David Glenn Lewis - Mystery Man

An odd little mystery, this. When I first read the details, while they were strange, I thought it was pretty clear what had happened and I even debated dropping it as it was a bit sad and depressing. But then I read more theories and delved into the nitty gritty and it seems that my immediate take was not necessarily correct and there might, in fact, be conspiracy theories ahoy after all. If you are already familiar with this story I doubt you’ll find much new here as practically every article and blog post I read bemoaned the lack of information about it but hey — they reckoned without the old Fact Boi tangents and my ability to just believe the most recent piece of information I hear or read.

This story is about David Glenn Lewis. Who? What? Where? Why? How? Exactly! Let’s get on with it.

RIP, John Doe

On the 1st of February, 1993, a man was seen along route 24, a two lane highway kind of out in the boonies near the small community of Moxee, Washington. Reports vary as to whether he was walking down the centre of the road or lying or sitting in the middle of it but a couple of motorists were alarmed enough that they tried to turn around and warn oncoming traffic about him. Unfortunately, it was too late and he was hit and killed by a car, the driver of which was never found.

When police arrived on the scene, they found that the man was wearing what looked like military fatigues and work boots. When basic tests were run, he was found to have no drugs or alcohol in his system. He wasn’t carrying any form of ID and nothing came up when they ran his fingerprints.

Eventually, after taking a few photos and tissue samples of the body, the man was buried as a John Doe near Yakima, Washington with a few strangers in attendance. A sad and lonely end for this unknown person.

Re-ee-wind

On this same day of the 1st of February 1993, many hundreds of miles away in Amarillo Texas, family man, lawyer, former judge and all around community good fellow, David Glenn Lewis had just been reported missing. It had been a Superbowl weekend and while that means nothing to most people, it’s apparently a big deal over in the States where an hour of sport gets dragged out into a four hour televisual marathon. A free-flowing game it ain’t.

Anyway, David Lewis had been home alone for that weekend while his wife and daughter had been having a girls trip out to Dallas. On the day of the final, which was the 31st of January, David set the “record” button on whatever old school VCR he had in the early 90s and maybe thought about eating one of the turkey sandwiches he’d made earlier and that were currently sitting in the fridge. And then he disappeared.

We do have some eyewitness accounts of a few of his movements and activities across that weekend but they seem to raise more questions than answers. Let’s go through a factual timeline of known sightings and other bits and bobs of information that came to light as the investigation commenced.

The Known Timeline

Most of the stories I’ve read about this case all contain practically the same timeline information, seemingly taken from an article in the Del-Rio News Herald, published about 6 months after David’s disappearance on the 27th of June 1993. The headline is “Baffling Trail Stumps Police Searching for Missing Attorney” and yeah, it’s pretty baffling. I’m also mentioning this to again highlight the lack of diverse sources of information about the case. While we can get into some more free-flowing ideas later on, this part of the story is pretty well-trodden in terms of language used so if you’ve seen or heard about it somewhere else, there probably aren’t any new developments coming your way.

On Thursday, January 28th 1993, David left work early as he said he felt ill. Just a quick note — the law firm he worked for was called Buckner, Lara and Swindell. I just thought “Swindell” was a slightly unfortunate name if you’re a lawyer so I guess that’s why they put it at the end.

Anyway, he didn’t seem to be totally bedridden as there is a record of him going to a gas station and then he had obviously recovered enough as the day went on because he taught his evening class at Amarillo college which finished at 10pm. Karen and Lauren Lewis left for their Dallas trip that same day and didn’t see David after he originally left for work that morning.

On Friday, January 29th 1993, at least according to this Del-Rio News Herald article, a friend of David’s had seen him “hurrying through the Southwest Airlines terminal at Amarillo’s airport. He was not carrying luggage.” Later that night at about 10.30pm, a car matching David’s, a red Ford Explorer, was seen by a police officer parked outside a county courts building. As no flags had been raised yet, this was just an observation at the time.

On Saturday, January 30th, 1993, the red Ford Explorer was no longer at the courthouse and neighbours of the Lewis’s confirmed their car had been parked outside their house that day. A sum of $5000 was deposited into the Lewis’s bank account but seemingly no-one can prove who did this. While it isn’t mentioned in the newspaper article but came up in the police investigation shortly after, a plane ticket was bought on this day under the name “David Lewis” and it was from Dallas to Amarillo.

