And then, in mid-March, Joshua Capehart spotted Thomas and his daughter, cold and shivering, hitchhiking on the side of the highway.

Capehart, a Lieutenant of Investigations in Warm Springs Police Department, had already investigated Thomas's abandoned vehicle, interviewed anyone who might have information. Now he had eyes on the pair who had been missing for at least a fortnight. In his police vehicle were flyers bearing their names and images. 

"People were pretty worried about the daughter because of the weather and maybe they didn't have enough supplies, or they did - we didn't know," Capehart says. "So after several days I was heading up towards the Portland area to drop off the missing [persons] flyers and I happened to come across them on the side of the highway because we had towed their pick-up, so it wouldn't be damaged.

"[I was] able to talk to him, brought him back to the police department, the Department of Human Services intervened and took custody of the daughter. We had a minor interview with Mr Stofiel and he was in some sort of a state of paranoia, stating he was being followed by the freemasons, and they were out to get him, and that was just the spot where he had pulled off of the road to get up into the mountains and hide."

According to the police report on the incident: "Thomas said he is sure the people chasing him and his daughter are the 'freemasons'. Thomas said he has studied everything about the freemasons for the past six years and knows all of their secrets and the corrupt activities they are involved in. Thomas said the freemasons are after him because he does not believe in the devil. When Thomas said 'the devil' he pointed in the air." 

FBI Missing Persons appeal poster as issued in March 2017. PICTURE WARM SPRINGS POLICE DEPARTMENT

Thomas had been so spooked that day in late February that he had simply dumped his truck, grabbed a knife and a sleeping bag, and with his daughter, ran into the woods in the direction of power lines. They stayed in the trees for three days, before returning to the vehicle for supplies and then leaving again. The engine had been left running as, on that return trip, Thomas thought he had been spotted. Thomas's daughter wasn't dressed for the weather - he later explained this is why they decided to try and hitchhike. According to the police report: "Thomas said he saw clear skies, and knew it was going to rain. Thomas said he did not want to stay out in the woods to have him and [his daughter] die from the elements as they were running low on supplies. Thomas said him and [his daughter] agreed that if the masons wanted to kill them then they were going to walk out and get it over with."

The AK 47 and another rifle were found. Neither was loaded. Within a few days, the young girl was in the custody of her mother, and Thomas was reported to be back at work. 

"Based on Thomas' mental condition and with the totality of the circumstances in mind, it is a joint recommendation between the FBI and the Warm Springs Police Department, not to pursue charges against Thomas," the report said.

According to Lt Capehart, Thomas “was known to be a prepper and to be prepared for anything - he had a paranoia for quite a good portion of his life”.

Lt Capehart was right about Thomas's persistent sense of paranoia. Sometimes it was seeing other people as reptilians, demons, satan in human form - people out to get him, people destined for hell. 

But was Thomas Stofiel really prepared for anything? Did he have any inkling that within three years, he would be more than 4,500 miles away in a Direct Provision centre alongside fellow asylum seekers in Tralee, Co Kerry? 

A man of visions and strange premonitions

Well before he landed in Ireland, and before he went missing with his daughter in Oregon, Thomas had been a man of visions, of strange, unsettling premonitions of the world coming to an end. In February 2011, on one of his Facebook accounts, Thomas posted a string of messages about "gods planet" - "the planet that's coming right now is called Elenin". This was going to collide with the Earth and obliterate humankind, with the exception of those who were prepared for the onslaught. 

"Only bringing things that we need to survive," he wrote, one comment after another lodged under his own post, a stream of consciousness. "Just ordered three gas masks with those snow shoes". He said his daughter would be in a pack sled.

Other comments included: "Can't believe it's going to happen in my time we should be able to see the water from where we will be."; "You need to prepare yourself think about the caveman days."; "Cave will keep you from getting fried by gods rath when he washes his hands across the sun and burns the eveil away."

Marc-André Argentino, a researcher of online extremism at Concordia University in Canada, explains that Elenin was a comet that was passing close to Earth in 2011, entering pop culture in the Nineties via a paranormal page and evolving into an actual apocalyptic event, or the precursor to one. "It is a conspiracy that has come around in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2018 and in 2020 with QAnon," he says.

Ciaran O'Connor, a senior analyst with ISD Global in London, which tracks and examines extremist behaviours, notes that Elenin was cited in numerous doomsday/apocalyptic predictions - including by some Christian/evangelical preachers. NASA had declared as far back as late 2011 that Elenin had disintegrated, one senior NASA figure stating “This is an ex-comet.”

Did Thomas always hold these beliefs? Certainly not in his younger years, though people who knew him growing up described him as a quiet, intense young man, someone who seemed to be keeping a lot inside his small, wiry frame.

His schoolmate Aaron Cearley said: "I just knew him when we were younger, he seemed like he was a real conflicted, pretty angry personality. He just seemed to carry a chip on his shoulder wherever he went. I ended up meeting him when we were in middle school and we belonged to a boxing organisation. He would come here and there and have a work-out. That's when I first met him.

"He is a few years older than me, I was probably 13 and he was probably about 16, maybe 17. He always hung around a lot of us younger kids."

