Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

j. patrick coolican:

Search for long lost brother among homeless is ‘like a needle in a haystack’

Missing Kerry Fisher

Leila Navidi

Virginia Fisher Murdoch, who lives in Florida, searches for her brother Kerry Fisher, whom she believes is homeless in Las Vegas, on Owens Avenue in downtown Las Vegas on Monday, May 27, 2013. Murdoch hasn’t seen her brother in more than 25 years.

J. Patrick Coolican

J. Patrick Coolican

Missing Kerry Fisher

Virginia Fisher Murdoch, who lives in Florida, searches for her brother Kerry Fisher, whom she believes is homeless in Las Vegas, with the help of Neil Jurgensen, right, who recently left a life on the streets, on Owens Avenue in downtown Las Vegas on Monday, May 27, 2013. Murdoch hasn't seen her brother in more than 25 years. Launch slideshow »

Virginia “Jenny” Fisher Murdoch had a dream a few months ago that her brother is alive.

In the dream, her brother Kerry Lee Fisher, missing from the Fisher family since the 1980s, arranged a simple puzzle, like a child.

Murdoch knows dreams aren’t prophetic, and though she seems almost embarrassed talking about it, she says this one feels different, a supernatural signal that arrived March 25, which, she notes, is the Catholic Feast of the Annunciation.

The signal she’s getting is that Kerry is alive and that his presence has something to do with Las Vegas, the place where people get lost and come to get lost.

“It may not be rational, but I awoke with this certainty that he’s alive,” she says.

So after weeks of Internet research, she’s traveled from Florida to Las Vegas this week to find her long lost brother, hitting shelters and food lines and parks and roadside encampments, armed with a flier of a fairly recent newspaper photo that she thinks shows Kerry, who would be 57 now.

Kerry was the middle of five children who grew up in Dallas and Birmingham, Ala. He was a quiet and sensitive introvert who loved science and rocketry and all-around tinkering.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps. The history isn’t clear, but Murdoch believes something bad happened, that Fisher was a whistleblower of sorts and flamed out. She thinks this episode may have had long-term consequences, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

He bounced around for a few years until he went missing around 1988, his last known whereabouts being Washington state, although his truck was found shortly thereafter in the desert Southwest.

At times through the decades, various family members have searched, becoming most hopeful when they saw an unidentified man in a Las Vegas Review-Journal photo that resembled what Kerry might look like 20 years later. The photo depicts people waiting in a food line at a Las Vegas shelter.

(We aren’t showing the photo because there’s no way of confirming it’s actually Fisher, meaning we might be misidentifying someone and making a serious error, however well intentioned.)

This effort to find Kerry is different: ’“Jenny” — as Kerry knows Virginia Murdoch — is on the case.

She’s talked to local housing officials, Metro Police, the coroner, Catholic Charities and other nonprofit groups, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration. She’s given a DNA sample to see if it matches anyone from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

“I had to do this. My family needs resolution. Any family would,” she says. Both her parents are alive, and she’d like to do this for them.

So far, there’s no evidence Kerry is dead — no death certificate, no media reports. But there’s also no evidence he’s alive — no driver’s license, no known address, no Social Security or veterans benefits.

For a variety of reasons, Las Vegas has a national reputation as a city of the lost. Metro detectives receive about 6,000 to 7,000 new missing person cases each year, with many residents no doubt wanting to be lost.

We begin the search on Memorial Day at a small park known as a homeless hangout at West Owens Avenue and B Street.

Murdoch is showing the photos and handing out fliers with contact info, and immediately she is hit in the face with reality.

“I know where he lives, and he doesn’t want to see you,” says a man who seems delusional, accusing Murdoch of stealing her brother’s Social Security benefits.

Others, gathered under the shade of a tree, are more helpful.

Says one: “He looks like the guy everybody calls ‘Cowboy.’”

Says another: “He’s a friend of mine. I’ve had a few beers with him.”

And a third: “Ain’t that ‘Tony Bologna’?”

Murdoch hoists up a toddler and gives a hug.

A woman tries to cheer Murdoch: “Baby, you’ll find him.”

Another group thinks he can be found at the Fremont Street Experience, either early in the morning or early in the evening. He drinks a bit. Doesn’t talk much. He’s no panhandler; he collects recyclables for money, they say.

We leave the little park, which smells intermittently like garbage but also barbecue from the nearby neighborhood, where Memorial Day goes on like it does for the rest of us.

“God, breaks your heart,” Murdoch says back in the rental car.

“It’s like a needle in a haystack,” she says.

The problem is that the man in the photo she’s convinced is Kerry might not actually be him, in which case she might be looking for the wrong needle in the wrong haystack.

Let’s hope he’s alive and that Las Vegas is the place that reunites the Fishers.

Kerry, if you’re out there, come home.

If you think you know the whereabouts of Kerry Lee Fisher, age 57, height 6 foot 2 inches, blue eyes, call 813-417-7462 or email [email protected].

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