It Appears He Just Vanished in Thin Air

On the sunny afternoon of Oct. 31, 1990, Radivoje (Ross) Matic was walking in downtown San Diego with two friends.

The friends decided to return to the Trinity Manor senior citizens high-rise where all three lived. But Matic, 81, a retired banker and Yugoslav immigrant, said he wanted to go to the Carl’s Jr. restaurant on Broadway.

It was the last time his friends ever saw him.

A day later, Matic’s daughter got worried and called police. A year later, Matic is still missing.

The Police Department gets hundreds of missing persons cases each month. Most are runaways or family disputes. A few are homicides. Fewer still are unsolved.

In 18 months with the missing persons unit, Detective Wayne McKinnon has had only three unsolved cases.

One is a man McKinnon suspects has fled to start a new life. Another is a very new case.

The Matic case is the oldest unsolved case and the most mysterious. With a stone-cold trail from the start.

“There’s no evidence of foul play,” McKinnon said, “but when a man that age just vanishes off the streets of San Diego, something is just not right.”

McKinnon quickly checked Matic’s bank account to see if he had withdrawn any money (normal for runaways). The account was untouched.

McKinnon checked with the coroner. Nothing. He contacted Tijuana authorities. Nada .

Matic’s friends at Trinity Manor had noticed nothing suspicious. Nobody at Carl’s Jr. remembered seeing Matic. News stories turned up no leads. Matic’s distraught family consulted psychics in search of clues.

McKinnon has not given up hope that someone someday will call (531-2000) with a tip. Somebody has to know something, he says in frustration.

Charmaine Freedman, 32, said her father had occasional memory lapses but was otherwise in good health. She’s haunted by his last words to her, on the morning he disappeared:

“He sounded kind of strange. The feeling that I got was that he felt no one loved him or cared for him.

“I thought I should call him back, but I was in such a rush to get to work by 9 o’clock that I didn’t. Now I wish I had.”

New Look at HIV Virus

Magic and information.

Charles A. Thomas, president of the Helicon Foundation, a San Diego basic research firm, has been trying for months to have a scientific journal publish his letter calling for a re-evaluation of the hypothesis that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

He’s been turned down flat.

This, despite the letter being signed by 3 dozen big-name scientists and researchers who agree with him that the hypothesis is unproven.

(Thomas and most of those signing his letter are not AIDS researchers, and their doubts are not shared by AIDS researchers. Thomas dismisses this as timidity bred by federal grants.)

Thomas, a former Harvard professor, now hopes he’s finally found a way to stimulate public discussion about whether the federal government is wasting billions of dollars chasing the wrong virus.

Thomas hopes to recruit Magic Johnson, who has vowed to become a “spokesman for HIV” since his shocking announcement Thursday.

Thomas says a member of the newly formed “Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis” has contacts in the sports world who should be able to get information to Johnson.

“Poor Magic Johnson, he’s like one of millions of guys who are antibody-positive,” Thomas said. “There’s absolutely no reason for him to fear or be feared.”

Cellmate Ready to Tell All

Look here.

* Rolodex Madam Karen Wilkening says she may testify in favor of Betty Broderick, her onetime cellmate.

She’s been interviewed by Broderick’s attorney and is ready if called. She remembers Broderick as a kindly, wounded soul.

* Funny smart white guys.

A gag ad in the San Diego Mensan, the publication of the brainy set, announces a new social movement, S.W.I.M., Straight White Intelligent Men, “dedicated to preserving the culture that built Western Civilization.”