They Called Him Mostly Harmless ending explained

Internet sleuths and a mysterious death are at the center of HBO’s recently released documentary They Called Him Mostly Harmless – read on for a breakdown of the ending, including the Christie Harris’ “Tabitha” incident. 

Internet sleuths – more specifically, the question of whether they do more harm than good in a criminal investigation – have been in the spotlight of late with the release of Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders. The topic is ripe for discussion given the true crime craze, and how it’s evolved in the digital age. 

Once again, this modern phenomenon is explored in HBO’s They Called Him Mostly Harmless, a documentary film about an unidentified hiker who was found dead in the Florida wilderness. But the more true crime fans dug into his identity, the more perplexing the case became. 

With They Called Him Mostly Harmless on Max and Discovery Plus now, we’ve broken down the ending. 

They Called Him Mostly Harmless ending explained

Right at the end of They Called Him Mostly Harmless, the producers wrap up the stories of the devoted internet sleuths who helped to identify the hiker as a troubled Louisiana man named Vance John Rodriguez. One of those is Christie Harris, who is focusing her time on another case involving a woman named Tabitha. 

As the documentary approaches the end, Christie explains that she’s glad she didn’t quit on the Mostly Harmless case. Growing emotional, she says, “I am glad I saw this to the end. I think when I found him, I found me and realized this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Text over the screen reads: “Christie remains the administrator for her Facebook group, ‘Unidentified, Nameless, and Never Forgotten.’ She’s already on her next case…” It then cuts back to Christie as she takes a call. We don’t hear what the caller is saying, but it leaves Christie in tears. 

She hangs up and leaves the room, and when she returns, she says: “They’ve got the story. Tabitha was decapitated.” The documentary ends there, and while it offers a resolution to the case of the deceased hiker, who went by the nickname “Mostly Harmless,” the scene has left viewers scratching their heads. 

Taking to Reddit, one asked, “Who tf is Tabitha,” to which another replied, “Yes!!!! I found this Reddit to ask exactly that! Why leave it in the doc like that? I want to know what those calls were about.”

Another Redditor said they joined a Facebook group to try to get to the bottom of it, before writing: “Tabatha Queen out of Bastrop LA. Christie is apparently no longer working on the case because the police were uncooperative.”

They later added: “Christie posted ‘Ok I’m curious is anyone curious about Tabitha and the decapitation’ in the group and another post was made by someone else and it seems it got deleted, but Christie was in the comments saying how she never understood if it was her head or her body and if she was found behind a school or a store and I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find anything about Tabitha being found anywhere… She’s also starting sh*t with the director of the documentary in the group.”

The Redditor isn’t wrong – there are no official records available online that suggest there’s a missing woman named Tabitha who was found decapitated. Some viewers have suggested the final scene was included to highlight the issue with cybersleuths. 

Others, meanwhile, wish that Rodriguez’s family were more involved in the doc, rather than the true crime fanatics. “I found the only interesting aspect of the documentary were the actual folks who met him and spent time with him speaking of their time with him,” said one.  

“Even one of the detectives made a comment about the Facebook groups calling them soap operas and he stopped looking through them.”

If you’re looking for something fresh to watch, check out the new true crime and documentaries coming to streaming this month. You can also find out what movies you should be streaming in March, as well as what TV shows to add to your watch list.

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