Identified! KY - Eddyville, Lake Barkley, WhtMale 35-50, UP75, wrapped in tire chains anchored by hydraulic jack, May’99 - Roger Dale Parham (Wanted by FBI)

[Trudie]

I see barges all the time (on the Ohio River), even know a lot of crew as casinos are also on the Ohio. His dress sounds so typical of what the guys are wearing, even in warm weather, to stay dry! I bet if we had annual stats on the number of men that go missing from boating jobs, we’d be stunned. Plus, they could begin in TX, end up in MI. Or? Maybe these days it is more difficult to get hired but I think at one time if you were ready to hit the water, you were hired. I know a lot of fresh out of school guys that hire on for a year or two, I suppose to appease their parents & get out of college, lol.

 

[PezCandy]

@MadMcGoo did you ever hear back from the ME?

 

[MadMcGoo]

@Trudie yes, your description of barges is very similar to the oil fields around here. Good pay, laidback (for the most part) bosses, secluded but ever-moving job sites, easy to get hired on (especially if you have a criminal record), require little to no prior experience or education, and a good environment for someone wanting to “disappear” from their own life or society in general. Making it also an ideal environment for someone wanting to make someone disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I know millionaire, highly educated, engineers who work at the same job sites and would very much be noticed if they went missing. Kind of a moot point at the moment, until we know more.

You mentioned something about direct deposit and payroll and whatnot. I think there’s some room for investigating that avenue. I’m pretty confident that Mac was alive in 1998, at least, how difficult would it be to inquire about things like that? If you were to know an inland or domestic (I can’t think of the word... they work on shore and not on the actual barges lol) employee for one of these companies, would it be possible to ask about employees who may have, even for a brief moment, been missed? YKWIM? ETA: like someone in Human Resources is what I’m trying to say, I think

 

[MadMcGoo]

@PezCandy no response yet.... last thing she told me was that she’d let me know about the potential matches I had on the spreadsheet (which has significantly increased since then lol) I can’t imagine she’s sooo busy (just kidding!!) I’ve been trying to stay busy and not check my email every 5 minutes

 

[Trudie]

@MadMcGoo. Very interesting article @ link.

re: your question about HR for a navigation company, I think that’s an option but there’s thousands of them.
Also, I’m only speculating he possibly worked the barges, only because he was found in water that is very near the Cumberland, Mississippi & Ohio rivers.
I think a lot of times a captain/pilot might not be inclined to notify the Coast Guard of incidents as he wants to keep his job, iykwim.
My friend that works the water says the worst aspect of the job for him is the personality conflicts that are unavoidable. Idk if protocol is the same all barge lines but my friend rarely sees the captain who has a lot of admin’ work & stays in his office area most of his waking hours.
My link explains chains, links & wire used by barge crew. Also, they are doing very heavy work & carrying a lot of equipment, I’m sure they carry many jacks. If the tug breaks down, it has to be repaired. Moo

Life on the River as a Towboat Deckhand
Other rigging that you will need to use are chain links

 

[Trudie]

Anyone think this person severed ties with his past, hence no one reporting him missing?

 

[carbuff]

That article is fascinating. I want to read it again, but it has already explained one point of confusion with the tire chain discussion--to me, a "chain link" is one single link. You loop a set of links together one after the other to make a chain. So I couldn't figure out why you kept harping on single links, which were so clearly NOT what the description was talking about. Learn something new every day!

It does sound like a barge-type chain link is a possibility for the gentleman's unfortunate wrapping.

 

[GJKJR]

May 14, 1999. The Paducah Sun, Paducah, KY.

May 9, 1999. The Paducah Sun, Paducah, KY.

May 11, 1999. The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY.

 

[PezCandy]

Does anyone know his autopsy report/results? In the news article above it said they couldn’t find anything... so strange

 

[Trudie]

Does anyone know his autopsy report/results? In the news article above it said they couldn’t find anything... so strange

I wonder if he might have been thumped in the head, knocked unconscious, bound & weighted, going in the water alive. If so, would his lungs indicate drowning as COD? I doubt it if he was not respirating as he should. But, I am not a doctor, lol. I can’t find autopsy report.

@GJKJR the discrepancy in weight bothers me. Also, his inseam @30 inches? High water pants? Very short inseam for a man over 6’.

@carbuff the chain/links prove to be most confusing, sorry. My point is boats carry a lot of equipment, odds & ends, etc. I’m certain they have a variety of jacks as a lot of repairs would require hoisting heavy pieces of steel, imo.

I’m concluding he was not local & probably not from KY. 20 years with no ID? If local, perhaps no family here, unknown to everyone except his killer?
All moo

(FYI: I am only speculating listing about this man possibly working in a maritime position. The fact no one reported him missing led me to believe he lived a transient type life.)

 

[Trudie]

@PezCandy no response yet.... last thing she told me was that she’d let me know about the potential matches I had on the spreadsheet (which has significantly increased since then lol) I can’t imagine she’s sooo busy (just kidding!!) I’ve been trying to stay busy and not check my email every 5 minutes

the Medical Examiner? If so, ask about autopsy/tox. Tysm

 

[MadMcGoo]

We may need to make adjustments to our “ME liaison” I have a ... not-so-way with words lol.

