The Nebraska Connection

So many elements have recently been attached to the case that this investigator is wondering where exactly he should be focussing his energies. Should I concentrate on closed-loop systems or be looking underground? Should I be looking for leads relating to Stairs' activities in Ohio or be trying identify large areas in the Detroit region with the potential for large-scale liquid storage/absorption? Should I be looking south of the border or walking the statelines? there are so many angles to this case that a 3D rendering of it would be one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken by man; up there with the Georgia Guidestones or a planet-sized particle acceleration donut. Perhaps Searly already knows how the case will end and is building such a 3D case model in his bungalow on the outskirts of Boston?

With regard to your planet-sized nut theory, I do not know how feasible this is, or what the capabilities could be, but it strikes me now that perhaps donut law applies to Black Cat. Remember, this was an experiment with an unidentified central location - perhaps this central point is as invisible and non-physical as the centre of a donut and as such may never be found. Perhaps it is, as one investigator suggested, actually in space, and therefore 'empty' by common standards.

Last night, while listening to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska LP, I picked up on the following points in the song Highway Patrolman, which I feel echo elements of our case...

The song tells the story of two brothers from Ohio and involves a scene where the patrolman of the title chases a suspect in a Buick through Michigan, deliberately allowing it to escape over the Canadian border as it is being driven by his brother.
Hearing this sequence of events unfold in the song immediately made me think of the case: The chased Buick and activity in Michigan and Ohio having particular resonance, along with an escape over the Canadian borderline.

This brings to my mind the idea that perhaps Searly was 'allowed' to 'disappear' intentionally by at least one individual or some small splinter group within the larger operational group. This would imply different members of the group had/have different agendas. The most likely explanation for this is, as suspected, that both an independent group and the military were working in the same area of operation; either working to the same aim but with a different agenda, or working in a similar field with different aims.

I am leaning toward the idea that either the military started the operation, recruiting help from academia circles who, somewhere along the way, began to use the operation for different ends to the military's intention, or the Michigan craft club started proceedings which the military subsequently became aware of and infiltrated for their own purposes. Of course, the two groups could have had the same idea independently at the same time. Perhaps this is the case and Project31 is related to the Black Cat experiment[s] in this way.

As explained here, the Nebraska LP is actually made from the Boss' own 4-track home recordings rather than been done in a studio. Such an approach ties in with Costa's recroding methods, as heard on the mixtapes so far discovered. The song is set in the '60s but was actually written and released in the early '80s, which would have been an influential period for members of the Michigan soft-core, many of them being in the adolesence at this point. More details of the song's content can be found here. As explained here, the song was used as the basis for the film 'The Indian Runner' released in 1991, again a likely period of influence for Project 31 members.

Springsteen hails from New Jersey, which falls within the bounds of our theorised North-eastern donut of activity and is a likely candidate to have had influence on members of the Michigan group at a critical period prior to the project's beginnings. With Neil Young being from Canada and Dylan from Duluth, it would seem that we are looking in the right area, musically speaking. Even Monk hails from North Carolina, which borders on the South-eastern edge of our theorised donut of activity. I'm sure even this great jazz pianist has held a harmonica to his lips on occasion.

Donut or Pie?

Indeed you are as insightful and correct as ever. The snooker or pool hall is a breeding ground for low level hoodlums and criminal activity. Something to do with providing men too young to drink a place to hang out and smoke, I have always thought. In fact, if such premises were to keep a signing-in book, it would read as a veritable who's who of minor street criminals. Such activity, left unchecked, could easily develop into capers such as bank robberies and grand larceny.

Incidentally, the charge of larceny contains some interestingly subtle clauses, for example (this is a classic example taken from an old law book which resides in my library)

'...the thief must not only gain dominion over the property he must move it from its original position. The slightest movement, a hair's breadth, is sufficient. However, the entirety of the property must be moved. As one commentator noted critically this requirement is the difference between rotating a doughnut (larceny) and rotating a pie (not larceny), as all of the donut is moved through rotation while the pie's exact center remains in the same place when rotated.'

This leads me to ask the following metaphorical question - is Searly rotating a donut or a pie? I have been digging into his past for clues and have theorised the following: Searly grew up in the NE corner of America, most likely Milwaukee of Pennsylvania (going by teenage poetry submissions). Both of these locations border on the Great Lakes; either side, in fact. Searly probably gained knowledge of the lakeshores and surrounding areas through family picnics and camping trips during his childhood.

