NELSON, DANIEL (1946 - 1968) - On the twelfth of August, 1968, less than a month, co-incidentally, after my birth, Daniel Nelson staggered into the Strangers bar in Greenbank, Wisconsin, his shirt saturated with his own blood. Within minutes, despite efforts of the staff to revive him, he was dead: the probable cause a stab wound to the upper chest inflicted by a long, thin blade. I say 'probable' because the wound was only one of several. Daniel had been stabbed a total of seven times. Blood stains in the vicinity of Strangers suggest that the fatal assault took place within a vehicle from which the dying Nelson was ejected before making his way to the bar. One witness recalled having to swerve to avoid a man he assumed to be drunk stepping from the rear door of a black car. As the 'drunk' staggered toward oncoming traffic, the car from which he emerged accelerated away. This was almost certainly Daniel Nelson.

With no apparent motive, the Greenbank Police Department assumed that Nelson's murder was a random act of savagery. Various local thugs and degenerates were questioned but none detained. By the time Nelson's remains were released for burial a month later, the police had acknowledged defeat. "It was just one of these things," recalled retired detective Ray Hollis when I contacted him years later. "We did everything we could." His complacency wasn't justified by the facts. When the investigation, headed by Hollis, failed to elicit a confession through violence it was abandoned. Despite the promptings of Nelson's parents and sister, nobody within the Greenbank P.D. thought to establish links between Daniel's murder and a strange incident three years earlier when a teenager, missing for a week, was found by loggers in the forest that rings Greenbank, muddled and without the slightest memory of where he had been. The name of the youth was Daniel Nelson.

An intelligent investigator regards co-incidence as a red flag. Every event in our lives is in some way linked. When the pattern of someone's existence is afflicted by such improbable misfortunes twice within a limited timescale, we're obliged to sit up and take notice. "Just one of these crazy things," insisted the idiotic Hollis when reminded of his negligence. Nobody familiar with the official investigative process, encumbered as it is by a slavish demand for 'evidence', should be entirely surprised by his attitude, though his lack of curiousity seems remarkable even by the standards of his vocation.

Certain names possess a resonance for no apparent reason. This applies even to those without any pronounced psychic gift. Why randomly combined syllables should leave one person cold while causing another an overpowering sensation of forgotten knowledge is testament to the threads that connect us. Even before I was apprised of the facts of Daniel's case, the mention of his name was sufficient to create a mental picture that tallied with the reality in every particular. I can see him now, his broad smile tempered by the apprehension that the world might not consider him entirely acceptable. No-one else might have suspected this lack of confidence in a champion debater who, incidentally, studied the same book on public speaking I inherited from my Grandpa Sneddon. Is it possible that Daniel possessed some foreknowledge of his fate? His sister, Irene, thought so. “Daniel was never the same after he went missing,” she told me. “The spark was gone. He withdrew into himself, it was as if he was waiting for something to happen.”

 

Home

Glossary

Hamilton Live

Casebook

 

Contact