Drunken college students drowning in Wisconsin

[Philo_T]

http://www.stuffmagazine.com/articles/html/article_817.html

Mystery River
College students are turning up dead in the Mississippi. Police say they drowned. Locals fear it's the work of a serial killer. Our investigation has turned up a potential suspect.

Stuff, October 2004

By Annemarie Conte

Rain pours down on a cold Wisconsin night as a man fights the current of the Mississippi River. It’s almost 2 A.M., and Jeff Geesey, a college sophomore in La Crosse, Wisconsin, is drunk. Lightning illuminates the sky as Geesey struggles in the violent currents until his arms and legs go numb. Exhausted, he succumbs to hypothermia and disappears beneath the water.

Back on campus, Geesey’s friends wonder why he hasn’t returned to the dorm at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. As word spreads, a rumor sweeps the town: Geesey is another victim of a serial killer who stalks young men too intoxicated to fend him off. The bodies of the other three alleged victims had turned up in the river during the past two years.

A bloodhound is used to search for Geesey. After four weeks, the dog hits on a scent that indicates Geesey experienced trauma in several locations. Someone apparently drove him more than a mile from the bar-heavy Third Street area to Niedbalski Bridge. Penny Bell, the bloodhound’s handler, says the dog found Geesey’s blood. “She was licking the pavement. But there was no forensics follow-up.”

La Crosse police chief Ed Kondracki remains skeptical. “Things she said those dogs could do, dogs can’t do,” he says.

On May 22, 1999, 41 days after Geesey vanished, two fishermen found his body. The medical examiner classified the manner of death as undetermined, but unofficially, some police officers consider it a suicide, based on four shallow self-inflicted scars on Geesey’s arms. But Geesey’s angry father says that a psychological evaluation determined that when Jeff cut himself, he was upset—but not suicidal.

To the students and the locals of La Crosse, the notion that four strapping young men drowned in the river in a span of two years seemed like too much of a coincidence—even if they all were drunk. On campus and in town, the serial-killer theory grew in popularity.

But just as the bodies in the river faded from the public’s consciousness, the town was shaken by the disappearance of a fifth young man, Jared Dion, on April 10, 2004. His corpse was found in the river five days later. Amid a public frenzy, La Crosse cops quickly deemed his death accidental. But a recent Stuff investigation determined that police might have too readily dismissed the possibility that a killer or killers were responsible for some or all of the deaths, simply because it seemed unlikely. Even worse, they failed to thoroughly investigate any of the deaths as possible homicides.

One week after Dion’s body turned up, an explosive La Crosse town meeting was broadcast live on local TV. Residents received cheers as they grilled a panel of police, university representatives and health officials.

Dan Marcou, a La Crosse police lieutenant and an uncle of one of the five dead boys, fought back tears as he chastised the crowd. “The La Crosse police department investigated all of these [deaths] thoroughly,” Marcou says. “I have to listen to people applaud at the thought that my nephew was killed by a serial killer. This community is like an alcoholic. It would rather think a killer is loose than admit that it’s got a drinking problem.”

see also: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36607 for more links

 

[zygmunt_rocks_on]

Where I went to college, the local authority produced a public information film about the dangers of post-pub river swimming. I swam across the river once, drunk and nearly didn't make it. Another college rite-of-passage was to walk along the parapet on the outside of the town's Victorian stone bridge, about 100ft above the river, again drunk. How none of us came a cropper, I have no idea. Dunno if the locals would have blamed any bloated corpses found in the Solway Firth a week later as evidence of a Serial Killer though.

 

[escargot]

What a terrible string of events. I'm inclined towards the drunken accident theory, because all drunks seem to love water and believe they can safely walk through/on it. It only takes a couple of drinks to make some peeps think they are indestructible.

I'm not knocking the victims here, far from it.

Every time I drive past a certain deepish, steep-banked local brook, I remember a certain young individual lurching drunkenly down to the water's edge, thinking, 'I won't bother with the bridge.......'
Cold water in my boots brought me to my senses. :eek!!!!:

Zygmunt's experience sounds like the sort of thing that's going on in La Crosse too.

A young man was found drowned somewhere in (I think) the Midlands here a couple of years back. His family believe he was attacked and murdered, although it seems more likely that he fell drunkenly in the canal while urinating into it.

