The doctor’s death is shrouded in mystery and speculation

CASSVILLE, MO (AP) — John Forsyth was known as a hardworking doctor who cared deeply about his patients and would often tease the emergency room nurses to relieve stress. He was the father of eight children and recently engaged. He also co-founded a cryptocurrency company with his brother.

His sudden disappearance from a southwest Missouri town last month — and the eventual discovery of his body in an Arkansas lake — has many wondering what happened to the man who had seemed happier than he had been for some time. A lack of information from law enforcement has deepened the mystery, prompting amateur investigators to post theories on Facebook.

“It’s like the world has fallen on us; we’re just in shock,” his sister Tiffany Forsyth said. “There’s a part of me that’s not entirely sure that this is real yet. I think it comes in steps.”

Forsyth disappeared on May 21 from a parking lot at a public pool. His body, apparently with a gunshot wound, was found nine days later. An autopsy has been performed, but a report is not expected for at least two months. Law enforcement officers revealed almost no details, except to say there was no danger to the public.

The doctor’s family is adamant that his death was not a suicide: he had recently become engaged, and his fiancée was pregnant.

Some true crime followers on social media have speculated that his death may have been related to the cryptocurrency company he co-founded with his brother, Richard Forsyth. Several other theories have also surfaced in a Facebook discussion group that has grown to over 1,000 members. Posts in that group are now closed for public viewing.

Just 10 days before his disappearance, the judge finalized Forsyth’s divorce – his second divorce from the same woman. The separation was amicable, according to family members and the ex-wife’s attorney, Ryan Ricketts, who said she was “devastated” by the doctor’s death.

Richard Forsyth said his brother was excited about his upcoming marriage and new baby and had a plane ticket to go see one of his daughters.

He said, “I can’t wait to introduce it to you.” We will live a wonderful life together. “We’re all going to spend a lot of time together,” said Richard Forsyth. “…I haven’t seen him this happy for a long time.”

Forsyth even texted his fiancée the day he went missing, saying he’d see her soon, according to his brother. The fiancée did not respond to a request on social media for an interview.

Besides hopeful comments about his future life, John Forsyth has recently made cryptic remarks about possibly being in danger, his brother said, adding, “I think he’s met some bad people and he didn’t tell me about them.”

Conflicting information

There was some confusion about what happened near the public pool where John Forsyth was last seen in Cassville, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of the Ozark Mountains tourist destination in Branson and about a half mile from the hospital where he worked. On May 21, the pool is not yet open for the summer season. Beaver Lake, a man-made reservoir used for recreation and where his body was found, is at least an hour’s drive from Cassville, via twisting highways that snake through the Ozarks.

At first, Richard Forsyth said the security camera footage showed his brother getting into someone else’s car. He now says the footage shows that a few minutes after the doctor stopped his car, a white SUV arrived, and left shortly thereafter. About 10 or 15 minutes after that, Richard Forsyth said, the doctor got out of his car and left, never to be seen alive again. Inside his unlocked car, he said, two cell phones, a laptop computer, and important documents were found.

So far, authorities – who have stressed the need for a thorough investigation before releasing information – have not said whether the SUV was linked to Forsyth’s disappearance, whether they found the gun used to shoot him or identify any suspects. .

Richard Forsyth said family members have been told it may be a long wait for answers, but they trust the investigating officers.

CRYPTO CONTACTS

The authorities also did not indicate how deeply they had researched Forsyth’s cryptocurrency connections.

Online publications covering the industry quickly took note of his death, which was confirmed just seven weeks after authorities in the San Francisco area charged a tech consultant with the stabbing murder of Cash app founder Bob Lee.

John and Richard Forsyth founded Onfo LLC, what they call a “network mining” venture, in 2018. At the time, Onfo’s website said account holders could earn credits without paying cash, by referring others to the company.

Onfo’s website features a roughly eight-minute video titled “The US Dollar Is Doomed,” which says that all governments’ currencies could collapse. The video promoting the Onfo launch portrayed bankers and political officials as pigs in suits, describing them as “drunk in expensive liquor, lounging in palaces”.

A Forbes article online in 2020 described John Forsyth as a Bitcoin millionaire.

But Richard Forsyth said he and his brother were looking to give large numbers of people, including the poor in developing nations, an opportunity to invest in the decentralized digital currency. He described Onfo as fighting what the brothers thought had become crypto: driven by greed, “about Lamborghini” and “billionaires and tax evasion”.

Paul Sibenik, principal case manager at CipherBlade, an agency that investigates cybercrime involving cryptography, said Onfo’s business model is similar to pyramid schemes, which rely on a growing number of referrals and cannot sustain.

“No single legitimate cryptocurrency project operates this way,” Sibenik said in an email to The Associated Press.

Richard Forsyth acknowledged that others might wonder if Onfo was a “multi-level marketing” operation, but added, “The main difference is that we didn’t sell anything.” It probably cost them millions of dollars, he said, instead of turning a profit.

“What we’re just doing is saying to people, ‘Let’s build this together,'” he said.

John Forsyth had significant cryptocurrency holdings when his second divorce became final last month. The divorce decree equally divided his and his ex-wife’s estate in bitcoin and another digital currency, Ethereum, valued at more than $800,000. The ordinance also required him to pay an additional $15,000 per month to his ex-wife as well as $3,999 per month to support four of their children, ages 10 to 18. The ordinance valued John Forsyth’s business interests outside of his cryptocurrency holdings at $1 million.

Farewell to friends and family

John and Richard Forsyth were among seven siblings in an extended family of over 100 cousins. Richard Forsyth said the brothers grew up in southwest Missouri and Alberta, Canada, and had dual US and Canadian citizenship.

The family held a private funeral on Saturday, followed by a vigil Sunday night at a park in Monet, north of Cassville. There, about 40 people, mostly family members, lit memorial candles and shared touching and humorous stories about him.

Colleagues recalled how Forsyth often tried to lighten the mood in the sweltering emergency room of a hospital in the town of Aurora where he worked. He likes to see “how much it can bother you,” said nurse Leah Tate, drawing chuckles from those gathered at the memorial service. She said that Forsyth once had the task of having a nurse throw something at him at least once a day.

Monyette resident Louise Hensley and former neighbor of John Forsyth said he treated her husband, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, for several years.

“He always cared deeply about his patients. Describing Forsyth’s death as “tragic,” Hensley said:

“I was just shocked when I heard a doctor was missing and then I saw him.”

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writers Jim Salter in St. Charles, Missouri; Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Lisa Bowman in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjdhanna