The Case of the Drowning Men (19 page)

In fact, he
was en route there
,
he
’d
just informed his friend, Anna
,
via
a cellphone conversation on
Mississippi Boulevard
at Saint Claire
.
Obviously, though,
Zamlen
was
somehow
intercepted on his way
because he
never made it
beyond that location
—his last words
to Anna
being
“Oh-my-god, help!”

Dan
Zamlen was a
responsible and caring individual; a
straight A student,
a
Three
-
Star
athlete,
an
Eagle Scout,
a
Catechism teacher
,
and
a
former
altar
boy
. He
had
also
recently diagnosed himself as a
diabetic and was wearing an insulin pod
the day
of
his disappearance
which, when
ever
empty or submersed, would
beep
a loud warning signal intermittently for about a week
until its energy pack was drained
.

It was a
lightweight,
state-of-the-art delivery device
and didn’t require embedding beneath the skin,
but
it
still had to be replenished every few days
. Therefore
Zamlen’s
health
was
a pressing concern
to his family
and
explained
why
they
sped promptly
to the scene
upon
learning
he was
officially
missing.

Friends and family tried repeatedly to contact
Zamlen
after
his last
worrisome conversation
,
but they
only
got
voicemail
each
time they tried
to call
him
.
The friend
he
’d
spoke
n
with
before
their conversation
ended abruptly
sa
id
she
’d
even
driven
to the p
articular intersection he
told her
he was calling from
, but when she got there
she said
Zamlen
was
already
gone.

The cellphone model
Zamlen’s parents had provided
him
with
for college was
a
model
that
,
as
long
it
remained charged and
fully
operative
would be
trackable
through
GPS
, if
it should ever be
necessary
for them to
have to
do
this
.
But
,
by
8:30
the
very
same
morning
,
th
at
cell
phone
had gone
dead
,
with
still no word
from,
or sign
of,
its owner
. S
o a
special
GPS feature that should have provided a locational ping
turned out
to be
worthless
technology
without the police actually bothering to track it
right away
.

The testimony
of
Dan Zamlen’s friend,
Anna
,
the last person he is alleged to have communicated with,
would change many times in the
telling and
retelling
of this
story
, making her multi-versions and possible embellishments of the
original
event
s
a significant bone of contention for the Zamlen family members
.

The Zamlens
were only trying to determine what exactly had happened to their loved one that night
,
but
,
as a consequence of
the young woman’s
unreliab
ility,
found
her to be
quite confounding
and untrustworthy
.

Nevertheless, the initial
version
is always what
counts
the most in
these
cases, and initially Anna
had
said that whatever
spurred the
dispute Zamlen
was
involved in
that
evening
,
which
caused
him
to erupt and
storm off
by himself, it
was relatively
unimportant
.

Regardless of what
actually
took place
at the bar
,
minor or major,
c
ommon
sense
still
dictates that
if someone’s last words before they disappeared were
cries
for help,
then
those concerned for the victim’s welfare
sh
ould
have
be
en
able to enlist
the aid of
law enforcement to search for him
without delay
.

But
when Zamlen went missing
in
April
2009
this was
not yet
how such
matters
were handled by the authorities
. Instead,
the Saint Paul Police Department
advised
hi
s
parents
that
they
’
d have
to wait
at least 24 hours
before
the youth
could
legally
be
considered a missing person.
“Your son is a grown man,” the police
reminded them
.
“
H
is lack of contact doesn’t rise to the level of concern as a missing child.”

Naturally, i
t goes without saying
,
if
a male or female
of any age has
met up with
some
type of
misfortune,
a
n awful
lot can happen in
only
24 hours
to deepen the tragedy
. And
,
apparently
,
a
n awful
lot did.

The SSPD did not join the
civilian
rescue effort
s
which were
spearheaded by Zamlen
’s loved ones
and
launched
immediately
upon their arrival in the city of Saint Paul
.
W
orse,
police
tried to prevent
the
search for him,
the
Zamlens said
,
expressly
forbidding
them
from
walk
ing
down
the rocky bluffs
near
where their son was last heard from
,
and even
stationing an officer in the area
with the aim of
discouraging
anyone
else from
scaling
them
.

Th
os
e bluffs
were
just
“too dangerous
,
”
the SSPD
told
would-be rescuers
.
A
warning the searchers felt compelled to disobey.

So i
t would be more than t
wo days of
their
fruitlessly combing the location and knocking door-to-door
throughout
the neighborhood before t
he
distraught
Zamlens
actually got to meet
with a missing persons investigator
; and w
hen
police
finally
did
look
for
Dan
Zamlen,
all
eight bloodhounds
they employed
followed the victim’s scent away from the river
to
ward
yet
another intersection
where the scent then faded
.

T
he
SPPD
scour
ed
the
perilous
bluffs
themselves,
too
,
but
the
y
also
found
no evidence of
any
one having
accidentally
t
umb
led over
and
down
on
to the shore
below
.
T
he
rocks
,
the
trees and
the
soil
of
the
se
several story high embankments
being
completely
undisturbed
.

So
phisticated side
-
sonar
scanning of the
river
and infrared
technology
likewise produced no
corpse
hidden in the
frigid
murk
of the Mississippi
,
and
the same was true
for
searching by air from
police h
elicopters
equipped
with
the
rmal tracking capabilities
who
also
spott
ed
nothing
in or around the water
.

B
ut b
y then this news
wasn’t a big
surprise
to
the Zamlen posse, numbering about 1200
strong
and comprised of
family members, friends, fellow university students
, and one ex-NYPD detective
who suspected foul play and a link with similar cases he’d been investigating
.
In all, the Zamlen search party
had
knocked on 7000 doors
to find the missing young man
and
, sadly,
had come up empty-handed
.

“We looked in the culverts
,
we looked in the trees,”
Dan Zamlen’s
father
declared
in
exasperation
. “I don’t really believe he’s in the river.”

Having pretty much drawn the same conclusion, t
he Saint Paul
P
olice
Department
terminated their
own efforts
after only three days of
hunting for the victim.
When,
almost
a month
later, Dan Zamlen’s body was
finally
pulled out of the river a few miles downstream at the Ford Motor plant,
they
officially
ruled
it
a drowning from a drunken fall
and closed the case
soon thereafter
when the autopsy
results came in showing
no signs of
physical
trauma.