Blair Adams
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Blair Adams from Canada was just 31 years old when his body was found in the parking lot of a Knoxville, Tennessee hotel in July 1996.

Scattered around his body was $4,000 worth of mixed Canadian, American, and German currency. His death was later discovered to be caused by a blow to the stomach. But what exactly happened to Blair remains a mystery. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 232, The Mysterious Death of Blair Adams.

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to the episode, we've got one new Patreon supporter to thank this week. Nina T. Thanks so much.

Now, let's get to this week's episode. This week's case is definitely an interesting one, and I think it's one of the lesser-known stories in the true crime community. So chances are, you might not have even heard of Blair's story. To this day, we really don't know what happened to him. All we know is that he died under very, very mysterious and weird circumstances. So, let's talk about it.

Robert Dennis Blair Adams, who went by Blair, was just 31 years old when his body was found dead outside of a Knoxville hotel almost three decades ago. Blair was born three days after Christmas on December 28, 1964, in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, to his mom, Sandra Edwards. Not much is known about Blair's childhood, but his mom described him as kind and ambitious. An ex-girlfriend called him a total gentleman.

But Blair didn't give everyone that perception. For some people that he worked with, he could be abrasive and confrontational. After high school graduation, Blair started working for his stepfather's construction business. It was a business based in Frankfurt, Germany, called SS Cedar Homes. Even though the company was based in Germany, Blair mostly worked on projects near his home in British Columbia. For the most part, Blair was doing pretty well for himself at this point in his life.

He was in his 20s, making pretty good money, and seemed to have a good future in construction. But somewhere along the way, he developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol that almost cost him everything. But by getting himself help by attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings regularly, he got sober by the time he turned 30. In 1996, Blair was 31 years old and had been sober from drugs and alcohol for two years.

He had even worked his way up to becoming a foreman at the construction company, which meant he was a supervisor. He also had a longtime girlfriend who lived in Germany that he met while working on a project there. By all means, everything in his life was going well again. But all of that seemed to change later that summer, when the Blair that everyone knew started acting strange. His behavior at work was the first thing to change. He became careless.

He started leaving construction sites unlocked with expensive tools and equipment behind, which was completely unlike him, especially as a supervisor. His co-worker said he used to be an upbeat guy, but recently started becoming paranoid, saying someone was after him or someone was trying to kill him. He also stopped going to his regular AA meetings.

His behavior outside of work also changed. He told his German girlfriend that he was scared of some former colleagues he worked with in Germany. Then he told his mom that someone was spreading rumors about him, but he wouldn't say who it was or why they were doing it. He was so scared of something that he only referred to it as it. He was even afraid to go back to his apartment by himself. Much later, his mom said this about it, quote,

Obviously something really weird was going on with Blair at this point. This unexplained paranoia seemed to come out of nowhere since he had never been diagnosed with any type of mental illness before.

Now, to some, it probably looked like he was having some type of mental breakdown or even some type of mental episode. But his mother doesn't think so. She really thought he was telling the truth about someone being after him or wanting to hurt him. Either way, something really bizarre was going on with him. Now, his family blamed his forgetfulness and carelessness at work on his insomnia.

He wasn't sleeping well, so that's probably why his behavior at work changed. He was just overly tired and forgetful. If he wasn't getting enough sleep at night, then maybe he was having trouble with his memory. Lack of sleep and forgetfulness usually go hand in hand. But why wasn't he sleeping well? And did that have anything to do with the paranoia about someone being after him?

Some people thought he might have gone back to drinking or using drugs. We know that a lot of drugs are known to cause paranoid thinking. He also stopped going to AA meetings. But those that were close to him at this point don't think so. They never saw any signs that he was drinking or using drugs again. He never smelled like alcohol, and no drugs were ever found inside of his apartment. Whatever the cause, one thing is for sure—

Something was going on with Blair, whether imagined or real. He was scared of someone or something. He kept telling people someone was after him. Whatever it was, we don't know. But things with Blair only got stranger in July. And that's when the mystery about him really began.

On Friday, July 5th, 1996, Blair went to the bank and withdrew just about every penny from his savings and checking accounts, which was about $6,000. He also took out everything from inside of his safety deposit box, mostly gold jewelry worth another couple thousand dollars.

