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With all the hoopla that surrounded Y2K festivities, you might remember the news story of Brian Welzien. Welzien wandered away from the Ambassador East hotel on New Year's Eve of 1999 and did not return. At the time police speculated that he may have possibly been drunk, fell into Lake Michigan and drowned. That scenario seemed to be correct when Welzien's body was eventually found in March of 2000 along a Gary, Indiana beach.
But since then, as more and more eerily similar cases came to light -- "athletic, intelligent, well-liked college student goes missing" and turns up drowned -- whisperings of a serial killer began to emerge. (Hopefully to remain) Chicago's own Mark Suppelsa talked to several people who believe this theory, and there's even a blog dedicated to the subject.
Two retired New York police detectives have devoted their own time and money to the cause (one even mortgaged his own house), and they believe that as many as 40 drowning "accidents" may be the work of not just a single person, but of a group of serial killers. They have followed a trail that they say started in New York and worked its way through Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The detectives have found several connections that seem unlikely to be just coincidences, including a similar piece of graffiti at various sites:
City after city, when they'd find the spot where the body went in, they would find something else: The symbol of a smiley face."It's very disturbing," Duarte said.
The paint color and size of the face varies, but the detectives are convinced that it's a sick signature the killers leave behind.
They also found the word "Sinsiniwa" at a site in Michigan, which turned out to be the street where another body was found in Dubuque, Iowa. [KSTP]
Photo by JustUptown
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Creeptastic.
Wow!
Sad, scary and fascinating post. After reading the links, I was struck by two seemingly contradictory thoughts.
The first is that you would have to be EXTREMELY drunk to fall in the lake and drown, though I'm sure it has happened.
If he was in the Gold Coast and wandered down to the lake, he would be at Oak Street Beach, which would make it almost impossible to fall in and drown. However, if he went further south, there is a wall there along the lake where you would have to swim a bit to get to a ladder, which makes it seem more possible, yet, still, I think, unlikely.
My second thought is that this serial killer would have to be exceptionally strong to murder college-aged men (athletes nonetheless) by drowning them. In fact, has anyone ever heard of such a thing?
The only way I can see him doing it is if he got them black-out drunk. Then what? Take them to the lake? Again, these men would have had to be so drunk that they were in an infantile state.
Until I got to that part of the story, I could NOT figure out why such a creepy picture accompanied the story. It got so much worse after I figured it out. YUK.
I absolutely remember this story, and it never really made sense to me that a drunk person would wander SO far away from ALL crowds and fall into the water completely unnoticed, on one of the busiest nights in the city. This is an interesting, seriously disturbing story.
I remember this story too. I wonder why the investigators are leaning towards a 'group' of serial killers and not just one? There's obviously more to the story. Also, I wonder if comprehensive toxicology tests were performed on all of the cadavers? Slip a rufie in someone's drink, and I would think that one person could easily pull this off. Fascinating and eerie at the same time--the stuff of film noir and hard-boiled detectives...
Just curious... if you find the body later... how would you know where it went into the water?
It all seems like a bit too much speculation. If there are bodies of water nearby, extremely drunk people often their way into them.
Where I went to college, there was a guy down the hall from me who had too much to drink, wandered away from a party, and somehow decided to swim across the river in February. Luckily, he didn't drown, but another student died the same way a few years later.
The graffiti would seem to indicate that these weren't random and unconnected accidental drownings. The blog says that the nicknames of some of the alleged group members were also discovered in multiple locations along with the smiley face...
After reading the blog documenting all of the cases I have to say it is not terribly compelling.
In many of the cases, including two really disturbing ones in Chicago, it seems that foul play very well could have been involved, but in the majority of them it sounds like young men just got extremely drunk and fell into a river or lake.
One thing that seems clear is that suggesting that there is a tie between the majority of the cases would seem to be extremely far-fetched. Witnesses in most of these point to the deceased as having been extraordinarly drunk and then wandering off.
One lesson you could learn from this is not to go near the water when you're drinking, and, two, not to wander around by yourself at night.
Pinko, if the detictives' stories are accurate, that would change things, but I have to agree with Olly. Are these detectives simply looking at all the graffiti in a radius of where the bodies were recovered? According to the blog, for most of the victims, the point of entry into the water is unknown.
@A2: "One lesson you could learn from this is not to go near the water when you're drinking, and, two, not to wander around by yourself at night."
This is true, but when you're fucked up, you're invincible. Or so you think.
@Pinko
I think in general roofies are undetectable. This is the reason proving certain rape cases are almost impossible.
@Yoknap
Not that Law and Order is the best source for information, but there was one episode where they found a body, and they do something with current and tides. Makes sense to me, but then again, it is Law and Order, so who knows.
The main fly in the ointment of this study is that intoxicated young persons have been known to fall into bodies of water and drown. This probably been going on since alcohol was first ingested by man.
LaCross, Wisconsin had a rash of these deaths a few years ago.
Also, there are people who are completely sober who fall into bodies of water. People lose their balance or slip on ice, as happened recently to a jogger here in Chicago. Once in the water, especially if the water is cold, there are other problems that arise. Death can happen quickly.
Anyway, I wish these people well. Maybe they're on to something. But probably not.
Hoof prints mean horses not zebras or whatever.
I think my initial curiosity was based on a flawed premise: That it would be difficult to be so drunk that when you fall in a body of water, you can't get out.
It's been a while since I've been in college, though, and it came back to me over the course of the day just how wickedly drunk people used to get... that kind of all-day liquor drunk where you are basically an infant. Most adults don't drink like that.
Anyway, I read a little about it and saw that, for example, 55 people drowned in the Seine in '07.
So simply falling in water and drowning is not an irregular occurrence at all, drunk or not.
What's up in Paris? Remind me to carry a life preserver when I am near the Seine.
Man, am I the only person here who's gotten drunk and swam in Lake Michigan at night? You guys are missing out.
drunken night swimming in lake michigan is what the last nights of summer were made foe for.
"Man, am I the only person here who's gotten drunk and swam in Lake Michigan at night? You guys are missing out."
No. I did it at 15. One of the best nights of my life.
I think this post is going to inspire me to go drunken skinny dipping in Lake Michigan this summer. Only because as a city kid, I have never once gone skinny dipping...anywhere. So if my alcohol-marinated, naked body washes up on the shores of Indiana or something, you guys can point the cops to this post for an explanation. Unless of course, there's smiley face graffiti near where I went in. Then avenge me...
@Pinko:
Skinny Dipping is one of the sexiest, most fun things one can do. Best in a pool, great in a lake.
Have fun, don't chicken out.
My husband says he read about this serial killer competition in a book called Current Events, Conservative Outcomes. Something about a competition between to guys to see who was the best killer?? He says that in the book the author predicted this would happen and it would terrorize the country. I know it scares the crap out of me, I called to get a security system put in this morning. Creepy!