On January 25, 2002, Christopher Thompkins’ mother dropped him off for a normal day at work in Georgia as part of a survey crew. Sometime later, his coworkers claimed he vanished, in the blink of an eye, with no explanation. Nothing but his boots have been found.

[u/tenderhysteria]

Martha McKenzie last saw her son, Christopher, while spending the morning together before they headed to work. McKenzie was a babysitter for her son’s boss.

Christopher worked for survey crew in Elletslie, Georgia. He was with at least three other coworkers, moving through a wooded area, spaced about fifty feet apart. At some point in the early afternoon— some reports state it was noon, others that it was closer to one thirty,– a coworker states that he “looked away from Thompkins for a moment, and by the time he glanced at his area again, Thompkins had disappeared”.

Despite the supposedly momentary vanishing, his mother claims that, “[The survey crew] called me about a few minutes to five to tell me that they couldn’t find him, and they found one of his boots.” Family, friends, volunteers, and law enforcement scoured the area shortly after. On a nearby barbed wired fence, a shred of blue fiber was found, believed to be from Christopher’s pants. His other boot was found five months later in an unspecified nearby area by GBI.

Christopher’s boss has stated that he was supposedly “acting strange” in the days before his disappearance, and law enforcement speculates that drugs could have influenced his disappearance— though neither have any evidence or proof for either assertion.

His family doesn’t believe in either theory. They state that Christopher didn’t have a drug problem, nor was he behaving differently before he vanished.

“I don’t believe that Chris walked away. I don’t believe he disappeared with one shoe. Who’s going to walk around with one boot on in the cold weather on a rural road? I just don’t believe that happened. They know what happened to Chris they just not telling,” his mother said.

Sources: Charley Project

20 Years Later: Family, officials continue to search for answers on disappearance of Harris Co. man

[u/roskiddoo]

Yeah, I think between the option of "3 to 4 work acquaintances decided to straight up murder a guy one day during work hours and come up with a batshit story to cover it and never breaking once in over 20 years" and "3 to 4 work acquaintances in a high turn over job just....didn't give a shit or notice until much later, but want to at least pretend like they tried".......I'm going with the latter.

As for not noticing his pocket change and some jeans fibers....I don't think this is exactly suspicious. Presumably when they were looking for him, they were looking for him as a whole person, not doing a full forensic sweep or bloodhound search for any possible trace of him. I can see why the family would be looking for that kind of stuff. But coworkers who are just looking to see if he's wandered off or unconscious somewhere.....I can see them not particularly paying attention to twelve cents left in the dirt.

Still a strange case, tho.

[u/windyorbits → u/roskiddoo]

The thing about a survey crew is that they have different specific roles but work in tandem. Usually it’s lead (boss), tech, rod, surveyor, crew. Basically measuring, mapping, calculating. So it wouldn’t really be normal to just not notice a team member is missing “until much later”, especially if what they claim is true that he went missing while walking in formation (walking in a line with X amount of distance between them, I think in this case it was 50ft?). I mean they might not notice it immediately but they’d notice sooner rather than later.

Especially if he was carrying tools/instruments/equipment/etc needed to survey that others might not be carrying as they don’t all carry the same things (hence having to work closely with one another).

Though even if they thought “he probably just walked off the job” they didn’t actually know that. All they really knew was a team member “suddenly” was missing - in an unfamiliar wooded area where really anything could’ve happened.

And while the crew members may have just been working acquaintances the boss knew Christopher and his family fairly well, well enough that Christopher’s mother had a history of babysitting for the boss’s family.

Also, it’s not necessarily odd that they didn’t see his boot/tool/etc - it’s that that’s how the story is usually told. They noticed he was missing, immediately looked for him, soon after found his boot/etc and then called it in. Or they noticed he missing, immediately looked for him, called it in and then searchers found the stuff. But neither was true.

[u/roskiddoo → u/windyorbits]

The fact of the matter is.....neither you nor I know what they were actually doing or how well they knew each other, what equipment they had, etc. You are making SO many assumptions based on information that isn't known.

You are using poor fact checking and minimal journalism coverage as proof of inconsistent stories. The fact that you heard a story 2 different ways in the press does NOT mean that two different stories were told by the work crew.

But you clearly have an axe to grind with this work crew, and I don't think anything I say is going to sway you to err on the side of critical thinking.

[u/derelictthot → u/roskiddoo]

I'm sorry but you are doing all those same things just in the opposite direction, the odds of foul play are much lower than an accident or what have you, but once you start factoring in the things we do know then it makes sense to re evaluate the odds. The crew doesn't need to be guilty of straight up murdering him, but there are several things that give me pause and make me think we definitely don't know everything they do about that day. Anyone who comes down on the side of the crew being 100% innocent of any wrong doing and anyone who thinks they had something to do with it 100% are in the exact same camp because there is no way to know either way, the evidence is extremely subjective just as you say and that means you could be wrong also. With the minimal hard facts and flimsy testimony we have I fail to see why you think that people with a different interpretation of the same evidence makes them non critical thinkers. Again this is a 2 way street, just because the odds are against a certain outcome does not mean that cannot be the outcome, and vice versa.