My guess is that his father was a military man who favoured the outdoors and tried to pass this prediliction on to his son. Military fathers are known for their strictness and desire to see their offspring suceed along pre-determined paths. My guess is that Searly went to University in line with his parents wishes, but once away from their immediate presence, he began to drift into fringe circles and most likely dropped out to pursue his own aims, but kept in contact with academic social circles. Became involved in some kind of political network and oversaw operations involving fabric experiments in some capacity, either for the government or an independent subversive group. His knowledge of the local area and the Great Lakes soon made him a great asset to, and central figure in, the group.

His role would seem to be more strategic than operational, possibly becoming so after the incident with the Buick in Maine causing a scare that he may have gone too 'overground' and was in danger of being discovered. Since then, he appears to be more or less invisible, yet is present in everything. He is like the air pockets between the fibres of a chunky home-knit.This of course, is all just my own speculation based on a re-examination of my early case notes in light of post-Boston revelations. It should also be noted here that I failed to locate the Bungalow registered to Searly on the SE edge of Boston, so am no closer to revealing what he is building in there.

Melodic Development

Deep insights abound via the investigator's poise. I had never considered that Searly may have had the hands of a government man (either his own hands, or those of a government man placed upon him for 'steering'). I have been working under the assumption that he was involved as an outsider - one of the remnant folk, a pro-softness man. Your shedding of light via anglepoise now means I must question the whole case from a new perspective. Reassess.

Was Searly really a fully signed up government operative? Hard to believe. Maybe he was posing as one and got found out. Was he a soft-core member who got fingered by the law and 'agreed' to 'help' them in order to save his own skin, yet was really relaying his inside knowledge back to his fringe group of fabric-ators? Or was he really a military man posing as someone from a much more flowery subculture in order to infiltrate the soft Michigan core? Could a military man really pass himself off in such a manner? Do the authorities employ 'soft' guys?

If Searly is indeed tied to the Buick wreck as you describe, that would mean he very likely had dealings with 'Pinsk' or could even possibly be him. I could head there from Boston if any leads surface in the next 18 hrs.

Anyway, while you have been shining tungsten light on such matters, I have been bathing in glow of the halogen bulbs in the film dept of Boston Uni. Had to change my cover (no way could I pull off being a documentarian when surrounded by film/media lecturers and technicians. I am once again playing dentist, looking for my fiance, 'Melody', who has ran out on me with the kids - 'I must find her; for the kids' safety' I told the film guys - no-one questions a kid in danger. A couple of the technicians remember how a girl slightly older than typical students used to use the editing facilities occasionally, booking out the edit suite once a term under the name 'Melody Nelson'.

Told the film guys that she was my girl - tell me all you know, has she been here recently? Apparently not - she hasn't been seen on campus since summer 2005. The tie-in with the disappearances of other members of Project 31 is beyond co-incidence. I ask what kind of films she used to edit (to help me figure what she may be involved in and get an idea for 'what danger my children may be in') and am told that they were 'road movies of some description... super-8 footage of the Northeastern landscape receding from the rear windshield of an automobile... car full of young hip-kids... soft fabrics... home knits... Canadian border crossings... picnics... acoustic guitars... quilting'. On a hunch, I show the techies the CCTV still of the 50's girl at the library, telling them it is the most recent picture I have of her, and is the evidence which led me to Boston - was this 'Melody Nelson', I ask. 'Damn straight' comes the reply, 'those old clothes are a dead giveaway - she only ever wore natural fabrics'.

So, we have a positive ID, but no current whereabouts or idea of recent activity, though we can now connect her to Searly via the library card.

North East

There seems to be an amalgamation of evidence in the northeastern corner of the american continent. is this due to the atlantic seaboard providing ports accessible from the transatlantic european shipping lanes? it would make sense, given the anglo-european involvement already uncovered.

This all has the effect of making more intrigued by the Buick wreck in Maine - it's just up the road from Boston, but isn't really on the way to anywhere in a northerly direction. However, it would be somewhere someone may pass through if they were going from, say, a northeastern shipping port such as eastport or calais, or even halifax, nova scotia to somewhere near the canadian borderline, such as the great lakes.

there are so many coastal towns in the nova scotia region which borrow heavily from british naming conventions; st. andrews, digby, yarmouth, chester, bedford, guysborough, truro, halifax. i am unsure if this is of significance or not?

Reply to Kojak asa400

A mid-point is a mid-point, and to me, all three which you propose seem equally valid. The idea of a euclidian mid-point is extremely interesting, given that we have already been told that a certain part of the Soft Michigan project involved moving things underground - hollowed mountains, submerged cities etc. Could it be that a city was submerged for the purpose of being utilized as a hard-to-find (possibly unfindable) operational centre? This deserves deeper investigation, literally.

