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#Post#: 473--------------------------------------------------
FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anchorag
e, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 12:52 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/uLOeJw4.jpg
Anchorage John Doe, also known as Flagpole Doe, was a man who
was witnessed committing suicide by jumping off of a flagpole in
1989.
#Post#: 474--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 12:54 pm
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HTML https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/14060/details
[img]
HTML https://www.namus.gov/api/CaseSets/NamUs/UnidentifiedPersons/Cases/14060/Images/Default/Thumbnail[/img]
Unidentified Person / NamUs #UP14060 Male, White / Caucasian
Date Found
August 24, 1989
Location Found
Anchorage, Alaska
Estimated Age Range
20-40 Years
Case Information
Case Numbers
NCMEC Number
ME/C Case Number
15-00835
Demographics
Sex
Male
Race / Ethnicity
White / Caucasian
Estimated Age Group
Adult - Pre 40
Estimated Age Range (Years)
20-40
Estimated Year of Death
1989
Height
6' 1"(73 inches) , Estimated
Weight
180 lbs, Estimated
Circumstances
Type
Unidentified Deceased
Date Found
August 24, 1989
NamUs Case Created
July 15, 2015
Location Found Map
Street Address
3006 Mt. View Dr.
Anchorage, Alaska
County
Anchorage Borough
Circumstances of Recovery
This was a witnessed death on 8/24/1989.
Details of Recovery
Inventory of Remains
All parts recovered
Condition of Remains
Not recognizable - Decomposing/putrefaction
Physical Description
Hair Color
Brown
Left Eye Color
Blue
Right Eye Color
Blue
Eye Description
Eyes appear to be blue or hazel
#Post#: 475--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 12:57 pm
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Contacts
Investigating Agencies
Anchorage Police Department
(907) 786-8900
Agency Case Number
89-112359
James Trull
--
Case Contributors
Stephen Hoage, Medicolegal Death Investigator
Alaska Medical Examiner's Office
(907) 334-2200
#Post#: 476--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:01 pm
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HTML http://www.anchoragepress.com/news/unearthing-the-truth/article_af2602b1-c7fe-595d-8d8e-bd6a2359d0de.html
On August 23, 1989, a bearded man strolled down Anchorage's
Mountain View Drive around lunchtime. Completely naked. He
looked to be in his early 30s and people stopped and stared and
honked their horns from their cars nearby. He walked over to the
nearby McDonald's where he walked over to the center of three
flagpoles in the parking lot and started to climb.
A police officer was stopped by a citizen who told him about a
man running down the road with no clothes on. The officer
watched as the man climbed up all the way to the top (about 30
feet) and looked as if he was surveying the area.
Officer Jones called up to him, but did not get a response. "I
saw him come around to the left side of McDonald's, walk right
up to the flagpole and shinny up it like a squirrel," recalls
Jones. "I've never seen anything like it. Naked, and right up
the pole like nobody's business. It was rather impressive."
When the man reached the top, 30 feet up, he clung on with his
legs and began fiddling with the flagpole topper. Other officers
had arrived by then and tried talking to him. He didn't seem to
hear or see anyone. It looked as if he was having a conversation
with the eagle at the top of the pole. Facing west, the man then
stretched out his arms-like eagle wings. Then, he kicked off
with his feet as if to fly, and dropped headfirst onto the
pavement.
He died with no noticeable birthmarks scars or tattoos. No drugs
were found in his system. His clothes or any identifying
features were never found. His Doe Network page notes: He may
have come from another country and jumped ship near Anchorage.
In 2011, there was a possible break in the case. A woman in CA
was certain that the man was her brother, Gordon Lopez, a man
who disappeared from Reed College in Portland, OR in 1986.
Gordon cleaned out his apartment, sent his uncashed tution check
to his sister along with a note that he would not see her again
and left. He had connections to Alaska, the man died on their
mother's birthday and had an uncanny resemblance to the sketch.
She paid for the body to be exhumed and DNA tested, but alas, he
was not Gordon.
