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| Missing person Matthew Weaver |
- His date of last contact was August 10th, 2018
- He is missing from Topanga, California
- He was 21 years old the day he went missing
- White male
- 5'10" and 130 pounds
- Brown hair and hazel eyes
- Partial beard and mustache
- He was wearing a Los Angeles Angels baseball cap, red shoes, and Dickies pants; the likeness of the cap, according to the Facebook group's admin, is pictured below
- NamUs says that his car was found abandoned near Rosa's Overlook on the Topanga Lookout Trail.
Regarding the circumstances, in the area where Matthew's car was found, there was a 911 phone call that might be linked to Matthew (this is not clear). Hikers reported hearing a man and a woman call for help according to an NBC article I read. Whether the said man was Matthew is not clear. According to the NBC article: "just after midnight on August 11 in the area near where surveillance footage last captured Matthew’s car, hikers called police to report hearing a male and female calling for help" (NBC).
I asked the individual who runs the Facebook group whether Matthew might have been with this said woman. The answer was that the "911 call cries of help yielded no results in locating Matthew Weaver or anyone else that needed assistance." This call could be a red herring but it is hard to ignore as well because of the proximity to Matthew's car and because of how close it was to his last-seen time.
I asked the Facebook group admin several more questions and they are answered below.
(1) Does Matthew have any tattoos?
Answer: "He has Jeremiah tattooed over his chest."
(2) Does he have any piercings?
Answer: "He has his ears pierced."
(3) Did he have any markings like a birthmark or scar?
Answer: "No."
(4) Was there anything unique about him due to a surgery or a medical procedure in the past?
Answer: "No."
(5) Was he an avid user of the trails?
Answer: "he was not a hiker but he knew the canyon roads well because he enjoyed driving on them."
Subjective Commentary:
If you come across an unidentified person's report with a described tattoo of "Jeremiah" prominent on the UPs chest, then think of Matthew and be aware that this tattoo was not in his NamUs profile at the time of writing. Hence, someone in the future might not match a UP to Matthew based on this tattoo. It would, therefore, be smart to do a periodic manual search of such a tattoo among UPs. I did such a search on October 7th, 2018 and found no hits.
Matthew's stated lack of familiarity with the trails could be a major clue. It might suggest that he got lost if he did, in fact, decide to venture on the trail network as his absence from his vehicle suggests.
But when I read about Matthew's case, I found the timeline enigmatic. He seemed active late in the evening on Thursday, August 9th and it seemed like he partied until the early hours of the morning of August 10th when he left the company of a woman at 4:30am. He also posted a SnapChat video at 5:30am or 6am, which starts to call into question when exactly he fell asleep. His car was seen on surveillance at 7:12am and there appears to be contact from him at 11:30am, which further calls into question when he slept. If the after-midnight (ie. early August 11th) 911 call pertains to Matthew it seems like he would have been away from a bed for more than 24 hours.
Lastly, there is the question of the hikers and their claim to hear a "male and female" call for help just after midnight on August 11th. I've wondered if that should have been a "male OR female" but the NBC article said "male AND female." If that was, in fact, Matthew and an unknown woman calling for help then there could be a missing woman here too. If you ever come across a report of a missing woman with the exact same last-seen date as Michael (or a day very close to it - August 10th, 2018) the consider whether this missing person might be related to Matthew's missing person's case. At time of writing, there was no such report in NamUs but one might yet get posted.
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