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Body Recovered From Pond Confirmed As Missing Man's

by Robert Burke / Tampa Tribune

As residents watch Deputy Chris Rule with HCSO Dive and Underwater Recovery Team, helps search a pond for evidence or clues at Country Woods Apartments.

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By GEORGE WILKENS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 3, 2008

Updated: 02/02/2008 11:46 pm

TAMPA - Authorities confirmed Saturday what some friends already knew - that the body found floating in a Carrollwood pond was that of Timothy "Chip" Chipley, last seen a week earlier at a nearby bar.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office revealed Saturday afternoon that the body recovered 24 hours earlier had been positively identified as Chipley, 34.

Authorities remain tight-lipped about the case, saying only that it continues as a death investigation.

"We're not releasing that," sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said Saturday of the cause of death revealed in the autopsy. She said that detail could be made public as soon as today.

Identification was based on a tattoo on Chipley's right arm, waterlogged identification and clothing matching the jeans, blue button-down striped shirt and boots Chipley was wearing when last seen at O'Brien's Irish Pub, Carter said.

Divers scoured the pond again Saturday but found no evidence helpful to the investigation, Carter said.

The pond at Countrywood Apartments is less than a mile from the pub at 11744 N. Dale Mabry Highway. Chipley lived at 10225 N. Oakleaf Ave., also in Carrollwood.

Matthew Sheer, 24, who worked with Chipley at Nuccio Heating & Air Conditioning for four years, said a sheriff's deputy he knows told him Friday that the body divers pulled from the pond was Chipley's.

Sheer and others are at a loss to understand how the martial arts enthusiast ended up dead after riding to the bar Jan. 26 with friends and opting to remain behind when they left.

"There's so many different scenarios, you can't pin it down," Sheer said. He speculated that Chipley, walking home in the dark, might have attempted a shortcut that led to the pond or he might have been mugged and drugged.

"You never know," Sheer said.

Chipley's friends printed fliers, organized a search and had planned a Friday vigil, which they canceled when they learned a body of a white man had been discovered close to the pub.

The Countrywood Apartments resident who discovered the body just before 5 p.m. Friday said it appeared to match the description of Chipley given in news reports of his disappearance.

Chipley studied martial arts and had trained for his "trip of a lifetime" to Thailand for further study, friends said. He obtained his passport and airline ticket months earlier and packed a week in advance for the flight that left without him Wednesday morning.

Chipley was a regular at O'Brien's, but bar patrons and friends had neither seen nor heard from him since about 3 a.m. Jan. 27, when he paid his tab and walked out the door.

Chipley, soft-spoken and easygoing, attended Chamberlain High School and remained close with several childhood friends, said those who knew him.

"All he did was fish and fight - martial arts," Sheer said.

Reporter George Wilkens can be reached at (813) 865-4847 or gwilkens@tampatrib.com.

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