"Benjaman Kyle" was the alias chosen by an American man who had severe amnesia. On August 31, 2004, he was found naked and injured, without any possessions or identification, next to a dumpster behind a Burger King restaurant in Richmond Hill, Georgia. Between 2004 and 2015, neither he nor the authorities determined his identity or background, despite searches that had included television publicity and various other methods.
In late 2015, genetic detective work, which had gone on for years, led to the discovery of his identity as William Burgess Powell (born August 29, 1948). With the rediscovery of his Social Security number, he again became eligible for employment and has received public assistance.[1]
Incident and post-amnesia
On August 31, 2004, at 5:00a.m., a Burger King employee in Richmond Hill, Georgia, found Kyle unconscious, naked, and sunburned behind a dumpster of the restaurant.[2][3] He had three impressions in his skull that appeared to have been caused by blunt force trauma and he also had red ant bites on his body. After discovering him, employees called the emergency services, and EMS took him to St. Joseph's/Candler Hospital in Savannah. He had no identity document and was recorded in hospital records as "Burger King Doe". After the incident, no criminal investigation was opened by Richmond Hill police until a friend inquired with the department in 2007. There were no reports of stolen vehicles in the area and local restaurants and hotels did not encounter any individuals matching Kyle's description.[2] Two weeks later he was transferred to Memorial Health University Medical Center, where records state he was semiconscious.[2]
He eventually said that he remembered his name was Benjaman, spelled with two 'a's, but said he could not recall his last name. He came up with the surname "Kyle" from his police and hospital placeholder name. He had cataracts in both eyes, and had corrective surgery nine months after he was found, when a charity raised enough money to pay for the operation. Upon seeing himself in the mirror for the first time, Kyle realized he was around 20 years older than he thought he was.[4]
Kyle believed he was passing through Richmond Hill, either on U.S. Route 17 or Interstate 95 in late August 2004. He may also have been on the road because of Hurricane Charley, which had hit earlier that month.[5][6]
After being released from the hospital, Kyle spent several years between the Grace House men's shelter and hospitals. In 2007 while at The J.C. Lewis Health Care Center he met a nurse who first inquired about his past.[1] The nurse helped support Kyle financially while he earned about $100 a month mostly doing yard work. While driving his truck in a yard, Kyle discovered that he still remembered how to drive a car. He was diagnosed with dissociative amnesia in 2007 by Jason A. King in Atlanta.[7] Georgia Legal Services did not obtain medical records for Kyle because Memorial Health requested an $800 fee. A friend contacted GeorgiaCongressmanJack Kingston for help with the case. To help with Kyle's identification, Kingston's office sent DNA samples to the FBI's National Criminal Justice Information Services Division in West Virginia.
For many years after his amnesia Kyle was homeless and had been unable to obtain employment as he could not remember his full Social Security number.[9] Several online petitions were created asking lawmakers to grant Kyle a new Social Security number. In 2012, an online petition was created on the We the People petitioning system on whitehouse.gov, but when its deadline expired on December 25, it had received only two-thirds of the number of signatures required to receive an official response. In February 2015, forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick reported that Kyle had cut off all contact with her just as she felt she was nearing a breakthrough.[5] A DNA test revealed that Kyle shared significant amount of DNA with members of a family named Powell in the western Carolinas– descendants of a 19th-century man named Abraham Lovely Powell.[1]
On September 16, 2015, Kyle announced that his real identity had been found, including identifying his name and close family members.[1][10]
Search for identity
There were a number of major efforts to identify Kyle by matching his fingerprints or DNA with that stored in various databases. These efforts included:
Newspaper articles were published in the Boulder Daily Camera on July 5, 2009, and in the Denver Post on July 7, 2009.[15] Based on Kyle's memories of the University of Colorado Boulder campus, it was hoped at the time that someone would respond to the articles to identify him.