He never told the bank teller what he was going to do with all of his money, and the teller never asked because it wasn't any of their business. If he wanted to withdraw all of his money, he could. So Blair put the money and the jewelry inside of a fanny pack and drove to his uncle's house. But when he got there, his uncle wasn't home, so we have no idea why he went there or what he planned on doing.

but it seems like he needed his uncle for something. We just don't know what that something was. Two days later, this is now Sunday, July 7th, Blair got behind the wheel of his Chevrolet Chevette and tried to board a ferry from Victoria, British Columbia to Seattle, Washington. This was the first of many attempts to get into the U.S., but he was immediately flagged down by U.S. immigration officers and not allowed to cross the border.

Once they found all of the jewelry and cash on him, they thought he might be a drug smuggler. In their eyes, he was this single guy traveling by himself, carrying thousands of dollars in cash. It basically had smuggler written all over it. Before Blair left the border, the immigration officers had a chance to speak with him. And one of their questions was if he had a criminal record, to which Blair said no.

But that's not exactly the truth. In reality, he did have a record. He had two past convictions for assault and drug charges. And once the immigration officers found out about this and they discovered that he was lying, that just gave them another reason to not let him cross. On top of looking suspicious, now he also looked like a liar.

So once when he was denied access to Cross, that's when Blair turned around and decided to make a few visits to friends and family, ending the day at his mom's house. It seemed like he wanted to go anywhere but back to his own apartment. The next morning, July 8th, he quit his job at the construction company, explaining that he, quote, didn't know he could carry on here, end quote. He didn't even bother to go back and get his final paycheck.

His next stop was to a travel agency. That's where he spent $1,700 on round-trip plane tickets to Frankfurt, Germany, scheduled to leave the following day. But why was he going there, or why did he want to go there? Some thought he wanted to visit his girlfriend who lived there. But she wasn't aware of any plans to see her, so that didn't seem to be the reason.

And it wasn't work-related either, because he didn't have any scheduled construction projects there since he just quit his job the day before. Of course, that is where his stepfather had his construction business. So maybe he was going to go there to meet up with his stepfather. But just like the girlfriend, his stepdad had no idea about any plans for Blair to come visit or stay with him.

Blair's day was only getting started because after the travel agency, he went to his ex-girlfriend's house in Vancouver. He asked her if she would drive him across the U.S. border since they wouldn't let him get on the ferry. But she said no, she didn't want any part of that and said, sorry Blair, I can't help you. So he left. The third stop was to his mom's house in Surrey.

She said he seemed really anxious and told her that he was afraid to go back home to his apartment, so he stayed the night at her house. He also canceled the round-trip plane ticket to Germany that he just purchased the day before. He told the airline company that the person he planned to visit got sick, so he no longer needed the tickets. So that's another strange move. Why would you buy international plane tickets just to cancel them a couple hours later?

One idea is that he never intended to get on that plane or was just trying to trick someone into thinking that he was going to leave the country. If someone was really following like he kept saying that they were, that would be a great way to fool someone. Purchase a plane ticket to another country but never get on that plane. But whoever was following him could probably find that out, that he never got on the plane and canceled the tickets. So who knows if that theory makes sense either.

Now, the next time Blair was spotted was the following day. This is now July 9th, where he once again tried to cross the U.S. border, this time by foot. Now, he wasn't stopped because he looked like a drug smuggler. He was stopped because he looked eerily similar to a car theft suspect. Earlier that day, a blue car was stolen from Vancouver and dumped at the border in the same exact spot where Blair was trying to cross.

He also had scratches covering his arms and legs. Plus, one of Blair's friends thought he saw him driving a blue car just the day before. So he very well could have been the person who stole it and ditched it at the border. But why would he steal a car? Was he trying to use it to illegally cross the border into the U.S.? Did he steal it from someone that he knows? We have no idea. We also don't know where the scratches on his arms and legs came from.

They weren't insanely bad scratches by any means, but they were enough for the officers to notice them. In the end, the border authorities didn't have any proof that he actually stole the car, so they weren't able to arrest him. They just didn't let him cross, so once again, Blair went back home. But he wasn't going to give up on trying to get into the U.S., because later that day, he drove to the airport in Vancouver.

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For a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at HappyMammoth.com. Just use the code TAILS at checkout. That's HappyMammoth.com and use code TAILS for 15% off today. Blair didn't do what you might think he would have once he got to the airport. Instead of buying a plane ticket anywhere, he decided to rent a Nissan Altima to try and cross the border for the third time.

