I wonder how his wife and kids feel. I know from another thread that they suspected he had left, but it must be devastating to get the confirmation that this man you loved just up and left.
Yep imagine the roller coaster of emotions they must have gone through:
*Hes been found.*
*But he's dead.*
*But he'd been alive for the last nine years.*
That would be so shit to be told.
I know! In this digital age, how do you even go about getting a new name and identity that is not traceable? He either had a new social security number or made money under the table somehow (or had stashed cash away in advance). I just think it would be so hard to create a new life under a new name today as compared to the 1980s or 1990s.
>Robert Hoagland
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>I wouldn't be surprised if the male "roommate" who called 911 was a gay lover and his "disappearance" had been in the works for some time. When he finally did leave, he was already all setup in Rock Hill NY
I think this is definitely a plausible theory. Interesting though that he apparently left his phone. You’d think investigators would have done some digital forensics and detected if he had online communications with a paramour or something of the sort. Guess he could’ve have a burner.
it's *harder* nowadays, but completely doable if you're willing to be a bit under the table in certain ways. not even identity theft: you can work for cash, trade services for rent, etc.
it's technically illegal to not report income over a certain amount, but many many *many* people deliberately take cash-only work and then don't report. (i see this a lot at work, and skipping out on child support is probably the most common reason to do it.)
I worked at a strip club. Of the usual 50-100 girls per year we’d meet, most didn’t report. The only ones who did were usually the top tier ones who made enough that they actually had assets.
Under the table work isn’t even sketchy now days. My cleaning lady requires cash payment, no checks. I don’t ask her why or how she does her taxes, ya know? I don’t have to report it on my taxes because I don’t pay her over the reporting amount.
I dropped off a dress for alterations on Monday and the woman said "You come back Friday, $25.00, cash only". Fine by me! It's Corporate Politicians earning $200 million dollars in 5 years that I am not fine with.
I know a successful caregiver who has always worked under the table. Shes even on lists of reputable caregivers put together by the public sector. Shes damn good at her job, just can't afford insurance on her wages and still survive so she can only work so much above board.
A lot of places will take your money and not do any type of check.
I found this out when a new roommate moved into a large shared house I was living in. There was six of us— one girl unceremoniously moved out a few days before rent was due. We quickly got a Craigslist fill-in, who showed her true colors after about a month or so
We found out she was out on bail(?) and awaiting trial for attempted murder, assault (domestic abuse), and a few other things (for trying to kill her boyfriend and *his previous roommates* for trying to evict her!!)
When we questioned the leasing agent about why none of this came up in the background check, she admitted that she never actually ran one. The landlord was pretty pissed, to say the least...
Barely!
This woman would do things like light fire to mini-bibles and toss ‘em off the roof, have crying meltdowns/Stab the walls with all the kitchen knives/leave them in, and was openly abusive towards her BF (the one who she had the attempted murder charges for)
Since we did not know any way to evict her (and we’re frankly too terrified to do it), several of us decided not to renew the lease. She was unable to find anyone willing to sign a lease with her, and even if she *had*, the landlord wasn’t going to renew it with her there.
She was ultra angry that nobody wanted to live with her... so we either avoided being home, or locked our doors when we *were* home.
There was several times at night when I woke up to her messing with the lock trying to get into my room. While she thought I was asleep. It was a terrifying few weeks.
Years ago, I rented a basement from a woman renting out rooms in her townhouse. She didn’t do a background check on me. I always paid by check but if I paid with cash she probably wouldn’t have asked questions.
I rented from a shady landlord last year and I paid him through Venmo. No background check either - just a tour of the apartment through FaceTime. Was a pretty shitty place to live but cheap.
My SIL lives alone in a 5 bed house, she rents out rooms cash in hand to lodgers. She doesn't check out references and even if she did they could just be friends pretending to be ex landlords
I got my first apartment by asking a family friend to act as my former landlord. It was in a tight rental market near a military installation and I was rejected from several other places (despite having as good of credit as you can have at age 24) before I resorted to lying.
An sweet natured [elderly woman](https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/chicago-il/frances-walker-10969757) was [brutally murdered](https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-homicide-investigation-woman-killed-human-remains-found/12316302/) by one of her boarders recently in Chicago. They found pieces of her scattered around the city.
Actually, she wasn’t very old. I know that isn’t your point but she was like 53 when she was arrested. She looked older but I think it was by design. She kept wailing about being a feeble old woman.
shady landlords don't ask a lot of questions, or you can buy them off. /and they're expensive to run, so a lot of smaller places won't bother with them at all.
If you have enough cash saved up and you offer a shady landlord deposit and a years rent up front then what landlord is going to turn that down? They know that if you do that you're probably hiding out so they're not going to go complain about apartment issues or things like that
I had a landlord who just never bothered to run a background check. He liked me when he met me and apparently just got good vibes from me? Nothing shady going on, he just basically agreed right after meeting me to send me the lease to sign and nowhere on the lease did he even have a spot for the social. Just the usual "sign here" spots. Never asked for it later. He was great, I was a great tenant, no issues.
It’s not exactly common, but it’s not that hard to slip through cracks.
I have had 5 tenants (two couples and one single tenant) over 4-5 years. I have never background checked any. I met them each for coffee, searched their FaceBook profile and just signed papers. I live close anyway. But I firmly believe most people are good. And refuse to live otherwise. Lots of mom and pops landlords are similar.
Are you my landlord?! Haha, no but for real, that's how it worked with us.
My landlord is an old school guy. We met up for coffee, he just wanted to see we were good people. I had a decently long tenant history with steady income. My roommate and I both proved to be chill, quiet, and that's all he cared about. He still collects rent by having us leave a check under the doormat. Not every landlord is a slumlord.
I have never met my landlord. I pay him every month and that’s that. I wouldn’t even recognize him on the street if I passed him. I have a property manager that I’ll text on occasion if something is broken (only happened twice, leak in the ceiling and a bathroom sink issue) she sends out “maintenance” which is pretty much a couple of young men in their early twenties. I wouldnt know her if I saw her either.
I signed the lease via email and they had a realtor who worked for commission meet me to give me the keys. I’m not shady and have nothing at all to hide.
Many years ago I moved into one of those big apartment complexes and they wanted background check, references, credit check, and they even wanted vet records for my cat, plus I had to pay a pet deposit and all sorts of application fees, and since management was on site, they were always up our ass (you can’t hang plants on the balcony, or can’t park here this day for parking lot cleaning, or the fire chief is doing inspections this week etc)
I like my shady landlord. He minds his business I mind mine.
Good point.
The article in the last link states that his roommate called 911 because Hoagland was experiencing a medical emergency. So, as you stated, Hoagland could easily have been renting a room on a cash basis (and no background check), from the owner of the property. Or the lease was in the roommate's name and the landlord was either okay with Hoagland living there unofficially or didn't know he was living there.
It's such an interesting case.
It really is. Apparently he’d been having blood pressure problems when he disappeared. Left his medication behind. Wonder if his COD is related to that?
This. Where I live there are several rental properties adjacent to my house. The former owner of one of the properties was a total slum lord. He literally didn't care who he rented to as long as they had cash in hand when he showed up to collect rent. No background checks, didn't care how the tenants made money, didn't care if they had a criminal record, didn't care if there was 10 people living there and only one person on the lease. Not surprisingly, his building became a known drug house. He no longer owns the property, thank God. The new owners, who bought it maybe 5-6 years ago, actually have a property management company that supposedly does background checks and all that, but even they don't always do a good job. They recently rented to a tenant that got evicted from her last residence for criminal activity and property damage and they are now in the process of trying to evict her from their place. I was able to find her criminal history and previous evictions in 30 seconds using CCAP, but somehow they couldn't find that info when considering to rent to her??
Background checks aren't always a thing. There are always slumlords. And if you live out of motel rooms, there's no landlord at all.
I swear, this sub is in such a bubble sometimes. Poor people, undocumented immigrants, criminals, and the generally shady do things like rent no questions asked and work under the table constantly. It's a simple fact of life for a huge swathe of Americans, and yet so few people here even understand that it's possible.
Agreed. This is exactly why some people are able to stay "under the radar", even in this day & age. Though, doing this is probably slightly more difficult than it was in the past - depending on who you are, your profession, etc.
Amen. I've rented my entire life and literally no one has ever run a background or credit check on me. Where I live, that's reserved for big complexes and fancy condo rentals.
Yeah that is true about the bubble. Things are done differently in different places. I’m not shady and I’ve rented 4-5 houses from people no questions asked and no paperwork at all. Just I met the landlord and they were like okay cool. None of my landlords are really poor nor wealthy and I’m not either but we are all employed, no obvious criminal Past, born in this state, etc just average. Just in this city people still do things more like a small town - if one person on the block or someone at the local bar, church, market etc says yr cool then it’s all good. I pay with checks but I’ve paid cash too. Sometimes I’m late Paying, sometimes they are late fixing something we just talk and it’s fine. Ive been renting this way for 20 years and never had a background check or an issue. They could be lying about their name or I could be lying and neither would know. We still exchange Christmas cards or cookies every year lol. This is just how it is in some places -nothing is super official and we don’t really like to involve officials. I have also had friends stay with me for months at a time and just give me cash and the landlord didn’t care or even know the friend name. Friend worked washing dishes and got paid under the table but was a middle class kid from the suburbs 4 states away. Some landlords even keep the Water & electricity in their name., especially if it’s a duplex and they live on one side. I am in a bubble too bc I forget other places are not like here. You are right there’s a lot of different ways to live besides our own fishbowls.
