It’s easy to locate a missing user who needs to be found.Alex Gumm has been missing for 928 days after his disappearance in Kauai.
Editor’s Note: This story is based on interviews with 3 members of Alex Gumm’s family circle, five of Gumm’s closest friends, Kauai police officers who attempted the case of Gumm’s missing user and the useful researcher hired through Gumm’s family circle to search for Guides.
KILAUEA, Kauai – A young guitarist with a radical non-secular practice, Alex Gumm did not tell anyone he was going to Kauai.
He didn’t even say goodbye when his parents dropped him off at a Maine bus station to begin his enigmatic journey.
In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. Gumm had recently shaved his head and vowed silence, keeping the global out of his mind.
With only one backpack in tow, Gumm landed at Lihue Airport on February 22, 2018 in a non-secular solitary quest, looking for anything he couldn’t locate in the aging New England Mill, the city he calls home.
He spent his first night on the island in a hostel in Kapaa, sleeping on an outdoor terrace wrapped in moisture and overlooking the sea.In the morning, he took a cab that never arrived.
Then he disappeared, never again his cell phone or his bank account.
He’s been missing for 928 days.
Gumm was 25 when he arrived in Kauai and disappeared from the public archives, a feat difficult to accomplish in the virtual age.
The story of his disappearance is part of a broader trend of lacking people in Hawaii, deliberately escaping the hyper-connectivity of global fashion and other times for more sinister reasons.There are other people who travel to Hawaii in search of a final destination.to end their lives, a phenomenon known as suicidal tourism.Others run to the islands to escape punishment for their crimes.
There are 86 cases of unresolved people in Kauai, which has a population of 72,000.The business spans an era of forty-five years.
It is very likely that some will remain open indefinitely, as they come with other people who were last noticed swimming in the ocean moments before disappearing into a hangover stream.
Other disappearances have led detectives to keep the missing user from wanting to be found.
Police say this appears to be the case for Gumm, who interrupted his private dates before arriving on the island.
Friends in Gumm’s hometown, who hacked the computer he left behind, say his most recent Google searches imply that he had been researching how to collect wild plants and locate blank water.He stayed in Kauai to withdraw from society and live a lonely life.grid.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kauai police said there was a growing tendency for others to move to the island to be left homeless voluntarily. The climate is temperate and there are many farms where you can exchange hard paints for food and shelter.Provide loose outdoor showers. Sometimes it’s acceptable to hitchhike.You can hunt, fish or choose to eat and cook it on the beach over a fire.
“People can still make a living from this land,” said Kauai Deputy Chief of Police Bryson Ponce.”There are still fish in the sea and animals to hunt and berries on the mountain.There’s a way to get here without a task or cash if you have enough resources to know how to do it.”
Boats from other states that live this way through selection (Gumm left about $8,000 intact in his bank account when he disappeared) make up a small but developing percentage of the island’s homeless population, police said.from California or the Pacific Northwest that misunderstood Hawaii’s temperate climate, they built a new life off the grid for themselves without being prepared for seasons of heavy rain, rainy heat and mosquitoes.
“We used to find out through calls who the other people are in our small town,” Ponce said. “And it has grown so much that now we have no concept. There are many other people who come to Kauai and mingle. There are other people who look alike just because of hiking and camping. You may see and be wrong, it’s something else.”
This is not a new phenomenon. An organization of other young people from the continent accumulated on a stretch of the sea coast on the island’s rugged north coast in 1969 to create the hippie retreat known as Taylor Camp.The network of tree houses condemned and dismantled throughout the state in the 1970s.the island’s reputation as a lair for counterculture-resistant people continues.
Other Hawaiian islands also attract free-spirited passers-by.The big island has no shortage of life-choice communities.A former hippie colony in Maui still serves as a gathering place for nudist beach parties.Even the city of Oahu, with its dense population and skyscrapers attract other marginalized people who seek to withdraw from the social order.
With only about 10% of the island available by car, Kauai’s vast un developed domain is through many vagrants as the ultimate counterculture paradise, a position where anyone can simply disconnect from their past life and remain unknown.
