A fascinating tale of Evan pursuit sent to me by hunter Gatz Morang.
Was Evan Ratliff in Kansas City?
When the Wired magazine Vanish contest began, I followed the story as it developed with a fascination for the subject. I read the Wired article “Gone Forever: What Does it Take to Really Disappear?” about Matthew Alan Sheppard’s disappearance and capture, from which the passphrase for the Vanish contest originated and which features comments from Frank Ahearn’s book “How to Disappear.” I followed-up by reading several articles on Frank Ahearn’s website, which displays a curious mix of perspectives from private investigators, skip tracers, and readers of too many detective novels. What I didn’t find on Ahearn’s website was evidence that professional manhunters don’t find many of those they’re looking for, or that people who try to disappear often don’t succeed. After the background reading, I was even more interested in how Evan Ratliff’s disappearance would unfold.
As information related to Ratliff’s disappearance began to come out, I casually played along trying to sift through what was useful and decipher what was presented. I watched the #vanish Twitter feed fill up with commentary from amateur sleuths trying to trace disguised IP addresses, determine purchases based on dollar amounts, and read between the lines of Wired interviews with people involved in Ratliff’s life. A Wiki was established, and several search teams had websites. It didn’t seem like anyone had any solid leads, although everyone seemed to have a hunch. I read every article Evan Ratliff had written and mentioned on his website, and I read every Wired interview with those from Ratliff’s “previous” life. Aside from some obvious clues, the motives of which had to be in question, the line that stuck with me from the personal interviews was from professional private investigator Steve Rambam, who was a source for the magazine article that inspired the contest. Rambam said, “Any method used to find Evan will point to a hotel or a cellphone tower or a restaurant or a friend he’s hanging with, and at that point, it doesn’t really matter what the person who’s sitting in the restaurant or occupying the hotel room looks like, it’s going to be Evan.” It was what I didn’t see coming to focus in any of the social media being employed to find Ratliff – there was no magic clue that provided a location specific enough to do field work that might lead to an encounter with the fugitive. A video interview with a web reporter on Venice Beach in California had surfaced, in which Ratliff was asked about whether he was concerned about the H1N1 virus, and he gave a lengthy answer for the camera. For someone like me, in a city in the middle of the country, in a city that has no relevance to Ratliff’s life, the only connection to this contest was an Internet connection.
…and then I got personally involved.
On September 1, two messages to the #vanish feed on Twitter came from a newly created account by the name of Cole Optera, with the screen name @Dusky_Wireworm. It was quickly deduced by the #vanish followers that @Dusky_Wireworm was Evan Ratliff. The messages were each a long string of numbers that started what became almost a sub-thread in the #vanish feed as folks struggled to decrypt the message. Were they dates, telephone numbers, IP addresses, flight numbers? The website listed in @Dusky_Wireworm’s Twitter profile was a webpage about the dusky wireworm beetle from an Agricultural Atlas for Russia and surrounding countries, with a clear photo of the pest at the top. It occurred to me that the profile picture @Dusky_Wireworm used was not the picture from the agricultural atlas. A Google image search for “dusky wireworm” showed the source for the profile picture on the very first page – Radcliffe’s IPM World Textbook on the University of Minnesota’s website. Evan Ratliff had written an article related to Ethanol and biofuels, and presumably would have studied the farming of corn and one of the primary pests – the dusky wireworm beetle, of the order Coleoptera. As everyone on the #vanish Twitter feed seemed preoccupied with decoding the strings of numbers, the information about the picture seemed relevant, since it at least strengthened the idea that @Dusky_Wireworm was Evan Ratliff. Was Evan in Minnesota? Near a corn field in Iowa? Is he heading towards Kansas City, my city? I created a Twitter account (up to this point I was only watching the feed) and posted information about the source of @Dusky_Wireworm’s picture. Surprisingly, a few posts later I was accused of being Evan Ratliff.