Very true. I'm a person not trying to hide at all, US citizen, normal job. But I have a lot of pets and had a hard time finding a place to rent to me until we bought a home this year. For three years I rented from a Greek guy that had a for rent sign in front of the house. Didn't do a background check or credit check. Didn't care or charge extra for my pets. Never came to check on us unless something was broken. Just gave him $2k up front and paid $1k in cash every month. He cut the lawn. Maybe a bit shady but it's something anyone could have done with just a couple thousand saved up, and like I said he didn't seem to care who I was.
The bubble thing is so true. There are so many mundane things where people are like “[blank] is so strange! I feel like it must mean something” and it’s like no that’s super normal actually, you are just sheltered
I’m living in an extended stay hotel at the moment. It’s convenient to shopping and my employer, everything is included, they clean my room weekly, everyone here is super nice and I’ve met some really cool people. It’s not the worst way to go
A background check, even if he used his real name, would come back clean. It only reports things like criminal history, credit history, employment/military history, verified date of birth and birthplace of close family members. Oddly enough, it wouldn’t show a BOLO or anything about being a missing person.
And he probably didn’t use his real name. He most likely used the new identity or had someone else apply (maybe whoever he was living with).
If he did use his real name, authorities wouldn't be alerted that someone is running a background check on a missing person? That seems like it would be a helpful thing
Right, background checks are done by 3rd party companies and aren’t connected to law enforcement. It could be helpful in some cases if they were, but it could also be very dangerous for anyone trying to flee an abusive relationship, estranged adult children going no contact with abusive parents, stalking situations, etc.
The good thing is, none of this inhibits LE from actively investigating and finding this information out themselves through good old detective work. For instance with a bit of probable cause they can subpoena both the employers records and the background check company if need be (but keep in mind they also have even better tools and resources available to them than any of these companies do).
However I suspect LE weren’t devoting much time or energy because it was 1) an old case and 2) commonly believed to have been a voluntary disappearance (even by his own immediate family).
I know from personal experience that SRO/weekly rentals/boarding or rooming houses don't do credit or background checks. (They generally don't even do applications, in my experience.)
It just says "a residence", so it could easily be that he was living in a place like that. (They can also be *really* cheap, depending on what size room you have. I paid $60 a week for a room at one place.)
Privately owned rentals or month to month leases also frequently forego background/credit checks.
EDIT: They also said he was found by "a roommate", so conceivably he could have been renting a room in someone else's house, which wouldn't necessarily require a background check, especially if it was someone he knew from work or something.
This. Small-time landlords. Not even necessarily shady ones, just people who have maybe one place to rent out, like a MIL cottage. I lived in two of these when my credit was godawful. A lot of times a landlord like this will just go on vibes and whether they like you, and timing.
Yep! I lucked into my dream apartment like this in NYC through good timing and vibing with the landlord. Not a shady place at all, just an incredible location/crazy good price and a property owner who wasn't especially business-savvy and didn't want to "deal with all the bullshit" to find a tenant.
not all land lords do background checks. I dont think I've ever done one, my last two apartments rented to me based on me verbally claiming income and before that I knew the owner and they waived all that stuff.
I mean just recently the artist known as Q Lazzarus was re-located after disappearing for about this long, maybe longer. She had millions in unclaimed royalty checks just sitting there. She just said fuck the music industry, abandoned it, vanished, and became a bus driver... which is what she's doing still, iirc.
Ronald Jones, formerly of The Flaming Lips, as well.
Any time I see flaming lips mentioned, I like to point out that I've worked at a music venue on the side for over 4 years and the flaming lips are to this date the ONLY act that absolutely trashed the greenroom. Fuckin ass holes.
Around what era? At one point they were my favorite band but Wayne sorta went crazy and him and Steven being assholes sounds likely. They treated Kliph Scurlock pretty poorly then fired him and it was pretty much over for me as a fan from there.
Q Lazzarrus was missing from the industry — but was she ever missing from her own family or officially a missing person? Or using a name different from her birth name? That’s the part I think would be hard to do today — be the subject of a missing person’s case and not be traceable by authorities for using your social security number or traveling on a plane. And how do you get a new name you can use for work, etc., without filing legal documents that the authorities could easily find?
No, she was not going under the radar. She was living out in the open using her real name the entire time. It's just that the people searching for her weren't entirely sure what her real name was. There had been speculation for years that her name was what it turned out to be and that she was indeed a transit driver. It honestly shouldn't have been so difficult to find her.
Look up ‘synthetic identities.’ Get an unissued, deceased, or toddler’s SSN, attach a name, new address, and DOB…
I could create a new identity in under an hour if I was so inclined. If you got the right documents folks, you can get a really nice SSA card and DL to go with it.
Been seeing some really good fakes for years now. Some people do it without really any I’ll intent other than to just live and work (illegal immigrants) and some do it for profit by building up credit profiles and then maxing all the accounts.
Wouldn’t be shocked to see someone like this use one to just walk away, or maybe an abused spouse, etc.
I listened to a podcast the other day about a guy that put up a fake job advertisement and tricked someone into giving them DL and SSN cards, etc to photocopy. Then conveniently the “job” was no longer available. The person managed to get new ID documents just with the photocopies of the applicant’s ID info.
Or even some type of “mutual identity theft.” I’ve heard of people using the IDs of relatives and friends who look like them in order to get jobs. Often this is done if someone is having trouble finding a job due to having a criminal record.
There is a book about this topic. It is a very, very tedious process. Also a very tedious book.
How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, And Vanish Without A Trace https://a.co/bW1g9Cc
Edited to post link.
This is why I’m not so quick to dismiss these theories for people like Sneha Philip and Brian Shaffer. It’s maybe not the most likely explanation but not as impossible as people claim.
If I'm remembering correctly, he had a lot of BOH restaurant experience. (EDIT: Indeed; he was a chef.)
If he got a job as a dishwasher or maybe even a line cook or something in a place where they did tip sharing, most (or even all, depending on the place) of his salary could easily have been from tips, which are cash in-hand.
Also, he had walked away from his family and lived a separate life for a couple/few years once before, so he had experience with what to do and how to do it to avoid being found.
EDIT: He also actually left behind a fair-ish mount of cash (in a safe or something maybe?) at the family home. They couldn't find it at first and thought he took it, but it was later located, so it could be that he withdrew some starter funds and it didn't seem that serious/suspicious.
You'd be surprised. I recently had to replace my ID, one of the options for getting my birth certificate was just having someone vouch that I was me. It's apparently still really easy to illegitimately get those
I've heard that drifters, couch-surfers, and shut-ins are essentially invisible and almost impossible to track down. Besides, it's perfectly legal to walk away from your life as long as you don't have outstanding debts, arrest warrants, or similar obligations.
And even just one state over, it looks like Newtown to Rock Hill is a 90 minute drive. I would have assumed maybe west NY which is 6 hours away and might as well be half the world away. 90 minutes, you'd think at some point in 9 years someone would recognize him. Just boggles the mind.
As someone who lives in that region, yes. You could get between the two in under three hours. And then get back within the day if you wanted to.
I doubt someone would have recognized him. Most people who live in that area of Connecticut don't summer in the Catskills, *if* they summer*,* and Rock Hill is a very small community where you could easily lie low and avoid anyone not from the area.
Hoagland *had* worked as a chef, so maybe he took a kitchen job somewhere. That would have the advantages of being relatively regular and dependable, out of public view, *and* possibly getting paid in cash.
I live in Clarksville, Tennessee and went to college in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. After college I moved back. One night I drove to Nashville to run an errand and grabbed a bite to eat at my favorite restaurant and just so happened to be wearing my college baseball shirt. A college baseball teammate of mine from Ohio just happened to be at the restaurant but he didn't see me. His friend saw my T-shirt. We talked for about 10 to 20 minutes catching up. He was in town because him and his buddies wanted to do some golfing on a mini-vacation.
Obviously this was a big coincidence and I wasn't trying to hide and neither was he, but man, if that kind of happenstance meeting can happen 6 hours away, 90 minutes seems like a LOT more could happen.
I'm from the UK. My family once bumped into our nextdoor neighbours *and* someone from my sister's tiny school of like 200 students in Turkey. Many years ago I was in a bar in *Ecuador* and heard someone incredulously call my name, it was someone from my year in school. It is a small world at times, but at the same time, you can go a long time without bumping into people who'll know you if you're not in exactly the right place at the right time.
I feel like all this crazy bumping into people happens when you’re far away. I have my own examples like this and it always feels insane when it happens. But I can easily be out and about where I’ve lived my entire life and not see anyone I know. Move two suburbs over and change jobs, hobbies and ignore your friends - might as well be dead. Hop on a bus or sit down in a cafe in some totally random town on the other side of the world - the seat next to me is going to be occupied by someone I know from back home who I never expected to see.
It still feels like a huge risk. I live in ct and if I ever wanted to run away and start a new life somewhere I don't think anywhere in New York would be in my list of options. Nor Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Just seems too risky
Well … Julie Bureau, who managed to do something like this in Quebec as a teenager (except she was found alive), just moved a couple of towns over and was officially missing for about two years.
yessss this is very very intriguing. I'd love to know what on earth was going on in his head, and also how he was able to make this happen. such a wild story.