We can’t be sure it was the same David Lewis of course, and it’s unclear whether the ticket was just purchased on that day or booked for a flight that left on that day. 1993 isn’t that long ago but it’s in a frustrating era for investigations like these as there wasn’t so much airport security and people could fly between states without showing ID or even giving their real names. The timing is interesting though, and we’ll come back to these breadcrumbs so let’s crack on for now.

On the morning of Sunday, January 31st 1993, the red Ford Explorer was again seen outside the Potter County Courts Building and this time, a Sheriff’s Deputy saw someone who looked a lot like David Lewis taking photos of it. Later that day at the Lewis household, someone recorded the start of the Super Bowl at 5.15pm. It has been taken for granted that David was physically in the house to do this, although I’m pretty sure my parent’s video recorder had a timer you could set via the remote control in the early 90s and we weren’t super-fancy early adopters or anything.

Invariably whatever I wanted to record would start late so I’d chop off the end but there you go, it’s the pain you had to endure growing up in the pre-streaming age. Apparently the Lewis’s VCR didn’t have the fancy bells and whistles on it that my modest family machine did and there wasn’t a timer function on it. This is a hotly debated point as it marks the difference between knowing where he was on the 31st of January and of having absolutely no idea where he was.

But let’s assume he was at home as there are a few other pointers. His wife and daughter arrived back later that evening and, at first, nothing seemed amiss. The game was being recorded, they found some turkey sandwiches in the fridge, there was laundry in the dryer and David’s watch and wedding ring were by the sink as he habitually took them off to do the washing up.

This is good to know as if I came home and my husband’s watch and ring were on the side, I’d immediately assume he’d left me. Karen was not phased and just assumed that David was working late or had gone to watch the game with a friend or something.

On Monday, February 1st, 1993, Karen Lewis was notified that David had missed a couple of work appointments. This was unlike him and due to the fact that she hadn’t seen him the previous day, she called the police to report him missing. On this day, another airline ticket was purchased under the name of David Lewis but this time it was from LA to Dallas, with a stop in Amarillo. Once again, it’s not clear if it was purchased that day or was for a flight that left on that day.

Nor is it clear if it was our David Lewis who bought the ticket. And still even more unclear is if this ticket or the previous one was ever actually used.

Police investigating David’s disappearance quickly found his car parked again outside the court building. Inside was all his ID: drivers license, checkbook, credit cards for gas and his house and car keys. To me this would again scream “disappearance” or maybe even that he’d taken his own life.

Apparently though, this was again common practice for David to just leave all his crap in the car, including his keys. Did this man not have at least one pocket about his person? I don’t know anything about Amarillo, but I would guess that car smash and grabs have been a thing since people started parking cars so why leave all your important personal belongings in there?

Take your belongings with you, folks and always lock your car! Anyway, this was not considered suspicious behaviour and, in fact, when the police also became aware of the plane tickets, they chalked the whole thing up to a voluntary disappearance, i.e. David Glenn Lewis had decided that for whatever reason, he was ditching this life and moving on to something new of his own volition.

Suicide was also suspected although as no new leads were uncovered, the case went cold after about 11 months.

The family had a different take on things, however. Karen Lewis is quoted in the Del Rio News-Herald as saying “All the family suspect foul play. We have from Day One.” Karen was convinced that David had been kidnapped or at least forced to flee into hiding by unsavory characters.

During his time as a judge, he had received death threats from disgruntled convicts and at the time of his disappearance, he was waiting to be deposed in a multi-million dollar case that had been brought against him, some other lawyers and an industrial client Lewis had represented. Karen Lewis also later said that his files on this case had also disappeared. The only other thing that seemed to be missing was some green sweatpants, no other clothing or possessions of any kind.

After the case went cold, the Lewis family would not have any significant news until 2004, a whopping 11 years after David was reported missing.

One Man, Two Mysteries

So far, you may not think that this case is particularly worthy of a place here in Decoding the Unknown, although we did one about a guy who made it rain indoors so maybe the bar’s not that high. But here’s the weird ending to the story. In 2003, a decade after David’s disappearance, Washington-based detective Pat Ditter was reading an article about how hard it was to solve missing persons cases through the existing database and how so many people ended up falling through the cracks.

He decided to try using the internet to see if he could clear any of his local caseload and turned to Google which I guess was still pretty new-fangled in 2003. I mean, like 1993 it sounds quite recent to me but at the time of writing it was nearly 20 years ago! There were a few unidentified person cases that he concentrated on and put what was known about their physical characteristics into the search engine to see if he could tally them up with anyone classed as a missing person.

