Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

On July 5, 1996, a 31-year-old Canadian man named Blair Adams abruptly left home with every cent he owned, including his gold and jewelry. Just before he took off, family and friends recalled him acting strangely as he became increasingly convinced that someone wanted him dead. They thought he was merely paranoid, but he was found murdered just five days later — 2,000 miles away from home.⁠

⁠

Adams' body was discovered in a parking lot in Knoxville, Tennessee, half-naked and beaten so severely that his stomach had ruptured. What's more, all of his valuables were found scattered around his body, indicating that his killer had no interest in robbing him. And after 27 years, no one has ever been charged with this haunting murder, and investigators have no hard evidence or even any suspects.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right....Read story 

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

Anyone with information in the case should call KCSO’s Cold Case Unit at 865-215-2675 or email coldcase@knoxsheriff.org.

Travis Dorman

Knoxville

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

A composite sketch of Blair Adams, a Canadian man who was found dead at an East Knox County construction site on July 11, 1996.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

On Aug. 30, 2017, Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Chief David Davenport pores over documents contained in the investigative file of the July 11, 1996 homicide of Blair Adams.

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Blair Adams

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

The short scream, the long strand of hair

The killer beat Adams, an autopsy found.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

A composite sketch of Blair Adams, a Canadian man who was found dead at an East Knox County construction site on July 11, 1996.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

On Aug. 30, 2017, Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Chief David Davenport pores over documents contained in the investigative file of the July 11, 1996 homicide of Blair Adams.

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Blair Adams

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

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Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

A crime scene photo showing some of the contents of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found on July 11, 1996 lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Boulevard.

The short scream, the long strand of hair

The killer beat Adams, an autopsy found.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

A crime scene photo of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. on July 11, 1996.

Certain injuries indicated he had been sexually assaulted, Davenport said, but there was no DNA evidence, and it wasn't clear when the assault occurred.

Authorities tested pieces of rebar from the construction site but failed to locate the murder weapon.

Although Adams had grappled with addiction in the past, toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He had not officially been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

The only person who reported hearing anything out of the ordinary was a security guard at a nearby business. He told detectives he heard an abrupt scream around 3:30 a.m. and believed it to be a woman's voice.

The bank, the ferry

Six days before his death, on Friday, July 5, Adams withdrew almost all of the money from his bank account in Canada and emptied the valuables from his safe-deposit box into a fanny pack.

He told his mother something was bothering him, then took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Courtenay, British Columbia, to visit his uncle, who was not home.

On Sunday morning, Adams, driving his Chevrolet Chevette, tried to board a ferry from Victoria to Seattle.

U.S. immigration officials flagged him — a man traveling alone with copious amounts of cash — as a possible drug courier. Suspicions intensified when he lied about having no criminal history despite having convictions on drug and assault charges.

After being denied entry, Adams visited a girlfriend in Vancouver, a friend in New Westminster, and his mother, Sandra Edwards, in Surrey.

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

A composite sketch of Blair Adams, a Canadian man who was found dead at an East Knox County construction site on July 11, 1996.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

On Aug. 30, 2017, Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Chief David Davenport pores over documents contained in the investigative file of the July 11, 1996 homicide of Blair Adams.

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Blair Adams

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

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Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

A crime scene photo of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. on July 11, 1996.

Certain injuries indicated he had been sexually assaulted, Davenport said, but there was no DNA evidence, and it wasn't clear when the assault occurred.

Authorities tested pieces of rebar from the construction site but failed to locate the murder weapon.

Although Adams had grappled with addiction in the past, toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He had not officially been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

The only person who reported hearing anything out of the ordinary was a security guard at a nearby business. He told detectives he heard an abrupt scream around 3:30 a.m. and believed it to be a woman's voice.

The bank, the ferry

Six days before his death, on Friday, July 5, Adams withdrew almost all of the money from his bank account in Canada and emptied the valuables from his safe-deposit box into a fanny pack.

He told his mother something was bothering him, then took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Courtenay, British Columbia, to visit his uncle, who was not home.

On Sunday morning, Adams, driving his Chevrolet Chevette, tried to board a ferry from Victoria to Seattle.

U.S. immigration officials flagged him — a man traveling alone with copious amounts of cash — as a possible drug courier. Suspicions intensified when he lied about having no criminal history despite having convictions on drug and assault charges.

After being denied entry, Adams visited a girlfriend in Vancouver, a friend in New Westminster, and his mother, Sandra Edwards, in Surrey.

