Betsy Shepard

Plain and simple.

I think he killed himself.

That's the only way I can explain it.

Because, he says, Ajay was acting strangely, even more strangely than usual, in the weeks before his disappearance.

He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and stuff out here.

You can pretty much disappear, I think was the word that he used, and nobody would ever find you.

Ajay said similar things to Dave Rathbun, but he didn't put a lot of stock into any of the statements because he says Ajay is just a weird guy.

Our unit was next to a big giant duck pond.

And one of the ways we used to make jokes about each other is we kind of like, where do you fit in the duck pond?

John was, and I don't want to malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks in the pond, which is good, right?

You need them.

You don't want everybody swimming the same.

Initially, Rathbun was open to the possibility of suicide, but he's become increasingly skeptical over time.

Because if Ajay had killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace of him would have turned up by now.

So Ajay's colleagues are divided on what happened to him.

It's kind of like those faces seen in the rocks at the Devil's Punchbowl.

Same details, but interpreted in different ways.

And that makes sense, because we feel conflicted about it too.

Ajay did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off.

I mean, how could he have buried himself and stay buried for almost three decades?