Marles Lazur is one of a small number of Facebook friends of Thomas. In late 2011 Thomas posted that he had his daughter back - "Im happy as hell never going without her again ... I could not get enough of parenthood I love it..." Underneath Marles wrote: "Congrats dude! I could tell you were really upset without her. Good for you. Now don't do anything dumb." 

Marles Lazur, who knew Tommy for much of his life and described him as "a sweetheart - he was just the sweetest". PICTURE SUPPLIED

Marles gives a little laugh when she remembers that comment.

"He was a sweetheart, he was just the sweetest," she says. "We were like family you know, kind of. But I didn't know about his background, whether he was in the [military] service or anything. When we associated with Tommy he came to our house all the time. He was pretty quiet, he didn't really talk a lot about his life, his family life, growing up, or being in the service, anything like that. When he had conversations it was in the now. We had a pool table, and his friends came over all the time, it was just all about now. We really didn't talk a lot about his past or anything."

Thomas was friends with Marles's son and he liked the family so much he stayed with them for a time after they had moved from Oregon to Montana. "He didn't let us know he was coming or anything, he just knocked on our door one day," she says.

It's a theme. People have many different views of Thomas, depending on when and how they met him and the intervals at which he popped in and out of their lives, but few seem to have gained a comprehensive picture. According to Aaron Cearley: "We had a few run-ins with him and he was drinking really heavily in his later twenties and just after a few drinks he'd want to start fighting people and it was not working out good for him. It seemed like real bad alcoholism."

Asked about Thomas's beliefs, or his religious ideology, Aaron says: "Well, he was into his negativity so it seemed like that his mind seemed to go in that direction, a lot of his anger and mistrust of people, it wouldn't surprise me if he was getting into something like that, doomsday prepping. He was a bit of a survivalist."

Aaron hadn't seen Thomas in years - "Not after that last time I saw him, I didn't really want much to do with it," he says. "It was not a good picture."

The last time Marles saw Thomas was just a few weeks before he "got into a little bit of trouble" in February 2017, when he disappeared into the woods.

"He was acting fine with me," she says. "Just, you know, normal Tommy. He just gave me a big hug and he was excited that he ran into me and I really liked that I was able to run into him and then we just stood in the parking lot of the Wells Fargo Bank and talked about what he was doing.

"Then a few weeks later we saw it on the news that they were looking for him, that he was missing and his daughter was missing and I don't know, they found his car, it was parked down in Warm Springs. And I said 'Oh my God, had he kidnapped his daughter from her mother?' We weren't sure what the story was there. We always knew that he had a real strong bond with his daughter... snagged her up and took off.

"That's probably when he went off the deep end. His daughter was everything to him, that's all he ever talked to me about, was his daughter. She was his life and that's all, he would always say I got to get a job and get situated so I can get my daughter back or whatever."

At the time of the incident in March 2017, Thomas's former partner, mother to his daughter, told police she had been very concerned about her well-being due to Thomas' mental state and that he had disappeared with her on many occasions. She told police that some five years previously, he had taken her on a visit and never returned her. Despite various contacts over the phone, the girl's mother had never been able to pinpoint where she was during that time and had also not reported this information to police. So, where had he been, and where was he headed?

Martin Elle can fill in some of these gaps. He is one of Thomas's oldest friends; or, as he puts it, he was a friend, having known and mentored him for more than 25 years, ever since Thomas joined the older man's Reserves Unit all those years ago. 

Martin Elle, one of Thomas's closest and long-serving friends, who tried to keep him on the straight and narrow over the years. PICTURE SUPPLIED

According to Martin: "I taught Tom mountain climbing skills, repelling, spelunking and many other outdoor skills. Fortunately and unfortunately, he took it to the utmost level."

Martin is a retired sergeant and chief of firing battery in the 218th Field Artillery Regiment of the Oregon Army National Guard and he's almost unique in having a helicopter view of Thomas's life. He first met Tom through another soldier and helped him get a job. Both men were in the Reserves, and according to Martin, Tom was progressing well - until he wasn't.

"Then he threw it all away on drugs," Martin says. "Got caught smoking pot during training [and] was given the option for treatment but to do that he had to admit he had a problem, take a reduction in rank and in about six months he could get his rank and section chief position back. He refused, and l believe he was given an other-than-honourable discharge. Many around him pushed for him to do this. He couldn't admit that there was a problem."

Thomas and his daughter lived with Martin on a couple of occasions, totalling almost two years, although "it has always been Tom's MO to just up and leave and then get to a point that his actions brought him back to reality." All this, Martin says, was anchored around Thomas's sense of "perceived persecution", and a troubled childhood. 

Martin says he was told Thomas had been diagnosed with a chemical imbalance at a very young age. Martin suggests Thomas may have experienced some trauma in his childhood. He believes Tom's mental health difficulties accelerated with his use of methamphetamines around the turn of the century, for which he received treatment in 2006. "I'm sure that his self-medication played a big role in his mental stability," he says. "Alcohol was even worse with Tom. When drinking he went from happy to sad to wanting to fight everyone in the place. No drugs or alcohol was ever permitted in my house. When he was living here to the best of my knowledge he never broke that rule."

Martin clearly saw Tom as someone who was "a provider and hard worker". He says Thomas wasn't a drifter, but instead someone who travelled around various American states at the behest of the company he worked for, having spent four years qualifying as a high-end fabricator/welder. But here and there, problems arose.