HOUSTON – A Rice University computer science student whose disappearance eight months ago made national news was discovered not begging in the streets or roughing it in the wilderness, but using a laptop at the University of California Berkeley.
Matthew Wilson, 21, was arrested late Wednesday and held for psychological evaluation after campus police came across him in a classroom after hours.
Some of those involved in the search suspect that Wilson got involved with a group that rejects society, instead choosing to live on the streets.
The bespectacled man was dressed in black, had shaved off his bushy red beard and told police he had been living on the streets.
Asked for his name, Wilson said he was “Colin Lynch,” then gave his real name when pressed. He will face criminal charges upon his release from a hospital, said Mitch Celaya, an assistant police chief for the university.
Among the potential charges are lying to a peace officer about his identity, possession of stolen property and trespassing, Celaya said.
The serial number was scratched off the Sony laptop Wilson was using, and he had someone else's checkbook, Celaya said.
Investigators want to know whether Wilson has any connection to a campus crime wave that involved stealing laptops and other items from students' backpacks.
Later, while he was being questioned at the Berkeley police station, Wilson told a detective that he had been living on the streets for a few months.
“He shared with the detective that he had decided in December to come West and disappear, and he felt that going West was a good place to disappear,” said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss of the Berkeley Police Department, which has been working with Rice police and UC Berkeley.
“(Wilson) also told the detectives that the student community is a good source of food, so he spent most of his days moving among the university student population,” Kusmiss said. “It is the kind of culture and environment where somebody can blend in and disappear.”
Wilson's mother said she knows her son is going through rough times, but is thankful he is alive. “You don't know how good I feel about this. It is better than anything in the world,” Cathy Wilson said from her home in Oklahoma as she prepared to head to California.
Wilson hadn't been seen by friends or relatives since withdrawing $500 from his bank account and mysteriously leaving Houston in December.
He failed to turn in his final exams at Rice and didn't say goodbye.
Wilson had applied to four universities, including UC Berkeley, but enrolled at Rice because he received a full scholarship there, his mother said.