He spoke tearfully about quitting the same job he had boasted about just a week earlier. He seemed anxious and didn't want to stay at his apartment.

He cryptically told a friend he needed to cross the border: Someone wanted him dead.

The Olympic Games, the German project

Adams packed his bags and left his mother's home on the morning of Monday, July 8. That was the last time she saw him alive.

In a recent phone conversation, Edwards described her son as "kind" and "ambitious," and said she didn't believe he suffered from mental illness in the weeks before his death.

She said Adams had once been romantically involved with a male roommate. 

"They acted a little strangely and giggled a lot and it was kind of odd, but then he went back to a heterosexual relationship after that," she said.

She claimed Adams traveled to the South to attend the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta — information never relayed to authorities.

The games began July 19, eight days after Adams' body was discovered more than 200 miles away in Knox County.

Edwards didn't explain how she knew her son's destination, how he ended up in Knoxville, or why she never told police.

"That was the whole point of his trip," Edwards said before hanging up the phone

Other calls to Edwards' home were answered by her husband, who grew angry, called chances of solving the case "remote as hell," and said, "We're not going to open that can of worms again."

Adams worked in late 1995 for his stepfather's prefab construction company, S.S. Cedar Homes, on an assisted-living facility near Frankfurt, Germany. He met a woman there while attending a party in November, and the two began dating.

She told detectives that Adams was a gentleman, whereas some — including a man he worked with in Germany — portrayed him as an abrasive and confrontational character who occasionally got in fights.

Although Adams told several people he feared for his life, he specified to his German girlfriend and at least one other friend that he dreaded violence from former coworkers who had recently returned from Germany.

Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

Anyone with information in the case should call KCSO’s Cold Case Unit at 865-215-2675 or email coldcase@knoxsheriff.org.

Travis Dorman

Knoxville

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

A composite sketch of Blair Adams, a Canadian man who was found dead at an East Knox County construction site on July 11, 1996.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

On Aug. 30, 2017, Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Chief David Davenport pores over documents contained in the investigative file of the July 11, 1996 homicide of Blair Adams.

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Blair Adams

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

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Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

A crime scene photo showing some of the contents of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found on July 11, 1996 lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Boulevard.

The short scream, the long strand of hair

The killer beat Adams, an autopsy found.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

A crime scene photo of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. on July 11, 1996.

Certain injuries indicated he had been sexually assaulted, Davenport said, but there was no DNA evidence, and it wasn't clear when the assault occurred.

Authorities tested pieces of rebar from the construction site but failed to locate the murder weapon.

Although Adams had grappled with addiction in the past, toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He had not officially been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

The only person who reported hearing anything out of the ordinary was a security guard at a nearby business. He told detectives he heard an abrupt scream around 3:30 a.m. and believed it to be a woman's voice.

The bank, the ferry

Six days before his death, on Friday, July 5, Adams withdrew almost all of the money from his bank account in Canada and emptied the valuables from his safe-deposit box into a fanny pack.

He told his mother something was bothering him, then took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Courtenay, British Columbia, to visit his uncle, who was not home.

On Sunday morning, Adams, driving his Chevrolet Chevette, tried to board a ferry from Victoria to Seattle.

U.S. immigration officials flagged him — a man traveling alone with copious amounts of cash — as a possible drug courier. Suspicions intensified when he lied about having no criminal history despite having convictions on drug and assault charges.

After being denied entry, Adams visited a girlfriend in Vancouver, a friend in New Westminster, and his mother, Sandra Edwards, in Surrey.

He spoke tearfully about quitting the same job he had boasted about just a week earlier. He seemed anxious and didn't want to stay at his apartment.

He cryptically told a friend he needed to cross the border: Someone wanted him dead.

The Olympic Games, the German project

Adams packed his bags and left his mother's home on the morning of Monday, July 8. That was the last time she saw him alive.

In a recent phone conversation, Edwards described her son as "kind" and "ambitious," and said she didn't believe he suffered from mental illness in the weeks before his death.

She said Adams had once been romantically involved with a male roommate. 

"They acted a little strangely and giggled a lot and it was kind of odd, but then he went back to a heterosexual relationship after that," she said.

She claimed Adams traveled to the South to attend the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta — information never relayed to authorities.

The games began July 19, eight days after Adams' body was discovered more than 200 miles away in Knox County.

Edwards didn't explain how she knew her son's destination, how he ended up in Knoxville, or why she never told police.

"That was the whole point of his trip," Edwards said before hanging up the phone.