Kyle took several DNA tests that offer clues to his origins. A genetic genealogy DNA test by Family Tree DNA produced a distant match with members of the Powell DNA Study.[11][16] Based on these results, in March 2010 an almost perfect DNA match was discovered in the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation database with a Davidson of Scottish ancestry, a grandson of Robert Holden Davidson (b. 1885, Logan, Utah, d. 1946, Chico, California). This Davidson's results were very different from other Davidsons who have been tested by the Davidson/Davison/Davisson Research DNA Study Project.[11][17] The fact that Kyle had several weak matches to Powells, with a single strong match to a Davidson, indicates a possible non-paternity event in the male line of his family—that is, an adoption, a name change, or an illegitimacy. It was surmised that his legal name might be Davidson, but that in past generations, the family name was originally Powell. A comparison of the whereabouts of the Powell and Davidson families revealed that members of both families were living in proximity in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s.[11]
A geographical comparison between Kyle's Y-DNA results and the YHRD Y Users Group database showed a somewhat close match in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma, but the U.S. coverage in this database is sparse and includes only Y-DNA haplotypes. A more comprehensive autosomal DNA test by 23andMe relating to mixed-gender family lines reveals a large number of matches with ancestry in the western Carolinas, eastern Tennessee, northern Alabama, and northern Georgia.[18]
Colleen Fitzpatrick attempted to create a family tree for Kyle, and based on DNA tests, cousins were identified from the western Carolinas who collaborated with her to try to determine his identity. Fitzpatrick's efforts had not yet pinpointed his exact identity when he cut off communication with her.[1]
Kyle's appearance on Reddit's r/IAmA (Ask me Anything) in 2012[12] and again in 2013[19] attracted several possible leads, most of which were disproven.[20]
Biography/memories
Kyle remembered that he was born 10 years before Michael Jackson and on the same day, giving him a possible birth date of August 29, 1948.[21][22][23]Genetic testing suggested that he may have had the surname Powell or Davidson or have relatives with these names.[6] Through hypnosis, he recalled a partial Social Security number 3X5-44-XXXX, consistent with numbers assigned in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana during the 1960s. Hypnosis suggested that Kyle had two or three brothers, whose names or faces he did not remember, but otherwise he could not recall any other people from his life.[6][7] Kyle had memories of Indianapolis as a child, including the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, the Woolworth's on the Circle, and the Indiana Theater showing movies in Cinerama. He remembered Crown Hill Cemetery, although not its name, the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and the White River when "it was mostly just a dumping ground".[citation needed] He also remembered grilled cheese sandwiches for a quarter and glasses of milk for a nickel at the Indiana State Fair. Based on his reactions to the mention of nuns during hypnosis, he may have been raised Catholic and may have attended Catholic schools.[24] Searching through Indianapolis area high school yearbook records came up empty, although records from that era are often incomplete.[12]
More specific memories placed him in Indianapolis between at least 1954 and 1963.[6] The earlier date is based on his recognition of the Fountain Square Theater,[25] but not the Granada Theater[26] in the Fountain Square area of town. The Granada closed in the mid-1950s. The later date is based on his recollections of a 2% retail sales tax that was enacted by the State of Indiana in 1963,[27] and that the popular WLS Chicago radio station disc jockey Dick Biondi left the station that year over management issues.[citation needed]
Kyle also had memories of being in the Denver Metropolitan Area. He had detailed memories of the subscription the University of Colorado Boulder's Norlin Library had to Restaurants & Institutions. He also remembered the Round the Corner Restaurant on The Hill, and the Flatirons and The Fox Theater near the Boulder campus.[28] This placed Kyle in Colorado in the late 1970s to early 1980s.[15] Kyle reported having memories of the controversy surrounding the construction of mass transit in Denver, at a time when the city still had no financing to proceed. Although the RTD Bus & Light Rail system in Denver went into operation in 1994, public debate over the construction of the system dates back to about 1980, consistent with the time period of the other memories that Kyle has of Denver and Boulder.[29]
More specific memories of Boulder placed Kyle there between 1976 and 1983.[6] The earlier date was based on his memory that he arrived during the construction of the Pearl Street Mall in the downtown area, and shortly after the Big Thompson Canyon flood[30] that occurred on July 31 – August 1, 1976. The later date was based on the year that the King Soopers grocery store chain merged with Kroger.
