Missing lawyer 'pulled a Jimmy Buffett,' friend says
A Kentucky lawyer who has been missing since June has been found at a Texas campground.
Clyde Johnson, 47, was found in Port O’Connor, Texas, after some sleuthing by an attorney friend, Ned Pillersdorf, who was appointed to maintain Johnson’s office, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.
Johnson “was a fixture in Floyd County” where he had been president of the Floyd County Bar Association and helped coach high school football, the story says. But troubles mounted when his home went into foreclosure, Johnson’s mother died, and he owed $100,000 in taxes, Pillersdorf said.
Johnson “pulled a Jimmy Buffett,” Pillersdorf told the newspaper, referring to the song “Landfall.”
“Sometimes people just get tired of dealing with the unadulterated crap and sail away,” Pillersdorf said.
Johnson had told his secretary he was going fishing with his dog and would return on June 24. When he didn’t come back, friends distributed fliers and searched nearby campgrounds for Johnson.
Pillersdorf got an important lead when Johnson’s wife spotted a card in the trash indicating her husband had purchased a prepaid cellphone, the story says. Pillersdorf got a court order to access the account and learned calls had been made from a campground near Austin.
But the big break in the case came when an electricity bill from the campground where Johnson is staying found its way to Johnson’s office. Johnson had registered at the campground under his real name, box number and town where he practiced law (though he misspelled the name), but he said the address was in Texas rather than Kentucky.
