Identified! KY - Owensboro, Pleasant Valley Rd, WhtMale 25-40, UP87, curly hair, eyeglasses, Jan'90 - William Dennis Mathews

[bflocket]

I wasn't a member when it all happened (the false ID reunidentification) but I remember this case from beforehand because it was an unidentified victim from my home state that was found/killed in (really, really huge) "WTF?" circumstances.

I've come across it a few times (he's no longer on Doenetwork) and it sounds like "They found a body that was all beat up. Somebody must've cut off hands/etc to thwart identification"

So I looked him up on Internet Archive ("Wayback Machine") and it was as strange as I remembered...


"The victim was found by two rabbit hunters east of Owensboro, on Pleasant Valley Road. The man had been murdered, stripped of his clothes and covered with twigs. He was shot several times, his face had been disfigured by some type of blows, blunt force trauma to the face, and his hands and feet had been cut off. The body was dumped in a briar thicket in Daviess County. Investigators believe that this victim may have been from another area.

The body was not decomposed, indicating that he hadn't been dead for long. Investigators believe, because there was no blood at the scene, that he was murdered somewhere else. As for the motive, police think it was possibly a Satanic sacrifice and there was also evidence to suggest homosexual activity before the victim's death, but police believe the hands and feet were removed to conceal the man's identity."


What I'm talking about being missing (at the very least) is the mention of satanic cults and "evidence of homosexual activity."

Was the crime evidence "sanitized" or were these "unsubstantiated rumors" considered by LE of the time???
I really want to know.

The "old snapshot" is from circa 2004 and here is the link. Hope it works!
http://web.archive.org/web/20041213070231/http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/133umky.html

 

[Magnum P.E.]

I don't know why his feet were removed but was it really to prevent identification? I mean, most of the UIDs on here still had their feet when found, and it has not helped ID them, not one bit. A distinctive tattoo on a foot, maybe?

Dismemberment is thankfully rare. I bet the Popo are looking at other similar cases (there can't be too many).

I'd like to know what the "satanic" and other aspects of the case are. Obviously they hold things back and they ain't gonna tell us everything, but I wonder if someone didn't have an overactive imagination.

Sorry folks, that's all I got.

 

[bflocket]

I don't know what to make out of the chain of events.

ca 2000:
-Unidentified male found, naked and dismembered. Evidence of homosexual activity and/or demonic sacrifice.

then

ca 2010
-unidentified male found "behind a barn" near Owensboro

I was only 10 when this guy was found, but remember the "ritual abuse" hysteria/crap about day cares and schools (which are as ridiculous to me now as they sounded to me then) and I'm also from Kentucky, so I know more than I want to know about religious craziness. Was that a factor here? And what kind of "evidence" was there of homosexual shenanigans, as was stated?

If either has any truth to them (why would they have even ever thought that? there had to be some reason) then why are they no longer publicized? Neither may be correct, but why were they believed back then?

 

[EmmaliLucia]

Out of all the recons I've ever seen this has got to be the worst.

When I first saw it I thought "Well, s***, this should be easy to solve, does doenetwork have a section for missing zombies?"

Any ways, I'm off to go find people that this guy could be. Wish me luck?

 

[EmmaliLucia]

Okay here's my short little list:

Douglas Harland Selby
Missing from Florida

Phillip Miles Chavis
Missing from North Carolina

David Wayne Mize
Missing from Mississippi

Jack Alan Hamons
Missing from Texas

Timothy Lee Keays
Missing from Oregon

Joe Matos Dias
Missing from California





So, what do you guys think?

 

[bflocket]

Out of all the recons I've ever seen this has got to be the worst.

That's some sort of photo/reconstruction combo. I think I've seen better looking (whether more accurate/artistic,I don't know) recons before. But I don't know how I'd find them. I'd searched for info about this guy recently and found not much more than the "found behind barn" description.

I really KNEW there was a much more twisted story than I could find. That's how I found the old Doenetwork link. I could really only find it because I knew the website and could guess and browse through dates. As I knew I'd read something about the perverted/crazy/false aspects long ago on Doenetwork, so that's what I looked for on the archive-search.

I have nowhere to start looking for those other pages (which likely no longer exist) that had better pics/details. I wish I did.


I'm really glad that I did find the old link. Whenever I saw mention (with the scant details), I kept thinking "Wasn't there some sick/sex/sacrifice stuff" going on with this?
Now at least I know I wasn't dreaming up all the scandalous stuff.

 

[CarlK90245]

Okay here's my short little list:

...

So, what do you guys think?

Douglas Harland Selby
Missing from Florida

Not a bad resemblance if you shave off his beard. He went missing in Key West, and his vehicle was found at Mile Marker 104 in the Florida Keys. (I can't find anyplace named Twin Harbors in Florida. There is a Two Harbors on Catalina Island off the Southern California coast - Where Natalie Wood drowned). But the circumstances seem to suggest that he never left the Florida Keys.

Phillip Miles Chavis
Missing from North Carolina

Unspecified tattoo (not found on the UID). I don't think he was decomposed enough for tattoos to escape notice.

David Wayne Mize
Missing from Mississippi

Hair isn't greying or curly. And the timeline is a bit of a stretch. The car being found abandoned just on the other side of the state line in Memphis complicates the narrative.

Jack Alan Hamons
Missing from Texas

Again, a decent resemblance, but lots of scars and a tattoo that isn't mentioned on the UID.