This time, he wanted to cross near the Seattle-Washington border. He also abandoned his own vehicle at the airport and never went back to pick it up. He probably switched cars so many times because his own car had already been flagged at the border so many times. He thought a rental car would help him eventually cross without getting stopped.

Now, this third time was a charm. Blair was finally able to cross into Seattle driving that rented Nissan Altima. Now that he was finally in the U.S., he headed straight to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where he turned in the rental car in and brought a one-way ticket to Washington, D.C. But here's another strange thing. Instead of buying a round-trip ticket that cost half the price...

Blair bought a one-way ticket for $800. The ticket counter employee even seemed confused and told him that you should buy a round-trip ticket because it only cost $400, half the price. But Blair said no, he wasn't interested in a round-trip flight. The one-way was just fine.

This time, he actually got on the plane and arrived in Washington, D.C. during the early morning hours of July 10th, where he once again rented another vehicle. He got a Toyota Camry, which he used to drive seven hours to Knoxville, Tennessee, his final destination. No one knows why he chose Tennessee. He doesn't have any connections there or business. So what made him pick that location of all places?

Blair's mom thinks he might have been heading south to go to the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, which was scheduled to happen a week later. But if that was true, I've got a lot of questions. Why rent all the cars? Why take out almost all the money from your bank accounts? And what was this whole thing about someone being after him if he's just planning on going to the Olympics?

None of it made any sense. And what's even weirder is that his mom never initially told this to the police. And since then, has basically refused to say how she knows that he was headed to the Olympics. She only came up with this theory years later. Again, she never mentioned it when the police first talked to her. Besides, Blair never told anyone else that he was planning to go to the Olympic Games. So to me, it just doesn't add up.

Before he got to Knoxville, about two hours into his drive, he got into a minor car accident on U.S. Highway 250 near Troy, Virginia. He somehow managed to back his car into another car, which sounded weird since he was apparently driving on a highway. But nonetheless, they got into the accident. Blair and the driver spoke for just a couple minutes, and then after that, he was on his way again.

Later on, the man told the police that Blair was really nice during this whole conversation, but he did notice that he seemed like he was in a hurry to get somewhere, like he had somewhere to be, which makes sense if he thinks that someone is after him. He finally made it to Knoxville around 5 o'clock p.m. that evening.

The whole trip, including the drive, the accident, and a stop at a gas station, took about 10 hours. So it was a really long day for him between the overnight plane ride to Washington, D.C., and now Tennessee. Okay, the first sighting of him in Knoxville that we know about happened when he stopped at a gas station on Strawberry Plains Pike. He asked the attendant working there to call a mechanic for him.

He said that the key to his rented Toyota Camry wasn't working anymore. Now, when the mechanic showed up, he said that he saw Blair was clearly trying to use a car key belonging to a Nissan Altima to start his Toyota Camry.

If you remember, the Nissan Altima was the other car that he rented. So it makes sense why the Camry wouldn't start. It's the completely wrong car key. That key belonged to the car that he supposedly abandoned at the Seattle airport. So the mechanic told Blair, hey, you're using the wrong car key here. You should probably look in your pocket or wherever for the key to the Camry.

He obviously had the correct key with him since he had already driven it for close to 10 hours. But apparently, Blair refused to look for it and just demanded that this mechanic guy call the tow truck company. So right away, the mechanic knew that something was really off, but he listened to Blair anyway and called the tow truck company. When they got there, the tow truck took the Camry away and the mechanic gave Blair a ride to a nearby hotel.

Later on, when the mechanic was interviewed by the police, he said he didn't think that Blair seemed to be high on drugs or alcohol. He just seemed to be in what he described as a daze. Blair was next spotted checking into a Fairfield Inn hotel around 7 o'clock p.m. He paid for the room in cash and gave the employee working a $100 bill. But when the employee tried giving back his change, he said he didn't want it.

A woman named Tika Hartsfield was the front desk employee working that night, and she thought Blair seemed paranoid and nervous and kept looking around like someone was coming for him, even though no one else was in the hotel. After Tika handed Blair the key to his hotel room, Blair grabbed it and put it in his pocket, but instead of walking toward the elevators towards his room, he walked out the front door of the hotel.

