NV NV - Wellington, WhtMale 574UMNV, 35-50, off Sand Canyon Road, Mar'92 - #1

[GGE]

Not sure if anyone else suggested this yet, but this man used to design for Mark Pack Works among other companies. Perhaps he'd recall if there was ever a red tail hawk design involved.

http://www.howedesigngroup.com/about_us.html

"Bob Howe, Designer -

35 years designing including both in-house and contract design for virtually all of the major companies
in the Outdoor/Camping Industry. Clients include The North Face, Sierra Designs, Marmot, REI, Easton,
Trailwise, Montbell, Early Winters, Caribou Mountaineering, Mark Pack Works, WindWing Designs, and
SnowLion "

his contact info is on the page.

edited to add: if Miss Muffet's information doesn't pan out, I mean.

 

[Dylgem22]

Not sure if anyone else suggested this yet, but this man used to design for Mark Pack Works among other companies. Perhaps he'd recall if there was ever a red tail hawk design involved.

http://www.howedesigngroup.com/about_us.html

"Bob Howe, Designer -

35 years designing including both in-house and contract design for virtually all of the major companies
in the Outdoor/Camping Industry. Clients include The North Face, Sierra Designs, Marmot, REI, Easton,
Trailwise, Montbell, Early Winters, Caribou Mountaineering, Mark Pack Works, WindWing Designs, and
SnowLion "

his contact info is on the page.

edited to add: if Miss Muffet's information doesn't pan out, I mean.

ETA: BBM
WindWind Designs was also the other company I mentioned upthread that was listed as having the same address as Mark Pack Works in Berkeley (a now defunct co. that used to make windsails for windsurfing)

 

[wenwe4]

IMPORTANT UPDATE!

I believe I may have obtained his address and phone number. I provided it to the detectives.

Let's postpone our searching until the detectives determine if it's good contact information.

Thanks so much to everyone for helping.

Good Job Miss M! I guess you ate your Wheaties instead of curds and whey (waves) this morning, because you are rockin' it like an Olympic Athlete! (Maybe we should ask Tricia to have a Top Ten Olympic Sleuther Award category? - I would nominate you, Stelehart, GGE, and Equestrianista and others)!

 

[SeriouslySearching]

Hopefully, it won't be another dead end for the detectives.

If the owner is this difficult to find, chances are he hasn't kept records in order to find the information needed. Maybe he has been backpacking and living off the grid. After all, his business was all about enjoying the great outdoors.

 

[Miss Muffet]

Yes they want contact info. Did you ask the supplier CST if they had a current address or phone? Are they shipping to the address on that website? If that address is still valid but the phone is non-working he may be using only cell phones.

I provided the detectives with the information. I'll let them determine if it's current to today. I don't want to overstep and accidently make contact with him. We need to be careful of that IMO.

 

[wenwe4]

I made contact with the supplier who made all of the silkscreening plates for Mark Pack Works. They remember making the plate for the red tail hawk/orange circle design, but they can not remember when it was done.

Yea! Good job!

At least LEO now has a verifiable contact re: the design.

 

[Miss Muffet]

Hopefully, it won't be another dead end for the detectives.

If the owner is this difficult to find, chances are he hasn't kept records in order to find the information needed. Maybe he has been backpacking and living off the grid. After all, his business was all about enjoying the great outdoors.

I hope it's not another dead end too. I'm not going to make assumptions about the type of information the detects want from the company since the investigation isn't just about dating the t-shirt.

 

[Dylgem22]

I made contact with the supplier who made all of the silkscreening plates for Mark Pack Works. They remember making the plate for the red tail hawk/orange circle design, but they can not remember when it was done.

I wonder if they made several shirts/bags with this design or only a select few? And were they the original Jim Kitson works or "knock off" prints?