#Post#: 477--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:04 pm
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HTML https://www.anchoragepress.com/news/doe-on-arrival/article_77a9c5da-65ac-5df9-9a72-f9e26aaf33f4.html
Doe on arrival
Debra McKinney
Aug 10, 2016
A backhoe can only do so much. So when it got to that point,
because it was his case, Anchorage Police Department Detective
James Trull grabbed a shovel, stepped down and started digging
alongside others at Anchorage Memorial Park cemetery last July.
One shovel full at a time, the team filled five-gallon buckets,
passing them to those up top, until they reached what was left
of the blown-out plywood coffin at the bottom of Track 13, Space
24.
Lying in that grave, they hoped, was the answer to a 26-year-old
mystery, one that began at 11:30 the morning of August 23, 1989,
when someone flagged down a patrol car to report a man strolling
down Mountain View Drive wearing only a beard.
Officer Fred Jones spotted the naked man coming around the back
of McDonald's, where he paused, looked around, strolled over to
the tallest of three flagpoles at the building's front entrance
and shinnied 30 feet up "like a squirrel," Jones recalled
recently. "Naked, and right up the pole like nobody's business."
Clinging to the top by his legs, the man didn't seem to hear or
see anyone; not the gawkers who had gathered, not Jones nor any
of the other officers who'd arrived by then and were trying to
talk him down. He seemed to be communing with the eagle ornament
at the top.
At the bottom of the pole, Officer James Loesch had just turned
his back to grab a loudspeaker from his patrol car when-to
everyone's horror-the man stretched out his arms like wings,
kicked off with his feet and did a swan dive headfirst onto the
concrete, landing about six feet from Loesch's heels.
"It went from kind of humorous to, 'Oh my God!'" recalled former
APD Sgt. Mike Grimes, now retired and living in Florida.
Despite efforts to save him, the man died the next morning at a
local hospital the same way he was admitted, as a John Doe.
"We never found a shred of his clothing or anything," said
Loesch, who spent considerable time searching the area.
The investigator assigned to the case tried everything from
checking with mental health facilities, to sending the dead
man's fingerprints and dental records to the FBI and missing
person clearinghouses in all 50 states. He even ran the case by
Interpol, an international law enforcement organization made up
of 190 countries. There were no hits.
Not knowing who he was or where he came from "bugged the hell
out of everyone," Grimes said.
And so, on a cold, breezy September day, the dead man joined the
other John, Jane, Baby and undetermined Does buried in Anchorage
Memorial Park, a man with no name among some of the most
well-known names and characters in Alaska history. And there he
stayed for 26 years, with a simple granite grave marker framed
in sod:
John Doe, 1989 - 1989.
It took more than two decades for the case of the so-called
Flagpole Jumper to get its first lead. A California woman
researching the online National Missing and Unidentified Persons
System, or NamUs, read details of the case and believed she'd
finally found her brother.
Three-and-a-half years before the man leapt to his death, Gordon
Bethel Lopez, a 21-year-old Reed College student living in
Portland, Ore., cleaned out his apartment, put his mail on hold
and returned a college tuition check to his mother with a note
saying she'd never see or hear from him again. His sister, Terry
Mihok, was 18 at the time and didn't know what happened between
them. Lopez was last seen Jan. 3, 1986. None of his possessions
were ever found, not even his car.
"So he disappeared," Mihok said by phone last summer. "I
couldn't understand how such a big part of my life was simply
gone forever."
She'd been searching for him ever since, dreaming that he was
still alive. Then she came upon the flagpole story on NamUs and
everything fit-the physical description, the forensic artist's
rendition of his face, the Alaska connection. Her brother had
worked as a logger in Southeast the summer before he
disappeared. Even the naked part had a familiar ring to it,
since one time, high on acid, he took off his clothes and
started preaching to people, she said. And he once told her that
if he ever committed suicide, he'd do it a public way to make a
statement.
"And if this really is Gordon," she said last summer, "he killed
himself on my mother's birthday."
