VA - Grateful Dead Fan - Unidentified male, 26 June 1995 - #2

[carterkatt]

I ran across this guy by accident today do you think there is a similarity? He is wanted by the FBI- It sure would explain why he wasn't reported missing.

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cei/matthew-samuel-west/view

I think it's very interesting. My take on it is that I would think it's a good possibility that someone wanted for a crime MAY become involved in crime again, and eventually get picked up. But, this person may be innocent and it's all incorrect. But... if he got started down the wrong road, I would say that a large percentage of people that get in trouble tend to repeat their mistakes.

So.... if it's the same person, he either has stayed under the radar all these years, never been caught, never did other illegal things, or may be deceased (and might be our Jason).

 

[Roy Harrold]

I think it's very interesting. My take on it is that I would think it's a good possibility that someone wanted for a crime MAY become involved in crime again, and eventually get picked up. But, this person may be innocent and it's all incorrect. But... if he got started down the wrong road, I would say that a large percentage of people that get in trouble tend to repeat their mistakes.

So.... if it's the same person, he either has stayed under the radar all these years, never been caught, never did other illegal things, or may be deceased (and might be our Jason).

Yes. Repeat their mistakes especially if it is a "lifestyle" for them, or if it represents their contribution to a particular subculture community, for example; selling t-shirts AND LSD to GD fans on the concert circuit?

[It's not as though LSD & GD have a unique mutual history or anything ]

Many have commented that the victims t-shirt was "a professional commercial product", frowned upon by purists. Well...the wanted man is said to have been co-owner of a tye-dye shop, and I assume that means a t-shirt shop? He is described as creative, probably involved in design as well as production. Could his shop have been one source for the professional commercial shirts sold at concerts? In which case, could he actually be wearing his own handiwork?

He is described as having been into drumming & coaching drummers...which brings that photo of the fans under the bridge to mind again.

But this is what I find most intriguing about the possibility of unknown victim being a wanted criminal conspirator - some of the people who would have known him best, his fellow conspirators, might be strongly disinclined to come forward to identify him even if they were aware of these campaigns to identify him, for fear of implicating themselves as a criminal associate of his. They might even find his anonymous demise of benefit to them, as law enforcement would go on & on looking for someone they can never find alive, perhaps more focused on him than on suspected but unknown co-conspirators.

 

[carterkatt]

But this is what I find most intriguing about the possibility of unknown victim being a wanted criminal conspirator - some of the people who would have known him best, his fellow conspirators, might be strongly disinclined to come forward to identify him even if they were aware of these campaigns to identify him, for fear of implicating themselves as a criminal associate of his. They might even find his anonymous demise of benefit to them, as law enforcement would go on & on looking for someone they can never find alive, perhaps more focused on him than on suspected but unknown co-conspirators.

Respectfully snipped by me...

Roy... very interesting thoughts... and sure does make sense!!!

Wish we could start back to square one and recheck heights, eye color, etc.

 

[carterkatt]

Also Roy - the "wanted" guy is supposedly a co-owner of the shirt shop??? I wish we could find the OTHER co-owner. He could certainly id the shirt from pics and know if it was from their store, as well as look at the sketches of Jason...

Has this angle been looked at? If so, I apologize.

 

[doublestop]

If Matthew West was convicted, as it says, surely his fingerprints would be on file?

 

[carterkatt]

If Matthew West was convicted, as it says, surely his fingerprints would be on file?

Interesting point, Doublestop. If he was convicted in 1992, I assume (we all know what that means!) his prints were on paper, not computerized. right?? Would Iowa have entered his prints into the computer as technology advanced? Is it at all possible that Jason/VA's prints were not compared because they were not checked against West's? (and no one thought to do so, until it's been suggested here?)

Someone smarter than me... educate me on fingerprints, please. TIA! :seeya:

I was printed here in VA in 1995 (as a volunteer for the state police! -- not as a criminal!) and I was at a state police headquarters in the VA Beach area, and I remember they'd just gone to the computerized scanning procedure, vs. the old ink/card. Before I moved to VA in 1995 I worked for a Chicago suburban PD and they still used ink and cards. So, I would assume that when West was printed in IA in 1992 and Jason was printed in VA in 1995, it may have been ink and cards in both cases? In the time that's passed, would either have been updated to computer data bases?

Please.. if my thinking is flawed, someone enlighten me,

 

[Roy Harrold]

If Matthew West was convicted, as it says, surely his fingerprints would be on file?

thank you. I was expecting fingerprints to be raised as the first response to my enthusiasm for a wanted felon as a potential match, now I needn't wait in suspense for that shoe to drop.