Pictured is the Toyota Camry that Blair Adams rented in Washington, D.C. and drove to Knoxville in July 1996.

Other calls to Edwards' home were answered by her husband, who grew angry, called chances of solving the case "remote as hell," and said, "We're not going to open that can of worms again."

Adams worked in late 1995 for his stepfather's prefab construction company, S.S. Cedar Homes, on an assisted-living facility near Frankfurt, Germany. He met a woman there while attending a party in November, and the two began dating.

She told detectives that Adams was a gentleman, whereas some — including a man he worked with in Germany — portrayed him as an abrasive and confrontational character who occasionally got in fights.

Although Adams told several people he feared for his life, he specified to his German girlfriend and at least one other friend that he dreaded violence from former coworkers who had recently returned from Germany.

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Three days before his death, at a travel service, a subdued Adams shelled out nearly $1,700 in Canadian cash for a round-trip flight to Frankfurt. He requested a refund the same day, explaining that the person he was going to visit had gotten sick. 

His German girlfriend wasn't expecting him.

The stolen car, the journey

Before dawn on July 9, Adams was spotted wandering near the border. Then he attempted to cross on foot.

Authorities at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing noted he had small scratches on his hands and legs.

He matched the description of an auto theft suspect.

And a blue car stolen in Vancouver had just been found near the point where he tried to cross.

Adams appeared dazed but proclaimed his innocence. Police had no evidence to tie him to the stolen car, so they released him back into Canada. A friend later told authorities she saw Adams driving a blue car — not his usual Chevette — the day before.

Adams, not ready to give up, abandoned his Chevette at the Vancouver International Airport and rented a Nissan Altima there. On his third try, he made it across the border to Seattle.

Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

Anyone with information in the case should call KCSO’s Cold Case Unit at 865-215-2675 or email coldcase@knoxsheriff.org.

Travis Dorman

Knoxville

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

A composite sketch of Blair Adams, a Canadian man who was found dead at an East Knox County construction site on July 11, 1996.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

On Aug. 30, 2017, Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Chief David Davenport pores over documents contained in the investigative file of the July 11, 1996 homicide of Blair Adams.

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Blair Adams

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

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Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

A crime scene photo showing some of the contents of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found on July 11, 1996 lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Boulevard.

The short scream, the long strand of hair

The killer beat Adams, an autopsy found.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

A crime scene photo of Blair Adams' fanny pack. It was found lying near his body at a construction site at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. on July 11, 1996.

Certain injuries indicated he had been sexually assaulted, Davenport said, but there was no DNA evidence, and it wasn't clear when the assault occurred.

Authorities tested pieces of rebar from the construction site but failed to locate the murder weapon.

Although Adams had grappled with addiction in the past, toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He had not officially been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

The only person who reported hearing anything out of the ordinary was a security guard at a nearby business. He told detectives he heard an abrupt scream around 3:30 a.m. and believed it to be a woman's voice.

The bank, the ferry

Six days before his death, on Friday, July 5, Adams withdrew almost all of the money from his bank account in Canada and emptied the valuables from his safe-deposit box into a fanny pack.

He told his mother something was bothering him, then took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Courtenay, British Columbia, to visit his uncle, who was not home.

On Sunday morning, Adams, driving his Chevrolet Chevette, tried to board a ferry from Victoria to Seattle.

U.S. immigration officials flagged him — a man traveling alone with copious amounts of cash — as a possible drug courier. Suspicions intensified when he lied about having no criminal history despite having convictions on drug and assault charges.

After being denied entry, Adams visited a girlfriend in Vancouver, a friend in New Westminster, and his mother, Sandra Edwards, in Surrey.

He spoke tearfully about quitting the same job he had boasted about just a week earlier. He seemed anxious and didn't want to stay at his apartment.

He cryptically told a friend he needed to cross the border: Someone wanted him dead.

The Olympic Games, the German project

Adams packed his bags and left his mother's home on the morning of Monday, July 8. That was the last time she saw him alive.

In a recent phone conversation, Edwards described her son as "kind" and "ambitious," and said she didn't believe he suffered from mental illness in the weeks before his death.

She said Adams had once been romantically involved with a male roommate. 

"They acted a little strangely and giggled a lot and it was kind of odd, but then he went back to a heterosexual relationship after that," she said.

She claimed Adams traveled to the South to attend the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta — information never relayed to authorities.

The games began July 19, eight days after Adams' body was discovered more than 200 miles away in Knox County.

Edwards didn't explain how she knew her son's destination, how he ended up in Knoxville, or why she never told police.