Mihok contacted detectives in Portland and Anchorage and
submitted her DNA. Still in its infancy in 1989, DNA was never
taken from the Flagpole Jumper until after his body was exhumed
last July. As it was-and still is-with unknowns, he'd had a
pauper's burial in a simple plywood casket covered in gray felt,
no pillow. Codes have since changed requiring all coffins to be
placed inside protective containers, but back then, the weight
of the soil collapsed his. Although the body wasn't in the
greatest shape, the State Medical Examiner's Office got what it
needed.
After the exhumation, the brother's dental records were compared
to those taken during the 1989 autopsy. They didn't match. James
Trull, the APD detective in charge of the flagpole case, broke
the news to Mihok.
"It's so unlikely that all those circumstances are mere
coincidences," she wrote via email at the time. "I can imagine
along the chain of custody his records may have been
compromised. Also, the dentist we got those from, our family
hadn't even seen in years, as far as I know. I hadn't seen him
since I was a child, about 10 years old.
"I would rather it not be him, but I really feel like it is. But
time will tell."
Because DNA has the final say, the Medical Examiner's Office
shipped teeth and a femur via Fed Ex to the Center for Human
Identification at the University of North Texas in Fort Worth.
As a suicide rather than a more pressing homicide case, the
results would take six months to a year.
They've finally come back. Confirmed. It's not him.
"It was definitely a letdown," said Trull, who had to make a
second difficult phone call to Mihok. "I'd told her about the
dental records so I think she half expected it. She was
obviously disappointed, as were all of us."
That would include Lori Fonken, the Portland detective in charge
of the Gordon Bethel Lopez missing person case. Comparing the
Polaroid snapped during the man's autopsy in 1989 to photographs
of Mihok's brother, she found "striking similarities.
"I was just surprised," Fonken said of the DNA results. "I was
hoping this would be a closed case."
Stephen Hoage, operations administrator and investigator at the
State Medical Examiner's Office, oversaw the exhumation.
"I understand why [Mihok] thought it was him," he said. "I was
probably 95 percent sure before we exhumed him that we were
going to end up with a match. I was 95 percent sure that it
wasn't him after the dentals."
It was a round of disappointment for the house. But not all was
for naught because now the man's DNA is in the system. If a
family member ever surfaces, the man will get his name and
history back.
Alaska's Unknowns
For now, what's left of the exhumed, nameless man is in a box in
the bone room at the Medical Examiner's Office off Tudor Road.
Hoage isn't sure how long the Flagpole Jumper will be there, but
at some point he'll end up back in the ground at Anchorage
Memorial Park, back to being one of the staggering number of
unidentified bodies lying in graveyards, morgues, freezers and
bone rooms across the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Death
Index doesn't include statistics on unidentified bodies, but a
2007 U.S. Department of Justice report counted more than 10,000
unknowns between 1980 and 2004 alone, with nearly three-quarters
found in Florida, New York, and the border states of Arizona,
California and Texas.
Alaska has few by comparison. The Alaska Bureau of Vital
Statistics has a Doe count of 141 from 1900 - 2015, those whose
last names are listed as Doe, "unknown" or have been left blank.
Of those, 42 are female, 95 are male and four are undetermined.
"These unidentifieds come to us in many conditions," Hoage said.
"We get a lot of bone cases where we may get a femur or a
mandible and that's all we get, up to a full body that's
decomposed, up to a homeless person who may have died within the
past few hours and nobody knows who they are."
Like the Flagpole Jumper, some die as Does on purpose. For
instance, the man who years ago checked into an Anchorage hotel
room under a fake name then shot himself in the head, leaving
not even a toothbrush. He died a John Doe, but didn't stay one
long. Franklin Perry was a postal worker; his fingerprints were
on file. He'd come all the way from the Bronx to die here, and
had even paid for his own cremation, also under a bogus name.