I don't have an answer to that, really. Carter Katt has pointed out some possible circumstances under which a comparison to Grateful Dead fan might have been missed by a generic mass database search, and there could be others, but I think the only way to be certain would be to have GD fan's prints and this specific wanted felon's prints compared.

I should have been more clear, when I raised the possibility of misinformation interfering with resolution of this case, that I'm not directing that concern solely at the base info for unidentified GD fan.
For example, misinformation can also appear in suspect or wanted felon summaries. Is Matthew West's hair really blond? Was he weighed & measured, or are those numbers self-reported and possibly deliberately inaccurate? If he had been wearing colored contact lenses when he was picked up, would that have been detected?

The same applies to other missing persons info summaries - could a match have been missed because misinformation on the right missing person's summary caused people to immediately dismiss that person as a possibility? Two well-known cases of unidentified remains in Canada had been incorrectly identified as female when they were actually male, a mistake that wasn't corrected for decades in both cases. Of course, this line of thinking can be taken to absurd extremes - with enough "what ifs" I could end up proposing that GD fan is actually DB Cooper! I understand that.

What I'm trying to say is...something is not right, about the lack of resolution in this specific case. Something is blocking, here, perhaps unintentionally as in misinformation or perhaps deliberately as in a calculated deception. I suggest that the responsible authorities ought to be a bit more liberal as to whom they consider for potential matches than they might otherwise be, at this point.

 

[Roy Harrold]

I want to explain a bit more about why I perceive that something is 'amiss' with the lack of resolution in this case.

There isn't anything in the case summary info which would trigger a reflexive "oh, who cares" response from people. The victims of this accident weren't fleeing the police, there's no suggestion they were drunk or high on drugs and therefore "the authors of their own misfortune". There is no indication that they were gang members, nor that they were illegal immigrants lacking identification for that reason, or members of some cultesque group that people hold in disdain such as racists or fringe militias.

On the other hand, this case has a high "awww!" factor. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm quite sincere about that. The summary info suggests 2 teens or young men - they could be anyone's sons or brothers - who are totally innocent victims of a horrific accident.

Beyond that, it's easy to read into the unidentified victim's effects a very American coming-of-age story that millions of people may have experienced themselves - young person travels to see their favorite band in concert, meets some person of the opposite sex, perhaps has a first romantic encounter, falls asleep and awakes to find their new love is gone and all they have left is a note with a phone number. Am I right? High "awww!" factor, a story capable of drawing people in, so they take the time to really consider the case info being presented.

With all the things this case has going for it, the work so many people have put into it over the years should have borne some kind of fruit by now, it seems to me. Well, perhaps it has. Perhaps there have been people who became aware of the case, read the summaries, looked at the personal belongings and the reconstruction, read some of the discussion, and said to themselves: "I know who that is" - but for reasons unknowable to us, they don't want anyone else to know.

I think that's possible. There aren't a lot of scenarios wherein that would make any sense, but mutual criminal involvement could be one of them.

 

[carterkatt]

Roy - I think you've got to be onto something. With all the excellent sleuths here at WS, and no one has any real leads on him, that doesn't make sense. Also... so many possible people have been ruled out. I think the Doe Network has been fully investigated and anyone remotely close to our guy has been checked out.

So, as you point out, what are the alternatives that are left? I think you are right on track.

Thanks for putting it so logically!

 

[Cyan]

I'm not on here often, so I am going to avoid posting links, for the moment.

I came across a Caroline that either has a hobby of or makes a living off of crafting GD items. This Caroline appears to have been in high school during the year 1990. This would have put her just out of high school or a year out in 1995.She appears to still be GDF and is very artistic. It appears that she may still attend music festivals and travel frequently. She lives in NC and has multiple friends named Caroline.

** There is nothing to indicate that she or her friends are or were Caroline O. and Caroline T.

I've wondered a bit about JD's clothes, shoes, the note, and lack of property.

Clothes:

Has it been released whether or not these clothes were actually sized to fit?
Could it be that they were stolen or that he had intended to be returning to them or to wherever he had been staying?

The Note:
Could it be that the note was not intended for him, but for someone else, named Jason?
Could the fact that it says "To Jason" be an indicator that JD had not been alone (excluding the Carolines) while on his way?

I do believe that Caroline T. wrote the note, due to the arrow, and I think that Caroline T. was led to believe that "Jason" was from the same area (due to lack of area code). Could the use of a last initial indicate that the person the note was intended for knew multitudes of Carolines or that they were barely acquainted? Could Caroline O. and Caroline T. just be nicknames? (reference the band The Donnas, they call themselves Donna A., Donna B., etc).

