A BUILDER who suddenly emptied his bank account and fled abroad fearing for his life was later found dead half-naked with gold bars and German cash.
The mysterious murder of Blair Adams thousands of miles from his home has baffled investigators and cold case fanatics for decades.
He had abruptly quit his job without even collecting his paycheck, was cripplingly paranoid and feared he had a bounty on his head.
The 31-year-old, from British Columbia, Canada, was two years sober but suddenly stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Blair confided in his mother that "someone had been spreading rumours" about him, while ominously telling pals he was living on borrowed time.
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And it seems his feeling of impending doom was right - as his partially clothed corpse was later found in a Tennessee car park.
Horrified construction workers found his battered and bloody body on July 11, 1996, with his worldly possessions littered around him.
Blair was pantless, his shirt was ripped open and his trousers, shoes and socks were dumped next to his lifeless corpse.
The Canadian's bum bag - packed with gold bars, jewellery, coins, keys, sunglasses and various currencies - was also discovered nearby.
Blair had withdrawn almost all of his money from his bank account and emptied his safe deposit box of its swag just six days earlier.
But his killer - who is said to have beaten the builder to death - didn't steal the thousands in cash or any of his personal items.
Detectives were stumped by the bizarre crime scene, forcing them to go back to basics and begin retracing the victim's steps.
Investigators discovered Blair had been on quite the journey, although his 2,700-mile voyage to Tennessee gave them more questions than answers.
He had fled his life in British Colombia on July 5, 1996, and attempted to enter the US on a ferry - until immigration officials spotted him.
The large amounts of money and valuables he was carrying caused concern and he was denied entry due to his convictions on drug and assault charges.
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Blair again attempted to cross the border four days later, but was spotted by Canadian officials and briefly detained.
On July 10, he rented a Nissan Altima from Vancouver International Airport and finally managed to enter the US, arriving in Seattle.
The builder bought a nearly $1,700 roundtrip ticket to Frankfurt, Germany, where he had previously worked and where his former girlfriend lived.
However, he peculiarly swapped his ticket for a one-way flight to Washington DC - where he again rented a car upon his arrival.
Blair climbed into a Toyota Camry and began his fateful seven-hour drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, with another motorist saying he seemed to be "in a hurry".
He later stopped at a petrol station in Strawberry Plains Pike and complained to a worker that he was having an issue with his car.
KEY CONUNDRUM
The Canadian told Gerald Sapp, an Interstate Repair Service driver, that he was having difficulty getting into the Toyota.
The employee pointed out that the key Blair was using was actually for a Nissan, his first rental car, rather than the Camry.
Sapp recalled: "I asked him to look in his pockets. I said, ‘If you drove this thing up here, you gotta have another key in your pockets.’
"And he wouldn’t look. So I thought he was nuts. He was bound and determined that he had the key he needed for that car."
Sapp ended up getting the Toyota towed to a repair shop while dropping Blair off at a Fairfield Inn located in Knoxville.
The builder was then seen on CCTV in the budget hotel's lobby, loitering for around 40 minutes before he purchased a room with $100 in cash.
When the hotel clerk tried to hand him his change, Blair strangely exited the hotel - and never ended up entering his hotel room.
Employee Ticca Hartsfield said in a 1997 interview on "Unsolved Mysteries that he seemed "paranoid".
"He just was very nervous, agitated, expecting someone to come in on him even though there wasn’t anybody there," she said.
"I don’t know who he was looking for, but he was waiting for somebody to walk in for him."
CONFUSING CRIME SCENE
Just hours later, construction staff working on a car park, situated on the other side of the motorway to the Fairfield Inn, found his body.
Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American currency were strewn around him and bulging out of the pocket of his jeans.
His unzipped leather bum bag lay close by, stuffed with nearly five ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins and jewellery.
A duffel bag was also discovered containing a plane ticket and rental car receipts, allowing authorities to piece together his movements.
The key for Blair's rented Toyota - which he previously couldn't find - and his hotel key car were also found next to his half-naked corpse.
Police said his partially removed trousers looked "like somebody else pulled them down for him" while one of his shoes lay "under his head like a pillow".
An autopsy found he had suffered numerous cuts and abrasions, with his wounds suggesting he may have tried to fend off his killer.
Blair had also endured a violent blow to his abdomen which had ruptured his stomach, as well as an injury to his forehead.
Cops determined he had been attacked with a crowbar or a club, while other injuries indicated that he had been sexually assaulted.
Authorities initially believed the killing may have been "sex-related", as the area was known as a hotspot for prostitution at the time.
DEAD END
But no murder weapon or DNA evidence was found - apart from one strand of long hair discovered clenched in Blair's fist.
Investigators concluded that he had eaten at some point that evening, as he died with lettuce, meat and sharp still in his stomach.
Blair had no drugs or alcohol in his system and despite his erratic behaviour, was never diagnosed with any mental illness.
But authorities had no leads to follow - except for a security guard working nearby hearing an abrupt scream at around 3.30am.
Nearly three decades on, police have not made any further progress on the case that has mystified the world.
Interstate Repair Service driver Sapp, then in his 40s, quit his job after being caught up in the grisly murder.
Cops brought him in for questioning and took hair samples after informing him of Blair's death.
"(Police) didn’t accuse me, but I felt like I was under suspicion for killing somebody and that was just — that wasn’t anywhere I needed to be," he said.
The chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit says cracking the mystery "will take somebody telling us about it".
The fact Blair's brutal murder remains unsolved has also weighed heavily on law enforcement who were involved in the investigation.
Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who responded to the scene, described it as the "most interesting and the strangest" case in his nearly four-decade career.
He told Knox News: "If I could have one wish, somewhere in a damn mayonnaise jar I could find a note that tells me what happened, just so I’d know."
