In my experience, cocaine users are not known for their tendency to be truthful. If I had to pick which part of that story was a lie, I'd say the robbery, but that's just speculation on my part.
he might well have wanted to go to LA, but my sense is both the robbery and the waiting for friends to give him $$$ were both lies. not much different than a panhandler who wants money to buy "coffee".
I just went throught the other Joes one more time.
Here's another Joe from the yearbook that somewhat resembles our John Doe. His name is out of focus though.
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This is the only guy I've seen listed who has any slight resemblance to the post mortem pics. The nose and mouth seems pretty similar although the shape of the face, not so much.
Still I wouldn't write him off. My guess is the name is Joseph Baumler. There are plenty in the US but I have no idea how to figure out if this one is alive or not.
As someone said though, it may not even be his real name.
I was looking again at him last night, and thought maybe, but John Doe has very tight curly hair. This guy has very straight thin hair.
Argh, you're right. I see that he did have some Bonne Bell lotion with him....Bonne Bell is headquartered here, so he probably bought that here. Don't know what that tells us, just something I noticed.
Here's my facial reconstruction for this John Doe.