This is a very interesting case to me because I moved to Cascade, Idaho in 1982 almost two years after his disappearance. I got to know several of the people that knew him including his mother. He was a savant with advanced verbal and mathematical skills. His mother was Swedish, being born in Sweden so Michael spoke Swedish as well as Russian. He was a ham radio operator and had conversations with Russians. He listened to Russian broadcasts frequently. Before it was public knowledge, he identified the sight of a secret Russian nuclear explosion when a radiation detector that he fashioned indicated a high level of radiation in Cascade. By reviewing the jet stream and weather pattern information he was able to locate the time and site of the detonation in the USSR with remarkable accuracy. He notified the FBI and was promptly visited and interviewed by them. He likely was under government surveillance subsequent to this. The Russians too may have monitored his communications. Also of interest, he had been accepted to West Point in his senior year. This certainly makes for an intriguing case.

Oh wow. This story has some layers. Thank you for sharing this. There seems so much more to this story than meets the eye.