NC NC - James 'Martin' Roberts, 19, Boone, 21 April 2016

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Aun said:
My thinking about the frozen dinners vs the other case described is in the detail of events as they happened.

In the case of Martin, self harm is suspected by some because he left a note about disappointment and going away. He then left his electronics, he left antidepressants, and then he chose to leave. He had a plan.

Specifically, he left underdressed for an overnight stay in the wilderness and he was carrying food that required specific preparation in a microwave. If he was planning on taking a hike, he chose the wrong food. If he was planning on self harm but decided to bring food with him as he walked along the Parkway, lost in the thought of his final decisions, he took the wrong food. If he was planning on all this ahead of staging the note and items in the room, i.e. when he was shopping, he chose the wrong food from the beginning. The frozen dinners means he was preparing for a specific destination where he would have access to a microwave. Maybe at some point beyond that, beyond the life of the provisions he carried, maybe he had a plan for self harm but at least when he left his apartment he had a destination where he expected to stay for a period of time and before we can start thinking self harm, we need to find that destination.

In the scenario mentioned, a man goes to work, eats lunch then is overcome by depression and jumps from a bridge. Maybe he left a note detailing his intentions, maybe he made the decision he would see his colleagues one last time before committing to the act. Either way, when he left, his intention may have been self harm but not before he made his way to an alternate location first (work).

In Martin's case, his choice of food clearly indicates he had a destination with a microwave. His choice of clothes indicates he would not be exposed to the outdoors over night. His choice of footwear might suggest he was not intending on any major trekking else he would wear hiking boots (if he had them). The choice to leave electronics, indicates he did not want to be tracked and wasn't worried what they might find about his motives by searching through the devices. He left a note, though details are withheld, suggest he had some sort of disappointment issues and was intending to be gone a while. As I understand it, it does not suggest self harm. He left his wallet but not his ID, indicating his destination might have required proof of identity to check in to a place or perhaps pick up a transportation ticket. Conversely, if he took the ID with him to help in identifying his body, he certainly wasn't planning on a water borne event which would ruin said ID. Nothing screams self harm to me. Everything points to him having a destination where he would be a while. A destination that required his ID and would have access to a microwave. If the microwave was not a factor then his decision to purchase the food came before the decision to leave and he just grabbed whatever food he could get his hands on when leaving that morning which, to me, is not the action of someone who didn't intend on living long enough to eat it. So, for me he either planned on an overnight stay in a hotel or a home where he could prepare his food, or perhaps a few days on the road as a passenger or even a rehab type setting.

Now let's look at the antidepressants. Was his hairbrush or toothbrush screened for signs of him actually taking the antidepressants?

The presence of therapeutic drugs in the hair of psychiatric patients was investigated, and the method for simultaneous determination of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs by GC/NPD and GC/MS was also established. Eight different psychotroic drugs were detected from the hair of 32 subjects, and chlorpromazine and clozapine concentrations in the hair were found to be dependent on the dosage and the correlation coefficients were 0.8047 (P < 0.001, n = 16) and 0.7097 (P < 0.001, n = 16) respectively. Segmental analysis demonstrated that there was a correlation between the subject's drug exposure history and the distribution of drug along the hair shaft.

I'm assuming the investigators conducted the screening to identify if Martin was actually taking the drugs they found. Likewise, I'm going to assume the investigators asked his room mates to supply their own hair sample to rule them out as being the prescription owner.

Were Martin's prints found on the container/blister packs holding the drugs?

Without this information we have to give an equal chance at the drugs being placed in his room to bolster the depression angle vs actually being part of Martin's regime.

He dressed light, with a windbreaker. Carried a backpack, easy shorts, easy sneakers, didn't take a bus or an Uber to get where he wanted to go. He walked and aside from the bus footage, somehow avoided all traffic and surveillance camera's. Was that by design or just by luck of the draw? Certainly there were homes and businesses that captured something. No? OK, so by luck of the draw he is not captured by video though was spotted, by two different friends, as he walked outside of town.

The way I see it. The frozen dinners removes so many options for him. We are not talking snacks like granola bars you can eat out on the trail, we are talking about dinners requiring a specific venue to prepare. Dinners that were chosen during his "shopping" trip in preparation for his eventuality.

When he left that morning, it's likely his destination had amenities and if you need amenities, I do not believe the first thing on your mind is self harm. At best, he walked away though circumstances suggest someone has helped.