Then, over the next 40 minutes, Blair is captured on the hotel's surveillance camera, pacing in and out of the lobby five different times. But during that entire time, he never checked into his room, and there's no evidence that he ever did. He eventually walked out of the hotel lobby on foot at 7.37 p.m., and that was the last time he was seen alive.

Around 7 a.m. on July 11th, two construction workers discovered his partially naked body lying in the parking lot of a hotel that was under construction at 7471 Crosswood Boulevard. The site was right off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for I-40 near the gas station and the hotel where Blair booked the room. At first, the construction workers thought that maybe he was just a homeless person who fell asleep in the lot.

It was an area that attracted both prostitutes and homeless people. But they quickly realized it was a dead body, who was later identified as Blair Adams. Now, if you didn't think this story was weird before, you probably will now. Around Blair's body were literally thousands of dollars in different currencies, including American, German, and Canadian currencies.

He had cash stashed away in one of his pants pockets, and inside of his fanny pack were five ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, and jewelry. It was pretty much everything that he had taken from his safe deposit box at the bank a couple days earlier, as well as the money from his bank accounts.

But oddly enough, everything was there. All of the money and jewelry were left completely untouched, except for a $100 bill that one of the construction workers admitted to stealing. So you can pretty much rule out that this is a robbery here. Now next up are his clothes. His pants were pulled down and turned inside out, and his socks were on the ground next to him.

The pants looked exactly like someone had taken them off Blair and then tried to put them back on, but only left them halfway up. He also had his car keys, including the keys for the Toyota Camry, which he had refused to look for the day before, as well as the hotel room key. Both of his shoes had also been removed, and one of them was lying underneath his head like he was using it as a pillow.

There was also a duffel bag next to his body that had maps and travel receipts in it. But it doesn't end there. Now let's talk about the condition of Blair's body and the autopsy. The autopsy was conducted at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. And according to the pathologist, he died sometime around 3.30 a.m., roughly four hours before he was discovered. But here's the really bizarre part.

Blair died from sepsis stemming from an abdominal perforation, not the cause of death you were probably expecting. The authorities believe Blair was repeatedly hit in the stomach and one of the blows caused his stomach to rupture, which led to the sepsis infection. They thought it could have either been multiple blows to the stomach or one really, really hard one.

There were also wounds to his forehead that the police thought were caused by either a crowbar or a baseball bat. Now, neither one of these weapons were found at the crime scene, but because it's a construction site, it's not impossible to imagine that someone grabbed something like that from the construction site and then just took it with them. So after having his stomach ruptured, Blair eventually developed sepsis, but he didn't die right away.

That's because sepsis usually takes up to 12 hours before becoming fatal, which is interesting because the person who beat Blair to death might not even know that he died. He probably suffered all those injuries, including the fatal one to his stomach, hours before he actually died and ended up in that parking lot. It also means that that particular parking lot where he was found might not actually be the location of where he was beaten.

He could have easily been attacked somewhere else, and that's just simply where his body ended up hours later. But if that's the case, how do you explain the money? Or his pants being pulled down? Another idea is that Blair was beaten in that parking lot and was basically left for dead. Then after a couple hours went by, he developed sepsis and ultimately did die.

We know Blair was alive and well until a little after 7 o'clock p.m. the night before. That's because he was seen in the hotel lobby multiple times. And based on the condition of his body, he was killed around 3.30 a.m. So that means that between 7.30 and 3.30 is when Blair was attacked. So maybe the sepsis developed faster than it normally does in most other people.

We also know that Blair fought back because he had a good amount of defensive wounds on his arms and hands. He also had large patches of hair missing from his head like someone pulled it. Inside one of his hands, investigators found a single strand of long black hair, which really is the biggest piece of forensic evidence in this case. But unfortunately, whatever amount of DNA was found in the hair doesn't match anyone in the DNA database.

So until a match is made, we have no idea who it belongs to. All we know is that it doesn't belong to Blair, and it's probably female because it's long. But that's not necessarily a guarantee either. A male could also have long hair. And when it comes to forensic evidence, hair evidence is pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole here, because to many, it's considered one of the least reliable types of evidence.

So from a forensic evidence standpoint, the police really don't have much to go on. But still, at least it's something that can hopefully help us figure out what happened eventually. Something else that was discovered at the autopsy was that Blair might have also been sexually assaulted, but no DNA evidence could be recovered from his body.

