We Just Missed You: My Uncle, The Missing Person Case

"I’m going on an adventure. Don’t try to find me. I’ll contact you."

Mar 29, 2024

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[Content Note: mention of suicide]

A body was found floating off of Clearwater Pass in Florida on August 8, 1987. The body belonged to my uncle Greg. He was thirty-six-years-old.

Spring is a time of rebirth, regrowth, and renewal. However, each spring I think about death: the death of my favorite season, winter; the death of my Grandma Elvira, who died in April on my brother’s birthday over a decade ago; and the death of my uncle Greg. Though his actual death date is in summer, my family found out about what happened to him in spring.

I’ve written briefly about it on here before, but my dad’s only sibling was a missing person for twenty-four years:

My uncle went missing when I was two-years-old. He packed up all of his belongings in his car and left a note that read, “I’m going on an adventure. Don’t try to find me. I’ll contact you.” He was a world traveler and highly educated, so my dad and grandparents initially assumed he left the U.S., specifically for France. My family never heard from him again.

Greg was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the youngest child of my grandparents. Because I have no memory of him, I depend on the stories I’ve been told. He was the tallest in the family, standing at 6’3”. He was kind and funny. For a long time after his disappearance, my family never talked about him. That’s not entirely true—my grandma never stopped bringing him into conversation. It felt a bit like talking about a ghost. Sadly, my grandpa, clearly in a lot of his own pain, would reprimand her each and every time: “Ellie, we don’t talk about that. Stop it.” I always wanted to hear about him. I wanted to get to know him, even if it was his ghost I was getting to know.

When my grandma was suffering with dementia and Alzheimer’s, she would often say to the room, “I wonder if Greg will call today.” My grandpa had softened a bit at this point, but would still sigh heavily and say, “No, Ellie.” Even as a child, my heart broke for her. She had all this love for her youngest boy with nowhere to put it. At the end of her life, she was a walking ghost—one foot in this world and one foot elsewhere. While she was alive, she never found out what happened to Greg. Maybe that was for the best.

My dad and his brother were very close. They were three years apart and looked like twins sometimes. In his twenties and early thirties, Greg had become more reclusive, though. My dad, very much an extrovert, would attempt to bring Greg to various social gatherings. Greg started to experiment with various drugs and he dealt with untreated and undiagnosed mental illness. Did the drug use trigger the mental illness? We’ll never know. According to my dad, Greg was fine until he started using drugs. Though, as many of us know about mental illness and addiction—many people can and do hide how bad they’re struggling; not necessarily on purpose.

One could say that Greg brought my parents together. My dad, concerned about his brother’s drug use and withdrawing nature, sought out an AODA (Alcohol and Other Drug Use) counselor. He was referred to one of the best in town at the time—my mom. Unfortunately, Greg was not ready or willing to get help and my dad didn’t have the support of his parents to do any type of intervention. Because Greg knew that my dad attempted to seek help from my mom, Greg’s relationship with my mom from the beginning was icy.

In 1987, my dad lost contact with his brother. Greg had left all of his belongings in his car in my grandparents’ driveway in Florida. My dad was concerned immediately. My grandparents weren’t—at least, they said they weren’t. The U.S. does a piss-poor job with missing person cases, specifically if those missing people are adults. There is rarely a sense of urgency from law enforcement. My dad wanted to report my uncle missing right away, but was told not to. He waited and waited. When he did report Greg missing to police, there was lack of care and immediacy. “He’ll probably come back on his own,” my dad was repeatedly told by police.

We were a family in turmoil for twenty-four years even though Greg died by suicide a few days after he went missing. We just missed him.

My dad had always wanted to find him. How could he not? My dad finally found someone to contact. He reached out to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. The database is enormous. If you do a search for missing “Identified” men, there are over fifteen thousand results—and these are just ones that have been processed in the system. There is also a section for “Unclaimed Persons.” This list has over twelve thousand people. Many of these folks were homeless at the time of their death. Finally, there is a section for missing “Unidentified” people. These are all real people. Sometimes I search the database just to learn a little bit about each person’s case; to learn of a their existence. The ones who have names, I say out loud.

Someone from NamUS eventually contacted the Sheriff’s Office in the county that Greg had lived in. The case was no longer cold. I remember feeling excited during this time. My grandpa, however, was extremely upset with my dad for “opening old wounds.” You would think a parent would want to know what happened to their missing kid, but I guess, for some, it’s too painful. My dad had to involve my grandpa in this because the police needed to speak to him and get a DNA sample. My dad also had to do this, but did so enthusiastically.

Thanks to advancements in DNA testing, Greg’s femur bone was tested against my dad and grandpa’s saliva, and it was a match. We learned that Greg had died mere days after he went missing. Amongst police, he was known as “John Doe Sand Key,” since his body was found in Clearwater, Florida near Sand Key. His remains had been in the Pasco County police cold case room all this time.

There are articles about my uncle’s missing person case since it was a big deal to find out who he was after so long. I will not link to these articles, because they are, quite frankly, inhumane and incorrect in many things they say. Specifically, one article mentioned that our family never reported Greg missing and never tried to find him. I contacted the writer of this article to tell him this was categorically untrue. He did make edits, but the harm his words caused my family, especially my dad, was done.

My family will never know exactly why Greg killed himself. We have our theories. We know snippets of Greg’s last few days. He went to his bank and withdrew all the money in his savings account. The bank teller remembered him because he had shaved off all of his facial hair. Greg clearly didn’t want to be found. He was obviously struggling and didn’t get the help he so desperately needed and deserved.

Maybe it’s cliche, but whenever I see a cardinal I think of Greg. When I see two cardinals, I think of both my grandma and Greg—together again.

She got her youngest child back after all.

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We Just Missed You: My Uncle, The Missing Person Case

"I’m going on an adventure. Don’t try to find me. I’ll contact you."

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