I continued to follow the growing sources of information about Evan Ratliff’s disappearance, but now I decided to treat it like an Amber Alert – if he was in Kansas City, where would he be? On September 3, things started to get really interesting. The Twitter account of @Dusky_Wireworm had made profile changes. His location now said “SFC, Denver…”. Without thinking, I went to Google maps and created driving directions with San Francisco, CA (where Ratliff lives) as the starting point and Denver, CO as the ending point. Unsurprisingly, the map graphic showed an almost straight blue line between the two cities. More than previously, several official, reliable clues started coming from Ratliff’s editor at Wired magazine, Nicholas Thompson. The contest rules stated that information from Nicholas Thompson are facts and not speculation (Thompson does not know Ratliff’s location during the contest). Thompson said that Evan Ratliff is living in a city, in a cheap apartment, within walking distance of “…five cafes with wi-fi, three of which he frequents, and one of which he goes to every day. Two of them have nice gluten-free food options” (Ratliff has Celiac Disease), and has a local bar that he frequents. A bit later, these vague clues were brought into clearer focus with another post on Wired magazine’s coverage of the contest. Thompson reports that one of the restaurants Ratliff frequents has gluten-free pizza.
If I continued the blue line from Google maps (…) Kansas City was the next major city along the line. Kansas City is a city. Kansas City has areas that fit within the guidelines of the factual clues given by Thompson, places within walking distance of multiple wi-fi cafes, bars and cheap apartments. In Kansas City, there would only be one option for gluten-free pizza – Waldo Pizza. It was possible that Evan Ratliff was in Kansas City, and the Waldo district would be a humorous place to hide.
Thinking back to the video interview with Ratliff, I wondered if he would attempt that kind of cheeky stunt in every city he visited. When I watched the news on television, I paid close attention to the background crowds. On the local news websites, I viewed videos of current events that might have man-on-the-street type interviews or crowds of onlookers. On Flickr I entered the search term “Kansas City”, then sorted to show the most recent photos first. As expected, I saw photos of recent community events with crowds of people…and sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the thumbnail photos of crowds and skylines was a close-up picture of a bug on a yellow background. By now, I was familiar with the dusky wireworm beetle, and this picture looked like one. When I clicked the photo, called Kansas City Lampshade Carabid, for details I saw among the tags Kansas, KS, Kansas City, coleoptera.
Evan Ratliff was in Kansas City!
Not only was Ratliff in Kansas City, but I knew exactly where!
Evan Ratliff was ten minutes away from my house. I quickly changed the lens on my camera with shaky hands and rushed out the door to collect my $5,000. There is a large lamp store on the main street that comprises the heart of the Waldo district in Kansas City (their slogan is something like “…a shade better than the rest”), and next door is the Waldo Bar and Grill. Across the street from the lamp store is Waldo Pizza, and behind is a coffee shop that has a California vibe. Evan Ratliff was in one of those establishments, and I just had to say “Fluke” to him for victory.
At 3:00pm on September 3, as the Waldo Bar and Grill came into view, there was a man sitting alone on the small patio in front wearing sunglasses, just waiting for me. I parked in the parking lot between Waldo Pizza and Waldo Bar Grill with the intention of getting a good clear picture, hiding behind the retaining wall. I grabbed my camera, but when I maneuvered to a shooting position I realized that the traffic passing between us was blocking my view. Wornall Road at 75th Street is a busy street, and there was no way traffic would ease up enough to take picture. I got back into the car, and from the parking lot pulled brazenly up to the curb directly in front of the man sitting on the patio, who I could now see was not Evan Ratliff. A look inside the open door didn’t reveal anyone there that could be him either. Undaunted, I left the camera in the car and walked around the block to the CoffeeGirls wi-fi enabled coffee shop with my Blackberry prepared for a photo. At the counter was a thin guy with dark hair wearing khakis, a dark blue shirt, and eyeglasses similar to ones seen in a photo of Ratliff posted on Wired magazine’s website that very day. He went from the counter to a table in the corner where two other guys sat with three laptops and four cell phones in front of them. There was nothing in the rules of the contest that stated that Ratliff was alone, and as he sat down I ordered a mocha cappuccino and tried to be sure it was him. My heart beating loudly, I walked over to the table and asked the guy in the dark blue shirt, “does the word ‘fluke’ mean anything to you?” He hesitated a moment as the other two guys looked up and they all said no. I felt like a crazy person.
