Richard Cheek was worried about his son John. The twenty-eight-year-old Memphis, Tennessee, businessman was working exceedingly long hours. When he wasn’t in the office, John was in the air, racking up frequent flyer miles traveling across the country to meet prospective investors. The potential payout was great, as John was working on a business deal that would make him a millionaire.

The physical cost of profiting financially, however, was also great. Richard, a surgeon, told John he was a workaholic and he did not mean it as a compliment. The doctor warned his son that the continuous eighteen-hour days along with the skipping of sleep and meals would catch up with him. John assured his dad everything was under control. Subsequent events, however, seem to indicate that father knew best.

John Cheek’s business deal was soon finalized, but he was not able to reap his riches. Instead of living in luxury, John was instead believed to be living on the streets, possibly having suffered a mental breakdown. Thirty years later, his fate remains unknown.

John Cheek

John Cheek was not married, and his job left him little time for a social life. He was the Chief Financial Officer for a branch of the Cates Company, one of the largest Real Estate operators in Memphis, managing residential apartment complexes across the southern United States. When the company voted to go public in mid-1993, John was one of the men in charge of organizing the transition.

John personally had a lot riding on the conversion; if it were approved, his salary would increase to $110,000 annually and he would be given $2 million in stock options. John poured all of his time and efforts into making his company’s move a success, and, in the process, of making himself a wealthy man.

A Major Business Deal

The deal was on the verge of completion by the end of November, until a last-minute glitch emerged. On December 1, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed the transition after finding several questionable transactions on the part of the Cates Company. As a result, John had to take a late-night flight from Memphis to Denver to meet with potential investors.

After a further SEC audit of Cates found no evidence of wrongdoing, the changeover was approved. After returning from Denver, John and a business associate had dinner at the Cooker restaurant, in Memphis, on the evening of December 2. John, having slept little in three days, was exhausted and further stressed from the delay in the proposed deal.

At approximately 11:00 p.m., the business associate dropped John at the Crescent Center, a large office building across the street from the restaurant where his 1987 Acura Legend was parked. Some sources state he was intoxicated.

Exhausted and Stressed

John, the consummate worker, did not arrive for work the following day. Co-workers initially believed he had overslept due to fatigue, but calls to his home went unanswered.

Richard and John’s mother, Arenna, searched the home John had recently bought in East Memphis. His suitcases were found unpacked from his return home, but he was not there. The towels Arenna had placed on his bed prior to his trip had been moved, but the bed had not been slept in. The only thing out of the ordinary was that the garage door was open. John always kept it shut, particularly when he was not at home.

John’s parents filed a missing person’s report with the Memphis Police.

Not At Home

At 10:40 a.m. the following morning, December 4, John’s car was found abandoned in an industrial area at Crump Boulevard and Riverside Drive on the Delaware Street exit ramp, now called the Metal Museum exit, along Interstate 55, near the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge that joins Tennessee and Arkansas over the Mississippi River. The locale was approximately twelve miles from his home and not on John’s route to work. No one knew of any reason why he would have driven in that area.

Police, as well as John’s parents, examined the car and found nothing out of the ordinary. No signs of foul play or of a struggle were evident.

Authorities theorized that John had committed suicide by jumping into the Mississippi River, or, perhaps still in an intoxicated state, had accidentally fallen into the river. Searches of the river and its banks, however, failed to locate a body.

No leads surfaced on John Cheek’s whereabouts until two months later.

John’s Car Is Found

On February 14, 1994, trucker Ron Jackson saw John’s missing person flyer at a truck stop in West Memphis, just across the state line in Arkansas from where John lived in East Memphis, Tennessee. Ron believed he had seen John the day before at a truck stop in Raphine, Virginia, seven-hundred miles away.

As he entered Raphine’s White Stop’s Truck Cafe, Ron encountered a young man sleeping on a bench. When Ron spoke to him, the apparent vagrant said he had no money. When Ron offered to buy him breakfast, the young man eagerly accepted.

Ron did not believe this man was a street person as he was wearing a white shirt and necktie, both of which appeared clean, and he appeared to have recently shaved. He also had a bundle of other clothes with him wrapped in a belt, and Ron believes he had seen the same man watching television at the truck stop the day before wearing different clothes.

Ron said the man spoke well, using excellent grammar absent any street lingo. The man never offered his name and, though appreciative of the breakfast, spoke very little, saying only he had recently stayed at a homeless shelter in Little Rock, Arkansas, one-hundred-thirty miles southwest of Memphis.

After breakfast, the man told Ron he was headed to Richmond, one-hundred miles southeast of Raphine, Virginia. The destination was opposite of where Ron was going, so they then parted ways. Ron thought the young man was disoriented and perhaps not dealing with a full deck.

Several things about the encounter made John’s parents optimistic that Ron had encountered their son. John was educated, spoke well, and wore a white shirt and necktie to work every day.

Most promisingly, Ron remembered a pair of slip-on moccasins worn by the man, and his description coincided with the Topsider moccasin shoes found to be missing from John’s home. Until that time, John’s parents had not told anyone that those shoes were missing, and the information had not been released to the media.

Arrena and Richard Cheeck

John’s Parents 

White’s Truck Stop cashier Amanda Hartless and her boss, Pat Cash, also said they believed they saw John Cheek at the truck stop for several days, sleeping in the CB-radio shop. Pat, however, later retracted his statement, saying he was not sure it was John he had seen. At the time, the truck stop was inundated with homeless people taking cover from an ice storm which had hit central Virginia, and he came to believe the man only resembled John. Amanda, however, never wavered in her contention that it was John she had seen at the truck stop.

In the ensuing four months, eight more sightings of John Cheek were reported, all in Virginia and Arkansas. None, however, could be confirmed, and few subsequent sightings were deemed credible.

Additional Reported Sightings

Dr. Richard Cheek believes his son may have suffered a sudden episode of stress-induced amnesia known as the “fugue state,” or “dissociative disorder,” a form of amnesia which is a sort of self-preserving mechanism people use when something has become so stressful that they can no longer deal with it.

The stress of the Cates Company business deal coupled with weeks of little sleep could have finally caught up to John. The possibility of the deal’s being nixed at the last minute may have been what pushed him over the edge. The stress could have been so overwhelming that he blocked his own identity.

Dr. Ray Sexton, a Memphis psychiatrist and Cheek family friend, agrees with Dr. Cheek’s assertion and says such episodes can last for extended periods of time, sometimes even for years.

A Mental Breakdown?

John Andrews Cheek has been missing since December 2, 1993. At the time of his disappearance, he was twenty-eight-years-old, stood six feet tall, weighed one-hundred-sixty pounds, and had brown hair. His eyes were blue, and he generally wore wire-rimmed glasses. He had a scar extending from his forehead to his nose.

John Cheek would today be fifty-eight-years-old. He may still be suffering from amnesia or a related illness causing him to be disoriented and unaware of his true identity.

No evidence or suggestion of foul play has been found regarding John’s disappearance. Although he was declared legally dead in 2000, John’s family and friends still cling to the hope that he will one day return home to claim the riches for which he worked tirelessly.

If you have any information on the disappearance of John Cheek, please call the Memphis, Tennessee, Police Department at 901-545-5700.

 

Still Missing

After receiving the SEC’s approval, the Cates Company went public in early 1994 as Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc., a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust.)

The company trades on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), and today has a market capitalization of over $18 billion.

A Profitable Company 

SOURCES:

• Charley Project
• Doe Network
• Memphis Commercial Appeal
• People Magazine
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post