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Forensic Science | |
Getting Away With Murder
Most murders are never solved because they are either ruled accidental or the wrong people are falsely convicted. Take the case of 21 year old, Christopher Jenkins. The University of Minnesota senior was good-looking, had a near perfect grade-point average and had a future in business.
Christopher Jenkins, 21, vanished on Halloween 2002. Four years later, police ruled his death a homicide.
He was last seen celebrating Halloween at a bar in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2002. Jenkins' friends said he left about midnight. Four months later, his body was found in the Mississippi River, still wearing his Halloween costume.
Minneapolis police classified the drowning as accidental.
Jenkins' blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, and police told his parents that he'd probably had too much to drink after bar-hopping with friends. They thought he'd fallen into the river.
His parents, Steve and Jan Jenkins, insisted that there had been foul play.
"He was loaded into a vehicle, a van, driven around and eventually murdered," Jan Jenkins told CNN. "He was murdered and thrown away like a piece of trash."
Hundreds of miles away, Kevin Gannon, a retired detective with the New York Police Department, was investigating the mysterious deaths of several college men from New York state. Each of the deaths had been ruled an accidental drowning. But these clusters of drowning deaths were probably murders.
In 2006, nearly four years after Jenkins died, there was a break in the case. A tip from a man in jail, described by Minneapolis police as a witness or suspect, caused police to change Jenkins' cause of death from "unexplained drowning" to homicide.
It was a lucky break for Gannon. He had promised the parents of Patrick McNeill that he wouldn't quit until he'd found out how the Fordham University student died. McNeill's body washed up in the East River two months after he left a bar in New York.
Gannon enlisted the help of another former NYPD officer, Anthony Duarte, when Christopher Jenkins' death became a homicide. In 2003, the two traveled to Minneapolis to investigate Jenkins' death.
They learned about a string of student drowning deaths, many of them involving young men who attended colleges along the Interstate 94 corridor in the Midwest -- in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Nine of the deceased attended the University of LaCrosse, in Wisconsin. Three attended colleges in New York state.
In all, the investigators say they've connected the bizarre drowning deaths of at least 40 college-age men across the country.
The two detectives believe that in each case, and in others they investigated, the men were drugged and then their bodies were slipped or tossed into the water to make it appear as if they'd drowned.
Minneapolis police are not convinced that Jenkins' death was the work of a serial killer. We are.
These murders span at least 25 cities and 11 states, and we need to track serial killers better, to prevent more serial "accidents" like the following:
1) Charles Blatz, 28 yrs, Missing-9/28/97 La Crosse, Wisc., Found-10/03/97 -- Mississippi River -- This is a very short and incomplete list. There are literally hundreds of reported drowning victims like the above.
Moreover, the National Crime Center reports 98,697 people are missing in the United States. Of this number, 55 percent are women, and 3,492 of these women are between the ages of 22 and 29.
Cause of Death: reportedly Drowning
2) Anthony Skifton, 19 yrs, Missing-10/10/97 La Crosse, Wisc. Found-- 10/20/97-- Mississippi River --
3) Nathan Kapfer, 20 yrs, Missing-2/22/98 La Crosse, Wisc. Found---4/04/98 -- Mississippi River --
4) Jeffrey Geesey, 21 yrs.,Missing-4/11/99 La Crosse, Wisc. Found---5/24/99 - Mississippi River --
5) Craig Burrows, 23 yrs.,Missing-9/29/02 Eau Claire, Wisc. Found--10/06/02 - Half Moon Lake --
6) Michael Noll, 22 yrs.,Missing-11/06/02 Eau Claire, Wisc. Found-----8/19/03 - Half Moon Lake --
7) Nathan Herr, 21 yrs.Missing-01/10/03 Sheboygan, Wisc. Found----3/15/03 - Lake Michigan --
8) Jared Dion, 21 yrs., Missing--4/10/04 La Crosse, Wisc.Found----4/15/04 -- Mississippi River --
9) Joshua Snell, 22 yrs. (visitor from Minnesota) Missing-6/12/05 Eau Claire, Wisc. Found---6/15/05 - Chippewa River --
10) Cullen Fortney, 21 yrs. Missing 1/08/06 Mississippi River La Crosse, Wisc. Found---1/08/06 - ALIVE Bac --
11) Kenji Ohnri, 20 yrs. Missing-01/28/06 Madison, Wisc. Found----6/19/06 - Lake Mendota --
12) Lucas Homan, 21 yrs. Missing-9/30/06 La Crosse, Wisc. Found--10/02/06 - Mississippi River --
13) Ken Christiansen, 19 yrs. Missing-4/13/01 Duluth, Minn. Found---4/16/01 - Chester Creek --
14) Christopher Nordby, 27 yrs. Missing-11/07/01 Minneapolis, Minn. Found-----2/11/02 - Mississippi River --
15) Christopher Jenkins, 21 yrs. Missing-10/31/02 Minneapolis, Minn. Found---02/27/03 - Mississippi River --
16) Joshua Guimond, 20 yrs. Missing-11/09/02 Collegeville, Minn. Found---( ) Never Found --
17) Jeremy Stienkeoway, 24 yrs.Missing-01/20/03 Hinckley, Minn. Found----4/10/03 - St. Croix River --
18) Patrick Kycia, 19 yrs. Missing-9/23/05 Moorhead, Minn. Found---9/28/05 - Red River --
19) Scot Radel, 21 yrs. Missing-02/02/05 St. Cloud, Minn. Found-----3/01/06 --
20) Keith Noble, 19 yrs. a student at Ohio University, reported missing in April 1998. found 5/06/98 -Hocking River --
21) Chad Sharon, Found February, 2003 in the St. Joseph River in South Bend, Ind. University of Notre Dame freshman had been missing for two months.--
22) Eau Claire, Wis. was found in lake on August 19, 2003. --
23) Ryan Getz, 21-years-old, MISSING: 12/31/97 East Lansing, MI FOUND: 4/18/98 Red Cedar River --
24) Brian Welzien, 21 yrs. Northern Illinois University student, MISSING: 1/1/00 Chicago, IL. FOUND: 3/17/00 Lake Michigan --
25) Eric Blair, Delta College student from Bay City, MISSING: 10/20/01 East Lansing, MI., FOUND: 10/23/01 Red Cedar River --
26) Brian Carrick, Johnsburg, IL., 17-year-old, MISSING: 12/20/02 --
27) Glen Leadley, 23-year-old., MISSING: 2/8/03 Chicago, IL., FOUND: 2/23/03 Lake Michigan --
28) Matthew Schiess, 17-year-old, MISSING: 11/1/03 Lena, IL., FOUND: 11/13/03 Pecatonica River --
29) Matt Kruziki, 24-year-old, traveling through Iowa, MISSING: 12/23/05 Dubuque, Iowa., FOUND: 3/18/06 Mississippi River --
30) Chris Olberding, missing since October 2, 2004, University of Cincinnati freshman, found, Ohio River --
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