I was reading the information that GGE provided about Bob Howe - the designer who worked for both Mark Pack Works AND Windwing Designs - IMO it seems like all of these 1970s outdoorsmen were maybe all related in a small circle of outdoorsmen in the Berkeley/Alameda CA locale - they could possibly lead to information on the t shirt and our UID -

 

[Miss Muffet]

I still can't get past the whole issue of "upcycling" the bag. To me that means they took a teeshirt and sewed it into the backpack. Maybe they took the seams apart on the bag, added the graphic portion of the tee shirt and then posted it online.

It would not be a "upcycled" or "repurposed" if no modifications had been done to the backpack (IMO). I just think the bag was made from Mark Pack Works and the tee-shirt had nothing to do with this pack until the etsy poster put them together.

Has anyone found a Mark Pack backpack with other silkscreens from this artist on them? If Mark Pack had the silkscreen of the red tailed hawk - why not just silk screen it directly to the pack? Instead it looked like the cotton fabric attached to the pack (in the original Equestrianista's post). Am I missing something?

I can't imagine someone sewing t-shirt material onto a backpack. It would be very flimsy and wouldn't hold up. The material in the backpack looks like a heavy canvas. The material in the detective's image is clearly t-shirt material.

 

[Miss Muffet]

I wonder if they made several shirts/bags with this design or only a select few? And were they the original Jim Kitson works or "knock off" prints?

I already wondered if Mark Pack Works was the business that caused Jim Kitson to close his shop at the wharf due to copying his artwork. I started researching that last night, and I'm still researching that angle.

I was reading the information that GGE provided about Bob Howe - the designer who worked for both Mark Pack Works AND Windwing Designs - IMO it seems like all of these 1970s outdoorsmen were maybe all related in a small circle of outdoorsmen in the Berkeley/Alameda CA locale - they could possibly lead to information on the t shirt and our UID -

I'm not sure if the detectives goal is to get information on the shirt anymore. It's clear what part of the country it came from IMO. We know the artist previously had a shop at the wharf that he closed because someone else opened another shop at the wharf selling his designs cheaper. I don't believe his work was mass produced on a super grand scale. The date the victim's t-shirt was made is sort of irrelevant to the investigation IMO.

 

[SeriouslySearching]

I can't imagine someone sewing t-shirt material onto a backpack. It would be very flimsy and wouldn't hold up. The material in the backpack looks like a heavy canvas. The material in the detective's image is clearly t-shirt material.

I agree, but it wasn't normal t-shirt material. It leaned toward a sweatshirt like someone mentioned. It had the weave of a sweater more than a cotton t-shirt. It was different.

I do think the backpack had the design on it originally.

 

[Miss Muffet]

Nah the FB guy wasn't him. The Oakland one is 66.. What age are we talking? Did we find that?

That's the question. Has anyone seen proof the company existed prior to 1981, which I believe is the earliest advertisement we've seen? We can't use 1975 as a definitive date for when the backpack was manufactured, but if the 66 year old manufactured the backpack in 1975, he would have been 26 years old at that time. How old do people think he was when he started the company? I can't imagine a 20 year old manufacturing high quality backpacks. A 26 year old makes more sense. If the company started in 1981 and he was 20 at the time, he would be 54 right now. I think that's very unlikely. As a result, I think he's in his late 50s to late 60s today.

Just an FYI, I've determined this business was run by the same Philip Mark since the beginning. This isn't a situation where a son of the same name inherited the business. If he did, he inherited it in 81 or earlier.

 

[wenwe4]

Submissions:

204) Kirby, Keith A 6’1 blonde age 24ish unk dental/dna
no namus
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/k/kirby_keith.html

205) Darrow, Dale A 6’4 – 6’6 brown age 31 dental/dna avail
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/7121/0/
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/d/darrow_dale.html

concludes Charley project 1990

 

[wenwe4]

Submissions:

206) Ferris, Matthew J 5’10 blonde age 21ish no dental/dna
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/17065/1/
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/f/ferris_matthew.html

This concludes Charley Project 1991

 

[Owutatangledweb]

You'd think they had a business license for the state of California since they were operating there, right? But where can we find it?