Hotels, homes, cabins, RV's and semi trucks have microwaves. Which ones also require an ID to gain access? If we arrive at hotels being the destination then we also have to account for the fact that microwaves are not standard at all hotels though are prolifically distributed so is it also safe to assume Martin had some forward knowledge of the hotel room amenities since he was confident he could use the Microwave? So, If we go with this hotel angle, he either had forward contact with the venue or he had the help of someone who told him what to bring.

For me, "frozen dinners" says much more about his destination than trail mix or a granola bar and combined with the other items we have learned, seems to point he had am immediate destination, other than self harm, in mind.
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You make some good points for sure. Today it popped into my head that Martin may have been going to go house-sitting for someone. But, there should be a digital/phone trail if so. moo
 
BlkMtnGirl said:
You make some good points for sure. Today it popped into my head that Martin may have been going to go house-sitting for someone. But, there should be a digital/phone trail if so. moo
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Definitely a possibility. And to your point, I don't necessarily think we have to rely on a digital trail from his own phone in that having a second cell phone, provided by someone else, provides a direct line of communication with him that can only be identified by cell tower dumps at places Martin may have frequented ala cross identifying his own cell phone in those dumps. Obviously it's not hard evidence that speaks to a crime but if you find a phone that hits the same towers Martin's phone hits, on a recognizable schedule you have a starting point for pulling further data. This is something that should have been on the radar from the beginning. I would think that when a missing person case is so important as to mobilize state and county air resources to locate the missing subject, it would also be important enough to test for the possibility he was in possession of additional communication devices if for no other reason than to identify the device and pull a location from it. Aside from looking at any surveillance data you could find prior the day he left in search of visually identifying a second phone, you could also review the intake document for his earlier arrest(s) to see if a second phone was identified. Short of this, the best method is hoping to find the patterns in the tower dumps.
 
Aun said:
Definitely a possibility. And to your point, I don't necessarily think we have to rely on a digital trail from his own phone in that having a second cell phone, provided by someone else, provides a direct line of communication with him that can only be identified by cell tower dumps at places Martin may have frequented ala cross identifying his own cell phone in those dumps. Obviously it's not hard evidence that speaks to a crime but if you find a phone that hits the same towers Martin's phone hits, on a recognizable schedule you have a starting point for pulling further data. This is something that should have been on the radar from the beginning. I would think that when a missing person case is so important as to mobilize state and county air resources to locate the missing subject, it would also be important enough to test for the possibility he was in possession of additional communication devices if for no other reason than to identify the device and pull a location from it. Aside from looking at any surveillance data you could find prior the day he left in search of visually identifying a second phone, you could also review the intake document for his earlier arrest(s) to see if a second phone was identified. Short of this, the best method is hoping to find the patterns in the tower dumps.
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I’m a little embarrassed to say I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying. So, one would look for patterns of places he visited on his regular phone, and then... I don’t understand where to go from there unless you had someone's account in particular you wanted to compare it to.
 
BlkMtnGirl said:
I’m a little embarrassed to say I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying. So, one would look for patterns of places he visited on his regular phone, and then... I don’t understand where to go from there unless you had someone's account in particular you wanted to compare it to.
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Sorry, my explanation was a mess but its essentially a tower dump begins by grabbing the data from cell towers where Martin's phone is ordinarily relayed from. Tower closest to his apartment, tower closest to his school, tower closest to his father's home, his mother's home etc. Ideally you would write a script to read this out of a data file or a database but you can do it manually as well. Once you have a list of Martin's towers, you start looking for numbers that show up hitting the same towers. For example, if Martin's dad made a call from his home, we would likely find his number on the same tower list that Martin's phone was found as it's likely Martin used his phone at least once when he was home visiting. You see? two different phones hitting the same set of towers at different times but identifiable because they are common to the tower, regardless of date. In terms of dates, let's not get caught up in the timing of looking to find both phones hitting the same towers at the same time. While this seems appropriate, it's really a double edged sword and can cause you to miss a connection so, for now, ignore the date and just find the phone numbers that appear on Martin's commonly used towers. After generating the list of numbers hitting those towers you look for any other numbers that are relaying through two or more of the towers. Obviously you get a lot of "chaff" and "chatter" this way but when you are looking to find someone who may be in danger, you dump the records and start looking, regardless of the time it takes. In Martin's case, he was very active locally to Boone but also wasn't too far removed from being at his dads so any number that can be found hitting towers in both locations would quickly contrast. The more towers that contain both numbers, the more likely it is Martin is using a second phone. Now, once you have the list of candidate numbers, you can start correlating date and time information to help weed out the chaff as it were. All of this data is digital AND its logged and I have never subscribed to the theory the data is no longer available. While I have no specific proof AT&T, T-Mobile or even an agency maintains this data I am confident they do though require varying degrees of court orders to access. Unless Martin had some sort of "professional" help maintaining his privacy or a bad instructor privy to such searching, it's likely a correlated phone would be found if in fact one does exist. If you find a number, you investigate it's owner. If the number no longer exists, you go through the same process with the new number and expand your tower options to include conventionally collected owner information. So at the end of the day, a tower dump can connect otherwise disparate people who simply travel in the same circles or it can catch someone stalking another person from the shadows so long as they carry a phone or accessible device.
 
