Footprints At The River's Edge
bella
Featured Stories
Over 200 intelligent, athletic, college-age men, who were "not likely to
disappear" have suddenly vanished throughout the Midwest and Canada.
One of those mentioned on nancy grace 'missing' program tonight was Jesse
Ross. I found this site while looking for information about his
disappearance. I suspected he might be linked to the missing young men in
the Midwest. I still don't believe all these deaths and disappearances are
random. I'm reminded of the victims of John Wayne Gacy and Herb Baumeister.
realpch
Case after case, young goes out drinking, gets drunk, accidentally falls
in water and drowns. Sure, there are some exceptions, but that's what
pretty much all the stories illustrate.
Moral of story: do not drink near bodies of water of sufficient depth in
which to drown.
Peach
--
Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
Save some dough, save some grief:
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http://www.scientology-lies.com
bella
"realpch" <rea...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:4D3FD83E...@aol.com...
> bella wrote:
>>
>> http://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com/
>>
>> Featured Stories
>> Over 200 intelligent, athletic, college-age men, who were "not likely to
>> disappear" have suddenly vanished throughout the Midwest and Canada.
>>
>> One of those mentioned on nancy grace 'missing' program tonight was Jesse
>> Ross. I found this site while looking for information about his
>> disappearance. I suspected he might be linked to the missing young men
>> in
>> the Midwest. I still don't believe all these deaths and disappearances
>> are
>> random. I'm reminded of the victims of John Wayne Gacy and Herb
>> Baumeister.
>
> Case after case, young goes out drinking, gets drunk, accidentally falls
> in water and drowns. Sure, there are some exceptions, but that's what
> pretty much all the stories illustrate.
>
> Moral of story: do not drink near bodies of water of sufficient depth in
> which to drown.
>
> Peach
Those same bodies of water have been there for decades, with the same young
men drinking and partying. I'm from that area, familiar with many of those
towns and bodies of water. And also heard the stories from friends of some
of these victims. How they seemed okay, and suddenly just disappeared.
Many suspect some of these young men have been drugged. I have a nephew who
attended one of the Mississippi River town Universites, fit the profile
perfectly, and was drugged at a downtown bar one night. Lucky for him, he
had friends looking out for him, who took him to a hospital.
realpch
Did you go down the list and read all those stories?
bella
Sorry, I should have googled more the other night. I already had researched
this, so was familiar with lots of the details that aren't delved into here.
I was in a hurry the other night, but still, I should have googled more
then.
I read *some*, not all. And I certainly don't believe it all. Some of it
really went 'out of the realm' for lack of a better word right now. (I'm
not feeling well, this flu or what ever that's going around, so bear with me
please if I don't find the words I'm looking for.) But there are some
cases, most of them along the Mississippi, in Minnesota, Wisconsin and a bit
of Illinois, that are extremely suspicious. When I saw this Jesse guy
brought up on nancy graces 'missing, 50 in 50' I wondered if he could be a
part of that group, so I checked it out on Google.
Here's probably a bit better link. Most of the cases I'm thinking of
involve young, college guys, who all were out drinking, and found later
drown.
http://marksuppelsa.typepad.com/closerlook/2006/05/missing_drowned.html
My nephew fit the same pattern, young, strong, in college in Minnesota, a
river city college. He also tended bar on week-ends in both Minneapolis,
his hometown, and at his school town. He was pretty savvy about drinking.
Never got really drunk, per his friends and associates. Saw too much
through his bartending jobs. One night he was out with his friends,
perfectly fine, and a short time later, when his buddies didn't see him,
they went outside and found him starting to wander off, incoherent. They
took him home & my sister and BIL took him to the hospital. My sister told
me she knew a couple of the other guys who'd ended up in the river. I
believe she knew one and then 'knew somebody who knew somebody' etc., on a
couple others, and all were pretty much the same circumstances. Now I'm not
saying there isn't an occasional 'guy gets drunk and falls in the river'
cases. But most of these were otherwise intelligent, well spoken guys who
didn't have a history of getting so drunk they'd fall in a river and drown.