As the wise Mr Marcou of La Crosse points out, 'This community is like an alcoholic. It would rather think a killer is loose than admit that it’s got a drinking problem.'

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Posted 10/28/2004 10:55 PM

Drownings haunt Wis. college town

By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY
LA CROSSE, Wis. — The last time anyone saw Jared Dion alive, he was trying to beat last call at a Third Street bar on Easter weekend.

By the time a police diver pulled his body from the Mississippi River five days later, many residents here believed that the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse senior had become the victim of a serial killer.

Dion was the sixth man to drown in La Crosse since 1997. All were white, ages 19-28. Four were college students. All had a blood-alcohol level greater than 0.22%, nearly three times the legal limit to drive.

Like others, Kellie Halfen, a classmate of Dion's, believes that a serial killer is stalking young men in downtown bars, luring them three blocks to Riverside Park and pushing them into the deep water. "There's too much going on for it just to be coincidence," says Halfen, an art education major from Somerset.

Even now, six months after Dion's death was ruled an accident, the debate over how he died divides this Midwest college town. Speculation about a serial killer came to a boil at a meeting a week after Dion's body was found in April. Residents shouted down the police chief because they thought he quickly dismissed the prospect.

Last month's Stuff magazine, which targets men ages 18-25 by featuring scantily clad women on the cover, included a story about the drowning.

The notion of a serial killer is also fueled by Web sites, including one by Vance Holmes, who calls himself a concerned citizen from Minneapolis. He says the deaths are more than coincidence.

But Police Chief Ed Kondracki says there is no indication of foul play in any of the drownings. In Dion's case there were no signs of trauma. An autopsy showed that Dion, 21, a business major from Merton, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.40% — a near-fatal level. Police believe he was drunk, wandered to the park and fell off a 10-foot retaining wall into icy water.

"Yeah, there's a serial killer out there. He goes by the name of alcohol," Kondracki says.

La Crosse is typical of many Wisconsin towns. German and Swedish immigrants built this city of 52,000 by logging and brewing beer. Taverns became a focal point for community activity.

That culture was evident to Joe Baker, the athletics director at UW-La Crosse, when he arrived from Alabama nine years ago: "I went from barbecue and sweet tea to brats and beer."

At one time, La Crosse had eight breweries. Only one remains. But there are more than 300 places in town to buy alcohol — triple the number of churches.

"We've had a reputation as a hard-drinking river town for 150 years," Mayor John Medinger says. "There's just a culture in La Crosse that tolerates excessive drinking."

That's beginning to change. After Dion's death, Medinger appointed a task force on alcohol use and expects a full report in January.

At the center of the city is UW-La Crosse with 8,000 students, the largest of three colleges in town. "Everyone here is very goal-oriented and motivated. They see Saturday night as a release, a chance to go out and have a good time," says Adam Dow, a senior from Plover majoring in elementary education. "We're not any different than any other college."

As many as 1,400 deaths a year in the USA are linked to college binge drinking — five or more drinks at one sitting, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

"We know binge-drinking kills," says Doug Hastad, the chancellor of UW-La Crosse. "We're not prohibitionists, but we are doing everything we can."

The town's three colleges have given recommendations to the task force, such as a ban on all-you-can-drink specials at bars and stricter enforcement of underage drinking laws. The schools have also made alcohol education and counseling widely available to students.

Among the ongoing efforts is the "Safe Ride" program, a free city bus sponsored by the schools. It makes a 30-minute loop from the cluster of bars at Third and Pearl streets to Viterbo University and UW-La Crosse.

Students call it the "drunk bus." After 10 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the bus is packed with students who clearly are a few beers beyond having a buzz.

Krystyn Heller, a fitness major from Racine, and three girlfriends clamber aboard at 11 p.m. on a recent Saturday night, shivering without coats in a wind chill of 33 degrees.

It's been a "total party day," says Heller, 22. Her foursome started drinking at 11 a.m., just before UW-La Crosse played its first home football game of the season. They progressed to an evening house party. Then they went home to freshen up, knock back a few shots and hop on the bus to the bars.

"It's great there's a bus. They make sure you get home safe," Heller says. She has to shout to be heard above the 46 other students on the bus. They'll have three or more hours of drinking before the return trip. "I mean, can you imagine if we all drove cars?" she asks.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-28-drownings_x.htm