The reason why they think he might have been assaulted is because, one, his body was found partially naked from the waist down. Someone had taken off his pants and then tried to put them back on. And number two, he had other strange injuries on his body suggesting a sexual assault.

Although what exactly those injuries are, we don't know. The authorities haven't specifically said. They just think that based on some of these injuries, that a sexual assault probably happened. So clearly this was a very, very unusual scene. You've got a dead person lying in the middle of a hotel parking lot with literally thousands of dollars in cash spread around them. He died from sepsis from a ruptured stomach.

He spent the last few days of his life running around paranoid that someone was after him, and now there's evidence of a sexual assault. So naturally, the police had questions, and so do I. They interviewed everyone they could possibly find, including people who lived nearby or worked nearby, to find out if anyone had seen or heard anything, but apparently no one did.

The only tip they got came from a security guard who worked at a nearby business and said that they heard a short scream sometime around 3.30 a.m. He said he thought the scream came from a woman, but other than that, he didn't see anything. So we have no idea if what the security guard heard had anything to do with Blair or not.

All we know for sure is that this tip seems to line up with the medical examiner's report that Blair was killed sometime around 3.30, the same time that the security guard heard the scream. During an interview in 2010, the police said that a composite sketch of a man had been made in the case in the beginning. No one knew about the sketch until the police talked about it years later, in 2010. Why they kept it a secret, we don't know.

But the sketch came about from two women who claimed to have witnessed Blair speaking to a man outside of a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Knoxville. This is interesting because according to Google Maps, the walk from the Fairfield Inn to the parking lot where Blair was found would take roughly 19 minutes. So they're pretty close.

And on the way from the hotel to the parking lot, Blair would have passed a Cracker Barrel restaurant. It's actually across the street from the hotel. So the theory became maybe Blair walked out of the hotel to go and find dinner and ended up at the Cracker Barrel restaurant down the street where the two women saw him talking to an unknown man.

And this man may or may not have any information about what happened that night. Or he might even be the guy responsible. Inside Blair's stomach, there was recently digested food, which included lettuce, some meat, and some shrimp. So that means that he ate something not long before he died. Now, we don't know if that came from something that he ate at the Cracker Barrel or not. Lettuce, meat, and shrimp are pretty generic. He could have eaten that anywhere.

but it does support the two women's story, at least in a way. So was this man the man that Blair was originally running from? Or did he run into problems at the Cracker Barrel? And this had nothing to do with his paranoia. Or the witnesses had the wrong guy, and it wasn't even Blair talking to a man outside the restaurant. Since the guy in the sketch has never been identified, we simply don't know the answers to any of those questions.

Another theory the police considered was that this was a sexual encounter turned deadly. Not only was it because they suspected he had been assaulted, but also because of the area where he was found. That particular parking lot was a known location for prostitution at the time. So the theory became Blair met up with someone there, then was assaulted and killed. Whether this person actually intended to kill Blair, who knows?

But either way, the encounter somehow turned deadly. The police also suspected that Blair could have gone there to meet up with a male for that sexual encounter. Even though Blair never came out as gay, his mom told authorities years later that he once had had a romantic relationship with a male roommate. Apparently, Blair said that the guy was only his friend and his roommate, but his mom thought otherwise.

Now, the robbery theory. Well, to me, a robbery makes no sense. If someone planned to beat Blair to death and steal his money, then they've got to be the worst robbers in the entire world, because all of the money and jewelry were left behind. So I think it's safe to say that this was no robbery. These people weren't after his money or his jewelry.

Another theory is that he was somehow involved in some type of illegal activity. We know he had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, so maybe he got tied up in something that we don't know about. Addiction can lead people down some pretty dark roads, so that idea in itself isn't really too far-fetched. But I don't think there's enough evidence to support this theory either.

Yes, he had done drugs in the past, but no one in Blair's life recalled him ever being involved in anything illegal before. He didn't sell drugs, he only used them. And even though he stopped going to his AA meetings, there was absolutely no evidence that he was using again. And going back to the money once more, even if this had something to do with drugs, why wouldn't these people take the money?

If this had anything to do with any type of illegal activity, you would think these people would take the money and jewelry. So I'm not too sure how strong that theory is either. According to a few people who knew Blair, he had made some enemies while working in Germany at his stepdad's construction company. Blair allegedly told his girlfriend that he was afraid of these guys coming to hurt him.