When a Doe comes into the State Medical Examiner's Office, as
all Alaska's Does do, pathologists and their teams look inside
and out for clues, documenting everything they see. During the
autopsy, they take full body photos, front, back, all angles,
Hoage said. If any fingertips are left, prints are taken and
entered into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
DNA samples are collected and, after analysis, entered into the
Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.
"During the autopsy we are going to document any surgical
history," he said. "We're going to know if they may have had a
kidney removed or an appendectomy or whatever. We're going to
document all the scars, marks, and tattoos on the person."
All clothing is photographed and inventoried, all details noted
including size, color and brand. Same for jewelry and other
items found with the body.
Post mortem dental x-rays are taken, and a forensic odontologist
charts the teeth.
Teeth. Hoage stressed how important they are to solving a Doe
case quickly. If a friend or family member is missing, after
filing a missing person report, the next most important step is
getting the person's dental records, since most dentist offices
destroy records after seven years of inactivity.
If all the pathology team has to work with is bones, they may be
sent out for examination by forensic anthropologists at the King
County Medical Examiner's office in Seattle or to the Center for
Human Identification in Texas. If anthropologists determine they
are at least 100 years old, the bones are considered historical
rather than forensic.
As all this information becomes available, it's entered into the
NamUS database and the FBI's National Crime Information Center.
If a person still can't be identified, a forensic artist may
then work up a facial reconstruction or use an autopsy photo to
create an image for release to the public.
"It's kind of a last resort where we're really looking for
help," Hoage said. "We don't want families to find out that
their family member is deceased by seeing their picture in the
paper."
The Latest John Doe
In Anchorage, the most recent unknown is a man found May 18 in a
tent in the woods behind Lowes on Tudor Road. He left few clues,
just two sleeping bags, a pull-over, a t-shirt, a pair of pants,
a belt, underwear, long underwear, four pairs of socks, a
headband, a key chain with four keys, a fingernail clipper, a
lighter and a button.
"Because of the conditions of the remains we couldn't estimate
the height or weight," Hoage said. "We don't know the hair color
or length. There were remains of a mustache and beard, at least
partial. Fingerprints in this case were not available. Of course
we can't tell the color of the eyes."
The key to learning who he was may lie in fractured bone. He had
a plate and six screws implanted in his right ankle so he may
have walked with a limp.
"We're hoping somebody will come forward and go, 'I talked to
'Joe,' and he was talking about how he broke his ankle, and I
haven't seen him in a couple of years, or a year or whatever,'"
Hoage said.
What little is known about the man has been entered into the
NamUs Unidentified Persons Database where it can be compared to
the system's Missing Persons Database in hopes of finding a
match. His body is now at the Center for Human Identification in
Texas. All new information-his age, race and DNA-will be entered
into CODIS. If he still can't be identified, he'll likely join
the two dozen other unknowns in the ground at Anchorage Memorial
Park. Plus whoever's in the ceramic urn someone abandoned on the
cemetery lawn last year. The urn had no identification inside or
out, no stainless steel identification tag that typically goes
into the crematory with the body.
Robert Jones, cemetery director, tried to find out who might be
in there.
"We reached out to funeral homes: 'Have you sold this urn?' Do
you know if anyone is asking about this urn?' We didn't get any
responses back. So it just ended up in our care in our
Columbarium Wall. It's above ground, we have access to it year
round so if anybody ever showed up saying, 'Did you find
grandma's urn?' We would know where grandma is."
Alaska's raucous '80s account for more than half of the
cemetery's Does, including five babies and two victims of
"Butcher Baker" Robert Hansen, the Anchorage serial rapist and
killer who murdered at least 17 teenage girls and women. Only 12
bodies were found.
One of them, a white brunette in her 20s, was discovered in 1980
by power line workers near Eklutna, thus the nickname Eklutna
Annie. Hanson confessed that after abducting her he drove to the
remote area and ordered her out of his truck. She ran, he
grabbed her by her hair, she pulled a knife, he wrestled it away
and stabbed her in the back. Her body was exhumed in 2003 for
DNA collection, and was reburied the following year.