In addition, in the mythology of the new era pedaled on non-secular blogs and YouTube channels, Kauai is described as lemuria, an ancient continent inhabited by alien beings of the stellar formula of the Pléyades.the island believing they can locate this esoteric eden.
Kauai police, however, say it is not unusual for newcomer passers-by to communicate with nature or in a full non-secular quest to be temporarily ill-equipped to leave the earth.
Kauai’s boundless nature has a history of hiding outlaws.
When the government banished the mythical cowboy Kaluaikoolau, also known as Koolau the Leper, and his circle of relatives from the Molokai leper colony in 1892, he escaped capture for years in the Kalalau Valley.
More recently, law enforcement officials endured seven days on the mountain to locate a federal fugitive hiding in the wet, sweltering mountains of east Kauai.The same man, a resident of Kauai, had already been arrested for violating probation after taking police for 23 days.hunting in the jungle.
“I will never be able to describe how strange it was to see someone disappear before your eyes.”- Shane McKenzie, Alex Gumm’s most productive friend
In the absence of a sign of unfair gambling, Gumm’s removal from the company appears to reflect a lifestyle decision, said personal investigator Brian Fujiuchi, who worked on the Gumm case.
Fujiuchi, kauai’s former police chief, said police may not do much when an adult decides to part with his old life.If the police located Gumm, they might do little more than assess their well-being and implor.to touch their parents to let them know he’s alive.
“This is what we call being intentionally lost.” Fujiuchi said.”If you don’t show warning signs, if you’re not a madman who burns items or steals places, you can mingle and live here for years without anyone noticing.Someone can literally faint in any remote valley, set up a camp there and lived there for a long time without knowing it.
The lack of urban progression in Kauai has kept alive the choice of a life in line with network life and artistic expression.
One such place is the Kalalau Valley, a green bowl of wild nature flooded with waterfalls secluded from the fashionable world through the thorns of dizzying peaks.Away from buildings, roads and cell phone service, the valley has long been a magnet for illegal occupants in search.of a non-secular awakening or, at least, of a certain distance from society at large.
This is where whimsical travelers who have a romantic feeling of listening to nature have lived for months, even years, despising their clothes, growing their own food and bathing in fresh herbal pools.
But the liberation of the customs of society that attracts others to the valley can also be dangerous.
The Kalalau Valley is where Jesse Pinegar, 22, from Utah, last noticed a camp in 2008; There sean Michael Rollnick’s 43-year-old body was discovered with no known direction in 2016 with injuries consistent with a fall from a cliff.is where the framework of Daniel Marks, 24, a resident of Oregon who has been absent for 14 years, is located.
A global traveler with a hobthrough for electronic music, Daniel Marks last noticed on the edge of the Kalalau Valley through a couple of Colorado tourists.
It’s December 11, 2005, and night falls. Daniel Marks, an avid hiker, broke into a verbal exchange with tourists he had just met and disappeared from the viewpoint, a popular photo shoot, towards the 4,000-foot depot at the back of the valley.
The Colorado couple reported the incident to the police.
“When the helicopter crossed the ridge and I looked down, I thought, “I never will.Nunca.Es too big” — Ron Marks, father of Daniel Marks
The Hawaiian word kalalau translates as “the one who wanders.”The valley cannot be legally available by car, plane or speedboat, although unauthorized “pirate” boats offer summer tours to the beach in front of the valley during the short summer season.when the ocean is calm. It is legally available only through a 35 km circular holiday or by kayak when the ocean is flat enough.
The good looks of Valley Global and its secluded location have long attracted hippies.It is also a self-guided nature retreat at the end of the 11-mile Kalalau Trail, popular with backpackers.
However, entering the valley from its reinforcing edge is anything wild goats can try.
Ron Marks, Daniel Marks’ father, concluded almost promptly that his son should have died when he saw the vertical cliffs he would have tried to descend.
“When the helicopter came here on the ridge and I looked down, I thought, ‘I never will.Nunca.Es too big, ” said Ron Marks.
Marks, a retired Ohio fed, spent more than $100,000 searching for his son, chartering part of a dozen helicopter flights over the valley and hiring The Rocky Mountain Trackers, a Colorado search and rescue professional organization.
