Chapters 9-14

Tell Me All you Know about....

“Chris was the sort of person who brooded about things,” Carine observes. “If something bothered him, he wouldn’t come right out and say it. He’d keep it to himself, harboring his resentment, letting the bad feelings build and build.” That seems to be what happened following the discoveries he made in El Segundo.

(Chapter 11)

Tell me all you know about...

But on the second form, dated March 30, 1992, two weeks before he left for Alaska, he’d signed his given name: “Chris J. McCandless.” And in the blank for Social Security number he’d put down, “228-31-6704.” Westerberg phoned Alaska again. This time the troopers took him seriously.

The Social Security number turned out to be genuine and placed McCandless’s permanent residence in northern Virginia. Authorities in Alaska contacted law enforcement agencies in that state, who in turn started combing phone directories for McCand-lesses. Walt and Billie McCandless had by then moved to the Maryland shore and no longer had a Virginia phone number, but Walt’s eldest child from his first marriage lived in Annandale and was in the book; late on the afternoon of September 17, Sam McCandless received a call from a Fairfax County homicide detective.

(Chapter 10)