Kyle had detailed knowledge of restaurant management and food preparation equipment, leading to the theory that he may have once worked in these industries.[12]
Kyle had nearly no memory of his life after the 1980s, including how he ended up in Georgia.[14] One event he does remember is reading about the September 11 attacks.[7] When asked by doctors to recall the presidents of the United States, he only recalled those from the 20th century.[12] Many of his memories he cannot describe in words and are at the tip of his tongue.[7]
Identification
On September 16, 2015, Kyle announced on his Facebook page that his identity had been established by a team of adoption researchers led by CeCe Moore.[1] "A little over two months ago I was informed by CeCe Moore that that they had established my Identity using DNA. Many people have shared their DNA profiles so that they may be compared with mine. Through a process of elimination they determined my ancestral bloodline and who my relatives were. A DNA test taken by a close relative has confirmed that we are related," Kyle wrote.[31]
The Orlando Sentinel reported on September 22 that Kyle had received a Florida identification card with the help of IDignity, an Orlando-based organization that helps the homeless and others obtain identification documents.[32] IDignity also assisted in establishing Kyle's identification.[33]
On November 21, 2016, Kyle's true identity was revealed to be William Burgess Powell. He was born on August 29, 1948, in Lafayette, Indiana, and was raised there. In 1976, he had cut ties with his family and abandoned his possessions, including his car and the trailer where he had been living. His family filed a missing persons report at the time, and police found he had moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he had moved on a whim with a coworker. His birth date turned out to be one of the details about his previous life that he had remembered correctly. A reporter found some Social Security records of him working in various jobs until 1983, after which no records could be found for the remaining period of more than 20 years before his discovery in 2004.[1]
Media coverage
Kyle appeared on the Dr. Phil show on the October 16, 2008, episode "Who am I".[24] Dr. Phil McGraw paid for Kyle to seek a professional hypnotist in an effort to help him recover lost memories. He also appeared on local television networks across the country. Kyle says he has been met with skepticism about the case.[6]
In March 2011, Kyle was the subject of a student documentary from Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts by filmmaker John Wikstrom. The film, entitled Finding Benjaman, was in part a description about his curious circumstances, and in part an appeal to action for local media groups and politicians. The film was invited to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival and at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival. Through the outreach involved with the film, Kent Justice of News4Jax (WJXT) ran a series on Kyle with the help of Florida Senator Mike Weinstein. Through Weinstein, and the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Kyle obtained a Legacy Identification Card to supplement the identity card he received when he was in Georgia. No new leads were developed by the story, but he found work and housing through the generosity of viewers.
The news of Kyle's identification received widespread coverage, including stories by the Orlando Sentinel, ABC News and New York's Daily News.[34][35]
Dissociative fugue, formerly called a fugue state or psychogenic fugue, is a rare psychiatric phenomenon characterized by reversible amnesia for one's identity in conjunction with unexpected wandering or travel. This is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity and the inability to recall personal information prior to the presentation of symptoms. Dissociative fugue is a mental and behavioral disorder that is classified variously as a dissociative disorder, a conversion disorder, and a somatic symptom disorder. It is a facet of dissociative amnesia, according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
DNA profiling is the process of determining an individual's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding.
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty queen who was killed at the age of six in her family's home at 755 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado. A long handwritten ransom note was found in the home. Her father, John, found the girl's body in the basement of their house about seven hours after she had been reported missing. She had sustained a broken skull from a blow to the head and had been strangled; a garrote was found tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma". Her death was ruled a homicide. The case generated worldwide public and media interest, in part because her mother Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen, had entered JonBenét into a series of child beauty pageants. The crime is still considered a cold case and remains an open investigation with the Boulder Police Department.
Henry Gustav Molaison, known widely as H.M., was an American who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy to surgically resect the anterior two thirds of his hippocampi, parahippocampal cortices, entorhinal cortices, piriform cortices, and amygdalae in an attempt to cure his epilepsy. Although the surgery was partially successful in controlling his epilepsy, a severe side effect was that he became unable to form new memories. His unique case also helped define ethical standards in neurological research, emphasizing the need for patient consent and the consideration of long-term impacts of medical interventions. Furthermore, Molaison's life after his surgery highlighted the challenges and adaptations required for living with significant memory impairments, serving as an important case study for healthcare professionals and caregivers dealing with similar conditions.