"That was the whole point of his trip," Edwards said before hanging up the phone.

Pictured is the Toyota Camry that Blair Adams rented in Washington, D.C. and drove to Knoxville in July 1996.

Other calls to Edwards' home were answered by her husband, who grew angry, called chances of solving the case "remote as hell," and said, "We're not going to open that can of worms again."

Adams worked in late 1995 for his stepfather's prefab construction company, S.S. Cedar Homes, on an assisted-living facility near Frankfurt, Germany. He met a woman there while attending a party in November, and the two began dating.

She told detectives that Adams was a gentleman, whereas some — including a man he worked with in Germany — portrayed him as an abrasive and confrontational character who occasionally got in fights.

Although Adams told several people he feared for his life, he specified to his German girlfriend and at least one other friend that he dreaded violence from former coworkers who had recently returned from Germany.

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Three days before his death, at a travel service, a subdued Adams shelled out nearly $1,700 in Canadian cash for a round-trip flight to Frankfurt. He requested a refund the same day, explaining that the person he was going to visit had gotten sick. 

His German girlfriend wasn't expecting him.

The stolen car, the journey

Before dawn on July 9, Adams was spotted wandering near the border. Then he attempted to cross on foot.

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Authorities at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing noted he had small scratches on his hands and legs.

He matched the description of an auto theft suspect.

And a blue car stolen in Vancouver had just been found near the point where he tried to cross.

Adams appeared dazed but proclaimed his innocence. Police had no evidence to tie him to the stolen car, so they released him back into Canada. A friend later told authorities she saw Adams driving a blue car — not his usual Chevette — the day before.

Adams, not ready to give up, abandoned his Chevette at the Vancouver International Airport and rented a Nissan Altima there. On his third try, he made it across the border to Seattle.

He ditched the Altima at the Seattle airport and purchased an overnight, one-way flight to Washington, D.C., for nearly $800 when he could have bought a round-trip for half the price.

He arrived at Dulles International Airport early Wednesday, July 10, rented the Toyota Camry about 6:45 a.m., and began the 7-hour drive to Knoxville.

Near Zion Crossroads on U.S. Highway 250 in Troy, Virginia, Adams backed his car into another man's vehicle, causing minor damage. The man told detectives that Adams seemed nice, but was in a hurry.

The wrong key, the right key

The first reported sighting of Adams in Knoxville occurred at a gas station on Strawberry Plains Pike at 5:30 p.m., roughly 14 hours before he was found dead.

An Interstate Repair Service driver, Gerald Sapp, responded to the gas station after a clerk called saying Adams claimed the key to his rental car didn't work.

That's because Adams was trying to use a key that belonged to a Nissan from one rental company when he was driving a Toyota Camry from another, Sapp recalled recently.

"I asked him to look in his pockets," Sapp said. "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 arranged for a wrecker driver to tow the Camry to an auto shop and dropped Adams off at the nearby Fairfield Inn. Sapp said Adams walked off without his bag. Sapp took it to him, then went home.

"The guy was not all there," Sapp said. "He didn’t appear to be messed up, he didn’t appear to be on drugs, but his mind wasn’t functioning correctly for some reason."

Police called Sapp the next morning and informed him of Adams' death, then brought him in for questioning and took hair samples.

The ordeal led Sapp, then in his 40s, to leave his job.

"(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.

And the allegedly missing key? It was found near Adams' body.

A crime scene photo of the key to Blair Adam's rented Toyota Camry. At a gas station on Strawberry Plains Pike, Adams was trying to use a key to a Nissan on the Toyota. He insisted it was the right key and refused to search his pockets for the Toyota key pictured here.

The hotel lobby, the last meal

At the then-newly-opened Fairfield Inn, located across I-40 from the site where his body would later be discovered, Adams continued to exhibit odd behavior.

He purchased a room with a $100 bill about 7 p.m., then walked away without getting his change. The clerk repeatedly tried to call his room, but he wasn't there.

Half-nude with fanny pack of gold, Canadian's killing a Knox County mystery decades later

Anyone with information in the case should call KCSO’s Cold Case Unit at 865-215-2675 or email coldcase@knoxsheriff.org.

Travis Dorman

Knoxville

Blair Adams wasn't himself, and everyone he knew could see it in his eyes.

Two years sober, he stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The 31-year-old Canadian construction foreman began leaving the job site unlocked, then quit without picking up his paycheck, saying he "didn't know if he could carry on here."

His coworkers suggested he see a doctor.