And bingo, after a few days, he cracked a long cold case wide open but in the process, added even more questions to the story. You might have already guessed but the man dressed military-style who was killed in a hit and run and buried in Washington in 1993 was none other than David Glenn Lewis. From what has been reported of his timeline, he was in his house at 5.15pm on Sunday, January 31st and the next day was hit by a car, nearly 1600 miles from home.

What on earth happened in the meantime? We’ll take a look at some leading theories but I’ll just quickly mop up the story first.

Detective Ditter found the missing persons report on David Lewis and was pretty sure it was his John Doe who had been languishing in an unvisited grave for over a decade. David Lewis wore those snazzy big ol’ glasses with the double bar at the top which are technically aviator glasses but that would indicate that these looked cool when they really didn’t. Anyway, David needed specs to see and the John Doe hadn’t been wearing any.

There was a note about them in his file though, and luckily his clothes had been saved. Ditter went searching and found some big ol’ glasses in with the clothes the John Doe was wearing when he died. He sent a DNA sample from one of the man’s boots and tissue sample that had been preserved to the police in Amarillo.

They compared it with Lewis’s mother and yep, it was a match. John Doe had been identified and David Glenn Lewis had finally been found. He was reburied in Westlawn Memorial Park in Texas in 2004.

The Theories

Let’s go through the two main theories first before talking about what I assumed had happened.

The first theory is that there was foul play involved. His wife and family have believed this from the moment it happened, so why are they so convinced? There are a few things that point towards David having been kidnapped or forced to leave against his will.

At his house, nothing at all was missing, apart from those green sweatpants which he might have put on to watch the game. This might indicate that he left with just what he was wearing. The timing of his disappearance is also quite suspicious.

It was just a week before this deposition he was going to give and the fact that all the paperwork relating to the case also vanished does seem fishy. He was apparently the last person left waiting to be deposed. I haven’t found out that much about this case but apparently it was his former law firm that he was supposed to be giving evidence against in a conflict of interest case.

David was representing a client from the oil industry.

According to his wife, to whom he had been married for about 12 years, he had received death threats during his time as a judge and she thought it more than possible that he could have picked up enemies from any number of his cases, projects, or even from inside his own firm. David worked on lots of community programs, including being a member of the Moore County Child Protective Services Board and he was also Chairman of Safe Place Inc. which assisted people fleeing from domestic violence and sexual abuse situations. So you can see where his life might have rubbed up against some potentially dangerous or at least very angry people.

Karen Lewis did also say that he had mentioned getting death threats again not long before his disappearance but he never told her who they were from and we only have her word about it. It’s also possible she was just saying that to give a bit more weight to her theory.

So let’s say he was settling down to watch the game when someone turned up and kidnapped him. How and why did he then end up 1600 miles away in just over 24 hours? While it is possible to drive from Amarillo to Moxee in almost exactly 24 hours, thank you Google Maps, that would mean constant driving through the night with no traffic.

I suppose the kidnappers could have taken shifts but where they were going and why is totally unknown. If this is the theory we’re going with, David was dumped or escaped at some point and was wandering down the middle of the highway when he was killed. We also have to assume here that the hit and run was totally accidental as why drive over 1500 miles to then run someone over in front of witnesses?

Apparently a Chevrolet Camaro was thought to be the car that hit him but no further clues have been found. And while the driver might have panicked and fled the scene, it’s also possible that they had no idea that they’d hit a person and might have thought it was a deer or something as that particular road is dark and people like to speed along it.

So, maybe they took a plane. Yakima Air Terminal is only about 10 miles from where David was found. This seems unlikely in a kidnapping scenario unless the kidnappers had a private plane, of course. If they went commercial, while I don’t know about the route in 1993, if you want to go from Amarillo to Yakima today, there are 2 stops en route.

Hardly conducive to an easy kidnapping. Also, about the paperwork. It could be anywhere. Karen Lewis left on her trip on the 28th of January.

David had at least 2 days to do something with his documents. Maybe he took them to the office or put them in a locker to keep them safe until his deposition. To me that doesn’t really scream “cover up”. And while he was supposed to be showing up to represent Big Oil in this court case, it was allegedly not a big deal and nobody would have benefitted from David’s disappearance.

Let’s move on to the police’s belief that he left Amarillo voluntarily. This was the conclusion they decided on after finding out someone using the name “David Lewis” had bought those plane tickets. There was also an account from a taxi driver that he drove a man matching David’s description to Dallas airport from a hotel. Apparently the man was acting nervously and paid with $100 bills, of which he had a big wodge.