I recognize the details of this case or more appropriately the very limited details of this case that have been released by law enforcement are equally suggestive of a walk away as they are pointing to something more sinister. Almost as if the intended narrative is to suggest a walk away. The problem is that no matter what we speculate or what theories are tested, we must circle back to the note. The note, where the only take away we can be sure about suggests he's going to make a change- thus supporting the theory this is a walk away. Why this matters is because law enforcement treat walk aways very differently from suspected suicides. Very differently. If someone leaves a note that suggests they are going away for the purpose of committing suicide, law enforcement will mobilize armies of personnel with access to easy warrants for the purpose of locating you before you commit the act, even though its not a criminal act in North Carolina. Conversely, if you leave a note saying you are making a change, implying you are going to leave, the same mobilization will protect your right, as an adult to walk away and not be found. I wonder if Martin chose to imply walking away because he was aware the case might be handled differently or if the note contains other more pertinent rationale but was censored to push the walkaway narrative. Since we are completely speculating with these questions, is it possible Martin wrote that note following the instruction of someone with this specific knowledge or did he just skirt the self harm language through organic reasons?
 
For some reason I thought I heard that he bought food at the store for the roommates because he owed them some from using theirs. But I’m not 100% sure it was this case.
 
I wonder if the woods at the base of Howard’s Knob have been searched. It’s a beautiful mountain towering 1000 feet above the ASU campus. It’s a bit of a walk/hike to get up there, but doable; probably around an hour’s walk from the convocation center. I’ve always been nervous up there, what with all the steep drop offs. In fact, they used to hang glide from the top before it was banned. I’m recalling a lot of very steep woods below the cliffs. I believe it’s actually too steep to search by traditional methods. I wonder if a specialized drone searching in winter time could find anything. :-(

I realize this doesn’t speak to all the questions brought up recently regarding food and such, and it’s a little unlikely nobody saw him walking up that road. But I’ve been up there plenty of times when no one was around, and Martin went missing on a Tuesday. Even if someone saw a random student walking up the road that day, they would not have had any reason to connect it to Martin. JMOO and just food for thought.
 
BlkMtnGirl said:
I wonder if the woods at the base of Howard’s Knob have been searched. It’s a beautiful mountain towering 1000 feet above the ASU campus. It’s a bit of a walk/hike to get up there, but doable; probably around an hour’s walk from the convocation center. I’ve always been nervous up there, what with all the steep drop offs. In fact, they used to hang glide from the top before it was banned. I’m recalling a lot of very steep woods below the cliffs. I believe it’s actually too steep to search by traditional methods. I wonder if a specialized drone searching in winter time could find anything. :-(

I realize this doesn’t speak to all the questions brought up recently regarding food and such, and it’s a little unlikely nobody saw him walking up that road. But I’ve been up there plenty of times when no one was around, and Martin went missing on a Tuesday. Even if someone saw a random student walking up the road that day, they would not have had any reason to connect it to Martin. JMOO and just food for thought.
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Very good point. I'm not sure if they searched that way but if they haven't it sounds like a place an organized search should take place. I'm sure there are a countless number of students what drones being 2021. Maybe someone could organize a student drone search. I think I will try to see if there is an organized drone club in Boone... Great idea blkmtngirl.
 