But it was he who discovered the only evidence of his son’s fatal hap: a spoiled, covered water purifier and a shawl hung conscientiously on the trunk of a felled tree on the edge of the valley near the falling cliff.
Although the facts about his son’s disappearance remain a mystery, he came to this conclusion: his son went to Kauai in search of adventure, when he saw the Kalalau Valley, he tragically sought to enter, tragically, miscalculated the danger of the landscape..
“The grass in the valley is rumored to be exceptional,” Ron Marks said.”Perhaps my son was just looking for a smart weed?I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Two months after his son disappeared, Ron Marks bought a tombstone.He’s a mile from his home in rural Ohio, a position Daniel Marks left when he was old enough.
Ron Marks’ daughter Susan disagreed with the location of the tombstone.
“Dad,” she says, “let him be there in Kauai and let a tree grow through him.Let him stay where he wanted to be.
But Ron Marks didn’t hesitate at his son’s ultimate resting place.
“If we ever find him, ” he said, “I’ll take him home.”
When Shane McKenzie said gumm had taken a flight to Kauai and that no one had heard of him since, his brain sank into a dark place.
“I think he had Kauai to commit himself to suicide,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie and Gumm grew up together on the East Coast, connected through skateboarding, guitar and conspiracy theories.
When McKenzie moved to Los Angeles to expand his musical career, Gumm, who never fully joined his family, followed him in search of his wonderful breakup.Artists in each and every sense of the word, young men have conceived a life around the creation and interpretation of music.
In McKenzie’s eyes, Gumm is kind, contemplative and a bit of a magician on guitar.
Success in the music industry probably wouldn’t have been so unsuccessful for Gumm because he had grown up watching McKenzie’s mother, Dale Bozzio, lead singer of the 1980s news band Missing Persons, while stoking the flickering flame of his fame.
But McKenzie says it’s not the glory Gumm was looking for, but Gumm was looking for musical excellence.He sought to create new sounds.
In Los Angeles, Gumm’s call was Albert Johnsun.His taste for guitar evolved from rock and roll to something more environmental and ingenious as his habit has become erratic.He began sleeping at the door of McKenzie’s room.He recorded his solo paintings only to him and told some friends that he believed himself to be descended from the alien race that inhabited Lemuria, the mythical cradle of civilization.On stage, he exercised a serenely seductive presence.
One night, McKenzie said his friend had come down from the stage defeated.
“They didn’t come, ” said Gumm to McKenzie, disoriented.
Gumm was talking about aliens. According to McKenzie, Gumm’s idea was going to move on to some other universe in his performance.
Something broke in Gumm that night, according to McKenzie: he stopped taking the guitar, followed a strict herbal diet and walked away from his relationships.Spend more and more time alone.
“I can never describe how strange it was to see someone disappear before your eyes,” McKenzie said.
In 2017, Gumm returned to Maine to live in the historic Victorian mansion that his parents own and function as an inn.Remaining in his own little wing of the house, Gumm pondered and studied the philosophy and faith of the world., who prefer to sleep on the floor.
Her mother understood her preference for another way of life, had felt a similar dissatisfaction with the prestige quo of her young men and was thirsty for something more meaningful, so she tried to nurture the interests of her only daughter, giving her literature about a Buddhist Monastery in a forest not far from Boston.
Gumm’s father brazenly disappointed. You may not settle for your child’s aversion to things he hoped to identify with, such as Christianity and football.
On February 20, 2018, Sally McLaren and Ben Gumm learned that their son was making plans to leave town only when he broke his vow of silence to say he wouldn’t be there to help tidy up the rooms.
There have been no official sightings of Gumm for more than two years, there have been some credible ones.
The most promising advice comes from a woguy who said he met a young man at a homeless camp in Salt Pond Beach Park in March or April 2018 and gave him a plate of seafood soup that he brought to the camp for anyone who might just be hungry.He rejected the soup and mentioned his herbal diet.
