Navy Vet Was Dead Almost 3 Years Before His Body Was Discovered By Chance In His Texas Apartment

chocolat79

Well-Known Member
I read somewhere that the mother tried to get other family members to help her raise money for a PI but was unsuccessful.

Eta...

I wonder if she was unsuccessful because everyone was experiencing financial difficulties and couldn’t contribute or if they had the money/resources and simply didn’t want to contribute. If it’s the latter it makes me wonder what kind of reputation he had where no one cared to help his mother find him (not even his own children), and if it’s the former I wonder why they didn’t start a Go Fund Me or something.
Thanks for the clarification and yes to everything else. Good questions.
 

HappilyLiberal

Well-Known Member
I blame the apartment complex for not changing a filter, not checking about the "leak", not towing his car, not inspecting the apartment, not doing pest control, nothing. They're terrible.

I blame the police because I mean, did they even try to find out where he could be. They refused to help his mother. WTH!!!

I blame his job too. Did they not know that he wasn't showing up?

I blame his family too! How do you not hear from someone for three years and not do a wellness check? Tomfoolery all around!
 

HappilyLiberal

Well-Known Member
One of my first thoughts after reading the article. Unknowingly storing a dead body because they don't take care of their rental units or check on tenants does not = full price rent.

I hate to blame the mom but after hearing from him twice a month you hear nothing at all and then call him on his birthday the following year and that's when you get worried? After that 2nd missed phone call of the month and me calling every hour of every day with no answer I would have gotten my butt on a plane and done some investigating. Even if she didn't have his new address (benefit of the doubt: maybe he had just moved before he died and hadn't had a chance to tell anyone yet?) she should have been able to get some information from his previous residence or something! Were they really as close as she says? Or maybe it's that she's very old and couldn't do more? Her son is 51 after all.

My mother calls me constantly and sometimes if she knows I'm avoiding her calls she'll make someone else call me just to report back to her that they spoke to me. If no one gets through after a few days she'll text me saying "I am coming to your house today to check on you" at which time I promptly answer. I can only imagine the hell she'd raise in my building if I didn't. She's done it before, come round screaming my name for the whole neighborhood to hear. Smh I feel bad for the mom in this story but I am also very confused by her limited action.

Seriously! My mom didn't hear from me for three days while I was writing a take-home exam in graduate school. By Monday morning she had my cousin calling my department office for a wellness check!
 

ThirdEyeBeauty

Well-Known Member
You all are assuming based on a person who was stationary for a while and the parent knows his whereabouts. This was a 50-something year old single man on the go. Yes the mother should have had a little something to follow the trail. The housing folks did not need a little trail-- they knew where he was for three years and should have seen his truck collect dust. This was an apartment not even a single family rental home. Even if we give them a year explain their lack of following up for year two and approaching year three. It must have been a scamlord run down place.
 

Farida

Well-Known Member
Laws and policies vary widely but where I live (and most places) if your lease expires even though you don’t sign a new one or ignore the notice it automatically reverts to a month-to-month. What is odd is if you don’t respond most companies will reach out because they absolutely will raise your rent if it reverts to a month-to-month. I have a hard time believing the rent never went up. Unless maybe he had a 2-3 year lease.

But that’s a crap complex because I have never lived in an actual complex where management never entered for a full three years. As people said, pest control, routine maintenance, upgrades and even safety inspections (like to make sure you don’t have a grill in the living room), check smoke alarms and if applicable sprinkler systems.

But yeah his family didn’t care enough because nobody got on a plane.
 

Farida

Well-Known Member
My guess is since he is retired and worked on a contract, maybe he had the type of job where you signed on for short-term contracts. So if after a current assignment ended and they contacted you to ask you if you wanted another one and you didn’t respond they assumed you were unavailable or uninterested.

But so lonely and isolated for NOBODY to notice or do anything.
 

dicapr

Well-Known Member
You all are assuming based on a person who was stationary for a while and the parent knows his whereabouts. This was a 50-something year old single man on the go. Yes the mother should have had a little something to follow the trail. The housing folks did not need a little trail-- they knew where he was for three years and should have seen his truck collect dust. This was an apartment not even a single family rental home. Even if we give them a year explain their lack of following up for year two and approaching year three. It must have been a scamlord run down place.

It’s not that hard to find out where someone is if you really want to find them. Maybe the mom didn’t have the knowledge to find her son but his kids know how to google. You can find someone’s address for the last 10+ years if you put in 30 minutes of effort. If he wasn’t purposely hiding and had his mail forwarded to his new place and was paying bills his address would have come up.

Sadly this individual lived a life in which no one was close enough to him to miss him when he disappeared. It’s no ones fault.
 
It’s not that hard to find out where someone is if you really want to find them. Maybe the mom didn’t have the knowledge to find her son but his kids know how to google. You can find someone’s address for the last 10+ years if you put in 30 minutes of effort. If he wasn’t purposely hiding and had his mail forwarded to his new place and was paying bills his address would have come up.

Sadly this individual lived a life in which no one was close enough to him to miss him when he disappeared. It’s no ones fault.

Like did anyone even put up a social media post to say my Uncle, brother, nephew, son is missing? What a sad life when you can be dead in your home for three years and no one even missed you enough to do anything about it. Wow.
 

SpiritJunkie

Well-Known Member
Sad. It's also up to us to maintain relationships with others...friends, family, colleagues...when you become ill it's nice to know that there will be at least one person who will check on your or you speak to regularly who will notice.

If you don't call regularly then folks won't really bat an eye if they don't hear from you.

The dusty car in the parking log is a major red flag no one investigated.

Side note:
We had a couple of dusty cars taking up visitor parking space in my condo and I took a pic and told security. Other people did the same thing and we complained that it was taking up valuable parking space..and perhaps the owner is ill or on vacation, then they should be in their own spots! Never heard back on why the cars were there so long but the car and truck are now gone.

People just didn't care and was going about their lives.
 

Scasey

Well-Known Member
The housing folks did not need a little trail-- they knew where he was for three years and should have seen his truck collect dust. This was an apartment not even a single family rental home. Even if we give them a year explain their lack of following up for year two and approaching year three. It must have been a scamlord run down place.
The apartment complex is a newer town square type complex. Parking is shared with the Recreation Center and can be scarce at times which surprises me that the police didn’t tag his car. Such a sad situation.
 

LdyKamz

Well-Known Member
Thought of this thread this morning after getting a group text from my landlord talking about the annual inspection of our apartments start this Saturday. My face was like :rolleyes: because 1. as long as I've lived here which is years it ain't never been no "annual inspection" and 2. I'm not letting these people up in my place because they done already been up and through here the past 2 months because of backed up pipes in every apartment on my line. I guess the building the man in the op lived in didn't do annual inspections either.
 
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