5 young men,all drunk,all last seen in downtown bar area of same city,drown in same stretch of Mississippi River over past 2 yrs,in WI:Relatives raise theory of possible serial killer,but cops have ruled all 5 deaths as drowning accidents
Joe1orbit
This is gonna have to be my final post of the day, folks. And my monthly trip
time is fast approaching too, but I still have almost 2 1/2 days left, so won't
begin the hourly countdown just yet. The FASCINATING article below was posted
to my very active & vital Mailing List, by someone else. Since it has not
appeared here at ATC, I'll do the honors and post it myself, along with my
commentary, as I extend my very sincere thanks to the dedicated newshound who
first located and posted this item to my List. Remember folks, if you want to
get ALL of the LATEST serial and mass murder news FIRST, the place to be is the
JOe1orbit Serial and Mass Murder Mailing LIst, 210 members strong, and all info
on the List, and how to subscribe, can be obtained by visiting my web page, at:
http://members.aol.com/Joe1orbit/MailingList1.html
Over in Wisconsin, FEARS that a serial killer of young men is on the loose,
are growing. Over the past two years, five young males have been found dead in
the Mississippi river. The official cause of all five deaths is DROWNING, and
autopsies of the 5 late teen and 20's aged fellows, shows that ALL of them were
INTOXICATED at the time of their deaths. So, a REASONABLE assumption could be
made that all five drunkenly stumbled into the river, or fell of boats, and
accidently drowned.
BUT, what are the odds of FIVE young men, from the same state, all falling
into the SAME river and drowning?? IMO, the odds are quite LOW. The possibility
that a SERIAL killer is GETTING these young men drunk, after befriending them,
and then TAKING them to the river and DELIBERATELY drowning them, is a very
real and legitimate possibility, IMO. And now we have some of the family
members of the five dead fellows, starting to speak out and demand a more
legitimate police investigation of the serial killer theory.
After all, when someone is SERIOUSLY drunk, they usually lose coordination
and balance skills, which would fit in perfectly with the thought of a serial
killer GETTING the young men drunk, then TAKING them out into the river,
perhaps on a boat in the middle of the night, and either overtly drowning them
by HOLDING his victim under the water, or else just THROWING the victim
overboard and WATCHING him die as he flounders around drunkenly and drowns.
All five victims are White males, aged 19-28. They were all drunk. All of
them were last seen on DOWNTOWN city streets, in the relatively SMALL city of
La Crosse, while drunk, making them VERY easy pickings for a serial killer. In
fact, they had ALL been to bars in the SAME AREA, just before they disappeared.
The fact that their bodies were found on the SAME STRETCH of the Mississippi
river too, is just TOO much of a coincidence. I agree with the college
professor/Daddy whose son was one of the victims, when he says that there is
EVERY indication that a serial killer is at work here, and a very CUNNING one
at that, for coming up with this CLEVER modus operandi to try and make all his
killings look like accidental drownings. None of the bodies were BRUTALIZED in
any way, no wounds such as those an enraged serial killer might inflict, were
found on any of the five bodies. But that could simply mean that our SK is a
well CONTROLLED fellow, who REALIZED that in order to make his killings look
like accidents, he would need to REFRAIN from violently assaulting his victims,
and/or raping them.
Police, as usual, are downplaying and rejecting claims of a serial killer
being at work. Says the lead detective on the cases: "The evidence suggests
the five deaths are nothing more than a string of drownings. We're not saying
that (a serial killer) is not a possibility. But we have not received any
information to show these have been anything but natural deaths." Well, all we
can do is GUESS, right now. But one thing I can say confidently, is that IF a
serial killer committed some or call of these 5 murders, he is a VERY
tactically astute and cunning fellow, and police will have a VERY difficult
time in identifying or capturing him. Or HER, I never want to rule out the
possibility of a serial killer in a case like this, being a gal.
Take care, JOE
The following appears courtesy of the 8/29/99 online edition of The mIlwaukee
Journal-Sentinel newspaper:
Families see link in string of drownings of young men They suspect a
serial killer may be responsible for 5 deaths over 25 months
By Peter Maller
of the Journal Sentinel staff
La Crosse - He was the fourth young man to drown in a backwater of the
Mississippi River in less than two years, but police didn't suspect foul
play when Nathan Kapfer's body floated to the surface 12 days before his
20th birthday.
The Viterbo College baseball player's blood-alcohol level was 0.22, more
than double the level the state considers evidence of intoxication for an
adult driver.
Friends reported Kapfer missing on Feb. 22, 1998, just hours after he was
arrested and released by La Crosse police. He was last seen walking along
a downtown street, his pockets stuffed with citations for using false
identification to enter a bar, underage drinking and disorderly conduct.
Investigators ruled Kapfer's death a drowning, possibly a suicide.
But Richard Geesey, whose 20-year-old son, Jeff, was the next to die in
the river, thinks his son might be alive today if police had treated
Kapfer's death as a possible homicide.
The 58-year old forestry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens
Point, who has read every police report on the series of drownings, thinks
a serial killer may be on the loose.
He suspects someone might be pushing drunken, young men into the
Mississippi.
Jeff Geesey, a student at UW-La Crosse, was the fifth young man in a
25-month stretch to turn up dead in a backwater of the same river.
"I have no proof of that (of a serial killer), but that's the way it
seems," Geesey said.
All the victims were white males of about the same age, all were extremely
intoxicated when they died. All had visited downtown bars in the vicinity
of Pearl and Third streets. None of the victims bore wounds consistent
with being assaulted. But numerous questions concerning their drownings
beg answers.
