Man Off a Cliff – The Weird Side of the Internet

Man Off a Cliff – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

A man calls 911 for help in the woods. He’s hanging on for dear life after falling down a cliff. He’s partially in the water and his phone’s battery in at 2%. And it was a bear that chased him off a cliff. His name was Brandon Andrade.

Should you know that name? No, not really. Because it wasn’t the guy’s real name. And when rescuers showed up to the cliff and looked down, the dead man in the water wasn’t Brandon Andrade either. And moreover, it wasn’t the man who called.

Nicholas Hamlett had a violent criminal history and was no stranger to prison. In fact, he had served four years of a twenty-year sentence for felony assault, paroled in 2016. A man of many IDs and many states, he must have realized that even aliases could get so hot they need to be ditched.

Knoxville, Tennessee resident Douglas Lloyd was adopted by a family that loved him, but like so many people, he struggled with mental health challenges. He lived outside, and by all accounts was a helpful person to all who knew him.

He was the body in the water.

Hewitt befriended him and lured him into the woods that day, intent of killing him and assuming his identity. And he might have gotten away with it except for the fact that forensic teams aren’t made up of idiots, and short of actually pushing Lloyd halfway off the cliff, climbing down, and pushing him in the rest of the way into the water, there was no way Lloyd’s injuries would match what they got off the 911 call.

He was caught in South Carolina. But my only real question in all of this was: why would you switch an alias ID with someone’s real ID? Why not “kill” Nicholas Hewlitt and assume Douglas Lloyd? How much heat did that alias have on it?

More from Liam Sweeny.