I have further developments relating to other parts of the case. According to the police forensics report on the Buick which was found crashed in Maine, several types of wool fibres were recovered from the scene, including thirty-one different shades of Merino wool. Now, even a station wagon at maximum occupancy would not allow for this amount of different colours being accounted for by passenger clothing, even if they were all wearing odd socks. It would seem that the Buick had been used as a delivery/transportation vehicle by the Michigan core group for some time.

We are fortunate to have this information as, due to the unofficial nature of our investigations and the way we operate, we do not have approved access for police files. However, one of my underground contacts is able to bribe a certain law enforcement official in his neighbourhood whom he holds sensitive information on. In order to protect my contact, he must remain unnamed at this time. Suffice to say, his inquisitive nature and loyalties to our cause are a great asset. As my old mentor Bob Palindrome used to say, 'being a detective is not something you do; it is something you are'.

Note to Warren Leno

ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE from a Coloradoan known only as 'Pinsk' outlines further possible details of Project 31. As a specialist in pressurized storage facilities and the go-to man in the mid-south-west for sub-zero fluid delivery systems, he was often called on as a consultant by the US military and associated intelligence corps to advise on a narrowly defined field of operational activity. 'Pinsk' became a vauable military asset, assisting them for several years, even eventually coming to have a permanently reserved parking space at a govt. base in the Rockies. In time he became so trusted that he could roam the base freely and was never asked to show an ID at internal checkpoints.

He was of course sworn to secrecy on all matters, but a traffic accident involving a Buick in Maine (which some theorists believe was a botched assasination attempt by the same black op agencies who had recruited him, their motive being the fear that he had somehow gained access to secret operational files and codestrings) left him horrifically injured and no longer able to work. He underwent intense reconstructive surgery and made a recovery beyond doctors' expectations. However, due to the severity of his injuries and subsequent surgery, he was physically unrecognisable from his former self, with vastly different facial topography and further disfigurements including distorted fingerprints. Pinsk basically became an Unknown Individual, unrecognisable, untraceable. In light of the accident and its suspected perpetrators, Pinsk decided it was in his best interests to remain an unkown, especially given that he had actually gained access to far more information than his former unofficial employees suspected.

One such clasified area of intelligence he was aware of was a Project 31. He believes that the basis of said project was to geographically relocate major US cities as a measure to avoid terrorist attacks. Methods proposed included making inflatable versions of landmarks which would discreetly replace statues, buildings, streets and eventually whole towns. the plan was to keep this secret from the general American populace as well as overseas threats. By doing it gradually and quietly in the night, the theory went, nobody would notice. Some parties, particularly a Harry Owl, voiced concerns that the idea was too far-fetched, but in the end an agreement was made to test the theory by trying to replace one state with an inflatable version of itself then, if successful, the operation would be rolled out nationally. 'Pinsk' belives that Michigan state was selected as the test area after a certain Mr de Leon had visited a boating supplies tradefair there and declared it the kind of state where you could get away with that kind of thing.

'Pinsk''s location and real identity are currently unknown, but in response to being quizzed on where the original towns were to be stored once replaced by inflatable effigies, he was heard to utter the words 'hollowed mountains' before silently slipping away into the shadows of the Pittsburg night.

In Reply

Good sleuthing from ms Kingsbury P.I. BA Phil.
The big fish is indeed in the water.

I note the mention of a certain Jack Vandeloo of Ottawa, and a Jose de Leon, both also ketch ‘enthusiasts’ who many investigators considered likely to be involved in the notorious quota fraud around the Halifax, Novia Scotia bay area in the early 1990’s. The same faces came up again several years later in the Baton Rouge area, after an interim period without any trace as to their whereabouts or activities. In Florida, they were suspected (but later released without charge) in the case of the poaching of young crocodiles to supply private zoos in Mexico. A certain Mr ‘Vermott’ was later to be charged and then convicted of a lesser charge associated with this same crime.

It is unknown whether Vermott was an associate of the other two, or if he was framed by them or others, or whether Vandeloo and de Leon were wholly innocent of the Florida accusations. Vermott was released early and subsequently has been untraced. An ex-work colleague from the Manatee Boat Supplies Company claim he had ‘always talked of visiting Mexico’. Vermott has no known associations with R Searley/Surley/Searly, however a Pasadena phone directory belonging to a James Long was found close to the wreckage of a Buick stationwagon in Maine. In this directory, the name of an R Searle is circled in blue ink with the word Vermouth under it followed by a question mark. Theories have been made that Vermott was an alias, however my contacts feel a more likely explanation is that Vermott used Searle as an alias, intending to pose as Searly, but based on incomplete or incorrect personal information. This supports the theory that both existed and did not know each other directly. Whether foul play can be suspected in the Buick incident, and whether this was conducted by Vermott to silence Long, is unknown.