The other Hanson victim buried downtown was also a white
brunette, this one thought to be in her late teens. After Hansen
was caught, he led investigators to her body near Horseshoe Lake
in the Matanuska Valley. Referred to as Horseshoe Harriet, she
was exhumed two years ago for DNA analysis, facial
reconstruction and age-progression imaging. She has yet to be
reburied and remains in the walk-in freezer at the Medical
Examiner's Office.
The oldest unknown buried in Anchorage Memorial Park was a man
who drowned in 1916, the year after Anchorage was founded. The
most recent was an Alaska Native man whose body was found in the
Chugiak area in 1997, according to the cemetery's burial master
list.
Thirty years in the burial and cremation business, Anchorage
mortician Robert Ferrell has taken care of many of the
cemetery's unknowns, including the Hansen victims and the
Chugiak man. Nothing at the scene, he noted, shed any light on
who he was or why he was there.
"He just came out of nowhere and nobody is missing him," Ferrell
wrote via email. "I can tell you that I did do a little
Christian service at the time of the burial even though it was
just me and the cemetery crew. I believe that everyone I bury
should have some sort of ceremony to say goodbye."
No one who was there when the Flagpole Jumper hit the
pavement-certainly not the officers involved-would ever forget
what they witnessed that day. James Loesch, the officer at the
bottom of the pole, has thought about him through the years and
wondered.
"What about family or friends? What kind of life did he lead to
push him to this tragic end?"
The day the he went into the ground, representatives of the
mental health community showed up to see him off. Since his
autopsy was unable to detect drugs or alcohol, it was assumed he
was having a psychotic episode when he jumped.
His exhumation last summer didn't provide the answers everyone
was hoping for, didn't close one of the most bewildering cases
in APD history. And now those following the case have two
mysteries on their minds. If the Flagpole Jumper isn't Terry
Mihok's brother, then who is he? And where is Gordon Bethel
Lopez?
#Post#: 478--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:07 pm
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3006 Mountain View Dr
Anchorage, AK 99501
[img]
HTML https://www.google.com/maps/vt/data=jq4RzZ31fbXJY5g5IH1-TiXPvW96EBPTlAjsmns3q3tkWWDSIfshFB-pBXnzLDOgbkQZEDnPTBBy8PD_LjYRz0eLqVNDwcAVSz1xY_Q8yYb_fU0P-aI97lvrXvSgocV4LPMJrF9QFOV2u7lmj5anB7Ti6zVYN3VMN8jWPkPsyu1RUfERYr5DyuLJbEpQYoA24x44b_KL[/img]
#Post#: 479--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:11 pm
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3006 Mountain View Dr
Anchorage, AK 99501
HTML https://i.imgur.com/kdmEqPv.jpg
#Post#: 480--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:14 pm
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HTML http://unidentified.wikia.com/wiki/Anchorage_John_Doe
Anchorage John Doe
Anchorage John Doe, also known as Flagpole Doe, was a man who
was witnessed committing suicide by jumping off of a flagpole in
1989. He may have been foreign to the country and came to Alaska
via ship.
NamUs lists his body condition as unrecognizable due to
decomposition, yet all evidence points to his body being
recovered soon after he was seen committing suicide.
Physical Description
He had curly brown hair with a beard and mustache.
His eyes were blue or hazel.
Anchorage John Doe
HTML https://i.imgur.com/1q1vqrm.jpg
Sex Male
Race White
Location Anchorage, Alaska
Found August 23, 1989
Unidentified for 29 years
Postmortem interval Minutes
Body condition Unknown
Age approximation 20 - 40
Height approximation 6'2 - 6'4
Weight approximation 180 - 185 pounds
Cause of death Suicide by jumping
#Post#: 481--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:17 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/zxoHKRE.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/dXNd7nE.jpg
#Post#: 482--------------------------------------------------
Re: FLAGPOLE JOHN DOE: WM, 20-40, jumped from a flagpole in Anch
orage, AK - 24 August 1989
By: Akoya Date: February 7, 2020, 1:20 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/oNEFNQe.gif
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