He told his mother people were spreading rumors about him.

He told friends he feared someone was going to kill him. As it turned out, he was right.

'A real mystery'

Two workers found Adams' half-nude corpse on July 11, 1996 at an East Knox County construction site, thousands of miles from his home in Surrey, British Columbia.

Whoever beat him and left him to die didn't steal the gold bars, gold coins, jewelry, or the cash that he had on him.

Authorities believe Adams knew no one in Tennessee, and investigators who retraced his steps found the way he arrived made as little sense as the way he died.

"It's a real mystery," said David Davenport, a former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and Jefferson County sheriff who is now the chief of the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. He oversees roughly 40 unsolved homicide cases, including Adams'.

No one's been charged in the killing, all leads have been exhausted, and only one piece of DNA evidence exists.

"Son, we don't quit on a murder case," Davenport said. "You go to these things that happen 40, 50 years ago, and they say, 'We thought you forgot about that.' I say, 'Well, we don't forget.'"

The blue jeans, the fanny pack

At first glance, they thought he was a vagrant who had bedded down at their job site.

Further inspection revealed he was dead, and had too much gold to be homeless.

Two construction workers stopping by an under-construction hotel at 7471 Crosswood Blvd. off the Strawberry Plains Pike exit for Interstate 40 discovered Adams' corpse in the parking lot about 7 a.m.

Thousands of dollars in Canadian, German and American cash were found around his body and in the pockets of his blue jeans. (The owner of a siding company working at the site pocketed a $100 bill and a $10 bill, but authorities later recovered them.)

Adams' pants had been removed "like somebody else pulled them down for him," said Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, who was a lieutenant over the Major Crimes Unit when he responded to the scene.

His socks lay on the asphalt. Sets of keys and a card to a hotel room were strewn about. His shoes were off, and as he lay dying, he apparently pulled one of them "under his head like a pillow," Jones said.

Detectives found a black duffel bag nearby that contained maps and various travel receipts.

A fanny pack stuffed with nearly 5 ounces of gold bars, gold and platinum coins, jewelry, more keys and a pair of sunglasses lay unzipped, its contents untouched.

The short scream, the long strand of hair

The killer beat Adams, an autopsy found.

The fatal blow ruptured his stomach, and he died of septic shock.

A weapon — possibly a club or crowbar, Davenport said — sliced open his forehead. 

He put up a fight. His attacker ripped tufts of hair from his head. Adams' hands were bloodied as if he held them up to defend himself. One was cut deep, and blackened like it had been "forcefully knocked to the pavement," Davenport said.

Investigators recovered a long strand of someone else's hair from that hand, the only significant piece of physical evidence in the case.

Certain injuries indicated he had been sexually assaulted, Davenport said, but there was no DNA evidence, and it wasn't clear when the assault occurred.

Authorities tested pieces of rebar from the construction site but failed to locate the murder weapon.

Although Adams had grappled with addiction in the past, toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He had not officially been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

The only person who reported hearing anything out of the ordinary was a security guard at a nearby business. He told detectives he heard an abrupt scream around 3:30 a.m. and believed it to be a woman's voice.

The bank, the ferry

Six days before his death, on Friday, July 5, Adams withdrew almost all of the money from his bank account in Canada and emptied the valuables from his safe-deposit box into a fanny pack.

He told his mother something was bothering him, then took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Courtenay, British Columbia, to visit his uncle, who was not home.

On Sunday morning, Adams, driving his Chevrolet Chevette, tried to board a ferry from Victoria to Seattle.

U.S. immigration officials flagged him — a man traveling alone with copious amounts of cash — as a possible drug courier. Suspicions intensified when he lied about having no criminal history despite having convictions on drug and assault charges.

After being denied entry, Adams visited a girlfriend in Vancouver, a friend in New Westminster, and his mother, Sandra Edwards, in Surrey.

He spoke tearfully about quitting the same job he had boasted about just a week earlier. He seemed anxious and didn't want to stay at his apartment.

He cryptically told a friend he needed to cross the border: Someone wanted him dead.

The Olympic Games, the German project

Adams packed his bags and left his mother's home on the morning of Monday, July 8. That was the last time she saw him alive.

In a recent phone conversation, Edwards described her son as "kind" and "ambitious," and said she didn't believe he suffered from mental illness in the weeks before his death.

She said Adams had once been romantically involved with a male roommate. 

"They acted a little strangely and giggled a lot and it was kind of odd, but then he went back to a heterosexual relationship after that," she said.