Detective James Smith who worked on the case is quoted in the Del-Rio News Herald article as saying: “It has a lot of earmarkings of suicide. People don’t always do what you expect.” That definitely rings true but why would Lewis go all the way to Washington to kill himself?

He had no ties at all, personally or professionally with anything or anyone in that state. Was that the point? He wanted to go somewhere that didn’t mean anything to him?

Smith pointed to the fact that Lewis’s business maybe wasn’t going as well as he hoped and he’d also recently failed to win back his seat as a judge. Lewis was also involved in a lot of other programs and stuff as I’ve already mentioned but when I say “a lot”, I mean A LOT. It’s exhausting just reading through all the stuff he was doing.

As well as being a lawyer and teaching in the college, here’s a list of the stuff he was involved with, according to his memorial:

He was an active member of Dumas Chamber of Commerce, Dumas Noon Lions Club, Dumas Discovery Center Board Member, former president of the Dumas and Moore County United Way, chairman of Safe Place Inc., member of the First Baptist Church in Dumas, teaching the Adult IV Sunday school class, and was active in the sanctuary choir and an adult ensemble. He was organizer and advisor of the Moore County Teen Court, was on the board of directors for the Dumas Community Education Advisory Council, and was a district chairman of Golden Spread Council of the Boy Scouts of America from 1986 to 1993.

I mean, wow. Maybe he was just stretched really thin and couldn’t keep up or was experiencing issues in one or more areas of his extremely busy life and it all got on top of him.

So maybe we can see why he might have wanted to get away from it all, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. But then his actions still make no sense. Why go to Washington? And those plane tickets are still really bugging me. Let’s combine these two theories together a bit and look at a strand where David did leave voluntarily but maybe he was going into hiding to protect himself and / or his family. This is one of the very few scenarios in which the plane tickets make sense.

Remember that two tickets under the name “David Lewis” were bought on the day of his disappearance and the day he was reported missing. The first was from Dallas to Amarillo. If David was at home in Amarillo, why would he have bought this ticket?

His wife and daughter were coming from Dallas but it’s not clear if they drove or flew and if they flew, why would he only buy one ticket for them? If they had needed him to buy a ticket for them, this would have been mentioned by his wife. The other ticket was from LA to Dallas, via Amarillo.

This is totally odd. If he was buying it for someone else, wouldn’t he have done it under their name so they could use it? How was he going to get to LA to then fly back to Amarillo?

One suggestion given here is that he was trying to throw people following him off the scent. This does sort of make sense. As I mentioned before, there was no real security or rigorous ID checks done when flying internally in the States in 1993.

He could have bought himself a ticket to Yakima Air Terminal for reasons unknown, under a totally different name, then just bought a couple of random flights under his name to make it look like he was going to be somewhere he wasn’t. This is all assuming, of course, that the David Lewis that bought the tickets was our David Lewis.

It does seem that the only way he could have been where he was at the time of his death was by flying, though. If he drove himself, he would have needed to hire a car as his Ford Explorer was left in Amarillo. His driver’s license was still inside the car and even though air travel security was pretty slack, he probably would have needed some form of ID and a driver’s license to rent a car.

His photo and name were put out there early on in the investigation and presumably police checked places like local car rental agencies. No record of him renting a car or of anyone matching his description has emerged. Even if he did have a car, it’s unlikely that he’d be able to make it to Moxee in time for his rendezvous with the Almighty.

As mentioned earlier, it’s doable but he would have had to drive for 24 hours straight with no breaks and no traffic delays. It just doesn’t sound likely. Why was he in Washington?

Was it his planned final destination or just a stop along the way? Were the people he was hiding from real threats or imagined?

The much-used Del-Rio News Herald article finishes with another quote from Detective Smith: “I ain’t got any plans, just nowhere else to go.” He was talking about the case going cold, by the way, not what he was doing for the weekend. Still, kind of a limp note for an investigation to end on.

This now leads on to what I immediately thought when I read this story for the first time. The actions are odd. He was found in the middle of nowhere with clothes on that were not his. Surely this all points to some sort of psychological breakdown.

The clothes thing, by the way, while strange is not really a big deal, I don’t think. There is an Army training centre in Yakima, an Army airfield and all sorts of other military stuff around there so there are military surplus stores too. David could easily have picked up his fatigues near the airport before walking, driving or hitching to where he was last found.