FWIW, I have a fairly good idea of the chains referred to in this case, but when I first read it, I couldn’t tell if they were describing snow tire chains, snow chains or tire chains...or just chains. It varied from source to source. And for me, it made a difference in what came to my mind. I’d think the person (presumably local) writing the report would know the difference, but they may not have known exactly how to describe what they were seeing. (Kinda like me in this moment) After all, we still don’t have a clue what this button is or what the “Blue Transportation Band” could be...

 

[Trudie]

We may need to make adjustments to our “ME liaison” I have a ... not-so-way with words lol.

FWIW, I have a fairly good idea of the chains referred to in this case, but when I first read it, I couldn’t tell if they were describing snow tire chains, snow chains or tire chains...or just chains. It varied from source to source. And for me, it made a difference in what came to my mind. I’d think the person (presumably local) writing the report would know the difference, but they may not have known exactly how to describe what they were seeing. (Kinda like me in this moment) After all, we still don’t have a clue what this button is or what the “Blue Transportation Band” could be...

What kind of chains are you thinking of? Do tell.
The amount of time he was in the water is not clear.
Wallet missing. Well, again, I think maritime employee. They leave their belongings in their room in event they go over. But a murderer might want his victim’s ID. Sooooooo

anyone check for Blue Star Maritime or barge lines? My battery is 6%, lol.

 

[MadMcGoo]

@Trudie now...I’m thinking of the chains that go on tires during extreme weather conditions (mainly heavy snow), the ones that look like “noodley” ladders.

 

[Trudie]

@Trudie now...I’m thinking of the chains that go on tires during extreme weather conditions (mainly heavy snow), the ones that look like “noodley” ladders.

lol, I will politely refrain from further chain convo. Love your description, lmbo “noodley”. I will say I believe @carbuff thinks the “noodley” type chains were used.

 

[PezCandy]

Blue star maritime was one of the first things that popped up when I was looking for blue star info and others stated trucking, I don’t know much about barges but I had the marine feeling about the blue star

 

[Trudie]

Blue star maritime was one of the first things that popped up when I was looking for blue star info and others stated trucking, I don’t know much about barges but I had the marine feeling about the blue star

oh thanks, I didn’t read back again, lol.
So you kinda lean towards the victim working barge lines?

 

[carbuff]

lol, I will politely refrain from further chain convo. Love your description, lmbo “noodley”. I will say I believe @carbuff thinks the “noodley” type chains were used.

Well, the FBI ViCap poster said snow chains, so I went with that. I have a bad habit of believing the FBI and that's not always a good idea. I love the noodley description too

After reading that article about life on the barges, I am on board with the possibility that the chains could be a piece of barge equipment. And after reading the description of how chains and lines can break, whip around, and drag you off the boat, I'm wondering if there's a way he might have accidentally gone overboard wrapped in a chain, possibly when one of the barges broke loose in bad weather. The crew would have tried to search for the body, but if they didn't find it, he would probably have been considered "presumed drowned" and there isn't a missing persons report for him. (At least that's what happens with fishermen who go overboard off the New England coast.)

 

[Trudie]

After reading that article about life on the barges, I am on board with the possibility that the chains could be a piece of barge equipment. And after reading the description of how chains and lines can break, whip around, and drag you off the boat, I'm wondering if there's a way he might have accidentally gone overboard wrapped in a chain, possibly when one of the barges broke loose in bad weather. The crew would have tried to search for the body, but if they didn't find it, he would probably have been considered "presumed drowned" and there isn't a missing persons report for him. (At least that's what happens with fishermen who go overboard off the New England coast.)

@carbuff I have wondered the same, only because I know a guy that went off a fishing boat on Lake MI, he was immediately rescued tho. He was in violent waters with the rudest winds ever, but his “rigging” took him overboard once he lost control of it.
Let’s just assume alcoholic beverages might have been involved here. It’d be very easy to have a “slip & fall”, maybe not going overboard, but seriously injured. I’m afraid not all crew members would want to report. Only because I think the captain/pilot of the watercraft might lose his job if he allowed an intoxicated person to work. Radioing the Coast Guard would be the only option for help, imo. So? Pitch him over? I’m going to speculate a whole lot of booze is involved in barge work, not by all, but by many.
(I’m trying to think of a situation requiring him to have the jack attached to chains, I guess only to maneuver it or retrieve it?) Idk

 

[PezCandy]

@Trudie yeah I get the barge impression, when I was looking up stuff in that area from the 90s there was a blue star cargo/goods boat that was going thru lake Barkley for awhile. That’s what made me think of that, but I was getting frustrated with the search because of limited info due to it being awhile ago. So I was initially thinking he had something to do with that. Maybe he upset the wrong person and they got rid of him? Remember the Lyle stevik (probably spelled wrong) where the family thought that he just didn’t want anything to do with them even tho the poor soul had committed suicide? Well maybe John Does family thought that he was just busy working or that he didn’t want anything to do with them either, and it being the 90s social media wasn’t a thing, if you wanted to talk to someone that was distant you’d write, make a call, or send a letter.