Geesey's own investigation with the help of a Milwaukee bloodhound and the
dog's handler, Penny Bell, has turned up evidence that differs from police
accounts of Jeff Geesey's last hours. And Richard Geesey is not alone in
thinking a killer may be working the river.
Parents of other victims and many college students believe he is on the
right track. Some young men living in La Crosse say they are terrified to
walk alone at night and now travel the streets only in pairs.
"There are too many similarities for it to be just a series of
coincidences," said Aaron Lavoy, a student at nearby Western Wisconsin
Technical College. "Most people in town don't believe these drownings were
accidental."
Kapfer's father, Mark, a pharmacist in Glendive, Mont., also thinks the
drownings have too many common characteristics to be solely coincidental.
"I can't believe that (five) kids just fell or jumped into the river," he
said in a telephone interview. "There are lots of other (college campuses)
with bodies of water, and this type of thing doesn't happen."
Nathan Kapfer sounded "very upbeat" during a phone conversation three days
before his disappearance, mentioning a job he had lined up for the summer,
his father said, which makes him doubt that his son's death was a suicide.
Barry Blatz of Kiel, whose brother, Charles, was among the victims, also
questions whether his brother's 1997 death was an accident.
"Chuck was a very strong swimmer, and he was physically fit and he was
intelligent about the water," Barry Blatz said. "We just can't seem him
doing anything stupid. We try to tell ourselves it was an accident, but
the thought of foul play is still there."
However, the lead police detective in the cases said the evidence suggests
the five deaths are nothing more than a string of drownings.
"We're not saying that (a serial killer) is not a possibility," said
Lt. Mitch Brohmer. "But we have not received any information to show these
have been anything but natural deaths."
Jeff Geesey's death came after a recent episode of emotional instability,
Brohmer said. A few months before he died, Geesey twice slashed his left
arm with a knife, the detective said.
But Geesey's father said psychologists told him that his son's behavior
was not a genuine suicide attempt, rather a call for attention.
Nor can it diminish the questions raised by the bloodhound investigation,
Richard Geesey said.
The dog, whose handler credits him with having 95% success rate solving
disappearances, picked up Geesey's scent in a hallway leading to
apartments over a bar he may have visited. From there,
the dog traced him into a bar across the street, out the back door and
into an alley. Geesey then allegedly went down a street to a parking lot
where he stopped by a fence.
"The dog indicated he was there quite a long time," Richard Geesey said.
"Then he was picked up in a vehicle and taken to Neibalski Bridge," from
where he apparently landed in the river.
Richard Geesey surmises that something terrible happened to his son along
the route that the bloodhound traced out about six weeks after the young
man disappeared, a period some police investigators believe was too long
after the boy's disappearance to be credible.
Strange circumstances also surround the disappearances of the other
victims:
Anthony Skifton, 19, was the third person found in the river. His
blood-alcohol level was 0.23. Several hours after he was last seen by
friends, a man named Adam Smith agreed to give a car ride
to two suspicious men in their 20s, one bleeding from a head wound.
Smith told police that the men offered him $5 to take them home from
Houska Park along the Mississippi to a downtown address. Smith later drove
back to the park and was this time approached by a man with a black goatee
who offered to perform oral sex, which Smith refused.
When Skifton's body was found Oct. 20, 1997, 13 days after he was reported
missing, the zipper on his shorts was unfastened. Brohmer thinks Skifton
toppled into the river while urinating. The autopsy determined that his
bladder was empty.
"That doesn't make sense," said Richard Geesey. "Everybody who knows him
knows he couldn't swim and was scared to death of the water. Why would he
do that in the river? He could have
urinated any place."
Charles Blatz, 28, a student at UW-Platteville came to La Crosse with a
friend for the city's Octoberfest celebration when he disappeared Oct. 2,
1997. The friend told police Blatz "appeared to be in good spirits" the
last time he saw him.
Blatz's badly mutilated body - his skull was fractured and he was missing
an arm - was found the next day floating in the main channel of the
Mississippi. Blatz had a blood-alcohol content of 0.31.
According to a medical examiner's report, the injuries most likely
occurred after the victim was dead since there was no tissue hemorrhaging
to suggest trauma while he was alive.
The story of Richard Hlavaty, the first victim, differs from the others.
Hlavaty, 19, of Western Springs, Ill., was in a bar fight and then chased
into the river by several unidentified men.
Hlavaty's blood-alcohol level was 0.27. His brother, James, 20, a La
Crosse resident, was also chased into the river, but swam to safety.
Mick Miyamoto, dean of student affairs at UW-La Crosse, said the drownings
resulted from binge drinking, not foul play.
"My sense is that these kids see themselves as invincible," he said. "Many
of them are binge drinkers, and they just refuse to accept the seriousness of
binge
drinking. If we didn't have the river, (the students) would be falling off or
jumping off the bluffs."
Brohmer, the police detective, said the city has no plans to increase the
number of squad cars patrolling the riverside.
And Brohmer said that, while he sympathizes with the victims' families,
the police have exhausted all possible leads and have nothing new go to
on.
"We've done the best investigation possible," he said. "We know these
families are upset. We would do anything we can to help any of them. I
think they are looking for some additional closure."
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Aug. 30, 1999.
*************************************
Join the Joe1orbit Serial and Mass Murder Mailing List! For more information on
my Mailing List, please visit:
http://members.aol.com/Joe1orbit/MailingList1.html
**************************************