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The mystery man known as “Lucky,” who was found with no identification in Amsterdam in 2023, is not a missing Vancouver man, according to police.
Vancouver police confirmed earlier this week they were looking into whether “Lucky” might be John Russell Kenny, missing since 1994. On Saturday, Amsterdam police confirmed on Saturday “Lucky” and Kenny are different people.
“This lead was investigated together with the Canadian police, and it has now been definitively established that Lucky and Mr. Kenny are not the same person,” Amsterdam police spokesperson Marijke Stor said.
Vancouver police Const. Megan Lui confirmed the finding in an email to Global News, saying the fingerprints of the two men did not match.
Meanwhile, Amsterdam police have received more than 500 tips since releasing a video about Lucky a week ago, Stor said. Those tips have provided several more “specific names of people” and detectives are now investigating at least nine leads.
Lui said Vancouver police are not involved in investigations of those leads.
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“Lucky” was found collapsed on an Amsterdam street in May 2023. He was taken to hospital where medical professionals concluded he suffered a brain hemorrhage or stroke.
He continues to suffer from aphasia, which affects how people read, speak, write and understand what other people say.
“We don’t really know how much he understands and we have tried in various ways, but it’s not really possible in communication with him to find out who he really is,” Stor said.
Lucky had no personal identification on him when he collapsed, which has stymied efforts to find out who he is. The case is classed as a “social investigation,” and Stor said police are trying to determine his identity for multiple reasons, including to connect him with someone he knows.
“We want to not only find out who he is, but also if there are any, for example, relatives who still love him and he could get in contact with, because he is right now in a nursing facility where they are taking, of course, good care of him,” she said. “But he spends a lot of his time alone and we think it would be very nice for him if he. . . could be able to talk to someone he knows.”
There is belief the man may be from Canada or the U.S., with police noting sources led detectives to Soep en Zo, a restaurant he’d occasionally go to for a drink in central Amsterdam’s Waterlooplein, (Waterloo Square).
There they found out some called him “Chris the Canadian,” which prompted police’s plea last Monday to people across the Atlantic Ocean for help in identifying the man.
“The people told us that he always spoke with what they called an American or a Canadian accent,” Stor said. “So the theory that he might be from America or Canada, that’s a theory we think could be really possible.”
She did caution it doesn’t mean “Lucky” is definitely Canadian or American, but it could still be a “real possibility.”
The man currently only speaks minimal words, mostly English words like “nonsense,” “definitely,” and “positive,” which he uses to agree or disagree when asked questions.
But while they’ve asked him questions about himself, including verbally, by speech computers, or pointing at letters on a map, they’re not sure how much he actually understands.
People can contact Amsterdam police if they have a tip to share.
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