Man’s disappearance leaves some in Corbin wondering

A man displaced by Hurricane Katrina who received aid from a local church and eventual resettled in Corbin may not have been all he appeared to be, and now police are investigating the circumstances surrounding his strange disappearance.
Don Pinkerton, 48, came to Corbin via an outreach effort by the First United Methodist to help victims of the hurricane, which ravaged Gulf coast areas of Louisiana and Mississippi in last August last year. The church opened up rooms above its gymnasium to house people displaced by the storm. According to Gus Clouse, who serves as Recreation Director for the church, Pinkerton was part of a group that came from Gulfport, Mississippi.
“He was in our musical … our church play,” Clouse said. “He was telling us how his friends would be shocked he was doing that. It really seemed like he enjoyed himself.”
When the church ended the assistance effort in January, Pinkerton remained there in exchange for helping out with odd jobs and assisting with “security.”
Clouse said he moved to a property near Sweet Hollow Resort, then finally to Forest Hills Apartments in Corbin. He got a job with the Corbin Independent School System as a custodian at Central Primary Elementary School.
By all accounts, Pinkerton fit into the community.
But his sudden disappearance a little over two weeks ago has people that knew him and helped him scratching their heads, and authorities curious as to his whereabouts.
“He’s not shown up for work for about a week,” Corbin Schools Superintendent Ed McNeel said last Thursday. “I can’t say much about his status with us because it’s a personnel issue, but I’ll put it like this … we expect people to be at work.”
Corbin Police confirm that an investigation into Pinkerton is in the works, but the officer in charge of the case, Jason Williams, could not be reached for comment.
A source close to the investigation said another resident at Forest Hills Apartments is accusing Pinkerton of stealing $350 from her before skipping town. He owed a months rent before his hiatus. And then there are legal questions regarding his receipt of aid from charitable, and possibly government sources under false pretenses.
“He left most of his stuff behind … all his furniture, his clothes, even his pet mice,” the source said, asking not be identified. “I know Don Pinkerton did a lot of people wrong … If he hasn’t been charged with anything, he needs to be, especially if the church was under the impression they were helping someone who was a victim of Hurricane Katrina.”
Whether or not Pinkerton was actually a legitimate victim of the storm is anyone’s guess.
People familiar with him say they’ve been told he’s actually from a number of different states: Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, etc.
Whitley County Sheriff’s Deputy Alan Onkst said he spoke to an Arkansas relative of Pinkerton’s last week in an effort to get some answers.
“He said this is nothing uncommon. He’s done this many times before,” Onkst said. “He normally will go into a community, he will get a good job, get involved in a relationship and get into a pretty good situation and then vanish into thin air.”
Onkst said Pinkerton’s relative told him the man slipped through a window late at night to escape the last community and relationship he was in before coming to Corbin.
Onkst surmises that Pinkerton traveled to Mississippi in the wake of the storm, then blended into a shelter before taking a church bus to Corbin.
“There was just so many opportunities for fraud to take place after all that happened,” Onkst said. “If he received any type of compensation or aid under false pretenses then there would be some criminal issue there. It was deceptive for sure. Whether it’s criminal or not, I don’t know.”
Clouse said he was surprised at Pinkerton’s abrupt departure, but recalled the church getting a few phone calls from people claiming the man owed them money. And there were other oddities.
After a short absence when few at the church saw him, Pinkerton told members he had been hospitalized.
“Somebody called the hospital and couldn’t find any record of him being up there,” Clouse said.
Pinkerton rarely talked about family, but Clouse said he seemed intimately familiar with communities on the Gulf coast.
“He told us all kinds of stories about working Mardi Gras and he knew a whole lot about the town of Slidell,” Clouse said. “If he wasn’t from that area, he sure knew a lot about it.”
Clouse said he last saw Pinkerton June 30 at the church, talking intently on a cell phone.
“Whoever he was on the phone with, he was in an intense conversation and he didn’t want me to hear that,” he said. “That’s the last time I saw him.”
Onkst said Pinkerton’s relative wasn’t “the least bit alarmed” he had vanished. A former friend reported he may be heading to Illinois.