A man woke up outside a Burger King and claimed to have “amnesia”. A new documentary claims he may be tied to cold cases

He was found naked and unconscious behind a Burger King in rural Georgia – a man with no wallet, no identification and, he claimed, no memory of who he was.

For years, the mystery man known as “Benjamin Kyle” haunted investigators and fascinated the public.

Since he was found in 2004, he has wandered through life with no social security number, relying on strangers, doctors and documentary filmmakers to help piece together the fragments of a past he said he could not remember.

Now, more than two decades later, Investigation Discovery is revisiting the bizarre case in a new two-night, four-part docuseries that suggests the mystery may be far darker than anyone realized.

Filmmakers Shannon and Eric Evangelista, founders of Hot Snakes Media, initially set out to help the man recover his identity. Instead, they say they uncovered disturbing inconsistencies in his story, and witness accounts that led them to believe he was linked to several cold cases and a possible connection to a powerful Midwestern crime family.

In April 2015, the mystery man was identified as William Burgess Powell, an Indiana man who went missing in 1976.

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But Shannon Evangelista says major questions remain unanswered. Over the years, the team has continued their investigation into Powell’s life, hoping to answer the question: what happened between 1976 and 2004?

Through years of research and chilling witness accounts, Evangelista now alleges that Powell may never have suffered from amnesia at all.

Instead, she claims he may have had ties to a notorious crime family in Lafayette, Indiana, and to George Keck, who was once believed to be connected to the 1977 killing of Purdue University student Kristine Kozik.

A man without a name

The mystery began on August 31, 2004, when a Burger King employee in Richmond Hill, Georgia discovered a man lying naked behind the fast food joint.

The man, believed to be in his mid-50s, was temporarily admitted to the hospital under the name “Burger King Doe,” later shortened to “B.K. Doe,” but when regained consciousness, he assumed the name of Benjaman. He later told staff his last name was Kyle because it matched the BK initials, he says in the documentary.

He believed his birth date was August 29, 1948 and he had a few blurred memories of Denver, Colorado, and Indiana, and but did not know how he ended up in Georgia and couldn’t remember any other identifying details about his life. He was diagnosed with dissociative amnesia, a rare condition that caused him to lose almost all memories connected to his past life.

He made his home in Jacksonville, Florida, but struggled to live and work without a social security number and government ID, so continued on his quest to find his identity. His strange story drew national attention, including television appearances on Dr. Phil and extensive media coverage, as investigators struggled to uncover who he really was.

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Benjaman Kyle learns his true identity

A team of genetic genealogists, led by CeCe Moore, who heads the Parabon NanoLabs genetic genealogical unit, finally identified the man in 2015 as William Powell.

Powell disappeared from his Indiana home in March 1976, according to a missing persons report filed by his brother. His car was found abandoned in a remote area of Battleground, Indiana, and the plates had been removed. His family reportedly believed he had died.

At 67 years old, Powell was finally able to obtain legal identification and access government assistance.

But finding out that Benjaman Kyle was Powell was only half the story.

“Initially, we really wanted to help Benjaman Kyle,” Shannon says in interview footage. “But the more we learned about him, the more that he started to get angry. He wants to control the flow of information.”

In an effort to jog Powell’s memory and learn more about his life, the team escorted him across the country, including to Indiana to reunite with his brother and to Purdue University, where he worked as a janitor.

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A mob and cold case connection?

One of the episodes centers on a slew of witness accounts that allegedly claim that Powell is linked to a powerful crime family in Lafayette, Indiana, where some believe his disappearing act was a way of saving his own life.

Part of the series focuses on George Keck, who investigators long examined in connection with several unsolved Indiana cases before his death in 2020.

In a conversation caught on camera, Evangelista grills him about what he knows about Powell. Both Powell and Keck were janitors at Purdue at the time of Kozik’s disappearance. Her body was found two miles from The Bar, a place Evangelista claims was a gathering place for the crime family.

“It’s not the most comfortable thing knowing I’m going to speak with the prime suspect, whose wife said he did it,” Evangelista says in the documentary. “I’ll do it but I’m not happy about it. I hope I don’t end up in a ditch.”

During the interview, Keck reveals disturbing details about Kozik’s death.

“On that one there, in fact, they wanted me as a suspect, and I failed a lie detector because I did know more than I was letting on,” he tells Evangelista. “I knew she was killed accidentally because I was told straight from the horse’s mouth.”

He said the killer tried to get her to perform a sexual act on him and when she refused, there was a struggle and “she swung at him. He hit her, she fell and she hit her head on a rock. Now, I didn’t see a rock or anything else there, but that’s what I was told.”

Kozik’s murder has never been solved.

The series also touches on several other cold cases in the Lafayette area. Evangelista has worked to revive the cases, but no one has been charged.

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Questions still remain

Evangelista says major questions remain unanswered.

“Because he was not himself and lived off the grid between 1981 and 2004,” she said. “I know why he left and why he fled. I know where he went for the most part but I don’t know who he was and what he was like and I want to know all of it.”

The series also notes that Powell has not been charged in connection with any of the crimes alleged in the documentary.

For Evangelista, the story is far from over.

“He thinks I’ve given up. I’m not giving up. I know too much,” she said.

But with Powell, now 77 years old, living a relatively private life away from national media attention, he has cut off communication with their team and investigators, making it harder for them to track down.

“If we stop, he wins,” she added. “We can’t give up.”

The Many Lives of Benjaman Kyle premieres May 25 and May 26, and moves beyond the medical mystery and into what filmmakers describe as a web of deception, unsolved cold cases and alleged organized crime ties.