Seeing the Holocaust images is eye-opening to Denim’s weight at death. I had developed a mental picture, but seeing those photos is a bit of different story.
Not even in chasing the Steve theory, Denim went through some pretty drastic changes, both physical and otherwise, from (based on what we know for sure) June/July 2017 to July 2018. So, for my intent and purpose, I’ll say one year.
(Based on witness accounts) In that one year, he went from being a seemingly healthy-looking man with somewhat of an overall purpose for being on the trails to an 83-pound, (still very much) unidentified decedent found alone in a tent in rural/remote Florida. Whom, as we know, was not lacking the resources a typical person would require to survive under normal circumstances.
This potentially proves one or more of a few things;
a) circumstances were not at all typical, although we don’t know how or why
b) Denim wasn’t as healthy as he appears to have been earlier on in the hike - maybe he was aware of his condition or ailment, and June/July 2017 was the beginning of the end, and he knew it
c) Denim was healthy in the beginning but, unbeknownst to him or anyone around him, was stricken with something life-threatening that either went untreated or progressed so rapidly that it left little to no time to recognize much less diagnose and treat.
So a person to whom any of those things, individually or in conjuncture, could apply and who’d walked many a’ miles in Denim’s shoes, could have and likely would have gone through just as many physical changes as they would internal changes. Rapid weight loss, hair loss, fatigue...to name a few.
These changes are all dependent upon what exactly caused his death or whether the changes could be the effects of something other than age and exposure to the environmental elements he may or may not have been accustomed to or not. I don’t know what, if anything, would cause someone’s hair to gray at a faster rate than the average person.
My point is that this case is unlike many we’ve seen in that so much seems to be known about this man, yet he’s no closer to being identified than he was 18 months ago. Something happened to him, which led him to be discovered dead with no indication of how or why. When this something happened has proved to be most elusive of all.
I don’t believe it’s as far out of the realm of possibility as some seem to think, that someone like Steve who went from wearing his hair in dreadlocks, homeless or otherwise living on the streets of Colorado, possibly having a girlfriend and other acquaintances could, in fact, find themselves hiking the Appalachian Trail, meeting and befriending many other hikers and albeit not ideally, acclimating to the environment - but mysteriously die alone with merely a $300 two-person tent, some gaming code, a neon shirt, hiking poles, a decent amount of cash and dozens of photos of him living - and still, no one to claim him thus far.
Again, this is a unique case. We have so many details that are generally not known to us but lack the ones that are usually at our fingertips. In this instance, we have both a missing person and an unidentified person all wrapped up into one. I doubt that makes any sense, but remember, the chance remains that the person we’ve been seeing and analyzing in all these photos - referred to as "Denim" or "Mostly Harmless" or "Ben Bilemy" - is not even the man found dead in the tent that day! Albeit unlikely, it’s something that frequently crosses my mind. (The button-up shirt still bewilders me too...ugh!)
JMOO FWTW
Although, I would think these scars are probably larger.