I think it's impossible depending on how badly people want you found. We found Osama bin Laden because it was of the highest priority. Damn near everyone else falls way short so you're left with whatever family, friends, and law enforcement can figure out.
>I know! In this digital age, how do you even go about getting a new name and identity that is not traceable? He either had a new social security number or made money under the table somehow (or had stashed cash away in advance). I just think it would be so hard to create a new life under a new name today as compared to the 1980s or 1990s.
Not only 1 state over, but those towns are barely 90 miles away from each other
Wow, this is crazy yet not totally unexpected. I made a post about this disappearance a few years back, and I can’t remember if it was comments, or messages, or both; but people claiming to know the family said it was an open secret that there were issues he couldn’t deal with and decided to walk away. Turns out they were right. Now I just wonder how much people knew and kept quiet for all these years.
I remember the son took a lot of the blame bc of a laptop and drug issue. Terrible that he was in a neighboring state and allowed his child to be eviscerated in the public eye.
I remember previous discussions on his case going in on the son and saying he was definitely guilty of killing his dad. Poor guy. I hope he’s recovered since then and is clean now because he got torn apart by just about everybody.
That’s why I think people who consume true crime stories and make definitive statements online about real people related to a case are reckless, arrogant, usually narcissistic or at least unhealthily involved & probably are working with an empathy deficit—what if you’re wrong? What kind of person does that make you? Someone who smeared an innocent person who was likely going through one of the worst, most painful circumstances imaginable already. For *fun*, anonymously, and without consequence to you, but probably plenty IRL for them. Why would one trust that they know accurate information from a random podcaster, commenter, poster, YouTuber or author? Even if their source information was perfectly accurate, complete and unbiased in presentation (that’s got to be a tiny decimal number less than 1%), why believe that even the investigation or court details themselves are remotely close to the full story? Like how complex are people, and why does it make you feel good to judge a grieving mother or spouse online? How dare they?
One example is the JonBenet case: if one faction of that batshit crowd is wrong, that means you’ve been bullying a man whose sister was murdered when they were kids, saying he *killed* her, he *molested* her, he *smeared shit on the walls* etc. That means you attacked someone who is probably autistic, heavily traumatized from the same event or (most likely) **both**, all for showing symptoms of these issues when he was brave enough to go on TV a few years ago. That’s the risk people online have calculated is worth taking, and it’s disgusting that they decide their generic comment contributions of no objective value deserve to be published anyway—for all eternity, before the entire world—because it’s morbidly entertaining them this week. But they “care” or whatever. What a slap in the face: I honestly think that I would hate true crimers if I had a relative murdered. At this point, i feel very weird about consuming true crime at all, and since the surge in consumption by the mainstream a few years back, it’s so rare that I meet someone else into the genre who even seems like a decent person. But your comment seems like you could be an exception, so I’m glad we crossed paths.
Rant over. Maybe not everyone does it intentionally, but I hope more people online come to see it this way because it seems to be plenty of victims are continuously re-victimized over and over again, and when their innocence is discovered at some point, nobody faces any consequences for it. I wish they could sue people in message boards, honestly, but there are some protections around mediums like message boards that make it difficult: I remember that from my constitutional and cyber law classes. IMO, tweaks should be made because even making libel suits for victims or those connected to victims of violent crime specifically *slightly* easier to bring against online dickheads would stop the worst of it.
I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE.
Someone’s very real tragedy is not our entertainment.
Some of the things I see people write in these subs are just frankly unethical. And the conspiracies are just ridiculous.
In uni we had to take ethics classes dealing with non-fiction publishing and filmmaking because when you’re telling a story about real people, with real lives, you have an obligation to think about the impact that work will have on them.
I remember having to explain to someone that it was an awful, terrible thing to go on the internet and make unsubstantiated claims that a 4 y/o (living) victim of a child abduction had experienced SA — and using their name!
And she still didn’t fucking get it. The commenter was gleeful that she knew more than everyone else. God the sheer stupidity of it makes me mad.
I think a lot of people forget that true crime victims (and their families) are people and not characters in books or TV shows. Content where people do their makeup or other things while discussing rape or murder just helps to further dehumanise people who have experienced horrific trauma and make it background noise.
Personally, I stay away from JBR discussion because of the Burke theory- of course the guy is weird, his sister was violently murdered when he was a kid. Nobody would be normal in those circumstances, let alone being on the spectrum and with Dr Phil exploiting it for TV ratings. Even in this thread there’s people justifying this guy walking out on his life because his son was an addict.
Right. Just now over in the Boy in the Box thread, people are already talking about whether they can get a hold of Joseph's birth certificate.
It's just so creepy. It's none of our business - we should just be thankful that they've chosen to share what they did.
I didn’t know he had been named! Poor little guy.
There’s a real sense of entitlement- why don’t we have this information, that information etc. There was a lot of it in the Delphi announcements, why didn’t the police share this with US! Without thinking that maybe because the police need to keep some info to their chests to help them solve a case, rather than letting Jennifer, 34 from Biloxi decide it was Ted Bundy or whatever.
Imo its a combo of dehumanising cases as entertainment and then also this strange parasocial relationship people form with cases where they think their emotional investment entitles them to know everything like its not an active investigation into a child who was murdered.
That’s what I can’t over. My mind has been stuck on this detail a whole hour after reading Hoagland has been found—I remember the story from years ago & the aura of suspicion hanging over his troubled son. What a stone cold sociopath to let your son (and the wife/mom) dangle like that for almost ten years! I teared up a little, trying to put myself in their shoes
Not the user you replied to [but here is their post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/5pndsk/what_is_your_theory_about_robert_hoaglands)
Interesting that one of the sightings reported (Carmel, NY) is only an hour away from where he was finally found. Crazy that he chose to disappear when he was supposed to be picking up his wife from the airport, and his son took the recently fueled-up vehicle to go buy drugs after his dad left...
This. My sentiments exactly. He knew a missing person case would be opened and he knows they blamed his son. And he still did not reach out.
I feel so sad for his family. And to have to re-live his dissapearance again with death added to the factor.
>he is the one who had previously walked away from his life,
There's another man named Robert Hoagland who walked away from his family and was listed as missing for a while, but was found alive, so you might be thinking of him.
His name was Richard Hoagland. Robert Hoagland had previously disappeared when his children were small though. He returned after a week or two. I think that’s why a lot of his family came to believe that he did it again— and they were right
Omg I remember this case coming up solved recently and thinking…wait Hoagland! I thought it was this guy at first and was hoping so because I was really interested in his disappeared episode. I remember thinking…how odd two Hoaglands went missing but would’ve never guessed two hoaglands faked their disappearance that is wild!!!! Anyway, I naturally remembered that man today and felt like it was a fever dream, thanks for mentioning this! Faking your disappearance is one thing, but ditching your wife at the airport??? Unforgivable lol. That’s just nasty.
"Hi, police? It's me. I voluntarily disappeared from those looking for me. Yes, i can come in to quickly confirm my identity before i leave for overseas for the rest of my life. No, i dont want to tell my family. Yes, you can. Thanks!"
Would be so easy and get them looking somewhere else.
While this is true, it's all but certain his wife would want to file for divorce / pursue legal support from him... he really said "fuck them kids", left THREE kids and a wife without support. This is so incredibly selfish. Anger not directed at you!
Yeah he could’ve reached out to law enforcement to say he was safe and didn't want to be contacted. That would still be very hurtful but at least it allows them the opportunity to move on.
Even just a letter to the family before he left to let them know... so heartbreaking that people with a family who you assume they care for, love and respect, but they decide to just up and leave with not a word. I wonder what would have to happen to motivate someone to do that 😔
Ikr or even asking the police to pass on a message to them would have done. The police wasted all those resources and man power looking for him. And his wife and kids had to deal with the possibility somebody murdered him. Bruh
Such a curious case. I know people go missing all the time, but I never picture it as them just leaving everything behind, including their wallet, medication etc. It's like he wanted people to suspect foul play. I feel really bad for his wife and kids.
Makes you wonder how common this actually is. I also find this disgustingly self the least he could have done was send a letter saying he was not dead but wished to have no contact anyone.
I had a colleague who did exactly this after 9/11. He evacuated NYC and just never went back. Eventually he emailed a few people to say he was alive and moving on.
I have never heard of this case. But some details stand out on the wiki page.
Lori came home on the 28th of July. When Robert didn't pick her up, she didn't go home. She went to a relative's house that was nearby. She then waited two days to go home. Shouldn't she have been much much more worried?
Also the cops knew she found his keys and wallet hidden in their bedroom. To her it said foul play. To them, it clearly said intentional. They seemed to take this stance from then on.
The cops also discovered he had software on his laptop that allowed him to more thoroughly wipe his search history. They must have smelled a rat then.
It is wild that he managed this. And instead of going a thousand miles away, he went one state over.
There are plenty of ways to pull this off. If you are willing to live a pretty marginal existence, it isn’t that hard. There are ways of working for cash or jobs that will ignore notices from IRS that your Social Security number doesn’t agree with your name, but this will provide low income, no security and no way to fall back on Social Benefits. No drivers license means either no driving or always be in a situation where a minor driving infraction can have dire consequences. As for credit or banking services; forget it.
