DICK KING'S BODY

  Here's the update: Bird has seen two shooters with no shots. I've missed two shooters with four shots. Photogeorge got a nice 8 opening day and Savage is hunting hard and not seeing much. Today we plan on putting a second stand in the cemetery. The second rut may be kicking in soon and snow is expected on Sunday. Monday is muzzleloader opener. Everyone is hoping for a hot doe and a horny buck on her tail in freshly fallen snow.

    All my mice and vehicle issues have kept me busy. I blew the all wheel drive transmission on Shewho's car and put my truck back on the road. Another car goes to the wreckers. My salvage yard and I are on a first name basis. I hope to get tires today and am keeping my fingers crossed. As far as the mice go, every morning I shake Cheeky's $10 per pound special cat food out of my boots before I go in the woods. Cheeky sleeps a lot and seems unconcerned that the mice are stashing his food in my footwear. I think they're friends. Yesterday I received a call from brother Ross. He was wondering if I knew Richard King? I did not. Why?

    Ross told me that Richard King aka Robert Hoagland died Monday in Rock Hill. So? It turned out that Robert Hoagland has his own Wikipedia page. Here's the thumbnail:  On the morning of July 28, 2013, security footage at a Mobil gas station in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, captured Robert Hoagland (1963 – December 5, 2022), a local chef and property appraiser, buying a map along with fuel for his wife's car. He was last seen by anyone who knew him later that morning, when his son bid goodbye as Robert was mowing the lawn of the family home, a conversation also witnessed by a neighbor. Hoagland failed to show up for work the next morning or pick up his wife when she returned home from an overseas trip that afternoon. He was reported missing.

Police investigated several sightings of Hoagland over the next year, mostly nearby.Tips also placed him in southern California and South Carolina; neither they nor the alleged sightings yielded any trace of him. Theories about his disappearance range from foul play possibly connected to his son's drug problems to an attempt to start a new life. The case has been featured on an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Disappeared.

Hoagland's disappearance was resolved almost a decade later when his body was found by a roommate in a Rock Hill, New York, apartment December 5, 2022, where he had been living under the name Richard King. Deputies from the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office found paperwork with his real name on it, and notified Newtown police.

    I don't have a Wikipedia page, but as far as the NY art world is concerned I also disappeared in 1995. Nobody bothered to search for the body. This story raises way more questions than answers. This man moved less than 100 miles from his home, changed his name and lived in plain sight for almost a decade. Why did he disappear? How did he support himself? Why could he not be found even with national attention given to his case, etc. etc.? But most importantly how could a 50 year old man with a job, a wife and two kids abandon it all to live in Rock Hill? When deer season is over this may require a bit more investigation. In the meantime I'm trying to interest townsfolk in changing the hamlet's slogan. ROCK HILL A Great Place to Disappear!