Blair Adams, a Canadian citizen who was 31 years old, was found dead in the parking lot of a hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 11, 1996. Nearly $4,000 worth of Canadian, American, and German money was spread around his body. The cause of his de*ath was found to be a blow to the stomach. His family and friends want to know what happened that led to his de*ath.
Authorities found that Blair acted very strangely in the days before he died. He said that people were trying to k*ill him, and he traveled thousands of miles to get to Knoxville. First, his family said that he started having mood swings. He also had trouble falling asleep. When his mother asked what was wrong, he said he couldn’t tell her about “it.” On July 5, 1996, he took all the money from his savings account as well as jewelry, gold, and platinum worth thousands of dollars. On July 7, he went to the border between Canada and the U.S., but he was not allowed to cross because he was a single man with a lot of money, which made him look like a drug dealer.
Blair went to his job at a construction company in Surrey, British Columbia, the next day and quit. That afternoon, he bought a round-trip flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt, Germany, for $2,000. The next day, his flight would leave. But he went to a friend’s house just a few hours after buying the ticket. He said he had to cross the border because someone was trying to k*ill him. His friend told him that she couldn’t help. The next day, July 9, he gave his ticket back, rented a car, crossed the border, and drove to Seattle.
Blair’s rental car was left at the airport. He then bought a ticket to Washington, DC, that only went there. Investigators thought this was strange because the price was twice as much as a round-trip ticket.
His mother thought that Blair was running away from something or someone.
On July 10, when he got to Washington, DC, he rented a white Toyota and drove to Knoxville. He didn’t know anyone in the area, so this was also strange.
At 5:30 p.m., Blair went to a gas station and told the worker that his rental car wouldn’t start. The attendant told him he had the wrong key and said, “If you drove the car here, you must have the right key.” Blair and the attendant looked for the right key, and Blair would empty his pockets, but they couldn’t find it, so he was stuck in Knoxville.
A mechanic took him to a hotel, and the manager of the hotel remembered him for a long time. He walked in and out of the lobby five times before getting a room. The hotel manager, Ticca Heartsfield, told the police, “He was just acting very agitated and paranoid. I don’t know who he was waiting for, but he was waiting for someone to walk in for him.” He left the hotel as soon as he bought the room and was never seen again.
Twelve hours later, Blair’s body was found in a parking lot about a half mile from the hotel. She was naked from the waist down. There were some odd clues at the crime scene. His pants had been taken off by pulling and were on the wrong way around. So were his socks. He didn’t have any shoes on and his shirt was torn. In addition to the different currencies worth $4,000 that were all over him, he also had a fanny pack with jewelry, gold, and platinum next to him, as well as a duffel bag with a lot of maps and travel receipts. The correct key to his rental car, which he had lost hours before, was perhaps the strangest clue at the scene.
Blair died because he took a hard blow to the stomach. The weapon, which could have been a club or crowbar, also cut open his forehead. He fought back. Pieces of his hair were ripped out of his head, and he had cuts on his hands where he tried to defend himself. Investigators found a long piece of hair in his hand that they think came from the person who k*illed him. Some of his wounds also seemed to show that he had been sexually abused.
He had never been diagnosed with a mental illness, and neither alcohol nor drugs were found in his body. But Blair’s odyssey would end up happening just the way he feared it would.
