The Case of the Drowning Men (24 page)

Designed
with the
obvious
agenda of
debunk
ing
for good
the idea of a gang of murderers on a
fifteen
-year
drowning
spree in the
northern corridor
,
the
C
enter for
H
omicide
R
esearch
lambasted the serial murder theory
.
But
utiliz
ing
a
so called
“non-recreational
outdoor
drowning database” to support their
various
findings,
while
tacitly
admitting
that
this crucial
database
was
“problematic
” because
“
it has some shortcomings in the form of missing data
,
”
is j
ust
the first of many
pitfalls
in
their argument
.

The second is that
i
t’s not known
which
“non-recreational”
drowning
database
CHR
was
actually
referring to
in their paper
since
,
oddly enough
,
they don’t
bother to
name it
.
Neither
do they
say
if the
cases
listed in
it
were
independently
compiled
by a recognized authorit
y
and
whether
th
e
statistic gathering was
international
or
domestic.

They do say on page two
of
their
study
that “CHR identified an Internet database of 40 water-related deaths and have continued adding cases to it
.
”
A perplexingly vague statement
which raises the possibility
that, aside from
a handful of
online lists maintained unofficially by
some
conscientious individuals
,
the database CHR was
alluding to
doesn’t
really
exist.

In
either
case
,
because researchers
“adding cases” to
re
invent a
n existing
database
that will
, once modified
,
support
their
research conclusion
s
,
is rather an
unusual
and
unscholarly approach to fact
-
finding
, this
admission
piqued my curiosity
.

So
I
conducted a sweeping search to see if I could
locate
the Homicide Center’s
top secret
source myself
,
b
ut
, regrettably,
and as might have been expected,
I
could
not
.

In fact,
even today
there isn’t an
authoritative
database
that I know of
dedicated to
compiling
non-recreational
outdoor
drowning
statistics
, let alone for the specific months of September to April
in the northern USA
,
since
, as it turns out,
such events
don’t happen very often
.
The chart I provided on water fatalities
in
this chapter
was
the closest I could find on the subject and was
generated by
The Center For Disease Control
in
the year
2004
.
B
ut
as you can see
in a glance
,
this one concerns
both
drowning and near
-
drowning
events
which happen in
recreational setting
s
. Moreover, it’s not all that recent, representing data the
CDC
collected
from
2001
to 2002
.

Still
,
when
analyzing
th
os
e
figures
, recreational drowning
s
are
surprisingly
low
when one takes into consideration the countless
millions of Americans who swim and boat each year.
In fact, w
ith recreational drowning l
isted by the CDC as only
“
the seventh leading cause of unintentional
-
injury deaths for all ages”
it would
seem
that
playing in
water
or near it, sober or intoxicated,
isn’t
quite
the
dangerous
act some experts are now claiming
it to be
.

CDC
also
state
s
the finding
s
for
this period to be consistent with
their
previous reports
showing
“small children are at the highest risk”
of death by drowning
,
“particularly
a
round residential pools
,
”
they
warn
.
F
atal
drowning
rates for
the
male
population
were
noted to be
“five times that of females”
by CDC estimates,
although
the organization
offered
no definitive
explanation
for th
at
la
tter
ratio
.

Which means, we can hypothesize
all we want
about it
, but
so far
no one
can really say why
it is that
more men
than women
die
during
water recreation.
And, at this rate, if we don’t keep probing for
the
answer
s
, we may never find out why only young males are dying in non-recreational drownings
around
the northern interstates.

The Center For Homicide Research
emphatically asserts “there is no known serial offender who has ever drowned victims.”
Again,
this is
not only
an
off topic
statement
,
but
it’s also
fal
s
e
. B
oth Coral Watts and Ted Bundy
specifically employed drowning as one of their murder methods
.

A
dditionally,
al
though female serial murderer
s are
still a rare phenomen
a
even
in
today
’s
violent
times
, a few such women as well have calculatingly used water to kill. Indeed, as
CHR
must have known,
or should have known
,
the record shows
a
full
five percent of
all
female serial killers
’
victims
were intentionally drowned
to death
.

I
n trying to give a line by line analysis of
CHR’s
“Drowning the Smiley Face Murder Theory” it w
a
s a
repeated
hindrance not being able to
refer to
a
bona fide
database
for non-recreational
drowning. E
ven the one CHR
alleges to have
banged together
for their
private
use
would’ve been
handy
so we could checkout their math
.
Math matters in research and it’s not inconsequential that they omitted it, h
owever,
there are plenty of
other assertions they made
that
appear
equally
skewed
which
can quickly be compared.

For instance, CHR spottily relied upon the Center for Disease Control’s 2005 “Death and Dying” statistics which cite accidents as the number one cause of death in males and females 15 to 24 years of age, and suicides as the third leading cause of death in this demographic
:
“Many of these drowning victims appear to be drinking to the point of total inebriation,” CHR
elaborates
on page five
of their paper
.
“Binge drinking is a strong predictor of actual suicide attempts.”

Naturally, suicide being
that
prevalent in the young, the
Homicide Center
hoped
the
figure
would
bolster their position that many of the
winter
drownings were actually the result of auto-assassination, or,
more
plainly put, the fulfillment of a subconscious death wish.

Writing the
se
off
as
mere
ly
due to
death wishes, though, is much too convenient
, since
virtually none of the young men who went missing and ended up drowned ever expressed suicidal ideations to anyone. More importantly, in pursuit of
this
type of
conjecture,
which was
at the expense of the
victims’
reputations, CHR entirely
failed to
mention the number two cause of death
listed by the CDC for th
at
age group
:
H
omicide
.

According to the Center for Disease Control, homicide is the second leading cause of death in Americans 15 to 24 years of age, accounting nationwide for over 16% of all fatalities in this particular segment of the population, and with males being six times more likely to be murdered than their female counterparts.

I’ll reiterate that
stat
because it’s pertinent and being
deliberately
ignored:
T
he second leading cause of death in young men is homicide, not drowning.