50 First Dates is a 2004 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Segal and starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, with Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, Lusia Strus, Blake Clark and Dan Aykroyd in supporting roles. It follows the story of Henry Roth, a womanizing marine veterinarian who falls for an art teacher named Lucy Whitmore. When he discovers she has amnesia, and forgets him when she falls asleep, he resolves to win her over again each new day.
In neurology, retrograde amnesia (RA) is the inability to access memories or information from before an injury or disease occurred. RA differs from a similar condition called anterograde amnesia (AA), which is the inability to form new memories following injury or disease onset. Although an individual can have both RA and AA at the same time, RA can also occur on its own; this 'pure' form of RA can be further divided into three types: focal, isolated, and pure RA. RA negatively affects an individual's episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory, but they can still form new memories because RA leaves procedural memory intact. Depending on its severity, RA can result in either temporally graded or more permanent memory loss. However, memory loss usually follows Ribot's law, which states that individuals are more likely to lose recent memories than older memories. Diagnosing RA generally requires using an Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI) and observing brain structure through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a computed tomography scan (CT), or electroencephalography (EEG).
Mistaken identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defendant, when in fact the person seen by the witness was someone else. The defendant may question both the memory of the witness, and the perception of the witness.
Jefferson High School is a high school located in Lafayette, Indiana, United States and administered by the Lafayette School Corporation. Its mascot is the Broncho and its school colors are red and black.
Kyle XY is an American science fiction television series created by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber and produced by ABC Studios. The central character is a teenage boy who awakens naked in a forest outside Seattle, Washington, with amnesia and no belly button. He is taken in by a family and given the name Kyle. The series follows Kyle as he tries to solve the puzzles of who he is and why he has no memory before that day. Although set in present-day Seattle, the series was filmed in the Vancouver, British Columbia area.
The Unknown Child was the initially unidentified body of Sidney Leslie Goodwin, a 19-month-old British toddler who was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett after the sinking of the RMS Titanic. For almost a century, Goodwin's gravestone in the Fairview Cemetery read "Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster to the Titanic April 15th 1912".
Selective amnesia is a type of amnesia in which the sufferer loses only certain parts of their memory. Common elements that may be forgotten are relationships, where they live, and certain special abilities and talents.
The Bourne franchise consists of action-thriller installments based on the character Jason Bourne, created by author Robert Ludlum. The franchise includes five films and a spin-off television series. The overall plot centers around Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin suffering from dissociative amnesia, portrayed by Matt Damon.
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American forensic scientist, genealogist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs Identifinders International, an investigative genetic genealogy consulting firm which helps identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes.
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases, but it can also be temporarily caused by the use of various sedative and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that is caused.
Lyle Stevik was the alias used by an American man who, in 2001, committed suicide inside a motel room in Amanda Park, Washington. Although his body was quickly discovered, and fingerprints, DNA and dental information collected and recorded, there were no matches in any databases and the man's identity remained unknown until 2018.
CeCe Moore is an American genetic genealogist who has been described as the country's foremost such entrepreneur. She has appeared on many TV shows and worked as a genetic genealogy researcher for others such as Finding Your Roots. She has reportedly helped law enforcement agencies in identifying suspects in over 300 cold cases using DNA and genetic genealogy. In May 2020, she began appearing in a prime time ABC television series called The Genetic Detective in which each episode recounts a cold case she helped solve. In addition to her television work, she is known for pioneering the genetic genealogy methodologies used by adoptees and others of unknown origin for identifying biological family.
Robert Ivan Nichols, alias Joseph Newton Chandler III, was a formerly unidentified American identity thief who committed suicide in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. After his death, investigators were unable to locate his family and discovered that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old boy who was killed in a car crash in Texas in 1945.
DNA Doe Project is an American nonprofit volunteer organization formed to identify unidentified deceased persons using forensic genealogy. Volunteers identify victims of automobile accidents, homicide, and unusual circumstances and persons who committed suicide under an alias. The group was founded in 2017 by Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press.
"Julie Doe" is the nickname given to a transgender woman believed to have been murdered in Clermont, Florida, in 1988. Neither the victim's identity, nor the identity of those involved in her death, have been established. The victim was believed to be a cisgender woman until DNA testing in 2015.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company also offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, both closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
