Footprints at the River’s Edge has partnered with Gary Peterson to conduct an independent scientific review of dozens of cases that were accumulated while conducting research for the site. Gary is an experienced Medico-legal Death Investigator who has worked on many missing persons' cases throughout the United States, including Gina Anderson, Caylee Anthony, Nicholas Garza and Stacy Peterson. The case review will be assisted by Marcia Cummings, a retired agent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
We welcome additional information from anyone interested in having us take a closer look at their loved one's disappearance. This information will be treated as confidential. Please e-mail Lisa at footprints.blogmail@yahoo.com.
19 comments:
This is great news!
Thank you, Sam. I am really excited to see what more we can turn up!
This is such a great thing to hear! This brings so much hope that these men will get justice. Having someone like Gary Peterson will be so helpful!!!!
I was directed to this site while looking for updates on the Brian Shaffer case. After reading the case histories of all these young men that drowned, there is absolutely NO WAY that there are that many accidental drownings. Also, every single bio lists wallet and id found in their pockets. There is definitely something sinister going on here. Due to the distance between states, I would loook at a truck driver or similar type person that would routinely travel between states. Most seem to be located in the Northeastern part of the US. I also question some of the cases where the victim was actually on the phone when the call abruptly ended and in one case the young man said, Oh God, Help Me before the call went dead. Were their cell phones found in the water as well? Some of the bios list that items of clothing were found on the shoreline near where the bodies were found. This strikes me as odd because that would indicate either clothing was removed before going in the water or clothing came off the body after drowing or death. in that case, the currents would make it seem unlikely that items as lightweight as clothing would wind up close the location where the body was found.
kimfee-
Thank you for observations. I agree that there are far too many oddities in these cases. You're right, in the majority of the cases, the ID was found on the body, and in many cases articles of clothing were found in a separate location. Oftentimes, the clothing was found on shore in a neat pile! In the cases where the victim was on a cell phone, the phones were not usually found. This is true of the story you mentioned. The deeper I dig, the more oddities I find in all of these cases.
I agree there are too many oddities. Some things on there own could be coincidence but it is
very improbable everything is.
There are 6 improbablities in less than a 4 month span between Luke Homan and Wade Steffy.
3 in a row repeated B names. Homan from Brookfield.
Ross from Belton
Jessiah from Belingham.
other similarities repeated
Jesse -Jessiah
Belton-Bellingham.
Luke Homan-Vibe Bar- Ross Vibe Radio
One with a brother that is an eagle scout
One whose symbol is the eagles
One who played for the eagles
Ross repeats 3 times
Ross ,Rossini and David Ross Road
sane was left in graffiti and the first letter of band names the victims can be associated with spell out sane
It spells itself out in order .I only have to use 4 out of 5 possible victims that I am aware of for that time period starting with the victim in the city where sane was left.
There should be a lot more victims for that 4 month time period that are just as suspicious and that you can't make a lot of associations with , or there are probably patterns that someone is creating. Dismissing Mike's patterns would also be a mistake . he created two names in 2005 alone. That by itself is an improbability . He also spelled out things that relate to a possible victims in the word patterns he made
Sfkillers-
Mike has done a lot of work and has looked at this thing in a very creative light. I think most people don't look for patterns in everyday life, and so they don't have experience with this.
But my first thought, honestly--and I'm not making light--is that patterns can always be found if you look hard enough. And as the number of cases grow, so do the odds of finding patterns. So seeing some data would go a long way toward convincing skeptics.
If you were to study a "control" group of 100 white, male, college-age students on Facebook, would you find similiar word patterns? If not, it would show that these patterns are not just flukes--that perhaps they really are being used by a sly, cunning killer. At that point, I would put together a timeline to show how all the patterns intersect, so we can hopefully glean from that what their significance is to the killer. While it's good to keep collecting the patterns, I think it is also time for this theory to move to the next level, which will only help it gain credibility.
It is like I said there should be a lot more victims we are unaware of or it is probable they are patterns someone helped create. I would need a lot more possible victims names in short periods of time for it to have a high probability of just being coincidence.The time period I covered includes four adjoining states and Tennessee. The time span from between Jameson and Steffy who is from Bloomington is less than 4 months. Only if someone would have a lot of names to draw from would any argument against patterns make sense. It is the same with other patterns. They are improbable unless there are a lot more potential victims that are still unknown. It is not possible to take random names and make so many associations without a lot more possible victims to create a pattern with .I tried it.A person would need a lot of randomly picked fake victims to spell out the same word that could be associated with a victim in the same pattern as Mike did and then do it again.
These young men disappearing really upsets me. There have been at least two male college students that have died under similar circumstances in this area. These two college students were each at two different bars on your list.They were very intoxicated when they left the bar and were found in water. We have a lot of water in our area, four colleges and many bars that students frequent here. I believe they are victims of circumstance....perhaps the serial killer(s)ask locals about which bars students tend to hang out at. The killer(s)sit quietly inside drinking or whatever, and wait for an opportunity to find their prey, such as a very intoxicated male student. They follow them out of the bar and then kill them around the water? I feel the male student does not have their guard up and can't fight back due to being so intoxicated...easy prey. I hope they find whoever is doing this, we can't lose anymore of our young men.