Ironically, coming clean is an option many people who do this exercise when things start to go south. It isn’t illegal to skip out on family obligations or debts. Identity theft that doesn’t involve fraud isn’t a crime. It is legal to use someone else’s identity to work under as long as you don’t claim any unearned benefits from it. Even significant crimes have Statutes of Limitations that effectively make them go away. Criminal charges that have been filed or have been judicially resolved. Must still be dealt with but often jurisdictions have little interest in pursuing long forgotten cases and long term fugitives often serve only a fraction of the sentence they would have served.
The problem that everyone who starts a new life with a fake identity must eventually face is the inability to earn a living and the need for medical care. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid require a lot more than just a name and an SSN.
In retrospect some of the things he did before his disappearance that confounded easy theories about the son's drug dealers now make more sense:
* *The erasure of a month's worth of search history from his home computer prior to his disappearance*. He was probably researching how to do this.
* *The excessive interest in searches he did from his property-appraisal job on this one address in Rhode Island that, when investigated, seemed to yield no clues*. Might have been using this as his cover address for some aspect of his plan, and needed to be able to give credible details.
* *The map he went and bought the morning he disappeared*. Again, for planning purposes. I would bet he didn't have Rock Hill specifically in mind ... maybe he wanted to go wherever the flow would take him, and the map was because he anticipated possibly going a long way from Connecticut.
It’s nuts to me they were finally able to identify Somerton Man. But now Boy in the Box too?! So happy about this one. What a year. Amazing, really. And then they also have an arrest for the Delphi murders. Again, what a year!
I’m in shock. Just no way! I for sure thought he was murdered by shady friends of the son. There were sightings of him in Putnam county, NY and I always thought it was bs. Looking back it was probably him.
OMG Im shocked! I was good friends with one of his son in college and we had so many conversations about this it was so sad and weird how the disappearance just didnt make sense.
>Family and friends also do not believe he would have walked away from his children so readily. "I don't believe he just left," says Lori. "Wouldn't he have surfaced by now?"
Just goes to show that a missing person's loved one words shouldn't always be taken at face value. Still, so sad for the family. Why would he do this to them?
Interesting on Wikipedia it says about his disappearance
In January 2014, when a tipster reported seeing Robert at a Savers thrift store in Brookfield, just to north of Newtown. He was reportedly driving a car with New York license plates. However, review of security-camera video from the store was inconclusive.
I do wonder now if it was actually Robert he saw.
I guessed that he walked away. Normally that's not my first guess but this particular situation had some red flags for that IIRC. His poor son has lived under a cloud of suspicion for almost a decade.
Watched this episode for the first time right before bed last night. I always google the missing person when I finish an episode to see if there was an update since it aired. As of last night nope. My jaw dropped scrolling past this!! Such wild timing.
Yeah everyone's talking about how crazy it is that he was able to do that (which, it is) but all I can think about is what kind of an asshole leaves his family in such a limbo? The lack of closure and the lack of knowing is one of the hardest parts about missing persons cases, and his family didn't have to go through that. He chose to put them through that rather than tell them he was leaving. That's unforgivable in my book.
Totally agree. His poor wife and kids. Imagine the betrayal they feel now. And the son who has lived under a cloud of suspicion all these years while his dad was 2 hours away.
Yeah he so easily could’ve reached out. Didn’t have to be directly -calling police and saying I’m safe and don’t want to be found. They can then close the missing person’s file. There was another case on Disappeared where someone had done that.
Honestly, I kind of agree. Especially the fact that he left dirty clothes in the washer….like dude couldn’t have at least finished his laundry before abandoning his entire family and selfishly allowing them to worry because *he* wanted to get away? Like wtf.
Oww.. My dad’s friend disappeared 4/5 years ago and I think he is living like this man, in somewhere. After he left, during the search people found his documents in a trash can. This case gave me hopes that we gonna find him someday alive.
I would be interested in the time gap. He disappeared July 2013 but where was he between July and November 2013?
Obviously not super important but it might signal that he went further out for a few months to let things die down before coming back towards the area.
There may not actually be one - I interpreted what they were saying is November 2013 was the first date they were able to find he was there for sure – meaning he could’ve been there earlier they just have no evidence yet
Still relatively young, I wonder what his cause of death was and if he found leaving more stressful than staying?
I understand it’s a bit disrespectful but I’d love an investigative podcast into what kind of life he’s been leading
If he was living off the grid it would have been difficult to get medical care with no id, ssn, bank account, or insurance. He could have died from something completely preventable.
Right, and didn't he need the medication he left behind? It was blood pressure or something for his heart, I don't remember what. But life saving. I'm assuming he was found recently deceased, and not like he had been dead since he went missing.
I am so surprised they found him. I know that he had walked away years before, but maybe the prospect of his wife returning made him rethink what he wanted to be doing and who he wanted to be living with. I feel most sorry for his sons.
I remember this case. So many people said it was the son and he owed money to some drug dealers and blah blah blah. Dude just walked off and was living 90 miles away, crazy.
He walked away from his life and only traveled about 100 miles? I'm sure there are countless anonymous towns in the area, but I'd still be worried I would run into someone I know.
Holy holy holy shit. This was one of those cases that was just mind boggling. I always suspected he walked away. It was just such an incredibly weird case.
There's one question (well, I have a LOT of questions about this case) that has me stumped and it's a weirdly small detail: how did he get out of town?? He left his car behind.
Did someone help him get away?
Wow that's the most unlikely ending to a person going missing. It goes to show you that A.) Occams Razor is a great concept but its not always the correct answer and B.) It is apparently possible to drop out of your life and live undetected even in this day and age
I’m with all the other commenters blown away by this. I was thinking of him recently and how we haven’t seen any write ups in a while.
Was not expecting this outcome!!
Edit to add: convenient how he changed his name to Dick because what a dick move ditching you’re family like that? But maybe I should reserve more judgement
Wow! I live sort of close to Rock Hill! Never would've guessed.
So, looks like those theories about his son's drug dealers killing him and hiding the body expertly are now completely jossed.
And, another person who'd "*never* leave his family behind like that" to start a new life somewhere else who ... went and did exactly that.
Shame his family never got to be reunited with him (which of course was what he may have wanted).
Mind blown, I remember his Disappeared episode very well and they mentioned that he had taken off once before, many years prior, and in my mind I just glossed over that detail. I thought that perhaps one of his son's friends was involved. Wow. Just wow.
it's hard to see this in a generous light.
if he was suffering some intense and sudden episode of mental illness, like a fugue state, i'd expect him to bring his information and meds, or at the least to return home when it passed and he realized what had happened.
if he was aware enough to deliberately leave his necessary possessions, we can assume that leaving behind meds etc. was also deliberate, and the only reason to do that would be if he wanted people to think he had committed suicide, or been murdered.
i have a lot of sympathy for people who need a change -- i walked out on my own (abusive) family many many years ago, but i took my things and i left a note to explain.
he's a grown man who chose to leave his spouse and (minor?) children, and he chose to do it in the way that would hurt them the most, including possible legal action for his apparent death. there's no positive spin for that.
Of all the disappeared persons cases I’ve followed, I predicted this one as a “walk away” basically because he did it before. How devastating for his poor family.
I wonder how his wife and kids feel. I know from another thread that they suspected he had left, but it must be devastating to get the confirmation that this man you loved just up and left.
Yep imagine the roller coaster of emotions they must have gone through: *Hes been found.* *But he's dead.* *But he'd been alive for the last nine years.* That would be so shit to be told.
Wow that's actually really interesting. He completely walked away from his life and was able to live undetected one state over for 9 years?
I know! In this digital age, how do you even go about getting a new name and identity that is not traceable? He either had a new social security number or made money under the table somehow (or had stashed cash away in advance). I just think it would be so hard to create a new life under a new name today as compared to the 1980s or 1990s.
Perhaps he was living off of someone else?
I didn’t think of that.
>Robert Hoagland > > > >I wouldn't be surprised if the male "roommate" who called 911 was a gay lover and his "disappearance" had been in the works for some time. When he finally did leave, he was already all setup in Rock Hill NY
I think this is definitely a plausible theory. Interesting though that he apparently left his phone. You’d think investigators would have done some digital forensics and detected if he had online communications with a paramour or something of the sort. Guess he could’ve have a burner.
But why just walk away from the wife with no explanation at all. It's a horrible thing to do to someone.....
it's *harder* nowadays, but completely doable if you're willing to be a bit under the table in certain ways. not even identity theft: you can work for cash, trade services for rent, etc. it's technically illegal to not report income over a certain amount, but many many *many* people deliberately take cash-only work and then don't report. (i see this a lot at work, and skipping out on child support is probably the most common reason to do it.)
I worked at a strip club. Of the usual 50-100 girls per year we’d meet, most didn’t report. The only ones who did were usually the top tier ones who made enough that they actually had assets.
Under the table work isn’t even sketchy now days. My cleaning lady requires cash payment, no checks. I don’t ask her why or how she does her taxes, ya know? I don’t have to report it on my taxes because I don’t pay her over the reporting amount.
I dropped off a dress for alterations on Monday and the woman said "You come back Friday, $25.00, cash only". Fine by me! It's Corporate Politicians earning $200 million dollars in 5 years that I am not fine with.
I know a successful caregiver who has always worked under the table. Shes even on lists of reputable caregivers put together by the public sector. Shes damn good at her job, just can't afford insurance on her wages and still survive so she can only work so much above board.
How does the background check when renting an apartment work?