Multiple mysterious drownings: accidents or serial murders?
A young male college student is out late partying with his friends at a
local bar. Everything is normal--just your average night. Suddenly his
friends notice he is missing. No one saw him leave, no one knows where he
went, and he never returns. A missing-person report is filed, and massive
search efforts within the community fail to turn up any clues. A few weeks
later, his body is discovered in a local river. His friends and family are
overwhelmed with not only grief, but also confusion. Why would he
spontaneously leave his friends, how did he manage to disappear without a
single witness seeing him, and how did he end up at the river?
The circumstances seem a little odd, but since there are no signs of a
struggle, his death is ruled accidental. But then another young male college
student in the area mysteriously disappears while out partying with friends,
only to be found dead in a river. And then another, and another, and another
...
Drowning, After Drowning, After Drowning
Starting in the year 1997 and continuing through 2006, the bodies of 24
males between the ages of 18 and 27 in the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana surfaced in rivers and lakes. All of the
deaths happened in areas along Interstate 94 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to
Lansing, Michigan (see map 1). Each victim had a similar story; in almost
every circumstance a young man had been drinking with friends and then
mysteriously disappeared or separated from his group, never to be seen alive
again. Days, weeks, or even months after each disappearance, a body would
finally be discovered in a nearby body of water. In two additional cases the
missing men were never discovered, making the total 26 in the area. None of
the bodies displayed any signs of a struggle, and authorities ruled most of
the deaths accidental and the remaining cases undetermined.
continues at link:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1613/is_3_15/ai_n29287772/
Theories on smiley face murders resurface again
Are the deaths of over 50 young, athletic collegiate men across the Midwest
linked together?
Rhiannon Banda-Scott
It all started in February of 1997 when Patrick McNeil, a 21-year-old junior
accounting student at Fordham University, went missing. After a night out
drinking and partying with friends at local New York bars, McNeil decided to
head home for some rest before an early class the next day. McNeil never
made it home.
Two months later in April, his body was found floating in the harbor near
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. His death was ruled a suicide but McNeil's parents
refused to believe their successful, ambitious and athletic son would do
such a thing as take his own life.
When the Smiley Face Killer theory, a hypothesis which proposed that a gang
was targeting collegiate men, leaving behind a graffiti sign of a smiley
face as a calling card, blew up in the media last May, the Today Show
reported that Kevin Gannon, then a detective sergeant, vowed to McNeill's
parents he would never give up on the case and even mortgaged his own home
to keep the investigation alive.
He and his partner on the case, Anthony Duarte, both working for the N.Y.
Police Department at the time, looked into nearly 90 separate murder cases
to see what they could find.
They uncovered at least 40 other deaths similar to McNeil's in over 10
different states. Coincidently, all of the deaths were ruled as "accidental"
drowning and almost all of the victims were popular, athletic males with
good grades.
Most of the young men had been drinking before they disappeared and their
bodies were found in near-frozen bodies of water strewn across the Midwest.
The kicker? A smiley-face symbol was found drawn near where many of the
drowning victims' bodies had been discovered.
Now, over 10 years later since McNeil's murders, more theories and
interesting coincidences involving other similar deaths have sparked a
debate over the likelihood of a "Smiley Face Gang" who prey on young male
college students, making their deaths look like accidental drownings.
According to Minneapolis City Pages, many of the victims' parents are
backing up Gannon and Duarte's theory, and have even called for a Federal
Investigation into the case. They want answers as not one parent can believe
that their son would just accidentally fall into the river and succumb to
death and no one believes their child was suicidal.
On Monday, then-KSTP reporter Kristi Piehl - who first broke the theory on
the Smiley Face Killer last year - and Bill Szostak the father of one of the
supposed victims, appeared on "Good Morning America" to share their opinions
on why the police and the FBI need to look further into the numerous
'accidental' deaths that are unfortunately closed cases. They believe that
the police would feel differently if they were to sit down and take a good
look at the similarities Piehl has discovered between the cases.