Timothy Lee Keays
Missing from Oregon

We already discussed him extensively earlier in this thread.

Joe Matos Dias
Missing from California

The UID doesn't appear to be hispanic, nor is it indicated.

 

[carbuff]

The current ruleouts:

Lindsey Baker, Jr 1971 North Carolina
Allyn Kellar 1954 Nebraska
David Mize 1960 Mississippi
Jerry Plaster 1962 Virginia


https://identifyus.org/cases/87

I also notice that the dental x-rays are now posted in the images section.

 

[webrocket]

I put zero stock in the homosexual/Satanic cult theories. isn't this the sort of crapola that landed the West Mephis 3 in prison for many years for a murder they did not commit?

I realize the post mortem violence here was extreme but the killer or killers wanted to minimize the ability of authorities to identify him. I am surprised they did not decapitate him. Joel Rifkin did all that stuff to his victims.

 

[Magnum P.E.]

I put zero stock in the homosexual/Satanic cult theories. isn't this the sort of crapola that landed the West Mephis 3 in prison for many years for a murder they did not commit?

I realize the post mortem violence here was extreme but the killer or killers wanted to minimize the ability of authorities to identify him. I am surprised they did not decapitate him. Joel Rifkin did all that stuff to his victims.

Interesting that those aspects are not in the later case descriptions. My guess is someone reexamined the case and decided there was not really any evidence of it.

I just ain't buying dismemberment to make ID harder. Someone had time and privacy to do it, so why remove hands and feet yet leave an identifiable (albeit beaten) face?

Nope, I think someone was collecting souvenirs from a victim. And that is usually the kind of thing that someone stops doing when they are dead, incarcerated, or too old to do it any more.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[webrocket]

hands and feet are not what I consider to be souvenirs. a piece of hair? item of clothing? some jewelry? yes. a body part, no in my book.

 

[EmmaliLucia]

Phillip Miles Chavis
Missing from North Carolina

Unspecified tattoo (not found on the UID). I don't think he was decomposed enough for tattoos to escape notice.

Snipped by me

Do you think it's possible that the tattoo was far enough down on his arm to have been cut off with his hands?

I know that when they say on the arm they usually mean upper arm, but it could explain why his hands were missing?

 

[EmmaliLucia]

hands and feet are not what I consider to be souvenirs. a piece of hair? item of clothing? some jewelry? yes. a body part, no in my book.

There are stories of people going through the attics of their war hero relatives and finding skulls that the relatives collected during the war, so I wouldn't put it past a killer to do it.

 

[CarlK90245]

Snipped by me

Phillip Miles Chavis
Missing from North Carolina

Unspecified tattoo (not found on the UID). I don't think he was decomposed enough for tattoos to escape notice.

Do you think it's possible that the tattoo was far enough down on his arm to have been cut off with his hands?

I know that when they say on the arm they usually mean upper arm, but it could explain why his hands were missing?

I kind of doubt it. Add in that he went missing nearly a full year before the John Doe was found, and the circumstances indicated that he was probably murdered at the time of his disappearance, that makes him that much more unlikely.

 

[Magnum P.E.]

hands and feet are not what I consider to be souvenirs. a piece of hair? item of clothing? some jewelry? yes. a body part, no in my book.

Wrong book. You are a rational person but this was not a rational crime committed by a rational person. I would not apply rational standards to it. A lot went on after the victim was already dead. This was probably not robbery or an ordinary murder.

Mayhem by serial killers - Luca Magnotta, Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, etc......

 

[carbuff]

hands and feet are not what I consider to be souvenirs. a piece of hair? item of clothing? some jewelry? yes. a body part, no in my book.

There was a murderer in our area when I was growing up who kept the hands of his victims in his freezer...

 

[bflocket]

Over the past week, I've seen a few things that have made me question how good NamUs is even more than before.



There was a UID (forget which one at the moment, other than a female) who had many suggestions on their thread.

A couple of those were written off as "ruled out by DNA" at DoeNetwork.
The UID (along with said MP's) have NamUs profiles, yet those individuals weren't on NamUs's ruled-out list.

I don't understand why, since it was apparently DNA that had ruled them out (which SHOULD be a pretty definite rule-out).




This fellow further strengthened my confusion...

After all of the publicized identification/unidentification, Scott Michael Morris is NOT on his rule-out list!!!

 

[CarlK90245]

Over the past week, I've seen a few things that have made me question how good NamUs is even more than before.



There was a UID (forget which one at the moment, other than a female) who had many suggestions on their thread.

A couple of those were written off as "ruled out by DNA" at DoeNetwork.
The UID (along with said MP's) have NamUs profiles, yet those individuals weren't on NamUs's ruled-out list.

I don't understand why, since it was apparently DNA that had ruled them out (which SHOULD be a pretty definite rule-out).




This fellow further strengthened my confusion...

After all of the publicized identification/unidentification, Scott Michael Morris is NOT on his rule-out list!!!

The NamUs rule out lists reflect ONLY those rule outs that are made within the NamUs system. Rule outs that were made outside of NamUs frequently don't make it onto the NamUs lists.

 

[DrDMike]

From what I've seen, most of cases like Scott Michael Morris end up being resolved with one of the family members being charged with his murder. I was wondering how confident LE is about SMM calling his friends and family.

 

[bflocket]

I'm still wondering about all of the crazy things from the early UID report. It sounded like he had an entire slasher movie done to him, and then some.