THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory
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TRUE CRIME: The police are calling them accidents. They say young men are simply drinking too much and meeting a tragic end in icy lakes and rivers. But the public thinks something else has been going on in America's northland since 1997. They're calling the sudden disappearances of hundreds of college-age men mysterious. They're calling the drownings murder.
THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN: A special true crime investigative report into the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory.
"When I looked at these cases, the first thing that jumped out at me was the victimological profile. It's not a normal distribution...the standard deviation is only 0.4 on their weight and height." -- Dr. Lee Gilbertson, gang specialist and associate professor, Department of Criminal Justice Studies at St. Cloud University
"The statistics are so stacked against this number of men, young men, Caucasian males, found in bodies of water in that cluster of states, within that period of time." -- Dr. Cyril Wecht, forensic pathologist
"The probability is virtually zero that five intoxicated students just happened to walk similar or even different routes and end up on the riverbank." -- Dr. Maurice Godwin, criminal investigative psychologist, commenting on the La Crosse Wisconsin drowning cluster.
"They could have been murdered but the person was just so good at doing it that they didn't leave any physical evidence...[they] could sedate and drown him in a tub or something like that and then throw him in the river." -- John Kelly, psychotherapist and profiler
*This full-color illustrated eBook edition = 42,500+ words or 220 illustrated print pages
Eponymous Rox
writer, investigative journalist, researcher
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THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN - Eponymous Rox
ADVISORY: The subject matter of this true crime investigation is derived from a variety of public records and databases including police and forensic reports. It may therefore contain themes and content not suitable for all audiences. The drown cases featured herein were originally classified by law enforcement agencies as accidents and, although a few have since been reclassified as ‘undetermined’ or as homicides, all of them, per the date of this publication, remain unsolved and inactive. However, a number of victims’ families are soliciting support from the public to overturn prior ‘accidental’ rulings so the deaths can be reinvestigated as murders, and are even offering substantial rewards for any information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of the party or parties responsible. Wherever available, active links to websites and other reading material for further study of specific victim profiles have been provided at the conclusion of each relevant chapter as well as in the comprehensive resource index at the end of this publication. The views and opinions expressed in THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN are based on private, independent research and consultations. As such, the findings and conclusions contained in it are considered speculative in nature and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher, the individuals or agencies who have been quoted, or the author. Some data/sources limited via fair usage percents are only extracts.
This book is dedicated to all who have died in vain or too young. May you find, and rest in, peace.
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Justice delayed is justice denied.
William Gladstone (1809 - 1898)
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CONTENTS: THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN
by EPONYMOUS ROX
FOREWORD
Chapter 1: Dead Certain
Chapter 2: Anatomy of a Drowning [forensic analysis]
Chapter 3: Corridor of Death
Chapter 4: More Than a Little – Less Than a Lot
Chapter 5: Cowboys and Indians
Chapter 6: Horses of a Different Color
Chapter 7: Profile of a Murderer
Chapter 8: Gradual and Not Swift Moving
Chapter 9: Drowning Out the Opposition
Chapter 10: Smiling Faces
Chapter 11: Prime Time for a Killing Theory
Chapter 12: Mud and a River
Chapter 13: Signs of Foul Play
Chapter 14: Profile of a Serial Murderer
Chapter 15: Sinking Fears
Chapter 16: Profile of a Mass Murderer
Chapter 17: Whitewash
Chapter 18: A Brother, Friend, and Son
Chapter 19: Probable Causes and Statistics
Chapter 20: You Can’t See What You’re Not Looking For
RESOURCE INDEX
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Chapter 1: Dead Certain
Since the mid 1990’s, in the northernmost district of America where Interstates 90 and 94 merge to cut a scenic route toward the west, crossing nearly a dozen states along the way and skirting the border with Canada, scores of young men are vanishing every year without a trace. Only to turn up days, weeks, or months later in nearby bodies of water, dead.
Occurring mainly between the months of September to April, it’s the same story repeating itself every time, with little variation: A young man goes out for the evening with his friends, gets separated from them some time after midnight, and, despite massive search efforts by his loved ones to find out what became of him, is never seen alive again.
For local law enforcement officials the hunt for lost men over the past fifteen years has become an all too familiar tale of woe as well, not the least because it’s costly and disruptive. But as far as police are concerned, even before they launch an investigation, even before a body’s been recovered from the water and an autopsy performed, it’s always a cut-and-dry case: No signs of foul play.
Young people are simply drinking too much, the authorities claim. Young people will do crazy and stupid things when they’re inebriated. They’ll even throw themselves into an icy river or lake and drown.
Seems a reasonable enough explanation on its face, if only one or two fatalities occurring every once in awhile, and a scenario that’s not totally impossible to imagine either. But by the hundreds?
And why only males then? All matching the same description? Washing up in places thoroughly searched before…?
I first stumbled upon the case of the drowning men in early 2012, and quite by accident. Indeed, whatever it was I’d originally been researching at the moment, it was undoubtedly not related to death or dying, and I’m also positive it had nothing to do with H20 and its cold-weather hazards. But the brain is an efficient machine and though its focus may be directed to one particular matter it’s still constantly processing everything else on the periphery; sorting, analyzing and connecting all the data-bytes it comes across. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Like dots on a map.
Scientists say one of the things the human brain is very quick to detect is a pattern. If so, that must be the reason why, when I glanced at the February article concerning yet another youth who had wandered away from his buddies and whose corpse was found shortly thereafter floating in the Mississippi, I blurted aloud, What, not again,
and clicked on the news link. Before that day, before I began to consciously pay attention to this issue, I can honestly say I’d never known of anyone, young or old, male or female, to drink and drown in autumn, winter or spring. Not in all the time I’ve lived in this, the affected area.