Piehl, whose full-time job is piecing together clues relating to all of the
deaths then posting her findings on a blog, has found some pretty shocking
connections and evidence that these young men were murdered and her findings
are tough to ignore. She thinks the local police have done a fair job of
looking into these cases but told GMA, "they're not looking for the link."
Szostak, whose son Josh went missing in December 2007, told GMA he
understands that it's easy to attribute these deaths to an accident when the
young men were out drinking prior to their deaths and could easily have
fallen into the river. After all, it saves time and money for the police
force to close as many cases as they can.
But after police found his son's body in the Hudson River and ruled the
death an accident, Szostak, a retired fire investigator, did some
investigating on his own. ABC News reported that when Szostak was looking a
personal item of his son's near the spot authorities believe Josh went into
the water, he found the missing link - a smiley face.
"It definitely screams homicide, not an accidental death," said Szostak on
Monday, during his GMA interview. While the local police departments
maintain that the deaths were accidental and not connected, in the meantime
he and Piehl are working closely together with dozens of other parents to
find the smoking gun in the case.
It's their hope that eventually their hard work will pay off as they vow to
keep fighting.
Our Take
Creepy. And Piehl's blog? Even creepier. She has uncovered some pretty
incriminating evidence, and I'm surprised the police department hasn't
thought twice about reopening any of these cases.
I may be missing an important chunk to this story, but I, myself, find it
hard to believe that this many men, so alike and in similar situations, just
happened to fall into the river and die. I hope Peihl's work and the
contributions from the victims parents garner some sort of result where
young men will stop "drunkenly falling" and dying in Midwest rivers.
03/23/09
bella
"bella" <tinyd...@biteme.com> wrote in message
news:ihslj0$keb$1...@news.albasani.net...
Sorry, forgot to add, like someone else said in the comments section of one
of these pages, 'why aren't there any 'stinking drug college women' falling
into the rivers?'
b
realpch
<snip>
> Sorry, forgot to add, like someone else said in the comments section of one
> of these pages, 'why aren't there any 'stinking drug college women' falling
> into the rivers?'
>
> b
I would guess they would be less apt to walk off on their own after
being out drinking.
Mick
200 since 2001? That's 20 a year. I'm guessing that is a small
fraction of the unsolved missing persons that are college men from the
midwest or canada.
bella
"Mick" <mc...@pitt.edu> wrote in message
news:5efff254-e50e-4e07...@k9g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
Starting in the year 1997 and continuing through 2006, the bodies of 24
males between the ages of 18 and 27 in the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana surfaced in rivers and lakes. All of the
deaths happened in areas along Interstate 94 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to
Lansing, Michigan (see map 1). Each victim had a similar story; in almost
every circumstance a young man had been drinking with friends and then
mysteriously disappeared or separated from his group, never to be seen alive
again. Days, weeks, or even months after each disappearance, a body would
finally be discovered in a nearby body of water. In two additional cases the
missing men were never discovered, making the total 26 in the area. None of
the bodies displayed any signs of a struggle, and authorities ruled most of
the deaths accidental and the remaining cases undetermined.
continues at link:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1613/is_3_15/ai_n29287772/
If you google this, there are tons of stories and articles on this subject.
And I'm reminded of the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Herb Baumgardner
(sp?). In those cases there were lots & lots of 'missing males', many years
worth, before LE or anyone believed something was amiss. This particular
pattern caught my attention quite a few years ago. Something about it just
didn't seem right. I grew up in Wisconsin, very familiar with the LaCrosse
area, where an inordinate number of guys *died* in this group. In all my
years of having friends and kids of friends attending many of these
Universities located by bodies of water, I don't recall drinking and
drowning being a problem. Drinking, driving and dying in wrecks, yes, but
not drinking and drowning. JMO