Anyway, let’s get back to this theory, which makes the most sense to me. For my money, David Lewis was experiencing a dissociative fugue. This is pretty rare but when it does happen, it causes people to basically forget who they are and to have a pressing need to flee from their current location.

“Fugue” comes from the Latin “fuga” which means “Act of fleeing” and it certainly seems to fit into our mystery man’s actions. People who suffer from dissociative fugues are often under intense mental pressure or stress which, while we can’t know for sure, it does seem like David was a candidate for, what with everything going on in his life at that point.

According to WebMD.com, symptoms of dissociative fugue include: “Sudden and unplanned travel away from home” and “Confusion or loss of memory about their identity, possibly assuming a new identity to make up for the loss”. So, if you ask me, the armchair expert, David experienced a case of dissociative fugue and left his house with nothing more than what he was wearing. This state can last less than a day or can drag on for months but it might have already started happening to him as people spotted him acting erratically like rushing through his local airport with any luggage, taking photos of his car and paying his cab driver from a stack of hundreds.

He then somehow made it to Washington state, got some different clothes and ended up walking down the highway. He wasn’t wearing his glasses when he was hit, maybe he was purposefully trying to kill himself or maybe in his fugue he thought he didn’t need them. I’m not sure how far amnesia goes but I haven’t heard that it cures myopia.

Also, while I was wondering why neither the police nor his wife had thought of this, I realized that I was reading the story already knowing the ending. They had no idea that a person killed in a hit and run several states over was David, all they knew at the time was that he was missing so I suppose I’ll cut them some slack.

So what do you think? A kidnapping gone a bit wrong? A paranoid David abruptly leaving for reasons real or imaginary? A total dissociative fugue which sent him running to a place he had no former links to? A combination of some or all of these things? All we know for sure is that one day David Glenn Lewis was at home in Amarillo and the next day he was lying dead on a road, 1600 miles away. How he got there and why will probably remain a mystery.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was David Glenn Lewis?

David Glenn Lewis was a family man, lawyer, former judge, and community figure from Amarillo, Texas. He was reported missing on February 1, 1993.

What happened to David Glenn Lewis on February 1, 1993?

On February 1, 1993, David Glenn Lewis was reported missing after his wife and daughter returned from a trip and found no sign of him. His car was found parked outside a courthouse with all his ID and keys inside.

How was David Glenn Lewis identified after his death?

In 2003, Washington-based detective Pat Ditter used the internet to match the description of a John Doe found in Moxee, Washington, with David Glenn Lewis’s missing persons report. DNA samples confirmed the identity.

What were the main theories about David Glenn Lewis’s disappearance?

The main theories include foul play, voluntary disappearance, suicide, and a dissociative fugue. His wife believed he was kidnapped, while the police suspected he left voluntarily or committed suicide.

What evidence suggested David Glenn Lewis might have been kidnapped?

Evidence suggesting kidnapping includes the fact that nothing was missing from his house except for some green sweatpants, and the timing of his disappearance just before a deposition in a multi-million dollar case.

What was the significance of the plane tickets bought under David Glenn Lewis’s name?

Two plane tickets were bought under David Glenn Lewis’s name: one from Dallas to Amarillo and another from LA to Dallas via Amarillo. The significance is unclear, but they might have been used to throw off anyone following him.

What was the condition of David Glenn Lewis’s car when it was found?

David Glenn Lewis’s car, a red Ford Explorer, was found parked outside the Potter County Courts Building with all his ID, checkbook, credit cards, and keys inside. This was not considered suspicious behavior at the time.

What was the timeline of David Glenn Lewis’s last known activities?

On January 28, 1993, David left work early due to illness but taught his evening class. On January 29, he was seen at the airport without luggage. On January 30, his car was seen at the courthouse, and a plane ticket was bought under his name. On January 31, his car was again seen at the courthouse, and the Super Bowl was recorded at his house. On February 1, he was reported missing.

What was the role of Detective Pat Ditter in identifying David Glenn Lewis?

Detective Pat Ditter used the internet to match the description of a John Doe found in Moxee, Washington, with David Glenn Lewis’s missing persons report. He sent DNA samples to Amarillo police, which confirmed the identity.

What is a dissociative fugue and how does it relate to David Glenn Lewis’s case?

A dissociative fugue is a rare condition where a person forgets their identity and flees from their current location. It is suggested that David Glenn Lewis might have experienced this, leading to his sudden disappearance and death in Washington.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: David Glenn Lewis - Mystery Man
• Hero image source by Who What Where Nguyen Why / openverse, by-sa.