Like my fellow citizens who are also lifelong residents of the Great Lakes region—growing up here, going to school, working, vacationing, socializing—I can attest that these two things, drinking and drowning in cold weather, have never been synonymous with each other. Drowning after a night out on the town with your friends during the chilly months of September through April, with nobody else around to help, with no witnesses, just isn’t as inevitable as the police would have us all suddenly believe it is. It’s not, regardless of what age you are or your close proximity to the water, an ordinary way to perish.
This is probably because in these parts, even when people are drunk out of their minds, they don’t usually drown outdoors unless they’re in the act of swimming, or else involved in some other form of water recreation like waterskiing or boating. Activities which, because of our cold, northern climate, are only safely executed in rivers, lakes and ponds approximately three months out of the calendar year, in June, July, and August.
The rest of the time the water’s simply too cold to go in, and most everybody (native and transplant alike) understands that if water is at or below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s not only brutally uncomfortable, it can kill you—a body cools in water twice as fast as it does in air, losing an approximate rate of five degrees per hour. Death from hypothermia only takes about three hours in 40 to 60 degree water; less than two hours at 35 to 40 degrees; and less than three-quarters of an hour at temperatures below 35 degrees.
Those deadly equations are fairly easy to master and, in the land of lakes and rivers and ponds and streams and brooks, youngsters are taught them early on. As for the rare and reckless few who fail to grasp the math, to be perfectly candid, they don’t usually make it to their early teens, let alone full adulthood.
The average age of the males who go missing and are later found drowned in the Interstate 90 and 94 Corridor is between 19 and 23 years. In the entire grouping perhaps a handful have been only 17 and a few others as old as 30, although it must be said, in the case of the more mature victims, they didn’t look anywhere near their true age in posters or photographs.
Grown men drowning in cold weather on their way home at night. That’s become a strange new fact of life and the weird new math those who reside in the northern corridor have now had to learn, based upon figures which have been accumulating for nearly the past two decades.
We’re fond of and rely on facts and numbers to inform us here in the northland because, overall, we’re an educated people. Our extensive waterways, highways, railways, large cities, major industries and fertile farmlands have contributed to make the region one of the most affluent in the country. As a result, many of the world’s finest universities can be found in this region as well, and an overwhelming majority of us have attended them. We’re a schooled and highly trained bunch of skeptics we are, and even a bit conservative leaning. Which is to say, we tend to mull things over long before we act. We don’t jump to conclusions…
In 2004 the April drowning of yet another popular, athletic, and bright 21-year-old male of medium build, at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse, provided the tipping point for that community’s stoical tolerance of the matter. In terms of these events La Crosse is one of the hotspots, and by that year there’d been way too many of the same type of men dying under identical circumstances for the public to view it anymore as coincidence. With the inexplicable disappearance of honor student Jared Dion the city was up in arms, and when his body was eventually discovered downriver, the once-whispered suspicions of murder instantly morphed into full blown allegations of a serial killer or a gang of serial killers stalking college-age men in the area, not to mention accusations of police involvement and a cover up.
There were roughly 51,000 people living in La Crosse in 2004, according to the U.S. Census, and, to be sure, they weren’t all hapless students; city officials and the police department were late to acknowledge a crisis at hand, and, when they did finally react to it, the town-hall meetings they commandeered to dismiss the public’s fears as unfounded did little or nothing to calm things down again. Every public debate concerning the river deaths was jam-packed and rapidly descended into a shouting match.
It was probably in a last ditch effort to restore the peace as well as to mitigate harm to the university’s reputation that an open letter from faculty members at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse was penned and then distributed to the student body. Co-authored by the Chairs of the Psychology and Sociology departments and titled Why we are 99.9% sure it is NOT a serial killer - a data based explanation, this urgent communiqué implored students to use their critical thinking skills
to evaluate what was really going on in their town. A levelheaded analysis would prove these were only drownings, not murders, the professors assured them. A string of terribly tragic and utterly preventable accidents:
Students are drinking too much and incapacitating themselves, a condition which drives some to seek out the river to refresh themselves, during which they slip and fall in.
Only men are drowning as a result of intoxication because women are more savvy these days and don’t wander around alone at night, especially not if they’ve been partying.
Annually, almost ten times as many males die during water recreational activities and in other types of accidents than females do. Alcohol plays a role in a number of these cases.
There are no drowning deaths at nearby universities like Madison because their campuses are beside lakes. Whereas La Crosse’s campus is situated right on the river’s edge, and rivers, being suddenly deep and fast flowing, are far more dangerous.
The similarities between the victims constitute illusory correlations
which can readily be explained through other qualifying factors.
Stepping into the middle of a community’s fray and trying to mediate it was highly unusual for a university, and, in light of the dire subject matter of their data based explanation
and the negative impact advertising it might have had on future enrollment, a rather risky PR move, too. But the professors’ treatise was also an intelligent, compassionate, and methodical approach to debunking the serial murderer theory before it could take root—the first of many—so the gamble was well worth it. Moreover, this strategy appears to have been quite successful. At least for awhile.
But in 2005, 2006 and 2007, drunk and sober young men continued to go missing along the interstates, sometimes two or more in the very same time span. Their corpses eventually to be retrieved from such rivers as the Calumet, the Hudson, the Charles, the Mississippi, the Milwaukee, the Wabash and the Wisconsin, as well as a number of area lakes, including Great Lake Michigan, Lake LaVerne, and the University at Madison’s nearby Lake Mendota. These latter deaths occurring in seeming defiance of the UW-L professors’ sweeping assertion that a lake doesn’t pose the same