It took me the entire mocha cappuccino to calm down enough to go survey Waldo Pizza, where they served the only gluten-free pizza in Kansas City. From the entrance, the restaurant is divided into three parts – a walled, private dining room to the right, an area with a tall half-wall to the left and an open dining area in the middle. The middle area was empty, but I could tell from the movements of the wait staff that there people in the other two areas. I peered around the doorway of the private dining room and saw five older ladies at a single table as the only diners. I looked to the left dining area and saw a table of people who were not Evan. It was late for lunch and early for dinner, so I sat at a table in the middle section where I had a view of the front door, then ordered a pizza in the mostly deserted restaurant. Not hungry, I nibbled at a single piece of non-gluten-free pizza as I tested myself with the worn Trivial Pursuit game cards on the table and tried not to look out of place. What movie won the Academy Award in 1950? All About Eve. What do Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller have in common? They both married Marilyn Monroe. Who’s the crazy guy at table 15? Me.
I tried to reconcile my original frenzy of getting there fast enough, with the current situation of knowing he was there, but not there. Walking out of Waldo Pizza with a box that consisted of an entire pizza minus a half slice I headed to the car. What do I do now? I put the pizza on the passenger side floor and locked the car, then surveyed the area. Waldo Pizza is between a sushi restaurant, a bakery (is it gluten-free, I wondered), and Tanner’s. There’s a place next to Tanner’s that has a rooftop area full of people. Across the street is the lamp store, Waldo Bar Grill, and a coffee shop called One More Cup. As I waited for the light to cross the street, then approach One More Cup, I noticed that not only is it between two lamp stores (the pivotal clue was a bug on a lampshade), but there was a guy sitting next to the front window working on a laptop. Hey, All About Eve was Marilyn Monroe’s first movie role!
On my way out of One More Cup with my overdose of caffeine in hand, I tried to get by the guy in the window without words as he looked at me studying him. I was studying his laptop actually, a Dell and not the Mac or Sony Vaio that Evan supposedly uses…but he could be Evan. It occurred to me that everyone in every place at this stupid intersection could be Evan. In my rush to get here, I hadn’t printed a photo. On my way back to the car, I tried to get a look at the thin guy with the KC Royals hat and Jose Cuervo t-shirt. His shoulders were slanted like Evan’s, but this guy was clearly too old. I started the car and headed back home to print photos and check for updates or new clues. I was all over the road buzzing from too much coffee, not enough food, and straining to look for out of state license plates. As thoughts of a stakeout developed, it occurred to me that my father, a police officer, might have some advice.
When I was a kid, my dad got involved in a similar search contest locally. I was pretty young, but I remember that the contest had an Elliott Ness/1930’s mafia theme. There was a key hidden somewhere in Kansas City and you had to find it. My dad solved all the clues, and I vaguely remember sitting in the car late at night while my parents scoured a particular intersection for that damned key. They didn’t find the key, and when the contest ended much later, it turned out that the key was taped to the back of a stop sign at the very intersection they spent all night searching. To this day, my parents both swear that the key was not there when they were.
I couldn’t get home fast enough. I don’t text message, and how people could possibly do it while driving I have no idea. It took several tries to call my dad using the torturously small buttons on the Blackberry, while scouting for out-of-state license plates and trying not to run over Evan as he was “running by water” as he does 4-5 times each week. Dad was outside supervising the guy delivering firewood, but he was almost done, as I explained to my mom the urgency and why I was calling.
“…and why do you think he’s here?”
“It’s the bug on the lampshade! I solved the bug on the lampshade clue and nobody else has! And the taco truck unfortunately only comes on the weekend. He’s leaving tomorrow!”