I agree with Lisa on the whole pattern thing. In fact, I can subscribe to the theory that someone, or even a few someones, are preying on young drunk college men. But I can't wrap my head around a stalker picking victims by the letters in their name or whatever.
Seems like too many left bars or parties alone because they were upset. Although a common scenario, how would a stalker know in advance a selected potential victim is ever going to be out partying at all--let alone separate from their friends long enough to offer up the opportunity to be abducted on the certain night the killer(s) were going to be in that particular area.
It seems more likely that a victim would be picked because, like the last poster referred, they were alone, it was late, not a lot of people around and having been drinking, unfortunately, made them easier targets.
I am curious if anyone has stats pre 1997 on drowning deaths among young college males in winter, as opposed to what they have been the last 13 years?
@SnowQueen
I have been working on getting the information on male college students going missing and then being found drowned from previous decades. This entails going to the library and is a tedious task as most is on microfiche and requires looking through old newspapers.
Right now I am working on 1980-1990and am still on 1980. I realized at the rate I'm going (not a lot of time to devote to this) I wouldn't collect all the needed data for a long time so I have narrowed it to the Midwest states.
My goal is to find out how the numbers compare from year to year and decade to decade but I am running into some problems that could potentially skew the data. Numbers on their own, without looking at population growth, number of men enrolled in college etc. aren't going to mean too much.
The circumstances of a college-aged male drowning are not always included in the article.
When I go to the library the next time I am going to talk with some different librarians to see if there is a more efficient method to obtain the needed information.
Any suggestions from you, or anyone reading this are more than welcome.
And then, as everyone knows, if the incidence of college men going missing and drowning are higher for 2000-2010, with all else being equal, it can still be argued it is due to increased drinking amoung college men.
Even so, the data would be of interest.
Snowqueen
Even I believe there is a lot of randomness. I would never make the argument the majority were targeted ahead of time. I am confident a pattern theory holds up under scrutiny. I also believe it is still a matter of opinion if there are in fact patterns and how many. If I test a theory , and I have,no one is going to take my word for it that it is very difficult to duplicate. I can make a very large list of similarities. There is a lot more to it. It is not like me or Mike were the only ones to notice either or we came up with all the possible patterns. I only expanded on them and was able to point out similar patterns. The patterns easiest to test would be Mike'e word patterns by picking out random names with cities and having the first letter of the city names match with at least 3 letters of a possible victims name. I would never suggest to lisa she should take the Lincoln connection she put on her blog to the next level. Don't believe it if you want but if there are patterns then some of the ones who were targeted may have been killed by someone they knew from facebook or myspace.
Monique, I wish I did have some good suggestions for you. It sounds like you have already done much more than I would even know where to start. I can only imagine how difficult a task it could be.
Along the same lines, I wonder if there could be stats somewhere on kids who just went missing after partying..and if the numbers have increased there?
I do understand numbers alone do not mean much-but it does seem like if it was one more piece in the puzzle that fit, it could lend even more credibility to either the sfk theory, or at least that something very strange is occurring that needs to be addressed.
It bothers me, because I grew up on a body of water that is generally open year round. We frequently had parties on the beach,or along the banks of the rivers that feed it, after bar closing or before we were of legal age to drink. There was also plenty of drug use.
Yet, never once did I ever hear of anyone-even from neighboring towns or states-ever entering the lake,rivers or creeks, and drowning after a party, accidentally or otherwise.
Nearly every other scenario occurred-fights, shootings (no one shot luckily), car accidents with kids killed, drunken suicides, disoriented people passing out in the woods and nearly dying of hypothermia, etc. But not once, in all those years, did anyone ever go in the lake, creeks, or rivers-even in a drunken or drugged stupor-much less end up dead there.
Then, in the early 2000s, within my local news range, there are three who go missing within months of each other and each turns up in the water. Then I start hearing the same story over and over and over. It just does not make sense.
University of Iowa student, Jonathan Lacina, has been missing since Jan.22,2010. He left a party at 9 p.m. on Friday night to walk 2 1/2 blocks to his home and disappeared. He has not been seen since. His father said he is not the type to disappear.
There are numerous links on him but this one shows police searching for him. What's kind of interesting is they shine their flash lights on a bunch of graffiti. They will be searching Lake Laverne "to rule it out".
http://www.kcci.com/video/22392934/
idex.html
Has anyone heard anything else about Jon Lacina? He was last seen a week before he was reported missing by his father, didn't his friends think it odd that they hadn't seen or heard from him in a week? Too many missing young men!
Just a quick correction: Jon Lacina is an Iowa State University student and not a University of Iowa student. Iowa State is located in central Iowa in the town of Ames.
This website is phenomenal. More and more students are going missing every week. I don't understand. This is simply just too big to be a coincidence. I find it interesting how all of their dissapearances appear to be similar, in the fact of the activites they were doing before being reported missing. What does everybody think? When will the media take a closer look at what's going on?
Within the last month we have had a string of missing college aged students all in the midwest. Sylvester McCurry, Eric Peterson, Jonathan Lacina, and Craig Meyers are the only names I have information on, but I have heard there are more missing within that time as well. I try to keep people up to date on the information I receive on my facebook.
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