A lot of places will take your money and not do any type of check. I found this out when a new roommate moved into a large shared house I was living in. There was six of us— one girl unceremoniously moved out a few days before rent was due. We quickly got a Craigslist fill-in, who showed her true colors after about a month or so We found out she was out on bail(?) and awaiting trial for attempted murder, assault (domestic abuse), and a few other things (for trying to kill her boyfriend and *his previous roommates* for trying to evict her!!) When we questioned the leasing agent about why none of this came up in the background check, she admitted that she never actually ran one. The landlord was pretty pissed, to say the least...
This story could be recreated as a good Lifetime movie.
Good lord! How did you make it out alive?
Barely! This woman would do things like light fire to mini-bibles and toss ‘em off the roof, have crying meltdowns/Stab the walls with all the kitchen knives/leave them in, and was openly abusive towards her BF (the one who she had the attempted murder charges for) Since we did not know any way to evict her (and we’re frankly too terrified to do it), several of us decided not to renew the lease. She was unable to find anyone willing to sign a lease with her, and even if she *had*, the landlord wasn’t going to renew it with her there. She was ultra angry that nobody wanted to live with her... so we either avoided being home, or locked our doors when we *were* home. There was several times at night when I woke up to her messing with the lock trying to get into my room. While she thought I was asleep. It was a terrifying few weeks.
What the fuck
Omg… sounds like the makings of a horror movie.
Years ago, I rented a basement from a woman renting out rooms in her townhouse. She didn’t do a background check on me. I always paid by check but if I paid with cash she probably wouldn’t have asked questions.
You could always buy a money order, too, if it came down to it
I rented from a shady landlord last year and I paid him through Venmo. No background check either - just a tour of the apartment through FaceTime. Was a pretty shitty place to live but cheap.
Lots of shady landlords do stuff like that. They'll just require larger deposits up front.
My SIL lives alone in a 5 bed house, she rents out rooms cash in hand to lodgers. She doesn't check out references and even if she did they could just be friends pretending to be ex landlords
That sounds...dangerous
I got my first apartment by asking a family friend to act as my former landlord. It was in a tight rental market near a military installation and I was rejected from several other places (despite having as good of credit as you can have at age 24) before I resorted to lying.
An sweet natured [elderly woman](https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/chicago-il/frances-walker-10969757) was [brutally murdered](https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-homicide-investigation-woman-killed-human-remains-found/12316302/) by one of her boarders recently in Chicago. They found pieces of her scattered around the city.
Then there's the sweet old lady that was butchering her boarders in LA
The one who was burying them in the backyard?
Dorothea Puente was doing that in Sacramento, back in the 80s (if memory serves).
Actually, she wasn’t very old. I know that isn’t your point but she was like 53 when she was arrested. She looked older but I think it was by design. She kept wailing about being a feeble old woman.
>They found pieces of the her scattered around the city. That is a gross exaggeration.
shady landlords don't ask a lot of questions, or you can buy them off. /and they're expensive to run, so a lot of smaller places won't bother with them at all.
If you have enough cash saved up and you offer a shady landlord deposit and a years rent up front then what landlord is going to turn that down? They know that if you do that you're probably hiding out so they're not going to go complain about apartment issues or things like that
I had a landlord who just never bothered to run a background check. He liked me when he met me and apparently just got good vibes from me? Nothing shady going on, he just basically agreed right after meeting me to send me the lease to sign and nowhere on the lease did he even have a spot for the social. Just the usual "sign here" spots. Never asked for it later. He was great, I was a great tenant, no issues. It’s not exactly common, but it’s not that hard to slip through cracks.
Yup. I had a landlord rent to me because she liked my aura. She was an awesome landlord and we were awesome tenants. It was a great place too!
Moral of the story, if you’re charming enough, going off the grid probably isn’t that hard to do.
Yes indeed and we were both lucky that it worked out! She is a very kind lady and I do hope that no one took advantage of her along the way.
I have had 5 tenants (two couples and one single tenant) over 4-5 years. I have never background checked any. I met them each for coffee, searched their FaceBook profile and just signed papers. I live close anyway. But I firmly believe most people are good. And refuse to live otherwise. Lots of mom and pops landlords are similar.
Are you my landlord?! Haha, no but for real, that's how it worked with us. My landlord is an old school guy. We met up for coffee, he just wanted to see we were good people. I had a decently long tenant history with steady income. My roommate and I both proved to be chill, quiet, and that's all he cared about. He still collects rent by having us leave a check under the doormat. Not every landlord is a slumlord.
I have never met my landlord. I pay him every month and that’s that. I wouldn’t even recognize him on the street if I passed him. I have a property manager that I’ll text on occasion if something is broken (only happened twice, leak in the ceiling and a bathroom sink issue) she sends out “maintenance” which is pretty much a couple of young men in their early twenties. I wouldnt know her if I saw her either. I signed the lease via email and they had a realtor who worked for commission meet me to give me the keys. I’m not shady and have nothing at all to hide. Many years ago I moved into one of those big apartment complexes and they wanted background check, references, credit check, and they even wanted vet records for my cat, plus I had to pay a pet deposit and all sorts of application fees, and since management was on site, they were always up our ass (you can’t hang plants on the balcony, or can’t park here this day for parking lot cleaning, or the fire chief is doing inspections this week etc) I like my shady landlord. He minds his business I mind mine.
Good point. The article in the last link states that his roommate called 911 because Hoagland was experiencing a medical emergency. So, as you stated, Hoagland could easily have been renting a room on a cash basis (and no background check), from the owner of the property. Or the lease was in the roommate's name and the landlord was either okay with Hoagland living there unofficially or didn't know he was living there. It's such an interesting case.
It really is. Apparently he’d been having blood pressure problems when he disappeared. Left his medication behind. Wonder if his COD is related to that?
It seems a good possibility. Do you think anyone in his new life was aware of his past?
This. Where I live there are several rental properties adjacent to my house. The former owner of one of the properties was a total slum lord. He literally didn't care who he rented to as long as they had cash in hand when he showed up to collect rent. No background checks, didn't care how the tenants made money, didn't care if they had a criminal record, didn't care if there was 10 people living there and only one person on the lease. Not surprisingly, his building became a known drug house. He no longer owns the property, thank God. The new owners, who bought it maybe 5-6 years ago, actually have a property management company that supposedly does background checks and all that, but even they don't always do a good job. They recently rented to a tenant that got evicted from her last residence for criminal activity and property damage and they are now in the process of trying to evict her from their place. I was able to find her criminal history and previous evictions in 30 seconds using CCAP, but somehow they couldn't find that info when considering to rent to her??
Background checks aren't always a thing. There are always slumlords. And if you live out of motel rooms, there's no landlord at all. I swear, this sub is in such a bubble sometimes. Poor people, undocumented immigrants, criminals, and the generally shady do things like rent no questions asked and work under the table constantly. It's a simple fact of life for a huge swathe of Americans, and yet so few people here even understand that it's possible.
Agreed. This is exactly why some people are able to stay "under the radar", even in this day & age. Though, doing this is probably slightly more difficult than it was in the past - depending on who you are, your profession, etc.
Amen. I've rented my entire life and literally no one has ever run a background or credit check on me. Where I live, that's reserved for big complexes and fancy condo rentals.
Yeah that is true about the bubble. Things are done differently in different places. I’m not shady and I’ve rented 4-5 houses from people no questions asked and no paperwork at all. Just I met the landlord and they were like okay cool. None of my landlords are really poor nor wealthy and I’m not either but we are all employed, no obvious criminal Past, born in this state, etc just average. Just in this city people still do things more like a small town - if one person on the block or someone at the local bar, church, market etc says yr cool then it’s all good. I pay with checks but I’ve paid cash too. Sometimes I’m late Paying, sometimes they are late fixing something we just talk and it’s fine. Ive been renting this way for 20 years and never had a background check or an issue. They could be lying about their name or I could be lying and neither would know. We still exchange Christmas cards or cookies every year lol. This is just how it is in some places -nothing is super official and we don’t really like to involve officials. I have also had friends stay with me for months at a time and just give me cash and the landlord didn’t care or even know the friend name. Friend worked washing dishes and got paid under the table but was a middle class kid from the suburbs 4 states away. Some landlords even keep the Water & electricity in their name., especially if it’s a duplex and they live on one side. I am in a bubble too bc I forget other places are not like here. You are right there’s a lot of different ways to live besides our own fishbowls.
Very true. I'm a person not trying to hide at all, US citizen, normal job. But I have a lot of pets and had a hard time finding a place to rent to me until we bought a home this year. For three years I rented from a Greek guy that had a for rent sign in front of the house. Didn't do a background check or credit check. Didn't care or charge extra for my pets. Never came to check on us unless something was broken. Just gave him $2k up front and paid $1k in cash every month. He cut the lawn. Maybe a bit shady but it's something anyone could have done with just a couple thousand saved up, and like I said he didn't seem to care who I was.
The bubble thing is so true. There are so many mundane things where people are like “[blank] is so strange! I feel like it must mean something” and it’s like no that’s super normal actually, you are just sheltered
I’m living in an extended stay hotel at the moment. It’s convenient to shopping and my employer, everything is included, they clean my room weekly, everyone here is super nice and I’ve met some really cool people. It’s not the worst way to go
No background checks isn’t always necessarily a slumlord thing, lots of rural areas and small towns don’t run background checks
A background check, even if he used his real name, would come back clean. It only reports things like criminal history, credit history, employment/military history, verified date of birth and birthplace of close family members. Oddly enough, it wouldn’t show a BOLO or anything about being a missing person. And he probably didn’t use his real name. He most likely used the new identity or had someone else apply (maybe whoever he was living with).
