The Missouri sheriff’s office that recovered the remains of a man who had been missing for a decade credited the work of a YouTuber for the discovery. This week, the Camden County Sheriff’s Office said videographer James Hinkle tipped them off about the possible whereabouts of Donald L. Erwin, who vanished in December 2013.
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However, Hinkle’s involvement in the case was much more significant than a mere tip-off. While he’s been documenting his search for Erwin on his YouTube channel Echo Divers for nine months, he started searching more than a year ago.
In an interview with Outdoors.com, Hinkle explained that he sympathized with Erwin and his family, because 59-year-old Erwin was a Marine Corps veteran, which Hinkle relates to because his son is also a Marine and other close relatives were veterans as well.
“People in the military, I hold them on high,” Hinkle said. “I believe those guys should be treated with the utmost respect and helped when they need it.”
What’s more, he said he’s been drawn to missing person cases ever since the 1991 abduction of 17-year-old Angela Hammond, which happened in his hometown of Clinton, Missouri.
“That never left me. I’ve followed that case my entire life,” he said, adding that he volunteered with others in his community to help search for her.
Since that experience, Hinkle said he’s been compelled to help out when can. He even went so far as to become a certified scuba diver, become a volunteer firefighter, and help an independent cold case investigation group called Beyond the Case. But the abduction had another effect on him as well. He developed an interest in true crime, though he said he hates that expression.
“Unfortunately, this type of entertainment is a double-edged sword,” Hinkle said. “People look at it as entertainment because they’re naturally curious, but then again, it gets the word out and sometimes you catch that one person who thinks ‘oh, I remember that night’ . . . and that leads to finding somebody.”
As a professional videographer with the skills necessary to search bodies of water, he decided to help in the search for Erwin. “The idea was to bring people along and tell the story of how this was done. The hope was that we would find Donnie. That was always the hope,” Hinkle said. “But at the same time, it helped awareness of the situation.”
In his videos, Hinkle explores a variety of outdoor locations using drones, a kayak and sonar equipment, and of course, scuba gear. He also walks viewers through theories of what might have happened to Erwin.
Before he disappeared on Dec. 29, 2013, Erwin told his wife that he was leaving to get a pack of cigarettes. Then, as Hinkle explains in a video, there are two theories about what might have happened. The first theory was that Erwin committed suicide. The reasoning behind that is Erwin lost his leg, which affected him psychologically, and when he left, he didn’t take with him everyday items like his glasses, wallet, and wheelchair. Hinkle wasn’t totally convinced, though.
Hinkle said that he thinks Erwin probably didn’t think he needed his glasses because he was running an errand to a familiar location like a gas station down the road. Plus, going back inside to retrieve them would’ve been inconvenient due to his disability. Hinkle added that Erwin did grab a debit card.
“When you look at it like this, the accident theory kind of makes sense,” Hinkle said. “It just does.”
With that in mind, Hinkle drove up and down the highway near Erwin’s house and scouted out gas stations and possible locations where Erwin could’ve had an accident. Five months after posing his theory, Hinkle searched a pond on private property about 3.5 miles away from Erwin’s home using a drone, and he found a car submerged in the water. He notified the authorities, who recovered the vehicle with tags and a description that matched Erwin’s car.
Then, on Christmas Eve, searchers with cadaver dogs and divers found human remains and an artificial hip that matched one that belonged to Erwin. In a statement, the sheriff’s office said they were confident it was Erwin, but they would still need confirmation through forensic analysis, and detectives would need to complete their investigation.
For his part, Hinkle said he was glad he could bring closure to the situation. On the Monday after the car was removed, he said he met with Erwin’s family.
“Even though they knew he’s been gone for 10 years, once they knew for sure that he had passed away . . . they could go through that grieving process,” he said, adding, “For the most part, our goal was to go there and help with the healing process.”
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