The man whose body was found in a van at the site of a house fire nearly two months ago has been identified.

Robert Thomas “Tom” Bridges was 61 at the time of his death last spring. Brown County Coroner Earl Piper estimated that Bridges had died in late April or early May 2019.

On Nov. 20, police were called to a home on Leaf Hawk Lane that was destroyed in a fire the night before, after family of the homeowner reported finding the body in the front seat of a van that had been parked on the property. The van was registered to the homeowner, but it appeared that it had not moved in awhile.

Coroner Earl Piper said Bridges’ cause of death was natural. He conducted an external autopsy only, due to the condition of the body and there not being anything internal to examine.

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“We were primarily looking for anything of a traumatic injury or foul play situation. Then, nothing at all showed up on that,” he said.

The homeowner was not living in the home at the time of the fire because she had moved into a nursing home, police said at the time.

Firefighters from all six volunteer departments had battled the blaze, which was visible from State Road 46 West at the top of Kelley Hill.

Bridges’ wallet was still with his body in the van. It contained his identification card and a Social Security card that had been reissued to him in March last year, which helped police determine when he had passed.

He was found lying on his back across the driver and front passenger seats in the van. “As a matter of fact, he was found in what I would consider almost a natural sleeping position, just the way he was laying,” Piper said.

Det. Brian Shrader with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department said the body position looked “relaxed.”

His head and shoulders were resting against the back of the passenger seat and his legs were across the driver’s seat. Bridges was covered with a small blanket and was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, which helped Piper determine that the weather may have been warmer when he died.

Piper said that even though the tissue was deteriorated, there was still enough to recognize if there had been any kind of injury marks, like a knife mark or gunshot. He didn’t find anything like that.

“There was just nothing to point out (from) his positioning in that van that anything traumatic had happened to him, that he had fought off anything. … In my opinion, he was lying in a normal sleeping position, like he just went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” Piper said.

Piper used DNA from Bridges’ brother to confirm his identity. It was a 99.99 percent match that the two were siblings. He was unable to find Bridges’ doctor or get dental records as a way to identify him.

How did he get there?

Bridges lived on Leaf Hawk Lane years ago with his parents. He was a neighbor to, and knew, the woman who lost her home in the fire.

After Bridges’ parents passed away, the home was sold, and Bridges’ siblings told police that he had moved to Arizona before returning back to Brown County, Shrader said.

“They didn’t know what he was doing. We think he stayed at Hotel Nashville for a while, but from that point, we’re pretty sure he was homeless,” he said.

“One of the neighbors out there (on Leaf Hawk Lane) found a homeless encampment in the woods at the bottom of the hill.”

Shrader said he wouldn’t say that Bridges had permission to be on the property, “but it wasn’t like he was totally unwelcome there either.”

From December 2018 to May 2019, the homeowner lived at Hotel Nashville because of the cold weather. That’s when police say she crossed paths with Bridges, last January or February.

At that time he asked her if he could stay at her home. She said no because the home had been winterized, and she did not see him again, Shrader said.

A Hotel Nashville maintenance worker reported seeing Bridges walking on State Road 46 West toward Bloomington near the former Little Nashville Opry property around late February or March.

Shrader said that Bridges’ Social Security card had been reissued on March 2019. “We know he was living then,” he said.

The homeowner moved back to the property in May, and by police timeline, Bridges was already deceased in the van at that time.

“Because she was handicapped, she basically gets out of her car and goes into her house, then from her house to her car. She would have never been over by that van,” Shrader said.

“You had to be up at the van and looking in there to have noticed him.”

Bridges’ family did not report him missing when they could not find him because he had lived a transient lifestyle the last couple of years, Shrader said. “They never knew where he was or where he could be. There was really no way for them to know. They didn’t know if he was alive and living homeless somewhere or not,” he said.

He has one brother who lives Indiana. The rest of his siblings live out of state. Police were able to make contact with his brother in Indiana to get DNA and information from him, because he had left a card at Hotel Nashville asking staff to call him if his brother showed up there.

Piper said that Bridges’ family is planning to have a memorial for him when the weather gets warmer, but they did not have service details yet.

The death investigation is now over, Shrader said.

“There’s absolutely no reason to suspect anything foul play,” he said.