So maybe it's possible that one of these quote-unquote enemies from Germany came out here and did this. But how bad of enemies could these people be? If that's what happened, then these people would have had to have come all the way from Germany to Knoxville, Tennessee to do this. Plus, we know how much work Blair was putting in to trying to get away, which means that these people would have had to follow him this entire time.

So I don't know about that one. That's a lot of work for someone to do all the way from Germany. Of course, the most popular theory is that Blair was having some type of mental breakdown or mental episode. This explains almost everything leading up to his death. The insomnia, the paranoid thinking, the strange and erratic behavior. Those are all signs of someone who might be having a mental break.

I know he didn't have a history of mental illness or any formal diagnosis in the past, but it's not too far-fetched to assume he had something going on in his mind. But this theory still doesn't explain the cause of death unless he simply found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He could have been having a mental episode, and it's just a total coincidence that he was murdered during a time when he believed someone was trying to kill him. Maybe it's a coincidence. So all of these are just theories. None of them answer all the questions or check off all the boxes, and none of them explain why he was found with all of that cash.

What was the motive for murdering him, if not robbery? Why kill someone and leave literally thousands of dollars behind? It seems like the only answer that makes sense is that this was personal. Blair knew who killed him. A stranger is a lot more likely to take the cash. But if this was something over-personal, then maybe this person didn't care at all about the money. They only cared about killing and hurting him.

And Blair was telling the truth when he told people that someone was after him and that he needed to get out of the country as quickly as possible. His behavior of changing flights and travel plans last minute, changing cars multiple times, and checking into a hotel that he wasn't actually staying at definitely implies that he believed someone was after him. And he did all of this to try and hide his tracks.

But was someone actually after him, or was it all in his head? No threatening messages were ever found in Blair's possession, although we're talking about 1996, before most people had cell phones. But the police didn't find any evidence suggesting that someone was threatening him, and there was no evidence, again, that he was involved in any type of illegal activity.

He wasn't in trouble for any drug-related incident. He had no history of mental illness. Nothing. And besides making a couple enemies in Germany, no one really spoke badly about him. So we have no idea who would have wanted him dead. Another strange thing is the cause of death, sepsis. Based on the medical examiner's report, he likely died around 3.30 a.m.,

But that's not necessarily the same time as when he was beaten. Like I mentioned earlier, sepsis usually takes a while to become fatal. So it makes more sense that Blair might have been injured hours before he died and ended up in that parking lot. But exactly when and by who is a mystery. Some people have talked about the strange coincidence between the location where his body was found and his ties to construction.

Remember, Blair worked as a construction foreman, and it's kind of ironic that his body was found at a construction site. But that just seems to be a strange coincidence, because he didn't have any ties to that particular site or Knoxville in general. So if that location had anything to do with it, we don't know it yet. One year after Blair's death, his story was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

where a member of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit said that cracking the case would, quote, take somebody telling us about it, end quote. This implies, at least to me, that they really don't have any evidence besides that strand of hair found in his hand, and we already know they haven't been able to match the DNA.

So right now, that single strand of hair is two things. The biggest piece of evidence in this case, and number two, right now it's useless. At this point, it's been almost three decades since Blair was found dead in that construction site. As of now, the police believe that while his delusions of someone wanting to kill him were very real to him, they were just that, delusions.

They don't believe his murder actually had anything to do with that. They think it was just a bad coincidence that at the same time he was having some type of mental breakdown, he was murdered for reasons completely unrelated and unknown. So what now? How does Blair's case ever get solved? Well, unless someone eventually comes forward, the only hope we have seems to be that strand of hair.

Maybe ancestry DNA or even genetic genealogy can be done like it's been done in so many other cold cases. If investigators can find a family match to the DNA, then maybe we can track down Blair's killer. But until then, the murder of Blair Adams remains unsolved even all these years later. What do you think happened to him? Was someone actually chasing him or was it all made up in his head?

Maybe he did have an undiagnosed mental condition that no one knew about. Or maybe he just recently developed it and never sought treatment. And did it actually have anything to do with his murder? And what could have been the motive? We've talked so much about the cash and jewelry found all around his body, so why didn't they take it? Maybe it's possible whoever did this to Blair didn't even know they killed him.

He could have been beaten and then hours later develop the sepsis, which ultimately killed him. Or do you have your own theories about what happened to him that I didn't talk about in the episode? To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share what I think happened to Blair Adams. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also support the show through Patreon.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.