URGENT! PLEASE HELP! Search for Missing Man in Middle Tennessee

[Silver Gaia]

54. You're right, sc.

It's a teeny-tiny town. Everybody knows everybody else. No one there has any idea who this old man he was talking to might be. Or at least, no one who's talking.

These are good questions. I'll try to comment and answer them as best I can.

1) Do they know what time he met this gentlemen at DG?
Unless it was in the very early hours, there would have been people about who would have seen them.

The meeting was set to be around noon. None of the DG employees recall seeing anything, and their security camera didn't cover the part of the parking lot where he parked his truck.

2) How did you know he was going to do this?
Obviously he communicated w/someone about this meeting. I would be investigating that/those party(ies) more.

We know that this is what he was going to do because he told Laura and Donnie, whose farm is where he lives (or lived). He has breakfast with them every morning. They knew that he was going to meet either the old man, or the contractor the old man hired to build the house, because he told them that. They are good friends of both David and I. They are impeccable, nothing questionable about either of them at all. He also told this to a woman in Michigan who is a mutual friend. She had expected him to arrive at her home sometime that evening. He was leaving for Michigan right after taking care of this business. He had originally been going to leave earlier, but told her he would be delayed because of this meeting.

3) Would someone have "set him up" because they suspected he had $?
Flashy jewelry, expensive clothes/car, tools, life ins., etc.? Or something else they wanted?

This is possible. I have considered a set up. He didn't have much money on him, maybe a few hundred for the trip to Michigan, but that could have been a lot to someone. There was nothing flashy about David. No fancy clothes, no jewelry, no expensive cars, no fancy tools, and I am sure he had no life insurance, either. He lived a very simple, back-to-the-land sort of life. He didn't even have an indoor toilet (because he didn't want it). Instead, he had a fancy outhouse with carpet and skylights. Think simple living. Nothing flashy in any way. Something else they wanted? Maybe. I can't figure out what that might be, though.

4) Could there have been a "love interest" involved?
Was he dating someone; someone he might not have known well enough to suspect any danger existed?

Possibly. A woman from a previous relationship had been trying to contact him. She is known to have violent tendencies, BUT the police say they have investigated her and she has been cleared. I don't know how well they did their job but they say she is not involved. I am still not so sure about that. He wasn't dating anyone currently. To be honest, my first gut reaction was that a woman was involved somehow.

5) Could he be held hostage?
Used as a "slave" for free work?

I've wondered about this, too. This is one of the few scenarios I can come up with in which he might still stand a chance of being found alive. But WHY? And by WHOM? It is hard to envision. But there are plenty of nutcases out there. Who knows...

6) Could this "story" be a ruse to throw investigators off the trail?

The idea of a ruse has come to me more than once. The old man is KEY here. Who is he? Was he setting David up for something? This idea goes back to the idea of a set up, too. Was the whole thing a ruse to get him off by himself with someone pretending to be the contractor? But WHY? Over a woman? Over the few hundred bucks he had in his wallet?

Nothing makes any real sense.

I have resigned myself to the idea that we may never know... that is very difficult to come to terms with, but it may be the reality.