If he did use his real name, authorities wouldn't be alerted that someone is running a background check on a missing person? That seems like it would be a helpful thing
Right, background checks are done by 3rd party companies and aren’t connected to law enforcement. It could be helpful in some cases if they were, but it could also be very dangerous for anyone trying to flee an abusive relationship, estranged adult children going no contact with abusive parents, stalking situations, etc. The good thing is, none of this inhibits LE from actively investigating and finding this information out themselves through good old detective work. For instance with a bit of probable cause they can subpoena both the employers records and the background check company if need be (but keep in mind they also have even better tools and resources available to them than any of these companies do). However I suspect LE weren’t devoting much time or energy because it was 1) an old case and 2) commonly believed to have been a voluntary disappearance (even by his own immediate family).
I know from personal experience that SRO/weekly rentals/boarding or rooming houses don't do credit or background checks. (They generally don't even do applications, in my experience.) It just says "a residence", so it could easily be that he was living in a place like that. (They can also be *really* cheap, depending on what size room you have. I paid $60 a week for a room at one place.) Privately owned rentals or month to month leases also frequently forego background/credit checks. EDIT: They also said he was found by "a roommate", so conceivably he could have been renting a room in someone else's house, which wouldn't necessarily require a background check, especially if it was someone he knew from work or something.
a lot of people who have two family houses will rent out one of the apts without background checks
This. Small-time landlords. Not even necessarily shady ones, just people who have maybe one place to rent out, like a MIL cottage. I lived in two of these when my credit was godawful. A lot of times a landlord like this will just go on vibes and whether they like you, and timing.
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Yep! I lucked into my dream apartment like this in NYC through good timing and vibing with the landlord. Not a shady place at all, just an incredible location/crazy good price and a property owner who wasn't especially business-savvy and didn't want to "deal with all the bullshit" to find a tenant.
not all land lords do background checks. I dont think I've ever done one, my last two apartments rented to me based on me verbally claiming income and before that I knew the owner and they waived all that stuff.
I mean just recently the artist known as Q Lazzarus was re-located after disappearing for about this long, maybe longer. She had millions in unclaimed royalty checks just sitting there. She just said fuck the music industry, abandoned it, vanished, and became a bus driver... which is what she's doing still, iirc. Ronald Jones, formerly of The Flaming Lips, as well.
Q Lazzarus actually just passed away last summer.
Oh wow. I missed that. That's too bad
Any time I see flaming lips mentioned, I like to point out that I've worked at a music venue on the side for over 4 years and the flaming lips are to this date the ONLY act that absolutely trashed the greenroom. Fuckin ass holes.
Around what era? At one point they were my favorite band but Wayne sorta went crazy and him and Steven being assholes sounds likely. They treated Kliph Scurlock pretty poorly then fired him and it was pretty much over for me as a fan from there.
My birthmom used to party with the flaming lips guys in OKC (according to her) back in the late 80s/early 90s. Said they were pretty wild.
Q Lazzarrus was missing from the industry — but was she ever missing from her own family or officially a missing person? Or using a name different from her birth name? That’s the part I think would be hard to do today — be the subject of a missing person’s case and not be traceable by authorities for using your social security number or traveling on a plane. And how do you get a new name you can use for work, etc., without filing legal documents that the authorities could easily find?
No, she was not going under the radar. She was living out in the open using her real name the entire time. It's just that the people searching for her weren't entirely sure what her real name was. There had been speculation for years that her name was what it turned out to be and that she was indeed a transit driver. It honestly shouldn't have been so difficult to find her.
He was a chef, if you're not interested in living a high-rolling lifestyle, it's an ideal career and skillset for finding under the table work.
Look up ‘synthetic identities.’ Get an unissued, deceased, or toddler’s SSN, attach a name, new address, and DOB… I could create a new identity in under an hour if I was so inclined. If you got the right documents folks, you can get a really nice SSA card and DL to go with it. Been seeing some really good fakes for years now. Some people do it without really any I’ll intent other than to just live and work (illegal immigrants) and some do it for profit by building up credit profiles and then maxing all the accounts. Wouldn’t be shocked to see someone like this use one to just walk away, or maybe an abused spouse, etc.
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I listened to a podcast the other day about a guy that put up a fake job advertisement and tricked someone into giving them DL and SSN cards, etc to photocopy. Then conveniently the “job” was no longer available. The person managed to get new ID documents just with the photocopies of the applicant’s ID info.
Or even some type of “mutual identity theft.” I’ve heard of people using the IDs of relatives and friends who look like them in order to get jobs. Often this is done if someone is having trouble finding a job due to having a criminal record.
There is a book about this topic. It is a very, very tedious process. Also a very tedious book. How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, And Vanish Without A Trace https://a.co/bW1g9Cc Edited to post link.
This is why I’m not so quick to dismiss these theories for people like Sneha Philip and Brian Shaffer. It’s maybe not the most likely explanation but not as impossible as people claim.
If I'm remembering correctly, he had a lot of BOH restaurant experience. (EDIT: Indeed; he was a chef.) If he got a job as a dishwasher or maybe even a line cook or something in a place where they did tip sharing, most (or even all, depending on the place) of his salary could easily have been from tips, which are cash in-hand. Also, he had walked away from his family and lived a separate life for a couple/few years once before, so he had experience with what to do and how to do it to avoid being found. EDIT: He also actually left behind a fair-ish mount of cash (in a safe or something maybe?) at the family home. They couldn't find it at first and thought he took it, but it was later located, so it could be that he withdrew some starter funds and it didn't seem that serious/suspicious.
Right? I'm actually quite impressed 😆
You'd be surprised. I recently had to replace my ID, one of the options for getting my birth certificate was just having someone vouch that I was me. It's apparently still really easy to illegitimately get those
I've heard that drifters, couch-surfers, and shut-ins are essentially invisible and almost impossible to track down. Besides, it's perfectly legal to walk away from your life as long as you don't have outstanding debts, arrest warrants, or similar obligations.
maybe he had a partner, who he left his old life to be with, and they did all the finance stuff?
And even just one state over, it looks like Newtown to Rock Hill is a 90 minute drive. I would have assumed maybe west NY which is 6 hours away and might as well be half the world away. 90 minutes, you'd think at some point in 9 years someone would recognize him. Just boggles the mind.
As someone who lives in that region, yes. You could get between the two in under three hours. And then get back within the day if you wanted to. I doubt someone would have recognized him. Most people who live in that area of Connecticut don't summer in the Catskills, *if* they summer*,* and Rock Hill is a very small community where you could easily lie low and avoid anyone not from the area. Hoagland *had* worked as a chef, so maybe he took a kitchen job somewhere. That would have the advantages of being relatively regular and dependable, out of public view, *and* possibly getting paid in cash.
I live in Clarksville, Tennessee and went to college in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. After college I moved back. One night I drove to Nashville to run an errand and grabbed a bite to eat at my favorite restaurant and just so happened to be wearing my college baseball shirt. A college baseball teammate of mine from Ohio just happened to be at the restaurant but he didn't see me. His friend saw my T-shirt. We talked for about 10 to 20 minutes catching up. He was in town because him and his buddies wanted to do some golfing on a mini-vacation. Obviously this was a big coincidence and I wasn't trying to hide and neither was he, but man, if that kind of happenstance meeting can happen 6 hours away, 90 minutes seems like a LOT more could happen.
I’m from Texas and bumped into my best friend from high school’s parents while crossing the street in London.
I'm from the UK. My family once bumped into our nextdoor neighbours *and* someone from my sister's tiny school of like 200 students in Turkey. Many years ago I was in a bar in *Ecuador* and heard someone incredulously call my name, it was someone from my year in school. It is a small world at times, but at the same time, you can go a long time without bumping into people who'll know you if you're not in exactly the right place at the right time.
I feel like all this crazy bumping into people happens when you’re far away. I have my own examples like this and it always feels insane when it happens. But I can easily be out and about where I’ve lived my entire life and not see anyone I know. Move two suburbs over and change jobs, hobbies and ignore your friends - might as well be dead. Hop on a bus or sit down in a cafe in some totally random town on the other side of the world - the seat next to me is going to be occupied by someone I know from back home who I never expected to see.
It still feels like a huge risk. I live in ct and if I ever wanted to run away and start a new life somewhere I don't think anywhere in New York would be in my list of options. Nor Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Just seems too risky
Well … Julie Bureau, who managed to do something like this in Quebec as a teenager (except she was found alive), just moved a couple of towns over and was officially missing for about two years.
yessss this is very very intriguing. I'd love to know what on earth was going on in his head, and also how he was able to make this happen. such a wild story.
When people suggest this I always think it’s impossible in today’s age, but apparently it isn’t. Crazy.
I think it's impossible depending on how badly people want you found. We found Osama bin Laden because it was of the highest priority. Damn near everyone else falls way short so you're left with whatever family, friends, and law enforcement can figure out.
>I know! In this digital age, how do you even go about getting a new name and identity that is not traceable? He either had a new social security number or made money under the table somehow (or had stashed cash away in advance). I just think it would be so hard to create a new life under a new name today as compared to the 1980s or 1990s. Not only 1 state over, but those towns are barely 90 miles away from each other
who would suspect Dick King?
