Why I Ran

Some interesting light has been shed on this case in the last 24 hours - the mixtape in particular giving us great insight into the scene we are dealing with. The connections are coming together like a healthy capilliary system, but we are still short of a main artery or two. The Searly connection is still vague, all we know is that it seems to involve automobiles, possibly roadtrips, nutritional strategy and the beefheart associations. To help turn the corner in the investigation, I have been reviewing my notes in an effort to further understand the character of our quarry.

Looking more closely at the man, we know he is a sports fan - the betting slips, bowling tokens and baseball tickets i found in his garbage tell us this. He is also a bookworm, possibly even a writer himself, going by the library fines and Octopiithagoas. His library account was highly active until eight months ago, then all of a sudden he stopped using it. It would have all the hallmarks of a missing persons case, except three weeks ago he apparently returned all borrowed books in his posession to a library in Boston, paying all due fines and renewing one book - 'Why I Ran' by Randy Loboda.

When I first saw the title on the library ticket, I read it as 'Why Iran?' and thought it was some political spook text, then I realised what it was - the autobiography of an eighties hotshot middle-distance college athlete who went off the rails in his early twenties who ended up fleeing police in a highway chase which went all the way from Denver to Los Angeles before he ran out of gas (ironically only 200 yards after passing a gas station). It is the third longest known police chase in America's history and Randy's crime never actually went on the record; his official final charge being that of a faulty brakelight. The book, published after seven years' silence, was intended to explain the motivation for his running both as an athlete and a fugitive. It was a commercial flop, but gained nortoriety as an unofficial manual of evasion techniques, becoming a cult text for those involved in underground movements wanting to avoid the authorities and providing source material for some of the early Obfuscationst manifestos.

It is interesting to know of such recent activities from Searly and his posession of this book provides some insight into his state of mind.