Is it possible that JD and Eric could have been arguing about something and that is what caused them to wreck?

 

[marauder]

It is also possible (though very unlikely) that there was no Jason and no one named Caroline.

Someone I knew back in the 90s had friends who basically lived on tour following the Dead. They would occasionally mail him a scribbled note, written with totally bogus info as a cover/distraction, onto a small square of plain white heavy paper. Each 2.5 by 2.5 inch piece of paper had 100 doses of LSD absorbed into it. He said this was very widely done.

(Anyone know what kind of paper the note was written on?)

Statistically, it's very unlikely, but the likely stuff hasn't solved the puzzle.

 

[Spacemonkey1975]

There are photos of the note floating around with the complete phone number blurred, it is regular notebook paper I think. It definately wasn't blotter paper, not that I would know or recognize that or anything :rocker:

 

[Roy Harrold]

Roy - I think you've got to be onto something. With all the excellent sleuths here at WS, and no one has any real leads on him, that doesn't make sense. Also... so many possible people have been ruled out. I think the Doe Network has been fully investigated and anyone remotely close to our guy has been checked out.

So, as you point out, what are the alternatives that are left? I think you are right on track.

Thanks for putting it so logically!

Thank you, you are very kind.

I believe there are grounds for asking the FBI to look into this case. I intend to do just that...a few minutes from now. Can't hurt, if their resources were brought to bear on the case - eh?

 

[Roy Harrold]

Here's another possibility that occurred to me recently.

Let's say that "Jason" is not the wanted felon Mathew Samuel West, but that the similarity in appearance between the picture of West on the FBI wanted site and the reconstruction of "Jason, were a famililial one - that Jason was a nephew or a cousin, perhaps. Could West have been aware of that person's demise, and assumed THEIR identity while discarding his own? Perhaps with collusion by other relatives? Nothing could bring back "Jason", but his identity could perhaps keep West out of prison & in their lives - ?

Identification of "Jason" would then blow West's "cover"...

 

[carterkatt]

Here's another possibility that occurred to me recently.

Let's say that "Jason" is not the wanted felon Mathew Samuel West, but that the similarity in appearance between the picture of West on the FBI wanted site and the reconstruction of "Jason, were a famililial one - that Jason was a nephew or a cousin, perhaps. Could West have been aware of that person's demise, and assumed THEIR identity while discarding his own? Perhaps with collusion by other relatives? Nothing could bring back "Jason", but his identity could perhaps keep West out of prison & in their lives - ?

Identification of "Jason" would then blow West's "cover"...

WOW.... fresh thinking. That's what we need. It's surely something to think about. hummmmmmm

 

[Roy Harrold]

WOW.... fresh thinking. That's what we need. It's surely something to think about. hummmmmmm

Well...there's kind of a trick, here. That is a construct, a scenario concocted not necessarily out of evidence but as an explanation for "holes" in other scenarios.

That scenario explains the potential fingerprint "hole" - West's fingerprints wouldn't be a match. It explains how West was able to "vanish" - he vanishes into a younger relative's identity. It explains the lack of a matching missing person - the victim's relations don't report him missing because they know his fate. It explains the lack of a resolution to this case - the relations don't want "Jason's" real identity exposed!

A construct like this is unlikely to represent reality, but the fact that a plausible scenario of this nature could be constructed from realities that we have experienced and are experiencing, is troubling.

I've been going through some prior postings, at random, and noting how many others have expressed similar concerns, similar frustrations, to my own. Time to stop mucking about with this case - Mr or Mrs Authorities - 140 potential matches eliminated! - time to bring in the Big Guns now and let's get this one resolved! Please?

 

[iamnotagolem]

I'm not sure where to ask this, but have there ever been autopsy pictures released? I realize they'd probably be gruesome due to the auto accident, but I can't help but thinking that maybe the reconstruction is way off and that could be why he hasn't been identified.

 

[GumDrop]

I ran across this posting last night from a woman named Adele in search of her lost relative, Jason Pursue. I tried to email the poster but the address does not exist anymore. I somehow found a woman with the same name on Facebook...I don't have a fb account myself so I couldn't send her a message. I did however see that she has a friend named Caroline O...... Any thoughts??

http://www.yourfamily.com/roots/yourfam.mv?qy=purdie&xo=yfmsg&xc=Query&xn=202&xt=lost_bb

 

[GumDrop]

Oops, It's Jason purdie...darn spell check!

 

[iamnotagolem]

I'm going through young children missing from the 1980s. I'm wondering if someone had kidnapped this kid as a young child and that's why they aren't coming forth to identify him.