David Bird

David Christopher Bird (c. 1959–2014) was an American journalist who covered energy markets for The Wall Street Journal and was deputy managing editor for Dow Jones Energy Service.

He graduated from Rider College in 1980.

Bird worked at the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida before joining Dow Jones Newswires, and subsequently transferring to Dow Jones's London office.

Five years into his career, Bird traveled extensively through Europe and the Middle East, returning to the U.S. in 1988.

Bird worked for Dow Jones & Company (the publisher of the Wall Street Journal), for more than twenty years, rising to become deputy managing editor of the Dow Jones Energy Service.

He was a key reporter on energy markets.

After his death, Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker praised Bird's reportorial zeal.

"His ability to navigate the vast troves of public oil data was unmatched," Baker wrote in a memo to staff.

"At 10:30 a.m. on Wednesdays, he could often be seen hunched over his computer, sifting through spreadsheets and crunching numbers just released by the Energy Information Administration. He was often the first to gain insight into important energy-market trends."

He did the latter to raise awareness for organ donation, since his life had been saved by a liver transplant following a hepatitis infection he suffered in the early 2000s.

Bird was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and was the youngest of six children.

After attending a Catholic elementary school in Hamilton Township, where the family lived, he went to Notre Dame High School in nearby Lawrenceville.

He was known for his ability to detect emerging market trends, particularly the decline in oil prices that began in 2014, before they otherwise became apparent, through close analysis of data.

Before working at the Journal he had worked for Dow Jones overseas, based in its London office.

In early 2014 he left his Millington, New Jersey, home for a short walk and never returned.

Local search efforts, hampered by that year's severe winter weather, failed to find any trace of him.

Conspiracy theories surfaced, especially after an erroneous report that his credit card had been used overseas, suggesting his disappearance was part of a pattern of suspicious deaths in the financial sector.

However, when his body was finally found in a nearby river 14 months later, the coroner ruled his death an accidental drowning and said there were no signs of foul play.

A native of the Trenton area, Bird was a graduate of Rider University.

In addition to his journalistic work he was an outdoor enthusiast who led Boy Scout hiking trips and ran marathons.

Late in the afternoon of January 11, 2014, Bird, who was recovering from a brief stomach illness, left his home in the Millington section of Long Hill Township, New Jersey.

He told his wife that he planned to go for a brief walk around nearby wooded trails, clad in a distinctive red raincoat with yellow zippers, jeans and sneakers.

After his return, he said, he intended to take down the family's Christmas lights.

He left his cell phone to recharge in his absence.

By the evening, however, he had not returned.

His wife called the police and reported him missing.

Finding him alive was of great importance to the family, since he was required to take anti-rejection drugs due to his liver transplant.

Those had been left at the house as well.

"This wasn't right," his wife said later.

"Something was wrong."

A fellow Boy Scout leader noted that Bird "was stuck somewhere, he knows how to shelter himself enough out of the elements. He knows how to signal if he can."

A few days after Bird disappeared, NBC News reported that his credit card had been used in Mexico.

His family, the network claimed, believed his disappearance was not an accident and somehow related to his work.

The family, through a friend, said those were not serious investigative leads, just theories being floated by those looking for answers.

Later they learned that the card had not, in fact, been used in Mexico after he disappeared; it had instead just been hacked.

Later, his wife Nancy called that report "a distraction, honestly."

Early efforts to search included helicopter patrols by New Jersey State Police, with Morris County park police following up on horseback and all-terrain vehicle while divers searched the nearby Passaic River.

Searchers suffered a setback when the winter weather turned colder than usual two weeks later followed by heavy snow throughout the region throughout the next two months; they continued their efforts by retracing their steps along the sides of local roadways, looking for signs of an unreported motor vehicle accident or personal items.

In March, when the snow melted, the search resumed, focusing on areas nearby where Bird had been known to hike and retracing earlier routes.

In May local police said their goal was to have the entire area within a 3 mi radius of the Bird home thoroughly searched.