This is where I lost DeNardo's trail, the spot in South Anchorage where he said he lived, but it turned out the address was a fake. (photo by Erik Hill)

Plenty of people can recognize Daniel DeNardo, one of the city’s more prominent conspiracy theorists. He’s been a perennial political figure for 20 years and filed nearly 100 lawsuits against everyone from Sarah Palin to Congregation Beth Sholom. But in two days of calling around, I could not find one person who called him a friend.

DeNardo died June 28 at Providence Alaska Medical Center. He was 62. His body is lying in a funeral home, waiting to be buried. It appears nobody can find his next of kin.

I encountered DeNardo last fall while watching the political debates. He was running against Rep. Bob Lynn for a seat in South Anchorage. DeNardo looked normal enough when the camera panned his way. He was silver-haired and mustachioed. He wore a sport coat and an eagle on his bolo tie. Then he opened his mouth.

"The major problem that faces Alaskans today is the most serious problem that any nation can face," he said. "That’s what’s referred to, I refer to it, as the Sovietization not only of the United States, but of Alaska in particular."

What followed included maps of Alaska and Russia drawn in Magic Marker, two-dollar bills waved to illustrate the uselessness of currency and a long ramble about banks and a communist plot to take over the country.

Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the DeNardos out there, those muddled envoys from the farthest orbits of public life who run on fringe tickets and testify out of turn and appear in the lobby of the Daily News with manila envelopes full of dog-eared paper. Usually they are harmless. And they bring a flash of the unexpected to the drone of public process. Once in a while, they also have a point.

I looked up DeNardo’s statement in last year’s election pamphlet and scanned phrases like "Marxist-Leninist Kriminals imposing Kommunist Korporate feudalistic perpetual Usery servitudes." He called lawyers Satanists, fixated on the Book of Revelation and said the state law library was a front for a cocaine operation. Then I looked up the election results.

Two hundred seventy-six people voted for him anyway.

The guy had been running for office forever. He was a character, sure, but someone out there had to like him enough to go to his funeral. Someone had to know his story. I started making calls.

For several years he was affiliated with the Alaska Independence Party. I dialed party chair Lynette Clark, a gold miner who lives outside Fairbanks. I told her he was dead.

"He is?" she said. "Well, there’s a burr out from under AIP’s saddle."

Turns out he kept calling himself an AIP candidate, but people from the party thought he was too fringe. Things got ugly, and he sued. I asked her if he had any friends or family. She didn’t think so.

"I can’t think of a single person that could say something nice about the man," she said. "And that in itself is a darn shame."

The more calls I made, the more it seemed anyone who knew DeNardo had also been sued by him. The targets of his filings included Veco, the state Supreme Court, GCI, Fred Meyer, Tony Knowles, his landlord, the chief of police, Mark Begich, the Alaska Student Loan Corp., the city, the state, Alaska Cleaners and a long list of lawyers, judges and public officials.

People described him as persistent, reserved and polite. They said he seemed motivated by principles, not anger. He always represented himself in court, and even made a recent argument before the state Supreme Court. Usually, he lost.

"There was a sort of odd disconnect between the craziness of what was going on in his head and what he was writing and how he appeared," said Jeff Feldman, a lawyer who dealt with DeNardo.

Many suspected that he may have sued the state more times than any individual. Over the last few months, he quit showing up at hearings. A few heard he was sick, possibly with cancer. No one knew what he did to make money. On some candidate questionnaires, he said he was a paralegal. Other times he listed his job as "counter revolutionary."

Eventually I tracked down John Wayne Glotfelty, who ran for governor in 2002 on the AIP ticket the same year DeNardo ran for lieutenant governor. They didn’t get along except for on one thing, Glotfelty told me. Both served in Vietnam.

While Glotfelty slogged through the jungle, DeNardo ended up in a base camp, pushing paper for the Army. He was "chairborne," Glotfelty said. According to military records, DeNardo went over right around the time he would have graduated from high school in 1966 and stayed for three years.

"Some kind of trauma went down while he was over there and he never got over it," Glotfelty said. "He was one of thousands that fell through the cracks. He just had enough intelligence to find a toenail hold to get his name in the paper once in a while."

I Googled DeNardo and found a page full of ranting videos on YouTube. Then I called his campaign phone number and listened to his voice on the message. He had an accent I couldn’t place. Old court records listed his place of birth as Colorado Springs. I decided to drive to his house. Maybe he befriended a neighbor.

He had an address on Cange Street off O’Malley Road. When I got there, all I found was an empty, sloping lot with a breathtaking view of Cook Inlet. I looked out at the hazy ocean. It was a dead end. DeNardo chose it in case someone tried to track him down.

I wondered what he was looking for with all his campaigns and lawsuits. Maybe it was a backward way to find human connection. Or maybe it was my mistake to look for logic. Maybe he was just crazy. But I still wished I could explain how a man so many recognized could live such an invisible life and wind up laid out in a funeral home, waiting for someone who cares enough to see his casket into the ground.

Here's footage of DeNardo's last debate:

UPDATE, part two: The Catholic church will take charge of DeNardo's burial plan and will coordinate donations. Read more here .