Aun said:
Very good point. I'm not sure if they searched that way but if they haven't it sounds like a place an organized search should take place. I'm sure there are a countless number of students what drones being 2021. Maybe someone could organize a student drone search. I think I will try to see if there is an organized drone club in Boone... Great idea blkmtngirl.
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I wouldn’t have thought of an organized approach. Good idea! I wonder if really anything could be seen, even in winter. It’s very thick there. From what I remember it was mostly deciduous trees, but I wasn’t thinking about circumstances like this, and it has been a while since the last time I was up there.

And with nothing specifically pointing to this, I wouldn’t expect a lot of LE to be on board. But you never know...
 
BlkMtnGirl said:
I wouldn’t have thought of an organized approach. Good idea! I wonder if really anything could be seen, even in winter. It’s very thick there. From what I remember it was mostly deciduous trees, but I wasn’t thinking about circumstances like this, and it has been a while since the last time I was up there.

And with nothing specifically pointing to this, I wouldn’t expect a lot of LE to be on board. But you never know...
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure LE won't organize anything but a student or local club effort might just work out. The local Hobbytown will likely have information about the Boone drone scene.
 
Another year has passed...

Eight years of Dateline's Missing in America: 169 still missing

martin_roberts.png


College student Martin Roberts was last seen around noon on April 21, 2016, near the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. In the time since, there have been very few clues as to what may have happened. Martin, who was 19 at the time, vanished without his cell phone, tablet or computer. He did not have access to a vehicle, which makes his disappearance all the more troubling to his family. Thousands continue to follow the Facebook group Help Find Martin Roberts, where Martin’s family posts updates, and others share words of encouragement. If you have any information regarding Martin’s case, call the Boone Police Department at (828) 268-6900.
 
Currently watching the “Disappeared” show on Martin. I can’t imagine he’s still alive :(. IMO I think he was depressed and disappointed in himself and he couldn’t live with it. Idk. It makes me so sad that he literally thought his parents wouldn’t be able to help him. They would have given anything. I talk to my kids OFTEN about suicide because as early as middle school my kids have had friends die by suicide. It’s traumatic and, as a parent, really hits you in the gut that innocent babies can do this. They think they have no way out and most times it’s a knee jerk reaction to something so trivial. I always tell my kids that there is nothing we can’t get through. I just find this case so sad and bizarre. I hope his family gets some answer soon.
 
Aun said:
How about check the history of a few of the lesser known or volunteer type drug and alcohol recovery programs in Boone. Maybe his "big change" was to get better. You wouldn't need a bank card and are not allowed computers and phones but WOULD need your ID to check in. One thing leads to another and his abrupt halt of antidepressants, unknown to the facility sponsors, brings about a seizure and at best, he's mentally incapacitated to some degree or at worst, becomes a liability to the facilitators. Wonder if any "treatment" organizations closed up shop around then. Still wonder where his food went? If he took it with him, it would point to a facility that was not traditionally funded and couldn't provide sustenance through the program. Like perhaps one offered by a church. This is of course if his roommates aren't responsible for raiding his food.. knowing he wouldn't be back for it. And of course, let's just point out that fraternity life, antidepressant meds and alcohol are a volatile mixture. I wouldn't shut the door on an accident or death as a result of this combination and the "brother" who might happen to be the one who gave him the pills to begin with engages in a cover up. Polygraph every single one of those fellows, paying special attention to anyone who had access to those types of pills.
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There are a couple “cults”/cult like groups in the area, twelve tribes, art of living and world of faith.
 
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kileystruecrime.squarespace.com

The Disappearance of James Martin Roberts — It's Crime O Clock Somewhere

For this case I watched an episode of Disappeared. It’s season 9 episode 11, titled ‘Breaking Away.’ A college student disappears a few months after returning to school. Background James Martin Roberts, or Martin as he was called, was born on August 19, 1996, and is from Kernersville, North
kileystruecrime.squarespace.com kileystruecrime.squarespace.com

I believe In theory #2. For 1. His parents were Divorced. That is not easy to take when you look to your parents for stability plus he did not think that he was living up to there expectations . 2. He had a bad breakup with his girl friend. 3 the DWI that he got.4. Taking that semester off. 5.switching schools. 6. The meds that he was taking , that were not his. He just had to much going on that he had to deal with.
It is possible that he met up with the wrong person.
 
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