be leaving in a way that didnt require custody/visitation and he was only going to leave me "one way" when he said this, his eyes were very spooky... He had them open extra and he wasnt blinking very much. I took it to mean he was going to take his life. I reminded him of my Grandfather who took his life in 1983. That I was certain my Grandfather would have taken a different route if he had a chance.. That suicide removes the options to make life better. He felt that we would be happier and better off without him. I still consoled him best i could.. to get him through this low spot. For 2-3 days after his eyes were still scary but he spent most of his time alone. This must have been in June. June 18th he was threatening to kill himself which i have records of on my phone. He stayed outside all night overnight telling me he was going to kill himself and that I better not go into the woods to look for him and to make sure the kids didnt either. We engaged though through texting and he never shut his phone off. By noon next day we went out to the woods and he came home with us after a little talking. By July he was constantly accusing me of affairs... accusing me of lying and that I did not need him anymore and i was moving on without him. My children were gearing up for not one but TWO COunty Fairs for August. We had 4H meetings, animal trainings etc left and right. Yes we were very busy but I constantly assured him that it wasnt any indication about him- we are just busy and by september life would slow down again.
I re-read the messages the week before he left. THere was I love Yous... just little things about life. He did take out $300 on Tuesday and Wednesday that week from the bank (so total of $600) he didnt conceal the fact he had removed money. He has done that in the past so it wasnt a red flag. He usually put it into savings. This money was still on him at the time of his disappearance. He may have removed some from our safe prior to leaving too but I do not have a money amount to that one except it was less than $1000. It was likely less than $500 and possibly even less than $200. We really did not have much available but I dont know what was in there more specifically.
Saturday before he left (two days) we had a little bit of a spat. He was not happy with me. I was running errands when he got out of work. I was on my period so cramping real bad so I cancelled our family picnic at the state park. I wasnt communicating with him very well and just told him to go home, i would be there soon. It would end up being about 4 hours before I got home. He ended up only getting home about 10 minutes before me but I did not know that at the time. We suspect he actually drove out to the place where he abandoned his van and had visited it that afternoon. He has a fitbit and you could see where he was driving, walked a little bit, then drove home. NEighbors at the place where the van was abandoned did tell police they had saw his van there. I do not know if he had considered making THAT his time to leave and then chickened out or what... BUT he WAS THERE prior to his disappearance... and I dont know if he was there prior to that. THere is a lodge in vicinity but its a time share kind of thing so not the same people there each week. Otherwise there is just some older people who visit their cabins on weekends.
If James hadnt left, I wouldnt have likely filed for divorce. Most of the reasons for filing was because of everything i learned AFTER he left... and quite honestly, how HAPPY I have felt in some areas of life BECAUSE he left.. It was an emotionally and mentally abusive marriage. But it ws easier to see that looking back than I was seeing while still in the midst of it.
Now one of those "i learned this after" things is his cell phone records. We have straight talk so they do not give us much details. But it appears he was regularly texting someone. The report just says n/a instead of giving me a number. He was messaging this person while he sat on the toilet that morning and I was a few feet away brushing my hair. I dont know who they are... I dont know if it was a woman or not.. I want to know if there is some sort of App that you can use to text that would show up as n/a in a phone record. He had other texts to other people where it showed me their cell phone numbers. So I dont think it is just straight talks way of handling texts. There was something about how he was texting or to what kind of number he was texting that was causing that information to be not available. WHOEVER this person is, they likely had the last contact with him and they would know where he went that day or even where he is now.
There were a couple times when i went to his work in June/July and he would tell me he almost walked out of work that day and he was going to go take his life. He said if I hadnt shown up, he was clocked out and he wasnt coming back. I did kind of blow these comments off because I just felt it was about manipulation/attention. I did not understand why WORK would have a trigger like that. There was nothing going on in texts with me... there was nothing going on at home those days so why was work pushing him over the edge? I considered the idea that he had a woman at work but so far all my questioning of coworkers nothing has surfaced to indicate there was a woman there that was of his interests.
So August 1st... overall a normal day... but I had certainly become accustomed to driving past his work just to make sure his vehicle was there because of the threats he had made. So when we were heading to a fair to set up for the upcoming week I went past his work 5 minutes before clock out and his vehicle wasnt there. I started calling his phone which was off. This isnt the first time he shut his phone off for a couple hours and would later come home telling me he went to the state park and slept in his hammock in the woods. Now some might think "oh this is where he went to see a woman" well on one occasion I did go out to the state park and indeed, he was there... and alone.. I was thinking he just felt he needed some alone time.
Anyways, about a hour later I messaged his coworker and asked if James had gone home with an injury or something but I noticed he wasnt at work at end of the day. She said that she had heard he had walked out of work midshift. That is when I got very nervous. He actually left! This is a man who would go to work with high fevers. He hated letting down work but he left midshift??
I kept checking his phone but he never turned it back on. By morning when he missed clocking into work for his shift is when I went to police and filed an endangered person/missing person report. He did have a 9mm with him. He had threatened suicide so many times that it was the logical explanation.
So, zoom ahead.. his van was found a few days later about 50 miles from work off the end of a seasonal road. Not a familiar area to us. No significance other than being a few miles off a road we traveled when going on our yearly camping trips. He had flattened all 4 of his tires, drained the battery, took his keys off his carbiner and tossed them into the woods about 10 feet from van. 50 feet in same direction he had taken his ammo out of both of his clips. There should have been a total of 31 bullets but we only found 16. They were not fired, they were just scattered. Both clips were empty and tossed a little further in. Tossed because there was some debrie inside the clip corner on one of them. A month later Mike Neiger found two pieces of his sunglasses 1000 feet in another direction but just off a two track. Nothing else of his was ever discovered. Missing is a tray from the console, the USB insert for phone charger, tire gauge, maybe a chisel, his cell phone, his wallet and his body.. Still in the van was his water bottle, his water packback for hiking, his walking stick, his hammock, extra clothes he always kept in his van, extra shoes, his FAVORITE hat, and his lunch box which still had food in it. I also suspect he had on him a smaller lunch box that was not returned to me from his work so I have to assume it is on him.. Oh and he left the gun holster in the van but the gun itself is still unaccounted for.
So it does give the appearance he may have fled after abandoning his vehicle. What he left behind would certainly give me the impression he had taken his life. Because to hike/leave he would have taken certain items. That state/federal forest is big! many places to hide. It has bears. It has a swift winding river (Pine River) lots of places where one could take their life and not easily be found. We spent a LOT of time searching those woods. Several Search and Rescue groups came out... Lots of police hours with their dogs.
That is why I changed my attitude to that he must have left the woods... and to have left the woods it would mean he was running from his life. If he was just depressed from family abandonment etc he could have taken his life in the woods. But to leave the woods, that said to me I was wrong on his motives... thats when I started viewing him more as a coward who abandoned his family.