The Case of the Drowning Men (35 page)

So
, fire versus water,
the cops
who may be
involved
in
intentionally
“drowning” men
for thrills
and spills
would
probably
be water recovery experts
, or ones with strong ties to related professions
.

But
maybe
a
far
more
logical and
benign
scenario might
resemble
this
one
: A young man leaves a party or bar slightly inebriated
. It’s late and he’s
exhausted
, maybe even irritated because he had an argument with someone
before he left
the place
. He’s walking home, but not
in a manner
as
coordinated as
usual
.
A
long the way
he
might
also
pause where he shouldn’t
in order
to
empty his bladder
. Or p
erhaps he’s just wearing his hood
up
and
somehow
looks suspicious to cop
s cruising by. They pull over
and get out
to interrogate
the man, but h
e
’s not doing anything wrong
he tells them and
“pulls an attitude”
which
the
police
find annoying and disrespectful
. That earns
the
guy
the stun
-
gun treatment.
They shock him o
nce
, t
wice
, t
hree times
maybe
. A
fter which
t
he
victim
falls to the ground
comatose
and unresponsive
,
or dies.

W
rongful death, suspension
s
without pay, demotion
s
, lawsuits…the river is close by. It’s a no brainer what to do.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
,

U.S. Supreme Court

What You’re Not Looking For
”

This
bold
statement
,
“
y
ou can’t see what you’re not looking for
,
”
drawn
with
a
smiley
-
faced o and an eye
sketched
neatly into the
hump of the
n,
was allegedly left
by the killer or killers
at the scene of
one
young man’
s
drowning. If
it
i
s
true
that
this graffiti
message
comes
directly
from a group of serial murderers
,
then
,
whoever the
miscreants are,
they’re quite right
and we should take them up on their dare
.

It’s an interesting expression
outside of that context too,
because,
apart
from being a potential
clue in the
c
ase of the
d
rowning
m
en,
and
disclos
ing that the author
who scrawled it on the wall
is
fairly literate
,
(
knowing to use
“you’re”
correctly
instead
of
the
much
-
mis
appropriated
“your”
)
,
this phrase i
s also a popular song lyric from a band who contributed music to the even more popular slash horror film series,
Scream
. T
he first installment of which appeared in theatres in
1
996.

The plot to
Scream
and
Scream
2
,
Scream 3
, etc., is
brutally simple and reliably formulaic: There’s a
ruthless
killer
of young people
on the loose and everybody’s either trying not to be the next victim or
attempting
desperately to catch him.

Where the
Scream
film
s
do
break tradition with the genre
, however,
is that the actual killer
himself
can be a different person
every
time.
That is to say, a
nybody who wears the killer mask, which resembles the face in Edvard Munch’s classic painting “The Scream”
,
can do the
serial slaying
s
.
A repe
ti
tive
theme
to
these movies
which can go on indefinitely, of course,
or
until moviegoers decide they’
v
e
finally
gotten
bored with
the franchise
and move on
to something else
.

Again,
I’m not saying that
this is
the same motif at play in th
e 15-year slew of
suspicious
drowning
s
in the northern corridor
. But I’m also not saying
that
it isn’t.

What I
am saying
is
, i
f investigators prefer to
only
look at alcohol as the common link in all these
strange
death
s, then that is what they
can
and will
find
without fail
. But to do th
is
they
also have to ignore
the
many cases where
autopsy reports
and toxicology findings
simply don’t support such a theory
.
No
t to mention
that
the victim
class
doesn’t
represent
an adequate
enough
cross
section of the population
for it all to be just a tragic coincidence.

I
t’s shocking that, i
n most of the cases, the facts aren’t even being
fully
considered. A presumption is
immediately
made
by the police
and when the evidence
they uncover
doesn’t conform
to
that, it’s all
tossed
to
the wind.
In fact,
often
times
police
search-and-rescue efforts aren’t even being launched
in a timely and professional manner
, further
hampering
an
already
compromised
inqu
i
ry
.

For example
, in one of the new
er
disappearances I
’
d
been
track
ing
since
this
winter
,
I was appalled to see
a one-day police search for
a
missing
student
abruptly
abandoned,
solely on the word of an unnamed source
claiming
they
’d
heard someone yell
ing
for help
down
by
the river
the night the victim went missing
.

Of course,
from
hav
ing
just
objectively
looked
at it
all
through a
forensic
perspective, we
now
know
that drowning people can’t speak
or yell
, for lack of air. So perhaps th
e
young man
i
n question
was calling for help from somewhere other than the
riverbank
. H
is drowned corpse was found
floating
three days later
by his family and friends
in the area where he allegedly disappeared
, although,
calculating the
water temperatures and the equally chilly weather, his body shouldn’t have resurfaced
for
at least
two
to
three
more
weeks
, or longer
.

J
ust a
nother
“
classic
”
drowning, the
police and
medical examiner proclaimed, and
,
as
has become
customary
for
these events
, the
toxicology report which
revealed an unremarkable blood/alcohol content
didn’t change that verdict
.
This, e
ven though the victim’s BAC
level was
nowhere near
what would
have
be
en
required
for
him
to head
in the wrong direction to his apartment and fall into the river on
his
way.

But at least
the 21-year-old birthday boy
and honor student
was found in the spot where th
at helpful
anonymous “witness” claimed he
’d
be
located
.

W
hen attempting to
address
community concern
s
over a
plaguing
situation like this
one
, public officers are
bound by
duty
and oath
to answer 100% truthfully
100% of the time,
and to take action where warranted
without prejudice
. I
emphasize
this because
authorities
responding
to this matter
in the past
ha
d
to
know they
we
re basing their
opinions
and assurances
on statistics that
are
irrelevant.
A
ll of them
had
to realize
the obvious;
that
, whatever the cause or causes, there
is
a disproportional representatio
n among the
drown
victims
,
and that it’s
not the element of intoxication that
is
uniformly connecting their deaths, but
the young men
themselves.
Who they are and what makes them so outstanding
is
set
ting
them up as targets
.