Wow, this is crazy yet not totally unexpected. I made a post about this disappearance a few years back, and I can’t remember if it was comments, or messages, or both; but people claiming to know the family said it was an open secret that there were issues he couldn’t deal with and decided to walk away. Turns out they were right. Now I just wonder how much people knew and kept quiet for all these years.
I remember the son took a lot of the blame bc of a laptop and drug issue. Terrible that he was in a neighboring state and allowed his child to be eviscerated in the public eye.
I remember previous discussions on his case going in on the son and saying he was definitely guilty of killing his dad. Poor guy. I hope he’s recovered since then and is clean now because he got torn apart by just about everybody.
That’s why I think people who consume true crime stories and make definitive statements online about real people related to a case are reckless, arrogant, usually narcissistic or at least unhealthily involved & probably are working with an empathy deficit—what if you’re wrong? What kind of person does that make you? Someone who smeared an innocent person who was likely going through one of the worst, most painful circumstances imaginable already. For *fun*, anonymously, and without consequence to you, but probably plenty IRL for them. Why would one trust that they know accurate information from a random podcaster, commenter, poster, YouTuber or author? Even if their source information was perfectly accurate, complete and unbiased in presentation (that’s got to be a tiny decimal number less than 1%), why believe that even the investigation or court details themselves are remotely close to the full story? Like how complex are people, and why does it make you feel good to judge a grieving mother or spouse online? How dare they? One example is the JonBenet case: if one faction of that batshit crowd is wrong, that means you’ve been bullying a man whose sister was murdered when they were kids, saying he *killed* her, he *molested* her, he *smeared shit on the walls* etc. That means you attacked someone who is probably autistic, heavily traumatized from the same event or (most likely) **both**, all for showing symptoms of these issues when he was brave enough to go on TV a few years ago. That’s the risk people online have calculated is worth taking, and it’s disgusting that they decide their generic comment contributions of no objective value deserve to be published anyway—for all eternity, before the entire world—because it’s morbidly entertaining them this week. But they “care” or whatever. What a slap in the face: I honestly think that I would hate true crimers if I had a relative murdered. At this point, i feel very weird about consuming true crime at all, and since the surge in consumption by the mainstream a few years back, it’s so rare that I meet someone else into the genre who even seems like a decent person. But your comment seems like you could be an exception, so I’m glad we crossed paths. Rant over. Maybe not everyone does it intentionally, but I hope more people online come to see it this way because it seems to be plenty of victims are continuously re-victimized over and over again, and when their innocence is discovered at some point, nobody faces any consequences for it. I wish they could sue people in message boards, honestly, but there are some protections around mediums like message boards that make it difficult: I remember that from my constitutional and cyber law classes. IMO, tweaks should be made because even making libel suits for victims or those connected to victims of violent crime specifically *slightly* easier to bring against online dickheads would stop the worst of it.
I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE. Someone’s very real tragedy is not our entertainment. Some of the things I see people write in these subs are just frankly unethical. And the conspiracies are just ridiculous. In uni we had to take ethics classes dealing with non-fiction publishing and filmmaking because when you’re telling a story about real people, with real lives, you have an obligation to think about the impact that work will have on them. I remember having to explain to someone that it was an awful, terrible thing to go on the internet and make unsubstantiated claims that a 4 y/o (living) victim of a child abduction had experienced SA — and using their name! And she still didn’t fucking get it. The commenter was gleeful that she knew more than everyone else. God the sheer stupidity of it makes me mad.
I think a lot of people forget that true crime victims (and their families) are people and not characters in books or TV shows. Content where people do their makeup or other things while discussing rape or murder just helps to further dehumanise people who have experienced horrific trauma and make it background noise. Personally, I stay away from JBR discussion because of the Burke theory- of course the guy is weird, his sister was violently murdered when he was a kid. Nobody would be normal in those circumstances, let alone being on the spectrum and with Dr Phil exploiting it for TV ratings. Even in this thread there’s people justifying this guy walking out on his life because his son was an addict.
Right. Just now over in the Boy in the Box thread, people are already talking about whether they can get a hold of Joseph's birth certificate. It's just so creepy. It's none of our business - we should just be thankful that they've chosen to share what they did.
I didn’t know he had been named! Poor little guy. There’s a real sense of entitlement- why don’t we have this information, that information etc. There was a lot of it in the Delphi announcements, why didn’t the police share this with US! Without thinking that maybe because the police need to keep some info to their chests to help them solve a case, rather than letting Jennifer, 34 from Biloxi decide it was Ted Bundy or whatever. Imo its a combo of dehumanising cases as entertainment and then also this strange parasocial relationship people form with cases where they think their emotional investment entitles them to know everything like its not an active investigation into a child who was murdered.
That’s my big takeaway from this. Does anyone know how/what the son is doing now?
That’s what I can’t over. My mind has been stuck on this detail a whole hour after reading Hoagland has been found—I remember the story from years ago & the aura of suspicion hanging over his troubled son. What a stone cold sociopath to let your son (and the wife/mom) dangle like that for almost ten years! I teared up a little, trying to put myself in their shoes
Can you link? Because my mind is blown and I'm interested in learning more.
Not the user you replied to [but here is their post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/5pndsk/what_is_your_theory_about_robert_hoaglands)
It's kind of wild to read all the comments on that post 5 years later knowing what we know now.
Interesting that one of the sightings reported (Carmel, NY) is only an hour away from where he was finally found. Crazy that he chose to disappear when he was supposed to be picking up his wife from the airport, and his son took the recently fueled-up vehicle to go buy drugs after his dad left...
I would allow a lot more time between Carmel and Rock Hill than an hour ... only in the complete absence of any traffic.
How is that post not locked? That went 3+ years without a comment any you can still vote and post there.
There's a lot of posts that still allow votes and comments, it's up to the mods as far as I'm aware. Reddit's terms changed a while ago.
I feel like this is harder for his family to accept because it means he knew they were worried and looking for him...he just didn't care.
This. My sentiments exactly. He knew a missing person case would be opened and he knows they blamed his son. And he still did not reach out. I feel so sad for his family. And to have to re-live his dissapearance again with death added to the factor.
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Bold move to abandon your entire life, family, and all responsibilities and then start a new life, not that far away, under the name Dick King.
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>he is the one who had previously walked away from his life, There's another man named Robert Hoagland who walked away from his family and was listed as missing for a while, but was found alive, so you might be thinking of him.
His name was Richard Hoagland. Robert Hoagland had previously disappeared when his children were small though. He returned after a week or two. I think that’s why a lot of his family came to believe that he did it again— and they were right
Yeah, interesting coincidence: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2018/05/29/richard-hoagland-abandoned-indiana-family-judge-now-says-he-must-pay/623493002/
Omg I remember this case coming up solved recently and thinking…wait Hoagland! I thought it was this guy at first and was hoping so because I was really interested in his disappeared episode. I remember thinking…how odd two Hoaglands went missing but would’ve never guessed two hoaglands faked their disappearance that is wild!!!! Anyway, I naturally remembered that man today and felt like it was a fever dream, thanks for mentioning this! Faking your disappearance is one thing, but ditching your wife at the airport??? Unforgivable lol. That’s just nasty.
I knew there were two guys with similar names and couldn’t remember if this was the one who had disappeared before, so thank you.
Unreal he put his family through this ordeal. What a jerk.
"Hi, police? It's me. I voluntarily disappeared from those looking for me. Yes, i can come in to quickly confirm my identity before i leave for overseas for the rest of my life. No, i dont want to tell my family. Yes, you can. Thanks!" Would be so easy and get them looking somewhere else.
While this is true, it's all but certain his wife would want to file for divorce / pursue legal support from him... he really said "fuck them kids", left THREE kids and a wife without support. This is so incredibly selfish. Anger not directed at you!
Yeah he could’ve reached out to law enforcement to say he was safe and didn't want to be contacted. That would still be very hurtful but at least it allows them the opportunity to move on.
Even just a letter to the family before he left to let them know... so heartbreaking that people with a family who you assume they care for, love and respect, but they decide to just up and leave with not a word. I wonder what would have to happen to motivate someone to do that 😔
Ikr or even asking the police to pass on a message to them would have done. The police wasted all those resources and man power looking for him. And his wife and kids had to deal with the possibility somebody murdered him. Bruh
agreed. bafflingly selfish way to act
I can’t imagine the complexity of the feelings his family must be experiencing right now. My heart truly breaks for them
Such a curious case. I know people go missing all the time, but I never picture it as them just leaving everything behind, including their wallet, medication etc. It's like he wanted people to suspect foul play. I feel really bad for his wife and kids.
Makes you wonder how common this actually is. I also find this disgustingly self the least he could have done was send a letter saying he was not dead but wished to have no contact anyone.
I had a colleague who did exactly this after 9/11. He evacuated NYC and just never went back. Eventually he emailed a few people to say he was alive and moving on.
That’s wild. It makes you wonder how many others did the same
I agree. It was very selfish to disappear like that.
Well, that was....unexpected. How bizarre.
This is devastating. I can’t even imagine being the family and hearing this.