She claimed Adams traveled to the South to attend the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta — information never relayed to authorities.

The games began July 19, eight days after Adams' body was discovered more than 200 miles away in Knox County.

Edwards didn't explain how she knew her son's destination, how he ended up in Knoxville, or why she never told police.

"That was the whole point of his trip," Edwards said before hanging up the phone.

Other calls to Edwards' home were answered by her husband, who grew angry, called chances of solving the case "remote as hell," and said, "We're not going to open that can of worms again."

Adams worked in late 1995 for his stepfather's prefab construction company, S.S. Cedar Homes, on an assisted-living facility near Frankfurt, Germany. He met a woman there while attending a party in November, and the two began dating.

She told detectives that Adams was a gentleman, whereas some — including a man he worked with in Germany — portrayed him as an abrasive and confrontational character who occasionally got in fights.

Although Adams told several people he feared for his life, he specified to his German girlfriend and at least one other friend that he dreaded violence from former coworkers who had recently returned from Germany.

Three days before his death, at a travel service, a subdued Adams shelled out nearly $1,700 in Canadian cash for a round-trip flight to Frankfurt. He requested a refund the same day, explaining that the person he was going to visit had gotten sick. 

His German girlfriend wasn't expecting him.

The stolen car, the journey

Before dawn on July 9, Adams was spotted wandering near the border. Then he attempted to cross on foot.

Authorities at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing noted he had small scratches on his hands and legs.

He matched the description of an auto theft suspect.

And a blue car stolen in Vancouver had just been found near the point where he tried to cross.

Adams appeared dazed but proclaimed his innocence. Police had no evidence to tie him to the stolen car, so they released him back into Canada. A friend later told authorities she saw Adams driving a blue car — not his usual Chevette — the day before.

Adams, not ready to give up, abandoned his Chevette at the Vancouver International Airport and rented a Nissan Altima there. On his third try, he made it across the border to Seattle.

He ditched the Altima at the Seattle airport and purchased an overnight, one-way flight to Washington, D.C., for nearly $800 when he could have bought a round-trip for half the price.

He arrived at Dulles International Airport early Wednesday, July 10, rented the Toyota Camry about 6:45 a.m., and began the 7-hour drive to Knoxville.

Near Zion Crossroads on U.S. Highway 250 in Troy, Virginia, Adams backed his car into another man's vehicle, causing minor damage. The man told detectives that Adams seemed nice, but was in a hurry.

The wrong key, the right key

The first reported sighting of Adams in Knoxville occurred at a gas station on Strawberry Plains Pike at 5:30 p.m., roughly 14 hours before he was found dead.

An Interstate Repair Service driver, Gerald Sapp, responded to the gas station after a clerk called saying Adams claimed the key to his rental car didn't work.

That's because Adams was trying to use a key that belonged to a Nissan from one rental company when he was driving a Toyota Camry from another, Sapp recalled recently.

"I asked him to look in his pockets," Sapp said. "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 arranged for a wrecker driver to tow the Camry to an auto shop and dropped Adams off at the nearby Fairfield Inn. Sapp said Adams walked off without his bag. Sapp took it to him, then went home.

"The guy was not all there," Sapp said. "He didn’t appear to be messed up, he didn’t appear to be on drugs, but his mind wasn’t functioning correctly for some reason."

Police called Sapp the next morning and informed him of Adams' death, then brought him in for questioning and took hair samples.

The ordeal led Sapp, then in his 40s, to leave his job.

"(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.

And the allegedly missing key? It was found near Adams' body.

A crime scene photo of the key to Blair Adam's rented Toyota Camry. At a gas station on Strawberry Plains Pike, Adams was trying to use a key to a Nissan on the Toyota. He insisted it was the right key and refused to search his pockets for the Toyota key pictured here.

The hotel lobby, the last meal

At the then-newly-opened Fairfield Inn, located across I-40 from the site where his body would later be discovered, Adams continued to exhibit odd behavior.

He purchased a room with a $100 bill about 7 p.m., then walked away without getting his change. The clerk repeatedly tried to call his room, but he wasn't there.

Surveillance video showed him entering and exiting the lobby five times within 40 minutes.

He seemed "paranoid," hotel employee Ticca Hartsfield said in a 1997 interview on the popular TV show, "Unsolved Mysteries." The show generated many tips but no significant leads in the case.

"He just was very nervous, agitated, expecting someone to come in on him even though there wasn’t anybody there," Hartsfield said. "I don’t know who he was looking for, but he was waiting for somebody to walk in for him.”

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