In 2018, hikers found a yellow tent at Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. Inside the tent: A dead man with no ID. For the next two years, nobody knew who he was. That mystery is the subject of the 2024 Max true crime documentary They Called Him Mostly Harmless.
No one knew the real identity of the man found dead at Big Cypress, with a grey-flecked beard and kind eyes, but that didn’t mean no one recognized him. A woman named Kelly Fairbanks had seen the man before, along the Appalachian Trail, near where the body was found. As the authorities sought his real name, they released a composite sketch of what he looked like, which spread widely throughout the hiking community.
Fairbanks saw the picture and told the police she once encountered the man and was struck by his “kind aura … [H]e was joking and laughing with me … Had a beautiful smile. And he had beautiful eyes — different from any other hiker,” Fairbanks said.
Fairbanks was so taken that she snapped a few pictures. And what was his name? According to Fairbanks, when asked the question, whomever the man was responded, “Mostly harmless,” Naples Daily News reported.
“Mostly harmless” was identified two years later
Although Kelly Fairbanks reported she saw “Mostly Harmless” — also sometimes called “Denim” —investigators didn’t have much to go on. While there was no ID inside the tent, there was hiking gear, about $4,000, and a couple of notebooks filled with computer code, but no cell phone or credit cards. He was between 35 and 50 years old and about 5-foot-8, but he only weighed around 83 pounds. There were no signs of foul play.
Through tips and leads, the Florida investigation determined that whoever it was had been on the trail for about a year, and he had likely originated in New York state, with possible ties to Louisiana. Even though the John Doe case was widely publicized in the media, Mostly Harmless’ identity remained a mystery, but finally, more than two years after he was found, there was a break in the case.
What happened to Vance Rodriguez?
As detailed in the Max documentary, about two years after Mostly Harmless was found, an old college roommate named Randall Godso came across a picture of the unidentified hiker and told the police his name was Vance Rodriguez. According to CBS News, Godso said, “As soon as I saw the pictures, I knew immediately — it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s Vance!’ … A tingle ran down my spine.” Forensic DNA genealogy confirmed Godso was right.
Rodriquez was reportedly a New York tech professional from Louisiana with a troubled past, who chose to leave it all behind and vanish on the Appalachian Trail. Rodriquez’s exact cause of death was never determined, although he was critically underweight, according to the autopsy.
They Called Him Mostly Harmless is set to stream on Feb. 8, 2024 on Max.