<p>I think that we have all been disturbed by stories of college males walking home alone after drinking and then disappearing to be found much later in a river. I started noticing them after a boy died like this at my son's university. Now two NYPD retired detectives are linking these killings:</p>
<p>""We've been doing this on our own, our own finances," Gannon explained. "We've never taken a penny from any of the families. I personally have mortgaged my own home to investigate this."</p>
<p>According to Gannon's ally, Duarte, this is almost 'a perfect crime' because the water washes away any physical evidence and there are never any witnesses. Almost all of the men are last seen by friends leaving a bar or college party."</p>
<p>There is information at kstp.com, a twin cities news woman, Kristi Piehl, is reporting on the case & will also appear on Monday a.m. t.v.</p>
<p>Thank you for posting. I hadn’t been following those stories at all. In general, stories about young women disappearing get more coverage.</p>
<p>Parents also should give their sons the same warnings females get about date rape drugs. There are predators who prey on males. The males do not have to be gay to be victimized. Important to hold their own drinks, not accept drinks from strangers, open their own drinks, and not go off with males whom they meet while drinking or partying.</p>
<p>Due to embarrassment, males are less likely to report this kind of victimization than are women.</p>
<p>These deaths (upwards of 100) are all eerily similar and are usually decided by the local police to be suicides or accidental drownings. Most happen Oct.-Nov. and Feb. The students are all intelligent, athletic guys who decided to walk home alone from bar or party. They now suspect serial killers-a gang, who leave graphitti signs & tags at the original site in the river.</p>
<p>"The murder of University of Minnesota college student Chris Jenkins in 2002 may have been related to as many as 40 other river deaths around the country, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reported Thursday night.</p>
<p>The information came from two retired New York City detectives who have been investigating the mysterious deaths of young men in rivers for 11 years."</p>
<p>Or, instead of looking for zebras instead of horses (really, a gang of serial killers? when has there ever been a GANG of serial killers…don’t these guys tend to work alone? and how, exactly, do these “gang members” figure out that the guy walking along the river is an “intellegent, athletic” college student and not some stupid clumsy non-student?)…</p>
<p>people could stop drinking so much that they fall into rivers. or people could keep a better eye on their friends and keep them from walking home alone.</p>
<p>I’m willing to bet the only “mass murderer” here is poor judgment among these “intelligent, athletic guys.”</p>
<p>I’m curious about the graffiti and tags found at the sites. If there is such evidence, why is it dismissed? If a gang does indeed leave such evidence, would it not be fairly easy to link the crimes?</p>
<p>I agree that these are tragic deaths - there was one not far from here in the past few years. But without concrete evidence of a gang or other criminal involvement, the “intoxicated person becomes disoriented, falls into a river and drowns” scenario is far more believable.</p>
<p>With the use of the internet suddenly “gangs” don’t have to be physically in the same area to be “connected”. And to think that there are not angry people across the country - remember there are 27,000 high schools and probably more than 27,000 kids who are the victims of “bullying” or other mistreatment…the scary thing is with facebook and the other websites, ones with serious issues have ways to connect…where it would seem that it would be a good thing that people can connect - it can also be dangerous. I wouldn’t write this off as impossible in this day and age. Scary.</p>
<p>That’s a bit of a double standard. When you hear a story of a girl who’s mysteriously found in a river, with her hair burned off her head and her face covered in duct tape, you don’t say “I bet poor judgement was to blame. Maybe she should be more mindful of tape and playing with matches”</p>
<p>It’s not a double standard. When I hear about people, regardless of gender, who’ve been burned or gagged I feel horrible for them and their family and hope they find the killer. I also wonder what they (or I) could have done to avoid the situation. </p>
<p>When I hear about people, regardless of gender, who appear to have died because they fell down drunk (which is the sad situation of most of these river drownings–hence the fact that investigations have concluded these deaths are accidental or suicides), I also feel terrible for them and their survivors–what a waste. But the way to cut down on those deaths is not to scour Facebook for evidence of some smiley-face gang…it’s to figure out some way to get college kids to stop drinking a little sooner, or at least to avoid wandering off alone when they’ve had too much. </p>
<p>I guess I’m just wondering why the police in so many different towns would all refuse to find gang members if there really was good evidence that’s what happened. In general, police officers are all too willing to find criminals and gang members, then arrest them. Why would this be any different?</p>
<p>I think it is always important to stress to college kids the dangers associated with drinking, drug use, casual sex, etc. All can be fraught with danger - long term, short term, subtle, and obvious. The consequences of poor judgment are unlimited and almost always bad.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair in these cases to assume they used poor judgement or that that is the reason for their deaths We don’t know that the young men did anything wrong or out of the ordinary.
When my brother was in high school, he was walking across an upscale suburban outdoor mall to go home after work. Four guys approached him and asked him for money. Apparently he didn’t respond quickly enough, because they punch him, knocked him down and kicked him to the point where he could barely stand up.
These were the days before cell phones-my brother threw a rock into a department store glass door to set off the alarm, which made the guys run off and brought the police. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but he had no idea that he was taking any risks by walking through a well-lit outdoor mall.
I do think our young men sometimes forget that they can be victims, even when in familiar surroundings, especially after dark.
This is a very disturbing article.</p>
<p>stacy: Do you know how hard it is to fall into a river? Even raucously drunk, it’s not easy. I too suspect something slightly more than just drunk college students may be at play here.</p>
<p>For crying out loud, this is all from a report on a local news station? Local news is the television equivalent of the National Enquirer. Or wait, what about the one where the girl wakes up and her roommate is dead and the killer has written on the mirror in the dead roommate’s blood “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”<br>
–K9Leader</p>
<p>Just over a year ago a male student died at my school, found a few days after his disappearance, at the bottom of the small lake on the edge of campus. He had last been seen leaving a house party and walking towards his dorm, but things didn’t quite add up because his dorm-access card was tried on the dorm adjacent to his that was completely vacant, so he wasn’t allowed access. He was found about as far away from the party as could be–picture this as “A” being the dorm, “B” being the party, and “C” being the lake, since that’s essentially how it occurred.</p>
<p>A…B…C</p>
<p>He was partying at B. Walked south a few blocks to A. Was found several blocks North of B at location C, at the bottom of the lake due to an apparent drowning. There were rumors around campus at the time that it was linked to the other mysterious drowning mentioned in this thread, despite us being in a “safe, small, midwest town”. </p>
<p>A few weeks later (or maybe earlier, I can’t remember now), a student who had gone missing from Grinnell was found at the bottom of the Grinnell community pool that had been covered but not drained for the winter. He had gone missing in like September was found in March or April I think.</p>
<p>Both were ruled “accidents” involving alcohol, I believe. Rumors swirled about a link to the mysterious river drownings, but nothing was ever really investigated into the matter. </p>
<p>Either a lot of drunk males are finding themselves near bodies of water or people are committing a horrible crime. Nobody really knows.</p>