The Case of the Drowning Men (20 page)

Dissatisfied and s
till hoping
they might
find
important
clues, the Zamlen’s continued
looking
for the
ir
son
’s cellphone
,
but never found it. They discovered instead a smiley face
with horns
spray-
painted on a sign at Ford Motor
s
, and
yet
another sketched onto a baseball
which was
left in the
vicinity
Zamlen had first disappeared.

N
either
item
was rel
evant
to his case, the Saint Paul police
then
insisted
, at this point in time far
more interested in investigating the sex
abuse
allegations against
Kevin
Gannon
which
had recently surfaced
,
than in entertaining
the
Smiley Face Murder theory
t
he
detective
was
now so
famous for espousing.

T
he results of a s
econd
autopsy
on Zamlen
didn’t sway them
an inch
from this
new
course
they’d chosen
either,
in spite of
the
second
medical examiner
’s
concerns
that
the
corpse
wasn’t displaying
any injuries from falling down the rocky and brush-filled bluffs
where the SPPD claimed he did
.

“
It is likely he drowned,”
examiner
number two
affirmed,
“
but I feel the manner of death cannot be determined and requires more police investigation and/or access to existing police records.”

Of course
,
the doctor
wasn’t referring to 400
-
plus pages discussing adnauseum the victim’s sexuality
…

Anger
can be
a powerful coping mechanism in times of grief and the
heartbroken
Zamlen
family
had plenty of reason to be angry
with
the SSPD’s
treatment
of their son’s case,
both
before and after his body was
located
, and ever since.

“
There are a lot of upset people here right now over the disrespecting of my son and his good
name,” the victim’s mother said. She
denounced
the
SPPD’s
campaign
to paint
her son
out
as a
confused
,
suicidal
homosexual
,
and
Kevin
Gannon
as
a dangerous
sexual predator
,
as
nothing but
a ruse and
a
cover
up
.

“I don’t believe any investigation was really done
,
”
Mrs. Zamlen stated
emphatically
. “I’m
through
with the police. They’ve done nothing for me, and I feel sorry for the taxpayers in Saint Paul.”

She continues today to try and piece all the evidence together on her own
, she sa
id
.

As to what
really
did
happen to Dan Zamlen
on
April 5th 2009
which
somehow
led to his entering the Mississippi
River
and
supposedly
drowning
,
“We don’t know,” a spokesman for the Saint Paul
P
olice
Department
admitted. “And we may never know
,
”
he added
dismissively
.
“B
ut b
arring any new evidence and information, the investigation is complete and inactive.”

"My son did not fall in that river,"
Gregory
Hart
’s father
insist
ed
. "Those marks on my son's face—somebody hit him."

Hart's
family
said
,
when they went to the
Providence
p
olice
about
his
disappearance
,
they
were
told
"get lost and file the report in Boston."

Hart's grandfather also claimed
that
even before
it was known
his grandson
was
dead and
his
body
discovered
in the
Woonasq
u
atucket River
,
the police
had
stated
“
he probably got drunk and drowned
.
"

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND - MARCH 23, 2010
:
“
The body of Gregory Hart
, 23,
of Dedham
Massachusetts
,
was found in the Woonasquatucket River late Tuesday
afternoon
.
Police s
ay the
UMass economics graduate
and certified scuba diver
was ‘
highly intoxicated
’
and drowned to death in the river.

Hart disappeared late Saturday evening from the Red Room Bar in Providence
which
is owned by the wife of a Providence police detective.
The victim’s
body was
discovered
in the river
by family and friends
who say he looked beaten not drowned
.
His
eye socket had been severely damaged, his clothes torn
,
and there were cuts on his knuckles and cheek.
”

- - -

Just p
rior to
23
-
year-old
Gregory
Hart’s disappearance
from a Providence Rhode Island pub at 1:30 in the morning of
March
14th
2010
,
local law enforcement officials
in that town
had
made the national
news
fo
r charges of
conspiracy and
corruption
.
From the
ongoing
“
O
peration Deception”
bust of
the Providence
P
olice
Department’s
cocaine ring
,
which
had already
led to a half dozen arrests of crooked cops
,
to
the matter of
a
Providence
police
d
etective
having been
charged with assault and battery after
being
video
taped
beating a handcuffed man with a flashlight, the
PPD
w
as
hip deep in scandal.

Further undermining confidence in the
ir
handling of the out-of-towner’s
disappearance and
drowning
death was that the
investigating
officer
just happened to be
the
husband
to
the
Red Room’s
owner
,
the bar
Hart
had
vanish
ed from. Th
is
conflict
,
and the
PPD’s assertion
the
victim
fell
into the water
at
a
location
which would have
necessitated
hi
s
scaling
a
tall
cement wall
and the
eight-foot fence atop it to get to the river
bank
(a
crobatic feats accomplished
with
a
BAC
allegedly
three times the legal driving limit
).
also raised
a number of
serious
doubts
.

The PPD’s failure
to
launch a
search for
Hart when his family
first
reported
his disappearance
to them
didn’t help
matters
either
.
N
or
did
the
discovery
of missing video from the bar’s interior and exterior surveillance cameras
recorded
on
that
evening
…and
the bar bouncer
immediately
leaving town
before he could be questioned
…
and
other
important
eye
witnesses
—friends of Hart
who had been
with him all
night
—suddenly
clamming up
and even
declining
to join the volunteer search-and-rescue
teams
out
looking for him
.

E
verything about
the case
was
odd
from the start
.

“When a sudden death happens in an unusual place under unusual circumstances, it’s suspicious,” Major Thomas F. Oates from the Providence Police Department announced
when
Greg
Hart’s body was
retrieved from
the
nearby
Woonasq
u
atucket River on March 16th
2011.

The c
ommand
ing
i
nvestigator
of the Hart case
,
Officer
Oates
was
attempting to
quell
rumors
already circulating a
bout a
possible
police
cover up
regarding
a
disturbance or
altercation
at
the
bar
the victim
was last seen alive in.
O
n this score,
reframing
the
public
’s low
opinion of the
police
department
,
the Major
wasn’t
meeting with
too
much success
, however. Mostly
because of the battered condition of the corpse.