It’s a story that has captured the imagination: A man who largely cannot speak, living in a Netherlands care home after a stroke with no known identity. “A lot of people ask, how is it possible?” Anton van Straten, an amateur sleuth in the Netherlands, told CTV News during an interview on Thursday. Van Straten was among the many people around the world captivated by a plea from Dutch police this week, as they shared a video showing a man nicknamed Lucky whose identity is a mystery. Dutch police say the man had a number of nicknames before his stroke, including “Chris the Canadian.” He was seen at Buddhist temples, spoke with a North American accent and was by all accounts quite wealthy. But who he actually is, legally, remains a mystery. “No bank account,” van Straten said of Lucky. “No house. No registration. Nothing? And nobody can connect him.” So van Straten got to work using artificial intelligence. He spent three hours using a variety of programs including ChatGPT, Claude and others. “I searched through international (and) Canadian missing persons databases. I used (AI) for this and compared many photographs and descriptions,” van Straten said. Van Straten believes there’s a good chance Lucky is actually John Russell Kenny, a Vancouver man police say had mental health issues and who was last seen in 1993. The amateur sleuth’s post sharing his attempt to determine Lucky’s identity has been viewed more than three million times. Vancouver police are taking the research seriously, and have provided fingerprints to their Dutch counterparts to see if there is indeed a match. “Our Vancouver Police Department’s missing person unit has been in contact with INTERPOL and Amsterdam police to identify if (Lucky and) John Russell Kenny are in the fact the same person,” confirmed Vancouver Police Cst. Megan Lui in an interview with CTV News. This isn’t the only lead, however, with Dutch police saying they have identified five other persons of interest.