Incorporation doesn't need to be in the same state though. Many companies from all over the country incorporate in Delaware because it's cheaper to do so there. But if we can find those incorporation records, there might be information about the owner or other people's names we can research instead of limiting ourselves to just finding Philip Mark in our attempt to find Mark Pack Works.

In other unrelated public record searches I did last night, I discovered California has some strange privacy laws about not providing names and addresses on the internet for public records. In that regard, it may be better if Mark Pack Works is incorporated in another state because we might have a better chance of getting the information outside of California.

Don't know what county they were operating in. But, in some States vendor's licenses are required to do business in order to track sales tax, etc. They are issued by the county. County Auditor's office in my State.

 

[Owutatangledweb]

Links upthread indicate they were in business as early as 1981 (Backpacking ads) and a Chicago Tribune article indicates they were in business as late as 1993:




Mark Pack was the head of the company. Not sure when the company ceased production, but since the company logo is rare, it may have sold to another company.

I'm assuming you got the contact info for the artist's (Jim Kitson's) wife Sue Laing from the memorial links on earlier posts in here; let us know if you need us to dig those up again. His wife may have info on who Jim might have sold the tee shirt design to, or which local stores may have supplied it. One of the memorials has a comment on it by a friend who "colated" and helped Jim peddle his "calendars" in the 1970s to Bay area bookstores; maybe Jim's wife would remember local stores his designs ended up in back then?

ETA: Sue & Jim were newlyweds in the late 70s (married 16 Sep 1978, El Dorado, CA). By 1980 they were living in San Francisco, CA. (Per ancestry.com link posted upthread: http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/1770750/person/-1877379395/facts)

Has anyone done a search for this Clive Harding person?

 

[Owutatangledweb]

He left a note on an obituary;

http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/dignitymemorial/guestbook.aspx?n=kenneth-ng&pid=155753313

(I wanted to leave the deceased's name out)

So he was at least in Oakland in 2012.

ETA: Or someone with that name.

This obituary has a "contact me" button next to Phil mark's name. Someone can email him. Did anyone already do a people search on him?

 

[Skully]

I agree, but it wasn't normal t-shirt material. It leaned toward a sweatshirt like someone mentioned. It had the weave of a sweater more than a cotton t-shirt. It was different.

I do think the backpack had the design on it originally.

that was me, I thought the weave was of good quality, like maybe a sweat shirt.

 

[mmarty]

Check in with all of you. My partner and I have been busy running down tips and leads that continue to come in, not only from you amazing people, but from the public after the media from yesterday. I will go through the 10 plus pages that have been added since I last checked in. An update for you all is that I have yet to receive a call back from Philip Mark, I left a message at the last good number for him. Secondly, we are finding that this particular t-shirt appears not only in the SF Bay Area but also in Nevada. I'd say that the majority of information leads us to believe that this t-shirt was more common in the SF Bay Area.

So, what now? Let's stay the course on our missing list. I am working on that daily, refining it and getting rule outs. I know you all want to know the rule outs, but I want to get a complete list first to publish (in the interest of time for me). My partner and I are working on somethings right now that we may need further assistance with and will get back to you tonight.

Finally, thanks is in order again to all of you working so hard on this case. It is the people dedicated to this mission on this forum that is renewing my faith in humanity. Thanks Again!

 

[Owutatangledweb]

I

Not sure if anyone else suggested this yet, but this man used to design for Mark Pack Works among other companies. Perhaps he'd recall if there was ever a red tail hawk design involved.

http://www.howedesigngroup.com/about_us.html

"Bob Howe, Designer -

35 years designing including both in-house and contract design for virtually all of the major companies
in the Outdoor/Camping Industry. Clients include The North Face, Sierra Designs, Marmot, REI, Easton,
Trailwise, Montbell, Early Winters, Caribou Mountaineering, Mark Pack Works, WindWing Designs, and
SnowLion "

his contact info is on the page.

edited to add: if Miss Muffet's information doesn't pan out, I mean.

Did anyone else notice that WindWing Designs is also mentioned here. Ya know, one of the places that came up at one of the mark packs addresses. ?