He is in this area," says Linda Curl, who serves lunch at a Salvation Army Community Center in Cheyenne. Curl called Thompson last February, after she'd seen a flier about [bleep]'s disappearance. She told him that [bleep] was eating and taking free bread there.

Thompson says he is coming around to the idea that [bleep] has put down roots in the area, noting that this is the third time people at the Salvation Army have claimed to have contact with him. He asked Cheyenne police to drop by the Salvation Army and a shelter a couple of days later, but [bleep] wasn't there.

"When I got that [receipt], quite honestly, is when I finally started to finally accept that maybe they are seeing him there," he says.

But [bleep] has no known ties to Cheyenne, didn't drive directly there, and had refrained from identifying himself until this receipt surfaced. Why would someone in hiding put a close variation of his own name to paper? And if he still didn't want to be found, why would he stay in one place for almost a year?

"I was a little surprised, assuming that it is him, that he's stayed put out there," Thompson says. "I really kind of figured that when he took off, he went further away than that. Maybe he didn't."

Lacking evidence that [bleep] is living in the wilderness, and with good leads in Cheyenne, [bleep]'s flight now seems less about leaving behind the modern world than the simple fear of a jail sentence. But if [bleep] is, in fact, dining at the Salvation Army, bargain shopping at the supermarket and ordering up Big Macs like any other Cheyenne resident, his disappearance is no less mysterious. Why didn't he ask for help after his arrest? Why Wyoming? Why did he leave the Explorer?