While waiting for my dad to call back, I checked #vanish on Twitter, and to my relief there were three pages of possible flight numbers, dates, and phone numbers derived from @Dusky_Wireworms only two messages. I’m not sure where the idea came from that Evan was going to Portland next, but every flight derivation had PDX and SLC in it. Since the $5000 man wasn’t there like I expected, I debated whether to post what I knew to the world or not. I checked the profiles for the most active posters on Twitter, scouting for their location. Everyone seemed to be California. Selfishly, I decided instead to cleverly mis-direct people. I wrote the following to the #vanish feed:
“RE: wireworm profile loc...John Denver had a song called "SanFrancisco Mabel Joy"...takes place in LA...0K#vanish”
I was so smart. I used the zero instead of O in OK to indicate not only the reward anyone following that clue would get, but also that I had solved the “SFC, Denver…” clue. The city that Evan was in was not OK, it was K. This might have been the point where I crossed the line into obsession, but who’s to say? It was much earlier that I accosted a stranger in a coffee shop and said, “Fluke.” I was trying to decipher a string of posts about the fuel efficiency of a Prius versus a bike when my dad called back. I directed him to the official Wired website about the contest and listened to him complain about how bad Internet Explorer had gotten on his PC (it had been a while since my last visit).
“Evan throws a dart…Kansas City would be a bullseye…the bug on the lampshade…Waldo…Where’s Waldo, get it? It’s clever.”
“…and why do you think he’s leaving tomorrow?”
“the taco truck,” I said, less sure of myself than ever.
My dad said that Evan looked very ordinary and would likely be in disguise, and therefore that he would be really difficult to pick out of a crowd. My dad gave me a list of mannerisms that cops look for when hunting for someone. He said I wouldn’t find him because if finding him was worth $5000 he wouldn’t be out in public at all. He also suggested that maybe Evan had taken the bug metaphor even further and was actually driving a Volkswagen. Maybe I should scout for the car. Hey, I thought, there was a green VW in the parking lot. It was next to the Army recruiting car. We talked about whether we were going to the upcoming NASCAR race like we do every year, then I thanked him for his advice and rushed back out. Did I sleep last night?
“One more hour of looking,” I told myself, and then I give up. It was dark when I got back to Waldo. On my way there, a black VW with California plates passed me going the other direction, so I had turned around and followed it West for about 30 minutes until she turned into a residential neighborhood, and then finally into a garage. I was really glad that I talked to my dad, just in case I got arrested.
I first went into the Waldo Bar Grill, where Happy Hour was just ending. As I made my way through the crowd I had no idea who I was looking for, except a guy sitting apart from everyone else and acting strange. I went into the bathroom and studied the graffiti on the chalkboard walls and ceiling. In the bathroom at Waldo Pizza I studied the 1960’s record albums on the walls. Had there been a Bob Newhart clue? I wandered the sidewalks for several hours, until I started to hear comments behind me about that guy “just loitering.” Defeated, I got back to the car about the time things started winding down in Waldo. The musicians were loading their guitars and equipment into trucks with local license plates, and I decided to try to find the cheap apartment where Evan was living.
There was only one small apartment complex within walking distance of Waldo, and it was ironically just across the street from a building that said “EVANS” on it. There was only a single row of parking behind the apartment building, so it was easy to scan the license plates of the dozen or so cars in the parking lot. All of them were local. Most of the cheap rooms for rent near Waldo are either connected to private homes or houses that have been divided into apartments, and there was no real way to identify them. Now aimlessly driving around Waldo, I thought it really would be a fluke if I actually found Evan Ratliff. I decided to go home at 2:00AM after I pulled up next to a guy on the sidewalk on a residential street wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a hat and sunglasses, rolled down my window and asked, “Does the word ‘fluke’ mean anything to you?”
My best guess is that Evan Ratliff left Kansas City just a few hours later on Delta flight 4499 at 6:00AM, bound for Portland, with a layover in Salt Lake City. But by that time clear thinking had come back to me, and I vowed to myself that I would not make a scene at the airport. It’s also possible that Evan Ratliff never was in Kansas City.