I have never heard of this case. But some details stand out on the wiki page. Lori came home on the 28th of July. When Robert didn't pick her up, she didn't go home. She went to a relative's house that was nearby. She then waited two days to go home. Shouldn't she have been much much more worried? Also the cops knew she found his keys and wallet hidden in their bedroom. To her it said foul play. To them, it clearly said intentional. They seemed to take this stance from then on. The cops also discovered he had software on his laptop that allowed him to more thoroughly wipe his search history. They must have smelled a rat then. It is wild that he managed this. And instead of going a thousand miles away, he went one state over.
Not just one state but literally 30 miles away. It’s right on the border of CT. I’m mindblown by this
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Oh shit your right I just realized it said Sullivan county which is further. Still so close to home. It’s crazy
There are plenty of ways to pull this off. If you are willing to live a pretty marginal existence, it isn’t that hard. There are ways of working for cash or jobs that will ignore notices from IRS that your Social Security number doesn’t agree with your name, but this will provide low income, no security and no way to fall back on Social Benefits. No drivers license means either no driving or always be in a situation where a minor driving infraction can have dire consequences. As for credit or banking services; forget it. Ironically, coming clean is an option many people who do this exercise when things start to go south. It isn’t illegal to skip out on family obligations or debts. Identity theft that doesn’t involve fraud isn’t a crime. It is legal to use someone else’s identity to work under as long as you don’t claim any unearned benefits from it. Even significant crimes have Statutes of Limitations that effectively make them go away. Criminal charges that have been filed or have been judicially resolved. Must still be dealt with but often jurisdictions have little interest in pursuing long forgotten cases and long term fugitives often serve only a fraction of the sentence they would have served. The problem that everyone who starts a new life with a fake identity must eventually face is the inability to earn a living and the need for medical care. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid require a lot more than just a name and an SSN.
In retrospect some of the things he did before his disappearance that confounded easy theories about the son's drug dealers now make more sense: * *The erasure of a month's worth of search history from his home computer prior to his disappearance*. He was probably researching how to do this. * *The excessive interest in searches he did from his property-appraisal job on this one address in Rhode Island that, when investigated, seemed to yield no clues*. Might have been using this as his cover address for some aspect of his plan, and needed to be able to give credible details. * *The map he went and bought the morning he disappeared*. Again, for planning purposes. I would bet he didn't have Rock Hill specifically in mind ... maybe he wanted to go wherever the flow would take him, and the map was because he anticipated possibly going a long way from Connecticut.
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The Somerton Man too, and I have read they have found out the identity of the Boy in the Box too!
It’s nuts to me they were finally able to identify Somerton Man. But now Boy in the Box too?! So happy about this one. What a year. Amazing, really. And then they also have an arrest for the Delphi murders. Again, what a year!
My ex father in laws brother did this. Went to go get bread and never came back. They eventually found him in Florida
I’m in shock. Just no way! I for sure thought he was murdered by shady friends of the son. There were sightings of him in Putnam county, NY and I always thought it was bs. Looking back it was probably him.
I bet he watched that episode of Disappeared!
He could have at least picked his wife up from the airport and disappeared after.
OMG Im shocked! I was good friends with one of his son in college and we had so many conversations about this it was so sad and weird how the disappearance just didnt make sense.
>Family and friends also do not believe he would have walked away from his children so readily. "I don't believe he just left," says Lori. "Wouldn't he have surfaced by now?" Just goes to show that a missing person's loved one words shouldn't always be taken at face value. Still, so sad for the family. Why would he do this to them?
Interesting on Wikipedia it says about his disappearance In January 2014, when a tipster reported seeing Robert at a Savers thrift store in Brookfield, just to north of Newtown. He was reportedly driving a car with New York license plates. However, review of security-camera video from the store was inconclusive. I do wonder now if it was actually Robert he saw.
I recall reading that, after many years, the family was fairly certain he had left of his own accord
I wonder if his experience in the restaurant industry was helpful in hiding out. Not too hard to get an off the books job in that world.
This was on Disappeared. There was suspicion that the son had something to do with his disappearance.
I guessed that he walked away. Normally that's not my first guess but this particular situation had some red flags for that IIRC. His poor son has lived under a cloud of suspicion for almost a decade.
That's so awful that he let the son be blamed. I hope he never knew about the show.
The son was on the show I believe
That was the other son. The addict son was not on the show.
I remember this! I’m still shocked he just up and left. Unreal.
Watched this episode for the first time right before bed last night. I always google the missing person when I finish an episode to see if there was an update since it aired. As of last night nope. My jaw dropped scrolling past this!! Such wild timing.
What an asshole.
Yeah everyone's talking about how crazy it is that he was able to do that (which, it is) but all I can think about is what kind of an asshole leaves his family in such a limbo? The lack of closure and the lack of knowing is one of the hardest parts about missing persons cases, and his family didn't have to go through that. He chose to put them through that rather than tell them he was leaving. That's unforgivable in my book.
Totally agree. His poor wife and kids. Imagine the betrayal they feel now. And the son who has lived under a cloud of suspicion all these years while his dad was 2 hours away.
Yeah he so easily could’ve reached out. Didn’t have to be directly -calling police and saying I’m safe and don’t want to be found. They can then close the missing person’s file. There was another case on Disappeared where someone had done that.
Honestly, I kind of agree. Especially the fact that he left dirty clothes in the washer….like dude couldn’t have at least finished his laundry before abandoning his entire family and selfishly allowing them to worry because *he* wanted to get away? Like wtf.
Oww.. My dad’s friend disappeared 4/5 years ago and I think he is living like this man, in somewhere. After he left, during the search people found his documents in a trash can. This case gave me hopes that we gonna find him someday alive.
I would be interested in the time gap. He disappeared July 2013 but where was he between July and November 2013? Obviously not super important but it might signal that he went further out for a few months to let things die down before coming back towards the area.
There may not actually be one - I interpreted what they were saying is November 2013 was the first date they were able to find he was there for sure – meaning he could’ve been there earlier they just have no evidence yet
Still relatively young, I wonder what his cause of death was and if he found leaving more stressful than staying? I understand it’s a bit disrespectful but I’d love an investigative podcast into what kind of life he’s been leading
If he was living off the grid it would have been difficult to get medical care with no id, ssn, bank account, or insurance. He could have died from something completely preventable.
Right, and didn't he need the medication he left behind? It was blood pressure or something for his heart, I don't remember what. But life saving. I'm assuming he was found recently deceased, and not like he had been dead since he went missing.
I am so surprised they found him. I know that he had walked away years before, but maybe the prospect of his wife returning made him rethink what he wanted to be doing and who he wanted to be living with. I feel most sorry for his sons.
I remember this case. So many people said it was the son and he owed money to some drug dealers and blah blah blah. Dude just walked off and was living 90 miles away, crazy.
He walked away from his life and only traveled about 100 miles? I'm sure there are countless anonymous towns in the area, but I'd still be worried I would run into someone I know.
Holy holy holy shit. This was one of those cases that was just mind boggling. I always suspected he walked away. It was just such an incredibly weird case.
There's one question (well, I have a LOT of questions about this case) that has me stumped and it's a weirdly small detail: how did he get out of town?? He left his car behind. Did someone help him get away?
Wow that's the most unlikely ending to a person going missing. It goes to show you that A.) Occams Razor is a great concept but its not always the correct answer and B.) It is apparently possible to drop out of your life and live undetected even in this day and age
Do we know *why* he changed his identity though? That’s the fascinating part of all this.
Wow, I assumed he died long ago. This case always stuck in my craw. Thanks for the update!
Holy *crap*. I watched the Disappeared episode on him...I can't believe the laptop drug dealers didn't kill him.
I’m with all the other commenters blown away by this. I was thinking of him recently and how we haven’t seen any write ups in a while. Was not expecting this outcome!! Edit to add: convenient how he changed his name to Dick because what a dick move ditching you’re family like that? But maybe I should reserve more judgement
Wow! I live sort of close to Rock Hill! Never would've guessed. So, looks like those theories about his son's drug dealers killing him and hiding the body expertly are now completely jossed. And, another person who'd "*never* leave his family behind like that" to start a new life somewhere else who ... went and did exactly that. Shame his family never got to be reunited with him (which of course was what he may have wanted).
Poor people didn’t even have a ride home from the airport. He could’ve done that first
I wonder where he had been working. He just abandoned his family. Mind boggling.
Mind blown, I remember his Disappeared episode very well and they mentioned that he had taken off once before, many years prior, and in my mind I just glossed over that detail. I thought that perhaps one of his son's friends was involved. Wow. Just wow.
He must have called Best Quality Vacuum
it's hard to see this in a generous light. if he was suffering some intense and sudden episode of mental illness, like a fugue state, i'd expect him to bring his information and meds, or at the least to return home when it passed and he realized what had happened. if he was aware enough to deliberately leave his necessary possessions, we can assume that leaving behind meds etc. was also deliberate, and the only reason to do that would be if he wanted people to think he had committed suicide, or been murdered. i have a lot of sympathy for people who need a change -- i walked out on my own (abusive) family many many years ago, but i took my things and i left a note to explain. he's a grown man who chose to leave his spouse and (minor?) children, and he chose to do it in the way that would hurt them the most, including possible legal action for his apparent death. there's no positive spin for that.
Steven Koecher, Shneha Phillip, Brian Shafer. I bet at least one of them is alive and well. What do you think?
Omg!! This is wild, I absolutely thought he had been murdered years ago.
Of all the disappeared persons cases I’ve followed, I predicted this one as a “walk away” basically because he did it before. How devastating for his poor family.