The guy had a tattoo on his arm that matched the description of the blue-dyed kundalini symbol on Gumm’s left forearm.I was reading a devoted text, maybe the Bible.
Fujiuchi, the personal investigator hired through Gumm’s parents to publish pamphlets about missing people in Kauai and stick to credible clues, said he conducted dozens of telephone and personal interviews with others who claimed to have noticed Gumm.in places where other people said they think it might still be, but each and every one of the recommendations is a dead end.
Gumm’s sightings stopped in mid-summer 2018, which led some to Gumm retreating to a more remote location on the island, such as the Kalalau Valley.
Another possibility: Gumm would possibly have left the island.
When Gumm disappeared, his parents filed a report of absent persons with Kauai police and hired Fujiuchi to top the list.They gave interview after interview with journalists, raising awareness of Gumm’s disappearance across the United States.
But they didn’t detect it in person; they believed that chasing him would only push him more.
“This is what we’re intentionally losing.” – Brian Fujiuchi, private investigator
Fujiuchi said there was no doubt that Gumm was in Kauai for at least several months after his arrival in February 2018.Although he has since left his bank account and cell phone, he said it was imaginable that he is still in Kauai.But, he says, it’s equally imaginable that he’s somewhere else.
Despite the absent user active on Gumm’s behalf, Gumm may have travelled transparently without informing any authority.After all, Gumm is an adult who is neither harmful nor endangered.He’s not a suspect in any crime. He has each and every right to withdraw from society.
A gumm training years friends organization presented its own survey in 2019, purchasing classified Facebook ads recommended by Kauai users.They contacted Gumm’s friends in Los Angeles to take a look at his mental state.They searched Gumm’s room and looked for clues on his computer..
When they went aimless, the five friends got on a plane and flew to Kauai.If anyone could locate their rebellious friend, they believed.They thought training their hunt was a wonderful adventure.
Looking from the plane, the men inspected Kauai, a leafy piece of land in an infinite sea, and thought they would place the Gumm game guitar on a beach somewhere for the first two days.They’d take him to dinner and convince him to come back.After that, there will be time for surf lessons in Hanalei Bay before everyone heads to the airport and says goodbye to the island.
In fact, the men were not entirely prepared to go to a remote island in search of their friend’s symptoms.
For seven days in November, the men explored homeless camps, second-hand shops, pantries, monasteries, skate parks and lonely beaches.Along the way, they encountered a homeless disoriented man who said Gumm had set up his shop next to hers for a while and a soft- voiced bohemian boy who claimed to have witnessed Gumm’s skilful guitar game.
These tips solidified for men the concept that their friend is in fact in Kauai and may still be there.But no one they knew had noticed for several months.Part of a dozen credible likely clues followed, but none of them represented much.
On the last day on the island, the study team had passed through all the villages of Kauai, but had set a foot slightly in the maze of jungle and rugged mountains that occupies most of the area of the island.
The men left the island, more because of the whereabouts of their friends than by the time they began.
Like many others who followed Kauai’s enigmatic charm, Gumm’s friends found the children ill-prepared and their plans half-prepared.Kauai broke his fantasy concept of paradise.
The island is a chimera. It’s small and full of places to hide.The climate is temperate and tempestuous. The concept that we can disappear is unlikely, however, it has been demonstrated over and over again.There are dozens of cases of unanswered people in Kauai.
It’s been two and a half years since Gumm disappeared and sometimes a new clue materializes.Gumm’s parents will receive an email or Facebook message about a Gumm imaginable and a personal investigator or citizen involved will stick to their needs.
But those tips and the glimmers of hope they give gumm’s friends and family are getting rarer.
“I’m still interested in what happened to him because I need to track him down,” said Ian Davis, one of the men who searched for Gumm in Kauai.”We live in a world that has been reduced through technology.be imaginable to find out what happened to him.
“But I don’t feel like, “Hey, I have to locate my friend.”I think that component of that replaced me when I realized, like, it’s probably that other one now.Even if he’s still alive, he’ll never be the same.”
If you have any information about Alex Gumm’s disappearance, please email Ben Gumm and Sally McLaren at [email protected] or Ian Davis to [email protected].
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