Chicagoist: Did a Serial Killer Group Hit Chicago?

Ginger1969

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:39:01 -0600

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!

Spav1

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:24:01 -0600

@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.

Pinko

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:02:42 -0600

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...

matty

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:15:50 -0600

"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.

joshuamellin

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:46:27 -0600

drunken night swimming in lake michigan is what the last nights of summer were made foe for.

starcrunch

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:46:37 -0600

Man, am I the only person here who's gotten drunk and swam in Lake Michigan at night? You guys are missing out.

Ward Up

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:24:29 -0600

What's up in Paris? Remind me to carry a life preserver when I am near the Seine.

A2

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:11:34 -0600

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.

Spav1

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:35:28 -0600

Hoof prints mean horses not zebras or whatever.

Ward Up

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:28:07 -0600

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.

Mary_Sunshine

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:43:29 -0600

@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.

rhoswhen

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:30:44 -0600

@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.

A2

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:25:07 -0600

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

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:14:13 -0600

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.

Pinko

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:10:27 -0600

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...

Olly McPherson

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:03:01 -0600

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.

YoknapatawphaTourismBoard

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:57:54 -0600

Just curious... if you find the body later... how would you know where it went into the water?

Pinko

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:33:53 -0600

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...

JuliaPorter

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:17:49 -0600

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.

A2

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:17:12 -0600

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.

matty

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:09:37 -0600

Wow!

Mary_Sunshine

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:46:37 -0600

Creeptastic.