by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Andrea Hoffmann has never been able to let things go. And that, it turns out, is a good thing.

“I’m interested in any kind of unsolved cases because I hate it when something is not solved. I hate it,” she said.

Last year, the cold case detective applied her dogged resourcefulness, intelligence, and mathematical curiosity to the March 1993 disappearance of Blake Nex from his Palmer Canyon home in Claremont. Her efforts uncovered new avenues of inquiry, giving Blake’s last surviving direct family member, his brother Royse, renewed hope that the 32-year mystery of his big brother’s disappearance might one day be solved.

Heidelberg, Germany resident and amateur cold case detective Andrea Hoffmann has been instrumental in revitalizing the search for Blake Nex. Photo/courtesy of Andrea Hoffmann

That Hoffmann has no training in law enforcement and is by day a technical writer living in Heidelberg, Germany has little bearing on what matters most: results.

And it may just be in her DNA.

“I’m like a mama duck: if there’s a duckling missing, I’m going to do everything to find it,” Hoffmann said. “It’s like instinct, or whatever you want to call it.”

The affable 49-year-old came to focus her unique skillset on the Blake Nex case through one of her routine examinations of cold case database the Charley Project.

“Every now and then I check missing persons cases,” Hoffmann said. “You know that you can compare if John Does are found … they have their own entries. And then you can search the database and see if there are any profile hits of a missing person. Then I stumbled across Blake’s profile, just because I was doing research — probably like a crazy person — and then just ended up finding Blake. Maybe it was fate. I don’t know.”

Blake’s case was different, Hoffmann said, in that there was next to nothing about it on the internet. The Charley Project information was sparse, but it did include a tantalizing detail: an alias. “And that was what interested me most, because there was an alias name given, but no explanation,” Hoffmann said. “And I was thinking, why is someone going by two very different names? And I couldn’t forget about that.”

In an effort to work out the mystery, Hoffmann created a family tree for Blake through information available on Ancestry.com. Eventually, she discovered Blake’s mother Margaret remarried in the early 1970s, and Blake, Royse and their sister Jeannette changed their surnames from “Martin” to their stepfather’s “Nex.”

It was no bombshell, but it did serve to further pique her curiosity. Soon she posted results of her research on a missing persons message board on Reddit.com, where others had also been speculating about the Blake Nex case.

Blake’s March 1993 disappearance happened in the nascent days of the internet, five years before Google’s official launch. Since then, Royse has done periodic Google searches for Blake Nex. “Not that I can find anything, but it can’t hurt, right?” Royse said.

Last year he got a new hit.

“So, I find out that there are people talking about him on the Reddit app,” Royse said. “And the one that had the best ideas of all, was her,” Royse said of Hoffmann. He reached out through Reddit, and soon the pair were texting and talking on the phone. Hoffmann dug deeper, interviewing Blake’s cousins, friends, and acquaintances. The case eventually caught the attention of Marissa Jones’ The Vanished podcast, which last month released two episodes about Blake’s disappearance.

Years ago a family friend alerted Royse to unidentified remains that had been found after a house fire near Claremont. The friend was convinced it was Blake. But dental records from the corpse did not match Blake’s. Since then Hoffmann has found two additional unidentified remains cases that fit the timeline and shared some physical characteristics with Blake. In April of this year, Hoffmann came across an entry for an unidentified body that had been found in rural Riverside county in 1994. It seemed to her like it could be him. The man was wearing Levi’s 501 jeans, like Blake did. The timeline worked. Hoffmann and Royse reached out to Nancy Rissi, coroner sergeant with Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner’s office, asking her to look into the case.

Royse Nex, pictured with wife Teresa “Tweedy” Monaghan, has been searching for his brother Blake since his 1993 disappearance from Palmer Canyon in Claremont. Photo/courtesy of Royse Nex

“When I first contacted [Rissi], her responses were immediate,” Royse said. “She sent a DNA kit to the local PD in Grapevine.” The results would take about six months, Rissi said. On October 9, Royse received an email from Rissi: his DNA did not match the John Doe in the desert, nor did it match any other open unidentified cases in Riverside County’s system.

“I understand you want to locate your brother, and hopefully he will be found soon,” Rissi wrote. “I’m sad we haven’t found him yet.”

Blake would be 70 now. Royse is 68. If his brother is dead, it would mean he is the last living member of his immediate family.

“I’m glad it’s not him,” Royse said of the John Doe in Riverside. “He’s also not in any database … that’s good news. So if he’s dead they haven’t found the body. And if they have, they didn’t do DNA, which would be hard to believe at this point. So that’s actually good news.

“If he’s dead I’d like to catch his killer before I die. If I were given the choice I’d rather look all my life and never find him dead, and on the day that I’m dying I get a telephone call and it’s him. That would actually be much better!”

The search for Blake Nex continues, and Hoffmann is no less determined to close the loop. Next May, she will travel to Texas to meet Royse in Grapevine, where one crucial stash of known evidence remains hidden away in his garage.

“My mom told me just before she died [in 2017] that there was a folder on Blake that she had and she wanted me to find it,” Royse said. “I’ve never found it … I can’t say that there’s anything in there that’s gonna help, but it might.”

Hoffmann, from halfway around the world, chimed in: “I’m going to find it. If I spend all summer in that garage, I’m going to find it.”

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For a deep dive into this story, listen to the excellent podcast The Vanished, hosted by Marissa Jones, which last month released two episodes about Blake’s disappearance. Check it out at thevanishedpodcast.com or wherever you get your pods.

Still more information about Blake Nex is at findblakenex.com.

Blake Nex’s 1990 passport photo. Photo/courtesy of Royse Nex

Did you remember Blake Nex or know someone who does? If so, your memories may help solve a 32-year-old mystery. If you have any information, please contact the LA County Sheriff’s Department at (323) 890-5500. You can also send a confidential tip at findblakenex.com.